fA 
 
 Cornell Hmrmitg Jib«»tg 
 
 GouDwiN Smith Hall 
 
 FROM THE FUND GIVEN BY 
 
 CSoIdmin Smftf) 
 1909 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PA 3054. W95 
 
 A short history of Greek literature from 
 
 3 1924 014 334 035 
 
 §^fmm eft^te Due 
 
 |p j^»MQ§9 
 
 
 w- 
 
 \^^mg 
 
 ^ mtM^ ^ 
 
 w^ngsr-^— ^^^ 
 
 -^ABft-^^ 
 
 ^nSBS- 
 
 "^^ 
 
 TIT? 
 
 BOOK 
 
 23 233 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 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/cu31924014334035 
 
GREEK SERIES FOR COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS 
 
 EDITED 
 UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF 
 
 HERBERT WEIR SMYTH, Ph.D. 
 
 ELIOT PROFESSOR OF GREEK LITERATURE IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
 
VOLUMES OF THE SERIES 
 
 GREEK GRAMMAR FOR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES. Ey the Editor, 
 
 Prof. Herbert Weir Smyth. 
 GREEK GRAMMAR FOR COLLEGES. By the Editor, Prof. Herbert Weir 
 
 Smyth. 
 BEGINNER'S GREEK BOOK. Prof. Allen R. Benner, Phillips Academy, An- 
 
 dover; and the Editor. 
 BRIEF GREEK SYNTAX. Prof. Louis Bevier, Jr., Rutgers College. 
 GREEK PROSE COMPOSITION FOR SCHOOLS. Clarence W. Gleason, 
 
 Volkmann School, Boston. 
 
 GREEK PROSE COMPOSITION FOR COLLEGES. Prof. Edward H. 
 
 Spieker, Johns Hopkins University. 
 AESCHYLUS. PrOMETHEIJS. Prof, J. E. Harry, University of Cincinnati. 
 ARISTOPHANES. Clouds. Dr. L. L. Forman, Cornell University. 
 DEMOSTHENES. On the Crown. Prof. Milton W. Humphreys, University 
 
 of Virginia. 
 
 EURIPIDES. IphIGENIA in TauriS. Prof. William N. Bates, University of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 EURIPIDES. Medea. Prof. Mortimer Lamson Earle, Columbia University. 
 HERODOTUS. Books VII.-VIII. Prof. Charles Forster Smith and Prof. Arthur 
 Gordon Laird, University of Wisconsin. 
 
 HOMER. Iliad. Prof. J. R. S. Sterrett, Cornell University. 
 
 Books I.-in. Books I.-III. and Selections. 
 LYSIAS. Prof. Charles D. Adams, Dartmouth College. 
 
 PLATO. Apology and CriTO. Prof. Isaac Flagg, University of California. 
 PLATO. EUTHYPHRO. Prof. William A. Heidel, Wesleyan University. 
 
 THUCYDIDES. Books II.-III. Prof. W. A. Lamberton, University of Penn- 
 sylvania. 
 
 XENOPHON. Anabasis. Books I.-IV. Dr. M. w. Mather, instructor in 
 
 Harvard University, and Prof. J. W. Hewitt, Wesleyan University. 
 
 XENOPHON. HelLENICA (Selections). Prof. Carleton L. Brownson, CoUege of 
 the City of New York. 
 
 GREEK ARCHAEOLOGY. Prof. Harold N. Fowler, Western Reserve University, 
 
 and Prof. James R. Wheeler, Columbia University. 
 GREEK LITERATURE. Dr. Wilmer Cave Wright, Bryn Mawr College. 
 
 GREEK RELIGION. Arthur Fairbanks, Ph.D., Litt.D., Director of the Boston 
 Museum of Fine Arts. 
 
 GREEK SCULPTURE. Prof. Rufus B. Richardson, formerly Director of the Ameri- 
 can School of Classical Studies, Athens. 
 
A SHORT HISTORY 
 
 OF 
 
 GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 FROM HOMER TO JULIAN 
 
 BY 
 WILMER CAVE WRIGHT, Ph.D. 
 
 I ATE OF GIRTON COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR 
 OF GREEK IN BRYN MAWR COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YORK-:- CINCINNATI •:■ CHICAGO 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 
 
 ^.UNIVI III 
 
Copyright, 1907, BY ,' 
 
 AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY. 
 
 CEEEK LITERATURE, 
 W. P- "> 
 
 Y I h" n;iv'iHu 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The writer of a survey of Greek literature so brief as 
 this feels throughout the task the lack of elbow-room, and 
 must always be acutely conscious of omissions. I have 
 kept constantly in mind the reader who, though little or 
 not at all acquainted with the classics, realizes that he can- 
 not appreciate any other literature, least of all his own, 
 unless he can relate its masterpieces to the types set, once 
 for all, by the Greeks. He may safely ignore all but the 
 best. But this book is intended, no less, for the student of 
 Greek who, in his second or third year at college, will 
 profit immensely by a rapid survey of the whole field of 
 Greek literature. For him every part of that whole be- 
 comes significant, and for his sake the tribe of Euphorion 
 or the declaimers must often usurp space that, if one fol- 
 lowed the mere sense of proportion, is due to the creative 
 writers. 
 
 Of the prose writers, Julian's is the latest name formally 
 treated, but, in order to include Musaeus and the later 
 epic, I have carried down the sketch of Graeco-Roman 
 poetry to the sixth century. 
 
 In the matter of the spelling of names I have not 
 striven for a consistency that scholars continue to abhor. 
 What advantage is it to a man who writes the name of 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 Dio to write it as he ought? asked Epictetus. I might 
 put the same question about Bion, or Eucleides the archon 
 and Euclid the geometer, and others, who will, no doubt, 
 long continue to defy the worshipers of uniformity. 
 
 I take this opportunity of expressing my thanks to 
 Professor Herbert Weir Smyth, the p:ditor of this Series, 
 for many valuable suggestions and criticisms. 
 
 WILMER CAVE WRIGHT. 
 BrYN Mawr, February, 1907. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER pjlCE 
 
 1. Pierian Religious Poetry g 
 
 II. The Homeric Poems 13 
 
 III. The Cyclic Fragments 45 
 
 \ylV. Hesiod 53 
 
 V. The Homeric Hymns and Epigrams 64 
 
 VI. Elegy and Iambic 71 
 
 VII. Melic Poetry 93 
 
 VIII. The Beginnings of Prose: The Early Philosophers . 143 
 
 IX. The Logographers : Herodotus 152 
 
 X. The Beginnings of Rhetoric: The Sophists . . .165 
 
 XI. Thucydides 175 
 
 \/XII. The Beginnings of the Drama: Aeschylus . . . 185 
 
 XIII. Sophocles 216 
 
 XIV. Euripides 238 
 
 XV. Comedy: Old, Middle, and New 271 
 
 XVI. Xenophon 317 
 
 XVII. The Earlier Orators: IsocrateS 326 
 
 XVIII. The Fourth-Century Orators: Demosthenes . . . 347 
 
 XIX. Socrates and the Lesser Socratics 369 
 
 XX. Plato 379 
 
 XXI. Aristotle 396 
 
 XXII. Alexandrian Literature 414 
 
 XXIII. Graeco-Roman Literature 462 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 519 
 
 INDEX , 525 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 PIERIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY 
 
 tx was from Thrace that the Muses, the Pierides, daughters of 
 aegis-bearing Zeus, made their first entrance into Greece ; from 
 the somber northern country that for the Greek and Latin poets 
 is peculiarly associated with snow and cold, the ice-bound summits 
 of Haeraus, the swift, cold waters of the Hebrus, the frozen cav- 
 erns of the Strymon. In the long night that ends for us with the 
 sudden illumination of the Homeric Poems, the Greeks distin- 
 guished a group of legendary figures, poets before Homer as 
 there were brave men before Agamemnon. Homer himself, whor 
 names no other poet, describes the encounter of the Muses with 
 Thracian Thamyris. There they met Thracian Thamy- 
 ris as he came up from Oechalia and made him cease 
 from song. For he boasted that he would excel, even though the 
 Muses themselves should sing, the daughters of aegis-bearing Zeus. 
 In their anger they made him blind, they took from him his mar- 
 velous gift of song, and caused him to forget his harping} The 
 fate of " blind Thamyris " is echoed in Greek literature as late as 
 the Emperor Julian. He is the prototype of the blind bard, 
 singular in that his loss of sight obscured his poetic gift, while 
 for the rest, blindness is a part of the poet's equipment, as for 
 Demodocus in the Odyssey, to whom the Muse gave good and 
 bad together. 'The sight of his eyes she took away, but gave 
 him the gift of sweet song.'* 
 
 1 Iliad II 594. The story is told with great detail in a song towards the 
 end of Browning's Aristophanes Apology. 
 
 2 So in the earliest version of the Daphnis legend the hero of pastoral 
 poetry sings only after the loss of his sight. 
 
 9 
 
lo SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Linus is a mere name, a personality invented, according to 
 
 Movers, by Greeks who misinterpreted the Semitic lament ai lenu, 
 
 ' woe to us,' the cry of " women weeping for Taramuz," 
 
 the Greek Adonis. But where men sang at all the 
 
 fair Linus song was sung. In Homer's Shield of Achilles it is 
 
 marked out as the typical lyric.^ The fragment of a Linus song 
 
 quoted by the Scholiast on that passage shows us at least what 
 
 was the Greek notion of the earliest type of dirge. In the fate 
 
 of Linus we recognize again the primitive conception of a divme 
 
 jealousy of mortal achievement which blinded Thamyris, Teiresias, 
 
 and Stesichorus, and destroyed Marsyas. The resentment of 
 
 Apollo slew Linus, whose suffering survives in Greek tragedy 
 
 where his personality fades into a mere refrain or epithet of woe.^ 
 
 The fame of Musaeus as a poet and the reputed founder of 
 
 the Eleusinian Mysteries was handed down by an unbroken 
 
 tradition. Plato deplores the influence on the super- 
 
 stitious of the ' swarm of books by Orpheus and 
 
 Musaeus,' while, for the more conservative Aristophanes, Musaeus, 
 
 like Orpheus, is a great religious teacher of the mysteries and 
 
 oracles, a ' useful ' poet, to be ranked with Homer and Hesiod.^ 
 
 Vergil, in his picture of the underworld,^ honors Musaeus even 
 
 more than Orpheus, the ' Thracian priest.' 
 
 Of all this shadowy tribe the most mysterious and yet mo?t 
 
 significant is the figure of Orpheus, whom Pindar calls 'the 
 
 father of song sent bv Apollo.' The poems at- 
 Orpheus ., , , . , ' , , , 
 
 tnbuted to hmi became the sacred book of all Greek 
 
 writers who were seriously interested in the technicalities and 
 mysteries of the religion of Greece. If, as Cicero declares, Aris- 
 totle denied the existence of Orpheus, the fact counted for noth- 
 
 1 Iliad XVIII 570. 
 
 2 Aesch. Ag. 121 ; Eur. I/el 171. 
 
 8 Frogs 1032. Heracleitus (circa 500 B.C.) is the oldest witness for Orphic 
 writings. The Greeks ascribed to Onomacritus, the sixth-century forger, 
 certain oracles of Orpheus and Musaeus. 
 
 * Aen. VI 667-668. 
 
PIERIAN RELIGIOUS POETRY n 
 
 ing. For Pythagoreans and Neo-Platonists alike, his Theogonies 
 were a sort of Book of Genesis. The collection of Orphica that 
 has reached us is a medley of late imitations and fragments which 
 range in date from the fifth or sixth century B.C. to the fourth 
 Christian century. For the most part their interest is antiquarian, 
 but here and there among the older fragments there is a trace of 
 austere and hieratic verse. Zeus of the gleaming thunderbolt is 
 first, Zeus is last; Zeus is the head, Zeus the center ; from Zeus 
 all things were made, Zeus is the foundation of earth and of the 
 starry heavens} This litany, which may well be primitive, or an 
 echo of the primitive, was the utterance of some mighty-mouthed 
 inventor ; it has the harmony of Milton's invocation : — 
 
 "Thee, Father first they sing, Omnipotent, 
 Immutable, Immortal, Infinite, 
 Eternal King; Thee, author of all Being." 
 
 Such was at least the Greek conception of this early religious/ 
 poetry, hexameters in which were defined the attributes and line-' 
 age of the gods which were to be made popular by the poems of 
 Hesiod and Homer; stately invocations, verse after verse of epi- 
 thets that are a sort of prayer ; it is precisely the type of song 
 that Orpheus sang to enchant the Argonauts.^ Its charm escapes 
 our modem taste. But there was a time when men were more 
 interested in the gods than in themselves, and that was the day of 
 Theogonies. For us, all the interest of Paradise Lost centers in 
 the fall of Eve ; for the primitive Greek it would have centered 
 in the fall of Satan. 
 
 The sorrows and resurrection of the Thracian Dionysus — 
 Zagreus — especially appealed to the Orphics. Their tradition and 
 ritual gradually spiritualized the gloomy Thracian legend which is 
 the ground note of all the suffering of Greek tragedy. Euripides, 
 who devoted his mystery play of the Bacchae to the sinister side 
 of Dionysus worship, was deeply interested in the Orphic doc- 
 trines. When Theseus in the Hippolytus taunts his son with his 
 
 1 Abel, Orphica 46. * ApoU. Rhod. Argonautica i. 496 ff. 
 
12 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 devotion to ' the ancient, ghostly, scrolls of Orpheus,' it is to the 
 Orphic discipline of life that Euripides refers, the asceticism 
 which, for two centuries, had been the main tenet of the Orphic 
 doctrine. The individualistic tendency that it encouraged was 
 no doubt attractive to Euripides, as it was wholly repellent to 
 Plato. The wish of Adraetus {Alcestis 357), Would that the 
 voice and the music of Orpheus were mine that I might charm 
 the daughter of Demeter and her lord with my songs and bring 
 thee forth from Hades ! Vergil's miserabilis Orpheus, the quest 
 of Eurydice, the descent into Hades, the violent death amid the 
 rites of Dionysus, all the literary immortality of Orpheus, is an 
 echo of the sacred doctrines of Orphisra. 
 
 Orpheus and the Dionysus legend may represent some form of 
 nature-worship on the " high Thracian farms " of northern Greece. 
 The rivalry of Tharayris and the Muses may symbolize some stage 
 in the growth of secular poetry from the poetry of invocation and 
 genealogy. All that we can assume is that the religious epos of 
 Pieria, of which the Greeks saw a dim reflection in the Orphica, 
 was the natural consolation of the more primitive ages of Greece 
 when the Muses first secured for men " a forgetfulness of evils, 
 and a truce from cares." 
 
 From this epos the Homeric Olympus may have been derived, 
 but it is in Hesiod and not in Homer that we hear its dying 
 echoes. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Abel, Orphica, Leipzig, 1885. Kinkel, Epicorum fragmenta I, 1877. 
 Mulkch, Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum, i860, has collected the 
 fragments attributed to Linus. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, 1829. Schuster, De 
 veteris orphicae Theogoniae indole atque origine, 1869. Kern, De Orphei, 
 Epimenidis Pherecydis Theogoniis, Berlin, 1888. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 THE HOMERIC POEMS 
 
 The Iliad and Odyssey are the earliest literary monuments, 
 not of Greece alone, but of Europe, and it is to them that we 
 must look for a clew to the poetry of which they are a selection. 
 We can trace in the texture of both poems a number of broken 
 threads of poetic legend, a number of unmistakable allusions to 
 poetry of the same general type, saga poetry, from the The heroic 
 great store of which these poems were drawn. The saga 
 heroic saga was the nucleus that in due time received artistic 
 treatment and w^s transformed into the heroic epic* There 
 must have been poets, impersonal and forgotten, to sing the Me- 
 leager saga of which there is an incomplete but splendid echo in 
 the ' Embassy '^ of the Iliad. The exploits of Tydeus and his 
 peers, the tale' 6f Thebes, the Dorian saga of Heracles, the Thes- 
 salian legend of the adventures of the crew of the Argo ' old in 
 story,' the tragic tale of Bellerophon, all these are quoted in the 
 poems,^ themselves limited by the Trojan campaign and its 
 sequel. The poet of the Odyssey, who bids the Muse inspire him 
 to sing some portion of the Odysseus saga, has his counterpart in 
 Phemius, who sings among the suitors the ' Sorrowful Return of 
 the Achaeans,' or in Demodocus at the Phaeacian court, making 
 
 1 The view of Niese that there was no pre-Homeric saga is worthy of note 
 only because his book, Die Entwicklelung der Hotnerischen Poesie, contains 
 much that is valuable for other aspects of the Homeric question. 
 
 ''■ E^. Iliad 1X527-599; IV yjz-ifX); VI 152-21 1. Achilles in his hut 
 sings the exploits of the heroes of old, 
 
 13 
 
14 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his lay of an episode in the war of which men still talked as well 
 as sang. It is significant that his 'Quarrel of Odysseus and 
 Achilles ' and his ' Tale of the Wooden Horse ' are not to be found 
 in our Iliad. 
 
 It is in fact evidence of the later date of the Odyssey that the 
 minstrels in that poem take their subjects, with the exception of 
 the song of Ares and Aphrodite, from the Trojan cycle already 
 fixed in public favor by the Iliad; even the sirens sang of 
 the toils they wrought, Argives and Trojans, by the will of the gods 
 The Trojan ^'« broad Troy-land. Of all their legends the Trojan 
 
 saga made the most profound impression on the Greeks. 
 
 Many an "unripe myth," many an "unripe epic," must l\ave fore- 
 shadowed the Iliad. The hexameter that Homer wields with 
 ease was an instrument forged by a long succession of poets, very 
 different from the cruder meter of primitive hieratic verse. But 
 the poet of the ' Wrath ' chose with poetic insight the most deeply 
 and permanently dramatic theme in all the store of saga. He 
 laid his scene in Asia Minor and showed in the resistance of 
 Priam and the people of Priam the Eastern defiance of the West, 
 a breach never to be healed. The echo of that collision had not 
 died when the Greeks repelled at Marathon the return wave of 
 invasion from the East. 
 
 The excavation at Hissarlik of a city — the sixth from the 
 bottom — that can be called ' Mycenaean ' secures, almost to the 
 extent that Schliemann hoped, a historical background for the Ho- 
 Dateofthe meric Poems. If Dorpfeld's date (1500-1000 B.C.) 
 
 Iliad for this Homeric city, the Pergamus of Troy,' be ac- 
 
 cepted, we may place that date as the terminus a quo of the 
 Trojan saga. The Homeric Poems are then a precipitate of 
 certain historical events. They may even represent some stage in 
 the colonization of Asia Minor from the mainland, a literature of 
 the exodus of the Achaeans, driven out by the Dorian invasion. 
 At any rate the events in the Poems occurred before the Dorian 
 
 iThe number of combatants must be greatly exaggerated in the poem, 
 since the circuit of the ' Homeric ' city is little more than a third of a mile. 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 15 
 
 iettlement of the Peloponnesus. For the Iliad knows no Dorians, 
 and the Odyssey only the Dorians of Crete.' 
 
 The problem of the origin and authorship of the Homeric 
 Poems kindled a debate in which the learned world is still era- 
 broiled. The open questions of Greek archaeology, history, and 
 linguistic all wait for a correct reading of the Homeric xhe Homeric 
 enigma. Archaeologists hope to determine it by the question 
 spade ; philologists by studies in dialect ; historians, like Bethe,^ 
 by tracking the local relations and cults of the heroes, which may 
 reveal the separate threads of the heroic saga, now so closely 
 interwoven ; literary critics persist i;i applying the canons of 
 aesthetics, the most subjective and fluctuating of all tests. The 
 consequence is that no one can relate his individual impressions 
 of the Iliad and Odyssey independently of the thronging theories 
 which give a fresh bias to every generation of readers. The same 
 may be said, if with less force, of all Greek poetry down to Archil- 
 ochus. After that the judgment is freer. There is no Alcaean, no 
 SopRoclean, 'question.' One can form one's estimate of either, 
 as one may of Byron or Tennyson, from the remains. But a liter- 
 ary revaluation of the Homerica apart from the Homeric question 
 is impossible. 
 
 The honor of giving birth to Homer was claimed by seven 
 cities, chiefly Ionian, though Aeolic Smyrna^ is among the most 
 respected claimants. Melesigenes, one of the names Homer's 
 given to the poet by tradition, is derived from the birthplace 
 river Meles which flows near Smyrna. The eight and name 
 Lives of Homer, which relate his adventures with much variation 
 of detail, and a precision that is the mint-mark of fiction when 
 applied to remote events, merely add to the uncertainty of the 
 tradition. The very name of ' Homer ' and its meaning is one 
 of the minor problems of Homeric criticism. Like ' Stesichorus,' 
 
 1 Od. 19. 177. The silence of Honver usually recoils on one who would 
 argue from it. The Aeolians are never named, yet on no theory could they 
 have been unknown to Homer. 
 
 2 Neue Jahrbiicher, 1904. ' Smyrna was Aeolic as late as 688 B.C. 
 
16 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 it may be an appellative implying some poetic activity— the 
 ' Harmonizer ' (o/a^, dp) ; ' but more probably it has no more 
 relation to the composition of the Iliaii than has the name of 
 Shakespeare to his plays. The regular meaning ' hostage ' gives 
 no clew ; we cannot trust the legend that in any dialect it meant 
 ' blind ' ; and Sengebusch's identification of Homer and Thamyris 
 reminds one of another ingenious German who refused to dis- 
 tinguish the Ettrick Shepherd from the Wizard of the North since 
 " Hogg " was obviously the dialect form of " Scott." The famous 
 reference to the Mnd man of Chios in the Delian Hymn to 
 Apollo may just as well have referred to Cynaethus of Chios, to 
 whom the Hymn is assigned by a Pindaric scholiast.^ From the 
 The Homer- same Commentator we first hear of the Homeridae, a 
 idae gort of School, or gens, of rhapsodes about whom the 
 tradition is no less confused. Were they ' Sons of Homer ' or 
 ' Sons of Hostages' ? Is Homer a patronymic derived from them, 
 or did some family choose him as their eponymous hero? For 
 Plato the Homeridae are merely those interested in Homer. 
 Even so, three thousand years hence, the true role of the Words- 
 worthians will be debated. 
 
 Our ignorance of the " little clan " of Chios and of the whole 
 corps of rhapsodes is the measure of our ignorance of the growth 
 of the Homeric Poems. Did the Thessalian Achaeans,^ the earlier 
 conquerors of the Peloponnesus, evicted in their turn by the 
 Dorians, carry across the Aegaean the hero saga that celebrates 
 the Mycenaean dynasty, the nucleus of the Iliad? * Strabo tells of 
 a second assembling at Aulis under Orestes and his son, who led 
 a migration through the Troad to Lesbos, and of a settlement of 
 
 1 Fick thinks the name may indicate a cult to celebrate the Aeolo-Achaean 
 union. 2 Schol. Find. Nem. II i. 
 
 * Mr. Ridgeway's theory is that they were a Celtic tribe which had mi- 
 grated from Epirus to Thessaly and formed a ruling Achaean caste. But 
 his picture of an army of conquered " Pelasgians " officered by Achaeans in 
 the Trojan campaign is unsupported by any evidence in the Iliad of such a 
 relation between the Greek chiefs and their men. 
 
 * The view of Monro, Leaf, and Lang. 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 17 
 
 the Pelopids at Cym6 in the twelfth and eleventh centuries B.C. 
 
 Perhaps the colonists of whom this legend is IJe reflection took 
 
 with them the lays in which the exploits of Aga- 
 
 , , r -r^ Birthplace 
 
 memnon were already famous. If so, we may im- of the 
 
 agine, with Mr. Leaf, that " some part of the most Poems 
 
 primitive Iliad may have been actually sung by the court minstrel 
 
 in the palace whose ruins can still be seen in Mycenae," a 
 
 minstrel who may have seen the day when Mycenae fell, like Troy. 
 
 Again, was the Iliad the work of Aeolic and Ionian poets in 
 Asia Minor, who sang in the Greek colonies the exploits of the 
 Achaeans of precolonial days ? ^ The Iliad might then have its 
 origin in the family pride of the princely colonial houses that 
 claimed descent from Agamemnon. Against this theory is the 
 fact that the last thing that Homer would seem to envisage is a 
 Hellenized Asia Minor, a foreign settlement of Greeks. For him 
 Miletus, the flower of Greek colonial enterprise, is still Carian. 
 Agamemnon comes to conquer, not to colonize. To return to 
 Greece, to their ' dear native land,' that, with the Greek heroes, is 
 an idee fixe; a strange point of view to emphasize in a colonial 
 epic. Would the poet of such an epic ignore the Aeolians and 
 only once mention the lonians ? ^ In that debatable Book, the 
 eleventh of the Odyssey, the catalogue of fair women is made up 
 from the legends of Thessaly, Boeotia, the Peloponnesus, and 
 Crete. ~&o Asiatic heroine displays her beauty and anguish to 
 Odysseus. In his vision only the miscreant Tantalus is Asiatic ; 
 and even he is the father of Pelops, the first of the mighty line 
 under whose leadership the Achaeans took over the Peloponnesus. 
 The great wave of Aeolic colonists had been preceded by lesser 
 and less effective inundations. It is, no doubt, one of these 
 Aeolic aspirations towards Asia Minor that is the basis of the 
 Trojan saga. 
 
 An appeal to his language would seem the most natural way to 
 determine a poet's origin. The language of the Iliad and Odyssey 
 
 1 The view of Fick, Grote, Niese, Croiset. 
 2 The passage is late (//. XIII 685). 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 2 
 
i8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 is a mixture of dialects in which Ionic and Aeolic predominate. 
 Few scholars would now maintain, with Christ, that an Ionian 
 
 poet of that age might deliberately embroider his 
 Dialect ^g^gg ^j|.j^ Aeolic, or that such a dialect as the 
 
 ' Epic ' was ever heard on the lips of man. It is now widely held 
 that some form of Aeolic was the original basis which the Ionian 
 colouring overlaid and to a great extent replaced. The Homerit; 
 dialect is a palimpsest. It is certainly easier to believe that the 
 poems were transliterated, much as Dryden, Pope, and Words- 
 worth rewrote Chaucer, than to imagine that a dialect with the 
 artificial complexion of Homer's could have weathered all the 
 centuries down to Aristarchus. 
 
 The first definite attempt to recover the original underlying 
 Aeolic was made by Fick, who pubhshed Aeolic versions of the 
 p. . Iliad and Odyssey. His main thesis is that the older 
 
 portions of the poems arose in Aeolis on the coast o( 
 Asia Minor, about 730 B.C., and were transliterated into Ionic twc 
 centuries later when, in the hands of the blind Cynaethus of Chios, 
 they were transformed into the Ionian Epos.' Where the Ionic 
 dialect provided no metrical equivalent the Aeolic form was left, 
 registered by the meter. The argument rests partly on the be- 
 havior in the poems of the " AeoUc " digamma. In the extant 
 Ionic remains, which go back as early as 700 B.C., there is no sure 
 trace of this letter, which corresponds to our w and the Latin v. 
 Before that date Ionic, like Attic, seems to have discarded the 
 digamma, initial and medial.^ In the Homeric Poems the places 
 where it is assumed by the meter are in a proportion of about five 
 to one where the meter refuses it. According to Fick the pas- 
 sages conditioned by the digamma are Aeolic, the others Ionic 
 and later accretions. His contention of an epos originally Aeolic 
 
 1 Fick accepts the scholiast's view that the " blind man of Chios " who 
 wrote the Hymn to the Delian Apollo was Cynaethus. " Blind Thamyris " in 
 //. II and blind Demodocus were his sympathetic creations. 
 
 2 Cp. the neglect of w in the pronunciation of Harwich and Warwick; 
 «iid 'ooman iat woman in dialect English, 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 19 
 
 is accepted by many modern scholars.' But any such attempt as 
 his Aeolic recension is unconvincing because of our ignorance of 
 eighth-century Aeolic. 
 
 More recent is the Aeolic 'Original Iliad'' of Bechtel (1901),^ 
 interveined like the ' Menis ' of Fick by the ' Wrath ', but very 
 different in substance, in dialect, and general conception. Fick 
 supported his selection of the original Aeolic passages, in the case 
 of the Iliad, by the aesthetic and logical arguments of Grote, 
 Diintzer, and others ; while, for the Odyssey, his selection of Ionic 
 accretions showed remarkable coincidences with the passages 
 rejected from the ' Ur-Odyssee,' the ' original Odyssey ' of Kirch- 
 hoff, whose recension was, like Grote's, mainly aesthetic and 
 logical. Bechtel, on the other hand, relies on Robert's 
 antiquarian recension to support his Aeolic ' Ur-Ilias.' 
 Robert developed the main thesis of Reichel (1894) that the only 
 defensive armor of the Homeric heroes was the long shield, 
 illustrated on a Mycenaean fragment of a silver vase and on the 
 famous dagger blades from Mycenae, and a leather helmet. They 
 wore no metal cuirass or metal greaves, for these have not been 
 found at Mycenae. The Ionian growth of the Epic is to be seen 
 in the introduction of the round shield ' and metal gear of the 
 
 1 Ritschl in 1834 held the same view as Fick, but he believed in a Homer 
 of Smyrna, working on a nucleus derived from the mainland. 
 
 * A comparison of these two Aeolic ' kernels ' is instructive. Fick extracted 
 the story of the ' Wrath ' from eleven books of the Iliad, ranging from Book 
 I to Book XXII. His ' Menis,' thus constructed, consists of 2260 lines, and 
 ends with the boast of the Greeks over dead Hector at XXII 393. The last 
 Books of the Iliad were, he thinks, a Lesbian expansion, while Books II to 
 VII were by a ' highly moral royalist ' from Cyme or Myrina, living under the 
 Pelopids. The whole was edited by Cynaethus in the first half of the sixth 
 century. Bechtel selects his 'Original Iliad' of 2146 lines from seventeen 
 Books, ending at XXII 212. He too divides the present poem into three 
 redactions : l, by an editor from Miletus; 2, by a Samian; 3, by a Euboean. 
 
 ' The round shield is illustrated on the Mycenaean ' Warrior Vase,' but this 
 is assigned to the " debased " period of Mycenaean art. The absence of this 
 or that product of Homeric civilization from the Mycenaean remains is used 
 by some critics as incautiously as the much misused "silence of Homer." 
 
20 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Ionian hoplite of the end of the eighth century. Robert and 
 Bechtel carry this theory so far as to construct an Aeolic poem 
 from those passages in which Mycenaean armor occurs. Their 
 recension illustrates the dangers of abandoning that sobriety in 
 detail which Ephorus said ought to mark our dealings with 
 remote events. Take the case of Iliad V, the ' Exploits of Dio- 
 mede,' recognized by many scholars as having no organic con- 
 nection with the ' Menis ' or ' Wrath.' In this old independent 
 lay, Mycenaean weapons prevail, but they are flanked by an un- 
 usual number of ingrained lonisms. In many similar passages 
 Bechtel evades this embarrassment by the simple device of an 
 " archaizing " Ionian, the favorite deus ex machina in all such 
 cases.' But Iliad V, he says, can never have been Aeolic : it was 
 written not much later than the primitive Iliad, by an Ionian who 
 used " an artificial dialect in which AeoHc and Ionic elements 
 were commingled " ; an amazing volte-face for a partisan of the 
 Aeolian epos, whose position rests on the improbability of the 
 original use of such a composite dialect as the ' epic' Iliad V is 
 the very book which Fick assigns to " an Aeolic royalist of Cym6." 
 If Bechtel is right, we mdy as well set aside both Aeolic recensions 
 as unnecessary. But we have seen that the use of an artificial 
 dialect by an original poet of the Iliad is among those possibil- 
 ities which the judgment refuses. 
 
 Yet it is only through some such reconciliation of archaeology 
 and linguistic that we can hope for a solution of the problem. 
 Meanwhile, the Mycenaean remains show certain marked coinci- 
 dences with the civilization described in the Homeric Poems. 
 The little hill-fort in the recesses of the Argive territory has jus- 
 tified its epithet ' rich in gold,' the gold of commerce, for Myce- 
 nae lay on the trade-route from Nauplia to Corinth. Since the 
 recovery of the dagger-blades of Mycenae with their inlaid metals 
 and enamel, there has been a reaction in favor of the theory that 
 the Shield of Achilles in Iliad XVIII, so elaborately decorated 
 
 ■■ In Iliad XVI 400-413, the armor is Ionian, the. WQDjiding Mycenaean. 
 If this be archaism, it is at least wholly unconscious. 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS ai 
 
 with its vignettes of war and peace, is not wholly imaginary, a 
 shield out of a fairy tale. The siege fragment of a Mycenaean 
 silver vase, published in 1891, might pass for an The 
 illustration of one of the panels of the Homeric shield, Mycenaean 
 the city at war. There too the women stand on the "™^'"s 
 wall to gaze, while the men sally forth. The great shield of Ajax 
 ' Hke a tower,' the shield that beat upon the ankles and neck of 
 Hector as he left the battlefield, is the pattern of those carried by 
 the fighting men in Mycenaean decorative work. The blue glass 
 frieze found at Tiryns has illuminated a famous passage in the 
 Odyssey} The Baltic amber from the tombs of Mycenae is a 
 tangible relic of the intercourse of Greek traders with the people 
 of northern Europe of whose midnight sun Odysseus knows and 
 the deadly night that darkens their winter days. But the points 
 of difference are even more striking. In Homer the dead are 
 invariably burned ; at Mycenae there is no trace of incineration. 
 Iron implements, known to the poet of the Iliad, more familiar in 
 the Odyssey, have not been found at Mycenae. Unless the Ho- 
 meric poets were very imperfect antiquarians, as all goes to show 
 they were, the civilization that they describe was either post-My- 
 cenaean or marks a Mycenaean decadence. It is impossible to 
 draw the line between Homer archaizing and Homer dropping 
 into the manners of his own age — the changing manners of some 
 four centuries. His use of armor, for example, is as mixed as 
 his dialect and is as little to be identified with the results, so far, 
 of excavation. The very epithet ' Mycenaean ' seems likely to be 
 superseded or greatly limited. Since the excavations of Mr. A. J. 
 Evans and others, in Crete, the focus of the culture of that golden 
 age has shifted from Mycenae, the point d'appui of Homeric 
 archaeologists, to Cnossos. There Daedalus made a dancing 
 floor for Ariadne ( //. XVIII 590), which may mean, as Mr. 
 Ridgeway thinks, that Cretan art in the Mycenaean age was 
 developed from the mainland of Greece. That would leave Myce- 
 nae still paramount. But the undeciphered documents of Crete 
 ' Odysseus marvels at the blue frieze in the hall of Alcinous; Od. 7. 87. 
 
22 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 may at any moment reveal a Minoan civilization wholly discon- 
 nected from the Homeric, more advanced and richer than the 
 The Minoan Mycenaean. Oblique though it may prove, or partial, 
 
 remains ^ Cretan revelation could hardly fail to throw light on 
 the Trojan question. But so far the dumb remains of Mycenae, 
 Hissarlik, and Cnossos have rather widened than answered the 
 question raised by the tradition that speaks in the Homeric Poems — 
 what essence of history can be distilled from the Trojan saga? 
 
 By the profound interest of its subject, but still more — and 
 hence its right to be considered the bloom of the epos — by its 
 unique success as a composition, the Iliad was lifted out of the 
 general fermentation of the heroic saga. The forces brought to 
 bear on it which have made it what it now is were chiefly cen- 
 tripetal : they tended to keep it together and to add to it. But 
 there were also disintegrating agencies : the treacherous memories 
 of the rhapsodes, whose activities were prolonged and vaguely 
 defined, the aesthetic or patriotic prejudices of the audiences 
 of all the centuries down to Aristarchus. The ' poetry of Homer ' 
 Cleisthenes which was suppressed by Cleisthenes of Sicyon (circa 
 
 of Sicyon ^^^ because it exalted his enemies of Argos,^ no 
 doubt included the Iliad. Besides the general glorification of the 
 Argives, their rival of Sicyon must have found peculiarly offensive 
 the statement in //. II 592, that Adrastus used to rule oxter Sicyon. 
 Other hearers might have grounds for sensitiveness. At any rate, 
 _ . , . the first record of a definite check on the dispersion 
 or alteration of the Poems is the tradition of the 
 Panathenaic ordinance ascribed to Solon (floruit 600 B.C.). He 
 passed a law that they should be recited at the State festival o< 
 the Panathenaea ' by prompting ', el iiroySoX^s, or according to 
 another version, ' in succession,' e| ii7roA.i;i/>«(Ds.^ The exact mean- 
 ing of these phrases is uncertain, and we know nothing precise 
 about the enactment. But it appears to show that Athens 
 assumed a guardianship of the Poems, and recognized the need 
 
 1 Herod. V 67. 
 
 2 Diog. Laert. I 57 ; pseudo-YaX. Hipparch. 228. 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 23 
 
 of a standard text. The Athenian attitude of responsibility for the 
 Hellenic masterpieces is still more sharply defined by the tradition 
 of the ' Recension of Peisistratus.' What is the evi- The 
 dence for this sixth-century commission of seventy- 'Recensionof 
 two court philologians — a suspicious number, and a Peis^tratus' 
 century to which one does not look for philology? The vox totius 
 antiquitatis claimed for it by Wolf is first heard in Cicero ; ^ Pau- 
 sanias, Aelian, and the later commentators take up the tale. A 
 famous passage in Diogenes Laertius {Solon 1.57) quotes Dieu- 
 chidas, the Megarian historian, to the effect that Solon did more 
 than Peisistratus to illuminate the Homeric Poems. A lacuna in 
 the text has been filled in byRitschl with a statement that 'Peisis- 
 tratus collected the poems and inserted a verse to the profit of 
 the Athenians.' Those who, like Wilamowitz, accept this read- 
 ing, lay stress on his proof that Dieuchidas lived as early as the 
 fourth century B.C. The interpolated verse (//; II 558) was 
 quoted, according to the tradition, on the Athenian side in an 
 arbitration between Megara and Athens for the award of Salamis. 
 The advocates of the recension of Peisistratus find it hard to ac- 
 count for the fact that neither Aristarchus nor Aristotle says a 
 word about the forgery, though the former rejects the verse and 
 the latter mentions the incident of its quotation (^Rhet. 1. 15). 
 Perhaps Wilamowitz is right in explaining the charge of Dieu- 
 chidas as the invention of a Megarian who could not brook the 
 ascendency of fourth-century Athens in every field; it was another 
 Megarian, Hereas, who accused Peisistratus of interpolating Od. 
 II. 631 (on Theseus the Attic hero) 'to please the Athenians.' 
 We may safely ignore that part of the tradition of the Peisistratean 
 recension which would make the Poems a sort of Septuagint. But 
 between the rhapsodes and the Alexandrian grammarians some 
 recension must have occurred^ and all the evidence influence of 
 points to the sixth century. The Alexandrians read Athens 
 an Atticized Homer; the very legend that Aristarchus thought 
 Homer was an Athenian points to that. When one considers the 
 
 1 De Oratore 3. 34. 
 
24 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 influence of the Attic recitations of some three centuries, for the 
 greater part of which Athens was the hterary center of Greece 
 and monopolized the book trade, the surprising thing is that the 
 poems are not more deeply dyed in Attic coloring. We find no 
 Athenian ' Exploits ' to soothe Athenian vanity, only isolated lines.^^ 
 Onomacritus, the court forger of the Peisistratidae, was at any rate 
 credited by the Alexandrian critics with having had special oppor- 
 tunities for fraud. Their rejection of Od. ii. 602-603 as by his 
 hand must mean that they had before them other copies than the 
 Attic exemplar — the canonical text. 
 
 But the Atticism of the Poems is only tentative ; a crystalliza- 
 tion had taken place by the sixth century which secured them 
 from anything Hke transliteration. The responsibility of Peisistra- 
 tus for the Attic, the individual efforts of Cynaethus of Chios for 
 the Ionian, recension are merely convenient footholds. In the 
 ocean of circulation of the Homeric Poems the strongest current 
 was now Attic ; any official effort to make a standard text would 
 naturally be the privilege of Athens. 
 
 The Alexandrians accounted for the divergencies of their Ho- 
 Xhe meric texts by the activity of the diaskeuasts. It is 
 
 diaskeuasts they who are responsible for the individual editions 
 of Homer (ai Kar avSpa) which arose in the centuries between 
 Peisistratus and the Alexandrians ; Antimachus of Colophon (circa 
 410 B.C.), himself an epic poet, and even Aristotle, are credited 
 with editions of this sort. The fifth-century schoolmaster who, as 
 Editions of Plutarch tells us {Alcib. 7), had made a private re- 
 the Poems vision of Homer for his own use, was the Fick of his 
 own day and not exceptional. The city editions (ai Kara TrdXeis) 
 were contributed to Alexandria by several towns, such as Sinope, 
 Argos, Crete, and Marseilles. It is the more surprising that when 
 one examines the quotations from Homer, in Plato, or Aeschines 
 
 '^ E.g. 11. I 265; III 144; XX 219-230. The last passage, in which 
 the Attic hero Erichthonius is foisted into a Trojan genealogy, may date 
 from the time when Athens claimed kinship with the Trojans for political ends, 
 (Strabo, XII p. 604.) 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 25 
 
 the orator, or Aristotle, one finds that, in spite of all this revision, 
 there are no essential diiTerences fi-om our own text. There are 
 some verbal variations ; but of the four hundred and eighty quota- 
 tions collected from pre-Alexandrian writers there are only twelve 
 that our Iliad lacks. Plato quotes Homer most frequently and 
 most correctly ; only in a spuriou^ dialogue (^Alcib. II) does any 
 important variant occur. One would find more misquotation of 
 Shakespeare or Milton in modern writers who cite from memory. 
 
 The Petrie papyrus fragment of the Iliad (1890), which is a 
 century older than Aristarchus, and the Oxford fragments con- 
 tain some verses that do not occur in our text. From these 
 papyri we can conjecture the sort of copies that, with their nu- 
 merous but slight variants, must have confronted the first notable 
 Homeric critic, Zenodotus of Alexandria (circa 280 B.C.). His 
 recension was a precedent followed by all the great Hbrarians, by 
 his pupil Aristophanes of Byzantium (200 B.C.), and finally by 
 Aristarchus (160 B.C.). This last is the pattern critic of antiquity, 
 the pride of the Alexandrian school. For our knowledge of his 
 work we depend on a summary that was copied into the margin 
 of Veneius A, the famous tenth-century Ms. of the Iliad, first 
 given to the world in 1788. At the end of each book of the 
 poem there occurs in the Ms. a sort of formula which described 
 the epitome of learned criticism that is preserved in the margin. 
 Scholiastic work on the Iliad continued as late as the twelfth cen- 
 tury A.D. ; it is chiefly anonymous, though we have extracts from 
 the Homeric Questions of Porphyrius, the neo-Platonist {circa 
 260 A.D.). The scholia of the " Quartet," Didymus on The 
 the critical signs of Aristarchus, Aristonicus on his scholiasts 
 recension, Nicanor on punctuation, Herodianus on prosody, are 
 the most valuable. Didymus and Aristonicus lived under Augus- 
 tus, Nicanor and Herodianus under Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. 
 Their epitome of Alexandrian work, which lay long ignored in the 
 hbrary of St. Mark, was unearthed by Villoison and published in 
 1788. 
 
 The publication of the Venetian scholia was a revelation of the 
 
26 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 doubts and difficulties of Alexandria. Aristarchus, though a 
 searching critic, was cautious, over-cautious if we judge him from 
 
 Tlig the standpoint of modern scholars. They are of the 
 
 Venetian same mind as Crates and his school of Pergamon, 
 scholia ^^^ ridiculed their rivals of Alexandria for their 
 
 attention to details, their ' trifling with monosyllables.' But the 
 appearance of the views of Aristarchus as reflected in the scholia 
 was the signal for the renewal of the Homeric debate in terms, 
 and from a point of view, that would have scandalized Alexandria 
 and Pergamon alike. In 1795 Wolf published the famous Pro- 
 
 Wolf s legomena, with its theory that the Iliad is a conglom- 
 Prolegomena eration of fragments which owes to Peisistratus ils 
 present form. He supported his argument with the contention 
 that writing was not in literary use when the Iliad was com- 
 posed ; there was, therefore, no reading public ; but our Iliad 
 must have been designed for a reading public. To Wolf, who 
 made his tests without the touchstones of epigraphy and 
 archaeology, the point seemed vital. For modern scholars, 
 who envisage the problem in the light of a century of ex- 
 cavations, his arguments have lost much of their force. It is 
 true that we have no Greek inscriptions that it is safe to 
 date earlier than the first half of the seventh century B.C. 
 The ' baleful signs ' that Proetus sends as the death warrant 
 of Bellerophon (//. VI 168) do not imply anything more ad- 
 vanced than some form of syllabary like the Cretan. Not be- 
 fore Archilochus (/r. 68) is there any mention of writing in Greek 
 literature. But the Greeks received the alphabet from Eastern, 
 perhaps Phoenician, sources, not later than the tenth century. 
 Writing Homer must have known of writing, but he may not 
 in Homer have used it in an age when it was a modern inven- 
 tion that had not superseded the use of memory. More than 
 once he shows signs of conscious antiquarianism that would pre- 
 serve him from the anachronism of making his heroes write. 
 When we review the analogies of other epics and consider the 
 feats of memory that were common even to the rhapsodes of 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 27 
 
 Plato's day,' we must conclude that memories able to hold and 
 transmit the Homeric poems were far more common than manu- 
 scripts. 
 
 Wolf's theory of a conglomerate Iliad like the Mahdbhdrata 
 has fallen into the background, and his idea of the functions of the 
 Peisistratean commission hardly coincides with the present con- 
 ception of the Attic recension. His work had been 
 mainly destructive. His famous disciple, Lachmann, 
 following in his steps, dissected the Iliad into nineteen separate 
 lays. His ' Kleinliedertheorie,' too, had its day, and has been 
 shelved — laudatur et alget. 
 
 G. Hermann (1834) is the father of the theory which has sup- 
 planted the views of Wolf and Lachmann, the conception of a 
 nucleus or kernel which suffered gradual expansion 
 from a series of redactions. The design was fixed by 
 the original poet when he chose the Wrath of Achilles for his 
 theme ; the later redactors respected, to a certain extent, his 
 limits. Their part was to vary and embellish, varias inducere 
 plumas ; but some dislocation of the original sequence of the 
 story, some rending of the tissues, was inevitable. With as many 
 variations as scholars, this view now prevails.^ 
 
 The variation naturally begins with each critic's conception of 
 the ' Menis ' or ' Wrath.' Christ assigns two thirds of our Iliad, 
 Bergk two fifths. Leaf about one sixth, to the original ' Homer.' 
 Not a single lay of Lachmann or Christ would survive j,^ 
 the armor test of Robert. The Aeolic ' Menis ' of ' kernel ' 
 Fick, the 'Original Iliad' of Bechtel, are profoundly ^"^^"^ 
 different. There is, however, a general tendency to derive the 
 essential poem of the ' Wrath ' from certain books of the Iliad, 
 especially I, XI, XV, XVI. The poetry of these books is used as 
 a touchstone of the rest. "We must," says Mr. Leaf, in his last 
 edition of the Iliad (1902), " shut our eyes now and then, to open 
 them again as the ring of the true metal calls our attention to the 
 
 > Cp. Xen. Sympos. Ill 81; Plato, Laws 810 E. 
 
 * Christ, Fick, Kirchhoff, Leaf, Wilamowitz, Bechtel, etc. 
 
28 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 splendid narrative and characterization which are at the bottom of 
 the expansion of the Menis into the Iliad." Even if one should 
 grant that the author of the ' Menis ' was mysteriously unable to 
 write below a certain level, this detection of the true metal seems 
 likely to remain a subjective exercise.^ 
 
 Eustathius, in the twelfth Christian century, recorded the suspi- 
 cions of the 'ancients ' as to the genuineness oi Iliad's.. It is, in 
 fact, the most insulated of all the cantos of the Iliad, though one 
 cannot imagine that it or they ever had a separate existence. Of 
 all the exploits of the Greeks, this grim episode is the most fool- 
 hardy. After a long day of fighting, which had abruptly ceased, 
 came the embassy and its failure in Book IX, action enough, one 
 would have thought, for the night that followed the Greek reverse. 
 Agamemnon, however, will not let his baffled warriors sleep, but 
 must send out Diomede and Odysseus through the dark night, 
 amid the slain, through the arvis and the black blood, to slay or 
 reconnoiter the Trojans, now, in the flush of their success, biv- 
 ouacked not far from the ships. On the way they meet and mur- 
 der Dolon, a spy even more foolhardy than themselves. After 
 slaying Rhesus and twelve of his men in their sleep, they ride back 
 to camp on his famous horses, which, like the whole achievement, 
 are never again mentioned. The episode is the only one in the 
 Iliad of which there is a close imitation in an extant play, the 
 Rhesus, usually ascribed to Euripides. 
 
 This book is a good instance of simple interpolation. It has 
 been rejected on the score of insulation and inconsistency, consid- 
 ered with a certain amount of late diction. Where the interpola- 
 Interpo- tion is complex, not of whole books, but of passages 
 
 lations aii(j single lines, the door is open to every shade of 
 
 opinion, every canon of criticism. The critics are almost unani- 
 mous in rejecting certain episodes : Helen on the wall in Iliadlll, 
 
 1 The incident of the weeping of Achilles' horses and their address by Zeus 
 in //. XVII is included in his 'Original Iliad' by Bechtel; it is rejected by 
 Fiek, and by Leaf, who says that it betrays a " sentimental tone foreign to the 
 oldest Epic." 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 29 
 
 and the duel of Paris and Menelaus ; the parting of Hector and 
 Andromache in VI ; the battle of the gods in XX ; the beautiful 
 and cruel episode of Lycaon in XXI; the funeral games of 
 Patroclus in XXIII ; and all passages containing a reference to the 
 mysterious wall before the ships. But the unanimity ends with 
 the rejection. If one asks why or when or how these passages, 
 most of them entirely worthy of the poet of the ' Menis,' 
 were inserted in the body of the Iliad and ascribed to Homer, 
 every critic makes his own separate answer. Those answers are 
 usually based on aesthetic or logical arguments. Retardation of 
 the action, a tone out of harmony with the poetry of the ' Menis,' 
 signs of dislocation of the sequence of events, above all, logical 
 and verbal inconsistencies, — are the grounds of judgment. Their 
 cumulative effect is great. But after reading such an analysis of 
 the Mad as Mr. Leafs, one's experience is much like Cicero's 
 with the proofs of immortality in the Phaedo ; he gave his assent 
 while the book was in his hand, but even as he laid it down, he 
 ranged himself with the dissenters. In this case, however, what 
 weakens one's assent is not so much laying down one book as 
 taking up another. There is a strong a priori probability that the 
 poem is the result of expansions of a far more simple kernel which 
 is embedded in our version. There are a number of ingenious 
 ways of disengaging the kernel from the expansion, a number of 
 hypotheses which almost arrive at certainty. But it is by dint of 
 their number and complexity that they stand together; if you 
 should isolate any one of them, it could never stand alone and 
 presentable to the lay reader. 
 
 Among the many agencies that conditioned the growth of the 
 Iliad we must reckon the genuine creative impulse of the true 
 poet ; the tendency of the court poet to insert panegyrics, or 
 episodes that should flatter family pride, such as the exploits of 
 Diomede or Idomeneus ; above all, the efforts of the redactor to 
 supply transitions that would lend an appearance of unity to a 
 long epic. All these would produce interpolation, simple and 
 complex. But the stimulus to all such expansion was a public 
 
30 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 taste that we cannot gauge; the taste of a public to whom retarda- 
 tion of the action and episodes that had no relation to the main 
 plot may have seemed as appropriate as, later, they seemed to 
 Aristotle, who speaks of the Catalogue of the Ships, which every 
 modern editor rejects, as an instance of that use of episodes 
 which he plainly admires in Homer. The Iliad and Odyssey are 
 essentially court poems, composed for a court audience. Now a 
 court audience is not, in any age, critical. What were discrep- 
 ancies, or repetitions, or lack of logical sequence, to the guests 
 after a banquet in a great man's house, when the minstrel sang and 
 they listened spellbound, with a ceaseless desire to hear him, as 
 Eumaeus s»ys of such a singer in the Odyssey ? Or, later, can we 
 imagine a more critical audience for the rhapsode at the public 
 festivals? The eyes of his hearers, too, would never rest on a 
 written copy ; and all minor detail escapes notice when the story 
 is engaging the attention. For the German scholar, a duel 
 between Paris and Menelaus in the tenth year of the war is incon- 
 ceivable ; all that a Greek audience demanded was a striking 
 picture of the cowardice of Paris. To Longinus and Gibbon the 
 battle of the gods in Iliad XX was a signal example of the grand 
 style. "I almost doubt which is more sublime," said Gibbon, 
 " Homer's ' Battle of the Gods ' or Longinus' ' Apostrophe to 
 Terentianus' upon it." For Mr. Leaf, the lines quoted by 
 Longinus (XX 61-65) ^''^ ^ "bombastic introduction." Are we 
 nearer to the taste of the Greeks with Longinus or with Mr. Leaf ? 
 If we could answer that question, we should yet have to ask what 
 Greeks? For a difference in taste in the grand style may quite 
 possibly have separated Thucydides and Longinus as widely as it 
 separates Gibbon and Mr. Leaf. Nor is such difference of taste 
 at all a matter of difference of time. "Any one could have drawn 
 the same characters for the purpose of piecing them into the Iliad" 
 says Carlyle. " The character of the matchless Pelides," says De 
 Quincey, a rather more reliable critic, " has an ideal finish and a 
 divinity about it, which argue that it never could have been a 
 gradual accumulation from successive touches." The "didactic 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 31 
 
 prosings " of Nestor regularly offend the eye of Mr. Leaf and to 
 his critical sense imply interpolation. They are absolutely in 
 character, charming touches of Hhos, to Mr. Ridgeway and Mr. 
 Lang. All these critics range over the same ground, but they 
 never put up the same game. 
 
 By the eighth century the Iliad was complete. But the com- 
 position of a great part of the Odyssey may be put at least a 
 century later. It is on the score of its comparative youth that 
 the problem of this poem has long been recognized as secondary 
 and almost separate. Even at Alexandria there were separatists 
 (Chorizontes) who asserted the dual authorship of Later date 
 the Iliad and Odyssey, a flicker of heresy which was • of the 
 put out by the strong hand of Aristarchus. Time, Odyssey 
 which makes all heresies orthodox, has suppressed the Unitarians 
 in their turn, and all scholars are now Chorizontes. Even the 
 argument of Aristarchus from anticipations of the Odyssey in the 
 Iliad proves to be double-edged. The Odyssean language in 
 certain cantos of the Iliad (IX, X, XXIII, XXIV) is merely 
 evidence of their later date. This is especially true of X, the 
 Doloneia, where the exploit of Odysseus is taken by Monro to 
 mark that advance of the Ithacan^ hero in popular favor which 
 culminates in the Odyssey. The poet of the Odyssey never 
 indeed repeats the substance of the Iliad, but his verbal echoes 
 are numerous and not always intelligent.^ For instance, in Od. 
 14. 419, Eumaeus kills the best of his swine for Odysseus, a fai 
 five-year-old ; the age is well enough for the ox in Iliad II 402, of 
 which the line is a close imitation ; but five-year-old pork is not a 
 
 1 Dorpfeld maintains (in Leukas, Athens, 1905) that Leucas, at the time 
 of the composition of the Odyssey, was an island, and that this, rather than 
 the island farther south, was the true Ithaca, the home of Odysseus. The 
 Ithacans, driven southward by the invading Dorians, migrated to the new 
 Ithaca, which was henceforth mistakenly identified with the Ithaca of the 
 Odyssey. The theory clears up a point in the geography of the Odyssey, but 
 the proofs, if there be any proof possible, have not yet appeared from the 
 excavations on Leucas. 
 
 2 Sittl has collected a number of such passages. 
 
32 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 dainty. In the minor antiquities, customs, and ideas of civilization 
 the divergences are many and easily detected. The poet of the 
 Odyssey had a wider range in the matter of geography, — a notable 
 Comparison case is his explicit knowledge of Egypt, — of metals 
 of Iliad and and trees ; a narrower interest in beasts of prey which 
 Odyssey -^^ jj^g xaoze. primitive Iliad are a constant accompani- 
 ment and terror of the pastoral life. In the Odyssey men con- 
 sult oracles ; Odysseus goes to Dodona, Agamemnon to Pytho, — 
 a point of affinity with the Homeric Hymns. In the Iliad is no 
 sign of individual ownership of land such as is clear in the Odyssey. 
 The grammar of the Odyssey is nearer to that of later Greek 
 usage, while its versification approximates more closely to Hesiod 
 than to the Iliad. A pax Olympica has succeeded the primitive 
 quarrels of the gods who debated the fate of Troy. Olympus 
 itself is more remote, never shaken by winds nor wetted by rain 
 nor any snow, but over it hovers the bright air without a cloud. 
 
 Something of this mellow brightness prevades the whole Odys- 
 sey with its reminiscences of "old, unhappy, far-off" quarrels and 
 battles. The causa teterrima belli, Helen, the curse of Troy, 
 where all men shudder at me, receives Telemachus in the gleaming 
 palace of Menelaus ; there she tells anecdotes of the Trojan siege 
 and weaves, ' like Artemis,' her violet wools. The imaginations 
 of the Greeks of the classical period dwelt on the image of the 
 Helen who brought to Ilios ' no dower but ruin,' fitly named Hell 
 of ships. Hell of men. Hell of cities, beautiful and treacherous like 
 a lion's whelp that fawns on its master, till one day it slays instead, 
 and the house is defiled with blood. But the less robust taste of 
 a later age was charmed by Helen of Sparta, pouring into the wine 
 a soothing drug to beguile pain and care, 
 
 " That nepenthes which the wife of Thone 
 In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena. " 
 
 The Odyssey is the picture of the sunset of Greek heroic life — 
 the sunset of a stormy day. "It is the work of Homer's old 
 age," wrote Longinus ; "you see the ebb and flow of greatness, an 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 33 
 
 • 
 imagination wandering in the fabulous and incredible, as though 
 
 the ocean were withdrawing into itself, laid bare within its own 
 boundaries.'' The chanson de geste, an echo of history, however 
 embellished, has given place to the roman d'aventure. Yet even 
 the fairy-tale element in the Odyssey is not, as Strabo pointed out, 
 wholly without foundation, a mere prodigious fiction. As the 
 Carthaginian periplus of Himilcon was put into Latin verse by 
 Avienus, so the poet of the wanderings of the Odyssey may per- 
 haps have followed some Phoenician periplus when he made his 
 hero cruise through seas strange to the lonians, but not uncharted 
 — ' for the Phoenicians made them known.' ' The traffic of the 
 Phoenicians, to which there are several allusions in th£ Homeric 
 Poems, had, no doubt, secured them a sort of thalassocracy before 
 the supremacy of the Greek mariners in the prehistoric Mediter- 
 ranean. M. B^rard has recently made a close comparison of the 
 voyage of Odysseus with the Instructions Nautiques, 
 with the result that the ' outer geography ' of the geography 
 Odyssey can never again be lightly dismissed as the 0* the 
 geography of fairyland. This part of the Odyssey '\5 ^ ^ 
 rather, to use a mariner's phrase, a sort of ' mirror of the sea,' .of 
 the Mediterranean, that is, as it was known to the merchants of 
 Sid on and Tyre.^ 
 
 The Odyssey, then, may mark the beginning of the Greek 
 thalassocracy. But the fairy tales that are embroidered on the 
 canvas of a Phoenician peiriplus are older than Odysseus or the 
 sorrowful return of the Achaeans. He is the typical adventurer, 
 the ' man of many shifts,' even in the oldest stratum of the Iliad 
 (I 311). Since his character is already fixed in the Iliad, his 
 
 ^ Strabo 3. p. 150. References to the Phoenicians in the Odyssey are 
 4.83-4,618; 3. 272-85; 14. 288-310; 15. 445 ff. 
 
 2 In Les Pheniciens et POdyssee (1902), M. Berard aims at a rehabilitation 
 of the Phoenicians, whose importance has been discredited by the majority of 
 archaeologists. His championship of Semitic inflaences on Greek language 
 and art betrays him into over-ingenuity in the matter of Greco-Semitic doub- 
 lets; but his 'topology,' which supports the theory of a Semitic periplus, is 
 for the most part independent of these. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 3 
 
34 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 • 
 saga may well antedate the Trojan campaign ; the insular ruler of 
 "barren and beggarly Ithaca" being chosen by some caprice of 
 tradition for the type of the ' home-seeking hero.' | His wander- 
 ings, like those of the Ancient Mariner who shot the albatross, 
 are an expiation ; his comrades have slain the oxen of the sun. 
 But for that, he might have gone straight home, specially ex- 
 cepted from Athene's wrath. To reject that incident from the 
 ' Original Odyssey ' is to weaken the dramatic mechanism of 
 the ' Home-coming '. If inserted later, like the ' Embassy ' in the 
 M'ad, it was well inserted. It is the poet's device, the excuse for 
 the episo les that are the essential ornament of an epic, and as such 
 it was envisaged by some gifted redactor, if not by the original 
 poet of the 'Return.' 
 
 In the I/iad a certain indistinctness of plan, a confused devel- 
 opment, is felt by the most conservative. The organic unity of 
 the Odyssey was the admiration of Aristotle ; and even Wolf was 
 impressed by the integritas which raises it as a composition far 
 above the Iliad. Its anatomy is indeed more complex. It is 
 true that Aristarchus and Aristophanes, the Alexandrians, set the 
 fashion for later critics by rejecting rather more than a whole 
 book at the end of the poem. But they ended the Odyssey at 
 23. 296, at the recognition by Penelope, to get rid of an anti- 
 climax, which implies no dislocation. They felt that the en- 
 counter with the relatives of the slain wooers and the second 
 descent into Hades, in spite of certain beauties (which have been 
 admired by Sainte-Beuve), are a patchwork, and the internal 
 evidence of post-Homeric language and imitations of earlier pas- 
 sages supports them. But it is not easy to cut out whole insu- 
 lated Books from the Odyssey without disturbing its proportions, 
 as you can cut the Doloneia and perhaps the ' Embassy ' out of 
 the Iliad. To an epic so closely knit only the 'kernel' theory 
 could be applied. 
 
 Kirchhoff (1859) is the Wolf of the Odyssey and has revolution- 
 ized the attitude of modern scholarship. He constructed a ninth 
 century 'Return' as critics of the Iliad have constructed a 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 35 
 
 ' Wrath,' making that the touchstone of the rest, a magnet that 
 attracted the later additions. His ' Return' begins at Book 5 with 
 the actual departure of Hermes for Ogygia (unaccount- 
 ably delayed in Book i of our Odyssey) and ends at 
 13. 184, at the point when the Phaeacians who had sent Odysseus 
 home to Ithaca see from the shore their convoy turned to stone, 
 and in deference to Poseidon's resentment against their too swift 
 and safe cruisers renounce their carrying trade. Kirchhoff rejects 
 from his ' Return ' the whole of Books 8 (the games of the Phaea- 
 cians), and 10 (Aeolus: the Laestr3'gonians : Circe). He assigns 
 to another poet of the same date the sequel (13. 185-23. 296), the 
 Alexandrian limit of the Odyssey. But from this sequel he must 
 of course omit Book 15, the return of Telemachus from Sparta. 
 For in 15 is assumed the earlier part of the Odyssey, 1-4, the 
 Telemachia, Kirchhoff 's " second enlargement," added as late as 
 660 B.C. The seventh century poet of the Telemachia revised 
 and interpolated the ninth century redaction in order to bring it 
 into line with his additions. The elaborate ingenuity that is 
 needed to account for these Telemachian interpolations' is the 
 infirmity of Kirchhoff's argument. The adaptation has in fact 
 been more skillful and thorough than in the case of the Iliad. 
 Within the Telemachia itself Kirchhoff regards i. 88-444 as a mere 
 reflex of Book 2. It is indeed easy to show that Athene's advice 
 to Telemachus is inconsistent and ill-judged ; that the conduct of 
 Telemachus, who by threatening the wooers weakens his own 
 plans, is undiplomatic. The whole then, if we follow Kirchhoff, is 
 borrowed from Book 2. But at 2. 260 there is a clear reference 
 to the visit of Athene ; this, Kirchhoff says, was interpolated by 
 the poet of Book i. The prayer of Athene to Zeus is granted in 
 Book I ; Hermes is to go to Ogygia and release Odysseus in the 
 seventh year of his lotus-eating captivity. But Hermes does not 
 set out until Book 5. 14, a postponement which reminds one of 
 the long delay that follows the promise of Zeus to Thetis in the 
 Iliad. Kirchhoff would regard the passage in 5 as the original, 
 1 15. 1-300, 495-557 ; '6. 129, 322-451 ; 17. 31-166. 
 
36 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 mechanically imitated by the poet of Book i. It is of course 
 essential that where the 'Return' and the Telemachia contain 
 identical lines, the ' Return ' should be the original. 
 
 KirchhofFs theory of the growth of the Odyssey is based on a 
 great number of discrepancies in the narrative, on verbal repeti- 
 tions, where he thinks that the organic passage can be distinguished 
 from the mechanical imitation, and the like. His particular argu- 
 ments do not always convince. There is not, for instance, in the 
 whole body of Homeric epic, a single discrepancy of detail which 
 one could not throw into the shade by parallels from Cervantes, 
 Scott, and Thackeray, to range no farther. 
 
 The bewilderment that is introduced by the subjectivity of the 
 aesthetic criticism of the Odyssey may be illustrated from every 
 Aesthetic book of the poem. For Kirchhofif the fight with Irus 
 criticism jn Book 1 8 is an old ballad, for Wilamowitz it is a 
 comparatively late parody. Kirchhoff rejects 23. 153 ff. on the 
 ground that while Odysseus takes a bath, Penelope is sitting' 
 neglected — which betrays a lack of proper feeling incredible in 
 an original^ poet. All such discussions end, as de Goncourt said, 
 with the simple assertion J''ai plus de goiit que vous. But in 
 Homeric criticism there are no steps backward. Linguistic, archae- 
 ology, the comparative study of the epic type, the history of the 
 saga and of local cults, all these currents flow in the same direc- 
 tion ; all tend to the disintegration of the present structure of the 
 Homeric epic. It is not easy to imagine what convulsion of 
 criticism should make that stream flow backward. Some form, 
 therefore, of Kirchhoff's theory, some rearrangement of the 
 Telemachia and the 'Return,' will continue to hold the field, 
 just as, for the Iliad, all modern criticism, even the 'kernel' 
 theory, is based on the hints of Wolf's Prolegomena. Even the 
 exaggerations of Wilamowitz, Seeck, and Niese have not dis- 
 Seeck '^'^^''^'^ Kirchhoff nor changed the fashion. Seeck 
 believed in two independent Odysseys, of which we 
 have in the ' Return ' a contamination ; in the earlier version, 
 the recognition by Penelope was not delayed until Book 23; 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 37 
 
 both she and Eurycleia helped Odysseus in his plot against the 
 suitors. Bechtel follows the same fashion in imagining a phan- 
 tom 'Original Iliad' in which the story was quite different, a 
 meager unstrung narrative with a diary of twelve days, nine in which 
 there is no action at all, followed by three days of fighting, so 
 arranged that Patroclus, Hector, and Achilles all fall on the same 
 day. In the eyes of such critics the perfect epic has the sym- 
 metry of a drama. Koechly has actually cut out of the Odyssey 
 five essential ' rhapsodies ' which could be put together like the 
 five acts of a tragedy — a fact which for him stamps them as the 
 work of the original poet. This is to confuse the canons of two 
 types of literature, as Euripides confused them when he wrote his 
 Troades, a mere succession of scenes from the epic. A reaction 
 to the more liberal Aristotelian view of the epic as a game of 
 digressions would greatly narrow the field of Homeric speculation. 
 The most striking and most Odyssean episode in the Odyssey is 
 the descent into Hades in Book 11. In the whole of the epic no 
 adventure has appealed more strongly to the imagina- 
 tion of later poets. But it is improbable that it be- 
 longed to the original ' Return.' The advice that Teiresias gives 
 to Odysseus serves no apparent end, since Circe, who had sent 
 him in search of it, herself, later (12. 39), gives the hero a far more 
 useful itinerary. Perhaps the episode was tacked on to the pas- 
 sage in Book i z by a poet who saw in it an opening for the mar- 
 velous and moving when he made the sorceress send the over-bold 
 adventurer to the shores of Oceanus to know death twice, while all 
 men else die once for all. A genius for purple patches of this sort 
 is hardly to be ranked lower than the genius of an original poet. 
 Not from Circe, however, but from Teiresias, Odysseus hears of 
 his last wandering and his end. From the sea shall thine own 
 death come, the gentlest death there be, which shall end thee, fore- 
 done with smooth old age. In the long procession that follows 
 Teiresias, some, like his mother, Anticleia, stay for speech with 
 Odysseus and vain embraces ; of others there is only a glimpse as 
 they pass. The long catalogue of fair women, like that famous 
 
38 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lost catalogue of Hesiod, the Eoiae, is a review of dead heroines. 
 Tyro and Antiope, Alcmene and fair Epicaste, the mother of 
 The Cata- Oedipus, lovely Chloris and Leda,— all declare their 
 logueV' lineage and cruel fate. Towards the end, the review of 
 ''''""^° famous names is less detailed, but none the less effect- 
 ive. Some critics object to the bare enumeration of Phaedra, and 
 Procris, and fair Ariadne, and Maera, and Clymene, on the ground 
 that the poet becomes a mere nomenclator. Nothing can be 
 more telling than such nomenclature, as Virgil saw when he imi- 
 tated this passage in his sixth Book. Each name calls up some 
 memory of romance, the " print and perfume " of a tale of bygone 
 passion, and the poet passes on to the next before the whole story 
 has been envisaged by the hearer or reader. It is the method of 
 the Ballade of Villon : — 
 
 La royne Blanche comme lis. 
 
 Qui chanioit a voix de seraine ; 
 Berte au grant pie, Bietris, Allis; 
 
 Haremburgis qui lint le Maine, 
 Et Jehanne, la bonne Lorraine. ... 
 
 The heroes of Greece follow :, Agamemnon, son of Atreus, sorrow- 
 ing, and accusing Clytemnestra of his death, a variation of the 
 account given by Nestor in Book 3 ; Achilles, Patroclus, Antilo- 
 chus, each asking of those that were dear to him. Only Ajax 
 stood aloof in sullen wrath for the award of the arms of Achilles : 
 Would that I had never won in that contest ! cries Odysseus. 
 But the proud spirit of the other, like Virgil's Dido, would have 
 none of his enemy's vain remorse. Here, at line 565, there is a 
 distinct shift of scenery. The review has ceased, and now there 
 is a revelation of Minos giving sentence from his throne, and the 
 hunter Orion driving the very beasts that he had slain on the 
 lonely hills. Then the great miscreants of Greek legend : Tantalus, 
 the type of unfulfilled desire, still straining like one athirst; Sisy- 
 phus of Corinth, the type of sinful weakness, a byword of vague 
 treachery, urging his stone uphill, but the weight ever drove him 
 back as it rolled to the plain, the ruthless stone. Last of all comes 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 
 
 39 
 
 the phantom of Heracles surrounded by the clamorous dead, him- 
 self like black night, peering about him like one ever about to shoot, 
 the type of the man of restless force and hard arlventures whom 
 Zeus has set amid toils, like Agamemnon. 
 
 In the fifth century Polygnotus read this scene in his Odyssey, 
 and illustrated it in his paintings. Aristarchus suspected the 
 whole passage. The most plausible explanation of this picture 
 of retribution and expiation, an allegory of human life, is that of 
 Wilamowitz. The passage is tinged with Orphism, is an echo of 
 the sixth century when the mysteries were teaching that only the 
 purified and initiated escape the terrors of Hades. Onomacritus 
 is the scapegoat of all forgeries of oracles and Orphica 
 in the sixth century ; and to him Wilamowitz^ as- 
 signs II. 566-635. This is of course pure conjecture. If in the 
 sixth century Onomacritus could write verse as fine as this, it 
 seems strange that he should have limited himself to anonymous 
 interpolations, or to the special forgeries of the oracles of Musaeus 
 and the Orphica that brand him in the tradition. On the other 
 hand, the fashion of anonymity or rather the effort to merge one's 
 poetical identity in Homer's was still predominant, because it was 
 still possible to borrow his trademark. 
 
 The belt of Heracles in 11, with its decorations of rows of 
 animals and battles and violent deeds, suggests to Wilamowitz 
 the black-figured Corinthian vases of the sixth century. On 
 these, too, Heracles is attended by Hermes and Athene, named 
 in II as his escorts to the underworld. But to ask whether 
 the vases reflect the Odyssey, or both poet and decorator echo 
 some contemporary Orphic original, is to confuse by raising 
 questions that we can never answer ; it is as rash as the effort 
 to make a selection from the Iliad and Odyssey of the poems 
 of Onomacritus. 
 
 For the next five centuries, so long as there were Greek poets, 
 they wrote under the spell of Homer. From that inexhaustible 
 
 1 Wilamowitz took the suggestion from the scholiast on 11.604, who at- 
 tributed that verse to Onomacritus. 
 
40 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 fountain the lyric poets in the seventh and sixth centuries, the 
 ' springtime of song,' drew their phrases and images, and em- 
 broidered their poems with allusions to the legends of the Iliad 
 and Odyssey. The tragedians, for the most part, sought their 
 plots in the Cyclic epics. But there was never a tragedy put on 
 the Greek stage that did not echo the language of Homer. Even 
 in the decadence of their literature the Greeks never lost their 
 appreciation of his unapproachable excellence and charm. Homer 
 was still the light of the Muses, the ageless mouth of all the world to 
 Antipater of Sidon,"^ the Syrian Greek of the second century B.C. 
 Another poet of the Anthology"^ dwelt on the unfading fresh- 
 ness of the Homeric narrative : Still we hear the bitter cry of 
 Andromache, still we see all Troy toppling from her foundations, 
 and the battling of Ajax, and Hector, bound to the horses, dragged 
 under the city's crown of towers. All this through the Muse of 
 Maeonides, the poet with whom no one country adorns herself as 
 her own, but the zones of both worlds. The Iliad and Odyssey are 
 written in a style that suits the taste of all ages and never becomes 
 antiquated. In that style perfect simplicity and directness of 
 expression have flowered into the highest and most permanent 
 form of art, vigorous and varied, yet always delicate and highly 
 wrought. The Homeric imagination conceived a limited range of 
 human characters, limited, that is, by the simple and noble 
 civilization reconstructed in the Poems. The great essential types 
 Homeric are there ; the fighter, the hunter, the crafty ad- 
 types venturer, the faithful wife, the seaman, gods and 
 goddesses walking the earth among men, beautiful, treacherous 
 women, and old, blind bards. In the Iliad, that epic of an 
 episode, the revengeful wrath of the warrior, we have all the 
 scenery of primitive battles, the black ships, the sea-beach and 
 the plain as the background and setting of the encampment, 
 blazing watch fires at night, and by day the dust and heat of the 
 assault as the waves of fight rolled backward and forward, the 
 groans and cries of men slaying and being slain, exhorting to fight 
 1 Anth. Pal. 7. 6. 2 Anth. Pal. 9. 97. 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 41 
 
 for a lost cause, like Sarpedon, or striking terror into a whole army 
 by a single shout, like Achilles at the trench. 
 
 From all that we turn to the far-echoing beach where the sea 
 washes the pebbles clear, or grows dark with a noiseless swell 
 before it breaks ; to the orchards of Alcinous, the great garden 
 within its hedge, where tall trees grow and blossom, pear trees 
 and pomegranates, and apple-trees with blight fruit, and sweet 
 figs, and olives in their bloom. . . Pear upon pear waxes old, 
 and apple on apple, yea and cluster ripens upon cluster of the 
 grape, and fig upon fig;^ to the great still cave on the en- 
 chanted island of Calypso, like a coral island in the South Seas, 
 where Odysseus wearied of pleasure as he had never wearied of 
 hardships. 
 
 The Homeric view of human life is always serious and sad. 
 The speeches that most enforce attention are the poignant reflec- 
 tions of doomed or dying men, of Lycaon, who after enduring the 
 bitterness of slavery had come home to Ilios after much pain only 
 to be slain on the twelfth day by the implacable Achilles;^ or 
 Hector " slain on a point of honour " or Priam ' utterly unblest,' 
 braving what no other man on earth hath braved before, to stretch 
 forth my hand toward the face of the slayer of my sons? For 
 there is nothing more pitiable than man, of all things that breathe 
 and move on earth.* 
 
 How much is left unsaid, and with what fine rhetorical judg- 
 ment, one may measure by a comparison of the Iliad and Odys- 
 sey with the manner of later Greek heroic epics. 
 Apollonius of Rhodes, Quintus of Smyrna, Nonnus °™*"'= 
 the Egyptian, each in turn tried to be the Homer of 
 his age. They were all too eager to show how much they knew. 
 They were always explaining, and left nothing to the imagination 
 of their readers. Nor could they secure the air of reality that 
 helps to give life and impressiveness to .the Homeric epic, written 
 as it was when men believed profoundly in the existence of the 
 gods and their intervention in human affairs.' For all their elabo- 
 1 Od. 7. 1 14. 2 //. XXI. ' //. XXIV 506. « //. XVII 443. 
 
42 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 ration of detail/ which makes their work, contrasted with the 
 Homeric frieze, seem like a mosaic, the later epic poets did not 
 succeed in conveying so vivid a picture of the intimate life of 
 Greece, of the minor antiquities ignored by the dramatists and 
 lyric poets. Homer, as the Greeks said, was capable of every- 
 thing. No poet has described so well the deeds and passions 
 of men : how they die fighting ; how they grieve for the dead ; 
 how beautiful and noble can be the simplest, as well as the most 
 splendid, setting of their lives. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. A. Papyri: Vetxie, Hazvara Biahum and Arsinoe con- 
 taips part of Ilinci II 1-877, S^^ '^^^^- ^•°- British Museum cxxvi contains 
 Iliad II 101-140, 4th or 5tli cent. a.d. Mahaffy, Flinders Petrie Papyri, 
 PI. iii, fr. from XI 503-537, 2d cent. B.C. Bodleian, b 3 (Grenfell, Greek 
 Papyri, Second Series), fr. of XXII, XXIII, 3d cent. B.C. Grenfell and 
 Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri, p. 46; Iliad II, 730-828, 2d cent. A.D. Oxyrhyn. 
 Papyri II p. 96 ; Iliad V 1-303, and a few frr. from Iliad V 329-705, 
 3d cent. A.D. 
 
 B. Ambrosianus Pictus, 5th-6th cent. A.D., at Milan, containing illustra- 
 tions of the Iliad, with portions from all the books except III, XVIII, IX, 
 XX — 800 lines in all ; published by Mai, 1819. The Syriac Palimpsest, 6th 
 or 7th cent. A.n., contains 3873 lines of the Iliad Uom XII to XXIV. Vene- 
 ius A (454), in the library of St. Mark's, Venice, loth cent. A.D., first published 
 by Villoison, 1788, contains the scholia of Aristonicus, Didymus, Herodian, 
 and Nicanor. Laurentianus C,Y\.oxtViC&, nth cent. A.D. ; Laurentianus X), 
 Florence, nth or 12th cent. A.D. 
 
 II. EniTiONS AND Commentaries. Editions before 1788: Ed. princ., 
 Demetrius Chalcondylas, Florence, 1488. First Aldine edition, Venice, 1504. 
 Turnebus, Iliad, Paris, 1554. Barnes (with scholia and notes), Cambridge, 
 17 1 1. Ernesti, Leipzig, 1759. Editions in and after 1788: Villoison, Iliad 
 ad vet. cod. Veneti fidem recensita, \emce, 1788. Wolf, Iliad, Halle, 1794; 
 Iliad and Odyssey, Leipzig, 1804. Heyne, Iliad, Leipzig, 1802. Bekker, 
 Iliad, Berlin, 1S43 ; /Had and Odyssey, Bonn, 1858. Kirchhoff, Odyssey, 
 Berlin, 1859 ; 2d ed., 1879. Pierron, Iliad, Paris, 1869. La Roche, Odyssey, 
 
 1 Lucian, /I'bw to Write History, 57, on Homer's self-restraint: Poet though 
 he is, he hurries past TarJalus, Ixion, and the rest. If he had been Parthenius, 
 or Euphorion, or Callimachus, how many lines would he have taken to get the 
 water to the lip of Tantalus^ or to set Ixion spinning? 
 
THE HOMERIC POEMS 43 
 
 Leipzig, 1867 ; Iliad, 1873. Merry and Riddell, Odyssey, I-I2, 2ded., Oxford, 
 1885. Pick, Odyssey (in Aeolic), Guttingen, 1883 ; Iliad, 1885. Christ, 
 //iVzo', Miinchen, 1884. Monro, //jW, Oxford, 1884. Ludwich, O^jji;^, Leip- 
 zig, 1889; //j'aa', Leipzig, 1902. Monro, Orffjjej/, 13-24, Oxford, 1901. Leaf, 
 Iliad, 2d ed., 2 vols., London, 1901-1902. Hennings, Odyssey, Berlin, 1903. 
 Faesi-Kaegi, Odyssey, 1-6, Berlin, 1901. 
 
 IIL Language. Bckker, Homerische Blatter, Bonn, 1863, 1872. Hinrichs, 
 De Homericae elocutionis vestigiis Aeolicis, Jena, 1875. Monro, A Grammar 
 of the Homeric Dialect, Oxford, 2.I ed., 1891. Seymour, Introduction to the 
 Language and Verse of Homer, Boston, 1885. Van Leeuwen, Epichiridion 
 diet. Ep., Leyden, 1894. See also the editions of Fick (II) and of Robert 
 and Bechtel (IV). 
 
 IV. Archaeology. Helbig, Das Homerische Epos aus den Denkm'dlern 
 erlautert, Leipzig, 1887. Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations, translated 
 by E./Sellers, London, 1891. Reichel, Ueber Homerische IVaffen,'V^\e.n, 1891. 
 Tsountas-Manatt, The Mycenaean Age, London, 1897. Ridgeway, The Early 
 Age of Greece, Cambridge, 1900. Robert und Bechtel, Studien zur Ilias, 
 Berlin, 1901. Dorpfeld, Troja und Ilion, Athens, 1902. Berard, Les Ph'e- 
 niciens et I'Odyssee, Paris, 1902-1903. Dorpfeld, Das Homerische Ithakq in 
 Melanges Perrot, 1903. 
 
 V. The Homeric Question. Wood, Essay on the Original Genius of Homer, 
 London, 1769. Wolf, Prolegomena,\i3i\e., 1795. \^'i.c\im^mi, Betrachtungen 
 ueber Homer's Ilias, Berlin, 1874. Hermann, Dissertatio de Interpolationibus 
 Homeri, Opusc, Leipzig, 1834. Welcker, Der Epische Cyclus, Bonn, 1835. 
 Sengebusch, Dissertationes Homericae, Leipzig, 1855-1873. Kirchhoff, Die 
 Composition der Odyssee, Berlin, 1869 (see also his edition of the Odyssey"). 
 Gladstone, Homeric Studies. For Fick's views see his editions. Sittl, Die 
 Wiederholungen in der Odyssee, Miinchen, 1882. Niese, Homerische Poesie, 
 Berlin, 1882. Christ, Prolegomena to the Iliad in his edition, 1884. Wila- 
 mowitz, Homerische Untersuchungen in Philolog. Untersuchungen, Vol. VII> 
 1884. Seeck, Die Qnellen der Odyssee, Berlin, 1887. Lang, Homer and the 
 Epic, London, 1893. Jeljb, Introduction to Homer, 2d ed., London, 1894 ; 
 contains a useful bibliography down to 1887. Cauer, Grundfragen der Ho- 
 merkritik, Leipzig, 1895. Bethe, Homer und die Heldensage in h'eue fahrbb., 
 
 1901. Zielinski, Die Behandlung gleichzeitiger Ereign. im Antiken Epos,l^e\p- 
 zig, 1901. Sitzler, Ein aesthet. Kommentar zu Homer's Odyssee, Paderborn, 
 
 1902. Breal, Un probleme de I'histoire litteraire, 1903. Drerup, Homer, 
 Munich, 1903. Blass, Z>«V Interpolationen in d. Odyssee Halle, 1904. Cham- 
 pault, Ph'eniciens et Grecs en Italic d'apres I'Odyssee, Paris, 1905. Dorpfeld, 
 Leukas, Athens, 1905. Lang, Untersuchungen zu Geographic der Odyssee, 
 Karlsruhe, 1905. 
 
44 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 VI. The Scholia. On the Odyssey, Dindorf, Oxford, 1855. Lehrs, De 
 Studiis Horn. Aristarchi, Leipzig, 1865. On the Iliad, Dindorf, Oxford, 1875. 
 \MiAvi\Ai,AristarMs Horn. Text-Kritik, Leipzig, 1884-1885. Maass, Scholia 
 on the Iliad, Oxford, 1888. 
 
 VIL Translations. Verse: //zW.- Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Lord Derby. 
 .\lford, Cordery, Newman, Sotheby, Bryant, Merivale, Wright, Way. Odyssey: 
 Pope, Worsley and Coningtoii, Schomberg, Lord Carnarvon, William Morris, 
 Way, Mackail. 
 
 Prose : Iliad : Lang, Leaf, and Myers. Odyssey : Butcher and Lang, G. H. 
 Palmer. See M. Arnold, On the Art of Translating Honier, London, 1861- 
 1862. 
 
 VIIL Lexica. Ebeling, Lexicon Homericum, Leipzig, 1880-1885. Dun- 
 bar, Concordance to the Odyssey and Hymns, Oxford, 1880. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE CYCLIC FRAGMENTS 
 
 From the eighth to the sixth century the composition of epic 
 poetry was industriously maintained. We have the fragments of 
 several lost epics, the titles of more ; their very number argues 
 industry rather than inspiration. Nearly all of those whose scanty 
 fragments survive were written by poets who h^d no other aim than 
 to supplement the Iliad and Odyssey. To the antiseptic quality 
 of the ' Homeric ' poems and the name of Homer the cyclic epics 
 owe their second-hand immortahty. In the uncritical as in the 
 imitative phase of Greek literary life, there was a marked tendency 
 to credit Homer with the whole body of cyclic epic. Aristotle 
 pointed out the qualitative differences of ' Cyclic ' and ' Homeric ' ; 
 the critics of Alexandria rejected from the canon all the epics but 
 the Iliad and Odyssey ; the ' ring ' of epic poetry that had- formed 
 about the canonical poems then broke up, and the rejected epics 
 gradually disappeared. 
 
 Their chronicles of the heroic legends had supplied plots to the 
 drama ; epic themes to the choral lyric of Stesichorus and Pindar ; 
 and to the rest of the lyric poets countless ornamental allusions. 
 Their interest was now wholly antiquarian. The reading public of 
 Greece was always limited : in the Christian centuries it was, like 
 our own, preoccupied with prose ; Homer himself was relegated to 
 the schools. It would have been strange indeed if they, having at 
 their command some twenty- eight thousand lines of the Iliad xaA 
 Odyssey, should have cared to copy and recopy the second-rate 
 epics. 
 
 We owe what we know of the cyclic poems to the fact that 
 Photius, a Byzantine lexicographer, copied some extracts from a 
 
 4S 
 
46 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 prose handbook or set of notes on the ' cycle ' by Proclus, whose 
 identity and date are disputed. Athenaeus, Pausanias, and the mar- 
 ginal notes of Venetus A of the Iliad supplement Proclus. It is not 
 likely that, in the second Christian century, the cyclic epics were 
 still read ; it is not even certain that they were extant, 
 though Pausanias, about this time, writes as though he 
 were familiar with the Thebais and the Cypria. Athenaeus, a 
 little later, quotes a few lines from the cyclic poets to illustrate his 
 antiquarian table talk. But a prose abstract such as that of Proclus 
 sufficed for an age devoted to imitative rhetoric ; with all these 
 writers, moreover, we have arrived at a stage when erudition, like 
 oratory, was imitative ; the collectors of literature were content to 
 echo the criticisms and the quotations of earlier writers. The 
 ideal of Proclus in his abstracts was the ideal of a mythographer. 
 In the cyclic poets he found a useful record of a certain sequence 
 of mythological events — ax.oKovB\ja. irpayfiArmi, a history of the 
 legends of Greece. 
 
 When a poet insists on having in all the facts, the creative 
 impulse has given place to the historical ; his public is naturally 
 content to read him in a prose version. The cyclic poets wrote 
 round about the Iliad and Odyssey, much as those epics had been 
 formed about the kernels of the 'Wrath ' and the ' Return.' The 
 siege of Thebes was the first great dramatic encounter of the 
 Hellenes, as the siege of Troy was the first dramatic collision 
 of Hellenes and Asiatics. In the heroic saga Thebes ranked next 
 to Troy. But Thebes had no Homer ; only the uncritical called 
 the Thebais ' Homeric' When an Alexandrian, perhaps Zenodo- 
 tus^ made a formal arrangement of the epic 'cycle,' the Theban 
 epics were brought into artificial connection with the cycle of the 
 Trojan saga. It was a curious attempt to make the siege of Troy 
 the pivot of the world's history. 
 
 An anonymous Theogonia, which belongs by right to a different 
 
 1 So Welcker, whose great book Der Epische Cydus, with its reconstruction 
 of the cycle, has fallen into the background now that the cyclic poems are no 
 longer believed to hold the answer to the Homeric question. 
 
THE CYCLIC FRAGMENTS 47 
 
 branch of the epic, formed the introduction, was a Book of Gene- 
 sis with its union of Earth and Heaven. The Titanomachia, the 
 Oedipodea, the Thebais, with its sequel the Epigonoi, were all 
 originally independent of the Trojan cycle. The Thebais was the 
 most famous epic of the Boeotian saga. According to Pausa- 
 nias, Callinus, the elegiac poet, whose date falls xhe 
 about the middle of the seventh century, assigned the Thebais 
 Thebais to Homer. This, though indirect, is the earliest refer- 
 ence to Homer that can be traced.^ It shows at any rate that, in the 
 seventh century, the phrase 'O.ar^pixa hri], or ' Homer ' had a wider 
 range of definition than merely the Iliad and Odyssey. This was 
 equally true a century later, and the ' recension of Peisistratus ' 
 may well have included the Thebais, Epigonoi, and Cypria, all at 
 that time ' Homeric' There is a cherished tradition that Homer 
 gave away his epics, the Cypria to Stasinus, the Little Iliad to 
 Thestorides. Lucian in the True History satirizes the tradition ; 
 Homer gives him an epic as a souvenir of their meeting in the 
 Shades ; it is a Battle of the Blessed and the Damned. 
 
 Even when it had been taken from Homer, the Thebais, like the 
 Epigonoi, was never assigned to any other poet, a rare distinction 
 for a cyclic epic. Pindar's Ninth Neinean Ode, the Seven against 
 Thebes of Aeschylus, the first choral ode of the Antigone of Soph- 
 ocles, all echo the Thebais. The Epigonoi described the more 
 successful expedition of the ' After-born.' The Taking of Oechalia, 
 attributed to Homer and to Creophylus of Samos, is The Taking 
 the attempt of some Homerid to bring into the sphere »* Oechalia 
 of the Ionian epos a figure and a saga wholly alien — Heracles 
 the hero of the Dorians. 
 
 A poem that is assigned to two or more poets may safely be 
 called anonymous. The Cypria was credited to Homer, Hegesias, 
 and Stasinus of Cyprus. Herodotus was, as far as we know, the 
 first skeptic as to ' Homeric ' authorship. He refused to call the 
 
 1 Bergk gives to Semonides of Amorgos {circa 625 B.C.) the fragment 
 usually attributed to Simonides of Ceos, in which //. VI 146 is quoted as the 
 ' noblest utterance of the man of Chios.' 
 
48 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Cypria ' Homeric,' on the ground of a contradiction with the 
 Iliad. With the Cypria opens the true Trojan cycle. It covers a 
 period of about thirty years, ending where the Iliad 
 begins, in the tenth year of the war. About forty 
 hnes of the poem are extant. The effort to bring other localities 
 into line with the Trojan saga is already obvious in the Iliad and 
 
 Odyssey. In //. V 43-47, Idomeneus of Crete slays Phaistos. 
 Here we have the skeleton of a Cretan saga in which, perhaps, 
 Idomeneus besieged his neighbor, the eponymous hero of Phaistos. 
 In the Cypria the Greek heroes make a false start and sack Teu- 
 thrania which they mistake for Troy. The whole incident with 
 the wounding of Telephus the Mysian, of whom Euripides was to 
 make a typical ragged hero, is a part of some Mysian saga, absorbed 
 by the poet who set out to compose a varied epic which should 
 introduce the Iliad. The legends of the Cypria were popular 
 with the tragedians. Telephus, Philoctetes, Palamedes, whose 
 treacherous death at the hand of Odysseus, quia bello^ vetabat, 
 made a strong impression on Vergil (Aen. II 81), Iphigenia at 
 Aulis, Peleus and Protesilaus, were all derived from the Cypria. 
 The poet of the Odyssey had echoed and developed the briefer 
 allusions of the Iliad; the poet of the Cypria transformed the 
 allusions of the Iliad into whole episodes. One is reminded of 
 the Odyssey by an air of magic that colors the incidents of the 
 poem. Telephus is miraculously healed ; Lynceus, who belongs 
 to the Messenian saga, has sight of superhuman keenness ; Nemesis, 
 here the mother of Helen, like Proteus, puts on all shapes in her 
 flight from Zeus. The twelve lines that describe her metamor- 
 phoses are the longest fragment preserved. 
 
 The Iliad follows the Cypria in the cycle ; the Aethiopis is 
 dove-tailed into the Iliad That the sequence might be unmis- 
 takable its author, Arctinus of Miletus {circa 750 B.C.), or some 
 The editor of the cycle, boldly struck off the epithet 
 
 Aethiopis of Hector (J7r7ro8a/^oto) in the last verse of the Iliad, 
 and replaced it with a sentence (^X^e 8' 'kf^m), Then came the 
 Amazon, to introduce his episode of the coming of Penthesilea, a 
 
THE CYCLIC FRAGMENTS 49 
 
 figure unknown to Homer. The Aethiopis has many parallels 
 with the Iliad. It is really an ' Achilleis ' though its title is derived 
 from Memnon of Ethiopia, son of the Dawn. He slays Antilochus, 
 the friend of Achilles, who avenges him as he had avenged Patro- 
 clus. When Arctinus made Achilles kill Thersites, he had not 
 forgotten that, in the Iliad, it was to Achilles that Thersites was 
 peculiarly offensive. 
 
 The Sack of Ilios by Arctinus was perhaps not originally a 
 separate poem. For the sake of historical continuity, no less 
 precious ' to the Alexandrian editor than his continuity of action 
 to the Homeric poet, the two lays were sepa- xhe 
 rated by the Little Iliad, anonymous, since tradition Little Iliad 
 gave it to six separate poets, notably Lesches of Lesbos. Its 
 heroes were Philoctetes and Neoptoleraus, striking figures in the 
 Sophoclean drama, a fact that has almost obscured for us their 
 claim to be heroes of the epic. Aristotle named ten tragedies 
 that had been carved out of the Little Iliad. The opening verse, 
 which survives,^ is an illustration of the method of Horace's too 
 ambitious scriptor cyclicus olim, who begins his epic with the 
 sounding line: Fortunam Priami cantabo et nobile bellum — 
 The fate of Priam I will sing and the famous war. The hero of 
 the Little Iliad is Odysseus ; it is a record of his shifts and adven- 
 tures and successes. The poem ended, for the purposes of the 
 cycle, with the entry of the Wooden Horse. 
 
 The Sack of Ilios by Arctinus was placed next. From this epic 
 Vergil derived his picture of the sack in the Second The 
 Book of the Aeneid, though, according to Macrobius, Sack of Ilios 
 he took it at second hand from the epic poet Peisander, now; usually 
 assigned to the sixth century. 
 
 The painful and straggling home-comings of the heroes, espe- 
 cially of the Atreidae, were the subject of the Returns, ascribed to 
 Agias. It told the story of the tragic fate of Agamemnon, the 
 vengeance of Orestes, and the sailing of Menelaus to Egypt. 
 
 1 Ilias Parva,fr. 1. "IXiov i,elSia koL AapSavliiv eiS7ru>\ov, Ilios I sing and the 
 land of Dardanus with its famous horses. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 4 
 
50 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Neoptolemus goes to Epirus, the first hint of the descent of the 
 royal house of Epirus from Achilles ; warned by Thetis, he goes 
 The overland by way of Thrace, where he meets Odysseus 
 
 Returns (cp. Od. 9. 39). The wrath of Athene hangs like a 
 cloud over the whole poem as the wrath of Poseidon had dark- 
 ened the fortunes of Odysseus. There are few episodes in the 
 Returns that were not inspired by the Odyssey. But, by a caprice 
 of quotation, it happens that the only extant fragment describes 
 the transformation of Aeson by the magic of Medea, an incident 
 from the saga of the Argonauts. 
 
 Eugammon of Cyrene {circa 566 B.C.) wrote the last poem of 
 the cycle, the Telegonia, as a sequej to the Odyssey. Like all 
 The sequels it is an anticlimax, which betrays the break- 
 Telegonia down of the epic impulse in the sixth century ; the 
 love of the marvelous had gained on the preference for spirited 
 and heroic action. In this poem the prophecy of Teiresias in 
 Od. II. 119 is fulfilled. Telegonus, the son of Odysseus and 
 Circe, coming ' from the sea ' to Ithaca on a quest like that of 
 Telemachus, slays his father unawares. Penelope marries Teleg- 
 onus, Circe marries Telemachus. The author of the poem, having 
 removed his personages to fairyland and given them immortality 
 at the hands of Circe, had made the expiring effort of the cyclic 
 genius to leave nothing untold. 
 
 After that first critical reaction in Herodotus, one epic after 
 another was denied to Homer and ceased to be ' Homeric' 
 For Aristotle, the cyclic poets are ' the others,' and are quoted 
 only to point by contrast the perfections of the Iliad and Odyssey. 
 Their personal identity stands or falls with Homer's ; for it would 
 be a mere perversity of philology to obliterate the personality of 
 Homer and accept that of Arctinus or Lesches. 
 
 The cyclic epics left a deep mark on the poetry of Greece. 
 Stesichorus drew on the cyclic rhapsodies no less than on Homer ; 
 Pindar's character of Achilles in the Third Nemean was taken, 
 not from the Iliad, but from the Aethiopis ; to Pindar, Cycnus 
 and Amphiaraus were as familiar as Hector. Euripides adopted 
 
THE CYCLIC FRAGMENTS 51 
 
 and exaggerated the cyclic degradation of Menelaus and Odysseus 
 Of the nine cyclic epics of which we have any knowledge thai 
 counts, less than one hundred lines survive. They might easily 
 have been quoted from epics as good as the Iliad or Odyssey. 
 The frequent neglect of the digamma, the dozen instances of late 
 or un- Homeric language, prove little. But we are not in a posi- 
 tion to question the judgment of antiquity which discarded the 
 cyclic poems ; nor is it likely that a happy find of a manuscript- 
 of the Cypria or the Thebais would reverse that judgment. 
 
 The weakening .of the epic impulse in the seventh and sixth 
 centuries was steady but slow, and even in the fifth, when lyric 
 and the drama were the types best suited to the age, there were 
 certain minor poets who chose to sing of heroic exploits in hex- 
 ameters rather than of themselves or the immediate interests of 
 men. About 650 B.C. Peisander of Camirus in Rhodes 
 wrote his Heradeia, of which we have only a few 
 fi-agments. The Heracles saga as we meet it in later literature 
 owes much to his imagination. The popular conception of the 
 hero carrying a club as his only weapon was derived from this 
 epic, which seems to have recounted at length all the great deeds 
 that he wrought with toil. So says Theocritus, if he really wrote 
 the twentieth Epigram, On the Statue of Peisander, ascribed to 
 him, a bronze figure set up, as he says, after many a month and 
 many a year to the poet who had first done justice to the untiring 
 son of Zeus. 
 
 Early in the fifth century Panyasis of Halicarnassus, said to be 
 the kinsman of Herodotus, jealous of the fame of Peisander, him- 
 self composed a Heradeia in fourteen books. Of its 
 
 PdQv&sis 
 merit we cannot judge from tlie fragments, about forty 
 
 lines, that survive. But Panyasis acquires a certain importance 
 
 from the fact that he was the leader of a revival of epic composition, 
 
 a revival that could only be spasmodic. The chief 
 
 ... . .. ^ , , Antimachus 
 
 epic poet of this century was Antimachus of Colophon, 
 
 whose activity lasted as late as the close of the Peloponnesian 
 
 war (404 B.C.). His masterpiece was the Thebais, of which about 
 
52 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 sixty verses are extant. It was so long, so dignified, so full of 
 
 interesting information, that it could not be neglected. The 
 
 name ot Antimachns was handed down by the critics, Greek and 
 
 Roman, always with respect but without enthusiasm. His elegiac 
 
 poem Lyde was a passionless imitation, elaborate and uninspired, 
 
 of the Nanno of Mimnermus.^ About the same time Choerilus 
 
 of Saraos wrote a historic epic of the conflict of Greece 
 Choenlus 
 
 and Persia, the Perseis, of which we have a few verses. 
 
 The poem must have had a vogue, however short-lived, at Athens, 
 where the Persian war was a popular theme. Choerilus lived for 
 a time at the court of Archelaus of Macedon, the patron of litera- 
 ture, and to be invited by Archelaus was in itself a proof of 
 celebrity. 
 
 With this last group of poets, who have little significance for 
 literature except in so far as they mark the historical sequence, 
 the epic after that brief renaissance, disappears, not to be gal- 
 vanized into life until, in the Alexandrian centuries, to write like 
 Homer was again the ambition of the learned. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Vfe\c\s.et, Ber Efiische Cyclus, Bonn, 1865. Duntzer, Die Fragmente der 
 epischen Poesie der Griechen, Koln, 1840. Kinkel, Epicorum Craec. Frag- 
 menta, Leipzig, 1877. See also Monro, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1883; 
 Wilamowitz, Philologische Untersuchungen, VII, pp. 328-380, Berlin, 1884. 
 
 Antimachus 
 
 Benecke, Antimachus of Colophon and the Position of Women in Greek 
 Poetry, London, 1896. 
 
 1 This elegy had a great vogue both at Alexandria and Rome. Cp. the 
 scornful remark of Catullus 95. lo: at populus tumido gaudeat Antimacho. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 HESIOD 
 
 By the Greeks of the classical period Homer and Hesiod were 
 regarded as the great instructors of Greece. Homer, they vaguely 
 said, taught men war, by which they meant rather the manly 
 virtues that are useful in warfare. Hesiod taught agriculture. 
 But the contrast of the Ionian epos and the epos of central 
 Greece, the contrast of heroic and didactic, was too evident to be 
 obscured. The ' Hesiodic manner ' and the ' Homeric manner ' 
 expressed two wholly different ways of writing epic. The Iliad 
 and Odyssey had been composed for the entertainment of an 
 aristocratic society. To ignore the life and energies of the people 
 was almost a convention of the heroic epic. The relations of 
 men with one another and the gods were on a scale that did not 
 include the peasant or his interests, did not include even the com- 
 mon soldier who fought before Troy. It is due to this unconscious 
 insolence that the swineherd Eumaeus in the Odyssey proves to be 
 a king's son who had been kidnapped by Phoenicians ; the very 
 harvest scene on the shield of Achilles is a picture of farming on 
 a great estate, whose owner leans on his staff and looks on at an 
 army of toiling men. 
 
 The poetry of Hesiod is the mirror of a very different society. 
 He wrote for men whose interests centered, not in war or tales of 
 war, but in the daily life of a small Boeotian village, in Thepeas- 
 the changes of seasons and crops, in a peasant ant's poet 
 farmer's hard and bare existence. With Hesiod, the poet of the 
 serfs, the common people take up the foreground. The Works 
 and Days was not meant to be, like the Iliad, an ornament of 
 the banquet ; it was composed for the instruction of the village 
 
 53 
 
54 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 street, for men who, if they should follow Hesiod's advice, 
 would never waste their time in social gatherings. With the 
 change of matter and of outlook the ' manner has changed. 
 Hesiod broke with the heroic tradition of anonymity ; he is a sub- 
 jective poet whose well-marked individuaUty is revealed in his 
 poems. In the WorAs and Days he tells us that his father, grow- 
 ing weary of the precarious life of a coast trader, emigrated from 
 Aeolic Cym6,' fleeing, as he says in his quaint manner, not riches, 
 nor wealth, nor prosperity, but hard poverty, the gift of Zeus to 
 men. He settled near Helicon in a wretched village, Ascra, cold 
 in winter, hot in summer, never good to live in? 
 
 It is not clear whether Hesiod was born before his father's emi- 
 gration. He was always claimed by the Boeotians and is the poet 
 of Boeotia, the first of a succession of distinguished 
 p ace fellow-countrymen who prove that the Athenian gibe 
 at the crass air and crass stupidity of his native land was merely 
 an expression of national prejudice such as, in Europe, in later 
 times, was directed against the Dutch. 
 
 Aeolic by descent, he spent- his youth at Ascra, his riper age in 
 western Locris, where he died, at Naupactus. The tradition, 
 always bent on linking the poets and establishing a sort of poetic 
 succession, made Hesiod the father of Stesichorus, the lyric poet. 
 Both poets had Locrian interests, for it was from Locris that 
 Stesichorus emigrated to Sicily. But Hesiod can hardly have 
 lived later than 750 B.C. ; his poetry echoes Homer 
 and is echoed by poets of the seventh century, by 
 which time the Hesiodic epic had become famiUar to the lonians. 
 The legend that he competed with Homer at Chalcis and 
 won the prize is clearly due to the Greek tendency to relate 
 great names ; unless, indeed, it symbolizes some phase in which 
 
 ^ The inroads of the Cimmerians from the regions now known as the Crimea 
 into Asiatic Aeolis {circa 700 B.C.) may have caused some of the Aeolic 
 colonists to migrate to Boeotia, their original home. 
 
 2 Works, 637 ff. This passage contains the earliest extant reference to the 
 Aeolians. 
 
HESIOD 
 
 55 
 
 the Greeks displayed a passing preference for the didactic 
 epic* 
 
 As poem after poem ceased to be considered Homeric, till the 
 Alexandrians reserved to Homer only the Iliad and Odyssey, so sev- 
 eral compositions once classed as ' Hesiodic ' were gradually dis- 
 carded. Of the epics that survive, the Works and Days without 
 question, the Theogony almost certainly, are Hesiod's ; the Shield 
 of Heracles is by a later and inferior poet. The poems have come 
 down to us in the mixed dialect of the Homeric epos with a greater 
 proportion of Aeolic forms. The Doric coloring, more marked in 
 the Theogony than in the Works, is possibly to be traced to the ip- 
 fluence of Delphi. Whether Hesiod wrote in the Boeotian or Lo- 
 crian dialect, whether the Homer whom he imitated had 
 already been transliterated into Ionic, are questions that 
 we cannot answer. His use of the digamma is so inconsistent that 
 it furnishes no real evidence. The flexibility of epic verse gave 
 the rhapsodes free play, and we may assume that Hesiod's dialect, 
 like Homer's, was gradually adapted to an Ionian audience.^ 
 
 The Works and Days CEpyaKoi'H/jiipai) is a poem of exhor- 
 tation and instruction, an epic of detail. The Aeolic tempera- 
 ment as it worked on the shores of Asia Minor may be The Works 
 contrasted with the same temperament influenced by *°^ ^*y® 
 the atmosphere and superstitions of Boeotia. But it would not be 
 safe to emphasize the contrast of environment, without taking 
 into account the poet's peculiar personality and circumstances. 
 The chief inspiration of the Works was the impulse to exhort 
 and warn a shiftless brother, whose sins, as Hesiod chose to 
 believe, were due to ignorance. Perses had won a lawsuit by 
 
 1 The Contest of Homer and Hesiod, a prose work dated by its mention of 
 the Emperor Hadrian, is a perfectly worthless attempt of a late writer to 
 transform a vague legend into history by the addition of picturesque details. 
 
 '^ Kick's theory of an Ionic recension of the Homeric poems at the begin- 
 ning of the sixth century obliges him to assume for Hesiod a similar recension 
 at about the same time. He believes that the Works and the Theogony wer? 
 originally composed in the Boeotian and Locri^n dialects. 
 
S6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 bribery, and deprived Hesiod of his proper share of their father's 
 estate. A certain unity is given to the first part of the poem by 
 the exhortations directed in alternate paragraphs to Perses and 
 the unjust judges, whom Hesiod addresses as ' Princes.' The 
 poem falls naturally into four main divisions: i. The Exhorta- 
 tions (1-382); 2. The Precepts of Agriculture and Navigation 
 (383-694); 3. The General Precepts (695-764); 4. The Cal- 
 endar of Days (765-end). 
 
 The first division of the Works is a manifesto, an assertion 
 of the poet's rights in the name of justice. A prelude, easily 
 detachable, is always open to suspicion ; the Boeotians round about 
 Helicon who, in the time of Pausanias (IX 31), rejected the first 
 ten lines of invocation, are supported by most modern editors. 
 The poem, then, begins with an allegory. There are two kinds 
 of Strife ("Epts), the baleful Strife that breeds war and, a more 
 familiar evil at Ascra, lawsuits ; opposed to it is that healthy spirit 
 of competition which urges a man to plow and plant and set his 
 house in order. O Perses, cries the poet, lay up these things in 
 thy heart and never may that envious strife turn away thy soul 
 from work. That wish is the text of this hortatory epic. The 
 Prometheus myth, which diverts Hesiod from his grievance, is 
 introduced to account for the need of drudgery and for the other 
 inevitable ills of man. Prometheus stole and gave to men the 
 fire that Zeus had hidden. Then Zeus devised a curse to offset 
 the stolen fire ; he created Pandora, the Greek Eve : Straightway 
 from earth the glorious Hephaestus fashioned her, in the likeness of 
 a shame-faced maiden, by the counsel of Zeus. The goddess bright- 
 eyed Athene decked her with a girdle and raiment; about her neck 
 the divine Charites and gracious Persuasion set necklaces of gold; 
 the fair-haired Hours crowned her head with spring flowers; in 
 her breast the messenger Hermes, the herald of the gods, set lies 
 and deceitful words, and a heart of guile. And he named her 
 Woman, Pandora, because all they that dwell on Olympus had 
 given her gifts, woe for mortal men (70 ff.). 
 
 The curses that escape from Pandora's jar, the dumb diseases 
 
HESIOD 57 
 
 that stalk among men, suggest to Hesiod another digression, a 
 famous picture of human decadence, the Five Ages of Mankind. 
 Hgrner had more than once hinted at the degeneration xhe 
 of man, but Hesiod is bitter where Homer was re- Five Ages 
 signed. In the Golden Age there was no need of toil, and when 
 men died they beqame daemons, heavenly guardians of men. In 
 the Silver Age sin begins, but is negative ; a feebler race con- 
 demned to a long childhood and brief maturity displayed pride 
 and neglected the gods ; after death they were buried deep under 
 ground. With the Bronze Age positive wickedness began ; it 
 was an age of violent men who slew one another and went down 
 to Hades. So far there has been a regular progression in the fall 
 of man. But the Fourth Age of the Heroes who fought before 
 Thebes and Troy was better and wiser ; it is not named by a 
 metal ; some heroes died, but others were translated to the Islands 
 of the Blest. The interruption is a sign of the widespread inter- 
 est in the heroic legends, or perhaps Hesiod, easily diverted from 
 a sequence of thought, introduced the Heroic Age to complete 
 his account of the fates of men after death. In the Fifth or Iron 
 Age, the downfall is all the more sudden for the check. Would 
 that [ had not lived in the fifth age ! wails Hesiod, would that I 
 had died first or been born later ! 
 
 The allegory of the hawk and the nightingale which Hesiod 
 relates to the judges is usually quoted as the earliest example 
 of the beast fable. But it is not precisely a story with a moral 
 hke a fable of Aesop ; its nearest parallel is rather the Old Testa- 
 ment allegory of the thistle and the cedar.^ After a series of 
 exhortations addressed alternately to Perses and the judges, the 
 first division of the Works ends with a collection of disconnected 
 proverbs. With the precepts of agriculture begins the xhe Pre- 
 positive instruction. The Greeks as a rule laid more cepts of 
 stress on the ethical teaching of Hesiod, but it was as ^ ' " 
 the poet of agriculture that he appealed to the Romans, and it 
 was these precepts that were to be transfigured by the imagination 
 1 2 Kings xiv. g. 
 
58 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 of Vergil in tiie Georgics. Hesiod hardly ever attempts, like Ver- 
 gil, to lift homely details. He knows nothing of the pleasure of 
 the amateur which made the Roman poet delight in those details 
 and linger over them.' Nor is he interested in the great forces 
 of nature ;, the inspiration of a Parmenides is far from Hesiod. 
 There is hardly a trace of the idyll in his epic, since he cares 
 little for the human interest essential to an idyll. The Works, 
 however, reveals Hesiod himself, the type of the grumbling farmer 
 of any age ; it sounds the true peasant note ; not till Theocritus 
 does one hear that note again in Greek literature and perhaps 
 there only in the Lityerses-song. 
 
 For the most part, the dry professional instructions of this part 
 of the Works might as well have been composed in prose, had 
 prose existed for Hesiod as a literary form. But here and there 
 he is betrayed out of the didactic maimer into a sudden and short 
 flight of poetry which rises to the Homeric level. Such is the de- 
 scription of winter and the violence of the north wind. From 
 the depths of horse-breeding Thrace it hurls its blast over the wide 
 sea ; the earth groans loud and the forest. Many an oak with its 
 high foliage, many a sturdy pine in the mountain valleys it seizes 
 and lays low on the fruitful earth ; then all the countless trees of 
 the forest clamor aloud (507 ff.). There you have the grand man- 
 ner; it seems incredible, though it is truly Hesiodic, that the 
 passage should end in practical advice on the choice of winter 
 clothing. 
 
 Hesiod had a genuine horror of the sea, but if one lives near 
 On the coast, one must not neglect the coasting trade. 
 Navigation Choose a safe season and take short voyages, avoiding 
 the dangers of small boats ; of fishing he says nothing. Between 
 the two first divisions of the Works and the third, the general 
 precepts, one can make out a loose connection of interest, the in- 
 terest of tlie reformation and instruction of Perses. The essen 
 tial foundation is industry ; Perses must work. But he must be 
 equipped with technical knowledge, and that is not enough ; he 
 Ceorg. Ill 285. Singula dum capti circumvectamur amore, * 
 
HESIOD 59 
 
 must observe certain general precautions, must avoid things of ill 
 omen. Hesiod, like the priests of Delphi, who echo him in their 
 oracles, knew the power of the proverb.^ It is the current pro- 
 verbial philosophy which comes home to all men, and it is the 
 same for Greek and barbarian. The prophecy that his mother 
 taught King Lemuel, her advice to one choosing a j^^^ 
 wife, echoes the acid wisdom of Semonides of Amorgos; Proverbs 
 Hesiod's maxim that you should leave your relatives alone and be 
 on good terms with your neighbor is the advice of Solomon : Go 
 not into thy brother's house in the day of thy calamity ; better is a 
 neighbor that is near than a brother far 'off {^Proverbs xxvii. lo). 
 Many of the homely proverbs that found a final though loose set- 
 ting in the Works, drifted there, no doubt, from other collections 
 such as that which was ascribed to Pittheus, the wise king of 
 Troezen. Here and there is a hint of Orphism or of the teachings 
 of Pythagoras ; one must not sit on immovable things, nor cross a 
 river with hands unwashed, nor pollute life with the baleful atmos- 
 phere of death. 
 
 Throughout all this gnomic advice, derived rather from 
 economics than from ethics, Hesiod reveals a narrow and bigotea 
 outlook, an illiberal attitude to friends and kindred, an embittered 
 egotism in all the relations of life. 
 
 Tlie Calendar of Days is at least as old as Heracleitus {circa 
 500 B.C.), who ridiculed its superstition.^ ■ The Works is a map of the 
 work of the -year ; the Days is concerned with the daily ^^^ 
 routine of the Boeotian farmer's life ; it is the classic Calendar of 
 collection of superstitions as to lucky and unlucky days ^^^ 
 such as are met with in all countries and all times. For the super- 
 stitious today, good luck or bad is often associated with certain 
 
 1 Cp. the oracle quoted in Herodotus VI 86 with Works 285. It may well 
 have been Delphic or Orphic influence that introduced into Hesiod's vocabu- 
 lary such enigmatic words as 0ep^oiKos, house-carrier, = snail; Tr^i'Tiifoi', the 
 five-branched, = hand, and the like. Cp. with the preceding, Herrick's de- 
 scription of the loss of a finger : " One of the five straight branches of my 
 hand Is lopt already." * Plutarch, Cam. 19. 
 
6o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 days of the week ; but in Hesiod's calendar it is with the moon 
 that the luck changes. He reviews, in his unsystematic fashion, 
 the days in their order, the luck as it waxes and wanes ; the days 
 that contain certain numbers, — Avoid all fifth days since they 
 are harsh and horrid (802) ; and the days suitable for certain 
 tasks, — Begin weaving on the twelfth. No day is wholly unlucky.' 
 In his lunar calendar Hesiod mentions several tasks that were 
 ignored in. the Works, such as making fences, sheep-shearing, 
 boat-building, all, however, suited to the life of the Boeotian peas- 
 ant. The poem closes with three verses obviously added to con- 
 nect with it the lost Ornithomanteia, ascribed to Hesiod. 
 
 Pausanias records that the Boeotians of his time allowed only 
 the Works to be Hesiodic. But the Theogony, though composed 
 with a very different inspiration, bears all the marks of genuine- 
 The ness. The influence of Delphi on Hesiod is not to 
 
 Theogony ^^g precisely defined, but in any case the Theogony is 
 hieratic poetry closely allied to the earliest rehgious epos de- 
 scribed in the first chapter. The disproportionate prelude, or mix- 
 ture of preludes, forming more than one tenth of the poem, is 
 later work, a local Heliconian compositioil which describes how 
 the Muses taught Hesiod his fair song as he pastured his sheep be- 
 low sacred Helicon. The poem, which begins at line 116, is a ge- 
 nealogical epic, a descriptive catalogue with an occasional digression 
 into allegory or myth. It is a somber picture of that struggle of the 
 immortals for supremacy which ended in the victory of Zeus. It 
 is often, as in the catalogue of the fifty Nereids (240-262), a mere 
 list of names. The myth of Prometheus, the savior, and the 
 creation of Pandora reappear with more detail. In the remains 
 of Greek literature Hesiod's Theogony is the only systematic treat- 
 
 ' In the fourteenth-century /Calendar of the University of Oxford {OiiLioxi 
 Historical Society, 1904) the members of the University are solemnly warned 
 in Latin verse against two days in every month, called ' Egyptian days ' from 
 the plagues of Egypt; e.g. the 'seventh day from the end of the first month' 
 must be avoided as unlucky for blood-letting, while the ' sixteenth day of a 
 thirty-one-day month ' is propitious for any enterprise. 
 
HESIOD 6 1 
 
 ment of the pedigree of the gods, a fact which to some extent 
 justifies a much criticised remark of Herodotus that ' Isome r and 
 Hesiod framed the Theogony of the Greeks.' Hesiod is the poet 
 of the Titans, who were to leave in literature the impression of un- 
 measured force. His description of their combat with Zeus is 
 one of his rare flights of impressive poetry. At the end are fifty 
 verses on gods who married mortals. Then Hesiod announces 
 that he will tell the tale of mortal women whom the gods wedded, 
 lines of transition in which, as at the close of the Works, we de- 
 tect the effort to make even Hesiod's poems consecutive. Here 
 followed the famous lost epic the Eoiae, which derived its awkward 
 name from the repetition of the words ^ ol-q, or such as, a phrase 
 which, in the true Hesiodic manner, introduced every 
 paragraph with its fresh instance of the union of a 
 god and a mortal. The Eoiae, perhaps, formed part of the lost 
 Catalogue of Women. Though we possess about one hundred lines 
 of the Catalogue and forty lines of the Eoiae, it is not easy to judge 
 of their poetic merit or their genuineness. There was a tendency 
 in the seventh and sixth centuries to ascribe to Hesiod any poem 
 that displayed the Hesiodic characteristics, gnomic moralizing and 
 a genealogical interest. 
 
 It is the more remarkable that he should have been credited 
 with the Shield of Heracles, an epic in the heroic manner. The 
 story of Alcmene, with which it opens, is plainly bor- xhe Shield 
 rowed from the Hesiodic Catalogue; the rest of the "^ Heracles 
 poem perhaps formed part of a Heracleia. The description of the 
 shield is an extravagant and tasteless imitation of the Homeric 
 Shield of Achilles. Longinus quotes a line which he calls ' re- 
 pulsive, not terrible,' and questions the genuineness of the whole 
 epic. Such were the poems, if we include the lost Melampodia, 
 the Astronomia, and the Maxims of Cheiron, that grouped them- 
 selves about the name of Hesiod, just as the cyclic epics, because 
 they dealt with the heroic saga, were drawn into the Homeric 
 current. 
 
 Only from the Works and the Theogony may one judge the 
 
62 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 stylejaf Hesiod. Few poets can have offered such opportunities 
 for interpolation as this poet of the moral formula and of gene- 
 alogies. Hardly any aesthetic test can be applied to the Works, 
 which has survived in defiance of the canons of unity, or propor- 
 tion, or coherence of thought. Several attempts have been made 
 by modern critics to separate the original nucleus from the later 
 additions, but none are convincing.'^ 
 
 We may rest in the knowledge that we have the Hesiodic epic 
 that was widely circulated in the Ionia of the seventh and sixth 
 centuries, was imitated by Semonides, Theognis, and Alcaeus, 
 attacked by Xenophanes and Heracleitus, admired by all educated 
 Greeks. A strange commentary on the ethical standards of 
 Greece is the fact that the Works should have held its ground for 
 centuries as the text-book of ethics in Greek schools ; that this 
 philosophy, not broad, not noble, not even expedient, conceived 
 by a peasant for the use of peasants as shrewd and selfish as him- 
 self, should have been taken for an inspired message to a great 
 race. 
 
 Hesiod was wholly out of touch with the cyclic inspiration ; but 
 the direct imitation of the Iliad and Odyssey is the most striking 
 feature of his style. /"He destroyed the symmetry of 
 ' his Five Ages to introduce the Age of the Homeric 
 Heroes ,'^in the Theogony are about 126, in the Works about 87 set 
 phrases borrowed from Homer ; nor do these include many stock 
 expressions which, in Hesiod's day, must have been the common 
 property of all who wrote epic. 'But Hesiod's imitations are of the 
 letter, not of the spirit, of Homer. His manner is profoundly 
 original, absolutely alien from the Homeric, as a single parallel will 
 show. When Homer makes Penelope compare her resdess 
 anxiety for Odysseus with the troubled song of the nightingale, 
 
 iThe most destructive of these critics is Lehrs, Quaestiones epicae, 1837; 
 Kirchhofif, in his Hesiodos' Mahnlieder an Perses, 1889, using the method that 
 he had applied to the Odyssey, regards the addresses to Perses and the kings 
 as the Hesiodic kernel ; the remainder is due to the interpolations and ex- 
 pansions of later redactors. 
 
HESIOD 63 
 
 he, completes the picture : Even as when the daughter of Panda- 
 retis, the brown, bright nightingale sings sweetly in the first season 
 of the spring, from her place in the thick leafage of the trees, and 
 with many a turn and trill pours forth her full-voiced music 
 bewailing her child, dear Itylus, whom on a time she slew with the 
 sword unwitting, Itylus, the son of Zethus the prince ; even as her 
 song, my troubled soul sways to and fro {Od. 19. 518 fif.). Hesiod 
 borrows from this passage when he speaks of the return of the 
 swallow in spring, but he is concerned, not with the myth and its 
 possibilities for a poet, but with the practical interest of the swal- 
 low's advent for the Boeotian farmer : After the rising of Arc turns, 
 the swallow, daughter of Pandion, with her shrill cry at dawn, flies 
 back into the daylight among men. Before she comes back, prune 
 your vines; that is the proper time {Works 568 ff.). 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. A. Papyri: /^a;/o«Jm, containing 174 vv. of the Woris 
 and Days, and 39 vv. of the Shield. Achmim, containing 68 vv. of the Theo- 
 gony ; both 4th cent. a.d. B. Mediceus, nth cent., at Florence, containing 
 the Works and Days. Mediceus 3, nth cent., at Florence, containing the 
 Theogony and the Shield. 
 
 II. Editions. Editio princeps, by Demetrius Chalcondylas, Milan, 1493, 
 containing the Works and Days. Aldine edition of complete works, 1495. 
 Wolf, Theogony, Halle, 1783. Gaisford, Hesiodi Carmina, 1814-1820. 
 Markscheffel, Hesiodi Fragmenla, J^eipzig, 1840. Steitz, Die Werke u. Tage, 
 Leipzig, 1869. Koechly and Kinkel, A'fjjoaia, Leipzig, 1870. Gottling-Flach, 
 Hesiodi Carmina, Leipzig, 1878. Kzach, Hesiodi quae feruntur omnia, 
 Leipzig, 1884. Rzach, Hesiodi Carmina, Leipzig, 1902. Fick, Hesiod' s 
 Gedichte, Gottingen, 1887. Kirchhoff, Hesiodos' Mahnlieder an Perses, Berlin, 
 1889. Sittl, Hesiodos, Athens, 1889. On the text, see Rzach in Wiener 
 Studien, 1897-1900; Wilamowitz in Bericht d. Berlin. Akad. 1900 (on new 
 fragments of the Catalogue). Rzach, Der Dialekt des Hes., Leipzig, 1876, 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE HOMERIC HYMNS AND EPIGRAMS 
 
 The Homeric Hymns were ascribed to Homer in that uncritical 
 period when ahuost any poem in the heroic manner might safely 
 be called ' Homeric' Even as late as Cicero, Philodemus the 
 Epicurean, a poet himself and evidently no critic, cited the 
 Hymns as Homer's. But the Alexandrians did not use them for 
 their Homeric references, a case in which silence means rejection. 
 The Hymns are plainly the work of rhapsodes, preludes composed 
 to introduce recitations of the epic. Thucydides (HI 104), 
 quoting from the Hymn to the Delian Apollo, calls it a prelude ; 
 for him, too, it was still Homer. Of the thirty-four Hymns in our 
 collection, nearly all end with a formula of leave-taking, the rhap- 
 sode's transition to the recitation to which the hymn was a solemn 
 and essential prelude : Goddess, queen of well-established Cyprus, 
 having given thee honor due, I shall pass on to another hymn 
 (IV end). The prelude and the epic that followed were alike 
 'hymns' to the Greek, who used the word iT/avos for any song, 
 epic or lyric, sacred or secular : First they sing a hymn to Apollo, 
 and then a hymn in memory of the men and women of old 
 (I 160). 
 
 In date the Hymns range from the seventh century B.C. to the 
 Christian era. Greek literature shows few traces of their influence. 
 Theognis (no) seems to echo the Delian Hymn, Aristophanes 
 quotes it {Birds 575); the reminiscences in the Alexandrian 
 poets, Theocritus, Callimachus, and Apollonius of Rhodes, are not 
 so certain. Written as the Hymns were by rhapsodes whose in- 
 spiration was almost wholly that of the Homeric school, the bor- 
 rowings from the Iliad and Odyssey are the most obvious features 
 
 64 
 
THE HOMERIC HYMNS AND EPIGRAMS 65 
 
 of their style ; they were too imitative to lend themselves to 
 imitation. 
 
 At the time when the oldest were composed, the digamma was 
 in use, but vacillating as it vacillates in Homer. For the date of 
 the Hymns the digamma is an unsafe guide, but it helps to deter- 
 mine their dialect. In the Hymn to Aphrodite, composed no 
 doubt for the Cyprians, whose dialect was tenacious of the di- 
 gamma, it is neglected only twice. The poet of that hymn had 
 before him the Hymn to Demeter, which was composed by an 
 Ionian for Attica ; as one would expect, the digamma 
 is there much less in evidence, though the poem is 
 earlier. On the other hand, the Delian Hymn, composed for 
 lonians by Cynaethus of Chios, as tradition goes and Fick believes, 
 contains a few passages from which the Aeolic digamma cannot 
 be expelled. The coloring of the dialect in all the Hymns is 
 decidedly Homeric, and there are not a dozen words in them 
 that do not occur also in Homer or Hesiod. 
 
 The first five form a group apart inasmuch as they are the best 
 and the longest — too long, one would think, for mere preludes. 
 The Hymn to Hermes has 580 verses; the two Hymns to Apollo, 
 if read as a single poem, amount to 564 verses. Most critics, 
 however, consent to ignore the manuscript tradition and regard 
 the Hymns as two entirely different poems of separate xhe Delian 
 authorship and date. The Hymn to the Delian Apollo Hymn 
 ends at line 178 with the poet's farewell to the Delian maidens : 
 Remember me in the time to come, when any of earthly men, yea, 
 any stranger that hath seen much and much endured comes hither 
 and asks. Maidens, who is to you the sweetest singer of all that 
 frequent this place, in whose song do you most delight? Then do 
 you all answer with one voice : He is a blind man and dwells in 
 rocky Chios ; forever shall his songs be the fairest. In the descrip- 
 tions of the wanderings of Leto and the birth of Apollo on Delos, 
 destined to be the meeting place of the ' long-robed lonians,' the 
 epic narrative style is varied once more by a purely lyric outburst : 
 Many are thy fanes and groves, and dear are all thy headlands 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — S 
 
6b SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and high peaks of lofty hills and rivers flowing onwards to the sea 
 (143 fif.) ; the mixture of styles is unusual in Greek epic. A Pin- 
 daric scholiast^ assigned the Hymn to Cynaethus of Chios (circa 
 504 B.C.) ; it is easier to assume a mistake in the traditional date 
 of Cynaethus than to believe that the Hymn is later than the 
 seventh century. 
 
 From the Pythian Hymn, lyric apostrophe of the god is ab- 
 sent. The scene has shifted to central Greece, where, at Delphi, 
 The Pyth- Apollo founds his oracle, and since he is after all a 
 ian Hymn Dorian god, intrusts his shrine to traders from Dorian 
 Crete. The Delian Hymn was written by a poet who had the 
 Ionian sense of beauty, the Ionian charm of style ; the Pythian, 
 by a poet of central Greece, interested, like Hesiod, in etymology 
 and the history of myth. To call the one ' Homeric ' and the 
 other ' Hesiodic ' is a useful though not strictly accurate differen- 
 tiation of their style and date.^ 
 
 The Hymn to Hermes (III) was admirably translated by Shelley 
 in ottava rima. With the traditional history of Greek music for 
 The Hymn an uncertain guide, we may date the poem at least no 
 to Hermes earlier than the fortieth Olympiad (536 B.C.), when 
 Terpander is supposed to have added three to the four strings 
 of the lyre ; in the Hymn, the lyre which Hermes invents is al- 
 ready seven-stringed. The poem is decidedly humorous, yet not 
 a burlesque ; a lively tale of the triumph of the precocious infant 
 Hermes over the sedate Apollo. 
 
 The poet of the Hymn to Aphrodite (IV) borrows the language 
 of Homer, Hesiod, and the Hymn to Demeter. But his descrip- 
 The Hymn 'ion of the meeting of Aphrodite and Anchises on 
 to Aphrodite ' many-fountained Ida ' has a beauty that, though it 
 may be called ' Homeric,' is independent of borrowing. The 
 prayer of Anchises to Aphrodite that he may not live a strengthless 
 
 1 See supra, p. 16. 
 
 2 GemoU (1886) has not converted modern scholars to his reaction in 
 favor of regarding the two hymns as one. For more than a century the 
 ather view has been successfully maintained. 
 
THE HOMERIC HYMNS AND EPIGRAMS 67 
 
 shadow among men, doomed to cruel immortality without im- 
 mortal youth, introduces the tale of Tithonus, whose old age, 
 wretched and weary and detested by the gods, made him hateful at 
 last even to the Dawn : She laid him in a chamber and shut the 
 gleaming doors, and his voice flows on endlessly. 
 
 The Hymn to Demeter (V), apart from its intrinsic beauty, has 
 the peculiar interest attached to a classic that has been preserved 
 in a single manuscript and restored to us by a lucky chance. It 
 was discovered in 1 780 by the German scholar Matthiae, in Mos- 
 cow, perhaps the last place to which one would have looked for 
 such a find. This Hymn, with its references to the Mysteries, may 
 well have been written for Eleusis, the sole survivor of a whole body 
 of hieratic poetry devoted to the Demeter legend. The Hymn 
 In Homer ' dread Persephone,' the goddess of the to Demeter 
 waste shore and barren willows, was for Odysseus the queen of 
 Hades, all the more terrible because unseen. In Hesiod (Theog. 
 913) is a passing allusion to her carrying-off by Aidoneus. But 
 for the poet of the Hymn, profoundly conscious of the religious 
 symbolism of the myth, Persephone is the daughter of Earth, who 
 
 for a season 
 
 " Forgets the Earth, her mother. 
 The life of fruits and corn," 
 
 yet is restored with the leaves and flowers of spring. The religion 
 of Eleusis was a religion of sorrow. The wandering Demeter, the 
 Greek type of the sorrowing mother, with her passionate human 
 grief, symbolized the wandering soul ; the restoration of Perseph- 
 one is the renewal of hope for man, here and hereafter. Happy 
 is he among mortal men who hath beheld these things ! cries this 
 poet of the mystics of Eleusis ; but he that is uninitiate and hath 
 no lot in them hath never equal lot in death beneath the murky 
 gloom (480 ff.). 
 
 The poem is full of movement and color : Demeter with her 
 blazing torches rushes on in her search, or springs ' like a Maenad 
 down a dark mountain woodland ' to greet Persephone ; the 
 daughters of Celeus speed along the hollow road-way ^ their hair, in. 
 
68 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 color like the crocus, floating about their shoulders (177 ff.). When 
 Persephone was snatched away, she was gathering roses and cro- 
 cuses, and violets in the soft meadow, and lilies and hyacinths and 
 the narcissus which the earth brought forth as a snare to the fair- 
 faced maiden, by the counsel of Zeus and to please the Lord with 
 many guests. Wondrously bloomed the flower, a maivelfor all to 
 see, whether deathless gods or deathly men. From its root grew 
 forth a hundred blossoms, and with its fragrant odor the wide 
 heaven above and the whole earth laughed, and the salt wave of the 
 sea. Then the maiden manieled, and stretched forth both her 
 hands to seize the fair plaything, but the wide-wayed earth gaped in 
 the Nysian plain, and up rushed the prince, the host of many 
 guests, with his immortal horses (6 ff.). In fine contrast with all 
 this is the picture of the stricken and disfigured goddess, sitting in 
 the shade of a thick olive tree, or wasting with silent grief in the 
 house of Celeus. 
 
 Of the shorter Hymns, the seventh, which describes an adven- 
 ture of Dionysus among pirates, preserves the legend of a miracle 
 The Hymn that was often represented in Greek art ; the poem 
 to Dionysus was imitated by Ovid.^ The eighth, To Ares, is a 
 poem of invocation of the Orphic type, a liturgy, out of place 
 in a collection of ' Homeric ' preludes. It is not likely that the 
 individual Hymns escaped interpolation and expansion at the hands 
 The Hymn of Orphic poets and rhapsodes, but beyond the di- 
 to Ares vision of the Hymn to Apollo, the efforts of the 
 
 destructive critics to disengage in each case the original hymn 
 are unconvincing and have been, discredited by the most recent 
 editors. 
 
 The Batrachotnyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice, is a 
 The Battle burlesque epic of 316 verses which tradition first gave 
 of the Frogs to Homer, later to Pigres of Halicarnassus {circa 480). 
 *" '"* It is interesting only as being the earliest parody of 
 the Homeric epic, a kind of composition that hardly ranks as 
 literature, though later, in Athens and Sicily, it appears to have 
 
 1 Mtt. III. 
 
THE HOMERIC HYMNS AND EPIGRAMS 69 
 
 been popular. In style the Battle is a barbarous mixture of prose 
 expressions and phrases borrowed from Homer ; the humor, as 
 in all these compositions, consists in applying elevated language to 
 the doings of the insignificant, in converting eloquence to bombast. 
 
 The loss of the Margites leaves us with only a faint clew to 
 Aristotle's meaning when he said (Poetics 4) that in his The 
 Margites Homer laid the foundations of Comedy. Margites 
 The poem was the epic of a stupid man (jidpyoi), a study of in- 
 eptitude. Margites is like a ' Character ' from Theophrastus 
 (371-287 B.C.) or the New Comedy. Many things he had learned 
 to do and all of them he did ill. Not of him could the gods make 
 even a digger or a plowman or anything intelligent; he was a 
 bungler at every trade. As if to mark its satiric quality, the hex- 
 ameters of the Margites were varied with iambics, the meter of 
 satire. Like the Battle, it was ascribed by one tradition to Pigres 
 of Halicarnassus. About half a dozen verses are extant. 
 
 The seventeen ' Homeric ' Epigrams, usually printed with the 
 Hymns, have an antiquarian interest from the fact that the author 
 of the ' Life ' of Homer, wrongly ascribed to Herodotus, contrived 
 to weave them into his account of the poet's adven- The 
 tures. They are of slight literary importance and Epigrams 
 were drawn from various sources. Composed for the most part 
 as occasional poems by rhapsodes, they reflect the chances of a 
 wandering and precarious life, appealing to the protection of sailors 
 and cities on whose welcome the rhapsode must depend. The 
 third Epigram was written for the tomb of Midas, probably by 
 Cleobulus of Lindus, one of the Seven Sages. Its construction 
 was criticised by Plato (Phaedrus 264) on the ground that its verses 
 can be read in any order ; ^ its arrogance inspired Simonides with a 
 reflection on the folly of the sage who thought that a mere monu- 
 ment could defy decay and the hands of gods and men. 
 
 1 A bronze maiden am I, set on the tomb of Midas. As long as water flows 
 and tall trees grow Here fixed on this grave of many tears I tell the way- 
 farer Here lies Midas. The epigram proved to be a monument that could 
 outlast bronze — aere ferennius. 
 
yo SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Moscoviensis, 14th cent., at Leyden, is the only extant 
 Ms. that contains the Hymn to Demeter ; also part of the Hymn to Dionysus. 
 Laurentianus, 15th cent., at Florence. Estensis, 15th cent., at Parma. 
 
 II. Editions. Editio princeps, Demetrius Chalcondylas, j^«».f, Batracho- 
 myomachia, and Epigrams, Florence, 1488. Ruhnken, Hymn to Demeter, 
 Leyden, 1782. Ugen, Hymns, Batrach., Epigrams, Halle, 1796. Bau- 
 meister, Batrach., Leipzig, 1886. Gemoll, t/ymns (with commentary), Leip- 
 zig, 1886. A. Goodwin, Hymns, Oxford, 1893. Ludwich, Batrach., Leipzig, 
 1896. Allen and Sikes, The Homeric Hymns, London, 1904. 
 
 III. Literature. Wolf, Prolegomena, Halle, 1795. Hinrichs in Her- 
 mes 17. Flach in Bezzenberger' s Beitrage II. Fick in Bezzen. Beiir, IX, 
 See also the critical epistles and introductions to the editions and to A. Lang's 
 translation. 
 
 IV. Translations Prose: 'SAgzx,The Homeric Hymns,'&i.\\'\^\a^,i%^\. 
 Lang, The Homeric Hymns, London, 1899. Verse: Lawtun, The Successors 
 of Homer, New York, 1898, contains some renderings in verse of the Hymns. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Dunbar, Concordance to the Odyssey and the Hymns, Ox- 
 ford, 1880. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ELEGY AND IAMBIC 
 
 As the music of the lyre was inseparable from epic recitation, so 
 elegy was accompanied by the flute, the Phrygian rival of the lyre. 
 The musical inventiveness of Asia Minor, the development of 
 technical skill that fixed the Phrygian and Lydian modes, are 
 summed up in the name of Olympus, a legendary 
 flute player whom tradition placed in the last quarter 
 of the eighth century, in the reign of Midas II. Olympus is 
 merely a class name, a personification of flute playing, as, in 
 northern Greece, Orpheus stands for the music of the lyre. The 
 legend in which Apollo, with his Dorian lyre, vanquished Marsyas, 
 the Phrygian flute player, reflects the attitude of the Greeks to an 
 instrument which they always regarded as Oriental, unbecoming 
 to a Greek goddess, Athene, who, in another legend, casts it from 
 her. But music was still indispensable to verse, and the double 
 Phrygian flute with its many stops was well adapted to elegy, the 
 new type of poetry which was to form a link between epic and 
 lyric. The word itself, of uncertain derivation, may be Phrygian, 
 meaning ' flute ' or ' air on the flute,' but this expla- 
 nation has as little authority as others that have been 
 discarded by modern scholars. The elegiac distich is the first 
 strophe of Greek poetry. The syncopation of the third and sixth 
 feet of every alternate hexameter secures greater expressiveness 
 to the dactylic meter, but elegiac is still far removed from the lyric 
 form. The rigid mold of the couplet in which the thought ends 
 with the pentameter was employed by the Latin poets. The 
 earlier Greek elegists, however, such as Callinus and Tyrtaeus, 
 were influenced by the continuous and fluent style of the epic, 
 and show no preference for the closed couplet. 
 
 7' 
 
72 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 It was in Ionia, in the brilliant and disturbed Greek colonies of 
 the seventh and sixth centuries, that elegy arose, and, wherevei 
 composed, at Megara, or Athens, or Sparta, elegiac verse was 
 The dialect always composed in the Ionic dialect. Nevertheless, 
 of elegy t^g influence of local dialects partially overcame this 
 convention, so that we find Doric forms in the Ionic elegies of 
 Tyrtaeus, who wrote for Dorians, and an Attic coloring in the 
 poems of Solon, the Athenian. Greek elegy was essentially con- 
 cerned with the present, with the varied interests of contempo- 
 rary life. But epic, the poetry of the past, was its starting point 
 and model, so that all the elegists, even those whose interest is 
 chiefly gnomic, employed Homeric turns of phrase, Homeric 
 rhythms in their hexameters, and Homeric fullness of detail. This 
 is especially true of the political and martial elegies of CalJinus 
 and Tyrtaeus; Theognis of Megara, the typical gnomic poet, has 
 frequent echoes of Hesiod with whom the elegists of Ionia had 
 little in common. But, in all cases, the elegists carried the weight 
 of epic lightly, and showed an increasing tendency to abandon 
 the archaic and to give free scope to the poet's individuality. 
 
 The earhest form of elegy was probably a lament,' so that the 
 modern use of the word is a reversion to the early limited mean- 
 ing to which Horace refers. Euripides, with conscious archaism, 
 makes his Andromache bewail her misfortunes in elegiacs,^ ac- 
 companied, no doubt, by the flute ; but this is the only example 
 in Greek literature of a formal dirge composed in the elegiac 
 meter. For, by the time that Greek elegy began to be preserved 
 as a literary form, its field had broadened to include a great 
 variety of subjects, it addressed almost every kind of audience, 
 and could express not only, as Horace indicates, both joy and 
 grief, but the whole range of human experience and emotion. 
 Callinus and Tyrtaeus wrote their war songs, and Solon delivered 
 his political manifestoes, in the elegiac meter; it was equally 
 
 ^ Hot. A. P. 75. Versibus impariter junctis querimonia primum, Post etiam 
 inclusa est voti sententia compos. Cp. Ovid, Heroides XV 7, elegeie flebile 
 carmen. 2 Androm. 103 ft. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 73 
 
 suited to a moral formula, a pathetic reflection, a satiric epigram, 
 a prayer to the Muses (Solon fr. 13), or a flippant personal poem 
 (Archilochus /r. 5). Finally, the elegiac couplet was much in 
 use for poems composed to be sung at the banquet, at which the 
 drinking song was a regular feature. Such songs could be satiric, 
 or amorous, or serious and didactic. To sum up therefore in a 
 single formula the role of Greek elegy, or to say that it was 
 peculiarly appropriate to a special occasion, such as the banquet,^ 
 is to be unjust to its many-sidedness. Wherever, in the seventh 
 and sixth centuries, Greeks met together (except at religious fes- 
 tivals, for which the hymn was more suitable), there was an 
 opening for the recitation of elegiac verse, at the banquet, or 
 round the camp fire, or in the Athenian market place. But with 
 all its variety of interest, elegy displays certain marked features. 
 It is preeminently speech, not narrative ; the elegiac ^^^ 
 poet addresses his contemporaries, making a personal characteris- 
 appeal, often with the effect of oratory ; secondly, to ^^'<=s of 
 judge from the considerable fragments that have 
 reached us, the elegiac couplet, with its brevity and precision, was 
 felt to be peculiarly fitted for the expression of an aphorism, a 
 sententious formula that was to be remembered. Finally, elegy 
 is subjective, and marks the reaction from the impersonal epic to 
 introspective poetry, a signal of the creative impulse. 
 
 In the earliest elegiac poet sounds the note not of grief but 
 of war. For Callinus of Ephesus (floruit 680 B.C.) war 
 
 must have been the engrossing fact of life. He lived 
 
 ° °. . , , Callinas 
 
 at the time when the fierce Cimmerians, whom only 
 
 the Assyrians could check,^ came down from the north and fell 
 
 on the cities of Ionia. Ephesus, about this time, had a foe nearer 
 
 home, the neighboring city of Magnesia, still unsacked, if we 
 
 1 Reitzenstein, Epigramm und Skolion, insists on the sympotic character 
 of the elegy; Stickney, Les Sentences dans la Pohie Grecque, p. 116, defines 
 it as " a sententious distich that one knows by heart.'' 
 
 2 In 679 B.C. Assarhaddon, king of Assyria, defeated the Cimmerians and 
 tbeit leader Teuspa. 
 
74 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 may believe Strabo, when Callinus wrote his martial elegiacs, 
 though, a little later, Archilochus knew of its ruin. In the longest 
 fragment, of twenty-one lines, Callinus exhorts the Ephesians to 
 throw off their sloth and repel the invaders : Dear and glorious 
 it is for a man to fight for his country and his children, and the 
 wife he has wedded, against his country' s foes ; "And how can 
 man die better?" Though one stay at home the fate of death 
 finds him out} The pro patria mori motive has inflamed every 
 patriotic poet and orator from that day to this ; it is the distinc- 
 tion of Callinus that he was the first lyric poet to strike that spirit- 
 stirring note of which the finest lines in Horace are an echo. 
 
 With Tyrtaeus {circa 640 B.C.) ^ the martial elegy has traveled 
 from Ionia to Sparta, by way of Athens. He was, according 
 
 „ ^ to one legend, an Athenian from Aphidna, who left 
 
 Tyrtaeus , , ,- 
 
 Athens to become a citizen of Lacedaemon, the most 
 
 jealous and exclusive state in Greece. Tyrtaeus made the war 
 
 songs of his adopted country. The fables that cluster about his 
 
 personality are the attempts of later writers to fill in the meager 
 
 outline of fact ; unless, indeed, they are due to the natural desire 
 
 of the Athenians to lessen the glory of Sparta. Not till Pausanias, 
 
 at any rate (170 a.d.), does one meet the tradition that Tyrtaeus 
 
 was no Spartan but a lame schoolmaster whom the Athenians had 
 
 sent in derision when Sparta, obeying an oracle, humbled her pride 
 
 and asked a general from Athens. The Second Messenian War was 
 
 a crisis in the history of Sparta. For the second time, Messenia, the 
 
 Poland of Greece, rose against her ojipressors. In the prolonged 
 
 struggle that followed, the popular discontent in Sparta threatened 
 
 the ruling dynasty, the great Dorian house of the Heracleidae. 
 
 V'-- 3. 
 
 2 Since 1896, when Dr. Verrall opened the debate (in the Classical Review 
 X), the evidence for the date of Tyrtaeus has been revised. Dr. Verrall 
 argued for the middle of the fifth century, while others connect the poet 
 with the Messenian revolt in the latter part of the sixth. In the absence of 
 conclusive proof it seems well to adhere to the tradition » hich makes Tyrtaeus 
 a leading figure in the ' Second Messenian War ' of the seventh century. , 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 75 
 
 It was at this point that Tyrtaeus, the alien poet, averted a revolu- 
 tion and saved the state. His poem on The Blessings of Order is 
 a royalist manifesto urging the divine right of the Heracleidae, 
 recalling the triumphs of their house in the earlier TheBless- 
 and longer war with Messenia, quoting the oracle of ingsofOrdei: 
 Apollo which, in set terms, supported the Dorian dynasty. He 
 caught the Spartan accent when he made this appeal to the Spar- 
 tan passion for discipline. But it was in his Exhortations and 
 Marching Songs that he touched the whole nation. The tradi- 
 tion that makes Tyrtaeus lead the armies of Sparta to victory is 
 perhaps only a way of saying that the spirit of Sparta leaped to 
 answer his songs. Fighting for its own sake was rarely courted 
 by the Greeks ; it is therefore not surprising to find Tyrtaeus 
 framing his Exhortations as an argument. In ad- x^e Exhor- 
 dressing a Greek one must not forget that he calcu- tations 
 1 ites first ; his very valor must be deliberate. It was not enough 
 to inflame the Spartans by the reminder of their old successes ; 
 they must be convinced of the expediency of death in battle. 
 A fair thing it is to fall and die in the front rank, a brave man 
 fighting for one's native land: but to leave his own city and his 
 fruitful fields, to go forth a beggar, that is of all things the most 
 hateful: . . . nay, since for the outcast wanderer there is no fair 
 season, no reverence, no regard, no pity, let us fight for this coun- 
 try of ours and die for our children, and never grudge them our 
 lives (^fr. 8 ). In the longest fragment, of forty lines, is a passage 
 which Theognis echoed or rather parodied,^ since for military 
 glory he substituted wealth : What though a man should have the 
 stature and strength of a Cyclops, or outrun the North Wind of 
 Thrace ; what though he were fairer than Tithonus in his beauty, 
 richer than Midas or Cinyras, more royal than Pelops, son of 
 Tantalus, or had the honey-sweet speech of Adrastus ; what is all 
 glory beside the glory of valor iti war? This is the excellent 
 thing, this is the great prize among men, the fairest that youth can 
 win {/r. 10). 
 
 ^ Cp. Theognis 699 ff. with Tyrtaeus y>-. 10. 
 
76 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Tyrtaeus wrote his political and martial elegies in Ionic, the 
 dialect of the elegy, shaded here and there by the Doric of 
 Sparta.' His phrases constantly recall the Ionic epic ; 
 his appeal to the pride of the youth of Sparta not to 
 leave the brunt of battle to the old was, no doubt, the more effec- 
 tive from the fact that the contrast of the glory of youth and the 
 humiliation of age was borrowed from the famous speech of Priam 
 in the Iliad.''' 
 
 For at least three centuries, the Exhortations of Tyrtaeus were 
 learned and recited by Spartan soldiers ; meanwhile they became 
 the common property of all Greece. In the fourth century one 
 could assume that a Cretan knew his Tyrtaeus like any Spartan.' 
 We owe a fragment of thirty-two lines to the fact that, after the 
 battle of Chaeronea (338 B.C.), when he had to indict a coward, 
 Lycurgus,* the Attic orator, quoted Tyrtaeus' picture of a coward's 
 fate among the Lacedaemonians. Tyrtaean poetry, to use Goethe's 
 distinction, is the antithesis of the poetry of the discouraged. 
 
 In his Marching Songs, to be sung to the flute by Dorians, 
 Tyrtaeus used the Doric dialect. The rhythm is that proper to a 
 march, anapaestic, without dactyls. In the solitary extant frag- 
 ment of six lines, the immortal Marseillaise of Greece, he appeals 
 to a spirit that no argument could reach : Come, sons of Sparta, 
 mother of heroes, come, sons of Sparta's men; foriuard with your 
 shield on the left; be brave and cast your spear; take no thought 
 for your life ; that is not the way of Sparta {fr. 15). 
 
 Far from Sparta and the loud, bold strains of Tyrtaeus, MiM- 
 
 NERMUS of Colophon {circa 630 B.C.) expressed in the 
 
 same meter his profound discouragement with life. 
 
 He is the founder of the erotic elegy; from Mimnermus the 
 
 elegiac poets of Alexandria, and later, their imitators, the Roman 
 
 ^ E.g. lidXuiv for imWov and the shortening of the accusative plural ending 
 of the first declension. 
 
 2 Cp. Tyrt. 10. 21-28 with /I. XXII 69 ff. Leaf thinks that the Homeric 
 passage is an interpolated echo of Tyrtaeus. 
 
 3 Plato, Laws 629. * Against Leocrates 107. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 77 
 
 elegists, drew their inspiration. This poet of personal emotion 
 was haunted by the terror of old age : We are like the leaves that 
 grow in the season of spring flowers, when on a sudden they in- 
 crease in the sun's rays. Like them we rejoice for a moment in 
 the flowers of youth, not knowing what the gods have in store, good 
 or ill. But the black Fates are there, bringing for one man the 
 doom of grievous old age, for another the doom of death {fr. 2). 
 Many poets since Miranermus have bewailed the brevity of youth, 
 but nearly always they have insisted on a sensitiveness all the 
 keener since the charm is fleeting. If love and youth must 
 "vanish with the rose," Horace sees in that fact no motive for 
 a strain of lamentation.^ But Mimnermus was no Epicurean ; his 
 eyes are fixed on the inevitable moment when beauty must perish, 
 and his bitterness is unrelieved. The collection of his elegies was 
 called Nanno after a flute player whom Mimnermus loved, but 
 her name does not appear in any fragment. His date is indi- 
 cated by the legend that Solon met him in Asia {circa 593 b.c). 
 In his verses to Mimnermus, Solon addresses him as 'son of 
 Liguastes,' ^ and, replying to a couplet in which the Ionian 
 poet had prayed not to live beyond his sixtieth year, begs him 
 to allow twenty years more to life, to admit that a man might 
 be happy till eighty.' Sixty years seemed too short to Solon who 
 ' lived and learned,' but they were enough for one whose only aim 
 had been enjoyment. Mimnermus reflects the decadence of the 
 Greek colonies. It was not long after her poet took this enervated 
 view of life that Ionia began to lose her freedom. 
 
 1 Odes I. II. 6. The address of the Celtic poet Llywarch Hen to his 
 crutch is the nearest parallel with Mimnernnus; but the wistful melancholy of 
 the Greek poet pales before the passionate fierceness of the Celt : O my 
 crutch ! Is it not spring, when the cuckoo passes through the air, when the 
 foam sparkles on the sea ? The young maidens no longer love me ! Behold 
 old age, which makes sport of me, from the hair of my head to my teeth, to my 
 eyes which women loved. 
 
 2 Diels is followed by Wilamowitz in regarding the word as an epithet 
 meaning ' the clear-voiced singer,' rather than as a patronymic. 
 
 ' Cp. Solony?-. 20 with Mimnermus _/9-. 6. 
 
78 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 With Solon, son of Execestides (639-559 B.C.), Athens makes 
 her first contribution to the literature of Greece. He was an 
 impoverished aristocrat of the house of Codrus, who, 
 according to the tradition, repaired his fortunes by 
 trade with Ionia before he set about founding the Athenian 
 democracy. His chief social reform was to free the small hold- 
 ings of Attica from the mortgages and debts that enslaved the 
 middle and lower classes to the capitalists and landowners. The 
 black earth be my witness, says Solon in one of his iambic frag- 
 ments, for she was a slave and is free (Jr. 36). Athens had a 
 genius for relating herself and her heroes to the striking events of 
 the past. Solon owes much of his dramatic interest to the tale 
 told by Herodotus of the encounter of the Athenian lawgiver with 
 Croesus when he came to Sardis, like other wise men, and uttered 
 the unheeded warning that, later, was to save the life of the Lydian 
 king.^ • The date of Croesus falls too late for that meeting to be 
 anything but a picturesque fable. It was the Athenian way of 
 accounting for the fact that Croesus survived the fall of Sardis 
 (546 B.C.). 
 
 Of Solon's poetry about 250 verses survive. They are, for the 
 most part, the expression of his political life or an apology for it, 
 an answer to his critics. A political argument does not lend itself 
 to imaginative treatment, and Solon was rather a politician writing 
 verse than a poet. But the verse is good, and in more than one 
 passage, the imagery is vigorous. In the Exhortation to the 
 Athenians, after describing the evils of the political system which 
 he overthrew, he continues : So the curse that is on the whole 
 stdte follows every man to his own home ; no more can the doors 
 of his courtyard keep it out ; but over the high fence it leaps and 
 hunts him down, yea though he hide himself in the innermost room 
 within {Jr. 4). In another passage the swift vengeance of Zeus 
 sweeps down on the wrongdoer like the spring wind that on a sud- 
 
 1 Herod. I 29. The earlier version of the escape of Croesus, in the Third 
 Ode of Bacchylides, was perhaps inspired from Delphi; there is no mention 
 of Solon; Apollo saves Croesus who had given great gifts to his shrine. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 79 
 
 den scatters the clouds. It stirs up the floor of the barren and 
 restless sea and on the wheat-bearing earth lays -waste the fair 
 works of men's hands. Then it blows as high as the steep home of 
 the gods, the very vault of heaven, and makes all clear weather for 
 the eyes to see. And the force of the sun in his strength and beauty 
 shines over the rich earth and never a cloud is there to be seen 
 {fr. 13). Solon's elegies were not all political and sententious. 
 When the Athenians had set their house in order they had yet to 
 retrieve a disgrace abroad. They must recover Salamis from 
 Megara, and never let it be said that, in full sight of Athens, the 
 island that closed the bay of their own Eleusis was held by a rival 
 state. Like Tyrtaeus urging the Spartans to reconquer Messenia, 
 Solon recited his Salamis to inflame the pride and patriotism of 
 Athens. Only eight disconnected lines are extant : / come as a 
 herald from lovely Salamis, with a song on my lips instead of com- 
 mon speech. .. . On that day may I change my country 
 
 JL ;• f DL , / yrc- i. ^ -^ The Salamis 
 
 and be a citizen of Fholegandrus or of Sicinus but not of 
 
 Athens ; for the moment I appear men will say : It is an Athenian, 
 one of those who let Salamis go. . . . Forward to Salamis ! Let us 
 fight for the lovely island and wipe out our shame and disgrace 
 {fr. i). Solon's iambic trimeters and trochaic tetrameters, as far 
 as they survive, are political and are prose in all but their form. 
 The contention of Plato ' that Solon needed only leisure to rival 
 Homer and Hesiod is a dramatic exaggeration of the pride of the 
 Athenians in their great lawgiver, who was, moreover, their first 
 poet. 
 
 Of all forms of verse the elegiac couplet was the best suited to 
 contain a moral reflection that was to be learned by heart, or the 
 brief appeal that, on a monument, was to rivet the attention of the 
 wayfarer. With Phocvlides of Miletus {circa 540 B.C.) it is 
 for the first time pungent and aggressive, is in fact 
 an epigram in the later sense since it expresses a 
 paradox or surprises by its conclusion. Of the personality of 
 Phocylides we know nothing. His gnomic reflections, to judge 
 
 1 Timaeus zi. 
 
8o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 from the fragments, were written chiefly in hexameters; ons 
 of eight lines in which he compares four types of women with 
 animals of corresponding qualities is perhaps abridged from the 
 satire on women by Semonides of Amorgos. The stereotyped 
 phrase, This too is by Phocylides, that introduces many of his 
 verses marked them as his own in a day when a gnomic utterance 
 was likely either to become common property or to be absorbed 
 into a collection such as that which is labeled Theognis. 
 
 Opposite Miletus lay the little island of Leros, and on Leros 
 lived Demodocus, a rival epigrammatist. The people of Miletus 
 are not fools, but they act like fools, wrote Demodocus. The 
 epigram of Phocylides on Leros is more famous : This too is by 
 Phocylides : The people of Leros are bad ; not this mati bad and 
 that man good ; all are bad except Procles ; and even Procles is 
 from Leros. Of the two epigrams it is not clear which was the 
 attack, which the rejoinder, and it matters little. The Milesian 
 poet, in whose fragments are no echoes of war or politics, ranked 
 as one of the wise men of Greece. His popularity lasted long if 
 Pseudo- °i^^ r"^y judge from the fact that, after 200 B.C., a 
 
 Phocylidea learned Jew, writing for Greeks, thought it worth while 
 to attach the name of Phocylides to a moral poem of some 200 
 verses, the Pseudo-Phocylidea, in which he attempted a partial 
 reconciliation of Paganism and the Bible. 
 
 Xenophanes of Colophon {circa 540 b.c.) was a philosopher 
 
 who wrote verse. But he composed elegiacs also, of which a few 
 
 fairly long fragments survive. The longest, of twenty-four lines 
 
 {fr. i), is a good example of descriptive elegy; the 
 
 a6 QO p 113.11 6 S /-T'ri 
 
 formal settmg of a banquet, the goblets and garlands, 
 the clear cold water and incense, are enumerated with Homeric 
 precision. The closing verses take a didactic turn. Xenophanes, 
 consistently hostile to the popular myth, and with the Greek 
 dislike of quarreling at a banquet, forbids his hearers to recite 
 the mythical and exciting quarrels of the Titans, Giants, 
 and Centaurs. He has been called the first Protestant, since he 
 was the first Greek to attack the traditional mythology of the 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 81 
 
 poets, and he anticipated Euripides by expressing resentment at 
 the excessive honor paid by the Greeks to the heroes of athletic 
 contests, ' as though muscle were more useful to a city than my 
 philosophy,' he says, with naive self-advertisement. The people of 
 Colophon, the home of the self-indulgent Mimnermus, had learned 
 luxury from the Lydians. Even Mimnermus, in his fragment on 
 a dead warrior (^fr. 14), seems to regret the effeminization of 
 Colophon, the degeneracy of the old stock from Pylos that had 
 been weakened by contact with the luxury of Asia. The fragment 
 (3) in which Xenophanes describes with the disdain of a philoso- 
 pher their carefully dressed hair, their perfumes and purple, is 
 perhaps derived from an elegiac poem on the Founding of Colo- 
 phon, ascribed to him by tradition. Of his satires and parodies 
 of philosophers, including Homer, we have only half a dozen hex- 
 ameters. Xenophanes wrote Ionic, avoiding, however, that imita- 
 tion of Homer which is a marked feature of the martial elegy of 
 Callinus and Tyrtaeus. 
 
 The gnome, or general reflection, of which the Latin equivalent 
 S&sententia, is one of the most marked features of Greek poetry, 
 nearly always profoundly moral. But there are the widest differ- 
 ences in its use and application. In the trivial conversations of 
 the bourgeois cl^ss m, the Mimes of Herodas, or the Fifteenth Idyl 
 of Theocritus, the condensed philosophy of current proverbs 
 plays much the same part as in the Polite Conversations of Swift, 
 whose fine ladies bandy vulgar saws and sayings from sheer poverty 
 of thought. But if one should turn to Greek literature for a more 
 dignified expression of gnomic wisdom, the Hellenic counterpart 
 of the Hebrew Book of Proverbs, the gnomic elegiacs of Theognis 
 of Megara would furnish the nearest parallel. He is 
 the typical Greek representative of the sententious 
 style, of which Hesiod's more rudimentary moral rhetoric is the 
 earliest example. There is no reasonable doubt that Nisajean 
 Megara, the hostile neighbor of Athens, was his birthplace. But 
 in the course of his wanderings he visited Sicily ,1 and probably 
 
 1 Plato, Laws 630 A. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 6 
 
82 SHOfiT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 became a civizen of Sicilian Megara, the colony, so that some com- 
 mentators, ancient and modern, have denied that he was a native 
 of the mother city. His date is a matter for conjecture. The 
 late chronologists, such as Eusebius and Suidas, placed his floruit 
 about the middle of the sixth century. For them, as 
 for ourselves, the question hung on the interpretation 
 of two passages in which Theognis speaks of the Persian peril. 
 He invites his friends to drink and be merry and never fear the 
 war of the -Medes (763-764), and, a little later, prays to Dorian 
 Apollo to intervene and save from the wanton host of the Medes 
 Dorian Megara, the city of Alcathous, whose walls the god had 
 helped to build. What Persian invasion was this that threatened 
 Megara ? Surely not the conquest of the Ionian Greeks by Har- 
 pagus (546 B.C.), which could have Httle significance for the city 
 of Theognis ; the reference is rather to the danger from Darius in 
 491 B.C., or to the last invasion of 480-479 when not even the vic- 
 tory of the Greeks at Salamis saved the Megarid from being over- 
 run by the cavalry of Mardonius. The tendency of modem 
 scholarship is to follow this line of reasoning and to assign the 
 life of Theognis to the latter half of the sixth and at least the first 
 decade of the fifth century. 
 
 Theognis is the only Greek elegiac poet of whom we have an in- 
 dependent manuscript ; for the others, as for the writers of iambic 
 verse, we depend on the caprices of quotation. There are extant 
 nearly 1400 verses that pass under his name ; there is no direct 
 evidence to show at what date our collection was made. It is 
 divided into two books, the first containing some 1200 verses, and 
 including all of the extant gnomic poetry of Theognis that is 
 worth consideration ; the Second Book is a collection of erotic 
 poems which occurs in only one manuscript and is, by almost uni- 
 versal consent, rejected as spurious. Not until the tenth century 
 A.D. and then only in that manuscript is it identified with Theognis 
 
 Of the home politics of sixth-century Megara we know hardly 
 more than can be gathered from the vague allusions of Theognis. 
 The- expulsion of the tyrant Theagenes marked the rise of the 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 83 
 
 democracy and a revolution that meant exile for the aristocratic 
 poet and his party, which probably returned to power through 
 a counter-revolution. Theognis, at any rate, was a 
 part of all these dissensions. His poems reflect the "'"^ara 
 arrogance of the aristocrat, for whom men were good or bad 
 according to their social rank or their politics, and the regrets of 
 the conservative who regarded the increasing power of the com- 
 mon people as a sign of the degeneracy of Megara. 
 
 Unchanged the loalh, but, ah, how changed the folk : 
 The base, who knew erstwhile nor law nor right. 
 But dwelled like deer, with goatskin for a cloak. 
 Are noiv ennobled; and, O sorry plight ! 
 The nobles are made base in all men's sight (53 ff.).* 
 
 Theognis the politician was a partisan embittered by exile, a 
 Greek Coriolanus in his view of the common people. In his 
 didactic verses ' No excess ' is his text. But turn the page and 
 you will find him demanding the ' black blood ' of his enemies to 
 drink, the genuine note of the Theognis who practiced, when he 
 dropped for the moment the Theognis who preached. Apart 
 from their political interest, his poems are, as Xenophon ' said, a 
 human document (o-vyypa/t/*a ircpi dvdpayn-tov) , a revelation of 
 Greek morals, their inconsistency, their narrowness, their expe- 
 diency. No wonder that Plato disparaged the popular morality 
 of Greece, while Socrates devoted his life to laying the foundations 
 of a moral philosophy the absence of which was the most striking 
 deficiency of the Athenians in his day ; what he had to supplant 
 w?is the prudential ethics of the favorite moralists of Greece,, 
 Hesiod and Theognis, the self-centered and pessimistic. 
 
 Theognis is not a great poet. The pessimism which he shares 
 with Hesiod and other makers of maxims becomes monotonous, 
 partly because it is so personal : Other men perhaps will be. But 
 I shall be dead and turned to black earth. He is deficient in 
 
 ' Professor J. B. Bury. 
 
 ^ Xen. (?) apud Stobaeum (^Florilegium Ixxxviii 14). 
 
84 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 imagery. But there are passages in which he rises above himselli 
 as when he addresses Cyrnus with the famous promise of immor- 
 tality : / have given thee wings, and thou shalt mount with ease 
 and fly over the unmeasured sea and the whole earth. When men 
 meet to feast and to drink thou shalt be there, a story on the lips of 
 many. . . . Yea, when thou shalt go down into the depths and 
 darkness of the earth, to the sorrowful home of Hades, even in 
 death thou shalt not lose thy renown . . . the gracious gifts of the 
 violet-crowned Muses shall be thy escort ; for thou shalt be a song 
 sung by all to whom those gifts are dear, so long as the earth 
 lasts and the sun. Yet from thee I win no honor, nay, none ; 
 thy words deceive me as though I were a little child (237 ff.). 
 
 The unexpected bitterness of the ending converts the 
 Cymus 
 
 poem mto an epigram. It was to Cyrnus, son of Poly- 
 
 paus, whom he sometimes addresses as Polypaides, that Theognis 
 
 dedicated his elegies. About 300 verses are stamped with the 
 
 name of this young Dorian noble who was his closest friend; 
 
 the poet's prophecy to Cyrnus that his name would serve as a 
 
 ' seal ' of genuineness,^ would establish a sort of copyright (19 ff.), 
 
 has been justified, since one of the few points on which the editors 
 
 of Theognis are agreed is in accepting as his the verses that 
 
 include that name. From these alone we might reconstruct the 
 
 grumbling Dorian aristocrat, a better bred and more worldly 
 
 Hesiod, who cannot please his fellow-citizens, who laments the 
 
 disloyalties of his friends, his poverty, the decadence of his class. 
 
 In exile he hears with a pang the shrill cry of the crane, the 
 
 signal for the spring plowing on the estate that is no longer his.^ 
 
 In the mass of short poems and couplets that have reached us 
 
 By such a seal ((rcppayls) the l)lind poet of the Delian Hymn endeavored 
 'to assure his fame; in the Persae of Timotheus, as Wilamowitz points out, 
 the personal allusion is meant to serve as a seal. But the best instance is the 
 poetry of Phocylides and Demodocus, where each couplet was stamped by its 
 author. 
 
 ^ Cp. Bid sow, when the crane starts clanging for Afric, in shrill-voiced 
 emigrant number. — Swinburne's translation of Aristophanes, Birds 710. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 85 
 
 under the name of Theognis, are many repetitions, and, what is 
 more curious, variations, as though the compiler of the collection 
 had included not only the current version but the current imi- 
 tation as well, or even the parody. Finally, several xhe 
 passages occur which are borrowed from Tyrtaeus, repetitions 
 Solon, and Mimnermus, with changes of setting, of application, and 
 of language that illustrate the precarious copyright of the Greek 
 author of gnomic elegy, whose maxims must always run the risk of 
 alteration and absorption into such a collection as this. The mo- 
 tive which led our compiler to gather under the name of Theognis 
 an anthology of the sententious elegy which includes even the 
 famous Delian inscription ' that Aristotle saw on the temple of 
 Apollo, is still debated. For a school book they were highly un- 
 suitable. It is more likely that the collection is a tribute to the 
 popularity of Theognis at those banquets which were to keep alive 
 the memory of Cyrnus, where love and politics, satire and the 
 sententious couplet, were all appropriate. The character and the 
 similarity of the introductory words and the recurring couplets 
 favor the view that we have here a book of drinking songs, col- 
 lected probably about the beginning of the fifth century B.C., when 
 the sympotic elegy was in vogue .^ 
 
 Archilochus of Paros (650 b.c.) was a younger contemporary of 
 Callinus. His date is fixed with some precision by the eclipse of 
 the sun in 648 B.C. which he mentions {fr. 74) ; it is the first trust- 
 worthy date of historical Greece.^ The reign of Gyges, the first 
 
 barbarian to impress the Ionian Greeks with his great- , 
 
 , , , . , , _. ^", Archilochus 
 
 ness, and the destruction, by the Cimmerians, of Mag- 
 nesia, the outpost of Hellenism, fell within the life of Archilochus, 
 who made the wealth of the one and the woes of the other proverbial. 
 
 * Fairest is justice, health is best ; but sweetest of all is to win the heart's 
 desire, 255-256. 
 
 ^ So Reitzenstein, Epigramm und Skolion. The theory of Miiller (1877), 
 that the arrangement of our text depends on a system of responsion indicated 
 by catchwords, is rightly rejected by recent critics as over-ingenious. 
 
 ' Hauvette points out that the eclipse may have been that of April, 657. 
 
86 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Archilochus was ranked with Homer as standing for the perfec- 
 tion of a type ; if we put Homer out of the question, he holds the 
 first place among the poets of Ionia. To invent, in Greek tradi- 
 tion, often means no more than to introduce to literature or to 
 improve ; Archilochus was credited with the invention of iambic, 
 because, with him, the iambic trimeter became a perfected literary 
 form. Of his poems we have as many elegiac as iambic fragments, 
 a number of trochaic tetrameters and parts of epodes. The 
 elegiacs often indicate that they were written to be sung at a 
 banquet (/rr. i, 2, 9, 13).^ 
 
 Strongly personal throughout, Archilochus is the first poet of 
 Greece who expresses himself, his individual desires and wrongs and 
 sorrows. His father w.is a noble, his mother a slave ; a man so 
 born, and born to poverty, must have many humiliations to en- 
 counter. Archilochus was forever " in disgrace with fortune and 
 men's eyes." But though his poems show him swayed by all the 
 passions, the passion that ruled him was pride, and he met the 
 blows of fate' with defiance. The narrow limits of Paros could 
 not hold him. All the misery of all the Greeks met together at 
 Thasos {fr. 52), an island off the coast of Thrace. There, too, 
 went Archilochus with a colony from Paros. But the attempt 
 failed. It was in an encounter with the hostile Thracians that he 
 threw away his shield, and so set the fashion for poets of wearing 
 their armor lightly, an example that was followed by Alcaeus 
 (Jr. 32), by Anacreon {fr. 28), and by Horace at Philippi {Odes 
 2. 7). The Spartans, we are told, drove Archilochus out of 
 Sparta because they could not tolerate the truly Ionian levity of 
 his verses on this incident : — 
 
 Some Thracian strutleih with my shield. 
 
 For, being somewhat flurried, 
 I left it in a wayside bush, 
 
 When from the field I hurried ; 
 
 iNew fragments on two papyri were found at Strassburg in 1899. See 
 bibliography and Blass in Khein. Mus. 55, who attributes them to Hipponax. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 87 
 
 A right good targe, but I got off. 
 
 The deuce may take the shield; 
 rilget another just as good 
 
 When next I go afield.^ 
 
 The arrows of fortune Archilochus met with fatalism ; the in- 
 sults of men he hastened to pay back. Without the context it is 
 not easy to decide whether the fragments tha;t refer to Neobule 
 are derived from the satire that followed his disillusion, but, in any 
 case, the expression of passionate love meets us first in Archi- 
 lochus : O that I might but touch the hand of Neobule ! he cries 
 {fr. 71) ; and again, Tlie love and longing that filled my heart 
 poured a thick mist before my eyes and stole my delicate senses 
 {fr. 103). Rejected by Lycambes, the father of Neo- 
 bule, Archilochus attacked the whole family with the 
 vitriol of his tongue. According to the tradition, father and 
 daughters hinged themselves rather than face his iambics, and 
 Archilochus won the name of ' slanderer ' which, two hundred 
 years later, Pindar echoes {Pyth. 2. 55). 
 
 Invective was perhaps the readiest expression of his intense and 
 stormy spirit. His satire was narrow and personal, not social, 
 though Horace (Sat 2. 3. 12) brackets him with the poets of the 
 Old Comedy. The didactic tone is rarely met in the fragments, 
 nor do they, Uke the elegiacs of Theognis, reflect the disturbed 
 poUtics of the Ionia of his day. Archilochus could express sorrow 
 as well as scorn and hate, and the elegiacs {fr. 9) on his brother- 
 in-law who was drowned at sea are hardly inferior to the more 
 celebrated lament of Catullus. TTie measureless renown of Archi- 
 lochus traveled west and east, says an epigram of Theocritus 
 (19). He fell in battle against Naxos, and there is a legend that 
 Apollo himself refused to admit to his temple the man who had 
 slain the ' servant of the Muses.' The brevity and brilliance, the 
 power which Quintilian^ calls the ' blood and muscle ' of his verses, 
 give vitaUty to almost every fragment of Archilochus. What im- 
 
 1 Professor Paul Shorey. ^ Jnst. Or. 10. i. 60. 
 
88 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 pressed Longinus ^ was the ' rich and disorderly abundance ' of his 
 many-sided genius. He wrote hymns, as was natural for one whose 
 father belonged to a priestly caste of Paros, where was a special 
 cult of Demeter ; his famous song of victory, a sort of prototype 
 of our See the Conquering Hero Comes, or Hail to the Chief, was 
 sung in Pindar's day on occasions when no special ode was com- 
 posed for the procession. 
 
 The beast fable was now well established in Greek literature in 
 its direct form as in Hesiod, or, with Solon, as a metaphorical allu- 
 sion (/r. 1 1), the form in which it chiefly appears in modern lit- 
 erature, or condensed to a proverb. Archilochus was famous for 
 his beast fables, which are mentioned as late as the Emperor 
 Julian (361 A.D.). What connects him with comedy and makes 
 him in a sense its founder is the fact that he forsook the epic 
 manner and uttered the language of daily life. 
 
 His chief metrical innovation was the introduction of the strophe 
 
 of the epode. Horace, in his first ten epodes, uses 
 Meters , r > 
 
 one of the two types of epode that survive in the 
 
 fragments of Archilochus, that in which the iambic dimeter follows 
 the trimeter. 
 
 Semonides (circa 625 B.C.) was a native of Samos who led a 
 colony to Amorgos and there lived and wrote. He was a younger 
 contemporary of Archilochus, but his iambics show no 
 trace of the influence of his neighbor of Paros. 
 Archilochus, with his personal invective, is hardly to be called 
 a satirist; Semonides, at any rate in the extant fragments, 
 directs his satire against a class. The pessimism of Hesiod, 
 the Hesiodic contempt of women, are echoed in the longest 
 fragment (of 1 18 verses), preserved by Stobaeus. For Semonides, 
 as for Hesiod, woman is a necessary evil. In his catalogue, which 
 Phocylides imitated {fr. i), to nine out of ten women, classi- 
 fied according to their perverse instincts, are assigned the unde- 
 sirable characteristics of as many animals. The telltale woman is 
 like a dog, restless and curious, eager to retail gossip. Not even, 
 1 Treatise on the Sublime 33. 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 89 
 
 with threats can her husband stop her, though in his anger he should 
 knock her teeth out with a stone, not though he should speak to her 
 gently, even when she is sitting among her guests. The pig, the ass, 
 the weasel, the horse, the ape, all have their counterpart among 
 women, slovenly, extravagant, bad-tempered, changeable, and 
 dangerous as the sea. Last of all he describes the woman who 
 resembles a bee, Hesiod's ideal housewife of the middle class ; 
 she takes no part in the scandalous talk of her neighbors ; to her 
 alone clings divine grace ; her children are fair and of good report. 
 But she is exceptional, and Semonides ends as he began. Woman 
 is the most baleful gift of Zeus, the great dilemma since one can 
 neither live with her nor without her (Jr. 7). In another fragment 
 of twenty verses he uses the iambic meter for didactic reflections 
 on the uncertainties of hfe, the helplessness of men, the need of 
 moderation and a resigned attitude to the inevitable. In the 
 shorter fragments there are traces of the beast fable, dear to all 
 didactic poets. Semonides is credited by tradition with a lost, 
 elegiac poem on the Ancient History of Samos, his birthplace. 
 He wrote Ionic, colored, as we can detect, by the local dialect 
 of Amorgos.^ The Alexandrians placed him next to Archilochus 
 in their limited canon of iambic poets. 
 
 HiPPONAX {circa 540 B.C.) was expelled from Ephesus, his 
 native city, by the tyrants Athenagoras and Comas whom he prob- 
 ably antagonized by his scurrilous verses. He settled 
 
 Hipponaz 
 no further from Ephesus than Clazomenae. The bitter- 
 ness of a life darkened by poverty, by exile, by personal deformity, 
 is reflected in all the fragments of Hipponax. Archilochus, reck- 
 less and unfortunate, had stooped to be scurrilous ; Hipponax is 
 at home in the gutter where he shivers and curses. Bupalos the 
 sculptor caricatured his personal defects and was punished by a 
 satire that made him a proverb to be quoted with the faithless 
 Lycambes.^ Even his parents, says a poet of the Anthology, were 
 
 1 Fick, Neue Jahrb. I p. 505. 
 
 ^ Hor. Epod. 6. 12. Qualis Lycambae spretus infido gener aut acer hostls, 
 Bupalo. 
 
90 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 not safe from the slander of Hipponax ; his shafts could wound be- 
 yond the grave.' Theocritus, three centuries later, wrote his epi- 
 taph in choliambics and made the single attempt to defend his 
 memory, asserting that only the wicked need hesitate to approach 
 his grave. 
 
 The fragments of Hipponax justify his bad name. He is the 
 earliest type of the begging poet whom it is dangerous to disoblige. 
 Like Martial, he demands clothes and money : Give Hipponax a 
 cloak and a tunic and fur-lined shoes and gold. The whine of the 
 beggar is varied by invective. Hipponax summed up with caustic 
 brevity the satire of the woman haters, Semonides and Phocylides : 
 There are two days on which a woman gives a man most pleasure 
 — the day he marries her and the day he buries her (Jr. 29). This 
 couplet is written in the choliambic meter, the skazon, 
 
 e s azon .^ ^yhjch the iambic trimeter changes its character by 
 the regular use of a spondee (or trochee, — v/) in the last foot. 
 This limping rhythm, the invention of the limping Hipponax, was 
 well suited to invective, but its role in satire was short-lived; 
 Ananius, a younger and insignificant contemporary of Hipponax, 
 wrote his satire in choliambics. But it was not long before Comedy 
 claimed the field of satire, and, with the Alexandrians, such as 
 Callimachus, or later with Babrius, the Latin writer of Greek 
 fables, the skazon lost its satiric character. In the mimes of 
 the Dorian writer Herodas, a contemporary of Theocritus, it 
 is employed for dialogue. Hipponax wrote trochaic tetrameters 
 and hexameters, but the greater number of the extant firag- 
 ments are choliambic. Like Archilochus and Semonides, he 
 follows the tendency which we first met in Hesiod to point 
 his moral by the use of the beast fable, or at least by allusions 
 to assume a knowledge of the deeply rooted folklore of Greece. 
 He makes the first reference in Greek literature to the scape- 
 goat {(jmpixaKO^) . 
 
 '^Op.Anth. Pal. 7. 536: 'These are not grapes but brambleberries, the 
 prickly pear that chokes the traveler and puckers his mouth.' 
 
ELEGY AND IAMBIC 91 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Aechilochus 
 Liebel, Archilochi reliquiae, Vienna, 1818. Welcker, Archilochos in Kl. 
 Sehr, I. Deuticke, Archiiocho I'ario quid in Graec. Hit. sit tribuendum, Ber- 
 lin, 1877. Reitzenstein, Zwei neue Fragmente der Epoden d. Archilochos in 
 Berl. Sitzgber., 1899. Hauvette in Rev. d. itudes grecques, 1901. Hauvette, 
 Archiloque, Paris, 1905. 
 
 Callinus 
 Franke, Callinus, sive quaestiones de origine carminis elegiaci, 1816. 
 Bieringer, Callinus, Tyrtaeus, Solon, 1863. Geiger, De Callini aetate, Er- 
 langen, 1877. 
 
 HiPPONAX 
 
 Welcker, Hipponax u. Ananius, Gottingen, 1817. Meineke, Bipponax in 
 Lachmann's Choliambica poesis, Berlin, 1845. 
 
 MiMNERMUS 
 Bach, Mimnermus, Leipzig, 1826. Traner, Mimnermus, Upsala, 1833. 
 Marx, De Mimnermo poeta elegiaco, Coesfeld, 1 83 1. Kaibel in Hermes 22. 
 
 ' Semonides 
 
 Welcker, Simonidis Amorg. iambi, Bonn, 1835. 
 
 Solon 
 Bach, Solon, Bonn, 1825. Cerrato, Sui frammenti dei carmi Soloniani, 
 Turin, 1877. Yi\m,De Solonis Plularcheifontibus,\%(s']. Begemann, Quaes~ 
 Hones Soloneae, Gottingen, 1878. Leutsch in Philologus, 1872. For Solon's 
 d alect see Fick in Bezzenberger's Beilr'dge 14. Heinemann, Studia Selonea, 
 Berl., 1897. Riedy, Solonis elocutio, Munich, 1903. 
 
 Theognis 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The best is the Mutinensis, loth cent., Paris; the second 
 best the Vaticanus, 13th cent. 
 
 II. Editions. ^fS/i'o/riWe/j, Aldus, Venice, 1495. Bekker, Leipzig, 1827. 
 Welcker, Frankfort, 1826. Sitzler, Heidelberg, 1880. E. Harrison, Studies 
 in Theognis, Cambridge, 1902, contains the text, essays, and appendices. 
 
 III. Literature. Immisch in Comm. philolog. in honor of O. Ribbeck, 
 Leipzig, 1888. Crusius in Khein. Mus. ^'i- Hiller m Jahrli. 1 88 1. Jordan, 
 Quaestiones Theognideae, Konigsberg, 1885. Nietzsche in Khein. Mus. 22. 
 
92 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 MuUer, De scriptis Theog., 1877. Reitzenstein, Epigramm u, SkoHon, 
 Giessen, 1 893. Hudson Williams in Journ. of Hell. Studies 23. Cauer in 
 PAilolugus ^&. Schaeter, De ileraiis ap. Tkeog. distichis,'B.a.\\e, i&gi. Couat 
 m Annales de la Faeulte de Lettres de Bordeaux, 1883. von Geyso, Studia 
 Theognidea. Beloch in Neue Jahrb. 1888, and in Rhein. Mus. 1895. Hud- 
 son Williams, A Discussion 0/ Some Questions in Theognis, Cambridge, 1903. 
 
 Tyrtaeus 
 Bach, Ueber Tyrtaeos u. 0. Gedichte, Breslau, 1830. Hoelbe, De Tyrtaei 
 patria, Dresden, 1864. Verrall in Class. Rev. X (1896) and XI (1897). Schwartz 
 in Hermes 34. Meyer in Rhein. Mus. 41. Bates in Trans, of A. Ph. Ass. 28 
 (1897). Wilamowitz, Die Textgeschichte d. Cr. Lyriker, Excurs. 10, Got- 
 tingen, igoo. Sitzler's rev. of Wilamowitz in Woch. f. Klass. Phil. 45, 1902. 
 
 Collections and Anthologies 
 Bergk, Poetae Lyr. Graeci, vol. 2. Hartung, Die Griechischen Elegiker, 
 Leipzig, 1858-1859. Buchholz, Anthologie aus d. Lyrikern d. Griechen, yo\. 
 I, 5th ed. by Peppmiiller, Leipzig, 1900. Anthologia Lyrica, Bergk-Hiller, 
 Leipzig, last ed., 1904. 
 
 Literature 
 Osann, Zur Griech. Elegie, Darmstadt, 1835. Welcker, Der Elegos in 
 Kl. Schr. I. (1844). Renner, Ueber das Formelwesen der Elegie, Leipzig, 
 1872. On the elegiac strophe: Weil in Rhein. Mus. 17. Leutsch in Phil- 
 ologus 29. Zacher in Philologus 57. Stickney, Les Sentences dans la poesie 
 grecque, Paris, 1903. See the treatment of elegiac and iambic poetry in the 
 Histories of Greek Lyric. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MELIC POETRY 
 
 The semi-mythical figure of Olympus represented the develop- 
 ment of the music of the Asiatic flute, and so played a part in the 
 history of Greek elegy. The more definite personality 
 of Terpander of Lesbos {circa 676 B.C.) marks the 
 advance of the Aeolic music of the cithara, the instrument of 
 melic poetry. The history of the Greek cithara is a series of 
 legends of the gradual increase of the strings of the primitive 
 four-stringed instrument. Terpander, says Timotheus {Persae 
 27,1), yoked the muse to ten strings. But tradition credited him 
 with the addition of only three strings to the original four, and his 
 name is forever connected with the seven-stringed cithara which 
 was in vogue in the fifth century B.C. Like Tyrtaeus and Alcman, 
 he was one of those poets of alien birth whom Sparta, according 
 to tradition, summoned from abroad to help her to regulate the 
 dissensions of her citizens. For two centuries Terpander's music 
 held the field, not only at Sparta and Lesbos, but throughout 
 Greece ; to sing his nomes was the privilege of free Spartans, 
 denied to the helots ; ^ to be a disciple of Terpander was to have 
 precedence over other competitors at the Spartan festival of the 
 Carneia, so that ' to come next to the Lesbian ' became a proverb. 
 About the middle of the fifth century, Phrynis of Lesbos, the next 
 innovator, shocked the conservatism of Athens as well as of 
 Sparta with his more intricate and florid music.^ Finally, Timo- 
 theus of Miletus {circa 400 B.C.) boasts of his eleven strings 
 {Persae 242). Terpander added three to the four divisions of 
 the Dome, the austere religious lyric with which he is closely 
 
 1 Plutarch^ Lycurgus 28. '^ Aristoph. Clouds 971. 
 
 93 
 
94 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 identified. He is said to have invented the Dorian mode, and we 
 have four stately verses written in pure spondees which Clement 
 of Alexandria quoted as his (/r. i). Like fr. 2, it is apparently 
 part of a prelude, for Terpander stands for the type of prelude 
 that was sung to the cithara, as Homer's name was attached to the 
 epic preludes that were recited by the rhapsodes. 
 
 Though Greek melic poetry is not to be thought of apart from 
 music, the musical accompaniment was only what Plutarch calls 
 it, the ' seasoning ' of the words.^ The enchantment that Orpheus 
 used on the Argonauts, or Phemius on the suitors, was mainly an 
 enchantment of language. We may, therefore, console ourselves 
 for our ignorance of Greek music with the reflection that, as far as 
 our fragments of melic go, we possess the essential, the statue, as 
 it were, though without the coloring that was an added beauty to 
 the Greeks. 
 
 Ionia had been the starting point of Greek epic, elegy and 
 iambic. Melic is AeoUan and Dorian. The Greeks had a pas- 
 sion for establishing a succession of names (SiaSox^) in every 
 branch of art. The legend that makes the head of Orpheus float 
 
 " Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore " 
 
 symbolizes in the Greek manner the passing of Aeolic poetry from 
 its original home in northern Greece to Aeolic Lesbos. That 
 island produced two poets, Alcaeus and Sappho, whose purely 
 personal and emotional poems so dominate the scanty remaining 
 fragments of that type of Greek lyric, that the type itself has come 
 to be regarded as Aeolic, as opposed to the less subjective choral 
 lyric of the Dorians. The distinction is not to be pressed. 
 Alcman, the Dorian, wrote subjective poetry for his choruses of 
 maidens, while the Aeolians, for all their subjectivity, did not 
 neglect the choral type that expresses the spirit of a crowd. But 
 for the Dorians, especially at Sparta, music and poetry were 
 not so much a recreation as a discipline. The self-restrained 
 Spartan temper was hostile to individualism and sought its highest 
 
 1 Symp. 7. 8. 
 
MELIC POETRY 9S 
 
 expression in an art that reflected the corporate life. For the 
 poetry of passion we must turn to the Aeolians. 
 
 Alcaeus of Lesbos (612 B.C.) belonged to a noble family of 
 Mitylene. That city, like Megara a century later, was divided, 
 toward the close of the seventh century, by the revo- 
 lutions that regularly attended the rise of democracy 
 in the Greek cities. To this democratic advance Alcaeus, like 
 Theognis, opposed all the prejudices and jealousies of his caste. 
 But his bitterest hostility was directed against those leaders of the 
 masses who, one after another, as Mitylene vibrated between 
 oligarchy and democracy, seized the supreme power and became 
 tyrants. Melanchrus, one of the first of these, was murdered in a 
 counter-revolution in which Antimenidas, the brother of the poet, 
 was prominent ; Myrsilus fell in his turn, the occasion for an ex- 
 pression of savage joy from Alcaeus : Now all must drink, whether 
 they will or no ; for Myrsilus is dead {/r. 20) . Horace borrowed 
 the first line of this poem for the ode in which he exulted over the 
 fall of Antony and Cleopatra (i. 37). Alcaeus fought with his 
 sword no less than with his verses. When Mitylene went to war 
 with Athens for the possession of Sigeum at the entrance of the 
 Hellespont, he took the field, and, like Archilochus, Anacreon, 
 and Horace, threw away his shield in flight, writing home to his 
 friend Melanippus that the Athenians had hung it in the temple of 
 Athene at Sigeum.' A more distinguished part in this encounter 
 with Athens was played by Pittacus of Mitylene, reckoned later 
 among the Seven Sages. He won the title by his wise policy 
 during the ten years (590-580 b.c.) of his dictatorship in Mitylene. 
 But Alcaeus, always in the opposition, a partisan rather than a 
 patriot, and perhaps sincerely afraid that the low-born Pittacus 
 was aiming at the tyranny {fr. 37) could not reconcile himself to 
 the friend of democracy. For ten or fifteen years he wandered in 
 exile, visiting Thrace and Egypt, suffering the dura navis dura 
 fugae mala (Hor. 2. 15), the miseries 0/ shipwreck, the bitter hard- 
 ships of exile, and expressing his sorrows in songs which Horace 
 1 Herod. V 95. 
 
96 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 thought must charm even the " tortured ghosts " in the under- 
 world. Alcaeus probably returned to Mitylene when Pittacus laid 
 down the dictatorship (580 B.C.) and granted an amnesty to the 
 exiled aristocrats. 
 
 His poems were arranged by the Alexandrians in teii books. 
 The Songs of Revolution {Stasiotica), like the songs of love and 
 wine, were, no doubt, sympotic, intended to be sung at the table. 
 In a short poem of seven verses, apparently complete, he describes 
 his armory, the decorative effect on roof and walls and floor of 
 the burnished arras, the white crests, the strange foreign weapons. 
 His delight in their brilliance and profusion is aesthetic rather 
 than martial, and only in the last line does he remind himself that 
 all these fascinating objects have their use for ' the Jv.ork in hand,' 
 probably one of those counter-revolutions which put down the ty- 
 rants. An Alcaic fragment (18), in which, like Theognis (671 ff.), 
 he compares the state in distress to a ship laboring in a storm, 
 was imitated by Horace (i. 14). His brother, Antimenidas, more 
 enterprising than Alcaeus, spent part of his exile in the service- of 
 Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, fighting as a Greek mercenary 
 in Egypt. We have a few lines of the poem with which Alcaeus 
 welcomed him home from exile, from the ends of the earth, bringing 
 a sword handle of ivory inlaid with gold, as a trophy, and the 
 reputation of having slain a giant {^fr. 33). 
 
 The Stasiotica reflect the political partisanship of Alcaeus, 
 whose share in the agitations of Mitylene has been somewhat 
 idealized by later poets.' The Emperor Julian ^ said of him that 
 he was given his talent not to express the pleasures of the senses, 
 but to avenge his wrongs. Yet he was a true Aeolian in his esti- 
 mate of the pleasures of wine and love. In the numerous frag- 
 ments of his drinking songs he speaks of wine with a sort of 
 ecstasy; his philosophy is that of Omar Khayydm — drown in 
 wine your fears and sorrows ; it is wine that loosens the lips and 
 
 1 Cp. Anth. Pal. g. 184 : TAe sword of Alcaeus was baptized in the blood oj 
 tyrants ; and Wordsworth : " When the live chords Alcaeus smote, Inflamed 
 by sense of wrong." ''■ Misopogori lyj k. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 97 
 
 holds a mirror to the soul {fr. 53) ; plant the vine first {fr. 44) — 
 advice which Horace echoes (i. 18). The fragments of love 
 songs are too scanty to be interesting. 
 
 The dialect of Alcaeus is Aeolic; his poetry, with that of 
 Sappho,' is the norm of Aeolic speech, associated, through them, 
 with the first purely personal songs of Greece. As a 
 writer of local dialect he was useful to grammarians, '* '"^ 
 and was edited by the Alexandrian critics. His meters show 
 great variety and ingenuity. Alcaeus developed the 
 logaoedic rhythms (made up of trochees and dactyls),^ 
 employing the Sapphic strophe and the so-called Asclepiads, but 
 especially the Alcaic strophe, which received his name and was 
 used by Horace in thirty-seven odes. Even in his Hymns, of 
 which we have a few fragments, he abandoned the conventional 
 hexameter for Sapphics and Alcaics. 
 
 The interests of Alcaeus were centered in the fierce feuds and 
 griefs of civil war. Sappho, though oi another generation than he, 
 lived under the same tyrants. As an aristocrat who, 
 though bom at Eresus, passed her life at Mitylene, 
 she suffered the exile of which Alcaeus complains, and may have 
 returned to Lesbos under the amnesty of Pittacus (580 B.C.). 
 But the political discords that rent Mitylene left no mark on her 
 poetry ; Myrsilus and Pittacus are never named in her fragments. 
 The literary historians constructed a romantic biography for 
 Sappho, but their industry was in proportion to their ignorance. 
 It was the privilege of Greek comedy to deride and outrage all 
 that was classical and canonized. To defy dates and facts, to pre- 
 tend, like Diphilus in the fourth century, that Archilochus and 
 Hipponax were Sappho's lovers, was one of the stock jests of the 
 later comedians.' Sappho, who had perhaps lived in Sicily during 
 
 1 On the tradition of his love for Sappho, see below, p. 98. 
 
 ^ For a good example of logaoedic rhythm, cp. Shelley's Night: "Swiftly 
 walk over the Western Wave, Spirit of Night." 
 
 ' Antiochus of Alexandria vfrote a treatise On the Poets who were ridiculed 
 by the Writers of the Middle Comedy. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 7 
 
98 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 her exile, knew the tale of Sicilian Daphnis, the ' laggard lover,' 
 whom the nymph pursued in vain by all the fountains, through all 
 the glades (Theocritus i. 83). His counterpart in Lesbian foliilore 
 was Phaon, the handsome boatman, endowed by Aph- 
 *°° rodite with two gifts, a beauty that drew all hearts, and 
 the armor of indifference. Phaon is not mentioned in the frag- 
 ments of Sappho, but in some lost poem she may have sung 
 of this frigid Lesbian Adonis. At any rate Greek comedy trans- 
 formed the genuine Sappho, notoriously indifferent to the love of 
 men, into a Sappho who cured her hopeless passion for the hard- 
 hearted Phaon ' by a leap from the Leucadian cliff, the desperate 
 remedy of pining lovers. Ovid, in the Heroides (15), Martial, and 
 the rest handed on the picturesque tradition. Hardly more cred- 
 ible than the scurrilous jests of comedy is the legend that Alcaeus 
 Alcaeus and loved Sappho. As the two great poets of Lesbos, as 
 
 Sappho fellow-citizens and contemporaries, their names are 
 constantly linked together. But the only trace of an intimate re- 
 lation is the fragment of a dialogue quoted by Aristotle. In a 
 Sapphic line Alcaeus is made to say, / long to speak, but shame 
 prevents my tongue, to which Sappho retorts in the Alcaic meter 
 that one who is ashamed to speak can have nothing honest to utter 
 {^fr. 28). Bergk prints the Sapphic line with the fragments of 
 Alcaeus (/r. 55), but it is possible that both his words and the 
 repartee were taken from a dramatic poem by Sappho. 
 
 It is in Herodotus (II 135) that we secure a piece of evidence 
 which helps to fix Sappho's date, and throws some light on her 
 personal history. He tells how Charaxus, her brother, came to 
 Egypt in the reign of King Amasis (570 B.C.), and there fell in 
 love with and ransomed Rhodopis, the beautiful courtesan from 
 Naucratis, for which act of profligacy Sappho, when he returned to 
 
 The Cha- Mitylene, ridiculed him in an ode. Within the last 
 
 laxus Ode decade Egypt, the scene of that extravagance, has given 
 up the fragment of a Sapphic ode which was probably addressed 
 to Charaxus by his sister. The fragment, which dates from the 
 1 Martial 10. '35, durus Phaon. 
 
MELIC POETRY 99 
 
 third century a.d., was one of the first and most precious of the 
 Papyri recovered from the rubbish heaps of Oxyrhynchus, about 
 one hundred and twenty miles to the south of Cairo, and was pub- 
 lished in 1898.^ On the strength of their dialect, meter, and 
 style, these four mutilated stanzas are attributed to Sappho. From 
 the beginning of every verse about two words have been torn off, 
 and not a single line is complete. But the conjectures of Blass, 
 Wilamowitz, and Jurenka, though the ode is, perhaps, more theirs 
 than Sappho's, have at least restored the sequence of ideas. 
 Charaxus is about to return from some absence, and Sappho, not 
 now in the mood to satirize his weaknesses, implores the Nereids to 
 bring her brother home that he may recover his good name and 
 confound his enemies. According to Athenaeus, Sappho sang the 
 praises of another brother, Larichus, who stayed at home and was 
 cupbearer to the highest officials of Mitylene, an office reserved to 
 youths of noble birth. The Charaxus Ode, if we have not mis- 
 taken its drift, is the solitary piece of direct evidence as to 
 Sappho's family life that is to be gleaned from her poems. It 
 would be rash to assume that it is her own child whose beauty, 
 like that of golden flowers, she described '\a.fr. 85. 
 
 What Lesbos in the seventh and sixth centuries offered to a 
 woman of Sappho's genius we must gather partly from the tradi- 
 tion, which depends chiefly on her poems, partly from the allusions 
 in the extant. fragments. She was, as Strabo said, a marvel, unap- 
 proached by any other woman in history, — a judgment that is as 
 true now as in the time of Augustus. For the finest lyric poetry is 
 love poetry, and more than any other's her verses " strike and sting 
 the memory in lonely places, or at sea, among all loftier sights and 
 sounds . . . seem akin to fire and air, being themselves all air 
 and fire ; other element there is none in them."^ It is not to the 
 Dorian temperament that one would look for poetry like hers, 
 though if among the maidens who danced Alcman's choruses, one 
 had possessed the gifts of Sappho, she would have enjoyed hardly 
 
 1 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part I : B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, London. 
 
 2 Swinburne, Notes on Poems and Reviews. 
 
100 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 less conventional freedom. In Ionia, on the other hand, or at 
 Athens, where the conventions of Ionia were inherited, a woman 
 must remain obscure or be classed as a courtesan. As an Aeolian, 
 Sappho encountered no such restrictions. She came of a race gifted 
 with a peculiarly keen sense of the charm and reality of the visible 
 world, devoted to the pleasures of the senses, renowned for its 
 beauty and its ardent love of beauty. In Lesbos, at any rate, a 
 woman could be a poet and train other women to take part in the 
 religious festivals and in the mixed choruses that sang ' epithalamia,' 
 wedding songs. That was Sappho's profession at Mitylene, as it 
 was the profession of her rivals, Gorgo and Andromeda' {frag. 
 41, 48, 58). The parallel of Socrates and his favorite pupils is 
 not to be forgotten. But Sappho's relation was closer to the 
 maidens whom she trained and who lived in her house ' dedicated 
 to the Muses ' (/r. 136). On these pupils, Atthis, Gyrinna, and 
 the rest, Sappho lavished a devotion whose expression all have 
 praised, while they hesitated whether to pity or condemn the 
 intensity of feeling, the anguish and ecstasy, that inspired her 
 immortal odes. For Sappho " all thoughts, all passions " were 
 diverted into a single current, and she uttered the secrets of her 
 heart with an ardor and energy that make all other expressions of 
 passion in literature seem incomplete and impersonal. The 
 scandalous Romans, following the degenerate Greeks, found it 
 easy to answer the riddle that her poems present to modem 
 readers. Few scholars now accept their interpretation, since 
 Welcker (1816) made his famous defense of the reputation of a 
 poet whom Plato called ' the Tenth Muse,' and whose image was 
 stamped on the coins of Mitylene.^ 
 
 1 Maximus of Tyre 24. 8. What Alcibiades, Charmides, and Phaedrus were 
 to Socrates, Gyrinna, Atthis, and Anactoria were to Sappho. Just as Prodicus, 
 Gorgias, and Thrasymachus were the professional rivals of Socrates, so 
 Gorgo and Andromeda rivaled Sappho. 
 
 ''■ E. Meyer, Beloch, and Toepffer are the chief modern adherents to the less 
 tharitable view of Sappho's character. In his review of Les Chansons di 
 Bilitis by the decadent French poet, Pierre Loiiys, Wilamowitz in the Got- 
 iingische Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1896, sides with Welcker. 
 
MELIC POETRY loi 
 
 To Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Augustan critic, we owe the 
 preservation of the Ode to Aphrodite (fr. i). He quotes it to 
 illustrate the ' smooth style,' in which Sappho, as he The 
 thought, excelled even Anacreon and Simonides : O Ode to 
 thou of the divers-colored throne, deathless Aphrodite, *?•*">*'** 
 child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, T beseech thee, break not my spirit 
 with agony and anguish, O goddess. But come hither, if ever before 
 thou didst hear my voice from afar and hearken. Then thou didst 
 leave thy father' s golden house and yoked thy chariot and didst come. 
 Over the dark earth sparrows drew thee, fair and swift, flapping 
 their thick wings as they flew from heaven through the upper air. 
 Quickly they reached my side ; and thou, blessed one, smiling with 
 thy deathless face, didst ask what wrong I suffer and why I call, 
 and what in my mad heart I most desire. ' Whom dost thou 
 desire that persuasion should draw to thy love ? Who doth thee 
 wrong, Sappho? Nay, even she that flies shall quickly follow ; if she 
 would not take thy gifts she shall give to thee, though she love not 
 now she shall soon love thee, yea though unwilling.' Come, I pray 
 thee, now as then, and set me free from the cruel pangs of love, 
 and all that my heart longs to win do thou accomplish, and be thou 
 thyself mine ally {fr. i). 
 
 Another Greek critic, the author of the treatise On the Sublime, 
 when he wished to show how a master of the grand style could 
 choose and combine the most striking effects of passion, so as to 
 make the lover at one and the same moment freeze, burn, rave, 
 and reason, quoted as' the most famous instance the Second Ode of 
 Sappho, which represents ' not one single passion, but The 
 a congress of the passions." This ode, incomplete Second Ode 
 as we have it, has been echoed in all realistic descriptions of 
 passion, from Euripides to Swinburne. It was imitated rather 
 than translated by Catullus, To Lesbia. Of all the classical poets 
 he was the most akin to Sappho, but his version, while it is the 
 best attempt to translate what Swinburne thought untranslatable, 
 seems artificial and elaborate beside the direct simplicity of the 
 1 On the Sublime, c. lo. 
 
102 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 original. Catullus used the true Sapphic rhythm, not the more 
 rigid, Romanized Sapphic of Horace. • 
 
 The The Epithalamia of Catullus are the nearest parallels 
 
 Epithalamia to Sappho's wedding songs, of which we have a few 
 verses only, but those roses, to use the phrase of Meleager \ — 
 
 Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost bough, 
 
 A-top on the topmost twig, — which the pluckers forgot, somehow, — 
 
 Forgot it not, nay, hut got it not, for none could get it till now. 
 
 Like the wild hyacinth floioer which on the hills is found. 
 Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear ani wound, 
 Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.^ 
 
 Though Sappho spent her strength on a single theme, there was 
 no danger of monotony in poetry such as hers, with its continual 
 renewal of images. Through the apple boughs and the rustling 
 leaves blows ' the new wine of the wind of spring,' the Cretan 
 women dance on the ' fine soft bloom of the grass ' ; Love shakes 
 her soul ' like a wind on the mountain that falls on the oaks ' 
 {/r. 42), or conies from heaven in a mantle that shines bright like 
 fire (/r. 64). Strength and fire and dehcacy are united in her 
 verses, and without a touch of sentimentality she sang of roses, and 
 the nightingale, and the silver moon. 
 
 Sappho's name is associated with her favorite stanza, the 
 Meters and Sapphic," but even in the fragments there is a marked 
 
 dialect variety of meters, including choriambs and hexameters. 
 Her dialect, like that of Alcaeus, is pure .-Lesbian Aeolic, with 
 occasional reminiscences of Homer. 
 
 Anacreon {floruit 540 B.C.) was a native of Teos, an Ion- 
 ian city on the coast of Asia Minor. When Harpagus reduced 
 
 1 Rossetti's translation of frag. 93, 94. Cp. Catullus 62. 42 ff. 
 
 2 For the Sapphic rhythm, cp. Swinburne's Sapphics : "Newly fledged, her 
 visible song, a marvel. Made of perfect sound and exceeding passion, Sweetly 
 shapen, terrible, full of thunders. Clothed with the wind's wings"; and for 
 another of Sappho's meters, his Choriambics : "Nay then, sleep if thou wilt; 
 love is content; what should he do to weep?" and Shorey's translation of 
 fr. 68: Thou shall die and be laid low in the grave, hidden from mortal ken. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 103 
 
 the Asiatic Greeks (545 b.c), Anacreon joined the exodus of 
 his countrymen from Teos to Abdera, in Thrace. There, in an en- 
 counter, with the hostile Thracians, hke Archilochus, he 
 threw away his shield {Jr. 28). Another echo of the 
 Thracian episode, more in keeping with the temperament of Anac- 
 reon than a reminiscence of warfare, is his address to a Thracian 
 maiden who had rejected his advances (/r. 75) ; the poem was imi- 
 tated by Horace (i. 23 and 3. 11), who, besides a certain number of 
 verbal echoes of the Teian poet, in his lighter moods constantly 
 recalls the Anacreontic manner. In a colony that must fight for 
 its existence, Anacreon was out of place. He left Abdera for Samos, 
 not far from his native city, summoned by Polycrates, the patron 
 of Ibycus. Of that luxurious court and short-lived tyranny 
 Anacreon was the poet laureate. His poems were full of the im- 
 pressions and memories of the golden days when he shared the 
 pleasures of Polycrates, sang the praises of the tyrant's favorites, 
 and even, if we are to believe the tradition, influenced the serious 
 policy of his wiser hours. The flute-playing of Bathyllus, the 
 beauty of Smerdis, who was the Antinous of the Samian court, the 
 charms and frailties of Ionian favorites and Ionian courtesans, 
 were the themesmost congenial to Anacreon and the tyrant of Samos. 
 When Polycrates fell into the trap laid for him by the Persian 
 satrap Oroetes (522 B.C.), Anacreon's good fortune outlasted his. 
 Hipparchus, the Athenian tyrant, sent a fifty-oared galley to bring 
 the poet in triumjih to Athens. There, no doubt, Anacreon lived 
 to see the violent end of his new patron (514 B.C.). After that, 
 the Athenian court, to which the sons of Peisistratus had attracted 
 Simonides of Ceos the choral poet, Lasus of Hermione the writer 
 of dithyrambs, and Anacreon himself, became, under the harsh and 
 suspicious rule of the survivor, Hippias, an uncongenial home for 
 a singer of Anacreon's tastes. It was at Athens that Pausanias saw 
 his statue by the side of that of his friend Xanthippus, the father, 
 of Pericles. He lived to be over eighty, and according to one 
 tradition spent his last years at the court of the Aleuadae in 
 Thessaly, haunting to the last the life of a court and the society of 
 
I04 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 those with whom he could laugh and drink and make love in his 
 gay old age. 
 
 Anacreon, like Sappho, is, above all, the poet of love. But, 
 though he is reckoned with them, his verse was never electrified 
 by the passion and vehemence of the Aeolians. Devoted to sen- 
 sual pleasures, Anacreon preserved the smiling serenity of a tem- 
 perament really moderate. So he came to be the typical example 
 of an old iage that still enjoys, a lighter hearted Mimnermus, whose 
 Ionian levity and ease of manner mask no real passion or strength 
 of character. There is no touch of patriotism in the fragments of 
 Anacreon ; only once, when roused by jealousy, does he strike a 
 vigorous note, ridiculing the low birth and acquired luxury of 
 Artemon, who had won from him his mistress Eurypyle (^fr. 21). 
 The fragments of the hymns to Artemis {Jr. i) and Dionysus 
 {fr. 2) are merely invocations intended to introduce more frivo- 
 lous themes, and express no real piety. 
 
 Anacreon employed a great variety of instruments and meters ; 
 Meters and the latter were not intricate : iambics and choriamb- 
 dialect ics, elegiacs, and the simpler logaoedics, especially 
 the glyconic in its eight-syllabled form. His dialect is Ionic 
 varied by Aeolic. 
 
 With all his frivolity Anacreon was incapable of the monoto- 
 nous triviality and flimsy texture of the collection of occasional 
 poems which Estienne (Stephanus) published under 
 his name in 1554. The Anacreontea could not im- 
 pose on scholars ; they bear every mark of a post-classical origin ; 
 their grammar and dialect, their allusions to the memory of Anac- 
 reon, to late art, to rhetoric and decadent theology, all point to 
 the Alexandrian and first Christian centuries ; here and there is 
 an echo from the Byzantine period. But among the sixty short 
 lyrics wholly unworthy, for the most part, of Anacreon, are half 
 .a dozen that are fanciful and charming, though their inspiration 
 is of the slightest. The poets of sixteenth-century France, espe- 
 cially Ronsard and Remy-Belleau, who translated the whole (1556), 
 greeted the Anacreontea with all the ardor of the Renaissance 
 
CHORAL MELIC 105 
 
 for the recovery of a Greek masterpiece.^ That enthusiasm 
 maintained by Byron, Moore, Leconte de Lisle with his " Ward- 
 our Street Greek," and even Goethe, has only faded before a 
 deeper appreciation of the genuine lyric poetry of the best days 
 of Greece. But the conception of Anacreon that passed into 
 three centuries of European literature will not easily be eradi- 
 cated. Two kinds of meter are used in the Anacreontea, the 
 iambic dimeter and the ionic dimeter ; both occur, though 
 rarely, among the varied measures of the genuine fragments of 
 Anacreon. The manuscript, which dates from the tenth or 
 eleventh century a.d., was originally attached to a copy of the 
 Anthology of Cephalas, now at Heidelberg. 
 
 EuMELUS of Corinth lived in the latter half of the eighth cen- 
 tury. He wrote historical epic, and early Corinthian poetry of 
 that type was freely ascribed to him as the representa- 
 tive of Corinth. But Eumelus has a place in the his- 
 tory of melic as the author of a prosodion which he composed for 
 a sacred embassy of the Messenians. It was their contribution to 
 the Ionian festival at Delos in honor of Apollo, a special compli- 
 ment from a Dorian state whose national god was Zeus, worshiped 
 with a similar festival at Ithome. The prosodion was a type of 
 choral song peculiarly associated with Delos. If genuine, as 
 seems probable, the two hexameter lines which tradition assigns to 
 Eumelus are the oldest extant remains of this kind of processional 
 cult song. 
 
 Terpander (p. 93) had fixed the character of the first stage 
 of Sparta's musical history ; with the second period 
 the name of Thaletas is associated. He came to 
 Sparta from an island famous for its dancing, Dorian Crete, 
 whose city, Cnossos, stamped on her coins the dancing floor which 
 
 ^ Ronsard, Odes V 15 : — 
 
 Je vay boire \ Henri Etienne 
 Qui des enfers nous a rendu, 
 Du vieil Anacreon perdu, 
 La douce lyre Teienne. 
 
io6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Daedalus made for Ariadne (//. XVIII 591) ; this was the Cretan 
 labyrinth itself, whose curves and mazes were really a map of the 
 evolutions of the choral dance. Thaletas introduced at Sparta 
 the elaborate dramatic dancing of Crete, and wrote songs to be 
 sung and danced to the music of the flute by choruses of men and 
 boys at the festival of the Gymnopaedia. 
 
 The influence of Thaletas can be traced in the cretic rhythms 
 used by Alcman, who, about the middle of the seventh 
 century, founded choral poetry at Sparta. As the 
 earliest representative of Greek melic, Alcman was placed first 
 in the Alexandrian canon of nine lyric poets. Sardis in Lydia 
 was his birthplace, but though he boasted of his connection with 
 that famous seat of the Lydian monarchy (/>-. 24), he was prob- 
 ably of Greek descent, as his name implies. His father, whose 
 name, Damas or Titaros, also indicates a Greek origin, may 
 have been a metic or resident alien at Sardis. According to the 
 legend, Alcman was sold as a slave to the Spartan Agesidas. At 
 any rate he became thoroughly identified with Sparta, wrote in her 
 dialect, used her local myths, and set' the Dorian stamp on Greek 
 choral lyric. In the militant poetry of Tyrtaeus, a little later, we 
 see the reflection of a community given over to camp life, Sparta 
 at war. Alcraan's choral odes are the expression of Sparta at 
 peace, a rare echo of a mood in which the lyre rivalled the sword 
 (/''• 35)- He created the ' partheneion,' or song of maidens, a 
 type of choral lyric which was peculiarly Dorian, since only Dorian 
 women were permitted by social conventions to appear as members 
 of a chorus at a public festival. We owe our knowledge of the 
 partheneion to the discovery by Mariette in 1855 of an Egyptian 
 papyrus from which have been recovered about a hundred lines 
 of a choral lyric {fr. 23) composed by Alcman to be sung by 
 maidens in honor of the Dioscuri, the friendly twin brethren of 
 Spartan legend, or perhaps to Artemis, since her name also occurs 
 (v. 61) . The ode of which we have this mutilated fragment began 
 with the recital of a Laconian myth, the tale of the insolence of 
 Hippocoon and his sons and their punishment, perhaps five 
 
MELIC POKTRY 107 
 
 strophes as objective as Homer. Then the poet points the moral 
 with a gnomic utterance, // is the gods who punish insolence — and 
 on that, like Horace in an ode that is, in some respects, parallel,' 
 becomes purely personal and secular. The latter half of the poem 
 expresses the playful rivalry of two maidens of the chorus, the 
 beautiful Agido and the only less beautiful Hagesichora, with her 
 ' golden hair and face of silver,' the chorus leader. There we 
 have the characteristic note of the poetry of Alcman ' the charm- 
 ing,' as the Greeks called him, the gayety and tenderness, the 
 affectionate gallantry, which are so engaging and so unexpected 
 in this Spartan poet. His personal interests were bound up in the 
 training of such choruses, and it was the chief regret of his old 
 age that he could no longer take part in them : — 
 
 Maidens with voices like ho7iey for sweetness, that breathe desire. 
 Would that T were a sea-bird with limbs that could never tire; 
 Over the foain-jlowers Jlying with halcyons ever on wing. 
 Keeping a careless heart, a sea-blue bird of the spring !''■ {fr. 26.) 
 
 In another fragment he describes the midnight silence of the 
 lonely hills and the deep sea : Sleep holds the hill tops and the 
 passes of the hills, the cliffs sleep and the ravines and all the wild 
 things that the black earth breeds after their kind, the beasts that 
 inhabit the mountains, the tribe of bees, and the monsters in the 
 depths of the shining sea. Even they, too, the flocks of birds fold 
 their long pinions in sleep (Jr. to). The modern parallel of this 
 poem is Goethe's Ueber alien Gipfeln istRiih, but Alcman omitted 
 the personal application that secures a pathetic climax for the 
 German lyric' 
 
 Among the papyrus fragments found at Oxyrhynchus and pub- 
 lished in 1898, was part of a partheneion addressed to Demeter 
 
 14.6. 
 
 2 H. C. Beeching. Cp. Tennyson, /« Memoriam : " Or underneath the 
 barren bush Flits V>y the sea-blue bird of March." 
 
 2 Lucan's Pacem summa tenent {Phars. -^. 273) may be an echo of Alcman. 
 Vergil contrasts the peaceful night with the restless heart of Dido. (^Aen. 
 4521.) 
 
io8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 by nine maidens who describe their fair raiment and ornaments ol 
 carved ivory. The four hexameter verses that survive are either, 
 as Blass believes, genuine Alcman, part of a cult song, or the clever 
 attempt of a later, archaizing poet to imitate his manner, as Theoc- 
 ritus imitated it in his Eighteenth Idyl. Tradition made Alcman 
 the founder of love poetry. He was, at any rate, the first literary 
 representative of personal melic. But in the fragments that sur- 
 vive there are no echoes of passion or of war. His gentle gayety 
 is relieved by occasional touches of humor, and even homely 
 realism. He frequently echoes the Homeric myths and language. 
 
 Dialect ^'^^ Doric of Sparta is blended in his literary dialect 
 and with Aeolic and epic forms. His meters were varied 
 
 meters ^^^ numerous. Ionics, for the first time in literature, 
 iambics, cretics, anapaests, logaoedic rhythms, and dactylic hexam- 
 eters appear in his fragments. It was probably Alcman, not 
 Stesichorus, who first broke the monotony of the succession of 
 strophe and antistrophe by the use of the epode, and thus created 
 the tripartite system of the Greek choral lyric. 
 
 In the last quarter of the seventh century, Lesbos, the birthplace 
 of Terpander, produced a poet whose name, like his, is associated 
 with a definite advance in the history of Greek lyric. It was, how- 
 
 Arion ^^^^' °" ^ strictly choral type, the dithyramb, that Arion 
 
 of Methymna left his mark. Arion, says Herodotus, 
 composed, named, and represented the dithyramb at Corinth (i. 
 23-24)- In the same passage he tells the tale which has given 
 pictures'queness to the vague personality of the poet. Arion had 
 wandered to Italy and Sicily, where, as a professional poet and 
 musician, he had acquired great wealth. From Tarentum he 
 embarked for Corinth, then under the rule of Periander (625- 
 585 B.C.). Once clear of the port, the sailors conspired to kill 
 Arion for the sake of his possessions. The poet, seeing himself 
 lost, won their permission to sing for the last time before his death. 
 ' With his singing robes about him ' he took his lyre and, having 
 sung the "Orthian nome," leaped into the sea. The ship sailed 
 on to Corinth, but a dolphin received Arion and carried him on its 
 
MELIC POETRY 109 
 
 back to Taenarum, where a bronze statuette of the man and the 
 dolphin existed in the time of Herodotus. How the legend arose, 
 why the dithyrambic poet came to be associated with the dolphin, 
 the symbol of Poseidon, who was actually the rider, Poseidon or 
 another, in that work of art at Taenarum which probably existed 
 before the legend of Arion's escape — all these are matters of con- 
 jecture. In the dispute Arion himself fades into a myth. But, for 
 the Greeks, he was the inventor of one of the most important though 
 one of the, to us, least known of the melic forms, the dithyramb 
 or choral song in honor of Dionysus. Arion con- The dithy- 
 verted the informal wine song into a choral lyric sung '^^'"•> 
 and danced by a circular chorus, and so introduced into Greek 
 literature the dithjrrambic type which was the forerunner of the 
 dithyrambs of Bacchylides, Simonides, Pindar, and a host of lesser 
 poets. But he did more than this. He was the first to train 
 choruses of satyrs, the goat choruses which later became charac- 
 teristic of Attic tragedy. It was on the score of his long residence 
 at Corinth, where he trained his cyclic choruses, that the Corin- 
 thians claimed the invention of tragedy. His dithyrambs were 
 sung to the flute and in the Phrygian mode, always recognized as 
 peculiarly appropriate to this wild and orgiastic type of lyric. 
 
 We do not know what meters Arion used, or what were pre- 
 cisely the innovations that made him famous. The fragment that 
 passes under his name in Bergk's collection is addressed to Posei- 
 don in gratitude for his escape. Its dialect, Attic mixed with 
 Doric, its meter, too elaborate for early choral lyric, its florid style, 
 prove that it is the work of some late, possibly fourth-century, 
 writer of dithyramb. Another sign of lateness is the disregard of 
 the strophic arrangement. 
 
 About a generation later than Alcman's prime, arose the most 
 
 original of the poets of Dorian stock, Stesichorus of Himera, 
 
 in Sicily, whose appellative, the 'choir-setter,' has „ . 
 
 , , . ^^ ,„ „ , , ' Stesichorus 
 
 obscured his true name, Teisias. He belonged to a 
 
 family of western Locrians who were among the earliest settlers 
 
 of Himera, founded in 648 B.C. ; with him the Greek colonies of 
 
no SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the West begin to play their part in literature. It is probable that 
 Stesichorus, whose fame was to be international, never visited 
 Greece. Aristotle {Rhet. 2. 20) relates that, when the citizens 
 of Himera were about to put themselves in the power of Phalaris 
 of Agrigentum, the tyrant whom the story of the brazen bull has 
 rendered infamous, Stesichorus recited to them his fable of the 
 horse and the stag as a warning. It was perhaps to avoid the 
 anger of Phalaris that he fled to Catana, where he died ; he was 
 buried outside the ' Stesichorean gate ' in an octagonal tomb 
 whose eight columns gave its name to a throw at dice. In the 
 third century B.C. his image was stamped on the coins of Himera, 
 and there Cicero saw his statue. 
 
 'Stesichorus,' says Quintilian,^ 'bore the weight of the epos on 
 his lyre.' In him ' the soul of Homer dwelt again.' What he 
 achieved was, in fact, a sort of revival of epic in lyric forms. He 
 created the heroic lyric, which proved to be the most truly inter- 
 national of all the varieties of Greek choral melic. A fragment of 
 Siraonides, written a century later, says that Homer and Stesi- 
 chorus sang to the nations {fr. 53), and throughout Greek litera- 
 ture there persists this association of the Ionian poet and the 
 The 'lyric 'lyric Homer' of Sicily. We do not know for what 
 Homer' ends Stesichorus composed the lyrics into which he 
 took over the heroic sagas. Only about fifty verses survive, and a 
 dozen titles, all suggestive of the epic, e.g. the Returns and the 
 Sack of Ilios. In the Oresteia {fr. 37), he calls his lyric 'a song 
 for the people,' which implies that it was intended for popular 
 festivals ; perhaps these were in honor of the Homeric heroes 
 whose exploits he sang. With him choral lyric developed larger 
 outlines in order to receive the heroic legends, so that his ampli- 
 tude offended critics who resented in a lyric the fullness and 
 breadth of Homer. In the history of choral lyric, Pindar is the 
 true successor of Stesichorus ; it was he who perfected the art of 
 confining epic narrative within the limits of the ode, and achieved 
 the grand style of which the Sicilian fell short. 
 
 ^ 10. I. 6a. 
 
MELIC POETRY m 
 
 As we have seen from Alcman, there was nothing essentially 
 new in the use of epic legends by a choral lyric poet. Stesichorus, 
 however, showed his originality in the freedom with which he 
 handled them. Though he drew on the sagas that he found in 
 Homer, Hesiod, and the cyclic poets, he broke with their tradi- 
 tions and boldly remodeled the heroic myths. Heracles was a 
 local Dorian hero, alien to the lonians and Aeolians. Stesichorus, 
 by developing the legends that transformed Heracles, the Dorian 
 ideal, into the type of the toiling hero, gnve him an international 
 interest. The famous apostrophe to Helen, Nay the tale is false ; 
 nei'er didst thou sail in the well-benched ships, never came to the 
 towers of Troy {fr. 32), is quoted by Plato,' who calls it a 'pali- 
 node,' a formal recantation wrung from Stesichorus when Helen 
 blinded him for adhering to the slanders of the less prudent Homer. 
 Whether the blindness was real or only a picturesque legend, 
 Stesichorus it was who created the legend of a phantom Helea 
 for whom the Greeks and Trojans fought, while the real Helen 
 waited for Menelaus in Egypt. So, too, Herodotus (2. 112) tells 
 the tale, and Euripides modeled his Helena on the Stesichorean 
 version. There are, in fact, few of the heroic myths of Greece, as 
 we meet them in the later poets and the Attic tragedians, which 
 the imagination of Stesichorus has not modified ; at any rate it is a 
 literary convention to hold him responsible for such changes as the 
 epic tradition has suffered. A striking proof of his populari^ty is the 
 frequency with which his versions of the myths are reproduced in 
 Greek art.^ We know little of the love poems in which Stesichorus 
 related the sorrows of Kalyke who took the Leucadian leap, and 
 Rhadina, slain with her lover by the jealous tyrant of Corinth ; 
 they seem to have marked the first appearance in literature of 
 the objective, impersonal love poem, a foreshadowing of Greek 
 romance. Sicilian Daphnis, the chief figure of later bucolic poetry, 
 was still, in the seventh century, a hero of folk song only. Stesi- 
 chorus used this popular legend in his lyrics, but they must have 
 been wholly unlike the sophisticated, bucolic type of poetry as we 
 1 Phaedrus^^T,. " Robert, Bild und Lied, Berlin, 1 88 1. 
 
112 SHORT HISTORY OF. GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 find it among the Alexandrians. Twenty-six books of poems were 
 
 ascribed to Stesictiorus. His lyrics were known throughout Greece, 
 
 so that in the fifth century Aristophanes could assume that an 
 
 Athenian audience would recognize a parody of the Sicilian poet 
 
 (Peace, 77O. His dialect is epic with Doric forms. 
 Dialect . , , , , , . . 
 
 a mixture such as would appeal to the international 
 
 audience to whom he became as familiar as Homer. His poems 
 
 were not, like Alcman's, accompanied by the dance, though he 
 
 regularly used the threefold strophic arrangement which was ever 
 
 after the rule in Greek choral lyric. 
 
 ^ Ibycus of Rhegium, in southern Italy ( floruit circa 
 
 Ibycns v ,-, ^ • , 
 
 544 B.C.), hke Stesichorus a poet from the West, came 
 
 from a city founded originally by a mixed colony of lonians and 
 Dorians. It is impossible to determine closely the descent of a 
 poet in whose writings, as possibly in his blood, are to be traced 
 the characteristics of the three great divisions of the Greek people. 
 Ibycus wrote in the Dorian manner, employing the choral meters 
 and strophes of Stesichorus, and, following in his steps, adapted 
 the heroic saga, the tales of the Argonauts, and the Heracles legend 
 to the uses of objective choral lyric. Here he was not without 
 originality ; for instance, the legend of Menelaus disarmed by the 
 beauty of Helen was first used by Ibycus. In contrast with the 
 formal stateliness and impersonality of Stesichorus, his poetry is 
 passionate and full of life and color, Ionian or Aeolian in its ex- 
 pression of the individual emotions. He was famous for his 
 erotic poems, addressed to boys, which preserved the form of 
 choral melic. In the fragments he sings of spring and Cydon- 
 ian apple trees watered by the river streams that flow in the quiet 
 garden of the nymphs, and the blossoms that are putting forth under 
 the shady leafage of the vine. But as for me, he cries. Love will 
 not let me rest at any hour. Like the North Wind from Thrace 
 that rages amid the lightnings fire, leaping from the side of Cypris 
 he comes, terrible and undaunted, to consume my heart with mad- 
 ness and shake my soul to the core {fr. i). 
 
 In his passionate enthusiasm for beauty, his love of flowers and 
 
MELIC POETRY 113 
 
 birds, there is an echo of Sappho, a sensuous appreciation that is 
 aUen to the Dorian temper, so that Aristophanes in the Thesmo- 
 phoriazousae (161) spoke of Ibycus as one who, like his contem- 
 porary Anacreon, had become soft and effeminate from contact 
 with the luxury of the East. Such was probably the 
 influence of the court of Polycrates of Samos, that 
 magnificent tyrant who, for ten years (532-522 b.c), defying 
 Greece and Persia, made Samos the most powerful and richest 
 island in the Aegean. There Ibycus spent a portion of his wan- 
 dering life. It is not till four hundred years later that we find in 
 Antipater's epigram in the Anthology (7. 745), the first allusion to 
 a legend which Schiller's poem. Die Kraniche des Ibykus, has 
 made familiar to many. The story, to which Plutarch adds some 
 details, relates that Ibycus was murdered by robbers in a lonely 
 place near the sea. As he died, he called on a passing flock 
 of cranes to avenge one who had sung of ' long-winged The Cranes 
 birds ' with peculiar tenderness. His prayer was »* Ibycus 
 granted by the gods, who regularly, as in the tale of Archilochus, 
 punish those who do violence to poets, or save their favorites as 
 the Dioscuri saved Simonides. The cranes flew over the theater 
 at Corinth, whereupon the agitation and involuntary exclamations 
 of the murderers, who were present, betrayed them to the rest of 
 the audience. The " cranes of Ibycus " {Ibyci grues) passed into 
 a proverb. 
 
 While Anacreon, crowned with flowers, enjoyed the last years of 
 the prosperity of Hipparchus, another Ionian poet, some twenty 
 years his junior, was already, at the same court, writing lyrics that 
 were to have a more brilliant and a more dignified popularity. 
 
 Simonides of Ceos (556-467 B.C.), though, like Anac- 
 
 ^-'•' ^ ' " , , Simonides 
 
 reon, he passed from court to court, as the fortunes 
 
 of his royal patrons rose or fell, was destined in the end to stand 
 
 as the chief poet of the glories of the Athenian democracy. He 
 
 belonged to a family which must have been the pride of Ceos, 
 
 since it produced Simonides and his nephew, Bacchylides. Soon 
 
 after the death of Hipparchus, who had encouraged him to leave 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 8 
 
114 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his native island, where he had made a name as a trainer of Dorian 
 choruses, he visited the small and half barbarous courts of the 
 Thessahan princes, the Scopadae of Crannon and the Aleuadae oi 
 Larissa. It is to their connection with Simonides that these petty 
 tyrants owe their place, slight as it is, in history. He gave theni a 
 name among men, says Theocritus, singing bright songs to a harp 
 of many strings} 
 
 An extant fragment of a Scolion is, in fact, addressed to Scopas ; 
 some thirty verses have been reconstructed from the Protagoras 
 (339 ff-)' '" which Plato discusses at length the precise meaning of 
 the poet's decidedly sophistical rhetoric, his cynical apology for the 
 man who fails to ' stand foursquare ' ; the worldly wise poet refuses 
 to set his ethical standard too high, since negative virtue is as much 
 as one may demand of his Thessalian patron (/r. 5). From the 
 accident of a falling roof which, according to the legend, destroyed 
 the Scopadae, Simonides was miraculously preserved by the divine 
 favor so often extended to Greek poets ; on this occasion it was 
 the Dioscuri who summoned him from the doomed palace, and so 
 paid their debt for an ode in which, with, for him, unusual piety, 
 he had neglected the Scopadae to celebrate the divine twins. 
 
 From Thessaly Simonides returned to Athens, no less at home 
 with the democrats than, in earlier days, at the court of the 
 Peisistratids. He was now the voice of the Athenian democracy, 
 and it was with no insincerity that he paid his tribute to the heroes 
 Harmodius and Aristogeiton : For the Athenians a great light 
 dawned on the day when they slew Hipparchus {fr. 131). The 
 lyrics and elegies of Simonides are the most striking memorials of 
 the victories of Athens over the Persians. His elegy on those who 
 fell at Marathon (490) was preferred to that of Aeschylus himself. 
 One of the finest extant fragments is from the ode, technically an 
 'encomium,' in honor of Leonidas and the heroes of Ther- 
 mopylae : Of those who died at Thermopylae glorious is the fate 
 and fair the destiny. No tomb for them, but an altar ; no tears, 
 but fame instead, and, for lamentation, praise. A monument like 
 
 ' fdyl 16. 34. 
 
MELIC POETRY 115 
 
 this, rust shall not corrupt nor time that destroys all else {fr. 4). 
 
 Even more famous is the elegiac couplet whose proud reserve and 
 
 laconic style are admirably suited to a Spartan epitaph : 
 
 Stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that their order is 
 
 obeyed and we lie here (92). Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, 
 
 and Plataea, the four famous encounters of the second Persian 
 
 invasion, inspired the greater part of the epigrams of SiraonidLs 
 
 at a time when individuals as well as cities claimed the honor of 
 
 inscriptions that should record their share in the repulse of Xerxes. 
 
 It may be that few of the eighty epigrams that are collected under 
 
 the name of Simonides were actually composed by him ; certainly, 
 
 few would satisfy the tests of modern scholars.' But what the 
 
 collection proves is that among all the poets whose imagination 
 
 was fired by these events to compose epigrams which, later, were 
 
 to rank as historical tradition, Simonides stood first ; his name was 
 
 inevitably lavished on compositions in which was expressed all the 
 
 personal and national pride of his generation. In 476 B.C., at the 
 
 age of eighty, he won a prize at Athens with a cyclic chorus ; in 
 
 the same year he went to Syracuse at the invitation of Hiero and 
 
 there, nine years later, he died. 
 
 For a choral poet to write elegies and epigrams was unusual, 
 
 and it was as a choral poet that Simonides won his fame. In the 
 
 exhibitions of dithyrambic choruses encouraged by ^.^^ 
 
 . Ditbyrambs 
 
 Hipparchus at Athens, he was the successful rival of 
 
 Lasus of Hermione, winning fifty-six prizes for dithyrambs which 
 have all perished ; many of these were, no doubt, heroic, dealing 
 with myths that had no connection with Dionysus. But it is the 
 chief distinction of this Ionian poet, whose Muse ' gathered all 
 things to her harvest' {fr. 46), that he set the seal of his pecul- 
 iar excellence on two types of Dorian choral lyric which had not 
 hitherto taken their place in Hterature, the 'epinikion ' or song of 
 victory and the ' threnos,' the song of lament. A famous hymn of 
 Archilochus to Heracles, with its refrain ' Hail to the conquering 
 
 iWilamowitz, Simonides der Epigrammatiker, in Goiting. Nachrichtcn, 
 1897, following Kaibel, rejects at least two thirds of Bergk's collection. 
 
ii6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 hero,' which had been regularly sung at the evening procession in 
 honor of an Olympian victor, was abandoned in the sixth and 
 fifth centuries, by all who could afford a special ode 
 composed by some distinguished living poet. The 
 new fashion gave an opening for a more personal expression of the 
 praises of the victor, and Simonides set the example followed by 
 Pindar and BacchyUdes of making a myth the foundation of the 
 ode ; the narrative led the hearer away from the victor and relieved 
 the monotony of flattering phrases ; and in the end the glory of 
 the present was dexterously interwoven with the splendid tradi- 
 tions of the past. Thus the ode was redeemed from its occasional 
 character and became something more than the triumph of an 
 hour. If we may decide from the scanty fragments of the Epinicia 
 of Simonides, his manner was more personal than Pindar's ; he 
 idealized less and lingered longer on the details of the contest. 
 
 The purely personal lyric which, for the Aeolians, was an outlet 
 for the emotions, was ahen to the temperament of Simonides, the 
 well-balanced, self-conscious artist, while in the composition of 
 songs of victory he was to be surpassed by his younger contem- 
 porary, Pindar. But he had a special gift for the 
 Threnoi , . ^,. , " 
 
 pathetic. His ' threnoi,' songs of lament, the Ceae 
 
 neniae of Horace {Odes 2. i), were written to be sung to the flute 
 at funeral ceremonies, and won a unique reputation for their power 
 of exciting pity and soothing grief. This worldly poet, whose 
 elastic disposition made him the friend of kings and democrats, 
 was never more successful than when he had to express the sad- 
 ness of bereavement. His melancholy was resigned and thorough, 
 and he offered the mourner no such picture of a future life and its 
 rewards as are to be found in Pindar's stately songs of consolation. 
 His outlook was bounded by the grave, but he could touch the 
 heart. The famous Danae and Perseus fragment (37), regularly 
 included among the ' threnoi ' of Simonides, is perhaps from a 
 dithyramb, but in any case it illustrates that power of pathos for 
 which he became proverbial. If a dirge, it may well have been 
 written for some bereaved princess of Thessaly, where, at Larissa 
 
MELIC POETRY 117 
 
 especially, Perseus was a familiar figure in mythical tradition. The 
 fragment contains only the lament of Danae : Shut in the carven 
 chest, when the wind blew and the sea was troubled, fear fell on 
 her and her cheeks were wet with tears. She took Perseus in her 
 arms and said: O my child, what grief is mine / Lo, thou art 
 asleep; thy childish heart can repose in this brass-bound chest, our 
 fearful ship, in the thick darkness of night without a star. The 
 salt spray of the wave that passes wets thy soft hair, but thou dost 
 not heed nor hear the wind moan, lying there in the purple coverlet 
 with thy fair face close-pressed. Ah! but if the danger were danger 
 to thee thou wouldst lend that little ear to my words. Nay, I bid 
 thee sleep, my child, and may the sea sleep too, sleep my unmeasured 
 sorrow. May fairer days come from thee, O Zeus, father of my 
 child, and if my prayer be overbold, if it offend justice, pardon 
 me {fr. 37). 
 
 The character of Simonides depends, for modern readers, chiefly 
 on the caprice of those who quoted the scanty fragments of the 
 longer lyrics. If we judge him from these, it is inevitable to con- 
 trast his conventional morality and lightly worn religion with the 
 moral earnestness and narrower, deeper piety of Pindar. Pro- 
 fessionalism in intellectual things was always repulsive to the 
 Greeks, and Simonides suffered in reputation because he was one 
 of the first professional poets. Ibycus and Anacreon were paid 
 voices, and Pindar did not write his odes for nothing. But since 
 they escaped the charge of commercialism, while Simonides be- 
 came a proverb of avarice, his love of gain must have been more 
 obvious or more crudely expressed than theirs. He was frankly 
 adaptable and diplomatic, ready to adjust the quarrels of tyrants, 
 as when he reconciled Hiero and another patron, Thero of 
 Agrigentum, and his worldly wisdom almost lifted him into 
 the ranks of the Greek sages. But in the end he is remembered 
 mainly as the saddest of the Greek lyrists, the weeping poet,* 
 as Heracleitus is the weeping philosopher. He wrote in a 
 
 1 " High from his throne in heaven, Simonides, Crowned with mild 
 aureole of memorial tears." — Swinburne. 
 
ii8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 literary dialect of epic mixed witii Doric and slightly varied 
 
 Dialect and with Aeolic forms ; his favorite meters are logaoedics, 
 
 meters and he frequently employs dactylic rhythms. 
 
 Greece produced few women whose poetry was destined to 
 
 leave its mark ; Sappho has no real rival. Erinna of Telos, 
 
 an island near Rhodes, was called the pupil of Sappho, but prob- 
 
 . ably belonged to the fourth century B.C. She wrote 
 
 in Doric, and is said to have composed an epic of 
 
 three hundred verses, called The Spindle, ' worthy of Homer.' 
 
 Those Alexandrians who, hke Callimachus or Asclepiades, thought 
 
 it was both useless and in bad taste to attempt Homeric epic, 
 
 pointed to this short poem as a model of what might still be done. 
 
 The Thebais of Antimachus of Colophon, on the other hand, they 
 
 thought a good example how not to write epic. In an epigram in 
 
 the Anthology^ Antipater praises Erinna precisely for this brevity, 
 
 which was to secure her a better chance of immortality than the 
 
 longer epics of the less judicious imitators of Homer. The fact 
 
 remains that Erinna perished, while the Argonautica of Apollonius 
 
 of Rhodes, of some six thousand lines, has survived. 
 
 Telesilla of Argos was a warrior poet; like Tyrtaeus, she 
 Telesilla fought for her country, which honored her with a 
 statue and a place in its legends. Praxilla of 
 Sicyon is said to have written dithyrambs, as became 
 a native of a city famous for its patronage of that type of lyric. 
 The last of this group, Corinna, a Boeotian of Tanagra or Thebes, 
 achieved some distinction in choral lyric. Five times, 
 according to tradition, she won the first place in com- 
 petition with Pindar, her younger contemporary. Her beauty 
 and her patriotic preference for the Boeotian dialect helped her 
 to these triumphs, if we may believe Pausanias. Corinna's fame 
 was local, limited by her dialect. She' wrote choruses for girls, 
 epigrams and noraes, employing, as we see from a few short frag- 
 ments, the simpler forms of logaoedic meters, and hexameters. 
 
 *7- 7'3- "Better the Swan's chant than a windy world of rooks in the 
 April sky I " — A. Lang's translation. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 119 
 
 Boeotian myths held the first place in her poems. From Corinna 
 Pindar learned the proper use of the myth as an ornament of 
 choral lyric. 
 
 Pindar (522-442 b.c.) was born at Cynoscephalae, near 
 Thebes, of an aristocratic family, a branch of the 
 Aegidae, a famous clan which had helped to found 
 Sparta. Athens, already the " mother of arts," fostered the 
 genius of the greatest lyric poet of Greece ; there he was trained 
 in the elaborate technique of choral composition, and perhaps 
 learned from Lasus of Hermione how to write dithyrambs. 
 Agathocles and Apollodorus taught him music. Finally, the 
 Boeotian poetess, Corinna, gave him lessons in taste, advising him 
 not to sow with the whole sack the mythical allusions which are the 
 essential ornament of Greek choral lyric. How he profited by 
 that training and won a name outside Thebes, we can judge from 
 the earliest extant poem, the Tenth Pythian. He was only twenty, 
 and Simonides was in his prime, when the Aleuadae of Larissa em- 
 ployed Pindar to write this ode for Hippocleas, a young Thes- 
 sahan noble who had won the foot race at the Pythian games 
 (502 B.C.). Twelve years later, in the year of Marathon (490 B.C.), 
 he composed the Seventh Pythian for the Athenian Megacles. In 
 the great duel between East and West which was to secure the 
 supremacy of Hellenic over barbarian civilization, the exact shade 
 of Pindar's patriotism is still disputed. Simonides, the Ionian, 
 could sing without reserve the victories of Athens and Sparta. 
 But Pindar was a son of Thebes which had welcomed the am- 
 bassadors of Darius, and was now the open ally of Xerxes. 
 Delphi, to whose policy he inclined by reason of the sacerdotal 
 otrain in his blood and personal associations, discouraged the 
 patriots, and Pindar went with Thebes and Delphi. The proof of 
 his Medism lies rather in the direct statement of Polybius (4. 31) 
 than in the extant poems. But he may be judged by 
 what he leaves unsaid. Marathon in the Odes figures 
 as the center of some local games ; Plataea, closely connected 
 with the humiliation of Thebes, he barely mentions, and then 
 
I20 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 indirectly. In later years, when his patriotism had broadened, he 
 sang the praises of Athens, the bulwark of Hellas, in a strain that 
 
 Praise of offended the Thebans, naturally sensitive on this point. 
 
 Athens Pindar was fined a thousand drachmas, whereupon 
 Athens paid the fine, and, for centuries, found no flattery sweeter 
 or more persuasive ^ than the epithets shining and violet-crowned 
 in the Theban poet's dithyramb (/r. 46). 
 
 Like Simonides, Pindar lived at the courts of Syracuse and 
 Agrigentum, and, though it was only after repeated refusals that 
 he accepted Hiero's invitation, he stayed in Sicily for several years, 
 composing some of his finest Olympian and Pythian Odes to cele- 
 brate the achievements of the two Dorian princes, Hiero and 
 Thero. At Syracuse he must have met Epicharmus, the founder 
 ol Sicilian Comedy, Aeschylus, Simonides, and Bacchylides. In 
 point of time Pindar stands between the two Ionian poets of 
 choral lyric. Superior at all points to Bacchylides, he was him- 
 self no match for Simonides where, as in a dirge, pathos rather 
 than splendor was appropriate. Pindar's First Olympian was 
 written for the same occasion as the Fifth Ode of Bacchylides. 
 The tradition of an unfriendly rivalry is to some extent supported 
 by passages in Pindar's Odes? Acusilaus of Cyrene and Alex- 
 ander of Macedon gave commissions to Pindar, and he may have 
 visited those places. The date of his death is uncertain, but he is 
 supposed to have reached the age of eighty, and if we take the 
 latest certain date of an extant poem (452 B.C. for 01. 4) as 
 marking the limit of his activity, his career covers half a century. 
 
 Of all the types of Greek choral lyric, hymns, paeans, hypor- 
 chemata, prosodia, partheneia, dithyrambs and dirges, encomia 
 and epinicia, we know well only the last, the songs of victory — • 
 the most important of all, since they played the most distin- 
 guished part. We have fragments of Pindar's work in all these 
 
 1 Aristophanes, Acharn. 636, said that the Athenians could be wheedled 
 into making concessions to any foreign embassy that would flatter Athens 
 with these adjectives. 
 
 » 01. 2. 94-97 ; Pyih. 2. 52-56 ; Nem. 3. 82; 7. 105 ; fsihm. 2. 6. 
 
MELIC POETRY 121 
 
 types, as well as remains of drinking songs (scolia) to which he 
 
 may have given a choral form. But his genius can be fairly 
 
 estimated from the epinicia only, the forty-four extant xhe 
 
 odes of victory which he wrote for the four great ath- Epinicia 
 
 letic contests of Greece, at Olympia, Delphi, Neraea, and the 
 
 Isthmus of Corinth. Local contests of the same sort were held 
 
 throughout Greece, but these four were the national games. The 
 
 Greeks, who refused political ties, preferring the isolation of 
 
 individual cantons, made a signal concession to the Pan- Hellenic 
 
 spirit when they met at these gatherings to honor Zeus, Apollo, 
 
 and Poseidon. To win the Dorian parsley at the Isthmus, or the 
 
 pale olive wreath of Olympia, or the withered parsley of Nemea, 
 
 was a ' luxury of honor ' that none of the prizes of later life could 
 
 throw into the shade. Not less than his wreath the victor must 
 
 have prized the ode, that ' finest breath of speech ' which glorified 
 
 him on the spot and, later, was sung at his home. It was the 
 
 ideahzed and immortal expression of the applause of the hour 
 
 that greeted the athlete when, flushed with success, in the flower 
 
 of youth and beauty, he passed through the ring of spectators 
 
 {01. 9. 100). All Greece agreed with Alcinous of Phaeacia that 
 
 there is no greater glory for a man while yet he lives than that 
 
 which he achieves by hand and foot} 
 
 Such an ode was essentially a personal song of praise. But 
 
 it was the task of the poet to lift the athlete and his triumph 
 
 out of the local and ephemeral interests of the event, and to bring 
 
 him into relation with the past of a race whose myths „^ 
 
 ^ , The myths 
 
 were always dearer to them and even nearer than 
 
 their history. While, therefore, all Greek choral lyric was essen- 
 tially narrative, the song of victory above all, after the praises of 
 the victor, told a tale and pointed its moral. Corinna's first 
 warning to Pindar not to neglect the myth was really more im- 
 portant than her criticism of his too lavish use of it. A typical 
 song of victory, such as the Fourth Pythian, relates an epic myth, 
 the tale of the Argonauts, but not in the epic manner. Homer 
 
 1 Od. 8. 148. 
 
122 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tells a tale for its own sake ; for Pindar it is the ornament of a 
 panegyric, illustrates a special event, conveys a lesson. The epic 
 poet could linger over similes, could fill in his background with 
 detail ; Pindar must employ the more rapid metaphor, and give 
 his picture in a few swift strokes. Even his ethical meditations, 
 the genuine reflex of his soul, are uttered by the way, without 
 the rhetorical argument so dear to the gnomic poets, and often 
 form a transition as he passes on from the victor to the myth or 
 harks back to the real occasion of the ode. The metaphors 
 themselves change quickly, are ' mixed,' a characteristic of all 
 rapid and picturesque language. For instance, in the Fourth 
 Pythian, Jason distilled his soft speech to lay the foundation of wise 
 utterance (137). 
 
 One must' never forget that Pindar's lyrics were conditioned 
 by their elaborate musical accompaniment. Dialogue, though 
 he does not avoid it, was difficult for his trailing style, 
 in which the appeal must always have been to the ear 
 rather than to the intelligence. When he wrote an ode, Pindar 
 went to work like the architect of a splendid and far-seen dwell- 
 ing, and behind its outward splendor the building was hardly less 
 intricate than the labyrinthine chambers of a Cretan palace.' The 
 formal responsions, the nice balancing of strophes or of triads 
 (strophe, antistrophe, and epode), the complicated pattern in 
 which every change of stitch contributes to the symmetry — all 
 this elaboration was an added beauty to the Greek ear ; to the 
 modern reader it is an added difficulty. It is for this reason that 
 Pindar is the scholar's poet, too austere, too ingenious, too liable 
 to an unexpected homeliness of allusion to appeal to those who 
 demand that poetry shall be direct and lucid and consistently im- 
 passioned. A Pindaric ode combines the irapressiveness of the 
 Hebrew scriptures, the simplicity of a ballad, and the elaborate 
 
 'The theory of Westphal and Mezger that nearly all the Pindaric odes are 
 built on the model of a nome of Terpander with its seven divisions, is 
 rejected by Wilamowitz, J. H. H. Schmidt, Croiset, Gildersleeve, Bury, and 
 H. W. Smyth. 
 
MELIC POETRY 123 
 
 effects of a modern opera. " Pindar is a poet," said Matthew 
 Arnold, when he coined the word " Pindarism " to express the 
 power of throwing all one's force into style — "on „_. , . „ 
 whom, above all other poets, the power of style 
 seems to have exercised an inspiring and intoxicating effect."^ 
 Pindar's "spiritual excitement" is indeed profound and consistent, 
 but it is expressed in a manner now naive, now magnificent. This 
 was no outrage to the Hellenic sense of beauty, but to the modern 
 ear there are passages in the Odes that seem as incongruous as 
 the mule races that were run in the splendid hippodrome of 
 Olympia. It was for a victor in a mule race that Pindar wrote 
 the Sixth Olympian, with its exquisite description of the flower 
 cradle of the child lamus, who lay hidden in an impenetrable 
 thorn brake, his delicate body steeped in the yellow and deep purple 
 rays of pansies (54 fiT.).^ 
 
 Pindar was an Orphic, or at least deeply influenced by Orphic 
 doctrines. There are many allusions in his odes to the future life, 
 its punishments and rewards, such as the picture in the Second 
 Olympian of the happy dead whose reward is to dwell with Zeus 
 
 " Where the soft Ocean breezes float for ever 
 Around the Islands of the Blest. 
 There golden bloom to bloom succeeds, 
 
 Through springs that never tire. . 
 They fill with light the ground below. 
 Athwart the shining trees they glow; 
 Their growth the very water feeds. 
 Hid under flowers of fire." ^ 
 
 But it was in the dirges especially that he would dwell, with 
 a concreteness rare in Greek poetry, on the flowery 
 meadows, the fruits, the frankincense, and the music 
 that await the souls of the good. None of the fragments, with 
 their resolute turning away from the grief of the moment, contain 
 
 1 Celtic Literature, p. 1 10. ^ Imitated by Matthew Arnold, Merope. 
 
 8 77 ff. Translated by Sir Francis Doyle. 
 
124 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 any such picture of personal sorrow as made the reputation of the 
 tender laments of Simonides. 
 
 We have a few fragments of the 'bold dithyrambs' which 
 impressed Horace* with their " full-flowing river of speech " and 
 the novelty of their diction. The last feature, espe- 
 cially the coining of compound epithets, seems fully as 
 characteristic of the Odes, to us at least who must judge from the 
 scanty fragments of the dithyrambs. When Horace goes on to 
 speak of the ' lawlessness ' of Pindar's dithyrambic style, we may 
 suppose that he referred to his neglect of strophic arrangement 
 in this type of ode. The longest fragment, of twenty-one lines 
 {/'>'• 75 )> w^s composed for a dithyrambic cpntest at Athens, to be 
 sung in the agora at one of the spring festivals in honor of Diony- 
 sus at which the successful chorus wore crowns of roses, the 
 sacred flower of the god. 
 
 In the Odes Pindar does not disguise his personal sympathies. 
 Though not himself of pure Dorian blood, he was a Dorian in soul, 
 his ideal prince was Dorian Thero, his favorite constitution that 
 of Dorian Aegina, for whose citizens he composed about one 
 fourth of the extant odes. His heroes are rarely drawn from 
 Homer's gallery of Achaean princes, but he is loud in the praise of 
 Ajax, whom they insulted, while he detests Odysseus, the national 
 hero of Ionia. By breeding and temperament Pindar was in sym- 
 pathy with his countryman Hesiod, Homer's traditional rival. 
 Boeotia was a proverb among the lonians for the slow wits which 
 they declared matched the heavy air of the country. Pindar 
 makes the usual retort of dwelhng on the offensive epithet, and 
 turns the ancient reproach of his race, Boeotian Swine, into a jest 
 {Ol. 6. 90). For all his praise of Athens, he remains anti-Ionian, 
 anti-democratic, incapable of the cosmopolitanism of Simonides. 
 
 Pindar's personal enjoyment of life was keen. The fragment of 
 a scolion {fr. 123) which, in his old age, he addressed to Theox- 
 
 1 Odes 4. X. Cp. Cowley's Praise of Pindar : " So Pindar does new words 
 and figures roll Down his impetuous dithyrambic tide, Which in no chan- 
 nel deigns to abide, Which neither banks nor dikes control." ' 
 
MELIC POETRY 125 
 
 enus, has all the fire of youth. But he had under his eyes the 
 unstable fortunes of the Sicilian dynasties, and his profession, the 
 celebration of athletic triumphs, brilliant as glass and no less brit- 
 tle, fostered his sense of the transient nature of all earthly inter- 
 ests. The Eighth Pythian was written as a song of victory, but 
 its tone justified the scholiast who called it a ' lament for human 
 destiny.' In an hour the delight of man waxes great,cuQs Pindar, 
 when he has sung the success of his Aeginetan friend, so in an 
 hour it falls to the ground, when fortune turns her face aside. 
 Man is the creature of a day. What is he? what is he not? the 
 shadow of a dream {Pyth. 8. 92 fif.). But though hardly an ode 
 of Pindar is without some reminder of the vanity of human ambi- 
 tion, the lofty serenity of his religious belief remained unshaken ; 
 his gods are jealous and inflexible, but they are incapable of the 
 corruption that disfigures the primitive legends.' 
 
 Pindar loved every effect of fire and light ; in his favorite meta- 
 phors everything blazes and flashes, the feet of the 
 
 Metaphors 
 victor, fame, wealth, the joy of living, the rays of glory 
 
 from his own songs. He wrote in all the three moods — Aeolian, 
 
 Dorian, and Lydian. His dialect is a mixture ; the 
 
 ' Dialect 
 
 basis ' epic,' with frequent Aeolic and Doric forms. 
 
 Though' he used the lively logaoedic and paeonic meters, he 
 
 preferred the more stately dactylo-epitrite (— w ). 
 
 .r •■, ,/ X ,.j ,. J Meters 
 
 After Ronsard (1550) wrote his odes designed to 
 
 show le moyen de suivre Pindare, a long succession of English 
 poets adopted what they took to be the Pindaric manner of 
 composing odes. Cowley and Shad well in the seventeenth century, 
 Congreve and Gray in the eighteenth, and many others, wrote 
 ' Pindaric ' odes, sometimes following the regular Greek arrange- 
 ment of stropTie, antistrophe, and epode, but for the most part 
 allowing themselves great irregularity of forra.^ 
 
 The Alexandrians admitted into their canon of Greek lyric poets 
 
 ^Pyth. 3, 01. 9, 01. 1. 
 
 ^ For a discussjoji of English Pindaric odes, see Gosse's Introduction to his 
 Etiglish Odes. 
 
126 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 nine names, Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Ibycus, Anac- 
 reon, Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides.^ Of these, Anacreon, 
 Siraonides, and Bacchylides were lonians. Anacreon counts with 
 the Aeolians as a writer of monodic lyric ; Simonides, the greatest 
 Bacchy- Ij^ic poet of his race, employed the Dorian rhythms 
 lides and language in his choral odes ; finally, Bacchylides 
 
 of Ceos wrote his choral songs after the type that had been set by 
 Simonides' and Pindar. 
 
 Little is known of the hfe of Bacchylides. To the fact that he 
 was the nephew of Simonides he probably owed his introduction 
 to the court of Hiero ; his floruit occurs about 468 B.C. when he 
 composed an ode in honor of Hiero's Olympian victory. In the 
 fourth century a.d. it is recorded that the Emperor Julian read his 
 poems, and as late as the fifth century there is evidence that they 
 were well known to anthologists and scholiasts. But in the Revival 
 of Learning in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries Bacchylides 
 played no part, and it was not till the closing years of the nine- 
 teenth that the sands of Egypt gave up the single papyrus manuscript 
 Recovery °'^ which we depend. Until 1897, the date of the first 
 of the edition, Bacchylides could be estimated only from the 
 poems brief fragments — the longest was only twelve lines — 
 collected by Bergk chiefly from the late anthologist Stobaeus. The 
 new manuscript contains fourteen odes of victory, the number of 
 Pindar's Olympian Odes, and six other choral lyrics, in all more 
 than a thousand lines either perfect or admitting of restoration. 
 The date of the papyrus is the first century B.C. or possibly a 
 century later.^ 
 
 Like Pindar, Bacchylides wrote Olympian, Pythian, Isthmian, 
 and Nemean odes; the present collection of fourteen epinicia' 
 
 ^ An epigram in the Palatine Anthology 9. 184, addresses the nine canoni- 
 cal poets and recognizes the charm of Bacchylides in the phrase ' Siren with 
 the gift of speech.' 
 
 ^ The Epinician Odes are not grouped as in the manuscripts of Pindar 
 according to festivals, but with reference to the home of the victor. 
 
MELIC POETRY 127 
 
 includes a Petraean Ode, in iionor of a victory at some Thessalian 
 games known as the Petraea and dedicated to Poseidon. The 
 recovery of the Epi7ikia of Bacchylides, though we xhe 
 can only regard it as a selection, has relieved the isola- Epinicia 
 tion that partly accounts for the fact that Pindar is antipathetic to 
 the modern reader. An estimate of Pindar always reads like an 
 apology, and partly for the reason that he created his own stand- 
 ard, and in his conception of the strain that suited a prize poem 
 
 a literary type wholly alien to our sympathies — he seemed to us, 
 even among the Greeks, to walk alone. We can better estimate 
 his essential qualities when we see how the same events and the 
 same atmosphere inspired a contemporary poet, his xhe nval 
 Ionian rival. Twice they were commissioned to 0* Pindar 
 celebrate the same victory. Pindar's First Pythian and the 
 Fourth Ode of Bacchylides ^ both commemorate Hiero's success 
 in the chariot race at Delphi, in 470 B.C. But here there was 
 no direct competition : to Pindar was assigned the more elaborate 
 ode, the more distinguished celebration ; Bacchylides holds the 
 inferior commission. Six years before that, however, Hiero had 
 won the single-horse race at Olympia (476 B.C.). The highest 
 height tops itself for kings, wrote Pindar in the First Olympian, at 
 this moment when the Sicilian tyrant seemed the brilliant favor- 
 ite of the gods, before disease had begun to overshadow all his 
 triumphs.^ It was for the same occasion that Bacchylides com- 
 posed the longest of his extant poems, the Fifth Ode, which, after 
 the oblivion of some fourteen hundred years, again invites com- 
 parison with the famous First Olympian, that ' finest flower of all 
 that Pindar wrote.' (Lucian, The Dream 7.) For the central theme 
 of his ode Pindar chose the tale of a chariot race in the dim past, 
 and sang how mighty Pelops won Hippodameia by the help of 
 
 1 The references to Bacchylides are according to Kenyon's editio princeps, 
 1897. 
 
 2 Pindar's Third Pythian ( ? 474 B.C.) and the Third Ode of Bacchylides 
 (468 B.C.), though composed in honor of Hiero's victories at Olympia and 
 Delphi, are designed to console him for sickness ami approaching death. 
 
128 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Poseidon, to whom he prayed, coming to the edge of the gray sea, 
 alone, in the darkness of night. . . . Keep back the brazen spear of 
 Oenomaus. . . . No coward is he whom so great a danger inspires. 
 Man must surely die ; why then should he sit idly and nurse in the 
 dark an inglorious old age ? Nay, this adventure shall be mine, 
 and do thou give me the issue I desire. Pindar dwells in this ode 
 on the beauty of water, of gold, of fire, of the sun, and finally on 
 the " honor and sweet rest " that are the portion of all Olympian 
 victors from Pelops to Hiero. In his Fifth Ode Bacchylides 
 passes from the praise of Hiero and his race-horse to the reflec- 
 tion, inevitable in a Greek poet when he contemplates human 
 achievement, that no mortal can escape sorrow, and, by a some- 
 what violent transition, to the toil of the invincible son of Zeus 
 
 „. who must descend to Hades to fetch Cerberus. 
 
 J. He 
 
 legend of There among the souls of the dead by the waters of 
 Meleager Qocytus, like leaves that the northwest wind drives along 
 the headlands of Ida ' where the sheep feed, he saw the soul of 
 Meleager and heard the tale of the Calydonian boar-hunt and how 
 Althaea in her passionate grief for the death of her brothers lit the 
 brand that was the measure of her son's life : ^ Even then, I was 
 stripping of his arms Clymenus, whom I had overtaken outside the 
 walls, when the Curetes fled to the goodly towers of ancient Pleu- 
 ron. Then my sweet life failed me. Alas ! I knew my strength 
 was waning; and with my last breath I wept that I must leave the 
 splendor of my youth? Here is the romantic pathos of the Ionian 
 showing through the conventional Doric forms. Homer himself, 
 
 1 The comparison of men with leaves has been a commonplace with poets 
 since the Iliad. Before the recovery of Bacchylides, Vergil {^Aen. 6. 309 ff.) 
 was the prototype of Milton's " angel forms . , . Thick as autumnal leaves 
 that strow the brooks in Vallombrosa. " 
 
 2 For Althaea and the brand, see Aesch. Choeph. 605 ff. 
 
 ' Cp. Swinburne, Atalanta in Calydon, " all this body a broken barren tree 
 That was so strong, and all this flower of life Disbranched and desecrated 
 miserably, ... for all my veins Fail me, and all mine ashen life burns down.'' 
 It was left for Euripides to introduce the passion of Meleager for Atalanta as 
 a factor in the legend. 
 
MELIC POETRY 129 
 
 when he gives another version of the Meleager legend (//. IX 
 529 ff.), is hardly more detailed than Bacchyhdes, who, in fact, here 
 and there seems to echo the Homeric passage. As an Ionian, 
 Bacchylides is naturally without the anti-Homeric bias of Pindar. 
 
 The manifest inferiority of Bacchylides to Pindar is not due to 
 any lack of technical knowledge or aptitude, though one may 
 observe in passing that the connection of Hiero with Heracles and 
 Meleager is somewhat arbitrary; it would as a rule be easier to 
 tear the myth from its setting in an ode of Bacchylides than in an 
 ode of Pindar. Longinus expressed admirably the difference be- 
 tween the two poets when he said that Bacchylides ' is faultless, 
 and a fine writer in the smooth style,' while Pindar ' burns all 
 before him in his swift course, but is often unaccountably dull.' ^ 
 In spite of the beauty and ease of his language, Bacchylides is a 
 poet of the second order, not to be ranked with the great creative 
 artists, the masters of the grand style, who, unlike him, aimed at a 
 perfection that was often beyond their reach. 
 
 Following on the Epinician Odesm the manuscript are six poems 
 which we may regard as a selection from the dithyrambs, hymns, 
 and paeans of Bacchylides. We might indeed, like The non-epi- 
 the Alexandrians, give the whole group the general nician lyrics, 
 title ' dithyrambs,' since the word, even as early as Plato, had come 
 to mean any lyric poem that imitated heroic action and told a 
 tale. To a fifth-century poet like Bacchylides, the dithyramb 
 implied no necessary connection with the story of Dionysus, nor 
 was its performance restricted to the festivals held in his honor ; 
 dithyrambs were performed even at the Attic Thargelia in honor 
 of Apollo. Of the six non-epinician lyrics, which all bear the title 
 of the myth that they relate, three may be regarded as specifically 
 dithyrambs, the Fifteenth, The Sons of Antenor, or The dithy- 
 The Demand for Helen's Surrender ; the Eighteenth, rambs 
 The Theseus ; and the Nineteenth, The Jo. By the recovery of a 
 type of poem hitherto known to us only in fragments, a gap in the 
 history of Greek literature is partly filled ; we are now able to 
 1 On the Sublime, 33. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 9 
 
I30 SHORT HISTORY OF GRREK LITERATURE 
 
 speak with some assurance of the dithyramb as it existed in the 
 fifth century apart from tragedy. Bacchylides, unlike Pindar, 
 observed the strophic arrangement in his dithyrambs. The saga, 
 or rather the scene from a saga which is their main theme, has in 
 no case any relation to Dionysus, though in the lo^ there is an 
 abrupt allusion to Semele, his mother. The Theseus, by its form, 
 stands alone among Greek lyrics. It is a dialogue between 
 Aegeus, king of Athens, and a chorus of Athenians ; the king, not 
 knowing that Theseus is his son, describes the deeds and the 
 appearance of the hero whose coming is dreaded by himself and 
 by the chorus. Here then we have the only extant case of a 
 dramatic lyric, a dialogue carried on between one speaker and the 
 chorus, and if we could assume that the Theseus repre- 
 
 XhGXh6S6US 
 
 sents the type of dithyramb from which, as Aristotle 
 tells us, tragedy was developed, this Eighteenth Ode would rank 
 as a real contribution to the history of the drama.' It would mark 
 that stage in the evolution of the play from the dithyramb when 
 the single actor still confined the dialogue to himself and the 
 chorus, or the leader of the chorus. In the lo, a poem 
 of very slight merit, written for an Athenian contest, 
 Bacchylides passes from the praise of Athens to the story of lo, for 
 which he seems to have drawn on the same sources as Aeschylus 
 in the Prometheus Bound. The Seventeenth Ode, the Youths and 
 Theseus, sung at Delos in honor of Apollo, is probably a paean. 
 Paean- The Theseus, with Minos the Cretan king, is accompanying 
 Youths and the youths and maidens whom Athens owed every year 
 Theseus jq {jjg Minotaur. Minos insults Eriboea (who is to be, 
 later, the mother of Aeginetan Ajax), whereupon Theseus, as the 
 son of Poseidon, defies Minos the son of Zeus. A flash of light- 
 ning attests the protection of heaven for Minos, who challenges 
 Theseus to leap into the sea, trusting in Poseidon, and bring up a 
 ring that he throws into the waves. Then the other's courage did 
 not recoil; he stood on the shapely stern-deck and leapt, and glad 
 
 1 Robert in Hermes 33. Our ignorance of the tragic dithyramb deprives 
 the conjecture of certainty. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 131 
 
 was the sea to welcome him to her deep groves. . . . He came to 
 the divine abode, and beheld with awe the far-famed daughters of 
 Nereus, the blessed god. From their beautiful limbs flashed a 
 light like fire, about their heads ivere bound fillets of woven gold, 
 and ivith supple feet they danced and made their hearts glad. Then 
 he saw in her lovely halls the dear spouse of his father, the goddess, 
 ox-eyed Amphitrite. About him she flung a purple cloak and set 
 on his curling hair a wofidrous wreath, dark with roses, once the 
 wedding gft of wily Aphrodite (81 ff.). 
 
 Bacchylides was not, like Pindar, a critic of the traditional saga, 
 and there is no proof that he modified it. The story of Theseus 
 and the ring and wreath, not known to us in hterature The same 
 hitherto, though it is told in Pausanias (i. 17. 2) and gfth^j\n°„ 
 Hyginus {Poet. Astron. 2. 6), was famiUar to archae- art 
 ologists from the illustrations of four red-figured vases, all belong- 
 ing to the fifth century ; the death of Meleager is represented on 
 an amphora of about 400 B.C., with Heracles and Cerberus on the 
 reverse of the vase. 
 
 In his Third Ode Bacchylides tells the story of Croesus, king of 
 Lydia, his generosity to the Pythian Apollo, and how in the hour 
 of his downfall he was repaid by the intervention of the god. In 
 that day of despair he was not the man to abide the misery still to 
 come, the lot of a slave. Before the brazen walls of his court he 
 built a pyre, and mounted thereon with his faithful wife and his 
 fair-haired daughters , weeping bitterly. Then he lifted his hands 
 to the heaven above and cried : O, all-powerful god, where is the 
 gratitude of heaven ? where is the son of Leto ? . . . So he spake 
 and bade them set fire to the wooden pile. The maidens shrieked 
 aloud and cast their arms about their mother ; for most hateful to 
 mortals is the death that they must see approach. But even as 
 the gleam of the fierce fire began to spread, Zetis brought a dark 
 cloud overhead and put out the yellow flame \2.C) ff.). The death 
 This version of the death of Croesus, in which he as- °* Croesus 
 cends the pyre by his own ciioice, is earlier than the story of Herod- 
 ptus. It was only seventy-eight years after the fall of Sardis when 
 
132 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 Bacchylides used this piece of history as though it had been a tradi- 
 tional myth. Even earlier, however, the painter of a red-figured 
 vase, now in the Louvre, had made a picture of the voluntary sac- 
 rifice of Croesus ; the Third Ode confirms his version of what 
 really happened. There are other, though less interesting, cases 
 in which the artists of the fifth century, chiefly the vase painters, 
 may be used as illustrations to Bacchylides. But in no case does 
 it seem likely that the painter was influenced by the poet. Bac- 
 chylides wrote no dirges, and his songs of love and wine, which 
 were perhaps more suited to his talent than the epinician type, are 
 lost to us. 
 
 "La facility,'' said Joubert, "est oppos^e au sublime." The 
 faultless style, the graceful ease of Bacchylides, his avoidance of 
 Pindaric metaphor, would have recommended him to Voltaire, who 
 could not tolerate the " inflated Theban." He outdid even Pin- 
 dar himself in coining new epithets, especially for his dithyrambs, 
 
 and the recovered poems have added over a hundred 
 Style . 
 
 words to the dictionary. These are, for the most part, 
 
 well-sounding and decorative epithets, often merely formal, but 
 occasionally of real beauty, as when he speaks of dark-tressed 
 Victory, or the darkly-flowering sea. 
 
 Pindar carefully avoided the use of his native Boeotian dialect. 
 But Bacchylides was an Ionian, and Ionian had long been estab- 
 lished by epic tradition as a dialect peculiarly suited 
 to poetry. It is therefore natural that the Dorico- 
 Aeolic coloring of his poem should have a basis more decidedly 
 Ionic than we find in Pindar.^ For all this tendency he is still to be 
 counted as a writer of ' choric,' as one is perhaps justified in call- 
 ing the conventional dialect, almost as conventional as 'epic,' 
 which was used with such slight variations by Simonides, Pindar, 
 and Bacchylides. 
 
 The meters of Bacchylides are, like Pindar's, dactylo-epitritic, 
 paeonic, and logaoedic. His name is not to be found in any Attic 
 writer, but there are echoes of his poetry in Euripides and Sophc- 
 'Schone, De diaUcto Bacchylidea, Leipziger Studien, 1899, p. 296., 
 
MELIC POETRY 133 
 
 cles. Horace, no doubt, had read it, and might have found 
 
 Bacchylides easier than Pindar to imitate, but there 
 
 is no direct proof that he did so. ^ ^^^ 
 
 The life of Timotheus of Miletus (447-357 B.C.), the last Greek 
 lyric poet of any importance, almost coincides with the century 
 immediately before Alexander. Before 1903 it was 
 impossible to appreciate his poetry from the few short 
 fragments that were extant, three lines of triumph for a victory 
 over his master Phrynis (/r. 11), a few more expressing his scorn 
 of old-fashioned music {/r. 12), and some disconnected verses 
 from the nomas. All this has an increased value since the re- 
 covery of a portion of a nome of Timotheus, a lyric narrative long 
 known by its title only, the Persae. In his day two kinds of nome 
 were performed on the cithara,, the melody without words by 
 musicians who were not necessarily poets, and the melody with 
 words, played and sung by the citharoede, the poet who was a 
 musician also. Of the latter type is the Persae. In it we see how 
 the severe ' strain,' the nome, religious in the beginning, has be- 
 come completely secularized. It has lost its stately character and 
 is as free from metrical limitations, as emotional, as imitative, as 
 the dithyramb. The Persae, one of the latest and most lucky 
 finds of Egyptian papyri, was discovered by Borchardt in a tomb 
 at Abusir (Busiris), where it had been left by the friends of its 
 owner, no doubt a Greek, to be read in ' the underworld, part of 
 the pathetic outfit of the dead. The whole poem, however, if he 
 had ever possessed it, he was not to take with him. Only a part 
 had been deposited in the grave, and much of that is now so 
 mutilated and crumbled as to be undecipherable. Such as it is, it 
 is the oldest Greek book now in our hands, dating probably about 
 the middle of the fourth century B.C., so that we now possess 
 a manuscript that Demosthenes might have read and that its author 
 might himself have written. The last four columns of the fragment 
 are fairly perfect and we can at last decide on the literary merit 
 of the nome as Timotheus wrote it, and can compare this lyric 
 version of the battle of Salatnis with the tragedy of Aeschylus, the 
 
134 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Persae, and the chapters of Herodotus that deal with the same 
 theme. As a historical account the Persae of Timotheus adds noth- 
 ing to the versions of Herodotus and Aeschylus. That would be 
 too much to ask from this libretto, written at a time when the New 
 Music had the upper hand, was no longer subordinate to the words. 
 The Persae must have owed much to the musical genius of its 
 author, and without its musical setting we can never do it full jus- 
 tice as a work of art. To inform, to be definite, is not the func- 
 tion of a libretto ; this lyrical description would serve as well for 
 any sea-fight in which Greeks met and scattered a barbarian 
 fleet. 
 
 When the papyrus becomes readable we are in the thick of the 
 encounter. Already the Persians are worsted, their ships are being 
 rammed by the Greeks and burned, their tiers of oars shorn away, 
 their crews massacred. Even the Phrygian landsman, says Timo- 
 theus, must now take to swimming like any islander, and as the 
 waves buffet him he threatens them in direct speech with helpless 
 and pathetic insolence. Timotheus likes to turn from the picture 
 of general destruction and makes the effect still more vivid by 
 singling out the misfortunes of the individual, and now we read 
 the ludicrou'' and incoherent prayers, with their mixed and bar- 
 barous dialect, of the Persian captive dragged into slavery by his 
 Greek conqueror on the shore. Finally Xerxes, when the day is 
 lost and all that heterogeneous host turned to flight, falls on his 
 knees and tears his breast, crying to his followers to harness his 
 chariot, to burn the tents and to flee with all his countless wealth 
 which must not fall into Greek hands. In the last verses Timo- 
 theus becomes abruptly personal, in the Pindaric manner, and 
 relates how the Spartans had expelled him because they did not 
 appreciate the New Music. And yet, as he says in this proud 
 apology, Terpander the Lesbian, Sparta's pride, had used as many 
 as ten strings (a statement that must be reconciled somehow with 
 our old notion of a seven-stringed Terpandrian cithara) and now 
 he, Timotheus, had but followed in the steps of Orpheus, the first 
 citharoede, and Terpander, when he exalted the glory of the 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 I3S 
 
 cithara by an eleventh string. By this personal reference he puts 
 the ' seal,' the trade-mark of authorship, on his nome. The poem 
 ends with a prayer to Apollo, the god to whom the nome was 
 peculiarly sacred, for the welfare of Miletus, the city that had 
 nursed the poet. Like any German or Italian libretto, this lyric is 
 hard to translate into coherent and poetic English. 
 
 Timotheus uses an extraordinary variety of meters. Iambics 
 predominate, but hardly a rhythm employed by the tragedians 
 in their choral lyrics is absent from this brief nome, 
 dochmiacs, the emotional measure of tragedy, tro- 
 chees, martial cretics, dactyls, and anapaests, following one an- 
 other in quick succession. There is no strophic arrangement, 
 no responsion.^ 
 
 Timotheus had lived long at Athens and, like his friend 
 Euripides, who is said to have sympathized with him and to 
 have foretold the victory of his Music of the Future, spent his 
 last years at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, at Pella. 
 In spite of his Ionian birth, he uses hardly more Ionic 
 forms than an Athenian tragic poet regularly ad- 
 mitted as consecrated by tragic usage. The basis of his language 
 is Attic, with a faint coloring of Aeolic. Like the poets of choral 
 melic he loved long compound epithets ; the mountain mother to 
 whom the Persians appeal is the goddess with the ' dark-leaf- 
 embroidered robe,' ' white-armed,' and ' golden-tressed' ; the sea 
 is, for the first time in poetry, ' emerald-haired.' He crowds his 
 description with metaphors introduced as a rule with a too obvi- 
 ous effort to avoid calling anything simply by its name; oars are 
 ' mountain-bred pines,' the ' hands ' or ' feet ' of the ships ; the 
 sea-water is ' rain, foaming, but not with wine.' Here we have 
 the mint-mark of the rhetorician writing poetry. 
 
 It was about 398 B.C. (according to Wilamowitz, 398-396, at 
 Mykale, at the Pan-Ionic festival in honor of Poseidon) that 
 
 1 A full account of the meters of the Persae and an exhaustive discussion 
 of the whole poem is to be found in the ed. princ. by Wilamowitz, Timotheos, 
 Die Perser, Leipzig, 1903. 
 
136 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 T'imotheus first performed the Persae. None of his poems had a 
 greater reputation, and as late as 207-206 B.C. it was sung again at 
 the Nemean festival. Though he is, like Orpheus, Terpander, and 
 Arion of Corinth, peculiarly the type of the Greek citharoede, the 
 poet who sings to his own accompaniment a solo like the Persae, 
 Timotheus was no less famous for his dfthyrambs, of which a few 
 titles survive, the Mad Ajax, the Travail of Semele, the Scylla. 
 Thucydides, Euripides, and Timotheus had lived together at the 
 court of Archelaus. When the Athenians erected a cenotaph in 
 honor of Euripides, whose bones remained in Macedonia, an 
 epitaph was written for it which was preserved in the Anthology^ 
 under the name of Thucydides. In one of the 'Lives' of Eurip- 
 ides this famous epitaph is ascribed to ' Thucydides or Timotheus.' 
 Not the least important of the finds of the archaeologists at 
 Epidaurus in Argolis in the latter part of the nineteenth century 
 was the poems of a writer hitherto unknown, Isvllus 
 of Epidaurus. His date may be gathered from an 
 allusion in his hexameters written in honor of Asclepius to the 
 danger which threatened Sparta after Philip's victory at Chae- 
 ronea in 338 B.C. Isyllus, who describes his own vision of Ascle- 
 pius promising to avert the danger, tells us that he was then a 
 boy, and his floruit has accordingly been placed by Wilamowitz^ 
 at 280 B.C. The poems, which were found, engraved on stone, in 
 the shrine of Asclepius, and were first published by Kabbadias,' 
 are all in honor of Apollo and Asclepius. Two hexameter poems 
 (17 and 23 verses) are written in conventional 'epic' with 
 touches of the poet's native Doric. The most important is the 
 Paean to Apollo (78 verses) in Ionics, a processional song which 
 belongs to the type of choral lyric and is written in a dialect 
 whose basis is Doric varied by the Aeolic and ' epic ' coloring 
 familiar to us from Pindar. The poems of Isyllus have a great 
 archaeological and historical value, but as poetry they are 
 insignificant. 
 
 ' 7. 45. '^ Philologische Untersuchungen IX, Berlin, 1886. 
 
 8'Ei^i)/iepls 'A/)xi"oXo7ikt}, 1885, 66. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 137 
 
 At Delphi, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, was 
 found, engraved on stone, a Paean to Dionysus, composed, 
 as we learn from the dedication, by Aristonous of The Paean of 
 Corinth. Its style has marked affinities with the Aristonous 
 dithyramb. The date is uncertain; Crusius conjectures that it 
 was written not long after the close of the Peloponnesian war. 
 It is in glyconics, twelve four-line strophes with a refrain, and 
 celebrates the birth of Dionysus at Thebes. It was first published 
 in 1895.' 
 
 In the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi were found three 
 fragmentary cult-songs in honor of Apollo ; a choral Hymn in the 
 cretic metre ; part of a very similar cretic Paean ; xhe Delphic 
 and part of a glyconic Hymn. The author of these Hymns 
 religious lyrics was probably Cleochares the Athenian, whose 
 name was found on another inscription in the same place, 
 a decree in his honor. The date of the poems, which were all 
 engraved on stone, is uncertain, but was probably the third cen- 
 tury B.C. Their dialect is the cosmopolitan, conventional dialect 
 of choral lyric. As poetry they would count for little. But their 
 interest is doubled by the fact that above each verse was engraved 
 the musical notation, the musical setting being immortalized to- 
 gether with the lyrics. This is a valuable contribution to the 
 obscure history of Greek music.^ 
 
 Among the minor types of Greek lyric, the scolion^ or 
 
 drinking song was perfected by the Aeolians, and es- 
 
 . ,, , J" J ,.■'., , ' , , , Thescolion 
 
 pecially by 1 erpander, who is said to have remodeled 
 
 and defined its music. It was not necessarily convivial in tone, 
 
 » 
 
 ^ Weil in Bull, de Corr. Hell. 19. Crusius in Philologus 53. 
 
 * See Crusius in Philologus 53. Pomtow in Philologus 49. 
 
 'The exact application of the word is uncertain. Hiller would connect it 
 with the ' crooked ' or ' curved ' rhythms, such as the logaoedic, in which the 
 feet are of more than one kind. An older and less probable derivation is 
 from the oblique (o-koXiiSs) order of the singers. Engelbrecht's elaborate 
 theory refers the obliquity partly to the character of the musical accompani- 
 ment, partly to the opposition of lyric and dactylic metres. 
 
138 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and, like the Ionian elegy, could be sentimental, or patriotic, 
 or moralizing, ranging through every mood, from the drinking 
 songs of Alcaeus to the famous scolion of Aristotle, To Virtue. 
 There was a fashion in these songs. By the end of the fifth cen- 
 tury it was out of date to sing a stave from Stesichorus, or Alcman, 
 or Simonides. The fashionable guest, when, according to the 
 etiquette, he took the branch of myrtle in his hand, was expected 
 to sing instead some selection from the song-book called the 
 The Attic ^^^^ Scolia, how Harmodius and Aristogeiton slew the 
 scolia tyrant and gave equal laws to Athens (Bergk 9), or 
 
 the Telamon (17) or Admetus (21), or the beautiful anonymous 
 scolion (28). 
 
 Drink with me and be young, love when I love, crowned as T am with flowers. 
 Kave with me when I rave, but be thou too, wise in my wiser hours.^ 
 
 This species of wine-song, originally an improvisation and 
 hardly to be distinguished in its more primitive form from a 
 folk-song, changed as it became a hterary type. When Alcaeus 
 wrote his scolia, he had in view only one singer. With Pindar 
 the scolion is stately, formal, and designed for a chorus. Logaoe- 
 dic was the favorite meter, and four-lined strophes were common. 
 
 The scolia reflect the alternating gayety and gravity of the 
 Greek, who, if he recalled a tale of far-off things, must point 
 its moral even over his wine, and, when he had crowned his hair 
 with flowers, preserved his balance with a saving reminder of the 
 beauties of temperance. A more pathetic and human interest is 
 The folk- attached to the fragments of Greek folk-songs. These 
 
 songs are the echoes of the humbler and more intimate life 
 of the people, brief ditties like the Linus, sung as they reaped the 
 corn that later was ground in the mill to the tune of Grind mill, 
 grind; even Pittacus grinds, the king of great Mitylene {fr. 43). 
 We have even a few fragments of the nursery songs to which the 
 children played their games : 
 
 1 M. H. Ritchie. 
 
MELIC POETRY 
 
 139 
 
 Where are my roses, where are my violets, where are my beautiful parsley 
 
 leaves ? 
 Here are your roses, here are your violets, here are your beautiful parsley 
 
 leaves (^fr. 19). 
 
 Perhaps the most charming of all is the swallow-song sung by 
 the children of Rhodes when they went begging from door to 
 door to announce the return of spring (/r. 41). Every hour of 
 toil, every hour of amusement, had its accompaniment of song. 
 In those unnamed, undated fragments we touch, not mere litera- 
 ture, but something deeper and more essential to the life of the 
 race. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Al.CAIii:S 
 
 Matthiae, Alcaei reliquiae, Leipzig, 1827. Welcker, Alk'dos in Kl. Schr. I 
 126 ff., Bonn, 1844. Kock, Alk'dos u. Sappho, Berlin, 1862. 
 
 Alcman 
 Welcker, Fragmenta Alcmanis lyr., Gissae, 1815; Kl. Schr. 4. 37 ff. A 
 papyrus fragment of a partheneion (//-. 23), now in the Louvre, was found by 
 Mariette in 1855, and published by Egger in Memoires d'histoire ancienne et 
 de philologie, Paris, 1863. A second papyrus fragment of a partheneion (not 
 in Bergk's collection) was published by Grenfell and Ilunt, Oxyrhynchus 
 Papyri I. viii, London, 1898. Special articles dealing with these /ra^,.- Bergk 
 in Poetae lyrici Graeci III; Diels in Hermes 31. Wilamowitz in Hermes 
 32. Jurenka in Wiener Stud. 18 and 22. Blass in Neue Jahrb. fiir I'ada- 
 gogik 3, 1899. Wilamowitz in Gotting. Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1898. Smyth, 
 Greek Melic Poets p. 204, London, 1 906. 
 
 .■\NACREON 
 .iiiacreontea, ed. princ, Stephanus, Paris, 1554. Bergk, Anacreontis Car- 
 mina, Leipzig, 1834. Zuretti, Anacreonte ed Anacreontee, Torino, 1889. 
 Welcker, Anakreon in Kl. Schr. i. 251 ff. Fick, Die Sprachform der alt- 
 ionischen l.yrik in Bezz. Beitrage, 1888. Weber, Anacreontea, Gottingen, 
 1895. Verse translations of the Anacreontea by Addison, 1735, and Moore, 
 
 1800. 
 
 Arion 
 
 Welcker, Der Delpliin des Arion in Kl. Schr. 1.89 ff. Wilamowitz, in 
 Herakles I. 85, Arion (with some remarks on the development of the dithy- 
 ramb), Berlin, 1889. 
 
i4o SHORT HISTORY OP GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Bacchylides 
 
 I. Manuscript. Papyrus, acquired by Grenfell in Egypt ; ist century B.C., 
 in the British Museum; contains twenty poems, five of which are mere frag- 
 ments. There are no schoha. A facsimile of the papyrus was published by 
 the British Museum in 1897. 
 
 II. Editions. Editio princeps,Yie-nyox\, The Poems of Bacchylides,\x>xAQa, 
 
 1897. Blass, Bacchylidis carmina cum fragmentis, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1899 
 (contains a full bibliography down to 1899), 3d ed., 1904. Jurenka, Die 
 neu^efundenen Lieder des Bakchylides, Vienna, 1898. Festa, Le odi e i fram- 
 menii di Bacchilide, iesto greco, (raduzione e note, Firenze, 1898. Smyth, 
 Greek Melic Poets (Selections), London, 1906. Jebb, Bacchylides, London, 
 1905. 
 
 III. Literature. A bibliography down to 1905 is prefixed to Jebb's edi- 
 tion of the poems. Christ in Sitz.-Ber. der Bayer. A&ad., 1898. Crusius in 
 Philologus, 1898. Maas in Philologus, 1904. Fraccaroli in Rivista di Filol., 
 
 1898. Hense in /?/«/«. jl/«j., 1898. Lipsius in A'ia^/a/ir*., 1898. Ludwich, 
 Verzeichn. d. Vorles. zu Konigsberg, 1898. Michelangeli, Delia vita di 
 Bacchilide, Messina, 1897. Robert in Hermes 33. Blass in Hermes 36. 
 Christ in Hermes 36. Schwartz in Hermes 39. Schroeder in Berl. Philol. 
 
 Wochenschr. 1898, nos. 11 and 28. Smith in Journ. of Hell. Studies, 1898. 
 Weil in Journ. des Savants, 1898. Wilamowitz in Gott. Gel. Anz., 1898, and 
 in Gott. Nachr., 1898. Jurenka in Wiener Studien 2i. Schone in Leip- 
 ziger Studien, 1899. Wilamowitz, Bakchylides, Berlin, 1898. Zielisnki, 
 Bacchylides, Lemberg, 1899. See also artt. in Athenaeum 1897-1898, and 
 in Class. Rev. 12 and 13. A. Croiset in Revue Bleue, 1898. 
 
 IV. Translations. Bacchylides (ten odes), E. Poste, London, 1898. Les 
 Poemes de Bacchylide, by Desrousseaux, Paris, 1898. Pohnes choisis de 
 Bacchylide, by d'Eichthal an 1 Reinach, Paris, 1898. The editions of Festa, 
 Jurenka, Jebb (II) include translations. The essay of Wilamowitz (III) 
 contains some German versions of the poems. 
 
 Corinna 
 
 Ahrens in De Graecae linguae dialectis 1.277. Welcker: see under 
 Erinna. 
 
 Erinna 
 
 Richter, Sappho u. Erinna, Leipzig, 1833. Welcker, De Erinna et 
 Corinna poetriis in Kl. Schr. 2. 145. Susemihl, Geschichte der Griech. Litt. 
 in d. Alexandrinerzeit II 527, Leipzig, 1891. 
 
 Folk-songs 
 Koester, De cantilenis popularibus veterum Graecorum, Berlin, 1831. 
 
ME Lie POETRY 141 
 
 Benoist, Des chants populaires dans la Grece antique, Nancy, 1857. See too 
 Fauriel, Chants populaires de la Grece Moderne, Paris, 1824. 
 
 Ibycus 
 Schneidewin, /i}ya ^/^e^. carm. reliquiae,Gott\ng&n, 1833. Welcker, Die 
 Kraniche des Ibykos in Kl. Schr. i. 89 (1833). Ibykos, ibid. i. 220 (1834). 
 G. Hermann m Jahn' s Jahrb., 1833. 
 
 Pindar 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Papyri: Oxyrhynchus Papyri III-IV, London, 1903- 
 1904, for frag, of an Ode and a Partheneion. The manuscripts are numer- 
 ous, but derived from a single archetype, probably of late date. The most 
 important are ^»«iroj2(2«2«, 12th cent., Milan; FaAVaBaj, 12th cent.; Pari- 
 sinus, 1 2th cent.; Laurentianus, ijth cent., Florence. 
 
 II. Editions, f^/./riwc, Aldus,Venice, 1513. Boeckh, Leipzig, 1811-1821, 
 Dissen, 1830. Mommsen, 1864. Bergk in Poetae Lyrici Graeci, 1878-1882. 
 Fennell, Cambridge, 1883. Gildersleeve, The Olympian and Pythian Odes, 
 London, 1890. Bury, The Neinean Odes, London, 1890 ; The Isthmian Odes, 
 London, 1892. Christ, Leipzig, 1896. 'O. Schroeder, Pindari Carmina, 
 Leipzig, 1900. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets ( for the fragments), London, 1906. 
 Abel, Scholia in Pindari Epinicia, Berlin, 1884. 
 
 III. Literature. Rauchenstein, Zur Einleitung in Pindar's Siegeslieder, 
 Aarau, 1843. Mezger, Pindar's Siegeslieder, Leipzig, 1880. A. Croiset, La 
 Po'esie de Pindare, 2d ed., 1886. Lind, De dialecto Pindarica, Lundae, 
 1893. Christ, Beitidge zum Dialekte Pindar's in Sitz.-Ber. d. Bayer. Akad., 
 Munich, 1891. Schmidt, Pindar's Leben u. Dichtung, Bonn, 1862. Jebb in 
 fourn.of Hell. Stud. vq\.\\\. TytteWin Quarterly Review, 1888. Jurenka, Mfi^;- 
 die Wichtigkeit der Pindar-Studien, Vienna, 1893. Caspar, Essai de chronol- 
 ogic Pindarique, Brussels, 1900. Wilamowitz in Sitz.-Ber. d. Berl. Akad,, 
 1901. Liibbert, De Pindari Studiis Terpandreis, Bonn, 1887. 
 
 . IV. Translations. The Odes of Pindar, translated into prose by E. 
 Myers, London, 1874. Le Odi de Pindaro, Fraccaroli, Verona, 1894. 
 V. Lexicon. Rumpel, Lexicon Pindaricum, Leipzig, 1883. 
 
 Sappho 
 A good bibliography of Sappho down to 1893 is in Wharton's Sappho; 
 Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and Literal Translations, 3d ed., Lon- 
 don, 1895. For special articles: Welcker, Sappho von einem herrschenden 
 Vorurtheil befreyt {i%i()), in his fCl. Schr. 2.80 ff.; Ueber die beiden Oden 
 der Sappho (1856), ib. 4.68 ff. Comparetti, Saffo e Faone in the Nuova 
 Antologia, Firenze, 1876. Lunak, Quaestiones Sapphicae, Kazaniae, 1888. 
 CipoUini, Saffo, Milano, 1889. Jurenka, Zur Klarung der Sappho-Frage in 
 
142 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LU'ERATURE 
 
 Wiener Studien, 1897. Jurenka, Die neuge/undene Ode der Sappho in 
 Wiener Studien, 1899. Wilamowitz, Les Chansons de Bilitis in Gott. Gel. 
 Anz., 1896. Blass, in Rhein. Mus. 1880. For a commentary on the Cha- 
 faxus Ode, H. W. Smyth, Greek Melic Foets, London, 1906. Blass, Die 
 Berliner Fragmente der Sappho (with text and critical notes) in Hermes 37. 
 Solmsen in Rhein. Mus. 57. 
 
 Papyri: Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Part I., Grenfell and Hunt, London, 1898, 
 rontains the Ode to Charaxus; 3d cent. a.d. Schubart, Berlin, 1902, pub- 
 lished two papyrus fragments ascribed to Sappho. 
 
 .'iCOLIA 
 Ribbeck, Ueber die Tafelgesange der Griechen, Berlin, 1848. Runck, 
 De Scolioruin origine el usu, Berlin, 1876. Engelbrecht, De S:oliorumpoesi, 
 Vienna, 1882. Reitzenstein, Epigramin. u. Skolion, Giessen, 1893. Wilamo- 
 witz, Die Attische Skoliensammlung in Aristoteles u. Alhen II, Berlin, 1893. 
 
 SiMONIDES 
 Schneidewin, Simonidis Cei carm, reliquiae, Brunsvigae, 1835. Cesati, 
 Simonide di Ceo, Casale, 1882. Wilamowitz, Simonides der Epigrammatiker 
 in Gott Nachr., 1897, *"<1 loniker bei den Lyrikern in Philolog. Untersuch, 
 IX. Blass in Hermes 30. Hauvette, Sur V authenticite des epigrammes de 
 Simonide, Paris, 1896. Boas, De epigr. Simon., Groningen, 1905. 
 
 Stesichorus 
 Kleine, Stesichori Him. fragmenta, Berlin, 1828. Welcker, Stesichorus 
 in Kl. Sckr. (1829) I 148 ff. 
 
 TiMOTHEUS 
 
 Ed. princ. Wilamowitz, Timotheos, Die Perser, Leipzig, 1903. Gilder- 
 sleeve, in A. J. P., 1903. Mazon, Les Perses (trans.) in Revue de Philologie, 
 1903. Reinach, in Revue Musicale, 1903. 
 
 Collections and Anthologies 
 Bergk, Poetae Lyrici Graeci,\o\. 3,4th. ed., Leipzig, 1878-1882. Hartung, 
 Die Griech. Lyriier,wo\s. 5 and 6, Leipzig, 1855-1857. Farnell, Greek Lyric 
 Poetry, London, 1891. Buchholz, Anthologie aus den Lyrikern der Grie- 
 chen, vol. 2, 4th ed., revised by Sitzler, Leipzig, i89'<. Bergk-Hiller, Antholo- 
 gia Lyrica, Leipzig, 1904. Smyth, Greek Melic Poets, London, 1906. 
 
 Literature 
 Flach, Gesckichte d. Griech. Lyrik, Tubingen, 1884. Nageotte, Histoire 
 de la po'esie lyrique grecque, Paris, 1888-1889. See too the Histories of 
 Greek Literature by Berjjk , Croiset, Sittl, Christ, Mure, Mahaffy. Jebb, Greek 
 Classical Poetry, London, 1894. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE : THE EARLY PHILOSOPHERS 
 
 Not before the sixth century did the Greeks realize that prose 
 writing could be an affair of art. This moment could not come 
 until they had gradually awakened to a purely intellectual interest 
 in their past and the explanation of the world about them, ques- 
 tions of fact in which the imagination had no part. For the three 
 centuries or more that they had been familiar with the art of 
 writing, prose had been reserved for the practical side of life, for 
 lists of names useful for reference, records of the business of the 
 temples, commercial and political agreements, in- Early prose 
 scriptions, '■ genealogies, legal codes, nothing that could records 
 be called literature. In the same category fall those scraps of 
 prose in which the wisdom of the Seven Sages was crystallized, — 
 brief warnings against excess and insolence, uttered even by 
 tyrants such as Periander of Corinth, or Pittacus of Mitylene, 
 men whom "the roadway of excess" had led to "the palace of 
 wisdom." 
 
 The dawn of prose for the Greeks was closely connected with 
 the awakening of a rationalistic spirit. In the sixth century the 
 cult of Orphism, with its mystic interpretations of the religious 
 myths and the powerful attractions of its mysteries and initiations, 
 threatened to dominate the Greek imagination at the expense of 
 the Greek intellect. The Theogonies of the poets, the myths 
 with their account of the relations of gods and men, were the 
 
 ^ The earliest inscription so far recovered was written in the reign of 
 Psammetichus II (594-589 B.C.) when some Gireek mercenaries who were 
 marching with him against Ethiopia scratcherl their names, like any modern 
 tourist, on a colossal statue at Abu-Simbel in Upper Egypt, 
 
 143 
 
144 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 sources of popular knowledge and belief, and the influence of the 
 priests converted even recent history into myth that should be at 
 once instructive and profitable. Less than a century after the 
 death of Croesus, the story of his end had been adapted to illus- 
 trate how the gods intervene to save their servants ; the relation 
 of Croesus to Apollo is an essential feature of the Croesus myth 
 as we find it in Bacchylides and Herodotus in the fifth century. 
 The spirit of research awoke in the Greeks at the moment when 
 thinkers and skeptics were most needed to challenge this authority 
 of the poets and mystics, and the records of research are naturally 
 in prose. 
 
 Not that the distinction was at once absolute. The first prose 
 writer, though he ranks as a philosopher, was himself inclined to 
 wonder-working and mysticism, while Xenophanes, the first great 
 
 skeptic, wrote in verse. Pherecydes of Syros, in the 
 Pherecydes . f „ ' , . , , ., , . 
 
 middle of the sixth century, described m prose his 
 
 conception of the universe as a great garment on which God em- 
 broidered earth and the seas and the habitations of the seas. Only 
 a few words of Pherecydes survive, and he was probably a theo- 
 logian rather than a philosopher. If we speak first of the begin- 
 nings of philosophical prose, it is not from any certainty that the 
 first writer of historical prose was actually later in time. Greek 
 history and Greek philosophy arose together as manifestations of 
 the Ionian genius for research (ta-TopLrj). At first they were hardly 
 separable. Later, when those who speculated as to the origin of 
 the universe claimed the title of philosophers, ' lovers of knowl- 
 edge,' research, or ' history,' was reserved to describe the record 
 of past events. But the early philosophers were, in several cases, 
 poets, while we have no record of a historian writing verse. The 
 real break between poetry and prose must be counted to the 
 historians ; the philosophers are linked on to the poets by the 
 form if not by the spirit of their writings. 
 
 The lonians had already perfected and fixed the type of the 
 epic, and the Ionian elegy was spreading through Greece, when 
 there appeared in the wealthy and pleasure-loving society of the 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE 145 
 
 colonial cities the founders of European philosophy and science, 
 the Ionian philosophers. Miletus, the most brilliant and arrogant 
 of the coast cities, was the home of Thales <yflor. circa Thales 
 590 B.C.), one of the Seven Sages. The Milesians, of Miletus 
 curious and intelligent, admired the inventive genius of one who, 
 as Theophrastus said, ' seemed to have lost belief in the gods.' 
 It was the chief merit of this great, independent thinker that 
 he grasped the unity which underUes the changing universe. 
 ' Water,' he said, ' is the element, the first principle, of things.' 
 
 Of the writings of Thales there is no trace, and his fellow-citi- 
 zen and pupil, Anaximander, the contemporary of Anaxi- 
 Phocylides, is credited with the first philosophical mander 
 treatise in Greece, his book On Nature, of which only a phrase or 
 two survives. He called his first principle the ' indeterminate,' 
 undetermined, that is to say, by qualities. To be destroyed, to 
 be absorbed again into the indeterminate, he regarded as a pun- 
 ishment of the ' injustice,' the selfishness, of things that had 
 claimed individual life. Anaximenes, also of Miletus, Anaxim- 
 working along the same lines, called his first principle eoes , 
 ' air.' The activity of the Milesian school ended with the fall of 
 Miletus (494 B.C.), but Greek philosophy, for the two centuries 
 that preceded Socrates, was devoted to the solution of the Mile- 
 sian problem : What single principle underlies the variety of the 
 external world? How is the original substance transformed? 
 How account for being and becoming, birth and death? 
 
 Greece was to give to the world, in the course of three cen- 
 turies, every known type of philosopher. In the second half of 
 the sixth century, a citizen of Samos, Pythagoras, answered these 
 questions with a theory which sets him wholly apart Pythag- 
 from the natural philosophers of Miletus. He con- "ras 
 ceived a new, unifying .principle which should limit the ' indefi- 
 nite ' of Anaximander. This was number. Pythagoras saw every- 
 where in the external world numerical analogies; qualities were 
 for him simply quantities, numerical relations. He had the tem- 
 perament of a mystic, and on its religious side, with its mystic 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — lO 
 
146 SHORT HISTORY OF CIREEK LITERATURE 
 
 dpctrine and its (.heory of transmigration of the soul, his philoso- 
 phy was so closely allied to Orphism that he counts as a reac- 
 tionary. Apart from his theory of number, with which we are not 
 concerned, he stands out as the first great ascetic, a philosopher 
 who, having a distinct theory of life, imposed a certain rigid habit 
 on himself and his disciples. Samos under the rule of Polycrates 
 was no place for one whose life was a protest against luxury. 
 Pythagoras migrated to Croton in Italy {circa 530 B.C.) and there 
 his order flourished until his political sympathies — -he was a 
 violent oligarch — caused his unpopularity and finally his death, ' 
 which was followed by a general persecution of the Pythagoreans. 
 The sixth century closes with Xenophanes of Colophon, who 
 Xenoph- Stands there protesting against all the cherished ideals 
 anes of the lonians, their religious traditions, for which he 
 
 holds Hesiod and Homer to blame, their anthropomorphism, — 
 God is one, he said, and not like mortals, — their worship of ath- 
 letics, and the luxury that had made them the easy prey of the 
 invading Persians. After the Persian conquest of Ionia, he 
 migrated to Elea, a Phocaean colony in Italy. As the champion 
 of reason, Xenophanes was essentially a skeptic, but his philosophy 
 had its dogmatic side. In his book On Nature he taught that all 
 things are One, that nothing comes into being or perishes. This 
 was to be, later, the cardinal doctrine of the Eleatic school of 
 which Xenophanes is virtually the founder. About thirty frag- 
 ments of his poems survive, hexameters and elegiacs, enough to 
 prove that he was a true poet, though he used verse as a weapon 
 to attack poetic tradition. 
 
 Pythagoras had been an ascetic, but not a soUtary. The pride 
 
 of Heracleitus of Ephesus (flor. circa ^oo e.g.') 
 
 Heracleitus , . . ; ^ -^ ' 
 
 set him apart from ' the many,' whom he scorned. 
 
 His isolation was a protest against the pliancy of the lonians, and 
 
 he framed his theory of the universe in oracular prose, ' solemn, 
 
 unadorned, unsweetened,' hke the utterances of the Sibyl, hard for 
 
 the many to understand. Behind the veil of the external world 
 
 he saw, not the One, the unchanging principle of Xenophanes, but 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE 147 
 
 an ever living fire, kindled and quenched according to measure, 
 but devouring, restless, and, in the external world itself, only the 
 transformations of fire. All things are in motion, nothing remains. 
 You could not step tivice into the same river, for other and yet other 
 waters are ever flowing on {frag. 41-42). He could see nothing 
 stationary, nothing that should stem the ever flowing current; 
 apparent rest was only movement disguised, harmony the strife of 
 opposites. Heracleitus, as became one who held his doctrine of 
 the essential relativity of things, was a fierce pessimist, labeled by 
 tradition ' the weeping philosopher.' His writings, of which more 
 than a hundred fragments survive, were in prose, abrupt and ob- 
 scure,, in which each strong, harsh phrase sounds like the fragment 
 of an oracle or a parable. He was the first Greek writer to ex- 
 press his personality in his prose style. Heracleitus and the 
 temple of Artemis were the sole glories of Ephesus. Hence the 
 legend that he deposited his writings within that famous shrine. 
 
 Xenophanes, said Aristotle, looked into the broad heavens and 
 asserted that unity is God. His younger contemporary, Parmen- 
 
 IDES of Elea, envisaged the same doctrine with the 
 
 .... , , , . , , Parmenides 
 
 eyes, not of a religious reformer and ethical poet, but 
 
 of one who deals with a distinctly metaphysical conception. He 
 is the central figure of the Eleatic school, whose main contention 
 was the existence of ' Being,' the denial of ' Becoming.' Hera- 
 cleitus had refused to distinguish a world that is from a world 
 that becomes, and accepted only the latter. Parmenides was the 
 first philosopher to deny the truth of those sense perceptions on 
 whose evidence Heracleitus based his system. From all those 
 illusions of the senses, especially from the illusion of ' motion,' he 
 withdrew to contemplate only the cold abstraction ' Being,' com- 
 plete in itself, immobile, eternal, spherical in form. He discussed 
 the nature of being, and refuted the doctrine of flux, in a long 
 hexameter poem of which we have about 150 verses. His enthu- 
 siasm for the great new fact that the negative has no existence 
 transforms even the purely logical passages into a battle song of 
 truth. It is necessary to say and to think that Being is ; for thai 
 
148 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERAl'URE 
 
 Being is, is possible, but it is impossible that Not- Being is. This, 
 then I bid thee ponder. . . . Let not habit and long experience 
 force thee along this path, thine eye short-sighted, thine ear and 
 tongue con/used with noise, but Judge aright the proof that I speak 
 and they have fought so long (vv. 43-44. 54-57)- '^he disciples 
 Zeno and of Parmenides, Zeno of Elea and Melissus of Samos, 
 Melissus who maintained the tradition of the school that motion 
 is illusory, belong to the history of dialectic ; the scadity fragments 
 of their prose are of no importance for the history of literature. 
 
 The contemporaries and successors of Parmenides could either, 
 like Zeno a;nd Melissus, maintain and develop the Eleatic theory 
 of unchanging Being, or the Heracleitean doctrine that nothing is 
 permanent save change, or again they could make the effort to 
 reconcile these two great metaphysical systems. This last was 
 the course pursued by Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists. 
 They all accepted the theory that certain substances exist, un- 
 changeable in themselves, and, in their several ways, accounted 
 for change by the motion of these elements. Empedocles of 
 Agrigentum in Sicily, a Dorian, the first philosopher of 
 his race, was born in 492 B.C. He was the first to 
 whom an element meant, as it means to ourselves, something 
 homogeneous yet divisible, and liable to changing states. Motion 
 accounted for these changes. To create is to combine, to destroy 
 is to separate, the four elements, earth, air, fire, and water. What 
 then is the force that moves ? It is Love, answers Empedocles, 
 that unites them and makes them One, and then again they are 
 sundered by Strife (vv. 67-68). Lucretius, who modeled his own 
 great philosophical epic on the poem of Empedocles, said that 
 Sicily, with her long tale of glories and great men, had no son 
 more venerable or more renowned than Empedocles ; the greater 
 pity that, like the Ionian philosophers, he too was ' wrecked on 
 the first beginnings." Empedocles speaks like one inspired, his 
 verses cry with a loud voice, but his fall was the greater, laments 
 the Rotnan poet, for he denied the existence of a void. To the 
 
 1 De Natura Rerum I. 729 ff. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE 149 
 
 Sicilians Empedocles seemed a prophet rather than a philosopher, 
 as he went about among them working miracles, an immortal god, no 
 longer a mortal, crowned with fillets and garlands of flowers. Men 
 follow after me in thousands, asking the road to wealth, demanding 
 oracles, demanding cures (vv. 355 ff.). 
 
 No ordinary ending befitted one who had claimed that he 
 could control the weather, and lead out of Hades the spirits of 
 the dead. Empedocles is said to have leaped into the crater of 
 Etna, whence fate, to ridicule his pretensions, ' thrfew up his brazen 
 slippers.' Greece produced only two great philosophical poems. 
 The fragments of the hexameters of Empedocles set him far above 
 Parmenides as a poet. Aristotle, who had no great opinion of his 
 philosophy, and excluded him from his formal category of the 
 poets because his verse was didactic, could not deny his poetical 
 genius; he called him 'Homeric,' and admired his use of meta- 
 phor and his rhetorical gift.^ Some of the finest fragments pre- 
 served are from his book On Purifications, in which he shows the 
 influence of the Pythagoreans and Orphics. From them he de- 
 rived his belief in transmigration, his vegetarianism, and the mysti- 
 cism that clouded his speculations. 
 
 Anaxagoras of Clazoraenae, the last great Ionian philosopher, 
 wrote in the Ionic dialect his book On Nature, of which a few 
 fragments are extant. For thirty years he lived in 
 Athens as the friend and adviser of Pericles. But the 
 Athenians, never very friendly to physical speculations, expelled 
 Anaxagoras on a charge of impiety in 434 B.C. He retired to 
 Lampsacus and died there. Like all philosophers after Parmeni- 
 des, he denied the possibility of creation and destruction. Writ- 
 ing somewhat later than Empedocles, and decidedly under his 
 influence, Anaxagoras solved the problem of ' becoming ' in a way 
 all his own. Instead of the four elements of Empedocles, he con- 
 ceived of countless substances, seeds, or germs, of things, all to- 
 gether, till Mind or ' Nous ' set them in order. Mind alone is infi- 
 nite, self-powerful, mixed with nothing. It was Mind that set going 
 1 Diog. Laert. 8. 57. 
 
I go SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the blind mechanical movement which, by separating all things 
 that are, gave them a distinct existence. This idea of an inde- 
 pendent, efficient cause, freed from the mythology that had ham- 
 pered Empedocles, — for Mind is itse;f only a finer substance, — 
 was the chief contribution of Anaxagoras. His clear, impersonal, 
 unimpassioned prose was the expression of a mind more truly 
 scientific, more detached from ethical and political interests, than 
 had been the case with his predecessors. Anaxagoras is the type 
 of the contemplative philosopher.^ 
 
 Of all the solutions that were proposed by the Greek philoso- 
 phers for the problem of ' being ' and ' becoming,' that of the 
 Atomists is most nearly related to modern physical theories. 
 Abdera, an Ionian colony on the Thracian coast opposite Thasos, 
 
 was the birthplace of Democritus, who is the true rep- 
 Bemocritus ,.,..,„, , ^ i 
 
 resentative of the Atomic Theory among the (jreeks, 
 
 though his master, Leucippus, who seems to have left no writings, 
 is regarded by Aristotle and Theophrastus as the real founder of 
 the. system. The Eleatics had denied the existence of a vacuum, 
 and therefore of movement. Tiie Atomists declared that, since 
 there is movement, there must be a vacuum. In truth, said Democ- 
 ritus, there are only atojns and a z'oid ; it is only by a convention 
 that one speaks of sweet and bitter. There is no objective truth 
 in sense perception ; qualitative differences arise from the num- 
 ber and variations of the atoms, which are of infinite variety of 
 size and shape. The theories of Democritus, from which the 
 modern Atomic Theory has directly descended, had little vogue 
 in Greece and were altogether ignored by Plato. / came to Athens 
 and no man knew me, says Democritus, resenting the indifference 
 
 ' Wilamnwitz, HerakUs i. 25, thinks that it was as a tribute to Anaxagoras, 
 and perhaps as an apologia for the exiled philosopher, that Euripides wrote 
 his famous lines: Happy the man who has acquired knowledge and under- 
 standing thereof, who does not set his heart on wronging his fellow-men, nor on 
 unjust deeds. He fixes his gaze on the ageless order of immortal nature, ani 
 asks where it arose, and whence ami how {fr. 902). That he did not goon 
 to ask why the world was made, and seek a final as well as an efficient cause, 
 was the ground of Plato's reproach against Anaxagoras {Phaedo 97). 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE 151 
 
 of Athens, the ' school of Hellas,' U> the ideas of one who, as he 
 boasted, had traveled, and investigated, and talked, more than 
 any other man of his time. He was one who, as Afistotle said, 
 ' had thought about everything,' and the loss of his works, which 
 seems to have occurred somewhere between the third and fifth 
 Christian centuries, is a serious hindrance to the study of Greek 
 philosophy and literature. The numerous but short fragments 
 that survive in quotation are naturally taken from the sententious 
 passages suitable for such treatment and, no doubt, give a one- 
 sided idea of his style. He wrote in the Ionian dialect on physics, 
 mathematics, ethics, and poetry. Cicero more than once admjres 
 the brilliance of his style, and Dionysius ' classes him as a writer 
 with Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Collections. MuUach, Fragmenta philosophorum graecorum I, Paris, 
 1881. Ritter and Preller, Historia Philosophiae graecae, 7th ed., i888. Diels, 
 Doxographi graed, Berlin, 1 879. Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece, 
 text and Eng. trans., New York, 1898. Diels, Poetarum philosophorum frag- 
 menta, Berlin, 1901. Diels, Die fragmente der Vorsokratiker, with German 
 trans., Berlin, 1 903. 
 
 II. Special Editions. Bywatd?, Heracliti Ephesii reliquiae, Oxford, 
 1877. Translation of By water's text : Patrick, Baltimore, 1889. Diels, A^<!?-a- 
 cleitus, Berlin, 1902. Xenophanes in Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graec. 2. Stein, Die 
 fragmente des Parmenides in Symbola Philolog. Bonnens., 1867. Diels, Par- 
 nienides, 1897. Karsten, Empedoclis carm. reliquiae, Amsterdam, 1838. 
 Stein, Emped.fragg., ISonn, 1852. Diels, Empedocles, Berlin, 1901. MuUach, 
 Democriti Abd. op. fragmenta, Berlin, 1 843. 
 
 III. Literature. Zeller, Phiiosophie der Griechen I, Berlin, 1876-1883. 
 Ritter and Preller (see under I). Windelband, Geschichte der alten Philoso- 
 phic, Strasburg, 1893. Burnet, Farly Greek Philosophers, with trans., London, 
 1892. Benn, The Greek Philosophers, London, 1883. Gomperz, Griechische 
 Denker, Leipzig, 1896-1902 (Eng. trans, by Magnus and Berry, London, 
 1901-1905). On Heracleitus, Brieger in Hermes 39, and in Neue Jahrb. 1904. 
 Lassalle, Die Phiiosophie Herakleitos des Dunkeln, 1858. Brieger, Leucipp 
 u. Demokrit, Hnll-, 1884. Natorp, Die Ethika des Demokritos,l%^-i. Hirzel 
 in Hermes 14. Norden, Die Griechische Kunstprosa I 22, on the style 0' 
 
 Democritus. 
 
 1 On the Arrangement of Words 24. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE LOGOGRAPHERS : HERODOTUS 
 
 In the fragments of the early Greek philosophers we have the 
 beginnings of dogmatic and argumentative prose. The logog- 
 raphers, as their name implies, wrote prose tales. It was about 
 Cadmus and the middle of the sixth century that Cadmus of Mile- 
 Acusilaus tus, and Acusilaus, the Boeotian from whom Pindar is 
 said to have borrowed legends, wrote their Genealogies, versions 
 in Ionic prose of the myths of the poets,^ set out with some 
 attempt at chronological order, and having this at least in com- 
 mon with history, that their aim was to link Ihe past with the 
 present, in however uncritical a fashion. Before the common in- 
 terest of the Persian wars centralized the political life of Greece, 
 there was no such thing as political history. Even 
 Hecataeus of MWtXvsJ^floruit 500 B.C.), who alone of 
 all his tribe speaks to us with a living voice, is still a logographer, 
 not a historian. He was a much-traveled man, a fact that, in 
 those days, was a guarantee of distinction and influence. When, 
 in 499 B.C., Aristagoras of Miletus persuaded the Asiatic Greeks 
 to revolt against the Persians, Hecataeus, who had seen with his 
 own eyes the resources of Persia, warned him from the under- 
 taking. Later, when Aristagoras had failed, Hecataeus again 
 offered good advice, which was again ignored. A direct conse- 
 quence of this revolt was the sack of Miletus in 494 B.C. In the 
 first sentences of his Genealogies, in that personal announcement 
 which has replaced the poet's invocation to the Muse, Hecataeus 
 shows that he was not untouched by the enlightenment of which 
 
 ' Acusilaus is said to have made a prose version of Hesiod's poems, supple- 
 mented, no doubt, by additions of his own. 
 
 152 
 
THE LOGOGRAPHERS : HERODOTUS 153 
 
 Xenophanes was, at that time, the most insistent champion. Hec- 
 ataeus of Miletus thus speaks. I write as I think true, for the 
 traditions of the Greeks seem to me manifold and laughable (/''. 332). 
 The fragment is a good example of the ' disconnected,' or non- 
 periodic style employed by the earlier prose writers, including 
 Herodotus himself. Hecataeus told the tale of his travels in his 
 Tour of the World, for which he made a map which surpassed 
 Anaximander's. It was from this account of the wonders of 
 Europe and Asia that Herodotus, who was jealous of the other's 
 wider travels and great reputation, copied some of his traveler's 
 tales. The imitation was the more flattering to Hecataeus in 
 that Herodotus, who prided himself on his critical spirit, slavishly 
 reproduced the other's errors as novelties of his own, as, for ex- 
 ample, the description of the habits of the phoenix and the croco- 
 dile. Hecataeus wrote ' pure ' Ionic, affected very slightly, if at 
 all, by literary influences. Several of the surviving fragments can 
 be identified as the originals of certain passages in Herodotus.^ 
 
 Among the later logographers who lived during and after the 
 Persian wars, Charon of Lampsacus wrote the annals of his town, 
 and books on Persia and Greece. Xanthus of Lydia (465-425 
 B.C.) wrote the story of Lydia, including the fall of Sardis. We 
 have a few insignificant remains of both these writers. 
 
 Hellanicus of Lesbos flourished during the Peloponnesian war, 
 and was alive as late as the battle of Arginusae (406 
 B.C.), which he mentions. He was a most industrious 
 writer, covering so much ground with his travels and his account 
 of the Greek states and of Asia, that in spite of the criticisms of 
 Thucydides,^ who reproaches him with dullness and inaccuracy, he 
 ranks next to Hecataeus in the group of logographers. What 
 separates him from them in one important respect is the fact that 
 he dealt with contemporary events, as well as legendary history. 
 His Atthis brought down the history of Attica as late as the Pelopon- 
 nesian war. It is not easy to judge of his style from the fragments 
 in Miiller's collection, which are, as a rule, rather paraphrases than 
 1 See Diels in Hermes 22. ^ I. 97. 
 
154 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 direct quotations. No use of Hellanicus by Herodotus can be 
 
 detected. 
 
 Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the first historian of Greece, was 
 
 born durinsf the decade that separated Marathon from 
 Herodotus _, , . , , , 
 
 Salamis (490-480 B.C.). Hahcarnassus, the capital of 
 
 Caria, though originally a Dorian colony, was, by that time, wholly 
 Asiatic in its interests. Its famous queen, Artemisia, as the suze- 
 rain of Persia, had fought with her five ships on the side of Xerxes 
 at Salamis. Her grandson Lygdamis was reigning when Herodo- 
 tus left his native city, perhaps, as the tradition relates, on ac- 
 count of some political embroilment from which he fled to Samos,' 
 or, more probably, following his instinct for travel and adventure. 
 Herodotus has nothing to say about the internal troubles of Hali- 
 carnassus, or the murder of his kinsman, the epic poet Panyasis, 
 at the hands of Lygdamis, and, in fact, for all the incidents o*" his 
 life we are reduced to late and untrustworthy evidence. It was 
 natural, at any rate, that, as the climax of his travels in the East, 
 he should settle for a time in Athens, then, in the 
 middle of the fifth century, the center of Greek liter- 
 ary and political life. From Athens, where Sophocles wrote a poem 
 in his honor and the citizens voted him ten talents, — the sum is 
 so large that it shakes one's credulity in the legend, — Herodotus 
 went with the colony of Athenians sent by Pericles to found Thurii 
 in Italy (443 B.C.). With that colonial settlement he became so 
 ideiuified that Aristotle, quoting from his history, makes him call 
 himself the ' Thurian,' though in all our manuscripts he is ' of Hali- 
 carnassus.' We do not know the year of his death, only that he 
 was still living in 428, a man of less than sixty, but at the close of 
 his career. 
 
 Halicarnassus had been the natural starting point of those travels 
 in Asia Minor and the interior of Western Asia in the course of 
 which he reached as far as Babylon. In Egypt he claimed to have 
 
 ^ Herodotus displays an acquaintance with Samos so intimate that, thougb 
 the tradition of his Samian exile is untrustworthy, we may be sure that he 
 made a long stay in the island. 
 
THE LOGOGRAl'HKRS: HERODOTUS 155 
 
 visited Elephantine, opposite Assuan, and farther north was familiar 
 with the coast of the Euxine as far as remote Colchis. 
 Greece and the islands he knew well ; Magna Graecia 
 was for many years his home. To all these excursions he' 
 brought a singularly receptive mind, an appropriating eye, and a 
 lively imagination fostered by a close acquaintance with the lyric 
 and epic poetry of Greece, and tempered by the very slightest 
 critical faculty. The instincts of the logographer and the geogra- 
 pher were still struggling with the new interest in the sequence of 
 actual historical facts. The historian in him triumphed, and in- 
 stead of writing the half mythical annals of his native city or a 
 mere record of the many men whose towns he saw and whose 
 minds he very imperfectly came to know, he chose as his main 
 theme the story of the Graeco-Persian wars, the second great en- 
 counter of the East and West. 
 
 Like Pindar, though his native city went with the invaders, 
 Herodotus wrote in the spirit of a true Hellene. A logographer 
 would have lingered over the poetical myths of the first collisions of 
 Greeks and barbarians. Herodotus dismisses these in a few para- 
 graphs ' and passes on to consider the rise of the kingdom of Lydia, 
 and the striking tale of the greatness of Croesus and his fall, with 
 the fall of Sardis, events only a century old. The alliance of Croe- 
 sus with the Spartans was an opening for the account of the early 
 history of Athens and Sparta, the legislation of Lycurgus and 
 Solon, and the tyranny of the house of the Peisistratidae. Croesus 
 was overthrown by Cyrus. And now we have the story 
 of the rise of the Persian empire, the exploits of Cyrus, 
 and the absorption by Persia of the cities of Ionia. This was so 
 thorough that Cambyses, the son of Cyrus, could regard the 
 lonians and Aeolians as his ' slaves by inheritance.' 
 Book 2 opens with the expedition of Cambyses 
 against Egypt. Herodotus is less concerned with its fortunes than 
 
 1 Aristophanes, Acharn. 488-494, parodies the first five brief chapters, ridi- 
 culing the earlier international quarrels which were regularly based on the 
 carrying off of some woman, lo, Medea, or Helen. 
 
156 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK. LITERATURE 
 
 with the recital of all the marvelous tales that he had collected in 
 that strange and ancient land, its superstitions, temples, and gods, 
 its curious animals, and, above all, that great and mysterious river, 
 the Nile, on which its life depends. Book 3 con- 
 tains the account of the madness and death of Cam- 
 byses and the accession of Darius, son of Hystaspes, called by his 
 people ' the trader,' because ' he made profit of everything,' and 
 imposed the heavy tribute which was the source of the vast royal 
 treasure of Persia. Darius reconquered Babylon and demolished 
 its walls. A description of Scythia and its invasion 
 by Darius takes up the greater part of Book 4, which 
 closes with an account of the Persian invasion of Libya, of the 
 foundation of Cyrene by Battus, and of the curious customs of the 
 Libyan nomadic tribes. The Persian conquests of Thrace and 
 Macedonia, at the opening of Book 5, form a prelude 
 to the revolt of Miletus and the fall of that city in 
 494 B.C. And so we are brought back at last by a wide circle to 
 Athens and Sparta, and the causes that, about this time, em- 
 broiled them, first with their Greek neighbors and with each 
 other, and finally with Persia. Athens, persuaded by Aristagoras 
 of Miletus, became involved in the revolt of Ionia against Darius. 
 The Persian king thought less, for the moment, of the lonians, 
 whom the Persians could always punish at their leisure, than of 
 his vengeance on the few Greeks who were still free, and who had 
 ventured to side with his ' hereditary slaves.' 
 
 Herodotus had now set before his readers the condition of Asia 
 and Ionia under the predominance of Persia, and of the chief 
 states of Greece. From this point to the end, with certain digres- 
 sions, he devotes himself to a minute and dramatic account of the 
 struggle between Greece and Persia. The counter invasion by the 
 Athenians, when they took Sestos in 478 B.C., he rightly regards as 
 the real close of the war, and, with that, his history ends. 
 
 When, and where, and in what order, Herodotus wrote his 
 history are matters of ingenious conjecture, depending wholly on 
 the internal evidence of the work. If the Athenian vote followed 
 
THE LOGOGRAPHERS : HERODOTUS 157 
 
 on a public reading of his book, he must have given his audience 
 only a selection from an unfinished composition. For one thing 
 seems fairly certain ; it was during the last two decades of his life 
 that Herodotus completed his history and gave it a revision that 
 was apparently not meant to be final, since he refers to passages 
 not included in the present version. In the last four Books he 
 mentions certain incidents connected with the Peloponnesian war, 
 which, from 431 B.C., whether at Thurii or Athens, must have been 
 the dominant interest, a present anxiety before which even Mara- 
 thon and Salamis fell into the background. 
 
 The analysis of Kirchhoff^ shows us, even to a chapter, what 
 portions, observing the present order, were written at Athens, at 
 Thurii, and again at Athens on a second visit for which we have 
 no evidence. Kirchhoff's theory rests mainly on the 
 knowledge of Athens displayed in the earlier Books, tj,"' " * 
 the appearance of an interest in Magna Graecia after 
 the first half of the third Book, and the fact that recent events are 
 reserved to the last five Books. But he has adduced nothing that 
 cannot be met by those who maintain that Herodotus worked over 
 his history to the last, expanding and inserting as he gathered fresh 
 evidence, so that we cannot say of any part that he so conceived it 
 and so wrote it down. The question hardly affects our appreciation 
 of the work as we have it. What we have to consider is, rather, how 
 Herodotus collected his material, how he has worked it into a liter- 
 ary whole, why it is that Hecataeus and Hellanicus and the rest 
 ' flit Hke shadows,' while he alone breathed a soul into his work. 
 
 Herodotus classified his material as derived from what he saw 
 with his own eyes, what he heard from others, and the conclusions 
 of his own intelligence.^ / must tell the tale as it was told to me, 
 he says, applying the remark to his whole history, but I am not 
 bound to believe it all? When there were several different versions 
 of the same tale, he chose the one that seemed to him the most 
 probable; he occasionally gives a rationalistic explanation of a 
 
 1 Die Entstehungszeit des Herodotischen. Geschichtswerkes, Berlin, 1878. 
 •■' 2. 99. - ^ 7. 152, 
 
iS8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 tradition that seems contrary to nature, as when he asserts that the 
 oracular doves who spoke with a human voice were really women, 
 chattering, like birds, an unknown tongue, and that the man who 
 was said to have swum under the sea the eighty stadia from 
 Aphetae to Artemisium really arrived in a boat. His imagination, 
 rather than his common sense, rejects these isolated prodigies 
 which neither adorn a tale nor illustrate the jealousy of the gods. 
 But he plainly thought that, in the remoter past, when the rela- 
 tions of men and gods were closer, anything might have happened, 
 and he would not deny the intervention of heaven in events so 
 recent as the fall of Croesus, or of Polycrates, whose too great 
 prosperity doomed him to an evil end. On his travels in Egypt 
 and to the confines of Persia, he was handicapped by his ignorance 
 of the language, and must depend on the gossip of guides, temple 
 servants, and inferior priests who knew enough Greek to impose 
 their wonderful tales on a credulous tourist.' 
 
 Credulous he was, and pardonably vain of his travels, but the 
 question of good faith is somewhat beside the mark. There are 
 persons, and Herodotus was one of these, whose exaggerations, 
 however outrageous, are the result of instinct and not of calcula- 
 tion. The discrepancies and inaccuracies of fact in Herodotus 
 are, probably, no more a conscious fraud than are his frequent 
 mistakes in addition.^ 
 
 1 Professor Sayce, who holds extreme views as to the bad faith of Herodo- 
 tus, and is his severest critic since the /'^a^/o-Plutarch, refuses to believe 
 that the historian ascended the Nile higher than the Fayoflm ; the visits to 
 Assyria and Babylonia were, he thinks, wholly imaginary ; and Herodotus 
 was an impostor who has deceived generations of critics. See the Introduc- 
 tion to his edition of Books 1-3 (1883). 
 
 ^ For examples of these, see 3. 90-95 ; 5. 52-54 ; and especially 2. 7-9, 
 where, in calculating the distance from the sea to Egyptian Thebes, he gives 
 6120 as the sum of 1500 and 4860, a pardonable error when one considers 
 how cumbrous and imperfect was the Greek number system. The letters of 
 the alphabet, which, like the Romans, they used as numbers, had a fixed, and 
 not a local value as have the numbers in our system. Accuracy about dates 
 was never a virtue of the Greeks. It was not till the third century B.C. that 
 they adopted the reckoning by Olympiads. 
 
THE LOGOGRAraERS: HERODOTUS 159 
 
 Herodotus was not, of course, without documents. For the 
 history of the Greek world he could use the poets, the lists of 
 priests, kings, and victors in the games, and the votary inscriptions 
 at the famous shrines. It is not easy to trace his indebtedness to 
 the logographers. There is no proof, for instance, that he used 
 Hellanicus, whose work on the history of Attica was apparently 
 published before his own. Few writers who are explorers as well, 
 have had so little chance of plagiarizing the books of other travel- 
 ers. The Tour of the World by Hecataeus he could, how- 
 ever, consult ; and when he found there a picturesque description, 
 he did not hesitate to make it his own. He is justified by the 
 event. Hecataeus, from whom he stole, together with Ctesias, the 
 physician of Artaxerxes, who exposed his ignorance of Persia in a 
 scathing review, hardly survive in men's memories, except in 
 connection with Herodotus. 
 
 Thucydides, a little later, was to prove himself a scientific his- 
 torian by fixing his eyes on those actions and events that affected 
 the life of a nation. But, to Herodotus, as he walked in the streets 
 of Memphis, or gleaned in Samos every detail of the tragic story 
 of Polycrates, nothing seemed unimportant that threw a light on 
 the private passions and caprices of men. He preferred to dwell 
 with especial emphasis on the tragedies that, to his mind, must 
 always follow when a man has overstepped the limits set for human 
 happiness. The certain vengeance of the gods on the unper- 
 mitted insolence of men like Xerxes was always recognized by the 
 Greeks. With Herodotus it became a fixed idea, darkening his 
 philosophy of life. Aeschylus, with whose tragedies he must have 
 
 been familiar, taught the law of the hereditary curse 
 
 If smssis 
 through which the children's teeth are set on edge for 
 
 sins generations old. But the Nemesis of Herodotus lies in wait 
 
 to put down the mighty from their seat out of mere intolerance of 
 
 success. Only the mean or chequered estate is secure. With 
 
 Horace (^Od. 2. 10), the doctrine has fallen to a commonplace. 
 
 But Herodotus lived in a world which was still learning from the 
 
 fall of kings and empires that 
 
i6o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 " the best way to escape His ire 
 Is, not to seem too happy." 
 
 As the wrath of Achilles gave unity to the Iliad, so the story of 
 the humbling of Persian influence holds together the nine Books 
 of the History of Herodotus. The Persians, Athenians, and Spar- 
 tans stand out as the three chief actors. But He- 
 Unity 
 
 rodotus had the epic cast of mind. His first thought 
 
 was to entertain his readers, not to convey a political lesson. He 
 was the last man to walk, like Thucydides, along the main road to 
 his goal. He had explored all the fascinating byways, and was 
 eager to share the curious observations with which he had been so 
 greatly diverted. Episodes were his opportunity, and at least half 
 tV-e work is devoted to digressions, which, as Dionysius of Halicar- 
 nassuo said,^ give his tale the charm of variety, the Ionian breadth 
 and warmth of the epic. 
 
 The influence of the epic is clearly seen in the manner of the 
 
 speeches, which are one of the chief ornaments of his history. 
 
 The words in which Croesus warns Cyrus that there is a wheel of 
 
 human fortune revolving forever, so that no man can be always 
 
 The fortunate, might have been uttered by Nestor. 
 
 speeches -phey would have been equally appropriate on 
 the lips of the Teiresias of Sophocles. For Herodotus could not 
 fail to be influenced by what was then the predominant, as it 
 was the newest, literary type. His characters often borrow the 
 tones of the drama, and utter pathetic or tragic comments that 
 would be admirable on the stage. When Cyrus, in spite of the 
 warning of Croesus, has actually fallen into the pit of fortune's 
 wheel, Tomyris, the barbarian princess "of the Massagetae, insult- 
 ing his corpse, cries out like a tragic heroine in her fierce grief: 
 I live and have conquered thee in battle, yet thou hath destroyed me, 
 since thou hast deceived and slain my son. Thus then I make good 
 my threat and give thee thy fill of blood? 
 
 Athens had deeply influenced the views and temper of Herodo- 
 
 ' To C. Pompeius 771, ''■ i. 214. 
 
THE LOGOGRAPHERS : HERODOTUS i6i 
 
 tus. The Persian nobles who discourse on the blessings of dem- 
 ocracy in the third Book reflect the impressions of the historian 
 who saw the triumph of democratic government in the Athens 
 of Pericles. His panegyric must have flattered the pride of the 
 Athenians, and may partly account, as Wilamowitz suggests,' 
 for the extravagant reward paid to him by a vote of the people. 
 In that debate of the Persian nobles, so like a sophistic common- 
 place, we may trace the influence of the study of rhetoric which 
 was making its way at Athens, though nearly twenty years were to 
 pass before the visit of Gorgias the Sicilian (in 427 B.C.) made 
 the devices of rhetoric seem an essential part of Athenian edu- 
 cation. Herodotus, it is true, wrote in the coordinated style 
 of conversation, as opposed to the periodic style of 
 Thucydides, and equally removed in its easy flow from 
 the curt and abrupt manner of the logographer. But he shows 
 the influence of the rhetoricians in his use of antithesis and in his 
 study of effects of sound, secured by the similar endings of words, 
 according to the favorite device of the sophists. 
 
 He tells us that in his day there were as many as four dialects 
 in use in Ionia. In spite of its Doric traditions, Ionic was certainly 
 the language of Halicarnassus, as is proved by two inscriptions 
 discovered by Newton. There are in Herodotus very few traces 
 of Doric, and those only in proper names. He wrote 
 the New Ionic, variegated by a vocabulary drawn in 
 part from the epic and from the lyric poets, whom he knew 
 well.^ The division of the History into nine Books is due to the 
 Alexandrians. 
 
 •Among the writers of Ionic prose there was one, a younger con- 
 temporary of Herodotus, whose name has a scientific rather than 
 a literary interest. Aristotle called him ' the Great ' ; he was un- 
 doubtedly one of the foremost of Greek thinkers, and he can no more 
 be omitted than Aristotle himself from a general survey of Greek 
 
 1 Hermes 12. 
 
 * A good instance of his close knowledge of lyric poetry is the curious echo 
 of Alcaeus (^fr. 33) in 7. 117. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — II 
 
i62 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 literature. Hippocrates of Cos, the Father of Medicine, was born 
 
 about 460 B.C. He was a great traveler, and, like 
 Hippocrates , . ^ , ■ , r , ■ ,-r 
 
 other famous men of his day, spent part of his life 
 
 in Athens. There is a tradition that he went to Abdera, on a pro- 
 fessional visit to Democritus, whose fellow-citizens suspected his 
 sanity and were reassured by this great specialist. Wherever 
 named, by Plato or others, Hippocrates is always treated with 
 profound respect. One of his aphorisms, I,t/e is short, art is long, 
 which has passed into a proverb, shows the spirit of the man, who 
 was no charlatan himself, but an honest and laborious student, the 
 enemy of quackery and ostentation. He lived as late as the 
 middle of the fourth century, and is said to have died at Larissa. 
 At Cos he founded a school of medicine, whose center was the 
 temple of Asclepius, and there, under the Ptolemies, was still 
 flourishing a scientific school of medicine unrivaled in Greece. 
 Hippocrates himself was an Asclepiad, one of a medical caste. 
 Under his name have come down to us over seventy writings on 
 medical subjects, which form a Hippocratic corpus. Of no part 
 of it can we say with absolute certainty that it is from the hand 
 of the great physician, but it represents the tradition of his school 
 and his immediate followers. These treatises are written in literary 
 Ionic. The dialect of his native Cos was Doric, but it was natural 
 that Hippocrates should 'rise above his colonial antecedents and 
 use that Ionic dialect which, until Athens imposed her own speech 
 on prose writers, was the conventional instrument of didactic 
 prose. Here, then, we have a monument of fifth and fourth 
 century Ionic. The style shows no trace of the influence of Gor- 
 gianic rhetoric, and is as little hterary in manner as the works of 
 Aristotle. The treatises were, in fact, composed for members of 
 the medical profession, rather than for the general public. Their 
 writers were well read in the early Greek philosophers, especially 
 Heracleitus and Empedocles, but, on the whole, they display a 
 reactionary tendency against the sixth-century philosophers, a 
 more sincere effort at scientific method and the critical spirit than 
 was shown by the earlier physicists, whose doctrines they regard as 
 
THE LOGOGRAPHERS: HERODOTUS 163 
 
 arbitrary and one-sided. One treatise, On the Art, stands out 
 among the rest as addressed to the lay reader. It is an apology 
 for the art of medicine, a pleading in the sophistic manner, and 
 perhaps represents, not so much a branch of medical literature, 
 as a type of treatise referred to by Plato in the Sophist} when he 
 says that every art and profession has its handbooks, written for 
 the popular reader. Gomperz even conjectures that the tract, 
 which has come down under the name of Hippocrates, was com- 
 posed by none other than Protagoras himself, the most distinguished 
 of all the sophists (p. 167). 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHT 
 
 The LOOOGRAI'HERS 
 
 Creazer, Hecataei Miles, fragmenta, Heidelberg, 1806. Klausen, Hecat. 
 Mil, /ragmentiif'R&rXm, 1831. yivi^Xet, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, 
 Paris, 1840-1870. Hollander, De Hecat. Mil. descriptione tei-rae,'Koim, 1861. 
 Ditlb in Hermes II. Gilmore, The Fragments of the Persika of Ctesias, 
 Lundon, 1892. 
 
 Herodotus 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Of the thirty known manuscripts the best are the Medi- 
 ceus, Venice, loth cent.; Angelicanus, Rome, nth cent.; Vaticanus, 14th 
 cent. There are very few scholia. 
 
 II. Editions. .£^. /rjKir., Aldus, Venice, 1502. Jungermann, Frankfort, 
 1608. Valckenaer, Amsterdam, 1763. Schweighaeuser, Paris, 1816. Gais- 
 ford, Oxford, 1824-1826. Bekker, Berlin, 1845. Blakesley, Oxford, 1854. 
 Baehr, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1856. Dindorf, Paris, 1862. Abicht, Leipzig, 1875. 
 Dietsch-Kallenberg, Leipzig, 1885. Holder, Leipzig, 1 886-1 888. Sayce, Bks. 
 1-3, London, 1883. Stein, Berlin, 5lh ed., 1887-1901. Tournier-Des- 
 rousseaux, Paris, 1891. Macan, Bks. 4-9, 2 vols., London, 1896. 
 
 III. Literature. Bredow,/?^ <2Va/«('o /%)-<;<2'., Leipzig, 1846. Kirchhoff, 
 Ueber die Enlstehungszeit des herod. Geschichtsiaerkes, Berlin, 1878. Bauer, 
 Die Enstehungszeit des herod. C«f;4., Vienna, 1878. Bachof, Quaestiuncula 
 Herodotea, Eisenach, i88o. Gomperz, Herodo/eische Stiidieit, Vienna, 1883. 
 Panofsky, Quaestiones de Hist. Herod, fontibus, Berlin, 1885. Gutschmid in 
 Gott. Gel. Am., 18S5. Delbrflck, Die Perserkriege, Berlin, 1887. Kleber, Die 
 Rhetorik hi Herod., Lowenberg, 1889. Hauvette, Herodote historien des 
 
 1 332 D. 
 
i64 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 guerres mediques, Paris, 1894. Maass in Hermes 22. Gomperz, Herodote t 
 Sopkocle in Melanges Weil, Paris, 1898. Griffiths, Stories of the High Priests 
 of Memphis, 1900. Revillout, Herodote et les oracles Egypt, in h'ev. Egyptol., 
 19CX). Grundy, The Great Persian War, Lontlon, 1901. Smyth, Ionic, Ox- 
 ford, 1894. Hoffmann, Der lonische Dialekt, Gottingen, 1898. 
 
 IV. Translations. Gary, Oxford, 1847. Rawlinson, with useful notes 
 and appendices, Oxford, 1858. Macaulay, London, 1890. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Schweighaeuser, London, 1830. 
 
 Hippocrates 
 Of the numerous manuscripts the best is Parisinus (2253), loth cent. Ed. 
 princ, Aldus, Venice, 1526. Kiihn, Medicorum Grace, opera omnia, Leipzig, 
 1821-1830. Littre, Paris, 10 vols, 1839-1861. Hippocratis opera omnia, 
 Ilberg, Diels, and Weber, Leipzig, vol. I, 1894; vol. II by Kilhlewein, Leip- 
 zig, 1902. Gomperz in Wiener Sitzb., 1890, and in Greek Thinkers I 282 ff., 
 Nevir York (trans.), 190 1. Costomiris in Rev. des &iudes grecques, 1889, 
 Schone in Rhein. Mus. 58, 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC: THE SOPHISTS 
 
 Western Greece, where, as we shall see later, Greek comedy 
 was first developed, was the birthplace of formal rhetoric. Among 
 all the divisions of the Greek race there was no people so akin in 
 temperament to the Athenians as the acute and witty Sicilians, 
 never at a loss for a repartee or a bon mot. They were half a cen- 
 tury behind Athens in getting rid of their tyrants, but by 466 B.C. 
 Syracuse was in the hands of a democracy, and now for the 
 next fifty years the republics of Sicily were to prosper. In the 
 early years of their freedom the Sicilians displayed a passion for 
 going to law and an inborn talent for debate that Athens alone 
 could surpass. It was to meet these new conditions of democratic 
 life that there arose in Syracuse two teachers of the art of rhetoric, 
 CoRAX and his more famous pupil TisiAS. Their Coraxand 
 reputation for subtlety and captiousness is enshrined Tisias 
 in an anecdote of a suit brought by the older man against Tisias 
 to recover his professional fee. This was one of those situations 
 which Plato regarded as a humorous paradox in the case of the 
 sophists. It was illogical, he said, that men who professed to 
 teach the virtues should prosecute their own pupils for fraud.^ 
 The defense of Tisias showed his training : Either you have taught 
 me the art of persuasion as you undertook, in which case let me 
 persuade you not to take a fee ; or you have failed to teach me, in 
 which case J owe you nothing. The retort of Corax, on the same 
 lines, was a fresh dilemma. Their rhetoric had a practical aim, to 
 provide the means of expert speech essential to success in the 
 courts, and they wrote the first manual or ' Art ' of rhetoric (riyyi). 
 1 Gorgias 519 c. 
 .65 
 
i66 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Tisias went to Thurii and there taught Lysias, the Attic orator. 
 From Thurii rhetoric traveled, in the iatter half of the fifth cen- 
 tury, to Athens. Tisias himself, according to tradition, lived for 
 a time in Athens and taught the young Isocrates. The favorite 
 weapon of Sicilian rhetoric, the appeal to ' the probable,' which, 
 if one employed it skillfully, armed one against either side of the 
 question or accusation, is used to excess by the orator Antiphon 
 in his speech on The Murder of Herodes, written at Athens 
 about 420 B.C. 
 
 For about a generation before the advent of this Sicilian influ- 
 ence another set of teachers had been educating the Athenians. 
 These were the sophists, compared with whose many-sidedness 
 Corax and Tisias must have seemed narrow specialists. The 
 sophists were the professors of the New Education at Athens, and 
 they are regularly condemned and defended, admired and despised, 
 in a group. The Greeks of the fifth and fourth centuries appHed 
 the name ' sophist ' to all who gave instruction in those subjects 
 which only the rich could afford, in that higher education dis- 
 trusted by the mass of the people as newfangled, but eagerly 
 pursued by every ambitious young Athenian. Protagoras of Ab- 
 dera was a sophist because he taught the art of being successful in 
 politics ; Prodicus of Ceos because he taught the nice use of words ; 
 Hippias of Elis because he taught geometry and astronomy ; 
 Tisias, too, was a sophist, a professor of rhetoric ; and Socrates 
 himself was not unfairly classed with the sophists by the Athenians 
 who saw him teaching and arguing like the rest in public places, 
 and could hardly be expected to put him in a separate category 
 merely because he asked no fees and despised those who ' retailed 
 knowledge.' The essential moral difference of his aim from theirs 
 was disregarded even by so intelligent an observer as Aristophanes.' 
 
 1 Plato's sharp distinction between philosophers and sophists was probably 
 esoteric in his day, not adopted or grasped by outsiders. So Radermacher in 
 Rhein. Mus. 52. 18. Later, one ground of distinction was the teacliing of 
 rhetoric. So, on the Parian marble, Plato i = labeled ' philosopher,' Aristotle, 
 ' sophist.' 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC 167 
 
 To measure the effect of the sophistic teaching on the literature 
 and life of Greece one must consider separately each one of those 
 distinguished men who, coming from all quarters of Greece, made 
 Athens the goal, and the applause of their Athenian pupils the 
 chief distinction, of their wandering lives. 
 
 Protagoras of Abdera, a Thracian town colonized by lonians, 
 was born about 480 B.C. He came to Athens about 450, and 
 though he did not cease to travel and lecture in the other cities of 
 Greece, the friendship of Pericles, the adulation of the young 
 Athenian aristocrats, his pupils, and the admirable opportunies for 
 displaying his talents in that brilliant society combined to make 
 
 his visits to Athens frequent and prolonged. Plato, in 
 , . „ ^ . . . • , , Protagoras 
 
 his i^rotagoras, gives an impressive picture of the ex- 
 citement caused by one of these visits, and of the brilliant and 
 dignified sophist himself, walking to and fro in the house of the 
 rich Callias, his host : A train of listeners followed him, for the 
 most part foreigners, for Protagoras draws them after him out of 
 every city as he passes through; he charms them with his voice, like 
 Orpheus, and they hear his accents and follow. There were some 
 Athenians also in the group. What entertained me most was to see 
 how clever they were in never getting in his way. When Protagoras 
 and those abreast of him turned round, the troop of listeners 
 divided on either side ; then they wheeled and fell into the rear, 
 always in perfect order} Plato's sketch may be trusted for the 
 personality of Protagoras as it impressed a sober Athenian intelli- 
 gence. He was a great Humanist, urbane, sensitive about his 
 dignity, rather weak in dialectics ; he tries to conceal his chagrin 
 when Socrates proves the better man in an argument, preferring, if 
 only Socrates would let him, to make his point that virtue can be 
 taught, in an eloquent, sustained speech, a fable which suited his 
 charming resonant voice better than the abrupt questions and an- 
 swers to which Socrates held him down. Protagoras was a purist, 
 and insisted on correctness of speech. Plato, who was supposed 
 to have reproduced the very stamp and character of his language, 
 ' Protag. 315 A. 
 
i68 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 makes him use a number of metaphors and a fluent, ample style, 
 the very style for the oratory of display. He professed to teach 
 his pupils how to talk down any specialist, but he kept his eye 
 mainly on those who wished to ,be successful statesmen ; to them 
 he promised to impart ' civic virtue,' or ' excellence.' By this he 
 meant something essentially unmoral, though not necessarily im- 
 moral, an expert knowledge how to get the better of an opponent 
 in every sort of debate. His philosophy was Heracleitean. One 
 who set out to train men to see and argue both sides, to make 
 their minds flexible and receptive, naturally rejected any such 
 absolute standard as would appeal to the followers of Parmenides. 
 For Protagoras everything was relative to man. Man is the 
 measure of all things. His agnostic utterances about the gods led 
 to his prosecution for impiety by the Athenians, always intolerant 
 of a professed skeptic. He fled from Athens and perished at sea. 
 Plutarch^ quotes a brief fragment in the Ionic dialect of Abdera, 
 in which Protagoras describes the fortitude of Pericles during the 
 plague at Athens. Plato in the Sophist '' refers to certain treatises 
 by Protagoras on wrestling and other subjects, ' arts ' or manuals 
 {Tixya.i) such as the typical sophist composed to display that ency- 
 clopaedic knowledge which Plato found so exasperating. Such a 
 treatise is, in fact, the apology for medicine. On the Art, which 
 has come down to us among the Hippocratic writings. This tract 
 Gomperz assigns to Protagoras, basing his theory on the appropri- 
 ateness of its " dialect, style and tone " to the date and person- 
 ality of Protagoras and on the similarity of its manner with the 
 speeches of Protagoras in Plato's dialogue.' 
 
 Protagoras may be called the founder of grammar. He was 
 The apparently the first to distinguish the three genders by 
 founder of name, and he divided the form of the verb into cate- 
 grammar gories that were the foundation of our moods. While 
 the rhetoricians of the Sicilian school aimed at 'beauty of lan- 
 guage,' Protagoras laid stress on ' correctness.' 
 
 1 Consol. ad Apollon. c. 33. ' 232 D. 
 
 ' Greek Thinkers (English trans.) I 467 ff. and in Wiener Sitzb., 1890. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC 169 
 
 Prodicus of Ceos, another of the sophists who concerned them- 
 selves with grammar, was a slightly younger contemporary of 
 Protagoras. He was famous for his study of the 
 precise use of synonyms, sought for le mot prof re ; 
 one may go so far as to picture him as a forerunner of Flaubert 
 and the rest in being possessed by what Coleridge called " the in- 
 stinctive passion in the mind for one word to express one act or 
 feeling." So we see him in Plato's good-natured satire in the 
 Protagoras, playfully entreated by Socrates not to confuse the 
 argument with his over-subde distinctions of language (358 a), 
 singled out from the other sophists as the one who could speak 
 with authority about the right use of terras. He was celebrated 
 besides for his fables, the moralizing myths which he composed to 
 be used as commonplaces, typical illustrations in an argument. 
 Such is the fable of Heracles at the Crossroads, making his famous 
 choice between virtue and pleasure, which is preserved for us in 
 the paraphrase by Xenophon.' Prodicus had at first come from 
 Ceos on an embassy. At Athens he made a reputation as a pubhc 
 speaker and finally settled there, making a large income from his 
 private pupils. 
 
 HiPPiAS of Elis, the contemporary of Prodicus, presented the 
 singular case of a thinker of the Dorian race. Of the 
 three sophists that are here considered together, and '^^'** 
 appear together in the Protagoras, he was the most many-sided 
 in his interests, the polyhistor, or to use the modern term, the 
 encyclopaedist, among them. He professed to have made all 
 that he wore, taught astronomy and geography, was a politician 
 rather than a professed teacher of dialectic. In the two Pla- 
 tonic dialogues that bear his name, the Hippias Major and 
 Minor, he appears as a vain and theatrical improvisator. In the 
 Protagoras his preference for teaching scientific subjects and the 
 arts, rather than the art of rhetoric, is ridiculed in passing by 
 Protagoras himself (318). 
 
 GoRGiAS of Leontini in Sicily (born circa 485 B.C.) came to 
 
 1 Mem. 2. I. 34. 
 
I70 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Athens as an ambassador from his native town, then oppressed by 
 her neighbor Syracuse, in 427 B.C. That embassy was an event 
 for Greek literature. Of all the sophists Gorgias was 
 orgias ^^^ greatest rhetorician. His success with the 
 Athenian public may be compared with that achieved by Carne- 
 ades and his companions when they came on an embassy from 
 Athens to Rome in 155 B.C., and alarmed Cato by the immediate 
 popularity of their philosophical lectures with the Roman youth. 
 Gorgias was a sort of oracle on rhetoric, a great craftsman, with 
 a greater passion for form and a more purely artistic aim than can 
 be detected in the other writers of his class and generation. His 
 life covers nearly the whole of the fifth century, so that he is the 
 contemporary of Herodotus. When he came to Athens, Aes- 
 chylus had been dead thirty years, Sophocles and Euripides were 
 writing, Aristophanes was bringing out his first comedy. All his 
 oratory, when he settled as a teacher in Athens, was epideictic, 
 speeches written for display, like the Funeral Oration of which 
 we have a fragment.^ The characteristics of the Gorgianic style 
 can be judged from this fragment. It is a tour de force in the 
 dexterous use of words. Antithesis, the most natural and the 
 earliest of all the ornaments of style, is used to excess. The line 
 in Rejected Addresses 
 
 " Regained the felt, and felt what he regained," 
 
 written as a parody of Pope's antithetic style, would be perfectly 
 fair as a parody of Gorgias. His clauses are short and precisely 
 balanced to correspond in length, form, and sound. The effect of 
 sound aimed at by this great virtuoso and his imitators was in- 
 deed not far removed from rhyme. The sound was echoed much 
 as in Shakespeare's 
 
 " And what should I do in Illyria? 
 My brother he is in Elysium." 
 
 ^ It was quoted by Maximus Planudes. Walz, Rhetores Graeci V 548 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC 171 
 
 What was the meaning of all these efforts at rhythm and assonance 
 and color in prose? Probably the best answer to that question 
 lies in the words of Isocrates, Let us see whether prose cannot, as 
 well as verse, celebrate the virtues of men} The great achieve- 
 ment of the epideictic orator was that he, in the end, superseded 
 the poet. Instead of a ' threnos ' or dirge by a lyric poet, there 
 would soon be only funeral orations ; history had supplanted epic, 
 and the panegyric was to supplant the lyrical ' encomium.' ^ 
 Men's ears were still, however, in the fifth century, attuned to the 
 key of poetry; they still looked to verse to give them the dis- 
 interested pleasures of literature. The sophists, therefore, when 
 they designed to please rather than to convince, must make their 
 prose rhythmical, and charm with a poetic vocabulary. Empedo- 
 cles himself, the Sicilian poet, had taught, according to Aristotle, 
 the arts of style, and perhaps Gorgias his pupil had caught from 
 him some of the rhetorical devices that he employs in his poetic 
 prose. But he owed certainly more to the tragic style, especially, 
 perhaps, the style of Sophocles. Gorgias went too far, and made 
 his prose metrical. He thus awakens the mistrust which, as 
 Aristotle later pointed out, is roused by the too great artificiality 
 of metrical prose. As a subjectivist, Gorgias shared in the so- 
 phistic reaction against the Eleatics, and wrote a treatise denying 
 the Absolute, and asserting the rights of the individual truth. 
 That truth one must impose on others by means of oratory. In 
 Plato's Gorgias we have what is no doubt a one-sided picture of 
 the famous sophist, with Socrates again in the leading part, out- 
 shining his opponent in argument and morality. The Helen and 
 the Palamedes, which, besides the genuine fragment of the 
 Funeral Oration, have come down to us under his name, are 
 probably not the work of Gorgias, but of a later imitator. They 
 are at least useful as showing what were held to be the 
 characteristic features of the style of the founder of epideictic 
 
 ' Evagoras 8. 
 
 ^ On this tendency, so fatal to poetry, see Nonlen, Die griechische Kunst- 
 frosa I 78. 
 
172 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 oratory/ the forerunner, not only of the correct Isocrates and his 
 school, but also of the Asianic manner of writing with all its 
 perversions of style. 
 
 Gorgias wrote the Attic dialect of the tragedians, and though a 
 Sicilian, coming from an Ionian settlement, has the distinction of 
 giving the first impulse to the art of writing Attic prose. His 
 conceits, of which a good instance is the famous vultures are 
 living graves^ were echoed by certain of his disciples, such as the 
 sophist Alcidamas, one of whose orations has survived in the 
 same collection as the Gorgianic panegyrics. But the surer taste 
 of the Athenian writers of prose, though they were decidedly 
 influenced by his figures of speech and oratorical effects, found 
 his preciosity, his over-ingenious manner, fr,igid and childish. 
 
 For all their variety of interests and individual differences, the 
 sophists overlap, and have certain general characteristics. They 
 are religious skeptics, careful speakers, thoroughly familiar with 
 literature, aim at the cultivation of the individual rather than the 
 advancement of science, are for the most part unmoral, and write 
 their moral fables for practical ends. They were the first critics 
 of the Greek poets. They mark the direction of interest at Athens 
 Influence on towards the higher studies, met the needs of the aris- 
 Gieek edu- tocratic section of Athenian society, and were always 
 frankly professional in their attitude to education. Be- 
 sides training those who wished to become sophists, they helped to 
 educate for politics youths like Hippocrates in the Protagoras, who 
 blushed at the mere hint that he might enter their ranks, though 
 
 1 Blass, Die Attische Beredsamkeit I 72, defends the genuineness of both 
 the Palamedes and the Helen ; Croiset, Hist, de la Lite. Gr., and Maass (in 
 Hermes 22) accept both; Norden accepts the Helen ; Jebb, Spengel, Egger, 
 and Navarre reject both. 
 
 2 On his deathbed he is reported to have said : Sleep at last lays me with 
 his brother Death, and Gladly I quit this decayed and tottering dwelling of the 
 body. This is a good instance of the display of the ruling passion in death. 
 With the second utterance cp. Waller, "The soul's dark cottage, battered 
 and decayed." 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC 173 
 
 he was eager to be their pupil. Xenophon tells us that Proxenus 
 the Boeotian prepared himself for a life of action by attending 
 the lectures of Gorgias.^ What makes Plato's satire on their class 
 so telling is that he recognizes their talents, concedes their charm 
 and impressiveness, before he condemns their lack of moral ear- 
 nestness and their unscientific method. They taught, as Aristotle 
 said, not the art, but the use of the products of the art ; it was as 
 though you were to profess to teach the science of protecting the 
 feet, and were to offer your pupils, not the rules of shoemaking, 
 but a great variety of ready-made shoes. Plato, whose aim was to 
 advertise the superior wisdom of Socrates, shows us the sophistic 
 method of argument at its worst. In his dialogues you see its 
 chicanery, its paralogisms and absurdities ; how it can degenerate 
 into mere quibbling with Euthydemus, and allure a foolish youth 
 like Dionysodorus : All our questions are like that, he cries with 
 foolish triumph. Whichever side you take we can refute you. 
 There is no escape} 
 
 The conservatives of Athens, looking back on the generation 
 that fought at Marathon, were convinced of the decadence of 
 Athenian morals and politics. They saw the rising generation 
 flattered and excited by the new education of the sophists, and 
 disliked their display and self-advertisement. But even Plato, 
 with all his personal prejudices, did not suppose that a handful of 
 professors could corrupt a whole society. To have taken that 
 position would have been to share the stupidity of the Athenian 
 jury which condemned Socrates on that very charge.* 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The Crippsianus manuscript of Antiphon, in the British 
 Museum, and the Oxoniensis, contain the Helen and the J'alamedes, ascribed 
 by some scholars to Gorgias. 
 
 II. Editions. The fragment of the Funeral Oration {^Epitaphius) is pub- 
 
 ^ Xen. Anab 2. 6. 16. ^ Euthydemus 275. 
 
 ' Grote, History of Greece, vol. VIII, ch. 67, has made a classic defense of 
 the sophists. 
 
174 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lished in Walz, Rhetores Graeci V. Blass includes the Helen and the Palo, 
 medes in his ed. of Antiphon (Teubner), Leipzig, 1881. The sophistic 
 fragments are collected in Miiller's Fragmeiita Philosophorum Graec, Paris, 
 1867, vol. II. Spengel, Ivvaywyi) Texvuy, Stuttgart, 1828. 
 
 III. Literature. Protagoras: Frei, QuaesU. Protag., Bonn, 1845. Gor- 
 gias: Foss, De Gorgia Leontino, Halle, 1828. Schonborn, De authentia 
 declamaiionum quae G. L. nomine exstant, Breslau, 1S26. Diels^ Gorgias und 
 Empedocles in Sitzungsber. d. Berl. Akad., Berlin, 1884. Frei in Uhein. Mus., 
 1850. Gercke in Hermes 32. Scheel, De Gorgianae discipliiiae vesiigiis, 
 Rostock, 1890. M3.S.SS m Hermes 22, Prodicus: 'Vie\c]!iei, Prodikos von Keos 
 in A7. Schr. 2. Hippias: Apelt, Peilrage, Leipzig, 1891. Alcidamas: Vahlen, 
 Der Rhetor Alkidamas in Sitzungsber. d. Wiener Ak. 1863. 
 
 On early Greek rhetoric : Volkmann, Die Rhetorik der Griechen und Romer, 
 2d ed.. Leipzig, 1874. Chaignet, l.a Rhetorique et son histoire, Paris, 1888. 
 Westermann, Geschichte der Beredsamkeit, Leipzig, 1833. Blass, Die Attische 
 Beredsamkeit, vol. I, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1887. J^^'ti, The Attic Orators, vol. I, 
 Introd., London, 1876. Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa vol. I, Leipzig, 
 1898. Navarre, Essai sur la rhetorique grecque avant Aristote, Paris, 1900. 
 On the Sophists : Cope, in fourn. of Classical and Sacred Phil. 1-3. Sidgwick 
 in/, of P. 4. Grote in History of Greece, vol. VIII, ch. 67. Diels, in his Dit 
 Fragmente d. Vorsokratiker Griechisch u. Deutsch, devotes Appendix IV to 
 the older sophists. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THUCYDIDES 
 
 Thucydides, son of Olorus of the Attic deme Halimus, was born, 
 as nearly as we can calculate, within the decade 471-461 B.C. He 
 v/as an Athenian citizen with all the advantages of 
 wealth and family, connected on his mother's side 
 with the semi-royal house of Miltiades, and the owner of gold 
 mines in Thrace. The single anecdote of his youth relates that, 
 being with his father at a reading of his history by Herodotus, 
 Thucydides was so excited by admiration that he shed tears. 
 Whereupon Herodotus complimented the father on his son's 
 generous appreciation and the talent that such emotion implied. 
 He is said to have been a pupil of the orator Antiphon who 
 taught rhetoric, and he certainly came under the influence of 
 the leaders of the intellectual society that gathered about Pericles. 
 Anaxagoras and Protagoras may have played their part in forming 
 his mind, and though Thucydides went into exile three years after 
 the arrival of Gorgias in Athens (427), there is no doubt that he 
 too felt the charm of the Gorgianic manner of speech, and profited 
 by his lessons in the possibilities of Attic prose. At the outbreak 
 of the Peloponnesian war he was a man of about forty, well- fitted 
 to understand its causes and follow its course. When the plague 
 devastated Athens in the second year of the war (430) Thucydi- 
 des was one of the few who recovered from its attack. In 424 we 
 find him a general in command of seven ships, off the ^^.^^ 
 island of Thasos, opposite the coast of Thrace. Brasi- 
 das, the Spartan general, threatened Amphipolis, and Thucydides 
 was ordered to protect the town. He arrived too late, Amphipolis 
 was lost to the Athenians, and Thucydides could only save for 
 
 «7S 
 
376 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 them Eion, the harbor town. The Athenians were always prompt 
 to punish an unsuccessful general. For twenty years, he writes, / 
 was banished from my country after I held the command at Am- 
 phipolis, and, associating with both sides, with the Peloponnesians 
 quite as mtich as w'.th the Athenians, because of my exile, I was 
 thus enabled to watch quietly the course of events} 
 
 The late ' Life ' ofThucydides by Marcellinus (fifth century a.d.) 
 adds the detail that it was the demagogue Cleon who caused his 
 exile. But the outline, the bare fact of exile, is all that we can 
 safely accept. Where he passed the next twenty years, whether 
 he returned to Athens in 403, where and how he died, are not 
 recorded by any trustworthy authority. He probably visited 
 Sicily and acquired the detailed knowledge of Syracuse that he 
 displays in the account of the Sicilian expedition. He may, as 
 Wilamowitz thinks, have lived for a time, and died, at the court of 
 Archelaus, king of Macedonia, at Pella.^ Euripides, we know, was 
 there, and Thucydides is credited with a beautiful and noble 
 epitaph on the tragic poet." The date of his death is unknown. 
 It was at least not later than 396 B.C., and may well have fallen 
 some years earlier. 
 
 His History of the Peloponnesian War was divided by the 
 Alexandrians into eight Books. In the first he gives a short sur- 
 
 Scope ^^y °^ ^'^ early conditions of Greece, the beginnings 
 
 of his of the Greek navies, and reviews briefly the fifty years 
 istory between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, the 
 causes of the hostility between Athens and Sparta, and the nego- 
 tiations before the great struggle began. Books 2-4 and part 
 of 5 describe the ten years, counting by summers and winters, 
 of the first period of the war, in which Archidamus of Sparta 
 plays a leading part. Then comes a full account of the peace of 
 Nicias in 421 B.C. and the siege and sack of Melos by the Athe- 
 nians. In Books 6-7, Thucydides tells the tale of the Sicilian 
 
 1 5. 26. 
 
 2 Hermes 12. For the arguments against this view, see Gilbert in Phi- 
 lologus 38. s Anth. Pal. 7. 45. 
 
THUCYDIDES 177 
 
 Expedition. This was in itself a separate war, no longer between 
 Athens and Sparta, but it proved to be a turning-point in the 
 Peloponnesian war as a whole, since that struggle of two years 
 exhausted the resources of Athens and gave the Spartans courage 
 to seize Deceleia and enter on the final stage of the conflict de- 
 scribed in Book 8. The first seven Bpoks show signs of care- 
 ful revision, of that polishing and filing which Dionysius of Hali- 
 carnassus detected in the work. Thucydides died before he could 
 revise the eighth Book ; one sign of its incompleteness is the fact 
 that it contains no speeches, none of those harangues and dialogues 
 that are so striking a feature of the other seven. 
 
 If Thucydides had not actually shed tears of envious admiration 
 at the triumphs of Herodotus, he must at least have witnessed 
 those triumphs. He was moved to build a monument of Attic 
 prose that should rival that Ionian masterpiece, but comparison 
 he desired a very different success. His audience with 
 must be prepared to do without the tales ' and myths ' Herodotus 
 which had given Herodotus so pleasing a confidence that he could 
 entertain where he could not instruct. To Thucydides the History 
 of Herodotus must have seemed an irresponsible tale. His own 
 was to be very different from that, a possession forever, not the 
 rhetorical triumph of an hour. There might, as he, contemptu- 
 ously admitted, be less mere pleasure for the hearer. Herodotus 
 had crowded his background and laid on the colors rich and 
 thick ; Thucydides was to grave his austere leSson deep in the 
 minds of the few who would profit by it, the select intelligences 
 for which he wrote and on which he counted in the future. He 
 can trust such an intelligence to see the law that governs all these 
 actions, to find it in the essential character of man, eternally the 
 same under all the draping of conventions and circumstances. 
 Though he does not name his predecessors, the logographers, or 
 Herodotus, he breaks with their traditions in the first sentences, 
 dismissing all the mythical history of Greece as of no great 
 account since the scale was so small, the people poor, feeble, 
 
 1 1. 22. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — I:i 
 
ryS SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LTfERATURE 
 
 and isolated, fit for no great enterprise. Even the Trojan war, 
 for all the embroidery of the poets, betrays the poverty of Greek 
 resources, the general insignificance. Greater than any previous 
 war, more memorable even than the repulse of Persia, was to be 
 this duel of lonians and Dorians, this suicidal settlement of old 
 scores in which he saw that all Hellas and many barbarians would 
 take sides. For seven or eight years he played an active part in 
 it, suffered from the pestilence that came in its train, heard maqj 
 of the speeches that he reports, and later, in his exile, still watched, 
 when he could not share, the fight. That was the way to write 
 history, as it was written later by Xenophon and Caesar, by men 
 who had been a part, and no small part, of the events. 
 
 Herodotus had written a panegyric of Greek civilization as 
 opposed to barbarian. Thucydides does not write for the glory 
 of Athens, though she is the protagonist, the heroine, of his im- 
 
 lonians Partial tale. He shows you the conflict of race pride ; 
 
 versus the Corinthians appeal to the Lacedaemonians not to 
 
 Donans let an Ionian city oppress Dorians ; the Dorian temper 
 and practice were pitted against the Ionian. ' We are not educated 
 out of respecting the laws,' says the Spartan king Archidamus : 
 ' we have not grown insolent in prosperity, we are not so over- 
 intelligent that we can only criticise and not act; we think our 
 neighbors may be as clever as ourselves.'^ That was not the Ionian 
 way at Athens. The intelligence of the Athenians was their pride, 
 the intelhgence tliat made them despise the enemy, the superior 
 cleverness against which they were warned by Cleon, ' the most 
 violent of the citizens.' ' You all long to be orators,' he tells them, 
 ' you worship what is new ; you are always changing your minds 
 and you think that you are wiser than the laws.'^ Thucydides is 
 far from pointing the moral of this contrast. " Listen to no intel- 
 lectual argument," said De Quincey. " One argument there is, 
 only one there is of philosophic value ... an argument drawn 
 from the moral nature of man. The rest are dust and ashes,' 
 Thucydides had no illusions about the moral nature of man. 
 1 1. 84. 2 3. 37-38. 
 
THUCYDIDES 179 
 
 For a generation he had watched the Greeks at every crisis 01 
 the war, and had found them ready, at the first hint of impunity 
 or of personal danger, to defy every law and convention. In the 
 plague at Athens he had observed their blind terror harden to a 
 callous eagerness to seize the pleasure of the moment at any cost 
 to others. When the Thracians entered Mycalessus and massacred 
 even the helpless school children, he remarks that such are the 
 passions of barbarians let loose. But he could not fail to see that 
 the Athenians were no less bloodthirsty when they murdered and 
 enslaved whole populations of their revolted allies, conception 
 as at Melos and Scione. The bad faith of the Pla- of human 
 taeans in putting to death their Theban prisoners ^ was "^^""^^ 
 matched by the treachery of Athenians like Phrynichus the 
 general, willing to betray his country to satisfy a personal grudge.^ 
 At Corcyra men first saw the worst excesses of revolution, the ties 
 of blood and the scruples of religion forgotten. But Thucydides 
 explains that all these atrocities seemed abnormal only because 
 they were the first of the kind. This, he said, is the nature of 
 man ; in the like circumstances he will always be ready to defy all- 
 laws and conventions, human and divine. In the fatal desire of 
 the Athenians to conquer Sicily he saw the irrational side of man 
 getting the upper hand. There were few evils, he thought, that 
 could not be averted by intelligence. To have keen perceptions, 
 to be prudent, to reason, to calculate, to penetrate motives, that is 
 the triumph of the human being. With Thucydides the Ionian 
 love of intelligence becomes a sort of obsession. Where Herod- 
 otus had seen the hand of God punishing the wrong-doer, Thucyd- 
 ides sees a lack of perception in the man, a miscalculation which 
 can stultify all the conventional virtues, as in the case of the vir- 
 tuous and unfortunate general, Nicias. The oracles he treats with 
 scant respect and observed that the only case in which they were 
 justified was in their declaration that the war would last thrice nine 
 years.' 
 
 The Spe eches have been called the sou Laf-his history. They 
 
 " 8. 50. 8 J. 26. 
 
i8o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 are all in the first seven Books and number forty-one, besides 
 two Dialogues, of the Melians and Athenians in the fifth, and 
 The of Archidamus and the Plataeans in the second Book. 
 
 Speeches There is one purely epideictic speech, the famous 
 Funeral Oration of Pericles in the second Book. Thucydides 
 did not profess to give the exact words of the speaker whom he 
 reports. What he aims at is to give the situation, to show the 
 national or personal ethos, the character and temperament as it 
 came out in debate, to_£ive _a precis of a lone^ disc ussion, makin g 
 o ne or two of th e chief speakers on both sides t he mouthpie ce of 
 ^iej£st, — Thucydides was writing in a generation whose chief 
 intellectual interest was rhetoric. At Athens history was made, 
 the fate of peoples and individuals decided, in debate. The only 
 other Attic prose writer of his own earher time, Antiphonr that 
 ' master of expression,' vyas a professional write r of s jaeeches. 
 Thucydides was himself deeply influenced by rhetoricians, and he 
 no_dQubt-xegar ded the speeches a sth e chief ^orname nt of his 
 work. They were his opportunity for characterization. In them 
 he shows us how the Spartans and Athenians estimated themselves 
 and how they were envisaged by each other. It was the most 
 dramatic and effective way of making the reader feel the force of 
 their motives, the national traditions, and the weakness and 
 strength of the national character of each. The typical Corin- 
 thian, speaking at Sparta, shows us vividly the attitude of the nearer 
 cities to the Athenians, those ' restless neighbors ' as they were 
 called in the Greek proverb, how they feared their untiring ambi- 
 tion, their thirst for expansion, so dangerous to the smaller states.' 
 The speech of Cleon, the popular Athenian politician, is probably 
 typical of the sort of scolding that the Athenians enjoyed from a 
 favorite speaker in those days when there was no scolding by 
 popular preachers from the pulpit or by the press. Provided only 
 that it was cleverly done, as Cleon could do it, he might attack 
 even the sacred principle of democracy, and tell the Athenians 
 with impunity that he never thought a democracy could manage 
 
THUCYDIDES i8i 
 
 an empire, and now he is sure of it when he sees them always 
 longing for an ideal state, but without the strength of purpose to 
 carry out their imperial destiny.^ The gieat Funeral Speech in 
 the second Book was delivered by Pericles over those who first 
 fell in the war. The ceremony was one that was repeated from 
 time to time during the war, and on this occasion was held in 
 honor of only fifteen dead. It is the finest panegyric that was 
 ever composed on Athens, and the noblest of the few Epitaphioi 
 or Funeral Speeches that have come down to us. In this speech 
 and the two others by Pericles,^ we have a report from one who 
 was almost certainly present of that powerful unwritten oratory 
 with which Pericles charmed and governed the Athenian democ- 
 racy for some thirty years.' 
 
 Though he had worked in narrower and deeper lines than 
 Herodotus, Thucydides is not without digressions. Into his 
 account of the mutilation of the Hermae at the opening of the 
 Sicilian war he inserts the tale of the conspiracy of Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton, with some details of the family history of the 
 Peisistratidae. ' The story of the treachery of Pausanias in the first 
 Book is an episode not essential to the narrative. But with Thu- 
 cydides a digression is always sober history, a sincere attempt to 
 clear up some incident connected, even if remotely, with the 
 matter in hand. He never gossips. In the private life of Peri- 
 cles or another he takes no interest, and does not even mention 
 Aspasia, about whose career at Athens Herodotus would have had 
 so much to relate. But even the severer unity of Thucydides has 
 been attacked. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who naturally pre- 
 ferred "the manner of his countryman Herodotus, reproached 
 Thucydides with breaking up his history, and making it read like 
 the work of an annalist by his regular division by winters and 
 summers. Dionysius was a rhetorician, and it was hard for such 
 a one to admire the Thucydidean manner, at once austere and 
 obscure. But he did not fail to appreciate his narrative power, 
 
 * 3- 37-40. " I- 140-144; 2- 60-64. 
 
 * On the eloquence of Pericles see infra. Chapter XIX. 
 
i82 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 those wonderful descriptions of fights, which Cicero said were like 
 a battle-song — the moving and terrible story in the seventh Book 
 of the retreat of Nicias from Syracuse with his army of forty 
 thousand men, their misery too deep for tears, as Thucydides snys, 
 their slow destruction by the Syraciisans. Most striking of all is 
 the account in the second Book of the plague at Athens. It is by 
 such passages as this that Thucydides has earned his title as 'the 
 most pathetic' of historians. He was faithful to his ideal of 
 giving general incidents which were bound, in such another case, 
 to recur. He was so successful in this that every description of a 
 pestilence, since his, has seemed to imitate him or to fall short of 
 his intensity. Lucretius' translated part of the passage into verse, 
 misunderstanding the original, here and there, and adding medi- 
 cal details that weaken the picture. Following him, Vergil in 
 the Georgics^- Ovid in the Metamorphoses^ Seneca in the Oedi- 
 pus^ echo Thucydides. Boccaccio describes the fourteenth-cen- 
 tury plague at Florence, Manzoni that of Milan in the seventeenth 
 century, Defoe tells the tale of the Black Death in London ; no 
 one of them has superseded the eight chapters in which Thu- 
 cydides describes the degradation of body and soul that are inevi- 
 table to all such visitations. It is in such passages that he shows 
 himself capable of the deepest pathos, a pathos that is never 
 sentimental. 
 
 All praise, but few enjoy, Thucydides. He was isolated among 
 Attic prose writers, profoundly original, an autocrat in the use of 
 language, though he owed much to the sophists. He has so im- 
 pressed his readers with his historical sense and his careful use of 
 evidence and of such documents, chiefly the texts of treaties, as 
 he had at his command, that, among Greek writers, he shares 
 with Aristotle, and with Aristotle only, the honor of being taken 
 on trust and quoted by scholars as an unimpeachable authority. 
 But his style has repelled many critics since Dionysius. It defied 
 imitation and soon seemed archaic. Thucydides is thoroughly 
 sophisticated, thoroughly conscious that he is writing Attic prose, 
 '6. 1138-1231. "3.478-566. '7. 523-613., 4 110-205. 
 
THUCYDIDES 183 
 
 conversant with all the devices of the nejv rhetoric. He offended 
 the taste of the later purists by the frequent use of words, phrases, 
 and constructions that were more suitable to poetry. That was 
 part of his archaism. His is the ' austere style,' a high and care- 
 fully chosen diction, with a nice discrimination of synonyms and 
 a tendency to definition which he may have learned from Prodi- 
 cus. He had a fondness for antithesis that strikes one as almost 
 a frivolity in an author of his cast, and, here and there, he writes 
 very much in the manner of Gorgias himself.^ But in spite of his 
 love of symnletry his style is marked by sudden and unaccount- 
 able variations of construction, and his sentences often end in an 
 anacoluthon. He dehghts in intricacy, disregards the natural 
 order of words, often holding up a word in order to give it a 
 special emphasis, and when, as frequently happens, his construc- 
 tions are far-fetched, it is not always clear that he has secured any 
 advantage by the effort. The long periods of Thucydides with 
 their long rhythms make his style impressive, but he condenses 
 his thought too much for clearness, overloads a sentence with a 
 crowd of ideas, is always 'treading on his own heels,' as was said 
 of him by Quintilian. The tension and the concentration are too 
 severe, so that the famous austere style often ends in harshness 
 and obscurity, and becomes a puzzle even to Greek critics. His 
 dialect, the older literary Attic, is varied by Ionic forms. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Of the numerous manuscripts the best are : the Lauren- 
 tianus, loth cent., at Florence; the Vaticanus, nth cent.; the Palatinus, at 
 Heidelberg; the Britannus, in the British Museum. An inscription found 
 on the Acropolis in 1877 (_Corp. Inscr. Att. I suppl. 46) gives part of the text 
 of the treaty quoted by Thucydides 3. 47. A short papyrus fragment (1st 
 or 2d cent. a.d. ) was published in Oxyrhynclms Papyri I, London, 1898. 
 
 II. EDrnoNS. Ed. princ, Aldus, 1502. Stephanus, with scholia, 1564. 
 Bekker, with scholia, Berlin, 1821. Arnold, Oxford, 1830-1835. Bloomfield, 
 London, 1843. Poppo, Leipzig, 1821-1851. Poppo-Stahl, Leipzig, 1871-1889. 
 Classen, 3d. ed., Berlin, 1879. Stahl, Leipzig, 1873-1874. Boehme, Leipzig, 
 
 l.£^. 3. 82; 6.76. 
 
i84 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 1864-1876. Hude, Leipzig, 1901. Croiset, 1-2, Paris, 1886. Shilleto, I, 
 London, 1872. Goodliart, 8, London, 1893. Forbes, I, Oxford, 1895. 
 Jones, Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, Oxford, igo2. 
 
 IIL Literature. Steup, Tkuk. Studien, Freiburg, 1881-1886. Ullrich, 
 Beitr. a. Erkl. des Thuk., Hamburg, 1846. Girard, Essai sur Thucydide, 
 Paris, 1884. MuUer-Strubing, Thuk. Forschungen, Vienna, 1881. Nieschke, 
 De Thuc. Antiphontis discipulo et Homeri imitatore, Munden, 1885. Kirch- 
 hoff, Thuk. u. sein Urkundenmaterial, Berlin, 1895. Wilamowitz in Hermes 
 11,12,34. Kirchhoff in ^i»r»/« 12. 'Sic\\'3Am Hermes it,. Gilbert in /%87- 
 ologus 38. Stahl in Neue Jahrb., 1896. Shorey in Trans. A. P. A. 24. Fors- 
 ter Smith ib. 25. Wolcott ib. 29. Diels in Gott. Gel. Anz., 1894. Jebb, 
 'The Speeches of Thucydides ' in Abbott's Hellenica, London, 1880. 
 
 IV. Lexica. Betant, Geneva, 1843-1857. Essen, /wafej: 7'-4a<r., Berlin, 1887. 
 
 V. Translations. Hobbes, London, 17th cent. Jowett, Oxfordy i88i. 
 Betant, Paris, 1863. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DRAMA : AESCHYLUS 
 
 Dionysus, the divinity to whom the Greek drama was from the 
 first consecrated, was the youngest of the Greek gods. In the 
 Homeric Poems he is one of the minor deities, mentioned twice 
 in the Iliad and twice in the Odyssey, but only in passing, and 
 never as one who plays a conspicuous part among the gods them- 
 selves. His adventures are, in all the legends, less grotesque, 
 more human, than those of the greater divinities. We can dimly 
 trace the path by which he entered Greece, a Phrygian god w'no 
 had to struggle for recognition, whose worship was opposed in 
 Thrace and again as he passed southward in Boeotia, till at last 
 he is established in Attica and at Athens. To the common people 
 Dionysus was peculiarly dear. They were all in a sense his priests, 
 since all could take an active part in his worship. For them he 
 was the giver of life, especially the life of the vine in their vine- 
 growing country, though oil and corn were no less his children. 
 His was the spring festival in the villages when the country people 
 met to open the wine of last year and to welcome the signs of 
 renewed life in the fresh leaves and flowers. His too was the 
 winter festival in December, when the vine growers rejoiced at the 
 ending of their toil. That was the gayer side of the worship of 
 Dionysus as the triumphant god of vigorous life, the ever young,' 
 the god of enthusiasm. But his other aspect was certainly not 
 forgotten. He was the god of ecstasy, but he was also the god 
 of sorrows, half human in that his mother was mortal, and to be 
 
 1 Tu puer aeternus, tu formosissimus. Ov. Met. 4. 18. 
 i8S 
 
i86 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 pitied, as one pitied Demeter, because both were acquainted with 
 grief. In the tangle of legends that grew up about Dionysus there 
 is a strong element of pathos. He could be imprisoned by a mortal, 
 as in the tale of Pentheus of Thebes, which Euripides uses in the 
 Bacchae, or driven to plunge into the sea and take refuge in the 
 bosom of Thetis when he was chased by the impious Lycurgus, as 
 Homer describes in the Iliad} So it was that the whole range of 
 human emotion was appropriate to his worship, wild grief and 
 wild gayety expressed in turn the ardor of his worshipers, and 
 both tragedy and comedy were derived from the choral dance in 
 his honor. 
 
 This was the 'dithyramb,' a word whose precise meaning is 
 unknown. Of the many ingenious derivations due to the Greek 
 poets and modern commentators, that which explains least seems 
 the most probable ; ' dithurambos ' is connected with ' thriambos,' 
 an obscure epithet of the god, and the compound means a ' song' 
 or 'dance' in honor of Dionysus. The dithyramb is first men- 
 tioned in literature by Archilochus (/r. 77), in the seventh cen- 
 tury, and for him it meant simply a song addressed to Dionysus 
 and inspired by wine. As the cult of the Phrygian god passed 
 over to Greece it found a congenial home in Naxos, while 011 the 
 mainland it was always associated with Thebes and Corinth. To 
 the latter city the dithyramb had perhaps been brought by Arion 
 of Lesbos (p. 108) when he came to the court of Periander the 
 Corinthian tyrant (625-585 B.C.). At any rate, according to the 
 tradition, Arion was the first to train and remodel the goat choruses 
 from which Attic tragedy was developed, and on this fact the 
 Corinthians based their claim to the invention of tragedy. In 
 these choruses the worshipers of Dionysus, disguised as goats 
 (tragoi), danced and sang the dithyramb to the music of the Phry- 
 gian flute. We know nothing precise about the innovation of 
 Arion. It may have been he who, bringing order into the dithy- 
 rambic choruses, set the number of the dancers at fifty, a conven- 
 tion that was always retained. The primitive cult song of Diony- 
 
 1 VI 132. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DRAMA 187 
 
 sus now suffered two distinct transformations. In the hands of the 
 writers of choral meUc it became the literary dithyramb as we find 
 it in Pindar and BacchyUdes, and flourished alongside of tragedy, 
 even at Athens. Of its transformation into the drama Athens has 
 the full credit. No other literary type is so peculiarly a reflection 
 of the Athenian genius and Athenian culture. The Doriaii dithy- 
 ramb as remodeled by Arion was transplanted to Athens in the 
 sixth century about the time when the court of Peisistratus became 
 the center of the artistic life of Greece. 
 
 Thespis, who may be called the founder of Greek * 
 
 tragedy, has held his ground in spite of the silence of 
 Aristotle, from whose Poetics is derived almost all that every scholar 
 accepts as the history of the beginnings of tragedy. A younger 
 race reshapes all this ; and infinite time will make many more in- 
 ventions yet ; but mine are mine. So says the epitaph of Thespis, 
 written by the Alexandrian poet Dioscorides in the second cen- 
 tury B.C. Thespis was born in the first years of the sixth century, 
 in Attica, in the village of Icaria, not far from Marathon, a place 
 traditionally associated with the worship of Dionysus. His great 
 contribution was that he took the decisive step from the dithyramb 
 to the drama and introduced an actor who was detached from the 
 chorus to play a separate part.' The naiiie of this performer, 
 the 'answerer' (iiTro/cpiT^s), indicates how close was still his con- 
 nection with the chorus, how subordinate were his spoken inter- 
 ludes to the lyrical part of the performance. The older Dionysiac 
 festival of the Wine press (Lenaea) was already established at 
 Athens. Peisistratus instituted the Great Dionysia of the City,- 
 a March festival which henceforth was the official season for the 
 performance, first of dithyrambs, atid later of tragedy full-blown- 
 It must have been under his patronage that, in 534 B.C., Thespis' 
 first played his tragedies at the City Dionysia, and we may accept 
 that date as marking the recognition by the Athenian state of the 
 
 1 The Theseus of Bacchylides (18) is a lyric dialogue between King Aegeus 
 and the chorus, and, if we regard the poem as a dithyramb, illustrates this 
 step in the evolution of the drama. 
 
i88 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 primitive form of Attic tragedy.^ It was therefore only ten years 
 before the birth of Aeschylus that the Dorian goat song, tragoedia, 
 became dramatic. Greek tragedy, however, never wholly discarded 
 the Dorian stamp. To the last the Athenian dramatist wrote his 
 choruses in the Dorian dialect.'^ 
 
 While the dithyramb was still purely choral there had already 
 appeared the tendency to introduce a wider range of interest than 
 the adventures of Dionysus. In the first quarter of the sixth cen- 
 tury Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, had forbidden his subjects to 
 sing their goat choruses in honour of Adrastus the Argive hero, 
 and had restored to Dionysus his rights. ' What has this to do 
 with Dionysus ? ' was the complaint of certain conservative audi- 
 ences, when they saw the god superseded by the heroes of the 
 saga in such a play as the Funeral Games of Pelias, said to be by 
 Thespis. 
 
 The gap of about a generation between the activity of Thespis 
 and the first successes of Aeschylus is filled by three dramatists. 
 Choerilus, a younger contemporary of Thespis, was 
 an Athenian who produced his first play in the 64th 
 Olympiad (524-521 b.c.) and was thirteen times a victor in the 
 tragic competitions which had already been organized at Athens. 
 Except a stray metaphor in which he calls rocks and rivers the 
 bones and veins of earth, we have no remains of his numerous 
 plays. If we may so interpret a very vague tradition in which 
 Choerilus was called ' a king among the satyrs,' he was peculiarly 
 successful in the satyric drama. He lived to compete with 
 Aeschylus. 
 
 With the new interest of legends other than the Dionysiac, came 
 the gradual elimination of the satyrs from the tragic chorus and 
 their replacement by performers more dignified and more appro- 
 
 ^ Horace seems to have confused tragedy with comedy when he makes 
 Thespis a strolling player who performed his plays on a cart and smeared his 
 face with wine lees. Ars Poet. 275. 
 
 2 Christ points out that in the Indian drama also, two dialects, Sanscrit and 
 Prakrit, were used. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DRAMA 189 
 
 priate to the heroic legend. But the satyrs were not banished 
 from the tragic stage. By a convention that was accepted in the 
 generation of Thespis or soon after, the tragic poet must offer for 
 competition a tetralogy, a set of four plays consisting of a tragic 
 trilogy and a satyric afterpiece. The satyric drama was a con- 
 cession partly to tradition, partly to the popular demand for the 
 coarser and less serious element that had been a marked feature 
 of the dithyramb. Tragedy, as Horace says, must condescend to 
 this sport with satyrs as a grave matron is induced on a feast day 
 to throw aside her dignity and dance with the rest' 
 
 The poet who was credited with the introduction of the satyric 
 afterpiece and who was, at any rate, especially distinguished for 
 his satyric dramas, was Pratinas, a Dorian of the Pelo- 
 ponnesus, who followed the current to Athens. It 
 was on the occasion of his competition with .Aeschylus in 499 that 
 the wooden seats of the theater are said to have broken down. 
 We have a few lyrical fragments of Pratinas which may have been 
 taken from his plays. In the longest of these he protests against 
 the fifth-century tendency to allow the flute accompaniment of a 
 lyric to encroach upon the words. 
 
 Phrynichus, the son of Polyphradmon, an Athenian, the most 
 distinguished of the predecessors of Aeschylus, won his first tragic 
 victory in 512 B.C. There can have been very little 
 action in his plays, since at first he used but one actor, 
 and even after his adoption of a second actor from Aeschylus 
 his effects were probably not such as would appeal to a modern 
 audience as dramatic. The chorus was still the protagonist in his 
 Phoenissae, which described the effect on the Persians of the 
 news of their defeat at Salamis ; for this play he used two actors 
 {circa 476 B.C.). The more famous Sack of Miletus was per- 
 formed with a single actor soon after the fall of the city in 494. 
 Herodotus tells us that the Athenians were so affected by- this 
 picture of the misfortunes of their allies, which they regarded 
 
 1 Ars Poet. 230. " The contemptuous fourth, the frank Concession to mere 
 niortal levity." Browning, Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
190 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 as a domestic calamity for Athens, that the whole theater burst 
 into tears and Phrynichus was fined a thousand drachmae for re- 
 minding them of their responsibility and their grief. They could 
 not risk such emotional influences on their public policy, and 
 Athenian etiquette henceforth was decidedly hostile to historical 
 plays, though Phrynichus himself, in his Phoenissae, and Aeschylus 
 a little later, with his Persae, proved that the Athenians could 
 safely be regaled with the griefs and humiliation of Persia. Phry- 
 nichus was famous for his lyrical effects, which were long popular 
 at Athens, though they were old-fashioned when Aristophanes 
 wrote the Wasps (422 B.C.). A fragment of one of these melo- 
 dies was closely imitated by Gray : — - 
 
 " O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move 
 The bloom of young Desire, and purple light of Love."' 
 
 The sixth-century theater of Dionysus at Athens in which 
 Thespis and his juniors played their tragedies consisted of a 
 
 round dancine-place, the orchestra, such as must have 
 The theater . 
 
 been used from the beginning by dithyrambic cho- 
 ruses, with an altar (thymele) in the center for sacrifices to the god. 
 There was no stage, and it is probable that the Thespian actor, 
 if he wished to distinguish himself from the chorus, delivered his 
 part from the step of the altar. Early in the fifth century a green 
 room was provided for changes of dress, the tent or ' scene ' 
 which cut off a segment of the circle of the orchestra. This 
 was soon faced by a proscenium, the background of the play, 
 which was usually the facade of a two-storied palace or temple.^ 
 All this, like the seats of the spectators, was apparently of wood 
 and constructed for temporary use until, in the fourth century, 
 when the great triumphs of the Athenian drama were over, 
 Lycurgus built a 'scene' of stone and erected stone seats for the 
 
 ^ Progress of Poesy 40. 
 
 ^ Wilamowit/, in Hermes 2\ thinl<s that this conventional proscenium was 
 not used in the earlier extant plays of Aeschylus, and conjectures that it 
 was introduced in the decade 468-458 B.C. 
 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE DRAMA 191 
 
 spectators, and those thrones of Pentelic marble which are still 
 the chief ornament of the ruined tlieater of Dionysus at Athens.' 
 
 Was there a raised stage for the actors in front of the pro- 
 scenium, or were they, in the days of the classical drama, on the 
 same level as the chorus in the orchestra? That is the question 
 which for the last fifteen years has divided archaeologists. There 
 are no remains early enough to be used as evidence, xhe 
 either for the stage buildings or the stage of the fifth st^g^ 
 century B.C. Of the Hellenistic theater we know much, but of the 
 theater of the fifth century, the setting of the plays of Aeschylus, 
 Sophocles, and Euripides, we know little more than can be 
 gathered from the plays themselves. Dorpfeld's theory that in the 
 fifth century actors and chorus stood on the same level in the 
 orchestra, seemed likely ten years ago to transform our whole 
 conception of the scenic setting of a play at Athens. But the 
 evidence of the extant dramas, since it has been used by both 
 sides in support of views that are directly opposed, is hardly more 
 decisive than the archaeological remains. On the side of those 
 who reject a fifth-century stage it may be said that it is not for us, 
 with our fixed ideas of the aesthetic propriety of a stage, to insist 
 that the audience of Aeschylus would not have tolerated a certain 
 arnount of confusion of chorus and actors.^ Aristotle thought 
 that, without the aid of the eye, the hearer of a tragedy should be 
 made to thrill with horror and pity at what takes place,' and for 
 this no raised stage was essential. What was the height of the 
 fifth-century stage, if stage there was, what were its dimensions, 
 
 1 Dorpfeld, Das Criechische Theater, 1896. 
 
 ^ For the open-air performance of the Antigone of Sophocles at Athens, in 
 April, 1905, under the immediate supervision of Dorpfeld, no stage was used. 
 "The result," writes Mr. Louis Dyer in the Nation, May 11, 1905, " has made 
 no converts. The altar blocked the view, the actors were constantly confused 
 with the chorus, while the entrances and exits were ineffective." At the per- 
 formance of Agamemnon at Harvard (1906) there was no stage, and there, 
 at any rate, the effect was admirable. 
 
 ^ Poetics 14. " Who hears the poem, therefore, sees the play." Browning, 
 Balaustion's Ac/venture. 
 
192 SHORT HiStORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 whether steps or an inclined plane rendered possible those scenes 
 in which chorus and actors undoubtedly mingle, these are still 
 open questions. 
 
 The development of the Athenian drama was steady and rapid. 
 
 About seventy years after Thespis produced his uncouth pieces. 
 
 Develop- half dithyrambs, half tragedies, the high-water mark of 
 
 ments tragic style had been reached in the Oresteia of Aes- 
 chylus, the masterpiece of Greek tragedy, and the Prometheus 
 Bound, whose superhuman personages disdain the solid ground, 
 had taxed the ingenuity of the stage machinist. It is not easy to 
 allot to each tragedian his exact contribution to the mechanical 
 contrivances of the theater and the structure of the play. Thespis 
 is credited with the invention of masks, Phrynichus with the intro- 
 duction of female characters and the prologue, Aeschylus with the 
 second actor and several stage devices, including the * machine ' 
 for raising the actor in the air, and the ' eccyclema,' the low stage 
 which could be rolled forward out of the door in the proscenium 
 when it was necessary, as in the Agamemnon, to show a tableau of 
 the interior of a house. Sophocles introduced the third actor and 
 scene painting. 
 
 Trochaic tetrameter seems to have been the earliest meter of 
 tragic dialogue and was used to the last in moments of especial 
 excitement. But it was very early superseded by iambic trimeter, 
 the meter that is most nearly related to prose speech. In the 
 choruses there was admitted the widest variety of rhythms derived 
 from choral lyric, the numbers changing with the changing pas- 
 sions, and this is especially true of the plays of Aeschylus, for 
 whom the chorus might still, as in the earliest drama, the Sup- 
 pliants, seem more important than the actors. One by one, in the 
 half century that followed the debut of Thespis, all these things 
 were added to tragedy, and we may be sure that the first and 
 most difficult steps are to be credited to the creative genius of 
 Aeschylus. Aristotle, it is true, in the tantalising Fourth Chapter 
 of the Poetics, which is our only unquestioned authority for the 
 beginning of the drama, says little of Aeschylus, and declines 
 
AESCHYLUS 193 
 
 to take the trouble to describe in detail the gradual elaboration of 
 the scenic effects which he regards as the least artistic part of 
 tragedy. But he tells us that it was Aeschylus who curtailed the 
 chorus, and we can trace in his extant plays that gradual subordina- 
 tion of the lyrical part which was necessary before there could be 
 genuine tragedy, with delineation of character and dramatic interest. 
 Aeschylus, the son of Euphorion, was born in the deme Eleusis 
 in 525 B.C. His father belonged to the class of the Eupatridae, 
 
 the old nobility of Attica, and may have held some . 
 
 Aescliylus 
 priestly office at Eleusis. We know nothing of the 
 
 education of Aeschylus, but we may suppose that, as Aristophanes 
 makes him say of himself in the Frogs (886), his soul was nour- 
 ished in the atmosphere of the Eleusinian worship of Demeter. 
 He first competed in tragedy against Pratinas and Choerilus in 
 499, but was defeated. His career as actor and poet must have 
 been interrupted by the Persian wars, since he fought at Marathon 
 (490 B.C.) and again, ten years later, at Salamis and Plataea. Yet 
 we find him winning the first of his thirteen tragic victories in 484, 
 and for the next twenty-five years he continued to write for the 
 Athenian stage. There is a tradition that, on one occasion, his 
 audience suspected that Aeschylus was revealing in his play the 
 mysteries of Demeter, and for the moment his life was in danger. 
 He was formally tried on the charge of impiety by the Areopagus, 
 and was acquitted. An invitation to the court of Hiero at Syra- 
 cuse was sure to follow on an artistic success at Athens. Aeschylus 
 paid more than one visit to Sicily, and in his later years, though he 
 did not cease to produce his tragedies at Athens, he chose to live in 
 Sicily, possibly preferring, as some say, not to witness the triumphs 
 of his younger rival Sophocles, who was placed before him in the 
 tragic competition of 468 B.C., or because the odium of the charge of 
 impiety had not been lived down. At Gela in Sicily he died in 456, 
 and there his tomb was shown. The epitaph on it is said to have 
 been written by himself, and this is the more likely because it says 
 not a word about his profession or his successes as a poet, but boasts 
 of his bravery at Marathon against the ' long-haired Medes.'. 
 
 HIST. CRKEK IJT. — 13 
 
194 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Of the eighty plays whose titles are recorded under the name of 
 Aeschylus, Seven have survived, together with considerable frag- 
 ments. It was Aeschylus, according to Aristotle, who first cur- 
 tailed the choral part and made the dialogue the protagonist of the 
 drama. In the earliest extant play, however, the interest still 
 centers in a crowd. The date of the Suppliants is not known. It 
 has been placed as late as 461, when the Athenians were consid- 
 
 The ering an Argive alliance, and as early as 492, when they 
 
 Suppliants were dreading an invasion of Orientals as insolent as 
 the sons of Aegyptus. In view of the primitive structure of the 
 play, the earher date is the more probable. The fifty daughters 
 of Danaus, who have fled from Egypt to Argos, the home of their 
 ancestress, lo, are at once the heroines and the chorus. Their 
 father, who though he speaks iambics is practically a coryphaeus, 
 and Pelasgus, the King of Argos, appear merely as the protectors 
 of the chorus, and, apart from their share of the dialogue, the 
 lyrics in which the Danaids express their terror, and despair, and 
 gratitude, take up half of the play. The Suppliants has no pro- 
 logue, and is itself a prologue, as the first play of a trilogy that 
 must have dealt with the rest of the legend, the fulfillment of the 
 threat of war with which the play closes, the forced marriage of 
 the Danaids with their pursuing cousins, and the slaughter on the 
 wedding night. In the last play of the trilogy the interest prob- 
 ably centered in one who for us is the chief figure in the whole 
 legend, Hypermnestra, splendide mendax in that she broke her 
 promise to slay Lynceus, her husband, and so become the ances- 
 tress of Danae, Perseus, and Heracles himself, as Aeschylus relates 
 in the Prometheus Bound. 
 
 Since the rest of the trilogy is lost, as well as the Cypria, the 
 cyclic epic in which was told the story of Lynceus, Hypermnestra 
 depends for her place in literature on Horace,' Ovid,^ and Chaucer, 
 who included her in his Legend of Good Women. In the treat- 
 ment of her devotion, her punishment, and her final acquittal by 
 the Argives, Aeschylus had an opportunity for situations less spec- 
 
 1 Od. 3. II. 2 Heroiiies 14. 
 
AESCHYLUS 195 
 
 tacular and more dramatic than the series of tableaux in the Sup- 
 pliants. In the other remains of the Aeschylean trilogies, as in the 
 dramas of Sophocles and Euripides, the dithyrambic chorus of 
 fifty is broken up and distributed among the plays. In the Sup- 
 pliants, which is a cantata rather than a tragedy, and perhaps in 
 the lost plays of this trilogy, the original number of the chorus is 
 retained, according to the requirements of the story. Two actors 
 only are used, since Danaus, with some loss of verisimilitude, leaves 
 the stage at a critical moment, to reappear as the herald. 
 
 The Persae was performed in 472 at Athens, and again at Syra- 
 cuse, at the request of Hiero.' According to the tradition, the 
 other plays of the trilogy were the lost Phineus and Glaucus, with 
 the satyric drama Prometheus to complete the tetralogy. The 
 Persae is the only extant Greek play that deals with contemporary 
 history. It is a picture of the humiliation of the Persians after 
 Salamis, the Asiatic reflection of the Athenian triumph. xhe 
 The scene is laid at the court of Xerxes, and the hero- Persae 
 ine of the piece is his mother Atossa, the widow of Darius. The 
 chorus is composed of Persian elders. By far the most striking 
 part of the dialogue is given to the Messenger, who, with an effect 
 that is epic rather than dramatic, describes to Atossa the destruc- 
 tion of the flower of the youth of Persia at Salamis and the ruin 
 of her son. 'Where is this Athens?' asks the unhappy queen, 
 and the Messenger's answer is an admission of the bravery and 
 good fortune of the Athenians doubly eifective from the lips of an 
 Oriental. Atossa receives the crushing account of her misfortunes 
 with one of those silences that Aeschylus made so impressive.^ So, 
 too, Cassandra in the Agamemnon shrinks 'like a wild thing newly 
 trapped ' and gazes in stubborn silence at Clytemnestra in whom 
 
 1 Wilamowitz in Hermes 32 conjectures that the Persae was written and first 
 acted at Syracuse. It was, he thinks, a play independent of the convention 
 of a trilogy, being itself a sort of miniature trilogy, with three loosely con- 
 nected acts. 
 
 ^ Cp. " I like your silence, it the more shows off your wonder." Winter'' s 
 Tale. 
 
196 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 she alone can see the murderess of Agamemnon. So Prometheus 
 in the Prometheus Bound utters not a word to his tormentors. It 
 was a peculiarly Aeschylean device to secure by this means the 
 strange and deep impression of what is not spoken, of the " silent 
 griefs which cut the heartstrings," and was so frequent in his plays 
 that it is ridiculed by Euripides in the Frogs of Aristophanes, 
 performed more than sixty years after the Persae. Nay, but I 
 liked that silence, says Dionysus, and got as much pleasure from 
 it as from many of the speeches nowadays. Dionysus, who in 
 the comedy of Aristophanes represents the preference of the 
 Athenian conservatives for Aeschylus, the poet of the generation 
 of Marathon, declared that he enjoyed also that dramatic moment, 
 the acme of interest in the play, when the ghost of Darius rose 
 from his tomb in the orchestra to warn and advise Atossa and the 
 chorus. Only two actors were used, so that Atossa must leave the 
 scene before the entrance of Xerxes, whose loud and abject grief 
 was the crowning triumph for the Athenian audience. 
 
 The Seven Against Thebes (467 B.C.) belongs to the trilogy of 
 the Theban cycle. The play opens at the point in the story when 
 The the two sons of Oedipus, fulfilling their father's curse, 
 
 A^Yin t ^^^ about to decide by arms their rivalry for the rule 
 Thebes of Thebes. Eteocles defends the city from within, 
 while Polynices, as one of the Seven Chiefs led by Adrastus, 
 threatens him from without. The role of the chorus of terrified 
 Theban maidens, and the beautiful lyrics in which they sing of 
 their fears and the horrors of a sacked city, are a conspicuous 
 feature. The long speeches of the Messenger, describing with epic 
 fullness the besieging warriors, their arms, and the devices on their 
 shields, are the most impressive in the play, which, as Aristophanes 
 said, is ' brimful of the spirit of war.' For all that, Eteocles is a 
 true tragic hero, and the dramatic interest centers in the encoun- 
 ter of the doomed brothers. This interest reaches its acme when, 
 as Eteocles distributes by lot the seven Theban leaders who are to 
 defend their seven gates against the seven chiefs, it appears that 
 fate has left to him the seventh gate, at which he must face Poly- 
 
AESCHYLUS 197 
 
 nices. Here, as throughout the play, the responsibility is thrown 
 on the gods. The tragedy closes with the tidings of the death of 
 the brothers, and the laments of Antigone and Isn:iene. The 
 resolve of Antigone to bury her brother Polynices, in defiance of 
 the city's edict, foreshadowed a play which, some twenty-five years 
 later, gave an immortal picture of that devotion and defiance, the 
 Antigone of Sophocles.' The Seven Against Thebes was preceded 
 by the lost Laius and the Oedipus, with the Sphinx as a satyric 
 afterpiece. 
 
 The date of the Prometheus Bound is uncertain. The almost 
 certain use of three actors, Prometheus, Hephaestus, and Kratos, 
 who personifies Force, the elaborate mechanism necessary for 
 staging the play, and the decided subordination of the ^p^^ 
 chorus, are evidence of its lateness. One other clew Prometheus 
 is to be found in the play itself. In his First Pythian, °"° 
 
 composed in 470, Pindar celebrated Hiero's victory over 
 the Etruscans at Cym6, his success in the chariot race, and the 
 foundation of the new city of Etna (476 b.c,), and described the 
 eruption of Etna which began in 479 and had "not yet ceased. 
 Even Aeschylus couH not improve on Pindar's imagery, and he 
 clearly echoes in his Prometheus Bound the lyric poet's descrip- 
 tion of those ' rivers of fire ' which the monster Typho, impris- 
 oned beneath Etna, flung up as a sign of his wrath and despair. 
 The play, then, falls later than 470, and it is safe to say that its 
 structure is more mature than that of the Persae {412 B.C.). But, 
 like the three earlier tragedies that survive, the Prometheus repre- 
 sents a single situation, there is no reversal of fortune due to dis- 
 covery or recognition, no knot is untied, and, at the close, the will 
 of Prometheus is still defiantly opposed to the will of Zeus. 
 
 In a piece where all is superhuman, where as in a "miracle 
 play" or "mystery" the ordinary limits of time and space are 
 
 1 The Seven Against Thebes was the last play of the trilogy, and there is 
 good reason to believe with Wilamowitz, Silzb. d. preuss. Ak., 1903, that 
 the whole final scene in our version, with its indication that the story is " tp 
 be continued," is a later, non-Aeschylean, addition. 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 198 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lightly set aside, the prodigies seem less prodigious. Such a play 
 is the Prometheus. The scene is laid in the Scythian desert, 
 ' remote from man.' ' Thither Hephaestus, reluctant to injure a 
 brother god, and Kratos (Force), eager to abet the cruel violence 
 of Zeus, bring Prometheus, and fasten him with chains and bolts 
 to a high peak that overlooks the sea. Prometheus is the proto- 
 type of all revolted and " Titanic " spirits. The Byrons and Shel- 
 leys greet him as the champion of oppressed mankind, one opposed 
 like themselves to all the forces of tyranny. 1/ The sin that Prome- 
 theus must expiate is his too great love of the human race. He 
 stole fire from heaven and with that gift bestowed on man all the 
 arts and safeguards of life. He helped men to be too clever, a 
 sin no more to be forgiven by the jealous gods of Greece than the 
 insolence of being too happy. One remembers how, in the 
 Odyssey, Poseidon punished the Phaeacians for making their ships 
 too swift and too safe, how Horace in the Odes reflects the Greek 
 feeling that the boats which first invaded the " inviolable main " 
 were ' impious.' If Aeschylus could see a modern airship, he 
 would say that the punishment of Icarus who dared to aspire to 
 ' wings not granted to mortal men ' had failed in its lesson. If he 
 could see men following their pleasures " by the light of the Ter- 
 ror that FHeth," and " domesticating the wildfire of the storm," he 
 would say that the original sin of the Titan had been thrown into 
 the shade.^ The punishment of Prometheus, 
 
 " A silent suffering and intense ; 
 The rock, the vulture, and the chain, 
 All that the proud can feel of pain," ' 
 
 1 Prometheus Bound 1-2. ApoUonius of Rhodes, in the Alexandrian age, 
 introduces Prometheus and his tortures as one of the sights of Colchis. From 
 his Argonaictica was probably derived the tradition which makes the Caucasus 
 rather than Scythia the scene of the Titan's sufferings. 
 
 2 Cp. the chorus on the rise of man, Sophocles, Antigone 332 ff. This atti- 
 tude to the overbold inventor was not confined to the Greeks; cp. Job 38. 
 " Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, Here we 
 are?" Verg. £f/. 4. 32. Ovid, ^«/. i. 94. TibuUus i. 3. 
 
 ' Byron, Prometheus. 
 
AESCHYLUS 199 
 
 might seem to be too severe for the offense, but those who think 
 so are reminded (by J. A. Symonds) that Adam and Eve forfeited 
 the happiness of the whole human race by gathering fruit from a 
 forbidden tree. 
 
 The very forces of nature are moved by the sufferings of Prome- 
 theus. The sea, at whose ' countless laughing ripples ' he gazes, 
 sends her Oc^n nymphs to comfort him with their fragrant 
 presence. They form the chorus, and in lyrics unusually brief for 
 Aeschylus, utter their gentle advice, sympathy, and expostulation. 
 In the meantime comes the father of the Oceanides, Oceanus 
 himself, the typical Aeschylean old man, prudent to a fault, and 
 wholly antipathetic to the Titanic spirit of revolt. But the deuter- 
 agonist of the piece is lo. Grotesque and pathetic in her shape 
 of a hunted cow, she is a fresh proof of the cruelty of Zeus. 
 Her prominence in the play, and the recital of her wanderings by 
 Prometheus, are justified by the fact that, after thirteen genera- 
 tions, a son of her line, Heracles the deliverer, will set the Titan 
 free. Her fate and the fate of her children Prometheus prophe- 
 sies to lo, and when she rushes out, driven by the gadfly, he 
 announces to the chorus that he holds the secret of the coming 
 downfall of Zeus. His boast is followed by the instant arrival of 
 Hermes with terrible threats if he should refuse to save Zeus by 
 revealing his secret. The play ends in a cloud of dust and fire, a 
 confusion of sky and sea, in which Prometheus has the last word : 
 O Aether that bringest round to all men the light of day, thou 
 seest my sufferings and my wrongs! 
 
 Of the second play of the trilogy, the Prometheus Unbound, we 
 have a few disjointed fragments, not enough to show how Aeschylus 
 managed that reconciliation of the Champion with the ^j^^ prome- 
 Oppressor which was so repugnant to Shelley. Heracles theus Un- 
 the deliverer must have played a chief part, and there bound 
 was, no doubt, some modification of the tyrannical attitude of Zeus, 
 some development of the moral character of a god whose supremacy 
 was now assured. Time could teach even Zeus. And so Prome- 
 theus takes his place in literature as the martyr who suffered for 
 
20O SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 men and was at last reconciled with Heaven.' So he appears at 
 the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, whose fatal union with Zeus he 
 has averted, a guest who in the famous description of Catullus 
 still wore the faded scars of that ancient suffering? 
 
 Shelley filled his Prometheus Unbound with ideas and language 
 derived from the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus. But he scorned 
 the tradition of a compromise that should leave Zeus supreme 
 over men. In his drama, Zeus marries Thetis and begets a child 
 mightier than himself, the Demogorgon who hurls him into the 
 bottomless void, while Man is left triumphant, with his foot on the 
 threshold of a second Golden Age. 
 
 The third play of the Aeschylean trilogy was probably Prome- 
 theus the Fire-Bearer, and celebrated the institution of the Prome- 
 theia, a festival with torch races held at Athens in honor of the 
 Titan. 
 
 "It is deserted now, but once it bore 
 Thy name, Prometheus; there the emulous youths 
 Bore to thy honor through the divine gloom 
 The lamp which was thine emblem." 
 
 If we reject, with most modern scholars, the older theory which 
 placed the Fire-Bearer first, we may class this lost play with that 
 other drama of reconciliation, the Eumenides, in which Aeschylus 
 again brought round to Athens the conclusion of a saga cycle. 
 
 The Oresteia, drawn from the Trojan saga, is the only Greek 
 trilogy extant, and it is the one of all others that we should have 
 chosen to survive. The other extant plays of Aeschylus, except 
 the Persae, which has apparently a peculiar independence, are at 
 a disadvantage because they survive as disjointed parts of a whole 
 that we are unable to envisage. But the Agamemnon, the Choe- 
 phori {Libation-Bearers') , and the Eumenides are like three great 
 
 1 Pindar in his Seventh Isthmian, written probably in 478 B.C., makes 
 Themis avert the fall of Zeus; she advises the gods to give Thetis to Peleus: 
 Let her wed a mortal and see her son die in war. Then they nodded assent 
 with immortal eyelids, and the fruit of her speech was not left to wither. 
 
 ^ 64. 296. 
 
AESCHYLUS 201 
 
 acts, each complete in itself, but held together by a larger unity. 
 In the first, Agamemnon is murdered by Clytemnestra on the first 
 day of his return home from Troy ; the second is a picture of the 
 revenge of Orestes, who slays his guilty mother and her lover 
 Aegisthus, and is hunted by the Furies, the Erinnyes who avenge 
 a mother's blood ; in the third we see the reconciliation of Orestes 
 with the Furies. ' They accept the verdict of heaven in his favor, 
 and, changing their name and character, are to be known here- 
 after as the Eumenides, the Gracious Ones whose shrine is beneath 
 the Areopagus. For the main features of the story Aeschylus may 
 have drawn on the lost cyclic epics, the Cypria and the Returns, 
 and owyed much, no doubt, to the lost lyric of Stesichorus, the 
 Oresteia: 
 
 Of the three dramas of murder, revenge, and remorse, the 
 Agamemnon is incomparably the best. The scene is laid at 
 Argos before the palace of Atreus, stained with the sins The Aga- 
 of the race, and from the first the atmosphere of the memnon 
 play is sinister. The first speaker is the watchman whom Clytem- 
 nestra has posted on the palace roof to look for the beacon fires 
 that are to announce the fall of Troy. Like the chorus through- 
 out, he is oppressed by a vague sense that anything new, even the 
 home-coming of Agamemnon, must be a new misfortune. He hints 
 at danger frorin within, declaring that, could the stones of the house 
 speak, they would cry out against one who hoped that good might 
 yet come to the line of Atreus. Agamemnon belongs to one of 
 those families to which dreadful things happen. His great-grand- 
 father, the~ founder of the house, was Tantalus, to whose career 
 every varying version of the legend adds some fresh crime against 
 the gods. Pelops, son of Tantalus and father of Atreus, was 
 cursed by Myrtilus, the dying victim of his treachery ; Atreus, the 
 father of Agamemnon, repeating one of the crimes of Tantalus, 
 had served up to his brother Thyestes the flesh of that brother's sons, 
 the ' Thyestean lianquet.' Aegisthus, son of Thyestes, who, as Cly- 
 temnestra's lover, plots with her the death of Agamemnon, has this, 
 his private score, to pay off. So the story goes on, crime added to 
 
202 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK TTTERATURE 
 
 crime and curse to curse with every fresh generation. Agamem- 
 non, who inherited this burden of sin, had sacrificed his blameless 
 child Iphigeneia that the ships might sail from Aulis to bring back 
 the false Helen. Of all the sins of this doomed race this sacrifice 
 has most deeply impressed the poets. Lucretius," when he wished 
 to show how fear of the gods led to evil deeds (Tantum religio potuit 
 suadere malorum !) before Epicurus freed men from their supersti- 
 tion, chose to describe the sacrifice of Iphigeneia the sinless, 
 by sinful hands ; and in the first great chorus of the Agamemnon, 
 the old men of Argos, when they see with anxious eyes that Clytem- 
 - nestra has made all the altars of the city blaze with gifts, are 
 diverted from their own fears by the thought of that other sacri- 
 ficial altar at which Agamemnon ' had the heart to become the 
 slayer of his child.' Their song is a prelude to the entrance of 
 Clyteninestra, who now comes to announce that the city of Priam 
 has fallen. Her description of the ' courier-flame ' of the eight 
 beacon fires that flashed the news of the Greek triumph from 
 Mount Ida in the Troad across Lemnos, Athos, Euboea, Boeotia, 
 and the Megarid, till the watchman saw its gleam on Mount Arach- 
 naeus in Argolis, has been finely imitated by Macaulay in the 
 Armada? Every descriptive speech and lyric in the Agamemnon 
 is a masterpiece. After another long chorus with a wonderful pic- 
 ture of the grief of Menelaus robbed of Helen, the herald of Aga- 
 memnon enters on the left, crowned with olive, and proclaims the 
 near approach of the king. Yet his tidings are not all of triumph. 
 A storm has scattered the Argive host on the home voyage, Mene- 
 laus has disappeared, and the ship of Agamemnon alone has sailed 
 safely across tlie Aegean Sea which ' flowers with dead Greeks and 
 their wrecked timbers.' Aeschylus seems to have intended to 
 secure by the unusually long choruses of the Agamemnon an illu- 
 
 ^ De Natura Rerum i . 84 ff. 
 
 * "Till Belvoir's lordly terraces the sign to Lincoln sent, 
 
 And Lincoln sped the message on o'er the wide vale of Trent, 
 Till Skiddaw saw the fire that Ijurned on Gaunt's embattled pile, 
 And the red glare on Skiddaw roused the burghers of Carlisle." 
 
AESCHYLUS 203 
 
 sion of lapse of time highly necessary in a play where the incidents 
 that, in the legend, followed the fall of Troy, the storm-driven 
 voyage of Agamemnon and his arrival at the palace, were crowded 
 into the first eight hundred lines, and were, for the spectator, 
 apparently limited by a single revolution of the sun. This was a 
 foreshortening of the action not uncommon in the Greek drama, 
 whose spectators were trained to ignore the ordinary conditions 
 of time. After a third long choral lyric, a splendid recital of the 
 woes that Paris and Helen brought on Troy, chariots arrive from 
 the harbor bringing the king and the Trojan spoils, and among 
 them the chosen flower of all the booty, the ' army's gift,' Cassan- 
 dra, the daughter of Priam, Apollo's priestess. Agamemnon is a 
 weary and disillusioned man who has paid dearly for his victory, 
 and has learned from his ten years before Troy to be suspicious 
 of all seeming loyalty and friendship. He hears with impatience 
 his wife's lengthy greeting, and choosing, at last, the risk of divine 
 jealousy rather than debate with her, consents to tread on the 
 purple carpet that she has laid down. He goes into the palace^ 
 
 " Treading the purple calmly to his death.'-' 
 
 Clytemnestra follows him, turning first to cry, Zeus, Zeus, fulfillment 
 is thine; fulfill my prayer ! The scene between Cassandra and 
 the chorus, when Clytemnestra, after a vain attempt to extort an 
 answer from the dumb prophetess, has left them together, is one 
 of the finest in the Greek drama. Cassandra, 
 
 "That strange-eyed, spirit-wounded, strange-tongued slave 
 There questing houndlike where the roofs red-wet 
 Reeked as a wet red grave," ^ 
 
 Stands before the palace and appeals to the statue of Apollo her 
 destroyer, who has brought her to this ' human slaughterhouse.' 
 She recalls in a vision all the monstrous crimes of the house of 
 Tantalus, sees, like the soothsayer Theoclyraenus in the Odyssey, 
 the blood of coming murder on the floors and v/alls, and foretells 
 
 1 Swinburne, On the Cliffs. 
 
204 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the new snare, the worst crime of all, which is being prepared 
 within. But it is her doom to be disbelieved to the last. The 
 Argive elders understand all her allusions to past misfortunes, 
 but, when she cries aloud for some one to save Agamemnon from 
 his queen, they think her distraught. Her prophecy of her own 
 end they are at last forced to comprehend, if not to believe : — 
 
 Ah, Ah, the doom (thou knowest whence rang that wail) 
 Of the shrill nightingale ! 
 
 (From whose wild lips thou knowest that wail was thrown) 
 For round about her have the great gods cast 
 A wing-borne body, and clothed her close and fast 
 With a sweet life that hath no part in moan. 
 But me, for me (how hadst thou heart to hear ?) 
 Remains a sundering with the two-edged spear.^ 
 
 At last Cassandra flings from her the chaplet and the prophetic 
 wand that had brought her only mockery, and, with a final obscure 
 hint of the revenge of Orestes, passes into the palace. On the 
 steps she pauses to utter a last lament for the destiny of man : — 
 
 Snough of life. . . . 
 
 Alas for human fortunes ! For in prosperity 
 They are a shadow ; and if misfortune falls 
 A wet sponge with a touch blots out the drawing. 
 
 The death-cry of Agamemnon, twice repeated, throws the 
 chorus into that confusion and helpless discussion regularly 
 imposed upon it at any crisis by the conventions of the Greek 
 drama. And soon the eccyclema is rolled forward, disclosing the 
 interior of the house with the corpse of Agamemnon laid beside 
 that of Cassandra, and Clytemnestra exulting over them. No 
 tragic figure must be wholly wicked, and even Clytemnestra, the 
 ' pitiless woman ' of Greek legend, does not sin from mere de- 
 pravity. Aeschylus allows her to plead in her own defense two 
 motives lor the murder of Agamemnon, the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, 
 whom We put to death as lightly as one slays a sheep or a goat,' 
 
 1 Swinburne's paraphrase ip On the Cliffs, 
 
AESCHYLUS 205 
 
 and her jealousy of Cassandra. In the midst of the threats of the 
 chorus and her defiant answers, Aegisthus, the weaker accomplice, 
 enters and rejoices in his personal vengeance on the son of 
 Atreus. He is taunted with weakness by the Argive elders, who 
 threaten him with the vengeance of Orestes, and their undignified 
 wrangling is ended and the play closed by the scornful words of 
 Clytemnestra : Flatter not so their foolish yelpings. Thou and I 
 as lords of this house will order all things well. 
 
 In the Choephori, which is, like Hamlet, a drama of revenge, 
 are three main episodes : the recognition of the home-coming 
 Orestes and his sister Electra, the death of Clytem- The 
 nestra at her son's hands, and the last scene, in which Choephori 
 the madness of remorse, the counter revenge of the Furies, drives 
 Ores'.es from Argos. For the recognition Aeschylus uses the 
 reasoning from signs, a device that was classed by Aristotle 
 among the less artistic of its kind. Electra, coming to see the 
 tomb of her father and to offer libations, is attended by a chorus 
 of maidens, Trojan captives who had formed part of the spoil of 
 Agamemnon. Their lyrics take up nearly a third of the play. 
 On the tomb she sees a lock of hair Kke her own, and, near it, 
 footprints which, sines they resemble hers in size and shape, can 
 have been- made only by Orestes. This last touch is a clear 
 failure to recognize the ridiculous on the part .of one whose 
 footing in the sublime was usually so secure. Aristophanes ridi- 
 culed the device in the Clouds (536 ff.), some thirty years later, 
 and Euripides in his Electra (413 b. c.) parodies the whole pas- 
 sage of the Choephori, making Electra herself reject the sugges. 
 tion that a brother's hair and his footprints would be likely to 
 resemble those of his sister. Following the recognition is a long 
 ' komrnos ' of nearly three hundred lines in which Orestes and 
 Electra exchange lamentations with the chorus. But through it 
 all Aeschylus never forgets that the motive of the play is revenge. 
 For him the pathos of Electra's situation and her joy at the 
 reunion with Orestes are dominated, as they are not to the same 
 extent in the plays of Sophocles and Euripides^ by the scheme fai 
 
2o6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 vengeance. By a false story of his own death Orestes wins his 
 way into the palace, and soon the spectators hear from within the 
 death-cry of Aegisthus. In the uproar that follows, Clytemnestra 
 seizes the axe with which she had slain Agamemnon, and con- 
 fronts her son, whose sword is still dripping with the blood of 
 Aegisthus. In this encounter of mother and son the dramatic 
 interest of the whole trilogy reaches its highest point. Clytem- 
 nestra in the Agamemnon had shown no sign of her guilty passion 
 for Aegisthus, though the chorus had not failed to taunt her with 
 it. Aeschylus could boast in the Frogs of Aristophanes that he 
 had never sinned against the dramatic proprieties by bringing on 
 the stage ' a woman in love.' But at this moment, when Clytem- 
 nestra learns of the death of Aegisthus from her son, she cannot 
 restrain her grief for the loss of her lover and champion. Thou 
 loves t the man ? cries Orestes in fury, thou shalt lie with him in 
 the same grave. Orestes is like Hamlet in his mission of revenge, 
 unlike him in that he pursues his purpose. Only once he hesi- 
 tates and appeals to Pylades, who for the rest of the play is a 
 mute personage, but for this once breaks silence as the mouth- 
 piece of Apollo to warn his friend that the god must be obeyed 
 and his father avenged. After that Orestes puts aside his mother's 
 appeals for mercy, and drives her before him into the palace that 
 she may die by the side of Aegisthus. He is next seen standing on 
 the eccyclema by the dead bodies of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, 
 as, in the Agamemnon, his mother had stood over Cassandra and 
 the king. In his hand Orestes holds the blood-stained robe with 
 which she had entangled Agamemnon in the bath, before she slew 
 him, and raises it to the light, that the sun himself, seeing that 
 cruel net, may bear witness to the justice of the deed. But it is 
 only for a few moments that Orestes can reason clearly in his own 
 defense, 
 
 " Streaked with his mother's blood, hut striving hard 
 To tell the story ere his reason goes." ^ 
 
 He feels the approaching madness of remorse and sees the 
 1 Browning, Patdine. 
 
AESCHYLUS 207 
 
 Gorgon shapes of the Furies, their dusky robes, their dishevelled 
 hair coiled with snakes, and the blood of hatred dripping from 
 their eyes as they swarm about their prey. Ye cannot see them, 
 but I can, he cries to the chorus. They drive me out and T must 
 flee. And so he rushes from the scene, scelerum Furiis agitatus 
 Orestes, turning his face to the shrine of Apollo at Delphi where 
 he had been promised protection. 
 
 The whole interest of the last play of the Oresteia, the Eumen- 
 ides, is centered in Orestes, facto plus et sceleratus eodem. The 
 other actors are divinities, Apollo and Athene, who ^^^ 
 come forward! in hi^ defense. The chorus is com- Eumenides 
 posed of his grim pursuers, the Furies. The scene opens at Del- 
 phi before the temple of Apollo, where Orestes has fled for 
 refuge. The Furies, who have been cast into a deep sleep by 
 Apollo, lie on the steps of the. central altar at which Orestes 
 crouches exhausted by his long flight. After a prologue by the 
 priestess, the tableau within the temple is disclosed, probably by 
 the eccyclema. While the Furies still sleep, Apollo sends away 
 Orestes, under escort of Hermes, to a shrine that is destined 
 to be the goal of his wanderings, the temple of Athene at Athens. 
 The ghost of Clytemnestra, stung by his escape, rises and upbraids 
 the sleeping Furies. When the play was produced, the aspect of 
 the chorus created something like a panic in the theater, and it 
 became a reproach to Aeschylus that he had added horror to 
 horror, had been the first to clothe the Furies in black and to put 
 snakes in their hair.' And now Clytemnestra stood among them, 
 a shamed and abhorred ghost, pointing to her wounds, and calling 
 on them not to let their prey escape. They answer her with 
 mutterings in their sleep and at last awake to find that the quarry 
 has stolen away. Apollo drives them like unclean things from his 
 shrine, and the scene changes to Athens, to the temple of Athene 
 
 1 Dante reproduced the Aeschylean Furies stained with blood, who had the 
 limbs of women and their action, and were girt with greenest hydras. Little 
 serpents and cerastes they had for hair, wherewith their cruel temples were 
 Sound. Inferno, Canto 9, Norton's translation. 
 
2o8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 on the Acropolis. There Orestes has come, after long years of 
 suffering, not, he pleads, as one red-handed and unpurged,but with 
 his guilt faded, the stain of blood grown dull on his hands, and 
 himself worn out by long travel in alien ways and among alien 
 men. The Furies crowd in the orchestra, and, as he clings to the 
 statue of Athene, they sing a terrible chant of vengeance that no 
 tears or prayers can avert. Athene refuses to decide between her 
 own suppliant and divinities so powerful as the Furies. At this 
 point Aeschylus imports into the play a historical interest which 
 was doubtless far more impressive to the Athenian spectator than 
 to ourselves. Atliene summons twelve Athenian citizens to try 
 the case of Orestes and the Furies. At the time when the play 
 was produced, under the regime of Pericles, the council of the 
 Areopagus, the most conservative institution at Athens, had been 
 deprived of all its political power on the motion of Ephialtes, and 
 had been shelved as an aristocratic body whose functions were 
 incompatible with general democracy. But there had been left to 
 the Areopagus its jurisdiction in cases of homicide such as was 
 tried at its first sitting in the Eumenides. What Aeschylus thought 
 of the reform of Ephialtes is not indicated in the play. But in 
 this picture of the founding of the court by Athene he expressed 
 the conservative Athenian attitude to the venerable council. 
 After the cross-examination of Orestes by the chorus, and the tes- 
 timony of Apollo in his defense, the votes of the twelve judges are 
 found to be equal. This was a moment when a god might well 
 intervene to cut the knot, as Apollo had intervened when Orestes 
 had to choose between the Erinnyes of a father unavenged and 
 the Erinnyes of a mother slain.' Athene accordingly gives the 
 casting vote for Orestes, who departs to Argos. The goddess is 
 left to appease the wrath of the chorus : 
 
 " yea thou knowest O mother Night, 
 Keen as that cry from thy strange children sent 
 Wherewith the Athenian judgment-shrine was rent. 
 For wrath that all their wrath was vainly spent, 
 1 Choeph. 283. 
 
AESCHYLUS 209 
 
 Their wrath for wrong made right 
 By justice in her own divine despite 
 That bade pass forth unblamed 
 The sinless matricide and unashamed." * 
 
 But Athene changes their curses on Athens into blessings, and 
 offers them a shrine beneath the Areopagus. So they become the 
 Eumenides, the ' Gracious Ones,' Athenian for evermore, and the 
 play ends with their solemn procession towards the Areopagus, 
 led by Athene. In a later Greek play, the Oedipus at Colonus, 
 they were to be shown as established deities of the sacred grove 
 at Colonus near Athens. 
 
 The satyric afterpiece of the Oresteia was the lost Proteus. 
 That ' old man of the sea,' surrounded by his flock of seals, had 
 prophesied to Menelaus in the Odyssey his wanderings, before the 
 gods would let him come home to Sparta, and had told him of the 
 murder of Agamemnon by Aegisthus in his halls. Aeschylus may 
 well have drawn on that episode to connect Proteus with the tale 
 of the house of Atreus. 
 
 Aeschylus said, or is reported to have said, that his plays 
 were ' slices from the great banquet of Homer.' Nothing in 
 those plays, and in the whole of Greek tragedy which 
 followed his lead, is more striking than the , domi- * ^ ^ 
 nation of the heroic saga. Never was the saga, that precious 
 inheritance of the Greeks, so deeply significant, so full of meaning 
 as in the drama. The great storehouse of the saga was, of course, 
 the epic. When Aeschylus admitted his debt to Homer he had 
 in mind, not only the Iliad and Odyssey, but the Cypria and the 
 Thebais, which in his generation men still ascribed to Homer. 
 Their story of the siege of Troy and the " dark sorrows of the line 
 of Thebes," preferred before all others by the tragedians, formed 
 the very substance of the drama, as they were indispensable to the 
 choral lyric of Simonides, Pindar, and Bacchylides. So necessary 
 were the myths to the vitality of tragedy, that, when the feeling 
 for the saga died out among the Greeks, tragedy, too, withered at 
 1 Swinburne, On The Cliffs. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — I4 
 
2IO SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the root. In the purely Attic legends Aeschylus seems to have 
 taken small interest, and, though lo has her place in the Pro- 
 metheus, he never brought her descendant Heracles on the stage. 
 The great convulsions, the ruinous passions, that he chose to de- 
 pict had not for their setting violet-crowned Athens. Remoteness 
 was an added beauty and an added terror; the desolation of 
 Scythia, on the verge of the world, gave an effect of somber gran- 
 deur to the Prometheus. For the Promethean • trilogy he had 
 drawn on the Theogonies ; the saga of the Argonauts furnished 
 him with several plays ; the Dionysus myth inspired ten 
 tragedies, among them the lost Lycui-geia, the trilogy in which 
 Aeschylus dramatized the infatuation and punishment of Lycur- 
 gus, king of the Edones, who, like Pentheus of Thebes, had re- 
 sisted the cult of Dionysus, had chased the Maenads, and driven 
 the god himself to take refuge in the sea.' It is hard to deter- 
 mine how far Aeschylus modified the legends which he found in 
 the cyclic epics and Stesichorus. The role of Electra, which was 
 to become so essential a part of the Orestes legend in tragedy, he 
 may well have derived from the Oresteia of Stesichorus. Homer 
 had given, in the Odyssey, two versions of the death of Agamem- 
 non. In the eariier Books, Aegisthus is said to have planned and 
 executed the murder, and Clytemnestra is barely mentioned. In 
 the eleventh Book the shade of Agamemnon tells how his wife 
 helped Aegisthus to slay him and how she murdered Cassandra. 
 The conception of Clytemnestra as the pitiless protagonist, a Lady 
 Macbeth unshaken by remorse, was not original with Aeschylus ; 
 Pindar, nearly twenty years before the Oresteia, had accused her 
 strong hands and ruthless heart of the murder of Agamemnon and 
 Cassandra. The watchman who, in the Odyssey, was set by 
 Aegisthus to spy out and report the coming of the king, is bor- 
 rowed by Aeschylus, but he is transformed into a faithful servant 
 of Agamemnon who watches for the beacon. 
 
 The finest tragedies of Aeschylus were concerned with the 
 legends of certain great houses whose monstrous crimes had laid 
 
 ' Cp. Iliad VI 130 and Sophocles, Antigone 955. 
 
AESCHYLUS an 
 
 their descendants under an inherited curse. The blossoming 
 of that ' darlc flower ' from generation to generation, the struggle 
 of the victims, their atonement or annihilation according to the 
 inevitable justice of the gods, and the ruthlessness of Destiny, 
 that is the great tragic contest displayed in the dramas 
 of Aeschylus. The tragic complication arises afresh 
 as each man sets his own " afflicted will " against the will of Destiny, 
 falls under his inherited tendency to guilt, and pays the penalty of 
 his own peculiar insolence, his own transgression of the limits of 
 human action set by fate. The very gods join hands with fate to 
 help a man on to his ruin, when, like Xerxes, he has set out in 
 insolent pride to attempt what is not permitted to a mortal. 
 That dark background of inevitable Destiny gives a significance 
 to the most trivial act of man, every reversal of fortune becomes 
 a judgment, and Nemesis herself is not a personification of the 
 jealousy of heaven, as in Herodotus, but a symbol of the victory 
 of the moral law over passion. 
 
 In his choruses Aeschylus illustrates his plays with many a 
 
 " lamentable tale of things 
 Done long ago and ill done." 
 
 The parodos or first choral lyric of the Agamemnon is crowded 
 with ' memories of pain,' the omen of the eagles and the hare 
 that delayed the fleet at Aulis, the sacrifice of Iphi- xhe 
 geneia, the insolent treachery of Paris, the flight of choruses 
 Helen through the gates at midnight, the lonely grief of Menelaus. 
 Most poignant of all, because most personal to the singers, is the 
 closing lament for the dead warriors who are mourned in every 
 home in Greece : Well-known and dear were the men who went 
 forth to the war ; but in place of each there comes back to his home 
 a handful of ashes, an unfamiliar urn} 
 
 In the first chorus of the Persae, by the enumeration of the 
 forces of Persia marshaled by Xerxes, the tale of the men who 
 
 'Cp. the echo In Tennyson's Lotos-Ealers , 'Two liandfuls of white dust 
 shut in an urn of brass.' 
 
212 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 came from Susa and Ecbatana, from the banks of the Nile, from 
 Sardis and Tmolus and gilded Babylon, Aeschylus achieved two 
 ends. The account of all that array of men and ships, so soon to 
 be scattered, heightened the triumph of the Greeks, and by the 
 recital of lists of half- familiar names of foreign men and places he 
 secured an effect of grandeur and pathos. The device is used by 
 the poets of all times. Vergil, in the seventh Book of the Aeneid, 
 impresses the imagination with his long list of the forces of Italy 
 gathered to oppose Aeneas, while Milton outdoes all his classic 
 models with his tale of the millions of dead reviewed by Satan, 
 closing his list of ' Princes, Potentates, and Warriors,' with 
 
 " all who since, baptized or infidel. 
 Jousted in Aspramont or Montalban, 
 Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond, 
 Or whom Biserta sent from Afric shore, 
 When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
 By Fontarabia." 
 
 For its plots and personages, for much of the language and 
 manner of its dialogue, tragedy was deeply indebted to the epic ; 
 but the rhythms which it used to express every shade 
 of lyrical emotion were borrowed from the choral melic 
 of the Dorians. Aeschylus used every variety of choral meter, 
 changing from the marching anapaest to the impressive dactylic 
 rhythm or to lively trochaics as his singers changed their mood. 
 He uses the unequal and emotional dochmiac, that peculiarly 
 tragic meter, derived no doubt from the dithyramb, when he 
 wishes to express strong passion, as at the moment when Cas- 
 sandra first breaks her ominous silence to denounce the blood- 
 stained palace of Atreus.' Logaoedics, which Sophocles and 
 Euripides used by preference, are less conspicuous in the choruses 
 of Aeschylus. The monody, tjie solo by the actor which was to 
 become a striking feature of the, plays of Euripides, is used in the 
 Prometheus Bound, where lo, pursued by the gadfly, sings her 
 frenzied lyrics. The refrain, so eff'ective for pathos, though 
 
 1 Agamemnon logo. 
 
AESCHYLUS 213 
 
 always used with the risk of failing in its effect, was rare in earlier 
 Greek poetry. Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, the Alexandrians, 
 may be said to have mastered the refrain and to have escaped 
 absurdity by the skill with which they introduced it in their idyls 
 and dirges. The famous wail, half lament, half prayer, which closes 
 a strophe, antistrophe, and epode in the first chorus of the Aga- 
 memnon, Sing woe, sing woe, but let the good prevail, and the twice 
 repeated invocation of Darius in the Persae are instances of that 
 use of the refrain by Aeschylus for which he was ridiculed by 
 Euripides in the Frogs} With Aeschylus, if not earlier, the swifl 
 and lively trochaic tetrameter, the first meter of tragic dialogue, 
 was superseded by iambic trimeter borrowed from the iambic poets 
 who had followed the lead of Archilochus. But in two scenes of the 
 Persae, and at the close of the Agamemnon, for the final dispute of 
 Aegisthus and the chorus, Aeschylus uses the older measure which 
 Euripides, later, introduced frequently and with conscious archaism.^ 
 The language of Aeschylus is charged with memories of Homer, 
 with Homeric figures and phrases, many no doubt taken directly 
 from the epics to which the poets of Greece turned, as one now turns 
 to the Bible, for the inevitable word or phrase. To the lyric poets 
 he certainly owed even more, but from their scanty remains we 
 cannot measure the debt. He wrote, like Pindar, the austere 
 style which seemed to the Greeks to embody the high 
 ideals and severe and strenuous lives of the genera- 
 tion that fought at Marathon. What he really invented was the 
 tragic style, the style of the tirade. Nothing is easier to ridicule 
 than grandiloquence, and it was not long before the Athenians 
 detected a touch of the absurd in the " frowning towers " of their 
 admired dramatist. To describe the language of Aeschylus, 
 
 " the thunder-phrases of the Athenian, grown 
 Up out of memories of Marathon," 
 1 1265. 
 
 2 The trochaic tetrameter of tragedy consists of eight trochees ( w) with 
 
 the final measure shortened (catalectic). The song in Browning's Blot on 
 the Scutcheon has a similar rhythm, but the line closes with a full measure, is 
 Kcatalectic : " There's a woman like a dewdrop, she's so purer than the purest." 
 
214 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Aristophanes in the Frogs (405 B.C.) draws on ail that is lofty and 
 toppling. The Aeschylean epithet is ' embattled,' his words and 
 phrases have ' beetling brows ' or ' waving plumes,' or are mounted 
 on dizzy heights, were in fact ' gathered at Marathon,' as Dionysus 
 hints.' 
 
 But when Dionysus has to choose which of the three dead tra- 
 gedians he shall take up with him from the underwoVld, to bring 
 once again to Athens the delights of the drama, he chooses 
 Aeschylus. The Athenians themselves decided that the plays of 
 Aeschylus should not die with him when they passed the law 
 which allowed his tragedies to be reproduced, even after his 
 death, at the tragic competitions, an honor that was never paid to 
 Sophocles or Euripides. 
 
 BIBUOGRAPHT 
 
 History of the Drama 
 
 Aristotle, Poetics. Welcker, Die Griechischen Tragodien, Bonn, 184I. 
 Schlegel, Vorlesungen aber dramatische Kunst u.. LUeratur, Heidelberg, 
 1809. Lessing, Dramaiurgie. Patin, Etudes sur les tragiques grecques, Paris, 
 1843. Nietzsche, Die Geburt der Tragodie, Leipzig, 1872. Windisch, Der 
 Griech. Einjluss iin Indischen Drama, Berlin, 1882. Bernays, Ueber die 
 aristot. Theorie des Dramas, Berlin, 1880. Haigh, Tragic Drama of the 
 Creeks, Oxford, 1896. 
 
 The Theater 
 
 Miiller, Lekrbuch d. Griech. Biihnenalteriiimer, Freiburg, 1886. Sommer- 
 brodt, Scaenica, Berlin, 1876. Haigh, The Attic Theater, Oxford, 1889. 
 Dorpfeld-Reisch, Das Griech. Theater, Athens, 1896. Miiller, Das Attische 
 Biihnenwesen, Guterslohe, 1902. Capps, The Stage in the Greek Theatre 
 according to the Extant Dramas,'i^ev/ Haven, 1893. WmssaiSirm, Die Szenisch. 
 AuffUhrungen D. Griech. Dramen, Miinich, 1893. Wilamowitz Ya.Hermes2\, 
 Dorpfeld in jSir^-A'w. Phil. Wochenschrift, i%yo. Robert in ^«;-ot« 32. 
 
 Aeschylus 
 I. Manuscripts. The archetype of the existing manuscripts is the Mediceus 
 or Laurentianus, lo-iith cent., at Plorence, brought from Greece in 1423. 
 Transcript by Merkel, Oxford, 1871; facsimile, Florence, 1896. The Medi- 
 cean didascaliae were recovered in 1848. 
 
 * Frogs 1296. 
 
AESCHYLUS 215 
 
 II. Editions, £(/./W«<r., Aldus, Venice, 15 18. Hermann-Haupt, Leipzig, 
 1852. Wecklein-Vitelli, Berlin, 1885 (crit. ed.). Wecklein-Zomarides, Athens, 
 1897 (with Greek notes). Kirchhoff, Berlin, i88d. Weil, Leipzig, 1885. 
 Weil, Giessen, 1867. Dindorf, Oxford, 1841-1851 (with scholia). 
 
 Special Editions. Suppliants; Tucker, London, 1889. Seven Against 
 Thebes: Ritschl, Leipzig, 1875. Verrall, London, 1887. Agamemnon : V ex- 
 rail, London, 1904. Wilamowitz, 1885. Ckoephori: Wilamowitz, 1896. 
 Tucker, Cambridge, 1901. Oresleia : Wilamowitz, igoi. TYit. Fragments: 
 Nauck, Tragicorum graec. fragmenta, Leipzig, 1856. Ahrens, Aeschyli el 
 Sophoclis fragmenta, Paris, 1886. Prometheus : Harry, New York, 1905. 
 
 III. Literature. Westphal, Prolegomena z. Aesch. Trag., Leipzig, 1869. 
 Patin, Eschyle, Paris, 1890 (7th ed. of his Etudes sur les tragiques ^ecs), 
 Myers, Aeschylus in Abbott's Hellenica, London, 1880. Richter, Die Drama- 
 turgie des Aesch., Leipzig, 1892. Haupt, Commentationes archaeologicae in 
 Aesch., Halle, 1897. ^ohsxi, Bild und I.ied, Berlin, 1881 (for the treatment 
 of the Orestes legend in Greek art). 
 
 IV. Lexicon. Dindorf, Lexicon Aeschyleum, Leipzig, 1876. 
 
 V. Translations. Plumptre, Anna Swanwick, Lewis Campbell (1890). 
 Oresteia ; Morshead, The House of Alreus, 2d ed., London, 1889. 
 Prometheus Bound: E. B. Browning. Agamemnon : Robert Browning, E. 
 Fitzgerald (the one too literal, the other too free). Warr, The Oresteian 
 Trilogv, London, 1901. Prometheus Bound: Bevan, London, 1902. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 SOPHOCLES 
 
 Sophocles, the son of Sophillus, was born in 497 b c. at ' white 
 Colonus,' a village lying about a mile to the northwest of Athens, 
 where, as he sings in the Oedipus at Colonus, the waters of the 
 Cephisus never fail, the narcissus and crocus flower in green glades, 
 and the gray-green olive, greatest beauty of all to the eye of a 
 native of Attica, ' flourishes mightily.' His father belonged to 
 that prosperous merchant class which produced Demosthenes, the 
 orator. Sophocles was twenty-eight years younger than Aes- 
 chylus, so that Marathon, where the older poet had played a 
 man's part, was for him a dim memory of childhood. In the 
 rejoicings after Salamis he was old enough to share, and was 
 chosen to lead the choir of boys who sang a paean for the victory. 
 The distinction was a tribute to his personal beauty and skill in 
 music, attested by more than one anecdote of his career as actor 
 in his own tragedies. Sophocles represents the generation that 
 reaped the fruits of Marathon and Salamis. His long life almost 
 coincides with the fifth century, but he incarnates, not those years 
 that saw the gradual dissolution of Athens, but the brilliant half cen- 
 tury of Athenian empire that falls between Salamis and the Pelo- 
 ponnesian war, the golden prime of ' shining Athens, the stay of 
 Hellas.' He was twenty-eight when he first entered the tragic 
 competition and defeated Aeschylus. During the next sixty years 
 he won more first prizes than fell to the lot of any other Greek 
 tragedian, and was never placed lower than second. Though he 
 took no active interest in politics, he was twice electea a general. 
 From the first he appears as the happy poet, the man who rep- 
 resents the perfection of the literary art of his time as Pericles 
 realized its political ideals. He was never allured to a foreign 
 
 216 
 
SOPHOCLES 217 
 
 court, like Aeschylus, by chagrin or desire for a foreign triumph, 
 and he was undistracted by the analytic temperament and craving 
 for novelty that tormented Euripides. He is the contented man 
 (evKokoi) who even in the underworld, says Dionysus,' is not to 
 be tempted to change his lot. There is a tradition that at the end 
 of his life he was engaged in a lawsuit with his thankless sons,^ 
 and his anger is perhaps reflected in his characterization of Oed- 
 ipus the implacable father in his last play, the Oedipus at Co- 
 lonus. But the story, if true, did not impair the legend that he 
 was, as Phrynichus * says, the ' happy Sophocles, happy in his 
 long life, his fortunes, his talent, happy to have written all those 
 beautiful tragedies; happy above all in that he died at last full 
 of honors, untouched by sorrow.' He was indeed spared the 
 sight of the final humiliation of Athens, dying in 405, a few 
 months before the naval disaster of Aegospotami. He was one 
 of the few great Athenians who never bore Athens a grudge, 
 and never went into exile. 
 
 Sophocles wrote more than a hundred tragedies of which only 
 seven are extant. The Ajax, of uncertain date, and the Antigone 
 (440 B.C.) are the earliest of the surviving plays. Many critics 
 place the Antigone first in date on the ground that in this play 
 alone Sophocles still observes the practice of Aeschylus in never 
 
 ' Aristoph. Frogs 82. 
 
 * A story goes — When Sophocles, last year. 
 Cited before tribunal by his son, 
 
 Was certified unsound of intellect. 
 
 And claimed as only fit for tutelage, 
 
 Since old and doting and incompetent 
 
 To carry on this world's work, — The defence 
 
 Consisted just in his reciting (calm 
 
 As the verse bore, which sets our heart a-swell 
 
 And voice a-heaving too tempestuously) 
 
 That chorus-chant " The station of the steed. 
 
 Stranger ! thou comest to, — Kolonos white." 
 
 Then he looked round and all revolt was dead. 
 
 — BROWNiNn, Aristophanes Apology. 
 
 * Frag. Comicorum Graec. 2. 592 (Meineke), 
 
i;i8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 dividing the iambic trimeter between two or more speakers. The 
 evidence from the structure of the plays is slightly in favor of the 
 priority of the Ajax. What the discussion indicates is that even 
 the two earliest of the seven plays represent the mature work of 
 Sophocles. 
 
 The greater Ajax, the son of Telamon, is a leading figure in the 
 Homeric epic, second only to Achilles, as the champion of the 
 Greeks in the Iliad. When in the Odyssey Odysseus met in the 
 underworld the ghosts of his comrades who had died before Troy 
 or on the home-coming, the shade of Ajax would not listen to the 
 soft words and the flattery of the comrade who had won from him 
 the arms of Achilles, but maintained a resentful silence, ' greater 
 . and more sublime than words.' But the story of that 
 
 fatal grievance was not told by Homer. Aeschylus 
 when he wrote his trilogy on the adventures of Ajax and Teiicer, 
 and Sophocles for this play and for his lost Teucer, must have 
 drawn on the cyclic epics, the lost Aethiopis and the Little Iliad. 
 Of the secret ballot of the Greeks and the injustice done to 
 Ajax we have no account in Greek literature, though Pindar 
 alludes to it more than once to illustrate the baleful effect of envy 
 and malice, and the Award of Arms was a favorite theme in the 
 Greek and Roman schools of rhetoric. Sophocles wrote his play 
 to show the fatal effect of that award on the injured hero. In his 
 wrath he had planned to murder his faithless comrades. But 
 Athene had turned his anger to madness and diverted his sword 
 upon the helpless cattle and sheep, the undivided spoils of Troy. 
 As the play opens she stands before his tent and warns her favorite 
 Odysseus to take to heart this lesson of the strength of the gods. 
 The madness and the delusion were the punishment, not only of 
 that plot of vengeance, but of a violent and independent spirit of 
 which there is no hint in the Iliad. Sophor-les thinks of Ajax as 
 afflicted in his happier days with a pride like that of Capaneus, 
 who boasted that ' God willing or not willing ' he would sack 
 
 ' Longinus, On Ike Stiblime 9. Cp. the encounter of Aeneas and Dido and 
 her silence in Aeneid 6, 
 
SOPHOCLES 219 
 
 Thebes, and was chosen by Dante for the type of the violent man 
 who held the gods in disdain.^ 
 
 Here then we have the motive for the intervention of Athene. 
 The humiliation of Ajax is complete, and nothing is left him but 
 to die. In the first part of the play the scene is laid before his 
 tent and by means of the eccyclema he is discovered within, sane 
 and ashamed among the slaughtered cattle, 
 
 " sitting alone in blood while friends 
 Are hunting far in the sunshine." 
 
 But now, as in the Eumenides, though not elsewhere in any extant 
 Greek tragedy, the scene changes to a lonely spot on the seashore, 
 where, having escaped from the solicitude of Tecraessa and the 
 chorus of Salaminian sailors, Ajax takes his farewell of life, curs- 
 ing to the last the treachery of the Atreidae : O Death, Death, 
 come now and look on me. Nay, thee I may address when I meet 
 thee in the underworld. But thou bright and glorious light of 
 day, and the Sun in his chariot, I greet thee now for the last time 
 and nevermore hereafter. O sunlight! O sacred soil of Salamis, 
 my native land . . . and ye streams and rivers and plains of Troy 
 that have nourished my life, farewell ! Nevermore will Ajax 
 address you. The rest shall I speak in Hades with the dead? 
 Then he falls on his sword, that 'most hateful of weapons' 
 which had been the gift of Hector and now proved the truth of 
 the proverb : The gifts of enemies are no gifts and bring no good. 
 In his dying speech Ajax had prayed to Zeus that Teucer his 
 foster brother might find his body and save it from the vengeance 
 of the Atreidae. In the last four hundred Hnes of the play 
 Teucer is the leading figure and maintains, first against Mene- 
 laus, and then against Agarnemnon, the right of Ajax to receive 
 burial. Finally Odysseus,!" the man who is not passion's slave," 
 who at the end as at the opening of the play shows himself too 
 generous to exult over his fallen rival, wins the consent of Aga- 
 memnon to the funeral rites, and would even have taken part in 
 
 1 Inferno, Canto 14. 2 gj^ fj 
 
220 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 them had not Teucer feared the displeasure of the implacable 
 dead. To call the latter part of the Ajax an anticlimax is to 
 show an incomplete sympathy with the spirit of the Greek dram- 
 atist, who seldom placed the crisis, the highest point of interest, 
 at the close of the play. But in any case it was almost as im- 
 portant to the Greek spectator that a tragic hero should be duly 
 buried as that he should meet a violent end. The complication 
 of the slaughter of the flocks has been solved by the death of 
 Ajax. Now we have a new though certainly a minor compli- 
 cation, the difficulty that the Atreidae oppose his burial as bitterly 
 as though he had been one of their Trojan foes. 
 
 On his first sight of the body of Ajax, Teucer had foretold the 
 cruel reception that must now be his at Salamis, the bitter re- 
 proaches of Telamon, that passionate and morose old man whose 
 son he had failed to save.^ In his lost play, the Teucer, Sophocles, 
 like Aeschylus in his Salaminians , dramatized the story of that 
 grievous home-coming and the exile of Teucer to Cyprus, where 
 he founded another Salamis. We have a brief fragment which 
 seems to show that Teucer, before he broke the news of the death 
 of Ajax, had recounted the hero's exploits at Troy. For when 
 Telamon learns the whole truth he exclaims : — 
 
 O vain delight, wherewith I was delighted. 
 To hear his praise, as one alive, recited! 
 The fiend of Death in darkness all the while 
 Fawning upon me let the joy beguile? 
 
 For the sequel we turn, not to Aeschylus or Sophocles, but to 
 the brief encounter of Teucer and Helen in Egypt in the Helen 
 of Euripides, and an ode of Horace in which he recites Teucer's 
 brave challenge to fate, the famous ' never despair ' passage, his ex- 
 hortation to his tried comrades to seeK with him a newer world.' 
 
 1 Ajax 1006. 2 Phillimore's translation oifr. 516. 
 
 * Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro, i. 7. Horace's O socii, 
 pejoraque passi, like Vergil's O socii . . . O passi graviora (^Aen. I. 199), are 
 reminiscences of Odyssey 12. 208. Cp. " My mariners, Souls that have toiled 
 and wrought and thought with me."— Tennyson, Ulysses. 
 
SOPHOCLES 221 
 
 The appointment of Sophocles as a general in the Saraian war is 
 said to have been a tribute to the popular success of the Antigone 
 (442 or 441 B.C.) ; a singular reward for a play whose 
 main thesis is that the rights of the individual may in "^^^ Antig- 
 certain cases rank higher than the rights of the State. 
 For the story Sophocles drew on the cyclic epics, the Thebais and 
 the Oedipodea, but the dev&lopraent of the action is his own. 
 For this, his first drama of the Theban saga, he chose the last chap- 
 ter of the calamities of the house of Laius, and took for protagonist 
 a figure that was henceforth to be the type of heroic self-sacrifice. 
 At the close of our version of the Seven Against TTiebes of Aeschy- 
 lus, Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus, a true child of her imprac- 
 ticable father, declares that she will bury the body of her brother 
 Polynices, in defiance of the edict of Creon, the new ruler of 
 Thebes. The penalty of disobedience is death, but the threat has 
 no terrors for one whose parents and brothers have perished. An- 
 tigone is betrothed to Haemon, Creon's son, but, like the Persian 
 princess fc Herodotus, she thought that her brother's claims can- 
 celed every other human tie. O king, said the wife of Intaphernes, 
 / may have another husband if God will, and other children if I 
 lose these ; but another brother I cannot have} In almost the 
 same words Antigone says that not for child or husband would she 
 have disobeyed the edict of the citizens. The dramatic situation 
 Ues in the conflict of the wills of Creon and Antigone. She asserts 
 that she has followed ' the unwritten code of the gods, framed not 
 to-day nor yesterday, but fixed forever.' He displays all the ob- 
 stinacy, the jealousy for his authority, natural to a tyrant whose 
 power has been intermittent and is only lately assured. He will 
 make no concessions to the sacred claim of the unburied dead, or 
 to a sister's devotion, or to the entreaties of Antigone's lover, his 
 own son. Sophocles went out of his way to introduce a love- 
 
 1 Herod. 3. 119. Cp. /i»A]f(j«« 909 ff. It is impossible to decide whether 
 Sophocles borrowed the idea from his friend. Other passages in which he 
 seems to reflect Herodotus are O. at C. 337-341 ; cp. Herod. 2. 35; with 
 Electra 417-423, cp. i. 108. 
 
222 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 interest in the Antigone. According to the prose version of the le- 
 gend in the Graeco-Roman handbook of Mythology {Bibliothecd), 
 which passes under the name of Apotlodorus, Haeraon the son of 
 Creon was killed by the Sphinx before the first coming of Oedipus 
 to Thebes. In the tragedy of Sophocles he appears as the Romeo 
 of the Greek drama, resolved to die with his betrothed. Yet 
 Sophocles never brings him on the stage with Antigone, and in her 
 exalted mood of se;lf-sacrifice she almost ignores Haemon. Before 
 she is led away to be buried alive she sings a dirge for her early 
 death, for the fate that sends her to the grave unwedded, for the 
 grievous woes of her house. In all this there is no touch of per- 
 sonal feeling for Haemon, no mention of his name. Haemon him- 
 self pleads her cause in the name, not of personal passion, but of 
 justice and family piety. It is Matthew Arnold, not Sophocles, 
 who makes her lover reproach Antigone as 
 
 " One than Creon crueller far. 
 For he, he, at least, by slaying her, 
 August laws doth mightily vindicate; 
 But thou, too-bold, headstrong, pitiless! 
 Ah me ! honorest more than thy lover, 
 
 O Antigone, 
 A dead, ignorant, thankless corpse." ^ 
 
 Nevertheless the final catastrophe of the play is the direct re- 
 sult of his passion. When Creon, shaken at last by the warning 
 of the seer Teiresias, goes to release Antigone, he is too late. 
 She has hanged herself, and Haemon is there before him, clinging 
 in frantic grief to her dead body. In that 'bridal chamber paved 
 with stone ' Creon's son falls upon his sword. Eurydice the queen, 
 when the messenger relates the dreadful scene, goes into the pal- 
 ace without a word ' good or evil.' Her broken-hearted silence, 
 like the silent exit ot Deianira in a later play, the Trachiniae, is 
 ominous even to the chorus. Creon, entering with Haemon's 
 corpse, is greeted by the crowning grief of the queen's suicide. 
 With this last crushing calamity the story of the house of Oedipus 
 
 ^ Fragment of an Antigone, 
 
SOPHOCLES 223 
 
 comes to an end. Ismene, the sole survivor, appears in Greek 
 tragedy only as a foil to her heroic sister, a colorless figure whom 
 the saga rejects. 
 
 Hegel thought the Antigone " the most perfect and excellent of 
 all dramas."^ But that was because he saw in it, not a drama of 
 the emotions, but a purely intellectual opposition, woman in the 
 person of Antigone defending her peculiar province of family piety 
 against the essentially masculine law of the State, a sex distinction 
 which certainly did not occur to an Athenian audience.^ Aris- 
 totle's judgment is more likely to appeal to the modern reader. 
 In the Rhetoric, when he insists on the stability of the unwrit- 
 ten law as opposed to fallible human conventions, he quotes a, 
 few lines of Antigone's fine rhetorical defense.^ But he did 
 . not, like Hegel, consider the Antigone the masterpiece of the Greek 
 drama. That distinction, as we know from the Poetics, he reserved 
 for the Oedipus Tyrannus. Antigone is in fact too austere, too 
 blameless, for the ideal tragic protagonist, who must display some 
 infirmity of purpose, some lapse of piety, if he is to arouse the 
 pity and fear of the spectators. 
 
 The Electra is one of the latest of the plays. It contains an 
 anapaestic solo (monody) by Electra'' such as is found elsewhere 
 only in the later plays of Euripides, one of those songs from the 
 stage which tended to become more important than the lyrics of 
 the chorus and were ridiculed by Aristophanes when he ^j^^ 
 attacked the New Music in the Progs. Another sign Electra 
 of lateness is the form of the first chorus, the parodos, which is a 
 
 1 Aesthetics III 2. 
 
 2 Cp. Girard, U Hegelianisme dans V interpretation de P Antigone de Sophocle, 
 in his &tudes sur la Poesie Grecqtie. . 
 
 3 Rhetoric I. 12; I. 15. 
 
 * 86-120. In the olden plays, e.g. the Supplices, Persae, and Agamemnon o( 
 Aeschylus, anapaestic rhythms were regularly employed by the chorus as it 
 entered the theater chanting the parodos. For this rhythm cp. Lochiel's 
 Warning: — 
 
 " For a 6eld of the dead rushes red on my sight, 
 And the clans of CuUo'den are scattered in flight." 
 
224 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 duet (kommos) with Electra, as in the latest play, the Oedipus at 
 Colonus. The chorus of Mycenaean women sing barely a hun- 
 dred lines of lyric independently of the actors. The Electra of 
 Euripides was produced about 413 B.C., and the Sophoclean Elec- 
 tra probably falls within the preceding decade.' Like the Choe- 
 phori of Aeschylus, the Electra is a drama of revenge. But here 
 Electra, not Orestes, is the protagonist and appears in every scene, 
 claiming her share in the punishment of her father's murderers. 
 Her younger sister, Chrysothemis, a replica of Ismene in the 
 Antigone, has adapted herself to the conditions in the palace after 
 the death of Agamemnon. But Electra was not to be conciliated. 
 She is a woman embittered by the threats and insults of her mother 
 and Aegisthus, by years of protest and of waiting for her father's 
 avenger. In the hour of her triumph she is pitiless ; when she 
 hears from within the dying cry of Clytemnestra, she cries to 
 her brother, Strike, if thou canst, a second stroke! The Sopho- 
 clean Orestes is a less tragic and less effective figure than the 
 fate-driven man who in the Choephori is maddened by the 
 Furies of remorse in the very hour of his success. Here he ' is 
 rather the goodly Orestes of the Odyssey, who won for him- 
 self renown among all men in that he slew the slayer of his sire, 
 and was held up by Athene to Telemachus as a pattern of filial piety. 
 The strategy to conceal his return from his mother and Aegisthus 
 is more elaborate and more convincing than in the Choephori. A 
 messenger who brings the report of his death at the Pythian games 
 is soon followed by a second, carrying the urn that is said to con- 
 tain his ashes. In one of the finest descriptive passages of the Greek 
 drama the messenger tells Electra how the son of Agamemnon, 
 failing to remember Nestor's wnrning to Antilochus in the Iliad to 
 avoid collision with the goal post in making the turn, had fallen 
 from his chariot and perished, dragged along the race course by 
 his frantic horses. The Sophoclean passage is a reminiscence of 
 
 1 The arguments of Wilamowitz in Hermes 18 in favor of dating the Eu- 
 ripidean Electra earlier than the Sophoclean are not convincing. See VahleB 
 in Hermes 26, and Jebb's Introduction to his edition. 
 
SOPHOCl ES 225 
 
 the Iliad} and Vergil borrowed from both Homer and Sophocles 
 for his famous description of a chariot race in the Georgics? 
 
 The recognition of the brother and sister is brought about, not 
 directly by the lock of his hair which Chrysothemis reports that 
 she has seen on the tomb of Agamemnon, but by the avowal of 
 Orestes, who is impelled to reveal himself by the sight of the ago- 
 nised grief of Electra over the urn that, as she thinks, holds his 
 ashes. Clytemnestra is slain first, and her dying shriek is heard 
 from within, a reminiscence of the death of Aegisthus in the 
 Choephori. Only now does Aegisthus arrive, and a new and effec- 
 tive scene is that in which he learns of her death and his approach- 
 ing fate. He is bidden to lift the veil from the dead Orestes and, 
 when he sees instead the dead body of Clytemnestra, he knows 
 that he is in the presence of the living avenger. In reserving the 
 death of Aegisthus for the end, Sophocles perhaps intended to se- 
 cure for Orestes the sympathy of the spectators at the close of the 
 play. For Orestes is haunted by no Furies, and no sense of 
 fresh guilt to be expiated darkens the end of the Electra as it 
 darkened the last scene of the Choephori. Aeschylus, Sophocles, 
 and Euripides all brought Electra and Orestes on the stage. It was 
 the Aeschylean Orestes, tristis, haunted by the Furies, who became 
 the traditional Orestes in literature. But Electra was to maintain 
 in the tradition her Sophoclean likeness, unaffected by the realistic 
 handling of Euripides, a figure with bolder outlines and a more 
 ruthless purpose than had been allowed to her by Aeschylus. 
 
 /For the date of the Oedipus Tyrannus there is no external 
 evidence. It was produced at some point in the thirty years or 
 more that separate the Antigone (441 B.C.) and the The Oedipus 
 Oedipus at Colonus. In writing the opening lines, Tyrannus 
 which describe the plague at Thebes, Sophocles may have drawn 
 on his personal memories of the plague that ravaged Athens 
 in 430, but he would hardly have risked a too pointed reminder 
 of the sufferings of his hearers while those sufferings were still 
 fresh. The Oedipus, a tragedy of the fall of intellectual pride, is the 
 1 XXIII 336. -^ 3. 103. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — I J 
 
226 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 model play of the Greek drama. From it Aristotle framed his pre- 
 scription for a perfect tragedy. When he says in the Poetics that 
 the ideal tragic hero must be a man not wholly good, whose down- 
 fall would merely shock the spectator, nor wholly bad, since the 
 spectacle of his ruin would be neither pitiful nor terrible, but rather 
 one who falls from his high place and happiness by some single 
 error or weakness of character, one in whom 
 
 " The dram of base 
 Doth all the noble substance oft subdue 
 To his own scandal," 
 
 he is thinking of the Sophoclean Oedipus. The Oedipus Tyrannus 
 is a perfect example of that ' complex ' tragedy in which a signal 
 change of fortune from good to bad and a ' reversal ' of intention 
 accompanies the ' recognition ' of the identity of the persons.'' 
 
 Oedipus is the most lamentable and the most tragic figure of the 
 Greek drama. When the play begins, the shadow of his calami- 
 ties or rather his recognition of them, which is the motive of the 
 tragedy, has already begun to darken the prosperity of the king of 
 Thebes. He learns from his wife's brother Creon, who has con- 
 sulted the Delphic oracle, that the plague which is destroying his 
 people cannot be stayed unless the murderer of Laius, who ruled 
 Thebes before the coming of Oedipus, be expelled from the city. 
 From the first it is Oedipus who sets in motion the inquiry which is 
 to discover his own ruin. His is a fatal curiosity which, against all 
 dissuasion, persists in dragging to light the secret that is to recoil 
 against himself He is himself the slayer whom he forbids his peo- 
 ple to harbor, so that 'evilly, as he himself is evil, he may wear out 
 his miserable life.' When Teiresias the blind seer, who alone in 
 the city knows the truth, tells him that he is the murderer who 
 pollutes the land, he sees in the mouthpiece of Apollo only a fel- 
 low-conspirator of Creon, intriguing to drive him from the throne. 
 His first suspicion of at least half the truth comes, not from the 
 plain denunciation of Teiresias, Thou art the murderer! but from 
 1 Poetics lo-ii. 
 
SOPHOCLES 227 
 
 the speech of Jocasta the unbelieving. To confirm him in his skep- 
 ticism as to oracles she relates the circumstances of the death of 
 Laius. The whole structure of the play and the effectiveness of the 
 'peripeteia,' the turning point, depends on an improbability, the 
 previous silence of Jocasta as to the manner of her first husband's 
 death.^ Her reassurance is the first revelation. Just so, when the 
 messenger who brings from Corinth the news of the death of King 
 Polybus, thinks to comfort Oedipus with the assurance that he is not 
 the true son of the dead king, he reveals to Jocasta in her turn the 
 terrible tnith. Alas! alas! wretched man, she cries, by that name 
 alone can I address thee and by none other henceforth forever! and 
 rushes from the stage. While Oedipus does not yet realize the 
 worst, the tragic tension is maintained. But the herdsman to 
 whom the child Oedipus had been given by Jocasta to be exposed 
 had been summoned from the country, and from his reluctant 
 answers the king learns the whole truth. The last link in the 
 chain of evidence is in its place. He knows that the oracle of 
 Apollo has been brought to pass. He has slain his father and 
 married his mother. Thou light! he cries, may I now 'look my last 
 on thee ! and follows Jocasta into the palace. There, as the mes- 
 senger from within soon relates to the chorus, he finds the body of 
 Jocasta the queen who has hanged herself. ' With a deep and 
 dreadful cry ' the wretched man loosed the halter and blinded his 
 eyes with the gold brooches torn from her dress. In the last scene 
 Sophocles brings Oedipus back on the stage with all the horror of 
 his bleeding face and blinded eyes. He exclaims that Apollo is 
 the cause of all his woes and begs to be led forth from the land, 
 entreating the compassion of Creon for Antigone and Ismene, 
 his helpless children, who are brought in by the attendants. 
 But even exile may not be his until the consent of Apollo has 
 been gained, nor must that mutilated figure be allowed to pol- 
 
 1 "Tout ce que je puis te dire, O critique pointu, c'est que, s'ils s'etaient 
 expliques auparavant, ce serait dommage, parce qu'il n'y aurait pas de piSce et 
 que la pi6ce est admirable.'' Sarcey in Quarante ans de the&tre. 
 
228 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lute the sunlight. Creon, now the ruler of Thebes, leads Oedipus 
 up the steps that he may hide his shame in the obscurity of the 
 palace. 
 
 His too great wisdom ruined Oedipus. Unaided by heaven, as 
 he boasts, he had read the riddle of the Sphinx, when even Teire- 
 sias, for all his soothsaying, had failed. And so Apollo turned the 
 edge of his own wisdom against him. Impious, however, like 
 Jocasta, he is not, for all his pride of human wit, and in his last 
 phase, in the Oedipus at Colonus, Sophocles was to show him 
 reconciled with the gods and honored, like Amphiaraus the blame- 
 less, by a painless and mysterious end, by translation instead of 
 death. 
 
 It is one of the unsolved mysteries of the Athenian theater that 
 the Oedipus Tyrannus did not win the first prize. Sophocles was 
 defeated by the nephew of Aeschylus, and to account for that 
 strange decision of the judges it has been conjectured that Philo- 
 cles competed with one of his uncle's plays. 
 
 The Trachiniae is the only extant play of Sophocles that takes 
 its name from the chorus, the maidens of Trachis in Thessaly 
 where the scene is laid. For the date there is no external evidence, 
 but the Euripidean prologue in which Deianira gives the audience 
 the situation, telling the story of her youth and the wooing of 
 Heracles, and the anapaests of Heracles and Hyllus at the close, are 
 signs of lateness. As a whole the play falls below the Sophoclean 
 level, chiefly from its lack of unity, the interest being concentrated 
 for the first half of the action on Deianira, and falling off when Hera- 
 cles becomes the protagonist. Sophocles found in 
 Trachiniae ^^ cyclic epic, the Taking of Oechalia, the story of 
 the enterprise of Heracles in Euboea, and his passion 
 for lole the daughter of Eurytus of Oechaha which brought about 
 the disaster dramatized in the Trachiniae. More than one minor 
 epic poet had written a Heracleia to celebrate the exploits of 
 Heracles, notably the Dorian Peisander {circa 650 B.C.), and 
 Panyasis the Ionian (480 B.C.), who, as the kinsman of Herod- 
 otus, may well have been read by Sophocles, the historian's 
 
SOPHOCLES 229 
 
 friend. Archilochus, the iambic poet, had made Hefacles the 
 typical conquering hero ((caA.XtVtKos). Pindar loved the national 
 hero of the Dorians and in his First and Tenth Nemean Odes 
 sang of his apotheosis after death. In his Fifth Ode, Bacchylides 
 relates how Heracles met Meleager in the underworld and prom- 
 ised that on his return to the upper air he would marry the ' sweet- 
 throated' Deianira, Meleager's sister. Sophocles had found his 
 plot already outlined by Bacchylides in the Sixteenth Ode, where 
 the poet sang of Deianira's love charm, and how ruin had lain in 
 wait for her from the fatal day when she took in her hands the 
 poisonous gift of Nessus, and he clearly echoes the language of 
 that ode.' But the Attic dramatists did not follow the example of 
 the epic and lyric poets. They felt that Heracles, the gluttonous 
 hero of the saga, was more suited to the comic than the tragic 
 stage. He is the hero of only one other Greek tragedy, the Mad 
 Heracles of Euripides,^ and of two Roman, the Mad Hercules and 
 the Hercules on Oeta of Seneca. 
 
 The Trachiniae is a drama of the jealous wife who tries to re- 
 gain her husband's affection, a character not easily made interest- 
 ing. In no other extant play has Sophocles used so modern a 
 motive. The great achievement of the Trachiniae is his character- 
 ization of Deianira the Aetolian heroine, who is the true protago- 
 nist. Her joy at the news that, after his year of slavery to Omphale 
 in Lydia and his Euboean expedition, Heracles is about to return 
 home, is changed to bitterness when she learns that the cause of 
 that expedition was his passion for lole of Oechalia. lole is 
 brought in like Cassandra, the flower of the spoil, and, like Cas- 
 sandra, meets the questions of Deianira with obstinate silence. 
 But Deianira is no Clytemnestra, and there is no anger in her 
 
 1 Cp. Bacchylides l6. 13 ff. with Trachiniae 750 ff. 
 
 2 Wilamowitz, who is inclined to exaggerate the influence on Sophocles of 
 Euripides, fails to prove conclusively that the Mad Heracles was written first, 
 or that Sophocles was inspired to dramatize the story of Heracles by the ex- 
 ample of his younger rival. See his Heracles I. pp. 343, 382. Zieliiiski, in 
 Philologus 55, maintains that the Trachiniae is one of tl.e earlier plays. 
 
^3o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 grief: I felt a profound pity when I beheld her, because it is her 
 beauty that has wrecked her life, and she, hapless one, all innocent, 
 brought her fatherland to ruin and bondage. The numerous 
 amours of Heracles Deianira has hitherto been able to ignore, 
 since they did not affect his home. But she now remembers the 
 gift of Nessus the centaur whom Heracles slew as he carried her 
 in his arms across the river Evenus. He had bidden her to gather 
 up his life blood and to preserve it as a love charm, ' so that he 
 shall never look on any woman to love her more than thee.' Now 
 she takes out the love philter, anoints with it a robe of state, and 
 sencis it to Heracles to be worn at the sacrifice that must still be 
 made before he can leave Euboea. Sophocles now disregards the 
 ' Unity of Time ' almost as boldly as Aeschylus had disregarded it 
 in the Agamemnon. Lichas carries the "shirt of Nessus" to 
 Euboea and, after the brief interval of a chorus and a few words 
 of dialogue, a hundred lines at most, Deianira's son Hyllus arrives 
 from Euboea to denounce his mother. Heracles is dying, slain by 
 the legacy of Nessus, by the hand of the dead, as the oracles had 
 long ago foretold. 
 
 The most effective moment in the play is the silent exit of 
 Deianira, who hears her son's curses without a word of self defense, 
 and turning from him goes into the house. There, like a true 
 daughter of Althaea, who like her had caused the death of her 
 dearest, she slays herself with the sword. The rest of the play is 
 a picture of the dying agonies of Heracles. All his suffering cannot 
 make him a sympathetic figure. He recognizes the hand of the 
 gods, and, without a thought for Deianira, is carried out to his 
 funeral pyre on Mt. Oeta, having bidden Hyllus to marry lole. 
 The tragic gloom of the ending is unrelieved by any clear promise 
 of that apotheosis on which Pindar loved to dwell, though it is as- 
 sumed by Sophocles himself in the Philoctetes. It was Philoctetes 
 who lit the pyre and received from the dying hero the bow and 
 arrows that were destined to take Troy. Mark the great cruelty 
 of the gods, says Hyllus at the close. They beget children, they art 
 hailed as fathers, and yet they can look on such sufferings as these. 
 
SOPHOCLES 231 
 
 The future no man can foresee, but the present is full of sorrow 
 and shame. 
 
 The Philoctetes (409 B.C.) is one of the latest plays. In the 
 Catalogue of the Ships Homer alludes to Philoctetes, lying in sore 
 pain in the island of Lemnos ; yet were the Argives beside their 
 ships soon to bethink them of Philoctetes. But it was The Philoc- 
 in the cyclic epics, the Cypria and the Little Iliad, that tetes 
 the sorrows of the limping hero had been told in detail. Pindar 
 in the First Pythian (470 B.C.) had described how Odysseus 
 fawned on Philoctetes when he needed him at last, how the 
 latter went to Troy, vexed by the pain of his wound, and, for 
 all his pain and weakness, sacked the city and ended the toils 
 of the Greeks. Long before Sophocles wrote his Philoctetes, 
 Aeschylus and Euripides had both produced tragedies on the 
 same theme and with the same general outline. Both had intro- 
 duced into the legend the refusal of Philoctetes to go to Troy, a 
 dramatic opposition absent from the less complicated epic version. 
 In both these lost plays Odysseus, the diplomatist of the Greek 
 army, had shared the embassy to Lemnos. But Sophocles was 
 the first to introduce the character of Neoptolemus,- and so to 
 achieve the contrast of elderly diplomacy and generous youth 
 which is the chief interest of this drama of intrigue. On that first 
 voyage to Troy, Philoctetes had been bitten in the foot by the 
 serpent that guarded the altar of the goddess on the island of 
 Chrysa. On the advice of Odysseus, the Greek chiefs, fearing the 
 evil omen and annoyed by the hero's cries and the odor of the fes- 
 tering wound, had left him marooned on Lemnos. In the plays of 
 Aeschylus and Euripides the chorus was composed of sympathetic 
 Lemnians. But Sophocles heightened the pathetic impression and 
 his hero's grievance by picturing Lemnos a desert island where, 
 for ten years, Philoctetes had dragged out a lonely and suffering 
 existence. The problem of the play is how to persuade this em- 
 bittered man to go to Troy and help his faithless friends. At each 
 separate crisis of the action before the intervention of Heracles, 
 the" plot hangs on the disposition of Neoptolemus. Odysseus has 
 
232 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 hardly persuaded him to win over Philoctetes by fraud instead of 
 force or reasoning when he is left alone to confront the injured 
 man with his strategy. The delight of Philoctetes at the sight of 
 a Greek face and the sound of Greek speech, and his ready belief 
 in the loyalty of a son of Achilles, make the task of Neoptolemus 
 easy. He pretends that he is bound for Greece, chagrined, like 
 the other, by the slights of the leaders of the army. The prayer 
 of Philoctetes not to be left behind, his appeal in the name of 
 pity, of generosity, of religion, of the love of glory, is a masterpiece 
 of tragic eloquence. Neoptolemus consents, and Philoctetes takes 
 a pathetic farewell of the gloomy cave that has grown so dear. 
 But a sudden paroxysm of pain from his wound delays their 
 departure. Neoptolemus has so far played his part well as the 
 accomplice of Odysseus. The famous bow and arrows are in his 
 hands, and, when Philoctetes wakes from the stupor that follows 
 the attack of pain, the moment has 'come to lead him to the ship 
 and embark for Troy. But now Neoptolemus hesitates in his 
 treachery. The sight of such suffering has touched his heart and 
 he confesses the truth. While he wavers, Odysseus enters, and, 
 failing to induce Philoctetes to go with them, declares that the 
 weapons of Heracles will suffice ; they will leave the obstinate man 
 on Lemnos. He goes out with Neoptolemus, lea,ving Philoctetes to 
 lament to the sympathetic chorus of sailors. But pity has restored 
 his true disposition to Neoptolemus, and he returns to give back 
 the bow, followed by Odysseus with vain protests and threats. 
 Even his gratitude to the son of Achilles cannot move Philoctetes 
 from his resolve. In this real dilemma, a knot worthy the inter- 
 vention of a god from the machine,* Heracles comes from heaven 
 to declare to his old comrade the will of Zeus that he should sail 
 to Troy, be healed of his wound, slay Paris, and take the city of 
 Priam. 
 
 Dio Chrysostom, the Graeco-Roman rhetorician, who had read 
 all the three tragic versions of the Philoctetes legend, decided 
 
 ' Horace, Ars Poetica 191. 
 
SOPHOCLES 233 
 
 that Sophocles had surpassed both Aeschylus and Euripides in 
 tragic effect and beauty of language.' It is easy to believe that in 
 the Sophoclean Philoctetes we have the golden mean. Sophocles 
 avoided archaic severity and too great simplicity of plot, on the 
 one hand, and on the other the sentimentalism and the sophistic 
 rhetoric which Euripides must have lavished on such a situation. 
 
 The chorus of sailors in the Philoctetes is merely the sympa- 
 thetic escort of Neoptolemus, and its independent share of the 
 lyrics is reduced to a single stasiraon of fifty-three verses (676-729). 
 In place of the old-fashioned parodos, a duet (kommos) with Neop- 
 tolemus is sung on its entrance (135 ff.). 
 
 The Philoctetes was a drama of exile, with a hero whom his coun- 
 try had set aside, and at last recalled in the hour of need. Hence 
 the conjecture, wholly unsupported by external evidence, that 
 Sophocles wrote the play with a pohtical motive, to suggest to the 
 Athenians that now, ^fter the failure of the Sicilian expedition, the 
 time had come for the recall of Alcibiades from exile. 
 
 The Oedipus at Colonus was the masterpiece of the poet's old 
 age. Like the Eumenides it is a drama of the recon- The Oedipus 
 ciliation of the hero with heaven ; it is the sequel, long ^t Colonus 
 delayed, of the Oedipus Tyrannus. Sophocles forsook the tradi- 
 tion that Oedipus died at Thebes, and made his hero's wanderings 
 end in his own deme Colonus, in the grove of the Eumenides, 
 
 "where Oidipous 
 Dared the descent mid earthquake thundering 
 And hardly Theseus' hands availed to guard 
 Eyes from the horror, as their grove disgorged 
 Its dead ones, while each daughter sank to ground."' 
 
 "Does the soul flower only on nights of storm? " asks Maeterlinck, 
 pleading for the "static'' drama. Action and passion were essen- 
 tial to the Greek conception of tragedy. But in the Oedipus at 
 Colonus, at any rate, we have for hero an old man whose days of 
 action are over, whose only aspiration is the death with which the 
 
 1 Oration 52. 272. ' Browning, Aristophanes' Apolog}'. 
 
234 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 play closes.^ In the jealousies and dissensions that are rending 
 Thebes he refuses to take part. Athens is his haven, and there he 
 is granted an end that is a consecration. Action for him is over. 
 But even in this last phase we see the passionate Oedipus, the im- 
 placable father, the Lear of Greek tragedy. Almost with his last 
 breath he bequeathes to his sons, Eteocles and Polynices, who had 
 driven him into exile, that heirloom of a curse which is worked out 
 in the Seven against Thebes of Aeschylus, the parent's curse that 
 was so dreaded by the saga heroes. The Oedipus at Colonus is 
 linked to an earlier play, the Antigone, by the pathetic appeal of 
 Polynices to Antigone and Ismene to give him burial : Ah ye, his 
 daughters and my sisters, — since ye hear these hard prayers of your 
 sire, — if this father's curses be fulfilled, and some way of return 
 to Thebes be found for you, oh, as ye fear the gods do not, for your 
 part, dishonor me, — nay give me burial, and due funeral rites? 
 
 Cicero is the earliest authority for the story, often quoted by 
 later writers, that when Sophocles in extreme old age was driven 
 by his sons to defend in a court of law his ability to manage his 
 own affairs, he recited to the judges his last play, the Oedipus at 
 Colonus, which was accepted as a triumphant proof that his facul- 
 ties were unimpaired. 
 
 The Oedipus Tyrannus, the Oedipus at Colonus, and the Antig- 
 one dramatize three successive phases in the saga of the house of 
 Oedipus, and fall naturally into a trilogy. But they were not writ- 
 ten in that order; the Antigone, which gives the last chapter of 
 
 the story, was produced first. Sophocles did not write 
 Innovations ... , , , , , , , , . , , 
 
 trilogies, and though he probably competed with tine 
 
 conventional number of tragedies, they were not linked together. 
 A more important innovation was his use of a third actor, imme- 
 diately adopted by Aeschylus. By this means he still further cur- 
 tailed the importance of the chorus, increasing at its expense the 
 value and range of the secondary characters, since the tritagonist, 
 Odysseus, for instance, in the Philocfetes, could now be directly 
 
 ^Cicero called it /////(/ mollissivium carmen, tenderest of poems: De 
 l''in. 5. I. '■ 1405 fT. Jebb's translation. 
 
SOtHOCLES 23^ 
 
 contrasted with the other two ; nor need the protagonist now leave 
 the stage at a critical moment, as Atossa in the Persae, for which 
 only two actors were used, must go out before the entrance of her 
 son. All the innovations of Sophocles tended to make tragedy 
 more flexible, more complex, an affair of greater art. He broke 
 through the etiquette that the poet, though often, no doubt, an 
 indifferent actor, must himself take a leading r61e. Accordingly, 
 about the middle of the fifth century, the name of the victorious 
 actor appears in the theater records (didascaliae) together with the 
 name of the poet. He increased the chorus from twelve to fifteen, 
 probably because he found that number more convenient for the 
 choric dances. His choruses never, of course, advance the action, 
 but he made them an integral part of the play, reflecting the action 
 at every point, though always in a mood undistracted, as had been 
 the more emotional choruses of Aeschylus, by personal terrors or 
 griefs. 
 
 The remote, the monstrous, the Titanic, did not appeal to 
 Sophocles. He took his characters from the heroic saga, choosing 
 those whose adventures had a closely human interest. Ideal types 
 they were, but still essentially human. When he puts on the stage 
 a picture of acute physical suffering, it is not the superhuman tor- 
 ment of a Prometheus or an lo, but the blinded eyes of Oedipus, 
 the dying agony of Heracles, the painful lameness of Philoctetes. 
 Though he took no pride, hke Aeschylus, in excluding a love inter- 
 est, love in his plays is still one of the minor motives. Only in the 
 Trachitiiae, where the flame of his inspiration burns lowest, is pas- 
 sionate love the mainspring of the action. He handled the saga 
 freely, introducing fresh complications and, except in the Trachi- 
 niae, an original and dramatic development of the legend. 
 
 Sophocles was a master of tragic eloquence. No one could 
 write more effectively than he those set speeches which sophoclean 
 were the dramatist's, as they had been the epic poet's, rhetoric 
 opportunity for brilliant rhetoric. Such is the messenger's de- 
 scription of the chariot race in the Electra; the tirade of Hera- 
 cles in the Trachiniae, reciting his great exploits, all ended now 
 
236 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 by the weak hand of a woman ; the tale of his sufferings on Lemnos 
 by Philoctetes. Tragic dialogue is with Sophocles an affair of the 
 highest art. Fifteen years before Gorgias, the Sicilian rhetorician, 
 came to Athens and charmed the sensitive ears of the Athenians 
 with his symmetrical and artificial prose, we find Sophocles, in the 
 Antigone, in full command of all those devices for symmetry, an- 
 tithesis, repetitions of words, and similar endings which Gorgias 
 and his imitators used to excess. The ingenious Sicilian thus found 
 ready to his hand in tragedy the artistic effects that he transferred 
 to prose.' 
 
 The true tragic hero is unconscious of his doom, and the effect 
 of his ignorance on the spectators is all the more striking if he 
 points by his own language the unconscious contrast between 
 
 Pathetic what he is and what he thinks he is. Sophocles uses 
 
 contrast this device, his so-called ' irony,' with peculiar skill. 
 The contrast is usually pathetic, as when Oedipus, still blind to his 
 own situation, alluding again and again to the murderer of Laius, 
 unconsciously threatens and curses himself; or when Ajax in his 
 madness boasts of his success and gives thanks to Athene who has 
 worked his ruin. But the contrast may be thrilling without pathos, 
 if the sympathy of the spectator be against the speaker, as when, 
 in the Electra, Clytemnestra exults that on this day she has been 
 freed from all her terror of Orestes, who, as the spectator knows, is 
 even then waiting his opportunity near the palace.^ 
 
 Sophocles, according to Plutarch, said of his own style that when 
 
 he began to write he had imitated the tragic manner. 
 
 Style , ^ r . , , , • , , , J 
 
 the pomp, of Aeschylus ; that m a second stage he had 
 
 erred on the side of elaboration and subtlety ; and had finally 
 
 achieved a third style, the mean of the other two, which he 
 
 thought best fitted to express character. The Sophocles who sur- 
 
 1 See the analysis of Sophoclean rhetoric by Navarre, Essai sur la rheto- 
 rique grecque 98 ff. 
 
 ^ A good instance of Shakespeare's use of pathetic contrast is Desdemona's 
 answer to Emilia's question " Is he not jealous ? " " Who, he ? I think the 
 sun where he was born Drew all such humors from him.'' 
 
SOPHOCLES 237 
 
 vives in onr seven plays is the mature poet who, standing between 
 Aeschylus and Euripides, did not disdain to reflect their influence, 
 though his genius saved hiu'. from the faults of both. ' Simmias of 
 Rhodes, the Alexandrian poet who wrote his epitaph, like Matthew 
 Arnold, dwelt on the sweetness and wisdom of the singer of Coloqus 
 " who saw life steadily and saw it whole." Gently over the tomb of 
 Sophocles, gently creep, O ivy, flinging forth thy pale tresses, and 
 all about let the rose petal blow, and the clustered vine shed her 
 soft tendrils round, for the sake of the wise-hearted eloquence min- 
 gled of the muses and the Graces that lived on his honeyed tongue} 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The best is the Laurentian archetype, Laurentianus, 
 loth or nth cent., at Florence. A facsimile was published by Thompson- 
 Jebb, London, 1885. Some manuscripts contain only the Electra, Ajax, and 
 O. T., the plays most read in the Byzantine schools. See Meifert, De Soph, 
 codicibus, Halle, 1 89 1. 
 
 II. Scholia. Dindorf, Oxford, 1825-1852. Laurentian scholia, Pappa- 
 georgios, Leipzig, 1881. 
 
 III. Editions. .£</./?-!«<:., Aldus, Venice, 1502. Stephanus, Paris, 1568. 
 Dindorf, Oxford, 3d ed., i860; 6th ed. by Mekler, Leipzig, 1885. L. Camp- 
 bell, Oxford, 1879-1881. Schneidewin-Nauck, new ed., Berlin, 1880-1888. 
 Jebb, The Plays and Fragments, with critical commentary and prose trans., 
 8 vols., Cambridge, 1884-1896 (vol. 8 not yet issued) ; Oedipus Tyrannus, 8th 
 ed., 1903; text only, I vol., Caml>ridge, 1897. Single edd., Ajax, Lobeck, 
 3d ed., Berlin, 1866. Electra, Kaibel, Leipzig, 1896. Fragments, Nauck., 2d 
 ed., Leipzig, 1889. 
 
 IV. Literature. Patin, Sophocle, 8th ed., Paris,' 1896. Girard, Sophode 
 in his Etudes sur la poesie grecque, Paris, 2d ed., 1900. E. Abbott in ffellen- 
 ica, London, 1880. Butcher, Sophocles in Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, 
 London, 1893. Lechner, De rhetoricae usu Sophocleo, Berlin, 1887. Gle- 
 ditsch, Die cantica der Soph, trag., Vienna, 1883. Wilamowitz, Die beiden 
 Elektren in Hermes 18. Vahlen, Soph. u. Eurip. F.lectra in //ermes 26. 
 
 V. Lexica. Genthe-EUendt, Berlin, 1867-1872. Dindorf, Leipzig, 1871. 
 VL Translations. Verse: L. Campbell, 1883. Whitelaw, 1883. Philli- 
 
 more, London, 1902 (0. T., O. C, and Antigone'). Prose: Jebb in his edi- 
 tion, and separately in I vol., Cambridge, 1904. 
 
 ^ Mackail's translation of Anth. Pal. 7. 22. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 EURIPIDES 
 
 Euripides, son of Mnesarchides (or Mnesarchus), of the Attic 
 village Phlyaj was born on Salamis in the year of the battle (480 
 B.C.). The Greek passion for symmetry and picturesque coinci- 
 dences in literary history was not satisfied with so much, and so 
 the legend arose that the youngest of the three great tragedians 
 came into the world on the very day of the sea fight 
 in which Aeschylus took part, the day of victory, at 
 whose close Sophocles, like Miriam the prophetess, led the song 
 of triumph. The tradition is respectfully reserved as to the pri- 
 vate life of Aeschylus, and consistently indulgent to Sophocles. 
 But it would be easy to write two separate accounts of the family 
 life of Euripides, in which every detail, from the year of his birth 
 (placed by some authorities in 485), and the name of his father, 
 down to the cause of his death, should be absolutely opposed. 
 From the more flattering of these contradictory versions we 
 should have to exclude all the spiteful and scurrilous gossip of his 
 persistent enemies, the comic poets, especially Aristophanes. In 
 their plays Euripides figyred as the son of a bankrupt shopkeeper 
 from Boeotia and a mother who sold vegetables ; as himself twice 
 married, deceived by both wives, and avenging these injuries by 
 reviling the whole sex in his tragedies. In the other, more dis- 
 interested version, based mainly on Philochorus, the third century 
 biographer, we find him the scion of an aristocratic family, who as 
 a boy held offices that fell only to the sons of the best famihes at 
 Athens, and with his matrimonial troubles limited at any rate by 
 one wife. But at the best we could not construct for him a sat- 
 isfactory set of conditions such as were the lot of Aeschylus and 
 Sophocles. He was melancholy, reserved, and unsociable, a dis- 
 
 238 
 
EURIPIDES 239 
 
 position always thoroughly disliked at Athens ; one who took no 
 part in politics, shut himself up with his books,' and studied those 
 suspected persons, the philosophers, especially Anaxagoras and 
 Protagoras. 
 
 Euripides was, in short, out of sympathy with his time and 
 with the average Athenian as completely as Sophocles, the easy- 
 going, was in touch with them. In his fifty years of work he won 
 only five first prizes, the fifth after his death, and was often placed 
 last. On his first appearance he was virtually defeated, being 
 awarded the tliird prize for the tetralogy that included the Daugh- 
 ters of Pelias ; and it was not till 440 that he won the first place. 
 More than once he scandalized his sensitive audience so that they 
 interrupted, and would have stopped the play but for his explana- 
 tions. The Athenians went to the theater of Dionysus as though to 
 a temple, and even Aeschylus did not always content their de- 
 mand for scrupulous piety. They distrusted this younger rational- 
 ist, this philosopher on the stage, who had no particular feeling 
 about Marathon, was the friend of Socrates, and had learned from 
 the impious Protagoras that the individual is the measure of right 
 and wrong.^ 
 
 Euripides spent the last year and a half of his life at the court 
 of Archelaus. This was that king of Macedonia described in 
 Plato's Gorgias as the typical tyrant whom Socrates declines to call 
 happy. With the ambition to Hellenize his country, he invited 
 to Pella the leading poets and artists of'Greece ; and, if he could, 
 would have added even Socrates to the ornaments of his court. 
 To Pella went Agathon, the tragic poet, the host in Plato's Sym- 
 
 1 "Soon the jeers grew : cold hater of his kind, 
 A sea cave suits him, not the vulgar hearth ! 
 What need of tongue talk vi'ith a bookish store 
 Would stock ten cities ?" 
 
 — Browning, Aristophanes' Apology. 
 ^ What shame is there if the doer feels no shame ? asks Macareus Kxifr. 19, 
 parodied by Aristophanes, Frogs 1475. 
 
240 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 posium, Timotheus, the writer of nomas and dithyrambs, and 
 Thucydides. Euripides never returned to Athens. In the win- 
 ter of 407-406 he died in Thrace, near Amphipolis, and there, for 
 the next five centuries at least, his tomb was an object of interest 
 to travelers. The tradition could not let him die in peace. He 
 was torn in pieces, said his biographers, by the hounds of 
 Archelaus ; or, as seemed more likely when one remembered 
 the end of Orpheus, or of his own Pentheus, by women, 
 perhaps in retaliation for his libels on their sex. To Euripides 
 dead the Athenians paid all the honors. Sophocles, whose 
 own days were numbered, is said to have made his chorus at 
 a proagon (rehearsal) wear black and leave off their garlands, 
 in mourning for his younger rival, while the state erected a 
 cenotaph in his honor. His epitaph, a quatrain worthy of 
 Simonides, passes under the name of Thucydides in the An- 
 thology}^ but is also credited to Timotheus, another of his friends 
 at the court of Archelaus. 
 
 Of the ninety-two plays said to have been written by Euripides, 
 eighteen have survived, or nineteen, if we count the Rhesus gen- 
 uine. Nine of these, the Hecuba, Orestes, Phoenissae, Androma- 
 che, Rhesus, Medea, Hippolyius, Alcestis, and Troades {Trojan 
 Women), were regularly read in the schools, and have come down 
 to us in numerous manuscripts, with scholia. The remaining ten, 
 the Suppliants, Ion, Cyclops, Heracleidae, Helen, Mad Heracles, 
 Electra, Bacchae, Iphigeneia among the Taurians, and Iphigeneia 
 at Aulis, are preserved in only two manuscripts, and without 
 scholia. We have fragments of about fifty-nine plays. 
 
 The earliest of the extant plays, the Alcestis, was produced in 
 438. The Thessalian legend of Alcestis, daughter of 
 the ill-fated Pelias, who chose to die for her husband, 
 when he, trying all in turn. 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 7. 45. All Hellas is the monument of Euripides. Yet hit 
 bones rest in Macedonian soil. . . . See, too, Anth. Pal. 7. 51. Thou 
 wast not slain by dogs, Euripides. . , . 
 
EURIPIDES 241 
 
 " found no one, none who loved so much, 
 Nor father, nor the aged mother's self 
 That bore him ; no, not any save his wife 
 Willing to die instead of him," i 
 
 had been used by Phrynichus in his lost Alcestis, a play which may 
 have contained even more of the comic element than is employed 
 by Euripides.^ The Euripidean Alcestis was written as the fourth 
 play in a tetralogy, was therefore a substitute for a satyric drama, 
 and is best described as a tragi-comedy. Heracles the glutton 
 was indeed better suited, even when he came as the deliverer of 
 Alcestis, to a satyric than a tragic piece. Speeches in character, 
 with a touch of comedy, such as the nurse's speech in the Choe- 
 phori, or the guard's in the Antigone, were often used to relieve 
 for the moment the tension of a tragedy. But in no other extant 
 Greek drama is there so violent a contrast as that of the pathetic 
 end of Alcestis and the description of the boisterous drunkenness 
 of Heracles. Here was a god sent to wrestle with Death himself, 
 brawhng at table, and bidding the downcast servant eat, drink, 
 and be merry. Browning could not tolerate the sordid realism of 
 the minor characters of the Alcestis, and in his paraphrase trans- 
 forms Heracles from the convivial athlete of Euripides to a radiant 
 and divine presence, the central figure of the play. But he did 
 not attempt to soften the ludicrous and repugnant scene of the 
 altercation of Admetus and Pheres, where the son taunts the father 
 with his love of life, and is met with the retort that it is not the 
 custom of the house that fathers should die for their sons, ' nor is 
 it Greek.' But without the weak and selfish there would be no 
 opening for that ' heroism of Alcestis,' whicli passed into a Greek 
 proverb. She dies on the stage, in front of her palace at Pherae, 
 an effect rarely admitted in a Greek tragedy, though we have seen 
 it in the Ajax of Sophocles. But Hades, as Apollo had foretold 
 in the prologue, gives up his prey to Heracles, yielding to the 
 
 1 Browning's paraphrase in Balaustion's Adventure. 
 ^ Wilamowitz, Heracles I 92. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT, — 1 6 
 
242 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 claims of human affection, as in the legends of Eurydice and Pro- 
 tesilaus. Alcestis is brought back from the grave, 
 
 " Rescued from death by force though pale and faint," 
 
 and restored to Admetus in a scene not unlike the ending of the 
 Winter's Tale. 
 
 " But all the time Alkestis moved not once 
 Out of the set gaze and the silent smile; 
 And a cold fear ran through Admetos' frame ; 
 ' Why does she stand and front me silent thus?' 
 Heracles solemnly replied, ' Not yet 
 Is it allowable thou hear the things 
 She has to tell thee; let evanish quite 
 That consecration to the lower^gods 
 And on our upper world the third day rise.' " ^ 
 
 The Medea was the first play in a tetralogy that obtained the 
 third prize in 431. The great sorceress of the Greek saga, a more 
 baleful and more vindictive figure than her father's sister, Circe, 
 the beguiler of men, Medea appears in the tragedy of 
 Euripides, probably for the first time in literature, as 
 the murderess of her children. The main outlines of the story, 
 though not this murder, Euripides found in the Corinthian saga, and 
 he chose the closing incidents of the Corinthian episode in Medea's 
 life, and laid the scene before her house at Corinth. The play is 
 a drama of jealousy and ruthless .revenge, a picture of the excess 
 of passion in a barbarian woman. Deserted by Jason, who is 
 about to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce, threatened with 
 exile for herself and her children, Medea prepares to destroy the 
 princess and her father together. Like Deianira, but with . no 
 sentimental intention, she sends to the princess a bridal wreath 
 and robe steeped in poison, for Medea is the typical poisoner of 
 Greek legend. The robe proves a " shirt of Nessus," which con- 
 sumes the bride, together with the king who tries to save her. 
 To complete her vengeance on Jason, that he may be left utterly 
 
 1 Balaustion's Adventure, 
 
EURIPIDES 243 
 
 desolate, Medea now slays her two children, not indeed on the 
 stage, but with an effect hardly less horrible to the audience who 
 hear their cries in the house and their struggles to escape. Medea 
 had arranged her own flight to Athens with King Aegeus, the father 
 of Theseus, who happened conveniently to be passing through 
 Corinth, and when Jason hurries in to save his children she is 
 already out of his reach, suspended aloft in her winged chariot 
 and carrying with her the bodies of the children which, with a 
 last refinement of cruelty, she refuses to leave with their father. 
 Earlier in the play the spectator's whole sympathy was centered in 
 Medea. Even the chorus of women of Corinth side with her 
 against her faithless husband. Jason, the cold and perfidious 
 adventurer, strangely reckless of Medea's well-known power to 
 harm, had met all her entreaties and reminders of their past with 
 a sophistic subtlety in which he took evident pride. But, at the 
 close, every spectator must have felt a reversal of feeling against 
 the remorseless Medea and a movement of pity for Jason, whose 
 agony at the sight of his murdered children is genuine. Medea, 
 divided, as in the wonderful speech in the play (1021-1080), 
 between a mother's love and her desire for a crushing revenge, 
 and once more, in Ovid's phrase, following the worse,' or poised 
 in her magic chariot with the dead children, was a favorite motive 
 in later Greek and Roman art. In spite of the somewhat casual 
 episode of Aegeus, and the supernatural exit of Medea, which has 
 offended some .critics, the play as a whole, both as regards struc- 
 ture and sustained tragic interest, is the masterpiece of Euripides. 
 
 The total absence of the gods from the action of the Medea is, - 
 to the modern reader, one of the excellences of the play. The 
 sorceress needs no divine aid in laying her fatal snares, and no 
 god intervenes to save Jason. He was to be left to the mercy of 
 those magic powers which had once served him well. But in the 
 
 * video meliora proboque, 
 
 Deteriora aequor. 
 
 j — Met. 7. 20. 
 
 / 
 
244 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LIFERATURE 
 
 Hippolytus (428) the gods pull the wires, and Phaedra, Hippo- 
 
 The Hip- lytus, and Theseus are puppets swayed to love, scorn, 
 
 polytus revenge, and remorse, according to the pleasure of 
 
 Aphrodite and Artemis. Aphrodite, neglected by Hippolytus, the 
 
 Amazon's son, tells in the prologue the plan of her revenge, how 
 
 that grievous and amazed Queen, 
 Wounded and wondering, with ne'er a word. 
 Wastes sloivly ; and her secret none hath heard 
 Nor dreamed. But never thus this love shall end. 
 To Theseus' son some whisper will I send. 
 And all be bare. And that proud frince, my foe. 
 His sire shall slay with curses. Even so 
 Endeth that boon the great Lord of the Main 
 To Theseus gave, the Three Prayers not in vain. 
 And she, not in dishonor, yet shall die?- 
 
 In an earlier lost play, the Hippolytus Veiled (so-called, it is 
 thought, because the youth veiled his face for shame at Phaedra's 
 confession of her love), Euripides had offended Athenian taste by 
 making his Phaedra too passionate, too outspoken; Phaedra as 
 Seneca and Racine envisaged her later. In this second version 
 which has outlived the first, the Hippolytus with the Garland (a 
 reference to the wreath which he offers to Artemis), Phaedra 
 exchanges no word with her stepson. It is from the officious 
 nurse that Hippolytus learns what the queen has not the courage 
 to declare. The tirade in which he expresses his horror and dis- 
 trust of all women, " this novelty on earth, this fair defect of 
 nature," has been imitated by Milton in Paradise Lost? Phaedra 
 belonged to a family whose loves had been unhallowed and dis- 
 astrous. Her mother was Pasiphae of Crete, her sister Ariadne 
 whom Theseus deserted on Naxos. And now she in her turn is 
 the helpless victim of Aphrodite. Like Stheneboea, another of 
 the heroines of Euripides, who slew herself when she was repulsed 
 by Bellerophon, Phaedra dies, holding in her hands a written accu- 
 
 1 38-47, Murray's translation. '^ 10. 888 H. 
 
EURIPIDES 245 
 
 sation of Hippolytus, the appropriate revenge of a woman scorned.' 
 Theseus refuses to hear his son's assertions of his innocence and 
 drives him from the city. And now the " third prayer " is granted 
 by Poseidon. A messenger, in a speech that closely resembles the 
 narrative of the fatal chariot race in the Electra of Sophocles, 
 brings the news that Hippolytus has been dragged to death by 
 his frightened horses on the seashore. Then Artemis appears 
 aloft, not to cut the knot, — for there is now no tragic complica- 
 tion, — but to clear the good name of her devotee, to reconcile 
 father and son, and to give an atmosphere of serenity and tender- 
 ness to the last scene. O breath of heavenly fragrance ! cries the 
 dying youth, even in my anguish I can feel thee and take rest.'' In 
 this play Euripides uses an accessory chorus of huntsmen. They 
 enter with Hippolytus in the first episode and sing a hymn to 
 Artemis, whose statue stands near that of Aphrodite in front of the 
 palace of Theseus at Troezen. The regular chorus of women of 
 Troezen, like the chorus of the Medea, are in turn sympathetic 
 and horror-stricken, but do not interfere to avert the death of 
 their mistress or the doom of the innocent prince. The first half 
 of the ode in which they sing of the power of love has been tJans- 
 lated by Browning : 
 
 O Love, Love, thou that from the eyes diffusest 
 Yearning, and on the soul sweet grace inducest~- 
 
 Souls against whom thy hostile march is m^ade — 
 
 Never to me be manifest in ire, 
 
 Nor, out of time and tune, my peace invade! 
 
 Since neither from the fire — 
 
 No, nor the stars — is launched a bolt m^ore mighty 
 
 1 " Yet, ere she perished, blasted in a scroll 
 
 The fame of him her swerving made not swerve." 
 
 — Browning, Artemis Prologizes. 
 In this poem, in the style of a Euripidean prologue, Brovifning relates the 
 story of the Hippolytus. 
 
 2 According to a legend followed by Vergil, Aen. 7. 761 ff., and Ovid, 
 Met. 15. 533 ff., Artemis restored Hippolytus to life. See also Browning, 
 Artemis Prologizes, 
 
246 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Than that of Aphrodite 
 
 Hurled frotn the hands of Love, the boy with Zeus for sire. 
 Idly, how idly, by the Alpheian river 
 And in the Pythian shrines of Phoebus, quiver 
 Blood offerings frotn the bull, which Hellas heaps ; 
 While Love we worship not — the Lord of men ! 
 Worship not him, the very key who keeps 
 Of Aphrodite, when 
 
 She closes up her dearest chamber portals ; 
 — Love, when he comes to mortals, 
 Wide-iaasting, through those deeps of woes beyond the deep ! 
 
 The Trojan Women (415) is a drama of a single situation, a 
 reaction to the ' simple ' type with a structure as devoid of com- 
 plication as the Suppliants of Aeschylus, in which the interest is 
 The Trojan epic rather than dramatic. There is no intrigue, no 
 Women reversal. The scene is the shore of the Troad on the 
 day after the fall of Troy. The gods must always leave a fallen 
 city. So they departed, with a great noise of their going, from 
 Jerusalem, when it was taken by Titus.^ And so now, in the pro- 
 logue, Poseidon takes his leave of Troy, whose walls he had helped 
 Apollo to build. Then follow scenes of desolation, such as those 
 which moved Aeneas to tears when he saw them in bronze on the 
 doors of Dido's temple of Juno at Carthage. There is nothing to 
 lighten the gloom. Andromache bewails her disgrace as the cap- 
 tive of Pyrrhus, and the fate of Astyanax, who is still alive, though 
 later in the play his body is carried in on his father's shield ; Cas- 
 sandra, frenzied with grief and shame, sings a delirious monody, a 
 wedding song for her nuptials with Agamemnon. The song and 
 the speech that follows are partly a reminiscence of the matchless 
 scene in the Agamemnon, and are full of sinister threats of the 
 coming doom of the house of Atreus. What unity the play has is 
 given by the person of Hecuba the protagonist, before whom all 
 this procession of woe passes, to whom each fresh report of the 
 insolence and cruelty of the Greeks brings a new and personal grie£ 
 
 1 Tacitus, Histories 5, 13, 
 
EURIPIDES 247 
 
 The chorus of Trojan women is absorbed in a single theme, the 
 fate of Troy, which burns in the background, the horrors of slavery 
 for the women of a sacked city. The whole play is a dirge for 
 Troy, but throughout is heard the note of disaster still to come, 
 the Nemesis that hes in wait for the insolent Greeks. 
 
 In the Helen (412) Euripides dramatized the legend of Helen in 
 Egypt. The fantastic effort to rehabilitate Helen, bewundert viel 
 und viel gescholten, had been made before Euripides. Stesichorus 
 in his palinode had declared that she never went to 
 Troy, that she was represented there by a phantom for 
 whom the Greeks and Trojans fought, a type, said Plato, of those 
 phantoms of pleasure for which the pleasure seeker strives in his 
 ignorance of true delight.^ Herodotus had told the story, omit- 
 ting the phantom, in his second Book. Nevertheless Euripides 
 must have surprised the Athenians when he forsook the familiar 
 epic tradition and put on the stage this new-fangled Helen, as 
 Aristophanes calls her,^ who had lived in retreat in Egypt for 
 seventeen years and is recovered there by Menelaus on his home- 
 ward, voyage. Nothing could be more absurd than his situation 
 when, after leaving one Helen (the phantom) on the shore, he is 
 greeted by her double (the real woman) inland. Helen has 
 learned the history of the Trojan war and her own part in it from 
 Teucer, who crosses the stage, an exile from Salamis, on his way to 
 found a new Salamis in Cyprus. The intrigue that is necessary 
 to save Helen from the wooing of the king of Egypt and her flight 
 with Menelaus are pure invention. Finally her brothers, the 
 Dioscuri, appear as gods from the machine and reconcile the king 
 to her loss.' 
 
 1 Republic 586. Goethe borrowed the idea of a phantom Helen for the 
 third act of the Second Part of Faust, which begins precisely like a play of 
 Kuripides, 
 
 ^ Thesmoph. 850. This comedy contains a number of quotations from the 
 speeches of the Helen, and parodies of the Helen, and the Andromeda. 
 
 2 Verrall's theory (in Four Plays of Euripides, 1905) that in the Helen 
 Euripides parodies his Iphigeneia among the Taurians is ingeniously worked 
 
248 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 In the same year as the Helen appeared the lost Andromeda, 
 and it also was parodied by Aristophanes in the Thesmophoridzou- 
 sae (411 B.C.). This is the play, a drama of the romantic love of 
 
 The Perseus for Andromeda, which so excited the people 
 
 Andromeda q£ Abdera one summer during the reign of Lysim- 
 achus, king of Thrace (306-281 B.C.), that they were smitten with 
 a sort of tragedy fever. The town, says Lucian, who tells the 
 story, not without malice, for the sluggish wits of Abdera were a 
 proverb, the town was filled with all those pale, thin, seven-day-old 
 tragedians declaiming loudly O Love ! lord of gods and men, the 
 monody from the Andromeda, and part of the great speech of 
 Perseus, which they had lately heard on the stage. ^ Nor were 
 these Euripidomaniacs cured of their distemper until the cold of a 
 Thraciari winter froze their enthusiasm. 
 
 The Orestes was produced in 408, not long before Euripides 
 left Athens for Macedonia. The popularity of this sensational and 
 inconsequent drama was perhaps partly due to the fact that it pro- 
 vided the Athenians with an experience rare in their 
 Xhe Orestes 
 
 theater, the emotion of curiosity as to how the play 
 
 would end. The scene is laid at Argos, immediately after the 
 vengeance of Orestes. Once more Euripides breaks with the 
 saga tradition. In his Orestes the Furies are but the hallucinations 
 of a guilty man maddened by the stings of conscience, " unnatural 
 troubles" bred of unnatural deeds. The scene in which Electra 
 attempts to minister to this " mind diseased " is not unworthy to 
 be ranked with the sleep-walking scene in the fifth act oi Macbeth, 
 as one of the finest pictures of remorse in literature. But a single 
 
 out and there is a modern parallel for a playwright parodying his own play. 
 But in the absence of all external evidence it is not easy to follow Verrall 
 when he asserts that the Helen was first played at a private celebration of the 
 Thesmophoria on the island Macris, and " contains domestic allusions and in 
 two most important personages represents the successive householders." 
 There is no evidence whatever for private performances of plays that ap- 
 peared at the Dionysia. 
 
 1 The Art of Writing History I. 
 
EURIPIDES 
 
 249 
 
 effective episode will not save a play. The rest is improbable 
 melodrama. Condemned to death, together with Electra, by the 
 Argives, deserted by Menelaus on his arrival at Argos, Orestes, 
 with the help of Pylades, kills Helen in revenge, and threatens to 
 murder Hermione before the eyes of her father and the citizens 
 who are besieging him in the palace. Apollo, appearing from the 
 machine, has more than one knot to cut. He satisfies the de- 
 mands of all, appeases Menelaus by recounting the apotheosis of 
 Helen and assuring him that her dowry will be his, bids Orestes 
 marry, not murder, Hermione, and gives Electra to Pylades. 
 
 The Orestes is full of novelties. Where Aeschylus or Sophocles 
 would have seen an opening for one of those set speeches in iambic 
 trimeter, by a messenger, which were among the most brilliant 
 effects of Greek tragedy, Euripides introduces a descriptive 
 monody by a Phrygian slave who, as he sang his account of the 
 murder of Helen, expressed his agitation and terror with a wonder- 
 ful variety of metrical effects.'^ There was much in the composi- 
 tion of the play that Aristotle must have disapproved.^ But he 
 contents himself with reproving Euripides for the unnecessary 
 baseness of the character of Menelaus. The Athenians,, on the 
 other hand, certainly enjoyed, at the close of the fifth century, 
 this picture of Spartan egotism and bad faith. 
 
 Those who attempt to arrange the undated plays in some sort 
 of chronological order, rely partly on the parodies in Aristophanes, 
 partly on the evidence of the meters. The arguments from the 
 political atmosphere of certain of the plays are less trustworthy. 
 In the tragedies produced after about 424 B.C. resolved iambics 
 become more and more frequent. Trochaic tetrameters are used 
 
 ^ 139s ff. Radermacher, in Rhein. Mus. 57, conjectures that Euripides 
 borrowed the scene of the murder of Helen from comedy, and that the 
 Orestes, like the Alcestis, was a tragi-comedy. 
 
 ^ The characters in the Orestes have not the elevation that is needed to 
 inspire the hearer with pity and terror. It falls under Lamb's criticism of 
 the sensationalism of the Duchess of l^alfi. " Its terrors want dignity, its 
 affrightments are without decorum." 
 
250 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 in nine of the extant plays, and as the six of tiiese whose date is 
 known belong to the latest period of the poet's career, one is 
 justified in concluding that the other three, the Iphigeneia among 
 the Taurians, the Ion, and the Mad Heracles, are also of late date. 
 Euripides, for the most part, reserved this meter for the expression 
 of emotion and excitement, as in the Mad Heracles^ where Lyssa, 
 Frenzy personified, describes how she will invade the breast of 
 Heracles and destroy his house, or as when Cassandra, in the Tro- 
 jan Women^ suddenly diverts her prophecy to her own fate and 
 the terrible doom reserved for Agamemnon. In the Bacchae, the 
 latest play, trochaic tetrameter is used throughout a whole scene,' 
 the dialogue of Dionysus and the chorus after his escape, and two 
 scenes in the Orestes (408 B.C.) are in this meter. 
 
 The Heracleidae is dated by some critics as early as 429, on 
 account of its political tone. Its aim is, clearly, to exalt Athens 
 Xhe at the expense of Argos and Sparta, an endeavor very 
 
 Heiacleidae appropriate to the first years of the Peloponnesian 
 war. It is a drama of the persecution of the children of HeracleS 
 by Eurystheus, king of Argos, and of the war with Argos which 
 Athens undertakes in defense of the refugees. A good many lines 
 are lost, but the play was worth preserving, if only for the fine 
 speeches of Macaria,'' the daughter of Heracles, a more consist- 
 ently heroic Iphigeneia, who of her free will gives her life to secure 
 the safety of her kindred and the victory over Argos. 
 
 The Andromache (430-424 B.C. ?) does not appear in the theater 
 records (didascaliae) and was either never acted on the Athenian 
 stage, or, as is more likely, was brought out under the name of one 
 The Timocrates or Democrates. The play is a sequel to 
 Andromache the Orestes. Hermione, the daughter of Menelaus, 
 married to Neoptoleraus, plots in his absence to murder the 
 captive Andromache and the child of her captivity, Molossus. 
 In this she is abetted by Menelaus, who is visiting Phthia, the 
 home of his son-in-law. Euripides wished to emphasize the con- 
 viction of the Athenians that the Spartans are all bad, all treacher- 
 
 1 858-873. 2 444-4.61. 3 604-641. •! 500-534, 574-596, 
 
EURIPIDES 251 
 
 ous,* and he makes Menelaus as cruel and faithless as his daughter 
 is jealous and cowardly. In the first half of the play Andromache 
 and her son are rescued by the arrival of theaged Peleus. In the 
 second, which is almost wholly disconnected, Orestes comes to 
 Phthia and persuades Herraione to elope with him, a step which 
 he has made safe by arranging for the murder of Neoptolemus at 
 Delphi. Pindar in his Seventh Nemean had given a version of the 
 death of Neoptolemus at Delphi ; the plot of Orestes was an inven- 
 tion of Euripides. The play closes with the appearance of Thetis, 
 who, in Euripidean fashion, decrees the apotheosis of her mortal 
 husband Peleus, and gives Andromache in marriage to Helenus. 
 They are to rule in Epirus, and there Aeneas finds them in Vergil's 
 sequel to the Andromache} The play is among the poorest of 
 Euripides. Andromache and Peleus, alone, are respectable and 
 dignified ; the rest are as repulsive as Euripides could make them. 
 The Hecuba is parodied by Aristophanes in the Clouds^ (423 
 B.C.), so that 424, or a little earlier, is a likely date for its appear- 
 ance. As in the Trojan Women, to which it is a sequel, Hecuba 
 is the protagonist. The scene is laid in the Thracian Chersonese, 
 visited by the Greeks as they return home with their 
 Trojan captives. The prologue is spoken by the ghost 
 of Polydorus, Hecuba's son, who has been treacherously slain by 
 Polymestor, king of Thrace, a victim of the king's accursed lust 
 for gold, auri sacra fames. Vergil imitates Euripides when he 
 makes Aeneas, too, land in Thrace, in his flight from Troy ; he 
 hears the voice of Polydorus from the grave, warning him to flee 
 this cruel land, this greedy shore. ^ Two main episodes divide the 
 interest of the Hecuba. The first is the sacrifice of Polyxena, 
 daughter of Priam, to the shade of Achilles, who, even from the 
 tomb, claims his share of the spoil.^ This is an opening for one 
 of those scenes of maiden heroism so dear to the Greek tragedians. 
 Polyxena, like Antigone, like Macaria, has little to lose by death, 
 
 1 Andromache 445 ff. ^ Cp. Hecuba 171 with Clouds 1 165. 
 
 2 Aen. 3. 294 ft. * Aen. 3. 40 ff. 
 
 * Catullus 64. 362. 
 
252 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and she shows none of the weakness that was so natural in the 
 case of Iphigeneia. In the second part of the play Hecuba takes 
 her revenge on Polymestor; she lures him into her tent, slays his 
 children, and puts out his eyes. The play is a series of scenes of 
 heartrending emotion, of cruel slaughter, death following death 
 It was always a favorite, but owes its success rather to beauties 
 of detail than to excellence of structure. 
 
 The Suppliants was produced about 421 b.c, and has the 
 same patriotic tendency as the Heracleidae. It is a picture of 
 Athens as the asylum of the Argives when they had failed in the 
 The expedition against Thebes. The Thebans refused 
 Suppliants burial to the slain Argives and are compelled by the 
 Athenians to give up the bodies. The play seems to have been in- 
 spired by the defeat of the Athenian army at Delium (424 B.C.), 
 and the refusal of the Thebans to surrender the Athenian dead, so 
 that Euripides was reminding the audience of their own recent 
 griefs, while he recommended friendly ties between Argos and 
 Athens. In the speech of the herald from Thebes, forbidding 
 Athens to harbor the Argives, there is a clear echo of the descrip- 
 tion of Capaneus in the Seiien against Thebes of Aeschylus.' 
 Capaneus the scornful, whom Dante^ saw in Hell, heedless of the 
 fiery rain and still defying the gods, had been slain by the thunder- 
 bolt of Zeus as he assaulted Thebes. In the funeral pageant of the 
 Argives with which the Suppliants closes, Euripides brings the pyre 
 of Capaneus on the stage, and the most sensational moment of 
 this spectacular play is that when his wife Evadne flings herself 
 on to the blazing pile that they may be consumed together, the 
 only instance of suttee in Greek tragedy. Very rare, to judge 
 from the extant plays, must have been a chorus of old women 
 such as Euripides brought on the scene in the Suppliants, those 
 bereaved mothers of the seven chiefs, who give its name to this 
 drama. Dramatic etiquette seems to have excluded, as a rule, 
 old women and young men from the chorus. 
 
 1 Cp. Suppliants 494 ff. with Seven against Thebes 425 ff. « Inferno 14. 
 
EURIPIDES 353 
 
 The Mad Heracles (423-420?) is the only extant Greek 
 drama, except the Trachiniae of Sophocles, in which Heracles 
 plays a leading role. Which of these two plays was produced 
 first and suggested the other is quite uncertain, xte Mad 
 Euripides introduced more than one novelty into his Heracles 
 version of the madness of Heracles. In the Heracles saga as he 
 found it in the Cypria, where Nestor described to Menelaus the 
 afflictions of Heracles, and in Stesichorus, the fit of madness in 
 which the hero murdered his children came early in his career, 
 at any rate before the Twelve Labors which are recited by the 
 chorus of Theban elders in this play. Euripides makes the mad- 
 ness fall on Heracles at the close of all these toils and successes, a 
 crushing blow from the implacable Hera who had so often had to 
 see the hated son of Alcmene escape unscathed. Amphitryon, the 
 mortal father of Heracles, a typical old man of the stage, who 
 clings to life and refuses to despair with the younger Megara, is 
 the link that connects the two parts of the action, since he is the 
 only character present throughout. In the first part, Megara, the 
 wife of Heracles, and her three sons are about to be slain by Lycus 
 the Euboean who has usurped the throne of Thebes in the absence 
 of Heracles. Lycus is an invention of Euripides. Heracles arrives 
 from his last expedition, the rescue of Theseus from Hades, in 
 time to save his family, and kills Lycus. And now, when all their 
 troubles seem to be over, the anger of Hera begins to work. On 
 the threshold of the house stands Lyssa, the fury of madness, 
 snakes in her hair and a torch in her hand, and describes in rapid 
 trochaics the mischief that she is sent to inflict on those within. 
 A messenger in a long set speech next relates the event, how, on a 
 sudden, a madness like that of Ajax fell on Heracles, how in the 
 frenzy of his delusion he slew his children, thinking them to be the 
 children of his taskmaster, Eurystheus. Megara, too, had fallen a 
 victim. Amphitryon was saved only by the intervention of Athene. 
 The eccyclema presently reveals Heracles lying in a heavy stupor 
 among the slain. He awakes sane, and slowly, like Agave in the 
 Biteehae, is convinced of the monstrous truth. Like Ajax, his first 
 
2S4 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 thought is of suicide. Euripides now abandons the Getaean saga, 
 with its tale of the pyre of Heracles on Oeta lit by Philoctetes, 
 and transplants Heracles, full fraught with griefs — no space for. 
 more} to Athens, the haven, in the Athenian drama, of the un- 
 happy and the exiled. 
 
 For the date of the Ion there is no evidence, though the use, 
 in three passages, of trochaic tetrameters may be taken as a sign 
 of lateness. Ion, the temple servant of Apollo at Delphi, is, in 
 fact, as Hermes explains in the prologue, the son of the 
 god himself and Creousa, an Athenian princess. Cre- 
 ousa has kept her secret, abandoned the child, and is now married 
 to Xuthus, an Athenian soldier of fortune. With him she comes 
 to consult the oracle, and the first episode is a touching encounter 
 between mother and son, in which each, confiding in the other, 
 reveals part of the truth but not enough for recognition. Mean- 
 while Xuthus interprets too literally a response of the oracle, and 
 claims Ion as his son. Creousa, in her jealousy of this adoption, 
 tries to poison Ion, who is saved by an accident. The situation is 
 now complicated enough. A mother has tried to murder her son, 
 and in his turn he is resolved to punish her with death. The 
 recognition that follows brings with it a complete reversal for all. 
 Creousa recognizes Ion as her son through the baby necklace, the 
 shawl, and other tokens that are part of the conventional outfit of 
 an exposed infant and had been preserved by the Pythian priestess. 
 Apollo has pulled the wires all through the play. He had brought 
 the mother and son to Delphi, given the misleading oracle to 
 Xuthus, sent out the Pythia in the nick of time with the tokens of 
 Ion. At the close, ashamed to appear himself, he sends Pallas to 
 confirm the parentage of lon^ and to bid him go to Athens to be- 
 come the ancestor of the Ionian race. The drama is sensational, 
 rather than tragic, and has little about it that is genuinely affecting. 
 It is constructed with much ingenuity and some lack of seriousness. 
 
 '1245. The line is quoted by Longinus (40) to show how a writer not 
 naturally sublime, may, by sheer art of arrangement, secure elevation to the 
 most ordinary phrase. 2 'SSS- 
 
EURIPIDES 
 
 2SS 
 
 But it will always be read for the sake of certain fine passages, the 
 
 morning hymn of Ion as he sweeps the temple steps, the entrance 
 
 of the chorus of Athenian women who admire and describe the 
 
 paintings (or reliefs?) of the labors of Heracles on the front of 
 
 the temple, an incident which perhaps suggested to Vergil the far 
 
 finer scene of Aeneas confronted with the pictures of the Trojan 
 
 war on the temple at Carthage, and to Herodas, his Mime, Women 
 
 at the Temple of Asclepius. Talfourd in his Ion (1836) borrowed 
 
 much from Euripides, but transferred the story to Argos, and gave 
 
 his play a very different denouement. 
 
 The Electra (circa 413?) almost certainly preceded the Helen 
 
 (412 B.C.) ; the speech of the Dioscuri at the close announces the 
 
 coming from Egypt of Helen, whose phantom, not herself, had 
 
 been the cause of strife at Troy.' More than once the three great 
 
 tragic poets of Athens chose the same theme from the 
 
 , . J , . , • , , , . The Electra 
 
 heroic saga, and the Athenians could compare their 
 
 individual manner of painting the same characters and handling 
 the same general plot, as Dio Chrysostora read and compared the 
 three versions of the Philoctetes legend.^ In a single instance we 
 can do the same. The Choephori of Aeschylus, the Electra of 
 Sophocles, the Electra of Euripides, all deal with the same situa- 
 tion, the return of Orestes and his vengeance on his mother and 
 Aegisthus. All these dramatists had to devise an altercation be- 
 tween Electra and her mother, a recognition of Orestes and Electra, 
 and a trap for the cautious pair who lived always in dread of such 
 an issue ; and they must close the drama, either with a scene of 
 remorse, as the Furies begin to hunt Orestes, or with a justification 
 of a deed that Apollo himself had ordained. Euripides, writing 
 last,' is at all points inferior to the other two. In no other play is 
 he so subjective, so indifferent to the beauty and horror of the 
 
 '1281. 2 Oration 52. '' 
 
 ' See the argument of Jebb, in his Introduction to the Electra of Sophocles, 
 
 opposing the thesis of Wilamowitz in Hermes 18, Die beiden Elektren, that 
 
 Sophocles wrote his Electra as a protest against the sordid realism of the 
 
 Electra of Euripides. 
 
256 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 heroic saga. The scene is laid, not before the palace of Atreus. 
 the only fitting background for the last crime of the house, but in 
 the country, near the rustic cottage where Electra lives with the 
 countryman to whom her mother has given her in marriage. Noth- 
 ing could be less appropriate to the Atreus saga than this setting of 
 rural simplicity, with the menial tasks of Electra, and. the country- 
 man's embarrassment for supplies on the arrival of a guest. In 
 the recognition scene, Euripides allowed himself a direct criticism 
 of the device of Aeschylus in the Choepho7-i. An old man pro- 
 duces a lock of hair from the king's tomb, and suggests that there 
 may be further proof of the arrival of Orestes from the footprints 
 and the garment that Electra herself had woven for her brother. 
 All this Electra carefully explains to be impossible and absurd. In 
 the end, Orestes is recognized by a scar on his forehead. For 
 Euripides, as for Sophocles, Electra is the ruthless protagonist, but 
 even more bloodthirsty ; she takes an active part in her mother's 
 dejth, and, as she boasts, steadies the sword of Orestes with her 
 own unshaking hand.^ It is Orestes throughout who is shaken 
 and overwhelmed by the horror of the deed. Euripides wished to 
 leave the impression that, under any provocation, it is odious to 
 kill one's mother, and unworthy of Apollo to urge a son to such a 
 crime.^ With this aim he even showed' the softer side of Clytem- 
 nestra, who hints to Electra that she suffers from remorse. The 
 Dioscuri appear, at the close, to dispatch Orestes to Athens for 
 purification, and from them only comes a hint of the approaching 
 Furies ; B^lectra is given in marriage to Pylades. 
 
 The Iphigeneia among the Taurians (414-412 B.C. ?) was com- 
 posed before the play whose story it continues, the Iphigeneia at 
 Aulis, one of the two posthumous works of Euripides. Iphigeneia, 
 
 1 " While one hand, Electra's, pulls the door behind, made fast On fate, — 
 the other strains, prepared to push The victim-queen, should she make fright- 
 ened pause Before that serpentining blood which steals Out of the darkness 
 where, a pace beyond, Above the slain Aigisthos, bides his blow Dreadful 
 Orestes."— Browning, Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
 '1245, 1302. '1105. 
 
EURIPIDES 257 
 
 saved from the sacrifice at Aulis by Artemis, as was described by 
 the poet of the Cypria, had been transported to the ^j^^ 
 northern shores, of the Euxine to be the priestess of iphigeneia 
 Artemis in the barbarous cult of the Taurians, an in- among the 
 hospitable race who sacrificed to their Greek goddess 
 all Greeks caught on their coasts.^ Orestes is sent to this remote 
 place by Artemis herself to carry her statue to Athens, as part of 
 the expiation of his mother's death. He is about to be sacrificed 
 by his sister, when their recognition is brought about by a device 
 which Aristotle himself admired, though not without reserve.^ He 
 praised the deviLe of the letter which revealed Iphigeneia to 
 Orestes; nothing could be better; but he thought the methods 
 of Orestes, who simply told his sister who he was, ' lacking in 
 art ' ; for the ingenious artist will allow nothing to seem arbitrary, 
 and Euripides falls beneath himself when he uses tokens, as in the 
 recognition of Ion, or a simple assertion of identity. Polyidus, a 
 later tragedian, hit on a good device ; he brought Orestes to the 
 altar, under the very knife, and, as Iphigeneia was in the act to 
 strike, her victim cried, ' So I too must die at the altar like my 
 sister 1 ' A very natural reflection, says Aristotle, approvingly.' 
 In the present play, the intrigue of the brother and sister to es- 
 cape from Thoas, the king of the Taurians, is not unlike the 
 strategy of Helen and Menelaus in the Helen. Goethe's famous 
 Iphigenie auf Tauris, composed first in prose and later (1786) 
 in verse, is essentially different from the Greek original, both in 
 the conduct of the action and the painting of the character. Like 
 certain French imitators of the Iphigeneia among the Taurians, 
 Goethe introduced a romantic motive ; his Thoas is enamored of 
 Iphigeneia, but is too magnanimous to detain her; his Iphigeneia 
 is too generous to deceive Thoas, a situation foreign to the ideas 
 of a Greek dramatist. 
 
 1 ..." at Taurica, Where now a captive priestess, she alway Mingles 
 her tender grave Hellenic sneech With theirs, tuoed to fbe hailstone-beaten 
 beach. . . ." — Browning, Waring. 
 
 ^Poetics 16. *ib.li>. 
 
 ' HIST. GREEK LIT. — IJ 
 
2S8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The title of Xkt Phoenician Women (413-407 B.C. ?) conveys 
 
 no hint of its subject. It is as though Euripides, having strung 
 
 together a number of episodes connected with the expedition of 
 
 The the seven chiefs against Thebes, would not commit 
 
 Phoenician himself as to the main interest of his play, and so 
 
 Women ^^^y his title from the chorus, a group of women of 
 Tyre who are complete outsiders as regards the action, but happen 
 to be passing through Thebes at the time of the fatal assault. 
 The play is a series of effective scenes. Antigone, like Helen on 
 the wall in the third Book of the Iliad, stands with an old attendant 
 on the ramparts of Thebes, and gazes at the leaders of the Ar- 
 gives ; she is moved especially by the sight of her favorite brother, 
 Polynices, whom Euripides presently brings on to the stage for 
 the sake of confronting him with Eteocles, his fierce and unscrupu- 
 lous brother. Euripides abandoned the Homeric and Sophoclean 
 version of the fend of Jocasta, reserving her suicide for the moment 
 when all her efforts at reconciliation have failed and the two 
 brothers have fallen in their duel. Oedipus, too, appears in the 
 Phoenician Women, a blind and broken old man whose exile with 
 Antigone follows on the death of the sons whom his curse has 
 slain. A single character, Eteocles, dominated the Seven against 
 Thebes of Aeschylus, played some sixty years earlier. Euripides 
 avoided any imitation of its action, crowded his play with half a 
 dozen characters that Aeschylus had ignored, and emphasized the 
 difference of his version by a side thrust at those fine speeches 
 describing the fourteen champions, which are the central interest 
 of the Seven against Thebes. To tell the name of each were waste 
 of time, says the Eteocles of Euripides,^ now when the enemy is 
 before the walls. 
 
 The Rhesus, if genuine, should stand first in a chronological 
 account of the plays, since, if Euripides wrote it, it is his least mature 
 work. Influenced, perhaps, by the interest of Athens in Thrace, in 
 those years when she was trying to found Amphipolis (circa 436). 
 
 ^Phoenician Women 751. 
 
EURIPIDES 2S9 
 
 Euripides certainly wrote a Rhesus. But the authorship of the 
 
 Rhesus that has come down under his name is an open 
 
 , . , , , , . The Rhesus 
 
 question to which the most competent scholars continue 
 
 to give contradictory answers. Any argument from its general 
 inferiority to every other extant Greek tragedy may be put aside, 
 since we cannot say how inferior to himself, on occasion, might be 
 the poet of nearly a hundred plays, of which we can estimate less 
 than a score. The arguments from style are inconclusive, and 
 have been used equally by those who assert and those who deny 
 that Euripides is the author. The skeptics at present have the 
 advantage of numbers, but no one has been able to produce a sin- 
 gle proof. The play has been assigned in turn to almost every 
 period in which the Greeks wrote tragedy. But since its author 
 caught the manner of Euripides and wrote lyrics not unworthy of 
 him, the safest theory seems to be that which places the Rhesus 
 early in the fourth century. It would then be written by some 
 eclectic imitator, perhaps Euripides the younger, who was not too 
 far removed from the best traditions of the drama. The play is a 
 dramatization of the tenth Book of the Iliad, the Doloneia cut up 
 into acts. The scene is laid in the Trojan camp on the very night 
 when Rhesus king of Thrace has come with his army and his 
 famous horses to aid the Trojans. Under cover of night Odysseus 
 and Diomede slay the king and drive away his horses, before ever 
 they had tasted the fodder of Troy, or drunk of the Xanthus, says 
 Vergil,^ seizing, as usual, this opening for pathos. In the Rhesus 
 there is, however, little of the pathetic effect for which Euripides was 
 famous, though there is the usual tragic contrast between the boasts 
 of the Thracian king, heard with chagrin by Hector, that he will 
 overcome with ease the champion of the Greeks, and that inglori- 
 ous end which the spectators could forecast. In these scenes 
 from the epic, Athene aids the enterprise of the Greek heroes after 
 the epic rather than the dramatic fashion. At the close, Terpsi- 
 chore the' Muse, the mother of Rhesus, appears aloft as a goddess 
 
 1 Aen. 1. 472. 
 
36o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 from the machine, not to cut a tragic knot, for there is no such 
 
 dilemma, but to sing an exquisite dirge for her murdered son. 
 
 Where the highest point of interest is the killing of an enemy, 
 
 there is no room for tragic pity or terror ; the whole situation is 
 
 better suited to epic. The Rhesus, like the Iphigeneia at Aulis, 
 
 has no prologue.^ 
 
 The Cyclops (of uncertain date) is interesting solely as the only 
 
 extant example of a satyric play. In the half century or more 
 
 that separates this work of Euripides from the satyric pieces of 
 
 Pratinas and Aeschylus, the satyric drama seems to have developed 
 
 precisely along the lines of regular tragedy. The 
 The Cyclops 
 
 Cyclops, at any rate, has all the essential features of 
 
 tragic structure, a prologue, a parodos, four episodes separated by 
 choral lyrics. But all these are so abridged that the whole amounts 
 only to some 700 lines, about half the length of the average 
 tragedy. One of the problems of the writer of a satyric piece was 
 how to bring the satyr chorus of Dionysus into connection with a 
 plot taken from the heroic saga. In the Cyclops, the satyrs, as 
 they sailed with Silenus in quest of Dionysus, the wandering god, 
 have been cast ashore on Sicily, the home of Polyphemus, who has 
 enslaved them to his service. Their tasks, the flocks which they 
 drive on the stage, the abundance of cheese and milk in the cave 
 of the Cyclops, the background of the play, lend even to this 
 coarse piece of buffoonery something of that idyllic atmosphere 
 which, since Theocritus, has seemed the peculiar charm of Sicily. 
 All that concerns Silenus and the satyrs is the invention of Euripi- 
 des. The rest is a dramatization of the ninth Book of the Odyssey, 
 the adventure of Odysseus in Sicily, the blinding of the one-eyed 
 Cyclops, and the escape of the resourceful hero. The Cyclopi 
 leaves the impression that we have lost little by the disappearance 
 of the satyric drama. But in any case Euripides was not the man 
 
 1 894-903, 906-914. 
 
 2 Among modern scholars Wilamowitz, Croiset, and Christ deny, SUtl and 
 Sitzler defend, the genuineness of the Rhesus. 
 
EURIPIDES 261 
 
 to be coarse with the necessary gusto. The Aeschylean imagina- 
 tion let loose must have produced something very different from 
 this play, which could be converted into a tragedy of the tamest, 
 simplest type by the omission of the wild satyr dance, the Sikinnis, 
 from the parodos, and a dozen indecent hnes scattered through 
 the play. The Cyclops has been admirably translated by Shelley. 
 
 Had Euripides written nothing during his exile, or had the 
 Iphigeneia at Aulis and the Bacchae failed to survive, he would 
 have been named in the history of literature as a poet whose fiame 
 of inspiration had burned fitfully at the last. If the plays produced 
 at Athens in the last decade of his life, plays such as the Orestes . 
 and the Helen, were the only examples of his latest manner, we 
 might speak with assurance of his earlier and stronger style and 
 its obvious decadence. In the competition of Aeschylus and 
 Euripides in the Frogs (405 B.C.), Aristophanes makes Aeschylus 
 complain that he is at a disadvantage in the underworld compared 
 with Euripides : My poetry survived me ; his died with him, so that 
 he has it here to quote} The witticism 'oses much of its point when 
 one remembers that, in the very year of the Frogs, two posthumous 
 plays of Euripides were brought out at Athens by bis son, the 
 Iphigeneia at Aulis and the Bacchae. In these is at least no sign 
 of falling off. 
 
 The story of Iphigeneia at Aulis (405) Euripides found in the 
 Cypria. Aeschylus and Sophocles had each written his Iphigeneia, 
 but of their plays we know little or nothing. The sacrifice of 
 Iphigeneia that the ships might sail to Troy was described in a 
 chorus of the. Agamemnon of Aeschylus, but with no 1^^ 
 hint of the happy ending given to the tale by Euripides. Iphigeneia 
 The scene is laid in the Greek camp at Aulis w'.h at A"l's 
 Agamemnon as protagonist. His grief and hesitation, the protests 
 of Clytemnestra, the resentment and pity of Achilles, the terror of 
 Iphigeneia, make up a series of situations well suited to the 
 genius of Euripides. His Iphigeneia throws off her weakness, and 
 
 1868. 
 
262 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 at the last devotes herself to the cause of Greece. Aristotle 
 reproved him for this inconsistency of her character.* But to 
 the modern reader who remembers Landor's beautiful imitation 
 of the scene, this sudden exaltation of Iphigeneia is no blemish.^ 
 The sacrifice itself and the famous gesture with which Agamemnon 
 veiled his head, which suggested to the painter Timanthes {circa 
 400 B.C.) his celebrated picture of the scene, is described by a 
 messenger. Iphigeneia is snatched from the very altar by Artemis, 
 who carries her off to be her priestess among the Taurians. The 
 prologue spoken by Artemis, which Euripides probably wrote for 
 • this play, has been lost. The chorus is composed of women of 
 Chalcis who have crossed the Euripus to see the sights of the 
 Greek camp, and naturally enough observe all these pathetic 
 scenes without profound emotion. The Iphigeneia at Aulis 
 inspired Racine to write one of his finest plays. 
 
 The Bacchae {Bacchanals), which Goethe and Macaulay thought 
 the finest of the tragedies of Euripides, is drawn from the Theban 
 saga of Dionysus. Aeschylus, who lived closer to the 
 dithyrambic beginnings of tragedy, had devoted 
 three trilogies to the Dionysus legends. He had dramatized both 
 the stories of the vengeance of the youthful god on those two kings 
 who had rejected his ritual, Lycurgus of Thrace, who in his mad- 
 ness slew his son, and Pentheus of Thebes, slain by his mother 
 Agave in her Dionysiac frenzy. His lost Pentheus must have dealt 
 with the same situation as the Bacchae. Sophocles alludes to the 
 fate of Lycurgus in a chorus of the Antigone, but does not mention 
 Pentheus. The Bacchae of Euripides, apart from the brief tale of 
 the death of Pentheus in the twenty-sixth Idyl of Theocritus, is the 
 only monument in Greek literature of this legend of the house of 
 
 1 Potties 15. 
 
 ^ " ' O father ! I am young and very happy. I do not think the pious Cal- 
 chas heard Distinctly what the goddess spake.' . . She lookt up and saw 
 The fillet of the priest and calm cold eyes. Then turned she where her parent 
 stood, and cried ' father ! grieve no more : the ships can sail.' " Agamemnon 
 and Iphigeneia. 
 
EURIPIDES 263 
 
 Cadmus. It is, besides, the locus dassicus for the revels, the in- 
 toxication, the wild ecstasy of the Maenads 
 
 " Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame." 
 
 The chorus is composed of those untiring Bacchanals who were the 
 inseparable cortege of Dionysus in tragedy and lyric, as his satyrs 
 were appropriate to the satyric drama and comedy. The. Maenads 
 in the Bacchae come from Asia, wearing fawnskins and wreaths of 
 ivy, and playing strange foreign instruments, cymbals, tambourines, 
 and pipes. Dionysus, son of Semele and Zeus, comes leading them 
 from Asia to Thebes, the scene of his mother's travail and fiery 
 death. At first he is not known, even to the chorus, as the god 
 himself, but plays the part of one who goes before to prepare the 
 way for the coming of Dionysus. Near the palace of Pentheus, 
 before which the scene is laid, is the tomb of Semele, lit up with 
 a mysterious symbolic blaze which burns brighter when her son as- 
 serts his power. The relief of the ludicrous is given by Cadmus 
 and the seer Teiresias. This aged pair follow the example of the 
 women of the city whom Agave, the queen mother, has led away 
 into the mountains to celebrate the new rites of Dionysus ; they 
 put on the dress appropriate to the god's votaries, and, in' spite of 
 old age and blindness, totter from the stage to join the wor- 
 shipers. Pentheus, son of Seraele's sister Agave, returning from 
 an absence, is scandalized by the strange madness that has seized 
 the women of Thebes, his mother, his grandfather, and even the 
 Theban seer. He binds and imprisons the effeminate stranger, 
 cuts his long hair, and forbids the worship of this new divinity in 
 Thebes. Dionysus, with portents of fire and earthquake, easily 
 releases himself. And now begins the punishment of Pentheus the 
 infatuated. Quern deus vuU perdere dementat prius. The god 
 casts his spell over the unhappy king and persuades him to go to 
 the mountains to see with his own eyes the secret ritual of the Mae- 
 nads, whose doings have been reported at length by a messenger. 
 From the moment of the imprisonment of Dionysus, Pentheus acts 
 like a man fey, only half conscious of his own acts. He comes out 
 
264 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of the palace arrayed in the dress of a Bacchanal, raving of two 
 suns in the sky and of his own supernatural strength, and so is led 
 out to his doom by the god. The chorus all this time remain on 
 the stage, and soon a messenger relates to them the terrible end 
 of Pentheus, torn in pieces like a wild beast by the hands of the 
 Maenads and his mother. Presently Agave enters carrying on the 
 point of her thyrsus the head of her son, a ' young lion ' that she 
 has slain in the mountains : Would that my son like me were happy 
 in his hunting ! Call him, hither to see me and my good fortune 
 face to face} Euripides is at his best in describing scenes of mad- 
 ness, the delirium of Orestes, or the ravings of Agave. For the 
 queen the reversal of the situation comes as her reason gradually 
 returns, and " she wakes up at last to find the real face turned up 
 towards the mother and murderer." The speech, with her lament 
 which must have balanced in length the lament of Cadmus over 
 the mutilated body of Pentheus (1301-1326), has been lost from 
 our manuscripts. When the manuscripts begin again, Dionysus 
 from the machine is announcing their fate of exile and wandering 
 to Cadmus and his aged wife Harmonia, who are to be changed 
 into serpents. Agave, too, must depart with her sisters from 
 Thebes. ■ 
 
 Pentheus discovered by the Maenads, and Agave carrying her 
 son's head, were favorite subjects for reliefs and vase paintings. 
 But no work of art has so deeply impressed the imagination with 
 the horror of the Pentheus legend as an anecdote of the perform- 
 ance of the Bacchae among the Parthians in the first century B.C. 
 After the defeat of Crassus at Carrhae (53 B.C.), the Roman gen- 
 eral's head was sent to the Parthian king Orodes in his camp, 
 It happened that a famous actor, Jason of Tralles, was playing 
 the part of Pentheus before the king, when the horrible trophy 
 arrived. He immediately assumed the r&le of Agave, and held 
 in his hand the head of Crassus while he sang: Lo! we bring 
 
 ' She comes bringing not Pentheus iut repentance, says Theocritus (26), 
 echoing the pun in the play (367). 
 
EURIPIDES 265 
 
 from the mountains to our halls this vine shoot, newly cut, our 
 happy quarry} 
 
 It is natural to see, with Pater," in the Bacchae, this " masque 
 of spring," an " amende honorable to the once slighted traditions 
 of Greek belief," as though the close of the poet's life, that peace- 
 ful last chapter in Macedonia, far from the rivalries and defeats of 
 Athens, had been a last act of reconciliation, like the serene end- 
 ing of some Greek drama. 'When Euripides speaks his mind,' 
 says one of the interlocutors in Lucian's Zeus the Tragedian, 'he 
 betrays his real opinion of the gods.' Sophocles had raised no 
 uncomfortable doubts. When his personages blaspheme, they 
 blaspheme in character, like Jocasta or Ajax, and their utterances 
 no more reflect the mind of Sophocles than the execrations of 
 Prometheus against Zeus, ' the new tyrant,' record the true senti- 
 ments of Aeschylus. But Euripides has put himself into his plays, 
 and no one can read them without detecting the restless spirit of 
 the skeptic. He is not to be thought of as a pupil of the sophists ; 
 he was born too soon for that ; but in the matter of the gods he 
 evidently shared the skepticism of Protagoras. It was said of him 
 that he was a realist, painted men ' as they are.' More than that, 
 he painted the gods as they are in all the saga stories and the- 
 ogonies, pitiless, revengeful, treacherous, sordid, with all the 
 worst faults of men. When his personages talk of the gods they 
 rarely add those saving clauses to justify divine ways, or those as- 
 sertions of unshaken piety which give a reassuring atmosphere of 
 orthodoxy to the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. There is, as 
 usual, a basis of truth under the persiflage of Aristophanes. Eu- 
 ripides did expose the gods and criticise the legends, and in 
 doing so he offended the taste as well as the piety of the Athe- 
 nians. A large audience is always orthodox, and a fifth-century 
 audience at Athens was the last to listen complacently to such 
 
 1 Bacchae 1169; Plutarch, Life of Crassus 33. 
 
 2 For an excellent description of the Bacchae and a translation of the mes- 
 senger's speech with its picture of the Maenads on the mountains, see his 
 Greek Studies. 
 
266 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 a saying as Hecuba's :' The Gods/ It is only by a convention thai 
 ■we believe in them? But the Bacchae, at least, allows us to cherish 
 a picture of the aged Euripides, with " calm of mind,, all passion 
 spent," acquiescing at last in the hallowed, the conventional view 
 of the tone that befitted a poet of the theater of Dionysus, what- 
 ever might be his private convictions. 
 
 Euripides, like Sophocles, though, according to the etiquette of 
 the theater he competed with four plays, did not write trilogies 
 
 with a connected subject, after the fashion of Aeschv- 
 The saga ■' 
 
 lus. The Trojan saga inspired him with only nine 
 
 tragedies, of which six are extant. For several of these he drew 
 on the Cypria. From this poem he borrowed the subject of an 
 early, lost play, the Telephus (438 B.C.), the story of the wounded 
 Mysian king who comes to Mycenae disguised as a beggar in rags, 
 and is unmasked by Odysseus. Telephus was the first and most 
 famous of those ragged heroes, Menelaus in Egypt, Oeneus, Phoe- 
 nix, Bellerophon, and the rest, whom Aristophanes found so 
 amusing.' 
 
 The Attic, Theban, Argive, Corinthian, Thessalian, and Cretan 
 sagas all furnished Euripides with subjects, and he handled their 
 legends with the greatest freedom. Sophocles had resuscitated 
 Haemon that he might die with Antigone. In the lost Antigone 
 of Euripides the heroine does not die ; she is pardoned and mar- 
 ried to Haemon. So, too, his Iphigeneia is not really sacrificed, 
 but is preserved to be discovered by Orestes among the Taurians. 
 His Helen is not murdered after all, but translated to the skies. 
 For Euripides, in this not unlike the writers of the later, weaker 
 epic, preferred a happy ending, a softening of the story. The 
 very dialectic for which his plays are famous was in its tendency 
 
 ' Hecuba 801. 
 
 2 Verrall, in his Euripides the Rationalist, says of the Alcesiis, Ion, etc., that 
 " this is a type of dramatic work whose meaning lies entirely in innuendo," 
 a cleverly veiled attack on religion. But the fact is that when, as Lucian says, 
 Euripides speaks his mind, he speaks out. 
 
 ' Acharnians 418 ff. 
 
, EURIPIDES 267 
 
 optimistic, and therefore alien to the spirit of tragedy, as Nietzsche 
 has pointed out. For the tragic is something blind and irresist- 
 ible, that cannot be reasoned away. When Clytemnestra argues 
 like a barrister pleading for the life of Iphigeneia,' and makes out 
 an excellent case against the policy of Agamemnon, she is by so 
 much the less a tragic figure as her logic is unanswerable. Such 
 speeches as hers are too common in Euripides, and are the suicide 
 of tragedy. " His genius," said the late Sir Richard Jebb of Eu- 
 ripides, "was at discord with the form in which he worked."^ 
 What we must always regret is that he regularly subdued himself 
 to the conventions of tragedy and used the old tragic themes. If 
 he had had the power to abandon the saga and bring on the stage 
 fictions of his own, as was done once at least in his own day by 
 Agathon, we should have had a tragic counterpart of Menander. 
 As it is, his dramas, for all their beauties, creak and strain under 
 the weight of the saga and lie open to the interpretations of the 
 over-ingenious. 
 
 Euripides had to wait for his popularity and, when it came, it 
 was a tribute not to any tragic grandeur of manner or assured per- 
 fection of form. We hear nothing of Aeschylomania nor a sen- 
 timental infatuation of whole cities with the plays of Sophocles. 
 But even in the lifetime of Euripides, the Sicilians, according to 
 Plutarch, freed any Athenian prisoner of war who could recite 
 some verses of their favorite poet. It is less likely that Lysander' 
 and his Spartans were really diverted from the complete destruc- 
 tion of Athens by "sad Electra's poet." But Euripidomania there 
 was, and not only the foolish frenzy that Lucian ridiculed at Ab- 
 dera. Euripides had never lost a chance to praise Attica and 
 Athens, the haven of ihe oppressed, where men are fed on all 
 the glories of the arts, and move delicately through that clearest 
 
 ' Iphigeneia at Aalis 1 146-1208. 
 2 Whibley's Companion to Greek Studies, p. 115. 
 
 ' The story of Lysander, softened by the recital of the Electro of Eurip- 
 ides, is told by Browning at the close of Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
268 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 air} During his lifetime his reward had been slight. He had 
 had to see his theater prefer, at almost every competition, the 
 tragedies of his dead rival Aeschylus, or of Sophocles his con- 
 temporary. But with the rise of the comedy of manners in the 
 century after his death the current set strongly in favor of a poet 
 to whom the writers of New Comedy, especially Menander, owed 
 much. He had been persecuted by the ridicule of the conserva- 
 tive Aristophanes ; but the most extravagant tribute of the Euri- 
 pidomaniacs was the utterance of a comic poet, three generations 
 after his death : If I believed, said Philemon, that the dead still 
 have consciousness, I would hang myself to see Euripides.^ The 
 taste of the fourth century and of the centuries that followed was 
 not offended by that New Music of his (no longer new), with its 
 monodies and trills. An austere critic like Aristotle might feel 
 that one who could so brilliantly do without the gods from the 
 machine, when he chose, ought not to have dragged them in so 
 persistently; his fondness for prologues, explanations, or argu- 
 ments of the action which became, with him, an integral part of 
 the play itself, the care he took to make the art of prologue 
 writing peculiarly his own, may have seemed as mysterious to 
 some of his admirers as to ourselves. But even Aristotle, who 
 illustrates most of the errors of tragic poets from the plays of Eu- 
 ripides, calls him 'the most tragic,"' an epithet which cancels a 
 multitude of criticisms. His popularity, when it came, was due 
 to that. His plays were the most moving, the most pathetic, the 
 most human, that were seen on the Greek stage. 
 
 The minor tragic poets of the fifth century need not be dragged 
 by us from the obscurity into which they were thrown in their 
 own time by the dazzling excellence of the incomparable Three. 
 Ion of Chios, who was successful in dithyramb as well as tragedy, 
 Achaeus of Eretria, who won a reputation for satyric drama, are 
 
 1 Medea 824-845, a chorus in which he forestalled the famous praise of At- 
 tica, the " swan song of Athens, " in the Oedipus at Colonus. 
 
 V-'SoKock. ^PoeHcsli. 
 
EURIPIDES 269 
 
 to us merely names. Agathon, however, v/hose Jloruii falls much 
 later than theirs, since he began to exhibit in 416, rises above the 
 crowd of minor dramatists, not so much through his 
 dramatic genius as in virtue of an extraordinary per- ^* 
 sonal charm which made even Aristophanes indulgent to this 
 decadent and effeminate poet. He and his lyrics are ridiculed in 
 the Thesmophoriazousae, and, if we may believe the scholiast, Aris- 
 tophanes devoted the lost Gerytades to a satire of his style. But 
 his last word about Agathon is indulgent and even tender. It is 
 uncertain whether, when Aristophanes regretted the loss of Aga- 
 thon, the ' excellent poet ' in the Frogs (85), he was alluding to his 
 death or only to the fact that he had, like Euripides, retired to the 
 court of Archelaus in Macedonia. At any rate we hear no more 
 of Agathon, and may suppose that his career was short. Plato 
 made him the host of the Symposium, which is supposed to be 
 held in honor of Agathon's first victory in 416, and gives us from 
 his lips a charming speech in praise of love. This was the more 
 appropriate since Agathon in his Anthos (Flower) or Antheus was 
 the first, as we learn from Aristotle, to write a tragedy on a purely 
 fictitious theme, a love story, we may assume, forsaking the con- 
 ventional myths.' Another innovation was the use of choral lyrics 
 that had no relation to the subject of the play.^ Aristotle frequently 
 refers to Agathon, and usually with approval. We have a few titles 
 of his plays. His style was strongly influenced by the rhetorical 
 refinements of Gorgias, crowded with antitheses, subtle and elab- 
 orate. This we must conclude from the Aristophanic imitations 
 and from the rhetorical antithetic manner of the speech which 
 Plato makes him deliver in the Symposium. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Euripides 
 
 1. Manuscripts. The best are the Marcianus, 12th cent., at Venice (con- 
 tains four whole plays and part of six). Parisinus, I3lh cent, (contains five 
 
 1 Poetics 9. "■= lb, 18. 
 
2 70 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 plays). Vaticanus, 13th cent, (eight plays). Palatinus, 14th cent, (fourteen 
 plays and part of HeracUidae) . The second part of the Palatinus is now the 
 Laurentianus, at Florence (contains six remaining plays and conclusion of the 
 Heradeidae). There are papyrus frag, of portions of the Medea, Orestes, 
 Rhesus, Phoen., Hipp.; the earliest is ascribed to the 2d or 3d cent. B.C., the 
 latest to the 4th or 5th cent. a.d. See Oxyrhynchus Papyri II. 
 
 II. Editions. Ed. princ. by Lascaris, Florence, 1496 (four plays). 
 Aldus, Venice, 1503 {Electra omitted). Barnes, Cambridge, 1694. Mus- 
 grave, Oxford, 1778. Kirchhoff, Berhn, 1855; 2d ed., 1867-1868. Dindorf, 
 Oxford, 1832-1840. Nauck, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1869-1871. Prinz-Wecklein, 
 1900-1902. * Murray, Oxford {Bibliotheca Oxon.'), I, 1902, II, 1904. Partial 
 edd. Rhesus : Vater, Berlin, 1837. Hecuba, Orestes, Phoen., Medea: Porson, 
 2d ed., Leipzig, 1807. (The Preface to Porson's Hecuba was an important 
 contribution to the study of tragic meters.) Suppliants: Wilamowitz' in 
 Analecta Euripidea, Berlin, 1875. Helen : Herwerden, Leyden, 1895. Medea: 
 Verrall, London, 1881. Earle, New York, 1905. /o» .■ Verrall, London, 
 1890. Heracles : Wilamowitz, Herakles, Berlin, 1889; 2d ed. much abridged, 
 1895. Hippolytus : W\\2imovi\iz,B&t\va, 189 1. Bacchae : S3.ndys, Caxahndge, 
 4th ed., 1904. Iphigeneia among the Taurians : Bates, New York, 1904. 
 Weil (Seven plays), Paris, 1868, 2d ed., 1880. Fragments: Nauck, 2d ed., 
 Leipzig, 1890. Scholia: Dindorf, Oxford, 1863. 
 
 III. Literature. Wilamowitz, Analecta Euripidea, Berlin, 1873. Ar- 
 nold!, Die Chorische Technik des Eur., Halle, 1878. Decharme, Euripide et 
 Vesprit de son theatre, Paris, 1893 (translated by Loeb, New York, 1906). 
 Pater, Greek Studies, London, 1895. Bloch, Alkestisstudien, Leipzig, 1901. 
 Patin, Etudes sur les tragiques grecs, Euripides, 7th ed., Paris, 1894. Verrall, 
 Euripides the Rationalist, Cambridge, 1895. Verrall, Four Plays of Euripides, 
 London, 1905. Nestle, Eur. der Dichter d. Griech. Aufkl'arung, Stuttgart, 
 1902. 
 
 IV. Translations. yJ/eaio ; Murray, London, 1906. Hippolytzts 3.ni Bac- 
 chae : Murray, London, 1902. Electra: Murray, London, 1905. Troades: 
 Murray, London, 1905. Way, London, 1896-1898 (3 vols.). The Mad 
 Heracles is paraphrased in Browning's Aristophanes Apology and the Akestis 
 in his Balaustiori s Adventure. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 COMEDY: OLD, MIDDLE, AND NEW 
 
 Comedy, like tragedy, is directly connected with the worship of 
 Dionysus. The tragic poets, when they transformed the dithyramb 
 into a drama of human passion, wrote their plays in the service of 
 the most human of all the gods. The poets of comedy looked 
 back, not to the varied and passionate expression of the dithy- 
 famb, but to the more hilarious and licentious side of Diony- 
 siac worship, the phallic songs.^ These were sung in the revel 
 (ku/ios) that followed the vintage festival. The pro- The phallic 
 cession with the symbolic phallus was, for the country song 
 
 people, the crowning moment when all restraints were thrown 
 aside, and Dionysus himself, his sorrows forgotten, in his role as 
 the god of generation, of all sensual pleasures, presided over 
 their joyous abandonment. When, in the Achamians of Aris- 
 tophanes, the typical countryman of Attica, Dicaeopolis, has 
 arranged a private and treasonable truce with Sparta, his first, 
 thought is that now he can once more keep the country festival of 
 Dionysus. In the forty lines that follow,^ he directs the small 
 procession before his house, while his wife looks on from the roof. 
 His daughter walks first with the basket of offerings, next, the 
 slave carrying the phallus, while he himself in tbe rear as chief 
 worshipei addresses Dionysus in language of the broadest and 
 most cheerful indecency. Such a ceremony, with a following 
 crowd of revelers hampered by no conventions, all in the humor 
 fbr improvised personalities, was the natural birthplace of the 
 comic spirit. The satiric epic Margites, the poems of Archilochus 
 
 1 Aristotle, Poetics 4. " 237-279. 
 
 271 
 
272 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LirERAlURE 
 
 and Hipponax and all the tribe of iambic satirists, expressed 
 in a literary form and for a more sophisticated audience the satiric 
 and less genial side of such a humor, and from these Comedy, as 
 it became literary, may have borrowed. But its first inspira- 
 tion was very different from theirs, and it remained the ' Komos- 
 song,' comedy, Dionysiac, and, as such, was at last admitted by 
 the Athenians to the dignity of a state function. 
 
 But it was not in Attica that the first steps were taken towards 
 Dorian 'he development of comedy from the phallic song. 
 
 Comedy The invention of comedy was claimed by Dorians. 
 
 The Dorian colony of Megara in Sicily, as the birthplace of the 
 first great comic poet, Epicharmus, naturally takes precedence of 
 Athens. The pretensions of Nisaean Megara, the mother-city, are 
 more dubious. Aristotle himself could say nothing decisive about 
 "Megarian Comedy,"' and when we use the phrase we are proba^ 
 bly trying to describe something that never existed as a literary 
 type outside the imagination of later commentators. The allusions 
 in Attic comedy might easily mislead. From the seventh century 
 when Athens and Megara had fought over Salamis, the Athenians 
 had hated their Dorian neighbors, the Megarians. All the refer- 
 ences to Megara in Attic comedy are hostile. A ' Megarian joke ' 
 is something too coarse and heavy for the Attic ear, Megarian tears 
 are crocodile's tears, Megarian taste is always the worst possible. 
 The Megarian claim that in comedy the Athenians were merely 
 plagiarizing Megara was peculiarly exasperating, because there was 
 probably some truth in it. Some sort of broad farce existed in- 
 Megarian the Megarid before Athens produced a comic poet. 
 
 farce But the comic spirit at Megara was no doubt displayed 
 
 in buffoonery, le gros rire, and no great poet like the colonial 
 Dorian Epicharmus arose to put the Megarian genius for comedy 
 beyond question, and raise Dorian farce above the sneers of 
 Athens. For such a genius we must turn to a colonial settlement, 
 Megara in Sicily. 
 
 Epicharmus was born on Cos, an island colonized by Dorians. 
 
 ' Poetics 3. 
 
OLD COMEDY 273 
 
 but the whole of his h'fe was spent in Sicily, and he counts as a 
 aiciUan. From Megara, where he was brought up, he moved to 
 Syracuse, and wrote his comedies under the patron- 
 age of Hiero, making one of the group of brilliant 
 men who gave its peculiar distinction to the Syracusan court. 
 There Epicharmus must have met Aeschylus, his junior by fifteen 
 years, whom he outlived, dying at the age of ninety. He had 
 lived long enough to see the downfall of the Sicilian tyrannies 
 and the beginnings of democratic government. But his working 
 life had been passed under the wing of despots, and in an atmos- 
 phere that did not encourage political comedy. We have over 
 two hundred fragments of his comedies, and a number of philo- 
 sophical precepts attributed to him in his character of Pythagorean 
 philosopher. The fragments are invaluable for his dialect, meters, 
 and style. But they give us no clear notion of the genius which 
 made Plato speak of Epicharmus as the master of the comic type, 
 and Horace prefer him to Plautus.^ Of his skill in drawing char- 
 acter and in devising plots we are in no position to judge. Nor can 
 w« pretend to detect in the fragments that animation, that lively 
 remuage which, according to Horace, was one of his characteristics 
 beyond the powers of Plautus to imitate. He was the first to 
 bring on the stage the character of the parasite, and we have a 
 fragment of fifteen iambic trimeters ^ in which a parasite describes 
 the seamy side of his servile profession, how, when he has made 
 his jokes and earned his dinner by flattering his host, he must go 
 home alone through the dark and muddy streets, insulted and 
 beaten by the night watchmen, and at last spend the night shivering 
 in his garret. It is from a comedy of another well-known type, 
 the mythological, that we have ten trochaic tetrameters, a mono- 
 logue by Odysseus, who reflects on the risks that he must run if he 
 should consent to go on a special mission to Troy as a spy.' An- 
 other fragment of four verses^ describes the gluttony of Heracles, 
 who appears already as the favorite hero of the comic stage. Sicily 
 
 1 Plato, Theaetetus 152; Horace, Epistles 2. i. 58. 
 '^fr. 35 iKaibel). ^fr. 99. ^fr. 21. 
 
 HIST. GRKEK LIT. 1 8 
 
2 74 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 was the paradise of the epicure, and there are preserved, among 
 the fragments, lists of food that seem always to have amused a 
 Greek audience by their mere length and detail, and were to 
 appear again as a striking feature of the New Comedy. It ,s 
 curious to find in Epicharmus the earliest example of a stock joke 
 that was worn threadbare, later, on the Athenian stage, and war 
 not disdained by Molifere, the pun made through aome slight erro^ 
 of pronunciation.' 
 
 Epicharmus is the gnomic comedian, as Euripides is the gnomic 
 poet of tragedy. Certain sententious sayings assigned to him by 
 . tradition had a great vogue in Greece, and, if wt may 
 
 trust the fragments that pass under his name, he intro- 
 duced into his comedies set arguments which, as we have them, 
 out of their setting, seem altogether unsuited to the comic stage. 
 It is curious that the Seventeenth Epigram of Theocritus, written 
 for his statue at Syracuse, dwells rather on the value of the 
 maxims of Epicharmus than on his power to amuse. 
 
 Epicharmus wrote the Doric dialect, and his ^lays, though they 
 
 were long read by all educated Greeks, can hardly have 
 
 been acted, except in Sicily. He used three kinds 
 
 of meter, — iambic trimeter, trochaic tetrameter, and anapaests. 
 
 There is in the fragments no trace of lyric poetry 
 
 such as lent a peculiar charm to the comedies of 
 
 Aristophanes, and if, as seems likely, Epicharmus used a chorus, 
 
 we know nothing of its r61e. 
 
 From the fragments and a number of titles we may conclude 
 that his comedies were of two kinds, — mythological, in which 
 he parodied the heroic legends, as Hebe's Marriage, and scenes 
 from ordinary life which foreshadow the plots and intrigues of 
 the New Comedy, such as The Boastful Man. He was, in 
 fact, the first to invent stories for his plays, and so is the father of 
 the modern comedy of intrigue. In him we have the bloom of 
 
 1 Cp. Aristoph. Frogs 304 with Epicharmus fr. 87, and Moliere, Femmn 
 Savantes: Veux-tu toute la vie offenser la grammaire ? Qui parle d'offenset 
 grandmere ni grandpere ? 
 
OLD COMEDY 
 
 275 
 
 Sicilian comedy, and it was short-lived. The Sicilians kept their 
 reputation for wit and ready repartee at least as late as Cicero's 
 time, but they never again achieved a notable success in regular 
 comedy. 
 
 SoPHRON of Syracuse, whose date falls in the latter half of the 
 fifth century, wrote mimes which were read and admired throughout 
 Greece, but could hardly have been intended for the regular comic 
 stage. They were character sketches, photographs of 
 the daily life of the middle and lower classes, written, 
 we are told, not in verse, but in a sort of rhythmic prose. We 
 have a few inconsiderable fragments of these, enough to support 
 the tradition that Theocritus imitated Sophron when he wrote his 
 mime of the Syracusan women at the festival of Adonis in Alex- 
 andria, commonly known as the Fifteenth Idyl. From Sophron's 
 sketch of women uttering incantations, Theocritus may well have 
 drawn his Simaetha of the Second Idyl, and it is even suggested 
 that in these lost Sicilian sketches we may see the beginning of 
 Greek pastoral poetry. They may, at any rate, have served as 
 models for a later writer of mimes, Herodas. Sophron's mimes 
 were ' of men ' and ' of women,' a reflection of the separate life of 
 the sexes, and were written in colloquial Doric. Plato is said to 
 have admired them, and they were, no doubt, little masterpieces of 
 this minor literary type. 
 
 Of the beginnings of comedy at Athens, how it was promoted 
 
 from a village recreation to an important role in the Dionysiac 
 
 festivals of the city, we know little that is definite and cannot 
 
 expect to be better informed than Aristotle, who admitted his 
 
 ignorance of its development. At any rate we may safely follow 
 
 his example and ignore Susarion, to whose name clings the vague 
 
 tradition that he was the first to introduce comedy from his native 
 
 Megarid into Attica. The Thespis of Attic comedy 
 
 , . „ , , Chionides 
 
 seems to have been Chionides, whose plays were 
 
 performed at Athens about the time of the Second Persian war. 
 It was not until at least half a century after its recognition of trag- 
 edy that the state formally admitted comedy to the Dionysiac 
 
2 76 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 competitions.^ The archon from this time 'grants a chorus ' to 
 comedy as well as to tragedy. Comedies were played both at the 
 Lenaea, the winter Dionysia, and at the Great, or City Dionysia 
 in spring, when the audience was increased by the presence of 
 the allies of Athens. Three plays were presented at each festival 
 by three separate poets, except in those rare cases where the same 
 poet offered two plays, thus competing against himself. There 
 was, therefore, no attempt at plays with connected subjects on the 
 analogy of tragedy. 
 
 It was at the City Dionysia in 459 that Magnes, a younger 
 contemporary of Chionides, achieved one of his many successes. 
 We have a few short fragments of his plays, but we 
 Magnes should know as little of him as of Chionides had not 
 
 Aristophanes in the Knights'^ reproached the fickle Athenian 
 public with having turned their old favorite Magnes adrift when 
 he had grown gray and they had wearied of his style of music and 
 his choruses of birds, and frogs, and insects. 
 
 By this time comedy is fairly established at Athens, with three 
 regular actors, masks, and all the stage machinery borrowed from 
 tragedy. For dialogue the comic writer employed, not only the 
 tragic iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter, but also iambic and 
 anapaestic tetrameter and anapaestic dimeter. In its structure a 
 play of the Old Comedy, as we observe it in Aristophanes, is closely 
 akin to tragedy. ■ Prologue, Parodos, and Exodos, with Episodes 
 of arbitrary number and length, are all there. But so also are two 
 features peculiarly its own, the Agon and the Parabasis. 
 
 The Agon,^ or set debate, normally falls between the Parodos, 
 
 1 Capps, in The Introduction of Comedy into the City Dionysia, Chicago, 
 1903, arguing from the evidence of inscriptions, suggests 487 or 486 as the 
 date for this formal recognition of comedy. The question is still open, but the 
 traditional date, which falls about twenty years later, can no longer be taken 
 for granted. 2 j20 ff. 
 
 * Westphal's ' syntagma.' The locus classicus for the discussion of the Agon 
 is Zielinski, Die Gliederung der Altattischen, Kvmoedie, Leipzig, 1885. Foi 
 the word itself, cp. Aristoph. Wasps 533. 
 
Olid comedy 277 
 
 Or entrance of the chorus, and the Parabasis. But Comedy was 
 always free to reject symmetry of structure, and we see in the Frogs 
 that the Agon could follow the Parabasis. In a moral play of the 
 Old Comedy there was always some principle to be ~. , 
 maintained, some course to be decided, and the Agon, 
 the debate between two antagonists and the chorus, is the pivot of 
 the play. So in the Wasps (526-724) a son must convince his 
 father that a sensible man will not spend his days in the law-courts ; 
 in the Clouds (889-1104) the Just and Unjust Arguments contend 
 for the education of Athenian youth ; in the Frogs (895-1078) 
 Aeschylus is pitted against Euripides. Zielinski recognizes nine 
 divisions of the complete Agon. But its economy was by no 
 means regular, its limits are not always obvious, and it could be 
 curtailed or even omitted at the caprice of the poet. 
 
 The chorus of comedy takes a lively part in the action. But the 
 Parabasis, the interlude in which it faces the spectators and ad- 
 dresses them in the name of the poet, was its most important 
 utterance. In the oldest plays of Aristophanes, in the • The 
 palmy days of the chorus, we see the Parabasis com- Parabasis 
 plete in its seven parts, whose names were probably invented by 
 the scholiasts. First came the anapaestic or trochaic prelude, and 
 the main speech of the coryphaeus in anapaests, ending with the 
 rapid ' choking ' verses, spoken in one breath. Then the Epirrhe- 
 matic Syzygy, or 'set of speeches,' normally composed of a lyric 
 ode with trochaic epirrhema,"^ and a lyric antode with trochaic 
 antepirrhema.^ The Parabasis could be docked at the poet's 
 pleasure, as we find it in the Peace and the Thesmophoriazousae of 
 Aristophanes. 
 
 The earliest Attic comedians, like their successors, ridiculed and 
 assailed with the grossest personal abuse any individual who had 
 made himself conspicuous, whether by some eccentricity of 
 
 1 The ' after word ' in trochaic tetrameters, so called because it followed 
 the Parabasis. Cp. Aristophanes, Knights, 565-580. 
 
 2 The second speech in the trochaic tetrameters, corresponding to the 
 epirrhema. Cp. Knights, 594—610. 
 
278 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 manners or morals, or as a political leader. Every new movement, 
 every departure from the long-established and conventional, was 
 an opportunity for the comic spirit. In short, the ridicule of the 
 comic stage was a recognized tax on any sort of distinction. In a 
 community as small as Athens, unlimited license of speech must 
 have seemed intolerable as well as dangerous, and in 440 B.C., by 
 the decree of Morychides, and again by the decree of Syracosius 
 in 416 B.C., the Athenians asserted their sense of decency and 
 forbade the comic poets to satirize individuals ' by name.' This 
 was a muzzling order which left to comedy nearly all its old free- 
 dom. Moreover, Athens could not for long deprive herself of the 
 fun of seeing the chief citizens held up to ridicule, and, four years 
 later, the decree was revoked. 
 
 Meanwhile, Athens had produced a comic poet of whose genius 
 we have a fairly distinct impression, while the other predecessors 
 of Aristophanes are little more than names. Cratinus, who was 
 an elderly rival of Aristophanes, won his last prize in 
 423. The dates of his birth and death we can only 
 conjecture. He belonged, like a true comic poet, to the ultra- 
 conservative party, was an admirer of Cimon, the ideal aristocrat 
 (who died in 449), and was bitterly opposed to Pericles as the 
 leader of the triumphant democracy. Of this there is fresh evi- 
 dence in the recently discovered argument of a play whose plot 
 could not be determined from the nine extant fragments, the 
 Dionysakxander'^ (430 or 429 B.C.). This, as we now see, was a 
 mythological comedy, a parody of Trojan legends, which turned 
 on the substitution of Dionysus for Paris (Alexander). It is 
 Dionysus who on Ida, where the scene is laid, awards the prize to 
 Aphrodite. When he has carried off Helen and is hiding with her 
 from the avenging Greeks in the house of the true Paris, the latter 
 resumes his proper place in the story, retains Helen as his wife, and 
 hands over Dionysus to the Greeks. In all this Dionysus is 
 
 1 Oxyrhynchus Papyri IV, London, 1904. See Croiset, Ze Dionysalexan- 
 der de Cratinos in Rev. des &tudes Grecques 17 (1904), and Korte in Herma 
 39 (1904)- 
 
OLD COMEDY 279 
 
 ridiculed and consoled in turn by a chorus of satyrs. Even into 
 this parody of the saga, Cratinus, as we now learn from the closing 
 words of the argument, introduced an attack upon Pericles as the 
 real author of the Peloponnesian war. Cratinus is, in fact, the first 
 comic poet to introduce political satire, which was to be the main 
 interest of the stage of Aristophanes. 
 
 In the Knights (424 B.C.), Aristophanes, as he reviewed the 
 short-lived triumphs of his forerunners on the stage, spoke with 
 contemptuous pity of old Cratinus, as a worn-out celebrity too en- 
 feebled by drink to keep up his reputation. ' In his palmy days,' 
 says Aristophanes, ' every one sang his songs, and his wonderful 
 exuberance of speech, a deluge of words, carried all before it. 
 Now he wears a faded garland and is always dying of thirst.' 
 Next year Cratinus repaid Aristophanes for this offensive sym- 
 pathy by winning from him the first prize with his comedy the 
 Bottle, a satire on his own habits. We have over four hundred, 
 fragments of Cratinus, chiefly single lines or phrases, or isolated 
 words quoted by grammarians or antiquarian writers, and several 
 titles. The plot of his last play, the Bottle, we can reconstruct 
 from the fragments. His mistress, the bottle, has alienated his 
 affections from Comedy, his lawful wife. When Comedy brings 
 suit to recover her rights, Cratinus argues in defense that water 
 drinkers (Horace's aquae potores) cannot write good verse. The 
 parabasis seems to have included an attack on Aristophanes. 
 The Konnos, a play by Ameipsias that had some reputation, and 
 the Clouds of Aristophanes were beaten by the Bottle, and the 
 triumph of Cratinus over his younger rival was complete. Cra- 
 tinus has the credit of improving the technique of comedy, and 
 especially of regulating the number of actors on the analogy of 
 tragedy, though the argument of the Dionysalexander shows that 
 for that play he needed four actors. 
 
 Crates, before he wrote comedies, was an actor in the plays of 
 Cratinus. Aristotle, who disliked in comedy direct personal abuse, 
 ' the iambic type,' says that Crates was the first of the Attic come- 
 dians to rise above the use of invective and represent the universal. 
 
28o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 His first victory was about 449, and he was probably no longer 
 alive when, in 424, in the Knights (537), Aristophanes applauded 
 his wit and pitied him for his struggle against the 
 '^'^**^*^ bad taste of the public, who certainly preferred broad 
 
 farce and personal satire. Crates is said to have been the first to 
 introduce a drunken man on the stage. The most important of 
 his fragments is one of ten trochaic tetrameters in which a speaker 
 describes his ideal home. It is to be free from servants ; the food 
 will cook itself and come with the plates and cups, at one's call.' 
 We have fifteen titles of the plays of Crates, and about fifty frag- 
 ments. 
 
 The activity of Pherecrates, who was called ' the most Attic ' 
 
 of the poets of Old Comedy, extends from 438 to 405 B.C. Plato in 
 
 the Protagoras (327 D) speaks of The Wild Men (421 B.C.), the 
 
 most successful of the plays of Pherecrates, with its 
 
 ^^ fl p^ A p y A 4- p Q 
 
 chorus of misanthropes who have withdrawn from the 
 ennui of civilization, in search of the pleasures of the simple life. 
 This sort of allegorical and moral fiction he seems, like Crates, to' 
 have preferred to personal satire. We have over two hundred 
 fragments of Pherecrates, and a number of titles. 
 
 Among the numerous contemporaries and rivals of Aristophanes, 
 three alone have maintained a place in the history of Greek litera- 
 ture, and are something more than names. These are Phrynichus, 
 
 Plato, and Eupolis. Phrynichus made his rtSfiJa^ in 429. 
 
 A well-known piece was his character play, the Misan- 
 thrope, whose hero says of himself : I live like Timon. I have no 
 wife, no servant, T am irritable and hard to get on with. I never 
 laugh, I never talk, and my opinions are all my own (fr. 18). In 
 405, when Aristophanes won the first prize with his Progs, Phryni- 
 chus was placed second with the Muses, itself apparently a literary 
 comedy, a contest between Sophocles and Euripides. 
 
 Plato was one of the most popular of the poets of the Old 
 Comedy. He had a special gift for writing parodies or bur- 
 lesques of the myths and legends consecrated by the poets. Such 
 
 i/r. 14 Kock. 
 
OLD COMEDY 281 
 
 were his Menelaus, Europa, and the Phaon, in which he probably 
 parodied the legend of Aphrodite's gift to the Lesbian boatman, a 
 beauty that all women found irresistible. The Phaon was played 
 in 391, when political comedy had lost its savor for 
 the Athenians. But in the earlier part of his career, 
 during the latter half of the Peloponnesian war, Plato had written 
 a number of political comedies, such as the Byperbolus (420 B.C.), 
 in which he attacked the demagogue who had succeeded Cleon, 
 and the Cleophon (third prize 405 B.C.), a satire on the democratic 
 leader Cleophon who, not long before, had made a name by his 
 financial reforms and was one of the chief opponents of peace with 
 Sparta. Like all the distinguished poets of Attic comedy, Plato 
 wrote satiric studies of contemporary society, such as the play 
 called The Women coming Home from Sacrifice. We have frag- 
 ments enough to prove that, though not one of the giants of Attic 
 comedy, he was an accomplished and witty writer. 
 
 EupOLis was the most brilliant of those who competed with 
 Aristophanes, and the disappearance of his plays is a misfortune 
 only second to the loss of Menander. He was a precocious poet, 
 
 still in his teens, when, in 429, two years before the 
 
 7 T ^< / Eupohs 
 
 debut of Aristophanes, he brought out his first play. 
 
 But his career as a comic writer was cut short by his early death 
 about 415. In 421, when the Peace of Aristophanes won the 
 second prize, Eupolis was placed first with his Parasites, a satire 
 on the extravagance of Callias son of Hipponicus, the rich young 
 Athenian who entertains Protagoras in Plato's dialogue, and be- 
 came a proverb at Athens for his extravagance and his taste for 
 sophists. In a fragment of sixteen verses from this play, a parasite 
 describes the bait set for such a one as Callias by men whose first 
 duty it is to flatter, their second to be witty or lose their dinner.^ 
 In another play, Eupolis, with easy irreverence, brought on the 
 stage Dionysus the effeminate and timid god as a raw recruit un- 
 dergoing military drill. The Maricas (420), which made his repu- 
 tation as an unsparing satirist, was a political comedy directed 
 
 V- 159- 
 
282 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 against the demagogue Hyperbolus and his mother, who was rep- 
 resented as a shameless old woman dancing the indecent cordax 
 and speaking Greek with a Thracian. accent. In the Baptists 
 (415) Eupolis attacked Alcibiades, whose influence he regarded 
 as a sign of the decadence of Athenian politics. Hence arose the 
 legend that his death, which followed shortly afterwards, was 
 caused by Alcibiades. Pericles had seemed to Cratinus a danger- 
 ous demagogue. To Eupolis, "who, when the great statesman 
 died, was only seventeen, Pericles stood for an older tradition, 
 made orthodox in the sight of a Greek comic poet by the mere 
 lapse of time. So it happens that the most expressive and most 
 quoted of his fragments is the praise of the oratory of Pericles.^ 
 Eupolis and Aristophanes had much in common. Both were gen- 
 uine patriots of the conservative, anti-democratic type, both dis- 
 liked the sophists and the new movement in education, and agreed 
 in regarding Socrates as one of the most noxious of the sophist 
 class. / can't endure Socrates, says Eupolis, he is always talking, 
 always penniless, always thinking over questions of all sorts except 
 the really vital question where his dinner is to come from? Just 
 so, more than a generation later, two poets of the Middle Comedy, 
 Alexis and Anaxandrides, ridiculed the frugality and austerity of 
 the philosopher Plato, the pupil of the ' unwashed Socrates.' 
 
 In the composition of the Knights (424) Aristophanes was 
 assisted by Eupolis and won the first prize, though he was compet- 
 ing against Cratinus. Two years later, the youthful collaborators 
 had quarrelled and accused each other of plagiarism, Eupolis 
 declaring that he had made a present of the play to Aristophanes, 
 • my bald friend,' ' while Aristophanes complained that Eupolis had 
 stolen the idea of his Maricas from the Knights.^ In this famous 
 literary quarrel Cratinus took part, smarting as he was under the 
 insolent pity of Aristophanes in the Knights. In his play, the 
 Bottle, he sided with Eupolis, and taunted Aristophanes with his 
 
 '^ fr. 94. Nauck, Melanges Greco- Remains V 219, has collected a number 
 of passages in which these verses are praised. 
 
 V'-. 352- 'A- 78. * Clouds 553. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 283 
 
 debt to his collaborator. We have no evidence as to the rights of 
 the case, and can hardly trust the scholiast on the Knights who 
 says that the second parabasis of that play was written by Eupolis. 
 Eupolis won seven first prizes in his brief career. Numerous 
 fragments and the titles of fifteen plays have survived. 
 
 Aristothanes of thedeme Cydathene was born about 445 B.C. 
 His parentage seems to have been at least respectable, but of his 
 private life, apart from his theatrical career, we in fact know noth- 
 ing. The tradition that his parents owned property in Aris- 
 Aegina depends on a passage in a play which was tophaues 
 given under the name of Callistratus, the Acharnians} and need 
 not have referred to Aristophanes himself. Like Eupolis, he was 
 not out of his teens when his first comedy was produced at Athens. 
 This was the Banqueters (427 B.C.). But he did not yet venture 
 to demand a chorus in his own name, and it was not till three 
 years later that he made his real debut by assuming the full re- 
 sponsibility for the Knights (424). His last play was the second 
 edition of the Plutus, brought out in 388. In the forty years of 
 his theatrical career he wrote forty comedies. Of these, eleven 
 survive, isolated in Greek literature as the only specimens of Greek 
 comedy that have come down to us complete. 
 
 The Banqueters, lost save for a few fragments, was brought out 
 under the name of a friend, the actor Philonides, and won the 
 second prize at the Lenaea m 427. Aristophanes was The Ban- 
 a mere boy when he wrote this satire on the New Edu- qaeters 
 cation. The central interest was apparently furnished by two youths 
 who embody the effects of two methods of education. One has 
 been- trained, like hjs father, in the good old-fashioned way, the 
 other, fresh from the debates of the sophists, is a fastidious, over- 
 educated pedant, an expert in the peculiar or obsolete diction of 
 the rhetoricians, but unable to sing a drinking song of Alcaeus or 
 Anacreon.' The same theme was to be worked out four years 
 later in the Clouds, where Aristophanes refers to his first play' 
 'a a passage that is the only safe clew to its plot. 
 
 > 652. '^fr. 223. 8 527-sa9. 
 
254 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The Babylonians was produced at the Great Dionysia in 426 
 under the name of Callistratus, another actor. This was a violent 
 The Baby- attack on the home and foreign policy of Athens. 
 
 lonians Though it was to Callistratus that the archon granted 
 the chorus, there was probably no secret as to the real authorship. 
 The bitterest satire of the piece had been directed agaiiist Cleon 
 the demagogue, and he retorted by indicting Callistratus on the 
 charge that, at the Great Dionysia, in the presence of the allies, 
 he had made Athens ridiculous. That neither Aristophanes nor 
 Callistratus suffered seriously from this indictment is certain. 
 
 At the Lenaea of 425, Callistratus again stood sponsor for the 
 The Achai- Acharnians, the oldest comedy still extant. The play 
 
 nians won the first prize, Cratinus being placed second, 
 Eupolis third. At the Lenaea no strangers were present : 
 
 Cleon at least cannot accuse me now. 
 
 That I defame the city before strangers. 
 
 For this is the Lenaean festival. 
 
 And here we meet all by ourselves, alone?- 
 
 In those days only one subject came home to all Athens, the war 
 with Sparta. For six years Attica had endured an annual invasion, 
 while the country people must live in the overcrowded city. 
 Aristophanes took for his hero one of these countrymen, Dicae- 
 .opolis (Honest Policy), who sighs for peace and the comforts of 
 country life. The first scene is a session of the Assembly on the 
 Pnyx, a satire on the blind obstinacy of the authorities in reject- 
 ing all overtures for peace, and an exhibition of the ease with 
 which the people are gulled by envoys from Persia and Thrace. 
 Dicaeopolis, in disgust, makes a private and personal treaty of 
 peace with Sparta. The scene changes to a street before the 
 houses of Dicaeopolis, Euripides, and Lamachus, the Athenian 
 general, one of the war party. Dicaeopolis is interrupted in his 
 feast of Dionysus by the furious entry of the chorus, old men of 
 the deme Acharnae, chiefly charcoal burners who are less affected 
 than the farmers by the miseries of war, and are eager to stone 
 ' Acharnians 502 ff., Frere's translation. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 285 
 
 this traitor who has made terras with Sparta. Dicaeopoh's meets 
 their onslaught with a sensational effect travestied from Euripides. 
 Seizing a charcoal basket, he threatens it with immediate destruc- 
 tion, a reminiscence of the Tdephus and the Orestes. To save 
 this precious object, the fierce Acharnians are driven to a com- 
 promise ; Dicaeopolis must make his defense of his treasonable 
 truce. To excite pity one should be in rags ; so much Euripides 
 had taught with his ragged heroes. Dicaeopolis hails the poet, 
 who is writing tragedies in his garret, and after a long parley, full 
 of insults and ridicule of Euripides, borrows the outfit of the most 
 ragged hero of all, Telephus, the beggar king. Armed with the 
 tragic style and semblance, he pleads the cause of peace in a serio- 
 comic speech, till the chorus, half persuaded, calls in Lamachus to 
 support its side. Dicaeopolis talks them all down, and is left in 
 possession of his treaty. In this play, for the first time, Aris- 
 tophanes used a parabasis. Here it is a defense of his motives in 
 writing the Babylonians, an appeal to the humor and sense of the 
 Athenians, a defiance of Cleon and his counter attacks. The last 
 part of the play is the broadest comedy, a series of episodes to 
 illustrate the advantages of peace to Dicaeopolis, his monopoly of 
 good things, his triumph over the maUce of sycophants, the envy 
 of his neighbors. A starving Megarian, long excluded from the 
 markets of Athens, offers for sale his children disguised as pigs ; a 
 Theban brings eels and other Boeotian dainties ; and while La- 
 machus must answer a summons to war, and set out in the snow, 
 Dicaeopolis retires to drink and feast with flute girls. In the last 
 episode the contrast is still more acute. The general is brought 
 in wounded, and the man of peace carries off the honors in a 
 scene of drunken revelry which bears all the marks of the Diony- 
 siac origin of comedy and its direct inheritance of the grossness of 
 the phallic songs. It is to be noted that, though in his later plays 
 Aristophanes was to make his personal attacks with the thinnest 
 of disguises, the Acharnians is the only comedy in which he 
 brings politicians on the stage under their own names, — Amphi- 
 iheus, who makes the treaty, and Lamachus. 
 
286 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 In the Acharttians, Aristophanes, with a side thrust at his 
 enemy's trade of tanning, promised that he would cut up Cleon 
 into shoe leather for the knights, the respectable middle class of 
 Athens. Accordingly, at the next Lenaea (424 B.C.), six months 
 after Cleon's sensational coup at Sphacteria, he produced in his 
 own name the Knights, of all his plays the most purely 
 political in interest. It was his first unchaperoned 
 play, and with it he again won the first prize over Cratinus. This 
 was his proudest victory, the most difficult and daring of his politi- 
 cal comedies. In the Acharnians he had appealed to the com- 
 mon sense of Athens to judge between himself and Cleon. But 
 now he turned the full force of his satire against the sovereign 
 people itself, and though he kept his promise and tore Cleon to 
 shreds, his audience fared no better. Demos, the allegorical 
 figure in whom is centered the interest of the play, is a foolish old 
 gentleman, superstitious, credulous, easily flattered ; at home he 
 is the most reasonable of men, but once he has entered the As- 
 sembly he sits with his mouth open like any fool (752). When 
 the play begins. Demos is under the thumb of a wily slave, a 
 Paphlagonian. This is the demagogue Cleon, wearing indeed no 
 mask in Cleon's likeness, since the mask makers, as the poet ex- 
 plains, lacked the courage for that : But no one will fail to know 
 whom r mean. My audience is sharp enough (230 if.). Two 
 other slaves of Demos, apparently the generals Demosthenes and 
 Nicias, conspire to oust Cleon. They find an oracle which fore- 
 tells that the Paphlagonian will be overthrown by a sausage seller. 
 Enter accordingly a citizen unconscious of his destiny, selling 
 sausages. Under this disguise Aristophanes satirizes Hyperbolus, 
 a demagogue of the lowest origin, the favorite butt of political 
 comedy, and Cleon's actual successor. He is persuaded to outbid 
 the Paphlagonian for the favor of Demos. In the scenes that 
 follow, Aristophanes makes fun of the Senate and the Assembly, 
 and spares no pains to show up the weaknesses of the fickle and 
 credulous mob that governed Athens. The Paphlagonian is 
 routed, but the sausage seller's success is not a success of merit. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 287 
 
 He is merelymore cunning, more apt to cringe and flatter his master. 
 The Knights has two parabases. In the first (498-6 10) , Aristopha- 
 nes reviews the work and fortunes of his predecessors in comedy. 
 Here was the passage which Cratinus resented and avenged a year 
 later, in the Bottle. The second parabasis (i 263-1315) is said to 
 have been written by Eupolis. It is partly a series of indecent lam- 
 poons on well-known Athenians, partly an imaginary debate of the 
 fleet, which is indignant at the idea of sailing under Hyperbolus, the 
 parvenu politician who had risen from selling lamps. In the end. 
 Demos is rejuvenated and recovers the common sense and dignity 
 that were his in the good old days of Miltiades and Aristeides. 
 This was a touch of flattery that left the audience in a good humor. 
 
 At the City Dionysia in 423 Aristophanes produced his first vef^ 
 sion of the Clouds and was beaten by Cratinus and Ameipsias. 
 He was deeply mortified by this rebuff, as he told his audience in the 
 
 Wasps (1044') and in the revised version of the Clouds 
 
 , /„^ ,.\ , , . , , The Clouds 
 
 (518 ff.), which, though it never appeared on the stage, 
 
 has survived the earlier edition. In rewriting the play after its 
 failure, Aristophanes gave it a new parabasis (518 ffi), and added 
 the debate of the Just and Unjust Arguments, the Agon (889 ff.), 
 and the closing incident of the burning of the house of Socrates. 
 But in its main outlines the play wasprobaW^Mittle changedr- 
 It is an attack on the New Education ^nd its professors, a subject 
 which Aristophanes had ■ treated tentatively in the Banqueters. 
 To make such a satire effective he must display in a single person- 
 age all the varied aspects and interests, all the weaknesses and 
 dangers of the new, fashionable sophistic and its art of rhetoric. 
 He chose for the scapegoat of the sophists, not a foreigner, an 
 occasional visitor, like Protagoras or Gorgias, but a figure familiar 
 to every Athenian, one of themselves — Socrates. 
 
 " Socrates ? No, but that pernicious seed 
 Of sophists whereby hopeful youth is taught 
 To jabber argument, chop logic, pore 
 On sun and moon, and worship Whirligig." 1 
 
 ^ Browning, Aristophanes' Apology. 
 
z88 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The fact that Socrates was a philosopher, who himself, disliked 
 and opposed the sophistic method and professions, mattered 
 nothing to Aristophanes or his audience, and did not weaken the 
 force of the satire. For the crowd, Socrates, with his persistent 
 dialectic, his refusal to take traditions for granted, his; annoying 
 missionary air, was a sophist like the rest. To Aristophanes, the 
 irpplacable reactionary with his eyes fixed on the perfections of 
 the past, this untiring debater who wished to replace conventional 
 morality by a new and more rational system of ethics seemed the 
 most formidable, the most disturbing, among the teachers of the 
 younger generation. Nor was a comic poet likely to spare one so 
 conspicuous, so eccentric, so fitted by nature for the comic mask. 
 The result was a caricature amusing enough. In the character of 
 the Aristophanic Socrates there is no unity, but the unity of the 
 play is secured by the admirable figure of Strepsiades the bour- 
 geois, from whom Molifere borrowed certain features for his Bourgeois 
 Gentilhomme. Strepsiades, who has married above his rank, is 
 driven by the extravagance of his aristocratic son Pheidippides to 
 devise some method of evading his creditors. It occurs to him 
 that the sophists, who can make the worse appear the better cause, 
 are just the men to help him. His son refuses to forsake the 
 turf and grow pale like a middle-class sophist, so Strepsiades him- 
 self proceeds to the school of Socrates, who hangs in a basket 
 observing the sun, while his pupils, in ridiculous postures, study 
 geometry and geography and apply their wits to minute research 
 work. One of them boasts that their master had secured them a 
 supper by a neat theft in the palaestra. So, too, Eupohs {fr. 361) 
 had described how Socrates stole a goblet at a musical party- All 
 Athens knew that Socrates was incapable of sneak-thieving, per- 
 fectly indififerent to luxuries, and there lay the joke. For Socrates 
 there was no sting in such a jest. What he felt keenly was the 
 complete misconception of his aim and of the nature of his studies, 
 that he whose single interest was ethics should have been brought 
 on the stage blaspheming the gods and talking nonsense about 
 astronomy and physics, studies to which he was indifferent, if not 
 
ARISTOPHANES 289 
 
 hostile. Plato in his Apology makes Socrates say that of all his 
 accusers he feared most this comedian who in his Clouds, twenty 
 years earlier, had so misrepresented him. The lessons of Socrates 
 prove too subtle for the wits of Strepsiades, and he persuades his 
 son to take his place. You'll be sorry for this, later on, says 
 Pheidippides, as, with a bad grace, he leaves his horse-racing to 
 learn the dialectic of the sophists. This is the key-note of what 
 follows. Young and eager for novelties, typical of the degenerate 
 youth of Athens, he soon acquires the sophistic method and is 
 ready to rout his creditors. But his father's admiration is changed 
 to hatred of the sophists when he finds that they have relieved his 
 son of every scruple, including filial piety. He has lost his taste 
 for Simonides and Aeschylus, and will sing only passages from the 
 immoral Euripides. Aristophanes usually ends his comedies with 
 some sort of procession or scene of revelry, as in the Acharnians, 
 Wasps, and Peace, but the Clouds, as we have it, closes with a 
 real denouement Strepsiades, eager to burn what he has wor- 
 shiped, sets fire to the school of Socrates. 
 
 The chorus of cloud goddesses who come down Mount Parnes, 
 through the hollows and the thickets, aslant, in trailing multitudes, 
 are introduced as the deities worshiped by Socrates and his 
 school. Their lyrics gave Aristophanes a chance for snatches of 
 poetry, such as, here and there, in his plays, lent the charm of 
 sudden contrast. The agon of the Just and Unjust Arguments 
 which represent the old and new morality and dispute with each 
 other the right to educate Pheidippides, is closely analogous to 
 the celebrated allegory of Prodicus the sophist, in which Pleasure 
 and Virtue contend for the soul of Heracles. The parabasis was 
 ■written after 420, since Aristophanes accuses Eupolis (553 fT.) of 
 having plagiarized his Knights in the Maricas, which appeared in 
 that year. The prologue, like that of the Acharnians, is the 
 Euripidean type in which the leading character describes the 
 situation in a soliloquy.' 
 
 The Wasps, which won the first prize in 422, is a political 
 
 ' Cp. the prologues of the Mad Heracles and the Andromache. 
 HIST. GREEK UT. — ig 
 
290 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and social satire. In the Clouds Aristophanes had offered the 
 Athenians less indecency, less of the phallic element, than so far 
 in any of his comedies. The play had failed, and he now, with 
 some chagrin, gave his audience no philosophic 
 play, but a plain little plot with a moral (64), ending 
 with a scene of unbridled dissipation such as was sure to leave the 
 spectators in a good humor. The Wasps is a satire on the Athe- 
 nian mania for the law courts. These had become a democratic 
 institution since Cleon, in 425-424, raised the juryman's fee from 
 one to' three obols (about ten cents) a day. The poorest Athenian 
 could now afford to spend his time sitting on a jury, and felt himself 
 at last the political equal of the most aristocratic citizen. It was 
 a situation naturally hateful to Aristophanes and the conservatives. 
 Cleon is, as usual, held responsible for all the defects of Athenian 
 politics. If the politician and poet had ever agreed on a truce, 
 as is hinted, though obscurely, in the second parabasis of the 
 Wasps (1284 ff.), it was now at an end. The foolish old juryman 
 who plays the leading role is called Philocleon (Cleon's Friend), 
 while his level-headed son who is the mouthpiece of Aristophanes 
 is Bdelycleon (Cleon Hater). Aristophanes set out to ridicule 
 Cleon's popular juries and to show the baleful effect of those three 
 obols, whose influence became proverbial. But the interest is 
 soon diverted from the general question to a study of the charac- 
 ter of philocleon, the typical Athenian with a passion for the law 
 courts. The prologue is Euripidean, a dialogue of two slaves, of 
 whom one expounds the situation to the audience. They are 
 helping their young master to keep his father at home. To this 
 end they must net the house, since the infatuated dicast tries to 
 escape through the chimney, by the rain gutter, and, like Odysseus 
 escaping from the Cyclops, conceals himself under an ass that is 
 being driven to market. This scene is one of the rare parodies of 
 epic in Aristophanes. The chorus of elderly jurymen, armed 
 with stings to show their aggressive temper, come to Philocleon's 
 rescue and are repulsed by his son. They consent to argue the 
 case, and the set debate, the agon, follows. The chorus is easily 
 
ARISTOPHANES 291 
 
 converted by Bdelycleon's arguments, and Philocleon, who must 
 sit on a jury or die of boredom, accepts a compromise. He will 
 stay at home and hold a private court. The scene that follows, 
 with the trial of the dog Labes, was closely imitated by Racine in 
 Les Plaideurs, a comedy which throughout is often merely a trans- 
 lation of the Wasps. Racine, however, dwelt rather on the mania 
 of an individual for going to law, while for Aristophanes the jury- 
 man's disease was typically Athenian. After the agon, the play 
 turns from satire to farce. Philocleon is so ardent a convert that, 
 like the Late Learner in the Characters of Thebphrastus, he de- 
 cides to become a young man about town, and is coached by his 
 son in the latest musical etiquette, table manners, and dress. He 
 has merely exchanged one vice for another. The reformed jury- 
 man is now the scandal of the town, and the play ends with a 
 drunken brawl, the phallic obscenity demanded by the Athenians. 
 The hero is left dancing the cordax, the climax of Greek drunken- 
 ness. So much for the promised moral of the play. It has two 
 parabases. 
 
 The Peace, performed in 421, renews the theme of the Achar- 
 nians in that it is a manifesto against the war. But times were 
 changed. Both sides had now grown weary of a ^^ p 
 struggle that had lasted for a decade, and the Peace of 
 Nicias, fixed for a term of fifty years, was on the eve of ratification. 
 Aristophanes is less violent than when in opposition, and the Peace 
 has far less spirit and action than the Acharnians. This time he 
 took for his hero Trugaeus (Vine-harvester), a typical vine-growing 
 peasant of Attica. Wearied, like Dicaeopolis, by the long delays 
 of the politicians, he sets out on a special mission to the skies to 
 persuade Zeus to act as mediator. He makes the ascent -on a 
 gigantic beetle from Etna, bestriding it like Bellerophon on Pega- 
 sus, a parody of Euripides. He finds that the gods, disgusted 
 with the belligerence of the Greeks, have retired, leaving War in 
 possession. Peace has been shut up, like Antigone, in a cave, and 
 Trugaeus calls on the working classes of all Greece to combine to 
 set her free. The chorus of Greek artisans arrives in the skies 
 
292 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 without visible means of ascent, a marvel that remains unexplained. 
 Starving Megarians, lazy Boeotians, strenuous Spartans, malcontent 
 Argives, all take part, and Peace at last emerges from her dungeon 
 attended by Opora, goddess of autumn fruits, and Theoiia, who 
 personifies those embassies to the Greek shrines which were pos- 
 sible only in peace. Trugaeus descends, hands over Theoria to 
 the care of the Senate, and celebrates his nuptials with Opora. 
 After his return to earth, the action drags. The last five hundred 
 hnes are taken up with scenes to illustrate the effects of the new 
 peace on the trafle of Athens. The play contains classic passages 
 in praise of peace enjoyed under one's own vine and fig tree, of 
 that happy state in which, as Bacchylides sang in his paean on 
 Peace, the weapons of war are hidden by spiders' webs. The 
 parabasis is almost wholly an assertion of the poet's superiority to 
 his rivals, on the ground that he avoids gross and trivial pleasantries 
 and presents the audience with new and original jests of a finer 
 make. The Peace lacks the agonistic element which was so well 
 suited to the talent of Aristophanes, and inevitably acquires some 
 of the tediousness of an allegory. It was beaten by the Parasites 
 of Eupolis. The records of the theater seem to have referred to 
 two editions of the Peace, but we cannot tell which has survived, 
 or whether only one version appeared on the Athenian stage. 
 
 The ^z>i/j was brought out in 414 at the City Dionysia, and 
 was beaten by a comedy of Ameipsias. Two Athenians, Peis- 
 thetairus (Plausible) and Euelpides (Hopeful), wearied of the 
 
 _ chicanery of Athens, set out to seek some ' easier, uu- 
 
 The Birds .... \ , „ . , , . . . , 
 
 litigious place. Peisthetairus, the masterspirit, is, how- 
 ever, by no means one of those who long for wings that they may 
 fly a\vay and be at peace. He is the born poHtical adventurer, 
 the empire builder, never so happy as when he is working up 
 some new scheme of government. Euelpides is the typical hanger- 
 on, the buffoon to whose frequent and foolish comments his leader 
 pays no attention. Guided by birds, they reach a wild and hilly 
 country, the home of the hoopoe, that mvsterious bird of Oriental 
 and Greek legends, still to be found on Mount Taygetus, and Still 
 
, ARISTOPHANES 293 
 
 held sacred by the Arabs, the unclean lapwing of Leviticus and 
 Deuteronomy. The hoopoe was once Tereus, the cruel king of 
 Daulis, and is gifted with miraculous intelligence. Peisthetairus 
 claims him as an ally and confides his project of founding the 
 empire of the birds, midway between earth and heaven, an ex- 
 cellent vantage-place from which to dictate terms to gods and men. 
 The hoopoe calls to their councils the chorus of birds, who enter 
 one by one, dressed in appropriate plumage, the most effective 
 and expensive chorus of Aristophanic comedy. Hostile, at first, and 
 distrustful of mankind, they are won by the rhetoric of the adven- 
 turer, and accept his programme for the founding of Cloudcuckoo- 
 land. Since it is indispensable that the two Athenians should be 
 completely naturalized, they eat a magic root provided by the 
 hoopoe, the maidenhair fern of the hoopoe legend, and are trans- 
 formed to birds. The parabasis is one of the boldest flights of 
 serious poetry in Aristophanes, and shows that a true poet can 
 make even Theogonies effective : — 
 
 // was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and HelPs 
 
 broad border. 
 Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven ; when in depths of the womb of the 
 
 dark without order 
 First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in 
 
 her bosom. 
 Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom. 
 Cold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning. . . .1 
 
 During the foundation ceremonies of the new city and the sac- 
 rifice to the bird deities who are to be its guardians, a crowd of 
 settlers and adventurers begins to pour in ; a dithyrambic poet 
 looking for soaring strophes in the upper air ; a soothsayer ; Melon, 
 the astronomer, who is told to measure his way back and so put 
 his geometry to a practical use (for Aristophanes has a truly con- 
 servative horror of science) ; a petty official eager to import red 
 tape from Athens. All are turned back by Peisthetairus, who has 
 no mind to make his ideal city a mere replica of Athens. Mean- 
 
 1 From Swinburne's translation. 
 
294 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 while the actual walls with their monstrous fortifications have been 
 built by the, birds. Its fame reaches Athens, and thereupon the 
 Spartan mode goes out of fashion, and all become ornithomaniacs, 
 and ape the habits and dress of Cloudcuckooland. An Athenian 
 herald is sent with congratulations on the great enterprise. And 
 now from above, Prometheus, the friend of man, always glad to 
 outwit the gods, comes to report that the new city intercepts the 
 savory smoke of sacrifice ; the gods are starving, and the birds 
 may expect a divine embassy. Accordingly, Heracles the glutton, 
 Poseidon his uncle, and a stammering god from Thrace arrive to 
 make terms. Peisthetairus plays on the greed of Heracles and 
 secures his own conditions. Like other adventurers, he wishes to 
 found a royal house, and receives from the gods Basileia (Royalty), 
 daughter of Zeus. The play ends with his wedding festivities. 
 
 The intention of Aristophanes in writing the Birds is one of the 
 unsolved problems of Greek literature. If it was pure fantasy, 
 like the Midsummer- Night's Dream, it holds an isolated position 
 among the plays of Aristophanes. If it is the picture of a Utopia, 
 designed to show up the weaknesses of Athens, it was likely to miss 
 its aim, since Peisthetairus can hardly have been the poet's notion 
 of an ideal. ruler. It was more in the manner of Aristophanes 
 that the play should have a direct reference to the state of 
 Athenian affairs. Nearly a year had passed since the sailing of 
 the SiciUan expedition, and the dilatory policy of Nicias was 
 already threatening its success. When the comic spirit undertakes 
 to teach as well as amuse, it is seldom consistent or coherent, and 
 it is possible that the Birds was written as an anti-imperialistic 
 manifesto. If so, it is inevitable to see in Peisthetairus the por- 
 trait of Alcibiades, that restless and ardent imperialist who had 
 mcited the Athenians to the conquest of Sicily. 
 
 The Lysistrata, produced at the Lenaea of 411, is the first of 
 three extant comedies in which Aristophanes gave the leading role 
 to women. Their share in his other plays had been both unseemly 
 and insignificant. Like the Acharnians and the Peace, the Lysis- 
 trata is a manifesto against the war, which, renewed only three years 
 
ARISTOPHANES 295 
 
 after the peace of Nicias, was now in its most disastrous stage 
 after the collapse of the Sicilian expedition. To that misfortune, 
 as fatal to Athens as Napoleon's Russian campaign to The 
 French ambition, Aristophanes only once refers (590,) Lysistrata 
 and turns hastily from it, as though neither he nor his audience 
 could endure the reminder. Athens was now on the eve of the 
 oligarchic revolution which was to place the Four Hundred in 
 power for three months, and to demonstrate, even to the aristo- 
 cratic poet, the superior merits of democracy. But in this play 
 his mind is wholly set on the desirability of peace. In his earlier 
 plays he had shown the point of view of the men of the middle 
 and working classes. Here we have the women's side, their 
 peculiar grievances against the war party. His heroine, whose 
 name means ' Disbander of Armies,' is a strong-minded woman 
 with a gift for rhetoric, one who, in the respectable society of 
 Athens, had no opportunity for displaying her talents outside the 
 home. She persuades the matrons of Athens and the athletic 
 women delegates from Sparta who attend her conference to desert 
 their homes and husbands and to refuse to return until peace 
 shall have been proclaimed. The episodes that follow the strike 
 of the wives were designed partly to amuse the audience with their 
 astonishing license, partly to give an opening for the common- 
 sense argument of the wise and witty Lysistrata, who utters the 
 sentiments of the poet as well as her own. She is clever enough 
 to make even women work together for a single end, and the 
 play closes with peace festivities and choral songs in the Doric 
 and Attic dialects. The Lysistrata is the last and least bitter of 
 the political plays of Aristophanes. It has no parabasis, but a 
 divided chorus of men and women who take a lively part in the 
 action. 
 
 The Thesmophoriazousae (Women at the Feast of Demeter), 
 performed at the spring Dionysia in the same year (411), is a lit- 
 erary satire. Since the scene in the Acharnians, several years 
 before, when Euripides, swinging absurdly in a stage machine, had 
 wailed aloud that, in borrowing the beggar's outfit of Telephus, 
 
296 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Dicaeopolis had robbed him of all his tragic effects, Aristophanes 
 had never failed to fling a taunt at a poet who stood for the 
 _. decadence of tragic art, as well as the corruption of 
 
 Thesmopho- Athenian manners and standards. One of the stock 
 riazousae effects of comedy was the sudden change from collo- 
 quial Greek to the tragic style, and it was nearly always the style 
 and ideas of Euripides that Aristophanes chose for this travesty.' 
 In his lost Proagon {Rehearsal), played in 422, Euripides had 
 been the central figure in a parody of a rehearsal of one of his 
 own plays. And now Aristophanes made another direct attack on 
 the tragic poet, who was an old man by this time, near the close 
 of his career. Here we have a regular plot, more carefully sus- 
 tained and worked out than is the case in the other extant come- 
 dies. On the third day of the feast of Demeter (Thesmophoria), 
 Euripides learns that the women have agreed to vary their festival 
 by a debate as to the best method of revenge on one who, in his 
 tragedies, had exposed the vices of their sex. He entreats 
 Agathon, the tragic poet, who is effeminate enough to pass muster 
 as a woman, to go and plead for him at the festival, from which 
 men are rigidly excluded. The scene with Agathon is a satire on 
 the new poetry, all rhythm and metaphors and fine senseless 
 phrases, and on Agathon himself, the womanish poet, who re- 
 ceives on the whole more severe handling than Euripides. Where 
 Agathon refuses to tread, a kinsman of the wife of Euripides, regu- 
 larly identified by the scholiasts with Mnesilochus, Euripides' 
 father-in-law, is eager to rush in. Disguised in women's clothes 
 from the wardrobe of the dissolute Agathon, he slips in among the 
 assembled women. There, with more courage than tact, he pleads 
 that Euripides left a good deal unsaid, and for that women ought 
 to be grateful. His infuriated hearers soon discover the sex of 
 this unsympathetic intruder, and hand him over to a Scythian 
 guard. The chief interest of what follows is the travesty of pas- 
 sages from the Helen and the Andromeda of Euripides, parodies 
 
 ' Cp. Clouds 26 ; Peace 6^; Wasps 11 1 ; Knights 30. Bakhuyzen finds 
 149 parodies of Euripides in the extant plays and fragments of Aristophanes. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 297 
 
 of meter and style which we are to believe did not bore the audi- 
 ence. To rescue his father-in-law, Euripides appears as Mene- 
 laus delivering Helen from Egypt, and as Perseus, the savior of 
 Andromeda, Mnesilochus in each case assuming the appropriate 
 part. These literary subtleties are lost on the Scythian. Mean- 
 while Euripides makes up his own quarrel with the women by a 
 compromise, and finally diverts the attention of the Scythian by 
 the charms of a dancer, so that Mnesilochus escapes. Consist- 
 ency in satire is the last thing attempted by Aristophanes. He 
 had set out to write a satire on decadent tragedy, but the chance 
 presented by the feminine debate was too good to let slip. On the 
 comic stage women, to be amusing, must be coarse and depraved, 
 always drinking, as they had been shown in the Lysistrata, experts 
 in the art of outwitting husbands. This is the strongest impression 
 of the present play. In the parabasis, which is their apologia, the 
 women hardly improve their case with the retort. Then why lio you 
 marry us ? Why are you so eager to keep us ? (788 ff.). The 
 play contains scenes heroically shocking. But perhaps the ex- 
 tracts from Euripides, about 200 verses, wearied even the Athenian 
 taste for parody. At any rate Aristophanes did not win the first 
 prize. He wrote a second play with the same title and a fresh 
 plot if we may judge from the numerous fragments. The play 
 is singular in that it ends, not with a procession, but with real 
 action, the distracted evolutions of the Scythian when he finds 
 that his captive has escaped. 
 
 The Frogs won the first prize at the Lenaea of 405. In the 
 autumn of 406 Athens had won the great naval battle of Arginu- 
 sae, a victory whose triumph was dashed by the disgrace and 
 death of six Athenian genetals. In the same year 
 Euripides died in Macedonia, and soon after came the * '°^* 
 death of the aged Sophocles. Here was an opening for a literary 
 comedy on the relations that might be supposed to exist between 
 the three great tragedians who had now met in the underworld, 
 and for a picture of the forlorn state of tragedy, which, at the 
 coming Dionysia, must fall back on the sons and nephews of the 
 
298 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 incomparable dead. Dionysus, the god of the theater, in despair 
 at the prospects of the theatrical season, decides to make one of 
 those descents into the underworld that were so familiar to the 
 Greeks from their saga stories. As Orpheus fluted Eurydice from 
 the dead, as Theseus and Peirithous went down to carry off Per- 
 sephone, as Heracles dragged Cerberus to the light, so this effemi- 
 nate god, little fitted for the heroic r61e, disguises himself with the 
 lion skin and club of Heracles, and with Xanthias, his grumbling 
 slave, sets out to bring back Euripides, the delight of the Athenian 
 stage. The play is named from the secondary chorus of frogs, 
 which sings a lyric accompaniment with a croaking refrain while 
 Dionysus is being rowed by Charon across the Acherontian 
 marshes. The main chorus consists of the spirits of the initiated, 
 the mystics of the Eleusinian mysteries. Their beautiful choral 
 songs invoking Persephone, Demeter, and lacchus are fit for the 
 most sacred ceremonies of Eleusis. They are a sort of saving 
 clause of piety, a sudden relief from the grotesque picture of the 
 weakness and cowardice of Dionysus. After an Odyssey of adven- 
 tures, all designed to amuse the audience at the expense of the 
 god of the festival, the two explorers reach the door of Pluto, and 
 we have another episode of divinity in distress. The play is more 
 than half done, when, after the parabasis, which here precedes 
 the agon, the Uterary satire begins. Dionysus finds himself called 
 on to umpire the quarrel of Aeschylus and Euripides, who both 
 claim the tragic throne in Hades. Euripides has the mob on his 
 side, for the good are scarce in Hades, as at Athens. Sophocles, 
 "the good easy soul," would rather not contend, but is ready, 
 should Euripides win, to enter the lists on his own account. Aris- 
 tophanes sometimes parodied the tragedies of Sophocles,' and 
 though, as a rule, he is indulgent to him, like all the comic poets, 
 there is an unkind reference in the Peace (699) to the avarice of 
 a poet who ' would put to sea in a sieve for money.' But Sopho- 
 cles represents the golden mean, and a satire like the present 
 
 1 Bakhuyzen finds 23 parodies of Sophocles in Aristophanes' plays and 
 fragments. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 299 
 
 could only be effective if it dealt with the extremes of the tragic 
 manner. Through the debate that follows Aristophanes is plainly 
 on the side of Aeschylus, who stood for the spirit and the triumphs 
 of the tempus actum, but just as one may ridicule one's gods, 
 since it is certain that the august ones enjoy a joke,^ so one's most 
 revered poet comes in for his share of parody,^ only in this case the 
 parody is without malice. First, each antagonist makes his claim, 
 Euripides that he has reduced the inflated bulk of Aeschylean trag- 
 edy and made her deiTiocratic and useful, to which Aeschylus re- 
 torts that, for his part, he has taught the Athenians to be warlike, 
 while, by degrading the heroic type, Euripides has made them 
 sentimental and immoral. Moreover, Euripides has an unfair ad- 
 vantage : My poetry did not die with me. His did, so that he will 
 have it here to quote? Then they come to closer quarters and 
 compare their prologues. Aeschylus proves, to the chagrin of 
 Euripides, that in the latter's stereotyped prologue, with its monoto- 
 nous construction, one can regularly replace three and a half feet 
 of the second or third line by a meaningless phrase, 'he lost 
 his little oil-flask.' ^ Each criticises the other's choral lyrics, and 
 Aeschylus attacks the innovations of Euripides, his metrical irregu- 
 larities, his favorite ' shake,' ' and especially the Cretan monodies 
 with their mixed meters and lack of meaning. At last scales are 
 brought that Dionysus may weigh their verses ' like a pound of 
 cheese.' The weighty epithets of Aeschylus naturally turn the 
 scale in his favor, but still Dionysus hesitates : The one is so clever 
 and the other is my delight. He will give Euripides another 
 chance. He that shall best advise the city, he shall come with me. 
 The political epigrams of Euripides prove to be merely clever, and 
 Dionysus decides to choose Aeschylus. O remember the gods by 
 whom you swore you'd take me ! cries Euripides. // was only my 
 tongue that swore, retorts Dionysus, cruelly echoing the famous 
 
 1 Plato, Cratylus 406 C. 
 
 ^ Bakhuyzen finds 37 parodies of Aeschylus in Aristophanes. 
 
 »868 f. *I203 <S. 
 
 * Cp. 1314, where a single syllable is spread out over several beats. 
 
300 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 repartee from the Hippolytus, which was constantly quoted 
 against Euripides by Greek writers and even, says Aristotle, in the 
 law courts of Athens. The chorus applauds the exit of Dionysus 
 and his poet. The parabasis is of the personal and political type 
 with the familiar warnings against demagogues, especially Cleo- 
 phon, who was now prominent. 
 
 The Eccksiazousae ( Women in Parliament) was produced in 
 392. Its heroine Praxagora, a bolder and more inventive Lysistrata, 
 is the ringleader in a conspiracy of strong-minded Athenian women, 
 whose cry is not "equal rights," but the subjection of men. Dis- 
 guised in the clothes of their husbands, this pale- 
 Ecclesia- faced crowd, looking like a lot of shoemakers, says 
 zousae ^^ amazed habitue of the Pnyx, carries a resolution 
 
 to hand over the government to the women of Athens. Aris- 
 tophanes gives us the rehearsal for this assembly, but not the 
 scene of the meeting at which Praxagora urged that women have 
 more common sense than men, more skill in finance, are more 
 scrupulous, more conservative. What is more, this scheme is the 
 only novelty that has not been tried by the changeable Athenians. 
 Equality and Fraternity is Praxagora's party cry, and her constitu- 
 tion is communism undiluted. All forms of wealth ate to be owned 
 by the state and distributed in equal allowances. There will be 
 no debts, no lawsuits, no thieves, and the law courts are trans- 
 formed into public dining-rooms where every citizen is to dine 
 at the public expense. Wives and children are to be common to 
 all. The last 400 lines of the play partly illustrate the futility 
 of the communistic ideal, which assumes that no man will want 
 more than his share, and are partly a series of grotesque and 
 obscene incidents resulting from Praxagora's law that in love 
 affairs the old are to be given precedence of the young. 
 There is no real denouement, and the piece ends with the 
 breathless song of the chorus of women hastening to the pubUc 
 dinner. The resemblance of Praxagora's scheme to the Utopia of 
 Plato's Republic will strike every reader. Both Aristophanes and 
 Plato give precisely the same arguments in favor of common 
 
ARISTOPHANES 301 
 
 property in wives and children, that reverence toward a possible 
 father, and the fear that the bystanders, out of filial duty, will 
 always come to the help of the old in distress, will insure respect 
 for tlie aged and harmony in the state. Plato certainly never 
 meant that women should govern his ideal city, and his com- 
 munism was limited to the ruling class. It may be admitted 
 that a Utopia is fair game for caricature on the comic stage. 
 But there are three arguments that must be met by those who 
 assume that Plato was satirized in this comedy. The Republic 
 was not published until several years after the play;^ Plato's 
 name is never mentioned by Aristophanes ; " finally, the idea of 
 a community of wives, though Aristotle in the Politics says 
 that it is an innovation of Plato's, was by no means new. Euripides 
 referred to it, and Herodotus had described just such a community 
 among the Agathyrsi, a Dacian tribe, and had given precisely the 
 same explanation as Plato and Aristophanes that such a system 
 would secure harmony among men with so wide a range of filiaV 
 and fraternal duties to observe.' It is of course possible that Plato's 
 theories had been ventilated in Athens before 392, but, on the 
 whole, it is safer to suppose that thsEcclesiazousae had no reference 
 to the Republic, but was aimed, partly at the Athenian tendency to 
 grasp at anything new, partly at the socialistic ideas that were cur- 
 rent at that time of political and social depression following a dis- 
 astrous war.* 
 
 1 Krohn conjectures that the first four Books, with their passing reference 
 to a community of women and children in 424 A, appeared before 392, and 
 that the fifth, with its development of the communistic scheme, was an an- 
 swer to the ridicule of Aristophanes. 
 
 2 Wolf, Meineke, and others identify the repulsive Aristyllus oi Eccl. 647, 
 Plutus 314, Telmessians fr. 538 (Kock), with the philosopher. But in any 
 case the allusions are slight, and we know from the Phaedo 59 B that its 
 author was known to Athens, not as Aristocles or its diminutive Aristyllus, but 
 as Plato. 
 
 ^ Cp. Eur.yr. 655 (Nauck) and Herod. 4. 104. 
 
 * For a reference to Plato's Utopia are Wolf, Meineke, Krohn, Pfleiderer, 
 Denis ; against are Gomperz, Christ, Campbell, Stallliaum, Sittl, Lutoslawski, 
 bitzler. 
 
302 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The Plutus (388 B.C.) is an allegory, a picture of society turned 
 upside down by the redistribution of wealth. Plutus, the god of 
 riches, had been blinded by Zeus, w.ho feared for his own suprem- 
 acy should the good alone possess the advantage of 
 The Plutus ' , , , , . , , , . X • . ou 1 
 
 wealth. Advised by the poor but virtuous Chremylus, 
 
 Plutus recovers his sight in the temple of Asclepius, and can now 
 follow his own inclinations and visit only the deserving. Society 
 is at once transformed. In a turn of Fortune's wheel the sycophant, 
 or professional informer, loses his trade, the rich old woman her 
 mercenary lover. The gods, on whom men no longer depend, 
 must starve without their sacrifices, and Hermes is driven to take 
 a scullion's place with Chremylus, who is the first to profit by the 
 god's recovery. Plutus himself is installed on the Acropolis of 
 Athens. Of all the Aristophanic comedies this is the least in 
 touch with life. The almost total suppression of the chorus is an 
 eclipse of gayety, and the scarcity of choral lyrics betrays a weak- 
 ness inherent in the Aristophanic plot, the lack of unity. The 
 pert witticisms of the slave Carion, a foretaste of later comedy, 
 are a poor substitute for the jovial fun of the earlier plays. Twice 
 only does the comic genius light up the frigid atmosphere of 
 allegory. Carion's account of a night spent in the temple of 
 Asclepius is an excellent satire on the greedy priests of the god 
 of medicine and the credulous invalids who flock to take the 'cure.' 
 The agon (415-612) is an effective debate between pale Poverty, 
 with her appearance as of an Erinnys escaped from tragedy, and 
 the rash beings who are planning to restore sight to Plutus. Pov- 
 erty declares that, if she be banished, there will be an end of all the 
 arts and crafts that make life agreeable, and of the trading that 
 makes it possible. Necessity is the mother of industry, the mo- 
 tive power of life, and hunger, as Persius said later, is the best 
 teacher.^ The idea was taken up again, in the Alexandrian 
 age, by the old fisherman in Theocritus. Poverty, though she 
 does not move Chremylus, has the best of the argument, but since 
 Aristophanes does not proceed to show the economic difficulties in 
 
 1 Cp. Plautus, StUhus I. 3. 24. Paupertas , . . omnes artes perdocet. 
 
ARISTOPHANES 303 
 
 a society where one need only be good to be rich, the play lacks 
 point. The chorus, of small farmers of Attica, plays an insignifi- 
 cant part, and there is no parabasis. Lucian borrowed the char- 
 acters of Hermes, Plutus, and Poverty, with certain of Poverty's 
 arguments, for his picture of the vicissitudes of fortune in Timon 
 the Misanthrope, Shakespeare's theme. An earlier Plutus, of which 
 we have a few fragments, was played in 408 B.C., but it is impos- 
 sible to decide to what extent it resembled the later version. It 
 was probably more political, and better furnished with choral 
 parts. Our version was a favorite play with the Byzantine schools 
 and is rich in scholia. 
 
 Aristophanes died in 385, within a few years of the performance 
 of the second Plutus. His last two comedies, the Cocalus and 
 the Aeolosicon, were produced under the name of his youngest 
 son, Ararus. Both were parodies of tragic themes and the 
 tragic style, and both are lost, save for a few fragments. The 
 Cocalus dealt with the violent end of King Minos in Sicily, and 
 seems to have had a plot with a regular intrigue and recognition, 
 like a Euripidean play ; or, still more, like the plays of the New 
 Comedy. 
 
 The first duty of a comic poet at Athens was to raise a laugh, 
 and no sense of decency, no shadow of the proprieties, ever re- 
 strained the genial humor of Aristophanes. The gross language 
 which Aristotle set down as typical of Old Comedy offended his 
 less robust taste, and in his extant works, at least, he ignores 
 Aristophanes. He speaks with approval of the more subtle hu- 
 mor of the later comedians who had abandoned the satiric type, 
 the poets, that is to say, of Middle Comedy, whose wit enter- 
 tained the Athens that he knew. But Aristophanes was a nian of 
 strong and serious prejudices. His plays are not only a monu- 
 ment of Athenian wit at its most genial, most brilliant, and most 
 licentious, but a manifesto of the poet's personal creed. Con- 
 servatism, the sanctity of tradition, is his thesis, and there is not 
 a comedy in which one may not see Aristophanes trying to stop 
 the current, protesting against the new manners, new religions, 
 
304 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 new philosophy, new rhetoric, literature, and music. The aca- 
 demic life of the fifth-century Athens with its crowd of sophists 
 and professors of all sorts, teaching the young to be too clever, 
 filled him with disgust. For him, to be complex was to be degen- 
 erate. He was a true son of the race which always held it a sign 
 of decadence when a fresh string was added to the lyre. The 
 speculative tendency, which makes fifth-century Athens so inter- 
 esting to us, he met with ridicule sharpened by distrust ; the 
 rhetorical studies that were already bearing fruit in the Attic ora- 
 tors were in his eyes a sort of literary dishonesty which reflected 
 moral weakness ; the " twitterings " of Euripidean lyrics, the com- 
 plicated turns and flourishes of Phrynis, the imitative music of 
 Philoxenus, Cinesias, with his ' deep blue dithyrambs,' Agathon's 
 effeminate and wanton songs, the whole development of instru- 
 mental music towards greater expressiveness and a wider range of 
 sentimental effect, he opposed as Pherecrates and Cratinus had 
 opposed them, because he thought they sapped the strength of 
 Athens. His own lyrics won him the name of ' the darling of the 
 Graces.' They show great variety, though no great depth, and can 
 be charming, as, for instance, the summons to Procne in the Birds, 
 or can express real religious feeling, as the hymn to Demeter in 
 the Frogs. Plato's epigram in the Anthology dwells on the lyrical 
 gift of Aristophanes : — 
 
 The Graces sought a heavenly shrine which ne'er 
 
 Shall come to notight. 
 And in thy soul, immortal poet, found 
 The shrine they sought^ 
 
 But his real talent was best displayed in the mordant raillery of 
 the parabases. 
 
 Aristophanes claimed^ that he used the speech of Athens, ob- 
 serving the golden mean between the cockney dialect of the town- 
 bred citizen and the rustic tongue of Attica. His iambic trimeters 
 show the usual comic variations from the tragic measure, frequent 
 
 1 4. 13. Rogers' translation. '^ fr. 685. 
 
MIDDLE COMEDY 305 
 
 resolutions and divisions of the line, and are sometimes interrupted 
 by that sudden descent to reality through the use of prose, which 
 was a common effect of the comic stage. 
 
 The swift decline of Old Comedy with its political interest 
 followed close on the fall of Athens in 404. For sixty or seventy 
 years it had been a weapon of the aristocratic opposition, always 
 kept bright by use. But the excesses of the oligarchy in their 
 brief term of power (404-403) must have disillusioned even Aris- 
 tophanes. Amnesty was in the air, and the poet could no longer 
 attack with the old sincerity a democracy that had proved the 
 only hope of Athens. In his last two extant plays, at any rate, he 
 turned from politics, and allowed himself only a few passing allu- 
 sions, such as the thrust at Agyrrhius,^ who had ' succeeded Thra- 
 sybulus as general in 389. Personalities like this, never, we may 
 be sure, failed to scandalize and entertain the comic theater at 
 Athens. But a satire on public affairs could only succeed so long 
 as the poet and his audience had the spirit to amuse and be 
 amused. The effort to repress personal allusions had been re- 
 newed more than once in the last half of the fifth century, notably 
 by the decree of Syracosius in 416, but they were futile, and it 
 was not by the power of the law that political comedy fell silent. 
 Times were changed, and an Athens that existed only through 
 the indulgence of Sparta was no fit setting for energetic political 
 satire. The economy preached by the archons was perhaps a 
 transparent excuse, but they acted on it, and already in the Frogs 
 Aristophanes speaks of the meager allowance that must now fur- 
 nish his chorus. It is the practical suppression of the chorus, as 
 we see it in the Ecclesiazousae and the Plutus, that marks the 
 transition from aggressive political comedy to the comedy of man- 
 ners, from the Old to the New. The chorus had been the weapon 
 of the Old Comedy, which perished with its sting. 
 
 Middle Comedy is a division that was adopted no earlier than 
 Hadrian, but the name has persisted as a useful literary con- 
 vention,^ though it is often difficult in the case of the extant 
 
 1 Plutus 1 76. '' Rejected by Kock in his Introduction to Vol. II, 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 20 
 
3o6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 fragments and titles to draw a real distinction between Middle and 
 New. Of the 800 plays of the Middle Comedy which, in the third 
 Christian century, Athenaeus could read, comedies which enter- 
 tained the Athenians for more than sixty years, not so much as a 
 single scene survives. Our judgment of the whole from the nu- 
 merous extant fragments of thirty-nine poets is handicapped, 
 partly by their brevity, partly by the circumstances of their quo- 
 tation. A number were preserved by Stobaeus when he compiled 
 his educational Anthology in the sixth Christian century, and 
 among others who quoted the Middle and New Comedy was 
 Clement of Alexandria {floruit 200 a. d.) in his Patchwork, or 
 Miscellany. Other scholars and antiquaries contributed their 
 share. But the writer to whom we owe the greatest number of 
 extracts is Athenaeus, whose Literary Dinner, written about 230 
 A. D., is crowded with quotations from the comic poets, chosen, 
 since such was his preoccupation, for their reference to the affairs 
 of the table, and especially to cookery. It was not an Anthology 
 so much as a display of pedantic erudition. Our whole conception 
 of Middle and New Comedy is colored by the culinary interests 
 of Athenaeus. He could only, however, quote what he found, and 
 it is evident that long lists of food, pictures of gluttony always 
 mysteriously amusing to the temperate Greeks, descriptions of 
 elaborate dishes, of fish and wines, played an important part in 
 later comedy. The chef who is an artist with a philosophy of his 
 own — for the sophists have invaded even the kitchen — was a 
 stock figure. The parasite, whose agreeable profession was next 
 best, said Antiphanes, to being a millionaire, was the inevitable 
 accompaniment of all this dining. That is Middle Comedy on 
 its farcical side. It differs from the old in its choice of themes. 
 It was more subtle, more complex, less gross. Mythological trav- 
 esties and allegories were the favorite material. The myths that 
 had been taken most seriously by the lyric and tragic poets were 
 considered most appropriate for ridicule, and many of the titles 
 of the comedies might have been drawn from a list of tragedies.' 
 
 1 E.g. the Alcestis, Bacchae, and Andromeda of Antiphanes. 
 
MIDDLE COMEDY 307 
 
 Though the poets were by no means all Athenians, the scene was 
 usually laid in Athens, and the wildest anachronisms were part of 
 the game. The poets, Sappho, Archilochus, or Hesiod, figured 
 in comedies that had a literary flavor, and contained, no doubt, 
 much literary criticism mixed with farce, like Jonson's Poetaster 
 or Sheridan's Critic. The philosophers and their tenets were not 
 spared. Middle Comedy in its allusions to the Lyceum, the 
 Pythagoreans, the Academy and Plato kept up the tradition of 
 Aristophanes. The good you'll get from her, my master, I appre- 
 hend no more than the Good of Plato, cries a slave in the Am- 
 phicrates of Amphis,^ and in the Phaedrus of Alexis,^ the lover 
 who goes " palely loitering " between Athens and the Piraeus con- 
 soles himself, as a Platonist might, with framing a definition of 
 Love. From such echoes and misunderstandings of the philoso- 
 phers one sees how Athenian society, like modern society before 
 science became fashionable, disliked and distrusted every new 
 theory. 
 
 Already there are comedies of intrigue drawn from Bohemian 
 Athens, social satires in which courtesans and the adventures of 
 the demi-monde have a prominent place. To judge from the long 
 list of such titles as the Perfumer, the Doll Maker, the Shepherd, 
 the Pilot, the Jeweler, and the like, there was hardly a profession 
 or calling that had not its appropriate play. Family relations were 
 exploited in such plays as the Twins, or the Sisters, and humorous 
 misunderstandings in a play like the Double, a forerunner of the 
 Comedy of Errors. Finally, there are the comedies of character, 
 the Miser, the Meddler, the Misanthrope, which are a connecting 
 link between Middle and New Comedy. How the plots were 
 managed in these plays, with their wide range of interest, we can- 
 not tell. But since there was no chorus to form transitions, there 
 was, no doubt, more effort after careful composition and a regular 
 denouement than in Old Comedy. 
 
 Of the individual poets of Middle Comedy few deserve mention. 
 Antiphanes (b. 408 B.C.) was" a foreigner, probably from Asia 
 
 V- 6 (Kock). ^fr. 245. 
 
3o8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Minor, who, in his long career, won thirteen first prizes. We have 
 fragments of about 200 plays, whose subjects range through the 
 
 varied interests and pursuits of fourth-century Athens, 
 
 from the philosophic schools to a dinner menu. 
 Alexis, the uncle of Menander, from Thurii in Magna Graecia 
 {Jioruit circa 348-288 B.C.), belongs to both Middle and New 
 
 Comedy, though he is counted with the earlier type. 
 
 In his long Hfe he is said to have written 245 come- 
 dies. In the refinement of his style, his appreciation of the 
 sensuous side of life, his tolerant philosophy, we see the family 
 likeness to his nephew Menander, the genius. But not even the 
 fragments of Alexis are exhilarating reading. Beside the mon- 
 strous jests of Aristophanes, which by their very excess of vitality 
 and vigor often touched the subhrae, the trivial gossip, the 
 cynicism, the gourmandise of the poets of Middle Comedy show 
 bloodless and second rate. 
 
 In the year after Chaeronea (337), Diphilus of Sinope, a col- 
 ony on the shores of the Black Sea, began to produce his plays at 
 
 Athens. It is not from the extant fraements alone 
 Diphilus 
 
 that he must be judged. The longest of our collec- 
 tion of over a hundred deal with cooking as a fine art, dining, and 
 parasites. But in the Latin adaptations of Plautus (b. about 254 
 B.C.), in the idyllic Rudens (Cable) with its flavor of country hfe by 
 the seashore, or the Casina, a comedy of intrigue and the demi- 
 monde, or the scene in the Adelphi (^Brothers) of Terence which 
 he took from the Sworn to Die Together of Diphilus, we may see 
 at least a reflection of the latter's talent. The titles of his plays 
 prove that, like Alexis, he wrote, on occasion, in the manner of 
 Middle Comedy, with travesty of the tragic myths and style. 
 
 It is in the Latin comoedia palliata, Comedy in a Greek dress, 
 that we must look for the characteristics of another poet of the 
 
 New Comedy, Philemon, the rival of Menander. , He 
 Philemon 
 
 was born at Soli, a Greek colony on the coast of 
 
 Cilicia, about 360 b.c, was well established in the good graces of 
 
 the Athenians when Menander began to compete, and continued 
 
NEW COMEDY 309 
 
 to hold his owa against the Athenian poet. Do you not blush, 
 Philemon, when you gain a victory over me ? asked Menander. 
 The anecdote sums up the tradition that Philemon's successes 
 were sometimes due to corrupt influence. The Mercator {^Mer- 
 chant') and the Trinummus (The Small Coin') of Plautus were 
 adaptations of Philemon, while the Mostellaria probably reflects his 
 Ghost} 
 
 Menander of Athens, the ' shining star ' of New Comedy, was 
 born in 342. He was the son of an Athenian general, J3iopeithes, 
 who, in 341, incited by the anti-Macedonian party, made a raid 
 in the Chersonese, and, when Philip protested, was defended by 
 Demosthenes in his speech On the Chersonese. Me- 
 nander's uncle was the popular comedian Alexis, and 
 he must have come under his influence. Theophrastus, the author 
 ' )f the Characters, was his friend, and he may well have enjoyed 
 the instruction of Aristotle, who died when he was nineteen. 
 Menander made his debut in 321 with the Angry Man, a title 
 which reminds us of the Characters of Theophrastus. The 
 Athens that he now set himself to entertain had failed in its last 
 stand against Macedonia in 322, after Alexander's death, and 
 during the thirty years of the poet's career the Athenians were 
 content with a state of inglorious inertia as part of the Mace- 
 donian empire. They consoled themselves with the enjoyment 
 of material prosperity, and were ripe for the quietism of Epi- 
 curus, a philosophy that all could put into practice after a 
 fashion that varied with the more or less refined taste of the 
 individual. For ten years (317-307) Demetrius of Phalerum, the 
 Athenian, was viceroy of Athens under Macedonia. Menander, 
 who was only three years his junior, and had been a fellow-pupil 
 in the school of Theophrastus, was the intimate friend of Demet- 
 rius, and, during the brief term of his prosperity, shared the 
 luxuries and dissipations of the idol of Athens. After the fall of 
 Demetrius, Menander was a spectator of the triumphs of the son 
 
 1 In the forthcoming (Ptolemaic) Hibeh Papyri, found in 1902, Grenfell 
 and Hunt will publish a new fragment of Philemon. 
 
3IO SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of another Macedonian general, Demetrius Poliorcetes (the ' Be- 
 sieger'), who sailed from Asia to 'free Athens.' During Me- 
 nander's later years, Athens passed, now into the control of 
 Cassander, now of Demetrius. He died in the harbor of the 
 Piraeus in 291, fulfilling his own saying that ' whom the gods love 
 die young.' While their masters changed, the interest of the 
 Athenians in comedy remained constant. Menander wrote for 
 them more than a hundred comedies, from which are preserved 
 about 1 100 fragments. But several hundreds of these fragments 
 are nothing to our purpose and, until lately, we had no whole 
 scene from which we might judge of his talent as a drama- 
 tist. In 1898 was published a papyrus fragment of the Coun- 
 tryman (Georgos), which gives us a continuous extract of 87 
 The Country- iambic trimeters. In spite of much mutilation, we 
 ™a" can read the soliloquy of a youth who finds the 
 
 preparations for his wedding in full swing and flees in dismay 
 from the house. Myrrhine, the mother of a girl whom he has 
 seduced, comes on and converses, first with her confidante, 
 Philinna, and then with Davus, the slave of Cleaenetus the coun- 
 tryman. Davus announces that his old master is willing to marry 
 the unfortunate girl. Five other fragments of the same play, 
 which we already possessed, add practically nothing to our knowl- 
 edge of the denouement or of the working out of the character of 
 the hero. But this was evidently a comedy of intrigue, with the 
 character of the countryman come to town supplying the sort of 
 study for which Menander was famous. Of The Girl with the 
 Short Hair {Perikeiromene) 51 verses have been recovered 
 among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri} It is a comedy of jealousy, 
 remorse, and reconciliation. Polemon, a sort of Othello, has a 
 mistress Glycera who had been a captive of war. He discovers 
 her in the society of a strange young man, and in a fury of jeal- 
 ousy cuts off her hair and drives her from the house. The stranger 
 proves to be Glycera's half brother. We have the scene near the 
 close of the play in which Polemon expresses his remorse. 
 1 Vol. II, London, 1899. 
 
NEW COMEDY 
 
 3" 
 
 Glycera has been restored to her long-lost father, and two wed- 
 dings are impending, her own to Polemon, and her brother's to 
 the daughter of a neighbor. 
 
 In the third volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri^ were pub- 
 lished fragments amounting to sixty verses of the Flatterer (KdAal), 
 the play from which Terence, as he admits in his Prologue, bor- 
 rowed the characters of Gnatho, the parasite, and Thraso, the 
 swaggering soldier, for his Eunuch. But it was not from the Flat- 
 terer that Terence took his plot, for he did not hesitate to ' contam- 
 inate,' to draw from two plays of Menander for the benefit of one 
 of his own. The new fragments, in spite of much mutilation, 
 reveal a course of events very different from the story of Terence's 
 Eunuch? Together with the fourteen verses published in the 
 Flinders Petrie Papyri (1891) and ascribed by Blass to the 
 Flatterer, they tantahze by their brevity and mutilated condition, 
 while they add fresh evidence of Menander's talent for characteri- 
 zation and witty dialogue.' 
 
 It is impossible to have a happier, a more humane reputation in 
 literature, than Menander's, so firmly maintained, based, so far, on 
 remains so slight. For after all it is the raptures of those who 
 could read Menander as a whole, the exclamation of Aristophanes 
 of Byzantium, one of a class not given to enthusiasm, O Me- 
 nander ! O Life ! Which of you copied the other? ; Caesar's epi- 
 gram, with the phrase that labelled Terence forever as a ' halved 
 Menander ' ; Quintilian's saying that from Menander's mold 
 issued every human type ; the acknowledged adaptations in 
 Terence's finest comedies;* these are the proofs of Menander's 
 
 1 London, 1903. ^ Leo in Gott. Nachr. 1903. 
 
 ' It is too early to say anything definite about a papyrus fragment of Me- 
 nander, unearthed only this year (1906) in Egypt, by M. Lefebre. The leaves, 
 it is said, are not continuous, but there are five hundred lines from each of 
 two plays, and about two hundred lines from two others, or twelve hundred in 
 all. This should prove enough for an independent valuation of Menander. 
 
 * ' Pour moi, je crois entendre I'Ombre de Menandre, par chacun de ces 
 vers aimables qui nous sont arrives en debris nous dire, Pour I'amour de 
 moi, aimez Terence." — Sainte-Beuve in Nouveatix Lundis V. 
 
312 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 greatness that stir the imagination and do rtiore than the disjointed 
 fragments to convince us that the sudden and mysterious loss of 
 those hundred plays of 'the golden' poet is the severest that has 
 befallen Greek literature. "For us," says George Meredith, 
 "Terence shares with his master the praise of an amenity that is 
 like Elysian speech, equable and ever gracious, like the face of 
 the Andrian's young sister : — 
 
 Adeo modesto, adeo venusto, ut nihil supra. 
 
 The celebrated flens quam familiariter, of which the closest 
 rendering grounds hopelessly on harsh prose, to express the sor- 
 rowful confidingness of a young girl who has lost her sister and 
 dearest friend, and has but her lover left to her ; ' she turned and 
 flung herself on his bosom, weeping as though at home there;' 
 this our instinct tells us must be Greek, though hardly finer in 
 Greek." 1 
 
 Aristotle did not live to see the comedies of Menander, but they 
 would probably have met the taste of one who disliked the gross- 
 ness and abuse of Old Comedy. Menander, unlike Aristophanes, 
 effaced his own personality, made no direct appeal to the audience 
 that might break the illusion, but aimed at verisimilitude. All 
 the emotions and weaknesses of the human heart were the text of 
 hisplot and of the good sayings which make the fragments a store- 
 house of proverbs. With his plays love took permanent posses- 
 sion of the stage. ' Each play has its love story,' said Ovid. 'That 
 is why they are read by all the boys and girls of Rome.' ^ All the 
 variations of the passion, its jealousies, quarrels, reconciliations, 
 miseries and delights, selfishness and self-sacrifice, which had 
 been totally absent from Old Comedy, were now the essential 
 interest of comedy grown romantic and pathetic. Here Menander 
 did but follow in the steps of Euripides, his chief model. But if 
 love was now the dominant interest, there was a wide field for 
 Menander's genius for painting types of character, with every 
 
 ' The Tdea of Comedy p. 44. 
 
 '^ Tristia 2. 370, pueris virginibusque. 
 
NEW COMEDY 313 
 
 man's ruling passion, and the man as he played the slave to it, 
 hit off in these pictures of the human soul. Perhaps the best 
 example of his power to launch a type is his boasting soldier, the 
 Thraso of Terence, the miles gloriosus of Plautus, whom we meet 
 again with a new face in two Shakespearean characters. Pistol and 
 Parolles. Intrigue, with the regular progress of seduction, separa- 
 tion, recognition, and marriage was handled by Menander with con- 
 summate talent. Literary reminiscence, parody, so attractive to 
 the poets of the Old and Middle Comedy, could not interest one 
 whose model was real life. His plays, as the expression of a well- 
 balanced, tolerant, and serene temperament, were a godsend to 
 the anthologist on the lookout for a mot, a maxim, a neatly turned 
 generalization. That he could express his philosophic serenity in 
 the grand manner, we see from a fragment : Happiest is the man, 
 as I count happiness, Parmeno, who is admitted to gaze on all these 
 splendid and solemn sights, this common sun} the stars, water, 
 fire, and the clouds, and having gazed, forthwith returns when^ e 
 he came, without his share of grief. Thou;^h you should live a 
 hundred years, or but few, these sights will ever be the same. 
 Grander than these it will never be yours to see} 
 
 Of the outward appearance of one who secured for himself all 
 the glory of the New Comedy, the seated statue in the Vatican 
 was long regarded as a portrait. But the sentiment that had 
 gathered about the care-lined face of that figure has been dis- 
 sipated by modern archaeologists, who could not but reject the 
 too hasty identification of Visconti.' 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Aristophanes 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Papyri: i)yr. (2d cent., possibly from the second ver- 
 sion of the Thesmcph.') in Oxyrhy'nchus Papyri II, London, 1899. 2) fr. 6th 
 cent., from parabasis of the Birds; Weil in Rev. de Phil.,'ii. S., 1882. The 
 
 1 Cp. Gray, Vicissitude : " The common sun, the air, the skies To 
 him are opening paradise." 
 
 ^fr. 481. , ' Furtwangler, M asterpieces 309, u. 3. 
 
314 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 best Manuscripts are the ^nwK«aj, nth cent., at Ravenna; de Vries, Leyden, 
 1903 (facsimile) ; Veneius 474, at Venice (7 comedies) ; J. W. White and T. 
 W. Allen, London, 1902 (facsimile). The Plutus, Clouds, Frogs, the favorite 
 plays of the Byzantine schools, occur most frequently in the manuscripts. 
 
 II. Editions. Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 1498 (9 comedies). Dindorf, 
 Oxford, 1835-1839 (includes scholia). Bergk, Leipzig, 1852 (new edition, 
 1886-1888). Blaydes, Halle, 1880-1893 (unfinished). Blaydes, Halle, 1886 
 (complete), v. Velsen, Leipzig, 1869-1883 (unfinished, continued by Zacher). 
 Hall and Geldart in Bibliotheca Oxon., Oxford, 1900. Van Leeuwen, Ley- 
 den : Wasps, 1893; frogs, 1896; Clouds, \%<)% ; Knights, 1900; Ach., 1901; 
 Birds, 1902 ; Thesmoph., 1903 ; Lys., 1903 ; Plut., 1904 ; Eccl., 1905. Spe- 
 cial editions: Ach., Merry, Oxford, 1893. Knights, v. Velsen-Zacher, Leipzig, 
 1897 ; Merry, Oxford, 1895. Clouds, Merry, Oxford, 1899. Wasps, Starkie, 
 London, 1897; Merry, Oxford, 1898. Peace, v. Herwerden, Leyden, 1897; 
 Merry, Oxford, 1900. Birds, Merry, Oxford, 1896. Frogs; and Eccl. (with 
 trans.), Rogers, London, 1902. Frogs, Merry, Oxford, 1901. Tucker, Lon- 
 don, 1906. Bodin et Mazon, Extraits d' Aristophane, Paris, 1902. 
 
 III. Scholia. Dindorf, Oxford, 1838. Dubner, Paris, 1883. Zacher, ZJw 
 Handschr. u. Classen d. Aristophanesscholien, Leipzig, 1888. Gulick, De 
 schol. A. Quaestt. myth, in Harvard Studies, 1894. Rutherford, Scholia Aris- 
 iophanica {oi Ravennas'), London, 1896. 
 
 IV. Literature. Muff, Vortrag d. Chorpartieen 6. A ., HaWe, iS'j2. Ar- 
 noldt. Die Chorpartieen d. A., Leipzig, 1873. Miiller-Striibing, A. u. die 
 iist. Kritii, Leipzig, 1873. heo, Quaestt. Aristoph., Bonn, iSy 3. VanLeeu- 
 wen, De A, Eurip. censore, Amsterdam, 1876. Bakhuyzen, De parodia in A. 
 comm., Utrecht, 1877. v. Velsen, Diss. Aristoph., Leipzig, 1878. Browning, 
 Aristophanes^ Apology, London, 1885. Murray, On Parody in A., Berlin, 
 1891. Deschanel, Etudes sur A., Paris, 1892. Zacher, Aristophanes-studien, 
 Leipzig, 1898. Blaydes, Adversaria Critica, Halle, 1899. Couat, Aristo- 
 phane, Paris, 3d ed., 1901. Romer, Studien 2. A., Leipzig, 1902. Mazon, 
 Fssai sur la composition des comedies d'' Aristophane, Paris, 1904, 
 
 V. Lexica. Dunbar, Concordance to the Plays and Fragments, London, 
 1884. Holden, Onomasticon, London, 1902. 
 
 VI. Translations. Frere, Ach., Knights, Birds, Frogs, Peace, in Works, 
 London, 1874. Frere, Ach., Knights, Birds, new ed., London, 1890. Rogers, 
 Frogs and Eccl., London, 1902. Rogers, Clouds, Peace, Wasps, Lys., London 
 (in separate vols.). Hickie, London, 1901. Frogs, by Murray in his Eurip- 
 ides, London, 1902, 
 
NEW COMEDY 315 
 
 EPICHARMUS 
 
 , MuUach, Fragmenta philosoph. Graec, Paris, 1 860; and in the collections 
 of Meineke and Keck; in Kaibel, Doriensium comoedia, vol. I of Com. 
 Graec. Frag., Berlin, 1899 ; in Ahrens, De dial. Dorica II, Gottingen, 1843 ; in 
 Lorenz, Leben u. Schriften d. Koers Epicharmos, Berlin, 1864. A fragment 
 in Papyri Rainer (published 1S99) is assigned by Gomperz to Epicharmus, 
 Girard, Epicharme in Etudes sur la Pohie Grecque, new ed., Paris, igoo. 
 Hauler, Der Mimus v. Epicharmus bis Sophron in Xenia Austriaca, 1893. 
 
 Menander 
 
 Meineke, Menandri et Philemonis rell., Berlin, 1833. ^'^' princ, of the 
 Countryman (^Teupyds) by Nicole, Basle and Geneva, 1897 (1898 on title- 
 page). Grenfell and Hunt, Menander's Teapy6s (with trans.), Oxford, 1898. 
 Blass in /Jl. Central Blatt, 1898. Kaibel in Gott. Nachr., 1898. Wila- 
 mowitz, Der Landmann d. Menandros in Neue Jahrb., 1899. Kauer in 
 Wiener Studien, 1904. Baumstark, De frag. Menandri Syriacis in J. f. 
 Phil., Suppl. 21. The IlEpjKei/jo/i^i'i) fragment in Ox. Pap. II, London, 1899. 
 Wilamowitz in Gott, Gel. Am., 1900. Weil in Journ. des Savants, 1900. 
 The Flatterer (K6\a?) : short fr. in Flinders Petrie Papyri, 1891; fr.{(x> 
 lines) in Ojt. /"a/. Ill, London, 1903. Blass in Hermes, 1898. Leo in Cotf. 
 Nachr., 1903. Collins, Menander in Essays and Studies, London, 1895. 
 Benoit, Essai historique et litteraire sur la comedie de Menandre, Paris, 1854. 
 Guizot, Menandre, Paris, 1855. Wilamowitz in Hermes 11. Reitzenstein, 
 j#. 35. Bethe, ib. 37. Weil, Deux Comedies- de Menandre in Etudes, Paris, 
 1900. Legrand in Revue des Et. Grecques, 1902, 1904. 
 
 Sophron 
 
 Fragments in Ahrens, De dialecto Dorica, Gottingen, 1843 ; and in Kaibel, 
 Doriensium Comoedia, Berlin, 1899. Heitz, Des Mimes de Sophron, Strass- 
 burg, 1 85 1. 
 
 Collections of Comic Fragments 
 
 Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec, 5 vols., Berlin, 1839-1841. Kock, Com. Alt. 
 Frag., T, vols., Leipzig, 1880-1888. Kaibel, Com. Graec. Frag., vol. I, Berlin, 
 1 899. Pickard-Cambridge, Select Fragments of the Greek Comic Poets, Ox- 
 ford, igoo. 
 
 Literature of Comedy 
 
 Anonymous : Hep! K<api,(p5las in Kaibel C. G. F. Genz, De parabasi, Ber- 
 lin, 1865. 7\s\\tz, De Atticorum com. bipartita, ^onn, 1866. Wilamowitz, Obs. 
 crit. in com. gr., Berlin, 1890. Zieliiiski, Z*?* Gliederung d. Altatl. Komoedie 
 
3i6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 Leipzig, 1885. Poppelreuter, De com. Ati. frimorclns,'ReT\\n, 1893, Nauck, 
 Melanges Gr.-Romains, St. Petersburg, 1892-1894. Fiihr, De MitnU CraecO' 
 rum, Gottingen, i860. Reich, Der Mimus, Berlin, 1903. Capps, 'I he Intrn- 
 duction of Comedy into the City Dionysia, Chicago, 1903. Humphreys, The 
 Agon of the Old Comedy in A. J. P., 1887. Baker, De com. graec. littera- 
 rum judicibus in Harvard Studies, 1904. Crusius in Philologus 46. Wila- 
 mowitz in Hermes 9. Capps in Harvard Studies, 1904. Meredith, ^« ^waji 
 on Comedy, London, 1897. Blaydes, Analecta Comica Graeca, Halle, 1905. 
 
 Histories of Comedy 
 
 Du Meril, Histoire de la Comedie Ancienns, Paris, 1869. Denis, La Com- 
 edit Grtcque, Paris, 1886. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 XENOPHON 
 
 Xenophon, son of Gryllus, was born in the Attic deme Erchia 
 about 430 B.C. His father was a rich land owner, and he grew up 
 with the tastes of a country gentleman for farming and all forms 
 of sport. In all else that he undertook he has been accused of 
 dilettanteism, but in the pleasures of the chase he is generally 
 allowed to have been an expert. He was still an impressionable 
 youth, pursuing the regular Athenian education for a man of his 
 class, and doubtless, like his friend Proxenus, attending the lectures 
 of the fashionable sophists, when he fell under the mesmeric influ- 
 ence of Socrates. The extraordinary and almost fanatic specializa- 
 tion of Socrates makes his pupils seem many-sided by contrast. 
 Few of them, moreover, were attracted, hke Plato, to the life of 
 contemplation, and Xenophon was conspicuously one of those who 
 are born for action and adventure. In 401, against the advice of 
 Socrates, he cast in his lot with his Boeotian friend Proxenus who 
 was employed by Cyrus to recruit Greek mercenaries for a secret 
 expedition against his brother Artaxerxes, the Great King. To 
 take service openly under a Persian prince who had so lately 
 helped Sparta to humiliate Athens was not Xenophon's intention, 
 and he went with the expedition as a free lance, ' neither general, 
 nor officer, nor soldier,' as he says in the Anabasis} Fifteen 
 months later he returned to Greece as leader of the Ten Thousand, 
 the Greek mercenaries who had survived the defeat of Cyrus and 
 the hardships of the famous retreat. In 399 he was free to return 
 to. Athens. But a disciple of Socrates, who had taken sides with 
 Cynis^ and was known to have leanings to Sparta, could not find 
 
 ^3-. 4. 
 317 
 
3i8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the atmosphere of the restored democracy agreeable. In 396 he 
 took service with Agesilaus of Sparta, and for two years shared the 
 campaigns of the Spartan king, who had set out from Aulis, like 
 another Agamemnon, persuaded that he was about to overthrow 
 the Persian empire. When Agesilaus was recalled from Asia by 
 the Spartans in 394, Xenophon, who, Hke so many of the exiled 
 sons of Athens, took the first opportunity of revenging himself, 
 fought on the Spartan side against the allied Athenians and 
 Thebans at Coronea (394 B.C.)- Whether the decree which 
 banished him from Athens was the result of his presence at 
 Coronea, or, as seems less likely, of his support of Cyrus, we do 
 not know. At any rate the Spartans repaid his services by the 
 gift of an estate at Scillus in the plain of Ehs, not far from 
 Olympia, and there he lived for twenty years, wrote his books, 
 hunted, built a temple to Ephesian Artemis, and brought up his 
 two sons, Gryllus and Diodorus, who fought at Mantinea with the 
 Athenian cavalry in 362. The heroic death of Gryllus at Mantinea 
 was thenceforward a favorite theme of rhetorical panegyric in the 
 patriotic prose and verse of Greece. Xenophon had left his 
 Peloponnesian estate in 371, when the Eleans, becoming hostile 
 to Sparta, plundered Scillus. His last years may have been spent 
 at Athens. He died about the middle of the fourth century, but 
 the place and the exact date of his death are alike uncertain. 
 
 As an independent thinker Xenophon has no claim to distinction. 
 In the four works which he devoted to the memory of Socrates, 
 the Apology, the Memorabilia, the Symposium, and the Oecono- 
 micus, he reflects the superficial estimate of Socrates by a practical 
 man who admired his master's ethical teaching without completely 
 grasping his philosophy. Xenophon had no taste for speculation, 
 ^nd could not appreciate the subtleties of the Socratic dialectic, 
 ^jjg He is not at his best as a reporter of the conversations 
 
 Memorabilia of Socrates in the MemoraUlia, a work whose historical 
 value is much debated. He was chiefly interested in the practical 
 precepts of Socrates on education, exercise, diet, duty to one's 
 kindred, religious observances, and the Uke. The Socratic method 
 
XENOPHON- 319 
 
 of arriving at definitions he describes last of all/ and declines to 
 pursue the subject at any great length. His talent lay rather in 
 describing action and adventure than in reproducing for the 
 reader the magnetic personality of a great teacher. Apart from 
 its historical interest, the Memorabilia has preserved for us the 
 celebrated and often-quoted epideictic apologue of Prodicus on 
 the ' Choice of Heracles,' which Xenophon makes Socrates recite to 
 Aristippus the Cyrenaic ^ as a sort of sermon against self-indulgence. 
 Xenophon's Apology of Socrates^ and his Symposium suffer from 
 the classical contrast that they invite with the Platonic works under 
 the same title. In the former, which is a brief semi- The 
 oratorical composition, the sort of thing that was quite Apology 
 beyond his range, Xenophon lays stress on the conviction of 
 Socrates that, for him, death was better than life, the goal for which 
 all his life had been a preparation. The setting of the Symposium 
 is the house of Callias, and the banquet is supposed to take place 
 in 421 when the author was a mere child. It was probably 
 written before the Symposium of Plato, who reproduced certain 
 details, notably the famous comparison of Socrates with the 
 images of Silenus.^ 
 
 In the Oeconomicus, Socrates converses with Ischomachus, an 
 Athenian, on the management of his house, his young wife, and his 
 farm. It contains an amusing picture of Xenophon's ideal house- 
 wife, broken in to her duties by her husband, induced xhe Oecono- 
 by his arguments to give up rouge, and powder, and micus 
 high heels, and to consider the active care of her household the 
 most exhilarating form of exercise. From the recital of his wife's 
 duties Ischomachus passes to his own outdoor occupation of farm- 
 ing, ' the most pleasant, the noblest, the dearest to gods and men.' 
 
 1 Memorabilia 4.6. ^2.1. 
 
 ' Zeller denies the Xenophontic authorship of the Apology. 
 
 * Cp. Xen. Symp. 4. 19 with Plat. Symp. 215 B. For a full account of 
 Plato's echoes of Xenophon, see the editions by Hug and Rettig of the 
 Platonic Symposium. Bruns in Neue Jahrb., 1900, maintains the priority 
 of Plato's work, and is followed by Gomperz. 
 
320 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The Anabasis is a description of the ' upgoing ' and the retreat 
 of the mercenary force of Greeks which set out in 401, ostensibly 
 to help Cyrus to reduce the troublesome hill tribes of Pisidia, 
 
 Xhe but actually to seize the throne from his brother. Their 
 
 Anabasis march was from Sardis through Asia Minor and Lyca- 
 onia to Tarsus, thence, across the Arabian desert, along the banks 
 of the Euphrates, to Cunaxa. There Cyrus was slain in battle, 
 and the enterprise collapsed. The leaderless Greeks had now to 
 face the dilemma that must always have threatened Greek merce- 
 naries on Asiatic service. Their patron had fallen, and if they 
 were not willing to chang^ sides and intrust themselves to the 
 good faith of Artaxerxes, they must begin a weary retreat through 
 a hostile country. At this crisis, a blunder of the Spartan general, 
 Clearchus, betrayed him, with the other officers of the Greek force, 
 including Proxenus, into the trap set for them by Tissapheines 
 And now Xenophon comes forward as the hero of the Anabasis. 
 He had a decided gift of oratory, as we may see from his report 
 of his own speeches to the army. His abilities were at once 
 recognized by the leaderless Ten Thousand, who elected him a 
 general, and followed his advice in their retreat northward. They 
 had now to march through an unknown country, harassed by the 
 army of Tissaphernes. They made their way painfully through the 
 hostile, independent tribes of Carduchia (Kurdistan), then by 
 wintry marches through Armenia and the country of the warlike 
 Chalybes, till at last they came to Trapezus, a Greek colony on 
 the coast of the Euxine : They came to a mountain named Theche. 
 When the van reached the summit they gave a loud cry. . . . And 
 as the clamor grew ever louder and more insistent as more troops 
 joined those that were shouting, Xenophon thought it must be some- 
 thing serious. He got on his horse and took Lycius and the cavalry 
 to the rescue. Soon they heard that the soldiers were shouting, TTie 
 sea ! The sea ! . . . Then they all came to the sum?nit and wept 
 for joy, and embraced one another and the generals and officers.^ 
 
 Like most Greeks who went campaigning in Asia, the Ten 
 
 ' Anabasis 4. 7, 
 
, XENOPHON 321 
 
 Thousand yearned for home. Xenophon, who could better appre- 
 ciate how unwelcome in their native land, how dangerous to the 
 general peace would be this army broken loose, wished to found a 
 Greek colony on the shore of the Euxine. But they preferred to 
 continue their retreat along the coast, partly by sea, to Chalcedon. 
 Thence they crossed to Byzantium and enhsted under a Thracian 
 prince, Seuthes, who cheated them of their pay. Finally, the rem- 
 nant, about six thousand, returned to Asia in 399, in the service 
 of Sparta. Xenophon, who had so far shared their fortunes, now 
 returned to Greece. 
 
 There is, no doubt, a good deal of invention in the Anabasis, a 
 good deal of exaggeration by Xenophon of the dangers of the 
 enterprise, and of his own exploits, influence, and resourcefulness. 
 His later career does not convince us that he had greatly impressed 
 his contemporaries with his talents as a leader of men. Neverthe- 
 less, the march of the Ten Thousand remains, in virtue of the 
 Anabasis, the most famous retreat in military history, the high- 
 water mark of whar can be achieved by a small army isolated in a 
 barbarous and hostile country. As he tells us in the Hellenica, 
 Xenophon first published the Anabasis under the name of The- 
 mistogenes of Syracuse, a precaution that may have been intended 
 to save his modesty, though it is not likely that any one was de- 
 ceived by the pseudonym. Diodorus, when he wrote his account 
 of the retreat in the Augustan age, ignored Xenophon altogether 
 until he had to describe the expedition of Seuthes, at the close. 
 And as Diodorus drew for his facts on Ephorus, a younger con- 
 temporary of Xenophon, his silence has been taken as a virtual 
 repudiation of the latter's claim to the leading role. 
 
 Tradition made Xenophon the hterary executor of Thucj'dides, 
 and editor of the unfinished History of the Peloponnesian War. 
 At any rate he seems to have intended his Hellenica xhe 
 to be a continuation or sequel of that work. He be- Hellenica 
 gins with the year 411, where Thucydides left off, and brings his 
 account of Greek affairs down to 362, the date of the battle of 
 Mantinea. He adopts the reckoning of Thucydides by summers 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 21 
 
322 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATLIRE 
 
 and winters, and clearly makes an effort, to imitate the Thucydidean 
 manner and point of view. But he was not formed to write philo- 
 sophical history of that pattern. His was rather the talent of a 
 writer of historical romance, and the chief value of his narrative 
 lies in his vivid descriptions and characterizations, the constant 
 reflection of the personal experience of an acute and interested 
 observer. The Hellenica is colored by the influence of Agesilaus, 
 and the writer's unconcealed preference for Spartan ideals and 
 methods. 
 
 Xendphon's pohtical ideal was a military monarchy, with a 
 benevolent despot such as he did not, apparently, expect Greece 
 to produce. In his Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus, he draws 
 The an idealized portrait of the elder Cyrus, with an ac- 
 Cyropaedia count of his education and his career. Ip this highly 
 colored political romance he tried to show what might be hoped 
 from a king who should have been trained in the Spartan discipline, 
 and not without the Socratic dialectic. He places his ideal king 
 in a Utopia which combines some of the features of the. Spartan 
 constitution with those of the Persian empire, the whole embel- 
 lished with fictitious anecdotes. This moral tale of the ideal 
 monarch's wisdom and temperance was, later, the model of more 
 than one fabulous biography. It was peculiarly exasperating to 
 Alexander the Great that, while his dearest ambition was to be, 
 like Achilles, the immortal hero of an epic, the best his literary 
 hangers-on could achieve was some absurd imitation of the 
 Cyropaedia in which he was cast for the leading r61e. 
 
 The Hiero is an imaginary dialogue between the poet Simonides 
 and Hiero of Syracuse, in which the interlocutors enumerate the 
 
 miseries and the counterbalancing advantages of a 
 The Hiero , , . ,, .^ .,. .,,.,. 
 
 tyranny to the tyrant himself. Faihng an ideal mili- 
 tary absolutism, Xenophon, like Plato, thought that the next best 
 constitution was the Spartan. His Constitution of Sparta is a 
 panegyric of the social and pohtical institutions of Lacedaemon. 
 
 A dilettante in philosophy and history, Xenophon was thoroughly 
 qualified to write the treatise On Hunting, the Cynegeticus, which, 
 
XENOPHON 323 
 
 since Valckenaer (1768), has been frequently rejected as spurious. 
 Plutarch, in the first Christian century, thought it genuine, while 
 Arrian, who was nicknamed the New Xenophon be- xhe 
 cause he closely modeled his works on those of the Cynegeticus 
 fourth-century historian, wrote his Cynegeticus without a suspicion 
 that he was imitating a spurious composition. Xenophon, whose 
 works are crowded with hunting metaphors and allusions to hunt- 
 ing, who, even in the Anabasis turns aside to tell us how the 
 Greek cavalry hunted gazelles and bustards and ostriches in the 
 Arabian desert, was of all men fitted by taste and training to write 
 this encomium of sport, a companion piece to the Oeconomicus 
 with its praise of farming. But the evidence of language is hard 
 to ignore, and is on the whole against those who maintain the 
 Xenophontic authorship. Why should Xenophon, in whose other 
 writings the infinitive for the imperative is not found, use this 
 construction 100 times in the Cynegeticus? And is it likely 
 that one so devoted to the horse as Xenophon should write a 
 treatise on hunting without any allusion to riding as one of the 
 pleasures of the chase? The treatise closes with an attack on the 
 educational methods of the sophists, quite in keeping with 
 Xenophon's old-fashioned conservatism. The writer draws a sharp 
 distinction between the sophists and the philosophers, such as was 
 recognized by few, even in the fourth century, and was probably 
 first emphasized in literature by Plato.' 
 
 It is not to be expected that one who had separated himself 
 from Athens and the fashions of Athens in early youth, and had 
 spent some twenty years of his literary activity in a Spartan colony, 
 should write the purest Attic. Xenophon used a great number of 
 words that were un-Attic,^ or considered by the critics too poetic 
 
 1 So Radermacher. Otf the genuineness of the Cynegeticus, see Seymour in 
 Trans. A. P. A., 1 878, who accepts as Xenophontic less than one half of the 
 treatise, and Radermacher in Rhein. Mus. 51, 52, who rejects it altogether. 
 Norden, Antike Kunstprosa I 431, thinks that it was written by a contempo- 
 rary of Xenophon, and that its prooemium was added in the Graeco-Roman 
 period, a product of the Second Sophistic. 
 
 2 Sauppe counted 316 poetic, 99 Ionic, and 62 Doric words in Xenophon. 
 
324 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 for Attic prose, and he did not hesitate to use the figures that 
 belong pecuharly to poetry, such as anaphora and asyndeton." 
 Though he was certainly familiar with the etiquette of prose com- 
 position in fourth-century Athens, he takes no pains to avoid 
 hiatus, and when he employs the rhetorical figures, he gives no 
 impression of aiming at effect. The naive style in which he wrote 
 is the most difficult of all to imitate, because it is the most sincere 
 and the most simple. In all his writings one can detect the touch 
 of the amateur, and he leaves one with the impression that here 
 we have a country gentleman of a type easily paralleled in most 
 countries and times, who in his youth was fortunate enough to take 
 part in some very exciting incidents, and in the long leisure of his 
 riper years devoted a very pretty talent to their description. In 
 those peaceful days on his estate in Elis, he turned his mind to the 
 problems of education and the art of life, and lived " like a second 
 Cheiron," training his distinguished sons, as the Centaur trained 
 Achilles, in the arts of hunting and war. 
 
 The school of Isocrates produced two minor fourth-century 
 historians, Theopompus and Ephorus. Theopompus of Chios 
 
 was born about 380 B.C. Trained by Isocrates in the 
 Theopompus . , . , .... - 
 
 art of rhetoric, he won distinction as a writer of pane- 
 gyrics, traveled far and wide, and could boast that every consider- 
 able town in Greece had applauded his eloquence. The oppor- 
 tunities of these travels he turned to account in more than one 
 historical work, a History of Greece which continued the history of 
 Thucydides down to 393 B.C., and a History of Philip from 362 to 
 the king's death in 336. This was a sequel to Xenophon's 
 Hellenica, and, like the rest of his works, is lost, save for a few 
 fragments and the analyses made by Photius. Polybius, who is 
 never indulgent to his predecessors, criticises his ignorance of 
 military affairs. He was, in fact, a rhetorician writing history,' 
 and seems to have had the faults of his class, a vanity that surpassed 
 even the complacency of Isocrates, and an overwrought style. 
 
 ' Oratori magis similis, says Quintilian. See Dionys. Hal., Letter to Pomr 
 peius 6, for the characteristics of Theopompus. 
 
XENOPHON 325 
 
 Nothing could more closely resemble the Gorgianic manner than the 
 style of certain of the fragments, especially the description of Philip.' 
 Ephorus, of Cyme in Asia Minor, was the contemporary and 
 fellow-pupil of Theopompus at Athens. We have only 
 scanty fragments of his Universal History, from the re- ^ °™* 
 turn of the Heracleidae to 340 B.C. This appears to have been a 
 monument of industry, written in the elaborate manner of the 
 Isocratic school, but uninspired by the philosophic insight of the 
 true historian. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 Xenophon 
 
 I. Manuscripts. These are late and incomplete. The best are the Pa- 
 risini, 13th and 14th cent., at Paris, and the Marcianus, 12th cent., at Venice. 
 
 II. Editions. Ed. princ, Florence, 1516. Aldus, Venice, 1525. Din- 
 dorf, Oxford, 1852-1856. Sauppe, Leipzig, 1865-1868. Schenkl, Berlin, 1876. 
 Anabasis: Hug, Leipzig, 1878. Memorabilia: Breitenbach, Berlin, 1886. 
 Hellenica : Breitenbach, Berlin, 1873; Marchant and Underbill, Oxford, 1906. 
 Cynegeticus: Pierleoni, Berlin, 1902. 
 
 III. Literature. Maass, Parerga Attica, Greifswald, 1890. Schacht, 
 De Xenophontis studiis rhetoricis, Berlin, 1 890. Joel, Der echte u. der Xeno- 
 phontische Sokrates,^eT\m, 1893; ^°1' ^^> '9°' (contains an excellent bibliog- 
 raphy of Xenophon). Seymour in Trans. /I . P. A ., 1%"]%. TLaXheMii Hermes 
 25. Lincke in ^erwM 1 7. Radermacher in j?/4«'k. Afaj. 51, 52. Diirrbach 
 in Sev. des Etudes Grecques 6. Roquette, De Xenophontis vita, Konigsberg, 
 1884. Richards in C/ajJ. /iVw., 1 898, 1899. Rosenstiel, Ueber die eigenartige 
 Darstellungsform in Xenopkon's Cynegeticus, Sondershausen, 1891. Sanders, 
 The Cynegeticus, Baltimore, 1903. Cesareo, / due Simposi, Palermo, igoi. 
 Hartman, Analecta Xenophontea, Leyden, 1887. Rutherford in The New 
 Phrynichus, London, 188 1. 
 
 IV. Lexica. Sturz, Leipzig, 1804. Sauppe, Lexilogus Xenophonteus, 
 Leipzig, 1869. 
 
 V. Translation. Dakyns, London, 1897, 3 vols. 
 
 Ephorus and Theopompus 
 
 Fragments in Miiller, Frag. Hist. Craec, Paris, 1841-1849. Marx, EpAori 
 iT-ff^., Karlsruhe, 1815. Klugmann, Z'^ jff//4oi^o, Gottingen, i860. Eyssonius, 
 Theopompus, Leyden, 1829. Dellios, Zur Kritik d. Theopomp, Jena, l88a 
 Bunger, Theopompea, Strassburg, 1889. 
 
 1/'-. 249. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE EARLIER ORATORS : ' ISOCRATES 
 
 It is not until the latter half of the fifth century that oratory at 
 Athens begins to count as literature. In the law courts and the 
 Ecclesia, the assembly of the people, practical eloquence, forensic 
 and political, had been rapidly developing. On certain public 
 occasions when a panegyric or a funeral oration was required there 
 was an opportunity for the third type, epideictic oratory, the 
 oratory of display. But it was still unwritten, ephemeral. After 
 all, there have always been good speakers, but it is a long step 
 from spoken to written eloquence. The brilliant oratory of 
 Pericles swayed the Ecclesia for thirty years, and there were great 
 speakers before Pericles. But men like Aristeides or Themistocles 
 spoke before rhetoric had become an art, and they left no more 
 enduring monument than if they had been successful actors. 
 Though Pericles may have profited from the dialectic of Zeno and 
 the later Eleatics, Plato insists that he owed to the lofty specula- 
 tions and the psychology of Anaxagoras the great thoughts which 
 were a fine substitute for the rules of rhetoric. 
 
 Pericles would have thought it beneath the dignity of his caste 
 
 to publish his speeches as though they had been advertisements. 
 
 That would have ranked him with the professional 
 
 Pericles 
 
 sophists. Thucydides in his history reports three of 
 these speeches : the funeral oration over those who fell in the first 
 year of the war, the exhortation to the Athenians to fight it out 
 with Sparta, and his apologia when they held him responsible for 
 their sufferings from the plague and the invasion of the second 
 year, not long before his death. Like the rest of the Thucydidean 
 speeches, they can never have been delivered in their present 
 condensed form. By condensation they must have lost the special 
 
 326 
 
ANTIPHON 
 
 327 
 
 characteristics of the rhetoric of Pericles, of the 'thunders and 
 lightnings' with which, as Aristophanes says, he ' confounded all 
 Greece.' ^ Two or three metaphors quoted by Aristotle in the 
 Rhetoric are " winged words " that must have been preserved for a 
 century by oral tradition. But the most effective description of 
 the way in which Pericles impressed his hearers is given byEupolis 
 the comic poet, who pubhshed his first play in 429 and may well 
 have heard Pericles speak. A rapid speaker you call him, but be- 
 sides that swiftness, persuasion sat upon his lips, — such a charm he 
 ■worked, and, alone of all the orators, he used to leave a sting in 
 those that heard? Such a sting in the wound must have been left 
 with those who heard him say in a funeral speech on the young 
 men who had fallen in the war that ' the city has lost its youth, as 
 though one had robbed the year of its spring.' 
 
 The first contributor to the literature of eloquence was Antiphgn, 
 of the Attic deme Rhamnus. Of his life we know little, and that 
 
 little is confused by biographers who failed to dis- 
 
 ..... , . , , . Antiphon 
 
 tmguish Antiphon the orator from the sophist men- 
 tioned by Xenophon. The year of his birth was probably about 
 480, so that he was the senior of Thucydides and somewhat 
 younger than Gorgias. He was deeply influenced by Sicilian 
 rhetoric and himself taught the art. Late in the fifth century the 
 title ' logographer' meant, no longer, a historian of the primitive 
 type, but a speech writer differing from the modern barrister 
 chiefly in this important point, that not he, but his- client, must 
 deliver the speech that he had composed. Thucydides, who was, 
 according to tradition, his pupil, says that no man of his time was 
 superior to Antiphon in the art of conceiving an argument and 
 expressing it, and of training others to speak in the law courts or 
 the Ecclesia.^ He was an extreme oligarch, one of a party that 
 had long been plotting to overthrow the democracy, and when, in 
 411, their chance came, Antiphon was the soul of the plot that 
 placed the Four Hundred in power. For about three months the 
 oligarchs governed Athens. They fell in their turn, and Antiphon, 
 
 1 Acharn. 550. = Eupolis, fr. 94. » 8. 68. 
 
328 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 convicted of having negotiated with Sparta, was executed as a 
 traitor to his country and his house was razed. Partly, no doubt, 
 because of his reserve, — he avoided all public debate, — partly 
 because the Athenians always distrusted one who was ' too clever,' 
 too ingenious in argument, Antiphon had no great public career. 
 His greatest success was his defense when on trial for his life, 
 ' the best speech of the kind that was made up to my time,' says 
 Thucydides, who is not easily moved to such praise. It was not 
 preserved, but there are extant fifteen speeches, all dealing with 
 murder cases, for it was in such sensational suits that he was a 
 Xhe specialist. Twelve of these speeches are arranged in 
 
 Tetralogies tetralogies, or groups of four, probably composed 
 about 425 B.C. Each of the three Tetralogies deals with a ficti- 
 tious case and includes the charge of the plaintiff, the reply of 
 the defendant, the second speech of the plaintiff, and, finally, 
 the second speech for the defense. They provide the skeleton 
 of a judicial argument, the formula with no unessential details, and 
 were intended as models of judicial rhetoric, as exercises for the 
 schools. Three kinds of murder, by an enemy, accidental, and 
 in self-defense, are handled with all the ingenuity of a sophistical 
 rhetorician. Besides the Tetralogies we have three speeches 
 written for actual use in the courts. The Defense of Herodes on 
 his trial for murder at sea. Against the Stepmother, in which a son 
 accuses his stepmother of poisoning his father, and the On the 
 Chorister, the defense of a leader of the chorus, who is accused 
 of poisoning a boy by giving him a draught to improve his voice. 
 From all these one can reconstruct the method of Antiphon as he 
 must have taught it in his lost handbook, his divisions of a speech, 
 the niceties of his formal rhetoric. His oratory bears the marks of 
 the teaching of the sophists. He uses their commonplaces, those 
 passages of general import or gnomic tendency, stereotyped senti- 
 ments that could be inserted at a suitable place in any speech. The 
 argument from probability, a favorite device of Sicilian rhetoric, 
 condemned by Plato on moral grounds,^ was constantly used by 
 
 1 Phaedrus 273. 
 
THE THEORISTS 329 
 
 Antiphon, both in the fictitious and the real pleadings. He did 
 not study, like Lysias, his younger contemporary, to express the 
 ethos, the individual character, of his clients. He is always 
 conventional and decorous in his appeals to the sympathies of his 
 hearers. He stands for the severe and archaic style in oratory, 
 and his periods lack the ease of the later speech writers. His 
 images are, however, full of vigor, and, hke Thucydides, he obtains 
 his effects by the carefully considered position of single words. 
 
 It was a contemporary of Antiphon and a politician of anti- 
 democratic convictions who wrote the pamphlet On the Constitic- 
 iion of Athens, first published in 424 B.C., one of the oldest 
 extant specimens of Attic prose. Though it is, plain from its 
 historical allusions that it was composed about 424 
 when Xenophon was still a child, it was long ascribed q ^. 
 to him and has survived only in the manuscripts of his Constitution 
 works. It is an apologia for the workings of the <'*-*t'iens 
 democracy at Athens by one who was as strongly opposed to 
 democratic principles as Theognis himself had been, and, like 
 him, deplores the governrpent of 'the best,' the 'quality,' that is, 
 the aristocrats, by ' the baser sort.' But he is far from the 
 violence of Theognis or Antiphon, and declares that, on the 
 whole, the Athenians are making a success of their democracy 
 and are likely to be satisfied with it for the present. There are 
 some slight resemblances in thought and style to Thucydides, but 
 there is no sufficient argument for assigning it to him, as one or 
 two scholars are inclined to do.^ 
 
 For the technique of oratory Antiphon did much, but he is 
 reckoned with the practical orators rather than with the theorists, 
 Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, the sophist, his younger contempo- 
 rary, flourished in the last quarter of the fifth century. Thrasym- 
 He composed political speeches as exercises, but achus 
 delivered none, and was preeminently a technical writer on 
 rhetoric. He is supposed to have founded the 'mixed' or 
 
 1 E.g. Roscher in Klio I 172, and, with more reserve, Sittl, Griech. Lit 
 II 87. Boeckh assigned the treatise to Critias the oligarch. 
 
330 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 ' moderate ' style, which rejected poetic words and novelties of 
 
 language, avoided hiatus, thCiugh not rigidly, and aimed at 
 
 elegance without visible effort. Thus he broke the way for writers 
 
 like Plato and Isocrates. He had a reputation for commonplaces 
 
 designed to rouse the emotions, suspicion, or anger, or pity,^ and 
 
 in the first Book of Plato's Republic we have a picture of the man 
 
 himself, violent in argument, easily flustered by the dialectic of 
 
 Socrates. Two rather fong fragments survive of this industrious 
 
 writer on technique, whose greatest contribution is that he made 
 
 a real advance in the development of the rhythmic prose period. 
 
 He was followed by another theorist, Theodorus of Byzantium 
 
 (^floruit 412), called by Plato a 'cunning speechwright.' He 
 
 wrote text-books of rhetoric, and added fresh categories and 
 
 classifications to the divisions of a speech. Both 
 Theodorus 
 
 Thrasymachus and Theodorus pursued at Athens 
 
 their profession as teachers of rhetoric. What one observes in 
 
 the history of oratory and rhetoric about this time is that every 
 
 theorist and every practical orator adds to the rules of the game, 
 
 defines the etiquette more closely, contributes to the growth of 
 
 oratory as an art. It was to the development of forensic, not 
 
 political, eloquence that they directed their efforts. 
 
 Antiphon is the first in the Alexandrian canon of ten Attic 
 
 ^ ^ .^ orators. Next to him is Andocides, of the Attic deme 
 
 Andocides ^ , , 
 
 Cydathene. He was born about 440 B.C. of a family 
 
 distinguished for generations in the wars and poHtics of Athens. 
 We know nothing of his personal history until 415, a year memor- 
 able at Athens for the sailing of the disastrous expedition against 
 Sicily, and for a mysterious incident that caused the delay of the 
 fleet. This was the mutilation of the Hermae, the square, stone 
 images of the god Hermes that stood before the door and in the 
 courtyard of Athenian houses and temples to symbolize his 
 guardianship over the intercourse of life, especially over the 
 goings-in and comings-out, as well as the boundaries and the roads 
 that mark the traffic of men. One night in May, 415 B.C., the 
 ' Plato, Phaedrus 267. 
 
ANDOCIDES 331 
 
 Hertnae were defaced. The discovery next day caused a panic in 
 Athens. The sacrilege was interpreted by the people as an ill 
 omen for the expedition on which they had staked so Mutilation 
 much. The gods who protected Athens were, they of the 
 thought, alienated at the very opening of the enterprise. Hermae 
 But what shook the nerves of the democratic party was their con- 
 viction that here was a mysterious signal of revolution, a sinister 
 warning by those secret conspirators who were known to have 
 been plotting to establish an oligarchy.^ Something like a reign 
 of terror followed. More than one informer denounced certain 
 members of the party of Young Athens to which Andocides be- 
 longed, and he was arrested on suspicion. He denied his own 
 guilt and saved his life by denouncing others. Shut out from the 
 market place and the temples, practically an outlaw, he left 
 Athens and spent ten years in travel and trading in Greece and 
 Italy. He made two unsuccessful efforts to return to Athens : in 
 411 when he was imprisoned by the Four Hundred for furnishing 
 supplies to the democratic army at Samos, and again in 410 or 
 409, when he delivered the speech in the Ecclesia On the Return, 
 claiming a pardon for past offenses on the ground that he had 
 served the state by securing for Athens a supply of corn from 
 Cyprus. In the end he had to wait for the amnesty of 403, when 
 he was completely reinstated and apparently forgiven the scandal 
 of his youth. It was not, however, forgotten, and in 399, when he 
 had become conspicuous in public life, he was accused of impiety 
 in attending the Eleusinian festival from which he had been barred 
 by the decree now sixteen years old. In defense he delivered the 
 speech On the Mysteries, reviewing the incident of On the 
 the Hermae, and denying the general charge of im- Mysteries 
 piety. He was acquitted, and in 391 reappears as one of the 
 ambassadors to Sparta. It was in the debate that followed his 
 return from this mission that he made the speech On the Peace} 
 
 '^ On the motive for the mutilation of the Hermae, cp. Wilamowitz, Aristo- 
 teles u. Athen 11 113. 
 
 ^ Sittl, Griech. Lit. II 85, denies ttie genuineness of the On the Peace. 
 
332 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 This was the close of his public career. Of his further adventures 
 and the date of his death we know nothing. Andocides is one of 
 the minor classics of Attic oratory. The speeches that have been 
 mentioned are extant, besides two short fragments ; a fourth 
 speech Against Alcibiades, ascribed to him, is probably the work 
 of a later sophist. Andocides was not one of those who, like 
 Antiphon, mark an advance in the technique of eloquence. He 
 seejns to have been one of those youths of good family, of the 
 type of Alcibiades, who turned to public life for excitement, and 
 as the best theater for displaying what they had learned from the 
 sophists. In spite of his place in the canon he was something of 
 an amateur. Aristotle, Dionysius, and Quintilian, who were inter- 
 ested in rhetoric, have little or nothing to say about him, and 
 when he is mentioned it is with a hint of disparage- 
 ment. His style lacks uniformity, and falls below the 
 genuine nobility of Antiphon. Sometimes he is content with the 
 plain, unadorned speech of everyday life, sometimes he uses 
 poetic images and language in order to be impressive. He has 
 less art than any other orator in the canon, both in the framing 
 of Ills sentences and the general arrangement of his subject. 
 
 The life of Lysias {circa 440-380 B.C.) has a special interest. 
 By descent he was a Sicilian, whose father Cephalus, on the advice 
 
 , . of Pericles, had transferred to Athens his manufactory 
 
 Lysias •' 
 
 of weapons of war. There he ranked with the most 
 
 wealthy and distinguished of the ' metics ' or resident aliens, who 
 
 could have little to do with poHtics since they had no political 
 
 rights. Cephalus was one of those metics who, in view of their 
 
 wealth, were admitted to equal opportunities of public service, 
 
 though not of public office, with the regular citizens. In the first 
 
 Book of Plato's Republic, we see him enjoying a mellow old age in 
 
 his fine house at the Piraeus, the quarter of the metics, eager to 
 
 hear philosophers talk, but withdrawing ' to attend to the sacrifices,' 
 
 when the conversation about old age and the blessings of wealth 
 
 develops into a discussion of an abstract kind. There, too, are 
 
 his sons, Lysias and Polemarchus, Athenian by education, and 
 
LYSIAS ^y. 
 
 associating with young Athenian aristocrats, the brothers of Plato 
 It was probably after the death of Cephalus that they went tc 
 Thurii, the new Athenian colony in Italy, where Lysias is saic 
 to have received lessons from Tisias, the Sicilian rhetorician 
 Thence they returned to the Piraeus, about 411. In 404 the 
 oligarchy of the Thirty came into power, and, seizing the oppor- 
 tunity for plunder, put Polemarchus to death. Lysias fled tc 
 Megara. In the spring of the next year' he came back with the 
 democrats, when, for his services to the party, Thrasybulus proposed 
 that he should receive the rights of a full citizen. The resolution, 
 though it passed the Ecclesia, was canceled on the motion of 
 Archinus, and it was as a metic that Lysias at last settled down 
 to repair his fortunes by professional speech writing at Athens. 
 In the seven or eight years before his brother's death he had 
 written on rhetoric and perhaps taught it, but it was in writing 
 speeches for the law courts that he found his real vocation. It 
 was probably in that prosperous period of his life before 404 that 
 he devoted himself to epideictic oratory, and gained the reputation 
 assigned to him by Plato in the Phaedrtis as ' the cleverest writer 
 of our time.' ^ In that dialogue, Phaedrus, the youthful admirer 
 of Lysias, reads to Socrates a truly sophistical jeu d'esprit which 
 he has just heard from the lips of Lysias himself.^ This is the 
 Eroticus, addressed by a lover to his beloved, a prose pleading 
 where Pindar or Anacreon would have written an ode. xhe 
 
 This was a common exercise with the rhetoricians, Eroticus 
 another point at which they invaded the rights of poetry. Plato 
 was bent on showing the frigidity and poverty of sophistical 
 rhetoric compared with the dialectic of a philosopher, and he 
 
 ' This year has a literary as well as a political interest. It was during 
 the archonship of Eucleides in 403 that the Ionic alphabet formally replaced 
 the older Attic alphabet at Athens. Henceforth the official records show 
 separate signs for the long and short e and and the Ionic symbols for the 
 double consonants. ^ 228 A. 
 
 ' Thompson, Blass, Egger, Sittl, are for, Croiset, K. F. Hermann, Steinhart, 
 against, the Lysiajiic authorship of the Ero/icus. 
 
334 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 chooses a piece of writing on which Lysias had lavished the de- 
 vices of the style of Gorgias, that extreme and too obvious art 
 that abounds in antitheses, similar endings, repetitions of the idea 
 for the sake of changing the language, and the like. Yet even 
 Plato admired the polished periods and the perfect clearness that 
 were to be the conspicuous merit of the forensic speeches of 
 Lysias. The seven Letters, nearly all erotic, are of interest merely 
 because they mark the first appearance of the letter as a piece of 
 literature. Even in his later years Lysias had not altogether given 
 up epideictic oratory. The Olympiac Oration, of which only 
 a part is extant, preserved by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was 
 written in 388, and is in the main an exhortation to the assembled 
 Greeks to agree among themselves and to beware of the new 
 tyrant of Sicily, Dionysius, who had sent a showy deputation to 
 the Olympic festival. The Epitaphitis, or Funeral Oration, written 
 in the manner of the similar speech of Gorgias, was probably 
 composed for a fictitious occasion. Its authorship is disputed.' 
 If, as seems likely, Lysias taught rhetoric before he devoted him- 
 self to speech writing, he must have composed the usual aids and 
 commonplaces for his students ; of a formal text-book of rhetoric 
 we hear nothing. 
 
 Lysias was industrious in his profession of speech writing, and 
 in the centuries after his death there was a tendency to ascribe to 
 him any judicial speech written in ' the plain style ' that had no 
 certain author, just as, earlier, a gnomic elegy was likely to be 
 gathered into the poems of Theognis. Of over four hundred 
 compositions credited to Lysias in the Graeco-Roman period, 
 Dionysius allowed 233 to be genuine. Of these we know 127 by 
 title only, and possess thirty-four speeches whole, or in consider- 
 able fragments. Even of this collection a number of speeches are 
 regarded as spurious, and still more are much mutilated. There 
 are, in fact, less than twenty forensic speeches that can be taken to 
 
 1 Blass, Attische Beredsamkeit I 442 ff., is inclined to reject it on the 
 score of inferiorities of style. So too Wilaraowitz, who places it in the third 
 century. 
 
LYSIAS 335 
 
 represent in a complete form the special talents of Lysias in this 
 field, which he made his own. The duty of a speech writer for 
 the law courts, did not include the actual delivery of the speech. 
 The plaintiff or defendant in an Athenian court must be his own 
 speaker. 
 
 Only one of the extant forensic speeches, that Against Eratos- 
 thenes, was delivered by Lysias himself. When the democracy was 
 restored in 403, he hastened to avenge the death of Polemarchus 
 by prosecuting Eratosthenes, one of the Thirty, who Against 
 was responsible for his brother's arrest and imprison- Eratos- 
 ment, and therefore, as Lysias contended, for his thenes 
 death also. We do not know the precise circumstances or setting 
 of the indictment, nor its result. Eratosthenes and one other of 
 the Thirty had dared to remain in Athens. Probably they intended 
 to meet the public inquiry which was offered by the terms of the 
 amnesty to those of the Thirty who had the courage to face it. 
 This inquiry, rather than an ordinary murder trial, may have been 
 the opportunity of Lysias.' The speech reviews at length the 
 crimes of the Thirty, and gives a classical picture of the horrors of 
 revolution and counter-revolution, always repeated in a Greek 
 state. Lysias felt himself the spokesman of all whose kindred had 
 been murdered in that year of terror and tyranny, above all he was 
 the spokesman of the metics whom the Thirty had despoiled. 
 After a recital of the facts, full of vivid descriptions and dramatic 
 touches, he changes his tone of personal emotion, and in the pero- 
 ration rises to the dignity of an impeachment. He bids 'the men 
 of the city' who had not left Athens, like 'the men from the 
 Piraeus ' who had brought back the democracy, remember all 
 their griefs, the desecrated temples, the impoverished city, the dead 
 whom they had not been able to save : You have heard, he con- 
 cludes, you have seen, you have suffered, you have him in your 
 hands — sentence him I ^ 
 
 1 Meier, Blass, Lipsius, and Jebb maintain, Rauchenstein opposes, this 
 conjecture. 
 
 2 Against Eratosthenes 100. 
 
336 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The indictment of Eratosthenes must have been the master- 
 piece of Lysias, and is certainly not surpassed by any of the extant 
 speeches. But it was rather in those written for chents that he had 
 Character a chance to show his talent for expressing character 
 drawing (ethos). The speechwright at Athens must have some 
 of the arts of an actor. He must study his client, put himself in 
 his shoes, make him speak as a man of his trade should speak, and, 
 above all, take care that his own personality and professional train- 
 ing never show through. Of this art of securing verisimilitude 
 Lysias was a master. The invalid who tries to prove that he ought 
 not to be taken off the public relief hst, the injured husband of the 
 lower class pleading his right to kill the man who had estranged 
 his wife's affection, the elderly metic, the rich farmer — of all these 
 and many more he hit off the character and point of view, and so 
 adjusted them that they would best appeal to a jury of average 
 businesslike men. 
 
 Lysias was somewhat neglected by Aristotle, but Dionysius of 
 Halicarnassus paid him an ungrudging tribute. A special danger 
 with speakers trained in the schools of rhetoric to learn by heart 
 stock passages was that they grew stale, repeated themselves, used 
 their old commonplaces. Lysias, says Dionysius,^ was peculiarly 
 spontaneous, could be depended on for a fresh 'prooemium' or 
 introduction, a fresh rhetorical argument, or a moral reflection 
 that had not become hackneyed by use. Plato had no good word 
 for the shrewd, little, legal minds of such as he saw thriving, some- 
 times at the expense of philosophers, in the courts of Athens. 
 But even he admired the style of Lysias. It was clear, plain, and 
 Style concise, purified of the poetic coloring that Gorgias 
 had used to excess, though it by no means rejected 
 the devices of antithesis, similar endings, balanced clauses, and 
 the like. Lysias, unhke Thucydides, could manage an anaco- 
 luthon, could abandon the grammatical construction so as to make 
 the idea clearer and give the hearer no shock. He achieved that 
 exquisite simplicity which one only recognizes as the perfection of 
 
 ^ On Lysias 17. 
 
ISAEUS 337 
 
 a difficult art when one tries to imitate it. His clients, always, of 
 course,, 'inexperienced in these affairs,' seemed sincere because 
 they spoke so simply. It was part of the Lysianic ' charm ' (xap's), 
 that his flow of simple language was never monotonous ; yet he 
 did not take his hearers by storm or carry them away on a tide of 
 eloquence, like a Demosthenes ; he sweetly disposed their minds, 
 and won them by a perfect naturalness. We may agree with 
 Longinus that, to prefer this faultless, low-pulsed art, " all toned 
 down," to the inspired manner of Plato, is to have no ear for the 
 grand style which no man can maintain without a lapse. For all 
 that, the perfect reserve and appropriateness of Lysias made him 
 the model of pure Attic speech to which men turned in later cen- 
 turies, when the florid Asianic manner was corrupting public taste. 
 Little is known of the life of Isaeus. He lived and practiced law 
 at Athens, perhaps as a metic, since there is a tradition that he 
 was bom at Chalcis. He was, at any rate, younger than Lysias, 
 since his first extant speech was composed about 389, 
 his latest about 353. There is a legend, not now gen- 
 erally accepted, that he was the favorite and almost exclusive teacher 
 of Demosthenes. There is no trustworthy evidence that Isaeus was 
 the pupil of Lysias, but he certainly imitated his style. He, too, was 
 a speechwright, a noted expert in suits about contested wills and suc- 
 cession to property. Though he seems to have had no formal school 
 of rhetoric, he left a text-book, which has perished. Of perhaps 
 fifty speeches written for the courts, only eleven survive, all dealing 
 with cases of inheritance. Isaeus was not a favorite with Greek and 
 Roman writers on rhetoric. He falls between Lysias and Demos- 
 thenes, since he could not rival either, though he has some of the 
 characteristics of both. Dionysius admits that he would not have 
 written a special treatment of his oratory, had he not seen in it some 
 of the germs of the eloquence of Demosthenes.^ Of all the orators 
 he comes nearest to Lysias in style, but he was less convincing, 
 because in his speeches the expert showed through ; he could not 
 maintain the characterization of his client as naturally as Lysias. 
 
 1 On Isaeus 20. 
 HIST. GKEEK LIT. — 22 
 
338 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 He was too clever : ' Even when he is telling the truth, you suspect 
 him,' says Dionysius. He uses more rhetorical figures than Lysias, 
 and more commonplaces, and is much more sensational, with fre- 
 quent appeals to the emotions of the jury. One notable difference 
 in his style is his avoidance of hiatus. Isocrates had added this 
 piece of etiquette to the training of prose writers, and Isaeus fol- 
 lows the fashion though he is not by any means consistent. 
 
 In Isocrates (436-338), epideictic oratory, the oratory of 
 
 display, touched the high-water mark. He was born in the Attic 
 
 deme Erchia, the dame of Xenophon, the son of a prosperous 
 
 flute maker, and it is evident that, like the young Hip- 
 
 I S CTSL^C S 
 
 pocrates in Plato's Protagoras, he went to school with 
 the sophists, Prodicus certainly, and possibly Protagoras, in order 
 to fit himself for a public career. But he was doomed to feel him- 
 self through life a statesman manque. A weak voice and an in- 
 curable diffidence, not unusual in one so vain, barred him from 
 such distinctions. No wonder that he speaks with envious admi- 
 ration of the gift of self-confidence as essential to an orator's suc- 
 cess, and complains bitterly that one might as well not have the 
 rights of a citizen if one cannot use them. The Peloponnesian 
 war, which helped to enrich the family of Lysias, did not encour- 
 age the sale of flutes, and in its later years Isocrates lost his for- 
 tune. He spent some time in Thessaly studying under Gorgias, 
 who was then living there, and on his return to Athens, rhetoric, 
 which had so far been for him the hobby of a rich amateur, be- 
 came his profession. For a time, indeed, he was, like Lysias, a 
 speechwright, but it did not suit Isocrates to make an art of sink- 
 ing his own personality in that of a client. About 393 he opened 
 a school of rhetoric, and soon became the most distinguished pro- 
 fessional teacher in Greece, making more money than all his 
 rivals put together. His course was from three to five years, and 
 was attended by students from all parts. In his school, which 
 Cicero called ' the oratorical laboratory,' were trained men like 
 Timotheus, the famous general and diplomat, orators like Hyper- 
 eides and Lycurgus, historians such as Theopompus and Ephorus. 
 
ISOCRATES 339 
 
 not to speak of tragedians, rhetoricians, and the like, or those who 
 came because there was to be had the most fashionable and ex- 
 pensive " finishing," the nearest approach to the hall-mark of a 
 university education that the time afforded.' The activity of 
 Isocrates extended through the next fifty-five years, and was not 
 confined to teaching. 
 
 Plato dishked the Isocratean method of teaching" rhetoric, and 
 may well have been jealous of the influence of the famous school. 
 At any rate, in the Phaedrus, long after Isocrates was established 
 as a professor of epideictic oratory, Plato makes Socrates prophesy 
 a brilliant future for the young writer in whom he saw a gift for 
 philosophy that might carry him far. Socrates hoped that Isoc- 
 rates might yet be inspired by some nobler impulse to turn from 
 rhetoric and give himself to philosophy. The passage in the 
 Phaedrus^ reads like a sarcasm. For Isocrates, when it was 
 written, had not become a philosopher, though he loves to speak 
 of his rhetoric as his ' philosophy.' 
 
 He had the artistic temperament with all its qualities and de- 
 fects. But he was at any rate a publicist if he could not be a 
 public man, and he dignified his professional life by writing politi- 
 cal pamphlets. Such was the Panegyricus, his masterpiece, over 
 which he is said to have spent ten years. He was a Hellene 
 rather than a mere Athenian, and thought that the The 
 only hope for Greece was that Athens and Sparta Panegyricus 
 should forget their quarrels and unite against Persia. With him 
 it became a fixed idea, that a united Greece should march 
 against Asia. When he saw that Athens and Sparta would not 
 combine, he addressed open letters, first {circa 368), to Dionysius, 
 
 ' To have been a pupil of Isocrates gave a certain cachet ; just so, many 
 an English writer and statesman has been labeled " a pupil of Jowett." Cp. 
 Cicero, De Orat. 2. 94. Ecce tibi exortus est Isocrates, cuius e ludo tamquam 
 ex equo Trojano meri principes exierunt. 
 
 2 I assume that the Phaedrus was written after the Panegyricus of Isoc- 
 rates (380 B.C.), when Socrates had been dead some twenty years, and the 
 vocation of Isocrates was no longer an open question'. 
 
340 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the tyrant of Syracuse, and finally, in 346, to Philip of Macedon 
 .whom he exhorted to reconcile the Greeks, so that he might 
 lead them to this great enterprise. To Isocrates, Philip seemed 
 no barbarian, but a worthy representative of the Hellenes, and 
 under his presidency he imagined a sort of Utopia, the great 
 cities of Greece sending embassies to share Philip's councils, and 
 all Hellas animated by the single hope that no harm might befall 
 this idealized personage before he had completed his great task.' 
 It was the dream of an idealist, and if it has made Isocrates seem 
 ridiculous to those who knew Philip better than he did, no one 
 has ever doubted that he had the welfare of Athens at heart. But 
 the true and typical patriot must be narrow in his views, jealous 
 for his country's independence and supremacy at all costs. A 
 Pan-Hellene at Athens could not expect to be called a patriot, 
 and Isocrates must have encountered many disappointments and 
 felt himself much misunderstood. Athens listened to Demos- 
 thenes and allied herself with Thebes against Philip. The de- 
 feat at Chaeronea in 338 secured the supremacy of Macedon. 
 But Isocrates did not live to see how little Philip could realize his 
 ideal of a united Greece. He died in the same year at the age of 
 ninety-eight.^ 
 
 We have twenty-one speeches and nine letters of Isocrates. 
 Many more than these were current under his name, but it seems 
 likely that we possess all but four of the compositions that the 
 critic Dionysius regarded as genuine. Among the scholastic wriN 
 ings we have three ' Hortatory Essays ' : To Demonicus, a letter 
 written, somewhat in the spirit of Lord Chesterfield, to a young 
 
 I Letter to Philip 68 ff. 
 
 ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus preserved a tradition that Isocrates would not 
 consent to survive the defeat of Athens at Chaeronea, and Milton's Sonnet to 
 the Lady Margaret Ley has fixed in the minds of English readers the legend 
 that the "dishonest victory" at Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, " kill'd with re- 
 port that old man eloquent." But what was a crushing disappointment to 
 Demosthenes and the anti-Macedonian party would have another side for 
 Isocrates, and for a man of his age one need not ask for other than naturaj 
 causes of death. 
 
ISOCRATES 341 
 
 aristocrat, possibly of Cyprus ; To Nicodes and the Nicocles, both 
 composed for the ruler of Cyprian Salamis {circa 372), who may 
 have been a pupil of Isocrates. The Busiris was writ- 
 ten about 390. It was a favorite exercise of the ^''^ ^"«'"* 
 sophists to write what they called ' recreations,' panegyrics of 
 things and people whose bad reputation made it difficult and para- 
 doxical to praise them. Such a tour de force had been achieved 
 by one Polycrates, a panegyric of Busiris, the inhospitable king of 
 Egypt, whom Heracles slew. Isocrates writes what is really a 
 slashing review of this work, showing how much better the white- 
 washing could have been done, and at the same time criticises 
 another composition by Polycrates, in which he had attacked Soc- 
 rates. When he wrote his Praise of Helen, Isocrates seems to 
 have had his eye on the Helen ascribed to his master Gorgias, 
 since he is careful to take different ground, and condemns just 
 the sort of faint praise, really amounting to an apology rather than 
 a panegyric, that we find in the earlier piece. The Evagoras is a 
 sincere panegyric of the murdered king of Cyprus, composed 
 about 365. 
 
 Of all the epideictic compositions, the finest is the Panathe- 
 naicus, written in 342, when the " old man eloquent " had 
 reached the age of ninety-four. It was not published The Pana- 
 till 339, and is thus the latest of his works. It contains ttenaicus 
 the praise of Athens and a lengthy comparison of her achieve- 
 ments with those of Sparta. It is highly personal, and its garru- 
 lity, especially toward the close, betrays the writer's age and the 
 vanity that had grown with years. He lets us into the secrets of 
 his school methods by describing how he had revised this speech 
 with three or four of his pupils ; how, in order to secure the 
 criticism of a specialist, he had called in a politician who had 
 leanings to Sparta, had silenced this critic, and sent him away a 
 wiser and humbler man. Even then he had called a council of 
 his friends to decide whether he had better burn the essay, and, 
 now, in his ninety- seventh year, he was only publishing it under 
 pressure. All this is foreign to one's ideas of literary art, but it is 
 
342 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 illuminating for the personality and methods of Isocrates, whom 
 we see working, like one of the great Italian masters, among 
 his pupils, and providing for their imitation his own model 
 compositions. 
 
 With this group of scholastic writings we may reckon the 
 speeches Against the Sophists and the Antidosis. Isocrates was 
 Against the curiously isolated. Though he had been the friend 
 Sophists and admirer of Socrates, he could not be counted 
 with the Socratics ; and, for all his interest in politics, he had to 
 stand aside from the dust and heat of the political race. Much as 
 he disliked the legal profession that he had abandoned, he was 
 still more anxious not to be identified with the crowd of sophists, 
 ' my enemies who make their living by plagiarizing me.' ^ We do 
 not know the precise date of his manifesto against the sophists, 
 but it was probably written about 391, at the opening of his career 
 as a teacher, and was designed to separate him publicly from them 
 and their ways. Unlike them, he insists on the need of special 
 endowment, on the power of imagination and intuition that no 
 mastery of rhetoric can teach ; he ridicules the practice of teaching 
 set passages, the commonplaces that were part of the outfit of the 
 rhetorician. 
 
 But he was, of course, in the Athenian sense of the word, a 
 The Anti- sophist, a professional teacher, no less than Protagoras 
 dosis had been, and in the Antidosis (354 B.C.) he accepts 
 
 the title. This, the longest of his speeches, which might well be 
 called On Myself, was composed after he had been compelled by 
 the courts to undertake a public service, a trierarchy, as befitted 
 one of the wealthier citizens. It is a fictitious speech, partly a 
 forensic defense against the citizen who had challenged him, 
 according to the Athenian custom, to accept the service or ex- 
 change properties ; partly it is an autobiography, the apology of a 
 veteran of eighty-two for his career as a rhetorician, and for his 
 theory of culture, which he supports by quoting long extracts from 
 his own works. 
 
 ^ Panatk. 16, 
 
ISOCRATES 343 
 
 We have a few fragments of the Art of Rhetoric of Isocrates, 
 unless, indeed, it be safer to regard them as echoes of his lectures 
 preserved in the quotations of later writers. In them we find the 
 rule for the avoidance of hiatus, and the precept that prose should 
 be rhythmical but not metrical. A passion for form dominated 
 Isocrates : ' If an idea has been expressed before, one should try 
 to say the same thing again, and better.' ^ Though he had been 
 a pupil of Gorgias, he did not admit into his own prose the orna- 
 ments of poetic diction, and has few metaphors. He 
 brought the period to perfection, paying out every mem- 
 ber lite the long link of a long and flawless chain, a chain that returns 
 on itself after a wide circle.'^ A writer who delighted in showing 
 what could be done with the truly subordinate style, incurred the 
 danger of not knowing where to stop. But though sentences so 
 long as his have seldom been written, long sentences have at least 
 never been more lucid. It was not surprising that, as soon as 
 prose writing had become a perfectly self-conscious art, it should 
 take over from poetry the rule that two vowels that belong to inde- 
 pendent words must not meet. Isocrates was the most rigid of 
 his contemporaries in this avoidance of hiatus, so that the canon 
 is always associated with his name. It is too much the fashion 
 to disparage his passionless perfection by comparing him with 
 Demosthenes, the truth being that they belong to separate cate- 
 gories. Isocrates is to be judged for what he was, the finished 
 type of the epideictic rhetorician, with whom perfection of form is 
 the first thought. After him the decline of rhetoric was swift and 
 steady. He is emphatically a man of the fourth century. But his 
 life covers nearly the whole of the hundred years that separate the 
 outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, when Pericles was the soul of 
 Athens, from the defeat at Chaeronea which made certain the 
 ascendency of Macedon. " Athens," says Gibbon, " condensed 
 within the period of a single life the genius of ages and millions." 
 
 1 Panegyr. 8. 
 
 2 Cicero's style is based on that of Isocrates, so that the latter may be said 
 tg have influenced, through Cicero, the prose of modern Europe. 
 
344 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 On which De Quincey observes ' that " the condensation is the 
 measure of the dignity ; and Isocrates, as the single life alluded 
 to, is the measure of the condensation," and goes on to compare 
 him and his long life with the cylinder of a dumb-bell, whose two 
 globes are in this case " the oasis of Pericles and the oasis of 
 Alexander." 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Andocides 
 
 I. Manusckipts. Crippsianus, 13th cent., in the British Museum. Am- 
 brosianus, 15th cent., Milan. 
 
 II. Editions. Schiller, Leipzig, 1835. Lipsius, Leipzig, 1888. Marchant, 
 De Mysteriis, et de reditu, London, 1889. Blass, Leipzig, 1892. 
 
 III. Literature. Frengel, De Andoc. de pace or., Konigsberg, 1866. 
 Hartman, De Hermocopidarum mysteriorunn/ue profanatorum iudiciis, 
 Leyden, 1880. Kirchhoff in Hermes i. Fuhr in Berl. Phil. Wochenschr,, 
 1903. 
 
 IV. Lexicon. Forman, Index Andocideus, Lycurgeus, Dinarcheus, Oxford, 
 
 1897. 
 
 Antiphon 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Crippsianus, 1 3th cent., in the British Museum. Oxoni- 
 ensis, probably 14th cent., at Oxford. 
 
 II. Editions. Maetzner, Berlin, 1838. lernstedt, St. Petersburg, 1880. 
 Blass, Leipzig, 1892. 
 
 III. Literature. Ignatius, De Ant. Rham. elocutione, Berlin, 1882. 
 Cucuel, Essai sur la langue et le style de Vorateur Antiphon, Paris, 1886. 
 Wilamowitz in Hermes 22. Keil in Hermes 29. Renter in Hermes 38, 39. 
 Dittenberger in Hermes 32. 
 
 IV. Lexicon. Van Cleef, Index Antiphonteus, Boston, 1895. 
 
 Isaeus 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The same as for Andocides supra. 
 
 II. Editions. The older editions of Aldus, Stephanus, and Reiske contain 
 only ten Orations ; the eleventh was first published by Mai in 1815. Com- 
 plete editions are: Schomann, Greifswald, 1831 ; Scheibe, Berlin, 1874; 
 Biirmann, Berlin, 1883 ; Wyse, Cambridge, 1904. 
 
 III. Literature. Liebmann, De Isaei vita et scriptis, Halle, 1831. Moy, 
 &tude sur les plaidoyers d'Isee, Paris, 1876. Roder, Beitr. .s. Erkl. a. Kritik. 
 
 1 Essay on Style. 
 
ISOCRATES 345 
 
 des Is., Jena, 1880. Lincke, De elocutione Isaei, Leipzig, 1885. Bfirmann in 
 Hermes 17 and 19. A good bibliography down to 1905 is prefixed to Wyse's 
 edition. Thalheim in Hermes 38. Seeliger in Jahrb. f. Phil. 113. Cac- 
 cialanza, Le Orazioni di Iseo, Torino, 1901. 
 IV. Translation. Jones, Oxford, 1779. 
 
 IsOCRATES 
 
 I. Mandscriffs. The best is the Urbinas in the Vatican. See Bfirmann, 
 Die Handschriftliche Ueberlieferung des Isokrates, Berlin, 1 885-1 886. 
 
 II. Editions. Coraes, Paris, 1807. Bekker, Oxford, 1823. Benseler- 
 Blass, Leipzig, 1888. Rauchenstein, Panegyricus u. Areopagiiicus, Leipzig, 
 1849-1874. Schneider, Leipzig, 1875. Drerup, vol. I, Leipzig, 1906. 
 
 III. Literature. Pfundt, De hoc. vita et scriptis, 1833. Keil, Anal. 
 Isocr., Leipzig, 1885. Blass, De Isocr. numeris commentatio, Kiel, 1891. 
 Strowski, De fsocr. paedagogia, Albi, 1898. Rehdantz in Gott. Gel. Anz., 
 1872. 'I'hiele in Hermes 27. Diels, ib. 29. Gercke, ib, 32. Drerup in 
 Fleckeisen's Jahrb., Suppl. 22, 1896. See too E. Havet's Introduction to 
 Cartelier's translation of the Antidosis, Paris, 1863. 
 
 IV. Lexica. MitcheW, Index graecitatis/socraticae, Oxford, 1S28. Preuss, 
 Index Isocr ateus, Leipzig, 1904. 
 
 V. Translations. Dinsdale and Young, London, 1752. Gillies, The 
 Orations of Lysias and Isocrates, 1778. Elyot's Doctrinal of Princes, 1534, 
 is a version of the To Nicocles. Freese, London, 1896. 
 
 Lysias 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The archetype of the numerous manuscripts is the Pala- 
 iinus, Heidelberg. See Sauppe, Epistola critica ad G. Hermann, Leipzig, 1841. 
 
 II. Editions. Scheibe, Leipzig, 1852-1874. Cobet, Amsterdam, 1863. 
 Rauchenstein, Berlin, 1848. Gebauer, Berlin, 188 1. Weidner, Leipzig, 1886. 
 Rauchenstein-Fuhr, Berlin, 1884— 1889. Thalheim, 1901. Cobet-Hartmann, 
 Leyden, 1905. Fraccaroli, Turin, 1902. Frohberger, Leipzig, 1866-1871 
 (selected orations), 2d edition. Frohberger-Gebauer, Leipzig, 1880. 
 
 III. Literature. Scheibe, Die oligarchische Umvialzung in Athen, Leip- 
 zig, 1841. Radermacher, De Lysiae oratoris aetate, Berlin, 1865. Egger, 
 Observations sur V&roiicos, in Annuaire de I'ass, pour V encouragement des 
 etudes gi-ecques, 1871. Pretzsch, De vitae Lys. or. temp, defniendis, Halle, 
 1881. Clerc, Les Methques Atheniens, Paris, 1893. Scheibe in Jahrb. f. 
 Phil. 31. Frohberger, ib. 82. Grosser, ib. 99. Usener, ib. 107. Blass in 
 Bursian's Jahresber., 1880. Rauchenstein in Philologus 10. 
 
 IV. Translation. Gillies, The Orations of Lysias and /socrates, 1778. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Holmes, Index Lysiacus, Bonn, 1895. 
 
346 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Thrasymachus 
 
 Schwartz, De Thrasymacho Chalcedonio, Rostock, 1892. Hermann, Dis- 
 puiatio de Thrasymacho, Gottingen, 1848. 
 
 On the Constitution of Athens 
 
 I. Manuscripts. This tract is found only in the manuscripts of Xenophon. 
 
 II. Editions. Kirchhoff,' Berlin, 1874. Wachsmuth in Progr. d. Univ. 
 Gotl., 1874. Belot, Paris, 1880. 
 
 III. Literature. Kirchhoff, Ueber die Schrift vom Siaate d. Ath. in Abh. 
 d. Berl. Ah., 1874, and ib. 1878. MuUer-Striibing, Die Ait. Schrift v. S. d. 
 Ath; 1880. SchoU, Die Anfange einer politischen Litteratur bei d. Griechen, 
 Munich, 1890. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers I 499 ff. (Eng. trans.). 
 
 Collections 
 
 Pifiiui, Rheiores Craeci, Venice, 15 13. Stephanus, Oratores Graeci, 1575. 
 Reiske, Oratorum Graec. monumenta, Leipzig, 1775 (omits Isocrates). Bek- 
 ker, Oratores Attici, Oxford, 1823 ; Berlin, 1824. Dobson, Oratores Attici, 
 London, 1828. Baiter and Sauppe, Zurich, 1843 and 1845. Didot, Oratores 
 Attici, Paris, 1868. 
 
 Literature 
 
 Spenge), 2um7w7^) Tex""!', Stuttgart, 1828. Volkmann, Die Rhetorik d. 
 Griechen a. Rotner, Leipzig, 1874. Chaignet, La Rhetorique et son his- 
 toire, Paris, 1888. Perrot, L' Eloquence politique et judiciaire h Athenes, 
 Paris, 1873. Girard, &tudes sur I' eloquence attique, Paris, 1874. Blass, Die 
 Attische Beredsamkeit, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1 887. Jebb, The Attic Orators from 
 Antiphon to Isaeos, London, 1876. Navarre, £jjaj sur la rhetorique grecque 
 avant Aristote, Paris, 1900. See also Gercke in Hermes 32, Die alte rix^ 
 ^T]TOfiK^\ u. ihre Gegner. Norden, Die Antike Kunstprosa, Leipzig, 1898. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE FOURTH-CENTURY ORATORS: DEMOSTHENES 
 
 Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes of the deme Paeania, 
 was born in 384 B.C. His father, who died when the son was 
 seven years old, belonged to the wealthy Athenian middle class. 
 The orator's grandmother on the mother's side had been a native 
 of Scythia, and we may note, as an instance of the absurd person- 
 alities that Athenian etiquette allowed a speaker to drag into his 
 argument, the reproach of the opponents of Demos- , 
 thenes that he was not a full-blooded Athenian. By 
 his father's will he was to inherit a sufficient fortune, but when he 
 came of age he found that his three guardians, Aphobus, Demo- 
 phon, and Therippides, had employed the ten years of his minority 
 in appropriating his estate. He was, apparently, a delicate and 
 timid youth, brought up in seclusion by his mother, the easy prey 
 of unscrupulous trustees. But the indomitable will that wasdestined 
 to wield the fierce democracy of Athens set itself, even now, to 
 fight what seemed a hopeless case. The next three years were 
 devoted to a training that was made the more arduous by certain 
 natural infirmities of voice and bearing, and in 363 he brought his 
 suit and delivered his speech Against Aphobus. Aphobus pro- 
 longed the contest by various devices to retain his plunder, so 
 that three speeches against his guardian and two against his con- 
 federate, Onetor, were delivered by Demosthenes before he could 
 feel that the moral victory, at least, was complete, though little 
 enough of his fortune was left to be restored. He was now free 
 to adopt the profession of speechwright, which he never altogether 
 abandoned. 
 
 347 
 
348 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Of thirty-three Private Orations that survive under his name, 
 only about fourteen are accepted by all the modern critics. All 
 Private Ora- are of value for the history of Athenian law, finance, 
 
 tions and the private life of the fourth century. But De- 
 mosthenes was not at his best in private suits. His heart was in 
 politics, and his finest speeches in the courts were delivered in 
 political trials. There could be no better exercise for one who 
 aspired to be a statesman than the writing of such speeches as 
 that Against Androtion (355 B.C.), composed for one Diodorus 
 who accused Androtion of having moved an illegal resolution. In 
 the Against Timocrates (352), the same client pursues his attack 
 on Androtion by persecuting one of his supporters. The speech 
 Against Arislocrates was written in 352 for Euthycles, a client 
 who opposed a motion to give extraordinary power and immunity 
 to Charidemus, the Euboean mercenary adventurer, who had 
 married the sister of Cersobleptes, king of Thrace, and later (349) 
 was destined to change sides once more and appear as an Athenian 
 commander. The policy of Demosthenes himself is hardly to be 
 judged from these professional speeches, though they probably 
 express his genuine convictions. 
 
 The most brilliant and effective of this group is the speech 
 Against Leptines (355). Demosthenes now for the first time ap- 
 Against pears in court to speak in person on a question of pol- 
 
 Leptines itics. On this occasion his task was that of a barrister, 
 since he spoke on behalf of the family of an Athenian whose death 
 had hindered his indictment of Leptines. Athens was in financial 
 difficulties after her unsuccessful attempt to punish her revolted 
 allies, Chios, Cos, and Rhodes. To meet this emergency, and to 
 relieve those who were liable to excessive public services, such as 
 the trierarchy, Leptines, in the previous year, had proposed to 
 abolish the hereditary immunities from this sort of taxation. Of 
 all the benefactors of Athens only the descendants of Harmodius 
 and Aristogeiton were to retain their privileges. To Demosthenes, 
 this repudiation of what he regarded as a state contract was 
 odious, a blow to the credit of a city that had been peculiarly 
 
DEMOSTHENES 349 
 
 scrupulous in paying its debts. He reviews, almost in the manner 
 of an epideictic panegyric, certain individual cases in which such 
 a withdrawal of well-earned privileges would be especially in- 
 jurious and unjust, and reminds the Athenians that Those who 
 debase the currency you punish with death : it will be strange, 
 indeed, if you listen to those who debase the whole commonwealth 
 and make it untrustworthy (§ 167). The empty treasury and 
 private avarice spoke louder than the young orator, and it seems 
 almost certain that the resolution of Leptines was allowed to 
 stand. 
 
 In the same year (354), Demosthenes spoke before the Ecclesia 
 On the Symmories, or Navy Boards. There are several pictur- 
 esque anecdotes of his earlier failures to impress an audience with 
 which an orator's delivery counted for so much ; but on the Sym- 
 this is his first political speech, unconnected with the modes 
 law cpurts, of which we know anything. It contains proposals 
 for the reform of the navy, which were not accepted by the As- 
 sembly. Sixteen years later, Demosthenes himself devised a more 
 thorough and practical scheme. But the speech gave him an op- 
 portunity for advising Athens not to make an aggressive war 
 against Persia ; she must strengthen her resources to meet emer- 
 gencies that the future was sure to bring, whether from the acts of 
 the king of Persia or another. That the other would be Philip of 
 Macedon, Demosthenes does not seem to have realized as yet, 
 any more than the rest of Athens. 
 
 In the next year (353) falls the second political harangue. For 
 the Megalopolitans. Megalopolis, founded (circa 370) as the 
 federal capital of the Pan-Arcadian union, was threatened by her 
 neighbor Sparta, naturally jealous of the Arcadian Poi the Meg- 
 league. Eubulus, the statesman whose cautious policy alopolitans 
 was now predominant at Athens, was opposed to sending help to 
 Megalopolis. The position of Demosthenes, at this time, was 
 that of a fiery young orator who was always in the opposition. 
 He urged Athens to support Megalopolis, to overlook the fact that 
 she was the ally of the hated Thebans, to preserve the balance of 
 
350 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 power, and check the aggressions of Sparta. The Athenians, how- 
 ever, decided to stand by the foreign policy of Eubulus, and not 
 to interfere in the Peloponnesus. 
 
 In the same year' (3S3)> the democrats of Rhodes appealed to 
 Athens for aid against the Carian queen Artemisia who was carry- 
 ing on the policy of her dead husband Mausolus by supporting 
 FortheRho- the oligarchical party in the island. Rhodes had led 
 
 dians the secession of the allies against Athens in 357, and 
 had no right to look to her for help. But Demosthenes, in his 
 speech For the Rhodians, argued that it was the sacred duty of 
 Athens, continually threatened as she was from within by the 
 terrors of oligarchy, to support democracy in every quarter. The 
 cause, however, like that of Megalopolis, was too unpopular, and 
 the island was left in the clutches of Caria. 
 
 So far Demosthenes had devoted himself to home affairs, or to 
 the expression, usually ineffectual, of a foreign policy that barely 
 recognized Philip of Macedon. In 359 Philip had secured the 
 throne, and at once entered on his policy of expansion. For his 
 schemes of conquest he needed money, and he turned his eyes to 
 the gold mines of Thrace that lay on his eastern border. To con- 
 trol these, he must first reduce the powerful neighboring town of 
 Amphipolis, still an outpost of Athenian influence in Thrace, 
 though the actual possession of the colony had been lost to Athens 
 The policy of in the Peloponnesian war. In 357 Philip attacked the 
 
 Philip town, and the inhabitants applied to Athens for assist- 
 ance. But they were thwarted by the diplomacy of Philip. He 
 made a secret bargain with the Athenians that, in return for the 
 free town of Pydna, which was to be restored to Macedon, he 
 would take Amphipolis, only to give it back to Athens, the right- 
 ful owner. When once Amphipolis had fallen, PhiUp kept it for 
 himself and lost no time in taking Pydna as well. Potidaea, an- 
 other Athenian outpost, he made over to the Olynthians, whom he 
 
 1 This date is made almost certain by the arguments of Judeich, Klein- 
 asiatische Studien l86 ff. The later date, 351, is given by Dionysius o£ 
 Halicarnassus, who is followed by Blass. 
 
DEMOSTHENES 351 
 
 was not yet ready to absorb. In 353 he captured Methone, the 
 last ally left to the Athenians on the Thermaic Gulf. By the end 
 of 352 he was master of the northern Aegean, and his fleet was 
 able to annoy the allies and to threaten Athenian trade. One 
 single check he had received from Athens : when he had inter- 
 fered in the holy war and defeated the Phocian army, in 352, he 
 made ready to march south and enter Greece by the pass of 
 Thermopylae ; but Eubulus sent a strong force to Thermopylae, 
 and Philip fell back, to turn his attention to the conquest of the 
 Thracian Chersonese. 
 
 Such was the position to which Macedonia had attained when 
 Demosthenes spoke his Firs( Philippic. It is the most eloquent 
 and most effective of the series of attacks that he was now to 
 make on the indifferentism of the Athenians, their improvidence, 
 their weakness in allowing Philip to outwit them in every encoun- 
 ter. He advised, as usual, what he thought 'best, but not easiest.' 
 There must be a greater proportion of citizens in the army, and, 
 above all, the generals must be Athenians. Every citizen must 
 determine to take a lesson from the energy and personal devotion 
 of Phihp. So far the Athenians have been content with languid 
 gossip : Is there any news ? you ask. Why, what news could be 
 more startling than this, that a mere Macedonian is defeating the 
 Athenians and managing the affairs of Greece ? Is Philip dead? 
 I ask. No, you answer, but he is ill. What difference does that 
 make to you ? Suppose he should die : you will soon create another 
 Philip if you take no more interest in your affairs than you do now 
 (§§ lo-ii). In this speech we see for the first time the impas- 
 sioned eloquence of Demosthenes at its height. He is no longer 
 merely an orator in the opposition, speaking against the peace 
 policy of Eubulus as a matter of course, but a patriot who sees 
 more clearly than the rest the insidious designs of Philip, and 
 realizes that tht greatest danger to Athens is her own apathy. 
 But the Athenians whom he addressed were very different from 
 the generation which, a century before, had been eager to risk 
 everything for the glory of empire at the bidding of Pericles, 
 
352 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 A vigorous and sustained foreign policy was impossible for that 
 pleasure-loving, degenerate democracy. Only three years earHer, 
 when Philip had appeared on the horizon, the Athenians had 
 resolved to put their amusements first, by voting that the festival 
 fund, which gave the citizens free admission to the festivals and 
 theaters, must never be diverted to the purposes of war. The 
 mere suggestion was to be accounted treason, and Demosthenes 
 could offer no practical scheme for strengthening the army and 
 navy while he respected the sanctity of the 'theoricon,' the theater 
 fund. In 349 he delivered the three Olynthiac Orations, which 
 are Philippics with a special reference to Olynthus. The 
 Olynthians saw themselves cut off from the rest of Greece by the 
 conquests of Macedonia, and more than once had appealed to 
 Athens for support. In 349 Philip besieged some of the 
 neighboring towns of Chalcidice, and Olynthus sent an embassy 
 to Athens. The First Olynthiac urges the Athenians to lose no 
 time in sending help to Olynthus. In the Third Olynthiac 
 Demosthenes at last declares that the festival fund ought to be 
 used for the war. The Athenians made an alliance with Olynthus 
 and sent troops, but Philip created a diversion by inciting a revolt 
 in Euboea. To put this down, Athens divided her forces, and in 
 348 Olynthus fell. 
 
 In the same year, Demosthenes, who had opposed the expedi- 
 tion to Euboea, wrote his speech Against Meidias. Meidias was a 
 Against "ch Athenian, an adherent of the peace party, who 
 Meidias had long had a grudge against Demosthenes. At the 
 feast of the Great Dionysia in this ye'ar, the orator was choregus 
 for his tribe, and when he appeared in the theater, Meidias struck 
 him in the face. The speech Against Meidias is a monument of 
 personal invective, and contains a classic description of Athenian 
 manners. But this was no time for private quarrels, and it is said 
 that Demosthenes abandoned or compromised the suit. In 347 
 we find him acting with the peace party and sent with the orator 
 Aeschines as an ambassador to Philip. His speech On the Peace 
 followed in 346. In 344 he spoke the Second Philippic, pointing 
 
DEMOSTHENES 353 
 
 out Philip's sustained hostility to Athens, and in 343 the On the 
 False Embassy, an unsuccessful impeachment of the orator 
 Aeschines. In 341 he delivered two speeches, On the Chersonese, 
 and the Third Philippic} 
 
 In the eight years between the peace of Philocrates (346) and 
 the battle of Chaeronea (338), Demosthenes was the soul of 
 Athens. For the latter part of that period his foreign policy was 
 hers, and when the peace with Philip was openly broken in 340, 
 he even persuaded the citizens to devote the festival fund to the 
 expenses of the war. Philip was, by this time, hopeless of secur- 
 ing the friendship of Athens. In 338, with the excuse of a second 
 holy war, he entered Greece by Thermopylae, this time un- 
 molested, and called on the Thebans to join him in an invasion 
 of Attica. The news reached Athens that he had seized Elatea. 
 Eight years later Demosthenes described the panic of the 
 Athenians when the messenger arrived in the evening, the hurried 
 clearing of the market place that the Assembly might meet at 
 dawn, and how, next day, in the general terror, he alone stood up 
 to give advice.^ 
 
 That advice was an alliance with Thebes, and it was due to the 
 diplomacy of Demosthenes that, at Chaeronea (338 b.c), Philip 
 had to face, not an isolated Athens, but Athens and Thebes to- 
 gether. But they had no competent generals to oppose to his 
 strategy, and he won the battle. The Athenians were chaeionea, 
 treated with the greatest consideration, and accepted 338 B.C. 
 his terms of peace. The Macedonian party was now predominant 
 in Athens, but the hopes of Demosthenes and his intrigues were 
 kept alive, first by the death of Philip in 336, and again by a false 
 report of the death of Alexander. He took no pride, though a 
 Greek well might, in the conquests of Alexander in the Far East ; 
 
 1 Blass does not, with the majority of scholars, regard the Fourth Philippic 
 as wholly the work of an imitator of Demosthenes. It is, he thinks, a com- 
 pilation of genuine fragments, riiade, with additions of his own, by some fourth- 
 century writer whose ambition was to compose a Demosthenic Philippic. 
 
 2 On the Crown 218 ff. 
 
 HIST. IJREEK LIT. — 23 
 
354 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 he was the typical narrow patriot and could not envisage with 
 the complacency of Isocrates a general expansion of Greece 
 under the leadership of Macedon. The six years that followed 
 Chaeronea were marked by only one oratorical triumph. This 
 was in 330 when his old enemy Aeschines brought his long- 
 delayed action against Ctesiphon, who, in 336, had proposed 
 that Demosthenes should receive a golden crown for his serv- 
 ices to Athens in that final crisis. The Macedonian party now 
 seemed strong enough to crush Demosthenes, and Aeschines 
 in his speech Against Ctesiphon tried to prove that his whole 
 pohtical career had been insincere and fatal to Athens. Demos- 
 thenes could have wished for no better opportunity to vindicate 
 his policy. The speech On the Crown is the masterpiece of his 
 oratory, a splendid epilogue to his political life. Aeschines won 
 less than one fifth of the votes, and disappeared from Athens and 
 from politics. Of Demosthenes we hear no more until 324 when 
 
 the affair of Harpalus disgraced the close of his career. 
 Harpalus 
 
 Harpalus, the absconding treasurer of Alexander, 
 
 arrived in Athens with 700 talents, hoping to induce the 
 Athenians to support him against his master. This they refused 
 to do, and he was lodged in the Acropolis in the charge of certain 
 commissioners, of whom Demosthenes was one. Harpalus escaped, 
 and half - the money had disappeared. When the court of 
 Areopagus investigated, they found Demosthenes guilty of receiv- 
 ing a bribe of twenty talents. Hypereides, a member of his own 
 party, accused him publicly, and he was condemned to pay a 
 heavy fine. In default of this he was imprisoned, but escaped and 
 went into exile. That he took the money of Harpalus there is 
 little doubt. Perhaps he thought that money stolen from Alexan- 
 der might fairly be converted to Athenian use. But this was not 
 the opinion of his judges, and that in a community whose standards 
 of political morahty were never impossibly high. 
 
 In 323 the hopes of Athens were revived by the death of 
 Alexander, and Demosthenes was recalled. After some slight 
 success, Athens and her allies were beaten at Crannon (322) by 
 
DEMOSTHENES 355 
 
 the Macedonian general Antipater. He proved a harder master 
 than Philip, and, among other humiliations, exacted from Athens 
 the surrender of Demosthenes, Hypereides, and cer- Crannon, 
 tain others of the anti-Macedonian agitators. Demos- 322 B.C. 
 thenes fled to the temple of Poseidon on the island of Calauria. 
 There he took poison rather than give himself up to the messen- 
 gers of Antipater. Forty years later the Athenians set up his 
 statue in bronze. 
 
 When Longinus^ sets out to praise Demosthenes, he begins by 
 adding up the qualities in which his contemporary Hypereides 
 surpassed him. He is flexible and Demosthenes is not ; he, like 
 Lysias, could merge his personality in his client's, while Demos- 
 thenes must always be himself; he is piquant, witty. Character- 
 charming, a master of the pathos that was so telling in istics 
 epideictic eloquence ; Demosthenes is none of these. But you 
 may add up all these points of excellence, and still the greatness 
 of Demosthenes is not to be shaken by arithmetic. For the very 
 strength of his individuality which forbade him to be flippant, or 
 fascinating, or histrionic, gave him the power to rise above him- 
 self and even what was mortal, and sweep away his hearers on the 
 full tide of eloquence. He could not have written the short 
 speech for Phryne the courtesan, which left not a dry eye among 
 those who heard Hypereides, but he 
 
 " Wielded at will that fierce democraty, 
 Shook the arsenal, and fulmin'Ii over Greece." 
 
 IVAen I read a speech of Isocrates, said Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 
 / become sober and calm . . . but when I take up a speech of 
 Demosthenes, I am stirred to enthusiasm, moved hither and thither, 
 and I share in all the emotions that sway the mind of man? 
 
 From the Greek critic, whose glory it is that he preferred the 
 grand manner to the faultless, down to Milton, metaphors that 
 express force and fire, that draw on the forces of nature, mighty 
 rivers, sea tides, thunder and lightning and strong winds, have been 
 
 ' On the Sublime 34. * On the Eloquence of Demosthenes 22. 
 
356 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lavished on Demosthenes. One who read only these panegyrics 
 might almost imagine him a rugged, untutored orator standing 
 before the Assembly with awkward gestures, and astounding it, as 
 Odysseus astounded the Trojans, with words that blinded and 
 overwhelmed like a snowstorm in winter.^ But he is, in fact, a 
 fourth-century orator equipped with all the rhetorical arts of his 
 time, as careful in his effects as the passionless Isoc- 
 ^ * rates. About his actual training we know little, ex- 
 cept that he did not attend the fashionable and expensive school 
 of Isocrates,^ but was probably taught informally by Isaeus, to 
 whom he would naturally turn as an expert in a suit such as he 
 intended to bring against his guardians. In certain of the earlier 
 forensic speeches he has, in fact, plagiarized the commonplaces 
 of Isaeus.'* He was a close student of Thucydides, and in the 
 speech On the Symmories and elsewhere there are clear echoes of 
 the historian's difficult and elaborate style, with its condensed 
 thought. Later, the influence of the smoother style of Isocrates 
 can be detected. The oratory of Demosthenes is naturally raised 
 to a higher pitch in the political harangues than in the forensic 
 speeches. Such a speech as that On the Crown was carefully 
 revised and polished between its delivery and its publication. In 
 his choice of words Demosthenes was no purist like Isocrates 
 or Lysias. He does not avoid colloquialisms and references to 
 the most trivial things of ordinary life. He is fond of proverbs, 
 and his speeches are made vivid with metaphors and roughened 
 with oaths and ejaculations. You will never find an oath in 
 Isocrates. 
 
 Demosthenes was careful to avoid hiatus — the meeting of two 
 vowels in consecutive words. Closely connected with this rule 
 about hiatus is a question which, for the last quarter of a century, 
 has agitated students of Demosthenes, and is likely to remain in 
 
 1 //. Ill 222. 
 
 '^ Gomperz maintains, against the generally received opinion, that Demos- 
 thenes was a pupil of Plato. 
 
 'Navarre, La Rhetorique Grecque 1 68 ff. 
 
AESCHINES 357 
 
 debate. This is his use of rhythm. Poetic prose has always been 
 regarded by persons of taste as a weakness or a heresy. It is reck- 
 oned one of the " pleasant atrocities " of Tacitus that he begins 
 his Annals with an unconscious hexameter.^ Isocrates 
 and the other writers on the technique of prose warned 
 their students that there was a line which must not be crossed ; 
 rhythm they must use, but they must not degenerate into metrical 
 prose. The difference between prose and verse rhythm hes in this, 
 that the former, in the first place, has unlimited freedom to change 
 the quality of the rhythmical effect, and, in the second place, the 
 correspondence observed in prose is not between whole sentences, 
 which would be the equivalent of the strophe or stanza in verse, but 
 between clause and clause, what Cicero calls a cantus obscurior. 
 Any comparison with verse must be inexact, but if one must liken 
 the rhythmical prose of a writer like Demosthenes to a verse type, 
 one might say that it is most nearly related to the strophe- 
 less dithyramb or no me as we see it in the newly discovered 
 Persae of Timotheus. That there is such a frequent and close 
 correspondence of members or clauses of the periods of Demos- 
 thenes Blass has certainly shown.^ But who shall decide whether 
 it is due to that instinct for rhythm which was keener in the Greeks 
 than in ourselves, or whether, as seems less likely, Demosthenes 
 followed some rule that he had formulated and could have im- 
 parted to another ? ' That he avoided the accumulation of short 
 syllables Blass has shown, but so do all who write in the grand 
 manner. 
 
 In the most important rival of Demosthenes we have a man of 
 a very different moral fiber. Aeschinks was born in 389 B.C., the 
 
 1 Yet the most exalted English prose may fall naturally into a hexameter : 
 " He poureth contempt upon princes, and weakeneth the strength of the 
 mighty." 
 
 2 AUisc\e Beredsamkeit 98 ff., and see especially his later articles in Neue 
 Jahrb., 1902 and 1904. 
 
 ' Sua sponte, etiamsi id non agas, cadunt plerumque numerose, says Cicero 
 of Gorgianic prose. Orator § 175. 
 
358 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 son of an obscure Athenian schoolmaster. His mother, if we are 
 to take the word of Demosthenes, was an inferior priestess of 
 certain rather shady rites, in which she was assisted by her son. 
 At any rate, Aeschines and his two brothers, who all 
 raised themselves to state offices, were self-made men 
 of the lower middle class. After following, without success, the pro- 
 fession of a provincial actor, Aeschines entered politics by a back 
 door. Under the patronage of Eubulus.he became clerk of the 
 Assembly, whose business it was to read the decrees and keep the 
 records. Later in life, he was ashamed of having held this insig- 
 nificant office, but he was able to use it as a stepping-stone to 
 positions of trust. He had a good presence, a fine voice, and a 
 talent for extempore speaking, and he turned them all to good 
 account. At the age of thirty-two (357 B.C.) he began his politi- 
 cal career, but we have no record of a speech before 348, when he 
 denounced Philip after the fall of Olynthus. In 347 he went on 
 a minor embassy to the Arcadian assembly at Megalopolis ; in 346 
 he was sent with Demosthenes and eight others to negotiate terms 
 of peace with Philip ; and he was a member of the second em- 
 bassy sent to receive Philip's oath. From this time he appears 
 as a supporter of Macedon, and as the owner of certain estates 
 which we can only account for as presents from Philip. So at 
 any rate Demosthenes accounted for them, and in 345 he prepared 
 to impeach Aeschines as a traitor to Athens. A rich Athenian 
 named Timarchus was to support the accusation. Aeschines fore- 
 stalled the attack by prosecuting Timarchus under the old and 
 neglected law of Solon which forbade the rights of citizens to 
 those whose life was infamous. The speech Against Timarchus 
 Against (344), the first that Aeschines published, is the most 
 Timarchus scurrilous that has come down to us from the Athenian 
 courts, where the rules of the game allowed personal abuse of a 
 kind that to-day even tlie newspapers wculd suppress. Timarchus 
 was convicted, and disappeared from public life. In 343 Demos- 
 thenes himself came forward to impeach Aeschines, who spoke in 
 his defense the speech On the False Eynbassy. This was the 
 
AESCHINES 359 
 
 apologia for his political policy and is the best of his speeches. 
 He was acquitted by thirty votes. In 340 he won a great oratori- 
 cal triumph. The Locrians of Amphissa, seven miles from 
 Delphi, had agreed with Thebes to wipe off the old on the False 
 score against Athens by accusing her in the Amphicty- Embassy 
 onic Council of sacrilege in connection with the dedication of cer- 
 tain shields which Athens had set up in the shrine, after Plataea. 
 Aeschines, as an Athenian deputy, was at the council, and, being 
 warned of the plot, had a sudden inspiration. More than two cen- 
 turies earlier the plain of Crisa near the temple had been sol- 
 emnly dedicated to Apollo, and curses laid oh any who should 
 cultivate it. But the Locrians had cultivated the plain, and 
 Aeschines now made a sensational speech urging the council to 
 punish the impious people of Amphissa : / stood up and pointed 
 out to the Amphictyons the plain which lies below the temple in full 
 view. Amphictyons, I cried, you see that this plain has been culti- 
 vated by the Amphissians, that they have built potteries there, and 
 stables. You see with your own eyes how the harbor that was 
 devoted to the god and laid under a curse has been rebuilt. No 
 one knows better than you how they exact port dues and make a 
 revenue from that sacred harbor. . . . This I said, and much 
 more to the same effect, and the Amphictyons shouted aloud. In 
 the excitement there was not another word said about the shields 
 that we had dedicated, but only about punishing the Amphissians} 
 This once, then, Aeschines served Athens by averting from her an 
 Amphictyonic war. 
 
 The speech Against Ctesiphon, in which Aeschines gives this 
 vivid description, was spoken in 330, and was an Against 
 attack on the political career of Demosthenes, in Ctesiphon 
 whose honor Ctesiphon had proposed a vote of a golden crown, 
 to be bestowed in the theater. It is the longest of the three 
 extant speeches. Aeschines argues that the proposal is illegal for 
 more than one reason, and that, in any case, the honor is not 
 deserved. The speech has always been overshadowed by the reply 
 1 Aeschines, Against Ctesiphon 119 ff. 
 
36o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of Demosthenes, the splendid speech On the Crown^ but it has 
 many effective passages. Such is that in which Aeschines reviews 
 the grievances and mortifications of Greece. Thebes blotted out 
 in a single day, Sparta ruined, and the Spartans bowed in the dust 
 before Alexander. Last of all, Athens, once the refuge and shel- 
 ter of all Greece, to whom every, other state sent embassies, is 
 fighting, not now for the leadership, but for her very soil. And 
 all this since Demosthenes entered politics. He is like one of 
 those dangerous men of whom Hesiod wrote in the Works and 
 Days, who destroy a whole state by their baleful advice. Aes- 
 chines was fond of quoting the poets — it was not for nothing that 
 he had been an actor and a schoolmaster's son — and he recited 
 the verses from Hesiod to point his parallel. This was his last 
 appearance in Athenian politics. He was fined a thousand drach- 
 mae for his failure to win one fifth of the votes, and withdrew to 
 Rhodes, where it is said that, disappointed by Alexander's death 
 of any hope of reinstatement at Athens, he spent the rest of his 
 life in teaching. 
 
 The prominence of Aeschines is mainly due to his collisions 
 with Demosthenes. Twice on his defense, the third time him- 
 self the aggressor, he summed up in the three speeches which are 
 all that he published that short but bitter conflict of sixteen years 
 between the friend and the enemy of Macedon. Inferior at all 
 points to Demosthenes, he has certain characteristics that remind 
 one of an orator of the earlier fifth-century group, Andocides. 
 They both have the same slightly unprofessional air of men who 
 had not from the first made oratory their single aim, and neither 
 of them ever undertook speech writing for others. But Aeschines 
 was the stronger man, and once he had entered politics he pur- 
 
 1 Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 216, tells an anecdote of Aeschines at 
 Rhodes. He had given a public reading of his speech Against Ctesiphon, 
 whereupon the Rhodians expressed their surprise that so brilliant a speech 
 was defeated, and their doubts of the sanity of the Athenian judges: You 
 would not wonder, said Aeschines, if you had heard Demosthenes make his 
 speech in defence. 
 
HYPEREIDES 361 
 
 sued his ambition with an energy and tenacity foreign to Andocides. 
 He was proud of his power of improvisation, and his speeches 
 wear the signs of it. No one could taunt him with the midnight 
 oil and the marks of incubation which he ridiculed in 
 Demosthenes, but he paid for this negligence by an 
 occasional confusion of expression. He had a special gift for 
 dramatic description, but in his narratives he never rises to the 
 eloquence that Demosthenes could use in such passages as the 
 famous description, in the speech On the Crown, of the coming 
 to Athens of the messenger with the news of Philip's occupation 
 of Elatea, and the night of panic that followed. But Aeschines 
 was excellent in a malicious anecdote of the stage fright of Dem- 
 osthenes before Philip, or of his own astuteness in turning the 
 tables on the impertinent Locrians. The mark of the stage is on 
 his vocabulary, which is full of poetic words and metaphors that 
 the stricter orators had barred. He was far from rigid in avoid- 
 ing hiatus, and in other respects, also, shows his independence of 
 the conventions of the school of Isocrates. What really spoils all 
 his eloquence is the fact that, though it takes the tone of patriot- 
 ism and makes the usual pathetic apostrophes to a glorious past, 
 it rings hollow because, however expedient at the time for Athens, 
 his policy was simply expedient and no more. It is much easier 
 to be truly moving when, like Demosthenes, the speaker puts 
 forth all the eloquence of one who pleads a lost cause. 
 
 Of the supporters of Demosthenes in the anti- Macedonian party, 
 Hypereides was the most important and the most eloquent. He 
 was bom about 389 B.C. of a prosperous middle-class family in the 
 deme Colly tus, Plato's deme, where oratory, according 
 to the tradition, was in the air you breathed. He is said 
 to have attended the school of Isocrates. In his private life he had 
 the reputation of an epicure. The comic poets made jests about 
 his fondness for gambling, his morning stroll in the fish market, 
 his friendships with courtesans. He was one of Phryne's lovers, 
 and when she was accused of impiety, made a celebrated speech 
 in her defense. Nor was she the only woman of her class for 
 
362 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 whom, following his profession of speechwright, he wrote speeches, 
 none of which survive. His appearance in political trials dates 
 from 360. In 343 he impeached Philocrates, who had arranged 
 the peace with Philip and was the bete noire of the anti-Macedo- 
 nian party. Shortly before Chaeronea Hypereides proposed that 
 Demosthenes should be rewarded by a vote of a golden crown. 
 In the panic after the battle he was one of the foremost to take 
 measures for the safety of the city, and made certain illegal pro- 
 posals, such as that the slaves should be freed. When he was 
 formally accused on this score, he pleaded that the arras of 
 Macedon had blinded his eyes to the laws, and the excuse was 
 accepted. When Demosthenes took the money of Harpalus, 
 Hypereides, his political adherent, was one of his accusers. The 
 exile of Demosthenes placed him at the head of his party, and, on 
 the death of Alexander (323), he was one of the most active in 
 advising resistance to Antipater in what is called the Lamian war 
 from the siege of the hill city, Lamia, near Thermopylae, by the 
 Athenian general Leosthenes, in that winter. In the following 
 year Hypereides was captured and put to death by the agents of 
 Antipater. 
 
 A complete manuscript of Hypereides, with the scholia, which was 
 known to exist in the library of the king of Hungary, was destroyed 
 in the invasion of the Turks in 1526. From that date until the 
 middle of the nineteenth century Hypereides was, like Bacchy- 
 lides, a mere name, depending on the judgments of the Greek 
 and Roman critics and the evidence of some insignificant frag- 
 ments. But in 1847 and 1856 there were discovered in Egypt 
 papyri containing four more or less complete speeches, that 
 Against Demosthenes (in the affair of Harpalus), which is too much 
 mutilated to be of great importance, the speeches For Lycophron 
 and For Euxenippus, and the famous Funeral Oration spoken 
 for those who fell in the Lamian war. In 1888 the Museum of 
 the Louvre acquired a papyrus containing the speech Against 
 Athenogenes. In 1890 the British Museum acquired the papyrus 
 manuscript of the speech Against Philippides {circa 336) which was 
 
HYPEREIDES 363 
 
 delivered in a political trial against one of the pro-Macedonian party. 
 So much, at least, the sands of Egypt have restored, and we have, 
 besides, over sixty titles of speeches from which we may judge of 
 the activity of Hypereides. The most interesting recoveries are 
 the Athenogenes and the Funeral Oration, the latter because, 
 though Hypereides was not an epideictic orator, this single speech 
 had a great reputation in antiquity, and though we know so much 
 from Thucydides, Plato, and Isocrates as to the general style and 
 etiquette of Greek funeral speeches, this is the only surviving one 
 of its kind that was actually delivered. The Athenogenes {circa 328) 
 was mentioned with the Phryne by Longinus as peculiarly typical 
 of the talents of Hypereides, who shone in a cause celebre for 
 which the grand style of Demosthenes would have been out of 
 place. Much of the speech is lost or hard to decipher. Athen- 
 ogenes was a wily Egyptian who sold perfumes in Athens. One of 
 his slaves attracted the notice of a country gentleman, the client 
 of Hypereides. Athenogenes consented to sell the slave, but ad- 
 vised the plaintiff, who was, as all Greek speech wrights say of 
 their clients, 'inexperienced in affairs,' to take over, as well, the 
 shop, the slaves, and the debts of the business, which, he said, 
 were insignificant and covered by the stock. A beautiful courte- 
 san named Antigone was employed by Athenogenes to persuade 
 the victim to sign the contract, and she secured a slave girl as her 
 share of the plunder. The plaintiff soon found himself liable for 
 heavy debts incurred by Athenogenes. The law of contracts was 
 against him, and he could only appeal to equity and the sympathy 
 of the jury. The speech is full of spirit and humor, a picture of 
 the shady side of the life of the Athenian middle class and demi- 
 monde. 
 
 Hypereides had a great reputation as a speaker, and many of 
 his imitators ranked him first as a model of the Attic manner. 
 Cicero bracketed him with Demosthenes, and we have seen that 
 when Longinus wished to emphasize the excellence of the latter, 
 he allowed to Hypereides a list of charms whose sheer number 
 Demosthenes could not rival. Brilliant, easy, and charming, 
 
364 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Hypereides lacked the grand style. Nor was he profoundly 
 original, and it was easy for later critics to show that he had 
 plagiarized passages from Demosthenes and did not scruple to 
 borrow a striking commonplace from Isocrates.' He takes little 
 pains to avoid hiatus, and it is only in the epideictic Funeral 
 Oration that he is careful to use the figures of rhetoric that had 
 been developed by Gorgias and his school ; elsewhere he has less 
 art than Lysias, and can hardly be classed with the Isocratic 
 group of writers. The Rhodian school of rhetoric whose style was 
 said to be the golden mean of Asianism and exaggerated Atticism 
 took Hypereides for its model. 
 
 The Athenian orators of the generation of Demosthenes were 
 drawn from the bourgeois class with one exception. This 
 was Lycurgus, a genuine aristocrat, whose family 
 ^ " ^ held a hereditary priesthood and had been distin- 
 
 guished for its public services among the richest citizens of 
 Athens. Lycurgus was born about 390 B.C., and his life runs 
 parallel with that of Demosthenes, to whose party he belonged. 
 Isocrates has the credit of his education, and, like many of the 
 pupils of that famous school, he turned to the career of a man of 
 action. In 338 he succeeded Eubulus as minister of finance and 
 public works, holding the office for twelve years. He was one of 
 the most useful of all Athenian statesmen, and under his adminis- 
 tration Athens increased her navy and restored her finances. 
 Next to Pericles he did most to beautify Athens, built the 
 Panathenaic stadium on the Ilissus, and rebuilt the Lycean gym- 
 nasium. His name is forever associated with the theater of 
 Dionysus which he completed and adorned with the marble 
 thrones that still survive, and the stage buildings still to be dis- 
 cerned among the later additions.' To one so deeply religious and 
 conservative these public acts seemed a pious duty, and it was in 
 the same spirit that he ordered that the state should provide 
 authorized texts of the three great Athenian dramatists, which the 
 
 ^ Cp. Funeral Oration 13 with Isocr. Evagoras 65. 
 2 Dorpfeld, Das Griechische Theater 36 ff. 
 
LYCURGUS 365 
 
 actors of their plays were in future bound to observe. This 
 official copy was secured for the Alexandrian Library by the sharp 
 practice of Ptolemy Euergetes, who forfeited a , large deposit 
 rather than return it to Athens. 
 
 In Athens the life of Lycurgus was quoted as a model of 
 asceticism. He carried his austerity into his public life, and prose- 
 cuted with unrelenting bitterness any citizen who fell short of his 
 ideal. Like other idealists who desired to make over the 
 Athenian character, he admired the methods of Sparta and would 
 have liked to import them into Athens. If he had lived so long, 
 he would, no doubt, have shared the fate of Demosthenes and 
 Hypereides at the hands of Antipater, but he died in 324, about 
 the time of the affair of Harpalus. . Of fifteen speeches asr 
 cribed to him, nearly all delivered after 338, only one sur- 
 vives, that Against Leocrates (330). It is marked by Against 
 the energy and bitterness that made him the terror of Leociates 
 all who had failed in their duty to Athens. Leocrates was an 
 Athenian who, after the battle of Chaeronea, had turned his back 
 on the desperate fortunes of his country and fled to Rhodes. 
 After six years he ventured to return and was promptly impeached 
 by the vigilant Lycurgus. In the name of patriotism he de- 
 manded the death of Leocrates, a severe penalty for an act of 
 cowardice, not in the field of war, and already expiated by six 
 years of exile. But the Athenians were slow to forgive, and, the 
 votes being even, Leocrates barely escaped with his life. In this 
 short speech Lycurgus quotes fifty-five verses from the lost 
 Erechtheus of Euripides, several Unes of Homer, three or four 
 passages from poets who cannot be identified,^ and, most valuable 
 of all to the modern reader, thirty-two elegiacs of Tyrtaeus in 
 praise of the patriot. It may be seen that Lycurgus had a decided 
 leaning to the epideictic style. The Leocrates is a locus classicus 
 on Greek patriotism, and differs in other respects from the regular 
 
 1 Among these, in § 92, is a Greek version of the saying, Quem deus vult 
 perdere dementat prius, perhaps the most famous and most debated quotation 
 that exists. 
 
366 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 forensic speech. The tone is thoroughly gnomic, and Lycurgus 
 
 dwells on the general aspects of the case, not condescending to 
 
 touch on the private life of Leocrates. His style, which was 
 
 dignified and dry, often reflects the influence of Isocrates. He 
 
 lacked the flexibility of Hypereides, and was no purist in his use 
 
 of words, so that he does not rank with the best models of Attic 
 
 eloquence. 
 
 The last in the canon of ten orators, and last in merit, was a 
 
 metic, disqualified for political life. Deinarchus was born at 
 
 Corinth about 360 b.c. He settled in Athens as a 
 Deinarchus , . , , • 1 • , , , 
 
 speechwright and gamed a considerable reputation. 
 
 His chief activity falls in the years 322-307, when the oligarchs 
 with whom he sympathized were in the ascendant in Athens. 
 When the democrats returned to power in 307, he withdrew to 
 Chalcis. Dionysius devoted a separate treatise to Deinarchus, but 
 rather in order to distinguish the genuine from the spurious 
 speeches out of about one hundred attributed to him, than by 
 way of paying him a special compliment. Of the sixty speeches 
 that he allowed to be genuine, only three are extant, together 
 with a long list of titles. Against Demosthenes, Against Aris- 
 togeiton, and Against Philocles were all written for clients and 
 all connected with the affair of Harpalus. Deinarchus was an 
 industrious imitator. He echoes all the greater Attic orators, but 
 especially Demosthenes. His speeches are perhaps the least im- 
 portant surviving specimens of Athenian eloquence, and his place 
 in the canon is a tribute to his industry and his professional suc- 
 cess, acquired, however, at a time when all his greater competitors 
 had been removed. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 Aeschines 
 
 I. Manuscripts. These are numerous but poor. Among the best are the 
 Coislinianus, loth cent., at Paris, and the Helmstadiensis, at Moscow. 
 
 II. Editions. See the Collections of the Orators. Bremi, Zurich, 1824. 
 Benseler, Leipzig, i860. Schulz, Leipzig, 1865. Weidner, Berlin, 1872. 
 Fratike, Leipzig, 1883. Gwatkin, London, 1890. Blass, Leipzig, 1897. 
 
DEINARCHUS 367 
 
 Against Ctesiphon : Simcox, Oxford, 1872 (together with Demosthenes, On 
 the Crown). 
 
 III. Literature. Adam, De codd. Aesch., Berlin, 1882. Tschiedel, 
 Quaest. Aesch., Berlin, 1887. 
 
 IV. Translations. Francis, Leland. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Preuss, Leipzig, 1896. 
 
 Demosthenes 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The best is the Parisintts, loth cent., in the Biblio- 
 thSque Nationale; a facsimile was published by Leroux, Paris, 1893. A 
 manuscript that has lately become prominent is the Laurentianus, 13th cent., 
 at Florence. 
 
 II. Editions. Aldus, Venice, 1504. Reiske, and Baiter and Sauppe in 
 their Oratores Attici. Voemel, 2d ed., Paris, 1868. Dindorf, with scholia, 
 Oxford, 1841-1851. Blass, Leipzig, 1889-1892. Butcher, vol. I in Bibliotheca 
 Oxon., Oxford, 1903. Selected Orations: Westermann, 7th ed., Berlin, 1875. 
 Westermann- Rosenberg, Berlin, 1903. Rehdantz, Leipzig, 1865-1866. Reh- 
 dantz-Blass, 1866-1890. Weil, Paris, 2d edition, 1883. Paley and Sandys, 
 Private Orations, Cambridge, 1875. On the Crown: Simcox, Oxford, 1872; 
 Weil, Paris, 1877; Goodwin, Cambridge, 1901. Against Meidias: Goodwin, 
 Cambridge, 1906. 
 
 III. Literature. Shaefer, Demosthenes u. seine Zeit, Leipzig, 1856- 
 1858; 2d ed., 1885. Croiset, Des idees morales dans Veloq. polit. de Dem., 
 Paris, 1874. Bodendorff, Das Rhythm. Gesetz des Dem., Konigsberg, 1880. 
 Butcher, Demosthenes, London, 1881. Christ, Die Atticusausgabe des Dem., 
 Munich, 1882. Diels and Schubart, Didymos Commentar z. Dem., Berlin, 
 1904. Blass in Rhein. Mus. 33. Riihl ib. 34. Perrot in Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, 1873. Drerup in Jahrb. f. cl. Phil, Suppl. 24, 1898. Blass in 
 Neue Jahrb., 1932 and 1904. Diels and Schubart, Didymos vepl Ariiw<r04mvs, 
 Leipzig, 1904. Bredif, Demosthenes, Eng. trans, by Macmahon, Chicago, 1887. 
 Girard in Atudes sur I' Eloquence Attique, Paris, 1874. Adams in Trans. 
 A.P.A.22. Cartault, De causa Harpalica, Paris, i88l. 
 
 IV. Translations. Leland, Collier. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Preuss, Index Demosthenicus, Leipzig, 1892. 
 
 DEINARCHUS 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The same as for Antiphon. 
 
 II. Editions. See the Collections of Attic Orators. Maetzner, Berlin, 
 1842. Thalheim, Berlin, 1887. Blass, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1888. 
 
 III. Lexicon. Forman, Index Andocideus, Lycurgeus, Dinarcheus, Ox- 
 . ford, 1897. 
 
368 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 HyPERElDES 
 
 I. Manuscripts. These consist of four Egyptian papyri recovered in the 
 latter half of the 19th cent. That containing the Athenogenes (dating about 
 the 2d cent. B.C.) is at Paris in the Louvre, and, except for some slight frag. 
 among the Petrie papyri, and the Persae of Timotheus, is the oldest extant 
 manuscript of a classical Greek author. 
 
 II. Editions. Four speeches are included in Didot's collection of 
 Oratores Attici, Paris, 1868. Blass, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1881; 3d ed., 1895 ('°- 
 cludes all six speeches and the frag.). Ag. Demosthenes: ed. princ, Harris, 
 London, 1848. Babington, London, 1850. Boeckh, Halle, 1848. For Eux- 
 enippus : ed. princ, Babington, Cambridge, 1853; Schneidewin, Gottingen, 
 1854. Cobet in yJ/»««ojryK«, 1853; Comparetti, Pisa, 1 862. Funeral Oration: 
 fi/.^rawi:., Babington, Cambridge, 1858-1859; Cobet, Leyden, 1858. Sauppe, 
 Gottingen, 1858; Cafifiaux, Paris, 1866. Ag. Athenogenes a.TiA Ag. Philippides : 
 ed. princ, Revillout, Revue Egypt., 1889. Kenyon in Classical Texts from the 
 Papyri in the British Museum, London, 1891. Weil in Rev. d. Etudes gr. 
 1892. Blass in Neue Jahrb., 1892-1893. Kenyon (with trans.), London, 1893. 
 
 III. Literature. Girard, Etudes sur I'eloquence Atlique, Paris, 1874. 
 Kayser, Lart oratoire, le style et la langue d'Hyperide in Musee Beige 2. 
 
 IV. Lexicon. Westermann, Index Graecitatis Hyperideae, Leipzig, 
 1860-1863. 
 
 Lycurgus 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The same as for Antiphon. 
 
 II. Editions. See the Collections of Attic Orators. Melancthon, Wit- 
 tenberg, 1545. Maetzner, Berlin, 1836. Kiessling, Halle, 1847. Rehdantz, 
 Leipzig, 1876. Scheibe, Leipzig, 1885. 
 
 III. Literature. Diirrbach, L'orateur Lycurgue, Paris, 1889. 
 
 IV. Lexicon. Forman, Index Andocideus, Lycurgeus, Dinarcheus, Ox- 
 ford, 1897. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 SOCRATES AND THE LESSER SOCRATICS 
 
 Socrates, son of the sculptor Sophroniscus, was born about 
 469 B.C. He grew up in the Athens of Pericles, the ' school of 
 Hellas ' where the laws secured even to one of his humble origin 
 a training in music and gymnastic. His education falls a full 
 generation before the coming to Athens of the sophists and the 
 new ideals of teaching, but he cannot have been ignorant of the 
 doctrines of the Ionian philosophers, and Anaxagoras, then resi^ 
 dent in Athens, could not fail to influence his mind. He seems to 
 have followed, for a time, his father's craft, but abandoned it to 
 devote himself to the life of a reformer. He must have been 
 fairly launched in his vocation as a teacher, and known beyond 
 Athens, before his admirer, Chaerephon, brought back from Delphi 
 the remarkable response that there was no wiser man than Socra- 
 tes. What was the motive of such a statement has never been 
 explained. The effect of the oracle was to strengthen his sense of 
 responsibility. He interpreted it to mean that he alone knew his 
 own ignorance and pursued with the greater energy his task of 
 convincing other men of theirs. 
 
 But besides the message from Delphi, which he was far too 
 pious to question, he had other and peculiar grounds for self-con- 
 fidence. Prom childhood throughout his life he received on occa- 
 sion a sudden intimation as to his actions, a warning voice heard 
 from within. This he interpreted as-a divine sign (to &M/*oVtov). 
 Other men must seek oracles, but he had only to await and obey 
 the clear command of a divine critic. So at least he believed, 
 whether because of a vein of mysticism which came to the surface 
 only here in the life of this clear-headed thinker, or because his 
 piety refused to allow him the credit of his wise and quickly 
 
 HIST. GHEEK LIT. — 24 369 
 
370 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 formed decisions. Plato and Xenophon vary in their precise con- 
 ception of the functions of the ' divine sign,' but both make Socra- 
 tes speak plainly more than once of this strange gift.^ Not in- 
 variably however was he to be restrained from the inexpedient. 
 Late in hfe he married Xanthippe, who, whether justly or not, has 
 passed into a proverb as a scold, the whetstone of his philosophy.^ 
 In 424 Aristophanes brought out the Clouds, a satire on the 
 new education and the methods of the sophists. In that play he 
 ridicules Socrates as one of the most conspicuous in the new 
 movement which he detested. For another twenty-five years after 
 the Clouds Socrates carried on his teaching, for which, unlike the 
 rest of the sophists, he took no fees. His interests, except for 
 occasional military duties, were limited to the streets of Athens, 
 where his grotesque features, as of a Silenus, his uncouth gait, his 
 self-confidence and air of a fanatic, were familiar to all. At first 
 he was, no doubt, tolerated as an oddity, but he came to be an 
 annoyance, regarded with jealous and irritated eyes by the major- 
 ity who, like Aristophanes, were too conservative not to hate his 
 attitude. He was different from all others, and to be different is 
 to be disliked. Heracleitus had been in his way a fanatic, hostile 
 to the ideals of his age, but he had withdrawn from observation, 
 and in any case Ionia was always more indulgent than Athens to 
 independent thought. Socrates was an aggressive eccentric, a 
 born missionary. His mission was nothing less than to educate 
 the higher classes, to whom alone he addressed himself, into the 
 conviction that they were less qualified for government, as re- 
 garded expert knowledge, than the very cobblers and artisans of 
 the city. Few persons beyond their first youth enjoy being en- 
 
 1 The more important referenees to the divine sign are Plato, Apology 31 
 C-D; Euthydemus 272 E; Phaedrus 242 B; Xenophon, Memorabilia I. I. 2; 
 4. 8. I ; Symposium 8. 5. 
 
 2 For a thorough and sympathetic sifting of the charges against Xanthippe, 
 see the not wholly serious essays of Zeller, Zur Ehrenrettung der Xanthippe in 
 his Vortrage, Leipzig, 1865 ; and Gildersleeve, Xanthippe and Socrates in 
 Essays and Studies, Baltimore, 1890. 
 
SOCRATES AND THE LESSER SOCRATICS 371 
 
 lightened, and Socrates was certain to antagonize the older mem- 
 bers of Athenian society. To them he seemed, as indeed he was, an 
 individuaUst who, standing aloof from the political interests of the 
 state, neither served it himself nor educated those who did ; who 
 despised, or set his face against, the whole range of Hellenic cul- 
 ture in which the Athenians took a, peculiar pride ; a cosmopolitan, 
 which, to the average Greek, with his intense local patriotism, was 
 almost the same thing as a traitor to one's state ; finally, he was a 
 friend of oligarchy, that nightmare of the Athenian crowd. All 
 this might have been ignored as mere eccentricity ; what could 
 not be forgiven was his success with the younger generation, 
 always eager for an enlightenment. Youths of all classes followed 
 his steps, caught iire from his enthusiasm for knowledge, and de- 
 lighted in his refutation of popular notions. His enemies had to 
 see him influencing men of all temperaments, the gentle and 
 heroic Theaetetus, the simple and honest Crito, the emotional 
 ApoUodorus, Critias who was to prove the most hateful of the 
 Thirty Tyrants,^ the gay and brilliant Alcibiades who was to avenge 
 himself on the democrats for his exile by betraying Athens to 
 Sparta, Plato the visionary aristocrat, Xenophon the soldier of 
 fortune with his slack notions of the duties of an Athenian. It 
 was not till after the fall of the oligarchs that the Athenian demo- 
 crats decided that they could now silence Socrates. Anytus, a poli- 
 tician who had been prominent in restoring the democracy, brought 
 the accusation : Socrates is guilty of crime because he does not believe 
 in the gods whom the city worships, but introduces new and strange 
 deities ; moreover he corrupts the youth. Socrates refused to con- 
 ciliate his judges or to withdraw from Athens. He was condemned 
 to death, and a month later drank the hemlock (399 B.C.). 
 
 Of all teachers who, writing nothing' themselves, depend on the 
 
 ^ The literary activity of Critias has been overshadowed by his notoriety 
 as a fierce oligarch. He wrote poetry and prose. We have fragments , of 
 political elegies ; of two dramas, decidedly Euripidean in their reflective 
 and speculative character ; and a few short fragments of his Constitutions, 
 a type of history which he was one of the first to write. 
 
372 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 testimony of disciples, Socrates is, with the exception of Christ, the 
 most important. We have now to consider his positive contribution 
 to the history of thought and morals. He is, in the first place, the 
 Socratic founder of utilitarian ethics. Moderation, that emi- 
 ethics nently Greek virtue, self-control, self-knowledge, were, 
 
 in his philosophy of life, the essential virtues, and were to be 
 pursued on the ground of their practical utility to man considered 
 as a citizen. Before Socrates, morality had been taught by the 
 gnomic poets, and in his own generation we find it a by-product 
 of sophistic, especially in the teaching of Prodicus. But Socrates, 
 with a deeper and more specialized purpose than any of these, 
 bent all his power of argument to the development of character. 
 His thesis, or rather axiom, since he never questioned its truth 
 and was content to hang on it his whole ethical argument, was 
 that ' Virtue is Knowledge,' that is to say, in Plato's phrase, ' No 
 one of his own will does wrong.' All his dialectic was bent 
 toward clearing up in the mind of every man with whom he came 
 in contact that man's ideas about the facts of everyday experi- 
 ence, politics, education, and conduct. He saw on all sides the 
 greatest confusion in the minds of educated men when called on 
 to define and distinguish the principles of their own actions. He 
 wished to replace the life of instinct, which the Greeks accepted 
 as law, by the life of reason. So it was that he went about de- 
 manding definitions, persuaded that, all error being intellectual, mfen 
 could be reasoned into virtue. If he could have heard Ovid's 
 Medea lamenting that though she saw the better way she must 
 follow the worse, he would have retorted that she only thought she 
 saw, — that her misconduct was due to intellectual confusion. But 
 it is not so much this assumption as his actual dialectical method 
 that places Socrates among the most original thinkers. The rhetoric 
 Socratic of the sophists he set on one side as misleading and 
 dialectic unsound, careless of truth. Two things, said Aris- 
 totle, we may with justice ascribe to Socrates, inductive reasoning 
 and the fixing of general concepts} It was, of course, by the 
 
 1 Metaphysics 13, p. 1078. 
 
SOCRATES AND THE LESSER SOCRATICS 373 
 
 inductive reasoning that he arrived at the concepts. His aim was 
 not to obtain a general rule, but to define ideas, such as justice, 
 injustice, piety, democracy, and the like. This was his contribu- 
 tion to the art of logical discussion. His teaching always took the 
 form of cross-examination, and since he inspired Plato to use the 
 dialogue form, we may regard him as the father of the literary 
 dialogue. For his habits and discussions we depend on the re- 
 ports of Xenophon and Plato, for when we come to Aristotle 
 there is always the risk that he is reflecting the Platonic Socrates 
 rather than the Socrates who walked the streets of Athens. Plato 
 was not the man to reproduce the opinions of others without to 
 some extent re-creating them in his own mind. But if we turn to 
 Xenophon as a reporter of less imagination, we must remember 
 that in reporting much depends on the ability to select. Xeno- 
 phon was little quahfied to appreciate Socrates on the side of his 
 philosophy. It is only when he has exhausted more trivial matter 
 that he turns at the end of the Memorabilia to describe the 
 Socratic method of dialectic, and he remarks that it would be a 
 long business to give all the. Socratic definitions.' No absolute 
 choice is possible between the idealized Socrates of the Platonic 
 dialogues and the Socrates who was envisaged by the rather com- 
 monplace mind of Xenophon. But it is the Platonic Socrates, 
 with his serenity, his invincible dialectic, his irony, and humor 
 that dominates the imagination of every reader. Men will always 
 prefer to think that he discoursed on love as Plato makes him dis- 
 course in the Symposium, proved a match for the brilliant Protag- 
 oras as in the dialogue of that name, and died with the calm and 
 unaffected heroism that he displays in the immortal death scene 
 of the Phaedo, — le drame du sage. 
 
 Socrates bequeathed to his followers a method and an attitude, 
 but no positive doctrines. There had been nothing esoteric in his 
 teaching. The several schools of philosophy that looked to him 
 as their founder were widely divergent in their doctrines and their 
 conceptions of the ' end ' or aim of existence. But they all derived 
 
 1 4. 6. 1. 
 
374 SHORT HISTORY Of GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 their ethics from Socrates, and were nearly all alike in this, that they 
 
 taught the necessity of setting up some standard and living by it. 
 
 EucLEiDES of Megara was one of the closest of his disciples. It is 
 
 said that, in spite of the exclusion of Megarians from Attic soil (by 
 
 the decree of 432 B.C.), he would slip into Athens 
 Eucleides , ^ . , . , . , , . 
 
 under cover of night m order to converse with his 
 
 master. He founded the critical school of the Megarians who have 
 been called the Neo-Eleatics because they blent the Socratic doc- 
 trine that Virtue is One with the teaching of the Eleatics that Being 
 is One. Thus we find the Megarians displaying the tendency of 
 the Socratic schools to absorb the physical speculations of the 
 pre-Socratic philosophers. From the Eleatics the Megarians took 
 over the dialectic of Zeno, and became . noted for their eristic, 
 their mania for exposing fallacies, " a race of logical martinets." 
 
 Practical ethics were neglected by the school of Megara; but 
 the Cynics clung to the Socratic tradition. Their founder was the 
 son of an Athenian father and a Thracian slave, Antisthenes, who 
 plays a conspicuous part in the Symposium of Xeno- 
 phon (422 B.C.). Plato sneers at him as a ' late learner ' 
 because he was no longer young when he forsook rhetoric to 
 join the Socratic circle. He taught in the gymnasium outside 
 Athens called the Cynosarges, which was reserved for half-breeds 
 like himself, and it was perhaps from this fact that his followers 
 were called Cynics. He had been a pupil of Gorgias, closely in 
 touch with sophistic influences, and, like many of the sophists, 
 wrote commentaries on the poets. The eccentricities of Di- 
 ogenes of Sinope (412-323 B.C.) have hrown into the shade the 
 personality of Antisthenes. But he was an industrious writer, 
 much read in Athens. We have a few fragments of his philo- 
 sophic writings, which were chiefly dialogues, written in Attic 
 whose purity was praised by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.' The 
 
 ' Blass, against the judgment of the majority of scholars, defends as authen- 
 tic two speeches that survive under the name of Antisthenes. They are 
 sophistic exercises, imaginary arguments of Ajax and Odysseus on the award 
 of the arms of Achilles. 
 
SOCRATES AND THE LESSER SOCRATICS 375 
 
 main characteristics of the Cynic school, its insistence on self- 
 dependence, on virtue as the only good, on a return to nature, 
 its adoption of Heracles as a patron saint, may all be traced to 
 Antisthenes. 
 
 The contribution of the other Cynics to literature was slight. 
 In the beginning of the third century B.C. Bion of Borysthenes, who 
 later joined the Cyrenaics, wrote, in the form of conversations, 
 satires that Horace tells us were both coarse and witty.^ They 
 
 are almost entirely lost. Menippus of Gadara, about 
 
 . ,, . . . , Menippus 
 
 the same time, wrote satiric miscellanies in verse varied 
 
 with prose. These achieved a wide popularity, and in the 
 following century were imitated in a work that was no less famous, 
 the Menippea7i Satires of the Roman writer Varro. 
 
 From Cyrene, the brilliant Greek colony on the African coast 
 which was to be forever identified with the philosophy of pleasure, 
 came another, and no less celebrated, pupil of Socrates, Aristip*-' 
 PUS, the first of the Cyrenaics. Cyrene had, so far, Aristiupus 
 produced only one writer of any note, Eugammon, 
 who wrote the Telegonia to close the ring of the Trojan epics, 
 though later it was to boast of the poet Callimachus, the learned 
 Eratosthenes, and Carneades, the founder of the New Academy. 
 The Cynics taught men to renounce, to be indifferent to the ordi- 
 nary desires. The ideal of Aristippus was very different. He 
 was a man of the world, to whom, as Horace said, every form of 
 life, every condition, every circumstance was becoming.^ He 
 derived from Socrates his interest in ethics, but for the Socratic 
 dialectic he cared no more than the Cynics. He loved all the 
 amenities of life. Happiness was the ' end ' of his philosophy, 
 and in its pursuit he was eager to leave no experience, no sensa- 
 tion, untried. This first of all the hedonists held that pleasure 
 is always a good, and that to know how to select one's pleasures 
 and to subordinate them to one's reason is to have mastered the 
 art of hfe. He agreed with Protagoras that beyond his own sen- 
 sations man can know nothing, and thought all other researches 
 ^Epistles 2. 2. 60. ^Epistles i. 17. 23. 
 
376 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 waste of time. The daughter of Aristippus succeeded him in his 
 school, a unique instance of a woman carrying on a philosophic 
 tradition. Aristippus wrote a history of Libya, and a number of 
 philosophic dialogues, partly in Attic, partly in the Dorian dialect 
 of Cyrene, but of all this not a genuine line remains. So far, in- 
 deed, the Socratics have had little significance for literature. For 
 the literary development of the teachings of Socrates we must turn 
 to Plato. 
 
 Megarian Socratism gradually died out. The Cynics existed 
 for several centuries as the exponents of a certain unconventional 
 manner of hfe, but their importance as philosophers was over- 
 shadowed by the Stoic school, founded in the first half of the 
 third century B.C. by Zeno, himself a pupil of the most famous of 
 the Megarians, Stilpo. 
 
 Zeno was Semitic by descent, a native of Citium, a Phoenician 
 
 colony in Cyprus. He was about twenty-two when he settled in 
 
 Athens, and there, after many years of study, he began to lecture 
 
 in the Painted Porch (Stoa) to his disciples, called Stoics from 
 
 the place where they foregathered. We have only fragments of 
 
 his works, which were both philosophical, expounding 
 
 his system, and critical, on the poets. On his death 
 
 {circa 260 B.C.) he was succeeded by his disciple Cleanthes of 
 
 Assos (331-232 B.C.). Though he wrote logical and scientific 
 
 works, among the latter a treatise on Heracleitus 
 Cleanthes , ' . . , , . .^ , . . „ . 
 
 whose doctnne formed the scientific basis of Stoic 
 
 ethics, the strength of Cleanthes did not lie in original speculation.' 
 With his pupil Chrysippus of Soli (280-206 B.C.), who suc- 
 ceeded him, the school may be said to have been founded again. 
 In learning and logic none of the earlier Stoics is 
 his equal, and he expanded and completed the 
 Stoic doctrine. Virtue is the highest good, the ' end ' of the 
 Stoics, and the study of logic and of the laws of nature, which 
 they thought indispensable, were all directed to the attainment of 
 virtue. Their ideal wise man is wholly detached from material 
 ippr the Hymn of Cleanthes see infra, Chapter XXIII. 
 
SOCRATES AND THE LESSER SOCRATICS 377 
 
 things. The earlier Stoics paid little attention to style, and though 
 theirs is peculiarly an Athenian philosophy, founded and taught 
 at Athens, their prose and their manner of thought was influenced 
 by their alien descent. 
 
 The School of Epicurus (342-270 b.c.) in its turn supplanted 
 Cyrenaicism, from which it was derived. So it was that from the 
 informal school of Socrates descended those four tendencies or ways 
 of looking at life, which are known as the Skeptic, the Cyrenaic, 
 the Stoic, and the Epicurean. Epicurus, though born 
 in Samos, was of Athenian parentage. In his famous Picurus 
 
 Garden at Athens he taught that 'happiness' was the end to be 
 pursued. This was of course something very different from the 
 vulgar ideal of ' the pleasure of the moment ' recommended by the 
 Cyrenaics. Happiness, according to Epicurus, consists in follow- 
 ing a simple life, choosing one's pleasures with prudence. So 
 one comes to enjoy content of mind and body. The refinement 
 of his personal interpretation must often have been exchanged by 
 Epicureans for the pursuit of sensual pleasures. The fault lies 
 with the chooser. For the ideal Epicurean, as Epicurus envisaged 
 him, though he does not scorn the pleasures of the senses, and 
 makes sense-perception the criterion of truth, compares well with 
 the impossibly remote and austere sage set up as the Stoic 
 pattern. The Epicurean philosophy, like the Stoic, was practical 
 rather than speculative, and since the business of securing a happy 
 life appeals to nearly all, his teaching had a wide popularity and 
 was maintained without any notable heresies for seven centuries. 
 Epicurus asserted that a knowledge of logic and the physical 
 sciences is necessary in order to rid one's self of superstition, that 
 bar to happiness. In 1752 were discovered in a villa at Hercu- 
 laneum fragments of his work On Nature. For the rest we 
 depend, for an account of his teaching, mainly on the quota- 
 tions of his biogrnpher Diogenes Laertius, who has also pre- 
 served his Will and an epitome of his philosophy. Epicurus, 
 like Chrysippus, was an industrious writer, but wholly indifferent 
 to style. 
 
378 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Socrates 
 K. F. Hermann, De Socratis magistris et dis(iplina, Marburg, 1837. Chai- 
 gnet, Vie de Socrate, Paris, 1869. Fouillee, Philosophic de Socrate, Paris, 1874. 
 D' Eichthal, Socrate et notre temps, Paris, 1 880. Boutroux, Socrate fondateur de 
 la science morale, Paris, 1885. Joel, Der echte u. der Xenophontische Sokrates, 
 Berlin, 1893. Pfleiclerer,5o/5ra^M a. /"/a*, Tubingen, 1896. ZeWet, Socrates and 
 the Socratic Schools, Reichel's translation, London, 1885. Lelut, Du Demon de 
 Socrate, Paris, 1856. Jackson, On the SaifiSvioi' ariiUlov of Socrates in Journ. of 
 Phil. X. Volquardsen, Das Daemonium des Socrates, Kiel, 1862. F. W. H. 
 Myers, Human Personality II 95 ff. Hegel, Gesch. d. Philosophic II 94 ff. 
 Doring, Die Lehre des Sokrates, Munich, 1895. 
 
 The Cynics 
 Antisthenes : Fragments in MuUach, Fragmenta Philosophorum 
 Graecorum; and the edition by Winckelmann, Zurich, 1842. Diimmler, 
 Antisthenica, Halle, 1882. Blass in Att. BeredsamkeitW. BlON : Fragments 
 in Wachsmuth, Sillographorum graecorum reliquiae, Leipzig, 1885, Ros- 
 signol, Frag. Bionis Borysth., Paris, 1830. Heinze, De Horatio Bionis 
 imitatore, Bonn, 1889. Menippus : Fragments in Wachsmuth. See under 
 BlON. Wildenow, De Menippo Cynico, Halle, 1881. Zeller in Socrates 
 and the Socratic Schools. Eng. trans., London, 1885. 
 
 The Cyrenaics 
 
 The records of the teaching of Aristippus are collected in MuUach, 
 Frag. Philosoph. Grace, Wieland, Aristippus, Leipzig, 1800. Stein, De vita 
 Aristippi, Gottingen, 1855. Zeller in Socrates and the Socratic Schools, Eng. 
 trans., London, 1885. 
 
 The Epicureans 
 
 Usener, Epicurea, Leipzig, 1887. Gomperz, Neue BruchstUcke Epikur's, 
 Vienna, 1876; and Die Ueberreste eines Buches von Epikur, Vienna, 1879. 
 Gomperz in Hermes 5. Wallace, Epicureanism, London, 1880. Guyau, 
 La morale d' Epicure, Paris, 1878. Courtney, Epicurus in Abbott's Hel- 
 lenica, London, 1880. Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, Eng. trans, 
 by Reichel, London, 1870. 
 
 The Stoics 
 
 Fragments in MuUach, Frag. Philosoph. Grace. Pearson, The Fragments 
 of Zeno and Cleanthes, London, i8go. Capes, Stoicism, London, 1880. 
 Wachsmuth, Commentationes de Zenone et Cleanthe, Gottingen, 1874. 
 Gercke, Chrysippea 'va.Jahrb.f. Philol., 1885. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 PLATO 
 
 Plato, the son of Ariston, was born in 428 or 427 B.C., soon 
 after the death of Pericles, so that his youth coincides with the 
 gradual decline of the fortunes of Athens. He was a thorough 
 aristocrat, claiming on his father's side descent from the Athenian 
 royal house of Codrus, and on his mother's from Solon. Critias 
 and Charmides, the oligarchs, who had been pupils of Socrates, 
 were his kinsmen. When Plato was twenty-four, he witnessed 
 their fall and the restoration of the democracy (403). 
 Some years before that, he had burnt his youthful 
 poems and joined the circle of Socrates, determined to dedicate 
 himself to philosophy. So far as he was a politician, he was anti- 
 democratic, following the tradition of his house. A thorough 
 Athenian education may, in his case, be taken for granted. Apart 
 from certain essays in poetry, not to be omitted by an imaginative 
 youth, philosophy was his first love. By Cratylus, a ' flowing 
 philosopher' more Heracleitean than Heracleitus, he was taught 
 the philosophy of flux, that most fascinating of all doctrines to 
 the imagination. The two great Eleatics, Parmenides and Zeno, 
 had visited Athens within the memory of Socrates, and with their 
 philosophy of perpetual rest, and the Zenonian dialectic, Plato was 
 familiar.' 
 
 In short, he was the heir of all the tendencies of the past, all 
 the contributions of the Greek genius to philosophy and literature, 
 a striking contrast to the one-sided Ionian philosophers. But of 
 
 ' The atomistic philosophy of Leucippus and Democritus is never men- 
 tioned by Plato — a singular omission, possibly due to the general indifference 
 of the Athenians to the studies of the Atomists. 
 
 379 
 
38o. SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 all the crowding influences that bore on his many-sided tempera- 
 ment, that of Socrates overpowered the rest. For some eight 
 years before the trial he was his devoted disciple. After the 
 condemnation of Socrates on charges which included that of 
 impiety, it seemed to Plato that the best, the wisest, the most 
 just of all the men whom he had known, had been the least under- 
 stood by his fellow-citizens. The vindication of the memory of 
 Socrates he made his life work; all his highest and most impas- 
 sioned flights of imagination, his triumphs of dialectic, his schemes 
 for social reform, his moral and religious teaching, he stamped 
 with the name and authority of Socrates. To himself he makes 
 two or three allusions in passing, but for the rest keeps his own 
 personality rigidly in the background. 
 
 On the death of Socrates in 399 Plato left Athens, and, after a visit 
 to Megara, the home of the Socratic Eucleides, spent several years 
 in travels in Egypt, Lower Italy, and Sicily. He was deeply im- 
 pressed, as we may see from his dialogues, by the 
 
 His travels ''^ . ' ' ^ , , , '/ . 
 
 ancient civilization of Egypt, her unbroken traditions, 
 
 and the wisdom of her priests. During a visit to Cyrene, he 
 associated with the mathematician Theodorus. To Tarentum in 
 Lower Italy he was no doubt attracted by the fame of Archytas 
 the Pythagorean, renowned both for his contributions to geometry 
 and physics, and for his statesmanship and military genius. Archy- 
 tas was doubly interesting to Plato because he saw realized in the 
 person of this remarkable man his ideal of a philosopher at the 
 head of the state. His first journey to Sicily (area 388 B.C.) was 
 in answer to an invitation from Dionysius I, the tyrant of Syracuse, 
 whose brother-in-law, Dio, had met and admired Plato in Italy. 
 Dionysius was fond of literature and himself wrote tragedies. 
 He would have liked to appear a second Hiero, surrounded 
 by Greek men of letters, and Plato was glad of the chance to 
 impart the philosophic virtues to a tyrant. But Dionysius was a 
 self-made man who had risen to the throne by his personal energy 
 and diplomacy. In the last eighteen years, under his rule, Syra- 
 cuse had become one of the most powerful cities in Greece, strong 
 
PLATO 381 
 
 enough' to defeat even Carthage. Such a man, at the age of forty- 
 three, was not Hkely to accept the Utopian ideas of a brother-in- 
 law, or to change his whole attitude to life at the bidding of a 
 philosopher. If we are to believe the later authorities, the tyrant, 
 growing suspicious of Plato's motives and influence, sent him to 
 Aegina to be sold into slavery, from which he was ransomed by his 
 friends and restored to Athens. There he now established his 
 school of philosophy in the Academy, one of the three great gym- 
 nasia of Athens. His school was really a miniature university, 
 like the famous school of rhetoric of which Isocrates was the 
 head (see p. 338). Near the gymnasium he acquired land, and a 
 house which was the center of the school ; it was bequeathed at 
 his death to Speusippus, its second head, and remained for cen- 
 turies the property of the Academicians until the school was broken 
 up by Justinian in 529 a.d. 
 
 In 367 Plato interrupted his teaching to revisit Sicily, at the 
 request of Dio and Dionysius II, who had succeeded his father. 
 In this younger and more impressionable tyrant, with 
 Die for his adviser, Plato hoped to find the material 
 for his philosophic king. He was received with enthusiasm and 
 began his instruction with a course in mathematics which was 
 taken by the whole court. But the method was too strenuous for 
 the tyrant, and the conservatives, who dishked the new influence, 
 were soon able to persuade him that Dio was a dangerous con- 
 spirator who must be banished. Plato returned to Athens, dis- 
 illusioned for the second time. But his ideals died hard, and a 
 few years later he was induced to make a third visit, this time in 
 the hope of reconciling Dio with Dionysius. The tyrant, though 
 he did not meet his hopes, tried to detain him at the court, and 
 it was only after much opposition that Plato managed to leave 
 Syracuse (360 B.C.). That is the last recorded incident in his 
 life. He spent his last years in teaching and writing, and died in 
 347 at the age of eighty. 
 
 Plato is the only Greek writer of the first rank of whose works 
 nothing has been lost. The Socratics, who had been taught by 
 
382 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Socrates that cross-examination is the best method of imparting 
 knowledge, naturally used the dialogue form for their own philo- 
 sophic compositions. For such a monument as Plato was to 
 The build in honor of Socrates, the inveterate talker, the 
 
 dialogues dialogue was peculiarly appropriate, and it suited his 
 talent for dramatic writing. Under his name there are extant 
 forty-two dialogues, thirteen letters, and some plainly spurious 
 definitions. Of the dialogues thirty-five were accepted by the 
 Alexandrians. Aristophanes of Byzantium {circa 200 B.C.) ar- 
 ranged them in trilogies. That was, as far as we know, the 
 first canon. Another classification was made by Thrasyllus, who, 
 in the first century A.D., arranged the dialogues in nine groups 
 of four, called tetralogies. It is one of the lasting grievances 
 of scholars against antiquity that it never occurred to a con- 
 temporary Academician, such as Speusippus, to write a list of 
 Plato's works in chronological order. That simple act would 
 have spared us the Platonic question with all the endless argu- 
 ments as to the authenticity and order of Plato's works. A few of 
 these have been recognized by all as above suspicion,^ guaranteed 
 as they are by the express testimony of Aristotle. We need not 
 however dwell on the eccentricities of a criticism which attacked 
 even the Parmenides and the Sophist, since a more temperate 
 attitude has been adopted, of late years, by the majority of 
 scholars. The Letters, though Christ and Wilamowitz are dis- 
 posed to accept the sixth, and Christ defends the thirteenth, are 
 now pretty generally regarded as post- Platonic, while several 
 dialogues may safely be rejected, mainly on the score of post- 
 Platonic and post-classical diction an 1 their echoes of Aristotle. 
 The following, all dialogues except the Apology, are generally ac- 
 cepted : Apology, Euthyphro, Crito, Chart/tides, Laches, Lysis, 
 Hippias Minor, lon^ Menexenus, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus, 
 
 1 Schaarschmirlt (1866) attacked the genuineness of all but nine of the 
 thirty-five dialogues. Windelband (1893) rejects the Parmtnides, Sophist, 
 and Statesman. 
 
 ^ The Ion is rejected by Zeller, Wilamowitz, Suseinihl., 
 
PLATO 383 
 
 Gorgias, Cratylus, Symposium, Phaedo, Republic, Phaedrus, Par- 
 menides, Theaetetus, Sophist, Statesman, Philebus, Timaeus, 
 Critias, Laws. 
 
 That the Laws was Plato's latest work we learn from Aristotle ; 
 that the Symposium was composed after the division of Arcadia in 
 384 B.C., and that the Meno falls later than the bribery chronology 
 of Ismenias by the Persians in 395, we gather from of the 
 ipternal evidence.^ No one doubts that the Timaeus dialogues 
 is a sequel to the Republic, or that the Sophist is a sequel to the 
 Theaetetus ; it seems certain that the Protagoras was written 
 before the Meno. To decide the relative dates of the rest of the 
 dialogues, after dividing them into several groups, has been, 
 for about a century, the aim of students of Plato. For a gen- 
 eration the statistical method has been applied to the solution 
 of the problem. The peculiarities of Plato's style, his use of 
 terms, have been closely investigated, with the aim of proving the 
 affinities of the dialogues and their place in the development of 
 the Platonic philosophy. In many cases the statistics are inaccu- 
 rate, and they have sometimes been abused. A writer who, like 
 Lutoslawski, demonstrates the growth of Platonic logic from the 
 statistics of five hundred peculiarities of style derived from some 
 fifty independent dissertations, is too often misled by the inaccu- 
 racies of the writers of those dissertations.^ The chief justification 
 of the statistical method is that it has developed no glaring 
 absurdity, except, indeed, the division of the Republic into strata 
 separated by other dialogues,' and has left the Laws in its tradi- 
 tional place. The statisticians agree on a certain rough grouping 
 
 1 Socrates, who died in 399, plays a leading part in the Symposium and 
 Meno ; Plato's bold use of anachronisms is one of the minor complications of 
 the Platonic question. 
 
 2 Lutoslavvski's Origin and Groivth of Plato^s Logic, London, 1897, contains 
 a good survey of the statistical study of PUto and is useful as a work of ref- 
 erence, in spite of the too confident conclusions of its 'stylometry' and the 
 frequent misinterpretations of Plato's text. 
 
 ' See Gomperz, Greek Thinkers III 51 ff. in defense of the unity of the 
 ^public. 
 
384 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of the dialogues, and disagree as to the precise relations of the 
 individual dialogues within the groups. The minor dialogues, 
 called ' Socratic ' because they deal with the Socratic search for 
 definitions, for general concepts, fall early ; the purely scientific 
 or ' dialectical ' dialogues, the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman, 
 were late, while there is a middle period for which the Republic 
 is the most important composition. Fortunately, it matters little 
 to the student of Plato's philosophy or style whether the Sympo- 
 sium and the Phaedo were composed before or after the Phaedrus, 
 and the special student who takes up the problem of stylistic 
 affinity will find excellent arguments for and against either theory, 
 and not infrequently the same argument worked both ways by the 
 opposing sides. 
 
 There is no doubt that, if Plato had been asked what was the 
 end of his teaching, the goal of which he never lost sight in all his 
 speculations, he would have replied that it was the improvement 
 of the moral nature of man. As others lay down the 
 principles of a science, he tried to formulate the laws 
 that regulate conduct. Morality had for him a purely intellectual 
 basis, since he agreed with Socrates that all virtue is knowledge. 
 Courage, as is shown in the Laches, is based on the knowledge of 
 what is and is not to be feared. In the Charmides, Critias and 
 Charmides, Plato's oligarchical kinsmen, reveal to Socrates their 
 ignorance of the essential meaning of temperance or sobriety of 
 soul, a virtue not to be acquired by those unable to give an 
 account of it. Like Socrates, Plato asserts that no one of his own 
 free will does wrong. From his assumption that all men desire 
 the good it follows that no man who can distinguish good and evil 
 will choose evil. Sin is, therefore, but another wotd for ignorance. 
 For should some clever and worldly man, like Callicles in the 
 Gorgias, deliberately choose the life of pleasure and decline to set 
 his ideal higher than that of the world about him, Plato sees, in 
 that choice, ignorance of the art of life, of the real nature of 
 happiness. The great thesis of the Gorgias, that it is more 
 blessed to suffer wrong than to inflict it, remains unshaken. Sin 
 
PLATO 385 
 
 is an error of arithmetic, for one who could count or measure the 
 real values of what he chooses or rejects would always make a 
 virtuous choice. So he maintains in the Protagoras^ supporting 
 with this proof from hedonism his contention that the virtues can 
 be reduced to knowledge, and can therefore be taught. After 
 many years, we find him asserting, in the fifth book of the Laws, 
 that the virtuous life is the happiest, actually contains the most 
 pleasures, tested by the hedonistic calculus. Pleasure was a word 
 that Plato would gladly have dropped from his vocabulary. He 
 was afraid of the natural instincts, had a genuine aesthetic dislike 
 of them, was consistently unfair to the hedonists, and was 
 happiest when he could assume, as in the Philebus^ that pleasure, 
 when most intense, is connected with disease of mind and body. 
 In the first part of that dialogue, which is one of the latest group, 
 he allows what seems to us a false antithesis, the opposition of 
 pleasure and knowledge. ^ He refused to admit the possibility of 
 happiness without virtue, or of virtue without freedom from desire. 
 Plato's assertion in the Gorgias, an apologia for the life of con- 
 templation, that the philosophic life is happier than the life of 
 action, is, of course, the reflection of a personal taste. With the 
 ambition of the born man of action to exercise his power of ruling 
 men he had no sympathy. He was the very antithesis of 
 Alcibiades and Critias, and was convinced that one of the surest 
 proofs that a man is fit to govern is his unwillingness to do so. * 
 He condemned the political ideals of all the greatest statesmen of 
 Athens, Pericles among the rest. He saw in the rule of the 
 majority at Athens all the dangers of the free develop- political 
 ment of the Ionian "centrifugal" temperament, and i^^^^s 
 whereas Thucydides^ had adtnired the ability of the individual 
 Athenian to adapt himself to the most varied forms of activity 
 with versatility and grace, Plato deplored the Athenian tendency 
 to individualism, the Heracleitean flux of standards. Mobility 
 and variety were vices in his eyes; change was a sign of 
 
 ^ 356-357- ' 45 B-E- ' Cp. Rep. 50s B. 
 
 * Rep. 520-521. ' 2. 40-41. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 25 
 
386 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 decadence. In the Republic, as though to offset the picture of 
 Thucydides, he describes just such an ' agreeable, lawless, many- 
 colored commonwealth' as that of Athens, and turns from all 
 that to admire a community in which amateurism and versatility 
 had never been prized or even allowed, where the individual had 
 always been trained to subordinate his private inclinations and 
 tastes to the general good of the state. But even in Dorian 
 Lacedaemon, the home of discipline and self-denial, with its 
 traditions almost as fixed as those of Egypt, its austerity of life, its 
 incarnation of the " centripetal " genius of the Dorians, Plato did 
 not find all that he dreamed of for his Utopia. Not in Lace- 
 daemon, any more than in Sicily, were philosophers at the head 
 of the state, and for Plato there could be no well-ordered com- 
 munity in which the rulers were not philosophers. 
 
 It was in the Republic, his masterpiece, that he expressed his 
 passionate conviction of the failure of democracy as he had seen 
 it at Athens, and of a tyranny like that at Syracuse. As he re- 
 The builds from the foundations the whole political fabric. 
 Republic leaving not one stone upon another of the Athenian 
 constitution, we see how completely he was out of sympathy with 
 his times, with Athenian ideals and ambitions, with the whole 
 range of Hellenic culture which it was the pride of Athens to 
 foster and represent. It is as a political treatise, as the first de- 
 scription of a " perfect city," a Utopia, that the Republic is now 
 read by all students of politics and social reformers, who rarely 
 imagine a reconstruction of society without borrowing some 
 features of Plato's ideal state. Community of property, the aboli- 
 tion of the family, universal brotherhood based on the possibility 
 that any man may be one's brother, state regulation of the breed- 
 ing of the citizens, provision against race suicide, equality of the 
 sexes on the ground that there is no intellectual difference between 
 them, compulsory education, the compulsory vote — for all these, 
 though they were not all original with Plato,^ one may turn to the 
 
 1 E.g. Herod. 4. 104 had described the community of women among the Aga- 
 thyrsi, designed to secure harmony and to 'make brothers' of the tribesmen. 
 
PLATO 387 
 
 Republic or the Laws. The most striking feature in his ideal 
 republic was the rigid subordination of the uneducated and work- 
 ing classes to a highly educated oligarchy of philosophers, trained 
 by dialectic to grasp the nature of real existence, and persuaded, 
 for their country's good, to turn from their philosophical pursuits 
 and prove that the truly wise man is the best general, the best 
 lawyer, the best legislator. Plato's ethical ideals never varied, 
 and in the Laws he reiterates the main thesis of the Republic, 
 the coincidence of justice and happiness. But he recognized in 
 his old age the possible dangers to the community of philosophic 
 absolutism, since even philosophers are human beings, not safely 
 to be intrusted with such powers, and so we have in the Laws an 
 acceptance of what, for Plato, was the second best, a decided 
 modification of his pohtical ideals, a revision of them more adapted 
 to men as they are. Enough remains that is alien to us, as it was 
 to Plato's contemporaries. He will allow no art that is not severely 
 didactic, admits trade with the greatest reluctance, would suppress 
 finance, rejects the Lacedaemonian ideal of war and conquest, 
 and, as in the Republic, leaves as little opening for what we call 
 progress as though he were organizing a monastery. 
 
 In Athens, a man who desired to enter public life sought the 
 society of sophists like Gorgias or Protagoras, or attended the 
 famous school of the rhetorician Isocrates. Plato could not ob- 
 serve this with indifference. There were sophists of Hostility- 
 all kinds, as there are always teachers of all kinds, but to the 
 though Plato might respect individuals among them, he ^''P ^ 
 never wavered in condemning the sophistic ideal of education as 
 dangerous and unscientific. He paid Protagoras and Gorgias the 
 compliment of reproducing their brilliant rhetoric, and frankly 
 shows us how fascinating they were, how natural it was that they 
 should attract the young and ambitious. He knew well that the 
 most effective satire is that which makes every concession to the 
 victim before it exposes his weaknesses. He disliked and derided 
 all the aspects of sophistic, the pretension to omniscience, the 
 sophist's claim that he could talk down any expert by sheer 
 
388 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 ingenuity of speech,^ the long set speeches by which he avoided 
 the issue when confronted by a Socratic cross-examination. He 
 disapproved of the sophistic preoccupation with poetry. Steadily 
 refusing to separate aesthetics from ethics, he had driven the poets 
 out of his ideal city because they encouraged the imagination and 
 the emotional side. The poet, inasmuch as he diverted men's 
 eyes from the divine realities to the 'imitation of an imitation,' 
 was, like the sophist, an illusionist. Above all, he disliked the 
 subjectivity of sophistic ethics, the sophist's acceptance of con- 
 ventional morality and of the individual man as the measure. 
 Eristic, the quibbling with paradoxes based on the wrong use of 
 language, to which the Zenoni^n dialectic had degenerated, he 
 satirized in the Euthydemus. As for the rhetoric of such a one 
 as Isocrates, he insisted that, at its best, it was merely a branch 
 of philosophy, strictly subordinate to ethics and dialectic ; that 
 the rhetorician must learn to define, and divide, and classify, is one 
 of the lessons of the Phaedrus? 
 
 Virtue as envisaged by Plato could never have for its foundation 
 the merely relative knowledge of the ordinary statesman, or rheto- 
 rician, or sophist.''' To the Heracleitean flux and the relativity 
 taught by Protagoras he opposed the Theory of Ideas, which, on 
 the philosophic side, was his great contribution to the history of 
 thought, while it is closely associated with his ethical and political 
 theories. Socrates in his search for moral truth had arrived at 
 inductive definitions. He had endeavored to replace knowledge 
 Theory derived from individual perceptions by universal con- 
 of Ideas cepts that were to be independent of popular opinion. 
 To Plato's reaUstic philosophy the universal concept became an 
 objective type, an entity more real than ' the real thing ' that can 
 
 ^ The locus dassicus is the self-advertisement of Gorgias in Plato's Gorgias 
 452 E. 
 
 ^ The relations of Plato and Isocrates have been endlessly discussed since 
 Spengel's hokrates u. Plato, 1855. See Gomperz, Greek Thinkers III 25 ff. 
 (Eng. trans."). 
 
 ' Cratylus 389, 440 B. 
 
PLATO 389 
 
 be perceived by the senses. The Platonic Ideas are all concepts, 
 but they exist apart from the mind. Plato saw the difficulties of 
 this realistic treatment of universals, this isolation of the Ideas, 
 and debated some of them in the Parmenides. What is the pre- 
 cise relation of the objective type, the thing that is, the noume- 
 non, to phenomena, the things that become, the particulars of 
 the world of sense? Is the Idea actually present in the par- 
 ticular, or is the latter, which derives all its qualities solely 
 from the Idea, merely a copy, an imitation, a shadow of the im- 
 material original? Are there ideas of all kinds, of hair and dirt, 
 of relations and negations, just as much as of the Good and the 
 Beautiful ? These were questions that Plato never definitely 
 answered. ' He left them,' says Aristotle,' ' to be investigated by 
 others.' The doctrine was ' hard to accept, hard to deny,' as he 
 himself says in the Republic (532 d), and his terminology when 
 he writes of the Ideas is so varied that he left the way open to his 
 commentators to disagree endlessly as to whether he believed from 
 first to last in his purely objective types, and did not essentially 
 modify his doctrine about them, though he took them from differ- 
 ent points of view according to the requirements of the dialogues,^ 
 or whether, as many scholars maintain, he abandoned in the later 
 dialogues the theory that they could exist outside the conscious 
 soul. Those who, like Lutoslawski, hold the latter view, are com- 
 pelled to throw overboard the testimony of Aristotle that the 
 Platonic Idea was transcendental, and the evidence of passages in 
 the later dialogues that Plato so conceived it.' 
 
 Dialectic, that is to say, argument on the nature of these, the 
 only, realities, is the only method by which men may attain to a 
 knowledge of them and of the supreme reality, the Idea of the 
 Good. For even in that immaterial world there is a hierarchy 
 of Ideas ; the .Idea of the Good is to the rest as is the sun to 
 
 1 Met. I. 6. 
 
 2 An excellent defense of this view is made by Shorey, The Unity of Plato's 
 Thought, Chicago, 1903. 
 
 " E.g. Timaeus 52 A. 
 
390 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 phenomena in the visible world.' The dialectician is aided by 
 Reminiscence (ava/Avi^o-ts) . Plato believed in the preexistence of 
 Reminis- the soul, that " birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," 
 cence that all knowledge is recollection.^ In the Phaedrus he 
 
 describes how the soul before birth may mount with the heavenly 
 train of gods to the plain of truth on the very roof of heaven, and 
 thence behold the Ideas. He who has the clearest memory of 
 that "vision splendid " is best suited for dialectic, may become a 
 philosopher, an " eye among the blind." At birth one is nearest 
 to the divine Ideas; when one loves, one has the best chance in 
 one's life to approach them again through the passion for beauty; 
 and the dying philosopher, like Socrates in the Phaedo, may at 
 least hope that he is about to recover the complete vision. 
 
 To describe the Ideas, without color, without form, intangible, 
 visible only to the intelligence {Phaedrus 247) was, as Plato knew, 
 beyond the power of human speech, and it is only in such a myth 
 as that of the Phaedrus or the Symposium that he speaks as 
 though the eye of the soul might behold the invisible essences. 
 
 He was too much of a poet not to desire to write about 
 The Myths , .,, ^,. ,^,. 
 
 them in the language of exaltation, and for this pur- 
 pose he takes refuge in the use of myth. In certain of the dia- 
 logues, the Phaedo, the Symposium, and the Phaedrus, the myth 
 is almost as important as the heroic myth in a Pindaric ode. In 
 these moments of exaltation Plato abandons the economy of 
 emotion which he thought so necessary to dialectic, and allows 
 himself to exhort instead of argue. 
 
 All the great impressive myths that deal with the Ideas and the 
 fate of the soul are put in the mouth of Socrates. In the Phaedo 
 myth (107-114) he describes the surface of the 'true earth,' in 
 a hollow of which men live, its trees, flowers, fruits, and pre- 
 cious stones, its overarching, ampler aether, and, with a geography 
 not unlike that of Dante's Earthly Paradise,* tells of the place of 
 
 1 Rep. 508 ff. 
 
 " Meno 80 ff. ; Phaedo 72 ff . ; Phaedrus 249. 
 
 " See Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905. 
 
PLATO 
 
 39 > 
 
 judgment for the souls of the dead, their punishments and rewards. 
 In the Gorgias myth (523-527) is a description of the Islands of 
 the Blessed, and the meadow where the judges, Minos, Rhada- 
 manthys and Aeacus sit and look through and through the scarred 
 and crooked souls of the dead. In the myth of Er in the Republic 
 (614-621) is yet another picture of the meadow of the judgment 
 seat, whence the dead souls joyrney to the throne of Lachesis to 
 choose each his lot for another course of earthly life. The myth 
 of the Phaedrus (246-257) is devoted to love, which is described 
 as a form of divine madness, the soul's aspiration to the True, the 
 Beautiful, and the Good. Beauty itself, brightly shining, it was 
 given them to behold, then when they followed in the blessed choir 
 . . . eyewitnesses of visions which are altogether fair, and of single 
 nature, without shadow of change. . . . These things our souls be- 
 held in pure light, themselves being pure and without the mark of 
 this which we call body, and now carry about with us, as the fish 
 carrieth the pidson house of his shell. 
 
 The Platonic myths, " which who knoweth not to be flowers of 
 poetry did never walk into Apollo's garden," those passages for 
 which, like Coleridge, he demanded from his hearers " a momen- 
 tary suspension of disbelief," are, for us, a literary embellishment of 
 the dialogues, digressions which some of us, like Theodorus in the 
 Theaetetus (177 c), like better than the argument. In the seven- 
 teenth century this side of Plato's teaching was emphasized by the 
 Cambridge Platonists, for whom Plato was a prophet, and the The- 
 ory of Ideas to be interpreted as the basis of a religious mysticism. 
 In this they were but following the example of the Neo-Platonists 
 of Alexandria. The mystical theology and enthusiasm xhe Neo- 
 of Plotinus, his yearning for separation from the body Platonists 
 and for purely spiritual sensations, carried him far from the severe 
 Platonic dialectic and the scientific drift of Plato's teaching. 
 Plato was destined to fall into the hands of extremists. From his 
 works, Emerson's " Bible of the learned, out of which come all 
 things that are still written and debated among men," the scho- 
 lastic controversialists of the Middle Ages singled out his realism 
 
392 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 as his chief characteristic, and it was under his flag that the Real- 
 ists debated with the NominaHsts, who opposed to the Platonic 
 types their doctrine that only the individual has real existence, that 
 genera and species are merely subjective combinations. 
 
 Plato's dialogues usually took the form of accounts of conversa- 
 tions. This gaive him a chance for dramatic descriptions of the 
 setting and characters of the piece, for the picture of the well- 
 ordered house of the rich old metic Cephalus, at the Piraeus, 
 where Socrates with Plato's brothers wove the many-colored tex- 
 ture of the Republic, or the supper at the house of Agathon, the 
 tragic poet in the Symposium. In the later dialogues we have no 
 such vivid impression of the scene and the interlocutors. That 
 long walk in Crete from Cnossos to the grotto of Zeus on Ida 
 does not dwell in our minds as the inseparable background of the 
 Laws, as do the rustling plane tree, the summer sounds and 
 scents that haunt the Phaedrus. In his old age long expositions 
 grew more frequent with Plato. In the Laws he seems to retain 
 the dialogue form rather from habit than because he felt it to be 
 appropriate; the whole of the fifth Book is a monologue.. An- 
 other note of change is that in the latest dialogues Socrates is no 
 longer the chief speaker ; in the Laws his place is taken by an 
 ' Athenian stranger,' who is perhaps meant for Plato himself. 
 
 Plato's style is all his own, varied hke his interests, and 
 
 cannot be brought under the rules of the rhetoricians. It 
 
 stands midway between poetry and prose, and its 
 
 strongly poetic coloring greatly distressed the very 
 
 critics who recognized in Plato one of the few masters of the grand 
 
 style. Poetic diction set his genius best. He knew that, as he 
 
 says in the Laws^ he wrote ' speeches very like poetry,' and in 
 
 the Phaedrus'^ he forestalled his critics by ridiculing his own 
 
 tendency to become dithyrambic in moments of exaltation. What 
 
 the writers on rhetoric probably forgot, is Plato's fondness for 
 
 parodying the fashionable styles of writing. When they accuse 
 
 him of Gorgianic figures in the Menexenus, they forget that he 
 
 1 8ii. 2 238, 241. 
 
PLATO 393 
 
 wrote this funeral oration as a parody of the epideictic manner, to 
 prove that he, who was always ridiculing the rhetoricians, could 
 compose, as well as Lysias or another, a show piece with all the 
 stock rhetorical ornaments, which should make his hearers ' feel 
 better men for three or four days.' ' Even in that speech, as 
 Gomperz has pointed out, he is carried away by his theme, the 
 praise of Athens, so that here and there he forgets to parody, 
 and rises to real eloquence. The Greek critics forgave Plato his 
 poetic coloring in consideration of the clearness and fragrance of 
 his ' gliding style,' the easy cadence that gave a charm to liis sim- 
 plest utterances.'' ' He flows on with a quiet stream, but with a 
 manner none the less elevated,' says Longinus, who always tempers 
 a criticism of Plato's style with a tribute to a genius which ranks 
 the higher in that it is not without some flaws. All allowed that 
 Plato had hit off the best style for the literary dialogue, the lan- 
 guage that ' Zeus might have used, if Zeus had spoken Greek.' 
 Thirty-three epigrams in the Anthology were ascribed to Plato. 
 
 These were woven . by Meleaeer into his Garland of „ . 
 
 Epigrams 
 Greek poets, in the first century B.C., the golden bough 
 
 of Plato, ever divine, shining everywhere in excellence. Some of 
 
 them are among the finest Greek epigrams that have survived. 
 
 Shelley translated and popularized one of the sepulchral type : — 
 
 Thou wert the Morning-star among the living 
 
 Ere thy fair light had fed ; 
 Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus, giving 
 
 New splendor to the dead? 
 
 Almost as famous is the Star : — 
 
 Thou gazest at the stars, my star ; might I be 
 That sky, with myriad eyes to gaze on thee ! * 
 
 These are the most popular. But Plato could rise above the 
 cleverness and prettiness that too often give the Greek epigram a 
 
 1 Menexenus 235 B. 
 
 2 Demetrius, On Style 183 if. ; Dionysius, To Pompeius 2. 
 » Anth. Pal. 7. 670. * il>. 7. 669. 
 
394 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 merely superficial charm. This he proved in the elegy for Die, 
 the Sicilian philosopher whom he had loved, whose short-lived 
 tyranny at Syracuse had been one of the bitterest of his friend's 
 disillusions : Tears were the lot of the Ilian women and Hecuba, 
 spun in the web of their fate on the day of their birth. But for 
 thee, Dio, wide were the hopes that the gods showered down as 
 they received the thank-offering for victory. And now thou liest in 
 thine own land, and' men pay thee honor in death. But I lojied 
 thee to madness, O Dio ! ^ 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The earliest is a papyrus from Gurob, containing 12 
 columns of the Phaedo, 3cl cent. B.C., published in Mahaffy's Petrie Papyri, 
 1891. The Clarkianus (^Bodleianus ax Oxoniensis) , <jih cent. A. D., found in 
 1801 in a monastery on Patmos, is at Oxford; it contains 24 dialogues. The 
 Parisinus, 9th cent., at Paris, contains 14 dialogues and the Letters. The 
 Tubingensis, 17th cent., at Tiibingen, contains 7 dialogues. The Venetm 
 (T), I2th (?) cent., at Venice, contains 31 dialogues. For a complete cata- 
 logue of the numerous manuscripts, see VVohlrab, Die Platonhandschriften, 
 Leipzig, 1887. 
 
 II. Editions. Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 1513. Stephanus, Paris, 1578. 
 (The paging of this ed. is always used for citation of the dialogues.) Bekker, 
 London, i8i6. Baiter-Orelli-Winckelmann, Zurich, 1842 and 1874. Stall- 
 baum, Leipzig, 1827-1877. Schanz, Leipzig, 1875-1885 (unfinished). Her- 
 mann, Leipzig, 1856 (Teubner), revised by Wohlrab, 1887. Burnet, Oxford, 
 1903 (6 vols.). Special editions. /KacflVtti: Thompson, London, 1868. Got- 
 gias: Thompson, London, 1870. Phaedo: Archer-Hind, London, 1884. 
 Geddes, London, 1884. Couvreur, Paris, 1893. Apology: Riddell, Oxford, 
 1877. Symposium: Rettig, Halle, 1875; Hug, Leipzig, 1884. Republic: 
 Jowett and Campliell, Oxford, 1894; Adam, Cambridge, 1903. Sophist 
 and Statesman: Campbell, Oxford, 1867. Theaetetus : Campbell, Oxford, 
 1861; 2d ed., 1883. Philebus: Poste, Oxford, i860; Bury, Cambridge, 1897. 
 Timaeus: Archer-Hind, London, 1887. Laws: Ritter, Leipzig, 1896. 
 
 III. LiTERATURK. Chaignet, De la Psychologie de Platon, Paris, 1862. 
 Grote, Plato, London, 1865. Martin, Etudes sur le Timee, Paris, 1841. 
 Teuffel, Uebersicht d. Plat. Lit., 1874. Huit, La vie et I'oeuvre de Platon, 
 Paris, 1893. Bonitz, Platonische Studien, Vienna, i886. Susemihl, Die 
 genetische Entivicklung d. Plat. Philos., Leipzig, 1855. Pfleiderer, Sokrates 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 7. 99. 
 
PLATO 395 
 
 «. /Va/o, Tiibingen, 1896. Gomperz, Piaioniscke Au/saize, Vienna, 1899-1902. 
 Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, vols. II-III, Eng. trans, by Berry, London, 1905. 
 Lutoslawski, The Origin and Growth of Plato's Logic, London, 1897. Met- 
 tauer, De Plat, scholiorum fontibus, Zurich, 1880. Socher, Ueber Platans 
 Schriften, 1820. Ueberweg, Untersuchungen, 1861. Kxohn, Die Platonische 
 Frage, 1 878. Peipers, Ontologia ■ Platonica, 1 883. Dittenberger in Her- 
 mes 16. Schanz in Hermes 21. Ritter, Untersuchungen, :888. Shorey in 
 vi. /./'., X,Xin,XVL Jackson in /. o/P., X, XI, XIII, XIV, XV. Natorp 
 in Hermes 35. Pater, Plato and Platonism, London, 1892. Shorey in Chicago 
 Studies in Classical Philology, Chicago, 1895. Shorey, The Unity of Plato's 
 Thought, Chicago, 1903. Blass, Ueber die Zeitfolge v. Platon's letzten Schrif- 
 /««, Halle, 1903. Ast, Platons Leben u. Schriften, "LeS^zig, \&l6, Steinhart, 
 Platons Leben, Leipzig, 1873. Zeller, Die Philosophic der Griechen, vol. II 
 (4th ed.), Leipzig, 1889. Stewart, The Myths of Plato, London, 1905. 
 Krohn, Der Platonische Staat, Halle, 1876. Natorp, Plato's Ideenlehre, 
 Leipzig, 1903. Windelband, Platon, Stuttgart, 1900. Kaluscha in Wiener 
 Studien 26, 
 
 IV. Lexica. Mitchell, Index Graecit. Platonicae, Oxford, 1832. Ast, 
 Lexicon Platonicum, Leipzig, 1835-1838. The revised version of Ast's Lexi- 
 con by Lewis Campbell is to be embodied in a new Platonic Lexicon now 
 (1906) in preparation under the editorship of Campbell and Burnet. 
 
 V. Translations. Ficinus, Florence, 1483 (Latin). Jowett, London, 
 3d ed., 5 vols., 1892. Symposium by Shelley, London, 1840. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 ARISTOTLE 
 
 Aristotle' (384-322 b.c), son of Nicomachus, was born at 
 Stageira, an Ionian colony on the northeast coast of Chalcidice, 
 which, like nearly all the Chalcidian cities, was annexed by Philip in 
 349. His father was court physician to Amyntas II of Macedonia. 
 But, as far as we know, Aristotle lived at Stageira until 
 the age of seventeen, and, m spite of the long years 
 that he spent at Athens, remained at heart a Stageirite, uncon- 
 verted to the political aims of Athens or Macedonia. His ideal 
 of a state was a modified Stageira. Of his father's influence 
 there is no trace. At Athens his guardian was a certain Proxenus, 
 to whose son, Nicanor, Aristotle betrothed by will his only daugh- 
 ter. At first he studied in the school of Isocrates, as though he 
 had been intended for .the life of a public man. But before he 
 was well out of his teens, Plato returned from his last attempt 
 to convert the court of Sicily, and Aristotle soon forsook rhetoric 
 for philosophy. Isocrates can have had no deeper grudge against 
 Plato than this defection of one who might have been the chief 
 ornament of the Isocratic school. Long after he had himself 
 reached maturity, Aristotle remained the faithful pupil of Plato, 
 not breaking away from the Academy, in spite of his own inde- 
 pendent judgments and certain marked differences of philosophic 
 creed. On Plato's death he left Athens to accept the invita- 
 tion of a fellow-disciple, Hermeias, tyrant of Atarneus on the 
 Mysian coast. Under the patronage of Hermeias he spent three 
 years near Atarneus, perhaps at Assos. When Hermeias had been 
 
 ^ The main facts and dates of Aristotle's life are given concisely by Dionys. 
 Hal., Mrsi Letter to Ammaeus 5. 
 
 396 
 
ARISTOTLE 397 
 
 put to death by Persian intrigues, Aristotle, at Philip's request, 
 went to the Macedonian court at Pella as the tutor of Alexander, 
 then a boy of fourteen. With Alexander's ambitions he can have 
 had no sympathy, and he would probably have rejected Milton's 
 saying that he 
 
 " bred great Alexander to subdue the world." 
 
 In 335 he returned to Athens to found the school of the 
 Lyceum, where his lectures, delivered during promenades, gave its 
 name to the Peripatetic school of philosophy. This was another 
 fresh start in a life that was somewhat at the mercy of events. He 
 had now reached the age of forty-nine, the moment when, as he 
 thought, the mind of man is at its prirae.^ For the next twelve 
 years he lectured in the Lyceum. But in 323 the death of Alex- 
 ander changed the face of affairs, and he was forced by the 
 Athenian reaction against Macedonia to retire to Chalcis, where he 
 died in 322, the year of the death of Demosthenes. He left a 
 daughter named Pythias, and an illegitimate son Nicomachus, im- 
 mortalized by the association of his name with the Ethics. Aris- 
 totle's will is quoted by Diogenes Laertius.^ His papers were 
 inherited by Theophrastus, his successor in the school, and on his 
 death they came into the possession of Neleus of Skepsis in the 
 Troad. There they remained for about a century and a half, 
 hidden in a cellar, were brought back to Athens at the end of the 
 second century B.C., then to Rome after Sulla's conquest of Athens 
 in 86, and were, at last, pubhshed by the tenth scholarch of the 
 Peripatetic school, Andronicus of Rhodes, about 50 B.C.' 
 
 Aristotle's lectures had been of two kinds : acroamatic (esoteric), 
 reserved for advanced pupils, and those of a more popular cast, 
 called exoteric. The edition of Andronicus did not include the 
 popular works, and they have survived only in fragments. A text 
 
 * Rhetoric 2. 23. ^ 5. 12. 
 
 ' This tradition is preserved by Strabo 13, I. In spite of his statement to 
 the contrary, there is no doubt that copies of the originals were always in 
 use by the Peripatetics, 
 
398 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 which had encountered such vicissitudes must have been much 
 mutilated, and much survived that Aristotle can never have in- 
 tended for publication in its present unrevised form. But where 
 we have not the exact Aristotelian language, we may at least feel 
 that we have Aristotle's ideas. His cast of thought, the " note " 
 of Aristotle, is as unmistakable as Plato's. 
 
 We must always deplore the loss of the more popular works 
 published by Aristotle himself. These were chiefly dialogues, 
 written no doubt in imitation of Plato, and their titles recall the 
 Platonic dialogues : On Friendship, On Justice, Menexenus, Sym- 
 posium. In dialogue form may have been the Exhortation to Phi- 
 losophy, the Protrepticus, which was addressed, after the fashion of 
 an Isocratic tract, to Themison, king of Cyprus, and was imitated 
 by Cicero in the Hortensius. 
 
 For the works that survive, the question of relative date hardly 
 arises. They contain numerous cross-references, and were worked 
 over and added to by Aristotle himself, and perhaps by members 
 of the school, also. As we have them they represent no final revi- 
 sion made by their author with a view to publication, and are often 
 hardly more than lecture notes, material for possible text-books. 
 
 The works on logic would have been placed first by Aristotle in 
 any systematic grouping. Want of culture for him meant ignorance 
 of method, ' analytics.' As the instrument of dialectic these works 
 
 The on method were called by the later Peripatetics the 
 
 Organon Organon ('tool' or 'instrument'). Of the great 
 system of logic which he planned but did not complete we have 
 only portions. The Categories, perhaps not genuine, contains the 
 forms of thought which are so essential a part of Aristotelian ter- 
 minology, — quantity (joirotjov), quahty (roTrotdv), place (to ;roi)), 
 time (to irort), and the rest of the famous Ten. The Topics, on 
 the method of probability, reflects the disputations of the sophists, 
 discusses dialectic, and has a sequel in the Sophistici Elen(hi 
 (Sophistic Refutations^, studies in eristic rather than dialectic. 
 His great contribution to logic was the syllogism discussed in the 
 Analytics. 
 
ARISTOTLE 
 
 399 
 
 In the field of natural science we have the History of Animals, and 
 three minor treatises on the same general subject. In Concerning 
 the Sky \ commonly known as the De Caelo) he dis- Natural 
 cusses, from the standpoint of the science of his day, science 
 the nature of the heavens and the motion of the planets. In the 
 Physics he treats of Matter, Form, Being, Becoming, Motion, and 
 the doctrine of causes : the final, from which flow all results that 
 have any value, and the material or secondary cause, from which 
 comes all that is imperfect or accidental. 
 
 Among the surviving treatises on Psychology and Metaphysics 
 is Concerning the Soul (De Anima), in which he maintains 
 the presence of soul in all things that have life, including plants, 
 reserving intelligence as the peculiar possession of pgychology 
 mankind. In the Metaphysics, which he called First and 
 Philosophy, the first sentence, All men instinctively ^ ^^ ^^'^^ 
 desire knowledge, lays down, in Aristotle's fashion, a universal law 
 which the argument that follows is to elaborate. The Metaphysics 
 received its title, not from Aristotle himself, but from later disci- 
 ples who wished to indicate its relation as coming after the 
 Physics. The subject-matter of this treatise, the four causes, for- 
 mal, material, efficient, final, universals, and absolute existence, he 
 regarded as the highest objects of human investigation. One 
 after another he reviews critically the pre-Socratic philosophers, 
 and then develops his own theory of Being. He rejects the Pla- 
 tonic theory of the independence of the universal concept. Class 
 concepts are real only as they exist in things. He maintained the 
 Platonic antithesis of true Being, recognized by its permanent and 
 universal qualities, and phenomena, which, when not imagined 
 conceptually, are inferior, as being subject to changing states and 
 conditions. But the theory he traced back to Socrates ; Plato had 
 overdeveloped it. His two last Books are a criticism of the Pla- 
 tonic Theory of Ideas. Their most weighty objections had been 
 forestalled by Plato himself in the Parmenides, the difficulty of 
 relating Ideas to phenomena, how to maintain their unity, the 
 ' third man,' and the rest, problems that arise against any theory 
 
40O SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK ITTERATURE 
 
 of the absolute, i Plato had left them unanswered, and they were, 
 
 in fact, unanswerable. 
 
 The Ethics, commonly called the Nicomachean to distinguish it 
 
 from the Eudemian Ethics which, though included with the works of 
 
 Aristotle, is from the hand of a disciple, has been labeled by tra- 
 dition with the name of Aristotle's son, who died as a 
 
 The Ethics , , ,• , , , ^ j-^ .1 
 
 youth, yet may have lived long enough to edit these 
 
 lectures. The treatise may be regarded as part of Aristotle's prac- 
 tical philosophy. Every art and science, he begins, eveij' action 
 and purpose seems to have some good as its object. Happiness is 
 the chief good, the end and aim of all human action. There 
 is a legend that, when Plato lectured on the Absolute Good, which, 
 though it is never exactly defined, is described in the sixth Book 
 of the Republic as the ideal standard of all philosophers and philo- 
 sophic statesmen, his audience melted away until Aristotle alone 
 remained. Aristotle did not, of course, accept Plato's Good con- 
 ceived as a transcendental Idea. He pointed out that it could be 
 brought under his ten Categories, and therefore could not have 
 an independent existence.^ It was, he thought, a poetical abstrac- 
 tion, of no use to the practical man, for whom he himself supplied 
 a working doctrine of virtue and happiness : We may then safely 
 define the happy man as one whose activity accords with perfect vir- 
 tue and who is adequately furnished with external goods, not for 
 a casual period of time, but for a complete or perfect lifetime. But 
 perhaps we ought to add that he will always live so, and will die as 
 he lives? Spencer,^ from the standpoint of modern utilitarian 
 ethics, brackets together Aristotle's and Plato's conceptions of 
 virtue and happiness, and condemns them both as unpractical 
 in assuming an ideal good.* Aristotle had before him an audience 
 thoroughly familiar with Plato's writings, and he constantly as- 
 sumes such a knowledge — especially in the Ethics, where he was 
 
 1 Ethics 1.4. 2 Ethics i. 10. Welldon's translation. 
 
 ^ Data of Ethics 13. 
 
 * For a discussion of the whole question of the Good as envisaged by Plato 
 and Aristotle, see Shorey, The Idea of Good in Plato's Republic. 
 
ARISTOTLE 401 
 
 dealing with a subject that Plato had thought of the first impor- 
 tance. When he attacks the Platonic doctrine, it is with an apology 
 echoed from Plato's own words : ' It is not that I love Plato less, 
 but Truth more.' ^ The Ethics throughout is an argument, though 
 Aristotle abandoned in such lectures as these the dialogue form 
 which Plato gave to his own dialectic. 
 
 The Magna Moralia is now generally regarded as a Peripatetic 
 treatise on ethics written after Aristotle's day, though still in the 
 third century B.C., so that it represents the school The Magna 
 ■tradition. Of the Eudemian Ethics, now generally Moralia 
 ascribed to Eudemus of Rhodes, Books 4-6 are almost identi- 
 cal with Books 5-7 of the Nicomachean. Hence these latter 
 are assigned to Eudemus by some critics. As an objection to this 
 theory, Burnet points out in his edition of the Ethics that Eudemus, 
 who was a mathematician, as Aristotle was not, would not have 
 used mathematical formulae with so little clearness as is displayed 
 by the author of the account of Justice in Book 5. 
 
 Aristotle regarded ethids as a branch of political science, to be 
 treated as ' a sort of politics,' and he wrote the Politics as a natural 
 
 sequel to the Ethics. Like Plato, he thought politics 
 , , . , , , , , . r , The Politics 
 
 the highest of the arts, the most architectonic, and 
 
 political activity the activity most appropriate to man. He in- 
 tended his lectures on politics to show how the Good of man, 
 which he had discussed in the Ethics, could be put into practice 
 in a state. Plato in the Republic had discussed ethics and politics 
 together, making the closest parallel between the individual soul in 
 all its varieties, and the various political states or forms of govern- 
 ment. Aristotle, though he wrote two separate treatises, always 
 assumes in his Ethics a political setting for the virtues, and would 
 have thought those lectures incomplete without the Politics. 
 Happiness is to be seen at its best and highest in a political state. 
 The Politics is crowded with reminiscences of the Platonic writings, 
 besides certain definite criticisms of Plato's Utopia. Aristotle de- 
 clined to abolish the family by establishing a community of wives 
 
 1 Cp. Ethics 6 with Plato, Republic 595 c. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 26 
 
402 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 and children, pointing out that, under those conditions, there 
 
 would be but a diluted affection to bind the citizens together. 
 
 Blood would not really be thicker than water where all men were 
 
 brothers. He was not dazzled, like Plato, by the Spartan ideal, 
 
 nor, on the other hand, had he anything to say about the growth 
 
 of such an empire as that conceived by Alexander. His ideal is 
 
 the small, autonomous, aristocratic city-state ; it is the traditions of 
 
 such city-states that he is interested in summing up, and he either 
 
 did not see or ignored the fact that their day in Greece was over. 
 
 The education of the citizen was one of the main topics. But 
 
 in the work as we have it his views are incomplete. 
 Education ,,„ , , , , . . , , , ; 
 
 What he had to say on the trainmg of the body we 
 have in full, and his ideas on music as a means in the education 
 of character.^ But of the education of the mind there is not a 
 word. He was no mathematician, nor did his school turn its atten- 
 tion to mathematics, as the Academy had done. It is, therefore, 
 not certain that he would have prescribed for his youthful citizen 
 that training in mathematics which Plato thought the essential prel- 
 ude to dialectic. Plato's pupils had been trained in the Academy 
 partly by the study of plants and animals,^ and biology, botany, 
 and physics were the favorite studies of the Lyceum. Plato had 
 taken slavery for granted, though he had said that Hellenic 
 prisoners of war must never be so degraded. Aristotle's attitude 
 is a slight advance, in that he perceived the whole question of the 
 justice of slavery to be open to discussion and beset with diffi- 
 culties,' which he reviews at length. But he thought slavery justi- 
 fied for the class of men who are ' slaves by nature,' men whose 
 function is mere physical service because they are incapable of 
 anything better. 
 
 In both the Ethics and Politics we have the lecture-room man- 
 ner of Aristotle, and we may safely regard them as having been 
 
 1 Politics 8. 
 
 2 In a play of Epicrates, /r. ii (Kock), Plato and his school are described 
 as bending all their energies to the definition of a gourd. 
 
 ^Politics I. 5-6. 
 
ARISTOTLE 403 
 
 written by him in something like their present form, for delivery, 
 though certainly not, as they stand, for publication. They are in 
 the colloquial manner, and throughout he seems to feel his way 
 through the argument, deliberately to choose the tone of dialectic 
 rather than that of one who offers dogmatic teaching. 
 
 It appears to have been his practice to collect a vast amount of 
 material for his educational works, to construct, as it were, his own 
 reference books. It was, perhaps, with a view to writing the 
 Politics that he made his descriptions of Constitutions, 158 in num- 
 ber. These tracts, which Plutarch found interesting reading, have 
 disappeared, with one exception. A portion of the Constitution 
 of Athens was recovered in 1885 from an Egyptian The Consti- 
 papyrus. Not long after, there were further finds, so tutioo of 
 that we now have the work almost entire. The editio Athena 
 princeps •W2iS, published in 1891,^ the year which saw the appear- 
 ance of the first edition of Herodas. The Constitution of Athens 
 is a political pamphlet, intended for the guidance of the ideal 
 statesman. Aristotle, like Plato, despaired of society as he found 
 it, and had no illusions on the subject of Athenian democracy. 
 This tract, however, since it concerned a state of which he was a 
 citizen for twenty years, was perhaps worked over more carefully 
 than the other descriptions of constitutions. He was no historian, 
 like Herodotus or Thucydides, and this is no monument of his- 
 torical research. He assumes a knowledge of history in his readers 
 and draws on the poems of Solon, the histories of Herodotus and 
 Thucydides, and those Attic chroniclers who, like Hellanicus, wrote 
 each his Atthis, or chronicles of Athens, in the fourth century. 
 The first part of the tract is historical, the second analytical. 
 Aristotle describes the development of the Athenian constitution 
 from the earliest times down to the restoration of the democracy 
 after the fall of the Thirty Tyrants, after which date there was no 
 more to be learned from the constitutional history of Athens. 
 There could hardly be a more impartial historian than Aristotle as 
 he calmly surveyed the past of his adopted city, and described 
 1 Kenyon, London. 
 
404 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 the machinery of her government in his own day, the Ecclesia, the 
 senate, the magistrates, the law courts. In the Politics he showed 
 how little of all this he accepted for his ideal city. The date of 
 the tract is generally, placed within the years 334-325 B.C., when 
 Aristotle was near the close of his career, writing with the full 
 authority of age, and his position as a renowned teacher. That it 
 was probably intended for the general reader is indicated by the 
 style, which is a great improvement on that of the other extant 
 writings, clear and fluent, the style of work that he published as 
 opposed to the note-book manner.^ 
 
 The Poetics is a critical document which in the sixteenth, 
 seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries became the canon of dra- 
 matic composition. The tract as we have it, the first formal 
 
 treatise on poetry, is incomplete. Only the first Book 
 , . J J , ., , ■ J . The Poetics 
 
 has survived, and that with many alterations and muti- 
 lations. The second. On Comedy, is lost save for a few fragments. 
 All art, he said, following Plato's lead in the Republic and Phaedrus^ 
 is ' imitation.' Of the types of poetic imitation he chose out three, 
 tragedy, epic, and the dithyramb, this last for the sake of its 
 relation to the drama, for Greek lyric in its many other forms 
 he ignores, no doubt because he was indifferent to it. He proceeds 
 to define tragedy as the imitation of an action that is serious (or of 
 moral distinction), complete and of a certain magnitude ; in lan- 
 guage embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several 
 kinds being found in separate parts of the play ; in the form of ac- 
 tion, not of narrative ; through pity and fear effecting the proper 
 purgation of these emotions? The six parts of tragedy are Plot, 
 Character (which he thought more important than Plot), Diction, 
 Thought, Scenery, Song. He would have been no Greek had he 
 not given ethics its due, both in liis prescription for the tragic hero, 
 who must fall by some striking fault and be neither too good nor 
 too bad for our sympathies, and in the famous doctrine of catharsis, 
 the purgation of pity and terror. Aristotle's spectator is to be 
 
 ^ This improvement is ascribed by Kaibel to the influence of Herodotus. 
 * e. 6. Butcher's translation. 
 
ARISTOTLE 
 
 40s 
 
 roused to the height of these emotions by the sight of so much 
 disaster, and his soul is to be purged of them in a manner that 
 much explanation on the part of scholars has never made precise. 
 Aesthetic pleasure comes from the sight of so much clever imita- 
 tion, from the rhythm, the language, the music, the surprises, the 
 recognitions, the character drawing. The Oedipus Tyrannus is 
 Aristotle's model play, and he admires the relation there of recog- 
 nition and reversal (complete change of circumstances), the second 
 following immediately, as it should, upon the first. Aristotle saw 
 in unity the formal principle of all aesthetic beauty, and the seventh 
 and eighth chapters discuss the question of dramatic unity, and 
 were the starting-point of the famous theory of the ' Unities.' The 
 only unity that he demands in a drama is unity of action. Every 
 part of the plot must be necessary to the whole, and that whole 
 must be such as the eye can grasp with ease. He had said that 
 the time limit of a tragedy should be ' a single revolution of the 
 sun or only a little longer,' ^ but to this he had prefixed ' as far as 
 possible,' and laid down no rigid rule. The third unity, of place, 
 is not so much as mentioned. How then did the ' Unities ' under 
 the name of Aristotle become a law for Europe? It seems to have 
 been the Italians who first, in the sixteenth century, introduced 
 the law of the unities, first of time and then of place. In England 
 the unity of place was formulated as we find it, together with the 
 unity of time, in Sidney's Apobgy for Poetry written in the latter 
 part of the sixteenth century. In France the three Unities were 
 formulated about 1630, a century later than Sidney. Boileau 
 erected the theory into a dogma,^ and Voltaire and others accepted 
 it without question as Aristotelian, until Lessing appealed to the 
 Poetics to prove that the theorists had gone far beyond Aristotle. 
 The last chapters are a comparison of epic and tragedy, their 
 
 ^ Art Poetique (published in 1674): — 
 
 " Qu'en un lieu qu'en un jour, un seul fait accompli 
 Tienne jusqu'a la fin le theitre rempli." 
 See Breitinger, Les Unites d'Aristote, Geneva, 1895. 
 
4o6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 different laws of composition and their respective merits. For 
 Aristotle, as poetry is the highest ot the arts, so tragedy is the 
 highest form of poetry. His dramatic aesthetics are not, of 
 course, appropriate to the modern theater, and we cannot but feel 
 that a critic of the drama who never dreamed of such an appari- 
 tion as Shakespeare, and in epic did not forebode Vergil, Dante, 
 and Milton, has little to say to the modern reader. Aesthetic 
 criticism was indeed not in his line, so much his deafness to Greek 
 lyric might prove ; his view was narrowed by what he had before 
 him ; he looked back as one who saw the final achievements of 
 literature which it only remained for him to appraise, and dreamed 
 of no new types ; his treatise is unfinished, and in the roughest 
 shape, perhaps mere lecture notes ; but as far as he goes Aristotle 
 is, as Lessing said of him, " infallible as the Elements of Euclid," 
 and he is both ingenious and just. His terminology and defini- 
 tions (though chapter 12 with the famous definitions of Prologue, 
 Parodos, and the rest is out of place and perhaps not even gen- 
 uine) remain unalterable and of real value. 
 
 There had been many rhetorical handbooks, chiefly dealing with 
 legal oratory, before Aristotle, but he created the art of rhetoric' 
 
 The His Rhetoric (3 Books) was written as the counterpart, 
 
 Rhetoric in an allied field, of his Logic. As that is the art of 
 discussion, so rhetoric is for him the art of persuading in any sub- 
 ject, and he set out to systematize and reduce to rules the processes 
 common to all who speak and write to carry their point. In the 
 first Book he considers the kinds of proofs, whence to get and 
 how to use them, and the rhetorical syllogism (enthymeme) ; the 
 three kinds of rhetoric, deliberative, judicial, and epideictic (we 
 owe to him those categories), their special topics and illustrations, 
 and the audiences that go with each. In the second Book he 
 follows Plato's hint in the Phaedrus of the need of psychology as 
 the basis of rhetoric, and analyzes the passions, habits, and tastes 
 of the type of men whom the speaker will have to persuade, a 
 
 ' See Spengel, 'Zvvariuri^ rex"'^", Stuttgart, 1828 ; Navarre, La Rh'etoriqnc 
 Crecqut avant Aristote, Paris, igcxj. 
 
ARISTOTLE 407 
 
 systematic psychology of rhetoric. Those chapters (1-12) on 
 rhetorical ' ethos ' for men of different ages and conditions may 
 have been intended for logographers, speechwrights who at Athens 
 must adapt every speech to the temperament and condition of the 
 client who had to deliver it. It was from this book that Horace- 
 took his Four Ages of human life. Throughout, oratory is the 
 formof prose composition which dominates Aristotle's mind, as in the 
 Poetics tragedy overshadows all other forms of poetry, even epic. 
 The third Book, far the most famous, is more concerned with the 
 literary side of the subject, with style and arrangement. It seems 
 to have been composed separately, and could ahnost stand alone, 
 like the tract of Demetrius. Aristotle was not profoundly interested 
 in style. After deciding that it must be clear and appropriate he 
 devotes much discussion to the use of metaphors, and reveals a 
 curious strictness which puts him out of touch here and there with 
 modern taste, as when, in his horror of the poetical or exaggerated 
 in prose, he blames Alcidamas for caUing the Odyssey a ' fair 
 mirror of human life.' His discussion of rhythm, with the warning 
 (much needed in the next centuries) against its abuse, is the basis 
 of much that followed in the theorists, Dionysius, for instance, in his 
 essay On the Arrangement of Words. They adopted from hirn the 
 preference for paeonic rhythm, of whose four possible forms he 
 praised -w w \j and \j w w-, the latter for the end of a clause. In 
 this Book he distinguishes the two styles, the continuous, the pre- 
 ferred style of Herodotus, and the periodic, of Isocrates, categories 
 that may be added to all the others that Aristotle presented to the 
 world in the days when the rhetoricians were still naming their tools 
 and regarded their craft as a science and not a sport. ' Purity ' 
 and ' propriety ' are labels that he devised, and he has much to say 
 on antithesis, true and false. The excesses of Gorgianic prose he, 
 like all the saner Greeks, condemned as a puerile fashion, and it 
 is to Isocrates that he turns most often for illustrations, ignoring, 
 curiously enough, Demosthenes, the master of eloquence, whether 
 from Macedonian prejudice, or because, as is more likely, he pre- 
 ferred a less forcible style of oratory. He concludes by giving the 
 
4o8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 formal divisions of a speech, exordium, narrative, proofs, and per- 
 oration, witli certain devices to outwit the opponent and the rec- 
 ommendation of jokes in season, irony being preferred as 'more 
 gentlemanly.' 
 
 As early as the sixteenth century it was recognized that the 
 Rhetoric to Alexander, which has come down under the name of 
 Aristotle, should rather be ascribed to Anaximenes of Lampsacus, 
 the fourth-century historian from whom Quintihan quotes a passage 
 that can be identified (though not absolutely) in the Rhetoric to 
 Alexander. The tract, which deals with the practical art of 
 oratory, exists in fragments. In tendency it is independent of 
 Aristotle and may even have been published earlier than his 
 Rhetoric} 
 
 Aristotle had the reputation of a good letter writer, one who 
 The knew how long to make a letter, what topics were suit- 
 
 Letters able, what should be the epistolary manner.^ But we 
 have only fragments of his Letters, and their genuineness is not 
 beyond question. 
 
 The treachery of Memnon of Rhodes which destroyed his 
 friend Hermeias, and the virtues of his patron of Atarneus, in- 
 spired Aristotle to compose an epigram, an elegiac quatrain to be 
 The inscribed on the statue of Hermeias at Delphi. The 
 Poems fragment of an elegy To Eudemus is worth notice be- 
 cause it contains the praises of Plato, as one ' whom it is not 
 permitted that bad men should even admire.' But the most im- 
 portant extant poem is the choral song in memory of Hermeias, 
 commonly called To Virtue? This has been called in turn a 
 hymn, an ode, a paean, a scolion, and is not easily to be included 
 in any of these categories. It was, however, choral, was sung at 
 banquets, and is perhaps, as Reitzenstein thinks,* simply an unusual 
 
 lEd. Spengel, Leipzig, 1847. Usenet, Quaesiiones Anaximeneae, Got- 
 tingen, 1856. Ipfelkofer, Die Rhetorik des Anaximenes, Wurzburg, 1889. 
 Susemihl and Navarre reject the ascription to Anaximenes. 
 
 ^Demetrius, On Style 230 ff. 
 
 2 Bergk, fr. 6. * Epigrainm, u. Skolion 42, 
 
ARISTOTLE 409 
 
 type of scolion, nearly related to the paean. The meter is dactylo- 
 epitritic. In these fifteen verses Aristotle sings in a strain that recalls 
 Wordsworth's Ode to Duty, the austere charms of Virtue, in whose 
 name Heracles and the Heavenly Twins were proud to toil, 
 and Achilles and Ajax to go down to Hades. With these great 
 names he linked the ' nursHng of Atarneus,' his friend, whose 
 pursuit of Virtue lost him life, but gained him the glory of a death- 
 less memory. 
 
 Aristotle is "the Master of those who know."^ Dante wrote 
 his famous phrase at a time when the authority of Aristotle was 
 predominant, in that period of scholasticism before the dawn of 
 the Renaissance revealed once again to the learned world the 
 wisdom of Plato. To the schoolmen of all Europe, in the thir- 
 teenth and fourteenth centuries, Aristotle was an infallible guide. 
 In him they found knowledge systematized, the forms of thought 
 fixed, the language of science set forth in words and phrases which 
 have remained to this day in use as he coined them. He was a 
 polymath, an encyclopaedist as indefatigable, as insatiable in the 
 collection of facts, as the hardest worker among those who were, a 
 little later, the pride of Alexandria. But he was not a mere 
 polymath, as were so many of the Alexandrians. On all that 
 material which he had gathered with a pedant's industry he brought 
 reason to bear, so that with him learning turned to wisdom ; he is 
 the first scientific statistician. Even where his scientific con- 
 clusions were false and, as in some instances, a retrogression 
 from the ground already won, his method is masterly. To discuss, 
 to define, was his passion ; to organize, to formulate existing 
 knowledge, his ambition. Theorizing was, he thought, the most 
 delightful of all activities, if one pursued it for its own sake, apart 
 from all question of practical utility, and though he was rarely 
 eloquent, and betrayed little of that emotional fervor which fas- 
 cinates the reader of Plato, he can rise to enthusiasm in speak- 
 ing of the life of the speculative philosopher.^ Consistently, 
 therefore, he conceived of God as absorbed in contemplation that 
 
 1 Dante, Inferno, canto 4. ^Ethics 10. 7. 
 
4IO SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 has no relation to the universe, not, like Plato's God, a creative 
 power that seeks to assimilate all things to himself: Now ij 
 political and military activities are conspicuous among good activi- 
 ties for their beauty and grandeur, but are incompatible with leisure 
 and are not chosen for their own sakes, but aim at an end beyond 
 them, and if the activity of intellect which is speculative seems to 
 surpass them in seriousness and not to aim at any end beyond itself 
 and to have a pleasure that is all its own, . . . if this is so, I say 
 it is evident that it is in this activity that we shall find self-suffi- 
 ciency and the possibility of leisure and such freedom from weari- 
 ness as is possible to man. Here, then, we have the perfect happi- 
 ness of 7tian, . . . It is not in so far as he is a man that he will be 
 able to live this life, but only so far as he has a divine element in 
 him. . . . The activity of God which excels all others in blessed- 
 ness, will be speculative} 
 
 Aristotle anticipated no modern theory of physics or astronomy, 
 and fell behind such a thinker as Democritus, in comparison with 
 whom he may be called superficial in this field. In anatomy and 
 descriptive zoology he was a close and accurate observer, making 
 genuine discoveries, and arriving at conclusions that are valid to- 
 day. He was, in fact, the creator of Natural History.^ 
 
 Aristotle aimed at covering the whole field of human interests 
 and despised no detail, thinking that every manifestation of human 
 intelligence was important for the understanding of the whole. 
 
 1 Ethics 10. 7. 7-8. Burnet's translation. 
 
 2 Osborn in From the Greeks to Darwin has collected certain passages from 
 Aristotle to prove that " he had substantially the modern conception of the 
 Evolution of life from a primordial, soft mass of living matter to the most 
 perfect forms, and that even in these he believed Evolution was incomplete, 
 for they were progressing to higher forms. His argument of the analogy 
 between the operatinn of natural law, rather than of chance, in the lifeless 
 and in the living world, is a perfectly logical one, and his consequent rejection 
 of the hypothesis of the survival of the fittest a sound deduction from his own 
 limited knowledge of nature. It seems perfectly clear that he placed all under 
 secondary natural laws. If he had accepted Empedocles' hypothesis, he 
 woijld have been the literal prophet of Darwinism." 
 
ARISTOTLE 411 
 
 Theatrical records {didascaliae) , Homeric problems, zoology, 
 physics, metaphysics, ethics, politics, rhetoric, and literary criti- 
 cism in turn absorbed his energies, and, above all, logic,' the in- 
 dispensable instrument of reasoning on all these. Experiment 
 and induction he recognized as the only method of scientific 
 research. 
 
 His conception of life is less sympathetic to us than Plato's, 
 because, while he lifts us to no exalted heights, he fails to impress 
 us with his comfortable but not illuminating doctrine that virtue is 
 a mean between two extremes. No moral enthusiasm lights up 
 his pages. The spirit of the ethical reformer which had produced 
 the practical philosophy of Plato was not Aristotle's. To reor- 
 ganize human life was not his ambition. But to make canons and 
 categories, to bring into order all the accumulated works of the 
 Greek genius, to show himself for all time the master of methodi- 
 cal thinking and knowing, this was the task of his life and in this 
 he succeeded. 
 
 Without the evidence of the more popular treatises it is im- 
 possible to be fair to his style. To us he seems to write most in 
 character when he uses the purely scientific expository manner. 
 We have not his Dialogues, that ' golden stream of 
 speech' admired by Cicero. In the single extant 
 work intended for the general reader, the Constitution of Athens, 
 his style is severe, unadorned with poetic words, and lucid, an 
 epithet that cannot be applied to large portions of the more scien- 
 tific works as we have them. For the Gorgianic manner of writ- 
 ing he has only ridicule.^ But he owed much to Isocrates, and 
 it is probable that, could we recover more of his popular treatises, 
 we should find in them some approximation to the Isocratic style.^ 
 
 Of his commentators the most important flourished in the 
 second and third centuries a.d. Alexander Aphrodisias was a 
 Carian who came to Athens about 198 a.d. We have his com- 
 mentaries on the Analytics, the Topics, and the Metaphysics, as 
 
 ' The word itself is, however, later than Aristotle. ^ Rhetoric 3. I. 
 
 * Cp. Cicero, Orator 62, Aristoteles Isocratem ipsum lacessivit. 
 
412 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 well as some minor independent treatises. At the Renaissance, 
 his works were translated into Latin. In the sixth century a.d. 
 Aristotle's ^ived SiMPLicius of Cilicia, a pupil of Damascius the 
 commenta- Neo-Platonist. He left Athens in 529 when the 
 ■'"^ Academy was closed by the edict of Justinian. His 
 
 commentaries, On the Categories, On the Physics, etc., are extant, 
 and are especially valuable for the quotations of the earlier 
 philosophers. His Manual on Epictetus is, says Gibbon, " pre- 
 served in the library of nations as a classic book." 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 I. Manuscripts. There is no single complete manuscript of Aristotle. For 
 the Poetics and Rhetoric the best is the Parisinus, loth or nth cent. Facsimile : 
 Paris, Leroux, 1891. Physics, Metaphysics, History of Animals, etc.: /"rtn- 
 ;2««;, I2th cent. Metaphysics: Laurentianus, 12th cent. Organon; Mar- 
 cianiis, loth cent. Constitution of Athens ; papyri at Berlin and the British 
 Museum, end of the ist or beginning of the 2d cent. A.D. Facsimile: 
 Kenyon, London, 1891. Politics; manuscripts of the 14th and 15th cent., 
 at Paris and Milan, and the Latin versions of Bruni, 15th cent , and William 
 of Moerbeke, 13th cent. 
 
 II. Editions. ^i/./^Mir., Aldus, Venice, 1495-1498. Berlin ed. by Bekker 
 and Brandis, 1831-1870; vols. I-IV,text, Latin trans, and scholia; vol. V, Frag- 
 ments by Rose and Index by Bonitz. Aristotle's text is usually cited by the 
 pages of the Berlin edition. Didot ed., by Diibnerand others, Paris, 1 848-1 874. 
 Teubner ed. (unfinished) by Apelt, Blass, Susemihl, Christ, Rose,'and others. 
 Special editions. Organon; Waitz, Leipzig, 1 844-1 846. Commentary by Maier, 
 Tubingen, 1896. Logica: Trendelenburg, Berlin, 1862. Sophistici Elenchi: 
 Poste, London, 1866 (with trans.). De Caelo: Prantl, Leipzig, 1881. De 
 Coloribus, etc.: Prantl, Leipzig, i88t. Physica; Prantl, Leipzig, 1879. De 
 Anima ; Biehl, Leipzig, 1884; Trendelenburg, Berlin, 1877. Metaphysics; 
 Bonitz, Bonn, 1848. Nic. Ethics ; Ramsauer, Leipzig, 1878; Bywater, Oxford, 
 1891; Susemihl, Leipzig, 1882; Grant, London, 1885; Burnet, London, 
 1900. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics (commentary to Bywater's 
 text), Oxford, 1892. Jackson, Book 5, Cambridge, 1879. Rodier, Book 10, 
 Paris, 1897. Eudemian Ethics; Susemihl, Leipzig, 1884. Magna Moralia: 
 Susemihl, Leipzig, 1883. Politics; Susemihl, Leipzig, 1872, 1879, 1882. 
 Susemihl and Hicks, Books 1-5, London, 1894. Newman, vols. 1-2, Ox- 
 ford, 1887; vols. 3-4, 1902. Constitution of Athens : ed. princ, Kenyon, 
 London, 1891; Van Herwerden and Van Leeuwen, Leyden, 1891; Sandys, 
 
ARISTOTLE 413 
 
 London, I Sq3; Blass, Leipzig, 1892; Wilamowitz, Berlin, 1891; 2d ed., 1893. 
 Rhetoric: Spengel, Leipzig, 1867. Cope an I Sandys, 3 vols., Cambridge, 
 1877. Poetics ; Vahlen, 3d ed., Leipzig, 1885. Butcher, 2d ed., London, 
 1898; 3d ed., 1902. Egger in Essai sur Vhistoire de la critique chez les 
 Cr«j, Paris, 1849. Egger, Paris, 1878. Ueberweg, Berlin, 1870. Susemihl, 
 Leipzig, 1874. Gomperz, Leipzig, 1897. Tucker, London, 1899. Poems in 
 Bergk, Lyrici Poetae Graeci 11. 
 
 in. Literature. Lewes, Wt-z.s/'o//^, London, 1864. Gxoie, Aristotle, 'Lon- 
 don, 1872; 3d ed., 1884. Trendelenburg, De Ar. Categoriis, Berlin, 1833. 
 Rose, ZJ< .4/-. librorum ordine et auctoritate, Berlin, 1854. Rose, Ar. Pseudo- 
 epigraphus, Leipzig, 1863. Cope, Introduction to the hhetoric, London, 1867. 
 Cook Wilson, Aristotelian Studies, Oxford, 1879. Kaibel, Stil u. Text d. 
 AS. IIoX., Berlin, 1893. Bcnitz, Ar. Studien, Vienna, 1862. Zeller, Aris- 
 totle and the Earlier Peripatetics, Eng. trans, by Costelloe and Muirhead, 
 London, 1897. Wilamowitz, Aristoteles u. Athen, Berlin, 1893. Zeller in 
 Hermesi^. Bergk in i?/4«j«. Mus. 36. 'H&vei, Etude sur la rhetorique d'Aris- 
 tole, Paris, 1846. Bernays, Zwei Abhandlungen iiber d. Ar. Theorie d. Drama, 
 Berlin, 1880. Benard, I'Esthetique d'Aristote, Paris, 1887. Prickard, On 
 the Art of Poetry, London, 1891. Gomperz, Zu A's Poetik, Vifenna, l888- 
 1896. TeichmuUer, Aristotelische Forschungen, Halle, 1869. Wallace, Out- 
 lines of the Philosophy of Aristotle, Oxford, 1880; 3d ed., 1883. Navarre, 
 Essai sur la rhetorique grecque avani Aristote, Paris, 1900. Breitinger, I^s 
 Unites d^ Aristote, Geneva, 1895. 
 
 IV. Translations. Welldon: Politics, London, 1883; Rhetoric, 1886; 
 Ethics, 1892. Politics: Jowett (with notes), Oxford, 1885. Metaphysics: 
 M'Mahon, London, 1884. Poetics: Butcher in his edition. Ethics: Peters, 
 London, 1904. Organon: Owen, London, 1882. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus in vol. V of the Berlin ed. of 
 Aristotle. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE 
 
 It was far more than her political independence that Alexander 
 took from Athens. When he founded Alexandria in 331, he per- 
 haps hoped that, in that Oriental city, remote from the petty jeal- 
 ousies of the Greek states, the Hellenic spirit would find a wider 
 field than in the narrow confines of the Athens that he had humili- 
 ated. In Alexandria were to be fresh literary triumphs, forever 
 associated with his name. And some part of this ambition he 
 achieved. When, at his death, in 323, his empire was divided, 
 one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter, became king of Egypt. Had 
 the tastes of this first Ptolemy been simply those of a military ad- 
 venturer, Alexandria might never have become the center of the 
 literary life of the next century and a half. Under his rule she 
 rose to be the greatest commercial city of the world. But he had 
 still higher ambitions for his capital. Following the traditions of 
 Hipparchus of Athens, Hiero of Syracuse, and his own royal coun- 
 tryman Archelaus of Macedon, Ptolemy invited to his court the 
 most distinguished writers and artists of the day. Menander he 
 could not persuade to leave Athens, but among those who accepted 
 his patronage were Philetas of Cos the founder of Alexandrian 
 elegy, Euclid the geometer, Stilpo of Megara the philosopher, and 
 Zenodotus of Ephesus the grammarian. To make the attracdons 
 of Alexandria for men of letters more permanent, he did what was 
 hardly possible for the patrons of literature in the days of the crea- 
 tive writers. He began to make that collection of books which 
 was to grow speedily into the great Library of Alexandria, and en- 
 shrined it in an academy whose handsome buildings and grounds 
 
 414 
 
CALLIMACHUS 415 
 
 were assigned as luxurious quarters for the most favored men of 
 letters. The expansion of the Library, and the studies that were 
 inspired by this unique collection were the central interest of the 
 Museum, as this temple of the Muses was called. One Ptolemy 
 after another added to the Library, and when it was burnt, in 
 47 B.C., it is said to have contained 700,000 volumes. Zenodotus, 
 whose specialty was Homeric criticism, was the first librarian, and 
 each in his turn, Callimachus, Eratosthenes, Apollonius of Rhodes, 
 Aristophanes of Byzantium, and Aristarchus took over this great 
 trust, became the head of the learned community, and contributed 
 critical and philological studies of the treasures under his care. 
 
 This was not an atmosphere from which was to be expected 
 great poetry, the poetry that speaks with a common voice to men. 
 Great learning and technical facility the Alexandrian poets ac- 
 quired, but among them all Theocritus stands out conspicuous as 
 one who sings because he must ; the others sing because they can. 
 They are destined to illustrate for all time the dangers of writing 
 for a coterie rather than for the entertainment of mankind in gen- 
 eral. Even in their own day, they had to face the ridicule that 
 always attacks a clique. Many are fattened in crowded Egypt, 
 says Timon of Phlius,^ scribblers on papyrus, endlessly squabbling 
 in the bird coop of the Muses. 
 
 Callimachus was born {circa 310 B.C.) in Cyrene, the 
 modern vilayet of Barka, a Dorian colony on the coast of Africa 
 
 which had been founded by his ancestor Battus of _ „. 
 rr^, ■ , , XT- , ^ T^ Callimachus 
 
 Thera, in the seventh century. His descent from Bat- 
 tus was a fact that Callimachus allowed no one to forget, and the 
 Latin poets kept up the tradition. For Catullus, who translated 
 and imitated him, Callimachus is ' Battiades,' so that, like Pindar, 
 this Alexandrian librarian secured some measure of the respect 
 always paid to a Dorian aristocrat. It seems likely that from Cy- 
 rene he went to study at Athens, and began his career as a school 
 master in a suburb of Alexandria. About 280 he attracted the 
 notice of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and thereafter spent his life in the 
 
 1 230 B.C. 
 
4i6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 shadow of the great Library, where he is supposed to have suc- 
 ceeded Zenodotus as librarian. He died about 240. As a poet, 
 prose writer, philologist, librarian, and arbiter of literary taste, he is 
 the most complete representative of the kind of talent and industry 
 which have given the epithet ' Alexandrian ' its associations in lit- 
 erature. Among his prose works, which have all disappeared, was 
 a huge handbook, a bibliography with notes, which was something 
 between a library catalogue and a history of literature. But it was 
 by his poems that he rose into notice, and by them he survives. 
 His tragedies have gone the way of his prose. 
 
 ' If you want,' says Martial, writing about 95 a.d. to a friend, 'to 
 read something that has no relation to real life and the men and 
 manners of your own time, I recommend the Causes of Callima- 
 chus.'^ But this was a criticism of the legends that Calliraachus 
 had chosen, rather than of the tone or manner of the poem. It 
 was in the Causes that Calliraachus displayed his sentimental side. 
 'Avoid the sentimental poets like myself and Callimachus,' says 
 Ovid in his Cure for Love- sickness?' Here we may suppose that 
 he referred to the Causes (Atria). It was a collection of roman- 
 tic tales in elegiac verse, chosen by Callimachus from the less fa- 
 miliar legends, according to the practice of this well-read poet, 
 who avoided, as far as possible, the themes of his classic predeces- 
 sors. The fragments, brief quotations by grammarians, 
 defy every attempt to reconstruct the poem. We know 
 that it was in four Books, and that the mythical allusions were as 
 enigmatic as Callimachus could make them. The Latin elegists 
 found in the Causes a store of sentimental situations, and were far 
 from underrating their model. Here and there, however, their 
 praise is faint to our ears, as when Ovid says that Callimachus 
 made up in craftsmanship what he lacked in genius. One virtue 
 we may assume for this elegy. It was short, or at least the separate 
 tales were short. The nearest literary parallel for this didactic poem 
 must have been the Lyde of Antimachus, an Alexandrian born be- 
 fore his season. But Callimachus detested Antimachus and all his 
 * Epigrams 10. 4. 2 yj^ f(_ 
 
CALLIMACIIUS 417 
 
 works, chiefly because of their length.afault that he no doubtavoided 
 for himself. Lacking this elegy, we can hardly give Callimachus 
 his right place as a poet. But tradition, the favorable remark of 
 Quintilian, and the frank imitations of the Latin poets have se- 
 cured him the first rank among Alexandrian elegists. The roman- 
 tic tale of the love of Acontius and Cydippe was told in the 
 Causes and inspired Ovid with two of his imaginary love letters.' 
 The story of these lovers, their first meeting at a Delian festival, 
 their separation and reunion, reminds one of the New Comedy 
 plots and indicates the beginning of the Greek romances. It was 
 used again in the sixth Christian century by Aristaenetus when he 
 wrote his imaginary letters, using precisely the method of the mod- 
 em novelist who throws his tale into the epistolary form. 
 
 The Lock of Berenice's Hair, in elegiacs, was translated by Ca- 
 tullus and may be judged from his version,^ if it be fair to estimate 
 any poem from a translation. Like Pope's Rape of 
 the Lock, than which nothing could be more Alexan- * 
 drian in spirit, it is mock heroic, the tale of the apotheosis of the 
 lock which Berenice vowed as a thank offering for the safe return 
 of her husband Ptolemy from the war. Pope himself did not 
 write with a lighter irony than this pedantic poet of the Alexan- 
 drian court. As we have the poem in Catullus, it is a clever piece 
 of raillery, where we should have looked for mere flattery and 
 a display of erudition. 
 
 The lost Ibis was a short satiric elegy directed against ApoUo- 
 nius of Rhodes, one of the missiles in their famous quarrel. Ovid 
 when he wished to attack an enemy, a Roman in- 
 former, borrowed the title of his Ibis from Callima- ^''^ ""^ 
 chus, and probably imitated many of the details of his Greek model. 
 
 Of the six extant Hymns, the fifth, the Bath of Pallas, is in ele- 
 giacs, and, but that the categories of the Alexandrians are elastic, 
 could hardly be separated from the elegies. In this poem of 142 
 verses, written in the Doric dialect, perhaps for some Argive festi- 
 val, Callimachus describes how the young Teiresias came upon 
 ^ Heroides 20. 21. ^ 68. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 27 
 
41 8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Athene as she bathed in the waters of Helicon, and how for this 
 offense the goddess took away his sight, but gave him the gift of 
 „ soothsaying. Ovid imitated this Hymn in the Meta- 
 
 morphoses} The Hymn to Zeus describes the birth of 
 the god in Arcadia, with all the attendant miracles. But Callima- 
 chus comes round in the end to the praise of Ptolemy, much as 
 Pindar might in an ode. The truth is that the chance to flatter 
 Ptolemy and to display his own erudition was more to Calliraachus 
 than all the gods on Olympus. It was Apollo, said Callimachus, 
 who inspired Battus to found his native Cyrene, and in his Hymn 
 to Apollo, an imitation of the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo, 
 he inserts a panegyric of this most beautiful of all the Greek colo- 
 nies. At the close he cannot resist a sneer at his rival ApoUonius, 
 who was probably at the moment peculiarly aggressive or successful. 
 The Hymns To Artemis and To Delos are the longest in the col- 
 lection. The latter was for a competition of rhapsodes at Delos, 
 and echoes the Theocritean panegyric of Ptolemy in the Seven- 
 teenth Idyl of Theocritus. The sixth. To Demeter, is in the Doric 
 dialect, and was perhaps composed for a Dorian Thesmophoria. 
 The legend chosen by Callimachus from the Demeter myth was 
 one which Ovid, following the Hymn, echoes in the Metamor- 
 phoses? This is the story of the impious Erysichthon, who, hav- 
 ing cut down a grove sacred to Demeter, was punished by a mon- 
 strous hunger that grew by what it devoured. In the first four 
 Hymns, Callimachus employed the dialect of the Homeric poems. 
 
 Sixty-three epigrams of Callimachus are preserved in the Pala- 
 tine Anthology. They include epitaphs, dedications, descriptions 
 of books, and amatory verses. Here too, as in the Hymns, we have 
 the echo of his Uterary quarrels. / detest . . . I dislike . . . I 
 
 Tie loathe . . . , he says within four lines, condemning, to- 
 
 Epigrams gether with those who would write epic like ApoUonius, 
 all the hackneyed themes of poetry, all in fact that he could not 
 call his very own. The desperate desire to be original, in spite of 
 his times, gives even this epigram a note of pathos. But, like 
 
 * 3- '43 ff- The tale is told again in Tennyson's Tiresias. ' 8. 741 ft 
 
CALLIMACHUS 419 
 
 other poets of the Anthology, he was at his best in the epigrams 
 written for epitaphs, or expressing the sorrow of death. Such are 
 the six elegiac verses in memory of his friend, the poet of Halicar- 
 nassus : — 
 
 They told me, Heracleitus, they told me you were dead. 
 
 They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed. 
 
 I wept as I remembered how often you and I 
 
 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down the shy. 
 
 And HOW that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest, 
 
 A handful of gray ashes, long, long ago at rest. 
 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake ; 
 
 For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take?- 
 
 Among the numerous inscriptions for the shipwrecked in the 
 Anthology few are more pathetic than this quatrain written for the 
 empty tomb of the drowned Sopolis : O that swift ships had 
 never been ! Then we should not have to weep for Sopolis, son of 
 Diocleides. But now his dead body drifts in the sea, and we can 
 only visit an empty tomb and read his name? To Martial,' Callima- 
 chus represented the best that could be achieved by the Greek 
 epigrammatists, and it is in the Epigrams that we, who know the 
 Causes only by its rather ominous title, must look for the per- 
 fections of his ' chased ' style, the exquisite finish that made his 
 faultlessness seem almost genius. Here, too, is that pungency 
 with sweetness, the saving touch of acid in the honey, which 
 Meleager found in the ' myrtle berry of Callimachus ' that he 
 wove into his Garland of Poets. The regular meter of the Greek 
 epigram, the elegiac couplet, is used for almost all these epigrams. 
 Some were perhaps written, as Reitzenstein suggests, for the en- 
 tertainment of the dinner table, and may be classed as sympotie 
 epigrams. 
 
 The latest work of Callimachus was the Hecale, the miniature 
 epic which was doubtless written to show the admirers of Antim- 
 achus and ApoUonius what should be the limit of Alexandrian 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 7. 80; Cory's translation. 
 ^ Anth. Pal. 7. 271. * Epigrams 4. 33. 
 
420 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 ambition. They who had called his inspiration asthmatic were tc 
 
 see in the Hecak the golden mean. Before 1893 we had onlj 
 
 thirty insienificant fragments of this model epic. Ir 
 TheHecale ' ^ , ,. , j . ^ r u . crl 
 
 that year was pubhshed an extract of about fifty verses 
 
 from a wooden tablet of the fourth Christian century. This was 
 found in the Fayodra, and published by Gomperz as an installment 
 of the Papyri Rainer} From this fragment it is calculated that 
 the length of the poem was about 500 verses, a good deal longer, 
 that is, than the Little Epics of Theocritus. Callimachus empha- 
 BJzed the fact that this is a genre epic when he gave it the name, 
 not of Theseus whose victory over the Marathonian bull is de- 
 scribed, but of the old peasant woman, Hecale, who entertained 
 the hero in her poor hut on the eve of the encounter. The poem 
 described the vigil of Theseus and his humble hostess, her anxiety 
 for his fate, the victory, and the pathetic contrast of the moment 
 when, as he returns with a triumphant following, he meets the 
 funeral procession of his friend, who has died in the hour of his 
 success. Of all this the recovered fragments give us broken 
 glimpses, enough to show how Callimachus indulged his passion 
 for erudite narrative and the obscurer legends. The soliloquy 
 that comes first in the extract seems to be uttered by a crow 
 which relates a scandalous story of Athene ; then we have the 
 garrulous but effective speech of an old man who comes at dawn 
 to wake his neighbor, and about fifteen lines describing the tri- 
 umph of Theseus and the exultation of the people of Marathon 
 at the capture of the monster. It was from the Hecale that Ovid 
 drew for his tale of the peasants Philemon and Baucis who enter- 
 tained Zeus and Hermes.'' 
 
 Callimachus loved archaic or unusual words, strange epithets, 
 like ' Rhamnusian ' Helen. Everywhere, except in the pathetic 
 epigrams, his erudition shows through. He will always point the 
 moral of the danger of too much learning in a poet of mere talent. 
 But his saying that a big book is a big nuisance, and his sneers at 
 the misguided Alexandrians who felt inspired to write long epics 
 » Vienna, 189 2 Met. 8. 620 ff. 
 
EUPHORION, RHIANUS 421 
 
 were a real service to literature. In spite of the loss of the Causes, 
 we can trace in Ovid and Catullus what they never sought to con- 
 ceal, and Catullus admitted, close imitations and translations of the 
 poems of ' Battiades.' Even Vergil borrowed firora him.' ' These 
 
 ■ singers of Euphorion,' says Cicero, in his contempt for the poets 
 of his day who imitated the Alexandrians. But the ' singers of 
 Callimachus ' were proud to follow in the steps of this greatest 
 of all his tribe. He left little untried, experimenting in all the 
 meters, even galliambics, and it seems likely that the galliambic 
 poem of Catullus to Cybele (63) was imitated or translated from 
 a model by Callimachus. 
 
 I hate a cyclic poem, said Callimachus, implying by the epithet 
 that any long epic in imitation of the Iliad and Odyssey must 
 have all the conventions, the formulae, the well-worn manner of 
 the cyclic type. His sneers at those who fancied themselves 
 equal to a long epic must have nipped in the bud many an aspir- 
 
 . ing poet, and increased the number of brief learned epics. Such 
 were the epic poems of Euphorion of Chalcis, the 
 librarian of King Antiochus, the Seleucid. He was 
 admired and translated by the Latin poets, whose preference for this 
 inferior Alexandrian shocked Cicero's surer taste. Sainte-Beuve, as 
 he reflected on the bizarrerie de la gloire which has made so many 
 ■■ gracious and tender ' Alexandrians seem the idle singers of an 
 empty day, took Euphorion for the typical figure among all those 
 lost poets, more unfortunate than the rest in that he perished 
 twice, once by the loss of his own poems, and again by the disap- 
 pearance of the works of Vergil's friend Callus, who imitated him. 
 But Callimachus did not persuade all the poets of his circle to 
 
 cut down their epics to the measure of his own Hecale. . 
 
 ^ Rhianus 
 
 Rhianus of Crete, whose literary career was spent m 
 
 Alexandria, wrote a long and ambitious epic, the Messenians, the 
 tale of that struggle between Messenia and Sparta which had in- 
 spired the marching songs of Tyrtaeus, " battle odes whose lines 
 are steel and fire." The hero of the epic of Rhianus was the 
 1 Cp. Aen. 8. 416 ff. with the Hymn to Artemis 51 ff. 
 
422 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Messenian patriot Aristomenes, who led his countrymen in theii 
 heroic eifort to throw off the heavy yoke of Sparta. It was a 
 forlorn hope, since the gods themselves and the decrees of fate, 
 as Rhianus admitted, were on the side of the heavier battalions 
 of Sparta. We have only a few lines of the Messenians, and for 
 the course of events described must turn to the resume given by 
 Pausanias in the fourth Book of his Tour of Greece. 
 
 But the real mutineer against the restrictions of Callimachus 
 was his younger contemporary and pupil, Apollonius of Rhodes. 
 The epithet 'the Rhodian,' which he has retained through so 
 Apollonius many centuries, was adopted by himself as a slight to 
 of Rhodes Alexandria, which was probably his birthplace, and it 
 reminds his readers, as he meant that it should, that a poet who 
 was long without honor in his own country had been made wel- 
 come at Rhodes. He had ventured, while still a youth, and in 
 defiance of the rules laid down by CalHmachus, to write an epic, 
 the Argonautica (Tales of the Argonauts'). When he recited por- 
 tions of his poem before the poets and philologists of the Alex- 
 andrian Museum, it was unfinished, but already betrayed by its 
 ample outlines that its scope far exceeded the limits accepted by 
 the majority of his hearers. Perhaps he hoped to convert them 
 by showing that long poems could still be written by a man of 
 genius. But his verses were received with ridicule by that com- 
 pany of jealous pedants, and he withdrew to Rhodes, where he 
 was at once applauded, both as poet and professor. There he de- 
 voted many years to revising and completing the Argonautica. 
 Callimachus was the most powerful and most hostile of his critics, 
 and kept up the feud, one of the bitterest in literature, by his 
 satire, the Ibis, while Apollonius contributed an epigram on the 
 elegies of Callimachus, written in the most spirited style of philo- 
 logical controversy.' In the course of time Callimachus and his 
 successor Eratosthenes died. Alexandria had come to admit the 
 greatness of Apollonius, and he was invited to take the vacant 
 post of librarian, and so became the head of the school where he 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. il. 275. 
 
APOLLONIUS OF RHODES 423 
 
 had been checked and humiliated. He died at Alexandria about 
 190 B.C. 
 
 ■ The legend of the Argonauts was, from the first, one of the most 
 popular tales of Greece, second in interest only to the Trojan and 
 Theban sagas, and had been handled by every distinguished poet 
 after Homer. In the Fourth Pythian Pindar had sketched the 
 story in splendid outlines, and with the reserve of the lyric man- 
 ner. Of the heroes who ventured on that quest of the The 
 Golden Fleece he named only twelve. The indefati- Argonautica 
 gable ApoUonius gives us a list of fifty-five, with extracts from 
 their family history, an opportunity not to be missed by an Alex- 
 andrian well read in the obscurer legends. That unwillingness to 
 leave out, which meets the reader at the opening of the poem, 
 was, from first to last, the striking weakness of ApoUonius. He 
 lived in an age when to be well informed was the first duty 
 of a poet, and not to display one's erudition was eccentric, a 
 waste of talent. His Argonautica consists of about six thousand 
 verses, less than half the Iliad. It is written in four Books. The 
 first describes the assembling of the heroes on the beach of Pagasae 
 in Thessaly, where the Argo had been built. There, before they 
 slept, Orpheus sang, to enchant them, a song which was the model 
 of the ode of Silenus described in Vergil's Sixth Eclogue, the story 
 of the beginning of the world and of those early old gods who ruled 
 when Zeus was still a child in his Cretan cave, one of those theogo- 
 nies which were the delight of primitive Greece : And now the 
 lyre ceased, but still were their heads strained forward to listen with 
 eager ears, and they were motionless under his spell} Next morn- 
 ing they launched the Argo. The chief episodes of their first 
 stage are the halt at Lemnos and the drowning of Hylas in Mysia. 
 In describing the latter, ApoUonius clearly echoes the more cele- 
 brated and more beautiful version in Theocritus. In Mysia the Argo- 
 nauts lose Heracles, who will not abandon his search for Hylas. 
 The second Book is crowded with the adventures of the voyage, 
 such as the boxing match of Polydeuces and the episode of 
 
 1 Argonautica i . 513 ff . 
 
424 SHORT jnisiUKY ut LrKJbiLK i^iii^KAi ukk 
 
 Phineiis, one of the famous "prophets old" of Milton's verse, f 
 had betrayed to men the sacred purpose of Zeus, and was pimisht 
 by endless old age and the constant persecution of the foul harpie 
 For the Argonauts, Phineus plays the part of Teiresias in tl 
 Odyssey, and tells them of dangers to come, the clashing rod 
 as they enter the Pontus, and, that sea once reached, all tl 
 itinerary of its mysterious coast till they shall come to tl 
 mouth of the Phasis, the goal of all their travel. The issue of a 
 these toils is to be wrought by Aphrodite, the first hint of the ro 
 of Medea. In their course they come to the palace of Lycus, tl 
 Mariandynian king, and to him Jason tells the tale of the voi 
 age, a reminiscence of the device in the Odyssey, adopted lat( 
 by Vergil. On the isle of Ares they rescue the shipwrecked soi 
 of Phrixus, the grandchildren of Aeetes, the nephews of Made; 
 These become their guides, and so at last they reach the cliffs c 
 frosty Caucasus and hear the bitter cry of Prometheus in tormen 
 So far the Muse of History has had the upper hand. But for h 
 'third Book Apollonius calls on Erato, the Muse of Erotic Poetr; 
 and now Medea's passion for the adventurer Jason becomes tl 
 main theme. She is not the baleful sorceress of the tragedy c 
 Euripides, but a love-sick girl who trembles and weeps tears of pil 
 for Jason's danger. Even then, however, she had won a reputi 
 tion for magic arts as the pupil of Hecate, and was regarded by tb 
 Colchiahs as one who can quench raging fires and check the fla, 
 of rivers, and make the moon and stars stand still} Easy enoug 
 was it for her to save Jason with her most potent drug, the sa 
 of a plant sprung from the blood of Prometheus. Apollonius d< 
 scribes every phase of her doubts and anguish of mind in that choic 
 between her father and this stranger with whom so far she had e: 
 changed no word, though his voice was ever in her ears, and h 
 least gesture as he had appeared in the halls of Aeetes : — 
 
 As when on the walls of a dwelling the leaping sunbeams play 
 Flung up from the water that into a caldron but now fell plashing, 
 Qr into a pail, and hither and thilher the sunbeam flashing 
 
APOLLONIUS OF RHODES 425 
 
 Jn lightning eddy and flicker is dancing in mad unrest, 
 
 So quivered and fluttered the heart within the maiden's breast.^ 
 
 Vergil imitates this passage in describing tiie doubts of Aeneas, 
 and the whole episode in his picture of the growth of Dido's pas- 
 sion for just such a hero as Jason. With Medea there is no real 
 doubt of the issue. She ' sees the better and her heart approves 
 it, but chooses the worse.' The words in which Ovid has made 
 her describe her choice have passed into a proverb. " 
 
 In her interview with Jason there are admirable speeches by 
 Medea, as she betrays, by degrees, her passion, and at last draws 
 expressions of emotion even from Jason, who must have been the 
 typical laggard lover of antiquity till he was surpassed by the frigid 
 Aeneas. The third Book makes the fortune of the poem. It 
 closes with a fine description of Jason's victory over the brazen 
 bulls, and the terrible slaughter of the Earth-born, who sprang from 
 the dragon's teeth to be mown down by his charmed sword. The 
 fourth Book tells the tale of Medea's flight from the palace to 
 the Argo, Jason's theft, with her aid, of the Golden Fleece, their 
 escape, the pursuit by the Colchians, and the cruel murder of 
 Medea's brother Absyrtus by the treachery of his sister who now 
 takes on something of her sinister character. But after they 
 leave Colchis the interest falls off, and there is more erudition 
 than poetry in the tale of that strange and labyrinthine return 
 voyage up the Danube, into the river Po and so to the Sicilian sea. 
 
 The real heroine of this romantic epic is Medea of the golden 
 eyes.' Jason's is a thankless role, and his quest is subordinated 
 in true Alexandrian fashion to the love interest. The whole is a 
 fairy tale crowded with all the marvels that could be imagined for 
 a mythical voyage in strange Eastern seas. It is an epic of details. 
 At every point the Muses inspire ApoUonius to clear up the obscure 
 traditions of the founding of some small town at which the heroes 
 touch, or to tell a myth such as that which accounts for the Etesian 
 
 '3-755 f- Way's translation. 
 
 ^ Met. 7. 20-2J ; video meliora, proboque, Deteriora sequor. 
 
 ' 4- 726. 
 
426 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 winds by which the heroes are detained on the Thynian coast 
 The scholarly note is always included in the text of the poem, so 
 that an incident often seems to be dragged in chiefly for the sake 
 of the historical comment. But even the oppression of detail, the 
 loss of the heroic outline, the trivial elegancies, the polite deities 
 with their highly conventional part in the intrigues, cannot obscure 
 the beauties of the third Book, and if we judge ApoUonius by 
 his best, he was a true poet. Quintilian said of the Argonautica 
 that it was written with a mediocrity below which ApoUonius did 
 not fall. Too much of it is merely interesting, an epithet never 
 applied to the best creative work. But ApoUonius can rise above 
 his general level, and next to the poems of Theocritus his 
 Argonautica is the most considerable performance of the Alex- 
 andrians. He wrote other epics which have not survived. Ovid 
 and Vergil are deeply in his debt, and Catullus echoes him in several 
 passages of the best known of his longer poems.^ 
 
 Hostile as he was to heroic epic imitative of Homer, Callimachus 
 did not disdain the didactic type, and though he had little flattery 
 to spare for contemporary poets, there was one of his circle for 
 whom he has only words of praise. This was Aratus of Soli in 
 Cilicia, the friend of Theocritus, whose masterpiece, the Phae- 
 nomena, Callimachus describes in an epigram as written in the 
 
 very manner of Hesiod.^ In this he showed the 
 Aratus 
 
 partiality of a friend. Aratus did indeed aspire to be 
 
 the Hesiod of Alexandria, as ApoUonius desired to be its Homer. 
 
 His work was a poetic version, in 1154 hexameters, of the prose 
 
 treatise of the learned Eudoxus. It was in two Books, the first 
 
 astronomical, the second meteorological dealing with the signs of 
 
 weather J for this part he seems to have borrowed from Theo- 
 
 phrastus. The Greek poets of the best period rejected the didactic 
 
 style, leaving to prose writers the mere conveyance of facts which 
 
 could not be adorned by the imagination and by human sympathy. 
 
 But here was the opportunity of Alexandria, in an age when erudition 
 
 sought an outlet and all desired to be well informed. Aratus had 
 
 ^64. ^ Anth. Pal. (). tp-j. 
 
THEOCRITUS 427 
 
 not the genius needed to make his poem a possession forever. 
 The Phaenomena fortunately survives, and we can compare it with 
 Vergil's Georgics and see how a genuine poet could give such a 
 theme human interest, by the power of imagination and the magic 
 of style. Aratus was a favorite with the Romans ^ and was trans- 
 lated by Cicero, Varro, and Germanicus. Though he was, no doubt, 
 regarded by the Alexandrians as one of themselves, he spent the 
 greater part of his literary life at the court of Antigonus of Mace- 
 don, at Pella, where he died about 245 B.C. 
 
 Every date in the life of Theocritus is a matter of guesswork. 
 According to the most likely conjecture, he was born about 315 
 B.C.,^ at Syracuse. Cos, the Dorian island, though it lay so far 
 from Alexandria, was the favorite retreat of the Ptolemies, their 
 Capri, where they went to recruit and to throw off the 
 affairs of state. There lived the tutor of Ptolemy II 
 (Philadelphus), the poet Philetas,' very famous in his day as a 
 writer of elegy. To Cos Theocritus went in early youth, and 
 studied under Philetas, to whom he paid a deferential compliment 
 in his Seventh Idyl. But of his personality and circumstances we 
 know hardly anything definite. He must have spent some time 
 in Alexandria under the patronage of Ptolemy, since he wrote 
 in his honor the Seventeenth Idyl, a panegyric expressed in 
 language perfectly appropriate from a court poet to a king who 
 asserted the divinity of his parents, and had set up their images, 
 made beautiful with gold and ivory, to be the helpers of men on 
 earth. The poem, with its invocation to Zeus, whose name recurs 
 at the close, flatters its subject by its likeness to a Homeric 
 Hymn. That Theocritus knew Southern Italy and the hills and 
 streams about Sybaris seems probable from the Fourth and Fifth 
 Idyls whose scenes are laid there. If he had not spent some 
 part of his poetic career at Syracuse, he would hardly.have written 
 
 ^ Cp. Vergil, Georgics i. 356- ff. with Phaenomena 909 ff. 
 2 Susemihl proposes 3:5 B.C., Legrand 305, Hauler, and Helm 305-300. 
 ' According to Cronert in Hermes 37, Philitas is the correct form. As an 
 elegiac poet Philetas ranked next after Callimachus : Quintilian 10. 58. 
 
428 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the Sixteenth Idyl in praise of Hiero II, an undisguised request, 
 in terms that do not suggest a prosperous poet, for the same 
 patronage that, in the fifth century, had been bestowed on 
 Simonides by the great Hiero. The date of the poem was per- 
 haps 274, more probably a decade later.' 
 
 Of the thirty Idyls that have come down to us several are 
 rejected outright by the editors, and others are not free from 
 suspicion. The bucolic or pastoral Idyls ' (etSuAAto;' = little poem) 
 are the most typical of the genius of Theocritus. But in the 
 traditional arrangement of his poems they are not sorted out from 
 the rest, nor is there any attempt at chronological order. Under the 
 general title Idyls are included the pastoral poems, the Mimes, 
 the Little Epics, the Encomia, and the Aeolic songs. 
 
 Before Theocritus pastoral poetry as a literary type did not exist. 
 Every extant Greek poem, where such a sentiment would be in 
 place, expressed the Greek sense of the charm of country life with 
 its abundance of food and wine and the repose that sweetens the 
 season of outdoor work. Even the city-bred Aristophanes, when 
 he advertised the joys of peace, painted her " sitting under her 
 olive." But before Theocritus, no Greek poet, as far as we know, 
 realized the literary value of the rude poetry of the shepherds, the 
 Volkslieder of pastoral life. That such a poet should be a Sicilian 
 was natural, since in Sicily more than elsewhere he would insen- 
 sibly achieve an intimacy with the life of the field and fold, with 
 the business of the hillsides, and all the joys and griefs of the old- 
 est and most natural of human callings! The material lay ready 
 to his hand in the songs which the Sicilian shepherds sang on their 
 feast days, improvising them as a rule, so that they were humorous 
 or pathetic according to the temperament of the untutored poet. 
 Such is the Phrygian Lityerses Song of the Tenth Idyl of Theocri- 
 tus, or, in the Seventh Idyl, the song that Lycidas had 'fashioned 
 on the hillside. ' From these sources Theocritus drew the motifs 
 that after him were used by all poets of pastoral, the conventions 
 and commonplaces of the singing match, the refrain, the carved 
 
 1 Beloch, 
 
THEOCRITUS 
 
 429 
 
 bowl or lamb as prizes ; the lament of the shepherd crossed in 
 love j the lover who carves the name of his mistress on a tree or 
 sends her present? of roses, doves, apples, or locks of hair ; the 
 dirge for the dead shepherd whom all nature laments ; the lover to 
 whom the defects of his mistress seem beauties ; all these Theoc- 
 ritus made his own, so that the Sicilian Muses are forever the 
 divinities of pastoral song, and, in spite of Vergil, it was not 
 Dorian Arcadia but Dorian Sicily that became the Arcady of the 
 poets. 
 
 The most pathetic and the most fruitful for later poetry of all the 
 themes that Theocritus found current among the Sicilian peasantry 
 was the story of the love and death of Daphnis. The country 
 people who sang of this hero of pastoral poetry perhaps 
 symbolized in his early death the quickly fading beauty 
 of spring. In the Eighth Idyl Theocritus, if the poem be his, 
 sang of the first victory of Daphnis, when he vanquished Menalcas 
 in alternate song ; in the Sixth he is again the young and invincible 
 shepherd poet. But, in the First, Thyrsis sings of the proverbial 
 sorrows and death of this victim of Aphrodite, who, like Hippolytus, 
 appeals with his last breath from Love who has worked his ruin to 
 his own protecting god, Pan, the god of shepherds. The invoca- 
 tion of Thyrsis to the nymphs : Where were ye Nymphs, where 
 were ye when Daphnis drooped and died? has been closely imitated 
 in a long series of dirges, by Vergil ' in his lament for Gallus, by 
 Milton in Lycidas, by Pope in his artificial Pastorals, by Shelley 
 in the Adonais. Daphnis goes down the stream lamented by all 
 living things of the hills and woods. The reward of Thyrsis is a 
 deep, carved bowl of ivy wood like that which Odysseus offered 
 to the Cyclops, a bowl where 
 
 " wanton ivy twines, 
 Wherein is enchased many a fair sight 
 
 w % » « * * • • 
 
 And over them spread a goodly wild vine. " * 
 
 ■1 Eclogue 10. 
 
 "2 Spenser, Shepherd's Cahndari; q). Verg., Ed. 3. 36, and Pope, Pastora} l. 
 
430 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The Sicilian legend of Polyphemus as the lover of Galatea is thi 
 theme of the Sixth and Eleventh Idyls, which Vergil echoed ii 
 
 Idyls 6 the Fifth Eclogue. In the Sixth Daphnis reproache 
 
 and II Polyphemus with his coldness to Galatea. The Cyclop! 
 sits piping, lost in the conceit of his own charms, while she, ligh 
 as thistledown, 
 
 " Pursuing that tliat flies, and flying what pursues," 
 rises from the sea to pelt his sheep with apples and his dog tha 
 runs along the shore, barking as he looks into the salt water 
 Damoetas gives the fatuous rejoinder of Polyphemus, which has 
 been echoed by all the conceited shepherds of pastoral poetry. 
 But in the Eleventh we find the Cyclops no longer coquetting, bul 
 pining for Galatea's notice, aware now that his appearance is againsi 
 him. I fell in love with thee, maiden, on the day when first thou 
 earnest with my mother and didst wish to pluck the hyacinths from 
 the hill, and I was thy guide on the way I' This tale of love at 
 first sight has been exquisitely imitated by Vergil in the Eighth 
 Eclogue, in a passage which Voltaire and Macaulay thought the 
 finest in Latin poetry. 
 
 The Seventh Idyl, the Thalysia {Harvest Feast of Demeter), 
 which Sainte-Beuve called the 'queen of eclogues,' is a remi- 
 niscence of the life of Theocritus in Cos, and of the friendships of 
 those youthful days when he studied under Philetas, 
 happier, one may suppose, than in his court life. Simi- 
 chidas (who is Theocritus himself, as Vergil is Tityrus and Spenser 
 Colin Clout) and two friends are walking in the heat of noon to 
 a harvest feast of Demeter near the river Hales. They meet 
 Lycidas, a Cydonian of Crete — one remembers the fine, soft bloom 
 of the Cretan grass in Sappho — clad in a rough goatskin, with 
 eyes that smiled always, and a laugh still on his lips? He sings 
 
 1 " Nor am I so deformed to sight, If in my scythe I loolted aright In 
 which I see my picture done." — Marvell. 
 
 ^ Lang's translation. 
 
 " Legrand would identify Lycidas with Leonidas of Tarentum, the epi- 
 grammaltist, a younger contemporary of Theocritus. 
 
THEOCRITUS 431 
 
 them a song which is a sort of resume of pastoral themes, his own 
 love for Ageanax, a brief account of the sorrows of Daphnis, and 
 the praises of Coraatas, the goatherd of Sicilian legend, who suf- 
 fered imprisonment in a chest for the Muses' sake, and was 
 miraculously fed by bees. Simichidas, in his turn, tells of the 
 consuming love of his friend Aratus (probably not the poet of Soli). 
 But what raises this Idyl above all the others that, like it, breathe 
 of summer scents and are full of the sounds of doves and bees, is 
 the closing picture of the feast near the altar of Demeter of the 
 threshing-floor, in the shade of elms and poplars, where Demeter 
 herself with " sunburnt looks, " the Muse of Pastoral Poetry, stands 
 by smiling, her hands full of corn and poppies. 
 
 The Thalysia has no regular amoebean song, the alternate stanzas 
 which were characteristic of pastoral improvisations. The best 
 example of this type, which Vergil has imitated in his Third 
 Eclogue, is the Eighth Idyl. Here we have all the 
 naive etiquette of the singing match, the challenge, the 
 agreement as to stakes and umpire, and then the alternate verses, 
 here elegiac quatrains, closely symmetrical, in which the singer who 
 draws the lot chooses the motif, the cadences and turns of thought, 
 which he that responds must closely follow in form and try to em- 
 bellish in expression. Some of the stanzas are lost, and, according 
 to the accepted arrangement, it is Menalcas, the loser, who sings 
 the quatrain which is the most concise and exquisite expression of 
 Sicilian pastoral : Nay, but beneath this rock will I sing, with thee 
 in mine arms, and watch our flocks feeding together, and, before us, 
 the Sicilian sea} 
 
 The Second Idyl, the Pharmaceutria {Sorceress), is not to be 
 classified offhand. It is a tale of town life, full of passion, and has 
 nothing in common with the pathetic or sentimental 
 loves of the pastoral Idyls. It might be classed as a 
 ' woman's mime ' with those of Sophron, but that it is a monologue, 
 in hexameters, and a mime implies dialogue.^ In English or 
 
 * Lang. 
 
 ^ The scholiast who says that it was from a mime of Sophron that Theoc- 
 
432 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Scottish poetry it would be called a ballad, like Rossetti's Sister 
 Helen, which it must have inspired. Simaetha is no Medea or 
 Canidia with a laboratory of poisons, but a betrayed girl deserted 
 by her lover. She has recourse to magic spells and love charms at 
 midnight, the wryneck that turns on the wheel, the melting wax, 
 and crackling laurel leaf : ' Even as it crackles in the flame may 
 the flesh of Delphis waste in the burning.' When the magic rite 
 is done and she has sent away the maid, Thestylis, she tells in the 
 silence and moonlight the story of her love, the pain and tumult 
 of her heart in dramatic contrast with the peace of nature. It was 
 at a festival procession that she first saw Delphis, one of those 
 shows that in New Comedy and its Latin imitations so often end 
 in lovers' meetings.^ The tale of her summons, his coming, and her 
 emotion as he crossed the threshold adds another to those pictures 
 of passion of which Sappho set the type. It has been most closely 
 imitated by Racine in Phedre. In the Sorceress, as in the dirge 
 for Daphnis, Theocritus uses the refrain, that pathetic device dear 
 to Alexandrian poets, which is so effective when it is not absurd. 
 It was adopted from Alexandria by Catullus, and by Vergil for the 
 Eighth Eclogue. The Fourth Idyl is a mime, a gossiping dialogue 
 between Battus and Corydon, which contains no songs, is reaUstic, 
 and reminds one that Comedy began in Sicily. Here we are in no 
 perfumed Eden, but in the society of the rude and sensual country 
 people with whom the idealized Daphnis has little in common. 
 The Fourteenth, the story of the lover's quarrel of Aeschines, and 
 the Twenty-First, the dream of the sea-worn fisherman, are also 
 mimes. The latter, which is probably not Theocritean, is similar 
 in scheme to the Eighth Mime of Herodas, the Dream. 
 
 It is to the Fifteenth, the Syracusan Women, or Women at the 
 
 ritus borrowed Thestylis, Simaetha's maidservant, strengthens the conjecture 
 that the model of the Sorceress was in Sophron, in whose fragments there are 
 verses evidently uttered by women preparing magic rites. 
 
 ^ Cp. Plautus, Cistellaria I. I. 89 ff. It was the feast of Dionysus. My 
 mother took me to see the show. As I came home I saw him. . . It was at a 
 feast of Adonis that Hero first met Leander. Cp. too Anth. Pal. 5. 193. 
 
THEOCRITUS 433 
 
 Feast of Adonis that one turns for the best and most certain 
 example, apart from Herodas, of the Greek mimes of the Sicilian 
 type which Sophron was the first to introduce to hterature. Its 
 model was Sophron's Women at the Isthmian Games, one of the 
 famous ' women's mimes.' Two Syracusan women ^j^g 
 
 who live in Alexandria go to see the Adonis festival Syracusan 
 given by Arsinoe, wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus. The Women 
 mime must have been written before Arsinoe's death iri 270. 
 Theocritus gives us all the details of the adventure, the arrival 
 of Gorgo at the house of her friend Praxinoa, the latter's fussy 
 reception, her hurried toilet interrupted by her scolding of the 
 bewildered servant, the malicious chatter of the two wo^en 
 about their absent husbands. At last they embark on the crowded 
 streets, and we have a vivid impression of the crush to get good 
 places, of the polite stranger who helps them to get inside, and 
 the exasperated sight-seer who cannot endure the broad Doric of 
 their endless chatter. Then a Greek singer begins the Hymn of 
 Adonis, the mysterious and unhappy lover of Aphrodite, Syrian 
 Thammuz 
 
 " Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
 The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
 In amorous ditties all a summer's day," 
 
 His image lies there on a silver couch, surrounded by fruits, 
 honey, cakes made to imitate all things that fly and creep, and 
 those quickly fading herb gardens of Adonis which were proverbial 
 for their fragihty, due to the shallow soil.^ The hymn, which 
 sings the advent of Adonis permitted every year a brief return 
 to earth, was chosen by Matthew Arnold ^ as the representative 
 religious poem of Paganism, in which there is not a particle of the 
 comfort that springs from religious emotion, as though these 
 decadent Alexandrians had here willfully missed their chance to 
 console and elevate by the symbolism of this tale of resurrection. 
 
 1 Plato, Phaedrus 276 B. 
 
 "^ Essays in Criticism, First Series, 208. Arnold translates the Idyl. 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 2,8 
 
434 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The hymn dwells only on the sensuous side, the appeal to eye 
 and ear. 
 
 The Mimes of Theocritus were almost certainly written to be 
 read, not acted, but that they were never put on the stage it 
 would be rash to say, when one remembers that even the Eclogues 
 of Vergil, so much less dramatic in form, were frequently per- 
 formed at Rome. 
 
 Among the Little Epics the most charming is the Thirteenth 
 Idyl, the Hylas. This is the tale of the drowning of 
 Hylas and the bitter grief of Heracles for the loss of 
 his favorite. It formed part of the great song of Silenus de- 
 scritipd in Vergil's Sixth Eclogue. Tennyson said he would be 
 content to die if he had written anything like the passage where 
 Heracles is on his vain quest for Hylas : Thrice he shouted 
 Hylas as loud as his deep throat could call, and thrice again the 
 boy heard him, and thin came his voice from the water, and hard 
 by though he was, he seemed very far away} 
 
 Other epic idyls are the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth which 
 describe the birth of Heracles, his miraculous infancy, and how 
 he slew the Nemean hon. More than one late writer of epic 
 tried to cover the whole Heracles myth, but these little epics are 
 short enough to please Callimachus, mere episodes from the saga 
 of the Dorian hero. 
 
 The Twenty-Eighth Idyl stands alone. It is in the con- 
 ventional Aeolic dialect, and was written as the dedication of an 
 
 ™, „. . ™ ivory distaff. This was a present from Theocritus to 
 The Distaff / ^ 
 
 'damty-ankled' Theugenis, the wife of his friend 
 
 Nicias. Her husband, a physician of Miletus, was himself a poet, 
 and scholar to whom are assigned eight epigrams in the Palatine 
 Anthology, the 'green mint' of Nicias.^ The meter of the Distaff 
 is choriambic. 
 
 The Twenty-Seventh Idyl {Oaristys), the 'Wooing,' is not by 
 Theocritus, though it is found only with his poems. It is a pas- 
 toral mime written in stichomuthia, the tragic manner of dialogue 
 
 ^Lang. Cp. Propertias i. 20. ^ Meleager, Garland ig. 
 
THEOCRITUS 435 
 
 in which the speakers take alternate verses. Though not 
 Theocritean it is worthy of Theocritus. In this sort of dialogue 
 all depends on the skill with which the speakers in their game 
 of quick rejoinder keep up the ball. This the anonymous poet 
 of the Oaristys achieves with wonderful dexterity and spirit, so 
 that the brief mime of Daphnis, the boyish lover, and the reluctant 
 maiden whom he woos and wins is one of the most vivid of the 
 pastorals. It has been translated by Ch^nier. 
 
 Between twenty and thirty epigrams of the Palatine Anthology 
 are ascribed to Theocritus. Of these Ahrens allows only nine to be 
 genuine. Theocritus would not have been an Alexandrian poet if 
 he had not contributed his share to that collection The 
 
 which is the chief monument of Alexandrian taste and Epigrams 
 ingenuity. Some of his epigrams are descriptive, little pictures that 
 might have been extracted from the Idyls, such as that where Daph- 
 nis, with Pan and Priapus hot on his track, lies unaware of their chase, 
 resting his tired limbs in a cool cavern.^ Others are for statues, 
 as that for the statue of Archilochus,^ and there is an epitaph^ for 
 the grave of Hipponax written in the Ephesian's own choliambics. 
 
 Theocritus created a literary convention and gave a permanent 
 form to a branch of poetry that had hitherto been neglected. 
 The longest of his poems is only 280 verses. With his talent for 
 description he might well have aspired, like ApoUonius, to write 
 an epic. But he was not burdened with erudition that he yearned 
 to display. His was a genius that knew its limitations. Callima- 
 chus tried to be himself, and tried in vain. Theocritus, by his 
 real independence and freshness, raised himself so far above the 
 rest of the Alexandrian poets that when one calls him an Alexan- 
 drian, it is always with a saving clause. Yet it is hard to imagine 
 him living in any other age. He is Alexandrian in his love of 
 calm, the gentle melancholy that breathes through the fragments 
 of Menander, his complete self-consciousness, his preoccupation 
 with love, the atmosphere of an age that has lost forever the 
 Tyrtaean note in poetry. Through Theocritus pastoral poetry will 
 1 3. 2 19. ' 21. 
 
436 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 always paint the soft side of country life, and breathe of summer 
 and that ardent Sicilian sun which gives their charms to shade 
 and the coolness of 'Dorian water.' Italy, as Sainte-Beuve pointed 
 out, was, in Vergil's day, a land of tillage and the hard work that 
 goes with the drastic use of the soil. The Georgks is tiie proper 
 idyllic poetry for Romans whose hands were too hardened by the 
 plow to turn readily to pipe-playing. The florid Eclogues of 
 Sannazzaro (1458-1530) are purely artificial. Pope, with his 
 "florist's flowers," made pastoral absurd. He thought that to live 
 one's life in the country was to lose it, and saw nature as one must 
 see her from a Twickenham villa, frankly declining to have any- 
 thing to do with shepherds not of the Golden Age. Spenser, as 
 Colin Clout, at least aimed at realism.. But pastoral does not 
 flourish in a land of fogs and rain. This is illustrated by the case 
 of Ireland. She is the most pastoral country in Europe, and in no 
 other are the illiterate poor so given to poetic composition. Yet 
 in a country where there is so little of the labor of tillage, so 
 much of heavenly leisure, otia dia, the portion of those who spend 
 their days in herding, there is no such thing as pastoral poetry. 
 It can only arise under clear skies, like those that made glad the 
 heart of the shepherd in Homer. The Irish sun shines too cold. 
 The basis of the dialect of Theocritus in the Mimes and the 
 pastoral Idyls is his native Doric, the broadest of all the Greek 
 
 dialects and the most musical, with its avoidance of 
 Dialect ., ., , , , , , 
 
 sibilants and the constant presence of the long " a. 
 
 The Little Epics and the Encomia are Ionic, as becomes their 
 
 epic themes, but with a mixture of Doric. The Distaff a.rxA two 
 
 other poems are in conventional literary Aeolic. 
 
 All but three of the poems are in hexameters. Theocritus used 
 
 the break in the fourth dactylic foot so frequently that 
 
 Meters . . , , , ,. , 
 
 it is known as the bucolic caesura. In the jiastoral 
 
 Idyls there is a tendency to use spondaic rhythm, in the Little 
 
 Epics dactyls predominate.' 
 
 Apart from Homer there is no Greek poet whose every page is 
 
 1 Kunst, De heroico versu, 1887. 
 
MOSCHUS AND BION 437 
 
 so crowded with literary associations. This is, of course, partly 
 due to Vergil's close imitations in the Eclogues, but more than one 
 famous Horatian tag, more than one familiar line of Catullus was 
 anticipated by Theocritus, while a list of the reminiscences of the 
 Idyh in the English poets would fill many pages. His own debt 
 to the earlier poets, to Philetas for example, the elegist, is naturally 
 less evident to us. The recovery of Stesichorus, from whom 
 Theocritus seems to have copied his Epithalamium of Helen, or of 
 Sophron's Mimes, would light up the question of his originality, 
 but could not weaken our impression of his genius. 
 
 MoscHUS of Syracuse was a pupil of Aristarchus the critic, and 
 himself wrote a prose work on grammar. He was that rare appari- 
 tion in the Alexandrian circle of the latter part of the 
 second century, a combination of poet and philologer. 
 That he carried on the tradition of Theocritus we see from the 
 eight poems and fragments that have survived. The third and 
 longest Idyl, the Lament for Bion, is assigned to him with no great 
 certainty. It is in hexameters and has a refrain unequally distrib- 
 uted : Begin, ye Sicilian Muses, begin the dirge. It is the funeral 
 song of Daphnis in a fresh form, and its pathetic prettiness inspired 
 Shelley and Matthew Arnold to borrow from it for the Adonais and 
 the Thyrsis. In one passage the poet rises above himself, and his 
 verses have been, ever since, the classic model, never surpassed 
 by its imitators, for the pathetic contrast of the seasons which are 
 renewed, the suns that rise again, with the ephemeral lot of man 
 to whom it is not given to " repair his drooping head" : Ah me, 
 when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and 
 the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and 
 spring in another year ; but we men, we, the great and mighty, or 
 wise, when once we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down 
 into silence; a right long, and endless, and unawakening sleep} 
 
 ' Lang. Cp. Catullus 5 ; Hor. Odes 4. 7 ; Wordsworth, Sonnet to the 
 River Duddon ; Spenser, Shepherd's Calendar : " Whence is it that the flowret 
 of the field doth fade ?..."; Tasso, Lament for Corinna : " Cade il bianco 
 ligustro, e poi risorge ..." 
 
438 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 BiON of Smyrna lived towards the end of the second century, 
 and wrote pastoral poetry in the dialect and manner of Theocritus. 
 Of his life we know nothing, and perhaps must not even accept as 
 historical truth the words of the writer of the Lament 
 for Bioii : Poison came to thy lips. . . . What mortal 
 was so cruel as to mix poison for thee ? Bion's work, as far as we 
 may judge from a few short poems and a number of fragments, 
 shows a falling off from the directness and dramatic power of 
 Theocritus. He is more rhetorical and more sentimental. His 
 manner is at its best in the longest extant idyl (98 hexameters), 
 the Lament for Adonis. Here we see how the motifs of the dirge 
 of Daphnis, in Theocritus, have become commonplaces of pastoral 
 poetry. The mountains, the rivers, the fountains, the flowers, weep 
 or flush red with anguish for Adonis. Grief makes the young 
 spring wild. 
 
 Herodas' of Cos {circa 300-250 B.C.) was a younger contem- 
 porary of Theocritus. The evidence for his date is in the Mimes, 
 such as references to the apotheosis of Ptolemy and Arsinoe in i ; 
 to the death, apparently recent, of Apelles the painter in 4 ; in i 
 and 4 there are imitations of the Fifteenth Idyl of Theocritus 
 which must have been written before the death of Queen Arsinoe 
 in 270. The Cos that Herodas knew was made con- 
 spicuous by the patronage of the Ptolemies, and was 
 the playground of unlovely Alexandria, a resort of poets and 
 artists. Before 1891 we had only ten fragments (22 verses) of 
 the Mimes of Herodas. In that year, which saw also the recovery 
 of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens, were published about 
 700 verses of Herodas from an Egyptian papyrus. Of these we 
 already possessed only five, in quotations. 
 
 These eight Mimes, brief dramatic dialogues, make up, to some 
 extent, for the loss of the famous Mimes of Sophron, who was the 
 acknowledged master of this literary type. Herodas, in a frag- 
 mentary prelude to the second Book of the Mimes (which has 
 
 ' Herodes and Herondas are other versions of his name. The correct 
 form is probably 'H/)(j53as (Meister). 
 
HERODAS 439 
 
 not been recovered), asserts that he sings to the lonians, whom 
 he calls the Xuthidae, with a reference to the Ion legend, and that 
 his ' hmping lays ' follow in the steps of the far-famed Hipponax. 
 He uses accordingly the scazon, the choliambic meter, iambic 
 trimeter lamed by the regular substitution of a long for a short sylla- 
 ble in the sixth foot. Many of the Alexandrian poets used the 
 scazon. But as we find it in these Mimes it seems the most direct 
 descendant of the scurrilous rhythm of Hipponax. Herodas and 
 Hipponax have stamped it forever as the vulgarest of all the Greek 
 meters, the best suited to pictures of low life, of the seamy side of 
 the manners of the Greek bourgeoisie, with its coarse jests and 
 incessant proverbs, its scolding and gossiping women. 
 
 The scene of the first Mime, the Go-Between (90 verses), is 
 . laid in a seaport, probably in Cos. Gyllis, a procuress, comes to 
 
 see her friend, the grass widow Metriche, whose hus- 
 
 J Mime I 
 band has been absent for some months in Egypt and 
 
 has failed to send her letters or messages. Gyllis is employed by 
 
 Gryllus, an athlete, to declare his passion for Metriche and to bribe 
 
 her to betray Mandris, her husband. But Metriche, with a strength 
 
 of character not displayed elsewhere in these Mimes, rejects the 
 
 woman's advances in language worthy of Penelope herself. The 
 
 third -person is a maidservant, a Thracian, the Greek equivalent of 
 
 the French maid. The opening verses, the greetings of the women, 
 
 the scolding of the maid, which was evidently a common-place 
 
 of the mime, closely resemble the first scene of the Syracusan 
 
 Women of Theocritus, and there may have been direct imitation 
 
 on the part, of Herodas. On the other hand, he may have drawn 
 
 directly on Sophron who had furnished the model for Theocritus. 
 
 The second Mime, the Pander (109 verses), takes place in Cos. 
 
 Battarus, the pander, brings an action for damages against Thales, 
 
 a citizen who has attempted to carry off a courtesan, ^^.^^ ^ 
 
 Myrtale. The whole is a monologue, the speech of 
 
 Battarus as plaintiff, interrupted only by three verses where the 
 
 clerk of the court reads a document. Even these were probably 
 
 recited by Battarus, with a change of voice. His speech is a 
 
440 SHORT msrORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 parody of the legal manner, of the conventions of legal oratory, 
 a favorite comic theme, and contains the stock arguments of such a 
 speech, the familiar devices to prejudice the jury against one's op- 
 ponent, the stopping of the water clock while a document is read. 
 It was to be deUvered, of course, with an exaggeration of the law- 
 court manner, made ridiculous by sudden lapses into coarseness 
 of language and vulgar proverbs. Myrtale herself is exhibited to 
 excite the pity of the jury, as in the famous incident when Hyper- 
 eides brought forward Phryne, and the defendant is told that, after 
 all, he may have her — for a consideration. 
 
 The third, the Schoolmaster (98 verses), is probably also a Coan 
 episode. Metrotime brings her incorrigible son, Cottalus, to be 
 soundly flogged by the schoolmaster Larapriscus. Cottalus is al- 
 ways either in the streets, or gambling, not with inno- 
 cent knuckle-bones, but with coin, and that, too, on 
 the roof, so that his mother must pay heavy bills for broken tiles. 
 His wax tablet, the Greek slate, lies unused between his bed and 
 the wall ; if he is asked to speak a passage from tragedy, he halts 
 and stumbles — -your grandmother, who had no schooling, could do 
 it better — in short, he is the bad boy of the place, and if the 
 dominie would have mercy, his mother has none. The flogging 
 scene follows. In the midst of it the boy escapes, with a taunt as 
 soon as he is out of reach. / will go home and tell the old man, says 
 his mother, and next time he shall be tied fast, so that the Muses 
 here, whom he hates, may look down from the wall on his struggles. 
 The fourth. Women making an Offering to Asclepius (95 verses), 
 describes the visit of two women to the temple of Asclepius, that 
 famous Coan shrine which had been decorated with statues ' and 
 paintings. Like the women in the Ion of Euripides, they admire, 
 
 with naive exclamations, the sculptures by the sons of 
 Mime 4 , 
 
 Praxiteles the Coan, the figure of a boy strangung a 
 
 goose, as in the famous group in the Capitoline Museum, marvel- 
 ing at the realism — soon men will learn to put life into stones. 
 
 ^ The bases of some of these statues were uncovered by the excavations 
 of 1902. 
 
HERODAS 441 
 
 When the sacristan opens, at dawn, the doors of the shrine, they 
 pass in and wonder at the paintings of Apelles the Ephesian, who 
 spent much of his life at Cos. The works that they admire are 
 ^ genre subjects, and we may gather something as to the personal 
 tastes of Herodas, who seems to be defending Apelles from his 
 critics. Soon the sacristan reports that their sacrifice of a cock is 
 propitious, and, according to temple etiquette, receives a leg of 
 the bird for his trouble. The rest they take home for dinner. 
 
 In the fifth, 'Cat. Jealous Mistress (85 verses), Bitinna reproaches 
 her slave Gastron, who is also her lover, with his attentions to 
 another woman. Deaf to his protests, she calls a servant to bind 
 and lead him to the whipping place, to be whipped to 
 death. But no sooner has he been dragged away than 
 she changes her mind, and sends her maid, who had interceded 
 for the culprit, to order that Gastron shall be branded on the face 
 instead. Even this is put off till after a festival, now at hand, and 
 it seems likely that he will get off altogether. There is a similar 
 situation in the fragment of a late Mime published among the 
 Oxyrhynchus Papyri} 
 
 The sixth, the Gossips (102 verses), describes Metro's call on 
 her friend Coritto to ask for a tradesman's address. The opening 
 verses recall the similar scene in the Syracusan Women Mimes 
 of Theocritus. The scene of the seventh, the Shoe- ^ and 7 
 tnaker (129 verses), is laid in a shoe shop. Metro comes to a 
 fashionable bootmaker, and is shown his stock, with all the new 
 patterns. The prices are high, from fifteen to twenty-five dollars a 
 pair, and the Mime was perhaps a satire on the extravagance of' 
 women of fashion. The shopkeeper has the leading role, and 
 speaks no of the verses. 
 
 The eighth, the Dream, is much mutilated, and the end is lost. 
 
 A woman wakes her slaves in the early morning with 
 
 . Mime 8 
 
 the usual scoldings, and relates to one of them, Anna, 
 
 her strange dream or rather nightmare, in which a goat seems to 
 
 have played a part, one of those dreams about animals of which 
 
 1 III. 41 J- 
 
442 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Lucian's is the most famous Greek example. The narrative is 
 continually broken by the loss of words and whole /ines, and can- 
 not be deciphered. 
 
 The Mimes of Herodas depend for their interest, not on the 
 action, but on the character drawing. His personages, like the 
 figures in New Comedy, are types, not caricatures, the fawning 
 procuress, the lively and impudent Battarus who keeps a house 
 of ill repute in a seaport and is not ashamed of the trade, the stiff 
 schoolmaster, true type of the rod-loving i^plagosus) pedagogue, 
 the jealous Bitinna, capricious, cruel, and revengeful, the middle- 
 class women who can never address a slave without harsh abuse. 
 It is not a pleasing gallery of persons. Metriche, the virtuous 
 wife, is the only one who utters proper sentiments, and there are 
 few Greek works of the imagination from which moral reflections 
 are so conspicuously absent. But every figure is lifelike, realistic 
 as the sculptures and paintings that the women of the fourth Mime 
 admire in the temple of Asclepius. Their speech is, of course, 
 in character, the most colloquial Greek that we possess, crowded 
 with vulgar proverbs, the favorite expression of the uneducated 
 in every age. There is no trace of the learned manner of the 
 Alexandrians. Verbs are constantly omitted, as is natural in rapid 
 conversation. 
 
 How the Mimes were intended to be performed is an open 
 question. For a regular stage they were, of course, unsuitable, 
 and much too brief But they have a modern parallel in those 
 dialogues performed in our own time, both in England and Amer- 
 ica, where a single actor represents by changes of voice, manner, 
 and gesture the necessary changes of person and scene, those 
 social sketches which are really mimes, and are written for private 
 entertainments and the music halls.' The Mimes of Herodas may 
 well have appeared at the music halls of Alexandria, or at private 
 parties, such as that in the house of Callias in Xenophon's Sym- 
 
 1 The dialogues for one actor, made popular liy Grossmith, Chevalier, and 
 Beatrice Herfor^l, are prose mimes, often in length and scope precisely parallel 
 to a mime of Herodas. 
 
THE ALEXANDRIAN EROTIC FRAGMENT 443 
 
 posium, when the entertainment was a pantomimic dance of 
 Theseus and Ariadne. 
 
 That Herodas knew his Theocritus well may be gathered from 
 a number of parallel passages. Many of these, however, may be 
 coincidences arising from similar subjects, and represent turns of 
 phrase and thought common in their generation and society. 
 
 Though the dialect of Cos was Doric, Herodas followed the 
 lead of Hipponax and the other iambic writers of the seventh 
 and sixth cent\iries in using the conventional literary Ionic. The 
 text, as we have it, shows a good deal of Atticism, the natural re- 
 sult of the influence of the Attic comedians and orators, though 
 Atticizing copyists are, no doubt, partly responsible. There are 
 numerous echoes of Aristophanes.* 
 
 Akin to a mime may have been the composition of which 
 Grenfell published a considerable fragment in 1896.^ This is the 
 so-called Erotic Fragment. It is the lament of a girl deserted by 
 her lover, like the Simaetha of Theocritus. As she slowly ad- 
 vances, apparently towards the house of the faithless one, she 
 pours forth, in language broken by excited grief, short, discon- 
 nected sentences, the tale of their love, his desertion, her own 
 constancy and eagerness to forgive, the abandonment of her 
 passion. Only about fifty Hnes of this monologue have been 
 discovered, and of these perhaps thirty are decipherable. Are 
 they poetry or prose ? The diction is not that of any Greek lyric 
 known to us. It is the colloquial language of common life, real- 
 istic as Herodas, and if anything less literary. Blass, 
 Diels, and Weil assign it to the category of rhythmic ^^^ ^^*^= 
 prose and compare the traditional style of the lost 
 Mimes of Sophron. In that case we could but regard it as a piece 
 of debased writing, in which, in the Asianic manner, rhythmical 
 prose has become metrical. For the greater part of the fragment 
 is written in dochmiacs, the meter of excitement in tragedy, a 
 
 1 Krakert, Herodas in mimiambis quatenus comoediam graecam respexisse 
 videaiur, Leipzig, 1902. 
 
 * An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and Other Greek Papyri, Oxford, 1896. 
 
444 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 rhythm wholly unsuited to prose. It is, therefore, more satisfac- 
 tory to accept the arrangement of Wilamowitz, and to regard the 
 fragment as a unique relic of Alexandrian lyric, related, if we must 
 lind a parallel for it in the classical period, to the monodies of 
 Euripides. We may call it an Alexandrian aria, not unlike those 
 other dramatic lyrics of about the same date, the cantica of the 
 plays of Plautus. To appreciate its undeniable beauty and pathos 
 we must, for the moment, forget the standards set by the classical 
 passages of emotional writing, since to these the Alexandrian author 
 of the piece did not conform. Its date is partly indicated by the 
 date of a contract written on the recto of the papyrus in 173 B.C. 
 The aria may have been composed some years earlier. 
 
 Every type of literature was essayed by the Alexandrians. Of 
 their epics, mythological (the Argonautica), genre (the Hecak), 
 and historical (the Messenians) , we know enough for a fair com- 
 parison with the classic models. But of the purely Alexandrian 
 
 drama we have no remains. The titles that survive 
 The drama , , . . . . , . ,., , 
 
 show that It was imitative. It is at any rate unlikely 
 
 that we have lost much by the disappearance of the numerous 
 
 tragedies of the Pleiad, seven tragic poets who produced plays at 
 
 Alexandria and are spoken of with respect by the commentators. 
 
 Even their names are not worth an effort of memory. The poeta 
 
 of the New Comedy, Menander and his successors, belong in point 
 
 of time to the Alexandrian period. But Athens was their center, 
 
 and they have been treated under the head of Attic Comedy in an 
 
 earlier chapter. 
 
 One of the tragic poets of the Pleiad composed a poem which 
 
 can hardly have been surpassed as a literary curiosity, even in that 
 
 age of learned poetry. Lycophron of Chalcis was born about 320, 
 
 as nearly as can be conjectured from other known facts 
 Lycophron 
 
 of his career. He died about 265, on the stage, and 
 
 in his tragic boots {cothurnatus), if we may trust an allusion to 
 the event in Ovid's Ibis?- He was appointed, about 285, by Ptol- 
 emy Philadelphus, to arrange the comedies in the Alexandrian 
 
 ' 531-532- 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY 445 
 
 Library. The fruit of that task, his nine Books on Comedy, have 
 perished like his tragedies. But there has survived his Alexandra 
 (or Cassandra), a poem written {circa 295) in iambic trimeters 
 (1474 verses), which enjoys the distinction of being the most 
 obscure production of Greek literature, a tour de force of cryptic 
 language. It is a long mpnologue spoken by a soldier in the 
 name of Priam's daughter, a report from memory of her prophecy- 
 of the fall of Troy. It is as though Lycophron had tried to ac- 
 count for Cassandra's failure to convince the Trojans of their 
 coming doom, by putting in her mouth expressions to which no 
 Trojan could have the key. The Alexandra is a riddle which 
 only the eccentric attempt to read. It exists as a monument of 
 learned folly, the labyrinth of Lycophron ' the obscure,' composed 
 for an academic clique and interesting to that clique alone. 
 
 The epigrams and short poems of the Alexandrians, together 
 with those of earUer and greater poets, such as Simonides, and of 
 the poets of the Graeco-Roman period, have come down to us in 
 two anthologies. The first anthologist of importance was Melea- 
 ger of Gadara, wliose Garland, made in the first cen- The 
 
 tury B.C., was absorbed in later collections. This was Anthology 
 the fate, too, of the amatory Anthology of Strato of Sardis, com- 
 piled in the reign of Hadrian. Then came the Anthology of 
 Agathias, a Byzantine poet of the sixth Christian century, who set 
 the example of arranging his selections under subjects. A gram- 
 marian of the tenth century, Constantinus Cephalas, in a brief 
 revival of learning at Constantinople, compiled the Palatine An- 
 thology, so called because the manuscript on which we depend was 
 found in the Palatine Library at Heidelberg.^ It represents about 
 320 poets, and was arranged, like- that of Agathias, by subjects, 
 though with no great consistency. Cephalas was succeeded by 
 Maximus Planudes, a learned monk of Constantinople, who, in the 
 fourteenth century, made an Anthology in seven Books. He 
 based his work on that of Cephalas, adding 397 poems and omit- 
 ting many, especially the work of the older poets. Away with 
 
 ^ By Saumaise (Salmasius), in l6o6. 
 
446 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 old poetry ! said Tiraotheus,' in his day, and this fatal Greek prefer- 
 ence for the moderns is responsible for the loss of many of the 
 most exquisite flowers of Meleager's Garland, which were dropped 
 out by the later anthologists, such as the ' roses ' of Sappho or the 
 ' rough white-thorn ' of Archilochus. 
 
 Since the discovery of the Palatine Anthology it has superseded 
 . the work of Planudes, except, indeed, where he supplements 
 Cephalas. The poems in the Anthology include brief idyls, odes, 
 elegies, and especially every type of epigram, and range in date 
 from the seventh century B.C. to the twelfth century a.d. The 
 majority are in elegiac meter. From the first the Greek poets 
 wrote epigrams for inscriptions on offerings, for tombs (epitaphs), 
 for works of art, for any occasion which would admit of an expres- 
 sive couplet or quatrain. But in Alexandria the epigram has 
 become literary, and is used much like the madrigal or sonnet in 
 English literature, to express a wide variety of interests and emo- 
 tions. Love, which, since the dawn of the New Comedy, had 
 usurped the stage, had long dominated elegy, and, with the Alex- 
 andrians, invaded the epigram. In the three centuries before 
 Christ, which saw all the phases of Alexandrinism and the transi- 
 tion to the Graeco-Roman period in literature, the art of writing 
 the epigram reached its height. Certain poets who excelled in 
 this type, including Meleager himself, fall under the period of Ro- 
 man influence in politics, but their interests lay, almost always, on 
 the eastern side of the Aegean, or, at any rate, they ignored Rome. 
 
 AscLEPiADES of Samos (^floruit 290 B.C.) who gave his name to 
 
 certain logaoedic meters used by Horace, wrote lyrics, but was 
 
 most famous for his epigrams, the ' windflowers ' of 
 Asclepiades 
 
 Meleager's Garland. Of the forty-three that survive, 
 
 many are among the prettiest of the erotic type : — 
 
 O Garlands, hanging by these doors, now stay. 
 Nor from your leaves too quickly shake away 
 My dew of tears, (^How many such, ah me I 
 A lover'' s eyes must shed!) 
 
 1 Persae 21. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY 447 
 
 But ■when the opening of these doors ye see. 
 Let slowly drop my rain upon her head, 
 Xhat so her golden hair may drink more deep 
 Those tears that I did weep)- 
 
 In an epigram of a different type, which echoes the literary con- 
 troversies of the day, he admires the Lyde of Antimachus, that 
 bone of contention among the Alexandrians.^ 
 
 We have in epigrams, chiefly sepulchral and dedicatory, of 
 Leonidas of Tarentum {circa 276 B.C.), whose 'rich ivy clusters' 
 Meleager wove into his Garland. He is at his best 
 in descriptions : Drink not here, wayfarer, of this 
 tepid water, which the pasturing sheep have filled with mud. Go 
 on but a little way over the ridge where heifers graze; there by that 
 Stone-pine of the shepherds thou shall find, murmuring through the' 
 •wet rock, a spring colder than any snow of the North? If we in- 
 terpret his life from his epigrams,* he was a poor and wandering 
 poet who suffered from the war of the Romans and Pyrrhus, and 
 his epigrams are written chiefly for the poor. They reflect the 
 pathos of the life of the hard-worked — the fisherman who falls 
 asleep in his hut of reeds by the Mediterranean, the spinning 
 ivoman who, till her eightieth year, toils to keep hunger from the 
 door.' 
 
 SiMMiAS of Rhodes and Dosiadas of Crete expended their in- 
 genuity in writing poems in shapes, an egg, or Love's wings," an 
 exercise that even Theocritus did not despise, if he Figured 
 really wrote the Syrinx {Shepherd's Pipe) preserved Poems 
 under his name in the Anthology.'' The Altar of Dosiadas, which 
 Lucian bracketed with Lycophron's Alexandra as pestilent pedan- 
 try,' has an exact parallel in the conceit of George Herbert's 
 poem, whose sixteen lines are arranged in the form of an altar. 
 
 Women poets have their place in the Anthology. Besides three 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 5. 145. A. Strettell's translation. ^ ^nth. Pal. 9. 63. 
 
 ° Anth. Plan. iTp. * Anth. Pal. 6. 300. 
 
 ' Cp. Sainte-Beuve in Nouveaux Lundis VII. ^ Anth. Pal. 15. 27, 23. 
 
 ' 15. 21. ^ Lexiphanes 25. 
 
448 SHQRT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 charming epigrams by the fourth-century Erinna, we have a few 
 petals of the ' hlies ' of Anyte of Tegea, collected by Meleager, 
 Anyte and chiefly little pictures full of delicacy and an Alexan- 
 
 Nossis drian tenderness for animals and sympathy with na- 
 ture. Such is the dedication for a Hermes which stands by a 
 windy orchard, near the gray seashore, offering rest for weary men 
 on their way, or the sea shrine of Aphrodite about which the very 
 sea is stirred as it gazes on her shilling image. We have twelve 
 epigrams of Nossis of Locri, who, early in the third century, dared 
 to challenge the superiority of Sappho,' but only one of her erotic 
 poems, those lovely and fragrant iris blooms of which Meleager 
 said that, for the tablets on which they were written. Love with 
 his own hands had melted the wax. Thus saith Nossis, are the 
 closing words, Whom the Cyprian loveth not, knows not what roses 
 her flowers are? 
 
 It would be idle to continue the list of these minor poets, for 
 whose shallow-rooted verses skill and taste, not genius, fancy, 
 rather than imagination, were demanded. Their epigrams are 
 best understood when described in groups according to their 
 interests rather than as the expression of individuals. The flower 
 gatherers to whom we owe this precious collection have left us 
 blossoms of all shapes, scents, and colors, to illustrate all the 
 emotions, love, hate, grief, literary jealousy, all the pursuits of life, 
 the pathos of death, the dangers of the sea, which to the Alexan- 
 drian eye ever suggested the unquiet grave of mariners who "toss 
 with tangle and with shells." The shores are set thick with the 
 tombs of the more fortunate who could at least win the rites of 
 burial. Seldom do the epitaphs of the shipwrecked rise above 
 the listless melancholy which makes so much of the Alexandrian 
 Anthology depressing to read. But once, at any rate, Theodoras 
 sounds a nobler note of encouragement : — 
 
 Here lies a shipwrecked mariner ; yet do tkou sail; 
 When we were lost, the other boats rode out the gale? 
 
 ^ Anth.Pal.'j.'jiZ. "^ Anth. Pal t,. i-jo. '^ Anth. Pal I- 2l\. 
 
MELEAGER 
 
 449 
 
 There is one more poet to be singled out, whose name is dear 
 to the anthologist as well as to the lover of poetry, Meleager, the 
 Syrian poet of Gadara (Ramoth-Gilead). Wvs, floruit 
 falls in the first century B.C. His life was spent partly 
 at Tyre, the last years at Cos. In his famous Garland, dispersed 
 by later anthologists, he collected, as a keepsake for his friend 
 Diodes, the short poems of some forty poets, from Sappho's 
 flowers, so few, but all roses, to the epigrams written in his own . 
 day, such as the ' young Phoenician cypress ' of Antipater of Sidon, 
 well known in the Ciceronian circle, and the ' early white violets ' 
 of his own muse. We have the preface of his Garland, fifty-eight 
 verses written in elegiac couplets, each poet associated with some 
 flower. In our Anthology survive about one hundred of the erotic 
 epigrams in which he excelled. Meleager's verses are among the 
 most tender and musical in the Anthology. With their florid 
 imagery, their sensuous and impassioned but not simple manner, 
 they suggest the influence of his Oriental blood, and if they are to 
 be labeled with an appropriate flower, it should be, not the white 
 violet that he chose as his emblem, but some delicate and heavily 
 scented exotic. No other poet of the Anthology has confided so 
 many of his love adventures. In the long list of his flames, 
 Heliodora, 'soul of my soul,' is dearest of all: I will twine the 
 white violet and the tender narcissus with myrtle, and laughing 
 lilies and the sweet crocus, and with these the purple hyacinth, yea, 
 I will twine roses, the lover' s flower, so that on Heliodora' s temples, 
 where her curls are sweet with myrrh, my garland may shed its 
 petals on those lovely locks} Ch^nier imitated Meleager's brief 
 idyP which describes in 24 hexameters the coming of spring in 
 the fields, the woods, on the shore, and on the open sea, a poem 
 which breathes the pastoral sweetness of Theocritus. Meleager 
 has often been called the Greek Ovid because of his tenderness, 
 and sensibility, and preoccupation with love. Sainte-Beuve 
 pointed out close parallels of thought and expression in Petrarch, 
 who certainly never had a chance to read Meleager. 
 
 1 Anth. Pal. 5. 147. ^ 9- S^S- 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 29 
 
450 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 A fresh section might be added to the Anthology from the best 
 of the inscriptional epigrams recovered by archaeologists, and col- 
 lected by Kaibel.^ His volume of lapidary inscriptions includes 
 the work of many centuries, recovered in Greece, Asia, and the 
 islands, epigrams that illustrate all the grades of skill attained, not 
 only by the Greeks, but by the Romans and Orientals who copied 
 their lapidary style. 
 
 Of all that was written in prose by the Alexandrian circle, not 
 a single work survived to become a classic. Out of that nest of 
 pedants came more than one poet, and most of the poets wrote 
 prose. But to judge from the fragments that survive, their writ- 
 ings contained nothing whose loss we need regret, except certain 
 information which would be useful for the historian of literature. 
 Treatises they wrote, but these were philological, the work of men 
 interested in grammar rather than in the principles of criticism. 
 
 Alexander, who was so eager to inspire a great literary monu- 
 ment, was singularly unfortunate in falling on a time that was bar- 
 ren of historical genius. His Oriental campaigns should have been 
 to historians what the Persian and Peloponnesian wars were to 
 
 The Herodotus and Thucydides. But the writers whom he 
 
 historians took in his train were wholly unequal to their task. 
 Men like Ptolemy I, Aristobulus, and Callisthenes, to name a 
 few of those who had the ambition to be the historians of Alex- 
 ander, produced military memoirs and journals of no literary value, 
 or mere marvelous fictions designed to flatter Alexander's vanity. 
 Besides these, Douris of Samos (born circa 340) wrote ponderous 
 histories of Macedonia and Greece from the date of Leuctra (371), 
 which were used as books of reference by later historians. Timaeus 
 of Tauromenium in Sicily (born circa 345) was an industrious 
 writer whose masterpiece was his history of Sicily. Half of his 
 long life he spent at Athens, so that he did not belong to the 
 Alexandrian circle. In spite of his vast erudition and industry, 
 he is constantly abused by Polybius, who is, no doubt, a preju- 
 diced critic. Timaeus was a true pedant writing history, and even 
 
 ^ Epigrammata graeca ex lapidibus conlecta, Berlin, 1878. 
 
THE HISTORIANS 451 
 
 that pedantic age recognized that he was too bookish. Longinus 
 quoted him to illustrate the paltry pleasantries and the frigidity of 
 a pedant writing in the worst rhetorical manner,' the manner of 
 the ' Asianists.' 
 
 The works of these men, and of others of their tribe, survive in 
 fragments, derelicts in the sea of learning, with no significance for 
 literature, only to be mentioned for the sake of continuity and to 
 point the moral of the lack of creative vitality in their Eratos- 
 day. It was the age of the encyclopedists, of men thenes 
 like Eratosthenes, who succeeded his master Callimachus as libra- 
 rian. He left hardly any subject untouched and was perhaps the 
 worthiest of the Alexandrian savants because the most scientific. 
 Geography, mathematics, physics, philosophical commentaries, 
 chronology, the history of poetry, were among his interests. Of 
 all that industry little survives, and, apart from a small circle of 
 specialists, the modern student knows Eratosthenes only as the in- 
 ventor of a method for finding prime numbers, the celebrated 
 " sieve," and as an authority on the early chronology of Greece. 
 
 The center of philosophy in the third century was not Alex- 
 andria, but Athens. There Plato's Academy continued to flourish 
 
 and his philosophy to be modified by his successors, 
 
 „ . „, , ^ , Philosophy 
 
 Speusippus, Xenocrates, Polemon, and Crates, who 
 
 made practical ethics, the ethics of the individual rather than 
 political morality, their chief interest. Xenocrates conceived of 
 the Ideas as numbers, and introduced a Pythagorizing tendency. 
 Several of the school were distinguished mathematicians, such as 
 Eudoxus, Neocleides, and Heracleides. The Lyceum of Aristotle 
 under Theophrastus and the later scholarchs kept up the traditions 
 of, its founder. The Platonists have no place in the history of 
 literature since their writings have almost entirely perished. It 
 would be unfair, in the absence of nearly all those works of 
 Aristotle which were destined by him for publication, to dwell 
 on his apparent indifference to style. But the decline of philo- 
 sophical prose may safely be illustrated from Epicurus and the 
 '^ On the Sublime 4. 
 
452 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Epicureans, Chrysippus and the Stoics. It is easy to write, said 
 Epicurus.' 
 
 The immediate successor of Aristotle cannot be so lightly dis- 
 missed. Theophrastus, the friend of Menander and pupil of 
 Theophras- Aristotle, was born in Lesbos. in 372. Athens, to 
 
 tus which he emigrated as a youth, became his home, and 
 
 there, after the death of Aristotle (322), he ranked as the most 
 distinguished philosopher and most popular teacher of the day. 
 He died in 287, providing by his will for the maintenance of the 
 Lyceum. Of his numerous works we have two on botany, and 
 considerable fragments of other philosophical treatises. He dis- 
 cussed in his lost works several subjects that had already been 
 handled by Aristotle, and with a freshness that won the admiration 
 of Cicero. But though philosophy was the main interest of his 
 life, the work for which he is known to the general reader, and 
 which gives him his place in the history of literature, is a httle 
 book of extracts from some larger work, whether on poetry or 
 
 The rhetoric. This is the famous Moral Characters, a col- 
 
 Characters lection of thirty character sketches, types of men as he 
 saw them in Athenian society, as one may see them in any society 
 to-day. Here was excellent material for a writer of mimes like 
 Herodas, or of Menander's comedy of manners, and the latter 
 may have used his friend's sketches, unless, indeed, his own plays 
 inspired them. They are all portraits of weaknesses and absurdities, 
 or of bad manners which amounted almost to crime in Athenian 
 eyes. Each sketch is labeled with the name of a foible, Stupidity, 
 Lack of Tact, or the like. Each opens with a definition of the 
 quality, a touch that betrays the philosopher, and proceeds to a 
 concrete illustration of the man subject to it, his actions, his con- 
 versation, his effect on others. Theophrastus has had many imita- 
 tors, especially in England and France, in the seventeenth century. 
 Bishop Hall, for his Characters of Vertues and Vices (London, 
 1608), Bishop Earle, for his Micro-cosmographie (London, 1628), 
 Sir Thomas Overbury for his Characters of Witty Descriptions, 
 
 ^ Diouys. Hal., On the Arrangement of Words 24. Cp. supra, p. 376. 
 
THEOPHRASrUS 
 
 4S3 
 
 (London, 1614), took Theophrastus for their model, and in France 
 La Bruyfere's Les Caracteres ou les moeurs de ce Steele (Paris, 
 1688), though very different in its aim, which was to satirize the 
 individuals of his time, was inspired by the Greek example, and 
 to it he added a paraphrase of the Characters of Theophrastus. 
 Theophrastus wrote several rhetorical treatises which have perished. 
 Of the work On Style we have fragments. His own style has no 
 special distinction.^ The merit of the sketches lies in their uni- 
 versality, which will make them outlast La Bruy^re, their psychol- 
 ogy, their humor, and the powers of observation that they 
 display. 
 
 It has been assumed that the philosophical writings of the 
 various third-century schools are of interest only to historians of 
 philosophy, but there is one exception. This, however, is not 
 prose. It is the Hymn to Zeus of the Stoic Cleanthes, and was 
 written about 300 B.C. These 38 hexameters are not to be 
 classed with the purely academic Hymns of Callimachus. They 
 bear, indeed, the traces of the philosophic development that lay 
 between the writer and the early ' Homeric' Hymns. Here Zeus 
 is the One, the ' Intelligence that goes to and fro.' But 
 Cleanthes is devout ; his language was quoted by Saint Paul ; ^ 
 and this breath of sincerity makes the Hymns of Callimachus and 
 Theocritus seem by comparison mere literary exercises. Still 
 more famous is a quatrain preserved by Epictetus^ in which 
 Cleanthes expresses the religious fervor that characterized the 
 nobler Stoics : Lead me, O Zens and thou, Destiny, whither- 
 soever my place has been assigned by you. Unfaltering I shall 
 follow. But should J turn coward and refuse, I shall follow none 
 the less. 
 
 1 Theophrastus followed Aristotle {Rhetoric T,. I.) in condemning Gorgi- 
 anic prose as fine writing that appeals only to the uneducated. Dion. Hal., 
 Lysias 14. 
 
 ^ Cp. Acts xvii 28 with Cleanthes, Hymn 4. The same phrase was used by 
 Aratus, Phaenomena 5. 
 
 ' Enchir. 53. 
 
454 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 The Alexandrians cared litde for oratorical prose, and it was 
 Athens, not Alexandria, that produced the last Greek orator of 
 Demetrius distinction. DEMETRiusofPhalerum(«>ra 345-283 B.C.) 
 of Phalerum was one whose suavity, elegance, polish, and subtlety all 
 the critics praised. Cicero found in his speeches the very perfume 
 of Athens. Quintilian called him the ' last Attic orator,' implying, 
 however, by the turn of his phrase that the last two words of the 
 title were not proof against challenge. All indeed agreed that his 
 name stood for the decline of eloquence, and to balance the terms 
 of praise, they declared that this pupil of Theophrastus, whose lot it 
 was to govern Athens for ten years as the viceroy of Macedonia, 
 was just such a speaker as one might expect the schools of phi- 
 losophy to send out into the dust and heat of public life. Actually 
 he was the only conspicuous orator trained in the school of Aris- 
 totle. His style had all the defects that may accompany the 
 qualities conceded by the critics. It was effeminate, emotional 
 without being inspiring, florid, tricked out with the spurious 
 charms, the paints and dyes of a. courtesan. The style was the 
 man, the reflection of a dissipated life. It was in his time that 
 the Greeks, who no longer had the inspiration of real contests in 
 the sphere of politics, began to compose declamations, exercises 
 in rhetoric, which were to take the place of oratory among them 
 and to form an essential part of the training of the Roman orators. 
 Of the speeches that Demetrius actually delivered we have no 
 remains. But in Stobaeus is preserved a fragment of a declama- 
 tion, enough to illustrate the faults of taste described by the 
 Roman critics. Demetrius was a man of great learning. After 
 his fall from power at Athens, he went to Alexandria to act as 
 consulting librarian to Ptolemy I in the formation of the Library. 
 The treatise On Style, which passes under his name, is not now 
 allowed to be his, and is described elsewhere.^ 
 
 We may regard Demetrius as the first important representative 
 of Asianism in Greek oratory. This was the name given to a 
 tendency that the purists deplored in Cicero's day. But Derae- 
 
 ^ See infra, Chapter XXIII. 
 
ASIANISM 455 
 
 trius was not the first ' Asianist.' The defects that separated the 
 Asianic from the Attic and the Atticizing orators were, in fact, 
 already existent in Gorgias himself and his followers, and had 
 been set aside by the severer taste of the Attic orators 
 of the best period of Greek eloquence. Asianisra 
 was hardly a matter of geography, though it is an Asiatic, Hege- 
 sias of Magnesia, who is generally held responsible for this strange 
 cult of style. It was a term leveled by the purists, who preferred 
 to copy the Lysianic or Demosthenic manner, at all who aban- 
 doned the periodic style in favor of short sentences (the 
 'kommatic' style 'in phrases '), and at the same time employed 
 antithesis, rhythm, and assonance to excess. The Muse of the 
 Asianists was overdressed, their rhythms were effeminate, a lapse 
 of morals from the standpoint of the purer Greek taste, their 
 pathos was employed without discretion and rang false, their 
 diction included words that Lysias would have discarded as poetic, 
 unsuited to the genius of prose. In short, they lacked taste, and 
 whether they came from the outskirts of Athens, like Demetrius, 
 or, like Hegesias, from Magnesia mattered little. Asianists in 
 every age mark the decline of eloquence and pride themselves on 
 their very faults, as these men must have done. Atticism, how- 
 ever, proved to be the safe path, and the Asianic danger was 
 short-lived, as is seen in the practice of the majority of the 
 Graeco-Roman rhetoricians. 
 
 Of Hegesias of Magnesia we have several fragments, preserved 
 in the quotations of his critics. He stands more decidedly than 
 
 Demetrius for the degradation of oratorical prose, be- 
 
 Hegesias 
 cause he had not the charm that won for the other 
 
 the half-reluctant approbation of the Romans. Cicero gives an 
 
 amusing parody of his jerky style. His rhythms were held up by 
 
 the critics as an example of what to avoid, and of the dangers of 
 
 falling into metrical prose. Forced and out-of-the-way metaphors, 
 
 circumlocutions instead of the simple word, false antitheses, a 
 
 close and artificial correspondence of clauses, are some of the 
 
 faults that can be illustrated from the fragments, and they are 
 
456 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK UTERATURE 
 
 precisely the weaknesses that had been introduced originally by 
 Gorgias and his followers in the fifth century. A good example 
 of the bombast which might result from indulgence in this style is 
 the long, boastful inscription of Antiochus of Comraagene, written 
 as a record of his achievements that was to last ' for all time ' by 
 some Greek rhetorician in the first century B.C.' With this ex- 
 cited, overdecorated style, dithyrambic, full of new or poetic 
 words, Greek prose written for an Oriental potentate, we have 
 reached the antipodes of Athenian prose writing. 
 
 Alexandria had a rival in Pergamon, the capital of the Attalids 
 in northwestern Asia Minor. Like the Ptolemies, Attalus I (241- 
 197 B.C.) and his successors desired to Hellenize their kingdom 
 and to oppose as a bulwark, here, where the Celts menaced 
 civilization, the culture of Greece. At Pergamon grew up a 
 Library second only to that of Alexandria, in which it was ab- 
 sorbed when Antony made a present of its 200,000 volumes to 
 Cleopatra. Here flourished a school of Homeric qriticisra and 
 a still more famous school of sculpture, and the Attalids encour- 
 aged rhetoric, as Alexandria did not, but no poets or prose writers 
 worth the name rewarded their patronage. Nicander of Colo- 
 phon is the solitary poet whom we need consider, and that only 
 because it happened that he was too ambitious to write in prose. 
 He wrote epic, but Hippocratean epic, not inspired by Homer. 
 He was a physician, and his two long poems that survive, the 
 Theriaca (958 verses) and the Alexipharmaca (630 
 verses) are didactic and wholly medical in their inter- 
 est and rank among the curiosities of literature. A bucolic poem 
 which Vergil imitated in his Georgics has perished. 
 
 Antigonus of Carystus in Euboea was among those whom 
 Antigonus Attalus invited to his court. He was a sculptor who 
 of Carystus wrote on art, unless, as some think, we must admit 
 a second Antigonus. His masterpiece, the Lives of the Philoso- 
 phers, has perished. But there has survived, the Wonderbook, 
 
 ' First published in Humann and Puchstein's Reisen in Kleinasien u. 
 Nordsyrien, Berlin, 1890. See Norden, Antike Kunstfrosa 1 141. 
 
ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE 457 
 
 concerned mainly with stories of animals. This collection of 
 strange stories is derived partly from Aristotle's History of Animals, 
 and in part, too, from a somewhat similar book of marvelous 
 tales by Callimachus. With this writer of the Wonderbook we 
 must not confuse another Antigonus of Carystus who wrote epi- 
 grams which were collected in the Anthology of Philip of Thessa- 
 lonica. Of the Pergamene critics of Homer, Crates of Mallus is 
 the chief. He founded the Pergamene school of allegorical criti- 
 cism in opposition to Aristarchus {circa 220-145), with whom he 
 maintained a bitter rivalry. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Anthology 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The Anthology of Cephalas is preserved only in the 
 Palatinus, lith cent., at Heidelberg. The Anthology of Planudes in the 
 Venelus, written by Planudes himself in the 14th cent. 
 
 II. EDrnoNS. Brunck, Strassburg, 1776, 1785. Jacobs, Leipzig, 1794- 
 1814 (13 vols); Leipzig, 1819, 1872 (3 vols). Meineke, Analecta Alexan- 
 drina, Berlin, 1843. Diibner, Paris, 1864(2 vols.); vol. Ill by Cougny, 
 1890. Sternbach, Anth. Plan., Leipzig, 1890. Stadtmiiller, Leipzig, vol. I, 
 1894; II, 1899. Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology, 
 London, 1890; revised ed. 1906. Kaibel, Epigrammata graeca ex 
 lapidiius conlecta, Berlin, 1878. Meleager: editions: Graefe, Leipzig, 
 l8n. Meineke, Leipzig, 1789. Headlam, Fifty Poems of Meleager, Lon- 
 don, 1890, 
 
 III. LiTERATDRE. Reitzenstein, De Anth. Pal. ep. sepulcralibus, Marburg, 
 1884. Weisshaupl, Die Grabgedichte d. Griech. Anth., Vienna, 1889. 
 Haeberlin, Carmina figurata graeca, Hannover, 1887. Allen, <^reek Versifi- 
 cation in Inscriptions, Boston, 1888. Meleager: Sainte-Beuve in Portraits 
 Contemporains V and in Nouveaux I.undis VII. Ouvre, Meleagre, Paris, 
 1894. Pomeroy, Meleager, London, 1895. Radinger, Meleagros, Berlin, 
 1897. Ermatinger, Meleagros, Hamburg, 1898. 
 
 IV. Translations. Anthology : Prose translations in Mackail's ed. of 
 Selections. Verse in Lang's Grass of Parnassus and in Selections from tlie 
 Greek Anthology (translations by various hands), edited by Graham Tomson 
 in the Camelot Classics, London. Rubensohn, Griech. Epigramme in Ueber- 
 setzungen, 'Weimai, 1897. Meleager: Deheque, Paris, 1863. Pierre Louys, 
 Paris, 1893. Headlam in his edition. 
 
45 8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Apollonius 
 
 The best manuscript is the Mediceus (^Laurentianus), loth or nth cent., 
 at Florence, the principal codex for Aeschylus and Sophocles. Ed. frinc, 
 Lascaris, Florence, 1496. Wellauer, Leipzig, 1828. Merkel, Leipzig, 1854; 
 new ed., 1897. Seaton, Oxford, 1906. Hemardinquer, ZJe 4^. Rh. Argon., 
 Paris, 1872. '^\c!a&fX\%, De Ap. fragmentis, Halle, 1875. Sainte-Beuve, Zl< 
 la Medee d'' Apollonius in Portraits Cont, V. Linde, De diversis recensionihus 
 Ap. Rh. Argon., Gottingen, 1885. La Ville de Mirmont, La navire Argo, 
 Paris, 1895. Cjirard in Etudes sur la poesie grecgue, Paris, 1900. Knorr, De 
 Ap. Rh. Argon, fontibus, Leipzig, 1902. Maass in Phil. Uniersuchungen 
 XII 357. Gercke in Rhein. Mus. 14. 
 
 Aratus 
 
 The best manuscript is the Marcianus, 12th cent., at Venice. Editions: 
 Buhle, Leipzig, 1793-1801. Bekker, Berlin, 1828. Maass, Berlin, 1893. 
 Maass, Analecta Eratosthenica, Beirlin, 1883. Maass, Aratea, Berlin, 1892. 
 Wilamowitz in Gott. Nachr., 1894. Scholia: Maass, Berlin, 1898. Transla- 
 tions: Lamb, London, 1848. Poste, London, 1880. 
 
 BlON AND MOSCHUS 
 
 Bion and Moschus are usually included in the manuscripts and editions of 
 Theocritus. Wilamowitz, Bucolici Graeci, Oxford, 1906. BiON: Ahrens, 
 Leipzig, 1854. Wilamowitz, Bion von Smyrna, Berlin, 1900, MoscHUS: 
 Maass and Prinz in Hermes 31. Translations by Leopardi, Florence, 1845. 
 Lang (with Theocritus), London, 1889. Bion, Lament for Adonis by E. 
 Browning. 
 
 Callimachus 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The archetype of the Hymns was a manuscript (con- 
 taining also the Homeric Hymns), nth or 12th cent., brought from Greece 
 to Venice by Aurispa in 1423. Copies of this survive in the Vatican, Lau- 
 rentian, and Marcian libraries. For the Epigrams see manuscripts oi Palatine 
 Anthology. A fr. of the Hecale on a wooden tablet found in Egypt, now 
 at Vienna, was published in Papyri Rainer, Vienna, 1893. 
 
 II. Editions. Schneider, Callimachea, Leipzig, 1870-1873. Meineke, 
 Berlin, 1861. Valckenaer, Elegiarum fragmenta, Leyden, 1798. Hymns 
 ixii. Epigrams : Volger, Leipzig, 1817; Wilamowitz, Berlin, 1882 and 1897. 
 Nigra, Inni di Calimaco su Diana et sui Lavacri di Pallade, Turin, 1892. 
 Hecale : Naeke, Bonn, 1845. Gomperz, Aus der Hekale des Kallim., Vienna, 
 
 1893- 
 
 III. Literature. Dilthey, De Callim. Cydippa, Leipzig, 1863. Analecta 
 
ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE 439 
 
 Callim., Bonn, 1865. Degner, De Dorismi usu Callim., Breslau, 1877. 
 Lange, De Callim. Aetiis, Leipzig, 1882. Knaack, AnaUcia Callim., Stettin, 
 1887. Reitzenstein, Callim. Hecale, Rostock, 1891. Reinach on the new 
 Hecale fr. in Rev. des At. Grecques, 1893. Legrand on tlie Hymns, ib., 1894. 
 Wilamowitz on the Hecale in Gott. Nachr., 1893. Ehrlich, De Callim. 
 Hymnis quaestt., Breslau, 1894. Studniczka in Hermes 28. Weinberger, 
 Kail. Studien, Vienna, 1895. Kuiper, De Hymnorum dictione epica, Leyden, 
 1896. Wilamowitz in Hermes 36. 
 
 The Erotic Fragment 
 
 Ed. print, in Grenfell, An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and Other Greek 
 Papyri, Oxford, 1896. The date is probably the second century B.C. Weil 
 in Rev. des &t. Grecques, 1896 (text and translation). Wilamowitz in Gott. 
 Nachr., 1896. Crusius mPhilologus 55. Blass in Jahr. f. class. Philol. 1896. 
 Rohde in Berl. Phil. Wochenschr., 1896. Leo in Abh. d. Gott. Ges., 1897. 
 
 Herodas 
 
 I. Papyrus, ist cent. a.d. in the British Museum (cxxxv). Facsimile by 
 Kenyon, London, 1892. 
 
 II. Editions. Ed. princ. in Kenyon, Classical Texts from Papyri in the 
 British Museum, London, 1891. Rutherford, edd. I and 2, London, 1891. 
 Bucheler, Bonn, 1892. Crusius, Leipzig, ed. I, 1892; ed. 2, 1894; ed. 3, 1898; 
 ed. 4, 1900; ed. 5, 1905. Van Herwerden in Mnemosyne, 1892. (text and 
 notes). Meister in Abh. d. k. sacks. Ges., Leipzig, 1893 (with trans.). Nairn, 
 Oxford, 1904. Partial edd.; Bucheler in Rhein. Mus. 46 {Mime i). Kaibel 
 in Hermes 26 {Mimes 4 and 6). Ragon, Le Mailre d'Acole, Le sacrifice a 
 Esculapi, Paris, 1898. 
 
 III. Literature. Crusius, Untersuchungen, Leipzig, 1892. Herrog, 
 Koische Forschungen, Leipzig, 1899. Olschewsky, La Langue et la Metrique 
 d'Herodas, Leyden, 1897. Hertling, Quaestiones Mimicae, Strassburg, 1899. 
 Wright in Harvard Studies 4. Herzog in Philologus 62. Artt. in Class. Rev. 
 V, VI. Reich, Der Mimus, Berlin, 1903. Krakert, Quatenus comoediam 
 graecam respexisse videatur Herondas, Leipzig, 1902. 
 
 IV. Translations. Boisacq, Paris, 1893. Crusius, Gottingen, 1893, Dal- 
 meyda, Paris, 1893. Mekler, Vienna, 1894. Setti, Modena, 1893. Quillard, 
 Paris, 2d ed., 1900. Symonds in The Greek Poets (enlarged ed.), London, 1893. 
 Sharpley, London, 1906 (verse). 
 
 Lycophron 
 
 The best manuscripts are the Venetus, I ith cent., and, derived from it, the 
 Vaticanws. 
 
46o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 £ci. prini:., Aldus, Venice, 1513 (with Pindar), Bachmann, Leipzig, 183a 
 Deheque (with trans.), Paris, 1853. Kiiikel, Leipzig, 1880. Scheer, Berlin, 
 1881. Holzinger (with trans.), Leipzig, 1895. Ciaceri (with trans.), Catania, 
 1901. Tzetzes, Scholia in Lycophronem by Miiller, Leipzig, 181 1. Wilamo- 
 witz, De Lycophronis Alexandra, Greifswald, 1883. Strecker, De Lycophrone, 
 Greifswald, 1884. Bates in Harvard Studies 6. Walter, De Lycophrone 
 Momeri imitatore, Basle, 1903. Translation: Yorke, Cambridge, 1806. 
 
 Rhianhs 
 
 Kohlmann, Qiiaestiones Messeniacae, Bonn, 1866. Mayhoff, De Rh, 
 Cretensis studiis Homericis, Leipzig, 1870. 
 
 Theocritus * 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The best are in the libraries of the Vatican, of Milan, 
 and of Venice, and are of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centt. The Ambrosiamts, 
 (K) 13th cent., at Milan, is the most important for Idyls i, 3-13. 
 
 II. Editions. £d. princ, Milan, 1481 {/dyls 1-18). Aldus, Venice, 
 1495. Valckenaer, Leyden, 1779. Fritzsche, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1869. Ahrens 
 in Bucolici Graeci, Leipzig, 1855-1859. Paley, Cambridge, 2d ed., 1869. 
 Kynaston (Snow), Oxford, 3d ed., 1877. Fritzsche-Hiller, Leipzig, 1881. 
 Kynaston (Snow), London, 1892. Jahn, Coin, 1899. Chomeley, London, 
 1901. Wilamowitz in Bucolici Graeci, Oxford, 1906. Oarz'j/j'j : Bellesort, 
 Paris, 1896. SchoHa: Diibner, Paris, 1S49. Ziegler, Tiibingen, 1867 (Am- 
 brosian). 
 
 III. Literature. Ahrens, Emendaiiones Theocr.,Gott\ngen,iZ^i. Sainte- 
 Eeuve, Theocriie in Portraits Litt. III. Biese, De poesi Theocr. observa- 
 Hones, Stralsund, 1874. Kayet, Memoire sur Pile de Cos, Paris, 1876. 
 Kunst, De Theocr. versu heroico, Leipzig, 1 887. Biese, Die Entwicklung des 
 NaturgefUhls bei d. Griechen, Kiel, 1892. Jahn, Die Art der Abhdngigkeit 
 Vergil's von Theokrit., Berlin, 1897-1898. Legrand, &tude sur Theocriie, 
 Paris, 1898. Girard in Etudes sur la po'esie grecque, Paris, 1900. Wilamo- 
 witz in Hermes 13 and 33. Kaibel, ib. 3 and 27. Paton-Hicks, Inscriptions 
 
 ^ In his Bucolici Graeci (1906) Wilamowitz abandons the current classifi- 
 cation of the Idyls, which dates from Stephanus, and, accepting the order 
 indicated in the MSB (especially K), arranges the Theocritea and Bucolica 
 as follows: Theocritus i, 7, 3-6, 8-13, 14, ■/., 15, 17, 16, 18, 24, 22, 28-30, 
 epigrams, fragment. An Appendix contains all the bucolic poems that now 
 pass under the names of Moschus and Bion, and the remaining ' Theocritean ' 
 Idyls, whose genuineness cannot be proved. Finally he includes the Techno- 
 pnegnia, thus restored to their ancient position as an Appendix to Theocritus, 
 
ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE 461 
 
 of Cos, Oxford, 1891. Wilamowitz, Die Textgeschichte der griechischen Bukol- 
 iker, Berlin, 1906. 
 
 IV. Translations. Verse: Calverley, London, 1896. Prose: Lang, 
 Theocritus, Bion and Moschtis, London, 1889. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Rumpel, Lexicon Theocriteum, Leipzig, 1879. 
 
 Theophrastus 
 
 I. Manuscripts. For the History of Plants the best is the Vaticanus. 
 For the Characters the Parisini, 10th and nth cent , and the Vaticanus, 
 13th cent. 
 
 n. Editions. Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 1497 (P^^t of '^i^ ^d. of 
 Aristotle). Schneider, Leipzig, 1818. Wimmer, Leipzig, 1814-1851, 1862. 
 The Characters on\y. Casaubon, 1592 and 1638; Foss, Leipzig, 1858; Jebb 
 (with trans.), London, 1870; Diibner, Paris, 1877. Text published by the 
 Leifz. Philol. Ges., 1897. 
 
 in. Literature. Gomperz in Abh. d. Wien. Ak. 117 (1888). Diels, 
 Theophrastea, Berlin, 1883. Hicks in Journ. of Hell. Studies 3. Rabe, De 
 Th. libris Tepl X^^ews, Bonn, i8go. 
 
 IV. Translations. Howell, London, 1824. Taylor, London, 1836. Jebb, 
 London, 1870 (in his ed.). Bennett and Hammond, London and New York, 
 1902. The version of La Bruyere, a mere paraphrase, is to be found in his 
 Oeuvres, 
 
 Alexandrian Literature 
 
 Couat, La Poesie Alexandrine, Paris, 1882. Susemihl, Gesch. d. Griech 
 Lift, in d. Alexandrinerzeit, Leipzig, 1891-1892. Blass, Die Griech. 
 Beredsamkeit V. Alexander bis auf Augustus, Berlin, 1865. Mahaffy, Greek 
 Life and Thought from the Death of Alexander to the Roman Conquest, Lon- 
 don, 2d ed., 1896. Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina, Berlin, 1843. Mahaffy, 
 The Empire of the Ptolemies, London, 1895. Droysen, Gesch. d. Hellenismus, 
 Gotha, 1842. Girard, &tudes sur la poesie grecque, Paris, 2d ed., 1900. 
 Knaack, Alexandrinische Litteratur in Pauly-Wissowa. 
 
 Pergamene Literature 
 
 Nicander: Schneider, Nicandrea, ed., Leipzig, 1856. Scholia: Abel, 
 Budapest, 1891. Plaehn, De Nicandro, Halle, 1882. Antigonus of Carys- 
 tus: The Wonderbook in Keller, Kerum nat. scrip/ores graeci, Leipzig. 
 Wilamowitz, Antigonus von Carystus, Berlin, i88l {Phil. Unters. IV). 
 Reitzenstein, Hellenistische Wundererzahlungen, Leipzig, 1906. Keller, 
 Paradoxographi, Leipzig, 1877. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 GRAECO-ROMAN LITERATURE 
 
 The first name with which we have to deal personifies the rela- 
 tions between Greece and Rome which give their peculiar color- 
 ing to the literature of the first century B.C. and the six Christian 
 
 centuries down to Tustinian. Polybius of Megalopolis 
 Polyblus , , ■' ^^. . •, u J ■ • J • 
 
 was born about 210 B.C. His native city had joined in 
 
 253 the Achaean League, one of the last efforts of that race of born 
 separatists to cooperate after the death of Alexander. The 
 League included a great part of the Peloponnesus and Megara. 
 Athens stood aloof from its activities, and Sparta was hostile. 
 With this Lea,gue of upstart provincials, as they must have seemed 
 to Athens and Sparta, the family of Polybius was closely connected, 
 and his own fortunes, as it proved, depended on its political rela- 
 tions with Rome. His father Lycortas was a prominent Achaean 
 statesman, and when Philopoemen, the Achaean leader, whose Life 
 Plutarch wrote, was poisoned in 184 by the mutineers at Messene, 
 Lycortas took his place as general of the League, and Polybius, then 
 a young man, carried the hero's ashes in the solemn funeral proces- 
 sion to Megalopolis. In 168 Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, 
 was crushed by the Romans, and there followed a persecution of 
 all Greeks who were not conspicuously pro-Roman. A thousand 
 leading Achaeans were deported to Rome to stand trial for alleged 
 resistance to Roman rule. Among them went Polybius. In 
 Rome there was no trial, and seventeen years later the survivors, 
 reduced to three hundred, were allowed to return to Greece 
 (150 B.C.). Polybius had turned the long leisure of his exile to 
 good account. He had been admitted into the Scipionic circle, 
 was the intimate friend of Scipio Africanus the Younger, and 
 
 462 
 
I'OLYBIUS 463 
 
 became a complete convert to Roman methods and the right of 
 Rome to rule the world. For his life-task he chose to write the 
 history of the Roman Conquest, of that wonderful half century 
 which made Rome the mistress of the known world and turned 
 other empires and kingdoms into her provinces. Four years after 
 the restoration of the Achaean exiles, Rome put an end to the 
 petty quarrels of the Greeks. Mummius made an epcample of 
 Corinth, the headquarters of the anti-Roman party, and Greece 
 became a Roman province, Achaea. After that, a Nero might 
 proclaim the freedom of the Greeks (67 a.d.) as Flaminius had 
 done in 196 B.C. — "a gift of that which is not to be given" — 
 but this was merely sentimental ostentation and had no political 
 meaning. Polybius, at least, had no illusions as to the future of 
 his countrymen. He had seen one king of Macedonia after 
 another humbled by Roman arms, Antiochus of Syria routed at 
 Magnesia in 190, Rome predominant in Asia and Egypt. He 
 was present when his friend Scipio destroyed Carthage in 146, and 
 again when he closed the war in Spain by the sack of Numantia in 
 133. ' Our Polybius,' as Cicero calls him,' lived too soon to be 
 influenced by the affectation that, later, made Greek writers avoid 
 all allusion to Rome as unbefitting the vocabulary of the pure 
 Atticist. He saw that Providence or Fortune (tuxj?) ^ was on the 
 Roman side, and there was little bitterness in his lament for his 
 country's fall : Here ends that period of fifty -three years ; this is the 
 climax of the growth and progress of the Roman empire. Thence- 
 forth all men seemed forced to believe that they had no choice but 
 to obey all the orders of Rome? Polybius thought that the Greeks, 
 those ' driveling ' Achaean cities, had worked their own ruin. Hel- 
 lenism had grown shabby, and he would not conceal its decay. Yet 
 he did not stand aloof from the Greeks in misfortune, and acted 
 as intercessor with the Romans after the fall of Corinth. Nor did 
 his countrymen regard him as a renegade since they set up his 
 
 1 On the Republic 2. 14. 
 
 2 Though not a professed Stoic, Polybius constantly shows the influence of 
 Stoic doctrines. ° 3- 4- 
 
464 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 statue near those of Aratus and Philopoemen, the heroes of the 
 Achaean League. The latter part of his life was spent in Greece, 
 and there he died at the age of eighty-two. 
 
 His History was composed in forty Books of which only five are 
 extant entire, i and 2 are introductory, and give an account of 
 the First Punic War and the war of the Carthaginians with their 
 mercenaries, the relations of Rome and lUyria, and the story of 
 the Achaeans down to the death of Cleomenes in 220. 
 Book 3 is the history of the Second Punic War to 
 the battle of Cannae in 216. Books 4 and 5 relate the struggles 
 of the Achaean League and the exploits of Antiochus of Syria 
 and of Philip of Macedon. Of 6-18 we have long extracts in 
 special manuscripts, and considerable fragments of the remainder of 
 the work down to 144. Trained in both politics and war and by 
 close intercourse with the conquerors of the world, Polybius had 
 unique qualifications for writing universal history. As a historian he 
 is thoroughly impartial both to Greece and Rome, not disguising the 
 faults of either. Truth he worshiped like a goddess,' and spared 
 no pains in collecting his evidence. " No other author of antiq- 
 uity," says Mommsen, " perhaps, can be named to whom we are 
 indebted for so much real instruction. His books are like the sun 
 in Roman history ; at the point where they begin, the mist which 
 still envelops the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars is raised ; and at the 
 point where they end, a new, and if possible, still more vexatious 
 twilight begins." ^ 
 
 The fact remains that Polybius is not read. He is a good 
 instance of the Nemesis that waits on those who think, with Epicu- 
 rus, that it is easy to write, and that it is enough, if your subject- 
 matter be interesting, to set down the truth and let the 
 style take care of itself. He saw in his predecessors, 
 Timaeus, or Zeno of Rhodes, or Phylarchus, who wrote history 
 as though it were tragedy,' efforts at fine writing which he took 
 every occasion to denounce. Much, indeed, of his own work is 
 devoted to the criticism of others, and he spends no less than 
 
 ' 13 5- ^ History of Rome III 468. ^ Pjlybius 2. 56. 
 
POLYBIUS 465 
 
 forty pages in dissecting Tiraaeus. History had, in fact, in his 
 day turned to mere panegyric. Though he adn:iitted a number 
 of speeches into his work, he saw their danger for the historian. 
 But in avoiding any tendency to fiction he fled to the other 
 extreme. He seems to lack all artistic sense. He did indeed 
 avoid hiatus, but apart from this no writer better illustrates by his 
 lack of it the value of Greek training in rhetoric. He did not 
 attempt to write pure Attic, but used the ' common ' dialect with 
 all its neologisms which were to be so carefully avoided by later 
 purists. In him we look in vain for those appeals to the imagina- 
 tion, those "hving images" which Shelley' reminds us were used 
 by all the great historians "to fill the interstices of their subject." 
 Nor are his faults of style merely negative. His sentences are 
 long and unwieldy, and he has a mania for the use of the abstract 
 substantive which is perhaps the greatest blemish on his style. 
 Yet no historical subject could be more interesting than that 
 with which he dealt. He neglected the opportunity to make 
 his recital classical. A good example of such neglect is his 
 account, in twenty-two chapters, of the mutiny of the 20,000 
 mercenaries of Carthage. From the hands of a Thucydides we 
 should have received a locus classicus of the horrors of the revolt 
 of a horde of mercenaries, who, like the natives of India in the 
 last century, had learned from their masters the arts of war, but 
 not how to use them like civilized men. The material is all 
 there, the Babel of dialects in that crowd of barbarians and 
 villainous Greeks where only one word Strike ! was known to all 
 alike ; their treachery and revenge ; the panic of Carthage as 
 the mutineers grew more menacing with every concession ; the 
 mutilations of the captured, the trampling of elephants ; the final 
 slaughter of thousands. All this is lost to the world of letters 
 because it is written in Greek that one would hesitate to set 
 before a schoolboy. 
 
 Polybius must have been a prize to the writers of epitomes. He 
 addressed his History mainly to the Romans, and he would have- 
 
 1 Defense of Poetry, 
 HIST. GREEK T.IT. — 30 
 
466 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 been consoled for Greek criticism of his style' by the anecdote 
 of Brutus, that man of action, spending the eve of Pharsalia over 
 an epitome of his work. Polybius was followed by Livy where 
 they covered the same ground. 
 
 The division of the Graeco-Roman period by the reigns of the 
 Roman emperors, or by the revival, more than once, of Greek let- 
 ters under the patronage of phil-Hellenic rulers hke Hadrian and 
 the Antonines, has much significance for the history of prose writing, 
 but none for poetry. As one searches 'the barren two centuries 
 after Meleager, there is no evidence that outside influences affected 
 the production of poetry. A Greek poet, had one appeared, 
 would have been greeted at Rome with no less enthusiasm than at 
 Alexandria a century earlier. But no such poet arose. In the 
 epic genre one or two names emphasize the fact that Apolloniiis 
 was to remain long without a rival. Oppian's didactic poem On 
 Fishing, published between 177 and 180 a.d., and 
 dedicated to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commo- 
 dus, is a contribution to natural history. It has survived to illus- 
 trate a didactic type which was very popular in the Graeco-Roman 
 centuries. Oppian was a man of Nicander's school and imitated 
 him. His poem may be allowed to represent a whole literature 
 on fishing, in prose and verse. Oppian's descriptions are accurate 
 enough to interest the modern naturalist. An epic On Hunting, 
 of which we have four Books, has come down under his name, but 
 is the work of some later and inferior poet. His style is extremely 
 ornate, and was more congenial to the scholiasts than to any 
 . later reader. 
 
 It is not till the fourth century that we encounter once more a 
 writer of mythological epic whose name has some literary impor- 
 
 Quintus tance. Quintus of Smyrna wrote a Sequel to the Iliad 
 Smyrnaeus in fourteen short Books. Of his life we know nothing 
 save his own statement that he was inspired, like Hesiod, by the 
 Muses with the theme of his epic as he pastured his flocks in the 
 
 ' Dionys. Hal., On the Arrangement of Words 4, reckons Polybius wltl 
 those whom ' no man endures to read through.' 
 
NONNUS 467 
 
 plains of Smyrna.' Even his date is a matter of conjecture. His 
 epic describes, in something less than 9000 verses, the events after 
 Hector's burial. For these he drew on the Aethiopis. Quintus 
 continues the narrative down to the shipwreck of the Greeks on 
 their return, and gives a long and detailed account of the slow 
 death of the lesser Ajax. The whole is an abridged version of the 
 cyclic epics of the Trojan saga, intended for fourth-century readers. 
 Whether Quintus had the original epics before him, or depended 
 on extracts or prose versions we cannot say with certainty. He 
 imitates Homer in almost every phrase, and owes something to 
 ApoUonius of Rhodes, and, perhaps, to Vergil. He wrote with 
 great technical facility. Though his poem has many signs of late- 
 ness, and no suggestion of original genius, it is readable and singu- 
 larly free from sophistic affectations. The versification indicates 
 that Quintus, who was fond of dactyls, but not a dactylomaniac, 
 preceded Nonnus. 
 
 About a century later than Quintus of Smyrna, a fifth-century 
 poet, Nonnus, a Hellenized Egyptian of Panopolis, who, 
 if, we may trust his epitaph by an unknown poet in the 
 Anthology, spent most of his life at Alexandria, wrote the Story of 
 Dionysus in forty-eight Books, a ponderous work, nearly as long as 
 the Iliad and Odyssey put together. Euphorion, the Alexandrian, 
 had written an epic on the same theme, and Soterichus the Egyp- 
 tian in the fourth century a.d. had composed a Bassarica. On 
 both these Nonnus drew for the numerous adventures and meta- 
 morphoses of the wandering Dionysus. He was an imitative poet 
 who followed Homer closely and owed much to the Bacchae of 
 Euripides for his episode of Pentheus. For raanyof the amorous 
 adventures of Dionysus himself and other mythical love stories, 
 which he delights to narrate, he used Alexandrian models. His 
 divers-colored Hymn^ as he calls the Dionysiaca, is a ram- 
 bling, confiised series of legends which defies every canon of epic 
 proportion and composition. For his style he owed much to 
 Callimachus and ApoUonius, but he dwelt on the sensual side of 
 ' 12. 310. '^Dionysiaca i. 15. 
 
468 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his legends in a manner that was not Alexandrian, but Oriental, 
 His Greek is rhetorical, and feverish as the most disordered dithy- 
 ramb. There are passages that could be written out in prose as a 
 sophistic declamation, as, for instance, the speech of Dionysus 
 pleading with Nicaea the Amazon, with its tedious play on words 
 and all the tinsel of sophistical panegyric (12. 130 fif.). But his 
 isolation, the scarcity of writers who would undertake such a task, 
 the dreadful dearth of poets with an inspiration and ardor so 
 sustained, give a fictitious value to Nonnus. He had enthusiasm, 
 imagination, facility, and an animation wholly lacking to Quintus 
 of Smyrna. He abounds in new words, bold phrases, and meta- 
 phors that are often merely grotesque. His preference for dactyls 
 amounted to mania and robbed the hexameter of its traditional 
 stateliness, so that the very liveliness, the singing effect of his verse, 
 becomes monotonous after a few pages.' Some time after the 
 composition of the Dionysiaca, Nonnus was converted to Christian- 
 ity, and made a paraphrase in verse of St. John^s Gospel which 
 survives with his epic. 
 
 Nonnus had his imitators. Tryphiodorus wrote a Sack of Ilios 
 in 691 hexameters, which is extant, and we have the Rape of Helen 
 (nearly 400 verses) by Cohithus. Both of these poets were, like 
 Nonnus, Egyptian Greeks. Literature would have lost nothing had 
 their works disappeared. But there was one poet of the school of 
 
 Nonnus who surpassed his master. This was Musaeus, 
 Musaeus 
 
 of whose life and precise date we know nothing. The 
 
 scholars of the Renaissance, like the poet Marlowe, identified him 
 
 with the legendary Athenian seer whom Vergil describes, in the 
 
 sixth Book of the Aeneid, as the center of an admiring throng in 
 
 the underworld. But the writer of Hero and Leander, a brief 
 
 1 Of the 32 varieties of Homeric hexameter, La Roche has shown that Non- 
 nus used only g; ApoUonius had used 27. Nonnus shows a decided prefer- 
 ence for making the word accent coincide, in the last foot, with the ictus. In 
 the choliambics of Babrius, this practice is the rule, and, in his case, is no doubt 
 due to the influence of the Latin skazon. Later, with the Byzantines, accent 
 seems to have been regularly taken into account in metrical composition. 
 
MiJSAEUS 469 
 
 idyllic epic of 343 verses, was a close imitator of Nonnus, and 
 may be placed with fair certainty early in the sixth century a.d. 
 and identified with the Musaeus to whom Procopius of Gaza, the 
 sophist, wrote one of 163 Letters preserved under his name among 
 the remains of the epistolographers. The story of Hero the 
 maiden, living in her lonely tower of Sestos, and of her lover 
 Leander who swam the Hellespont every night from Abydos, 
 on the opposite coast, had been treated by several Latin poets. 
 Vergil," Ovid, Martial, Lucan, Statius, Ausonius,^ had all made 
 allusions more or less detailed to the legend, while Ovid included 
 in his elegiac imaginary epistles, the Heroides, a letter from Lean- 
 der to Hero and her reply. But there is little doubt that they all 
 derived the tale from some Alexandrian poem which had made 
 this obscure legend famous, and that, long before Musaeus, Lean- 
 der was the type of the daring lover who dares once too often, and 
 Hero of the maiden isolated mysteriously in her tower, Uke the 
 princess of folklore. It was almost certainly Callimachus who, in 
 the lost Causes, drew these lovers from the shades of their local 
 saga of Sestos and Abydos. Musaeus would have merited the 
 praise of Callimachus for the brevity and manner of his epic. This 
 is indeed the last Greek poem that may be read with profit, the 
 swan song of the race. Musaeus imitated the metrical effects 
 and, here and there, the actual phrases of Nonnus, but not his 
 rhetorical conceits, his verbosity, his confused digressions, his 
 passion for detail. This straightforward tale is written with a noble 
 and touching simplicity worthy of the earlier days of Greek poetry. 
 The lovers meet at Sestos at a festival, as Simaetha met Delphis 
 in the Second Idyl of Theocritus : — 
 
 " Thither resorted many a wandering guest 
 To meet their loves ; such as had none at all 
 Came lovers home from this great febtival." ' 
 
 There Leander was only one of many who desired the beauty of 
 the maiden Hero, whose flushed feet were \ike roses beneath her 
 
 I Georgics 3. 258 ff. ^ Mosella 5. 287. 
 
 2 Marlowe, Hero and Leander i. 
 
470 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 robe/ while all about her was the blush of many roses. In fine 
 contrast with the opening scenes and the swimming of the stormy 
 Hellespont, 
 
 "The roaring sea lamenting to these hours 
 Leander's Love and Death," 
 
 is the solitude of the close, when in the dawn after a night of tem- 
 pest Hero, whose torch had been quenched at the moment of her 
 lover's death, sees his drowned body on the rocks below her 
 tower, and silently, without a word of grief, like a tragic heroine, 
 flings herself down to die on his body. The poem was paraphrased 
 by Schiller who, with less taste, makes Hero utter a dying lament. 
 The whole is Alexandrian in manner, singularly free from the 
 faults of all other Graeco-Roman narrative poetry. It is, in fact, 
 Musaeus, since we have not the Alexandrian original, who has 
 made the fortune of the legend, so that it still appeals to the 
 modern reader : — 
 
 " I never think of poor Leander's fate 
 And how he swam, and how his bride sat late, 
 And watched the dreadful dawning of the light. 
 But as I would of two that died last night. 
 So might they now have lived, and so have died; 
 The story's heart to me still beats against its side." ' 
 
 Marlowe's Hero and Leander, finished by Chapman, is a long 
 and elaborate poem in which he rather rewrote than paraphrased 
 " divine Musaeus." An incomplete poem on the river Alpheius 
 in the Anthology^ so closely echoes the phrases of Musaeus that it 
 must have been a direct imitation. 
 
 Elegiac poetry was maintained in those gleanings after the har- 
 vest preserved in the Anthology. They are for the most part 
 pretty trifles, nugae. Philodemus of Gadara, the Epicurean phi- 
 losopher, the friend of Piso the consul (58 B.C.), lived at Rome 
 and was admired for his learning, which placed him above the 
 Greeklings who crowded the capital. We have thirty-two of his 
 
 » 90. » Leigh Hunt. » 9. 362. 
 
THE EPIGRAMMATISTS 471 
 
 epigrams, nearly all on erotic subjects. It is to be supposed that 
 they reflect the taste of his Roman patrons rather than his own 
 habits, for his philosophic writings are austere and dry enough. 
 They were included in the Anthology, not by Melea- ,^^^ 
 ger, the fellow-townsman of Philodemus, but by epigram- 
 Philip of Thessalonica, who in the first century a.d. ™atists 
 made a collection of modern poets. He was perhaps the first to 
 use the title ' Anthology.' To Meleager's Garland, Philip added 
 an appendix containing nearly eighty of his own epigrams, chiefly 
 rhetorical exercises displaying little originality. He included 
 even Roman poets who wrote in Greek, such as the accomplished 
 Marcellus and Germanicus. Antipater, whom Philip added to his 
 Anthology, was a Greekling who came under Roman influence. 
 He imitated both his namesake of Sidon and Leonidas of Taren- 
 tum. Crinagoras of Mitylene lived in the first century under the 
 patronage of Augustus. Of his fifty epigrams many are on Roman 
 themes, addressed to the young Marcellus or celebrating the vic- 
 tories of Tiberius. 
 
 In the reign of Hadrian, Strato of Sardis not only contributed 
 about one hundred epigrams to the Anthology, but himself made 
 the collection represented by Book 12 of tht Falatine Anthology. 
 All of these are erotic. About forty epigrams are preserved under 
 the name of Lucian of Samosata, chiefly satiric verse, epigrams in 
 the modern sense, and none of them certainly from the hand of 
 Lucian. 
 
 In the sixth century, under Justinian, two friends, Agathias, the 
 anthologist and historian, and Paulus Silentiarius, the ' Silen- 
 tiary ' or privy councilor, exchanged epigrams, the Agathias 
 former from his country house on the Bosphorus, and Paulus 
 while Paulus attended to his duties at the court in Constantinople. 
 Agathias wrote the epigram which inspired Jonson's lyric, " Drink 
 to me only with thine eyes " : / am no winebibber; but if thou 
 wilt make me drunk, taste thou first and bring it to me, and 
 I take it. For if thou wilt touch it with thy lips, no longer is 
 it easy to keep sober or to escape the sweet cupbearer; for th 
 
472 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 cup ferries me over a kiss from thee, and tells me of the grace thai 
 it had} 
 
 Paulus was the better poet of the two, and his epigrams, to the 
 number of more than seventy, are among the best of this later 
 period. His is the curious dialogue in which a dead man in his 
 grave attempts to confide in an indifferent wayfarer who waves 
 every assertion aside : — 
 
 My name's — What matter ? and my home — 1 care not. 
 My birth was noble — What if it were not ? 
 Glory I won — What boots it in the tomb ? 
 And here I lie — Who says so, and to whom ? ^ 
 
 In the epigrams after Meleager, with few exceptions, there is a 
 decided falling off. In them we can trace the euphuism of the 
 day, and the trivial effects of sophistic rhetoric from which a true 
 poet would have shaken himself free. Any striking incident that 
 could be used appears again and again in these epigrams, each 
 ingenious versifier trying to outdo the rest in metrical subtleties, 
 and in giving fresh turns to the old commonplaces. All were imi- 
 tators, whose favorite model was an Alexandrian, Leonidas of 
 Tarentum. 
 
 Babrius, if we may judge from his name, was an Italian by 
 
 birth. His date is quite uncertain, but probably falls in the reign 
 
 of Alexander Severus (222-235 a.d.). He wrote, at any rate, at 
 
 a time when it was the fashion for a Roman to com- 
 
 Babrius ■ ,-, , , ._,.,, 
 
 pose in Greek, as, in our day, certain English and 
 
 American writers prefer French to their native tongue. It was, 
 moreover, a surer way to the patronage of the phil- Hellenic em- 
 perors. The immortality of the Mythiambics of Babrius was 
 secured by their popularity as a school book. They seem to be 
 paraphrases in verse of some prose collection of fables, probably 
 those of Aesop, that half-legendary figure whom Greek tradition 
 placed in the time of Croesus, while the Greeks proceeded to at- 
 tach to his name any beast fable with a moral. This tendency is 
 
 ^ Anth. Pal. 5. 261; Mackail's translation. Jonson used the prose version 
 of Philostratus 355. 2 Rogers' translation. 
 
iiAJiKiUb 473 
 
 especially marked in the plays of Aristophanes. Aesop was the 
 " child's Homer " of the Greeks. What Babrius did was to make 
 such fables easily accessible in verse for use as a schoolbook or 
 for quotation by the sophists, who loved to illustrate their speeches 
 with such apologues. His vocabulary has many I.atinisms and 
 half-understood archaisms, such as the affectations of the Alexan- 
 drians had made popular. His dialect has an Attic basis with 
 Ionic coloring, and is wholly literary and conventional. His 
 choliambics are akin to the Latin type rather than to the verse of 
 Hipponax or Herodas, a further hint of his Italian origin. The 
 Mythiambics became a classic, are constantly quoted by later 
 writers, and have distinct literary merit. But his handling of the 
 beast fable contributes nothing to the history of the origins of folk- 
 lore, since the fables are highly artificial and sophisticated, well 
 adapted for the declamations for which they were so often to 
 point the moral. 
 
 For two centuries after the short-lived dramas of the Alexan- 
 drian Pleiad, Greek tragedies were written by playwrights whose 
 names have survived, here and there, while all the fruits of their 
 industry have perished. In the second century a.d., Lucian 
 could say' that new plays were no longer written, at 
 any rate for representation. Of the famous classic 
 plays only the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides 
 still held the stage. The choruses were omitted. Euripides 
 maintained his popularity long after the other two had ceased to 
 please the crowd, and his plays were still acted in the third cen- 
 tury. After that date tragedy was almost wholly relegated to the 
 schoolroom, and was replaced by mimes performed with a ballet, 
 and pantomimes in dumb show of some well-known myth. 
 
 The permanent contribution of the Alexandrian period had 
 been almost wholly poetical. But in the Christian centuries it is 
 to the writers of prose that one looks for the maintenance of 
 Greek letters. Rome, in the first centuries, was the center of the 
 intellectual life of the world and the source of patronage. In 
 
 1 Praise of Demosthenes 27. 
 
474 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 proportion as the Roman emperors loved Greek letters, the Greek- 
 lings who crowded to Rome prospered, and they wrote for Roman 
 readers no less than for Greek. The historians, following the 
 lead of Polybius, wrote in Greek the history of Rome for Romans, 
 compiling from their predecessors and, as a rule, with little care 
 for style. Diodorus of Sicily (^circa 40 B.C.) wrote forty Books 
 of universal history down to Caesar's conquest of Gaul. Of this 
 massive work we have Books 1-5 and 1 1-20 and 
 some fragments. It was called the Library of His- 
 tory {Bibliotheca), and in it Diodorus aimed at covering all the 
 events and dates of history from the dawn of time. For his re- 
 searches he used the libraries of Rome, and himself traveled far 
 and wide. His book was much admired by the Greeks and Ro- 
 mans of his own and later centuries. But he had no independ- 
 ence of view, and slavishly reproduced in abridgment or Hterally 
 the classical historians for each period. His style is clear and 
 dry, he avoids hiatus, and, like Polybius, uses abstract substan- 
 tives to excess. Of the few speeches included in the work, the 
 greater number are epideictic and highly rhetorical. 
 
 Not long after the battle of Actium (31 B.C.) there came to 
 Rome a citizen of Halicarnassus, the famous Dionysius, there to 
 spend the best years of his literary life ; there, too, he probably 
 died. His reputation depends mainly on his critical essays on 
 Bionvsius ^^^ writers of classic Greek prose. But he was a his- 
 of Halicar- torian, too, and we have his Early History of Rome 
 nassus (Books i-i i and fragments of 1 2-20), which was com- 
 pleted about 8 B.C. This he wrote partly for the glory of 
 Rome, as a tribute to the distinguished Romans who were his 
 friends, partly as an example of what could still be achieved in 
 Greek prose by one who was the leader in that revival of Atticism 
 which was so soon to defeat the Asianists. His dream was the 
 renaissance of Greek prose through the sincere and sedulous imi- 
 tation of the classic models, a reaction which, as he admitted, 
 must come through the influence of Rome. The main theme of 
 his history was the grandeur of Rome, and as it covers the mythi- 
 
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS 475 
 
 cal past of Rome and Greece, it forms a sort of introduction to 
 the work of Polybius. The chief literary interest of Dionysius was 
 oratory, and no historian ever included so many speeches of fa- 
 mous persons, chiefly epideictic in character and style, and com- 
 posed with so little care for verisimilitude that he makes Romulus 
 employ all the rhetorical tricks of a Greek sophist. So hard is it 
 for a professional critic to avoid the errors that he would be the 
 first to detect in another. Dionysius had not the gifts of style 
 nor the note of originality that might have lifted his history to the 
 rank of a classic. He is lifeless and monotonous and is burdened 
 with too many reminiscences. His most important contribution 
 was to rhetoric, which he taught, and to the criticism of the ora- 
 tors. 
 
 The First Letter to Ammaeus is a precious document for the 
 history of literature. A Peripatetic had claimed that Demos- 
 thenes owed his oratorical success to the prescriptions of the 
 Rhetoric of Aristotle. This worthless paradox provoked Dionysius, 
 who could not endure that his ideal orator should seem to be 
 indebted to a philosopher and not to other orators and rhetoricians, 
 Isocrates, for instance. The facts and dates are in his favor, 
 and his arguments are invaluable evidence for the chronology of 
 Demosthenes and Aristotle. The essay On the Arrangement of 
 Words was a birthday gift to a young Roman pupil, a solid treatise, 
 very different from the florid ' birthday speeches ' with which the 
 sophists regaled their patrons. This reminds one rather of the 
 numerous Studies dedicated to distinguished scholars of our time, 
 though it would not be easy to produce an exact parallel of a 
 modern work dedicated to a pupil. After distinguish- Qn the Ar- 
 ing style from subject-matter, Dionysius promises two rangement 
 tracts on style, the second to be on the choice of words, "* '^''^^^ 
 k mot propre, while this, the first, deals with the more impor- 
 tant question of their effective order, Dryden's " ordonnance." 
 How Herodotus, using the most ordinary vocabulary, succeeded 
 in making that risque anecdote of Candaules and Gyges vivid, 
 and redeemed the scandalous theme by the mere arrangement of 
 
476 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 the words ! ' Then we have the definition of the three har- 
 monies, the 'austere' {e.g. Aeschylus, Pindar, Thucydides), the 
 ' smooth ' or ' flowery ' (Sappho, Isocrates), the ' middle,' a golden 
 mean (Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Demosthenes). Even this pro- 
 fessor knows that precepts are not all, and dwells on the need of 
 literary tact. His experiments in style and the numerous quota- 
 tions in prose and verse greatly heighten the interest of the tract. 
 The attempts of Blass and others to define the rules that govern 
 the rhythms of Demosthenic prose were anticipated by the 
 analysis here made of Demosthenic rhythms (c. 17). Dionysius 
 quotes part of a Pindaric dithyramb, the Danae dirge of Simonides, 
 and, most precious of all, the whole of the Sapphic Ode to Aphro- 
 dite. R. L. Stevenson had not read Dionysius, but his essay on 
 Style in Literature'- is a close modern parallel to the Arrange- 
 ment of Words. 
 
 The tract On the Ancient Orators has an introduction, an im- 
 passioned attack on Asianism, in which Dionysius decjares that 
 that theatrical manner of rhetoric is not for long. He divides the 
 Attic orators into two groups, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, and Demos- 
 thenes, Hypereides, Aeschines. Lysias is the model of the per- 
 fectly lucid and simple style, the ideal of the Attic purists, among 
 whom Dionysius does not count as an extremist. Isocrates is the 
 type of the elaborate, self-conscious, highly wrought artist, occa- 
 sionally too copious. Isaeus, too clever to convince, owed two 
 thirds of his reputation to the fact that he trained Demosthenes. 
 The Letter to Pompeius is a famous criticism of Plato. Dionysius 
 was a professor first, nervous about extremes, afraid of literary 
 gorgeousness. Hence Plato's grand manner, which he had him- 
 self called ' dithyrambic,' ' was not to be admired without reserve. 
 For Plato's spare and muscular manner he has nothing but praise. 
 The Second Letter to Ammaeus is a minute analysis of the style of 
 Thucydides, whose obscurity Dionysius found repellent, preferring, 
 both as a matter of taste and from national prejudice, his country- 
 man Herodotus. This tract has a linguistic rather than a literary 
 
 1 3. ^ Contemporary Keview, 1885. ^ Phaedrus 238 D. 
 
STRABO 477 
 
 interest, while another, On Thucydides, is a comprehensive estimate 
 of the historian, to whom he had devoted part of the Letter to 
 Pompeius. Dionysius was the first to write for the use of the 
 Atticists a set treatise On Imitation. This we have in part only, 
 some quotations made by Dionysius himself in his Letter to 
 Pompeius, and fragments of an epitome by a later hand. These 
 fragments used to be classified as Criticism of the Classic Writers 
 under the name of Dionysius. The Art of Rhetoric is now held 
 to be spurious on the score of language and doctrine. 
 
 A literary critic of the first water Dionysius is not. But he 
 was a thorough scholar, an enthusiast with correct taste, and as 
 such a rare apparition in his day. He writes, not with the in- 
 fallibility and impartiality of an Aristotle, but with an idee fixe, 
 the perfection of Demosthenes, which left him with a certain 
 coldness to other prose writers. His mind was set on the orators, 
 and his criticisms, the judgment of an educated Greek who had 
 hardly a trace of the Greekling, are indispensable for the study of 
 the history of Greek prose. 
 
 Strabo, who was born about 60 B.C. on the shore of the Pontus, 
 may be admitted among the historians, since his political and 
 physical Geography has a decided historical value. He was a 
 highly educated and much-traveled man, proud of his native 
 place, yet a true cosmopolitan. At Rome, where he 
 came about 20 B.C. to enjoy the blessings of the peace 
 established by Augustus, he must have spent several years, and his 
 work was intended to be of use to Roman readers. He wrote as 
 a cultivated amateur who took no interest in the professional 
 quarrels of the Asianists and Atticists and modeled his style on 
 no classic writer. He avoids hiatus, but not with strictness, and 
 uses many un-Attic words and constructions. Apart from the 
 interest of his descriptive Geography of Europe, Asia, Egypt, and 
 Libya in seventeen Books (of which nearly the whole survives), we 
 owe to him countless citations from the Greek and Alexandrian 
 classics. He wrote a History as a sequel to the work of Polybius, 
 from 146 B.C. down to the first years of the Empire. This is lost. 
 
478 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 One other name must be added to this incomplete Hst of the 
 historians who flourished in the first Christian century under the 
 favor of Rome. Josephus was born in 37 a.d. at Jerusalem, and 
 received the education of a Jew, not like that of the Hellenized 
 Jews of Alexandria, of whom his older contemporary 
 Philo, the "Jewish Plato " (20 B.C.-40 a.d.) is the best 
 representative. For Josephus learned Greek late in life in order to 
 translate his masterpiece the History of the Jewish War for the bene- 
 fit of non-Semitic readers. In this task he required the help of 
 others. In the History he tells the story of the revolt of the Jews 
 and their repression by Titus (66-70 a.d.). After his capture as a 
 prisoner of war he had become the friend of Vespasian and Titus, 
 and was present as an eyewitness when the latter sacked Jerusalem 
 in 70. The latter part of his life he spent in Rome. Like Polyb- 
 ius, he was pro-Roman, and played a very similar part as mediator 
 between the Romans and his own countrymen. His later work, 
 completed in 94 a.d., the Early History of Judaea, from the Crea- 
 tion to 66 A.D., is less interesting and less vigorous than the narra- 
 tive of events of which he himself was a part. 
 
 Dionysius, in the early years of the Roman Empire, judged of 
 the prospects of historical prose from such writers as Polybius, 
 whose style did not encourage one to read him to the end. He 
 saw that it was to the Atticizing rhetoricians that one must look for 
 the revival of Greek prose and the return to Attic models. In the 
 following century, in the reigns of Trajan and Hadrian and the 
 phil-Hellenic Antonines, the Atticizing revival bore fruit for his- 
 torical prose. Dionysius, could he have read him, would have 
 found much to approve in Arrian {circa 95-175). Born in Nice- 
 media, a successful governor of Cappadocia under Hadrian, 
 Arrian was an Atticist at heart. After an active raili- 
 tary career, he became a citizen of Athens, conspicu- 
 ous for wealth and public spirit, and there wrote his History of 
 the Anabasis of Alexander {m seven Books) which has come down 
 to us almost complete. It covers the years 336-323 B.C. Arrian 
 was an industrious writer, a geographer as well as a historian. He 
 
ARRIAN 479 
 
 was a devoted disciple of the philosopher Epictetus who, like an- 
 other Socrates, himself wrote nothing. Epictetus, a lame Phrygian, 
 while a slave at Rome, educated himself and became one of the 
 most famous teachers of the Stoic school. When Domitian ban- 
 ished the philosophers (94 a.d.) he retreated to Nicopolis in 
 Epirus, where Arrian heard him teach. It was open to every Stoic, 
 as to every Epicurean, to make his own personal application to life 
 of the doctrines of his school. The exaltation of the human will 
 is the preoccupation of Epictetus. All the Stoics taught the virtue 
 of self-sufficiency, but not with such insistence. He was an em- 
 phatic teacher, and his strongest emphasis is laid on all that con- 
 cerns the freedom of the soul, its independence of externals. For 
 him all progress lies in the strengthening of one's power to work 
 out one's own principles of conduct. The teaching of Epictetus 
 strongly influenced Marcus Aurelius, but where the ex-slave is 
 cheerful and even optimistic, the emperor is coldly and piously 
 resigned. Epictetus addressed himself to all classes of men, was 
 possessed by the thought of his mission, and disdained no sort of 
 practical advice and exhortation. Marcus Aurelius communed only 
 with himself, in regions of self-denying austerity remote from the 
 trials of common men. Mindful of the pious tribute of Xenophon 
 in the Memorabilia, Arrian wrote out the Lectures and Dis- 
 courses of Epictetus and a Manual (Enchiridion) of his teach- 
 ing. The two latter are extant, and on them we depend for our 
 knowledge of the doctrines of Epictetus. Arrian pushed the 
 parallel with Xenophon further, borrowed his titles, prided himself 
 on the close resemblance of their careers and tastes, and won the 
 title of the New Xenophon. He wrote treatises on Tactics and 
 Hunting, the latter a continuation of the Cynegeticus, which he 
 evidently regarded as Xenophontic. His work On India was 
 written in Ionic, in imitation of Herodotus. Arrian is the chame- 
 leon among the Atticizing historians ; he wrote in close imitation 
 now of Xenophon, now of Thucydides, and again of Herodotus. 
 But few Atticists were as consistent as he, or as unspoiled by the 
 rhetoric of his day. 
 
48o SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Appian of Alexandria, Arrian's contemporary, was a successful 
 advocate at Rome under Hadrian and Antoninus and was raised 
 by the latter, through the influence of Fronto, the 
 tutor of Marcus Aurelius, to .the post of procurator. 
 He is a man of one book, his Roman History, the work of his 
 mature years. An autobiography, to which he refers in his preface, 
 is lost. His ambitious History extended from the mythical cen- 
 turies of Rome to the reign of Trajan. Instead of writing annals, 
 the story of Rome year by year, he arranged his twenty-four Books 
 in divisions, after the manner of Ephorus, grouping together all 
 the events that illustrated the relations of Rome with other nations, 
 or her own civil struggles, so that the reader had before hira a 
 comprehensive survey in a single Book of the wars in Italy (2), 
 the Spanish wars (6), the civil wars (13-21). Of all this we have 
 the Preface, with its description of the countries and nations 
 controlled by the vast Empire of Rome, excerpts from 1-5, almost 
 the whole of 6—8, the latter half of 9, and the whole of i i-i 7, 
 so that the work ends, for us, before the close of the civil 
 wars, at 34 B.C. Appian is a historian of the school of Po- 
 lybius, but his work, owing to its plan, lacks unity and coherence. 
 The most valuable portion that has survived is the section on the 
 civil wars. He was a born compiler, with no critical gift. What 
 his sources actually were is still an open question, but he seems to 
 have owed much to the numerous minor historians, both Latin and 
 Greek, whose works have perished. His style is clear and not re- 
 markable for any attempt at Atticism. He included few speeches, 
 and those have little that is purely epideictic. Arrian was, indeed, 
 free from the conspicuous faults of sophistic rhetoric. 
 
 Cassius Dio, grandson of the orator Dio of Prusa (Chrysosto- 
 mus),was born at Nicaea in Bithynia. He came to Rome in 180 
 and held the offices of praetor and consul. Under Alexander 
 Cassius Severus he was proconsul of Africa. After his second 
 Dio consulship (229) he withdrew from pubhc life to 
 
 Nicaea. Of his great work, the History of Rome, from Aeneas 
 to 229 A.D., in eighty Books, we have, besides fragments and an 
 
PLUTARCH 481 
 
 eleventh-century epitome, Books 36-60 (from 68 e.g. to 47 a.d.). 
 He is a valuable authority for the last years of the Roman Re- 
 public, though for the civil wars Appian is a safer guide. Dio 
 spent ten years in collecting his material from the Greek and 
 Latin historians of Rome. He ranks among the Atticists and took 
 Thucydides for his model, especially for his speeches, which are 
 numerous and long. He could not resist the temptation to be 
 epideictic, and is too often carried away into excess of antithesis, 
 parallelisms, similar endings, and other rhetorical devices. 
 
 The first and second centuries produced more than one biog- 
 rapher whose writings are the fringe of history. Plutarch of 
 Chaeronea in Boeotia was born about 50 a.d. He was of good 
 stock, and the glimpses that he gives us of his family and connec- 
 tions at Chaeronea reveal conditions highly favorable for the pro- 
 duction of a well-bred and amiable moralist. Plutarch was no 
 Greekling. After his studies at Athens, where he certainly was 
 
 in 66 A.D., he paid more than one visit to Rome and _ 
 
 Plutarch 
 became intimate with several distinguished Romans. 
 
 He gave lectures in Greek to Roman audiences. But he never 
 took the trouble to master Latin thoroughly, and did not depend 
 on Roman patronage. He never expatriated himself, and lived at 
 Chaeronea, which, as he said, could not aiford to lose a single citi- 
 zen. In his old age he devoted himself to the priestly service at 
 Delphi, thus setting the seal on a long life of scrupulous piety. 
 Of the date of his death we know knothing, but there is evidence 
 that he was still alive in 1 20. Agathias in the Anthology says of 
 him that he wrote the 'Lives' of many, but found none to write 
 his own. 
 
 Plutarch is best known by the work which, in translations, has 
 endeared him to generations of French and English readers, the 
 Parallel Lives of famous Greeks and Romans. As we have it, it 
 lacks some of the Lives and several of the comparisons 
 which he made of the Greeks and Romans. These 
 he had paired together, Alexander and Julius Caesar, Theseus and 
 Romulus, Demosthenes and Cicero, and the rest. We possess 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 3I 
 
482 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 forty-eight Lives, including four, Artaxerxes, Aratus, Galba, and 
 Otho, which were written singly. Plutarch was a true hero wor- 
 shiper, and he chose for his heroes men who had distinguished 
 themselves in public Ufe, ignoring the mere man of letters. He is 
 no historian. In any case, the Greeks of the best period were 
 singularly incurious about the private lives and personalities of 
 their great men, so that he could only fall back on tradition for 
 his personal anecdotes. He saves his credit by reminding us that 
 he writes, not history, but biography, and he might have maintained 
 that his fallible chronology, his weakness for the picturesque rather 
 than the prosaic version of the incident, did not impair the moral 
 lesson that he wished to convey and that he made vivid by abun- 
 dant anecdotes and dramatic situations. The individual, his pecul- 
 iar temperament and characteristics, stood out clear for Plutarch, but 
 he often failed to understand, much more to allow for, the political 
 background of his personages. Tact and skill in narrative" he had, 
 variety and a strong sense of the dramatic. So it was that Shake- 
 speare found in North's translation of the Lives dramas like 
 Coriolanus or Julius Caesar ready made. Plutarch's Lives are 
 rich in scenes of pathos or dramatic intensity, the defeated Crassus 
 at Carrhae, Cleopatra raising to her tower the wounded Antony, 
 the triumph of Aerailius Paulus, the farewell of Brutus and Portia, 
 the death scenes of Pericles, Caesar, Brutus and Cato. He has 
 been called the Greek Montaigne, and the vitality and never fail- 
 ing humanity, the genial wisdom that made Plutarch so sympathetic 
 to Montaigne himself, as he read him in the French version of 
 Amyot, has won him countless readers who hardly know so much 
 as the names of the other literary Greeks of his century. The rest 
 need to be galvanized into life, but the cheerful and many sided 
 Plutarch will hardly need that perpetual rediscovery " from time to 
 time as long as books last " promised to him by Emerson. 
 
 He was before all else "naturally moral." The eighty odd 
 essays and dialogues, Montaigne's " cream of philosophy " which 
 we have under his name, are all moral and didactic in aim, so that 
 they are regularly classed together as Moralia. Many of them 
 
PLUTARCH 483 
 
 have been rejected outright by modern scholars, and several lie 
 under suspicion. Like most of the intellectuals of his day, Plu- 
 tarch drew his ethics from Plato and Aristotle, and it xhe 
 was the Platonic example that led him to write the Moralia 
 fourteen authentic dialogues that we possess. Of these On the 
 Cessation of Oracles is one of the most interesting, with its narra- 
 tive of the proclamation of the death of the great god Pan by the 
 Egyptian mariner. The incident was related to prove that the 
 Daemons were mortal, since even a deity could die ! ' 
 
 The Table Talk in four Books is a series of discussions on all 
 manner of questions, philosophical, antiquarian, literary, questions 
 of social demeanor, and diet, and natural history. Plutarch's 
 father, brothers, and grandfather take part in certain of these lively 
 discussions, which are held at Athens, or Delphi, or at the Games in 
 Elis or Corinth. Among the literary essays that On the Malice of 
 Herodotus displays the natural prejudice of a Boeotian against one 
 who had so severely criticised the conduct of the Boeotians in the 
 Persian Wars, unless, indeed, we regard the piece as a rhetorical 
 exercise of a sort common in the schools. In the Comparison of 
 Aristophanes and Menander, Plutarch expressed his own decided 
 preference for Menander, natural in one who disliked extravagance 
 of all kinds, even in Comedy. He hated the Epicureans, and 
 attacked them in Against Colotes (an Epicurean), and in a dia- 
 logue whose thesis was that One cannot live pleasantly according to 
 the Epicurean fashion. In his essays he often attacks superstition 
 and he was uncritically pious. But he popularized a doctrine that 
 is itself highly superstitious, the theory of Daemons, intermediary 
 beings, bad and good, whom he made responsible for all the 
 apparent errors of the gods. This was an effort to purify Greek 
 theology and to justify the ways of god to man. 
 
 Plutarch was no strict Atticist, though as a well-read man he is, 
 of course, prone to Attic constructions and vocabulary. For the 
 most part he avoids hiatus, though he ridicules its too careful 
 
 1 Mrs. Browning, in her explanation of her poem, The Dead Pan, gives 
 Plutarch as her authority, but misquotes his version. 
 
484 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 exclusion as pedantic' He abounds in quotations from the classi- 
 cal Greeks and Alexandrians, and his fondness for quoting poetry 
 amounts to a defect of style. He could not, of course, remain 
 outside the current of sophistic, and when he taught at Rome, he 
 gave declamations like the rest. His Whether Fire or Water is 
 more Useful is a typical epideictic piece; the Gryllus, a dialogue 
 of Odysseus with one of Circe's swine, is a paradoxical encomium, 
 while the very arrangement of the Lives in parallels suggests the 
 sophistic practice. Later he shows Httle trace of the influence of 
 rhetoric. His style is rather massive than graceful, and he has a 
 weakness for abstract substantives. Like Aristotle, he is one of 
 the very few Greek writers of importance who profit by translation. 
 He disliked Asianism and all aff'ectation in writing, as a form of 
 excess, and ridiculed equally the rigorous Atticist who would rather 
 go cold in winter than wear wool not Attic, but preferred to sit 
 inactive in the fine and threadbare cloak of Lysianic speech." 
 
 Of the numerous historians of the schools of philosophy, anxious 
 in each case to preserve a record of an unbroken succession of 
 scholarchs, one has survived. The Li7>es of the Philosophers of 
 Diogenes Laertius (probably so called because he came from Laerte 
 in Cilicia) has no literary or critical merit, but few books have 
 Diogenes been more quoted for their facts. What gave the book 
 Laertius a vitality denied to others of its type is the fact that he 
 surveyed the whole field of philosophy, combining all the separate 
 records and traditions of the schools in one handbook. His 
 sources are still debated, and we are uncertain as to his method of 
 using them. He had before him numerous histories of the schools, 
 lists of scholarchs, and collections of notable sayings with which he 
 helped out his own meager resources. As he has nothing to say 
 about Neo-Platonism, and mentions the successor of the second- 
 century Sextus Empiricus, his date probably falls in the first half 
 of the third century. The Lives are in ten Books : 1-2 the 
 
 ^ The use of hiatus is, therefore, no safe criterion for the genuineness ot 
 his writings. 
 
 ' How to Listen 9. 
 
PAUSANIAS 485 
 
 pre-Socratics and Socrates; 3 Plato; 4 the Academy; 5 Aris- 
 totle and his successors ; 6 the Cynics ; 7 the Stoics ; 8 the Py- 
 thagoreans ; 9 Heracleitus, Eleatics, and Skeptics ; 10 Epicurus. 
 His own preference was for Epicureanism. The book was written 
 for some woman of rank whose name has not been preserved. 
 
 In the second century a.d., though Rome was the source of all 
 patronage, the center of politics and active life through which 
 flowed every current of human interests, Greece held her own as 
 the shrine of past greatness and the birthplace of the arts. With 
 the Greek tongue, literature, and monuments every man of educa- 
 tion must be familiar. There were few Romans of position who 
 did not spend some part of their student life in Greece. To meet 
 the demand, which must have been considerable, for a handbook 
 of Greek geography and monuments, Pausanias, the topographer, 
 wrote his Tour in Greece, a description in ten Books of the greater 
 part of European Greece. It is packed with information 
 which even then cannot have been easily accessible, a 
 storehouse of topography, traditions, and descriptions of things 
 worth notice. No serious traveler or archaeologist in Attica, 
 Corinth, Messenia, Elis, Achaea, Arcadia, Boeotia, or Phocis could, 
 in our day, dispense with the Tour of Pausanias, and it is safe to 
 say that its greatest vogue began with the nineteenth century. He 
 describes, not only the ancient monuments, but those that were 
 due to the Roman emperors. He either implies or states that he 
 saw all that he mentions, and though this is taken with a grain of 
 salt to-day, he has never been convicted of bad faith. That he was 
 writing his book in 173 a.d. may be gathered from a historical 
 reference.' His style is careless and free from the rhetorical man- 
 ner. But no one will quarrel with the style of a work which has 
 proved to be indispensable in the great task of excavating the 
 material remains of Greece, and his numerous omissions and errors 
 might be forgiven if only for the sake of a single debt out of the 
 many to his credit, the discovery of the tombs of Mycenae, for 
 which Schliemann depended on the second Book of the Tour. 
 
 ' 5. I. 2. 
 
486 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 It seems fairly safe to ascribe to the second century a.d. a tract 
 which, by manuscript tradition, was long falsely given to Demetrius 
 of Phalerum, the friend of Theophrastus. The evidence for the 
 later date of the essay On Style Va both linguistic and chronological, 
 Demetrius drawn from actual references in the work, including a 
 On Style quotation from Demetrius of Phalerum himself. The 
 name of the writer may well have been Demetrius, which would at 
 least account for the manuscript confusion. On Style, or How to 
 write Prose, is clearly Peripatetic in origin, and shows the influ- 
 ence of the Rhetoric of Aristotle. But the writer is more con- 
 cerned than Aristotle with actual modes of expression, the structure 
 of the sentence, definitions of the clause (colon), the phrase 
 (komma, hence the 'kommatic' style, of such a writer as Hegesias), 
 and of the period. Four kinds of style are distinguished, the 
 plain,- elevated, elegant, and forcible, and the vice of each de- 
 scribed. The use of the dual betrays the Atticist. The author 
 was, however, no purist. His style is lucid and concise. 
 
 Far more important for the history of criticism than these ana- 
 lytical subtleties is the aesthetic treatise On the Sublime, to give it 
 Pseuda- ^'^ traditional title, though On the Grand Style would 
 
 Longinus On convey the Greek word ui/^os more precisely to the 
 modern reader. To this treatise we have referred now 
 and again under the name of Longinus. Yet it may be taken for 
 granted that it was not written by that Cassius Longinus who at the 
 court of Palmyra, in the third Christian century, was the minister 
 of Queen Zenobia, and as her adviser fell a victim to the Emperor 
 Aurelian (273 a.d.).^ Longinus was indeed a learned man, de- 
 scribed by the fourth-century Eunapius as 'a living library and 
 walking museum,' and it will be long before his name is thoroughly 
 
 ^ Mr. Churton Collins, however, in a recent essay, maintains that Longinus, 
 the rhetorician of Palmyra, should not be robbed of the credit of the work on 
 the evidence that has so far been brought forward. See his Longinus and 
 Greek Criticism in Studies in Poetry and Criticism, London, 1905. Wih- 
 mowitz, in Hermes 35, 49, places the essay in the first half of the first century, 
 A.D, 
 
PSEUDO-LONGINUS 487 
 
 dissociated from the essay On the Sublime, even as Homer's clings 
 to the Odyssey. Mr. Roberts himself, who denies his authorship, 
 labels his book ' Longinus.' The first suspicion was aroused in 1808, 
 when there was discovered on a Vatican manuscript of the treatise 
 the ascription ' Longinus or Dionysius.' The manner of the work 
 is wholly alien from that of Dionysius of Halicarnassus,and the man- 
 uscript evidence so far indicates, if anything, that On the Sublime 
 was anonymous for the copyist of that day. No writer later than 
 the first century is quoted, but little is to be gathered from the argu- 
 ment from silence. The work is never mentioned by any Graeco- 
 Roman writer. In atmosphere it suits the first century a.d. But it 
 is a singularly detached work, written by one who was unlike all his 
 tribe, unlike those Alexandrian philological critics', who, as Pope 
 said, had all the accomplishments " except spirit, taste, and sense " ; 
 unlike Dionysius, who put his faith in imitation ; still more unlike 
 the genial moralist Plutarch, whose name has been attached to the 
 treatise by certain desperate critics. It's writer is, what Aristotle 
 was not, one of the very few inspired aesthetic critics whom the 
 history of Uterature can show. Caecilius, probably the Atticizing 
 friend of Dionysius, had written on ' the Sublime,' and Longinus, 
 as the author may be called for convenience, sets out to improve 
 on that attempt. A literary judgment, said he, is the last fruit of 
 long toil, but it was not mere labor so much as inspired tact that 
 made his work a masterpiece of criticism. In describing the 
 qualities of the grand style he quotes from the Greek and Latin 
 classics and even from the Hebrew scriptures, setting together the 
 words of Moses : Let there be light, and the great passage in the 
 Jliad^\itxt Ajax, baffled by the mist, cries in despair to Zeus : In 
 the light slay us, since it is thy good will that we die} This is fol- 
 lowed by a famous comparison of the Iliad and Odyssey, and the 
 analysis of the Sapphic Ode to Anactoria, that ' congress of the 
 passions,' which survives only by reason of its quotation here. 
 Thought, passion, figures, and diction, those beautiful words which 
 he calls the life of the spirit, all the elements of the grand style 
 
488 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 are surveyed with no precise system, the lack of order being in- 
 creased for us by the frequent mutilations of the treatise. In 
 dealing with the ' faultless ' writers, ' Longinus ' shows his gift for 
 criticism by asserting that genius is far removed from faultlessness, 
 and preferring a Pindar to a Bacchylides, a Homer to an Apollo- 
 nius. His final test of the sublime is that it must be found to 
 please at all times and in all countries — quod semper, quod 
 ubique. Like Quintilian, he deplores the scarcity of true elo- 
 quence in his own day, but ascribes it less to the decay of liberty 
 than to the corroding influence of the love of money and pleasure 
 which produces triviality in the soul. The Roman Tacitus had said 
 as much in his Dialogue on Orators. The authorship of the essay 
 matters little. It stands alone, unspoiled by pedantry, the judg- 
 ment of one who coull be trusted to make his test of literature the 
 pleasure that results. He assumed that, given the pleasure and 
 the judicious reader, all the rest, the moral teaching, whatever 
 may be demanded, will be added. He was, as Pope calls him, an 
 "ardent judge," this "bold longinus," and he appeals afresh in 
 every generation to the enthusiast, who must, however, be serious 
 and sincere, well balanced, undisturbed by the passing fads and 
 affectations of literature. 
 
 Dionysius saw the signs of a genuine revival of oratory due to the 
 imitation of the best Greek models through the invigorating in- 
 fluence of Rome, as though the fact that the Ronians were tasteful 
 The New critics might be enough to inspire Greeks witli true 
 Sophistic eloquence, after Roman dominion had crushed their 
 political life. He was himself a leader in the reaction to Attic 
 style through imitation, the only effective weapon against the 
 Asianists, to whose empirical methods he opposes, hke a second 
 Isocrates, his 'philosophical ' rhetoric which was to be both artistic 
 and scientific. He set up Hegesias as the bete noire of the Atticists, 
 the model of what to avoid. But he did not count with the rigorous 
 purists, whose model must be Lysias. Each to his choice, and it 
 was for the purists that his friend Caecilius of Calacte composed 
 his Attic Lexicon. That was one of the first signs of the hyper- 
 
THE SECOND-CENTURY SOPHISTS 489 
 
 Atticism which Lucian ridicules in his Lexiphanes and the Guide 
 to Rhetoric. Atticism of all shades gained the day, and when we 
 come to the revival of rhetoric known as the New Sophistic, we 
 find that most of the sophists are Atticists and swear by some Attic 
 prose model, playing " the sedulous ape " as Stevenson said of his 
 own initiation into the writer's craft. This revival was marked by 
 the foundation, by Antoninus Pius (138-161 A.D.),.of salaried 
 chairs of rhetoric, whose holders, whether at Rome, Athens, or the 
 provincial towns which often maintained public chairs of their own, 
 were regarded with the profoundest deference and were often sent 
 on diplomatic missions. Thus did the phil- Hellenism of Hadrian 
 and the Antonines spur the vanity of the Greeks to fresh efforts in 
 the only literary activity that was popular in their day, the epi- 
 deictic speech. The rhetoricians had long controlled education, 
 and all of them taught ; rhetoric stood for the humanities ; so that 
 epideictic eloquence was really the display of the talents of pro- 
 fessors. 
 
 The second-century sophists have been made vivid to us by the . 
 Lives of Philo stratus, an Athenian sophist of the third century. His 
 lively sketches show us precisely what this revival was worth, how 
 public declamation had become a fashionable sport for ^]jg gecond- 
 which one trained the voice and gestures and wore the century 
 uniform of an exquisite, laboring on every detail that ^"^ 
 could impress the enraptured audience, who cared little whether 
 the speech was in praise of baldness, or an address of welcome to 
 the emperor, or any one of the twenty-seven varieties of epideictic 
 speech named by Menander the rhetorician, in the third or fourth 
 century,' in his essay on this important type. Only their favorite 
 must be in good voice and round his elaborate periods with the 
 smile that showed him a master of the game. Philostratus opens 
 his list with Nicetes of Smyrna, who appeared in Nerva's reign as a 
 showy declairaer, Asianic enough to have grieved Dionysius, if we 
 may judge from this brief sketch. Many of these hungry Greek- 
 lings were, no doubt, geography apart, of an Asianism deplorably 
 ' Bursian, Der Rhetor Menander, Munich, 1882. 
 
490 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 florid. But it is a mistake to regard, with Rohde, the New Sophistic 
 as simply a renaissance of that Asianism which to Dionysius had 
 seemed a lost cause. When, in the fifth century, Gorgias had set 
 up prose as the rival of poetry, he borrowed poetry's weapons, and 
 the baroque style which resulted became the natural manner of 
 the more florid epideictic declaimers, even of those who may be 
 put in the category of the Atticists. 
 
 Declamation had by now supplanted every type of poetry, the 
 religious hymn, the marriage song, the triumphal ode, and, as 
 though to mark the usurpation, the sophists used the terminology 
 Herodes of poetry. They 'sang' their 'songs' as they called 
 Atticus their declamations, and the audience would beat time 
 to their rhythms. The pomp and prodigality of the life led even 
 a rich man like Herodes Atticus (100-175 a.d.) to declaim and 
 teach declaimers. He prided himself less on his splendid patron- , 
 age of the arts and the stadium of white marble that he gave to 
 Athens than on the ' easy flow ' of language, the gift of improvisation 
 that made him the ' tongue of the Hellenes.' Of all his glittering 
 eloquence we have one short and unimportant speech, a fictitious 
 oration against Macedonia, a smooth and careful composition from 
 which we can gather little of the character of his many-sided elo- 
 quence. We have two declamations of the famous Polemon on 
 two heroes of Marathon. But they have lost their savor and 
 merely betray what we should know without documents — that the 
 sophists of the second century had nothing to say. No doubt 
 the style of their iinprovisations was very different. Aristeides, the 
 pupil of Herodes (129-189 a.d.), does indeed survive in fifty-five 
 Orations, perhaps because, not possessing the gifts of 
 a public speaker, he depended, like Isocrates, on his 
 readers. Atticism had been a mania with Herodes, and Aristeides 
 made himself one of the most correct writers of the day. He 
 lived long at Smyrna, where he upheld the banner of pure Attic 
 against the solecists. He aimed at using no word that did not 
 come from books, but his practice, as with all these purists, lagged 
 behind his theory. He was proverbially unpopular as a teacher of 
 
DIO OF PRUSA 491 
 
 rhetoric, though for the later sophists, such as Themistius in the 
 fourth century, he was to rank with Demosthenes as a model of 
 Greek prose. Yet his monody on Smyrna after an earthquake ^ has 
 all the mint marks of Asianisra, even short, jerky sentences, in 
 strong contrast with his regular periodic style. 
 
 In the list of sophists who were also philosophers, Philostratus 
 placed Dio, surnamed ' Chrysostomus,' the ' Golden-mouthed,' 
 Born at Prusa in Bithynia about 40 a.d., in rank and condition a 
 sort of Asiatic Plutarch, he was for part of his life at dIo 
 
 least a professed sophist, wrote paradoxical panegyrics 0* Pmsa 
 of a parrot, a gnat, and hair,^ according to the prevailing fashion, 
 and in an extant speech proves ingeniously that Troy was never 
 taken by the Greeks.' But he was made of sterner stuff than 
 Herodes and his fellows. Banished as a suspect by Domitian, he 
 wandered in exile for fourteen years, acquiring a peculiar knowledge 
 of the towns on the north coast of the Black Sea and of the savage 
 Getae, whose history he wrote. This work is lost, but we have 
 eighty speeches (essays would often be the more correct title), 
 partly moral lectures which he delivered both during and after his 
 exile, which ended in 96 with the accession of his friend Nerva. 
 
 To lecture thus from town to town was like those ' God-forsaken 
 sophists ' whom Dio denounces. His aim, however, was very dif- 
 ferent from theirs. They regularly came to praise. But Dio's 
 addresses are often sermons, direct admonitions aimed at definite 
 abuses, in which he spares the vanity of his hearers no more than a 
 modern revivalist, and we may picture him delivering them to huge 
 audiences who heard with gusto these graceful harangues, full of 
 classical allusions and scathing references, to their frivolity, if they 
 were Alexandrians,^ to their curious habit of snoring, even when 
 awake, if of Tarsus,' if Rhodians" their parsimony and vandaUsm in 
 making over old statues. In another category are the dozen 
 Bithynian speeches addressed to Trajan about the time when Pliny 
 was an official in that province, so that we can compare the point 
 
 1 Oration 20. " Synesius replied in praise of baldness. 
 
 ^ Oration \i {^hxwxa). * 32. ° 33. 34- " S'- 
 
492 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 of view of a Roman functionary and a born Bithynian. In his 
 Euboean Tale, or The Hunter, is a charming idyl of country life on 
 a farm near the coast of Euboea where he had been shipwrecked. 
 Dio compares at every point the simple manner of his kindly hosts 
 in the hollows of Euboea, the courtship of two rustic lovers, the 
 abundance of food and drink, with all the drawbacks of town life, 
 so that here, too, this born preacher may point his moral. The 
 whole is perhaps fiction, a moral tale. Elsewhere he describes life 
 at Borysthenes on the north shore of the Black Sea, a settlement 
 where Greeks were surrounded by Scythian barbarians. He finds 
 them talking bad Greek but devoted to Homer, highly sensitive to 
 any criticism of their adored poet, and eager to listen to a speech 
 from Dio on monarchy, so rare is the sight of an educated stranger 
 in those parts.' Dio labeled himself philosopher, and he was 
 one of Plutarch's type, who borrowed the best from all the schools 
 while belonging definitely to none. He had excellent taste in 
 imitation, writing the 'plain' style, and avoiding by his geniality of 
 temperament the cold correctness of an Aristeides. Xenophon and 
 Plato were his favorite models, and next to Lucian he is the most 
 successful, the most pleasing to read of all the imitative writers of 
 his age. To ' write better than Dio ' was evidently considered 
 high praise by Epictetus. " 
 
 Among the very few writers who rose superior to the glitter of 
 sophistic in his own composition, though he was a generous patron 
 of the profession, is Marcus Aurelius (i 21-180 a.d.). To Him- 
 
 Marcus .f^^(the title, though awkward, is literal and so to be 
 Aurelius preferred to the traditional Meditations), in twelve 
 
 imsel Books, was probably written down from day to day, 
 the record of a soul conversing with itself, with no thought of other 
 eyes. The mood and matter are everything, and it would be im- 
 pertinent to search for graces of style in this famous work of 
 edification, the Greek counterpart of the Imitation of Christ. 
 This last great Stoic wrote indeed with as little care for effect as 
 any other of his school. His Greek, the tongue everywhere of the 
 
 1 Oration 36. 2 3. 23. 17. 
 
LUCIAN 493 
 
 educated, was acquired, and is rugged and abrupt, crowded with 
 Latinisms. Where it is the nobility of thought alone that lends 
 impressiveness, at least nothing is lost in translation : Picture, 
 for instance, the times of Vespasian — there you see folk marrying, 
 rearing children, falling sick, dying, warring, feasting, trading, 
 farming, flattering, pushing, suspecting, plotting, praying for 
 deaths, grumbling at fate, loving, amassing, coveting consulships or 
 crowns. Yet, where now is all that restless life? . . . So likewise 
 scan the many registers of ages and of nations ; see how hard they 
 strove, how fast they fell, and were resolved into the elements. 
 Above all dwell in retrospect on those whom you yourself have seen 
 straining of ter vanities, instead of following out the law of their own 
 being, and clinging tight to that, resting content.'^ So Marcus 
 Aurelius to himself. One passage is like all the rest, the calm self- 
 admonition of a being too dignified for confession, who in the latter 
 years of an ascetic life sees the vanity of all striving save for the 
 approval of one's own soul, the 'inward guide.' He was most akin 
 to Epictetus, and the journal is steeped in the Stoic philosopher's 
 language and thought. 'The most human of all books, ' as Renan 
 called To Himself, has no literary merit, but it Uves and speaks 
 with a voice to men, while no sophist of them all is known beyond 
 the pale of the speciaUsts. 
 
 It is singular enough that a Roman emperor should close the long 
 line of Pagans whose moral reflections still stir the imagination. 
 But it is still more strange that a Syrian of the lower class should, 
 
 about the same time, set the high-water mark of what . 
 
 , ,. . „ , „ Lucian 
 
 was achieved in Greek hterature m all the Oraeco- 
 
 Roman centuries, and appear as "the last great master of Attic 
 
 eloquence and Attic wit. " Lucian of Samosata in Syria {circa 
 
 125-200 A.D.) was born in poverty. He was apprenticed to an 
 
 uncle who was a statuary. But the trade did not set his genius, 
 
 and he managed somehow to pick up an education by wandering 
 
 from one to another of the great cities of Ionia, which had once 
 
 dajroed Homer and cradled the earliest philosophers, but now 
 
 J 4. 32; Kendall's translation. 
 
494 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 disputed the possession of the most showy declaimers. Lucian set 
 out to qualify himself for a career so profitable. Meanwhile he 
 was Hellenizing himself to good purpose, so that his Syrian dialect 
 fell from him and was to leave no traces on his writings. For a 
 short time he was an advocate at Antioch, but that original and 
 buoyant spirit was not to be tamed to any sober profession, and we 
 find him following the life of a declaimer, now in Greece or Italy, 
 now holding a lucrative chair of rhetoric in Gaul. We find him at 
 Antioch in 163 on the occasion of a visit of Lucius Verus, the col- 
 league of Marcus Aurelius, and after a triumphant return to his 
 native Samosata he settled in Athens, findhig the atmosphere 
 there more congenial and less Philistine than at Rome, if we may 
 judge from his comparison of the two cities in the Nigrinus, and 
 his assertion of the aesthetic superiority of Athens. In Athens he 
 wrote the works that made him famous beyond the common lot of 
 Sophists. In his essay, The Dependent Scholar, he gave us the locus 
 c/assicus for the miseries of the hungry Greeklings who were the 
 hangers-on of rich Roman Philistines, and prayed that he might 
 never be reduced to such an extremity. Late in life he became 
 an office holder, a sort of sub-commissioner in Egypt, and wrote 
 a« Apology for an inconsistency that was only apparent. He re- 
 fused to plead poverty, and pointed out that in the public service 
 there was no personal degradation such as he had described. He 
 seems to have died in official harness, about 200 a.d. 
 
 Rhetoric had made a Greek of Lucian, but her meretricious 
 charms could not hold him, and at the age of forty, about the 
 time when he moved to Athens, he discarded the sophist's pro- 
 fession and flattered himself that he had turned to philosophy. 
 In the Double Indictrmnt, written about 165, he shows Rhetoric 
 bringing suit against him for desertion, while Dialogue, far from 
 supporting him, expresses in a parody of Plato's style his own 
 grievance, as one whom Lucian had degraded from his associa- 
 tions with philosophy, linked with Comedy, and forced to play the 
 buffoon. Yes, said Lucian, / refused to discourse subtle nothings 
 about the immortality of the soul . . . or the claims of rhetoric to be 
 
LUCIAN 495 
 
 called a shadow of a fraction of statecraft or a fourth of flattery? 
 He was indeed no philosopher. His conversion by the Platonist 
 Nigrinus in Rome, described in the Nigrinus, was too sudden to 
 be lasting, a rare gust of emotionalism. Satire was his true 
 vocation, and his literary life in Athens was devoted mainly to 
 satiric dialogues. Of the eighty-two compositions that pass under 
 his name, several are now unanimously assigned to later imitators, 
 notably the Halcyon, a charming dialogue on the myth of the 
 kingfisher,^ and Lucius, or The Ass, a fairy tale of the metamor- 
 phosis of a man into an ass, and the beast's marvelous adventures 
 till he could eat roses and resume a human shape. Apuleius 
 about the same time wrote a Latin version of the same story, 
 drawn perhaps from the original followed by ' Lucius of Patrae ' 
 as the writer of The Ass styles himself. But in Apuleius the air 
 of magic that decadents love pervades the whole, while in the 
 pseudo-Lucian there is a slighter interest in the supernatural side. 
 The Ass was paraphrased by Machiavelli. ' 
 
 Of the sophistic pieces the Phalaris (I and II), the apology of 
 the tyrant of Sicily, and the Praise of a Fly are good examples of 
 paradoxical panegyrics, a sort of special pleading for which 
 Lucian's legal experience had been good training. The Dis- 
 inherited is a stock theme of the schools, which we Sophistic 
 meet in Latin in the Suasoriae of the elder Seneca, works 
 written long before Lucian. Swans and Amber is a clever little 
 introductory speech, the hors doeuvre customary with the sophists 
 before the epideixis, the declamation proper, began. 
 
 Lucian gave new life to the dialogue. His writings in this form 
 range in date from 160 to 175 a.d., roughly speaking, and are 
 not easily classified. He shows the greatest versatility, using the 
 dialogue for panegyric, as the Portrait Study in praise of Panthea, 
 the mistress of Lucius Verus, composed when the emperor visited 
 
 1 Double Indictment 34. 
 
 ''■ Translated by Pater in Marius the Epicurean. 
 
 » Against the Lucianic authorship are Cobet, Dindorf, Jacobitz ; for, 
 Arnim, Rohde, and others. 
 
496 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Antioch (162/3) ; the Anacharsis, in which an intelligent Scythian 
 
 debates with Solon the value of hard exercise, an opening for 
 
 genial satire on the mania for athletics. The Hermo- 
 Dialogues . , ^ . .. .... 
 
 ttmus, written about 165, is a maniiesto of skepticism 
 
 in which he reviews his pursuit of truth among the schools of 
 philosophy, and . declares, on the word of a man of forty, that the 
 quest is hopeless : " I would have kissed the feet of Truth if I 
 coul'l have found my way to her through the crowd of philoso- 
 phers," says Traill's Lucian to Pascal.^ But the Hermotimus was 
 a farewell to philosophy more sentimental than was warranted by 
 the connection. ^ The influence of New Comedy is evident in 
 the brief mimes, the Dialogues of Courtesans. The Dialogues of 
 the Dead are more definitely satiric, moralizing conversations be- 
 tween the dead and their guardian gods on the folly of the living. 
 They were plainly written under the influence of a satirist who 
 takes part in more than one of them, Menippus of Gadara, who 
 at the close of the fourth century B.C. had set the type which 
 was to be followed by both Greek and Roman satirists. For the 
 character of the satires of Menippus, which are all lost, we must 
 look to Lucian's lively imitations. The Dialogues of the Gods 
 and Dialogues of the Sea Gods were the opportunity of Lucian the 
 skeptic. They are his most characteristic pieces and attack the 
 current belief in the gods. Lucian could not tolerate any form of 
 insincerity or credulity, and the world he lived in was composed 
 of men who either pretended to believe in the gods for their own 
 ends, or were blindly superstitious. It was an age when charla- 
 tanism throve, and whether in religion or literature Lucian was its 
 unsparing foe. 
 
 His Alexander, the Oracle Monger is an account of his ex- 
 posure of the frauds of one of the most successful impostors of the 
 
 ' The New Lucian, London, 1900. 
 
 ^ Pater, who paraphrases the dialogue in Marius the Epicurean, trans- 
 forms Hermotimus, the worn student of sixty, to an ardent youth who is 
 disillusioned by the arguments of Lucian speaking in his own person and 
 not under the disguise of Lycinus as in the original. 
 
LUCIAN 497 
 
 day and the most dangerous, because more gifted than other men 
 of his time. Between Lucian and this man there was a duel to 
 the death, till Alexander's heroics were ended by a The 
 
 painful disease. At the close of his narrative Lucian Alexander 
 refers to Epicurus, that great man whose holiness and divinity of 
 nature were no shams, one of the few unqualified words of admir- 
 ation of a philosopher that he Was known to utter, and perhaps 
 inspired in this place rather by a sympathy for the atheistic 
 attitude of Epicurus than by any respect for his doctrines. From 
 the Christians Lucian naturally never got any credit for his attacks 
 on Paganism. The Philopatris being judged spurious, there is no 
 direct hostility to the Christians to be found in the rest of the 
 Lucianic writings. But he would have rent Christianity with 
 gusto, had he not made the mistake of regarding it merely as one 
 of the least offensive of the new religions that kept arriving from 
 the East. In the Peregrinus, the strange story of the Christian 
 turned Cynic who burnt himself alive at Olympia (169 a.d.), he 
 shows small respect for the unaccountable beliefs which Peregrinus 
 had discarded. The Sale of Creeds, one of the most amusing 
 of the dialogues, is one of his last thrusts at philosophers and 
 their doctrines. The creeds, represented in most cases by the 
 founders of the schools, are put up for sale by Zeus and Hermes. 
 Pythagoras with his golden thigh is bought by a syndicate ; no 
 one can afford to buy the voluptuous Aristippus ; while Stoicism, 
 with its monopoly of virtues and talents, is knocked down to a 
 dealer for fifty pounds. 
 
 The essay How to write History was written about 165, when 
 Verus was conducting the Parthian war. Every educated man, says 
 Lucian, took to writing the history of that war. It was g^^ ^ 
 an epidemic, like that curious tragedy fever that once write 
 fell on the people of Abdera. Rather than be out T^^^°Vi 
 of it, Lucian will at least write about writing history. He re- 
 minds the historian that history and panegyric are, to quote his 
 favorite measure of distance, two octaves apart. He shows 
 from contemporaries how not to write history — / wish my bitterest 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. .•^2 
 
498 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 foe no worse fate than the reading of them. Frigid? Caspian 
 snows, Celtic ice, are warm in comparison} Lucian is at his 
 most amusing as he describes the historian who is more Thu- 
 cydidean than Thucydides, the unconvincing wounds described by 
 one, the strange deaths of another ; the ' seventy thousand of the 
 enemy killed while the Romans lost two' ; the queer geography, 
 one writer taking Samosata and' putting it down squarely in 
 Mesopotamia ; the floods of tragedian's rhetoric. 
 
 The whole essay is really a prologue to the True Story, a 
 parody of all the wonderful narratives of lying Greek historians 
 The True from Herodotus and the historians of Alexander, 
 Story down to those who were writing on the Parthian war.^ 
 
 It is a Gulliver's Travels written without the bitterness of Swift, a 
 literary not a moral satire. Lucian outdoes all the marvels of 
 this sort of tale,- dear to the Greeks since the narrative of Odysseus 
 to Alcinous. He visits the sun and moon, who happen to be at 
 war, lives, like Jonah, in a whale for nearly two years, spends some 
 time in the Islands of the Blest, where Homer confides to him 
 that he is a Babylonian and really wrote all those 'spurious' 
 verses — so now I knew what to think of the critics Zenodotus and 
 Aristarchus and all their lucubrations? As he left, Odysseus, 
 unseen of Penelope, handed him a letter for Calypso. 
 
 The conceits of the hyper-Atticist were not to be let pass by 
 
 one whose mission was to expose all the folly of the world. The 
 
 , . . Lexiphanes and the Guide to Rhetoric are directed 
 
 Lexiphanes 
 
 at the sophists with whom he no longer was reckoned 
 
 formally. The Lexiphanes ridicules the affectations of the archa- 
 ists and purists, and their efforts after the peculiar word, while the 
 Guide is an ironical set of rules for the budding rhetorician, de- 
 signed to show that the short cut to the profession may be safely 
 taken in this gullible world. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius, but for the armor of Stoicism, might have 
 wept like Heracleitus at the spectacle of the vanity of human 
 
 ' 19. The quotations are regularly from Fowler's translation. 
 
 " Juvenal 10. 174 ; Quidquid Graecia mendax audet in historia. ' 20. 
 
LUCIAN'S STYLE 499 
 
 life, but Lucian, like another Democritus, " laughed the world 
 away." His is not an endearing personality. He has none of the 
 engaging softness or the nice feelings of Plutarch and Die, and 
 when he commands respect, it is for his perfect sincerity, and not 
 for any more positive virtues or dignity of character. His aloof- 
 ness from the cant and charlatanism of his day he did not make 
 dignified. With Lucian all is hard and bright, nothing dimmed 
 or softened by pathos or sentimentality. But he had a genuine 
 passion for writing well, and that covers many sins. What is hard- 
 est to forgive is his glibness, his perfect assurance. 
 
 His style is the triumph of the imitative method. He was not, 
 of course, impeccable, and he was too closely in touch with his 
 time not to assimilate aad reproduce in his Greek much Lucian's 
 that Aristeides would have been pained to read, since Style 
 he could not have verified the expressions in any standard work. 
 The writer of the Lexiphanes naturally avoided the commonplaces 
 of the sophists, which were too well worn, the eternal reminiscences 
 of Marathon and the Persian wars, the excessive use of antithesis, 
 and the other rhetorical devices. He drew his vocabulary chiefly 
 from Plato, Xenophon, and Attic Comedy. His pages are crowded 
 with images and tags from the poets, and he did not disdain, on 
 occasion, the violent metaphors dear to sophists. When he had 
 hit on a good figure, he used it more than once, a tendency com- 
 mon to most devotees of style. A good deal of his reminiscence 
 Greek is, of course, parody, so that it is hard to say with this 
 writer of many moods when his style is himself. 
 
 The domination of sophistic is plain to see in a literary genre 
 which the Greeks developed late and never brought to perfection, 
 — the romance. The Greek novel began with Xeno- gomancg 
 phon's Cyropaedia, and this sort of biography, half 
 history, half romance, was to the last a favorite type. All followed 
 Xenophon's formula, the biographers of Alexander with their 
 marvelous tales, down to Philostratus, the sophist, who, in the 
 third century, wrote for Juha Domna, the literary empress, the 
 Life of ApoUonius of Tyana, the wonder v/orker, whose career 
 
Soo SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 showed so close an analogy with the life of Christ that Philostra- 
 tus used to be charged with writing a parody of the Gospels. But 
 in embellishing the adventures of the Pythagorean saint, he was 
 but following the f ishion of writing didactic romance in the form 
 of biography. The imaginary letters of great men were really 
 essays in fiction, and with Alciphron became a sort of epistolary 
 romance. Lucian, in the True Story, was only imitating such a 
 writer as Antonius Diogenes, whose The Wonders Beyond Thule 
 was something between fabulous history and romance. We have 
 a summary of it in Photius. 
 
 But the true romance, the love story, was sure to predominate 
 in the end. The New Comedy had prepared the way for it, and 
 the sophists included in their declamadong erotic speeches, while 
 earher still the erotic elegy and the idyl set the type. As early 
 as Aristotle there were the Milesian Tales, of which we have 
 echoes in the analyses of Parthenius in the first century B.C. 
 They corresponded apparently to the shadier French novel of to- 
 day, in moral tone, and Plutarch tells us that they were found in 
 the luggage of a Roman officer after the defeat of Crassus at 
 Carrhae, and were read aloud to the shocked senate of barbarians, 
 who were told to judge from these tales of the morals of the men 
 who aspired to rule over Parthians.' There was much local 
 romance, Ephesian Tales and Babylonian Tales, of the sort that 
 Callimachus loved to revive, or Musaeus used for his Hero and 
 Leander; but these legends counted almost as history, and the 
 same may be said for a papyrus dated about 50 a.d., on which 
 was found, in 1893, a fragment of the story of the loves of Ninus 
 and Serairamis. About the close of the fourth century a.d., 
 Heliodorus of Phoenicia wrote his Tales of Ethiopia, a fantastic 
 romance of a type that must have been popular in his time, a mere 
 series of adventures in strange lands, differing little from the won- 
 der narratives parodied by Lucian, except that here the main in- 
 terest is the love of an Ethiopian princess for a Thessalian Greek. 
 Achilles Tatius, of Alexandria, wrote in the fourth or fifth can- 
 
 1 Crassus 32. 
 
EUNAPIUS SOI 
 
 tury his Story of Leucippe and Cleitophon, the one of Byzantium, 
 
 the other of Tyre. He took as his model the work of Heliodorus. 
 
 This, too, is a tale of wildly improbable adventures, ending with 
 
 the happy marriage of a pair of lovers. The style is often highly 
 
 epideictic, and Achilles Tatius inserts a prose poem on the rose, 
 
 one of the favorite commonplaces of sophistic rhetoric. 
 
 With Ix)NGUS Greek fiction touched its highest point. He was 
 
 a sophist, probably of Lesbos, who lived between the second and 
 
 fifth centuries. His Daphnis and Chloe is a pastoral ^ 
 
 ^ "^ Longus 
 
 romance of Mitylene, and shows the direct influence 
 
 of Theocritus. No Greek novel is complete without pirates and 
 
 the supernatural, and both are in Daphnis and Chloe. But the- 
 
 pastoral effect remains as the deepest impression, and redeems 
 
 the grossness of certain scenes. This mark of decadence was 
 
 avoided by the author of Paul et Virginie, when he imitated 
 
 Longus.^ The mark of the sophist is over all these writers. They 
 
 insert speeches in the declamatory style, set arguments, dithy- 
 
 rambic laments, change their styles according to the rules of 
 
 sophistic, but prefer, on the whole, the Asianic manner, especially 
 
 for emotional scenes. 
 
 As Philostratus makes the second-century sophists stand out for 
 
 us with a prominence perhaps unfairly due to his sketches, so 
 
 EuNAPius of Sardis wrote the Lives of the philoso- _, 
 
 ^ Eunapius 
 
 phers and sophists of the fourth century, chiefly the 
 representatives of the Neo-Platonic school to which he belonged. 
 Though his work is far less valuable and entertaining than that of 
 Philostratus, we rely on him for much of our knowledge of this 
 later group of sophists to whom is due a second, but less brilliant, 
 renaissance of rhetoric. 
 
 The central interest of the lives of these men, who were all phil- 
 Hellenes and pagans, was the attempt of the Emperor Julian, 
 himself not the least among the sophists, to revive pagan worship 
 throughout his empire. Athens was the training ground of fourth- 
 
 1 Reich, De Alciphronis Longique aetate, Konigsberg, 1894, places Longus 
 in the latter half of the third century A.D., and is followed by Norden. 
 
S02 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 century sophistic, though Antioch, Nicomedia, Byzantium, and 
 Alexandria were all eager to maintain the most distinguished 
 The fourth- sophists. HiMERius of Prusa, born 315 A.D., was 
 
 century conspicuous as a professor at Athens, in favor alike 
 
 sophists ,^,jtjj Christian emperors and Julian the Hellenist. 
 We have thirty-four of his speeches, chiefly on the stock themes of 
 the schools, and a number of occasional addresses. He has all the 
 marks of an Asianist, calls himself a swan, a cicada, a swallow, and 
 his speeches, ' hymns,' ' odes,' or ' songs,' in the sophistic jargon. 
 In fact, it was only the fashion that kept him from writing verse. 
 
 Themistius of Paphlagonia was something more than a sophist, 
 ■and had great influence at the court of Byzantium, where he 
 taught rhetoric to the sons of emperors, and was a sort of court 
 orator at imperial functions. We have thirty-five of his Orations, 
 and his Paraphrases of Aristotle, rare evidence of 
 serious scholarship in one of these sophists. Themis- 
 tius tried to make up the old quarrel between sophists and philos- 
 ophers. Technically he was a sophist, gave displays of epideictic 
 rhetoric, and never quoted his Paraphrases to prove himself a 
 philosopher. The Neo-Platonists, who represented philosophy in 
 the fourth century, would have none of him, and by his attitude 
 to the sophists he estranged both sides. His style was based on 
 the Attic orators, but he warns his hearers not to look to him for 
 the perfect accuracy of a purist, an accuracy to which, indeed, no 
 purist had ever attained. 
 
 His friend Libanius, of Antioch, took Aristeides for his model, 
 
 and declared that he would give the wealth of Midas to achieve 
 
 ^ .^ . anything like the perfections of that new Demosthenes. 
 
 Libamus tt • ■ 1, 
 
 He was rigidly conventional, and his panegyrics are 
 
 cut out precisely after the pattern prescribed by the theorists. 
 He had the talent for epideixis that Aristeides had lacked. We 
 have sixty-five Orations, all of the sophistic type, and 1607 Let- 
 ters, several addressed to the Emperor Julian, whom he outlived 
 and dared to mourn. He was content with the title of sophist, 
 unlike Themistius, and thought it the most flattering that he could 
 
JULIAN S03 
 
 bestow on Julian.* He was among the most punctilious of the 
 sophists in his avoidance of Roman names, and, as far as possible, 
 of Roman allusions. This was a piece of etiquette that Aristeides 
 had scrupulously observed, though it must often have been em- 
 barrassing to men who hung on the favor of Roman emperors. 
 Themistius the independent ignored this tradition, but Himerius 
 often uses a circumlocution rather than write a Roman name. 
 Philostratus tells how Apollonius of Tyana came across the word 
 " LucuUus " in a document addressed to him by some lonians, and 
 returned their letter with a reprimand for barbarism. Libanius 
 manages to compose a panegyric of Julian without naming a 
 single Roman emperor, avoiding even Marcus Aurelius, who was 
 Julian's model. Nor does he ever use a Latin word or expression. 
 Julian the Apostate counts with the sophists, who adored him as 
 the restorer of Hellenism, and was taught secretly by Libanius, in 
 spite of the prohibition of the Christian Constantius. He had 
 some instruction from Themistius also, though the latter stood 
 aloof from the Julianic revival. Julian's work as a 
 sophist is technically comprised in his panegyrics and 
 prose Hymns, but the trail of the sophist is on all that he wrote. 
 His oration On Monarchy, in honor of Constantius, observes 
 all the rules laid down by Menander for this species of composi- 
 tion, in which every sophist must be an expert. We have nearly 
 a hundred Letters, many of which are spurious. Julian wished to 
 make Neo-Platonism the philosophy of his revived Hellenism, but 
 he belonged to the younger or Syrian branch of the school of 
 which lamblichus was the real founder, and only once mentions 
 Plotinus. lamblichus the theurgist, on the other hand, he 
 ranked with Plato, and paid him a fanatical devotion. Julian's 
 vague ideal had been the restoration of the old gods of Greece, 
 but when he had fairly faced their numbers and given them back 
 their special altars and sacrifices, the Platonist revolted in his 
 blood. The monotheism that philosophy had been teaching for 
 centuries must remain the religion of the educated, but he was 
 
 1 Letitr 43. 
 
504 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 all the more sensitive as to the attitude of the people to his re- 
 stored gods. His two prose Hymns, To the Sun and To the 
 Mother of the Gods, have the form and the commonplaces of this 
 sophistic type. He often makes the stock excuse of haste and 
 lack of professional ease in writing, and all his work shows by its 
 clumsy repetitions and digressions a want of finish. In narrative 
 and satire his style is clear and straightforward, but much of his 
 philosophical writing is darkened by the obscurity inevitable when 
 a theory is only vaguely realized. His is the reminiscence Greek 
 of the period, full of echoes, interwoven with half verses, phrases, 
 and whole sentences taken without acknowledgment from the 
 Greek masterpieces. All the sophists were strongly influenced in 
 their diction by Plato, and Julian is no exception. Two of his 
 compositions stand apart from the rest, the Caesars, a satire in the 
 form of a banquet of his predecessors, in which Constantine plays 
 the villain and Marcus Aurelius has all the honors, and the Misop- 
 ogon, written as a satire on himself when the ungrateful people of 
 Antioch had ridiculed his beard and aspect of a philosopher. 
 
 In Julian's scheme philosophy must always be in the service of 
 religion. In this he showed himself essentially a man of the fourth 
 Christian century, unable to revive in himself or others the true 
 spirit of Hellenism. To return to the standpoint of Plato was in- 
 deed impossible for one who, to promote Hellenism, must outbid 
 the rival attractions of Christianity. Neo-Platonism, compared 
 with the other schools of philosophy, had been, from the first, re- 
 ligious, but we may see from a brief retrospect how far it had de- 
 generated in the course of a century. 
 
 Plotinus of Lycopolis, in Egypt (204-270 a.d.), was the real 
 
 founder of the school. For a time he had been the pupil of 
 
 Ammonius Saccas at Alexandria, but later he came 
 
 Plotinus -nil 11 ■ c 
 
 to Rome, where he spent the last twenty-six years ot 
 
 his life in teaching. It was during his last sixteen years that he 
 wrote the Enneads {Nines), so-called because each of the six sec- 
 lions contained nine discussions, fifty-four books in all. This 
 work is the written monument of Neo-Platonism. Plotinus revised 
 
THE NEO-PLATONISTS 505 
 
 nothing, and left to his pupil Porphyry the arrangement of the 
 work, and even the correction of the spelling, which was a weak 
 point in his acquired Greek. In the Enneads he debated and ex- 
 pounded, one by one, questions of ethics, psychology, metaphysics, 
 cosmology, and aesthetics, as they arose in his school. In spite of 
 Porphyry's editing, they appear in no regular sequence. The 
 rhetorical questions with which he begins almost every paragraph 
 partly reflect his debates with his pupils, partly heighten the ef- 
 fect of energetic exposition. To the charms of style he was indif- 
 ferent, but a fervent sincerity redeems the frequent obscurities of 
 manner, and at times the accents of enthusiasm take the tone 
 of genuine eloquence : We must mount again to the Good which 
 every soul craves. He that has seen it knows what T say, how 
 fair it is. For as Good it is to be desired, and men desire it. 
 He that would attain it must climb up and keep his face toward it, 
 and strip off the garments that he put on in his downward course 
 to earth. So, having left behind, on that ascent, all that is alien to 
 the God, with pure self he beholds pure deity, simple, without stain, 
 on whom all things depend, toward whom all things look, in whom 
 they are, and live, and think. What then is the way ? What the 
 method? How shall a man behold the ineffable beauty that abides 
 in the innermost shrine of the holy temple, nor ever emerges to meet 
 the eye of the profane ? Courage ! Let him press on to the holy place 
 within. But first he must leave behind the sight of his eyes, nor once 
 turn to gaze on the loveliness of earth that before seemed so fair. 
 For he that looks on earthly beauty must not pursue it in haste, but 
 remember that it is but an image, a trace, a shadow, and so flee to 
 that of which it is a copy} This doctrine of the need of escape 
 upward for the individual soul was no doubt inspired by Plato's 
 description in the Republic of the ascent of the true philosopher to 
 the region of the Ideas, and so to the apprehension of tlfe Good. 
 But for Plato the Good, though the highest of all, was not sepa- 
 rated from the rest of the Ideas. For Plotinus, however, the One, 
 "the fountain light of all our day," 
 
 ^ Ennead i. 6. 7-8. 
 
5o6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 " Unplaced, unparted, one close Unity 
 Yet omnipresent; all things, yet but One; 
 Not streaked with gaudy multiplicity. 
 Pure light without discolouration," ' 
 
 was above and beyond the Platonic Ideas to a degree that he was 
 always struggling to express with a vocabulary framed to deal with 
 the things of sense, and not for the convenience of idealist philoso- 
 phers. The second member of his Trinity was Mind, which creates 
 Being by thinking, and is itself the thinker and the thought. 
 Mind contains the Ideas or archetypes of the whole visible world. 
 The third member is the Soul of the Whole, produced by Mind. 
 Soul contains a plurality of souls and, with them, spirit turns 
 toward matter, since they choose the worse, the prison of the 
 body. This error they must expiate by dissatisfaction with life, 
 and the desire for reascent, for 
 
 " The way, which from this dead and dark abode 
 Leads up to God. " ^ 
 
 The Plotinian discipline prepares the soul for a detachment on 
 which is to dawn the vision of the Absolute, the flight of the Alone 
 to the Alone? Such a vision Plotinus himself achieved four times 
 in the five years of his association with Porphyry. To him every- 
 thing human must necessarily be alien. Asceticism has never 
 been pushed farther, though it is usually more somber, more self- 
 tormenting, more implacable. His mysticism was of the severest, 
 most abstract type, but his counsels of perfection met the needs of 
 many in that age of soulless rhetoric, and in the fourth century the 
 Enneads were more widely read than Plato. 
 
 The speculative mysticism of Plotinus seems to leave little open- 
 
 ' Henry More, Psychathanasia. More was one of those Cambridge Plato- 
 nists who tried to reconcile the Christian doctrine that God is Love with the 
 Plotinian conception of a principle above all being, impersonal, un-selfcon- 
 scious. In him is to be found the most direct poetic expression of the teach- 
 ings of Plotinus. 
 
 ^Vaughan, The World. 
 
 ^ JEnnead 6. 9, il. 
 
THE NEO-PLATONISTS 507 
 
 ing for the dogmas of mythology. Yet he admitted that the wor- 
 ship of the gods might help others to the attainment of spiritual 
 ecstasy, though for himself the union with the Absolute must be 
 achieved by heavenly contemplation. Moreover, he accepted the 
 theory of daemons, and accounted for evil in the world by their 
 agency. That way lay the road to superstition and imposture, 
 which his followers took in due course. 
 
 Literature, at that time, gained nothing from this spiritual re- 
 naissance. It was reserved for men of the mold of Henry More, 
 Drummond, Vaughan, Spenser, Milton, and Wordsworth to give 
 these doctrines literary life. The earlier, at least, of these turned 
 to the metaphysical aftergrowth of Platonism in the Enneads of 
 Plotinus even more than to the dialogues of Plato, because the 
 Trinity they found there attracted them by its likeness to Chris- 
 tian doctrine. 
 
 The decadence of Neo-Platonism made little headway in the 
 
 writings of Porphyry of Tyre (233-301 ? a.d.), the Syrian youth of 
 
 noble descent, who forsook all to be the disciple of _ 
 
 Porphyry 
 Plotinus, wrote his Life and published the Enneads. 
 
 He was the savant among the Neo-Platonists, grammarian, 
 historian of philosophy, mathematician, and Aristotelian commen- 
 tator. But his chief interest was the exposition of the Plotinian 
 philosophy. In his Letter to Anebo he recognizes with amazing 
 candor the drawbacks and frauds of polytheism as it was practiced 
 in his day. But he explained them by the working of wicked 
 daemons, and went farther than Plotinus in recommending magic 
 and theurgy as a means of counteracting the powers of evil. 
 
 Porphyry's pupil, Iamblichus of Chalcis (died 330 a.d.), was the 
 theologian of the school, as Plotinus had been its metaphysician. 
 
 Like all the Neo-Platonists, he was eclectic, and , ,,. . 
 
 ' ' Iamblichus 
 
 would have called himself a philosopher of all the 
 
 schools. But his eclecticism was superficial and arbitrary. When 
 a Platonic or Aristotelian doctrine could be distorted, or a phrase 
 borrowed, to help out his fantastic theories, he claimed the au- 
 thority of Plato and Aristotle. But the final appeal for him and 
 
5o8 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 his followers was not to human wisdom but to divine revelation 
 He stands for the decadence of Neo-Platonism, and though we 
 may decline to believe all the miraculous stories of his life, as 
 Eunapius tells it, there is no doubt that theurgy was the means he 
 chose for attaining mystical union with the One. The treatise 
 On the Mysteries, which was long ascribed to him, has been re- 
 jected by Zeller on account of its style. But we have evidence 
 enough that, though he was more refined in his methods than 
 Lucian's Alexander, he was an impostor, or at best a fanatic. 
 His disciples Chrysanthius and Maximus, who had a strong influ- 
 ence over Julian, were professed miracle workers, priests rather 
 than philosophers. For the teachings of lamblichus Julian' had a 
 fanatical admiration, ranked him above Plato and Plotinus, and, fol- 
 lowing him, insisted that initiation into the Mysteries is essential for 
 the philosopher. Ascesis, with the aim of a vision of the Absolute, 
 was still preached in Julian's writings, but his practice carried him 
 far from the severe spirituality of Plotinus. His preoccupation 
 with Neo-Platonism explains why he turned for sympathy, in his 
 revival of Hellenism, not to the Roman aristocracy and Senate, the 
 real strongholds of fourth-century paganism, but to the sophists 
 and theurgists of Athens and the east. Not long after the failure 
 of his attempt we find Neo-Platonism established at last in the 
 Academy at Athens, and, in a scholastic reaction, resuming the 
 study of Plato and "Aristotle. Athens remained the headquarters 
 of its teaching until, in the time of the last scholarch Damascius, 
 Justinian closed the school (529 a.d.). 
 
 The last great Neo-Platonist, Proclus (410-485 a.d.), was 
 born in Constantinople, of parents who had emigrated from Lycia. 
 
 At Athens he became the pupil of Syrianus, and suc- 
 Proclas , , , . , , , 5,. ^., . , 
 
 ceeded him as scholarch. His Life was written by 
 
 his disciple, Marinus. In his attempt to systematize philosophy, 
 
 Proclus divided everything into threes. Even the daemons must 
 
 1 The six Letters addressed to lamblichus which are included among th« 
 JuUanic writings are, of course, spurious. lamblichus died about the timi 
 when Julian was born. 
 
STOBAEUS 509 
 
 be of three kinds. By his lifeless classifications he relegated Neo- 
 Platonism to the sphere of scholasticisra. But for him, too, posi- 
 tive religion came first ; theurgy was a striking feature of his ascetic 
 disciphne, and he regretted that he could not limit the reading of 
 his contemporaries to the Timaeus of Plato and the utterances of 
 the oracles. His reverence for Plato was genuine, and his com- 
 mentaries on the Timaeus, the Republic, the Parmenides, and the 
 Cratylus witness to his industry. The Chrestomathy which has 
 come down under his name is known to us only from analyses in 
 the Bibliotheca of Photius the Byzantine lexicographer, and from 
 fragments preserved in the Codex Venetus of the Iliad. It is a 
 sort of primer of Greek literature, put together in a perfectly un- 
 critical spirit, and its remains are valuable to us mainly for their 
 information about the Trojan part of the epic cycle.' 
 
 Such collections as this played to some extent the part of his- 
 tories of literature, except that they were designed as well to give 
 direct instruction in philosophy and morals by means of the quoted 
 utterances of all who could be pressed into service. It is to this 
 fact that we owe the greater part of so much of the literature of 
 Greece as has survived only in quotations. It would be ungra- 
 cious, in considering this debt, not to mention Joannes Stobaeus, 
 of Stobi in Macedonia, whose date falls not earlier than 
 the sixth Christian century, and possibly later.^ His 
 work, originally in four books, has come down to us, 
 after some abridgment, under two titles, the Eclogues, devoted 
 mainly to physics and ethics, and the Anthology {Florilegium or 
 Sermones), extracts in prose and verse on all imaginable condi- 
 tions and relations of human life. Fragments of the three great 
 dramatists, and of many minor poets, epic and dramatic ; the 
 elegists, in whom he found a mine of sententious reflections ; the 
 poets of Comedy, whom he ransacked as diligendy as Athenaeus, 
 
 J See p. 46. It is still, however, an open question whether we are justified 
 in identifying the author of the Chrestomathy with Proclus the Neo-Platonist. 
 
 2 The latest writer quoted by Stobaeus is Hierodes of Alexandria, the 
 ,Neo-Platoni.st {floruit 450 a.d.). 
 
5IO SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 two centuries before him ; the philosophers ; the Alexandrian 
 writers; from all these and many more he gathered the flowers of 
 wisdom and beauty that were to educate his son Septimius, una- 
 ware that the task would make his homely name immortal. 
 
 With Julian and his contemporaries Greek prose Uterature may be 
 said to end, and it is only by a stretch of courtesy that one includes 
 the sterile rhetoric of the later sophists, those sapless leaves frozen 
 on the tree of knowledge, in the category of Uterature at all. 
 Poetry, as iias been seen, was not yet wholly extinct, since Nonnus 
 and Musaeus, and here and there an epigrammatist, were to relieve 
 the barrenness of the next two centuries. But prose had long been 
 dead, and the remains of the rhetoricians would seem unworthy 
 of notice, if it were not that the historian of Greek hterature must 
 always omit with a qualm the most trivial piece of evidence since 
 he may thus unconsciously distort more than is inevitable the 
 proportions of the original whole. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY 
 
 Babrius 
 
 The best manuscript is the Athous, British Museum, loth cent., discovered 
 at Mt. Athos in 1843 (122 fables). Six others are preserved in the Faiicanus, 
 15th cent., and on a wax tablet from Palmyra. iHaay frag, are quoted in the 
 Lexicon of Suidas. Ed. princ, Boissonade, Paris, 1844. Lachmann, Berlin, 
 1845. Schneidewin, Leipzig, 1853. Gitbauer, Vienna, 1882. Rutherford, 
 London, 1883 (with a special Lexicon). Crusius, Leipzig, 1896; text only, 
 1897. Werner, Quaestiones Babrianae, Berlin, 1891. Hoch, De Babrii 
 fabulis, Halle, 1870. Crusius in I^ip. Studien 2. For the meter: Ahrens, 
 De crasi et aphaeresi, Stolberg, 1845. 
 
 Demetrius 
 
 The best manuscript is the Parisinus, which contains also Aristotle's Rhetoric 
 and Poetics and rhetorical treatises of Dionysius Hal. Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 
 1508-1509. Victor, Florence, 1552. Spengel in vol. Ill of Rhet. Graeci. 
 Radermacher, Leipzig, 1901. Roberts, Cambridge, igo2 (with trans.). Liers, 
 De aetate et scriptore Tepi 'Epnifvclas, Wratislaw, 1881. Hammer, Demetrius 
 vepl 'Ep., Landshut, 1883. Altschul, De D. Rhetoris aetate. Leipzig, 1889. 
 
BIBLIUGKAFHY 511 
 
 Beheim-Schwarzbach, Libellus Trepl 'Ep. quo tempore compositm sit, Kiel, 1890, 
 Schenkl in fViener Studien 4. 
 Translation. Roberts in his edition. 
 
 Diogenes Laertius 
 
 The best manuscripts are the Borbonicm at Naples and the Laureniia- 
 nus, both I2th cent. Ed. princ, Basle, 1534. Huhner-Jacobitz, Leipzig, 
 1833. Cobet, Paris, 1850, 1862. Egger, De fonit. D. L., Bordeaux, 1881. 
 Nietzsche in Rhein. Mus. 23-25. Wilamowitz in Phil. Unters. IV 320 if. 
 Schwartz in Pauly-Wissowa. 
 
 Dio OF Prusa 
 
 The best manuscripts are the Palatinus, 15th cent., Vaticanus, 13th cent, 
 Meermannius, i ith cent., is the only manuscript that contains the whole of the 
 extant works. Ed. princ, Venice, 1551. Reiske, Leipzig, 1784. Emperius, 
 Brunswick, 1844. Dindorf, Leipzig, 1857. Arnim, Berlin, 1893-1896. 
 Arnim, Leben u. Werke des Dio, Berlin, 1898. Martha, Les Moralistes sous 
 PEmpire Jlomain,Ta.Tis, 1S86. Sonny, Anaiecta a</Z)., Kief, 1896. Webet 
 in Leip. Studien 10. Schmid in Atticismus i. 72 ff. 
 
 DiONYSIUS OF HaLICARNASSUS 
 
 Manuscripts of the History ^xe the Urbinas, loth cent., and Chisianus, lOth 
 cent.- Editions: Kiessling, Leipzig, 1 860-1 870. Kiessling-Jacoby, 1905. 
 Liers, Die Theorie d. Geschichischreibung d. D. von H., Waldenburg, 1886, 
 Flierle, Ueber Nachahmungen d. Demosih. u. Xen. in Dionys., Munich, 1890. 
 Bocksch, De fontt. Dionys. Hal. in Leip. Studien 17. Manuscripts of the 
 critical and rhetorical works are the Parisinus, nth cent., Ambrosianus, 15th 
 cent., Laurentianus, 12th cent. Editions : Reiske, vols. V-VI of his ed., Leip- 
 zig, 1775-1777. Van Herwerden, Ep. crit. tres, Groningen, 1861. Usener, De 
 imitatione epistulaeque crit. duae, Bonn, 1889. Usener and Radermacher, 
 Leipzig, vol. I, 1899 ; II, 1904. Desrousseaux and Egger, D. d'H.Jugement 
 sur Lysias, Paris, 1890. Weil, Premiere Lettre a Ammee, Paris, 1878. The 
 Three Literary Letters, Roberts, Cambridge, 1901. Sadous, De la rhetorique 
 attribuee a D. d'H., Paris, 1847. Blass, De D. H. scripiis rhet, Bonn, 1863. 
 Usener, D. H. quae fertur ars rhetorica, Leipzig, 1895. Kaibel, D. H. u. die 
 Sophistik in Hermes 20. Egger, Denys d'Halicarnasse, Paris, 1902. Saints- 
 bury, History of Criticism I 127 ff., London, 1902. Baudat, D. d'H. le Traite 
 de la Disposition des Mots, Paris, 1879. Rabe in Rhein. Mus. 48. 
 
 Epic Poets 
 Musaeus : Manuscripts : Oxoniensis in the Bodleian, I Ith cent., Vaticanus, 
 14th cent., Palatinus, at Heidelberg, 15th cent. Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 
 
512 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 1494. Heinrich, Hannover, 1795. Passow, Leipzig, l8io. Dilthey, Bonn 
 1874. Schwabe, De Musaeo Nonni imitatore, TUbingen, 1876. Knaack, 
 Hero u. Leander, Leipzig, 1898. Kleram, De fabula (Hero and Leander), 
 Leipzig, 1889. Trans. Chapman, London, 1616 (verse). NoNNUS: Manu- 
 script: Palatinus, l6th cent. Ed. princ, Falkenburg, 1569. Moser, Heidel- 
 berg, 1809. Graefe, Leipzig, 1819-1826. Koechly, Leipzig, 1858. Paraphrase 
 of St. John's Gospel : Scheindler, Leipzig, 1881. Ouwaroff, iVo«Koj, Peters- 
 burg, 181 7. Koehler, Ueber die Dionysiaka, Halle, 1853. Ludwich, Beitr, 
 z. JiTriiik d. JVonnos, Koiiigsheig, 1873. Scheindler, Quaesiiones Nonnianae, 
 Brunae, 1878. La Roche, Zur verstechnik d. Nonnos in Wiener Siiidien 22. 
 Oppian: Manuscript: The Taurinensis. ^oC/riKc, Aldus, Venice, 1517. 
 Schneider, Leipzig, 1813. Lehrs, Paris, 1846. Ausfeld, De Oppiano, Gotha, 
 1876. Preuss, Zum Sprachgebrauch d. Oppian, 1880. QuiNTUS Smyrnaeus: 
 We have only copies of the codex found by Bessarion in Calabria. Editions: 
 Rhodomann, Hannover, 1604, Koechly-Zimmermann, Wilhclmshaven, 1900. 
 Sainte-Beuve, Quinte Smyrne in Aludes sur Virgile, Paris, 1871. Kenipt- 
 zow, De Q, S. fontt., Kiel, 1891. La Roche, Prosodie u. Metrik in Wiener 
 Siudien 22. 
 
 Epigrammatists 
 
 Kaibel, Philodemi Epigrammala, Greifswald, 1885. Rubensohn. Crinag- 
 eras, Berlin, 1888. See the collections and anthologies under chapter XXII. 
 
 Minor Historians 
 
 Appian : The best manuscripts are V'aiicanus, nth and 12th centt., and 
 Laurentianus, 15th cent., Monacensis (at Munich), 15th cent. Ed. princ, 
 Stephanas, Paris, 1551. Diibner, Paris, 1840. Bekker, Leipzig, 1852. Men- 
 delssohn, Leipzig, 1878, 1905. Civil Wars, I: Strachan-Davidson, Oxford, 
 1903. Trans. White, New York, 1899; vol. I, Foreign Wars ; II, Civil Wars. 
 ArriaN: Manuscripts: the Parisinus, Palatinus, Laurentianus, Bodleianus. 
 Ed. princ., Trincavelli, Venice, 1536. Anabasis : Ed. princ, Krueger, Berlin, 
 1835-1848. Geier, Leipzig, 1873. Abicht, Leipzig, 1879. Scripta Minora : 
 Hercher, Leipzig, 1854. Discourses, Manual, and Fragments of Epictetus: 
 Schenkl, Leipzig, 1894, 1898. Renz, Arrianus quatenus imitator Xenophon- 
 tis sit, Rostock, 1879. Boehner, De A. dicendi genere, Erlangen, 1886. Cas- 
 sius Dio: Manuscripts: Laurentianus and Marcianus, nth cent. Ed. 
 ^?-z«r.,Stephanus, Paris, 1548. Dindorf-Melber, Leipzig, 1890. Melber, Leip- 
 zig, 1896. Boissevain, Berlin, 1895— 1901. Cronert in Wiener Studien 21. 
 Maisel, Observationes in C. D., Berlin, 1888. Diodorus: Manuscripts rang- 
 ing from loth to 15th centt., in the libraries of Vienna, the Vatican, and Paris. 
 T\i& Patmius, loth cent., found at Patmos. Ed. princ, Stephanus, Paris, 1559 
 Muller, Paris, 1842. Vogel-Dindorf, Leipzig, 1893. Bekker-Dindorf-Fischer, 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 513 
 
 Leipzig, 1906. Bethe, Quaestionts Diodoreae, Gottingen, 1887. Bader, 
 De D. rerum Rom. auct, Leipzig, 1890. Kaellier in Leip. Studien 3. JosE- 
 PHUS : The best manuscripts for the History are the Parisinus, 14th cent., and 
 Bodleianus, 15th cent. ; for the War of the Jews, Parisinus &nA. Ambrosianus, 
 both loth cent. Editions: Havercamp, Amsterdam, 1726. Dindorf, Paris, 
 new ed., 1868. Bekker-Naber, Leipzig, 1896. Niese, Berlin, 1887-1896. 
 Druner, Forschangen iiber J., Marburg, 1896. Translation: Whiston-Mar- 
 goliouth, London, 1 906. Strabo : The best manuscripts are now at Paris. 
 Ed. princ, Aldus, Venice, 1516. Casaubon, Paris, 1620. (Strabo is usually 
 cited according to Casaubon's paging.) Miiller and Diibner, Paris, 1858. 
 Karolies, Athens, 1889. Meineke, Vindiciae Strab., Berlin, 1852. Dubois, 
 Examen de la Geographic de S., Paris, 189 1. Wilkens, De S, fontt., Mar- 
 burg, 1886. Ruge, Quaestt. Strab., Leipzig, 1888. 
 
 PSEUDO-LONGINUS 
 
 There are ii manuscripts: at Paris (4), Rome (3), Milan (i), Venice (1), 
 Florence (l), Cambridge (i). The Parisinus, loth cent, is the best. Ed. 
 princ., Robortello, Basle, 1554. Manutius, Venice, 1555. Toup, Oxford, 1778. 
 Egger, Paris, 1837. Spengel in Shet. Grace, Leipzig, 1853. Jahn, Bonn, 1867. 
 Vahlen, Bonn, 2d ed., 1887. Hammer-Spengel, Leipzig, 1894. Roberts, Cam- 
 bridge, 1898. Voucher, Etudes Criiifucs, Geneva, 1854. Egger in- Essa; sur 
 fiistoirc de la critiqtie chez les Grccs, Paris, 1849, 1887. Prickard, Oxford, 1906, 
 Kohde in Rhein. Mus. 35. Arnim in Wiener Studien 24. Churton Collins, 
 Longinus and Greek CriHcisnt in Studies in Poetry and Criticism, London, 1905. 
 
 Translations. Stebbing, Oxford, 1867. Havell (with Introduction by 
 Lang), London, 1890. Roberts in his edition. Prickard, Oxford, 1906. 
 
 LuciAN 
 
 L Manuscripts. The best are the Vaticanus and Harleianus, both lOth 
 cent., and the Vindoboncnsis, nth cent. Ed. princ, Florence, 1496. 
 Jacobitz, Leipzig, 1836-1841, 1871-1874, 1901. Dindorf, Paris, 1840, 1884. 
 , Fritzsche, Rostock, 1882-1885. Sommerbrodt, Berlin, 1886-1893. 
 
 II. Literature. Jacob, Charactcristik Lucians, Hamburg, 1832. Her- 
 mann, Zur Charactcristik Lukians, 1849. Rohde, Ueber L.'s Schrift Aofeios, 
 Leipzig, 1869. Bernays, Z«iz'a« u. die Kyniker, Berlin, 1879. Cxo\s,e.t, Essai 
 sur la vie et Ics ocuvres de /.., Paris, 1882. Gildersleeve, Lucian in Essays and 
 Studies, Baltimore, 1890. Hime, Lucian, the Syrian Satirist, London, 1900. 
 Dec, De ratione inter Ps. Luciani Asinum et Apulei Met., Leyden, 1891. 
 Boldermann, Siudia Lucianea, Leyden, 1893. Arnim in Wiener Studien 23. 
 Rohde in Rhein. Mus. 40. Schmid, Atticismus 216 ff. 
 KIST. GREEK LIT. — 33 
 
514 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 III. Translations. H. W. and F. G. Fowler, Oxford, 1905. Selections; 
 Smith, New York, 1892, Sheldon, Philadelphia, 1901. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius 
 
 The Palatinus codex used by Xylander for the ed. princ, Zurich, 1550, is 
 lost. The only complete manuscript is the Vaiicanus, Editions : Diibner, 
 Paris, 1840 ; Stich, Leipzig, 1882. Renan, Marc-Aurele, Paris, 1883. Mat- 
 thew Arnold, Marcus Aurelius in Essays in Criticism. Translations by Collier, 
 Long (1862), Randall, London, 1898 (with introductory essay on Stoicism). 
 
 Pausanias 
 
 The best manuscripts are the Leidensis and the Vindobonensis. Ed. princ, 
 Aldus, Venice, 1516. Bekker, Berlin, 1826. Schubart-Walz, Leipzig, 1838- 
 1839. Dindorf, Paris, 1846. Schubart, Leipzig, 1 874. Hitzig-Bliimner, Leip- 
 zig, vol. I, 1896; II, 1901. Wilamowitz in Hermes 12. Kalkmann, Pau- 
 sanias, Berlin, 1886, Gurlitt, Pausanias, Graz, 1890. Trans. Frazer, London, 
 1898. 
 ' Plutarch 
 
 I. Manuscripts. Of the Lives : Sanger manensis, loth cent., Palatinus, 
 nth cent.; several at Paris (^Parisini), and Matritensis at Madrid, 14th 
 cent. Of the Moralia . four Parisini, nth, 13th, and 15th centt.. Mar- 
 cianus, nth cent.; three Vaticani, 13th and 15th centt. 
 
 II. Editions. Stephanus, Paris, 1572. Reiske, Leipzig, 1774-1782. 
 Doehner-Dubner, Paris, 1846-1855. Lives: Ed. princ.,Florence, i^iy. Sin- 
 tenis, Liepzig, 1852-1855, 1873-1875. Bekker, Leipzig, 1855-1857. Selec- 
 tions: The Zjwj.' Siefert-Blass, Leipzig, 1872. Moralia: Aldus, Venice, 1509. 
 Wyttenbach, Leipzig, 1796-1799. Bernardakis, Leipzig, 1884- 1 896 (7 vols, 
 and appendix). Patoh, Pythici Dialogi ires, Berlin, 1893. Parthey, Isis u, 
 Osiris, Berlin, 1850. 
 
 III. Literature. YoDimann, Leien u.ScAriften d.P.,het\m,iS6g. Wes- 
 termann, De P. vita eiscriptis, Leipzig, 1855. Trench, Plutarch, London, 1873. 
 Greard, De la Morale de P., Paris, 1866. Michaelis, De ordine vitarum,^ 
 Berlin, 1875. Mahaffy in Tke Creek World under Roman Sway, London, 
 1890. Oakesmith, The Religion of P., London, 1902. 
 
 IV. Translations. Amyot, Paris, 1559-1572. Lives: North, London, 
 1579 (from the French of Amyot). Dryden (so called, with Dryden's Pref- 
 ace), London, 1683-1686; Qough's ed., 1859. Langhorne, London, 1770. 
 Dacier, Paris, 1 721. Moralia: under title Miscellaneous Essays (translated 
 by various hands), ed. by Goodwin, Boston, 1870 ; 6th ed., 1898. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Lexicon Plutarcheum, Wyttenbach, Leipzig, 1830. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 515 
 
 POLYBIUS 
 
 I. Manuscripts. The best manuscript for 1-5 is the Vaticanus, nth 
 cent. Excerpts from i-i8 in the Urbinas. For the last books, excerpte in 
 C. Porphyrogenetus, loth cent. 
 
 II. Editions. Hervagius, Basle, 1549. Casaubon, Paris, 1609. Schweig- 
 hauser, Leipzig, 1789-1795. Bekker, Berlin, 1841. Dindorf, Leipzig, 1866- 
 1882. Hutsch, Berlin, 1867; 2d ed., 1888-1892. Buttner-Wobst, Leipzig, 
 1882-1904. 
 
 in. Literature. La Roche, C,4a>-arf?«rf«/5 (/.T"., Leipzig, 1857. Breska, 
 Untersuchungen iiber d. Quellen d. P., Berlin, 1880. Strachan-Davidson, 
 Polybius in Hellenica, Oxford, 1880. Goetzler, De P. elocutione, Wiirzburg, 
 1887. Scala, Die Studien d. P., Stuttgart, 1890. Cuntz, Polybius u. sein 
 Werk, Leipzig, 1902. Nissen in Rkein. Mus. 26. Kalker in Z<»)t. Studien 3. 
 
 IV. Translation. Shuckburgh, London, 1889. 
 
 V. Lexicon. Schweighauser, Oxford, 1822. 
 
 The New Sophistic 
 
 (Second Century) 
 
 Aristeides: Dindorf, Leipzig, 1829. Baumgart, ^rij^zf/w, Leipzig, 1874. 
 Keil, Berlin, 1897 (unfinished). Herodes Atticus : Hass, De H. A. oratione 
 Tepi TToXirefas, Kiel, 1880. Philostratus : Lives, sni Life of Apollonius of 
 Tyana: Kayser, Leipzig, 1871. Translation of the Life of A., Chassang, 
 Paris, 1862. Baur, Apollonius u, Christus, Tubingen, 1832. Gildersleeve, 
 Apollonius of Tyana in Essays and Studies, Baltimore, 1890. PoLEMON: 
 Hinck, Leipzig, 1873. Juttner, De Pokmonis vita, operibus, arte, Breslau, 
 1898. Blass, Die Gr. Beredsamkeit v. Alexander bis Augustus, Berlin, 1865. 
 Schmid, Der Atticismus, Stuttgart, 1887-1896. Rohde, Der Gr. Roman, 
 Leipzig, 1876, 1900. Norden, Antiie Ji'uns/prosa,'Leipz\g, i8g8. 'Bmns, Die 
 Atticistischen Bestrebungen, Kiel, 1896. Kaibel in Hermes 20. Wilamowitz, 
 Asianismus u. Atticismus in Hermes 35. Rohde in Rkein. Mus. 41. Rader- 
 macher in Rkein. Mus. 52, 54. Bibliography by Schmid in Bursian's yoAr«- 
 bericht, 1901. 
 
 The New Sophistic 
 
 (Fourth Century) 
 
 Eunapius: Lives: Boissonade, Amsterdam, 1822 ; Paris, 1849. HiMERlus: 
 Dubner, Paris, 1849. Teuber, Quaestiones Himerianae, Breslau, 1882. 
 Julian: The best manuscript is the Vossianus at Leyden, 12th or 13th cent. 
 Ed.princ, Martin, Paris, 1583. Petau, Paris, 1630. Hertlein, Leipzig, 1875- 
 
5i6 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 1876. Against the Christians, Neumann, Leipzig, 1880. Miicke, Julianm, 
 Gotha, 1868. Naville,ya/j>« ^/i/oj/a/, Neufchitel, 1877. Schwartz, iJf ojVa 
 et scriJitisyuHani,BoTm, 188S. TeuSel, JfTaiser/u/ianus in Sitidien. Gilder- 
 sleeve, Julian in Essays and Studies, Baltimore, 1890. France, Julian's 
 Relation to the New Sophistic, London, 1896. Gardner, Julian, New York, 
 1895. N6gf'> I^imperatore Giuliano, Milan, 1902 (translation by Letta- 
 Visconti-Arese, London, 1906). Z^tf^rj: Westermann, Leipzig, 1854. Bidez 
 and Cumont, Kecherches sur la tradition manuscrite des Lettres de J., Brus- 
 sels, 1898. Brambs, iVaiftVM, Eichstatt, 1897. AWard, Julien l'Apostat,'PsLris, 
 1903. LiBANlUS: Reiske, Altenburg, 1784-1797. Foerster, Leipzig, 1903 
 (unfinished). Letters : Wolf, Amsterdam, 1738. Sievers, Das Leben des L., 
 Berlin, 1868. Petit, Essai sur L., Paris, 1866. Themistius: Dindorf, Leip- 
 zig, 1832. Schenkl is preparing an edition. See his articles in Wiener Stu- 
 dien, 20-23. Paraphrases : Spengel, Leipzig, 1866. 
 
 General Literature. Petit de JuUeville, D&cole d'Athenes au IV* Steele, 
 Paris, 1868. Capes, University Life in Ancient Athens. 
 
 The Neo-Platonists 
 
 Simon, Histoire de VEcole d' Alexandrie, Paris, 1845. Vacherot, Histoire 
 de I'Ecole d' Alexandrie, Paris, 1846, 1851. Chaignet, Histoire de la psychologie 
 des Grecs (vol. IV), Paris, 1893. Zeller, Philosophie d. Griechen, vol. V, 
 Leipzig, 1881. Bigg, Neo-Platonism, London, 1895. Whittaker, The Neo- 
 Platonists, Cambridge, 1901. Cudworth, The True Intellectual System of the 
 Universe, London, 1678. Plotinus: The best manuscript is the Afedieeus, 
 13th cent. £</./?■«»;:., Ficinus, Basle, 1580. Creuzer, Oxford, 1835. Kirchhoff, 
 Leipzig, 1856. Muller, Berlin, 1878. Kirchner, Die Philosophie des Plotins, 
 Halle, 1854. "KizYiXxx, Neuplatonische Studien, lUiSSs., 1864-1867. Kleist, 
 Plotinische Studien, Heidelberg, 1883. Benn, The Spiritualism of Plotinus 
 in Greek Philosophers, London, 1S82. Translations: Taylor, London, 1794, 
 1817; Bouillet, Paris, 1857-1861; Muller, Books i-vi, Berlin, 1878-1880. 
 Porphyry: Introduction to the Categories, Busse, Berlin, 1887. Selections 
 in Nauck, Opuscula Selecta, Leipzig, 2d ed., 1886. Life of Plotinus, Wester- 
 mann, in the Didot edition of Diogenes Laertius, Paris, 1850. Iamblichus: 
 Quaestionum Homericarum reliquiae, Schrader, Leipzig, 1880. Protrepti- 
 cus, Pistelli, Leipzig, 1893. De communi mathematica, Festa, Leipzig, 1891. 
 On the Pythagorean Mode of Life, Kiessling, Leipzig, 1816. Pseudo-Iambli- 
 chus, De Mysteriis, Parthey, Berlin, 1857. Proclus: Cousin, Paris, 1820- 
 1827 : 2d ed., 1864. Marinus, Life of Proclus, in the Didot edition of Diog- 
 enes Laertius, Paris, 1850. Berger, Proclus exposition de sa doctrine, Paris, 
 1840. Kirchner, De Prodi Metaphysica, Berlin, 1846. Prodi Chrestoma- 
 thiat grammaticae fragmenta in Westphal, Scriptores metrici graeci. 
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 517 
 
 Romance 
 
 EroHei scriptores: Hercher, Leipzig, 1858. Hirschig, Le Pas Paume and 
 Boissonade, Paris, 1856, 1885. Heliodorus: Coraes, Paris, 1804. Longus: 
 Schaefer, Leipzig, 1803 (with Latin version). Villoison, Paris, 1878. Courier, 
 Rome, 1810. Sailer, Leipzig, 1843. Trans, by Amyot, Paris, l6th cent. 
 Sainte-Beuve Longus in N. Lundis IV. Reich, De Alciphronis Longique 
 aetate, Konigsberg, 1894. Achilles Tatius: Jacobs, Leipzig, 1821. Chas- 
 sang, Histoire du Roman, Paris, 1862. Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, 
 Leipzig, 1876, 1900. Schwartz, Funf Vortrage uber d. gr. Roman, Berlin, 
 1896. Salverte, Le Roman dans la Grice ancienne, Paris, 1894. Wilcken, 
 Ein neuer gr. Roman in Llermes 28 (1893). Schmid in Neue. Jahrb., 1904. 
 Smith, Translations of the Greek Romances, London (Bohn), new ed., igoi. 
 
 Stobaeus 
 
 Editions: Gessner, Zurich, 1549. A niio/ogy,G&is{ord, Oxford, iSzz; Leip- 
 zig, 1823-1824. Tauchnitz ed., Leipzig, 1838. Wachsmuth-Heuse, vols. I-II, 
 Berlin, 1884; vol. Ill, 1894. Meineke, Leipzig, 1855-1857. Eclogues, 
 Heeren, Gottingen, 1792-1801. Meineke, Leipzig, i860. Gaisford, Oxford, 
 1850. Jacobs, Lectiones Stobenses, Jena, 1827. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE' 
 
 All dates for Greek events earlier than the middle of the seventh 
 century B.C. are legendary or conjectural. 
 
 B.C. 
 
 776 Traditional date of the First Olympiad. 
 
 680 ? Callinus of Ephesus, elegiac poet. 
 
 676 ? Terpander of Lesbos, musician and melic poet. 
 
 650 Archilochus of Paros, iambic, elegiac, and melic poet. 
 
 Alcman of Sparta, choral melic poet. 
 648 Eclipse of the sun mentioned by Archilochus (see p. 85). 
 630 MiMNERMUS of Colophon, elegiac poet. 
 625 Semonides of Amorgos, iambic poet. 
 
 Arion of Lesbos, choral melic poet. 
 600 Alcaeus of Lesbos, melic poet. 
 
 Sappho of Lesbos, melic poet. 
 
 Stesichorus of Himera, choral melic poet. 
 599 Solon of Athens, elegiac poet, 639-599. 
 590 Thales of Miletus, philosopher. 
 570 Anaximander of Miletus, philosopher. 
 550 Anaximenes of Miletus, philosopher. 
 
 Cadmus of Miletus, logographer. 
 
 Pherecydes of Syros, philosopher. 
 546 Cyrus takes Sardis. Fall of CroeSus. 
 540 Phocylides of Miletus, elegiac poet. 
 
 Demodocus of Leros, elegiac poet. 
 
 Anacreon of Teos, melic poet. 
 
 HiPPONAX of Ephesus, choliambic satirist. 
 
 Ibycus of Rhegium, melic poet. 
 
 Xenophanes of Colophon, philosopher and elegiac poet. 
 
 IThe date given is the fioruit, placed approximately at forty years of age, to 
 which are added, when known, the dates of birth and death. Authors whose 
 century is unknown are omitted. 
 
 SI9 
 
S20 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 534 First tragic contest at tlie City Dionysia, in Athens. 
 
 Thespis of Attica, tragic poet. 
 530 Pythagoras of Samos, philosopher. 
 520 Theognis of Megara, elegiac poet. 
 
 Lasus of Hermione, choral melic poet. 
 
 CoRiNNA of Boeotia, choral melic poet. 
 516 SiMONiDES of Ceos, choral melic poet, 556-468. 
 510 Democracy established at Athens. 
 508 The Attic State assumes control of the tragic choruses. 
 500 Heracleitus of Ephesus, philosopher. 
 
 Hecataeus of Miletus, logographer. 
 
 Choerilus of Athens, tragic poet. 
 
 Pratinas of the Peloponnesus, tragic poet. 
 494 Fall of Miletus. 
 
 Phrynichus of Athens, tragic poet. 
 490 Battle of Marathon. 
 
 Panyasis of Halicarnassus, epic poet. 
 485 Aeschylus of Athens, tragic poet, 525-456. 
 480 Epicharmus of Cos, comic poet. 
 
 Pindar of Thebes, choral melic poet. 
 
 Battle of Salamis. 
 479 Battle of Plataea. 
 
 475 Parmenides of Elea, philosopher and poet. 
 468 Bacchylides of Ceos, choral melic poet. 
 460 Chionides of Athens, comic poet. 
 
 Magnes of Athens, comic poet. 
 
 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, philosopher. 
 456 Sophocles of Athens, tragic poet, 496-405. 
 450 Phrynis of Lesbos, musician. 
 
 GORGIAS of Leontini, sophist and rhetorician. 
 
 Crates of Athens, comic poet. 
 
 Zeno of Elea, philosopher,. 
 
 Empedocles of Agrigentum, poet and philosopher. 
 444 Herodotus of Halicarnassus, historian. 
 
 Protagoras of Abdera, sophist and grammarian. 
 
 Cratinus of Athens, comic poet. 
 440 Antiphon of Athens, orator. 
 
 Euripides of Athens, tragic poet. 
 
 Melissus of Samos, philosopher. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 521 
 
 440 SOPHRON of Syracuse, writer of mimes. 
 435 Leucippus of Abdera ?, philosopher. 
 431 Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. 
 
 Pericles of Athens, statesman and orator. 
 430 HiPPiAS of Elis, sophist. 
 
 Hellanicus of Lesbos, historian. 
 
 Pherecrates of Athens, comic poet. 
 
 Thucydides of Athens, historian. 
 
 Hippocrates of Cos, writer on medicine. 
 429 Socrates of Athens, philosopher, 469-399. 
 425 Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, sophist and rhetorician. 
 420 Democritus of Abdera, philosopher. 
 
 Prodicus of Ceos, sophist. 
 415 The Sicilian Expedition. 
 
 Agathon of Athens, tragic poet. 
 
 EupoLis of Athens, comic poet. 
 
 Critias of Athens, poet and statesman. 
 
 Aristophanes of Athens, comic poet. 
 412 Theodorus of Byzantium, rhetorician. 
 41 1 Revolution of the Four Hundred. 
 406 Death of Euripides. 
 405 Plato of Athens, comic poet. 
 404 Antimachus of Colophon, epic poet. 
 403 End of the Peloponnesian War. 
 400 TiMOTHEUS of Miletus, citharoede. 
 
 Andocides of Athens, orator. 
 
 Lysias of Athens, rhetorician and speechwright. 
 399 Death of Socrates. 
 
 Eucleides of Megara, philosopher. 
 395 Isocrates of Athens, rhetorician and publicist. 
 394 Xenophon of Athens, historian. 
 387 Plato of Athens, philosopher, 427-347. 
 380 Antisthenes of Athens, philosopher. 
 
 IsAEUS of Chalcis, speechwright. 
 
 Aristippus of Cyrene, philosopher. 
 368 Antiphanes of Asia Minor ?, comic poet. 
 362 Diogenes of Sinope, philosopher. 
 354 Alexis of Thurii, comic poet. 
 350 Ephorus of Cyme, historian. 
 
S22 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LTIERATURE 
 
 350 Theopompus of Chios, historian. 
 
 Lycurgus of Athens, orator. 
 349 Aeschines of Athens, orator. 
 
 Hypereides of Athens, orator. 
 344 Aristotle of Stageira, philosopher, 384-322. 
 343 Demosthenes of Athens, orator, 383-322. 
 338 Battle of Chaeronea. 
 337 DiPHiLUS of Sinope, comic poet. 
 332 Theophrastus of Lesbos, philosopher. 
 331 Foundation of Alexandria. 
 323 Death of Alexander. 
 320 Philemon of Soli, comic poet. 
 
 Deinarchus of Corinth, speech wright. 
 305 Timaeus of Tauromenium, historian. 
 302 Epicurus of Samos, philosopher. 
 
 Menander of Athens, comic poet. 
 300 Demetrius of Phalerum, orator. 
 
 Zeno of Citium, philosopher. 
 
 DouRis of Samos, historian. 
 291 Cleanthes of Assos, philosopher. 
 290 Hegesias of Magnesia, rhetorician. 
 
 Philetas of Cos, elegiac poet. 
 
 Asclepiades of Samos, melic poet and epigrammatist. 
 280 ? Isyllus of Epidaurus, choral melic poet. 
 
 Lycophron of Chalcis, epic and tragic poet. 
 276 Leonidas of Tarentum, epigrammatist. 
 27s Theocritus of Syracuse, bucolic poet. 
 270 Callimachus of Cyrene, Alexandrian epic and elegiac poet 
 260 Aratus of Soli, writer of didactic epic. 
 
 Herodas of Cos, writer of mimes. 
 236 Eratosthenes of Cyrene, librarian and encyclopaedist. 
 234 Euphorion of Chalcis, epic poet. 
 222 Rhianus of Crete, epic poet. 
 180 ?Nicander of Colophon, epic poet. 
 180 Crates of Mallus, Homeric critic. 
 
 Aristarchus of Samothrace, critic and grammarian. 
 170 PoLYBius of Megalopolis, historian. 
 1 50 MoscHUS of Syracuse, bucolic poet. 
 
 BlON of Smyrna, bucolic poet. 
 
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 523 
 
 150 Meleager of Gadara, epigrammatist and anthologist. 
 
 55 Philodemus of Gadara, Epicurean and epigrammatist. 
 
 40 DiODORUs of Sicily, historian. 
 
 20 Strabo of Amasia, historian and geographer. 
 
 8 DiONYSlus of Halicarnassus, historian and critic. 
 
 A.D. 
 
 50 Crinagoras of Mitylene, epigrammatist. 
 
 77 JosEPHUS of Jerusalem, historian. 
 
 80 Dio Chrysostomus of Prusa, sophist and lecturer. 
 
 go Plutarch of Chaeronea, moralist and biographer. 
 100 Epictetus of Phrygia, philosopher. 
 130 Appian of Alexandria, historian. 
 Arrian of Nicomedia, historian. 
 140 Herodes Atticus of Athens, sophist. 
 150 Pausanias of Lydia ?, topographer. 
 1 61 Marcus Aurelius, emperor and philosopher. 
 165 LuciAN of Samosata, sophist and satirist. 
 169 Aristeides of Mysia, sophist. 
 180 Oppian of Cilicia, writer of didactic epic. 
 180 ? Alciphron, epistolographer and sophist. 
 180 Cassius Dio of Nicaea, historian. 
 210 Philostratus of Athens, sophist and biographer. 
 220 Aelian of Praeneste, sophist.' 
 
 225 ? Athenaeus of Naucratis, grammarian and writer on minor antiq- 
 uities. 
 225 ? Babrius, writer of fables in choliambics. 
 244 Plotinus of Lyeopolis, Neo-Platonist philosopher. 
 250 ? Diogenes Laertius, biographer. 
 330 Seat of Empire removed to Byzantium. 
 
 350 Themistius of Paphlagonia, sophist and Aristotelian com- 
 mentator. 
 
 354 LiBANius of Antioch, sophist and epistolographer. 
 
 355 HiMERius of Prusa, sophist. 
 
 1 Aelian was an Italian who never so much as visited Greece, though he pre- 
 ferred to write in Greek his anecdotes of the philosophers, of animals, and of the 
 persons, important and insignificant, whom he gathered into his Medley of History 
 ( Varia Historia). This has survived, together with the treatise On Animals and a 
 number of Letters of dubious authenticity. It is only by convention that one in- 
 cludes their author's name among those who have contributed to Greek literature. 
 
524 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 371 Julian of Constantinople, emperor and sophist. 
 
 380 ? QuiNTUS of Smyrna, epic poet. 
 
 386 EuNAPius of Sardis, sophist and biographer. 
 
 390 ? Heliodorus of Phoenicia, writer of romance. 
 
 400 ? NoNNus, epic poet. 
 
 450 Proclus of Lycia, philosopher. 
 
 joo ? MusAEus, epic poet. 
 
 529 Closing of the schools of philosophy by Justinian. 
 
 540 Agathias, epigrammatist. 
 
 Paulus Silentiarius, epigrammatist. 
 550 ? Stobaeus Joannes of Stobi in Macedonia, anthologist and col- 
 lector of extracts. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abdera 103, 150, Hippocrates at 163, 
 tragedy fever at 248, 267, 497. 
 
 Abu-Simbel inscription at 143. 
 
 Abusir (Busiris) 133. 
 
 Academy of Plato 381, 451, training in 
 402 ; closed by Justinian 508. 
 
 Achaean League 462. 
 
 Achaeans Ridgeway on the 16. 
 
 Achaeus of Eretria 268. 
 
 Achilles Tatius writer of romance 500. 
 
 Actium battle of 474. 
 
 ACUSILAUS of Argos 152. 
 
 Acusilaus of Cyrene 120. 
 
 Aegidae clan of 119. 
 
 Aegospotami 217. 
 
 Aelian see Chronological Table, 
 
 Aeolic dialect 18 ; epos 18, 19. 
 
 Aeschines 352, 354, 3d7-361 ; Ag. 
 Ctesifhon 354, 359; Ag. Timarchus 
 358; On the False Embassy 358, 359. 
 
 Aeschylus 120, 159. 170, 188, 189, 191, 
 193-815, 216, 223, 231, 233, 237, 238, 
 249, 260, 261, 262, 265, 273, 289 ; Aga- 
 memnon 192, 195, 201-205, ^o^' 2^^» 
 212, 230, 246, 261, at Harvard 191 ; 
 Choephori Tso^i-iiyj, 208, 224, 225, 241, 
 25s, 256 ; Eumenides 200, 207-209, 219, 
 233 ; Glaucus 195 ; Laius 197 ; Lycur- 
 geia 210; Oedipus l(^; Oresteia 192; 
 Pentkeus 262 ; Fersae 133, 190, 195- 
 196, 211, 23s ; Fhineus 195; Prome- 
 theus Bound 192, 194, 196, 197-199, 
 210, 212; Prometheus the Fire-Bearer 
 200 ; Prometheus the satyric 195 ; Pro- 
 metheus Unbound 199 ; Froteus 209 ; 
 Salaminians 220 ; Seven against Thebes 
 196-197, 221, 234, 252, 258 : Sphinx 
 197: Suppliants 192, 194-195, 246; in 
 the Frogs 298-299 ; meters of 212 ; on 
 Salamis 134. 
 
 Aesop 472. 
 
 Agathias epigrams of 471, on Plutarch 
 481 ; Anthology of 445. 
 
 Agathocles 119. 
 
 Agathon 239, 267, 269, 296; Anthos 
 or Antheus of 269. 
 
 Agesilaus 318, 322. 
 
 Agyrrhius in the Fluius 305. 
 
 Alcaeus 86, 94, 98-97, 102, 125, 138. 
 283; dialect 97; hymns of 97; meters 
 97 ; relations with Sappho 98 ; Words- 
 worth on 96 ; Stasiotica 96. 
 
 Alcibiades 233, 282, 294, 332, 371, 388 ; 
 pupil of Socrates 100, 
 
 Alcidamas the sophist 172; style of criti- 
 cised by Aristotle 407, 
 
 Alciphron epistolary romance of 500. 
 
 Alcman of Sardis 99, 106-108, in, 
 112, 125, 138; dialect Io8; meters 108. 
 
 Aleuadae of Thessaly 103, 114, 119. 
 
 Alexander 309, 322, 344, 353, 366, 402, 
 414, 450, 462 ; biographers of 499 ; 
 death of 354, 362, 397; historians of 
 498 ; pupil of Aristotle 397. 
 
 Alexander Aphrodisias commenta- 
 tor of Aristotle 411. 
 
 Alexander Severus 472, 480. 
 
 Alexandria the critics of 45; founded 
 414 ; Library of 365, 414, 445, 454, 456 ; 
 Museum at 415. 
 
 Alexandrian age characteristics of 435; 
 philosophy in 451. 
 
 Alexandrian Literature 414-461. 
 
 Alexis 282, 307, 308, 309. 
 
 Amasis of Egypt 98. 
 
 Ameipsias 287, 292. 
 
 Ammonius Saccas the Neo-PIatonist 504. 
 
 Amphipolis 175, 258, 350. 
 
 Amphis Amphicrates of 307. 
 
 Amphissa 359. 
 
 Amphitheus 285. 
 
 Amyntas II of Macedonia 396. 
 
 525 
 
526 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Amyot translator of Plutarch 482. 
 
 ANACREON of Tecs 86, loi, lOg-105, 
 113, 117, 125, 283, 333; dialect 104; 
 meters 104 ; Anacreontea 104-105. 
 
 Anactoria 100. 
 
 Ananius 90. 
 
 ANAXAi^ORAS of Clazomenae 149-150, 
 175. 239. 326, 369. 
 
 Anaxandrides 282. 
 
 Anaximander 145, 153. 
 
 Anaximenes 145. 
 
 Anaximenes of Lampsacus Rhetoric to 
 Alexander ascribed to 408. 
 
 Andocides 330-332, 360; On the 
 Mysteries 331 ; On the Peace 331 ; On 
 the Return 331. 
 
 Andromeda rival of Sappho 100. 
 
 Andronicus of Rhodes 397. 
 
 Anthology Palatine 105, 240, 418, 
 432, 445-450 : epigram of ApoUo- 
 nius in 422 ; of Callimachus on Aratus 
 426; epitaph of Euripides 136; epigram 
 on Erinna 118; epigrams of Nicias 
 434; epigram on the nine lyric poets 
 126; Platonic epigrams 393; epigram 
 on Ibycus 113; epitaph of Nonnus 
 467; imitation of Musaeus 47c. 
 
 Anthology of Philip of Thessalonica 437. 
 
 Anthology of Planudes 445. 
 
 Antigonus of Carystus Wonderbook 
 456. 
 
 Antigonus of Carystus the epigrammatist 
 
 4S7- 
 
 Antigonus of Macedonia patron of Aratus 
 427. 
 
 Antimachus of Colophon 24, 51, 419; 
 Lyde of 52, 416, 447; Thebais of 51, 
 118. 
 
 Antimenidas brother of Alcaeus 96. 
 
 Antiochus of Alexandria 97. 
 
 Antiochus of Commagene 456. 
 
 Antiochus the Seleucid 421. 
 
 Antiochus of Syria 463. 
 
 Antipater of Sidon 40, 449 ; epigram 
 on Erinna 118; on Ibycus 113. 
 
 Antipater Graeco-Roman epigram- 
 matist 471. 
 
 Antipater Macedonian general 355, 36a, 
 
 Antiphanes 306, 307-308. 
 
 Antiphon 175, 180, 327-329, 332; 
 
 Tetralogies 328. 
 Antisthe.nes 374-375. 
 Antonines Atticism under the 478 ; their 
 
 Phil-Hellenism 466, 489. 
 Antoninus Pius foundation of chairs of 
 
 rhetoric by 4B9. 
 Antonius Diogenes The Wonders Bf 
 
 yond Thule of 500. 
 Antony Mark 456, 
 Anyte of Tegea 448. 
 Anytus, accuser of Socrates 371. 
 Apelles 438, 441. 
 Aphetae 158. 
 Aphidna 74. 
 
 Apollodorus the musician 119. 
 Apollodorus Bibliotheca of 222. 
 Apollonius of Rhodes 41, 118, 198, 415, 
 
 417, 419, i22-iZ6, 435, 466, 467; 
 
 Argonautica 423-426; attaclied by 
 
 Callimachus 418; epigram against 
 
 Callimachus 422 ; Longinus on 488. 
 Apollonius of Tyana 499-500. 
 Appian 480. 
 Apuleius 495. 
 Aratus of Soli 426-427 ; Phaenomena 
 
 426. 453- 
 
 Aratus the patriot 464. 
 
 Archelaus of Macedonia 52, 135, 136, 
 176, 239, 240, 269, 414. 
 
 Archidamus of Sparta 176, 178, 180. 
 
 Archilochus 26, 74, 85-88, 97, 103, 
 115, 186, 213, 229, 271, 307, 446; 
 epigram of Theocritus on 435 ; Longi- 
 nus on 88 ; beast fables in 33 ; meters 
 88. 
 
 Archytas of Tarentum 380. 
 
 Arctinus 48, 49. 
 
 Areopagus council of 208. 
 
 Arginusae battle of 297. 
 
 Argonauts saga of 121. 
 
 Arion of Lesbos, 108-109, 136, 186, 
 187; dialect 109; Herodotus on 108. 
 
 Aristaenetus writer of romance 417. 
 
 Aristagoras of Miletus 152, 156. 
 
 Aristarchus 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31, 34, 39 
 
 415. 437, 457- 
 Aristeides the statesman 287, 326. 
 Aristeides the sophist 490-491,492; 
 
 avoidance of Roman names by 503; 
 
INDEX 
 
 527 
 
 imitated by Libanius 502; purism of 
 499- 
 
 Aristippus 319. 375-376; in Lucian 
 497- 
 
 Aristobulus the historian 450. 
 
 Aristogeiton and Harmodius 114, 181, 
 348 ; SGolion to 138. 
 
 Aristomenes the Messenian 422. 
 
 Aristonicus Homeric scholiast 25. 
 
 Aristonous Paean of 137. 
 
 Aristophanes 170, 232, 249, 265, 274, 
 277, 282, 283-305, 308, 312, 428; 
 Ackamians 266, 271, 283-284, 289, 295, 
 327 ; Aeolosicon 303 ; Babylonians, 283, 
 285: Banqueters 283, 287; Birds 292- 
 294, 304: Clouds 205, 251, 277, 283, 
 287-289, 290; attaclc on Socrates in 
 370 : Cocalus 303 ; Ecclesiazousae 300- 
 301; Frogs 193, ig6, 206, 213, 214, 217, 
 223, 239, 261, 269, 274, 277, 280, 297- 
 300, 304, 305 ; Gerytades 269 ; Knights 
 276, 279, 280, 282, 283, 286-287 i I-ysis- 
 trata 294-295; Peace 112, 277, 281, 
 2S9, 291-292 ; Pluius 283, 302-303 ; 
 Proagon 296 ; Thesmophoriazousae 247, 
 24S, 269, 277, 295-297; on Ibycus 113 ; 
 Wasps 190, 277, 287, 289-291 ; refer- 
 ence to Aesop 473 ; dialect 304; 
 echoed by Herodas 443 ; estimate of 
 by Plutarch 483; meters 304; on 
 Socrates 166; on the Seven against 
 Thebes 196 ; parody of Herodotus 155, 
 of Stesichorus 112. 
 
 Aristophanes of Byzantium 25, 34, 311, 
 415 ; Platonic canon of 382. 
 
 Aristotle 171, 182, 249, 275, 300, 303, 
 309, 312, 332, 336, 373, 396-411, 451, 
 452, 454, 484, 500 ; Analytics 398 ; 
 Categories 398 ; Constitution of Ath- 
 ens 403, 438, style of 411 ; Constitu- 
 tions 403; De Anivia 399 ; De Caelo 
 399 ; Eudemian Ethics 400, 401 ; 
 Nicomachean Ethics 397, 400-401 ; 
 History of Animals 399, 457; Letters 
 408; Magna Moralia 401; Metaphys- 
 ics 399, on Socrates 372, on the Pla- 
 tonic Ideas 389; Organon^gi; Physics 
 399; Poems 408, Eiegy To Eudemus 
 408, Scolion To Virtue 138, 408 ; Poet- 
 ics 187, 192, 194, 223, 226, 257, 262, 
 
 268, 269, 271, 272, 279, 404-406, on 
 tragedy 191; Politics 301, 401, 402, 
 404; Rhetoric 223, 327, 397, 406, 453, 
 47Si 486, on the Gorgianic manner, 411 ; 
 Sophistici Elenchi 39S ; Topics 398 ; as a 
 critic 477; as a witness to the genuine- 
 ness of Platonic dialogues 382; com- 
 pared with Longinus, 487; contribu- 
 tions to Natural History 410 ; critic of 
 the Platonic Ideas 399 ; echoed in 
 pseudo- Platonic dialogues 382; loss 
 of the popular works of 398 ; not a 
 reformer 411 ; on Democritus 151 ; on 
 Education 402; on Empedocles 149; 
 on God 410; on Herodotus 154; on 
 Hippocrates 161; on slavery 402; on 
 Stesichorus no; on the life of specu- 
 lation 409 ; on Oedipus Tyrannus 405 ; 
 quotes Sappho 98; reminiscences of 
 Plato in 401; style 411; Paraphrases 
 of by Themistius 502. 
 
 Arnold Matthew 237 ; echoes Pindar in 
 Merope 123; Fragment of an Antigone 
 222 ; imitates Moschus in Thyrsis 437 ; 
 Celtic Literature quoted 123 ; on Pin- 
 dar 123 ; on Theocritus Idyl i; 433. 
 
 Arrian 323, 478-479. 
 
 Arsinoe wife of Ptolemy 433, 438. 
 
 Artaxerxes 159, 317. 
 
 Artemis temple of at Ephesus 106, 147. 
 
 Artemisia of Caria 154, 350. 
 
 Artemisium 115, 158. 
 
 Asarhaddon of Assyria 73. 
 
 ASCLEPIADES of Samos 118, 446-447. 
 
 Asclepius 136 ; temple of at Cos 162. 
 
 Ascra 54, 56. 
 
 Asianism 172, 451, 454-455, 474, 476, 
 484; Dionys. Hal. on 490; in Aris- 
 teides 491 ; in the writers of romance 
 501 ; in Himerius 502 ; opposed by 
 Dionys. Hal. 488. 
 
 Aspasia 181. 
 
 Assos 396. 
 
 Assuan Herodotus at 155. 
 
 Athenaeus 46, Literary Dinner {Deip- 
 nosophists) of 306; on Sappho 99; 
 collection of fragments of Comedy 509. 
 
 Athens chronicles of Atthides 403, con- 
 stitution of described by Aristotle 403 ; 
 develops the Axaxaa, 187 ; Dionysus at 
 
528 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 185; Herodotus at 154; influence on 
 Herodotus 160; influence on the 
 Homeric Poems 23; opposed to 
 Persia 156; plague at 16S; praise of 
 in Euripides 267 ; praise of in Isocrates 
 341 ; praise of in Pindar 120 ; praise of 
 in the Menexenus 393 ; rhetoric at 166 ; 
 sophists at 166. 
 
 Atomists 148, 150, 379. 
 
 Atossa 195. 
 
 Attains I 456. 
 
 Atthis pupil of Sappho 100. 
 
 Atticism 455, 463, 477, 474, 478, 484, 486; 
 in Appian 481, in Arrian 479, in Plu- 
 tarch 483 ; at Smyrna 490 ; influence 
 of Rome on 488 ; ridiculed by Lucian 
 489, 498. 
 
 Aurelian emperor 486. 
 
 Ausonius Mosella of 469. 
 
 Babrius 90, 468, 472-473. 
 
 Babylon 154, 156. 
 
 Bacchylides 113, 120, 125, 126-133, 
 144, 187, 209, 229, 292, 362; lo 130; 
 Theseus 130, 187; relation to Pindar 
 127 ; compared with Pindar 129 ; dia- 
 lect 132; dithyrambs 129; meters 132; 
 style 132 ; Longinus on 488. 
 
 Battle of the Frogs and Mice {Batrach- 
 omyomachia) 68. 
 
 Battus of Cyrene 156, 415. 
 
 Bechtel on Homer 19, 20 ; original Iliad 
 of 37. 
 
 Beeching translation of Alcman 107. 
 
 B6rard on the geography of the Odyssey 
 
 33- 
 Berenice wife of Ptolemy 417. 
 Bethe on the Homeric saga 15. 
 BlON of Smyrna 213, 488. 
 Bion of Borysthenes Cynic and Cyrenaic 
 
 37S. 
 Blass on Antisthenes 374 ; on Menander 
 
 311 ; on the rhythms of Demosthenes 
 
 357, 476. 
 Boccaccio on the plague at Florence 182. 
 Boeotia reputation of 124; saga of in 
 
 Corinna 119. 
 Boileau on the Unities 405. 
 Borchardt 133. 
 Brasidas 173. 
 
 Browning E. The Dead Pan 483. 
 
 Browning R. Aristophanes' Apology 9, 
 189, 217, 233, 239, 256, 267, 287; Arte- 
 mis Prologizes 245; Balaustion's Ad^ 
 venture 191, 241, 242; A Blot in the 
 'Scutcheon zi^ ; Pauline 206 ; Waring 
 
 257- 
 Brutus admiration of Polybius 466. 
 Bumet on Eudemus of Rhodes 401. 
 Byron 105 ; Prometheus 198. 
 
 Cadmus of Miletus 152. 
 
 Caecilius of Calacte 487 ; Attic Lexicon 
 
 of, 488. 
 Caesar 178, 311. 
 Callias son of Hipponicus 167, 281, 319, 
 
 442. 
 Callimachus 90, 118, 37S, 415-422, 
 
 434. 435. 451. 457, 500; Causes 416- 
 
 417, 421, 469 ; elegies 427 ; Epigrams 
 418-419 ; HecaU 419-420 ; Hymns /[iy~ 
 
 418, 453: Hymn To Artemis echoed 
 by Vergil 421; Ibis 417, 422; The 
 Lock of Berenice 417; describes the 
 Phaenomena of Aratus 426; imitated 
 by Nonnus 467; quarrel with ApoUo- 
 nius of Rhodes 422. 
 
 Callinus 71, 73-74. 
 
 Callisthenes 450. 
 
 Callistratus 283, 284. 
 
 Cambyses 135, 156. 
 
 Campbell Lochiel's Warning 223. 
 
 Cannae 464, 
 
 Capps on recognition of Comedy by the 
 State 276. 
 
 Carlyle on the Iliad 30, 
 
 Carneades 170, 375. 
 
 Carrhae 500. 
 
 Carthage 381; mutiny of mercenaries at 
 465 ; sack of 463, 
 
 Cassander 310. 
 
 Cassius Dio 480^81. 
 
 Catharsis in Aristotle Poetics 404. 
 
 Cato 170. 
 
 Catullus 200, 251, 437; Epithalamia of 
 102; To Lesbia loi; echoes ApoUo- 
 nius of Rhodes 426; imitates Calli- 
 machus 413, 421; refrain in 432; 
 Sapphic meter of 102; translaJcS 
 Csdlimachus, 417. 
 
INDEX 
 
 529 
 
 Cephalas Constantinus Palatine Anthol- 
 
 <K)'of44S. 
 Cephalus 332 ; in the Republic of Plato 
 
 392. 
 Cersobleptes of Thrace 348. 
 Chaeronea battle of 136, 308, 340, 343, 
 
 353. 36s. 369- 
 Chapman last part of Marlowe's Hero 
 
 and Leander by 470. 
 Charaxus brother of Sappho 98. 
 Charidemus 348. 
 
 Charmides pupil of Socrates 100, 379. 
 Charon of Lampsacus 153. 
 Chaucer Legend of Good Women on 
 
 Hypermnestra 194. 
 Cb^nier imitation of Meleager by 449; 
 
 translator of the Oaristys 435. 
 Chesterfield Lord 340. 
 Chevalier A. Mimes of 442. 
 Chionides 275. 
 Choerilus of Athens 188, 193. 
 Choerilus of Samos epic poet 52. 
 Choral melic 105-137; dialect of 132; 
 
 myths in 121 ; types of 120. 
 Chorizontes the 31. 
 Chorus in Comedy 277 ; suppression of 
 
 305; in Tragedy 186, 187, 188, 19S; 
 
 composed of satyrs 109; in Aeschylus 
 
 211; in Sophocles 235; in fAiloctetes 
 
 233- 
 
 Christ on the Platonic Letters 382. 
 
 Chrysanthius the Neo-Platonist 508. 
 
 Chrysippus 376, 452. 
 
 Cicero no, 234, 275, 338; Hortensius 
 398; on Demetrius of Phalerum 454; 
 on Democritus 151 ; on Gorgianic 
 prose 357 ; on Hypereides 363 ; on 
 imitation of the Alexandrians by 
 Roman poets 421; on Isocrates 339; 
 on Polybius 463 ; on style of Aristotle 
 411; on Theophrastus 452; on Thu- 
 cydides 182 ; style of 343 ; translator 
 of Aratus 427. 
 
 Cimmerians 85 ; invasion of S4, 73- 
 
 Cimon 278, 
 
 Cinesias 304. 
 
 Cithara history of 93. 
 
 Cl-EANTHES 376 ; Hymn to Zeus 453. 
 
 Cleisthenes of Sicyon 22, 188. 
 
 Clement of Alexandria 94, 306. 
 
 HIST. GREEK LIT. — 34 
 
 Cleobulus of Lindus 69. 
 
 Cleochares of Athens 137, 
 
 Cleon 176, 178, 180, 281, 284, 283, s86, 
 
 290. 
 Cleopatra 456. 
 Cleophon 281, 300. 
 Cnossos 22, 105. 
 Colchis Herodotus at 135, 
 Collins Churton on Longinus 486. 
 Colonus 216, 233. 
 Coluthus epic poet 468. 
 COMEUY 271-316; Dorian origin 272; 
 
 Middle 282, 303, 305-308 ; New 274, 
 
 308-313; Agon 276-277; Parabasis 
 
 277 ; ridicule of poets in 97. 
 Commodus 466. 
 Congreve Pindaric odes of 123. 
 Constantine emperor in Julian Caesars 
 
 504- 
 Constantius emperor 503. 
 CORAX of Sicily 165, 166. 
 Corcyra revolution at 179. 
 
 CORINNA 118, 121. 
 
 Corinth 186; dithyramb at 108, 109; 
 claim of Corinth to invention of tragedy 
 186 ; sack of by Mummius 463. 
 
 Coronea battle of 318. 
 
 Cos Dorian colony 272; school of medi- 
 cine at 162; resort of Alexandria 427, 
 438. 
 
 Cowley Pindaric odes of 123 ; Praise of 
 Pindar 124. 
 
 Crannon 354. 
 
 Crassus 264 ; defeat of 500. 
 
 Crates the Academician 451. 
 
 Crates comic poet 279-280. 
 
 Crates of Mallus Homeric critic 26, 437, 
 
 Cratinus 278-279, 282, 286, 287, 304. 
 
 Cratylus 379. 
 
 Creophylus of Samos 47. 
 
 Crete excavations in 21; labyrinth of 
 106; saga of 48. 
 
 Crinagoras of Mitylene 471. 
 
 Critias 329, 371, 379, 383. 
 
 Crito 371. 
 
 Croesus 78 ; myth of 144 ; in Bacchylides 
 131; in Herodotus 131, 153, 138, 160. 
 
 Crusius on the Paean of Aristonous 137. 
 
 Ctesias 159. 
 
 Cunaxa 320. 
 
530 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Cyclic epics 40, 45 ; Theogonia 46 ; Ae- 
 thiopis 48, 2i8, source of Quintus of 
 Smyrna 467; Cypria 46, 48, 194, zoi, 
 209, 231,253,257,261, 266; Little Iliad 
 47, 49, 218, 231 ; Oedipodea 221 ; Re- 
 turns 49-50, 201 ; Taking of Oechalia 
 47, 228 ; Tkebais 46, 209, 221 ; Sack of 
 llios 49 ; scorn of Callimachus for 421 ; 
 Fragments of 45-52 ; Tetegonia 50. 
 
 Cyme 17, 54. 
 
 Cynaethus 16, 18, 24, 66. 
 
 Cynics the 374, 376. 
 
 Cynosarges the 374. 
 
 Cyrenaics the 375, 377. 
 
 Cyrene 156. 
 
 Cyrus the Great 155, 322. 
 
 Cyrus the Younger 160, 317, 320. 
 
 Daemons in Plutarch 483. 
 
 Damascius Neo-Platonist 412, 508. 
 
 Dante 406; Earthly Paradise of 390; 
 Inferno 207, 219, 252, on Aristotle 409. 
 
 Daphnis legend 9, 98 ; in Stesichorus in. 
 
 Darius son of Hystaspes 119, 156, 195. 
 
 Deceleia 177. 
 
 Defoe on the Black Death 182. 
 
 Deinarchus 366. 
 
 Delium battle at 252. 
 
 Delphi attitude to Persia 119; response 
 concerning Socrates 369 ; games at 
 121 ; Treasury at 137 ; Hymns found 
 at 137. 
 
 Demeter at Rleusis 193. 
 
 DEMETRIUS of Phalerum 309, 454, 486. 
 
 Demetrius On Style 393, 407, 408, 486. 
 
 Demetrius Poliorcetes 310. 
 
 Democritus 150-151, 162; dialect 151; 
 ignored by Plato 379 ; laughter of 499. 
 
 Demodocus of Leros 80. 
 
 Demosthe.mes 133, 216, 337, 340, 343, 
 347-357, 358, 359, 363, 397, 407, 475 ; 
 Ag. Aphoius 347; Ag. Leptines 348; 
 Ag. Meidlas 352; First Philippic 351 ; 
 Second Philippic 352 ; Third Philippic 
 353 • Fourth Philippic 353 ; For the 
 Megalopolitans 349 ; For the Rhodians 
 350; Olynthiacs 352; On the Cherso- 
 nese 353 ; On the Crown 309, 354, 356, 
 360, 361 ; On the False Embassy 353 ; 
 On the Peace 352 ; On the Symmories 
 
 liVi^ 356; Private Orations 348; 
 Dionys. Hal. on 477; echoed by 
 Deinarchus 366; model of Atticists 
 491 ; rhythms 357, 476. 
 
 Demosthenes the general 286. 
 
 De Quincey Essay on Style, 344 ; on the 
 Ilic^ 30 ; quoted 178. 
 
 Destiny in Aeschylus 211. 
 
 Diaslceuasts the 24, 
 
 Didymus Homeric scholiast 25. 
 
 Dieuchidas of Megara 23. 
 
 Digamma the 18 ; in the cyclic epics 51 ; 
 in the Homeric Hymns 65, 
 
 DIO of Prusa 232, 255, 480, 491-492; 
 compared with Lucian 499 ; Epictetus 
 on style of 492 ; Euboean Tale of 492. 
 
 DiO of Syracuse 380, 381 ; Plato's epi- 
 gram on 394. 
 
 Diodes friend of Meleager 449. 
 
 DiODORUS of Sicily 321, 474. 
 
 Diodorus son of Xenophon 318. 
 
 Diogenes Laertius 377, 484-485; 
 quoted 149; quotes Aristotle's will 397. 
 
 Diogenes of Sinope 374. 
 
 Dionysia City or Great 187, 276. 
 
 DiONYSIUS of Halicarnassus loi, 177, 
 l8t, 182, 332, 334, 340, 350, 374, 474- 
 477, 478, 487, 489; Early History 0/ 
 Rome 474; First Letter to Ammaeus 
 475 ; on Aristotle 396 ; Letter to Pom- 
 peius 393, 476 ; On Isaeus 337, 338 ; On 
 Lysias 336; On the Ancient Orators 
 476-477 ; On the Arrangement 0/ 
 Words ^yj, 466, 475-476; On the 
 Eloquence of Demosthenes 355 ; On 
 Thucydldes /Y76\ on Atticism 488; on 
 Deinarchus 366 ; on Democritus 151; 
 on Herodotus 160; on Theopompus 
 324 ; quotes Sappho ici. 
 
 Dionysius I of Sicily 334, 339, 380. 
 
 Dionysius H of Sicily 381. 
 
 Dionysus 187, 188; in Thrace 11; the 
 god of Comedy 271; the god of 
 Tragedy 185, 186; in the Frogs 196; 
 in the Iliad and Odyssey 185 ; theater 
 
 of 344- 
 Diopeithes 309. 
 Dioscorides 187. 
 
 Dioscuri the 106; rescue Simonides 114. 
 DIPHILUS 97, 308 ; on Sappho 97. 
 
INDEX 
 
 S3I 
 
 Dithyramb the 109, 186, 187; in AriS' 
 
 totle Poetics 404; literary 109; of 
 
 Arion 108; of Bacchylides 129, 132; 
 
 of Pindar 124; of Fraxilla 118; of 
 
 Simonides 115. 
 Domitian banishes Dio 491 ; banishes 
 
 the philosophers 479. 
 Dorians ' claim to Comedy 272 ; dialect 
 
 in tragic choruses 188; position of 
 
 women among 99, 106; centripetal 
 
 genius of 386. 
 DSrpfeld date of Troy 14 ; on the home 
 
 of Odysseus 31 ; theory of the stage 
 
 191. 
 DosiADAS of Crete 447. 
 DouRis of £amos 450. 
 Doyle translation of Pindar 123. 
 Drama The Beginnings of the 185-193 ; 
 
 in Aristotle Poetics 404 ; Alexandrian 
 
 444; Graeco- Roman 473 ; Satyric 189. 
 Drummond William the Neo-Platonist 
 
 and poet 507. 
 Dryden 475. 
 Dyer Louis on the question of the Greek 
 
 stage 191. 
 
 Earle Bishop 452. 
 
 Eion harbor town of Amphipolis 176. 
 
 Elatea occupation of 361. 
 
 Eleatic school of philosophy 146, 147, 
 171. 
 
 Elegy characteristics of 73 ; derivation 
 71 ; dialect 72 ; meter 71 ; of Simoni- 
 des 114; Alexandrian founded by 
 Philetas 414; sententious 81 ; Alexan- 
 drian elegists 76 ; Roman elegists 76. 
 
 Elegy and Iambic 71-93. 
 
 Eleusis 193. 
 
 Emerson on Plato 391; on Plutarch 
 482. 
 
 Empedocles of Agrigentum 148-149, 
 162, 171. 
 
 Engelbrecht on the scolion 137. 
 
 Ephesus temple of Artemis at 147. 
 
 Ephialtes 208: 
 
 Ephorus 321, 324, 325, 338, 480. 
 
 Epicharmus 120, 272-274, 
 
 Epicrates on the studies of the Academy 
 402, 
 
 Epictetus 412, 453, 479 ; on the style of 
 
 Dio 49a; Enchiridion 479; Lectures 
 and Discourses 479; compared with 
 Marcus Aurelius 493. 
 
 Epicurus 309, 377, 451, 452, 464; 
 praised by Lucian 497. 
 
 Epidaurus 136. 
 
 Epigrams Homeric 69; inscriptional 
 450; of Simonides 115; Alexandrian 
 445-450; Graeco-Roman 471-472. 
 
 Epinicia of Bacchylides 127 ; of Pindar 
 120, 121; of Simonides 115, 116. 
 
 Epos Aeolic 18, 19 ; didactic 53 ; heroic 
 53; Pierian 9-12. 
 
 Eratosthenes 375, 415, 422, 461. 
 
 Eresus birthplace of Sappho 97. 
 
 Erinna of Telos 118; epigrams of 
 448. 
 
 Erotic Eragment The 443-444. 
 
 Etna death of Empedocles on 149; 
 foundation of the city 197. 
 
 Eubulus 349, 351, 358, 364. 
 
 Eucleides the archon 333. 
 
 EUCLEIDES of Megara 374, 380. 
 
 Euclid the geometer 414. 
 
 Eudemus of Rhodes 401. 
 
 Eudoxus 426, 451. 
 
 Eugammon of Cyrene 50, 375. 
 
 EUMELUS of Corinth 105. 
 
 EUNAPius of Sardis 486, 501 ; Lives of 
 501 ; on lamblichus 50S. 
 
 EUPHORION, 421, 467. 
 
 EUPOLIS 280, 281-283, 284, 288, 327; 
 Maricas 289 ; Parasites 292. 
 
 Euripides ioi, 170, 195, 213, 217, 223, 
 231, 233, 237, 238-S70, 274, 280, 284, 
 285, 289, 291, 29s, 301, 312; Alcestis 
 240-242 ; Andromache 250 ; Androm- 
 eda 247, 248, 296; Antigone 266; 
 Bacchae 11, 186, 250, 252, 261, 262-264, 
 imitated by Nonnus 467 ; Cyclops 260- 
 261; Daughters of Pe lias 2-^^] Electra 
 205, 224, .255-256; Erechtheus 365; 
 Hecuba w;i-'2Ki'i,i6(s\ Helen in, 220, 
 247-248, 261, 296: Heracleidae 250; 
 Hippolytus 244-246, 300; Hippofytus 
 Veiled 244; Ion 250, 254-255, 440; 
 Iphigeneia among the Taurians 250, 
 256-^57 ; Iphigeneia at Aulis 260, 261- 
 262, 267; Mad Heracles 229, 250, 
 253-254 ; Medea 242-243, 268 ; OresUi 
 
532 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 248-249, 250, 261, 1285 ; Fhoenician 
 Women, 7.^; /\^kesasz^S,26o; Suppli- 
 ants 252; Telepkus 266, 285; Trojan 
 Women 37, 246-247, 250, 251; ac- 
 quaintance with Timotheus 135, 136 ; 
 epitaph of in Anthology 136, 176; fr. 
 translated 150; in the Frogs 196, 298- 
 299; monodies of 444; on Atalanta 
 128 : popularity of 473 ; Euripidoma- 
 nia 248, 267. 
 
 Eustathius 28. 
 
 Euthydemus in Plato EutAydemus 173. 
 
 Euxine the 155. 
 
 Evans A. J. in Crete 21. 
 
 Fayoflm the 158. 
 
 Fick on Homer 16, theory of Aeolic epos 
 
 18, 19 ; on Hesiod 55, 
 Flaminius 463. 
 Folk-songs 138. 
 Fronto 480. 
 Furtwangler Masterpieces 313, 
 
 Gallus friend of Vergil 421. 
 
 Gemoll 66. 
 
 Germanicus 471; translator of Aratus 
 
 427. 
 Gibbon 343 ; on Simplicius 412 ; on the 
 
 Iliad 30. 
 Gnome the in Greek literature 81. 
 Goethe 105, 247, 262; Iphigenie a-uf 
 
 Taaris 257; compared with Alcman 
 
 107. 
 Gomperz on Demosthenes 356; on the 
 
 Hippocratic corpus 163 ; on the Men- 
 
 exenus 393; Jr. of Hecale published 
 
 by 420. 
 GORGIAS of Leontini 100, 161, 169-172, 
 
 17s. 183, 236, 269, 287, 327, 334, 336, 
 
 338, 343. 364. 374, 387, 455. 45fi. 49°; 
 
 Funeral Oration 170, 171 ; Helen 171, 
 
 341 ; Palamedes 171, 
 Gorgo rival of Sappho 100. 
 Gosse English Odes 125. 
 Gray Pindaric Odes 125; Progress of 
 
 Poesy 190 : Vicissitude 313. 
 Grossmith mimes of 442. 
 Grote on the sophists 173. 
 Grylhis son of Xenophon 318, 
 Gyges, 85. 
 
 Gymnopaedia Spartan festival 106. 
 Gyrinna pupil of Sappho 100. 
 
 Hadrian 305, 445, 466; Atticism under 
 
 478 ; phil-Hellenism of 489. 
 Halicarnassus 154; dialect of 161. 
 Hall Bishop 452. 
 Harmodiiis and Aristogeiton 114, 181, 
 
 348 ; scolion to 138. 
 Harpalus 355, 362; the affair of Dein- 
 
 archus on 366. 
 Hecataeus of Miletus 152-153, 157, 
 
 159- 
 Hegel Aesthetics 223. 
 Hegesias of Magnesia 455, 486, 488. 
 Hegesias writer of cyclic epic 47. 
 Heidelberg Palatine Library at, 445. 
 Heliodorus of Phoenicia . writer of 
 
 romance 500. 
 Hellanicus of Lesbos 158-154, 157, 
 
 159. 403- 
 
 Heracleidae Dorian dynasty 74. 
 
 Heracleides the Academician 451. 
 
 Heracleitus of Ephesus 10, 59, 117, 
 146, 147, 162, 370, 376, 379, 498. 
 
 Heracleitus of Halicarnassus friend of 
 Callimachus 419. 
 
 Heracles in Bacchylides 128; in Comedy 
 273 ; a Dorian hero 47 ; saga of in 
 Ibycus 112; in Stesichorus iii. 
 
 Herbert George, The Altar of 447. 
 
 Herculaneum frag, of Epicurus discov- 
 ered at 377. 
 
 Hereas of Megara 23. 
 
 Herford B. mimes of 442. 
 
 Hermae mutilation of 181, 330. 
 
 Hermann, G. Homeric theory of 27. 
 
 Hermeias of Atarneus 396, 408. 
 
 Herodas 81, 90, 255, 27s, 403, 438-443, 
 452,473; dialect 443; meter 439; style 
 442 ; parallels with Theocritus 443. 
 
 Herodes Atticus 490. 
 
 Herodianus Homeric scholiast 25. 
 
 Herodotus 47, 61, in, 144, 153, 154- 
 161, 170, 175, 178, 179, 181, 189, 221, 
 228, 247, 301, 403, 450, 47S, 498 ; com- 
 pared with, Thucydides 177 ; dialect 
 -161; Dionys. Hal. on 476; imitated 
 by Arrian 479 ; influence on Aristotle 
 404 ; on Arion 108 ; on community of 
 
INDEX 
 
 533 
 
 wives 386 ; on Salamis 134 ; on Sappho 
 98 ; style 161, 407. 
 
 Herrick R. quoted 59. 
 
 Hesiod 83-63, 124, 307, 466; date 54; 
 Asironomia 61 ; Catalogue of Women 
 61 ; Eoiae 38, 61 ; Shield of Heracles 
 61; Theogony 55, 60-61; Works and 
 Days S3, 54. SS-60. 360; Melampodia 
 61 ; attacked by Xenophanes 146 ; 
 dialect 35; contest with Homer 155; 
 ethics of 62; imitated by Aratus 426; 
 imitated by Vergil 58 ; prose version 
 of by Acusilaus 152 ; style 62. 
 
 Hiatus 330, 338, 339 ; in Aeschines 361 ; 
 in Demosthenes 356; in Hypereides 
 364; in Plutarch 483; in Xenophon 
 324; avoided by Diodorus 474; 
 . avoided by Polybius 465 ; avoided by 
 Strabo 477. 
 
 Hibeh Papyri 309. 
 
 Hiero I of Syracuse 115, 117, 120, 126, 
 127, 193, 19s, 197, 273, 414, 428. 
 
 Hiero H of Syracuse 428. 
 
 Hierocles of Alexandria 509. 
 
 Killer on the scolion 137. 
 
 Himera foundation of 109. 
 
 Himerius of Prusa 502; avoidance of 
 Roman names by 503. 
 
 Hipparchus of Athens 103, 113, 115, 
 414. 
 
 Hippias of Athens 103. 
 
 Hippias of Elis 166. 
 
 Hippocleas the Thessalian 119. 
 
 Hippocrates 161-163. 
 
 HiPPONAX 86, 89-90, 97, 271, 435, 439, 
 473- 
 
 Hissarlik 14, 22. 
 
 Homer birthplace and name 15, 16, 17; 
 attacked by Xenophanes 146 ; contest 
 with Hesiod 55 ; in Lucian True Story 
 498. Homeric Poems 13-44; Atti- 
 cized 23, 24; birthplace of 16, 17; 
 dialect of 18 ; editions city and indi- 
 vidual 24 ; influence on Greek Litera- 
 ture 40; interpolation of 28; kernel 
 theory of 27; Longinus on 488 ; quoted 
 by Lycurgus 365; quotation of in 
 pre-Alexandrian writers 24; Homeric 
 Question 15 ff. ; writing in 26 ; Homeric 
 reserve 41; Homeric types 40. Iliad 
 
 160, 210, 218, 224, 22s, 231, 258, 259; 
 Codex Venetus 509; compared with 
 Odyssey 32, by Longinus 487 ; date of 
 14: echoed in Odyssey 31; growth of 
 29; Venetian scholia 25, 26; Odyssey 
 203, 209, 210, 218, 220, 224, 260, 424; 
 compared with Iliad 32, by Longinus 
 487 ; geography of 33 ; organic unity 
 of 34; Orphism 39; quoted on 
 athletic contests 121. 
 
 Homeric Epigrams 69. 
 
 Homeric Hymns 64-70 ; To Aphrodite 
 65, 66 ; To Ares 68 ; To Delian Apollo 
 16, 64, 65; To Demeter 66, 67; To 
 Dionysus 68 ; To Hermes 65, 66 ; To 
 Pythian Apollo 66 ; date 65 ; dialect 63. 
 
 Homeridae 16. 
 
 Horace 279; Ars Poetica 232; Epistles 
 273, on Aristippus 375, on satires of 
 Bion 375 ; Odes ig8, 220, 437 ; meters 
 446 ; Sapphic meter 102 ; at Philippi 86; 
 compared with Alcman 107; echoes 
 Alcaeus 97; echoes Anacreon 103; 
 echoes Aristotle Rhetoric 4pfj; imi- 
 tates Alcaeus 96; on Alcaeus 95; on 
 Hypermnestra 194; on Nemesis 159; 
 on Pindaric dithyrambs 124; on the 
 ship of State 96 ; on Thespis 188 ; on 
 tragedy 189; .reference to Simonides 
 116. 
 
 Hunt Leigh quoted 470. 
 
 Hyginus 131. 
 
 Hyperbolus 282, 286. 
 
 HYPEREIDES 338, 354, 355, 361-364, 
 366; Ag. Athenogenes 362-363; Ag. 
 Demosthenes 362; Funeral Oration 
 363; episode of Phryne 440, 
 
 Iambic poets 85-90, 
 
 lAMBLlCHUS SOT ; devotion of Julian to 
 
 503, 508 ; /jtfw^^o-lamblichus On the 
 
 Mysteries 508. 
 IBYCUS 103, 112-113, 117, 125; Mene- 
 
 laus and Helen in 112. 
 Icaria 187. 
 
 Ion of Chios 268. , 
 
 Ionia position of women in. loa; rise of 
 
 philosophy in 144. 
 Ionian epic elegy and Iambic are 94; 
 
 armor in Homeric Poems 19. 
 
534 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 lonians centrifugal temperament of 
 
 38s- 
 
 Ireland lack of pastoral poetry in 436. 
 
 ISAEUS 337-338; teacher of Demos- 
 thenes 356. 
 
 ISOCRATES 166, 172, 324, 330, 338-344, 
 
 354. 3S5. 356. 361. 387. 475. 488; 
 Evagoras 171, 341, plagiarized by 
 Hypereides 364 ; Ag. the sophists 342 ; 
 Antidosis 342 ; Busiris 341 ; Panatke- 
 naicus 341; Panegyricus 339; Praise 
 of Helm 341 ; relations with Plato 388 ; 
 Aristotle on 407 ; Dionys. Hal. on 
 476; debt of Aristotle to 411 ; influence 
 of style on Lycurgus 366 ; style 343 ; 
 teacher of Aristotle 396. 
 
 Isthmus of Corinth games at 121. 
 
 ISYLLUS of Epidaurus 136; Paean to 
 Apollo 136. 
 
 Ithaca identified by Dorpfeld with 
 Leucas 31. 
 
 Ithome worship of Zeus at 105. 
 
 Jason of Tralles 264. 
 
 Jebb on Euripides 255, 267. 
 
 Job Book of 198. 
 
 Jonson Ben 471, 472 ; Poetaster 307, 
 
 JOSEPHUS478. 
 
 Joubert quoted 132. 
 
 Jowett reputation as a teacher 339. 
 
 Julia Domna empress 499. 
 
 Julian emperor 501, 502, 503-S04, 510 ; 
 
 .Caesars 504 ; Hymns 503 ; Letters 503 ; 
 
 Misopogon 504 ; On Monarchy 503 ; 
 
 mourned by Libanius 502 ; on Bacchyli- 
 
 des 126; on Alcaeus 96; Platonic 
 
 vocabulary 504; style 503; Letters to 
 
 lamblichus not genuine 508. 
 Justinian 381, 462, 471; edict against 
 
 philosophers 412 ; closes the Academy 
 
 S08. 
 Juvenal on falsehood of Greek historians 
 
 Kabbadias 136. 
 
 Kaibel on influence of Herodotus on 
 
 style of Aristotle 404. 
 Kirchhoff on Herodotus 157 ; on Hesiod 
 
 62 ; on Odyssey 34, 35. 
 Koechly on Odyssey 37, 
 
 La Bruy^re imitation of Theophrastus 
 
 453- 
 Lachmann on Homer 27. 
 Lamachus in Aristophanes 284, 285. 
 Lamb Charles on The Duchess of Malfi. 
 
 249. 
 Lamian War 362. 
 Lampsacus Anaxagoras at 149. 
 Landor Agamemnon and Iphigeneia 
 
 262. 
 Lang A. translation of Antipater quoted 
 
 118. 
 Larichus brother of Sappho 99. 
 Larissa 162. 
 
 Lasus of Hermione 103, 115, 119. 
 Leaf on the Iliad 27, 30. 
 Leconte de Lisle 105. 
 Lefebre discovery of new firagment of 
 
 Menander by 311. 
 Lenaea the 187. 
 Leonidas of Sparta 114. 
 Leonidas of Tarentum 430, 447, 471 ; 
 
 the imitators of 472. 
 Leosthenes the general 362. 
 Leros 80. 
 Lesbos position of women on 100 ; Aeo- 
 
 lic 94 ; conditions in sixth century 99. 
 Lesches 50. 
 Lessing on Aristotle 406 ; on the Unities 
 
 405- 
 
 Leucas 98 ; Leucadian leap in ; iden- 
 tified by DOrpfeld as the home of 
 Odysseus 31. 
 
 Leucippus the Atomist ignored by Plato 
 
 379- 
 
 Leuctra battle of 450. 
 
 Libanius 502-503; Orations tp2\ Let- 
 ters 502. 
 
 Libya Persian invasion of 136. 
 
 Linus 10 ; Linus-Song 138. 
 
 Livy follows Polybius 466. 
 
 Llywarch Hen quoted 77. 
 
 Logographers 152-154, 177. 
 
 LONGINUS (or author of On the Sublime) 
 61, loi, 218, 254, 337, 355, 486-488 ; 
 on Archilochus 88; on Bacchylides 
 and Pindar 129: on Hypereides and 
 Demosthenes 363; on Plato 393; on 
 the Iliad 30; on Timaeus the histo- 
 rian 451 ; quotes Sappho loi. 
 
INDEX 
 
 535 
 
 LONGUS writer of romance 501 ; Daph- 
 nis and Chloe 501. 
 
 LoiiYS Pierre, Les Chansons de Bilitis 
 100. 
 
 Lucan compared with Alcman 107 ; on 
 Hero and Leander 469. 
 
 LuciAN 266, 267, 442, 492, 493-499, 
 508 ; Alexander 497 ; Anacharsis 496 ; 
 Apology 454; The Dependent Scholar 
 494 ; Dialogues of Courtesans 496 ; 
 Dialogues of the Dead 496 ; Dialogues 
 of the Gods 496; Dialogues of the Sea- 
 Gods 496 : The Disinherited 495 ; The 
 Double Indictmetit 494; on Pindar in 
 The Dream 127 ; on Atticism in Guide 
 to Rhetoric 489: Hermotimus 496; 
 How to write History 248, 497 ; Lexi- 
 phanesaffi; on Atticism in Lexiphanes 
 489; on Lycophron and Dosiadas 
 in Lexiphanes 447 ; Nigrinus 495, 
 comparison of Rome and Athens 494; 
 Peregrinus 497; Phalaris 495; Por- 
 trait Study 495 ; Praise of a Fly 495 ; 
 Praise of Demosthenes 473 ; Sale of 
 Creeds 497 ; Swans and Amber 495 ; 
 Timon 303; satirizes Homeric tradi- 
 tion in True History 47; True Story 
 498, 500; Zeus the Tragedian 265; 
 attitude to Christians 497 ; epigrams 
 assigned to 471 ; on Homer 42 ; style 
 499 ; PseudO'ljacYAn : The Halcyon 
 495; Lucius or The Ass 495; Philo- 
 patris ^^. 
 
 Lucius of Patrae 495. 
 
 Lucius Verus 494, 497. 
 
 Lucretius 202 ; echoes Thucydides 182 ; 
 on Erapedocles 148. 
 
 Lutoslawslci on chronology of Platonic 
 dialogues 383 ; stylometry 383 ; on 
 Platonic Ideas 389. 
 
 Lycambes satirized by Archilochus 87, 
 89. 
 
 Lyceum the 451 ; founded 397 ; studies 
 of 402. 
 
 Lycophron 444-445 ; Alexandra 445 ; 
 Lucian on 447. 
 
 Lycortas 462. 
 
 Lycurgus of Athens igo, 338, 364-366 ; 
 Ag. Leocrates 365. 
 
 L^ycurgus of Sparta 1^5, 
 
 Lycurgus of Thrace 186, 262, legend of 
 
 210. 
 Lygdamis of Halicarnassus 154, 
 Lynceus legend of 48, 194. 
 Lysander 267. 
 Lysias 166, 329, 332-337, 338, 355, 356, 
 
 364. 393. 4SS ; -^S- Eratosthenes 335 ; 
 
 Epitaphius ^■H; Broticus^^^; Letters 
 
 334; Olympiacus 334; Dionys. Hal. 
 
 on 476; model of hyper-Atticists 
 
 488. 
 Lysimachus of Thrace 248. ' 
 
 Macaulay 262; The Armada 202 j on 
 
 Vergil 430. 
 Macedonia Persian conquest of 156. 
 Machiavelli paraphrase of The Ass by 
 
 495- 
 Macrobius 49. 
 Maeterlinck 233. 
 Magnes 276. 
 Magnesia 85. 
 Mah^bhSrata the 27, 
 Mantinea 318, 321. 
 Manzoni on the plague at Milan 182, 
 Marathon 119, 154, 193, 216, 239 ; town 
 
 of 187. 
 Marcellinus the biographer 176. 
 Marcellus 471. 
 Marcus Aurelius 466, 479, 492-493, 
 
 494, 498 ; Julian's model 503 ; praise 
 
 of in Julian 504. 
 Margites 69, 271. 
 Mariette 106. 
 
 Marinus the disciple of Proclus 508. 
 Marlowe 468 ; Hero and Leander 469. 
 Marsyas 71. 
 Martial 98 ; Epigrams 419 ; epigram on 
 
 Callimachus 416 ; on Hero and Lean- 
 der 469 ; on Phaon 98. 
 Marvell quoted 430. 
 Mausolus of Caria 350. 
 Maximus the fourth century theurgist 
 
 508. 
 Maximus of Tyre quoted 100. 
 Maximus Planudes 170. 
 Megacles the Athenian 119. 
 Megalopolis 349, 358. 
 Megara 82, 83; Comedy at 272; Mega- 
 
 rian philosophy 374, 376. 
 
S36 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Meleager legend in art 131. 
 
 Meleager of Gadara 449, 466, 471, 
 472; Garland 393,419, 434, 445, 446, 
 447, 448 ; on Sappho 102. 
 
 Melesigenes 15. 
 
 Meles river 15. 
 
 Melic Poetry 93-142; ciioral 105- 
 137; Aeolian and Dorian 94. 
 
 Melissus of Samos 148. 
 
 Melos massacre at 179 ; sack of 176. 
 
 Memnon of Rhodes 408. 
 
 Menander comic poet 267, 268, 281, 
 308, 309-313, 414, 435, 444, 452; 
 Countryman 310 ; Girl with Short Hair 
 310; Flatterer 311; estimate of by 
 Plutarch 483. 
 
 Menander the rhetorician 489, 503. 
 
 Menippus of Gadara 375 ; influence on 
 Liician 496. 
 
 Meredith G. The Idea of Comedy 312. 
 
 Messenia 74. 
 
 Meters Alcaic 97 ; anapaestic 223 ; As- 
 clepiad 446; bucolic caesura 436; 
 choliaiubic 439, 473; choriambic 102; 
 dochmiac in the Erotic Fragment 
 443 ; elegiac in Anthology 446, in 
 tragedy 72 ; galliambic of Catullus and 
 Callimachus 421; Ionic in Alcman 
 108; logaoedic 97: skazon in Hippo- 
 nax go, in Herodas 439 ; trochaic te- 
 trameter 213, 250; Sapphic 97, 102, 
 
 Methone 351. 
 
 Midas epitaph of i6g. 
 
 Miletus 17, 135, 14s ; fall of 145, 152, 156 ; 
 philosophy of 145. 
 
 Miltiades 175, 287. 
 
 Milton 212, 244, 3SS, 406, 424, 507; 
 Lycidas 429; on Aristotle 397: on 
 Isocrates 340; compared with Vergil 
 128. 
 
 MiMNERMUS 76-77, 81; Nannojy. 
 
 Minoan remains in Crete 22. 
 
 Minos in Bacchyhdes 130. 
 
 Mitylene 95, 97. 
 
 Molifere 274, 288. 
 
 Mommsen on Polybius 464. 
 
 Montaigne compared with Plutarch 482. 
 
 Moore T. 105. 
 
 More Henry 507 ; Psychathanasia quoted 
 506. 
 
 Moryohides decree of 278. 
 MosCHUS of Syracuse 437, 213. 
 Moses quoted by Longinus 487. 
 Movers on the Linus-song 10. 
 Mummius sack of Corinth by 463. 
 Murray G, translation of Hippolytus 244,. 
 MUSAEUS epic poet 468-470 ; Htro and 
 
 Leander 500, 510. 
 MuSAEUS the seer founder of Eleusinian 
 
 Mysteries 10, 39, 468. 
 Music of Delphic Hymns 137. 
 Mycalessus massacre at 179. 
 Mycenae 17, 19, 20, 21, 22; Mycenaean 
 
 remains 19, 20, 21. 
 Mykale festival at 135. 
 Myrsilus of Mitylene 95, 97. 
 Mysia saga of 48. 
 Myths in art 131 ; in choral melic 121 j 
 
 in Plato 390-391. 
 
 Napoleon I retreat of from Moscow 
 compared with retreat of Nicias 295. 
 
 Naucratis 98. 
 
 Navarre on rhetoric of Sophocles 236, 
 
 Naxos worship of Dionysus on 186. 
 
 Nebuchadnezzar 96. 
 
 Neleus of Skepsis 397. 
 
 Nemea games at 121, 136. 
 
 Nemesis 48; in Aeschylus 211 j in He- 
 rodotus 159. 
 
 Neobule betrothed to Archilochus 87. 
 
 Neocleides 451. 
 
 Neo-Platonism at Alexandria 391; of 
 Julian 503, 504; decadence of 507, 
 S08. 
 
 Nero proclaims freedom of the Greeks 
 
 463- 
 
 Nerva 489 ; friend of Dio 491. 
 
 Newton the archaeologist 161. 
 
 NiCANDER of Colophon 456, 466. 
 
 Nicanor Homeric scholiast 25. 
 
 Nicanor son-in-law of Aristotle 396. 
 
 Nicetes of Smyrna sophist 489. 
 
 Nicias the general 179, 182, 286, 294: 
 Peace of 176, 291, 295. 
 
 Nicias of Miletus the poet friend of The- 
 ocritus 434. 
 
 Nicomachus, son of Aristotle 397, 400. 
 
 Niese Homeric theory of 13. 
 
 Nietzsche 267, 
 
INDEX 
 
 537 
 
 Nigrinus the Platonist 495. 
 
 Nile river 158 ; in Herodotus 156. 
 
 Nome the of Timotheus 133; orthian 
 
 108 : Terpandrian divisions of 123. 
 NONNUS 467-468, 510; imitated by 
 
 Musaeus 469. 
 Norden on epideictic oratory 171. 
 North translation of Plutarch 482. 
 Norton translation of Dante 207. 
 Nossis of Locri 448. 
 Numantia sack of 463. 
 
 Oaristys the 434. 
 
 Odysseus saga of 34; descent into 
 
 Hades 37, 38 ; typical adventurer 33 ; 
 
 Dfirpfeld on the home of 31. 
 Olympia games at 121, 123, 127, 
 Olympus 71. 
 Olynthus 352 ; fall of 358. 
 Omar Khayydm compared with Alcaeus 
 
 96. 
 Onomacritus 10, 24, 39. 
 On the Constitution of Athens the tract 
 
 wrongly ascribed to Xenophon 329. 
 Oppian 466. 
 
 Oratory the three divisions due to Aris- 
 totle 406. 
 Orators the earlier 326-346. 
 Orators the fourth-century 347- 
 
 368. 
 Orodes 264. 
 Orpheus 10, 11, 12, 134, 136, 167, 240; 
 
 in the Argonautica 423. 
 Orphica the 11, 12, 39. 
 Orphics the 149. 
 Orphism 11, 59, 123, I43. 146; in Or^-f- 
 
 Osborn H. F. on Aristotle 410. 
 
 Overbury Sir T. imitator of Theophras- 
 tus 452. 
 
 Ovid Cure for Love-sickness on Callima- 
 chus 416 ; Heroides 98, follows Calli- 
 machus 417, on Hero and Leander 
 469; Ibis 417, 444; Metamorphoses 
 182, 198, 24s, 418, imitation of Calli- 
 machus 420, on Medea 243, 372, 
 425; Tristia on Menander 312; on 
 Hypermnestra 194; imitation of Cal- 
 limachus 42; ; debt to ApoUonius 426 ; 
 on Pbaon 98. 
 
 Oxford Kalendar of quoted 60. 
 Oxyrhynchus Papyri 99, 107, 310, 311 ; 
 
 fr. of a mime 441; fr. of Sappho 
 
 99- 
 
 Paean of Aristonous 137 ; of Bacchylides 
 130; of Isyllus 136. 
 
 Palamedes legend of 48. 
 
 Pandora myth of 56, 60. 
 
 Panegyric sophistic type of 341 ; in Plu- 
 tarch 484. 
 
 Panyasis 51, 154; Heracleia of, 51, 
 228. 
 
 Papyri Flinders Petrie ■^ii; oi /Had z$\ 
 Oxyrhynchus, 99, 107, 310, 311, 441; 
 Rainer 420. 
 
 Parmenides of.Elea 147, 148, 149, 168, 
 
 379- 
 
 Paros 8s, 86. 
 
 Partheneion the 106 ; of Alcman 107. 
 
 Parthenius analyses of Milesian Tales 
 500. 
 
 Pascal in The New Lucian 496. 
 
 Pater W. Greek Studies 265 ; Marius the 
 Epicurean, paraphrase of Hermotimus 
 in 496, translation of Halcyon in 495. 
 
 Paulus Silentiarius 471-472. 
 
 Pausanias 46, 74, 103, 118, 131, 485; 
 resume of the Messenians of Rhianus 
 in Tour of Greece 422. 
 
 Pausanias of Sparta 181. 
 
 Peisander 49, 51 ; Heracleia 228. 
 
 Peisistratus 187 ; dynasty of 155 ; recen- 
 sion of Homer by 23, 26, 47. 
 
 Pella 176. 
 
 Peloponnesian war 157; described by 
 Thucydides 175. 
 
 Pelops legend of 17, 201 ; in Pindar 127. 
 
 Pentheus legend of 186. 
 
 Pergamon 26; library at 456; rival of 
 Alexandria 456. 
 
 Periander of Corinth 108, 143, 186. 
 
 Pericles 154, 161, 167, 175, 208, 216, 
 278, 282, 326, 332, 343, 344, 3SI, 364, 
 369, 378; friend of Anaxagoras 149; 
 Funeral Oration of 180, 181; Plato's 
 opinion of 385 ; Protagoras on 168. 
 
 Peripatetic philosophy 397. 
 
 Perseus in Thessalian tradition 117. 
 
 Perseus of Macedonia 462, 
 
538 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Persius 302. 
 
 Petraea in Thessaly games at 127; 
 
 Petraecm Ode of Bacchylides 127. 
 Petrarch parallels with Meleager in 449. 
 Petrie Papyri 311 ; of Iliad 25. 
 Phaedrus pupil of Socrates 100. 
 Plialaris of Agrigentum no. 
 Phallic song the 271, 285. 
 Phaon legend of 98. 
 Pharsalia 466. 
 Pherecrates comic poet 280, 304; 
 
 Wild Men of z8o. 
 Pherecydes of Syros 144. 
 PHILEMON 268, 308-309. 
 Philetas of Cos 414, 427, 430; debt of 
 
 Ttfeocritus to 437. 
 Philip of Macedon 136, 340, 349, 350 ff. 
 
 358, 361. 396. 397- 
 
 Philip of Thessaloniea anthologist 457, 
 471. 
 
 Philo of Alexandria 478. 
 
 Philochorus 238. 
 
 Philocrates 362. 
 
 Philodetnus of Gadara 470, 471. 
 
 Philonides 283. 
 
 Philopoemen 462, 464. 
 
 Philostratus of Athens 501 ; Life of 
 Afollonius of Tyana 499-500; Lives 
 of the Sophists 360, 489; anecdote of 
 the Atticism of Apollonius of Tyana 
 503 ; imitated by Ben Jonson 472. 
 
 Philoxenus 304. 
 
 Phocylides 79-80, 145 ; pseudo-Phocy- 
 lidea 80. 
 
 Phoenicians influence on the Odyssey 33. 
 
 Photius 45, 324, 500 ; Bibliotheca 509. 
 
 Phryne 361 ; defense of by Hypereides 
 440. 
 
 Phrynichus comic poet 280; Misan- 
 thrope 280. 
 
 Phrynichus tragic poet 189, 192, 217, 
 241 ; Phoenissae 189, 190 ; Sack of 
 Miletus 189. 
 
 Phrynichus the general 179. 
 
 Phrynis of Lesbos 93, 133. 
 
 Phylarchus 464. 
 
 Pierian epos 9-12. 
 
 Pigres of Halicarnassus 6g. 
 
 Pindar 45, no, 117, 118, 119-125, 132, 
 133. 138, iss. 187, 209, 2IO, 213, 218, 
 
 229, 230, 231, 251, 333, 413; Pirsl 
 Pythian 197; Fourth Pythian 423; 
 Seventh Isthmian 200; dirges 123; 
 metaphors 125 ; dialect 125 ; meters 
 125 ; style 122 ; compared with Bac- 
 chylides 129; compared with Simom- 
 des 116; preferred to Bacchylides by 
 Longinus 488 ; " Pindarism " 123. 
 
 Piso the consul 470. 
 
 Pittacus of Mitylenc 95, 96, 97, 143; in 
 folk-song 138. 
 
 Pittheus 59. 
 
 Planudes Maximus Anthology 445. 
 
 Plataea 115, 119, 193, 359. 
 
 Pi.A'ro 69, 162, 275, 282, 307, 317, 322, 
 323, 326, 333, 334, 336, 337, 361, 371, 
 
 372, 374. 376. 379-394, 398, 504, 506, 
 507,508; Apology ziq; Charinides^i^; 
 Cratylus z(^^; Commentary of Proclus 
 509; Euthydemus 388; Gorgias 171, 
 239. 384. 385. 388, myth in 391 ; Hip- 
 pias Major and Minor 169 ; Ion 382 ; 
 Laches 384 ; Laws 385, 387, 392, date 
 of 383 ; Menexenus parody of, epideic- 
 tic manner in 392 ; Meno date of 383 ; 
 Parmenides -^Z^, 399; Commentary of 
 Proclus 509; Phaedo 30T, 373, 390; 
 Phaedrus 328, 330, 333, 339, 388, 390, 
 392, 404, 476, myth in 390, 391, on the 
 gardens of Adonis 433, on rhetoric 
 406, on Stesichorus in ; Philebus 385 , 
 Protagoras 280, 281, 338, 383, 385, on 
 Pherecrates 280, ridicule of fiippins 
 169, Simonides quoted 114; Republic 
 247, 300-301, 330, 332, 383, 386-387, 
 389, 400, 401, 404, 505; Commentary 
 of Proclus 509; myth of Er 391; 
 Sophist 383 ; Symposium 239, 269, 319, 
 
 373. 390. *i^*^ o^ 383: Theaetetus 273, 
 383, 391 ; Timaeus 383, 389, Com- 
 mentary of Proclus 509: Academy 
 381; anachronisms 383; Aristotle's 
 criticism of 399; at the Renaissance 
 409; criticized by Dionys. Hal. 476; 
 echoed by Lucian 499: epigram on 
 Aristophanes 304, on Dio 394; ethics 
 of 384 ; Idea of the Good 389 ; model 
 of Dio 492; myths in 390-391; on 
 Anaxagoras 150; on handbooks 163; 
 on Protagoras 167; on Sappho 100; 
 
INDEX 
 
 539 
 
 on slavery 402; on the sophists 165, 
 166, 173, on the writings of tlie sophists 
 168 1 portrait of Socrates 373 ; praised 
 by Aristotle 408; reminiscence doc- 
 trine 390; Socratic dialogues 384; 
 style 392-393 ; teacher of Aristotle 
 396, 400; Theory of Ideas 388-390, 
 criticized by Aristotle 399; theory of 
 imitation in art, 404 ; travels 380. 
 
 Plato comic poet 280-281. 
 
 ■PJatonists the Cambridge 391, 506. 
 
 Plautus 273, 308, 309, 313 ; cantica of 
 444 ; Cistellaria 432. 
 
 Pleiad the of Alexandria 444, 473. 
 
 Pliny 491. 
 
 PLOTINUS39I, 504-507, S08; neglected 
 by Julian 503. 
 
 Plutarch 94, 236, 267, 323, 462, 481- 
 484, 487; Lives 481-482; Moralia 
 482-483; Life of Crassus 265, 500; 
 compared with Lucian 499 ; compared 
 with Dio 492; on Aristotle 403; on 
 Ibycus 113 ; on the Milesian Tales 
 500; quotes Protagoras 168. 
 
 Piataxch pseudo — on Herodotus 158. 
 
 Polemarchus 332, 333. 
 
 Polemon Academician 451. 
 
 Polemon sophist 490. 
 
 PoLYBius 324, 450, 462-466, 474, 475, 
 478,480; History 464-466; sequel by 
 Strabo 477 ; style 464. 
 
 Polycrates of Samos 103, 113, 146, 158. 
 
 Polycrates sophist 341. 
 
 Polygnotus 39. 
 
 Polyidus tragic poet 237. 
 
 Pope 170, Pastorals 429, 436; Rape of 
 the Lock 417 ; on Longinus 488. 
 
 Porphyry 505, 507 ; Letter to Anebo 
 
 507. 
 Potidaea 350. 
 Pratinas 189, 193, 260. 
 Praxilla of Sicyon 118. 
 Praxiteles 440. 
 ProCLUS 46, 508-509 ; Chrestomathy of 
 
 509; Platonic Commentaries 509. 
 Procopius of Gaza 469. ^ 
 
 Prodicus 100, 166, 169, 289, 338, 372; 
 
 Choice of Heracles 319. 
 Prometheus myth 60, 196 ; in Hesiod 56. 
 Propertius 434. 
 
 Prosodion of Eumelus 105. 
 Protagoras 166, 167-168, 175, 239, 
 
 265, 287, 338, 342, 373, 375, 387, 388 ; 
 
 Gomperz on 163. 
 Proxenus friend of Xenophon 317 ; pupil 
 
 of Gorgias 173. 
 Proxenus guardian of Aristotle 396. 
 Psammetichus 11 143. 
 Ptolemies the 162. 
 Ptolemy I (Soter) 414, 450, 454. 
 Ptolemy II (Philadelphus) 415, 427, 438, 
 
 444- 
 Ptolemy III (Euergetes) 365; flattered 
 
 by Callimachus 418. 
 Pydna 350. 
 Pythagoras of Samos 145 ; in Lucian 
 
 497- 
 Pythias daughter of Aristotle 397. 
 
 Quintilian 311, 332, 408,417; onArchilo- 
 chus 87; on Demetrius of Phalerum 
 454; on Philetas 427; on Stesichorus 
 no'; on Theopompus 324; on Thucy- 
 dides 183 ; on the Argona-utica 426. 
 
 QuiNTUS of Smyrna 41, 466 ; compared 
 with Nonnus 468. 
 
 Racine 262, 291 ; Phedre 432. 
 Radermacher on Euripides 249 ; on the 
 
 sophists 166. 
 Rainer Papyri 420. 
 Refrain use of by Catullus Theocritus 
 
 and Vergil 432. 
 Reichel theory of Homeric weapons 19. 
 Reitzenstein on elegy 73. 
 Rejected Addresses, quoted 170. 
 R6my-Belleau 104. 
 Renan on Marcus Aurelius 493. 
 Rhetoric to Alexander 408. 
 Rhianus of Crete 421-422; Messenians 
 
 421. 
 Rhodes Swallow-song of, 139. 
 Rhodopis 98. 
 Rhythm in prose 455; Aristotle on 407; 
 
 of Demosthenes 476. 
 Ridgeway theory of the Achaeans 16. 
 Ritchie, M. H. translation of scolion 138, 
 Ritschl 19, 23. 
 Robert on the Iliad 19, 20. 
 Roberts editor of On the Sublime 487. 
 
540 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Rogers translation of epigram of Paulus 
 472 ; of Platonic epigram 304. 
 
 Kohde on the New Sophistic 490. 
 
 Romance 499-501 ; Babylonian Talcs 
 500; Ephesian Tales 500; Milesian 
 Tales 500; Ninus-and Semiramis in 
 500. 
 
 Ronsard 104, 105, 125. 
 
 Rossetti Sister Helen 432 ; translation of 
 Sappho 102. 
 
 Saga the heroic 13 ; Corinthian 242 ; of 
 Argonauts 210; in Aeschylus 209; in 
 Euripides 266 ; of Meleager 13 ; Trojan 
 14 ; in the drama 209. 
 
 Sages the Seven 143, 145. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve 34 ; on Euphorion 421 ; 
 on Meleager 449; on Menander 311; 
 on pastoral 436 ; on Theocritus 430. 
 
 Saint Paul quotation of Aratus by 453. 
 
 Salamis battle 115, 133, 154, 193, 195, 
 216, 238. 
 
 Salamis island 272; recovery of by 
 Athens 23, 79. 
 
 Samos Herodotus at 154. 
 
 Sannazzaro Eclogues 431. 
 
 Sappho 94, 97-102, 118, 125, 307, 432, 
 446, 449; Ode to Aphrodite loi, 476; 
 Ode to Anactoria quoted by Longinus 
 487; Charaxus Ode 98-99; Epithala- 
 mia 102 ; relations with Alcaeus 98 ; 
 compared with Ibycus 113 ; Meleager 
 on 449 ; dialect 102 ; meters 102. 
 
 Sarcey on the plot of Oedipus Tyrannus 
 227. 
 
 Sardis 131, 133, ISS- 
 
 Saumaise (Salmasius) 445. 
 
 Sayce on Herodotus 158. 
 
 Scapegoat mentioned by Hipponax 90. 
 
 Schiller Die Kranicke des Ibykus 113; 
 use of the Hero legend 470. 
 
 Schliemann 14 ; use of Pausanias 485. 
 
 Scione 179. 
 
 Scipio Africanus 462, 463. 
 
 Scolion the 137, 138; the Attic Scolia 
 138 ; of Alcaeus 138 ; of Aristotle 138, 
 408; of Pindar 138; of Simonides 
 114. 
 
 Scopadae the 114 
 
 Scythia 136. 
 
 Seeck on the Odyssey 36. 
 
 Semiramis in Greek romance 500. 
 
 Semonides of Amorgos 59, 80, 88-89. 
 
 Seneca Hercules on Oeta 229; Mad 
 Hercules 23f^', Oedipus iSz. 
 
 Seneca the Elder Suasoriae 495, 
 
 Sengebusch on Homer 15. 
 
 Septimius son of Stobaeus 510. 
 
 Sestos taken by Athens 156. 
 
 Seuthes 321. 
 
 Sextus Empiricus 484. 
 
 Shadwell 125. 
 
 Shakespeare 294, 303, 313, 406 ; Comedy 
 of Errors 307 ; Macbeth 248 ; Othello 
 236; Twelfth Night 170; Winter's 
 Tale 19s, 242 ; use of Plutarch 482. 
 
 Shelley 199, 261 ; Adonais 429, imitation 
 of Moschus 437; Defense of Poetry 
 465 ; Hymn to Hermes 66 ; logaoedies 
 97 ; Prometheus Unbound 200 ; trans- 
 lation of Platonic epigram 393. 
 
 Sheridan Critic 307. 
 
 Shorey on the Idea of the Good in Plato 
 and Aristotle 400; on the Platonic 
 Ideas 389 ; translation of Archilochus 
 87 ; translation of Sappho 102. 
 
 Sicilian Expedition 176, 294, 295. 
 
 Sidney Apology for Poetry on the Unities 
 405. 
 
 SIMMIAS of Rhodes 237, 447. 
 
 Simonides of Ceos 69, loi, 103, 113- 
 118, 119, 120, 125, 132, 138, 209, 240, 
 289, 322, 428 ; Danae and Perseus 1 16, 
 117,476; Epigrams 115; dialect 118; 
 dithyrambs 115 ; meters 118 ; dirges 124. 
 
 Simplicius commentator of Aristotle 412. 
 
 Smyrna Aeolic 15 ; Atticism at 490. 
 
 Socrates 169, 171, 173, 239, 282, 287, 
 317. 318, 319, 333, 339, 341, 369-373, 
 375. 377. 379. 3^4 1 '" 'he Phaedo 390; 
 in the Republic 392; vindication in 
 Plato 380; pupils of 100; relations 
 with Protagoras 167 ; Aristotle on 399 ; 
 classed with the sophists 166. 
 
 SOCRATICS the 374-377. 
 
 Solon 72, 77, 78-79, 155, 358, 403! 
 Exhortation to the Athenians 78 ; 
 Salamis 79 ; ancestor of Plato 379 : 
 regulates the recitation of the Homeric 
 Poems 22 ; in Lucian Anacharsis 496. 
 
INDEX 
 
 541 
 
 Sophistic the New 488-489, 491. 
 
 SOtHlSTS THE 16S-173, 287, 323, 328, 
 338. 341. 342, 372. 374. 398, 473. 475 ; 
 influence on Greek education 172-173 ; 
 influence on style 161 ; Plato on 173 ; 
 Plato's hostility to 387 ; poets super- 
 seded by 171 ; in the second century 
 A.D. 489; in the fourth century A.D. 
 501-504, 510; avoidance of Roman 
 allusions 503 ; erotic speeches by 500 ; 
 commonplaces of 499; paradoxical 
 panegyrics 491, 495. 
 
 Sophocles 160, 170, 171, 192, 193, 195, 
 216-237, 238, 239, 240, 249, 261, 265, 
 266, 267, 280, 297 ; Ajax 217, 218- 
 220, 241 ; Antigone 197, 198, 210, 217, 
 221-223, 234, 236, 241, 262; perform- 
 ance at Athens 191 ; Electra 223-225, 
 23s, 236, 24s, 255 ; Oedipus ai Colonus 
 209, ai6, 217, 221, 224, 228, 233-234, 
 268; Oedipus Tyrannus 225-228, 233, 
 model play of Aristotle 405; Philoc- 
 tetes 230, 231-233, 235 ; Teucer 218, 
 220; Trackiniae 222, 228-231, 235, 
 236, 253; friend of Herodotus 154; in 
 Frogs 298 ; innovations of 234-235 ; 
 irony of 236; rhetoric of 235; style 
 236. 
 
 SOPHRON 275; Mimes 431, 438, 443, 
 influence on Theocritus 437; imitated 
 by Theocritus 432, 433. 
 
 Soterichus 467. 
 
 Spencer Data of Ethics on Aristotle 
 and Plato 400. 
 
 Spenser 430; pastoral of 436 ; Shepherd's 
 Calendar 429, 437; Neo-Platonism in 
 
 507- 
 Speusippus of the Academy 381, 382, 
 
 4SI- 
 
 Sphacterla 286. 
 
 Stage of the Greek theater 191. 
 
 Stageira birthplace of Aristotle 396. 
 
 Stasinus 47. 
 
 Statius Hero and Leander legend in 469. 
 
 Stephanus (Estienne) 104. 
 
 Stesichorus (Teisias) 45, 54, 108, 
 109-112, 125, 138, 247, 253; Mene- 
 laus and Helen in in; Oresteia 
 no, 201, 210; Palinode in; Returns 
 no; story of Rhadina iii; Sack of 
 
 Jlios no ; dialect na; use of the saga 
 in ; influence on Theocritus 437. 
 
 Stevenson R. L. 476; on imitation of 
 prose style 489. 
 
 Stickney on elegy 73. 
 
 Stilpo of Megara 376, 464. 
 
 Stobaeus Joannes 126, 454, 609; An- 
 thology 306, 509 ; Eclogues 509, 
 
 Stoics the 376; influence on Polybius 
 
 463- 
 
 St. Pierre imitation of Longus 501. 
 
 Strabo 16, 33, 74, 477-478 ; on Sap- 
 pho 99 ; on the Mss. of Aristotle 397. 
 
 Strato of Sardis 471 ; Anthology 443. 
 
 Strettell A. translation of epigram in 
 Anthology 447. 
 
 Strophe use of in choral melic 108. 
 
 Sulla conquest of Athens 397. 
 
 Susarion 275. 
 
 Swift Gulliver's Travels compared with 
 Lucian The True Story 498 ; Polite 
 Conversations 81, 
 
 Swinburne Atalanta in Calydon 128 ; 
 On the Cliffs 203, 204, 209 ; Sapphics 
 102 ; Chor iambics 102 ; on Sappho 99, 
 loi; on Simonides 117; translation of 
 chorus in the Birds 293. 
 
 Symonds J. A. 199. 
 
 Syracosius decree of 278, 305. 
 
 Syracuse 165, 170, 182. 
 
 Syrianus the Neo-Platonist 508. 
 
 Tacitus 3S7 ; Dialogue on Orators 48S ; 
 Histories 246. 
 
 Talfourd Ion 255. 
 
 Tantalus legend 17. 
 
 Tasso Lament for Corinna 437. 
 
 Teisias see Stesichorus. 
 
 Telesilla of Argos 118. 
 
 Tennyson Lotos-Eaters 211; Tiresias 
 418; Ulysses 220; echo of Alcman 
 107. 
 
 Terence 308, 312, 313; Eunuch 311; im- 
 itation of Menander 311, 312, 313; 
 Sainte-Beuve on 311. 
 
 Terpander 93, 105, 108, 136; altera- 
 tion of cithara 134 ; nome of 123 ; soo. 
 lia of 137. 
 
 Teuthrania 48. 
 
 Thales 145. 
 
542 SHORT HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE 
 
 Thaletas 105-106. 
 
 Thammuz the Greek Adonis 433. 
 
 Thamyris 9, 18. 
 
 Thargelia the 129. 
 
 Thasos 86, 150, 175. 
 
 Theater the at Athens 190, 364, 
 
 Thebes i85 ; saga of 46. 
 
 Thebes Egyptian 158. ' 
 
 Themison king of Cyprus 398. 
 
 Themistius 508, 491; Orations 502; 
 Paraphrases of Aristotle 502 ; attitude 
 to Pagan revival 503. 
 
 Themistocles 326. 
 
 Themistogenes of Syracuse 321. 
 
 Theocritus 58, 81, 213, 260, 262, 264, 
 302, 415, 426, 427-437, 438, 449; Epi- 
 grams 51, 274, 435 ; Idyl I /^zg ; Idyl 2 
 
 275, 431-43Z. 469; Idyl 4 427. 432; 
 
 Idyl s 427 ; Idyl 6 430 ; Idyl 7 427, 428, 
 430-431 ; Idyl iS 431 ; Idyl 10 428 ; Idyl 
 iinyi ; Idyl 13 imitated by ApoUpnius 
 423 ; admired by Tennyson 434 ; Idyl 
 14 ^32; Idylls 275, 432-434. 439. imi- 
 tated by Herodas 438 ; translated by 
 M. Arnold 433; Idyl 16 428; Idyl ij 
 427 ; Idyl 21 432 ; Idyl 2^ 434 ; Idyl 2^ 
 434 ; Idyl 28 434 ; pastoral Idyls 428- 
 431; Little Epics 420; dialect 436; 
 figured poem of 447 ; imitates Alcman 
 108; imitated by Vergil 437; influ- 
 ence on Longus 501; meters 436; 
 panegyric of Ptolemy 418 ; quoted 
 98, 114; rearranged by Wilamowitz 
 460. 
 Theodoras of Byzantium the rhetorician 
 
 330. 
 Theodorus epigram of 448. 
 Theodorus the mathematician 380. 
 THEOGNIS75, 81-8S, 329, 334; date 
 
 82 ; on the ship of state 96 ; repetitions 
 
 85. 
 
 Theophrastus 69, 14s, 397, 4SI, 45&- 
 453, 454, 486; Characters 291, 309, 
 452-453 ; echoed by Aratus 426. 
 
 Theopompus 334, 338; Quintilian on 
 
 324- 
 Theoricon the theater fund 352. 
 Theoxenus scolion of Pindar to 124. 
 Thermopylae celebrated by Simonides 
 
 114- 
 
 Thero of Agrigentum 117, 120, 124. 
 
 Theseus legend in Baochylides 130. 
 
 Thespis 187-188, 189, 190, 192 ; Funeral 
 Games of Pelias 188. 
 
 Thestorides 47. 
 
 Thrace Dionysus in 185; Persian con- 
 quest of 156. 
 
 Thrasybulus 308, 333. 
 
 Thrasyllus Platonic canon of 382. 
 
 Thrasymachus of Chalcedon 329- 
 330. 
 
 Thucydides 159, 160, 175-183, 240, 
 321. 324. 326. 327. 328, 329, 336, 356, 
 403, 450, 465 ; relation to Timotheus 
 136 ; critic of Hellanicus 153 ; dialect 
 183; imitated by Appian 481; imitated 
 by Arrian 479 ; on the Athenian char- 
 acter 385; speeches of 179-1S0; style 
 161, 182, analyzed by Dionys. Hal. 476. 
 
 Thurii 157, 166; foundation of 154; 
 Herodotus at 154. 
 
 TibuUus 198. 
 
 TIMAEUS of Tauromenium 450, 464. 
 
 Timanthes the painter 262. 
 
 Timarchus attack of Aeschines on 358. 
 
 Timon of Phlius 415. 
 
 Timotheus of Miletus 133-136, 240; 
 Persae of 84, 133, 357, on old poetry 
 446; dialect 135; dithyrambs of 136; 
 meters 135; on Terpander 93. 
 
 Timotheus the general 338. 
 
 TISIAS the rhetorician 165, 166, 333. 
 
 Tissaphernes 320. 
 
 Tithonus legend 67. 
 
 Titus siege of Jerusalem by 246, 478. 
 
 Tomyris story of in Herodotus 160. 
 
 Tragedy Dorian goat-song 188; dialect 
 of 188; development of 192; meters 
 192. 
 
 Traill The New Lucian. 496. 
 
 Trajan 491 ; Atticism under 478. 
 
 Tryphiodorus epic poet 468. 
 
 Tyrtaeus 71, 72, 74, 106, 118, 421 ; 
 - Marching Songs jb; dialect 76; quoted 
 by Lycurgus 76, 365 ; date 74. 
 
 Unities the in Aristotle 405 ; Sidney on 
 405 ; doctrine of Boileau 405. 
 
 Valckenaer on Xenophon 323. 
 
INDEX 
 
 543 
 
 Varro translator of Aratus 427 ; Menip- 
 pean Satires of 375. 
 
 Vaughan Henry 507 ; The World 506. 
 
 Venetus A codex of the Iliad 25, 46, 509. 
 
 Vergil 406, 421, 424, 429, 430 : Aeneid 212, 
 218, 220, 245, 251, 25s, 259, debt to Cal- 
 limachus 421, on Musaeus 468 ; Ec- 
 logues ig8, imitation of Theocritus 
 437, on Gallus 429, represented on the 
 stage 434; Eclogue j imitation of 
 Theocritus 431 ; Eclogue 5 imitation 
 of Theocritus 430 ; Eclogue 6 423, 434 ; 
 Eclogue 8 imitation of Theocritus 430 ; 
 Georgics 182, 225, compared with the 
 Phaenomena of Aratus 427, imitation 
 of Nicander 456, on Hero and Lean- 
 der 469; compared with Milton iiiS; 
 echoed by Quintus of Smyrna 467 ; 
 imitation of Apollonius 425, 426 ; pas- 
 sage compared with Alcman 107 ; 
 pastoral in 436, 
 
 Verrall on Euripides 247, 266; on the 
 Helen 248 ; on Tyrtaeus 74. 
 
 Vespasian 478. 
 
 Villoison 25. 
 
 Villon Ballade 38. 
 
 Visconti on statue of Menander 313. 
 
 Voltaire on Pindar 132; on the Unities 
 405 i on Vergil 430. 
 
 Waller quoted 172. 
 
 Welcker on Sappho 100 
 
 Whibley Companion to Greek Studies 267. 
 
 Wilamowitz 23, 77 ; on Anaxagoras 150 ; 
 on date of On the Sublime 486 ; on the 
 epigrams of Simonides 115; on the 
 Erotic Fragment 444; on Euripides 
 241, 2SS ; on Herodotus 161 ; on 
 Isyllus 136; on the Mutilation of the 
 Hermae 331; on the Odyssey 11, 39; 
 on Aeschylus Persae 195; on the 
 Platonic Letters 382; on the prosce- 
 
 nium 190; on Sappho 100; on 
 
 Aeschylus Seven against Thebes 197; 
 
 on Sophocles 229 ; on Sophocles and 
 
 Euripides 224; on Thucydides 176; 
 
 on Timotheus 135 ; rearrangement of 
 
 Theocritus by 460. 
 Wolf 23, 27, 34 ; Prolegomena 26, 36. 
 Wordsworth Ode to Duty 409 ; Sonnet to 
 
 the River Duddon 437 ; on Alcaeus 96; 
 
 Platonic mysticism in 507. 
 
 Xanthippus father of Pericles 103. 
 
 Xanthus of Lydia 153. 
 
 Xenocrates the Academician 451. 
 
 Xenophanes 62, 144, 146, 153 ; elegies 
 80-81. 
 
 Xenophon 37, 173, 178, 317-325, 327, 
 329, 338 ; Anabasis 320-321 ; Apology 
 318,' 319; Constitution of Sparta 322; 
 Cynegetic-us 322, imitated by Arrian 
 479: Cyropaedia first Greek romance 
 322, 499; Hellenlca 321-322, 324; 
 Hiero 322 ; Memorabilia 169, 318^ 479 ; 
 portrait of Socrates 373 ; Oeconomicus 
 318, 319, 323 ; Symposium 318, 319, 
 374, 442; echoed by Lucian 499; 
 model of Dio 492, 
 
 Xerxes 115, 119, IS4, 159. I9S, 211; in 
 Timotheus Persae 134. 
 
 Zagreus 11. 
 
 Zeller on Xenophon Apology 319 ; rejects 
 
 On the Mysteries ascribed to lambli- 
 
 chus 508. 
 ZenO of Elea 148, 326, 374, 379. 
 Zeno of Rhodes the historian 464. 
 Zeno the Stoic 376. 
 Zenobia of Palmyra 486. 
 Zenodotus 25, 46, 414, 415. 
 Zieliiiski on the Agon in Comedy 276; 
 
 on Sophocles 229,