A History Of - Forgotten Books

A H i s to ry o f

AN C IEN T G R E EK

L IT ERATUR E

G ILBERT MURRAY,M .A

AUTHOR or CARLYON su ns ," “

ANDROMACHEEURIPIDES 2MEDEA , ETC.

1 0 1100 11

WILLIAM HEINEMANNMCMX I

PR E FA C E

To read and t e-read the scanty remains now left to us

of the Literature of Ancient Greece, is a pleasant and

not a laborious task ; nor is that task greatly increasedby the inclusion of the ‘ Scholia ’

or ancient commen

taries. But modern scholarship has been prolific in

the making of books ; and as regards this department

of my subj ect,I must frankly accept the verdict passed

by a German critic upon a h istorian of vastly wider

erudition than mine,and confess that I ‘ stand help

less before the mass of my material.’ TO be more

precise,I be lieve that in the domain of Epic, Lyric,

and Tragic Poetry,I am fairly familiar with the re

searches of recent years ; and I have endeavoured to

read the more celebrated books on Prose and ComicPoetry. Periodical literature is notoriously hard to

control ; but I hope that comparatively few articles ofimportance in the last twenty volumes of the Hermes

,

the RIzez'

m'

sc/zes Mus eum, the Pb ilologus , and the Eng

l ish C lassical Journals, have escaped my consideration .

More than th is I have but rarely attempted.

I f under these circumstances I have nevertheless

sat down to write a History of Greek Literature,and

have even ventured to address myself to scholars as

well as to the general public,my reason is that

,after

viii PREFACE

all,such knowledge of Greek literature as l poss ess

has been of enormous value and interest to me ; that

for the last ten years at least,hardly a day has passed

on which Greek poetry has not occupied a large part

of my thoughts, hardly on e deep or valuable emotion

has come into my life which has not been either

caused,or interpreted, or bettered by Greek poetry.

This is doubtless part of the ordinary narrowing of

the special ist,the one-sided sensitiveness in which he

finds at once his sacrifice and his reward ; but it is

usually,perhaps

,the th ing that j ustifi es a man in

writing.

I have felt it difficult in a brief and comparatively

popular treatise to maintain a fair proportion betw een

th e scientific and aesthetic sides of my subj ect. Ourultimate literary j udgments upon an ancient writer

generally depend,and must depend

,upon a large mass

of ph ilological and antiquarian argument. I n treating

Homer,for instance, it is impossible to avoid the

Homeric Question ; and doubtless many w i l l j udge,

in that particular case,that the Question has almost

ousted the Poet from th is book. As a rule,however

,

I have tried to conceal all the laboratory work,

except for purposes of il lustration,and to base my

exposition or criticism on the results of it. Thisexplains why I have so rarely referred to other

scholars,especially those whose works are best known

in . this country . I doubt,for instance

,if th e names

of jebb, Leaf, and Monro occur at all in the following

pages. The same is true of such writers as Usen er,Gomperz, Susemihl, and Blass, to whom I owe much ;

PREFACE ix

and even of W. Christ, from whose Gesclzz’

cfzte def

Grz'

ec/zzlvclzen Lz’

ttera tur I have taken a great deal of my

chronology and general framework. But there are two

teachers of whose influence I am especially conscious

first,Mr. T. C. Snow, of St. John

’s College,Oxford, too

close a friend of my own for me to say more of h im;and secondly

,Professor Ulrich von Wilamow itz-Moellen

dorff,of GOttingen , whose historical insight and singular

gift of imaginative sympathy w ith ancient Greece seem

to me to have changed the face of many departments of

Hellenic study within the last fifteen years.

My general method,however

,has been somewhat

personal,and independent of particular authorities. I

have tried— at first unconsciously,afterwards of set

purpose—to realise,as well as I could

,what sort of

men th e var ious Greek authors were,what they liked

and disliked, how they earned their living and spenttheir time . Of course it is only in the Attic period

,

and perhaps in the exceptional case of Pindar,that

such a result can be even distantly approached,unless

history is to degenerate into fiction . But the attempt

is helpful even where it leads to no definite result. I t

saves the student from the error of conceiving ‘ the

Greeks ’ as all much alike—a gallery of homogeneous

figures,with the same ideals

,the same standards

,the

same limitations. I n reality it is their variety that makes

them so living to us—the vast range of their interests,

the suggestiveness and diversity of their achievements,

together with the vivid personal energy that made the

achievements possible . I t was not by ‘ classic repose ’

nor yet by ‘ worship of the human body,

’ it was not

PREFACE

even by the mere possession of high intellectual andaesthetic gifts

,that they rose so irresistibly from mere

barbarism to the height of their unique civilisation : it

was by infinite labour and unrest,by daring and by

suffering, by loyal devotion to the things they felt tobe great ; above all, by hard and serious thinking.

Their outer political history,indeed

,like that of all

other nations,is fi l led with war and diplomacy

,with

cruelty and deceit. I t is the inner history,th e history

Of thought and feeling and character,thatl is so grand .

They had some difficulties to contend with which arenow almost out of our path . They had practically no

experience,but were doing everything for the first

time ; they were utterly weak in material resources

and their emotions, their ‘

a'es z

'

res and fea rs area’rages ,

were probably w i lder and fierier than ours. Yet they

produced the Athens of Pericl es and of Plato.

The conception which we modem s form of these men

certain ly varies in the various genera tions. The ‘ serene

and classical ’ Greek of W inckelmann and Goethe did

good service to th e world in his day,though we now

feel h im to be mainly a phantom. He has been suc

ceeded,especially in the works of painters and poets,

by an aesthetic and fleshly Greek in fine raiment , an

abstract Pagan who lives to be contrasted with an equally

abstract early Christian or Puritan, and to be glorified or

mishandled according to the sentiments of his critic . He

is . a phantom too, as unreal as those marble palaces in

which he habitually takes h is ease . He w ould pass,perhaps

,as a ‘ Graeculus ’ of the Decadence ; but the

speeches Aga ins t Tz'

ma re/zus and Aga z'

ns t Leoera tes show

PREFACE xi

what an Athenian jury would have thought of him.

There is more flesh and blood in the Greek of the

anthropologist, the foster-brother of Kaffirs and HairyAinos . He is at least human and simple and emotional

,

and free from irrelevant trappings. His fault, of course,is that he is not the man we want, but only the raw

material out of which that man was formed : a Hellene

without the beauty,without the spiritual life

,without

the Hellen ism. Many other abstract Greeks are about

us,no one perhaps greatly better than another ; yet

each has served to correct and complement his prede

cessor ; and in the long-run there can be little doubt

that our conceptions have become more adequate.

We need not take Dr. Johnson’s wild verdict about the

‘ savages ’ addressed by Demosthenes, as the basis of

our comparison we may take the Voy age d’

Anaelza rszs

of the Abbé Bartelemi. That is a work of genius in

its way,careful

,imaginative

,and keen -sighted ; but it

was published in 1788 . Make allowance for the per

sonality of the writers, and how much nearer we get

to the spirit of Greece in a casual study by Mr. Andrew

Lang or M . Anatole France !

A desire to make the most of my allotted space,and

also to Obtain some approach to unity of view,has led

me to limit the scope of this book in several w ays.

Recognising that Athens is the only part”

of Greece of

which we have much real knowledge, I have accepted

her as the inevitable interpreter of the rest,and have

,

to a certain extent, tried to focus my reader’s attention

upon the Attic period,from E schylus to Plato. I have

xii PREFACE

reduced my treatment of Philosophy to the narrowest

dimensions,and

,with much reluctance

,have deter

mi ned to omit altogether H ippocrates and the men of

science. Finally, I have stopped the history proper at

the death of Demosthenes, and appended only a rapid

and perhaps arb itrary sketch of the later l iterature

down to the fall of Paganism,omitting entirely

,for

instance, even such interesting books as Theoph ras tus’

s

C/za raeters , and the Trea tis e on Me S nolz'

me.

I n the spelling of proper names I have made no greateffort to attain perfect consistency. I have in generaladopted the ordinary English or Latin modifications

,

except that I have tried to guide pronunciation by leaving

k unchanged where e would be soft,and by marking long

syllables w ith a circumflex . Thus Kimon is not changedto Cimon, and Demédes is distinguished from ZEsch ines .

I have not,however

,thought it necessary to call h im

Demades,o r to alter the aspect of a common word by

writing Demeter,Thfikydides . I n references to ancient

authors,my figures always apply to the most eas ily

accessible edition my reading, of course, is that which

I think most l ikely to be right in each case . All the

authors quoted are published in cheap texts by Teubn er

or Tauchnitz or the English Universities,except in a few

cases,which are noted as they occur. Aristotle

,Plato

,

and th e Orators are quoted by the pages of the standard

editions in the Cons titution of Atitens , which, of course,was not contained in the great Berlin Aristotle

,I fol low

Kenyon’s ea’z'

tz'

oprinceps .

Philologists may be surprised at the occasional ao

ceptance in my translations of ancient and erroneous

PREFACE x iiietymologies. I f

,in a part icular passage, I translate

rjMfia r oq‘ sun - trodden It is not that I th ink it to be a

‘ contracted form,

’

of nxtéfia ros, but that I bel ieve Euri

pides to have thought so .

An asterisk after the title of a w ork signifies that the

work is lost or only extant in fragments. Fragmentarywriters are quoted

,unless otherwise stated

,from the

following collections : Fragmenta s torz'

eornm e eorum,

by Karl Miiller Pnz'

los opnornm,by Mullach Tragi oornm,

by Nauck Comz'

eorum,by Kock Ep icornm, by Kinkel ;

Poetce Ly rz’

a'

Grad,by Bergk. These collection s are

denoted by their in itial letters,F. H . G.,

F. P. G .,and

so on . C. I . A. is the Corpus Inscriptz'

onum A ttz'

ca rztm,

C. I . G. the Camus In scriptionum Graeea rnm. I n a few

cases I have used abbreviations for a proper name,as

W. M . for Wilamow itz-Moellendorfi‘,but not

,I th ink

,in

any context Where they are likely to be misunderstood.

Among the friends who have helped me with criticisms

and suggestions,I must especial ly express my indebted

ness to Mr. GEORGE MACDONALD, lecturer in Greek inthis University, for much careful advice and correction

of detail throughout the book.

GILBERT MURRAY.

GLASGOW,Februa ry 1 897.

PR E F A C E

TO TH E S ECO ND ED I T I O N

IN revising th is book for a second edition, I hope that Ihave profited in many isolated points of detail by thesuggestions of several kindly critics both at home andabroad. As to the general plan of my treatise, I sti lladhere to the views expressed in the Preface to theFirst Edition . Large as the omissions are in this “ shorthistory of a great subj ect

,and much as I feel these

omissions myself,I can only say that they are the result

of long and careful balancing of advantages. I t i s nowant of love for post-Demosthenic literature

,no want

of interest in th e process of massing and weighing theevidence on which my conclusions rest

,and certainly

no want of cordial admiration for the achievements ofthe present and the last generation of scholars in GreatBrita in and I reland

,that has influenced me in deter

mining to save space at the expense of these threesubj ects.I am glad, however, that, thanks to th e unexpected

amount of sympathy which has greeted my very imperfect book

,I have this early opportunity of adding

a few words upon two writers who,for different reasons

,

were not properly treated in my first edition,Bacchylides

and HerOdas . The former of these had not been published when this book first appeared ; the latter was

5

xvi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

accidentally omitted in my brief summary ofAlexandr ian

l iterature .The last of the three great papyri recently acquiredby the British Museum and edited by Mr. F. G. Kenyon,is a very beautiful MS.

,written about the middle of the

first century B.C. I t contains twenty lyr ical poems byBacchylides of Keos

,s ix practical ly intact

,the others

in all possible stages Of muti lation . The surmise thatsome of the poems were not Epinikian ’ has proved tobe correct. Six of them,

whatever class of lyric theymay eventual ly be assigned to, have at any rate noreference to the Games. One or two poems, notablyX V . and XVI ., have rather the appearance of mythswithout a setting—centre-pieces ready to be fitted intoa poem celebrating some occasion

,when the occas ion

and the patron should present themselves. The possib ility of such a practice is il lustrated by many of

Pindar’s poems and by the Fifth of Bacchylides’ own,

in wh ich the myth forms a separate whole and mightbe excised bodily (Ant. B to Ant. E) . One is remindedof the loa

’

communes composed by th e professionalorators, which we find both incorporated in speechesand existing separately.Bacchylides appeals to us

,to say the least

,as one

of a most marve llous group ; he breathed the sameair as Pindar

, [Eschylus and Sophocles, and, like theminor Elizabethans

,comes to us with a certain fragrance

not his own clinging about his garments. Yet in h imself too he is a real and beautiful poet. The old verdictof ‘ Longinus

,

’ which has been accepted as canonicalduring al l the centuries when nobody could test it

,

proves to be both apt and true when confronted w ithBacchylides

’

own works . He is‘not to be compared

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xvu

with Pindar for genius,

’ but is nevertheless among the‘ faultless poets ’ whose thoughts are smooth and beautifully expressed at every point.’ I n one sense the verylimitations of Bacchyl ides increase the value of th isdiscovery. We did not really know til l now what anormal lyric poet of the fifth century was like . We

had only Pindar to j udge by,and Pindar is

,and must

always have been,utterly unnormal and inimitable .

Bacchylides is nei ther. When an average Athenianthought of a lyrical poet

,the main association in his

mind was probably this pecul iar art of twisting andbeating language like so much metal, welding strangeand beautiful compounds

,fretting out delicate traceries

of w ords and music. One may th ink of the variationsrung upon ‘ clouds ’ and ‘ snow ’ and ‘wings ’ and ‘ sunlight ’ by the poet in Aristophanes’ Birds . That poettaken at his best

,and stripped of the atmosphere of

caricature which enwraps h im,might bear a consider

able resemblance to our new-found Bacchylides.To turn to more intimate criticism

,Bacchyl ides was

a nephew of S imonides and a

i

t ival of Pindar,and both

great men have left their marks upon him . The dialect,

the metres,the subj ects

,are those of Pindar . There is

much,too

, of the Pindaric habits of thought, the aversion to democracy

,the re ligious quiescence

,the per

functory moralising, which were probably common tomost of the poets who served Dorian masters. But inplace of the tense

,obscure splendour which is the special

characteristic of Pindar’s mind,we have here an easy

lucidity that betrays th e I onian and the pupil Of S imonides. Bacchylides is often so ballad - like both inrhythm and in manner

,that one can wel l imagine the

fishermen singing his verses,as we are told

,but can

xviii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

scarcely believe,that they sang Pindar’s . The actual

imitation of Pindar is sometimes strongly marked . We

have it at its greatest in Ode V., a beautiful lyric of twohundred lines, narrating the parley of Heracles andMeleager in Hades, and Meleager

’

s story of his owndeath

.The description of the eagle

’s fl ight in this

poem— “tke peaks of tko grea t ea rtk kola

'kim not, nor

ike rugged waves of tke unweaU/ing sea —suggests Pindarat once so does the rapid, vivid mention of the

“ghos ts

of unhappy men, driv ing like leaves tno t a keen w ind tossesup tke li eaa

’lana

’s of [da amia’ t/ze grazing skeep

”

; and theloaded epithets of “prona’ wkite-armea’ rosebud-crownedArtemis .

”At the end of this poem one feels for a

moment as though a new Pindar had really come backto us. But the ode was written fo r the same occasionas Pindar’s first Olympian

,and is in metre very similar

to the second. We turn to those poems again, and theconclusion is irresistible : Pindar stands alone on themountain tops, as he has alw ays stood .

I ndeed the most un -Pindar ic of Bacchyl ides’ poemsare perhaps real ly the most successful . Ode XVI I ., T/zeYout/es and Tlzes rus

,te l ls us the story

,hitherto almost

unknown,how Minos

,when carrying his human tribute

to the Minotaur, offered insult to one of the maidens,

and was checked by Theseus ; how the angry tyrantappealed to his father Zeus

,and taunted his young

captive with false ly claiming to be the son of Poseidonand how Theseus

,to prove that he too was a god’s son

,

Sprang into the sea and was welcomed and crownedwith a garland in the palace of the Nereids. Pindar

,

and perhaps most other Greek poets, might have shrunkfrom representing the son of Zeus in this ogreish aspect

,

or at least from making Zeus recognise and accept

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xx PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

gleam like the fires of Lemnos . A y outh he is , they say ,in

h is firs t spr ing, y et his heart is set on the j oy s of Ares,on

war, and the clash of ba ttling bras s ; and his feet are turned

towa rds sunlight-lovingAthens .

"

To turn from No . 733 of the British Museum papyri

to No . 535, the poems we find in this latter are not

works of great bulk or of exceptional beauty. But theycall for mention here

,both because

,having only been dis

covered in 1 890 , they have not been treated at all in theolder histor ies of l iterature, and because they form by farthe most important specimens we possess of one wholespecies of composition, the Mime. HerOdas was not aw ell -known figure in l iterary history l ike Bacchylides .He is mentioned some four times in l iterature . Theform of his name was uncertain : Athenaeus calls himHerOndas Pliny and Stobaeus omit the i t . His worksand his l ife were utter blanks to us

,and our ideas of his

date fluctuated betw een the sixth and third centuries !The question of the i t sti l l remains unsettled

,as the

papyrus does not contain a title - page. But we cannow make out both the country and the date of the poet.He bears a Doric name

,but writes in Ion ic . His scenes

,

when they are not in the inevitable Alexandria,are

laid in Cos,and there is a general prominence given

to Coan things. Co s is a Doric island, which w ouldaccount for the poet

’s Doric name . His I onic dialectis probably due to the l iterary tradition of the Mime

,

though it is worth while noticing that the admixture ofI on ic forms in the Coan Inscriptions suggests a blendingof Dorian and I onian blood in the island. The homeof HerOdas

, therefore, was probably Cos. His date isfixed by an allusion to the Theo i Adelphoi,

’

i .e. Ptolemy

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION xx i

Philadelphus and his sister Arsinoe, whose worship wasestablished in their l i fetime

,about the year 268 B .C. He

speaks of the sculptor Apelles as recently dead, whichsuits the same date . And he mentions that he had composed other sorts of poetry before his Mimes. He lived,therefore

,in the age of Call imachus and Theocr itus.

His M imes are all written in Scazons or ‘ l impingiambics

,

’°

and depict,with little merriment and l ittle

caricature, scenes of daily l ife on its more vulgar side .There is great fel icity of language, an appearance of

admirably close observation,and a vein of quiet and

unobtrusive wit,which

,both in its manner and in its

subj ects, reminds one of certain French writers. Thefirst Mime shows us a young married woman

,Metriche

,

receiving a visit from h er old but unvenerable nurse .The visitor descants upon the protracted absence ofMétriché

’

s husband in Egypt,and the even more pro

tracted desire of a certain distinguished athlete to offerconsolation . The hostess gently snubs her, and changesthe subj ect. Métriché has the further merit, uniqueamong HerOdas

’

s women, of not scolding her servants.The shrewish vulgarity O f the others reminds one

of a bad dream, the more oppressive for its seemingcloseness to life .I n the second poem

,a disreputable

,but burly and

amusing person brings an action at law. I n the th ird,

a mother takes her boy to a schoolmaster to bewhipped. I n the fourth

,some w omen go round the

temple of Asclep ius at Cos,admiring the works of

art,and giving Offerings . I n the fifth

,a woman in a

fit of j ealous fury sends one of her male slaves toreceive “ two thousand lashes at the slaves’ prison

,

and then changes her mind and calls h im back. I n

xxn PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

the sixth,two young women have a private chat,

chiefly about servants and c lothes : their conversationis neither witty nor ridiculous, nor of any visible meritin itself ; but it is represented with an extraordinaryappearance of lifelikeness. I n the seventh, a woman isbuying things from a leather-worker.These seven Mimes are in good preservation . Thereseem to be fragments of six others. They must havebeen brill iant and amusing entertainments when firstproduced at Co s or Alexandria, w ith the satire al l fresh,and the del icate shades easily vis ib le . But the humourwas largely of an evanescent and ‘ topical ' sort ; andas the Mimes now stand

,a reader will probably feel that

they are very well done,and that he does not care to

read them again . I f he does read them again,it will

be chiefly for their great antiquar ian importance,and

,

secondly,for the real dexterity of the writing. HerOdas

presents a graceful figure even when paying his com

pliments to Ptolemy,a task in which both Cal limachus

and Theocritus found their cunning fail.

GILBERT MURRAY.

Ma rch 1898

PR E F A C E

TO TH E TH I RD ED I T I ON

THE revision of a book deal ing with so large a subj ectas the whole of Greek classical l iterature is a veryserious p iece of work, and is not much l ightened bythe smallness of th e book itsel f . I n the present reprintI have not attempted any general revision . Exceptfor hyphens and commas I have only altered the textin two places (pp . 21 1 , Damia and Auxés ia shouldbe regarded not as sisters but as [Eginetan forms ofthe Mother . and Maid, and, of course

,the comedies

of Amph is and Alexis were not, as my words impl ied,written before Plato’s Republic.Natural ly, however, the last n ine years have notpassed without making some impression both on ouractual knowledge of Greek literature and on my own

tentative Opinions about it. On the subject of theHomeric Poems I have learned much from the revisededition of Leaf’s Iliad

,from the appendix to Monro’s

Ody ssey ,from Ridgeway’s Early Age of Greece, and

from Berard’s Les Phéniciens et l’

Ody s se'

e,as wel l

as from many other smal ler works,among which I

would specially mention W ilamow itz’

s two treatiseson Die [on is che Wanderung and Pa n ion ian (S i teungsber. der K. Preus s ischen Akademie

,i i i . and iv.

,1 90 6)

and Eric Bethe’

s lecture Homer und die Heldensage,

xxiv PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION '

Leipzig, 1 90 2. Also th e great discoveries made by

Dr. Evans and others in Crete have necessar i ly changedmany of our conceptions of pre -Homeric Greece .

Mycenae has fal len into its place as on ly on e, andn ot by any means the greatest, of the pre-Helleniccentre s ; and the p re-Hellenic Age must be knownnow as AEgean rather than Mycenaean .

The main corrections which I should now make inmy Homer ic chapter would be to emphasi se morestrongly th e importance of the Race Migrations (p . 32)and to develop more definitely the suggestion madeupon p . 30 . I t seems probable that a great deal ofthe fighting described in the Iliad i s not mere fictionbut tribal h istory torn from its context. I t relatedor iginal ly to old w ar s of migrant tribes in Thessaly

,

Thrace, the Peloponnese, Crete, and el sewhere . Bethehas shown reason to believe

,first

,that many of the

Homeric heroes are personified tribes,l ike I srael or

Esau ; and secondly, that they can often be discoveredmoving down Greece from north to south . He traceseach tribal hero by his tomb or tombs

,his marriages

,

and his chief enemies. Ancient deeds of glory performed under forgotten condition s in various parts ofthe A d an world have been drawn into th e attractionof Troj an Saga and made into incidents of the greatwar for Troy. I hope soon to have an opportunity oftreating the whole of th is subj ect afresh .

I n the treatment of the origin s of tragedy I shouldmake two main corrections. The first of these is dueto a book which has lately shed l ight for Hel lenis tsupon some of the most Obscure and important partsof the ir subj ect, Miss E. Harr i son ’s Prolegomenato the S tudy of Greek Religion . I t seems to me to be

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION xxv

almost proved that the traditional theory of tragedybeing a “ Goat- song, though bel ieved by the Greeksthemselves and consequently important in its influenceon the development of the drama

,i s etymologically

a mere mistake . The word may be derived not from

tragos ,‘ a goat,

’ but from tragos ,‘ spelt

,

’ a grain from

which intox i cating dr ink was made . ‘Tragedy,

’ thesong of Dionysus

,would thus fal l into l ine w ith his

several title s ‘ Bromios,

’ ‘ Brai tes ,’ ‘ Sabazios,

’ al l derived from different intoxicants. B romos i s barley ;bra is on and saba/a two different forms of beer. (Seeop . cit., pp. 4 14The second correction is due to an address del iveredto the Hellenic Society in 1 905 by Professor Ridgeway.

He argued,to my mind convincingly, that one most

important element in the or igin of tragedy was theritual performed in so many parts of Greece at thegrave of an ancestor or dead hero . Those “

tragic

choruses wh ich celebra ted the sufier ings of Adras tus

(p . and which were afterwards transferred to

D ionysu s,were more important than anyone reali sed.

Almost every tragedy, as a matter of fact, can beresolved into a lament over the grave of some canonised hero or h erome, mixed with a re-enacting of hisdeath . Evidence confirmatory of this suggestion crowdsupon one in reading the tragedies. I t i s not only thefunereal tone and the ever-present shadow of death

,

which seemed so hard to explain on the pure Dionysiactheory ; there is an actual tomb present as a centralfact of the story in the maj ority of tragedies. To takethe first six tragedies of Eur ip ides

,for in stance : we

have the tomb of Al cesti s,

’ worshipped in after- days

(Ale. 1. 994- 1 0 05) the rites paid by the Corinthians at

xxvi PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

the tomb of the children of Medea (Med. 1 38 1 and

Scholia ) the magical grave of Eurystheus (Helid.

1 0 30- IO44 ) ; the rites performed by a maiden chorus

over the grave Of H ippolytus (H ip . 1425 theexpiatory r ite s of the Delph ians over the grave of

Neoptolemus (Andr . 1 239 and the Kunos Sema ,or Cairn of Stones which hid the curse- fraught bodyof Hecuba (Hec. 1 259 I n each case

,even the

last,the worship at the tomb seems capable of being

the nucleus round which the whole celebration of thetragedy has gathered . When Artemi s prophesies toHippolytus that rites shal l be paid at his tomb

And v irgi ns”thoughts in mus ic evermore

Turn toward thee, andpra ise thee in the songOf Phe dra

’sfarfamed love and thy great w rong,

the prophecy is fulfilled in the tragedy itsel f. How far

th e histor ica l evidence for thi s theory can be madecomplete

,how far it explains the Prologue and the

Messenger in tragedy, how far the Deus ex ma ch ina

i s or iginally a ghost evoked from the grave, or how

far Altars of Refuge sometimes take the place of tombs,

are subj ects which I must not discuss til l ProfessorRidgeway’s full views are published .

The rich discoveries of papyr i made during thepast decade, especial ly at Oxyrrhyn cus , would affectthe language of th is book in some few places

,were I

w r iting n ow, but I do n ot think that they have t e

vealed any noteworthy errors in it, either of statementor Opinion . Except perhaps on one point. I wasformer ly incl ined

,in the absence of clear evidence on

either s ide, to defend T imotheus against the sweepingattacks of the traditional cri ticism. Since his dithyramb


xxvi ii PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

growth of each style of poetry separately, not to takepoet by poet. The figures of the individual poets aretoo uncertain . And their work must have consistedmain ly not in free creation but in a reverent workingover of inherited material , and a constant pouring ofn ew l i fe into the traditional treatment of traditionalsubj ects. Commentators on Iliad xxii. 71 If. are puzz ledto find ‘ Homer ’ quoting ‘Tyrtaeus .’ But the phenomenon ceases to be very strange when we real ise thati t is not exactly one poet quoting another

,but merely

some phrases of the traditional I on ian war- elegy findingtheir way into the traditiona l I onian epic.I n th e case Of Eurip ides

,the further writings of

Verrall, Nestle, and others, as wel l as my own in crea sing studies

,have given me much to add to the account

in this book, but, I th ink, nothing of any importanceto retract.

GI LBERT MURRAY.

NEW COLLEGE, OX FORD.

C O N T E N T S

CHAPTERI. HOMER : INTRODUCTORYII. LESSER HOMERIC POEMS ; HESIOD ; ORPHEUSIII. THE DESCENDANTS OF HOMER, HESIOD, AND ORPHEUS

IV. THE SONGv. THE BEGINNINGS or PROSE

VI. HERODOTUSVII. PHILOSOPHIC AND POLITICAL LITERATURE To THE DEATH

OF SOCRATES

VIII. THUCYDIDESTHE DRAMA : INTRODUCTION

It. E SCHYLUS

X I. SoPHOCLEs

X I I. EURIPIDESXIII. COMEDY .

X IV. PLATO

xv . XENOPHONXV I. THE

‘ORATORs

’

XVII. DEMOSTHENES AND H Is CONTEMPORARIESXVIII. THE LATER LITERATURE, ALEXANDRIAN AND ROMAN

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

INDEX

THE

LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

HOMER

INTRODUCTORY

IN attempting to understand the scope and developmentof Greek literature

,our greatest difficulty comes from the

fragmentaryand one- sided nature of our tradition . Therehas perhaps never been any society in history so near tothe highest side of our own as the Athens of Euripidesand Plato . The spiritual vividness and religious freedom of these men

,the genuineness of their culture and

humanity,the reasoned daring of their s ocial and politi

cal ideals,appeal to us almost more intimately than does

our own e ighteenth century. But between us and themthere has passed age upon age of men who saw differently, who sought in the books that they read otherthings than truth and imaginative b eauty, _

or who didnot care to read books at all. Of the literature produced by the Greeks in the fifth century B .C .

,we possess

about a twentieth part of that produced in the seventh,

sixth,fourth

,and third

,not nearly so large a propor

tion. All that has reached us. has passed a severeA


and far from discriminating ordeal. I t has securedits l ife by never going out of fashion for long at atime ; by appealing steadily to the book-trade throughout a number of succes sive epochs of tast ourth -century Greecefpre-Christian Alexandria, Augustan Rome,the great Hellenic revival of the Antonines, the narrowerAttic revival of the later sophists.

After the death of Julian and Liban ius , one is temptedto think that nobody was real ly interested in l iteratureany more ; but certain books had long been conventionally established in the schools as ‘ classics,

’ and thesecontinued to be read

,in ever - dwindling numbers

,til l

the fall of Constantinople and the Renaissance. Theeccentricities of the tradition would form material fora large volume. As in Latin it has zealously preservedVergil and Av ianus the fabulist

,so in Greek it has multi

plied the MSS . of Homer and of Apollonius the X itianOn Spra z

'

m. As in Latin it practically lost Lucretius savefor the accident of a single MS.

,and entirely lost Calvus

,

so in Greek it came near to losing AEs chylus , and preserved the most beautiful of the Homeric hymns onlyby inadvertence . I n general

,it cared for noth ing that

was not e ither useful in daily l ife,l ike treatises on

mechanics and medicine,or else suitable for reading in

schools. Such writers as Sappho,Epicharmus, Demo

critus, Menander, Chrysippus, have left only a few disj ointed fragments to show us what precious books wereallowed to die through the mere nervelessness of Byzantium. But Rome and Alexandria in their vigour hadalready done some intentional sifting. They liked orderand sty le they did not care to Copy out the more tumultuous writers. The mys tics and as cetics

,the more uncom

promising philosophers,the ardent democrats and the

THE TRADITIONv

enthusiasts generally,have been for the most part sup

pressed . We must remember that they existed,and try

from the remains to understand them.

THE LEGENDARY PoETs

But the first great gaps in the tradition are of a different nature . An immense amount of l iterature was neverpreserved at al l . I t is generally true that in any creativeage the living literature is neglected. I t i s being producedevery day ; and why should any one trouble himsel f tohave it copied on good material and put in a safe placeI t is only that which can no longer be had for the askingthat rouses men’s anxiety lest it cease altogether . Thisis what happened among th e Greeks in tragedy

,in lyric

poetry,in oratory

,and in the first great movement of

history. The greater part of each genus was alreadyextinct by the time people bethought them of preservingit. Especially was it the case in the earl iest form of composition known to our record

,the hexameter epos.

The epos,as we know it

,falls into three main division s

according to author and subj ect-matter. I t is a vehiclefor the heroic saga, written by Homéros ’

; for usefulinformation in general

,especial ly catalogues and genea

logies,written by Hés iodos

’ and thirdly,for rel igious

revelation,issuing originally from the mouths of such

figures as ‘ Orpheus,

’ Musmus,

’ and the Bakides .

’

This last has disappeared,leaving but scanty traces

,and

the poems of ‘Homer and Hesiod ’ constitute our earl iestliterary monuments.All verse embodiments of the saga are necessarily less

old than the saga itsel f. And more than that,it is clear

4 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

that our Ilz'

ad, Ody s sey ,

Erga , and Tlzeogony are not thefirst

,

“ nor the second,nor yet the twelfth

,

”of such em

bodiments . These ostensibly primitive poems show alength and complexity of composition which can onlybe the result of many generations of artistic effort.They speak a language out of al l re lation to commonspeech

,ful l of forgotten meanings and echoes of past

states of society ; a poet’s language

,demonstrably built

up and conditioned at every turn by the needs of thehexameter metre . There must therefore have beenhexameter poems before our Ilz

'

ad. Further,the hexa

meter itself is a high and complex development many

s tages removed from the simple metres in which thesagas seem once to have had shape in Greece as wellas in India

,Germany

,and Scandinavia. But if we need

proof of the comparative lateness of our earliest records,

we can find it in ‘ Homer ’ himself,when he refers to

the wealth of poetry that was in th e world before him,

and the general feeling that by his day most great themeshave been outworn .

1

The personalities of the supposed authors of thevarious epics or s tyles of epos are utterly beyond ourreach . There is for the most part something fantas ticor myth ical in them. Orpheus, for instance, as a sagafigure

,i s of Greek creation as a name

,he is one of the

‘Ribhus,

’

or heroic artificers,of the Vedas

,the firs t

men who were made immortal . Another early bard,

‘ Linos,

’ is the very perfection of shadowiness . TheGreek settler or exile on Semitic coasts who listened tothe strange oriental dirges and caught the often-recurringwail Ali -lend (

‘Woe to took the words as Greek,a t

1 Esp . 0, 74 ; p , 70 ; a , 351 . The books of the Iliad are denoted by the

capita l letters of the Greek a lphabet, those of the Ody ssey by the small letters



‘ Homéros,’ but stil l leaves ‘ Homeridae ’ unexplained .

I t may be what it professes to be, a patronymicHomer I t is easy to imagine a state ofsociety in which the Sons of the Hostages, not trustedto fight

,would be used as bards. But it may equally

well be some compound (54677, &p meaning ‘ fitterstogether

,

’ with the termination modified into patronymicform when th e minstrels began to be a guild and to feel

the need of a common ancestor.I t i s true that we have many traditional ‘ l ives ’

of

the prehistoric poets,and an account of a ‘ contest ’

between Homer and Hesiod,our version being copied

from one composed about 40 0 B .C. by the sophist Alkidamas

,who

,in his turn

,was adapting some already

existing romance. And in the poems themselves wehave what purport to be personal reminiscences.Hesiod mentions his own name in the preface to theTlzeogony . I n the Erga (I. 633 E) , he tel ls how his fatheremigrated from Kyme to Ascra. The Homeric HymnIo Apollo ends in an appeal from the poet to themaidens who form his audience

,to remember him

,and

when any s tranger a sks wno is Me sweetes t of s ingers and

wlzo delay/i ts them mos t, to answer w ith one voice :’Tis a

blind man lie dwells in craggy Cil ios lzis s ongs s/zall oe

the fa ires t for evermore.

” Unfortunately,these are only

cases of personation . The rhapsode who recited thoseverses fi rst did not mean that li e was a blind Chian

,and

li ls songs the fairest for evermore ; he only meant thatthe poem he recited was the work of that bl ind Homerwhose songs were as a matter of fact the best. Indeed

,

both this passage and the preface to the Tneogony aredemonstrably later additions

,and the reminiscence in the

E rga must stand or fal l wi th them . The real bards of

PERSONALITY OF HOMER 7

early Greece were all nameless and impersonal and wekn ow definitely the point at which the individual authorbegins to dare to obtrude himself—the age of the lyristsand the I onian researchers. These passages are not evidence of what Hesiod and Homer said of themselves ;they are evidence of what the tradition of the sixthcentury fabled about them .

Can we see the origin of th is tradition ? Onlydimly. There is certain ly some historical truth in it .The lives and references

,while vary ing in all else

,ap

proach unanimity in making Homer a native of I onia.They concentrate themselves on two places

,Smyrna

and Chios ; in each of these an [Eolian population hadbeen overlaid by an I onian

,and in Chios there was

a special clan cal led ‘ Homéridw .

’ We shall see thati f by the ‘ b irth of Homer ’ we mean the growth of

the Homeric poems,the tradition here is true . I t is

true also‘

when it brings Hesiod and his father overfrom Asiatic Kyme to Boeotia

,in the sense that the

Hesiodic poetry is essentially the Homeric form broughtto bear on native Boeotian material.Thus Homer is a Chian or Smyrnaean for historicalreasons but why is he blind Partly

,perhaps

,we have

here some vague memory of a primitive time when theable-bodied men were all warriors ; the lame but strongmen

,smiths and weapon-makers and the blind men

,

good for nothing else, mere singers . More essential ly,it is the Saga herself at work. She loved to make hergreat poets and prophets bl ind

,and then she was

haunted by the ir bl indness. Homer was her Demodocus

,

“whom the Muse grea tly loved, and gave him both

good and ev il; she took away h is ey es and gave him

sweet minstrelsy .

”

(0, 63, I t is pure romance—the


romance which creates the noble bust of Homer inthe Naples Museum ; the romance which one feels in

Callimachus’

s wonderful story of the Ba thing of Pallas,

where it is Teiresias,the prophet, not the poet, who

loses h is earth ly sight. Other traits in the traditionhave a similar origin— the contempt poured on theunknown beggar-man at the Marriage Feast til l herises and sings ; the curse of ingloriousness he lays onthe Kymean s who rej ected him ; the one epic (Cyp rianot up to h is own standard

,with which he dowered h is

daughter and made her a great heiress.

THE HOMERIC POEMS

I f we try to find what poems were definitely regardedas the work of Homer at the beginning of our tradition

,the answer must be—all that were ‘ Homeric ’

or

‘ heroic in other words,al l that expres s in epos the two

main groups of legend,centred round Troy and Thebes

respectively. The earl iest mention of Homer is by thepoet Callinus (ca . 660 who refers to the Theba ifi ashis work ; the next is probably by Semon ides of Amorgos

(ca . 630 who cites as the words of a man of Chiosa proverbial phrase which occurs in our Iliad

,

“As the

pas s ing of leaves is , so is thepas s ing of men.

” I t is possiblethat he referred to some particular Chian

,and that the

verse in our Iliad is mere ly a floating proverb assimilatedby the epos ; but the probability is that he is quotingour passage. Simonides of Keos (556—468 a goodcentury later

,speaks of “Homer and S tes ichom s telling

how Meleagros conquered ally ouths in spear-throw ing across

the w ild Anauros .

” This is not in our Iliad or Ody ssey ,

WHAT POEMS WERE HOMERIC 9

and we cannot trace the poem in which it comes . Pindar,a little later

,mentions Homer several times. He blames

him for exalting Odysseus—a reference to the Ody s seybut pardons him because he has told “

s tra ightly by rod

and plummet the whole prowess of A ias”

; especial ly, itwould seem

,his rescue of the body of Achil les, which

was described in two lost epics, the Little Iliad and theE th iop is .

‘ He bids us“remember Home/s word : A

goodmessenger brings honour to any dealing”—a word

,as it

chances,which our Homer never speaks ; and he men

tions the Homer idae,s ingers of s titched lay s .

"

I f IEschylus ever called his plays1 slices from the great

banquets of Homer,

” the banquets he referred to musthave been far richer than those to which we have admission. I n all his ninety plays it i s hard to find more thanseven which take their subj ects from our Homer

,including

the Agamemnon and Choephoroi,2 and it would need some

spleen tomake a critic describe these two as ‘ slices fromthe Ody s sey . What IEschylus meant by Homer was theheroic saga as a whole . I t is the same with Sophocles ,who is called ‘most Homeric

,

’ and is said by Athenaeus

(p . 277) to“ rej oice in the ep ic cycle and make whole

dramas out of it.” That is,he treated those epic myths

which Athenaeus only knew in the prose ‘ cycles ’ or handbooks compiled by one Dionysius in the second centuryB.C.,

and by Apollodorus in the first. To Xenophanes

(sixth century)‘ Homer and Hesiod ’ mean al l the epic

tradition,sagas and theogonies al ike

,j ust as they do to

Herodotus when he says ( i i . that they two madethe Greek religion

,and distributed to the gods their titles

1 Athenaeus, 347 e.2 The others are the Achil les -trilogy Nereides,

’Phrygcs

Q

I O LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

and honours and crafts , and described what they werel ike . There Herodotus uses the conventional languagebut he has already a standard of criticism which is incon

s istent with it. For he conceives Homer definitely asthe author of the Iliad and Ody s sey . He doubts if theLay of the Afterborn

“ be h is,and is sure ( i i . 1 1 7) that

the Cyp ria" cannot be

,because it contradicts the Iliad.

This is the first trace of the tendency that ultimatelyprevailed. Thucydides expl icitly recognis es the Iliad

,the

Hymn to Apollo, and the Ody s sey as Homer’s. Aristotle

gives him nothing but the Iliad,the Ody ssey , and the

humorous epic Ma rgitesfi" Plato’s quotations do not go

beyond the Iliad and the Ody ssey ; and it i s these twopoems alone which were accepted as Homer’s by thegreat Alexandrian scholar Aristarchus (ca . 160 andwhich have remained Homeric ’ ever since .How was it that these two were originally selected as

being ‘ Homer ’ in some special degree ? And how wasit that

,in spite of the essential dissimilarities between

them, they continued to hold the field together as hisauthentic work when so many other epics had beengradually taken from him ? I t is the more surprisingwhen we reflect that the differences and incons ist

encies between them had already been pointed out inAlexandrian times by the ‘ Chorizontes ’ or

‘ Separators,

’

Xenon and Hellani‘

cus .

ILIAD AND ODYSSEY : THE PANATHENAICRECITATION

A tradition comes to our aid which has been differently interpreted by var ious critics—the story of

PI S I STRATUS AND HOMER 1 1

the recension by Pisistratus,tyrant of Athens

,in the

middle of the sixth century . Late writers speak much ofthis recension . Vox totius antiguita tis

” is the authorityWolf claims for it. I t is mentioned in varying terms byCicero

,Pausanias

,Ai l ian

, josephus it is referred to as awell-known fact in a late epigram purporting to be writtenfor a statue of Pisistratus

,great in counsel

,who col

lected Homer, formerly sung in fragments.” Cicero’s

account is that Pisistratus “ arranged in their presentorder the books of Homer, previously confused . TheByzantine Tzetzes—the name is only a phonetic wayof spell ing Caecius— makes the tradition ludicrous byvarious mistakes and additions ; his soberest versionsays that Pisistratus performed th is task “ by the help ofthe industry of four famous and learned men— Concylus

,Onomacritus of Athens, Zopyrus of Heraclea, and

Orpheus Of Crotona. Unfortunately,the learned Con

cylus is also called Epiconcylus, and represents almostcertainly the Epic Cycle,

’

e’

mfcc‘

w mo m,misread as

a proper name ! And the whole commission has afabulous air

,and smacks of the age of the Ptolemies

rather than the Sixth century. Also it is remarkable thatin our fairly ample records about the Alexandrian critics

,

especially Aris tarchus,there is no expl icit reference to

Pisistratus as an editor.I t used to be maintained that this silence of the

Alexandrian s '

proved conclusively that the story was notin existence in their time . I t has now been traced

,in a

less developed form,as far back as the fourth century B .C.

I t was always known that a certain Dieuch idas of Megarahad accused Pisistratus of interpolating lines in Homerto the advantage of Athens—a charge evidently implyingthat the accused had special means of controll ing the text.

1 2 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

I t was left forWilamow itz to show that Dieuch idas was awriter much earlier than the Alexandrians, and to explainhis motive.1 I t is part of that general literary revengewhich Megara took upon fallen Athens in the fourth century. Athens had not invented comedy it was Megara .

Nor tragedy either it was Sikyon . Athens had only fal

s ified and interpolated l” Whether Dieuch idas accepted

the Pisistratus recension as a fact generally believed,or whether he suggested it as an hypothesis, is not clear.I t appears

,however

,that he could not find any un -Attic

texts to prove his point by. When he wished to suggestthe true reading he had to use his own ingenuity. I twas he who invented a supposed original form for theinterpolated passage in B

,671 ; and perhaps he who

imagined the existence of a Spartan edition of Homerby Lycurgus

,an uncontaminated text copied out hones tly

by good DoriansThe theory

,then

,that Pisistratus had somehow inter

polated Homer’ was current before Alexandrian times.

Why does Aristarchus not mention it We cannotclearly say. I t is possible that he took the fact forgranted, as the epigram does . I t i s certain, at any rate,that Aristarchus rej ected on some ground or other mostof the l ines which modern scholars describe as ‘Athenianinterpolations ’ ; and that ground cannot have been amerely internal one

,S ince he held the peculiar belief that

Homer himself was an Athenian . Las tly,it is a curious

fact that Cicero's s tatement about the recension by Pis isstratus seems to be derived from a member of thePergamene school

,whos e founder

,Crates

,stood almost

alone in successfully resisting and opposing the authorityof Aristarchus. I t is quite possible that the latter tended

l



that there was a practice in Athens,dating at latest from

early in the fifth century,by wh ich the Homeric poems

were recited publicly in a pres cribed order and that theorigin of the practice was ascribed to a definite publicenactment. We find further, that in al l non-Athenianliterature down to Pindar, Homer seems to be takenas the author of a much larger number of poems thanwe possess—probably of all the Troj an and Theban epics—whereas in Attic l iterature from the fifth century ou

wards he is especial ly the author of the Iliad and the

Ody ssey ,the other poems being first treated as of doubt

ful authorship,afterwards ignored . When we add that in

the usage of all the authors who speak of this Panathenaicrecitation

,

‘ Homer ’ means s imply, and as a matter ofcours e

,the Iliad and the Ody s s ey , the conclusion inevi

tably suggests itself that it was these two poems alonewhich were selected for the recitation

,and that it was

the recitation which gave them their unique position of

eminence as the ‘ true Homer.Why were they selected ? One can see something

,

but not much . To begin with,a general comparison

of the style of the rej ected epics with that of our twopoems suggests that the latter are far - more elaboratelyworked up than their brethren . They have more unitythey are less l ike mere lays ; they have more dramatictension and rhetorical ornament. One poem only canperhaps be compared with them

,the first which is quoted

as ‘ Homer’s ’ in l iterature, the Theba is : * but the gloryof Thebes was Of al l subj ects the one which could leastbe publ icly blazoned by Athenians Athens would rej ectsuch a thing even more unhesitatingly than Siky on re

jected the Homer’ which prais ed Argos.1

1 Hdt. v. 67.

HISTORY OF THE TEXT 1 5

We get thus one cardinal point in the history of thepoems ; it remains to tra ce their development both before and after. To take the later history first

,our own

traditional explanation of Homer is derived from theAlexandrian scholars of the third and second centuriesB.C.

,Zenodotus of Ephesus (born 325 Aristophanes of

Byzantium (born 257 and Ar istarchus of Samothrace

(born 215) especially from this last, the greatest authorityon early poetry known to antiquity . Our informationabout him is mos tly derived from an epitome‘ Of the worksof four later scholars : Didymus On theAris tarchean Recen

s ion Aristonicus On the S igns in the Iliad a nd Ody ssey

i .e. the critical signs used by Aristarchus ; Herodian Onthe Prosody a nd Accentua tion of the Iliad

,and N icanor On

Homeric Punctua tion . The two first named were of theAugus tan age the epitome was made in the th ird centuryA.D. ; the MS . in wh ich it is preserved is the famous

Venetus A of the tenth century, contain ing the Iliad butnot the Ody s s ey .

We can thus tel l a good deal about the condition ofHomer in the second century B .C.

,and can hope to

establish with few errors a text ‘according to Aristarchus,

’

a text which would approximately satisfy the best l iteraryauthority at the best period of Greek criticism . But wemust go much further

,unless we are to be very unworthy

followers of Aristarchus and indifferent to the caus e of

science in l iterature . I n the first place, if our commentscome from Aristarchus

,where does our received text

come from ? Demonstrably not from h im,but from

the received text or vulgate of his day, in correction of

which he issued his two editions,and on which neither

he nor any on e else has ultimately been able to exer

cise a really commanding influence . No t that he


made violent changes ; on the contrary,he seldom or

never ‘ emended ’ by mere conj ecture,and

,though he

marked many lines as spurious,he did not omit them .

The greatest divergences which we find between Aristarchus and the vulgate are not so great as those betweenthe quartos and the folio of Hamlet.

Yet we can see that he had before him a good manyrecensions which differed both from the vulgate and from

on e another. He mentions in especial three classes ofsuch MSS .

—those of individuals,showing the recension

or notes of poets l ike Antimachus and Rh ianus, or of

scholars l ike Zenodotus ; those of Cities, coming fromMarseilles

,Chios

,Argos

,Sinope

,and in general from all

places except Athens,the city of the vulgate and, lastly,

what he calls the ‘ vulgar ’ or‘ popular ’ or ‘ more care

less ’ texts,among which we may safely reckon ‘ that of

the many verses (15woxbo n xos) .The quotations from Homer in pre-Alexandrian writersenable us to appreciate both the extent and the l imitsof this variation . They show us first that even in Athensthe vulgate had not established itself firmly before theyear 30 0 B.C. ABsch ines the orator

,a man of much

culture,not only asserts that the phrase 8

’

e’

9 0 7pm.»

w e occurs ‘ several times in the Iliad,

’ whereas in our

texts it does not occur at all but quotes verbally passagesfrom O and T with whole l ines quite different. And thethird-century papyri bear the same testimony, notablythe fragment of A in the Flinders-Petrie collection published in 1 891 by Prof. Mahaffy, and the longer piecefrom the same book published by M . N icole in the Revuede Philologie, 1 894. The former of these, for instance,conta ins the beginnings or endings of thirty-eight lines ofA between 50 2 and 537. I t omits one of our l ines con

TEXT IN FOURTH AND THIRD CENTUR IES 1 7

tains four strange l ines and has two others in a differentshape from that in our texts a serious amount of divergence in such a small space. On the other hand

,the

variations seem to be merely verbal ; and the same appliesto the rest of the papyrus evidence . There is no variationin matter in any fourth-century text.The summing up of this evidence gives us the last two

s tages of the Homeric poems . The canonical statementsof fact and the order of the incidents were fixed by agradual process of which the cardinal point is the in stitution of the Panathenaic recitations ; the wording of thetext line by line was gradually stereotyped by continuedprocesses of school repetition and private reading andl iterary study

,culminating in the minute professional

criticism ofZenodotus and his succes sors at the Alexandrian library.I f we go further back

,it is impossible not to be struck

by the phenomenon,that while the Homeric quotations

in most fourth and fifth century writers,even in Aristotle

,

for ins tance,differ cons iderably from our text, Plato

’

s

quotations 1 agree with it almost word for word. Onecannot but combine with this the conclusion drawn byGrote in another context

,that Demetrius of Phalérum

,

when summoned by Ptolemy I. to the foundation of thel ibrary at Alexandria

,made use of the books bequeathed

by Plato to the Academy.2

This analysis brings us again to the Panathenaic recitation . We have seen that its effects were to establishthe Iliad and the Ody s sey as Homer

’

pa r excellence ; tofix a certain order of incidents in them and

,of course

,

to make them a public and sacred possession of Athens.

1 Coun tingAlcibiades II . as spurious .Grote, Plato, ch ap. vi.


Let us try to see further into it. When was it ins titutedWas there real ly a law at all

, or only a gradual processwhich the tradition, as its habit is, has made into on e

definite actAs for the date, the establishment of the custom is surenot to be earl ier than the last person to whom it is as

cribed that is, it took place not before, but probably after,the reign of Hipparchus. Now, to make the works of thegreat Ionian poet an integral part of the most solemn rel i

gious celebration of Athens, is a thing which can only havetaken place in a period of active fraternising with I onia.That movement begins for Athens with th e I onian revoltbefore 50 0 B .C. she had been ashamed of her supposedkinsmen even Cleisthenes had abolished th e Ionian tribenames . The year 499 Opens the great Pan- I on ic periodof Athenian policy

,in which Athens accepts the position

of metropolis and protectress of I onia, absorbs Ionianculture

,and rises to the intellectual hegemony of Greece .

Learning and letters must have fled from Miletus at theturn of the Sixth century B.C.

,as they fled from Con

stantinople in the fifteenth A.D.,and Athens was their

natural refuge. We shall see later the various great menand movements that travelled at this time from Asia toAthens. One typical fact is the adoption of the Ionianalphabet at Athens for private and literary use.The native Athenian alphabet was an archaic andawkward th ing

,possessing neither double consonants nor

adequate vowel-distinctions. The Ion ian was,roughly

,

that which we now use. I t was not official ly adoptedin Athens til l 404—the public documents l iked to preserve their archaic maj esty—but it was in private usethere during the Pers ian Wars ;1 that is

,i t came over

1 Ki rchhoff, Alphabet, Ed. iv. p. 92.

OFFICIAL COPY I NG 1 9

at the time when Athens accepted and asserted herposition as th e metropolis of I onia

,and adopted the

Ion ian poetry as a part of her sacred possessions. But

a curious difficulty suggests itself. Homer in I onia wasof cours e already written in I onic. Our tradition

,how

ever,backed by many explicit statements of the Alex

andrian s and by considerations of textual criticism,

1

expres sly insists that the old texts of Homer were inthe old Attic alphabet. I f Homer came into the Panathenzea at the very same time as the new Ionian alphabetcame to Athens

,how was it that the people rewrote him

from the better script into the worse ? The answer isnot hard to find ; and it is also the answer to anotherquestion

,which we could not solve before . Copies of

Homer were written in official Attic, because the recitation at the Panathenaea was an official ceremony

,pre

scribed by a legal enactment.There was then a definite law

,a symptom of the

general I onising movement of the first quarter of thefifth century. Can we see more closely what it effectedI t prescribed a certain order, and it started a tendency

towards an official text. I t i s clear that adherence tothe words of the text was not compulsory

,though

adherence to the matter was. I t seems almost certainthat the order so imposed was not a new and arbitraryinvention . I t must have been already known and approved at Athens ; though, of course, it may have beenonly one of various orders current in the differentHomeric centres of I onia, and was probably not rigidand absolute anywhere . At any rate on e thing is clear—th is law was among the main events which ulti

1 See Cauer’

s answer to Wilamowi tz, Grundfragen der Homerhri tih, p.69 11.


mately took the epos for good out of the hands of the

rhaps odes.We know that the epos in I onia was in the possession of ‘Homéridai

’

o r‘rhapsOdo i

’ and we havereason to suppose that these were organised in guildsor schools. We know roughly how a rhapsode set towork. He would choose his bit

’ from whatever legendit might be

,as the bards do in the Ody ssey .

1 He wouldhave some lines of introduction— so much Pindar tel ls

us,and the Homeric hymns or preludes show us what

he meant— and probably some lines of finish . Hewould almost inevitably be tempted to introduce brightpatches and episodes to make his lay as attractive asothers . He would obj ect to a fixed text

,and utterly

abhor the subordination of parts to whole .Now

,our poems are ful l of traces of the rhapsode ;

they are developments from the recited saga,and where

they fail in unity or consistency the recited saga ismostly to blame . For ins tance in E

,the superhuman

exploits of D iomedes throw Achilles into the shade andupset the plot of the Iliad. But what did that matterto a rhapsode who wanted a good declamation

,and

addressed an audience interes ted in Diomedes ? TheDoloneia (K) , placed where it is, is imposs ib le ; it notonly makes a night of portentous length ; it also rends intwo a continuous narrative . I n a detached recitation itwould be admirable . To take a different case

,there

is a passage describ ing a clear night,

“when all the h igh

peaks s tand out,and the j utting p romon tories and glens ;

and above the shy the infin ite heaven breaks open .

” Thisoccurs in H

,where the Troj an watch-fires are l ikened to

the stars ; it occurs also in II, where the Greeks’ despair

1 01 73 3 0 , 500 84 as 326'



are adapted to the demands of a reading publ ic. Therewas no reading public either in Athens or in I onia by

470 . Anaximander wrote his words of wisdom for afew laborious students to learn by heart ; Xenophanesappealed simply to the car ; it was not til l forty yearslater that Herodotus turned his recitations into bookform for educated persons to read to themselves, and

Euripides began to collect a l ibrary.This helps us to some idea of the I onian epos as itl ived and grew before its transplanting. I t was recited,not read ; the incidents of the Iliad and the Ody sseywere mostly in their present order, and doubtles s thepoems roughly of their present compass, though wemay be sure there were Iliads without K, and Ody s sey sending

,where Aristarchus ended his

,at rle 296, omitting

the last book and a half. Much more important, theIliad did not necessarily stop at th e mere funeral ofHector. We know of a version which ran on fromour last l ine S o dealt they w ith the bury ing of Hector

,

but there came the Amazon,daughter of Ares , great

hearted slay er of men -and which told of the love of

Achil les for the Amazon princess,and h is slaying of

her, and probably also of his well- earned death . Thedeath of Achil les is

,as Goethe felt it to be

,the real

end that our Iliad implies. When the enchanted steed,

Xanthus,and the dying Hector prophesy it

,we feel that

the ir words mus t come true or the s tory lose its meaning .

And if i t was any of the finer ‘ Sons of Homer ’ whotold of that last death-grapple where it was no longerKebrionés n or Patroclus

,but Achilles himself

,who lay

“under the blind dus t - s torm,

the mighty limbs flungmigh tily ,

and the riding of wa r forgotten, the worldmust owe a grudge to those over-patriotic editors who

THE LANGUAGE OF HOMER 23

could not bear to let the national Epic end with atriumph for the Troj an s .

Of course in this I onic Homer there were no Athenianinterpolations,

’ no passages l ike the praise of Menestheus,

the claim to Salamis,the mentions of Theseus

,Procris

,

Phaedra, Ariadne, or the account of the Athenians in N,

under the name of ‘ long-robed Ion ians

,

’ acting as a regiment of heavy infantry. Above all

,the language

,though

far from pure,was at least very different from our vulgate

text it was free from Atticisms.

THE EPIC LANGUAGE

We must analyse this language and see the historicalprocesses implied in its growth.

An old and much-scoffed-at division of Greek dialectsspoke of I onic, IEolic, Doric, and

‘ Epic.’ The firstthree denote

,or mean to denote, real national distinc

tions the last is,of course, an artificial name . But the

thing it denotes is art ificial too—a language that nol onians

,Dorians

,or ZEolianS ever spoke ; a

‘ largeutterance

,

’ rhythmic and emotional,l ike a complicated

instrument for the expression of the hero ic saga. As

has already been remarked,it is a dialect conditioned at

every turn by the Epic metre its fixed iepithets, its formulae

,its turns of sentence-connection

,run into hexa

meters of themselves. Artificial as it is in one sense,

it makes the impression of Nature herself speaking.

Common and random phrases— the torrents coming“dow n from the hills on their head; the “h igh West w ind

shouting over a w ine-faced sea“the eas tern isle where

dwells Ebs the Dawn-ch ild,amid her palaces and her


dancing-

grounds , and the r is ing places of the Sun —thesewords in Epic Greek seem al ive ; they call up notprecisely the look or sound, but the exact emotionalimpression of morning and wind and sea. The expressions for human feeling are almost more magicalthe anger of “ wha t though his hands be as fire, and his

sp irit as burn ing iron or the steadfastness of “Bear, 0

my hea rt, thou has t borney et a ha rder th ing.

”

There is thus no disparagement to the Epic dialectin saying that

,as it stands

,it is no language, but a mix

ture of l inguistically- incongruous forms,late

,early

,and

primaeval .There are first the Att icisms . Forms l ike Tu8fi, é

’

ws,

m ay -reg, can only have come into the poems on Atticsoil

,and scarcely much before the year 50 0 B .C. At

least,the fragments of Solon ’s Laws have

,on the

whole, a more archaic look. But for the purposes ofhistory we must distinguish . There are first the removable Atticisms. A number of l ines which begin withé’

wc will not scan unti l we restore the I onic form 1309.That is, they are good Ionic l ines, and the Attic formis only a mis take of the Attic copyist. But there arealso fixed Atticisms— l ines which scan as they s tand

,and

refuse to scan if turned into I onic ; these are in thestrict sense late lines ; they were composed on Attic soi lafter Athens had taken possession of the epos.Again, there are ‘ false forms ’ by the hundredattempts at a compromise made by an Athenian reciteror scribe between a strange I onic form and his own

natural Attic,when the latter would not suit the metre .

The I onic for ‘seeing ’

was bpéovr eq, the Attic Olefin/Testhree syllables instead of four ; our texts give the false6p6wv—res—ie . they have tortured the Attic form into four

‘ATTICISMS ’

AND uEOLISMS '25

syllables by a quaver on the w . Similarly a wer’

ovs is anattempt to make the Attic owréovs fil l the place of theuncontracted cmre

’

eoq, and ebXe-rcia o da i is an elongated

ebXe-rc'

io ba i . Spell ing, of course, followed pronunciation ;the scribe wrote what the reciter chanted .

The historical process which these forms imply,

’

canonly have taken place when Athens looked nowhereoutside herself for literary information

,when there were

no Ionic-Speaking bards to correct the Attic bookseller.Some of them

,indeed, can only have ceased to be

absurd when the Koine,the common literary language

,

had begun to blur the characters of the real dialectsand to derive everything from the Attic standard. Thatis,they would date from late in the fourth century.But to e liminate the Attic forms takes us a very little

way ; there is another non- I onic element in Homer’slanguage which has been always recognised

,though

variously es timated,from antiquity onwards

,and which

seems to belong to the group of dialects spoken inThessaly

,Lesbos

,and the AEolian coast ofAsia including

the Troad . Forms like ’

Arpei3a o, Mova'

cimv,may for c

’

iv,

n ia vpeq for r éo o apes, intensitives in e’

pc adj ectives in - evvos,

and masses of verbal flexion s are proved to be IEolic,as

well as many particular Words l ike wol w dp p ovos,O epa'irns,

r’

ip v8i s .

There is also another earl ier set of ‘ fals e forms,

’

neither E olic nor Ionic,but explicable only as a mixture

of the two . xe/cxwé‘

s-res is no form ; it is an original IEolic

xexxfieyov-req twisted as close as metrewi l l al low it to theIonic xe/chn

f

yo'

r es ; sjvrbm for ‘ shouting herald,

’ isthe [Eclic c

’

z’

7rv mbrought as near as metre permits to theI onic 757 157 779. Most significant of all is the case of

the Digamma or Vau, a W-Sound,which disappeared in


Ionic and Attic Greek, both medial ly (as in our Norw ich,

Berwick) and initial ly (as in who, and the Lancashire

’

ooman) . I t survived, however, in Doric inscriptions, andin such of the [Eolic as were not under I on ian influence,til l the fifth and sometimes the fourth century . I t iscal led in antiquity the ‘o l ic letter.’ Now there are 3354places in the poems which insist on the restoration of thisVau— i .e. the l ines wil l not scan without it ; 617 places,on the other hand, where in ancient [Eol ic it ought tostand

,but is metrical ly inadmiss ible . That is

,through

the great mass of the poems the habit and tradition ofthe E cho pronunciation is preserved ; in a small partthe I onic asserts itself.These facts have been the subj ect of hot controversybut the only eflective way to minimise their importance isto argue that we have no remains of[Eol ic of the seventhcentury

,and that the apparent ZEolisms may be merely

‘old Greek ’ forms dating from a period before thescattered townships on the coast of Asia massed themselves into groups under the names of IOn eS and Aioleis—an historical hypothesis which leads to difficulties.I t is not disputed that the ‘ZEolic

’ element is the

older. Philology and history testify to it, and weightmust be allowed to the curious fact, that to turn thepoems into ZEolic produces the rhymes and assonancescharacteristic of primitive poetry in numbers far toolarge to be the result of accident.1 And it holds as ageneral rule th at when the IEolic and Ionic forms aremetrically indifferent— i .e. when the l ine scans equallywell with either—the Ionic is put ; when they are notindifferent, then in the oldest parts of the poems the

1 E .g. Fpégouev dOOavd-row c TOL bppa vov ebpvv é

’

xoun , xbkos 64!my d‘

yptor dypn

( z fipec), and dpér wa t drapéV/cw ‘

r o.

EVIDENCE OF THE LANGUAGE 27

[Eclic stands and the I onic cannot, in the later parts theI onic stands and the E cho cannot. And further, wherethe two dialects denote the same thing by entirely different words

,the XEolic word tends to stand in its native

form ; e.g. K609,‘ people

,

’ keeps its a,because the I onic

word was 873mm For a ‘ temple ’ the I onic vnbs standseverywhere

,but that is j ust because temples are a late

development ; the oldest worship was at altars in theopen air.1

There are many exceptions to these rules. Dr. Fickof Gottingen

,who has translated all the ‘ older parts ’ of

Homer back to a supposed original IEolic, leaving whatwil l not transcribe as either late or spurious

,has found

himself obliged to be inconsistent in his method whenFoBéo-ba i occurs without a F he sometimes counts it asevidence of lateness

,sometimes alters it into ixéo ba i . I n

the same way a contraction l ike Ill/( 63177 6? may representan [Eclic vina v'res from Ii i/cam, or may be a staringAtticism . When we see further that, besides the Ionismswhich refuse to move

,there are numbers of o lisms

which need never have been kept fo r any reason of

metre,the conclusion is that the Ionising of the poems

is not the result of a del iberate act on the part of aparticular I onic bard— Fick gives it boldly to Kynaethusof Chios—but part of that gradual semi - consciousmodernising and re-forming to which al l saga-poetry issubj ect. The same process can be traced in the variousdialectic versions of the N ibelungenlied and th e Chansonde Roland. A good instance of it occurs in the Englishballad of S ir Degrevant, where the hero

‘Agravain’ has

not only had a D put before his name,but sometimes

rhymes with ‘retenaunce

’

or‘ chaunce ’ and sometimes

1 Cauer, Grundfragen , p. 20 3.


with ‘recreaun t

’

or avaunt.’ I t comes from an AngloNorman original

,in which the S ieur d’

Agr ivauns formed

his accusative d’

Agr ivaunt.1

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF HOMER

The evidence of language is incomplete without someconsideration of the matter of the poems. What national ity

,for instance

,would naturally be interes ted in the

subj ect of the Iliad ? The scene is in the Troad, on

o l ic ground . The hero is Ach illes, from Ai olic Thessaly. The chief king is Agamemnon, ancestor of thekings of IEolic Kyme. Other heroes come from Nor

thern and Central Greece,from Crete and from Lycia.

The I onians are represented only by Nestor, a hero of

the second rank,who is not necessary to the plot.

This evidence goes to discredit the I onian origin of themain thread of the Iliad ; but does not the same l ineof argument

,if pursued further

,suggest something stil l

more strange—vi t ., a Peloponnesian origin ? Agamem

non is king of Argos and Mycenae ; Menelaus is king of

Sparta ; Diomedes, by some little confusion, of Argosalso ; Nestor, of Pylos in Messenia. The answer to thisd ifficulty throws a most s tr iking l ight on the history ofthe poems. All these heroes have been dragged down tothe Peloponnese from homes in Northern Greece.Diomedes

,first

,has no room in Argos ; apart from the

difficulty with Agamemnon,he is not in the genealogy

,

and has to inherit through his mother. A slight study ofthe local worships Shows what he is

,an ideal ised IEtolian .

He is the founder of cities in I taly ; the cons tant companion of Odyss eus

,who represents the North West

1 Thornton Romances , Camden Soc , 1 844, esp. p. 289.



and Helene. But need I l ion be in Troia on the s ite

of Hissarlik ? I t i s worth observing that the sceneryof the similes in the oldest parts of the poems is Thessalian

,and not Asiatic ; that Hector Upholder ’

) is notconnected in local legend with the historical Troy—itsheroes are [Eneas and one Dares ;1 that th is E neas,though afterwards identified with a hero at H issarl ik

,

seems to be in origin the tribal hero of the E n eanes

in South Thessaly,j ust as Teukros the archer

,

gets in later tradition connected with I lion,and the I l ion

men become Teukro i Of course it is ultimately a myththat we have to deal with . The original battle for Helenwas doubtless a strife of light and darkness in the Sky,j ust as the N iblungs were cloud-men and Sigurd a sungod

,before they were brought down to Worms and

Burgundy. But i t looks as if the Helen- feud had itsfirst earthly local isation

,not in Troy

,but on the southern

frontier of those Thessal ian bards who sang of it. 2

When Dr. Schliemann made his first dazzl ing dis

coveries at Mycenae and H issarl ik, he believed that hehad identified the corpse of Agamemnon and recoveredthe actual cup from which Nestor drank

,the pigeons

stil l intact upon the handles. We all smile at this nowbut it remains a difficult task to see the real relationwhich subsists between the civilisation described in theHomeric poems

,and the great castles and walls

,the

graves and armour and pottery,which have now been

unearthed at so many difleren t sites in Greece.Of the nine success ive cities at H issarl ik

,the sixth

from the bottom corresponds closely with the civi l isation of Mycenae

,a civil isation similar in many respects

to that implied in the earl iest parts of the Iliad. The1 Duncker, Greece, chap. xiii. 2 See Preface.

MYCENIE : THE MIGRATIONS 3 I

Homeric house can be illustrated by the castle of Tiryns ;the “ corn ice of blue hy anos ,

” a mystery before,is explained

by the blue glas s-l ike fragments found at Mycenae . Theexhumed graves and the earl iest parts of Homer agreein having weapons of bronze and ornaments of i ron ;they agree substantial ly in their armour and their worksof art

,the inlaid daggers and sh ields, the l ion-hunts and

bul l - hunts by men in chariots,

”

and in the ostensibleignorance of writing.

On the other hand,the Similarity only holds good for

the earliest strata of the poems,and not fully even for

them . Mycenae buried her dead ; the men of the eposburnt theirs—a practice which probably arose during theSea Migrations

,when the wanderers had no safe soil to

lay their friends in . Tiryns actually used stone toolsto make its bronze weapons

,whereas the earl iest epos

knows of iron tools ; and in general we may acceptE . Meyer’s account that the bloom of the epos l iesin a ‘middle age ’ between the Mycenaean and theclassical periods.Thus the general evidence of the subj ect -matterconspires with that of the language

,to Show that the

oldest strata have been worked over from an Ai olicinto an I onic shape ; that the later parts were originally composed in I onia in what then passed as ‘ Epic ’

— that is,in the same dialect as then appeared in

the rest of the poems,with an unconsciously stronger

tincture Of I onism ; further, that the translation wasgradual

,and that the general development took cen

turies ; and lastly, perhaps, that an all- important epochin th is development was formed by the great RaceMigrations which are roughly dated about 1 0 0 0 B .C.

I t seems to have been the Migrations that took the


legendary war across the sea,when historical E olians

found themselves fighting in the Troad agains t H issarl ik,and l iked to identify their own enemies with those oftheir ancestors ; the Migrations, which drew down theNorthern heroes to the Peloponnese

,when a s tream

of Greeks from the Inachus valley met in Asia a streamfrom Thessaly. The latter contr ibuted their heroic sagathe former brought the memory of the gigantic castlesand material splendour of Tiryns and Mycenae .These Migrations present a phenomenon commonenough in history

,yet one which in romantic horror

baffles a modern imagination : the vaguenoise of fightingin the North ; the s i lly human amusement at the troublesof one’s old enemies over

,the border the rude awaken

ing ; the fl ight of man,woman

,and child ; the hasty

shipbui lding ; the fl inging of life and fortune on un

known waters . The boats of that day were at the mercyof any weather. The ordinary villagers can have hadl ittle seamansh ip. They were lost on the waves in thousands. They descended on s trange coasts and died byfamine or massacre . At the best

,a friendly city would

take in the wives and ch ildren,while the men set off

grimly to seek,through unknown and monster-peopled

s eas,some spot of clear land to rest their feet upon

’

.

Aris tarchus put Homer at the ‘ I on ic Migration .

’ Thismust be so far true that the Migrations—both IEolic andIonic— stirred depths of inward experience which foundoutlet by turning a set of ballads into the great epos

,by

creating ‘ Homer.’ It was from this adventurous exilethat I onia rose and the b loom of I onia must have beenthe bloom of the epo s.

ADVANCES I N CIVILISATION 3 3

CRITERIA OF AGE

As to determin ing the comparative dates of variousparts of the poems, we have already noticed several possible clues . Bronze weapons are earlier th an iron

,open

air altars earl ier than temples,leathern armour earl ier

than metal armour,individual foot-fighting (witness

swift- footed Achilles ’) earl ier than chariot-fighting, andthis again than riding and the employment of columnsof infantry. The use of ‘Argos for the plain of Thessalyis earl ier than its vague use for Greece

,and this than its

secondary specialisation in the Peloponnese. But al l suchclues must be followed with extreme caution . Not onlyis it always possible for a late poet to use an archaicformula— even Sophocles can use xaxfcbs fo r a swordbut also the very earl iest and most essen tial ep isodeshave often been worked over and re-embell ished downto the latest times . The slaying of Patroclus

,for in

stance,contains some of the latest work in Homer ; it

was a favourite subj ect from the very outset,and new

bards kept ‘ improving ’ upon it.We find Hellas ’ and ‘Achaia ' following similar linesof development with Argos. They denote first Achilles’sown district in Phthia, the home of those tribes whichcalled their settlement in the Peloponnese ‘Achaia

,

’ andthat in I taly ‘Great Hellas.’ But through most of

the Iliad ‘Ach aio i’ means the Greeks in general

,while

‘ Hellas ’ is stil l the Special district. I n the Ody s sey wefind Hellas in the later un iversal sense

,and in B we

meet the idea Panhellén es .

’ This is part of the expan

s ion of the poet’s geographical range at first all the actorshad really been Achaio i or Argeio i afterwards the old

0


names ‘Achaioi’ and ‘Argeio i

’ continued to be used todenote al l the actors

,though the actual area of the poems

had widened far beyond the old l imits and was wideningstil l . The las t parts of the Ody ssey are quite familiarwith Sicily and Kyrene

,and have some inkl ings of the

interior of Russia, and perhaps of the Vikings of the far

North .

1

Another gradual growth is in the marriage- customs.Originally

,as Aristotle noticed, the Greeks simply bought

the ir wives ; a goodlooking daughter was valuable asbeing awed/30m,

‘ kine-winning,

’ because of the price,

the 58m,her suitors gave for her. I n classical times the

custom was the reverse instead of receiving money forh is daughter

,the father had to give a dOW Iy with her

'

and the late par ts of the poems use 38m in the senseof ‘ dowry.’ There are several stages between, and oneof the crimes of th e suitors in the Ody ssey is the ir refusalto pay 331m.

Another criterion of age l ies in the treatment of thesupernatural. I t is not only that the poems contain

,as

Rohde 2has shown,traces of the earliest rel igion

,ances tor

worship and propitiation of the dead,mixed with a later

‘ I onic ’ spir it,daring and sceptical

,which knows nothing

ofmysteries,and uses the gods for rhetorical ornament

,or

even for comic relief. There is also a marked developmentor degeneration in the use of supernatural machinery.I n the earl iest stages a divine presence is only introducedwhere there is a real mystery

,where a supernatural ex

planation is necessary to the primitive mind. I f Odysseus, entering the Phaeacians

’ town at dusk,pass es on

and on safe and unnoticed,it seems as if Athena has

1 Th e Laes trygones , especia l ly at, 82—86.Psy che, pp. 35f.

TREATMENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL 3 5

thrown a cloud over him if Achilles,on the very point

of drawing h is sword against his king, feels somethingwithin warn and check him

,it seems to be a divine hand

and voice. Later on the gods come in as mere ornaments ; they thwart one another ; they become ordinarycharacters in the poems. The more divine interferencewe get

,the later is the work

,until at last we reach the posi

tively-marring masquerades of Athena in the Ody ss ey ,

andthe offensive scenes of the gods fighting in E and T. Notthat any original state of the poems can have done without the gods altogether. The gods were not created inAsia ; they are

‘ Olympian,

’ and have their charactersand their formal epithets from the old home of theAchaio i.

The treatment of individual gods,too, has its Sign i

ficance— though a local, not a chronological one. Zeusand Hera meet with little respect. I ris is l ike the ‘malapert heralds ’ of Euripides. Ares is frankly detested fora bloodthirsty Thracian coward. Aphrodite

,who fights

because of some echo in her of the Phoen ician Ashtaroth,

a real ly formidable warrior,is ridiculed and rebuked for

her fighting . Only two gods are respectfully handledApollo,who, though an ally of Troy, is a figure genuinelydivine ; and Pose idon, who moves in a kind of rollingsplendour. The reason is not far to seek : th ey are thereal gods of the I onian . The res t are, of course, godsbut they are other peoples ’ gods

,

’ and our view of themdepends a good deal on our view of their worshippers .Athena comes next in honour to the two Ionians in theOdy s sey and K she outs trips them . Athens could manageso much

,but not more : she could not make the I onian

poetry accept her stern goddess in her real grandeur ;Athena remained in the epos a fighting woman

,treache


rous and bitter,though a good partisan . She wil l never

be forgiven for the last betrayal of Hector.Great caution must be used in estimating the s ign ifi

cance of repetitions and quotations. For instance, thedisguised Odysseus begins prophesying his return in r

,

30 3, with the natural appeal

Zeus hear mefirs t, ofgods mos t h igh andgreat,

And brave Ody sseus’ hearth , where I am come.

”

But when he says the same in E, 158, not only is theprophecy imprudent when he does not mean to berecognised

,but he is also not at h is own hearth at al l

,

and a slight surplusage in the first l ine betrays th eimitator : “Zeus

,hear me first of gods and thy kind

board.” The passage is at home in r,and not at home

in E.Similarly

,what we hear in x

,1 36, is natural

In the isle there dwelt

Kirhefazr-tres s’d,dreadgoddes s full of song.

”

Kirkewas essential ly ‘ dread,

’ and her ‘ song ’ was magicincantation but in p , 448, it runs

Calypso in the is leDwellethfair -tress

’

d, dreadgoddes sfull of s ong.

”

Calyp so was not special ly‘ dread ’ nor ‘ ful l of song

,

’

except in imitation of Kirke ; and, above all, to‘ dwell

fair the verb and adj ective thus j oined,is not a

possible Homeric manner of behaviour,as to ‘ dwell

secure ’

or to ‘ l ie prostrate ’ would be .I n the same way the description of Tartarus in Theagany ,

720 As fa r’

nea th ea rth as is the heaven above — i snatural and original . Homer’s “As far

’nea th hell as



one of the rej ected epics. The story in 8 (242 ff.) aboutHelen helping Odysseus in Troy, is definitely stated byProclus—a suspected witnes s, it is true—to occur in theLittle Iliad.

* The succeeding one (271 makes Helenhostile to the Greeks

,and cannot come from the same

source . But it als o reads l ike an abridgment. So does thestory of Bel lerophon in Z Proitosfirst s ent h im to s lay

the Chima ira : now she was a thingdivine and not mortal, in

front a lion, and beh ind a serpent, and in the middle a w ild

goa t, breath ing furious fire. Yet he slew her, obey ing the

s ign s of the gods .

” What signs,and how ? And what is

the meaning of the strange lines 20 0 f. ? “But when he,

too,w as ha ted of all the gods , then verily down the Pla in of

Wander ing alone he wandered, eating his hea rt, shunn ing

the tread of men . The original poem,whatever it was

,

would have told us ; the re’

sume’ takes al l the details for

granted.

Space does not al low more than a reference to thatcriterion of date which has actually been most used inthe ‘ Higher Criticism — the analysis of the story. I tmight be interesting to note that the wall round theships in the Iliad is a late motive ; that it is built underimpossib le circumstances ; that it is sometimes there andsometimes not

,and that it seems to return mysteriously

after Apollo has flattened it into the ditch ; or thatAchilles in II speaks as if the events of I had notoccurred ; or that Odysseus

’ adventures in n and a, andperhaps in i

,seem to have been original ly composed in

the third person,not the first

,while h is supposed false

stories in ‘g' and 7 seem actually to represent older

versions of the real Odysseus- legend or that the poetsof r and the fol lowing books do not seem to know thatAthena had transformed the ir hero in v into a decrepit

ANALYS I S OF STORY : SU ITOR-SLAYING 39

old man, and that he had consistently remained so to

the end of But in al l such criticism the detail is thel ife . We select one point for i l lustration— the Suitorslaying.I n our present version Odysseus begins with the bow

,

uses up all h is arrows,puts down the bow

,and arms

himself with spear and sh ield and helmet,which Téle

machus has meanwhile brought (x, What werethose fifty desperate men with their swords doing whilehe was making the change ? Nearly all critics see herea combination of an old Bow-fight with a later Spearfigh t. As to the former

,let us start with the Feet

washing in r . Odysseus is speaking with Penelopesh e is accompanied by Eurycleia and th e handmaids.Odysseus dare not reveal himself directly

,because he

knows that the handmaids are false. He Speaks to h iswife in hints

,tel ls her that he has seen Odysseus

,who

is in Thesprotia,and will for certain return before that

dying year is out ! He would like to send the handmaids away, but of course cannot. He bethinks h imof his old nurse Eurycleia and

,when refreshment is

oflered him,asks that She and none other (7 , 343 seq.)

shall wash his feet. She does so,and instantly (r , 392)

recognises him by the scar ! Now, in our version, theman of many devices is taken by surprise at this ; hethreatens Eurycle ia into silence, and nothing happens.The next th ing of importance is that Penelope—she hasj ust learnt on good evidence that Odysseus is al ive, andwill return immediately—suddenly determines that shecannot put off the suitors any longer

,but brings down

her husband’s bow,and says she will forthwith marry

the man who can shoot through twelve axe-heads withit ! Odysseus hears her and is pleased ! May it not be


that in the original story there was a reason for Penelope to bring the bow

,and for Odysseus to be pleased ?

I t was a plot. He meant Eurycleia to recognise h im,

to send the maids away, and break the news to Penelope .Then husband and wife together arranged the trial of

the bow. This is so far only a conj ecture,but it is

curiously confirmed by the account of the slaying givenby the ghost of Amph imedon in w. The story he tellsis not that of our Ody s sey : it is the old Bow-slaying

,

based on a plot between husband and wife (esp.

As to the Spear-fight, there is a passage in 7r,28 1—298,

which was condemned by the Alexandrians as inconsistent with the rest of the story . There Odysseusarranges with Telemachus to have all the weapons inthe banquet hall taken away

,only two spears

,two

swords,and two shields to be left for the father and son .

This led up to a Suitor- slaying with Spears by Odysseusand Telemachus

,which is now incorporated as the

second part of our Suitor- slaying. Otto Seeck 1 hastr ied to trace the Bow-figh t and the Spear-fight (whichwas itself modified again) through all the relevant partsof the Ody ssey .

I t is curious that in points where we can comparethe myths of our poems with those expressed elsewherein l iterature

,and in fifth -century pottery

,our poems

are often,perhaps generally

,the more refined and

modern . I n the Grea t Eoia i,“ the married pair Alkino ii s

and Arete are undisguisedly brother and sister : ourOdy ssey explains elaborately that they were really onlyfirst cousins. When the shipwrecked Odysseus meetsNaus icaa

,he pulls a bough off a tree—what for ? To

Show that he is a suppliant,obviously : and so a fifth

1Quellen der Ody ssee, 1887.

MORAL GROWTH 4 1

century vase represents it. But our Ody ssey makesh im use the branch as a veil to conceal h is nakedness ! And so do the vases of the fourth century. A

version of the slaying of Hector followed by Sophoclesin his N iptra

’“ made Ach il les drag his enemy al ive ath is chariot wheels. That is the cruder, crueller version .

Our poems cannot suppress the savage insult,but they

have got rid of the torture. How and when did th ishumanising tendency come We cannot say ; but it wasdeliberately preferred and canonised when the poemswere prepared for the sacred Athenian recitation .

This moral growth is one of the marks of the lastworking over of the poems. I t gives us the magnificent studies of Helen and Andromache

,not dumb

obj ects of barter and plunder,as they once were

,but

women ready to take the ir places in the conception of

ZEschylus . I t gives us the gentle and splendid chivalryof the Lycians

,Sarpedon and Glaucus . I t gives us

the exquisite character of the swineherd Eumaeus hiseager generosity towards the stranger who can tel l ofOdysseus

,al l the time that he keeps professing h is

incredulity his quaint honesty in feeding himself,his

guest,and even Telemachus

,on the young inferior pork

,

keeping the best,as far as the su itors allow

,for his

mas ter (E, 3, 80 ; W,and his emotional breach of

principle,accompanied with much apology and j usti

fication,when the story has entirely won him :

“ Bm’

ng

forth the bes t of the hogs (E, Above all,it seems

to have given us the sympathetic development of Hector.The oldest poem hated Hector, and rej oiced in mangl inghim

,though doubtless it feared him as well

,and let him

have a better right to his name ‘ Man-slayer ’ than hehas now

,when not only Ach il les

,but Diomedes

,Aias

,


Idomeneus,and even Menelaus, have successively been

made more than a match for him . I n that aspectHector has lost

,but he has gained more . The pre

vail ing sympathy of the later books is with him . The

two most explicit moral j udgments in the poems areagainst Achilles for maltreating him .

1 The gods keephis body whole

,and rebuke his enemy’s savagery . The

scenes in Z,the parting with Andromache, the com

forting of l ittle Astyanax frightened at his father’s plume,

the calm acceptance of a battle which must be fatal,

and of a cause which must be lost—all these are in theessence of great imagination ; but the absolute masterpiece

,one of the greatest feats of skil l in imaginative

l iterature,is the fl ight of Hector in X . I t is s imple

fear,undisguised yet you feel that the man who fl ies

is a brave man . The act of staying alone outside thegate is much ; you can j ust nerve yourself to it.But the s ickening dread of Achil les’ distant oncominggrows as you wait

,ti ll it S imply cannot be borne. The

man must fly ; no one can blame him ; it is only onemore drop in the cup of divine cruelty

,which is to

leave Hector dead, Troy burned, As tyanax butchered,and Andromache her enemy’s slave. I f the old poetwent with the conqueror

,and exulted in Hector’s shame

,

there has come one after him who takes all his factsand turns them the other way ; who feels how far moreintense the experience of the conquered always is

,and

in this case how far more noble .The wonder is that Achilles is not spoilt for us. Somehow he remains grand to the end

,and one is grieved

,not

alienated,by the atrocities his grief leads him to . The last

touch of th is particular spirit is where Ach illes receives1 ‘I'. 24 ; X , 395; and i f .

IMAGINATIVE SYMPATHY OF HOMER 4 3

Priam in his tent. Each respects th e other, each conquers his anguish in studied courtesy ; but the name ofHector can scarcely be spoken

,and the attendants keep

the dead face hidden,lest at the sight of it Priam’s rage

Should burst its control,

“and Ach illes s lay him and s in

aga ins t God (I) , I t is the true pathos of war :the thing seen on both sides ; the unfathomable suffering for wh ich no one in particular is to blame .Homer

,because he is an ‘ early poet

,

’ is sometimessupposed to be unsubtle

,and even superficial . But is

it not a marvel of sympathetic imagination which makesus feel with the flying Hector

,the cruel Achilles

,the

adulterous Helen,without for an instant losing hold of

the ideals of courage,mercifulnes s

,and chastity

This power of entering vividly into the feelings of

both parties in a confl ict is perhaps the most characteristic gift of the Greek genius it is the spirit in whichHomer, IESChylus, Herodotus, Euripides, Thucydides,find their kinsh ip

,and which en abled Athens to create

the drama.

LESSER HOMERI C POEMS ; HES IOD ; ORPHEUS

THE REJECTED EPIcs

WHEN amid the floating masses of recited epos twopoems were special ly isolated and organised into com

plex unity,there remained a quantity of authorless poetry,

originally of equal rank with the exalted two,but now

mangled and disinherited . This rej ected poetry was notfully organised into distinct wholes . The lays and groupsof lays were left for each reciter to modify and to selectfrom . I t is an anachronism to map out a series of epics,to cut off Cypria ,

‘ Iliad, zE thiop is ,‘ L ittle Iliad

,

" Sack ofIlion

,

* Homecomings," Ody s sey , Te

‘

legoneiaf as so manyseparate and continuous poems composed by particularauthors. The for instance

,a great mass of

Epe’ centring in the deeds of Paris and the Cyprian

goddess before the war,is attributed to Homer

,Creo

phylus, Cyprias, Hégés ias, and Stas inus ; the S ach’ is

claimed by Homer, Arctinus, Lesches , and a poet whosename is given as Hegias, Agias, or Augias, and his homeas Troizen or Colophon . Some of these names perhapsbelonged to real rhapsodes ; some are mere inventions.‘ Cyprias

,

’ for instance,owes h is existence to the happy

thought that in the phrase 7aKbvrpi a 3m; the second wordmight be the Doric genitive of a proper name, Kim-

plus,

and then the question of authorship would be solved.

44



only does he start from a false conception of what thepoems were—they had probably peri shed before the daysof Pausanias

,centuries earl ier—h e also seems to have

reached his results by first taking the contents of somehandbook

,of which we can only say that it often agrees

word for word with that of Apollodorus,and then

,by

conj ecture or otherwise,inserting “Here begins the Little

Iliad of Lesche‘

s of M or“Here comes the {E thi op i s

of Arctinus of ridile’tus .

" I t is known from quotations inearl ier writers that the individual poems covered muchmore ground than he allows them. For instance

,the

L ittle Iliad begins in Proclus with the contest of Aiasand Odysseus for th e arms of Achilles

,and stops at the

reception of the Wooden Horse . But a much earlierbeginning is suggested by the opening words of thepoem itself

,which stil l survive : I s ing of Ilion and

Dardan ia,land of ch ivalry , for wh ich the Danaoi, hench

men of Ares , sufi’

ered many things ; and a later endingis proved by the quotations which are made from it toi llustrate the actual sack. I t is the origin, for instance,of Vergil’s story about the warrior who means to slayHelen

,but is restrained by Venus ; only in the L ittle Iliad

it is Helen’

s beauty unaided that paralyses Menelaus.I n general, however, Vergil, l ike Proclus

’

s authority,pre

fers the fuller version derived from the special epic onthe Sack by ‘Arctinus of Miletus

,

’ while Theodoru'

sagain sets aside both epics and fol lows the lyrical Sachof Stes ichorus .

Again, Proclus makes the zE thz'

op is* and the Sach * two

separate poems with a great gap between them. HisA?thiop is

* begins immediately at the end of the Iliad,

gives the exploits of the Amazon Penthesileia and theIEth iop Memnon, and ends with the contest for the

HISTORY OF THE REJECTED EPICS 47

arms of Achilles ; the S ach * begins after the receptionof the Wooden Horse. The fi thiop is

" has five books,

the Sach * two ; seven in all. But one of the tables treatsthem both as a single continuous poem of 950 0 l ines,which must mean at the very least ten books. On theother hand, Proclus makes the Homecomings ,

* whichmust have been a series of separate lays almost as elasticas the E oia i * themselves (see p . into a single poem.

As for the date of these poems,they were worked into

final shape much later than our Homer,and then appa

rently more for the ir historical matter than for the ir poeticvalue . They quote Iliad, Ody ssey ,

and Theogony theyare sometimes brazen in the ir neglect of the digamma ;they are often modern and poor in their language . Onthe other hand

,it is surely perverse to take the ir mentions

of ancestor-worship, magic, purification, and the like,as evidence of lateness. These are all practices of dateless antiquity

,left unmentioned by Homer

,

’ l ike manyother subj ects

,from some conventional repugnance

,

whether of race,or class

,or tradition . And the actual

matter of the rej ected epics is often very old . Wehave seen the relation of 8 to the L i ttle Iliad.

* I n the

Cyp ria* Alexander appears in his early glory as con

queror of Sidon ; there is a catalogue of Troj ans whichcannot well have been copied from our meagre l ist in B

,

and is perhaps the source of it ; there is a story told byNestor which looks l ike the original of part of our Hadeslegend in A. And as for quotations

,the words “ The

purpose of Zeus was fulfilled are certainly less naturalwhere they stand in the opening of the Iliad than inthe Cypr ia ,

* where they refer to the whole design ofrelieving Earth of her burden of men by means of theTroj an War. We have 1 25separate quotations from the


Cp ,

* which seems to have stood rather apart andindependent in the general epic tradition .

The Telegoneia ,* too

,though in its essence a mere

sequel,making Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Kirke

,

sail in search of his father, j ust as Telemachus did, isful l of genuine saga- stuff. Odysseus is repeated in hisson

,l ike Ach illes

,l ike Launcelot and Tris tram. The

sons of the Far-wanderer ’ are Far-figh ter’ and ‘ Far

born,

’ and a third,by Calypso

,is Far- subduer ’ (Tele

damus ) . The bowman has a bowman son, and the sonwanders because the father did. And the end of theTelegoneia

* is in the simplest saga-spirit. Telegonusunknowingly slays h is father

,who gives him Penelope to

wed and protect. He takes all the characters to Kirkein the magic island ; she purifies h im of blood

,and

makes Telemachus and Penelope immortal finally,the

two young men marry their respective step-mothers,

Odysseus apparently remaining dead. That is not lateor refined work. ‘ Eugamon

’

(‘ Happy -marrier ’

) ofCyrene must have seemed a grotesque figure to themen of the fifth century ; he was at home among thoseold saga -makers who let Heracles give Deianira toHyllus, and ( Edipus take on the late king

’s wife as partof the establishment.The critical questions suggested by the rej ected epicsare innumerable . To take one instance

,how comes it

that the L ittle Iliad * alone in our tradition is left in sothin a dress of conventional ‘ Epic ’ language that th eIEolic shows through ? One l ine actual ly gives thebroad a and probably the double consonants of IEolic

,

m‘

sf p en é'

nv Mlu'fl

'

pL‘

l 8’

e’

7ré'reAAe a eAciva . Othersare merely conventionalised on the surface . Possiblysome epics continued to be sung in Lesbos in the

THE HOMERIC HYMNS 49

native dialect til l the era of antiquarian collection inthe fourth century B .C. or after ; and perhaps if th ispoem were ever unearthed from an Egyptian tomb, weshould have a specimen of the loose and popular epic

not yet elaborated by Ionic genius. Its style in generalseems l ight and callous compared with the s tern tragedyOf the Milesian E th iop is

" and S ack of Ilion .

*

Among the other rej ected epics were poems of whatmight be called the World-cy cle. O f these

,Proclus uses

the Theogony* and the Titan Wa r

,

* of which last thereexists one really beautiful fragment. The Theban ‘Ring

,

’

which was treated by grammarians as an introduction tothe Troj an

,had an a dipodeafi

‘ a Theba is,

* and a Lay ofthe After-born

,

* treating of the descendants of the Seven,who destroyed Thebes. The Dr iving forth of Amph ia

raus ,* the Tah ing of E chaliaf the Phoca is ,

* the Dana is,

*

and many more we pass over.

HYMNS OR PRELUDES

I t was a custom in epic poetry for the minstre l to‘ begin from a god

,

’ generally from Zeus or the Muses.1

This gave rise to the cultivation of the Pro-o imion ’

or

Prelude as a separate form of art,specimens of which

survive in the so - called Homeric ‘ Hymns,

’ the word{Savor having in early Greek no religious connotation .

The shortes t of these preludes merely call on the godby his titles , refer briefly to some of h is achievements ,and finish by a line l ike

,

“Ha il to thee, Lord; and now

begin my lay ,” or

,Beginn ing from thee

,I w ill pas s to

another song.

” 2 The five longer hymns are, l ike Pindar’S

victory songs,il lustrations of the degree to which a

1 Find Nem. 2. Cf. 0, 499.2 See esp . 3 1 .

D

50 LITERATURE or ANCIENT GREECE

form of art can grow beyond itself before it is felt tobe artistically impossible . The prelude was developed asa th ing apart until it ceased to be a prelude.The collection which we pos sess contains poems ofdiverse dates and local ities, and the tradition of thetext is singularly confused . The first 546 l ines, forinstance

,are given as one hymn ‘ to Apol lo.’ But they

comprise certainly two hymns : the first ( 1—178) by anI onic poet

,on the birth of the I on ian God in the floating

island of Delos the second by a poet of Central Greece,on the slaying of the great Earth- serpent

,and the estab

lishment of the Dorian God at Delphi. Further, thesetwo divisions are not single poems

,but fall into separate

incomplete parts. Athenaeus actually cal ls the whole‘ the hymns to Apollo .

’ The I onic port ion of this hymnis probably the earl iest work in the extant col lection.I t is quoted as Homer’s by Thucydides ( i i i. andAristophanes (B irds , and attributed by Didymusthe grammarian to the rhapsode Kynaethus of Chios ;which puts it

,in point of antiquity, on a level with the

rej ected epics. The hymn to Hermes partly dates itselfby giving seven strings to the original lyre as inventedby that god . I t must have been written when the oldfour- stringed lyre had passed

,not only out of use, but

out of memory. The beautiful fragment (vii .) on thecapture of Dionysus by brigands looks l ike Attic workof the fifth or fourth century B.C. The Prelude toPan (xix.) may be Alexandrian ; that to Ares (viii .)suggests the fourth century A.D.

I n spite of their bad preservation, our Hymns aredelightful reading. That to Aphrodite, relating noth ingbut the visit of Aphrodite to Anchises shepherding h iskine on Mount Ida

,expresses perhaps more exquisitely

HYMN To DEMETER 51

than anything else in Greek literature that frank j oy inphysical l ife and beauty which is often supposed to becharacteristic of Greece. The long hymn to Demeter,extant in only one MS .

,which was discovered last century

at Moscow ‘ among pigs and chickens,

’ is perhaps themost beautiful of all. I t is interesting as an early Atticor E leusinian composition . Parts are perhaps ratherfluent and weak

,but most of the poem is worthy of

the magnificent myth on which it is founded . Takeone piece at the opening

,where Persephone “was

play ing w ith Oheanos’

deep -breas ted daugh ters , and pluch

ingflowers, roses and crocus and pretty pans ies , in a soft

meadow,andflags and hy acinth, and tha t great narcissus

that Ea rth s ent upfor a snare to the rose-face ma iden, doingserv ice by God

’s w ill toHim of theMany Gues ts . The bloom

of it was wonderful, a marvelfor gods undy ing and mortal

men ; from the root of it there grew out a hundred heads,

and the incensed smell of it made all the w ide shy laugh

above,and all the earth laugh and the salt swell of the sea .

And the girl in wonder reached out both her hands to tahe

the beautiful th ing toplay w ith ; then y awned the broad-trod

ground by the Pla t of Ny sa, and the dea thless s teeds brahe

forth, and the Cronos -born hing,He of the Many Names

,

of the Many Gues ts andHe swept her away on h is golden

char iot.” The dark splendour of Aidoneus,

“H im of the

Many Thralls , of the Many Gues ts ,” is in the highest spirit

of the saga.

COMIC POEMS

Of the Comic Poems which passed in antiquity asHomer’s

,the only extant example is the Ba ttle of the

Frogs and M ice, rather a good parody of the fighting


epic. The opening is Boeotian ; the general colour ofth e poem Attic . An obvious fable—followed strangelyenough by A. Ludw ich in his large edition—gives it toone Pigres

,a Carian chief, who fought in the Persian

War. The battle began because a mouse namedPs icharpax, flying from

‘

a weasel,came to a pond to

quench h is thirst. He was accosted by a frog of royalrace

,Phys ignathos, son of Peleus—( the hero of Mount

Pelion has become ‘Mudman,

’ and h is son Puff-cheek ’

— who persuaded him to have a ride on h is back and seehis kingdom . Unhappily a Hydros ’—usually a watersnake

,here perhaps some otter- l ike animal—l ifted its

head above the water,and the frog instinctively d ived.

The mouse perished,but not unavenged . A kinsman

saw him from the bank,and from the blood- feud

arose a great war,in which the mice had the best of it.

At last Athena besought Zeus to prevent the annihilationof the frogs. He tr ied first thunderbolts and then crabs

,

which latter were more than the mice could stand theyturned

,and the war ended.

There were many comic battle-pieces ; we hear of aSp ia

’er a Crane-fight,

* a Fieldfa re-poemfi‘ Some

were in iambics,and consequently foreign to the Home

ric style . The most celebrated comic poem was theMa r

gites ,* so called after its hero

,a roaring blade (népryos),

high-spirited and incompetent,whose characteristic is

given in th e immortal l ine

miAA’ ijfl'far ar o e

’

pya, O’ij n frrrar o min-m.

Many arts he hnew,and he hnew them all badly and

again “He was not meant by the gods for a digger or a

ploughman , nor generally for any thing sens ible he w a s

deficient in allmanner of w isdom.

” Late writers on metre



be an idle dog,ignorant of the world and fond of law.

Hesiod wants to praise righteousness : the figure mustshow a certain l ight-handedness in its dealings withmoney . We have then no information of what Hesiodwas— only a tradition of what Hesiod was supposed to be .He was born at Kyme, in IEolis his father migratedto Boeotia

,and settled in Ascra, a charming and fertile

village on the slopes of Mount Helicon,which the poet

describes as “ bad in w inter, insuf erable in summer .

"

Here he herded flocks on Helicon,ti l l one day the

Muses greeted him with the words : “Boors of the w ild

fields,by

-words of shame,nothing but belly ! We hnow

how to tell many false th ings true-s eeming,but we hnow

how to speah the real truth when w e w ill.” This made

Hesiod a poet. We hear nothing more of h im til l hisdeath

,except that he once went across the channel from

Aulis to Chalkis to take part in a competition at thefuneral games of Amphidamas

,king of Euboea

,and

,al

though much of his advice is about nautical matters,that

he did not enj oy the sea. He avoided Southern Greecebecause of an oracle wh ich foretold that he should die atNemea ; and so he did, at a l ittle sanctuary near O ineonin Locris

,which happened to bear that name. He was

murdered and thrown into the sea by the brothers of oneClymene or Ctimené

,who was supposed to have borne a

son to the octogenarian poet ; but the dolphins broughtthe body to land

,and a stately tomb was built for it at

O ineon . The son was the great lyrist Stés ichorus IThis is not even pure myth

,it is myth worked up by

ancient scholars. Yet we can perhaps get some historicalmeaning out of the ir figmen ts . The whole evidence of thepoems goes to suggest that there was a very old peasantpoetry in Boeotia

,the direct descendant in all l ikel ihood

LEGEND OF HES IOD’S LI FE 55

of the old IEolian lays of the Achaio i, from which‘ Homer ’ was developed ; and that this was at sometime enriched and invigorated by th e reaction upon it

of the full-flown I onian epic. That is, I on ian poets musthave settled in Boeotia and taken up the local poetry.Whether one of those poets was called Hés iodos

’ is aquestion of l ittle importance. I t does not look likean invented name . At any rate

,the Boeotian poetry

flourished,and developed a special epic form

,based on

the I onian Homer,

’ but with strong local traits.What of Hesiod’s death We know that the Hesiodicpoetry covered Locris as well as Boeotia the cataloguesofwomen are especially Locrian . The Clymene story issuggested

,doubtless

,by a wish to provide a romantic and

glorious ancestry for Stes ichorus . Does th e rest of thestory mean that Locris counted Hesiod as her own

,and

showed his grave while Boeotia said he was a Boeotian,and explained the grave by saying that the Locrians hadmurdered him AS for the victory at the funeral gamesof Amphidamas

,it is a late insertion

,and the unnamed

rivals must he meant to include Homer. The story of acontest between Homer and Hesiod

,in which the latter

won,can be traced back

,as we saw (p. to the fifth

century at least.Of Hesiod’s poems we have nominally three preserved

,

but they might as well be called a dozen,so little unity

has any one of them—the Theogony , the Worhs andDay s

(Erga ), and the Sh ield of Heracles .

The Worhs a nd Day s is a poem on E rga ,’

or Worhs Ofagriculture

,with an appendix on the lucky and unlucky

Day s of the month, and an intertexture of moral senfences addressed to Perses. I t is a Slow

,lowly

,simple

poem ; a little rough and hard, the utterance of those


Muses who like to tell the truth . There is no swing inthe verses they seem to come from a tired, bent man atthe end of his day

’

s work— a man who loves the countryl ife

,but would like it better if he had more food and less

toil . There is l ittle sentiment . The outspoken bitterness

of the first ‘Gnome’ is characteristic : “Potter is w roth

w ith potter, and ca rpenter w ith ca rpenter ay e, begga r is

envious of begga r, and mins trel of mins trel I SO is thenext about the j udges who rob the poor man : “ Fools ,

they hnow not how the half is more than the whole, nor the

grea t j oy there is in mallow and asphode Mallow andasphodel were the food and flowers of the poor. Themoral sentences increase in depth in the middle of thepoem

,and show a true and rather amiable idea of duty .

Ha rd worh is no shame ; the shame is idlenes s .

” “Help

y our neighbour, and he w ill help y ou. A neighbour matters

more than a hinsman .

”Tahe fa ir measure, and give a

little over the measure—if y ou can .

”Give w illingly a

w illing gift is a pleasure. Give is a good girl, and

S na tch is a badgirl, a br inger of dea th I It is bes t to

marry a w ife ; but be very careful, or y our neighbours maybe merry a t y our expen se. There is no prize lihe a good

wife noth ing that mahes y ou shudder lihe a bad; she

roa s ts y ou w ithoutfire,and br ings y ou to a raw old age.

”

At the end these sentences degenerate into rules ofpopular superstition not to put the j ug on the mixingbowl when drinhing ; tha t means dea th I not to s it on

immovable th ings ,” and so on . One warning

,

“not to

cross a river w ithout was hing y our hands and y our s ins,

”

approaches Orphism .

The agricultural parts of the E rga are genuine andcountry- l ike . They may be regarded as the gist of thepoem

,the rest being insertions and additions. There

THE ERGA 57

is the story how the gods had “ hidden away h is l ifefrom man

,till good Prometheus stole fire and gave

it h im . Then Zeus, to be even with him,made a shape

l ike a gentle maiden, and every god gave it a separatecharm

,and Hermes last put in it the heart of a dog and

the ways of a thief. And the gods called it Pandora,

and gave it to Epimetheus,who accepted it on behalf

of mankind. There is the story of the four ages : atleast there ought to be four—gold

,silver

,bronze

,and

iron ; but, under the influence of Homer,the heroes

who fought at Troy have to come in s omewhere. Theyare put j ust after the bronze and before ourselves. Weare iron ; and, bad as we are, are l ikely to get worse.The gods have all left us

,except Aidos and Nemesis

—those two lovely ideas which the sophist Protagorasmade the basis of social eth ics

,and which we miserably

translate into Shame and R ighteous Indignation . Someday

,Hesiod thinks

,we shal l drive even them away

,and

all wil l be lost. Two passages, indeed, do suggest thepossibil ity of a brighter future : all may be well whenthe Demos at last arises and punishes the sins of theprinces ( 175, 260 I t is interesting to compare theloyalty of the prosperous I onian epos towards its primitive kings with the bitter insurgency of the Boeotianpeasant-song against its oligarchy of nobles.The Erga is del ightful in its descriptions of the seasons—a subj ect that touched Greek feel ings down to thedays of Longus . Take the month of Lenaion,

“ bad

day s , enough to fiay an ox,when the north w ind r ides

down f rom Thrace, and ear th and the plan ts shut them

selves up and hefalls on thefores t and br ings down grea t

oahs andp ines ; and all the woodgroans , and the w ild beas ts

sh iver and put their ta ils between their legs . Their h ides


a re th ich w ith fur, but the cold blow s through them,and

through the bull’

s hide and the goa t’

s thich ha ir ; but it

cannot blow through to the gentle little gi rl who si ts in the

cottage w ith her mother,

” and so on . And how goodthe summer is, in wh ich foolish people have made ita reproach against Hesiod’s poetic sensitiveness that hel iked to sit in the shadow of a rock and have a picnicwith milk and wine and plenty of goats’ flesh .

The Theogony is an attempt, of course hopelessly inadequate

,to give a connected account of the gods, their

origins and relationships. Some of it is more than old ;it is primeval . Several folk-gods occur whose names arefound in Sanskrit

,and who therefore may be imagined

to date from Indo - European times,though they are

too homely to occur in the heroic epos : Hestia, Rhea,Orthros, Kerberos. We are dealing with most ancientmaterial in the Theogony ; but the language, the presentform of the poem

,and perhaps the very idea of syste

matis ingthe gods, are comparatively late . The E rga 70 2

is quoted by Semon ides (about 650 But it is impossible to date the poems . We have seen (p. 37) thatthe Theogony is quoted by the Iliad—whereas the Theo

gony often quotes the Iliad and Ody ssey , and at the endrefers to the matter of several of the rej ected epics.The text is in a bad condition ; it is often hard to seethe connection or the sense. I t almost looks as i f therewere traces of a rhapsode’s notes, which could be ex

panded in recitation . There are remains of real,not

merely l iterary,rel igion . ErOs Love

,is prominent

,

because he was special ly worshipped in Thespiae,Ascra

’

s

nearest big town . Hecate has a hymn (41 1—452) soearnest that it can only come from a local cult. A

great part of the poem,the mutilation of Ouranos, the

THEOGONY. CATALOGUES OF WOMEN 59

cannibal ism of Cronos,only ceases to be repulsive when

it is studied as a genuine bit of savage rel igion . To

those of the later Greeks who took it more seriously,it was of course intolerable . There is real grandeur inthe account of the Titan War

,which doubtless would

be intel l igible if we had the Homeric Titan War* before

us. And there is a great sea-feeling in the l ist of Nereids

(347 flfl) .The Theogony ends (967—1020 ) with a list of thegoddesses who lay in the arms of mortals and borechildren l ike the gods. I n the very last l ines the poetturns from these Now

,sweet Muses

,s ing the race of

mortal women .

” Of course,the Muses did s ing of them

,

but the song is lost. It is referred to in antiquity byvarious names The Catalogue of Women

,

’

The Poems

about Women,’

The Lis ts of Heroic Women ’

; particularparts of it are quoted as The Boia i

,

’

The Lists of the

Daughters of Leuh ippos ,’

of the Daughters of Proitos ,’ and

so on .

Why were l ists of women written For two reasons.The Locrians are said to have counted the ir genealogiesby the woman’s side and if th is

,as it stands

,is an exag

geration , there is good evidence, apart from Noss is andher fellow-poetesses, for the importance of women inLocris. Secondly, most royal houses in Greece weredescended from a god. I n the days of local quasimonotheistic religion th is was simply managed : the localking came from the local god. But when geographicalboundaries were broken down

,and the number of known

gods consequently increased, these genealogies had to besystematised

,and sometimes amended. For instance

,

certain Thessalian kings were descended from Tyro andthe river En ipeus . This was well enough in their own


valley ; but when they came out into the world, theyfound there famil ies descended

.

from Poseidon,the god

of the great sea, perhaps of all waters, and they could notremain content with a mere local river. I n Ody ss ey Awehave the second stage of the story the real ancestor wasPoseidon

,only he visited Tyro disguised as the river !

The comparatively stable human ancestress es form thesafest basis for cataloguing the shifting divine ancestors.There were five books in the Alexandrian edition of the

Ca talogues of Women! the last two being what is cal ledEoia i f This quaint title is a half - humorous plural ofthe expression oi

’

n, Or lihe,

’ which was the formof transition to a new heroine

, Or lihe her who dwelt

in Ph th ia , w ith the Cha rites’

own loveliness,by the wa ters

of Peneus , Cy rene the fa ir .

” There are one hundredand twenty - four fragments of the Ca talogue

‘ andtw enty - six of the Or lihes .

’ I f they sometimescontradict each other

,that is natural enough

,and it

cannot be held that the Alexandrian five books had allthe women there ever were in the Hesiodic l ists. Whenonce the formula Or lihe

’ was started,it was as easy to

put a new ancestress into the l is t as it is,say, to invent a

new quatrain on the model of Edward Lear’s. Furth ermore

,it was easy to expand a given E oié” into a s tory,

and this is actually the genesis of our third Hes iodicpoem

,th e Shield of Heracles , the ancestress be ing, of

course,th e hero’s mother

,Alcmene.

The Shield begins Or lihe Alcmene’, when shefled her

home andfa therland, and came to Thebes ; it goes on tothe b irth of Heracles

,who

,it proceeds to say, Slew

Kyknos , and then it tells how he Slew Kyknos . I n thearming of Heracles before the battle comes a long

description of the sh ie ld.



eth ical belie f which stirred th e national interest or theemotions of a particular poet.

ORPHEUS—REVELATION AND MYSTICISM

I n studying the social and the literary history ofGreece

,we are met by one striking contrast. The

social h istory shows us the Greeks,as the Athenians

thought themselves,especially god - fearing

,

’ or,as

St. Paul put it, ‘ too supers titious.’ The literature aspreserved is entirely secular. Homer and Hesiod mention the gods constantly ; but Homer treats them aselements of romance

,Hesiod treats them as facts to

be catalogued. Where is the literature of rel igion,

the l iterature which treated the gods as gods ? I tmust have existed . The nation which had a shrine atevery turn of i ts mountain paths

,a religious ceremony

for every act of da i ly l ife,spirits in every wood and

river and spring,and heroes for every great deed or

stirring idea, real or imagined ; which sacrificed the defence of Thermopylae rather than cut short a festival ;whose most enlightened city at its most sceptical timeallowed an army to be paralysed and lost because ofan ecl ipse of the moon

,and went crazy because the

time - honoured indecencies of a number of statueswere removed without authority— that nation is notadequately represented by a purely secular l iterature.As a matter of fact, we can see that the religiouswritings were both early and multitudinous.

The Vedic hymns offer an analogy. Hymns l ikethem are implied by the fact that the titles of theHomeric gods

,é/ca

'ep

'yoq

’

A7rbAv, Boém s wbrvca Hpn,

THE VAR IOUS MYSTER IES 63

éxamBeAe’

v-ao are obviously ancient, and are

constructed with a view to dactyl ic metre . We knowthat the early oracles spoke in verse. We know thatthere were sacred hymns in temples

,quite distinct

from our secular Homeric preludes. We have evidence that th e Mysteries at Eleusis depended in part

on the singing of sacred music.The Mysteries are not mentioned by Homer. Thatdoes not mean that they are late it means that they aree ither too sacred or else too popular. The discoveriesof anthropologis ts now enable us to see that the E leuSin ian Mysteries are a form of that primitive religion,scarcely differentiated from ‘ sympathetic magic

,

’ whichhas existed in so many diverse races. The Mysterieswere a drama. The myth of the Mother of Corn andthe Maid

,the young corn who comes up from beneath

the earth and is the giver of wealth,was represented in

action . At the earliest time we hear of,the drama in

cluded a vine-god,or perhaps a tree-god in general

,Dio

nysus . This is corn-worship and vegetation -worsh ip : iti s not only early

,but primitive.

There were other Mysteries, Orphic or Bacchic.The common opinion of antiquity and the present dayis that the Bacchic rites were introduced to Greece fromabroad— the god of the Thracian brought

,in Spite of

opposition,into Greece . I f so

,he came very early. But

i t seems more likely that Dionysus is rather a new-comerthan a foreigner he is l ike the new year

,the spring

,the

harvest,the vintage. He is each year

,in every place

,a

stranger who comes to the land and is welcomed as astranger at the end of his time he is expelled

,exorcised

,

cut to pieces or driven away. At any rate he is early,

and for the real rel igion of Greece he is of overwhelming


importance . A real religion is a people’s religion. Thegreat complex conception Dionysus-Bacchus was acommon folk’s god

,or rather had united in himself an

indefinite number of similar conceptions which wereworshipped by common folk all over Greece. We hearof him mostly through Alexandrian and Roman sources,sceptical through and through

,i n wh ich he is merely the

god of wine. But this is degradation by narrowing.

He is a wine -god ; he is a tree-god ; but above all he isone of th e person ifications of the spirit of ecstasy, theimpulse that is above reason

,that l ifts man beyond

himself,gives h im power and blessedness

,and lets loose

the immortal soul from the trammels of the body. Thesame spirit

,in a tamer

,saner

,and more artist ic form, was

absorbed in the very different conception of Apol lo.This religion doubtles s had the most diverse forms. Thegods it worsh ipped varied in n ames and attributes as theyvaried in the ir centres of in itiation . But the most important aspects of it seem to have been more or lessunited in the religious revelations of Orpheus.’

Most of the old rel igious poems belonged to Orpheusor his kinsman Musaeus

,as the heroic poems to Homer,

and the didactic to Hesiod . But we know nothing ofthem before the great rel igious revival of the sixthcentury

,associated with the name of Onomacritus . The

Old separate cults of tribe and family had been disturbed by increasing intercourse . Agglomerated in theHomeric theology

,they lost their sanctity ; and they

could scarcely survive Hesiod and his catalogues . Hencecame

,on the one hand

,scepticism embodied in the

I onian philosophy,and the explanation of the world by

natural science ; on the other hand, a deeper, morepassionate belief. I t was all very well for Thales to be

ORPHI SM 65

saved by knowledge ; the common man could not lookthat way. Amid the discouragements of the sixthcentury

,the ebb of colonisation

,the internal wars

,the

fal l of Sybaris and of the half-divine N ineveh,came the

turn ing away from this l ife to the next,the setting of the

heart on supernatural bliss above the reach of war andaccident.Hence arose a great wave of religious emotion

scarcely represented in our tradition, but affecting everyoracle and popular temple from Caria to I taly. Themain expression of this movement was Orphism. I tappears first as an outburst of personal miracle-workingreligion in connection with Dionysus -worship . We canmake out many of the cardinal tenets. I t bel ieved insin and the sacerdotal purging of sin ; in the immortalityand divin ity of the soul ; in eternal reward beyond thegrave to the ‘ pure ’ and the ‘ impure —of course

,none

but the in itiated being ultimately qu i te pure and in theincarnation and suffering of Dionysus-Zagreus. Zagreuswas the son of Zeus and the Maiden (Kore) ; he wastorn asunder by Titans

,who were then blasted by the

thunderbolt. Man’s body is made of their dead ashes,

and his soul of the l iving blood of Zagreus. Zagreuswas born again of Zeus and the mortal woman Semelé

l ived as man, yet god ; was received into heaven andbecame the highest

,in a sense the only

,god . An indi

vidual worsh ipper of Bacchus could develop his divineside til l he became himself a ‘ Bacch os

,

’ his potentialdivinity realised .

So a worsh ipper of Kybébé in Phrygia becameKybébos and many Orphic prophets became Orpheus.The fabled Maenad orgies never appear h istorically inGreece . The connection with wine was explained away

E


by the elect,and was in real ity secondary. Dionysus is

the god within, th e spirit of worship and inexplicablej oy : he appea rs best in communion with pure soulsand the wild th ings of nature on the sol itary mountainsunder the stars.The Orphic hymns brim over with th is j oy ; they ar e

ful l of repetitions and magniloquence, and make foremotion . The first hymn—ve ry late but typical— runs

I callHeca te of the Way s , of the Cross -way s , of the darh

nes s,of the Heaven and the Ea rth and the S ea , saf ron -clad

goddes s of the grave, exulting amid the sp ir its of the deaa’

,

Perseia , lover of loneliness , Queen who holdes t theKey s of the

World,

. . bepres ent a t our pure s erv ice w ith thefulness of

j oy in th ine hea rt.

That hymn dates from th e fourth century A.D.,and

so do most of our complete Orphic poems. We onlypossess them in their last form

,when the rel igion was

a dying th ing. But it is a remarkable fact, that there

is no century from the fourth A.D. to the s ixth B .C.

which is without some more or less celebrated Orphicteachers. At the height of the classical epoch

,for in

stance,we have evidence of an Orphic spirit in Pindar,

Empedocles,I on of Chios

,Cratinus the comedian,

Prodicus the philosopher,and probably in Euripides.

Plato complains of the “ crowd of books by Orpheusand Musaeus,

” and inveighs against their doctrine of

ceremonial forgiveness of sins. Besides th is ‘ crowd — inthe case of Musaeus it amounted at least to eleven setsof poems and numerous oracles - there were all kinds ofless reputable prophets and purifiers. There was a typecal led ‘ Bakis ’—any one sufficiently ‘ pure ’ was apparently capable of becoming a Bakis— whose oracleswere a drug in the Athen ian market. Epimenides

,the

LEADERS OF ORPH ISM 67

medicine-man from Crete,who purified Athens after

Xylon’s murder, was the reputed author of Argo

nautihafi Purifica tions ,’ and Oraclesfi“ Though he Slept

twenty years in a cave, he has more claim to real itythan a similar figure

,Abaris

,who went round the world

with—o r,as some think, on—a golden arrow given him

by Apollo. Abaris passed as pre - Homeric ; but hisreputed poems were founded on the epic of the h is

torical Aristeas of Proconnésus about the Arimaspi,

which contained revelations acquired in trances aboutthe hyperboreans and the grifi n s . Aristeas appearedin Sicily at the same time that he died in Proconnésus .These were hangers-on of Orphism ; the head centre

s eems to have been Onomacritus . He devoted himselfto shaping the religious policy of Pisistratus and Hip

parchus , and forging or editing ancient Orphic poems.He is never quoted as an independent author. Thetradition disl ikes him, and says that he was caught inthe act of forging an oracle of Musaeus

,and banished

w ith disgrace by Hipparchus. However, it has to admitthat he was a friend of that prince in his exile

,

1 and itcannot deny that he formed on e of the ch ief influencesof the Sixth century .

Before the sixth century we get no definitely Orphicliterature

,but we seem to find traces of the influence

,

or perhaps of the spirit, from which it sprung. Thecurious hymn to Hecate the Only-born ’ in the Theo

gony (41 1 f.) cannot be called definitely Orphic, but itstands by itse lf in the religion of the Hesiodic poems.The few references to Dionysus in Homer have an‘ interpolated ’

or‘un -Homeric ’ look

,and that which

tells of the sin and punishment of Lycurgus implies1 Herodt. vn. 6.


the existence of an Orphic missionary tale.1 The etei nalpunishment of the sinners in A seems Orph ic so possiblydoes the fact that the hero saw none of the blest. Hecould not

,because he was not in itiated. The Homeric

preludes to Ar es,to Athena

,and perhaps that to

Poseidon,show some traces of the movement. Among

the early epics the Alcniabn is " dealt largely with purification

,and contained a prayer to ‘Zagreus

,all-highest

of all gods.’ The Corinth ian epics of Eumelus Showa similar strain . Eumelus was of the clan Bacch iadw,

his Eurbp ia‘" was about Dionysus

,and he treated the

Orphic subj ects of Medea and the Titan War. Severalepics

,l ike the M iny as ,

’ contained apocalyptic accountsof Hades. The important fact is that the mystical and‘ enthusiastic ’ explanation of the world was never without its apostles in Greece

,though the main current of

speculation, as directed by Athens, set steadily contrariwise, in the l ine of getting bit by bit at the meaning ofthings through hard thinking.

1 Z., 1 32 I.



poet PANYASIS of Halicarnassus : the name is Carian,but the man was the uncle of Herodotus

,and met h is

death in a rebellion against Lygdamis, the Cariangovernor of his native state. He wrote elegies aswell as his epic. One Alexandrian critic puts Panyfis isnext to Homer among epic poets : generally, he camefourth

,after Hesiod and Antimachus . I n Quintilian

he appears as a mixture of the last two writers—hismatter more interesting than Hesiod’s

,his arrangement

better than that of Antimachus. The fragments areun -Homeric

,but strong and well written . Accident has

preserved us three pieces somewhat in the tone of thecontemporary sympotic elegy. One speaker praise s

drink and the drinker with great spirit ; another answersthat the first cup is to the Charites and Horai and

Dionysus,the second to Aphrodite

,the third is to

I nsolence and Ruin and so y ou had better go home to

y our wedded w ife.” Some of the l ines haunt a reader’s

memoryDemeter bare, and thegr ea t Craftsman bare,S ilver Apollo and Poseidon bare,To s erv e a y ea r, a mortalmas ter

’s thrall.”

CHOIRILUS of Samos was also a friend of Herodotus,and followed him and fEschylus in taking the Persianinvasion for h is subj ect

,and Athens for his heroine.

We hear of him in the suite of the Spartan generalLysander—apparently as a domestic bard— and afterwards at the court of Archelaus of Macedon . His

poem is the first ‘ historical ’ epic in our s ense of theword : an extant fragment complains that al l legendarysubj ects are exh austed. The younger Choirilus whocelebrated Alexander and has passed into legend ashaving been paid a gold phil ippus a line for very bad

ANTIMACHUS OF COLOPHON 7 I

verses—the same anecdote is told of others—may havebeen this man’s grandson . I f he was really the authorof the epitaph on Sardanapallus he was not a bad writer,though the original prose was finer ‘ “Sardanapallus , son

of Anahy nda raxes , built Anch iale and Ta rsus in one day ..

E at,dr inh , mahe merry ; all th ings els e are not worth

tha t !

A rival of the earl ier Cho irilus was ANTIMACHUS of

Colophon, author of the Theba is ,* a learned poet affecting

to despise popularity,and in several respects an Alexan

drian born before his time . Naturally,Alexandria admired

him,counted him with Empedocles as master of ‘ the

austere style,

’ and ranked him in general next to Homer,

though Quintil ian, in quoting the criticism,remarks that

‘ next ’ does not always mean ‘ near .’ A vague anecdotictradition connects Antimachus and Plato . Plato sent h isdisciple Heraclides to collect Antimachus’s works

,or

else stayed in a room which Antimachus’s recitation hademptied of other listeners ; and Antimachus said, Platoto me is worth a thousand.

” There were l iterary warsover Antimachus in later times ; and th is anecdote isused by the friends of the learned epos

,l ike Apollonius

,

to glorify Antimachus, while Callimachus and Duris tookit as merely proving what they otherwise held

,that Plato

was no j udge of poetry. The fragments are mostly too

short to be of any literary interest the longer pieces areeither merely grammatical or are quoted by Athenaeusfor some trivial point about wine-cups. The sty le strikesa modern ear as poor and harsh

,but the harshness is

studied,as the strange words are. He owed his rea l

fame more to his elegiac romance Ly de* than to h is

epic.Lastly

,Pausanias tells us “A person called Phalys io s


rebuilt the temple of Asclepios in Naupaktos . He hada disease of the eyes and was almost bl ind

,when the

god sent to him Anyté, the epic poetess, with a sealedtablet.” Phalys ios recovered, but we know no more of

ANYTE except that Sh e was a native of Tegea,in Arcadia

,

and is once called ‘ the feminine Homer - by Antipaterof Thessalonica

,who has handed down to us many of

her epigrams,and who may or may not have read her

epics.The descendants of Hesiod are more varied and moreobscure . The genealogical epos has two lines of development. The ordinary form went on living in diversparts of Greece . We hear of the Naupaktian Verses,the Samian

,the Phocaean ; but either they go without

an author,o r they are given to poets of local legend, the

national equivalents of Hesiod Carkinus’ of Naupaktos,

Eumelus of Corinth, Asius’ 1

of Samos. On the otherhand

,the Eo ié

’ type produced the romantic or eroticelegy. This form of poetry in the hands of such mastersas Mimnermus, Antimachus, and Hermés ianax, takes theform of l ists of bygone lovers

,whose children are some

times given and sometimes not. I t is the s tory of theEo ié

’ seen from a different point of view. When wehear how the ‘ great blue wave heaven-h igh curled overthe head of Tyro and took her to her sea-god

,we think

not of the royal pedigree,but of the wild romance of

the story,the fee ling in the heart of En ipeus or of

Tyro .

The didactic poetry of Hesiod developed on one S ideinto the moral ising or gnomic epics of Phokylidés , theproverbs of the Seven Wise Men, the elegies of Solon andTh eogn is ; it even passed into the iambics of Sémon ides

1 Our Sillos -like fragment must be by another man, not a Samian.



culture,who turns from the world to become high priest

of an ascetic brotherhood based on mysticism and purification .

The rise of a distinctly philosophical epos is immediately due to the curious spiritual rebellion ofXENOPHANES of Colophon

,a disciple of An aximander,

who was driven by the Persian invasion of 546 B .C.

to earning his l ivel ihood as a rhapsode . But heknew from Anaximander that what he recited was nu

true . “Homer and Hes iod fas tened on the gods all tha t

i s a shame and a rebuhe to man,th ieving and adultery

and the chea ting one of another .

” He made his mas ter’sphysical I nfinite into God there is one God mos t h igh

over men and gods“all of him sees , thinhs , and hea rs

he has noparts ; he is not man -lihe either in body or mind.

“Men have made God in their own image; if oxen and lions

couldpa in t, they would mahegods lihe oxen and lions .

” Hewrote new ‘ true poetry of his own— th e great doctrinalpoem On Na ture

,

’ an epic on the historical Founding ofColophon,

* and 20 0 0 elegiacs on the S ettlement a t Elea of

himself and his fel low-exiles. The seventy years whichhe speaks of as having “

tossed h is troubled thoughts upand down Hellas ,

” must have contained much hard figh ting against organised opposition

,of which we have an

echo in his Sa tires f He was not a great philosophernor a great poet but the fact that in the very strongholdof epic tradition he preached the gospel of free philosophyand said boldly the th ings that every one was secretlyfeel ing

,made him a great power in Greek life and l itera

ture . He is almost the only outspoken critic of rel igionpreserved to us from Greek antiquity . The scepticismor indifference of later times was combined with a conven tional dis l ike to free speech on rel igious matters

THE PHILOSOPHICAL EPOS 75

partly as an attack on shadows,partly as mere ‘ bad

taste .’

The example of Xenophanes led his great philosophicaldisciple to put his abstract speculations into verse form .

PARMENIDES’ poem On Nature * was in two books,the

first on the'

way ofTruth, the second on the way of Falsehood. There is a mythological setting, and the poet

’sride to the daughters of th e Sun

,who led him through

the stone gates of Night and Day to the sanctuary ofWisdom

,is quite impressive in its way. But it would al l

have been better in prose .EMPEDOCLES of Acragas , on the other hand, is a realpoet

,perhaps as great as his admirer Lucretius

,and

working on a finer material . He was an importantcitizen

,a champion of l iberty against the tyrants Theron

and Th rasydaios . His history, l ike that of the kindredspirits

,Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana

,has been

overlaid by the miraculous . He stopped the Etesianwinds ; he drained an enormous marsh ; he recalled adead woman to life ; he prophesied the hour that thegods would summon him

,and passed away without

dying. His enemies said that from sheer van ity hehad thrown himself down Mount Etna that he mightdisappear without a trace and pass for immortal .How did any one know

,then ? ’ ‘ He had bras s

boots and the volcano threw one of them up Sanertradition said that he died an exile in the Peloponnese .His character profoundly influenced Greek and Arabianthought

,and many works in both languages have passed

under h is name. His system we Speak of later ; butthe thaumaturgy is the real l ife of the poem. Take thewords of a banished immortal stained by sin

There is an utterance of Fa te, an ancient decree of the


gods , everlas ting, s ealed w ith broad oa ths when any being

s ta ins h is hand w ith s in of hea rt or swears an oa th of de

ceiving,ay e, though he be a Sp ir it, whos e life is for ever ,for

thrice ten thousandy ears he wanders away from the Bles sed,

grow ing, as the ages pass , th rough all the shapes of mortal

th ings , pa s s ingfrom one to another of the wea ry way s of li e.

The might of the fi ther hunts h im to the S ea,the Sea vomits

h im bach to the floor of Earth, and Earthfiings h im to the

fires of Helios the unwear ied,and he to the whirlw inds oj

fi ther. He is received of one after another,and abhorred

Empedocles remembered previous l ives “ I have been

a y outh and a ma iden and a bush and a bird anda gleaming

fish in the sea .

” He hated the slaughter of animals forfood Willy e never ceasefrom the horror of bloodshedding ?

S eey e not tha t y e devour y our brethren, and y our hea rts

rech not of it P But bean-eating was as bad Wretched,

thrice-w retched,heep y our hands from beans . It is the same

to ea t beans as to ea t y our fathers’heads . This is no

question of over-stimulating food ; beans were undersome rel igious fi r/0 9 or taboo, and impure.

ELEGY AND IAMBUS

The use of the word ‘ lyric ’ to denote all poetry thatis not epic or dramatic

,is modern in origin and inac

curate . The word impl ies that the poetry was sung to alyre accompaniment

,or

,by a slight extension ofmeaning,

to some accompaniment. But the epos itsel f was originally sung.

‘ Homer ’ had a lyre,

‘ Hesiod ’ either a lyreor a staff. And

,on the other hand

,the ‘ lyric elegy and

iambus began very soon to drop their music. All Greek



over the sea to Terpander’

s island. Terpander is thusthe developer of IEolic or native Greek harp-music. But

he also learned,we are told, from the Cretan Chrysoth e

mis . Now, Crete was one of the .first Dorian settlements.So Terpander is a j unction of the native string-musicwith that of the Dorian invader. All that we knowof h im

,his name ‘ Cha rmer-of-men

’ included,has the

stamp of myth . He gave the lyre seven strings instead of four. Seven tunes are mentioned as his invention ; one particularly, called the

‘Terpandrian Nomos,’

is characterised by its seven divisions,instead of the

S imple three,Beginning

,Middle

,and End. He won

four musical prizes at Delphi—at a time before therewere any contests 1 He is the first musical victor in theCarneia at Sparta. All these contests existed at firstwithout fixed records

,and the original victor is gener

ally mythical.The conclusion is that

,as there was heroic legend

,so

there was song in most cantons of Greece before our

earl iest records. The local style varied, and mus ic wasgeneral ly classified on a geographical bas iS the Ph rygian style

,

’ ‘ the I onian,

’ ‘ th e Dorian,

’ ‘ the hypo-Dorian,

’

‘ the hyper-Phrygian,

’ ‘ the Lesbian,

’ and so on. Thedivision is puzzling to us because it is so crude

,and

because it implies a concrete knowledge of the particular styles to start with . The disciples of Socrates, whosaw every phenomenon with the eye of th e moral ist

,

dwell much upon the eth ical values of the various divisions : the Dorian has dignity and courage, the Ph rygian is wild and exciting

,the Lydian effeminate

,the

ZEOIian expresses turbulent chivalry. This sounds arbi

trary ; and it is interesting to find that while Platomakes the I on ic style ‘ effeminate and bibulous

,

’ his

MUS ICAL ACCOMPAN IMENTS 79

disciple Heraclides says it is ‘ austere and proud.

’ TheSocratic tradition especially finds a moral meaning inthe difference between string and wind instruments .The harp allows you to remain master of yourself, afree and thinking man ; the flute

,pipe

,or clarionette

or whatever corresponds to the various kinds of aulos,puts you beside yourself, obscures reason, and is morefit for barbarians. As a matter of fact, the

‘ aulos ’ wasthe favourite instrument in Sparta

,Boeotia

,and Delphi.

TOO stimulating for the sensitive Athenian, it fairlysuited the Dorian palate. I t would probably be milkand-water to us.The local styles of music had generally corresponding

s ty les of metre . Those of Lesbos and Teos, for instance,remained Simple ; their music appeals even to an um

trained ear. The ordinary I onic rhythms need only beonce felt to be ful l of magic, the Dorian are a littleharder

,while many of the [Eol ian remain unintell igible

except to the most sympathetic students . The definiterules

,the accompaniment of rhythmic motion and con

stant though subordinate music, enabled the Greeks toproduce metrical effects which the boldest and most melodious of English poets could never dream of approaching .

There is perhaps no department of ancient achievementwhich distances us so completely as the higher lyricpoem . We have developed mus ic separately

,and far

surpassed the Greeks in that great isolated domain,but

at what a gigantic sacrifice !The origin of the word E legy is obscure. I t mayhave been originally a dirge metre accompanied

,when

sung,by the ‘ aulos .

’

But we meet it first in war-songs,

and it became in course of time the spe cial verse forlove.


The oldest kn own elegist, CALLINUS,comes from

Ephesus, and writes in a dialect l ike that used in theIonic parts of Homer. His wars are partly against theinvading Kimmerians (about 650 partly against thetown of Magnesia. He was about contemporary withthe great Archilochus (p . 86) but Callinus speaks

~

of

Magnesia as sti l l fighting,while Archilochus mentions its

fal l . TYRTAEUS Of Aph idna wrote elegiac war-songs forthe Spartans in the Second Messenian War (685—668and speaks as a Dorian noble

,a Spartiate . But there

was an Aph idna in Attica as well as in Laconia ; andAthenian malice remodelled an old j oke into the anec

dote that Sparta,hard pres sed in the war

,had sent to

Athens for a leader,and that Athens had sent them a

lame schoolmaster, who woke the dull creatures up, and

led them to victory. I n the same spirit,the Samians

used to tell how they lent the men of Priéné a pro

phetess to help them against the Carians— even aSamian old woman could teach the Prieneans how tofight ! Tyrtaeus becomes a semi-comic character in thelate non-Spartan tradition— for instance

,in the Messe

nian epic of Rh ianus (third century but his Doricname

,the fact that his songs were sung in Crete as well

as in the Peloponnese,and the traditional honours paid

to h im at Lacedaemonian feasts, suggest that he wasa personification of the Doric war-e legy, and that al lauthorless Doric war-songs became his property— for

instance,the somewhat unarchaic l ines quoted by the

orator Lycurgus. The poems were, of cour se, Originallyin Doric; but our fragments have been worked over intoI onic dres s

,1

. and modern ised. The collection,which

includes some anapaestic marching-songs, comes from1 Cf the mixture 6. ¢¢o p1mar ln Er dpr av bl ef.



background for the favourite Greek conception of theWise Wanderer. We hear, in defiance of chronology,how he met the richest of kings, Croesus, who showedal l h is glory and then asked who was the ‘most fortunate ’ man in the world. Solon named him certainobscure persons who had done the ir duty and wereloved by their neighbours and were now safely dead .

The words seemed meaningless at the time,but had

their due effect afterwards— on Croesus when Cyrus wasin the act of burning him to death and on Cyrus whenhe heard the story and desisted from his cruel pride .Solon was a soldier and statesman who had written

love-poetry in his youth,and now turned h is ski ll in

verse to practica l purposes, circulating political poemsas his successors two centuries later circulated speechesand pamphlets . I t is not clear how far th is practice wasborrowed from the great towns of I onia

,how far it was

a growth of the special ly Athenian instinct for pol itics .We possess many considerable fragments

,elegiac

,iambic

,

and trochaic,which are of immense interest as h istorical

documents ; while as poetry they have something of thehardness and dulness of the practical man . The mostinteresting bits are on the war against Megara for thepossession of Salamis

,and on the Seisachtheia

’ or Ofshahing of Burdens ,

’ as Solon’s great legislative revolu

tion was called . As a reforming statesman,Solon was

beaten by the extraordinary difficulti es of the time ; hel ived to see the downfall of the constitution he hadframed, and the rise of Pisistratus ; but someth ing inhis character kept h im al ive in the memory of Athensas the type of the great and good lawgiver

,who might

have been a ‘Tyran nos,’ but would not for righteousness’

sake.

THEOGNIS OF MEGARA 8 3

THEOGNIS of Megara, by far the best preserved of theelegists, owes h is immortal ity to h is maxims, the briefstatements of practical philosophy which the Greekscalled GnOmai and the Romans Sententia .

’ Some aremerely moral

Faires t is r ighteousness , and bes t is health,And sweetes t is to win the heart’s des ire.”

Some are bitter

Few men can cheat their haters, Ky rnos mine;Only true love is easy to betray I

”

Many show the exile waiting for h is revenge

Dr inh while they drinh, and, though thine hea rt begalled,Let no man living count the wounds of i t :There comes a day for pa tience, and a dayFor deeds andj oy , to a ll men and to thee I

Theogn is’

s doctrin e is not food for babes. He is aDorian noble, and a partisan of the bitterest type in astate renowned for its factions. He drinks freely ; hespeaks of the Demos as ‘

the vile’ or as ‘my enemies ’

;

once he prays Zeus to “give h im their blach blood to

drinh . That was when the Demos had killed al l h isfriends

,and driven him to beggary and exile

,and the

proud man had to write poems for those who entertained h im. We hear, for instance, of an elegy onsome Syracusans slain in battle . Our extant remainsare entirely personal ebullitions of feeling

-

or monitoryaddresses

,chiefly to his squ ire Kyrnos . His relations

with Kyrnos are typical of the Dorian soldier. He takesto battle with him a boy

,his equal in station

,to whom

he is ‘ lihe a fa ther’

(I. He teaches him all theduties of Dorian chivalry—to fight

,to suffer in silence

,


to stick to a friend, to keep clear of falsehood, and to

avoid associating with ‘ base men.

’ He is pledged tobring the boy back safe, or die on the field himself ;and he is disgraced if the boy does not grow up to bea worthy and noble Dorian . I n the rest of h is relations with the squire, there is some sentiment whichwe cannot enter into : there were no women in theDorian camps. I t is the mixed gift of good and evilbrought by the Dorian invaders to Greece

,which the

true Greek sometimes over-admired because it was soforeign to him—self—mastery

,courage

,grossness

,and

pride,effective devotion to a narrow class and an un

civil ised ideal . Our MSS. of Theogn is come from acollection made for educational purpos es in the thirdcentury B.C., and Show that state of interpolation whichis characteristic of the Schoolbook. Whole passages ofSolon,Mimnermus, Tyrtaeus, and another elegist Euénus ,originally j otted on the margin for purposes of comparison

,have now crept into the text. The order of

the Gnomes is confused and we sometimes have whatappear to be two separate versions of the same gnome

,

an original and an abbreviation . There is a certainbl indness of frank pride and chivalry, a depth of hatredand love

,and a sense Of mystery

,which make Th eogn is

worthy of the name of poet.

The gnomic movement receives its special expressionin the conception of the Seven Wise Men . They provide the necessary myth ical authorship for the widespread proverbs and maxims— the ‘Know thy selfj

’ whichwas written up on the temple at Delphi ; the

‘Nothing

too much,

’ ‘ Surety ; loss to follow,

’ and the l ike,which

were current in people’s mouths. The Wise Ones were



distinguish him from his more illustrious namesake,S imonides of Keos. H is elegies, a history of Samosamong them,

are lost but Stobaeus has preserved in his

Anthology an iambic poem on women—a counter-satire,

apparently,to the waggon-songs in which the village

women at certain festivals were licensed to mock theirmale acquaintances . The good woman in Semon ides isl ike a bee

,the attractive and extravagant l ike a mare

,

and so on . The pig-woman comes comparatively highin the scale , though She i s lazy and fond of food.

There were th ree iambic poets regarded as ‘ classical ’

by the Alexandrian canon— Semon ides,Archilochus

,and

H ippOnax. But, except possibly the last-named, no poetwrote iambics exclusively ; and the intimate l iterary connection between, for instance,Th eogn is,Archilochus, andHesiod

,shows that the metrical division is unimportant.

Much of Solon's work might, as far as the subj ect or thespirit is concerned, have been in elegiacs or iambics indifferently. The iambic metres appear to have been connected with the popular and homely gods Dionysus andDemeter

,as the state ly dactyl ic hexameters were with

Zeus and Apollo . The iambic is the metre nearest tocommon speech ; a Greek orator o r an English newspaper gives a fair number of iambic verses to a column .

I ts service to Greek literature was to provide poetry witha verse for dialogue

,and for the ever-widening range of

subj ects to which it gradual ly condescended. A Euripides, who Saw poetry and meaning in every stone of astreet

,found in the current iambic trimeter a veh icle of

expression in some ways more flexible even than prose .When it first appears in literature

,it has a sati rical

colour.ARCHILOCHUS of Paros (fl. 650 ecl ipsed all earlier

IAMBIC POETRY. ARCHI LOCHUS 87

writers of the iambus,and counts in tradition as the first.

He was the Homer ’ of famil iar personal poetry. Thiswas partly due to a l iterary war in Alexandria

,and partly

to his having no rivals at his side. Stil l, even our scantyfragments j ustify Quintil ian

’s criticism :“The sentences

really are strong,terse

,and quivering, ful l of blood and

muscle ; some people feel that if his work is ever inferiorto the very highest

,it must be the fault of his subj ect

,

not of his genius.” This has, of course, another side toit. Archilochus is one of those masterful men who hate tofeel humble . He will not see the greatness of things

,and

likes subj ects to which he can feel himself superior. Yet,apart from the s atires, which are blunt bludgeon work,his smallest scraps have a certain fierce enigmatic beauty.Oh, h ide the bitter gifts of our lord Poseidon I

” is a cryto bury his friends’ shipwrecked corpses. “ In my spea r

is h neaded bread,in my spear is w ine of Isma rus and I lie

upon my spear as I dr inh I” That i s the defiant boast of

the outlaw turned freebooter. There were s even dead

men trampled under foot, and we were a thousand mur

derers .

” What does that mean One can imagine manythings . The few lines about love form a comment onSappho . The burning, colourless passion that finds itsexpression almost entirely in physical language may bebeautiful in a soul l ike hers ; but what a fierce, impossiblething it is with this embittered soldier of fortune

,whose

intense sensit iveness and prodigious intel lect seem sometimes only to mark him out as more consciously wickedthan his fel lows ! We can make out something of his li fe .He had to leave Paros—one can 1mag1ne other reasonsbesides or before h is alleged poverty— and settled on

Thasos,

“a w retched island, ba re and rough as a hog

’s bach

in the sea,

” in company with all the worst scoundrels in

8 8 LITERATURE OF ANC IENT GREECE

Greece . I n a battle with the natives of the mainland hethrew away his sh ield and ran, and made very goodj okes about the incident afterwards. He was betrothedto Cleobulé, the daughter of a respectable Parian citizen,Lycambes . Lycambes broke off the engagement ; Archilochus raged bl indly and indecently at father and daughterfor the rest of his l ife . Late tradition says they hangedthemselves. Archilochus could not stay in Paros ; thesettlement in Thasos had failed ; so he was thrown on

the world,sometimes supporting himself as a mercenary

soldier,sometimes doubtless as a pirate

,until he was

kil led in a battl e against Naxos. “ I am a servant of the

lordgod of war , and I hnow the lovely gift of the Muses .

”

He could fight and he could make wonderful poetry.I t does not appear that any further good can be saidof him.

Lower all round than Archilochus is HIPPONAX of

Ephesus. Tradition makes him a beggar,lame and

deformed himself,and inventor of the ‘ halting iambic ’

or ‘ scazon,’ a deformed trimeter which upsets all one’s

expectations by having a spondee o r trochee in thelast foot. His works were all abusive . He inveighedespecially agains t the artists Bupalos and Athén is, whohad caricatured him ; and of course agains t womene.g.

,

“A w oman gi ves a man two day s of p leasure : the

day he ma rries her, and the day he ca rries out her corpse.”

Early satire does not imply much wit ; it impl ies hardhitting

,with words instead of sticks and stones . The

other satirical writers of classical times,Anan ius and

Hermippus, Kerkidas and Aischrion , were apparentlynot much admired in Alexandria.One form of satire

,the Beast Fable

,was especial ly

developed in col lections of stories which went under


THE SONG

THE PERSONAL SONG—SAPPHO,ALCIEUS

,ANACREON

THE Song proper,the Greek ‘ Melos

,

’ fal ls into two

divisions—the personal song of the poet,and the choric

song of his band of trained dancers . There are remainsof old popular songs with no alleged author

,in various

styles : the M ill S ong—a mere singing to while awaytime Grind

,M ill

, grind Even Pittacus grinds Whois h ing of the grea t My tilene —the Sp inn ing Song andthe Wine-Pres s Song, and the Swallow S ong, withwhich the Rhodian boys went round begging in earlyspring. Rather h igher than these were the ‘ Skolia

,

’

songs sung at banquets or wine-parties. The formgave rise to a special Skol ion - tune

,with the four - l ine

verse and the syllable-counting which characterises theLe sbian lyric. The Skol ion on Harmodius and Aristo

geiton is the most celebrated ; but nearly all our remainsare fine work

,and the “Ah

,Leipsy drion , false to them

who loved thee,

” the song of the exiles who fled fromthe tyrant Pisistratus to the rock of that name

,is full of

a haunt ing beauty.The Lesbian Melos ’ culminates in two great names

,

Alcaeus and Sappho,at the end of the seventh century .

1

1 The dates are uncertain. Athens can scarce ly have possessed Sigéumbefore the reign of Pisistratus . Be loch , Gr iech ische Geschichte, i. 330 .

9°

ALCIEUS OF LESBOS 9 1

The woman has surpassed the man,i f not in poetical

achievement,at least in her effect on the imagination

of after ages. A whole host of poetesses sprang upin different parts of Greece after her— Corinna andMyrtis in Boeotia

,Telesilla in Argos

,Praxilla in Sikyon

while Erinna,writing in the fourth century

,still cal ls

herself a comrade of Sappho.ALCIEUS spent his life in wars, first against Athensfor the possession of Sigéum,

where,l ike Archilochus

,

he left his Shield for the enemy to dedicate to Athena ;then against the democratic tyrant MelanchrOs andhis successor Myrs ilos . At last the Lesbians stoppedthe civil strife by appointing Pittacus

,the ‘Wise Man

,

’

dictator,and Alcaeus left the island for fifteen years .

He served as a soldier of fortune in Egypt and elsewhere : his brother Antimen idas . took service withNebuchadnezzar

,and killed a j ewish or Egyptian giant

in single combat. Eventually the poet was pardonedand invited home . His works fi l led ten books inAlexandr ia ; they were all

‘ occasional poetry,

’ hymns,

political party- songs (o r a o twrucci), drinking-songs, andlove -songs. His strength seems to have lain in thepol itical and personal reminiscences

,the “ hardships of

travel,banishment

,and war

,

” that Horace speaks of.Sappho and Alcaeus are often represented together onvases

,and the idea of a romance between them was

inevitable. Tradition gives a l ittle address of his ina Sapphic metre, Thou violet - crowned

, pure, s oftlysmiling Sappho,

” and an answer from Sappho in Alcaics—a del icate mutual compliment. Every line of Alcaeushas charm. The stanza called after him is a magni

ficent metrical invention. His language is spontaneousand musical ; it seems to come straight from a heart as


full as that of Archilochus, but much more generous.He is a fiery [Eolian noble, open-handed

,free-drinking,

frank,and passionate and though he fought to order in

case of need,he seems never to have written to order.

His younger contemporary SAPPHO— the name isvariously spelt ; there is authority for Psappha, Psaffo ,and even Pspha—born at Ephesus, dwell ing at Mity lene,shared the pol itical fortunes ofAl caeus’s party. We hearof a husband

,whose name, Kerkylas of Andros, is not

above suspicion ; and of a daughter Klers,whose existenceis perhaps erroneously inferred from a poem I have a

fa ir little child,w ith a shape lihe a golden flower, Kleis , my

da rling.

” She seems to have been th e leader of a bandof l iterary women, students and poetesses, held togetherby strong ties of intimacy and affection. I t is comparedin antiquity 1 to the circle of Socrates. Sappho wrote inthe most varied styles— there are fifty different metresin our scanty remains of her—but all bear a strongimpress of personal character. By the side of Alcaeus,one feels her to be a woman . Her dialect is more thenative speech of Mitylene

,where sh e l ived his the more

l iterary. His interests cover war and drinking andadventure and politics ; hers are all in personal feel ing,mostly tender and introspective. Her suggestions of

nature— the l ine,

“ I hea rd the footfall of the floweryspring

” the marvellously musical comparison,“ L ihe

the one sweet apple very red, up h igh on the h ighes t bough ,

that the apple-ga therers have forgotten no, not forgotten ,but could never reach sofar —are perhaps more definitelybeauti ful than the love-poems which have made Sappho

’

sname immortal . Two of these are preserved by accidentthe rest of Sappho’s poetry was publicly burn ed in 1 073

1 Maximus Tyr'



verses written for ? how far is the poem a literary oxercise based on the odes written by Alcaeus to his squireLykos, or by Th eogn is to KyrnusNo on e need defend the character of ANACREON of

Teos ; though, since he l ived in good society to the ageof eighty-five, he cannot have been as bad as he wishesus to believe . His poetry is derived from the Lesbiansand from the Skolia of his countryman Pyth ermus .He was driven from Teos by the Pers ian conquestof 545 B.C. ; he settled in Abdera, a Teian colony inThrace ; saw some fighting

,in which

,he carefully ex

plains,he disgraced himself quite as much as Alcaeus and

Archilochus final ly, be attached himself to various royalpersons

,Polycrates in Samos

,Hipparchus in Athens, and

Ech ekrates the Aleuad in Thessaly. The Alexandrianshad five books of his e legies

,epigrams

,iambics

,and

songs ; we possess one satirical fragment, and a goodnumber of w ine and love songs, address ed chiefly to h issquire Bathyllus . They were very popular and gave riseto many imitations at al l periods of l iterature we possessa series of such Anacreon tea

,dating from various times

between the third century B .C. and the Renaissance . Thesepoems are innocent of fraud in one, for instance (No.Anacreon appears to the writer in a dream 1 in most ofthem th e poet merely assumes the mask of Anacreon andsings his love-songs to ‘ a younger Bathyllus .

’ Thedialect

,the treatment of ErOs as a frivolous fat boy

,the

person ification s, the descriptions of works of art, all aremarks of a later age. Yet there can be no doubt of theextraordinary charm of these poems

,true and false al ike.

Anacreon stands out among Greek writers for his limpidease of rhythm

,thought

,and expression . A child can

1 Cf. 20 and 59.

ANACREON OF n os 95

understand him,and he ripples into music. But the

false poems are even more Anacreontic than Anacreon .

Compared with them the real Anacreon has great varietyof theme and of metre, and even some of the statelinessand reserved strength of the sixth century . Very likely

Our whole conception of the man would be higher, wereit not for the incessant imitations which have fixed h imas a type of the festive and amorous septuagenarian.

These three poets represent the personal lyric ofGreece . I n Alcaeus it embraces all sides of an adven

turons and perhaps patriotic life in Sappho it expresseswith a burning intensity the inner l ife

,the passions that

are generally silent ; in Anacreon it spreads out intol ight snatches of song about simple enj oyments

,sensual

and imaginative . The personal lyric never reached theartistic grandeur

,the rel igious and philosophic depth

of the choric song. I t is significant of our difficulty inreally appreciating Greek poetry

,that we are usually so

much more charmed by the sty le which all antiquitycounted as easier and lower.

THE CHOIR-SONG—GENERAL

Besides the personal lyric,there had existed in Greece

at a time earl ier than our earl iest records the practice ofcelebrating important occasions by the dance and songof a choir. The occas ion might of course be publicor private ; it was always in early times more or lessrel igious—a victory, a harvest, a holy day, a birth, death,or marriage . At the time that we first know the choirsong it always implies a professional poet

,a band of

professional performers, and generally a new production


—new dance,new music, new words- for each new

occasion . Also, it is international . The great lyric poets

are from Lesbos, I tal ian Locri, Rh egion, Keos, Boeotia ;the earliest is actually said to be a Lydian . A poet caneven send his composition across the sea to be repre

sented,secure of having trained performers in another

country who will understand the dancing and singing.

The dialect is correspondingly international. I t hasIEolic, Epic

,

’ and Doric elements,the proportions vary

ing S lightly in various writers. These facts suffice toShow that the choir-poem which we get even in Alcman

,

much more that of Simonides,is a highly-developed pro

duct. Our chief extant specimens, the prize-songs ofPindar

,represent the extreme fulness of bloom upon

which decay already presses.What is the history implied in this mixture of dialects ? The AEOlic is the language of song, because of

Sappho and Alcaeus . NO singer followed them whowas not under their spell . The ‘ Epic ’ element comesfrom the Homer ’ which had by th is time grown to bethe common property of Greece .1 The Doric elementneeds explanation .

The poets, as we have seen, were not especial lyDorian ; but the patrons of the poetry were, and so toa great extent was its spir it. I t was the ess ence of theIonian and o lian culture to have set the individualfree the Dorian kept him

,even in poetry

,subordinated

to a larger whole,took no interest in h is private feel ings

,

but requ ired him to express the emotions of the community. The earl iest choir-poets

,Alcman and Tis ias

,

1 What this Homer ’ dialect was in Baeo tia, or Lesbos , or Argos , we are

not ab le to say . The Epic e lement in our lyric remains has been Ionised and

Atticised jus t as the Ili ad has been.



totle Often uses the special name ‘ dithyramb ’ to denote

the whole genus th is is a popular extension of meaning,influenced by the growth of the later Attic dithyrambin the hands of Timotheos and Ph iloxen os . Even thenames of the different kinds of choir-song are vague.When Alexandrian s cholars collected the scattered worksof Pindar or Simonides

,they needed some principle of

arrangement and divis ion . Thus,according to the

subj ects,we have drink-songs

,marriage- songs

,dirges,

victory-songs,& c. or

,by the composition of the choirs ,

maiden- songs,boy

-songs,man-songs or

,from another

point of view again,s tanding- songs

,marching-songs

,

dancing - songs . Then there come individual names,

not in any classification a paean is a hymn to Apolloa ‘ dithyramb

,

’ to Dionysus ; an‘ ialemos ’

is perhaps alament for sickness

,and not for death . The confus ion

is obvious. The co llectors in part made divisions of

their own ; much more they util ised the local namesfor local varieties of song which were not intended tohave any reference to on e another. I f an ‘ ialemos

’

really differed from a ‘ threnos,

’ and each from an‘epikédeion ,

’ it was only that they were all local names,

and the style of dirge-singing happened to vary in thed ifferent localities.The dithyramb proper was a song and dance toDionysus

,practised in the earliest times in Naxos

,

Thasos,Boeotia

,Attica ; the name looks as if it were

compounded of Ar,

‘ god,

’ and some form of tr iumphus ,flplanBos,

‘ rej o icing.

’ I t was a wild and j oyous song.I t first appears with strophic correspondence ; afterwardsit loses this

,and has no more metre than the rh ap so

dies of Walt Whitman . I t was probably accompaniedwith disguise of some sort ; the dancers represented th e

VAR IETIES OF CHOIR- SONG 99

daemonic fol lowers of Bacchus,whom we find in such

hordes on th e early Attic drinking-vessels. We call themsatyrs ; but a satyr is a goat-daemon, and these have theears and tail of a horse

,l ike the centaurs. The difference

in sentiment is not great : the centaurs are all the wildforces that crash and speed and make music in the Thessal ian fores ts the satyr is the Arcadian mountain-goat

,the

personification of the wildnes s,the mus ic and mystery

,

of high mountains,the instincts that are at once above

and below reason : his special personification is Pan,

the Arcadian shepherd-god,who has nothing to do with

Dionysus. When we are told that Arion “ invented,

taught,and named the dithyramb in Corinth

,it may

mean that he firs t j oined the old Dionysus-song with thePan- idea that he disguised his choir as satyrs. Corinth

,

the junction of Arcadia and the s ea-world,would be the

natural place for such a transition to take place . Thusthe dithyramb was a goat- song

,a ‘ tragOidia

’ and itis from this, Aristotle tells us, that tragedy arose . I tis remarkable that the dithyramb

,after giving birth

to tragedy, l ived along with it and survived it. I nAristotle’s time tragedy was practical ly dead

,while its

daughter,the new comedy

,and its mother the Attic

dithyramb,were still flourishing.

THE EARLY MASTERS

ALCMAN

The name ALCMAN is the Doric for Alcmaeon,and the

bearer of it was a Laconian from Messoa (circa 650But Athenian imagination could never assimilate the idea

1 0 0 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

of a Spartan being a poet. I n the case of Tyrtaeus theymade the poet an Athenian ; in that of Alcman, somechance words in one of his poems suggested that he orhis ancestors came from Lydia. Hence a romance—hewas a Lydian, made a Slave of war by the wild Kimmerians, and sold across seas to Sparta, where his beautiful songs procured h im his freedom . Alcman is

‘

verynear the Lesbians ; he speaks freely in his own person,using the choir merely as an instrument ; the personalring of his love-passages made Archytas (4th cent. B.C.)count him the inventor of love-poetry ; he writes in afresh country dialect

,as Sappho does

,with little l iterary

varnish his personal enthusiasm for the national brothof Sparta is like that of Carlyle for porridge . H is metresare clear and simple ; and the fragment imitated byTennyson in In Memoriam shows what his poetry canbe No more

,oh

,w ild sweet throa ts , voices of love, w ill

my limbs bea r me , woula’

,would I were a cery l

-bird,tha t

flies on the flow er of the wa ve amid the ha lcy ons , w ith never

a ca re in his hear t, the s ea -purple bird of the spring!

His longest fragment is on an Egyptian papyrus,

found by Mariette in 1 855, and containing part of abeautiful ‘ Parthenion

,

’

or cho ir- song for girls. I t is adramatic part-song. When we hear first that Agidoamong the rest of the chorus is l ike “ a race-horse amongcows ,

” and afterwards that “the ha ir of my cous in Ages i

chora gleams lihe pure gold, this does not mean that the‘ boorish ’ poet is expressing his own frank and ficklepreferences—would the ‘ cows ’ of the choir, in that case,ever have consented to sing such lines —it is only thatthe two divis ions of the chorus are paying each othercompliments. This poem,

unlike those of the Lesbians ,has a strophic arrangement

,and is noteworthy as showing



horse making itself a Slave to man in order to berevenged on the stag, was one of h is warnings againstthe ty rant. When Phalaris triumphed, Stes ichorus re

tired to Catana ; where his octagonal grave outside thegate became in Roman times one of the sights of Sicily .

Apart from such possible fragments of good tradition asmay survive in the notorious forgeries called the Lettersof Phala ris , we possess only one personal fact about h isl ife . He was attacked with a disease of the eyes ; andthe thought preyed upon h is mind that this was thedivine wrath of Helen

,of whom he had spoken in the

usual way in some poem—perhaps the Helen * or the

Sach of Ilion .

* His pangs of conscience were intensifiedby historical diffi culties . I t was incredible that all Troyshould have let itself be destroyed merely to humourParis. I f the Troj ans would not give up Helen, it musthave been that they never had her. Ti s ias burst into arecantation or Palinodia

,

’ which remained famous

Tha t tale was never true I Thy foot never s tepped on the

benched galley ,nor crossed to the tow ers of Troy .

” We

cannot be sure what h is own version was it cannot wellhave been that of Herodotus and Euripides

,which makes

Helen elope to Egypt,though not to Troy . But

,at any

rate,he satisfied Helen

,and recovered his Sight. A very

similar story is told of the Icelandic Skald Thormod.

The service that Stés ichorus did to Greek literature isthreefold he introduced the epic saga into the West heinvented the stately narrative style of lyric ; he vivified andremodelled

,with the same mixture of boldness and simple

faith as the Helen story,most of the great canonical

legends. He is called “ the lyric Homer, and describedas bearing the weight of the epos on his lyre .” 1

1 Quint. x. 1 .

STESICHORUS OF HimERA 10 3

The metres specially named ‘ Stesichorean ’—thoughothers had used them before Stés ichorus— show thishalf-epic character. They are made up of halves of theepic hexameter, interspersed with short variationsepitrites

,anapae sts, or mere syncopae

— j ust enough tobreak the dactylic swing

,to make the verse lyrical. His

diction suits these long stately lines it is not passionate,not very songful

,but easily followed

,and suitable for

narrative . This helps to explain why so important awriter has left so few fragments . He was not difficultenough for the grammarian he was not line by lineexquisite enough for the later lover of letters . Theancient critics

,amid all their praises of Stés ichorus

,

complain that he is long ; the Ores teia* alone took two

books,and doubtless the S ach of Ilion

“ was equal to it.His whole works in Alexandrian times fi l led twenty-s ixbooks. He had the fulness of an epic writer

,not the

vivid Splendour that Pindar had taught Greece to expect in a lyric. Yet he gained an extraordinary position .

1

Simonides,who would not over-estimate one whom he

hoped to rival, couples him with Homer So sang to thenations Homer and Stes ichorus . I n Athens of the fifthcentury he was universally known . Socrates praised him.

Aristophanes ridiculed him . Not to know three linesof Stés ich orus was a proverbial description of ill iteracy.

11

There was scarcely a poet then l iving who was not influenced by Stés ichorus ; scarcely a painter or potterwho did not, consciously or unconsciously, represent hisversion of the great sagas. I n tracing the historical

1 The coins of Himera bearing the figure of Stés ichorus are later than24 1 B.C., when he had become a legend. C]: also Cic. Verr . ii. 35.1 No reference, as used to be thought, to the strophe, antis tmphe, epode

ofchoric music.


development of any myth, research almost always findsin Stés ichorus the main bridge between the earl iest remains of the story and the form it has in tragedy or inthe late epos . I n the Agamemnon legend

,for instance

,

the concentration of the interest upon Clytaemnestra,which makes the story a true tragedy instead of anordinary tale of blood - feud

,is his ; Clytaemnestra

’sdream of giving suck to a serpent is his ; the conscience-mad Orestes is probably h is ; so are many of

the details of th e sack of Troy,among them

,if the

tradition is right,the fl ight of IEneas to Italy.

This is enough to show that Stés ichorus was a creativegenius of a very high order—though

,of course, none of

these stories is absolutely his own invention . Confessedfiction was not possible til l long after Stes ichorus . Tothe men of his day all legend was true h istory if it wasnot, what would be the good of talking about it ? Theoriginal ity l ies

,partly

,in the boldness of faith with which

this antique spirit examines his myths,criticising and

freely altering details,but never suspecting for an in

stant that the whole myth is an invention,and that he

h imself is inventing it. I t is the same with Pindar.Pindar cannot and wil l not believe that Tantalus offeredhis son to the gods as food

,and that Demeter ate part

of his shoulder. Therefore he argues,not that the

whole th ing is a fable,nor yet that it is beyond our

knowledge ; agnosticism would never satisfy him : heargues th at Poseidon must have carried off Pelops toheaven to be his cup -bearer

,and that during h is ah

sence some ‘envious neighbour ’ invented the cannibalstory. This i s j ust the spirit of the Pal inodia.But

,apart from this

,even where Stés ichorus did not

alter his saga -material,he shows the originality of genius



SIMONIDES

On the day, it is said, that Tis ias died, there was bornin Keos the next great international lyrist of Greece

,

SIMONIDES (556—468 A man of wide culture andsympathies, as well as great poetic power, he was soonfamous outside the circle of Ionian islands. Old Xenophanes, who l ived in I taly, and died before Simonideswas thirty

,had already time to denounce him as a

well—known man. He travelled widely—first, it is said,to Western Greece

,at the invitation of Stés ichorus ’s

compatriots ; afterwards to the court of Hipparchus inAthens ; and, on his patron

’s assassination,to the princes

of Thessaly. At one time he crossed to Asia ; during thePersian War he was where he should have been—withthe patriots. He ended his life with E schylus, Pindar,Bacchylides

,Ep icharmus , and others, at the court of

Hiero of Syracuse. I f he was celebrated at thirty, inhis old age he had an international position comparableperhaps to that of Voltaire . He was essential ly 6 o odm

’

s,

the wit,the poet

,the friend of al l the great ones of the

earth,and their equal by his sheer force of intel lect.

His sayings were treasured,and his poems studied with

a verbal precis ion which suggests something like idolatry .

Rumour loved to tel l of his strange escape from shipwreck

,and from the fall of the palace roof at Crannon ,

which kill ed most of Scopas’

s gues ts . He was certainly aman of rich and many- S ided Character he was trusted byseveral tyrants and the Athenian democracy at the sametime ; he praised H ipparchus, and admired Harmodius

and Aristogeiton ; in his old age he was summoned toSicily to reconcile the two most powerful princes in

S IMONIDES OF KEOS 1 0 7

Greece,Gelo and H iero . The charges of avarice which

pursue h is memory are probably due to h is writing atspecified terms—not for vague

,unspecified patronage

,

l ike the earl ier poets . The old fashion was more friendlyand romantic

,but contained an element of servitude .

Pindar,who laments its fall

,did not attempt to recur

to it ; and really SimOn ides’

s plan was the nearest approach then possible to our system of the independentsale of brain-work to the public. Simonides, l ike theearlier lyrists

,dealt chiefly in occasional poetry— the

occasion being now a festival, now a new baby, now thebattle of Thermopylae —and he seems to have introducedthe ‘ Ep iniko s,

’

the serious arti stic poem in honour Ofvictories at the games. Not that an Epin ikos

’ is reallya bare ode on a victory—on the victory

,for instance

,of

Prince SkOpas’

s mules. Such an ode would have l ittle

pOwer of conferring immortality . I t is a song in itselfbeautiful and interesting, into which the poet is paid tointroduce a reference to the mules and their master.Simonides wrote in many styles : we hear of Dithy

ramb s,Hyporchemata

,Dirges— all these special ly ad

mired—Parthenia,Prosodia

,Paeans

,Encomia

,Epigrams .

His re ligious poetry is not highly praised . I f one cou lduse the word ‘ perfect ’ of any work of art

,it might

apply to some of SImOn ides’

s poems on the events of

the great war— the ode on Artemisium,the epitaph on

those who died at Thermopylae . They represent theextreme of Greek ‘ sophrosyne’— self-mas tery

,heal thy

mindedness— severe beauty,utterly free from exaggera

tion or trick—plain speech, to be spoken in the presenceOf simple and eternal things “ S tranger, bear word to the

Spartans tha t we lie here obedient to their charge.

” Heis great, too, in the realm of human pity. The little

I OS LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

fragment on Danae adrift in th e chest j ustifies the ad

miration of ancient critics for h is ‘ unsurpassed pathos.’

On the other hand,he is essentially an I onian and a man

of the world, one of the fathers of the Enl ightenment.

He has no splendour, no passion, no religious depth .

The man who had these stood on the wrong side in hiscountry’s l ife-struggle and Greece turned to Simonides

,

not to Pindar,to make the record of its heroic dead.

TIMOCREON

The ‘ Home for Geniuses ’ which H iero’s court even

tually became, must have been a far from peacefulrefuge . Pindar especially was born to misunderstandand disl ike Simonides ; and though j ealousy is not oneof the vices laid to the latter

’s charge,he was a wit and

could be severe . When he was attacked by a low poetfrom Rh odes

,TIMOCREON, who is ch iefly known by h is

indecent song of delight at the condemnation of Themistocles as a traitor Not Timocreon alone mahes compacts

w ith the Medes I am not the only doch -ta il; there a re other

foxes too I Simonides answered by writing his ep itaph :Here lies Timocreon of Rhodes , who a temuch, dranh much,

and sa id ma ny ev il th ings .

” The poet’s poetry is notmentioned.

BACCHYLIDEs

S imOn ides’s nephew,BACCHYLIDES

,l ived also at H iero’s

court,and wrote under the influences both of his uncle

and of Pindar. He was imitated by Horace,and ad

mired for his moral tone by the Emperor Jul ian— a l argeshare of ‘ immortal ity ’

for one who is generally reckoneda second-clas s poet . And it appears that more is in store



served a pretty good account of his outer circumstances.He was born at the village of Kynoskephalae, in Boeotiahe was descended from the IEgidae, a clan of conqueringinvaders

,probably ‘ Cadmean,

’ since the name Pindar ’

is found in Ephesus and Thera. The country-bred Boeotian boy showed early a genius for music. The lyre

,

doubtless, he learned as a child : there was one

Skopelinus at home, an uncle of the poet, or perhapshis step - father

,who could teach him flute-playing . To

learn choir- training and systematic music he had to goto Athens

,to ‘Athenoclés and Apollodorus.’ Tradition

insisted on knowing something about his relation tothe celebrities of the time. He was taught by Lasus ofHermione beaten in competition by his country-womanCorinna

,though some extant lines of that poetess make

against the story I pra ise not the gracious My rtis , not I,

for coming to contes t w ith Pinda r,a woman born ! ” And

another anecdote only makes Corinna give him goodadvice to sow w ith the hand

,not w ith the whole sach

,

when he was too profuse in his mythological ornaments .The earl iest poem we possess (By th . written whenPindar was twenty—or possibly twenty- four— was acommiss ion from the Aleuadae

,the princes of Pharsalus

,

in Thessaly. This looks as if h is reputation was madewith astonishing rapidity. Soon afterwards we find himwriting for the great nobles of Ai gina

,patrons after his

own heart,merchant princes of the highest Dorian

ancestry. Then begins a career of pan-Hellenic celebrity : he is the guest of the great families of Rhodes,Tenedos

,Corinth

,Athens of the great kings

,Alexander

of Macedon,Arkes ilaus of Cyrene

,Thero of Acragas ,

and H iero of Syracuse . I t is as distinguished as that ofSimonides. though perhaps less sincerely international.

LI FE OF PINDAR 1 1 1

Pindar in his heart l iked to write for ‘ the real nobil ity ,’

the descendants of IEacus and Heracles ; his Sicil iankings are exceptions

,but who could criticise a friendly

king’s claim to gentil ity ? This ancient Dorian bloodis evidently at the root of P indar’s view of l ife ; eventhe way he asserts his equal ity with his patrons showsit. Simonides posed as the great man of letters. Pindarsometimes boasts of his genius, but leaves the impression

of th inking more of his ancestry . I n another thing heis unlike Simonides. P indar was the chosen vessel ofthe priesthood in general

,a votary of Rhea and Pan

,and

,

above al l,of the Dorian Apollo. He expounded the re

habilitation of traditional religion, which radiated fromDelphi. He himself had special privileges at Delphiduring his life

,and his ghost afterwards was invited

yearly to feast with the god . The priests of Zeus Ammonin the desert had a poem of h is written in golden letters

on their shrine.These facts explain, as far as it needs explanation, thegreat flaw in Pindar’s l ife . He lived through the PersianWar ; he saw the beginning of the great period of

Greek enlightenment and progress. I n both crises hestood, the unreasoning servant of sacerdotal traditionand racial prej udice, on the side of Boeotia and Delph i.One might have hoped that when Thebes j o ined thePersian

,this poet, the friend of statesmen and kings in

many countries,the student from Athens

,would have

protested. On the contrary,though afterwards when

the war was won he could write N emean iv. and theDithyramb for Athens

,in the cris is itself he made what

Polybius calls ( iv. 3 1 )“ a most shameful and inj urious

refusal ” : he wrote a poem of which two large dreamyl ines are preserved

,talking of peace and neutral ity ! I t


is typical of the man. Often in th inking over the bes tp ieces of Pindar—the maj estic organ-playing

,the grave

strong magic of language, the lightn ing-flashes of halfrevealed mystery—on e wonders why this man is notcounted the greatest poet that ever lived

,why he has

not done more,mattered more. The answer perhaps is

that he was a poet and nothing else. He thought inmusic ; he loved to l ive among great and beautifulimages—Heracles

,Achilles

,Perseus, Iaso n, the daughters

of Cadmus. When any part of his beloved saga repelledh is moral sensitiveness

,he glided away from it

,careful

not to expres s scepticism,careful also not to speak evil

of a god. He loved poetry and music, especial ly h isown . AS a matter of fact, there was no poetry in theworld like his

,and when other people sang they j arred

On him,he confesses

,lihe crows .

’

He loved religion,and is on the emotional side a

great rel igious poet. The open ing of Nemean vi . i scharacteristic ; so is the end of h is last dated work

(Py th . Things of a day I wha t a re we and wha t

not ? A dream about a shadow is man ; y et when some

god-

given splendour falls , a glory of light comes over him

and his life is sweet. Oh , Blessed Mother 15 gina ,gua rd

thou th is city in the way s of freedom,w ith Zeus and Prince

E acus and Peleus and good Telamon and Achilles ! — a

rich depth of emotion,and then a childl ike l itany of

traditional saints . His religious Speculations are sometimes far from fortunate

,as in Oly mpian i . ; sometimes

they lead to sl ight improvements . For instance,the

old myth said that the nymph Coronis,loved by Phoebus

,

was secretly false to him but a raven saw her,and told

the god. Pindar corrects this : “the god

’

s all - s eeing

mind did not need the help of the raven . I t is qu ite



which hung about the court of a great prince,and he

ideal ised the merely powerful H iero as easi ly as thereally gallant Ch romios . Not that he is ever conscious

of identifying success with merit ; quite the reverse .He is deeply impressed with the power of envy anddishonest arts—the victory of the subtle I onian Odysseusover the true IEacid Aias . I t was this principle perhapswhich helped him to comprehend why Simonides hadsuch a reputation

,and why a mob of Athenian sailors,

with no physique and no landed property,should make

such a stir in the world.

I t is a curious freak of history that has preserved usonly his ‘ Epin iko i

’—songs for winners in the sacredgames at Olympia

,Pytho, Nemea, and the I sthmus. Of

al l his seventeen books Hymns ; Paeans ; Dithyrambs,2 ; Prosodia, 2 ; Parthenia, 3 ; Dance- songs, 2 ; Encomia ;Dirges Epin ikoi, 4

”—the four we possess are certainlynot th e four we should have chosen . Yet there is inthe kind of song something that suits P indar’s genius.For one th ing, it does not really matter what he writesabout. Two of his sublimest poems are on mule-races.I f we are little interested by the fact that Xenophon ofCorinth won the Stadium and the Five Bouts at Olympiain the fifth century B .C.,

neither are we much affectedby th e drowning of young Edward King in the seventeenth A.D. Poems like Ly cidas and Olympia n xi i i . areindependent of the facts that gave rise to them. And

,

besides, one cannot help feel ing in Pindar a genuinefondness for horses and grooms and trainers. I f ahors e from Kynoskephalae ever won a local race, theboy Pindar and his fel low-villagers must have talkedover the points of that horse and the proceedings ofh is trainer with real affection. And whether or no th e

NATURE OF PINDAR’S GEN IUS 1 1 5

poet was paid extra for the references to Melés ias the‘ professional

,

’ and to the various uncles and grandfathers of his victors

,he introduces them with a great

semblance of spontaneous interest. I t looks as if hewas one of those un -self-conscious natures who do not

much differentiate their emotions : he feels a thri ll atthe sight of H iero’s ful l-dress banquet board

,of a wrest

l ing bout, or of a horse- race, j ust as he does at the

thought of the labour and glory of Heracles ; and everythril l makes him S ing.

P indar was really three years younger than [Eschylusyet he seems a generation older than Simonides. Hischaracter and habits of thought are all archaic so is hisstyle . Like most other divisions of Greek literature

,the

lyric had been working from obscure force to lucidity. I thad reached it in Simonides and Bacchylides. P indarthrows us back to Alcman

,almost. He is hard even to

read can any one have understood him,sung He tel ls

us how his sweet song wil l “ sa il ofl"

from zEgina in the big

sh ips and the little fish ing-boa ts as they separate homewards after the festival (Nem. Yet on e can scarcelybelieve that the Dorian fishermen could catch at onehearing much of so difficult a song. Perhaps it was onlythe tune they took

,and the news of the victory. He

was proud of h is music and Aristoxenus, the best judgewe have

,cannot praise it too highly . Even now

,though

every wreck of the music is lost—the Messina musicalfragment (of Py th . being spur ious- one feels thatthe words need singing to make them intell igible . Themere meaning and emotion of Py th ian iv. or Olymp ian i i .—to take two opposite types—compel the words intoa Chant, varying betw een

'

Slow and fast,loud and

low . The clause-endings ring like music : waAiryxo'rov


Bana o flév (Olymp . i i .) i s much more than angry and

overborne. The king of the Epeans,when “ into the

deep channel runn ing dea thwards , he wa tched—42pm” éc

‘

w

n bAw—h is own city s inh (Olymp . x. remains in one’smind by the echoing my own of the last words ; soPelops praying “ by the grey s ea -surge

—oloq c’

v 5p¢va,alone in the da rhnes s - in Oly rnp . i. ; so that marvelloustrumpet-crash in Py th . iv. (ant. 5) on the last great wordTL/Miv. Many lovers of Pindar agree that the things thatstay in one’s mind

,stay not as thoughts

,but as music .

But h is worthy lovers are few. He is hard in theoriginal—dialect

,connection

,state of mind

,all are diffi

cult to enter into ; ordinary readers are bewildered by themixture of mules and the new moon and trainers and theAi acidae . I n translations—despite the great skil l of someof them—he is perhaps more grotesquely naked than anypoet ; and that, as we saw above, for the usual reason,that he is nothing but a poet. There is l ittle rhetoric

,no

philosophy,l ittle human interest ; only that fine bloom

what he calls c’z’wr os—which comes when the most sensitive language meets the most exquisite thought

,and

wh ich “ not even a god though he worked hard couldkeep unhurt in another tongue .Pindar was l ittle influenced either by the movements

of his own time or by previous writers. Stés ichorus

and Homer have Of course affected him . There are j usta few notes that seem echoed from E schylus : theeruption of [Etna is treated by both but Pindar seemsquite by himself in his splendid description (Py th .

I t is possible that his great line Afio é 86 Zebs c’

z’

cjsbi 'roqTrrc

’

iva s, is suggested by the Prometheus trilogy,of which

it is the great lesson Everlas ting Zeus set free the

Titans .



offences he had signal ly visited, engraved, presumably, bythe temple authorities. I n the medical temples of Cos,Rhodes, and Cnidus, there were, as early as the sixthcentury B .C.,

full notes of interesting diseases,giving the

symptoms,the treatment

,and the result. There were,

doubtless,records of prodigies and their expiations.

There were certainly lists of priests and priestesses,

sometimes expanding into a kind of chronicle.These were publ ic and subj ect to a certain check. But

there were also more esoteric books,not exposed to the

criticism of the vulgar. The ceremonial rules weresometimes published and sometimes not ; the Exégétaiat Athens had secret records of omens and j udgments onpoints of law or conscience ; in Delph i and other centres,where the tradition was rich

,there were written {mo/i mi

y am memoirs of the stories which the servants of the

god wished to preserve. And, of course, outside and

beyond the Official temple-worship, there was the privateand unauthorised preacher and prophet, the holder ofmysteries

,the sel ler of oracles

,the remitter of Sins—men

l ike Onomacritus,Tisamenus the Iamid, Lampon, and the

various Bakides,whose misty and romantic stories can

frequently be traced in Herodotus. And there were alsothe noble families. Their bare genealogies were often inverse

,in a form suitable for quoting

,and eas i ly remem

bered among the public . But even in the genealogiesother branches of the same stock were apt to have contradictory vers ions and when it came to l ives and deeds,which might be forgotten o r misrepresented, the familydid well to keep authentic records

,suitably controlled

,i n

its own hands .

FICTION IN EARLY PROSE 1 19

‘ STORY ’

And here we meet the other tendency which goes tothe forming of prose history

,the old Lus t zurn Fabuliren

,

taking the form of interest in individuals and a wish tokn ow their characters and their stories. The Story is ayounger and lesser sister of the Saga

,in some lights not

to be dis tinguished from her. I t is impossib le to readour accounts of Solon

,Croesus

,Demokédes , Polycrates,

Amfis is,without feel ing that we are in the realm of

imaginative fiction . We are nearer to fact than in theepos and the fact behind is more a human fact. Thecharacters are not gods or heroes

,they are adventurous

prophets and sages and discrowned kings the originalspeaker is not the Muse, but the I onian traveller. I tmay even be supposed that there is a certain truth in thecharacters

,if in nothing else . But that is further than

we have a right to go Sir john Falstaff is not psychologically true to Oldcastle the Lollard there is no reasonto suppose that the farcical king Amés is resembles anyEgyptian Aahmes

,or to credit the mellow wisdom of our

Croesus to the real conqueror of I onia. Once created,it is true

,the character generally stays ; but that is the

case even with the men of the epos .The story was early fixed as literature . The famousMilesian and Sybarite stories must date from the S ixthcentury B .C .

,before Sybaris was des troyed and Miletus

ruined . Such instances as have been preserved in latetradition The Widow of Ephesus ’ in Petronius, andlarge parts of Appuleius— are pure fiction, tales in th etone of Boccaccio, with imaginary characters. But

everything points to the belie f that in the ir first form


they were attached to h istorical names l ike the anecdotes

of Herodotus ; and as a matter of fact the earliest fragment of Greek prose romance known,1 has for its hero

and heroine N inus and Semiramis.

CHRONICLES

Fo r l iterature in the narrower sense, the first importantprose histories are th e chronicles (a

’

spo i ) of I onian towns,followed closely by those of Sicily. NO set of ‘ HOro i

’

i s extant,unless one may regard the Parian Marble as

an attempted abbreviation of the HOro i’

of all Hellas .I t stil l remains for the student of antiquity to make outwhat data in our tradition go back to the ancient annals

of particular towns . Some local genealogies—many, fo rinstance

,in the Scholia to Apollonius - clearly do so so

does that meteoric stone which fell at Aigospotarno i inthe seventy-eighth Olympiad ; and so does that

“ whiteswallow no smaller than a partridge ” whose appearancein Samos has such a cloud of witnesses .2 A Syracusanchronicle seems to be the source of the record whichThucydides (vi. 1—5) gives of the foundations of theI talian and Sici l ian towns ; they are dated by the foundation of Syracuse

,which is taken as the great era of the

world not needing closer specification. The origin of

any given chronicle is of course lost in obscurity . Likethe epos in early times

,l ike even the histories and com

men taries and the philos ophical text-books of the variousschools in later antiquity

,l ike the cathedrals of the Middle

1 Hermes , xxvn . 161 ff.1 The s tone is given in the Parian Marb le ; the swal low’

s Witnes ses are

Aris totle (fr. An tigonus Carystius , Heraclides Ponticus , and E liza

quotingAlexander Myndius.



The first real chroniclers come from Ion ia and theislands

,thoughtful and learned men

,who put into books

bo th the records and the oral tradition—B ION of

Pr0 connésus, who worked over Cadmus ; D IONYSIUS of

Miletus, perhaps the first who tempered the recordsof his unheroic I onia with the great deeds of Persia ;CHARON of Lampsacus, whose work must have beensomething l ike that of Herodotus

,taking in Persian

and Eth iopian history,details in Th emistocles’s l ife, and

voyages beyond the pil lars of Heracles ; EUGeEON ofSamos

,XANTHUS of Lydia, and many others leading up

to the great triad,Hecataeus, Herodotus, Hellan icus .

I n the West it is a different story. A rich and tragichistory was there

,and a great imaginative literature but

the two did not meet. There were no writers of historytil l after th e time when the aged Herodotus went over tofinish his days in Thurii. Then ANTIOCHUS of Syracusepublished a record of the West reaching at least as fardown as the year 424 B.C. The problematic H IPPYS ofRhégion may have written at the same time. TheWesterns had

,no doubt

,their temple records

,and pro

duced a great group of historians in the generationafter Thucydides. But in the beginning of prose composition it is s ignificant that they treated l iteraturebefore history. THEAGENES of Rh égion (520 iscounted as the first Homeric scholar ; we only knowthat he explained someth ing ‘ allegorical ly ’ and toldabout the War of the Giants . GLAUCUS of Rhégionwrote ‘About Poets

,

’ giving not on ly names and dates,

but sty les and tendencies as well, and stating whatoriginal authors each poet ‘ admired ’

or followed,from

O rpheus onward,who “

admired nobody , because a t

tha t time there was nobody . I t is th is tendency,this

PROSE IN THE EAST AND WEST 1 23

interest in pure l iterature,which explains the rise of

Gorgias.I f we search in Eastern Greece for critics of Homer

,

we shal l find them only in the chroniclers of the townswhich have special connection with h im

,l ike ANTIDORUS

of Kymé, and DAMASTES of Sigéum. Nevertheless thehigher prose l iterature took its rise in the East

,in that

search for knowledge in the widest sense,which the

Ionian called ia r opln, and the Athenian apparentlyWe are apt to apply to the sixth century the

terminology of the fourth,and to distinguish philosophy

from history . But when Solon the philosopher “ wentover much land in search of knowledge

,

” he was doingexactly the same thing as the h is torians Herodotus andHecataeus . And when this last made a ‘ Table ’

of theworld

,with its geography and anthropology

,he was

in company with the philosophers Anaximander andDemocritus. ‘ Historié ’ is inquiry

,and ‘ Philosophia ’

is love of knowledge. The two cover to a great extentthe same field—though

,on the whole

,philosophy aims

more at ultimate truth and les s at special facts ; and,what is more important, philosophy is general ly thework of an organised school with more or less fixed orSimilar doctrines—Milesians

,Pythagoreans

,E leatics

while the ‘ Historikos’ is mostly a traveller and reciter

of stories.A prose book in the sixth century was

,except in the

case of a text-book for a philosophic school the resultof the author’s ‘ Historie’ it was h is Logos

,the thing

he had to say . Neither the book itself nor the kind ofl iterature to which it belonged had any name. The firstsentence s erved as a kind of title -page . The simplestform is—“Alhmceon of Crotbn say s this This is the


settingfbrth of the resea rch of Herodotus of Halica rnassus .

I n a more specialised H istorié Antiochus,X enophanes

’

son,put these th ings together a bout Italy

”or without the

author’s name Th is I say about the whole wor

(Democritus) ; Touching the diseas e called Holy ,thus

it is”

(Hippocrates) . And what was the man who so

wrote He was obviously Ao'yo'ypafdms, or Aoy o'rrow'

s, sincehe had made a Logos.’ He was probably eyewypcipos andGeoAbryos

' presumably ¢iAba o¢os, and in the eyes of hisadmirers a o ocpbs c

’

zmjp. I f you wished to quote h is nameless and chapterles s work you had to use some descriptive phrase . As you referred to the middle part of 7 asHomer in the Foot-washing

,so you spoke of Heca

taeus in Asia, or in the parts about Asia ” “ Charon inthe Persian parts ” “Anaximander about Fixed Stars

,

”

or “ in the Description of the World . Late traditionoften took these references for the titles of separateworks

,and made various early authors write books by

the dozen .

The early epos was taken as a fact in itself ; it waseither authorless

, or th e work of an imaginary and semid ivine author ; so was the story ; so was the chronicle ;so, of course

,were the beginnings of speculation and

cosmology. I n the next stage a book is the work of a cor

poration ; a guild of poets ; a school of philosophersa sect of votaries ; a board of offi cials. First ‘ Homer,IEsop,

’ Hesiod," Orpheus

,

’ Cadmus ’ next Homeridae,

Pyth agoristae, Orph ics, and 72pm. M iAncn’

wv. The closebond of the old Greek civic l ife had to be shatteredbefore an individual could rise in person and express hisviews and feel ings in the sacred maj esty of a book. I npoetry Archilochus and oth ers had already done it. I nprose the epoch was made by a book of which the open



treasures of Apollo at Branch idae—the Persians wouldtake them if they did not—and to build a fleet that couldcommand the IEgean . The Wise Man was flecked withimpiety l Aristago ras and the people preferred the ir ownway

,were routed everywhere

,and saw the treasure fall

,

sure enough,into the hands of the enemy. One other

counsel he gave when things seemed hopeless,urging

Aristagoras not to fly altogether,but to fortify the island

of Leros,hold the sea

,and attempt to win Miletus again .

That is,all the things which Ion ia wished she had done

,

in looking back upon her bitter h istory, became in thestory the neglected counsels of her great Hecataeus .

And it was he, too, who mediated with Artaphern es forthe sparing of the conquered towns— that, at least,success fu l ly.

Hecataeus was not a l iterary artist l ike Herodotus hewas a thinker and worker. His style

,according to Her

mogen es (2nd cent. who loved the archaic,was

“ pure and clear,and in some ways singularly pleasant ”

yet,on the whole

,the book had “much less charm than

Herodotus—ever so much,though it was mostly myths

and the l ike . One must not lay much stress on the lastwords ; history, to Hecataeus

,lay in the ages which we

have now abandoned as mythical,and

,whi le he rej ected

the Greek traditions,he often followed the Egyptian.

But we cannot in the face of his opening words talk ofhis ‘ credulity

,

’ or make him responsible for the legendthat Oineus’s bitch gave birth to a vine - stump 1 ; he mayhave mentioned the story only to ridicule it. I n his geographical work he was the standard authority for manycenturies ; and though he is not likely to have beenquite consistent in his rationalism

,he remains a great

1 Frag. 34 1 .

HECAT/EUS : HERODORUS 1 27

figure both in the history of l iterature and in the marchof the human mind. Hecataeus represents the Spirit ofhis age as a whole

,the research

,the rationalism

,the

l iterary habit. Herodotus is the most typical il lustration of the last of these tendencies ; for the others weselect two of the unpreserved writers

,Herodot us and

Hellanicus .

HERODORUS

HERODORUS of Heraclea,father of the soph ist B ryson

,

whose dialogues are said to have influenced Plato,is

the typical early rationalist. His work was a criticalh istory of the earliest records

,deal ing primarily with

his native town and its founder,Heracles

,but touching

,

for instance, on the Argonauts and the Pelopidae . Hismethod is o ne that has lost its charms for us ; but itmeant hard thinking

,and it wrought real service to

humanity. Prometheus, bound, torn by the eagle, anddel ivered by Heracles

,was really a Scythian ch ief near

the river called Eagle,which

,as is well known

,makes

ruinous floods. The inhabitants,thinking (as Hesiod

thought) that floods were a punishment for the sins ofprinces , bound, i .e. imprisoned, Prometheus, ti ll Heracles,who is recorded to have received from Atlas “ the pillarsof earth and heaven — i .e. the foundations of astronomy

,

geography, and practical science—engineered the s treaminto a proper seaward course . Laomedon

,again

,was

said to have defrauded Apollo and Poseidon of theirreward after they had built h is walls fo r him . That isthe simplest matter : he took money from their templesfor the building and did not restore it.1 I t was per

1 Frag. 23, 24, 18


haps part of Herodot us’

s method to state the commonstory before criticising it, for we find him quoted

,l ike

Hecataeus, as an authority for some of the absurdestlegends

,which almost certainly he must have explained

away. He was not an un imaginative sceptic,however

he went so far as to believe the well-authenticated tradition that th e Nemean Lion fel l from the moon . This wasbecause he bel ieved that the moon was not a small light

,

but ‘ another earth ’

; t hat meteorites and the l ike probably fe ll from it that certain insects

,and

,more notably

,

vultures,whose nests

,as far as he could discover

,had

never been seen on earth,were likely to have flown down

from there he perhaps added that the l ion cannot poss ibly have been born in Nemea, and cannot well havetravelled there from Mount Haemus ; that, moreover,the description of it does not tal ly with that of anyknown lion . This is not ‘ simple credul ity ’

: given thathe underrated the distance of the moon from us

,it is a

very excusable error in rationalism . He tried hard tosystematise h is chronology— that gigantic labour whichno Greek Heracles ever quite accompl ished ; his geographical studies were wide and careful

,

1 and all he didwas subservient to a criticism of early h istory. Howdifferent it is

,though not in kind inferior

,to the spirit

of Herodotus and Thucydides I

THE EARLY ‘HISTORIKOI ’

HELLANiCUS

HELLANICUS of Le sbos is so far fixed in date, that hisAtth is ’ is mentioned by Thucydides ( i. and con

1 Frag. 20 , 46.



system of chronology for all the history of the past. I tis perhaps through Hellan icus that Thucydides us es thisrecord

,

1 though it was recognised in the Peloponnesebefore . Meantime, it would seem,

the sophist H ippiashad issued his epoch-making l ist of the Olympiads withtheir successive victors . Hellan tcus fo llowed him witha l ist of the victors in the games of Apollo Karneios atSparta.Hellan icus had now written a number of separate

books. Unlike Herodotus,he gave his various sources

undisguised,and did not attempt to mould them all into

a personal Logos ' of h is own . He seems even to havegiven th e books names Phoron is ,

’ as the Argive h is torywas called

,after the ancient king Phoroneus

,is a title

pure and simple and ‘Deuca libneia,

’ 1‘ hal f-way betweena description and a title . I t was after th is

,to all appear

ance,that he came to Athens and wrote his celebrated

Atthis ’“(31m m) The Athenians of the pas t

generations had been too busy making history to be ableto write it. The foreign savant did it for them. I t i s unfortunate that his interests were more in the past than thepresent. He began with Ogygos, who was king a thousand and twenty years before the first Olympiad

,and

ran merci lessly through all the generations of emptynames requisite to fi l l in the gaping centuries. He hadstarted from the Argive l ist, which was very full and hehad to extend the meagre Attic l ist of kings by supposingduplicates of the same name. When he comes to thetimes that we most wish to know about—the fifty yearsafter th e Persian War—the method which he hadlaboriously built up for the treatment of legend

,leaves

him helpless in dealing with concrete fact. Short,and

111. 2 ; iv. 1 33 .

HELLANICUS 1 3 1

in h is treatment of dates inexact,is the judgment passed

upon him by Thucydides. But dates were the man’sgreat glory He reckoned by generations

,three to a cen

tury,in the earl iest times

,by the annual archons as soon

as they were established. Thucydides, in all probabi l ity,mean s that the system of putting the events down in alump against the ar chon’s name

,was inexact compared

with his own division of succeeding summers and winters .Hellanicus was a widely-read and influential author

,but

he gets rough handling from his critics Ephorus “ putshim in the first rank ofMars .

” Apollodorus says,He

shows the greatest careles sness in almos t every treatiseStrabo himself “ would sooner bel ieve Homer

,Hesiod

,

and the tragedians.” This last statement seems only tomean th at the general tradition embodied in the poets issafer than the local tradition followed by Hellan icus .

He was an able,systematic

,conscientious h istorian,

though it might possibly have been better for historyhad he never existed .

1 Jr 7 02: r Aefarocr 711 1156719 101 . C!: Josephus c. Ap. i. 3 Strabo , x. 451 , and

xiii. 61 2.

H E RO D O T U S

HERODOTUS,SON OF LYXES or HALICARNASSUS(484 —

425 B .C.)

HERODOTUS,the father of history

,

l was an exiled manand a professional story- teller not of course an impro

visatore,

’ but the prose correlative of a bard, a narratorof the deeds of real men, and a describer of foreignplaces. His profession was one which aimed

,as Thucy

dides severely says, more at success in a pass ing entertainment than at any lasting discovery of truth its firstnecessity was to interest an audience. Herodotus musthave had th is power whenever he opened h is l ips ; buthe seems to have risen above his profession

,to have

advanced from a series of public readings to a greathistory— perhaps even to more than th at. For his workis not only an account of a thrill ing struggle

,politically

very important,and spiritual ly tremendous ; it is also,

more perhaps than any other known book,the expression

of a whole man,the representation of al l the world seen

through the medium of one mind and in a particularperspective . The world was at that time very interestingand the one mind

,while strongly individual

,was one of

the most comprehensive known to human records.1 Cic. dc Leg. i. x.

“

1 3!


1 34 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECEhands and was put to death . Herodotus fled to Samos.At las t, in what way we kn ow not, Lygdamis fel l andHerodotus returned ; but the party in power was forsome reason hostile to him—possibly they were ‘ auto

nomists,’ while he stood for the Athenian League—and

Herodotus entered upon h is li fe of wandering . Hefound a second home in Athens, where he had a friendin Sophocles

,and probably in Pericles and Lampon .

He was finally provided for by a grant of citizenshipin Thurii

,the mode l international colony which Athens

founded in South I taly,in 443, on the site of the tw ice

ruined Sybaris. Of his later l ife and travels we knowlittle definite . He travelled in Egypt as far as Elephan

tine at some time when the country was in the handsof Persia

,and of course when Persia was at peace with

Athens—after 447, that is. He had then already finishedhis great Asiatic j ourney ( i i. 150 ) pas t Babylon to theneighbourhoods of Susa and Ecbatana. At some timehe made a j ourney in the B lack Sea to the mouths ofthe I ster

,the Crimea

,and the land of the Colchians.

Pericles went through the B lack Sea with a large fleetin 444 ; perhaps Herodotus had been employed beforehand to examine the resources of the region . Besidesthis, he went by ship to Tyre, and seems to have travelleddown the Syrian coast to the boundary of Egypt. Hewent to Cyréné and saw something of Libya. He knewthe coast of Thrace

,and traversed Greece itself in all

directions, seeing Dodona, Acarnan ia, Delphi, Thebes,and Athens

,and

,in the Peloponnese

,Tegea

,Sparta

,

and Olympia.What was the obj ect of all th is travelling ; and howwas a man who had lost h is country

,and presumably

could not draw on his estate,able to pay for it I t is a

LIFE or HERODOTUS 1 35

tantalising question,and the true answer would probably

tell us much that is now unknown about Greek life inthe fi fth century B.C. Herodotus may have travelledpartly as a merchant ; yet he certainly speaks of merchants in an external way and he not only mentionsas is natural considering the aim of his book—but seemsreally to have visited

,places of intel lectual interest

rather than trade-centres. I n one place ( i i. 44) he saysexplicitly that he sailed to Tyre in order to find out afact about H eracles. The truth seems to be that he wasa professional Logopoios,

’ a maker and reciter of Logoi,

’

Tkings to tell,

’ j ust as Kynaith os, perhaps as Panyas is ,was a maker and reciter of Epe,

’ Verses.’ The anecdotictradition which speaks of his public readings at Athens

,

Thebes,Corinth

,and Olympia

,certainly has some sub

stratum of truth . He travelled as the bards and th e

Sophists travelled ; l ike the Homeridae, l ike Pindar, l ikeHellan icus, l ike Gorgias. I n Greek communities hewas sure of remunerative audiences ; beyond the Greekworld he at least collected fresh ‘ Logoi .’ One may geta l ittle further light from the fact attested by Diyllus theAristotelian (end of 4th cent. that Herodotus wasawarded ten talents on the motion of Anytus bya decree of the Athen ian Demos. That is not a payment

for a series of readings it is the reward of some serious

public service . And it seems better to interpret thatservice as the systematic collection of knowledge aboutthe regions that were politically important to AthensPersia

,Egypt, Thrace, and Scythia, to say noth ing of

states l ike Argos— than as the historical defence of Athens

as the ‘savz

'

our of Hellas ,’ at the opening of the Pelopon

nes ian War. Even the published book, as we have it,is ful l of information which must have been invaluable


to an Athenian politician of the time of Pericles ; andit stands to reason that Herodotus must have had massesof further knowledge which he could impart to theAthen ian Fore ign Office,

’ but decidedly not publish forthe use of all Hellas .

The histories of Herodotus are ord inari ly divided intonine books

,named after the nine Muses . The divis ion

is of course utterly post-classic Herodotus knew noth ingof his Muses

,

’ but simply headed his work,T[us is fire

account of tko resea rch of Herodotus of T I n our

editions it i s Herodotus of Halz'

oa ruas sus,

” but he mus t

have written “of by all analogy

,and Aris totle

read “of T The Athenian or Eastern book-trade

,

appealing to a publ ic which knew the man as a Hal i

carnass ian , was naturally tempted to head its scrollsaccordingly. I t is l ike the case of the Anooas z

'

s, which

appeared pseudonymously as the work of Themis to

genés of Syracuse (see p. but it was known tobe really Xenophon’s

,and the book-trade preferred to

head it with the better-known name .The last three books of Herodotus give the history ofthe invasion of Xerxes and its repuls e the first six forma sort of introduction to them

,an account of the gradual

gathering up of all the forces of the world under Persia,

the restive kicking of I onia against the irresistible,and

the burs ting of the storm upon Greece. The connectionis at first loose

,scarcely visible ; only as we go on we

begin to feel the growing intensity of the theme— theconcentration of al l the powers and nations to wh ichwe have been gradually introduced

,upon the one great

confl ict.Starting from the mythical and primeval enmity b etween Asia and Europe

,Herodotus takes up h is history



the end of Aris tagoras , the romantic and terriblefl ights of whole communities from the Persian ven

geance ; the hand of the king is uplifted over Greece .I n the north the great Mardon ius advances, persistentlysuccessful

,recovering Thrace and the islands

,and

rece iving the submission of Macedonia ; in the south,Datis comes by sea direct upon Eretria and Athens .And at the same time heralds are sent to the Greekstates demanding ‘ earth and water

,

’ the token of submission to the king’s will.Through all these books

,but in VI . more than any

,

the history of the Greek states has been gathered up indigressions and notes

,historically on a higher plane than

the main current of the narrative in Asia. Datis lands inEuboea and discharges the first part of his orders bysweeping Eretria from the face of th e earth , then proceeds to Marathon to fulfil the remaining part . He ismet

,not by the united Greeks

,not even by the great

Dorian cities,only by the Athenians and a band of

heroic volunteers from P lataea— met,and by God’s help

,

to man's amazement, defeated . After this the progressof the narrative is s teady. Book VI I . indeed movesslowly : there is the death of Darius and the successionof Xerxes ; the long mass ing of an invincib le army,the preparations which ‘ shake As ia ’

for three years.There are the heart-searchings and waverings of variousstates

,the terror

,and the hardly - sustained heroism ;

the eager inquiries of men who find the plain facts tobe vaster than their fears ; the awful voice of theGod in whom they trust at Delphi

,bidding them only

despair,fly

,

“ma/re their minds familia r w ill: lzorrors .

Athens, who had offended the king, was lost. Argosand other towns might buy life by submission

,by

HERODOTUS’S METHOD OF COMPOS ITION 1 39

not j oin ing the fools who dared fight their betters .

Then comes the rising of the greater part of Greeceabove its religion

,the gathering of “

t/zem t/za t were

better minded, and thus at last the tremendous narrative

of battle .Much has been written about the composition of the

histories of Herodotus. They fall apart very easily,they contain repetitions and contradictions in detail,and the references to events and places outside thecourse of the story raise problems in the mind of aninterested reader. Bauer worked at th is question onthe hypothesis that the book was made up of separate‘ Logoi ’ inorganically strung together. Kirchhoff heldthat the work was originally conceived as a whole, andcomposed gradually. Books 1 19, which showno reference to the West

,were written before 447, and

before the author went to Thurii ; s ome time later heworked on to the end of Book IV. ; lastly, at thebeginning of the Peloponnesian War he returned toAthens

,and in that stirring time wrote all the second

half of his work,Books V.

—IX. He had meant to gomuch further ; but the troubles of 43 1 interrupted thework

,and his death left it unfinished. Mr. Macan sup

poses that the las t three books were the first written,and that the rest of the work is a proem,

“ composedof more or less independent parts

,of which II. is the

most obvious,while the fourth book contains two other

parts,only one degree les s obvious but that internal

evidence can never decide whether any of these partswere composed o r published independently.Some little seems certain the last events he mentionsare the attack on Plataea in 43 1 B .C.,

the subsequentinvas ion of Attica by the Lacedaemonians

,and the


execution of the Spartan ambassadors to Persia inWe know he was in Athens after 432, because he had seenth e Propylaea finished . His book must have been freshin people’s memory at Athens in 425, when Aristophanesparodied the opening ofBook Arguing from what hedoes not mention

,i t is probable that he was not writing

after 424, when Nikias took Cythera (vi i. and almostcertain that he did not know of the S icil ian expeditionof 4 15or the occupation of Dekeleia in 41 3 . His themewas the deliverance of Greece and th e rise of theAthenian Empire

,and he died before that Empire began

to totter.For it is clear that he did not l ive to finish his work .

Kirchhoff argues that he meant to carry th e story downto the Batt le of Eurymedon, to the definite point wherethe liberated Ionian s swore their oath of un ion underthe hegemony of Athens. That

,Kirchhoff holds

,is

the real finish o f the Medika ’ not the siege of Sestos,

which is the last event given in our narrative .3 And

does not Herodotus himself show that he intended togo further when he promises (vii . 21 3) to tell

‘ later'

the cause of the feud in which the traitor Ephialteswas murdered

,an event which occurred some time after

476 ? Kirchhoff says, Yes ; but the conclusion is not

convincing. The cause of the feud may have comelong before the murder

,and it is perfectly clear from a

number of passages that Herodotus regards all eventslater than 479—8 as not in the sphere of his h istory . Hedismisses them with the words

,

“But t/zese t/zz'

ngs nappened

afterwards . Thus he does,it seems

,reach his last date ;

but he has not finished the revising and fitting. He leaves

1vu. 233 ; ix. 73 ; v u. 137 ; of: vi . 9 1 .Aclza rn ia ns

, 524 H“

.

3 Meyer , F lz. Mus . xlu 146.



different contexts. Our work clearly seems based ona great mass of material col lected and written down inthe course of a l ife- time ; and, on the other hand, it iscertainly a unity

,the diverse strands being firmly held

and woven eventually into the main thread. This viewmakes it difficult to lay stress on references to laterevents as proving the late composition of any particularpassage . The work as it stands is the composition ofthe man’s last years

,though large masses of the material

of it may be taken,with hardly a word altered

,from

manuscripts he has had by him for lustres.I n one important point Meyer and Busolt appear to

be right,as against Mr. Macan and most Herodotean

authorities— in placing th e Egyptian Logoi ’ quite late,

after the historian’s return from Thurii,rather than before

h is first settlement there . Book I I . stands very muchapart from the rest of the work it shows signs of a deepinward impression on the mind of the writer made bythe antiquity of Egyptian h istory and culture and

,with

all its helpless credul ity on the unarmed side of Herodotus

’

s mind,it shows a freer attitude towards the Greek

rel igion than any other part . I f th is impression hadbeen early made

,it would surely have left more mark

upon the general run of the work than is now visible .There is

,however

,another hypothesis quite probable he

may have util ised a youthful work which he intended torevise . Diels attributes the pecul iar tone of Book I I . tothe author’s close dependence upon Hecatmus he thinksthat the plagiarism is too strong for ordinary ancientpractice

,unless we suppose that these Logoi ’ were in

tended only for use in public readings,and never received

the revision necessary for a permanent bookform .

Our judgments about Herodotus are generally affected

RELIGION OF HERODOTUS 143

by an implied comparison,not with his precursors and

contemporaries,nor even with his average successors

,

which would be fair, but with one later writer of peculiarand almost eccentric genius

,Thucydides. Thus in re

ligious matters Herodotus is sometimes taken as a typeof simple piety, even of credulity. An odd j udgment.I t is true that he seldom expresses doubt on any pointconnected with the gods

,while he constantly does so in

matters of human history. He veers with alacrity awayfrom dangerous subj ects, takes no liberty with divinenames

,and refrains from repeating s tories which he

called ‘ holy.’ Of course he does so it is a conditi on of

his profession the rhapsode or Logopoios who actedotherwise

,would soon have learnt ‘wisdom by suffering.

’

Herodotus was not a philosopher in religion he has notheory to preach in this, as in every other departmentof intellect

,it is part of his greatness to be inconsistent .

But there were probably few high-minded Greeks on

whom the trammels of their local worsh ips and theirconventional polythe ism sat less hamperingly . He hasbeen cal led a monotheist that of course he is not . But

his language implies a certain background ofmonotheism,

a moral God behind th e nature -powers and heroes,almost

as definitely as does that of E schylus or even of Plato.

Travel was a great breaker of the barriers of bel ief when

the vital creeds of men were stil l really national, or cantonal

,or even parochial . I t is surely a man above his

country’s polythe ism who says ( i i . 53) that it cannot bemore than four centuries since Homer and Hesiod invented the Greek theology

,and gave the gods their names

,

offi ces, and shapes A dangerous saying for the publicbut he is interes ted in his own speculation

,and has not

h is audience before him. And we may surely combine

1 44 LITERATURE or ANCIENT GREECE

th is with his passing comment on the Egyptian theologies

,that ( i i . 3)

“about the gods one man know s as

muck as anotber .

” There is evident sympathy in h isaccount of the Persian re ligion as opposed to the Greek

Images and temples and alta rs it is not in tkeir law to

set up— nay ,

tbey count tlzem fools wko make suck, as 1

j udge, because t/zey do not bold tire gods to be man-skaped,

as t/ze Greeks do. Tbeir habit is to sacrifice to Zeus ,goingup to the tops of tbc bzgkes t mounta ins , kotding all tke round

of tbc sky to be Zeus .

”Tkey sacrifice,

” he goes on,“to

sun , moon ,ea rtk,fire

,wa ter, and tire w inds .

” The feelingof that pas sage ( i. 1 3 1 ) expresses the true Greek polytheism

,freed from the accidents of local traditions and

anthropomorphism. I f you press Herodotus or th eaverage unsacerdotal Greek, he falls back on a Onebeh ind the variety of nature and history ; but whatcomes to him naturally is to fee l a divine elementhere

,there, and everywhere, in winds and waters and

sunlight and all that appeals to his heart— to singleout each manifestation of it, and to worship it thereand then.

I t is fair to lay stress on these passages rather than onthose where Herodotus identifies various foreign deitiesw ith known Greek ones under the conventional names

(Neith-Athena, Alilat-Ourania, Chem-Pan) , or where, aftera little excursus into the truth about the l ife of Heracles

,

and a conclusion that there were two people of the samename

,he prays “ the gods and heroes to take no offence

( ii . I n those cases he is speaking the language ofh is audience ; and perhaps, also, the

‘ safe ’ professionalattitude has become a second nature to him .

With prophecies and omens and the special workingsof Providence, the case is different. He is personally



that shattered Xerxes’ armada (vii . 1 89, though the

Athenians had actually prayed to Boreas to send it,

Herodotus refus es to assign it positively to that cause,pointing out that the Magi were praying in the Oppos ites ense for three days

,at the end of which time the storm

stopped. Herodotus’s Godhead is “j ealous and fraug/zt

w itk trouble,and falls like ln tn ing

” upon humanpride— upon the sin

,that is

, of man making himselfequal to God . Aristotle is one of the few theologianswho have explained that ‘ j ealousy ’ is inconsistent withthe idea of God

,and that in the true sense man should

make himself as near God as can be. I n that po intHerodotus’s deity seems to stoop ; but it is the MoralTribunal of the world

,and all tribunals are apt to punish

wrong more than to reward right. I t would be invidious,though instructive

,to quote parallels from modern his

torians on the special workings of Providence upon theweather and such matters

,in favour of the ir own parties

and as for oracles,Herodotus’s faith is approved by h is

s tandard translator and commentator at the present day,

who shows reason to suppose that the Pythia was insp ired by the devil !1

A certain rabies against the good faith of H erodotushas attacked various eminent men in different ages.But neither Ktes ias nor Manetho nor Plutarch nor Panovsky nor Sayce has succeeded in convincing manypersons of his bad faith . He professes to give thetradition, and the tradition he gives ; he states variantaccounts with perfect Openness

,and criticises his

material abundantly. He is singularly free from anytendency to glorify past achievements into the miraoulous, stil l more s ingularly free from national or local

1Rawlms on, i. 176 1g.

I S HERODOTUS FAIR-MINDED ? 1 47

prej udice . He admires freedom ; he has a vivid horrorof tyrants. But there is no visible difference in histreatment of the oligarchic and democratic states ; andit is difficult to show any misrepresentation of particulartyrants due to the writer

,though it is l ikely

,on the whole,

that the tradition he follows has been unfair to them.

Herodotus is not more severe than Thucydides or P lato .

As to the Persians, he takes evident pleasure in testifyingnot only to their courage

,as shown

,for instance

,in

fighting without armour against Greek hopl ites,but to

their chivalry,truthfulness

,and high political organisa

tion . He is shocked at the harem system,the orien

tal cruelties,the slave - soldiers driven with scourges

,

the sacking of towns, where the Asiatics behaved likemodern Turks or l ike Europeans in the wars of religion .

He is severe towards the Corinth ians and Thebans ;whose defence

,however, it would be diflicult to make

convincing. To see really how fair he is,one needs

but to look for a moment at the sort of language suchwriters as Froude and Motley use of the average activeCatholic

,especially if he be French or Spanish .

I n the main,Herodotus is dependent for his mistakes

upon his sources,and in all respects but one he is

clos er to the truth than his sources . He had readnearly all existing Greek literature he not only quotesa great many writers

,chiefly poets

,but he employs

phra ses,

“no poet kas mentione and the l ike

,which

imply a control of al l l iterature. He seems for somereason or other to have avoided using h is professionalcolleagues, Charon and Xanthus he mentions nologographer but Hecataeus . He refers in some fourteen passages to monuments or inscriptions

,though

he certainly did not employ them systematically. For


the most part,he depends on the oral statements of

wel l—informed persons, both for the older history ofGreece and for the ‘Medika .

’ I n barbarian countrieshe was largely dependent on mere dragoman-knowledge

,and the careless talk of the Greek quarter of the

town .

His frequent expressions,

“the L iby ans say ,

” “the

Cy renceans say ,

” seem to refer either to the results of

h is own inquiries in the country referred to,or to the

direct statement of some native . Four times we havea personal authority given .

l “Arch ias whom I met a t

Pitone’” gives the story of his grandfather ; Tymnes

,

the steward of Ariapeithes , verifies some genealogies ;Thersander of O rchomenus

,who had dined with

Mardon ius in Thebes , and Dika ios of Athens,who had

l ived in exi le among the Medes togeth er with Demaratusthe Spartan king

,vouch respectively for two stories

which tel l at least of troubled nerves among thefollow ing of Mardon ius . A more important sourceof knowledge lay in the archives of various famil iesand corporat ions : sometimes, perhaps, Herodotus wasal lowed to read the actual documents ; more often,probably

,he had to ques tion the men who pos sess ed

them. That would be the case,for instance

,with the

Delphic oracle,to whose records he plainly owes an

immense amount,especial ly in the earl ier books . He

draws from the traditions of the Alcmaeon idae (Pericles),the Ph ilatdae (Miltiades), and probably from those ofthe Persian general Harpagos .

The weakness of these sources may be easily imagined .

I n his Spartan history Herodotus knows all aboutLycurgus

,who was of course a fixed saga-figure ; then

1 iii. 55; iv. 76 ; vii i. 65; ix. 16.



friend. Amas is and Rhamp s in itus are all but fairy-talefigures ; and two celebrated passages—the speech of thewife of In taph ernes preferring her irreplaceable brotherto her replaceable sons ( i i i. the immortal H ippocleides winning his bride by his prowess and high birth,los ing her by dancing on h is head

,and remarking

,as his

feet fly,that it is “ all one to s opoclezdes I (vi . 1 26 seq.)

these two have been run to ground in I ndian l iterature.1

Solon cannot have met Croesus, because the dates donot fit. He cannot have uttered the great speech Hero

dotus gives h im,for it is made up partly from Argive

,

partly from Delphic legends,legends which clustered

in each case around certain unexplained tombs. Thedreams that came to lure Xerxes to his ruin, requiremore personal affidavits to substantiate them. Thedebate of the seven Persians on Monarchy

,Oligarchy

,

and Democracy, though Herodotus stakes his reputation upon it, has been too much for almost everybeliever. Conce ivably Maass is right in tracing it to afictitious dialogue by Protagoras. But it is idle to rej ecton ly what i s grossly improbable, and accept withoutevidence all that may possibly be true . The greaterpart of the history o f Herodotus i s mixed up with purepopular story-making in various degrees ; the ancientforeign history almost irrecogn isably so, the Greek history before Marathon very deeply

,while even the parts

later than Marathon are by no means untran sfigured. I none way

,it i s t rue

,Herodotus is guilty of personal, though

unconscious,deceptiveness ; his transitions, his ways

of fitting one block of ‘ Logoi ’ into another, are purelystyl istic . He gets a transition to his Libyan Logoi ’ bysaying ( iv. 167) that the expedition of Aryandes wa

‘

s

Man n’

s edition, App. xiv.

TRANS ITIONS AND ADECDOTES 1g1

really directed against all Libya. There is no reasonto think that it was. He introduces h is Athenian history by saying ( i. 56) that Croesus looked for an allyamong the Greeks

,and found that two cities stood out

Sparta,ch ief of the Dorians ;Athens, chief of the I onians

but that the latter was crushed for the time beingunder the heel of her tyrant P is istratus. The ty rant hadnot crushed Athens ; he was probably not then reigning ; Athens was a third- rate I onian state . I n framingthese transitions and in getting motives for the ins ertionof anecdotes, as when he gives to Gelon Pericles

’

s

famous saying,

The sp r ing is taken out of the y ea r (vii .Herodotus does not expect to be pinned to

conclusions . As P lutarch angrily puts it, he cares foraccuracy in such points “ no more than HippocleidesFor the rest, his historical faults are the inevitable consequence of his sources— the real untrustworthinesscon sisting

‘

not in error or inaccuracy here and th ere,

much less in any deliberate misrepresentation,but in

a deep unconscious romanticising of the past by men’sown memories

,and the shaping of al l h istory into an

exemplification of the workings of a Moral Providence.To his own aim he is singularly true—that “ the real

deeds of men shall not be forgotten, nor the wondrous works

of Greek and ba rba rian lose their name.” Plutarch—for

the treatise On the Malice of Herodotus is surely Plutarch,

if anything is—does not quarrel with him merely forthe sake of Thebes. To Plutarch the age Herodotustreated is an age of giants, of sages and heroes infull dress

,with surprising gifts for apophthegm and re

partee,and he sees all the ir deeds in a glow of adoring

humility. He hates, he rej ects their meaner side ; andhe cannot bear the tolerant gossiping real ism of Hero


dotus . Yet it is this power of truthfulness in the man,combined with h is tragic grasp and his wide sympathyth is way of s ee ing men’s hearts j ust as they are withall their greatness and their failure, that causes a criticwho weighs h is every word, to claim that

“ no otherGreek writer has covered so large a world with so fulla population of l iving and immortal men and womenas Herodotus,

” 1 and to place his work opposite Homer’s,

irremovably and irreplaceably at the fountain-head ofEuropean prose literature .

Macan, lxxiii.



‘ things ’ arise by ‘ separation .

’ I t is God : by its lawall ‘ things ’ must be destroyed again into that fromwhich th ey were made ; they meet with

‘ retribution ’

for their ‘ unrighteousness,’

i .e. their invasions of on e

another’s spheres of being. The th ird Miles ian,ANAX I

MENES,trying to specify what Anaximander left unclear

,

takes the Infinite to be really Vapour while theprocess of separation by which the various things comeinto being is really condensation due to change of

temperature . The unity of th is school l ies in its conception of the question to be answered What is theworld ? means to them,

“What is the world madeof —and in the ir assumption of a half-materialisthylozoism.

‘Air,

’ for instance,is ‘ Mind .

’ The schoolspent most of its activity on scientific research, ti l l itshared the destruction of its city in 494 B .C. I t re

mained the chief source and stimulus of later philosophy.Altogether opposite in sp irit was the great Th iasos of

the West,founded about 530 B .C.

,by an exi led Samian

oligarch, PYTHAGORAS. I ts principles seem to haveincluded a rel igious reformation

,hosti le both to the

theology of th e poets and to the local cults ; a moralreformation, reacting against the freer l ife and morecomplicated social conditions of the time ; and a political reaction in support of the aristocratic principle

,

which was in danger of disappearing before the democracies and tyrannies. I n the time of its founder thesect marred its greatness by unusual superstition

,and by

perpetrating the great crime of the age,the destruction

of Sybaris. Later,it did important work in mathematics

and astronomy.The doctrine of the Milesians was spread over Hellasby the minstrel XENOPHANES ( see p . A rhapsode

EARLY PHILOSOPHERS I 55

had an enormous public,and stood in the central fortress

of the poetic religion. From th is vantage-ground Xenophanes denounced th e ‘ l ies ’ of Homer and Hesiod

,and

preached an uncompromising metaphysical monotheism .

There was One God,not man- shaped

,not having parts,

i nfinite,unchanging

,omnipresent

,and all of him con

scious . He is One and the Whole. He is really,perhaps

,Anaximander

’

s I nfinite robbed of its mobility ;he is so like the One of Parmenides that tradition makesXenophanes that ph ilosopher’s teacher

,and the founder

of the Eleatic School.

At Ephesus near Miletus, in the next generation toAnaximenes

,the problem of the Milesians rece ives an

entirely new answer, announced with strange pompand pride

,and at the same time bearing the stamp

of genius._

“All things move and nothing s tay s ,” says

HERACLiTUS “all things flow .

”And it is this Flow that

is the real s ecret of the world,the ‘Arché

’ not a substance arbitrarily chosen

,but the process of change

itself,which Heraclitus describes as ‘ Burning ’

Heraclitus writes in a vivid oracular prose ; he isobscure

,partly from the absence of a philosophic lan

guage to express his thoughts,but more because of

the prophet- l ike fervour of expression that is natural tohim. I t mus t also be remembered that in an age beforethe circulation of books a teacher had to appeal to thememory . He wrote in verses like Xenophanes and Parmenides

,or in apophthegms like Heraclitus and Demo

critus . The process of change is twofold—a Way Upand away Down—but it is itself eternal and unchanging .

There is Law in it ; Fate, determining the effect of everycause ; jus tice, bringing retribution on every offence.


The ‘ offences ’ appear to be, as in Anaximander,the

self-as sertive pride of particular th ings claiming to Be

when they only Become and Pass, claiming to be Themselves when they are only a transition of someth ing elseinto something else. Heraclitus speaks with a twofoldpride—as one who has found truth, and as a nobleman . He would have concurred entirely in N ietzsche

’

s

contempt for “ shopkeepers,cows

,Christians

,women

,

Englishmen, and other democrats.” The Milesians are

as dirt to h im ; so are h is fe llow-citizens and mankindgenerally. He condescends to mention Pythagoras

,

Xenophanes,and Hecataeus with Hesiod

,as instances

of the truth that much lea rn ing teaches not w isdom.

PARMENIDES of E lea answers Heraclitus ; he findsno solution of any difficulty in Heraclitus

’

s flow ; thereis nothing there but Becoming and Ceasing, and hewants to know what I S—in the sense

,for instance

,that

2 X 2 is 4, absolutely and eternally, though Parmenideswould not admit our popular distinction between abstractand concrete .What is

,is what is not

,is not

,aimé

’

o n,does not exist .

Therefore there is no Change or Becoming,because

that would be passage from Not-being to Being,and

there is no Not-being. Equally,~ there is no empty

space ; therefore no motion. Also there is only OneThing if there were more

,there would have to be Not

being between them. He goes on to show that the OneThing is spherical and finite

,and of course divine . I t

is matter,sol id ; but it is also Thought, for Thought

and tha t of wh ich it is though t a re the same.

What then about th e world we know,which has oh

viously a great many th ings in it Parmenides answersorientally : it is only deceit

,what an Indian calls May a .



From the side of Being there arose three important

systems.EMPEDOCLES of Acragas, whom we have treated above

(p . assumes the exis tence not of one,but of four

original Roots of Things — Earth, Water, Air, and Fire,with empty space about them. The roots are unchanging matter in themselves

,but moved and mixed— th is

i s perhaps h is most important contribution to philosophy—by non-material forces

,which he describes as Love

and Hate,or Attraction and Repulsion .

ANAXAGORAS of Clazomenae, the first philosopher tosettle pe rmanently in Athens, assumed a very muchlarger number of original and eternal ‘

things’ or ‘

seeds’

(Xpfiuam ,a n éppam ), whose combination and separation

make the subs tances of the world. He means someth ing like the ‘E lements ’ of modern Chemistry. Amongthem there is Mind

,

‘ Noos,

’ which is a ‘ thing ’

like therest

,but subtler and finer

,and able to move of itself.

I t acts in the various component parts of the worldj ust as we feel it act in our own bodies. I t has ‘

come

and a rranged’

all the ‘ th ings .’ Anaxagoras treated theSun and Moon as spheres of stone and earth

,the Sun

white- hot from the speed of its movement ; both wereenormous in size, the Sun perhaps as big as the Peloponnese He gave the right explanation of eclipses .

The other solution offered by this period is the AtomicTheory. I t seems to have originated not from anyscientific observation

,but from abstract reasoning on

Parmenidean principles. The by is a wxéov,a Thing is

a Solid,and anything not solid is nothing. But instead

of the One Eternal Sol id we have an immense numberof Eternal Sol ids, too small to be divided any more‘Atomo i

’

Un -cuttab les Parmen ides’

s argument against

ATTEMPTS AT SOLUTION 1 59

empty space is not admitted,nor yet his demand that

that wh ich is ’ must be round and at rest. Why should it ?As a matter of fact the things have innumerably differentshapes and are always moving. Shape

,size

,and motion

are all the qualities that they possess,and these are the

only Natural Facts. All else is conventional or derivative . The theory was originated by Leukippus of Abdera,but received its ch ief development from his great discipleDemocritus

,and from Epicurus.

THE ATHENIAN PERIOD OF PHILOSOPHY

Empedocles died about 430 B.C.,and Anaxagoras was

banished in 432. But for s ome years before this thereaction against cosmological speculation had begun .

I t was time to find some smaller truths for certain,

instead of speculating ineffectually upon the great ones.The fifth century begins to work more steadily at particulat branches of science—at Astronomy

,Mathematics

,

History,Medicine

,and Zoology.

This tendency in its turn is met and influenced bythe great stream of the time. The issue of the PersianWar, establish ing Greek freedom and stimulating thesense of common nationality, had let loose all the pentup force of the nation, military,social, and intel lectual .Great towns were appearing . The population of Athensand the Piraeus had risen from to aboutProperty was increas ing even faster. The facilities fordisposing of money were constantly growing ; commer

cial enterprises were on a larger scale and employedgreater numbers both of free workmen and of slaves .Intercourse between the different cities was much com


moner ; and the foreign residents, at least in Athensand the progressive towns, were well cared for by lawand l ightly taxed. Local protective tariffs were practically abol ished ; the general Athenian customs at thePiraeus amounted only to 1 per cent. on imports andexports. Compared with other periods, the time afterthe battle of Mykalé was one of prolonged peace . Thenation was possessed by an enthusiastic bel ief in itself

,

in progress,and in democracy. One result of this was

the economic movement,which gives the key to so

much of Athenian history,the struggle of the free work

man to keep up his standard of l iving by means of hispol itical ascendancy. The other is the demand of theDemos for the things of the intellect, answered by thesupply of those things in a shape adapted for popularconsumption .

At all times the Greeks had keenly felt the value of

personal quality in a man (ripe-mi), and of wisdom or

skill How could these things be attained ? A

Hagn istés’ could make you pure if you were defiled

an ‘Andrapodistés’ could make you a slave ; was there

such a th ing as a ‘ Soph istes ’ who could make youwise ? They came in answer to the demand

,men of

diverse characters and seeing ‘wisdom ’ in very differentlights. Some rej ected the name of ‘ Soph is tés

’

: itclaimed too much . Some held that wisdom might betaught

,but not virtue : that could only be ‘ learned by

practice .

’ Gorgias doubted if he could teach anything ;me only claimed to be ‘ a good speaker.’ PROTAGORASboldly accepted the name and professed to teach WOMTLK‘I)bperfi, social virtue ; he preached the characteristicdoctrine of periods of ‘ enlightenment

,

’ that vice comesfrom ignorance

,and that education makes character.



less form his only resource is to make his puppet,either

with cynical coolness or in bl ind rage,proceed to the

necess ary extremes, and be there confounded . And

who is the puppet to be ? Somebody,if possible, who

is not too notoriously incongruous to the part ; whosesupposed tenets may vaguely be thought to imply something analogous to the infamous sentiments which haveto be defended.

Th rasymachus of Chalkédon is made in Republic 1. to

advocate absolute inj ustice,to maintain that law and

morality are devices of the weak for paralysing the freeaction of the strong. I t is very improbable that this respectable democratic professor held such a view : inpolitics he was for the middle class ; and in 41 1 hepleaded for moderation. He went out of h is way toattack the current type of successful inj ustice, Archelaus of Macedon . He was celebrated as a sentimentalspeaker ; he says in an extant fragment that the successof the unrighteous is enough to make a man doubt theexistence of divine providence . Plato’s fiction is, in fact,too improbable ; no wonder he has to make the puppetlose its temper before it wil l act.This is the ch ief crime which has made Thrasymachus

the typical corrupt and avaricious Sophist ” the otheris that, being a professional lecturer, he refused tolecture gratu itously and in publ ic to Socrates and hisyoung friends—whose notorious obj ect was to confutewhatever he might say.What Aristophanes says of the Sophists is of coursemere gibing happily he attacks Socrates too

,so we

know what his charges are worth . What the Socraticstell us—and they are our chief informants— is colouredby that great article of their faith

,the ideal One Righteous

I NDIVIDUAL SOPHI STS 163

Man murdered by a wicked world : nobody is to

stand near Socrates. Socrates h imself only tel ls usthat the philosophy of the Sophists would not bear hiscriticism any more than the sculpture of Pheidias or

the statesmanship of Pericles. They were human ;perhaps compared to h im they were conventional ;and their real fault in his eyes was the spirit theyhad in common—the spirit of enlightened

,progres sive

,

democratic,over-confident Athens in the morning of

her greatness .Their main mission was to teach

,to clear up the mind

of Greece, to put an end to bad myths and unprovencosmogonies

,to turn thought into fruitful paths. Many

of them were eminent as original thinkers : Gorgias reduced E leatic ism to absurdity ; Protagoras cleared theair by his doctrine of the relativity of knowledge . Themany sophists to whom ‘wisdom ’ meant knowledge of

nature,are known to us chiefly by the H ippocratic writ

ings,and through the definite advances made at this time

in the various sciences, especially Medicine, Astronomy,Geometry

,and Mechanics. Cos

,Abdera

,and Syracuse

could have told us much about them Athens,our only

informant,was thinking of other things at the time—of

social and human problems. I n this department Protagoras gave a philosophic basis to Democracy . The massof mankind possess es the sense of j ustice and th e senseof shame— the exceptions are wild beasts, to be exterminated— and it is these two qualities rather than intellectual powers that are the roots of social conduct.Alkidamas

,a disciple of Gorgias

,is the only man recorded

as having in practical politics proposed the abolition of

s lavery ; in speculation, of course, many did so . Antiphon the sophist represents, perhaps alone;the sophistic


view that a wife is a ‘ second self ’ and more than any

friend.

I n history,Hippias laid the foundations of a national

sys tem o f chronology by publishing the l ist of Olympian victors. The whole science of language rests onthe foundations laid by such men as Prodicus andProtagoras : the former insis ting on the accurate discrimination of apparent synonyms ; the latter showingthat language is not a divine and impeccable th ing,but a human growth with conventions and anomalies .

As to morals in general, most of the Sophis ts wereessentially preachers

,l ike H ippias and Prodicus others

,

l ike Gorgias , were pure artists. The whole movementwas moral as well as intel lectual, and was singularly freefrom the corruption and lawlessness which accompanied

,

for example,the I tal ian Renaissance. The main fact

about the Sophists is that they were set to educate thenation

,and they did it. The character of the ordinary

fourth - Century Greek,his humanity

,s ense of j ustice

,

courage,and ethical imagination

,were raised to some

thing l ike the level of the leading minds of the fifthcentury

,and far above that of any population within a

thous and years of him . After all,the Sophists are the

spiritual and intellectual representatives of the age of

Pericles ; let those who revile them create such anage again .

OCCASIONAL WRITINGS

The real origin of Att ic prose literature is not to befound in the florid art of Gorgias

,nor yet in the technical

rhetoric of Te is ias,where Aristotle rather mechanically

seeks it : it l ies in the pol itical speeches and pamphlets



place of character a s ettled b itterness against everythingthat represented the Empire . He was like that malcontentislander whom I socrates answers in his Panegy ricus , arepresentative of the Oligarchic and Particularist partyin the all ied states

,the aristocrats and dependents of aris

tocrats, whose influence and property were lost throughthe Athenian predominance, and to whom th e Democracy and the Empire were al ike anathema. Yet hecame to Athens l ike every one else, l ike those

‘ dozensof Thasians ’ mentioned by Hegemon the sati rist

Close-shorn,not over n ice, whom sheer Want sh ips on thepacket,

Damaged and damagi ngmen , toprofess bad verses in Athens .

”

Stes imbrotus lectured successfully as a sophist ; wroteon Homer and on current politics . At last he was ableto rel ieve his feel ings by a perfect masterp iece of l ibel,Upon Themis tocles , Thucy dides , andPericles .

* The first andlast were his especial arch -fiends ; the son of Melés ias,

being Pericles’s opponent,probably came off with the

same mild treatment as Kimon, who,“although an abj ect

boor,ignorant of every a rt and science, had a t leas t the merit

of being no ora tor and posses s ing the rudimen ts of hones ty ;he might almos t have been a Peloponnes ia n I

” I f Stes imb rotus were not such an infamous l iar

,one would have

much sympathy for him. As it i s, the only thing to beurged in h is favour is that he did not

,as is commonly

supposed, combine his rascality with sanctimoniousness .

His book on the The My s teries* must have been an

attack. The mysteries were a purely and ch aracteris

tically Athenian possession,to wh ich

,as I socrates says,

they only admitted other Greeks out of generosity ; andStes imbrotus would have fals ified h is whole position ifhe had praised them . The man is a sort of intransigeantultramontane j ournalist

,wearing rather a modern look

THE ‘ OLD OLIGARCH ’167

among his contemporaries,a man of birth, abil ity, and

learning,shut out by politica l exigencies from the due

use of his gifts .Similar to Stes imbrotus in general political views, vastly

removed from him in spirit,is the ‘ OLD OLIGARCH,

’

whose priceless study of the Athenian constitution ispreserved to us by the happy accident of the publ ishertaking it for Xenophon’s. I t is not only unl ikeXenophon’s sty le and way of th inking

,but it demon

strably belongs to the first Athenian Empire,before the

Sicil ian catastrophe . I t is,in fact

,the earl iest piece of

Attic prose preserved to us,and represents almost alone

the practical Athenian style of writing,before l iterature

was affected by Gorgias or the orators. I t is familiar,terse

,vivid ; it follows the free grammar of conversa

tion, with disconnected sentences and frequent changesof number and person . I t leaves

,l ike some parts of

Ar istotle,a certain impression of naked

,unphrased

thought. The Old Oligarch has a clear conception of

the meaning of Athenian democracy,and admitting for

the moment that he and his friends are the ‘ Noble andGood

,

’ while the masses are the ‘ Base and Vile,

’ hesees straight and clear, and speaks without unfairness.I dis like the kind of cons titution

,because in choos ing it

they have defin itely chos en to make the Vile better of than

the N oble. This I dislike. But gra nted tha t this is their

inten tion ,I w ill show tha t they conserve the spirit of their

cons titution well, and manage their afia irs in general well,

in points where the Greeks th ink them mos t a t fault.”

There is even a kind of justice in the arrangement “for

it is the masses tha t row the sh ips , and the sh ips tha t have

made the Emp ire.

” They do not follow the advice of theGood men—no the firs t Vile man who likes

,s tands up


and speaks to the Ass embly ,and, as a fact, does somehow

find out wha t is to his in teres t and that of the mas ses .

Ignorance plus Vileness plus Loy alty is a safer combina tion

in an adviser of the Demos than Wi sdom plus Virtue plusDis afi

'

ection .

”As for the undue licence allowed to slaves

and resident al iens, it is true that you cannot strike them,

and they will not move out of your way but the reasonis that neither in dress nor in face is the true Atheniancommoner at all distinguishable from a slave

,and he

is afraid of being hit by mistake lThe writer goes over the constitution in detail without

finding a serious flaw : everything is so ordered— theelective offices

,the arrangements with the all ies

,the

laws about comedy and about the public buildingsas to secure the omnipotence of the Demos . For instance

,the system of making the all ies come to Athens

for their lawsuits is oppress ive, and sometimes keepsl itigants waiting as long as a year before their casescan be heard . But it provides the pay of the j urycourts ! I t enables the Demos to keep an eye on theinternal affairs of the whole Empire and see thatthe ‘ Good ’ do not get the upper hand anywhere . I tmakes the allies real ise that the ‘ Mob ’ is really theirmaster

,and not the rich admirals and trierarchs whom

they see representing Athens abroad . Then it bringstaxes ; it means constant employment for the heralds,and brisk trade for the lodging-house keepers and thecabmen and those who have a slave to h ire out. I fonly we had a hundred pages of such material as thisins tead of th irteen, our understanding OfAthenian historywould be a more concrete thing than it is .I t is hard to see the exact aim of the Old Oligarch.

He discusses coolly the prospect of a revolution . No



cons titution of Draco . I t can scarcely have been byTh eramenes himself, since it shows no special hostilityto Critias and the Oligarchical extremists. The samepamphleteering spirit infected even Pausanias

,the exiled

Spartan king,and led him to attack Lysander and the

Ephors under th e cover of a L ifiz of Ly curgus .

’

SOCRATES, SON OF SOPHRONISCUS FROM ALOPEKE(468—399 B .C.)

Among the Sophists of the fifth century is one whoscarcely deserves that name

,or

,indeed

,any other which

classes him with his fel lows a man strangely detached ;l iving in a world apart from other men a life of incessantmoral and intellectual search ; in that region most rich togive and hungry to receive sympathy

,elsewhere dead to

the feel ings and conventions of common society. I t is thiswhich makes the most earnest of men a centre of merriment

,a j ester and a wil ling butt . He analyses life so

gravely and nakedly that it makes men laugh,as when

he gropes his way to th e conclusion that a certa in fieryorator’s aim in life is “ to make ma ny people angry a t the

same time.

” The same Simpleness of nature led himto ask extraordinary questions ; to press insistently foranswers ; to dance alone in h is house for the sake of

exercise ; to talk without disguise of h is mos t intimatefeelings. He was odd in appearance too stout

,weather

stained,i ll- clad

,barefooted for the most part

,deep-eyed

,

and almost fierce in expression ; subj ect to long fits ofbrooding

,sometimes silent for days

,generally a pers istent

and stimulating talker,sometimes amaz ingly eloquent ;

a man who saw th rough and through other men, leftthem paralysed

,Alcib iades said

,and feel ing ‘ l ike very

LIFE OF SOCRATES 1 7 1

slaves ’

; sometimes inimitably humorous, sometimes inexplicably solemn only

,always original and utterly un

self-conscious .The parentage of Socrates was a j oke . He was the sonof a midwife and a stone-mason ; evidently not a successful stone-mason

, or his wife would not have continuedher profession . He could not manage such little propertyas he had

,and was apt to drop into des titution without

minding it. He had no profession . I f he ever learnedsculpture

,he did not practise it. He took no fees for

teaching ; indeed he could not see that he taught anyth ing. He sometimes, for no visible reason, refused,s ometimes accepted

,presents from his rich friends.

Naturally he drove h is wife,Xanthippe

,a woman of

higher station,to despair ; he was reputed henpecked.

I n the centre of education he was ill educated in a hotbed of political aspirations he was averse to pol itics. Henever travel led ; he did not care for any fine art ; heknew poetry well

,but insisted on treating it as bald

prose . I n his mil itary service he showed iron courage,

though he had a way of fall ing into profound reveries,

which m ight have led to unpleasant results. I n his lateryears

,when we first know him

,he is notorious for his

utter indifference to bodily pleasures or pains. But wehave evidence to Show that this was not always so thatthe old man who scarcely knew whether it was freezingor whether he had breakfasted

,who could drink al l n ight

without noticing it,had pas sed a s tormy and passionate

youth . Sp in tharus , the father of Ar istoxenus, one of thefew non-disciples who knew him in his early days

,says

that Socrates was a man of terrible passions,his anger

ungovernable and h is bodily desires violent,

“ though,”

he adds,

“ he never did anything unfair.”


Socrates’s positive doctrines amounted to little he clungto a paradoxical belief that Virtue is Knowledge a Viewrefuted before h im by Euripides

,and after him by Aris

totle— in its ordinary sense, at least : to him,of course,

it meant something not ordinary . He had no accom

plishments , and did not as a rule care to acquire them ;

though,when it occurred to him

,late in life

,to learn

music,he went straight to a school and learned among the

boys. He was working incessantly at a problem whichhe never really could frame to himself

,which mankind

never has been able to frame . He felt that the great truthhe wanted must be visible everywhere

,if we knew how

to look for it. I t is not more knowledge that we want :only the conscious realis ing of what is in us. Accepting the j est at his mother's profess ion

,he described his

proces s of questioning as assisting at the birth of truthfrom spirits in travail.Along with th is faith in a real truth inside man

,

Socrates possessed a genius for destructive criticism.

Often unfair in his method,always deeply honest in

his purpose,he groped with deadly effect for the funda

mental bel iefs and principles of any philosopher,pol i

tician,artist

,o r man of the world

,who consented to

meet h im in discus sion . Of course the discussionswere oral ; Athens had not yet reached the time forpamphlet criticism

,and Socrates could not write a con

nected discourse . He obj ected to books,as he did to

long speeches,on the ground that he could not fol low

them and wanted to ask questions at every sentence .Socrates was never understood ; it seems as if, for

all h is insistence on the need of se lf- consciousness, henever understood himself. The most utterly

'

divergen t

schools of thought claimed to be h is followers. His



off cause of all Love, loved his disciples and all whowere working towards the same end . Plato real isesthis to the full. Socrates perhaps had only glimpses ofit ; but it is clear that that intense vibrating personalaffection between man and man, which gives mostmodern readers a cold turn in reading the Platonic dialogues , is in its seed a part of Socrates. I t is remarkable

,cons idering the possibi l ities of Greek l ife at the

time,that this ‘ Eros ’ gave rise to no scandal against

Socrates,not even at his trial .1 I n P lato’s case it

showed itself to be a little imprudent ; Aristotle’s mag

n ificen t conception of Friendsh ip is bes t explained whenwe see that it is the Platonic Love under a '

cooler andsafer name .Wh at was the source of Socrates’s immense influenceover all later ph ilosophy

,since in actual philosophic

achievement he is not so great as Protagoras, not comparable with Democritus ? I t was largely the daemonic

,

semi- inspired character of the man . External ly,it was

the fact of his detachment from all existing bodies andinstitutions, so that in the ir wreck, when Protagoras ,Pericles

,Gorgias fell

,he was left standing alone and un

discredited . And,secondly

,it was the great fact that he

sealed his mission with his blood . He had enough of

the prophet in h im to feel that it was well for him todie ; that it was impossible to unsay a word of what hebelieved

,or to make any promise he did not personally

approve . Of course th e Platonic Apology is fiction,but

there is evidence to Show that Socrates’s indifference,

or rather superiority,to l ife and death is true in fact.

The world was not then famil iarised with religious persecutions , and did not know how many people are ready

1 He speaks quite pos itively on the point X en. Symp. viii. 32 ff.

DEATH OF SOCRATES 1 75

to bear martyrdom for what they believe . But there isone point about Socrates which is unl ike the rel igiousmartyr : Socrates died for no supposed crown of glory,had no particular revelation in which he held a fanaticalbel ief. He died in a calm,

deliberate conviction,that

Truth is really more precious than Life,and not only

Truth but even the unsuccessful search for it. The trialhas been greatly discussed both now and in antiquity.

The Socratics,l ike j Esch ines and An tisthenes

,poured

out the vials of their wrath in l iterature . Plato wrotethe Apology and the Gorgias ; Lysias the orator steppedin with a defence of Socrates in speech form Polycratesthe sophist dared to justify— probably not as a mere

j eu d’

esprit—the decision of the court ; I socrates fel lupon him with caustic politeness in the Bus ims

,and

Xenophon with a certain Clumsy convincingness in theMemorabilia .

The chief point to realise is that the accusers werenot villains, nor the judges necessarily

‘ l ice ’ as M .

Aurel ius tersely puts it. Socrates had always beensurrounded by young men of leisure

,drawn mainly

from the richer and more dissolute classes. He hadin a sense ‘ corrupted ’ them : they had fe lt the destructive Side of his moral teaching

,and failed to grasp

his real aim. H is political influence was markedlysceptical. He was no oligarch ; his oldes t apos tleChairephon fought beside Thrasybulus at Phyle; buthe had analysed and destroyed the sacred principle of

Democracy as well as every other convention . Thecity had barely recovered from the bloody reign of

his two close disciples Critias and Charmides couldnever recover from the treason of his ‘ beloved ’

Alcib iades . The religious terrors of the people were


keenly awake—confusedly occupied with oligarchic plots,

religious S ins,and divine vengeance.

Of his accusers,the poet Melétus was probably a fanatic

,

who obj ected to the Divine Sign. He was a weak manhe had been intimidated by the Thirty into executing anillegal arres t at their orders— the same arres t

,according to

the legend of the Socratics,which Socrates had refused

to perform . Lc n seems to have been an average respectable pol itician ; the Socratics have nothing againsthim except that he was once the master’s professed friend.

These men could hardly have got a conviction againstSocrates in the ordinary condition of public feeling ;but now they were supported by Anytus . A l ittle laterin the same year

,when Melétus attempted another pro

secution for impiety against Andokides, in oppositionto Anytus , he fai led to get a fifth of th e votes. Anytus

was one of the heroes of the Res tored Democracy,one

of the best of that generous band. As an outlaw atPhyle he had saved the l ives of bitter ol igarchs whohad fallen into the hands of his men . When victorioushe was one of the authors of the amnesty . He left themen who held his confiscated property undis turbed inenj oyment of it.He had had relations with Socrates before. He was

a tanner,a plain wel l- to-do tradesman

,himself ; but he

had set his heart on the future of his only son,and was

prepared to make for that obj ect any sacrifice exceptthat which was asked . The son wished to follow Socrates. He herded with young aristocrats of doubtfulprinciples and suspected loyalty ; he refused to go intohis father’s business . Socrates

,not tactfully

,had pleaded

his cause. Had Socrates had his way, or Any tus his,all might have been well. As it was, th e young man


THUCYDI DES

AT the time when the old Herodotus was putting thefinish to his history in Athens, a new epoch of strugglewas opening for Greece and demanding a wr iter. Theworld of Herodotus was complete, satisfying . Persiawas tamed ; the seas under one law ; freedom andorder won Equal laws

,equal speech

,democracy.

The culture which,next to freedom

,was what Herodotus

cared for most,was real ised on a very wide scale : he

lived in a great city where every citizen could read andwrite

,where everybody was Sewbs and There

had never been,not even in the forced atmosphere of

tyrants’ courts, such a gath ering of poets and learnedmen as there was in th is simply- l iving and hard-workingC ity. There was a new kind of poetry

,natural only to

this so il,so strangely true and deep and arresting

,that

it made other poetry seem like words. And the citywhich had done al l th is—the fighting

,the organising

,the

imaginative creating al ike—was the metropolis of hisown I onia

,She whom he could Show to be the saviour

of Hellas,whom even the Theban had hailed

,0 sh in ing,

violet-crowned City of Song, grea t Athens , bulwark ofHellas

,walls divine.

” 1 That greeting of Pindar’s struckth e keynote of the Athenians’ own feeling. Again and

1 Find. frag. 76.x76

THE PERI CLEAN IDEAL 1 79

again the echoes of it come back ; as late as 424 B .C.

the word ‘ violet- crowned ’ could make an audience Sit

erect and eager,and even a judicious use of the ad

jective shining by a foreign ambassador could do diplomatic wonders .1

I t was a passionate romantic patriotism . I n the bestmen the love for the ir personified city was inextricablyunited with a devotion to all the aims that they felt to behighest—Freedom

,Law

,Reason

,and what the Greeks

cal led ‘ the beautiful .’ Theirs was a peerless city,and

they made for her those overweening Claims that a manonly makes for his idea] or for one he loves. Periclesused that word called himself her ‘ lover (épa o rrjq)—theword is keener and fresher in Greek than in Englishand gathered about him a band of similar spirits

,united

lovers of an immortal mistress. This was why theyadorned her so fondly. Other Greek states had madegreat buildings for the gods . The Athenians of this agewere the firs t to lavish such immense effort on buildingsl ike the Propylaea, the Docks, the Odeon, sacred onlyto Athens. Can Herodotus have quite sympathised withthis He cannot at least—who can understand anotherman’s passion —have liked the ultimate cla im

,definitely

repeated to an indignant world,that the matchless city

should be absolute queen of her ‘ all ies,

’ a wise and beneficent ty rant, owing no duties except to protect and leadHellas

,and to beat off the barbarian .

11

There was a great gulf between Herodotus and theyounger generation in the circle of Pericles, the gulf ofthe sophistic culture. The men who had heard Anaxa

1 Ar. E1]. 1 329, Adz. 637.1 Thuc . n. 63, Pericles ; much more s trongly afterwards

, iii . 37, Cleonv. 89 , at Melos ; v i. 85, Euphémus ; cf i. 124, Co rinthians .


goras,Protagoras

,and H ippocrates

,differed largely in

beliefs,in aims

,in interests ; but they had th e all

important common principle, that thought must be clear,and that Reason holds the real keys of the world.

Among the generation influenced by these teacherswas a young man of anti-Periclean family, who neverth eless profoundly admired Pericles and had as similatedmuch of his Spirit ; who was perhaps conscious of acommanding intellect

,who had few illusions

,who hated

hazines s,who was also one of the band of Lovers . He

compared his Athens with Homer’s Mycenae or Troy ;he compared her with the old rude Athens which hadbeaten the Persians. He threw the whole sp irit of the‘ Enlightenment ’ into his study of ancient history. Hestripped the shimmer from the old greatnesses, and foundthat in hard daylight his own mistress was the grandestand fairest. He saw—doubtless all the Periclean circlesaw - that war was coming, a b igger war perhapsthan any upon record

,a war all but certa in to estab

lish on the rock the permanent supremacy of Athens.THUCYDIDES determined to watch that war from thestart

,mark every step

,trace every cause

,h ide nothing and

exaggerate noth ing—do all that Herodotus had not doneor tried to do . But he meant to do more than study ithe would help to win it. He was a man of position anda distinguished soldier. He had Thracian blood

,a nor

th ern fighting strain,in his veins

,as well as some kinship

with the great Kimon and Miltiades. The plague of 430came near to crushing his ambitions once for all

,but he

was one of the few who were sick and recovered. Thewar had lasted eight years before he got his real opportun ity . He was elected genera l in 423 B .C.

,second in

command, and sent to Chalcidice. I t was close to his



Who can possibly tell the rights of the case ? 1 Weknow only that Athens was a rude taskmaster to hergenerals. We cannot even say what the sentence was .He may have been banished ; he may have been condemned to death, and fled ; he may have fled for fearof the trial . We do not know where he lived. Theancient Life says

,at his estate at Scapté Hyle in Thrace

but that was in Athen ian territory,and no place for

an exile . I t is certain that he returned to Athens afterthe end of the war. He says himself that he wasoften with the Lacedaemonian authori ties. He seemsto have been at the battle of Mantinea

,and possibly

in Syracuse. We know nothing even of his death,

which probably occurred before the eruption of Etnain 396. His grave was in Athens among those of

Kimon’s family ; but‘Zopyrus,

’ confirmed by ‘ Cratippus

’—whoever they are—say that it had an ‘ ikrion’

—whatever that is—upon it,which was a S ign that the

grave did not contain the body.I f we knew more of Cratippus we Should be able to

add much to our l ife of Thucydides. The traditionall ives

,on e by Marcel linus (sth cent. one anonymous,

are a mass of confl icting legends, conj ectures , and deduction s . He wept at hearing Herodotus read, andreceived the old man’s blessing he married a Thracianheiress ; he was exiled by Cleon he sat under a planetree writing h is histories ; he drove al l the ZEginetans outo f their island by his usury ; he was murdered in threeplaces

,and died by disease in another. Dionysius of,

Halicarnassus says in so many words (pp . 143, 144) thatCratippus was Thucydides

’s contemporary. I f that were

1 The case agains t Thucydides is wel l given by Grote (vi. 191 who

accepts Ma rcellinus’s story that Cleon was his accuser.

THE ‘ LIVES ’OF THUCYDIDES 1 8 3

true it would rehabi litate the credit of the tradition, butth e evidence is crushing against it. Recent criticism of

the Life is al l based on an article in Hermes xii ., whereWilamow itz reduces the conven tional structure to itsbase in the facts given incidentally by Thucydides h imself plus the existence of a tomb of “Thucydides

,son

of Olorus, of the deme Hal imus, among the Kimon iangraves in Athens ; and then rebuilds from the fragments one small W igwam which he considers safe— theconclusion

,namely

,that Praxiphanes , a disciple of

Theophras tus and a first-rate authority, had said thatThucydides

,together with certain poets

,l ived at the court

of Archelaus of Macedon. The argument is supportedby Thucydides’s own remarks ( i i. 1 0 0 ) about that kingimproving the country in the way of organisation androad-making “more than all the eight kings before h im

together .

”But it has led irresistibly to a further con

clus ion .

1 Not only did Praxiphanes say this, but wecan find where he said it : it was in h is dialogue About

That spoils al l . The scenes in dialoguesare

,even in Plato’s hands

,admittedly unhistoric ; after

Plato’s death they are the merest imaginary conversations ; so that our one W igwam collapses almost as soonas it is buil t. One corner of it only remains.The dialogue

,in discussing the merits of history and

poetry—Aristotle had pronounced poetry to be the‘ more philosophic ’— pits Thucydides

,the truthful h is

torian,alone against five poets of different kinds ; and

we can probably guess what the decis ion/

was,from the

fragmentary sentence which states that “ in h is lifetime

Thucy dides was mos tly unknown,but valued bey ond p rice

3

1 Hirze l in Hermes xiii.


That,then

,is one new fact about Thucydides

,and it

is l ike th e others. His personal hopes were blightedin 423 ; his political and public ideals slowly brokenfrom 4 14 to 404. And the man’s greatness comes outin the way in which he remains faithful to h is ideal ofhis tory. He records with the same slow unsparing detail,the same convincing truthfulness

,al l the tr iumphs and

disasters—his own failure and exile,the awful story of

Syracuse,the horrors of the ‘ Stas eis

,

’ the moral poisonof the war-sp irit throughout Greece

,even the inward

humil iations and exacerbated tyranny of her who wasto have been the Philosopher-Princess among nations .Our conception

,

‘ the Peloponnesian War,

’ we oweto Thucydides . There are in it three dis tinct wars andeight years of unreal peace. The peace after the firstwar was followed by an all iance

,and it looked as if

the next disturbance in the air of Hellas would findAthens and Sparta arrayed as al lies against some Thebano r Argive coalition. Thucydides was stil l working athis record of the Ten Years’War when fresh hos til itiesbroke out in Sicily

,and he turned his eyes to them .

The first war is practical ly complete in our book. TheSicilian Expedition (vi., vii .) is practical ly finished

,too

,

in itself,though not ful ly brought into its place in the

rest of the history. I t has a separate introduction ; itexplains who Alcibiades is

, as though he had not beenmentioned before it repeats episodes from the accountof the Ten Years War

,or refers to it as to a separate

book. As the Sicil ian War drew on,Thucydides real ised

what perhaps few men could see at the time,the real

oneness of the whole series of events . He collectedthe materials for the time of peace and partly shapedthem into history (v. 26 to end) he collected most of the



Sometimes the speakers are vaguely given in the plural‘the Corinthians sa id —that is, the political situation

is put in the form of a speech or Speeches Showingvividly the way in which different parties conceived it.

A notable instance is the imaginary dialogue betweenthe Athenians and the Melians, showing dramaticallyand with a deep

,though perhaps over- coloured

,char

acterisation the attitude of mind in which the war- partyat Athens then faced their problems.This is at fir st sight an odd innovation to be intro

duced by the great realist in history. He warns usfrankly

,however. I t was hard for him or his informants

to remember exactly what the various speakers had said .

He has therefore given the speeches which he thoughtthe s ituation demanded

,keeping as close as might be to

the actual words used ( i. I t is a hazy description .

He hims elf would not have liked it in Herodotus ; andthe practice was a fatal legacy to two thousand yearsof history-writing after him . But in h is own cas e wehave seen why he did it

,and there is li ttle doubt that

he has done it with extraordinary effect. There isperhaps noth ing in l iterature l ike his power of halfpersonifying a nation and lighting up the big lines ofits character. The most obvious cases are actual description s, such as the contrast betw een Athens andSparta drawn by the Corinthians in I.

,or the picture

of Athens by Pericles in I I . ; but there is dramaticpersonation as well

,and one feels the national ity of

various anonymous speakers as one feels the personalcharacter of Nikias or Sthenelatdas or Alcibiades. I twould be hard to find a clearer or more convincingaccount of confl icting policies than that given in thespeeches at the beginning of the war.

THE SPEECHES IN THUCYDIDES 1 8 7

Of course we should have preferred a verbatim re

port ; and of course Thucydides’s practice wants a

Thucydides to j ust ify it. But if we compare thesespeeches with the passages in VI I I . where he has givenus the same kind of matter in indirect form

, one in

clines to th ink that the artificial and fictitious speechis the clearer and more ultimately adequate. The factis that in his ideal of history Thucydides was almostas far from Polybius as from Herodotus. Carefulness and truth

,of course, come absolutely first

,as

with Polybius. Of the things done in the war”

(asdistinguished from the speeches)

“ l have not thought

fit to write from casual informa tion nor according to any

notion of my own . Pa rts I saw my self ; for the res t,

which I lea rned from others,I inquired to the fulness

of my power about every deta il. The truth was ha rd

to find, because eye-w itnes ses of the same events spoke

difi'

erently as their memories or their sympa thies va ried.

The book w ill perhaps seem dull to lis ten to,because there

is no my th in it. But if those who w ish to look a t the

truth about wha t happened in the wa r,and the pas sages

like it which a re sure according to man 's na ture to recur

in the future,j udge my work to be us eful, I sha ll be conten t.Wha t I have w ritten is a th ing to pos sess and keep alway s ,

not a performancefor pas s ing en terta inment.”

He seeks truth as diligently and relentless ly as amodern antiquary who has no obj ect for concealment or exaggeration . But his aim is a different one .He is not going to provide material

”

for his readersto work upon. He is going to do the whole work himself— to be the one j udge of truth, and as such to givehis results in artistic and final form

,no evidence

produced and no source quoted. A significant point,


perhaps,is h is use of documents on the one hand and

speeches on the other. Speaking roughly, one may

say that in the finished parts of his work there are nodocuments ; in the unfinished there are no speeches .With regard to the speeches the case is clear. Nearlyal l bear the marks of being written after the end of

the war. The unfinished E ighth Book has not a singlespeech the unfinished part of Book V. only the MelianDialogue.With the documents there is more room for doubt ;but the point is of great inner significance. Of the ninedocuments embodied verbatim in the text, three are inthe notoriously unfinished E ighth Book ; three are inthat part of Book V. which deals with the interval ofpeace ; three—a Truce

,a Peace

,and an All iance, between

Athens and Sparta— belong to the finish of the TenYears’ War. Now

,it can be made out that thes e last

three come from Attic,not Spartan

,originals that they

were not acces sible to the exile ti l l h is return in 40 3,and that such information as he had of them throughthird persons was not correct. Where they stand inthe text they are inorgan ic. The narrative has beenwritten without knowledge of them ; in one case itcontradicts them . The Truce shows that a separatetruce had been made between Athens and Troezen

,

not mentioned in the text. The Peace differs fromthe narrative about Pteleon and Sermylia, and im

plies that Athens had recovered the towns in Chalci

dice. The Al l iance does not contain any clause bindingAthens and Sparta to make no separate alliance exceptby mutual consent

,though the surrounding narrative

both implies and states that it did (v. 39, Thneydides

’

s documents have all been added to the text after



able omissions. His account of the tribute is obscurefor want of detail. He says Thera was not in the

Empire in 432, and does not explain how she came tobe paying tribute in He says l ittle about treatiesand proposals of peace

,l ittle of finance, l ittle ofAthenian

political development or military organisation . There isnot so much ‘ background

,

’ to use Mr. Forbes’s word,to his h istory as to that of Herodotus. But the com

parative fulness of Book I . in such matters is perhapsan indication of what the rest would eventual ly havebecome.Thucydides’s style as it stands in our texts is an extraordinary phenomenon . Undeniably a great style, terse,res trained, vivid, and leaving the impres sion of a powerful intellect. Undeniably also an artificial style, obscureamid its vividness

,archaistic and poetic in vocabulary

,

and apt to run into verbal flourishes which seem to havel ittle thought behind them. Part of th is is expl icableenough . He writes an art ificial semi- I onic dialect

, fin;

for h erd, nu for s'

i w, n pdo

-aw for n pci

'rrw. The literary

tradition explains that. Literature in Greek has alwaysa tendency to shape itself a language of its own . He isoverladen with antith eses

,he instinctively sees th ings

in pairs ; so do Gorgias and Antiphon . He is fondof distinguishing between synonyms ; that is the effectof Prodicus . He is always inverting th e order of hiswords, throwing separate details into violent relief,which makes it hard to see the whole chain ofthought. This is evidently part of the man’s peculiarnature . He does it far more than Antiphon and Gorgias

,

more even than Sophocles. His own nature,too

,is

responsible for the crowding of matter and thought that

TEXT OF THUCYDIDES 1 9 1

one feels in reading him—the new idea,the new logical

distinction,pres s ing in before the old one is comfortably

disposed of. He is by nature ‘S emper ins tans s ibi’

(Quintil ian). A certain freedom in grammar is common toall Greek

,probably to all really thoughtful and vivid

,

writers abstract singular nouns with plural verbs,slight

anacolutha,intell igib le compressions of speech . Butwhat

is not explicable in Thucydides is that he should havefal len into the intermittent orgies of ungrammatical andunnatural language

,the disconcerting trails of comment

and explanation,which occur on every third page.

Not explicable if true ; but is it true ? The answersarise in a storm.

“No ; our text is utterly corrupt.”

“ I t is convicted of gross mistakes by contemporaryinscriptions . I t is ful l of glosses. I t has been fi l ledwith cross - references and explanatory interpolationsdur ing its . long use as a school-book.

” “ I ntentionalforgers in late times have been at it ” (Cob et, Rutherford) . One of them was bloodthirsty

,

’ and one talked‘ l ike a cretin (Mul ler-Strub ing) . Nay

,th e work itse lf

being notoriously unfinished,it was edited after the

author’s death by another ” (Wilamow itz) or by variousothers

,who interpolated so freely

,and found the MSS .

in such a state of confusion,that the “ unity of author

ship is as hopelessly lost in the Thucydidean questionas in the Homeric ” (Schwartz) .Against th is onslaught

,it is not surpris ing that the

average scholar has taken refuge in deafnes s,or looked

on w ith sympathetic hope while Herbst does his magn ificent gladiator-work in defence of everything that hebel ieved in the happy sixties— the time

,as he says plain

tively, when he felt, in opening his Thucydides, thathe was “ resting in Abraham’s bosom. I t is not sur


pris ing that conservative editors have even adopted theextraordinary theory—merely in defence against the deveIOpment theories of Ullrich, Kirchhoff, and Cwiklinski—that Thucydides did not write a word between 432

and 404, and then apparently did the whole book at a

Sitt ing.

This is not the place to discuss the text, except inthe broadest manner, and for the sake of its s ign ifi

cance in the history of l iterature and in our conceptionof Thucydides. I n th e first place

,the gen eral line of

Cobet followed by Rutherford, that the text is largelydefaced by adscripts and glosses

,and that Thucydides

,

a trained styl ist at a time when style was much studied,

did not,in a work which took twenty- nine years’ writing

,

mix long passages of masterly expression with Shortones of what looks l ike gibberish—thus much seemsmorally certain. The mere comparison of the existingMSS . and the study of Thucydides’s manner Show it.But that takes us very little way. Dr. Rutherford’svaluable edition of Book IV.

,attempting to carry th ese

results to a logical conclus ion,has produced a text

which hardly a dozen scholars in Europe would accept.We can see that the original wording has been tamperedwith ; we can see to a certain extent the l ines of thetampering . We cannot from that res tore the original .But we have some concrete facts by which to estimateour tradition. We have part of the original text of on eof Thucydides’s documents extant on an Attic stone .1 Wehave some significant quotations in the late geographerStephen of Byzantium.

The inscription,according to Kirchhoff

,taking the

twenty -five l ines alone,but allowing for restorations

,

1 The treaty , Thuc. v. 47=C. I. A. iv. 46 6.



course he cannot have known by his own wits. I nanother passage ( i i i. where our text says thatOlpae, a place on the extreme border of Acarnan ia

towards Amph ilochia, was“the common tribunal of the

Acarnanians , Stephen quotes it as“of the Aca rnan ians

and Amphilochians ,” which is j ust what its position

demands.The upshot of this is that all criticism of Thucydidesmus t recognise the demons trable imperfection of our

text. For instance,in the well-known Mitylenaean

s tory,when the As sembly has condemned the whole

military population to death in a moment of passion ,repented the same day

,and

,by the tremendous ee t ion

of the galley- rowers who bore the reprieve, saved them,

it proceeds to condemn and execute the ringleaders ofthe rebell ion

,thosemos tguilty .

”They numbered ra ther

more tha n 1 0 0 0”

( i i i . I s that number remotelycredible ? There is nothing in which MSS . are soutterly untrustworthy as figures

,the Greek numeral

system lending itself so eas ily to enormous mistakes .The ringleaders were in Athens at the time. I t was adeliberate execution of prisoners

,not a hot-blooded

massacre ; and nobody, either in Thucydides or forcenturies after him, takes the least notice of it ! DiodOrus

,with his Thucydides before him

,makes Hermo

crates of Syracuse deliver a speech upon all the crimesof Athens ; he tells of many smaller things ; he tel lsof the cruel decis ion of the first Assembly and of theenormity which the Athenians thought of committingand omits to mention that they executed 1 0 0 0 of theirsubj ects in cold blood. I t is clear that DiodOrus didnot read our story. I t all rests on the absolute correctn es s of the figure a ; and our editors cry aloud andI

EXAMPLES or PROBABLE CORRUPTION 1 95

out themselves with knives rather than admit that the acan possibly be wrong 11

I n the same way,in i. 51 our text can be checked

by a contemporary inscription .

2 The stone agreesexactly with Thucydides in the names of the firstset of generals mentioned ; in the second it gives“Glaukon (Metage)nés and Our textgives Glaukon

,son of Leagros ; Andokide

‘

s,son of Leo

’

goras—that is

,Andokidés the orator. I s this a mere

mistake of the historian’s ? Not necessari ly . Supposethe owner of some copy in which there was a blot or atear was not sure of the form ‘ Leagros

’

;“ Ledgoras,

”

he would reflect,

“ is a real name ; Andokidés was sonof a LeOgoras . Hence enters the uninvited orator andousts the two real but illegib le names. Someth ing of

that sort is far more likely than such a mis take on thepart of Thucydides.I n a passage at the end of Book I . where the narra

tive is easy and the style plain,the scholiast observes that

“here the lion laughs. The l ion would laugh more oftenand more pleasantly if we could only see his real expression undistorted by the accidents of tradition .

To return from this inevitable digression,we see eas i ly

how Thucydides was naturally in some antagonism toHerodotus’s whole method of viewing things. Thucydides had no supernatural actors in h is narrative. He seesno suggestion—how could he in the wrecked world thatlay before h im - of the working of a Divin e

'

Providence.

His Spirit is pos itif ; he does not speak of things heknows nothing about. He is a little sardonic about

1 Mul ler-Striibing of course thinks the passage an interpo lation . Thneydides used the decadic sys tem of numerals , not that of the Attic inscriptions.

1 C. I. A. 179.


oracles,which of course fil led the air at the time. He

instances their safe ambiguity ( i i . 17, and mentions

as a curiosity the only on e he had ever known to comedefinitely true (v. He Speaks little of persons. Herealises the influence of a great man such as Pericles, amere demagogue such as Cleon

,an unscrupulous genius

such as Alcib iades . Living in a psychological age, hestudies these men’s characters and modes of thought,studies them sometimes with vivid dramatic personation ,in the ‘speeches and elsewhere ; but it is only the mind,never the manner or the matter

,that he cares for , and he

never condescends to gossip . He cares for great movements and organised forces. He believes above all thingsin reason

,brain-power

,intel l igence.

There is another point in which he is irritated by Herodotus . He himself was a practical and highly- trainedsoldier. Herodotus was a man of letters who knew noth ing of war except for some small I on ian skirmish ing inhis youth . Herodotus speaks of the ‘regiment of Pitané

,

’

showing that he thought Spartan regiments were raisedby localities it makes Thucydides angry that a professedhistorian should not know better than that.1 Except intopography

,which is always difficult before the era of

maps,Thucydides is very clear and pointed in his

mil itary matters ; and it is interesting to observe thathe lays his hand on almost all the weaknesses of Greekmilitary organisation which were gradually made clearby experience in the times after him . I n the Peloponnes ian War the whole strength of the land army wasin the heavy infantry. Thucydides shows the helplessness of such an army against adequate light infantry.11

lph icrates and Xenophon learned the lesson . He shows



in h is reckoning, but he could not foresee th e plague, norbe responsible for the abandonment of his pol icy afterhis death . I t is very remarkable, indeed, how Thucydidesnever expresses a personal j udgment which could be deduced from the facts he has given. He only speaks whenhe thinks the facts l ikely to be misinterpreted. Cleon

’

s

undertaking ( iv. 28) to c apture Sphactéria in less thantwenty days was fulfi lled. I t was nevertheless an insaneboast, says Thucydides. At the end of the Sicil ian Ex

pedition , we are full of admiration for Demosthenes ;our pity for Nikias is mingled with i rritation

,and even

contempt. Thucydides sobers us : “Of all the Greeks ofmy time, he leas t deserved so miserable an end

, for he

lived in the performa nce of all tha t was coun ted virtue”

(vii. Generous praise ; but the man’s l imitations

are given all tha t was counted virtue.” We should

never have discovered this about Nikias from the merehistory. But Thucydides knew the man ; is perfectly,almost cruelly

,frank about him ; and that is Thucy

dides’

s final j udgment. I t is the same with Antiphon .

He is a sinis ter figure he was responsible for a reignof terror. But Thucydides

,who knew him

,admired

him,while he deliberately recorded the ful l measure

of h is offences . Macch iavelli’

s praise of Caesar Borgiasuggests itself. Antiphon’s dpe'rrj was perhaps ratherlike Borgia

’

s Virtu,and Macchiavell i had a great ideal

for I taly,something l ike th at of Thucydides for Athens.

Or one might th ink of Philippe de Commines’ praiseof Louis X I. But Thucydides

,though in intellect not

unl ike these two, is a much bigger man than De Commines

,a much saner and fuller man than Macchiavell i

,

and a much nobler man than either. He is very charyofmoral j udgments

,but surely it needs some blindnes s

CHARACTERI STICS OF THUCYDIDES 199

in a reader not to feel the implication of a very earnestmoral standard all through. I t has been s aid that heattributes only selfish motives even to h is best actors,a wish for glory to Bras idas , a desire to escape punishment to Demosthenes. But he seldom mentions personal motives at all

,and when such motives do force

the ir way into h istory they are not generally unselfish .

He certainly takes a high standard of patriotism forgranted. One would not be surprised

,however, to

learn that Thucydides’s Speculative ethics found a difficulty in the conception of a strictly unselfish action.

Of course Thucydides is human he need not alwaysbe right. For ins tance

,the ‘Arch ae ologia,

’

or introduc

tion to ancient history in Book I., is one of the mosts triking parts of his whole work. For historical imagination, for breadth of insight, it is probably without aparallel in l iterature before the time of the Encyclopedistes ; and in method it is superior even to them .

Nevertheless it is clear that Thucydides does not reallyunderstand Myth. He treats it merely as distortedhistory

,when it often has no relation to h istory . Given

Pelops and Ion and Hellén,his account is luminous ;

but he is sti l l in the stage of treating these conceptionsas real men .

Of course in the ‘Archaeologia’ there is no room for

party Spirit ; but even where there is, the essentialfairness and coolness of the writer’s mind remain un

broken . He is often attacked at the present day. But

the main facts— that most antiquity took him as a type offair-mindedness

,while some thought h im philo-Spartan

and some philo-Athenian that Plato and Aristotle censured him for being too democratic, while his modernopponents complain that he is not democratic enough


speak volumes. His own pol itics are clearly moderate .The time when Athenian political affairs pleased himbest

,he tells us—not counting, presumably, the excep

tional ‘ Greatest-Man-Rule ’

of Pericles—was during thefirst months of the Restored Constitution in 4 1 1 . I t wasa fa ir combina tion of the rights of the Few a nd the .Many .

” 1

He seems to be a man with strong personal opinions, anda genius for putting them aside while writing narrative .His reference to ‘

a certa in’

Hyperbolus (vii i. 73)—whenHyperbolus had been for some time the most prominentpolitician in Athens— is explicable when one real ises thath is h istory was addressed to thewhole Greek world, whichneither knew nor cared about Athenian internal politics.The contemptuous condemnation of the man which follows

,is written under the influence of the Spirit current

in Athens at the end of the century. His tone aboutCleon is certainly suggestive of personal feel ing. But thesecond introduction of him 2 is obviously due to someoversight either of author or scribe ; and the astounding sentence in iv. 28

, 5, becomes reasonable whenwe realise that “

the Athen ians who “ would sooner be

r id of Cleon than capture Sphacte’ria

,are obviously

the then maj ority of the Assembly,th e party of Nikias .

After all,his account o f Cleon is the least unfavourable

that we possess and if it is harsh,we should remember

that Thucydides was under a special obligation to Showthat Cleon is not Pericles.I t must be borne in mind that Thucydides returned

to Athens in 40 3 l ike a ghost from the tomb, a remnantof the old circle of Pericles. He moved among menwho were strangers to him. His spirit was one whichhad practically died out of Athens nearly a generation

1 viii. 97 ; cf. 11. 65, 5, and iii. 82, 8. 1 iv. 21 = iii. 361



firm the memory of his real city and h is leader—theman whom they called a demagogue because he wastoo great for them to unders tand ; who never took agift from any man ; who dwelt in austere supremacy ;who, if he had only l ived, or his counsels been followed,would have saved and realised the great Athens thatwas now gone from the earth . Other men of the daywrote pamphlets and arguments. Thucydides has not

the heart to argue. He has studied the earl ier and themythical times

,and prepared that marvellous introduc

tion . He has massed al l the h istory of his own daysas no man ever had massed history before . He knowsten times more than any of these writers, and he meansto know more stil l before he gives out h is book. Aboveal l

,he is going to let the truth speak for itself. No man

shall be able to contradict him,no man show that he

i s ever unfair. And he wil l clothe all h is story in wordslike the old words of Gorgias, Prodicus , Antiphon, andPericles himself. He will wake the great voices of thepast to speak to th is degenerate world .

His death came first. The book was unfinished .

Even as it s tood it was obsolete before it was published. As a chronicle it was continued by Xenophon

,

and as a manifesto on human vanity by Th eopompusbut the style and the spirit of it passed over the headsof the fourth century. Some two hundred years later

,

indeed,he began to be recognised among the learned

as the great truthful h istorian . But with in fifty yearsof h is death Ephorus had rewritten

,expanded

, popu

laris ed, and superseded him,

and left h im to wait forthe time of the archaistic revival of the old Greek literature in the days ofAugustus Caesar.

T H E D RAM A

INTRODUCTION

LOOKING at the Drama of Sophocles as a finishedproduct

,without considering its historical growth

,we

are constantly offended by what seem to be inexplicablepieces of conventionalism . From some conventionalelements, indeed, it is singularly free . There are oneor two traditional ficelles—oracles , for instance, andexposure of chi ldren ; but on the whole the play ofincident and character is as true as it is unostentatious .There is no sham heroism

,no impossible villainy

,no

maudlin sentiment. There is singular boldness andvariety of plot, and there is perfect freedom fromthose pairs of lovers who have been our tyrants sincemodern drama began .

One group of alleged conventions may be at onceset aside. We must for the present refuse to lis ten tothose who talk to us of masks and buskins and top -knotsand sacerdotal dress

,repeat to us the coarse half

knowledge of Pollux and Lucian,show us - the grotesques

of South I taly and the plasterer’s work of Pompeiandegradation

,compi le from them an incorrect account

of the half-dead Hellenistic or Roman stage —the stagethat competed with the amphitheatre —and bid usconstruct an idea of the drama of Euripides out of


the ghastly farrago. I t is one of the immediate duties

of archaeological research to set us right again wherearchaeological text-books have set us so miserably

wrong.

Stil l our undoubted literary tradition does containstrong elements of convent ional ism. The charactersare all saga-people ;1 they all speak in verse they tendto speak at equal length

,and they almost never interrupt

except at the end of a line . Last and worst, there iseternally present a chorus of twelve or fifteen homo

geneous persons—maidens, matrons, e lders, captives, orth e l ike—whose main duty is to minimis e the inconven ience of their presence during the action, and to danceand sing in a conventional Doric dialect during the intervals. The explanation of th is is, of course, historical .We have seen above (p. 99) how the Silenus- choir

of the Centaur- like fol lowers of Dionysus was mergedinto the Satyr-choir of wild mountain-goats in thesuite of the Arcadian mountain- god Pan.

‘ Tragos ’ isa goat ;

‘ tragikos choros’ a goat- choir and ‘ tragOidia

’

a goat -song. The meaning of the word onlv changedbecause the th ing it denoted changed. Tragedy developed from the Dorian goat-choirs of th e NorthernPeloponnese— those of Arion at Corinth, and of theprecursors of Pratinas at Phlius

,and those which the

tyrant Cleisthenes suppressed at Sikyon for “ celebratingthe sufferings of Adrastus.” 1

1 The bes t known exception is the An theus ’ (not Flower ) of Agathon.

Agathon left Athens (about 407) at the age of fo rty , when he had already wona position inferio r on ly to that of Sophocles and Euripides , but before his individual o rigina lity and his Socratic or P la tonic spirit had a permanent effecton the drama. Ar i stophanes had assailed him vehemen tly in the Thermo

phoriazusa and Gery tades —a testimony to his advanced spirit in art.1 Hdt. v. 67. See Pre face .



came on firs t,say

,as the King Lycurgus, let him change

his dr es s during the next song and re-enter as the priestwhom Lycurgus has scorned ; next time he may be amessenger announcing the tyrant’s death . All that isneeded is a place to dress in . A section of the rounddancing-floor is cut off ; a booth or

‘skéne

’

is erected,and the front of it made presentable .

Normally it becomes a palace with three doors for theactor-poet to go in and out of. Meantime the characterof the dancing is somewhat altered, because there is nolonger a ring to dance in the old ring-dance or cyclicchorus ’ has turned into t he ‘ square chorus of tragedy.Of course

,the choir can change costume too

Pratinas once had a choir representing Dyman ian

dancing girls. But that was a more serious business,

and seems to have required a rather curious intermediates tage . There are titles of plays, such as The Hun tsmenSaty rs ,

* Herald S a ty rs ,* Wres tler - S a ty rs .

“1 Does notth is imply 1 something l ike the h laccus a S oldier

,

Maccus an Innkeeper, of the I talian‘Atellanae

,

’ l ikeThe Dev il a Monk in English ? The actor does notrepresent a soldier simply ; he represents the old stagebuffoon Maccus pretending to be a soldier. The choirare not heralds ; they are satyrs masquerading as such .

I t is the natural end of this kind of entertainment tohave th e disguise torn off

,and the satyrs

,or Maccus

,

or the Devil,revealed in their true characters . I n

practice the tragic choirs were al lowed three changesof costume before they appeared as satyrs confessed.

That is,to use the language of a later time

,each per

fo rmance was a ‘ tetralogy '— th ree ‘ tragedies ’ (‘ little

myths,

’

Aristotle calls them by comparison with the1 W. M. Herakles, i. p. 88 .

THE STAGE AND THE ACTORS 20 7

longer plays of'

h is own day), followed by a satyricdrama. The practice did not die til l the middle periodof Eurip ides . His Cy clops is the one satyr-play extant,while his Alkes tis is a real drama acted as a concludingpiece to three tragedies.The Greek word for actor,

‘ hypocrites,

’ means ‘an

swerer.’ The poet was really the actor ; but if he

wanted to develop his solitary declamation into dialogue

,he needed some one to answer him . The chorus

was normally divided into two parts,as the system of

strophe and antistrophe testifies. The poet perhaps tookfor answerers the leaders of these two parts. At anyrate,

‘ three actors ’ are regularly found in the fullydeveloped tragedy. The old round choir cons istedof fifty dancers and a poet : the full tragic companyof forty - eight dancers

,two ‘ answerers

,

’ and a poet .That was all that the so - called ‘

choregus’

- the richcitizen who undertook the expenses of the performance— was ever bound to supply ; and mun ificent as

this functionary often was in other respects,his ‘

pa ra

choregema ta ,’

or gifts of supererogation, never took theform of a fourth actor in the proper sense . Nor didhe provide four changes of costume for the whole fortyeight dancers ; they appeared twelve at a time in thefour plays of the tetralogy . The tradition says looselythat Thespis had one actor

,fEschylus two, and Sophocles

three,though sometimes it is fE schylus who introduced

the third . As a matter of fact,it was the s tate

,not the

poet,which gave fixed prizes to the actors

,and settled

the general conduct of the Dionysus Feast. Accordingly,

when we find an ancient critic attributing particularscenic changes to particular poets

,th is as a rule only

means that the changes appeared to him to occur for


the first time in their works . A mutilated inscription 1

s eems to give us the date of some important alteration or ratification of stage arrangements. I t admittedComedy to the great D ionysia ; it perhaps establ ishedthe ‘ three actors

,

’ perhaps raised the tragic chorus fromtwelve to fifteen

,and perhaps made the palace- front

s cene a permanency. The poets tended naturally toretire from acting. E schylus ceased in his later l ife .Sophocles is said to have found his voice too weak .

The profession of actor mus t have been establishedbefore 456 B.C.

,when we firs t find the victorious

actors mentioned officially along with the poet and the‘ choregus.’

The chorus was the main substance of the tragedy .

Two main processes were needed to make a completeperformance : the ‘ choregus ’ ‘ provided a chorus

,

’ thepoet ‘ taught the chorus — those were the difficult th ings.The mere composition was a matter of deta i l

,which any

good poet was ready to do for you . All the technicalterms are formed with reference to the chorus. The‘ prologue ’ is all that comes before their entrance ; an‘ep isodion

’ is the ‘ entry to ’ the chorus of any freshcharacter ; the close of the play is an

‘ exodus,

’ becausethey then depart. But the chorus was doomed todwindle as tragedy grew. Dialogue is the essence of

drama ; and the dialogue soon became, in Aristotle’s

phrase,

‘ th e protagonist.’ We can see it developingeven in our scanty remains. I t moves from declaimedpoetry to dramatic speech ; it grows less grand andstiff

,more rapid and conversational . I t also increases

in extent. I n the Supplian ts of Ai schylus (before

470 B.C.) the chorus are rea lly the heroines of the1 C. I. A ii . 971 .



of the whole ; in the [on (414 B.C.) it is nearly half, butthe monodies and part- songs amount to half as muchagain as the Choir-songs . I n the Ores tes (40 8 B .C.) thesolo parts are three times as long as the choral parts .One apparent exception to th is rule really illustratesits meaning. The Baccha , one of the very latest plays,has a large choral element and no monodies. Why ?Because when Euripides wrote it he had migrated toMacedonia

,and apparently had not taken his operatic

actors with him . Macedonia had no drama ; but it hada l iving dithyramb with professional performers

,and it

was they who sang in the Baccha .

This upward movement of the satyr-song was due tovarious causes— to the Spiritual crises that ennobled theAthenian people to the need for some new form of artto replace the dying epos as a veh icle for the heroicsaga ; to the demand made by Dionysus-worship forthat intensity of emotion which is almost of necessitytragic. The expropriated satyrs were consigned

,with

their quaint old-world buffoonery,to a private corner at

the end of the three tragedies,and the comic element

was left to develop itsel f in a separate form of art .To us in our reflective moods comedy and tragedyseem only two sides of the same thing

,the division

between them scarcely tangible and so thought theAthens of Menander. But. historically they are ofdifferent pedigree. Tragedy Springs from th e artisticand professional choir-song ; comedy, from the mumming of rustics at vintage and harvest feasts. “ Tragedyarose from the dithyramb

,says Aristotle ;

“ comedy,

from the phall ic performances.” These were celebratedin honour of the spirits of fructification and increasein man

,beas t, or herb, which were worshipped under

ORIGINS OF COMEDY 2 1 1

various names in different parts of Greece . I t wasDionysus at Acharnae, in Rhodes, and in Delos . I twas Damia and Auxés ia in ZEgina ; Demeter and Koréin some parts of Attica ; Pan in the Northern Peloponnese . I t is always a shock to the modern imaginat ionto come upon the publ ic establ ishment of such monstrously indecent performances among a people so farmore Simple and less s elf - indulgent than ourselves .

But, apart from possible elements of unconscioushypocrisy on our own part, there are many th ingsto be borne in mind. I n dealing with those elementsin human nature which are more permanent than re

spectable, the characteristic Greek method was frankrecognition and regulation . A pent-up force becomesdangerous let al l natural impulses be given free play insuch ways and on such occasions as will do least damage .There were the strictest laws against the abuse of thesefestivals

,against violence

,against the undue participation

of the young but there was, roughly speaking, no Shameand no secrecy. We have, unfortunately, lost Aristotle

’sphilosophy 0 1 comedy. I t was in the missing part of th ePoetics . But when he explains the moral basis of tragedyas being “ to purge our minds of their vague impulses ofpity and terror ” by a strong bout of these emotions ;when he j ustifies ‘ tumultuous ’ music as affording a‘ purgation ’ of the wild emotional element in our

nature which might else break out in what he calls‘enthous iasmos

’

; it is easy to see that the licences incomedy might be supposed to effect a more obviousand necessary purgation .

1 Bes ides this,we must not

1 The definition in frag. 3, Vah len , says this directly : 175m, andare to be so purged by comedy.

”But is the whole passage a genuine quota

tion, or is it rather a deduction ofAr is totle’s views ?


forget that there was always present in Greece anactive protest against these performances ; that evenabsolute asceticism was never without its apostles ;and

,lastly

,that where religion gives sanctity to a bad

custom it palsies the powers of the saner intellect.Without a doubt many a modest and homely priestessof Dionysus must have believed in the beneficial effectsboth here and hereafter of these ancient and symbol icalprocessions.One of the characteristics of the processions was

‘

pa rrhes ia’

(‘ free and it remained the proud

privilege of comedy . You mocked and insulted freely

on the day of special l icence any of those persons towhom fear or good manners kept you silent in ordinarylife . I n some of the proces sions this privilege was specially granted to women . As soon as comedy began to beseriously treated

,the central point of it lay in a song

,

written and learned,in which the choir

,acting merely

as the mouthpiece of the poet, addres sed the public on

‘ topical ’ subj ects. This became the ‘

pa rabas is’ of the

full-grown comedy. For the rest, the germ of comedy isa troop of mummers at the feast of Dionysus or somesimilar god

,who march with flute and pipe

,sing a

phall ic song,and amuse the onlookers with improvised

buffoonery . They are unpaid, unauthorised. I t was nottill about 465 B .C. that public recognition was given tothe ‘ kbmoi

,

’ or revel-bands,and ‘komoidia

’ allowed tostand by the side of ‘

tragoidia .

’ I t came first at theLenaea, afterwards at other Dionysiac festivals . But itwas not ti l l the beginning of the Peloponnesian War thattwo gifted young writers

,Eupolis and Ar is tophane s ,

eventually gave the Old Comedy an artis tic form,wove

the isolated bits of farce into a plot,and more or less



PHRYNICHUS, SON OF POLYPHRADMON (fl. 494 B.C.)

The leas t shadowy among the pre-AEschylean drama

tists is PHRYNICHUS. Tradition gives us the names of

nine of h is plays, and tel ls us that he used the trochaictetrameter in his dialogue

,and introduced women’s

parts . We hear that he made a play on the Capture

of M z

'

létus ;* that a fine was put on him for doing so

,

and notice issued that the subj ect must not be treatedagain . The fal l of Miletus was a national grief, andperhaps a disgrace at any rate, it involved party politicsof too extreme a sort. Ph ryn ichus had better fortunewith h is other play from contemporary history

,the

Phoen is sa ; i ts chorus representing the wives of Xerxes’

Phoenician sailors,and its Opening scene the king’

s

council-chamber,with the elders waiting for news of

the great war. He won the prize that time, and probablyhad for ‘choregus ’ Themis tocles himself, the real, thoughof course unmentioned

,hero of the piece. I t is the

lyr ics that we most regret to have lost, the quaintobsolete songs still hummed in the days of the Peloponn es ian War by the tough old survivors of Marathon,who went about at unearthly hours of the morn ing

Lights in their hands, oldmus ic on their lips ,I/Vild honey and the Eas t and loveliness .”1

A certain grace and tenderness suggested by our remainsof Phryn ichus enable us to real ise how much [Eschylus

’

s

grand s tyle is due to h is own character rather than to theconditions of th e art in his time though it remains truethat the Persian War did for tragedy what the Migrationsseem to have done for Homer

,and that Phryn ichus and

ZEschylus are both of them‘men of Marathon.

’

1 Aris toph . Vesp. 220 .

E S C H Y LU S

E SCHYLUS, SON OF EUPHORION, FROM ELEUSIS(525—456 B-C.)

z‘ESCI—IYLUS was by birth an Eupatrid

, of the old

nobil ity. He came from E leusis,the seat not only of

the Demeter Mysteries,but also of a special worsh ip

of Dionysus-Zagreus,and close to Thespis’s own deme

Icaria. We hear that he began writing young ; but hewas called away from his plays, in 490 , to fight atMarathon

,where his brother Kynégeirus met a heroic

death,and he won his firs t victory in the middle of the

nine years of peace which followed Four yearslater he j oined in the general exodus to the ships andSalamis

,leaving the stones of Athens for the barbarians

to do their will upon . These were years in whichtragedies and big thoughts might Shape themselves inmen's minds . They were not years for much actualwriting and play - acting . I n 476 fESChylus seems tohave been at the wars in Thrace ; we have echoes ofthem in the Ly curgus

* Trilogy and in the Persa (esp.

Soon after that again he was in Syracuse,perhaps

on a diplomatic mission, and wrote his Women of Etna ,*

in honour of the town of that name which Hiero had

just founded (476—475) on the s lopes of the mountain .

From 484 onwards he was probably the chief figure215


in Attic letters ; though his old rivals Pratinas and

Phryn ichus, and their respective sons Ar istias and

Polyphradmon,among others, doubtless won prizes

over h is head from time to time,and

,for all we know,

deserved them . The earl iest play we possess is the

Supplian t Women ; the earl iest Of known date is thePersa

,which won the first prize in 472.

I n 470 he was again in Syracuse, and again thereason is not stated

,though we hear that he repro

duced the Persa there . I n 468 he was beaten for thefirst time by the young Sophocles. The next year hewas again V ictor with the S even aga ins t Thebes . Wedo not know the year of his great Prometheus Tri logy,but it and the Ly kurgeia

1‘ seem to have come after this .His last victory of all was the Ores teia (Agamemnon,Choephoroi, and Eumen ides) in 458 . He was again inSicily after th is - the l ittl e men of the Decadence suggest that he was j ealous of Sophocles’s V ictory of tenyears back l—and died suddenly at Gela in 456. Hisplays went in and out of fash ion at Athens, and acertain party l iked to use him chiefly as a stick forbeating Euripides ; but a special law was passed afterhis death for the reproduction of his tragedies, and hehad settled into h is definite place as a class ic before thetime of Plato. The celebrated bronze statue of him wasmade for the stone theatre bui lt by Lycurgus about 330 .

The epitaph he is said to have written for his tombat Gela is characteristic : no word of h is poetry ; onlytwo lines

,after the neces sary detai ls of name and birth

place , tell ing how the“grove of Ma ra thon can bear w itness

to his good s oldierhood,and the long

-ha ired Mede who feltit. I t is very possible that the actual facing of deathon that first great day remained with h im as the supreme



of the Argonaut legend, who probably prophesied someth ing about the greater confl ict between Europe andAsia

,of which that expedition was a type. The th ird

was Glaucus f‘ but there were two pieces of that name,

and the plot is not certain . The Persce itself is modelledon the Phcen is sw " of Ph ryn ichus : the opening wordsof the two are almost identi cal

,and the scene in both

is in the council-chamber of Susa,though in the

Persee i t afterwards changes to the tomb of Darius.The Persce has not much plot- interest in the ordinarysense ; but the heavy brooding of the first scenes,the awful flashes of truth

, the evocation of the old

blameless King Darius, who had made no Persiansweep, and his stern prophecy of the whole disaster tocome

,all have the germ of high dramatic power : one

feels the impression made by “the many a rms and many

sh ips , and the sweep of the cha riots of Sy ria ,” both in the

choir-songs and in the leaping splendour of the description s of battle. The external position of the Persaas the first account of a great piece of history by agreat poet who had himself helped to make the history,renders it perhaps unique in l iterature ; and its beautyis worthy of its eminence.The Seven aga ins t Thebes came th ird in the tr ilogyafter the La ius

“ and the G dzpus .

’ One old versionof the saga allowed (Edipus to put away Iocasta afterthe discovery of their relationship

,and marry Eury

gane ia ; there was no sel f-blinding, and the childrenwere Euryganeia’s. But Ai schylus takes the story inthe more gruesome form that we all know. The S even

gives the siege of Thebes by the exi led Polyneikes, thebattle

,and mutual slaying of the two brothers. I t was

greatly admired in antiquity “a play full of Ares

,

THE SEVEN . THE PROMETHEIA 2 1 9

tha t made every one who saw it w ish forthw ith to be

a‘fiery foe,

’ as Aristophanes puts it (Rana,

The war atmosphere is convincing,the characters plain

and strong. Yet,in spite of a certain brill iance and

force,the S even is perhaps among Ai schylean plays

the one that bears least the stamp of commandinggenius. I t is l ike the good work of a lesser man .

Very different is the Prometheus , a work of the sameperiod of transition as the Seven, and implying theuse of three actors in the prologue, as the S even

probably does in the ‘ exodus.’ The trilogy seemsto have consisted of Prometheus Bound

,Prometheus

Freed,

* and Prometheus the Fire-Carrier .

* The subj ectis Titanic ; it needs a vast and

‘ winged ’ imagination .

But it h as produced in the hands of [Es chylus andof Shelley two of the greatest of mankind’s dramaticpoems . Prometheus is the champion of man agains tthe Tyrant Power that sways the world . He hassaved man from the destruction Zeus meant for him

,

taught h im the arts of civil isation, and, type of allelse

,given him fire

,which was formerly a divine

thing stored in heaven . For this rebellious love ofmankind he is nailed to a storm- riven rock of theCaucasus ; but he is not conquered, for, in the firstplace, he is immortal, and besides he knows a secreton which the future of heaven and earth depends.Zeus tries by threats and tortures to break him

,but

Prometheus will not forsake mankind. And thedaughters of Ocean

,who have gathered to comfort

h im,will not forsake Prometheus. They face the

same blasting fire,and sink with h im into the abyss.

There is action at the beginning and end of the play ;the middle part

,representing

,apparently

,centuries


rather than days,is taken up with long narratives of

Prometheus to the Oceanides, with the fruitless interces sion of Oceanus himself

,and the strange entry of

another V ictim of Zeus,the half-mad Moon-maiden Io

,

driven by the gadfly, and haunted by the ghost of thehundred—eyed Argos. The chorus of the Prometheus

is perhaps in character and dr amatic fitness the mostbeautiful and satis fying known to us on the Greekstage . The songs give an expression of Weltschmerz

for which it would be hard to find a paralle l be forethe present century . The whole earth is in travail asPrometheus suffers : There is a cry in the waves of the

sea a s they fall together, and groan ing in the deep a wa il

up from the cavern realms of Dea th,and the sp rings

of the holy rivers s ob w ith the anguish of p ity I nanother place the note is more personal : “Nay ,

th ine

was a hopeles s sacr ifice, 0 beloved; speak— wha t help sha ll

there be, and whereP Wha t succour from things of a day P

Didst thou not see the little-doing, s trengthless , dream-like,

wherein the blind race of man is fetteredP Never,never

shallmortal couns els outpass the grea t Harmony of Zeus l

Zeus is irresistible : those who obey him have peaceand happiness such as the Ocean-Daughters once hadthemselves . Yet they feel that it is better to rebel.There is perhaps no piece of lost literature that hasbeen more ardently longed for than the Prometheus

Freed.

* What reconcil iation was possible One can seethat Zeus is ultimately j ustified in many th ings. For

instance,the apparently aimless persecution of 10 leads

to great results,among them the birth of Heracles, who

is another saviour of mankind and the actual de livererof Prometheus . Again

,it seems that Prometheus does

not intend to overthrow the ‘ New Tyrant,’ as Shelley’s



moving ; there is a definite plot by which the ministers

of vengeance enter the palace ; there is great boldnessof drawing in all the characters down to the patheticand ludicrous old nurse ; there is the haunting shadowof madness looming over Orestes from the outset, anddeepening through the hours that the matricide is b efore h im and the awful voice of Apollo in his ears

,

and he struggles helplessly between two horrors,up

to the moment when his mother's curses take visibleform to him

,and he fl ies from the grey snake- locked

faces.The Eumen ides is dramatic in its opening, merelyspectacular in its close . There is a certain grandeurin the trial scene where Orestes is accused by theCurse-Spirits

,defended by Apol lo

,and acquitted by

the voice of Athena. The gods, however, are broughttoo close to us

,and the foundation of the Areopagus

has not for us the religious reality it had for E schylus .

But the thing that most disappoints us,the gradual

slackening of the interest ti l l the ‘ pity and terror ’

melt away in gentle artistic pleasure,was

,as every

choric ode and most tragedies testify,one of the

essential principles of Greek art. Shakespeare was withthe Greeks. He ends his tragedies by quiet scenesamong minor characters

,and his sonnets with a calm

general ising couplet. We end our plays with a point,

and our sonnets with the weightiest l ine .

The general spirit of {Eschylus has been much misunde rstood

,owing to the external c ircumstance that h is

l ife came at the beginning of an age of rapid progress .

The pioneer of 490 is mis taken for a reactionary of 404.zEschylus is in thought generally a precursor of the

- THE GENERAL SPIRIT OF lESCHYLUS 223

sophis tic movement,as Euripides is the outcome of it.

He is an enthusias tic democrat of the early type . Listento the paeans about freedom in the Persoz. That is thevery spirit recorded by Herodotus as having madeAthens rise from a commonplace I onian sta te to bethe model and the leader of Hellas. And the Persa isnot isolated . The king in the Suppliants is almostgrotesquely constitutional ; the Prometheus abounds inprotests against despotism that breathe the trueAthenian spirit ; a large part of the Agamemnon is amerciless condemnation of the ideal of the conqueringmonarch . I n the Eumen ides , it is true, Ai schylus defin itely glorifies the Areopagus at a time when Bphialtes and Pericles were removing most of its j urisdiction .

He was no opponent of Pericles,who was his ‘choregus

,

’

at leas t once 1 but he was on e of the men of 490 . To

that generation, as Aristotle’s Cons titution has taught us,

the Areopagus was the incarnation of free Athens inbattle agains t Pers ia to the men of 460 it was an ob so

lete and anomalous body.As to the religious orthodoxy of ZEs chylus, it appearscertain that he was prosecuted for having divulged orotherwise offended against the mysteries

,which suggests

that he was obnoxious to the orthodox party. We maypossibly accept the s tory

,stated expressly by Clement

,

and implied by Aris totle ( 1 1 1 1 a ), that he escaped byproving that he had not been in itiated, and consequentlyhad nothing to divulge . For a distinguished E leusiniannot to have been initiated— if credible at all—wouldimply something like an anti- s acerdotal bias . Certainlyhe seems to have held no pries thoods h imself

,as Sopho

cles and Pindar did ; and his his torical position may1 C. I. A. 971 .


well have been that of those patriots who could not

forgive or forget the poltroonery of Delphi before thewar (see p. However this may be

,he is in religious

thought generally the precursor of Euripides. He standsindeed at a stage where it sti ll seems possible to reconcilethe main scheme of traditional theology with moral ityand reason . Euripides has reached a further point

,

where the disagreement is seen to be beyond healing.

Not to Speak of the Prometheus,which is certainly sub

versive,though in detail hard to interpret

,the man who

speaks of the cry of the robbed birds being heard by“some Apollo, some Pan or Zeus

”

(Ag. who praysto Zeus

,whoe

’

er he be”

( 1 60 ) who avows“there is no

power I can find, though I s ink my plummet through all

being, excep t only Zeus,if I would in very truth cas t ofi

’

th is a imless burden of my hea rt”— is a long way from

Pindaric po lytheism. He tries more definitely to gropehis way to Zeus as a Spirit of Reason

,as opposed to the

blind Titan forms of Hes iodic legend.

“Lo,therewas one

grea t of y ore, swollen w ith s trength and lus t of ba ttle, y et it

sha ll not even be s a id of h im tha t once he was And he

who came thereafter met his conqueror, and is gone. Call

thou on Zeus by names of Victory . Zeus,who made

for Man the road to Thought, who s tablished ‘Lea rn by

Suf ering’

to be an abiding Law That is not written inthe revelations of Delphi or E leusis ; it is true humanthought grappling with mysteries. I t involves a practical discarding of polyth e ism in the ordinary s ense, anda conception—metaphorical

,perhaps

,but sugges tive of

real bel ief— of a series of ruling spirits in the governmentof the world—a long strife of diverse Natural Powers ,culminating in a present universal order based on reason,l ike the pol itical order which fEschylus had seen estab



against which human nature battles ; and the overthrow o i the Great King was the one thought thatwas in every Greek mind at the time. Thus the perilof human ‘ Hubris ’ and the ‘ j ealousy of God —i.e.

the fact that man’s will aims further than his powercan reach—is one rather conspicuous princip le inE schylus .

Another is a conviction of the inevitableness of thingsnot fatal ism,

nor any approach to it,in the vulgar

sense,but a reflection that i s borne in on most people

in considering any grave calamity , that it is the naturalconsequence of many th ings that have happened before.The crimes in E schylus are hereditary in two senses .I n the great saga-houses of Thebes and Mycenae therewas actually what we should call a ta int of criminalmadness —it is brought out most explicitly in Euripides’sElectra . Orestes was the son of a murderess and aman who had dealt much in blood (n okvrcrbvos) . Hisancestors had been proud and turbulent Chieftains

,

whose passions led them easily in to crime . But thecrime is hereditary in itself also . The one wild blowbrings and always has brought the blow back

,

“ th e

ancient blinded vengeance and th e wrong that amendethwrong. This

,most people will admit

,is a plain fact ;

of course the poet puts it in a mystical or symbol icalform . The old blood remains fresh on the ground

,

crying for other blood to blot it out. The deed ofwrong begets ch ildren in its own likenes s. The firstsin produces an ‘Ara

,

’ a Curse- Spirit, which broodsover the scene of the wrong, or over the heart andperhaps the race of the sinner. How far this i s metaphor, how far actual belief, is a problem that we cannotat present answer.

CHARACTERI STICS OF ZESCHYLUS 227

This chain of thought leads inevitably to the question,

What is the end of the wrong eternally avenged andregenerated ? There may of course be no end butthe extinction of the race

,as in the Theban Tr ilogy ;

but there may come a point where at last Law or justicecan come in and pronounce a final and satisfying word.

Reconcil iation is the end of th e Ores teia,the Prometheia

,

the Dana id Trilogy . And here,too

,we get a reflection

of the age in which [Eschylus l ived, the ass ert ion overlawless places ofAthenian civil isation and justice.I n looking over the plays and fragments as a whole

,

on e notices various marks both of the age and of theindividual . I t is characteristic of both that fE schyluswrote satyr-plays so much

,and

,it would seem

,so well .

These Titanic minds—Ai schylus and Heraclitus amongGreeks ; men like Victor Hugo and Carlyle among ourselves—are apt to be self-pleasing and weird in theirhumour. One of the really elemental j okes ofAi schylusis in the Prometheus F irekindler

,

* a satyr-play, wherefire is first brought into the world

,and the wild satyrs

go mad with love for its beauty,and burn their beards

in kissing it ! The thing is made more commonplace,though of course more comic, in the Sophoclean satyrplay Helen

’

s Ma rriage,* where they go similarly mad

about Helen . A definite mark of the age is the largenumber of dramas that take their names from the chorus

,

which was still the chief part of the play— Bassa rce,

*

Edbn i,‘ Dana ides ,

* & c. Another is the poet’s fondnessfor geographical disquisitions. Herodotus had not yetwritten

,and we know what a land of wonder the farth er

parts of the world stil l were in his time . To the Athens

ofZEschylus the geographical interest was partly of th is

imaginative sort in part it came from the impulse given


by the rise of Athens to voyages of discovery and tradeadventure. Of our extant plays , th e Prometheus is ful l ofmere declamations on saga-geography the Persa comesnext

,then the Suppliants ; and even the Agamemnon

has the account of the beacon stations. Glaucus of the

S ea,

it N iobe,* and probably the My s ians ,

“ were full ofthe same thing. The impulse did not last in Greektragedy. Sophocles has h is well-known burst of Herodotean quotation

,and he likes geogra phical epithets as a

form of ornament,but he keeps his interest in historié ’

within due limits . Eur ipides, so keenly al ive to all

other branches of knowledge,is quite indifferent to this.

I n the choice of subj ects ZEschyIus has a certa in preference for something superhuman or unearthly

,which

combines curious ly with this geographical interest. ThePrometheus begins with the words “ Lo

,we are come to

the fa rthest verge of the world,to where the Scy thia ns

wander,an unearthly desola tion . That is the region

where ZEschylus is at home, and his‘ large utterance ’

natural and unhampered. Many of his lost plays movein that realm which Sophocles only speaks of, among

The las t peaks of the world, bey ond all s eas,

Well-springs of n igh t andgleams of opened heaven ,The oldgarden of the Sun .

” 1

I t is the scene of the Daughters of the Sun ,* treating of

the fall of Phae'

thon of the S oul Weighing,‘ where Zeusbalances the fates of Hector and Achilles of the [x ion 1‘

of the zldemnon ; and the numerous plays on Dionysiacsubj ects show the same spirit.I t is partly the infancy of the art

’

and partly th e intens ity of [Eschylus

’

s genius that makes him often choosesubj ects th at have apparently no plot at all

,l ike our

1 Soph. frag. 870.



I t does somehow spoil one’s taste for twitterings. And

so,above all

,do his great dramatic speeches

,so ruggedly

grand that at first sight one is often bl ind to the keenpsychology of passion in them—for instance

,that in

which Clytaemestra gives publ ic welcome to her husband. She doeS not kn ow whether he has been toldof her unfaithfulness ; she does know that she is utterlyfriendless

,that the man whom she dreaded in her

dreams is returned,and that the las t hour for one or

other of them has come. She tries, l ike one near todeath

,to leave some statement of her case . She is near

breaking down more than once but Sh e gathers courageas she speaks, and ends in the recklessness of nervousexaltation

F reer nen of Argos, andy egathered Elders,

I shall not hold i t shame in the midst qfyou

To outspeak the lovey e well know burns w i thin me.There comes a time when allfearfades and dies .Who else can speak 1? Does any heart but mine

Know the long burden of the life I boreWh ile he was under Tray ! A lonely womanSet in a desolate house, no man

’s arm near

To lean on—Oh,

’tr‘

s a wrong to make one mad1Voices of wrath r ing ever in her ears :

Now,he is come ! A’

aw ,

’tis a messenger

And every tale worse tidi ngs tha n the las t,

Andmen’s cries loud agains t the w alls tha t hold her !

If all the wounds tha t channelled rumour boreHave reached this King’

sflesh—w hy , ’tis all a net,

A toi l of riddledmeshes Died he there

Wi th all the deaths that crowded in men’s mouths,Then is he no t some Géry on , triple-lived,Three bodied

,mons trous , to be sla in and slain

Ti ll every life be quelledP Belikey e have told him

Of my death -th irst- the rope above the lintel,And how they cut me down 1? True ’

twas those voices ,

The wrath and hatred surgi ng in mine ears .

SPEECH or CLYT/EMESTRA 23 1

Our child, s ire, is not here : I would he were

Ores tes , he who holds the hos tages

For thee andme. Yet now ise marv el at i t.

Our war -fr iend S troph ios keeps h im,who spohe much

Of blows n igh pozsed tofall,—thy daily peril,Andmany plots a trai torous falh migh t weave,1 once being weah, manlihe, to {burn thefallen.

But l—the s tormy r ivers of my griefAre quenched now a t the spr ing, and no drop left.My late-couched ey es are sea red w ith many a blight,Weeping the beaconfires tha t burnedfor theeFor ever answerless . And did sleep come,A gna t

’s th in song would shout me in my dreams ,

And star t me up seeing thee allgi rt wi th terrors

Close-crowded, and too longfor one n ight’s sleep I

And now ’tis allpas t Now wi th heart a tpeaceI ha i lmy King,my wa tch ~dog of thefoldMy shih

’s one cable of hope, my pi llarfirm

Where all else reels,my father

’s one-born heir ,

My land s carce seen a t sea when hope was dead,My happy sunr i se after nights of s torm,

My liv ing well-spring in the w ilderness

Oh, it is j oy , the wai ting time is pas tThus ,King, 1 greet thee home. No god needgrudge

Sure we have sufi'

ered in timepas t enoughThi s one day

‘s triumph . Ligh t thee, sweet my husband,

From this high sea t y et set not on bare earth

Thy foot,gr ea tKing, thefoot tha t trampled Troy lHo, thralls , why tarry y e, whose tash is set

To cmet the King’s way B r ingpr iceless crimson

Let a ll his ga th be red, andj us ticeguide him,

Who saw h is deeds, a t las t, unhopedfor, home !

S O P H O C L E S

SOPHOCLES, SON OF SOPHILLOS, FROM COLONUS(496—406 B .C.)

SOPHOCLES is formed by the legend into a figure of

ideal serenity and success. His life lay through theperiod of his country’s highest prosperity . He wastoo young to suffer much in the fl ight of 480 , and hedied j ust before Athens fell. He was rich, pious, goodlooking

,good - tempe red

,pleasure - loving

,witty

,

“ withsuch charm of character that he was loved by everybody wherever he went. He held almost the onlytwo sources of income which did not suffer from thewar—the manufacture of weapons, and the state-paiddrama . He won a prodigious number of first prizestwenty as against the five of Euripides. The fifteen of

ZEschylus were gained in times of less competi tion . Hedabbled in public life

,and

,though of mediocre practi

cal abil ity,was elected to the highes t offices of the

sta te. He was always comfortable in Athens,and had

no temptati on to console himself in fore ign courts ashis colleagues did. We may add to this that he wasan artist of the ‘ faultless ’ type

,showing but few

traces of the ‘ divine discontent.’ H is father was arich armourer, and a full citizen—not a Metoecus

’ l ikeKeph alus (p . Sophocles learned music from Lam


234 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECEunderstood about as much as the average educatedAthenian .

” I n 443 he had been Hellénotamias’

(Treasurer of the Empire) with no bad results. Hisfame and popularity must have carried real weight

, or

he would not have been one of ten Commissionersappointed after the defeat of the Sicil ian

Expedition in 41 3 . And it is significant that,when he

was prosecuted along with his colleagues for agreeing tothe Oligarchical Constitution of 41 I , he was acquitted onthe natve defence that he had really no choice l ”

An authorless anecdote speaks of some family difficulties at the end of his l ife

,attributing them to his con

n ection with an hetaira ’ named Th eoris . His legitimateson Iophon tried to get a warrant for

' administeringthe family estate, on the ground of his father’s inca

pacity . Sophocles read to the j ury an ode from theE dipus a t Colbnns , which he was then writing, and washeld to have proved thereby his general sanity ! Thestory smacks of the comic stage ; and the referencesto the poet at the time of his death, especially byAristophanes in the Frogs , and Phryn ichus, son of

Eunomides , in the Mus es,

* preclude the l ike lihood of anyserious trouble having occurred shortly before. He diedin 406, a few months after his great colleague Euripides,in whose honour he introduced his last chorus in mourning and without the usual garlands.1 H is tomb lay onthe road to Dekele ia

,and we hear that he was worshipped

as a hero under the name of Dexion’ on

the curious ground that he had in some sense ‘ received ’

the god Asclepius into h is house. He was a priest ofthe Asclepian hero Alcon

,and had built a chapel to

At the ‘

pro-agbn’

or introductory pageant. At the actual feast such

conduct would probab ly have been impiety.’

DEVELOPMENT OF SOPHOCLES'S GENIUS 235

‘The Revealer ’ Ménutes, identified with Heracles ;but the real reason for h is own worship becomes clearwhen we find in another connection that he hadfounded a ‘Thiasos of the Muses

,

’ a sort of theatricalclub for the artists of Dionysus. He thus becametechnically a Hero Founder

,

’ l ike Plato and Ep i

curn s, and doubtless was honoured with incense andan ode on his birthday. He was ‘ Dexion

’ perhaps asthe original ‘ host.’

Sophocles was writing pretty continuously for sixtyyears, and an interesting citation in Plutarch 1 purportsto give his own account of h is development. That thewords are really his own is rather much to believe ; butthe terms used show the criticism to be very ancient.Unfortunately the passage is corrupt. He began byhaving some relation—is it ‘ imitation ’

or is it ‘ revolt ’ ?—towards the magniloquence of ZEschylus

’ next came‘ his own ‘

s tern ’ and artificial period of style ’

;2 thirdly

,

he reached more eas e and s impl icity, and seems to havesatisfied himself. Bergk finds a trace of the [Eschylean

period ’ in some of the fragments ; and it is a curiousfact that ancient critics found in the pseudo-EuripideanRhesus a ‘ Sophoclean character.’ I t is not l ike theSophocles of our late plays

,but does suggest a fourth

century imitation of E schylus . One form of the ‘ artificial tendency— it might as well be translated ‘ technical ’

or profess ional —is expressed in the scenic changes withwhich Sophocles is particularly associated ; though, of

course , it must be borne in mind that the actual admission of ‘ three actors and scene- painting " to the

l

IIurpbv mi xardr exvov. Hip v is ear ly Greek for the later a bm pbv.

Ar. Poet. 4.


sacred precinct must have been due to a public enactment

,and not to the private innovation of a poet.

Perhaps the most important change due to Sophoclesh imself took place in what the Greeks called the‘ economy ’ of the drama. He used up al l h is mythmaterial in one well- constructed and complex play, andconsequently produced three separate plays at a timeinstead of a continuous trilogy.1 But, in general, Sophocles worked as a conscious artist improving details,demanding more and smoother tools, and making up,by skilful construction, tactful scenic arrangement, andentire avoidance of exaggeration or grotesqueness, forhis inab ility to walk quite so near the heavens as h isgreat predecessor. The ‘ stern and artificial ’ period isbest represented by the Electra . The Electra is ‘ artificial

’ in a good sense,through its skil l of plot, its

clear characterisation,its uniform good writing. I t is

also artificial in a bad sense. For instance,in the

messenger’s speech, where all that is wanted is a falsereport of Orestes ’s death

,the poet chooses to insert a

bril l iant, lengthy, and quite undramatic description ofthe Pythian Games. I t is also ‘ stern .

’

ZEschylus inthe Choe

’

phoroi had felt vividly the horror of h is plothe carries his characters to the deed of blood on astorm of confused

,torturing

,half - religious emotion ;

the climax is, of course, the mother-murder, and Orestes

fal ls into madness after it. I n the Electra th is elementis practically ignored. E lectra has no qualms ; Orestesshows no sign of madness ; the climax is formed, notby the culminating horror

,the matricide

,but by the

hardest b it of work,the slaying of E gisthus l ZEschylus

1 It was his contemporary Aristarchus of Tegea who first made plays ofth eir present length (Suidas ).



Someth ing of the same sort keeps him safe in thel imi ts of convention. A poet who is uncompromisinglyearnest in his real ism

,or unreserved in his imagination

,

i s apt to j ar upon his audience or to make them laugh .

Sophocles avoids these dangers. He accepts throughoutth e traditional conception of heroes and saga-people .The various bits of criticism ascribed to him— “ I drawmen as they ought to be drawn ; Euripides draws themas they are “E schylus did the right th ing, but without knowing it - al l imply the ‘ academic ’ standpoint.Sophocles is the one Greek writer who is ‘ classical ’ inthe vulgar sense—almost in the same sense as Vergiland Milton . Even his exquisite diction

,which is such

a marked advance on the stiff magnificence of his predecessor

,betrays the lesser man in the greater artist.

[Eschylus’

s superhuman speech seems like natural superhuman speech . It is j ust the language that Prometheuswould ta lk

,that an ideal Agamemnon or Atossa might

talk in their great moments. But neither Prometheusnor (Edipus nor E lectra, nor any on e but an Attic poetof the highest culture, would talk as Sophocles makesthem . I t is th is characteristic which has establ ishedSophocles as the perfect model

,not only for Aristotle

,

but in general for critics and grammarians ; while thepoets have been left to admire ZEschylus, who

“ wrotein a state of intoxication

,

” and Euripides,who broke

himself against the bars both of l ife and of poetry.The same l imitation comes out curiously in pointswhere his plays touch on speculation . For one th ing

,

h is piety makes him,as the scholias t quaintly puts it

,

1

quite helpless in repres enting blasphemy.

” Contrast,

for instance,the similar passages in the Antigone (l. 1 043)

1 E lectra , 83 1 .

LIMITATIONS OF SOPHOCLES 239

and the Heracles of Euripides (l. I n the Heracles,

the hero rebukes Theseus for l ifting him from his despairand unveil ing his face ; he will pollute the sunlight !That is not a metaphor

,but a real p iece of superstition.

Theseus repl ies that a mortal cannot pollute the eternally pure element. Later he asks Heracles for hishand. [t is bloody , cries Heracles

“ it w ill infect y ou

w ith my cr ime !” “Let me clasp i t

,

” answers Theseus,

and fea r not.” Now

,Sophocles knew of these ideas

that the belief in a physical pollution of blood is a delus ion

,and that a man cannot

,if he tries

,make the sun

impure ; but to him they reeked of s cepticism - or elseof prosiness. He uses them as blasphemy in the mouth

of the offending Creon 1 No impulse to reason or analysewas allowed to disturb his solemn emotional effects.Another typical difference between the two poets is intheir treatment of the incest of ( Edipus . Sophocles isalways harping on i t and ringing the changes on thehero’s relationships

,but never th inks it out. Contrast

with his horrified rhetoric, the treatment of the samesubj ect at the end of Eurip ides’s Phoen issa'

,the beautiful

affection retained by the blind man for Iocasta, his con

fidence that she at any rate would have gone into exileat h is s ide uncomplain ing, his tender farewell to herdead body. What was the respectable burgher to sayto such a thing ? I t was defrauding him of his right tocondemn and abominate Iocasta. No wonder Sophocleswon four times as many prizes as Euripides ! A naturalconcomitant of this lack of speculative freedom is acertain bluntness of moral imagination which leads

,for

instance,to one structural defect in th e G dious Ty rannus .

That piece is a marvel of cons truction : every detailfollows naturally

,and yet every detail depends on the


characters be ing exactly what they were,and makes us

understand them. The one flaw, perhaps, is in Teiresias.That aged prophet comes to the king absolutely determined not to tel l th e secret which he has kept for sixteenyears

,and then tells it —why ? From uncontrollable

anger,because the king insults h im . An aged prophet

who does that is a disgrace to h is profession ; butSophocles does not seem to feel it.Sophocles is thus subj ect to a certain conventionalideal ism . He lacks the elemental fire of Ai schylus, thespeculative courage and subtle sympathy of Euripides.All else that can be said of him must be unmixedadmiration . Plot

,characters

,atmosphere are all digui

hed and ‘ Homeric ’

; his analysis, as far as it goes, iswonderfully sure and true ; his language is a marvel ofsubtle power the music he gets from the iambic trimeterby his weak endings and varied pauses is incomparable ;1

his lyrics are uniformly skilful and fine,though they

sometimes leave an impression of laboured workmanship ; if they have not the irresistible songfulness of

fEschylus and Euripides,they are safe from the rho

domontade of the one,and the inapposite garrulity of

the other. And it is true that Sophocles shows at timesone high power which but few of the world

’s poets sharewith him. He feels, as Wordsworth does, the maj estyof order and well-being sees the greatness of God

,as it

were,in the untroubled th ings of life. Few hands but

his could have shaped the great ode in th e Antigone

upon the Rise of Man, or the description in the Aj axof the ‘ Give and Take ’

in nature . And even in the

1 W. M . Heracles , i. p. 21 . It is Ionic sty le : weak endings , elis ions at the

end of the verse (like Achaios of Eretria ), fiuly for hub , shortening of a longvowe l or diphthongbefore ano ther vowe l.



that she mus t die,and hanged hers elf. ( Edipus him

self meant to slay her if she had not anticipated him.

Why did he not fol low her ? Any free compositionwould have made h im do so ; but Sophocles wasbound to the saga

,and the saga was perfectly certain

that ( Edipus was al ive and blind a long time afterwards . Eurip ides avoided th e awkwardness in aningenious way . I n his G

‘

dipus* 1 the hero is over

powered and blinded by the retainers when he hasmurdered Iocas ta and is seeking to murder his childr enand h imself. As a mere p iece of technique, the d jous

of Sophocles deserves the position given to it byAristotle

,as the typical example of the highes t Greek

tragedy. There is deep truth of emotion and highthought ; there is wonderful power of language, grasp

of character, and imagination ; and for pure dramaticstrength and skil l

,there are few things in any drama

so inexpressibly tragic as the si lent exit of Iocasta, whenshe alone sees the end that is coming.

The Aj ax—called by the grammarians Aj ax the

Scourge-Bea rer

, in distinction to another Aj ax the Loc

rian — is a stiff and very early play. I t is only in theprologue and in the last scene that it has three actors

,

and it does not really know how to use them,as they

are used, for instance, in the Electra and the An tigone .

Aj ax,being defeated by Odysseus in the contest for

the arms of Achilles,nursed his wrath til l Athena

sent him mad. He tried to attack Odysseus and theAtridae in their tents

,and

,l ike Don Quixote, fel l on

some sheep and oxen instead . He comes to h is mindagain

,goes out to a sol itary place by the sea, and

falls upon his sword . All the las t five hundred lines

Frag. 54 1, wh ich seems misplaced in Nauck.

THE AJAX. THE ANTIGONE 24 3

are occupied with the question of his burial,his great

enemy Odysseus being eventually the man who prevails on the angry generals to do him honour. Thefinest things in the play are the hero’s speeches in hisdisgrace

,and the portraiture of his concubine

,the

enslaved princess Tecmessa,whom he despises

,and

who is really superior to him in courage and s trengthof character

,as well as in

bunselfishn ess . I t is difficult

to believe that the Aj ax is uniform as we have it.Not only does the metrical technique vary in differentparts

,but both the subtly - drawn Tecmessa and the

fiendish Athena seem to come from the influence of

Euripides ; while other points of late style, such asthe abus e of heralds

,and the representation of Mene

laus as the wicked Spartan,combine with the dis

proportionate length of the burial discuss ion to suggestthat there has been some late retouching of this veryold play.

The An tigone is perhaps the most celebrated dramain Greek literature . The plot is built on the eternallyinteresting idea of martyrdom

,the devotion to a h igher

unseen law,resulting in revolt against and destruction

by the lower visible law. Polyneikes has been slainfighting against h is usurping brother Eteocles andagainst his country ; and Creon— th e name merelymeans ‘ ruler

,

’ which accounts for its commonnes s forthe official kings of the saga—commands that he becast out to the dogs and birds as a traitor. Any onewho attempts to bury him shal l suffer instant death .

His sister Antigone determines to bury him ; the othersister

,I smene

,hesitates and shrinks . An tigone is dis

covered,refuses to make any kind of submission

,and is

condemned. I smene tr ies to share her suffering ; her


lover Haemon, son of Creon, intercedes for her : bothin vain . Haemon forces h is way into the tomb whereshe has been immured al ive, finds her dead

,and slays

himself.Apart from the beauty of deta il

,especially in th e

language,one of the marks of daring gen ius in th is

play is Antigone’s vagueness about th e motive or principle of her action : it is because her guilty brother

’scause was just ; because death is enough to wipe - awayal l offences becaus e it is not her nature to j oin inhating

,though she is ready to j oin in loving ( l.

because an unburied corps e offends the gods ; becauseher own heart is really with the dead, and she wishesto go to her own . I n one pas sage she explains

,in a

helpless and pathetically false way,that she only buries

him because he is her brother ; she would not haveburied her husband or son ! It is absolutely true tol ife in a high sense ; l ike Beatrice Cenci, she

“ cannotargue : she can only feel.” And another wonderful touchis Antigone’s inability to see the glory of her deathshe is only a weak girl cruelly punished for a thingwhich she was bound to do . She thinks the almost t eligious admiration of the elders is mockery ( l.Creon also is subtly drawn . He is not a monster

,

though he has to act as one. He has staked his wholeauthority upon his edict. Finding it di sobeyed

,he has

taken a position from which it is almost impos sible toretreat. Then it appears that his n iece is the culprit.I t is hard for him to eat up his words forthwith ; andshe gives him no faintest excuse fo r doing so . Shedefies him openly with a deep dispassionate contempt.l smene, bold in the face of a real cris is, j oins her sisterhis own son Haemon

,at firs t moderate

,becomes pre



of the living. The love—motive in Haemon is not likelyto be due to Sophocles’s invention ; it is unlike h isspirit

,and he makes l ittle use of it, much less than

Euripides did in his lost Antigone.

"E The idea wouldnaturally come from Mimnermus or one of the eroticelegists.The Trachin ice and the Ph ilocte’tes show clearly theinfluence of Eurip ides . The former deals with thedeath of Heracles by the coat of burning poison whichhis enemy the centaur Nessus has given to the hero’swife Deianira, profess ing that it is a love - charm .

Deianira finds tha t Heracles is untrue to her,and that

an unhappy princes s whom he has sent as captive ofwar to her house is really the obj ect for whom hemade the war. She bethinks her of the love- charmand sends it

,and the burly demi-god di es raging.

The Dorian hero,a common figure in satyr-plays

,had

never been admitted to tragedy till Euripides’s Heracles,

where he appears as the lusty conquering warrior,j ovial

and impulsive,with little nobleness of soul to fall back

upon . There are some definite imitations of theHeracles in the Trachin ia

,apart from th e Euripidean

prologue and the subtly dramatic situation betweenDeianira and her husband’s unwill ing mistress. Onewould l ike to know if there can be any connectionbetween the writing of th is play and the history contained in Antiphon’s speech On Poi son ing (p .

The Ph iloctetes (409 B .C .) is markedly a character-play.

The hero,once the companion of Heracles, and now

owner of his unerring bow,had been bitten by a noxious

snake . The festering wound seemed about to breed apes tilence

,and the Greeks left the s ick man marooned

on Lemnos . Long years afterwards an oracle reveals

THE LATE PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES 247

that the bow,and Philoctetes with it, must come to

Troy,if th e town is to be taken . I t is all but im

possible to approach the injured man ; but Odysseus,the great contriver

,agrees to try it

,and takes with

him the son of Achilles, Neoptolemus. Odysseus himself is known to Philoctetes ; so he keeps in the background

,and puts Neoptolemus forward to entrap the

man on board his ship by ingen ious l ies. The youngsoldier reluctantly consents. He wins entirely theconfidence of the old broken-hearted solitary ; everything is in train for the kidnapping

,when a spasm of

agony from the incurable wound comes on Philoctetes .Neoptolemus does his best to tend him

,and cannot

face h is victim’s gratitude . At the last moment heconfesses the truth . Philoctetes has taken him forhis s ingle friend ; he is real ly a tool in the hand

of his cruellest enemy . A profoundly tragic situation,l it up by the most thrill ing beauty of verse ; it ends

in Euripidean style by Heracles appearing as a DivineReconciler ex machina (see p.

The CEdipus a t Colbnus is a play of the patrioticarchaeological type

, of which our earliest example isthe Heracleida of Euripides. I t turns on the allegedpossession by Attica of th e grave of (Edipus—evidentlyonly ‘ alleged

,

’ and that not in early tradition,for we

find in the play that no such suppo sed grave wasvisible. When CEdipus is an old man, and has, as itwere

,worn out the virulence of the curse upon him

by his long innocent wanderings with h is daughterAntigone

,news is brought to him from Thebes by

I smene of a new oracle . His body is to keep its‘ hagos ’ or taboo— the power of the supernaturallypure or supernaturally polluted— and wil l be a divine

24s LITERATURE or ANCIENT GREECE

bulwark to the country posses sing it. Consequentlythe Thebans intend to capture him

,keep him close

to their border til l he dies,and then keep control

of his grave . (Edipus meantime has reached Colonus,in Attica

,the seat of the ‘ Semnai

,

’ ‘ Dread Goddesses ,’

where he knows that he is doomed to die . Theseusaccepts h im as a citizen

,and he passes mysteriously

away. This is the only play in which Sophocles haspractically dispensed with a plot

,and it is interesting

to see that the experiment produces some of h is

very highest work. The poetry leaves an impressionof superiority to ordinary technique, of contentmentwith its own large and reflective splendour. But

the time was past when a mere situation could byimaginative intensity be made to fi ll a whole play.Sophocles has to insert ‘ epeisodia ’ of Creon andPolyn eikes, and to make the first exciting by a futileattempt to kidnap th e princesses

, the second by theutterance of the father’s curse . The real appeal ofthe play is to the burn ing

,half - desperate patriotism

of the end of the War Time . The glory of Athens,

the beauty of the spring and the nightingales at 0 0 16nus, the holy Acropolis which can never be conquered,represent the modern ideals of that patriotism : thelegendary root of it is given in the figure of Theseus

,

the law-abiding,humane

,and rel igious king ; in the

eternal reward won by the bold generosity of Athens ;in the rej ection of Argos and the malediction laidfor ever on turbulent and cruel Thebes . The pieceis reported to be effective on the stage. Certainlythe spiritual maj esty of CEdipus at the end is amongthe great things of Greek poetry ; and the ratherharsh contrast which it forms with the rage of the


E U R I P I D E S

EURIPIDES,SON OF MNESARCHIDES OR MNESARCHUS,FROM PHLYA (ca . 480

—406 B.C.)

WE possess eighteen plays from the hand of Euripides,as against seven each from the other two tragedians ;and we have more material for knowledge about h imthan about any other Greek poet, yet he remains, perhaps

,the most problematic figure in ancient l iterature .

He was essentially representative of his age,yet appa

ren tly in hostility to it ; almos t a failure on the stageh e won only four 1 first prizes in fifty years of production

yet far the most celebrated poet in Greece. His contem

porary public denounced him as dul l, because he torturedthem with personal problems ; as malignant, because hemade them see truths they wished not to see ; as blas

phemous and foul-minded,because he made demands

on their rel igious and spiritual natures which they couldneither satisfy nor overlook. They did not know whetherhe was too wildly imaginative or too realistic

,too romantic

or too prosaic,too childishly simple or too philosophical

—Aristophanes says he was all these things at once. Theyonly knew that he made them angry and that they couldnot help l isten ing to him . Doubtless they realised thathe had little sense of humour and made a good butt ;

The fifth was after his death .

THE TRADITIONAL LI FE 25x

and perhaps,on the other hand

,they felt that he really

was what they called h im in mockery,

‘wise .’ At anyrate, after the great disaster of Syracus e he was theman they came to

,to write the epitaph on the hopes of

Athens.The tradition

,so gentle to Sophocles

,raves against

Euripides. “ He was a morose cyn ic,privately vicious

for all his severe exterior.” He did not write his playsthey were done by his slaves and casual acquaintances.“ His father was a fraudulent bankrupt ; his mother a

greengroceress and her greens bad. His wife was calledCho irilé Sow and acted up to her name he divorcedher

,and his second wife was no better.” I t delights in

passages between the two tragedians in which the povertystricken misanthrope is crushed by the good Sophocles

,

who took to h is cups and their bearers l ike a man,and

did not profess to be better than h is neighbours.A few of these stories can be disproved ; some aregrossly improbable ; most are merely unsupported byevidence . I t can be made out that the poet’s father

,

Mnesarch ides, was of an old middle-class family owningland and holding an hereditary Office in the localApollo-worsh ip at Ph lya. His mother

,Kleito the ‘green

groceress,

’ was of noble family. Our evidence suggeststhat her relation towards her son was on e Of exceptionalintimacy and influence ; and motherly love certainlyforms a strong element in his dramas . Of Euripides’swife we only know that her name was not Ch oirilé, butMelité, and that Aristophanes in 41 1 could find no i l lto say of her. Of his three sons, we hear that Mnesar

chus was a merchant,Mnes ilochus an actor, Euripides

apparently a professional playwright ; he brought outthe lph igen ia , Bacchw, and Alcmeon * after h is father’s

252 LITERATURE o r ANCIENT GREECE

death . The poet lived, so Ph ilochorus says,on his own

estate at Salamis,and worked in a cave facing the sea,

which was shown to tourists down to Pliny’s time. Heavoided society and public l ife— as much

,that is

,as an

Athenian of that day could avoid them. He served inthe army . He had at least once to perform a ‘ l iturgy

’

of some sort,perhaps fitting out a trireme ; he was a

Proxenus ’ of Magnesia,an office which resembled that

of a modern consul,and involved some real political

work . These expensive posts must have come to himearly in his life ; he was reduced to poverty, l ike all thelanded proprietors

,towards the end of the war. For the

rest,he was the first Greek who collected a libra ry

,

the writer and th inker,not the man of affairs .

At on e time, indeed, we find him taking at least anindirect part in politics. About 420 , at the end of theTen Years’ War

,he wrote a play with a definite ‘ tend

ency .

’ The Supplia nts not only advocates peace withSparta— that was the case with the Cresphon tes

’“and theErech theus

"as well— it also advocates all iance with

Argos, and proclaims the need in Athens of“a general

y oung a nd noble.

” “A general young and noble was atthat moment coming to the front

,and especially press

ing forward the Argive alliance—Alcibiades . Next yearhe was appearing at Olympia with that train of fourhorse chariots which made such a noise in Greece

,and

w inn ingth e Olympian victory for which Euripides wrotea Pindaric Ode. This lets us see that the philosophicpoet

,l ike Socrates and most other people

,had his period

of Alcibiades-worship . We do not know how long itla sted . Euripides was for peace

,and Alcibiades for

war ; and by th e time of the Sicil ian Expedition,it

would seem, Eurip ides had lost faith in the daemonic

’



the Odysseus of the Hecuba (424 where the type isfirs t sketched clearly. He is not personally blood - thirsty

,

but he is obliged to put the interest of the Achaio ibefore everything . The most disagreeable consequencesare to be apprehended if he does not lie

,murder

,and

betray ! I t is the same with Menelaus in the Ores tes ,and

,above all

,with Agamemnon in the [phzgen ia in

Aulis . They are so placed that ordinary social considerations seem to make j ustice and honour impossible .Another note which marks the last years of the war is atendency to dwell on the extreme possibi l ities of revenge .I t was an old theme of Euripides— the Medea had taughtit in 43 1— but he now saw all about him instances of therule that by wronging people beyond a certain point youmake them into devils . I t is th is motive which gives unityto the Hecuba

,the gradual absorption of the queen’s whole

nature into one infinite thirst for vengeance ; whichanswers the scholiast’s complaint about the Ores tes , thateverybody in it is bad . Another deepening sentimentin Eurip ides is his aversion to the old ta les that callthemselves heroic. His E lectra was enough to degradefor ever the b lood - feud of the Atridae . Read after itwhat any other poet says on the subj ect

,Sophocles or

[Eschylus or Homer, and the conviction forces its elfupon you : “ I t was not l ike this ; it was j ust whatEurip ides says it was . And a 80M <l>ovifa , a craft-murder,

’

is not a beautiful thing after al l."

I t i s at this las t period of his l ife at Athens that wereally have in some part the Euripides of the legendthe man at var iance with his kind, utterly sceptical, butOpposed to most of the philosophers

,contemptuous of

the rich,furious against the extreme democracy

,

1 hating1 Or . 370 930.

NOTES OF EURIPIDES’S LAST PERI OD 255

all the ways of men,commanding attention by sheer

force of brain-power. He was baited incessantly by arabble of comic writers

,and of course by th e great pack

of the orthodox and the vulgar. He was beaten . Afterproducing the Ores tes in 408, he left Athens for th e courtof Archelaus of Macedon . We hear that he went “ because of the malicious exultation of almost everybody

,

though we have no knowledge of w hat the exultationwas grounded on. I n Macedon he found peace

,and

probably some congenial society. Agathon the tragedianand Timotheus the musician were there

,both old friends

of his,and the painter Zeuxis

,and probably Thucydides.

Doubtless the barbarism underneath the smooth surfaceof the Macedonian court, must sometimes have let itselfappear. The story of Euripides being killed by theking’s hounds is disproved by the silence of Aristophanes bUt it must have produced a curious effecton the Athen ian when one of the courtiers

,who had

addressed him rudely,was promptly delivered up to him

to be scourged ! He died about eighteen months afterreaching Macedon ; but the peace and comfort of hisnew surroundings had already left their mark upon h iswork. There is a singular freshnes s and beauty in thetwo plays

,Baccheo and [ph igen ia in Aulis , which he le ft

unfinished at his death and the former at any rate hastraces ofMacedonian s cenery (565 Of theArchelaus

,

*

which he wrote in h is hos t’s honour,but few fragments

survive .Not that in the last period of Euripides’s work at Athens

his gloom is unmixed. There is nothing that better il lustrates the man’s character than the bright patches inthese lates t plays, and the particular forms taken by hisstil l - surviving ideals. I n his contempt for society and


statecraft,his iconoclastic spirit towards the al l- admired

Homeric demi-gods,his sympathy with the dumb and

uninterpreted generally,he finds h is heroism in quiet

beings uncontaminated by the world . The hero of theElectra is the Working Peasant, true-hearted, honourable,tactful

,and Of course as humbly conscious of his in

feriority to all the savage Chieftains about him as theyare confident of their superiority to h im. But

,above

all,Euripides retains h is old belief in the infinite possi

b ilities of the untried girl . To take only the completeplays

,we have a virgin-martyr for heroine in the Hera

cleidw,Hecuba

,lphzgen ia in Aulis ; we have echoes of her

in the Trbiades and the Supplian ts . She is always a realcharacter and always different. One pole perhaps is inthe Tro‘ iades

,where the power to see someth ing beyond

this coi l of trouble,the second sight of a pure spirit

,gets

its cl imax in Cassandra . The other,the more human

side,comes out in the lphigen ia . The young girl

,when

she first finds that she has been trapped to her death,

breaks down,and pleads helplessly

,like a child

,not to

be hurt ; then when the first blinding shock is past, whenshe has communed with herself

,when she finds that

Achilles is ready to fight and die for her, she rises tothe height of glad martyrdom for Hellas

’ sake. Thelife of one Achil les is worth that Of a thousand merewomen

,such as she That is her fee l ing at the moment

when she has risen incomparably beyond every one inthe play and made even her own vain young herohumble. Aristotle— such are the pitfal ls in the way Ofhuman critics— takes her as a type of incons istency ! 1

An element of brightness comes also in the purelyromantic plays of the last years

,the Helena and Andro

med a.* One is reminded of the Birds (p . Euripides1 Poetics , cap . xv



Movement, of the Enlightenment ; as the apostle Ofclearness of express ion, who states everything that hehas to say explicitly and without bombast. His languagewas so much admired in the generations after his deaththat it is spoilt for us. I t str ikes us as hackneyed andundistinguished

,because we are famil iar with various

commonplace fellows who imitated it,from I socrates

to Theodore Prodromus. He probably showed evenin the Daughters of Pelias ” his power to see poetryeverywhere . His philosophical bent was certainly foreshadowed in l ines l ike “ in God there is no inj us tice

(frag. his quick sympathy with passion of everysort

,in the choice of the woman Medea for h is chief

figure .But the most typical of the early plays, and the one

which most impressed his contemporaries,was the

Telephus’“(438 I t has a great number of the

late characteristics in a half - developed state, overlaidwith a certain externality and youthfulness. It is worthwhile to keep the Telephufi constantly in view in tracingthe gradual progress of Euripides’s character and method.

The wounded king of Mysia knows that noth ing but thespear of Achilles

,which wounded him

,can cure him ;

the Greeks are all h is enemies ; he travels throughGreece

,lame from his wound

,and disguised as a

beggar ; speaks in the gathering of hostile generals,

is struck for his insolence,but carries his point ; finally,

he is admitted as a suppliant by Clytaemestra, snatchesup th e baby Orestes

,reveals h imself

,threatens to dash

out the baby’s brains if any Of the enemies whosurround him move a step

,makes his terms, and is

healed. The extraordinarily cool and resourceful hero—h e recalls those whom we meet in Hugo and Dumas

TECHNIQUE OF EURIPIDES 259

—was new to the s tage,and fascinating. There was

originality , too, in his treatment of ‘ anagnoris is ’ or

‘ recognition ’ as a dramatic cl imax — the overturningof a situation by the discovery who some person reallyis- the revelation

,in this case

,that the lame beggar is

Tel ephus. This favourite Euripidean effect had becomeby Aristotle’s time a common and even normal way Ofbringing on the catastrophe . Of our extant plays

,the

Ion,Electra

,Helena

,[phzgen ia in Tauris contain ‘

t e

cognitions .’ A celebrated instance among the lost playswas in the Cresphontes .

* That hero,son of the murdered

king Of Messenia,had escaped from the usurper Poly

phontes, and was being reared in secret. H is mother,Merope

,was in the tyrant’s power. He comes back to

save her, gains access to Polyphontes by pretending thathe has slain Cresphontes

,and asks for a reward. Merope

hears that astranger is in the house claiming a rewardfor having murdered her son . She sends quickly to herson’s refuge and finds that he has disappeared. I ndespair she takes an axe and goes to where the boysleeps. At the last instant

,while she is j ust speaking the

words,

“ Infernal Hades , this is mine qfering to thee,her

husband’s Old slave,who holds the l ight for her

,re

cognises the youth,and rushes in to intercept the blow.

Even in Plutarch’s time this stage effect had not lost its

power.Apart from the technical ‘ recognition,

’ the Telephusat

gave the first sign of a movement towards melodra

matic situations,the tendency which culminates in the

Ores tes . That play Opens some days after the slayingof Clytaemes tra and Aigisthus . Ores tes and Electra arebesieged in the castle by the populace, and the Assemblyis at the moment discussing the ir doom. Orestes is i l l


and mad ; E lectra wasted with watching and nursing.

I f she saves him, the two will probably be stoned.

News comes Of safety. Menelaus, their father’s brother

,

has sailed into the harbour with Helen . Helen comesto the castle

,and Menelaus’s veterans guard the entrances.

Orestes gradually recovers his mind it seems as if he andhis sister were saved. But Menelaus is the natural heirto the kingdom after Orestes ; and he has always disapproved of deeds of violence ; he wil l not thwart thewil l of the people ; and cannot offend his father- in - lawTyndareus

,who claims vengeance for Clytaemestra . I n

short,he means to let the brother and s ister be stoned.

Scenes of vivid contrast and s train succeed one another,

ti ll the two see that al l i s lost. The blood -madnesscomes on Orestes . He gets possession Of h is swordand turns upon Helen and Hermione. TO take one

touch from many : to escape stoning, Electra andOrestes are res olved to die . She begs him to kil l her.He turns from her : “My mother

’s blood is enough . 1

w ill not h ill thee. Die as bes t thou may es t."

The Telephus* was in th ese several respects the typical

play of Euripides’s early period,but it str ikes one as a

young play. The real ism,for ins tance

,was probably not

of the subtle type we find in the Electra . The great markof it was the disguised beggar’s costume, which thr ews tage convention to the winds. I n the Acha rn ians of

Aristophanes the hero has to make a speech for h is li fe,and appl ies to Euripides for some ‘ tragic rags which willmove th e compass ion Of his hearers. He knows j ust therags that will suit h im

,but cannot remember the name

of the man who wore them . The old unhappy Oineus

appea red in rags , says Euripides.“ It was not Oineus

some one much w retcheder .

”The blindPhoen ix perhap s ?



the audience with Phaedra on the wave Of passion whichleads to her murderous slander. I t can only be done atthe expense of Hippolytus, and it is hard to make a trueand generous man do right and be odious for doingso. The long speech of H ippolytus (11. 616 ff.) managesit. At h is exit the spectator is for the moment furious,and goes whole-heartedly with t dra .

I t was in 43 1 , before the H ippoly tus , but seven yearsafter the Telephus ,

* that Eurip ides first dealt with themotive of baffled or tragic love

,which he afterwards

made pecul iarly his own . The Medea is,perhaps

,the

most artistical ly flawless of h is plays ; though, Oddlyenough

,it was a failure when first acted. The bar

barian princess has been brought from her home by

jason, and then deserted, that he may marry thedaughter of the king of Corinth . She feigns resignation sends to the bride “ a gift more beautiful thanany now among men

,which has come from the fiery

palaces of her ancestor the sun .

” I t is really a robe ofburning po ison . The bride dies in torture. Medeamurders her children for the sake of the pain it willbe to their father

,and fl ies.

This is the beginning of the wonderful women - studiesby which Euripides dazzled and aggrieved h is contemporaries . They called him a hater of women ; andAristophanes makes the women of Athens consp ire forrevenge against him (see p . Of course he wasreally the reverse. He loved and studied and expressed the women whom the Socratics ignored andPericles advised to stay in their rooms. Crime

,how

ever,is always more striking and palpable than virtue.

Heroines l ike Medea,Phaedra

,Sth eneb o ia

,Aerope

,

Clytaemestra,perhaps fi l l the imagination more than

THE WOMEN OF EURIPIDES 263

those of the angel ic or devoted type— Alcestis,who

died to save her husband,Evadne and Laodamia

,

who could not survive theirs,and all the great l ist of

virgin-martyrs . But the significant fact is that,l ike

Ibsen,Euripides refuses to idealise any man

,and does

idealise women . There is one youth-martyr,Meno ikeus

in the Phoen issce, but his martyrdom is a masculinebusiness- l ike performance—h e gets rid of his prosaicfather by a pretext about travelling-money (11. 990 ff.)without that shimmer of lovel iness that hangs over thevirgins . And again

,Euripides will not allow us to dis

l ike even h is wors t women . No one can help sidingwith Medea ; and many of us love Phaedra—even whenshe has lied an innocent man’s l ife away.I t is a s tep from this championship of women to the

other th ing that roused fury against Euripides—hisinterest in the sex question in al l its forms. Thereare plays based on ques tions of marriage-breaking

,l ike

the H ippolytus and S theneboia "— in which the heroineacted to Bellerophon as Potiphar’s wife to joseph . Therewas one, the Chry s ippus ,

* in condemnation of that relation between men and boys which the age regardedas a peccadillo

,and which Euripides only allowed to

the Cyclops. There was another,the fi olusfi which

made a problem out of the old innocent myth of theWind-god with his twelve sons and twelve daughtersmarried together and living in the isle of the Winds .

I t is Macareus in this play who makes the famous pleaWha t thing is shameful if a man ’

s hea rt feels i t no

shame ? But more important than the special dramasis the constant endeavour of this poet to bring his ex

periences into relation with those of people whom heis trying to understand

,especially those of the two


silent clas ses, women and slaves. I n the sweat ofbattle

,perhaps when he was wounded

,he had said to

himself,Th is mus t be lihe child-bea ring, but not half so

bad I” I No wonder the general public did not know

what to do with him ! And how were they to standthe man who was so severe on the pleasures of theworld

,and yet did not mi nd h is heroes be ing bastards

Nay, he made the priestess Augé, whose vow of virginityhad been vio lated, and who was addressed in terms ofappropriate horror by the virgin warrior Athena

,answer

her blasphemously

Arms blach w ith rotted blood

And deadmen ’s w reckage are notfoul to thee

Nay , these thou loves t : only Augi’

s babe

F rights thee w i th shame

And so with slavery : quite apart from such plays asthe Archelaus * and Alexander,

* which seem to havedealt specially with it, on e feels that Euripides

’s thoughtwas constantly occupied with the fact that certain peopleserve and belong to certain others

,and are by no means

always inferior to them.

Towards rel igion his attitude is hard to define. Dr.Verrall entitles h is keen-sighted s tudy of th is subj ect

,

Eurip ides the Ra tiona lis t and it is Clear that the playsabound in marks of hostil ity towards the authoritativepolytheism of Delphi

,and even to th e beliefs of the

average Athenian . And further,it is quite true that in the

generation which condemned Protagoras and Socrates,

and went mad about the Hermae, the Open expression offreethinking views was not quite safe for a private individual in the market-place ; very much less so for the

poet of an officially accepted drama of Dionysus, on the1 Med. 250.



Its significance . One of the rare instances Of a plainpersonal statement is in the Heracles (11. 1 341

Say not there be adulterers in heaven .

Nor pri soner gods andgaoler s —long ago

My hear t ha th named it v ile and shall not alter

Nor onegodmas ter and another thrall.

God, if he be God, lacheth naught. All these

Are dead unhappy tales of mins trelsy .

”

These words seem clearly to represent the poet h imself,not the quite unphilosophic hero who utters them.

They read like the firm self - justification of a manattacked for freethinking. That was written about 422,before the time of bitterness. For the most part, Eurip ides is far from frank on thes e subj ects. The maj ority of

the plays draw no conclusions, but only suggest premisses .

They state the religious traditions very plainly,and leave

the audience to j udge if it bel ieves in them or approvesof them . His work left on his contemporaries, and, ifintell igently read, leaves on us, an impression of uneasy,half-disguised hostil ity to the supernatural element whichplays so large a part in it. I t i s a tendency which makeshavoc in h is art . P lays l ike the Ion

,the Electra

, the

lph igen ia in Tauris , the Ores tes, have someth ing j arringand incomprehensible about them

,which we cannot

dispose of by lightly call ing Euripides a ‘ botcher,

’ orby saying

,what is known to be untrue in history

,that

he was the poet of the ‘ ochlocracy ’ and played tothe mob .

Fo r one thing, we must start by recognising and tryingto understand two pieces of technique which are speciallythe invention or characteristic of Euripides, the Prologue and the Deus ex machiné . The Prologue is easilyexplained . There were no playb ills, and it was well to

PROLOGUE AND ‘DEUS EX MACHINA ’267

let the audience know what saga the play was to treat.The need was the more pressing if a poet was apt

,l ike

Euripides, to choose little-known legends or unusualvers ions of those that were well known . The Prologuewas invented to meet th is need. But

,once there

,it

suggested further advantages. I t practically took theplace of an explanatory first act . Euripides uses it tostate the exact situation in which he means to pick uphis characters ; the Ores tes and the M edea

,for instance

,

gain greatly from their prologues. They are able to beginstraight at the centre of interest. I t must, of course, befully recognised that our existing prologues have beeninterpolated and tampered with . Euripides held thestage all over the Hellen istic world for centuries afterhis death

,and was often played to barbarian audiences

who wanted everything explained from the beginning .

Thus the prologue of the Electra,to take a s triking

example,narrates th ings that every Athenian knew from

his infancy. But the Prologue in itself is a genuineEurip idean instrument.I f we overcome our disl ike for the Prologue, we are

s til l offended by the way in which Eurip ides ends hisplays. Of his seventeen genuine extant tragedies, tenclose with the appearance of a god in the clouds, commanding

,explaining

,prophesying. The seven which

do not end with a god, end with a prophecy or someth ing equivalent— some scene which directs attentionaway

'

from the present action to the future results . Thatis,the subj ect of the play is really a long chain of events ;

the poet fixes on some portion of it— the action of oneday

,generally speaking—and treats it as a piece of vivid

concrete l ife,led up to by a merely narrative introduc

tion,and melting away into a merely narrative close.


The method is to our taste quite undramatic,but it is

explicable enough it falls in with the tendency of Greekart to finish

,not with a cl imax

,but with a lessening Of

s train .

There is a growth visible in this method of ending. I nthe earlies t group of our extant plays

,there is

,with the

merely apparent exception of the Hippoly tus (see p.

no deus ex machind. From about 420 to 4 14 the godappears

,prophesies

,or pronounces j udgment

,but does

not d isturb the action in the ‘ troubled period ’ he produces what is technically called a ‘ peripeteia

,

’ a violentreversal of the course of events .l Now

,if Pindar had

done this,we might have said that his superstition was

rather gross,but we could have accepted it. When it is

done by a man notorious for h is bold religious specu lation,

a reputed atheist,and no seeker of popularity

,then it

becomes a problem. Let any one who does not feel thedifficulty

,read the Ores tes . I s it credible that Eurip ides

believed that the story ended or could end as he makesit ; that he did not see that h is deus makes the wholegrand tragedy into nonsense ? Dr. Verrall finds the solution of th is knot in a bold theory that Euripides, writinghabitually as a freeth inker

,under circumstances in which

Outspokenness was impossible,deliberately disguised h is

meaning by adding to his real play a sham prologue andepilogue

,suitable for popular consumption, but known

by those in the poet’s confidence to have no bearing on

his real intent. The difficulties in th is view are obvious.

I( 1 ) No deus ex mach iné : Alces tis Cy clops , Medea Heracleida

Heracles andHecuba (424 also Trbiades (415) and Phan zlssa(2) Deus with mere prophecy or the like Andromache Supplices

Ion,E lectra (413 i ). (3) Deus with ‘ peripeteia '

: Iphigenia in Tauris

Helena Orestes [ph igen ia in Aulis and Baccha doubt

ful ; probab ly pe ripeteia ’

in each.



truth ! I n this point, as in others, the over-comprehens iven ess of Euripides

’s mind led him into artistic sins,

and made much of his work a great and fascinatingfailure .There are two plays

,one early and one late

,in which

the divine element is treated with more consistency,

and,it would seem, with some real expression of the

poet’s thought—the H ippoly tus and the Bacchce. TheLove-goddess in the former (428 B .C.) is a Fact of Naturepersonified ; her action is destructive, not (1. 20 ) personally vindictive her bodily presence in the strangelyterrible speech which forms th e prologue

,is evidently

mere symbol ism,representing thoughts that are as much

at home in a modern mind as in an ancient. Hippolytus is a saint in his rej ection of the Cyprian andhis cleaving to the virgin Artemis ; it is absurd totalk of his ‘ impiety.’ Yet it is one of the poet’s rootedconvictions that an absolute devotion to some one

principle— the All or noth ing ’ of Brand,the ‘ Truth ’

of Gregors Werle— leads to havoc. The havoc maybe

,on the whole the best thing : it i s clear that H ippo

lytus‘ l ived well

,that his action was mxéu ; but it did,

as a matter of fact,produce malediction and suicide

and murder . Very similar is the unseen Artemis ofthe end

,so beautiful and so superhumanly heartless.

The fresh virg inity in nature,the spirit of w i ld meadows

and waters and sunri se,i s not to be disturbed because

martyrs choose to die for it.The Baccha is a play difficult to interpret. Forexcitement

,for mere thrill

,there is absolutely

,

nothinglike it in ancient literature . The plot is as simple asit i s daring. The god Dionysus is disowned by hisown kindr ed

,and punishes them. There comes to

I NNER RELIGION OF EURI PIDES 27 1

Thebes a ‘ Bacchos’ —an incarnation

,it would s eem

,

of the god himself— preaching the new worsh ip. Thedaughters of Cadmus refus e to accept his spirit ; heexerts it upon them in strength amounting to madnes s

,

and they range the hills glorifying him . The old

Cadmus and the prophet Teiresias recognise h im atonce as God ; the unearthly j oy fi lls them

,and they

feel themselves young again . The king Pentheus isthe great Obstacle . He takes his stand on reason andorder : he will not recognise the ‘mad ’ divin ity. But

Pentheus is the wrong man for such a protest ; possiblyhe had h imself once been mad— at least that seems tobe the meaning of l . 359, and is natural in a Bacchiclegend— and he acts not calmly

,but with fury. He

insults and imprisons the god,who bears al l gently

and fearlessly, with the magic of latent power. Theprison walls fall

,and Dionysus comes s traight to the

king to convince him again . Miracles have been doneby the Maenads on Cithaeron, and Dionysus is readyto show more will Pentheus wait and see ? Pentheusrefuses

,and threatens the ‘ Bacchos

’ with death ; thegod changes his tone (1. In a scene of weirdpower and audacity

,he slowly controls— on e would fain

say hypnotises ’— Pentheus makes him consent to donthe dres s of a Maenad

,to carry the thyrsus

,to perform

all the acts of worship . The doomed man is led forth toCithaeron to watch from ambush the secret worship ofthe Bacchanals , and is torn to p ieces by them . The maddaughters of Cadmus enter

,Agave bearing in triumph

her son’s head, which she takes for a lion’s head,and

singing a j oy- song which seems like the very essenceof Dionys iac madness expressed in music . The s tory

is well known how this play was acted at the Parthian


capital after the defeat Of Crassus at Carrh ae. The actorwho represented Agave, entered bearingthe actual headof Crassus ; and the soldier who had really slain Crassusbroke out in the audience

,clamouring for the ghastly

trophy . That was what semi-Hellenised savages madeout of the Bacch ic !What does it all mean ? T0 say that it is a reactionarymanifes to in favour of orthodoxy , is a view which hardlymerits refutation . I f Dionysus is a personal god at all

,

he is a devil. Yet the point of the play is clearly tomake us understand him . He and his Maenads aremade beautiful ; they are generally allowed the lastword (except 1. and the swift l onic-a-minore songshave

,apart from their mere beauty

,a certain sp iri tual

loftiness . Pentheus is not a ‘ sympathetic ’ martyr. And

there i s even a certa in tone of polemic against ‘mererationalism ’ which has every appearance of comingfrom the poet h ims elf.1 The play seems to representno volteface on the part of the old free- lance in thought,but rather a summing up of his position . He hadalways denounced common superstition he had alwaysbeen averse to dogmatic rational ism. The lesson ofthe Baccha is that of the H ippoly tus in a stronger form.

Reason is great,but it is not everyth ing . There are

in the world things not of reason,but both below and

above it ; causes of emotion, which we cannot express,which we tend to worship

,which we feel, perhaps, to

be the precious elements in l ife. These things areGods or forms of God : not fabulous immortal men

,

but ‘ Things which Are,

’ th ings utterly non-human andnon-moral

,which bring man bliss or tear his l i fe to

shreds without a break in the ir own serenity . I t is a1 See, e.g., Bruhn’

s Introduction.



dramatic craft, subtlety, sympathy, courage, imagination ;he pried too close into the world and took things toorebelliously to produce calm and successful poetry. Yetmany will feel as Philemon did :

“ If I were certa in

tha t the dead had consciousness , I would hangmy self to seeEuripides .

"

C O M E D Y

BEFORE ARISTOPHANES

ANCIENT comedy, a development from the mummingof the vintage and harvest feasts, took artistic form inthe two great centres of commercial and popular l ife

,

Syracuse and Athens. The Sicil ian comedy seems tohave come first. EPICHARMUS is said to have flourishedin 486. H e was a native of Cos, who migrated first toSicil ian Megara, and then to Syracuse . His remains aresingularly scanty compared with his reputation

,and it

is hard to form a clear idea of him . He was a comedywriter and a philosopher, apparently of a Pythagoreantype . His comedies are partly burlesques of heroic sub

jects , l ike the Cy clops,* Bus iris

,

* Promdtheus,

* resemblingthe satyric dramas of Athens, and such comedies asthe Ody ssts

“ and Chirbnes * of Crattnus . Others,l ike the

Rus tic * and the S ight-S eers ,* were mimes, representingscenes from ordinary life. In th is fie ld he had arival

,SOPHRON, who wrote Feminine Mimes ’ and

‘ Masculine Mimes,

’ and has left us such titles as the

Tunny -F i sher,

* the Messenger,* the S eams tres s es

,

* the

Mother- in-Law.

* A th ird sty le of composition followedby Epicharmus was semi-philosophical, like the discussion between ‘ Logos ’ and Logina,

’ Male and Female

Reason, or whatever the words mean . And he wrote975


one strictly philosophical poem, On Na ture.* We hear

that the comedies were rapid and bustling ; but, of

course,the remnants that have survived owe their li fe

merely to some literary qual ity,whether pith ines s of

thought or grammatical oddity. His description of aparasite— the thing existed in his time

,though not the

word—is excellent .1 I t is interesting to find him usingpuns of the most undisguised type

,as where one

speaker describes Zeus as Hékom ry’

é’

pavou family , andthe other hears f

y’

é'

pavov as tyépa vov, and supposes that

the god fed his guest on a crane . A typical piece of

conversation is the following : 2 “A. After the sacrificecame a feas t, and after the feas t a drinking-party . B . Tha t

s eems n ice. A. And after the drinhing-pa rty a revel, after

the revel a sw inery , after the sw inefy a summons,after

the summons a condemna tion,and after the condemna tion

fetters and s tocks and a fine.

” The other side of theman is represented by his philosophical sayings : “M ind

ha th s ight and M ind ha th hea ring; all things else are

deaf and blind “ Cha racter is des tiny to man or,

one of the most frequently-quoted lines of antiquity,

“Be s ober, and remember to disbelieve : thes e a re the s inew s

of the mind. The metre of Ep icharmus is curiouslyloose ; it suggests the style of a hundred years later,but his verbose and unfinished diction marks the earlycraftsman . He often reminds one of Lucilius andPlautus.

The Attic comedy was developed on different lines,

and,from about 460 B .C. onwards, fol lowed in the steps

of tragedy. The ground-form seems to be a twofolddivision

,with the ‘ parabasis ’ between . Firs t comes a

1 P. 225, Lorenz, Leben , & c.

2 Fr . incer t. 44.



redeems him from the clutches of the designing Pytin e .

He won the first prize,and Aristophanes was last on the

l ist. But a wreck he was after al l,and was dead by 421 .

One of h is actors—h e employed three—was Crates,who

wrote with some success,and has the distinction of having

first produced drunken men on the stage .PHEREKRATES

,who won h is first victory in 437, was a

praiseworthy but tiresome writer, to j udge by his verynumerous fragments. He had better plots than his contemporaries

,and approached the manner of the later

comedy. He treats social subj ects, such as the impudence of slaves and the ways of ‘ hetairai ’ he has aviolent attack on Timotheus and the new style of music .He also shows signs of the tendency wh ich is so strongin Aristophanes, to make plays about imaginary regionsof bl iss ; in his M iners ,

* for instance,a golden age is

found going on somewhere deep in or under the earth,and in h is Ant-Men

* there was probably someth ingsimilar. We only know of one pol itical drama by him— an attack on Alcibiades .

EUPOLIS i s the most highly praised of the contem

poraries of Aristophanes. His characteristic was xdpbs,‘ charm ’ or ‘ grace

,

’

as contrasted with the force andbitterness of Crati nus

,and the mixture of the two in

Aristophanes. These three formed the canon of comicwriters in Al exandria. I t i s said that the death of

Eupoli s in battle at the Hellespont was the occasionof exemption from military service being granted toprofessional poets. H is political tendencies were so farsimilar to those ofAr istophanes that the two collaboratedin the most savage piece of comedy extant

,the Kn ights ,

and accused one another of plagiarism afte rwards. Thatplay was directed against Cleon. I n the Ma r ihds “

FI FTH- CENTURY COMEDY 279

Eupolis wrote against Hyperbolus in the Demoi * hespoke well of Pericles as an orator (frag . but thiswas after h is death and probably did not mean much .

I n revi l ing Cleon it was well to praise Pericles,j ust as

in reviling Hyperbolus it was well to praise Cleon .

Comedy was an ultra-democratic institution,as the Old

Oligarch remarked,yet all the comic writers have an

aristocratic bias . This is partly because their provincewas satire

,not praise : if they were satisfied with the

course of politics , they wrote about something else whichthey were not satisfied with . Partly

,perhaps

,it is

that they shared the bias of the men of culture . But

Eupolis was more liberal than Aristophanes . Aristophanes does not seem ever to have violently attackedrich people .1 Eupolis wrote his Fla tterers

* agains t‘ Money-bag Gallias ’ and his train, and his Bap ta i

*or

D ippers* against Alcib iades. The latter piece represented

one of those mystical and enthusiastic worships whichwere so prominent at the time

,that of a goddess named

Cotytto . Baptism was one of the rites ; and so wassecrecy

,unfortunately for the reputation of those con

cerned. The Greek layman attributed the worst possiblemotives to any one who made a secret of h is rel igiousObservances or prayed in a low voice .PHRYNICHUS, son of Eun omides, who won his firstprize in 429, and PLATO, of whom we know no piececertainly earl ier than 405, bridge the transition to thecomedy of manners

,which arose in the fourth century.

The Solitary* of Phryn ichus is an instance of a piece

which was a fai lure because it was produced some twentyyears before the public were ready for it. We have nopurely political play from Phryn ichus ; from Plato we

1 Alcibiades had fa llen at the time of the Triphaler.‘l


have a Hyperbolus ,* a Cleophon,

* and one called theAlliance

,

* dealing with the alleged consp iracy of Nikias,

Phaeax, and Alcibiades to get Hyperbolus ostracised.

ARISTOPHANES, SON OF PHILIPPUS, FROM KYDATHENAION(ca . 450 B.C. to ca . 385B.C.)

By far the mos t succes sful of the writers of the oldcomedy was ARISTOPHANES ; and though he had certainexternal advantages over Cratinus

,and enj oyed a much

longer active l ife than Eupolis, he seems, by a comparison of the fragments of all the writers of this formof l iterature

,to have deserved his success. He held

land in ZEgtna. There is no reason to doubt h is fullAthenian citizenship

,though some l ines of Eupolis

( frag . complain ing of the success of foreigners,

have been supposed to refer to h im. He probablybegan writing very young . At least he explains thathe had to produce his first piece, the Da itales “ Men ofGuzzleton under the name of his O lder friend the actorCallis tratus partly because he was too young for someth ing or other— perhaps too young to have much chanceof obtaining a chorus from the archon ; partly because,though he had written the play

,he had not enough

experience to train the chorus. This manner of production became almost a habit with him . He produced theDa itale’sfi Baby lon iansfi

‘ Acha rn ia ns,B irds

,and Ly s is tra ta

under the name of Call istratus ; the Wasps , Amph ia rdus ,‘

and Frogs under th at of Ph ilOn ides . That is,these

two persons had the trouble of teach ing the chorus,and the pleasure of receiving the s tate payment forthe production . They also had their names proclaimed



against Ols on and Lamachus,as representing the war

party ; but the poet handles h is formidable enemy witha certain caution while

, on the other hand, he goes outof his way to attack Eurip ides (p . whom he haddoubtless already made responsible for the ‘ corruption of the age ’ in the Da italés .

‘ We do not knowof any personal , cause of enmity between the two menbut it is a fact that

,in a degree far surpassing the other

comic writers, Ar is tophanes can never get Eurip idesout Of his head. One might be content with the factthat Eurip ides was just the man to see how vulgar andunreal most of the comedian’s views were

,and that

Ari stophanes was acute enough to see that he saw it.But it remains a curious thing that Aristophanes, in thefirst place

,imitates Euripides to a noteworthy extent

so much so that Cratinus invented a word ‘ Eurip id

aristoph an ize’ to describe the style of the two ; and,

secondly, he must, to j udge from his parodies, haveread and t e- read Euripides til l he knew him practicallyby heart.In 424 Aristophanes had his real fl ing. The Situation

as sumed in the Kn ights is that a crusty old man calledDemos has fallen wholly into the power of his rascallyPaphlagonian slave ; his two home-bred slaves get holdof an oracle of Bakis

,ordain ing that Demos shall be

governed in turn by four ‘mongers ’ or‘ chandlers ’

the word is an improvised coinage—each doomed to

yield to some one lower than himself. The ‘ hempchandler ’ has had his day

,and the ‘ sheep - chandler ’

now there is the Paphlagonian ‘ leather-chandler,’ who

Shall in due time yield to -what ? A ‘ black-puddi ngchandler “Lord Poseidon

,wha t a trade ! Shouts the

delighted house-slave,and at the critical instant there

ACHARNIANS .

’ KNIGHTS 28 3

appears an abnormally characteristic costermongerwith a tray of black-puddings. The two conspiratorsrouse the man to his great destiny. The rest of theplay is a wild struggle between the Paph lagonian andthe black-pudding man

,in which the former is routed

at h is own favourite pursuits— lying, perj ury, steal ing,and the art of ‘ cheek.

’ The Paphlagonian,Of course

,

is Cleon,who owned a tannery ; the two Slaves are

Nikias and Demosthenes ; the previous‘ chandlers ’

were apparently Lys icles and Eucrates . But the poettells us that

,in the first p lace, he could get no actor

to take the part of Cleon,and

,secondly

,th at when he

took the part h imself the mask-painters refused to makea mask representing Cleon . The play is a perfect marvelof rollicking and reckless abuse. Yet it is wonderfullyfunny

,and at the end, where there is a kind of trans

formation scene,the black-pudding man becoming a good

genius,and Demos recovering h is senses

,there is some

eloquent and rather noble patriotism. The attack isnot exactly venomous nor even damaging. I t can havedone very little to spoil Cleon

’

s chances of election toany post he desired . I t is a hearty deluge of mudin return for the prosecution of 426. Such a play

,if

once accepted by the archon,and not interrupted by

a popular tumult,was l ikely to win frantic applause ; as a

matter of fact,the Kn ights won the fir st prize .

The next year there was a reaction . The Clouds,

attacking the new culture as typified in Socrates,was

beaten, both by the Wine - Flash * of th e ‘wreck ’

Cratinus, and by the Connus"

of Ameips ias . Aristophanes complains of this defeat 1 in a second versionof the play, which has alone come down to us. He

1 Clouds,‘ pa rabas is .’


considered it the bes t th ing he had ever written . Be

sides the parabasis,’ two scenes in our Clouds are stated

not to have occurred in the original play— the dialoguebetween the just Cause and the Unjust Cause, and therather effective close where Socrates’s house is burnt.The present play 15 manifestly unfinished and doesnot hang together, but the interest taken by posterityin the main character has made it perhaps the mostcelebrated of all Aristophanes’s works . The situationan old man wishing to learn from a sophist the best wayto avoid paying h is debts—is n ot really a very happyone ; and, in Spite of the exquisite style which Aristophanes always has at command

,and the humour of

particular situations,the play is rather tame . Socrates

must have done someth ing to attract public notice atthis time, s ince he was also the hero of the Connusfi"

Ameips ias described him as a poor, hungry, raggeddevil

,who ‘ insulted the bootmakers ’ by his naked feet

,

but nevertheless ‘ never deigned to flatter.’ That cari

cature is nearer to the original than is the sophist of the

Clouds , who combines various traits of the real Socrateswith all the things he most emphatically disowned—theatheism of Diagoras, the grammar of Protagoras

,the

astronomy and physics of Diogenes of Apollonia. However

,the portrait is probably about as true to l ife as

thos e of Cleon,Agathon, or Cleonymus, and considerablyless ill-natured .

I n 422 Aristophanes returned again from the movement of thought to ordinary politics . The Wasps is asatire on the love of the Athenians for sitting in thejury courts and trying cases. I t must have been afascinating occupation to many minds : there was inte l

lectual interest in it, and the charm of conscious power.



We may guess that the Old Age,* in which s ome old men

were rej uvenated, was produced in the interval, and alsothe Amph ia rcius ,

’1 in wh ich some one goes to ‘ dreama dream ’ in the temple of the hero at Oropus. Thesame subj ect is satirised in the Plutus many years after

(cf. also p . The next play in our tradition is Aristo

phanes’

s unquestioned masterpiece,the Birds (4 14

I t has perhaps more fun,certain ly more sustained in

terest,and more exquisite imagination and lyr ic beauty

,

than any of his other works. I t is a revelation of theextraordinary heights to wh ich the old comedy withall its grotesqueness could rise. The underlying motiveis the famil iar desire to escape from the worry ofreality , into some region of a quite different sort. TwoAthenians

,Pe ithetairus Persuader ’) and Euelpidés

Hopefulson having realised the fact that Tereus wasa king of Athens before he was turned into a hoopoeand became king of the B irds—a fact established beyonddoubt by Sophocles and other highly-respected poetsdetermine to find him out

,and to form a great B ird

commonwealth. Peith etairus is a Splendid character,

adapting himself to every situation and convertingevery opponent. He rouses the melancholy Téreus ;convinces th e startled and angry B irds ; gets wingsmade ; establ ishes a constitution, public buildings, anddefences ; receives and rej ects multitudes of appl icantsfor citizenship

,admitting

,for instance

,a lyric-poet and

a father-beater,’ who seems to be the ancient equivalent

for a wife-beater,but drawing the l ine at a prophet

,an

inspector,and a man of science. Meantime the new

city has blocked the communication of the gods withEarth

,and cut ofl the ir supplies of incense. Their

messenger I ris is arres ted for trespassing on the B irds’

THE BIRDS 8 7

territory,and Peith etairus makes the poor girl cry ! At

last the gods have to propose terms . But a deserterhas come to Peithetairus beforehand : it is Prometheus,the enemy of Zeus

,hiding from ‘Them Above under

a large umbrella—how much further can cheery profan ity go —and bringing information about the weakness of the gods. When the embassy comes, it consistsof one wise man, Poseidon ; one stupid man, who isseduced by the promise of a good dinner

,Heracles and

one absolute fool, Triballos, who cannot talk intell igibly,and does not know what he is voting for. Zeus restoresto the B irds the sceptre of the world

,and gives to

Peith etairus the hand of his beautiful daughter Basileiaand ‘ Cloudcuckootown

’ is establishedfor ever. A lesser man would have felt bound to bringit to grief ; but the rules of comedy really forbade suchan ending

,and Aristophanes is n ever afraid of his own

fancies . There is very little political al lusion in theplay. Ar istophanes’s party were probably at the timecontent if th ey could prevent Athens from sending reinforcements to Sicily and saving the army that wasduring these very months rotting under the walls ofSyracuse . The whole play is a refusal to think aboutsuch troublous affairs. I t was beaten by Ameips ias

’

s

Revellers,* but seems to have made some impression

,

as Archippus soon after wrote his F is hes * in imitationof it.The next two plays of our tradition are written under

the shadow of the oligarchy of 41 1 . Pol itics are notsafe

,and Ari stophanes tries to make up for them by

daring indecency. The Ly s is tra ta might be a very fineplay ; the heroine is a real character, a kind of femalePeitheta irus

,with more high principle and less sense of


humour. The main idea— the women strike in a bodyand refuse to have any dealings with men until peace ismade— was capable of any kind of treatment ; and thecurious th ing is that Aristophanes, while profes sing toridicule the women

,is al l through on their side. The

j okes made by the superior sex at the expense of th einferior—to give them their Roman names—are seldomremarkable either for generosity or for refinement. And

it is our author’s pleasant humour to accuse everybodyof every vice he can think of at the moment. Yet withthe single exception that he credi ts women with aninordinate fondness for wine -parti es— the equivalent

,it

would seem,of afternoon tea—h e makes them

,on the

whole,perceptibly more sensible and more sympathetic

than his men . Of Course the emancipation of womenwas one of the ideas of the time. Aristophanes wrotetwo plays on the subj e ct, and that before Plato had madeh is famous pronouncement, or the Cynics started theirwomen-preachers . Two other comedians

,Amphis and

Alexis,fol lowed his lead. I t was an instinct in Aristo

phanes to notice and superficial ly to assimilate most ofthe advanced thought of his time ; if he had gonedeeper, he would have taken things seriously and spoilth is work. He always turns back before he has understood too much

,and uses his half-knowledge and partial

sympathy to improve his mocking .

The Thesmophoriazus ce, written in the same year andunder the same diffi culties

,is a very clever play. The

women assembled at the feast of Thesmophoria,to

which no men were admitted,take counsel together how

to have revenge on Eurip ides for representing such‘ horrid ’ women in his tragedies. Euripides knows ofthe plan

,and persuades his father- in - law to go to the



place of honour when he came. The death of Sophoclesmust have occurred when the play was half written hehas to be mentioned

,but is represented as having no

wish to return to earth ; while Dionysus himself affectsto be anxious to see what sort of work Ioph on will dowithout his father’ s help . His poetry is not criticisedor parodied . On the arrival of Dionysus

,there follows

a long contest between the two poets. I t seems apedantic subj ect

,and it is certainly wonderful that an

Athenian audience can have sat listen ing and laughingfor hours to a piece of literary criticism in the form of aplay. But the fact remains that the play makes even amodern reader laugh aloud as he reads. As to the judgments passed on the two poets

,one may roughly say

that the parodies are admirable,the analytical criticism

childish .

1 Ar istophanes feels al l the points with singulars ensitiveness

,but he does not know how to name them

or expound them,as

,for instance

,Aristotle did. The

choice is hard to make : “ I th inh the one clever,but I

enj oy the other,

”says Dionysus. Eventually he leaves the

decision to his momentary feelings and choosesAi s chylus .

I t would be quite wrong to look on the play as a mereattack on Euripides. The case would be paralle l if wecould imagine some modern writer like the late Mr .Calverley

,a writer of comedy and parody with a keen

and Class ic literary taste,sending Dionysus to call Brown

ing back to us,and deciding in the end that he would

sooner have Keats .There comes anoth er great gap before we meet

,in

392, the poorest of Aristophanes’s plays

,the Eccles iazusa

or Women in Parl iament.’ I t reads at first l ike a parodyof the scheme for communism and abolition of the1 The mus ica l cri ticism,

which is plentiful, of course pass es over our heads.

FROGS . ECCLES IAZUSE . PLUTUS 29 1

family given by Plato in Republic V. The dates willnot allow this ; but it is, of course, quite likely thatPlato had expressed some such views in lectures or

conversation before he put them in writing. Theschemes are far from identical. I n Plato the sexes areequal in Aristophanes the men are disfranch ised. Themarriage system is entirely different. The communismand the simplification of l ife might be sympathetic parodies of Plato, but Aristophanes will not have the severetraining or the military saints at any price . TheEccles iazus a' has a larger subj ect than the merelypolitical Ly s is tra ta , but it is a much tamer play.

The Plutus (388 B.C .) is the last play of Aristophanespreserved

,and is very different from the res t. I t may

almost be called a play without personal ities,without

politics,without parabas is that is

,it belongs practically

not to the old but to the middle comedy— the transition to the pure comedy of manners. I t is

,indeed

,

stil l founded on a sort of ‘ hypothesis,

’ l ike the B irdsor the Acha rn ians . Plutus is a blind god ;if we could catch him and get h is eyesight restoredby a competent oculist or a miracle-working temple

,

what a state of th ings it would be ! The main linesof the play form merely the working out of th isidea. But the new traits appear in many details ;we have the comic slave

,impudent

,rascally

,but

indispensable, who plays such an important part inMenander and Terence

,and we have character-draw

ing for its own sake in the hero’s friend Bleps idémus .

We hear of two later plays called Aiolos ihon * and

Cbcalus ,* which Ar istophanes gave to his son ArarOS

to make his début with . Sikon is a cook’s name ; so,presumably

,the fir st represented the old Wind-god


acting in that capacity. The second,l ike so many of

the new comedy plays,contained a story

,not comic but

romantic,with a seduction and a recognition .

Aristophanes is beyond doubt a very great writer.The wisdom of h is politics, the general value of hisV iew of life

,and

,above all

,the ‘ S ittliche Erns t

’ whichhis admirers find in his treatment of h is opponents’

alleged vices , may well be questioned. Yet,admitting

that he often opposed what was best in h is age,or

advocated it on the lowest grounds ; admitting that h isslanders are beyond description

,and that as a rule he

only attacks the poor,and the leaders of the poor

neverth e less he does it al l with such exuberant highSpirits

,such an air of its all being nonsense together

,

such insight and swiftnes s,such incomparable direct

ness and Charm of style,that even if some Archelaus

had handed him over to Euripides to scourge,he

would probably have escaped h is well-earned whipping.

His most characteristic qual ity,perhaps

,is his combina

tion of the wildest and broadest farce on the one hand,

with the most exquis ite lyric beauty on the other. Ofcourse the actual lyrics are loose and casual in workmanship ; it argues mere inexperience in writing lyricverse for a critic seriously to compare them in th isrespect with the choruses of Sophocles and Euripides.But the genius is there, if the hard work is not.

As a dramatist,Aris tophanes is careless about con struction but he has so much ‘ go and l ifting power that hemakes the most absurd situations credible . He has areal gift for imposing on h is audience’s credulity. Hisindecency comes partly

,no doubt

,from that peculiarly

Greek na ivete’

,which is the result of simple and un

affected living ; partly it has no excuse to urge except


P LAT O

PLATO,SON OF ARISTON, FROM KOLLETUS (427 347 B.C.)

DESCENDED by his father’s Side from Codrus,the last

king of Attica, through his mother from Solon a cousinof Critias and nephew of Charmides an accomplishedgymnast and wrestler

,a facile and witty writer ; with

a gift fo r occasional poems and an ambition towardstragedy

,with an unusually profound training in music

,

mathematics,and letters

,as well as a dash of Heraclitean

philosophy ; Plato must have seemed in h is first youth atype of the bril liant young Athenian aristocrat. He mighthave aspired to a career like that of Alcib iades

,but h is

traditions and preferences made him turn away from legitimate pol itical action . He despised the masses

,and was

not going to flatter them. He went in sympathies; if n otin action

,with his relatives along the road dimly pointed

by the Old Ol igarch—the road of definite conspiracy withhelp from abroad. When he first met Socrates he wastwenty

,and not a philosopher. He was one of th e

fash ionable youths who gathered about that Old sage toenj oy the process of having their wits sharpened

,and

their dignified acquaintances turned into ridicule . Theseyoung men were social ly isolated as well as exclusive .They avoided the Ecclesia

,where Ol igarchism was not

admitted ; their views were as a rule too‘ advanced ’

for

MIMES 295

official expos ition on the stage . They mostly read theirtragedies to one another.Plato amused h is friends with a new kind of l iterature

,

the mime. I t was a form which seems to be introdocing itself among ourselves at the present moment—the close study of l ittle social scenes and conversations

,seen mostly in the humorous aspect. The two

great mime-writers,Epicharmus and Sophron, had by

this time made their way from Sicily to all the cultured circles of Greece . Plato’s Own efforts were inprose

,l ike Soph ron

’

s,though we hear that he slept

with the poems of Ep icharmus under h is pillow. A

mass of material lay ready to hand—one Tisamenus of

Teos had perhaps already utilised it— in the conversations of Socrates with the divers philosophers and diguitaries . Plato’s earliest dialogue 1 s eems to be preserved.

I n the Laches Socrates is formally introduced to thereader as a person able

,in spite of his unpromis ing

appearance,to discuss al l manner of subj ects. Two

fathers,who are thinking of having their sons trained

by a certain semi-quackish fencing-master,ask the great

generals Laches and Nikias to see one of his performance s and advise them. Socrates is called into thediscuss ion

,and after some pleasant character-drawing

it is made evident that the two generals have no notionwhat courage is

,nor consequently what a soldier ought

to be. The Grea ter H ipp ias is more outspokenly humo

1 I fol low main ly the linguistic tes ts as given in C. Ritter’s statisticaltab les . The chief objections to this method are the s tatistics are not yet

sufficien tly comprehens ive and delicate (2) it is difficult to al low for the fact,wh ich is both attested by tradition and independently demonstrab le, that

P lato used to work over h is pub lished dialogues . But I do not expect theresults of Campbe ll , Dittenberger, Schanz, Gomperz, Blass , Ritter, to beserious ly modified.


rous. Socrates applies to the sophist to know what‘ the beauti ful ’ (TOmm) is ; he has a ‘ friend ’ at home‘ with a big stick ’ who asks him questions of this s ort

,

and wil l not let him s leep of nights ti l l he answers them.

The point of the dialogue lies in the utter incapacity ofHippias

,for all his wide information and practical

abil ity, to grasp an abstract idea, and in his gradualdisgust at the coarse language and outrageous conductwhich Socrates imputes to the imaginary friend.

A change in the manner of these mirnes comes withthe events of404—40 3 B.C . We could be sure even withoutthe testimony of Letter VII. that Plato must have lookedwith eager expectation at the attempt of th e Thirty to“ stay but for a moment the pride of the accursedDemos,

” 1and introduce a genuine aristocracy he must

have been bitterly disappointed when their excessesmade the Demos seem gold in compa rison .

” H is twokinsmen fel l in th e streets fighting against their countrymen ; their names were universally execrated by theAthens of the Restoration . Plato had loved Charmides ,and chooses a characteristic imaginative way to defendh is memory. The Thirty were guilty of 68pi 9 pride

,

’

intemperance,

’ whatever we call it. Admitted what istheir excuse ? That they never knew any more than anyone else what d auppoa bm)

‘ healthy-mindedness ’) was. Plato goes back from the slain traitor Charmides to the Charmides of 430 ; a boy full of promiseand of all the ordinary qualities that men praise— noblyborn, very handsome, docile, modest, eager to learn .

Socrates affects to treat h im for a headache ; but youcannot treat the head without the body, nor the bodywithout the soul. I s h is soul in health Has he

1 Alleged epitaph of Cri tias.



philosophical work of Plato that is not a dialogue,pur

ports to be Socrates’s defence at his trial,but is

,in

fact,neither a speech for a real court nor an answer

to a legal accusation,but a glorification of a great

man’s whole character in the face of later Athenianrumours. I t cannot have been written for some yearsafter 399. The Crito is in the same spirit ; it te lls howCrito had arranged for Socrates to escape from prison

,

and how Socrates would not evade or disobey the laws .The Euthyphro is a sl ight sketch, framed on the usualplan : people were ready to put Socrates to death forimpiety

,when no one really knew what piety was. The

Pha do gives the last hours in prison,the discourse on the

immortal ity of the soul,and the drinking of the poison .

I t is realistic in every detail,but the real ism is softened

partly by the essential nobleness of the actors,partly

by an artistic device which Plato loved in the middleperiod of his work : the conversation is not givendirectly

,it is related by Phaedo

,who had been present

,

to one Ech ecrates of Ph lius,some years after

,and far

from Athens. “ There is nothing in any tragedy ancientor modern

,says the late Master of Ball iol

,

“ noth ingin poetry or history (with one exception), l ike the lasthours of Socrates in Plato .

” Very characteristic is thelack of dogmatism or certainty : one argument afteranother is brought up

,followed intently

,and then

,to

the general despair,found wanting ; that which is ulti

mately left unanswered is of a metaphysical character,

l ike the Kantian position that the Self, not being inTime

,cannot be destroyed in Time. ‘ Soul ’ is that by

which th ings l ive ; when th ings die, i t is by beingseparated from Soul : therefore Soul itself cannot beconceived dead. I t is an argument that carries conviction

PLATO ON THE DEATH OF SOCRATES 299

to minds of a particular qual ity in speculative moments .The ordinary human comment upon it is given by Platoin that last moment of intolerable strain

,when Phaedo

veils h is face,and Crito starts to h is feet, and

“Apollo

do’

rus,who had never ceased weep ing a ll the time, burs t

out in a loud and angry cry which brahe down every one

but Socra tes .

”

As for the Gorgi as , it seems to fulfi l a prophecy putinto the mouth of Socrates in the Apology :

“You have

h illed me becaus e y ou thought to escape from gi ving an

account of y our lives . But y ou w ill be disappointed. There

a re others to conv icty ou, accus ers whom I held bach when y ou

hnew it not; they w ill be ha rsher ina smuch as they a re

younger, andy ou w ill w ince the more.

” The Gorgia s is fullof the sting of recent suffering. I t begins by an inquiryinto the nature of Rhetoric ; it ends as an indictment ofal l rhétores

’ and pol iticians and the whole public l ife ofAthens. Rhetoric is to real s tatesmanship as cookery isto medicine it is one of the arts of pleas ing or flattery .

’

There are two conceivable types of statesman : the truecounsellor

,who will oppose the sovere ign when he goes

wrong and the false,who will make it h is business from

childhood to drink in the spirit of the sovereign,to

understand instinctively all h is l ikes and dislikes . Hewill be the tyrant’s favourite

,or the great popular leader

,

according to circumstances,but always and every

where a mere flatterer, bad and miserable ." “He w ill h ill

your true counsellor,any how ,

” retorts Callicles,the advo

cate of evil,“ if he gives trouble !

” “As if I did not

hnaw tha t,

” answers Socrates— “that a bad man can h ill a

good ! Callicles admits that all existing politicians are

of the worse type, imitators of the sovereign, but holdsthat Themistocles and KimOn and Pericles were true


statesmen All fla tterers , coohs,

confi ctioners , tavern

heepers !” answers Socrates ;

“Whom have they made

better ? They have filled the city w ith ha rbours , dochs ,

walls,tributes

,and such trash, ins tead of temperance and

fighteousness !” They have made the city bloated and

sick ; when the crisis comes, the city wil l know howit has been deceived

,and tear in pieces its present

flatterers ! The dialogue breaks into four main thesesI t is worse to do than to suffer wrong ; it is better tobe punished for wrong done than not to be punished ;we do not what we will, but what we desire ; to be,and not to seem

,is the end of l ife. I t is characteristic

of Plato that anger against the world never makes himcynical

,but the reverse : he meets his griefs by harder

th inking and more determined faith in his highestmoral ideal . He speaks in the Rhada of men who aremade misanthropic by disappointments “ It is bad tha t

,

to hate y our fellow -men; but it is worse to ha te Reas on

and the Ideal.” He fell

,like Carlyle

,and perhaps l ike

Shakespeare,into the first error he never came near the

second . _

The next dialogue,Meno

,on the old question “whether

Goodness is Teachable,

” sti ll bears the stamp of Socrates’sdeath in the introduction of Anytus and the rather cruelreferences to h is son (see above, p. But purespeculation predominates

,especially the theory of Ideas

,

which was already prominent in the Phado. The Ly s is ,On Friendship

,is an un important work ; Plato could

only treat that subj ect under the deeper name of Love .This he does in two dialogues which stand apart, even inPlato

,for a certa in glamour that is al l their own . The

Pha drus comes later ; the Sympos ium marks the closeof th is present period . I f the claim were advanced that



Plato’s brother, the s tory of the Banquet . Not that hewas there himself it was long before h is time

,as it

was before Glaucon s ; but he heard it from Aristodemus ,“a little unshodma n who had followed Socrates. So

,by

indirect memories, we reach the Banquet. We hear thevarious accounts of the origin and meaning of Love

,at

last that learnt by Socrates from the Mantinean prophetessDiotima. Love is the child of Poverty and Power (wépoe) ;the obj ect of Love is not Beauty but Etern ity

,though

it is only in that which is beautiful that Love can bearfruit. The lover begins by loving some one beautifulperson ; then he feels bodi ly beauty everywhere, thenbeautiful souls and deeds and habits

,

” til l at last hecan open his eyes to “

the grea t ocean of the beautiful inwhich he finds his real life . The passion of his originalearthly love is not by any means dulled

,it persists in

intensity to the end,when at last he sees that ultimate

cause of al l the sea of beautiful th ings,Perfect Beauty

,

never becoming nor ceasing,waxing nor waning ;

“ it

is not lihe any face or hands or bodily th ing; it is not

word nor though t it is not in s omething els e,neither

liv ing thing, nor ea rth nor heaven only by itself in its

ow n way in one form it for ever ls (a im) [cad a im) [t ed

a irrof) uovoetséc ciel. by )” I f a man can see that

,he has

his l ife,and nothing in the world can ever matter to him.

Suddenly at this point comes a beating on the door,

and enters Alcibiades,revell ing

,

“ w ith many crowns in

his ha ir” we have his absorption into the Banquet

,and

his speech in praise of Socrates,the brave

,wise, sinless .

Then—we hear—came a second and louder noise, aninroad of cold night air and unknown drunken revellers.

Most of the guests slipped away. Aris todemus , who waswaiting for Socrates

,drew back and fell as leep, ti l l he

PLATO’S FIRST VI S IT TO S IC ILY 30 3

woke in grey dawn to find the feast over,only Socrates

stil l unchanged,discoursing to Agathon and Aristophanes.

Aristodemus was weary and could not fol low the wholeargument ; he only knew that it showed how comedyand tragedy are the same thing.

But by th is time new influences were at work inPlato’s development. On his master’s death he hadretired with other Socratics to Megara

,where the whole

hearted protection of Eucleides laid the seeds in Plato’smind of a life- long respect and friendliness towards thebarren Megaric dialectics . The Gorgias can scarcelyhave been written in Athens. We hear vaguely of

travels in Egypt and Cyrene . But P lato seems to havereturned home before 388 B.C.,

when he made his firstfateful expedition to Sicily. Mos t of Sicily was at thistime a central ised mil itary despotism in the hands ofDionysius I., whose brother- in - law

,Dion

,was an en thu

s iastic admirer of Plato . I t was partly this friend, partlythe Pythagorean schools

,and partly interest in the great

volcano,which drew Plato to Syracuse and he probably

considered that any tyrant’s court was as fit a place for aphilosopher as democratic Athens . But he was more ason of his age and country than he ever admitted. Hecould not forgo the Athenian’s privilege of n appna fa

( free Speech), and he used it in the Athenian manner, onpolitics. The Old autocrat put him in irons

,and made

a present Of him— so the legend runs —to the Spartanambassador Follis . Pollis sold h im as a slave in XEgina,where one Ann ikeris of Cyrene— a follower of Ar is tippusapparently

,heaping coals of fire on the anti-Hedonist’s

head—bought h im into freedom,and refused to accept

repayment from Plato’s friends ; who, since the sub


scriptions had been already collected, devoted the moneyto buying the philosopher a hous e and garden to teachin

,about twenty minutes’ walk from Athens

,near the

gymnas ium sacred to the hero Academus. This was in

387, at least two years before the Sympos ium. But everydetai l in this story varies

,and our oldest evidence, the

Seventh Letter,gives nothing beyond the fact of a dis

appointing visit.The founding of the school was a return to the habitof the older philosophers. The Academy was technicallya Th ias os

,

’ or rel igious organisation,for the worship Of

the Muses,with officers

,a constitution

,and landed pro

perty. The head was elected ; mathematics, astronomy,and various sciences were taught

,as well as phi losophy.

The lecturers overflowed from the Scholarch’s ’ modesthouse and library into the garden and public gymnas ium; it was only later that they acquired adequatebuildings. Women students attended as well as men .

The institution preserved its un ity,and regularly burned

incense to Plato as ‘ hero-founder ' upon his birthday,

amid the most complete changes of tendency and doctrine, til l it was despoiled and abol ished by justinian in

529 A.D. as a stronghold of Paganism. The early fourthcen tury was a great period for school- founding. Antis thenes had begun his lectures in Kyno sarges , the gymnas ium of the base-born, soon after Socrates

’

s death .

I socrates had followed with h is system of general cultureabout 390 B.C. The next generation saw th e establishment of the Lyceum or Peripatos by Aristotle, the Stoaby Zeno

,and th e Garden by Epicurus.

Whatever the date of the founding of the Academy,after the Sympos ium there appears, on internal evidence,to be a marked interval in Plato’s l iterary work. The



the open ing of his school . We cannot tell which wasoriginally the provocation and which the answer ; controvers ial writings in antiquity were generally workedover and over till each side had answered the other toits own satisfaction . But the tone of mutual criticism isclear

,and the Phcedrus ends with a supposed message

to I socrates from the master. I socrates is young yet ’

—that is, of course, at the imaginary date of the conversation—J and is too fine material to be a mere oratorif he will turn to philosophy

,he has the genius for it.

Tahe tha t message from me, Phddrus , to Isocra tes whom

I love.

” I f th is is ‘ polemic,

’ it is not l iving polemic itis the tone of an Old friend letting bygones be bygones

,

and agree ing to respect a diflerence of opin ion . Theprobabil ity is that we have the Phcedrus in a late revision . The first publication was perhaps the occasion of

Isocrates’

s outburst ; our Pha drus is rewritten fifteenyears later

,answering gently various po ints of criticism

,

and ending with th is palpable ol ive-branch .

During these years Plato was working out his mostelaborate effort

,the Republic. He used for the intro

duction a little dialogue in the early humorous s ty le,on Righteousness

,

’ between Socrates and Thrasymachus .

This is now Book I . of the Republic ; the res t is by thelanguage- tests uniform

,and the various theories for

dividing the long work into ‘ strata ’ are so far discountenanced. The main subj ect of this great unityis Oi nawmimyfl wh at Righteousness is, and whether thereis any reason to be righteous rather than unrighteous.This leads to the discussion and elaboration of a righteouscommunity ; not, as a modern would expect, because

justice is a relation between one man and anotherPlato emphatica l ly insists that it is someth ing in the

THE ‘REPUBLIC 30 7

individual’s own character— but because it is easier to seethings on a large scale . We must not here attempt anyanalysis Of th is masterpiece of sustained argument

,of oh

servation,wit

,imagination

,and inspired eloquence. To

say that it involves Social ism and Communism,the equal

ising of the sexes,the abolition of marriage

,the crushing

of commerce,the devotion of the whole resources of the

state to education, a casual and unemphas ised abolitionof Slavery, and an element of despotism in the hands ofa class of soldier-saints— such a description results incaricature. The spirit of the Republic can naturally onlybe got from itself

,and only then by the help of much

study of the Greek mind,or else real power of imaginative

sympathy .It yields as l ittle to skimming as do most of

the great l iving works of th e past.Plato’s gifts of thought and express ion are at the ir

highest in the Republic, but several of the notes of hislater years are beginning to be heard— the predominantpolitical interest ; the hankering after a reformed anddocile Dionysius the growing bitternes s of the poetphilosopher against the siren who seems to keep himfrom Truth . Plato speaks of poetry as Mr. Ruskin speaksof l iterary form .

“ I Show men their plain duty ; andthey reply that my style is charming Poetry is utterdelusion . I t is not Truth nor a shadow of Truth : it isthe th ird remove

,the copy of a Shadow

,worthless ; and

yet it can intoxicate people,and make them mad with

delight I t must be banished utterly from the righteouscity.’ Aristotle and the rest of us, who are not in perilfrom our excess of imagination, who have not spentyears in working passionate ly towards an ideal of Truthfor which poetry is always offering us a mirage

,will very

properly deplore Plato’s want of appreciation . We


try to excuse h im by saying that when he spoke ofpoetry he was th inking of Chaerémon

,and the sons

of Carkinus . But he was not. I t is real poetry,it is

Homer and E s chylus and himself that he turns against ;and he would have been disloyal to his philosophy if hehad done otherwise . Plato had based his li fe on thebelief th at hard th inking can lead men to salvation ;that Truth and the Good somehow in the end coincide.He meant to work towards that end

,come what might ;

and if Poetry interfered,he must throw Poetry over

board . After the Republic she has almost gone ; theS ophis tes , Politica s

,Laws

,know little of her

,and even

the myths become more abstract and didactic,except,

possibly,that of Atlantis in the Critias .

I t is curious that Plato does not include his mythsin his condemnation of poetry

,since it was as poetry

that he originally j us tified them . A divine vision inthe Pha do commissions Socrates j ust before his deathto ‘ practise poetry ’

(p ova imj) ; the oracle from Delphiin the Apology procla ims Socrates the wisest of men,because he knows h is own ignorance . Both visionand oracle are apparently fictions : they are Plato

’s wayof claiming a divine sanction for his two-sided Socrates,the inspired Questioner and the inspired Story-tel ler.

1

I t is in later l ife also that Plato turns seriously topolitics. A younger generation of philosophers wasthen growing up

,the future Cynics

,Stoics

,Epicureans,

who turned utterly away from the State,and devoted

themselves to the individual soul. Once Plato wasready to preach some such doctrine himself : he hadbegun life in reaction against the great politicalperiod . But he was

,after all

,a child of Periclean

1 Sch anz, Herm. xxix. 597.



Plato could still write (709 f.) Giveme a ty rant-governed

ci ty to form our commun ity from; let the ty rant be y oung,docile

,brave

,temperate, and s ofa r fortuna te as to have a t his

s ide a true thinher and lawgiver .

” That is j ust at the endof the first hal f of the long work : the Laws must havetaken years in writing, and there is a demonstrablechange of style after Book IV. I n the second half wehave noth ing more of Plato’s hopes for a kingdom ofth is world

,unless we connect with them that sad pas sage

where he faces and accepts a doctr ine that he wouldhave denied with h is last breath ten years before—thatthere is

,after al l

,an Evil World-Soul ! (p . The

other writings of the late period are pure philosophy .

The Sophis tes and Politica s are sequels to the Thea tétus ;they follow in method the unattractive ‘ dichotomy ’

of

the Pa rmen ides . The Sophis tes is a demonstration of thereal ity of Not-Be ing, the region in which the Sophis t,who essential ly I s-Not whatever he professes to be

,has

h is existence. The Ph ilébus , an inquiry into the Good—it is neither Knowledge nor Pleasure

,but has more

analogy to Knowledge— is remarkable for conducting itsmetaphys ics without making use of the so -called Theoryof Ideas its basis is the union of Finite and Infinite

,of

Plurality and Unity . I t appears from the statistics of

language to have been composed at the same time as thefirst half of the Laws .

The Tima us,on the origin of the world

,and the

Critias , on that of human society , go with the secondhalf of the Laws . The Timaus is either the mostdefinitely futile

,or the least understood of Plato’s specu

lations ; an attempt to construct the physical world out

of abstract geometrical elements,instead of the atoms of

Democritus. The Critias fragment treats of the glory

PLATO’S LATEST WORK 3 1 r

and downfall of the isle Atlantis,an ideal type of mere

material strength and wea lth, with marked resemblancesto Athens. There was to have been another dialogue,Hermoera tes , in th is series, but it was never written .

Plato died,leaving the Law s unrevised—stil l on the

wax,tradition says

,for Phil ip of Opus to transcribe and

edit— and the Critias broken in the midst of a sentence.Plato had failed in the main efforts of h is life. He

was,indeed, almost worsh ipped by a large part of the

Greek world ; his greatness was felt not only by philosophers

,but by the leading generals and statesmen .

The Cyrenaics might be annoyed by his loftiness ; theCynics might rage at h im for a false Socratic

,a rich

man’s philosopher speculating at ease in his garden,

instead of making his home with the disinherited andcrying in the streets against sin . But at the end of hislifetime he was almost above the reach of attack. Evencomedy is gentle towards him ; and the slanders of thenext generation are only the rebound against previousexaggerations of praise . I t i s significant of the vulgarconception of him

,that rumour made him the son of

Apollo,and wrapped h im in Apoll ine myths ; of the

philosophic feel ing, that Ar istotle— no sentimentalistcertain ly

,and no uncompromising disciple—built him

an altar and a shrine.But the world was going wrong in P lato’s eyesthose who praised

,did not obey ; those who wor

shipped,controverted him. He had set out expecting

to find some key to the world—some principle thatwould enable him to operate with all mental conceptsas one does with the concepts of mathematics. I t isthe knowledge of th is principle which is to make the‘ Rulers ’ of the Laws and the Repuélic infall ible and


despotic . Plato himself knew that he had not foundit. The future was for the men who had more meregrit and less self-criticism. Ar istippus could teach andact unshrinking hedonism ; Democritus could organisescience and form a definite dogmatic materialism ;

Antisthenes could revi le the world— art,learn ing,

honour included—without misgiving . These were theauthors of the great consistent schools. P latonism hadno form of its own . Plato’s nephew and successor,Speus ippus, merely worshipped his uncle, and thoughtall detailed knowledge impossible til l one could knoweverything ; Aristotle developed his own system, prac

tical, profound, encyclopaedic, but utterly apart andti n -Platonic ; Heraclides ran to death h is master’s s piritof fiction and mysticism

,and became a kind of reproach

to h is memory.But it is j ust th is inconclusiveness of Plato’s thought

that has made it immortal . We get in h im not a systembut a Spirit

,and a spirit t hat no discoveries can super

sede. I t i s a mistake to th ink of Plato as a dreamer ;he was keen and even satirical in h is insight. But herises beyond his own satire

,and

,except in the Gorgias

period, cares always more for the beauty he can detectin things than for the evil. I t is equally a mistake toideal ise h im as a sort of Apoll ine hero

,radiant and un

troubled, or to take that triumphant head of the I ndianBacchus to be h is l ikeness. He was known for h isstoop and his searching eyes ; the Letters speak oftenof il lness ; and Plato

’s whole tone towards his time isl ike Carlyle’s or Mr. Ruskin’s. He is the greatest masterof Greek prose style

,perhaps of prose style altogether

,

that ever l ived . The ancient critics,over-sensitive to

oratory, put Demosthenes on a par with him or above


X E N O P H O N

X ENOPHON, SON OF GRYLLUS, FROM ERCHIA

(434—354 E£3.)

AMONG Socrates’s near companions were two youngcavalrymen of about the same age

,both of aristo

cratic and semi-treasonable traditions,which seriously

hampered any political ambition they might entertain,and neither quite contented to be a mere man of letters .Plato stayed on in Athens

,learning music

,mathematics

rhetoric, philosophy ; performing his military dutieswriting and burning love-poems ; making efforts atEurip idean tragedy. XENOPHON went to seek his fortune abroad .

The story goes that Socrates, ou first meeting Xenophon in his boyhood

,stopped him with his stick and

asked abruptly where various marketable articles wereto be had. The boy knew

,and an swered politely

,

ti ll Socrates proceeded : “And where can you get menxakoi xc

’

uyadoc’

(beaux et bon s ) ? —that untranslatableconception which includes the ‘ fine fel low ’ and the‘ good man.

’ The boy was confused ; did not know.

“ Then follow me,

s aid the ph ilosopher. The legendis well fitted . Xenophon was never a philosopher, buthe was a typical 1:a may aeéq : a healthy-minded man,religious through and through ; a good sportsman and

3 1 1

XENOPHON’S GREAT ADVENTURE 3 1 5

soldier ; a good husband and father ; with no speculative power

,and no disposition to criticise current bel iefs

about the gods or the laws,though ready enough to

preach and philosophise mildly on al l less dangeroustopics.He is said to have been strikingly handsome

,and he

had in him a dash of romance . A Boeotian friend,

Proxenus,had been engaged by the satrap Cyrus

,

brother to the Great King, t o lead a force of Greekmercenaries on an inland march towards Cil icia. Theaim of the expedition was not divulged

,but the pay

was h igh,and there was every opportunity for adventure .

Proxenus offered to take Xenophon with h im. Xenophon would not actually take service under Cyrus

,who

had so recently been his country’s enemy, but obtainedan introduction to the prince

,and followed him as an

independent cavalier. The rest of the story is wellknown . The troops marched on and on

,wondering

and fearing about the real obj ect of their march . At

last it was beyond concealment that they were assail ingthe Great King . Some fled ; most felt themselves committed

,and went forward. They fought

.

the King atCunaxa ; Cyrus was killed. The Greeks were graduallyisolated and surrounded. .Their five commanders

,ih

cluding Xenophon’s gentle friend Proxenus,the Spartan

martinet Clearchus, the unscrupulous Thessalian Menon ,were inveigled into a parley

,seized

,and murdered. The

troops were left leaderless in th e heart of an enemy’scountry

,over a thousand miles from Greek soil . Xeno

phon saved them . In the night of dismay that followedthe murder of the generals, he summoned the remaining leaders

,degraded the one petty officer who advised

submis s ion—a half-Lydian creature,who wore ear-rings l

3 lo LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE

— had new generals elected, himself one of them,and

directed the march,fighting and flying

,towards the

unexplored Northern mountains. There was scarcelya day or night without adventure, til l the memorableafternoon of january 27, 40 0 B.C.,

when they caughtsight of the sea near Sinope ; and not much peace ofmind for Xenophon till be handed h is army over tothe Spartan Harmost Th ib ron in the March of 399.

I t was a brill iant and heroic achievement. True, thedifficulties were not so great as they seemed ; for th ismarch itself was the first sign to Europe of that internalweakness of the Oriental Empires wh ich was laid bare byAlexander

,Pompey

,Lucullus

,and the various conquerors

of India. But Xenophon’s cheery courage,his compara

tively high intel lect and culture, his transparent honour,his religious simplicity

,combined with great ski ll in

managing men and a genuine gift for improvis ing tacticsto meet an emergency

,enabled him to perform an

exploit which many an abler soldier might have at

tempted in vain . He was not ultimately successful as acondottiere. H is Ten Thousand, proud as he is of the irachievements afterwards

,must have contained some of

the roughest dare-devils in Greece ; and Xenophon, l ikeProxenus

,treated them too much like gentlemen . Old

Clearchus,knout in hand and curse on lips

,never l ighten

ing from his gloom except when there was kill ing about,

was the real man to manage them permanently.Fo r Xenophon the ‘Anabasis ’ was a glory and a faux

pas . He found a halo of romance about h is head, andh is occupation gone. He remembered that Socrates hadnever l iked the expedition ; that the god at Delph i hadnot been fairly consulted and he consoled himself withthe reflection that if he had been more pushing he would



396 came a general of a better sort, the Spartan kingAgés ilaus, commissioned to wage a more decis ive waragains t Artaxerxes . Xenophon j oined his s taff

,and the

two became warm friends. But fortune was capricious.I n 395Athens made an all iance with Artaxerxes in 394she declared war on Sparta

,and condemned Xenophon

for Laconism,

’ an offence l ike the old Medism,

’

involv

ing banishment and confiscation of goods. I f Xenophonhad drifted before, he had now no choice. He formallyentered the Spartan service

,returned to Greece with

Ages ilaus , and was actually with h im,though perhaps as

a non- combatant,when he defeated the Thebo-Athenian

alliance at Coronea .

Xenophon was now barely forty - one,but his active

l ife was over. The Spartans gave him an estate atSkillfis

,near E l is

,and perhaps employed him as their

political agent. He spent the next twenty years inretirement

,a cultured country gentleman writing a

good deal,hunting zealously

,and training his two

brill iant sons,Gryllus and Diodorus— the ‘ Dioscuri

,

’ asthey were called— to be like their father

,patterns of the

ch ival ry of the day . The main obj ect of Xenophon’slater life was probably to get the sentence of banishmentremoved

,and save these sons from growing up without

a country. He was successful at last. When Athens t ej oined the Spartan all iance the ‘ Lacon ist ceased to be atraitor

,and his sons were admitted into h is old regiment

and when Gryllus fe ll at Mantinea,al l Greece poured poems

and epitaphs upon him. At that time Xenophon was nolonger in the Spartan service . He had been expelled fromSkillOs by an E lean rising in 370 , and fled to spend therest of h is l ife in the safe neutral ity of Corinth .

Of th e l iterary fruits of his retirement, the most im

RETIREMENT AND LITERARY WORK 3 1 9

portant and the best written is undoubtedly his recordof the Anabas i

’

s . I t also seems to be one of the earl ies t,

though some passages—such as v. 3 . 9, where he refersto his past employments at SkillOs—have been addedmuch later. Autobiographical writing was almost umknown at the time ; but the publication was partly forced

on Xenophon by the misrepresentations of h is actioncurrent in Athens, and perhaps especially by the recordof the expedition already published by Sophainetus ofStymphalus. We read in Xenophon that Sophain etuswas the oldest of the officers ; that he had once almostrefused to obey Xenophon’s command to cross a certaindangerous gully ; that he was fined ten minae for somefailure in duty.1 That is Xenophon’s account of him .

No doubt his account of Xenophon required answering.But why did Xenophon publish his book under an assumed name, and refer to it himself in the Hellenica asthe work of Tbemis togenes of Sy racuse

’

? I t is not aserious attempt at disguise. The whole style of writingshows that the ‘ Xenophon of Athens

,

’ referred to inthe third person, is really the writer of the book. Theexplanation suggests itself, that the pseudonymity was atechnical precaution against possible a vxo¢av

~rla dictated

by Xenophon’s legal position . He was c

’

in aoq— an out

lawed exile . He was forbidden h éy ew xa l «ypécpew,

‘ tospeak or write,

’ in the legal sense of the words,in Attica .

He could hold no property. What was the pos ition of abook written by such a man Was it l iable to be burntlike those of Protagoras ? Or could the bookse ller beproceeded against ? It may well have been prudent

,

for the sake of formal legal ity,to have the book passing

under some safer name .

Auab. v. 3. x, 8. x; vi. 5. x3.


The style of the Anabas is is not very skilful,and the

narrative is sometimes languid where the actual eventsare stirring. Still

,on the whole

, on e feels w ith Gibbonthat “ th is pleasing work is original and authentic

,

” andthat constitutes an inestimable charm . The details aremost vivid— the officer pul led over the cl iff by catchingat the fine cloak of one of the flying Kurds the Mos syn

dwellers exhib iting their fat babies fed on chestnut-mealto the admiration of the Greeks the races at Trebizondconducted on the principle that “ you could run anywhere the Thymians waking the author up with theinvitation to come out and die l ike a man, rather thanbe roasted in his bed— there are l iterally hundreds ofsuch things. Of course Xenophon is sometimes wrongin h is distances and details of fact

,and the tendency

to romance which we find in the Cy ropddeia has a slightbut vis ible eflect on the Anabas is . The ornamentalspeeches are poor and unconvincing. Stil l

,on the

whole,it is a fresh

,frank work in which th e writer at

leas t succeeds in not spoil ing a most thrill ing story.To touch briefly on his other works. When Socrateswas attacked and misunderstood

,when Plato and the

other Socratics defended him,Xenophon, too, felt called

upon to write h is Memoirs of S ocra tes . His remarkablememory stood him in good s tead. He gives a Socrateswhom his average contemporary would have recognisedas true to l ife. Plato, fired by his own speculative ideas ,had inevitably altered Socrates . Xenophon

’

s ideas werea smaller and more docile body : he seldom misrepre

sents except where he misunders tood . In the latereditions of the M emorabilia he inserts a detailed refutation of the charges made by ‘ the Accus er,

’

as he callsPolycrates

,agains t Socrates’s memory ; and he seems


3 22 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT‘

GREECE

the Peloponnesian War. Books I I I .—VI I . contain theannals of Greece to the battle of Mantinea

,ending with

the sentence “ S o fa r I ha ve w ritten ; wli a t came after

w ill per/zaps be anotlzer’s s tudy . The first part,though

far below Thucydides in accuracy,in grasp

,in unity of

view,and in style

,is noticeably above the rest of the

work. The Hellen ica,though often bright and clear in

detail,forms a weak history . Outside his personal ex

perience, Xenophon is at sea. The chronology is faulty ;there is l ittle understanding of the series of events as awhole there is no appreciation of Epaminondas. Thefact that the h istory is the work of an able man withlarge experience and exceptional opportunities for gettinginformation

,helps us to appreciate the extraordinary

genius of Thucydides .We possess a tract on the Cons titution of Lacedd mon,

1

an essay on Atlzen ian Finances , a Manualfor a Cavalry

Commander, and another for a Cavalry Priva te,and a

tract on Hun ting w illi Hounds,bearing the name of

Xenophon . The last is suspected on grounds of style,

but may be a youthful work. The genuineness of theFinances depends partly upon chronological ques tionsnot yet definitely settled : it is an interesting book, andseems to be written in support of the peace policyof Eubulus. The cavalry manuals do not rais e one’sopinions of Greek mil itary discipline, and are lesssystematic than the Manual for Res i sting a S iege byXenophon’s Arcadian contemporary, AENEAS TACTICUS.

The Cy rope deia is not a h istorical romance if it were,

Xenophon would be one of the great originators of

l iterary forms it is a treatment of the Ideal Ruler andthe Best Form of Government, in the shape of a history

1 For Tbe Con s titution of Atlzens , see above, p. 167.

HELLENICA AND MINOR WORKS 3 23

of Cyrus the Great,in which truth is subordinated to

edification .

1 The form is one followed by certain of theSophists. Xenophon perhaps took it from Prodicus

in preference to the usual Socratic expedient of animaginary dialogue. The work was greatly admired inantiquity and in the last century . The style is morefinished than in any of Xenophon ’s other works. TheOriental colour is well kept up . The incidents containmasses of striking tragic material, which only fai l to beeffective because modern taste insists on more workingup than Xenophon will consent to give. The politicalideal which forms the main obj ect of the book, is happilydescribed by Croiset as a Versai lles ofLouis XIV. revisedand corrected by Fenelon .

” I t was actually intendedif we may trust the authority of the Latin grammarian

,

Aulus Gellius—as a counterblast to Plato’s Republic !Xenophon was an amateur in literature, as he was inwar

,in his tory

,in philosophy

,in politics

,in field-sports .

He was susceptible to every influence which did notmorally offend him . His style is

,

simple,but unevenly

so . He sometimes indulges in a little fine writing ; theeulogy on Agés ilaus tries to avoid hiatus, and showsthe influence of I socrates ; the speeches in his histories,and the whole conception of th e Hellen ica

,show the in

fluence of Thucydides. The influence of Plato leadsXenophon into a sys tem of imitation and correction whichis almost absurd . His language has the same receptivity.

I t shows that colloquial and democratic absence ofexclusiveness which excited the contempt of the OldOligarch ;

2 it is affected by old - fashioned country

1 Contrast, e.g., the h istorica l account ofCyrus ’s death in Hdt. i. 2 14, and theroman tic one in Cy rop . vi ii . 7.2 Rep . AM. 2, 8.


id ioms,by the lingua franca of the soldiers in Asia,

perhaps by long res idence in foreign countries— thoughDoricisms are conspicuous by their absence. I f, in spiteof this, Xenophon became in Roman times a model ofAtt icism

,

’ i t is due to his ancient simpl icity and ease, hisinafi

'

ecta ta j ucunditas . He is Attic in the sens e that hehas no bombast

,and does not strive after e ffect

,and that

he can speak interes tingly on many subj ects ‘ with outraising his voice.’



rhetoric in Cicero’s time,a man of some genius and

much enthusiasm, but with no interest in anything butrhetorical techn ique. He criticises Thucydides th e historian

,Plato the philosopher

,I socrates the publicis t

,

Isaeus the acute lawyer, Lys ias the work-a-day persuaderof j uries, all from practically the same stand-point— thatof a man who had all h is l ife studied style and taughtstyle

,who had written twenty volumes of history with a

view to noth ing but style. I n his own province he is anexcel lent critic. He sees things which we do not see

,

and he feels more strongly th an we feel. He speakswith genuine hatred of the Asiatic or late and florid style

,

the ‘ foreign harlot ’ who has crept into the place of thetrue and simple Attic. Our tradi tion has thus neglectedh istorians

,playwr ights, philosophers, men of science, and

clung to the men who wrote in speech- form ; and thes elast

,whatever the aim and substance Of the ir writing, are

all j udged as technical orators.The importance to us of the ‘ orators ’ l ies in threethings. First, they illustrate the gradual building up of anormal and permanent prose style. The earl iest art istsin pros e had been over-ornate Gorgias too poetical

,

Antiphon too formal and austere, Thucydides too diffi cult.THRASYMACHUS of Chalcedon (p . 162) probably gave thenecess ary correction to th is set of errors so far as speaking went. H is style was ‘medium between the pomp ofGorgias and the colloquialness of ordinary speech . Histerse periods and prose rhythms pleased Aristotle. But

he was a pleader, not a writer. The next step appears inLYSIAS. He had an enormous practice as a writer Ofspeeches under the Restored Democracy

,and, without

much eloquence or profound knowledge of the law, areputation for almost always winning his case s. His

VALUE OF THE ‘ ORATORS ’

3 27

style is that of the plain clear-headed man,who te lls his

story and draws his deductions so honestly,that his

adversary’s vers ion is sure to seem artificial and knavish .

Within his l imits Lysias is a perfect styl ist ; but he is aman of l ittle imaginative range

,and he addresses a j ury.

He does not develop a normal l iterary prose . ISZEUS,a

lawyer of great knowledge and a powerful arguer,is stil l

further from this end. lsocRATES achieves it. The essaywriting Of h is school—men broadly trained in letters

,

philosophy,and his tory, and accustomed to deal with

large questions in a l iberal,pan-Hellenic sp irit— forms in

one sense the final perfection of ancient prose,in another

the ruin of what was most characteristical ly Attic or

indeed Hellenic. I t is smooth, self-restrained, correct,euphonious

,impersonal. I t is the first Greek prose that

is capable of being tedious. I t has lasted on from thatday to this

,and is the basis of prose style in Latin and

in modern languages. I t has sacrificed the characteristiccharms of Greek express ion, the individual ity, the closerelation between thought and language

,the naturalness

of mind which sees every fact naked and states everythought in its lowest terms. Isocrates

’

s influence wasparamount in al l belles lettres ; scientific work and oratoryproper went on their way little affected by him .

Secondly,the orators have great historical value .

They all come from Athens,and all l ived in the century

between 420 and 320 B .C. Other periods and towns wereeither lacking in the combination of culture and freedomnecessary to produce political oratory

,or else

,as hap

pened with Syracuse,they have been neglected by our

tradition . The Attic orators are our chief ‘ source ’

for Attic law,and they introduce us to the pol ice

court population of a great city— th e lawyers,the


j udges,the ne’er-do-weels

,the swindlers

,and the syko

phantai,’ or vexatious accusers trying to win blackmail

or pol itical capita l by discovering decent people’s peccadilloes . The Athenian records are less nauseous thanmost, owing to the mildness of the law and the com

parative absence of atrocious crime . The most painfulfeature is the racking of slave -witnes ses though evenhere extreme cruelty was forb idden

,and any injury

done to the slave,temporary or permanent, had to be

paid for. Attic torture would probably have seemedchild’s p lay to the rack-masters of Rome and modernEurope . Happi ly also the owners seem more often thannot to refuse to allow examination Of this sort

,even to

the prej udice Of the ir causes. All kinds Of argumentativepoints are made in connection with the worth or worthlessness Of such evidence

,and the motives of the

master in allowing or refusing it. Perhaps the strangestis where a l itigant demands the torture of a femaleslave in order to suggest that h is opponent i s in lovewith her when he refuses.But the orators have a much broader value than th is.

The actual words Of Demosthenes,and even of I socrates

,

on a pol itical crisis,form a more definitely firs t-hand

document than the bes t l iterary history. They give usin a palpable form the actual methods

,ideals

,pol itical

and moral standards Of the early fourth century—o r,

rather, they will do so when fully worked over andunderstood . There are side- l ights on rel igion

,as in

the case (Lysias, vii.) Of the man accused of uprootinga sacred O l ive stump from his field

,and that o f

Euxen ippus (Hyperides, i i i.) and his i llegal dream. A

certain hill at Oropus was alleged by some rel igiousauthority to belong to th e god Asclepius

,and one



The average speech of Lysias has a real claim on theworld’s attention as a model of what Dionysius calls the‘ plain ’ style Of prose— every word exact

,every sentence

clear, no display, no exaggeration, no ornament exceptthe inherent charm and wit Of natural Attic. I t is not,of course

,a work of art in the same sense as a poem of

Sophocles. Speech-writing was a ‘ techne’ in the sensethat it had rules and a purpose

,but its purpose was to

convince a j ury,not to be beautiful. We are apt to be

misled by Cicero and the late writers on rhetoric . Theytalk in technical language ;

“ This ditrochaeus broughtdown the house

,says Cicero

,when probably the house

in question hardly knew what a ditrochaeus was , or evenconsciously noticed the rhythm of the sentence . Theytel l us of the industry of great men

,and how Isocrates

took ten years composing the Panegyn'

cus . This is edifying

,but cannot be true for the Panegyrieus contemplates

a particular pol itical situation,which did not last ten

years.The tone of the orators themselves is quite differentfrom that of the rhetoricians

,whether late l ike Dionysius

,

or early l ike Alkidamas and Gorgias . Except in I socrates,

who,as he repeatedly insists

,is a professor and not an

orator,we find the current convention about oratory to

be the same in ancient times as in modern— that a truespeech should be made extempore

,and that prepared o r

professional oratory is matter fo r sarcasm . I f Al‘

sch ines

l ikes to quote an absurd phrase from Demosthenes, it isno more than a practical politician would do at the present day . The points in ancient prose which seem mostartificial to a modern Englishman are connected witheuphony. Ancient l iterature was written to be read aloud,and this reading aloud gives the clue to the rules about

PROSE STYLE IN THE ‘ ORATORS ’3 3 1

rhythm and hiatus,j ust as it explains many details in the

system of punctuation—for instance,the dash below the

line which warns you beforehand Of the approach of theend of the sentence . We are but l ittle sensible to rhythmand less to hiatus or the clashing of two vowel-soundswithout a dividing consonant ; we are keenly al ive torhyme. The Greeks generally did not notice rhyme, butfelt rhythm strongly

,and abhorred h iatus . I n poetry

hiatus was absolutely forbidden . I n careful prose it wasavoided in varying degrees by most writers after about

380 B.C. I socrates is credited with introducing th e fashion .

He was followed by all the historians and philosophersand writers of belles lettres

,and even

,in the ir old age

,by

Plato and X enOph on .

1 The orators who ‘ published ’

general ly felt bound to preserve the prevailing habit.In the real debates of the Assembly

,of course

,such

refinement would scarcely be either attainable or noticeable

,but a published speech had to have its l iterary

polish . A written speech,however

,was an exceptional

thing . The ordinary orators—Cal l istratus,Thrasybulus

,

Leodamas—were content simply to speak . EvenDemosthenes must have spoken ten times as much ashe wrote.The speeches we possess are roughly of three kinds .

Firs t,there are the bought speeches preserved by the

cl ient for whom they were written : such are the seven

1 There is indeed some doubt about th is avoidance of hiatus . Our earliestpapyri give texts which admit hiatus freely. Th e funera l speech ofHypertdes ,for ins tance, abounds in harsh in stances , and the pre

-Alexandrian papyri ofPlato have more hiatus than our ordinary MSS. Does this mean that the

Alexandrian scho lars deliberately doctored their class ica l texts and removedhiatus ? Or does it mean that our pre

-Alexandrian remains are general ly inaccurate ? The fo rmer view must be dismissed as flatly imposs ib le, thoughthere are some difliculties in the latter.


speeches For Apollodorus in the Demosthenic collection,those ofHyperides For Ly copbron and Aga ins tA t/zenogenes ,and most Of the will cases of Isaeus . Very similar isthe case of Lysias

,viii .

,in wh ich some person unnamed

renounces the society of his companions— retires fromhis club

,as we should say—on the ground that they

have spoken ill of him,have accused him Of intruding

upon them,and have persuaded him to buy a bad horse.

There were doubtless other versions of the affair inexistence

,and the motive for having the protest copied

and circulated is Obvious. Another Lys ian fragmenthas a somewhat similar origin . The second part ofthe speech for Polystratus 1 1 to the end) is not adefence of Polystratus at al l, but a moral rehabilitationof the Speaker himself

,the defendant’s son .

Again,there are the orators’ own publ ications—mome

times mere pamphlets never spoken,sometimes actual

speeches re issued in permanent form as an appeal tothe widest possible circle . Andocides

’

s publication Ontbc My s teries is a defence of h is career

,without which

he could scarcely have l ived safely in Athens. I t was thesame with the rival speeches On tire Crow n . [Esch in es

had lost his case and h is reputation ; in self-defence hepublished a revised and improved version of his speech

,

answering points which he had missed at the actualtrial . This compelled Demosthenes

,who at the time

had almost entirely ceased writing,to revise and publish

h is reply. Most of our pol itical speeches,however

,

such as the Oly n thiacs and Pb ilippics , seem to havebeen circulated to advocate a definite policy ; and itis noteworthy that publ ication is almos t always theresort of the Opposition, not condescended to by themen in power.



attached much value to the works of Demosthenes andHyperides, or even Lysias, the tendency he had setgoing secured to some extent the preservation of everymanuscript current under a distinguished name . Thevery idea of the great l ibraries of the next centurywould never have been conceived had there not alreadyexisted a number of small l ibraries and a wide- spreadsp ir it of book-preserving.

LIVES OF THE ORATORS

Up to Isocrates

A canonic list of uncertain origin— it appears in

Caecilius of Calé-Acte,but not in his contemporary

Dionysius— gives us ten Attic orators par excellence :

Antiphon,Andocides, Lysias, I socrates, Isaeus, Lycurgus ,

ZEsch ines, Hyperides, Demosthenes, Deinarchus . Arbitrary as it is, this list determined what orators shouldbe read for educational purposes from the first centuryonward

,and has

,Of course

,controlled our tradition .

Outside of it we possess only one important fragment byAlkidamas

,on The Soph i sts , or Those who compose Wri tten

Speeches ," and some rather suspicious j eux d

’

esprit

speeches of Ody s seus by the same Alkidamas , of Aj ar and

Ody s s eus by Antisthenes the cynic, a Pra is e of Helen anda speech of Palame‘des by Gorgias . The genuinenessOf these is on the whole probable, but they have littlemore than an antiquarian value . Happily some speechesby other writers have been preserved by being erron e

ously ascribed to one of the canonical ten. In th e

Demosthenic collection,for instance, the accusation of

ANTIPHON 3 35

Neaera is the work of some able and well- informedAthenian

,and the speech On the Halonnes e is perhaps

by Hégés ippus .Of ANTIPHON l ittle is known beyond the narrative of

Thucydides mention ed above (p . He had workedall h is l ife preparing for the revolution of 41 1 . He ledit and died for it

,and made what Thucydides considered

the greatest speech in the world in defence of his actionin promoting it. We possess three real speeches ofAntiphon, and three tetralogies. These latter are exer

cises in speech-craft, and Show us the champion of th eoppressed aristocrats training h is friends for legal praetice

,as Thucydides tel ls us he did. He takes an imagi

nary case,with as l ittle positive or detailed eviden ce as

possible,and gives us two skeleton speeches— they are

not more—for the accusation, and two for the defence .Considering the difficulty of the game

,it is well played .

The arguments are necessarily inconclusive and Oftensophistical

,but they could not be otherwise when real

evidence was against the rules. Minute legal argument

is also debarred . I n fact the law contemplated in thetetralogies is not Attic

,but a kind of common-sense

system . I t may be that Antiphon,l ike many Of h is

party,was really trying to train the aristocrats of the

subject s tates more than his compatriots. The realspeeches are all on murder cases

,the finest being the

defence Of Euxith eus the Mitylen ean on the charge

of having murdered his shipmate Herodes. The firstspeech

, On a Charge of Poison ing, deals with a singularlytragic story . A slave-girl was about to be sold by aruffianly master, with whom she was in love ; a womanwho wished to be rid Of her own husband

,induced the

girl to give the two men,at a dinner which they had


together in a Piraeus tavern,something which she

alleged to be a love-philtre . Both men died . Thegirl confessed forthwith, and was executed proceedingsnow being taken against the real culprit.ANDOCIDES, son Of LeOgoras , of the family of theSacred Heralds

,comes to us as a tough

,enterprising

man,embittered by persecution . I n the extraordinary

panic which followed the mutilation of the figures Of

Hermes in 4 15, Andocides was among th e three hundredpersons denounced by the informer Diocleides

,and

,um

l ike most of the rest, was in a sense privy to the outrage.I t was merely a freak On the part of some young scepticsin his own club, who probably thought the Hermae bothridiculous and indecent. To stop the general panicand prevent poss ible executions of the innocent

,he

gave information under a promise of indemnity. I t isone Of those acts which are never quite forgiven . I nspite of the indemnity

,he was driven into banishment

by a special decree excluding from public and sacredplaces those who had committed impiety and confessedit.” His next tw elve years were spent in adventuroustrading

,and were ruled by a constant effort to procure

his return . The first attempt was in 4 1 1 , after hehad obtained rights of timber-cutting from Archelaus

of Macedon, and sold the timber at cost price to the

Athenian fleet. He was promptly re-expelled . Thesecond return was the occasion of the speech About

Return ing Home,and took place after 4 1 0 , when he had

used his influence at Cyprus to have corn-ships s ent torel ieve the scarcity at Athens. He returned finally withThucydides and all the other exiles

,pol itical and crimi

nal,after the amnesty in 40 3 (see p . He spent his

money lavishly on public obj ects, and escaped proseou



Lysias,throwing himself with vigour into the demo

cratic cause, was able to supply the army with 20 0

shields,20 0 0 drachmae in money, and large indirect

assistance as well . On the return Of the Demos, Lysiaswas accepted as a full citizen on the proposal Of Th rasybulus himself. He made h is one extant ‘ Démégoria

’

or Parliamentary speech (34) in protest against theproposal of one Phormis ius to limit the franchise tohouse or land holders.1 Phormis ius

’

s policy wouldhave been that of Thucydides

,I socrates

,Th eramenes,

and,of course

,that of Plato and Aristotle. But Lysias

was an unabashed ‘ Ochlocrat.’ He was at this timepoor

,and his citizenship was shown to be illegal almost

as soon as it was granted . I t was annulled on themotion of Arch inus, a democrat who had fought withTh rasyb tllus but favoured the moderates. Lysias wasdebarred from direct political ambition

,but repaired

his fortunes and worked wel l for h is party by ceaselessactivity in the law-courts . On the expulsion of thetyrants in 40 3, when the various factions were ignoran tof their comparative strength and tired of strife

,an

amnesty had been pas sed,including all except the actual

tyrants,and allowing even these e ither to leave the

country unmolested,or to be tried individually on the ir

personal acts . When the extreme democrats realisedthe ir strength

,they regretted this amnesty

,and some

of the chief speeches of Lysias are attempts to make itnugatory. Thus in the speech Aga ins t Era tos thenes , whohad been one of the tyrants

,but claimed to be tried

,

according to the amnesty,for his pers onal acts only

,

Lysias insists on the solidarity of the whole body ofty rants. The man had been implicated in the arrest

1 Cf. W. M. Aristotles and Athen , ii. 226.

POLITICS OF LYS IAS 339

of Polemarchus , though not in h is condemnation todeath . There was nothing else agains t h im, and he seems

to have been acquitted.

The speech Aga ins t Agordtus takes a curious groundabout the amnesty. Agoratus had practised as an lnformer in 405 and 404, and falsely claimed the rewardfor s laying Phryn ichus . This shows, argues Lysias, thathe was a democrat. The amnesty was only made by theDemos with the oligarchs, and does not apply betweentwo democrats ! I n a similar partisan spirit Lysiaspersecutes the younger Al cibiades . His offence was thathe served in the cavalry instead of the heavy infantry .

He claims that he had special permis sion, and it wouldbe hard to imagine a more venial offence. But thefather’s memory stank in the nostri ls of the radicals,and the act savoured of aristocratic assumption . Lys iasindicts h im in two separate speeches—first, for desertion,and secondly

,for failure to serve in the army

,invoking

the severest possible penalty ! After these speeches,and

that Aga ins t the Corn -Dealers,and the markedly unfair

special pleading Aga ins t Ena ndros , it is difficult to rej ectother documents in the Lys ian collection on the groundof their sycophantic tone.’

Lysias is especially praised in antiquity for his powerof entering into the character of every different cl ientand making his speech sound ‘ natural

,

’ not bough t .His cathol icity of sympath y may even seem un s crupu

lous,but it has l imits. He cannot really conceive an

honest ol igarch . When he has to speak for on e,as in

25, he makes him frankly cynical : “ I used to be an

oliga rch because it suited my interes ts now it suits me to be

a democra t. Every one a cts on the same principle. The

importa n tpoin t is tha t I have not broken the law .

"


He speaks well for the cl ients of the moderateparty

,l ike Mantitheos

,who had trouble from sycophants

,

and especial ly well against the hunger for confiscationof property which marked the worst type of extremist

( 1 8, The speech For the Incapable Man,a cripple

pauper whose right to state rel ief had been disputed,is

good-natured and democratic. The pauper cannot havepaid for the speech and, even if some one else did, thecare taken with it shows real sympathy. On the whole,considering that we have thirty- four more or less com

plete speeches of Lysias—the ancients had 425, of which233 were thought genuine l— and some considerablefragments ; considering, too, that he was a profes sionallawyer writing steadily for some twenty-five years—h ecomes out of his severe ordeal rather well . I t is nowonder that Plato disliked him . He was a type of theadroit practical man. He was an intemperate democrat.Above all

,he had handled the Socratic [Esch ines ( frag . 1 )

very roughly. That philosopher had tried to l ive as amoneyless sage l ike h is master

,his simple needs sup

ported by the will ing gifts of friends and disciples .Unfortunately he fell on hard times . His friends did notappreciate his gospel ; his neighbours fled from theirhouses to avoid him. At last they prosecuted h im fordebt

,and the unfortunate priest of poverty had to marry

the septuagenarian widow of a pomatum-seller, and runthe business himself ! The j est may have been pleasingto the court ; but not to Plato. And sti l l l ess can he haveliked the turbulent success of the Olympian oration,whenLysias took h is revenge for the enslavement of his nativecity by call ing Hellas to unite and sai l against Dionysius—which Hellas never thought of attempting— and incitingthe crowd to burn and pillage the tents of the tyrant

’

s lega



and sensitive ; even in later l ife h is shyness was anamusement to his pupils. However

,towards the end

of the war,when his father was dead

,and every on e

alike in straits for money,I socrates had to support

himself by h is wits . As soon as peace was madeand he was free to leave Athens

,he went to

Thessaly and learned from the great Gorgias—a singularstep for a poor man

,if we accept the current

myth of the ‘ grasping sophists.’ But doubtless the Oldman was ready to help a promising pupil withouta fee .He was back in Athens by 40 0 , a professional speech

wri ter and teacher Of rhetoric. The latter profes sioncannot have paid under the circumstances

,but the

former did. Aristotle says that the booksel lers in h istime had ‘ rolls and rolls ’ of legal Speeches bearing th ename of I socrates. He himself disl iked and ignoredthis period of ‘ doll-making

’

in contrast to the ‘ noblesculpture ’

of his later l ife,1 and his pupils sometimes

denied its existence altogether . I t was at Chios,not

Athens,that he first set up a formal school of rhetoric

,

probably in 393, when, in consequence of Conon’s

victories,Chios returned to the Athenian alliance .

Conon was a friend of I socrates, and may have givenhim some administrative post there . The island hadlong been famous for its good laws and peaceful life .Speech-writing for courts of law was Obviously notpermissible in an admin istrator ; even for an Athenianpolitician it was considered questionable . But therecould be no obj ection to his teaching rhetoric if hewished . I socrates had nine pupils in Chios, and foundedhis reputation as a singularly gifted teacher. When

Dionys . Isocr . 18, Ant id. 2.

‘ PHILOSOPHY ’OF ISOCRATES 343

he returned to Athens (391 he did no more lawcourt work. He establ ished a school

,not Of mere

rhetoric, but of what he called philosophy .

He is at great pains to explain himself,both in the

fragment Aga ins t the S oph is ts , which formed a sort ofprospectus of h is system

,and afterwards in the elaborate

defence of h is life and pursuits,which goes by the name

of the Speech on the Exchange of Property . His philosophy is not what i s sometimes so called— paradoxicalmetaphys ics, barren logomachies, or that absolutelycertain knowledge a priori about al l the world, whichcertain persons offer for sale at extremely reasonableprices

,but which nobody ever seems to possess . Nor

,

again,is it the mere knack of composing speeches for

the law-courts, l ike Lysias, or of making improvisations,l ike Alkidamas . I socrates means by philosophy whatProtagoras and Gorgias meant—a practical culture ofthe whole mind, strengthen ing the character, forminga power of ‘ generally right j udgment

,

’ and developingto the highest degree the highest of human powers

,

Language. He requires in his would-be philosopher abroad amateur knowledge of many subj ects—Of history

,

Of dialectics and mathematics, of the present politicalcondition Of al l Greece

,and of lite rature. He is far

more philosophic and cultured than the average orator,far more practical and sensible than the philosophers .

I t is a source of l ifelong annoyance to him that bothphilosophers and practical men despise his middlecourse

,and that the general public refuses to under

stand him . Plato in two passages criticises the positionvery lucidly . I n the Pheedrus ( see above, p . 305) heexpresses his sympathy with I socrates as compared

with the ordinary speech-writers. I n the epilogue to


the Euthy de’mus

,

1 Grito mentions the criticisms of acerta in nameless person upon Socrates What sortof man was the critic ? ” “ Not a philosopher

,not a

speaker . Crito doubts if he has ever been into a lawcourt ; but he understands th e art Of s peech

,and writes

wonderfully. answers Socrates,

“ he is wha t Pro

dicus used to call a Boundary S tone, half philosopher and

half practical s ta tesman . The Bounda ry S tones believe

thems elves to be the w ises t people in the w orld; but probablyare not so. For practical s ta tesmansh ip may be the rightthing,

or philosophy may be the righ t thing,or conceivably

both may be good, though differen t. But in none of these

cases can tha t which is half one and half the other be

super ior to both . Perhaps in our fr iend’

s ey es both a re

pos itively bad 7 The likeness to I socrates is beyond dispute . I socrates had an easy reply : both practical manand phi losopher are one - sided the one wants culture andbreadth of imagination

,the other loses his hold of con

crete l ife . As a matter of fact his answer was his success.His school became the University of Greece . I t satisfieda widespread desire for culture on the part of men whodid not mean to become professional mathematicians orphilosophers in the stricter sense . The leading names ofthe next generation come chiefly from the school of ISOcrates— the statesmen Timotheus and LeOdamas , the tragicpoetTh eodectes

,the h istorians Ephorus andTh eopompus ,

the orators Is aeus,Lycurgus

,Ai sch ines

,Hyperides, and

some hundred more . The Alexandrian scholar Hermipposwrote a book on The Dis ciples of Isocra tes .

1 Though the general s ta tis tics of the Euthy demus show it to be a ve ryearly work , the epilogue is obvious ly separab le in compos ition from the res t,and, as a matter of fact, contains some s ligh tmark s of lateness ( éxbuevov ¢pow§~J ews f paw a

,and perhaps Germs ), and none of ea rlin ess .



I n 374 Euagoras was conquered and assassinated ; hisson Nicocles succeeded him. I socrates has left us an‘ Exhorta tion to N icocles,

’ summoning him with tact andenthusiasm to discharge the high duties of an Hellenicking ; a

‘ N icocles,

’ or an address from that king tohis subj ects demanding their co - Operation and loyalObedience and an Encomion on Euagoras

— the first,it is

said,ever written upon a character of current history.

Meantime the pol itical situation in Greece properhad changed. The league of Athens and Thebes againstSparta had enabled Thebes to resume more than herold power

,while it involved Athens in heavy expense .

The anti-Theban sentiment in Athens,always strong

,

became gradually unmanageable . One cris is seems tohave come in 373, when the Thebans surprised anddestroyed Plataea. The l ittle town was nominally inall iance with Thebes

,but it was notoriously disaffected

so the act was capable of different interpretations. Theremnant Of th e Plataeans fled to Athens and asked to beres tored to the ir country. Such a step on the part ofAthens would have implied a declaration of war againstThebes and an all iance with Sparta. The Pla ta icus ofI socrates is a glowing plea for the Plataean cause

,a pam

phlet in th e usual speech form. The chief real speakerson the occasion were Callistratus for Platma-Sparta

,and

the great Epaminondas for Thebes. I n 366 I socratesstrikes again on the same side . Thebes, in

‘ her Leuctr icpride ’ —as Theopompus seems to have called it— hadestablished the independence of Messenia, and insistedon the recognition of th is independence as a conditionOf peace . Most of the Spartan al lies were by this timeanxious for peace on any terms . The liberation of themuch-wronged province did not hurt them, and it h ad

I SOCRATES AND SPARTA 347

roused the enthusiasm of Greece in general, voiced byAlkidamas in his Mess in iacus f But Sparta could neveracquiesce in giving up the richest th ird of her territory,and see ing her old subj ects and enemies established ather doors. She let the al l ies make peace alone ; andI socrates

,in what purports to be a speech of the

Spartan king Archidamus,supports her cause. I t was

an invidious cause to plead . Princip le is real ly agains tI socrates

,but he makes a strong case both in practical

expediency and in sentiment. The speech is ful l of

what the Greeks called ‘ éthos’

(character) . I t has aSpartan ring

,especial ly when Arch idamus faces the

l ast alternative. They can leave Sparta, ship the noncombatants to Sicily or elsewhere

,and become again

what they originally were— a camp, not a city, a homeless veteran army of desperate men which no Thebancoalition will care to face (71This time

,again

,I socrates saw his pol icy accepted and

his country in alliance with Sparta . But meanwhilehis greater hOpes for Athens had been disappointed .

The other cities of th e Maritime League were sus

picious Of her, and the hegemony involved intoler

able financial burdens to herself. I socrates had seenEuago ras, and formed more definitely his pol iticalideal—peace for Hellas

,the abol ition of piracy on the

seas,the l iberation of the Greek cities in Asia

,the

opening of the East to emigration,

"

and the spread of

Hellen ism over the world. As early as 367 he hadsent a public letter to Dionysius of Syracuse, who had

just saved Western Hellas from the Etruscans andCarthagin ians

,inviting him to come East and free the

Greek cities from Persia. Dionysius died the nextyear

,and I socrates continued hoping the best he


could from the Maritime League. I n 357 the leaguebroke up in open war, which only ended in the abandonmen t by Athens Of all her claims. She sank tothe level of an ordinary large Greek town, and, underthe guidance Of Eubulus

,devoted her energies to

financial retrenchment and the maintenance of peace .I socrates was one of the few men who saw what thepolicy meant—a final renunciation Of the burden ofempire . I n the treatise On the Peace

,he pleads fo r

the autonomy of the all ies,and actual ly uses some of

the arguments of that anti-Athen ian party in the islandswhich he had confuted in the Panegy ricus .

About the same time,in the Areopagi tica s, he preaches

the home policy of the moderates,of Phokion and

Aristotle— a return to the hab its of Old Athens, to themi-rpi oe WOXLTeL

’

a , which he associates with the Areopagus. In its more obvious aspect, the speech is amanifesto in support of Eubulus

,like Xenophon’s

F inances . But it is at the same time an interest ingillustration of the moral sensitiveness and self-distrustof the age— the feel ing which leads Demosthenes todenounce all Hellas

,and Demades to remark that the

Virgin Of Marathon is now an old woman, with nothought beyond slippers

,gruel

,and dressing - gown !

I t was just before the‘

end Of the Social War thatI socrates turned to Ar ch idamus of Sparta with thesame invitation as he had addressed before to Dionys ius . Who else could so well lead the crusade againstbarbarism ? Agés ilaus, his father, had made the at

tempt,and won great glory. He had failed because

he had been interrupted,and because he had tried to

re instate exiles Of h is own party in their cities. Archidamus should confine himself to th e one great tas k of



perfectly real, and proved, in fact, to be nearer theeventual outcome than those of any contemporary. Theevils he sought to remove were practical— the financialdistress, the over-population, the hordes of mercenaries,and the pirates, who, excepting for the brief supremacies of Athens and Rhodes, and perhaps of Venice,have scourged the Eastern Mediterranean from the timesof Homer to the present century .

But Athens was in tent on her last fatal war, and wasnot going to palter with her enemy. I socrates fell intoextreme unpopularity . I t is remarkable that even in that

suspicious time no enemy ever h inted that he was bribed .

They only called him an unpatriotic Sophist, a perverterof the statesmen who had been h is pupils. Against theseattacks we have two answers : the Pana thena icus— composed for the Panathenaea of 342, but not finished intime— a confused re

’

chaufie’

of th e patriotism of the

Panegy ricus , to which the author no longer really heldand the speech On the Exchange of Property , mentionedabove

,defending his p rivate activity as a teacher.

One letter more, and the long life breaks. The battleof Chmronea in 338 dazed the outworn old man. I twas the triumph of h is prophecies ; it made his greatscheme possible . Yet it was too much to bear. Hiscountry lay in the dust. His champion Of united Hellaswas rumoured to be sitting drunk on the battle-fieldamong the heroic dead. I socrates did the last servicehe could to his country and the world. Philip wasabsolute victor. No one knew what his attitude wouldbe to the conquered . There is no word Of baseness inlsocrates

’

s letter . He does not congratulate Philip onhis victory ; he only assumes h is good intentions towards Greece

,and urges him

,now that Hellas is at his

INFLUENCE OF I SOCRATES 35I

feet,to take the great task upon him at last. He saw

neither the fulfi lment nor the disappointment. Did hecommit su icide ? Late tradition says so — Dionysius,Pausanias

,Ph ilostratus, Lucian, pseudo-Plutarch, and

the Life, in unison . At any rate,it is certain that n ine

days—Aris totle says five days—after Chaeronea, I socrateswas dead.

His seven legal speeches are able,and free from

chicanery,but they are too ‘ full-dress ’ and they do not

bite . His letters to the sons of J ason,to Timotheus

,

and the rulers of Mitylene, show the real influence whichthis secluded teacher possessed ; and one inclined toaccuse him Of servil ity to his royal correspondents willdo well to read the letter of his enemy (Speus ippusnumbered 30 in the Socratic collection .

We have n oticed briefly his relation with Plato .

1 WithAristotle it was something the same . The pupils of thetwo men developed eventually a violent feud ; themasters respected one another. ‘ Plato moved mostlyin a different sphere from the teacher of style ; butAris totle taught rhetoric himself

,and is said

,in j ustify

ing his enterprise, to have parodied a line of Euripides,

Base to s it dumb,and let barba r ians speah,

” by substituting ‘ I socrates ’ for ‘ barbarians .’ The strictly scientificmethod of the Rhetoric implies

,of course

,a criticism of

the half-scien tific,half-empirical method of I socrates.

But if Aristotle criticises,he also follows . Not only did

his first great work,the Exhorta tion to Ph ilosophy ,

if defi

n itely prefer the I socratic model to the Platonic, butwhenever in his later l ife he strives after style

,it is style

according to Isocrates. Also, among previous teacherso f rhetoric, I socrates, though not philosophical enough

I cannot think that the bald-headed tinker ofRep. vi. is Isocrates .


for Aristotle, was far the most phi losophical . I n th isdepartment

,as in every other

,he followed the moderate

course—he avoided the folly of extremes, or fel l betweentwo stools

,as one may prefer to phrase it. I n a sense

his cardinal fault l ies in this double-mindedness. Is

he a styl ist,or is he a political th inker ? I s he really

advising his country,or is he giving a model exercise

to h is school The criticism is not quite fair. I t wouldapply to every orator and styl ist

,to Grattan

,Burke

,

Cicero,Demosthenes h imself. Perhaps the real reason

for that curious weariness and ir ritation which I socratesgenerally produces

,is partly the intolerance of our own

age to formal correctness of the easy and obvious sort.The eighteenth century has done that business for us

,

and it interests us no longer. Partly it is the real anddefinite lack in I socrates of the higher kind of in sp i

ration . He is conceited. He likes a smooth,sensible

prose better than Homer. He does not understandpoetry

,and does not approve of music . I t is s ins of

this kind that mankind ultimately cannot forgive,because

they are offences agains t the eternal element in our life .As to re ligion in the more definite sense, I socrates isan interesting type ; a moderate as usual, eminentlypious

,but never superstitious

,using re ligion effectively

as an element in his eloquence, and revealing to a closeinspection that profound unconscious absence of bel iefin anything— in providence

,in Zeus himself

,in philo

sophy,in principle—which is one Of the privileges Of

the moderate and practical moralist. Yet he was a goodand sagacious man

,an immense force in l iterature

,and

one Of the most successful teachers that ever l ived .



that Athens demanded of her rich citizens ; then hesettled down to poverty as a speech -writer

,and perhaps

as a teacher. He succeeded at once in h is profession,

though his hesitating and awkward delivery interferedwith his own speaking . His practice was of the highest kind. He did not deal with ‘ hetaira ’ suits l ikeHypertdes, and he steadily avoided

‘sykophantic

’ prosecution s, though he both wrote and spoke for theOpposition in cases of political interest.His first personal appearance was perhaps in 355,

Aga ins t Lep tines ,1 who had proposed to abolish public

grants of immunity from taxation. I t was a prudentfinancial step

,and hard to attack ; but these grants

were general ly rewards for exceptional diplomatic services

,and formed an important element in the forward

policy advocated by the Opposition.

Eubulus had taken Office after the Social War of

357, when the time called for retrenchment and retreat.His financial policy was an unexampled success but itmeant th e resignation Of the Empire

,and perhaps worse .

He had inherited a desultory war with Phil ip,in which

Athens had everyth ing against her. Phil ip was stepby step seizing the Athenian possessions on the Shoresof Thrace . Eubfilus

,since public Opin ion did not allow

him to make peace,replied by a weak blockade of the

Macedonian coast and occasional incursions . The hotterheads among the Opposition demanded an army ofmercenaries to march upon Pella forthwith . This wasfolly. Demosthenes

’s own policy was to press the warvigorously until some marked advantage could be gainedon which to make a favourable treaty.But Philip did not yet fi ll th e whole horizon . I n thespeech For the Rhodians 351 or 353 B .C.) Demosthenes

1 Probab ly Lepttnes : see Clas s . Rev iew, Feb. 1898.

POLITICAL PARTIES IN 350 B.C. 355

urges Athens to help a democratic ris ing in Rhodes,

in the hope Of recovering part of her los t influence inthe E gean . Eubulus was against intervention . I n thespeech For Megalopolis 353 B.C.) Demosthenes merelyObj ects to taking a definite side in favour of Sparta. I twould have been impossible at the time to give activehelp to Megalopol is ; though perhaps it would haveprevented one of the most fatal combinations of theensuing years

,the rel iance of the anti-Spartan parts

of the Peloponnese upon Philip’s support. I n 352

Philip had attempted to pass Thermopylae into LowerGreece ; Eubulus, for once vigorous, had checked him .

But the danger had become obvious and acute,and

Demosthenes urges it in the F irs t Philzpp ic. The kingretired northwards and laid s iege to Olynthus. Athensknew the immense value of that place

,and acted

energetically ; but the great diplomat paralysed her bystirring up a revolt in Euboea at the critical moment .Demosthenes

,in h is three Oly nthia cs , presses unhes itat

ingly for the rel ief of Olynthus . The government tookthe common-sense or unsanguine view

,that Euboea

,

being nearer,must be saved first. Euboea was saved ;

but Olynthus fell,and Athens was unable to continue

the war. When Ph ilocrates introduced proposals of

peace,Demosthenes supported him

,and was given a

place on the commission of ten sent to treat withPhil ip for terms. He was isolated among the commissioners. The most important of these

,after Philo

crates , was [ESCHINES Of KothOkidae (389—3 14He was a man of high culture and birth

,though the

distresses Of the war compelled all h is family to earntheir own l ivelihood. His father turned schoolmas ter ;his mother did religious work in connection with some


Mysteries. E sch ines himself had been an actor,a

profession which carried no slur,and a clerk in the

public service . He was a hater of demagogues and afollower of Eubulus. The three speeches of his whichwe possess are all connected with Demosthenes andwith th is embassy.

The negotiations were long. Eventually a treaty wasagreed to

,contain ing at least two dangerous ambiguities :

it included Athens and her allies,and it left each party in

possession Of what it actually held a t the time. NowAthens was anxious about two powers , which wereallies in a sense

,but not subj ect all ies—Kersobleptes ,

king of a buffer state in Thrace,and the Phokian s

,any

attack on whom would bring Phil ip into th e heart of

Greece . Philip’s envoys refused to allow any specific

mention of these allies in the treaty the Athenian commissioners were left to use their diplomacy upon theking himself. And as to the time of the conclusion ofthe treaty, Athens was bound to peace from the day shetook the oaths. Would Ph il ip admit that he was equallybound

, or would he go on with his operations ti l l hehad taken the oaths himself Ph ilocrates and E sch ines

considered it best to assume the king’s good faith as amatter of course

,and to conduct their mission according

to the ordinary diplomatic routine . Demosthenes pressedfor extreme haste . He insisted that they should notwait for Philip at his capita l

,but s eek h im out wherever

he might be . When the commissioners’ passports didnot arrive, he dragged them into Macedonia withoutpassports . However

,do what he might

,long delays

occurred ; and, by the time Phil ip met the ambassadors,he had crushed Kersobleptes and satisfactorily roundedh is eastern frontier. Demosthenes made an Open breach



traditional Life is a mere hash of hostile anecdotes,and

a current j est accused him of trying to influence a juryby partial ly undressing a certain Phryne in court. Hisworks were absolutely lost till this century

,when large

parts Of five speeches— not eloquent,but surpassing even

Lysias in coolness and humour, and a frank disl ike ofhumbug—have been recovered in papyri from UpperEgyptDemosthenes himself was engaged in preparing for

the future war and trying to counteract Philip’s intriguesin the Peloponnese (Ph il. IL) . I t was a pity that in 344he revived the Old action against ZEsch ines (On M isconduct of Ambas sadors ) . The speeches of both oratorsare preserved. E sch ines appears at h is best in them,

Demosthenes perhaps at his worst. His attack was intemperate

,and his prejudice led him to combine and

colour his facts unfairly. He could have shown thatAi sch ines was a poor diplomat ; but, in spite of his political ascendency

,he could not make the j ury believe that

he was a corrupt one . [Esch ines was acquitted, andDemosthenes was not yet secure enough Of his powerto dispense with publ ishing his speeches.We possess one (On the Chersonnese) in wh ich hedefends the irregularitie s of his general Diopeithes on

Philip’s frontier and another (Ph il. III .) in which heissues to all Greece an arraignment of Philip’s treacherousdiplomacy. Most of Demosthenes’s public speeches havethe same absence ofwhat we call rhetoric, the same greatself-forgetfulness. But something that was once narrowin his patriotism is now gone

,and there i s a sense of im

minent tragedy and a stern music of diction which makesthe Th ird Ph ilipp ic unlike anything else in l iterature.War was declared in 340 , and at first Athens was suc

BEFORE CHE RONEA 359

cessful. I t was a stroke of rel igious intrigue that turnedthe day. The Locrians were induced to accuse Athensof impiety before the Amphictyonic council . lmpietywas in Greece

,l ike heresy afterwards

,an offence Of

which most people were guilty i f you pressed theinquiry . The Athenians had irregularly consecrateds ome Theban shields. But the Locrians themselveshad profanely occupied the sacred territory of Kirrha.

Ai schin es,who was the Athenian representative

,con

trived to divert the warl ike bigotry of the council againstthe Locrians. He is ve ry proud of his achievement .But either turn served Philip equal ly well : he onlydesired a sacred war of some sort

,in order that the

Amphictyons,who were without an army

,might summon

him into Greece as defender of religion. Once insideThermopylae

,he threw off the mask. Demosthenes

Obtained at the last moment what he had so long sought,

an alliance between Athens and Thebes but the Macedomian generalship was too good

,and the coal ition of

Greece lay under Philip’s feet at Chaeronea in 338 .

Athens received the blow with her usual heroism .

Lycurgus the treasurer was overwhelmed with volumtary offerings for the defence fund

,and the walls were

manned for a fight to the death. But that was not

Philip’s wish . He sent Demades th e orator,who had

been made captive in the battle,to say that he would

receive proposals for peace . The friends of Macedon,

Phokion , j Es ch in es, and Demades, were the ambassadors

,and Athens was admitted on easy terms into the

alliance which Phil ip formed as the basis of his marchagainst Persia. Then came a war of the law-courts

,

the Macedonian party straining every nerve to get ridOf the war element. Hyperides had proposed, in the


first excitement of the defeat,to arm and liberate all

slaves. This was unconstitutional,and he was prose

outed by Aristogeiton . His simple confession It

was the ba ttle of Chwronea tha t spoke, not I The a rms

of Macedon took away my s ight ”—was enough to securehis acquittal. A desperate onslaught was made againstDemosthenes ; Aristogeiton, So s icles , Ph ilocrates, Diondas

,and Melanthus

,among others

,prosecuted him. But

the city was true to him. Some of the accusers failed toget a fifth of the votes

,and he was chosen to make the

funeral speech over those slain at Chaeronea.

l Then camethe strange counter-campaign of LYCURGUS against theMacedonian party. The man was a kind Of Cato . Ofunassailable reputation himself

,he had a fury for ex

tirpating all that was corrupt and unpatriotic, and hisstandard was intolerably high . The only speech of h ispreserved to us is Aga ins t Leocra tes , a person whosecrime was that he had left the city after Chaeronea,instead of staying to fight and suffer. The penalty demanded for th is slight lack of patriotism was death, andthe votes were actually equal .This shows the temper of the C ity ; but resistance toMacedon was for the time impossible . Athens wascontent with an opportunist coal ition directed byDemosthenes and Demades . On Phil ip’s murder arising was contemplated

,but checked by Alexander’s

promptitude. Soon after,on a rumour that Alexander

had been slain in I llyria,Thebes rebelled

,and Demos

thenes carried a motion for j oin ing her. Army andfleet were prepared

,money despatched to Thebes

,and

an embassy sent to the Great King for Persian aid,when

Alexander returned,razed Thebes to the ground

,and

1 The extant speech is spurious .



Demosthenes of the last eight years was true to theDemosthenes of the Ph ilipp ics . E s ch ines knows thatthe issue of the trial l ies with Hyperides and the radicalwar party

,and he plays openly for the ir support . He

emphasises Demosthenes’s connection with the Peacein the first part of his li fe . He has the audacity toaccuse him Of having neglected three opportunities of

rising against Alexander in the last part ! I t was wellenough for Al exander’s personal friend and tr ied supporter to use such accusations. Demosthenes couldonly answer them by an open profession of treason

,

which would doubtless have won his case, and havesent him prisoner to Macedon . He does not answerthem . He leaves the war party to make its j udgmentin Si lence on the question whether he can have beenfalse to the cause of h is whole l ife, whether the tone

“

i n which he speaks Of Chaeronea is l ike that of arepentant rebel . I t was enough . E sch ines failed toget a fifth of the votes

,and left Athens permanently

discredited. He set up a school in Rhodes,and it is

said that Demosthenes suppl ied h im with money whenhe was in distress.But the hostile coalition was not long delayed . I n

324 Harpalus, Alexander’s treasurer, decamped with a

fleet and 720 talents—ful l materials for an effectiverebellion . He sought admi ss ion at Athens

,and the

extremists were eager to rece ive him . But the timewas in other ways inopportune, and Demosth enespreferred a subtler game . He carefully avoided anyopen breach of allegiance to Alexander. He insistedthat Harpalus should dismiss his fleet

,and only agreed

to rece ive him as a private refugee. When Alexanderdemanded his surrender

,Demosthenes was able to

CTES IPHON. HARPALUS 363

refuse as a matter of personal honour, without seriouslycompromising his relations with the king. The Macedon ian s insisted that Harpalus should be detained,and the treasure stored in the Parthenon in trust forAlexander. Demosthenes agreed to both proposals, andmoved them in the Assembly himself. What happenednext is not known

,but Harpalus suddenly escaped,

and the Macedonians insis ted on having the treasurecounted . I t was found to be less than half the originalsum . That it was going in secret preparations for war,they could have little doubt. They would have liked astate trial and some instant executions. Demosthenesmanaged to get the question entrusted to the Areopagus

,

and the report deferred. I t had to come at last. TheAreopagus made no statement of the uses to whichthe money was appl ied

,but gave a list of the persons

guilty of appropriating it,Demosthenes at the head .

His intrigue had failed, and he had given the friendsof Macedon the ir chance . He was prosecuted byHyperides on the one side, DEINARCHUS on the other.The latter

,a Corinthian by birth

,rose into fame by

this process,and noth ing has survived of him except

the three speeches relating to it. Dionysius calls h ima ‘ barley Demosthenes,

’ whatever that may mean— thesuggestion is probably ‘ beer ’ as opposed to ‘ wineand h is tone in this speech is one of brutal exultation .

Very different,suspiciously different

,is Hyperides, who

not only says nothing to make a permanent breach,but

even calls attention to Demosthenes’s great position,to

the unsolved problem Of what he meant to do with themoney

,to the possib il ity that his l ips are in some way

sealed . For his own part,Hyperides talks frank treason

with a coolness which well bears out the stories of his


courage . Demosthenes was convicted,and condemned

to a fine of fifty talents. Unable to pay such an enormous sum

,he withdrew to Troizen .

Nine months after, Alexander died and Greece rose .Demosthenes j oined his accuser Hyperides in a missionto rouse the Peloponnese

,and was reinstated at Athens

amid the wildest en thusiasm. The war opened well .The extant Funeral Speech of Hyperides was pronouncedafter the first year of it. I n 322 came the defeat at Crannon . The Macedon ian general Antipater demanded thepersons of Demos thenes and Hyperides . Old Demades,unable to mediate any more

,now found himself drawing

up the decree sentencing his colleague to death . Demosthenes had taken refuge in the temple of Pose idon atCalauria

, where he was arrested, and took poison .

Hyperides is said to have been tortured, a statementwhich would be incredible but for the flood of crimeand cruelty which the abol iti on Of l iberty

,and the in

troduction of Northern and As iatic barbarism,let loose

upon the Greek world in the next centuries.Demosthenes has never quite escaped from the stormy

atmosphere in which he lived . The man’s own intensityis infectious

,and he has a way of forcing himself into

living politics. The Alexandrian schools were monarchical

,and thought ill of him. To Grote he was

th e champion of freedom and democracy. To N iebuhrPh il ip was Napoleon

,and Demosthenes the ideal

protest against h im . Since 1 870 , now that monarchicalmil itarism has changed its quarters

,German scholars l

seem Oppressed by the l ikeness between Demosthenesand Gambetta

,and denounce the policy of ‘ la revanche

’

;

1 Eg. Roh rmoser, Weidner , and even Beloch and Ho lm. Th e technicalcritics are Spengel and Blass .



ambassadors. He appeared in festal attire on hearingOf Philip’s assassination

,though he had just lost his

only daughter. I n the prelude to the last war,Philip’s

action was Often the more correct,as was that of

another Phil ip in dealing with Will iam of Orange. I nDemosthenes’s private speech-writing we are struck byone Odd change of front. I n 350 he wrote for Phormioagainst Apollodorus in a matter of the great Bankwith which they were both connected

,and won his

case. Next year he wrote for Apollodorus, prosecutingone of his own previous witnesses

,Stephanus

,for perj ury ,

and making a violent attack on Phormio’

s character.The probabil ity is that Demosthenes had made discoveries about his previous cl ient which caused him toregret that he had ever supported him— among them

,

perhaps,th e discovery that Stephanus was giving false

evidence. The only external fact bearing on the problemis the coincidence that in the same year Apollodorus

,at

some personal risk,proposed the measure on which

Demosthenes had set h is heart—the use of the FestivalFund for war purposes— and that he remained afterwardsattached to Demosthenes. The Midias case is a clearin s tance of the subordination of private dignity to publicinterest. Mtdias was a close friend of Eubulus, and hadboth persecuted and as saulted Demosthenes when hewas Choregus at th e great Dionysia. Demosthenes prepared to take action

,and wrote the vehement speech

which we poss ess (Aga ins t M idias) , in which he declaresthat noth ing will satisfy him but the utmost rigour ofthe law. But meantime there arose the negotiations forthe peace of 346, and Demosthenes had to act in concertwith Eubulus. He accepted an apology and compensation

,and let the matter drop.

THE SPIR IT OF THE TIME 367

We must never forget in reading Demosthenes andZEsch in es, that we are dealing with an impetuousSouthern nation in the agony of its last struggle . Thepolitenesses and small generositie s of politics are notthere. There is no ornamental duelling. The menfight with naked swords

,and mean business . Demos

thenes thought of his opponents, not as statesmenwho made bad blunders

,but as perj ured traitors who

were sel l ing Greece to a barbarian. They thoughthim

,not

,indeed

,a traitor— that was impossible—but a

malignant and insane person who prevented a peacefulsettlement of any issue. The words ‘ treason ’ and bribe ’

were bandied freely about ; but there is hardly anyproved case of treason, and none of bribery

,unless the

Harpalus case can by a stretch of language be cal led so .

There are no treasury scandals in Athens at th is time .There is no legal disorder. There is a singular absenceofmunicipal corruption . The Athenians whom Demosth enes reproaches with self- indulgence

,were living at

a strain of self- sacrifice and effort which few civil isedcommunities could bear. The wide suspicion of briberywas caused chiefly by the bewilderment of Athens atfinding herself in the presence of an enemy far hersuperior both in material force and in diplomacy. Whywas she so incomprehensibly worsted in wars

,where she

won most of the battles Why were her acutest s tatesmen invariably outwitted by a semi-barbarous king ?Somebody must be betraying her ! Demosthenes on

th is point loses all h is balance of mind. He lives in aworld peopled by imaginary traitors. We hear how berushed at one Antiphon in the s treets

,and seized him

with his own hands . Happily the j urors did not losetheir sanity . There were almost no convictions. I t was


very similar in I taly before and after 1 848 . People whosepatriotism was heroic went about accusing one anotherof treason . The men of 404, 338, and even 262

,will not

easily find their superiors in devotion and self-sacrifice.

Another unpleasant result of th is suspicion and hatredis the virulence of abuse with which the speakers ofthe time attack their enemies. Not, indeed, in publicspeeches. In those of Demosthenes no opponent iseven mentioned. But in the law- courts

,which some

times gave the finishing stroke to a political campaign,

the attacks on character are savage . The modernanalogue is the raking up of more or less irrelevantscandals against both witnes ses and principals in casesat law

,which custom allows to barristers of the h ighest

character. The attack on ZEsch ines in the De Corona

is exceptional . Demos thenes had a real and naturalhatred for the man . But he would never have draggedin his father and mother and his education

,if ZEsch ines

had not always prided himself on these particular th ings—h e was distinctly the social superior of Demosthenes

,

and a man of high culture— and treated Demosthenesas the vulgar demagogue . Even thus

,probably Demos

th enes repented of h is witticisms about the old lady’sprivate in itiations and ‘ revivals .’ I t i s to be wishedthat scholars would repent of the ir habit of readingunsavoury meanings into words which do not possessthem .

Demosthenes can never be j udged apart from hiscircumstances . He is no saint and no correct mediocrity . He is a man of genius and something of a hero ;a fanatic

,too

,no doubt

,and always a politician . He

represents h is country in that combination of intellectualsubtlety and practical driving power with fervid ideal ism,


XVIII

THE LATER LITERATURE,ALEXANDRIAN

AND ROMAN

FROM THE DEATH OF DEMOSTHENES To THE

BATTLE OF ACTIUM

AMONG the many stereotyped compliments which weare in the habit of paying to Greek l iterature, we areapt to forget its singular length of life. From thepreh istoric origins of the epos to Paul the Silentiaryand Musaeus in the sixth century after Christ there isnot an age devoid of delightful and more or less originalpoetry. From Hecataeus to the fall of Byzantium thereis an almost uninte rrupted roll of historians

,and in on e

sense it might be held that history did not find itsbest expression till th e appearance of Polybius in thesecond century B .C. Ph ilosophy is even more obv iouslyrich in late times ; and many wi ll hold that if the great

est individual th inkers of Greece are mostly earl ier thanPlato

,the greatest achievements of speculation are not

attained before the times of Epictetus and Plotinus.The literature of learning and science only begins at thepoint where the pres ent book leaves off. I t may evenbe said that the greatest factor in imaginative l iterature

,

Love, has been kept out of its rights al l through the31°

END or FREE HELLENISM 371

Attic period,and that Mimnermus and Sappho have to

wait for Theocritus to find their true successor.Yet the death of Demosthenes marks a great dividingline. Before it Greek l iterature is a production ab so

lutely unique after it, it is an ordinary first-rate l iterature

,l ike Roman or French or I talian . Of course it is

impos sible to draw a strict l ine between creation andadaptation ; but, in the ordinary sense of the words,the death of Demosthenes forms a period before whichGreek poets

,wr iters

,th inkers

,and statesmen were really

creating,were producing things of which there was no

model in the world ; after which they were only adapting and finishing

,producing things l ike other things

which already existed.

That is one great division ; the other is similar toit. We have seen how the crash of 404 B.C. stunnedthe hopes of Athens

,dulled her faith in her own mis

sion and in human progress generally. Chaeronea andCrannon stamped out such sparks as remained. Athensand intel lectual Greece were brought face to face withthe apparent fact that Providence sides with the bigbattal ions

,that material force is ultimately supreme .

Free pol itical l ife was over. Political speculation was ofno use

,because the mil itary despots who held the world

were not l ikely to l isten to it. Even Aristotle,who h ad

been Alexander’s tutor,and was on friendly terms with

him,treats h im and his conquests and his system as

utterly out of relation to any rational constitution of

society . The events of the next two centuries deepenedthis impres sion

,and political aspirations as a motive in

l ife and literature came to an end for Greece . Of coursemany ages and peoples have done very well withoutany freedom in public action or speech or thought .


But these things were in the heart fibres of the Greekrace

,and it pined when deprived of them.

The middle ages and the East made up for theirabsence of publ ic interests by enthusias tic religious fai th .

But this solace l ikewise was den ied the later Greek.

The traditional religion was moribund among educatedmen in the fifth century ; after the fourth it was hardlyworth attacking . People knew it was nonsense

,but

considered it valuable for the vulgar ; and, above all,they asked each thinker if he had anyth ing to put inits place . Much of the intel lect of the fourth centuryis thrown into answering th is demand. On the onehand we find Athens full of strange faiths, revived orimported or invented ; superstition is a serious fact inlife . One could guess it from the intense earnestnessof Epicurus on the subj ect

, or from the fact that bothAn tiphanes and Menander wrote comedies upon The

Supers titions Man . But the extant inscriptions aredirect evidence. On the other hand came the greatphilosophical systems. Three of these were especiallyreligious

,resembling the sixth century rather than the

fifth . The Cynics cared only for virtue and the relation of the soul to God ; the world and its learningand its honours were as dros s to them . The Stoics andEpicureans

,so far apart at firs t sight

,were very similar

in their ultimate aim. What they really cared about wase th ics— the practical question how a man should orderhis l ife . Both indeed gave themselves to some science—the Epicureans to phys ics

,the Stoics to logic and

rhetoric—but only as a means to an end . The Stoictried to win men’s hearts and convictions by sheersubtlety of abstract argument and dazzl ing sublimity ofthought and express ion . The Epicurean was deter



bound to prefer Truth . A more fervid or less originaldisciple

,Speusippus, for instance,would not have treated

the two as antithetic. On Plato’s death in 347, Speus ippus was Chosen head of the Academy ; and Aristotlefound it tactful to leave Athens

,accompanied by Xeno

crates,who afterwards succeeded Speusippus . He spent

three years at Assos,in Mysia

,and married Pyth ias, the

niece of the dynast there,under romantic circumstances

,

having somehow rescued her during a revolt. I t was in

343 that he was invited to Pella by Phil ip, and becametutor to the young Alexander, then aged seventeen .

Noth ing is known of those lessons. One fears therewas little in common between the would-be rival ofAchilles and the great expounder of the ‘ contemplativel ife

,

’ except the mere possession of transcendent ab il ities. Ar istotle’s real friend seems to have been Ph il ip .

He had perhaps caught something of that desire for aconverted prince which played such tricks with Platoand I socrates. He had made attempts on two smallpotentates before Philip—Themison of Cyprus, and h iswife’s uncle

,Hermeias . A year after Ph ilip’s death

,

Aristotle returned to Athens, and Alexander marchedagainst the Persian Empire. Aristotle had always disapproved of th e plan of conquering the East. I t wasnot ‘ contemplative .’ And even his secondary piece ofadvice

,that the conqueror should be a ‘ leader ’ to the

Greeks and a ‘ master ’ to the barbarians,was rej ected

by Alexander, who ostentatiously refused to make anydifference betw een them. There was a private difficulty

,

too,of a worse kind : one Callisthenes

,whom Ar istotle

left as Spiritual adviser in h is stead,was afterwards im

pl icated in a supposed conspiracy and put to death .

But there was no open quarrel. I t was probably at this

ARI STOTLE 375

time (335) that Aris totle founded his school of philosophyin a building with a peripatos or covered walk

,near the

grove of Apollo Lyke ios , j ust outside Athens . I t was aninstitution in some respects less near to the Academy thanto the Alexandrian l ibraries

,and

,l ike them

,was probably

helped by royal generosity. Aristotle’s omnivorous learning and genius for organisation had the ir full scope. Hesurrounded himself with fellow - Studentsoavr es—directed them to various special collections andresearches admitted differences of opinion in them,

andexercised the right of free criticism himself and so builtthat gigantic structure of organised and reasoned knowledge which has been the marvel of succeeding ages.Aristotle’s writings were divided by the later Peripa

tetiCS into e’

fwr epucoi and ci/cpoauarucoi My er—works forpublication a nd lecture materials. H is reputation inantiquity was based entirely on the former class

,espe

cially on the semi-popular dialogues ; and it is a curiousfreak of history that

,with the possible exception of the

Cons titution of Athens , not one work of this whole classis now preserved. I n our Aristotle we have no finishedand personal works of art l ike the dialogues of Plato .

We have only boroumj/ca -ra—the notes and memorandaof the school. That explains the al lusive and ellipticalstyle

,the anecdotes and examples

,which are suggested

but not s tated ; it also explains the repetitions andoverlapp ings and occasional contradictions . Divers of

the a vupcxoa ocpofiw es have contributed matter, and thelectures have been repeated and worked over by various‘ scholarchs.’ Aristotle’s Rhetoric

,for instance, was based

on the collections of his disciple Th eodectes,and ex

panded again by his successor Theophrastus. ThePhy s ics count as Aristotle ; the Botany and M ineralogy ,


as Theophrastus ; but both men were obviously concerned in both . I n the Eth ics there are clear tracesof three separate teachers—the mas ter himself

,Eudémus

,

and another. The M etaphy s ics and Logic mus t have hadtheir main speculative l ines laid by Aristotle’s originalspeculations . The Poetics seem to give his personalreply to the challenge which Plato had thrown to someone not a poet, but a friend of poetry, to give in plainprose ” some j ustification of the senseless thing.

1 But inal l of these works there are additions and comments byother teachers. I n political science the school collectedand analysed 158 different existing constitutions. Aristotle himself did Athens and Sparta ; but he publishedh is great theoretic treatise on Politics before his collectorshad nearly finished their work.Fifty years after Aristotle’s death the Peripatos ’ had

become an insignificant institution,and the master’s

writings were but little read til l the tas te for them revivedin the Roman period . For one thing, much of his workwas of the pioneer order, the kind that is quickly superseded, because it has paved the way by which others mayadvance . Again

,organised research requires money,

and the various ‘ diadochi,

’

or successors of Alexander,kept their endowments for their own capitals. Aboveall

,the aim of universal kn owledge was seen—nay, was

proved by Ar istotle’s own experience— to be beyondhuman powers. The great organisations of Alexandriawere glad to spend upon one isolated subject, such asancient l iterature or mechanics, more labour and moneythan the Lyceum could command in its search forEncyclopaedic wisdom . Even a great ‘ polymath ’ l ikeEratosthenes is far from Ar istotle.

1 Rep . 607.



Comedy is dated roughly from 40 0 to the death of Alexander

,in 336, and is characterised by a love of parody

and the ridicule of poets and myths. The New, as wehave said above, extended its sphere to al l the subj ectsof ordinary li fe . The plots are well constructed, andoften convincing . The reigns of the diadochi ’ formed atime full of adventure and intrigue

,and real l ife supplied

the stage with soldiers of fortune,kidnapped maidens,

successful adventurers,and startling changes of fate, as

well as with parasites and ‘ hetairai.’ The diction, too,has an air of real ity . I t is a language based on life,and keeping close to l ife

,utterly remote from the arti

ficial beauty of th e contemporary epics and elegies .I t aims at being ‘ urbane and pure ’ as well as witty ;but it is not highly studied. ANTIPHANES and ALEXIS

,

of the Middle Comedy, wrote over two hundred playseach MENANDER and PHILEMON, over two hundred b etween them. Much is said about the low moral tone ofthe New Comedy— on the whole, unj ustly. The generalsympathies of the poets are healthy enough ; only theyshrink from all high notes

,and they do perhaps fail to see

the dramatic and imaginative value of the noblest s idesof life . Menander himselfwas a close fr iend of Epicurus

,

and shocked people by ‘ praising pleasure .’ The talentand energy devoted to descriptions of eating and drinkingin the Middle Comedy are sometimes cited as a symptom of the grossness of the age. But a feast was on eof the traditional elements in comedy ; how could a‘ kOmOidia ’ go without its ‘ kOmos ’

? Our evidence,

too , is mi sleading, because it comes chiefly from theBanquet

-Philos ophers of Athenaeus, a book which special lyransacked antiquity for quotations and anecdotes uponconvivial subj ects. And

,above all

,it is well to remember

NEW COMEDY 379

that the Middle Comedy began in years of dearth,and

all literature shows us how half-starved men gloat uponimaginary banquets. There is as much suffering as

jollification behind some of these long l is ts of fishesand entrées.Romantic and adventurous love formed a prominentmotive in the plots of the New Comedy

,and such love

,

under the conditions of the time, was generally foundamong troubled circumstances and damaged characters .I n satirical pieces the heroine herself is often a hetaira .’

I n a great many more she is rescued from the clutchesof ‘ hetairai ’ and their associates. I n a few

,it would

seem,she has ‘ a past,

’ but is nevertheless al lowed tobe ‘ sympathetic.’ I n one or two, like the Amas tris of

Diph ilus , she is a virtuous, or at least a respectable,princess, and the play itself is real ly a historic drama.Certainly the sentimental interest was usually greaterthan the comic.Philemon ultimately went to Alexandria

,and Machon

lived there ; but they were exceptions. Menander himself stayed always in Athens . Our conception of th e manis drawn as much from his famous statue, and from theimaginary letters written in h is name by the SophistAlkiph ron (about 20 0 as from his own numerousbut insignificant fragments. Very skilful the letters are

,

and make one fond of the cultured,critical

,easy-natured

man, loving nothing much except l iterature and reposeand h is independence

,and refusing to l ive at th e Alex

andrian court for any salary, or to write down to thepublic in order to win as many prizes as Philemon .

The same adventurous love interest which pervadedcomedy also raised the elegiac and epic poetry of the


time to its highest imaginative achievements. The lateGreek elegy was not only a th ing of singular beauty, itwas also a great l iterary influence ; and Callimachus,Euphorion

,and Ph ilétas are the chief inspirers of the

long- l ived Roman elegy. PHILETAS,a younger contem

porary of Demosthenes,is perhaps the first typical

Alexandrian elegist a pale student,wasted in body,

who “ would have been blown away if he had notworn leaden soles to his boots a Homeric critic ;tutor to Ptolemy I I . and to Theocritus ; a writer of

love elegies,which he called by the name of his own

beloved ‘ B ittis,’ and of an idyll about Odysseus and

Polymele. He and ASCLEPIADES,whose graceful love

verses are well represented in the Anthology, were theonly poets of this age whom Theocritus frankly confessed to be his superiors. A friend of Ph ilétas

,HERME

SIANAK, has left us one long fragment, giving l ittle morethan a list of bygone lovers

,which wil l have startled

many readers of Athenaeus by a certain echoing andmisty charm . CALLIMACHUS

,l ibrarian

,archaeologist

,

critic,and poet, was perhaps the most influential per

sonality in l iterature between Plato and Cicero . Herealised and expressed what h is age wanted

,and what

it was able to achieve. The creative time had gone ;it was impossible to write l ike Homer or Hesiod orlEschylus ; they suited their epoch, we must suit ours,and not make ourselves ridiculous by attempting torival them on their own ground . What we can do is towrite short unambitious poems, polished and perfectedin every line . The actual remains of Cal limachus are disappointing

,save for a few fine epigrams

,and the elegy on

the Ba thing of Pallas . For th e res t, a certa in wit andcoldness

,a certain obviousness in reaching effects, spoil


3 8 2 LITERATURE OF ANCEINT GREECE

highes t bloom of theflower. The other would be Medea’sanswer when J ason proposes to plead for mercy with herfather Aiétes

,and to make covenant for her hand

,as

Theseus once sued for Ariadne from Minos

Speah not of ruth nor pact. They dwell not here.

Aii tes heep s no bond, nor hnows nofear,Nor walhs w ith men as M inos walhed of old;

And I am no Greehpr incess gentle-souled.

—0ne only th ing : when thou art saved andfree,Thinh of Medea

,and I w ill think of thee

Alway s , though allforbid. And be there heard

Some voicefromfar away , or some w ild birdCome cry ing on the day I amforgot.

And lift me in their arms through was tes of skyToface thee in thy falseness , and once cry ,

[ saved thee.

’Yea, a

-sudden at thy hall

And hear ths tone may I s tand when those day s fall.

Apo llonius is,of course

,subj ect to the vices of his

age . He has long picture- l ike descriptions,he has a

tiresome amount of pseudo - Homeric language,he

has passages about th e toi lette of Aphrodite and thearchery of Eros which might have been written byOvid or Cowley. But there is a genuine originalityand power of personal observation and feel ing in him ;

witness the similes about the Oriental child-wife whosehusband is killed

,the wool-worker bending over the fire

for light as she labours before sunrise,the wild thoughts

that toss in Medea’s heart like the reflected light dancingfrom troubled water

,the weird reaping of the Earth

ch ildren in the fire of sunset—which force us to admit thatin him Greece found expression for things that had beenmute ever before . And for romantic love on th e higherside he is without a peer even in the age of Theocritus.

APOLLONIUS. THEOCR ITUS 3 8 3

THEOCRITUS is perhaps the most universally attractiveof al l Greek poets. I t i s common to find young studentswho prefer him to Homer

,and most people are con

scious of a certain delighted surprise when they firstmake his acquaintance. I n his own sweet and lowlydomain he is absolute monarch ; one might almostsay that there is hardly anyth ing beautiful in the pastoral poetry of the world that does not come fromTheocritus. His first idyll

,the Dirge on Daphn is , has

perhaps had a greater number of celebrated imitations

than any poem of its length in existence—from B ion’s

Adon is , Moschus’s Bion

,Vergil’s Daphni s, to our own

That habit of retrospect, that yearning over the past,which pervades all the poetry

,though not the scientific

work,of Alexandria, is peculiarly marked in Theocritus .

There are poems in plenty about the present ; there areeven poems about the future

,and the hopes which the

poet reposes in his patrons. But the present is ratherugly and the future unreal . The true beauty of Theocritus

’

s world lies in the country l ife of the past. TheSicil ian peasants of his own day

,it has been well remarked

,

were already far on the road to becoming th e agriculturalslave population of the Roman Empire

,

“ that mostmiserable of all proletariats.” Yet even long afterwards

,

under the oppression of Verres,they were known for

their cheerfulness and songfulness and it is probablethat the rustic bards whom we meet in Theocritus arenot mere figmen ts of the imagination . I t was in the oldSicil ian poetry of Stés ichorus that the type firs t appeared.

The Sicil ian villager,like the Provencal, the Roumanian,

and the Highlander, seems to have taken verse-makingand singing as part of the ordinary business of li fe.


There is such unity of style and atmosphere in Theocritus that on e easily overlooks the great variety of hissubj ects. We call his poems Idylls

,

’ and expect themto be ‘ idyll ic.’ But in origin the word eiSbMtcov is merelythe diminutive of 6230 9,

‘ form ’ or ‘ style and our use ofthe name appears to come from the practice of headingthese pastoral poems with the musical di rection eiSbMtcou

Bov/eokucbv, or a in okucbv,

‘COW- herd style

,

’ or ‘ goat-herdstyle

,

’ or whatever the case might require . Only ten ofthe th irty- two Idylls of Theocritus which have come downto us are strictly about pastoral life

,real or ideal ised ;

six are epic,two are written for ‘ occasions,

’ two areaddresses to patrons

,six are definite love- poems, and four

are real istic studi es of common l ife . The most famousof these last is the Adoniazus e ( Id . a mime describing the mild adventures of two middle- clas s Syracusanwomen

,Gorgo and Praxinoa

,at the great feast of

Adonis celebrated at Alexandria by Ptolemy I I . Thepiece is sometimes acted in Paris, and has some realbeauty amid its humorous but almost unpleasant closeness to l ife . There is not so much beauty in the preceding mime (xiv.) with its brief sketch of the kind ofthing that drives young men to enlist for foreign servicebut there is perhaps even more depth and truth

,and

,we

must add,more closely- studied vulgarity. The second

Idyl l,narrating the unhappy love of Simaetha and her

heart- broken sorceries,is hard to classify it is realistic

,

beautiful,tragic

,strangely humorous

,and utterly unfor

gettable . I t does for the heart of life what the ordinarymime does for the surface ; and, in sp ite of severalconscious imitations

,has remained a unique masterpiece

in literature. Three poems appear to express the poet’spersonal feel ings ; they are addressed to h is squire, and



Roman, and as fu ll of those little phrases that smackof the Gradus and suggest self- satisfaction—B ion is “ theDorian Orpheus,

” Homer is “ tha t sw eet mouth of Ca lliope.”

Yet his bad manner cannot hide his inborn gifts. Amongthe innumerable echoes of the Greek pastoral which arestil l ringing in the ears of modern Europe

,a good many

come from Moschus’s Lament for B ion for instance,Matthew Arnold’s dream

,to

Mahe leap up w i th j oy the beauteous headOf Proserp ine, among whose crownéd ha ir

Areflow ersfirs t opened on S icilian a ir ;

Andflute h isfii end, lihe Orpheus ,from the dead.

”

The other great mark of the Al exandrian epos andelegy

,besides the love interest

,was the learned interest.

There were numerous archaeological poems. RHIANUS

wrote on the Messenian Wars,making a kind ofWallace

out of Ar istomenes . Cal l imachus wrote four elegiacbooks of A itia or ‘ Origins,

’ and an antiquarian epos‘Hecate

,

’ centring upon Theseus and the Bull ofMarathon, but admitting many digressions. There weresti ll more philosoph ical poems. ARATUS of Soli wroteon Phe nomena or ‘Th ings Seen in the Sky

,

’ with anappendix on the signs of the weather ; Nicander, on

natural history,and on poisons and antidotes

,as well

as on the origins and legends of various cities. Neitherof these two poets appeals much to our own age

,which

prefers its science pure,untempered with make-believe.

The extraordinary influence and reputation enj oyed byAratus in antiquity appear to be due to the fact that hesucceeded in annexing, so to speak, as h is private property

,one of the great emotions of mankind. I n the

centuries following him it almost seems as if no culturedman was capable of looking long at the stars w i thout

LEARNING AND RESEARCH 3 87

murmuring a line from the Phcenomena . The greatestman of learn ing of the whole Ptolemaic age, ERATOSTHENES

,kept h is geography and Chronology

,and his

works on the‘

Old Comedy,to a prose form . His

l ittle epos about the death and avenging of Hesiod,and

his elegy Erzgone’, are on legendary and what we shouldcall poetical ’subj ects.I n Prose

,learn ing and research set the prevailing tone .

The marches of Alexander had thrown open an immensestretch of th e world to Greek science

,and the voyages

of h is admiral Nearchus , and of men l ike Polemon andPy theas, completely altered ancient geography. OurCh ief handbooks are a Tour of the World and a Periplusor ‘Voyage-round ’ various coasts

,current under the

names of SKYMNUS and SKYLAX respectively. The scientific organisation of geography was carried out by menlike Eratosthenes and H ipparchus

,involving th e inven

tion of systems for calculating latitude and longitude, andthe use of trigonometry . Mathematics

,pure and appl ied

,

were developed by a great number of distinguished men,

including EUCLID,in the time of Ptolemy I., and ARCHI

MEDES,who died in 21 2. Mechanics— the machines

being largely of wood,and the motive power generally“

water o r mere gravitation, though in some cases steamflourished both for mil itary purposes and for ordinaryuses of l ife. There is a curious pas sage in the extant,works of HERO, describing a marionette -machine, whichonly required setting at the beginning to perform um

aided a four-act tragedy, including a sh ipwreck and a

conflagration .

Learning was very especially applied to literature.There were two great l ibraries in Alexandria—the firs tby the museum and the palace the second, both in age


and importance,near the temple of Serapis. They were

proj ected by the first Ptolemy with the help of Demetrius of Phalérum

,actually organised by the second

(Philadelphus) ; and they formed the centre of culturefor the next centuries . Zenodotus, Call imachus, Eratosthenes

,Aristophanes of Byzantium

,and Aristarchus were

the first five librarians what institution has ever had sucha row of giants at its head i’ The most immediate workof these l ib raries was to collect and preserve books ;every ship visiting Alexandria was searched for them

,

and neither money nor intrigue was spared in acquiringthem . The next task was to form a ca talogue ra isonne

the work mainly of Call imachus,in 1 20 volumes ;1 the

next, to separate the genuine works from the spur ious,and to explain the difficult and obsolete writers. Theother kings of the time formed libraries too

,that of the

Atta l ids at Pergamus being the most famous. Pergamuswas a greater centre of art than even Alexandria

,but

in l iterature proper it was at a disadvantage. I t hadstarted too late, when Alexandria had snapped up mostof the unique books. I t had no papyrus. The plantonly grew in Egypt

,and the Ptolemies forbade th e

export of it ; so that Pergamus was reduced to us ingth e costly material which bears its name

,

‘ parchment.’ I n criticism generally Pergamus was alliedwith the Stoic s chools ; and devoted itself to inter

preting, often fanciful ly enough, the sp irit rather thanthe letter of its ancient writers

,and protesting against

the dictatorship of Aristarchus and the worship of exactknowledge .

One of the first fields for the spirit of research and

Hiram: 76» iv wdap wa rbelabra kapgl/dw wv ( a t (59 aw é'

ypa tlrar .



him still more against the military despots . His twogreat works were Hellen ica

,in twelve

,and Ph ilipp ica , in

fifty- eight books. Like other verbose men

,he liked to

preach silence and simplicity. He was possibly a professed member Of the Cynic sect ; at any rate, he wasa hater of the world, and a despiser of the great. Hebel ieved that al l the evi ls of Greece were due to her‘three heads ,

’

Ath ens, Sparta, and Thebes, and that kingsand statesmen and ‘ leaders of the people ’ were generally the scum of society. He is praised for his ski llin seeing secret causes and motives—ch icfly bad ones—behind the veils of d iplomacy

,and his style is almost

universally admired . The so - called Longinus,On the

Sublime, quotes his description of the entry of the GreatKing into Egypt, beginning with magnificent tents andChariots

,ending with bundles of shoe- leather and pickled

meats . The critic complains of bathos but the passagereads l ike the intentional bathos of satire. His militarydescriptions fail to pleas e Polybius, and it is hard toexcuse the long speeches he puts into the mouth of

generals in action .

The Sicil ian TIMAEUS was a historian of the sametendency

,a pure student, ignorant of real warfare, who

wrote the history of his own island in th irty-eight books .He

,too, took a severe view, not only of kings and

dip lomats,but also of other historians ;1 but he pos

s essed the pecul iar merit of having thoroughly masteredhis sources

,including inscriptions and monuments , and

even Carthaginian and Phoenician archives. Polybiusalso praises the accuracy of his chronology.Turn ing aside from special h istories l ike the Atth is

of Ph ilochorus and the Samian Chron icle of Duris,we

Hence his nickname E v a luator, Biod. Sic. 5. 1 , andAth. 272.

HISTORY. POLYBIUS 39 1

find the old rational ism of HerodOrus revived in aquasi-historical shape by EUHEMERUS and his followerPALE PHATUS. They reduced myth and rel igion tocommon- sense by the principle that the so -called godswere all mortal men who had been worshipped after deathby the superstition or gratitude of their fellow-creatures .Euhemerus had the great triumph of finding in Cretewhat he believed to be a tomb with the ins cription, Zc

‘

w

Kpbvov Zeus,son of And we find an inter

esting product of the international spirit of the timethe Spirit which was to produce the Septuagint and theworks of Philo— ln the histories of Berosus, priest of

Bel in Babylon,and Manetho, priest of Serapis in

Alexandria .But the greatest of the later Greek h istorians is,

without question,POLYB IUS of Megalopolis (about 205

1 23 His father, Lycortas , was general of theAchaeans, and the first forty years of the h istorian’s l ifewere spent in mil itary and diplomatic work for theleague

,especial ly in its resistance to Rome. I n 166 he

was sent to Rome as a hostage, and for sixteen years hewas kept there, becoming a close friend of the Scipios.He followed the younger Africanus on most of hisexpeditions

,and saw the fal l of Numantia and of

Carthage . I n his last years he was the principalmediator between Rome and Greece

,posses s ing the

confidence of both sides,and combining in a singular

degree the patriotism of the old Achaean cavalrymanwith a disinterested and thorough - going admirationfor Rome. His h istory started from 264 B .C.

,where

Timaeus ended, and led up to his own days in thefirst two books ; then it expanded into a universalhistory, giving the rise of Rome

,step by step

,down


to the destruction of Carthage and the final loss of

Greek independence. As a ph iIOSOph ic historian, astudent of causes and principles, of natural and geographical conditions

,of customs and prices

,above all

of pol itical constitutions, he is not equalled even byThucydides. He combines the care and broadness ofview of a philosophic modern wr iter with the practicalexperience of an ancient historian . Only the first fivebooks of his history are extant in a complete form ; thenext th irteen

,in extracts . As for the sty le of Polybius,

Dionysius classes him among the writers “whom nohuman being can expect to finish .

” That is naturalin the professional Att icist

,who could not forgive

Polybius for writing the current common Greek ofhis time. But it is odd that modern scholars, especi

ally if they have read the Atticist h istorians and Polyb ius close together

,should echo the rhetor’s protest

against the strong living speech of the man of affairs.Polybius does not leave the same impression of personal genius as Thucydides ; but he is always interesting, accurate, deep - th inking

,and clear - sighted. He

has one or two prej udices,no doubt— against Cleo

menes for instance,and against the lEtolians . But

how he sees into the minds and fee ls the aims of

almost al l the great men he mentions ! His Aratusand h is Scipio are among the most living Characte rsof history ; and his Hannibal is not Livy

’

s theatri calvillain , but a Semite of gen ius, seen straight andhumanly. Polybius was prosaic in temperament ; hewas harsh in criticising other historians. But

,apart from

his mere scientific achievement,he has that combina

tion of moral and intellectual nobleness which enablesa consistent patriot to do j ustice to his country’s



There is something faint in his emotion,something con

tracted and over- refin ed in his range of interes ts. And

a certain lack of spring and n imbleness amid all h isgrace of diction and vers ification seems sometimes tobetray the fore igner. One suspects that

,at home in

Gadara,Greek was only h is second language

,and that

he had talked Aramaic out of school. Perhaps his mostingenious work is the Proem to the Anthology

,describing

th at metaphorical Garland

Whereun to many blooms brought Any ti,

Wildflags andM cero many ,—lilies whi te;And Sapphofew , but roses .

”

ANTIPATER of Sidon was nearly equal to him ; CRINAGORAS i s always good to read. And, as a matter offact, there was work of this kind produced, much of itbeautiful, much of it offensively corrupt, right on to thedays of PALLADAS in the fifth century, of AGATHIAS and

PAUL the Silentiary In the s ixth .

One cardinal obstacle to poetry in imperial times wasthe non - correspondence between metrical rules and realpronunciation . Ai schylus and Sophocles had based theirpoetry on metre

, on long and short syllables, because thatwas what they heard in the words they spoke . Ar istophanes of Byzantium (257—1 80 B.C .) n oticed, besides thedivisions of long and short

,a certain musical p itch in the

words of an Att ic sentence,and invented the system of

accents for the instruction of foreigners in pronunciation .

I t is hard to real ise the exact phonetic value of th is pitchaccent ’ ; but it is ce rtain that it did not affect poetryor even attract the notice of the ear in classical times,and that as late as the second century B .C. it was something quite different from what we call accent

,to wit,

POETRY UNDER ROMAN EMPIRE 395

stress -accent. But in the fourth century after Christthe poet NONNUS, an Egyptian Greek from Panopolis,in his Diony s iaca, begins suddenly to reckon wi th accent.Dividing his hexameters into halves at the caesura, heinsists that in the second half the accent shall not fal l on

the ante-penultimate syllable ; while in the first halfbefore the caesura he mostly insists that it shall fal lon the ante-penultimate . The accent must by his timehave become a stress-accent

,and the ingenious man is

attempting to serve two masters. A verse l ike

obpa vbvWme’

bovroq

dw r éia a cAids 38pm;

is in metre a good hexameter ; by accent It is nextdoor to

A captain bold ofHal ifax,Wh o lived in country quarte rs ”

that is to say,to the so -cal led politic ’ verses scanned by

accent,which were normal in Byzantine times

,and were

used by the vulgar even in the fourth century. Quintusof Smyrna

,an epic poet preceding Nonnus

,does not

Observe these rules about accent ; but Coluthus, Tryph iodorus, and Musaeus do. The Diony s iaca made anepoch .

I n prose there is much his tory and geography andSophistic l iterature from the age of Augustus on . Dio

dorus Siculus,Dionysius of Hal icarnassus

,J osephus the

J ew are followed by the Xenophon of the decadence,

Arrian by Appian,Dion Cassius

,and Herodian . ARRIAN

wrote anAnabasis of Alexander,l ike Xenophon’s Anabasis

of Cyrus,and devoted himself to expounding Epictetus

a great deal better than Xenophon expounded Socratesthis besides tactics and geography. Above all

,PLUTARCH


(46—1 20 A.D.) wrote his immortal Lives , perhaps the mostwidely and permanently attractive work by one authorkn own to the world

,and the scarcely less interesting

mas s of treatises wh ich are quoted under the generalname of Moralia . He was no scientific h istorian

,and

the value of his statements depends enti rely on theauthorities he chances to follow ; but he had a gift ofsympathy, and a power of seeing what was interesting .

As a thinker he is perhaps over - anxious to edify,and

has his obvious limitations ; but he is one of the mosttactful and Charming writers

,and one of the most lovable

characters,in antiquity.

I n pure l iterature or s ophistic ’ we have many names.Dion Chrysostomus

,Herodes Atticus

,and Aristides are

mere sty l ists,and that only in the sense that they can

write very fair stuff in a language remarkably resemblingthat of Demosthenes or Plato . The Philostrati are moreinteresting

,both as a pecul iarly gifted family

,and for

the subj ects of their work. There were four of them .

Of the first we have only a dialogue about Nero and theCorinthian Canal . Of the second we have the admirableLife of Apollonius of Tyana, the Neo-Pythagorean saintand philosopher who maintained a short- l ived concurrence with the founder of Christianity ; also a treatiseon Gymnas tic, and some love- letters. Of the third andfourth we have a pecul iar series of ‘E ihones

’

(Pictures) ,descripti ons of works of art in elaborate poetica l prose .

They are curious and very skilful as l iterature, and arevalued by archaeologists as giving evidence about realpaintings. The description of pictures was a recognisedform Of sophistic

,which flourished especially at the

revival of art under the Antonines,and lasted on to the

days of Lo ngus and Achilles Tatius.



ignorance,and saintl iness especially offended him. He

was intended by his father for a sculptor,but broke away

into l iterature . He began as a rhetorical sophist of theordinary sort

,then found his real vocation in satirical

d ialogues,modelled on Plato in point of s tyle

,but with

the comic element outweighing the philosophical . I nth e l ast years of his l ife he accepted a government Offi cein Egypt

,and resumed h is rhetorical efforts. He is an

important figure,both as representing a view of l ife which

has a certain permanent value for all ages,and also as

a s ign of the independent vigour of Eastern Hellenismwhen it escaped from its state patronage or rebelled againstits educational duties.

I n philosophy, which is apt to be allied with education

,and which consequently flourished under the early

Empire,there is a large and valuable literature extant.

There are two great philosophic doctors. GALEN wasa learned and bright

,though painfully voluminous

,

writer,as wel l as a physician

,in the time of M . Aurelius.

SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, a contemporary of Caligula, was amember of the Sceptic school ; his two sets of booksAga ins t the Ma thema tici

,or professors of general learn

ing, and Aga ins t the Dogma tici, or sectarian philo

Sophers, are full of strong thought and interestingmaterial. There are two philosophical geographersSTRABO in th e Augustan age

,PTOLEMY in the time of

Marcus . The former was stronges t on th e practical andhistorical s ide

,while Ptolemy’s works on geography

and on astronomy are the most capable and scientificthat have come down to us from ancient times . An

other ‘

geographus ,’ PAUSAN IAS

,who wrote his Tour

of Greece (Hepcrjyno cs'

Ek7tci809), in ten books, under the

ROMAN PHILOSOPHY 399

Antonines,seems to have travelled for pleasure

,and

then,after he had come home

,compiled an account

of what he had seen,or ought to have seen, out of some

book or books at least three hundred years old ! Thatis the only way to explain his odd habit of not mentioning even the most conspicuous monuments erected after150 B.C. Nay, his modern critics assure us that sometimes when he says ‘ 1 was told

’ or ‘ I my self saw,

’ heis only quoting his old traveller without changing theperson of the verb . This is damaging to Pausanias personally, but it increases the value of his guide-bookwhich

,if often inaccurate and unsystematic

,is a most

rich and ancient source of information, quite un ique invalue both to archaeologists and to students of customand religion . I t was Pausanias

,for instance

,who

directed Schliemann to Mycenm.

I n philosophy proper, the professional Stoic is bestrepresented to us in the Lectures and the Handboo/e of

EPICTETUS, a Phrygian slave by origin, and a cripple,who obtained his freedom and became a lecturer at

Rome. Expelled thence, in 94 A.D.,by Domitian ’

s

notorious edict against the philosophers,he settled at

N icopolis,in Epirus

,where he lived to enj oy the

friendship of Traj an, and, it is said, also of Hadrian

( 1 17—1 38 Epictetus illustrates the difference ofthis age from that of Plato or even of Chrys ippus,in that he practically abandons all speculation

,an d

confines himself to dogmatic practical ethics. Heaccepts

,indeed, and hands on the speculative bas is

of morality as laid down by the earlier Stoics, but h isreal strength is in preaching and edification . Hecalled his school a “ healing

-place for diseased souls .

”

Such a profession is slightly repellent ; but the breadth


and concreteness of the teacher’s conceptions, his sublimity of thought

,and his humour

,win the affection of

most readers. Yet p icturesque as the external circumstances of Epictetus are

,they are dimmed by comparison

with those which make the figure of MARCUS AURELIUSso uniquely fascinating. And the clear

,strong style of

the professional lecturer does not atta in that extraordinary power of appeal which underl ies the emperor’sawkward Commun ings w ith H imself . Wi th Marcus

,

as with so many great souls,everything depends on

whether you love him or not. I f the first three chapterswin you

,every word he writes seems precious ; but

many people,not necessarily narrow-minded or vicious

in taste,will find the whole book dr eary and un

meaning . It would be hard to deny, however, thatthe ethical teach ing of the old Stoa

,as expounded by

these two men,is one of the very highest

,the most

spiritual,and the most rational ever reached by the

human intellect. Marcus died in 1 80 ; the great philosopher of the next century was born in 204, PLOTINUS,the chief of the Neo-Platonists . Though he professesfor the most part merely to interpret Plato, he isprobably the boldest thinker, and his philosophy themost complete and comprehensive system

,of Roman

times. His doctr ine is an uncompromising ideal ism :

the world all comes from one Original Force, whichfirSt differentiates itself into M ind

,i .e. into the dual ity

of Thought and Being. Nature is the result of Thoughtscontemplating themselves

,and the facts of nature, again,

are her self-contemplations. There is a religious element in th is system which was developed

,first by the

master’s biographer and editor, Porphyry, and then byIamb lichus

,into What ultimately became a reasoned



which Julian was s triving towards and imperfectlygrasping all through his l ife

,which he might

,in a

sense,have attained permanently in happier ages. He

was a great and humane general, an able and unselfishs tatesman . But there is fever in h is ideals ; there is ahorror of conscious weakness in his great attempts .

I t is the feeling that besets all th e Greek mind in itsdecadence. Roman decadence tends to exaggeration

,

vainglory,excess of ornament ; Greek decadence is

humble and weary. “ I pray tha t I may fulfil y ourhopes ,

” writes J ul ian to Th emistius ,“ but I fi ar I shall

fa il. The p romis e y ou mahe about me to y ours elf and

others is too la rge. Long ago I had fancies of emula tingAlexander and Ma rcus and other grea t and good men

and a sh rinhing us ed to come over me and a s trange dread

of hnow ing tha t I was utterly [aching in the courage ofthe one

,and could never even approach the perfect virtue

of the other . Tha t was wha t induced me to be a s tudent.

I thought w ith relief of the ‘Attic Es say s ,’

and though t it

righ t to go on repea ting them to y ou my friends, as a ma n

w ith a heavy burden lightens his trouble by s inging. And

now y our letter has increas ed the old fea r, and show n the

s truggle to be much , much ha rder , when y ou talh to me ofthe pos t to wh ich God has calledme.

”

One form of l iterature,indeed

,contemporary with

Julian,and equally condemned by him and by his chief

opponents,shows a curious combination of decay and

new l ife,the Romance. The two earl iest traces of prose

romance extant are epitomes. There is perhaps no spontan eous fiction in the Love Stories of PARTHENIUS

,an

Alexandrian who taught Vergil,and collected these myths

for the use of Roman poets who liked to introducemythical names without reading the original authorities .

THE ROMANCE 46 3

But the work may have looked different before it wasepitomised. There is real invention in the work of

one ANTONIUS DIOGENES about The Incredible I/Vondersbey ond Thule. He lived before Lucian

,who parodies

him. The book was full of adventures,and included

a visit to the moon ; but, to j udge from the epitome, itrepeated itself badly

,and the characters seem to have

been mere puppets. One particular effect, th e hero or

heroine or both being taken for ghosts, seems especiallyto have fascinated the author. There is some skil l in theelaborate and indirect mas sing of the imaginary sourcesfrom which the story is derived . Romance was popularin the third century

,which has left us the complete

story of Habrocomés and Antheia by XENOPHON of

Ephesus. The two best Greek novelists are with l ittledoubt LONGUS and HELIODORUS : the former for merel iterary and poetic quality ; the latter for plot andgrouping and effective power of narrative . Heliodorus writes l ike the opener of a new movement. Heis healthy

,exuberant

,ful l of zest and self-confidence.

His novel is good reading even in our own age, whichhas reached such exceptional skill in the technique ofnovel-wr iting. You feel that he may well be

,what as a

matter of fact he was, the forerunner of a long array ofnotable writers, and on e of the founders of an exceptionally prolific and durable form of l iterature. I t is saidthat HeliodOrus was a Christian and bishop of Salonica

,

and that the synod of his province called upon him eitherto burn his book or to res ign his b ishopric, whereuponthe good man did the latter. The story rests on weakevidence

,but it would be like the HeliodOrus that we

know. Longus is very different—an unsanguine manand a pagan . Not that h is morals are low : it needs an


unintell igent reader or a morbid translator to find harmin his H is tory of Daphn i s and Chloe. But a feel ing ofdiscouragement pervades all his work

,a wish to shut

out the world,to shrink from ambitions and problems

,

to l ive fo r innocent and unstrenuous th ings . He re

minds one of a tired Theocritus writing in prose . Someof the later novelis ts

,l ike Achi lles Tatius and Chariton

,

wrote romances which,j udged by vulgar standards

,

will rank above that of Longus. They are stronger,better constructed

,more exciting ; some of them are

immoral . But there is no such poet as Longus amongthem .

He is the last man,unless the present writer’s know

ledge is at fault,who lives for mere Beauty with the

old whole-hearted devotion,as Plotinus l ived for specu

lative Truth,as Julian for the “ great city of gods and

men .

” Of these three ideals,to which

,beyond all others

,

Greece had opened the eyes of mankind,that of Political

Freedom and Justice had long been relegated from praotical l ife to the realm of thought

,and those who had

power paid no heed to it. The search for Truth wasfinally made hopeless when the world

,mistrusting

Reason,weary of argument and wonder

,flung itse lf

pass ionately under the spell of a system of authoritativeRevelation

,which Claimed a censorship over all Truth,

and stamped free questioning as sin . And who was topreach th e old Beauty, earnest and frank and innocent,to generation s which had long ceased to see it or tocare for it The intellect of Greece died ultimately of

that long discouragement which works upon nations l ikeslow poison . She ceased to do her mission because hermission had ceased to bear fruit. And th e last greatpagans

,men like Plotinus

,Longus

,and Julian, pro


CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE'


4 1 0 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

Phocy lides , GnomicusHipponax , Iambicus

X enophanes , Poeta Phi loThespis, TragicusPythago ras , Phi losophasTheagenes, His toricusTheognis , Elegiacus

Simonides, Choricas

Lasus, Cho ricasHecataeus, His toricusDionys ius , HistoricusAlcmaeon, Phi losophasOnomacritus , Poeta Orph icusZopyrus , Poe ta OrphicusCha ron , His to ricusEugaeon , Histo ricus

Choirilus , TragicusHeracli tus, PhilosophusHerodotus

,His toricus

Phryn ichus , Tragicus .

Court ofHippias.

Competed agains t

fEschylus, 499.

First tragic victory ,5rr.

I I I .—THE ATTIC PERIOD.

Battle of Marathon.

Pindar, lyth . 7.

PANYASIS, Epicus, Ha lica rnas sus .

Pindar, Ifi'tfi. 3.

HIPPYS, His toricus, Rhegium (fabulousEPICHARMUS, Comicus, Syracuse (Cos ) .E SCHYLUS, Tragicus , Ath ens ; b . 525. d. 456. First victo ry .

Pindar, Olym. 10 and I I .

PINDAR, Choricus , Thebes ; b. 522, d. 448.

Pindar, [st/1m. 7.

Formation ofDe lian Confederacy.

Phrynichus , Pfie n ism.

PARMEN IDES, Poeta Ph ilosophions, Elea.

Pindar, Olym. I and 12 ; E schylus, Perm.

BACCHYLIDES, Cho rions , Sici ly.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 4 1 l

Pindar , Olym. 6. The firs t victo ry of Sophoc les.Pindar, Py t/z. 4 and 5.

CORAX ,Rhetor, Sicily .

Pindar, Olym. 7 and I3.

CHIONIDES, Comicus, Athens.MAGNESECPHANTIDES

ANAXAGORAS, Philosophus , Athens (Clazomena ).BRYSON, Soph istes , Heraclea.E schylus , Ores tez

'

a.

Pindar , Olym. 9.

SOPHOCLES, Tragicus , Athens ; b. 496, d. 406.

Euripides , Pelz'ader.Pindar, Olym. 4 and 5.

ION, Tragicus , Chios.GORGIAS, Soph istes , Leontini.STESIMBROTUS, Sophi stes, Thasos.CRATES, Comicus, Athens .

ZENO, Ph ilosophas , Elea .

Anaxagoras leaves Ath ens.CRATINUS, Comicus , Athens .

HERMIPPUS, Comicus , Athens .

EMPEDOCLES, Poeta Philosoph icus , Agrigentum.

HERODOTUS, His toricus , Halica rnassus ; b . 484, d. 425Herodotus goes to Thurii.

PROTAGORAS, Sophis tes , Abdera ; b. 482 d. 4 1 1 .

Sophocles , An tigone (or 442 P).

ANTIPHON, Orator, Athens .

ARCHELAUS, Philosophus, Athens.EURIPIDES, Tragicus , Athens ; b. 480 , d. 406.

MELISSUS, Ph ilosophus , Samos .

SOPHRON, Mimographus , Syracuse.Parthenon dedicated.

Euripides , Alcertz's (with Cressce, Alcm an , Telep/zus ) .

LEUKIPPUS, Philosophus , Miletus or Abdera.Corinth ians defeat Corcyreans , suppo rted by Athenians , in a s ea

fightPheidias andAspas ia prosecuted for impiety. Also Anaxagoras .Peloponnes ian War.

Euripides , Medea (wi th Dz’

ety s, Plzz’

loctetes ).Herodotus pub lishes last part of his hi story.

H IPPIAS, Sophi stes, Elis .

HELLANICUS, Historicus , Lesbos.PHERECRATES, Comicus, Athens.

4 I 2 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

THUCYDIDES,Historicus, Athens.

HIPPOCRATES, Medicus, Cos .PHRYNICHUS, Comicus, Athens.

SOCRATES, Philos ophus , Athens ; b . 468, d. 399.

Euripides , Ifz'ppob'tus .Gorgias comes to Athens as chief envoy ofLeontifi .

Ari stophanes , Daz’

tales.

Ar is tophanes, Baby lonz'am.

DIOGENES, Philosophus, Apo l lonia in Crete.Aristophanes , Acha rn ians .

Capture of Sphacteria.

DIAGORAS, Philosophus , Melos.Aristophanes , n g/m.

ANTIOCHUS, His toricus, Syracuse.Thucydides leaves Athens.

Aristophanes, Cloud: ( l st edit ).Aris tophanes , Wasps .

Peace ofNikias .

DAMASTES, H istoricus , Sigeum.

THRASYMACHUS, Rh etor , Cha lcedon.DEMOCRITUS, Ph ilosophus , Abdera.GLAUCUS, Histo ricus, Rhegium.

PRODICUS, Sophi s tes , Ceos.Old Oligarch on Con stitution ofAthens .Antiphon, Or. 5, On tfie Murder of Herodes.

AGATHON , Tragicus , Athens ; b. 447, d. 400 .

Muti lation of the Hermae. Expedition to Sicily.Euripides, Tf odder.EUPOLIS, Comicus, Athens .

HEGEMON, Comicus , Athens (Thasos ).ALKIDAMAS, Rhetor, Elea .

CRITIAS , Politicus , Athens .

ARISTOPHANES, Comicus , Athens ; b. 450, d. 385; B ird:

Athenian fleet destroyed at Syracuse.Euripides

,Electra.

Lys ias comes to Athens.

Euripides , Helene, Andromeda.

Ari stophanes, Ly sz's trata , n em pbor z'

azma .

Governmen t of the Four Hundred.

Lysias 20 , For Poly stratus .

Sophocles , Pli i lot teter.Euripides , Orestes.Ar istophanes , Plutus ( lst edit ).


4 1 4 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

ISZEUS, Orator, Athens .ANAX ANDR IDES , Comicus , Athens (Camirus ) .{ENE/ts , Tacticus , Stymphalus.Isaeus , Or. 9, On the E state of A styph ilus.

Aristotle comes to Athens.

ANTISTHENES, Phi losophus , Athens .ARISTIPPUS, Philosophus , Cyrene.Isocrates, Or. 6, Arch ia

’

amus .

ANTIPHANES, Comicus , Athens (a foreigner ) b. 404, d. 330 .

Isaeus , Or. 6, On the E state of Ph ilocternon .

Demosthenes , Or. 27 and 28, Aga inst Aphobns .

Battle ofMantinea. Death of Epaminondas .Demosthenes , Or. 30 and 3 1 , Aga ins t Onetar 1 and II.

LYCURGUS, Orator, Athens ; b. 396 d. 323.

Hyperides , Agai nst Autocles .

Isocrates, Letter VI. , To the Ch ildren ofj ason.

Socia l War begins.

End Of Second Athenian Empire.

Isocrates, Or. 8 , On the Peace ; Or. 7, Areopagitica s.

Eubulus in power at Athens .

Demosthenes , Or. 14, On the Navy Boards ; Or. 20 , Aga ins t la ys/inesALEXIS, Comicus , Athens (Thurii ) ; b. 394, d. 288 .

Isocrates , Or. 15, On the An tidosis .

Demos thenes , Or. 16, On behalf of the M'ega/opolitans .

THEODECTEs , Tragicus , Athens (Phas e lis ).THEOPOMPUS, Historicus, Chios .

Demos thenes , Or. 4, Aga ins t Philip I.Demosthenes , Or. 1 and 2, Oly n thiacs I. and II.

Death of P lato. Speus ippus at the Academy.

Peace ofPhilocrates .

E SCHINES, Orator, Athens ; b. 389, d. 3 14.

1Esch ines, Aga in st Tzma rchus .

DEMOSTHENES, Orator, Athens ; b . 383, d. 322.

EPHORUS, Historicus , Kyme.

ARISTOTLE, Philosophus, Stagirus .

Demosthenes, Or. 19. fEschines , Or. 2 (Falsa Legat io).Heges ippus About Halon nesus .

Demos thenes , Or. 8 , On the Chersonnese; Or. 9,Aga inst Ph ilip

War with Ph i lip.ANAXIMENES, Rhetor, Athens.DEMADES, Orator, Athens.lIYPERIDES , Orator, Ath ens ; d. 322.

Isocrates , Or. 12, Panathena icns .

Xenocrates at the Academy .

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 4 1 5

Battle OfChaeronea.Philip assas sinated. Alexander the Great succeeds.Aristotle teaches at the Lyceum in Athens .

Alexander sets out for Persia.

Demosthenes, Or. 18, On the Crown.

lEsch ines, Or. 3, Aga inst Ctesiphon .

Lycurgus, Aga i ns t Leocrates .DEINARCHUS, Orator, Athens (Co rinth ) ; b . 361 Or. 1 , Aga i n st Demosthenes Or. 2, Aga inst An stogeiton .

Epicurus comes to Ath ens .

Death ofAlexander. Lamian War.

Hyperides , Epi taphius .

Death ofDemosthenes , Hyperides , andAris to tle.Alexander’s Empire divided among his Genera ls.


4 l 8 I NDEX

Cha ri ton, 404 Euclides, Socratic, 173, 30 3Charon, 122 Euclides , mathematician, 387Chi onides , 277 Eudemus, Peripatetic, 376ChOIrilus ,

.

ep1¢ poets , 70 f. Eugaeon, 1 22tragic poet, 205 Eugamon ofCyrene, 5

Chor i zon tes, 10 Euhemerus, 39 1Chq , 95f 204 f Eumelus, 68 , 72 f. , 121CleIdernus, 121 Euphorion , 380Cleobulma , 85 Eupolis , 21 2, 278 f.C leobulus , 85 Euripides, 209, 210 , 225, 229, 250—274Cleostratus , 73Coluthus, 395

away . 2

23f

f. 275- 293. 377

-

379 SEES;3352r mna , I r

Crates , 278 Gorglas r 160 : 163, 334

Cratinus, 275, 277Cratippus , 1 82

CreOphylus , 1 21

Crinagoras , 394Critias , 169Ctesias , 389

DAMASTES of Sigeum, 123Deinarchus, 363Demades, 359 f.Democritus , 159, 3 10 , 3 12Demodocus , 85Demosthenes

, 353-

369Deus ex mach ina, 266 f.Didymus, 15Dieuch idas OfMegara, 1 1Diodorus Siculus , 395Dion Cass ius , 395Dion Chry sostomus , 396D ionysius , cy clogr aphns , 9, 45 H ippias, 164

OfHa licarnassus, 3 13 , 325, 395 H ipponax, 73, 88

ofMi letus , 1 22 H ippys , 1 22D iony sus -wor sh ip, 65f. , 210

‘H istorzli,’123 f.

Diph Ilus, 379 Homer, 3—51D i thy ramb, 98 f. Hyperides , 357 f.Diyllus, Peripatetic, 135Duris , 71 390

IAMBLICHUS, 400

ECPHANTIDES, 277 Ibycus , 105Empedocles , 75, 158 l izscnptz

‘

ons, 1 17 147, 192, 195, 208Ephorus , 149, 389 Ion , 165, 233Epic

‘cy cles ,

’

45 Iophon ,234

Epicharmus , 275f., 295 Issans , 34 1, 353Epictetus , 399 Isocrates , 304, 327, 341 - 352Epicurus , 304Epimenides, 66 f., 121 JOSEPHUS, 395Eratos thenes, 387 Jul ian , 40 1

II ECATFEZUS , 1 25f.Hegemon, 166Heges ias , 44Heges ippus , 335HelIOdorus , 40 3Hellan icus , 128 f.

Heraclides of Pontus, 3 12Heraclitus , 155f.Hermesianax, 72, 380Hermippus, 88IIermogenes , 126Hero , mechanician , 387Herodes Atticus , 396Herodian, 15, 395Herodorus, 1 27 f.

Herodotus, 9, 125, 132—152,Hes iod

, 3, 6, 53—62

I NDEX 4 1 9

Ph iletas , 380Phi lip of 0 us , 3 1 1

Ph ilIstus, 3Ph ilo, 391LESCHES, 5, 44 Philochorus, 1 21 , 390

Leukippus , 159 Philonides , 280

Linus ,’

4 Philosophia ,’

1 23, 153, 343Lobon , 85 Ph ilos tratus , 396Longinus , 390 Phokylides , 72, 85Longus , 404 Phryn ichus , 214, 279Lucian, 397 Pindar, 8 , 1 3, 104, 109—1 16, 178Lycurgus , 359 t. Pisander ofCamirus , 69LYSifiS, 175, 337

"

34 l Plato , 17, 65, 71 , 151 , I73 , 294-

3 13P lato , comicns , 279MACHON, 379 P lotinus, 400Magnes . 277 P lutarch. 151. 235, 293. 395fManetho, 391 Polybius , 187, 389, 391 f.Marcel linus, 182 Polykrates , 175, 320Marcus Aure lius , 400 Polyphradmon, 216Matron , 73 Po rphyry, 400Meleager, 393 f. Pratinas

,205, 206

Melesagoras , 121 Praxiphanes, 183Meletus, 176 Prodicus, 164Melissus , 157 Pro tagoras , 150 , 160 , 163 f.Menander , 21 3 , 293, 378 Pto lemy,geographus, 398Mimnermus , 72, 8 1 Pythagoras , 73 f., 154Moschus, 385Musaeus , 395 QUINTUS of Smyrna, 395N ICANOR, 15Nonnu RHAPSODES , 19S, 395

Rh ianus , 16, 386

OLD OLIGARCH,

’The, 167- 169

Onomacritus , 1 1 , 1 3 note, 67Oppian. 393Ora tor s

,

’

325—352Orpheus , 4, 62—68PAL/EPHATUS, 391

Palladas , 394PanyasiS. 70 . 133Papy n

‘

, 16, 100 , 109, 388Parmenides , 75, 156 f.Parth enius , 402Paul the Si lentiary, 394Pausan ias , 398Periander, 73Phaedo , 173Phaedrus , 89Pherecra tes, 278Pherekydes , 121Ph ilemon , 213, 378

SAPPHO , 92 f. 95Semonides ofAmorgos, 8, 58, 72, 85f.Sextus Empiricus , 398Simon ides ofKeos , 8 , 106—108Skolia. 77. 90Skylax, 387Skymnus, 387Socrates, 170—177. 294, 308 . 3 14. 320Solon , 12 f., 72, 8 1 f.

Sophaenetus , 3 19Soph ists , 160—164Sophocles , 209, 229, 232- 249Sophron, 275, 295Speusippus. 3 12. 373Spintharus, 171

Stas inus , 44Stephen of Byzantium, 192, 193Stes ichorns, 54, 10 1- 105Stes imbrotus , 165f.

4 20

‘ Sfory ,’H 9

Strabo, 398TERPANDER

, 77 t'

.

Tha les , 153Theagenes , 122

Themis tius, 402‘ Themis togenes,

’

3 19Theocritus , 383 f.Th eodectes, 344Theodorus , grammarian, 46Theognis, 72, 83 f.Theophrastus

, 375f.Theopompus , 389 f.Thespis, 205Thrasymachus , 162, 169, 326Thucydides , 1 0 , 178

-20 2

Timaeus , 390Timocreon , 108Timotheus, 278

I NDEX

AHE

Tisamenus ofTeos , 295Tis ias , rhetor, 164

‘vVlSE Men , Seven, 72, 84 f.X ANTHUS, 122X enon , 10

Xenophanes , 9, 21, 74, 154Xenophon , 1 75, 3 14—324Xenoph on of Ephesus , 40 3ZAGREus, 65Zeno, 157. 304Zenodo tus , 15, 388

Zopyrus, 1 1

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His tory of Italian Literature

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,D.Litt .

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A H istory of American LiteratureBy Professor W . P. TrentLa rge Crown 8vo, c loth extra, 65.

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