fyxmll Mnmrnin WiMxt BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE Gr-PT«©F 1S91 A.-i3(ii..G.'J.l... /.£-/.Z/.9.i The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022691764 _. „_ Cornell University Library PA 3092. J44 1892 ^''^iffiXfSfii ,«■?'' influence of classical Gr 3 1924 022 691 764 THE GROWTH AND INFLUENCE OF CLASSICAL GREEK POETRY I / i LECTURES DELIVERED IN 1892 ON THE PERCY TURNBULL MEMORIAL FOUNDA- TION IN THEJOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY BY R. C. JEBB KEGIUS PROFESSOR OF GREEK IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 1893 EM, Copyright, 1893, By R. C. J ebb. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Camdridge, Mass., U. S.A, £lectrotyped and Friuted by H. O. Houghton & Co. To DANIEL C. OILMAN, LL. D. PRESIDENT OF THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY, ^W tSoIutne, WHICH OWES ITS EXISTENCE TO HIS FRIENDSHIP, IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. STn iflemotiam. PERCY GRAEME TURNBULL NATUS EST MAII DIE VICESIMO OCTAVO A. D. MDCCCLXXVIII OBIIT FEBRUARII DUODECIMO A. D. MDCCCLXXXVII. Qia trplv av9Tj(rai fi6^ov iiWuraif i^efiapiipdijSf eiapos QvB' iydrov fiTjKhy afieiipdfjLevos' v) ; and his theme is a quarrel between Odysseus and Achil- les, — a lay " of which the fame had reached the wide heaven." Odysseus, sitting unknown among the guests, draws his purple cloak over his face to hide his emotion. When the minstrel paused in his song, and the other guests were applauding or talking, Odysseus would stealthily wipe away his tears ; but his royal host perceived it, and pres- ently proposed that the company should go out to see athletic games. So the chamberlain hangs up the lyre again, and guides the minstrel out of the hall. Once again Alcinous makes a banquet for his guest, and again Demodocus is summoned. Odysseus sends the minstrel a mess of boar's flesh as a special honor, and, with praise of his former singing, asks him to give them a partic- ular lay about the making of the wooden horse, in which the Greek heroes were hidden, and by means of which they took Troy. The minstrel obeys ; and again Odysseus is strongly moved by the strain. In this instance, we note an interest- ing phrase : it is said that the minstrel, on hearing the request of Odysseus, " took up the tale from that point,"' — that point, namely, in some longer lay concerning Troy. Nor is it only in these memorable passages that the Odyssey refers to the art of the minstrel. The swineherd Eumaeus, eager to make Penelope understand the charm of the newly arrived stran- 38 GREEK EPIC POETRY ger (Odysseus), has recourse to a simile : " Even as when a man gazes on a minstrel, whom the gods have taught to sing words of yearning joy to mortals, and they have a ceaseless desire to hear him, so long as he will sing, — even so he charmed me, sitting by me in the halls." Thus the minstrel appears in the Odyssey as a singer whom men believe to be directly moved by the gods or by the IMuse ; he sings in the halls of chieftains, accompanying his song with the lyre ; and his *ong is ordinarily a lay of moderate compass, dealing with some episode complete in itself, such as the making of the wooden horse, taken from a larger story, such as the tale of Troy. But there are two points above all others that deserve notice. The first is the The Greek . .,,.,, ,. minstrel's rapt attention with which the audience listens, — the strong power of the mm- strel over their emotions. This entirely agrees with the vivid picture of the effects produced, in a later age (circ. 400-350 b. c), by the Ho- His thernes. meric rhapsode, as described in Plato s Ion. The other point is the phrase used to de- note the general class of themes handled by the minstrels, — the deeds of heroes, icXea avSpmv. It is the same used in the Iliad to describe the subjects which Achilles sang to the lyre, for his own pleasure and that of Patroclus, in his hut at Troy. In this phrase itself, however, there is nothing distinctive. The early age of almost every people DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER 39 can show forms of folk-lore and folk-song which could be described as the deeds of famous men, the legendary heroes of the race. The question is. What was distinctive in the Greek conception here, separating it from the conceptions formed by other races ? The early legends of a people commonly blend mythology with reminiscences more or less his- torical ; but the proportions which the two ele- ments bear to each other vary indefinitely in differ- ent cases. Sometimes mythology is paramount ; the national saga serves mainly to preserve weird images of the supernatural, fantastic creations of a primitive fancy, which have fascinated the child- hood of the race, and have continued to haunt its mind. As an instance, one might take the earlier shape of the story on which the German .^^ xibeiun- Xibelungenlied was founded, — a story s^"!""*. once common to the whole Teutonic stock. In the Nibelungenlied itself, no doubt, the mytho- logical element has dwindled before the ethical, and history, though in a fantastic disguise, has contributed the persons of Attila and Theodoric. But the older Norse version of the story still moves in a world where daemonic and magical agencies reign supreme ; Brunhild is a valkyria, and Si- gurd can metamorphose himself ; the nominally human persons scarcely pertain to real humanity. Or such early folk-song may be directly EariyEngi.sh based on definite historical events, and "^'p"'"'*- adhere pretty closely to facts ; thus the early 40 GREEK EPIC POETRY war -poems of England in the tenth century, such as the " Battle Song of Brunanbuhr " and the " Song of the Fight at Maldon," concern the real struggles against the Danes. And between these two poles there is an intermediate region, a class of legends in which the basis is historical, but in which a free fancy has given a new com- plexion to the facts, altering, shifting, combining them, mingling them with alloy, old or new, at its French plcasurc. This is what has happened, Sfvah-y" °^ for example, in some of the early French romances of chivalry, the so-called " Chansons de Geste." The great German Karl has become the French Charlemagne, with his capital at Paris instead of Aachen ; he goes on crusades, and leads his armies against Jerusalem or Constantinople. But, amidst all these fanta- sies and impossibilities, the romances preserve the fundamental fact that there was a time when a single emperor ruled over western Europe from the Eider to the Ebro. And the same thing holds good of minor persons ; thus the Roland of the romance is killed fighting against Saracens in the Pyrenees ; and there was a real knight named Roland, who was indeed killed in Pyrenaean war- fare, though his foes were the Gascons. Now the Iliad and the Odyssey are evidently more nearly analogous to the French ro- withtheHo- mances of chivalry than to the primi- meric epics. . ^ tive form of the Nibelungen lay, or to the early war-poetry of England. What exact DISTINCTIVE CHARACTER 4 1 measure of historical fact the Iliad contains, we cannot say : the analogy of the Carolingian romance would suggest that some Achaean king may once have held a dominion as extensive as that of Agamemnon, and that there were strug- gles in the Troad of the kind which the Iliad describes ; inferences which are probable on grounds independent of such analogy. On the other hand, the supernatural agency is an organic part of the Iliad ; the Homeric Achilles slays Hector with the aid of Athena ; we are not logi- cally justified in eliminating Athena, and still affirming as a fact that a Greek hero named Achilles slew a Trojan hero named Hector. The essential difference between the French ro- mances, considered as legends typical of a class, and the Homeric epics is this. In the French romances, widely as they depart from historical truth, the main interest is afforded by imagination playing around history. The series of exploits constitutes the principal charm. These achieve- ments, which the French poets and hearers as- cribed to ancestors of their own, form the pith of the romances; the characters of the great men who do them, as, for instance, that of the poet- ical Charlemagne, however interesting, are of sub- ordinate interest. Now, in the Homeric epics, the deeds of prowess ascribed to the legendary ancestors of noble Greek houses or clans were indeed sources of deep interest and pride to their descendants ; so, too, were the achievements of 42 GREEK EPIC POETRY the Greek army, as a whole, against the Trojans. But the inmost secret of the spell exerted by Homeric epos does not reside in such senti- ments. The supreme and distinctive work of the The human Homcric poct was to body forth those m^c poetry!" human types in which the Hellenic race recognized its own ideals, and in con- templating which it became conscious of itself. Not the successes won by Achilles, but Achilles himself, — not the adventures of Odysseus, but Odysseus himself, — made the Iliad and the Odys- sey all that they were to the Greeks. The same remark applies to the minor human types in each epic, and, in the Olympian sphere, to the divine types ; but it is in the central person of either poem that it is most significant. Achilles is a young warrior of transcendent physical beauty and unequaled prowess ; he is further characterized by the most vehement emotions, curbed with difficulty by strong self-command ; he is a masterly orator, in whose speaking the most fiery passion is combined with the keenest power of sarcasm and the utmost force of argument ; he is also in sympathy with the gentler graces of human life ; the delight of his leisure in the camp is to sing the glories of heroes to the lyre ; his tact and his courtesy are preeminent ; he is chivalrous and tender towards the afflicted and the helpless. And he has also a peculiar pathos. Two fates, as his divine mother told him, were open to his choice ; he might ACHILLES 43 remain in Greece, and live to old age, but at the cost of missing renown ; or he might come to the war at Troy and win renown, but at the cost of dying young. And before the Iliad opens, his choice has been made. The presage of an early doom hovers above him, flitting now and again like a cloud across the brilliant morning of his life ; he knows it, and he does not complain. Modern readers, even students of the classics, have too often taken their idea of the Homeric Achilles from the misleading summary of his character by Horace : " Let him deny that laws were made for him, and acknowledge no umpire but the sword." The very key-note in the charac- ter of the Homeric Achilles is his burning indig- nation at a wrong, at a gross breach of justice ; he does not represent the sword as against right, but right as against tyranny. This is perfectly marked at the beginning of the Iliad, when Achilles first appears. Apollo is plaguing the Greeks because his priest has been wronged by Agamemnon. When the pestilence has been ra- ging for nine days, it is Achilles who summons the Greeks to the assembly. He then addresses Aga- memnon, and proposes that they shall ask some soothsayer why Apollo is wroth. On this hint, without waiting for Agamemnon's invitation, the seer Calchas at once rises, and says that he can reveal the cause, if Achilles will promise to pro- tect him from the anger of a great chief ; he does not say who it is. Achilles, rising again, bids 44 GREEK EPIC POETRY Calchas speak fearlessly ; no one shall lay a finger on him, — no, not Agamemnon himself. Thus Achilles — who, as yet, has suffered no personal injury, and is acting solely for the common good — stands forth at the outset of the epic as the one chieftain who dares to uphold the public interest, and, in so doing, to brave his suzerain's anger. In the debate which follows, he appears to no less advantage. Calchas declares that Apollo's wrath will not cease until the daughter of Chryses is restored by Agamemnon. The king does not re- fuse to restore her, but at once demands compen- sation. Achilles replies that the Greeks have no common stock of property in the camp from which such compensation can be made ; the king must wait till Troy has been taken. Agamemnon then makes a most unwarrantable speech ; he taxes Achilles with evasion, and declares that, if the Greeks do not provide compensation, he will take it by force. Achilles, thoroughly incensed, and with good cause, denounces him as shamelessly selfish ; they are all fighting at Troy in the cause of his family ; he himself has the foremost place ; yet he actually threatens to despoil his followers. " And now," Achilles ends, " I will go back to Phthia ; that is better than to stay here amassing wealth for thee." These words are the signal for a torrent of insults from Agamemnon ; let Achilles go, — his anger is of no account ; nay, the bride of Achilles shall replace the daughter of Chryses, that Achilles may learn to know the power of his chief, and may be a warning to others. ACHILLES 45 Thus Agamemnon has put himself completely in the wrong : a chivalrous warrior, as Achilles is, might reasonably decline to serve under such a leader, — so violent, so ungrateful, so contemptu- ous of all reason and fairness, so outrageous in behavior towards comrades who are risking every- thing for the sake of him and his. It is an essen- tial feature of the Iliad that, though Achilles exceeds measure in the persistence of his resent- ment, his resentment is, in its origin, perfectly justified. His turbulent emotions are so promi- nent in the poem that it is all the more needful to observe the restraint which is placed upon them at supreme moments. One such moment occurs after the contumelious speech of Agamemnon just noticed ; and there the act of self-restraint is beautifully imaged as obedience to the whisper of a guardian goddess. Achilles is moved to slay Agamemnon on the spot ; he is actually drawing his sword from the scabbard, when Athena comes to him from heaven ; she glides behind him, and, as he is on the point of darting forward, catches him by his auburn hair ; he turns round, and rec- ognizes her ; there is an awful divine light in her eyes, but she is invisible to all except himself : she tells him that Hera has sent her, in good will to him and to Agamemnon ; he may rebuke the king, but he must not draw sword : and then she departs to Olympus. Another such moment is in that noble and touching scene, when Priam comes by night to the Greek camp, to ransom the body 46 GREEK EPIC POETRY of his son Hector from Achilles. He enters the young hero's hut unnoticed, and in a moment is at his feet, clasping his knees and kissing his hands ; and then he makes his prayer to the young conqueror, asking him to think of his father Peleus, who may have troubles in his old age, but is sustained by the hope of seeing Achilles again. He ends with those famous words, unmatched for simple and noble pathos : " I have borne such things as no man on the earth hath ever borne, — to lift to my lips the hand of the man who hath slain my son." Achilles raises the old man from the ground, and places him in a seat, but makes no sign of granting his prayer ; and then Priam reiterates it. Thereupon Achilles breaks forth : " Chafe me no more. ... I myself am minded to give Hector back to thee. . . . Stir my heart no more amidst my troubles, lest I keep not my hands even from thee, though thou art my suppli- ant, and transgress the commandment of Zeus." Then he rushes " like a lion " out of the hut, and gives his orders as to making the corpse of Hec- tor ready for Priam to take home. That dread of his lest he should slay his aged and helpless guest is the measure of the bitter and terrible struggle in his soul. His grief and rage for the death of his friend are unabated ; he feels intensely that, even now, the ransoming of Hector's corpse may be a dishonor to the memory of Patroclus. But he also knows that Zeus commands him to accept the ransom ; and he feels a deep compassion for ACHILLES 47 Priam. That cry of his, " Chafe me no more," marks the extremity of the tension ; he can mas- ter himself ; but he must be let alone to do his hard duty in the light of his own thoughts. It is well to remember these aspects of Achil- les ; to notice that there is more in him than the brilliancy of the warrior, on whom the panoply made by Hephaestus flashes " like the gleam of blazing fire, or of the sun as it arises ; " more, too, than his tempestuous passion, or his splendid efficiency alike in action and in speech ; there is also that intrepid championship of the public good, that burning zeal against high-handed op- pression, that fount of chivalrous compassion, and, not least, that sense open to the admonitions or behests of the gods, compelling him to hold his own fiercest impulses in check, even when they are straining in the leash, and he mistrusts his own power to control them. This Homeric Achil- les is a type in which the Hellenic age which gave birth to it saw its own ideal of a glorious manhood to which the freshness of youth still remained, — manhood with all its energies of body and soul in radiant vigor ; tinged, also, with that characteristically Greek melancholy which springs from a sober recognition of a limit to the human lot, and sets a boundary to hope, though without inducing either apathy or complaint. There is one respect, indeed, in which the Ho- meric Achilles might seem to contravene an in- stinct of the Greek nature : is he not deficient in 48 GREEK EPIC POETRY the sense of measure ? When he spurns the en- voys of Agamemnon, though they offer the am- plest reparation, and refuses to forego his wrath until the Greeks shall have been reduced to ex- tremities, he certainly violates the Greek concep- tion of what is fitting in mortal men. He acts more like one who is possessed by K\h, — so the Greeks of the fifth century would have felt, — and exposes himself to the jealous anger of the gods. But we must remember that this youthful warrior belongs to the youth of the race that conceived him. In him they expressed their ideal of splen- did and many-sided force ; in him, too, they saw such an equipoise of faculties as their artistic in- stinct required in typical manhood : his body has not been developed at the expense of his mind ; he is a great warrior, but also a great orator ; he can touch the lyre no less than wield the sword. And in this aspect he expresses the Greek sense of measure : he is a harmoniously developed hu- man being. On the moral side, that sense of measure is again represented by his acts of self- mastery, — as in the scenes with Agamemnon and Priam. That his feelings are, in themselves, violent and excessive, results from the effort of poetry, in a simple and vigorous age, to express human nature in its highest intensity ; Achilles must be peerless in action ; he must be unique also in vehemence of emotion, — of anger, and of love. Odysseus also is an ideal type ; but he is not ODYSSEirS 49 lifted above ordinary emulation in the same de- gree as that dazzling embodiment of 1 r 1 r 11 1 ■ 1 • Odysseus. youthful force and beauty which is pre- sented by the son of Peleus. Horace, who scarcely appreciates the Homeric Achilles, is more felicitous when he describes Odysseus as an instructive pattern of what can be done by manli- ness and wisdom. This hits the point, — that the Greeks saw in Odysseus no unapproachable hero, but the great exemplar of certain qualities which every one might cultivate. Greek poetry, with its usual tact, does not make Odysseus young. He is a middle-aged man of the world. His most prominent trait is the quick-witted versatility which can deal with every fresh difficulty as it arises. His intellectual power often gives him, too, a large measure of foresight. But the Ho- meric Odysseus, be it observed, is not invariably prudent. Sometimes, when the most deadly dan- ger is imminent, he fails in common prudence, through too much curiosity, or through a spirit too sanguine or too audacious, which leads him to tempt fate. Take, for instance, his adventure in the cave of the Cyclops. When he and his com- rades reach the cave, Polyphemus is absent. The comrades propose that they should take the cheeses, the kids, and the lambs, and make off to their ship. But no, Odysseus is bent on seeing Polyphemus, and, oddly enough, professes to think that the master of the cave may prove hos- pitable. So there they stay, eating the cheeses of 50 GREEK EPIC POETRY the Cyclops, till he returns ; when Odysseus speaks, and, with a certain effrontery, expresses a hope that he and his party, thirteen in number, may receive entertainment. On being asked where he has left his ship, he answers with the ready falsehood that it has been wrecked. The Cyclops, with an indignation not wholly unwar- rantable, replies, not in words, but by cooking two of the companions for his evening meal ; and all the troubles begin. Not content with having brought his friends to this pass, Odysseus, when at last he puts to sea with the six survivors, must needs shout back a defiance to the giant, who re- plies by breaking off the top of a mountain, and throwing it at the ship, which it narrowly misses. But even this is not enough. When they have got a little further, Odysseus shows signs of wish- ing to hail the Cyclops again, and his comrades implore him to be silent. " Foolhardy that thou art, why wouldst thou rouse the savage to wrath.?" "But," says Odysseus in telling the story, "they prevailed not on my lordly spirit." And so he shouts again to Polyphemus : " Cy- clops, if any shall ask thee who put out thine eye, say that it was Odysseus, the waster of cities, son of Laertes, who lives in Ithaca." This leads to a short dialogue, the end of which is that the Cy- clops hurls a huger crag than before, which grazes their rudder. Another instance of his rashness is when he forgets one of Circe's express warnings, as they are nearing Scylla, and stands full armed ODYSSEUS SI at the prow of his ship, attracting her notice by his defiance. This occasional excess of daring is an impor- tant trait in the Homeric Odysseus ; it distin- guishes him from the cold, cautious, even mean- souled Odysseus of later writers. His true distinction, in the Odyssey, is that he has wit enough to extricate himself from any difficulty, and fortitude enough to bear whatever the gods send. He is sometimes found in situations trying to heroic grandeur, as when the ram conveys him out of the cave, or when he clings " like a bat " to the wild fig-tree above Charybdis ; who can imagine Achilles in such positions.' But even then he is heroic, with the heroism of supreme ingenuity. And his companions supply the mea- sure of his superiority to commonplace men. The only thing in which they ever have the better of him is commonplace caution, and then it merely serves to bring out his advantage in intellect. He never yields to merely sensuous temptation, and he never defies the known will of the gods, as his companions do when they eat the oxen of the sun- god in Thrinacria. But strong as he is, he is in no way raised above human infirmity. The song of the Sirens woos mortals to the isle where all knowledge shall be theirs, — knowledge of what has been, and of what shall be hereafter upon the earth. The finer the spiritual ear, the more peril- ous the allurement of that promise ; and Odys- seus endures a harder ordeal than his grosser 52 GREEK EPIC POETRY comrades, whose labor is needed to row the ship swiftly past that shore, and whose ears are mean- while sealed with wax against the sounds which, for them, would have had less meaning. But he, lashed to the mast, must listen to that song ; and his own will would have been too weak, if more than human counsel had not warned him before- hand that he must place himself out of his own power, until those sounds die away over the sea. That home which he sought through so many wanderings and trials was the true centre of his affections. The unwilling guest of Calypso in the far west, he yearned for the day when he might see were it but the smoke rising from his own land. "There is nothing better or nobler," he says to the maiden Nausicaa, "than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house." And when at last he reaches Ithaca, and when, still in his disguise, he converses with Penelope, how touching is the anxiety to guard her against too sudden a shock of joy, which appears in his manner of gently preparing her mind for the announcement that her husband has returned. He pretends to be a Cretan, a certain Aethon, who has known Odysseus ; yes, and he has heard on good authority that Odysseus is safe — that he is in Thesprotia — nay, that he will soon be in Ithaca; and he can say even more, — he can sol- emnly assure her, as his conviction, that she will soon recover him : " In the same year Odysseus shall come home, as the old moon wanes and the ODYSSEUS 53 new is born." To the last, he has his moments of despondency. As he lies sleepless in the porch of his own house, on the rude couch allotted to him as a poor and unknown stranger, he muses how he can ever prevail against the suitors, — one man against so many ; he chides his own misgivings ; but he cannot allay them. Then Athena comes to him from heaven, stands above him, and com- forts him : " O hard of belief ! Many can trust in a weaker friend than I am, — in a mortal friend ; but I am divine, and I preserve thee to the end." Such is the Homeric Odysseus ; no superhuman paragon, but an able, nimble-witted, brave, patient man, who fights or devises his way through many trials, not without lapses from prudence, not with- out experience of discouragement, but with a sound brain and a warm heart, and, thanks to the gods, with final success. Such clear human types as these, instinct with the very essence of the Greek spirit, give to the Homeric epics that living and abiding human in- terest — first of all for the Greeks themselves, and then for people of every race and age — which distinguishes them from all other poems of war or adventure, how rich soever in the splendor of battle or the charm of wonderland. Here is the indwelling principle of life in the Ho- . . , . Thefonnof menc poetry ; but it is a harder thing Homeric to describe the characteristics of the form in which that soul is clothed. If one should say, " Read the Iliad and the Odyssey, or parts S4 GREEK EPIC POETRY of them, in the original ; that is ths only way to obtain any adequate sense of their distinction in respect to form," he might seem to be evading his task ; and yet that is strictly true ; true, not only as it is, more or less, of all great poetry, but in a special degree. Translation, even the best, though it be the work of a poet, will not help far ; still less will analysis, be it ever so skillful and so sub- tle. Nevertheless, there is one thing which any competent guide can do for those who are only about to read Homer ; he can assist in orientating their minds ; >he can aid them in placing them- selves'at the right point of view ; if he cannot tell them what Homer is, he can at least help them to see what Homer is not. A generation has scarcely elapsed since it was possible for an accomplished scholar to include the following epithets among those which he gave to Homer's style :^ — "gar- rulous" and "quaint;" also to say, "Homer rises and sinks with his subject, — is prosaic when it is tame, is low when it is mean." Mr. Mat- thew Arnold's " Lectures on Translating Homer" showed once for all how erroneous is the con- ception which these epithets imply ; we may differ from him on some points, but nothing could be bet- ter than what he says as to the four cardinal qual- ities of Homer, — plainness of thought, plainness of style, nobleness, and rapidity. Each Homeric -^ i plainness of can bcst be illustrated by a contrast. thought. ^ -' First, then, — plainness of thought. Agamemnon says in Homer : " There will be HOMERIC PLAINNESS OF THOUGHT 55 a day when sacred Ilios shall perish." How- does the Elizabethan translator, Chapman, render this ? " And such a stormy day shall come, in mind and soul I know. When sacred Troy shall shed her tow'rs,for tears of overthrow." The addition of the epithet " stormy " to the word " day " might pass ; but the thing by which Chapman violates plainness of thought, and is therefore un-Homeric, is the idea of comparing Troy's towers, as they fall, to tears which Troy sheds at her own ruin. This is not a mere pad- ding out of the original ; it is a new thought, of which the original has nothing; and moreover it is a fantastic thought, — a conceit. The Eliza- bethan age was fond of conceits ; it was a puerile extravagance in the use of the newly recovered imagination. But if the Greek mind ever went through such a stage, that stage lies far behind Homer. When Pope said that Chapman writes, not like Homer, but as Homer might have written at an immature age, he was so far quite right. The proneness to " conceits " is a fault of imma- turity. Then as to plainness of style. Sarpedon is exhorting Glaucus to iight against the „, . o o o Plainness Greeks: "I would not urge thee," he °*^'y'=- says, " if- men could live forever. But as it is, since ten thousand fates of death beset us always, — forward ! Either we shall give glory to a foe- man, or he to us." 56 GREEK EPIC POETRY Pope translates : — - " But since, alas ! ignoble age must come, Disease, and death's inexorable doom. The life which others pay, let us bestow, And give to fame what we to nature owe.'' The two last verses are an expansion of the one Greek word, lo/^cv, — " forward ! " — and how the balanced rhetoric destroys its simple force ! Note, in passing, that these two qualities, plain- ness of thought and plainness of style, are wholly distinct. A plain thought may be clothed in arti- ficial language, when the result is usually bathos, as in that well-known example, where " open the bottle and cut the bread " becomes, — " Set Bacchus from his glassy prison free. And strip white Ceres of her nut-brown coat." Or a plain style may convey a curious thought, as when Lady Macbeth says, — " When you durst do it, then you were a man ; And to be more than what you were, you would Be so much more the man." Then thirdly, nobleness. Homer's manner is noble, whatever the subject may be, as Nobleness. , , , . , he IS always also simple and uncon- strained ; and here the snare for the modern translator is that, in trying to be unconstrained, he is apt to become ignoble ; that is, to use some word, recommended by the easy air which it gives, of which the associations are too familiar, or too prosaic — in a word, too low for poetry. NOBLENESS— RAPIDITY 5/ Chapman falls into this snare, when he renders the words spoken by the Homeric Zeus concern- ing the immortal steeds of Achilles — <£ SetXuj, "ye hapless ones!" — by a phrase which, though idiomatic, is too colloquial — " poor wretched beasts ! " Lastly, Homer is rapid. In combining this rapidity with unvarying nobleness, the , y . . . Rapidity. Homeric poems are unique. Homeric rapidity has two distinct sources. The first and most essential is the quick movement of the poet's mind. His thoughts are direct ; they are ever darting onward ; and he does not retard their progress by details of a merely ornamental kind. " Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles," says Homer ; and in his first verse he has an- nounced his theme. Contrast the opening of " Paradise Lost " : — " Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe, With loss of Eden, till one greater Man Restore us, and regain the blissful seat. Sing, Heavenly Muse." Observe that this first source of Homeric ra- pidity is not a necessary or universal character- istic of Greek epic poetry as such ; Hesiod does not possess it. It is distinctive of Homeric epos ; and though it belongs to both the Iliad and the Odyssey, it is in the Iliad that we chiefly feel this rushing impetus of mind. The other cause S8 GREEK EPIC POETRY of Homeric rapidity is a joint result of language and metre. Greek has naturally a lighter and swifter movement than, for instance, Latin ; and the Greek hexameter, though its rhythm varies so much in different hands, is always lighter and more rapid than the Latin hexameter. The opening lines of the Iliad are, again, a supreme example of this. The twenty-second book of the Iliad is the climax of the poem. Achilles chases the Iliad in Hector round the walls of Troy, and slays him. Consider the enormous diffi- culty of treating this simple theme in such a man- ner that it should be a worthy climax for an epic on the great scale of the Iliad, one so rich in thrilling and varied pictures of warfare ; and then observe how the Homeric poet has managed it. At the beginning of the book, Hector is stand- ing outside the Scaean gate, and Achilles is rush- ing towards him over the plain ; Priam and Hec- uba on the ramparts implore their son to seek refuge in the city, but he is deaf to their prayers. Then Achilles comes up, and begins chasing Hec- tor round the walls. Here occurs the first prob- lem for the poet. The pursuit must not be too brief ; that would rob both the heroes of glory. And, in fact, they make three rounds of the city walls. But how is the poet to maintain, and gradually raise, the excitement of so prolonged a race ? How is he to provide that his hearer or reader shall follow that race to the very end, with ILIAD XXII 59 an interest which not only shall not flag, but shall increase from moment to moment ? He has re- course to one of the greatest but most difficult secrets of Homeric epos, — the blending Divine and f T • •., 1 . • A 1 Ml human action. of divme with human action. Achilles, chasing Hector, has completed two circuits, and the third is in progress ; the intense excitement of the pursuit, watched by Trojans from the ram- parts and by Greeks from the plain, is marked by these crowning words — " and all the gods beheld!' The poet then immediately proceeds: "And to tliem spake the Father of gods and men." In an instant we have been wafted from the plain of Troy to Olympus, and are listening to a debate among the gods, which ends in Athena obtaining leave to help Achilles, and darting down to earth. The third circuit is now drawing to a close, and Apollo inspires Hector with a supreme effort. And the third circuit is all but completed, when Zeus in heaven uplifts the golden scales, and weighs the fates of the two men ; the scale which contains the fate of Hector sinks, and he is doomed beyond recall. Athena now makes Achil- les halt. Hector, she tells him, shall be persuaded to turn back and face him ; she takes the form of Deiphobus, Hector's brother, and emboldens him to confront his foe ; in the words of overweening confidence which Hector utters — so unlike his former misgivings — wc feel, with a certain hor- ror, that the power of the goddess has not been over his body alone ; she has hurt his mind. 6o GREEK EPIC POETRY And when the phantom of Deiphobus vanishes, Hector himself, sane once more, knows that he must die. His last rush against Achilles has the fury of despair ; while the light that flashes from the spear of his foe is likened to the steady ray of Hesperus, fairest of the stars in heaven. He falls, — his dying prayer for funeral rites is spurned, — and he expires after prophesying the doom of his conqueror. Thus the movement of the human action to its goal has been diversified at three moments by divine intervention : the appeal of Athena to her father, the weighing of the fates by Zeus, the deluding of Hector by Athena. And what is peculiarly Homeric in this is that it is managed without impairing the probability of the human action. Achilles and Hector do not seem less real, their deeds do not follow each other less naturally, because Athena interposes. The super- natural agency, on the other hand, is not mechan- ical, as that of Vergil's Olympus is apt to be. Athena, counseling Achilles, while invisible to Hector ; restoring the spear, vainly hurled by Achilles, to his hand, assuming the semblance of Deiphobus, and then suddenly disappearing, — Athena is a being not less real than the mortals ; the light of her beautiful and terrible presence seems to flash upon the battle-field, and again to vanish. Homeric poetry alone has been able to create a sphere in which gods and men thus min- gle ; in which the energies of men are tested to their height by the direct pressure of a superhu- DIRECT SPEECH 6l man force, while the gods become only more lumi- nously divine by moving upon the earth among men. This twenty-second book of the Iliad also illustrates two other characteristics of Homeric epos, — the use of direct speech, of direct and the use of simile. In both of these Homer has set the example to later poets ; but here, again, we should note what is distinctively Homeric. When Achilles has stricken down Hec- tor, he cries exultingl}-, " Aye, Hector, when thou wert despoiling Patroclus, thou thoughtest to be safe, and didst not reck of me, who was afar. Thou fool ! But, far from h im, at the hollow ships, I was left behind, mightier to avenge ; and I have laid thee low. Thou shalt be foully torn by dogs and birds, but he shall have honor in his death from the Achaeans." These few words re- veal the inmost mind of Achilles, — his passionate grief, h's passionate desire to avenge his com- rade ; they explain his ruthlessness towards Hec- tor. This is the more peculiarly Homeric use of direct speech, — when it serves to bring a motive, or a situation, into clear relief. Hence a man's thoughts are often given as words spoken by him to his own soul, as Hector's audible thoughts are when Achilles is drawing near. Simile, again, in its Homeric use, is never merely ornamental, but always intro- •* ^ ■' ^ Use of simje. duces a moment, or a thing, which the poet wishes to render impressive. He prepares 62 GREEK EPIC POETRY US for it by first describing something like it, only more familiar. Thus the chase of Hector by Achilles occasions four similes, appropriate to successive moments. Achilles, as he starts in pursuit, is likened to a falcon when it swoops after a dove. As the chase draws towards a close, it is compared to a chariot-race when the chariots round the turning-point of the course and the goal is in sight. As Hector, now almost spent, tries to keep close under the walls, and Achilles again drives him out towards the plain, we have the image of the fawn whom the hound will not suffer to crouch under a bush. And lastly Achil- les, when, though gaining on Hector, he cannot overtake him, suggests the admirably vivid simile of a man in a dream, who sees some one flying before him, but seems unable to move in pursuit. Other parts of the Iliad furnish examples of sim- ile, which are in themselves more brilliant and elaborate, — such as that in the eighteenth book, perhaps the most splendid of all the similes, in which the flame flashing from the golden cloud with which Athena has encircled the head of Achilles is likened to the beacon-fire which blazes up at sunset from some beleaguered island, a sig- nal for aid to the neighboring isles and coasts. But nowhere is the Homeric purpose of simile more clearly seen than in the series just men- tioned, which so vividly marks the course of the supreme struggle between the two champions. Thus far we have been considering some of the USE OF SIMILE 6$ principal characteristics which distinguish the Homeric epics from all others. It will be well, next, to notice certain features which belong more especially to the Odyssey. And then, passing from Homeric to Hesiodic epos, we shall find it instructive to observe some of the broad differ- ences between them. Ill GREEK EPIC POETRY (continued) In any just perspective of European poetry, the resemblance betweeri the Iliad and the Odyssey must always, of course, be far more striking than the difference. Both present ideal human types, both blend divine and human action, both unite plain thought, plain style, nobleness, and rapid- ity, in a manner which broadly separates them from all other compositions. To those who regard the epics from a little distance, and not from those closer points of view which have been gained by modern criticism, it will not appear astonishing that this common Homeric character should even have been regarded as showing the work of one mind; for undoubtedly the stamp of mind seen in both epics is one which has no comparable record in any third poem that could be named. Nevertheless, the differences between the Iliad Differences ^"^ ^^^ Odysscy, which every reader iikTarVthe ^^els, require to be expressly noted. If Odyssey. ^g qjjjJ^- ^.q ^Jq g^^ ^g shdl\ uot adequately appreciate the range of power which marked this early age of Greek poetry. The material of the Iliad is furnished chiefly by warfare or debate. These interests are not wholly absent from the Odyssey, but they hold THE ODYSSEY 65 a subordinate place, and they have an inferior degree of animation. When Odysseus slays the suitors in the banquet-hall, we have, indeed, a full account of the fight, but not the tone of a fight in the Iliad ; the suitors have no chance against Odysseus, who is here a personified Nemesis rather than a mere combatant. The Ithacan as- sembly in the second book of the Odyssey is perhaps most in the manner of the Iliad, but it is not highly effective in itself ; since the appeal of Telemachus is evidently doomed to failure from the outset, and he has no remedy. The chief value of the scene consists in exhibiting the inso- lence of the suitors, and in making us feel that a retribution, however tardy, must one day ov^take them. As a whole, the Odyssey derives its charm from two sources, — narrative of adventure, and de- scription of social life. In respect to both these elements, it moves in a region which is almost wholly foreign to the Iliad ; and in both it has qualities peculiar to itself. The twelfth book may serve to illustrate the manner in which the Odyssey narrates -' -' . style of adventure. It contains the partmg of narrative in ^ ° the Odyssey. Odysseus and his comrades from Circe ; the Sirens ; Scylla ; the impiety of the comrades in Thrinacria ; their destruction ; and the nar- row escape of Odysseus from Charyb- brevity and dis. The first thing that we note is ^™piw»y- thQ^ brevity and simplicity. These marvelous inci- 66 GREEK EPIC POETRY dents, coming one after another, are told quite plainly, without the least attempt to heighten them by elaboration or comment ; there is enough detail to produce an effect of reality, but no more. Thus, after briefly describing Charybdis, the hero says, " We had our eyes bent towards her, in fear of destruction ; but meanwhile Scylla snatched . six of my companions out of my hollow ship, — the bravest and strongest of them all. As I turned my glance back to the ship, and then in search of my comrades, all at once I espied their hands and feet as they were lifted on high, and they cried aloud to me in their agony, and called me by my name for the last time. Even as a fisherman on a headland, with his long rod, throws his baits to ensnare the little fishes, casting the horn of an ox of the fields into the deep, and when he has hooked his fish, casts it writhing ashore, so writhing were they lifted up to her cave ; and there she devoured them, shrieking in her gates, while they stretched forth their hands to me in their dread struggle. That was the most piteous thing ever I saw with mine eyes, in all my toil when I was searching out the paths of the sea." He says no more on that subject, but continues thus : "Now when we had escaped the rocks, and dread Charybdis and Scylla, then we soon came to the fair island of the god," — Thrinacria. This episode of Scylla, so naturally and vividly told, fills only sixteen lines. The entire series of NARRA TIVE 67 adventures in the twelfth book occupies only 453 lines. A like plainness and absence of prolixity mark the narratives throughout. We observe the comparison of Scylla to a fisherman, — introduced, as it might have been in the Iliad, to mark a crisis. But, since the Odyssey, owing to the na- ture of its subject, has fewer moments of con- centrated excitement than occur in the battles of the Iliad, it has fewer similes, — only about forty, as against the Iliad's 180. The Iliad is an epic full of dramatic force ; further, it is not only noble, but preeminently an example of the grand style, as in the description of Apollo descending from heaven to smite the Greeks with pestilence : "The arrows clanged upon the shoulders of the god in his wrath, as he moved; and his coming was in the likeness of night." The Odyssey is rather the model of how a story should flow ; it contains examples of the grand style, as when Circe says to her guests, on their return from the voyage to the nether world, " Men overbold, who have gone down alive to the house of Hades, that ye should twice know death, while other men die once ; " but its distinctive nobleness is a noble charm, especially in scenes of peace, and, above all, of domestic life. The comparative absence of that dramatic force which belongs to the Iliad is compen- pi(.,u„sque sated in the Odyssey by a peculiar in- ^^^'^*=- stinct for picturesque effect. Thus, when Ody- seus and his son are removing the arms from the 68 GREEK EPIC POETRY hall to the armory by night, Telemachus suddenly cries : " Father, this is a great marvel that I sec with mine eyes ; yes, the walls of the hall, and the fair spaces between the pillars, and the beams of pine, and the pillars that run aloft, are bright as it were with flaming fire. Verily some god is within, of those that hold the high heaven.'' One other example may be given. When Odys- seus is about to enter the palace of the Phaeacian king, Athena throws a cloud around him, to shroud him from the eyes of those who might forbid him to enter. Going onward unseen, he comes at last into the presence of King Alcinous and Queen Ar^t6. He throws himself in supplication before the queen. At that moment the wondrous mist melts away from him, and silence falls on the Phaeacians, as they marvel at the suppliant. This instinct for the picturesque, into which color and grouping enter, is akin to the dramatic sense, yet distinct from it, and also from the Hellenic sense of clear and beautiful outline. In both the examples just given, one condition is suddenness ; the fancy to which such impressions come with a bright surprise is nimble and open, — quick to see the supernatural around it. Thoroughly congenial to it is that strain of Magical or magical or fairy lore which pervades the fairy lore. Odysscy. This element is not wholly absent from the Iliad ; there is the horse Xan- thus, speaking with a human voice ; there are the self -moving tripods of Hephaestus, and his golden MAGICAL LORE 69 handmaids who can move, think, and speak. In the Iliad, however, such things are rare and inci- dental, whereas they belong to the very texture of the other epic. The magical herb "moly" given by Hermes to Odysseus ; Ino's magical ^"eil which saves him from drowning ; the por- tents in Thrinacria, when the flesh of the oxen bellowed on the spits, and the hides stripped from them began to move ; the Phaeacian ship turned to stone ; the second-sight of the seer Theocly- menus, — these are instances which occur at once. Such marvels, it may be remarked, express a side of the Ionian fancy which had been developed by maritime adventure, as other aspects of Ionian character are seen in the sensuous tendencies of the hero's comrades, or, again, in the graces of social intercourse which give such a charm to the epic. Both as a story of voyages and as a picture of civilization, the Odyssey bears, more strongly than the Iliad, the stamp of Ionia. Another trait which pervades the narratives of the Odyssey, further distinguishing it ^^^^^ from the Iliad, is the mode of conceiv- ^^'^■ ing that divine agency which is blended with the human. In the Iliad, Olympus is a mountain from whose heights the gods descend ; the peaks of Ida or of Samothrace are stations from which the gods obser\'e men ; an Olympian debate has all the reality of a debate on the earth ; the divine action upon men either is physical, or con- sists in the transmission of commands to them by 70 GREEK EPIC POETRY a divine messenger who appears in visible shape. In the Odyssey a spiritual element enters more largely into the dealing of the deities with mor- tals. Thus Odysseus says to his son, " When 'Athena of deep counsel shall put it into my heart, I will give thee a sign ; " and faith in the 'gods has become a more spiritual feeling. Tele- machus says that Zeus and Athena are the best of allies, "though their seat is in the clouds on high." And the image of Olympus itself has be- come more ethereal: it is a far-off place, "where, as men say, is the seat of the gods that standeth fast forever. Not by winds is it shaken, nor ever wet with rain, nor doth the snow come nigh thereto, but the clearest air is spread around it, without a cloud, and a pure light floats over it ; therein the blessed gods are glad eternally." A good instance of this difference between the two epics may be found in the twelfth book of the Odyssey. When Odysseus discovers that, while he slept, his companions have slain the oxen of the Sun-god, he cries aloud to father Zeus in his anguish. And then he relates a short scene among the gods ; the nymph Lampetie goes swiftly to Helios, the Sun-god, and tells him that his oxen have been slain. Helios then addresses Zeus and the assembled gods, declaring that, un- less he is compensated for his oxen, he will shine no more over the earth ; he will go down to Hades, and shine among the dead. Zeus, in reply to this threat, promises that he will wreck the THE GODS OF THE ODYSSEY 7 1 ship of the offenders. The whole scene occupies only thirteen lines. If it is compared with a par-' allel incident of the Iliad, — the scene between Zeus and Athena in the twenty-second book, which, like this, precedes a catastrophe on earth, — it will be felt how much less of human-like realism there is in the passage of the Odyssey. There is a further difference ; Odysseus feels bound to ex- plain how he came by this knowledge ; and so he adds that he had heard it from the nymph Calypso, who herself had heard it from Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Now in the Iliad there is no example of such a reply to anticipated skepticism ; when deeds done, or words spoken, among the gods are related in the Iliad, the narrator is the poet himself, who is supposed to know them by inspiration. The only exception is Agamemnon's narrative, in the nineteenth book (95-136), of the discussion in Olympus before the birth of Heracles, — a passage which seems to have been interpolated in the Iliad from an epic Heracleia. The last distinctive trait of narrative in the Odyssey which we shall notice is an traits ver 'n occasional approach of the tone of com- °° ™'"«'iy- edy, as moderns would deem it. Thus Odys- seus says, after relating how he had warned his comrades against Charybdis, " I did not go on to speak of Scylla, lest haply they should give up rowing, and hide themselves in the hold." This savors to us of comedy, because it is so opposite 72 GREEK EPIC POETRY to the heroic ; but the poet did not intend it to be comic ; the quality in him which it indicates is naivete. So, again, when the men snatched by Scylla are compared to fish wriggling at the end of an angler's line, the comparison is to us grimly grotesque ; but the poet's aim was simply to make the horror vivid. And everywhere, even in such touches, the style of the Odyssey pre- serves its Homeric nobleness. Let us turn now to that other source, besides narrative of adventure, to which the Odyssey owes Pictures of ^^^ peculiar charm, namely, the descrip- sociaiiife. tions of social life. Here the key-note is given by the position of women in the Homeric age ; and that position, as exhibited in the Odys- sey, is essentially the same of which the Iliad affords glimpses. But the Iliad, an episode of warfare, can give glimpses only ; it is reserved for the Odyssey to furnish more complete pic- tures. The central point is the sanctity of mar- riage, which is not merely the Homeric rule, but „ ... . a rule with few and narrowly limited Position ol J women. exccptious. Thc position of the Ho- meric wife in her own home may be best stated by saying that it is essentially the same as it is in Christian countries to-day, and totally unlike the position ordinarily held by the Athenian wife in the fifth and fourth centuries b. c. If Odysseus and Penelope were the only wedded couple whose relations were portrayed in the Odyssey, it might be argued that they could not be taken as a nor- POSITION OF WOMEN 73 mal instance, since conjugal loyalty is the special point of their story. But the possible objection disappears when we consider the other cases, — Alcinous and Aret^, Menelaus and Helen : the position of the wife is similar in all three exam- ples. The hero and heroine of the poem may then be safely regarded as expressing, though in a high form, the general feeling of Greeks in the poet's age. We remember the frank words of Odysseus to Calypso : " Be not wroth with me hereat, goddess and queen. Myself I know it well, how wise Penelope is meaner to look upon than thou, in comeliness and stature. But she is mortal, and thou knowest not age or death. Yet even so, I wish and long day by day to fare home- ward and see the day of my returning." Not less expressive are the words in which Penelope asks her husband's pardon for not having welcomed him when he first came in disguise, — she so dreaded, so she says, to be deceived. In truth, her slowness to believe is the best measure of her wish to believe. Of Aret^, the wife of King Alcinous, it is said: "She hath, and hath ever had, all worship heartily from her dear children, and from her lord Alcinous, and from all the folk, who look on her as a goddess, and greet her with reverent speech, when she goes about the town." When Odysseus is about to present himself in the palace of Alcinous, Nausicaa, the king's daughter, gives him this counsel, after describing to him how he will find the king and queen together in 74 GREEK EPIC POETRY the great hall : " Pass thou by him, and cast thy hands about my mother's knees, that thou mayest see quickly and with joy the day of thy returning, even though thou art from a very far country. If but Aer heart be kindly disposed toward thee, then is there hope that thou shalt see thy friends, and come to thy well builded house, and thine own country." Nausicaa herself is not only the most charming girl in ancient literature, — so charming, that one shrinks from making her the subject of prosaic comment, — but teaches us more than perhaps any other person as to the position of her sex in that age. It is at once a proof of the freedom which she enjoyed, and of the reverence for wo- men which such freedom implies, that her father should allow her to drive with no escort but that of her handmaids to a distance from the city. (In Corfu, where Candni Bay is the traditional scene of her meeting with Odysseus, the popular ver- sion of the story assumes that she was accompa- nied by her mother.) But the Homeric descrip- tion of her meeting with Odysseus is the most in- structive passage, and the most beautiful. When the other maidens are scared by the apparition of the wild-looking shipwrecked man, the princess is not afraid : " for Athena put courage in her heart, and took trembling away from her limbs." The perfect taste which appears in the Homeric treatment of the situation implies something be- yond and above itself. No poet could have so KAUSICAA 75 imagined that scene whose instincts had not been moulded by a chivalrous respect for women ; and no poet could have clothed the image in such lan- guage whose own mind was not pure.^ Nausicaa shows Odysseus the way to her father's city, by driving in front of him, while he follows on foot ; but she directs him to stop at a poplar grove out- side the city, lest by entering it in her train he should give occasion for comment. Alcinous afterwards blames his daughter for not having herself conducted the stranger to the house ; and his words are another proof of the freedom which respect secured to such a maiden. One last glimpse of Nausicaa is when Odysseus, in all the comeliness which Athena has shed over him, is passing into the banquet-hall, and Nausicaa is standing at the door ; she says to him : " Fare- well, stranger, and think of me hereafter, even in thine own land ; for to me the first thou owest the price of life." And he answers : " Nausicaa, daughter of great-hearted Alcinous, yea, may Zeus the thunderer, the lord of Here, grant me to reach my home, and see the day of my returning ; so would I, even there, do worship to thee, as to a goddess, all my days ; for thou, maiden, hast given me my life." 1 There is one verbal trait which curiously illustrates this ; where Odysseus is described as about to " approach " the maid- ens, the word employed is one which no Greek poet of a more sophisticated age would have used in such a context (Od. 6. 136, ;6 GREEK EPIC POETRY The Homeric women generally are character- ized by a gentle dignity and a refinement in which no modern civilization could show their superiors. They are essentially feminine, without being in- sipid or inane ; their sphere is in the home ; their occupation is in the ministries of wife and mother, of sister and daughter ; and in everything that Homer shows us of their relations, we recognize a natural warmth of domestic affections and a noble tone of manners. There are indeed two Homeric exceptions to such a standard ; but in each case there are touches which render these exceptions fresh proofs of the rule. Nestor refers to the terrible crime of Agamemnon's wife; but in doing so he notes how she had yielded only to the persistence of the tempter Aegisthus : " Verily at the first the fair Clytaemnestra would have nothing to do with the foul deed ; for she had a good understanding." And Helen at least feels a re- morse which no reproaches could make sharper. The noble element in her character comes out in response to nobleness ; it is when her brother-in- law, Hector, has been vainly striving to inspire Paris with something of his own generous patriot- ism, that Helen's self-condemnation breaks forth in its bitterest utterance. Thus in the Odyssey there is present the first condition of a worthy social life ; women are Tone of social surrouudcd with the reverence, and ex- imercourse. ercisc the influence, which ought to be theirs. And the tone of social intercourse found GOOD MANNERS 7/ in the Odyssey has a corresponding refinement. If one had to specify its most general charac- teristic, one might perhaps say that it was the root of all courtesy, a fine regard for the feel- ings of others. The behavior of Alcinous, when he notices that Odysseus is painfully affected by the minstrel's song, and presently makes an ex- cuse for moving from the banquet-hall, is a case in point. The same delicacy of feeling marks the whole scene in the house of Menelaus, when Helen and he entertain the youthful Telemachus and his friend, Nestor's son Peisistratus. The people for whom such poetry was written must have been a people of naturally acute perceptions : one feels this all through the social scenes of the Odyssey. There is nothing in the Athenian liter- ature of the fifth and fourth centuries b. c. which equals the Odyssey in this particular charm, rich though Plato's dialogues are in proofs of what cul- tivated intelligence could do to embellish society. If we ask the reason, surely it must be sought, at least to a great extent, in the fact that the position of women was so much higher, and their influence so much sounder, in the Homeric age. The place of Aret6 cannot be supplied by Aspa- sia. Modern readers are apt to feel that the Odyssey is more modern than the Iliad. The chief reason is that, in the domestic scenes of the Odyssey, they recognize so much which corre- sponds with modern feeling in regard to the rela- tionships of the family. 78 GREEK EPIC POETRY Brief as this survey has necessarily been, it will Summary ^^^^ indicated in what sense Iliad and Sct^/h'^'^' Odyssey alike possess that charm which meric poetry. ^^ ^^g ^^^^ ^^ associatc with "the childhood of the world," — a phrase which may be unscientific, or even in some degree mislead- ing, but which at least expresses our modern feel- ing that in these poems there is a freshness, a simplicity, a beauty, which are altogether beyond the reach of art ; which, when their natural bloom is over, can never be artificially renewed ; and which belong to an age that, in respect of con- scious thought, is related to our own as childhood to maturity. There is, however, another aspect of Homeric epos which must also be clearly apprehended. Its form represents a perfection of poetical art which must have been gradually attained. Experience shows that the earliest efforts to employ a lan- guage in metrical composition are inseparable from some degree of rudeness. There is a struggle of thought with expression, a tendency to ignoble or grotesque modes of speech, an incapacity for the equable maintenance of a high level. Homeric epos bears no such traces of the primitive stage in literature. It has a perfectly artistic and elas- tic medium of utterance, which the poet uses with easy and unfailing mastery. The union of such consummate art in poetical form with the spiritual character of a simple age is the unique distinction of the Homeric poems. And we observe further HESIOD 79 that the personality of the artist is suppressed. He is to us as Demodocus and Phemius were to the listeners in the Odyssey, merely the prophet of the god, — the inspired man to whom this gift of song has been committed. Next to Homer early Greek tradition placed another famous poet, recognized as the . founder of a characteristic type in epic poetry ; one which was regarded as forming a kind of antithesis to the Homeric. Hesiod fig- ures in legend as Homer's rival. They contended, the story said, at Chalcis in Euboea. Each re- cited passages from his greatest work: Homer, from the Iliad ; Hesiod, from the Works and Days ; and Hesiod triumphed. Hesiodic epos is represented, for us, by three extant poems, and some fragments. Two of these three poems are, fortunately, those with which Hesiod's name was chiefly associated throughout Hellas ; while the third, though greatly inferior in interest and value to the others, serves at least to illustrate, one phase in the later development of the Hesiodic school. These three are, the Works and Days, the Theogony, and the Shield of Heracles. The poem entitled Works and Days is the most characteristic of Hesiod, and was so The works regarded by the ancients. In the pfe- ^"■JDays. sent text there is some spurious matter, and not a little confusion ; nor can the original form of the composition be exactly determined. Still, the nucleus, at least, is undoubtedly genuine, and 8o GREEK EPIC POETRY bears a stamp which is in striking contrast with the Homeric. It cannot be placed later than the eighth century p. c. In the age of Archilochus, at the beginning of the seventh century b. c, the name of Hesiod was already famous. The poet had a younger brother, named Perses, who had acquired more than his due share of their common patrimony by bribing certain judges. After living in idleness on this ill-gotten wealth, Perses is now reduced to begging from Hesiod, who declines to give him anything more, except good advice. And the sum of this advice is, " Work, and be just." The first part of the poem is concerned with Perses and the moral reflections which he suggests. The second part consists of directions concern- ing the various tasks of the husbandman, and hints of prudence for seafaring men. This is the part from which the poem takes the first half of its title, the Works. There is a sort of appen- dix to it, in about seventy verses, — precepts as to marriage, friendship, and other subjects ; also as to certain ceremonial observances, necessary if one would avoid the displeasure of the gods. The third and last part teaches what days of the month are lucky or unlucky for certain ac- tions. " Sometimes a day is a stepmother, some- times a mother." This calendar has suggested the second half of the composite title. Works and Days. When we consider this singular composition HESIOD'S FIVE AGES 8 1 as a whole, the impression which it leaves on the mind might be described by saying that there is a foreground and a background. The fore- ground is held by the definite practical teaching. The background is formed by Hesiod's general views of human destiny ,~ and these claim the first notice. They are gloomy. Four ages of the world have gone before that into which Hesiod has been born : the golden age, when men lived like the gods, with no sickness or sorrow or de- cay, and died as if subdued by sleep ; the silver age, in which childhood lasted a hundred years, but the later period of existence was embittered and shortened by men's own impiety ; the age of bronze, terrible and fierce in its warfare ; and then, as if by a partial return to the better days of the human race, the age of the heroes, such as fought at Troy, whose nature was half divine, and who passed from life to the Islands of the Blest, by the Ocean stream in the region of the sunset. And now Hesiod exclaims bitterly : " Would that I had not to live in the fifth age ! Would that I had died earlier, or that my birth had fallen on later days ! For now~ there is a race of iron." It is not clear why he should have wished that he had been born later ; for he adds that the race of iron will be followed by an age still more de- praved than itself. What is the origin of evil.'i Hesiod has his answer to that question. Zeus could not forgive Prometheus for having stolen fire from heaven. He therefore ordered the god 82 GREEK EPIC POETRY Hephaestus to fashion a beautiful maiden. When she had been made, Athena gave her a girdle and fair robes ; the Graces and Persuasion hung golden chains upon her ; the Hours crowned her with the flowers of spring ; the god Hermes gave her guile and deceiving words : and because every god had dowered her with a gift, she was called the maiden of all gifts, Pandora. Then Zeus sent her to the brother of Prometheus, named, not, like him, from forethought, but from afterthought, — from taking thought when it is too late, — Epi- metheus. Epimetheus had been warned by his wiser brother not to accept any gift from Zeus ; but he disregarded the advice and received Pan- dora. This crafty maiden then took the lid off a certain large jar, in which all the evils that now plague the world had been shut up ; and those evils went abroad, to be imprisoned nevermore. Only Hope remained under the rim of the jar ; for Pandora had replaced the lid before Hope could flutter forth. And now, in this iron age, wrong-doing is ram- pant ; great men devour bribes and give crooked judgments. " Fools," cries Hesiod, " who know not how much more is the half than the whole, who know not how happily a man may live on mallows and squills ! " For the edification of such great men Hesiod tells a fable, an oxvo%, — the earliest specimen of its class in European liter- ature. Thus said the hawk to the nightingale, when he was carrying her through the high clouds THE HA WK AND THE NIGHTINGALE Zl in the grip of iiis talons, and she, transfixed on their sharp points, was wailing piteously, — this was his stern speech to her : " Silly creature, why dost thou scream ? Thou art in the grasp of the stronger ; thou shalt go wherever I take thee, songstress though thou art ; I will make a meal of thee, if I please, or I will let thee fall. It is folly to think of striving against one's betters. Then one is vanquished, and adds pain to dis- grace." Hesiod protests earnestly against the hawk's ■^' doctrine that might is right. He draws a vivid picture of the blessings that might attend on a city in which justice was respected : "That city " thrives, and the people flourish in it ; peace, nur- turer of youth, is in the land, and Zeus never ordains grievous warfare for that folk. Hunger and calamity wait not on men who give righteous judgment ; but their fields are glad with festal joys. The earth yields them plenty ; on the moun- tains, the oak-bears acorns aloft and shelters bees beneath ; the sheep are heavy with their burden of fleecy wool ; the women bear children like unto their parents. They enjoy all good things in full measure ; they travel not in ships ; but the grain- giving Earth yields them her fruit." This picture must be understood, not as describ- ing what Hesiod conceived to be possible for his '^ own iron age, but rather as an ideal image of what might have been if the human race, in its down- ward course, had not angered the gods and in- 84 GREEK EPIC POETRY creased its own troubles. As maltcrs stand, "the gods have hidden the means of life from men." Hard, unremitting toil is man's portion ; all his industry, all his foresight, all his scrupulous atten- tion to signs and omens, are demanded, if he is to escape dire jDOverty, dire suffering, and premature death, Such is the general view of life which forms the gloomy background of llesiod's poem. But when we turn to the practical'tcaching which fills the foreground, wc find ourselves amidst compara- tively cheerful surroundings. If tliere is nothing brilliant or beautiful or generous, at least there is the stir of busy work, and the fresli, open-air feel- ing of a close communion with tlie varyiiij^^ sighls and sounds of the fields at each season of the year. A few lines from the beginning of the pre- cepts on farming will serve to give some idea of the style: "When the I'leiads, the daughters of Atlas, rise, begin thy reaping; but tJiy jjloughing, when they are about to set. l'"orty nights and forty days are they hidden, but re-appear as the seasons come round, when tJie sickle is first sharp- ened. That is the rule of the fields for men, whether they dwell by the sea, or in the hollows of valleys far from the surging dee]). Strip (jff thy coat when thou sowest, when thou ploughe.st, when thou reapest, if thou wouldst gather in all thy fruits in their season; lest perchance thou fall on a mid-time of poverty, and go begging to other men's houses, and get nothing : as thou. FARMING IN BOEOTIA Perses, hast now come to me ; but verily I will give thee no more, nor replenish thy measure. Work, foolish Perses ; work the works that the gods have set for men." Hesiod insists, as might have been expected, on the virtue of early rising : " Morning claims a third part of the day's work ; morning sets us forward on a journey or on a task, — morning, who at her coming puts many men on the road, and lays the yoke on many oxen." And one of the charms of the poem is that it so often breathes the breath of those early morning hours when, in winter, the poet saw the mists resting on the tilled lands of wealthy Boeotian farmers, and saw it gladly, because such mists are kindly to the wheat crop ; or when, as spring came on, he looked in the pale light over a landscape tinted by the early shoots of fig-tree and vine, which he has in mind when he speaks of the " gray " spring, or caught the note of some bird that marked a critical moment in his busy calendar. " Give heed when thou hearest the voice of the crane from the clouds overhead, as she utters her ' cry from year to year. Her voice gives the sign for ploughing, and proclaims the season of rainy winter, and pierces the heart of the man who has not provided himself with oxen. It is easy to say, ' Lend me a pair of oxen and a wagon ; ' but it is also easy to answer, ' Xay, my oxen are busy.' " The swallow, heard at daybreak, warns the husbandman that the early spring pruning of GREEK EPIC POETRY the vines must be delayed no longer. And as spring is passing into early summer, the farmer who has deferred his ploughing knows that his last opportunity has come " when the cuckoo utters her cry from amid the leaves and gladdens the hearts of men the wide world over." The smaller signs which the poet notes are often curious. When snails leave the ground and begin to crawl over plants, this shows that the summer season is too far advanced to permit further labor at the vines ; it is time to prepare for the early harvest. A good rainfall in spring is such as fills, but only fills, the prints made by the hoofs of the oxen. The spring season for navigation has arrived when the leaves on the upper branches of the fig-tree have unfolded to about the length of a crow's foot- print. Hesiod's warnings against laziness or procrasti- nation are often couched in pithy sayings which have the flavor of rustic proverbs. In wintry weather a man must not be tempted to waste his time by gossiping in the warm forge, lest after- wards he " press a swollen foot with a lean hand ; " that is, suffer from that twofold effect of starva- tion. The importance of storing up grain is en- forced by the words, " Drive the spiders out of your jars." A sharp north wind is graphically described as one which " makes an old man trot." "Take your fill from your wine-jar when it is full and when it is low, but spare it halfway down ; thrift in the dregs is a poor thing." The maxims SO.U£ OF HESIOD'S ^MAXIMS 87 on the conduct of life in general are of the same type, and evince rustic caution of a somewhat cynical type ; many of them, too, bear the stamp of life in an isolated hamlet, where a man's com-^ fort depends much on having good relations with his few neighbors. " Invite your well-wisher to dinner, and let your enemy alone ; but especially invite your neighbor." The reason for the last clause is given directly : " If any mishap should occur in the village, your neighbors come without stopping to make their toilet ; " but those who are further off, even though kinsfslk, stop to make it. " Men have been ruined by trusting, and by mistrusting." " Do not make any friend as close as a brother." " If you do, then take care not to provoke him by injury ; byt if he wrongs you by word or deed, remetnber it, and requite him doubly. If he once more makes overtures of friendship, and is willing to render satisfaction, meet him halfway." " Smilingly de- mand a witness from your own brother ; " that is, do not believe your own brother on his mere word, but at the same time appear to be playful, and pretend that you desire the witness merely because it is more businesslike. The advice re- specting marriage is equally circumspect. The poet is not a misogynist, but the chief character- fstic of his attitude towards the female sex is caution. A man should phoose a wife among his neighbors, says Hesiod, after a very careful sur- vey ; else his choice may supply these same GREEK EPIC POETRY neighbors with matter of animadversion. He admits, indeed, though somewhat dryly, that there is nothing better than a good wife. All this is in the tone of the Boeotian farmer : how far we have traveled from the world of the Homeric Arfite and Nausicaa ! The poet of the 'Works and Days has a hard head and a not very generous heart ; his cold and cautious prudence is often sordid. Even the duty of propitiating the gods by worship is referred to a mercenary motive, — " that thou mayest buy another man's land, instead of his buying thine." Yet along with so much that is hard or ignoble there is at least one element of nobleness, — a real feeling for the dignity of work. "Work is no reproach ; the reproach is to be idle." And there is the feeling, too, that work makes for righteousness ; work be- longs to the divine scheme for men, and it is the idle man who becomes unjust. Thus the lower side of the poet's teaching is qualified by such sentiments as this : " It is easy to find wicked- ness abundantly ; the path is smooth and short. But the immortals have decreed that only toil shall reach Virtue. Long and steep is the way to her, and rough at the first ; but when the higher ground is reached, difficult though the path be, it is less difficult thenceforth." From the Works and Days we pass to the sec- The Theo- °^^ pocm by which Hesiod is chiefly gony. represented, the Theogony. Here we are told how Earth arose out of chaos ; how the HESIOD'S THEOGONY 89 eldest dynasty of gods, the first-born of the ele- mental powers, was overthrown by the younger dynasty of Zeus ; and how each person of the Olympian hierarchy came into being. What is there in common, it might be asked, between such a theme and a body of practical rules, like that contained in the Works and Days, for the conduct of daily life ? How are we to conceive the basis, the fundamental idea, of the Hesiodic school, if these two poems are alike characteristic of it ? The Theogony itself supplies the answer. It is not, in the Homeric sense, a work of art. Such unity as it possesses is derived from the thread of divine genealogy. It is a compilation of current lore concerning the parentage and relationships of the deities ; the object being to give this lore in a continuous form. The work has been skilfully done ; and the essential dryness of the subject has been occasionally relieved by short episodes. One of these, the battle of the gods and Titans, imi- tates the style of the Iliad ; though it may be doubted whether this passage belonged to the earliest form of the composition. The poem re- mained a standard authority. Herodotus couples Hesiod with Homer as a creator of the Greek the- ogony. The Homeric poetry prevailed by its own charm ; the Hesiodic poem, which is little more than an Olympian peerage, could prevail only by authority. What was that authority .? It is only a conjecture, though a plausible one, that the The- ogony had the sanction of Delphi. Its materials 90 CREEK EPIC POETRY must have been largely derived from temple-le- gends, often inconsistent with each other ; and the compiler's endeavor to harmonize them could not easily have succeeded if the priesthood of Apollo had withheld the seal of their approval. In this connection it is interesting to note a few points of contact between the language of Delphi and the language of Hesiod. The i>-kya vijirie 'Q.iptrq of the Works and Days has an echo in the i>.kya. vyfrn. Kpo2(Te of the Delphic oracle (Her. i. 85). That oracle often used enigmatic substitutes for com- mon words, as when rivers were called by it " drainer^ of the hills " (opc/ATrorai). This trait is strongly marked in Hesiod, as when he calls the snail the " house-carrier " (<^ep€oiKos). And a verse from the Works and Days (285) actually occurs in a response given at Delphi (Her. 6. 86). We see, then, that the basis common to the two chief I-^esiodic poems, the Works and Days and the Theogony, is the practical tendency : in the one case, to direct the farmer's daily life ; in the other, to produce an orthodox history of the gods which should be useful as a standard work of reference. In neither case is the play of imagination alto- gether excluded, but the practical purpose pre- dominates ; the poet's first object is to instruct ; whereas in poetry such as the Homeric, of which the aim is ideal, the first object is delight. The sh'eid of '^^^ third pocm which bears the name Heracles. pf Hesiod is Certainly much later than the age to which the two others must be re- THE HESIODIC AIM AND STYLE 91 f erred, — the short epic called the Shield of Her- acles. Other miniature epics of the same general class were also ascribed to Hesiod. What, it may be asked, is the distinctively Hesiodic feature in such compositions? Is not the Shield, in subject and in form, rather Homeric'than Hesiodic? Our materials for an answer are scanty. But it may be suggested that the work of the Hesiodic school in this kind set out, originally at least, from the same point of view as the Theogony, namely, from the desire to preserve the facts of local legend. The purpose was less poetical than historical. Grad- ually, it may be, the Hesiodic poetry became, in this province, a direct imitation of the Homeric ; and that is certainly tRe phase which the Shield of Heracles seems to represent. The broad differences between the style of Hesiod and that of Homer porrespond styieofHe- with the inner difference of spirit. Ho- 'jj^.^.rwX mer's directness of thought ajid sim- "'^H"'"™- plicity of language are always joined to nobleness. In the Works and Days Hesiod's thoughts are generally plain, and his language also ; but his style is not always noble ; it is often too homely for that ; and, with or without homeliness, it is often quaint. One form of such quaintness is the device already mentioned as oracular, of riddling synonyms for plain words. Thus the hand is called " the five-branched " i^ivTotoi) ; a thief is "one who sleeps by day" (i7/n£poKoiTos). Homer speaks of "swift ships, which are the horses of 92 GREEK EPIC POETRY the sea for men ; '' Hesiod would not have scru- pled to use the phrase " horses of the sea " as a substitute for the word "ships," leaving his mean- ing to be guessed. Again, Hesiod is rapid only in so far as the natural lightness of the Greek hexameter profits all who use it. He is not rapid in the further and higher sense in which Homer is so, — by virtue of the impetuous thought which is always darting onwards. Hesiod does not sweep us along on a swift flow of verse. He is usually concise, pointed, emphatic. Each fact or precept is stated tersely, in the manner which he thinks fitted to fix it in the mind; and then he goes on to his next fact. He hardly cares to provide smooth transitions, or to give his series of facts a fluent continuity. His small groups of verses are rather like so many separate beads on a string. If such verses were recited, they would not hold listeners as the Homeric poetry does. They are meant rather to sink into the mind of the individual who shall ponder them as he toils in the fields or wends his way to the temple. Lastly, the Hesiodic poet is utterly unlike the Hesiod as a Homcric iu this, that he does not sup- teacher. prcss himsclf. The artist merges his personality in his work. A teacher such as He- siod cannot do so. He comes forward as an ex- pounder of lore, religious, moral, or technical : the force of the message depends not a little on the personal earnestness of the prophet. The verses prefixed to the Theogony, in which Hesiod de- HOMER AND HESIOD 93 scribes how the Muses appeared to him when he was keeping his sheep on Helicon, may be of another origin from the poem itself ; but the words there ascribed to the Muses happily sum up the difference between Homeric and Hesiodic epos. "We know," they say, "how to tell fables that seem like realities, and we know also, when we Qhoose, how to relate true things." "To re- late true things" was the distinctive bent of Hesi- odic poetry. It represents the effort to adapt the form of Ionian epos to a different genius and to material of a different order. This effort had only a limited success. The literary interest of the Hesiodic poetry is indeed manifold; but Greek epos, as a characteristic expression of the Greek spirit, is represented by Homer, and by Homer alone. The true instinct of the Asiatic lonians created new forms for new material, so soon as they be- came qonscious that they had outlived the great age of their own epic poetry. And in Greece proper, also, new forms were developed. To trace the earlier course of that development will be the aim of the next lecture. IV GREEK LYRIC POETRY : THE COURSE OF ITS DE- VELOPMENT The epic was for long the only poetry, artistic in form, which the Greeks possessed. If a lower limit for the period be sought, it may be placed approximately at the close of the eighth century B. c. Till then epos held a solitary supremacy ; and the secret of the spell which it exerted was in the charm of the past. The listeners surrendered themselves to the magic of a flowing narrative which carried them into an ideal rfegion of heroic life, — not the life of the present, and yet linked with it by the simple faith of the men for whom the minstrel recited. Their own interests and thoughts seldom ranged beyond the sphere of action in which the heroes moved, and the sphere of debate or social intercourse in which the minds ^ ,. . of the heroes found utterance. But Conditions which gradually a change came. Monarchies new forms gavc placc to ollgarchies, and these to tyrannies, or lastly to democracies. Hel- lenic life became fuller of experiences and efforts which stimulated the thoughts of the individual, — giving him new tasks, new objects of ambition, new possibilities of enjoyment. This was more especially the case in the Ionian colonies of Asia THE VOICE OF A NEW LIFE 95 Minor. Their cities were in the neighborhood of barbarian foes ; they were drawn together by the need of mutual protection ; their social qualities, and their consciousness of the higher differences between Greek and barbarian, were thus quick- ened. Above all, familiarity with the most re- pellent aspects of Oriental despotism served to strengthen in them the Hellenic love of freedom. The Asiatic lonians were the first Greeks among whom democratic insti- ^)^^'^^ tutions ripened, however imperfectly. *''"°'- They were also the first among whom a life of some cultivation and refinement became possible for large classes of the citizens. The century from 750 to 650 B. c. saw the beginning of this change. It was also a period of enterprise and discovery. Distant seas and lands were explored ; colonies were founded ; commerce became more active ; the bounds of knowledge were enlarged in many directions, and reflection was stimulated. The new poetry corresponded to this new state of things. It was the voice of the individual man, interested in the present, and desirous of expressing his own thoughts among his friends. It took two forms, those known as the Elegiac and the Iambic. They must be considered separately, and we will begin with the Elegiac. The word elegos, " elegy," was proba- Elegiac bly of Armenian origin, meaning first ""pn. a misfortune, a sad event, and then a kind of dirge, played on the flute, for the dead. Phrygia 96 GREEK LYRIC POETRY was the region in which the music of the flute was first developed, especially by the musical re- former Olympus, in the eighth century b. c. From Phrygia the word elegos came to the Ionian Greeks on the coasts of Asia Minor. Greek poets now set Greek words to this mournful flute dirge, which in its original form had been instrumental only. The earliest Greek elegies were doubtless purely lyric, — short mournful songs. Flute music, however, was not funereal only : in Ionia it be- came popular at social gatherings ; and it could also appeal in stirring strains to the warlike spirit. Hence by the side of the funeral elegy other kinds arose. A poem of some length addressed to a gathering of friends, or intended for the citi- zens at large, could be recited after the epic fashion, being introduced by singing a few verses to the flute music, and concluded in a similarly lyric manner. Such, elegies, mainly recited, but prefaced and closed by singing, were now couched The elegiac in the mctrc known as the elegiac coup- coupet. jg^ Yjjg Greek word for this couplet, elegion, was naturally of later origin than the word elegos ; it occurs first in Attic writers of the fifth century b. c. This couplet was the invention of Ionian poets familiar with the epic hexameter. The hexameter obviously required modification before it could be adapted to the requirements of the new poetry. Hesiod could use the hexameter as a vehicle for his precepts, even on homely themes, because he maintained the tone of an in- THE ELEGIAC COUPLET 9/ spired teacher. But the confidences of friend to friend, or the exhortations of citizen to fellow-citi- zens, could not appropriately wear such a garb. Epic verse was_toQ stat:ely for that purpose. And it was open to a. further objection. It was ill suited to those shorter effusions which the new poetry encouraged. If the flow of heroic verse is to have its proper effect, that flow must not be confined within too narrow limits. On the other hand, the unit of the heroic measure, the hexa- meter, had been inseparably associated by long use with the very idea of artistic poetry. Such considerations determined the choice of the first instrument adopted by the new poetry. The hexameter was retained ; but to each such verse was added a curtailed hexameter, the so- called pentameter. The pair form's a couplet to which the cadence of the second verse gives a natural close. Hence even a single elegiac coup- let has the effect of a complete whole. The elegiac couplet has a further characteristic which illustrates the history of elegiac poetry. Homeric epos had shown the capacity of the hexameter to express the most diverse feelings, — wrath, scorn, fear, entreaty, pity, anguish, tenderness. It could be modulated with almost endless variety. In the elegiac couplet it is the first verse, the hexa- meter, which pitches the tone of feeling ; and the hexameter brings all its inherent versatility to the new metre. The relation of the second verse, the pentameter, to the first is again infinitely various. 98 GREEK LYRIC POETRY If the hexameter has been a trumpet-call to battle, the pentameter, by its gentler tone, can give an effect of contrast. Or if the first verse has been pathetic, the second verse can echo it in a softer key. Universally, the effect of the pentameter in the elegiac couplet is that, instead of sweeping the mind onward, as is done by a continuous ilow of hexameter verse, it invites our thought to return upon itself ; it gives a meditative pause, a moment of reflection. And these two essential properties of the elegiac couplet are expressed in the actual course of the elegiac development. Elegiac po- etry was universal in its range of theme ; but its tone was always tinged with meditation, and often with sadness. The varied capabilities of elegy are sufficiently displayed by the series of poets who re- Elegiac poets, r j j r and their prescnt It durmg the first two centuries themes. . or so of its existence, the period in which it was freshest and most vigorous, from about 700 B. c. down to the time of the Persian wars. The fragments which remain are indeed for the most part meagre, but they illustrate the wide range of tones which the new instrument could yield. Callinus of Ephesus, the Callinus. , . -^ , . , , , earliest elegist on record, belonging to the first decades of the seventh century, appears, in the few verses which remain, as the author of a stirring appeal to the warlike spirit which had too long slumbered in the bosoms of his Ionian fellow-citizens, now menaced by the invasion of a THE ELEGIAC POETS 99 barbarian horde. Martial elegy soon has another representative in another Ionian, Tyr- taeus, who found more congenial listen- ers in the youth of Sparta, his adopted home. Alike in technical skill and in manly vigor, Tyr- taeus is greatly superior to CallTnus. In some of his couplets the call to battle rings out like a clar- ion note. Meanwhile, a greater poet than either Callinus or Tyrtaeus had been illustrating the pri- mary use of elegy in lament for the dead. From the Ionian Archilochus of Paros we have Archuochus. some beautiful verses mournmg the fate of friends who had been lost at sea. Somewhat later, but before the close of the seventh century, Mimnermus of Smyrna strikes yet an- . Mimnennus. other note. He composed martial ele- gies, among others ; but his distinction is that of being the first elegiac poet known to us who ap- plied elegy to themes of love. His tone is plain- tive, and marked by the inevitable sadness of one who prizes life only for those pleasures which old age takes away. He is indeed the interpreter of a degenerating Ionia, of a people destined to bear the yoke; but he is also interesting as the po- etical ancestor of those elegiac poets, Greek or Roman, whose chief inspiration was derived from tender sentiment. With Solon, at the beginning of the sixth cen- tury, a new element comes into elegy. , . r , r ;■ Solon. He employs it for the utterance of his thoughts on the evils which afflict Attica, and on lOO GREEK LYRIC POETRY his own efforts to remedy them. These are the thoughts of a statesman who is also a philosopher ; they are inseparably connected with still wider and deeper reflections on the permanent conditions of human life. Man proposes, but the gods dis- pose ; the prophet can read omens, but cannot avert fate ; the physician can prescribe, but has no assurance of healing. Solon thus represents in its highest form that tendency of Greek elegy which is described by the term "gnomic," — the desire to inculcate moral precepts and practical wisdom. This tendency was continued, though in a feebler and more prosaic strain, by PhocylideS. r-n/r-i Phocyhdes of Miletus, who belonged to the second half of the sixth century. And at the same period it found a more interesting exponent in Theognis of Megara, the only Dorian, perhaps, who attained eminence in ele- giac poetry. Theognis, an aristocrat impoverished and exiled by the triumph of the democratic party in his native Megara, is a man to whom the world is out of joint, but whose faith in the beliefs and traditions of Dorian aristocracy is unshaken. That faith is as inseparable from his belief in the divine government of the world as the royalism of a French emigrant in ihe days of the Revolution was inseparable from his Catholicism ; when the Dorian aristocracy is depressed, the face of heaven is darkened : but even in that twilight of the gods Theognis still sacrifices to the goddess Hope ; and meanwhile he is fain to impress salutary counsels THE ELEGIAC POETS lOI on his young friend Cyrnus. There is at once a kinship and a contrast between the elegiac moral- ist, who thus enforces traditional maxims, and the philosopher Xenophanes, who towards , , r 1 • 1 1 Xenophanes. the close of the sixth century used elegy in protest against certain usages of his day. Xeno- phanes is anxious to raise the tone of conversation at dinner-parties, where the guests were too much addicted to entertaining each other with the fic- tions of the old poets. He would fain have them turn from Centaurs and Titans to more edifying topics. Again, he deprecates the honor paid to athletes, while man of intellect are neglected. This last view, put forward about the time when great lyrists were writing odes of victory, stamps Xenophanes as a man thoroughly out of accord with ordinary Hellenic life ; in his hands, elegy gave one more proof of its versatility by serving the purpose of the modern pamphlet, in which a social reformer airs his favorite crotchet. We now come to the age of the Persian wars ; and Simonides shows how the ele- giac couplet can be made a vehicle for commem- orative inscription, — summing up great national events in a few clear-cut words, beautiful as sculpture, or finding an utterance for public or private grief. Sappho had already given an ex- quisite example of elegiac pathos in her epitaph of four lines on the maiden Timas. But no one before or after Simonides illustrated as he did the full efficacy of the elegiac metre for every kind of I02 GREEK LYRIC POETRY monumental expression. Take, for instance, those four simple lines on the men of Tegea who had fallen in war, — probably in the battle of Plataea (fr. 102, Bergk) : — TfivSe St' avOpixnrwv aperav ovx ikcto naTTi/os aWipa, haioix,ivr)'s evprv^opov Teyeqr 01 povkovTO ttoXlv fj-iv cXivOepii} reOakvlav ■jraicrl XLirelv, avrol 8' iv ■trpoji.axoi.a-i trta-iiv. " It was due to the valor of these men that smoke did not go up to heaven from the- burning of spacious Tegea. Their choice was to leave their children a city flourishing in freedom, and to lay down their own lives in the front of the battle." Observe the noble and massive simplicity of the, words, which follow each other in a perfectly nat- ural order ; the force with which the first couplet describes the greatness of the peril, and the sim- ple pathos with which the second describes the resolve by which that peril was averted. Elegiac poetry thus afforded a field in which any Popular man could try his poetical powers on character of "^ elegiac poetry, any theme. Other forms, the epic, the lyric, the dramatic, were bound by traditions re- quiring a certain correspondence between form and subject - matter ; they were also connected with certain divisions of the Greek race, as the choral lyric was especially Dorian, and as Tragedy was Attic. But elegy was entirely free in regard to range of subject-matter, and was open to all. And no other form of Greek poetry had so pro- POPULARITY OF ELEGIAC VERSE 103 longed an existence. From 700 b. c. down to the fall of the Eastern Empire, verse contin- , . Its endunng ued to be written in the elegiac metre, vitauty. Constantinus Cephalas was adding recent work to his Anthology at the time when the English .^thelstan was defeating the Danes. Out of some 2,800 epigrams in the Palatine collection, all but about 300 are elegiac. This enduring popularity of the elegiac measure was due to the fact that it was so tolerant of mediocrity. Before Herodotus, the Greeks had nothing that can properly be called prose literature. The elegiac form of poetry partly supplied that defect. If the remains of the early elegists are so scanty, one reason may be that their work was so abundant and so unequal. It was welcome as a familiar companion to Greeks of an age when poetry was judged by the higher standards of art ; but it was also less likely to be preserved. We take more care of a book than of a newspaper. The great bulk of extant Greek elegy dates from an age when the creative prime of the Greek genius was over. Iambic poetry comes into view at the same period as elegiac ; that is, at the begin- j^^^^;^ ning of the seventh century. While p°^"^- the elegiac form was a modification of the stately epic, the iambic starts from the opposite pole. To the Greeks it seemed the nearest of all metres to the cadence of every-day speech. Aristotle observes that people were apt to make undesigned iambic rhythms in speaking, and the texts of the I04 GREEK LYRIC POETRY orators illustrate his remark. The origin of the Obscurity of name and of the rhythm is obscure. its origin. Greek legend pointed to an early use of some iambic measure in that popular jesting, of a satirical kind, which custom licensed at certain festivals. When Demeter was mourning for her daughter, the first smile was drawn from her, it was said, by the sallies of the maid Iamb6. The very old comic poem Margites is known to have mingled iambic verses with hexameters. But the origin of the iambic rhythm, and of the closely kindred trochaic, was perhaps not Hellenic. The word iambus is conjecturally traced to Phrygia ; and it is noteworthy that a town called Iambus, near the Troad, is mentioned by Hesychius. The Phrygian founder of the improved flute music, Olympus, is said to have composed in iambic and trochaic rhythms. The trochee was used in songs belonging to the early ritual of Dionysus, which came into Thrace from Phrygia. The lonians, the first Greeks who used these rhythms, may have derived them partly from Phrygia, partly from Thrace. Both these regions were known to the Ionian poet who, early in the seventh century, Archilochus. .... artistically developed those rhythms, Archilochus of Paros. He wrote iambic or tro- chaic verses of various lengths, and combined these with dactylic or other metres. For poems composed in these measures he probably used two different modes of delivery. One of these IAMBIC SATIRE 10$ modes was purely lyric, the verses being sung throughout. In the other mode, the beginning and end of the poem were sung, while the mid- dle part of it was given in recitative, with a mu- sical accompaniment. His poems in the iambic or trochaic measure were designed to be recited among friends at social gatherings, as elegiac poems often were. The iambic form, as used by Archilochus, was associated with fierce personal satire. , ,. r Iambic satire. His younger contemporary, Simonides simonidesof of Amorgus, also applied it to satire, Amorgus. though rather general than personal. HippSnax. And about a century later, Hippdnax of Ephesus once more used iambic verse as a weapon of per- sonal attack, giving the verse that peculiarly un- graceful form known as the scazon, or "limping." Thus within a hundred and fifty years we find three lonians who use the metre in satire. Its fitness for the purpose depended prima- ^hy iambics rily on its nearness to the rhythm of '^"^=°"^=d. common speech. This made it a fitting metre in which to deal with those ludicrous or sordid as- pects of life and character for which the elegiac measure, with its epic affinities, was too noble and too gentle. The old legends of the suicides caused by the early Ionian satirists may or may not be founded on fact, but in any case they are suggestive. We cannot tell whether Archilochus really drove Neobul^ and her kinsfolk to self-destruction, or whether HippSnax had the same effect on the I06 GREEK LYRIC POETRY sculptor Bupalus. But the general credence which the ancients gave to such storied proves the scath- ing force which they must have felt in the satires, when they heard or read them. This side of the iambic tradition was continued in Attic Comedy. But there is a larger aspect of iambic poetry which must not be forgotten. The satirical application, however frequent and charac- teristic, was after all accidental. It was merely one particular bent given to the general cha^ra^cterrf faculty of thc iambic metre, which was iambic verse. , . . , , . ^ that of expressmg thoughts m a term relatively near to the ordinary idiom of conversa- tion. The fragments of Archilochus himself suf- fice to show that he was far from restricting his new measures to the satirical use. The splendid trochaic verses addressed to his own troubled soul do not imply any satirical context. Simonides of Amorgus also has left us some iambic verses, moralizing on the evils of human life, which con- tain nothing that might not with equal propriety have been said in the elegiac form. Solon's iam- bics, again, have some themes in common with his elegiacs. Yet there is also a difference How differing ... i i i ri^i from the which should bc noted. The elegiac elegiac. measure, derived from the epic, suggests that the poet, like the old minstrel, is addressing a ci_rcle.i3f Jisteners. Even when he speaks osten- sibly to one person only, as Theognis to Cyrnus, the tone is still frankly social ; the things said are such as might be said in a gathering of friends. CHARACTER OF IAMBIC VERSE lO/ The iambic form, on the other hand, being more colloquial, is more suitable than the elegiac when the thing to be said is more personal or confiden- tial. Solon illustrates this difference, m^straiion Both in elegiacs and in iambics Solon re- ''■°'" ^°'°''- fers to the troubles of Attica, and to the remedies which he sought for them. In his elegiacs he de- scribes the general character of these remedies. But the iambic form is that which he prefers when he wishes to defend himself in detail, — to answer the taunt that he had shown a shallow understanding or an irresolute spirit by failing to snatch the prizes that were within his grasp, or to meet the complaint that he had shipwrecked the hopes of his followers. Such controversy de- manded some approach to the tone of real debate, to the briskness of attack and retort ; and for this the iambic form was the right one. In this gen- eral aspect the iambic tradition was developed by the dialogue of Attic Tragedy. When this distinction has been duly noted, the fact remains that elegiac and iambic kinship be- poetry are essentially companion forms, ^^^l^t^^ alike characteristic of the period which ^^''^' immediately followed the age of the great epos. They are companions, because both alike enabled a man to utter what he thought and felt on any subject, public or private, and because neither form made, of necessity, any high demand on the poetical gifts of the person who used it. Of the two, iambic verse required perhaps the higher I08 GREEK LYRIC POETRY technical skill ; and that is one reason why it was less popular than the elegiac. This seems the right place in which to say a , , few words on the question whether these Grounds for ciassiug them two Companion forms of poetry should or should not be classed as " lyric." In their origin both were lyric, as we have seen. Certain elegiac and iambic poems were sung ■ throughout, while others at least began and ended with singing. But this connection with music was gradually relaxed, or even lost. In the fifth cen- tury B. c, or from a somewhat earlier date, simple recitation, without music, was probably the rule, both for elegiac and for iambic poems. Greeks of the fifth century b. c. called lyric poems inele (ju,eA.i;). They never applied that term to purely elegiac or purely iambic poetry. These they would have classed, like epic poetry, under the general term epe iem^. It would be confusing, then, to describe elegiac and iambic poetry by the Greek term "melic." But there is no objection to de- scribing them as "lyric," if only it be remembered that the justification for doing so is historical ; that is, these forms of poetry were originally lyric, though they afterwards ceased to be so.'' ^ Bergk calls them lyric, but defends the classification on a ground which seems unsatisfactory, namely, because they are sub- jective, and thus share the essence of lyric poetry. Greek lyric poetry was not, however, always subjective ; neither was elegiac. Nor in any case ought the word " lyric " to be used as a mere syno- nym for " subjective." Bergk seems, then, to have taken the right course, but for a questionable reason. THE LOST TEXTS 109 The earlier history of Greek literature is in one respect not unlike the progress of the Iliad. When Diomedes has displayed his prowess, it be- comes the turn of Ajax, and then of Patroclus, Menelaus, Achilles. So, in the field of poetry, first one division of the Greek race, and then another, comes to the front. The lonians, after maturing the epic form, develop the elegiac and the iam- bic ; then Aeolians share with Dorians the glory of creating lyric poetry ; and as the last named reaches the summit of its excellence, the Athe- nians are perfecting the drama. The period during which Greek lyric poetry flourished is roughly measured by the ^ -^ ^ ^ Period of two centuries from 650 to 450 b. c. Greek lyric poetry. No loss which the modern world has suffered in respect to ancient literature has been more often deplored than that of the Greek song to which those centuries gave birth. Of all the manifold forms which the Greek lyric assumed, there is only one which is known to us with any completeness, namely, the ode of victory, as treated by Pindar. The other forms are represented only by small fragments. Some of these fragments are, indeed, inestimable ; but relatively to the body of Greek lyric poetry which the ancients possessed, the whole collection is a mere handful of gold-dust. Nine lyric poets, including Pindar, were recognized by the Alexandrian critics as standing in the first rank. With the exception of Pindar himself, there is not one of these whose no GREEK LYRIC POETRY work can now be adequately estimated. Even, however, if the lyric texts had survived, they could not have been thoroughly appreciated with- out a more precise knowledge of the music to which they were set ; and if the music, too, had come down to us, there would still have been a defect in our compre'hension, so far as the choral lyrics are concerned, since the dancing which accompanied them was itself a work of elaborate art. Nevertheless, this chapter in the literary his- tory of Greece is not a blank. A study of the fragments, and of scattered notices in ancient lit- erature, has made it possible to trace the general course of the lyric development, and to recognize at least the distinctive characteristics of the chief lyric poets. Greek lyric poetry had two main Its two main branches, the Aeolian and the Dorian, branches. "pj^g Acolian lyric was meant to be sung by a single voice, — it was "monodic;" and it was essentially the utterance of the singer's own feelings. The Dorian lyric was choral, and dealt largely, though not exclusively, with themes of public interest, especially with those suggested by public worship. The Dorian lyric was a little earlier in attaining an artistic form ; but it will be convenient to speak first of the Aeolian. The Aeolian island of Lesbos was the place The Aeolian whcrc the Greek cultivation of music lyric. ;(^j.s(- made a notable advance. The Lesbian Terpander (710 b. c.) improved the THE AEOLIAiXS OF LESBOS 1 1 1 four-stringed lyre into an instrument with seven strings, adequate to the purposes of lyric poetry, and may be regarded as practi- cally the founder of Greek vocal music. He estab- lished in Lesbos a school of citharodes, "singers to the cithara," which was long famous. The first condition of lyric poetry had thus been cre- ated. The special form which it took in Lesbos was due to the Aeolian temperament, and to the circumstances of the island. Aeolians were char- acterized, above other portions of the Greek race, by vehemence of feeling ; they were also sen- suous ; but in the higher embodiments of the Aeolian character this sensuousness was ennobled by generous ardor, and refined by an educated instinct for grace and beauty. Lesbos, in the sev- enth century b. c, was a place where every charm of nature and of art coexisted with a large mea- sure of Asiatic opulence. The ruling class was a high-spirited aristocracy, chivalrous and warlike, but also luxurious, and peculiarly appreciative of natural loveliness in every form. Sappho's period of poetical activity belonged to the years from about 6io to 570 B. c. From the mass of fiction or calumny which later literature, and especially Attic Comedy, wove around her name only a few leading facts can be disengaged. She was the head of a school or group of pupils in Lesbos, — maidens whom she trained in the lyric art, sometimes with a view to their taking part in the religious festivals. The motives of her poems 112 GREEK LYRIC POETRY were usually connected with this circle of dis- ciples, and with the events of their lives. For example, the stanzas beginning ^alverai jx.oi k^vos refer, it is conjectured, to the man to whom one of her disciples was betrothed. The bridal songs which Sappho composed were again for these young friends. There seem to have been rival teachers in Lesbos, such as Gorgo and Andro- meda. Sappho was married, and had a daughter to whom she was devoted. In the poHtical troubles of the island she was driven into exile about 595 B. c, and visited Sicily, but returned to Lesbos about 580. The fragments of her poetry are unique, both for their wonderful melody and for the intensity of passion which the musical words express. They also show the finest sense of beauty in the natural world : in the night sky, when the stars pale before the full moon ; or in places where cool streams are shadowed by fruit- trees, and " slumber is shed " on weary eyelids "from the rustling leaves." The fragments of Sappho, and they alone, reveal the secret of Aeolian poetry at its highest. No- thing that remains from her contem- porary, Alcaeus, is of comparable signifi- cance. The scanty fragments suffice, indeed, to show his original power in language and in metre. The stanza known as " Sapphic " was his inven- tion, no less than the stanza which bears his own name. For the rest, he is the Lesbian noble whose fiery Aeolian heart was tried by party warfare and SAPPHO AND ALCAEUS 1 13 by exile, as it was cheered by love and by revelry ; a brilliant cavalier, proud of his own order, who took the dark days with the bright, — always ready, like Lovelace, to crown his head with roses and to drown his cares in the wine-bowl. We see in him those common elements of Aeolian character which were clarified in the loftier and subtler genius of Sappho. It was no accident that a four-line stanza was the form of composition principally used / ^ -^ . The Aeolian by both these foremost representatives four-iine stanza. of the Aeolian school. Such a stanza, repeated without variation, suited the purpose of their poetry, which was to be sung by one voice, in social gatherings ; just as the massive structure of the Dorian ode, with its strophe, antistrophe, and epode, was adapted to choral performance. After Sappho and Alcaeus, the Aeolian lyric school found no exponent of similar celebrity. Little is known, unfortunately, of Sappho's friend and contemporary, the poetess Erinna, who seems to have given promise of great excellence before she died at the age of nineteen ; still less is known of another who belonged to Sappho's circle, Damo- phyla. But the Aeolian influence reappears in other combinations. Anacreon, the poet . . . - Anacreon. of courtly festivity, is Aeolian, after the manner of Alcaeus, in so far as love and revelry are his themes. But while the strains of Alcaeus were dignified by ardent feeling and manly spirit, the Ionian poet's sensuousness is tempered merely 114 GREEK LYRIC POETRY by intellectual grace. The fragments of Anacreon indicate no passion ; he seems scarcely even in ear- nest about his pleasures. The soul of the Aeolian lyric was given to it by the Aeolian genius, and could not live outside the sphere of Aeolian life. The claim of the Dorians to the choral lyric The Dorian poctry known as Dorian is of a differ- chorai lyric. ^^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^^ limited kind. It con- sists in this, that Dorian public life supplied the themes with which that poetry was primarily con- cerned, and also determined that its form should be choral. But the poets who worked out the conceptions thus imposed by Dorian life were sel- dom of Dorian birth. In relation to lyric poetry, Sparta may be regarded as representa- tive of the Dorian influence. It was at Sparta that the musical improvements of Terpan- der and his successor, Thaletas, were brought into harmony with the Cretan art of festal dancing, and with the forms of lyric composition which Dorian festivals demanded. The Aeolian singers had Themes which taken their themes from the emotions fifgg^sted to 1 ^rid interests of the individual. But the '^°^' Spartan citizen, a soldier in a permanent camp, was less accustomed to the indulgence of private sentiment". The feelings most familiar to the Spartan were those which he shared with all his civic comrades, gathered for athletic games, or marshalled for battle, or assembled at the festivals of the Carneian Apollo ; the thoughts which' most readily appealed to him concerned the ancestral THE DORIAN LYRIC AT SPARTA 11$ splendors of the Dorian race, the deeds of the Heracleidae, the glories of the heroes from whom they sprang, the laws and usages which Dorian tradition had consecrated, the praise of the gods who protected Dorians and received their worship. The form of lyric poetry required for the expres- sion of such thoughts was one in which many performers could take part ; one which should be impressive on occasions of public solemnity, and which should satisfy not only ear and mind, but also that sense of rhythmic movement which had been developed in Sparta by the habit of gymnas- tic exercises. Such exercises were not confined to Spartan men, but were prescribed for Spartan maidens also ; whose choral dances, moreover, formed a prominent feature of Spartan festivals. The first recorded poet of the choral lyric ap- pears at Sparta about the middle of the seventh century b. c. This is Alcman, a Lydian who had been brought from Asia Minor to Sparta as a slave. Such rudimentary choral poetry as already existed at Sparta had two main characteristics : it belonged to religious liturgies, and the words were subordinate to the music. The solemn vo/ioi, "nomes," sung to the gods, and especially to Apollo, exemplified these traits. The most general change made by Alcman was in the direction of secularizing choral poetry. His best known compositions were odes to be sung by cho- ruses of Spartan raskdi&ViS, partheitia. Into these he introduced a large variety of feelings and inter- Il6 GREEK LYRIC POETRY ests which had no connection with religious ritual. The sentiments were sometimes those of the poet himself, sometimes those of the maidens by whom the ode was sung. Occasionally there was a kind of lyric dialogue between the poet and his chorus. These parthenia were composed in strophe and antistrophe, and were accompanied by the flute. One of the most notable fragments, in which the poet distinguishes and compliments individual maidens of the chorus by name, was found in Egypt in 1855. In another fragment, consisting of four hexameters, Alcman bewails that he is now too infirm to move round swiftly with the dancers ; he wishes that he were like the sea-bird called "cerylus," "that sea-blue bird of spring," who skims the bright surface of the waves with the halcyons. He also composed hymns to the gods, and to the Spartan demigods Castor and Pollux ; choral songs, too, for men and boys at the festival called Gymnopaedia, and marching- songs for the Spartan troops. A portion of his poetry, however, seems to have had no link with any public occasion, and to have been merely the expression of his own feelings. His sympathy with external nature was evidently true and keen. We have his description of a serene night in Lace- daemon, as he saw it in that fair valley of the Eu- rotas, under the grand cliffs of Taygetus : " The summits of the mountains are sleeping, and the ravines, the headlands, and the torrent courses, the leaves that the black earth nourishes, and all creep- ALCMAN. — STESICHORUS 1 1 / ing things, the wild creatures of the hills, and the race of bees, and the monsters in the depths of the dark sea ; and sleep is upon the tribes of wide- winged birds." Altogether, the Lydian Alcman is an interesting figure in that age of Sparta, when its stern military life was tempered by a larger mea- sure of liberal culture than in later days. He had the ease and grace of an Ionian, with something of an Asiatic bent towards luxury. Yet his choral poetry must have been in unison with the tastes of his audience. The Spartans for whom he sang were capable of appreciating the blended charms of lyric verse, music, and dance. Stesichorus of Himera in Sicily (6io b. c.) is a poet of greater importance than Alcman, Stesichorus. and must be regarded as the chief repre- sentative of the Dorian choral lyric in its earlier period ; he is, indeed, the poetical ancestor of Si- monides and Pindar. In Alcman, as we have seen, there was a subjective element ; the poet's own feelings found large expression. The choral poe- try of Stesichorus, on the other hand, was of a thoroughly objective character, and its peculiar stamp depended on its relation to epos. He com- posed hymns for those national festivals of Sicily and Magna Graecia in which the heroes were espe- cially honored. These hymns seem to have em- braced the whole circle of epic tradition. Hera- cles, Orestes, the Atreidae, Odysseus, Helen, were among his themes. This was an innovation in the treatment of the hymn, which had hitherto been Il8 GREEK LYRIC POETRY addressed to divine persons only. Alcman had in- deed written hymns to Castor and Pollux, but they were at least demigods, raised above the heroes of human origin. Further, the style of Stesichorus was essentially epic ; the poet's personality appeared as little as it does in the Homeric poems ; and he used an artificial epic dialect, with only a slight tinge of Dorian. He added an epode to the strophe and antistrophe ; an improvement commemorated by a proverbial phrase, "the triad of Stesichorus." This enlargement of the choral structure suited his epic subjects, which required a grand and massive framework. His choral epic hymns gave the first hint of the model on which Pindar's mag- nificent odes of victory are constructed. He was a precursor of Pindar also in the bold coinage of new compound words. Epic grandeur, in a splen- did and spacious choral form, was his charm for the ancient world. Simonides couples him with Homer ; Alexander the Great described him as a poet worthy to be read .by kings ; Quintilian observes that he sustained the burden of epos with the lyre. It should be added that he also broke new ground in two other fields. His lyric treatment of popular love-stories, as in his Rhadina and Caly-ca, was the germ of romance, afterwards developed in prose by the Greek novel-writers. And his lyric pastoral, Daphnis, was the earliest example of bucolic poetry. After Stesichorus, the next considerable name is that of Ibycus, who flourished about 550 b. c. IBYCUS 119 The place held by Ibycus is in one respect unique. He is the only poet in whom the two ■' , Ibycus. great branches of the Greek lyric con- verge, while they still remain distinct. His po- etical life had two periods. In the first he lived at his native Rhegium in southernmost Italy, and wrote choral lyrics in the epic style of Stesichorus. The legend of the Argonauts and stories from the Trojan cycle were handled by him. During the second period of his career he lived in the Ionian island of Samos, at the court of the tyrant Poly- crates ; and here he composed love-poetry, which, to judge by the fragments, was more Aeolian in its passion than anything written since the days of Sappho. It recalls Sappho in this, also, that the portrayal of passion is joined to a vivid feeling for the beauties of nature. Thus Ibycus says : " In spring the Cydonian apple-trees put forth blossoms, watered by the river-streams where the Nymphs have their inviolable haunt ; and the vine-buds come forth, growing under the foliage of the vine-shoots. But for me Love knows no season of slumber, — like the north wind of Thrace, that rages amid lightnings." Love comes upon Ibycus, " dark as the storm, a stranger to fear ; " and he trembles at the god's approach. Similarly, Sappho compares the Love-god to a mountain whirlwind uprooting oaks. The Eros of these poets is a fierce and dreadful power ; not the play- ful boy Eros of later poetry. We are reminded of the words in which Dante describes the apparition I20 GREEK LYRIC POETRY of Love : " There seemed to be in my room a mist of the color of fire, within which I discerned the figure of one of terrible aspect." It was by his later or quasi-Aeolian work, not by his earlier work on epic themes, that Ibycus was best remembered in Greek literature. The last great name before Pindar is that of Simonides. He was born at Ceos in or SimODides. ^ i . about 550 B. c, being some sixteen years younger than Anacreon, and about thirty-four years older than Pindar. An Ionian by birth and by temperament, he chose the Dorian choral form for his lyrics, which were composed in an artifi- cial dialect like that of Stesichorus, — epic with a Dorian tinge. As Anacreon is the Ionian of a luxurious Asiatic type, Simonides is the Ionian who has felt the chastening and bracing influenae of Athens. He was a poet not only of great gifts, but also, in some directions, of marked originality. Stesichorus extended the scope of the choral hymn from gods to heroes ; Simonides was perhaps the first who successfully extended it from the heroes to contemporary men. He wrote odes of victory, " epinicia," celebrating the successes of competitors in the great national games, and in these odes prob- ably dwelt more on the details of the particular victory than Pindar usually does ; also " encomia," odes in praise of men notable by position or achievement, which had less of a public character than the odes of victory, and were often intended to be sung at private banquets. One specimen, SIMONIDES 121 which has come down to us nearly entire, is the " encomium " on the Thessalian tyrant Scopas, whose guest the poet had been. The last ten years of his life were passed with Hieron, the tyrant of Syracuse, where he is said to have died, at the age of ninety, in 467 b. c. Such knowledge as we possess concerning the life and character of Simonides exhibits him as a clever and versatile man of the world, with all the subtle and grace- ful Ionian gifts, but without much depth of con- viction or feeling. His pathetic power in poetry was, indeed, renowned, and in this quality he was ranked even above Pindar. It was Simonides who first made the " threnos," or dirge, an accepted form of lyric poetry. But his pathos was due prin- cipally to the perfect purity of style, the unerring sense of proportion, the exquisite feeling for har- mony, with which he knew how to adorn the tra- ditional topics of an epitaph. This fact is illus- trated by his verses on the heroes of Thermopylae, — verses justly celebrated for a beauty of form which no prose version can even suggest : " Glori- ous was the fortune of those who died at Ther- mopylae, and fair is their fate ; their tomb is an altar. Others are bewailed, but they are remem- bered ; others are pitied,- but they are praised. Such a monument shall never moulder, nor shall it be defaced by all-conquering Time. This sep- ulchre of brave men has taken the glory of Hellas to dwell with it ; be Leonidas the witness, Sparta's king, who has left behind him the great beauty of 122 GREEK LYRIC POETRY prowess and an immortal name." More famous still is the poet's description of Danae, with the infant Perseus, afloat in a chest on the stormy sea, under the stars ; nothing could be more exquisite than the contrast between the fierce elements that rage around and the fair sleeping child, watched by the young mother, so anxious, so helpless, so forsaken, apparently, by the divine lover, Zeus, withdrawn in the recesses of that starry sky, to whom she makes her timid prayer, — not for her- self, but for her child. Simonides was, in his own sphere, a consummate artist. The slender remains of his work show few traces of fire or passion, but they prove an unsurpassed command of all the graces that can touch and charm. Kindred though less eminent gifts won renown for his sister's son, Bacchylides of Ceos, a „ , ,., -' ' Bacchylides. lyric poet who also was numbered among the foremost nine. The disciple and imitator of his uncle, Bacchylides was admired especially for smoothness and finish. Like Simonides, he was a welcome guest at the court of Hieron, and wrote an ode of victory on that prince's success in the char- iot-race of 472 B. c, the same which is immortalized in Pindar's first Olympian ; but his home, according to Plutarch, was. in Peloponnesus. The most dis- tinctive branch of his work was probably that in which he gave a choral treatment to themes of social pleasure ; and the fragments, scanty though they are, indicate a vein of genial gaiety which re- minds us both of Anacreon and of Horace. His CAUSES OF ITS DECLINE 1 23 style is now best represented by some verses which describe the joys of peace with much picturesque detail. It is an interesting conjecture that the paean in which these verses occurred may have been written at a time when the long struggles with Persia had just been closed by the victories of Cimon. Reserving Pindar for a separate treatment, I would conclude this sketch of the lyric develop- ment by indicating some of the causes ^^^^^^ ^^ich why the existence of Greek lyric poetry '/j^^iJ," t'Sn o£ was not more prolonged. After the iy"<=P''«'T- days of Simonides and Pindar it languished, and soon perished. Why was this so 1 As to the Aeolian lyric poetry, that had been virtually extinct from a still earlier time. It could flourish only where the conditions amidst which Sappho and Alcaeus lived were at least partially continued, and where the Aeolian fire burned in spirits like theirs. Sweetness and light, even when Athenian, were not enough to nourish Aeo- lian song. But when the choral lyric had once been transplanted from its Dorian birthplace to Attica, as it was by Simonides and his contempo- raries, why should it not have continued to thrive there } It was well suited to the purposes of Athenian public ritual, and, in the hands of Si- monides, had become popular with Athenians. One cause may be recognized in the diminished number of forms for choral lyrics which Athenian life afforded. In the seventh century b. c, the 124 GREEK LYRIC POETRY period at which the intellectual culture of Sparta reached its highest level, the lyrists whom Sparta attracted and honored found one of their best opportunities in those choral dances of Spartan maidens for which parthenia like those of Ale- man were composed. But the Attic maiden was brought up in a comparatively strict seclusion ; the Dorian parthenia were wholly opposed to Attic feeling and usage. With regard to other species of the choral lyric, most of them were eclipsed at Athens by the popularity of one, the choral hymn to Dionysus, known as the dithy- ramb. And the dithyramb in its turn lost much of its hold upon public favor when a more brilliant and enthralling form of the Dionysus cult had been matured in the drama. Meanwhile, the ode of victory, so popular in the age of Simonides and Pindar, gradually died out in the latter part of the fifth century b. c, as the divisions and troubles of Hellas began to react upon the national festivals. And when, in the time of the Peloponnesian war, the dithyramb made a last effort to compete with drama at Athens, that effort only hastened the extinction of lyric poetry. The dithyrambic poets now sought to please by extravagance ; and the art of music itself was corrupted by an excess of florid ornament. Attic comedy, with its ridi- cule of these things, well interprets the moribund phase of lyric poetry. But that poetry had left imperishable monu- ments. We have seen how elegy gave utterance CAUSES OF ITS DECLINE — SlfM MARY 1 25 to patriotic exhortation, to tender sentiment, to political wisdom or philosophic reflec- Summary. tion, and to grief for the dead ; how iambic poetry became the weapon of satire, but also, like elegy, a more general vehicle of self-ex- pression, especially in animated argument or self- defence ; how the lyric monody gave a voice to Aeolian passion and worship of beauty, a voice more feebly echoed in the voluptuous strains of the Ionian ; and how the choral lyric, with its massive melodies, became the organ of Dorian life, civil or religious, of heroic legend, of congrat- ulation to victorious athletes, or of the solemn dirge for the departed. In each and all of these kinds, the sure instinct of the Greeks had created a harmony between form and subject, a harmony infinitely varied, but always satisfying the de- mands of an artistic sense. Such a survey, though rapid, will have prepared us to appreciate the poet in whom the lyric development culminates. V PINDAR In the almost total loss of Greek lyric poetry the modern world has one consolation : the poet who closed the series of the masters was ac- counted the greatest of all. Sappho might be un- approachable in her kind ; Stesichorus and Si- monides might be preeminent in certain qualities respectively ; but in range of power and loftiness of inspiration there was no rival to Pindar. This was the general and settled verdict of antiquity, in days when all the materials for a comparison existed. And though we possess only one class of Pindar's compositions, the class is that by which he had gained his widest popularity. If the Alexandrian critics had been asked to name any one kind of poem as characteristic of him, it is probable that they would have chosen the odes of victory, and there can be little doubt that the majority of ancient readers would have confirmed their choice. In relation to the development of Greek poetry, Pindar has a twofold interest : he continues the tradition which begins with Alcman and Stesichorus, while at the same time he may be regarded as, in a certain sense, the precursor of the Attic drama. Little is known concerning his life. He was HIS LYRIC PREEMINEXCE 1 27 bom near Thebes in 522 b. c, being thus a contem- porary of Aeschylus, and survived the Lj^of year 452 b. c. ; the date of his death is ^'"•'^'^• unknown. He enjoyed an elaborate and many- sided training in the complex art of choral lyric composition. He belonged to one of the noblest families in Greece, that of the Aegeidae, His family. which had branches at Thebes, Sparta, and Cyrene ; and he stood in an intimate rela- tion with the priesthood of Apollo at His^ia,io„ Delphi. These facts are of cardinal '"D^'p^ importance for a comprehension of his poetry. In his whole view of life he is an Hellenic aris- tocrat, profoundly convinced that men who trace their lineage to a hero have a strain of divine blood, which gives them natural advantages, moral and intellectual no less than physical, over other men. And he has also a priestly tone ; he is an expounder of religious and ethical precepts, who can speak in the lofty and commanding accents of Delphi. The forty-four odes of victory {epinikid) repre- sent a type of poem which Pindar had ^jj^^^^of received from predecessors. Archilo- ™'°'y- chus had written a song to Heracles and lolaus, with the refrain T-iyveXXa KoAAiVtice (" See, the con- quering hero comes"), which had long been in use at Olympia, and was still popular in Pindar's time. In the course of the sixth century b. c, which saw a great development of the Greek na- tional games, the more elaborate " ode of victory " 128 PINDAR came into being. Simonides, thirty-four years older than Pindar, was the first composer whose odes of victory became celebrated. The first difficulty for moderns, when they try to appreciate the work achieved by Pindar in this field, is that of conceiving the ancient festivals themselves which called forth these odes. What was the meaning of a victory in the games at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, or the Isthmus .' What kind of feelings did it evoke .'' Perhaps it would be hardly possible for us moderns to imagine these things adequately, even if we knew more than we do. The best resource is to make certain leading points clear to ourselves, and then com- bine them, as well as we can, in a mental picture. The oiym- Taking the Olympian festival, then, as pian festival, ^j^g greatest, we may say, first of all, that the spectacle was one of extraordinary bril- liancy. The "altis," or sacred precinct, of Olym- pia, richly adorned with the most splendid works of art, was a'focus of Panhellenic religion. In the midst of it was the ancient altar of Zeus, repre- senting the earliest Hellenic phase of the sanctu- ary, when the worship of Zeus was combined with the cult of the hero Pelops. This was the altar at which the lamidae, the hereditary soothsayers, practised their rites of divination by fire, in virtue of which Olympia is saluted by Pindar as " mis- tress of truth." A little to the west of this was the Pelopion, a small precinct in which sacrifices had been offered to Pelops from the time when THE OLYMPIAN- ALTIS 1 29 Achaeans founded Pisa. South of the Pelopion stood the temple of Zeus. The easternmost por- tion of this temple was open to the public ; the middle portion was probably the place where the wreaths were presented to the victors ; the west- ernmost contained the image of Olympian Zeus, forty feet high, wrought in ivory and gold by Pheidias, and inspired by these words of Homer : " The son of Cronus spake, and nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from the king's immortal head, and he shook great Olym- pus." Externally this temple was richly adorned with sculpture. The east front exhibited twenty- one colossal figures by Paeonius, a group repre- senting the moment before the chariot-race be- tween Oenomaus and Pelops. The west front showed the -fight of the Lapithae and the Cen- taurs. On the metopes were depicted the twelve labors of Heracles. Other temples within the altis were those of Hera and the Mother of the Gods. There was also a large number of votive edifices, including the twelve treasure-houses, having the character of small Doric temples, erected by twelve Greek states in honor- of the Olympian Zeus. Olympia was not merely a sanctuary, but also the political centre of a league, — a sacred city ; and therefore the sacred precinct included a town hall and an agora, while outside of it were a council hall, a gymnasium, and other buildings. On the east of the altis was the stadion, an ob- 130 PINDAR long enclosure used for the foot-races, as well as for the contests in boxing, wrestling, leaping, quoit- throwing, and javelin-throwing. It is computed that upwards of 40,000 spectators could have seen these contests from the neighboring slopes. The hippodrome, for chariot-races and horse-races, ex- tended south and south-east of the stadion. The valley of the Alpheus is itself of great beauty. Looking eastward, one sees the snow -crowned ranges of Eryraanthus and Cyllenc in Arcadia. Imagine what it must have been when all those treasures of art, from which the Hermes of Prax- iteles and the winged Victory of Paconius are mere waifs and strays, were seen in the warm sunlight of September ! One can understand the orator Lysias calling Olympia the "fairest place in Greece." At this festival, all parts of Hellas — from the furthest settlement in the western Mediterranean to the colonies of Asia Minor, the Euxine, or Libya — were represented by their foremost men, — the foremost in athletic prowess, the foremost in poetry, music, eloquence, the foremost in wealth and power. To enter for the chariot-race was a costly ambition : a rich man who did so was considered as reflecting honor on his city; and a Sicilian prince such as Hieron or Theron welcomed the opportunity, not only for the sake of displaying his resources, but also as a means to popularity. Finally, the whole festival was profoundly pene- trated by religious feeling, which gave it solemnity THE OLYMPIAX FESTIVAL 13 1 w'thout overclouding its free joj'ousness. The gods, Zeus above all, and the heroes, especially Heracles and Pelops, were present amidst their worshipers, glorious in the creations of art, and were felt as watching, inspiring, and rewarding the competitors. There is therefore nothing in modern life that can properly be compared with a victory at Olympia. The modem horse-race or boat-race may attract vast crowds, and may even assume the importance of a public holiday ; but the Olympian gathering was not merely that : it was also a religious celebration. There is a still further difference. The glory of the modem race- winner or athlete is brief ; it lives in the memory of a few, but not with the public. The OhTupian victor, however, was a distinguished man from that moment to the end of his days. He had shed lustre on his native city, and was sure of such honors as it could bestow. His name was recorded at Olympia. Go where he might throughout Hellas, the title which he had won (o\vfi.-iovUifi) sufficed to procure him a more than respectful welcome. This permanent renown had its coun- terpart in the permanent value attached to odes of \'ictory like Pindar's. Such an ode was indeed an occasional poem, in the sense that it was written to celebrate a particular event ; but it was not ephemeral. An epinikion by Pindar was an abid- ing monument, an heirloom- for the victor, his family, and his city. Thus the ode in which Pin- dar celebrated the victory of the Rhodian Diagoras 132 PINDAR is said to have been copied in letters of gold, and deposited in the temple of Athena at Lindus in Rhodes. The anxiety of the foremost men in Hellas to obtain such a memorial can easily be understood, even though they may not have be- lieved the poet's true prophecy, that his tribute, besides travelling further, would live longer than the marble of the sculptor. An ode of Pindar is composed of various ele- ments which are nowhere else so blended Characteris- . ,. i i ■ i • , tics of Pin- in literature, and which m the actual life of Hellas were nowhere so vividly brought together as at Olympia. First of these elements is splendor, — a reflex in Pin- dar's opulent and brilliant language of the material splendor which Olympia could show in so many forms, — the marble of temples and statues, the brilliant colors which everywhere met the eye when embassies from the courts of Greek princes in Africa or Sicily were present in the altis, and when every city in Hellas that appeared at all was anxious to add something of magnifi- cence to the scene ; the splendor of athletic beauty in men and youths, perfectly developed by long months of training ; the splendor of rushing move- ment when chariots swept round the hippodrome, and when speed of foot or disciplined strength was tested in the stadion ; the splendor of choral music, and of stately ritual at the altars ; the splendor of nature around and above, whether sun- shine was lighting up the altis and shining on the HIS SPLENDOR 133 snows of the distant Arcadian hills, or the scene was steeped in that softer radiance of which Pin- dar speaks, when " the full orb of the midmonth moon " looked down at evening on feast and music and song. As an instance of this quality in Pin- dar's style, we might take the first words of his first Olympian : " Water is best, and gold is the shining crown of lordly wealth, like a flaming fire in the darkness ; but if thou wouldst sing of prizes in the games, look not by day for a star in the lonely heaven that shall rival the gladdening radi- ance of the sun ; nor let us think to praise a place of festival more glorious than Olympia." In this splendor is included swiftness. The frequent and rapid transition from image to image, from one thought to another which has started up in the poet's mind, is one of the reasons why it is impos- sible truly to represent Pindar in continuous trans- lation. The second element which Olympia offered to the sight and the thought, as Pindar r^ ■ , , , , , • Linking of offers It to the thought and the ear, is present with past. the kinship of the present with the heroic past. The sacred ground of Olympia on which the competitors moved everywhere reminded them of the heroes, the ancestors of the noblest Hellenes, the corhmon glory of the Hellenic race. Here was a memorial of Pelops, there of Heracles, of Telamon or his son Ajax, of Peleus or his son Achilles, and many more, — all exemplars of stren- uous effort, and of immortal fame won through 134'' PINDAR effort, by the grace of the gods, and of the poets whom the gods inspired. Stesichorus had set the first great pattern of heroic legend treated in lyric verse. Simonides seems to have dwelt more, in his odes of victory, on the particular circumstances of the victory which he was celebrating ; and this is what might have been anticipated from his gen- eral bent. Pindar passes, as a rule, lightly and briefly over the details of the victory itself, and then links on his theme to some heroic legend, which often occupies the bulk of the ode. To- wards the end, he returns again to his immediate theme. In finding a suitable link between theme and myth he shows marvellous skill : it is one of those points in which his versatile art well repays close study. But here I would rather draw atten- tion to a larger aspect of his dealing with the he- roic legends. These legends serve to invest the particular victory with a general significance, and to raise our thoughts from the latest' victor towards one who strove and prevailed in far-off days. They lend an ideal charm to a triumph of which the interest would otherwise be mainly local or per- sonal ; and in doing this they render Pindar's poe- try once more a faithful mirror of Olympia. The youngest conqueror who had just received his chap- let of wild olive moved in an atmosphere of mem- ories which raised his achievement to a still higher level by connecting it with the ancestral glories of his race. A third element common to the Olympian altis THE FESTIVAL AND THE POEM 135 and the Pindaric ode is counsel. When the priests sprung from lamus stood beside the al- tar of Zeus, and read the fiery signs, they expounded to men the omens of the future. The athlete about to enter the stadion saw before him an altar of Kairos, personified Opportunity, the power that enables competitors to seize the criti- cal moment. In such forms, and many others, the promptings or warnings of divine counsel were expressed at Olympia ; but this was not all. The assembled Hellenes might there hear the voice of philosopher, or poet, or statesman, who chose that occasion to urge lessons of wisdom. Pindar is thoroughly in ■ harmony with the genius of the national festivals when he weaves precepts of re- ligion or ethical maxims into the richly embroi- dered texture of his odes. He interprets no special theory ; rather he gives an impressive utterance to sentiments and rules of conduct which were gen- erally current among Hellenes, — summing up, as it were, the teaching of Hellenic experience in a manner appropriate to such a festival. And as the lamidae might have spoken from their altar in the altis, so Pindar speaks from the spiritual van- tage-ground of his relation with Delphi. That is, he speaks loftily, with authority ; and not seldom his phrases have an oracular stamp, being terse, strangely worded, or even enigmatic. There is yet one other feature in which the mind of Pindar reflects Olympia. The festival brought Greeks together from the whole Hellenic world. 136 PINDAR The imagination of Pindar has a corresponding Pinheiienic tendency to range swiftly over the entire range. ^^^^ q£ fjgUas, including the remotest regions to which Hellenes had penetrated. How spacious a fancy appears in his figurative descrip- tion of a man whose hospitalities were unstinted and continual : " Far as to the Phasis was his voy- age in summer days, and in winter to the shores of Nile." When his song has had free course, he thinks of it as a ship that has sailed westward, even beyond the gates of the Mediterranean, and cries, " None may pass beyond Gadeira into the gloom of the west ; set our sails once more for the land of Europa." A voyage to the Pillars of Her- acles furnishes him with a comparison for the ut- most extent of good fortune. Here, as in his lofty flight and in his swift descent upon his object, he is indeed the eagle among poets, who surveys the whole field of Hellenic existence, while his pier- cing glance darts from land to land and from city to city. ^Such, then, are the principal elements common to the festival and the poetry : splendor of light and color, of physical beauty, of swift movement and strenuous effort, of choral music and stately worship, of natural scenery ; vivid sympathy be- tween the present and the heroic past ; wisdom speaking by the voice of priest and prophet ; a feeling for the unity of Hellas, quickened by the sense of its vastness and variety. * The choral form in which Pindar has blended A TYPICAL ODE 13/ these elements, and the manner of blending them, are more difficult to describe. The first Analysis of Olympian ode may be taken as typical, the first The ode, of one hundred and sixteen verses, is composed in four triads of twenty-nine verses each ; the triad consisting of a strophe and antistrophe, each of eleven verses, followed by an epode, of seven verses. The chorus, in singing each strophe and antistrophe, accompanied their song with rhythmic dancing ; in singing each epode they remained stationary. This ode was in honor of a victory in the horse-race at Olympia, won by Hieron, the ruler of Syracuse, in 472 b. c, and was intended for performance at Hieron's court. It begins with this immediate theme, Hie- ron's victory ; then passes to the legend of Tan- talus and his son Pelops ; and ends with a further reference to Hieron. These three sections, begin- ning, middle, and end, do not correspond precisely with the limits of triads ; but we may say, roughly, that the first triad is given to Hieron, the second and third-triads are given to the myth, and the last triad returns to the subject of the first. The sequence of thought is as follows : Olym- pia is the most splendid of festivals, peerless as the sun in the heavens. The victory of Hieron at Olympia has given him fame in the land of Pelops ; whom the mighty sea-god Poseidon loved. That relative pronoun " whom," which comes in so naturally, is the link between theme and myth. " Pelops, whom Poseidon loved, from the moment 138 PINDAR when Pelops was born with his ivory shoulder." Now, the ordinary legend did not say that Pelops was born with an ivory shoulder : it told how the Lydian king Tantalus, when the gods honored him by coming as guests to his table, slew his son Pelops, and set the flesh before them ; the goddess Demeter unwittingly ate of the shoulder ; then the gods ordered Hermes to put the remains into a caldron, from which Pelops came out miracu- lously re-created, but without this shoulder ; and Demeter supplied its place by a shoulder of ivory. Pindar rejects this version, because it dishonors the immortals (that is, makes Demeter a canni- bal), and tells the story thus : The sea-god Posei- don carried the young Pelops off from the banquet to Olympus, and then the spiteful neighbors of Tantalus invented the cannibal feast to explain the boy's disappearance. Tantalus was doomed to his fearful punishment in the lower world, not for serving up his son to the gods, but for stealing their nectar and ambrosia, and giving them to his mortal companions. And therefore the gods would not allow his son to remain in Olympus. They sent Pelops back, " to be numbered once more with the short-lived race of men." As the youth grew to manhood he fell in love with Hippodameia, daugh- ter of Oenomaus, king of Elis. Her hand could be won only by defeating her father in the chariot- race ; and death was to be the penalty of failure. The young Pelops went and stood on the seashore in the night, and called aloud on the sea-god who THE FIRST OLYMPIAN I39 had once borne him to Olympus. Poseidon ap- peared to him ; Pelops told his wish, and prayed for the god's help in the contest with Oenomaus, full, as he well knew, of dire peril. " But, seeing that men must die, wherefore should a man sit idly in obscurity, nursing a nameless old age.' No ! " he cries, " this struggle shall be my task, and do thou give the issue that I desire." Then Posei- don gave him a golden chariot, and horses, winged, untiring. Pelops overcame Oenomaus, and won Hippodameia. And now the grave of Pelops is honored beside the stream of the Alpheus, and his glory is bound up with that of Olympia, " where speed and strength are tried." The myth is finished; and another link like that which knitted proem with myth has been forged to knit myth with conclusion : " Olympia, where speed and strength are tried. He who conquers there hath delicious sunshine in his life henceforth, so far as the games can give it." And as the future is hidden from men, sufficient unto the day is the good thereof. The victory of Hieron claims this Aeolian song; and if the god should not forsake him, he will receive such a tribute again. Greatness has many forms and levels ; may Hieron hold throughout life his su- preme power, and the poet his supreme renown. With this haughty parallel between Hieron and himself, as to degree of eminence in their respec- tive ways, Pindar characteristically closes the first Olympian ode. The outline just given will serve I40 PINDAR to show the nature of the framework, the charac- ter of the transitions, the manner in which a mor- alizing strain is mingled with the others. As to the effect which such an ode would have of™ Pindaric produccd whcn performed with choral music and dance, the nearest modern analogy — distant though it be — must be sought in the sphere of music rather than in that of poetry. Oratorios such as the Messiah or Israel in Egypt are at least nearer to Pindar, in their manner of affecting the hearers, than any kind of modern literature. There is, of course, a dif- ference which at once limits even this imperfect analogy, namely, that in Pindar's poetry, as in all Greek lyrics of the best age, the words were paramount, and the music subordinate. But the comparison between the Pindaric ode and the ora- torio, so far as it is valid at all, does not depend on the relation between words and music. It turns rather on those rapid transitions from one tone of feeling to another, from storm to calm, from splendid energy to tranquillity, from trium- phant joy to reflection or even to sadness, which in Pindar are so frequent and so rapid that they are reconciled with art only by the massive harmonies of rhythm and language which hold them to- gether ; harmonies for which two conditions were indispensable, — a language with the unrivalled qualities of the Greek, and an artist supremely distinguished by rhythmical and musical power over words. No Greek except Pindar succeeded GENERAL EFFECT OF HIS WORK 14I in making sucli harmonies ; Pindar himself could hardly have made them in any modern tongue. For in the higher poetry, especially when it em- ploys the grand style, the movement of every modern language is slower than that of Greek. But modern music allows of transitions from mood to mood as varied and almost as rapid as Pindar's ; and here again it is the framework of harmony which makes them possible. It has been the tendency of much criticism, both ancient and modern, to convey the YxvL&z.r2.%z.n impression that Pindar's genius is of ""^'■ that impetuous kind which scorns all restraints of traditional rule, rushes onward without premedi- tation or pause, and wins its triumphs by the sheer vehemence of masterful inspiration. Hor- ace has done much to diffuse this conception of the Theban poet by comparing him to the moun- tain stream, swollen with rains, which has over- flowed its banks, and rushes downward in a thun- derous torrent. In modern times, it was not until Boeckh and Dissen had brought order out of the apparent chaos of his metres that this notion of his lawlessness began to be dissipated. Every one of his odes is, in fact, a work of the most elaborate and complex art, calculated and refined to the smallest detail. It is enough to mention three things out of several which demanded the artist's thought and tact. First, as the compass of the ode is usually moderate, — the fourth Pythian being the only 142 PINDAR one which exceeds five triads, — he had to plan a symmetrical distribution of his material, so that proem, central part, and ending should be rightly proportioned to each other. And if, as was usu- ally the case, some heroic myth was to be intro- duced, he had to consider the links with such myths which could be furnished by the family of the victor, or by the victor's city, or by some cir- cumstance of the victory itself. Secondly, he had to decide the musical mode to which the poem was to be set. The Dorian mode breathed a grave, earnest, manly spirit ; the Aeolian was more joyous and animated, with the tone of brilliant and chivalrous festivity ; the Lydian, which Pin- dar uses more rarely, had a tender and pensive character suited to dirges. Each style of music had certain metres which were specially congenial to it. Thirdly, the choice of musical mode and of metre affected the complexion of the dialect. Pindar's dialect is, in its basis, the same as that which Stesichorus adopted when he set the first example of treating heroic themes in lyric form. It is the epic, a variety shaped by poetical artists, and not corresponding exactly with any spoken idiom. But Pindar tempers this with Dorisms, or Aeolisms, — Asiatic rather than Boeotian Aeolisms, — in varying proportions, according to the musical style and the metre in which he is writing. These three points suffice to show that Pindar, in composing an epinikion, was an artist working under manifold demands on observance of rule and HIS ART, AND HIS GENIUS 143 tradition. The most careful thought, the nicest care, were required at every step. Stress must be laid upon this aspect of his work, because it is apt to be overlooked. But there is, of course, another aspect also. The torrent is not a good simile, but the boldness of Pindar's ori- Yi\sh6\i ginal genius is evident. The only rea- o"gi"^i''y- son which moderns could find for doubting it is that he so often asserts it. It must be remem- bered, however, that Pindar is the inspired poet, who feels, as a Greek of his age would feel, that his gift is strictly divine, — that Apollo or the Muse is speaking through his lips, — and that to e.xalt his own gift is to honor the divinity who bestows it. Certainly it cannot have been alto- gether pleasant to be a minor poet in Pindar's time : he tells these struggling contemporaries, with a sublime candor, that he is the eagle, while they are ravens and daws. The impression given by Pindar's style is that he is borne onward by the breath of an irresistible power within him, eager to find ample utterance, immense in resources of im- agery and expression, sustained on untiring wings. After the longest and highest flight he always seems to have strength in reserve ; after the lar- gest manifestations of his opulent fancy we can feel that there is inexhaustible wealth behind. It is the union of this mighty spirit and this magnifi- cent abundance with the Greek artist's disciplined instinct of self-control and symmetry that renders Pindar unique. 144 PINDAR Particular notice is due to the stamp of his dic- Pindaric tion. Other great poets have been dis- diction. tinguished by more delicate felicity, more chastened beauty of phrase, more faultless and unimpeachable taste. Sappho and Simonides, to take only lyric examples, exhibit even in the few fragments that remain certain charms of this kind which Pindar lacks ; but there is one gift in which he is absolutely alone. It is one which could find full scope only within the grand frame- work of the Dorian choral lyric, — the faculty of shaping magnificent phrases, and giving them ex- actly their right setting in the spacious verse, so that they at once delight the ear and charm the imagination. Consider, for instance, the line de- scribing how Jason, protected by Med^'s spells, was able to harness the fire-breathing bulls : — fix^T epyov TTvp Si vw ovk ioKei irafi^apixaKov f eivas k^eriJ.iu'i. Who but Pindar could have put the last three words together .' In these carven marble blocks of language we often find some stately epithet, perhaps fashioned by the poet himself, as, do-Teioi' pCtp-v (l>vTev(Te(r6ai iJi,€\r](Tifji.ppoTov. But even the com- monest words can be thus moulded by him into forms which haunt the memory, as when Medea says, referring to the piece of Libyan earth that was lost overboard from the Argo : — ivaXiav ^a/xev crvv aXfjio. icnrepas, vypiS ireXdyei (nrofiivav. It is in some of these phrases, where Pindar has H/S SPECIAL GIFT IN LANGUAGE 1 45 used long compound words, that he has more es- pecially given occasion for the charge of bombast. Voltaire called him "this inflated Theban," and said that Pindar's French translator, M. de Chau- mont, had endowed the turgid Greek with such clearness and beauty as he could claim. Mr. Mat- thew Arnold describes Pindar as " the poet on whom, above all other poets, the power of style seems to have exercised an inspiring and intoxicat- ing effect," — which implies at least a certain ab- sence of due self-restraint. Few would contend that Pindar's marvellous wealth of ideas and words never betrayed him into excess. One remembers what Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare : " He was indeed honest, and of an open and free nature, had an excellent fancy, brave notions, and gentle expressions ; wherein he flowed with that facility that sometimes it was necessary he should be stopped." Yet one would have been sorry, on the whole, to have had Shakespeare regulated by Ben Jonson ; and surely we may be glad that Pindar was not governed by a modern standard of lyric sobriety. But what I wish to point out here is the intimate relation between the rhythmical structure of Pindar's odes and that moulding of phrases in which he is a very Michael Angelo of language. Learn a few strophes of the fourth Pythian by heart, carefully studying the metre at the same time, and then you will apprehend, more clearly than before, two things, — ^the plastic power over words which Pindar wields, and the extent to 146 PINDAR which even those phrases which modern criticism might deem somewhat turgid — Troi/ciXo^op/^tyyos dotSa5, for instance — are excused by the fact that they harmonize with the genius of these spacious measures which sustain the majestic structure of the Dorian ode. If we could hear such an ode performed with the music to which it was wedded by Pindar, this relation would undoubtedly be still more apparent. The power of poetry is inseparable, in Pin- His feeling dar's thought, from the power of music, Smu'4°"" and both are symbolized by the lyre, tte'ivre™" — " joint possession," as he calls it, "of (PytLi.). Apollo and the Muses." "O golden lyre, joint possession of Apollo and the dark- haired Muses, thou at whose bidding the dan- cer's step begins the festal dance, thou whose signs the singers obey, when thy quivering notes raise the prelude of the choral song ! Thou canst quench even the thunderbolt, whose spear is of perennial fire ; and the eagle, king of birds, slum- bers on the sceptre of Zeus, suffering his swift wings to droop at his sides ; for thou hast sent a mist of darkness on his arched, head, a gentle seal upon his eyes, and he heaves his back with the rippling breath of sleep, spellbound by thy trem- bling strains. Yea, the violent god of war forgets the cruel sharpness of his spears, and yields his melting soul to slumber ; for thy shafts subdue the minds of the immortals, by virtue of the art which is from Leto's son and the deep-bosomed Muses. FEELING FOR MUSIC, AND FOR NATURE 1 47 " But all creatures that Zeus loves not are dis- mayed when they hear the music of the Pierides, whether on land or on the raging deep ; as that foe of the gods who lies in fearful Tartarus, Typhon of the hundred heads, reared of old in the famed Cilician cave. But now Sicily and the sea-restrain- ing cliffs above Cumae press down his shaggy breast, and a pillar of heaven holds him fast, even hoary Aetna, nurse of keen snow through all the year ; whose secret depths hurl upward pure foun- tains of unapproachable fire ; in the daytime, those rivers pour forth a stream of lurid smoke, but in the darkness a red rolling flame sweeps rocks with a roar to the wide deep." We observe here Pindar's feeling for what is grand or terrible in nature, one which „. „, o » His sense ot elsewhere finds only limited expression |eau?y'in°'^ in Greek poetry of this age. Thus Aes- "^""'°' chylus, who also speaks of Aetna in eruption, em- phasizes rather its destructive effect on human labor : " Rivers of fire shall break forth, rend- ing with fierce fangs the level meads of fruitful Sicily." Nor is Pindar less in sympathy with gen- tler aspects of natural beauty. In the fragment of a dithyramb he speaks of the season " when the chamber of the Hours is opened, and nectar- breathing plants perceive the fragrant spring. Then are the lovely tufts of violets strewn over the divine earth ; then are roses twined in the hair, and voices of songs sound to the flute, and choruses chant of bright-wreathed Semele." 148 PINDAR Those verses may remind us of the goddesses who were often represented as young maidens decking themselves with vernal flowers, — the Charites, or Graces. They are the deities who give all things that can rejoice or refine the human spirit, who lend a crowning charm to victory and festivity, who throw a gentle radiance over every form of art, and who are therefore also goddesses of song, especially of such song as Pindar's. His tribute to the power of music should be associated The Charites With his invocation of the Charites : " II- ymp. Hv.). lygf^JQ^g queens of bright Orchomenus, who watch over the old Minyan folk, hear me, ye Graces, when I pray ! For by your help come all things glad and sweet to mortals, whether wisdom is given to any man, or beauty, or renown. Yea, the gods ordain not dance or feast apart from the majesty of the Graces. The Graces control all things wrought in heaven ; they have set their throne beside Pythian Apollo of the golden bow ; they adore the everlasting godhead of the Olym- pian father." Pindar is never more truly Hellenic than when His views o£ ^^ mingles his celebration of human human life, glory with reminders as to the limit of human destiny. The athlete who has won victory by painful self-discipline, the prince whose victory is an illustration of "wealth set off by virtues," like gold set with gems more precious still, have won a noble reward, a very light of life, which burns most brightly when the poet has given yOVS AND LIMITS OF MAN'S LOT I49 them enduring renown. But they, too, must re- member Nemesis. "No mortal can find a path, by sea or land, to the Hyperboreans : no mortal can climb the brazen sky." " Let a man remem- ■ ber that his raiment is worn on mortal limbs, and that the earth shall be his vesture at the last." "Forecasts of the future are doomed to blind- ness." "The hopes of men are tossed up and down, as they cleave the waves of disappoint- ment." Such sentiments do not, however, cast any prevailing shadow over Pindar's poetry. They serve rather to limit the human horizon, without discouraging effort, or veiling the sun- shine which requites it. Definite as are the bounds of man's lot, he still, as Pindar says, " has some likeness to the immortals, perchance in lofty mind, petchance in form." Pindar has summed up his view in these words : " Things of a day ! what are we .■■ what are we not .' Man is a shadow, a dream. But when the glory of victory has come, the gift of heaven, then a clear light rests on men, and their life is serene." Simonides, in his dirges, seems to have dwelt chiefly on the pathos of death ; Pindar, in the most famous fragment of this class, pictures the bliss of the life in Elysium : " The strength of ^, . •' ^ Elysium. the sun shines for them in that world, while it is night with us; the 'space before their city, amid crimson-flowered meadows, has shade of frankincense trees and wealth of golden fruits. Some of them take their pleasure with horses or IfO - .".V~--^ m fess re srsn|::i,»Bi sicre -nek £5cs. -Ersd : Inreir faad. ^2S dier zrrniri? rrirersr riiaiDiaM isai lie iJTErs cc tie r^cs. -wrrh fir-ssec: r_r^"" OK- Boeiioe 35 ore ;i: tie zr>:sc inre-z-sc- """" exs ™r 5-,- bv rhe terse bri&OKT ci his scyLe, vbkii 5s ofre- zairrelccsiy rSeriresqrae. ir>d Ijnr lie sirr: paeos of dir^ec speech -rilci ssrre r? £ri- ^QSize the steike:^ HIS RELATION TO EPOS If I What could be more graphic, for instance, than the picture of the youthful Jason when he sud- denly appeared in the market-place of lolcus, wear- ing the cloje-fitting dress of a hunter in the Mag- nesian forests, with a leopard's skin over it, while his long bright hair streamed down his back? " He went straight on, and stood in the nurket-place when the crowd was fullest, putting his dauntless spirit to the proof- They knew not who he was ; but one or another of the awe-struck folk was moved to say, ' Surely this is not Apollo, no, nor Aphrodite's lord, of the brazen chariot ; and 't is said that the sons of Iphimedeia have their graves in bright Naxos, even Otus, and thou, bold king Ephialtes, Yea, and Tityos hath fallen by the swift arrow of Artemis, sped from her invincible quiver, that mortals should not long for loves that are beyond their reach,' Thus the people spake to one another," How vivid, again, is the picture of the moment when the ship Argo is about to sail from lolcus, with her crew of heroes, and Jason, at the stern, pours his libation to Zeus, after the weighing of the anchor! "The chief took a golden goblet in his hands, and called on Zeus, whose spear is the , lightning, and on the rushing strength of waves and winds, and on the nights, and the paths of the deep ; and prayed for kindly days, and friendly fortune of return. Then a favoring voice of thunder pealed in answer from the clouds, and bright flashes of lightning came bursting through them ; and the heroes 152 PINDAR were comforted, putting faith in the signs of the god." This, then, is the first distinction of Pindar here, — the force with which he portrays certain mo- ments. The second is the swiftness with which he glides over all those parts of the story which it does not suit him to elaborate;. After the descrip- tion of Jason ploughing with the dread oxen of Aeetes, and how he was shown the place where the dragon guarded the golden fleece, Pindar thus cuts the story short : "Tis long for me to tread the well-worn track ; yea, and I know a speedy path ; I have shown the ways of song to many." Then he suddenly apostrophizes Arcesilas, the prince to whom the ode is addressed, and tells, in only four lines, how Jason slew the dragon, won the fleece, and sailed home with Medea and his comrades. Continuous epic narrative no longer sufficed for Pindar's contemporaries. The men who had lived through the Persian wars, and who took delight in the national games, had a quickened power of imagining strenuous action. The heroes of the past were believed to have mingled with the Greek warriors, and to have aided them in beating back the foe on sea and land. Pindar's age turned to the heroic legends with a desire to seize each par- ticular episode as vividly as possible, and to bring the heroes into a closer relation with its own life. This tendency, of which the fourth > Pythian is the greatest example, can be seen in other odes, VIVID SCEXES FROM THE MYTHS 153 also, where Pindar treats, more briefly, some one situation or incident taken from the legends. Such is the picture of the nymph Cyrene, the warlike huntress in the mountain dells of Pindus, The nymph who, in Pindar's words, "loved not the Cyrme (Pyth. II.). pacings to and fro before the loom." And once, he says, " as she struggled alone, without spear, against a fierce lion, far-darting Apollo, lord of the wide quiver, found her ; and straightway he called Cheiron from his dwelling, and spake unto him : ' Son of Philyra, come forth from thy holy cave, and marvel at the spirit of this woman, and at her great might, — what battle she wages here with intrepid brow, — a maiden with heart too high for toil to quell ; her soul is shaken by no tempest of fear. WTiat man begat her .' From what stock was she reft, to dwell in the secret places of the shadowy hills .' ' " Or, again, take the description of Heracles, as an infant, strangling the serpents which Hera had sent to destroy him and his brother lolaus _ •^ The infaot in their cradle. When the serpents ap- Heracles ^ '■ (Nem. l). pear there is a general panic : Alcraena's handmaids are distracted ; warriors come rushing in with swords. But lo ! " the boy Heracles lifted up his head, and began the fight : he seized the two serpents by their necks in his sure grasp, and, as he strangled them, time forced the breath out of their monstrous forms." Then Amphitryon sends for the seer Teiresias, who prophesies the child's great future : " how many lawless shapes of vio- 1 54 PINDAR lence he should destroy on land and sea ; how he should give to death those hatefuUest of men who walk in guile and insolence ;" and how, at last, for reward of his toils, " he should receive fair Heb^ for his bride, and hold his marriage feast in the house of Zeus, well pleased with that dwelling-place divine." The whole picture of this scene around the cradle is masterly, — the spectators, first terri- fied, and then full of joyful amazement, and the calm prescience of the seer. Not less so is that scene from the later life of Heracles, when he is the guest of Telamon in Aegina, and prays to his Heracles pre- divine father that the wish of Telamon' s rfAjS"'''"'' heart may be granted: " Then Heracles (isthm. V.) stretched forth to heaven his unconquer- able hands, and spake thus : ' O father Zeus, if ever thou hast heard my prayers with willing heart, I pray thee now, even now, with strong entreaty, that thou give this man a brave child of Eriboea, — a son, strong of body, even ^s this lion's hide that floats around me, stripped from the beast that I slew in Nemea of old, first of my labors ; and may he have a soul to match.' When Heracles had so spoken, the god sent forth the king of birds, a mighty eagle, and sweet pleasure thrilled through the hero, and he spake as a prophet speaks : ' Tela- mon, thou shalt have the son whom thou desirest ; and after the name of the bird that has appeared, call him Ajax : great shall be his might, and he shall be terrible in the strife of warring hosts.' " Let us remember that the setting of these pic- HIS AFFINITY TO DRAMA 155 tures is the ode of victory. No other form of Greek poem was so intimately bound up with the energies of the present ; Pindar's verse throbs with all those pulses of Hellenic life pji^^^^^^^i which were stirred by the great festivals. ,^'°hat'o/'""' When the heroes of the past were intro- Auk drama, duced into such an ode ; when they were made, as Pindar makes them, to stand out before the fancy in deed and word, — then the character of the poem itself gave those persons a new meaning. There might be some implied parallelism between the ancient hero and the living victor ; or the as- sociation might be limited to the fact that both were celebrated in the same choral ode. But, in either case, the poetical juxtaposition had a two- fold effect. It threw an ideal light around the living victor ; and it also invested the legendary hero with a new reality. The hero was now drawn within the circle of contemporary interests : those who listened to a choral ode of Pindar, with the Olympian victor whom it glorified present to their eyes, gained a more vivid conception of his heroic prototype. Thus the lyric poetry of Pindar lends a new vitality to the epic tradition. This vivid sympa- thy with heroic action, stimulated by the strug- gles of the present, and yet lifted above it, is the same which received its final expression in the Attic drama. Before Pindar's career was closed Aeschylus had passed away ; Sophocles and Eu- ripides were the rising masters of tragedy. It 156' PINDAR would be misleading to exaggerate the degree of kinship between the spirit of their work and that of Pindar. But, in the sense which has been de- fined, a true affinity exists. Pindar, the greatest of the Greek lyrists, — the most wonderful, per- haps, in lofty power, that the lyric poetry of any age can show, — holds his title to immortality by the absolute quality of his work ; but for the his- tory of Greek literature he has also the relative interest of showing the epic heroes under a new light, — neither that far-off, though clear, light, as of a fair sunset, which the lay of the minstrel shed around them in the palace of Alcinous, nor yet that searching sunshine of noontide which fell upon them in the theatre of Dionysus. VI THE ATTIC DRAMA We have seen how the Dorian choral lyric, as handled by Stesichorus and his successors, had clothed the old epic legends in a new form ; one which was peculiarly congenial to the widely spread Dorian family, but which was welcomed also by Hellenes to whom the spirit of Ionian epos had been either alien or unsatisfying. It was a particular species of the choral lyric which, in turn, became the parent of the Attic Drama, ongin of In drama the heroic myths were once au.c Drama, more animated with a new life, — different from that which had been given to them in Ionia, differ- ent also from the lyric, and yet preserving ele- ments of both. When Aeschylus created Tragedy, he became, for the Athens and the Hellas of his day, truly a second Homer. Drama sprang from the species of lyric poem called the dithyramb. The dithyramb ^^^ ^j^ _ is mentioned first by Archilochus, who ""'': describes it as the " beautiful song of Dionysus," and boasts that he knows how to raise that song when inspired by wine. It appears, then, that the dithyramb was originally a convivial song, defi- nitely associated with the god Dionysus. It may also be inferred that it was originally sung by IS8 THE ATTIC DRAMA one voice; it belonged to the "raonodic " class of lyrics. The Greeks seem to have received the cult of Dionysus from Thrace, a region well known to Archilochus ; and the dithyramb probably came along with the cult. The etymology of the word is unknown. It is conjectured that the first sylla- ble, di, represents the root of Stos, etc. (compare 8iiroA,ta), and that the word "dithyramb" meant a divine or excellent 6vpayu,;8os. The latter word, also in the form dpiaixfios, occurs as the name of a song or dance ; but its origin remains uncertain. A song to the wine-god, sung under his influ- ence, had presumably a wild, impassioned charac- ter, and was accompanied with gesticulation. It would thus have presented a strong contrast to the tranquil and solemn nomas, "nome," chanted to Apollo, with which the improved music of Ter- pander was peculiarly associated. Of the two styles, that which the nome exhibited was the bet- ter suited to the Hellenic nature. The dithyramb, in its original form, would have been less Hellenic than Oriental. It is not surprising, then, that while the nome appears at the beginning of the lyric period, the dithyramb was the- last lyric species which received an artistic development. This development was due to Arion, of Arion. Methymna m Lesbos, who probably be- longed to the Lesbian school of citharodes founded by Terpander. Corinth was the place at which Arion produced his choral dithyrambs ; he had been invited to the court of Periander, who was tyrant ARION AND THE DITHYRAMB Igp of Corinth from about 628 to 585 b. c. A luxuri- ous and pleasure-loving city, Corinth already knew the worship of Dionysus, and was generally well disposed towards novelties of an Oriental char- acter. The chorus which sang a dithyramb was designated in the fifth century as a kvkXlo^ x^P"^' ^ circular chorus, probably because It moved in dance round the circular orchestra, in contradis- tinction to the tragic chorus, drawn up facing the actors. In the time of Simonides the number of such a chorus was fifty, and this number may have dated from Arion. But the work of Arion was not merely to make the dithyramb choral. His chorus, we are told, was composed of satyrs. A ^•l^^^^^ chorus so composed was called a rpayiKos '=''°™=- XopcJs. The word rpayos, " goat," is used by Aeschy- lus in a fragment of one of his satyr plays as a synonym for "satyr." Such "goat" or "satyr" choruses had existed in the Peloponnesus before Arion's time. At Sicyon, about 600 b. c, they pertained to a festival in honor of the hero Adras- tus ; and Cleisthenes, who was then tyrant of Sicyon, is said to have transferred them from the cult of Adrastus to the cult of Dionysus. The words in which Herodotus relates this (v. 6j) im- ply that, in his belief at least, the satyr chorus had previously belonged to the cult of Dionysus, and that Cleisthenes was merely vindicating the right of the deity to an honor which had been tempo- rarily alienated from his worship. When Arion formed his dithyrambic chorus of satyrs, he was l6o THE ATTIC DRAMA assigning the song of Dionysus to specially appro- priate performers, who stood in a recognized re- lation to that god. And he was also making the performance something more lively, more charac- teristic, than an ordinary choral song. Still, there was nothing as yet properly dramatic in such an entertainment. The dithyrambic chorus, performed by satyrs, came to Athens during the brilliani reign of Peisistratus, about the middle of the sixth cen- tury. At this period thf^ cult ol Dionysus had already gained a strong hold upbn Attica. Peisis- tratus favored a popular and growing taste by The Great- establishing a nqw festival of the god, Dionysia. morc Considerable than any which then existed, — the Great Dionysia, cele,brated in the later spring, towards the end of March. The dithyrambic chorus was now added to the regular attractions of this festival, n^. The next step towards the creation of drama ^, . was that which is associated with the Thespis. name of Thespis. At the Great Dio- nysia of. 534 B. c, Thespis, in producing a dithy- rambic chorus, came forward as a reciter of verses, addressing his chorus of satyrs, and doubtless per- sonating a satyr himself. The iambic verse had been at home in Attica since Solon's time, and here was a ready-made vehicle for a lively address, humorous or satirical. The satirical iambics of Archilochus and others had furnished models. The new departure thus combined an Ionian ele- FROM THESPIS TO AESCHYLUS l6l ment with the Dorian choral lyric ; and that com- bination was enduring. But even then the enter- tainment fell short of being dramatic. The reciter of verses who addressed the dithyrambic chorus could indeed relate action. But action could not yet be represented as taking place before the eyes of the spectators. In the obscure interval between Thespis and Aeschylus, the most important name is that of Phrynichus. Two of his best-known „, . , •' Phrynichus. pieces were founded upon contemporary events. One of these pieces dealt with the cap- ture of Miletus by the Persians at the close of the Ionian revolt. The other, entitled the Phoenissae, turned upon the battle of Salamis. In each the chorus was, of course, the dominant feature ; the catastrophe was related to them by the single reciter. Aeschylus, born in or about 525 b. c, is sail to have made his first appearance as a Aeschylus. poet about 500 b. c, and to have gained the first prize at the Dionysia some sixteen years later, about 484 b. c. The entertainment which he found existing was such as Thespis had made it, — a goat-song, or "tragedy," which was still essentially lyric, and not yet properly dramatic. Instead of the single reciter, Aeschylus intro-i duced two persons, both, like the single reciter, detached from the chorus. These two persons | could hold a dialogue, and could represent action. By this change, Aeschylus altered the whole char- 1 62 THE ATTIC DRAMA acter of the lyric tragedy, ■ and created a drama. The founder '^'^^ dialoguc between the two actors of Drama. j^q^ bccamc the dominant feature of the entertainment; the part of the lyric chorus, though still very important, had now only a diminished importance. In reading the Frogs of Aristophanes, written Testimony of ^^^7 Y^ars after the death of Aeschylus, Aristophanes. ^^ ggg ]^jg place in Athenian memory. That comedy is an inestimable document, of which the historical value is not impaired by the free play of humor and of fancy; it is nearer, both in time and in spirit, to the age of Aeschylus, and is far more instructive than any other document that we possess. There we catch an echo of the sweet lyrics of Phrynichus, — of those "native wood-notes wild " which he had warbled as if the birds had taught him, — a music dying away in the distance of that century's earliest years, — the lyrics of which elderly men had heard their fathers speak with delight. And there, too, rises before us a living image of the majestic poet who had come after Phrynichus, the poet who, first of the Hellenes, had built up a stately diction for Tragedy, and also invested it with external gran- deur ; the poet who had described the battle of Salamis as he had seen it ; whose lofty verse had been inspired by the wish to nourish the minds of 'his fellow-citizens with ennobling ideals, to make them good men and true, worthy of their fathers and their city ; the poet to whom many an Athe- THE SHAPING OF TRAGEDY 1 63 nian, sick at heart with the decay of patriotism and with the presage of worse to come, looked back, amidst regret for the recent loss of Sophocles and Euripides, as to one who had been not only the creator of the Attic drama, but also in his own person an embodiment of that manly and victori- ous Athens which was forever passing away. Before turning to the individual characteristics of the three tragic masters, it may be Nature of At- well to touch briefly on the nature of '" "°' ^' Attic Tragedy itself, as it was determined in its essential features by Aeschylus. The first point which claims notice is the rela- tion of Attic Tragedy to epos. Aeschylus, or some one who understood him, said that his tragedies were morsels from Homer's great feast. It was Aeschylus who decided, once for all, that the proper and distinctive material of tragedy was to be found in the heroic legends. The Its material. rule did not preclude an occasional ex- ception, such as the Persae, but it was of gen- eral validity, and was maintained as long as Attic tragedy lasted. And it was not an arbitrary rule. The heroic world was that in which, for the Greeks, the deeds and sufferings of humanity were raised to an ideal nobleness, an ideal pa- thos. A Greek who desired that his drama should lift men's minds into that region, — that it should nobly move and nobly teach them, — could go to no other fountain-head than Ho- meric epos. The age of Aeschylus regarded epos 1 64 THE ATTIC DRAMA as history. Later history could also, doubtless, supply tragic themes. The fortunes of the last Lydian king, as Herodotus narrates them, would have furnished such a theme ; what could be more tragic than the fate of Croesus, lured towards the eastern bank of the Halys by a divine voice which he had not understood, and, in his abasement, even under the shadow of death, bringing the lessons of his own destiny home to the mind of his Persian conqueror.' But, in that picture of the past which lived before the imagination of the men who had fought at Salamis, no heroic glory lit up the period between Homer and themselves. Such glory played around the captors of Troy, and a true kinship with those conquerors of Priam was felt by the conquerors of Xerxes ; but if Attic Tragedy was not to idealize the heroism which the contemporaries of Aeschylus had enacted, then it must go back to the heroism which the traditions of their ancestors had consecrated. The limits of epos — not absolutely of its actual themes, but at least of its spirit — were the limits of Attic Trag- edy ; the essence of that Tragedy was in viewing the heights of the past from the heights of the present, so blending them in a single imaginative view that the heroic past became, in very truth, the present. And this brings us to another point which Its didactic should be remembered. Modern criti- SS^tel"''"'" cism, introspective and analytic, has pondered particular sayings of Aeschy- MATERIAL AND SPIRIT OF TRAGEDY 165 lus, Sophocles, Euripides ; it has brought these sayings together, arranged them under heads, di- gested them into formulas, linked them by ingen- ious reconciliations, until, for each of the three dramatists, it has evolved a certain body of philo- sophy or theosophy. Such efforts have an inter- est and a value of their own. But the artificial method involves a danger of representing the thought of these poets as more systematic than it really was. When Aeschylus, for instance, took a subject from the heroic epos, and made it into a play or a trilogy, his paramount aim was to present his story in the most effective and vivid manner, — that which seemed to him most beauti- ful and most impressive. He was a poet and an artist moved by the god to give dramatic embodi- ment to those great forms, — human, but raised above common humanity, — from whom the Hel- lenes traced their lineage, and through whom their lineage ascended to the gods of their race. Stirred by that great endeavor, he poured forth the deepest thoughts and feelings which his life had bred in him ; yes, and felt himself called to be a teacher — -to move the minds and nourish the hearts of his people. But these thoughts and sentiments, which he uttered as the course of the drama suggested, do not warrant the assumption that the poet had a definite and coherent system.of doctrine in his mind. If, for example, Aeschylus could be examined on his views of the relations between fate and free will, modern criticism would 1 66 THE ATTIC DRAMA possibly find his answers vague and unsatisfac- tory — far less ingenious, too, than the answers which moderns have devised on his behalf. As for the Athenian spectators in the theatre, they went to see the heroes in bodily presence, and to hear their living voices ; they went to see what Aeschylus would make Agamemnon do and say. They looked also to hear wise thoughts from actors or from chorus, and they welcomed such wisdom, which worked upon them mainly by deep- ening beliefs with which they were already im- bued. Each of the great dramatists colored the collective experience of Hellenes with his own views of life, and gave prominence to certain thoughts of his own ; but, in so far as Attic Trag- edy was directly didactic, the larger part of what it did consisted in clothing received Hellenic max- ims with forms of new energy and beauty. A third point which is of some moment, if ^ ., we wish to apprehend the spirit of Attic Its portraiture ^ ^ ^ o£ character. Tragedy, is the general nature of the character-drawing. It is a familiar observation that the characters of Attic Tragedy are rather types than individuals : and this is true in a rela- tive sense ; it is true for us, who are accustomed to a portraiture of character more minute, fuller of individualizing touches, than any which Attic Tragedy attempted. Our standard, in dramatic portraiture, is the Shakespearian ; the Aeschylean Clytaemnestra might be described as typical rather than individual, in comparison with Lady TRAGIC CHARACTER-DRAWING 1 6/ Macbeth ; so might the Sophoclean Oedipus, in comparison with Lear. Nevertheless, when we study Clytaemnestra or Oedipus, we feel not only the breadth and vividness of the poetical concep- tion, but also the number of fine touches by which the effect has been aided. In speaking of "types," then, we must guard against seeming to mean that Clytaemnestra was to Aeschylus, or Oedipus to Sophocles, merely the abstract representative of a certain genus. Each of them was, to the creator, a living individual, definitely and vividly conceived ; only the ideal aim of Attic Tragedy imposed a certain restraint upon details, when this individual was to be presented in action and speech. Here, once more, it is the relation of Attic Tragedy to epos that gives us the right gauge. Epos was narrative, dealing with a large compass of material. The conditions of such nar- rative seldom permitted the epic poet to elaborate pictures of character. The most highly individual- ized persons of Homeric epos are perhaps Zeus and Hera, whose domestic dissensions are favor- able to that result ; then Achilles and Odysseus ; and then perhaps Nausicaa. But these are excep- tional ; most of the epic characters are hardly more than adumbrated. Attic Tragedy received its persons from epos, with only a few salient traits prescribed, — sometimes scarcely even so much. Within these mere outlines, the charac- ters were, as a rule, created by the Attic drama- tists themselves. Each dramatist could use his 1 68 THE ATTIC DRAMA own discretion ; he was not even bound to be consistent with himself ; the Creon of the Oedipus Tyrannus is different from the Creon of the Colo- neus ; so is the Helen of the Helena from that of the Orestes. Still less did one dramatist feel bound by another's conception ; witness the Elec- tra pf Sophocles and the Electra of Euripides. But when the creative period of Greek poetry was closed ; when the literary poets of a later age, Greek or Roman, looked back on the Attic drama as a whole ; then it was recognized that th& heroic persons had there been delineated once for all. The characters as drawn in Attic Tragedy were for these later writers the standard conceptions. Clytaemnestra, Oedipus, and the rest had received from the Attic dramatist certain attributes which thenceforth adhered to them. Horace reminds us of this in the Ars Poetica ; and Seneca's plays practically illustrate Horace. Thus Attic Tragedy became to the later literature nearly what epos had been to Tragedy. Epos had prescribed out- lines which Tragedy had filled in, — observing, while it did so, the limitations imposed by the first law of its being, its ideal scope ; and these characters became traditional, — without receiv- ing, however, any further development comparable with that which Tragedy had effected. Remembering these general qualities of Attic Tragedy, we may next consider the par- Distinctive ° . traits of the ticular Stamp impressed upon it by each three masters. * ■' of the great mastexs. Among the seven AESCHYLUS 1 69 extant plays of Aeschylus, the oldest is the Sup- plices, which has been conjecturally Aeschylus. placed a year or two before the battle of Marathon. Whatever its precise date may be, it undoubtedly has the interest of showing us the creator of Tragedy at a comparatively early mo- ment in his career ; as the Oresteia, near the end of his life, shows us the climax of his achievement. When the work of Aeschylus is viewed in regard to its form, the first broad characteristic which claims notice is his treatment of the „. , His use of Chorus. In the Supplices, the Chorus '^e chorus, is the true protagonist. We are reminded of the time, ther^ recent, before Aeschylus had intro- duced the second actor, when Tragedy had been essentially lyric. And in that choral ode of the Supplices which invokes blessings upon Dorian Argos, there is a significant reference to Dorian lyric poetry, as composed, in various kinds, for public ritual ; " May the singers raise holy song at the altars, and may the chant, wedded to the harp, be poured from pure lips." The Danaides, who form the Chorus of the Supplices, were regu- larly represented as fifty in number ; and it is not improbable that, in this play, the Chorus consisted of fifty persons, — the number, as we have seen, of the cyclic or dithyrambic Chorus. The chorus of only twelve, used in the later plays of Aes- chylus, — representing roughly one quarter of the cyclic Chorus, — may have come in along with the tetralogy, presumably his invention. In no other I70 THE ATTIC DRAMA play is the Chorus quite so important as in the Supplices ; yet in each of the other six, besides bearing a large part, it has also a real share in the action. Thus in the Prometheus the Ocean Nymphs are not merely the comforters of the sufferer, who remain with him throughout ; at the end they defy the Olympian threats, and resolve to share his doom. The Persian Elders in the Persae represent the nation smitten at Salamis, and interpret the effect of the battle upon Asia. In the Seven against Thebes the Theban maidens are so closely interested in the events that at the end they even divide into two factions, one siding with Antigone and, the other with Ismene. The Elders of Mycenae in the Agamemnon are outspoken opponents of Clytaem- nestra and Aegisthus. In the Choephori the Chorus of captive maidens assist the vengeance ; and the Eumenides, in the play called after them, have a part second only, if second, to that of Orestes. As a lyric poet, in his choral odes, Aeschylus His style in ^^^ ^ strongly -marked style, which must lyncs. ^g recognized as altogether his own ; the history of the choral lyric, so far as we know, shows nothing resembling it as a whole, nor is there anything like it in the later dramatists. A typical example of this style is afforded by the first two odes, in the Agamemnon. We find there three principal characteristics. First, there is an epic tone, Homeric in its nobleness, and accord- AESCHYLUS i/l ant with the hexameter rhythms which are so largely used ; Homeric also in the variety and vivacity given to the narrative by short speeches like those of Calchas and Agamemnon. Secondly, the lyric expression is boldly imaginative, in a manner which sometimes recalls Pindar ; thus there is a Pindaric rapidity in the succession of images and metaphors. Thirdly, there is an ele- ment of reflection, not practically sententious or didactic, as with Pindar, but rather the outcome of a deeply-brooding mind, with a mystic tinge. The lofty language in which these three qualities are blended exhibits varying harmonies between form and matter. At one moment it has the vigorous directness of Homeric narrative. At another it labors with the stress of conflicting thoughts, as in the verses which picture the anguish of Agamemnon. Or solemn emphasis and intense earnestness are expressed by a cumu- lative weight of phrase, as in the warning of Calchas, — fjLLfjLVU yap <^o;8epa waXtVopTos oiKOi/o/tos SoXi'a fivafumv /J.^vi's TCKVOTroivos. Again, plastic beauty and human pathos are marvellously united in the description of Iphige- neia, about to die at the altar, and in the pas- sage picturing the desolation of Menelaus. It is needless to multiply illustrations from other plays ; but we might mention the two odes of benedic- tion — that of the Danaides for Argos and of the Eumenides for Athens — as examples of a gentle 172 THE ATTIC DRAMA lyric charm : and, as marking the height of sub- limity, that ode in which the Eumenides describe their own nature and office. As in the lyrics of Tragedy, so also in dialogue. His SI le in *^^ stylc of Acschylus is distinctive, dialogue. pje ^g^g jjQ^^ indeed, the first who had lent dignity and beauty to the measures which tragic dialogue employs. Nearly two hundred years earlier, Archilochus had given a majestic rhythm to the trochaic tetrameter. A century before Aeschylus, Solon had written iambic tri- meters, among which there are at least some lines not unworthy of Aeschylus himself. But it re- mained for the mighty spirit of Aeschylus to give the iambic trimeter a sustained grandeur which it had never possessed before. His style is always the grand style ; yet it is not monotonous. He can use iambic verse with equal mastery for terse and vigorous narrative, as in describing the battle of Salamis ; for declamation, as in the brilliant rhetoric of Clytaemnestra, or the stately oration of Athena ; for concentrated invective, as when Apollo drives the Furies from his temple ; for keen controversy, as in the trial of Orestes ; or for descriptive passages of tranquil beauty, as when Prometheus depicts the change which he had wrought on the primitive life of mankind. Towards the end of the fifth century b. c, it be- came the fashion of a new school to censure Aes- chylus as bombastic. The extant plays do not justify the charge. They rather illustrate the AESCHYLUS 173 phrase applied to him by the Aristophanic cho- rus in the Frogs. He has the -yiyyeves ^iVry/ua, the breath of a Titan ; his strength sustains his gran- deur; he is often exuberant, but seldom turgid. In the general view of the ancient world, Aes- chylus was the supreme representative indent view of dramatic inspiration, an inspiration "£ ^is genius, sometimes too stormy and vehement to obey the law of the best art. This feeling is crudely ex- pressed in the tradition preserved by Athenaeus, that Aeschylus wrote under the stimulus of wine, and by the saying ascribed (falsely, we may well believe) to Sophocles, that Aeschylus did right, but without knowing why. The author of the treatise on Sublimity attributed to Longinus simi- larly qualifies his estimate of the poet's genius. To a modern mind, the most striking attribute of Aeschylus is the lofty force of his ere- His creative ative imagination. In the Eumenides, ■"•ag'"""'"- for instance, every reader is aware of this, and yet it is not easy for even the most appreciative modern student to realize all that such an achieve- ment signified. The Olympian gods and goddesses were clearly defined forms, stronger and more beau- tiful men or women. But there were other super- natural beings whom the Greeks preferred to leave in a reverent obscurity ; and of all such the most appalling were the Erinyes. To call those dread powers forth from the valley of the shadow into the open light of day, to clothe them in a visible shape, to show them in the very exercise of their 174 THE ATTIC DRAMA awful prerogatives, announcing their own name, and asserting their office as avengers of blood, — this was a thing which, among Greeks, only an imagination of supreme boldness could have con- templated, and only an imagination of transcendent power could have accomplished. Hardly less bold, and not less wonderful, is the feat achieved in the Prometheus. The only human person in that play is lo, whose destiny separates her from ordinary humanity. The other persons are Prometheus, sprung from the race of the Titans who had warred against Zeus, but himself one whose wisdom had helped to establish the new ruler's throne in heaven ; Oceanus, the earth-gir- dling god of waters, borne through the air by a winged creature to the Scythian wilderness where Prometheus is chained to storm-beaten cliffs ; the Ocean-Nymphs, daughters of Oceanus and Tethys ; the god Hephaestus, whose satellites. Strength and Force, aid him in executing the divine sentence ; and Hermes, the messenger from Olympus. In the drama which Aeschylus has made with such beings, there is the sustained elevation which such a theme required; but there is also — and it is the combination which is so peculiarly Hellenic — a simplicity, a natural directness, which completes the triumph. The imaginative surroundings of the action are given with equal skill. There is no set description, but a few hints or passing touches call up a picture of the region in which Prometheus suffers, — the sky above, the boundless sea far off AESCHYLUS 175 below, the desolate summits of the Caucasus be- tween them ; the frosty starlight of the nights, which only varied the torments of the victim ; the driving snow, the raging wind, the thunderstorm and the earthquake. Vast and weird as is the vision, it is presented with Hellenic clearness of outline, with Hellenic obedience to the sense of measure and harmony. In his principal human characters, Aeschylus ex- hibits the same creative force. Clytaem- nestra is born whole from his brain ; she ception of character. becomes known through her deeds and words, till her presence can be felt ; she acquires an atmosphere. How wonderfully her speech of welcome to Agamemnon, with its winding and glit- tering coils of rhetoric, makes us apprehend the hidden steadiness of her deadly purpose ! And with what terrible reality does her exultation burst forth after the murder, in a series of short, sharp sentences, when she stands before the elders of Mycenae, telling them how the blood upon her robe has freshly spurted from her husband's death- wound, and how she rejoices in it, as a cornfield in the rains of spring ! She is not merely the para- mour of Aegisthus ; she is the agent of the Erinys, who punishes Agamemnon for the slaughter of Iphigeneia. When she protests her confidence in the future, this is the sanction of her vow: "by the justice that has avenged my daughter, by Ate, and by the Fury, the powers to whom I have slain this man." 176 THE ATTIC DRAMA Like Clytaemnestra, each of the greater Aeschy- lean persons has an organic unity, shown Reference . . i 1 » r' for action in action cvcn more than through fine touches of self-revealing speech. Uni- versally, Aeschylus prefers action to speech, where it is possible ; in this direct sense he is the most dramatic of the dramatists. The part of the Mes- senger is less indispensable to him than to his suc- cessors. No messenger relates the murder of Aga- memnon ; it is the dying man's shriek, heard by the chorus from within, that announces the fulfil- ment of Cassandra's vision. Action, not merely ex- planatory dialogue or formal prologue, is his favor- ite opening for a play : the beacon flashes on the watcher's gaze at Mycenae ; the Pythia finds the Eumenides in the temple, and the ghost of Cly- taemnestra breaks their slumber. In his theology, as in all else, Aeschylus is a Hellene of the Hellenes : he is no mono- His theology. . , • 1 i i -i 1 theist, yet he might be described as a monarchist in religion. Zeus is to him emphati- cally the king of the gods. His Olympus is a firmly ruled monarchy ; for in the divine govern- ment of the world he finds a steadiness which im- plies unity of control ; and, to the anthropomorphic mind, this unity again implies a Supreme person. Behind and above Zeus himself is Fate. Zeus, says the Aeschylean Prometheus, is not the pilot of Necessity. But we must recollect that Greek polytheism had its historical perspective. The dynasty of Zeus had succeeded to older dynasties. AESCHYLUS 1/7 At the time when Prometheus spoke, Zeus was new to power ; Prometheus himself had helped to give him the victory, and Zeus was showing a kind of Olympian arrogance ; his new throne might still, in the workings of Fate, be shaken. This is, in fact, part at least of the answer to the problem which the Prometheus raises ; there had been faults on the side of Zeus no less than on the other, and therefore there was a ground of compromise. But such a danger for Zeus belonged to the remote past. Aeschylus would have allowed that a col- lision between Zeus and Fate was conceivable in the abstract, but would have denied, probably, that such a conflict lay any longer within the horizon of human religion. Zeus represents, for Aeschy- lus, the supreme rule of the world, so far as men can form any clear notion of it : — "Zeus, whosoever he be, if this name please his ear. By this name I bid him hear; Nought but Zeus my soul may guess, i6o^ff,',' trans. Seeking far and seeking near, ty Ernest Seeking who shall stay the stress Of its fond and formless fear." And then follows an allusion to those two rulers who had preceded Zeus, namely, Uranus and Cro- nus : — " For he who long ago was great, Filled with daring and with might, Now is silent, lost in night ; And the next who took his state Met his supplanter too, and fell, and passed from sight." To the mind of Aeschylus, who had seen the over- 1/8 THE ATTIC DRAMA throw of the Persian host, the divine judgment upon the violators of Hellenic shrines, Zeus was present not only as the god now established in supreme sway, but also as one who, in a far-off past, had striven against enemies, prevailed over competitors, beaten down the insolence of the earth-born. Among the moral ideas which Aeschylus con- nects with religion, the dominant one Retribution. . . - t . • . i • « / IS simple. It is the maxim, Spaa-avn nadfiv, the belief that sin must be expiated by suffering. Zeus has shown men the way to wis- dom ; he has ordained that by suffering men shall learn. " Know this for thy children and thy house : as thou buildest, such in time shall be thy recompense." This idea takes a more The trans- complcx form in the doctrine of the mitted curse, hereditary curse, the Erinys of the fam- ily. Laius, for instance, wrongs Pelops, and Pe- lops curses the race of Laius. Oedipus, the son of Laius, inherits that curse ; but an act of his own is required to call the Erinys into activity, and Oedipus unwittingly commits parricide and incest. Eteocles, the son of Oedipus, in turn sins against his father, and becomes subject to the curse. There is an element of mystic fatalism here, residing in the notion that a curse upon a whole race, once heard by the gods, will insure each successive generation acting in such a man- ner as to continue the operation of the Erinys. Aeschylus, we may suppose, simply accepted this AESCHYLUS 1/9 belief. It is not probable that he had attempted to effect in his own mind any logical reconciliation between destiny and free will, much less that he could have stated any theory which would have stood the criticfsm of modern thought. This must remain a matter of speculation ; but it is interest- ing to observe that as a poet he was unquestion- ably influenced by his creed of retribution for sin, and more particularly by the doctrine of the trans- mitted curse, in respect to his form of dramatic composition. Welcker distinguishes two kinds of trilogy used by Aeschylus. One is the fable-trilogy, in which the three plaj's are three successive chapters of one story, as the Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenides. The other is the theme-trilogy, in which the bond between the pieces is merely that of some general idea ; thus the Supplices, according to Welcker, belonged to a trilogy in which the connecting idea was that of Hellenic victory over the barbarian. The evi- dence for the theme-trilogy is somewhat shadowy, but there is no doubt that the fable-trilogy was the form which Aeschylus, presumably its creator, made distinctively his own. Xow, the fable-trilogy was evidently a congenial mode of composition for a dramatist whose imagination was so spacious, who loved to express character by great strokes of action, and whose sympathy with the genius of Homeric epos was so profound ; but the fable- trilogy was also peculiarly suitable for the pur- pose of tracing the process by which, in the divine l8o THE ATTIC DRAMA counsels, sin is followed, soon or late, by suffer- ing ; above all, when the aim of the poet was to show how the dread influence of the avenging Fury, once established over a guilty house, de- scends from generation to generation. From the founder of Tragedy we may now turn Sophocles: *° ^^^ P°^^ ^^^ marks a further stage his happy life, jn its development. Sophocles was born in or about 496 b. c, being thus some twenty-nine years younger than Aeschylus. The ancient Greek world can show no other man. in whom all the ele- ments of good fortune, as a Greek conceived them, were united as they were in Sophocles. The gods, whom he loved and who loved him, gave him phys- ical beauty ; rare genius ; a suiificiency of wealth ; victories at the Dionysia, dating' from his first appearance as a competitor, and lasting down to the end of a long life ; distinction in the service of his country ; the afTection of his fellow-citizens, won by his character no less than by his achieve- ments ; an honored old age, in the full vigor of his faculties ; and a death which came at last oppor- tunely, for by a few months only he was spared hearing that cry, the dirge of the imperial city, raised in the Peiraeus and caught up from point to point through the line of the Long Walls, which announced the overthrow at the Hellespont ; he was spared the sight of Athens besieged by a Peloponnesian fleet, and finally occupied by a Spartan garrison. Aeschylus had long ago died SOPHOCLES l8l in Sicily ; Euripides had found a grave in Macedo- nia ; but Sophocles was laid to rest in his native land : and although embittered enemies were then established on Attic soil, their outposts respect- fully opened a passage to the sad procession which moved along the road from Athens towards Deceleia, bearing the last of the great poets to the sepulchre of his fathers. A contemporary could thus sum up his life : — " Thrice happy Sophocles ! In good old age, Blessed as a man, and as a poet blessed. He died ; his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end ; nor knew he any sorrow." The most important change made by Sopho- cles in the form of Tragedy consisted -i-jj^,^;,^ in raising the number of actors from ^"°''- two to three. This was an innovation which Aes- chylus could adopt, as in the Oresteia, without affecting the quality of his work ; but in the hands of Sophocles the change had large consequences. These cannot be understood until we have first considered the differences of thought concerning men and gods which separate Sophocles from Aeschylus. Here lies the root of the difference between the types of drama which they created. Aeschylus had vindicated the ways of heaven to men by insistence upon the great Ethical and law which he regarded as all-pervading ; ^|^"|^°"j when a man suffers, it is a divine neme- sophocies. sis upon sin. Zeus steadfastly upholds Righteous- ness. If you cannot discern how a sufferer has 1 82 THE ATTIC DRAMA offended, or if his punishment seems too great for his offence, then go further back ; search the his- tory of his family ; it will be found that somewhere there has been a sin. Thus the belief in destiny helped out the doctrine of retribution. Aeschylus put some strain on the facts of human experience, but at any rate he saved the justice of Zeus. Sophocles surveyed the spectacle of life with less prepossession and with a more tender sympathy. He was, like Aeschylus, a pious believer in the traditional rehgion of the Hellenes ; but he held it in a form nearer to the received popular form than did Aeschylus. Zeus is not so steadily or uniformly paramount with Sophocles as he is with the elder poet. Apollo is often in the fore- ground, not as a mere mouthpiece of Zeus, but sometimes as a dispenser of good or ill. Athena, in the exercise of her own power, inflicts the chastisement upon Ajax. The idea of the heredi- tary curse is not strange to Sophocles ; he sees it at work in the house of Pelops, in the house of Lab- dacus ; but he makes it a less prominent agency than it is made by Aeschylus ; it is enough to com- pare the Oedipus Tyrannus with the Seven against Thebes. As a rule, the Sophoclean person sufEers either for what he himself has done — as Ajax for contempt of Athena — or else, being innocent, he suffers for no intelligible reason which the poet can assign, as Philoctetes does. The human lot is narrowly limited, and if a mortal trespasses on the limit, the jealousy of the gods will swiftly SOPHOCLES 183 smite him. But more than this, Sophocles the fortunate can declare that never to be born is the best lot, and the next best, to die as soon as may be after birth. Life is the shadow of a vapor, and old age is misery. In a word, Sophocles is profoundly impressed with the v\?oes of humanity, — woes which may be due to no fault of a man's own. Yet he firmly believes in the goodness and justice of the gods. He does not fall back on a half-mystic doctrine of nemesis. He leaves the problem unsolved. But he contributes at least one inestimable thought towards its solution. He . teaches that suffering is not necessarily an evil. Suffering may educate and ennoble the character, as in the case of Oedipus. It may bring the vic- tory of a cause which the sufferer prizes above life, as in the case of Antigone. Or, even if there can be nothing of comfort or compensation for the individual victim, his suffering may still have been ordained, in the hidden wisdom of just gods, for the good of mankind. Sophocles has been described, in well-known words, as one " who saw life steadily, and saw it whole." Those words, true of his dramatic art, are equally true of his religious and moral ideas. He saw the evil and sorrow that are in life as part of a divine scheme, which may, indeed, appoint such discipline for the good of the individual, but which also sub- ordinates the welfare of the individual to the wel- fare of the race. How, then, did such thoughts influence the work 1 84 THE ATTIC DRAMA of Sophocles as a dramatist ? Aeschylus, with a Influence of grandcur and a breadth akin to those of Jponiit^^ heroic epos, showed the heroes in the ""■ great outlines of their action, fulfilling the destiny appointed for them by Zeus, and illus- trating the eternal law of Righteousness. Sopho- cles believed not less in the fixity of the divine law ; but he dwelt on less simple forms of its opera- tion : when he contemplated human passions and sufferings, he felt the apparent contradictions to divine goodness, though his faith in that goodness was profound. Hence his human sympathy on the one side and his piety on the other conspired to interest him in character, in the motives and feelings of men, in the influences which they exert over each other, and in the effects upon them of the divine discipline. Here he saw the best hope of resolving the apparent discords. The chief formal change which he made in Tragedy aided him in working out this tendency of his mind. A third actor made it possible to exhibit the interaction of human motives with greater subtlety and fullness. The dialogue now became still more important than Aeschylus had made it. The Chorus lost nothing of its value in the lyric province ; but it ceased to take so active a part in the drama. The trilogy remained the usual, if not the imperative, form of tragic pro- duction. But Sophocles usually dispensed with a link of story between the three plays. Here, again, his distinctive aim interprets his practice. SOPHOCLES 185 In an Aeschylean trilogy, such as the Oresteia, the unity of the trilogy supersedes that of the single play. Sophocles prefers a more limited framework, within which the finer touches of ethical portraiture can be appreciated. Plutarch briefly notices three stages of develop- ment through which the manner of So- phocles had passed, and ascribes the periods of account to the poet himself. What his "^^'^°' authority may have been, we do not know. But the three stages are in themselves probable, and part, at least, of the development can be traced in the extant plays. In the first stage, Sophocles is said to have imitated the grandeur of Aeschylus. The phrase used by Plutarch implies that in this grandeur the younger poet came to feel something crude and immature. There is other evidence besides this for the tradition that Sophocles, while regarding Aeschylus as a sublimely in- spired poet, was conscious of his own superiority as an artist. The second stage in his style was marked, according to Plutarch, by a certain arti- ficiality ; — by elaborate art which had not yet mas- tered the secret of concealing itself. In his third and final phase, Sophocles had perfected and mellowed the best style for the dramatic expres- sion of character. The final goal here indicated, as that towards which the poet's whole develop- ment had moved, is certainly the true one ; the fine delineation of human character in action was the supreme and distinctive excellence of 1 86 THE ATTIC DRAMA Sophocles. It cannot be said that in the extant plays there is any trace of the first, or Aeschy- lean phase. But when the Antigone, produced probably in 441 b. c, is compared with the Phi- loctetes, produced thirty-two years later (in 409 B. c), we can discern some traces of a progress from the second phase to the third. The por- traiture of character in the Antigone is, indeed, already consummate. But the style of compo- sition is slightly more artificial than in the Phi- loctetes ; and the Antigone, though probably the earliest of the extant plays, was produced when the poet was at least fifty-five, and when he had been at work for twenty-seven years. If we possessed plays written before the Antigone, and belonging to the period from 468 to 441 b. c, the steps of the progress could doubtless be more clearly traced. In a Sophoclean tragedy there is always some Character- Central Issue, so contrived as to probe Sophoclean "^^ depths of character in the principal '''°>'' agents. In the Antigone, for example, it is the conflict between the resolve of Antigone to obey the unwritten law of the gods by burying her brother, and the resolve of Creon to enforce his own edict against the burial. And it is the poet's strong grasp of this situation which gives a vital unity to the whole drama. The issue is set forth in a conversation between Antigone and her sister Ismene, with which the play begins. This is the type of opening adopted by Sophocles SOPHOCLES 187 in all the extant plays ; for the Trachiniae is not really an exception, although the speech with which Deianeira opens it so far resembles a pro- logue of Euripides as to be historical. These initial conversations, it should be observed, do not merely explain the situation from which the action starts ; they also illustrate the character of some principal person — as that of Antigone. The march of a Sophoclean drama corresponds with the strength and clearness of the central conception ; it never halts, though its course is diversified by variety of incident. Thus in the Antigone we have the scenes between Creon and the guard set to watch the corpse ; between Creon and his son Haemon, who intercedes for Antigone; between Creon and the prophet Teire- sias, who foretells the divine wrath. Every occurrence, every speech, contributes to the dra- matic progress ; at every step the tragic interest rises towards the climax. The Chorus The directly assists this progress ; not in- sophociean ,,..., . Chorus. deed, as a rule, by sharmg m the action, but by attuning the thoughts of the spectators to successive moods in sympathy with the action of the play. Thus in the Antigone the subjects of the six choral odes are, the past peril of Thebes from the Argive allies of Polyneices ; the audacity of man, as illustrated by the un- known breaker of Creon's edict, who has given burial to Polyneices ; the power of love, as shown by Haemon's intercession ; the prisons of Danae, 1 88 THE ATTIC DRAMA Lycurgus, and Cleopatra, as compared with the rock-tomb which awaits Antigone ; and the bene- ficence of Dionysus, whom the Chorus, in a brief gleam of delusive hope, summon to share in the anticipated joy of his favorite Thebes. Each of these six themes has a direct bearing on the dramatic moment. The poetry of Sophocles is the expression of a mind in which the happiest natural Sophocles .r,,, . ,,. and the Age gifts had bccn ripened durmg the hap- piest years of Athenian history. It had been the work of Pericles, between 460 and 430 B. c, to realize the essential idea of a Greek city as it had never been realized before. The Athen- ian citizen, rich or poor, could now take his part in the public life of the city without undue sacri- fice of his private interests, and could also par- ticipate in the noblest pleasures of literature and art. Forms of beauty were around him which, in the words ascribed to Pericles, gave a daily delight that banished gloom. Two men who lived in that age are above all others its wit- nesses to the modern world. The mind of Thu- cydides had been moulded by the ideas of Pericles, and doubtless by personal intercourse with him ; the Periclean stamp can be recognized in the clearness with which Thucydides apprehends that the vital thing for a state is less the pattern of its constitution than the spirit in which it is governed. Sophocles, again, as a dramatist, shows the Periclean influence in his manner of investing SOPHOCLES 189 the traditions of Hellenic religion with a higher spiritual and intellectual meaning, and more gener- ally in the harmonious perfection of his poetical art. The artistic side of the Periclean age is indeed represented by the plays of Sophocles in literature, as by the Parthenon in architecture and sculpture. Sophoclean tragedy exhibits the same union of power with purity of taste, the same self-restraint, the same instinct of symmetry, which can still be admired in the remains of the temple. In the poetry, as in the marble, the Athenian spirit shows the fineness to which it could be tempered by the concurrence of those influences and conditions which the age of Pericles had brought together, — a fortunate union which could not have occurred at any earlier moment, and which, when these few years had passed, was never repeated. The greatness of Sophocles as a poet depends primarily on his greatness as an artist. Among his gifts, those to which he chiefly owes his fame are, his sympathetic insight, his unfailing sense of proportion and harmony, his chastened beauty of workmanship, — in a word, those faculties by which he renders Tragedy a perfect work of ideal art. Aeschylus takes rank, not primarily in vir- tue of such gifts as these, but more distinctively by his sublime imaginative vision. The glory which surrounded Sophocles at Athens for more than sixty years attests the high level of mental cultivation and of artistic feeling which then pre- igo THE ATTIC DRAMA vailed among Athenians, — not among a select few only, but in those audiences of twenty thou- sand or more which filled the theatre at the Dionysia. It is not to be expected that modern readers generally should appreciate Sophocles so readily as Aeschylus. With modern readers, Aeschylus has, to begin with, one momentous advantage ; there is a strain in his poetry, due to his doctrine concerning the divine vindication of righteousness, which gives him some measure of resemblance to a Hebrew prophet. Sophocles, on the other hand, subjects the modern mind to the severest test of a capacity for appreciating the purely Hellenic spirit in its highest form. The degree in which a modern enjoys Sophocles is not necessarily a measure of his feeling for poetry ; but it may fairly be taken as a measure of his sympathy with the finest qualities of the Athenian genius. The third master of Attic Tragedy must be reserved for separate treatment. VII THE ATTIC DRAMA {continued) The victory at Salamis, in which Aeschylus took part as a soldier, and which Sopho- Euripides. cles, as leader of the boy-chorus, helped to celebrate, marks the birth-year of Euripides. Like Aeschylus, he competed for the tragic prize at the age of twenty-five, but had to wait many years before he gained it. His first success was in 441, when he was thirty-nine ; and in a career of nearly half a century that success was only four times repeated. To the end of his days he was the butt of Attic Comedy, which, besides ridi- culing his plays, propagated all manner of stories concerning his private life. He was a lonely man, a student and a thinker, who lived in seclusion, — a strong contrast, here, to Aeschylus the soldier and Sophocles the man of affairs. It was an old tradition that he had fitted up a place of study in a cave on the shore of Salamis, where he used to work, looking out upon the sea ; and much of his imagery is taken, not indeed from the sea itself, but from the life of seafarers. He was 5 friend of Anaxagoras, to whom he has paid a beautiful tribute (fr. gio, okj3i dramatist, nature of Attic Tragedy, and on the limits which that nature imposed. It is also fraught with the 194 THE ATTIC DRAMA germs of a new drama ; it is the source of influ- ences which proved fruitful in the later literature of antiquity ; it is even a link between the ancient and the modern theatre. But few literary ques- tions are more difficult to estimate fairly than the relation of Euripides to a form of art which he enriched with some of its noblest ornaments, but on which he also impressed tendencies that could lead only to decay and extinction. Tragedy came to Euripides with its general con- Tragedyhad ditions fixed in a manner which he could been ideal. ^^^ attempt to alter. Three actors, a chorus, subject-matter to be taken from the heroic legends, — these were the essentials. Aeschylus and Sophocles, unlike in so much, were alike in this, that to the external traditions of their drama they had added an unwritten law as to its spirit, which they both observed with unwavering con- stancy : it was that the' treatment should be ideal. Agamemnon, for example, was not to be taken out of the heroic atmosphere with which the myth sur- rounded him. He was, indeed, to be made living ; but the life was to be that of a Greek hero, — in other words, of a man belonging to the far- off age when gods mingled in the warfare on the plain of Troy ; a man, moreover, directly descended from Zeus himself. The divine light which played around that age was compatible with the full hu- manity of the heroes, as it is in the Iliad, only the humanity must be noble. That nobleness is inde- pendent of rank or circumstance. The Homeric EURIPIDES 19s swineherd Eumaeus has it as well as Achilles. The necessary minimum of such nobleness might be defined negatively. Persons whose life is placed in the heroic age must not so act or speak as to resemble ordinary men or women of the contem- porary world. If they do so, they may be inter- esting, but they lose their ideal character. By ceasing to be ideal they also become, as heroic persons, less real. Agamemnon, arguing like an astute lawyer or an ingenious demagogue, may be a more familiar type of person, but the illusion that we are listening to the king of Mycenae is ruined. Now Euripides was a poet fertile in ideas, full of views on all the questions of his day, .j.,^^ ^^^^^ — religious, moral, political, social. If he f°'' Euripides, was to write Tragedy, he could only use the heroic myths. Tragedy was an act of worship. He could not be allowed to write a tragedy about Miltiades or Themistocles ; but when he had chosen his \i&- roic dramatis personae, the impulse was irresistible to make these persons the exponents of his teem- ing thoughts on contemporary life. " It was easy enough for Aeschylus," we can imagine him say- ing, "to exclude modern thought ; there were no pressing problems then ; the era of reason had scarcely dawned ; besides his poetical vision, Aes- chylus had only his half-mystic theology, which suited it. It is easy, too, for worthy Sophocles, a pious soul who lives for art, not for philosophy ; but if / am to give the people of my best, — if I 196 THE ATTIC DRAMA am to teach and improve them through my poetry at the Dionysia, — how can I keep within those old limits of conventional utterance ? " So Euripides went to work in his own new His mode of "^^^ ■ The extcnt to which he modern- soivingit. J2e(j the heroes must not be exagger- ated. He observed measure. Still, he intro- duced a most vital change ; he brought the diction and thought of the heroic persons far nearer to that of every-day life ; he added small traits of character, which, in contrast to the finer touches of Sophocles, did not (as a rule) deepen the significance of those persons, but merely made them appear more commonplace. And, pervading his plays, there was what must be called the sophistical strain, most prominent in the Protagorean rhetoric of the debates, where Adyos is pitted against Xdyos, but seen also in the remarks on the gods, or on moral questions. Here the light of common day was let in upon the heroic age, with disastrous results for dra- matic effect. A new treatment of, the Chorus •Y^^ was an inevitable consequence. In this Chorus. respect the difference between Aes- chylus and Sophocles had been less important than the agreement : both had maintained the organic bond between Chorus and dialogue. This was possible, because the animating spirit of their dialogue was one which could be con- tinued in lyric utterance ; it was noble ; it be- longed to the age of the heroes. But after a EURIPIDES 197 dialogue in which two disputants had displayed the latest novelties of rhetorical casuistry, how could a choral ode be in accord with it ? And besides this difficulty, there was a positive mo- tive for a change — the wish for variety. Thus the choral odes of Euripides came to be either wholly irrelevant to the dramatic context, or connected with it only slightly and occasionally. The instinct which told Euripides that the day of Attic Tragedy, as the elder masters had understood it, could not be much prolonged, was a true one ; the signs were around him. But it is a different question, and one not easily answered, how far he actually felt, in his last twenty or thirty years, the pressure of a public demand, which his innovations were designed to meet. It is a significant fact that, in 409 b. c, when the career of Euripides was nearing its close, the Philoctetes of Sophocles gained the first prize. The old style of Tragedy could still hold its own, then, with the public — at least in the hands of Sophocles. But the veteran Concessions poet may have been a favored exception, to popular Certainly there are several features in the work of Euripides which look like concessions to a new popular taste. Foremost among these is his adoption in his lyrics of the musical novel- ties associated with the new dithyrambic school, and especially with Timotheus. The The new general tendency of these was to substi- *^''^''^' tute a florid style, with profuse ornament, for the 1 98 THE ATTIC DRAMA simpler and purer music of the older Tragedy. A step in the same direction was the monody, — a solo sung by an actor, who accompanied it with an expressive dance. Such monodies — called " Cretan " by Aristophanes, since the dance was of Cretan origin — were elements of operatic ballet thrust into Greek Tragedy. Outside of the lyric province, an appeal to popular taste may be surmised in the love of Euripides for Mechanical Startling effccts in the management of the plot. The use of the deus ex ma- china was often, doubtless, merely to cut a knot ; but we may conjecture that it was also popular in itself, as a ghost is always popular on the mod- ern stage. The Euripidean prologue, introducing the spectators to the subject of the play, was again a boon to ignorance or mental indolence. In such particulars, the course' adopted by General scope Eurfpidcs . may havc been prescribed, or of his changes, f^yored, by his audiences. • But the es- sence of his reform, at any rate, had little to do with popular taste. He was not driven to it ; he imposed it. The wit of Aristophanes often packs a great deal of sound criticism into a few words. His Euripides says that, when he received Tra- gedy from Aeschylus, it was plethoric, swollen, and heavy. He treated it for this malady, giving it decoctions which reduced it to a leaner but more healthy state. Then he proceeded to feed it up again, with such a stimulating diet as mon- odies. There is a biting truth in this mockery. EURIPIDES 199 Euripides had to apply the principle of compen- sation. The heroic had to be replaced by the sensational. In attempting to estimate the work of Euri- pides, we must indeed guard against allowing too much weight to the verdict of Attic Comedy ; but neither can we ignore it. It is necessary to apprehend the point of view from which ^ ^ ^ Antagonism this contemporary satire assailed him, oftheComic and the grounds on which it based its unfavorable judgment. If we then proceed to modify that judgment in the light of a larger survey, we shall do so with less fear of erring through modern misconception. The hostility of Aristophanes to Euripides was certainly bitter ; nor can it surprise us, if he believed Euripides to have done all the mischief with which he charges him. But Aristophanes was not the only comic poet who attacked Euri- pides. There was a deeper reason for ^ . '^ intimate this than any individual or personal t^if^ sentiment. Attic Comedy had a natu- ral quarrel with the innovator in Tragedy, and the ground of this lay in its own history. Sicily is one of two regions in which the origin of Comedy is to be sought ; the other is «-r^i T^ • 11' r« • '1 Development Athens. The Dorians, both m bicily of Attic 111 Comedy. and m Greece proper, early showed a bent towards farcical humor ; in the case of the Siceliots, there may have been Italic influences at work, since it has always been an Italic gift to 200 THE ATTIC DRAMA seize those traits of life and character which suit farce and burlesque. At the courts of the Sicil- ian princes such entertainments were welcome. The Dorian Epicharmus, from the SiciHan Me- gara, was the first who developed the ruder farce into a species of dramatic poetry. This was done at Syracuse, where the tragic poets Phrynichus and Aeschylus had been the guests of Hieron ; and Attic Tragedy may have suggested the gen- eral idea of the form which Epicharmus adopted, though he does not seem to have used a Chorus. Athens, during the same period — the first half of the fifth century b. c. — developed a comic drama from a different source. At the Dio- nysia, when the people were assembled to wor- ship the god and to see tragedy, the merry procession called a comus had become a recog- nized feature of the festival. It was at first a voluntary and unofficial affair. One or more troops of men dressed themselves up in mummers' costume, and marched into the sacred precinct to the music of the flute. They then sang a song in honor of Dionysus ; and one of their number addressed the audience in a humorous speech, turning on civic interests and on the topics of the day. The festal procession then withdrew again. The name Comedy, Kco^uSi'a, originally denoted this " Song of the Comus," and was doubtless coined at Athens, on the analogy of tragoedia. About 465 b. c. the comus was adopted into the official programme of the festival : in- ATTIC COMEDY 20I stead of being the voluntary work of private persons, it was now organized with aid from the State. The steps by which a dramatic perform- ance was built up around the comus-song and speech can no longer be traced. But some five and thirty years later, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, Attic Comedy, as we know it, was mature. Tragedy naturally furnished the general model on which the new kind of drama was constructed. This is apparent in the limit placed on the number of actors ; no extant play of Aristophanes requires more than three regular actors, allowance being made for small parts being taken by supernumeraries who were not required to be absolutely mute. But Comedy was connected with Tragedy by much more than this kinship of form. Comedy expressed the frolicsome side of that Dionysiac worship from which Tragedy took its birth. Religion, the religion of Dionysus, was the breath of life to Comedy, not less — perhaps even more — than to her grave sister. It was religion that author- ized the riot of fancy which turns the world topsy-turvy, the jests upon all things Olympian or human, the unsparing personal satire. Let that popular religion once lose its hold, and then, though Tragedy might survive, Comedy, such as Aristophanes wrote, must lose its sacred privileges, and, with them, its reason for exist- ing. By the first law of its being, the Old Comedy was the sworn foe of all things which 202 THE ATTIC DRAMA could undermine the sway of Dionysus, the god who not only inspires the poet, but protects his liberties. And the nearer Tragedy stood to the original form which the Dionysiac cult had given to it, the closer was the kinship which Comedy felt with it. For this reason Aeschylus repre- sents, even better than Sophocles, the form of Tragedy with which the muse of Aristophanes was in spiritual accord ; and Euripides repre- sents everything which that muse abhors. Eu- ripides, who dwarfs the heroic stature, and pro- fanes heroic lips with the rhetoric of the Ecclesia or the law-court; Euripides, with his rationalism, his sophistry, his proclivity to new-fangled notions of every kind — here Comedy, with sure instinct, saw a dramatist who was using the Dionysia against the very faith to which that festival was devoted, and whose poetry was the subtle solvent by which Comedy and Tragedy alike were destined to perish. It was a happy fortune that, before its short life came to an end, the essence of Attic Aristophanes. ^ , r i.i i i Comedy was so perfectly expressed by the great satirist who was also a great poet. The genius of Aristophanes indeed transcends the form in which he worked ; but it exhibits all the varied capabilities of that form. He can denoiJhce a corrupt demagogue or an unworthy policy with a stinging scorn and a force of right- eous indignation which make the poet almost forgotten in the patriot. He can use mockery ARISTOPHANES 203 with the lightest touch. But it is not in denun- ciation or in banter that his most exquisite faculty is revealed. It is rathar in those lyric passages where he soars above everything that can move laughter or tears, and pours forth a strain of such free, sweet music and such ethereal fancy as it would be hard to match save in Shakespeare. A poet who united such gifts brought keen insight and fine taste to the task of the critic. In reading the Frogs, we do not forget that it is a comedy, not a critical essay. And .j.^^ criticism we allow for the bias against Euripides. ™ ""^ ^''°^^- But no careful student of the play can fail to ad- mire how Aristophanes seizes the essential points in the controversy between the two schools of Tragedy. When Aeschylus has said that a poet ought to edify, Euripides rejoins (in effect), "Are you edifying when you'indulge in dark grandilo- quence, instead of explaining yourself in the lan- guage of ordinary humanity .'' " Now observe the rejoinder of Aeschylus. He replies, " Great sentiments and great thoughts are suitably clothed in stately words. Besides, it is natural that the demigods {tov% rjfiiOiov^) should have grandeur of words ; for their clothes are much grander than ours. I exhibited all this properly — and you have utterly spoiled it." Here Aristophanes has put the true issue in a simple form. Aeschylus is right in vindicating his own style, and con- demning his rival's, by an appeal to the nature of his subject-matter. Heroes and demigods 204 THE ATTIC DRAMA ought not to speak like ordinary men. He is right, too, when he enforces his point by referring to the stately costume which he had devised for Tragedy. This was a visible symbol of the limit set to realism. When Aristophanes passes from the ground of art to that of ethics, the justice of his criticism may be less evident to moderns, but here also he is substantially right from the Athenian point of view. His Aeschylus complains that Euripides had sapped the springs of civic manliness, of patriotism, and even of morality. It is true that Euripides, as a dramatic poet, had contributed to tendencies setting in that direction. Homer had been regarded by the Greeks as their greatest teacher, because the heroes were the noblest ideals of human life which they possessed. Aes- chylus and Sophocles, in their different ways, had preserved the Homeric spirit. If the heroes once ceased to be ideals of human life, the ordi- nary Greek of the fifth century had no others. To depose the heroes from their elevation above commonplace humanity was also to destroy an indispensable link between god and man in the popular religion. But that religion was at the root of the Greek citizen's loyalty to the city. In the smaller details of his polemic against Euripides, the comic poet is sometimes ummaiy. 2,Q.vX& and just, somctimcs excessively unfair. We are not here concerned with such details. The broad facts which claim our atten- ARISTOPHANES 205 tion are simply these. Attic Comedy, as such, was the natural foe of a tragic poet like Euripides. Aristophanes clearly understood the artistic limits proper to Attic Tragedy. He clearly saw where and how Euripides had transgressed them ; he also saw that this error of Euripides in art was, for the Athens of his day, inseparable from a bad moral influence. And Aristophanes can sum up his judgment by saying that Euripides, in pur- suing new refinements, had abandoned the great- est things (to. /jLiyia-Ta) of the Tragic Art — as Athens had known it. The very qualities by which Euripides incurred this censure endeared him to later an- „ , . , Populanty of tiquity, both Greek and Roman. As j^^/^p^^^^'." Attic Tragedy perished with Euripides, so the old life of Athens, and of Hellas itself, per- ished only seventy years later. Hellas , ■' ^, ,, . ...... Hellenistic; gave place to Hellenism, a civilization in which Hellenic and foreign elements were min- gled. This later Greek age recognized Euripides as its prophet. He had been before his own time, and therefore he was in harmony with theirs. In touching the deep problems of human de.stiny, he had given utterance to their scepticism, per- plexity, melancholy. In drawing human charac- ter, he had used a thousand subtle touches which every day they could recognize as true, and which they found in no other poet of old Hellas. He delighted them by the bold ingenuity of his plots and by the brilliant beauty of his descriptions. 206 THE ATTIC DRAMA He was with them, too, in their sorrows ; if any one of them had been visited by a cruel reverse of fortune, or by a heart-breaking bereavement, he could find no poet whose sympathy was so human as that of Euripides, or who could so gently unseal the fountain of tears. And there- fore Euripides became indeed their idol. He was the inspiration, and in much the pattern, of the new Attic Comedy. One of its poets, Philemon, exclaims, "If the dead retain their senses, as some say, I would hang myself to see Euripides." At Rome, from the latter part of the third cen- tury B. c. onwards, he was equally wel- come. Ennius translated the Medea; Pacuvius and Attius took him for their chief model. The Parthian Orodes was seeing a performance of the Bacchae, when the actor who was playing Agave produced the gory head of Crassus. Dante, who does not name Aeschylus or Sopho- mediaeval; ^ , ^^ . . , , cles, numbers Euripides among the great poets of Greece. In the period of the Renais- sance Euripides was more popular than either of the elder dramatists. Racine was his disciple ; and his influence predominates in Milton's " Samson Agonistes." It has been his crowning good fortune in modern times that, when a reaction against him came, towards the end of the last century, the reaction was intem- perate. Such excessive disparagement as Schle- gel's elicited a protest from Goethe, who says that it is absurd to deny sublimity to Euripides, LATER ESTIMATES OF EURIPIDES 207 and that " if a modern man must pick out faults in so great an ancient, he ought to do it upon his knees." This is one of those generous outbursts which are sure of applause ; and yet the defense is not relevant. No intelligent criticism would deny that Euripides is sometimes sublime ; he is so, incontestably, in the Bacchae. Nevertheless modern criticism has a right to speak, though it should be reverent. Euripides has qualities which place him among the world's great poets and fully justify all the admiration which he has won from posterity. But these qualities must also be estimated relatively to the form and to the age in which he worked. The conflict of modern judg- ments upon him has arisen in large measure from failing to keep the two points of view distinct. Some of his best plays charm the modern reader, not merely by particular beau- i„,ri„sic ties, but also by unity of effect. Such are Euripkifs the Medea, the Hippolytus, the Ion, the ^="p°"- Bacchae. But it is distinctive of Euripides, as compared with Aeschylus and Sophocles, that the interest of particular passages is usually felt more strongly than the harmony of the whole. There are powerful scenes, which can often be detached. There are ideas, maxims, sentiments, of which it is easy to make an anthology. In an age of intel- lectual and moral unsettlement, a cultivated man who gives a voice to each doubt or emotion as it arises is certain to have the ear of posterity. It is not only in action that history repeats itself. 208 THE ATTIC DRAMA At one point or another, in this phase or that of his reflections, Euripides has a kinship with the troubled spirits of every race and century. Not less universal in its appeal to the modern mind is that gleam of romance which he makes to play, with so strange a beauty, around the shapes of classical mythology. We see it in the story of Phaedra, pining with secret love; in the story of Ion, the young ministrant of the Delphian temple, who comes to learn the secret of his parentage ; in both the plays concerning the fortunes of Iphi- geneia. This tinge of romance is given chiefly by two things, — analysis of the individual's feel- ing, aided by minute portraiture of circumstance, and sudden surprises in the plot, — sometimes through supernatural agency. But a romantic coloring is not the only quality of Euripides in which he might be regarded as a precursor of modern drama. In one play at least, the Bacchae, he shows a sense of natural beauty, lit up by fancy, which no other Greek poet, perhaps, has manifested with equal splendor. The same play is also distinguished from all the other works of its author by profound sympathy with the spirit of the Dionysiac worship. It was written in Macedonia shortly before his death ; and might almost have propitiated Aristophanes himself, who very likely had not seen it when he wrote the Frogs. Euripides was sometimes reproached with the tearful scenes in his plays. His critics called him CHARMS OF EURIPIDES FOR MODERNS 209 maudlin and effeminate. He has made a good answer, and it is curiously modern. The dis- guised Orestes is deeply moved by the plight in which he finds his sister Electra. As he is supposed to be a stranger, he feels it necessary to make some excuse for his emotion, lest it should surprise her. " Pity," he says, " nowhere dwells with ignorance, but with the wise among men ; for indeed the wise have to pay a price for their advantage in wisdom." " Wise," " wisdom," here refer to mental cultivation. He means that sensibility to the sight of suffering is the proof, and the penalty, of mental refinement. There is yet another trait in the poetry of Euri- pides which often gives it a peculiar charm for moderns. Though he was called a misogynist, no one has shown a finer appreciation of feminine tenderness or feminine strength. Nor has any ancient poet given more beautiful expression to the family affections. Take, for instance, this fragment of the Erechtheus : " Love your mother, children, for there is no love that it is sweeter to cherish." In another fragment (No. 909) a de- voted wife is very beautifully described. She holds her husband's affection by her goodness more surely than by beauty ; she looks always on the bright side of his deeds and words; his troubles and joys are reflected in her countenance ; she helps to bear his burdens, and without feeling it to be a pain. It is significant that these verses have been preserved by a Christian writer, Cle- ment of Alexandria. 2IO THE ATTIC DRAMA Such are the qualities by which Euripides be- came the first prophet of a cosmopolitan human- ity. His influence on the history of the world has been wider than that of either Aeschylus or Sophocles, for the interests and feelings to which he appeals are common to all men. He demands no peculiar sympathy with the Hellenic spirit ; he makes no severe demand on the historical imagi- nation. No sane criticism would now dispute his claim to a place among the world's great poets. Yet the serious student of Greek literature must _, . ., not shrink from a difficult and almost Euripides theHeiienic P^inful duty ; he must not shut his eyes standard. ^q j.},g truth that Aristophancs was right in the main, both artistically and morally. This great and fascinating poet, Euripides, the author of a dazzling compromise, the precursor of the ro- mantic drama, was not a sound Hellenic artist ; he was a herald of death to the art around which he threw those novel splendors. In modern phrase, we may say that Tragedy as he found it was ideal, and that his tendency was towards real- His"real- . .... ism: " what ism ; only, m usmg those words, we must it meant. ' ." o remember that the Greek mind, when it was at its best, — as it was in the middle of the fifth century b. c, — knew no such antithesis be- tween idealism and realism in art as our use of those terms is apt to suggest. Achilles, for in- stance, was what we should call an ideal to the Greeks ; he was so, however, not as transcend- ing humanity, not as a semi-abstract person seen THE ''REALISM" OF EURIPIDES 211 through a divine mist, but because he was so lucidly and brilliantly human, — human in the most splendid and pathetic shape that Greek fancy could give to a young hero. Odysseus was an ideal as being a man, vividly drawn, of superlative fortitude, ability, and resource. When Euripides made such persons speak in the strain of contem- porary rhetoric or casuistry, he was not making them, from a Greek point of view, more real ; he was making them, considered as heroes, less so, because he was reducing them from a higher to a lower sphere of reality. Menander did not feel this, any more than the ordinary modern reader does, because in Menander's day the old Hellenic life was broken up, and the old faith was dead ; but Aristophanes felt it, and Sophocles would have felt it too. Sophocles, in his later years, experi- enced the influence of Euripides on the technical side, — in some details of composition and versifi- cation, — though not to the extent that has some- times been assumed ; but no one can say that in the essence of his conception — in " the great- est things" of the tragic art, as Aristophanes calls them — Sophocles ever made the smallest approach to the younger poet's manner. The lines of an English poetess are well known : — " Our Euripides the human With his droppings of warm tears, And his touching of things common Till they rise to meet the spheres." The last two lines may often be as true for tis 212 THE ATTIC DRAMA as the first two ; but they do not truly describe what Euripides did for those of his Athenian contemporaries who were in sympathy with the traditional Hellenic faith. In their view, he so touched things heroic as to make them, — not rise to meet the spheres, — but descend nearer to the level of common ground. Cicero, in an eloquent passage,^ has pleaded for aesthetic toler- ance on the ground of the wide differences of individual type between artists who excel in the same field. Sculpture is a single art, he says ; and yet how unlike each other are Myron, Poly- cleitus, and Lysippus ! Painting is a single art ; and yet there is little resemblance between Zeuxis, Aglaophon, and Apelles. It is so also, he pro- ceeds, in poetry. Roman literature presents us with the contrasts of Ennius, Pacuvius, and At- tius ; Greek literature, with those of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. This is an excellent instance of a plausible criticism which moderns would be apt to accept as almost a truism, and which, nevertheless, so far as Greek art and poetry are concerned, misses the vital point. The dif- ference between Myron and Polycleitus in Greek sculpture is utterly different, not merely in degree but in kind, from that which both present in rela- tion to Lysippus. Aeschylus and Sophocles are dis- similar ; but the difference is not the same in kind as that which divides both of them from Euripides. In the highest Greek genius, symmetry and har- ' De Oratore, 3. 7. § 26. THE TURNING-POINT 213 mony were essential elements ; the Hellene had established a concord of spirit and body , . , , . , , . The great age which he impressed upon the creations of Greek poetry ; of his mind, and in which resides the peculiar secret of their beauty ; therefore the truly classical poetry of Greece, such as that of Homer, Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles, cannot be under- stood, — indeed, is not conceivable, — apart from the phase of Hellenic society and Hellenic thought in which each kind had its birth ; to each of them this society and this thought were necessary con- ditions. At the end of the fifth century before Christ the intellectual progress of Hellas had and the produced a discord between the inward ^"'™- and the outward life which nothing could have resolved, short of some new religion which should succeed to the place of the old. And, as this dis- cord became ever more conscious and more com- plex, the framework of the outward life itself was dissolved ; there came a divorce between society and the state ; the citizen no longer lived for the city. It is no accident that the creative period of the Greek mind closed with the end of the old social and political order in Hellas. Studious leisure might remain ; learning might increase ; new regions of knowledge might be opened ; but the highest inspiration of literature and of art had disappeared. It may be urged on behalf of Euripides that, with- out some such changes as he introduced, Tragedy 214 THE ATTIC DRAMA could no longer hope to please. The altered circumstances of the time demanded taken by ° the concessioH. This may be granted, Euripides. , . , . . t , i rj_ at least for the time immediately alter his : but it is only another way of saying that Attic Tragedy had reached the term of its exist- ence, as Ionian epos had done at an earlier date. A great poet in whom the artistic sense was more purely Hellenic than it was in Euripides would have refrained from attempting a compromise. He would have felt'that the result, however effec- tive, could not be harmonious ; that not merely would the form of Attic Tragedy be modified, but its very soul would be extinguished. The historical proof of this is given by the Its literary actual development of Greek drama after sequel. Euripidcs. Tragedy languished in a feeble imitative way, and soon ceased altogether. It was in the line of Comedy that the work begun by the last of the tragic masters was continued and completed. The portraiture of ordinary char- acter, the realistic description of ordinary life, to which Euripides had made the first approach, reached its full development in the New Comedy. Menander was as far from the lofty lyric strain of Aristophanes as from his wild fantasy and his personal satire. Me- nander's prevailing tone was that of polite con- versation; not without passages of tender senti- ment, grave thought, or almost tragic pathos. Thus his style was nearly on the level to which AFTER EURIPIDES 21 5 Euripides had reduced Tragedy : the resemblance was often so great that their fragments have some- times been confused. Euripides would have found a freer scope for his peculiar gifts, and would have , , , , _ How Euri- worked with more complete success, pideswas •ri 111 11 r 1 shackled. if he could have broken away from the trammels of tradition ; if he could have multiplied the actors at will, chosen his subject-matter where he would, altered the style of the costumes, and abolished the Chorus. Beautiful as his lyrics often are, they would charm still more as inde- pendent odes. But he could not thus emancipate himself, because Tragedy was a part of the Dio- nysiac worship, and the tradition which prescribed its type was also the sanction of its existence. It was needful that Tragedy should die before it could live again, the old name with a new form and a new spirit. In the Roman adaptation of the Greek New Comedy a novel feature was introduced, r 1 , ., 1 . , Roman modi- fraught With consequences more import- fication of the ant than itself. The division into scenes and acts, following on the abolition of the Chorus, was not, in Roman practice, accompanied with free change of scene, or with liberty for the dra- matist to suppose as long an interval of time between scenes as he might desire. But it pre- pared the way for deliverance from the thraldom of the "unities," a freedom which confers such an advantage on the modern theatre. 2l6 THE ATTIC DRAMA After the Roman reproductions of Greek Corn- Transition s'^y- ^ l°"g period, fruitful in new influ- to°Mo1iem'" cnces, elapsed before the advent of Drama. Romantic Drama, of which Shakespeare is the greatest representative. In the Dark Ages, the classical plays still found readers among the learned, — chiefly in monasteries ; but there was no theatre as a place of amusement. The popular entertainers were not actors but story-tellers — minstrels, troubadours, and the like. The very words " Tragedy " and " Comedy " ceased to have dramatic associations. Such stories as those in the "Mirror for Magistrates" were called tragedies ; Dante could call his grave epic the " Divine Com- edy." Stories in prose and verse, — sacred, taken from Scripture, or concerning the Saints — secu- lar, concerning deeds of chivalry or marvelous adventure — were the delight of the Middle Age. The entire range of such stories falls under the word " Romance," which merely expresses the group of languages, all sprung from that of Rome, in which such stories were current. The first meeting of Romance with its almost for- gotten predecessor. Drama, was in the Mysteries and Miracle Plays, from the twelfth century onwards, — which had for their first object to place sacred stories before the eyes of a laity unable to read Latin. The Miracle Play dealt with some portion of Scripture history, or with the life of a Saint : the Mystery, with some part of New Testament history which concerned a HOW RELATED TO THE MODERN 217 mysterious subject, such as the Incarnation or the Atonement. The Morality was another step towards drama ; — a play in which the characters were personified virtues and vices, or such alle- gorical agents as Wealth, or Death. Yet one step more was taken when the abstract virtues and vices were replaced by men typical of them ; as Aristeides might represent justice. And then the circle of characters came to be enlarged so as to include human life generally, as in John Hey- wood's Interludes in Henry VIII.'s reign. The regular drama was now at hand. The first English comedy, " Ralph Roister Doister," was written by Nicholas Udall, before 1551. The first English tragedy, " Gorboduc," by Sackville and Norton, was acted in 1 562, two years before Shakespeare's birth. This new drama is called the Romantic, in contradistinction to the Classical, because Romance furnished it with most of its material. But the ancient drama, revealed anew by the Renaissance, gave the outlines of its form, and strongly influenced its construction. There was indeed a school of criticism, not extinct, though defeated, in Shakespeare's time, which contended for the strict observance of the ancient unities in respect to time and place. Ben Jonson combated it by arguing that the ancient drama itself had been gradually developed, and that moderns were entitled to carry the development further, " instead," as he says, " of being tied to those strict and regular forms which the niceness 2l8 THE ATTIC DRAMA of a few, who are nothing but form, would thrust upon us." In recalling, however briefly, this course of. progress from ancient to modern drama, Attic Tragedy • i. l • — Its claim we are already warned agamst making an exaggerated claim for that unique and splendid phase of dramatic poetry — the ear- liest — which is known as Attic Tragedy. It is not the absolute measure, for all times and peo- ples, of what Tragedy should or can be. It does not furnish a norm by which Shakespeare or Goethe or Victor Hugo can be adequately tried. But in its own kind Attic Tragedy is supreme. It is the final outcome of the Greek genius in poetry ; it has absorbed into itself elements of all that was best in the forms which went before it. It is also a perfect expression of the Athenian mind in the best age of Athens ; that is, of the greatest national genius for literary art which history can show, seen at the moment of its highest excellence. The whole history of classical Greek poetry- was that of a natural growth. Epos ex- growth of presses one stage of the Hellenic devel- Greek poetry. ^ opment. Lyric poetry a second, Attic Drama a third. Each, in its own time and in its own way, represents an order of beliefs and feel- ings to which the poet gave, indeed, a clearer and more beautiful embodiment, but which was already pervading the Hellenic world of his age. Each, too, is addressed to hearers more directly than to THE RESULT OF A NATURAL GROWTH 219 readers ; its interpreter is the living voice of the reciter, of the lyric singer, or of the actor. In the literature of Rome, and of the modern world, it is only the ruder phases of poetry, those of folk-song or ballad, which exhibit such a relation to national life. But Greek poetry preserved this relation so long as creative force remained to it. The classi- fication. Epic, Lyric, Dramatic, is itself a proof. The general rules governing each of these forms were gradually shaped by poets in response to the needs of Hellenic audiences. The laws of Epos were evolved by the conditions of a minstrel's recita,tion at a banquet or on some public occa- sion. The laws of the Lyric were shaped by the requirements of choral worship at Dorian festivals, or by the usages of Aeolian society. The princi- pal laws of Drama were determined by the Attic ritual of Dionysus. And when these general laws had been thus shaped, they were binding on the poet ; his original genius was to be shown in his handling of the instrument prescribed to him, not in devising new instruments of his own ; he could introduce new details, but the great out- lines were fixed. His subject-matter decided the form which he was to employ. The series of great poets in any modern literature would illustrate this by contrast. Take, for example, English poetry from Spenser to Wordsworth ; the literary development can be traced, no doubt, to the causes which connect it with the general intellec- tual progress of the nation, and with the social or 220 THE ATTIC DRAMA political influences of different periods ; but it is not, in the direct Greek sense, a spontaneous and continuous expression of national life ; and there- fore it does not follow, in the Greek sense, the cflurse of a natural growth. ' Hence there is no poetry of which it is so true as of the Greek that it ought to be The order of ° . that growth Studied in the historical order of its should be followed in development. Homer is the best pre- study. '^ ^ paration for Pindar ; Homer is again the best aid, and Pindar no small aid, to the comprehen- sion of the Attic drama. In the classical age the whole bent of the Greek mind was retrospective. Descending the stream of Greek poetry from its source, we gradually learn to appreciate the feel- ing with which successive Greek poets looked back upon the spiritual past of their race. It would be a further aid to such appreciation, if it were possible to restrict our field of view as it was restricted for the Greeks themselves. But no modern can strictly confine his thoughts within the mental boundaries of ancient Greece ; despite alf his efforts, disturbing cross-lights from later ages I will steal in, and color or obscure his vision of that far-off world. The Attic drama, with its defi- nite framework, its clear outlines, and its strong con- centration, is the form of -Greek poetry least liable to these effects ; it is that which we can hope to see most nearly from the Hellenic point of view. In Tragedy, this is made possible for us by Aeschylus and Sophocles ; in Comedy, by Aristophanes. The FROM THE MODERN POINT OF VIEW 221 spectacle offered by Euripides is, in itself, less purely Hellenic ; but if we only remember that, then we can enjoy without reserve the peculiar gift which his genius has bequeathed to the modern world, — a blending of Hellenic light, though that light is declining, with the incipient promise of Romance. VIII THE PERMANENT POWER OF GREEK POETRY In a survey of Greek poetry, epic, lyric, and dramatic, we have seen how, in each Relation of ... , . ^ Greek poetry succcssive phasc, it was the voice ot to Greek life. t ^^r '-f^i it >> Greek lire, ihe very word "hterature is fraught with associations which tend to obscure this fact. Writing was, indeed, the instrument by which the poems were preserved and trans- mitted. In the second half of the fifth century B. c. copies of the most popular works were dili- gently multiplied and widely circulated. But it belonged to the very essence of all the great poetry that it appealed to hearers rather than to readers. The Greeks of the classical age were eager listeners and talkers ': they delighted in lively conversation and subtle discussion, but they were not great students of books. It was the in- terchange of living speech that sharpened their quick apprehension and gave elasticity to their intelligence. There is a striking passage in the Phaedrus of Plato which expresses the genuine Greek feeling on this subject. The written re- cord of thought, Socrates says, is, taken by itself, an inanimate thing. There are two brothers, the spoken /(!7^(?j and the written logos; but the first alone is true-born ; the second is illegitimate ; it GREEK POETRY AND GREEK LIFE 223 does not inherit the full capacities of reason ; if it is questioned, it remains dumb ; if it is attacked, it can offer no defense. The spoken logos, in- deed, alone is really existent ; the written is a mere phantom of it. In the place where this re- mark occurs, it points to the difference between a barren Rhetoric and a fruitful Dialectic. But the remark itself is of still wider application. In every province of intellectual activity, and in that of poetry among the rest, the Greeks of the cl as- sical age demanded _a_living sympathy of mind with mind. What they felt in regard to the poet can be best understood by comparing it with the feeling which not they alone, but all people, have in regard to the orator and the preacher. The true orator, the great preacher, speaks out of the fulness of genuine conviction and emotion to the minds and hearts of those who hear him ; through all variations of mood and tone, he keeps in men- tal touch with them; The excellence of the clas- sical Greek poet was tried by the same test. No refinement or elaboration of art could sustain the poet through his ordeal, if he failed in truth to nature. False sentiment may pass muster in the study, but it is inevitably betrayed by its own unveracity when it is spoken aloud before listen- ers whose minds are sane, as those of the Greeks preeminently were ; the hollow ring is detected ; it offends ; and the exemption of the best Greek poetry from false sentiment is a merit secured by the very conditions under which that poetry was produced. 224 POWER OF GREEK POETRY The form of expression, again, was controlled by this tribunal of sound-minded hearers. A style might be novel and bold in any degree that the poet's faculty could reach ; but at least it was required to have in it the pulse ■ of life ; it would be repugnant to his audience if they per- ceived the artificial outcome of mechanical formu- las, a style which sought to impress or surprise by mere tricks of phrase, having no vital relation to his thought. When Aristophanes quotes such tricks of phrase, even from a poet so great in many ways as Euripides, we seem to catch an echo of Athenian laughter ; we feel how strong and how sober was the control which the Athe- nian theatre exercised in this direction. When the work of the conaposer failed to be vital and sincere, this, the unpardonable fault, was de- scribed by the expressive word fuxpo-s, frigid. The composition was then no longer a living thing, which spoke to the hearers, and elicited a re- sponse. It was stricken with the chill of death. Thus the Greek poetry of the great age was not merely inspired by life ; it was regulated by life ; the instinct of the hearers was a restraint operat- ing upon the poet, a safeguard against affectation or unreality. The freshness, the charm of nature, the immortal youth, which belong to such Greek poetry are due not simply to the qualities of the Greek mind, but also to this relation between the poet and his audience. This fact cannot be too much emphasized, for it at once constitutes an THE POET AND HIS AUDIENCE 225 essential difference between the best Greek poe- try and such as has been produced under the con- ditions of a literary age, one of books and readers. In a literary age the influence of criticism upon poetry, operates through the individual critic, who either speaks for himself alone, or is the exponent of a school or a coterie. Such criticism, working on the sensitive temperament of a poet, is too apt to check his spontaneity ; on the other hand, it does not necessarily help to keep him in accord with nature, that is, with the first law of poetical truth and beauty. But the Greek poet's spon- taneity was in no way checked by his audience ; they only required that he should maintain a liv- ing relation with them. It is a familiar experience that the collective impression of intelligent Hsten- ers, to a speech, let us say, or to a sermon, has a critical value of a certain kind which can seldom be claimed for the judgment of any single critic. There is a certain magnetic sympathy, generated by the mere presence of fellow-listeners, which more or less influences each member of such a company. He can scarcely avoid considering how that to which he is listening is likely to affect other minds beside his own. The very atmo- sphere of human companionship tends to preserve the sanity of the individual judgment. In the case of people with the unique gifts of the Greek race, — their obedience to reason, and their in- stinct for beauty, — the critical value of the col- lective impression was exceptionally high. Their 226 POWER OF GREEK POETRY poets were subject to a test which, while leaving them the largest freedom, also warned them, with unfailing accuracy, when they were in danger of going wrong. Further, it should be remembered that poetry, Old Greek Orally delivered, not written for readers, view of the jjj^jj h&en from the earliest times the poet as a whautiiil- very basis of Greek education. The piles. Greek genius had reached full maturity before written literature became important, and before literary prose had been developed. There is no more significant testimony of this fact than is afforded by the manner in which Greeks of the classical age conceived the office of the poet. They regarded him as primarily a teacher. Aris- tophanes frequently expresses this view of his own calling, and is a true interpreter of orthodox Greek sentiment when he enumerates the lessons which may be learned in various departments from the older poets. Aristotle was the first who for- mally asserted that the aim of poetry, as of all fine art, is to give noble pleasure, and that its didactic use is accidental. But the older conception held its ground, and often reappears in the later Greek literature. Strabo, in the Augustan age, can still describe poetry as an elementary philosophy, which instructs us — pleasurably, no doubt — in regard to character, emotion, action. With the same meaning, he observes that no one can be a good poet who is not first a good man. Plutarch gives still more forcible expression to the same THE POET AS A TEACHER 22/ sentiment : poetry, he says, is a kind of twilight, — a soft light in which truth is tempered with fiction, — to which the young are introduced in order that their eyes may be gradually prepared for the full sunshine of philosophy. In the Ro- man writers, too, this old Greek view can be traced, though sometimes blended with the Aris- totelian, as when Horace insists equally on the utile and the dulce ; and from the Roman world it passed on to the Renaissance. The prevalent view of the Elizabethan age, as given by Sir Philip Sidney in his " Apology for Poetry," was that the end of poetry is " delightful teaching." Dryden was something of a heretic when he ven- tured to say, " I am satisfied if " verse " cause de- light ; for delight is the chief, if not the only, end of poesy." It may seem strange that the view of poetry as primarily didactic, a view which might be deemed prosaic, should have been that which was generally held by the Greeks, the most artistic of all races, in the age when their artistic faculties were at the best. But it is needful to distinguish between this view as it was held in Hellenistic or Roman times, and as it was held by the Greeks of an earlier period. What it really signifies, in its old Greek form, is that poetry was interwoven with the whole texture of Greek life. The voice of the poet was the voice from which the people had been accustomed, through long generations, to derive every thought that raised their minds above daily routine, and every sentiment that 228 POWER OF GREEK POETRY came home to their hearts with living power. When they spoke of the poet as a teacher, and of poetry as didactic, this did not imply any indiffer- ence to beauty and form, or to the delight which such form gives ; it was simply a recognition of poetry as the highest influence, intellectual and spiritual, which they knew. It was not merely a recreation of their leisure, but a power pervading and moulding their whole existence. The ethical .aspect, to which they habitually gave prominence, was in their conception inseparable from the ar- tistic, and became thus prominent because, to them, poetry was a thing so potent and so serious. This was the sense in which the Greeks of the classical age spoke of poetry as didactic ; it was, in reality, quite different from the sense in which the same view of it was enunciated by the literary moralists of a later time, who regarded Greek poe- try as a treasure-house of maxims or sentiments wherewith to point their rules of conduct and to fill their anthologies. Between the two stands Aristotle's doctrine that the end of poetry is to give noble pleasure, — a doctrine, which, as we can now see, was itself a testimony to the fact, of which in his Poetics and his Rhetoric he implies his consciousness, that the creative age of the Greek genius was finished. A broad line separates that age, in respect of Greek poetry ^^^ poctical work, from every other. -iwSnl-' I"^ '^*' second instance has the world ''°''- seen the most perfect art of expression ALEXANDRIA 229 joined to such direct sympathy with the living soul of the people whose mind was thus inter- preted. The great types of Greek poetry, epic, lyric, dramatic, became permanent traditions ; they passed on from one nation to another, re- ceiving various modifications, while always pre- serving the traces, direct or indirect, of their origin ; the Greek spirit, too, reappears now and again, though fitfully and partially, in later times ; but the combination of form with spirit which dis- tinguishes the classical poetry of Greece remains unique. Of all the stages through which the Greek tra- dition passed, none is more instructive TheAiexan- than the Alexandrian. It is so near to '^"^" p"'"''- the great Hellenic age in time, it has so many links with it, and yet the difference is so profound. The best poetry of Greece had been nourished by two inspirations, working together for beauty, for natural freshness and vigor, for sincerity ; these inspirations were religion and political freedom. The Alexandria of the third century b. c. had no longer the inspiration of the Hellenic religion. In the religion of Alexandria, the Oriental ele- ment, mingled with Hellenic forms and names, was already predominant, often in shapes which were not only non-Hellenic, but non-Aryan, being dis- tinctly Semitic both in form and in origin. This tendency had begun, indeed, earlier ; but it im- plied a fundamental change of thought and of feeling when cults such as that of Adonis came 230 POWER OF GREEK POETRY to be publicly and generally practised by Greeks. Then as to civic life, it was not merely in form of government that the capital of the Ptolemies dif- fered from the free cities of the elder Hellas. We remember Aristotle's views as to the proper limit of size for a city. " A city could not con- sist," he says, " of ten men, nor, again, of one hun- dred thousand" (Eth. N. 9. 10). A city of one hundred thousand (free) inhabitants would have been, in Aristotle's estimate, no longer a civic society, a tto'Xis, but something more unwieldy. It has been computed that at the end of the Pelopon- nesian war the total free population of Athens was less than seventy thousand. Aristophanes can assume that his Athenian audience will seize each of his innumerable allusions to fellow-citizens, whom we may suppose to have been, in many cases, of no public eminence, and who neverthe- less were familiar to the mass of their fellow-citi- zens by their personal peculiarities, failings, or merits. This compactness of social life was an intellectual gain to poetry. But Alexandria in the third century b. c. was like a huge modern city. It had a population of about eight hundred thou- sand. Every country of the ancient world con- tributed its quota to that multitude. There was a native Egyptian quarter, prolific in beggars by day and burglars by night. There was a large Jewish quarter, harboring chiefly men of business or men of letters. Soldiers from Greece, Italy, Sicily, and Asia were enrolled among the guards ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE 23 1 of the Ptolemies. Merchants from the furthest East brought the porcelain of China and the choicest products of India to the marts of the great capital Literature, like art, was no longer a public delight, prepared by citizens for citizens ; it was now mainly the pleasure of princes and millionaires, and was produced by men who might be described as professional men of letters. The Alexandrian age is the earliest that can be called, in a modern sense, literary ; the earliest in which a literary class catered for select, though numer- ous, readers. The learned poets of Alexandria wielded the classical Greek language with com- plete mastery of its vocabulary ; their models, the classical Greek writers, were thoroughly fa- miliar to them ; they had explored all the paths of Greek mythology, even the most devious and obscure. Yet, in reading Callimachus or Apollo- nius Rhodius we speedily become aware that the difference between them and the older poets is not merely one of degree, but, in respect to what makes poetry vital, a difference of kind. They are ingenious, elegant, copious ; their gift of ex- pression is often brilliant ; but the thing which is not there is the breath of life. Their work is the work of the study, artificial, elaborate, charged with allusions gathered by their wide reading, embellished with words and phrases culled from all the highways and by-ways of poetical diction ; but if, in the great age of Greece, such poems had been tried by the sound natural instinct of a 232 POWER OF GREEK POETRY Greek audience, they would not have been saved by their occasional beauties ; taken in the mass, they would have been condemned as i^vxpa, frigid. The Alexandrian age can show only one poet who has a true affinity with the great Theocritus. r ^ i i i • r? past of Greek song, and that is Theo- critus. His rural idyls are no sham pastorals, but true to the sights and sounds of his native Sicily. The Sicilian sunshine is there, the shade of oak- trees or pine, the " couch, softer than sleep," made by ferns or flowers; the "music of water falling from the high face of the rock," the ar- butus shrubs, with their bright red berries, above the sea-cliffs, whence the shepherds watch the tunny-fish ers on the sea below, while the sailors' song floats up to them ; and if the form given to the strains of shepherd and goatherd is such as finished poetry demands, this is a very different thing from the affectation of the mock pastoral, as it existed, for instance, at the court of Louis XIV. The modern love-songs of Greek shepherds warrant the supposition that their ancient proto- types commanded some elegance of expression ; and whatever may be the degree in which Theo- critus has idealized his Sicilian peasants, at any rate we hear the voice and breathe the air of nature. His twenty-first idyl is a dialogue be- tween two old fishermen, who wake before day- light in their wattled cabin on the Sicilian coast. One of them tells the other a dream that he has just had ; he had caught a golden fish, and had THEOCRITUS 233 vowed that he would give up his hard calling. His comrade advises him to go on with his work, for dreams of gold will not feed him. Of this idyl Mr. Lang truly says, "There is nothing in Wordsworth more real, more full of the incommu- nicable sense of nature, rounding and softening the toilsome days of the aged and the poor. It is as true to nature as the statue of the naked fisher- man in the Vatican. One cannot read these verses but the vision returns to one, of sandhills by the sea, of a low cabin roofed with grass, where fishing-rods of reed are leaning against the door, while the Mediterranean floats up her waves that fill the waste with sound. This nature, gray and still, seems in harmony with the wise content of old men whose days are waning on the limit of life, as they have all been spent by the desolate margin of the sea." But the idyls of Theocritus are not all rural ; and he too, when he handled epic material, had to write in the Alexandrian manner ; as in his hymn to the Dioscuri, and his two idyls on Heracles, the serpent-strangler and the lion-slayer. The general Alexandrian charac- ter is seen in the adaptation of the subjects to a small framework, the avoidance of the large epic style, the prettiness of detail given by a number of pictorial touches. It is a significant fact that Theocritus, the last genuinely inspired poet of Hellas, draws his true inspiration not from civic but from rural life, and is least Hellenic, in the old sense, just when he is most in accord with the taste of the great city in which he dwelt. 234 POWER OF GREEK POETRY In the Alexandrian age, with all its close study and imitation of the classical models, influencVon nothing is more remarkable than the absence of any promise that the Hel- lenic spirit which animated those masterpieces was destined to have any abiding influence in the world. If that spirit was already so languid or almost dead in Greek-speaking men so familiar with its works, how could it be expected that aliens in blood and in language, aliens further re- moved from the great days of Greece not merely in time but in all the conditions of their lives, should prove more appreciative disciples, or more faithful guardians, of the Hellenic tradition ? And yet it is true that the vital power of the Hellenic genius was not fully revealed, until, after suffering some temporary eclipse in the superficially Greek civi- lizations of Asia and Egypt, it emerged in a new quality, as a source of illumination to the liter- ature and the art of Rome. Early Roman litera- ture was indebted to Greece for the greater part of its material ; but a more important debt was in respect to the forms and moulds of composition. The Latin language of the third century b. c. was already in full possession of the qualities which always remained distinctive of it ; it was clear, strong, weighty, precise, a language made to be spoken in the imperative mood, a fitting inter- preter of government and law. But it was not flexible or graceful, musical or rapid ; it was not suited to express delicate shades of thought or THE GREEK INFLUENCE ON ROME 235 feeling ; for literary purposes, it was, in com- parison with Greek, a poor and rude idiom. The development of Latin into the language of Cicero and Virgil was gradually and laboriously accom- plished under the constant influence of Greece. That finish of form, known as classical, which Roman writers share with Greek, was a lesson which Greece slowly impressed upon Rome. The Roman character was far too distinctive and too vigorous to be merged in any foreign influence. A peculiarity of the Roman mind was indeed its capacity to receive new impressions, and to assimilate foreign influences, without losing its own powerful individuality. On the other hand, a close and prolonged study of the Greek models could not end in a mere discipline of form ; the beauty of the best Greek models depends too much on their vital spirit. Not only was the Roman imagination enriched, but the Roman intellect, through literary intercourse with the Greek, gradually acquired a flexibility and a plas- tic power which had not been among its original gifts. Through Roman literature the Greek in- fluence was transmitted to later times in a shape which obscured, indeed, much of its charm, but which was also fitted to extend its empire, and to win an entrance for it in regions which would have been less accessible to a purer form of its manifestation. In the earlier period of the Renaissance the scholars of Italy, where the revival had its chief 236 POWER OF GREEK POETRY seat, were engrossed with Latin literature ; they TheRenais- regarded it as their Itahan heritage, domfnliiSy" ^estored to them after long deprivation. Latin. Greek studies, though ardently pur- sued by a few, remained, on the whole, in the background. And it may be said that the gen- eral spirit of the classical revival continued to be Latin rather than Greek down to the latter part of the last century. Even where Greek scholar- ship was most cultivated, there was comparatively little sense of what is characteristic and distinctive in the best Greek literature. This sense relctiOT of was devclopcd, in the second half of the cen ury. gjgj^j-ggjj^jj ceutury, chiefly through two agencies. One was the study of Greek art as advanced by such men as Winckelmann and Les- sing, bringing with it the perception that the quali- ties characteristic of the best Greek art are also present in the best Greek literature. The other agency was the reaction against the conventional classicism, wearing a Latin garb, which had so long been in vogue. Minds insurgent against that tyranny turned with joyous relief to the elastic freedom of the Greek intellect, to the living charm of Greek poetry and Greek art. Goethe and Schiller are representatives of the new impulse. The great gain of the movement which then began was that, for the first time since the revival of letters, the Greek originals stood out distinct from the Latin copies ; men acquired a truer sense of the Hellenic genius. SINCE THE RENAISSANCE 237 and the current of Hellenic influence upon mod- ern life began to flow in a clear channel of its own, no longer confused with the somewhat turbid stream of Renaissance classicism. Meanwhile, however, literature and art had ex- perienced the influence of other forces, , „ ^ ' Influences acting in very different ways ; and with ^"^""("e'^ these forces the Hellenic influence had "<="«"'<=• to reckon. One of these was the product of medi- aeval Catholicism, which had given art a « 1 1 r 1 .11 Mediaeval art. new genius. A new world of beauty had arisen, even more different from the pagan world than the Empire of the twelfth century was differ- ent from that of the first. Greek art had sprung from a free, cheerful life, open to all the bright impressions of external nature, a life warmed by frank human sympathies, and lit up with fancy controlled by reason. The lawgivers of mediaeval art were men withdrawn from communion with the outward world by the rapture of a devotion at once half-mystic and intensely real ; instead of flexible intelligence, they had religious passion ; instead of the Greek's clear and steady outlook upon the facts of humanity, they had a faith which transfigured the actual world, which adjusted every relation of life by its own canons, which indeed made itself the standard by which the impressions of the senses were to be judged. The Greek art- ist, even in portraying passion, was mindful of bal- ance, and placed certain limits on the expression of individual character ; the mediaeval artist strove 238 POWER OF GREEK POETRY before all things to express the intensity of the individual soul. In poetry Dante is the great ex- ponent of this spirit, and mediaeval Catholicism deeply colored the sentiment of all the literature known by the general name of Romantic. Romantic In Goethc's younger days the conflict I ' between the Classical and the Romantic schools raged fiercely. The interlude of Helena, which forms the third act in the sec- ond part of " Faust," was the work of his old age (1830). Faust's nature is to be elevated and purified by developing in him the sense of beauty ; Helena represents the classical, but es- pecially the Greek, element in art and literature ; and when Faust at last wins her, their union typifies the reconciliation of the Romantic with the Classical. Goethe himself, as one of his crit- ics says, dated a new life, a complete mental re- generation, from the time when he first seized the true spirit of the ancient masters. In his own words, speaking of Greek art and literature : " Clearness of vision, cheerfulness of acceptance, easy grace of expression, are the qualities which delight us ; and now, when we affirm that we find all these in the genuine Grecian works, achieved in the noblest material, the best-proportioned form, with certainty and completeness of execution, we shall be understood if we always refer to them as a basis and a standard. Let each one be a Grecian in his own way ; but let him be one." In the allegorical strain which pervades the Helena, CLASSICAL AA'D ROMANTIC SCHOOLS 239 Goethe has not failed to mark that, while the Hellenic idea of beauty is supreme, the Roman- tic element has also enriched modern life. The gifts are not all from one side. The symmetry, the clear outlines, the cheerful repose of Classi- cal art, are wedded to the sentiment, passion, and variety of the Romantic. The great German poet felt, and has expressed with wonderful subtlety, the truth that no modern can absolutely dis- sociate the Hellenic influence from the others which have contributed to shape modern life ; no one can now be a pure Hellene, nor, if he could, would it be desirable; but every one should recog- nize the special elements with which the Hellenic ideal can ennoble and chasten the modern spirit, and these he should by all means cultivate. To do so successfully is to educate one's sense of beauty ; and to do that aright is to raise and purify one's whole nature. This great lesson, taught half-mystically in the second part of " Faust," is apt to be ob- , , , Hellenism scured by a contrast much deeper than and hc- , 1 -r» braisin. any that ever existed between the Ro- mantic and the Classical schools, — one of which Goethe took little account, since it did not much concern him, — the contrast between Hellenism and Hebraism. As Mr. Matthew Arnold says in " Culture and Anarchy," the governing idea of Hellenism is spontaneity of consciousness ; that of Hebraism is strictness of conscience. Both seek, in the Hebrew Apostle's words, to make 240 POWER OF GREEK POETRY us partakers of the divine nature ; but Hellenism seeks to do this through the reason, by making us see things as they are ; Hebraism insists rather on conduct and obedience. The Renaissance was a movement away from mediaeval Catholicism in the direction of Hellenism ; the Reformation was a movement in the direction of Hebraism. In countries where the Reformation took strongest hold, and, owing to the qualities of our race, more especially in England, the intellectual influence of the Renaissance was crossed, and for a time checked, by the Hebraizing tendency. The Puri- tan conception of righteousness, with all its moral nobleness, was at that moment adverse to the ac- quisition of the best things which the Hellenic in- fluence had to bestow ; and in this sense it could be said, with a melancholy truth, that the English " entered the prison of Puritanism, and had the key turned upon their spirit there for two hun- dred years." But though there is a profound difference, there The Greek ^^ '^° ucccssary antagonism, between the S™tance ideal broadly described as Hebraic, and with others, ^.jjg permanent, the essential, parts of Hellenism. The Greek influence has acted upon modern life and literature even more widely as a pervading and quickening spirit than as an exem- plar of form ; and it has shown itself capable of cooperating, in this subtle manner, with various alien forces, so as neither to lose its own distinc- tion nor to infringe upon theirs. HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM 241 In respect to Hebraism, Milton illustrates this. By temperament no less than creed, Mil- T-» ■ r t 1 • , Milton. ton was a Puritan of the higher type. He had an austere belief in his own mission to be for England a prophet, a mouthpiece of moral teaching and moral warning, just as he believed, and said, that the English nation was, in the He- brew sense, a chosen people. He was also steeped in classical culture. In an age of classicism which, outside of Italy, was usually superficial, he was the first Englishman who had joined a thorough appre- ciation of the classical literature (especially Latin) to a first-rate original genius for poetry. I do not forget Ben Jonson, at once scholar and poet ; but in neither quality was he Milton's equal. How, then, is the Hellenic influence seen in Milton } It cannot be said to have determined the pervading spirit of his work ; that is rather Hebraic, or, when it is not Hebraic, Latin. The "Lycidas," for instance, is a pastoral elegy on the Alexandrian model ; but how strangely is the temper of the Greek original changed when the English poet blazes forth in Puritan indignation against the corruptions of the Church ! The poet himself shows his consciousness of this in reverting from the digression to his theme : — Return, Alpheus, the dread voice is past That shrunk thy streams — return, Sicilian Muse I The "Samson Agonist es" has the form of a Greek drama, but its inspiration, like its subject, is far more Hebraic than Hellenic ; it concerns 242 POWER OF GREEK POETRY the mysterious dealing of Jehovah with his ser- vant ; it is full of questionings and strivings like those of Job, followed by such a triumph as rings through the song of Miriam or of Deborah. Yet no one familiar with the best Greek poetry can read Milton without feeling what its in- fluence has contributed to his genius ; it has helped to give him his lofty self-restraint and his serenity. Another modern poet, who illustrates the co- operation of the Greek influence with Keats. ^ foreign influences, is Keats. Unlike Milton, Keats knew Greek literature only through such scraps as he might find in classical diction- aries, or, at most, through translation, as he knew Homer through Chapman. His grasp of Hellenic things unavoidably lacks that sureness which is found, for instance, in Landor, who, besides being much of a Greek in feeling, had also an intimate familiarity with Greek literature ; on the other hand, Keats had a native sympathy with the spirit of Greek mythology ; and even a Landor could not achieve what Keats sometimes reaches by flashes of insight. The Greek element is, however, only one of those which are present in the poetry of Keats. The romantic element was not less vital in it ; " St. Agnes' Eve " is not less characteristic than the " Ode on a Grecian Urn." And his manner, even in treating Greek subjects, was not Greek, except occasionally, and for brief spaces. His style had not the harmo- FUSION WITH OTHER ELEMENTS 243 nious and lucid simplicity of the best Greek styk;,l which gives clear outlines to the central thought,! dispensing with all ornament which might con-^ fuse or obscure it. Keats, like the Elizabethan poets, delighted in a luxuriance of decorative detail ; his style is essentially romantic. In "Hyperion," for instance, the description of the god's palace, Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold, And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks, is throughout rather romantic in its splendors and its mystery than truly Hellenic. So also is this passage of " Endymion," beautiful in itself, but charged with imagery of an Elizabethan type, and lacking Hellenic simplicity: — As when, upon a tranced summer night, Those green-robed senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir. But in one quality of his genius Keats was truly M a Greek, — namely, in his vivid, spontaneous ^ \ sympathy with the life of external nature. Take, for example, his " Ode to a Nightingale ; " there we see the joy in nature for nature's own sake, penetrated by a feeling which is truly Hellenic ; not with the feeling of Shelley, that the visible world is but the veil of the unseen. Like a Greek, too, Keats loved to embody the powers of nature in human shapes of more than human loveliness, — unlike Wordsworth, to whom the influences of nature were emanations, not per- 244 POWER OF GREEK POETRY sons, and whose joy in nature was also insepara- ble from those aspirations of his own mind which he read into the scenes around him : — The clouds that gather round the setting sun Do take a sober coloring from an eye That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality : Another race hath been, and other palms are won. The natural affinity of Keats with the Greek mind is curiously illustrated by a letter to a friend in which he argues against distrust of the imagination as a guide to truth, saying, in effect, that, when a beautiful vision rises before the imagination, it is the imperfect reflex of a divine prototype, which will be seen hereafter. Keats had not read Plato, and yet here is the tendency which received a more scientific expres- sion in the theory of ideas. When the poetry of Keats was described as "the wail and remon- strance of a disinherited paganism," the criticism was singularly unjust. A strain of imaginative regret there indeed is in him, when he thinks of what has gone out of the world with the inspi- rations of the ancient poetry : — Glory and loveliness have passed away. But his regret was for the beauty, not for the paganism ; and no one felt more finely the sense in which the spiritual existence of that beauty has been prolonged : — Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on ; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd. Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone. FUSION WITH OTHER ELEMENTS 245 Other poets there have been, and are, who have consciously sought, and sometimes with exqui- site results, to blend the Hellenic grace with a romantic coloring ; as in Dante Gabriel Rossetti's sonnets on Greek subjects the language has a Greek clearness, lightness, and finish, while the spirit is rather that of the Italian Middle Age : or as Mr. William Morris clothes Greek stories in a mediaeval garb. Thus his " Jason" derives a pe- culiar charm from the mediaeval traits. When the Argonaut heroes move through the streets of lolcos to embark, bells are ringing in the town, and ladies shower roses From windows glorious with the well-wrought hem Of many a purple cloth. It is as if the poet were singing in the latter part of the Middle Age, when its enchantments were about to pass away before a clearer illumi- nation : like the wreaths on the helmets of the Argonauts, the poet's fancies seem wet With beaded dew of the scarce-vanished night. The distinction of such poetical work is the use of romance to bring Hellenism into relief ; the inner contrasts between the romantic and the Hellenic spirit are rather hinted than expressed. But the deepest and largest influence of Greece is not to be sought in the modern poetry which treats Greek subjects and imitates Greek form ; that influence works more characteristically when, 246 POWER OF GREEK POETRY having been received into the modern mind, it acts by suggestion and inspiration, breathing a grace and a power of its own into material and form of a different origin : — totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem, et magno se in corpore miscet. This influence has been all-pervading in modern life, in modern literature and art. Yet those who most appreciate the true value Value of Hei- of Hellenism will never claim for it that, lenismforus; ^^y j^^^jf^ -^ ^^^ gufifice for the ueeds of modern humanity. In the intellectual province its value is not only permanent, but unique ; it has furnished models of excellence which can never be superseded ; by its spirit, it supplies a medicine for diseases of the modern mind, a cor- rective for aberrations of modern taste, a discipline, no less than a delight, for the modern imagina- tion ; since that obedience to reason which it exacts is also a return to the most gracious activi- ties of life and nature. Of such a power, we may truly say, it will never Pass into nothingness, but still will keep A bower of quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing. But in the province of religion and morals Hel- and the limit l^uism alouc is uot Sufficing. Greek thereto. polytheism, even as ennobled by the great poets, was incapable of generating religious conceptions which could satisfy the mind and ''THE POWER OF THE WING'' 247 heart, or 'of furnishing an adequate rule for the conduct of life. These must be sought from an- other source. Yet there is no inherent conflict between true Hellenism and spiritualized Hebraism, jj^],^ ^,^3,. that Hebraism which has passed into les^Gredf Christianity. Such a notion could be ™'''- entertained only wh.ere the apprehension of Hel- lenism itself was superficial or defective. There has, indeed, been some poetry in which the direct imitation of Greek form has been associated with unhealthy tendencies ; there have been transient vagaries of modern fashion which have seemed to assume that Hellenism is to be found, as has been neatly said, in eccentricity tinged with vice. But the distinctive quality of the best Greek poetry and art, that by which it has lived and will live, is the faculty of rising from the earth, from a soil which nourishes weeds along with flowers, into a clearer air. " The divine," says Plato in the Phaedrus, " is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and the like ; by these the wing of the soul is nour- ished, and grows apace ; but when fed upon evil and foulness and the like, wastes and falls away." Greek poetry, in its noblest forms, was indeed the ■rnipov Swa/iis, " the power of the wing," for the human soul ; the visions to which it soared were such as that described in the Phaedrus, where beauty is beheld dwelling with o-u^poo-wj?, modesty, in a holy place, as in a shrine ; and in the emotion which this divine beauty stirs, love is blended with 248 POWER OF GREEK POETRY reverent adoration. The spirit of the highest Greek poetry, as of the best Greek art, is essen- tially pure ; to conceive it as necessarily entangled with the baser elements of paganism is to con- found the accidents with the essence; the acci- dents have passed away ; the essence is imperish- able. Nor is it purity alone that can be claimed for such Greek poetry ; it is capable of acting as an intellectual tonic, and of bracing us for the battle of life. There is truth in the words with which Mr. Gladstone concludes his "Studies on Homer:" — "To pass from the study of Homer to the busi- ness of the world is to step out of a palace of enchantment into the cold, gray light of a polar day. But the spells in which this enchanter deals have no affinity with that drug from Egypt which drowns the spirit in effeminate indiffer- ence ; rather they are like the i^ap/xaxov ^(tBKov, the remedial specific, which, freshening the under- standing by contact with the truth and strength of nature, should both improve its vigilance against deceit and danger, and increase its vigor and reso- lution for the discharge of duty." A like tribute might be paid, with not less justice, to the classical Greek poetry as a whole. True to Aristotle's principle for art, this poetry deals with the universal, — with those elements of human character and life which are not transient or abnormal, but of interest for every age and .every land. What Mr. Lowell said of the ancient AND ITS PERMANENT VALUE 249 classical literature generally applies especially to the Greek : " It is as contemporary with to-day as with the ears it first enraptured ; for it ap- peals not to the man of then or now, but to the entire round of human nature itself. . . . We know not whither other studies will lead us, es- pecially if dissociated from this ; we do know to what summits, far above our lower region of turmoil, this has led, and what the many-sided outlook thence." The claims of classical Greek poetry to a per- manent hold upon the attention of the conclusion: civilized world are of two kinds, intrin- cidmslT""^ sic and historical. Viewed in regard to ^'"'' p"""^' its intrinsic qualities, this poetry is the creation of a people in whom the gifts of the artists were more harmoniously united than in any other race; it bears the impress of their mind in the perfec- tion of its form ; it is also the spontaneous and profoundly suggestive expression of their life and thought. Viewed historically, this poetry is the fountain-head of poetical tradition in Europe ; it has supplied the typical standards of form, it has also furnished a varied wealth of material and illustration ; even where it has not given a direct model, it has operated by the subtle diffusion of an animating spirit ; it has become blended with various other influences of later origin, and to every such alliance it has contributed some intel- lectual distinction which no other element could have supplied. So far from being adverse to 2SO POWER OF GREEK POETRY those religious and ethical influences which are beyond the compass of its own gift to modern life, it is, rightly understood, in concord with them, inasmuch as it tends to elevate and to refine the human spirit by the contemplation of beauty in its noblest and purest form. On the high places of Greek literature, those who are worn with the troubles or disturbed by the mental maladies of modern civilization can breathe an atmosphere which, like that of Greece itself, has the freshness of the mountains and the sea. But the loneliness of Oeta or Cithaeron is not there ; we have around us, on those summits, also the cheerful sympathies of human life, the pleasant greetings of the kindly human voice. The great poets of ancient Hellas recall to one's mind the words in which Aeschylus described the kinsmen of Niobe who worshiped their ancestral deity on the mountain-heights of Mysia: — the seed of gods, Men near to Zeus ; for whom on Ida burns, High in clear air, the altar of their Sire, Nor hath their race yet lost the blood divine. Humanity cannot afford to lose out of its in- heritance any part of the best work which has been done for it in the past. All that is most beautiful and most instructive in Greek achieve- ment is our permanent possession ; one which can be enjoyed without detriment to those other studies which modern life demands ; one which no lapse of time can make obsolete, and which CONCLUSION 251 no multiplication of modern interests can make superfluous. Each successive < generation must learn from ancient Greece that which can be taught by her alone ; and to assist, however little, in the transmission of her message is the best reward of a student. INDEX. Achilles, the Homeric, 42 ; char- acteristics of, 43 ; the ideal of manhood, 47. Actors, number of, in Sopho- clean tragedy, i8r. Adonis, cult of, 229. Aeolian lyric, the, no, 142. Aeschylus, 147 j period of, 161 ; founder of the drama, 162 ; use of chorus by, 169; style in lyrics, 170; in dialogue, 172; his genius and creative im- agination, 173; his conception of character, 175; theology of, 176; his use of the trilogy, 179. Aetna, eruption of, 147. Agamemnon, 43. Age of Pericles, relation of So- phocles to, 188. Alcaeus, 112. Alcman, 115; character of his poems, no. Alexandria, religion of, 229; pop- ulation of, 230. Alexandrian period, the, 230. Anacreon, 113; character of his poems, 114. Anaxagoras, 192. Antigone, the, of Sophocles, 186. ApoUonius Rhodius, 231. Archilochus of Paros, 99, 104. Architecture, Gothic, 29. Arion, 158; development of di- thyramb due to, 158. Aristophanes, testimony of, to Aeschylus, 162; his hostility to Euripides, 199; genius of, 202 ; his criticism, 204. Aristotle, on Greek monarchy, 17 ; on the doctrine of poetry, 228. Arnold, Matthew, 54, 145, 239. Art, mediaeval, 237. Assyria, religion of, 5. Athena, 45, 53, 59. Athens, development of comedy at, 200 J population of, 230. Athletes, honor paid to, loi. Attic Comedy, 124; Euripides the butt of, 191, 199; develop- ment of, 199; Roman adapta- tion of, 215. Attic Drama, relation of Pindar to, ISS, 156; origin of, 157; Aeschylus the founder of, 162 ; laws of, 219. Attic Tragedy, nature of, 163; material of, 163 ; didactic qual- ity of, 164; its portraiture of character, 166 ; ending with Euripides, 205; its claim de- fined, 218. Babylonia, religion of, 5. Bacchae of Euripides, the, pre- eminence of, 208. Bacchylides, 122; odes of, 122; style of, 123. Boeotian farming, 85. Callimachus, 231. Chansons de Geste, 40. Charybdis, 66. Choral lyric, the Dorian, 114, 142, 144, 157. Chorus, circular, 159 ; satyr, 159 ; of Aeschylus, 169; of Sopho- cles, 187 ; of Euripides, 196. Cicero, 212. Circular chorus, the, 1 59. Citharodes, school of, at Lesbos, III, 158. 254 INDEX Civilization, Egyptian, 2 ; in Io- nian colonies, 95. Clement of Alexandria, 209. Climate, influence of, on Greek development, 30. Comedy, traits of, in the Odys- [ sey, 71 ; derivation of the name, 200 ; development of, at Athens, 200. Corinth, 158. Criticism of Aristophanes, 204. Cult of Adonis, 229. Cyrene, the nymph, 153. Damophyla, 113. Danae, description of, by Simo- nides, 122. Dante, 119, 216, 238. Delphi, oracle of, 8g, 90; rela- tion of Pindar to, 127. Demodocus, the minstrel, 36, 79- Dionysia, the Great, 160. Dionysus, 157; song of, 1 58 ; festival of, 160. Dirge, the, 121 ; introduced by Simonides, 121. Dithyramb, the, 1 57 ; description of, 1 57 ; development of, due to Arion, 158. Divination by fire at Olympia, 128. Divine and human action, 59 ; in the Odyssey, 69. Dorian lyric, the, 109; choral, 114, 142, 144, 157. Dorian ode, the, 113. Doric temples at Olympia, 129. Drama, transition from ancient to modern, 216; birth of Eng- lish, 217. Drama, Attic, Pindar's relation to, 155, 156; origin of, 157; Aeschylus the founder of, 162. Dryden, 227. Egyptian civilization, 2. Elegiac couplet, the, 96, loi. Elegiac poetry, origin of, 95; popular character of, 102 ; vi- tality of, 103 ; kinship with iambic, 107 ; why classed as lyric, 108. Elegiac poets, 98, period of, 98. Elegy, meaning of word, 95 ; martial, 99 ; influence of Solon on, 100. Elysium as depicted by Pindar, 149. Encomia, 120. English drama, birth of, 217. English war-poetry, early, 40. Epic period, the, how related to the lyric, 34 ; duration of, 94. Epic poetry as distinct from lyric and dramatic, 32 ; later Greek, 35 ; relation of Pindar to, 150. Epinicia, 120. Erinna, 113. Eros, of the poets, 119. Euripides, 155 ; attacked in Attic Comedy, 191, 199; residence at Salamis, 191 ; relation to Athens of his time, 192; work as a dramatist, 193, 194 ; char- acter of his tragedies, 194, 195 ; treatment of the Chorus, 196; his prologues, 198; popularity in later times, 205 ; popularity at Rome, 206; in modern times, 206; merits as a poet, 207 ; his kinship with all ages, 208 ; influence on the history of the world, 210 ; realism, 210 ; difiiculties under which he worked, 215. Fable, in Hesiod, 82. Farming in Boeotia, 85. " Faust," Goethe's, 238. Five ages of Hesiod, 81. Flute, music of, first developed in Phrygia, 96. French romances of chivalry, 41. Frogs of Aristophanes, the, 162 ; criticism in, 203. Games, Olympian, description of, 128, 129, 130. Gladstone, W. E., "Studies in Homer," 248. INDEX 255 Gods, the Homeric, 23, 70. Goethe, 238. Gothic Architecture, 29. Graces, the, invocation to, by Pindar, 147. Graioi, 12. Greek compared with Sanslcrit, 21. Greek monarchy, Aristotle on, 17- Greek shepherds, love-songs of, 232. Greeks, distinction of, among Indo-Europeans, 27. Gymnopaedia, festival of, 116. Hebraism and Hellenism, con- trast between, 239, 240. Hector, 58. Hellenic characteristics, 15. Hellenic migrations, the, 12. Hellenic reaction in i8th cen- tury, 236. Hellenism and Hebraism, con- trast between, 239, 240. Heracles, 153, 154. Heracles, shield of, of Hesiod, 90. Herodotus, 164. Hesiod, rival of Homer, 79 ; po- ems of, 79 ; date of, 79 ; Theo- gony of, 88, 89 ; style of, com- pared with the Homeric, 91 ; as a teacher, 92 ; literary inter- est of, 93. Hexameter, character of, 97. Homeric language, 21. Homeric nobleness and rapid- ity, 56; use of direct speech, 61 ; simile, 61. Homeric plainness of thought and style, 54, 55. Homeric poems, probable origin of, 14; as a revelation of the Greek faculties, 24; form of, 53 ; position of women in, 72 ; characteristics of women in, 76; general character of, 78; poetical art in, 78 ; style of, compared with the Hesiodic, 91. Iambic poetry, 103 ; obscurity of its origin, 104 ; general char- acter of, 106 ; compared with elegiac, 106; illustration from Solon, 107 ; kinship with ele- giac, 107 ; why classed as lyric, 108. Iambic satire, 105. Ibycus, 119; characteristics of his poetry, 119. Iliad, the, religion in, 15 ; climax of, 58 ; use of simile in, 62 ; re- semblance between the OdJS- sey and, 64; differences be- tween the Odyssey and, 64 ; dramatic force of, 67. Ionian colonies, civilization in the, 95. Jonson, Ben, 217. Keats, 242 ; his relation to Greek poetry, 242, 243. Knowledge, Greek desire for, 20. Landor, 242. Language, Homeric, 21. Lesbos, cultivation of music at, no; school of citharodes at, III, 158. Lessing, 236. " Limping " iambic verse or sca- zon, 105. Lore, magical, in the Odyssey, 68. Lyre, invocation to, 146. Lyric poetry, Greek, 94 ; period of, 109 ; causes of its decline, 123. Magical lore, in the Odyssey, 68. Martial elegies, 99. Maxims of Hesiod, 87. Mediaeval art, 237. Melancholy, Greek, 20. Melic poetry, 108. Menelaus, 77. Migrations, Hellenic, 12. Milton, quoted, 57 ; his apprecia- tion of classical literature, 241. Mimnermus, 99. 256 INDEX Minstrel, the early Greek, 38. Miracle Plays, 216. Monarchy, early Greek, 17. " Moralities," the mediaeval, 217, Morris, William, 245. Music, the new, adopted by Eu- ripides, 197, 198. Music, cultivation of, at Lesbos, no. " Mysteries," the mediaeval, 216. Narrative in the Odyssey, 65. Natural growth of Greek poetry, 2l8. Nausicaa, 74. Nibelungenlied, the, 39. Nobleness of Homer, 56, 72. Nomes, 115, 158. Odes, of victory, 109, 124; Do- rian, 113; of Simonides, 120; of Pindar, 127. Odysseus, the Homeric, 49. Odyssey, the resemblance be- tween the Iliad and, 64; dif- ferences between the Iliad and, 64; style of narrative in, 65; brevity and simplicity of, 65 ; gods of the, 70 ; social life in, 72. Olympia, the sacred precmct at, 128. Olympian Festival, the, 1 28 ; re- ligious elements connected with, 131. Olympian Ode, analysis of the first, 137. Oratorio, comparison between Odes of Pindar and, 140. Origin of Attic Drama, 157. Pan-Hellenic range of Pindar's Odes, 136. Pelops, legend of, 138. Pentameter, introduction of, 97. Pericles, age of, relation of So- phocles to, 188. Perses, brother of Hesiod, 80. Persian Wars, the, loi. Philemon, 206. Phocylides of Miletus, 100. Phoenicians, 9. Phrygia, origin of elegy in, 96. Phrynichus, 161, 162. Picturesque effects in the Odys- sey, 67. Pindar, odes of, 109, 127; general effect of, 140. Pindar, preeminence as a lyric poet, 126; life and period of, 127; relation to Delphi, 127; characteristics of his poetry, 132 ; artistic power of, 141 ; originality of, 143 ; feeling for music, 146; sense of beauty in nature, 147 ; views of human life, 148 ; relation to epic po- etry, 150 ; affinity to Attic Drama, 155, 156. Pindaric diction, characteristics of, 144. Plato, dialogues of, 77. Plutarch on the style of Sopho- cles, 185. Poetical art, in Homeric poetry, 78. Pope's translation of Homer, quoted, 56. Priests, in Homer, 16. Prologues of Euripides, 198. Pythian ode, description of the fourth, 150. Religion, in the Iliad, 15. Renaissance, the, 236. Roman adaptation of Greek Comedy, 215. Romance, meaning of, 216. Romances of chivalry, French, 41. Romantic School, the, 238. Rome, popularity of Euripides at, 206; influence of Greek poetry on, 234. Rossetti, D. G., 245. Salamis, residence of Euripides at, 191. Sanskrit compared with Greek, 21. Sanskrit epics compared with Homer, 28. INDEX 257 Sapphic stanza, the, 112. Sappho, HI ; an elegy by, loi. Satire, iambic, 105. Satyrs, chorus of, 159. Scazon, 105. Schiller, 236. School of citharodes at Lesbos, III, 158. Scylla, 66. Selloi, 12. Shakespeare, 216. Shield of Heracles, of Hesiod, Sicily, birthplace of Comedy, 199. Sidney, Sir Philip, 227. Simile, Homeric use of, 61. Simonides as an elegist, loi ; his character and work, 120. Solon, 99; his use of elegy, 100 ; illustration of iambic verse from, 107. Sophocles, his happy life, 180; ethical and religious views, 181 ; introduces a third actor, 184; periods of his style, 185; general characteristics of his plays, 186; use of the chorus by, 187 ; relation to the Age of Pericles, 188. Sparta, poetic themes suggested by, 114; Dorian lyric at, 115. Stadion at Olympia, 130. Stanza, the Sapphic, 112; Aeo- lian four-line, 113. Statue of Zeus at Olympia, 129. Stesichorus, of Himera, 1 17 ; choral poetry of, 118; epic style of, 1 18 J triad of, 118. Strabo, 226. Teacher, Greek view of the poet as a, 226. Temple of Zeus at Olympia, 129. Terpander, 11 1, 158. Theocritus, characteristics of his poetry, 232. Theognis of Megara, 100. Theogony, the, of Hesiod, 88; characteristics of, 89. Theology of Aeschylus, 176. Thespis, 160. Threnos, or dirge, 121. Tragedy, Attic, nature of, 163; material of, 163 ; didactic ele- ment in, 164; portraiture of character in, 166; its claim de- fined, 218. Triad of Stesichorus, 118. Trilogy, use of, by Aeschylus, 179. Tyrtaeus, 99. Victory, ode of, 109, 124. Voltaire, 145. Winckelmann, 236. Women, position of, in Homeric poetry, 72; characteristics of, 76 ; as portrayed by Euripides, 209. Works and Days, the, of Hesiod, 79- Xenophanes, loi, 192. Zeus, temple and statue of, at Olympia, 129.