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 V.I 
 
 Studies of the Greek poets / 
 
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STUDIES 
 
 THE GREEK POETS 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
STUDIES 
 
 GREEK POETS 
 
 FIRST SERIES 
 
 JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'sketches IN ITALY AND GKEECE' 
 * RENAISSANCE IN ITALY ' ETC. 
 
 Im Ganzen Guten Schonen 
 Resolut zu leben 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE 
 
 1877 
 
 {A II rights reservedl 
 
TO 
 
 HENRY GRAHAM DAKYNS 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME, TOGETHER WITH 
 
 ITS COMPANION, IN MEMORY OF COMMON 
 
 INTERESTS, JOINT STUDIES,' AND FOURTEEN 
 
 YEARS OF FRIENDSHIP 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I; 
 THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Language and Mythology. — The Five Chief Periods of Greek Lite- 
 rature. — The First Period : Homer — Religion and State of the 
 Homeric Age — Achilles' and Ulysses. — Second Period : Tran- 
 sition — Breaking up of the Homeric Monarchies — Colonization — 
 the Nomothetae — lonians and Dorians — Development of Elegiac, 
 Iambic, Lyric Poetry — Beginning of Philosophy, — Third Period : 
 Athenian Supremacy — Philosophy at Athens — the Fine Arts — 
 the Drama — History — Sparta and Athens — Pericles and Anaxa- 
 goras. — Fourth Period : Hegemony of Sparta — Enslavement of 
 Hellas — Demosthenes — Alexander and Achilles — Aristotle — the 
 Hellenization of the East — Menander — the Orators. — Fifth 
 Period : Decline and Decay — Greek Influence upon the World 
 — Alexandria — the Sciences — Theocritus — the University of 
 Athens — Sophistic Literature — Byzantium — Hellas and Chris- 
 tendom I 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 The Grandeur of his Fame. — His Versatility of Genius — His Self- 
 "exaltation. — His Mysticism. — His supposed Miracles. — Legends 
 about his Death. — His Political Action. — His Poems. — Estimation 
 in which the Ancients held them. — Their Prophetic Fervour. — 
 Belief in Metempsychosis. — Purifying Rites. — Contempt for the 
 Knovifledge of the Senses. — Physical Theories. — ^The Poem on 
 Nature. — The Four Elements. — The Sphserus. — Love and Dis- 
 cord.- — The Eclecticism of Empedocles 38 
 
viii CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE GNOMIC POETS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 .Definition of the term Gnomic. — The Elegiac Metre. — The Age of 
 the Despots in Greece. — Three Periods in Elegiac Poetry ; the 
 Martial, the Erotic, the Gnomic. — Callinus. — ^Tyrtseus. — Mim- 
 nermus. — His Epicurean Philosophy of Life. — Solon. — The 
 Salaminian Verses. — Doctrine of Hereditary Guilt. — Greek 
 Melancholy. — Phocylides. — His Bourgeois Intellect. — Xeno- 
 phanes. — Theognis. — The Politics of Megara. — Cyrnus. — Pre- 
 cepts upon Education and Conduct in Public and Private Life. 
 — The Biography of Theognis. — Dorian Clubs. — Lamentations 
 over the Decay of Youth and Beauty 67 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 THE SA TIE IS TS. 
 
 Invention of the Iambic Metre. —Archilochus. — His Parentage and 
 Life. — ^^His Fame among the Ancients. -^Ancient and Modem 
 Modes of judging Artists. —The Originality of Archilochus as a 
 Poet. — Simonides of Amorgos. — His Satire on Women.— The 
 Ionian Contempt for Women. — Hipponax. — Limping Iambics. — 
 Differences between the Satire of the Greeks and Romans. ' 104 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE LYRIC POETS. 
 
 The ^Esthetic Instinct of the Greeks in their Choice of Metres.— 
 Different Species of Lyrical Poetry.— The Fragments in Bergk's 
 Collection. — Proemia. — Prosodia. — Parthenia. — Pjean. — Hypor- 
 chem. — Dithyramb. — Phallic Hymn. — Epinikia. — Threnoi. 
 — Scolia. — ^olian and Dorian Lyrists. — The Flourishing 
 Period of Lesbos.— Sappho.— Alcaeus.—Anacreon. —Nationality 
 of the Dorian Lyrists.— Spartan Education.— Alcman.— Arion.— 
 
 Stesichorus.—Ibycus.— Simonides.— Greek Troubadours. —Style 
 
 of Simonides. — Pindar ', j,» 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 PINDA-R. 
 
 Page 
 His "Life. — Legends connected with him. — The Qualities of his 
 Poetry. — The Olympic Games. — Pindar's Professional Character. 
 — His Morality. — His Religious Belief. — Doctrine of a Future 
 State. — Rewards and Punishments. — The Structure of his Odes. 
 — The Proemia to his Odes. — His Difficulty and Tumidity of 
 Style 165 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 
 
 Two Conditions for the development of a National Drama. — The 
 Attic audience. — The Persian War. — Nemesis the cardinal idea' 
 of Greek Tragedy. — Traces of the doctrine of Nemesis in early 
 Greek Poetry. — The fixed material of Greek Tragedy. — Athens 
 in the age of Euripides. — Changes introduced by him in 
 Dramatic Art. — The law of progress in all art. — .lEschylus, 
 Sophocles, Euripides. — The treatment of &fi/vx^a by Euripides. 
 — Menoikeus. — The death of Eteocles and Polynices. — Poly- 
 xena. — Medea. — -Hippolytus. — Electra and Orestes. — Injustice 
 done to Euripides by recent critics 196 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 Heine's critique on Aristophanes. — Aristophanes as a poet of the 
 fancy. — The nature of his comic grossness. — Greek Comedy in 
 its .relation to the worship of Dionysus. — Greek acceptance of 
 the animal ionditions of humanity. — His Burlesque, Parody, 
 Southern sense of Fun. — Aristophanes and Menander. — His great- 
 ness as a Poet. — Glimpses of pathos. — His Conservatism and 
 serious aim. — Socrates, Agathon, Euripides. — German critics 
 of Aristophanes. — Ancient and Modem Comedy. — The Birds. 
 — The Clouds. — Greek youth and education. — The Allegories 
 of Aristophanes. — The Thesmophoriazusce. — Aristophanes and 
 
 Plato 24s 
 
 a 
 
X CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Greek Tragedy and the rites of Dionysus.— A sketch of its origin and 
 history.— The Attic Theatre.— The actors and their masks.— 
 Relation of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece.— The legends 
 used by the Attic tragedians.— Modem liberty in the choice of 
 subjects.— Mystery Plays.— Nemesis.— Modem Tragedy has no 
 religious idea. — Tragic Irony. — Aristotle's definition of Tragedy. 
 Modern Tragedy offere no Kdeapcris of the passions. — Desti- 
 nies and Characters.— Female Characters.— The Supernatural. 
 —French Tragedy.— Five Acts.— Bloodshed.— The Unities. — 
 Radical diiferences in the spirit of ancient and modem art 289 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 TffE IDYLLISTS. 
 
 Theocritus. — His Life. — The Canon of his Poems. — The meaning of 
 the word IdyU. — Bucolic Poetry in Greece, Rome, Moder 
 Europe. — The Scenery of Theocritus. — Relation of Southern 
 Nature to Greek Mythology and Greek Art. — Rustic Life and 
 Superstitions. — Feeling for Pure Nature in Theocritus. — How 
 distinguished from the same feeling in Modem Poets. — 
 Galatea. — Pharmaceutria. — Hylas. — Greek Chivalry. — The 
 Dioscuri. — Thalysia. — Bion. — The Lament for Adonis. — Mos- 
 chus. — Europa. — Megara. — Lament for Bion. — The debts of 
 Modem Poets to the Idyllists 316 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE ANTHOLOGY. 
 
 The history of its Compilation. — Collections of Meleager, Philippus, 
 Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes. — The Palatine MS. — The Sec- 
 tions of the Anthology.— Dedicatory Epigrams. ^Simonides. — 
 Epitaphs : Real and Literary. — Callimachus. — Epigrams on 
 Poets. — Antjpater of Sidon.— Hortatory Epigrams. — Palladas. — 
 
CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Satiric Epigrams. — Lucillius. — Amatory Epigrams. — Meleager, 
 Straton, Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, 
 Agathias, Plato. — Descriptive Epigrams 356 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 
 
 Separation between the Greeks and us. — Criticism. — Nature. — The 
 Olive. — Greek Sculpture. — Greek Sense of Beauty. — Greek 
 Morality. — Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit 412 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Sappho's Hymn to Aphrodite. — Desdemona's Death. — Theocritus : 
 
 Idyll xxix 439 
 
THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
 
 language and Mythology. — The Five Chief Periods of Greek Literature. 
 The First Period : Hortier— Religion and State of the Homeric Age 
 — Achilles and Ulysses. — Second Period : Transition — Breaking up 
 of the Homeric Monarchies — Colonization — the Nomothetse— lonians 
 and Dorians — Development of Elegiac, Iambic, Lyric Poetry — 
 Beginning of Philosophy. — Third Period : Athenian. Supremacy — 
 Philosophy at Athens — the Fine Arts — the Drama — History — 
 . Sparta and Athens — Pericles and Anaxagoras. — Fourth Period : 
 Hegemony of Sparta — Enslavement of Hellas — Demosthenes — 
 Alexander and Achilles — Aristotle — the Hellenization of the East 
 — Menander — the Orators. — Fifth Period: Decline and Decay — Greek 
 Influence upon the "World — Alexandria — the Sciences — Theocritus — 
 the University of Athens — Sophistic Literature — Byzantium^ — Hellas 
 and Christendom. 
 
 The most fascinating problems of history are veiled as closely 
 from our curiosity as the statue of Egyptian Isis. Nothing is 
 known for certain about the emergence from primitive bar- 
 barism of the great races, or about the determination of national 
 characteristics. Analogies may be adduced from the material 
 world ; but the mysteries of organized vitality remain impene- 
 trable. What made the Jew a Jew, the Greek a Greek, is as 
 unexplained as what daily causes the germs of an oak and of 
 an ash to produce different trees. All we know is that in the 
 womb of the vague and infinitely distant past, the embryos 
 y f '^ B 
 
2 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of races were nourished into form and individuality by means 
 of the unseen cord which attaches man to nature, his primitive 
 mother. But the laws of that rudimentary growth are still 
 unknown ; " the abysmal deeps of Personality " in nations as 
 in men remain unsounded : we ca.nnot even experimentalize 
 upon the process of ethnical development. 
 
 Those mighty works of art which we call languages, in the 
 construction of which whole peoples unconsciously co-ope- 
 ■ rated, the forms of which were determined not by individual 
 genius, but by the instincts of successive generations acting to 
 one end inherent in the nature of the race :— those poems of 
 pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words but in living 
 imagery, fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of 
 nascent nations, which we call Mythologies :— these surely are 
 more marvellous in their infantine spontaneity than any more 
 mature production of the races which evolved them. Yet we 
 are utterly ignorant of their embryology : the true science of 
 Origins is as 'yet not even in its cradle. 
 
 Experimental philologers ijiay analyze what remains pf 
 early languages, may trace their connections and their points 
 of divergence, may classify and group them. ' But the nature of 
 the organs of humanity which secreted them is unknown, the 
 problem of their vital structure is insoluble. Antiquarian 
 theorists may persuade us that Myths are decayed, disinte- 
 grated, dilapidated .phrases, the meaning of which had been 
 lost to the first mythopoeists. But they cannot tell us how 
 these splendid flowers, springing upon the rich soil of rotting 
 language, expressed in form and colour to the mental eye the 
 thoughts and aspirations of whole races, and presented a measure 
 of the faculties to be developed during long ages of expanding 
 civilization. If the boy is father of the man. Myths are the 
 parents of philosophies, religions, polities. 
 
 To those unknown artists of the prehistoric age, to the 
 language-builders and myth-makers, architects of cathedrals 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 3 
 
 not raised with hands but with the Spirit of man for Humanity 
 to dwell therein, poets of the characters of nations, sculptors of 
 the substance of the very soul, melodists who improvised the 
 themes upon which subsequent centuries have written varia- 
 tions, we ought to erect our noblest statues and our grandest 
 temples. The work of these first artificers is more astonishing 
 in its unconsciousness, more effective in its spontaneity, than 
 are the deliberate and calculated arts of sculptor, painter, poet, 
 philosopher, and lawgiver of the historic periods. 
 
 Some such reflections as these are the natural prelude to the 
 study of a literature like that of the Greeks. Language and 
 Mythology form the vestibules and outer courts to Homer, 
 Pheidias, Lycurgus. 
 
 It is common to divide the history of Greek literature into 
 three chief periods : the first embracing the early growth of 
 Ppetry and Prose before, the age in which Athens became 
 supreme in Hellas — that is, anterior to about 480 B.C. : the 
 second coinciding with the brilliant maturity of Greek genius 
 during the supremacy of Athens — that is, from the termination 
 of the Persian war to the age of Alexander : the third ex- 
 tending over the Decline and Fall of the Greek spirit after 
 Alexander's death— that is', from B.C. 323, and onwards, to 
 the final extinction of Hellenic civilization. There is much 
 to be said in favour of this division. Iiideed, Greek history 
 falls naturally into these three sections. But a greater degree 
 of accuracy may be attained by breaking up the first and last 
 of these divisions, so as to make five periods instead of three. 
 After having indicated these five periods in outline, we will 
 return to the separate consideration of them in detail and in 
 connection with the current of Greek history. 
 
 The first may be termed the Heroic, or Prehistoric, or 
 Legendary period. It ends with the first Olympiad, b.c. 776, 
 and its .chief monuments are the epics of Homer and Hesiod. 
 The second is a period of transition from the Heroic or Epical 
 
4 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to that of artistic maturity in allthe branches of Hterature. In 
 this stage history, properly so-called, begins. The Greeks try 
 their strength in several branches of composition. Lyrical, 
 Satirical, Moral, and Philosophical poetry supplant the Epic. 
 Prose is cultivated. The first foundations of the Drama are 
 laid. The earliest attempts at science emerge from the criticism 
 of old mythologies. The whole, mind of the race is in a fer- 
 ment, and, for the moment, effort and endeavour are more 
 apparent than mastery and achievement. This period extends 
 from B.C. 776 to B.C. 477, the date of the Athenian league. The 
 third period is that of the Athenian Supremacy. Whatever is 
 great in Hellas is now concentrated upon Athens. Athens, 
 after her brilliant activity during the Persian war, wins the 
 confidence and assumes the leadership of Greece. Athens 
 is the richest, grandest, most liberal, most cultivated, most 
 enlightened state of Hellas. To Athens flock all the poets 
 and historians and philosophers. The Drama attains maturity 
 in her theatre. Philosophy takes its true direction from 
 Anaxagoras and Socrates. The ideal of history is realized 
 by Thucydides. Oratory flourishes under the great statesmen 
 and the . demagogues of the Republic. During the brief but 
 splendid ascendency of Athens, all the masterpieces of Greek 
 literature are simultaneously produced with marvellous ra- 
 pidity. Fixing 413 B.C. as the date of the commencement 
 of Athenian Decline, our fourth period, which terminates in 
 B.C. 323 with the death of Alexander, is again one of transi- 
 tion. The second period was transitional from adolescence 
 to maturity. The fourth is transitional from maturity to old 
 age. The creative genius of the Greeks is now less active. We 
 have indeed the great names of Plato, Aristotle, and Demos- 
 thenes, to give splendour to this stage of national existence. 
 But the sceptre has passed away from the Greek nation proper. 
 Their protagonist, Athens, is in slavery, The civilization 
 which they had slowly matured, and which at Athens had 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 5 
 
 been reflected in the masterpieces of Art and Literature, is 
 now spread abroad and scattered over the earth; Asia and 
 Egypt are Hellenized. The Greek spirit is less productive 
 than it has been ; but it is not less vigorous. It still asserts 
 itself as the greatest in the world ; but it does so, relying more 
 upon its past acquirements than on any seeds of power that 
 remain to be developed in the future. The fifth period, the 
 longest. of all, is one of decline and decay. It. extends from 
 B.C. 323 to the final extinction of classical civilization. Two 
 chief centres occupy our attention — Athens, where the tradi- 
 tions of art and philosophy yet linger, where the Stoics and 
 Epicureans and the sages of the New Academy still educate 
 the world and prepare a nidus for the ethics of Christianity — 
 and Alexandria, where physical science is cultivated under 
 the Ptolemies, where mystical theology flourishes in the schools 
 of the Neoplatonists, where libraries are formed and the labour 
 of literary .criticism is conducted on a gigantic scale, but where 
 nothing new is produced except the single, most beautiful 
 flower of Idyllic poetry and some few epigrams. In this fifth 
 period, Rome and Byzantium, where the Greek spirit, still 
 vital, over-lives its natural decay upon a foreign soil, close the 
 scene. 
 
 In these five periods — periods of superb adolescence, early 
 manhood, magnificent maturity, robust old age, and senility — 
 we can trace the genius of the Greeks putting forth its vigour 
 in successive works of art and literature, concentrating its 
 energy at . first upon its own self-culture, then extending 
 its influence in every direction, and controUing the education 
 of humanity, finally contenting itself with pondering and 
 poring on its past, with mystical metaphysics and pedantic 
 criticism. Yet even in its extreme decadence the Hellenic 
 spirit is still potent. It still assimilates, transmutes, and 
 alchemizes what it works upon. Coming into contact with 
 the new and mightier genius of Christianity, it forces even 
 
6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 that first-bom of the Deity to take form from itself. One dying 
 eifort of the Greek intellect, if we may so speak; is to formulate 
 the dogma of the Trinity and to impress the doctrine of the 
 Logos upon the author of the Gospel of St. John. The analogy 
 between the history of a race so undisturbed in its development 
 as the Greek, and the life of a man, is not altogether fanciful. 
 A. man like Goethe, beautiful in soul and body, exceedingly 
 strong and swift and active and inquisitive .in all the move- 
 ments of his spirit, first lives the life of the senses and of 
 physical enjoyment. His soul, "immersed in rich fore- 
 shaJowihgs of the world," has scarcely begun to think con- 
 sciously in the first period. But he feels the glory of existence, 
 the strivings of inexhaustible energy, the desire of infinite 
 expansion. The second period is one of Sturm und 
 Drang. New things are learned : much of the beautiful 
 physical activity is sacrificed ; he discovers that life involves 
 care and responsibility as well as pleasure ; he concentrates 
 his mental faculty on hard and baffling study, in which at first 
 he halts and falters. Then he goes forth to the world and 
 wins great fame, and does the deeds and thinks the thoughts 
 oy which he shall be known to all posterity. His physical and 
 mental faculties are now in perfect harmony ; together they 
 offer him the noblest and most enduring pleasures. But after 
 a while his productiveness begins to dwindle. He has put 
 forth his force, has f\illy expressed himself, has matured 
 his principles, has formed his theory of t'le world. Our fourth 
 period corresponds to the early old age of such a man's life. 
 He now applies his principles, propagates his philosophy, 
 subordinates his fancy, produces less, enjoys with more sobriety 
 and less exhilaration, bears burdens, suffers disappointments, 
 yet still, as Solon says, " learns always as he grows in years." 
 Then comes the fifth stage. He who was so vigorous and 
 splendid, now has but little joy in physical life ; his brain is 
 dry and withering ; he dwells on his old thoughts, and has no 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 7 
 
 faculty for generating new ones : yet his soul contains deep 
 mines of wisdom ; he gives counsel and frames laws for 
 younger generations. And so he gradually sinks into the 
 grave. His acts remain : his life is written. 
 
 The great name of Homer covers the whole of the first 
 period pf Greek Literature.* It is from the Homeric poems 
 alone that we can form a picture to our imagination of the 
 state of society in prehistoric Hellas. The picture which they 
 present is so lively in its details, and so consistent in all its 
 parts, that we have no reason to suspect that it was drawn 
 from fancy. Its ideal, as distinguished from merely realistic, 
 character is obvious. The poet professes to sing to us of 
 heroes who were of the seed of gods, whose strength exceeded 
 tenfold the strength of actual men, and who filled the world 
 with valiant deeds surpassing all that their posterity achieved. 
 Yet, in spite of this, the Iliad and the Odyssey may be taken as 
 faithful mirrors of a certain phase of Greek society, just as the 
 Niebehmgen Lied, the romances of Charlemagne, and the tales 
 of the Round Table reflect three stages in the history of 
 feudalism. We find that in this earliest period of Greek 
 history the nation was governed by monarchs each of whom 
 claimed descent from a god: Thus the -kings exercised their 
 power over the people by divine right ; but at the same time 
 a necessary condition of their maintaining this supremacy 
 was that they should be superior in riches, lands, personal 
 bravery, and wisdom. Their subjects obeyed them, not merely 
 because they were t^wytvCic, or because they were Fathers 
 of the people, but also, and chiefly, because they were the 
 ablest men, the men fitted by nature to rule, the men who 
 could be 'depended upon in an emergency. The king had 
 just so much personal authority as he had abihty to acquire or 
 to assert. As soon as this ability failed, the sceptre departed 
 
 * My special debt to Hegel's Philosophy of History in this paragraph 
 ought to be acknowledged. 
 
8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 from him. Thus Laertes overlives his royalty ; and the suitors 
 of Penelope, fancying that Ulysses is dead, take no heed of 
 Telemachus, who ought to rule in his stead, because Tele- 
 machus is a mere lad ; but as soon as the hero returns, and 
 proves his might by stringing the bow, the suitors are slain 
 like sheep. Again, Achilles, while acknowledging the sway of 
 Agamemnon, quarrels with him openly, proving his equality 
 and right to such independence as he can assert for himself. 
 The bond between the king in the Heroic age and his chief- 
 tains was founded on the personal superiority of the suzerain, 
 and upon the necessity felt for the predominance of one 
 individual in warfare and council. The chiefs were grouped 
 around the monarch like the twelve peers round Charle- 
 magne, or like the barons, whose turbulence Shakspere 
 has described in Richard II. The relation of the Homeric 
 sovereign to his princes was, in fact, a feudal one. Olympus 
 repeats the same form of government. There Zeus is monarch 
 simply because he wields the thunder. When Her^ wishes to 
 rebel, Hephaestus advises her to submit, because Zeus can 
 root up the world, or hurl them all from the crystal parapet of 
 heaven. Such, then, is the society of kings and princes in 
 Homer. They stand forth in, brilliant relief against the back- 
 ground, grey and misty, of the common people. The masses 
 of the nation, like the Chorus in Tragedy, kneel passive, deed- 
 less, appeaUng to heaven, trembUng at the strokes of fate, 
 watching with anxiety the action of the heroes. Meanwhile 
 the heroes enact their drama for themselves. They assume 
 responsibility. They do and suffer as their passions sway 
 them. Of these the greatest, the most truly typical, is Achilles. 
 In Achilles, Homer summed up and fixed for ever the, ideal of 
 the Greek character. He presented an imperishable picture of 
 their national youthfulness, and of their ardent genius, to the 
 Greeks. The " beautiful human heroism " of Achilles, his 
 strong personality, his fierce passions controlled and tempered 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. g 
 
 by divine wisdom, his intense friendship and love that passed 
 the love of women, above all, the splendour of his youthful 
 life in death made perfect, hovered like a dream above the 
 imagination of the Greeks, and insensibly determined their 
 subsequent development. At a later age this ideal was 
 destined to be realised in Alexander. The reality fell below 
 the ideal : for rzen liest si beau que la fable, si triste que la 
 verite. But the life of Alexander is the most convincing proof 
 of the importance of Achilles in the history of the Greek race.* 
 
 If Achilles be the type of the Hellenic genius, radiant, 
 adolescent, passionate ; as it still dazzles us in its artistic beauty 
 and unrivalled physical energy ; Ulysses is no less a true portrait 
 of the Greek as known to us in history — stern in action, ruthless 
 in his hatred, pitiless in his hostility ; subtle, vengeful, cun- 
 ning ; yet at the same time the most adventurous of men, the 
 most persuasive in eloquence, the wisest in counsel, the bravest 
 and coolest in danger. The Grceculus esuriens of Juvenal may 
 be said to be the caricature in real life of the ideahzed Ulysses. 
 And what remains to the present day of the Hellenic genius 
 in the soTcalled- Greek nation descends from Ulysses rather 
 than Achilles. If the Homeric Achilles has the superiority of 
 sculpturesque and dramatic splendour, the Homeric Ulysses 
 beats him on the ground of permanence of type. ■ 
 
 Homer, then, was the Poet of the Heroic age, the Poet 
 of Achilles and Ulysses. Of Homer we know nothing, we 
 have heard too much. Need we ask ourselves again the 
 question whether he existed, or whether he sprang into the 
 full possession of consummate art without a predecessor? 
 That he had no predecessors, no scattered poems and ballads 
 to build upon, no well-digested body of myths to syijthesize, 
 is lan absurd hypothesis which the whole history of literature 
 refutes. That, on the other hand, there never was a Homer, — 
 
 * In my Second Series of Studies of Greek Poets I have devoted i. 
 separate chapter to the character of Achilles. 
 
lo THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 that is to say, that some diaskeuast, acting under the orders of 
 Pisistratus, gave its immortal outline to the colossus of the 
 Iliad, and wove the magic web of the Odyssey — but that no 
 supreme and conscious artist working toward a well-planned 
 conclusion conceived and shaped these epics to the form they 
 bear, appears to the spirit of sound criticism equally ridiculous. 
 The very statement of this alternative involves a contradiction 
 in terms ; for such a diaskeuast must himself have been a 
 supreme and conscious artist. Some Homer did exist. Some 
 great single poet intervened between the lost chaos of legendary 
 material and the cosmos of artistic beauty which we now pos- 
 sess. His work may have been tampered with in a thousand 
 ways, and religiously but inadequately restored. Of his age 
 and date and country we may know nothing. But this we do 
 know, that the fire of moulding, fusing, and controlling genius 
 in some one single brain has made the Iliad and Odyssey what 
 they are. 
 
 The Epic poet merges his personality in his poems, the 
 words of which he ascribes to the inspiration of the Muse. 
 The individual is nowhere, is forgotten in the subject and 
 suppressed, while the luminous forms of gods and heroes 
 move serenely across the stage, summoned and marshalled 
 by the maidens of Helicon. In no other period of Greek 
 literature shall we find the same unconsciousness of self, the 
 same immersion in the work of Art. In this respect the 
 poetry of the Heroic age answers to the condition of pre- 
 historic Hellas, where as yet the elements of the Greek race 
 remain still implicit in the general mass and undeveloped. 
 We hear in Homer of no abrupt division between Dorians 
 and lonians. Athens and Sparta have not grown up into 
 prominence as the two leaders of the nation. Argos is 
 the centre of power ; but Phthiotis, the cradle of the Hel- 
 lenes, is the home of Achilles. Ulysses is an islander. 
 In the same way, in Homer the art of the Greeks is still 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. ii 
 
 a mere potentiality. The artistic sentiment, indeed, exists 
 in exquisite perfection; but it is germinal, not organized 
 and expanded as it will be. We hear Of embroidery for 
 royal garments, of goldsmith's work for shields and breast- 
 plates, of stained ivory trappings for chariots and horses. But 
 even here the poet's imagination had probably outrun the fact. 
 What he saw with his fancy, could the heroic artisans have 
 fashioned with their tools ? Is not the shield of Achilles, like 
 Dante's pavement of the Purgatorial staircase, a forecast of 
 ■the future? Architecture and Sculpture at any rate can 
 scarcely be said to exist. Ulysses builds his own house. The 
 statues of the gods are fetishes. But, meanwhile, the founda- 
 tion of the highest Greek art is being laid in the cultivation of 
 the human body. The sentiment of beauty shows itself in 
 dances and games, in the races of naked runners, in rhythmic 
 processions, and the celebration of religious rites. This was 
 the proper preparation for the after-growth of Sculpture. The 
 whole race lived out its sculpture and its painting, rehearsed, 
 as it were, the great works of Pheidias and Polygnotus in 
 physical exercise before it learned to express itself in marble or 
 in colour. The public games, which were instituted in this 
 first period, further contributed to the cultivation of the sense 
 of Beauty, which was inherent in the Greeks. 
 
 The second period is one of transition — in Politics, in 
 Literature, in the Fine Arts. Everywhere the old landmarks 
 are being broken up, and the new ones are not yet fixed. The 
 Heroic monarchies yield first of all to oligarchies, and then 
 to tyrannies ; the tyrannies in their turn give place to 
 democracies, or to constitutional aristocracies. Argos, the 
 centre of Heroic Hellas, is the first to change. Between 
 770 and 730 B.C. Pheidon usurps the sovereign power, and 
 dies, leaving no d)masty behind him.* Between 650 and 500 
 
 * The dale of Pheidon is in truth unfixed. According to recent 
 calculations, he may have celebrated the 28th and not the 8th Olympiad. 
 
12 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 we find despots springing up in all the chief Greek cities. At 
 Corinth the oligarchical family of the Bacchiadse are superseded 
 by the tyrants Cypselus and Periander. At Megara the despot 
 Theagenes is deposed and exiled. At Sicyon the Orthagoridae 
 terminate in the despot Cleisthenes, whose reign is marked by 
 an attempt to supersede the ancient Doric order of govern- 
 ment by caste. At Mitylene, Pittacus becomes a constitu- 
 tional autocrat, or dictator for the public safety. At Samos, 
 Polycrates holds a post of almost Oriental despotism. At 
 Athens, we find the great family of the Pisistratidae, who 
 supersede the dynastic tyranny in commission of the house 
 of Codrus. What is the meaning of these changes ? How 
 does the despot differ from the Heroic monarch, who held, as 
 we have seen, his power by divine right, but who also had to 
 depend for his ascendency on personal prowess ? Gradually 
 the old respect for the seed of Zeus died out. Either the 
 royal families abused their power, or became extinct, or, as 
 in the case of Athens and Sparta, retained hereditary privi- 
 leges under limitations. During this decay of the Zeus-born 
 dynasties, the cities of Greece were a prey to the quarrels 
 of great families ; and it often happened that one of these 
 obtained supreme power — in which case a monarchy, based 
 not on divine right, but on force and fear, was founded : or 
 else a few of the chief houses combined against the State, 
 to establish an oligarchy. The oligarchies, owing their 
 authority to no true, legal, or religious fount of honour, were 
 essentially selfish, and were exposed to the encroachments of 
 the more able among their own families. The cleverest man 
 in an oligarchy tended to draw the power into his own hands ; 
 but in this he generally succeede.d by first flattering, and then 
 intimidating the people. Thus in one way or another the old 
 type of dynastic government was superseded by despotisms. 
 
 The involved alteration in his date would bring him into closer connection 
 with the other despots. 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 13 
 
 more or less arbitrary, tending to the tyranny of single 
 individuals, or to the coalition of noble houses, and bringing 
 with them the vices of greed, craft, and servile cruelty. The 
 political ferment caused a vast political excitement. Party 
 strove against party ; and when one set gained the upper 
 hand, the other had to fly. The cities of Hellas were filled 
 with exiles. Diplomacy and criticism occupied the minds of 
 men. Personal cleverness became the one essential point in 
 politics. But two permanent advantages were secured by this 
 anarchy to the Greeks. The one was a strong sense of the 
 equality of citizens ; the other a desire for established law, as 
 opposed to the caprice of individuals and to the clash of 
 factions in the State. This then is the first point which marks 
 the transitional period. The old monarchies break up, and 
 give place to oligarchies first, and then to despotism. The 
 tyrants maintain themselves by violence and by 'flattering the 
 mob. At last they fall, or are displaced, and then the states 
 agree to maintain their freedom by the means of constitutions 
 and fixed laws.' The despots are schoolmasters, who bring the 
 people to Nomas as their lord. 
 
 Three other general features distinguish this period of 
 transition. The first is Colonisation. In the political disturb- 
 ances which attend the struggle for power, hundreds of citizens 
 were forced to change their residence. So we find the mother 
 cities sending settlers to Italy, to Sicily, to Africa, to the Gulf 
 of Lyons, to Thrace, and to the islands'. In these colonies 
 the real life and vigour of Hellas show themselves at this stage 
 more than in the mother states. It is in Sicily, on the coast of 
 Magna Grsecia, on the sea-board of Asia Minor, in the islands 
 of the ^gean, that the first poets and philosophers and 
 historians of Greece appear. Sparta and Athens, destined to 
 become the protagonists of the real drama of Hellas, are 
 meanwhile silent and apparently inert. Secondly, this is the 
 age of the Nomothetse. Thebes receives a constitution from 
 
14 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 the Corinthian lovers and lawgivers Philolaus and Diodes. 
 Lycurgus and Solon form the states of Sparta and Athens. It 
 is not a little wonderful to think of these three great cities, 
 successively the leaders of historic HellaSj submitting to the 
 intellect each of its own lawgiver, taking shape beneath his 
 hands, cheerfully accepting and diligently executing his direc- 
 tions. La,stly, it is in this period that the two chief races 
 of the Greeks — the lonians and the Dorians — emerge into 
 distinctness. Not only are Athens and Sparta fashioned to 
 the form which they will afterwards maintain ; but also in the 
 colonies two distinct streams of thought and feeling begin to 
 flow onwards side by side, and to absorb, each into its own 
 current, those minor rivulets which it could best appropriate. 
 
 What happens to literature in this period of metamorphosis, 
 expansion, and anarchy? We have seen that Homer covers 
 the whole of !he first period of literature ; and in the Homeric - 
 poems we saw that the iiiterests of the present were subordi- 
 nated to a splendid picture of the ideal past, that the poet was 
 merged in his work, that the individual joys and sorrows of the 
 artist remained unspoken, and that his words were referred 
 immediately to the Muse. All this is now to be altered. But 
 meanwhile between the first and second period a link is made 
 by Hesiod. In his Works and Days he still preserves the 
 traditions of the Epic. But we no longer listen to the deeds of 
 gods 'and heroes ; and though the Muse is invoked, the poet 
 appears before us as a living, sentient, suffering man. We 
 descend to earth. We are instructed in the toils and duties of 
 the beings who have to act and endure upon the prosaic stage 
 of the world, as it exists in the common light of the present 
 time. Even in Hesiod there has therefore been a changfe. 
 Homer strung his lyre in the halls of princes who loved to 
 dwell on the great deeds of their god-descended ancestors. 
 Hesiod utters a weaker and more subdued note to the tillers of 
 *.he ground and the watchers of the seasons. In Homer we 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 15 
 
 see the radiant heroes expiring with a smile upon their Hps as 
 on the ^ginetan pediment. In Hesiod we hear the low sad 
 outcry of humanity. The inner life, the daily loss and profit, 
 the duties and the cares of men are his concern. Homer too 
 was never analytical. He described the world without raising 
 a single moral or psychological question. Hesiod poses the 
 eternal problems : What is the origin and destiny of mankind ? 
 Why should we toil painfully upon the upward path of virtue ? 
 How came the gods to be our tyrants ? What is Justice ? How 
 did evil and pain and disease begin ? After Hesiod the Epical 
 impulse ceases. Poets indeed go oni writing narrative poems 
 in hexameters. But the Cycle, so called by the Alexandrian 
 critics, produced about this time, had not innate life enough to 
 survive the wear and tear of centuries. ' We have lost the 
 whole series, except in the tragedies which were composed from 
 their materials. Literature had passed beyond the stage of the 
 heroic Epic. The national ear demanded other and more 
 varied forms of verse than the hexameter. Among the lonians 
 of Asia Minor was developed the pathetic melody of the 
 Elegiac metre, which first apparently was used to express the 
 emotions of love and sorrow, and afterwards came to be the 
 vehicle of moral sentiment and all strong feeling. Callinus 
 and Tyrtseus adapted the Elegy to songs of battle. Solon 
 consigned his wisdom to its couplets, and used it as a trumpet 
 for awakening the zeal of Athens against her tyrants. Mim- 
 nermus confined the metre to its more plaintive melodies, and 
 made it the mouthpiece of lamentations over the fleeting beia.uty' 
 of youth and the evils of old age. In Theognis the Elegy 
 takes wider scope. He uses it ahke for satire and invective, 
 for precept, for autobiographic grumblings, for political dis- 
 courses, and for philosophical apophthegms. Side by side with 
 the Elegy arose the various forms of Lyric poetry. The 
 names of Alcaeus and Sappho, of Alcman, Anacreon, Simo- 
 nides, Bacchylides, Stesichorus, Arion instantly suggest them- 
 
1 6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 selves. But it must be borne in mind that I^yric poetry in 
 Greece at a very early period broke up into two distinct species. 
 The one kind gave expression to strong personal emotion and 
 became a safety-valve for perilous passions : the other was 
 choric and complex in its form ; designed for pubUc festivals 
 and solemn ceremonials, it consisted chiefly of odes sung in 
 the honour of gods and great men. To "the. former or personal 
 species belong the lyrics of the Ionian and ^olian families : to 
 the latter, or more public species, belong the so-called Dorian 
 odes. Besides the Elegy and all the forms of lyric stanza, the 
 Iambic, if not invented in this period, was now adapted of set 
 purpose to personal satire.* Archilochus is said to have pre- 
 ferred this metre, as being the closest in its form to common 
 speech, and therefore suited to his unideal practical invective. 
 From the Xjnz Dithyrambs of Arion, sung at festivals of 
 Dionysus, and from the Iambic satires of Archilochus, recited 
 at the feasts of Demeter,t was to be developed the metrical 
 structure of the drama in the third period. As yet, it is only 
 among the Dorians of Sicily and of Megara that we hear of any 
 mimetic shows, and these of the simplest description. 
 
 In this period the first start in the direction of philosophy 
 was made. The morality which had been implicit in Homer, 
 and had received a partial development in Hesiod, was con- 
 densed in proverbial couplets by Solon, Theognis, Phocylides, 
 and Simonides. These couplets formed the starting-points for 
 discussion. Many of Plato's dialogues turn on sayings of 
 Theognis and Simonides. Many of the sublimer flights of 
 meditation in Sophocles are expansions of early Gnomes. 
 Even the Ethics of Aristotle are indebted to their wisdom. 
 
 * The Margiies and Eiresione, attributed by the Greeks to Homer 
 contain possibly the earliest fragments of Iambic verses. 
 
 t Satire, it is well known, was permitted at some of the festivals of 
 Demeter ; and the legend of the maid lambe, who alone could draw 
 a smile from Demeter, after she had lost Persephone, seems to symbolize 
 the connection of Iambic recitations with the cultus of this goddess. 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. ' 17 
 
 The ferment of thought produced by the political struggles of 
 this age tended to sharpen the intellect and to turn reflection 
 inwards. Hence we find that the men who rose to greatest 
 eminence in statecraft as t3rrants or as lawgivers, are also to bei 
 reckoned among the primitive philosophers of Greece. The 
 aphorisms of the Seven Sages, two of whom were Nomothetse, 
 and several of whom were despots, contain the kernel of much 
 that is peculiar in Greek thought. It is enough to mention 
 
 these : firjdcv ayav fihpov apitrrov yvGiOi aeavrov' Kaipbv yvS)Oc 
 
 avayK-ri F ovZe Oeoi fia\ovTcu, which are the germs of subsequent 
 systems of ethics, metaphysics, and theories of art.* Solon, as 
 a patriot, a modeller of the Athenian constitution, an elegiac 
 poet, one of the Seven Sages, and the representative of Greece 
 at the court of Crcesus, may be chosen as the one most 
 eminent man in a period when literature and thought and 
 politics were to a remarkable extent combined in single indi- 
 viduals. 
 
 Meanwhile philosophy began to flourish in more definite 
 shape among the colonists of Asia Minor, Italy, and' Sicily. 
 The criticism of the Theogony of Hesiod led the Ionian 
 thinkers, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaxirhander, Heraclitus, to 
 evolve separate answers to the question of the origin of the 
 universe. The problem of the physical «PX^> °^ starting point, 
 of the world occupied their attention. Some more scientific 
 theory of existence than mythology afforded was imperatively 
 demanded. The same spirit of criticism, the same demand for 
 accuracy, gave birth to history. The Theogony of Hesiod and 
 the Homeric version pf the Trojan war, together with the 
 genealogies of the Heroes, were reduced to simple statements of 
 fact, stripped of their artistic trappings, and rationalized after 
 a rude and simple fashion by the annaUsts of Asia Minor. 
 This zeal for greater rigour of thought was instrumental in 
 
 * Nothing overmuch :' measure is best : know thyself; know the right 
 moment : against necessity not even gods fight. 
 
 C 
 
J 8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 developing a new vehicle of language. The time had come at 
 length for separation from poetry, for the creation of a prose 
 style which should correspond in accuracy to the logical 
 necessity of exact thinking. Prose accordingly was elaborated 
 with infinite difficulty by these first speculators from the ele- 
 ments of common speech. It was a great epoch in the history 
 of European culture when men ceased to produce their 
 thoughts in the fixed cadences of verse, and consigned them 
 to the more elastic periods of prose'. Heraclitus of Ephesus 
 was the first who achieved a notable success in this new and 
 difficult art. He for. his pains received the title of 6 nKonivoc, 
 the' obscure ; so strange and novel did the language of science 
 seem to minds accustomed hitherto to nothing but metre. Yet 
 even after his date philosophy of the deepest species was still 
 conveyed in verse. The Eleatic metaphysicians Xenophanes 
 and Parmenides — Xenophanes, who dared to criticise the an- 
 thropomorphism of the Greek Pantheon, and Parmenides, who 
 gave utterance to the word of Greek ontology, to ov, or Being, 
 which may be significantly contrasted with the Hebrew I am — 
 wrote long poems in which they invoked the Muse, and dragged 
 the hexameter along the pathway of their argument upon the 
 entities, like a pompous sacrificial vestment. Empedocles of 
 Agrigentum, to whom we owe the rough and ready theory of 
 the four elements, cadenced his great work on Nature in the 
 same sonorous verse, and interspersed his speculations on the 
 Cycles of the Universe with passages of brilliant eloquence. 
 
 Thus the second period is marked alike by changes in 
 politics and society, and by a revolution in the spirit of litera- 
 ture. The old Homeric monarchies are broken up. Oligarchies 
 and tyrannies take their place. To the anarchy and unrest of 
 transition succeeds the demand for constitutional order. The 
 colonies are founded, and contain the very pith of Hellas at 
 this epoch : of all the great names we have mentioned, only 
 Solon and Theognis belong to Central Greece. The Homeric 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 19 
 
 Epos has become obsolete. In its stead we have the greatest 
 possible variety of literary forms. The Elegiac poetry of morality 
 and war and love; the Lyrical poetry of personal feeling and of 
 public ceremonial; the Philosophical poetry of metaphysics and 
 mysticism ; the Iambic, with its satire ; Prose, in its adaptation 
 to new science and a more accurate historical investigation; 
 are all built up upon the ruins of the Epic. What is most 
 prominent in the spirit of this second period is the emergence 
 of private interests and individual activities. No dreams of 
 a golden past now occupy the minds of men. No gods or 
 heroes fill the canvas of the poet. Man, his daily life, his 
 most crying necessities, his deepest problems, his loves and 
 sorrows, his friendships, his social relations, his civic duties — 
 these are the theme of poetry. Now for the first time in Europe 
 a man tells his own hopes and fears, and expects the world to 
 listen. Sappho simply sings' her love ; Archilochus, his hatred ; 
 Theognis, his wrongs ; Mimnermus, his ennui ; Alcseus, his 
 misfortunes ; Anacreon, his pleasure of the hour ; and their 
 songs find an echo in ■ all hearts. The Individual and the 
 Present have triumphed over the Ideal and the Past. Finally, 
 it should be added that the chief contributions to the. culture 
 of the fine arts in this period are Architecture, which is carried 
 to perfection ; Music, which receives elaborate form in the 
 lyric of the Dorian order ; and Sculpture, which appears as yet 
 but rudimentary upon the pediments of the temples of M^-a.2, 
 and Selinus. 
 
 Our third period embraces the supremacy of Athens from 
 the end of the Persian to the end of the Peloponnesian war. 
 It was the struggle with Xerxes which developed all the latent 
 energies of the Greeks, which intensified their national existence, 
 and which secured for Athens, as the central power on which 
 the scattered forces of the race converged, the intellectual 
 dictatorship of Hellas. No contest equals for interest and for 
 importance this contest of the Greeks with the Persians. It 
 
20 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 was a struggle of spiritual energy against brute force, of liberty 
 against oppression, of intellectual freedom against superstitious 
 ignorance, of civilization against barbarism. The whole fate 
 of humanity hung trembling in the scales at Marathon, at 
 Salamis, at Platsea. On the one side were ranged the hordes 
 of Asia, tribe after tribe, legion upon legion, myriad by myriad, 
 under their generals and princes. On the other side stood forth 
 a band of athletes, of Greek citizens, each one himself a prince 
 and general. The countless masses of the herd-like Persian host 
 were opposed to a handful of resolute men in whom the force 
 of the spirit of the world was concentrated. The triumph of 
 the Greeks was the triumph of the spirit, of the intellect of 
 man, of light dispersing darkness, of energy repelling a dead 
 weight of matter. Other nations have shown a temper as 
 heroic as the Greeks. The Dutch, for instance, in their re- 
 sistance against Philip, or the Swiss in their antagonism to 
 Burgundy and Austria. But in no other single instance has 
 heroism been exerted on so large a scale, in such a fateful 
 contest for the benefit of mankind at large. Had the Dutch, 
 for example, been quelled by Spain, or the Swiss been crushed 
 by the House of Hapsburg, the world could have survived the 
 loss of these athletic nations. There were other mjghty 
 peoples, who held the torch of liberty and of the spirit, and 
 who were ready to carry it onward in the race. But if Persia 
 had overwhelmed the Greeks upon the plains of Marathon or 
 in the straits of Salamis, that torch of spiritual liberty would 
 have been extinguished. There was no runner in the race to 
 catch it up from the dying hands of Hellas, and to bear it 
 forward for the future age. No : this contest of the Greeks 
 with Persia was the one supreme battle of history; and to the 
 triumph of the Greeks we owe whatever is most great and 
 glorious in die subsequent achievements of the human race. 
 
 Athens rose to her full height in this duel. She bore the 
 brunt of Marathon alone. Her generals decided the sea-fight 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 21 
 
 of Salamis. For the Spartans it remained to defeat Mardonius 
 at Platsea. Consequently the olive-wreath of this more than 
 Olympian victory crowned Athens. Athens was recognized as 
 Saviour and Queen of Hellas. And Athens, who had fought 
 the battle of the Spirit — by Spirit we mean the greatness of the 
 soul, liberty, intelligence, civilization, culture, everything which 
 raises men above brutes and slaves, and makes them free 
 beneath the arch of heaven — Athens who had fought and won 
 this battle of the Spirit, became immediately the recognized 
 impersonation of the Spirit itself. Whatever was superb in 
 human nature found its natural home and sphere in Athens. 
 We hear no more of the colonies. All great works of Art and 
 Literature now are produced in Athens. It is to Athens that 
 the sages come to teach and to be taught. Anaxagoras, Socrates, 
 Plato, the three masters of philosophy in this third period, are 
 Athenians. It is, however, noticeable and significant that 
 Anaxagoras, who forms a link between the philosophy of the 
 second and third period, is a native of Clazomenas, though 
 the thirty years of his active life are spent at Athens. These 
 thinkers introduce into speculation a new element. Instead of 
 inquiries into the factors of the physical world or of ontological 
 theorizing, they approach all problems which involve the activi- 
 ties of the human soul, the presence in the universe of a con- 
 trolling Spirit. Anaxagoras issues the famous apophtliegm, vovq 
 Tzav-m' Kparei : " intelligence disposes all things in tne world." 
 Socrates founds his ethical investigation upon the Delphian 
 precept, yywHi inavTov : or, " the proper study of mankind is 
 man." Plato, who belongs chronologically to the fourth period, 
 but who may here be mentioned in connection with the great 
 men of the third, as synthesizing all the previous speculations 
 of the Greeks, ascends to the conception of an ideal existence 
 which unites Truth, Beauty, and Goodness in one scheme of 
 universal order. 
 
 At the same time Greek art rises to its height of full 
 
22 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 maturity. Ictinus designs the Parthenon, and Mnesicles the 
 Propylfea ; Pheidias completes the development of Sculpture 
 in his statue of Athene, his pediment and friezes of the Par- 
 thenon, his chryselephantine image of Zeus at Olympia, his 
 marble Nemesis upon the plain of Marathon. These were 
 the ultimate, consummate achievements of the sculptor's skill ; 
 the absolute standards of what the statuary in Greece could do, 
 PSTothing remained to be added. Subsequent progression — for 
 a progression there was in the work of Praxiteles — was a deflec- 
 tion from the pure and perfect type. 
 
 Poetry, in the same way, receives incomparable treatment 
 at the hands of the great dramatists. As the Epic of Homer 
 contained implicitly all forms of poetry, so did the Athenian 
 Drama consciously unite them in one supreme work of art. 
 The energies aroused by the Persian war had made action and 
 the delineation of action of prime importance to the Greeks. 
 We no longer find the poets giving expression to merely per- 
 sonal feeling, or uttering wise saws and moral precepts, as in 
 the second period. Human emotion is indeed their theme : 
 but it is the phases of passion in living, acting, and con- 
 flicting personalities which the Drama undertakes to_ depict, 
 pthical philosophy is more than ever substantive in verse : but 
 its lessons are set forth by example and not by precept — they 
 animate the conduct of whole trilogies. The awakened activity 
 of Hellas at this period produced the first great drama of 
 Europe, as, the Reformation in England produced the second. 
 The Greek Drama being essentially religious, the tragedians 
 ascended to Mythology for their materials. Homer is dis- 
 jnembered, and his episodes or allusions, together with the 
 substance of the Cyclic poems, supply the dramatist with plots. 
 Put notice the diff'erence between Homer and ^schylus, the 
 Epic and the Drama. In the latter we find no merely external 
 delineation of mythical history. The legends are used as out- 
 Jines to be filled in with living and eternally important details. 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 23 
 
 The heroes are not interesting merely as heroes, but as the 
 types and patterns of human nature, as representatives on a 
 gigantic scale of that humanity which is common to all men 
 in all ages, and as subject to the destinies which control all 
 human affairs. Mythology has thus become the text-book of 
 life, interpreted by the philosophical consciousness. With the 
 names of ^schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, must be coupled 
 that of Aristophanes. His Comedy is a peculiarly Athenian 
 product — the strongest mixture of paradox and irony and broad 
 buffoonery and splendid poetry, designed to serve a serious 
 aim, the world has ever seen. Here the many-sided, flashing 
 genius of the Ionian race appears in all its subtlety, variety, 
 suppleness, and strength. The free spirit of Athens runs riot 
 and proclaims its liberty by license in the prodigious saturnalia 
 of the wit of Aristophanes. 
 
 It remains to be added that to this period belong the 
 histories of Herodotus, the Halicamassean by birth, who went 
 to Thurii as colonist from Athens, and of Thucydides, the 
 Athenian general ; the lyrics of Pindar the Theban, who was 
 made the public guest of Athens ; the eloquence of Pericles, 
 and the wit of Aspasia. This brief enumeration suffices to 
 show that in the third period of Greek Literature was con- 
 tained whatever is most splendid in the achievements of the 
 genius of the Greeks, and that all these triumphs converged 
 and were centred upon Athens. 
 
 The public events of this period are summed up in the 
 struggle for supremacy between Athens and Sparta. The race 
 which had shown itself capable of united action against the 
 common foe, now develops within itself two antagonistic and 
 mutually exclusive principles. The age of the despots is past. 
 The flowering-time of the colonies is over. The stone of 
 Tantalus in Persia has been removed from Hellas. But it 
 remains for Sparta and Athens to fight out the duel of Dorian 
 against Ionian prejudices, of Oligarchy against Democracy. 
 
24 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Both states have received their definite stamp, or permanent 
 j]eoc— Sparta from semi-mythical Lycurgus; Athens from 
 Solon, Cleisthenes, and Pericles. Their war is the warfare of 
 •the powers of the sea with the powers of the land, of Conserva- 
 tives with Liberals, of the rigid principle of established order 
 with the expansive spirit of intellectual and artistic freedom. 
 What is called the Peloponnesian war— that internecine 
 struggle of the Greeks — is the historical outcome of this deep7 
 seated antagonism. And the greatest historical narrative in 
 the world, that of Thucydides, is its record. To dwell upon 
 the events of this war would be superfluous. Athens uniformly 
 exhibits herself as a dazzling, brilliant, impatient power, led 
 astray by the desire of novelty, and the intoxicating sense of 
 force in freedom. Sparta proceeds slowly, coldly, cautiously ; 
 secures her steps ; acts on the defensive ; spends no strength 
 in vain ; is timid, tentative, and economical of energy ; but at 
 the decisive moment she steps in and crushes her antagonist. 
 Deluded by the wandering fire of the inspiration of Alcibiades, 
 the Athenians venture to abandon the policy of Pericles and 
 to contemplate the conquest of Syracuse. A dream of gigantic 
 empire, in harmony with their expansive spirit, but inconsistent 
 with the very conditions of vitality in a Greek state, floated 
 before their imaginations. In attempting to execute it, they 
 over-reached themselves and fell a prey to Sparta. With the 
 fall of Athens, faded the real beauty and grandeur of Greece. 
 Athens had incarnated that ideal of loveliness and sublimity. 
 During her days of prosperity she had expressed it in superb 
 works of art and literature, and in the splendid life of a free 
 people governed solely by their own intelligence. Sparta wa^ 
 strong to destroy this life, to extinguish this light of culture. 
 But to do more she had no strength. Stiffened in her narrow 
 rules of discipline, she was utterly unable to sustain the 
 spiritual vitality of Hellas, or to carry its still vigorous energy 
 into new spheres. It remained for aliens to accomplish this. 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITER A TURE. 25 
 
 Just before passing to the fourth period of comparative de- 
 cline, we may halt a moment to contemplate the man who repre- 
 sents this age of full maturity. Pericles, called half in derision 
 by the comic poets the Zeus of Athens, called afterwards, with 
 reverence, by Plutarch, the Olympian — Pericles expresses in 
 himself the spirit of this age. He is the typical Athenian, who 
 governed Athens during the years in which Athens governed 
 Greece, who formed the taste of the Athenians at the time 
 when they were educating the world by the production of im- 
 mortal works of beauty. We have seen that the conquest of the 
 Persians was the triumph of the spirit, and that after the con- 
 quest the spirit of humanity found itself for the first time abso- 
 solutely and consciously free in Athens. This spirit was, so to 
 speak, incarnated in Pericles. The Greek genius was made 
 flesh in him, and dwelt at Athens. In obedience to its dic- 
 tates, he extended the political liberties of the Athenians to 
 the utmost, while he controlled those liberties with the laws 
 of his own reason. In obedience to the same spirit, he ex- 
 pended the treasures of the Ionian League upon the public 
 works, which formed the subsequent glory of Hellas, and made 
 her august even in humiliation. " That," says Plutarch, 
 "which now is Greece's only evidence that the power she 
 boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, 
 was his construction of the pubKc and sacred buildings.'' It 
 was, again, by the same inspiration that Pericles divined the 
 true ideal of the Athenian commonwealth. In the Funeral 
 Oration he says : " We love the beautiful, but without osten- 
 tation or extravagance ;, we philosophise without being seduced 
 into effeminacy : we are bold and daring ; but this energy in 
 action does not prevent us from, giving to ourselves a strict 
 account of what we undertake. Among other nations, on the 
 contrary, m.artial courage has its foundation in deficiency of 
 culture ; we know best how to distinguish between the agreeable 
 and the irksome ; notwithstanding which we do not shrink 
 
26 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 from perils." In this panegyric of the national character, 
 Pericles has rightly expressed the real spirit of Athens as dis- 
 tinguished from Sparta. The courage and activity of the 
 Athenians were the result of open-eyed wisdom, and not of 
 mere gymnastic training. Athens knew that the arts of life 
 and the pleasures of the intellect were superior to merely 
 physical exercises, to drill, and to discipKne. 
 
 While fixing our thoughts upon Pericles as the exponent of 
 the mature spirit of free Hellas, we owe some attention to his 
 master, the great Anaxagoras, who first made Reason play 
 the chief part in the scheme of the universe. Of the relations 
 of Anaxagoras to his pupil Pericles, this is what Plutarch tells 
 us : " He that saw most of Pericles, and furnished him most 
 especially with a weight and grandeur of sense, superior to all 
 arts of popularity, and in general gave him his elevation and 
 sublimity of purpose and of character, was Anaxagoras of 
 Clazomense, whom the men of those tinies called by the name 
 of Nous, that is, mind or intelligence ; whether in admiration 
 of the great and extraordinary gift he displayed for the science 
 of nature, or because he was the first of the philosophers who 
 did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, 
 nor to necessity or compulsion, but to a pure, unadulterated 
 intelligence, which in all other existing mixed and compound 
 things acts as a principle of discrimination, and of combination 
 of like with like." Thus we may say, without mysticism, that 
 at the very moment in history when the intelligeiice of mankind 
 attained to freedom, there arose a philosopher in Anaxagoras 
 to proclaim the freedom and absolute supremacy of intelligence 
 in the universe ; and a ruler in Pericles to carry into action 
 the laws of that intelligence, and to govern the most uncon- 
 trollably free of nations by Reason. When Pericles died, 
 Athens lost her Zeus, her head, her real king. She was left a 
 prey to parties, to demagogues, to the cold encroaching policy 
 of Sparta. But Pericles had lived long enough to secure the 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 27 
 
 immortality of what was greatest in his city, to make of Athens 
 in her beauty " a joy for ever." 
 
 " If the army of Nicias had not been defeated under the 
 walls of Syracuse ; if the Athenians had, acquiring Sicily, held 
 the balance between Rome and Carthage, sent garrisons to the 
 Greek colonies in the south of Italy, Rome might have been 
 aU that its intellectual condition entitled it to be, a tributary, 
 not the conqueror, of Greece ; the Macedonian power would 
 never have attained to the dictatorship of the civilized states of 
 the world." Such is the exclamation of Shelley over the fall 
 of Athens. But, according to the Greek proverb, to desire 
 impossibilities — in the past as in the present — is a sickness of 
 the soul. No Greek state could have maintained its ^9oe 
 while it ruled a foreign empire ; nor is the right to govern 
 measured by merely intellectual capacity. The work of 
 Greece was essentially spiritual and not political. The chief 
 sign of weakness which meets us in the fourth period is in the 
 region of politics. After the humiliation of Athens, Sparta 
 assumed the leadership of Greece. But she shamefully 
 misused her power by betraying the Greek cities of Asia to the 
 Persians, while her generals and harmosts made use of their 
 authority for the indulgence of their private vices. Nothing in 
 the previous training of the Spartan race fitted them for the 
 control of nations with whose more liberal institutions and 
 refined manners they could not sympathize. Their tyranny 
 proved insupportable, and was at last reduced to the dust by 
 the Thebans under Pelopidas and Epaminondas. But Thebes 
 had neither the wealth nor the vigour to administer the govern- 
 ment of Hellas. Therefore the Greek states fell into a chaos 
 of discord, without leadership, without a generous spirit of 
 mutual confidence and aid ; while at the same time the power 
 of the Macedonian kingdom was rapidly increasing under the 
 control of Philip. An occasion offered itself to Philip for 
 interfering in the Greek affairs. From that moment forward for 
 
28 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ever the cities of Greece became the fiefs of foreign despots. 
 The occasion in question was a great one. The Phocians had 
 plundered the Delphian temple, and none of the Greeks were 
 strong enough to punish them. The act of the Phocians 
 was parricidal in its sacrilege, suicidal in short-sightedness. 
 Defiling the altar of the ancestral god, on whose oracles the 
 states had hitherto depended for counsel, and destroying, with 
 the sanctity of Delphi, the sacred symbol of Greek national 
 existence, they abandoned themselves to desecration and dis- 
 honour. With as little impunity could a king of Judah have 
 robbed the temple and invaded the Holiest of Holies. But 
 neither Spartans, nor Athenians, nor yet Thebans arose to 
 avenge the affront ofl"ered to their common nationality. The 
 whole of Greece proper lay paralyzed, and the foreigner 
 stepped in — Philip, whom in their pride they had hitherto 
 called the Barbarian. He took up the cause of Phoebus and 
 punished the children of the Delphian god for their impiety. 
 It was clearly proved to the states of Hellas that their inde- 
 pendence was at an end. They submitted. Greece became the 
 passive spectator of the deeds of Macedonia. Hellas, who had 
 been the hero, was now the chorus. It was Alexander of 
 Macedon who played the part of Achilles iri her future drama. 
 
 One man vindicated the spirit of Greek freedom against this 
 despotism. The genius of Athens, militant once more, but 
 destined not to triumph, incarnates itself in Demosthenes. 
 By dint of eloquence and weight of character he strives to 
 stem the tide of dissolution. But it is in vain. His orations 
 remain as the monuments of a valiant but ineffectual resist- 
 ance. The old intelligence of Athens shines, nay, fulminates, 
 in these tremendous periods ; but it is no longer intelligence 
 combined with power. The sceptre of empire has passed from 
 the hands of the Athenians. 
 
 Still, though the states of Greece are humiliated, though we 
 hear no more of lonians and Dorians, but only of Macedonians, 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 29 
 
 yet the real force of the Greek race is by no means exhausted 
 in this fourth period. On the contrary, their practical work 
 in the world is just beginning. Under the guidance of 
 Alexander, the Greek spirit conquers and attempts to civihze 
 the East. The parallel between Alexander and Achilles, as 
 before hinted, is more than accidental. Trained in the study 
 of Homer as we are in the study of the Bible, he compared his 
 destinies with those of the great hero, and formed himself 
 upon the type of Pelides. At Troy he pays peculiar reverence 
 to the tomb of Patroclus. He celebrates Hephasstion's death 
 with Homeric games and pyres up-piled to heaven. He carries 
 Homer with him on war-marches, and consults the Iliad on 
 occasions of doubt. Alexander's purpose was to fight out to 
 the end the fight begun by Achilles between West and East, 
 and to avenge Greece for the injuries of Asia. But it was 
 not a merely mihtary conquest which he executed. Battles 
 were the means to higher ends. Alexander sought to subject 
 the world to the Greek spirit, to stamp the customs, the 
 thoughts, the language, and the culture of the Greeks upon 
 surrounding nations. Poets and philosophers accompanied his 
 armies. In the deserts of Bactria and Syria and Libya he 
 founded Greek cities. During the few years of his short life 
 he not only swept those continents, but he effaced the past and 
 inaugurated a new state of things throughout them ; so that, in 
 subsequent years, when the Romans, themselves refined by 
 contact with the Greeks, advanced to take possession of those 
 territories, they found their work half done. The alchemizing 
 touch of the Greek genius had transformed languages, cities, 
 constitutions, customs, nay, religions also, to its own likeness. 
 This fourth period, a period of transition firom maturity to 
 decay, is the period of Alexander. In it the Greek spirit, 
 which had been gathering strength through so many generations, 
 poured itself abroad over the world. What it lost in intensity 
 and splendour, it gained in extension. It was impossible even 
 
30 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 for Greeks, while thus impressing their civilization on the whol6 
 earth, to go on increasing in the beauty of their life and art at 
 home. 
 
 Some of the greatest names in Art, Philosophy, and Lite- 
 rature ' still belong to this fourth period. The chief of all is 
 Aristotle, il maestro di color che sanno, the absorber of all 
 previous and contemporary knowledge into one coherent 
 system, the legislator for the human intellect through eighteen 
 centuries after his death. It is worth observing that Aristotle, 
 unlike Socrates and Plato, is not a citizen of Athens, but of 
 the small Thracian town Stageira. Thus, at the moment when 
 philosophy lost its essentially Hellenic character and became 
 cosmopolitan in Aristotle, the mantle devolved upon an alien. 
 Again Aristotle was the tutor of Alexander. The two greatest 
 men of the fourth period are thus brought into the closest 
 relations. In pure literature the most eminent productions of 
 this period are the orations of ^schines, Demosthenes, 
 Isocrates ; and the comedies of Menander. It is not a little 
 significant that we should have retained no authentic fragment 
 of the speeches of Pericles — except in so far as we may trust 
 Thucydides, — while the studied Rhetoric of these politically 
 far less important orators should have been so copiously 
 preserved. The reign of mere talk was imminent. Oratory 
 was coming to be studied as an art, and practised, not as a 
 potent instrument in politics, but as an end in itself Men 
 were beginning to think more of how they spoke than of what 
 they might achieve by speaking. Besides, the whole Athenian 
 nation, as dikasts and as ecclesiasts, were interested in Rhetoric. 
 The first masters of eloquence considered as a fine art were 
 therefore idolizJed. Demosthenes, ^schines, Isocrates, com- 
 bined the fire of vehement partisans and impassioned politicians 
 with the consummate skill of professional' speech-makers. 
 After their days Rhetoric in Greece became a matter of frigid 
 display — an aycij/Kr/xa f'c to irapa-xjirifia. In the Comedies of 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 31 
 
 Menander, as far as we may judge of them from fragments and 
 critiques, and from their Latin copies, a very noticeable change 
 in the spirit of literature is apparent. The so-called New 
 Comedy, of which he was the representative, is the product of 
 a meditative and inactive age. The great concerns of the 
 world, and of human life seen in its profoundest depth, which 
 , formed the staple of Aristophanes, have been abandoned. 
 We are brought close to domesticities : the events of common 
 life occupy the stage of Menander. The audience of Aristo- 
 phanes listened with avidity to comedies of which politics 
 upon the grandest scale were the substance. Menander invited 
 his Athenians to the intrigues of young men, slaves, and 
 hetairai, at warfare with niggardly parents. Athens has ceased 
 to be an empress. She has become a garrulous housewife. 
 She contents herself with amusements, — still splendid with 
 intelligence and dignified with wisdom, but not weighty with 
 the consciousness of power, nor throbbing with the pulses of 
 superabundant youthfulness and vigour. 
 
 In the Fine Arts this fourth period was still inventive. 
 Under Alexander painting, which had received its Hellenic 
 character from Polygnotus and Zeuxis, continued to flourish 
 ■with Apelles. Indeed, it may be fairly said that while Art in 
 the Heroic period was confined to the perfecting of the human 
 body, in the second period it produced Architecture, in the 
 third Sculpture, and in the fourth Painting — this being ap- 
 parently the natural order of progression in the evolution of 
 the fine arts. Lysippus, meanwhile, worthily represents the 
 craft of the statuary in Alexander's age ; while the coins and 
 gems of this time show that the glyptic and numismatic arts 
 were at their zenith of technical perfection. Of Greek Music, 
 in the absence of all sure information, it is difficult to speak. 
 Yet it is probable that the age of Alexander witnessed a new 
 and more complex development of orchestral music. We 
 hear of vast symphonies performed at the Macedonian court. 
 
32 
 
 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Nor is this inconsistent with what we know about the history 
 of Art : for music attains independence, ceases to be the 
 handmaid of Poetry or Dancing, only in an age of intel- 
 lectual reflectiveness. When nations have expressed themselves 
 in the more obvious and external arts, they seek through 
 harmonies and melodies to give form to their emotions. 
 
 The fifth, last, and longest period is one of DecHne and 
 Decay. But these words must be used with quahfication when 
 we speak of a people like the Greeks. What is meant is that' 
 the Greeks never recovered their national vigour or produced 
 men so great as those whom we have hitherto been men- 
 tioning. The Macedonian empire prepared the way for the 
 Roman : Hellenic civilization put on the garb of servitude to 
 Rome and to Christianity. Henceforth we must not look 
 to Greece proper for the more eminent achievements of the 
 still surviving spirit of the Greeks. Greek culture in its 
 decadence has become the heritage of the whole world. 
 Syrians, Egyptians, Phrygians, Romans, carry on the tradition 
 inherited from Athens. Hellas is less a nation now than 
 an intellectual commonwealth, a society of culture holding 
 various races in communion. The spiritual republic estab- 
 lished thus by the Greek genius prepares the way for Christian' 
 brotherhood : the liberty of the children of the Muses leads 
 onward to the freedom of the sons of God. 
 
 In this period, the chief centres are first Alexandria and 
 Athens, then Rome and Byzantium. The real successors of 
 Alexander were his generals. But the only dynasty founded 
 by them which rises into eminence by its protection of the 
 arts and literature was the Ptolemaic. At Alexandria, under 
 the Ptolemies, libraries were formed and sciences were studied. 
 Euclid the geometer, Aratus the astronomer, Ptolemy the cos- 
 mographer, add lustre to the golden age of Alexandrian culture. 
 Callimachus at the same time leads a tribe of learned poets 
 and erudite men of. letters. Dramas meant to be read, like 
 
THE PERIODS OF. GREEK LITERATURE. 33 
 
 Lycophron's Cassandra ; epics composed in the study, like 
 the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, form the diversion of 
 the educated world. Meanwhile the whole genus of parasitic 
 litterateurs begin to flourish : grammarians, who settle and 
 elucidate texts with infinite labour and some skill ; sophists 
 and rhetoricians, whose purpose in life it is to adorn imaginary 
 subjects and to defend problematical theses with conceits of 
 the fancy and ingenious .subtleties of reasoning. A young 
 man writing to his mistress, a dinner-seeker who has failed to 
 get an invitation, Themistocles at the Persian court, celebrated 
 statues, philosophical puzzles — everything that can be wordily 
 elaborated, is grist for their mill. The art of writing without 
 having anything particular to say, the sister art of quarrying 
 tlie thoughts of other people and setting them in elaborate 
 prolixities of style, are brought to perfection. At the same 
 time, side by side with these literary moths and woodlice, are 
 the more industrious ajits, — the collectors of anecdotes, com- 
 pilers of biographies, recorders of quotations, composers of 
 all sorts of commonplace books, students of the paste-brush 
 and scissors sort, to whom we owe much for the pre- 
 servation of scraps of otherwise lost treasures. Into such 
 mechanical and frigid channels has the life of literature passed. 
 Literature is no longer an integral part of the national existence, 
 but a form of poHte amusement. The genius of Hellas has 
 nothing better to do 'than to potter about like a dilettante 
 among her treasures. 
 
 The only true poets of this period are the Sicilian Idyllists. 
 Over the waning day of Greek poetry Theocritus, Bion, and 
 Moschus cast the sunset hues of their excessive beauty. 
 Genuine and exquisite is their inspiration ; pure, sincere, and 
 true is their execution. Yet we agree with Shelley, who 
 compares their perfume to " the odour of the tuberose, which 
 overcomes and sickens the spirit with excess of sweetness." 
 In the same way the erotic epigrammatists, though many 
 
34 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 6i them genuine poets, especially the exquisite Meleager 
 of Gadara, in the very perfection of their peculiar quahty of 
 genius offer an unmistakable sign of decay. It is the fashion 
 among a certain class of modern critics to rave about the art 
 of Decadence, to praise the hectic hues of consumption and 
 even the strange livors of corruption, more than the roses and 
 the lilies of health. Let them peruse the epigrams of Meleager 
 and of Straton. Of beauty in decay sufficient splendours may 
 be found there. 
 
 While Alexandria was thus carrying the poetic tradition 
 of Hellas to its extremity in the Idyll and the Epigram — 
 carving cherrystones after the sculptor's mallet had been laid 
 aside — and was continuing the criticism which had been set 
 on foot by Aristotle, Athens persisted in her function of 
 educating Europe. She remained a sort of university, in 
 which the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle were adequately 
 developed, though not in the most comprehensive spirit, by 
 a crowd of Peripatetic and Academic sages, and where the 
 founders of the Epicurean and Stoic schools gave a new 
 direction to thought. It was during the first vigour of the 
 Epicurean and Stoic teaching that the spirit of Hellas came 
 into contact with the spirit of Rome. Hence Lucretius, 
 Cicero, the Satirists — whatever, in fact, Rome may boast 
 of philosophy, retains the tincture of the ethics of her school- 
 masters. Rome, as Virgil proudly said, was called to govern — 
 not to write poems or carve statues — but to quell the proud 
 and spase the abject. Still she caught, to some extent, the 
 aesthetic manners of her captive. Consequently, long after 
 the complete political ascendency of Rome was an established 
 fact, and geographical Greece had become an insignificant 
 province, the Hellenic spirit led the world. And some of 
 its latest products are still dazzling in beauty, marvellous in 
 ingenuity. Titanic in force. A few 'names selected from the 
 list of Graeco-Roman authors will be more impressive than 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 35 ' 
 
 much description. Plutarch of Chseronea, in the first century, 
 the author of the great biographies ; Lucian, the Syrian, in the 
 second century, the master of irony and graceful dialogue and 
 delicate description ; Epictetus, the Phrygian slave, in the 
 second century, who taught the latest form of Stoicism to 
 the Romans, and had for his successor Marcus Aurelius; 
 Philostratus of Lemnos, the rhetorician and author of the life 
 of ApoUonius ; Plotinus, Porphyrins, and Proclus, the re- 
 vivers of Platonic philosophy under a new form of mysticism 
 at Alexandria during the third and fourth centuries ; Longi- 
 nus, the critic, \vho adorned Palmyra in the third century ; 
 Heliodorous of Emesa, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Musseus, the 
 erotic novelists and poets of the fourth and fifth centuries ; 
 these, not to mention the Christian fathers, are a few of the 
 great men whom Greece produced m this last period. But 
 now notice how miscellaneous in iiationality and in pursuit 
 they are. One only is a Greek of the old stock — Plutarch, the 
 Boeotian. One is a slave firom Phrygia. Another is a Roman 
 Emperor. A fourth is the native of the desert city of Tadmor. 
 Two are Sjrrians. One is a Greek of the ^gean. Another is 
 an Egyptian. From this we rhay see how the genius of the 
 Greeks had been spread abroad to embrace all lands. No 
 fact better illustrates the complete leavening of the world 
 by their spirit. 
 
 But considering that this fifth period may be said to cover 
 six centuries, from the death of Alexander to about 300 after 
 Christ, — for why should we continue our computation into the 
 dreary regions of Byzantine dulness ? — it must be confessed 
 that it is sterile in productiveness and inferior in the quality of 
 its crop to any of the previous periods. Subtle and beautiful 
 is the genius of Hellas still, because it is Greek ; strong and 
 stern it is in part, because it has been grafted on the Roman 
 character ; its fascinations and compulsions are powerful enough 
 
36 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to bend the metaphysics of the Christian faith. Yet, after all, 
 it is but a shadow of its own self. 
 
 After the end of the fourth century the iconoclastic zeal and 
 piety of the Christians put an end practically to Greek art and 
 literature. Christianity was at that time the superior force in 
 the world; and though -Clement of Alexandria contended for 
 an amicable treaty of peace between Greek culture and the 
 new creed, though the two Gregories and Basil were, to use 
 the words of Gibbon, " distinguished above all their contem- 
 poraries by the rare union of profane eloquence and orthodox 
 piety," though the Bishops of the Church were selected from 
 the ranks of scholars trained by Libanius and other Greek 
 Sophists, yet the spirit of Christianity proved fatal to the spirit 
 of Greek art. Early in the fifth century the Christian rabble 
 at Alexandria, under the inspiration of their ferocious despot 
 Cyril, tore in pieces Hypatia, the last incarnation of the dying 
 beauty of the Greeks. She had turned her eye backwards to 
 Homer and to Plato, dreaming that haply even yet the gods of 
 Hellas might assert their power and resume the government 
 of the world, and that the wisdom of Athens might supplant 
 the folly of Jerusalem. But it was a vain and idle dream. The 
 genius of Greece was effete. Christianity was pregnant with 
 the mediaeval and the modern world. In violence and blood- 
 shed the Gospel triumphed. This rending in pieces of the 
 past, this breaking down of temples and withering of illusions, 
 was no doubt necessary. New wine cannot be poured into old 
 bottles. No cycle succeeds another cycle in human affairs 
 without convulsions and revolutions that rouse the passions of 
 humanity. It is thus that 
 
 " God fulfils Himself in many ways, 
 Lest one good custom should corrupt the world." 
 
 Yet even in this last dire struggle of the spirit of Pagan art 
 with the spirit of Christian faith, when Beauty had become an 
 
THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. 37 
 
 abomination in the eyes of the HoHest, on the ruins, as it 
 were, of the desecrated fanes of Hellas, weeds lovely in their 
 raiikness flourished. While Cyril's mobs were dismembering 
 Hypatia, the erotic novelists went on writing about Daphnis, 
 and Musaeus sang the lamentable death of Leander. Nonnus 
 was perfecting a new and more poHshed form of the hexameter. 
 These were the last, the very swan's notes, of Greek poetry. 
 In these faint and too melodious strains the Muse took final 
 farewell of her beloved Hellas. And when, after the lapse of 
 1000 years, the world awoke upon the ruins of the past, these 
 were among the first melodies which caught its ear. One of 
 the three first Greek books issued from the Aldine press about 
 the year 1493, and called by Aldus the "precursors," was 
 the poem of Hero and Leander. It was reprinted at Paris in 
 1507 by De Gourmont, at Alcala, in Spain, in 1514, and at 
 Cologne in 1517 by Hirschhom.- Our Marlowe in the i6th 
 century translated Musaeus.' The French Amyot translated 
 Longus, and bequeathed to his nation a voluminous literature 
 of pastorals founded upon the tale of Chloe. Tasso and 
 Guarini, in Italy, caught the same strain ; so that the accents 
 of the modern Renaissance were an echo of the last utterances 
 of dying Greece. The golden age of pastoral innocence, the 
 beir eta dell' oro, of which the Alexandrians had been dreaming 
 in the midst of their effete and decaying civihzation, fascinated 
 the imagination of our immediate ancestors, when, three cen- 
 turies ago, they found the Sun of Art and Beauty shining in 
 the heavens, new worlds to conquer, and indefinite expansions 
 of the spirit to be realized. 
 
38 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 The Grandeur of his. Fame. — His Versatility of Genius.— His Self- 
 exaltation. — His Mysticishi. — His supposed Miracles. — Legends about 
 his Death.— His Political Action. — His Poems. —Estimation in which 
 the Ancients held them. — Their Prophetic Fervour. — Belief in 
 Metempsychosis. — Purifying Rites. — Contempt for the Knowledge of 
 the Senses. — Physical Theories. — The Poem on Nature— The Four 
 Elements. — The Sphsrus. — Love and Discord. — The Eclecticism of 
 Empedocles. •. 
 
 The figure of Empedocles of Agrigentum, when seen across 
 the twenty-three centuries which separate us from him, 
 presents perhaps a more romantic appearance than that of 
 any other Greek philosopher. This is owing' in a great 
 measure to the fables which invest his life and death with 
 mystery, to his reputation for magical power, and to the wild 
 sublimity of some of his poetic utterances. Yet, even in his 
 lifetime, and among contemporary Greeks, he swept the stage 
 of life like a great tragic actor, and left to posterity the fame 
 of genius as a poet, a physician, a patriot, and a philosopher. 
 The well-known verses of Lucretius are enough to, prove that 
 the glory of Empedocles increased with age, and bore the test 
 of time. Reading them, we cannot but regret th^t poems 
 which so stirred the reverent enthusiasm of Rome's greatest 
 singer have been scattered to the winds, and that what we 
 now possess of their remains affords but a poor sample of their 
 unimpaired magnificence. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable about Empedocles thari his 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 39 
 
 versatility and comprehensiveness. Other men of his age 
 were as nobly born, as great in philosophic power, as distin- 
 guished for the part they bore in poHtics, as celebrated for 
 poetic genius, as versed in mystic lore, in medicine, and in 
 magic arts. But Parmenides, Pythagoras, Pausanias, and 
 Epimenides could claim honour in but one, or two at most, of 
 these departments. Empedocles united all, and that too, if we 
 may judge by the temper of his genius and the few legends 
 handed down to us about his life, in no ordinary degree. He 
 seems to have possessed a warmth and richness of nature 
 which inclined him to mysticism and poetry, and gave a 
 tone of peculiar solemnity to everything he did, or thought, ■ 
 or said. At the same time, he was attracted by the acute- 
 ness of his intellect to the metaphysical inquiries which 
 were agitating the western colonies of Greece, while his rare 
 powers of observation enabled him to make discoveries in 
 the then almost unexplored region of natural science. The 
 age in which he lived had not yet thrown off the form_ of 
 poetry in philosophical composition. Even Parmenides had 
 committed his austere theories to hexameter verse.* There- 
 fore, -the sage of Agrigentum waS' easily led to concentrate 
 his splendid powers on the production of one great work, 
 and made himself a poet among philosophers, and a phi- 
 losopher among poets, without thereby impairing his claims 
 to rank highly both as a poet and also . as a thinker among 
 the most distinguished men of Greece. But Empedocles had 
 not only deeply studied metaphysics, nature, and the arts ot 
 verse ; whatever was mysterious in the world around him, in 
 the guesses of past ages, and in the forebodings of his -own 
 heart, possessed a powerful attraction for the man who 
 thought himself inspired of God. Having embraced the 
 
 * See the chapter on Parmenides in my Second Series of Studies of 
 Greek Poets for a translation of the fragments of the Eleatic poems on 
 Nature. 
 
\o 
 
 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Pythagorean theories, he maintained the fallen state of men, 
 and implored his fellow-creatures to purge away the guilt by 
 which they had been disinherited and exiled from the joys 
 of heaven. Thus he appeared before his countrymen not 
 only as a poet and philosopher, but also as a priest and purifier. 
 Born of a wealthy and illustrious house, he did not expend his 
 substance merely on horse-racing and chariots, by which means- 
 of display his ancestors' had gained a princely fame in Sicily; 
 but, not less proud than they had been, he shod himself with 
 golden sandals, set the laurel crown upon his head, and, trailing 
 robes of Tyrian purple through the streets of Agrigentum, went 
 attended. by a crowd of serving-men and reverent admirers. 
 He claimed to be a favourite of Phoebus, and rose at length 
 to the pretension of divinity. His own words show this,, 
 gravely spoken, with no vain assumption, but with a certainty 
 of honour well deserved : — 
 
 ' ' Friends who dwell in the great city hard by the yellow stream of 
 Acragas, who live on the Acropolis, intent on honourable cares, harbours 
 revered of strangers, ignorant of what is vile ; welcome : but I appear 
 before you an immortal god, having overpassed the limits of mortality, 
 and walk with honour among all, as is my due, crowned with long fillets 
 and luxuriant garlands. . No sooner do I enter their proiid prosperous 
 cities than rnen and women pay me reverence, who follow me in thousands, 
 asking the way to profit, some desiring oracles, and others racked by long 
 and cruel torments, hanging on my lips to hear the spells that pacify 
 disease of every kind." 
 
 We can hardly wonder that some of the fellow-citizens of 
 Empedocles were jealous of his pretensions, and regarded him 
 with suspicious envy and dislike, when we read such lines of 
 lofty self-exaltation. Indeed, it is difficult for men of the nine- 
 teenth century to understand how a great and wise philosopher 
 could lay claim to divine honours in his own lifetime. This 
 arrogance we have been accustomed to associate with- the 
 names of a Caligula and a Claudius. Yet when we consider the 
 circumstances in which Empedocles was jplaced, and the nature 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 41 
 
 of his theories, our astonishment diminishes. . The Hne of 
 demarcation between this world and the supernatural was then 
 but vague and undetermined. Popular theology abounded in 
 legends of gods who had held familiar intercourse with men, 
 and of men who had been raised by prowess or wisdom to 
 divinity. The pedigrees of all distinguished families ended in 
 a god at no great distance. Nor was it then a mere figure of 
 speech when bards and priests claimed special revelations from 
 Apollo, or physicians styled themselves the children of Ascle- 
 pius. Heaven lay around the first Greeks in their infancy of 
 art and science ; it was long before the vision died away and 
 faded into the sober daylight of Aristotelian philosophy. ■ Thus 
 when Empedocles proclaimed himself a god, he only stretched 
 beyond the usual limit a most common pretension of all men 
 learned in arts and sciences.' His own speculations gave him 
 further warrant for the assumption of the style of deity. For 
 he held the belief that all living souls had once been demons 
 or divine spirits, who had lost their heavenly birthright for 
 some crime of impurity or violence, and yet were able to 
 restore themselves to pristine splendour by the rigorous exer- 
 cise of abstinence and expiatory rites. These rites he thought 
 he had discovered : he had prayed and fasted ; he had held 
 communion with Phoebus the purifier, and received the special 
 favour of that god, .by being made a master in the arts of song, 
 and magic, and healing, and priestcraft. Was he not therefore 
 justified in saying that he had won again his rights divine, and 
 transformed himself into a god on earth ? His own words tell 
 the history of his fall : — 
 
 " Woe to me that I did not fall a prey to death before I took the cursed 
 food within my lips ! . . From what glory, from what immeasurable 
 bliss, have I now simk to roam with mortals on this earth ?" 
 
 Again, he says — 
 
 " For I have been in bygone times a youth, a maiden, and a flowering 
 shrub, a bird, yea, and a fish that swims in silence the deep sea." 
 
42 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 From this degraded state the spirit gradually emerges. Of 
 the noblest souls he says : — 
 
 " Among beasts they become lions dwelling in caverns of the earth upon 
 the hills, and laurels among leafy trees, . . . and at last prophets, and 
 bards, and physicians, and chiefs among the men of earth, from whence 
 they rise to be gods supreme in honour, . . . sitting at banquets with 
 immortal comrades, in their feasts unvisited by human cares, beyond the 
 reach of fate and wearing age." 
 
 Empedocles, by dint of pondering on nature, by long penance, 
 by the illumination of his intellect and the coercion of his 
 senses, had been raised before the natural term of life to that 
 high honour, and been made the fellow of immortal gods. 
 His language upon this topic is one of the points in which we 
 can trace an indistinct resemblance between him and some of 
 the Indian mystics. There is, however, no reason to suppose 
 that Asiatic thought had any marked or direct influence on 
 Greek philosophy. It is better to refer such similarities to 
 the working of the same tendencies in the Greek and Hindu 
 minds. 
 
 To those who disbelieved his words he showed the mighty 
 works which he had wrought. Empedocles, during his lifetime, 
 was known to have achieved marvels, such as only supernatural 
 , powers could compass. More than common sagacity and in- 
 genuity in the treatment of natural diseases, or in the removal 
 of obstacles to national prosperity, were easily regarded by 
 the simple people of those times as the evidence of divine 
 authority. Empedocles had devised means for protecting the 
 citizens of Agrigentum from the fury of destructive winds. 
 What these means were, we do not know ; but he received in 
 consequence the title of KwXvaarcfxnQ, or warder-oflf of winds. 
 Again, he resuscitated, from the very jaws of death, a woman 
 who lay senseless and unable to breathe, long after all 
 physicians had despaired of curing her. This entitled him 
 to be regarded as a master of the keys of life and death ; nor 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 43 
 
 did he fail to attribute his own power to the virtue of super- 
 natural spells. But the greatest of his achievements was the 
 deliverance which he wrought for the people of Selinus from 
 a grievous pestilence. It seems that some exhalations from 
 a marsh having caused this plague, Empedocles, at his own 
 cost,. cut a channel for two rivers through the fen, and purged 
 away the fetid vapours. A short time after the cessation of 
 the sickness, Empedocles, attired in tragic state, appeared 
 before the Selinuntians at a banquet. His tall and stately 
 figure wore the priestly robe ; his brazen sandals rang upon 
 the marble as he slowly moved with front benign and solemn 
 eyes ; beneath the sacrificial chaplet flowed his long Phcebean 
 locks, and in his hand he bore a branch of bay. The nobles 
 of Selinus rose ; the banquet ceased; all did hun reverence, 
 and hailed him as a god, deliverer of their city, friend' of 
 Phoebus, intercessor between angry Heaven and suffering 
 men. 
 
 Closely connected with his claim to divinity was the position 
 which Empedocles assumed as an enchanter. Gorgias, his 
 pupil, asserts that he often saw him at the magic rites. Nor 
 are we to suppose that this wizardry was a popular misinter- 
 pretation of his real power as a physician and philosopher. It 
 is far more probable that Empedocles himself believed in the 
 potency of incantations, and delighted in the ceremonies and 
 mysterious songs by which the dead were recalled from Hades, 
 and secrets of the other world wrung from unwilling fate. We 
 can form to ourselves a picture of this stately and magnificent 
 enchanter, convinced of his own supernatural ascendency, and 
 animated by the wild enthusiasm of his ardent nature, alone 
 among the mountains of Girgenti, or by the sea-shore, invoking 
 the elemental deities to aid his incantations-, and ascribing the 
 forebodings of his own poetic spirit to external inspiration or 
 the voice of gods. In solitary meditations he had wrought out 
 a theory of the world, and had conceived the notion of a 
 
44 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 spiritual God, one and unseen, pure intellect, an everlasting 
 omnipresent ' power, to whom might be referred those natural 
 remedies that stopped the plague, or cured the sick, or found 
 new channels for the streams. The early Greek philosophers 
 were fond of attributing to some " common wisdom " of the 
 world, some animating soul or universal intellect, the arts and 
 intuitions to which they had themselves attained. Therefore, 
 with this belief predominating in his mind, it is not strange that 
 •he should have trusted to the divine efficacy of his own spells, 
 and have regarded the results of observation as a kind of 
 supernatural wisdom. To his friend Pausanias the physician 
 he makes these lofty promises, " Thou shalt learn every kind 
 of medicines that avert diseases and the evils of old age. 
 Thou too shalt curb the fury of untiring winds, and when 
 it pleases thee thou shalt reverse thy charms and loose 
 avenging storms. Thou shalt replace black rain-clouds with 
 the timely drought that men desire, and when the summer's 
 arid heat prevails, thou shalt refresh the trees with showers 
 that rustle in the thirsty corn. And thou shalt bring again 
 from Hades the life of a departed man." Like the Pytha- 
 goreans whom he followed,- he seems to have employed the 
 fascination of music in effecting cures : it is recorded of him 
 that he once arrested the hand of a young man about to slay 
 his father, by chanting to the lyre a solemn soul-subduing 
 strain. The strong belief in himself which Empedocles pos- 
 sessed, inspired him with immense personal influence, so that 
 his looks, and words, and tones, went farther than the force 
 of other men. He compelled them to follow and confide in 
 him, like Orpheus, or like those lofty natures which in every 
 age have had the power of leading and controlling others 
 by innate supremacy. That Empedocles tried to exhibit this 
 superiority, and to heighten its effect by gorgeous raiment 
 and profuse expenditure, by public ceremonies and myste- 
 rious modes of life, we need not doubt. There was much 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 45 
 
 of the spirit of Paracelsus in Empedocles, and vanity impaired 
 the simple grandeur of his genius. In every'age of the world's 
 history there have been some such men — men in whom the 
 highest intellectual gifts are blent with weakness inclining them 
 to superstitious juggleries. Not content with their philoso- 
 phical pretensions, or with poetical renown, they seek a more 
 mysterious fame, and mix the pure gold of their reason with 
 the dross of idle fancy. Their very weakness adds a glow of 
 colour, which we miss in the whiter light of more purely 
 scientific intellects. They are men in whom two natures cross 
 — the poet and the philosopher, the 'mountebank and the seeir, 
 the divine and the fortune-teller, the rigorous analyst and the 
 retailer of old wives' tales. But none have equalled Empe- 
 docles, in whose capacious idiosyncrasy the most opposite 
 qualities found ample room for co- existence, who sincerely 
 claimed the supernatural faculties which Paracelsus must have 
 only half believed, and who lived at a time when poetry and 
 fact were indistinguishably mingled, and when the world was 
 still absorbed in dreams of a past golden age, and in rich 
 foreghadowings of a boundless future. 
 
 We are not, therefore, surprised to read the fantastic legends 
 which involve his death in a mystery. Whatever ground of 
 fact they may possess, they are wholly consistent with the 
 picture we have formed to ourselves of the philosopher, and 
 prove at least the superstition which had gathered round his 
 name. One of these legends has served all ages as a moral for 
 the futility of human designs, and for the just reward of inordi- 
 nate vanity. Every one who knows the name of Empedocles 
 has heard that, having jumped into Etna in order to conceal 
 the time and manner of his death, and thus to establish his 
 divinity, fate frustrated his schemes by casting up his braien 
 slippers on the crater's edge. According to another legend, 
 which resembles that of the death of Romulus, of CEdipus, and 
 other divinized heroes, Empedocles is related to have formed 
 
46 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 one of a party of eighty men who assembled to celebrate by 
 sacrifice his restoration of the dying woman. After their 
 banquet they retired to sleep. But Empedocles remained in 
 his seat at table. When morning broke, Empedocles was 
 nowhere to be found. In reply to the question of his friends, 
 some one asserted that, he had heard a loud voice calling on 
 Empedocles at. midnight, and that, starting up, he saw a light 
 from heaven and burning torches. Pausanias, who was pre- 
 sent at the sacrificial feast, sent far and wide to inquire for his 
 friend, wishing to test the truth of this report. But piety 
 restrained his search, and lie was secretly informed by heavenly 
 messengers that Empedocles had won what he had sought, and 
 that divine honours should be paid to him. This story rests 
 on the authority of Heraclides Ponticus, who professed to 
 have obtained it from Pausanias. The one legend we may 
 regard as the coinage of his foes, the other as a myth created 
 by the superstitious admiration of his friends. 
 
 We have hitherto regarded Empedocles more in his private 
 and priestly character than as a citizen. Yet it was not to be 
 expected that a man so nobly born, and so remarkable for 
 intellectual power, should play no public part in his native 
 state. A Greek could hardly avoid meddling with politics, 
 even if he wished to do so, and Empedocles was not one to 
 hide his genius in the comparative obscurity of private life. 
 While he was still a young man, Tlieron, the wise tyrant of 
 Agrigentum, died, and a powerful aristocracy endeavoured 
 to enslave the state. Empedocles manfully resisted them, 
 supporting the liberal cause with vehemence, and winning so 
 much popular applause that he is even reported to have 
 received and refused the offer of the kingly power. By these 
 means he made himself many foes among the nobility of Agri- 
 gentum ; it is also probable that suspicion attached to him for 
 trying to establish in his native city the Pythagorean common- 
 wealth, which had been extirpated in South Italy. That he 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 47 
 
 loved spiritual dominion we have seen ; and this he might 
 have hoped to acquire more easily by taking the intellectual 
 lead among citizens of equal rights, than by throwing in his lot 
 with the aristocratic party, or by exposing himself to the 
 dangers and absorbing cares of a Greek tyrant. At any rate, 
 it is recorded that he impeached and procured the execution 
 of the leaders of the aristocracy ; thus rescuing the liberty of 
 his nation at the expense of his own security. After a visit to 
 Peloponnesus Empedocles returned to Agrigentum, but was 
 soon obliged to quit his home again by the animosity of his 
 political enemies. Where he spent the last years of his life, 
 and died, remains uncertain. 
 
 It remains to estimate the poetical and philosophical renown 
 of Empedocles. That his genius was highly valued among the 
 ancients appears manifest from the panegyric of Lucretius. 
 Nor did he fail to exhibit the versatility of his powers in every 
 branch of poetical composition. Diogenes Laertius affirms 
 that forty-three tragedies bearing his name were known to 
 Hieronymus, from , whom he drew materials for the life of 
 Empedocles. Whether these tragedies were really written 
 by the philosopher, or by another Sicilian of the same name, 
 admits of doubt. But there is no reason why an author, 
 possessed of such varied and distinguished talents as Empe- 
 docles, should not have tried this species of composition. 
 Xenophanes is said to have composed tragedies ; and Plato's 
 youthful efforts would, we fondly imagine, have afforded 
 . the world fresh proofs of his commanding genius, had they 
 escaped the flames to which they were condemned by his 
 maturer judgment. No fragments of the tragedies of Em- 
 pedocles survive ; they probably belonged to the class of 
 semi-dithyrambic compositions, which prevailed at Athens 
 before the days of .^fischylus, and which continued to be cul- 
 tivated in Sicily. Some of the lyrical plays of the Italians 
 — such, for instance, as the Orfeo of Poliziano— may enable us 
 
48 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to form an idea of these simple dramas. After the tragedies, 
 Diogenes makes mention of political poems. These may be re- 
 ferred to the period of the early manhood of Empedocles, when 
 he was engaged in combat with the domineering aristocracy, 
 and when he might have sought to spread his liberal principles 
 through the medium of gnomic elegies, like those of Solon or 
 Theognis. The fragments of the /oaflapynoi, or poem on 
 lustral rites, sufficiently display his style of earnest' and im- 
 perious exhortation to make us believe that at a time of poK- 
 tical contention he would not spare this powerful instrum'ent 
 of persuasion and attack. In the next place, we hear of an 
 epic poem on the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, which Empe- 
 docles is said to have left unfinished, and which his sister or 
 his daughter burned with other papers at his death. The great 
 defeat of the Medes took place while Empedocles was still a 
 youth. All Hellas had hung with breathless expectation on 
 the event of Marathon and Salamis. The fall of Xerxes 
 brought freedom and relief from terrible anxiety, not only to 
 the towns of Attica and the Peloponnesus, but also to the shores 
 of Sicily and Italy. It is not, therefore, unlikely that the 
 triumph which excited Simonides and ^schylus to the pro- 
 duction of masterpieces, may have stirred the spirit of the 
 youthful patriot of Agrigentum. Another composition of Empe- 
 docles which perished under his sister's hands, was a Proemium 
 to Apollo. The loss of this poem is deeply to be regretted. 
 Empedocles regarded himself as specially protected by the god 
 of song and medicine and prophetic insight. His genius would 
 therefore naturally take its highest flight in singing praises to 
 this mighty patron. The hymn to Zens, which has been as- 
 cribed to Cleanthes, and some of the pseudo-Orphic declama- 
 tions, may give us an idea of the gravity and enthusiasm which 
 Empedocles would have displayed in treating so stirring a 
 theme. Of his remaining works we possess fragments. The 
 great poem on Nature, the Lustral Precepts, and the Dis- 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 49 
 
 course on Medicine, were all celebrated among the ancients. 
 Fortunately, the inductions to the first and second of these 
 have been preserved, and some lines addressed to Pausanias 
 may be regarded as forming the commencement of the third. 
 It is from these fragments, amounting in all to about 470 lines, 
 that we must form our judgment of Empedocles, the poet and 
 the sage. 
 
 That Empedocles was a poet of the didactic order is clear 
 from the nature of his subjects. Even as early as the time of 
 Aristode, critics disputed as to whether poems written for the 
 purpose of scientific instruction deserved the name of poetry. 
 In the Poetics, Aristotie says, — uvblv Se koivov kariv 'Ojxripa kiA 
 'RfjirthnKXiT irXifv TO fiirpov Sio tov fjtv TTOiriTriv Zlkuiov KnkCir, roe 
 2f fpvmoXoyov juaXXov rj irutriTr}i',* The title <j)V(Ti6\oyo£, or 
 philosopher of nature, was of course generic, and might have 
 been claimed by HeracUtus, on the strength of his prose writings, 
 no less than by Empedocles. Lucretius, in the exordium to 
 his poem, argues for the utility of disguising scientific precepts 
 under the more attractive form of art ; as we sweeten the lips 
 of the vessel that contains bitter medicine, in order to induce 
 the child to take it readily. And not only had Empedocles 
 this reason in his favour for the use of verse, but also, at the 
 age in which he lived, it was still a novelty to write prose at 
 all ; nor would it have been consistent with his theories of 
 inspiration, and with the mysticism he professed, to abandon 
 the poetic form of utterance. He therefore thought and wrote 
 hexameters as naturally as the scientific men of the present day 
 think and write their sentences and paragraphs, until the dis- 
 course is formed into a perfect whole. Allowing, then, for 
 the subject of his poem, Empedocles was regarded by antiquity 
 as first among the Greek didactic singers, though he com- 
 
 * Between Homer and Empedocles there is nothing. in common ex- 
 cept their metre : therefore it is right to call the former a poet, the latter 
 a natural philosopher rather than a poet. 
 
 E 
 
50 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 peted with Parmenides for this distinction, and was placed 
 upon a level with Lucretius. Lactantius mentions them both 
 together, in his definition of this kind of poetry. And Aristotle, 
 in another treatise, now lost, but quoted by Diogenes, praises 
 the artistic genius of the philosopher in these words : Kat 
 
 'OjUjjjOiKOs EjUTTt^oKX^S K<xi ccwoc irepl Trjv <j>paaiv yiyovE 
 fiirafopiKvi TC S>v Kai toIq aXXocf Trepi Trjv TroirjTiicriv eTriTEvy/xniri 
 
 XP&fXffoe* The epithet 'O/xripiKOQ is very just; for not only 
 is it clear that Empedocles had studied the poems of Homer 
 with care, and had imbibed their phraseology, but he also 
 possessed a genius akin to that of Homer in love of sim- 
 plicity, in fidelity to nature, in unimpeded onward flow of 
 energetic verse. 
 
 The simile of the girl playing with a water-clock, whereby 
 Empedocles illustrates his theory of respiration, and that of the 
 lantern, which serves to explain his notion of the structure of 
 the eye, are both of them Homeric in their unadorned simplicity 
 and vigour. Again, such epithets as these, iroXua/junroi' (full- 
 blooded) for the liver, iXaeipa (gentle) for the moon, c^ujStXijc 
 (quick-darting) for the sun, wo\v(TTE<paroQ (crowned) for majesty, 
 defiEpunng (grave-visaged) for harmony, and the constant repe- 
 tition of 8toi SoXt)(a(wi'£c TL/j^m (pipiaToi (the long-aged gods 
 in honour foremost), have the true Homeric ring. Like 
 Homer, he often chooses an epithet specific of the object 
 which he wishes to describe, but not especially suited to the 
 matter of his argument. Thus iroXwicXaurwv yvvaiKii)v (women 
 given to tears) occurs when there is no particular reason to 
 fix the mind upon the tearfulness of women. But the poetic 
 value of the passage is increased by the mind being thus 
 carried away from the logical order of ideas to a generality on 
 which it can repose. At other times, when this is necessary, 
 
 * Empedocles again was Homeric in style, and clever in his use of 
 phrase, for he inclined to metaphor, and employed the other admirable 
 instruments of the poetic art. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 51 
 
 the epithets are as accurately descriptive as those of a botanist 
 
 or zoologist : iv i:6yyjs.irti QaXaaaavo^OLQ ftapvi'ojroig (in whelks 
 that inhabit the sea with heavy backs) .... Xidoppivu)v re 
 j^eXwiwi' (stony-coated tortoises), for example. Again, Empe- 
 docles gives rein to his imagination by creating bold metaphors ; 
 he calls the flesh aapKwv j^iriiv (a robe of flesh), and birds 
 irTepofiajj.ovag KvfjfiaQ (boats that move with wings). Referring 
 to his four elements, he thus personifies their, attributes : 
 " Fiery Zeus, and Herfe, source of vital breath, and Aidoneus, 
 and Nestis, with her tears." At another time he speaks of 
 " earth, and ocean with his countless waves, and liquid air, 
 the sun-god and ether girdling round the universe in its 
 embrace." 
 
 The passage, too, in which he describes the misery of earth 
 rises to a sublime height. It may well have served as the 
 original of Virgil's celebrated lines in the sixth ^Eneid : — 
 
 " I lifted up my voice, I wept and wailed, when I beheld the unfamiliar 
 shore. A hideous shore, on which dwell murder, envy, and the troop of 
 baleful destinies, wasting corruption, and disease. Through Ate's meadow 
 they go wandering up and down in gloom. There was the queen of dark- 
 ness, and Heliope with her far-searching eyes, and bloody strife, and 
 mild-eyed peace, beauty and ugliness, swiftness and sloth, and lovely truth, 
 and insincerity with darkling brows. Birth too and death, slumber and 
 wakefulness, motion and immobility, crowned majesty and squalid filth, 
 discordant clamour and the voice of gods.'' 
 
 We can understand by these passages how Empedocles not 
 only was compared with Homer by Aristotle, but also with 
 Thucydides and ^schylus by Dionysius of Halicamassus, who 
 speaks of his " austere harmony" (aioTTjpar apfioviar). The 
 conciseness of his argumentative passages, the breadth of his 
 treatment, and the dryness of his colouring, to quote the terms 
 of painting, resemble the style of Thucydides, while his bold 
 figures and gloomy grandeur are like those of ^schylus. Plu- 
 tarch, in the treatise on the genius of Socrates, speaks of the 
 style of Empedocles at large, both as regards his poems and 
 
52 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 his theories, as "inspired with dithyrambic ecstasy" (^aAa 
 PefiaKxevfj-iyri). This seems a contradiction to the "austere 
 harmony " of Dionysius. But there are passages which justify 
 the title. This exordium, for instance, savours of prophetic 
 fury : — 
 
 " It stands decreed by fate, an ancient ordinance of the immortal gods, 
 established from everlasting, ratified by ample oaths, that, when a spirit of 
 that race, which has inherited the length of years divine, sinfully stains his 
 limbs with blood, he must go forth to wander thrice ten thousand years 
 from heaven, passing from birth to birth through every form of mortal 
 mutability, changing the toilsome paths of life without repose, even as 
 I now roam, exiled from God, an outcast on this world, the bondman of 
 insensate strife. 
 
 " Alas, ill-fated race of mortals, thrice accursed ! from what dire 
 struggles and what groans have ye been born ! The air in its anger drives 
 them to the sea, and ocean spues them forth upon the solid land, earth 
 tosses them into the flames of the untiring sun, he flings them back again 
 into the whirlwinds of the air ; from one to the other are they cast, and 
 all abhor them. " 
 
 And the following adjuration has a frantic energy, to modern 
 readers almost laughable but for its indubitable gravity, — 
 " Wretches, thrice wretches, keep your hands from beans ! " 
 
 or, again, with reference to the abomination of animal food : — 
 
 "The father drags along his dear son changed in form, and slays him, 
 pouring prayers upon his head. But the son goes begging mercy from his 
 maniac sire. The father heeds him not, but goads him on, and, having 
 slaughtered him, prepares a cursed meal. In like manner sons take their 
 fathers, and children their mothers, and tearing out the life devour the 
 kindred flesh. Will ye not put an end to this accursed slaughter ? Will 
 ye not see that ye consume each other in blind ignorance of soul ? " 
 
 It is not strange that the poems of Empedocles were pilfered 
 by oracle-mongers in after-ages. 
 
 Besides these passages, there are some of a milder beauty 
 which deserve high praise for their admirable power of suggest- 
 ing the picture that the poet wishes to convey. The follow- 
 ing lines describe the golden age of old,— to which Empedocles 
 looked back with melancholy longing : — 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 53 
 
 " There every animal was tame and familiar with men, both beasts and 
 birds, and mutual love prevailed. Trees flourished with perpetual leaves 
 and fruits, and ample crops adorned their boughs- through all the year. 
 Nor had these happy people any Ares or mad Uproar for their god ; nor 
 was their monarch Zeus, or Cronos, or Poseidon, but Queen Cypris. Her 
 favour they besought with pious symbols and with images, and fragrant 
 essences, and censers of pure myrrh, and frankincense, and with brown 
 honey poured upon the ground. The altars did not reek with bullocks' 
 gore." 
 
 It may sound ridiculous to say so, yet Empedocles resembles 
 Shelley in the quality of his imagination and in many of his 
 utterances. The hnes just quoted, the belief in a beneficent 
 universal soul of nature, the hatred of animal food, the love of 
 all things moving or growing on the face of earth, the sense of 
 ancient misery and present evil, are all, allowing for the differ- 
 ence of centuries, and race, and education, points by which 
 the Greek and the English poets meet in a community of 
 nature. Two more passages illustrative of the poetical genius 
 of Empedocles may be quoted. In the first he describes the 
 nature of God, invisible and omnipresent. In the second he 
 asserts the existence of an universal law. They both are re- 
 markable for simplicity and force, and elevation of style : — ■ 
 
 ' ' Blessed is the man who hath obtained the riches of the wisdom of 
 God ; wretched is he who hath a false opinion about things divine. 
 
 "He (God) may not be approached, nor can we reach him with our 
 eyes or touch him with our hands. No human head is placed upon his 
 limbs, nor branching arms ; he has no feet to carry him apace, nor other 
 parts of man : but he is all pure mind, holy, and infinite, darting with swift 
 thought through the universe from end to end. " 
 
 " This law binds all alike, and none are free from it : the common 
 ordinance which all obey prevails through the vast spaces of wide-ruling 
 air and the illimitable fields of light in endless continuity." 
 
 The quotations which have served to illustrate the poetical 
 genius of Empedocles have also exhibited one aspect of his 
 philosophy — that wherein he was connected with the Pytha- 
 goreans. It is quite consistent with the whole temper of his 
 intellect that he should have been attracted to the semi-Oriental 
 
54 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 mysticism which then was widely spread through Grecian Italy 
 and Sicily. After the dissolution of the monastic common- 
 wealth founded by Pythagoras, it is probable that refugees 
 imbued with his social and political theories scattered them- 
 selves over the adjacent cities, and from some of these men 
 Empedocles may have imbibed in early youth the dream-like 
 doctrines of an antenatal life, of future immortality, of past 
 transgression and the need of expiation, of abstinence, and 
 of the bond of fellowship which bound man to his kindred 
 sufferers upon the earth. It is even asserted in one legend that 
 the philosopher of, Agrigentum belonged to the Pythagorean 
 Society, and was expelled from it for having been the first to 
 divulge its secrets. In later life these theories were developed 
 by Empedocles after his own fashion, and received a peculiar 
 glow of poetic colouring from his genius. There is no need 
 to suppose that he visited the East and learned the secrets 
 of Gymnosophists. A few Pythagorean seeds sown in his 
 fruitful soil sprang up and bore a hundred-fold. Referring 
 to the exordium of his poem on Nature, and to the lines in 
 which he describes the unapproachable Deity, we find that 
 Empedocles beUeved in a pristine state of happiness, when 
 the " Dasmons," or " gods, long of life, supreme in honour,'' 
 dwelt together, enjoying a society of bliss. Yet this state was 
 not perfect, for some of these immortals stained their hands 
 with blood, and some spoke perjury, and so sin entered in 
 and tainted heaven. After such offence the erring spirit, 
 by the fateful, irrevocable, and peremiial law of the divine 
 commonwealth, had to relinquish his heavenly throne and 
 wander "thirty thousand seasons" apart from his comrades. 
 In this period of exile he passed through all the changes of 
 metempsychosis. According to the rigorous and gloomy con- 
 ception of Empedocles, this change was caused by the hatred 
 of the elements ; earth, air, fire, and water refusing to retain 
 the criminal, and tossing him about from one to the other 
 
EMPEDOCLES. ■ 55 
 
 without intermission. Thus, he might be a plant, a bird, a 
 fish, a beast, or a human being in succession. But the trans- 
 migration did not depend upon mere chance. If the tortured 
 spirit, environed, as he was, by the conflicting 'shapes and con- 
 tradictory principles and baleful destinies which crowded earth 
 — " the over-vaulted cave," the " gloomy meadow of discord," 
 as Empedocles in his despair described our globe — could yet 
 discover some faint glimmering of the truth, seize and hold 
 fast seme portion of the heavenly clue, then he might hope 
 to reascend to bUss. Instead of abiding among birds, and 
 unclean beasts, and common plants, his soul passed into the 
 bodies of noble lions, and mystic, bay-trees, or became a bard, 
 a prophet, a ruler among men, and lastly rose again to the 
 enjoyment of undying bhss. Throughout these wanderings 
 death was impossible. Empedocles laughed at the notion of 
 birth and death ; he seems to have beheved in a fixed number 
 of immortal souls, capable of any transformation, but incapable 
 of perishing. Therefore, when his spirits, falling .earthward, 
 howled at the doleful aspect of the hideous land, the very 
 poignancy of their grief consisted in that bitter thought 
 of Dante's, " questi non hanno speranza di morte '' — in that 
 thought which makes the Buddhist welcome annihilation. It has 
 been already hinted, that although the soul by its forced exile 
 lost not only happiness but also knowledge, yet the one might 
 be in part retrieved, and the other toilsomely built up again in 
 some degree by patient observation, prayer, and magic rites. 
 On this point hinges the philosophy of Empedocles. It is 
 here that his mysticism and his science are united into one 
 system. In like manner, Plato's philosophy rests upon the 
 doctrine of Anamnesis, and is connected with the vision of a 
 past beatitude, the tradition of a miserable fall, and the prospect 
 of a possible restoration. Empedocles, like Parmenides and 
 Xenophanes in their disquisitions on the eternal Being, like 
 PUto in his references to the Supreme Idea, seems to have 
 
56 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 imagined that the final Essence of the universe was unapproach- 
 able, and to have drawn a broad distinction between the rational 
 and sensual orders, between the world as cognizable by pure 
 intellect, and the world as known through the medium of 
 human sense. The lines of Empedocles upon God, which 
 have been already quoted, are similar to those of Xenophanes : 
 both philosophers assert the existence of an unknown Deity 
 pavilioned in dense inscrutability, yet not the less to be re- 
 garded as supreme and omnipresent and omnipotent — as God 
 of gods, as life of life. How to connect this intuition with the 
 physical speculations of Empedocles is difficult. The best way 
 seems to be to refrain from identifying his eloquent description 
 of the unknown God with the Sphserus of his scientific theories, 
 and to beheve that he regarded the same universe from different 
 points of view at different times, as if in moments of high ex- 
 altation he obtained a glimpse of the illimitable Being by a 
 process of ecstatic illumination, while in more ordinary hours 
 of meditation his understanding and his senses helped him to 
 obtain a knowledge of the actual phenomena of this terrestrial 
 globe. His own language confirms this view of the case: — 
 
 "Weak and narrow," he says, " are the powers implanted in the limbs 
 of men ; many the woes that fall on them and blunt the edge of thought ; 
 short is the measure of the life in death through which they toil ; then are 
 they borne away, like smoke they vanish into air, and what they dream 
 they know is but the little each hath stumbled on in wandering about the 
 world ; yet boast they all that they have learned the whole — vain fools ! 
 for what that is, no eye hath seen, no ear hath heard, nor can it be 
 conceived by mind of man. Thou, then, since thou hast fallen to this 
 place, shalt know no more than human wisdom may attain. 
 
 " But, O ye gods, avert the madness of those babblers from my tongue, 
 and cause the stream of holy words to issue from my hallowed lips. And 
 thou, great Muse of Memory, maiden with the milk-white arms, I pray to 
 thee to teach me things that creatures of a day may hear. Come from the 
 House of Holiness, and bring to me her harnessed car.'' 
 
 Here we see plainly set forth the impossibility of mortal, 
 fallen intellects attaining to a perfect knowledge of the Uni- 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 57 
 
 verse, the impiety of seeking such knowledge, or pretending to 
 have found it ; and, at the same time, the limitations under 
 which true science remains within the reach of human beings. 
 How this science may be reached, he tells us in some memo- 
 rable lines, probably supposed to issue from the lips of the 
 Muse whom he invokes : — " But come, search diligently, and 
 discover what is clear in every realm of sense, . . . check the 
 conviction of thy senses, and judge by reason what is evident 
 in every case.'' 
 
 Thus the senses, although feeble and erring guides, are, after 
 all, the gates to knowledge ; and their reports, when tested by 
 the light of reason, form the data for human speculation. The 
 senses, resident in the limbs, are composed in certain pro- 
 portions of the four elements, which also constitute the earth. 
 Therefore, between the frame of man and the world outside 
 him, there is a community of substance, whereby he is enabled 
 to know. "OfMoi'i p/jLoloig yiyvbjiTkerai (likes are known by likes) 
 is the foundation of our philosopher's theory of knowledge. 
 The rational soul, being that immortal part of man whereon 
 depends his personal identity, whether he take the shape of 
 plant or animal, receives and judges the resulrs of sensation. 
 This theory, it will be observed, has a kind of general similarity 
 to that of Parmenides. Empedocles draws a marked difference 
 between the province of the senses and of the reason, and 
 inveighs agamst the impotence of the former. Again, he speaks 
 of the real being of the world as pure "and perfect intellect ; 
 and at the same time elaborately describes the universe as it 
 appears to human sense and understanding. But here the 
 likeness ends. Parmenides has no mysticism, and indulges in 
 no theology. He believes in the actual truth of his rational 
 ontology, and sneers at the senses. " Thy fate it is," he says, 
 " all mysteries to learn, both the iraswerving mind of truth that 
 wins a sure assent, and the vain thoughts of men, in which no 
 certainty abides. But, baseless as they are, these also shalt 
 
58 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 thou learn ; since thou must traverse every field of knowledge, 
 and discern the fabric of the dreams of men." His ontology is 
 just as elaborate as his physics, and he evidently considers its 
 barren propositions of more value than any observations on 
 astronomy or physiology. Empedocles, on the other hand, 
 despaired of ontology, and gave all his mind to explanations 
 of the physical universe — how it came to be, and what laws 
 governed its alternations, — believing all along that there was 
 a higher region of pure intellect beyond the reach of his 
 degraded soul. " Here we see in a glass darkly, but then face 
 to face." In this respect he resembled Xenophanes more than 
 Parmenides. Xenophanes had said, " No man hath been, nor 
 will ever be, who knows for certain all about the gods, and 
 everything of which I speak ; for should one publish the most 
 sure and settled truth, yet even he cannot be said to know ; 
 opinion is supreme in all things." Empedocles belonged more 
 to the age behind him than to that which followed ; and his 
 extensive knowledge of nature was a part of his artistic rather 
 than his scientific temperament. 
 
 Yet, allowing for the march of human progress during 
 twenty- three centuries, we are bound to hold much the same 
 language as Empedocles regarding the limitations of know- 
 ledge. We have, indeed, infinitely extended our observation 
 of phenomena ; we have gained fuller conceptions of the 
 Deity and of the destinies of man. But the plummet which 
 he threw into the bottomless abyss of science has as yet found 
 no bottom, and the circle which it made by striking on the 
 surface of the illimitable ocean has grown and grown, but 
 yet has touched no shore on any side. Like him, we still 
 speak of an unapproachable God, utterly beyond the reach 
 of human sense and intellect ; like him, we still content our- 
 selves with receiving the reports of our senses, comparing and 
 combining them by means of our understanding, and thus 
 obtaining some conception of the universe in which we live. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 59 
 
 If we reject the light of Christianity, the guesses which we 
 form about a future world are less vague than those of 
 Empedocles, but founded on no surer scientific basis ; the 
 God we worship still remains enveloped in symbols ; we still 
 ascribe to him, if not a human form, at least the reason, 
 partialities, and passions of mankind. Indeed, in this respect, 
 the sage of Agrigentum stood unconsciously upon the platform 
 which only our profoundest thinkers have attained. He felt 
 the awe of the Unseen — he believed in the infinite Being, — 
 but he refused to dogmatize about His attributes, confining his 
 own reason to the phenomenal universe which he strove in 
 every way to understand, and to employ for the good of his 
 race. Empedocles was greater than most of his contemporaries, 
 for he neither believed it possible to explain the whole mystery 
 of the world, nor did he yet reject the notion of there being a 
 profound mystery. He steered clear between the Parmenides 
 and Democritus of his own day — between the Spinoza and the 
 materialist of modern speculation. Herein the union of phi- 
 losophy and poetry, of thought and feeling, in his nature, gave 
 the tone to all his theories. We must not, however, in our 
 praise forget that all these problems appeared- in a far more 
 simple form to the Greeks of that age than to ourselves, and 
 were therefore more hastily and lightly answered. Between 
 the ontology of Parmenides and that of Hegel what a step 
 there is ! What meagre associations gather round the one ; 
 what many-sided knowledge gives substance to the other ! 
 
 Remembering, therefore, in what light Empedocles regarded 
 his own physical speculations, we may proceed to discuss them 
 more in detail. We shall find that he deserved a large portion 
 of that praise which Bacon rather whimsically lavished on 
 the pre-Socratic philosophers, to the disadvantage of the 
 mightier names of Plato and Aristotle. 
 
 TJie poem on Nature is addressed to Pausanias the physician, 
 who was a son of Anqhitus of Agrigentum, and a special friend 
 
6o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of Empedocles. To Pausanias, the philosopher begins his in- 
 struction with these words : — " First learn what are the four 
 chief roots of everything that is : fiery Zeus, and Herb, source 
 of vital breath, and Aidoneus, and Nestis with her tears, who 
 is the fount of moisture in the world." Thus Empedocles, 
 after the fashion of the Pythagoreans, allegorized his four 
 elements. In other passages he calls them " fire, water, 
 earth, and air's immeasurable height ; " or " earth, and ocean 
 with his countless waves, and liquid air, the sun-god, and ether 
 girdling the universe in its embrace ; " or again, " Hephaestus, 
 rain, and radiant ether ; '' or lastly, " light, earth, heaven, and 
 ocean."" It will be seen that he designated his elements some- 
 times by mythological titles, sometimes by abstract terms, and 
 sometimes by selecting one or other natural object — such as 
 the sun, the air, the ocean — in which they were most manifest. 
 It is well known that Empedocles was the first philosopher 
 to adopt the four elements, which, since his day, continued 
 to rule supreme over natural science, until modem analysis 
 revealed far simpler and broader bases. Other speculators 
 of the Ionian sect had maintained each of these four ele- 
 ments, — Thales the water, Anaximenes the air, Heraclitus the 
 fire, and perhaps fbut this rests on no sure evidence), Phere- 
 cydes the earth. Xenophanes had said, " Of earth and 
 water are all things that come into existence." Parmenides 
 had spoken of dark and light, thick and subtle, substances. 
 Each of these fundamental principles is probably to be re- 
 garded not as pure fire, or pure water, or pure air, but as an 
 universal element differing in rarity, and typified according 
 to the analogical necessities of language, by means of some 
 familiar object. The four elements of Empedocles appear 
 to have been suggested to him, partly by his familiarity with 
 contemporary speculation, and partly by his observation of 
 Nature. They held their ground so long in scientific theory, 
 because they answered so exactly to a superficial view of the 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 6l 
 
 world. Earth with everything of a soHd quality, water in- 
 cluding every kind of. fluid, fire that burns or emits light, air 
 that can be breathed, appear to constitute an exhaustive 
 division of the universe. Of the eternity of these four primal 
 substances, according to the Empedoclean theory, there is no 
 doubt. The philosopher frequently reiterates his belief in the 
 impossibility of an absolute beginning or ending, though he 
 acquiesces in the popular use of these terms to express the 
 scientific conceptions of dissolution and recombination. 
 
 These elements, then, were the material part of the world 
 according to Empedocles. But inherent in them, as a tendency 
 is inherent in an organism, and yet separable in thought from 
 them as the soul is separable from the body, were two con- 
 flicting principles of equal power, love and discord. Love and 
 discord by their operation wrought infinite changes in the 
 universe : for it was the purpose of love to bind the elements 
 together intb a compact, smooth, motionless globe ; and of 
 discord to separate them one from another, and to keep them 
 distinct in a state of mutual hostihty. When, therefore, either 
 love or discord got the upper hand, the phenomenal universe 
 could not be said to exist, but in the intermediate state was a 
 perpetual order of growth and decay, composition and disso- 
 lution, whereby the world, as we behold it, came into exist- 
 ence. This intermediate state, das Werdende, to yiyvo^tvuv tia\ 
 uTToWiifievov (the Becoming, that which comes into existence 
 and passes out of it again by dissolution), was (j)vaic, or Nature. 
 The conflicting energies of love and discord formed the pulses 
 of its mighty heart, the systole and diastole of its being, the 
 one power tending to life, the other power to death, the one 
 ■pushing all the elements forward to a perfect unity of compo- 
 sition, the other rending them apart. To the universe when 
 governed by love in supremacy Empedocles gave the name of 
 aipaipoQ (perfect globe), which he also called a god. This 
 a-ipaipoe answered to the Eleatic tc, while the disjointed elements 
 
62 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 subservient to the force of strife corresponded to the Eleatic 
 ■KoXXa* Thus the old Greek antagonism of Good and Evil, 
 One and Many, Love and Hatred, Being and Not-being, were 
 interpreted by Empedocles. He looked on all that is, das 
 Werdende, as transitory between two opposite and contradictory 
 existences. 
 
 Again, according to his system, the alternate reigns of love 
 and discord succeeded one another at fixed intervals of time ; 
 so that, from one point of view, the world was ceaselessly 
 shifting, and from another point of view, was governed by eter- 
 nal and unalterable Law. Thus he reconciled the Heraclitean 
 flux and the Parmenidean immobility by a middle term. Each 
 of the elements possessed a separate province, had separate 
 functions, and was capable of standing by itself. To fire it- 
 would seem that the philosopher assigned a more active influ- 
 ence than to any of the other elements ; therefore a kind of 
 dualism may be recognized in his Universe between this ruling 
 principle and the more passive ingTedients of air, earth, and 
 water. The influence of love and harmony kept them joined 
 and interpenetrated, and so mingled as to bring the different 
 objects, which we see around us into being. Empedocles 
 professed to understand the proportions of these mixtures, 
 arid measured them by Pythagorean rules of arithmetic. Thus 
 everything subsists by means of transformation and mixture ; 
 absolute beginning and ending are impossible. 
 
 Such, briefly stated, is the theory of Empedocles. The fol- 
 lowing passage may be quoted to show how the phenomenal 
 Universe comes into being under the influence of love : — 
 
 " When strife has reached the very bottom of the seething mass, and 
 love assumes her station in the centre of the ball, then everything begins to 
 come together, and to form one whole — not instantaneously, but different 
 substances come, forth, according to a steady process of development. 
 
 * For the Parmenidean hypothesis of a fixed and finite sphere of Being, 
 see my Second Series of Studies of Greek Poets, chap. v. p. 142. 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 63 
 
 Now, when these elements are mingling, countless kinds of things issue 
 from their union. Much, however, remains unmixed, in opposition to the 
 mingling elements, and these malignant strife still holds within his grasp. 
 For he has not yet withdrawn himself altogether to the extremities of the 
 globe ; but part of his limbs still remain within its bounds, and part have 
 passed beyond. As strife, however, step by step, retreats,, mild and 
 innocent love pursues him with her force divine ; things Which had been 
 immortal instantly assume mortality ; the simple elements become confused 
 by interchange of influence. When these are mingled, then the countless 
 kinds of mortal beings issue forth, furnished with every sort of form— 
 a sight of wonder. " 
 
 In another passage this development is compared to the 
 operation of a painter mixing his colours, and forming with 
 them a picture of various objects. Discord is said to have 
 made the elements immortal, because he kept them apart, and 
 would willingly have presen-ed their separate qualities; whereas 
 love mixes them together, breaks up their continuity, and con- 
 fuses their kinds. What Empedocles exactly meant by Sphaerus 
 is hard to understand ; nor do we kpow how far he intended 
 Chance to operate in the formation of the Universe. He often 
 uses such expressions as these, " So they chanced to come 
 together," and describes the amorphous condition of the first 
 organisms in a way that makes one think he fancied a perfectly 
 chaotic origin. Yet "the art of Aphrodite," "so Cypris ordained 
 their form,'' are assertions of designing intelligence. In fact, 
 we may well believe that Empedocles, in the infancy of specu - 
 lation, was led astray by his double nomenclature. When talking 
 of Aphrodite, he naturally thought of a person ruling creation ; 
 when using the term " Love," he naturally conceived an innate 
 tendency, which might have been the sport of chance in a great 
 measure. It also appears probable that, when Empedocles 
 spoke of " Chance" and " Necessity," he 'referred to some in- 
 herent quality in the elements themselves, whereby they grew 
 , together under certain laws, and that the harmony and discord 
 which ruled them in. turn, were regarded by him as forces 
 aiding and preventing their union. • 
 
64 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 To understand the order of creation, we may begin by- 
 imagining the sphere, which, in the words of Empedocles, " by 
 the hidden bond of harmony is stablished, and rejoices in 
 unbroken rest ... in perfect equipoise, of infinite extent, it 
 stays a full-orbed sphere rejoicing in unbroken rest." Love now 
 is omnipotent ; she has knit all the elements into one whole ; 
 Discord has retreated, and abides beyond the globe. But soon 
 his turn begins : he enters the sphere, and "all the limbs of the 
 god begin to tremble." Now the elements are divided one 
 from the other — ether first, then fire, then earth, then water 
 from the earth. Still the elements are chaotic ; but wandering 
 about the spaces of the world, and "permeating each the 
 other's realm," they form alliances and tend to union. Love 
 is busy no less than Discord. The various tribes of plants and 
 animals appear at first in a rudimentary and monstrous con- 
 dition : " many heads sprouted up without necks, and naked 
 arms went wandering forlorn of shoujders, and solitary eyes 
 were straying destitute of foreheads." Still the process of 
 seething and intermingling continued ; " when element with 
 element more fully mixed, these members fell together by- 
 haphazard . . . many came forth with double faces and two 
 breasts, some shaped like oxen with a human front, others, 
 again, of human race with a bull's head ; and some were mixed 
 of male and female parts." Unfortunately, the lines in which 
 he describes the further progress of development have been 
 lost, and we do not know how the interval between chaos and 
 order was bridged over in his system. Only with reference to 
 human beings he asserts that in the earliest stage they were 
 produced in amorphous masses, containing the essence, as it 
 were, of both male and female ; and that after the separation of 
 these masses into two parts, each part yearned to join its tally. 
 And therefrom sprang the passion of desire in human hearts. 
 This theory has been worked out by Plato artistically in the 
 Symposium. Also with reference to the accretion of the 
 
EMPEDOCLES. 65 
 
 phenomenal universe, he says that earth formed the basis of all 
 hard and solid substances, preponderating in the shells of fish, 
 and so on. Bones were wrought of earth, and fire, and water, 
 " marvellously jointed by the bonds of Harmony." It is need- 
 less to follow Empedocles through all his scattered fancies, to 
 show that he knew that the night was caused by the earth 
 intercepting the sun's rays, or that he thought the sun reflected 
 heaven's fire like a mirror, or that he placed the intellect in 
 the blood, and explained respiration by a theory of pores, and 
 the eyesight by imagining a fire shut up within the pupil. The 
 fragnaents we possess are too scanty to allow of our obtaining 
 a perfect view of his physical theory ; all we gather from them 
 is that Empedocles possessed more acquired and original 
 knowledge than any of his contemporaries. 
 
 It may appear from what has been said about his system 
 that Empedocles was at best a great Eclectic. But this is not 
 entirely the case. If he deserves the name of Eclectic, he 
 deserves it in the same sense as Plato, though it need not be 
 said how infinitely inferior, as an original thinker, he is to Plato. 
 Empedocles was deeply versed in all the theories, metaphysical, 
 cosmogonical, mystical, and physiological, of his age. He 
 viewed from a high station all the problems, intellectual, social, 
 and moral, which then vexed Greece. But he did not pass his 
 days in a study or a lecture-room, nor did he content himself 
 with expounding or developing the theories of any one master. 
 He went abroad, examined nature for himself, cured the sick, 
 thought his own thoughts, and left an impress on the con- 
 stitution of his native state. In his comprehensive mind all 
 the learning he had acquired . from men, from books, from 
 the world, and from reflection, was consolidated into one 
 system, to which his double interest for mysticism and physics 
 gave a double aspect. He was the first in Greece to reconcile 
 Eleatic and Heraclitean speculations, th^ puzzle of plurality 
 and unity, the antagonism of good and evil, in one theory, and 
 
66 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to connect it with another which revealed a solemn view of 
 human obligations and destinies, and required a life of social 
 purity and self-restraint. The misfortune of Empedocles as 
 a philosopher consisted in this — that he succeeded only in 
 resuming the results of contemporary speculation, and of 
 individual research, in a philosophy of indisputable originality, 
 without anticipating the new direction which was about to be 
 given to human thought by Socrates and Plato. He closed 
 one period, — the period of poetry and physical theories and 
 mysticism. The period of prose, of logic, and Of ethics, was 
 about to begin. He was the last of the great colonial sages of 
 Greece. The Hellenic intellect was destined hencefonh to 
 centre itself at Athens. 
 
67 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 THE GNOMIC POETS. 
 
 Definition of the term Gnomic. — The Elegiac Metre. — ^The Age of the 
 Despots in Greece. — Three Periods in Elegiac Poetry : the Martial, 
 the Erotic, the Gnomic. — Callinus. — Tyrtseus. — Mimnermus. — His 
 Epicurean Philosophy of Life. — Solon. — The Salaminian Verses. — ■ 
 Doctrine of Hereditary Guilt. — Greek Melancholy. — Phocylides. — 
 His Bourgeois Intellect. — Xenophanes. — Theognis. — The Politics of 
 Megara. — Cyrnus. — Precepts upon Education and Conduct in Public 
 and Private Life. — The Biography of Theognis. — Dorian Clubs. — 
 Lamentations over the Decay of Youth and Beauty. 
 
 The term Gnomic, when applied to ascertain number of Greek 
 poets, is arbitrary. There is no definite principle for rejecting 
 some and including others in the class. It has, however, been 
 usual to apply this name to Solon, Phocylides, Theognis, and 
 Simonides of Ceos. Yet there seems no reason to exclude some 
 portions of Callinus, Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and Xenophanes. 
 These poets, it will be observed, are all writers of the elegy. 
 Some of the lyric poets, however, and iambographers, such as 
 Simonides of Amorgos and Archilochus, have strong claims for 
 admission into the list. For, as the derivation of the name 
 implies, gnomic poets are simply those who embody -/vZ^xai, 
 or sententious maxims on life and morals, in their verse ; and 
 though we find that the most celebrated masters of this style 
 composed elegies, we yet may trace the thread of gnomic 
 thought in almost all the writers of their time. Conversely, 
 the most genuine authors of elegiac gnomes trespassed upon 
 the domaia of lyric poetry, and sang of love and wine and per- 
 sonal experience no less than of morahty. In fact, the gnomic 
 
68 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 poets represent a period of Greek literature during which the 
 old and simple forms of narrative poetry were giving way to 
 lyrical composition on the one hand, and to meditative writing 
 on the other ; when the epical impulse had become extinct, 
 and when the Greeks were beginning to think definitely. The 
 elegy, which seems to have originated in Asia Minor, and to 
 have been used almost exclusively by poets of the Ionian race 
 for the expression of emotional and reflective sentiments, lent 
 itself to this movement in the development of the Greek genius, 
 and formed a sort of midway stage between the impassioned 
 epic of the Homeric age and the no less impassioned poetry 
 and prose of the Athenian age of gold. 
 
 Viewed in this light, the gn-omic poets mark a transition from 
 Homer and Hesiod to the dramatists and moralists of Attica. 
 The ethical precepts inherent in the epos received from them 
 a more direct and proverbial treatment ; while they in turn 
 prepared for the sophists, the orators, and Socrates. 
 
 This transitional period in the history of Greek literature, 
 corresponding, as it does, to similar transitions in poUtics, re- 
 ligion, and morality, offers many points of interest. Before 
 Homer, poetry had no historical past, but after the age of the 
 Epic a long time elapsed before the vehicle of verse was ex- 
 changed for that of prose. Xenophanes, Parmenides, and 
 Empedocles wrote poems upon nature in hexameters. Solon 
 and Theognis committed their state-craft and ethics to elegiac 
 couplets. Yet at the same time Heraclitus and the seven sages 
 were developing the germs of prose, and preparing the way for 
 Attic historians and philosophers. 
 
 Again, whereas Homer introduces us to a Hellas small in its 
 extent, and scarcely separated from surrounding tribes, we find 
 in the transitional period that the strength and splendour of 
 the Greek race are dissipated over distant colonies, Hellenic 
 civilization standing out in definite relief against adjacent 
 barbarism. The first lyrical and elegiac poets come from the 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 69J 
 
 islands of the Archipelago, or from the shores of Asia Minor. 
 The first dramatists of note are Sicilian. Italy and Sicily afford 
 a home to the metaphysical poets, while the philosophers ot 
 the Ionian sect flourish at Ephesus and Miletus. 
 
 Corresponding to this change in the distribution of the race, 
 a change was taking place in the governments of the States. 
 The hereditary monarchies of Homer's age have disappeared, 
 and, after passing through a period of oligarchical supremacy, 
 have given place to tyrannies. The tyrants of Miletus and oi 
 Agrigentum, rising from the aristocracy itself; those of Corinth, 
 Athens, and Megara, owing their power to popular favour ; 
 others, like Cylon, flourishing a while by force of mere audacity 
 and skill ; others, again, like Pittacus of Mitylene, using the 
 rights of their dictatorship for the public benefit, — had this 
 one point in common : it was the interest of all of them to 
 destroy the traditional prejudices of the race, to gather a 
 powerful and splendid court around them, to patronise art, 
 to cultivate diplomacy, and to attach men of abilitity to their 
 persons. As the barons of feudalism encouraged the romances 
 of the Niebelungen, Carlovingian, and Arthurian cycles, so 
 the hereditary monarchies had caused the cyclical epos to 
 flourish. It was not for the interest of the tyrants to revive 
 Homeric legends; but rather to banish from the State all traces 
 of the chivalrous past. With this view .Cleisthenes of Sicyon 
 put down the worship of Adrastus, and parodied the heroic 
 names of the three tribes. Poetry, thus separated firom the 
 fabulous past, sought its subjects in the present, — in personal 
 experience, in pleasure, in politics, in questions of diplomacy, 
 in epigrammatic morality. 
 
 Such, then, was the period during which the gnomic poets 
 flourished, — a period of courts and tyrannies, of colonial pros- 
 perity, of poUtical animation, of social intrigue, of intellectual 
 development, of religious transformation, of change and un- 
 certainty in ever}' department. Behind them lay primitive 
 
70 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Homeric Hellas ; before them, at no great distance, was the 
 time when, the Greek genius would, find its home in Athens. 
 Poetry and Science were then to be distinguished ; the philo- 
 sophers, historians, and orators were to make a subtle and 
 splendid instrument of Greek prose ; the dramatists were to 
 develop the choric and dialectic beauty of the Greek language 
 to its highest ■ possible perfection ; tyrannies were to be 
 abolished, and the political energies of Hellas to be absorbed 
 in the one great struggle between the Dorian and Ionian 
 families. But in the age of gnomic poetry these changes were 
 still future ; and though the mutations of Greek history were 
 accomplished with unparalleled rapidity, we yet may draw cer- 
 tain hnes, and say — Here was a breathing-time of indecision 
 and suspense ; this period was the eve before a mighty revolu- 
 tion. I propose, therefore, to consider the gnomic poets as 
 the representatives to some extent of such an age, and as 
 exponents of the rudimentary, social, and political philosophy 
 of Greece before Socrates. 
 
 Three periods may be marked in the development of the 
 early Greek elegiac poetry — the Martial, the Erotic, and the 
 Gnomic. Callinus and Tyrtseus are the two great names by 
 which the first is distinguished. Mimnermus gave a new 
 direction to this style of composition, fitting the couplet, which 
 had formerly been used for military and patriotic purposes, 
 to amatory and convivial strains.* In after-years it never 
 lost the impress of his genius ; so that Ovid, Tibullus, and 
 Pfopertius may be regarded as the hneal descendants of the 
 Colophonian bard. Solon at a later date applied the elegiac 
 measure to severer subjects. He was the first perhaps to use 
 it for purely gnomic purposes, maintaining, however, the martial 
 
 * This seems to have been recognised by the ancients, as is proved by 
 the lines quoted from Hermesianax in Athentms, xiii. 597, where the 
 epithet iia\ax6s, assigned to his pentameter, is meant to be emphatic. Mim- 
 nermus gave it a luxurious and tender quality. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 71 
 
 spirit in his Salaminian verses, and imitating the example of 
 Mimnermus in his lighter compositions. Phocylides, to judge 
 by the scanty fragments which we possess of his poems, was 
 almost wholly gnomic in his character. But Theognis, who is 
 the latest and most important of the elegiac writers of this 
 period, combined the political, didactic, and erotic qualities to 
 a remarkable degree. As a poet, Simonides was greater than 
 any of those whom I have named j but his claims to rank 
 among the sententious philosophers rest more upon the frag- 
 ments of his lyrics than upon the elegiac epitaphs for which he 
 was so justly famed. 
 
 These are the poets of whom I intend to speak in detail. 
 Taken together with Homer and Hesiod, their works formed 
 the body of a Greek youth's education at the time when 
 Gorgias and Hippias were lecturing at Athens. From them 
 the contemporaries of Pericles, when boys, had learned the 
 rules of good society, of gentletnanly breeding, of practical 
 morality, of worldly wisdom. Their saws and precepts were 
 on the lips of the learned and the vulgar ; wise men used 
 them as the theses for subtle arguments or the texts for orato- 
 rical discourses. Public speakers quoted them as Scripture 
 might be quoted in a synod of the clergy. They pointed re- 
 marks in after-dinner conversation or upon the market-place. 
 Polemarchus, for instance, in Plato's Republic, starts the 
 dialogue on Justice by a maxim of Simonides. Isocrates, the 
 Rhetor, alludes to them as being " the best counsellors in 
 respect of human affairs," and Xenophon terms the gnomes of 
 Theognis " a comprehensive treatise concerning men." Having 
 been used so commonly and largely by the instructors of 
 youth, and by men of all cpnditions, it was natural that these 
 elegies should be collected into one compendious form, and 
 that passages of a gnomic tendency should be extracted from 
 larger poems on different subjects. In this way a body if 
 sententious poetry grew up and received the traditional 
 
72 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 authority of Solon, Phocylides, Simonides, and Theognis. 
 But in the process of compilation confusions and mistakes of 
 all kinds occurred, so that the same couplets were often attri- 
 buted to several authors. To bear this in mind at the outset 
 is a matter of some moment ; for at this distance of time it is 
 no longer possible to decide the canon of the several elegists 
 with accuracy. In dealing with them, we must, therefore, 
 not forget that we are handling masses of heterogeneous 
 materials roughly assigned to a few great names. 
 
 The earliest elegiac poet was Callinus, a native of Ephesus, 
 between the years 730 and 678 B.C. His poems consist almost 
 exclusively of exhortations to bravery in battle. " How long 
 will ye lie idle ? " he exclaims ; " put on your valour ; up to 
 the fight, for war is in the land ! " He discourses in a bold 
 and manly strain upon the certainty of death, and the glory of 
 facing it in defence of home and country, winding up with this 
 noble sentiment : — " The whole people mourns and sorrows 
 for the death of a brave-hearted man ; and while he lives he is 
 the peer of demigods." The lines of Tyrtasus, whose prominent 
 part during the second Messenian war is the subject of a 
 well-known legend, embody the same martial and patriotic 
 sentiments in even more masculine verse. 
 
 It would be alien from my purpose to dwell long upon 
 these military poems, since the only gnomic character which 
 they display is the encouragement of a heightened honour, 
 unselfishness, indifference to gain, devotion to the State, and 
 love of public fame. Yet the moment in the history of Hellas' 
 represented by Tyrtseus, the leader whose voice in the battle- 
 field was Hke a clarion to his manly Spartans, and in the 
 council-chamber was a whisper of Athene queUing strife, is 
 so interesting that I cannot omit him in this place. " Never," 
 to use the words of Miiller, " was the duty and the honour of 
 bravery impressed on the youth of a nation with so much 
 beauty and force of language, by such natural and touching 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 73 
 
 motives." If of a truth it be, as Milton says, the function of 
 the poet " to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds 
 of virtue and public civility," then Tyrtseus, less by his specific 
 maxims than by the spirit that his verses breathe, deserves an 
 honoured place among the bards whom Aristotle would have 
 classed as ^9i/c<iraroi, most serviceable for the formation of a 
 virile and powerful temperament, most suited for the educa- 
 tion of Greek youth. The following translation stands as 
 Thomas Campbell made it from a martial elegy ascribed to 
 the bard of Lacedsemon : * — 
 
 "How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand, 
 In front of battle for their native land ! 
 But oh ! what ills await the wretch that yields, 
 A recreant outcast from his country's fields ! 
 The mother whom he loves shall quit her home, 
 An aged father at his side shall roam ; 
 His little ones shall weeping with him go, 
 And a young wife participate his woe ; 
 While scorned and scowled upon by every face, 
 They pine for food, and beg from place to place. 
 
 " Stain of his breed ! dishonouring manhood's form, 
 All ills shall cleave to him : affliction's storm 
 Shall blind him wandering in the vale of years. 
 Till, lost to all but ignominious fears, 
 He shall not blush to leave a recreant's name. 
 And children, like himself, inured to shame. 
 
 ' ' But we will combat for our fathers' land. 
 And we will drain the life-blood where we stand. 
 To save our children : — fight ye side by side. 
 And serried close, ye men of youthful pride. 
 Disdaining fear, and deeming light the cost 
 Of life itself in glorious battle lost. 
 
 » Without attempting to discuss the vexed question whether Tyrtseus 
 was a native Spartan, or, according to the ancient tale, an Athenian 
 naturalized in Sparta, his • self-identification with the people he inspired 
 justifies the phrase that I have used above. 
 
74 • THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ' ' Leave not our sires to stem the unequal fight, 
 "Whose limbs are nerved no more with buoyant might ; 
 Nor, lagging backward, let the younger breast 
 Permit the man of age (a sight unblessed) 
 To welter in the combat's foremost thrust, 
 His hoary head dishevell'd in the dust, 
 And venerable bosom bleeding bare. 
 But youth's fair form, though fallen, is ever fair. 
 And beautiful in death the boy appears, 
 The hero boy, that dies in blooming years : 
 In man's regret he lives, and woman's tears ; 
 More sacred than in life, and lovelier far. 
 For- having perished in the front of war." *■ 
 
 Strangely different are the elegies of Mimnermus, the poet 
 of Colophon, who flourished toward the end of the seventh 
 century B.c.t His name has passed into a proverb for luxurious 
 verse, saddened by reflections on the fleeting joys of youth, 
 and on the sure and steady progress of old age and death. 
 Tyrtaeus, though a native of Attica, wrote for Spartans at war 
 with a strong nation ; Mimnermus was bom and lived among 
 Ionian Greeks emasculated by barbarian control and by con- 
 tact with the soft Lydians. It was of these Colophonians that 
 Xenophanes, a native poet, said, " Instructed in vain luxury 
 
 * The sentiment of these last lines is not only ethically spirited, but it is 
 also singularly, exquisitely Greek. The aesthetic tact of the Greek race 
 felt the plastic charm of a youth's fonn dead upon the battle-field. Like a 
 statue marbled by the frost of death he lies, the perfection of life-moulded 
 clay ; and his red wounds are the lips of everlasting praise. Not so the 
 elder man. Nakedness and mutilation bring no honour to him ; he has no 
 loveliness of shape to be revealed and heightened by the injuries of war ; 
 for him the flowing beard and the robes of reverend eld are a majestic cover- 
 ing, to be withdrawn by no hand seeking to unveil secluded beauties. His 
 lot is cast no longer in those fields, intense and passionate of art and love, 
 where death, cropping the bloom unset, confers a crown of immortality. 
 Cf. //iad, xxii. 71. An echo of this Greek feeling for the beautiful young 
 dead may be traced in David's picture of the drummer-boy at Avignon, in 
 Walt Whitman, and in Lord Albemarle's ' Recollections of Waterloo.' 
 
 t The birthplace of Mimnermus is not very certain. Fragment 9 
 in Bergk's Collection would seem to justify the opinion that he was a 
 native of Smyrna colonised from Colophon. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 75 
 
 by the Lydians, they trailed their robes of purple through the 
 streets, with haughty looks, proud of their flowing locks be- 
 dewed with curious essences and oils." For such a people the 
 exquisitely soft and musical verses of Mimnermus, pervaded by 
 a tone of lingering regret, were exactly suited. They breathe 
 the air of sunny gardens and cool banquet-rooms, in which we 
 picture to ourselves the poet lingering out a pensive life, 
 endeavouring to crowd his hours with pleasures of all kinds, 
 yet ever haunted and made fretful among his roses by the 
 thought of wrinkles and death. " When your youth is gone," 
 he says, " however beautiful you may have been, you lose the 
 reverence of your children and the regard of your friends." 
 " More hideous is old age than death. It reduces the hand- 
 some and the plain man to one level — cares attend it — the 
 senses and the intellects get deadened — a man is forgotten 
 and put out of the way." The Greek sentiment of hatred for 
 old age is well expressed in one epithet which Mimnermus 
 employs — &fiop(poi, formless. The Greeks detested the ugliness 
 and loss of grace which declining years bring with them, 
 almost more than weakened powers or the approach of death. 
 Nay, " when the flower of youth is past," says Mimnermus, 
 " it is best to die at once." Men are like herbs, which flourish 
 for a while in sunshine— then comes the winter of old age, 
 with poverty or disease, or lack of children. His feeling 
 for the charm of youth was intense ; he expressed it in 
 language that reminds us of the fervency of Sappho — "Down 
 my flesh the sweat runs in rivers, and I tremble when I see 
 the flower of my equals in age gladsome and beautiful." 
 
 This tender and regretful strain is repeated by Mimnermus 
 with a monotonous, almost pathetic persistency, as if the one 
 thought of inevitable age oppressed him like a nightmare day 
 and night. His delight in the goodliness of youth and man- 
 hood is so acute, and his enjoyment of existence is so ex- 
 quisite, that he shrinks with loathing from the doom iniposed 
 
76 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 on all things mortal to decline and wither. " May I complete 
 my life without disease or cares, and may death strike me at 
 my sixtieth year ! " Such is the prayer he utters, feeling, 
 probably, that up to sixty the senses may still afford him some 
 enjoyment, and that, after they are blunted, there is nothing 
 left for man worth living for. In all this Mimnermus was true 
 to one type of the Greek character. I shall have occasion 
 further on to revert to this subject, and to dwell again upon 
 the fascination which the flower of youth possessed for the 
 Greeks, and the horror with which the ugliness of age inspired 
 them.* That some escaped this kind of despair, which to us 
 appears unmanly, may be gathered from the beautiful discourse 
 upon old age with which the Republic of Plato opens. 
 Mimnermus, however, belonged to a class of men different 
 from Cephalus : nowhere in the whole range of literature can 
 be found a more perfect specimen of unmitigated ennui.\ In 
 his verse we trace the prostrate tone of the Oriental, combined 
 with Greek delicacy of intellect and artistic expression. The 
 following passage may be cited as at once illustrative of his 
 peculiar lamentation, and also of his poetical merits : — 
 
 " What's life or pleasure wanting Aphrodite ? 
 
 When to the gold-haired goddess cold am I, 
 When love and love's soft gifts no more delight me, 
 
 Nor stolen dalliance, then I fain would die ! 
 Ah ! fair and lovely bloom the flowers of youth ; 
 
 On men and maids they beautifully smile : 
 But soon comes dolefiil eld, who, void of ruth, 
 
 Indifferently afflicts the fair and vile : 
 
 * Notice particularly the couplets of Theognis beginning &iuai ^yisv 
 ^/37)j and Aippoves HyBpamoi, Bergk, voli ii. pp. 420, 550. 
 
 ■(• Fragment 9 in Bergk's Collection might seem to express a manlier 
 spirit, if we could suppose that it referred to personal exploits of the poet. 
 It forms, however, part of a description of the early colonization of 
 Smyrna from Pylos ; when Mimnermus alludes to martial deeds, he does 
 so with a tone of regret, as one who has no share in them, and lives his 
 own life in political stagnation. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 77 
 
 Then cares wear out the heart ; old eyes forlorn 
 
 Scarce reck the very sunshine to behold — 
 Unloved by youths, of every maid the scorn, — 
 
 So hard a lot God lays upon the old. " * . 
 
 We are not surprised to hear that the fragments ol Mim- 
 nermus belonged to a series of elegies addressed to a flute- 
 player called Nanno.t They are worthy of such a subject. 
 Nanno, according to one account, did not return the passion 
 of the poet. 
 
 In Mimnermus, however luxurious he may have been, we 
 yet observe a vein of meditation upon life and destiny, which 
 prepares us for the more distinctly gnomic poets. Considered 
 in the light of Greek philosophy, Mimnermus anticipates the 
 ethical teaching of the Hedonists and Epicureans. In other 
 words, he represents a genuine view of life adopted by the 
 Greeks. Horace refers to him as an authority in these well- 
 known lines : — 
 
 " Si, Mimnermus uti censet, sine amore jocisque 
 Nil est jucundum, vivas in amore jocisque ; " * 
 
 on which the scholiast observed that the elegiac poet " agreed 
 with the sect of the Epicureans." 
 
 Next to Mimnermus in point of time is Solon. Perhaps the 
 verses of this great man were among his least important pro- 
 ductions. Yet their value, in illustrating the history of Athens, 
 would have been inestimable, had they been preserved to us 
 in a more perfect state. "There is hardly anything," says 
 Grote, " more to be deplored, amidst the lost treasures of the 
 
 * Miscellanies, by the late John Addington Symonds, M.D. (Mac- 
 millan & Co. 1871), p. 410- 
 
 ' t Strabo quotes " the Nanno " as Athen^us quotes " the Leontion " 
 of Hermesianax, another Colophonian amourist. 
 
 % Epistles, bk. i. 6. Translated thus by Conington : "If, as Mim- 
 nermus tells you, life is flat with nought to love, devote yourself to that." 
 
78 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Grecian mind, than the' poems of Solon ; for we see by the 
 remaining fragments that they contained notices of the public 
 and social phenomena before him, which he was compelled 
 attentively to study, blended with the touching expression of 
 his own personal feelings, in the post, alike honourable and 
 difficult, to which the confidence of his countrymen had 
 exalted him." The interest of Solon as a gnomic poet is 
 derived chiefly irom the fact that he was reckoned one of the 
 seven wise men of Greece, that he was one of the two most 
 distinguished Nomothetae of Hellas,' that he is said to have 
 • conversed familiarly with the great Lydian monarch, and that 
 he endeavoured at Athens to resist the growing tyranny of 
 Pisistratus. Thus Solon bore a prominent part in all the most 
 important affairs of the period to which the gnomic poetry 
 belongs. Its politics, diplomacy, and social theories, its 
 constitutional systems and philosophy, were perfectly familiar 
 to him, and received a strong impress from his vigorous 
 mind. It is thought that his poems belong to an early period 
 of his life ; yet they embody the same sentiments as those 
 which Herodotus refers to his old age, and express in the 
 looser form of elegiac verse the gist of apophthegms ascribed 
 to him as one of the seven sages. 
 
 Literature and politics were cultivated together" at this 
 period among the Greeks; philosophy was gained in actual 
 life and by commerce with men of all descriptions. The part 
 which Tyrtaeus, Alcaeus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, 
 and Archilochus played in the history of their States need 
 not be more than alluded to. Simonides of Amorgos founded 
 a colony ; Theognis represented a large and important party. 
 But Solon, in a truer sense than any of these men, combined 
 decisive action in public life with letters. Nor is it, perhaps, 
 necessary to agree with Grote in depreciating the poetical 
 value of his verses. Some of them are very fine and forcible. 
 The description, for example, of the storm which sweeps away 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 79 
 
 the clouds, and leaves a sunny sky (Frag. 13, ed. Bergk), is iull 
 of noble imagery. 
 
 The first three firagments of Solon's elegies form part ot 
 the ode recited by him in the market-place of Athens, when 
 he braved the penalty of death, and urged his fellow-citizens 
 " to rise and fight for the sweet isle of Salamis." These lines 
 are followed by a considerable fragment of great importance, 
 describing the misery of ill-governed and seditious Athens. 
 Among the sayings attributed to Solon (Diog. Laer., i. 63) is 
 one that gives the keynote to this poem. When asked what 
 made an orderly and well-constituted state, he answered, 
 ^' When the people obey the rulers, and the rulers obey the 
 laws." The paraphrase which I subjoin exhibits in strong 
 contrast the difference between Dysnomia and Eunomia, as 
 conceived by the Athenian law-giver. Demosthenes, who used 
 the name of Solon on all occasions with imposing rhetorical 
 effect, quotes these lines in a celebrated passage of the speech 
 De Fals. Leg., 254 : — " The citizens seek to overthrow the 
 State by love of money, by follovidng indulgent and self-seeking 
 demagogues; who neglect religion and pervert the riches of the 
 temples. Yet justice, silent but all-seeing, will in time bring 
 vengeance on them for these things. War, want, civil discord, 
 slavery, are at our gates ; and all these evils threaten Athens 
 because of her lawlessness. Whereas good laws and govern- 
 ment set all the State in order, chain the hands of evil-doers, 
 make rough places plain, subdue insolence, and blast the 
 budding flowers of At^, set straight the crooked ways of 
 tortuous law, root out sedition, quell the rage of strife ; under 
 their good influence all things are fair and wise with men." 
 Thus early and emphatically was the notion of just balance 
 enunciated among the Greeks. It formed the ruling principle 
 of their philosophy as well as of their politics ; for the \xr\li.v 
 'ayav (nothing over-much) of Solon corresponded to the ^irpov 
 (measure) of the Ionic speculators, and contained within itself 
 
go THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 the germ of Aristotle's ethical system, no less than of the 
 political philosophy of Plato's Republic. 
 
 In, the fifth and sixth fragments Solon describes the amount 
 of power he would wish to see intrusted to the Athenian 
 Derhus ; in the ninth, he prophesies the advent of a despot : 
 "From storm-clouds descend furious snow and hail, and 
 thunder is born of bright lightning; so great men produce 
 the overthrow of States, and into the bondage of a despot's 
 power the people fall unwittingly. Easy it is to raise the 
 storm, but hard to curb the whirlwind ; yet must we now take 
 thought of all these things." Fragment the second contains 
 a further warning on the subject of impending tyranny. The 
 power of Pisistratus was growing to a head, and Solon told the 
 Athenians that if he proved despotic, they would have no one 
 but themselves to blame for it. 
 
 The remaining fragments of Solonian poetry are more 
 purely meditative. " Bright daughters of Memory and Olym- 
 pian Zeus," he begins, " Pierian Muses ! hear my prayer. 
 Grant me wealth from the blessed gods, and from all men a 
 good name. May I be sweet to my friend and bitter to my 
 foe ; revered by the one and dreaded by the other. Money I 
 desire, but no ill-gotten gain : for the wealth that the gods 
 give lasts, and fleets not away ; but the fruits of insolence and 
 crime bring vengeance — sure, though slow. Zeus seeth all 
 things, and like a wind scattering the clouds, which shakes the 
 deep places of the sea and rages over the corn-land, and comes 
 at last to heaven, the seat of gods, and makes a clear sky to be 
 seen, whereupon the sun breaks out in glory, and the clouds 
 are gone — so is the vengeance of Zeus. He may seem to 
 forget, but sooner or later he strikes ; perchance the guilty man 
 escapes, yet his blameless children or remote posterity pay the 
 penalty." Two points are noticeable in this passage ; first, the 
 dread of ill-gotten gain ; and secondly, the conception of im- 
 placable justice. There was nothing which the Greeks more 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 8 1 
 
 dreaded and detested than wealth procured by fraud. They 
 were so sensitive upon this point that even Plato and Aristotle 
 regarded usury as criminal, unnatural, and sure to bring calamity 
 upon the money-lender. Thus Chilon, the Lacedemonian sage, 
 is reported to have said, " Choose loss rather than dishonour- 
 able gain : for the one will hurt you for the moment, the other 
 will never cease to be a curse." There are few of the seven 
 sages who have not at least one maxim bearing on this point. 
 It would seem as' if the conscience of humanity were touched 
 at a very early period by superstitious scruples of this kind. 
 The Jewish law contains warnings similar to those of Solon ; 
 and among our own people it has been commonly believed 
 that wealth unlawfully acquired, money taken from the devil, 
 or property wrested from the Church, is disastrous to its owner, 
 and incapable of being long retained in the possession of his 
 family. Theognis expresses nearly the same sentiments as 
 Solon in the following verses : — " He who gets wealth from 
 Zeus by just means, and with hands unstained, will not lose 
 it; but if he acquire it wrongfully, covetously, or by false 
 swearing, though it may seem at first to bring him gain, at last 
 it turns to calamity, and the mind of Heaven prevails. . But 
 these things deceive men, for the blessed gods do not always 
 take vengeance on crime at the moment of its being com- 
 mitted; but one man in his person pays for a bad deed, 
 another leaves disaster hanging over his own children, a third 
 avoids justice by death." 
 
 Both Solon and Theognis, it will be observed, express 
 emphatically their belief in a vengeance of Heaven falling upon 
 the ■ children, and the children's children of offenders. This 
 conception of doom received its most splendid illustration at 
 the hands of the tragic poets, and led philosophers Hke Empe- 
 docles to devise systems of expiation and purification, by means 
 of which ancestral guilt might be' purged away, and the soul 
 be restored to its pristine blamelessness. Theognis in another 
 
 G 
 
82 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 fragment (731-752) discusses the doctrine, and calls in question 
 its justice. He takes it for granted, as a thing too obvious to 
 be disputed, that children suffer for their father's sin, and 
 argues with Zeus about the abstract, right and policy of this 
 law, suggesting that its severity is enough to make men with- 
 draw their allegiance from such unjust governors. The in- 
 equality of the divine rule had appeared in the same light to 
 Hesiod and Homer (see Iliad, xiii. 631 ; Hesiod, Op. ei Dies, 
 270). But it is in the gnomic poets that we first discover a 
 tendency to return and reason upon such questions : the wedge 
 of philosophical scepticism was being inserted into the old 
 beliefs of the Greek race. In some respects these gnomic 
 poets present even a more gloomy view of human destinies 
 than the epic poets. Solon says, " It is fate that bringeth 
 good and bad to men ; nor can the gifts of the immortals be 
 refused ; " and in Theognis we find, " No man is either 
 wealthy or poor, mean or noble, without the help of the 
 gods." ..." Pray to the gods ; nought happens to man of 
 good or ill without the gods." ..." No one, Cymus, is him- 
 self the cause of loss and gain ; but of both these the gods 
 are givers." * It would be easy to multipty passages, where 
 the same conception of the divine government as that for 
 which Plato {Rep.,^. 379) blamed Homer is set forth; but 
 the gnomic poets go beyond this simple view. They seem to 
 regard Heaven as a jealous power, and superstitiously believe 
 all changes of fortune to be produced by the operation of a 
 god anxious to delude human expectations. This theology 
 lies at the base of the Solonian maxim, that you ought not to 
 judge of a man's happiness until his death : " for," in the 
 
 * The well-known passage in the//z«(/(xxiv. 527), which describes the 
 two casks at the threshold of the house of Zeus, contains the germ of this 
 belief. But after Homer there arose a darker sense of the jealousy of the 
 gods, accompanied in speculative minds by a tendency to call the principles 
 of the divine rule in question. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 83 
 
 language of Herodotus, " there are many to whom God has 
 first displayed good fortune, and whom he afterwards has 
 rooted up and overthrown." 
 
 Thus Solon moraUzes in his elegies upon the vicissitudes of 
 life : — ^" Danger lies everywhere, nor can a nian say where he 
 will end when he begins ; for he who thinks to do well, without 
 forethought, comes to grief ; and often when a man is doing 
 ill. Heaven sends him good luck, and he ends prosperously." 
 It must however be observed that Solon in no passage of his 
 elegiac poems alludes distinctly to the intervention of a jealous 
 or malicious destiny. He is rather deeply impressed with the 
 uncertainty of human affairs — an uncertainty which the events 
 of his own life amply illustrated, and which he saw displayed 
 in every town about him. Simonides repeats the same strain 
 of despondency, dwelling (Frag. 2, ed. Gaisford) upon the 
 mutabilities of life, and exclaiming with a kind of horror : 
 " One hideous Charybc^is swallows all things — wealth and 
 mighty virtue." 
 
 At this period in Greece the old simplicity of life was 
 passing away, and philosophy had not yet revealed her broader 
 horizons, her loftier airps, and her rational sources of content. 
 We have seen how Mimnermus bemoaned the woes of old 
 age. Solon, whose manliness contrasts in every other respect 
 with the effeminacy and languor of the Colophonian poet, gave 
 way to the same kind of melancholy when he cried, " No 
 mortal man is truly blessed ; but all are wretched whom the 
 sun beholds." What can be more despairing than the lamen- 
 tations of Simonides ? — " Few and evil are our days of life ; 
 but everlasting is the sleep which we must sleep beneath the 
 earth." ..." Small is the strength of man, and invincible are 
 his sorrows ; grief treads upon the heels of grief through his 
 short life ; and death, which no man shuns, hangs over him at 
 last : to this bourne come the good and bad alike." In the 
 midst of this uncertainty and gloom Theognis cannot find a 
 
84 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 rule of right conduct. "Nothing," he says, "is defined by- 
 Heaven for mortals, nor any way by which a man may walk 
 and please immortal powers." Nor can we point to any more 
 profoundly wretched expression of misery than the following 
 elegy of the same poet : " It is best of all things for the sons of 
 earth not to be born, nor to see the bright rays of the sun, or 
 else after birth to pass as soon as possible the gates of death, and 
 to" lie deep down beneath a weight of earth." This sentiment 
 is repeated by Bacchylides, and every student of Greek tragedy 
 . knows what splendid use has been made of it by Sophocles 
 in one of the choruses of CEdipus Coloneus. Afterwards it 
 passed into a commonplace. Two Eufipidean fragments em- 
 body it in words not very different from those of Theognis, 
 and Cicero is said to have translated it. When we consider 
 the uneasy and uncertain view of human life expressed in these 
 passages, it seems wonderful that men, conscious of utter 
 ignorance, and believing themselves, like Herodotus, to be 
 the sport of almost malignant deities, could have grown so 
 nobly and maintained so high a moral standard as that of the 
 Greek race.* 
 
 The remaining fragments of Solon contain the celebrated 
 lines upon the Life of Man, which he divided into ten periods 
 of seven years. He rebuked Mimnermus for wishing to make- 
 sixty the term of human life, and bade him add another de- 
 cade. We also possess some amorous verses of questionable- 
 character, supposed to have been written in his early youth. 
 The prudes of antiquity .were scandalized at Solon, a lawgiver 
 and sage, for having penned these couplets. The libertines 
 rejoiced to place so respectable a name upon their list of' 
 worthies. To the student of history they afford, in a compact 
 
 * This subject will be resumed in the introduction to my chapter 
 on Euripides, where I attempt to show how the Herodotean notion of' 
 divine jealousy was moralized at the time of the Persian war into the idea 
 of Nemesis. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 85 
 
 form, some insight into the pursuits and objects of an Athenian 
 man of pleasure. Plato quotes one couplet in the Lysis, 
 and the author of the dialogue Trepj ipcirwi' (On Loves), attri- 
 buted to Lucian, makes use of the same verses to prove that 
 Solon was not exempt from the passion for which he is apolo- 
 :gizing. Apuleius mentions another as " lascivissimus ille 
 versus." It should be added that the most considerable of 
 these elegies has also been ascribed to Theognis. The doubt 
 •of authorship which hangs over all the gnomic fragments 
 warns us, therefore, to be cautious in ascribing them to Solon. 
 At the same time there is no strong external or internal, argu- 
 ment against their authenticity. Solon displays no asceticism 
 in his poetry, or in anything that is recorded of his life or sayings.* 
 It is probable that he lived as a Greek among Greeks, and was 
 not ashamed of any of their social customs. 
 
 Passing from Solon to Phocylides we find a somewhat dif- 
 ferent tone of social philosophy. Phocylides was a native of 
 Miletus, who lived between 550 and 490 B.C. If Mimnermus 
 represents the effeminacy of the Asiatic Greeks, Phocylides 
 •displays a kind of prosaic worldly wisdom, for which the 
 lonians were celebrated. He is thoroughly bota-geots, to use a 
 modem phrase ; contented with material felicity, shrewd, safe 
 in his opinions, and gifted with great common sense. Here 
 •are some of his maxims : — " First get your living, and then 
 think of getting virtue." ..." What is the advantage of noble 
 birth, if favour follow not the speech and counsel of a man ? " 
 ..." The middle classes are in many ways best off; I wish 
 to be of middle rank in the State." Aristotle {Fol., iv. 9, 7), 
 quotes the last of these sayings with approbation. It is a 
 thoroughly Ionian sentiment. Two of his genuine fragments 
 •contain' the germ of Greek ideas afterwards destined to be 
 widely developed and applied by the greatest thinkers of 
 
 * See the passage quoted from Philemon by Athenseus, xiii. 569, where 
 the institution of public lupanaria is ascribed to Solon. 
 
86 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Greece. One of these describes the Greek conception of a 
 perfect State :— " A small city, set upon a rock, and well 
 governed, is better than all foolish Nineveh." We here recog- 
 nize the practical wisdom and thorough sohdity of Greek good 
 sense. Wealth, size, and splendour they regarded as stumbling- 
 blocks and sources of weakness. To be compact and well 
 governed expressed their ideal of social felicity. Plato in the 
 Republic, and Aristotle in the Politics, carry the thought ex- 
 pressed in this couplet of Phocyhdes to its utmost logical 
 consequences. Again he says, '• In justice the whole of virtue 
 exists entire." This verse, which has also been incorporated 
 into the elegies of Theognis, was probably the common pro- 
 perty of many early moralists. Aristotle quotes it in the 
 fifth book of the Ethics with the preface : Ato cat irapoifiia- 
 ^ojjEvoi (pafiEv (wherefore in a proverb too we say). It might 
 be placed as a motto on the first page of Plato's Republic, for 
 justice is the architectonic virtue which maintains the health 
 and safety of the State. 
 
 Phocylides enjoyed a high reputation among the ancients. 
 Though few genuine fragments of his sayings have been handed 
 down to us, there is a long and obviously spurious poem which 
 bears his name. Some moralist of the Christian period has 
 endeavoured to claim for his half-Jewish precepts the sanction 
 of a great and antique authority. The greater number of those 
 which we may with safety accept as genuine are prefaced by the 
 words max royt ^wKvXiSea) (and this too of Phocylides), forming 
 an integral part of a hexameter. Phocylides was author of an 
 epigram in imitation of one ascribed to Demodocus, which is 
 chiefly interesting as having fimiished Porson with the model 
 of his well-known lines on Hermann. He also composed an 
 epigrammatic satire on women, in which he compares them to 
 four animals, a dog, a bee, a pig, and a horse, in the style of 
 the poem by Simonides of Amorgos. 
 
 Xenophanes, a native of Colophon, and the founder of the 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 87 
 
 Eleatic school of philosophy, has left some elegies of a gnomic 
 character, which illustrate another point in the Ionian intellect. 
 While Phocylides celebrated the superiority of comfort and the - 
 solid goods of life, Xenophanes endeavoured to break down 
 the prejudice in favour of mere physical advantages, and to 
 assert the absolute pre-eminence of intellectual power. In his 
 second fragment (ed. Bergk) he says, " You give all kinds .of 
 honours — precedence at festivals, pensions, and public mainte- 
 nance — to runners, boxers, pentathletes, wrestlers, pancratists, 
 and charioteers, who bear away the prize at Olympia ; yet these 
 men are not so worthy of reward as I am ; for better than the 
 strength of men or horses is our wisdom. What is the use of 
 all this muscular development ? It will not improve the con- 
 stitution of the State or increase the revenue."* In this para- 
 phrase, I have, for the sake of brevity, modernized the language 
 of Xenophanes, while seeking to preserve the meaning of an 
 elegy which admirably illustrates the principles of the Ionian 
 race, and of Athens in particular, as contrasted with those of 
 the Dorians. Plato, Aristotle, and all the political moraHsts of 
 Greece, blamed Sparta and Thebes for training mere soldiers 
 and gymnasts, to the exclusion of intellectual culture ; thus 
 retarding the growth of their constitutions and forcing them to 
 depend in all emergencies upon brute force. Had all lonians 
 been like Solon and Xenophanes, had there been nothing of 
 Mimnermus or Phocylides in their character, then the Athenians 
 might have avoided the contrary charge of effeminacy and 
 ignobility of purpose and merely sesthetical superiority, with 
 which they have been taxed. 
 
 Contemporary with Phocylides was Theognis, a poet of 
 whose gnomic elegies nearly fourteen hundred lines are still 
 extant. Some of these are identical with verses of Solon, and 
 
 * We may compare with this fragment a passage preserved from the 
 Autolycus of Euripides, translated by me in the Second Series of Studies of 
 Greek Poets, chap. viii. p. 283_. 
 
88 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of Other writers ; yet we. need not suppose that Theognis 
 was himself an imitator. It is far more probable that all the 
 gnomic poets borrowed from the same sources, or embodied 
 in their couplets maxims of common and proverbial wisdom. 
 That Aristotie so regarded one of their most important apho- 
 risms on the architectonic supremacy of justice, we have already 
 seen. Besides, it is not certain on what principle the elegies 
 which bear the names of different poets, were assigned to them. 
 Theognis covers more ground than any of his predecessors, and 
 embraces a greater variety of subjects. It has never been ima- 
 gined that the fragments we possess formed part of an elaborate 
 and continuous poem. They rather seem to have been written 
 as occasion served, in order to express the thoughts of the 
 moment ; while not a few included in the canon of Theognis 
 belong probably to other poets. Many of them contain 
 maxims of political wisdom, and rules for private conduct in 
 the choice of friends ; others seem to have been composed 
 for the lyre, in praise of good society, or wine, or beauty ; 
 again we find discussions of moral questions, and prayers to 
 the gods, mixed up with lamentations on the miseries of exile 
 and poverty ; a few throw light upon the personal history of 
 Theognis ; in all cases the majority are addressed to one 
 person, called Cymus.* 
 
 * A very ingenious attempt was made by Mr. Hookham Frere to 
 reconstruct the life of Theognis from his elegies. It would be too much to 
 assert that his conjectures are always successful. Indeed he often intro- 
 duces foreign matter and modern sentiment, while he neglects the, pecu- 
 liarly Greek relations of the poet to his friend. Those who are curious 
 about such works of hypercriticism would do well to study his Theognis 
 Restilutus. (Frere's Works, vol. ii.) In doing so, they must, however, 
 bear in mind, as already observed above, that a great many of the couplets 
 and short poems ascribed to Theognis by the later Greeks were not really 
 his own. Theognis, like Hesiod, Solon, and Phocylides, was credited 
 with more proverbial wisdom than he can be held responsible for. Con- 
 tradictory utterances are therefore not imfrequent in his elegies, and this 
 fact renders a trustworthy restoration of his biography and body of opinion 
 almost impossible. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 89 
 
 Theognis was a noble, born at Megara about the middle of 
 the sixth century B.C. His city, though traditionally subject 
 to the yoke of Corinth, had under the influence of its aristocracy 
 acquired independence. In course of time Theagenes, a dema- 
 gogue, gained for himself despotical supremacy, and exiled the 
 members of the old nobility from Megara. He, too, succumbed 
 to popular force, and for many years a struggle was maintained 
 between the democratic party, whom Theognis persistently 
 styles /carai and ZuCKoi (bad and cowardly), and the aristocracy, 
 whom he calls ayadol and eaBXoi (good and stanch). Theognis 
 himself, as far as we can gather from the fragments, spent a 
 long portion of his life in exile from Megara ; but before the 
 period of his banishment he occupied the position of friend and 
 ■counsellor to Cyrnus, who, though clearly younger than him- 
 self, seems to have been in some sense leader of the Megarian 
 aristocracy. A large number of the maxims of Theognis on 
 State-government are specially addressed to him. 
 
 Before proceeding to examine these elegies in detail, we 
 may touch upon the subject of the friendship of Theognis for 
 Cyrnus, which has been much misunderstood. It must be 
 remembered that Theognis was the only Doric poet of the 
 gnomic class — all those who have been hitherto mentioned, 
 belonging without exception to the Ionian family of the Greek 
 race. We are not, therefore, surprised to find some purely 
 Dorian qualities in the poetry of Theognis. Such, for in- 
 stance, are the invocations to Phcebus and Artemis, with 
 which our collection of fragments opens ; but such, in a far 
 more characteristic sense, is the whole relation of the poet 
 to his friend. From time immemorial it had been the custom 
 among the Dorian tribes for men distinguished in war or state- 
 craft to select among the youths one comrade, who stood to 
 them in the light of pupil and squire. In Crete this process 
 of election was attended with rites of peculiar solemnity, and 
 at Sparta the names of £(<77rj/jj'\?je and a'Crric, or "inbreather" 
 
90 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and " listener," were given to the pair. They grew up together, 
 the elder teaching the younger all he knew, and expecting to 
 receive from him in return obedience and affection. In man- 
 hood they were not separated, but fought and sat in the assembly 
 side by side, and were regarded in all points as each other's 
 representatives. Thus a kind of chivalry was formed, which, 
 like the modern chivalry of love and arms, as long as it remained 
 within due limits, gave birth to nothing but honourable deeds 
 and noble friendships, but which in more degenerate days 
 became the curse and reproach of Hellas. There is every 
 reason to believe that Theognis was united to Cyrnus in the 
 purest bonds of Doric chivalry ; and it is interesting to observe 
 the kind of education which he gives his friend (see 1049-1054, 
 Theogn., ed. Bergk). Boys in the Doric States were so soon 
 separated from their home, and from the training of the family, 
 that some substitute for the parental discipline and care was 
 requisite. This the institution to which I have briefly alluded 
 seems to have to some extent supplied. A Spartan or Cretan 
 settlement resembled a lairge public school, in which the elder 
 boys choose their fags, and teach them and protect them, in 
 return for duty, service and companionship. 
 
 Lines 87-100 describe the sincere and perfect affection, the 
 truthfulness and forbearance, which the poet requires from 
 Cyrnus. In another passage (1259-1270) he complains of the 
 changeable character of the youth, and compares him to a 
 skittish horse. One of his longest, and, in point of poetry, 
 most beautiful elegies, celebrates the immortality which his 
 songs will confer on Cyrnus (237-254). He tells his friend 
 that he has given him wings to fly with over land and sea, that 
 fair young men at festivals will sing of him to sweetly-sounding^ 
 pipes, and that even Hades shall not prevent him from wander- 
 ing on wings of fame about the isles and land of Hellas, so long 
 as earth and sun endure. The lofty enthusiasm and confidence 
 of these promises remind us of Shakspere's most pompous 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 91 
 
 sonnets. Again, he bewails the difficulties and dangers of this 
 kind of friendship (1353 and 1369), or entreats Cyrnus not ta 
 let malicious slanders interrupt their intimacy. In some cases, 
 we cannot acquit Theognis any more than Solon of licentious- 
 ness in the expression of his love. But the general tone of his 
 language addressed to Cyrnus is so dignified and sober that, 
 we are inclined to think his looser verses may refer to another 
 and more scandalous attachment. 
 
 The first elegy of great importance (43-69) describes the 
 state of Megara when under the control of a democracy. It 
 expresses the bitter hatred and contempt which the Greek 
 nobles in a Dorian State felt for the Perioeci, or farmers of the 
 neighbouring country, whom they strove to keep beneath 
 them, and to exclude from all political rights : — '' Cyrnus, this 
 city is still a city, but the people are all changed, who some- 
 time since knew neither law nor justice, but wore goatskins, 
 and dwelt like deer beyond the walls. Now they are noble, 
 son of Polypas ; and the brave of heretofore are base. WhO' 
 can endure to look upon these things ?" Again he says (1109- 
 II 14), "The nobles of old days are now made base, and the 
 base are noble, ... a man of birth takes his bride from a low 
 man's house.'' In another place he complains that the rabble 
 rule the State with monstrous laws, that the sense of shame has 
 perished, and that impudence and insolence lord it over the 
 land (289-292). In these perilous times he compares the State 
 to a ship managed by incompetent and unruly mariners : the 
 waves are breaking over her, but the sailors prevent the good 
 pilot from guiding her helm, while they make pillage of the 
 common good (667-682). This simile bears a striking resem- 
 blance to the passage of the Republic in which Plato compares 
 a State possessed by demagogues and the mob to an ill- 
 governed ship. Lastly, says Theognis, " Porters rule, and the 
 nobles are subject to the base." In this state of disorder the 
 very principles of Dorian society are neglected. Money i& 
 
^2 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 regarded as the charter of nobiHty, and no attempts are made 
 to maintain a generous breed of citizens. " We are careful," 
 he says (183-196), "to select the best race of horses and the 
 like, but a noble man doubts not about marrying a mean 
 woman if she bring him money ; nor does a woman reject the 
 suit of a mean man if he be rich. Wealth is honoured ; wealth 
 has confused our blood." This passage has great interest, 
 both as showing the old prejudices of the Dorian aristocracy, 
 and also as proving that a new order of things was beginning 
 in Greece. Even the Dorian States could not resist the 
 progress of commerce and republican institutions ; and little 
 Megara, situated between mercantile Corinth and democratic 
 Athens, had but small strength to stem the tide. But the party 
 •of Theognis were not always out of power. When Cymus and 
 iiis friends held sway in Megara, he gives them this advice 
 (847-850) : " Trample on the empty-headed rabble ; strike 
 them with the stinging goad ; and put a galling yoke upon their 
 neck ; for never shall you find so despot-loving a Demus in 
 the whole earth." That he had frequent cause to apprehend 
 the rising of some tyrant from the body of the people may be 
 noticed in the fragments. Among the earliest of these in our 
 arrangement (39-42) occurs this elegy : — "Cymus, this city is 
 pregnant ; but I fear that it will bring forth a man to chastise 
 our evil violence." He then proceeds to lay down the axioms 
 •of the oligarchical State theory : the nobility, he says, never 
 juined a city ; it is only when base leaders get the upper hand, 
 and wrest justice in order to indulge the populace and 
 make their own gain, that civil dissension and ruin ensue. 
 Tyrants were as hateful to the true oligarchs as a democracy, 
 and Theognis in one place actually advises tyrannicide : " To 
 lay low a despot who consumes the people is no sin, and will 
 not be punished by the gods" (1181). This sentiment cor- 
 responds with the couplet of Simonides on Harmodius and 
 Aristogeiton, and with the apophthegms of several of the sages. 
 
ThE GNOMIC POETS. 93. 
 
 Theognis, seeing Cyrnus environed with political difficulties^ 
 thought fit to furnish him with rules of conduct. He was very- 
 particular about the choice 'of proper friends. One elegy 
 {31-38), in which he discourses on the desirabiHty of con- 
 sorting with none but the best company, and of avoiding the 
 contagion of low comrades, attained a wide celebrity among 
 the Greeks. So much of their life was spent in public; and so- 
 much of their education depended on society, that the question 
 of social intercourse was one of paramount importance. Plato- 
 in the Meno, Xenophon in his Memorabilia, and Aristotle in 
 the ninth book of the Ethics, all make use of these verses :— 
 " Come not into the company of bad men, but cling always to- 
 the good ; eat and drink with then) ; sit with them, and seek 
 to please those who have great power. For from the noble 
 you will learn what is noble • but if you mix with base men 
 you will lose the wits you have." It must always be borne in 
 mind that by tirflXoi and ayaBol Theognis meant the men 
 of his own party. The " good " and " noble " were men of 
 birth, wealth, breeding, and power, on whom, by prejudice 
 and habit, he conferred these moral titles. In course of time, 
 however, as the words acquired a more ethical significance,, 
 the philosophers were able to appropriate maxims of worldly 
 prudence to their own more elevated purposes ; nor were they 
 even in the times of Theognis other than ambiguous, for the- 
 identification of aristocratic position and moral worth was so- 
 conventionally complete, that words which were intended to- 
 be taken in the one sense had an equal application in the 
 other. In another elegy (305-308) Theognis repeats this- 
 advice, when he observes that no one is born utterly bad 
 by nature, but that he contracts habits of depi-avity from 
 his associates. Here it is obvious how much of ethical 
 meaning the words " good " and " bad " involved, even in the 
 times of the Megarian poet, and how vastly important he 
 considered the society of well-bred companions to be in the 
 
'94 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 formation of character. A different view of moral habits 
 seems to be taken in another fragment (429-438), where 
 Theognis attributes more influence to nature than to training : 
 ■ — " To beget and rear a child," he says, " is easier than to 
 instil good principles. No one ever devised means for making 
 fools wise, or bad men good. If Heaven had given to the 
 ■sons of '^Esculapius the gift of healing wickedness and folly, 
 great fees would they have earned. If you could fashion or 
 insert what minds you liked, good men would never have 
 bad sons. But no amount of teaching will make a bad man 
 good." These verses are quoted both by Plato and Aristotle, 
 •with whose inquiries on the subject of Education versus 
 Nature, of rpo(j(») as opposed to ^vaic, they had, of course, 
 considerable correspondence. 
 
 In connection with this subject of moral habits and com- 
 panionship, Theognis thought fit to give his pupil advice about 
 his deportment at the public dinners of the Dorians. At these 
 social meetings there was ample scope for political intrigue ; 
 and hence it followed that a public man was forced to be par- 
 ticular about his associates. The poet devotes a series of 
 couplets (61-82) to this point, recommending Cyrnus to be 
 reticent, and not to communicate the whole of his plans even 
 to his friends. He warns him how difficult it is to get a faithful 
 friend. You could not find, he says (83-86), one shipload of 
 really trustworthy and incorruptible men upon the face of the 
 world. Moreover, nothing requires more skill than to discover 
 the insincerity of a hypocrite (11 7-1 2 8). You may test gold 
 and silver, but there are no means of getting at the thoughts 
 of men. This sentiment, together with the metaphor of pinch- 
 beck metal, is used by Euripides in Medea (line 515). Aris- 
 totie also quotes the passage in his Eudemian Ethics (vii. 2). 
 Time, however, says Theognis (963-970), and experience, 
 and calamity, are the true tests of friendship. If a man 
 will bear misfortune with you, or will help you in a serious 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 95 
 
 undertaking, you may then, but not till then, rely upon 
 his expressions of attachment. This suspicious temper re- 
 calls the social philosophy of Machiavelli ; indeed, Greek 
 politics in no respect resembled those of modern Italy more 
 closely than in the diplomatic footing upon which all the 
 relations of society were placed. There are two very curious 
 passages (213-218 and ro7i-io74) in which Theognis bids 
 his friend be as much as possible all things to all men. 
 " Turn a different side of your character," he says, " to dif- 
 ferent men, and mix part of their temper with your own. Get 
 the nature of the cuttlefish, which looks exactly like the rock 
 it clings to : be versatile, and show a variety of complexions." 
 Again, he boasts that " among madmen I am exceeding mad ; 
 but among the just no man is more just than I am.'' Nor 
 is this subtlety to be confined to friendly relations merely. In 
 one most Jesuitical couplet (363) Theognis urges his friend 
 " to beguile his foe with fair words ; but when he has him 
 in his power, to take full vengeance and to spare not." As to 
 the actual events of the life of Cyrnus, we know nothing except 
 what is told u.s in one of the elegies (805-810), that he went 
 as a Theorus to the shrine of Delphi. We may gather from 
 some expressions of the poet that he was of a rash and 
 haughty and unconciliatory temper. 
 
 Passing now to the personal history of Theognis, we are 
 struck with his frequent lamentations, over poverty and the 
 wretchedness of exile. " Miserable poverty ! " he cries, " go 
 elsewhere; prithee stay not with a host that hates thee." 
 " Poverty breaks the spirit of a noble man more than anything, 
 more even than age or ague. The poor man is gagged and 
 bound ; he cannot speak or act .... Poverty comes not to 
 the market or the lawsuits ; everywhere she is laughed and 
 scoffed at, and hated by all men mother she is of help- 
 lessness : she breaks the spirit of a man within his breast, so 
 that he suffers shame and wrong in silence, and learns to lie 
 
96 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and cheat and do the sin his soul abhors Wretched 
 
 want, why, seated on my shoulders, dost thou debase body 
 and mind alike" (267, 351, 385, 173-182, 649). Wealth, on 
 the other hand, he cries with bitterness, is omnipotent (1117) : 
 " O wealth ! of gods the fairest and most full of charm ! with 
 thy help, though I am a mean man, I am made noble." " Every 
 one honours a rich man and slights a poor man : the whole 
 world agrees upon this point." But the finest and most satirical 
 of all his poems on this subject is one (699-718) in which he 
 says : " Most men have but one virtue, and that is wealth ; it 
 would do you no good if you had the self-control of Rhada- 
 manthus himself, or if you knew more wiles than Sisyphus, or 
 if you could turn falsehood into truth with the tongue of a 
 Nestor, or if you were more fleet of foot than the children of 
 Boreas. You must fix your mind on wealth — wealth alone. 
 Wealth is almighty." It was poverty that gave its bitterness 
 to exile. My friends, he says, pass me by ; " no one is the 
 firiend or faithful comrade of an exile. This is the sting of 
 exile." " I have suffered what is as bad as death, and worse 
 than anything besides. My friends have refused me the assist- 
 ance which they owed, and I am forced to try my foes " (811- 
 814). Hope, which has always been the food and sustenance 
 of exiles, alone remained to him. There is one beautiful elegy 
 (1135-1150) in which he imitates Hesiod, singing how faith 
 and temperance and the graces have left the earth, how oaths 
 are broken and rehgion is neglected, how holiness hath passed 
 away ; yet, if a pious man remain, let him wait on Hope, to 
 Hope pray always, to Hope sacrifice first and last. 
 
 Verses 825-830 and 1 197-1202 describe his condition 
 while living as a poor man, stripped of his paternal farms, in 
 Megara. The voice of the harvest-bird brings him sorrow, for 
 he knows that other men will reap his fields. How can he 
 pipe or sing, when from the market-place he sees his own land 
 made the prey of revellers ? The same sense of the res aiigusta 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 97 
 
 do7ni is expressed in the welcome to Clearistus. We gather 
 from another elegy (261-266) that Theognis had lost not only 
 his land, but also a girl to whom he was betrothed. Her 
 parents gave her in marriage to a man less noble and less 
 worthy than himself. Nor do we fail to get some insight into 
 his domestic circumstances. Mr. Frere explains one fragment 
 (271-278), full of Lear's indignation, by conjecturing , that 
 Theognis had left a wife and children behind him at Megara 
 during his wanderings, and had returned to find them estranged 
 and thankless. He translates the fragment thus : — 
 
 " One single evil, more severe and rude 
 Than age or sickness or decrepitude, 
 Is dealt unequally, for him that rears 
 A thankless offspring ; in his latter years, 
 Ungratefully requited for his pains, 
 A parsimonious life and thrifty gains, 
 With toil and care acquired for their behoof ; 
 And no return ! but insolent reproof ; 
 Such as might scare a beggar from the gate, 
 A wretch unknown, poor and importunate ! 
 To be reviled, avoided, hated, curst ; 
 This is the last of evils, and the worst ! " 
 
 The same kind of ingenious conjecture supplies us with a 
 plausible explanation of some obscure couplets (1211-1216), 
 in which it appears that Theognis, having been taunted by a 
 female slave, replied by making most sarcastic remarks on the 
 servile physiognomy, and by boasting that among all his miseries 
 he had remained a free man and a noble-minded gentleman. 
 He often bids his soul be strong and bear bad fortune, like 
 Ulysses when he cried, rtVXaSt 2^ KpaSirj cat Kvmpov aWo ttot 
 erXrit.* Nor does he fail to ease his heart by praying for ven- 
 geance, and indulging the hope that he may live to drink the 
 blood of his foes (349), and to divide their property among his 
 friends (562). That he was kindly entertained in the various 
 
 * "Be stout, O heart of mine : ere now thou hast endured even more 
 grimly grief than this." 
 
 H 
 
98 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 States he visited, he tells us ; and it is thought that he re- 
 ceived the citizenship of Hyblsean Megara. Sicily, Euboea, 
 and Sparta {783-788) are specially mentioned by him as his 
 homes in exile. Wherever he went he carried with him fame, 
 and found a welcome. " Yet," says the poet, " no joy of those 
 fair lands entered my soul, so far was anything from seeming 
 dearer than my native land." ' 
 
 Among the elegies of general interest attributed to Theognis, 
 none is more beautiful than the following hynm to the god- 
 desses of Song and Beauty, which has been very elegantly 
 rendered into English verse : — 
 
 " Muses and graces ! daughters of high Jove, 
 When erst you left your glorious seats above 
 To bless the bridal of that wondrous pair, 
 Cadmus and Harmonia fair, 
 Ye chanted forth a divine air : 
 
 ' What is good and fair 
 
 Shall ever be our care.' 
 Thus the burden of it rang : 
 
 ' That shall never be our care 
 
 Which is neither good nor fair.' 
 Such were the words your lips immortal sang." * 
 
 The very essence of the Greek feeling for the beautiful is 
 expressed in these simple lines. Beauty, goodness, and truth 
 were to the Greeks almost convertible terms ; and the nearest 
 approach which Plato made to the conception of a meta- 
 physical deity was called by him the ilia tov KaXov. Not less 
 Greek is the sentiment expressed in the following lines (1027) : 
 — " Easy among men is the practice of wickedness, but hard, 
 friend Cymus, is the method of goodness." Theognis here 
 expresses very prosaically what Hesiod and Simonides have 
 both enunciated in noble verse (Op. et Dies, 285-290, and 
 Simonides, Frag. 15, ed. Gaisford). It is noticeable that in his 
 couplet TO ayaQtiv is used instead of apsrij. The thought, how- 
 
 * Miscellanies, by the late John Addington Symonds, M.D., p. 41 1. 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 99 
 
 ever, is the same ; nor does it differ widely from that which is 
 contained in the AristoteHan " Hymn to Virtue," where we see 
 that what the Greeks meant by this word, included not only 
 moral rectitude, but also the labour of a Hercules, and all noble 
 or patriotic deeds which implied self-devotion to a great cause. 
 The occasions for which the elegies of this class were com- 
 posed by Theognis seem to have been chiefly banquets and 
 drinking parties. In the Dorian States of Greece it was 
 customary for men to form select clubs, which met together 
 after the public meals for the purpose of drinking, conversing, 
 and enjoying music. These friendly societies formed an 
 appendix to the national ^eiBtVta, or public tables. Great care 
 was taken in the selection of members, who were admitted by 
 ballot ; and in time the clubs acquired political importance. 
 Periander is said (Ar. Pol., v. 9, 2) to have abolished them in 
 Corinth because they proved favourable to aristocracy — no 
 doubt by keeping up the old Doric traditions which he took 
 pains to break down. In the verses of Theognis we are intro- 
 duced to many members of his club by name — Onomacritus, 
 Clearistus, Demonax, Democles, Timagoras, and doubtless 
 Cymus. Of course these customs were not confined to Doric 
 cities ; on the contrary, the Symposia and Erani of the 
 Athenians are more celebrated for their wit and humour, while 
 readers of Thucydides remember how large a part the clubs 
 played in the history of the 8th Book. But the custom was 
 systematized, like everything else, with greater rigour among 
 Dorians. It appears that, after having eaten, the cups were 
 filled and libations were made to the Doric patron Phoebus 
 (cf Theogn., Frag, i) ; then came the Comus or drinking-bout : 
 flute-players entered the room, and some of the guests sang to 
 the lyre, or addressed an elegy to the company at large, or to 
 some particular person. These facts may be gathered from 
 different fragments of Theognis (997, 757) ; but if we wish to 
 gain a complete picture of one of these parties, we may seek it 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 in an elegy of Xenophanes, which is so fresh and pretty that I 
 feel inclined to paraphrase it at length : — 
 
 "Now the floor is cleanly swept ; the hands of all the guests are 
 washed ; the cups shine brightly on the board. Woven wreaths and 
 fragrant myrrh are carried round by the attendants, and in the middle 
 stands a bowl full of that which maketh glad the heart of man. Wine too 
 is ready in reserve, wine inexhaustible, honey-sweet in jars, smelling of 
 flowers. ^ Frankincense breathes forth its perfume among the revellers, and 
 cold water, sweet and pure, waits at their side. Loaves, fresh and golden, 
 stand upon the table, which groans with cheese and rich honey. In the 
 midst is an altar hung about with flowers, and singing and merriment 
 resound throughout the house. First must meny-making men address the 
 gods with holy songs and pure words ; libations must they pour, and pray 
 for strength to act justly ; then may they drink as much as a man can 
 carry home without a guide — unless he be far gone in years. This also is 
 right, to speak of noble deeds and virtue over our cups ; not to tell tales of 
 giants or Titans or the Centaurs, mere fictions of our grandfathers, and 
 foolish fables." 
 
 It was customary at these banquets to sing the praises of 
 youth and to lament old age, ringing endless changes on the 
 refrain " Vivamus atque amemus," which antiquity was never 
 weary of repeating. Very sad and pathetic is the tone of these 
 old songs, wherein the p»an mingles with the dirge ; for 
 youth and the grave are named in the same breath, and while 
 we smell the roses we are reminded that they will wither. 
 Then comes the end — the cold and solitary tomb, eternal frost 
 and everlasting darkness, to which old age, the winter and 
 night of life, is but a melancholy portal. GaudeaMus igitur, 
 juvenes cum sumus. 
 
 "To pleasure, in life's bloom, yield we our powers, 
 While yet to be and to enjoy are ours ; 
 For swift as thought our glorious youth goes by, 
 Swift as the cojirsers that to battle fly. 
 Bearing the chief with quivering spear in hand, 
 Madly careering o'er the rich corn-land," — 
 
 SO sings Theognis (977), and with even more of pathos he 
 exclaims — 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. loi 
 
 " Ah me ! my youth ! alas for eld's dark day : 
 This comes apace, while that fleets fast away. '' 
 
 The same idea is repeated in many other elegies, always with 
 the same sad cadence : " No man^ as soon as the earth covers 
 him, and he goes down to Erebus, the home of Persephone, 
 takes any pleasure in the sound of the lyre, or the voice of the 
 flute-player, or in the sweet gifts of Dionysus" (973-976). At 
 another time he reckons up the ills of life : " When I am 
 drinking I take no heed of soul-consuming poverty or of 
 enemies who speak ill of me j but I lament delightful youth 
 which is forsaking me, and wail for grim old age who cometh 
 on apace" (11 29-1 132). Their tone reminds us of Mimner- 
 muSj who said the utmost when he cried — 
 
 - ' ' Zeus to Tithonus gave a grievous ill — 
 Undying age, than death more horrible ! " 
 
 .To multiply more elegies of this description would be 
 useless. We may, however, allude to a pogii of Simonides 
 (Frag. 100, ed. Gaisford), which combines the sweetness of 
 Mimnermus and the energy of Theognis : — " Nothing human 
 endures for aye. Well said the bard of Chios, that like the 
 leaves so is the race of men : yet few who hear this keep 
 it in their mind; for hope is strong within the breast of 
 youth. When the flower of youth lasts, and the heart of a 
 man is light, he nurses idle thoughts, hoping he never will 
 grow old or die ; nor does he think of sickness in good health. 
 Pools are they who dream thus, nor know how short are the 
 days of youth and life. But learn thou this, and live thy 
 life out, cheering thy soul with good things." The tone of 
 these elegies pervades a great many monuments of Greek 
 sculpture. Standing before the Genius of Eternal Repose, or 
 the so-called Genius of the Vatican, we are moved almost to 
 tears by the dumb sadness with which their perfect beauty has 
 been chastened. Like the shade of young Marcellus in Virgil, 
 
I02 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 they seem to carry round them a cloud of gloom, impalpable, 
 yet overshadowing their youth with warnings and anticipations 
 of the tomb. 
 
 With Theognis the hst of gnomic poets, strictly so called, 
 may be said to close. Simonides, from whom I have adduced 
 some, passages in illustration of the elder elegiac writers, sur- 
 vived the bard of Megara, and attained a far greater reputation 
 than he enjoyed, at the Syracusan and Athenian courts. How 
 highly his maxims were valued by the moralists of the succeed- 
 ing age, is known by every reader of the Protagoras and 
 Republic of Plato. But a more detailed analysis of his verses 
 would be out of place, when we consider that his chief fame 
 rests upon epitaphs, patriotic epigrams, and lyrical fragments 
 — none of them strictly gnomic in their character. 
 
 To modern readers the philosophy of the poets whom we 
 have considered will perhaps seem trite, their inspiration tame, 
 their style pedestrian. But their contemporaries were far from 
 arriving at this criticism. To obtain concise and abstract 
 maxims upon the ethics of society, poHtics, and education, was 
 to them a new and inestimable privilege. In the gnomic 
 poets the morality which had been merely implicit in Homer 
 and Hesiod, received separate treatment and distinct expres- 
 sion. The wisdom which had been gradually collecting for 
 centuries in the Greek mind, was tersely and lucidly condensed 
 into a few pregnant sentences. These sentences formed the 
 data for new syntheses and higher generalizations, the topics 
 for enlarged investigation, the "middle axioms " between the 
 scattered facts of life and the unity of philosophical system. 
 We may regard ■ the gnomic poets with interest, partly on 
 account of the real, if rare, beauty of some of their fragments ; 
 partly on account of their historical and illustrative value ; 
 partly because all efforts of the human mind in its struggle for 
 emancipation, and all stages in its development, are worthy 
 of attentive study. To the sophists, to the orators, to Socrates 
 
THE GNOMIC POETS. 103 
 
 and his friends, to the tragic writers, to educated men at large 
 in Hellas, they were authorities on moral questions ; and their 
 maxims, which the progress of the centuries has rendered 
 commonplace, appeared the sentences of weightiest wisdom, 
 oracles almost, and precepts inspired by more than human 
 prudence. 
 
104 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SATIRISTS. 
 
 Invention of the Iambic Metre. — Archilochus. — His Parentage and Life. — 
 His Fame among the Ancients. — Ancient and Modem Modes of 
 Judging Artists. — The Originality of Jirchilochus as a Poet. — Simo- 
 nides of Amorgos. — His Satire on Women. — The Ionian Contempt 
 for Women. — Hipponax. — Limping Iambics. — Diiferences between 
 the Satire of the Greeks and Romans. 
 
 The Greeks displayed their aesthetic instinct in nothing more 
 remarkably than in their exact adaptation of the forms of art 
 to the nature of the subjects which they undertook to treat. 
 The Hexameter had sufficed for the needs of the Epic. The 
 Elegiac had fulfilled the requirements of pathetic or contem- 
 plative meditation. But with the development of the national 
 genius a separate vehicle for satire was demanded. Archilo- 
 chus of Paros created a new style, and presented in the Iambic 
 metre a new instrument to the poets of his race. The circum- 
 stances of the birth and parentage of Archilochus are significant. 
 He was the son of Telesicles, a noble Ionian, and of Enipo, a 
 slave-woman. Thus from the very first there were inequalities 
 in his circumstances which may have sufficed to sour his' 
 temper. His birth, which may be fixed about 729 B.C., was 
 predicted, according to old tradition, by the oracle at Delphi. 
 The same oracle busied itself at a later period with his death, 
 by cursing the Naxian soldier Calondas, who had killed him in 
 battle, because he had " slain the servant of the Muses." As 
 the fragments we possess of Archilochus render it difficult 
 
THE SATIRISTS. 105 
 
 to understand the very high estimation in which he was held 
 hy the Greeks, and which these stories indicate, it may be well 
 to preface this account of him with some quotations from 
 the ancient critics. Longinus,* to begin with, explains the 
 incongruities of his poetry by saying that he "dragged 
 disorderly elements into his verse under the impulse of divine 
 inspiration." Plato t calls him ffo^oiran-c 'Apx/Xoxoc, "the 
 prince of sages," which, in the mouth of a philosopher, is 
 the highest panegyric. The Alexandrian critic Aristophanes, 
 when asked which of the poems of Archilochus he liked 
 best, answered with laconic brevity, "the longest." Hadrian,:}: 
 in an epigram, says that the Muses turned the attention 
 ■of Archilochus to mad Iambics, in order that their darling 
 Homer might not have so dangerous a rival in the field of 
 the Epic. All antiquity agreed in naming him second only 
 to Homer : " Maximus poeta aut certe summo proximus," 
 ■" a poet of the highest order, or surely next unto the greatest," 
 .says Valerius Maximus. The birthdays of Homer and 
 Archilochus were celebrated on the same day ; their busts 
 were joined in Janus fashion — two faces and one head : 
 Hippodromus the Sophist § called Homer the Voice, Archilo- 
 chus the Breath or Soul, of the students of wisdom. The 
 epithet koWlittos (most beautiful) was ascribed to him because 
 ■of his perfect style, though the subjects of his poetry were 
 anything but beautiful. Of this style Quintilian|l says that it 
 •excelled in "powerful as well as short and quivering sen- 
 tences,'' that it contained "the greatest possible amount of 
 blood and sinews.'' The highest praise which Gorgias could 
 ■pronounce on Plato when he pubhshed his dialogues upon the 
 Sophists, was to say that Athens had produced a new Archi- 
 lochus. To multiply these panegyrics would be easy. But 
 •enough has been adduced to prove that the ancients looked 
 
 * On the Sublime, xxxiii. 5. t Rep. 365, t. % Anth. Pal., vii. 674. 
 § Philostr. Bioi Soph., 620. || jl. 1. 60. 
 
io5 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 on Archilochus as a worthy rival of Homer, as a poet supreme 
 in his own department, as the creator of a new kingdom in 
 poetry, as the sire .of a long line of mighty artists. 
 
 What remains of the verse of Archilochus and what tve 
 know of his life are curiously at variance with this enthusiasm. 
 Nothing proves the difference between ancient and modern 
 views of art more strongly than the fact that all antiquity con- 
 curred in regarding as a divinely inspired benefactor of the 
 human race, a man who in the present day would have been 
 hunted from society with execrations. This son of the slave- 
 woman, born in an Ionian island, where license was more tole- 
 rated than in a Dorian state, devoted himself to satire, making 
 his genius the instrument of private hate, and turning the golden 
 gifts of the Muses to the service of his selfish spite. A greater 
 contrast cannot be conceived than that which exists between 
 Homer, the priest of Gods and Heroes, the poet of high 
 actions and lofty passions, whose own life is buried in sacred 
 and sublime mystery, and this satirist who saw the world with 
 jaundiced eyes, prying about for subjects of his wrath and 
 bitterness and scorn, whose themes were the passions of his 
 own heart, the sordid misadventures of his personality. It 
 was this contrast between Archilochus and Homer that gave 
 the former a right in the estimation of the Greeks to take 
 equal rank with the Father of the Epos. He, the greatest 
 poet next in date to Homer, by virtue of a divine originality of 
 genius, exercised his art in exactly the opposite field to that 
 which Homer ruled as his demesne. Clearer sign than this of 
 inspiration tould not be demanded ; and how should posterity 
 withhold its gratitude from the poet who had unlocked a new 
 chamber of the treasure-house of art? This was how the 
 ancients reasoned, instead of measuring their poets, as the 
 moderns try to do, by moral standards and conventional 
 conceptions of propriet}'. . 
 
 The facts of the life of Archilochus are briefly these. He 
 
THE SATIRISTS. 107 
 
 was engaged to be married to Neobuld, daughter of Lycambes. 
 Her father retracted his consent to the marriage, having 
 possibly discovered that the temper of his proposed son-in-law 
 was a mixture of gall, wormwood, vinegar, verjuice, vitriol, and 
 nitric acid. Thereupon, as Horace says : — ■ 
 
 " Archilochum proprio rabies armavit iambo." * 
 
 He made the Iambic metre his own, and sharpened it into 
 a terrible weapon of attack. Each verse he wrote was polished 
 and pointed like an arrow-head. Each line was steeped in the 
 poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her sisters, 
 and her father. The set of poems which he produced, and, as 
 it would appear, recited publicly at the festival of Demeter, 
 were so charged with wit and fire, that the country rang with 
 them. The daughters of Lycambes, tradition avers, went 
 straightway and hanged themselves — unable to endure the flight 
 of fiery serpents that had fallen on them : for, to quote the 
 words of Browning, Archilochus had the art of writing verse 
 that " bit into the live man's flesh like parchment," that sent 
 him wandering, branded and for ever shamed, about his native 
 streets and fields. After this murderous exhibition of hia 
 power Archilochus left Paros.f 
 
 " Away with Paros ! her figs and fishy life ! " 
 
 He removed to Thasos, where the Parians founded a colony. 
 But Thasos was worse than Paros :% " Like the backbone of an 
 ass it stood bristling with wild wood ; for, in sooth it is not a 
 fair land, or pleasant, or delightful, like that which spreads by 
 Siris' stream." It was here he threw his shield away in a battle 
 with the Thracians, and gave Horace and Alcseus a precedent 
 by writing a poem on his want of prowess. The remainder of 
 his life was spent in wandering. He visited Sparta, where, 
 
 * It was rage that armed Archilochus with his own Iambic. 
 \ Berglc, Poeta Lyrici, p. 696. \ lb. p. 689. 
 
*o8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 however, he was not suffered to remain an hour. The Ephors 
 judged rightly that this runaway soldier and foul-mouthed 
 Ionian satirist might corrupt the Spartan youth, or sow dissen- 
 sion in the State. The publication of his works was forbidden 
 in this, the 'most conservative of all Greek States. Finally 
 Archilochus returned to Paros, and was killed in battle by a 
 native of Naxos. A more unhappy existence, wretched in 
 itself and the cause of wretchedness to others, can scarcely be 
 imagined, if the tale of the hfe of Archilochus be true. Dis- 
 honoured by the inequality of his parentage, slighted in the 
 matter of his marriage, discontented at home, restless and 
 rejected abroad, he seems to have been formed by the facts 
 of his biography for the creation of Satire. And this is his 
 greatest title to fame. 
 
 It is possible that the Iambic metre existed before the date 
 ■of Archilochus. An old myth connects it with the festivals of 
 Demeter. Demeter, it is said, could not be made to laugh 
 after her daughter's loss, until a nymph, lambd, by her jests 
 and sarcasms, raised a smile upon her lips. This legend proves 
 that the Greeks referred the origin of the Iambic to those jokes 
 and gibes which were common in the feasts of Demeter, and 
 from the licentious mirth of which the satiric element of 
 Comedy was developed. The Iambic is nearest in cadence 
 to the language of common life ; it is therefore the fit vehicle 
 for dialogue, and for all poetry that deals with common and 
 ■domestic topics. Again, it is essentially rapid in movement : 
 Horace speaks of celeres Iambi (swift Iambi) ; Hadrian calls 
 them XvaaHrrEc 'iafifioi (raging Iambi) : this rapidity fitted 
 them for sharp attack and swift satiric pungency. Admitting 
 then that the metre may have been employed in early attempts 
 at colloquial satire, Archilochus, perceiving its capacities, 
 fashioned it to suit the purpose of his own consummate art. 
 He was celebrated among the ancients for having perfected 
 the metres belonging to what they called the SnrXaariov yivog, 
 
THE SATIRISTS. 109, 
 
 as distinguished from the "laov ye'i-oe— that is to say, the Iambic 
 and Trochaic rhythms, in which either the arsis or the thesis, 
 has twice the time of the other. In a trochee the first syllable 
 equals two of the same time as the second ; in an iamb this. 
 order is reversed ; whereas the dactyl and the spondee, on 
 which the hexameter and elegiac metres are based, are feet, 
 each member of which has the same time, the two shorts of 
 the dactyl being equivalent to the second long of the spondee. 
 Archilochus, if not absolutely the inventor, was the creator of 
 these two metres, the Iambic and Trochaic, as truly as Homer 
 was the creator of the heroic measure. No proof of the power 
 of his genius can be greater than the fact that, whatever changes, 
 may have been subsequently wrought in the Iambic and Tro- 
 chaic metres, they remained substantially the same as those 
 which Archilochus employed, whether afterwards adapted ta ■ 
 Satire, Tragedy, or Comedy. While speaking of Archilochus. 
 as a technical artist, it ought to be mentioned that he gave 
 further proof of his originality by elaborating the metrical 
 systems which the Greeks called Asynart^tes, or unconnected. 
 These consisted of a mixture of dactylic and anapsestic with 
 trochaic feet. The Ithyphallic, which was marked by a suc- 
 cession of three trochees at the end of the line, was the most 
 distinguished. 
 
 To translate Archilochus is almost impossible. His merit 
 is the perfection of style, which will admit of no transplanta- 
 tion. His language is the language of common life, exqui- 
 sitely chosen, and kept within the most exact limits, with a 
 view to the production of a carefully studied effect. It is 
 hopeless to render such fragments as we possess without 
 making them seem coarse or prosy, the poet's supremacy 
 having been achieved by his artistic handling of vernacular 
 Greek. When we compare its pithy terseness with the flowing 
 grandeur of the Epic — ^a grandeur which had already become 
 conventional in Greece, a fluency which poetasters abused — it 
 
no THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 is easy to understand that the racy epigrams of Archilochus, 
 in which the subject was set forth with exquisite point and 
 without circumlocution, must have been an acceptable novelty 
 to his audience. Greek sculpture is not more pure in out- 
 line than the following fragment,* which sets before our eyes 
 the figure of a girl embossed on marble or engraved in 
 chalcedony : 
 
 %-)(pvv(i QaKh^v fivpffivrjs ir^pTrero 
 ^oSrls re Ka\hy ficflos, tj 5e ot KSfijj 
 Hfwvs /caTEff/cfofe Kai iierdfpeva. 
 
 Archilochus flourished between 7 14 and 676 b.c. The date 
 of the next Iambic poet, Simonides of Amorgos, is 660 b.c. 
 It is noticeable that both of these satirists are Ionian. The 
 relaxation of Ionian life and the fi-eedom of Ionian manners, 
 as concerned the artist and the public, rendered the develop- 
 ment of satire in Ionia more natural than it could ever have 
 been in a Dorian state. Simonides owes his celebrity to a 
 poem upon women, a very ungallant production of 119 lines, 
 which presents one of the most ciuious examples upon record 
 of a perfectly smooth and yet crushing satire. The Iambic 
 lines flow quietly and swiftly off the poef s lips, in mild and 
 polished phraseology, with none of the concentrated fury of 
 Archilochus. Yet Simonides aims at no less than destroying 
 the character of a whole sex. In a sort of gentle, well-man- 
 nered, lazy way he is successful, not so much by persuading us 
 through examples, after the method of Juvenal, that his satire is 
 justified, as by the imperturbable expression of a profound con- 
 viction. The interest of this poem is very great, as marking a 
 departure from the personalities of Archilochus and an attempt 
 to introduce generaUties into the region of satiric delineation. 
 
 * Bergk, p. 691 : 
 
 " Holding a myrtle-rod she blithely moved, 
 And a fair blossoming rose ; the flowing hair 
 Shadowed her shoulders, falling to her girdle." 
 
THE SATIRISTS. ni 
 
 In this respect it is in Greek literature almost unique, if we 
 €xcept Sicilian, Megarian, and Attic Comedy, whereof this is 
 not the place to speak. The rhetorical treatment of a problem 
 of social ethics from the point of view of satire was, as we shall 
 see hereafter, alien to Greek literature. 
 
 This is the plan of the poem. Simonides describes the 
 nature of the different sorts of women by comparing them suc- 
 cessively to a hog, a fox, a dog, mud, sea- water, an ass, a weasel, 
 a mare, an ape, a bee. Thus there are ten kinds, and only one 
 respectable or industrious. He rushes at once in medias res : 
 " God made the mind of women in the beginning of different 
 ■qualities : for one he fashioned of a bristly hog ; in whose 
 house everything tumbles about in disorder, bespattered with 
 mud, and rolls upon the ground : she, dirty, with unwashed 
 ■clothes, sits and grows fat in a dung-heap." The woman like 
 mud is thus hit off : " This woman is ignorant of everything 
 both good and bad ; her only accomplishment is eating : 
 ■cold though the winter be, she is too stupid to draw near the 
 fire." Here is the woman who takes after the sea : " She has 
 two minds ; when she laughs and is glad, the stranger seeing her 
 at home will give her praise — there is not a better woman than 
 this on the earth, no, nor a fairer ; but another day she is 
 ■unbearable, not to be looked at or approached, but she is right 
 mad. To friend and foe she is alike implacable and odious. 
 Thus as the sea often is calm and innocent, a great delight to 
 sailors in summer-time, and oftentimes again is frantic, tearing 
 ■along with roaring billows ; so is this woman in her temper." 
 The woman who resembles a mare offers other disagreeable 
 qualities. She is " delicate and long-haired, unfit for drudgery 
 or toil : she would not touch the mill or lift the sieve or clean 
 the house out ! She bathes twice or thrice a day, and smears 
 herself with myrrh ; then she wears her hair combed out, long 
 and wavy, decked with flowers. It follows that this woman is 
 a rare sight to one's guests, but to her husband she's a curse, 
 
H2 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 unless he be a tyrant who prides himself on such expensive 
 luxuries." The ape-like wife is treated even worse. But at last 
 we reach the bee : " The man who gets her is lucky ; to her 
 alone belongs no blame : his property thrives and increases 
 under her ; and loving with a loving helpmate she grows 
 old, the mother of a fair and famous race. Such wives are 
 the best and vidsest Zeus grants to men." Yet even after 
 this pretty picture Simonides winds up with a comprehensive 
 condemnation of the female sex : " Zeus made this supreme- 
 evil — women : even though they seem to be of good, when one 
 has got one, she becomes a plague." 
 
 The spirit of this invective is derived in a great measure- 
 from Hesiod, whose myth of Pandora marked his estimate 
 of women, and whose precepts concerning the choice of a 
 wife must have depressed the Boeotian bachelors with the 
 certainty that nine women out of ten would prove a curse. 
 This is precisely the proportion of bad to good that Simonides 
 establishes. His tenth and virtuous wife is praised because- 
 she is industrious and quiet, and the mother of many children. 
 We here get the primitive ideal of the help meet for man. 
 Modern theorists would condemn it as the model of a slave.. 
 And it is certain that, as Greek civilization advanced, without 
 a corresponding elevation of the conception of wifehood, the 
 chivalrous sentiment of the Greeks sought other channels than 
 that of sexual love, exalting a form of passionate friendship 
 between men as the real source of heroic action and inspiring 
 thought* The outline traced by Simonides was filled in by 
 
 * The degradation of women was undoubtedly the source of many of" 
 the -worst faults of the Greek race. Yet it is easy to over-estimate the 
 importance of such satires as that of Simonides ; nor -would it be fair to 
 take them as expressing the deliberate opinion of the nation. The Je-ws, 
 who gave a nobler place in social life to women, ascribed the fall of man to- 
 Eve. Modern literature again, in spite of Christianity and chivah-y, is 
 not wanting in epigi-ams like the folio-wing, ascribed to Leo Battista 
 Alberti : " Levity and inconstancy were given to women as a counter- 
 
THE SATIRISTS. 113 
 
 subsequent satirists. Susarion, the Comic Poet, makes this 
 grandiloquent proclamation : " Hear, O ye people ! These 
 are the words of Susarion of Tripodiscus, Philinus' son, of 
 Megara : Woman is a curse 1 " Aristophanes in his plays, the 
 Lysisiraia, the Thesmophoriazusa, and the Ecclesiazusce, gives 
 to the Athenian women all the attributes of the hog, the ape, 
 the clay, the sea, and the fox ; in the Clouds he draws the 
 picture of one who is like the blood-mare ; but he does not 
 hint, even by way of parody, that there existed any bees. 
 The Greeks never learned the art of making women their 
 companions in the noblest sense. It must, however, be borne 
 in mind that the lonians were less civilized in this respect 
 than the Dorians, who liad a higher regard for the excellences 
 of women, and allowed them greater liberty.* Simonides is 
 expressing Ionian rather than Dorian sentiments, and at 
 the same time may be reasonably supposed to be over- 
 straining them for the sake of a burlesque effect. 
 
 Next in date to Simonides among the lambographers ranks 
 Hipponax of Ephesus, who flourished about 540 B.C. He too 
 was an Ionian. The satire which Archilochus had directed 
 against private enemies was extended, as we have seen, by 
 Simonides to a whole sex; and thus its purely selfish cha^ 
 racter had been considerably modified. But Hipponax re- 
 stored it to its primitive function. He used the Iambic as 
 a weapon of personal attack : and as Archilochus had sHot 
 his arrows against Lycambes and his daughters, so Hipponax 
 found a butt in Bupalus and Athenis, sculptors of Chios. 
 These two artists had begun by ridiculing the poet, who was 
 short and thin and ugly. They seem to have made caricatures 
 of him, piquing themselves no doubt upon the durability of 
 
 balance to their perfidy and badness ; for, could woman stick to her 
 purpose, she would destroy all the fair works of 15 an. " 
 
 * Plutarch's Life of Cleomenes contains two historical pictures of heroic 
 wifehood. 
 
114 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 the marble in'which they worked. But they found more than 
 their match in Hipponax, whose biting verses are said to have 
 driven Bupalus to hang himself. Whether this is a mere echo 
 of the tale of Lycambes remains doubtful ; but at any rate the 
 statiies of the sculptor have perished, while the poet's Iambics 
 exist in sufficient force to justify his reputation among the 
 ancients for having been the most caustic, crabbed, and sour 
 of satirists. They called him h iriKpoe (the pungent), and in 
 their epigrams, made merry over his traditional bad temper. 
 Leonidas of Tarentum, for instance, warns travellers not to 
 touch his tomb, lest they should rouse the sleeping wasp ; and 
 Alcaeus of Messene says that no ivy, vine, or rose, should adorn 
 his grave, but only thorns and thistles. 
 
 In order apparently to bring the metre still more mthin the 
 sphere of prose and common speech, Hipponax ended his 
 Iambics with a spondee or a trochee instead of an iambus, doing 
 thus the utmost violence to the rhythmical structure. These 
 deformed and mutilated verses were called x'^Xia/j/3oi or "lafifioi 
 cKCil^ovTiQ (lame or limping Iambics). They communicate a, 
 curious crustiness to the style. The Choliambi are in poetry 
 what the dwarf or cripple is in human nature. Here again, by 
 their acceptance of this halting metre, the Greeks displayed 
 their acute aesthetic sense of propriety, recognising the harmony 
 which subsists between crabbed verses and the distorted 
 subjects with which they dealt — the vices and perversions of 
 humanity — as well as their agreement with the snarling spirit 
 of the satirist. Deformed verse was suited to deformed 
 morality. Meanwhile it is but just to Hipponax to record 
 that he appears to have been a sincere castigator of crime, 
 extravagance, and folly. Without the sublime perfection and 
 fervid energy of Archilochus, he does not seem to have 
 shared the unamiable personal qualities of the greater poet. 
 Two of his hnes give a sufficient notion of his style : — 
 
THE SATIRISTS. 115 
 
 Si' Tififpai yvvaiKSs f'lcriv ^Surrai, 
 Sray 70^^17 Tis irii.K<f>4pri reBviiKmav. 
 
 A woman gives two days of happiness to man, in her bridal 
 and her burial. 
 
 The satire which these three lonians, Archilochus, Simonides, 
 and Hipponax, inaugi^irated in Greece, was continued by the 
 Attic comic poets. Satire in the Roman and the modern 
 sense of the term never flourished among the Greeks. The 
 life of the Agora, the Ecclesia, and the Theatre, was too com- 
 plete and free to need the supplement of rhetorical invective 
 intended either for reading or for recitation. Of satirical 
 comments upon individuals and of pasquinades of every kind 
 the Greeks had plenty. We hear, for example, that Alcgeus 
 exercised his poetical talent in satirizing Pittacus, and one of 
 the most considerable fragments of Anacreon contains a very 
 ludicrous caricature of Artemon, his rival for the affections of a 
 certain yellow-haired Eurypyle. But their satire did not incline 
 to the forrn which the earlier writers of Iambics had invented. 
 It found its true sphere in the Dorian Comedy of Epicharmus 
 and the Athenian Comedy of Aristophanes, who combined the 
 personalities of Archilochus and the generalities of Simonides 
 in his own consummate work of dramatic art. Among the lost 
 treasures of Greek literature we have to regret few things more 
 than the plays of the Syracusan Epicharmus, from whom we 
 might have learned directly what now we can only infer — that 
 the Dorians, when uncontrolled by the severe taste of Sparta, 
 indulged a humour for drollery and sarcasm, which, though 
 rougher than that of the lonians, must have had its own flavour 
 of raciness and fun. Roman satire maintained a strictly rnoral 
 intention ; facit indignatio versus is the motto of Juvenal, while 
 Horace holds the mirror of worldly philosophy to the follies 
 and the vices of his age, and Persius applies the canons of 
 Stoical Ethics to the phenomena of society as he observed 
 them. This is the lead which our modern satirists — the Regnier 
 
ii6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of France, the Dryden or the Pope of England, have followed^ 
 Greek literature furnishes no specimen of this species of com- 
 position. Wherever in the Comedies of Aristophanes, or the 
 Dialogues of Lucian, or the Epigrams of the Anthology, we meet 
 with satire, we find the simple motives of Archilochus and 
 Simonides at work. Personal animosity gives a barb and a 
 venom to the shaft : or the poet delineates with more or less of 
 comic wit the social anomalies that have struck his fancy. 
 Of serious invective and of moral preaching, the Greeks, in 
 their satiric art at least, knew nothing. Plato himself is only 
 accidentally a satirist in the sense oi the term which we: 
 moderns have adopted from the Romans. 
 
117 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THE LYRIC POETS. 
 
 The Esthetic Instinct of the Greeks in their Choice of Metres. — Different 
 Species of Lyrical Poetry. — The Fragments in Bergk's Collection. — 
 Proemia. — Prosodia. — Parthenia. — Poean. — Hyporchem. — Dithyramb. 
 — Phallic Hymn. — Epinikia. — Threnoi. — Scolia. — jEolian and Dorian 
 Lyrists. -i-The Flourishing Period of Lesbos. — Sappho. — AIcEeus. — 
 Anacreon. — Nationality of the Dorian Lyrists. — Spartan Education. — 
 Alcman. — Arion. — Stesichorus. — Ibycus. — Simonides. — Greek Trou- 
 badours. — Style of Simonides. — Pindar. 
 
 To compress into a single essay all that should be said about 
 the Greek lyrical poets is impossible. Yet by eliminating the 
 •writers of elegies and iambics, who have been considered 
 separately as gnomic poets and satirists, the field is somewhat 
 narrowed. Simonides of Amorgos, Archilochus, Theognis, 
 Solon, not to mention lesser names, are by this process legiti- 
 mately excluded. The ^olian lyrists, with Sappho at their 
 head, and the so-called Dorian lyrists, who culminate in 
 Pindar, remain. Casting a glance backwards into the remote 
 ■shadows of antiquity, we find that lyrical poetry, like all art in 
 Greece, took its origin in connection with primitive Nature- 
 worship. The song of Linus,* referred to by Homer in his 
 
 i^ep6ev Ktdo^pi^e' Kivov S' vith Ka\by &€iSiV 
 AeTTToAep (pavii. — //iad, xviii. 569. 
 
 ' ' A boy, amid them, from a clear-toned harp 
 Drew lovely music ; well his liquid voice 
 The strings accompanied." — Lord Derby's Trans, 
 
ii8 'IHE GREEK POETS. 
 
 description of the shield of Achilles, was a lament sung by- 
 reapers for the beautiful dead youth who symboHsed the decay 
 of summer's prime.* In the funeral chant for Adonis, women 
 bewailed the fleeting splendour of the spring ; and Hyacinthus, 
 loved and slain by Phoebus, whom the Laconian youths and 
 maidens honoured, was again a type of vernal loveliness 
 deflowered. The Bacchic songs of alternating mirth and 
 sadness, which gave birth, through the Dithyramb, to Tragedy, 
 and through the Comus-hymn to Comedy, marked the waxing 
 and the waning of successive years, the pulses of the heart of 
 Nature, to which men listened as the months passed over them. 
 In their dim beginnings these elements of Greek poetry are 
 hardly to be distinguished from the dirges and the raptures of 
 Asiatic ceremonial, in which the dance and chant and song 
 were mingled in a vague monotony — generation after genera- 
 tion expressing the same emotions according to traditions 
 handed down from their forefathers. But the Greek genius was 
 endowed with the faculty of distinguishing, differentiating, 
 vitalizing, what the Oriental nations left hazy and confused 
 and inert. Therefore with the very earliest stirrings of con- 
 scious art in Greece we remark a powerful specializing 
 tendency. Articulation succeeds to mere interjectional utter- 
 ance. Separate forms of music and of metre are devoted, 
 with the unerring instinct of a truly aesthetic race, to the 
 expression of the several moods and passions of the soul. An 
 unconscious psychology leads by intuitive analysis to the 
 
 * Bergk {Poeta Lyrici Greed, 3 vols., Leipsic, 1866) gives an old Greek 
 Linus-song on p. 1297 : — 
 
 " O Linus, thee the gods did grace : 
 For unto thee they gave, most dear, 
 First among men the song to raise 
 With shrill voice sounding high and clear ; 
 And Phoebus thee in anger slays. 
 And Muses mourn around thy bier." 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 119 
 
 creation of distinct branches of composition, each accurately 
 adapted to its special purpose. 
 
 From the very first commencement of their literature, the 
 Greeks thus determined separate styles and established critical 
 canons, which, though empirically and spontaneously formed, 
 were based on real relations between the moral and sesthetical 
 sides of art, between feeling and expression, substance and 
 form. The Hexameter was consecrated to epical narrative ; 
 the Elegy was confined to songs of lament or meditation ; the 
 Iambic assumed a satiric character. To have written a narrative 
 in Iambics or a satire in Hexameters would have been odious to 
 Greek taste : the stately march of the Dactylic metre seemed 
 unfit for snarling and invective ; the quick flight of the Iambic 
 did not carry weight enough or volume to sustain a lengthy 
 narrative. In the same way the infinite divisions of lyrical 
 poetry had all their own peculiar proprieties. How could a 
 poet have bewailed his loves or losses in the stately structure 
 of the Pindaric ode ? Conversely, a hymn to Phcebus required 
 more sonorousness and elaboration than the recurring stanzas 
 of the Sapphic or Alcaic offered. It was the business, there- 
 fore, of the Greek poet, after duly considering his subject, to 
 select the special form of poetry consecrated by long usage for 
 his particular purpose, to conform his language to some species 
 of music inseparable from that style, and then, within the pre- 
 scribed limits both of metre and of melody, to exercise his 
 imagination as freely as he could, and to produce novelty. 
 This amount of fixity in the forms of poetry and music arose 
 from the exquisite tact and innate taste of the Greek race. It 
 was far from being a piece of scholastic pedantry or of Chinese 
 conservatism. No ; the diction, metre, and music of an elegy 
 or an ode tended to assume a certain form as naturally as the 
 ijigredients of a ruby or a sapphire crystallize into a crimson 
 or an azure stone. The discrimination shown by the Greeks 
 in all the technicalities of art remained in full vigour till the 
 
120 . THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 decline of their literature. It was not until the Alexandrian 
 age that they began to confound these delicate distinctions, 
 and to use the Idyllic Hexameter for all subjects, whether 
 narrative, descriptive, elegiac, encomiastic, hymeneal.* Then, 
 and not till then, the Greeks descended to that degradation of 
 art which prevailed, for instance, in England during what we 
 call the classic period of our literature. Under the influence 
 of Dryden and of Pope, an EngHsh poet used no metre but 
 the heroic couplet, whether he were writing a play, an epigram, 
 a satire, an epic, an eclogue, an elegy, or a didactic epistle ; 
 thus losing all elasticity of style, all the force which appropriate 
 form communicates to thought. 
 
 To catalogue the minute subdivisions of the art of lyric poetry 
 in Greece, to show how wisely their several limits were pre- 
 scribed, how firmly adhered to, and to trace the connexion of 
 choral song with all the affairs of public and private life, would 
 be a task of some magnitude. Colonel Mure, in a, well-known 
 passage, writes : — " From Olympus down to the workshop or 
 the sheep-fold, from Jove and Apollo to the wandering mendi- 
 cant, every rank and degree of the Greek community, divine 
 or human, had its own proper allotment of poetical celebration. 
 The gods had their hymns, nomes, paeans, dithyrambs ; great 
 men had their encomia and epinikia ; the votaries of pleasure 
 their erotica and symposiaca ; the mourner his threnodia and 
 elegies ; the vine-dresser had his epilenia ; the herdsmen their 
 bucolica ; even the beggar his eiresione and chelidonisma." 
 Lyrical poetry in Greece was not produced, like poetry in 
 modern times, for the student, by men who find they have a 
 taste for versifying. It was intimately intertwined with actual 
 
 * Many poems of the Syracusan Idyllists are valuable historically as 
 adaptations of the Hexameter to subjects essentially lyrical. In the 
 Adoniazusae, the Epithalamium Helense, the Lament for Bion, &c. we 
 trace a Ijrrical inspiration overlaid by the Idyllic form. Theocritus must 
 have worked on the lines of old choral poetry. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. I2i 
 
 life, and was so indispensable that every town had its profes- 
 sional poets and choruses, just as every church in Europe now 
 has its organist, of greater or less pretension. The mass of 
 lyrical poetry which must have existed in Greece was probably 
 ■enormous. We can only compare it to the quantity of church 
 music that exists in Germany and Italy, in MS. and print, good, 
 bad, and indifferent, unknown and unexplored, so voluminous 
 that no one ventures to sift it or reduce it to order. Of this 
 large mass we possess the fragments. Just as the rocky islands 
 of the ^gean Archipelago testify to the existence of a sub- 
 Tnerged tract of mountain heights and valleys, whose summits 
 -alone appear above the waves, so the odes of Pindar, the waifs 
 and strays of Sappho, Simonides, and others, are evidences of 
 the loss we have sustained. They prove that beneath the 
 •ocean of time and oblivion remain for ever biiried stores of 
 poetry, which might have been sufficient to form the glory 
 of a literature less rich in masterpieces than the Greek. To 
 •collect the fragments, to piece them together, to ponder over 
 them until their scattered indications offer some suggestion 
 •of the whole which has been lost, is all that remains for the 
 ■modem student. Like the mutilated marbles of Praxiteles, 
 chips broken off from bas-reliefs and statues, which are dis- 
 interred from the ruins of Rome or Herculaneum, the minutest 
 portions of the Greek lyrists have their value. We must be 
 thankful for any two words of Sappho that survive in authentic 
 juxtaposition, for any hemistich that may be veritably styled 
 a relic of " some tender-hearted scroll of pure Simonides." 
 
 Chance has wrought fantastica,lly with these relics. The 
 lyrists, even in classical days, fell comparatively early into 
 neglect. They were too condensed in language, too difficult 
 in style, too sublime in imagination for the pedants of the later 
 Empire. Long before its close, Greek literature was oppres- 
 ■sed with its own wealth ; in the words of Livy, magniticdine 
 Jaboravit sud. Taste, too, began to change ; sophistic treatises, 
 
122 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 idyllic verses, novelettes in prose, neat epigrams, usurped upon 
 the grander forms of composition. The stagnation, again, of 
 civic life under imperial sway proved unfavourable to the 
 composition of national odes and to choric celebrations in 
 which whole peoples took a part. So disdainful in her alms- 
 giving has Fortune been, that she has only flung to us the 
 Epinikian odes of Pindar ; while his hymns to the gods, his. 
 processional chants, and his funeral dirges, are lost. Young 
 Athens, Alexandria, and Byzantium cared, we may conceive, for 
 poems which shed lustre on athletic sports and horse-racing. 
 Trainers, boxers, riders, chariot-drivers — all the muscular sec- 
 tion of the public — had some interest in bygone Pythian or 
 Olympian victories. But who sought to preserve the antiquated 
 hymns to Phcebus and to Zeus, when the rites of Isis and Serapis 
 and the Phrygian mother were in vogue ? The outspoken 
 boldness of the Erotic and Satiric lyrists stood them in bad 
 stead. When Theodora was exhibiting her naked charms in 
 the arena, who could commend the study of Anacreon in the 
 schoolroom? Degeneracy of public morals and prudery of 
 literary taste go not unfrequently together. Therefore, the 
 emperor Julian proscribed Archilochus ; and what Julian pro- 
 scribed, the Christians sought to extirpate. To destroy an ode 
 of Sappho was a good work. Consequently, we possess no- 
 complete edition of even a section of the works of any lyrist 
 except. Pindar : what remains of the others has been preserved 
 in the works of critics, anecdote-mongers, and grammarians ; 
 who cite tantalizing passages to prove a rule in syntax, to. 
 illustrate a legend or a custom, to exemplify a canon of taste. 
 Imbedded in ponderous prose, these splintered jewels escaped 
 the iconoclastic zeal of the monks. Thanks be to Athenseus 
 above all men (the author of an imaginary dialogue in fifteen 
 bulky books on every topic of Greek antiquity), to Longinus, 
 to Philostratus, to Maximus Tyrius, to Plutarch the moralist, 
 to Stobseus, to Hephsestion, to Herodian, and to the host of 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 12^ 
 
 Other Dryasdusts from whose heaps of shot rubbish Bergk and 
 his predecessors have sorted out the fragments of extinguished 
 stars ! As a masterpiece of patient, self-denying, scientific^ 
 exhaustive investigation, the three volumes of Bergk are un- 
 rivalled. Every author of antiquity has been laid under contri- 
 bution, subjected to critical analysis, compared and confronted 
 with his fellow-witnesses. The result, reduced to the smallest 
 possible compass, yields a small glittering heap of pure gold- 
 dust, a little handful of auriferous deposit sifted from number- 
 less river-beds, crushed from huge masses of unfertile quartz. 
 In our admiration of the scholar's ingenuity, we almost forget 
 our sorrow for so much irreparable waste. 
 
 Before proceeding to consider the justice of th e time-honoured 
 division of Greek Lyrics into ^olian and Dorian, it will be well 
 to pass in review a few of the principal classes into which 
 Greek choral poetry may be divided. Only thus can any idea 
 of its richness and variety be formed. The old Homeric ii/xioi, 
 or hymns dedicated to special deities, were intended to be sung 
 at festivals and rhapsodical contests. Their technical name 
 was Proemia, or preludes — preludes, that is, to a longer recita- 
 tion ; and on this account, as they were chanted by the poet 
 himself, they were written in hexameters. With them, there- 
 fore, we have nothing here to do. Prpcessional hymns, or 
 Prosodia, on the contrary, were strictly lyrical, and constituted 
 a large portion of the poetry of Pindar, Alcman, and Stesichorus. 
 They were sung at solemn festivals by troops of men and 
 maidens walking, crowned with olive, myrtle, bay, or oleander, 
 to the shrines. Their style varied ,with the occasion and the 
 character of the deity to whom they were addressed. When 
 Hecuba led her maidens in dire necessity to the shrine of 
 Pallas, the Prosodion was solemn and earnest. When Sopho- 
 cles, with lyre in hand, headed the chorus round the trophy 
 of Salamis, it was victorious and martial. If we wish to 
 present to our mind a picture of these processional cere- 
 
124 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 monies, we may study the frieze of the Parthenon preserved 
 among the Elgin Marbles. Those long lines of maidens and 
 joung men, with baskets in their hands, with flowers and palm- 
 branches, with censers and sacred emblems, are marching to 
 ■the sound of flutes and lyres, and to the stately rhythms of 
 -anti phonal chanting. When they reach the altar of the god, a 
 halt is made; the libations are poured; and now the music 
 ■changes to a solemn and spondaic measure — for the term 
 •spondaic seems to be derived from the fact that the libation- 
 hymn was composed in a grave and heavy metre of full feet. 
 Hephsestion has preserved a spondaic verse of Terpander which 
 illustrates this rhythm : — 
 
 inrejfSaifief Ta7s Mw/xas 
 iraifAv Mtiaais 
 
 Aarovs wei.* 
 
 In the age of Greek decadence the honours of the Prosodion 
 were sometimes paid to men. Athenaeus gives this lively de- 
 scription of the procession which greeted Demetrius Poliorketes: 
 "When Demetrius returned from Leucadia and Corcjnra to 
 Athens, the Athenians received him not only with incense and 
 garlands and libations, but they even sent out processional 
 •choruses, and greeted him with Ithyphallic hymns and dances : 
 stationed by his chariot- wheels, they sang and danced and 
 chanted that he alone was a real god ; the rest were sleeping, 
 or were on a journey, or did not exist ; they called him son of 
 Poseidon and Aphrodite, eminent for beauty, universal in his 
 goodness to mankind ; then they prayed and besought and 
 supplicated him like a god." The hymn which they sang may 
 be read in Bergk, vol. iii. p. 13 14. It is one of the most 
 interesting relics of antiquity.f 
 
 * " Pour we libations to Memory's daughters, the Muses, and to the 
 Muse-leading son of Leto." 
 
 t Plutarch records with just indignation the honours of this sort paid 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 125: 
 
 For the sake of its rare and curious metre alternating the 
 Iambic and Trochaic rhythms, I have faced the difficulties of 
 translation, and liave ventured on the following version : — 
 
 "See how the mightiest gods, and best-beloved 
 
 Towards our town are winging ! 
 For lo, Demeter and Demetrius 
 
 This glad day is bringing ! 
 She to perform her Daughter's solemn rites ; 
 
 Mystic pomps attend her : 
 He, joyous as a god should be, and blithe, 
 
 Comes with laughing splendour. 
 Show forth your triumph ! Friends all, troop around t 
 
 Let him shine above you ! 
 Be you the stars to circle him with love ; 
 
 He's the sun to love you. 
 Hail, offspring of Poseidon, powerful god. 
 
 Child of Aphrodite ! 
 The other gods keep far away from earth ; 
 
 Have no ears, though mighty ; 
 They are not,' or they will not hear us wail : 
 
 Thee our eye beholdeth ; 
 Not wood, not stone, but living, breathing, real, 
 
 Thee our prayer enfoldeth. 
 First give us peace ! Give, dearest, for thou canst ; 
 
 Thou art Lord and Master ! 
 The Sphinx, who not on Thebes, but on all Greece 
 
 Swoops to gloat and pasture ; 
 The y^tolian, he who sits upon his rock, 
 
 Like that old disaster ; 
 He feeds upon our flesh and blood, and we 
 
 Can no longer labour ; 
 For it was ever thus the .(Etolian thief 
 
 Preyed upon his neighbour ; 
 Him punish Thou, or if not Thou, then send 
 
 CEdipus to harm him, 
 Who'll cast this Sphinx dowji from his cliff of pride, 
 
 Or to stone will charm him." 
 
 by Aratus to Antigonus : " He offered sacrifices, called Antigonea, ia 
 honour of Antigonus, and sang paeans himself, with a garland on his head^ 
 to the praise of a wasted, consumptive Macedonian. " {Life of Cleomenes. ) 
 The words in italics strongly express a true Greek sense of disgust for the- 
 barbarian and the weakling. 
 
126 thb: greek poets. 
 
 A special kind of prosodia were the Parthenia, or proces- 
 sional hymns of maidens ; such, for example, as the Athenian 
 girls sang to Pallas while they climbed the staircase of the 
 Parthenon. Aristophanes has presented us with a beautiful 
 example of antiphonal Parthenia at the end of his Lysistrata, 
 where choruses of Athenian and Spartan girls sing turn and 
 turn about in rivalry. Alcman won his laurels at Sparta by 
 the composition of this kind of hymn. A fragment (Bergk, 
 p. 842) only remains to show what they were like : " No more, 
 ye honey-voiced, sweet-singing maidens, can my limbs support 
 me : oh, oh, that I were a cerylus, who skims the flower of the 
 sea with halcyons, of a dauntless heart, the sea-blue bird of 
 spring 1 " Such Parthenia, when addressed to Phoebus, were 
 called Daphnephorica ; for the maidens carried laurel-branches 
 to his shrine. A more charming picture cannot be conceived 
 than that which is presented to our fancy by these white-robed 
 virgins, each with her rod of bay and crown of laurel-leaves, 
 ascending the marble steps of the temple of the Dorian god. 
 John Lyly, who had imbibed the spirit of Greek life, has 
 written a hymn, " Sing to Apollo, god of day ! " which might 
 well have been used at such a festival. 
 
 The Prosodia of which we have been speaking were ad- 
 dressed to all the gods. But there were other choric hyinns 
 with special names, consecrated to the service of particular 
 deities. Of this sort was the Peean, siing to Phoebus in his 
 double character of a victorious and a healing god. The Psean 
 was both a song of war and of peace ; it was the proper ac- 
 companiment of the battle and the feast. In like manner the 
 Hyporchem, which, as its name implies, was always accom- 
 panied by a dance, originally formed a portion of the cult of 
 Phoebus. The chorus described in the Iliad, xviii. 590, and 
 the glorious pageant of Olympus celebrated in the Hymn to 
 Apollo, 186, were, technically speaking, Hyporchems. As 
 the Paean and the Hyporchem were originally consecrated to 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 127 
 
 Apollo, SO the Dithyramb and the Phallic hymn belonged to 
 Dionysus. The Dithyramb never lost the tempestuoiis and 
 enthusiastic character of Bacchic revelry ; but in time it grew 
 from being a wild celebration of the mystic sufferings of 
 Bacchus into the sublime art of Tragedy. Arion forms the 
 point of this transition. He seems to have thrown a greater 
 reality of passion and dramatic action into his choruses, which 
 led to the introduction of dialogue, and so by degrees to 
 Tragedy proper. Meanwhile the Dithyramb, as a tumultuous 
 choric song, retained its individual existence. As A.rion had 
 devoted his genius to the cultivation of the Tragic or Cyclic 
 chorus, Lasos, the master of Pindar, stamped his own style 
 upon the Dithyrambic ode as it continued to be used at festive 
 meetings. Every -town in Greece had its chorodidascalus, a 
 functionary whom Aristophanes ridicules in the person of 
 Kinesias in the Birds* He is introduced warbling the wildest, 
 windiest nonsense, and entreating to have a pair of wings given 
 him that he may chase his airy ideas through the sky. The 
 Phallic Hymn, from which in like manner Comedy took its 
 origin, was a mad outpouring of purely animal exultation. 
 Here the wine-god was celebrated as the pleasure-loving, 
 drunken, lascivious deity. Aristophanes, again, our truest 
 source of information respecting all the details of Greek life, 
 supplies us with an instance of one of these songs, and of 
 the simple rites which accompanied its performance.f In the 
 Frogs, also, the Master of Comedy has presented us with an 
 elaborate series of Bacchic hymns.J Here the Phallic and 
 Satyric element is combined with something of the grandeur- of 
 the Dithyrambic Ode ; the curious mixture of sarcasm, ob- 
 scenity, and splendid poetry offers a striking instance of 
 Greek religious feeling, so incomprehensible to modern minds, 
 
 * See Frere, vol. ii. pp. 200, 201. 
 
 t See Tr. of Acharnians, Frere, vol. ii. p. 1 7. 
 
 X Frere's Translation, vol. ii. pp. 241-245. 
 
128 THlE GREEK POETS. 
 
 It is greatly to be regretted that our information respecting- 
 the Dithjrramb and the Phallic Chorus has to be obtained 
 from a dramatic poet rather than from any perfect specimens. 
 of these compositions. Bergk's Collection, full as it is, yields, 
 nothing but hints and fragments.* 
 
 Passing to the Lyrics, which were connected with circum- 
 stances of human, life, the first to be mentioned are Epinikia, 
 or odes sung in honour of victors at the games. Of these, in 
 the splendid series of Pindar and in the fragments of Simo- 
 nides, we have abundant examples. We are also able to trace 
 their development from the simple exclamation of T-i/'rtXXa St. 
 Ka\\unice,-Y the composition of which was ascribed to Archi- 
 lochus, and which Pindar looked back upon with scornful 
 triumph. Indeed, in his hands, to use the phrase of Words- 
 worth, " the thing became a trumpet, whence he blew soul- 
 animating strains." The Epinikian Ode was the most costly 
 and splendid flower in the victor's wreath. Pindar compares 
 the praise which he pours forth for Diagoras the Rhodian 
 to noblest wine foaming in the golden goblet, which a father 
 gives to honour his son-in-law, the prime and jewel of his 
 treasure-house. The occasions on which such odes were sung 
 were various — either when the victor was being crowned, or 
 when he was returning to his native city, or by torchlight 
 during the evening of the victorious day, or at a banquet after 
 his reception in his home. On one of these occasions the 
 poet would appear with his trained band of singers and 
 musicians, and, taking his stand . by the alta.r of the god to 
 whom the victor offered a thanksgiving sacrifice, would guide 
 the choric stream of song through strophe and antistrophe and 
 epode, in sonorous labyrinths of eulogy and mythological 
 allusion — prayer, praise, and admonition mingling with . the 
 
 * See however the interesting archaic hymns to Dionysus, pp. 1299, 
 1300. 
 
 t Bergk, p. 716 ; Pindar, Olymp. ix. i. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 129 
 
 fumes of intoxicating poetry. Of all these occasions the most 
 striking must have been the commemoration of a victory in 
 the temple of Zeus at Altis, near Olympia, by moonlight. 
 The contest has taken place during the day ; and the olive 
 wreath has been placed upon the head, say of Myronides, 
 from Thebes. Having rested from his labours, after the bath 
 and the banquet, crowned with his victorious garland and with 
 fillets bound about his hair, he stands surrounded by his 
 friends. Zeus, in ivory and gold, looks down from his marble 
 pedestal. Through the open roof shines a moon of the south, 
 glancing aslant on statue and column and carved bas-relief ; 
 while below, the red glare of torches, paling its silver, flickers 
 with fitful crimson on the glowing faces of young men. Then 
 swells the choral hymn, with praise of Myronides and praise of 
 Thebes, and stormy flights of fancy shooting beyond sun and 
 stars. At its close follow libation, dedication, hands upraised 
 in prayer to Zeus. Then the trampling of sandalled feet upon 
 the marble floor, the procession with songs still sounding 
 to the temple-gate, and on a sudden, lo ! the full moon, the 
 hills, and plain, and solemn night of stars. The band dis- 
 perses, and the Comus succeeds to the thanksgiving. 
 
 As a contrast to the Epinikia we may take the different 
 kinds of Threnoi, or funeral songs. The most primitive was 
 called Epikedeion, a dirge or coronach, improvised by women 
 over the bodies of the dead.* The lamentations of Helen and 
 Andromache for Hector, and of the slave-girls for Patroclus, 
 are Homeric instances of this species. Euripides imitates 
 them in his tragedies — in the dirge sung by Antigone, for 
 instance in the Phxriissce, and in the waitings of Hecuba 
 
 * It is interesting to observe that this custom of the funeral dirge, 
 improvised yn'Ca. wild inspiration by women, has been preserved almost to 
 the present day in Corsica. A collection of these coronachs, called Voceri 
 in the language of the island, was published in 1855 at Bastia, by Cesare 
 Fabiani. 
 
130 THE GREEK POETS. - 
 
 for Astyanax in the Troades. A different kind of Threnos 
 were the songs of Linus, Hyacinth, Adonis, and others, to 
 which I have already alhided in the beginning of this chapter. 
 The finest extant specimen, of this sort is Bion's Lament for 
 Adonis, which, however, was composed in the IdylHc age, 
 when the hexameter had been substituted for the richer and 
 more splendid lyric metres. A third class of Threnos con- 
 sisted of complex choral hymns composed by poets like 
 Simonides or Pindar, to be sung at funeral solemnities. Many 
 of our most precious lyric fragments, those which embody 
 philosophical reflections on life and dim previsions of another 
 world, belong to dirges of this elaborate kind. 
 
 Marriage festivals offered another occasion for lyric poetry. 
 The Hymeneal, sung during the wedding ceremony, the 
 Epithalamium, chanted at the house of the bridegroom, and 
 many other species, have been defined by the grammarians. 
 Unfortunately we possess nothing but the merest debris of 
 any true Greek ode of this kind. Sappho's are the best. We 
 have to study the imitations of her style in Catullus, the 
 marriage chorus at the end of the Birds of Aristophanes, 
 and the Epithalamium of Helen by Theocritus, in order to 
 form a remote conception of what a Sapphic marriage chorus 
 might have been. In banquet songs we are more fortunate. 
 Abundant are the Parcenia of Alcseus, Anacreon, Theognis, 
 and others. Scolia or catches, so called from their irregular 
 metrical structure, were also in vogue at banquets ; and of 
 these popular songs a sufficient number are preserved. A 
 drunken passagfe in the works of Aristophanes brings before 
 us after a lively fashion the ceremonies with which the Scolion 
 and the wine-cup circled the symposium together.* Of all 
 these catches the most celebrated in ancient days was the 
 panegyric of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, attributed to Calli- 
 
 * Translated by Mitchell, vol. ii. p. 282, in his Dicast turned Gentle- 
 man. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 131 
 
 stratus. As I have the opportunity of printing from MS. a 
 translation of this song by the late Professor Conington, I will 
 introduce it here :— 
 
 " In a wreath of myrtle I'll wear my glaive, 
 Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave, 
 Who, striking the tyrant down, 
 Made Athens a freeman's town. 
 
 ' ' Harmodius, our darling, thou art not dead ! 
 Thou liv'st in the isles of the blest, 'tis said, 
 With Achilles first in speed, 
 And Tydides Diomede. 
 
 " In a wreath of myrtle I'll wear my glaive. 
 Like Harmodius and Aristogeiton brave. 
 When the twain on Athena's day 
 Did the tyrant Hipparchus slay. 
 
 " Foir aye shall your fame in the land be told, 
 Harmodius and Aristogeiton bold. 
 Who, striking the tyrant down. 
 Made Athens a freeman's town." 
 
 The whole collection of Scolia in Bergk (pp. 1 287-1 296) is 
 full of interest, since these simple and popular songs carry us 
 back more freshly than elaborate poems to the life of the 
 Greeks. One of these, attributed to Simonides, sums up the 
 qualities which a Greek most desired : — 
 
 hyiOAV^iV ijiiv &pta'TOi' aySpl Qvm^, 
 
 Ssirepojf Se (^ucti/ Ka\hv yev^ffSat, 
 
 rh Tpirov 5e irXovreiv aS6\ws, 
 
 Kal rh reraprov ri^av fj.€T^ twv tptKav.* 
 
 Unlike Solomon, when asked what he would take from the 
 Lord as a gift, the Greek poet does not answer Wisdom, but 
 first Health, secondly Beauty, thirdly Wealth untainted by 
 fraud, and foiirthly Youth in the society of friends. The last 
 
 * " To be in health is the best thing for mortal man ; the next best to 
 ;e of form and nature beautiful ; the third, to enjoy wealth gotten without 
 I'raud ; and the fourth, to be in youth's bloom among friends. " 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 thought of this little poem is expanded very beautifully in 
 another Scolion : — 
 
 aiv /loi ir7vs, avvl)Ba, (rvpepa, <rvcrTe^avri(l>6pet, 
 ffiy fioi fiaipofj.4t'tfi ^Ij/eo^ abv ffiti^povi trcotppSvet ; 
 
 " Drink with me, be young with me, love with tne, wear 
 crowns with me, when I am mad be mad with me, be wise 
 with me when I am wise." The verb awrifiav is almost 
 untranslatable. Of another kind is the ScoUon of Hybrias 
 the Cretan, translated thus into English verse by Thomas 
 Campbell : — 
 
 " My wealth's a burly spear and brand, 
 And a right good shield of hides untanned, 
 
 Which on my arm I buckle : 
 With these I plough, I reap, I sow, 
 With these I make the sweet vintage flow. 
 And all around me truckle. 
 
 "But your wights that take no pride to wield 
 A .massy spear and well-made shield. 
 
 Nor joy to draw the sword : 
 Oh, I bring those heartless, hapless drones, 
 Down in a trice on their marrow .bones. 
 
 To call me king and lord. " 
 
 This catch brings before our eyes in a very lively picture the 
 lawless Freiherr of early Dorian barbarism. Another species of 
 the Scolion is more sentimental : "Would that I were a fair 
 lyre of ivory, and that fair boys bore me to the Bacchic Choir ; 
 would that I were a fair, new, and mighty golden jar, and that 
 a fair woman bore me with a pure heart.'' Again we find 
 moral precepts in these catches. " Whoso betrayeth not a 
 friend hath great honour among men and gods, according to 
 my mind." 
 
 While on the subject of Scolia, it will not do to pass over the 
 most splendid specimen we have in this order of composition. 
 It is a fragment from Pindar (Bergk, p. 327), to translate which, 
 I feel, is profanation : 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 133 
 
 " O soul, 'tis thine in season meet, 
 To pluck of love the blossom sweet. 
 
 When hearts are young : 
 But he who sees the blazing beams. 
 The, light that from that forehead streams, 
 
 And is not stung ; — 
 Who is not storm-tost with desire, — 
 Lo ! he, I ween, with frozen fire, 
 Of adamant or stubborn steel, 
 Is forged in his cold heart that cannot feel. 
 
 ^ ' Disowned, dishonoured, and denied 
 By Aphrodite glittering-eyed, 
 
 He either toils 
 All day for gold, a sordid gain. 
 Or bent beneath a woman's reign, 
 
 In petty broils. 
 Endures her insolence, a drudge. 
 Compelled the common path to trudge ; 
 But I, apart from this disease. 
 Wasting away like wax of holy bees, 
 
 '' ' Which the sun's splendour wounds, do pine, 
 Whene'er I see the young-limbed bloom divine 
 Of boys. Lo ! look you well ; for here in Tenedos, 
 Grace and Persuasion dwell in young Theoxenos.." 
 
 Of the many different kinds of lyric poetry consecrated to 
 love and intended for recitation by single musicians, it is not 
 possible to give a strict account. That the Greeks cultivated 
 the serenade is clear from a passage in the Ecclesiazusce of 
 Aristophanes, which contains a graceful though gross specimen 
 <of this kind of song. The children's songs (Bergk, 1303-1307} 
 about flowers, tortoises, and . hobgoblins are too curiously 
 illustrative of Greek manners not to merit a passing notice, nor 
 ■can I here omit a translation of the only Swallow-song preserved 
 to us. Athenaeus, to whom we owe this curious relique, 
 localizes the Chelidonisma in Rhodes, referring it particularly 
 to the district of Lindus.* In spring-time the children went 
 
 * Athen. Lib. viii. 360. 
 
134 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 round the town, collecting doles and presents from house ta 
 
 house, arid singing as they went : 
 
 " She is here, she is here, the swallow ! 
 Fair seasons bringing, fair years to follow ! 
 
 Her belly is white, 
 
 Her back black as night ! 
 
 From your rich house 
 
 Roll forth to us 
 
 Tarts, wine, and cheese : 
 
 Or if not these. 
 
 Oatmeal and barley-cake 
 
 The swallow deigns to take. 
 "What shall we have ? or must we hence away ? 
 Thanks, if you give ; if not, we'll make you pay ! 
 
 The house door hence we'll carry ; 
 
 Nor shall the lintel tarry ; 
 
 From hearth and home your wife we'll rob ; 
 
 She is so small, 
 
 To take her off will be an easy job ! 
 Whate'er you give, give largess free ! 
 Up ! open, open to the swallow's call ! 
 No grave old men, but merry children we ! " 
 
 After this lengthy, but far from exhaustive enumeration of 
 the kinds and occasions of lyrical poetry in Greece, we may 
 turn to consider the different parts played in their cultivation 
 by the several chief families of Hellas. It is remarkable that 
 all the great writers of elegies and iambics were lonians ; 
 Theognis of Megara is the only Dorian whose genuine poems 
 are celebrated; and against his we have to set the bulk of 
 Solon, Minrnennus, Phocylides, Callinus, and Tyrtseus, all 
 Ipnians.* Not a single Dorian poet seems to have composed 
 iambics, the rigid discipline and strong sense of deconim in a 
 Dorian state probably rendering the cultivation of satire impos- 
 sible. We are told that the Spartans would not even suffer 
 Archilochus to lodge as a stranger among them. But when we 
 turn to lyric poetry — to the poetry of stanzas and strophes^ 
 
 * This begs the question of the nationality of Tyrtseus, who, according^ 
 to antique tradition, was of Attic origin, but who writes like a Spartan. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 135 
 
 the two Other families of the Greeks, the Cohans and the 
 Dorians, take the lead. As a Dorian was exceptional among 
 the elegists, so now an Ionian will be comparatively rare 
 among the lyrists. So great was the aesthetical conservatism of 
 the Greeks that throughout their history their primitive distinc- 
 tions of dialect are never lost sight of. When the Athenians 
 developed Tragedy, they wrote their iambics in pure Attic, but 
 they preserved a Dorian tone in their choruses. The epic 
 hexameter and the elegy, on the other hand, retained an Ionian 
 character to the last. 
 
 The paths struck out by the Cohans and Dorians in the 
 domain of lyric poetry were so different as to justify us in 
 speaking of two distinct species. When Milton, in the Paradise 
 Regained, catalogued the poetical achievements of the Greeks, 
 he assigned their true place to these two species in the line — 
 
 ' ' jEolian charms and Dorian lyric odes. " 
 
 The poets and poetesses of the ^gean Islands cultivated a 
 rapid and effusive style, polishing their passionate stanzas so 
 exquisitely that they well deserve the name of charms. The 
 Dorian poets, inspired by a graver and more sustained imagina- 
 tion, composed long and complex odes for the celebration of 
 gods and heroes. The ^olian singer dwelt on his own joys 
 and sorrows ; the Dorian bard addressed some deity, or told 
 the tales of demigods and warriors. The .^olian chanted his 
 stanzas to the IjTre or flute ; the Dorian trained a chorus, who 
 gave utterance to his verse in dance and song. 
 
 Though the Cohans were the eldest family of the Hellenic 
 stock, their language retaining more than any other dialect the 
 primitive character of the Greek tongue, yet they never rose 
 to such historical importance as the Dorians and lonians. 
 Geographically they were scattered in such a way as to have 
 no definite centre. We find .^Eolians in Elis, in Boeotia, in 
 Lesbos, and on the Asian seacoast south of the Troad. But in 
 
136 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 course of time the ^olians of Elis and Bceotia were almost iden- 
 tified with the Dorians as allies of Sparta, while the Cohans of 
 Lesbos and Asia merged themselves in the Athenian empire. 
 Politically, mentally, and morally, they showed less activity 
 than their cousins of the blood of Dorus and Ion. They pro- 
 duced no lawgivers like Lycurgus and Solon : they had no 
 metropolis like Sparta and Athens ; they played no prominent 
 part in the struggle with Persia, or in the Peloponnesian war. 
 In the later days of Greece, Thebes, when Dorized by contact 
 with the Spartans, for a short time headed Greece, and flourished 
 with brief splendour. But it would not be accurate to give to 
 the ^olian character the credit of the fame of Thebes at that 
 advanced period. Yet, for a certain space of time, the Cohans 
 occupied the very foreground of Greek literature, and blazed 
 out with a brilliance of lyrical splendour that has never been 
 surpassed. There seems to have been something passionate 
 and intense in their temperament, which made the emotions of 
 the Dorian and the Ionian feeble by comparison. Lesbos, the 
 centre of j^olian culture, was the island of overmastering pas- 
 sions : the personality of the Greek race burned there with a 
 fierce and steady flame of concentrated feeling. The energies 
 which the lonians divided between pleasure, politics, trade, 
 legislation, science, and the arts, and which the Dorians turned 
 to war and statecraft and social economy, were restrained by the 
 Cohans within the sphere of individual emotions, ready to 
 burst forth volcanically. Nowhere in any age of Greek history, 
 or in any part of Hellas, did the love of physical beauty, the 
 sensibility to radiant scenes of nature, the consuming fervour 
 of personal feeling, assume such grand proportions and receive 
 so illustrious an expression as they did in Lesbos. At first 
 this passion blossomed into the most exquisite lyrical poetry 
 that the world has known : this was the flower-time of the 
 ./Eolians, their brief and brilliant spring. But the fruit it bore 
 was bitter and rotten. Lesbos became a byword for corrup- 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 137 
 
 tion. The passions which for a moment had flamed into the 
 gorgeousness of Art, burning their envelope of words and 
 images, remained a mere furnace of sensuahty, from which no 
 expression of the divine in human Ufe could be expected. In 
 this the Lesbian poets were not unlike the Provengal trouba- 
 dours, who made a literature of Love, or the Venetian painters, 
 who based their art upon the beauty of colour, the voluptuous 
 charms of the flesh. In each case the motive of enthusiastic 
 passion sufficed to produce a dazzling result. But as soon as 
 its freshness was exhausted there was nothing left for Art to 
 live on, and mere decadence to sensuality ensued. 
 
 Several circumstances contributed to aid the development of 
 lyric poetry in Lesbos. The customs of the Cohans permitted 
 more social and domestic freedom than was common in Greece. 
 ^oHan women were not confined to the harem like lonians, 
 or subjected to the rigorous discipline of the Spartans. While 
 mixing freely with male society, they were highly educated, and 
 accustomed to express their sentiments to an extent unknown 
 elsewhere in history — until, indeed, the present time. The 
 Lesbian ladies applied themselves successfully to literature. 
 They formed clubs for the cultivation of poetry and music. 
 They studied the arts of beauty, and sought to refine metrical 
 forms and diction. Nor did they confine themselves to the 
 scientific side of art. Unrestrained by public opinion, and 
 passionate for the beautiful, they cultivated their senses, and 
 emotions, and indulged their wildest passions. All the 
 luxuries and elegances of life which that climate and the rich 
 valleys of Lesbos could afford, were at their disposal ; exquisite 
 gardens, where the rose and hyacinth spread perfume ; river- 
 beds ablaze with the oleander and wild pomegranate ; olive- 
 groves and fountains, where the cyclamen and violet flowered 
 with feathery maiden-hair ; pine-tree-shadowed coves, where 
 they might bathe in the calm of a tideless sea ; fruits such as 
 only the southern sun and sea-wind can mature ; marble cHffs, 
 
138 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Starred with jonquil and anemone in spring, aromatic with 
 myrtle and lentisk and samphire and wild rosemary through all 
 the months ; nightingales that sang in May ; temples dim with 
 dusky gold and bright with ivory; statues and frescoes of heroic 
 forms. In such scenes as these the Lesbian poets lived, and 
 thought of Love. When we read their poems, we seem to have 
 the perfumies, colours, sounds, and lights of that luxurious land 
 distilled in verse. Nor was a brief but biting winter wanting 
 to give tone to their nerves, and, by contrast with the summer, 
 to prevent the palling of so much luxury on sated senses. The 
 voluptuousness of .^Eolian poetry is not like that of Persian or 
 Arabian art. It is Greek in its self-restraint, proportion, tact. 
 We frnd nothing burdensome in its sweetness. All is so 
 rhythmically and sublimely ordered in the poems of Sappho 
 that supreme art lends solemnity and grandeur to the expres- 
 sion of unmitigated passion. 
 
 The world has suffered no greater literary loss than the loss 
 of Sappho's poems. So perfect are the smallest fragments pre- 
 served in Bergk's Collection — the line, for example (p. 8go), 
 i\poQ ctyyeXos i/xep6cp(dvoe ariSioy* which Ben Jonson fancifully 
 translated, " the dear glad angel of the spring, the nightingale " 
 —that we muse in a sad rapture of astonishment to think what 
 the complete poems must have been. Among the ancients 
 Sappho' enjoyed a unique renown. She was called " The 
 Poetess,'' as Homer was called " The Poet.'' Aristotle quoted 
 without question a judgment that placed her in the same 
 rank as Homer and Archilochus. Plato in the Phcedrus men- 
 tioned her as the tenth Muse. Solon, hearing one of her 
 poems, prayed that he iniglit not see death till he had learned 
 
 * Compare Simonides (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1 143): — 
 
 " Blithe angel of the perfttme-breathing spring, 
 Dark-vested swallow." 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 139 
 
 it Strabo speaks of her genius with religious awe. Longinus 
 cites her love-ode as a specimen of poetical sublimity. The 
 epigrammatists call her Child of Aphrodite and Er6s, nursling 
 of the Graces and Persuasion, pride of Hellas, peer of Muses, 
 companion of Apollo. Nowhere is a hint whispered that her 
 poetry was aught but perfect. As far as we can judge, these 
 praises were strictly just. Of all the poets of the world, of all 
 the illustrious artists of all literatures, Sappho is the one whose 
 every word has a peculiar and unmistakable perfume, a seal of 
 absolute perfection and inimitable grace. In her art she was 
 unerring. Even Archilochus seems commonplace when com- 
 pared with her exquisite rarity of phrase. 
 
 About her life — her brother Charaxus, her daughter Cleis, 
 her rejection ofAlcseus and her suit to Phaon, her love for Atthis 
 and Anactoria, her leap from the Leucadian cliff— we know so 
 very little, and that little is .so confused with mythology and 
 turbid with the scandal of the comic poets, that it is not worth 
 while to rake up oitce again the old materials for hj-pothetical 
 conclusions. There is enough of heart-devouring passion in 
 Sappho's own verse without the legends of Phaon and the cliff 
 of Leucas. The reality casts all fiction into the shade ; for 
 nowhere, except, perhaps, in some Persian or Provencal love- 
 songs, can be found more ardent expressions of overmastering 
 emotion. Whether addressing the maidens, whom even in 
 Elysium, as Horace says, Sappho could not forget ; or em- 
 bodying the profounder yearnings of an intense soul after 
 beauty, which has never on earth existed, but which inflames 
 the hearts of noblest poets, robbing their eyes of sleep and 
 giving them the bitterness of tears to drink — these dazzling 
 fragments, 
 
 " Which still, like sparkles of Greek fire. 
 Bum on through time and ne'er expire " 
 
 are the ultimate and finished forms of passionate utterance, 
 diamonds, topazes, and blazing rubies, in which the fire of the 
 
I40 THE GREEfC- POETS. 
 
 soul is crystallized for ever. Adequately to translate Sappho 
 was beyond the power of even Catullus : that love-ode, which 
 Longinus called, " not one passion, but a congress of passions," 
 and which a Greek physician copied into his book of diagnoses 
 as a compendium of all the symptoms of corroding emotion, 
 appears but languid in its Latin dress of " Ille mi par." Far 
 less has any modern poet succeeded in the task : Rossetti, who 
 deals so skilfully with Dante and Villon, is comparatively tame 
 when he approaches Sappho. Instead of attempting, therefore, 
 to interpret for English readers the charm of Sappho's style,* 
 it is best to refer to pp. 874-924 of Bergk, where every vestige 
 that is left of her is shrined. 
 
 Beside Sappho, Alcseus pales. His drinking-songs and 
 war-songs have indeed great beauty ; but they are not to be 
 named in the same breath, for perfection of style, with the 
 stanzas of Sappho. Of his life we know a few not wholly 
 uninteresting incidents. He was a noble of Mitylene, the 
 capital of Lesbos, where he flourished as early as 611 b.c. 
 Alcseus belonged to a family of distinguished men. His 
 brothers Cicis . and Antimenidas upheld the party of the 
 oligarchy against the t3rrant Melanchrus ; and during the 
 troubles which agitated Mitylene after the fall of this despot, 
 while other petty tyrants — Myrsilus, Megalagyrus, and the 
 Cleanactids — ^were attempting to subdue the island, the three 
 brothers ranged themselves uniformly on the side of the 
 aristocracy. At first they seem to have been friendly with 
 Pittacus. It was while fighting at his side against the 
 Athenians at Sigeum that Alcsus threw his shield away — an 
 exploit which, like Archilochus, he celebrated in a poem 
 
 * Those who are curious in the matter of metres will find the Sapphic 
 stanza reproduced in English, with perfect truth of cadence, in Swinburne's 
 " Sapphics " (Poems and Ballads). The imitations by Horace are far less 
 close to the original. In an appendix I have given a crude version of 
 Sappho's Ode to Aphrodite in accented Sapphics. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 141 
 
 without apparently damaging his reputation for valour. Being 
 a stout soldier, a violent partisan, the bard of revolutions, and 
 the brother of a pair of heroes, he could trifle with this little 
 accident, which less doughty warriors must have concealed. 
 When Pittacus was chosen .^Esymnetes, or dictator with 
 despotic power for the preservation of public order, in 589 
 B.C., Alcseus and his brothers went into opposition and were 
 exiled. All three of them were what in modern politics we 
 should call High Tories. They could not endure the least 
 approach to popular government, the slightest infringement of 
 the rights of the nobility. During his exile Alcseus employed 
 his poetic faculty in vituperating Pittacus. His satires were 
 esteemed almost as pungent as those of Archilochus. But the 
 liberal-minded ruler did not resent them. When Alcaeus was 
 on one occasion taken prisoner, he set him free, remarking 
 that " forgiveness is better than revenge." Alcaeus lived to be 
 reconciled with him and to recognise his merits. As a trait in 
 the domestic life and fortunes of the Greeks of this time, it is 
 worth mentioning that Alcasus took refuge in Egypt during his 
 banishment from Lesbos, and that his brother Antimenidas 
 entered the service of the king of Babylon. In the same way 
 two Englishmen in the times of the Edwards might have 
 travelled in Germany or become soldiers oi the Republic of 
 Florence. Of the Greek oligarch who lent his sword to Nebu- 
 chadnezzar — in his wars perhaps against Jehoiakim or Pharaoh- 
 Necho — we get a curious glimpse. Alcseus greeted him on 
 his return in a poem of which we possess a fragment, and which 
 may be paraphrased thus : — 
 
 " From the ends of the earth thou art come ' 
 Back to thy home ; 
 The ivory hilt of thy blade 
 With gold is embossed and inlaid ; 
 Since for Babylon's host a great deed 
 Thou didst work in their need, 
 
142 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Slaying a warrior, an athlete of might, 
 Royal, whose height 
 Lacked of five cubits one: span — 
 A terrible man." 
 
 We can fancy with what delight and curiosity Alcseus, 
 who, as may be gathered from his poems, was an amateur of 
 armour, examined this sword-handle, wrought perhaps from 
 Ethiopian tusks, by Egyptian artists with lotos -flowers or 
 patterns of crocodiles, monkeys, and lions. This story of 
 the polished Greek citizen's adventure among the Jews and 
 Egyptians, known to us through Holy Writ, touches our 
 imagination with the same strange sense of novelty as when 
 ■we read of the Persian poet Sady, a slave in the camp of 
 Richard Coeur de Lion's Crusaders. 
 
 Considering the life Alcseus led, it is not strange that he 
 should have sung of arms and civic struggles. Many frag- 
 ments, preserved in all probabihty from the Stasiotica, or 
 Songs of Sedition, which were very popular among the 
 ancients, throw light upon the stormier passages of his history. 
 One of these pieces* describes the poet's armoury — his 
 poHshed helmets and white horsehair plumes, the burnished 
 brazen greaves that hang upon the wall, the linen breastplates 
 and bucklers thrown in heaps about the floor, with Chalkidian 
 blades, and girdles, and tunics. The most striking point 
 about this fragment is its foppery. Alcseus spares no pains 
 to make us know how bright his armour is, how carefully his 
 greaves are fixed against the wall by pegs you cannot see 
 {Trao-o-aXoic KpinrroKTi irtpiKeifievai), how carelessly the girdles 
 and small gear are tossed about in sumptuous disarray. The 
 poem seems to reveal a luxurious nature delighting in military 
 millinery. No Dorian would have described his weapons 
 from this point of view, but would have rather told us how 
 
 * Bergk, p. 935. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 143 
 
 often they had been used with effect in the field. The ^olian 
 character is here tempered with OrientaUsm. 
 
 Of the erotic poems of Alcseus, only a very few and incon- 
 siderable fragments have survived. Horace says of them, 
 addressing his lyre : — 
 
 " Lesbio primum modulate civi, 
 Qui ferox bello, tamen inter arma, 
 Sive jactatam religarat udo 
 
 Littore navim, 
 Liberam et Musas Veneremque et illi 
 . Semper hserentem puerum canebat ; 
 Et Lycum nigris oculis nigroque 
 Crine decorum." * 
 
 Of Lycus we only know, on the authority of Cicero, f that 
 he had a wart upon the finger, which Alcseus praised in 
 one of his poems. It has also been conjectured that the hne 
 oivoq, S) <j>i\e nal, Kal aXadea, "wine, dear boy, and truth,'' 
 which Theocritus quotes as a proverb at the beginning of his 
 ^olic Idyll, was addressed to Lycus. A fragment ■ of far 
 greater interest is the couplet preserved by Hephsestion, :{: in 
 which Alcseus calls on Sappho by her name : " Violet-crowned, 
 pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho ! I want to say something, but- 
 shame prevents me.'' To this declaration Sappho replied : " If 
 thy wishes were fair and noble, and thy tongue designed not to 
 utter what is base, shame would not cloud thine eyes, but thou 
 wouldst speak thy just desires." This is all we know about the 
 
 * Carm. i. 32, thus translated by Conington : — 
 
 " Thou, strung by Lesbos' minstrel hand, 
 The bard, who 'mid the clash of steel, 
 Or haply mooring to the strand, 
 His battered keel, 
 
 ' ' Of Bacchus and the Muses sung. 
 And Cupid, still at Venus' side, 
 And Lycus, beautiful and young. 
 Dark-haired, dark-eyed." 
 
 t Di Nat. Deorum, i. 28. % Sec Bergk, p. 948. 
 
144 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 love-passages between the greatest lyrists of the ^olian school. 
 In this way do the ancient critics tantalize us. Aristotle,* 
 in order to illustrate a moral proposition, Hephaestion, with a 
 view to proving a metrical rule, fling these scraps of their 
 wealth forth, little dreaming that after twenty centuries the men 
 of new nations and other thoughts will eagerly collect the scraps, 
 and long for more, of that which might have been so freely 
 lavished. Whether Sappho wrote her reply in maidenly 
 modesty because the advances of Alcseus were really dis- 
 honourable, or whether she affected indignation to conceal 
 a personal dislike for the poet, we cannot say. Aristotle 
 or Hephsestion might probably have been able to tell us. 
 But the one was only thinking of the signs of shame, while 
 the attention of the other was riveted upon the "so-called 
 dodecasyllable Alcaic." 
 
 The most considerable remains of the lyrics of Alcseus are 
 drinking-songs — praises of wine, combined with reflections 
 upon life and appropriate descriptions. of the different seasons. 
 No time was amiss for drinking, to his mind : the heat of sum- 
 mer, the cold of winter, the blazing dogstar and the driving 
 tempest, twilight with its cheerful gleam of lamps, midday with 
 its sunshine — all suggest reasons for indulging in the cup. 
 Not that we are justified in fancying Alcseus to have been 
 a vulgar toper : he retained ^olian sumptuousness in his 
 pleasures and raised the art of drinking to an aesthetic 
 altitude. One well-known piece from the ParcRnia of Alcseus 
 is capable of translation into Elizabethan rhymed verse, as 
 follows : — 
 
 " The rain of Zeus descends, and from high heaven 
 A storm is driven : 
 And on the running water-brooks the cold 
 Lays icy hold : 
 
 ♦ Rhtt., i. 9. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 145 
 
 Then up ! beat down the winter ; make the fire 
 
 Blaze high and higher ; 
 Mix wine as sweet as honey of the bee 
 
 Abundantly ; 
 Then drink with comfortable wool around 
 
 Your temples bound. 
 We must not yield our hearts to woe, or wear 
 
 With wasting care ; 
 For grief will profit us no whit, my friend. 
 
 Nor nothing mend : 
 But this is our best medicine, with wine fraught 
 
 To cast out thought." 
 
 The debt of Horace to Alcaeus must have been immense. 
 The fragment just translated is the original of the ninth ode of 
 the first book. The fragment on the death of Myrsilus, vvv 
 ■Xpi) fiedva-drjv, shows where Horace found the model for 
 the last ode of the first book. Again, " O navis referent " (Hor. 
 Carm. i. 14) is based on an ode of the Lesbian poet of which 
 we possess a fragment.* Between the temperaments of Horace 
 and of Alcaeus, as between those of Catullus and of Sappho, 
 there were marked similarities and correspondences. The 
 poetry of both Horace and Alcaeus was polished rather than 
 profound, admirably sketched rather than richly coloured, more 
 graceful than intense, less passionate than reflective. In 
 Sappho and Catullus, on the other hand, we meet with richer 
 and more ardent natures : they are endowed with keener sen- 
 sibilities, with a sensuality more noble because of its intensity, 
 with emotions more profound, with a deeper faculty of thought, 
 that never loses itself in the shallows of " Stoic- Epicurean 
 acceptance,'' but simply and exquisitely apprehends the facts 
 of human life. Where Horace talks of Orcus and the Urn, 
 Catullus sings : — 
 
 ' ' Soles occidere et redire possunt, 
 Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux 
 Nox est perpetua una dormienda. " 
 
 * Bergk, p. 936. 
 L 
 
,46 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 This contrast between the pohshed sententiousness of Horace 
 and the pathetic outcry of Catullus marks the difference 
 between two classes of poets to whom Horace and Alcseus, 
 Sappho and Catullus, respectively belong. 
 
 Of the other Lesbian poets, Erinna and Damophila, we 
 know but little : the one survives in a single epigram— if we 
 reject the epitaphs on Baucis : the other is a mere name. It 
 ■is noticeable that of the four Lesbian poets three are women. 
 We may remember that in Thebes, which was also an ^olian 
 city, Myrtis and Corinna rivalled Pindar. 
 
 To the hst of .^Eolian poets Anacreon, though an Ionian by 
 birth and an Ionian in temperament, is generally added, be- 
 cause he cultivated the lyrical stanza of personal emotion. 
 Into the .iEolian style Anacreon introduced a new and un- 
 congenial element. His passion had none of Sappho's fiery 
 splendour, none of the haughtiness and restlessness which dis- 
 tinguished Alcgeus. There was a vein of levity, almost of 
 vulgarity, in the lonians, which removed them from the alti- 
 tudes of Dorian heroism and ^olian enthusiasm. This tinc- 
 ture of flippancy is discernible in Anacreon. Life and love 
 come easily to him. The roses keep no secrets for his ears, 
 such as they told to Sappho : they serve very well for garlands 
 when he drinks, and have a pleasant smell — especially in mjrrrh. 
 The wine-cup does not suggest to him variety of seasons, — 
 the frozen streams of winter, the parched breath of the Dog- 
 star, — as with Alcseus : he tipples and gets drunk. His loves 
 too are facile — neither permanent nor tempestuous. The 
 girls and boys of whom he sings were flute-players and cup- 
 bearers, servants of a tyrant, instrumenta Ubidinis, chosen for 
 their looks, as the poet had been selected for the sweetness of 
 his lyre with twenty chords. He never felt the furnace of 
 Sappho, whose love, however criminal in the estimation of 
 modem morahsts, was serious and of the soul. The difference 
 between the lives of these three lyrists is very striking. Alcseus 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 147 
 
 was a politician and party leader. Sappho was the centre of 
 
 a free society of female poets. Anacreon was the courtier and 
 
 laureate of tyrants. He won his first fame with Polycrates, at 
 
 whose death Hipparchus fetched him to Athens in a trireme 
 
 of fifty oars. Between Bacchus and Venus he spent his days 
 
 in palaces ; and died at the ripe age of eighty-five at Teos, 
 
 choked, it is reported, by a grape-stone — a hoary-headed roue, 
 
 for whom the rhyme of Walter Mapes might have been 
 
 written : 
 
 ' ' Meum est propositum, 
 In taberna mori," &c. 
 
 It need not be remarked that of the genuine poems of Ana- 
 creon we possess but few (pp. 1011-1045 of Bergk). His 
 great popularity in Greece led to innumerable imitations of 
 his lighter style."' These are fully preserved in Bergk's Col- 
 lection (pp. 1046-1108). 
 
 The Dorian style offers a marked contrast to the .(Eolian. 
 In the case of the Ionian satirists and elegists, and in that of 
 the .^olian lyrists, the national peculiarities of the art resulted 
 from national qualities in the artists. This is not the case 
 with the so-called Dorian poets. The great lyrists of this 
 school are, with one exception, of extraction foreign to the 
 Dorian tribe. Alcman was a Lydian ; Stesichorus acknow- 
 ledged an Ionian colony for his fatherland ; Arion was a 
 Lesbian ; Simonides and Bacchylides were Ionian ; Pindar 
 was Boeotian ; Ibycus of Rhegium alone was a Dorian. Why 
 then is the style called Dorian? Because the poets, though 
 not Dorian by birth, wrote for Dorian patrons in the land 
 
 * The people of Athens gave him a statue on their Acropolis. The 
 Teians struck his portrait on coins. Critias said that his. poems would last 
 as long as the Cottabos in Hellas. He did in fact exactly represent one 
 side, and that the least heroic side, of the character of the Greeks— their 
 simple love of sensual pleasure. As mere Hedonism grew, so did the 
 songs and the style of Anacreon gain in popularity, whereas the stormier 
 passion of Sappho became unfashionable. 
 
hs the greek poets. 
 
 of Dorians, to add splendour to ceremonies and solemnities 
 
 in vogue among the Dorians. The distinctive features of this, 
 
 the most sublime branch of Greek lyrical poetry, have been 
 
 already hinted at : these elaborate Choral Hymns, in which 
 
 strophe answers to antistrophe, and epode to epode, chanted 
 
 by bands of singers and accompanied at times by dancing, 
 
 were designed to give expression, no longer to personal 
 
 emotions, but to the feelings of great congregations of men 
 
 engaged in the celebration of gods, and heroes, and illustrious 
 
 mortals. Why this species of choral poetry received the 
 
 patronage and name of the Dorian tribe may be seen by 
 
 glancing at the institutions peculiar to this section of the 
 
 Hellenic family. The Dorians, more than any other Greeks, 
 
 lived in common and in public. Their children were educated, 
 
 not at home, but in companies, beneath the supervision of 
 
 state-officers. Girls as well as boys submitted , to gymnastic 
 
 training, and were taught to, sacrifice domestic and personal to 
 
 political and social interests. Tutored to merge the individual 
 
 in the mass, habituated to associate together in large bodies, 
 
 the Dorians felt no need of venting private feeling. Their 
 
 personal emotions were stunted : . they had no separate wants 
 
 and wishes, aspirations and regrets, to utter. Yet the sense of 
 
 melody and harmony which was rooted so profoundly in the 
 
 Greek temperament needed some outlet even here ; while the 
 
 gymnastic and athletic exercises practised by the Dorians 
 
 rendered them peculiarly sensitive, not only to the beauties of 
 
 the human body, but also to the refinements of rhythmical 
 
 movement. The spiritual enthusiasm for great and glorious 
 
 actions, which formed the soul of the Greek race, flamed with 
 
 all the greater brilliancy among. Dorians, because it was not 
 
 narrowed, as among the Cohans, to the selfish passions of 
 
 the individual, or diverted, as among lonians, to meditation 
 
 or satire ; but was concentrated on public interests, on religious 
 
 and heroic traditions, on all the thoughts and feelings which 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 149 
 
 Stimulate a large political activity. The. Dorians required a 
 poetry which should be public, which should admit of the par- 
 ticipation of many individuals, which should give utterance to 
 national enthusiasms, which should combine the movements of 
 men and women in choric evolutions \vith the melodies of 
 music and the sublime words of inspired prophecy. In brief, 
 the Dorians needed poets able — 
 
 ' ' to inbreed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public 
 civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections 
 in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and 
 equipage of God's Almightiness, and what He viforks, and what He suffers 
 to be wrought with h'igh Providence Lastly, whatsoever in reli- 
 gion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave ; whatsoever hath 
 passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from 
 without, or the wily subtleties and reflexes of man's thoughts from within ; 
 all these things with a solid and treatable smoothness, to paint out and 
 ■describe." 
 
 But here arose a difficulty. With all their need of the highest 
 and most elaborate poetry, with all their sensibility to beauty, 
 the Dorians thought it beneath the dignity of a citizen to prac- 
 tise the arts. Their education, almost exclusively military and 
 gymnastic, unfitted them, at all events in Sparta, for studies 
 indispensable towards gaining proficiency in any science so 
 elaborate as that of choral poetry. Drilled to abstinence, 
 ■obedience, and silence, dwelling in a camp, without privacy or 
 leisure, how could a Spartan, that automaton of the State, be 
 ■expected to produce poetry, or excel in any fine art? A 
 Spartan king, on being shown the most distinguished musician 
 of his age, pointed to his cook as the best maker of black broth. 
 Music, if music they must have ; poetry, if poetry were required 
 by some divinely implanted instinct ; dancing, if dancing were 
 a necessary compliment to the Deity ; must be imported by 
 these warriors from foreign lands. Thus the Spartans became 
 the patrons of stranger artists, on whom they imposed their laws of 
 taste. They pressed the flexible Ionian, the passionate Lesbian, 
 
ISO THE grerk: poets. 
 
 the languid Lydian, the acute Athenian, into their service, 
 and made them use the crabbed Dorian sf)eech. They said : 
 We want such and such odes for our choruses ; we wish to amuse 
 our youths and maidens, and to honour the gods with pompous 
 harmonies ; you, men of art, write for us, sing for us ; but be 
 careful to comprehend our character ; and remember that, 
 though you are lonians or Lesbians, your inspiration must be 
 Dorian. They got what they required. The so-called Dorian 
 lyric is a genuine product of the Dorian race, although its 
 greatest masters were foreigners and aliens. Much after the 
 same fashion did England patronise Handel in the last 
 century ; in the same way may Handel's oratorios be called 
 Enghsh music ; for though the English are not musicians, and 
 are diffident in general of the artist class, yet neither Germans, 
 nor Italians, nor French, have seen produced upon their soil 
 such colossal works of art in the service of a highly intellectual 
 religion. 
 
 It is interesting to reflect upon the influence of the Dorian 
 race in the evolution of Greek art. That, as a nation, they 
 possessed the germs of artistic invention, and that their 
 character expressed itself veiy clearly in aesthetic forms, is 
 evident from the existence of the Dorian style in architecture, 
 and the Dorian mood in music, both of which reflect their 
 broad simplicity and strength disdaining ornament. The same 
 stamp they impressed upon Greek poetry, through the instru- 
 ments they selected from other tribes. Had it not been for 
 the strict legislation of Lycurgus, which, by forcing Sparta into 
 a purely political development, and establishing a complete 
 community of life among the citizens, checked the emergence 
 of that individuality which is so all-important to the artist, 
 Sparta might have counted her great sculptors, poets, musi- 
 cians, orators, and painters, in rivalry with Pheidias, Sophocles, 
 Damon, Pericles, Polygnotus. As it was, though without 
 hands to paint and carve, without lips to sing and plead. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 151 
 
 the stubborn Dorian race set its seal on a wide field of Greek 
 art.* 
 
 The elaborate works of the choral lyrists may be regarded 
 as the highly-wrought expansions of rudiments already existing 
 among the Dorians. Alcman, Arion, and Stesichorus, the 
 three masters who formed ghoral poetry from the materials 
 indicated to us in the poems of Homer, and who had to blend 
 in one harmonious whole the sister arts of dancing, music, 
 and poetry, so as to present a pompous appeal to the intellect 
 through speech, and through the ear and eye, found ready to 
 their hands such simple songs as may be read in Bergk, pp. 
 1 297-1303. The dithyramb of the women of Elis : "Come, 
 hero, Dionysus, to the holy sea-temple, attended by the graces, 
 and rushing on with oxen-hoof ! Holy ox ! Holy ox ! " The 
 chorus of the old men, rrien, and boys at Sparta : " We once 
 were stalwart youths : we are ; if thou likest, try our strength : 
 we shall be ; and far better too ! " The march-song of the 
 Spartans in their rhythmic revels : " Advance, boys, set your 
 feet forward, and dance in the reel better still." — From these 
 had to be trained the complex and magnificent work of art, 
 which culminated in a Pythian ode of Pindar ! Alcman was 
 a native of Sardis, and a slave of Agesilaus the Spartan. He 
 flourished at Sparta between 671 and 631 B.C., composing Par- 
 thenia for the maidens of Taygetus. Who does not know his 
 lines upon the valley of Eurotas ? " Sleep holds the mountain 
 summits and ravines, the promontories and the water-courses ; 
 leaves, and creeping things, and whatsoever black earth breeds ; 
 and wild beasts of the hills, and bees, and monsters in the 
 hollows of the dark blue deep ; and all the wide-winged birds 
 are sleeping." Juniorto Alcman was Arion, who spent most of his 
 
 * It is unhistorical to confound the Dorians with the Spartans, who 
 were a specially-trained section of the Dorian stock. Yet it will be seen 
 that, in relation at least to lyric poetry, Sparta fairly may be taken as the 
 Dorian state. 
 
152 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 time with Periander at Corinth. His contribution to choral 
 poetry was the elaboration of the Dithyramb. But of his work 
 we have unfortunately not a single fragment left. The piece 
 that bears his name (Bergk, p. 872) has to be ascribed to some 
 tolerable poet of the Euripidean period. His life is involved 
 in mythology; most beautiful is the oft-told tale of his salvation 
 from the sea waves by an enamoured dolphin — a fish, by the 
 way, which Athenaus dignified by the title of (ptXuSoe re Kal 
 (piXavXoe (song-loving and flute-loving), and which Aristotle 
 calls (j>iKayepioiros (affectionate to men). Rather more is 
 known about Stesichorus. He was a native of Himera in 
 Sicily, but possibly a Locrian by descent. His parents called 
 him Tisias, but he took his more famous name from his profes- 
 sion. Stesichorus is a tide that might have been given to any 
 chorus-master in a Greek city ; but Tisias of Himera won it by 
 being emphatically the author of the choric system. Antiquity 
 recognised in him the inventor of Strophe, Antistrophe, and 
 Epode, with the corresponding movements of the dance, which 
 were designated the Triad of Stesichorus. A remark made by 
 Quintilian about this poet — that he sustained the burden of 
 the Epos with his lyre — forms a valuable criticism on his style. 
 In the days of Stesichorus, the epic proper had lost its vitality ; 
 but people still felt the livehest interest in heroic legends, and 
 loved to connect the celebration of the past with their cere- 
 monies. A lyrical poet had therefore so to treat the myths of 
 Hellas that choruses should represent them in their odes and 
 semi-dramatic dances. It is probable that Stesichorus made 
 far more use of mythical material than Pindar, dealing with it 
 less allusively and adhering more closely to the epic form of 
 narrative. AVhen we hear of his ode, the Orestea, being 
 divided into three books (whatever that may mean), and read 
 the titles of the rest — Cerberus, Cycnus, Scylla, Europa, the 
 Sack of Troy, the Nostoi, and Geryonis, we are led to suspect 
 that his choral compositions were something of the nature of 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 153 
 
 mediseval mystery plays — semi-lyrical, semi-dramatic poems, 
 founded on the religious legends of the past. Stesichoms did 
 not confine himself to this species of composition, but wrote 
 hymns, encomia, and pseans, like other professional Ijrrists 
 who succeeded him, and invented a curious kind of love-tale 
 from real life. One of these romantic poems, called Calyce, 
 was about a girl, who loved purely but unhappily, and died. 
 Another, called Rhadina, told the forlorn tale of a Samian 
 brother and sister put to death by a cruel tyrant. It is a pity 
 that these early Greek novels in verse are lost. We might 
 have found in them the fresh originals of Daphnis and Chloe, 
 or of the romances of Tatius and Hehodorus. Finally, Stesi- 
 chorus composed fables, such as the Horse and the Stag, and 
 pastorals upon the death of Daphnis, in which he proved him- 
 self true to his Sicilian origin, and anticipated Theocritus. 
 Enough has been said about Stesichorus to show that he was 
 a richly inventive genius — one of those facile and abundant 
 natures who excel in many branches of art, and who give hints 
 by which posterity may profit. Yet with all his genius he was 
 not thoroughly successful. His pastorals and romances were 
 abandoned by his successors ; his epical l3a-ics were lost in the 
 tragic drama. Like many other poets, he failed by coming at a 
 wrong moment, or else by adhering to forms of art which could 
 not long remain in vogue. In his attempt to reconcile the 
 epical treatment of mythology with the choric system of his 
 own invention, he proved that he had not fully grasped the 
 capabilities of lyrical poetry. In his endeavour to create an 
 idyllic and romantic species, he was far before his age. 
 
 The remaining choral poets of the Dorian style, of whom 
 the eldest, Ibycus, dates half a century later than Arion, re- 
 ceived from their predecessors an instrument of poetical 
 expression already nearly complete. It was their part to use 
 it as skilfully as possible, and to introduce such changes as 
 might render it more polished. Excellence of workmanship is 
 
1 54 , THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 particularly noticeable in what remains of Ibycus, Simonides, 
 Bacchylides. These latter lyrists are no longer local poets : 
 under the altered circumstances of Hellas at the time of the 
 Persian war, art has become Panhellenic, the artists cease to 
 be the servants of one state or of one deity ; they range from 
 city to city, giving their services to all who seek for them, and 
 embracing the various tribes and religious rites of the collected 
 Greeks in their sesthetic sympathy. Now, for the first time, 
 poets began to sell their songs of praise for money. Simonides 
 introduced the practice, which had something shocking in it to 
 Greek taste, and which Plato especially censures as sophistic 
 and illiberal in his Protagoras. Now, too, poets became the 
 friends and counsellors of princes, mixing freely in the poHtics 
 of Samos, Syracuse, Agrigentum, Thessaly ; aiding the tyrants 
 Polycrates, Hiero, Theron, the Scopads, with their advice. 
 Simonides is said to have supended hostilities between 
 Theron and Hiero by his diplomatic intercession after their 
 armies had been drawn up in battle-array. Petrarch did not 
 occupy a more important place among the princes and re- 
 publics of mediaeval Italy. Under these new conditions, and 
 with this expansion of the poet's calling, the old character of 
 the Dorian lyric changed. The title Dorian is now merely 
 nominal, and the dialect is a conventional language consecrated 
 to this style. 
 
 Ibycus was a native of Rhegium, a colony of mixed lonians 
 and Dorians. To which of these families he belonged is not 
 certain. If we judged by the internal evidence of his poems, 
 we should call him an Ionian ; for they are distinguished by 
 voluptuous sweetness, with a dash of almost ^olian intensity. 
 Ibycus was a poet-errant, carrying his songs from state to state. 
 The beautiful story of the cranes who led to the discovery of 
 his murder at Corinth, though probably mythical, like that 
 of Arion's dolphin, illustrates the rude lives of these Greek 
 troubadours, and shows in what respect the sacer votes, servant 
 
TUB LYRIC POETS. 155 
 
 ot the Muses and beloved of Phoebus, was held by the people. 
 Ibycus was regarded by antiquity as a kind of male Sappho. 
 His odes, composed for birthday festivals and banquets, were 
 dedicated chiefly to the praise of beautiful youths ; and the 
 legends which adorned them, like those of Ganymede or 
 Tithonus, were appropriate to the erotic style. Aristophanes, 
 in the Thesmophoriazusce, makes Agathon connect him with 
 Anacreon and Alcseus, as the three refiners of language. It is 
 clear, therefore, that in his art Ibycus adapted the manner of 
 Dorian poetry to the matter of .^olian or Ionian love-chants. 
 Of his poetry we have but few fragments. The following seems 
 to strike the keynote of his style : " Love once again looking 
 upon me from his cloud-black brows, with languishing glances, 
 drives me by enchantments of all kinds to the endless nets of 
 Cypris : verily I tremble at his onset, as a chariot-horse, who 
 hath won prizes, in old age goes grudgingly to try his speed in 
 the swift race of cars." In another piece he compares the 
 onset of Love to a downrush of the Thracian north wind armed 
 with lightning. This fragment, numbered first in Bergk's Col- 
 lection, is taken from Athenseus, who quotes it to prove the 
 vehement emotion of the poet : — 
 
 " In spring Cydonian apple-trees, 
 Watered by fountains ever flowing 
 Through crofts unmown of maiden goddesses, 
 And young vines 'neath the shade 
 Of shooting tendrils, tranquilly are growing. 
 Meanwhile for me Love never laid 
 In slumber, like a north-wind glowing ' 
 
 With Thracian lightnings, still doth dart 
 Blood-parching madness on my heart, 
 From Kupris hurtling, stormful, wild. 
 Lording the man as erst the child." 
 
 It is interesting to compare the different metaphors 
 whereby the early lyrists imaged the assaults of the Love-God. 
 Sappho describes him in one place as a youth arrayed with 
 a flame-coloured chlamys descending from heaven ; in another 
 
156 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 she calls him "a limb-dissolving, bitter-sweet, impracticable 
 wild beast ; " again, she compares the state of her soul under 
 the influence of love to oak-trees torn and shaken by a moun- 
 tain whirlwind. Anacreon paints a fine picture of Love like 
 a blacksmith, forging his soul and tempering it in icy torrents. 
 The dubious winged figure armed with a heavy sword, which 
 is carved upon the recently-discovered column from the 
 Temple of Ephesus, if he be the Love-God, and not, as some 
 conjecture, Death, seems to have been conceived in the spirit 
 of these energetic metaphors. The Greeks, at the period of 
 Anacreon and Ibycus, were far from having as yet imagined 
 the baby Cupid of Moschus, the Epigrammatists, and the 
 Alexandrian Anacreontics. He was still a terrible and passion- 
 stirring power — no mere malicious urchin coming by night 
 with drenched wings and unstnmg bow to reward the poet's 
 hospitality by wounding him ; no naughty boy who runs away 
 from his mother and steals honeycombs, no bee-like elf asleep 
 in rosebuds. 
 
 Simonides is a far more brilliant representative than Ibycus, 
 both of Greek choral poetry in its prime, and also of the whole 
 literary life of Hellas during the period which immediately 
 preceded and followed the Persian war. He was bom in the 
 island of Ceos, of pure Ionian blood and breeding ; but the 
 lonians of Ceos were celebrated for their aio<ppoavir) (reserve, 
 or self-restraint), a quality strongly marked in the poems of 
 Simonides. In his odes we do not trace that mixture of 
 .^olian passion and that concentration upon personal emotions 
 which are noticeable in those of Ibycus, but rather-a Dorian 
 solemnity of thought and feeling, qualifying Simonides for the 
 arduous functions to which he was called, of commemorating 
 in elegy and epigram and funeral ode the achievements of 
 Hellas against Persia. Simonides belonged to a family of pro- 
 fessional poets ; for the arts among the early Greeks were 
 hereditary; a father taught the trade qf flute-playing and 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 157 
 
 chorus-leading aud verse-making to his son, who, if he had 
 
 original genius, became a great poet, as was the fate of Pindar ; 
 
 or, if he were endowed with commonplace abilities, remained 
 
 a journeyman in art without discredit to himself, performing 
 
 useful functions in his native place.* Simonides exercised 
 
 his calling of chorus-teacher at Carthsea in Ceos, and lived at 
 
 the ^opriytiov, or resort of the chorus, near the temple of 
 
 Apollo. But the greater portion of his life, after he had 
 
 attained celebrity, was passed with patrons, — with Hipparchus, 
 
 who invited him to Athens, where he dwelt at amity with 
 
 Anacreon, and at enmity with Pindar's master Lasos — with the 
 
 Scopads and Aleuads of Thessaly, for whom he composed 
 
 the most touching threnoi and the most brilliant panegyrics, 
 
 of which fragments have descended to us ; — finally, v/ith 
 
 Hiero of Syracuse, who honoured him exceedingly, and when 
 
 he died, consigned him to the earth with princely funeral 
 
 pomp. The relations of Simonides to these patrons may be 
 
 gathered from numerous slight indications, none of which are 
 
 very honourable to his character. For instance, after receiving 
 
 the hospitality of Hipparchus, he composed an epigram for 
 
 the statue of Harmodius, in which he calls the murder of the 
 
 tyrant " a great hght rising upon Athens.'' Again, he praised 
 
 the brutal Scopas, son of Creon, in an ode which is celebrated, 
 
 both as being connected with the most dramatic incident in the 
 
 poet's life, and also as having furnished Plato with a theme for 
 
 argument, and Aristotle with an ethical quotation—" To be a 
 
 good man in very truth, a square without blame, is hard." This 
 
 * The Dramatic art was hereditary among the Athenians. .(Eschylus 
 left a son, Euphorion, and two nephews, Philocles and Astydamas, who 
 produced tragedies. The last is reported to have written no fewer than 
 two hundred and forty plays. lophon the son and Sophocles the grandson 
 of the great Sophocles were dramatists of some repute at Athens. Euri- 
 pides had a nephew of his own name, and Aristophanes two sons who 
 followed the same calling. It is only from families like the Bachs that we 
 can draw any modern parallel to this transmission of an art from father to 
 son in the same race. 
 
158 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 proposition Plato discusses in the Protagoras, while Aristotle 
 cites the phrase, rtrpaywj'oe aviv 4'oyov (four-square without 
 fault). From the general tenour of the fragments of this ode, 
 from Plato's criticism, and from what is known about the 
 coarse nature of Scopas, who is being praised, we must con- 
 jecture that Simonides attempted to whitewash his patron's 
 character by depreciating the standard of morality. With 
 Ionian facility and courtly compliment, he made excuses for 
 a bad man by pleading that perfect goodness was unattainable. 
 Scopas refused to pay the price required by Simonides for 
 the poem in question, telling him to get half of it from the 
 Dioscuri, who had also been eulogised. This was at a banquet. 
 While the king was laughing at his own rude jest, a servant 
 whispered to the poet that two goodly youths waited with- 
 out, desiring earnestly to speak with him. Simonides left the 
 palace, but found no one. Even as he stood looking for 
 his visitors, he heard the crash of beams and the groans of 
 dying men. Scopas with his guests had been destroyed by the 
 falling of the roof, and Simonides had received a godlike 
 guerdon from the two sons of Tyndareus. This story belongs, 
 perhaps, to the same class as the cranes of Ibycus and 
 the dolphin of Arion. Yet there seems to be no doubt that 
 the Scopad dynasty was suddenly extinguished ; for we hear 
 nothing of them at the time of the Persian war, and we know 
 that Simonides composed a threnos for the family. 
 
 The most splendid period of the life of Simonides was that 
 which he passed at Athens during the great wars with Persia. 
 Here he was the friend of Miltiades, Themistocles, and Pausa- 
 nias. Here he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Ther- 
 mopylae, Salamis, Platsea — poems not destined to be merely 
 sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble 
 or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works 
 of the noblest architects and statuaries. The genius of Simo- 
 nides is unique in this branch of monumental poetry. His 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. 159 
 
 couplets — calm, simple, terse, strong as the deeds they cele- 
 brate, enduring as the brass or stone which they adorned — 
 animated succeeding generations of Greek patriots ; they were 
 transferred to the brains of statesmen like Pericles and Demos- 
 thenes, inscribed upon the fleshy tablets of the hearts of war- 
 riors like Cleomenes, Pelopidas, Epaminondas. We are thrice 
 fortunate in possessing the entire collection of these epigrams, 
 unrivalled for the magnitude of the events they celebrate, and 
 for the circumstances under which they were composed. When 
 we reflect what would have become of the civilization of the 
 world but for these Greek victories — when we remember that 
 the events which these few couplets record, transcend in im- 
 portance those of any other single period of history — we are 
 almost appalled by the contrast between the brevity of the 
 epigrams and the world-wide vastness of their matter. In 
 reviewing the life of Simonides, after admitting that he was 
 greedy of gain and not adverse to flattery, we are bound to con- 
 fess that, as a poet, he proved himself adequate to the age 
 of Marathon and Salamis. He was the voice of Hellas — the 
 genius of Fame, sculpturing upon her brazen shield with a pen 
 of adamant, in austere letters of indelible gold, the achieve- 
 ments to which the whole world owes its civilization. Happy 
 poet ! Had ever any other man so splendid a heritage of 
 song allotted to him ? 
 
 In style Simonides is always pure and exquisitely polished. 
 The ancients called him the sweet poet — Melicertes^*ar ex- 
 cellence. His (ToiippoiTvvr], or tempered self-restraint, gives , a 
 mellow tone not merely to his philosophy and moral precepts, 
 but also to his art. He has none of Pindar's rugged majesty, 
 volcanic force, gorgeous exuberance : he does not, like Pindar, 
 pour forth an inexhaustible torrent of poetical ideas, chafing 
 against each other in the eddies of breathless inspiration. On 
 the contrary, he works up a few thoughts, a few carefully selected 
 images, with patient skill, producing a perfectly harmonious 
 
i6o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 result, but one which is always bordering on the commonplace. 
 Like all correct poets, he is somewhat tame, though tender, 
 delicate, and exquisitely beautiful. Pindar electrifies his hearer, 
 seizing him like the eagle in Dante's vision, and bearing him 
 breathless through the ether of celestial flame. Simonides 
 leads us by the hand along the banks of pleasant rivers, through 
 laurel groves, and by the porticos of sunny temples. What he 
 possesses of quite peculiar to his own genius is pathos — the 
 pathos of romance. This appears most remarkably in the 
 fragment of a threnos which describes Danae afloat upon the 
 waves at night.* ' It is with the greatest diffidence that I offer 
 a translation of what remains one of the most perfect pieces of 
 pathetic poetry in any literature : — 
 
 ' ' When, in the carven chest. 
 The winds that blew and waves in wild unrest 
 Smote her with fear, she, not with cheeks unwet. 
 Her arms of love round Perseus set, 
 
 And said : O child, what grief is mine ! 
 But thou dost slumber, and thy baby breast 
 Is sunk in rest, 
 
 Here in the cheerless brass-bound bark, 
 Tossed amid starless night and pitchy dark. 
 
 Nor dost thou heed the scudding brine 
 Of waves that wash above thy curls so deep, 
 Nor the shrill winds that sweep, — 
 Lapped in thy purple robe's embrace, 
 Fair little face ! 
 
 * Mr. Mahafify, in a note to p. lOO of his Social Life in Greece, takes 
 for granted that the " great fragment " alluded to above had escaped my 
 notice, and corrects me for my error of omission. This shows that he had 
 not read my chapter on the Lyric Poets with attention. I have known the 
 Song of Danae by heart ever since I could read Greek for pleasure ; and 
 what prevented me in my first edition from introducing an English version 
 of it after the sentence above, was the same motive that caused me to 
 exclude all translations of Sappho — profound reverence. The Greek is so 
 familiar to scholars that it would have been superfluous to reprint it. No 
 English rendering satisfied me. What I have now inserted in the text, is 
 an old attempt of my own to reproduce the meaning of Simonides. 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. l6i 
 
 But if this dread were dreadful too to thee, 
 Then wouldst thou lend thy listening ear to me ; 
 Therefore I cry, — Sleep babe, and sea be still, 
 And slumber our unmeasured iU ! 
 
 Oh, may some change of fate, sire Zeus, from thee 
 Descend, our woes to end ! 
 But if this prayer, too overbold, offend 
 Thy justice, yet be merciful to me ! " 
 
 The careful development of simple thoughts in Simonides 
 may best be illustrated by the fragment on the three hundred 
 Spartans who died at Thermopylae : — 
 
 " Of those who died at Thermopylae glorious is the fate and fair the 
 doom ; their grave is an altar ; instead of lamentation, they have endless 
 fame ; their dirge is a chant of praise. Such winding-sheet as theirs no 
 i-ust, no, nor all-conquering time, shaU bring to nought. But this sepulchre 
 of brave men hath taken for its habitant the glory of Hellas. Leonidas 
 is witness, Sparta's Icing, who hath left a mighty crown of valour and 
 undying fame." 
 
 The antitheses are wrought with consummate skill j the fate of 
 the heroes is glorious, their doom honourable : so far the eulogy 
 is commonplace ; then the same thought receives a bolder 
 turn : their grave is an altar. We do not lament for them so 
 much as hold them in eternal memory ; our very songs of 
 sorrow become paeans of praise. What follows is a still further 
 expansion of the leading theme : rust and time cannot affect 
 their fame ; Hellas confides her glory to their tomb. Then 
 generalities are quitted ; and Leonidas, the protagonist of 
 Thermopylae, appears. 
 
 In his threnoi Simonides has generally recourse to the 
 common grounds of consolation, which the Ionian elegists 
 repeat ad nausemn, dwelling . upon the shortness and uncer- 
 tainty and ills of life, and tending rather to depress the survivors 
 on their own account than to comfort them for the dead.* In 
 
 * The reputation gained by Simonides among the ancients for the 
 sorrow of his song is proved by the phrase of Catullus, — " Moestius lach- 
 rymis Simonideis " (more sad than tears shed by Simonides). 
 
 M 
 
i62 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 one he says, " Short is the strength of men, and vain are all 
 their cares, and in their brief Hfe trouble follows upon trouble \ 
 and death, that no man shuns, is hung above our heads — for 
 him both good and bad share equally." It is impossible, while 
 reading this lachrymose lament, to forget the fragment of that 
 mighty threnos of Pindar's which sounds like a trumpet-blast 
 for immortality, and, trampling under feet the glories of this 
 world, reveals the gladness of the souls who have attained 
 Elysium : — 
 
 " For them the night all through, 
 
 In that broad realm below, 
 The splendour of the sun spreads endless light ; 
 
 'Mid rosy meadows bright. 
 Their city of the tombs with incense-trees, 
 
 And golden chalices 
 
 Qi flowers, and fruitage fair, 
 
 Scenting the breezy air, 
 Is laden. There with horses and with play, 
 With games and lyres, they while the hours away. 
 
 " On erery side around 
 Pure happiness is found. 
 With all the blooming beauty of the world ; 
 
 There fragrant smoke, upcurled 
 From altars where the blazing fire is dense 
 With perfumed frankincense. 
 Burned unto gods in heaven. 
 Through all the land is driven. 
 Making its pleasant place odorous 
 With scented gales and sweet airs amorous.'' i 
 
 I 
 What has been said about Simonides applies! in a great 
 measure also to Bacchyhdes, who was his nephewl, pupil, and 
 faithful follower. The personality of Bacchylidesi as a man 
 and a poet, is absorbed in that of his uncle — the g^eater^bard, 
 the more distinguished actor on the theatre of the world. While 
 Simonides played his part in public life, Bacchylides gave him- 
 self up to the elegant pleasures of society ; Vhile Simonides 
 celebrated in epigrams the military glorieg^^ of the Greeks, 
 
THE LYRIC POETS. . 163 
 
 Bacchylides wrote wine-songs and congratulatory odes." His 
 descriptions of Bacchic intoxication and of the charms of peace 
 display the same careful word-painting as the description by 
 Simonides of Orpheus, with more luxuriance of sensual sug- 
 gestion. His threnoi exhibit the same Ionian despondency 
 and resignation — a dead settled calm, an elegant stolidity of 
 epicureanism. That this excellent, if somewhat languid, 
 lyrist may receive his due meed of attention, I have selected 
 his most important fragment, the Praise of Peace, for transla- 
 tion (Bergk, vol. iii. p. 1230) : — 
 
 " To mortal men Peace giveth these good things : 
 Wealth, and the flowers of honey-throated song ; 
 The flame that springs 
 On carven altars from fat sheep and kine, 
 Slain to the gods in heaven ; and, all day long, 
 Games for glad youths, and flutes, and wreaths, and circling wine. 
 Then in the steely shield swart spiders weave 
 Their web and dusky woof : 
 
 Rust to the pointed spear and sword doth cleave ; 
 The brazen trump sounds no alarms ; 
 Nor is sleep harried from our eyes aloof. 
 But with sweet rest my bosom warms : 
 The streets are thronged with lovely men and young. 
 And hymns in praise of boys like flames to heaven are flung." 
 
 The tone common to Simonides and Bacchylides in funeral 
 poems will be illustrated by the four following fragments : * — 
 
 " Being a man, say not what comes to-morrow, 
 Nor, seeing one in bliss, how long 'twill last ; ' 
 
 For wide-winged fly was ne'er of flight so fast 
 As change to sorrow. ■ 
 
 " Nay, not those elder men, who lived of yore. 
 Of sceptred gods the half-immortal seed. 
 Not even they to prosperous old age wore 
 A life from pain and death and danger freed. 
 
 * See Bergk, vol. iii. pp. 1128, 1129, 1132, 1227. 
 M 2 
 
i64 , THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 " Short is the strength of men, and vain their trouble, 
 Through their brief age sorrows on son-ows double ; 
 O'er each and all hangs death escaped by none ; 
 Of him both good and bad an equal lot have won. 
 
 " For mortal men not to be bom is best, 
 Nor e'er to see the bright beams of the day ; 
 Since, as life rolls away, 
 No man that breathes was ever alway blest." 
 
 Here we must stop short in the front of Pindar — the Hamlet 
 among these lesser actors, the Shakspere among a crowd of 
 inferior poets. To treat of Greek lyrical poetry and to omit 
 Pindar is a paradox in action. Yet Pindar is so colossal, so 
 much apart, that he deserves a separate study, and cannot be 
 dragged in at the end of a bird's-eye view of a period of lite- 
 rature. At the time of Pindar poetry was sinking into man- 
 nerism. He by the force of his native originality gave it a 
 wholly fresh direction, and created a style as novel as it was- 
 inimitable. Like some high mountain-peak, upon the border- 
 land of plain and lesser hills, he stands alone, sky-piercing and 
 tremendous in his solitary strength. 
 
i6s 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PINDAR. 
 
 His Life. — Legends connected with Him. — The Qualities of his Poetry.,- — 
 The Olympic Games. — Pindar's Professional Character. — His Mora- 
 lity. — His Religious Belief. — Doctrine of a Future State. — Rewards 
 and Punishments. — The Structure of his Odes. — The Proemia to his 
 Odes. — His Difficulty and Tumidity of Style. 
 
 Pindar, in spite of, his great popularity among the Greeks, 
 offers no exception to the rule that we know but little of 
 the lives of the illustrious poets and artists of the world. His 
 parents belonged to the town of Cynoscephalse ; but Pindar 
 himself resided at Thebes, and spoke of Thebes as his 
 native place — Qy\^a. fiarep i/xa. That his father was called 
 Daiphantus appears tolerably certain ; and we may fix the 
 date of his birth at about 522 B.C. He lived to the age of 
 seventy-nine ; so that the flourishing period of his life exactly 
 coincides with the great Persian struggle, in which he lived 
 to see Hellas victorious. He had three children — a son, 
 Daiphantus, and two daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. 
 His family was among the noblest and most illustrious of 
 Thebes, forming a branch of the ancient house of the ^geidss, 
 who settled both at Thebes arid Sparta in heroic times, and 
 offshoots from whom were colonists of Thera and Cyrene. 
 Thus many of the heroes , celebrated by Pindar, and many 
 of the illustrious men to whom he dedicates his odes, were of 
 his own kin. Genius for the art seems to have been here- 
 : <iitary in the family of Pindar, as it was in that of Stesichoru^ 
 
1 56 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and of Simonides : therefore, when the youth showed an 
 aptitude for poetry, his father readily acceded to his wishes, 
 and sent him to Athens to learn the art of composing for 
 the chorus from Lasos, the then famous but now forgotten 
 antagonist of the bard of Ceos. Before his twentieth year, 
 Pindar returned to Thebes and took, it is said, instruction 
 from the poetesses Myrtis and Corinna. To this period of his 
 artistic career belongs the oft-told tale, according to which 
 Corinna bade her pupil interweave myths with his panegyrics, 
 and when, following her advice, he produced an ode in which 
 he had exhausted all the Theban legends, told him 73 x^'P' 
 ZCiv aweipEiv, a\\a fxfi oXw tu OuXaicy, that one ought to SOW 
 with the hand and not with the whole sack. Against both 
 Myrtis and Corinna, Pindar entered the lists of poetical 
 contest Corinna is reported to have beaten him five times, 
 and never to have been vanquished by her more illustrious 
 rival. Pausanias hints that she owed her victories to her 
 beauty, and to the fact that she wrote in a broad .^olic 
 dialect, more suited to the ears of her judges than Pindar's 
 Doric style. The same circumstance w^hich ensured her this 
 temporary triumph may have caused her ultimate neglect 
 The fragment we possess of Corinna — 
 
 iirt ^dva (j}ova^ e0a Tlividpoio ttot' epiv, 
 
 " I blame the clear-voiced Myrtis for that, a woman, she con- 
 tended against Pindar," is curiously at variance with her own 
 practice. Its ^olisms prove how local and provincial her 
 language must have been. 
 
 The history of Pindar's life is the record of his poetical 
 compositions. He was essentially a professional artist, taking 
 no active part in politics, and studying to perfect his poetry 
 all through the perilous days of Salamis and Platsea — like 
 Michael Angelo, wl^o went on modelling and hewing through 
 
PINDAR. i6j 
 
 the sack of Rome, the fall of Florence, the decline of Italian 
 freedom, with scarce a word to prove the anguish of his patriot 
 souli Pindar, unlike his fellow- countrymen, did not side with 
 the Persians, but felt enthusiasm for Athens, the ipuaixa 
 "EWaSos (buttress of Hellas), as he calls her in a dithyramb * 
 (fr. 4). For this he was made Proxenos of Athens, and re- 
 ceived a present of 10,000 drachmas. It is said that the 
 Thebans fined him for his implied reflections upon them, and 
 that Athens paid the debt. These facts, if true, testify to the 
 post of honour which a mighty poet occupied in Hellas, when 
 the vox et praterea nihil of a bard, inspired indeed by muses, 
 but dependent on a patron for his bread, was listened to with 
 such jealous ears by the rulers of great cities. The last 
 Isthmian ode sTiows in what a noble spirit Pindar felt the 
 dangers of Hellas during her deadly strife with Persia, and 
 how he could scarcely breathe for anxiety until the stone of 
 Tantalus suspended over her had been arrested. In the 
 Proemium he says : — 
 
 " For Cleander and his prime of beauty let some one, O ye youths, 
 bear the glorious meed of toil to the splendid portals of his sire Telesarchus, 
 the revel-song, which pays him for his Isthmian victory and for his might 
 in Nemean games. For him I too, though grieved in soul, am asked to 
 call upon the golden muse. Freed as we are from mighty griefs, let us not 
 fall into the bereavement of victorious crowns, nor nurse our cares : but 
 ceasing from vain sorrows, spread we honeyed song abroad thus after our 
 great trouble ; forasmuch as of a truth some god hath turned aside the 
 stone of Tantalus which hung above our lieads — intolerable suffering for 
 Hellas. Me verily the passing away of dread hath cured not of all care ; 
 yet it is ever better to notice what is present ; for treacherous time is hung 
 above the lives of men, rolling the torrent of their days. Still, with 
 freedom on our side, men can cure even these evils ; and it is our duty to 
 attend to wholesome hope." 
 
 Pindar passed his time chiefly at Thebes, where his home 
 was. But he also visited the different parts of Greece, fre- 
 quently staying . at Delphi, where the iron chair on which 
 
 * This and all references are made to Bergk's text of Pindar. 
 
i68 THE. GREEK POETS. 
 
 he sat and sang was long preserved; and also journeying 
 to the houses of his patrons — Hiero of Syracuse, and pre- 
 sumably Theron of Agrigentum, and perhaps, too, Alexander' 
 of Macedon. Olympia must have often received him as a 
 guest, as well as the island of ^gina, where he had many 
 friends. Odes were sent by him to Cyrene, to Ceos, to 
 Rhodes — on what tablets, we may wonder, adorned with 
 what caligraphy from Pindar's stylus, in what casket worthy 
 of the man who loved magnificence ? The Rhodians inscribed 
 his seventh Olympian — the most radiant panegyric of the sea- 
 bom isle of Helios — in letters of gold on the walls of their 
 temple of the Lindian Athene. In the midst of his artistic 
 labours, and while serving many patrons, Pindar, as we shall 
 see, preserved his dignity and loftiness of moral character. 
 
 Pindar is said to have died in the theatre at Argos, in the 
 arms of Theoxenos, a youth whom he loved passionately, and 
 whom he has praised in the most sublime strains for his beauty 
 in a Scolion, the fragment of which we possess.* Anacreon . 
 choked by a grape-stone, Sophocles breathing out his life to- 
 gether with the pathetic lamentations of Antigone, ^schylus 
 killed on the sea-shore by the eagle whose flight he had 
 watched, Empedocles committing his fiery but turbid spirit to 
 the flames of Etna, Sappho drowning her sorrows in the surf 
 of the Leucadian sea, Ibycus, the poet-errant, murdered by 
 land robbers, Euripides torn to pieces like his own Pentheus, 
 Archilochus honoured in his death by an oracle that cursed 
 his battle-foe, Pindar amid the plaudits of the theatre sinking 
 back into the arms of his Theoxenos and djdng in a noon- 
 tide blaze of glory— these are the appropriate and dramatic 
 endings which the. literary gossips among the Greeks, always 
 inventively ingenious, ascribed to some of their chief poets. 
 Se non son vert, son ben trovati. 
 
 * See above, p. 133. 
 
PINDAR. 169 
 
 Some purely legendary details show the estimation in which 
 Pindar was held by his countrymen. Multitudes of bees are 
 said to have settled on his lips when he was an infant. Pan 
 chose a hymn of his and sang it on the mountains, honouring 
 a mortal poet with his divine voice. The Mother of the gods 
 took up her dwelling at his door. Lastly, we have the famous 
 story of the premonition of his death in dreams — a legend of 
 peculiar significance, when we remember that Pindar, like Sir 
 Thomas Browne, believed that " we are more than ourselves 
 in our sleep," and wrote : 
 
 " All by happy fate attain 
 
 The end that frees them from their pain ; 
 
 And the body yields to death, 
 
 But the shape of vital breath 
 
 Still in life continueth ; 
 
 It alone is heaven's conferring : 
 
 Sleeps it vifhen the limbs are stirring., 
 But when they sleep, in many dreams it shows 
 The coming consummation both of joys and woes." * 
 
 Just before his death, then, Pindar sent to inquire of the ~ 
 oracle of Ammon what was best for manj and the answer, 
 which he had already himself anticipated in his commemoration 
 of Trophonius and Agamedes, was — Death. Meanwhile Perse- 
 phone appeared to him in his sleep, and told him that he 
 should praise her in her own realm, although on earth he had 
 left her, alone of the blest gods, unsung. Ten days afterwards 
 he died. The hymn which Pindar composed for Persephone 
 in Hades, was dictated to a Theban woman by his ghost — so 
 runs the tale — and written down. After his death, Pindar 
 received more than heroic honours. They kept his iron chair 
 at Delphi ; and the priest of Phoebus, before he shut the 
 temple gates, cried, " Let Pindar tjie poet go into the banquet 
 of the god." At Athens his statue was erected at the public 
 
 * Translated by Conington, from Fragment ii. of Dirges. 
 
170 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 cost. At Thebes his house was spared in the ruin of two 
 sieges : — 
 
 "Lift not thy spear against the Muse's bower ; 
 The great Emathian conqueror bid spare 
 The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
 Went to the ground." 
 
 At Rhodes, as we have seen, an ode of his was sculptured on 
 the temple walls of Pallas. Throughout the future, as long as 
 Greek poetry endured, he was known emphatically by the title 
 of 6 Xvpiicfic. 
 
 Pindar was famous, as these semi-mythical stories about his 
 infancy and old age indicate, for piety. Unlike Horace, who 
 calls himself Parais deorum cultor et infrequens, Pindar was a 
 devout and steadfast servant of his country's gods. He dedi- 
 cated a shrine or fMarpwoi' near his own house to the Mother 
 of the gods, a statue to Zeus Ammon in Libya, and one to 
 Hermes in the Theban agora. The whole of his poetry is 
 impregnated with a lively sense of the divine in the world. 
 Accepting the religious traditions of his ancestors with simple 
 faith, he adds more of spiritual severity and of mystical morality 
 than we find in Homer. Yet he is not superstitious or credu- 
 lous. He can afford to criticise the Myths like Xenophanes 
 and Plato, refusing to believe that a blessed god could be a 
 glutton. In Pindar indeed we see the fine flower of Hellenic 
 religion, free from slavish subservience to creeds and cere- 
 monies, capable of extracting sublime morality from mythical 
 legends, and adding to the old glad joyousness of the Homeric 
 faith a deeper and more awful perception of superhuman mys- 
 teries. The philosophical scepticism which in Greece, after 
 the age of Pericles, corroded both the fabric of mythology and 
 the indistinct doctrines of theological monotheism, had scarcely 
 yet begun to act. 
 
 Passing to the poetry of Pindar, we have a hard task before 
 us What can be said adequate to such a theme ? What can 
 
PINDAR. 171 
 
 be left unsaid of the many thoughts that ought to be expressed ? 
 At the time of Pindar's youth, lyrical poetry in Greece was 
 sinking into maflnerism. He, by the force of his originality, 
 gave it a wholly new direction, and, coming last of the great 
 Dorian lyrists, taught posterity what sort of thing an ode should 
 be. The grand pre-eminence of Pindar as an artist was due 
 in a great measure to his personality. Frigid, austere, and 
 splendid ; not genial like that of Simonides, not passionate 
 like that of Sappho, not acrid like that of Archilochus ; hard 
 as adamant, rigid in moral iirmness, glittering with the strong 
 keen light of snow ; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent; — the 
 unique personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influ- 
 ence, so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophd of his odes. 
 In his isolation and elevation Pindar stands like some fabled 
 heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from afar, girdled at the 
 base with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed round 
 with steam and vapour, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline 
 into cold blue ether. Few things that have life dare to visit 
 him at his grand altitude. Glorious with sunlight and with 
 stars, touched by rise and set of day with splendour, he shines 
 when other lesser heights are dulled. Pindar among his peers 
 is solitary. He had no communion with the poets of his day. 
 He is the eagle; Simonides and Bacchylides are jackdaws. 
 He soars to the empyrean ; they haunt the valley mists. 
 Noticing this rocky, barren, severe, glittering solitude of 
 Pindar's soul, critics have not unfrequently complained that 
 his poems are devoid of individual interest. Possibly they 
 have failed to comprehend and appreciate the nature of this 
 sublime and distant genius, whose character, in truth, is just 
 as marked as that of Dante or of Michael Angelo. 
 
 Since I have indulged in one metaphor in the vain attempt 
 to enter into some rapport with Pindar, let me proceed to illus- 
 trate the Pindaric influence — the impression produced by a 
 sympathetic study of his odes upon the imagination saturated 
 
172 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 with all that is peculiar in his gorgeous style — ^by the deliberate 
 expansion of some similes, which are by no means mere orna- 
 ments of rhetoric, bu,t illustrations carefully selected from the 
 multitude of images forced upon the mind diu-ing a detailed 
 perusal of his poetry. One of the common names for Pindar 
 is the Theban Eagle. This supphes us with the first image, 
 which may be conveyed in the very words, of Dante : * 
 
 "In dreams I seemed to see an eagle hovering in air on wings of gold, 
 with pinions spread and ready to swoop. I thought I was on the spot 
 where Ganymede was taken from his comrades and borne aloft to the celestial 
 consistory. I pondered — peradventure the great bird only strikes this hill 
 and peradventure scorns to snatch elsewhere his prey. Then it seemed to 
 me that, after wheeling a while, it swooped, terrible like lightning, and 
 caught me up into the sphere of flame ; and there I thought that it and I 
 both burned ; and so fiercely did the fire in my imagination blaze, that 
 sleep no longer could endure, but broke." 
 
 This simile describes the rapidity and fierceness of Pindar's 
 spirit, the atmosphere of empyreal splendour into which he 
 bears us with strong wings and clinging talons. Another 
 image may be borrowed from Horace, t who says, 
 
 ' ' Fervet immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus or e ; " 
 
 likening the poet to a torrent, unrestrained, roaring to the 
 woods and precipices with a thunderous voice. This image 
 does not, like the other, fix our attention upon the quaUty 
 peculiar to Pindar among all the poets of the world — splen- 
 dour, fire, the blaze of pure effulgence. But it does suggest 
 another characteristic, which is the stormy violence of his 
 song, that chafes within its hmits and seems unable to advance 
 
 * Purg., ix. 19. 
 
 t Carm. , iv. 2. Translated thus by Conington : 
 
 " Pindar, lilpe torrent from the steep 
 Which, swollen with rain, its banks o'erflows, 
 With mouth unfathomably deep, 
 Foams, thunders, glows." 
 
PINDAR. 175 
 
 quickly enough in spite of its speed. This violence of Pindar's 
 style, as of some snow-swollen Alpine stream, the hungry Arve 
 or death-cold Lutschine, leaping and raging among granite 
 boulders, has misled Horace into the notion that Pindar's 
 odes are without metrical structure : 
 
 ' ' numerisque fertur 
 Lege solutis : " 
 
 whereas we know that, while pursuing his eagle-flight to the 
 sun, or thundering along his torrent-path, Pindar steadily 
 observed the laws of Stroph^ Antistrophd, and Epode with 
 consummate art. A third figure may be chosen from Pindar* 
 himself. 
 
 " As when a man takes from his wealthy hand a goblet foaming with 
 the dew of the grape, and gives it with healths and pledges to his youthful 
 son-in-law to bear from one home to the other home, golden, the crown of 
 his possessions, gracing the feast and glorifying his kinsman, and makes 
 him in the eyes of the assembled friends to be admired for his harmonious 
 wedlock : so I, sending outpoured nectar, the Muse's gift, to conquering 
 heroes, the sweet fruit of the soul, greet them like gods, victors at Olympia 
 and Pytho." 
 
 Then too he adds : " With the lyre and with the various voices 
 of flutes + I have come with Diagoras across the sea, chanting 
 the wave-born daughter of the Cyprian goddess and the bride 
 of Helios, island Rhodes." In this passage we get a lively im- 
 pression of some of the marked qualities of Pindar. Reading 
 his poetry is like quaffing wine that bubbles in a bowl of gold. 
 Then too there is the picture of the poet, gorgeously attired, 
 with his singing robes about him, erect- upon the prow of a 
 gilded galley, floating through dazzling summer-waves toward 
 the island of his love, Rhodes, or Sicily, or ^gina. The lyre 
 and the flute send their clear sounds across the sea. We pass 
 
 * 7th 01. 
 
 t Compare this with the passage in Pythian, iii. 68, where Pindar 
 describes himself 'loylai/ -rkfuiav BiKairaav. 
 
174 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 temple and citadel on shore and promontory. The banks of 
 oars sweep the flashing brine. Meanwhile the mighty poet 
 stretches forth his golden cup of song to greet the princes and 
 illustrious athletes who await him on the marble quays. Read- 
 ing Pindar is a progress of this pompous kind. Pindar, as one 
 of his critics remarks, was bom and reared in splendour : 
 splendour became his vital atmosphere. The epithet (fiiXayXaoe, 
 which he gives to Girgenti, suits himself. The splendour- 
 loving Pindar is his name and title for all time. If we search 
 the vocabulary of Pindar to find what phrases are most fre- 
 quently upon his lips, we shall be struck with the great pre- 
 ponderance of all words that indicate radiance, magnificence, 
 lustre. To Pindar's soul splendour was as elemental as har- 
 mony to Milton's. Of the graces, Aglaia must have, been his 
 favourite. Nor, love as he did the gorgeousness of wealth, 
 was it mere transitory pomp, the gauds and trappings of the 
 world, which he admired. There must be something to stir 
 the depths of his soul— beauty of person, or perfection of art, 
 or moral radiance, or ideal grandeur. The blaze of real mag- 
 nificence draws him as the sun attracts the eagle ; he does not 
 flit moth -like about the glimmer of mere ephemeral lights. 
 
 After these three figures, which illustrate the fiery flight, the 
 torrent-fulness, the intoxicating charm of Pindar, one remains 
 by which the magnetic force and tumult of his poetry may be 
 faintly adumbrated. He who has watched a sunset attended 
 ■ by the passing of a thunderstorm in the outskirts of the Alps, 
 who has seen the distant ranges of the mountains alternately 
 obscured by cloud and blazing with the concentrated brightness 
 of the sinking sun, while drifting scuds of hail and rain, tawny 
 with sunlight, glistening with broken rainbows, clothe peak 
 and precipice and forest in the golden veil of flame-irradiated 
 vapour — who has heard the thunder bellow in the thwarting 
 folds of hills, and watched the lightning, like a snake's tongue, 
 flicker at .intervals amid gloom and glory — knows in Nature's 
 
PINDAR, 175 
 
 language what Pindar teaches with the voice of Art. It is only 
 by a strained metaphor like this that any attempt to reahze the 
 Sturm und Drang of Pindar's style can be communicated. In 
 plainer language, Pindar, as an artist, combines the strong 
 flight of the eagle, the irresistible force of the torrent, the 
 richness of Greek wine, the majestic pageantry of Nature in 
 one of her sublimer moods. 
 
 Like all the great lyrists of the Dorian School, Pindar com- 
 posed odes of various species — Hymns, Prosodia, Parthenia, 
 Threnoi, Scolia, Dithyrambs, as well as Epinikia. Of all but 
 the Epinikian Odes we have only inconsiderable fragments left ; 
 yet these are sublime and beautiful enough to justify us in 
 believing that Pindar surpassed his rivals in the Threnos and 
 the Scolion as far as in the Epinikian Ode. Forty-four of his 
 poems we possess entire — fourteen Olympians, twelve Pythians, 
 eleven Nemeans, seven Isthmians. Of the occasions which led 
 to the composition of these odes something must be said. 
 The 01)mipian games were held in Elis once in five years, 
 during the summer : their prize was a wreath of wild olive. 
 The Pythian games were held in spring, on the Crisseean plain, 
 once in five years : their prizes were a wreath of laurel and a 
 palm. The Nemean games were held in thegroves of Nemea, 
 near Cleonse, in Argolis, once in three years : their prize was a 
 wreath of parsley. The Isthmian games were held at Corinth, 
 once in three years : their prize was a wreath of pine, native 
 to the spot. The Olympian festival honoured Zeus ; that of 
 Pytho, Phoebus ; that of Nemea, Zeus ; that of the Isthmus, 
 Poseidon. Originally they were all of the nature of a Travr/yvpie 
 or national assembly at the shrine of some deity local to the 
 spot, or honoured there with more than ordinary reverence. 
 The Isthmian games in particular retained a special character. 
 Instituted for an Ionian deity, whose rites the men of Elis 
 refused to acknowledge, they failed to unite the whole Greek 
 race. The Greek games, like the Schwing-feste and shooting 
 
176 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 matches of Switzerland, served as recurring occasions of 
 reunion and fellowship. Their influence in preserving a Pan- 
 hellenic feeling was very marked. During the time of the feast, 
 and before and after, for a sufficient number of days to allow of 
 travellers journeying to and from Olympia and Delphi, hostilities 
 were suspended throughout Hellas ; safe-conduct was given 
 through all states to pilgrims. One common feeling animated all 
 the Greeks at these seasons : they met in rivalry, not of arms 
 on the battle-field, but of personal prowess in the lists. And 
 though the various families of the Hellenic stock were never 
 united, yet their games gave them a common object, and 
 tended to the diffusion of national ideas. 
 
 Let us pause to imagine the scene which the neighbourhood 
 of Olympia must have presented, as the great recurring festival 
 of the Greek race approached — a festival in the fullest sense 
 of the word popular, but at the same time consecrated by 
 religion, dignified by patriotic pride, adorned with Art. The 
 full blaze of summer is overhead ; plain and hill-side yield no 
 shade but what the spare branches of the olive and a few 
 spreading pines afford. Along the road throng pilgrims and 
 deputies, private persons journeying modestly, and public 
 ambassadors gorgeously equipped at the expense of their state. 
 Strangers from Sicily, or Gyrene, or Magna Grsecia, land from 
 galleys on the coast of Elis. Then there are the athletes with 
 their trainers — men who have been in rude exercise for the 
 prescribed ten months, and whose limbs are in the bloom of 
 manly or of boyish strength. Sages, like Gorgias, or Prodicus, 
 ■ or Protagoras, are on their way, escorted by bands of disciples, 
 eager to engage each other in debate beneath the porticos 
 of the Olympian Zeus. Thales or Anaxagoras arrives, big 
 with a new theory of the universe. Historians like Hero- 
 dotus are carrying their scrolls to read before assembled 
 Hellas., Epic poets and rhapsodes are furnished with tales 
 of heroes, freshly coined from their own brains, or conned 
 
PINDAR. 177 
 
 with care from Homer. Rich men bring chariots for racing 
 or display ; the more a man spends at Olympia, the- more 
 he honours his native city. Women, we need not doubt, are 
 also on the road — Hetairae from Corinth, and Cyprus, and 
 Ionia. Sculptors show models of their skill. Potters exhibit 
 new shapes of vases, with scrolls of honeysuckle wreathing 
 round the pictured image of some handsome boy, to attract the 
 eyes of buyers. Painters have their tablets and colours ready. 
 Apart from these more gay and giddy servants of the public 
 taste, are statesmen and diplomatists, plenipotentiaries de- 
 spatched to feel the pulse of Hellas, negotiators seeking 
 opportunities for safe discussion of the affairs of rival cities. 
 Every active brain, or curious eye, or wanton heart, or well- 
 trained limb, or skilful hand., or knavish wit may find its fit 
 employment here. A mediaeval pilgrimage to St. James of 
 Compostella or St. Thomas of Canterbury was nothing to this 
 exodus of wit in Greece. 
 
 As they approached Olympia, a splendid scene burst upon 
 the travellers' eyes — the plain of Elis, rich, deep-meadowed, 
 hoary with olive-trees. One cried to the other, There is the 
 hill of Cronion ! There is the grove of Altis ! Thither flows 
 Alpheus to the sea ! Those white and glittering statues are 
 the portraits of the victors ! That temple is the house of 
 everlasting Zeus ; beneath its roof sits the Thunderer of Phei- 
 dias ! Every step made the journey more exciting. By the 
 bed of the Alpheus, tawny in midsummer with dusty oleander- 
 blossoms, the pilgrims passed. At last they enter the pre- 
 cincts of Olympian Zeus : the sacred enclosure is alive with 
 men ; the statues among the trees are scarcely more wonder- 
 worthy in their glittering marble than are the bodies of the 
 athletes moving beneath them. The first preoccupation of 
 every Greek who visited Olympia was to see the statue of 
 Zeus. Not to have gazed upon this masterpiece of Pheidias 
 was, according to a Greek proverb, the unhappiness of life. In 
 
 N 
 
178 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 this, his greatest work, the Athenian sculptor touched the 
 highest point of art, and incarnated the most sublime concep- 
 tion of Greek rehgious thought. The god was seated on his- 
 throne ; but, even so, the image rose to the height of forty 
 feet, wrought of pure ivory and gold. At his feet stood figures 
 symbolical of victory in the Olympian games : among them 
 the portrait of Pantarkes, himself a victor, the youth whom 
 Pheidias loved. In designing his great statue the sculptor had 
 in mind those lines of Homer which describe Zeus nodding 
 his ambrosial locks, and shaking Olympus. That he had 
 succeeded in presenting to the eye all that the Greek race 
 could imagine of godlike power and holiness and peace, was 
 attested not only by the universal voice of Hellas, but also by 
 the Romans who gazed as conquerors upon the god, Lucius 
 Paulus ^milius, we are told, after the battle of Pydna, swept 
 Greece, and coming to Olympia, saw the Pheidian Zeus. He 
 shuddered, and exclaimed that he had set mortal eyes upon 
 the deity incarnate. Yet Paulus was a Roman trampling with 
 his legionaries the subject states of fallen Hellas. Cicero 
 proclaimed that Pheidias had copied nothing human, but had 
 carved the ideal image existing in an inspired mind. 
 
 Zeus, it must be remembered, was the supreme god of the 
 Aryan race, the purest divinity of the Greek cultus. He was 
 called Father, Sire of gods and men. Therefore his presence 
 in the Panhellenic temple was peculiarly appropriate and 
 awe-inspiring. We may imagine the feelings of an athlete 
 coming to struggle for the fame of his own city, when he 
 first approached this statue in the august Olympian shrine. 
 The games were held at the time of a fiiU moon ; through 
 the hypsethral opening of the temple-roof fell the silver rays 
 aslant upon those solemn lineaments, making the glow of 
 ivory and gold more solemn in the dimness of a wondrous 
 gloom. 
 
 Presidents chosen from the people of EHs and named 
 
PINDAR. 179 
 
 Hellanodikai, awarded the prizes and controlled the conduct 
 ■of the games. From their decision, in cases of doubt, there 
 was a final appeal to the assembly of Elis. In the morning 
 the heralds opened the lists with this proclamation : * " Now 
 begins the contest that dispenses noblest prizes ; time tells 
 you ■ to delay no longer." When the runners were ready, 
 the heralds started them with these words, " Put your feet 
 to the line and run." At the end of the day they cried, 
 ^'Now ceases the contest that dispenses noblest prizes; 
 time tells you to delay no longer." The victor was crowned 
 with wild olive, and led by his friends to the temple of Zeus. 
 On the way they shouted the old Archilochian chorus, 
 ri';v£\Xa KoWiviKe, to which Pindar alludes in the beginning 
 of his 9th Olympian : " The song of Archilochus uttered 
 at Olympia, the triple cry of Hail Victorious 1 was enough 
 to conduct Epharmostus, leading the revel to the Cronian 
 hill with his comrades. But now, from the far-darting bows 
 of the Muses, approach Zeus of the blazing thunder and 
 the holy jutting land of Elis with these mightier shafts." 
 Sacrifice and banquet took place in the evening ; and happy 
 was thfe athlete who, in this supreme moment, was greeted by 
 Pindar with attendant chorus and musicians of the flute and 
 lyre. Three Olympians, which seem to have been composed 
 and chanted on the spot, survive— the 4th, the 8th, the loth. 
 The Proemia to these odes, two of which are remarkably short, 
 indicating the haste in which they had been prepared, suffi- 
 ciently establish this fact. " Supreme hurler of the thunderbolt 
 that never tires, Zeus ! Thy festival recurring with the season 
 brings me with sound of lyre and song to witness august 
 games." " Parent of golden-crowned contests, Olympia, mis- 
 tress of truth," &c. But it could not be expected that the 
 more elaborate of Pindar's compositions should be ready on 
 
 * Bergk, Poelte Lyrici, p. 1301. 
 N 2 
 
i8o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 such occasions. It usually happened that the victor either 
 found Pindar at Olympia, or sent a message to him at Thebes, 
 and bespoke an ode, adding gifts in accordance with the poef s 
 rank and fame. Then Pindar composed his Epinikian, which 
 was sung when the conqueror returned to his own city. The 
 ode would be repeated on successive anniversaries at banquets, 
 sacrificial festivals, and processions in honour of the victory. 
 The 9th Olympian, which has been already quoted, was, for 
 example, sung at a banquet in honour of Epharmostus of 
 Opus, after the altar of Ajax, son of O'ileus, had been crowned. 
 Pindar, as we find from frequent allusions in the odes, had 
 such a press of work that he often delayed sending his poems 
 at the proper time, and had to excuse himself for neglect. In 
 the second Isthmian he records a delay of two years. We may 
 add that he did not disdain to accept money for his toil. In 
 the nth Pythian he says : "Muse, it is thy part, since thou hast 
 contracted to give thy voice for gold, to set it going in various 
 ways." In the Proemium to the second Isthmian he somewhat 
 bitterly laments the necessity that made him sell his songs : 
 
 " The men of old, Thrasybulus, who climbed the chariot of the gold- 
 crowned Muses, and received a famous lyre, lightly shot their arrows of 
 honey-voiced hymns in praise of boys, of him whose beauty kept the 
 summer bloom of youth, that sweetest souvenir of Aphrodite throned in 
 joy. For the Muse as yet loved not gain, nor worked for hire, nor were 
 sweet and tender songs with silvered faces sold by Terpsichore. But now 
 she bids us keep the Argive's speech in mind ; and verily it hits the truth ; 
 that Money, Money, Money makes the man. He spoke it when deserted 
 of his riches and his friends." 
 
 Yet we must not suppose that Pindar sang slavishly the 
 praise of every bidder. He was never fulsome in his pane- 
 g]n-ic. He knew how to mingle eulogy with admonition. If 
 his theme be the wealth of a tyrant like Hiero, he reminds him 
 of the dangers of ambition and the crime of avarice. Arcesi- 
 laus of Cyrene is warned* to remit his sentence of banish- 
 
 * Pyth. iv. 263. 
 
PINDAR. i8i 
 
 ment in favour of a powerful exile. Victors, puffed up with 
 the pride of their achievements, hear from him how variable 
 is the life of man, how all men are mere creatures of a day. 
 Handsome youths are admonished to beware of lawlessness 
 -and shun incontinence. Thus Pindar, while suiting his praises 
 to the persons celebrated, always interweaves an appropriate 
 precept of moraUty. There was nothing that he hated mor« 
 than flattery and - avarice, and grasping after higher honours 
 than became his station. In him more than in any other 
 poet were apparent the Greek virtues of evKoafiia, trMfpoaii'i], 
 and all the moral and artistic qualities which were summed up 
 in the motto fjriiev ayar* Those who are curious to learn 
 Pindar's opinions on these points may consult the following 
 passages : f Nem. viii. 32 ; Nem. vii. 65 ; Pyth. xi. 50 ; Isthm. 
 
 * These pregnant words imply self-government and self-restraint in 
 obedience to a high ideal of order and symmetry, as opposed to the perils 
 and the uncomeliness of extravagance. 
 
 t " Hateful of a truth, even in days of old, was treacherous blandish- 
 ment, attendant of wily words designing guile, mischief-making slander, 
 which loves to wrest the splendour of fame and to maintain the unreal 
 honours of ignoble men. Never may such be my temper, Zeus, our father ! 
 but may I follow the plain paths of life, that, dying, I may leave no foul fame 
 to my children. Some pray for gold, and some for vast lands ; but I to 
 please my countrymen, and so to hide my limbs beneath the earth, praising 
 where praise is due, and sovring blame for sinM men. Virtue grows and 
 blooms, like a tree that shoots up under fostering dews, when skilled men 
 and just raise it towards the liquid air." . . . "Among my fellow- 
 citizens I look with brightness in my eye, not having overstepped due 
 bounds, and having removed from before my feet all violence. May future 
 time come kindly to me." . . " May I obtain from heaven the desire 
 <jf what is right, aiming at things within my powers in my prime of life. 
 For finding, as I do, that the middle status in a city flourishes with more 
 lasting prosperity, I deprecate the lot of kings." . . . "Passing the 
 pleasure of the days I gently glide towards old age and man's destined end : 
 for all alike we die ; yet is our fortune unequal ; and if a man seek far, 
 short is his strength to reach the brazen seat of the gods : verily winged 
 Pegasus cast his lord Bellerophon, who sought to come into the dwellings 
 ■of the heaven, unto the company of Zeus." . . . " Seek not to be Zeus' 
 - , . mortal fortunes are for mortal men." 
 
i82 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 vii. 40 ; Isthm. v. 14 ; and lastly, Pyth. x. 22, which contains 
 this truly beautiful description of a thoroughly successful life, as 
 imagined by a Greek : 
 
 "That man is happy and songworthy by the skilled, who, victorious by 
 might of hard or vigour of foot, achieves the greatest piizes with daring 
 and with strength ; and who in his lifetime sees his son, while yet a boy, 
 crowned happily with Pythian wreaths. The brazen heaven, it is true, is 
 inaccessible to him ; but whatsoever joys we race of mortals touch, he 
 reaches to the farthest voyage." 
 
 With this we may compare the story of happy lives told by 
 Croesus to Solon, and the celebrated four lines of Simonides : 
 — " Health is best for a mortal man ; next beauty ; thirdly,, 
 well-gotten wealth ; fourthly, the pleasure of youth among 
 friends." 
 
 Closely connected with Pindar's ethical beliefs were his 
 religious notions, which were both peculiar and profound- 
 Two things with regard to his theology deserve especial 
 notice — its conscious criticism of existing ' legends, and its 
 strong Pythagorean bias, both combined with true Hellenic 
 orthodoxy in all essentials. One of the greatest difficulties 
 in forming an exact estimate of the creed of a philosophical 
 Greek intellect, is to know how to value the admixture of 
 scientific scepticism on the one hand, and of purer theism 
 on the other. About Pindar's time the body of Hellenic my- 
 thology was being invaded by a double process of destruc- 
 tive and constructive criticism. Xenophanes, for example, 
 very plainly denounced as absurd the anthropomorphic Pan- 
 theon made in the image of man, while he endeavoured to. 
 substitute a cult of the One God, indivisible and incognis- 
 able. Plato still further developed the elements suggested 
 by Xenophanes. But there was some inherent incapacity in 
 the Greek intellect for arriving at monotheism by a process 
 of rarefaction and purification. The destructive criticism 
 which in Xenophanes, Pindar, and Plato, had assailed thet 
 
PINDAR. 183 
 
 grosser myths, dwindled into unfruitful scepticism. The at- 
 tempts at constructing a rational theosophy ended in meta- 
 physics. Morality was studied as a separate branch of 
 investigation, independent of destructive criticism and re- 
 ligious construction. Meanwhile the popular polytheism 
 continued to flourish, though enfeebled, degenerate, and dis- 
 connected from the nobler impulses of poetry and art. In 
 Pindar the process of decadence had not begun. He stood at 
 the very highest point which it was possible for a religious Greek 
 to reath — combining the Ksthetically ennobling enthusiasm for 
 the old Greek deities with so much critical activity as enabled 
 him to reject the grosser myths, and with that moderate 
 amount of theological mysticism which the unassisted intellect 
 of the Greeks seemed capable of receiving without degeneracy 
 into puerile superstition. The first Olympian ode contains 
 the most decided passages in illustration of his critical inde- 
 pendence of judgment : 
 
 "Impossible is it for me to call one of the blessed ones a glutton : 
 I stand aloof : loss hath often overtaken evil speakers." 
 
 Again : 
 
 ' ' Truly many things are wonderful ; and it may be that in some cases 
 fables dressed up with cunning fictions beyond the true account falsify the 
 traditions of men. But Beauty, which is the author of all delicious things 
 for mortals, by giving to these myths acceptance, ofttimes makes even 
 what is incredible to be credible : but succeeding time gives the most 
 certain evidence of truth ; and for a man to speak nobly of the gods is 
 seemly ; for so the blame is less." 
 
 These two passages suffice to prove how freely Pindar handled 
 the myths, not indeed exposing them to the corrosive action 
 of mere scepticism, but testing them * by the higher standard 
 of the healthy human conscience. When he refuses to beUeve 
 that the immortals were cannibals and ate the limbs of Pelops, 
 
 * Compare for a similar freedom of judgment Antigone's famous speech 
 on the imwritten Laws. 
 
i84 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 he is like a rationalist avowing his disbelief in the savage doc- 
 trine of eternal damnation. His doubt does not proceed from 
 irreligion, but from faith in the immutable holiness of the gods, 
 who set the ideal standard of human morality. What seems to 
 him false in the myths, he attributes to the accretions of 
 ignorant opinion and vain fancy round the truth. 
 
 The mystical element of Pindar's creed, whether we call it 
 Orphic or Pythagorean, is remarkable for a definite belief in 
 the future hfe, including a system of rewards and punishments, 
 for the assertion of the supreme tribunal of conscience,* and 
 finally, for a reliance on rites of purification. The most 
 splendid passage in which these opinions are expressed by 
 Pindar is that portion of the second Olympian in which 
 he describes the torments of the wicked and the blessings 
 of the just beyond the grave : — 
 
 "Among the dead, sinful souls at once pay penalty, and the crimes 
 done in this realm of Zeus are judged beneath the earth by one who gives 
 sentence under dire necessity. 
 
 "But the good, enjoying perpetual sunlight equally by night and day, 
 receive a life more free firom woes than this of ours ; they trouble not the 
 earth with strength of hand, nor the water of the sea for scanty sustenance ; 
 but with the honoured of the gods, all they who delighted in the keeping of 
 their oath pass a tearless age : the others suffer woe on which jio eye can 
 bear to look. Those who have thrice endured on either side the grave to 
 keep their spirits wholly free from crime, journey on the road of Zeus to 
 the tower of Cronos : where round the islands blow breezes ocean-borne : 
 and flowers of gold burn some on the land from radiant trees, and others 
 the wave feeds : with necklaces whereof they twine their hands and 
 brows, in the just decrees of Rhadamanthus, whom father Cronos has for a 
 perpetual colleague, he who is spouse of Rhea throned above all gods. 
 
 " Peleus and Cadmus are numbered among these : and thither was 
 Achilles brought by his mother when she swayed the heart of Zeus with 
 prayer : he who slew Hector, the invincible firm pillar of Troy, and gave 
 Cycnus to death and Eo's jEthiopian son." 
 
 * The conscience forms a strong point in the ethical systems of many 
 of the ancients, especially of Plato, of Lucretius, ofPersius — authors other- 
 wise dissimilar enough as representing three distinct species of thought. 
 In Mythology it receives an imperfect embodiment in the Erinnyes, who, 
 
PINDAR. 185 
 
 The following fragments from Threnoi* translated by Pro- 
 fessor Conington further illustrate Pindar's behef in a future 
 state of weal or woe : 
 
 " They from whom Persephone 
 
 Due atonement shall receive 
 
 For the things that made to grieve, 
 To the upper sunlight she 
 Sendeth back their souls once more, 
 Soon as winters eight are o'er. 
 From those blessed spirits spring 
 Many a great and goodly king, 
 Many a man of glowing might, 
 Many a wise and learned wight : 
 And while after-days endure, 
 Men esteem them heroes pure.'' 
 
 And again : 
 
 " Shines for them the sun's warm glow 
 When 'tis darkness here below : 
 And the ground before their towers. 
 Meadow-land with purple flowers, 
 Teems with incense-bearing treen, 
 Teems with fruit of golden sheen. 
 Some in steed and wrestling feat. 
 Some in dice take pleasure sweet, 
 Some in harping : at their side 
 Blooms the spring in all her pride. 
 Fragrance all about is blown 
 
 O'er that country of desire. 
 Ever as rich gifts are thrown 
 
 Freely on the far-seen fire. 
 Blazing from the altar-stone. 
 
 • * * » » 
 
 But the souls of the profane, 
 
 Far from heaven removed below, 
 
 however, are spiritual forces acting from without, rather than from within, 
 upon the criminal. Purifying rites belonged to the Mysteries or reAETof ; 
 they formed a. prominent feature in the Ethics of Empedocles and 
 Pythagoras, and an integral part of the cult of Apollo and the nether 
 deities. Philosophers like Plato rejected them as pertaining to ceremonial 
 superstition. 
 
 * Bunsen's God in History, vol. ii. pp. 144 and 136. 
 
i86 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Flit on earth in murderous pain 
 
 'Neath the unyielding yoke of woe ; 
 While pious spirits tenanting the sky 
 Chant praises to the mighty one on high." 
 
 For Pindar's conception of the destinies of frail humanity, 
 take this, sublime but melancholy ending to an ode* which has 
 been full of triumphant exultation : " Brief is the growing-time 
 of joy for mortals, and briefly too doth its flower fall to earth 
 shaken by fell fate. Things of a day ! what are we — ^and what 
 are we not ! A shadow's dream is man. But when the splen- 
 dour that God gives descends, then there remains a radiant 
 light and gladsome life for mortals." Compare with this the 
 opening of the sixth Nemean : 
 
 " One is the race of men, and one the race of gods ; from one mother 
 we both draw breath. But a total difference of force divides us, since 
 man's might is nought, while brazen heaven abideth a sure seat for aye. 
 Nevertheless, we are not all unlike immortals either in our mighty soul 
 or strength of limb, though we know not to what goal of night or day fate 
 hath written dovrai for us to run." 
 
 Passing to the consideration of Pindar purely as an artist, 
 we may first examine the structure of his odes, and then illus- 
 trate the qualities of his poetry by reference to some of the 
 more splendid Proemia and descriptions. The task which lay 
 before him when he undertook to celebrate a victory at one 
 of the Greek games, was this. Some rich man had won a race 
 with his chariot and horses, or some strong man had conquered 
 his competitors by activity or force of limb. Pindar had to 
 praise the rich man for his wealth and liberality, the strong 
 man for his endurance of training and personal courage or 
 dexterity. In both cases the victor might be felicitated on his 
 good fortune — on the piece of luck which had befallen him ; 
 and if he were of comely person or illustrious blood, these also 
 
 offered topics for congratulation. The three chief common- 
 
 t 
 * Pyth. viii. 
 
PINDAR. 187 
 
 places of Pindar, therefore, are oA/3of, aperjj, trnv^iia, wealth 
 or prosperity, manliness or spirit, and blessings independent 
 of both, god-given, not acquired. But it could not be that a 
 great poet should ring the changes only on these three sub- 
 jects, or content himself with describing the actual contest, 
 which probably he had not witnessed. Consequently Pindar 
 illustrates his odes with myths or stories bearing more or less 
 closely on the circumstances of his hero. Sometimes he cele- 
 brates the victor's ancestry, as in the famous sixth Olympian, 
 in which the history of the lamidse is given ; sometimes his 
 city, as in the seventh Olympian, where he describes the birth- 
 place of Diagoras, the island Rhodes ; sometimes he dwells 
 upon an incident in the hero's life, as when in the, third 
 Pythian the illness of Hiero suggests the legend of Asclepius 
 and Cheiron ; sometimes a recent event, like the eruption of 
 Etna, alluded to in the first Pythian, gives colour to his ode ; 
 sometimes, as in the case of the last Pythian, where the story 
 of Medusa is narrated, the legendary matter is introduced 
 to specialize the nature of the contest. The victory itself is 
 hardly touched upon : the allusions to o\/3oc, a^f'ni tvTvyia, 
 though frequent and interwoven with the texture of the ode, 
 are brief: the whole poetic fabric is so designed as to be 
 appropriate to the occasion and yet independent of it. There- 
 fore Pindar's odes have not perished with the memory of the 
 events to which they owed their composition. 
 
 Pindar's peculiar treatment of the Epinikian ode may best 
 be illustrated by analyzing the structure of one or two of his 
 poems. But first take this translation of one of the shorter and 
 simpler of the series — the twelfth Pythian : 
 
 " To thee, fairest of earthly towns, I pray — 
 Thou splendour-lover, throne of Proserpine, 
 Piled o'er Girgenti's slopes, that feed alway 
 Fat sheep ! — with grace of gods and men incline, 
 Great queen, to take this Pythian crown and own 
 Midas ; for he of all the Greeks, thy son. 
 
i88 THE GREEK POAtS. 
 
 Hath triumphed in the art which Pallas won, 
 Weaving of fierce Gorgonian throats the dolorous moan. 
 
 " She from the snake-encircled hideous head 
 Of maidens heard the wailfiil dirges flow, 
 What time the third of those fell Sisters bled 
 By Perseus' hand, who brought the destined woe 
 To vexed Seriphos. He on Phorkys' brood 
 Wrought ruin, and on Polydectes laid 
 Stem penance for his mother's servitude, 
 And for her forcefiil wedlock, when he slew the maid 
 
 " Medusa. He by living gold, they say, 
 Was got on Danae : but Pallas bore 
 Her hero through those toils, and wrought the lay 
 Of full-voiced flutes to mock the ghastly roar 
 Of those strong jaws of grim Euryale : 
 A goddess made and gave to men the flute, 
 The fountain-head of many a strain to be, 
 That ne'er at game or nation's feast it might be mute, 
 
 " Sounding through subtle brass and voicefiil reeds. 
 Which near the city of the Graces spring 
 By fair Cephisus, faithful to the needs 
 Of dancers. Lo ! there cometh no good thing 
 Apart from toils to mortals, though to-day 
 Heaven crown their deeds : yet shun we not the laws 
 Of Fate ; for times impend when chance withdraws 
 What most we hoped, and what we hoped not gives for aye." 
 
 Here it will be seen that Pindar introduces his subject with 
 a panegyric of Girgenti, his hero's birthplace. Then he names 
 Midas, and tells the kind of triumph he has gained. This 
 leads him to the legend of Medusa. The whole is concluded 
 with moral reflections on the influence of Fate over human 
 destinies. The structure of the sixth Pythian is also very 
 simple. " I build an indestructible treasure-house of praise 
 for Xenocrates (Hnes 1-18), which Thrasybulus, his son, gained 
 for him • as Antilochus died for Nestor (19-43), so Thrasybulus 
 has done what a son could do for his father (44-46) ; wise and 
 fair is he in his youth; his company is sweeter than the 
 honeycomb'' (47-54). One of the longest odes, the fourth 
 
PINDAR. 189 
 
 Pythian, is coiistructed thus : " Muse ! celebrate Arcesilaus 
 (1-5). Cyrene, Arcesilaus' home ; its foundation and the 
 oracle given to Battus (5-69). The tale of the Argonauts, 
 ancestors of the founders of Thera and of Cyrene (69-262). 
 Advice to Arcesilaus in the interest of Demophilus" (263-299), 
 Here the victory at Pytho is but once briefly alluded to (1. 64). 
 The whole ode consists of pedigree and political admonition, 
 either directly administered at the end, or covertly conveyed 
 through the example of Pelias. The sixth Olympian, which 
 contains the pedigree of the lamidae, is framed on similar 
 principles. The third Pythian introduces its mythology by a 
 different method : " I wish I could restore Cheiron, the healer 
 and the tutor of Asclepius, to life (1-7). The story of Coronis, 
 her son Asclepius, and Hippolytus (7-58). Moral, to be con- 
 tent and submit to mortality (58-62). Yet would that Cheiron 
 might return and heal Hiero (62-76) ! I will pray ; and do 
 you, Hiero, remember that Heaven gives one blessing and two 
 curses, and that not even Cadmus and Peleus were always 
 fortunate (17-106). May I suit myself always to my fortune !" 
 (107-115). The whole of this ode relates to Hiero's illness, 
 and warns him of vicissitudes : even the episode of Coronis 
 and Asclepius contains a covert warning against arrogance, 
 while it gracefully alludes to Hiero's health. 
 
 The originality and splendour of Pindar are most noticeable 
 in the openings of his odes — the Proemia, as they are techni- 
 cally called. It would appear that he possessed an inexhaustible 
 storehouse of radiant imagery, from which to draw new thoughts 
 for the commencement of his poems. In this region, which 
 most poets find but barren, he displayed the fullest vigour and 
 fertility of fancy. Sometimes, but rarely, the opening is simple, 
 as in the second Olympian : " Hymns that rule the lyre ! what 
 god, what hero, what man shall we make famous ? " Or the 
 ninth Pythian : " I wish to proclaim, by help of the deep- 
 girdled Graces, brazen-shielded Telesicrates, Pythian victor," 
 
igo THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 &c. Rather more complex are the following : Nem. iv. " The 
 joy of the feast is the best physician after toil ; but songs, the 
 wise daughters of the Muses, soothe the victor with their touch : 
 warm water does not so refresh and supple weary limbs as 
 praise attended by the l)T:e ;" or again : 01. xi. " There is a 
 time when men have greatest need of winds ; there is when 
 heaven's showers of rain, children of the cloud, are sorest 
 sought for. But if a man achieves a victory with toil, then 
 sweet-voiced hymns arise as the beginning of future fame," 
 &c. &c. But soon we pass into a more gorgeous region. " As 
 when with golden columns reared beneath the well-walled 
 palace-porch we build a splendid hall, so will I build my 
 song. At the beginning of the work we must make the portal 
 radiant." * Or again : " No carver of statues am I, to fashion 
 figures stationary on their pedestal ; but come, sweet song ! on 
 every argosy and skiff set forth from ^gina to proclaim that 
 Pytheas, Lampon's son, by strength of might is victor in 
 Nemean games, upon whose chin and cheek you see not yet 
 the tender mother of the vine-flower, summer's bloom." + Or 
 again : " Hallowed bloom of youth,, herald of Aphrodite's am- 
 brosial pleasures, who, resting on the eyelids of maidens and 
 of boys, bearest one aloft with gentle hands of violence, but 
 another rudely ! " J Or once again, in a still grander style : 
 
 "Listen 1 for verily it is of beauty's queen, or of the Graces, that we 
 turn the glebe, approaching the rocky centre of the deep -voiced earth : 
 where for the blest Emmenidas and streani-washed Acragas, yea, and 
 for Zenocrates is built a treasure-house of Pythian hymns in the golden 
 Apollonian vale. This, no rain of winter, driving on the wings of wind, 
 the pitiless army of the rushing cloud, no hurricane, shall toss, storm- 
 lashed with pebbles of the uptom beach, into the briny ocean caves : 
 but in pure light its glorious face shall speak the victory that brings a 
 common fame on thy sire, Thrasybulus, and thy race, remaining in the 
 windings of Crisasan valleys." § 
 
 We have already seen how Pindar compares his odes to 
 * 01. vi. t Nem. v. { Nem. viii. § Pyth. vi. 
 
PINDAR. 191 
 
 arrows, to sun-soaring eagles, to flowers of the Muses, to wine 
 in golden goblets, to water, to a ^hrine which no years will fret 
 away. Another strange figure * may be quoted from the third 
 Nemean (line 76) : " I send to thee this honey mingled with 
 white milk ; the dew of their mingling hangs around the bowl, 
 a draught of song, flowing through the ^-Eolian breath of flutes." 
 It will be perceived that to what is called confusion of meta- 
 phors Pindar shows a lordly indifference. Swift and sudden 
 lustre, the luminousness of a meteor, marks this monarch of 
 Ipic song. He grasps an image, gives it a form of bronze, 
 irradiates it with the fire of flame or down-poured sunlight. 
 
 To do justice to Pindar's power of narrative by extracts and 
 translations is impossible. No author suffers more by muti- 
 lation and by the attempt to express in another language and 
 another rhythm what he has elaborately fashioned. Yet it may 
 be allowed me to direct attention to the rapidity with which the 
 burning of Coronis (Pyth. iii. 38), and the birth of Rhodes from 
 the sea (01. vii. 54), are told m words the grandest, simplest, 
 and most energetic that could be found. This is the birth of 
 lamos (01. vi. 39) : — 
 
 "Nor could she hide from ^pytus the seed 
 
 Divine : but he to Pytho, chewing care, 
 Journeyed to gain for this great woe some rede ; 
 
 She loosening her crimson girdle fair, 
 And setting on the ground her silver jar, 
 
 Beneath the darksome thicket bare a son, 
 Within whose soul flamed godhead like a star ; 
 
 And to her aid the golden-haired sent down 
 Mild Eleithuia and the awful Fates, 
 Who stood beside, while from the yearning gates 
 
 " Of childbirth, with a brief and joyous pain, 
 
 Came lamos into the light, whom she therewith 
 Sore-grieving left upon the grass : amain 
 By gods' decree two bright-eyed serpents lithe 
 
 * Compare, too, Nem. vii. 11, 62, 77. 
 
192 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Tended, and with the harmless venom fed 
 Of bees, the boy ; nor ceased they to provide 
 
 Due nurture. But the king, what time he sped 
 Homeward from rocky Pytho, to his side 
 
 Called all his household, asking of the son 
 
 Bom of Evadne, for he said that none 
 
 " But Phcebus was the sire, and he should be 
 
 Chief for his prophecy 'mid mortal men, 
 Nor should his children's seed have end. Thus he 
 
 Uttered the words oracular : and then 
 They swore they had not heard or seen the child. 
 
 Now five days old ; but he within the reed 
 And thick-entangled woodland boskage wild. 
 
 His limbs 'mid golden beams and purple brede 
 Of gillyflowers deep-sunken, lay ; wherefore 
 
 He by his mother's wish for all time bore 
 
 " That deathless name. But when he plucked the flower 
 
 Of golden- wreathed youth, he went and stood 
 Midmost Alpheus, at the midnight hour, 
 
 And called upon the ruler of the flood. 
 His ancestor Poseidon, and the lord 
 
 Of god-built Delos, praying that he might 
 Rear up some race to greatness. Then the word 
 
 Responsive of his sire upon the night 
 Sounded : — ' Arise, my son, go forth and fare 
 Unto the land whereof all men shall share ! ' 
 
 " So came they to the high untrodden mound 
 
 Of Cronion ; and there a double meed 
 Of prophecy on lamos was bound, 
 
 Both from the voice that knows no lie to heed 
 Immortal words, and next, when Heracles, 
 
 Bold in his counsels, unto Pisa came, 
 Founding the festivals of sacred peace 
 
 And mighty combats for his father's fame. 
 Then on the topmost altar of Jove's hill, 
 The seat of sooth oracular to fill." 
 
 After so much praise of Pindar's style it must be confessed 
 that he has faults. One of these is notoriously tumidity — an 
 overblown exaggeration of phrase. For example, when he wants 
 to express that he cannot enlarge on the fame of .^gina, but 
 
PINDAR. 193 
 
 will relate as quickly as he can the achievements of Aristomenes 
 which he has undertaken, he says : — " But I am not at leisure 
 to consecrate the whole long tale to the lyre and delicate voice, 
 lest satiety should come and cause annoy : but that which is 
 before my feet shall go at running speed — thy affair, my boy— ' 
 the latest of the noble deeds made winged by means of my art."* 
 The imaginative force which enabled him to create epithets like 
 *t\ayXaoc, vafjiiropipvpos, and to put them exactly in their proper 
 places, like blocks of gleaming alabaster or of glowing por- 
 phyry — for the architectural power over language is eminent 
 in Pindar — the Titanic faculty of language which produced 
 
 such phrases as If aSafiaVTOS V aiSapov KC-)(6XKevTai [liXaivav 
 
 kapSiai/ i/zuxP^ ^Xoyi, did also betray him into expressions as 
 
 pompous and frigid as these — TroiKiXo^opjuiyyoe dotJac 
 
 iT^oivoTevaia t aoiia SidvpapjSwv. These, poured forth by 
 Pindar in the insolence of prodigality, when imitated by infe- 
 rior poets, produced that inflated manner of lyrical diction which 
 Aristophanes ridicules in Kinesias. The same may be said 
 about -his mixed metaphor?, whereof the following are fair 
 examples : — 
 
 S6^av ex** ■''*''' ^'^^ yKtifffft^ aKAvas Xiyvpas 
 
 a ju' iSeKovra TrpoaiXKH KoAAiptfoioi itvoats. — 01. vi. 82. 
 
 Kjinrav axiaov Taxi> 5' &yKvpav ^peurov x^ovl 
 
 irpifpaBe x^'p^^os &\Kap Trerpus 
 
 4yKufiluu yStp &citTos ^fxvojv 
 
 eir' &Wot' 6,Wov Sre fiiMaaa Bivei \Syov. — Pyth. x. 5 1. 
 
 Nor are these the worst, perhaps, of the sort which might 
 be chosen : for Pindar uses images like precious stones, setting 
 them together in a mass, without caring to sort them, so long 
 as they produce a gorgeous show. Apparent incohereftces, 
 involving difficulty to the reader, and producing a superficial 
 
 * Pyth. viii. 30. 
 o 
 
194 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 effect of obscurity, constitute another class of his alleged 
 faults — due partly to his ■ allusive and elliptical style, partly to 
 his sudden transitions, partly to the mixture of his images. 
 Incapable of what is commonplace, too fiery to trudge, like 
 Simonides, along the path of rhetorical development, infinitely 
 more anxious to realise by audacity the thought that seizes him 
 than to make it easy to his hearer, Pindar is obscure to all who 
 are unwilling to assimilate their fancy to his own. La Harpe 
 called the Divine Comedy une amplification stupidement barbare: 
 what, if he had found occasion to speak the truth of his French 
 mind, would he have said about the Odes of Pindar ? Another 
 difficulty, apart from these of verbal style and imagination, is 
 derived from the fact that the mechanism of Pindar's poetry, 
 carefully as it is planned, is no less carefully concealed. He 
 ■seems to take delight in trying to solve the problem of how 
 slight a suggestion can be made to introduce a lengthy narrative. 
 The student is obliged to maintain his attention at the straining 
 point if an ode of Pindar's, even after patient analysis, is to 
 present more than a mass of confused thoughts and images to 
 his mind. But when he has caught the poet's drift, how deli- 
 cate is the machinery, how beautiful is the art, which governs 
 this most sensitive fabric of linked melodies! What the 
 hearers made of these odes — the athletes for whom they were 
 written, the handsome youths praised in them, the rich men at 
 whose tables they were chanted^remains an impenetrable mys- 
 tery. Had the Greek race perceptions infinitely finer than 
 ours? Or did the classic harmonies of Piijdar sweep over 
 their souls, ruffling the surface merely, but leaving the deeps 
 untouched, as the soliloquies of Hamlet or the profound philo- 
 sophy of Troilus and Cressida must have been lost upon the 
 groundlings of EUzabeth's days, who caught with eagerness at 
 the queen's poisoned goblet or the by-play of Sir Pandarus? 
 That is a problem we cannot solve. All we know for certain 
 
PINDAR. ■ 195 
 
 is, that even allowing for the currency of Pindar's language and 
 for the familiarity of his audience with the circumstances under 
 which his odes were composed, as well as with their mytho- 
 logical allusions, these poems must at all times have been more 
 difficult to follow than Bach's fugue in G minor to a man who 
 cannot play the organ. 
 
196 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 
 
 The Conditions for the development of a national Drama. — The Attic 
 audience. — The Persian War. — Nemesis the cardinal idea of Greek 
 Tragedy. — Traces of the doctrine of Nemesis in early Greek Poetry. 
 — The fixed material of Greek Tragedy. — Athens in the age of 
 Euripides. — Changes introduced by him in Dramatic Art. — The law 
 of progress in all art. ^jEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. — The treat- 
 ment of cuif'ux''' ty Euripides. — Menoikeus. — The death of Eteocles 
 and Polynices. — Polyxena. — Medea. — Hippolytus. — Electra and 
 Orestes. — Injustice done to Euripides by recent critics. 
 
 Critics who are contented with referring the origin of the 
 Greek drama to the mimetic instinct inherent in humanity are 
 apt to neglect those circumstances which render it an almost 
 unique phenomenon in literature. If the mimetic instinct were 
 all that is requisite for the origination of a national drama, 
 then we should find that every race at a certain period of its 
 development produced both tragedy and comedy. This, how- 
 ever, is far from being the case. A certain rude mimesis, such 
 as the acting of descriptive dances or the jesting of buffoons 
 and mummers, is indeed common in all ages and nations. But 
 there are only two races which can be said to have produced 
 the drama as a fine art originally and independently of foreign 
 influences. These are the Greeks and the Hindhus. With 
 reference to the Hindhus, it is even questionable whether they 
 would have composed plays so perfect as their famous " Sa- 
 kountala " without contact with the Hellenes. All the products 
 of the modern drama, whether tragic or comic, must be regarded 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 197 
 
 as the direct progeny of the Greek stage. The habit of play- 
 acting, continued from Athens to Alexandria, and from Rome 
 to Byzantium, never wholly expired. The " Christus Patiens," 
 attributed to Gregory of Nazianzus, was an adaptation of the 
 art of Euripides to Christian story ; and the representation of 
 " Mysteries " during the middle ages kept alive the dramatic 
 tradition, until the discovery of classic literature and the revival 
 of taste in modern Europe led to the great works of the English, 
 Spanish, French, and subsequently of the German theatre. 
 
 Something more than the mere instinct of imitation, there- 
 fore, caused the Greeks to develop their drama. Like sculpture, 
 like the epic, the drama was one of the artistic forms through 
 which the genius of the Greek race expressed itself — by which, 
 to use the language of philosophical mysticism, it fulfilled its 
 <iestiny as a prime agent in the manifestation of the World- 
 Spirit. In thair realisation of that perfect work of art for which 
 they seem to have been specially ordained, the drama was no 
 less requisite than sculpture and architecture, than the epic, the 
 ode, and the idyll. 
 
 Two conditions, both of which the Greeks enjoyed in full 
 perfection at the moment of their first dramatic energy, seem 
 to be requisite for the production of a great and thoroughly 
 national drama. These are, first, an era of intense activity 
 or a peripd succeeding immediately to one of excitement, by 
 which the nation has been nobly agitated ; secondly, a public 
 worthy of the dramatist, spurring him on by its enthusiasm and 
 intelligence to the creation of high works of art. A glance at 
 the history of the drama in modern times will prove how 
 necessary thfese conditions are. It was the gigantic effort 
 which we English people made in our struggle with Rome 
 ajid Spain, it was the rousing of our keenest thought and pro- 
 foundest emotion by the Reformation, which prepared us for 
 the Elizabethan drama, by far the greatest, next to the Greek, 
 in literature. The nation lived in action, and delighted to see 
 
198 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 great actions imitated. Races in repose or servitude, like the 
 Hebrews under the Roman Empire, may, in their state of 
 spiritual exaltation and by effort of pondering on the mysteries. 
 of God and man, give birth to new theosophies ; but it requires 
 a free and active race, in which young and turbulent blood is 
 flowing, to produce a drama. In England, again, at that time, 
 there was a great public. All classes crowded to the theatres. 
 London, in whose streets and squares martyrs had been 
 burned, on whose quays the pioneers of the Atlantic and 
 Pacific, after disputing the Indies with Spain, lounged and 
 enjoyed their leisure, supplied an eager audience, delighting 
 in the dreams of poets which recalled to mind the realities of 
 their own lives, appreciating the passion of tragedy, enjoying 
 the mirth of comic incident. The men who listened to Othello 
 had both done and suffered largely ; their own experience was 
 mirrored in the scenes of blood and struggle set before them. 
 These two things, therefore — the awakening of the whole 
 English nation to activity, and the presence of a free and 
 haughty audience — made our draina great. 
 
 In the Spanish drama only one of the requisite conditions 
 was fulfilled — activity. Before they began to write plays the 
 Spaniards had expelled the Moors, discovered the New World, 
 and raised themselves to the first place among European nations. 
 But there was not the same free audience in Spain as in England. 
 Papal despotism and the tyranny of the Court checked and 
 coerced the drama, so that, with all its richness and imaginative 
 splendour, the Spanish theatre is inferior to the English. The 
 French drama suffered still more from the same kind of restric- 
 tion. Subject to the canons of scholastic pedants, tied down 
 to an imitation of the antique, made to -reflect the manners ' 
 and sentiments of a highly artificial Court, animated by the 
 sympathies of no large national audience, the French play- 
 wrights became courtiers, artists obedient to the pleasures of 
 a king — not, like the dramatists of Greece and England, the- 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 199. 
 
 prophets of the people, the leaders of a chorus triumphant and 
 rejoicing in its mighty deeds. 
 
 Italy has no real theatre. In Italy there has been no stirring 
 of a national, united spirit ; no supreme and central audience ; 
 no sudden consciousness of innate foi^ce and freedom in the 
 sovereign people. The requisite conditions have always failed. 
 The German drama, both by its successes and shortcomings, 
 illustrates the same position. Such greatness as it achieved in 
 Goethe and Schiller it owed to the fermentation of German 
 nationality, to the so-called period of " storm and stress'' which 
 electrified the intellects of Germany and made the Germans 
 eager to assert their manhood among nations. But listen to 
 Goethe complaining that there was no public to receive his 
 works ; study the petty cabals of Weimar ; estimate the imita- 
 tive and laborious spirit of German art; and it is clear why 
 Germany produced but scattered and imperfect results in the 
 drama. 
 
 The examples of England, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, 
 all tend to prove that for the creation of a drama it is neces- 
 sary that the condition of national activity should be combined 
 with the condition of a national audience — not an audience of 
 courtiers, or critics, or learned persons. In Greece, both of 
 these conditions were united in unrivalled and absolute per- 
 fection. While in England, during the Elizabethan period, the 
 public which crowded our theatres were uncultivated, and 
 formed but a small portion of the free nation they represented 
 — in Athens the whole people, collectively and in a body, 
 witnessed the dramatic shows provided for them in the theatre 
 of Bacchus. That theatre had space for 30,000 spectators, so 
 that the total male population of Athens could enter it, and at 
 the same moment attend to the fragedies or comedies of rival 
 playwrights.* The same set of men, when assembled in the 
 
 * See Leake's Topography of Athens, vol. i. p. 521. 
 
200 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Pnyx, constituted the national assembly ; and in that capacity 
 made laws, voted supplies, declared wars,- ratified alliances, 
 ruled the affairs of dependent cities. In a word, they were 
 Athens. Every man among them — by intercourse with the 
 greatest spirits of the Greek world in the Agora and porches of 
 the wrestling-grounds, by contemplation of the sculptures of 
 Pheidias, by familiarity with Eleusinian processions, by partici- 
 pation in solemn sacrifices and choric dances, by listening to 
 the recitations of Homer, by attendance on the lectures of 
 the sophists, by debates in the Ecclesia, by pleadings in the 
 law-courts — ^had been multifariously educated and rendered 
 capable of appreciating the subtleties of rhetoric and argument, 
 as well as of comprehending the aesthetical beauty with which 
 a Greek play was enriched. It is easy to imagine the influence 
 which this potent, multitudinous, and highly cultivated audience 
 must have exercised over the dramatists, and what an impulse 
 it must have communicated to their genius. In England the 
 playwright and the actor were both looked down upon with 
 pity or contempt ; they wrote and acted for money in private 
 speculations, and in rivalry with several petty theatres. In 
 Athens the tragedian was honoured. Sophocles was elected a 
 general with .Pericles, and a member of the provisional govern- 
 ment after the dissolution of the old democracy. The actor, 
 too, was respected. The State itself defrayed the expenses of 
 the drama, and no ignoble competition was possible between 
 tragedian and tragedian, since all exhibited their plays to the 
 same audience, in the same sacred theatre, and all were judged 
 by the same judges. 
 
 The critical condition of the Greek people itself at the epoch 
 of the drama is worth minute consideration. During the two 
 previous centuries, the whole of Hellas had received a long 
 and careful education : at the conclusion came the terrible 
 convulsion of the Persian war. After the decay of the old 
 monarchies, the Greek states seethed for years in the process 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 201 
 
 of dissolution and reconstruction. The colonies had been 
 founded. The aristocratic families had striven with the mob 
 in ev.ery city; and from one or the other power at times 
 tyrants had risen to control both parties and oppress the 
 commonwealth. Out of these political disturbances there 
 gradually arose a sense of law, a desire for established consti- 
 tutions. There emerged at last the prospect of political and 
 social stability. Meanwhile, in all departments of art and 
 hterature, the Greeks had been developing their genius. 
 Lyrical, satirical, and elegiac poetry had been carried to per- 
 fection. The Gnomic poets and the Seven Sages had crystal- 
 lized morality in apophthegms. Philosophy had taken root in 
 the colonies. Sculpture had almost reached its highest point. 
 The Greek games, practised through nearly three hundred 
 years, had created, a sense of national unity. It seemed as if 
 all the acquirements and achievements of the race had been 
 spread abroad to form a solid and substantial base for some 
 most comprehensive superstructure. Then, while Hellas was 
 at this point of magnificent but still incomplete development, 
 there followed, first, the expulsion of the Peisistratids from 
 Athens, which aroused the spirit of that mighty nation, and 
 then the invasion of Xerxes, which electrified the whole Greek 
 world. It was this that inflamed the genius of Greece ; this 
 ■ transformed the race of thinkers, poets, artists, statesmen, into 
 a race of heroes, actors in the noblest sense of the word. The 
 struggle with Persia, too, gave to Athens her right place. 
 Assuming the hegemony of- Hellas, to which she was fore- 
 destined by her spiritual superiority, she flashed in the supreme 
 moment which followed the battle of Salamis into the full 
 consciousness of her own greatness. It was now, when the 
 Persian war had made the Greeks a nation of soldiers, and had 
 placed the crown on Athens, that the drama — that form of art 
 which combines all kinds of poetry in one, which sub- 
 ordinates sculpture, painting, architecture, music, dancing, 
 
.202 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to its own use, and renders all arts subservient to the one 
 end of action — appeared in its colossal majesty upon the 
 Attic stage. 
 
 At this point of lystory the drama was a necessary product. 
 The forces which had given birth to all the other forms of art 
 were still exuberant and unexhausted, needing their completion. 
 At the same time, nothing but the impassioned presentation of 
 humanity in action could possibly have satisfied the men who 
 had themselves enacted on the plains and straits of Attica the 
 greatest and most artistic drama of real history. It was one of 
 the chief actors of Marathon and Salamis who composed the 
 Prometheus, and personated his own hero on the. stage. 
 
 If we proceed to analyse the cardinal idea of Greek tragedy, 
 we shall again observe the close connection which exists between 
 the drama and the circumstances of the people at the time of 
 its production. Schlegel, in his Lectures on the Drama, 
 defines the prevailing idea of Greek tragedy to be the sense of 
 an oppressive destiny — a fate against which the will of man 
 blindly and vainly dashes. This conception of hereditary 
 destiny seems to be strongly illustrated by many plays. Orestes, 
 CEdipus, Antigone are unable to escape their doom. Beautiful 
 human heroism and exquisite innocence are alike sacrificed to 
 the fatality attending an accursed house. Yet Schlegel has not 
 gone far enough in his analysis. He has not seen that this 
 inflexible fate is set in motion by a superior and anterior 
 power, that it opfl'ates in the service of offended justice. 
 When CEdipus slays his father, he does so in contempt of 
 oracular warnings. Orestes, haunted by the Furies, has a 
 mother's blood upon his hands, and unexpiated crimes of 
 father and of grandsire to atone for. Antigone, the best of 
 daughters and most loving of sisters, dies miserably, not 
 dogged by Fate, but having of her own freewill exposed her 
 life in obedience to the pure laws of the heart. It is im- 
 possible to suppose that a Greek would have been satisfied 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 203 
 
 with the bald fate-theory of Schlegel. Not Fate, but Nemesis, 
 was the ruUng notion in Greek tragedy. A profound sense of 
 the Divine government of the world, of a righteous power 
 punishing pride and vice, pursuing the children of the 
 guilty to the tenth generation, but showing mercy to the 
 contrite — in short, a mysterious and almost Jewish ideal of 
 offended Holiness, pervades the whole work of the tragedians. 
 This religious conception had gradually defined itself in the 
 consciousness of the Greek race. Homer in both his epics 
 presents us with the spectacle of crime punished._ It is the sin 
 of Paris and the obstinacy of the Trojan princes which lead- 
 to the fall of Troy. It is the insolence of the suitors in the 
 Odyssey which brings them to their death. The Cyclical 
 poets seem to have dwelt on the same theme. The storm 
 which fell on the Achaian fleet, dispersing or drowning the 
 heroes, was a'punishment for their impiety and pride during , 
 the sack of Troy. The madness of Ajax followed his violence 
 upon Cassandra. When conscious morality begins in Greece 
 the idea is at once made prominent. Hesiod continually 
 insists on justice, whose law no man may violate unpunished. 
 The Gnomic poets show how guilt, if unavenged at the 
 moment, brings calamity upon the offspring of the evil-doer. 
 This notion of an inheritance of crime is particularly notice- 
 able, since it tinged the whole tragedy of the Greeks. Solon, 
 again, in his dialogue with Croesus, developes another aspect 
 of the same idea. With him the Deity is jealous of all tower- 
 ing greatness, of all insolent prosperity ; his Nemesis punishes 
 the pride of wealth and the lust of life. Some of the most 
 prominent personages of Greek tragedy — Creon, CEdipus, 
 Theseus, Agamemnon — illustrate this phase of the idea. In 
 the sayings of the Seven Sages we trace another shade of the 
 conception. All of them insist on moderation, modesty, the 
 right proportion, the due mean. The lyrists take up a some- 
 what different position. The vicissitudes of hfe, both inde- 
 
ao4 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 pendent of and connected with personal guilt, fascinate their 
 imagination. They have a deep and awful sense of sudden 
 catastrophes. Pindar rises to a loftier level : his odes are 
 pervaded by reverence for a holy Power, before whom the 
 insolent are forced to bow, by whom the humble are protected, 
 and the good rewarded. 
 
 Such are the traces of a doctrine of Nemesis to be found in 
 all the literature of the pre-dramatic period. That very event 
 which determined the sudden splendour of the drama, gave a 
 sublime and terrific sanction to the already existing morality. 
 The Persian war exhibited the downfall of a haughty and 
 insolent race, cut off in all its pomp and power. Before the 
 eyes of the men who witnessed the calamities of CEdipus and 
 Agamemnon on the stage, the glory of godless Asia had 
 vanished like a dream. Thus the idea of Nemesis quelling the • 
 insolent and smiting the unholy was realised in actual history ; 
 and to add to the impression produced on Greek imagination 
 by the destruction of the Persian hosts, Pheidias carved his 
 statue of Nemesis to be a monument in enduring marble of the 
 national mord,lity. ./Eschylus erected an even more majestic 
 monument to the same principle in his tragedies.* 
 
 Nemesis is the fundamental idea of the Greek drama. It 
 appears strongest in .^Eschylus, as a prophetic and awful law, 
 mysteriously felt and terribly revealed. Sophocles uses it to 
 point the deep moralities which govern human life. In Euri- 
 pides it degenerates into something more akin to a sense of 
 vicissitudes ; it becomes more sentimental— less a religious or 
 moral principle than a phenomenon inspiring fear and pity. 
 This sequence appears to be necessary in the growth and 
 expansion of a primitive idea. Rugged and superstitious at 
 
 * The terrific lessons of the Persian war seem to have quickened in the 
 Greeks a spiritual sense beyond what was natural to their genius, and from 
 the influence of which they speedily recovered. 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 205 
 
 first, it is next harmonised and humanised, and ends at last in 
 being merely artistic. 
 
 In ^schylus the fiindamental moral law of Nemesis, as a 
 part of the Divine government of the world, is set forth in three 
 distinct manifestations.* We find it expressed mythologically, 
 as abstract and ideal, in the Prometheus. The offence of 
 Prcrmetheus against Zeus, though unselfish and generous, must 
 be expiated by suffering; the rebellious demigod must be 
 brought at last to merge his will in that of Zeus, to bind his 
 brows with the willow of submission, and to place upon his 
 finger the iron ring of necessity. We find it expressed typi- 
 cally, as still ideal and almost superhuman, in the Oresteia. 
 Here a whole family is vitiated by the offence of their first 
 ancestor. The hereditary curse is renewed and fortified from 
 generation to generation, by the sins of the children, until at 
 last a reconciliation is effected between the purifying deities 
 and the infernal powers of vengeance. In the Persce the same law 
 is exhibited as a fact of contemporary history. It is no longer a 
 matter of mythology, as in the Prometheus, or a matter of heroic 
 legend, as in the Oresteia, but a matter of actual experience, 
 that the godless man should suffer and involve the innocent 
 in his disaster. Thus the law of Nemesis is displayed as an 
 eternal verity in the Prometheus ; and in the Oresteia it is 
 actualised and humanised within the region of heroic legend ; 
 in the Persce it is used for the explanation of everyday events. 
 The pedigree of inherited crime and vengeance, as explained in 
 the choruses of the Oresteia, and as illustrated by the whole his- 
 tory of the Tantalidse, is this. The pride of wealth in the first 
 instance swells the heart, and inclines its possessor to ungodly 
 thoughts. This leads to impiety (to Ivaat^ko), and in the ener- 
 getic language of the Agamemnon f the arrogant man kicks with 
 
 * For a detailed critique of ^schylus, see my Second Series of Studies 
 of Greek Poets, chap. vi. 
 
 t Line 375 ; compare Choeph. 631, Eum. 510-514. 
 
206 
 
 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 his heel against the altar of Justice. A state of presumptuous 
 insolence (iI/Spic) is the result of the original unholiness. And 
 now the man, who has been corrupted in his soul, is ready for 
 the commission of some signal crime. At^, or a blindness of the 
 reason, which prevents him from foreseeing the consequences 
 of his acts, is the child of this presumption. Inspired by 
 Atd, he sheds the blood of his brother, or defiles his sister's 
 bed ;* and from this moment the seed is sown, which will spring 
 up and breed fresh mischief for each successive generation. 
 After the spilling of blood the affair passes into the hands of the 
 Erinnyes, whose business it is to beset the house of the guUty 
 doer. They form the bloody revel, which though glutted with 
 gore, refuse to quit the palace of Atreus. They leap upon it 
 from above, and rack it like a tempest. Yet irom their power 
 there is escape. The curse of the house works ; but it works 
 
 * This pedigree of the House of Tantalus — a family Upas-tree — 
 illustrates the descent of crime from generation to generation : 
 
 Tantalus [Insolence of immense riches. 
 Steals the nectar and am- 
 brosia of the gods and gives 
 to them Pelops to eat.] 
 
 Chrysippus, 
 a bastard son, 
 whom Atreus 
 and Thyestes 
 kill. 
 
 Slays Myrsilus, 
 the son of 
 Hermes. 
 
 Pelops = Hippodameia. 
 
 I 
 
 NlOBE. 
 
 Atreus = ^rope. 
 In revenge up- 
 on Thyestes for 
 his adultery 
 serves up the 
 children of 
 Thyestes to him 
 at a banquet. 
 
 Thyestes. 
 Incestuous with 
 ^rope and with his 
 own daughter Pelopia, 
 by whom he has a 
 
 I 
 
 ^GISTHUS. 
 
 Agamemnon 
 
 Clytemnestra. Menelaus. 
 
 Orestes. 
 
 Iphigenia. 
 
 Elect RA. 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 207 
 
 only through the impure. Should a man arise capable of seeing 
 rightly and living purely, he may work off the curse and ' 
 become free. Such a man was Orestes. The leading thought 
 in this system of morality is that pride begets impiety, im- 
 piety produces an insolent habit of mind, which culminates 
 in blindness ; the fruit of this blindness is crime, breeding 
 crime from sire to son. It is only when the righteous 
 man appears, who' performs an act of retributive justice, 
 in obedience to divine mandates, and without the indul- 
 gence of any selfish passion, that the curse is stayed. Such 
 is a crude sketch of the ^schylean theory of Nemesis, as 
 set forth in the great Trilogy. To .^Eschylus, the presentation 
 of the moral law conceived by him is of more importance than 
 the exhibition of the characters of men controlled by it. Such 
 is not the case with Sophocles. He fixes our attention upon 
 the afiapria, or error of the guilty man, interests us in the 
 qualities by which he was betrayed into sin, and makes us feel 
 that suffering is the inevitable consequence of arrogant or 
 wilful acts. The weakness of the offender is more prominent 
 in Sophocles than the vengeance of the outraged deity. Thus, 
 although there is the sternest religious background to all the 
 tragedies of Sophocles, our attention is always fixed upon the 
 humanity of his heroes. The house of Labdacus is involved 
 in hereditary guilt. Laius, despising an oracle, begets a son 
 by Jocasta, and is slain by that son. (Edipus, in his youthful 
 recklessness, careless of oracular warnings, kills his father and 
 weds his mother. Jocasta, through her levity and impiety, is 
 hurried into marriage with the murderer of her husband, who is 
 also her own son. All this avBaSia, or headstrong wilfulness, is 
 punished by the descent of a fearful plague on Thebes ; and 
 (Edipus, whose heat of temper and self-reliance are his only 
 serious crime, is overpowered by the abyss of misery into which 
 these faults have plunged his people and his family. The utter 
 prostration of (Edipus— when his eyes have been opened to the 
 
2o8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 tissue of horrors he has woven round himself, his mother, his 
 nation, and his children — is the first step in his moral discipline. 
 He abdicates in favour of the insolent Creon, and goes forth to 
 wander, an abhorred and helpless blind man, on the face of 
 the earth. When, at the conclusion of his Pariah life, the 
 citizens of Colonus refuse him harbourage, he only cries : "My 
 deeds were rather sufferings than crimes." His old heroic 
 haughtiness and headstrong will are tempered to a noble 
 abhorrence of all baseness, to a fiery indignation. He has 
 been purged and lessoned to humility before the throne of 
 Zeus. Therefore, in return for his self-annihilation, the gods 
 at last receive him' to their company, and constitute him a 
 blessed Daemon in the place of his disgrace.* It was the 
 highest triumph of tragic art to exhibit that new phase in 
 the character of (Edipus, which marks the conclusion of the 
 Tyrannus, and is sustained in the Coloneus. In both of these 
 
 * The scenery of ,the (Edipus at Colonus is admirably suited to this' 
 conclusion of a tragic tale. During the course of his wanderings the 
 discrowned king has learned from the oracle that he is destined to end his 
 days within the precincts of the Semnai Theai — the august goddesses — 
 the Eumenides. It is therefore with a firm presentiment of coming death 
 that he discovers that his blind feet, led by Antigone, have rested in the 
 grove of the Furies at Colonus. The place is fair. There are here no 
 ^schylean Harpy-Gorgons with blood-shot eyes and twining vipers : but 
 the meadows are dewy with crocus-flowers and narcissus ; in the thickets 
 of olive and laurel nightingales keep singing ; and the sound of rivulets 
 spreads coolness in the midst of summer's heat. The whole grove is 
 hushed, and very fresh and wild. A solemn stillness broods there, for the 
 feet of the profane keep far away, and none may tread the valley-lawns 
 but those who have been purified. The ransomed of the Lord walk there. 
 This solemnity of peace pervades the whole play, forming, to borrow 
 a phrase from painting, the silver-grey harmony of the picture. There is a 
 peculiar depth of meaning in thus bringing QSdipus to die among" the 
 unshowered meadows of those Dread Ladies, whom in his troubled life he 
 found so terrible, but whom in his sublime passage from the world he is to 
 greet resignedly. The thought of death, calm but austere, tempers every 
 scene : we are in the presence of one whose life is ended, who is about to 
 merge the fever of existence in the tranquillity beyond. 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 209' 
 
 plays, CEdipus is the same man : but circumstances have so 
 wrought upon his temper as to produce a great change. Still, 
 the change is only commensurate with the force of the circum- 
 stances. We comprehend it, while at the same time we are 
 forced to marvel a,t the profound skill of the poet, who, in the 
 first tragedy, has presented to our eyes the hot-tempered 
 king reduced to abject humiliation, and in the second has 
 showii us the same man dignified, and purified by the deal- 
 ings of the heavy hand of God. Set aside by his calamity, 
 and severed from the common lot of men, CEdipus has 
 submitted to the divine will and has communed with unseen 
 powers. He is therefore now environed with a treble mys- 
 tery — witli the mystery of his awful past, — the mystery of his 
 god-conducted present, — the mystery of his august future. 
 It was by such masterly delineation of character that Sophocles 
 threw the old ^schylean dogma of Nemesis into the back- 
 ground, and moralised his tragedy without sacrificing an iota 
 of its religious force. Aristotle, speaking of the highest tragic 
 art, says that its object is to represent an ^9oe, a permanent 
 habit of moral temper. Careless or bad art allows impossible 
 incongruities in the delineation of character, whereas the true 
 poet maintains identity throughout. If this be so, Sophocles 
 deserves the title of jjAtcoiraroe in the very highest sense. As 
 a further illustration of the divergence of Sophocles from the 
 ^schylean dogma of Nemesis, it is worth while to mention the 
 Antigone. This play takes us beyond the region of hereditary guilt 
 into the sphere of moral casuistry; its tragic interest depends not 
 upon the evolution of an ancestral curse, although Antigone is 
 incidentally involved in the crime of her brothers ; but upon the 
 conflict of duties in a single heart. Antigone, while obe)ang 
 the law of her conscience, is disobeying the command of her 
 sovereign. She acted rightly ; yet her offence was sufficient to 
 cause her legal death, and this death she chose with open eyes. 
 It is in the person of Creon that the old moral of Nemesis is 
 
 p 
 
210 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 drawn. Like CEdipus, he treats the warnings of Teiresias with 
 scorn, and persists in his criminal persecution of the dead 
 Polyneices. Shaken at last by the seer's vaticinations, he 
 rescinds his orders, but too late. Antigone has hanged her- 
 self in prison ; Haemon curses his father, and stabs himself 
 upon her corpse ; Eurydice, maddened with grief, puts an end 
 to her own life; and thus the house of the tyrant is left 
 unto him desolate. It is qiiite impossible by any phrases of 
 mere criticism to express the admiration which every student 
 of Sophocles must feel for the profundity of his design, for' the 
 unity of his art, and for the firmness with which he has com- 
 bined the essential religious doctrines of Greek tragedy with 
 his own ethical philosophy. In passing to Euripides we feel 
 how much we have lost. The religious foundation has been 
 broken up; the clear intuitive morality of Sophocles has been 
 exchanged for sophistry ; and, as a consequence, his tragedies 
 can never boast of unity beyond the region of sesthetical com- 
 position. In the delineation of character he wavers ; not 
 because he could not conceive of a well-sustained type, since 
 Medea, Hippolytus, and many other of his studies have a grand 
 subjective identity; but because, apparently through levity, he 
 was more interested in the creation of plots and situations than 
 in the exhibition of the truly tragic ^9oe. The praise bestowed 
 on him by Aristotle proves that his contemporaries had recog- 
 nised this source of both his weakness and his strength. 
 
 In considering the work done by the three great tragic 
 authors, we must not forget that the Greek dramatists adhered 
 to a fixed body of legends ; the tales of the House of Atreus, of 
 Troy, of the family of Laius at Thebes, of Heracles, of Jason, 
 and of Theseus, formed the staple of the plays of ^schylus, 
 Sophocles, and Euripides. This fact helps to account for the 
 early decline of the Greek drama. It was impossible for the 
 successors of ^schylus and Sophocles to surpass them in the 
 heroic treatment of the same mythical motives. Ye* custom 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 21 r 
 
 and tradition, the religious antecedents of tragedy, the cum- 
 brous apparatus of mask and buskin and Bacchic robe, the 
 conventional Chorus, the vast size of the theatre, the whole 
 form, in fact, of Greek dramatic art, rendered a transition 
 from the heroic to the romantic tragedy impossible. Those 
 fixed legends which ^schylus had used as the framework for 
 his religious philosophy of Nemesis and Atd, from which 
 Sophocles had drawn deep lessons of morality, had to be em- 
 ployed by Euripides as best he might. On their firmly tra:ced, 
 inflexible outlines he embroidered his own work of pathos 
 and imagination, losing sight of the divine element, blurring 
 morality, but producing a world of fanciful yet living shapes of 
 sentiment and thought and passion. 
 
 In order to comprehend the position of Euripides in relation 
 to his predecessors, we must consider the changes which had 
 taken place in Athens between the period of the Persian war 
 and that in which he flourished. All the mutations of Greek 
 histoty were accomplished with celerity; but in this space of 
 less than half a century the rate of progress was nothing less 
 than marvellous.* Some of the men of Marathon yet remained 
 
 * The evolution of the Attic drama through its three great tragedians 
 was accomplished with a rapidity which is quite miraculous, ^schylus 
 gained his first prize in 484 B.C., Sophocles his first in 468 B.C., Euripides 
 his first in 441 B.C. The Medea of Euripides, a play which exhibits all 
 the innovations of its author, appeared in 43 1 B. C. Therefore a period of 
 fifty-three years sufficed for the complete development of the greatest work 
 of art the world has ever witnessed. The history of our own stage offers a 
 parallel to this extraordinary rapidity of growth. Marlowe produced his 
 Tamburlaineva. 1590, Ford his Lover's Melancholy in 1628 : between these 
 two dates — that is to say, within the compass of thirty-eight years — were 
 composed all the plays of Marlowe, Shakspere, Ben Jonson, Beaumont, 
 Fletcher, Massinger, Webster, Heywood, Decker, Marston, Chapman, 
 Middleton, and others whom it would be tedious to mention. Halliwell's 
 Dictionary of Old English Plays contains 280 closely-printed pages ; yet 
 very few of the pieces 'he enumerates are subsequent to what we call Eliza- 
 bethan. But, though our drama, in respect of fertility, offers a parallel to 
 that of Athens, we can show no three poets of paramoimt genius corre- 
 
 p 2 
 
212 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 when Aristophanes was writing, both to point his moral against 
 Euripides, and also to prove by contrast with the generation 
 that had grown up since, how impossible it was for the poet of 
 the present to vie with the ^schylus of the past. In the first 
 place, Athens had become the centre of progressive thought. 
 Teachers of rhetoric and reasoning made her wrestling-grounds 
 and gardens the scene of their disputes and lectures. The arts 
 of eloquence were studied by the youth who in a previous age 
 had been contented with Homer. At Athens, Anaxagoras 
 had questioned the divinity of Helios, and had asserted Reason 
 to be the moving force of the universe. Sophists who taught 
 the arts of life for money, and philosophers who subjected morals 
 to ingenious analysis, and explained away on scientific prin- 
 ciples the ancient myths of Greek nature-worship, combined to 
 disturb ethical and religious traditions. A more solid, because 
 more reasoned, morality was springing up perhaps. A purer 
 monotheism was being inculcated. But meanwhile the old 
 Hellenic customs d.nd the fabric of mythic theology were 
 undermined. It could not be but that the poet of the day 
 should participate in these changes. In the second place, the 
 Athenian populace had grown to be supreme in two depart- 
 ments — the high parliament of State and the law-courts. 
 Every Athenian was now far more than formerly an orator or 
 judge of orators, an advocate or judge of advocates. Two 
 passions possessed the popular mind : the passion for the 
 Assembly with its stormy debate and pompous declamation ; 
 the passion for the Dikastery with its personal interests, its 
 problems of casuistical law, its momentous tragedies of private 
 
 spending to iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, each of whom would 
 have been sufficient by himself to mark a century in the growth of the 
 genius of his nation. Between yEschylus and Sophocles there is a wide 
 chasm in religion, politics, and art ; between Sophocles and Euripides, 
 again, there is a chasm in religion, politics, art, and philosophy. Yet 
 Sophocles, after superseding /Eschylus, lived to put on mourning for the • 
 death of Euripides. 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 213 
 
 life, its studied eloquence. Talking and listening were the 
 •double function of an Athenian citizen. To speak well on 
 every subject, so as to gain causes in the courts, and to per- 
 suade the people in the Pnyx ; to criticise speeches with 
 acumen, so as not to be deluded by specious arguments : these 
 were the prime accomplishments of an Athenian youth of pro- 
 mise. It is obvious that a very peculiar audience was thus 
 formed for the tragedian — an audience greedy of intellectual 
 subtleties, of pathetic situations, of splendid oratory, of clever 
 reasoning — an audience more appreciative of the striking than 
 the true, of the novel than the natural. In the third place, the 
 Athenians had waxed delicate and wanton, since' the Persian 
 war. When ^schylus began to write, the peril of utter ruin 
 hung like a stone of Tantalus over Hellas. That removed, the 
 Greeks breathed freely. The Athenians, growing in wealth 
 and power, neglected the old moderation of their ancestors. 
 Youths who in earlier days would have fared hardly, now drove 
 their chariots, backed their fighting-cocks, and followed their 
 ■own sweet will. Aristotle quaintly enough observes, that the 
 flute had become fashionable after the expulsion of the 
 Persians. The poet of the day could no longer be austere 
 like .^schylus or sedate like Sophocles. In all these changes 
 Euripides partook. The pupil in rhetoric of Prodicus, in 
 philosophy of Anaxagoras and Heraclitus, a book-collector, a 
 student of painting, the friend of Socrates, cultivated in all in- 
 novations of morality and creed, Euripides belonged essentially 
 to his own - day. As far as a tragic dramatist can be the 
 mouthpiece of his age. Euripides was the mouthpiece of 
 Athenian decline. For this reason, because he so exactly 
 expressed the feelings and opinions of his time, which feelings 
 and opinions produced a permanent national habit of mind, 
 Euripides became the darling of posterity, ^schylus was the 
 Titanic product of a bygone period; Sophocles displayed the 
 pure and perfect ideal ; but Euripides was the artist who, without 
 
214 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 improving on the spirit of his age, gave it a true and 
 adequate expression. The only wonder is that during hi& 
 lifetime Euripides was not more popular at Athens. His com- 
 parative neglect proves him to have been somewhat in advance 
 of his century, and justifies Aristophanes in the reproach that 
 he anticipated the Athenians in the break-up of their forms of 
 thought. 
 
 At this point we may consider the condition of the Tragic 
 Art when Euripides took it up as the business of his life. 
 Though tragedy, as formed by .^schylus, represented one true 
 and important aspect of Greek thought — the religious, yet it 
 could never have been adequate to the life of the whole nation 
 in the same degree as the many-sided drama of Shakspere, for 
 example, was to that of our Elizabethan ancestors. Its regu- 
 larity and solemnity tended to make it an ideal work of art. 
 It might arouse the religious feeling, the national pride, the 
 enthusiasm for a legendary past, which were so powerful 
 among the Athenians of the Marathonian epoch. But it 
 could not have had much attraction for the Athenians of 
 the Syracusan expedition. As men subject to the divine rule,, 
 indeed, it had a message fraught with meaning for them; 
 but as Athenians of to-day it did not touch them. We can. 
 well believe that this lofty, ceremonious art fatigued a large 
 portion of the Attic audience. After having listened to some, 
 seventy plays of -^Eschylus .and fifty of Sophocles, not to 
 mention Phrynichus and Choerilus, and scores of minor 
 dramatists, all teaching the same religious morality, and all 
 obeying the same sesthetic principles, we can conceive that a 
 merry Greek began to long for novelty. It must have required 
 the supreme genius of a Sophocles to sustain the attention of the 
 audience at its ancient altitude. In the hands of inferior poets, 
 the tragic common-places must have appeared insipid. Some 
 change seemed absolutely necessary. Emripides, a poet of very- 
 distinguished originality, saw that he must adapt his dramatic 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 215 
 
 Style to the new requirements of his audience, and give them 
 what they Hked, even though it were not good for them. The 
 sophistic arguments, the strained situations, the law-court 
 pleadings, the pathetic touches, the meretricious l)rrics, the 
 philosophical explanations, the sententious epigrams, the 
 theatrical effects, which mar his tragedies, were deliberate 
 innovations on the old pure style. Euripides' had determined 
 to bring tragedy home to the sympathies of the spectators. . 
 All the peculiarities of his art flow from this one aim. Whether 
 he did not pursue this aim on a false method, whether he 
 might not have aroused the sympathies of his audience without 
 debasing tragedy, remains a fit matter for debate. 
 
 Entirely to eliminate the idea of Nemesis, which gave its 
 character to Greek tragedy, was what Euripides, had he been 
 so inclined, could hardly have succeeded in effecting. Though 
 he never impresses on our minds the dogma of an avenging 
 deity, like ^schylus, or of an inevitable law, like Sophocles, 
 he makes us feel the chance and change of human life, the 
 helplessness of man, the stormy sea of passions, sorrows, and 
 vicissitudes on which the soul is tossed. Conventional phrases 
 about moderation in all things, retributive justice, and the like, 
 are used to keep up the old tragic form. In this way he 
 brought tragedy down to the level of real life, wherein we do 
 not trace the visible finger of Providence, but where all seems 
 at least confusion to the natural eye. Euripides, no more than 
 Shakspere, sought to be a prophet or interpreter of the divine 
 operations. In the same spirit he treated his materials with 
 freedom. Adhering conventionally, and as a form of art, to 
 the mythical legends of Hellas — that charmed circle beyond 
 which the tragic muse had never strayed — he adapted them to 
 his own purposes. He gave new characters to the principal 
 heroes,* mixed up legendary incidents with trivial domestic 
 
 ♦ Very notable in this respect is his consistent degradation of Ulysses. 
 
2t6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 scenes, lowered the language of demigods to current Greek talk, 
 hazarded occasional scepticism, and introduced familiar phrases 
 into ceremonious debates. The sacred character of the myths 
 disappeared ; Euripides used them as so many masses of enter- 
 taining folklore and fiction, fit for tragic handling. When we 
 hear Achilles and Orestes talking like Athenian citizens, wrang- 
 ling, perorating, subtilizing, seeking victory in strife of words, 
 trifling with questions of profoundest import, and settling 
 
 . moral problems by verbal quibbles, we understand the remark 
 of Sophocles that he had painted men as they ought to be, 
 Euripides as they are. Medea and Alcestis are not the mythical 
 Medea or the legendary queen of Pherse, but an injured wife, 
 and a devoted wife, just such as Shakspere or Balzac might 
 have depicted. But unfortunately for this attempt to make 
 Greek tragedy more real and living, more representative of the 
 
 ■ actual world, the cothurnus, the mask, the Chorus, the thymel^ 
 the gigantic stage, remained. All the cumbrous paraphemaha 
 of the ^schylean theatre environed the men and women of 
 Euripides, who cut but a poor figure in the garb of demigods. 
 In trying to adapt the mould of Greek tragedy to real life, 
 Euripides overpassed the limits of possibility. The mould 
 snapped in his hands. Therefore he is better to read than he 
 could have been in scenic representation. 
 
 The same inevitable divergence from theyEschylean system 
 is observable in every department of the tragedy of Euripides. 
 While Sophocles had diminished the direct interposition of 
 mysterious agencies, so frequently invoked by .^Eschylus, and 
 had interested his audience in human character controlled and 
 tempered by an unseen will of God, Euripides went further. With 
 him the affairs of life are no longer based upon a firm foundation 
 of Divine law, but gods intervene mechanically and freakishly, 
 like the magicians in Ariosto or Tasso.* Their agency is valu- 
 
 * Exception must be made in favour of the Hippolytus and the Bacchce, 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 217 
 
 able, not as determining the moral conduct of the personages, 
 but as an exhibition of supernatural power which brings about 
 a sudden revolution of events. Independently of their miracu- 
 •lous activity, the human agents display all varieties of character : 
 every shade of virtue and vice is delicately portrayed; pathetic 
 scenes are multiplied; the tendernesses of domestic life are 
 brought prominently forward ; mixed motives and conflicting 
 passions are skilfully analyzed. Consequently the plays of 
 Euripides are more rich in stirring incidents than those of his 
 predecessors. What we lose in gravity and unity is made up 
 for by versatility. Euripides, to use a modem phrase, is more 
 sensational than either ^schylus or Sophocles. Aris'totle 
 called him rpayicwraroe, by which he probably meant that he 
 was most profuse of touching and exciting scenes. 
 
 The same tendencies strike us in the more formal depart- 
 ment of the tragic art. Here as elsewhere Euripides moves 
 a step beyond Sophocles, breaking the perfection of poetic 
 harmony for the sake of novelty and effect. Euripides con- 
 descended to stage tricks. It is well known how Aristophanes 
 laughed at him for the presentation of shabby-genteel princes 
 and monarchs out-at-elbow. Having no deep tragic destiny 
 for the groundwork of his drama, he sought to touch the spec- 
 tators by royalty in ruins and wealth reduced to beggary. The 
 gorgeous scenic shows in which ^schylus had delighted, but 
 which he had invariably subordinated to his subject, and 
 which Sophocles with the tact of a supreme master in beauty 
 had managed to dispense with, were lavished by Euripides. 
 One play of his, the Troades, has absolutely no plot. Such 
 attraction as it possesses, it owes to the rapid succession of 
 pathetic situations and splendid scenes, the whole closing with 
 the burning of the towers of Troy. 
 
 By curtailing the function of the Chorus, Euripides separated 
 
 where the whole action of the play and the conduct of the persons are 
 determined by the influences of Aphrodite and Dionysus. 
 
2i8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 from the action of the drama that element which in ^schylus 
 had been chiefly useful for the inculcation of the moral of the 
 play. On the other hand, by expanding the function of the 
 Messenger he was able to indulge his faculty for brilliant de- 
 scription. It has been well said, that the ear and not the eye 
 was the chosen vehicle of pathos to the Greeks. This remark 
 is fully justiiied by the narrative passages in the pla)^ of Euri- 
 pides — passages of poetry unsurpassed for radiance, swiftness, 
 strength, pictorial effect. The account of the Bacchic revels 
 among the mountains of Cithaeron, and of the death of 
 Pentheus in the Baccfue, that of the death of Glauk^ in 
 Medea, and of Hippolytus in the play that bears his name, 
 that of the sacrifice of Polyxena in the Hecuba, and many 
 others, prove with what consummate skill the third of the 
 great tragic poets seized upon a field within the legitimate 
 province of his art, as yet but imperfectly occupied by his pre- 
 decessors. 
 
 Another novelty was the use of the prologue. Here, again, 
 Euripides expandecj the already existing elements in Greek 
 tragedy beyond their power of enduring the strain he put upon 
 them. In their drama the Greek poets did not aim at surprise ; 
 the spectators were expected to be familiar beforehand with 
 the subject of the play. But when the plot became more 
 complicated, and the incidents more varied under the hands 
 of Euripides, a prologue was the natural expedient, in perfect 
 harmony with the stationary character of Greek tragedy, for 
 placing the audience at the point of view intended by the 
 poets. 
 
 In all these changes it will be evident that Euripides, wisely 
 or unwisely, obtained originality by carrying his art beyond the 
 point which it had reached under his predecessors. Using a 
 simile, we might compare the drama of .^schylus to the sub- 
 lime but rugged architecture which is called Norman, that of 
 Sophocles to the most refined and perfect pointed style, that of 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 219 
 
 Euripides to a highly decorated — florid and flamboyant — man- 
 ner. .iEschylus aimed at durability of structure, at singleness 
 and grandeur of effect. Sophocles added the utmost elegance 
 and finish. Euripides neglected force of construction and 
 unity of design for ornament and brilliancy of effect. But he 
 added something of his own, something infinitely preciotis and 
 enduringly attractive. The fault of his style consisted in a too 
 exclusive attention to the parts. 
 
 The object of the foregoing remarks has been to show how 
 and to what extent Euripides departed from the form and 
 essence of Greek tragedy. It may sound paradoxical now to 
 assert that it was a merit in him rather than a defect to have 
 sacrificed the unity of art to the development of subordinate 
 beauties. Yet it seems to me that in no other way could the 
 successor of ^schylus and Sophocles have made himself the 
 true exponent of his age, have expanded to the full the faculties 
 still latent in Greek tragedy, or have failed to " affect the fame 
 of an imitator." The law of inevitable progression in art, from 
 the severe and animated embodiment of an idea to the conscious 
 elaboration of merely aesthetic motives and brilliant episodes, 
 has hitherto been neglected by the critics and historians of 
 poetry. They do not observe that the first impulse in a people 
 toward creativeness is some deep and serious emotion, some 
 fixed point of religious enthusiasm or national pride. To give 
 adequate form to this taxes the energies of the first generation 
 of artists, and raises their poetic faculty, by the admixture of 
 prophetic inspiration, to the highest pitch. After the original 
 passion for the ideas to be embodied in art has somewhat 
 subsided, but before the glow and fire of enthusiasm have faded 
 out, there comes a second period, when art is studied more for 
 art's sake, but when the generative potency of the earlier poets 
 is by no means exhausted. For a moment the artist at this 
 juncture is priest, prophet, hierophant, and charmer, all in one. 
 More conscious of the laws of beauty than his predecessors, he 
 
220 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 makes some sacrifice of the idea to meet the requirements of 
 pure art ; but he never forgets that beauty by itself is insuffi- 
 cient to a great and perfect work, nor has he lost his interest 
 in the cardinal conceptions which vitalise the most majestic 
 poetry. During the first and second phases which I have 
 indicated, the genius of a nation throws out a number of master- 
 pieces — some of them rough-hewn and Cyclopean, others per- 
 fect in their combination of the strength of thought with grace 
 and elevated beauty. But the mine of ideas is exhausted. The 
 national taste has been educated. Conceptions which were 
 novel to the grandparents have become the intellectual atmo- 
 sphere of the grandchildren. It is now impossible to return 
 upon the past — to gild the refined gold, or to paint the lily of 
 the supreme poets. Their vigour may survive in their successors : 
 but their inspiration has taken form for ever in their poems. 
 What then remains for the third generation of artists ? They 
 .have either to reproduce their models — and this is stifling to true 
 genius ; or they have to seek novelty at the risk of impairing 
 the strength or the beauty which has become stereotyped. Less 
 deeply interested in the great ideas by which they have been 
 educated, and of which they are in no sense the creators, in- 
 capable of competing on the old ground with their elders, they 
 are obliged to go afield for striking situations, to force senti- 
 ment and pathos, to subordinate the harmony of the whole to 
 the melody of the parts, to sink the prophet in the poet, the 
 hierophant in the charmer. 
 
 This law of sequence is widely applicable. It will be seen 
 to control the history of all uninterrupted artistic dynasties. 
 Greek sculpture, for example, passes from the austere, through 
 the perfect, to the simply elegant. The artist of the -iEginetan 
 pediment was wholly intent upon the faithful representation 
 of heroic incidents. The event filled his mind : he sought to 
 express it as energetically as he could. Pheidias stands on the 
 ground of accomphshed art. The Mythus selected for treat- 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 221 
 
 ment is developed with perfect fidelity, but also with regard to 
 sesthetical effect. Praxiteles neglects the event, the substance 
 of the Mythus. His interest in that. has languished, and has been 
 supplanted by enthusiasm for mere forms of beauty. He lavishes 
 a Pheidian wealth of genius on separate figures and situations 
 of no great import except for their consummate loveliness. In 
 architecture, the genealogy of the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian 
 orders points to the same law. Take another instance from 
 modern painting. Giotto, Raphael, Correggio, differ less perhaps 
 in actual calibre than in relative historical position. Giotto,, 
 intent upon the fundamental ideas of Christian mythology, 
 determines to express them forcibly, faithfully, earnestly, with- 
 out regarding aught but the best method of investing them with 
 harmony, lucidity, and dignity. Raphael ascends .a step, and 
 combines the strength and purity of Giotto with elaborate beauty 
 and classic finish of style. Correggio at his appearance finds 
 all the great work done. The Christian mythus has been ade- 
 quately set forth by his predecessors. He is driven to become 
 the thaumaturgist of chiaroscuro, the audacious violator of unity 
 in composition, the supreme painter of erotic paradise. Further 
 development of the religious idea beyond that achieved by 
 Raphael was impossible. Already in Raphael's work a com- 
 promise between religious austerity and pagan grace had been 
 observable. The simplicity of Giotto was gone beyond recap- 
 ture. Correggio could only be original by carrying onward to 
 its ultimate perfection the element of beauty for its own sake 
 introduced by Raphael. Like Euripides, CoiTeggio was con- 
 demned to the misfortune of separating beauty from the idea, 
 the body from the spirit. With them the forces inherent in the 
 germs of their respective arts were exhausted. But those who 
 rightly understand them must, we imagine, be prepared to 
 accept with gratitude the existence of Correggio and Euripides, 
 both as complementing Giotto and ^schylus, and also as ac- 
 counting for the meridian splendour of Sophocles and Raphael. 
 
222 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Without the cadence of Euripides the majestic aria of Sophocles 
 would hardly be played out. By studying the Correggiosity 
 of Correggio we comprehend how much of mere aesthetic 
 beauty is held in solution in the work of Raphael. It is thus, 
 as it were, that, like projectiles, arts describe their parabolas 
 and end. 
 
 To return in detail to the Greek tragedians, ^schylus 
 determines at all hazards to exhibit the chosen mythus in its 
 entirety, and to give full prominence to his religious idea. 
 Hence we have to put up with much that is tedious — a whole 
 Choephorm, for example. But hence the unrivalled majesty 
 of the Agamemnon. Sophocles manipulates his subject more 
 artistically, so as to make it harmonious without losing sight 
 of its internal source of unity. But he already begins to disin- 
 tegrate the colossal work of ^schylus — notably in his sepa- 
 ration of the Trilogy and in his moralizing of the idea of 
 Nemesis. With Euripides the disintegration is complete. He 
 neglects the mythus altogether. The theosophy of .^schylus, 
 always implicit in Sophocles, survives as a mere convention- 
 ality in the work of Euripides. Finally, like Praxiteles, he 
 carves single statues of eminent beauty ; like Correggio, he 
 conceals his poverty of design beneath a mass of redundant 
 elegance. What we have really to regret in the art of Euri- 
 pides is that he should have endeavoured to compete at all 
 with .^schylus and Sophocles upon the old ground of the tales 
 of Thebes and Troy. Where he breaks new ground, as in 
 the Medea, the Hippolytus, and the Bacchce, he proves himself 
 a consummate master. Here the novelty of his method shocks 
 no sense of traditional propriety. He is not driven to flip- 
 pant scepticism in dealing with time-honoured myths, or to 
 travesties of well-marked characters, in order to assert his in- 
 dividuality. These plays exhibit a complete unity of outward 
 form, and a profound internal unity of passion and character. 
 They are not surpassed in their own kind by anything that any 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 223 
 
 Other poet had produced ; and if " the chef d'ceuvre be adequate 
 to the chef d'ceuvre," Euripides may here be pronounced the 
 equal of Sophocles and Shakspere. 
 
 To enter into an elaborate analysis of Euripides as a poet 
 would be beyond the scope of this essay, which has for its sub- 
 ject the relation of the third great dramatist to his predecessors 
 and to Greek tragedy in general. Yet something must be 
 added to justify the opinion just expressed, that, though 
 Euripides suffered by the constraint under which he laboured 
 in competition with rivals who had nearly exhausted there- 
 sources of the tragic art, yet he displays beauties of his own 
 of such transcendent merit as to place him in the first rank of 
 the poets of the world. It would be a delightful task to 
 attempt to do him justice in the teeth of a malevolent genera- 
 tion of critics, led by Schlegel and Miiller, who do not under- 
 stand him — to summon from the shadows of the Attic stage 
 the " magnificent witch " Medea, pure-soiiled Polyxena, wifely 
 Alcestis, fiery-hearted Phaedra, chaste and cold Hippolytus, 
 Andromache upon her chariot a royal slave, Orestes in his 
 agony soothed by a sister's ministrations, the sunny piety of 
 Ion, the self-devotion of Menoikeus — intermingling perchance 
 these pictured forms, pure, statuesque and clear as frescoes 
 from Pompeii, with choric odes and exquisite descriptions. 
 The l3rrics of Euripides are among the choicest treasures of 
 Greek poetry: they flow like mountain rivulets, flashing with 
 sunbeams, eddying in cool shady places, rustling through 
 leaves of mint, forget-me-not, marsh-marigold, and dock. His 
 landscapes are most vivid: in ancient poetry there is nothing 
 to compete with the pictures of Cithseron, where the Bac- 
 chantes lie limb-length beneath the silver-firs, their snakes 
 asleep, and the mountain air rufiling their loose curls ; or with 
 the cave of Polyphemus, where the satyrs lead their flocks from 
 pasture up the valley between stone-pine and chestnut-tree to 
 the lawns that overhang dark purple sea-waves. In the depart- 
 
224 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ment of the picturesque Euripides is unrivalled. His paintings 
 have the truth to nature, the delicately modulated outline, and 
 the facile grace of the most perfect bas-reliefs or frescoes. 
 
 But to attempt this labour of criticism would be to write a 
 book upon Euripides. It must be enough in this place to 
 illustrate one quality which occupies a large space in the 
 dramatic ethics of Euripides, and forms the motive of the 
 action of his leading characters. The old religious basis of 
 Nemesis having been virtually abandoned by him, Euripides 
 fell back upon the morality of passions and emotions. For his 
 cardinal virtue he chose what the Greeks called evipv)(^la, stout- 
 heartedness, pluck in the noblest sense of the word, — that 
 temper of the soul which prepared the individual to sacrifice 
 himself for the State, and to triumph in pain or death or dogged 
 endurance rather than give way to feebler instincts. That this 
 quality should be prominent in Euripides is not without signi- 
 ficance. Not only did it enable him to construct most thrilling 
 scenes : it also harmonized with the advancing tendencies of 
 Greek philosophy, which already held within itself the germs 
 of Stoicism — or the theory of Kaprepla.* One of the most 
 dramatic exhibitions of this virtue occurs in the Phcenisscs. 
 The Seven Captains are beleaguring Thebes, and affairs are 
 going ill with the garrison. Teiresias, however, prophesies that 
 if Creon's son, Menoikeus, will kill himself, Thebes must 
 triumph. Creon accepts the prophecy but seeks to save his 
 son ; he sends for Menoikeus and instructs him how he may 
 escape to Dodona. Menoikeus pretends to agree with what 
 his father counsels, and, after true Euripidean fashion, sends 
 
 * It may be questioned whether a Dorian type of character was not in 
 the mind of Euripides when he constructed his ideal of feminine heroism. 
 What Plutarch in the life of Cleomenes says of Cratesiclea and the wife of 
 Panteus reads like a. conmientary on the tragedies of Macaria, Polyxena, 
 and Ifhigenia. Xenophon's partiality for the Spartans indicates the same 
 current of sympathy. Philosophical analysis was leading up to an eclectic 
 Hellenism. 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 225 
 
 Creon to get his journey-money. Then the boy, left alone 
 upon the stage, turns to the Chorus and begins his speech : — 
 
 " How wqll have I my father's fears allayed 
 With fraudulent words to compass my own will 1 
 Lo, he would filch me hence, with shame to me, 
 Loss to my fatherland. An old man's heart 
 Deserves some pity. — What pity can I claim 
 If I betray the land that gave me birth ? 
 Know then that I shall go and save the state, 
 Giving my life and dying for this land. 
 For this is shamefiil ; if beneath no ban 
 Of oracles, bound by no force of fate. 
 But standing to their shields, men dare to die 
 Under the ramparts of the town they love ; 
 While I, untrue to brother and to sire, 
 And to my country, like a felon slink 
 Far hence in exile ! Lo, where'er I roam. 
 All men would call me coward ! By great Zeus, 
 Who dwells among the stars, by bloody Ares, 
 Who made the dragon-seed in days of old 
 Lords of the land, I swear this shall not be ! 
 But I will go, and on the topmost towers. 
 Standing, will dash into the murky den 
 Where couched the dragon, as the prophet bade. 
 Thus vfill I free my country. I have spoken. 
 See, then, I leave you : it is no mean gift 
 In death I give the city ; but my land 
 I purge of sickness. If all men were bold 
 Of their good things to work the public weal, 
 I ween our towns had less of ills to bear. 
 And more of blessings for all days to be. " 
 
 With the Phcenissa in our hands, one other passage may be 
 translated which displays the power possessed by Euripides of 
 composing a dramatic picture, and presenting pathos to the 
 eye. Eteocles and Polyneices have been wounded to the death. 
 Jocasta, their mother, and Antigone, their sister, go forth to 
 the battle-field to find them : — 
 
 " Then rushed their wretched mother on the twain 
 And seeing them thus wounded unto death. 
 Wailed : ' O, my sons ! too late', too late I come 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 To succour yoii ! ' Then, clasping them by turns, 
 She wept and mourned the long toil of her breasts, 
 Groaning ; and by her side their sister groaned : 
 ' O; ye who should have been my mother's stay 
 In age, O, thoughtless of my maiden years 
 Unwedded, dearest brothers ! ' From his chest 
 Heaving a heavy breath. King Eteocles heard 
 His mother, and stretched forth a cold damp hand 
 On hers, and nothing said, but with his eyes 
 Spake to her by his tears, showing kind thoughts 
 In symbols. Then the other, who still breathed. 
 Looked at his sister, and the queen, and said, 
 ' We have perished, mother ! yea, I pity thee. 
 And this my sister, and my brother dead ; 
 For dear he was — my foe — and yet was dear. 
 Bury me, O, my mother, and thou, too. 
 Sweet sister, in my father's land, I pray ; 
 And close my dying eyelids with thy hand. 
 Mother ! ' — Upon his eyes he, placed her hand — 
 ' And fare you well ! Now darkness clips me round. ' 
 Then both breathed out their weary life together. 
 But the queen, when she saw this direful end. 
 Maddened with anguish drew the dead man's sword, 
 And vnrought things horrible ; for through her throat 
 She thrust the blade : and on her dearest falling 
 Dies, and lies stretched, clasping both in her arms." 
 
 But to return to the virtue of A^vyia. The play of Hecuba 
 contains a still more touching picture of heroism in death than 
 that displayed by Menoikeus. Troy has been taken. Ulysses 
 is sent by the Greeks to inform Hecuba that her daughter 
 Polyxena must be sacrificed. Hecuba reminds him how in 
 former days he had come disguised as a spy to Troy, and how 
 she had recognised him, and, at his strong entreaty, spared 
 him from discovery. In return for this, let him now spare 
 her daughter. Frigidly and politely Ulysses replies, " True, 
 lady, a life for life. You saved mine, I would do something 
 to save yours ; but your daughter is quite another person. I" 
 have not the pleasure of having received benefits from her. 
 I must trouble her to follow me." Then Polyxena breaks 
 silence : — 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 227 
 
 " I see thee, how beneath thy robe, O king, 
 Thy hand is hidden, thy face turned from mine. 
 Lest I should touch thee by the beard and pray. 
 Fear not : thou hast escaped the god of prayers 
 For my part. I will rise and follow thee. 
 Driven by strong need ; yea, and not loth to die. 
 Lo ! if I should not seek death, I were found 
 A cowardly, life-loving, selfish soul ! 
 For why should I live ? Was my sire not king 
 Of all broad Phrygia ? Thus my life began ; 
 Then was I nurtured on fair bloom of hope 
 . To be the bride of kings ; no small the suit, 
 I ween, of lovers seeking me : thus I 
 Was once — ah, woe is me ! of Idan dam,es 
 Mistress and queen, 'mid maidens like a star 
 Conspicuous, peer of gods, except for death ; 
 And now I am a slave : this name alone 
 Makes me in love with death — so strange it is. '' 
 
 Sheer contempt of life, when Ufe has to be accepted on dis- 
 honourable terms, is the virtue of Polyxena. But, so far, 
 though we may admire her fortitude, we have not been touched 
 by her misfortune. Euripides reserves the pathos, after his own 
 fashion, for a picture. Talthybius, the herald, is telling Hecuba 
 how her daughter died : — 
 
 ' ' The whole vast concourse of the Achaian host 
 Stood round the tomb to see your daughter die. 
 Achilleus' son taking her by the hand. 
 Placed her upon the mound, and I stayed near ; 
 And youths, the flower of Greece, a chosen few. 
 With hands to check thy heifer, should she bound, 
 Attended. From a cup. of carven gold, 
 Raised full of vfine, Achilleus' son poured forth 
 Libation to his sire, and bade me sound 
 Silence throughout the whole Achaian host. 
 I, standing there, cried in the midst these words : 
 ' Silence, Achaians ! let the host be still ! 
 Hush, hold your voices ! ' Breathless stayed the crowd ; 
 But he : ' O, son of Peleus, father mine, 
 Take these libations pleasant to thy soul, 
 Draughts that allure the dead : come, drink the black 
 Pure maiden's blood wherewith, the host and I 
 Q2 
 
228 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Sue thee : be kindly to us ; loose our prows, 
 
 And let our barks go free ; give safe return 
 
 Homeward from Troy to all, and happy voyage.' 
 
 Such words he spake, and the crowd prayed assent. 
 
 Then from the scabbard, by its golden hilt. 
 
 He drew the sword, and to the chosen youths 
 
 Signalled that they should bring the maid ; but she, 
 
 Knowing her hour was come, spake thus, and said : 
 
 ' O, men of Argos who have sacked my town, 
 
 Lo, of free will I die ! let no man touch 
 
 My body : boldly will I stretch my throat. 
 
 Nay, but I pray you set me free, then slay ; 
 
 That free I thus may perish : 'mong the dead, 
 
 Being a queen, I blush to be called slave.' 
 
 The people shouted, and King Agamemnon 
 
 Bade the youths loose the maid, and set her free : 
 
 She, when she heard the order of the chiefs. 
 
 Seizing her mantle, from the shoulder down 
 
 To the soft centre of her snowy waist 
 
 Tore it, and showed her breasts and bosom fair 
 
 As in a statue. Bending then with knee 
 
 On earth, she spake a speech most piteous : 
 
 ' See you this breast, oh ! youth, if breast you will. 
 
 Strike it ; take heart : or if beneath my neck, 
 
 Lo ! here my throat is ready for your sword ! ' 
 
 He willing not, yet willing, pity-stirred 
 
 In sorrow for the maiden, with his blade 
 
 Severed the channels of her breath : blood flowed; 
 
 And she, though dying, still had thought to fall 
 
 In seemly wise hiding what eyes should see not. 
 
 But when she breathed her life out from the blow. 
 
 Then was the Argive host in divers way 
 
 Of service parted ; for some bringing leaves. 
 
 Strewed them upon the corpse ; some piled a pyre. 
 
 Dragging pine trunks and toughs ; and he who bore none, 
 
 Heard from the bearers many a bitter word : 
 
 ' Standest thou, villain ? Hnst thou then no robe, 
 
 No funeral honours for the maid to bring ? 
 
 Wilt thou not go and get for her who died 
 
 Most nobly, bravest-souled, some gift ? ' Thus they 
 
 Spake of thy child in death : O, thou most blessed 
 
 Of women in thy daughter, most undone ! ' 
 
 The quality of tui^ux'" which we have seen in Menoikeus 
 and Polyxena, is displayed by Macaria in the Beradeidce and 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 229 
 
 by Iphigenia in the last scene of her tragedy at Aulis. Another 
 shade of the same virtue gives a peculiar attraction to the 
 self-devotion of Alcestis in her death, and of Electra in her 
 attendance on the brain-sick Orestes. It is noticeable that 
 Euripides, the so-called woman-hater, has alone of the Greek 
 poets subsequent to Homer, with the single exception of 
 Sophocles, devoted his genius to the delineation of female 
 characters. It is impossible to weigh occasional sententious 
 sarcasms against such careful studies of heroic virtue in 
 woman as the Iphigenia, the Electra, the Polyxena, the Alcestis 
 of our poet. Aristophanes, who was himself the worst enemy 
 Athenian ladies ever met with, describes Euripides as a foe- 
 to women, apparently because he thought fit to treat them, 
 not as automata, but as active, passionate, and powerful agents 
 in the play of human life.*' 
 
 But to return to our illustrations of iv-i^vyja. In the Medea 
 and the Hi;ppolytiis Euripides again displays this virtue of stern 
 Stoicism in two women. But here the heroines are guilty : 
 their Spartan endurance of anguish to the death is tempered 
 with crime. These tragedies are the master-pieces of the poet; 
 in each of them the single passion of an individual forms the 
 subject of the drama. Separated from all antecedents of 
 ancestral doom, Medea and Phaedra work out the dreadful 
 consequences of their own tempestuous will. Not Othello, and 
 not Fatist, have a more complete internal unity of motive. No 
 modem play has an equal external harmony of form. Medea 
 was one of the most romantic figures of Greek story. Daughter 
 ■of the sungod in the Colchian land of mystery and magic, she 
 unfolded like some poisonous flower, gorgeous to look upon, 
 with flaunting petals and intoxicating scent, but deadly. 
 Terrible indeed in wiles, she learned to love Jason. By a 
 
 * The real cause of offence was the prominence given by Euripides to 
 the passion of unholy love in some of his heroines ; to the interest and 
 sympathy he created for Phtedra, Sthenobcea, and others. 
 
230 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 series of crimes, in which the hero participated as her accom- 
 plice, and of which he reaped the benefits — by the betrayal of 
 her father's trust, by the murder of her brother, by the butchery 
 of Pelias — she placed her lover on the throne of Thessaly. 
 Then Jason, at the height of his prosperity, forgetting the love, 
 as of some tigress, that the sorceress bore him, forgetting too 
 her fatal power of life and death, cast his eyes on Glauk^, the 
 king's daughter of Corinth, and bade Medea go forth with her 
 sons, a Pariah, — a dishonoured wife. Whither should she turn ? 
 To Colchis, and the father whose son she slew? To Thessaly, 
 where the friends of Pelias still live ? Jason does not care. 
 His passion for Medea has vanished like a mist. Their 
 common trials, common crimes — trials which should have 
 endeared them to each other ; crimes which were as strong as 
 hell to bind them — have melted from, his mind like dew. He 
 only wishes to be rid of the fell woman, and to live a peaceful 
 life with innocent home-keeping folk. But on one thing Jason 
 has not reckoned — on the awful fury of his old love ; he forgets 
 how she wrought by magic and by poison in his need, and 
 how in her own need she may do things terrible and strange. 
 In the same way we often think that we will lightly leave some 
 ancient, strong, habitual sin, of old time passionately cherished,, 
 of late grown burdensome ; but not so easily may the new 
 pure life be won. Between our souls and it there stands the 
 fury of the past. 
 
 Medea in her house, like a lioness in her den, has crouched 
 sleepless, without food, not to be touched or spoken to, since 
 the first news of Glauke's projected bridal was told. No one 
 knows what she is meditating. Only the nurse of her children 
 ■ mistrusts her fiery eyes and thunderous silence, her viperish loose 
 hair and throbbing skin. The moment is finely prepared. 
 Some Corinthian ladies visit her, and she, though loth to rise,, 
 does so at their prayer, excusing her reluctance by illness, and 
 by a foreigner's want of familiarity with their customs. Pale, 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 231 
 
 calm, and terrible, she stands before them. From this first 
 appearance of Medea to the end of the play, her one figure 
 occupies the whole space of the theatre. Her spirit is in the 
 air, and the progress of the action only dilates the impression 
 which she has produced. The altercations with Creon and 
 with Jason are artfully conducted so as to arouse our sympathy 
 and make us feel that such a nature is being driven by the in- 
 temperance and selfishness of others into a cul-de-sac of crime. 
 The faciUty with which she disposes in thought of her chief foes, 
 as if they were so many flies that have to be caught and killed, is 
 eminently impressive. " Many are the ways of death : I will 
 stretch three corpses in the palace — Creon's, the bride's, my 
 husband's. My only thought is now of means — whether to 
 bum them, or to cut their throats — perchance the old tried way 
 of poison were the best. They are dead." Kat Sjj r^er a o-i. Medea 
 knows they cannot escape her. For the rest, she will consider 
 her own plans. In the scene with Jason she rises to an appal- 
 ling altitude. Her words are winged snakes and the breath of 
 furnaces. There is no querulous recrimination, no impotence 
 of anger ; but her spirit glows and flickers dragon-like against 
 hjm, as she stands above him on the pedestal of his ingratitude. 
 But when he has gone, and she sits down to reconsider her last 
 act of vengeance — the murder of his sons and hers — then begins 
 the tragic agony of her own soul. These lines reveal the 
 contest between a mother's love and the pride of an injured 
 woman, the ev\pvxia. of one who must steel her heart in order 
 to preserve her fame for fortitude and power : — 
 
 " O Zeus, and justice of high Jove, and light 
 Of Sun, all seeing ! Now victorious 
 Over my foes shall I pace forth, sweet friends, 
 To triumph ! 
 
 " I shudder at the deed that will be done 
 Hereafter : for my children I shall slay — 
 Mine ; there is none shall snatch them from me now. 
 
232 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ' ' Let no one deem me timid, weak of hand, 
 Placidly tame ; but of the other temper, 
 Harsh to my foes and kindly to my friends.'' 
 
 Then when Glaukd, arrayed in the robe Medea sent her, 
 is smouldering to ashes with her father in slow phosphorescent 
 flame, Medea sends for her children and makes that last speech 
 which is the veiy triumph of Euripidean rhetoric : — 
 
 " O, children, children ! you have still a city, 
 A home, where, lost to me and all my woe, 
 You will live out your lives without a mother ! 
 But I — lo ! I am for another land, 
 Leaving the joy of you :— to see you happy, 
 To deck your marriage-bed, to greet your bride, 
 To light your wedding torch shall not be mine ! 
 
 me, thrice wretched in my own self-will ! 
 
 In vain then, dear my children ! did I rear you ; 
 
 In vain I travailed, and with wearing sorrow 
 
 Bore bitter anguish in the hour of childbirth I 
 
 Yea, of a sooth, I had great hope of you, 
 
 That you should cherish my old age, and deck 
 
 My corpse with loving hands, and make me blessed 
 
 'Mid women in my death. But now, ah me ! 
 
 Hath perished that sweet dream. For long without you 
 
 1 shall drag out a dreary doleful age. 
 And you shall never see your mother more 
 With your dear eyes : for all your life is changed. 
 Woe, woe ! 
 
 Why gaze you at me with your eyes, my chUdien ? 
 
 Why smile your last sweet smile ? Ah ! me ; ah ! me I 
 
 What shall I do ? My heart dissolves within me 
 
 Friends, when I see the glad eyes of my sons ! 
 
 I cannot. No : my will that was so steady 
 
 Farewell to it. They too shall go with me '■ 
 
 Why should I wound their sire with what wounds them 
 
 Heapmg tenfold his woes on my own h^ad ? ' 
 
 No, no, I shall not. Perish my proud will 
 
 Yet whence this weakness ? Do I wish to reap 
 
 The scorn that springs from enemies uinpunished ? 
 
 Dare it I must. What craven fool am I, 
 
 To let soft thoughts flow trickhng from my soul ! 
 
 Go, boys, into the house : and he who may not 
 
 Be present at my solemn sacrifice— 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 233 
 
 Let him see to it. My hand shall not falter. 
 
 Ah! ah! 
 
 Nay, do not, O my heart ! do not this thing ! 
 
 Suffer them, O poor fool ; yea, spare thy children ! 
 
 There in thy exile they will gladden thee. 
 
 Not so : by all the plagues of nethermost Hell 
 
 It shall not be that I, that I should suffer 
 
 My foes to triumph and insult my sons ! 
 
 Die must they : this must be, and since it must, 
 
 I, I myself will slay them, I who bore them. 
 
 So it is fixed, and there is no escape. 
 
 Even as I speak, the crown is on her head. 
 
 The bride is dying in her robes, I know it. 
 
 But since this path most piteous I tread, 
 
 Sending them forth on paths more piteous far, 
 
 I will embrace my children. O, my sons. 
 
 Give, give your mother your dear hands to kiss ! 
 
 O, dearest hands, and mouths most dear to me, 
 
 And forms and noble faces of my sons ! 
 
 Be happy even there : what here was yours, 
 
 Your father robs you of. O, loved embrace ! 
 
 O, tender touch and sweet breath of my boys ! 
 
 Go, go, go, leave me ! Lo, I cannot bear 
 
 To look on you : my woes have overwhelmed me ! 
 
 Now know I all the ill I have to do : 
 
 But rage is stronger than my better mind. 
 
 Rage, cause of greatest crimes and griefs to mortals. " * 
 
 Phaedra, the heroine of the Hi^polytus, supplies us with a 
 new conception of the same thirst for ivKktla — the same iv^ivxta, 
 ycvvaioTrie, indifference to life when honour is at stake. The 
 pride of her good name drives Phasdra to a crime more detest- 
 able than Medea's, because her victim Hippolytus is eminently 
 innocent. I do not want to dwell upon the pining sickness 
 of Phaedra, which Euripides has wrought with exquisitely 
 painful details, but rather to call attention to Hippolytus. Side 
 by side with the fever of Phaedra is the pure fresh health of the 
 hunter-hero. The scent of forest-glades, where he pursues the 
 
 * The whole of this splendid speech should be compared with the 
 fragment of Neophron's Medea, on which it is obviously modelled. See 
 my Second Series oi Studies of Greek Poets, p. 313. 
 
234 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 deer with Artemis, surrounds him ; the sea-breeze from the 
 sands, where he trains his horses, moves his curls. His piety 
 is as untainted as his purity ; it is the maiden-service of a 
 maiden-saint. In his observance of the oath extorted from 
 him by Phaedra's nurse, in his obedience to his father's will, in 
 his kindness to his servants, in his gentle endurance of a pain- 
 ful death, and in the joy with which he greets the virgin 
 huntress when she comes to visit him, Euripides has firmly 
 traced the ideal of a guileless, tranquil manhood. Hippolytus 
 among the ancients was the Paladin of chastity, the Percival of 
 their romance. Nor is any knight of mediaeval legend more 
 true and pure than he. Hippolytus first comes upon the stage 
 with a garland of wild flowers for Artemis : — 
 
 " Lady, for thee this garland have I woven 
 
 Of wilding flowers plucked from an unshorn meadow, 
 
 Where neither shepherd dares to feed his flock. 
 
 Nor ever scythe hath swept, but through the mead 
 
 Unshorn in spring the bee pursues her labours. 
 
 And maiden modesty with running rills 
 
 Waters the garden. Sweet, queen, take my crown 
 
 To deck thy golden hair : my hand is holy. 
 
 To me alone of men belongs this honour, 
 
 To be with thee and answer when thou speakest ; 
 
 Yea, for I hear thy voice but do not see thee. 
 
 So may I end my life as I began." 
 
 Even in this bald translation some of the fresh morning 
 feeling, as of cool fields and living waters, and pure companion- 
 ship and a heart at peace, transpires. Throughout the play, in 
 spite of the usual Euripidean blemishes of smart logic-chopping 
 and pragmatical sententiousness, this impression is maintained. 
 Hippolytus moves through it with the athletic charm that 
 belongs to such statues as that of Meleager and his dog in the 
 Vatican. At the end the young hero is carried from the sea- 
 beach, mangled, and panting out his life amid intolerable pain 
 and fever-thirst. His lamentations are loud and deep as he 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 235 
 
 calls on Death the healer. Then suddenly is he aware of the 
 presence of Artemis : — 
 
 " O, breath and perfume of the goddess ! Lo, 
 I feel thee even in torment, and am eased ! 
 Here in this place is Artemis the queen. " 
 
 The scent of the forest coolness has been blown upon him. 
 His death will now be calm. 
 
 " A. Poor man ! she is ; the goddess thou most loved. 
 H. Seest thou me, lady, in what plight I lie ? 
 A. I see thee ; but I may not drop a tear. 
 H. Thou hast no huntsman and no servant now. 
 A. Nay, truly, since thou diest, dear my friend. 
 H. No groom, no guardian of thy sculptured shrine. 
 A. 'Twas Kupris, the arch-fiend, who wrought this woe. 
 H. Ah, me ! Now know I what god made me die. 
 A. Shorn of her honour, vexed with thy chaste life. 
 H. Three of us her one spite — behold ! hath slain. 
 A. Thy father, and his wife, and thirdly thee. 
 H. Yea, and I therefore mourn my sire's ill hap. 
 A. Snared was he by a goddess's deceit. 
 H. Oh ! for your sorrow in this woe, my father ! 
 T. Son ! I have perished : life has now no joy. 
 H. I mourn this error more for you than me. 
 T. Would, son, I were a corpse instead of you. 
 A. Stay ! for though earth and gloom encircle thee. 
 
 Not even thus the anger unavenged 
 
 Of Kupris shall devour at will thy body : 
 
 For I, with my own hand, to pay for thee. 
 
 Will pierce of men him whom she mostly dotes on. 
 
 With these inevitable shafts. But thou. 
 
 As guerdon for thine anguish, shalt henceforth 
 
 Gain highest honours in Troezenian land. 
 
 My gift. Unwedded maids before their bridals 
 
 Shall shear their locks for thee, and thou for ever 
 
 Shalt reap the harvest of unnumbered tears. 
 
 Yea, and for aye, with lyre and song the virgins 
 
 Shall keep thy memory ; nor shall Phaedra's love 
 
 For thee unnamed fall in oblivious silence. 
 
 But thou, O son of aged Ageus, take 
 
 Thy child within thy arms and cherish him ; 
 
 For without guile thou slewest him, and men, 
 
236 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 When the gods lead, may well lapse into error. 
 Thee too I counsel ; hate not thy own father, 
 Hippolytus : 'twas fate that mined thee." 
 
 Thus Artemis reconciles father and son. Hippolytus dies 
 slowly in the arms of Theseus, and the play ends. The ap- 
 pearance of the goddess, as a lady of transcendent power more 
 than as a divine being — her vindictive hatred of Aphrodite, and 
 the moral that she draws about the fate by which Hippolytus 
 died and Theseus sinned, are all thoroughly Euripidean. Not 
 so would ^schylus the theologian, or Sophocles the moralist, 
 have dealt with the conclusion of the play. But neither would 
 have drawn a more touching picture. 
 
 The following scene from the opening of the Orestes may 
 be taken as a complete specimen of the manner of Euripides 
 when working pathos to its highest pitch, and when desirous 
 of introducing into mythic history the realities of common 
 life. Electra appears as the devoted sister ; Orestes as the 
 invalid brother; the Chorus are somewhat importunate, but, 
 at the same time, sympathetic visitors. This extract also 
 serves to illustrate the Euripidean habit of mingling lyrical 
 dialogue with the more regular Iambic in passages which do 
 not exactly correspond to the Commos of the elder tragedians, 
 but which require highly-wrought expression. Helen has 
 just left Electra. As the wife of Menelaus walks away, the 
 daughter of Agamemnon follows her with her eyes, and speaks 
 thus : — 
 
 "jE'/. O nature ! what a curse art thou 'mid men — 
 Yea, and a safeguard to the nobly-tempered ! 
 
 [Points her finger at Helen. 
 See how she snipped the tips of her long hair, 
 Saving its beauty ! She's the same woman still. — 
 May the gods hate thee for the ruin wrought 
 On me, on him, on Hellas ! Woe is me ! 
 
 [Sees the Chortts advancing. 
 Here come my friends again with lamentations, 
 To join their wails with mine : they'll drive him far 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 2yj 
 
 From placid slumber, and will waste mine eyes 
 
 With weeping when I see my brother mad. 
 
 {Speaking to the Chorus. 
 
 O dearest maidens, tread with feet of wool ; 
 
 Come softly, make no rustling, raise no cry : 
 
 For though your kindness be right dear to me, 
 
 Yet to wake him will work me double mischief. 
 
 \The Chorus enters. 
 Ch. Softly, softly ! let your tread 
 
 Fall upon the ground like snow ! 
 
 Every sound be dumb and dead : 
 
 Breathe and speak in murmurs low ! 
 El. Further from the couch, I pray you ; further yet, and yet away ! 
 Ch. Even so, dear maid, you see that I obey. 
 El. Ah, my friend, speak softly, slowly, 
 
 Like the sighing of a rush. 
 Ch. See I speak and answer lowly 
 
 With a stealthy smothered hush. 
 El. That is right : come hither now ; come boldly forward to my 
 side ; 
 
 Come, and say what need hath brought you : for at length with 
 watching tried, • 
 
 Lo, he sleeps, and on the pillow spreads his limbs and tresses 
 wide. 
 Ch. How is he? Dear lady, say : 
 
 Let us hear your tale, and know 
 
 Whether you have joy to-day, 
 
 Whether sorrow brings you low. 
 El. He is breathing still, but slightly groaning in his sleep alway. 
 Ch. O poor man ! but tell us plainer what you say. 
 El. Hush ! or you will scare the pleasant 
 
 Sleep that to his eyelids brings 
 
 Brief oblivion of the present. • 
 
 Ch. Ah, thrice wretched race that springs 
 
 Burdened with the god-sent curses of abhorred deeds ! 
 El. Ah me ! 
 
 Guilty was the voice of Phcebus, when enthroned for prophecy. 
 
 He decreed my mother's murder — mother murdered guiltily ! 
 Ch. Look you, lady, on his bed, 
 
 How he gently stirs and sighs ! 
 El. Woe is me ! His sleep hath fled. 
 
 Frightened by your noisy cries ! 
 Ch. Nay ; I thought he sleeping lay. 
 El. Hence, I bid you, hence away 
 
 From the bedside, from the house I 
 
238 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Cease your noise ; 
 Subdue your voice ; 
 Stay not here to trouble us ! 
 Ch. He is sleeping, and you rightly caution us. 
 El. Holy mother, mother Night ! 
 
 Thou who sheddest sleep on every wearied wight ! 
 Arise from Erebus, arise 
 With plumy pinions light : 
 
 Hover o'er the house of Atreus ; and upon our aching eyes. 
 Wearied with woe, 
 With grief brought low, 
 Solace bring 'mid miseries. 
 Silence ! Hush ! what noise was this ? 
 Can you ne'er your tongue restrain, 
 And allow soft slumber's kiss 
 To refresh his fevered brain ? 
 Ch. Tell me, lady, what the close 
 
 Of his grief is like to be ? 
 El. Death. Nought else will end his woes. 
 
 Lo, he fasts continually. 
 Ch. Alas ! Alas ! his fate is sure. 
 El. By the promise, to make ptlre 
 
 Hands a mother's life-blood stained, 
 Phoebus brought 
 Woe, and wrought 
 All the grief that we have gained. 
 Ch. Just it was to slay the slayer; yet the deed with crime was 
 
 fraught. 
 El. Thou art dead : oh, thou art dead. 
 
 Mother, who didst bear me ! mother, who didst shed 
 A father's blood, and slay 
 The children of thy bed ! 
 
 We are dying, we are dying, like the dead, and weak as they : 
 For thou art gone. 
 And I am wan. 
 
 Weeping, sighing night and day ! 
 Look upon me, friends, behold 
 How my withered life must run, 
 Childless, homeless, sad and cold. 
 Comfortless beneath the sun. 
 Ch. Come hither, maid Electra, to the couch ; 
 Lest haply he should breathe his life away 
 Unheeded . I like not this deep dead languor. 
 
 \Orestes wakes up. 
 Or. O soothing sleep ! dear friend ! best nurse of sickness ! 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EVRIPIDES. 239 
 
 How sweetly came you in my hour of need. 
 
 Blest Lethe of all woes, how wise you are, 
 
 How worthy of the prayers of wretched men I 
 
 AAHience came I to this place ? How journeyed I ? 
 
 I cannot think : my former mind is vanished. 
 Et. O dearest, how hath your sleep gladdened me ! 
 
 Say, can I help to soothe or raise your body ? 
 Or. Yes, take me, take me : with your kind hands wipe 
 
 The foam of fever from my lips and eyes. 
 El. Sweet is this service to me ; I am glad 
 
 To soothe my brother with a sister's hand. 
 Or. Support me with your breast, and fan my forehead ; 
 
 Brush the loose hair •- I scarce can see for sickness. 
 El. Poor head ! How rough and tangled are the curls, 
 
 How haggard is your face with long neglect ! 
 Or. Now lay me back upon the bed again : 
 
 When the fit leaves me, I am weak and helpless. 
 El. Yea ; and the couch is some relief in sickness, 
 
 A sorry ffiend, but one that must be borne with. 
 Or. Raise me once more upright, and turn my body : 
 
 Sick men are hard to please, through wayward weakness. 
 El. How would you like to put your feet to earth? 
 
 'Tis long since you stood up ; and change is pleasant. 
 Or. True : for it gives a show of seeming health ; 
 
 And shows are good, although there be no substance. 
 
 {Orestes changes his posture and sits at ease. 
 El. Now listen to me, dearest brother mine. 
 
 While the dread Furies leave you space to think. 
 Or. What have you new to say ? Good news will cheer me ; 
 
 But of what's bad I have enough already. 
 El. Menelaus is here, your father's brother : 
 
 His ships are safely moored in Nauplia. 
 Or. What ! Has he come to end your woes and mine ? 
 
 He is pur kinsman and our father's debtor. 
 El. He has : and this is surety for my words — 
 
 Helen hath come with him from Troy, is here. 
 Or. If heaven had saved but him, he'd now be happier : 
 
 But with his wife, he brings a huge curse home. 
 El. Yea : Tyndareus begat a brood of daughters 
 
 Marked out for obloquy, a shame through Hellas. 
 Or. Be you then other than the bad ; you can : 
 
 Make not fine speeches, but be rightly minded ! 
 
 \As he speaks, he becomes excited. 
 El. Ah'me, my brother ! your eyes roll and tremble — 
 
 One moment sane, and now swift frenzy fires you ! 
 
 [Orestes speaks to phantoms in the air. 
 
240 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Or. Mother, I sue to thee. : nay, mother, hound not 
 
 Those blood-faced, snake-encircled women on me ! 
 
 There ! There ! See tliere — close by they bound upon me ! 
 El. Stay, wretched brother ; start not from the bed ! 
 
 For nought you see of what seems clear and certain. 
 Or. O Phoebus ! They will slay me. those dog-faced, 
 
 Fierce-eyed, infernal ministers, dread goddesses ! 
 El. I will not leave you ! but with woven arms 
 
 Will stay you from the direful spasm-throes. 
 
 {Orestes hurls Electra from him. 
 Or. Let go ! Of my damned Furies thou art one, 
 
 That with thy grip wouldst hale me down to hell ! 
 El. Ah, woe is me ! what succour shall I find. 
 
 Seeing the very gods conspire against us ? 
 Or. Give me my bow and arrows, Phcebus' gift. 
 
 Wherewith Apollo bade me fight the fiends. 
 
 If they should scare me vnth wild-eyed delirium. 
 
 Some god shall feel the fury of man's hand, 
 
 Unless ye vanish forth from out my sight ! 
 
 \He threatens the phantoms. 
 
 Hear ye not ! See ye not the feathery wings 
 
 Of swift, sure-striking shafts, ready to flutter ? 
 
 Ha ! Ha ! 
 
 Why linger here ? Go, sweep with outspread pinions 
 
 The windy sky ! Hence, and complain of Phcebus ! 
 
 Woe's me ! 
 
 {Recovering his reason again. 
 Why waste I breath, weaiying my lungs in vain ? 
 Where am I ? From my bed how leaped I — when ? 
 'Midmost the waves once more I see fair weather. 
 Sister, why weep you ? Wherefore veil your head? 
 I blush to see you partner of my woe. 
 Blush that a girl should suffer in my sickness. 
 
 Nay, do not pine thus, bowed beneath my burden 
 
 All mine ;— you said but yea, 'twas I who shed 
 Our mother's blood : but Loxias I blame, 
 Who urging me to most unholy deeds 
 Helped me with words, in act availed me nothing. 
 Yea, and I think my sire, if, face to face, 
 I asked him— is it right to slay my mother ? 
 Would lengthen many prayers, beseeching nie 
 Never to draw my sword on her who bare me, 
 Seeing he might not see the sun again. 
 
 And I am doomed to bear this weight of horrors. 
 
 But now unveil your face again, dear sister, 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 241 
 
 And cease from weeping; — even though we be 
 Ringed round with sorrows. ■ When you see me downcast, 
 Soothe you my terror and my frenzied soul — 
 Soothe and caress me ; yea, and when'you moan, 
 'Tis mine to stay and comfort as I can : 
 For these kind services of friends are fair, 
 But, dear, sad sister, go into the house. 
 And give your watchful eyes to sleep, and rest ; 
 Take food, and with fair water bathe yourself. 
 For think, if you should fail me, if by watching 
 You take some sickness, then we're lost : 'tis you, 
 You only, are my help ; all else is vanished. 
 El. Not so. With you to die I choose, with you 
 To live : it is all one ; for if you perish. 
 What shall I do — a woman ? How shall I, 
 Brotherless, friendless, fatherless, alone, 
 Live on ? Nay, if you ask it, I will do 
 Your will ; but, brother, rest you on your bed ; 
 Nor take the terror and the startling fear 
 For more than phantoms : stay upon the couch. 
 For though one is not sick, and only seems, 
 Yet is this pain and weariness to mortals." 
 
 This scene, for variety of motive and effect, is not excelled 
 by any passage in ancient tragedy. The scope which it afforded 
 for impressive acting must have been immense, though it is 
 difficult to understand how the fixed masks and conventional 
 dresses of the Greek stage could have been adapted to the 
 violent and frequent changes of mood exhibited by Orestes. 
 Adequately to render the effect of the lyrical dialogue between 
 Electra and the Chorus is very difficult. I haye attempted to 
 maintain in some degree the antistrophic pauses, and by the 
 use of rhyme, to hint how very near the tragedy of the Greeks 
 approached, in scenes like this, to the Italian opera. The 
 entrance of the Chorus singing " Silence,'' can only be 
 paralleled by passages in which the spies or conspirators of 
 Rossini or Mozart appear upon the stage, whispering " Zitto, 
 Zitto ! " to the sound of subdued music. In the same way 
 Electra's impassioned apostrophe to Night must have been the 
 subject of an elaborate Aria. 
 
242 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 It is hard, while still beneath the overshadowing presence of 
 so great a master as Euripides, to have patience with the critics 
 and the scholars who scorn him — critics who cannot compre- 
 hend him, scholars who have not read him since they were at 
 school. Decadence ! is their cry. Yet what would they have? 
 Would they ask for a second Sophocles, or a revived ^schylus? 
 That being clearly impossible, beyond all scope of wish, why 
 will they not be satisfied with beauty as luminous as that of a 
 Greek statue or a Greek landscape, with feeling as profound 
 as humanity itself, and with wisdom " musical as is Apollo's 
 lute? " These are the quaUties of a great poet, and we contend 
 that Euripides possesses them in an eminent degree. It is 
 false criticism, surely, to do as Schlegel, Miiller, and Bunsen 
 have successively done * — to measure Euripides by the standard 
 of the success of his predecessors, or to ransack his plays for 
 illustrations of pet dramatic theories, and then because he will 
 not bear these tests, to refuse to see his own distinguished 
 merits. It would sometimes seem as if our nature were 
 exhausted by its admiration of a Sophocles or a Shakspere. 
 There is no enthusiasm left for Euripides and Fletcher. 
 
 Euripides, after all is said, incontestably displays the quahty 
 of radiancy. On this I should be willing to base a portion of his 
 
 * Goethe was very severe on the critics who could not appreciate 
 Euripides : "to feel and respect a great personality, one must be some- 
 thing oneself. All those who denied the sublime to Euripides, were 
 either poor wretches incapable of comprehending such sublimity, or 
 shameless charlatans, who, by their presumption, wished to make more of 
 themselves, and really did make, more of themselves than they were." 
 (Eckermann's Cotvmrsations of Goethe, English ed., vol. ii. p. 377.) In 
 another place he indicates the spirit in which any adverse criticism of 
 Euripides should be attempted: "A poet whom Socrates called his 
 friend, whom Aristotle lauded, whom Menander admired, and for whom 
 Sophocles and the city of Athens put on mourning on hearing of his death 
 must certainly have been something. If a modern man like Schlegel 
 must pick out faults in so gi-eat an ancient, he ought only to do it upon his 
 knees." (lb., vol. i. p. 378.) Again (z(5., vol. i. p. 260), he energetically 
 
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES. 243 
 
 claim to rank as a great poet. An admirer of ^schylus or 
 Sophocles might affirm that neither ^schylus nor Sophocles 
 chose to use their art for the display of thrilling splendour. 
 However that may be, Euripides, alone of Greeks, with the ex- 
 ception of Aristophanes, entered the fairyland of dazzling fancy 
 which Calderon and Shakspere and Fletcher trod. The Bacchce, 
 like the Birds, proves what otherwise we might have hardly 
 known, that there lacked not Greeks for whom the Tempest 
 and A Midsummer Nights Dream would have been intelligible. 
 Meanwhile, in making any estimate of the merits of Euripides, 
 it would be unfair to omit mention of the enthusiasm felt for 
 him by contemporaries and posterity. Mr. Browning, in the 
 beautiful monument which he has erected to the fame of 
 Euripides, has chosen for poetical treatment the well-known 
 story of Athenians rescued from captivity by recitation of the 
 verses of their poet.* There is no reason to doubt a story which 
 attests so strongly to the acceptation in which Euripides was 
 held at -large among the Greeks. Socrates, again, visited the 
 theatre on the occasion of any representation of his favourite's 
 plays. By the new comedians, Menander and Philemon, 
 Euripides was regarded as a divine miracle. Tragedy and 
 comedy, so dissimilar in their origins, had approximated to a 
 coalition ; tragedy losing its religious dignity, comedy quitting 
 its obscene though splendid personalities ; both meeting on 
 the common ground of daily life. In the decadence of Greece 
 it was not ^schylus and Aristophanes, but Euripides and 
 Menander, who were learned and read and quoted. The 
 colossal theosophemes of ^schylus called for profound reflec- 
 
 combats the opinion that Euripides had caused the decline of Greek 
 tragedy. 
 
 * See Balaustion's Adventure. Since this chapter was first published, 
 Mr. Browning has still further enforced his advocacy of Euripides by 
 Aristophanes' Apology, while the great tragic poet has found a staunch 
 defender from the carping criticasters of the Schlegel school in Mr. 
 Mahaffy. 
 
244 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 tion ; the Titanic jokes of Aristophanes taxed the imagination 
 to its utmost stretch. But Euripides " the human, with his 
 droppings of warm tears," gently touched and soothed the 
 heart. Menander with his facile wisdom flattered the intellect 
 of worldly men. The sentences of both were quotable at large 
 and fit for all occasions. They were not too great, too lofty, 
 too resplendent for the paths of common life. We have lost 
 Menander, alas ! but we still possess Euripides. It seems a 
 strange neglect tif good gifts to shut our ears to his pathetic 
 melodies and ringing eloquence — because, forsooth, ^schylus 
 and Sophocles had the advantage of preceding him, and were 
 superior artists in the bloom and heyday of the young world's 
 prime. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ARISTOPHANES. 
 
 Heine's critique on Aristophanes. — Aristophanes as a- poet of the fancy. — 
 Thenature of his comic grossness. — Greelc Comedy in its' relation to 
 the worship of Dionysus. — Greelc acceptance of the animal conditions 
 of humanity. — His Burlesque, Parody, Southern sense of fun. — 
 Aristophanes and Menander. — His greatness as a Poet. — Glimpses* of 
 pathos. — His Conservatism and serious, aim. — Socrates, Agathon, 
 Euripides. — German critics of Aristophanes. — Ancient and Modern 
 Comedy. — -The Birds. — The Clouds. — Greek youth and education. — 
 The Allegories , of Aristophanes. — The Thesmophoriazusa. — Aristo- 
 phanes- and Plato. 
 
 " A DEEP idea of world-destruction ( Weltvernichtungsidee*) lies 
 at the root of every Aristophanic comedy, and, like a fantas- 
 tically ironical magic tree, springs up in it with blooming orna- 
 ment of thoughts, with singing nightingales, and cHmbing, 
 chattering apes." This is a sentence translated from the German 
 of Heinrich Heine, who, of all poets, was the one best fitted 
 to appreciate the depth of Aristophanes, to pierce beneath his 
 smiling comic mask, and to read the underlying Weltver- 
 nichtungsidee with what he calls its "jubilee of death and fire- 
 works of annihilation.'' Perhaps, as is common with German 
 writers of imagination, Heine pushes his point too far, and 
 insists with too much force upon the "jubilee of death," "the 
 
 * It is almost impossible to translate this word, which will frequently 
 recur in the essay, and whicli seems to depend for its force upon the con- 
 ception of the satiric spirit, as {hat which "stets vernichtet," the Mephis- 
 tophilistie " verneinender Geist." 
 
246 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 fireworks of annihilation.'' The strong wine of his own paradox 
 intoxicates his judgment, and his taste is somewhat perverted 
 by the Northern tendency to brood upon the more fantastic 
 aspects of his subject. It is not so much Aristophanes himself 
 whom Heine sees, as Aristophanes reflected in the -magic 
 mirror of his own melancholy and ironical fancy. Yet, after 
 making these deductions, the criticism I have quoted seems 
 to me to be the proper preface to all serious study of the greatest 
 comic poet of the world. It strikes the true key-note, and tunes 
 our apprehension to the right pitch ; for, in approaching Aris- 
 tophanes, we must divest our minds of all the ordinary canons 
 and definitions of comedy : we must forget what we have 
 learned from Plautus and Terence, from Molifere and Jonson. 
 No modern poet, except perhaps Shakspere and Calderon in 
 parts, will help us to understand him. We must not expect to 
 find the gist of Aristophanes in vivid portraits of character, in 
 situations borrowed from every-day life, in witty dialogues, in 
 carefully constructed plots • arriving, at felicitous conclusions. 
 All these elements, indeed, he has ; but these are not the main 
 points of his art. His plays are not comedies in the sense in 
 which we use the word, but scenic allegories. Titanic farces in 
 which the whole creation is turned upside down ; transcendental 
 travesties, enormous orgies of wild fancy and unbridled imagi- 
 nation; Dionysiac dances in which tears are mingled with 
 laughter, and fire with wine ; Choruses that, underneath their 
 oceanic merriment of leaping waves, hide silent deeps of 
 unstirred thought. If Coleridge was justified in claiming the 
 German word Lustspiel iax the so-called comedies of Shakspere, 
 we have a far greater right to appropriate this wide and preg- 
 nant title to the plays of Aristophanes. The brazen mask 
 which crowns his theatre smiles indeed broadly, serenely, as if 
 its mirth embraced the universe ; but its hollow eye-sockets 
 suggest infinite possibilities of profoundest irony. Buffoonery 
 carried to the point of paradox, wisdom disguised as insanity, 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 247 
 
 and gaiety concealing the whole sum of human disappoint- 
 ment, sorrow, and disgust, seem ready to escape from its open 
 but rigid lips, which are moulded to a proiid perpetual laughter. 
 It is a laughter which spares neither God nor man — which 
 climbs Olympus only to drag down the Immortals to its scorn, 
 and trails the pall of august humanity in the mire ; but which, 
 amid its mockery and blasphemy, seems everlastingly asserting, 
 as by paradox, that reverence of the soul which bends our knees 
 to Heaven and makes us respect our brothers. There is 
 nothing sinister or even serious in Aristophanes. He did not 
 write in the sarcastic, cynical old age of his nation or his era. 
 He is rather the voice of its superabundant youthfulness : his 
 genius is like a young man, sporting in his scorn of danger 
 with the thought of death ; like Achilles, in the sublimity of 
 his beauty, mimicking the gestures of Thersites. Nor, again, 
 are his thoughts shaded down, concealed, wrapped up in 
 symbols. On the contrary, the very " Weltvernichtungsidee '' 
 of which Heine speaks, leaps forth and spreads its -vvings 
 beneath the full blaze of Athenian noon-day, showing a glorious 
 face, as of sculptured marble, and a comely person unashamed. 
 It is not the morbid manifestatiop of sour secretions and 
 unnatural juices, but the healthy product of keen vitality and 
 perfectly harmonious functions. Into the clear light his para- 
 doxes, and his irony, and his unblushing satire spring like song- 
 birds rejoicing in their flight. 
 
 Then, again, how miraculously beautiful are " the blooming 
 ornament of thoughts," " the nightingales and climbing apes," 
 of which we spoke ! No poet — not even Shelley — has exceeded 
 the choruses of the Birds and Clouds in swiftness, radiance, and 
 condensed imagination. Shakspere alone, in his Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, and the Tempest; or Calderon, in some of 
 his allegorical dramas, carries us away into the same enchanted 
 land, where the air is purer and the skies seem larger than in 
 our world j where the stars bum with treble lustre, and where 
 
248 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 the flowers harbour visible spirits — elfs and Ariels clinging to 
 the branches, and dazzHng fireflies tangled in the meadow- 
 grass beneath our feet. Nor is it only by this unearthly 
 splendour, of visionary loveliness that Aristophanes attracts us. 
 Beauty of a more mundane and sensual sort is his. Multitudes 
 of brilliant ever-changing figures fill the scene ; and here and 
 there we find a landscape or a piece of music and moonlight 
 glowing with the presence of the vintage god. Bacchic proces- 
 sions of young men and maidens , move before us, tossing 
 inspired heads wreathed with jasmine 'flowers and wet with 
 wine. The Mystae in ,the meadows of Elysium dance their 
 rounds with the clash of cymbals and with madly twinkling 
 snow-white feet. We catch glimpses at intervals of Athenian 
 banquets, of midnight serenades, of the palestra with its crowd 
 of athletes, of the Panathenaic festival as Pheidias carved it, 
 of all the busy rhythmic coloured life of Greece. 
 
 The difficulty of treating Aristophanes in an essay is twofold. 
 There are first of all those obstacles which every writer on so 
 old a subject has to meet. Aristophanes, like all Greek poets, 
 has been subjected to prolonged and most minute criticism! 
 He has formed a part of classical education for centuries, . and 
 certain views about his poetry, substantially correct, have be- 
 come a fixed element in our literary consciousness. Thus every 
 fresh writer on the old Comedy of Athens must take a good 
 deal of knowledge for granted in his readers— but what, and 
 how much, he hardly knows. He may expect them to be 
 acquainted with the details furnished by scholars like Donald- 
 son about the times at which comedies were exhibited, the 
 manner of their presentation on the stage, and the change from 
 the old to the middle and new periods. He may suppose that 
 they will know that Aristophanes stood in the same relation, 
 to Cratinus as Sophocles to ^schylus ; that the Clouds had 
 not so much to do with the condemnation of Socrates as some 
 of the later Greek gossips attempted to make out ; that Aristo- 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 249 
 
 phanes was Conservative in politics, philosophy, and Hterature, 
 vehemently opposing the demagogues, the sophists, and Euri- 
 pides. Again, he may, or rather he must, avoid the ground 
 which has been so well trodden by Schlegel,' Miiller, and 
 Mitchell, in their famiHar criticisms of Aristophanes : and he 
 may content himself with a passing allusion to Grote's dis- 
 cussion of the Clouds. But though, from this point of view, 
 Aristophanes is almost stale from having been so much written 
 about and talked about and alluded to — though in fact there 
 is a primd, facie obligation imposed on every one who makes 
 his plays the subject of fresh criticism' to pretend at least to 
 some originality of view or statement — still Aristophanes has 
 never yet been fairly dealt with or submitted to really dispas- 
 sionate consideration. Thus he shares in common with all 
 poets of antiquity the disabilities of being hackneyed, while he 
 has the peculiar and private disability of never having been 
 really appreciated at his worth except by a few scholars and 
 enthusiastic poets. The reason for this want of intelligence in 
 the case of Aristophanes is not hard to see. First of all, his 
 plays are very difficult. Their allusions require much learned 
 illustration. Their vocabulary is copious and rare. So that 
 none but accomplished Grecians or devoted students of litera- 
 ture can hope to read him with much pleasure to themselves. 
 In a translation his special excellence is almost unrecognizable. 
 Next — and this is the real reason why Aristophanes has been 
 unfairly dealt with, as well as the source of the second class of 
 difficulties which meet his interpreters — it is hard for the 
 modern Christian world to tolerate his freedom of speech and 
 coarseness. Of all the Greeks, essentially a nude nation, he is 
 the most naked — the most audacious in his revelation of all 
 that human nature is supposed to seek to hide. The repug- 
 nance felt for his , ironical insouciance and for his profound 
 indelicacy has prevented us from properly valuing his poetry. 
 Critics begin their panegyrics of him with apologies ; they lift 
 
250 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 their skirts and tread delicately, passing over his broadest 
 humour sicco pede, picking their way among his heterogeneous 
 images, winking and blinking, hesitating arid condoning, 
 omitting a passage here, attempting to soften an allusion there, 
 until the real Aristophanes has almost disappeared. Yet there 
 is no doubt that this way of deaUng with our poet will not do. 
 The time has come at which any writer on Greek literature, if 
 not content to pass by Aristophanes in silence, must view him 
 as he is, and casting aside for a moment at least the veil of 
 modern propriety, must be prepared to admit that this gre"at 
 comic genius was " far too naked to be shamed." 
 
 So important is this point in the whole of its bearing upon 
 Aristophanes, that I may perhaps be allowed to explain the 
 peculiar position which he occupies, and, without seeking to 
 offer any exculpation for what offends us in the moral sensi- 
 bilities of the ■ Greeks, to show how such a product as the 
 Comedy of Aristophanes took root and grew in Athens. His 
 plays, I have already said, are not comedies in the modem 
 sense, but Lustspiele — fantastic entertainments, debauches of 
 the reason and imagination. The poet, when he composed 
 them, knew that he was writing for an audience of Greeks, 
 inebriated with the worship of the vintage god, ivy-crowned, 
 and thrilling to the sound of orgiastic flutes. Therefore, we 
 who read him in the cool shades of modem Protestantism, excited 
 by no Dionysiac rites, forced to mine and quarry at his jests 
 with grammar, lexicon, and commentary, unable, exceptby the 
 ■exercise of the historical imagination, to conceive of a whole 
 nation agreeing to honour its god by frantic license, must 
 endeavour to check our natural indignation, and by no means 
 to expect from Aristophanes such views of life as are consistent 
 with our sober mood. We cannot, indeed, exactly apply to the 
 case of Aristophanes those clever sophistries by which Charles 
 Lamb defended the comic poets of our Restoration, when he 
 ^aid that they had created an unreal world, and that, allowing 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 251 
 
 for their fictitious circumstances, the perverse morality of their 
 plays was not only pardonable but even necessary. Yet it is 
 true that his audacious immodesty forms a part of that Weltver- 
 nichtungsidee, of that total upturn and Titanic revolution in 
 the universe, which he affects ; and so far we may plead in his 
 ■defente, and in the defence of the Athenian spectators, that 
 his comedies were consciously exaggerated in their coarseness, 
 and that beyond the limits of the Dionysiac festival their jokes 
 would not have been tolerated. To use a metaphor, his plays 
 were, offered as a sacrifice upon the thymel^ or orchestral altar 
 of that Bacchus who was sire by Aphroditd of Priapus : this 
 potent deity protected th'em ; and the poet, as his true and 
 loyal priest, was bound, in return for such protection, to repre- 
 sent the universe at large as conquered by the madness of 
 intoxication, beauty, and desire. Thus the Aristophanic 
 comedies are in one sense a radiant and pompous show, by 
 which the genius of the Greek race chose, as it were in. 
 bravado, to celebrate an apotheosis of the animal functions of 
 humanity ; and from this point of view we may fairly accept 
 them as visions, Dionysiac day-dreams, from which the nation 
 woke and rose and went about its business soberly, until the 
 Bacchic flutes were heard again another year. , 
 
 On the religious origin of Greek Comedy some words may 
 perhaps be reckoned not out of place in this connection. It 
 has frequently been pointed out to what a great extent the 
 character of the Aristophanic Comedy was determined by its 
 sacred nature, and by the peculiar condition of semi- religious 
 license which prevailed at Athens during the celebration of 
 the festival of Bacchus. We know that much is tolerated in a 
 Roman or Venetian carnival which would not be condoned at 
 other seasons of the year. Yet the Italian carnival, in its 
 palmiest days, must have offered but a very poor and frigid 
 picture of what took place in Athens at the Uionysia, nor was 
 the expression of ,the crudest sensuality ever thought agreeable 
 
252 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to any modern saint. That the Greeks most innocently and 
 simply wished to prove their piety by these excesses is quite 
 clear. Aristophanes himself, in the Acharnians, gives us an 
 example of the primitive Phallic Hymn, which formed the 
 nucleus of Comedy in its rudest stage. The refrain of (j>a\rjc, 
 
 aralpe BaK^t'ou, ^vyKuifie, vvicrtpuvrXavriTi, jioiy^i, sufficiently mdl- 
 
 cates its nature. Again the Choruses of the Mysts in the 
 F7'ogs furnish a still more brilliant example of the intermingle- 
 ment of debauchery with a spirit of true piety, of sensual 
 pleasure with pure-souled participation in divine bliss. Their 
 hymns to lacchus and Demeter alternate between the holiest 
 strains of praise and the most scurrilous satire. At one time 
 they chant the delights of the meadows blooming with the rose ; 
 at another they raise cries of jubilant intoxication and fierce 
 frenzy. In the same breath with the utterance of sensual 
 passion, they warn all profane persons and impure livers to 
 avoid their rites, and boast that for them alone the light of 
 heaven is gladsome, who have forsworn impiety and preserved 
 the justice due to friends and strangers. We must imagine 
 that this Phallic ecstasy, if we may so name it, had become, 
 as it were, organized and reduced to system in the Aristophanic 
 Lustspiel. It permeates and gives a flavour to the comic style 
 long after it has been absorbed and superseded by the 
 weightier interests of developed art. This ecstasy impHed a 
 profound sympathy with nature in her large and perpetual 
 reproductiveness, a mysterious sense of the sexuality which 
 pulses in all members of the- universe and reaches conscious- 
 ness in man. It encouraged a momentary subordination of 
 the will and intellect- and nobler feelings to the animal 
 propensities, prompting the same race which had produced 
 the sculptures of the Parthenon, the tragedies of .^schylus, the 
 deeds of Pericles and Leonidas, the self-control of Socrates, the 
 thought of Plato, to throw aside its royal mantle of supreme 
 humanity, and to proclaim in a gigantic work of art the 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 253 
 
 irreconcilable incongruity which exists between the physical 
 nature and the spirit of the man, when either side of the 
 antithesis is isolated for exclusive contemplation. We need 
 not here point out how far removed was the Phallic ecstasy 
 from any prurient delight in licentious details, or from the 
 scientific analysis of passions. Nor, on the other hand, need 
 we indicate the vein of a similar extravagant enthusiasm in 
 Oriental poetry. It is enough to remember that it existed latent 
 in all the comic dramas of the earlier period, throbbing through 
 them as the seve de la jeunesse palpitates in youthful limbs and 
 adds a glow and glory to the inconsiderate or unseemly acts of 
 an Alcibiades or Antony. Christianity, by introducing a new con- 
 ception of the physical relations of humanity, by regarding the 
 body as the temple of the spirit, utterly rejected and repudiated 
 this delirium of the senses, this voluntary acceptance of merely 
 animal conditions. Christianity taught mankind, what the 
 Greeks had never learned, that it is our highest duty to be at 
 discord with the universe upon this point. Man, whose subtle 
 nature might be compared to a many- stringed instrument, is 
 bidden to restrain the resonance of those chords which do 
 not thrill in unison with purely spiritual and celestial har- 
 monies. Hence the theories of celibacy and asceticism, and 
 of the sinfulness of carnal pleasure, which are wholly alien to 
 Greek moral and rehgious notions. Never since the age of 
 Athenian .splendour has a rational and highly civilized nation 
 dared to express by any solemn act its sense of union with 
 merely physical nature. Aristophanes is therefore the poet of 
 a past age, the "hierophant of a now unapprehended mystery," 
 the unique remaining example of an almost unlimited genius 
 set apart and consecrated to a cultus which subsequent civiliza- 
 tion has determined to annihilate. The only age which offers 
 anything like a parallel to the Athenian era of Aristophanes is 
 that of the ItaKan Renaissance. In the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries, at Venice, Florence, and Rome, it seemed as if the 
 
254 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Phallic ecstasy might possibly revive, as if the animal nature of 
 man might again be deified, in sentiment at least, and as if the 
 highest arts might stoop once more to interpret and to con- 
 secrate the poetry of the senses. But the conscience of the 
 world was changed ; and this could no longer be. The image 
 of Christ crowned with thorns had passed across the centuries ; 
 hopes undreamed of by the Greeks had aroused a new spirit in 
 the soul of man, and had forced him in spite of inclination to 
 lift his eyes from earth to heaven. Over the joys of the flesh, 
 which were connected with a future doom of pain unending 
 and disgrace, was shed a hue of gloom and horror. Conception 
 was looked upon as sin : birth as disaster. -It was even 
 doubted whether for any but for virgins, except by some special 
 privilege of election, salvation could be hoped. Therefore, 
 while the Greeks had been innocent in their serene uncon- 
 sciousness of sin or shame, the extravagances of the Renais- 
 sance were guilty, turbid, and morbid, because they were 
 committed defiantly, in open reprobacy, in scorn of the 
 acknowledged law. What was at worst bestial in the Greeks 
 has become devilish in the Renaissance. How different from 
 a true Greek is Benvenuto Cellini ; how unlike the monsters 
 even of Greek mythic story is Francesco Cenci : how far more 
 awful in his criminality is the Borgia than any despot of Greek 
 colony or island ! I have been somewhat led astray from 
 the point in view, which was to prove that the comedies of 
 Aristophanes embody a peculiar and temporary, though recur- 
 ring and recognized, phase of Greek feeling — that they owe 
 their license in a great measure to their religious origin, and to 
 the enthusiasm of the Bacchic ecstasy. 
 
 But what has just been said about the difference between 
 Athenian Greece and the Italian Renaissance will show that 
 Aristophanes has a still more soHd ground of defence in the 
 fact that he was thoroughly ' in harmony with the moral sense 
 of his age and nation, and that the Bacchic license was only an 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 2=5 
 
 exaggeration of more ordinary habits both of thought and 
 action. It must be acknowledged that the Greeks were devoid 
 of what we call shame and delicacy in respect of their bodies. 
 It was only in the extreme old age of the Greek race, and under 
 the dominion of Oriental mysticism, that the Alexandrian 
 Plotinus was heard to exclaim that he blushed because he had 
 a body. The true Greeks, on the contrary, were proud of the 
 body, loved to display their physical perfections, felt no shame 
 of any physical needs, were not degraded by the exercise of 
 any animal function, nay poetized the pleasures of the flesh. 
 Simonides, in his lines on Happiness, prays first for health 
 and next for beauty ; and a thousand passages might be 
 quoted to prove how naturally and sincerely the Greeks 
 reckoned physical beauty among the chief goods of life, and 
 how freely they exhibited it in all its splendour. As a slight 
 indication' of the popular feeling, we might quote the reproof 
 for effeminacy which Aristophanes utters against the young 
 men who thought it necessary to appear clothed at the Pan- 
 athenaic festival ; from which it is clear that the Greek con- 
 science connected nudity with purity. The immense value 
 attached to physical beauty is evident even from their military 
 history — from the record, for instance, of Callicrates among 
 ■ the heroes of Platsea, simply because he was the fairest of the 
 Greeks who fought that day. Again, Herodotus tells of one 
 Philippus, who joined in the expedition of Dorieus against Eryx, 
 and who being slain and stripped by the people of Segeste, 
 was taken up by his foes and nobly' buried, and thereafter wor- 
 shipped as a hero on account of his exceeding beauty. The 
 influence which the sight of beauty exercised over the gravest 
 of the Greeks is proved by the story of Phryne before the Areo- 
 pagus, and by what Plato tells of Socrates at the beginning of 
 the Charmides. How it could electrify a nation assembled in 
 the theatre, is shown by Plutarch's' story of the slave whom 
 Nicias set free for winning the applause of all Athens when 
 
256 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 acting Dionysus, and by Xenophon's tale about another Dorieus 
 whom the Athenians, though he was their deadly foe, released 
 ransomless and scatheless, after he had been captured and 
 sent to Attica, because he was a very goodly man. Nor was it 
 the sense of beauty only, or the open exhibition of the person, 
 which marked the Greeks. Besides this, and perhaps flowing 
 from it, we find in them an extraordinary callousness with regard 
 to many things which we think shocking and degrading in the 
 last degree. The mere fact that Alcibiades, while a minister of 
 the Athenian people, could have told the tales of his youth, 
 recorded in Plato's Banquet, or that grave men could have 
 contended without reserve for the favour of distinguished cour- 
 tesans, proves that the Athenian public was ready to accept 
 whatever Aristophanes might set before them — not to take his 
 jokes scornfully, as a Roman patron trifled with the facetia 
 of his Grmculus esuriens, but while enjoying them, to respect 
 their author. 
 
 Nor is Aristophanes without another solid ground of defence, 
 on the score of sincerity and healthiness. In his immodesty 
 there is nothing morbid, though it is expressed more crudely 
 than suits the moral dignity of man. Aristophanes is never 
 prurient, never in bad taste or vulgar. He has none of the 
 obscenity which revolts us in Swift, who uses filth in order to 
 degrade and violate our feelings ; none of the nastiness of 
 Molifere or Pope, whose courtly and polished treatment of dis- 
 gusting subjects is a disgrace to literature ; none of the coarse- 
 ness of Ben Jonson ; none of the far more indecent inuendo 
 which contaminates the writings of humorists like Sterne and 
 satirists like Voltaire, who seem always trying, childishly or 
 apishly, to tamper with forbidden things. Aristophanes accepts 
 licentiousness as a fact which needs no apology : he does not, 
 as the modems do, mingle it with sentiment, or indulge in it 
 on the sly. He has no polissonnerie : the vice egrillard oi the 
 French (from whom we are obliged to borrow these phrases) is 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 257 
 
 unknown to him. His license is large, serene, sane, statuesque, 
 self-approved. His sensuality is nonchalant and natural — so 
 utterly devoid of shame, so thoroughly at home and well con- 
 tented with itself, that it has no perturbation, no defiance, no 
 mysterious attractiveness. Besides he is ironical : his aire\p<o\ri- 
 fxivoL and £vpvirf)b)KToi promenade in noonday, and get laughed 
 at, instead of being stoned and hooted down. About the 
 audacious scene between Kinesias and Murrhin^ in the Zysi's- 
 irata, there is no Aretine hircosity. It is merely comic — a 
 farcical iiicident, selected, not for the rankness of its details, but 
 for its dramatic capabilities. The same may be said about the 
 termination of the ThesmophoriazuscB and the scene in the 
 EcdesiazuscB, which so vividly illustrates the working of one law 
 in the new commonwealth. So innocent in his unconsciousness 
 is Aristophanes, that he rarely condescends even to satiri-ze the 
 sensual vices. The lines about Ariphrades in the Knights, how- 
 ever, are an instance of his having done this with more than the 
 pungency of Martial, and it must be admitted that his pictures 
 of the drunkenness and incontinence of the Athenian women 
 have something Swiftish in their brutal sarcasm. If we are to 
 seek for an approximation to Aristophanic humour, we shall find 
 it perhaps in Rabelais. Rabelais exhibits a similar disregard for 
 decency, combining the same depth of purpose and largeness of 
 insight with the same coarse fun. But in Aristophanes there is 
 nothing quite grotesque and homely, whereas Rabelais is full of 
 these qualities. Even the opening of the Peace, fantastic as it 
 is in absurdity, does not touch the note of grossness peculiar 
 to French Pantagruelism. Aristophanes is always Greek, while 
 Rabelais inherits the mediaeval spirit. In reading Aristophanes 
 we seem to have the serene skies of Attica above our heads ; 
 the columns of the Propylasa and the Parthenon look down on 
 us J noble shapes of youths and maidens are crowding sacred 
 marble steps ; below, upon the mirror of the sea, shine Salamis 
 and ^gina ; and far off, in hazy distance, rise Peloponne- 
 
 s 
 
258 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 sian hills. With these pictures of the fancy his comedy har- 
 monizes. But Rabelais carries us away to Gothic courts and 
 monkish libraries : we fill his margin with etchings in the style 
 of Gustave Dord What has been said of Rabelais applies with 
 even greater force to Hogarth, whose absolute sincerity is as 
 great as that of Aristophanes, but who is never light and care- 
 less. His coarseness is the product of a coarse nature, of coarse 
 manners, of a period of national coarseness. We tolerate it 
 because of the moral earnestness beneath : the artist is striving 
 diligently to teach us by. warning us of vice. This is hardly 
 ever the case with Aristophanes. When he is coarse, we par- 
 don him for very different reasons. In his wilful degradation of 
 humanity to the level of animals we recognize a portion of the 
 Weltvernichtungsidee. In the intellectual arrogance of the 
 Athenian prime a poet could afford thus to turn the world up- 
 side down. But those who cannot subscribe to the following 
 dictum of Taine, which is very applicable to Aristophanes, — 
 " Elevdes k cette dnormitd et savouries avec pette insou- 
 ciance, les fonctions corporelles deviennent podtiques*" — those 
 who 
 
 '" Wink and shut their apprehension up 
 
 From common sense of what men were and are, 
 Who would not know what men must be " — 
 
 will need to " hurry amain " from the masque of moral anarchy 
 which the great comedian displays. With these remarks I may 
 finally dismiss what has to be said about the chief disability 
 under which Aristophanes labours as a poet.* 
 
 For the enjoyment of Aristophanic fun a sort of southern 
 childishness and swiftness of gleeful apprehension is required. 
 
 * Since this chapter was written, Mr. Browning's interesting piece of 
 criticism in verse, Aristophanes' Apology, containing a most clever cari- 
 cature of Aristophanes, and a no less clever defence of Euripides, has 
 appeared. I do not see any reason to alter the view expressed above 
 concerning Greek Comedy. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 259 
 
 It does not shine so much in its pure wit as in its overflowing 
 humour and in the inexhaustible fertiHty of ludicrous devices by 
 which laughter is excited. The ascent of Trugaios to heaven 
 upon the dung-beetle's back, and the hauling of Peace from her 
 well in the Eirene, or the wine-skin dressed up like a baby in 
 the Thesmophoriazusa, may J)e mentioned as instances of this 
 broad but somewhat peculiar drollery. Burlesquing the gods 
 was always a capital resource of the comic poets. If we in the 
 nineteenth century can find any amusement whatever in Byron's 
 or Burnand's travesties of Olympus, how exquisitely absurd to 
 an Athenian mob must have been the figures of Prometheus 
 under an umbrella, Heracles the glutton, Hermes and .^acus 
 the household slaves, Bacchus the young fop, and Iris the 
 soubrette. The puns of Aristophanes for the most part are 
 very bad, but the parodies are excellent. Then the surprises 
 (TTiipd -K^otjloKia v\ both of language and of incident, with which 
 his comedies abound, the broad and genial caricatures which 
 are so- largely traced and carried out in detail with such force, 
 the brilliant descriptions of familiar things seen from odd or 
 unexpected points of view, and lastly the enormous quantity 
 of mirth- producing matter which the poet squanders with the 
 prodigality of conscious omnipotence, all contribute to heighten 
 the comic effect of Aristophanes. Perhaps the most intelli- 
 gible piece of fun, in the modern sense of the word, is the last 
 scene in the Thesmophoriazusce, which owes its effect to parody 
 and caricature more than to allusions which are hard to seize. 
 A great deal of the fun of Aristophanes must have depended 
 upon local and personal peculiarities which we cannot under- 
 stand : the constant references to the effeminate Cleisthenes, 
 the skin-flint Pauson, miserly Patrocles, cowardly Cleonymus, 
 Execestides the alien, Agyrrhius the upstart, make us yawn 
 because we cannot catch the exact point of the jests against 
 them. Indeed, as Schlegel has said, " we may boldly affirm 
 that, notwithstanding all the explanations which have come 
 
26o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 down to us— notwithstanding the accumulation of learning which 
 has been spent upon it, one half of the wit of Aristophanes is 
 altogether lost to the modems." 
 
 Having dismissed these preliminary considerations, we may 
 now ask what has caused the comedy of Aristophanes to 
 triumph over the obstacles to its. acceptance. Why have his 
 plays been transmitted to posterity when those of Eupolis and 
 Cratinus have perished, and when only scattered lines from 
 the eight hundred comedies of the middle period read by 
 Athenaeus have survived destruction ? No one has asked of 
 Aristophanes the question which the Alexandrian critic put to 
 Menander : " Oh, Nature and Menander, which of you copied 
 the other ? " Yet Menander is scarcely more to us than the 
 memory of a departed greatness,* or at best an echo sounding 
 somewhat faintly from the Roman theatre, while Aristophanes 
 survives among the most highly cherished monuments of anti- 
 quity. The answer to this question is, no doubt, that Aristo- 
 phanes was more worth preservation than his predecessors or 
 successors. It is wiser to have confidence in the ultimate good 
 taste and conservative instinct of humanity, than to accept 
 Bacon's half- ironical, half-irritable saying, that the stream of time 
 lets every solid substance sink, and carries down the froth and 
 scum upon its surface. As far, at least, as it is possible to 
 form a judgment, we may be pretty certain that in the province 
 of the highest art and of the deepest thought we possess the 
 greater portion of those works which the ancients themselves 
 prized highly ; indeed, we may conjecture that had the great 
 libraries of Alexandria and Byzantium been' transmitted to us 
 entire, the pure metal would not very greatly have exceeded in 
 bulk what we now possess, but would have been buried beneath 
 masses of inferior matter from which centuries would have 
 
 * See my Second Series of Studies 'of Greek Poets, chap, x., for an 
 estimate of Menander, together with the other playwrights of the Middle 
 and New Comedy. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. z6i 
 
 scarcely sufficed to disengage it. Aristophanes was preserved in 
 his integrity, we need not doubt, because he shone forth a.sa.poet 
 transcendent for his splendour even among the most brilliant 
 of Attic playwrights. Cratinus may have equalled or surpassed 
 him in keen satire : Eupolis may have rivalled him in exquisite 
 artistic structure ; but Aristophanes must have eclipsed them, 
 not merely by uniting their qualities successfully, but also by 
 the exhibition of some diviner faculty, some higher spiritual 
 afflatus. If we analyze his art, we find that he combines the 
 breadth of humour, which I have already sought to charac- 
 terize, with the utmost versatility and force of intellect, with 
 the power of grasping his subjects under all their bearings, with 
 extraordinary depth of masculine good sense, with inexhaust- 
 ible argumentative resources, and with a marvellous hold on 
 personalities. Yet all these qualities, essential to a comic poet 
 who pretended also to be the public censor of politics and 
 morals, would not have sufficed to immortalize him had he not • 
 been essentially a poet — a poet in what we are apt to call the 
 modern sense of the word — a poet, that is to say, endowed 
 "with original intuitions into nature, and with the faculty of 
 presenting to our minds the most varied thoughts and feelings 
 in language uniformly beautiful, as the creatures of an exube- 
 rant and self-swayed fancy. Aristophanes is a poet as Shelley, 
 or Ariosto, or Shakspere, is a poet, far more than as Sophocles, 
 or Pindar, or Lucretius is a poet. In spite of his profound art, 
 we seem to hear him uttering " his native wood notes wild." 
 The subordination of the fancy to the fixed aims of the reason, 
 which characterizes classical poetry, is not at first sight striking 
 in Aristophanes ; but he splendidly exhibits the wealth, luxu- 
 riance, variety, and subtlety of the fancy working with the 
 reason, and sometimes superseding it, which we recognize in 
 the greatest "modern poets. If we seek to define the peculiar 
 quaHties of his poetic power, we are led to results not easily 
 expressed, because all general critical conclusions are barren 
 
262 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and devoid of force when worded, but which may perhaps be 
 stated and accepted as the text for future illustration. 
 
 The poetry of Aristophanes is always swift and splendid. 
 We watch its brilliant course as we might watch the flight of a 
 strong rapid bird, whose plumage ghtters by moments in the 
 light of the sun ; for, to insist upon the metaphor, the dazzling 
 radiance of his fancy only shines at intervals, capriciously, with 
 fitful flashes, coruscating suddenly and dpng out again. It is 
 as if the neck alone and a portion of the feathers of the soaring 
 bird were flecked with gold and crimson grain, so that a 
 turn of the body or a fluttering of the pinions is enough to 
 bring the partial splendour into light or cast it into shadow. 
 Aristophanes passes by abrupt transitions from the coarsest 
 or most simply witty dialogue to passages of pure and plaintive 
 song ; he quits his fiercest satire for refreshing strains of lark- 
 like heaven-aspiring melody. These again he interrupts with 
 sudden ruthlessness, breaking the melody in the middle of a 
 bar, and dropping the unfinished stanza. He seems shy of 
 giving his poetic impulse free rein, and prefers to tantalize* us 
 with imperfect specimens of what he might achieve ; so that ' 
 his splendour is like that of northern streamers in its lambency, 
 though swift and piercing as forked lightnings in its intensity. 
 Even his most impassioned and sustained flights of imagination 
 are broken by digressions into satire, fantastic merriment, or 
 parody, by which the more dull-witted Athenians must have 
 been sorely puzzled in their inability to decide on the serious 
 or playful purpose of the poet. Perhaps the most splendid 
 passages of true poetry in Aristophanes are the Choruses of the 
 initiated in the Frogs, the Chorus of the Clouds before they 
 
 * As a minor instance of these sudden transitions from the touching to 
 the absurd, take Charon's speech (Frogs, 185) : — 
 
 T(S ew h.vaTtaJjKa.s 4k KaKav Kal Trpayfidrajv ; 
 
 lis ets T^ Atj^tjs ireBiov, ^ 's ovov n6Kas, 
 
 fl 's Kspfiepious, fl 's KdpaKas, ^ Vi Talyapov ; 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 263 
 
 appear upon the stage, the invitation to the nightingale, and 
 the parabasis of the Birds, the speech of Dikaios Logos in the 
 Clouds, some of the praises of rustic hfe in the Peace, the sere- 
 nade (notwithstanding its coarse satire) in the Ecdesiazusa, and 
 the songs of Spartan and Athenian maidens in the Lysistrata. 
 The charm of these marvellous lyrical episodes consists of their 
 perfect simplicity and freedom. They seem to be poured forth 
 as " profuse strains of unpremeditated art " from the fulness of 
 the poet's soul. Their language is elastic, changeful, finely- 
 tempered, fitting the deUcate thought like a veil of woven air. 
 It has no Pindaric involution, no ^schylean pompousness, no 
 studied Sophoclean subtlety, no Euripidean concetti. It is 
 always bright and Attic, sparkling like the many- twinkling 
 laughter of the breezy sea, or like the light of morning upon 
 rain-washed olive-branches. But this poetry is never very deep 
 or passionate. It cannot stir us with the intensity of Sappho, 
 with the fire and madness of the highest inspiration. Indeed, 
 the conditions of comedy precluded Aristophanes, even had he 
 desired it, which we have no reason to suspect, from attempting 
 the more august movements of lyric poetry. The peculiar 
 glories of his style are its untutored beauties, the improvised 
 perfection and unerring exactitude of natural expression, for 
 which it is unparalleled by that of; any other Greek poet. In 
 her most delightful moments the muse of Aristophanes suggests 
 an almost plaintive pathos, as if behind the comic mask there 
 were a thinking, feeling human soul, as if the very uproar of 
 the Bacchic merriment implied some afterthought of sadness. 
 
 A detailed examination of the structure of the comedies 
 would be the best illustration of these remarks. At present it 
 will be enough to bring forward two examples of the tender 
 melodies which may at times be overheard in pauses of the 
 wild Aristophanic symphony. The first of these is the well- 
 known Welcome to the Nightingale, sung by the Chorus before 
 their Parabasis ; — 
 
264 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 <pi\Tarov opt>4(cv, 
 TTiit/Tuv ^uvvofie roiv 4^av 
 Sfivav ^vvrpop' rniSot ; 
 ^Afles, -^Xfles, SxIiBtis, 
 , Tl^vv (p66yyov ejuol tpepovfr' ; 
 ctAA' S KaKKi^6av KptKOVff' 
 avT^v ^fjiyfiatxiv 7jpiyo7s, 
 &PXOV Tuv aj/airaitrray. * 
 
 With what a fluent caressing fulness one word succeeds another 
 here ! How each expresses love and joy ! Remember, too, 
 that all the birds are singing together, and that the wild throat 
 of their playfellow, the nightingale, is ready to return the 
 welcome with its throbbing song of Maytime and young 
 summer. Take another poetic touch, brief and unobtrusive, 
 yet painting a perfect picture with few strokes, and transfus- 
 ing it with the spirit of the scene imagined : — 
 
 aXX* ava[j,y7}(r64uTeSj ui/dpes, 
 ttJs SiaiTTjs TTJs iraKaias, 
 ^v Trapel^ auTTj irob' TifUf, 
 Twv re Tra\ao'i(tiV ^Keiyuvt 
 
 TtOf Te (T^KtDP, TaV T6 fi^pTWV, 
 
 TTJs rpvyds re ttjs y\vKeias, 
 TTJs lavLcis T€ TTJs irphs Tcp fppeaTLf 
 tS)V tc ^KoSjv, Siv TFoSovfjLey — 
 
 " The violet-bed beside the well, and the olives which we long 
 to see again." Trugaios is reminding his fellow-villagers of the 
 pleasures of peace and of their country life. Those who from 
 their recollection of southern scenery can summon up the 
 picture, who know how cool and shady are those wells, mirror- 
 ing maiden-hair in their black depth ; how fragrant and dewy 
 are the beds of tangled violets, how dreamy are the olive-trees, 
 aerial, mistlike," robed with light, will understand the peculiar 
 wodoe of these lines. 
 
 But we must not dwell too much upon the glimpses of 
 pathetic poetry in Aristophanes, which after all are but few and 
 
ARISTOPH-ANES. 265 
 
 far between, mere swallow-flights of song, when compared with 
 the serious business of his art. It is well known that the old 
 comedy of the Athenians performed the function of a public 
 censorship. Starting from the primitive comic song, in which 
 a rude Fescennine license of what we now call " chaffing" was 
 allowed, and tempering its rustic jocularity with the caustic 
 bitterness of Archilochian satire; comedy became an instrument 
 for holding up to public ridicule all things of general interest. 
 Persons and institutions, nay, the gods themselves, are freely 
 laughed at. Bacchus seems to have enjoyed the jokes even 
 when directed against himself : «u 6 Otoe 'ierwc yaipu (^CkoyikiDQ 
 rts rill' are the words of Lucian. So no one else had a right to 
 resent the poet's merriment when the presiding god of the 
 festival approved of sarcasms against his deity, and trod his 
 own stage as a cowardly effeminate young profligate. This 
 being the more serious aim of comedy, it followed that 
 Aristophanes ahvays had some satiric, and in so far didactic 
 purpose, underlying his extravagant caricatures. What that 
 purpose was, is too well known to need more than passing 
 mention. From his earliest' appearance under the name of 
 Callistratus, to the last of his victories, Aristophanes maintained 
 his character as an Athenian Conservative. He came forward 
 uniformly as a panegyrist of the old policy of Athens, and a 
 vehement antagonist of the new direction taken by his nation 
 subsequently to the Persian war. This one theme he varied, 
 according to circumstances and convenience. In the first of 
 his plays — the Daitaleis, he attacked the profligacy and 
 immodesty of the rising generation, who neglected their 
 Homer for the lessons of the Sophists, and engaged in legal 
 quarrels. The Acharnians, the Peace, and the Lysistrata are 
 devoted to impressing on the Athenians the advantages of 
 peace, and inducing them to lay aside their enmity against 
 Sparta. In the Knights, the Demagogues are attacked through 
 the person of Cleon, with a violence of concentrated passion 
 
266 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 that surpasses' the most savage onslaughts of Archilochus. 
 The Clouds and Wasp exhibit different pictures of the insane 
 passion for Htigation and the dishonest arts of rhetoric which 
 prevailed at Athens, fostered partly by the influence of Sophists 
 who professed to teach a profitable method of public speaking, 
 and partly by the flattery of the demagogues. The Birds is a 
 fantastic satire upon the Athenian habit of building castles in 
 the air, and indulging in extravagant dreams of conquest. In 
 the EcdesiazuscR Aristophanes seems bent on ridiculing the 
 visionary Utopias of political theorists like Plato, and also on 
 caricaturing the social license which prevailed in Athens, where 
 everything, as he complains, had been tried, except for women 
 to appear in public like the men. In the Thesmophoridzusa 
 and the Frogs we exchange politics for literature ; but in his 
 treatment of the latter subject, Aristophanes exhibits the same 
 conservative spirit. His hostility against Euripides, which is 
 almost as bitter as his hatred of Cleon, is founded upon the 
 sophistical , nature of his art. Indeed, the Demagogues, the 
 Sophists, and Euripides were looked upon- by him as three 
 forms of the same poison which was corrupting the old ^9oe 
 of his nation. We have now indicated the serious intention of 
 all the plays of Aristophanes, except the Plutus, which is an 
 ethical allegory conceived under a different inspiration from 
 that which gave the impulse to his other creative acts. Yet it 
 must not be forgotten that the subject matter of these plays 
 is often varied : in the Acharnians, for example, we have a 
 specimen of literary criticism, while the Lysistrata is aimed as 
 much at the follies of women as intended to set forth the 
 advantages of peace. We must also remember that it was the 
 poet's purpose to keep his serious ground-plan concealed. His 
 Comedy had to be the direct antithesis to Greek Tragedy. If 
 it taught, it was to teach by paradox. In this respect, Aris- 
 tophanes realised a very high ideal. Preach as he may be 
 doing in reaHty, and underneath his merriment, there is hardly 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 267- 
 
 a passage in all his plays, if we except the pleadings of Dikaios 
 Logos in the Clouds, and the personal portions of the 
 Parabases, in which we catch him revealing his own earnest- 
 ness. Every ordinary point of view^is so consistently ignored, 
 and all the common relations of things are so thoroughly 
 reversed, that the topsy-turvy Chaos which a play of 
 Aristophanes presents, is quite harmonious. It is, in fact, 
 madness methodized and with a sober meaning. Perhaps we 
 ought to seek in this consideration the key to those problems 
 which have occupied historians when dealing with the Aristo- 
 phanic criticism of Socrates. How, it is always asked, could 
 Aristophanes have been so consciously unjust to the great 
 moralist of Athens? If we keep in sight the intentional 
 absurdity of everything in one of the Aristophanic comedies, 
 we may perhaps understand how it was possible for the poet 
 to travesty the friend with whom he conversed familiarly at 
 supper parties. That Plato understood the ridicule of his 
 great master from some such point of view as this, is clear 
 from his express recommendation of the Clouds to Dionysius, 
 from the portrait which he draws of Aristophanes in the 
 Symposium, and from the eulogistic epigram (if that is genuine) 
 which he composed upon him. It is curious as a parallel, that 
 Agathon should have been even more ignobly caricatured than 
 Socrates at the beginning of the Thesmophoriazusx ; yet we 
 know from his own lips, as well as from the dialogue of Plato, 
 that Aristophanes was a friend of the tragic poet, for he 
 elsewhere calls him 
 
 The lash applied to Socrates and Agathon is scarcely less 
 stinging than that applied to Cleon and Euripides.. Yet the 
 fact remains, that Aristophanes was the friend of Agathon, 
 and a member of the Socratic circle. Much of the obscurity 
 attending the interpretation of the Clouds arises from our 
 
268 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 having lost the finer nuances of Athenian feeling respecting 
 the persons satirized in the old Comedy. We do not, for 
 example, understand Cratinus when he joins the name of 
 F.uripides with that of his ^eat satirist in one epithet descrip- 
 tive of the quibbling style of the day — evpnriSapiiTTofart^eu'.* 
 But to return from this digression, we may observe that it was 
 only in a democracy that an institution unsparing of friend 
 and foe, like the old Comedy, in which persons were openly 
 exposed to censure and the solemn acts of the government 
 were called in question, could be tolerated. Accordingly we 
 find that the early development of Comedy, after the date of 
 Susarion, was checked by the accession of Pisistratus to power, 
 and that the old Comedy itself perished with the extinction of 
 Athenian liberty. It. is only a derhocracy that likes to criticise 
 itself, that takes" pride in its indifference to ridicule, and in its 
 readiness to acknowledge its own errors. In this respect, we 
 English are very democratic : we abuse ourselves and expose 
 our own follies more than any other nation ; the press and the 
 platform do for us in a barren, unsesthetic fashion, what Aris- 
 tophanes did for the Athenian public. 
 
 Perhaps we may now be able to see that a middle course 
 must be followed between the extremes of regarding Aristo- 
 phanes as an indecent parasite pandering to the worst incli- 
 nations of the Athenian rabble, and of looking upon him as a 
 profound philosopher and sober patriot. The former view is 
 maintained by Grote, who, though he is somewhat hampered 
 by his pronounced championship of all the democratic institu- 
 tions of Athens, among which the Comedy of Aristophanes 
 must needs be reckoned, yet clearly thinks that the poet was 
 
 * This epithet contains the gist of the objection often brought against 
 Aristophanes, that he assisted the demoralization which he denounced. If 
 he did so, it was not by his grossness and indelicacy, but by his subtilty and 
 refinement and audacity of universal criticism. The sceptical aquafortis of 
 his age is as strong in Aristophanes as in Euripides. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 269 
 
 a meddling monkey, full indeed of genius, but injurious to the 
 order of the State, and to the peace of private persons. The 
 latter has been advocated by the German scholars, Ranke, 
 Bergk, and Meineke, against whom Grote has directed an able 
 and conclusive argument in the notes to his eighth volume. 
 Truly, it is absurd to pretend that Aristophanes was the 
 prudent and far-seeing moralist described by his German ad- 
 mirers. To imagine him thus, would be to falsify the whole 
 purpose of the Athenian Comic Drama, and to test its large 
 extra,vagance by the narrow standard of modern morality. We 
 might as well fancy that Alexander was an unselfish worker in 
 the service of humanity, as bring ourselves to see in Aristo- 
 phanes the sage of uniformly staid sobriety. Not to mention 
 that such a notion is at total variance with the only authentic 
 portrait we possess of him, in the Symposium of Plato, every 
 line of his Comedies cries out against so pedantic ■ and priggish 
 a calumny. For it is a calumny thus to misrepresent the high- 
 spirited muse of Aristophanes, with her dishevelled hair and 
 Coan robe of flimsiest gauze, and wild eyes swimming in the 
 mists of wine. She never pretends to be better than a priestess 
 of the midnight Bacchus and Corinthian Aphrodite, though 
 she believes sincerely in the inspiration of these deities. To 
 see in her a Vestal or a Diotima, to set the owl of Pallas on 
 her shoulder, and to strap the segis round her panting breasts 
 is a piece of elaborate stupidity and painful impertinence, 
 which it remained for German pedagogues to perpetrate. Yet 
 it is equally wrong to think of Aristophanes merely as a per- 
 nicious calumniator, who killed .Socrates, and put an ineffectual 
 spoke in the wheel of Progress. Granted that he was more of 
 a Merry- Andrew than a morahst, more of a yeXwroTroioe than a 
 ^ertwpoXiaxni, we must surely be blind if we fail to recognise 
 the deep undernote of good sense and wisdom which gives 
 eternal value to his jests — worse than blind if we do not honour 
 him for valiant and unflinching service in the cause which he 
 
27° THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 had recognized as right. Nor are the enemies of Aristophanes 
 less insensible to his real merits as an artist, than his ponderous 
 German friends. What are we to think of the imaginative 
 faculties of a man, who after^gazing upon the divine splendours 
 of the genius of Aristophanes, after tracking the erratic flight of 
 this most radiant poet, " with his singing robes about him," can 
 descend to earth and wish that he had never existed, or shake 
 his head and measure him by the moral standards of Quarterly- 
 Reviews and British respectability? Alas, that from the 
 modem world should have evanesced all appreciation of Art 
 that is not obviously useful, palpably didactic ! If we would 
 rightly estimate Aristophanic Comedy, we must be prepared 
 to accept it in the classical spirit, and separating ourselves 
 from either sect of the Pharisees, refuse to picture its great 
 poets to ourselves, on the one hand as patriots exitnid. morum 
 gravitate, or on the other, as foul slanderers atnd irreverent 
 buffoons. Far beyond and outside the plane of either standing- 
 ground are they. The old Comedy of Athens is a work of art 
 so tempered and so balanced, that he who would appreciate 
 it must submit, for a moment at least, to forego his modem 
 advantages of improved morality, and public decency, and 
 purer taste, and parliamentary courtesy, and to become — if 
 he can bend his moral back to that obliquity — a " Merry 
 Greek." 
 
 It is now clear that Aristophanic Comedy is in the history 
 of Art unique — the product of pecuhar and unrepeated circum- 
 stances. The essential differences between it and modem 
 Comedy are manifold. Modem Comedy partakes of the 
 Tragic spirit ; it has a serious purpose, acknowledged by the 
 poet ; a lesson is generally taught in its catastrophe ; it is fond 
 of poetical justice. Aristophanic Comedy, as we have seen 
 whatever may be its purpose, is always ludicrous to the spec- 
 tators and to itself Tartuffe, A New Way to Pay Old Debts, 
 and Voljione, are tragedies without bloodshed : you only laugh 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 271 
 
 at them incidentally. The Clouds, the Knights, and the Frogs 
 excite inevitable laughter; Nor is this difference manifest only 
 in the matter and spirit of the two Comedies : it expresses 
 itself externally in their several forms. The plays of Aris- 
 tophanes, upon the stage, must have been like our Panto- 
 mimes, or rather, like our Operas. If we wish to form a 
 tolerable notion of the appearance of an Aristophanic Comedy, 
 we cannot do better than keep in mind the Flauto Magico of 
 Mozart. Had Mozart received a good translation of the Birds 
 instead of the wretched libretto of the Zauberflote, what a really 
 magic drama he might have produced ! Even as it is, with 
 the miserable materials he had. to work upon, the master musi- 
 cian has given us an Aristophanic specimen of the ludicrous 
 passing by abrupt but delicate transitions to the serious, of 
 Parody and Irony playing in and out at hide and seek, of 
 Pathos lurking beneath Merriment, and of Madness leaping by 
 a bound into the regions of Pure Reason. And this he has 
 achieved by the all-subduing witchery of music — by melodies 
 which solve the stiffest contradictions, by the ebb and flow of 
 measured sound rocking upon its surface the most varied 
 thoughts and feelings of the soul of man. In the Zauberflote 
 we are never surprised by any change, however sudden — by 
 any incident, however whimsical. After first lamenting over 
 the stupidity of the libretto, and then resigning ourselves to 
 the caprices of the fairy story, we are delighted to follow the 
 wanderings of Music through her labyrinth of quaint and con- 
 tradictory absurdities. Just so, we fancy, must have been the 
 case with Aristophanes. Peisthetserus and Euelpides were not 
 more discordant than Papageno ; the Birds had their language 
 as Astrifiammante has hers ; nor were the deeper tones of 
 Aristophanic meaning more out of place than the bass notes 
 of Sarastro, and the choruses of his attendant priests. Music, 
 which has ■harmonized the small and trivial contradictions of 
 the Zauberflote, harmonized the vast and profound contradictions 
 
272 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of Aristophanic Comedy. It was the melodramatic setting of 
 such plays as the Birds and the Clouds which caused their 
 Weltvemichtungsidee to blossom forth melodiously into the 
 magic tree, with all its blossoms and' nightingales and merry 
 apes, to which I have so often referred. 
 
 With this parallel between the Birds and an opera like the 
 Zauberflote in our minds, we may place ourselves among the 
 thirty thousand Athenian spectators assembled in the theatre 
 about the end of March, 414 B.C. We must remember that 
 the great expedition had recently gone forth to Sicily. It was 
 only in the preceding year that the Salaminian galley had been 
 sent for Alcibiades, who had escaped to Sparta, where he was 
 now engaged in stirring up evil for his countrymen. But as yet 
 no disaster had befallen the army of invasion. Gylippus had not 
 ■arrived. Lamachus was still alive. Every vessel brought news 
 to the Athenians of the speed with which their forces were car- 
 rying on the work of circumvallation, and of the despondency 
 of the Syracusans. The spectators of the plays of Aristophanes 
 and Ameipsias were nearly the same persons who had listened 
 to the honeyed eloquence of Alcibiades persuading them to 
 undertake the expedition, and promising them not merely the 
 supremacy of Hellas, but the empire of the Mediterranean and 
 the subjugation of Carthage. Alcibiades, indeed, had turned 
 a traitor to his country ; but the charm of his oratory and the 
 spirit he had roused remained. Each father in the audience 
 might fairly hope that his son would share in raising Athens to 
 her height of splendour : not a man but felt puffed up with 
 insolent prosperity. The only warning voice which spoke while 
 Athens trembled on the very razor-edge of fortune, was that of 
 Aristophanes — but with how sweet and delicate a satire, with 
 sarcasms that had the sound of flattery, with prognostications 
 of failure that wore the shape of reahzed ambitions, with mu- 
 sical banter and multitudinous jests that seemed to apologize 
 for folly rather than to censure it ! There is no doubt but that 
 
ARISTOPBANES. 273 
 
 Aristophanes intended in the Birds to ridicule the ambition of 
 the Athenians and their inveterate gullibihty. Peisthetserus 
 and Euelpides represent in comic caricature the projectors, agi- 
 tators, schemers, flatterers, who, led by Alcibiades, had imposed 
 upon the excitable vanity of the nation. Cloudcuckootown is 
 any castle in the air or South Sea Bubble, which might take 
 the, fancy of the Athenian mob. But it is also more especially 
 the project of Western dominion connected with their scheme 
 of Sicilian conquest. Aristophanes has treated his theme so 
 poetically and largely, that the interests of the Birds is not, like 
 that of the Wasps or the Knights, almost wholly confined to 
 the Athens of his day. It transcends those limitations of place 
 and time, and is the everlasting allegory of foolish schemes and 
 flimsy ambition. A modern dramatist — Ben Jonson or Molibre 
 for instance, perhaps even Shakspere — could hardly have re- 
 frained from ending the allegory with some piece of poetical 
 justice. We should have seen Peisthetaerus disgraced and 
 Cloudcuckootown resolved into " such stuff as dreams are 
 made of" But this is not the art of Aristophanes. He brings 
 Peisthetaerus to a successful catastrophe, and ends his Comedy 
 with marriage songs of triumph. Yet none the less pointed is 
 the satire. The unreality of the vision is carefully maintained, 
 and Peisthetaerus walking home with Basileia for his bride, like 
 some new sun-eclipsing star, seems to wink and strut and shrug 
 his shoulders, conscious of the Titanic sham. 
 
 To analyze in detail a work of art so well known to all 
 students as the Birds would be needless. It is enough to 
 notice in passing that it is quite unique of its kind, combining 
 as it does such airy fancies as we find in the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream with the peculiar pungency of Aristophanic 
 satire, untainted by the obscenity which forms an integral part 
 of the Ecclesiazusce or Lysistrata. Most exquisite is the art 
 with which Aristophanes has collected all the facts of orni- 
 thology, all the legends and folk-lore connected with birds, so 
 
 T 
 
274 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 as to create a fanciful birdland and atmosphere of true bird life 
 for his imaginary beings. Not less wonderful is the imagination 
 with which he has conceived the whole universe frorii the bird's 
 point of view, his sympathy with the nightingale, the drollery 
 of his running footman Trochilus, the pompous gravity of his 
 King Epops, and so on through the whole of his winged 
 dramatis personcR. The triumph of his art is the Parabasis, in 
 which the birds pour forth melodious compassion for the tran- 
 sitory earth-born creatm'es of an hour. Poor nien, with their 
 little groping lives ! The epithets of pity which the happier 
 birds invent to describe man, are woven as it were of gossamer 
 and dew, symbols of fragility. Then the music changes as the 
 vision of winged Eros, upsoaring from the primeval ■tvind-egg, 
 bursts upon the fancy of the chorus. Again it subsides into 
 still more delicate irony, when the just reign of the birds on 
 earth and over heaven is prophesied ; and the whole concludes 
 with semi-chorus answering to semi-chorus in antiphonal strains 
 of woodland poetry and satire — the sweet notes of the flute 
 responded to by shouts of Bacchic laughter. 
 
 We have seen in dealing with the Birds how Aristophanes 
 converted the whple world into a transcendental birdland, and 
 filled his play with airy shapes and frail imaginings. This 
 power of alchemizing and transmuting everything he touches 
 into the substance of his thought of the moment, is no less 
 remarkable in the comedy of the Clouds. And here we are 
 able to mark the peculiar nature of his allegory more clearly 
 than in the choruses of the Birds, with greater accuracy to 
 distinguish the play of pure poetry alternating with satire, to 
 trace the glittering thread of fancy drawn athwart the more 
 fantastic arabesque of comic caricature. In the Clouds Aristo- 
 phanes ridicules the rising school of teachers who professed to 
 train the youth of Athens in the arts of public speaking and 
 successful litigation. He aims at the tribe of sophists, who 
 substituted logical discussion for the old sesthetic education of 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 275 
 
 the Greeks, and who sought to replace mythological religion 
 by meteorological explanations of natural phenomena. The 
 pedantry of this dialectic in its boyhood offended the artistic 
 sense of a conservative like Aristophanes : the priggishness of 
 upstart science had the air to him of insolent irreligion. 
 Besides, he saw that this new philosophy, while it undermined 
 the ^9oc of his nation, was capable of lending itself to ignoble 
 ends — that its possessors sought to make money, that their 
 disciples were eager to acquire mere technical proficiency, in 
 order to cut a fine figure in pubhc and to gain their selfish pur- 
 poses. The sophists professed two chief subjects, ra ixeriupn, 
 or the science of natural phenomena ; and rhetoric, or the art 
 of conquering by argument. Aristophanes, in the Clouds, sa- 
 tirizes both linder the form of allegory by bringing upon the 
 stage his chorus of Clouds, who, in their changeful shapes — • 
 heaven-obscuring, appearing variously to various eyes, coming 
 into being from the nothing of the air, and passing away again 
 by imperceptible dissolution, usurping upon the functions of 
 Zeus in the thunder and the rain, hurrying hither and thither 
 at the will of no divine force, but impelled by the newly dis- 
 covered abstraction Vortex — are the very forms and symbols 
 of the airy, misty Proteus of verbal falseness and intangible 
 irreligion which had begun to possess the Athenians. In order 
 to understand the force of this allegory, we must remember the 
 part which the clouds played in the still vital mythology of the 
 Greeks. It was by a cloud that Hera in her divine scorn had 
 deluded the impious desires of Ixion, who, embracing hollow 
 shapes of vapour, begat Centaurs. The rebellious giants who 
 sought 'to climb Olympus, were forms of mist and tempest in- 
 vading the serenity of highest heaven : this Strepsiades indicates 
 when he quotes the words irXrycafiove 0' EKaToyK£(pa\a Tvipw as re- 
 ferring to the clouds. It was in cloudy vision that gods appeared 
 to mortals, or escaped their sight ; in cloud that the Homeric 
 heroes were snatched from death by their Olympian patrons ; 
 
276 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 in clouds that ^olus dwelt and Danae was prisoned. The 
 Harpies were wind-tossed films of frothy cloud ; the Sirens 
 daughters of foam and mist. Everything that deceived and 
 concealed, that shifted and eluded, that stole away " the en- 
 chanted gazer's mind," all Maya or delusion, all fascination and 
 unrealizable desire, was symbolized by clouds. Nor was it 
 without meaning that the clouds ascended from pcean, from 
 the wily parent of wave and storm, the inscrutable hoarder of 
 secrets locked within the caverns of the murmuring deep, who 
 might never be taken in any one clear form, who loved to cozen 
 and betray, whose anger was swift and fretful against such as 
 caught him in their toils. The clouds were his daughters, and 
 so was Aphrodite — beautiful, deceitful, soul-subduing — these 
 his offspring of the air, this his child of the foam — tliese pouring 
 glamour on the eyes of men, this folding their hearts in snares. 
 Without being fanciful, we might foUow this analysis through 
 a hundred labyrinths, all tending to show how exquisite to the 
 apprehension of a Greek steeped in m3^hological associations 
 must have been the allegory of the clouds. We might, more- 
 over, have pointed out the care of Aristophanes to maintain this 
 mythological propriety. Even in the Parabasis, for instance, 
 where the chorus comes forward in its human character as the 
 representative of the poet, there occurs a semi-choric strain of 
 great beauty, hymning the elemental deities of Sun, Air, Ocean, 
 and all-covering Heaven, who are the parents and especial patrons 
 of the clouds ; for the Sun begets them from the fountains of 
 the Sea, the Air receives and gives them shape as they drift 
 through her yielding realm, and the great Zeus of the sky com- 
 pels them to his service, stores them with his thunder, and 
 iToakes a palace for them in his adamantine home, and wreathes 
 their dances round his footstool .of tlie firmament. But it is 
 enough to have pointed out the main features of the allegory. 
 The scope which it afforded for the display of splendid poetry 
 was of course immense. From the first moment of the appear- 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 277 
 
 ance of the choms to the end we never lose sight of their 
 cloudy splendour, and, as in the case of the Birds, every 
 thought, playful or imaginative, which can be conceived re- 
 lating to the world of clouds, is pressed by Aristophanes into 
 his service. 
 
 Early in the play the fount of poetry which they suggest, 
 springs pure and clear from the flinty rock of previous satire. 
 Socrates, who has just been displayed to us as the insignificant 
 anatomizer of fleas and gnats, rises suddenly to this height in 
 his invocation : — 
 
 " O Sovereign King, immeasurable Air, who keepest the earth balanced, 
 and blazing Ether, and sublime goddesses, ye Clouds of lightning and of 
 thunder, arise, appear, dread queens, in mid -air to your Thinker ! " 
 
 It is only in the last word, notice, that the comic smile breaks 
 out. 
 
 " Come, then, ye reverend Clouds, honour this neophyte with your 
 dread beauty ! whether upon Olympus' holy snow-swept peaks ye sit, or 
 in the gardens of father Ocean weave the dance with nymphs, or in golden 
 pitchers draw the waters of Nile, or in Mseotis bide, or on the white eyries 
 of Mimas : listen, receive our sacrifice, be gracious to our rites," 
 
 With what radiance of imagination the haunts of the clouds 
 are here enumerated ! Sometimes we see them floating in 
 virginal processions above unfooted snows, sometimes en- 
 throned like queens in solemn silence on aerial watch-towers, 
 sometimes dissolved in dew far down among the Oceanides, 
 or brooding, filmy vapours, on the face of broad untroubled 
 lakes.. 
 
 Aristophanes, it may be said in passing, never dwells upon 
 the more tempestuous functions of the clouds as stormy and 
 angry powers : that would be to violate his allegory, which 
 must always show them deceitfully beautiful, spreading illusion 
 over earth and sky. 
 
 In answer to the invitation of Socrates, the Clouds are heard 
 
278 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 behind the stage chanting a choric hymn ; * and here it must 
 be remarked that the poet has revealed subtle instinct, for 
 before exhibiting his Chorus, arrayed in veils of filmy gauze, 
 to the people, by which he might have risked the possibility 
 of exciting ludicrous instead of solemn ideas, he enlists the 
 imagination of the audience by a sublime strain of preparatory 
 music, vocally realizing the splendour of the coming Clouds 
 before they strike the eyes of the spectators. 
 
 It is to the repeated roll of distant thunder that they sing 
 their untranslatable entrance hymn. Behold them rising, 
 silent domes and pinnacles and towers, from the burnished 
 mirror of the noonday sea : how the sunlight flashes on their 
 pearly slopes and fills their deeply-cloven valleys : .how dewy 
 bright and glistening they are ! Then watch them scale the 
 vault of heaven, quitting the horizon with its mists, marching 
 in tranquil state across the spaces of blue ether, gliding to 
 their thrones among the mountain pines ! There they repose, 
 and at their feet is heard the clamour of the streams, the deep 
 rebounding boom of sea waves ; but they are seated in serenity, 
 and below them lies the champaign with its fruits of holy earth, 
 and on their broad immortal marble fronts the unwearied light 
 of the sun-god plays. From their girdles to their sandals falls 
 
 ap9aiJ.ev ipavepal dpaffepi^v (pvtriv evdyyjTOVf 
 
 Trarphs air' 'nKeayov fiapvax^os 
 
 v^T]\Siv 6p4aiv Kopvcpais eirl 
 
 dey5poK6fjLous, tva 
 
 T7i\e(j>ave7s trKoiriiis CKpopd/icBa, 
 
 KapiroiSs t* hpdoiJ.4vav iepav x^Sya^ 
 
 Kal TTora^Siv ^aHav KcXaS^juara, 
 
 Kat irApTOv K5\dSovTa ^ap^^po/iov ' 
 
 vixfj.a yhp aiSepos aKdjiarov ae\aye7Tat 
 
 fiapfiapeais iy avyais. 
 
 dAV airoaeiffdfiej/oL yiipos ojx^piov 
 
 adaydras lieas iiTiiclifieda 
 
 TTj\effK6Trip ojifJiATL yaiav. 
 
 Clouds, 275. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 279 
 
 the robe of mist that wrapped them round, and on the watch- 
 towers of the world they sit, bare in their beauty, god-like forms. 
 
 Such is the vision which this inimitable Chorus evokes. Its 
 truth has been felt by all who have seen the rising of summer 
 clouds from the waters of the Mediterranean. Indeed, this 
 Chorus belongs to the highest order of poetry. Not only does 
 it furnish an example of the freshness which is peculiar to 
 Aristophanes, but it is in the deepest sense an intuition into 
 the inmost life of nature. We hear in it the voice of a true 
 seer or interpreter, who knows by choice of words and rhythms 
 how to convey his own impressions to our mind. Even 
 Shelley, when he wrote his Cloud, had grasped perhaps the 
 secret of the pomp and splendour of Cloudland less firmly than 
 Aristophanes has done, though his images are piled so multi- 
 tudinously, and every thought or fancy that a cloud suggests is 
 whirled, as it were, in the drift of brilHant and radiant shapes. 
 Aristophanes has this advantage — that something of the 
 mythopceic power still survived in Greece, and that he shared 
 the sculptural genius of his race. Moreover, his audience were 
 prepared by their religious associations to conceive of his 
 Clouds as living creatures, and he was writing for the stage, 
 where the poetry of personification is made easy by direct 
 appeal to the eyesight. 
 
 In the Clouds as it has been transmitted to us, Aristophanes 
 employs another and more direct form of allegory. He brings 
 upon the stage the lUmoc, Xoyoe in controversy with the alinoz 
 Xo'yoc — the former representing the old Conservative education 
 of Athens, the other the new theories and modes of Kfe which 
 were beginning to spring up. It has been conjectured that 
 I'lKaioi Xdyoe wore the mask of Aristophanes himself, and ci^icoc 
 \6ynz that of Thrasymachus the Sophist. If this conjecture 
 hits the truth, it is curious that the vulgar logician whom 
 Socrates handles so severely in Plato's Republic, should have 
 been chosen as the ideal of his doctrine and influence— the 
 
28o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 special pleader of the Phrontisterion. The contest between 
 these two impersonations of modesty and impudence, of 
 manliness and effeminacy, offers an unique example in Greek 
 comic literature of what was common on our own stage about 
 three centuries ago. The Just and Unjust Logoi dispute and 
 wrangle for the favour of Pheidippides precisely like the abstrac- 
 tions in Hycke Scorner or Lusty Juventus. Of course this 
 kind of allegory is much coarser and affords less scope for 
 poetical treatment than the exquisite mythus of the Clouds. 
 The Logoi are but masks or hollow automata, from behind 
 which the poet utters his arguments : there is no illusion of 
 the senses, no enchantment of the fancy in their presentation. 
 Yet the speech of Dikaios Logos forms one of the purest and 
 most beautiful passages that Aristophanes has written, in its 
 simple and affectionate picture of old Athenian life. The poet, 
 we fear, was very far behind his age : he looked back to the 
 good times when the sailor only knew enough to sing out 
 " Ahoy ! " and call for biscuit : he wanted the Athenian lads to 
 have broad backs and sluggish tongues : he was dead to the 
 advantages of dialectic and Socratic definition : he kept trying 
 to bring back the days of Marathon, when nothing could avert 
 the coming days of Syracuse and ^gospotami and Chseronea. 
 We who read the history of Athens by the light of our Grote, 
 we who are rolling our waves towards the rising instead of the 
 setting sun, know now how very perverse and unadvanced the 
 poet was. Yet, for all that, can we fail to be charmed with the 
 picture that he draws of Greek boyhood in the good old times, 
 and to contrast it favourably with the acknowledged impudence 
 and profligacy of Critias and Agathon and Alcibiades — the 
 friends and pupils of Socrates ? " In that blissful time," says 
 Dikaios Logos, "when I flourished, and modesty and tem- 
 perance were practised, a boy's voice was never heard ; but 
 he would set off at daybreak, in snow or sunshine, with his 
 comrades to the school of the harper, where he learned the 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 281 
 
 ballads of our forefathers in praise of Pallas ; and from the 
 harper he would run to the training-ground and exercise 
 himself with the decorum befitting virtuous youth." The rules 
 for- the behaviour of boys which Aristophanes here enunciates, 
 provoke a modern smile ; for the morality of Athens obliged 
 lads to observe the same sort of propriety which we expect 
 from girls. But for all his modesty, the youth of those days 
 was not a milksop. He did indeed shun the public baths 
 and the agora, repel the advances of profligate persons, respect 
 his parents, avoid Hetairai, and form in his breast an image of 
 • Aid6s : yet he frequented the wrestling-ground, and grew fair 
 in form and colour with generous exercises, not " sicklied o'er 
 with the pale cast of thought," nor bent and jaded by the 
 restless wrangling of the law courts : but among the saCred 
 olive-trees of the Academy he ran races with his comrade, 
 " crowned with white reeds, smelling of bindweed and careless 
 hours and leaf-shedding poplar, rejoicing in the prime of spring, 
 when the plane-tree whispers to the elm." In these last lines 
 we touch the very core of Greek aristocratic Conservatism — 
 that imperious demand for leisure, for erxoXi) t&v avaynamv, of 
 which Aristotle speaks as an essential in the life of free men ; 
 that contempt of all serious time-consuming business which we 
 find in Plato ; that respect for the beauty of the body, and 
 that dislike of every occupation that tended to degrade its 
 form or spoil the freshness of its colour ; that sympathy with 
 nature in her graceful moods ; that well-bred nonchalance ; 
 that love of the gymnasium with its poplar sacred to Herakles, 
 the god of endurance, and its plane-tree of swift Hermes — in a 
 word, those accumulated aesthetical prejudices which marked 
 the race pre-eminent for its artistic faculty, the caste of rich and 
 idle citizens supported by a nation of slaves, the unique and 
 never again to be imitated people, who once and for all upon 
 this earth of ours attained perfection, realized the ideal toward 
 which we vainly strive. 
 
282 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 With the last lines of this speech in our memory, we may 
 turn to the dialogues of Plato, whose Phgedrus and Charmides 
 and Lysis are true children and disciples of Dikaios Logos ; 
 or to the Autolycus of Xenophon's Symposium,, whose breast 
 is as smooth, and skin as bright, and shoulders as broad, and 
 tongue as short, as even Aristophanes could wish ; or we may 
 set before us some statue like the Apoxyomenos of Lysippus, 
 or the. Discobolos of Myron, and feel that we have gathered, 
 in fancy at least, the flower of the perfection of the pride of 
 Hellas. 
 
 Much of the allegory of Aristophanes consists of metaphors- 
 taken literally and expressed by appropriate symbolism to the 
 audience. Thus, Trugaios actually drags the goddess Peace, 
 with her attendants Opora and Theoria, from the well,- the 
 Chorus, while they help him, singing " Yoho ! " like sailors at 
 a capstan. In the same comedy. War and Havoc are exhibited 
 with a gigantic mortar, in which they bray the States of Greece. 
 Socrates suspended in his basket is a metaphorical allegory of 
 this sort, his posture being peculiarly expressive of star-gazing 
 and abstract speculation at a time whe'n the objects of such 
 contemplations were called to. /xeTewpa. Of the same kind is 
 the balance in which the lines of ^schylus and Euripides are 
 weighed. Any poet might use the metaphor (weighed in the 
 balance and found wanting) ; but it is a stretch of metaphorical 
 license to exhibit an actual pair of scales upon the stage. Many 
 of the figurative actions of the Hebrew prophets were prac- 
 tical appeals to the imagination, similar to these allegories of 
 Aristophanes. Indeed, such dramatic metaphors may be reck- 
 oned among the most powerful instruments in the hands of a 
 great master. Had Dante conceived a masque upon the politics 
 of Italy, we doubt not but that he would have employed some 
 energetic symbols of this sort ; and in passing, it may be said 
 that no artist has appeared in modern times so capable of con- 
 sti-ucting an allegorical drama in the style of Aristophanes as 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 283 
 
 Dante. The symbolism of the I^Fff^/j is somewhat different from 
 that with which we have been deahng. In this play the chorus 
 were armed, no doubt, with lance-like stings; but there was no 
 attempt on the poet's part, as in the case of the Clouds and 
 Birds, to maintain the illusion oC their being wasps. They talk 
 and act like old men ; their waspishness is merely metaphorical, 
 and the allegory ends in an appeal to the eyesight. The Flutus, 
 on the other hand, presents an example of allegory in the strictly 
 modern sense. It is a Greek anticipation of our moralities, of 
 such a play as might be founded on a portion of the Pilgrim's 
 Progress. Wealth and Poverty appear upon the stage, and speak 
 appropriately. Avarice and Prodigality are satirized. ' The use 
 and abuse of riches are contrasted in a series of incidents 
 framed with expressly moral purpose. The whole play is 
 singularly un-Aristophanic. We have here no "Weltvernicht- 
 ungsidee '' — no nightingales or climbing apes to speak of. 
 For this very reason it has been copied in modem times (its 
 inner nature rendering it capable of adaptation to our tastes) 
 by Ben Jonson in the Staple of News, and by Goethe in the 
 second part of Faust. 
 
 One word must be devoted to the Thesmophoriaziisce. In 
 the history of dramatic literature, the chief interest of the play 
 is that it diifers from the otlier works of Aristophanes in its 
 structure. It has a regular plot — an intrigue and a solution — 
 and its persons are not allegorical but real. Thus it approaches 
 the standard of modern comedy. But the plot, though gigantic 
 in its scale, and prodigious in its wealth of wit and 'satire, is 
 farcical. The artifices by which Euripides endeavours to win 
 Agathon to undertake his cause, the disguise of Mnesilochus in 
 female attire, the oratory of the old man against the women in 
 the midst of- their assembly, his detection, the momentary sus- 
 pension of the dramatic action by his seizure of the supposed 
 baby, his slaughter of the swaddled wine-jar, his apprehension 
 by Cleisthenes, the devices and disguises by which Euripides 
 
284 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 (in parody of his own tragic scenes) endeavours to extricate his 
 father-in-law from the scrape, and the final ruse by which he 
 eludes the Scythian bowmen, and carries off Mnesilochus in 
 triumph — all these form a series of highly diverting comic 
 scenes. There is no passage in Aristophanes more amusing 
 than the harangue of Mnesilochus. The other women have 
 abused Euripides for slandering their sex in his tragedies. 
 Mnesilochus, the humorous and coarse old rustic, gets up in 
 his flimsy female gear, and eloquently reminds them of the 
 truths which Euripides might have divulged. One crime after 
 another is glibly and facetiously recorded, until the little heap 
 of calumnies uttered by Euripides disappears beneath the moun- 
 tain of confessions piled up by the supposed matron. The 
 portrait, too, of Agathon in the act of composition is exquisitely 
 coiiiic. By comparing it with that drawn by Plato in the Ban- 
 quet, we may to some extent estimate the amount of truth in 
 Aristophanic caricature. The meaningless melodious style — 
 the stream of honeyed words,* summd delumbe saliva — with 
 which Agathon aiid his Chorus greet our ears, is scarcely more 
 a parody of his poetry than the speech on love is of his prose. 
 Agathon is discovered lying on a sofa, arrayed in female gar- 
 ments and smelling of cosmetics ; when asked why thus attired, 
 he lisps a languid answer that he is composing a tragedy about 
 women, and wants to be in character : 
 
 " The poet ought to keep in harmony 
 With any subject that he hjis to treat : 
 If women be his theme, then must his pereon 
 Be toned and fashioned to a female mood ; 
 
 * Mnesilochus' criticism reminds us of Persius : 
 
 K(d ByjXvSpiuSes Kol KaTey\aiTi(r/A4voy 
 Kcu fiavdaXuTOV, SSffT' ifiov y' aKoowfxivov 
 iTii) rhv fSpav avr^v uTr^ABe yipya\os. 
 
 • Thesm. 130. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 285 
 
 But when he writes of men he has no need 
 
 To study chai^ge ; 'tis only what we have not 
 
 We seek to supplement by dressing up. 
 
 Besides, how unsesthetic 'tis to see 
 
 A poet coarse and hairy ! Just remember ^ 
 
 Famed Ibycus, Anacreon, Alcseus, 
 
 Who made our music and our metres flow, 
 
 Wore- caps, and followed soft Ionian fashions :* 
 
 And Phrynichus — this surely you have heard— 
 
 Was beautiful, and beautifully dressed ; 
 
 And this, we cannot doubt, is why his plays 
 
 Were beautifiil, for 'tis a natural law 
 
 That like ourselves our work must ever be.'' 
 
 Modern writers upon whose 'lips in udo est McBnas et Attis 
 might take some of this satire not inaptly to themselves. But 
 the crowning sport of the Thesmophoriazusce is in the last 
 scene, when Mnesilochus adapts the Palamedes and the Helen 
 of Euripides to his own forlorn condition, jumbling up the 
 well-known verses of these tragedies with coarse-flavoured 
 rustical remarks ; and when at last Euripides himself acts 
 Echo and Perseus to the Andromeda of his father-in-law, and 
 both together mystify the policeman by their ludicrous utter- 
 ance of antiphonal lamentations. 
 
 I have but scanty space for touching on one of the topics 
 which the Thesmophoriazusa suggests — the satire of Aristo- 
 phanes upon Athenian women, whom he invariably represents 
 as profligate, licentious, stupid, drunken, thieves and liars. 
 AVhether they were in any sense as bad as he' has painted them 
 — and he has given them a worse character than any other 
 Greek poet, not even excepting Simonides of Amorgos— or 
 whether their absence from the comic spectacles encouraged a 
 paradoxical misrepresentation of their worst and most excep- 
 tional qualities, is not easy to decide. This at least is clear 
 that, while comic exaggeration is obvious in every detail, the 
 picture, overdrawn and coarse as it may be, accords with that 
 of other and less copious Greek satirists ; nor could it have 
 
286 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 been tolerated in a society where women held a station of 
 respect and honour.* 
 
 The point of the Thesmophoriazusce, so far as the women 
 are cqpcemed, is that while Aristophanes pretends to show up 
 Euripides for his abuse of them, his own satire is far more 
 searching,, and penetrates more deeply into the secrets of 
 domestic life. What are the crimes of Phsedra in comparison 
 with the habits he imputes to Athenian wives and daughters ? 
 The Lysistrata will not bear discussion ; but in passing I may 
 notice the humour of the oath by wine which the inexorable 
 heroine and her Spartan friend administer. Other oaths might 
 be broken, but no Athenian wife or maid would incur the 
 penalty of this dread imprecation : " If I fiiil, may the bowl 
 be filled with water." Of the three comedies which treat of 
 women the Ecdesiazusa has the most permanent interest. In- 
 deed, mutatis mutandis, its satire might almost be adapted to 
 
 * One of the most interesting cliapters in Greek history still remains to 
 be written. It should deal in detail with the legal and domestic position 
 of- free women at Athens, with the relation of their sons and husbands to 
 Hetairai, and with the whole associated subject of paiderastia. ■ Since this 
 essay on Aristophanes was first published, Mr. Mahaffy ha.s done much in 
 his excellent book on Social Life in Greece towards clearing up our views 
 upon these matters. But the topic still requires a fiiller and more scientific 
 handling. Mr. Mahaffy is particularly felicitous in marking the distinctions 
 of the Herodotean, Thucydidean, and Euripidean estimates of women, in 
 bringing into prominence the CEconomicus of Xenophon, and in laying 
 stress upon the warfare of opinion which raged at Athens between 
 conservatives of the Periclean tradition, represented by Aristophanes, and 
 innovators, represented in poetry by Euripides, in philosophy by Plato. 
 I cordially agree with him in his remark that "in estimating women at 
 this time, the Alcestis and Macaria pf Euripides are too high, and the 
 women of Aristophanes are too low." {Social Greece, 2nd ed. p. 228). 
 The great difficulty which must have been felt by all thoughtful students of 
 Greek literature, is how to reconcile the high ideals of female character, 
 presented by the Attic tragedians, with the contemptuous silence of 
 Thucydides, with the verdict of Plato upon women-lovers as compared 
 with boy-lovers, with the ribaldry allowed to comic poets, and with the 
 comparative absence of female portraits in the biographies of great 
 Athenians composed by Plutarch. 
 
ARISTOPHANES. 287 
 
 the present day, or to the future which our theorists upon the 
 rights of women are preparing. The Athenian ladies disguise 
 themselves as men, and crowd the assembly, where they out- 
 vote their husbands, sons, and brothers, and proclaim the su- 
 premacy of women in the State. Praxagora, the agitator of the 
 scheme, is chosen Strategis. She decides that a community of 
 property and free trade between the sexes are the two things 
 wanted to insure general felicity. The point of the satire 
 consists in this : that the arguments by which the women get 
 the upper hand, all turn on their avowed conservatism ; men 
 change and shift, women preserve their old customs, and will 
 maintain the ^Ooe of the State ; but no sooner have they got 
 authority than they show themselves more democratic than the 
 demagogues, more new-fangled in their political notions than 
 the philosophers. They upset time-honoured institutions and 
 make new ones to suit their own caprices, squaring the laws 
 according to the logic of feminine instincts. Of course specu- 
 lations like those of Plato's Republic are satirized in the 
 farcical scenes which illustrate the consequences of this female 
 revolution. But perhaps the finest point about the comedy is 
 its humorous insight into the workings of women's minds — its 
 clear sense of what a topsy-turvy world we should have to live 
 in if women were the lawgivers and governors. 
 
 In quitting Aristophanes I am forced to reflect upon the 
 inadequacy of my attempts to interpret the secret of his 
 strength and charm. The epithets which continually rise to 
 our lips in speaking of him — radiant, resplendent, swift, keen, 
 changeful, flashing, magical — carry no real notion of the mar- 
 vellous and subtle spirit that animates his comedy with life 
 pecuhar to itself. In dealing with no other poet is the critic 
 or historian so powerless. No other work of art leaves so in- 
 communicable an impression on the mind of the student. As 
 for my words about Aristophanes, they are " sound and fury 
 signifying nothing : " to be known, he must be read with ad- 
 
288 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 miration and delight. But those who have submitted them- 
 selves to the influence of his genius, will understand what I 
 mean when, in conclusion, I say that, with Plato and Aristo- 
 phanes for guides, we can to some extent reconstruct the life 
 of the Athenians, animate the statues of Myron and Lysippus, 
 and see the aisles of the Parthenon or the benches of the 
 Pnyx crowded with real human beings. Plato introduces us 
 to the graver and more elegant side of Attic life, to the KaXo- 
 ayaSot and yapUvTzc, to men of sober tastes and good birth 
 and exquisite breeding. Aristophanes acquaints us with men 
 of pleasure, vulgar and uneducated characters, haunters of the 
 law courts and the market-place and the assembly. From Plato 
 we learn what occupied philosophers and people of distinction. 
 Aristophanes tells us the popular jokes at Athens, how the 
 political and military edicts recorded by Thucydides were 
 familiarly discussed, how people slept and walked, and dressed, 
 and dined. In Plato's Dialogues the fine Greek intellect is 
 shown to us trained and tutored into exquisite forms of ele- 
 vated culture. In Aristophanes, though art even more con- 
 summate has been used, we see the same refined intellect 
 running riot and disporting itself with the flexibility of un- 
 tameable youth. By Plato we are taught how dignified and 
 humane the Greeks could be, by Aristophanes how versatile 
 and human they were. 
 
289 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 ■ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 
 
 Greek Tragedy and the rites of Dionysus.— A sketch of its origin and 
 history. — The Attic Theatre. — The actors and their masks. — Relation 
 of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece. — The legends used by the 
 Attic tragedians. — Modern liberty in the choice of subjects. — Mystery 
 Plays. — Nemesis. — Modern Tragedy has no religious idea. — Tragic 
 Irony. — Aristotle's definition of Tragedy. — Modern Tragedy offers no 
 KiiBapcns of the passions. — Destinies and Characters. — Female Cha- 
 racters. — The Supernatural. — French Tragedy. — Five Acts. — Blood- 
 shed. — The Unities. — Radical differences in the spirit of ancient and 
 modern art. 
 
 In order to comprehend the differences between the ancient and 
 the modern Drama — between the tragedy of Sophocles and the 
 tragedy of Shakspere — it is necessary to enter into the details of 
 the history of the Attic stage. In no other department of art is 
 the character of the work produced so closely dependent upon 
 the external form which the artist had to adopt. 
 
 Both the Tragedy and Comedy of the Greeks were intimately 
 connected with the religious rites of Dionysus. Up to the very 
 last, they formed a portion of the cultus of the vintage-god, to 
 whom the theatre was consecrated, and at whose yearly festivals 
 the plays were acted. The Chorus, which originally formed 
 the chief portion of the dramatic body, took its station at the 
 altar of Bacchus in the centre of the theatre. Now the worship 
 of Bacchus in Greece had from the first a double aspect — 
 joyous arid sorrowful. The joyous festivals were held in cele- 
 bration of the vigour and the force of nature, in the spring and 
 
 u 
 
290 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 summer of the year ; the sorrowful commemorated the sadness 
 of the autumn and the winter. There were therefore two dis- 
 tinct branches of musical and choral art connected with the 
 Dionysiac rites — the one jovial, the other marked by the enthu- 
 siasm of a wild grief. From the former of these, or the Revel 
 Song, sprang Comedy ; from the latter, or the Dithyramb, 
 sprang Tragedy. Arion is named as the first great poet who 
 cultivated the Dithyramb and wrote elaborate odes for recita- 
 tion by the Chorus in their evolutions round the Bacchic altar. 
 His Chorus were attired like Satyrs in goat-skins, to represent the 
 woodland comrades of the god; hence came the name of Tragedy 
 or Goat-song. At first the Dith)Tambic Odes celebrated only 
 the mystical woes of Dionysus : then they were extended so as 
 to embrace the mythical incident? connected with his worship ; 
 and at last the god himself was forgotten, and the tragic suffer- 
 ings of any hero were chanted by the Chorus. This change 
 is marked by an old tradition concerning Sicyon, where it is 
 said that the woes of the hero Adrastus were sung by the 
 Bacchic choir, and that Cleisthenes, wishing to suppress the 
 national mythology, restored the antique Dionysiac function. 
 It also may explain the Greek proverb : " What has this to 
 do with Dionysus ? " — a question which might reasonably have 
 been asked when the sacred representation diverged too widely 
 from the line of Bacchic legend. 
 
 Thus the original element of Greek Tragedy was the Dithy- 
 ramb, as cultivated by Arion ; and the first step in the progress 
 of the pithyrambic Chorus toward the Drama was the intro- 
 duction of Heroic legends into the odes. The next step was 
 the addition of the Actor. It has been ingeniously conjectured 
 that the actor was borrowed from the guild of Rhapsodes. 
 The Iambics of Archilochus and other poets were recited, as 
 we know, at the feasts of Demeter, whose cult had points 
 of similarity with that of Bacchus. It is not improbable that 
 when the heroic element was added to the Dithyramb, and the 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 291 
 
 subjects handled by the professional . reciters of the Homeric 
 and Cyclic Epics began to form a part of the Dionysiac cele- 
 bration, a rhapsode was then introduced to help the Chorus in 
 their office. That he declaimed Iambics and not Hexameters 
 may be accounted for by the prevalence of the Iambic in the 
 sister-cult of Demeter. This then was the third step in the 
 development of tragedy. To the Dithyrambic Chorus of Arion 
 was added an interlocutor, who not only recited passages of 
 narrative, but also exchanged speech with the Chorus, and 
 who in course of time came to personate the hero whose 
 history was being celebrated. Thus far had the art advanced 
 in the' age of Thespis. The Chorus stood and danced round 
 the altar of Bacchus. The Rhapsode, whom we now begin to 
 call the Actor, stood on a raised stage l^oyiiov) above them. 
 The whole history of Greek Tragedy exhibits a regular expan- 
 sion of these simple elements. The function of the Chorus, 
 the peculiar nature of the masks and dresses, and the very 
 structure of the theatres, can only be explained by reference .to 
 this primitive constitution of the Dramatic art. 
 
 To Thespis the Athenian, whose first regular exhibition of the 
 Tragic show preceded the birth of ^schylus by about ten years, 
 belongs the credit of having brought the various elements of 
 Tragedy into harmony, and of having fixed the outlines of the 
 Tragic art. The destruction of Athens by the Persian army, 
 like the burning of London, which inflicted so severe an injury 
 upon our early dramatic literature, obliterated the monuments 
 of the genuine Thespian tragedy. Some of the names of these 
 dramas — Pentheus, Phorbas, the Funeral Games of Pelias, the 
 Priests— A\aNt been preserved ; from which we may conjecture 
 that Thespis composed interludes with regular plots, combining 
 choric passages and monologues uttered by the actor with eluci- 
 datory dialogues. ' His chorus was the traditional band of 
 mummers clad in goat-skins — the rpayoi of the ancient Dio- 
 nysiac festival. The poet himself was the actor, and his portion 
 
 u 2 
 
292 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 of the interlude was written either in Iambic, or, as we may 
 gather from a passage in the Poetics of Aristotle, in Trochaic 
 metre. The next great name after Thespis is Phrynichus, who 
 composed a tragic interlude on the taking of Miletus by the 
 Persians. This fact is important, since it proves that even at 
 this early period a dramatist felt justified not merely in departing 
 from the myths of Dionysus, but also in treating the events of 
 contemporary history in his choric Tragedy. The Athenians, 
 however, were indignant at so abrupt a departure from usage, and 
 at the unsesthetical exhibition of disasters which had recently 
 befallen their race. They fined the poet, and confirmed their 
 tragedians in the custom of handling only ancient and religious 
 legends. It is well known that the single exception to this custom 
 which has been preserved to us is the splendid triumph of 
 ^schylus composed upon the ruin of the godless Xerxes. 
 Phrynichus introduced one important change into the Thespian 
 Drama : he established female characters. After him came 
 Pratinas, who altered the old form of the Chorus. Hitherto, 
 whatever may have been the subject of the play, the Bacchic 
 rpkyoL stood in their quaint goatskins round the thymeld or altar 
 of the god. Pratinas contrived that in future the Chorus should 
 be attired to suit the action of the piece. If the play were 
 written on the fall of Troy, for instance, they appeared as 
 ancient Trojans ; or if it had reference to the house of Laius, 
 they came forth as senators of Thebes. At the same time 
 special pieces for the traditional tragic chorus were retained, 
 and these received the name of Satyric Dramas. Henceforth 
 it was customary for a tragic author to produce at the same 
 time three successive dramas on the subject he selected, to- 
 gether with a satyric play.. The only essential changes which 
 were afterwards made in Greek Tragedy, were the introduction of 
 a second actor by .ffischylus and of a third actor by Sophocles, 
 the abandonment of the stricter rule of the tetralogy, and the 
 gradual diminution of the importance of the Chorus. The choric 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 293 
 
 element, which had been everything at the commencement, gave 
 way to the dialogue, as the art of developing dramatic situa- 
 tions and characters advanced ; until in the days of Euripides 
 the Chorus formed a comparatively insignificant part of the 
 • tragic machinery. This curtailment of the function of the 
 Chorus was a necessary consequence of progress in the art of 
 exhibiting an imitation of human action and passion. Yet the 
 Chorus never lost its place in Greek Tragedy. It remained to 
 mark the origin of the Drama, and as a symbol of the essen- 
 tially religious purpose of the Tragic spectacle. 
 
 An event is said to have happened during the age of Pratinas 
 which greatly influenced the future of the Attic Drama. The 
 Thespian, interludes had been acted on a wooden scaffolding. 
 This fell down on one occasion, and caused so much alarm that 
 the Athenians erected a permanent stone theatre, which they con- 
 structed on the south-east side of the Acropolis. Whether this 
 old story is a fiction, and whether the time had not naturally 
 arrived for a more substantial building, may admit of question. 
 At any rate the new theatre was designed as though it were des- 
 tined to exist for all time, as though its architects were prescient 
 that the Attic Drama would become the wonder of the world. 
 It contained 30,000 spectators, seated in semicircular tiers 
 scooped out of the rock of the Acropolis. Their faces were 
 turned towards Hymettus and the sea. The stage fronted 
 the Acropolis : the actors had in view the cliffs upon which stood 
 the Parthenon and the gleaming statue of Protective Pallas. 
 The whole was open to the air. Remembering these facts, we 
 are enabled to understand the peculiar grandeur and propriety 
 of those addresses to the powers of the earth and sky, to the 
 temples of the gods, to the all-seeing sun and glittering 
 ocean-waves, which are so common in Greek tragedy. The 
 Athenian theatre was brought into close connection with 
 all that was most brilliant in the architecture and the sculp- 
 ture of Athens, with all that is most impressive in the natural 
 
294 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 environments of the city, with the very deities of the Hellenic 
 worship in their visible manifestations to the senses of men. This 
 circumstance alone determined many peculiarities of the Greek 
 Drama, which make it wholly unlike our own. If the hero of a 
 modern play, for instance, calls the sun to witness, he must 
 point to a tissue-paper transparency in the centre of a painted 
 scene : if he apostrophizes Ocean, he must turn towards a heaving 
 mass of agitated canvas. But Ajax or Electra could raise their 
 hands to the actual sun, gilding the statue of Athene with living 
 rays ; Prometheus, when he described the myriad laughter of 
 the dimpling waves, knew that the sea was within sight of the 
 audience ; and sun and sea were regarded by the nation at 
 large, not merely as phenomena of our universe, but as beings 
 capable of sympathizing with humanity in its distress. For the 
 same reason nearly all the scenes of the Greek Tragedies are 
 laid in daytime and in the open air. The work of art exhibited 
 in an unparalleled combination of aesthetical definiteness with 
 the actual facts of nature. The imagination is scarcely more 
 wrought upon than the senses ; whereas the Tragedy of Shak- 
 spere makes a direct appeal to the inner eye and to the highly 
 stimulated fancy of the audience. It is generally before a 
 temple or a palace that the action of a Greek play proceeds. 
 Nor was there anything artificial in this custom ; for the 
 Greeks lived in the air of heaven, nor could events of such 
 magnitude as those which their tragedy represented, have been 
 appropriately enacted beneath the shadow of a private roof 
 Far different were the conditions which the modern dramatist 
 undertook to illustrate. The hesitations of Hamlet, the 
 spiritual conflict of Faustus, the domestic sufferings of the 
 Duchess of Malfi, are evolved with peculiar propriety within 
 the narrow walls of palace- chambers, college-cells, and prisons 
 or mad-houses. Scenery, in our sense of the word, was 
 scarcely required by the Greeks. The name of a tragedy 
 sufficed to determine what palace-gate was represented by the 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 295 
 
 Stage : the statue of a god was enough to show whose temple 
 •was intended. This simpHcity of theatrical arrangement led to 
 a corresponding simplicity of dramatic construction, to rarity 
 of changes in the scene, and to the stationary character of 
 Greek Tragedy in general. 
 
 Hollowed out of the hillside, the seats of the Athenian 
 spectators embraced rather more than a full semicircle, and 
 this large arc was subtended by a long straight line, — the 
 ai:y]vri, or background of the stage. In front of this wall ran a 
 shallow platform, not co-extensive with the (!ny\ry\, but corre- 
 sponding to the middle portion of it. This platform was the 
 stage proper. It was in fact a development of the Thespian 
 Xoytiov. The stage was narrow and raised a little above the 
 ground, to which a flight of steps led from it. On the stage, 
 very long in proportion to its depth, all the action of the play 
 took place : the actors entered it through three openings in 
 the aKTit'Ti, of which the central was larger and the two side ones 
 smaller. When they stood upon the stage, they had not much 
 room for grouping or for complicated action : they moved and 
 stood Hke the figures in a bas-relief, turning their profiles to the 
 audience, and so arranging their gestures that a continually har- 
 monious series of figures was relieved upon the background of 
 the crtcriytj. The central opening had doors capable of being 
 thrown back and exhibiting a chamber, in which, at critical 
 moments of the action, such spectacles as the muirdered body of 
 Agamemnon, or the suicide of Jocasta, were revealed to the 
 spectators. The chorus had their own allotted station" in the 
 centre of the whole theatre — the semicircular pit left between 
 the lowest tier of spectators and the staircase leading to the 
 Stage. In the middle of this pit or orchestra was placed the 
 thymel^, or altar of Bacchus, round which the chorus moved on 
 its first entrance, and where it stood while witnessing the action 
 on the stage. The chorus entered by side passages leading 
 from the back of the aicrirri, on a lower level than that of the 
 
296 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 stage : nor did they ever leave their orchestra to mount the 
 stage and mingle with the actors. The dressing rooms and 
 offices of the theatre were concealed behind the o-k?/>'^. Above 
 the stage was suspended an aerial platform for the gods, while 
 subterranean stairs were constructed for the appearance of 
 ghosts ascending from the nether regions. 
 
 These details about the vast size of the theatre, its system 
 of construction, and its exposure to the air, make it clear that 
 no acting similar to that of the modem drama could have 
 been possible on the Attic stage. Any one who has visited 
 the Roman theatre of Orange, where the <jKr]vi\ is still in tole- 
 rable preservation, must have felt that a classical audience 
 could not have enjoyed the subtle intonations of the voice 
 and the delicate changes in the features, expressive of varying 
 .passions, which constitute th6 charm of modem acting. Our 
 intricate and minute eifects were out of the question. Every- 
 thing in the Greek theatre had to be colossal, statuesque, 
 almost stationary. The Greeks had so delicate a sense of 
 proportion and of fitness that they adjusted their art to these 
 necessities. The actors were raised on thick-soled and high- 
 heeled boots : they wore masks, and used peculiar mouth- 
 pieces, by means of which their voices were made more 
 resonant. The dresses which they swept along the stage were 
 the traditional costumes of the Bacchic festivals — brilliant and 
 trailing mantles, which added volume to their persons. All 
 their movements partook of the dignity befitting demigods 
 and heroes. To suppose that these pompous figures were of 
 necessity ridiculous would be a great mistake. Everything we 
 know about Greek art makes it certain that in the theatre, no 
 less than in sculpture and architecture, this nation of artists 
 achieved a perfectly harmonious effect. How dignified, for 
 example, were their masks, may be imagined from the sculp- 
 tured heads of Tragedy and Comedy preserved in the Vatican 
 — marble faces of subUme seirenity, surmounted by the huge 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 297 
 
 mass of curling hair, which was built up above the mask to 
 add height to the figure. But in order to maintain the 
 grandeur of these personages on the stage, it was necessary 
 that they should never move abruptly or struggle violently. 
 This is perhaps the chief reason why Greek Tragedy was so 
 calm and so processional in character, why all its vehement 
 action took place off the stage, why some of its most impas- 
 sioned expressions of emotion were cadenced in elaborate 
 lyrics with a musical accompaniment. An actor, mounted on 
 his buskins, and carrying the weight of the tragic mask, could 
 never have encountered a similar gigantic being in personal 
 combat without betraying some awkwardness of movement or 
 exhibiting some unseemly gesture. It was therefore necessary 
 to create the part of the Messenger as an artistic correlative to 
 the peculiarly artificial conditions of the stage. We find in the 
 same circumstance a reason why the tragic situation was sus- 
 tained with such intensity, why the action was limited to a 
 short space of time and to a single locality, and why few 
 changes were permitted in the characters during the conduct 
 of the same piece. For' the mask depicted one fixed cast of 
 features ; and though, as in the c^se of CEdipus, who tears out 
 his eyes in a play of Sophocles, the actor might appear twice 
 upon the stage with different masks, yet he could not be con- 
 stantly changing them. Therefore the strong point of the 
 Greek dramatist lay in the construction of such plots and cha- 
 racters as admitted of sustained and steady passion, whereas a 
 modern playwright aims at providing parts which shall enable 
 a great actor to exhibit lights and shades of varying expression. 
 It still remains a problem how such parts as the Cassandra 
 of ^schylus and the Orestes of Euripides could have been 
 adequately acted with a mask to hide the features ; but such 
 effects as those for which Garrick, Rachel, and Talma were 
 celebrated would have been utterly impossible at Athens. 
 
 In order to form any conception of a Greek drama, we must 
 
298 THE GREEK P.OETS. 
 
 imbue our minds with the spirit of Greek sculpture, and 
 animate some frieze or bas-relief, supplying the accompaniment 
 of simple and magnificent music, like that of Gluck, or like the 
 recitatives of Porpora. Flaxman's designs for ^schylus are 
 probably the best possible reconstruction of the scenes of a 
 Greek tragedy, as they appeared to the eyes of the spectators, 
 reHeved upon the background of the rsKr)v'ti. Schlegel is justly 
 indignant with those critics who affirm that the modern opera 
 affords an exact parallel to the Greek Drama. Yet the com- 
 bination of music, acting, scenery, and dancing in such an 
 opera as Gluck's Orfeo or Cherubim's Medea, may come 
 nearer than anything else towards giving us a notion of one of 
 the tragedies of Euripides. This remark must be qualified by 
 the acknowledgment of a radical and fundamental difference 
 between the two species of dramatic art. Music, dancing, 
 acting, and scenery, with the Greeks, were sculptural, studied, 
 stately; with the modems they are picturesque, passionate, 
 mobile. If the opera at all resembles the Greek Drama, it is 
 because of the highly artificial development of the histrionic 
 art which it exhibits. The expression of passion in a stationary 
 and prolonged aria, with which we are familiar in the opera, 
 and which is far removed from nature, was of common occur- 
 rence in Greek Tragedy.* 
 
 * The scene in which Antigone takes leave of the Chorus within sight 
 of her tomb is a good instance of this artificial treatment of passionate 
 situations in the Attic Drama. It has been censured by some critics as 
 being unreasonably protracted. In reality it is in perfect accordance with 
 the whole spirit of Greek Tragedy. ' The emotions are brought into 
 artistic relief : the figures are grouped like mourners on a sculptured 
 monument : the antiphonal dirges of the princess and her attendants set 
 the pulses of our sympathy in rhythmic movement, so that grief itself 
 becomes idealized and glorified. The depth of feeling expressed, and the 
 highly wrought form of its expression, together tend to rouse and chasten 
 all that is profound and dignified in our emotions. Strophe after strophe, 
 heart-beat by heart-beat, this wonderfully cadenced funeral song of her 
 who is the bride of Acheron proceeds until the marble gates are shut upon 
 ■ Antigone. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 299 
 
 So far we have been occupied with those characteristics of 
 the ancient drama, which were immediately determined by the 
 external circumstances of , the Attic stage. I have tried to 
 show that some of the most marked qualities iof the work of 
 art were necessitated by the conditions of its form. But other 
 and not less important points of difference between the ancient 
 and the modern drama were due to the subject-matter of 
 the former. The Greek playwrights confined themselves to a 
 comparatively narrow circle of mythical stories; * each in suc- 
 cession had recourse to Homer and to the poets of the Epic 
 Cycle. ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, not to mention 
 their numerous forgotten rivals, handled and rehandled the 
 same themes. We have, for example, extant three tragedies, 
 the ChoephorcB of ^schylus, the Electra of Sophocles, and 
 the Electra of Euripides, composed upon precisely the same 
 incident in the tale of Agamemnon's children. Modern dra- 
 matists, on the contrary, start with the whole stuff of human 
 history ; they seek out their subjects where they choose, or 
 invent motives with a view to the exhibition of varied character, 
 force of passion, tragic effect; nor have they any fixed basis of 
 solid thought like the doctrine of Nemesis t whereon to rear 
 their tragic superstructure. In this respect the Mystery Plays 
 of the Catholic Church offer a close parallel to the Greek 
 Drama. In these dramatic shows the whole body of Christian 
 tradition — the Bible, the acts of the saints, and the doctrines 
 of the Church about the Judgment and the final state of the 
 soul — was used as the material from which to fashion sacred 
 plays. But between the Mysteries and the early Attic tragedies 
 there was one great- point of difference. The sanctity of 
 the Christian tradition, by giving an immovable form to the 
 legends, precluded all freedom of the fancy. There could be 
 no inventive action of the poet's mind when he was engaged 
 
 * See pp. 22, 210. t See pp. 202-211. 
 
300 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 in setting forth the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Atonement, 
 or the final Judgment. His object was to instruct the people 
 in certain doctrines, and all he could do was to repeat over 
 and over again the same series of events in which God had 
 dealt with man. Therefore, when the true dramatic instinct 
 awoke in modem Europe, the playwrights had to quit this 
 narrow sphere of consecrated thoughts. Miracle plays were 
 succeeded by Moralities, by Histories, and by those unfettered 
 creations of which Marlowe in England offered the first illus- 
 trious examples. Had the Thespian interludes been as purely 
 didactic in their object as the early Mystery plays of the 
 Church, we should either have possessed no Attic Drama at 
 all or else have received from the Greek poets a very different 
 type of tragedy. As it was, the very essence of Greek religion 
 reached its culminating point in art. Epical mythology 
 attained to final development in the free artistic creations 
 of Sophocles. Meanwhile the dramatists were hampered in 
 their choice of subjects by the artificial restraints imposed 
 upon them. They were never at liberty to invent. They were 
 always bound to keep in view the traditional interpretation of 
 legends to which a semi-religious importance attached. 
 
 Many distinctions between the ancient and the modern 
 drama may be deduced from this original difference in the 
 sources of their materials. The conception of retributive 
 justice pervades the whole tragedy of the Greeks ; and the 
 maintenance of this one animating idea is due no doubt in a 
 great measure to the continued treatment of a class of subjects 
 which not only remarkably exhibited its working, but which also 
 were traditionally interpreted in its light. The modem drama has 
 no such central idea. Our tragedy imports no dominant religious 
 or moral conception into the sphere of art. Even Shakspere 
 and Goethe, the most highly moralized of modern drama- 
 tists, have been contented with bringing close before our eyes 
 the manifold spectacle of human existence, wonderful and 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 301 
 
 brilliant, from which we draw such lessons only as can be 
 learned from life itself. They do not undertake, like the 
 Greek tragedians, to supply the solution as well as the problem. 
 It is enough for them to exhibit humanity in conflict, to enlist 
 our sympathies on the side of what is noble, or to arouse our 
 pity by the sight of innocence in misery. The struggle of 
 Lear with his unnatural daughters, the death of Cordelia when 
 the very doors of hope have just been opened ; Desdemona 
 dying by her husband's hand, without one opportunity of ex- 
 planation ; * Imogen flouted as a faithless wife ; Hamlet wrest- 
 ling with Laertes in the grave of Ophelia ; Juliet and Romeo 
 brought by a mistake to death in the May-time of their love ; 
 Faust inflicting by his bitter gift of selfish passion woe after 
 woe on Margaret and her family — these are the subjects of our 
 tragedy. We have to content ourselves as we can with this 
 " mask and antimask of impassioned life, breathing, moving, 
 acting, suffering, laughing," and to moralize it as we may. The 
 case is different with Greek Tragedy. There we always learn 
 one lesson — rw Spauavn TTudeTv, the guilty must suffer. It is 
 only in a few such characters as Antigone or Polyxena that 
 pure pathos seems to weigh down the balance of the law. 
 
 A minor consequence of the fixed nature of Attic Tragedy 
 was that the dramatists calculated on no surprise in order to 
 enlist the interest of their audience. The name, CEdipus or 
 Agamemnon, informed the spectators what course the action of 
 the play would take. The art of the poet therefore consisted 
 in so displaying his characters, so preparing his incidents, and 
 so developing the tragic import of the tale, as to excite atten- 
 tion. .From this arose a peculiar style of treatment, and in 
 particular that Irony of which so much is spoken. The point, 
 for example, about the CEdipus Tyrannus was that the specta- 
 tors knew his horrible story, but that he did not. Therefore, 
 
 * See Appendix for a note on the death of Desdemona. 
 
302 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 every word he uttered in his pride of prosperity was charged 
 with sinister irony, was pregnant with doom. Every minute 
 incident brought him nearer to the final crash, which all the 
 while was ready waiting for him. In reading this tragedy of 
 Sophocles we seem to be watching a boatful! of careless persons 
 gliding do^vn 'a river, and gradually approaching its fall over 
 a vast cliff. If we take interest in them, how terrible is our 
 anxiety when they come within the irresistible current of the 
 sliding water, how frightful is their cry of anguish when at last 
 they see the precipice ahead, how horror-stricken is the silence 
 with which they shoot the fall, and are submerged ! Of this 
 nature is the interest of a good Greek tragedy. But in the case 
 of the modern drama all is different. When our Elizabethan 
 ancestors went to the theatre to hear Othello for the first 
 time, very few of them knew the story : as the play proceeded, 
 they could not be sure whether lago would finally prevail. At 
 every moment the outcome was doubtful. Tragic irony is 
 therefore not a common element in the modern drama. The 
 forcible exhibition of a new and striking subject, the gradual 
 development of passions in fierce conflict, the utmost amount 
 of pathos accumulated round the victims of malice or ill luck, 
 exhaust the resources of the tragedian. The ancient dramatist 
 plays with his cards upon the table : the modern dramatist 
 conceals his hand. Euripides prefixed a prologue descriptive 
 of the action to his pieces. Our tragedies open only with 
 such scenes as render the immediate conduct of the play 
 intelligible. 
 
 Aristotle's definition of tragedy, founded upon a vast experi- 
 ence, we need not doubt, of the best Greek dramas, offers an- 
 other point of contrast between the ancient and the modern 
 art. " Tragedy," he says, " is an imitation of an action that 
 is weighty, complete, and of a proper magnitude ; it proceeds 
 by action and not by narration; and it effects through pity and 
 terror a purgation of the like passions in the minds of the spec- 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 303 
 
 tators." This definition, which has caused great difficulty for 
 commentators, turns upon the meaning of the KMapniq* or pur- 
 gation, which Tragedy is supposed to effect. It is quite clear 
 that all poetry which stirs the feelings of pity and " terror need 
 not at the same time purge them in or from the souls of the 
 listeners, except only in so far as true art is elevating and puri- 
 fying. Therefore Aristotle must have had some special quality 
 of the Tragic art to which he was accustomed, in his mind. 
 His words seem to express that it is the function of the Tragic 
 Drama to appeal to our deepest sympathies and strongest pas- 
 sions, to arouse them, but at the same time to pacify them, and, 
 as it were, to draw off the dangerous stuff that lies upon our 
 soul, — to resolve the perturbation of the mind in some trans- 
 cendental contemplation.f This is what the greatest Greek 
 
 * The word Kd6ap<ns may possibly have been borrowed from medicine 
 by Aristotle, and his meaning may therefore be that the surplus of the 
 passions of which he speaks is literally purged out of the mental system by 
 the action of Tragedy. This suggestion was, I think, made by Bernays. It 
 has been pointed out to me by my friend, Mr. E. Abbot of Balliol College, 
 that Aristotle, in another passage of the Poetics (xvii. 8), uses the word in 
 a lustral meaning. The reference to it in a weighty passage of the 
 Politics (viii. 7, 4) seems to prove that the purification was for the 
 individual, not, as Goethe thought, for the passions as exhibited in the 
 work of art itself.' 
 
 t Milton's description of the poet's function, in the Reason of Church 
 Government urged against Prelacy, contains a fine expansion of the phrase 
 Ktieapa-i-s in these words : — " To allay the perturbation of the mind, and 
 set the affections in right tune.'' Milton in his own Samson Agonistes 
 followed the Greek usage closely, and concluded the whole drama with a 
 choric reflection upon the wisdom of God's dealings with the race of m?n. 
 There again he expresses in the very last words of his play the same 
 doctrine of Kaflopcris : — • 
 
 ' ' His servants He, with new acquist 
 Of true experience from this great event, 
 With peace and consolation hath dismissed. 
 And calm of mind, all passion spent. " 
 
 Hegel, in his . doctrine of the Versbhnung, or reconciliation of opposite 
 passions in a contemplation which is above them and includes them, seems 
 to have aimed at the same law as Aristotle. 
 
304 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Tragedies achieve. They are almost invariably closed by some 
 sentence of the Chorus in which the unsearchableness of God's 
 dealings is set forth, and by which we are made to feel that, 
 after the fitful strife and fever of human wills, the eternal coun- 
 sels of Zeus remain unchanged, while the moral order of the 
 world, shaken and distorted by the passions of heroic sufferers, 
 abides in the serenity of the Ideal. Furthermore, there is in 
 the very substance of almost all Greek tragedies a more ob- 
 vious healing of wounds and restoration of harmony than this. 
 The Trilogy of Prometheus was concluded by the absorption 
 of the Titan's vehement will in that of Zeus. The Trilogy 
 of Orestes ends with the benediction of Pallas and Phoebus 
 upon the righteous man who had redeemed the errors of his 
 house. Sophocles allows us a glimpse of Antigone bringing peace 
 and joy to her father and brothers in Hades. The old OEdipus, 
 after his life- wanderings and crimes and woes, is made a blessed 
 Daemon through the mercy of propitiated deities. Hippolytus is 
 reconciled to his father, and is cheered and cooled in his death- 
 fever by the presence of the maiden Artemis. Thus the terror and 
 pity which have been roused in each of these cases are allayed 
 by the actual climax of the plot which has excited them : grief 
 itself becomes a chariot for surmounting the sources of grief 
 But the modern drama does not offer this (ca0apo-ic : its passions 
 too often remain unreconciled in their original antagonism : the 
 note on which the symphony terminates is not unfrequently 
 discordant or exciting. Where is the (.ayapo-ig in King Lear? 
 Are our passions purged in any definite sense by the close of 
 the first part of Faust? We are rather left with the sense 
 of inexpiable guilt and unalleviated suffering, with yearnings 
 excited which shall never be quelled. The greatest works of 
 modern fiction — the novels of Balzac, with their philosophy of 
 wickedness triumphant ; the novels of George Eliot, with their 
 dismal lesson of the feebleness of human effort ; the tragedies 
 of Shakspere, with the silence of the grave for their conclu- 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 305 
 
 sion— iirtensify and embitter that " stmggle to be what we are 
 not, and to do what we cannot" which Hazlitt gives as an 
 equivalent for life.* The greatest creative poet of this genera- 
 tion writes dyayKri upon his title-page. The chief poet of the 
 century makes his hero exclaim : 
 
 " Enthehren soUst du, sollst entbehren." 
 
 Such purification of the passions as modem art achieves, is to 
 be found most eminently in the choric movements of Handel, 
 in the symphonies of Beethoven, in all the great achievements 
 of music. Ancieijt art aimed at the perfect within definite limits, 
 because human life in the ancient world was circumscribed by 
 mundane limitations, and its conditions were unhesitatingly ac- 
 cepted. Our art aims at the infinite, because we are for ever 
 striving after a completion which cannot be attained. It was 
 not for nothing that Christianity, with its widening of spiritual 
 horizons, closed the ancient and inaugurated the modern age : — 
 
 " Une immense esperance a traverse la terre ; 
 Malgr^ nous vers le ciel il faut lever les yeux." 
 
 In that fixed mood of restless expectation, in that persistent 
 attitude of the soul upraised to sweep the heavens, there Ues 
 the secret of modern art. Life to the Greek belonged to the 
 category of to wipac : it was like a crystal in its well-defined 
 consistency. Our life, whether we regard it from the point of 
 view of science or of religion, belongs to the airetpov : it is 
 only one term of an infinite series, the significance whereof is 
 relative to the unknown quantities beyond it.- Consequently 
 modern art is nowhere satisfied with merely aesthetic forms. 
 
 * In the Greek Drama the notion of Fate was primarily theological : 
 the hero was conducted to his end by gods. . In Shakspere Fate is 
 psychological ; Hamlet's own character is his destiny. In Goethe, Victor 
 Hugo, and George Eliot the conception of Fate has passed into the 
 region of Positivism : the laws of blood, society, and race rule individuals 
 in the Elective Affinities, Les Miserables, the Spanish Gipsy, . - . 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 The soul with its maladies imperiously demands expTession. 
 Michael Angelo was not contented, like Pheidias or Praxiteles, 
 with carving the serenity of godlike men and women. In the 
 figures upon the tombs of the Medici he fashioned four moods 
 of the tortured, aching, anguished soul, to whom the burden of 
 this life is all but intolerable. His frescoes in the Sistine 
 Chapel are subordinated to the expression of one thought^ 
 the doom of God which will descend upon the soul of man. 
 Christianity destroyed beyond all possibility of reconstruction 
 the free, frank, sensuklity of Paganism. It convicted humanity 
 of sin, and taught men to occupy themselves .with the internal 
 warfare of their flesh and spirit as that which is alone eternally 
 important. Life itself, according to the modem formula, is a 
 conflict which will be concluded one way or the other beyond the 
 grave. Meanwhile upon this earth the conflict is undetermined. 
 Therefore art, which reflects life, represents the battle, and 
 dares not to anticipate its outcome. In this relation the very 
 pathology of the soul becomes poetic. 'E»ar aSuraT-wc, said the 
 Greek proverb, ronog Tfjs 4"'X^s — to desire impossible things is 
 a disease of the soul. But F amour de I'hnpossiMe — the straining 
 of the soul after the infinite, the desire to approximate in 
 this world to a dream of the ecstatic fancy — all the rapture of 
 saints, the self-denial of solitaries, the death in life of penitents 
 — is not defined by us as a disease. On the contrary, this 
 passion for the impossible has been held through many cen- 
 turies of modern history to be the truest sign of the soul's 
 health ; and even where such superstition has not penetrated, 
 poets like Byron have prided themselves upon the same temper 
 displayed in their extravagant yearnings. Don Juan, enormous 
 in his appetite for pleasure, and rebellious on the grave's brink 
 beneath the hand of God ; Faust, insatiable of curiosity, and 
 careless of eternity in his lust for power ; Tannhauser, pursuing 
 to the end his double life of love too sweet to be abandoned 
 and of conscience Loo ^.c-jt?!}' sensitive to be stilled ; these are 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 307 
 
 our modern legends. These, with so Httle of mere action in 
 them, so much of inner meaning and mental experience, yield 
 the truest materials to our artists. Over and over again have 
 Faust, Tannhauser, and Don Juan supplied the poet with 
 subjects wherein no m-erely local or temporary tragedy is set 
 forth, but the destiny of the modern man is shown as in a magic 
 mirror. Nor has the advent of science as yet restored our mind 
 to that " passionless Bride, divine Tranquillity," which the 
 Greeks enjoyed, and which alone could be the mother of 
 such art as the antique. Although the sublime cheerfulness 
 of Goethe shows by way of forecast how the scientific mood 
 may lead to this result hereafter, for the present science has 
 deepened and complicated our most distressing problems, 
 has rendered the anxiety of man about his destiny still more 
 cruel, has made him still more helpless in the effort to com- 
 prehend his relations to the Universe, by seeming to prove 
 that his most cherished hypotheses are mere illusions. Like a 
 spoiled child, who has been taught to expect too much, to 
 think about himself too much, and to rely too much on flattery, 
 humanity, shrinking from the cold calm atmosphere of science, 
 still cries in feverish accents with St. Paul : " If Christ be not 
 riseii, then are we of men most wretched ! " How strange 
 would that sentence have sounded to Sophocles ! How well 
 it suits the tragedy of Shakspere, which has for its ultimate 
 Versohnung the hope, felt, though unexpressed, of St. Paul's 
 exclamation ! 
 
 As a corollary to what has hitherto been said about the dif- 
 ferences between the drama of Sophocles and that of ShakSpere 
 it follows that the former aims a't depicting the destinies, and 
 the latter the characters of men.* Shaksjiere exhibits individual 
 
 * Character in a Greek play is never so minutely anatomized as in a 
 modern work of fiction. "We do not actually see the secret workings of 
 the mainsprings of personality. We judge a hero of Sophocles by his 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 wills and passions clashing together and producing varied 
 patterns in the Web of life. Sophocles unfolds schemes and 
 sequences of doomed events, where individual wills and passions 
 play indeed their part, but where they are subordinated to the 
 idea which the tragedian undertakes to illustrate. A play of 
 ^schylus or Sophocles strikes us by the grandeur of the whole : 
 a play of Shakspere or Goethe overwhelms us by the force and 
 frequence of combined and interacting motives. No analysis 
 can be too searching or acute for the profound conception 
 which pervades the Oresfeia of ^schylus ; but there is no single 
 character in .^Eschylus or in Sophocles so worthy of minute 
 investigation as that of Hamlet or of Faust. If a critic looks 
 to the general effect of a tragedy, to the power of imagination 
 displayed in its conception as a single work of art, he will 
 prefer the Agamemnon to Macbeth; but if he seek for the crea- 
 tion of a complete and subtle human soul, he will abandon 
 Clytemnestra for the Thane of Cawdor's wife. The antique 
 drama aims at the presentation of tragic situations, determined 
 and controlled by some mysterious force superior to the agents. 
 The modem aims at the presentation of tragic situations, im- 
 mediately produced and brought about by the free action of the 
 dramatis personoe. 
 
 One advantage which the modem dramatist has over the 
 ancient is that he may introduce very numerous persons in con- 
 certed action without the danger of confusion, and that of these 
 
 actions and by his relations to other men and women more than by his 
 solllaquies or by scenes specially constructed to expose his qualities. In 
 this respect Greek Tragedy again resembles Greek sculpture. • As in their 
 sculpture the Greek artists felt the muscular structure of the human frame 
 with exquisite sensibility, while they did not obtrude it upon the spectator ; 
 so in their tragedy the poets preferred to exhibit the results rather than to 
 lay bare the process of mental and emotional activity. The modem 
 tragedian shifts his ground somewhat, but he chooses an equally legitimate 
 province of poetry when he discloses the inmost labyrinths in the character 
 of a Hamlet or a Faust. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 309 
 
 many may be female. It has been ably argued by De Quincey 
 that the Attic tragedians had small opportunity of studying 
 the female character, and that it would have been indecorous 
 for them to have painted women with the perfect freedom of 
 a Cleopatra or a Vittoria Corombona.* Consequently their 
 women are either superficially and slightly sketched like Ismene 
 and Chrysothemis ; or else they are marked by something mas- 
 culine, as in the case of Clytemnestra and Medea ; or again 
 they move our sympathy not by the perfection of their woman- 
 liness but by the exhibition of some simple and sublime self- 
 sacrifice — notable examples being the filial devotion of Antigone, 
 the sisterly affection of Electra, the uncomplaining submission 
 of Iphigeneia and Polyxena, the wifely self-abandonment of 
 Alcestis, the almost frigid acquiescence in death of Makaria. 
 The later Greek drama, and especially the drama of Euripides, 
 abounded in these characters. They are incarnations of certain 
 moral qualities. Like the masks which concealed the actor's face, 
 they show one fixed and sustained mood of emotion : we find 
 in them no hesitancy and difficult resolvCj no ebb and flow of 
 wavering inclination, but one immutable, magnificent, heroic 
 fixity of purpose. In a word, they are conformed to the 
 sculptural type of the Greek tragic art.f 
 
 * This seems to have been the gist of one of the grudges of Aristo- 
 phanes against Euripides, as I have indicated above, p. 229, note. He 
 made the love of Sthenoboea, the vengeance of Medea, too interesting. 
 
 f The most perfect female character in Greek poetry is the Antigone of 
 Sophocles. She is purely Greek, unlike any modern woman of fiction, 
 except perhaps the Fedalma of George Eliot. In her filial piety, in her 
 intercession for Polyneices at the knees of CEdipus, in her grief when her 
 father is taken from her, she resembles the woman whom most men have 
 learned to honour in their sisters or their daughters or their mother. But 
 the Antigone, who defies Creon, who lays her life down lest her brother 
 should receive no funeral dues, who marches to her living tomb in order 
 that the curse-haunted coi-pse of Polyneices should have rest in Hades, 
 appears to the modern mind a being from another sphere. A strain of 
 unearthly music seems to announce her entrance and her exit on the stage. 
 That the sacrifice of the sister's very lifer-the breaking of her plighted 
 
310 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Owing to'the very structure of the Attic stage, Greek tragedy- 
 could never have recourse to those formless, vague, and unsub- 
 stantial sources of terror and of charm which the modern 
 dramatist has at his command. How could such airy nothings 
 as the elves of the Tempest, the fairies of A Midsummer Night's 
 Dream, or the witches of Macbeth have been brought upon that 
 colossal theatre in the full blaze of an Athenian noon ? Figures 
 of, Thanatos and of Lyssa did indeed appear : the ghost of 
 Clytemnestra roused the sleeping Furies in the courts of 
 
 troth to HEemoii, should follow upon the sprinkliug of those few handfuls 
 of dust— that she should give that life up smilingly, nor ever in her last 
 hours breathe her lover's name,— is a tragic circumstance for which our 
 . sympathies are not prepared. It is almost in vain that we recall to mind 
 such considerations as enable us to conceive the peculiarities of her 
 circumstances and her character, — first, that she has inherited a portion of 
 her father's proud self-will, and then, that disaster after disaster, — the loss.of 
 CEdipus, 'the death of her two brothers, — has come huddling upon her in 
 a storm of fate. In spite of all this she strikes us at the first as frigid. It 
 is only after long contemplation of her perfect lineaments that we come 
 to recognize a purity of passion, a fixity of purpose, a loyalty of kinship, a 
 sublime sense of duty, raised far above the strain of common modem sen- 
 timent. Even Alfieri, in the noble outline-drawing he has sketched from 
 Sophocles, could not refrain from violating the perfection of the picture by 
 these final words : — 
 
 " Emone, ah ! tutto io sento, 
 Tutto 1' amor, che a te portava : io sento 
 II dolor tutto, a cui ti lascio.'' 
 
 None such are to be ound in .Sophocles upon the lips of the dying 
 , Antigone. She is all for her father and her brothers. The tragedy of 
 Hasmon belongs to Creon, not to her. None of the women of Euripides 
 are so sublime as this. The situations he has invented for them are less 
 complex ; their humanity is less perfect. In my Second Series of Studies 
 of Greek Poets I have written more at length upon Antigone. See 
 chapter vii. The temptation to use the Coloneus to illustrate and soften 
 the impression of the Antigone is very great. Yet it is one which ought 
 probably to be resisted^ or, at least,, yielded to with caution ; for the 
 Coloneus was composed long after the Antigone, and nothing justifies the 
 hypothesis that a Greek tragedian felt bound to adhere in different dramas 
 to one conception of the same character. 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 311 
 
 Delphi : the phantom of Darius hovered over his grave . But 
 these spectres were sculpturesque — such as Pheidias, might 
 have carved in marble, and such as we see painted on so-called 
 Etruscan vases. They were not Banquo-apparitions gliding 
 into visible substance from the vacant gloom and retiring 
 thitherward again. When such creatures of the diseased ima- 
 gination had to be suggested, the seer, like Cassandra, before 
 whose eyes the phantoms of the children of Thyestes passed, 
 or Orestes, who drew his arrows upon an unseen cohort of 
 threatening fiends, stared on vacancy. Shakspere dares at 
 times to realize such incorporeal beings, to give to them a voice 
 and a visible form. Yet it may be doubted whether even 
 in his tremendous supernatural apparatus the voice which 
 shrieked to Macbeth " Sleep no more ! " the mutterings of 
 Lady Macbeth in her somnambulism, the spectre which 
 Hamlet saw and his mother could not see, the dream of 
 Clarence with its cry of injured ghosts, are not really the most 
 appalling. ■ ' 
 
 The Greek drama owed its power to the qualities of regu- 
 larity and simpUcity : the strength of the modern lies in 
 subtlety and multiplicity. The external conditions of the 
 Attic theatre no less than the prevailing spirit of Greek tragic 
 art forced this simplicity and regularity upon the ancient 
 dramatists. These conditions do not occur in the modern- 
 world. We have our little theatres, our limited audience, our 
 unmasked actors, our scenical illusions, our freedom in the 
 choice of subjects. Therefore to push the subtlety and multi- 
 plicity of tragic composition to the utmost — to arrange for the 
 most swift and sudden changes of expression in the actor, for 
 the most delicate development of a many-sided character, 
 for the most complicated grouping of contrasted forms, and for 
 the utmost realization of imaginative incidents — is the glory 
 of a Shakspere or a Goethe. The French dramatists made the 
 . mistake of clinging to the beggarly elements of the Attic stage. 
 
312 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 when they had no means of restoring its colossal grandeur. 
 When it was open to them to rival the work of the ancients in 
 a new and truly modern style, they hampered their genius 
 by arbitrary rules, and thought that they were following the 
 principles of the highest art, while they submitted to the mere 
 necessities of a bygone form of presentation. If Racine had 
 beHeved in Nemesis, if Versailles had aiforded him a theatre 
 and an audience like that of Athens, if his actors had worn 
 masks, if sculpture had been the dominant art of modern 
 Europe, he would have been following the right track. As it 
 was, he became needlessly formal. The same bHnd enthusiasm 
 for antiquity led to the doctrine of the Unities, to the absti- 
 nence from bloodshed on the stage, and to the restriction of 
 a play to five acts. Horace had advised a dramatist not to 
 extend his tragedy beyond the fifth act, nor to allow Medea to 
 murder her children within sight of the audience. All modem 
 playwrights observe the rule of five acts : nor is there much 
 to be said against it, except that the third act act is apt to be 
 languid for want of matter. But the Greeks disregarded 
 this division : judging by the choric songs, we find that 
 some of their tragedies have as many as seven, and some 
 as few as two acts. Again, as to bloodshed on the stage, 
 it is probable that if the Greek actors had not been so 
 clumsily arrayed, we should have had many instances of their 
 violation of this rule, .^schylus discloses the shambles where 
 Agamemnon and Cassandra lie weltering in their blood, and 
 hammers a stake through the body of Prometheus. Sopho- 
 cles exhibits aidipus with eyes torn out and bleeding on his 
 cheeks. Euripides allows the mangled corpse of Astyanax to be 
 brought upon the stage in his father's shield. There is nothing 
 more ghastly in an actual murder than in these spectacles 
 of slaughter and mutilation. With reference to the Unities, 
 the French critics demand that a drama shall proceed in the 
 same place, and the playwrights are at infinite pains to manage 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 313 
 
 that no change of scene shall occur. But Aristotle, whose 
 authority they claim, is silent on the point ; while the usage of 
 the Greek Drama shows more than one change of place, — 
 especially in the Ajax of Sophocles, and in the Euwenides of 
 ^schylus, where the scene is shifted from the temple of Phoe- 
 bus at Delphi to the Areopagus at Athens. Still the exigencies 
 of the Greek theatre made it advisable to alter the centre of 
 action as little as possible ; and as a matter of convenience this 
 requirement was complied with. The circumstances of our own 
 stage have removed this difficulty, and it is only on the child- 
 ish principle of maintaining an impossible illusion that the 
 unity of place can be observed with any propriety. The unity, 
 of time has more to. say for itself. Aristotle remarks that it is 
 better to have a drama completed within the space of a day : 
 this rule flows from his just sense of the proportion of parts ; 
 a work of art ought to be such that the mind can easily com- 
 prehend it at a glance. Yet many Greek plays, such as the 
 Agamemnon of .^Eschylus, where Agamemnon has time to 
 return from Troy, or the Eumenides, where Orestes performs 
 the journey from Delphi- to Athens, disregard this rule in 
 cases where it required no strain of the mind to bridge over 
 the space of a few unimportant days or hours. When in the 
 modern drama we are introduced td the hero of a play first as 
 a child and then as a full-grown man, and are forced mean- 
 while to keep our attention on his acts in the interval as im- 
 portant to the dramatic evolution, there is a gross violation of 
 sesthetical Unity. About the Unity of action all critics are 
 agreed. It is the same as unity of interest, or unity of subject, 
 the interest and the subject of a play being its action. A good 
 tragedy must have but one action, just as a good epic or a good 
 poem of any sort must have but one subject ; for the simple 
 reason that, as the eye cannot look at two things at once, so the 
 mind cannot attend to two things at once. Modern poets have 
 been apt to disregard this canon of common sense : the under- 
 
314 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 plots of many plays and the episodes of such epics as the 
 Orlando of Ariosto are not sufficiently subordinated to the 
 main design or interwoven with it. Aristotle is also right in 
 saying that the unity of the hero is not the same as the unity 
 of action : a play, for example, on the labours of Hercules 
 could only be made a good drama if each labour were shown 
 to be one step in the fulfilment of one divinely appointed task. 
 Shakspere has complied with the canon Of the Unity of action 
 in all his tragedies. Whether Goethe has done so in Faust 
 may admit of doubt. The identity of his hero seems to him 
 sufficient for the tragic unity of his piece : yet he has given us 
 another centre of interest in Margaret, whose story is but a mere 
 episode in the experience of Faust. Unity of action in a 
 tragedy, the very soul of which is action, is the same as organic 
 coherence in a body ; and therefore, as every work of art ought, 
 according to the energetic metaphor of Plato, to be a living 
 creature, with head, trunk and limbs all vitalized by one 
 thought, this Unity is essential. Admitting this point, we may 
 fairly say that the other rules of French dramatic criticism are 
 not only arbitrary but also founded on a mistake with regard 
 to the Greek theatre and a misapprehension of the proper 
 functions of the modern stage. Composing in obedience to 
 them is like walking upon stilts in a country where there are 
 no marshes to make the inconvenience necessary. 
 
 In this review of the differences between our own tragedy 
 and that of the Greeks I have scarcely touched upon those 
 primary qualities which differentiate all modern from ancient 
 art. The " sentiment of the infinite," which Renan regards as 
 the chief legacy of mediaevalism to modern civilization, and 
 the preoccupation with the internal spirit rather than the 
 external form which makes Music the essentially modern, as 
 Sculpture was the essentially ancient art, are causes of innume- 
 rable peculiarities in our conception of tragedy. I have hardly 
 alluded to these, but have endeavoured to show that the immer- 
 
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY. 315 
 
 sion of Greek Tragedy in religious ideas, the fixed body of 
 mythical matter handled by the Greek dramatists in succession, 
 and the actual conditions of the Attic theatre will account for 
 the greater number of those characteristics which distinguish 
 Sophocles from Shakspere, the prince of Greek from the prince 
 of modern tragic poets. 
 
3i6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE IDYLLISTS. 
 
 Theocritus. — His Life. — The Canon of his Poems. — The meaning of the 
 word Idyll. — Bucolic Poetry in Greece, Rome, Modem Europe. — 
 The Scenery of Theocritus. — Relation of Southern Nature to Greek 
 Mythology and Greek Art. — Rustic Life and Superstitions. — Feeling 
 for Pure Nature in Theocritus. — How distinguished from the same 
 feeling in Modern Poets. — Galatea. — Pharmaceutriae. — ^Hyla.s. — 
 Greek Chivalry. — The Dioscuri. — Thalysia. — Bion. — The Lament 
 for Adonis. —Moschus. — Europa. — Megara. — Lament for Bion, — 
 The debts of Modem Poets to the Idyllists. 
 
 Of the lives of Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus there is very little 
 known, and that little has been often repeated. Theocritus was 
 a Syracusan, the son of Praxagoras and Philinna, Some confu- 
 sion as to his parentage arose from the fact that in the seventh 
 Idyll Theocritus introduced himself under the artificial name of 
 Simichidas, which led early critics to suppose he had a father 
 called Simichus. It is however quite clear that the concurrent 
 testimony of Suidas and of an epigram in the Anthology which 
 distinctly asserts his descent from Praxagoras and Philinna, 
 is to be accepted in preference to all conjectures founded 
 on a mm de filume. Theocritus flourished between 283 and 
 263 B.C., but the dates and circumstances of his birth and death 
 are alike unknown. We may gather inferentially or directly 
 from his poems that he sought the patronage of Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus at Alexandria, and lived for some time among the men 
 of letters at his court. Indeed Theocritus was the most bril- 
 liant ornament of that somewhat artificial period of literature ; 
 he above all the Alexandrian poets carried the old genius of 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 317 
 
 Greece into new channels, instead of imitating, annotating, and 
 rehandling ancient masterpieces. The sixth and seventh Idylls 
 prove that Aratus, the astronomer, was a familiar friend of the 
 Syracusan bard ; probably the frequent allusions to meteorology 
 and the science of the stars which we trace in the poems of 
 Theocritus, may be referred to this intimacy. From the Idylls 
 again we learn that the poet left Alexandria wearied with 
 court life, and, like Spenser, unwilling 
 
 ' ' To lose good nights that might be better spent, 
 To waste long days in pensive discontent, 
 To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow, 
 To feed on hope, and pine with fear and sorrow." 
 
 He seems, however, to have once more made trial of princely 
 favour at the Syracusan court of Hiero, and to have been as 
 much offended with the want of appreciation and good taste 
 as with the illiberality that he found there. Among his friends 
 were numbered Nicias, the physician of Miletus, and his wife 
 Theugenis, to whom he addressed the beautiful little poem 
 called TtXaKari], or the Distaff — a charming specimen of what 
 the Greek muse could produce b)- way of vers de societk. The 
 end of his life is buried in obscurity. We can easily believe 
 that he spent it quietly among the hills and fields of Sicily, in 
 close communion with the nature that he loved so well. His 
 ill-success as a court poet does not astonish us ; the panegyrics 
 of Hiero and Ptolemy are among his worst poems — mere pinch- 
 beck when compared with the pure gold of the Idylls proper. 
 It was in scenes of natural beauty that he felt at home, and 
 when he died he left a volume of immortal verse, each line of 
 which proclaims of him — " Et ego in Arcadia." We cannot give 
 him a more fitting epitaph than that of his own Daphnis : — 
 
 €j3a \)6ov ' e/cAuce Siya 
 Thv Mcixrais (ptKov &v^pa, rhy ov NvfupaiffLf anex^V* 
 
 * " Down the dark stream he went ; the eddies drowned 
 The muses' friend, the youth the nymphs held dear." 
 
3iB THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 If we know little of Theocritus, less is known of Bion. Suidas 
 says that he was born at Smyrna, and the elegy written on his 
 death leads us to suppose that he lived in Sicily, an5 died of 
 poison wilfully administered by enernies. Theocritus, though 
 his senior in age and his predecessor in Bucolic poetry, seems 
 to have survived him. Bion's elegist, from whom the few facts 
 which we have related with regard to the poet of Smyrna's life 
 and untimely death are gathered, has generally been identified 
 with Moschias. Ahrens, however, with characteristic German 
 scepticism, places the 'ETrirat^ioc Vi'mvoc, upon a list of Iiuer- 
 torum Idyllia. Nor can it be denied that the author of this 
 poem leads us to believe that he was a native of Magna Grsecia, 
 whereas Moschus is known to have been a Syracusan. The 
 third and last of the Sicilian Idyllists, he stands at a great dis- 
 tance from Theocritus in all essential qualities of pastoral com- 
 position. He has more of the grammarian or man of erudition 
 about him ; and we can readily conceive him to have been, 
 according to the account of Suidas, a friend of Aristarchus, 
 Of the dates of his life nothing can be recorded with any cer- 
 tainty. He seems to have lived about the end of the third 
 century b.c. 
 
 During the short period in which Bucolic poetry flourished 
 onder Theocritus, Bion, and Moschiis, Syracuse remained be- 
 neath the sceptre of Hiero. While the bloody strife vs'as 
 being waged between Rome and Carthage for the empire of 
 the Mediterranean, Syracuse, intermediate between the two 
 great combatants, was able not only to maintain a splendid 
 independence under the sway of her powerful tyrant but also 
 to afford the Romans signal aid upon the battle-fields of Sicily. 
 In Sicily, the sun of Greece still shone with some of its old 
 radiance on the spots where, before Athens had assumed the 
 intellectual supremacy of Hellas, poetry, philosophy, and all the 
 arts of life had first displayed their splendid spring-time. The 
 island in which the April of the Greek spirit had disclosed its 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 319 
 
 earliest flowers now bore the last but not least lovely wreath of 
 autumn. The winter was soon coming. Rome and her Verres 
 were already looking upon Trinacria as their prey ; and the 
 Idyllic garland was destined to crown with exotic blossoms the 
 brows of Virgil. 
 
 About the authenticity of many of the Idylls grave questions 
 have been raised. It is hard to believe that all the thirty 
 which bear the name of Theocritus were really written by him. 
 The 23rd and 25th, for instance, are not in his style ; while the 
 19th reminds us more of the Anacreontic elegance of Bion or 
 Moschus than of his peculiarly vigorous workmanship. The 
 29th again, though admitted as genuine by Ahrens, might well 
 pass for the work of an earlier .i^Iolic writer.* But without 
 some shock to my feelings I cannot entertain the spuriousness 
 of the 2 1 St Idyll, which Ahrens pla,ces among the productions 
 of some doubtful author. The whole series after the i8th 
 have been questioned. These ' however include the Epical 
 compositions of Theocritus, who might well have assumed a 
 different manner when treating of Hercules or the Dioscuri 
 from that in which he sang the loves of Lycidas and Daphnis. 
 That they are inferior to his pastorals is not to be wondered at ; 
 for he who blows his own flute with skill may not be therefore 
 strong enough to sound the trumpet of Homer. Ahrens, as 
 observed above, extehds his criticism to the lament for Bion, 
 which, I confess, appears to me more full of fire and inventive 
 genius than any other of the poems attributed to Moschus. 
 
 Yet in these matters of minute evidence too much depends 
 upon mere conjecture and comparison of styles for us to remove 
 old landmarks with certainty. Suppose all records of Raphael's 
 works had been lost, and a few fragments of the Cartoons 
 together with the Transfiguration and the little picture of the 
 Sleeping Knight alone remained of all his paintings, would not 
 
 * I have placed an English version of this beautiful and characteristic 
 composition in the Appendix. 
 
320 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 some Ahrens be inclined to attribute the Sleeping Knight to a 
 weaker if not less graceful artist of the Umbrian School ? The 
 Allegro and Penseroso might by a similar process of disjunctive 
 criticism be severed from the Paradise Lost. On the other 
 hand, nothing can be more doubtful than" assertions in favour 
 of authenticity. It is almost impossible for a foreigner to per- 
 ceive . minute differences of style in the works of two con- 
 temporary poets, and infinitely more difficult for a modem to 
 exercise the same exact discrimination in deciding oii the 
 monuments of classic art. Schlegel, in his History of Dramatic 
 Literature, asserts that he discovers no internal difference be- 
 tween Massinger and Fletcher. Yet an English student is 
 struck by the most marked divergences of feeling, language, 
 natural gifts, and acquired habits of thought in these two 
 dramatists. Thus the difficulty of such criticism is twofold. 
 If a Syracusan of 200 b.c. could discuss our lucubrations on 
 the text of the Bucolic poets, he would probably in one .case 
 express astonishment at our having ascribed two dissimilar 
 Idylls to Theocritus, and in another case explain away our 
 scepticism by enumerating the three or four successive manners 
 of the poet. Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus are the Eponyms 
 of Idyllic poetry. To each belongs a peculiar style. It is 
 quite possible that some Idylls of successful imitators whose 
 names have been lost may have been fathered upon the three 
 most eminent founders of the school.. 
 
 The name of the Idyll sufficiently explains its nature. It 
 is a littlp picture. Rustic or town life, legends of the gods, and 
 pg.ssages of personal experience supply the idyllist with sub- 
 jects. He does . not treat them lyrically, following rather the 
 rules of epic and dramatic composition. Generally there is a 
 narrator, and in so far the Idyll is epic ; its verse too is the 
 hexameter. But occasionally the form of dramatic monologue, 
 as in' the Pharmaceictria, or that of dramatic dialogue, as in 
 the Adoniazusm, takes the place of narrative. Bion's lament 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 321 
 
 for Adonis again is a kind of sacred hymn ; while the dirge 
 on Bion's death is elegiac. Two Idylls of Theocritus are 
 encomiastic; several celebrate the deeds of ancestral Doric 
 heroes — Heracles and the Dioscuri. One is an epistle. Many 
 of Bion's so-called Idylls differ little, except in metre, from the 
 Anacreontics, while one at least of the most highly finished 
 pieces of Theocritus must be ranked with erotic poetry of the 
 purely lyrical order. It will be seen from these instances that 
 the idyllic genius admitted many species, and that the Idylhsts 
 were far from being simply pastoral poets. This form of com- 
 position was in fact the growth of a late age of Greek art, 
 when the great provinces had been explored and occupied, 
 and when the inventor of a new style could legitimately adopt 
 the tone and manner of his various predecessors. Perhaps the 
 plastic arts determined the direction of Idyllic poetry, suggest- 
 ing the name and supplying the poet with models of compact 
 and picturesque treatment. In reading the Idylls it should 
 never be forgotten that they are pictures, so studied and 
 designed by their authors. They ought to affect us in theisame 
 way as the bas-reliefs and vases of Greek art, in which drama- 
 tic action is presented at one moment of its evolution, and 
 beautiful forms a,re grouped together with such simplicity as to 
 need but little story to enhance their value. If we approach 
 the Idylls from this point, of view, and regard them as very 
 highly finished works of decorative art, we shall probably be 
 able to enjoy their loveliness without complaining that the 
 shepherds and shepherdesses are too refined, or that the land- 
 scapes have not been drawn from nature. 
 
 Without discussing the whole hackneyed question of 
 BucoKc poetry, a word must be said about its origin, and 
 about the essential difference between Theocritus and modern 
 pastorals. It is natural to suppose that country folk, from the 
 remotest period of Greek history, refreshed themselves with 
 dance and song, and that music formed a part of their religious 
 
 Y 
 
322 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ceremonials. The • trials of strength which supply the motive 
 of so many Theocritean Idylls were quite consistent with the 
 manners of the Greeks, who brought all rival claims of supe- 
 riority to the touchstone of such contests. Their antiquity 
 in the matter of music may be gathered from the legends of 
 Pan and Apollo, and of Apollo and Marsyas. Phoebus, in 
 the character of shepherd to Admetus, gave divine sanction to 
 Bucolic minstrelsy. In respect of bodily strength, the gym- 
 nastic rivalry of Olympia and other great Hellenic centres was 
 so important as to determine the chronology of Greece, — 
 while even claims to personal beauty were decided by the 
 same trial : the three goddesses submitted to the arbitration of 
 Paris; and there were in many states hpiareia of physical 
 charms, not to mention the boys' prize for kisses at Nissean 
 Megara. Bucolic poetry may therefore be referred to the 
 pastoral custom of shepherds singing together and against each 
 other at festivals or on the green. 
 
 It was the genius of Theocritus in all probabiUty which 
 detetmined the Doric and SiciUan character of the Idylls we 
 possess. He, a Syracusan and a Dorian, perfected the genre, 
 and was followed by his imitators. Nothing can be more 
 simple and lifelike than the conversations of his rustics, or 
 more nicely discriminated than the pedestrian style of their 
 dialogue and the more polished manner of their studied songs. 
 The poet has no doubt invested these rural encounters with 
 the imaginative beauty which belongs to art. He has attri- 
 buted to Corydon and Thyrsis much of his own imagination 
 and deHcate taste . and exquisite sense of natural loveliness. 
 Had he refrained from doing so, his Idylls would not have 
 challenged the attention and won the admiration of posterity. 
 As it is, we find enough of rustic grossness on his pages, and 
 may even complain that his cowherds and goatherds savour 
 too strongly of their stables. Of his appreciation of scenery it 
 is difficult to speak in terms of exaggerated praise. As I pur- 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 323 
 
 pose to discuss this subject more minutely further on, it may 
 here be enough to remark that he alone of pastoral poets drew 
 straight from nature, and fully felt the charm which underHes 
 the facts of rustic life. 
 
 In comparison with Theocritus, Bion and Moschus are 
 affected and insipid. Their pastorals smack of the study more 
 than of the fields. .Virgil not only lacks his vigour and en- 
 thusiasm for the open-air life of the country, but, with Roman 
 bad taste, he commits the capital crime of allegorizing. Virgil's 
 pernicious example infected Spenser, Milton, and a host of 
 inferior imitators, flooding literature with dreary pastorals in 
 which shepherds discussed poHtics, reHgion, and court-gossip, 
 so that at last Bucolic poetry became a synonym for every- 
 thing affected and insipid. Poetry flourishes in cities, where 
 rustic song must always be an exotic plant. To analyze 
 Poliziano, Sanazaro, Guarini, Tasso, Spenser, Fletcher, 
 Jonson, Barnfield, Browne, Pope, &c., and to show what 
 stirains of natural elegance adorn their imitations of the 
 ancients, would be a very interesting but lengthy task. As 
 society became more artificial, especially at Florence, Paris, 
 and Versailles, the taste for pseudo-pastorals increased. Court- 
 ladies -tucked up their petticoats and carried crooks with 
 ribbons at their tops, while Court-poets furnished aristocratic 
 Corydons with smooth verses about pipes and pine-trees, and 
 lambs and wattled cotes. The whole was a dream and a 
 delusion ; but this mirage of rusticity appropriated the name of 
 pastoral, and reflected discredit even on the great and natural 
 Theocritus. At length this genre of composition, in which 
 neither invention nor observation nor truth nor excellence of 
 any kind except inglorious modulation of old themes was 
 needed, died a natural death ; and the true Bucolic genius 
 found fresh channels. Crabbe revived an interest in village 
 life ; Bums sang immortal lyrics at the plough ; Goethe 
 achieved a masterpiece of Idyllic delineation ; Wordsworth 
 
324 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 reasserted the claims of natural simplicity ; Keats expressed 
 the sensuous charms of rustic loveliness ; Tennyson and Barnes 
 have written rural idylls in the dialects of Lincolnshire and 
 Dorsetshire ; while other writers are pursuing similar lines of 
 composition. Theocritus, it is true, differs widely from these 
 poets both in his style and matter. But he deserves to rank 
 among the most realistic artists of the nineteenth century on 
 account of his simplicity and perfect truth to nature. In 
 reading him we must divest ourselves of any prejudices which 
 we have acquired from the perusal of his tasteless imitators. 
 We must take his volume with us to the scenes in which he 
 lived, and give him a fair trial on his own merits. 
 
 It is on the shores of the Mediterranean — at Sorrento, at 
 Amalfi, or near Palermo, or among the valleys of Mentone, — that 
 we ought to study Theocritus, and learn the secret of his charm.* 
 Few of us pass middle life without visiting one or other of 
 these sacred spots, which seem to be the garden of perpetual 
 spring. Like the lines of the Sicilian idyllist, they inspire an 
 inevitable and indescribable ttoSoq, touching our sense of beauty 
 with a subtle power, and soothing our spirits with the majesty 
 of classical repose. Straight from the sea-beach rise mountains 
 of distinguished form, not capped with snow or clothed with 
 pines, but carved of naked rock. We must accept their beauty 
 as it is, nude, well defined, and unadorned, nor look in vain 
 for the mystery or sublimity or picturesqueness of the Alps. 
 Light and colour are the glory of these mountains. Valleys 
 divide their ilanks, seaming with shadow-belts and bands of 
 green the broad hillside, while lower down the olives spread a 
 hoary greyness and soft robe of silver mist, the skirts of which 
 are kissed by tideless waves. The harmony between the beauty 
 of the olive boughs and the blue sea can be better felt than 
 described. Guido, whose subtlety of sentiment was very rare, 
 
 * I may refer my readers to the chapter on the Cornice in my Sketches 
 in Italy and Greece for a fuller treatment of this landscape. 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 325 
 
 has expressed it in one or two of his earliest and best pictures 
 by graduated tones of silver, azure, and cool grey. The de- 
 finite form and sunny brightness of the olive-tree suits our 
 conception of the Greek character.' It may well have been 
 the favourite plant of the wise and calm Athend Oaks with 
 their umbrageous foliage, pine-trees dark and mournful upon 
 Alpine slopes, branching limes, and elms in which the wind 
 .sways shadowy masses of thick leaves, belong, with their huge 
 girth and gnarled boles and sombre roofage, to the forests of 
 the North, where nature is rather an awful mother than a kind 
 foster-nurse and friend of man. In northern landscapes the 
 eye travels through vistas of leafy boughs to still, secluded 
 crofts and pastures, where slow-moving oxen graze. The mys- 
 tery of dreams and the repose of meditation haunt our massive 
 bowers. But in the South, the lattice-work of olive boughs 
 and foliage scarcely veils the laughing sea and bright blue sky, 
 while the. hues of the landscape find their climax in the daz- 
 zling radiance of the sun upon the waves, and the pure light of 
 the horizon. There is no concealment and no melancholy 
 here. Nature seems to hold a never-ending festival and dance, 
 in which the waves and sunbeams and shadows join. Again, in 
 northern scenery, the rounded forms of fuU-foliaged trees suit 
 the undulating country, with its gentle hills and brooding clouds ; 
 but in the South the spiky leaves and sharp branches of the 
 olive carry out the defined outlines which are everywhere 
 observable through the broader beauties of mountain and valley 
 and sea-shore. Serenity and intelligence characterize this 
 southern landscape, in which a race of splendid men and 
 women lived beneath the pure light of Phoebus, their ancestral 
 god. Pallas protected them, and golden Aphrodite favoured 
 them with beauty. Nations as great and noble have arisen 
 among the oak and beech woods of the North'; strong-sinewed 
 warriors, heroic women, counsellors with mighty brains, and 
 poets on whose tongue the melody of music lingers Uke a 
 
326 TFTE GREEK POETS. 
 
 charm. But the Greeks alone owned the gift of innate beauty and 
 unerring taste. The human form upon those bare and sunny 
 hills, beneath those twinkling olive boughs, beside that sea 
 of everlasting laughter, reached its freedom; and the spirit of 
 human loveliness was there breathed fully into all the forms of 
 art. Poetry, sculpture, architecture, music, dancing, all became 
 the language of that moderate and lucid harmony which we 
 discover in the landscape of the Greeks. 
 
 Olives are not however by any means the only trees which 
 play a part in idyllic scenery. The tall stone-pine is even 
 more important ; for, underneath its shade the shepherds 
 loved to sing, hearing the murmur in its spreading roof, and 
 waiting for the cones with their sweet fruit to fall. Near 
 Massa, by Sorrento, there are two gigantic pines so placed 
 that, lying on the grass beneath them, one looks on Capri 
 rising from the sea, Baise, and all the bay of Naples sweeping 
 round to the base of Vesuvius. Tangled growths .of olives, 
 oranges, and rose-trees fill the garden-ground along the 
 shore, while far away in the distance pale Inarime sleeps, 
 with her exquisite Greek name, a virgin island on the deep. 
 In such a place we realize Theocritean melodies, and find a 
 new and indestructible loveliness in the opening Hne of his first 
 idyll :— 
 
 These pines are few and far between. Growing alone or 
 in pairs, they stand like monuments upon the hills, their 
 black forms sculptured on the cloudlike olive groves, from 
 which at intervals spring spires and columns of slender cypress- 
 trees. 
 
 Here and there in this bright garden of the age of gold 
 white villages are seen, and solitary cottage roofs high up 
 among the hills, — dwellings perhaps of Amaryllis, whom the 
 shepherds used to serenade. Huge fig-trees lean their weight 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 327 
 
 of leaves and purple fruit upon the cottage walls, while cheny- 
 trees and apricots snow the grass in spring with a white wealth 
 of April blossoms. The stone walls and little wells in the 
 cottage gardens are green with immemorial moss and ferns, and 
 fragrant with gadding violets that ripple down their sides, and 
 chequer them with blue. On the wilder hills you find patches 
 of ilex and arbu,tus glowing with crimson berries and white 
 waxen bells, sweet myrtle rods and shafts of bay, frail tamarisk 
 and tall tree-heaths that wave their frosted boughs above your 
 head. Nearer the shore, the lentisk grows, a savoury shrub, 
 with cytisus and aromatic rosemary. Cleniatis and polished 
 garlands of tough sarsaparilla wed the shrubs with clinging, 
 climbing arms ; and here and there in sheltered nooks the 
 vine shoots forth luxuriant tendrils bowed with grapes 
 stretching from bra,nch to branch of mulberry or elm, fling- 
 ing festoons on which young loves might sit and swing, or 
 weaving a lattice-work of leaves across the open shed. Nor 
 rnust the sounds of this landscape be forgotten, — sounds of 
 bleating flocks, and murmuring bees, and nightingales, and 
 doves that moan, a,nd runnmg streams, and shrill cicadas, 
 and hoarse ■ frogs, aiid whispering pines. There is not 
 a single detail which a patient student may not verify from 
 Theocritus. 
 
 Then too it is a landscape in which sea and country are 
 never sundered. This must not be forgotten of Idyllic scenery ; 
 for it was the warm sea-board of Sicily, beneath protecting 
 heights of ^tna, that gave birth to the Bucolic muse. The , 
 intermingling of pastoral and sea life is exquisitely allegorized 
 in the legend of Galatea ; and pn the cup which Theocritus 
 describes in his first Idyll, the fisherman plays an equal part 
 with the shepherd youths and the boy who watches by the vine- 
 yard wall. The higher we climb upon the mountain-side the 
 more marvellous is the beauty of the sea, which seems to rise 
 as we ascend, and stretch ipto the sky. Sometimes a little 
 
328 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 flake of blue is framed by olive boughs, sometimes a turning 
 in the road reveals the ■whole broad azure calm below. Or 
 after toiling up a steep ascent we fall upon the undergrowth 
 of juniper, and lo ! a double sea, this way and that, divided by 
 the sharp spine of the jutting hill, jewelled with villages along 
 its shore, and smiling with fair islands and silver sails. Upon 
 the beach the waves come tumbling in, swaying the corallines 
 and green and purple sea-weeds in the pools. Ceaseless beat- 
 ing of the spray has worn the rocks into jagged honeycombs 
 on which lazy fishermen sit perched, dangling their rods like 
 figures in Pompeian frescoes. 
 
 In landscapes such as these we are readily able to 
 understand the legends of rustic gods ; the metamorphoses 
 of Syrinx, Narcissus, Echo, Hyacinthus, and Adonis ; 
 the tales of slumbering Pan, and horned satyrs, and 
 peeping fauns, with which the Idyllists have adorned their 
 simple shepherd songs. Here, too, the Oread dwellers of the 
 hills, and dryads, and sylvans, and water-nymphs, seem 
 possible. They lose their unreality and mythic haziness ; for 
 men themselves are more a part of Nature here than in the 
 North, more fit for companionship with deities of stream and 
 hill. Their labours are lighter and their food more plentiful. 
 Summer leaves them not, and the soil yields fair and graceful 
 crops. There is surely some difference between hoeing turnips 
 and trimming olive boughs, between tending turkeys on a 
 Norfolk common and leading goats to browse on cytisus 
 beside the shore, between the fat pasturage and bleak winters 
 of our midland counties and the spare herbage of the South 
 dried by perpetual sunlight. It cannot be denied that men 
 assimilate something from their daily labour, and that the 
 poetry of rustic life is more evident upon Mediterranean shores 
 than in England. 
 
 Nor must the men and women of classical landscape be 
 torgotten. When we read of the Idylls of Theocritus, and 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 329 
 
 wish to see before us Thestylis, and Daphnis, and Lycidas, we 
 have but to recall the perfect forms of Greek sculpture. We 
 may for instance summon to our mind the Endymion of the 
 Capitol, nodding in eternal slumber, with his sheep-dog slumber- 
 ing by : or Artemis stepping from her car ; her dragons coil 
 themselves between the shafts and fold their plumeless wings ; 
 or else Hippolytus and Meleager booted for the boar-chase : 
 or Bacchus finding Ariadne by the sea-shore; msenads and 
 satyrs are arrested in their dance; flower-garlands fall upon 
 the path : or a goat-legged satyr teaches a young faun to play ; 
 the pipe and flute are there, and from the boy's head fall long 
 curls upon his neck. Or Europa drops anemone and crocus 
 from her hand, trembling upon the bull as he swims onward 
 through the sea : or tritons blow wreathed shells, and dolphins 
 splash the water : or the eagle's claws clasp Ganymede, and 
 bear him up to Zeus : or Adonis lies wounded, and wild 
 Aphroditd spreads hungry arms, and wails with rent robes 
 tossed above her head. From the cabinet of gems we draw a 
 Love, blind, bound, and stung by bees ; or a girl holding an 
 apple in her hand ; or a young man tying on his sandal. 
 Then there is the Praxitelean genius of the Vatican who might 
 be Hylas, or Uranian Eros, or Hymenseus, or curled Hyacin- 
 thus — the faun who lies at Munich overcome with wine, his 
 throat bare, and his deep chest heaving with the breath of 
 sleep—Hercules strangling the twin snakes in his .cradle, or 
 ponderous with knotty sinews and huge girth of neck — Demeter, 
 holding fruits of all sorts in one hand and corn stalks in the 
 other, sweeping her full raiment on the granary floor. Or else 
 we bring again the pugilist from Caracalla's bath, — braised 
 faces and ears livid with unheeded blows, — their strained arms 
 bound with thongs, and clamps of iron on their fists. Proces- 
 sions move in endless line, of godlike youths on prancing steeds, 
 of women bearing baskets full of cakes and flowers, of oxen 
 lowing to the sacrifice. The Trojan heroes fall with smiles 
 
330 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 upon their lips ; the Athlete draws the strigil down his arm ; 
 the sons of Niobe He stricken, beautiful in death. Cups too 
 and vases help' us, chased with figures of all kinds, — dance, 
 festival, love-making, rustic sacrifice, the legendary tales of 
 hate and woe, the daily Idylls of domestic life. 
 
 Such are some of the works of Greek art which we may use 
 in our attempt to reahze Theocritus. Nor need we neglect the 
 monuments of modem painting — Giorgione's pastoral pictures 
 of piping men and maidens crowned with jasmine flowers, 
 Raphael's Triumph of Galatea, and Tintoretto's Marriage of 
 Ariadne, or the Arcadians of Poussin reading the tale' of death 
 upon the gravestone, and its epitaph — " Et ego." 
 
 To reconstruct the mode of life of the Theocritean dramatis 
 persona is not a matter of much difficulty. 'Pastoral habits are 
 singularly unchangeable, and nothing strikes us more than the 
 recurrence of familiar rustic proverbs, superstitions, and ways 
 of thinking which we find in the Idyllic poets. The mixture 
 of. simpHcity and shrewdness, of prosaic interest in worldly 
 affairs and of an unconscious admiration for the poetry of 
 nature, which George Sand has recently assigned with delicate 
 analysis to the Bucolic character in her Idylls of Nohant, meets 
 us in every line of the Sicilian pastorals. On the Mediterranean 
 shores too the same occupations have been carried on for 
 centuries with little interruption. The same fields are being 
 ploughed, the same vineyards tilled, the same olive-gardens 
 planted, as those in which Theocritus played as a child. The 
 rocks on which he saw old Olpis watching for the tunnies, with 
 fishing-reed and rush basket, are still haunted through sunny 
 hours by patient fishermen. Perhaps they cut their reeds and 
 rushes in the same river-beds ; certainly they use the same sort 
 of KaXafios. The goats have not forgotten to crop cytisus and 
 myrtle, nor have the goat-herds changed their shaggy trousers 
 and long crooks. You may still pick out a shepherd lad among 
 a hundred by his skin and cloak. It is even said that the 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 331 
 
 country ditties of the Neapolitans are Greek ; and how ancient 
 is the origin of local superstitions who shall say ? The country 
 folk still prefer, like Comatas in the fifth Idyll, garden-grown 
 roses to the wild eglantine and anemones of the hedgerpw, 
 scorning what has not required some cost or trouble for its 
 cultivation. _ Gretchen's test of love by blowing on thistle-down 
 does not differ much from that of the shepherd in the third 
 Idyll. Live blood in the eye is still a sign of mysterious im- 
 portance (Idyll iii. 36). To spit is still a remedy against the 
 evil eye (vii. 39). Eunica, the town girl, still turns up her nose 
 at the awkward cowherd ; city and country are not yet wholly 
 harmonized by improved means of locomotion. Then the people 
 of the South are perfectly unchanged — the fisher boys of Castel- 
 lamare ; the tall straight girls of Capri singing as they walk 
 with pitchers on their heads and distaffs in their hands ; the 
 wild Apulian shepherds ; the men and maidens laughing in 
 the olive-fields or vineyards ; the black-browed beauties of the 
 Cornice trooping to church on Sundays with gold earrings, 
 and with pink tulip-buds in their dark hair. One thing how- 
 ever is greatly altered. Go where we will, we find no statues 
 of Priapus and the Nymphs. No lambs are sacrificed to Pan. 
 No honey or milk is poured' upon the altars of the rustic 
 Muse. The temples are in ruins. Aloes and cactuses have 
 invaded the colonnades of Girgenti, and through the halls of 
 Psestum winds whistle, and sunbeams stream unheeded. But 
 though the gods are gone, men remain unaltered. A little less 
 careless, a little more superstitious they may be ; but their joys 
 and sorrows, their vices and virtues, their loves and hates, are 
 still the same. 
 
 Such reflections are trite and commonplace. Yet who can 
 resist the force of their truth and pathos ? 
 
 ouX "1"'" T^y "EpoiTa n6vots €T€x', as i&OKeviies, 
 NiK^a, ^TivL Tovro Bewv iro/ca t^kvov eyeVTO ' 
 
332 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 ovx afiiv Tcfe Ka\a irpdrois Ka\ci (paiyerat ^jues, 
 
 ot BpaTol "TTcASfieaBa, rh 6* aHpiov ovK 4(ropaiJ.es * — 
 
 said Theocritus, looking back into the far past, and remember- 
 ing that the gifts of love and beauty have belonged to men and 
 gods from everlasting. With what redoubled force may v^^, 
 after the lapse of twenty centuries, echo these words, when we 
 tread the ground he knew, and read the songs he sang ! His 
 hills stir our vague and yearning admiration, his sea laughs its 
 old laugh of waywardness and glee, his flowers bloom yearly, 
 and fade in the spring, his pine and olive branches overshadow 
 us ; we listen to the bleating of his goats, and taste the sweet- 
 ness of the springs from which he drank ; the milk, and honey 
 are as fresh upon our lips, the wine in winter by the wood fire, 
 when the winds are loud, is just as fragrant ; youth is still youth, 
 nor have the dark-eyed maidens lost their charm. Truly ovx 
 
 afxlv TO. KaXa TTparOLQ KaXci (paifErai ■^(J.^e. In this consists the 
 
 power of Theocritean poetry. It strikes a note which echoes 
 through our hearts by reason of its genuine simplicity and 
 pathos. The thoughts which natural beauty stirs in our minds, 
 find their embodiment in his sweet strong verse. ; and though 
 since his time the world has grown old, though the gods of 
 Greece have rent their veils and fled with shrieks from their 
 sanctuaries, though in spite of ourselves we turn our faces skyward 
 from the earth, though emaciated saints and martyrs have sup- 
 planted Adonis and the Graces, though the cold damp shades 
 of Calvinism have chilled our marrow and our blood, yet 
 there remain deep down within our souls some primal sym- 
 pathies with nature, some instincts of the Faun, or Satyr, or 
 Sylvan, which education has not quite eradicated. " The hand 
 which hath long time held a violet doth not soon forego her 
 
 * Not for us alone, as we once thought, friend Nicias, did Love's 
 parent, whosoever among gods that was, beget Lord Er&s. Not for us 
 did fair things first reveal their fairness ; we who are mortal men, and 
 have no vision of the morrow. 
 
THE IDY LUSTS. 33 
 
 perfume, nor the cup from which sweet wine had flowed his 
 fragrance." 
 
 I have dwelt long upon the peculiar properties of classical 
 landscape as described by the Greek idyllists, and as they still 
 exist for travellers upon the more sheltered shores of the Medi- 
 terranean, because it is necessary to understand them before 
 we can appreciate the truth of Theocritus. Of late years much 
 has been written about the difference between classical and 
 modern ways of regarding landscape. Mr. Ruskin has tried 
 to persuade us that the ancients only cared for the more culti- 
 vated parts of nature, for gardens or orchards, from which food 
 or profit or luxurious pleasure might be derived. And in this 
 view there is no doubt some truth. The Greeks and Romans 
 paid far less attention to inanimate nature than we do, and 
 were beyond all question repelled by the savage grandeur of 
 marine and mountain scenery, preferring landscapes of smiling 
 and cultivated beauty to rugged sublimity, or the picturesque- 
 ness of decay. In this they resembled all southern nations. 
 An Italian of the present day avoids ruinous places and soli- 
 tudes however splendid. Among the mountains he complains 
 of the brutto paese in which he has to live, and is always longing 
 for town gaieties and the amenities of civiHzed society.* The 
 ancients again despised all interests that pretended to rival 
 the paramount interest of civic or military life. Seneca's figu- 
 rative expression circum flosculos occupatur, might be translated 
 literally as applied to a trifler, to denote the scorn which 
 thinkers, statesmen, patriots, and generals of Greece and Rome 
 felt for mere rural prettiness ; while Quinctilian's verdict on 
 
 * One bright morning in the first week of June I went out into the fields 
 at Borca below Macugnaga, which were then full of brilliant and sweet 
 flowers. There I met an old woman, with whom I talked about her life in 
 what seemed to me a terrestrial Paradise. She threw her arms and eyes 
 to heaven, and looking round her, cried, "■ Che bnctto paese!" "Ah, what 
 an ugly country to live in ! " Compare Browning's Up at a Villa, Down in 
 the City. 
 
334. THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Theocritus (whom however he allows to be admirabilis in suo 
 genere), musa ilia rustica et pastoralis non forum modo verum 
 ipsam etiam urbem reformidat, characterizes the insensibility ot 
 urban intellects to a, branch of art which we consider of high 
 importance. But it is very easy to overstrain this view, and 
 Mr. Ruskin, perhaps, has laid an undue stress on Homer in 
 his criticism of the classics ; whereas it is among the later 
 Greek and Roman poets that the analogy of modern literature 
 would lead us to expect indications of a genuine taste for un- 
 adorned nature. These signs the Idyllic poets amply supply ; 
 but in seeking for them we must be prepared to recognize a 
 very different mode of expression from that which we are used 
 to in the florid poets of the modern age. Conciseness, sim- 
 plicity, and an almost prosaic accuracy are the never-failing 
 attributes of classical descriptive art. Moreover, humanity was 
 always more present to their minds than to ours. Nothing 
 evoked sympathy from a Greek unless it appeared before him 
 in a human shape, or in connection with some human senti- 
 ment. The ancient poets do not describe inanimate nature 
 as such, or attribute a vague spirituality to fields and clouds. 
 That feeling for the beauty of the world which is embodied 
 in such poems as Shelley's Ode to the West Wind gave birth in 
 their imagination to definite legends, involving some dramatic 
 interest and conflict of passions. We who are apt to look for 
 rhapsodies and briUiant outpourings of eloquent fancy, can 
 scarcely bring ourselves to recollect what a delicate sense of 
 nature and what profound emotions are implied in the con- 
 ceptions of Pan and Hyacinthus and Galatea. The misuse 
 which has been made of mythology by modern writers has 
 effaced half its vigour and charm. It is only by returning to 
 the nature which inspired these myths that we can reconstruct 
 their exquisite vitality.' Different ages and nations express 
 themselves by different forms of art. Music appears to be 
 dominant in the present period ; sculpture ruled among the 
 Greeks, and struck the keynote for all other arts. Even those 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 335 
 
 sentiments which in our mind are most vague, the admiration 
 of sunset skies, or flowers or copsewoods in spring, were ex- 
 pressed by tliem in the language of definite human form. 
 They sought to externalize and realize as far as possible, not 
 to communicate the inmost feelings and spiritual suggestions 
 arising out of natural objects. Never advancing beyond cor- 
 poreal conditions, they confined themselves to form, and sacri- 
 ficed the charm of mystery, which is incompatible with very 
 definite conception. It was on this account that sculpture, 
 the most exactly imitative of the arts, became literally Archi- 
 tectonic among the Greeks. And for a precisely similar reason 
 music, which is the most abstract and subjective of the arts, 
 the most evanescent in its material, and the vaguest, assumes 
 the chief rank among modern arts. Sculpture is the poetry of 
 the body, music the language of the soul. 
 
 Having once admitted their peculiar mode of feeUng Nature, 
 no one can deny that landscape occupies an important place 
 in Greek literature. Every line of Theocritus is vital with a 
 strong passion for natural beauty, incarnated in myths. But 
 even in descriptive poetry he is not deficient. His list of trees 
 and flowers is long, and the epithets with which they are cha- 
 racterized are very exquisite, — not indeed brilliant with the 
 inbreathed fancy of the North, but so perfectly appropriate as 
 to define the special beauty of the flower or tree selected. In 
 the same way, a whole scene is conveyed in a few words by 
 mere conciseness of delineation, or by the artful introduction 
 of some incident suggesting human emotion. Take for example 
 this picture of the stillness of the night : — 
 
 ^i/tSe ffiyoE ^ikv Trdyros, aiywvri S' aTJTai ' 
 a 5' ^juct ou aiyq (nepvwv evrotrdey avla, 
 a\V €7rl T^z/^ iraa-a KaTaiQafiai, '6s fie rdAatvav 
 avrl yvi^atKhs ^GrjKe kokw koI andpdsvov ^/iei'.* 
 
 Idy/l ii. 38-41. 
 
 ' Now rests the deep, now rest the wandering winds. 
 But in my heart the anguish will not rest, 
 
336 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Or this :— 
 
 hX'hk TV fihv x°'^P^^^'^ '^OT* uKeavhv rpeire vd^Kovs 
 •K^TvC^ iyij 5' Vttru rhv efibv Tr6vov, &tnrep {m&TTav. 
 Xotpe, '^iXavaia \nTap6xpoe • xa^pere S\ ^Woi 
 affrepcs, eiici]\oio kot' &VTvya NuKris oiraSoi* 
 
 Idyll ii. 163 et seqq. 
 
 Or this of a falling star : — 
 
 KaT'tiptire S* 4s fi4\aj/ iSSotp 
 a9p6os, (Sjs Srta iruptrljs ctTr* ovpaj/io ^piircv afniip 
 a0p6os 4i/ irovTtfj, vaiiTOis Se tis ehrev eraipots ' 
 K0v(p6Tep', S) iratSes, iroieiffff '6n\a ' irKevffTtKhs oZpos.f 
 
 Idyll -sim. 49-52. 
 
 Or the seaweeds on a rocky shore (vii. 58), or the summer bee 
 (iii. 15), or the country party at harvest time (vii. 129 to the 
 end). In all of these a peculiar simplicity will be noticed, 
 a self-restraint and scrupulosity of definite delineation. To 
 Theocritus the shadowy and iridescent fancies of modem poetry 
 would have been unintelligible. The creations of a Keats or 
 Shelley would have appeared to be monstrous births, like the 
 Centaurs of Ixion, begotten by lawless imaginations upon 
 cloud and mist. When the Greek poet wished to express the 
 charm of summer waves he spoke of Galatea, more fickle and 
 light than thistle-down, a maiden careless of her lover and as 
 cruel as the sea. The same waves suggested to Shakspere 
 these lines, from Midsummer Night's Dream : — 
 
 While for his love I pine who stole my sweetness, 
 And made me less than' virgin among maids. " 
 
 * " Adieu, dread queen, thou to the ocean turn 
 Thy harnessed steeds ; but I abide and suffer • 
 Adieu, resplendent moon, and all you stars. 
 That follow on the wheels of night, adieu ! " 
 
 t " Into the black wave 
 Fell headlong as a fiery star from heaven 
 Falls headlong to the deep, and sailors cry 
 One to another. Lighten sail ; behold, 
 The breeze behind us freshens ! " 
 
THE WYLLISTS. 337 
 
 " Thou rememberest 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath 
 That the rude sea grew civil at her song ; 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres, 
 To hear the sea-maid's music ; " 
 
 and to Weber the ethereal " mermaid's song " in Oberon. No 
 one acquainted with Shakspere and Weber can deny that both 
 have expressed with marvellous subtlety the magic of the sea 
 in its enchanting calm, whereas the Greek poet works only by 
 indirect suggestion, and presents us with a human portrait 
 more than a phantom of the glamour of the deep. What we 
 have lost in definite projection we have gained in truth, variety, 
 and freedom. The language of our art appeals immediately 
 to the emotions, disclosing the spiritual reahty of things, and 
 caring less for their form than for the feelings they excite in 
 us, Greek art remains upon the surface, and translates into 
 marble the humanized aspects of the external world. The one 
 is for ever seeking to set free, the other to imprison thought. 
 The Greek tells with exquisite precision what he has observed, 
 investing it perhaps with his own emotion. He says, for 
 instance : — 
 
 aXBc yevoi'fiav 
 rhv Ki(r(rbv diaShs Kot rhv TTTcpty, ^ tv TriKatrS??.* 
 
 The modern poet, to use Shelley's words, 
 
 ' ' Will watch from dawn to gloom 
 The lake-reflected sun illume 
 The yellow bees in the ivy bloom ; 
 Nor heed nor see what shapes they be, 
 
 * " Would I were 
 The murmuring bee, that through the ivy screen 
 And through the fern that hides thee, I njight come 
 Into thy cavern ! " 
 
338 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 But from these create he can 
 Forms more real than living man, 
 Nurslings of immortality,'' 
 
 endeavouring to look through and beyond the objects of the 
 outer world, to use them as the starting-points for his creative 
 fancy, and to embroider their materials with the dazzling 
 fioriture of his invention. Metamorphosis existed for the 
 Greek poet as a simple fact. If the blood of Adonis turned to 
 anemones, yet the actual drops of blood and the flowers re- 
 mained distinct in the poet's mind ; and even though he may 
 have been sceptical about the miracle, he restrained his fancy 
 to the reproduction of the one old fable. The modem poet 
 believes in no metamorphosis but that which is produced by 
 the alchemy of his own brain. He loves to confound the 
 most dissimilar existences, and to form startling combinations 
 of thoughts which have never before been brought into con- 
 nection with each other. Uncontrolled by tradition or canons 
 of propriety, he roams through the world, touching its various 
 objects with the wand of his imagination. To the west wind 
 he cries : — 
 
 "Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion. 
 Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed. 
 Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean, 
 Angels of rain and lightning ; there are spread 
 On the blue surface of thine airy surge. 
 Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 
 Of some fierce Msenad, ev'n from the dim verge 
 Of the horizon to the zenith's height. 
 The locks of the approaching storm. . . ." 
 
 Imagine how astonished even ^schylus would have been 
 at these violent transitions and audacious transformations ! 
 The Greeks had few conceits : * they did not call the waves 
 
 * Perhaps this is over-stated. In the later Greek literature of the 
 Sophists we find many very exquisite concetti. Philostratus, for example, 
 from whom Jonson translated " Drink to me only with thine eyes " calls 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 339 
 
 " nodding hearse-plumes " like Calderon, or the birds " winged 
 lyres " like Marini, or daisies " pearled Arcturi of the earth " 
 like Shelley, or laburnums " dropping wells of fire " like 
 Tennyson. If they ventured on such licenses in their more 
 impassioned lyrics, they maintained the metaphor with strict 
 propriety. One good instance of the difference in this respect 
 between the two ages is afforded by Ben Jonson, who translates 
 Sappho's 
 
 ^po^ lfi€p6<pO)fos &yy€\os aijSc^y, 
 
 by " the dear glad angel of the spring, the nightingale." Be- 
 tween ayyeXoe and ange/ there is the distance of nearly twenty 
 centuries ; for though Ben Jonson may have meant merely to 
 anglicise the Greek word, he could not but have been glad of 
 the more modern meaning. 
 
 So much of this essay has already been devoted to the 
 consideration of Theocritean poetry in general, that I cannot 
 here afford to enter into the details of his several Idylls. A 
 few however may be noticed of peculiar beauty and signi- 
 ficance. None are more true to local scenery than those 
 which relate to the story of Galatea. In this brief tale, the 
 life of the mountains and the rivers and the sea is symbol- 
 ized, — the uncouth and gigantic hills, rude in their rusticity 
 — the clear and lovable stream — the merry sea, inconstant 
 and treacherous, with shifting waves. The mountain stands 
 for ever unremoved ; love as he will, he can but gaze upon the 
 dancing sea, and woo it with gifts of hanging trees, and cool 
 shadowy caverns, and still sleeping-places in sheltered bays. 
 But the stream leaps down from crag to crag, and gathers 
 
 the feet of the beloved one ipTipemufva (^iKiii).a,Ta, or "kisses pressed upon 
 the ground." Even Empedocles (see p. 51) and Pindar (see p. 193) are 
 not free from the vice of artificial metaphor. Compare, too, the laboured 
 metaphors, and compound epithets quoted from Chcerfmon in my Second 
 Series of Studies of Greek Poets, p. 328, and the specimens quoted below 
 from Meleager. 
 
340 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Strength and falls into the arms of the expectant nymph — a 
 fresh lover, fair and free, and full of smiles. Supposing this 
 marriage of the sea and river to have been the earliest idea of 
 the mythus, in course of time the persons of Acis and Galatea, 
 and the rejected lover Polyphemus, became more and more 
 humanized, until the old symbolism was lost in a pastoral 
 romance. Polyphemus loves, but never wins : he may offer 
 his tall bay-trees and slender cypresses, ,and black ivy, and 
 sweet-fruited vines, and cold water flowing straight — a drink 
 divine — from the white snows of wooded ^Etna : he may sit 
 whole days above the sea, and gaze upon its smiling waves, 
 and tell the nymph of all his flocks and herds, or lure her with 
 promises of flowers and fawns and bear's whelps to leave the 
 sea to beat upon its shore, and come and live with him and 
 feed his sheep. It is of no use. Galatea heeds him not, and 
 Polyphemus has to shepherd his love as best as he can. Poetry 
 in this idyll is blended with the simplest country humour. The 
 pathos of Polyphemus is really touching, and his allusions to 
 the sweetness of a shepherd's life among the hills' abound in 
 unconscious poetry ; side by side with which are placed the 
 most ludicrous expressions of uncouth disappointment, together 
 with shrewd observations on the value of property and other 
 prosaic details. If I mistake not, this is true of the rustic 
 character, in which, though stirred by sorrow into sympathy 
 with nature, habitual caution and shrewdness survive. The 
 meditations of the shepherd in the third idyll exhibit the same 
 mixture of sentiments. 
 
 As a specimen of the Idylls which illustrate town life I 
 select the second, the humour of its rival, the fifteenth, 
 being of that perfect sort which must be read and laughed 
 over, but which cannot well be analyzed. The subject of the 
 Pharmaceutria is an incantation performed in the stillness of 
 the night by a proud Syracusan lady who has been deserted by 
 her lover. In delineating the fierceness of her passion and 
 
THE WYLLISTS. 341 
 
 the indomitable resolution of her will Theocritus has produced 
 a truly tragic picture. Simaetha, maddened by vehement des- 
 pair, resorts to magic arts. Love, she says, has sucked her 
 life-blood like a leech, and parched her with the fever of desire. 
 She cannot live without the lover for whose possession she has 
 sacrificed her happiness and honour. If she cannot charm him 
 back again, she will kill him. There are poisons ready to work 
 her will in the last resort. Meanwhile we see her standing at 
 the magic wheel, turning it round before the fire, and charging 
 ^t ;to draw false Delphis to her home. A hearth with coals 
 upon it is at hand, on which her maid keeps sprinkling the 
 meal that typifies the bones of Delphis, the wax by which his 
 heart is to be consumed, and the laurel bough that stands for 
 his body. At the least sign of laziness Simaetha scolds her 
 with hard and haughty words. She stands like a Medea, 
 seeking no sympathy, sparing no reproaches, tiger-like in her 
 ferocity of thwarted passion. When the magic rites have been 
 performed, and Thestylis has gone to smear an' ointment on 
 the doors of Delphis, Simaetha leaves the wheel and addresses 
 her soliloquy to the Moon, who has just risen, and who is jour- 
 neying in calm and silver glory through the night. There is 
 something sublime in the contrast between the moonlight on 
 the sea of Syracuse and the fierce agony of the deserted 
 lioness. To the Moon she confides the story of her love : 
 " Take notice of my love, whence it arose, dread Queen." It 
 is a vivid and tragic tale of southern passion : sudden and 
 consuming, recklessly gratified, and followed by desertion on 
 the one side and by vengeance on the other.* Simaetha has 
 no doubt many living parallels among Sicilian women. The 
 classical reader will find in her narration a description of the 
 
 * How wonderfully beautiful is her description of Delphis and his 
 comrade Eudamnippus : "their cheeks and chin were yel ower than 
 helichrysus ; their breasts more radiant far than thou, O Moon, as having 
 lately left the fair toil of the wrestling-ground. " 
 
342 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 working of love hardly to be surpassed by Sappho's Ode, or 
 Plato's Phmdrus. The wildness of the scene, the magic rites, 
 the august presence of the Moon, and the murderous determin- 
 ation of Simsetha heighten the dramatic effect, and render the 
 tale excessively interesting. 
 
 As a picture of classical sorcery this Idyll is very curious. 
 Nothing can be more erroneous than to imagine that witchcraft 
 is a northern invention of the middle ages, or that the Brocken 
 is its head-quarters. With the exception of a few inconsider- 
 able circumstances, all the terrible or loathsome rites of magic 
 were known to the ancients, and merely copied by the moderns. 
 Circe in Homer, Simaetha in Theocritus, Canidia in Horace, 
 the Libyan sorceress of Virgil, the Saga of Tibullus, Medea in 
 Ovid, Erichtho in Lucan, and Megaera in Claudian (to mention 
 no more), make up a list of formidable witches to whom none 
 of the hideous details of the black art were unknown. They 
 sought for poisonous herbs at night, lived in ruinous places, 
 ransacked charnel-houses for dead bodies, killed little children 
 to obtain their fat for unguents, compelled the spirits of the 
 dead to rise, and after entering a fresh corpse to reveal the 
 mysteries of fate, devoured snakes, drank blood, raised storms 
 at sea, diverted the moon from her course, muttered spells of 
 fearful import, and loved above all things to "raise jars, 
 jealousies, strifes, like a thick scurf o'er life." Even in the 
 minutest details of sorcery they anticipated the witches of the 
 middle ages. Hypsipyle in Ovid mentions a waxen portrait 
 stuck full of needles, and so fashioned as to waste the life of 
 its original. The witch in the Golden Ass of Apuleius anoints 
 herself, and flies about like a bird at night. Nor were were- 
 wolves, those most ghastly creations of diseased imagination, 
 unfamiliar to the Greeks and Romans, as may be proved from 
 Herodotus, Virgil, Ovid; Petronius, and Apuleius. Those who 
 care to pursue this subject will find a vast amount of learning 
 collected on the point by Ben Jonson in his annotations to 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 343 
 
 The Masque of Queens. One fact however must be always 
 borne in mind : the ancients regarded witchcraft either as a 
 hideous or a solemn exercise of supernatural power, not recog- 
 nizing any Satanic agency or compact with Hell. Hecate 
 triviis ululata per urbes, the " Queen of the Night and of the 
 Tombs," assisted sorcerers : but this meant merely that they 
 trafficked in the dark with the foul mysteries of death and 
 corruption. The classical witches were either grave and 
 awful women, like the Libyan priestess in the .Mneid, or else 
 loathsome pariahs, terrible for their malignity, like Lucan's 
 Erichtho. Mediaevalism added a deeper horror to this super- 
 stitious and ghoulish conception by the thoughts of spiritual 
 responsibility and of league with God's enemies. Damnation 
 was the price of magic power ; witchcraft being not merely 
 abominable in the eyes of men but also unpardonable at the 
 bar of divine justice. 
 
 Several poems of Theocritus are written on the theme of 
 Doric chivalry, and illustrate the heroic age of Greece. They 
 may be compared to the Idylls of the King, for their excellence 
 consists in the consummate art with which episodes from the 
 legendary cycles of a bygone age are wrought into polished 
 pictures by a cultivated poet. The thirteenth Idyll is espe- 
 cially remarkable for the exquisite finish of its st3'le and also 
 for the light it throws on the mutual relations of knight and 
 squire in early Greek warfare. Theocritus chooses for the 
 subject of this poem an episode in the life of Heracles, the 
 Dorian hero, when he and other foremost men of Hellas, dtioc 
 aii)To<; ripuiwf, followed Jason in the Argo to the Colchian 
 shores, and he took young Hylas with him ; " for even," says 
 Theocritus, "the brazen-hearted son of Amphitryon, who with- 
 stood the fierceness of the lion, loved a youth, the charming 
 Hylas, and taught him like a father everything by which he 
 might become a good and famous man ; nor would he leave 
 the youth at dawn, or noon, or evening, but sought continually 
 
344 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to fashion him after his own heart, and to make him a right 
 yokefellow with him in mighty deeds." How he lost Hylas on 
 the Cianian shore, and in the wildness of his sorrow let Argo 
 sail without him, and endured the reproach of desertion is 
 well known. Theocritus has wrought the story with more 
 thai! his accustomed elegance. But I wish to confine at- 
 tention to the ideal of knighthood and knightly education 
 presented in the passage quoted. Heracles was not merely 
 the lover but the guardian also and tutor of Hylas. He 
 regarded him not only as an object of tenderness, but 
 also as a future friend and helper in the business of life. His 
 constant aim was to form of him a brave and rrianly warrior, 
 a Herculean hero. And in this respect Heracles was the 
 Eponym and patron of an order which existed throughout 
 Doric Hellas. This order, protected by religious tradition and 
 public favour, regulated by strict rules, and kept within the 
 limits of honour, prodiiced the Cretan lovers, the Lace- 
 dsemonian " hearers " and "inspirers," the Theban immortals 
 who lay with faces turned so stanchly to their foes that vice 
 seemed incompatible with so much valour. Achilles was 
 another Eponym of this order. In the twenty-ninth Idyll, the 
 phrase, ^ kyCKkiiioi (j>i\oi is used to describe the most perfect 
 pair of manly friends. The twelfth Idyll is written in a similar 
 if a weaker and more wanton vein. The same longing retro- 
 spect is cast upon the old days " when men indeed were golden, 
 when the love of comrades was mutual," and constancy is 
 rewarded with the same promise of glorious immortality as 
 that which Plato holds out in the Phadrus. Bion, we may 
 remark in passing, celebrates with equal praise the friendships 
 of Theseus, Orestes, and Achilles. Without taking some notice 
 of this peculiar institution, in its origin military and austere, it 
 is impossible to understand the chivalrous age of Greece among 
 the Dorian tribes. In the midst of brute force and cunning 
 and an almost absolute disregard of what we are accustomed 
 
THE IDYLUSTS. 34S 
 
 to understand by chivalry— gentleness, chastity, truth, regard 
 for women and weak persons — this one anomalous sentiment 
 emerges. 
 
 Passing to another point in which Greek differed from 
 mediaeval chivalry, we notice the semi-divine nature of the 
 heroes : QtToe aoiroc is the name by which they are designated, 
 and supernatural favour is always showered upon them. This 
 indicates a primitive society, a national consciousness ignorant 
 of any remote past. The heroes whom Theocritus celebrates 
 are purely Dorian — Heracles, a Jack the Giant-Killer in his 
 cradle, brawny, fearless, of huge appetite, a mighty trainer, with 
 a scowl to frighten athletes from the field ; Polydeuces, a 
 notable bruiser ; Castor, a skilled horseman and a man of 
 blood. In one point the twin sons of Leda resembled me- 
 diseval knights. They combined the arts of song with martial 
 prowess.. Theocritus styles them Jn-ir^Ec KtOapiaTul, dedXriTfjpet; 
 aoitoi — harp-playing riders of horses, athlete poets. Their 
 achievements narrated in the twenty-second Idyll may be com- 
 pared with those of Tristram and Lancelot. The gigantic 
 warrior whom they find by the well in the land of the Bebry- 
 cians, gorgeously armed, insolent, and as knotty as a brazen 
 statue, who refuses access to the water and challenges them 
 to combat, exactly resembles one of the lawless giants of the 
 Morte Arthur. The courtesy of the Greek hero contrasts well 
 with the barbarian's violence; and when they come to blows, 
 it is good to observe how address, agility, training, nerve 
 , enable Polydeuces to overcome with ease the vast fury and 
 brute strength of the Bebrycian bully. As the fight proceeds, 
 the son of Leda improves in flesh and colour, while Amycus 
 gets out of breath, and sweats his thews away. Polydeuces 
 pounds the giant's neck and face, reducing him to a hideous 
 mass of bruises, and receiving the blows of Amycus upon his 
 chest and loins. At the end of the fight he spares his prostrate 
 foe, on the condition of his respecting the rites of hospitality 
 
346 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and dealing courteously with strangers. Throughout it will be 
 noticed how carefully Theocritus maintains the conception of 
 the Hellenic as distinguished, from the barbarian combatant. 
 Christian and Pagan are not more distinct in a legend of the 
 San Graal. But Greek chivalry has no magic, no monstrous 
 exaggeration. All is simple, natural, and human, Bellero- 
 phon, it is true, was sent after the Chimsera, and Perseus freed, 
 Andromeda like St. George from a dragon's mouth. But these 
 fancies of Greek infancy formed no integral part of artistic 
 mythology ; instead of being multiplied, they were gradually 
 winnowed out, and the poets laid but little stress upon them. 
 
 The achievement of Castor is not so favourable to the 
 character of Hellenic chivalry. Having in concert with Poly- 
 deuces born off by guile the daughters of Leucippus from 
 their affianced husbands. Castor kills one of the injured lovers 
 who pursues him and demands restitution. He slays him, 
 though he is his own first cousin, ruthlessly; and while the 
 other son of Aphareus is rushing forward to avenge his brother's 
 death, Zeus hurls lightning and destroys him. Theocritus 
 remarks that it is no light matter to engage in battle with the 
 Tyndarids; but he makes no reflection on what we should call 
 " the honour" of the whole transaction. 
 
 Of all the purely pastoral Idylls by which Theocritus is most 
 widely famous perhaps the finest is the seventh, or Thalysia. 
 It glows with the fresh and radiant splendour of southern 
 beauty. In this poem the Idyllist describes the journey of 
 three young men in summer from the city to the farm of their 
 friend Phrasidamus, who has asked them to take part in the 
 feast with which he proposes to honour Demeter at harvest 
 time. On their way they meet with a goat-herd, Lycidas, who 
 invites them, " with a smiling eye," to recline beneath the trees 
 and while away the hours of noon-tide heat with song. " The 
 very lizard," he says, " is sleeping by the wall ; but on the hard 
 stones of the footpath your heavy boots keep up a ceaseless 
 
THE WYLLISTS. 347 
 
 ringing." Thus chided by the goat-herd they resolve upon a 
 singing match between Simichidas, the teller of the tale, and 
 Lycidas, who oifers his crook as the prize of victory. Lycidas 
 begins the contest with that exquisite song to Ageanax, which 
 has proved the despair of all succeeding Idyllists, and which 
 furnished Virgil with one of the most sonorous lines in his 
 Georgics. No translation can do justice to the smooth and 
 liquid charm of its melodious verse, in which the tenderest 
 feeling mingles gracefully with delicate humour and with 
 homely descriptions of a shepherd's life. Tlie following lines, 
 forming a panegyric on Comatas, some famed singer of the 
 , rustic muse, may be quoted for their pure Greek feeling. Was 
 ever an unlucky mortal envied more melodiously, and yet more 
 quaintly, for his singular fortune ? 
 
 aXsil 5', SiS Trot^ edeKTO- rhv ah:6'Kov evpea Kdpj/a^ 
 ^(ahv iovra KaKTJffiv aTaadahlrjfftv &yaKTos ' 
 &s T6 jftv al ffi^al \etixwv66e (pep^ov ioitrai 
 KiSpov is aSetai/ fiaXaKots &v6sa(n p.e\Lffffat • 
 ovpeKd 01 yXvKi/ MoTtra Kari arSfiaros x^^ viKrap, 
 Si /la/capttTTe Kojuara, rh d^y raSe repiryci. Tretr6v67]s, 
 Ka\ rh KaTeKXdtrdTi^ is hapvaKa, Koi tv, fieKiffffav 
 Kt]pia <p^p^6fiivos, eros &ptov ^lereAectras.* 
 
 The song with which Simichidas contends against his rival is 
 not of equal beauty ; but the goat-herd hands him the crook " as 
 a gift of friendship from the Muses." Then he leaves the three 
 friends, who resume their journey till they reach the house of 
 
 * "How of old 
 The goat-herd by his cruel lord was bound, 
 And left to die in a great chest ; and how 
 The busy bees, up coming from the meadows, 
 To the sweet cedar, fed him with soft flowers, 
 Because the Muse had filled his mouth with nectar. ■ 
 Yes, all these sweets were thine, blessed Comatas ; 
 And thou wast put into the chest, and fed 
 By the blithe bees, and passed a pleasant time." 
 
 Leigh Hunt's yar of Honey from Mount Hybla. 
 
348 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Phrasidamus. There elms and poplar-trees and vines embower 
 them with the pleasant verdure of rustling leaves and the per- 
 fumes of summer flowers and autumn fruits. The jar of wine 
 as sweet as that which made the Cyclops dance among his 
 sheepfold, spreads its fragrance through the air ; while the 
 statue of Demeter, with her handfuls of corn and poppy- heads, 
 stands smiling by. 
 
 This seventh Idyll, of which no adequate idea can be con- 
 veyed by mere description, may serve as the type of those 
 purely rustic poems which since the days of Theocritus have 
 from age to age been imitated by versifiers emulous of his 
 gracefulness. If space allowed, it would not be uninterest- 
 ing to analyze the Idyll of the two old fishermen, who gossip 
 together so wisely and contentedly in their hut by the sea- 
 shore, mending their nets the while, and discoursing gravely of 
 their dreams. In this Idyll, which is however possibly the 
 work of one of Theocritus's imitators, and in the second, 
 which consists of a singing match between two harvest-men, 
 the native homeliness of the Idyllic muse appears to best 
 advantage. 
 
 With this brief and insufficient notice, I must leave Theo- 
 critus in order to say a few words about his successors. Bion's 
 poetry, when compared with that of Theocritus, declines con- 
 siderably from the Bucolic type. His Idylls are for the most 
 part fragments of delicately finished love-songs, remarkable for 
 elegance and sweetness more than for mascuHne vigour or terse 
 expression. In Bion the artificial style of pastoral begins. 
 Theocritus had made cows and pipes and shepherds fashion- 
 able. His imitators followed him, without the humour and 
 natural taste which rendered his pictures so attractive. We 
 already trace the frigid affectation of Bucolic interest in the 
 elegy on Bion : " He sang no song of wqrs or tears, but ,piped 
 of Pan and cowherds, and fed flocks, singing as he went ; pipes 
 he fashioned, and milked the sweet-breathed heifer, and taught 
 
THE IDYLLrSTS. 349 
 
 kisses, and cherished in his bosom love, and stole the heart of 
 Aphrodite." As it happens, the most original and powerful of 
 Bion's remaining poems is a '' Song of Tears," of passionate 
 lamentation, of pathetic grief, composed, not as a pastoral ditty, 
 ■but on the occasion of one of those splendid festivals in which 
 the Syrian rites of slain Adonis were celebrated by Greek 
 women. The ETrirci^ioe 'A^aii-i&c is written with a fiery passion 
 and a warmth of colouring peculiar to Bion. The verse bounds 
 with tiger leaps, its full-breathed dactyls panting with the energy 
 of rapid flight. The tender and reflective beauty of Theo- 
 critus, the concentrated passion of his Simeetha, and the flow- 
 ing numbers of his song to Adonis are quite lost and swallowed 
 up in the Asiatic fury of Bion's lament. The poem begins 
 with the cry Aiafoi tov " Klwvir, which is variously repeated in 
 Idyllic fashion as a refrain throughout the lamentation.* After 
 this prelude, having as it were struck the key-note to the music, 
 the singer cries : 
 
 ^TjKeTl 'nop(pvp4ols iy\ fpdpeai Kuirpt KaQevSe * 
 eypeo SelKaia Kvav6iTroKe Kal TrXaTdyr^fTOV 
 ffrdQea^ Kol Kiye irafTLv, aTrtti\eTO KaXhs '^ASoims.f 
 
 Notice how the long words follow one another with quick 
 pulses and flashes of sound. The same peculiar rhythm re- 
 curs when, after describing the beautiful dead body of Adonis, 
 the poet returns to Aphrodite : 
 
 a S* *A</)po5(Ta 
 Kvffaixiva n\0KaiJ.75as ayo^ bpvfi^s a\d\riTai 
 irivdaXfa, vijirXeKTOs, affivSaXos • at Se ^ttroi viv 
 fpXOfiivav KelpovTt t^l Uphv al/xa SpeiropTai. 
 
 * This ought probably to be printed, after Ahrens, aUC S> rhy 
 "ASayiv. The exclamation occurs in a fragment of Sappho [Bergk, No. 63], 
 whose lyric on the legend of Adonis may have suggested Bion's Idyll. 
 
 t " Sleep, Cypris, no more, on thy purple- strewed bed ; 
 
 Arise, wretch stoled in black,— beat thy breast unrelenting, 
 And shriek to the worlds, ' Fair Adonis is dead.' " 
 
 Translation by Mrs. Barrett Browning. 
 
350 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 oji 8J KoiKuoura Si' ftyxia fiaKpa (popeirai, 
 'Xfftripiov ffoiwira viffiv, Kol vaiSa Ka\(dffa.* 
 
 There are few passages of poetical imagery more striking than 
 this picture of the queen of beauty tearing through the forest, 
 heedless of her tender limbs and useless charms, and calling on 
 her Syrian lover. What follows is even more passionate ; 
 after some lines of mere description, the ecstasy again descends 
 upon the poet, and he bursts into the wildest of most beautiful 
 laments : — 
 
 lis tSev, is iv6ri(T€v 'ASdiviSos ftff'xcT'Oi' UKkos, 
 ws ISe ipotviov atji-a liapaipofiivai ircpl /nrjp^, 
 irdxeas afiTTerdtraffa Kivvpero • ixiivov ''aSwvi, 
 StlffTroTjue ^eTpov'^AiaivL, K.T.A.f 
 
 The last few lines of her soliloquy are exquisitely touching, 
 especially those in which Aphrodite deplores her immortality, 
 and acknowledges the supremacy of the queen of the grave 
 over Love and Beauty. What follows is pitched at a lower 
 key. There is too much of merely Anacreontic prettiness 
 about the description of the bridal bed and the lamenting 
 Loves. Aphrodite's passion reminds us of a Neapolitan Stabat 
 Mater, in which the frenzy of love and love-like piety are strangely 
 blended. But the concluding picture suggests nothing nobler 
 than a painting of Albano, in which amoretti are plentiful, and 
 
 * " And the poor Aphrodite, with tresses unbound, 
 
 All dishevelled, unsandalled, shrieks mournful and shrill 
 
 Through the dusk of the groves. The thorns, tearing her feet 
 Gather up the red flower of her blood, which is holy, 
 
 Each footstep she takes ; and the valleys repeat 
 The sharp cry which she utters, and draw it out slowly. 
 She calls on her spouse, her Assyrian. " 
 
 Translation by Mrs. Barrett Browning. 
 
 ■f "When, ah ! ah !— she saw how the blood ran away 
 
 And empurpled the thigh ; and, with wild hands flung out. 
 Said with sobs, ' Stay, Adonis ! unhappy one, stay ! ' " — Ibid. 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 351 
 
 there is much elegance of composition. This remark apphes 
 to the rest of Bion's poetry. If Theocritus deserves to be 
 illustrated by the finest of Greek bas-reliefs, Bion cannot claim 
 more than an exquisitely chiselled gem. Certainly the second 
 and third fragments are very charming ; and the lines to Hesper 
 (fragment 16) have so much beauty that I attempt a version of 
 them : — 
 
 " Hesper, thou golden light of happy love, 
 Hesper, thou holy pride of purple eve. 
 Moon among stars, but star beside the moon. 
 Hail, friend ! and since the young moon sets to-night 
 Too soon below the mountains, lend thy lamp 
 And guide me to the shepherd whom I love. 
 No theft I purpose ; no wayfaring man 
 Belated would I watch and make my prey ; 
 Love is my goal, and Love how fair it is, 
 When friend meets friend sole in the silent night, 
 Thou knowest, Hesper ! " 
 
 In Moscnus we find less originality and power than belong 
 to Bion. His Europa is an imitation of the style in which 
 Theocritus wrote Hylas ; but the copy is frigid and affected by 
 the side of its model. Five-and-twenty lines for instance are 
 devoted to an elaborate description of a basket, which leaves 
 no very definite impression on the mind ; * whereas every leaf 
 and tendril on the cup which Theocritus introduces into the 
 first Idyll stands out vividly before us. Nothing, moreover, 
 could be more unnatural and tedious than the long speech 
 which Europa makes when she is being carried out to sea upon 
 the bull's back. Yet we must allow that there is spirit and 
 beauty in the triumph of sea monsters who attend Poseidon 
 and do honour to the chosen bride of Zeus ; Nereids riding on 
 dolphins, and Tritons, '' the deep-voiced minstrels of the sea, 
 
 * This basket for holding flowers, the work of Hephaestus, had the tale 
 of lo carved upon it. So Catullus, in the counterpane of Thetis, has 
 wrought in needlework the story of Ariadne, and Statins in the mantle 
 given by Adrastus to Admetus has woven that of Hero and Leander. 
 Both of these Roman poets beat Moschus in picturesque effect. 
 
352 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 sounding a marriage song on their long-winding conchs." * 
 The whole of this piece is worthy of Ovid's Metamorphoses. 
 Moschus is remarkable for occasional felicities of language. In 
 this line for example, 
 
 eSre koX hr'p^Kiwv TroiiMatveTat %Qvos oyeipaiv, 
 
 an old thought receives new and subtle beauty by its expres- 
 sion. If Megara (Idyll iv.) be really the work of Moschus, 
 which is doubtful, it reflects more honour on him. The dialogue 
 between the wife and mother of the maddened Heracles, after 
 he has murdered his children and gone forth to execute fresh 
 labours, is worthy of their tragic situation. "Epwc ^pajrtVijc, 
 (Runaway Love), again is an exquisite little poem in the 
 Anacreontic style of Bion, fully equal to any of its models. 
 The fame of Moschus will, however, depend upon the Elegy 
 on Bion. I have already hinted that its authorship is 
 questioned. In my opinion it far surpasses any of his 
 compositions in respect of definite thought and original 
 imagination. Though the Bucolic common-places are used 
 with obvious artificiality, and much is borrowed from Theo- 
 critus' Lament for Daphnis, yet so true and deHcate a spirit 
 is imbfeathed into the old forms as to render them quite fresh. 
 The passage which begins al al rai ixaXaxai every dabbler 
 in Greek literature knows by heart. And what can be more 
 ingeniously pathetic than the nuances of feeling expressed in 
 these lines : — 
 
 ipdpfxaKoy ^\0e, 3luy, iroA trhy (TrS^a • (jytipfiaKov tIBes, 
 TTus T€v Tols xetAetTffi TTOTdSpafie KovK iyKvKavdti ; 
 r\s Se $pot6s ToaaovTov avdfi^pos ■fl Kepaffat toi 
 ^ Sovi/at KdKeoj/Ti rh tpdpfiaKoy ; f 
 
 * Italian art of the Renaissance in l,he designs of Mantegna and 
 Raphael and Giulio Romano, did ful^ustice to these marine triumphs. 
 + "There came, O Bion, poison to thy mouth, 
 
 Thou didst feel poison 1 how could it approach 
 Those lips of thine, and not be turned to sweet ? " 
 
 Leigh Hunt. 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 353 
 
 And : — 
 
 •ris TOTE (T? aifiyy^ /ieXfJerai, & Tpnr66nre ; 
 tIs S' ^irl (TOij icaK&iiOis 64]<rn (rrS/ia ; tIs Bpaabs otras ; 
 eiVeVi ycip irvtlei tA crck x«'^«" "oi tIi (rbc S,iT0na • 
 oxi S* ^v SovaKefftri reus iiri^iffKer^ aoiSas.* 
 
 Or again :- 
 
 
 There is also something very touching in the third line of 
 this strophe : — 
 
 Ksims S Tats ayihatiriv ipd(Tiuos ovk4ti /ieXiret, 
 oukct' ipTifiairifflv virh Spvffy i^fieyos ^Set, 
 aAAcb Trapk nKovTTJL ix4\os AijOatov ot€fSei,J 
 
 and in the allusion made to the Sicihan girlhood of grim Per- 
 sephone (126-129). This vein of tender and melodious senti- 
 ment, which verges on the concetti of modern art, seems different 
 from the style of Europa. 
 
 To English readers, the three elegies, on Daphnis, on 
 Adonis, and on Bion, severally attributed to Theocritus, Bion, 
 and Moschus, will always be associated with the names of 
 Milton and Shelley. There is no comparison whatever between 
 Lycidas and Daphnis. In spite of the misplaced apparition of 
 St. Peter, and of the frigidity which belongs to pastoral alle- 
 gory, Lycidas is a richer and more splendid monument of 
 elegiac verse. The simplicity of the Theocritean dirge contrasts 
 
 * " Who now shall play thy pipe, oh ! most desired one ; 
 Who lay his lips against thy reeds ? who dare it ? 
 For still they breathe f thee, and of thy mouth, 
 And Echo comes to seek her voices there." — Leigh HaNT. 
 
 t "Echo too mourned among the rocks ihat she 
 
 Must hush, and imitate thy lips no longer." — Ibid. 
 
 X " No longer pipes he to the charmed herds, 
 No longer sits under the lonely oaks, 
 And sings ; but to the ears of Pluto now 
 Tunes his Lethean verse." — Ibid. 
 
 A A 
 
354 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Strangely with the varied wealth of Milton's imagery, the few 
 ornaments of Greek art with the intricate embroideries of 
 modern fancy. To quote passages from these well-known 
 poems would be superfluous ; but let a student of literature 
 compare the passages, tt^ vok ap' l\a& and S> Yiav U.av with 
 Milton's paraphrase " Where were ye, nymphs, — " or the con- 
 cise paragraphs about the flowers and valleys that mourned for 
 Daphnis with the luxuriance of Milton's invocation " Return, 
 Alpheus.'' 
 
 When Shelley wrote Adonais, his mind was full of the 
 elegies on Bion and Adonis. Of direct translation in his 
 Lament there is very little ; but he has absorbed both of the 
 Greek poems, and transmuted them into the substance of his 
 own mind. Urania fakes the place of Aphrodite — the heavenly 
 queen, " most musical of mourners," bewails the loss of her 
 poetical consort Instead of loves, the couch of Adonais is 
 surrounded by the thoughts and fancies of which he was the 
 parent ; and, instead of gods and goddesses, the power of 
 nature is invoked to weep for him and take him to herself. 
 Whatever Bion _ and Moschus recorded as a fact becomes, 
 consistently with the spiritualizing, tendency of modem genius, 
 symbolical in Shelley's poem. His art has alchemized the 
 whole structure, ideahzing what was material, and disembody- 
 ing tlie sentiments which were incarnated in simple images. 
 Adonais is a sublime rhapsody ; its multitudinous ideas are 
 whirled like drops of golden rain, on which' the sun of the 
 poet's fancy gleams with ever-changing rainbow hues. In 
 drifts and eddies they rush past, delighting us with their 
 rapidity and brilliancy; but the impression left upon our 
 mind is vague and incomplete, when compared with the few 
 and distinct ideas presented by the Doric Elegies. At the end 
 of Alastor there occurs a touching reminiscence of Moschus, 
 but the outline is less faint than in Adonais, the transmutation 
 even more complete. 
 
THE IDYLLISTS. 355 
 
 Tennyson, among the poets of the nineteenth century, 
 owes much to the Greek idyllists. His geniiis appears to be 
 in many respects akin to theirs, and the age in which he 
 lives is not unUke the Ptolemaic period. Unfitted, perhaps, 
 by temperament for the most impassioned lyrics, he delights 
 in minutely finished pictures, in felicities of expression and in 
 subtle harmonies of verse. Like Theocritus, he finds in nature 
 and in the legends of past ages subjects congenial to his 
 muse. (Enone and Tithonus are steeped in the golden beauty 
 of Syracusan art. " Come down, O maid," transfers, with 
 perfect taste, the Greek idyllic feeling to Swiss scenery ; it is 
 a fine instance of new wine being poured successfully into 
 old bottles, for nothing can be fresher, and not even the 
 Thalysia is sweeter. It would be easy enough to collect minor 
 instances which prove that the Laureate's mind is impregnated 
 with the thoughts and feehngs of the poems I have been dis- 
 cussing. For instance, both the figure, " softer than sleep," 
 and the comparison of a strong man's muscles to the smooth 
 rush of running water over sunken stones, which we find in 
 Enid, occur in Theocritus. 
 
 At the end of this Chapter I cannot refrain from once more 
 recommending all lovers of pure verse and perfect scenery to 
 study the Greek idyllists upon the shores of the Mediterranean. 
 Nor would it be possible to carry a better guide-book to the 
 statue-galleries of Rome and Naples. For in the verses of 
 Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, the aesthetic principles of the 
 Greeks, in the age to which our relics of their statuary for the 
 most part belong, are feelingly and pithily expressed ; while 
 the cold marble, that seems to require so many commentaries, 
 receives from their idyllic colouring new life. 
 
 A A 2 
 
3S6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE ANTHOLOGY. 
 
 The history of its Compilation, — Collections of Meleager, Philippus, 
 Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes. — The Palatine MS. — The Sections of 
 the Anthology. — Dedicatory Epigrams. — Simonides. — Epitaphs : 
 Real and Literary. — Calliraachus.— ^-Epigrams on Poets. — Antipater 
 
 of Sidon. — Hortatory Epigrams. — Palladas Satiric Epigrams. — 
 
 Lucillius. — Amatory Epigrams. — Meleager, Straton, Philodemus, 
 Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentarius, Agathias, Plato. — Descriptive 
 Epigrams. 
 
 The Anthology may from some points of view be regarded as 
 the most valuable relic of antique literature which we possess. 
 Composed of several thousand short poems, written for the 
 most part in the elegiac metre, at different times and by a mul- 
 titude of authors, it is coextensive with the whole current of 
 Greek history, from the splendid period of the Persian War to 
 the decadence of Christianized Byzantium. Many subjects of 
 interest in Greek life, which would otherwise have had to be 
 laboriously illustrated from the historians or the comic poets, 
 are here fully and melodiously set forth. If we might compare 
 the study of Greek literature to a journey in some splendid 
 mountain region, then we might say with propriety that from 
 the sparkling summits where .^schylus and Sophocles and 
 Pindar sit enthroned, we turn in our less strenuous moods to 
 gather the meadow flowers of Meleager, Palladas, Callimachus. 
 Placing therri between the leaves of the book of our memory, 
 we possess an everlasting treasure of sweet thoughts, which will 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 357 
 
 serve in after-days to remind us of those scenes of Olympian 
 majesty through which we travelled. The slight effusions of 
 these minor poets are even nearer to our hearts than the master- 
 pieces of the noblest Greek literature. They treat with a 
 touching limpidity and sweetness of the joys and fears and 
 hopes and sorrows that are common to all. humanity. They 
 introduce us to the actual hfe of a bygone civilization, stripped 
 of its political or religious accidents, and tell us that the Greeks 
 of Athens or of Sidon thought and felt exactly as we feel. 
 Even the Graffiti of Pompeii have scarcely more power to re- 
 construct the past and summon as in dreams the voices and the 
 forms of long-since buried men. There is yet another way in 
 which the Anthology brings us closer to the Greeks than any 
 other portion of their literature. The Lyrists express an intense 
 and exalted mood of the race in its divine adolescence. The 
 Tragedians exhibit the genius of Athens in its maturity. The 
 Idylhsts utter a rich nightingale note from the woods and fields 
 of Sicily. But the Anthology carries us through all the phases 
 of Hellenic civilization upon its uninterrupted undercurrent 
 of elegiac melody. The clear fresh light of the morning, the 
 splendour of noonday, the mellow tints of sunset, and the sad 
 grey hues of evening are all there. It is a tree which bears 
 the leaves and buds and blossoms and fruitage of the Greek 
 spirit on its boughs at once. Many intervals in the life of the 
 nation which are represented by no other portion of its litera- 
 ture — the ending for example of the first century before Christ 
 — here receive a brilliant illustration. Again there is no more 
 signal proof of the cosmopolitan nature of the later Greek 
 cultirre than is afforded by the Anthology. From Rome, 
 Alexandria, Palestine, Byzantium, no less than from the isles 
 and continent of Greece, are recruited the poets, whose works 
 are enshrined in this precious Golden Treasury of fugitive 
 pieces. 
 
 The history of the Anthology is not without interest. By a 
 
358 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 gradual process of compilation and accretion it grew into its 
 present form from very slight beginnings. The first impulse to 
 collect epigrams seems to have originated in connection with 
 archaeology. From the very earliest the Greeks were in the habit 
 of engraving sentences, for the most part in verse, upon their 
 temples, statues, trophies, tombs, and public monuments of all 
 kinds. Many of these inscriptions were used by Herodotus and 
 Thucydides as authorities for facts and dates. But about 200 
 B.C. one Polemon made a general collection of the authentic 
 epigrams to be found upon the public buildings of the Greek 
 cities. After him Alcetas copied the dedicatory verses at 
 Delphi. Similar collections are ascribed to Mnestor and Apellas 
 Ponticus. Aristodemus is mentioned as the compiler of the 
 epigrams of Thebes. , Philochorus performed the same service 
 for Athens. Neoptolemus of Paros and the philosopher 
 Euhemerus are also credited with similar antiquarian labours. 
 So far, the collectors of epigrams had devoted themselves to 
 historical monuments ; and of their work, in any separate form 
 at least, no trace exists. But Meleager of Gadara (b.c. 60) 
 conceived the notion of arranging in alphabetical order a selec- 
 tion of lyric and erotic poetry, which he dedicated to his friend 
 Diodes. He called this compilation by the name of a-TE<jiai'Oi , 
 or wreath, each of the forty-six poets whom he admitted into 
 ■ his book being represented by a flower. Philip of Thessalonica 
 in the time of Trajan, following his example, incorporated into 
 the garland of Meleager those epigrams which had acquired 
 celebrity in the interval. About the same time or a Httle later, 
 Straton of Sardis made a special anthology of poems on one 
 class of subjects, which is known as the fjov(7a waidiKri,' a.nd 
 into which, besides ninety-eight of his own epigrams, he 
 admitted many of the compositions of Meleager, Philip, and 
 other predecessors. These collections belong to the classical 
 period of Greek literature. But the Anthology, as we possess 
 it, had not yet come into existence. It remained for Agathias, 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 359 
 
 a Byzantine Greek of the age of Justinian, to undertake a com- 
 prehensive compilation from all the previous collections. After 
 adding numerous poems of a date posterior to Straton, especially 
 those of Paulus Silentiarius, Macedonius, Rufinus, and himself, 
 he edited his kvkKoq iTiypaixfiaTwv, divided into seven books. 
 The first book contained dedicatory epigrams, the second de- 
 scriptive poems, the third epitaphs, the fourth reflections on the 
 various events of life, the fifth satires, the sixth erotic verses, the 
 seventh exhortations to enjoyment. Upon the general outline 
 of the Anthology as arranged by Agathias two subsequent col- 
 lections, were founded. Constantinus Cephalas, in the tenth 
 century, at Byzantium, and in the reign of Constantinus Por- 
 phyrogenitus, undertook a cornplete revision and recombination 
 of all pre-existing anthologies. With the patience of a literary 
 bookworm, to whom the splendid libraries of the metropolis 
 were accessible, he set about his work, and gave to the Greek 
 Anthology that form which it now bears. But the vicissitudes 
 of the Anthology did not terminate with the labours of Cephalas. 
 Early in the fourteenth, century a monk, Planudes, set to work 
 upon a new edition. It appears that he contented himself 
 with compiling and "abridging from the collection of Cephalas. 
 His principal object was to expurgate it from impurities and 
 to supersede it by what he considered a more edifying text. 
 Accordingly he emended, castrated, omitted, interpolated, 
 altered, and remodelled at his own sweet will : " non magis 
 disposuit quam mutilavit et ut ita dicam castravit hunc librum, 
 detractis lascivioribus epigrammatis, ut ipse gloriatur," says 
 Lascaris in the preface to his edition of the Planudean Antho- 
 logy.* He'succeeded, however, to the height of his desire; for 
 copies ceased to be made of the Anthology of Cephalas ; and 
 when Europe in the fifteenth century awoke to the study of 
 
 *■ He mutilated, and, so to speak, castrated this book quite as much as 
 he arranged its contents, by withdrawing the more lascivious epigrams 
 according to his own boast. 
 
362 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 poets and philosophers of Greece, as well as works of imagina- 
 tion illustrative of the Iliad and the Attic tragedies, might 
 then be studied in one place of public resort. Byzantium had 
 become a vast museum for the ancient world. The third 
 section is devoted to mural inscriptions from the temple of 
 Apollonis in Cyzicus. The fourth contains the prefaces of 
 Meleager, Philip, and Agathias, to their several collections. 
 The fifth, which includes 309 epigrams, is consecrated to 
 erotic poetry. The sixth, which numbers 358, consists of 
 a collection of inscriptions from temples and public monu- 
 ments recording the illustrious actions of the Greeks or votive 
 offerings of private persons. In the seventh we read 748 
 epitaphs of various sorts. The eighth carries us again into 
 the dismal region of post-pagan literature : it contains nothing 
 but 254 poems from the pen of Saint Gregory the Theologian. 
 The 827 epigrams of the ninth section are called by their col- 
 lector tTTideiKTiKa ; that is to say, they are composed in illustra- 
 tion of a variety of subjects, anecdotical, rhetorical, and of 
 general . interest. Perhaps this part of the whole Anthology 
 has been the favourite of modern imitators and translators. 
 Passing to the tenth section we find 126 semi-philosophical 
 poems, most of which record the vanity of human life and 
 advise mortals to make "the best of their brief existence by 
 enjoyment. The eleventh is devoted to satire. It is here 
 that the reflex influence of Latin on Greek literature is most 
 perceptible. The twelfth section bears the name of Straton, 
 and exhibits in its 258 epigrams the morality of ancient Hellas 
 under the aspect which has least attraction for modem readers. 
 The thirteenth embraces a few epigrams in irregular metres. 
 The fourteenth is made up of riddles and oracles. The 
 fifteenth again has half a century of poems which could not 
 well be catalogued elsewhere. The sixteenth contains that 
 part of the Planudean collection which does not occur in our 
 copy of the Anthology of Cephalas. It may be mentioned in 
 
THE ANfnOLOGY. 363 
 
 conclusion that, with one or two very inconsiderable excep- 
 tions, none- of the poems of the early Greek lyrists and Gnomic 
 writers are received into the so-called Anthology. 
 
 To the student of Greek history and Greek customs, no. 
 section of the Anthology is more interesting than' that which 
 includes the kvLypafxfiura arcSrifxaTLKa, the record of the public' 
 and the private votive-offerings in Hellas. Here, as in a 
 scroll spread out before us, in the silver language of the great 
 Simonides,* may be read the history of the achievements of the 
 Greeks against Xerxes and his hosts. The heroes of Marathon, 
 the heroes of Thermopylae, Megistias the soothsayer, Leonidas 
 the king, Pausanias the general, the seamen of Salamis, the 
 Athenian cavalry, the Spartans of Plataea, all receive their 
 special tribute of august celebration at the hands of the poet 
 who best knew how to suit simple words to splendid actions.. 
 Again the orijXij which commemorated in Athens the patriotic 
 tyrannicide of Aristogeiton, the statue of Pan which Miltiades 
 after Marathon consecrated in honour of his victory, 4:he 
 trophies erected by Pausanias at Delphi to Phoebus, the altar 
 to Zeus Eleutherios dedicated in common by all the Greeks, 
 the tripod sent to Delphi by Gelon and the other tyrants of 
 Sicily after their victory over the Carthaginians, for each and 
 all of these Simonides was called on to compose imperishable 
 verse. Our heart trembles even now when we read such lines 
 as these : t 
 
 * I have spoken of these compositions of Simonides. as though they all 
 belonged to the Dedicatory Epigrams. A large number of them are, how- 
 ever, incorporated among the Epitaphs proper. 
 
 + "To those of Laced.-emon, stranger, tell, 
 
 That, as their laws commanded, here we fell. " 
 
 John Sterling. 
 
 There is no very good translation of this couplet. The difficulty lies in 
 the word piifuuri. Is this equivalent to ^Tirpais, as Cicero who renders it by 
 legibus seems to think ? Or is it the same as orders ? 
 
364 THE GREkK POETS. 
 
 & |«v' &jyi\\€iv i^aKfSaiiiovlois 'in r^Se 
 
 And who does not feel that the grandeur of the occasion 
 ■exalts above all suspicion of prosiness the frigid simplicity of 
 the following ? * 
 
 ebriKfiif ij'UX^* X^iinaTi irtMiifVOi, 
 ' Xiepaas ^ItXaffacrcj, 4\ei0fpov 'EWdSi Kiff/igv 
 
 tSpiaavTO Aihs fiafthv 'EKfvBeplov. 
 
 But it is not merely within the sphere of world-famous history 
 that the Dedicatory Epigrams are interesting. Multitudes of 
 them introduce us to the minutest facts of private life in 
 Greece. We see the statues of gods hung round with flowers 
 and scrolls, the shrines filled with waxen tablets, wayside 
 chapels erected to Priapus or to Pan, the gods of the shore 
 honoured with dripping clothes of mariners, the Paphian home 
 of Aphrodite rich with jewels and with mirrors and with silks 
 suspended by devout adorers of both sexes. A fashionable 
 church in modem Italy — the Annunziata at Florence, for 
 example, or St. .A.nthony at Padua — is not more crowded with 
 pictures of people saved from accidents, with silver hearts and 
 waxen limbs, with ribands and artificial flowers, with rosaries 
 and precious stones, and with innumerable objects that only 
 tell their tale of bygone vows to the votary who hung' them 
 there, than were the temples of our Lady of Love in Cneidos 
 or in Corinth. In the epigrams before us we read how 
 hunters hung their nets to Pan, and fishermen their gear to 
 Poseidon ; gardeners their figs and pomegranates to Priapus ; 
 blacksmiths their hammers and tongs to Hephaestus. Stags 
 are dedicated to Artemis and Phoebus, and corn-sheaves to 
 
 * " What time the Greeks with might and warlike deed, 
 Sustained by courage in their hour of need, 
 Drove forth the Persians, they to Zeus that frees 
 This altar built, the free fair pride of Greece." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 365 
 
 Demeter, who also receives the plough, the sickle, and the 
 oxen of farmers. A poor man offers the produce of his field 
 to Pan ; the firstfruits of the vine are set aside for Bacchus 
 and his crew of satyrs ; Pallas obtains the shuttle of a widow 
 who resolves to quit .her life of care and turn to Aphrodite ; 
 the eunuch Alexis offers his cymbals, drums, flutes, knife, and 
 golden curls to. Cybele. Phoebus is presented with a golden 
 cicada, Zeus with an old ash-spear that has seen service, 
 Ares with a shield and cuirass. A poet dedicates roses to the 
 maids of Helicon and laurel wreaths to Apollo. Scribes offer 
 their pens and ink and pumice-stone to Hermes ; cooks hang 
 up their pots and pans and spits to the Mercury of the 
 kitchen. Withered crowns and revel-cups are laid upon the 
 shrine of Lais : Anchises suspends his white hair' to Aphrodite, 
 Endymion his bed and coverlid to Artemis, Daphnis his club 
 to Pan. Agathias inscribes his Daphniaca to the Paphian 
 queen. Prexidikd has an embroidered dress to dedicate. 
 Alkibi^ offers her hair to Here, Lais her mirror to Aphrodite, 
 Krobylus his boy's curls to Apollo, Charixeinos his long 
 tresses to the nymphs. Meleager yields the lamp of his love- 
 hours to Venus ; Lucillius vows his hair after shipwreck to 
 the sea-gods; Evanth^ gives her thyrsus and stag's hide to 
 Bacchus. Women erect altars to Eleithuia and Asclepius 
 after childbirth. Sophocles dedicates a thanksgiving shrine 
 for poetic victories. Simonides and Bacchylides record their 
 triumphs upon votive tablets. Gallus, saved frorh a lion, 
 consecrates his hair and vestments to the queen of Dindymus. 
 Prostitutes abandon their ornaments to Kupris on their mar- 
 riage. The effeminate Statullion bequeaths his false curls and 
 flutes and silken wardrobe to Priapus. Sailors offer a huge 
 cuttlefish to the sea-deities. An Isthmian victor suspends his 
 bit, bridle, spurs, and whip to Poseidon. A boy emerging 
 into manhood leaves his petasos and strigil and chlamys to 
 Hermes, the god of games. Phrynd dedicates a winged Eros 
 
366 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 as the firstfruits of her earnings. Hadrian celebrates the 
 trophies erected by Trajan to Zeus. Theocritus writes in- 
 scriptions for Uranian Aphrodite in the house of his friend 
 Amphicles, for the Bacchic tripod of Damomenes, and for the 
 marble muse of Xenocles. Erinna ded.icates the picture of 
 Agatharkis. Melinna, Sabaethis, and Mikythus are distin- 
 guished by poems placed beneath their portraits. There is 
 even a poem on the picture of a hernia dedicated apparently 
 in some Asklepian shrine; and a traveller erects the brazen 
 image of a frog in thanksgiving for a draught of wayside water. 
 Cleonymus consecrates the statues of the nymphs : 
 
 a? TcESe $4ydri 
 
 " Ambrosial nymphs, who alway tread these watery deeps with roseate 
 feet." 
 
 It will be seen by this rapid enumeration that a good many of 
 the Dedicatory Epigrams are really epideiktic or rhetorical ; 
 that is to say, they are written on imaginary subjects. But 
 the large majority undoubtedly record such votive offerings as 
 were common enough in Greece with or without epigrams to 
 grace them. 
 
 What I have just said about the distinction between real 
 and literary epigrams composed for dedications,' applies still 
 more to the epitaphs. These divide themselves into two well- 
 marked classes — (i.) actual sepulchral inscriptions or poems 
 written immediately upon the death of persons contemporary 
 with the author ; and (ii.) literary exercises in the composition 
 of verses appropriate to the tombs of celebrated historical or 
 mythical characters. To the first class belong the beautiful 
 epitaphs of Meleager upon Clearista (i. 307), upon Heliodora 
 (i. 365), upon Charixeinos, a boy 12 years old (i. 363), upon 
 Antipater of Sidon (i. 355), and the three which he designed 
 for his own grave (i. 352). Callimachus has left some perfect 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 367 
 
 models in this species of composition. The epitaph on 
 Heracleitus, a poet of Halicarnassus, which has been ex- 
 quisitely translated by the author of lonica, has a grace of 
 movement and a tenderness of pathos that are unsurpassed : * 
 
 eriTf Tir, 'HpiiKXeiTe, reiy fi6pov,- is S4 lie Sixpu 
 
 ilyayev, ^M'^ffSjjy 8' iffffaxis o/i(|)(iT€poi 
 ^Ktov iv \4(rxri KareSiffafiev &A.\& irii fiev irou, 
 ^eii>' 'A\iKapvTi<rev, TerpdiraAai iTiro5i^" 
 , at Se Teal C'^'ovffiv ctTjSJyey, ^(riv d irdvTtav 
 apiraKT^s 'AtSrji ovk eVi x^P** j8a\e?. 
 
 His epitaph on the sea-wrecked Sopolis (i. 325), though less 
 touching, opens with a splendid note of sorrow' : t 
 
 &(^eKe /j.7]S* 4y4vovTO Boal vees ' ov yoLp ttv 7]fie7s 1 
 
 TToiSa AioK\ei5ov SdnroKti/ etTTevofiev 
 vvv 5^ 6 fiiv eiv a\i irov rpepeTat veKvs- arrl 5* exeivov 
 
 oHfOfxa Ka\ Kevehv (TTJfia irapepx^fieda . 
 
 The following couplet upon Saon (i. 360) is marked by its 
 perfection of brevity : J 
 
 T^Se ^d(i>v 6 A(kwvo$ 'AKiivdios lephv Uttvov 
 Koi/xaraf BviTKeiv ju^ \4ye tovs ayaOois. 
 
 * ' ' 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 sky. 
 
 " And now that thou art Ipng, my dear old Carian guest, 
 A handful of grey 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." 
 
 t "Would that swift ships had never been ; for so 
 We ne'er had wept for Sopolis : but he 
 Dead on the waves now drifts ; while we must go 
 Past a void tomb, a mere name's mockery." 
 
 f " Here lapped in hallowed slumber Saon lies, 
 Asleep, not dead ; a good man never dies." 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 
368 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Among the genuine epitaphs by the greatest of Greek authors, 
 none is more splendid than Plato's upon Aster (i. 402) : * 
 
 , 'ACTTip irplv /lev tKafiires ^v\ ^(aoiaiv *'E^os' 
 vvv Se Baviiv Xafiveis" t^airepos iv <p0iiJ.evots. 
 
 To Plato also is ascribed a fine monumental epigram upon the 
 Eretrian soldiers who died at Ecbatana (i. 322) : t 
 
 oV5e ffOT* Aiyaioio ^api^pofiov olS/ia \ftr6i/T€S 
 
 X^P^ K\vT'fi TOTe Trarpls 'Ep^rpta • ;)^afp6T' 'Adriyai 
 yehoves %i$olris • X^^P^ BiKaaira (plKrt. 
 
 Erinna's epitaph on Baucis (i. 409) deserves quotation, be- 
 cause it is one of the few pieces accepted by the later Greeks, 
 but probably without due cause, as belonging to a girl whose 
 elegiacs were rated by the ancients above Sappho's : J 
 
 (rrSXai xal Seipfives ifial Kol irevBifif Kpuaae 
 
 HffTis exeis *A"/'Sa toi' o\iyay (TiroBt^r, 
 jots ifihtf 4pxofi4j/oi(n Tap' ijpiov eSfirare ;^a/j5e»', 
 
 air' aarol Te\46avT' a16' erepas Tr6\ios • 
 
 " Thou wert the morning star among the living, 
 Ere thy fair light had fled ; 
 Now, having died, thou art as Hesperus giving 
 New splendour to the dead. " 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 " We who once left the ^Egean's deep- voiced shore, 
 Lie 'neath Ecbatana's champaign, where we fell. 
 Farewell Eretria, thou famed land of yore, 
 
 And neighbour Athens, and loved sea, farewell." 
 
 "Pillars of death, carved Sirens, tearful urns. 
 In whose sad keeping my poor dust is laid. 
 To him, who near my tomb his footsteps turns. 
 Stranger or Greek, bid hail ; and say a maid 
 Rests in her bloom below ; her sire the name 
 
 Of Baucis gave ; her birth and lineage high ; 
 And say her bosom friend Erinna came 
 And on this tomb engraved her elegy." 
 
 J Elton. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 369 
 
 XliTi ^6 vv/jupav eZffav Ixf 1 T<i(/)os emire Kol ri • 
 X^Ti irar'fip fj^ eKciKet BavKiSa x^ti yevos 
 
 TriyiUf us eiSuyTr Kal 3tti iMot a trvyeTaipls 
 "Hpivv' 4v Ti/M^if jpdiJ.fl,' exdpa^f TiiSe. 
 
 Sappho herself has left the following lament for the maiden 
 Timas (i. 367) : * 
 
 Tifidbos aSe kSvis, rctv S^ "Trph ydfioLo 6avQu(rav 
 
 Se^aro ^epffecpSyas Kvdveos BdXafXCS, 
 5s Kal anro^Ot^ivas Tratrat veoBayi fftSaptfi 
 
 aKiKes ifieprciv lipaThs eQeyro K6fjiav. 
 
 In each of these epitaphs, the untimely fading of a flower- 
 like maiden in her prime has roused the deepest feeling of the 
 poetess. This indeed is the chord which rings most truly in 
 the sepulchral lyre of the Greeks. Their most genuine sorrow 
 is for youth cut off before the joys of life were tasted. This 
 sentiment receives, perhaps, its most pathetic though least 
 artistic expression in the following anonymous epitaph on a 
 young man. The mother's love and anguish are set forth with 
 a vividness which we should scarcely have expected from a 
 Greek (i. 236) : t 
 
 yTjKees S) Batfiov, tI Se fioi Kal <p4yyos eSeifas 
 
 els oXiyuv eVewi/ /teVpa liivvvddSia ; 
 fl 'Iva \virij(Tr}s 51 efi^v jStoToio reXevrijif 
 
 fiTirdpa. Sei\ai7]v SdKpvffi Kcd ffTovaxa^s, 
 ^ fi erex' 5i M* otittjAc Kal ^ -irohv ixei^ova irarphs 
 
 tppovri^a naiSeiTis ^vvtyev T]fi^repyis ; 
 
 "This is the dust of Timas, whom unwed 
 Persephone locked in her darksome bed : 
 For her the maids who were her fellows, shore 
 Their curls and to her tomb this tribute bore. '' 
 
 "Merciless heaven ! why didst thou show me light 
 For so few years and speedy in their flight ? 
 Was it to vex by my untimely death 
 With tears and wailings her who gave me breath ? 
 Who bore me, and who reared me, and who wrought 
 More for my youth with many a careful thought, 
 B E 
 
370 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 6s \Av yhp Tvre6v re KoX op(t>avbv 4v neydpouri 
 
 KiWnrev • ^ 5" eir" ^/lol irdvras irKn Ka/t-dTovs. 
 ? fiev eVoi (plKov Tjey irp' ayvSiv riye/wvliaiv 
 
 lliirpeiriiiev fiiBois aiul>l SiKOffiroXlas' 
 aWd fiot ov ysviiav ljre5e'|aT0 Koipiiiov 6.v6os 
 
 TiKiKiT]^ ipaTTJs, ov ydjxov, oil SaiSas' 
 ovx vfi^vaiov 6.€LO€ "TrepiKKvrhv, ov tckos elSe, 
 
 Si5(T7roT/40s, cK yeverjs \el\pavov T]ix.iTipris, 
 TTfS 'iro\v6pr}vflTov ' Kviret S4 fie Kol reSpeara 
 
 litlTphs TiaKiTTi\s irivBos ae^Sfiepov, 
 ^pAvTuvos yoepa7s 4-jrl tppovriffiy, ^ Te«e iratBa 
 
 axifiopofj Kevfhy X'^PM" <p^^''l^ varpiSos. 
 
 The common topic of consolation in these cases of untimely 
 
 death is the one which Shakspere has expressed in the Dirge 
 
 for Fidele, and D'Urfey in his Dirge for Chrysostom by these 
 
 four lines : 
 
 " Sleep, poor youth, sleep in peace, 
 
 Relieved from love and mortal care ; 
 Whilst we that pine in life's disease. 
 Uncertain-blessed, less happy are." 
 
 Lucian, speaking of a little boy who died at five years of age 
 (i. 332), makes him cry : 
 
 aK\d fie fi^ KXalois' Kat yiip ptSroto fiereffxov 
 Ttaipov KoX Traipo>v ray ^l6toio kokSiv. 
 
 A little girl in another epitaph (i. 366) says to her father : 
 
 KffX^^ \t5iras, 
 0eiiJSoT6 • QyaTo\ TroXKdKi Svarvx^es. 
 
 Than my dead sire : he left me in his hall 
 An orphan babe : 'twas she alone did all. 
 My joy it was beneath grave men of laws, 
 Just pleas to urge and win approved applause ; 
 But from my cheek she never plucked the flower 
 Of charming youth, nor dressed my bridal bower, 
 Nor sang my marriage hymn, nor saw, ah me ! 
 My offspring shoot upon our ancient tree. 
 That now is withered. Even in the tomb 
 I wail Politta's woe, the gloom on gloom 
 That swells her grief for Phronton ; since a boy 
 In vain she bore, his country's empty joy.'' 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 371 
 
 A young man, dying in the prime of life, i? even envied by 
 Agathias (i. 384) : 
 
 %jnr)\s S\Pios ovTos, t>s 4v ve6ri\Ti /lapavBeU 
 ^K<j>vye T^v ^i6tov Baatrov aKirpoavvTiv. 
 
 But it is not often that we hear in the Greek Anthology a strain • 
 of such pure and Christian music as this apocryphal epitaph on 
 Protd : * 
 
 ovK eBaves, Tlp^tj, fieT4$Tjs 5' ey hiieipova x^opov-, 
 Kal vaieis jAOKapuiv vfjffovs 6a\iy %vi iroWy, 
 evda icoT* 'HKvcriuv Tredlair ffKipraffa yiyqQas 
 &v6etTiv iv ixaKaKotai, KaKav ^KTOffdev airaifTtiiv • 
 ov xet^ttiv AuTTct (T*, 'ov Kav/j,', oil vovaos ^voxKei^ 
 oil TTiiv^s, oh Bit(/oj ex^' <^' ^^^ ""^e iroBeivhs 
 avOptjaTtaf cTt trot jStoros ' ^daets yh.p Ci/j,4fnrT(os 
 airyats ev Kadapaiffiv 'OKifntov TrK-fjffiov ^vtos. 
 
 Death at sea touched the Greek imagination with peculiar 
 vividness. That a human body should toss, unburied, un- 
 honoured, on the waves, seemed to them the last indignity. 
 Therefore the epitaphs oii Satyrus (i. 348), who exclaims : 
 
 Keivcp BivfjevTi leal arpvyercp en KeTfiai 
 vSart fjLaivofUvep fiefjupSfievos Bop47i^ 
 
 and on Lysidike (i. 328), of whom Zenocritus virites- 
 
 Xatrai trov ffTa^ovtriv e0' dKfivpa Biafiope KoipTj 
 
 * " Thou art not dead, my Prote ! thou art flown 
 To a far country better than our own ; 
 Thy home is now an Island of the Blest ; 
 There 'mid Elysian meadows take thy rest : 
 Or lightly trip along (the flowery glade, 
 Rich with the asphodels that never fade ! 
 Nor pain, nor cold, nor toil, shall vex thee more, 
 Nor thirst, nor hunger on that happy shore ; 
 Nor longings vain (now that blest life is won) 
 For such poor days as mortals here drag on 4 
 To thee for aye a blameless life is given 
 In the pure light of ever-present Heaven.'' 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 B B 2 
 
372 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and on the three athletes who perished by shipwreck (i. 342), 
 have a mournful wail of their own. Not very different, too, is 
 the pathos of Therimachus struck by lightning (i. 306) :* 
 
 ouTiJ/naTai ZAKti T!or\ raij\iov at $6es ^Kdov 
 
 ttXat, Qnpiiiaxos Se rapa Spvt rhy vUKphv eBSci 
 virvov iKoijX'fiSii S' in irvpbs ovpavlov. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from these to epitaphs which dwell more 
 upon the qualities of the dead than the circumstances of their 
 death. Here is the epitaph of a slave (i. 379) :t 
 
 Ztmrl/iTi ri irplc iovaa t'iiv<f rip a^funt SoliAr) 
 KaX Tif ir^'fiaTi vvv evpev iK^vSepiTiy. 
 
 Here is a buffoon (i. 380) : J 
 
 NriKetijs 'AiSijs- M <ro\ S' iyeKacrire Sav6vTt, 
 TiTvpe, KoX yeKvwv 6riK€ ite fiLfiof^^op. 
 
 Of all the literary epitaphs by far the most interesting are 
 those written 'for the poets, historians, and philosophers of 
 Greece. Reserving these for separate consideration I pass 
 now to mention a few which belong as much to the pure epi- 
 gram as to the epitaph. When, for example, we read two very 
 clever poems on the daughters of Lycambes (i. 339), two again 
 on a comically drunken old woman (i. 340, 360), and five on a 
 man who has been first murdered and then buried by his mur- 
 derer (i. 340), we see that, though the form of the epitaph has 
 been adopted, clever rhetoricians, anxious only to display their 
 skill, have been at work in rivalry. Sardanapalus, the eponyni 
 of Oriental luxury, furnishes a good subject for this style o|^ 
 
 * " Home to their stalls at eve the oxen came 
 
 Down from the mountain through the snow-wreaths deep ; 
 But ah, Therimachus sleeps the long slfeep 
 'Neath yonder oak, lulled by the levin-flame." 
 
 t "She who was once but in her flesh a slave ■• 
 
 Hath for her flesh found freedom in the grave." 
 
 t " Hades is stern ; but when you died, he said. 
 Smiling, ' Be jester still among the dead." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 373 
 
 composition. His epitaph runs thus in the Appendix Planudea 
 (ii- 532):* 
 
 TefmdfLevos 6a\iT](rt' dav&vri ffoi oUth ovtjctls' 
 Kal yap iydj aTro56s etjui, Jilvou fj.eyd\7js ^ofTLhivffas. 
 TfJfTo"' e^o) Offff* ^ipayoi/ KaX 4(pv^pt<ra, Kai fier eptaros 
 Tepiry eS&Tlv TCt Se itoAaA koI uAjSia ttPii'a A.€Xe«rTJX£. 
 Tjb'e 0*0(^7) ^i6roiO -KapaiviGLS avdpilnroiaiv. 
 
 We find only the fourth and fifth lines among the sepulchral 
 epigrams of the Anthology of Cephalas (L 334), followed by a 
 clever parody composed by the Theban Crates. Demetrius, 
 the Spartan coward, is another instance of this rhetorical 
 exercise. Among the two or three which treat of him I -quote 
 the following (i. 317) :t 
 
 di/i/c' airh '7rTO\4fiov rp^o'ffavT'd ffe ^d^aro fiaTtip, 
 
 iravTo. rhv 6Tr\tffThv Kdafiov o\coK€K6Ta, 
 avrd TOi (poviav, Aafidrpie, avrlKa Tioyxav 
 
 cTire Sta TrAaTewv acrafieva \ay6va)V ' 
 Karflace, ^7)8" ex^'T'' ^Tdpra tfioyov • oi yi-p ixdva 
 
 ^fiirKaKev, el SeiKobs TOvfihv e^pei^e yd\a, 
 
 Agathias writes a very characteristic elegy on Lais (I 315) : + 
 
 epTTWV els 'K^vpT]j/ rd(pov tdpaKov afj.<p\ K4\evdoif 
 AaiSos hpxait]S, us -rb xdpayfM \4yei • 
 
 " Know well that thou art mortal : therefore raise 
 Thy spirit high with long luxtirioiis days. 
 When thou art dead, thou hast no pleasure then. 
 .1 too am earth, who was a king of men 
 O'er Nineveh. My banquets and my lust 
 And love-delights are mine e'en in the dust ; 
 
 . But all those great and glorious things are flown. 
 True doctrine for man's life is this alone." 
 
 " When homeward cowering from the fight you ran 
 Without or sword or shield, a naked man, 
 Your mother then, Demetrius, through your side 
 Plunged her blood-drinking spear, nor wept, but cried ; 
 Die ; let not Sparta bear the blame ; but she 
 Sinned not, if cowards drew their life from me ! " 
 
 " Travelling to Ephyre, by the road-side 
 The tomb and name of Lais I espied : 
 
372 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 and on the three athletes who perished by shipwreck (i. 342), 
 have a mournful wail of their own. Not very different, too, is 
 the pathos of Therimachus struck by lightning (i. 306) :* 
 
 avT6fiaTat 5ei\7i ttotI ra^Xiov aX $6es ^\Bov 
 
 ataii Qiipifxaxos Se irapa SptA rhv fiaKphu eiJSei 
 ViTj/oy- iKoifxi)Br\ S'' e/c Trvphs ovpaviov. 
 
 It is pleasant to turn from these to epitaphs which dwell more 
 upon the qualities of the dead than the circumstances of their 
 death. Here is the epitaph of a slave (i. 379) -.t 
 
 ZaxrifiTj Tj irplp iovcxa fi^vcp tm ff^fiart SoiSAt; 
 Kol T9J (TtlifiaTi vvv eZpev iKevdepi^fiv. . 
 
 Here is a buffoon (i. 380) : J 
 
 Nr)A.€iJjs 'AiStjs' eirl ffol 5' ey€\acra'e SavSvrt, 
 T'tTvpe, Kol VGKiicov drjKe ffe fiifxcyK^yoy. 
 
 Of all the literary epitaphs by far the most interesting are 
 those written for the poets, historians, and philosophers of 
 Greece. Reserving these for separate consideration I pass 
 now to mention a few which belong as rriuch to the pure epi- 
 gram as to the epitaph. When, for example, we read two very 
 clever poems on the daughters of Lycambes (i. 339), two again 
 on a comically drunken old woman (i. 340, 360), and five on a 
 man who has been first murdered and then buried by his mur- 
 derer (i. 340), we see that, though the form of the epitaph has 
 been adopted, clever rhetoricians, anxious only to display their 
 skill, have been at work in rivalry. Sardanapalus, the eponym 
 of Oriental luxury, furnishes a good subject for this style of 
 
 * ' ' Home to their stalls at eve the oxen came 
 
 Down from the mquntain through the snow-wreaths deep ; 
 But ah, Therimachus sleeps the long slfeep 
 'Neath yonder oak, Mled by the levin-flame." 
 
 t " She who was once but in her flesh a slave 
 
 Hath for her flesh fotmd freedom in the grave.'' 
 
 J " Hades is stern ; but when you died, he said, 
 Smiling, ' Be jester still among the dead." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 373 
 
 composition. His epitaph runs thus in the Appendix Planudea 
 (ii-532):* 
 
 TepirSfievos BaKi-part' 6av6pTt coi ofjTis ovr}ais' 
 Kal yap iyii ffirQS6s ei^t, Nivov ^eyd\7is $atri\iv(ras. 
 Ttitrc' e;t(w Stro'' e<f>ayoi/ Kal i<pv0pn7a, Kal juer' ^ptoros 
 repiTV iSiTjV ra Se troWa Kal oK^ia Kiitva \4\ei-7rTat. 
 ^6'e ffotp^ ^i6roio irapaiyetrts av6pc*ynoiffij/. 
 
 We find only the fourth and fifth lines among the sepulchral 
 epigrams of the Anthology of Cephalas (L 334), followed by a 
 clever parody composed by the Theban Crates. Demetrius, 
 the Spartan coward, is another instance of this rhetorical 
 exercise. Among the two or three which treat of him I -quote 
 the following (i. 317) :t 
 
 dytrt' airh irToXe/xou rpecrffavtti (re ^e^aro fidTjjp, 
 
 •jrdvTa rbv dTrXiffray K6aiJ.oy b\u\eK6T.a, 
 avrd TOi tpoviav, Aafxdrpte, aiiTtKa Koy^av 
 
 etire Sta irKaTewv aKra/xeya Kay6v(tiV ' 
 Kdrdave, ^7]5' ex^rco ISTopra }]/6'yoi' • ov yhp iKelva 
 
 ^jfiTrAaKey, el Set\oiis TOVfihj/ e0pei|/e ydha. 
 
 Agathias writes a very characteristic elegy on Lais (i. 315) 
 
 'dpiruv ets *K^t5prjj' rdtpov edpaKoy afj.(pl KeKevBop 
 AatSos kpxairis, 6s t^ x'^P°-7f^^ K4yet • 
 
 " Know well that thou art mortal : therefore raise 
 Thy spirit high with long Ijixnrious days. 
 When thou art dead, thou hast no pleasure then. 
 .1 too am earth, who was a kmg df men 
 O'er Nineveh. My banquets and my lust 
 And love-delights are mine e'en .in the dust ; 
 
 . But all those great and glorious things are flown. 
 True doctrine for man's life is this alone." 
 
 " When homeward cowering from the fight you ran 
 Without or sword or shield, a naked man, 
 Your mother then, Demetrius, through your side 
 Plunged her blood-drinking spear, nor wept, but cried ; 
 Die ; let not Sparta bear the blame ; but she 
 Sinned not, if cowards drew their life from me ! " 
 
 " Travelling to Ephyre, by the road-side 
 The tomb and name of Lais I espied : 
 
374 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 SdKpti S' iitKrirfltras, xa'po's yivai, 4k yhp OKOwJjs 
 o'lKTeipu! ai y', etpriv, V ''rdpos ovk lS6firiv • 
 
 2 Triaov ifCBeav i/6ov iJKaxes ■ &A\' IfSe Ai\6iiv 
 vaieis, oyAatr;^ eV y(0ovl xaTSfjiivr). 
 
 An epitaph on the inutihty of epitaphs is an excellent novelty, 
 especially when the witty poet (Paulus Silentiarius) has the 
 humour to make the ghost eager to speak while the wayfarer is 
 inattentive (i. 332) :* 
 
 o^vo^id iioi. t\ 5e toOto ; vaTpis Se jttoi. es rX 5e tovto ; 
 
 K\€ivov 5' 61^1 yevous. el yhp acpavpordrov ; 
 f/](ras 5' ^yStJfoJS eKiiroj/ $iov. ei yhp aSi^^ws ; 
 
 KeTjxat S' ei/ddSe vvv: t\s rivi ravra Keyeis ; 
 
 The value of the epitaphs on poets and great men of Greece is 
 this — that, besides being in many cases of almost perfect beauty, 
 they contain the quiHtessence of ancient criticism. Every epithet 
 is carefully so chosen as to express what the Greeks thought 
 peculiar and appropriate to the spirit and the works of their 
 heroes. Orpheus is the subject of the following exquisite elegy 
 by Antipater of Sidon (i. 274) :f 
 
 ovk4ti de\yofi4vas, *Op<|)6u, Spins, ovKdri merpas 
 S|eis, 06 Bfipav avTov6iiOvs oyeAas" , 
 
 ovHiTi Koif>.i(reis avifiav Ppdjiov, ovx^ X'^^^ifo;', 
 ov fttpercoy ffvpfioijSj ov Trarayevtray S\a. 
 
 I wept and said : ' Hail, queen, the fame of thee, 
 Though ne'er I saw thee, draws these tears from me ; 
 How many hearts for thee were broken, how 
 By Lethe lustreless thou liest now ! " 
 " My name, my country — what are they to thee ? 
 What, whether base or proud my pedigree? 
 Perhaps I far surpassed all other men ; 
 Perhaps I fell below them all ; what then ? 
 Suffice it, stranger ! that thou seest a tomb ; 
 Thou know'st its use ; it hides — no matter whom." 
 
 W. COWPER. 
 
 "Orpheus ! No more the rocks, the woods no more, 
 Thy strains shall lure ; no more the savage herds. 
 Nor hail, nor driving clouds, nor tempest's roar, 
 Nor chafing billows list thy lulling words ; 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 375 
 
 d}\€0 7ap ■ (Tc Se iroW^ KaTwSupa»/TO fluyarpes 
 
 Kva[J.offvvas, fidrjip 5* e^oxa KoX\£(j7ra- 
 rl-fpdtfi^vois aToifaxevfiev ^(p* who'll/, ayi/c' aAaAKCii' 
 
 Sophocles receives a gift of flowers and ivy, and quiet sleep 
 from Simmias the Theban (i. 277) :* 
 
 7ip4fi' utrep Tifi^oio ^0(f>oK\eos, iiptfia, KLffffe, 
 ' epir^Cots, x^oepoi/s iKirpoxecoy iT\oKdfj.ovSt 
 Kal ireraKov irdtfTTi BiiWot ^6dov, tJ re ipiKop^i^^ 
 
 &IXTtg\os, iiyph Ttept^ KK-tiiiara x^vo.f^^^Vi 
 ^LvGKev eviiri-qs '7nvvT6(ppopos, %v d fi^Mxphs 
 
 ^tTKTiffev Moutrecoi/ S./ifiLja /ca/c Xapirwy, 
 
 Among the nine epitaphs on Euripides none is more deli- 
 cate than the following by Ion (i. 282) :t 
 
 Xoipe jLteXa^uTTCTtiAois, EvpiiridTj, ey yvd\otffL' 
 
 riiepms rhv del vvKrhs ex^^v OaKafj-ov • 
 iff&t S' virh x^ov'bs &v, 'drt (Tot k\4os d(p9tToi' effrat 
 
 laov 'OjjLTipeiats aevdois x'^P'-^'-^- 
 
 Where could a poet be better lulled to rest than among the 
 black-leaved hollows of Pieria ? But the most touching tribute 
 
 For thou art dead : and all the muses mourn, 
 But most Calliope, thy mother dear. 
 Shall we then, reft of sons, lament forlorn. 
 When e'en the Gods must for their offspring fear ? " 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 
 * " Wind, gentle evergreen, to form a shade 
 Aa-ound the tomb where Sophocles is laid ; 
 Sweet ivy, wind thy boughs, and intertwine 
 With blushing roses and the clustering vine : 
 Thus will -thy lasting leaves, with beauties hung. 
 Prove grateful emblems of the lays he sung ; 
 Whose soul, exalted like a God of wit. 
 Among the Muses and the Graces writ." 
 
 Anon. 
 
 t " Hail, dear Euripides, for whom a bed 
 In black-leaved vales Pierian is spread : . 
 Dead though thou art, yet know thy fame shall b 
 Like Homer's green through all eternity." 
 
376 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 to Euripides is from the pen of a brother dramatist, the comic 
 poet Philemon (ii. 94) : * 
 
 ei Tois a\ri6eiaunv 01 reOvriKdres 
 aiaBitatv e?X'"'i SySpts Ss (JMuriv rives, 
 aiTTiy^dfLTiv hv $itt ISetv EupiirfSTjv. 
 
 Aristophanes is praised by Antipater of Thessalonica (ii. 
 37) as the poet who laughed and hated rightly : 
 
 KtofiiKe Koi ffT6^as &^ia Kal ye\d<Tas. 
 
 His plays are characterized as full of fearful graces, (l>o(3epSiv 
 ■n-\Tid6[xevoi -yapiTtov. Over the grave of Anacreon, who receives 
 more tributes of this kind than any other poet, roses are to 
 bloom, and wine is to be poured, and the thoughts of Smerdies, 
 Bathyllus, and Megistias are to linger. Antipater of Sidon 
 in particular paid honour to his grave (i. 278) : f 
 
 BdWoi TeTpaxdpv/i^os, 'AvdKpeov, an,(j>l tre Kurcrhs 
 
 d^pd re Kei/xdovav TToptpvpecov ireraAa ' 
 TnjyaX S" oipytv6eyros avaOXl^owro ydKaKTOs, 
 
 euaSes S* airh yrjs TjSii x^o^ro fieOv, 
 6<ppa Ke Toi (rnoSi'fi re Kai otrrea repipiy ApriTai, 
 
 ei 5^ Tis <t>6tfJievots xp^/J'-T^'reTat 6ir(^po(rt;ra, 
 
 * " If it be true that in the grave the dead 
 
 Have sense and knowledge, as some men assert, 
 I'd hang myself to see Euripides." 
 
 t ' ' Around the tomb, O bard divine ! 
 
 Where soft thy hallowed brow reposes, 
 Long may the deathless ivy twine, 
 And summer pour his waste of roses 1 
 
 " And many a fount shall there distil, 
 And many a rill refresh the flowers ; 
 But wine shall gush in every rill. 
 
 And every fount yield milky showers. 
 
 " Thus, shade of him whom nature taught 
 To tune his lyre and soul to pleasure. 
 Who gave to love his warmest thought. 
 Who gave to love his fondest measure ; 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 377 
 
 The same poet begins another epitaph thus : 
 
 ri/^Pos 'AvaKpelovTos ' & Tii'ios ivSdSf Kixms 
 
 Less cheerful are the sepulchres of the satirists. We are 
 bidden not to wake the sleeping wasp upon the grave of 
 Hipponax (i. 350) :* 
 
 S ^etye, tpevye rhv xot^ctfcTTT} rdcpot/ 
 rhv (ppiKrhv 'l-TnruvaKTOs, oSre x^t T€<^pa 
 m/ZjSia^ei BomrdKetov es ffriyos^ 
 fii} nws iyelpris fftpT^Ka rhv Koifidtfievoy, 
 hs ouS^ ej/ aSy vvv KeKolfiiKev x^^^y, 
 (rKd^ovtri fxerpots opda ro^eiKTas einj. 
 
 The same thought is repeated with even more of descriptive 
 energy, in an epitaph on Archilochus (i. 287) : | 
 
 ffTJfxa T(J5* 'Apx^^^X^^ TrapaTrdvnov, '6s irore irtKp^v 
 
 fiouaav exiSva'ttp irpuros ejSai^e X^^Vt 
 alfid^as 'EKtKava rhv ^^epov ' olSe AvKdfi^rjs 
 
 fivp6f.i.evos rpiarcrZv cCjUjuara dvyarepwy • 
 ijpefia. 5^ Trapdfi€iif/oy, dSotirdpe, p.'fj nore TOuSe 
 
 Ktyf](rris ti5jU/3ci) tr^Tj/cas ifpe^ofieyovs^ 
 
 _- "Thus, after death, if spirits feel, 
 
 Thou mayest, from odours round thee streaming, 
 A pulse of past enjoyment steal. 
 And live again in blissful dreaming. " 
 
 T. Moore. 
 
 " Stranger, beware ! This grave hurls words like hail : 
 Here dwells the dread Hipponax, dealing bale. 
 E'en 'mid his ashes, fretful, poisonous, 
 He shoots Iambics at slain Bupalus. 
 Wake not the sleeping wasp : for though he's dead. 
 Still straight and sure his crooked lines are sped." 
 
 ' ' Here sleeps Archilochus by the salt sea ; 
 Who first with viper's gall the muse did stain, 
 And bathed mild Helicon with butchery. 
 Lycambes weeping for his daughters three 
 Learned this, Pass then in silence : be not fain 
 To stir the wasps that round his grave remain." 
 
378 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Diogenes offers- similar opportunities for clever writing/ 
 The best of his epitaphs is this well-known but anonymoy 
 dialogue (i. 285) :* 
 
 eiire, Kiiov, rims i,vSphs i(pe<rT<iis irrifM (pvhdffffeis ; 
 
 rod Kvv6s ■ i.Wa t\s ■/jv ovros av^p i Kiaiv ; 
 ^teyej/rjs. yevos eiire, 2ipa>7re^s. %s irldov ^Kei ; 
 
 Kol fiiXa ■ vvv Se ew&c a.<rTfpas oXkov Ix"- 
 
 The epitaphs on Erinna, who died when she was only nine- 
 teen, are charged with the thought which so often recurs when 
 we reflect on poets like Chatterton untimely slairi ; — what would 
 not they have done, if they had lived? (i. 275) -.-I- 
 
 6 yKvKii 'HpivVTjs oStos '&6vos, ovxl Tohbs /itv 
 
 01s tiv irapBepiKcis ivveaKaiSeKerevs, 
 a\\^ eT^ptav iroWtjov ^vvardjT^pos' ej S' 'AtSas ot 
 
 fjiil raxiis ?Afle, ris ttv tokIkov Iffx' ivojM ; j 
 
 Sappho rouses a louder strain of celebration (i. 276) J 
 
 "Smrcpd Toi KcvBeis x?^' AioAl Tav /iera MoiSirois 
 
 aBavarais Bvarav yiovaav aetSo/xevav, 
 hii Kivpis Kal "EpftJS ffbv a/i tTpcufiov, &s /ieVo IliiBii 
 
 cTrXeK* aeiCtiJOV llLipiScay (rT€<pavoi/, 
 "EXAaSt juei/ repipiv, crol Se k\€os ' Si TpteKtKTOv 
 
 TAotpat SivGvffai i/Tjjua Kar' fjXa/ctiTCW, 
 
 ' ' Tell me, good dog, whose tomb you guard so well ? 
 The Cynic's. True : but who that Cynic, tell. 
 Diogenes, of fair Sinope's race. 
 What ! He that in a tub was wont to dwell ? 
 Yes : but the stars are now his dwelling-place." 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 
 " These are Erinna's songs : how sweet, though slight ! — 
 For she was but a girl of nineteen years : — 
 Yet stronger far than what most men can write : 
 Had Death delayed, whose fame had equalled hers ? " 
 
 " Does Sappho then beneath thy bosom rest, . 
 .(Eolian earth ? that mortal Muse confessed 
 Inferior only to the choir above, 
 That foster-child of Venus and of Love ; 
 Warm froiA whose lips divine Persuasibn came, 
 Greece to delight, and raise the Lesbian name ? 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 379 
 
 &(l>6iTa fi7i(ra^4ya Swp' 'EXitcuiyidBctiv -; 
 
 This is the composition of Antipater of Sidon, who excels 
 in this special style. Without losing either the movement or 
 the passion of poetry, he is always delicate and subtle in his 
 judgments. His epigrams on Pindar are full of fire (i. 280) :* 
 
 IIiepiKhv (rdhTTiyya, rhv evayiav fiaphv Sfiuav 
 
 Xf^^KGVTctv, Kar^xGi Tlivdapov aSe K6vts, 
 o5 jueAoy eiffatwv (p6ey^at6 Key, &s trore MoviTuv 
 
 iy KctS/^ou BaKiiixois fffiijvos aveirhtlffaTO. 
 
 The very quintesserlce of criticism is contained in the phrases 
 aaXiziyi, xaX/cEuraf. The Appendix Planudea (ii. 590) contains 
 another epitaph on Pindar by Antipater, which for its beautiful 
 presentation of two legends connected with his life deserves to 
 be quoted :t 
 
 ve^pelwv b'ir6ffov ff^Kiriy^ iirepiax^v av\S>v, 
 
 rdffffov uTrep irdtras ^Kpaye ceTo xeAus ' 
 ou5e ^rrjv airaAo(S irepi x^^^^^'-^ efffihi eK^lj/os 
 
 €7rAacre KijpSdeTOV, Ulv^ape, ffeio fieht. 
 ndprvs 6 Mmvd\ios Kspdets 6ehs i^vov aeltras 
 
 Thv aio Kol yo/iiW Arja'diiems Sovdicaiy. 
 
 O ye, who ever twine the three-fold thread, 
 Ye Fates, why number with the silent dead 
 That mighty songstress, whose unrivalled powers 
 Weave for the Muse a crown of deathless flowers ? " 
 
 Francis Hodgson. 
 
 ' Piera's clarion, he whose weighty brain 
 Forged many a hallowed hymn and- holy strain, 
 Pindar, here sleeps beneath the sacred earth : 
 Hearing his songs a man might swear the brood 
 Of Muses made them in their hour of mirth. 
 What time round Cadmus' marriage-bed they stood. 
 
 ' As the war-trumpet drowns the rustic flute. 
 So when your lyre is heard all strings are mute : 
 Not vain the labour of those clustering bees 
 Who on your infant lips spread honey-dew ; 
 Witness great Pan who hymned your melodies, 
 Pindar, foirgetful of his pipes for you." 
 
38o THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 It is impossible to do justice to all these utterances on the 
 early poets. — ^schylus (i. 281) : 
 
 b rpayLKhy <l>^j/7jfia koX ofppvSea'O'av aoi^^U 
 Trvpyd)ffas tm^ap^ irpSnos ey eucTr/p. 
 
 Alcman (i. 277): 
 
 rbi^ XO'pt^VT* *AXKfiava, rhv {tfiyriTTJp' vfisvaiau 
 k{ikvov, 'rhy Movtrwy &^ia /leK^ptifievov. 
 
 Stesichorus (ii. 36) : 
 
 'OfiTjptKhy 8s t' airh ^evfia 
 etrirafras olKelois, ^Ttjcrixop*, iv KapArois, 
 
 Ibyqus (ii. 36) : 
 
 riSi T€ rieiSoCr, 
 ''ijSii/ce, KoX iraiBcitv &vdos h.pLtiixd.ixevs, 
 
 Enough has been quoted to show the delicate and apprecia- 
 tive criticism of the later and lighter Greek poets for the earlier 
 and grander. It is also consolatory to find that almost no 
 unknown great ones are praised in these epigrams ; whence we 
 may conclude that the masterpieces of Greek literature are 
 almost as numerous now as they were in the age of Nero. The 
 philosophers receive their due meed of celebration. Plato can 
 boast of two splendid anonymous epitaphs (i. 285) : * 
 
 and- 
 
 Mid — 
 
 70*0 jLcej/ iv kSKitois Kp^rei rSSe aS>iMa HKdrufos, 
 \fivx^ S" aBdvarov Ti^iv %x^^ liaxapav. 
 
 aUri, riiTTe ^e$TjKas inrep Td(pov ; ^ riyos, 6*7re, 
 
 affrsp6evra 6euv oIkov anoffKoneeis ; 
 i//up^^s elfil VlKiiTuvos anonTafievris is ^OSvfiTov 
 
 ilxdiv • <rSi/m 5e yrj 7i)7ei'cs 'AtBU ex«. 
 
 ' ' Earth in her breast hides Plato's dust : his soul 
 The gods for ever 'mid their ranks enrol." 
 
 " Eagle ! why soarest thou above the tomb ? 
 To what sublime and starry-paven home 
 
 Floatest thou ? 
 I am the image of swift Plato's spirit, 
 Ascending heaven : Athens does inherit 
 His corpse below.'' 
 
 Shelley. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 381 
 
 It is curious to find both Thucydides (ii. 119) and Lyco- 
 phron (ii. 38) characterized by their difficulty. 
 
 Closely allied in point of subject to many of the epitaphs 
 are the so-called hortatory, epigrams, tiriypafj/iaTa wpoTptTriKa. 
 These consist partly of advice to young men and girls to take 
 while they may the pleasures of the moment, partly of wise 
 saws and maxims borrowed from the Stoics and the Cynics, 
 from Euripides and the comic poets. Lucian and Palladas are 
 the two most successful poets in this style. Palladas, whose 
 life falls in the first half of the fifth century, a Pagan, who 
 regarded with disgust the establishment of Christianity, attained 
 by a style of " elegant mediocrity " to the perfection of pro- 
 verbial philosophy in verse. When we remember that the 
 works of Euripides, Menander, Philemon, Theophrastus, and 
 the Stoics were mines from which to quarry sentiments about 
 the conduct of life, we understand the general average of 
 excellence below which he rarely falls and above which he 
 never rises. Yet in this section, as in the others of the 
 Anthology, some of the anonymous epigrams are the best. 
 Here is one (ii. 251) :* 
 
 fls aiSyiv i6eia KOT^Autrw, e?r ' air* 'Adrivwv 
 
 fie tre 7* avtdrw irii-Tpris a7roT7j\e dav6vTa, ' 
 ■jrdvToOcv els d tpiptjcv els cudTjV &v€fios. 
 
 Here is another, which repeats the old proverb of the cup and . 
 the lip (ii. 257): — 
 
 * " Straight is the way to Acheron, 
 Whether the spirit's race is run 
 From Athens or from Meroe : 
 Weep not, far off from home to die ; 
 The wind doth blow in every sky, 
 That wafts us to that doleful sea." 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 
38i THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 And another, on the difference between the leaders and the 
 followers in the pomp of life (ii. 270) : — 
 
 iroKKoi TOi vap87iKoip6poi iravpoi Se re pdKXOi. 
 
 Equally without author's name is the following excellent 
 prayer (ii. 271) :* 
 
 ZeC Patn\eu rh, /lev €(rfl\o Kai fixoi^fmis Kal aviixTois 
 dufu SiSou ■ TO S€ \irypct ttal eixopeyaj/ airfpiKois. 
 
 Lucian gives the following good advice on the use of wealth 
 (ii. 2s6):t 
 
 fcis TiQvti^6p^svos Twv ffiav ayoBav ctir(J\oue, 
 
 ws 5e ^ifuffiixevo^ (|>€£S60 ffav Kreavotv 
 effTL 5' av^p ffo(f>hs oZros ts ^fKpa Tavra voiitras 
 
 ^etSot Koi 5a7r£trf7 ficTpov i(prjpfi6traro. 
 
 Agathias asks why we need fear death (ii. 264) :J 
 
 rhv Bavarov t1 i^o/Seitrffc, -rhv tiitvxItis -yfi/sTripa, 
 
 rhv ■Kai)0VTa vSffous Kal TTevitis oSvyas ; 
 fiovvov oTra^ GvrjTOis irapayii/erat, ouSe ttot' avrhu 
 
 elBep Tis Bvi\tS)V Sedrepof ipx^fJi-^vov ' 
 at 8e if6<rot TroAAai Kal irolKLXai, &Wot' ctt* &\\ov 
 
 ipxififi'ai flvTjTWV Kol f(.6To^a\X(ijUcyoi. 
 
 The remainder of my quotations from this section will all be 
 
 * " God, grant us good, whether or not we pray ; 
 But e'en from praying souls keep bad away." 
 
 f "Your goods enjoy, as if about to' die ; 
 As if about to live, use sparingly. 
 That man is wise, who, bearing both in mind, 
 A mean, befitting waste and thrift, can find." 
 
 Burgess. 
 
 J " Why shrink from Death, the parent of repose, 
 The cure of sickness and all human woes ? 
 As through the tribes of men he speeds his way. 
 Once, and but once, his visit he will pay ; 
 Whilst pale diseases, harbingers of pain. 
 Close oh each other crowd — an endless train.'' 
 
 W. Shepherd. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 383 
 
 taken from Palladas. Here is his version of the proverb attri- 
 buted to Deinocritus that life's a stage (ii. 265) :* 
 
 ffKTjv^ TTcis 6 jSios Koi TTalyvtov • fi ^d$e irai^eiv 
 
 Here, again, is the old complaint that man is Fortune's play- 
 thing (ii. 266) -.f 
 
 'TThovTov Koi vevltjs fieffirSQt ^efi^Sfievos. 
 KaX Tohs fiev Kardyovtra iraKiv crtpaipTj^by aelpei, 
 Tohs 5' airb rcoy ve(l>e\wv eis aiSrjv Kardyet. 
 
 Here again, but cadenced in Iambics, is the Flight of Time 
 (ii. 266) : + 
 
 S TTJs Ppax^ias Ti^ovris rTJs rpv $iov ' 
 t5?j/ o^^TTjra rod j(^p6vov irevB'^ffa/TC ' 
 Tj^e'is Kad€^6fjLea'6a Kal KpiiJ.(j!>fj.€6a, 
 ^oxOovvres -i) Tpv(pwj/Tes " 6 Se XP^^^^ '^P^X^^t 
 
 rpex^l Koff 7]fiUV TUV TaXaiTTtltpoov jSpOTWJ/, 
 
 tpipwv eKdiTTOv T^ jSiciJ Ka.Ta<7rpo<p'fiv. 
 
 The next epigram is literally bathed in tears (ii. 267) : § 
 
 SaKpvx^ojv yeySfiTjv Kal SaKpiffas aTToBytjiTKu ' 
 SdKpuffi S' iv iroAXoty rbp plov eZpov SAoc. 
 
 * " All life's a scene, a jest : then learn to play. 
 Dismissing cares, or bear your pains alway." 
 
 t " This wretched life of ours is- Fortune's ball ; 
 'Twixt wealth and poverty she bandies all : 
 These, cast to earth, up to the skies rebound ; 
 These, tossed to heaven, come trembling to the ground." 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 
 { " O for the joy of life that disappears ! — 
 
 Weep then the swiftness of the flying years : 
 We sit upon the ground and sleep away. 
 Toiling or feasting ; but time nins for aye, 
 Runs a fell race against poor wretched man. 
 Bringing for each the day that ends his span." 
 
 § "Tears were my birth-right ; bom in tears, 
 In tears too must I die ; 
 And mine has been, through life's long years, 
 A tearful destiny. 
 
384 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 (3 yivos apBpairuv iroXvSdKpvroVf curdeveSf oiKTpov, 
 tpaiv6fieyoy kot^ yris ttal 5La\v6fievov. 
 
 When he chooses to be cynical, Palladas can present the 
 physical conditions of human life with a crude brutality which 
 is worthy of a monk composing a chapter Z>d Contemptu 
 humancB miserice. It is enough to allude to the epigrams upon 
 the birth (ii. 259) and the breath (ii. 265) of man. To this 
 had philosophy fallen in the death of Greece. One more 
 quotation from Palladas has a touch of pathos. The old t)rder 
 has yielded to the new : Theodosius has closed the temples : 
 the Greeks are in ashes : their very hopes remain among the 
 dead (ii. 268) : 
 
 "EAAljyes efffi^y &vSpes ea-troScofieyoif 
 veKpSjv Ixoi'Tes i\iri^as TsQafifiivai • 
 avctTTpdL(l>'q yotp irdyra yuf rd irpdyfiaTa. 
 
 With this wail the thin lamentable voice of the desiccated 
 rhetorician ceases. 
 
 Akin to these hortatory epigrams, in their tone of settled 
 melancholy, are some of the satiric and convivial. It is neces- 
 sary, when we think of the Greeks as the brightest and sunniest 
 of all races, to remember what songs they sang at their ban- 
 quets, and to comfort ourselves with the reflection that between 
 their rose-wreaths and the bright Hellenic sky above them 
 hung for them, no less than for ourselves, the cloud of death. 
 
 What more dismal drinking-song can be conceived than 
 this? (i. 337):* 
 
 tfi'Sej' afiapriiffas yevSfxriv itapd rav fie T5K6yr(av • 
 yiVVT]Qiis 5' 6 rdXas ep^ofiai ets 'AiBtiv ' 
 
 " Such is the state of man ; from birth 
 To death all comfortless : 
 Thon swept away beneath the earth 
 In utter nothingness. " 
 
 Edward Stokes. 
 
 " My sire begat me ; 'twas no fault of mine : 
 But being bom, in Hades I must 'pine : 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 385 
 
 a jui|iJ •yovimv eavaTn<t>6pos ■ &fi.oi civdyKris 
 
 ^ fie irpoffTreKii&et rtp ffTvyepa Oavdrtp* 
 ovSev 4i)v yep6iMTiv ' irdKiv effaofiai us irdpos ovSev ' 
 
 ovSev Kot fiTiBev ruf fiepdiTtav rh yeyos ' 
 XeiTTtiy jUoi rh K^nreWov ^nocTTiK^affov, craTjoe, 
 
 KoX KviTTis aKov^v rhv ^pd/xiov Trapcxe. 
 
 The good sense of Cephalas placed it among the epitaphs ; 
 for in truth it i? the quintessence of the despair of the grave. 
 Yet its last couplet forces us to drag it from the place of 
 tombs, and put it into the mouth of some late reveller of the 
 decadence of Hellas. It has to my ear the ring of a drinking- 
 song sung in a room with closed shutters, after the guests have 
 departed, by some sad companion, who does not know that 
 the dawn has gone forth, and the birds are aloft in the air. 
 The shadow of night is upon him. Though Christ be risen 
 and the sun of hope is in the sky, he is still as cheerless as 
 Mimnermus. If space sufficed, it would be both interesting 
 and profitable to compare this mood of the epigrammatists 
 with that expressed by Omar Khayyim, the Persian poet of 
 Khorassdn, in whose quatrains philosophy, melancholy, and 
 the sense of beauty are so wonderfully mingled that to surpass 
 their pathos is impossible in verse.* Here is another of the 
 same tone (ii. 287) :t 
 
 Tjiiis e| Tfovs •jrapairefiTreTai, eir' afieXovvTWV 
 Tjfi&i/ i^ai(pvTjs tJ^ci 6 iropipvpeos, 
 
 O birth-act that brought death ! O bitter fate 
 That drives me to the grave disconsolate ! 
 To nought I turii, who nothing was ere birth ; 
 For men are nought and less than nothing worth. 
 Then let the goblet gleam for me, my friend ; 
 Pour forth care-soothing wine, ere pleasures end." 
 
 * See Fitzgerald's faultless translation of the Jiubdiydt of Omar 
 Khayyam, published by Quaritch. 
 
 t " Morn follows mom ; till while we careless play 
 Comes suddenly the darksome king, whose breath 
 C C 
 
386 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 «al Tohs fiev T^j|as, robs S' oTrr^iras, eftovs Se 
 (pvaijo-as, &l€t TrdvTas es %v ^dpaOpof, 
 
 And another with a more delicate ring of melancholy in the 
 last couplet (ii. 289) : * 
 
 imvc&eLs ^ *TO?p6 • ri Se ffK^ipos avrh fio^ ffe' 
 
 eypeo, ju^ repirov noiptSiy ^eAer?? • 
 fij) (peiff-ri Ai6Sciipi • \dBpos S' eis BaKxov oKLffBiiv 
 
 &XP^^ ^''"^ (T(/)a\€pou ^wpoirSrel y6vaTos ' 
 effced' St' ov irL6fiea6a, -noXvs noXis' aW &y* i-jreiyov. 
 
 7] crvyer^ Kpordtpcov a-rrr^rai Tjfi^Tepwv. 
 
 And yet another (ii. 2 94),j' which sounds like the Florentine 
 Carnival Song composed by Lorenzo de' Medici : 
 
 " Chi vuol esser lieto sia ; 
 Di doman non e certezza : " 
 
 wive KoX evcppaivov ' ri yhp aijptoif ^ rl rh fieWov 
 
 oirSeU yLvc^a-Kei ' fi^ rpex^, /t^ Koir'ia ' 
 Ids ^ivaffai, x'^P^^^h fJ-^rdSos, tpdye, ftyrjTa hoyi^ov ' 
 
 rh ^rjv Tov ix^ ^riv oitShy SKws airex^i * 
 iras d Bios roiScrde (>OTr^ p.6i/ov ' ti.v -npoKd^ris ffov 
 
 Uv 5e Qdyris kiepov irdvra ' (rii S" oi/hef e^eis. 
 
 But the majority of the tTrtypap/zara o-KWTrnra, or jesting 
 epigrams, are not of this kind. They are written for the most 
 
 Or wastes or burns or blows our life away, 
 But drives us all down to one pit of death. " 
 
 * " Thou sleepest, friend : but see, the beakers call ! 
 Awake, nor dote on death that waits for all. 
 Spare not, my Diodorus, but drink free 
 Till Bacchus loose each weak and faltering knee. 
 Long will the years be when we can't carouse — 
 Long, long : up then ere age hath touched our brows.'' 
 
 t ' ' Drink and be merry. What the morrow brings 
 No mortal knoweth : wherefore toil or run ? 
 Spend while thou mayst, eat, fix on present things 
 Thy hopes and wishes : life and death are one. 
 One moment : grasp life's goods ; to thee they fall : 
 Dead, thou hast nothing, and another all." 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 387 
 
 part, in Roman style, on ugly old women, misers, stupid actors, 
 doctors to dream of whom is death, bad painters, poets who 
 kill you with their elegies, men so light that the wind carries 
 them about Hke stubble, or so thin that a gossamer is strong 
 enough to strangle them ; vices, meannesses, deformities of all 
 kinds. Lucillius, a Greek Martial of the age of Nero, is both 
 best and most prolific in this kind of composition. But of all 
 the sections of the Anthology this is certainly the least valuable. 
 The true superiority of Greek to Latin literature in all its 
 species is that it is far more a work of pure beauty, of un- 
 mixed poetry. In Lucillius the Hellenic muse has deigned 
 for once to assume the Roman toga, and to show that if she 
 chose, she could rival the hoarse-throated satirists of the 
 empire on their own ground. But she has abandoned her 
 lofty eminence, and descended to a lower level. The same 
 may be said in brief about the versified problems and riddles 
 (ii. pp. 467-490), which are not much better than elegant 
 acrostics of this or the last century. It must, however, be re- 
 marked that the last-mentioned section contains a valuable 
 collection of Greek oracles. 
 
 Of all the amatory poets of the Anthology, .by far the noblest 
 is Meleager. He was a native of Gadara in Palestine, as he 
 tells us in an epitaph composed in his old age : 
 
 Trar.pa Se fie TCKfat 
 'ArOls iv 'AtTffvpiots yaiofieva, Tddapa.* 
 
 It is curious to think of this town, which from our childhood 
 we have connected with the miracle of the demoniac and the 
 swine, as a Syrian Athens, the birthplace of the most mellifluous 
 of all erotic songsters. Meleager's date is half a century or 
 thereabouts before the Christian era. He therefore was 
 ignorant of the work and the words of One who made the 
 
 * The country that gave birth to me is Gadara, an Attic city on 
 Assyrian shores. 
 
 c C 2 
 
388 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 insignificant place of his origin world-famous. Of his history 
 we know really nothing more than his own epigrams convey ; 
 the two following couplets from one of his epitaphs record his 
 sojourn during different periods of his life at Tyre and at Ceos : 
 
 %v 6i6irais ^vSpwffE Tvpos TaSdpav 6' Up&, x^'^" ' 
 KSis S' epar^ Mepdiriav irpea-^vv iyT]poTp6tpei. 
 
 'AA\' ei fiiv 2i5pos iirffl, ^dXa/i- ei 5' oSj/ (Tvys *oTi'i|, 
 NaiSios ' el. S* "EAAtji/, X"^P^ ' "^^ ^' o-^'^^ (ppdcroy* 
 
 This triple salutation, coming from the son of Gadara and Tyre 
 and Ceos, brings us close to the pure humanity which distin- 
 guished Meleager. Modem men, judging him by the standard 
 of Christian morality, may feel justified in flinging a stone at 
 the poet who celebrated his Muiscos and his Diodes, his 
 Heliodora and his Zenophila, in too voluptuous verse. But 
 those who are content to criticise a pagan by his own 
 rule of right and wrong, will admit that Meleager had 
 a spirit of the subtlest and the sweetest, a heart of the ten- 
 derest, and a genius of the purest that has been ever granted 
 to an elegist of earthly love. While reading his verse, it is 
 impossible to avoid laying down the book and pausing to 
 exclaim : How modern is the phrase, how true the passion, 
 how unique the style ! Though Meleager's voice has been 
 mute a score of centuries, it yet rings clear and vivid in our 
 ears ; because the man was a real poet, feeling intensely, 
 expressing forcibly and beautifully, steeping his style in the 
 fountain of tender sentiment which is eternal. We find in him 
 none of the cynicism which defiles Straton, or of the volup- 
 tuary's despair which gives to Agathias the morbid splendour 
 of decay, the colours of corruption. All is simple, lively, fresh: 
 with joyous experience in his verse. 
 
 * Who grew to man's estate in Tyre and Gadara, and found a fair old 
 age in Cos. If then thou art a Syrian, Salaam ! if a Phcenician, Naidios ! 
 if a Hellene, Hail 1 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 389 
 
 The first great merit of Meleager as a poet is limpidity. A 
 crystal is not more transparent than his style ; but the crystal 
 to which we compare it must be coloured with the softest flush 
 of beryl or of amethyst. Here is a little poem in praise of 
 Heliodora (i. 85) : » 
 
 irXeloj K^vk6'Cov, irX€|aj 5* wnah^tiv a/xa [jLvpTots 
 
 vdpKtaa'oj/, irXe^oi Kal ra yeXuvra Kpiya, 
 irKe^w Kal KpOKov 7}Suy ' eVi7rA.e|a) 5' vaKlvBoy 
 
 7rop(^i;pe'?;i/, 7r^e|w Kal <f>iKepa(rTa fi&da, 
 Qis tiv cTTi Kpordfpots iMvpo^oa-Tpvxov 'HKioddpas 
 
 evTr\6Kafjioy x^^"^^^ avBo^oKfj ffr^^avos. 
 
 Nothing can be more simple than the expression, more ex- 
 quisite than the cadence of these lines. The same may be said 
 about the elegy on Clearistd (i. 307) : | 
 
 01/ ydpLOV a\\' 'AiSav iirivvfiipidiov KKeapicTa 
 
 Se^aTO, TrapBeyia^ apLfiara \vOfxeva • 
 &pTi yctp effTvepLOL yvficpas iirl 5iK\i(ny &;^6uy 
 
 AwTol K at BaKdp.(iiv eirKaTayevvTO Qvpai ' 
 71^01 8' 6\oKvyiJihv aviKpayov, ck S' 'Yfievaios 
 
 irtyaBeis yoephu (pBeyfia jxiQappiSffaro' 
 al 5' aural Kal ipeyyos iSaSovxovv irapa iraffT^ 
 
 TrevKai, Kal tpBifievc^ vipBev etpatvov dS6v. 
 
 ' I'll twine white violets, and the myrtle green ; 
 
 Narcissus will I twine, and lilies sheen ; 
 
 I'll twine sweet crocus, and the hyacinth blue ; 
 
 And last I twine the rose, love's token true : 
 
 That all may form a wreath of beauty, meet 
 
 To deck my Helicdora's tresses sweet." 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 ' Poor Cleariste loosed her virgin zone 
 
 Not for her wedding, but for Acheron ; 
 
 'Twas but last eve the merry pipes were swelling, 
 
 And dancing footsteps thrilled the festive dwelling ; 
 
 Mom changed those notes for wailings loud and long, 
 
 And dirges drowned the hymeneal song ; 
 
 Alas ! the very torches meant to wave 
 
 Around her bridal couch, now light her to the grave ! " 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 
390 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 The thought of this next epigram recalls the song to Ageanax 
 in Theocritus' 7th Idyll (ii. 402) : * 
 
 oUptos ifiirveiKTas vavrais N670s, ^ Svffeptiyres, 
 
 ^fitffii /X6U ^l/vxas apiraixev 'AvSpdyadov ' 
 rpls /xaKapes vaes, rpls S' oAjSta icvfiara ■k6vt0Vj 
 
 TerpaKL S* €vBa(fJ.aiu iratdotpopai' &vefiO^' 
 
 Trop8/xev6els iiriSri rhv yKvKVTtatta '¥65ov. 
 
 These quotations are sufficient to set forth the purity of 
 Meleager's style, though many more examples might have been 
 borrowed from his epigrams on the cicada, on the mosquitogs 
 who tormented Zenophila, on Antiochus, who would have been 
 Eros if Eros had worn the boy's petasos and chlamys. The 
 next point to notice about him is the suggestiveness of his 
 language, his faculty of creating the right epithets and turning 
 the perfect, phrase that suits his meaning. The fragrance of the 
 second line in this couplet is undefinable but potent : t 
 
 Ctf Svffepus ^vxh iravtrai' TzoTs Kal 5i' oveipxif 
 elStiiXois KCtAAeus Hoi(pa xAiaivo/iei'T?. 
 
 It is what all day-dreamers and castle-builders, not to speak of 
 the dreamers of the night, must fain cry out in their despair. 
 The common motive of a lover pledging his absent mistress is 
 elevated to a region of novel beauty by the passionate repeti- 
 tion of words in this first line : j: 
 
 e7X" Kal iritAif ciite ■7rd\tv irdXtti 'RKmSiipas, 
 
 * " Fair blows the breeze : the seamen loose the sail : — 
 O men that know not love, your favouring gale 
 Steals half my soul, Andragathos from me ! 
 Thrice lucky ships, and billows of the sea 
 Thrice blessed, and happiest breeze that bears the boy ! 
 O would I were a dolphin that my joy, 
 Here pn my shoulders ferried, might behold 
 Rhodes, the fair island thronged with boys of gold ! " 
 
 t " O soul too loving, cease at length from even in dreams thus idly 
 basking in the warmth of Beauty's empty shapes." 
 
 } " Pour forth ; and again cry, again, and yet again, ' to Heliodora ! ' " 
 
1HE ANTHOLOGY. 391 
 
 In the same way a very, old thought receives new exquisite- 
 ness in the last couplet of the epitaph on Heliodora : * 
 
 aXK6. (Te yovvov\x.o.t. Va. ■iravTp6<l>€ tclv travo^vprov 
 ijpefjta (Tois KdKirots ^uSrep ivayKtiXio-ai, 
 
 The invocation to Night, which I will next quote, has its own 
 beauty derived from the variety of images which are subtly and 
 capriciously accumulated : f 
 
 |y -riSe wafi/iTjTeipa 6ea>v XiTOjiai ee (piKr) Nu| 
 pal Xirofiat K^fjLtov aii/^irAai-e irdrvia Ni/|. 
 
 But Meleager's epithets for Love are perhaps the triumphs of 
 his verbal coinage : J 
 
 ItTTi 5' 6 ira7s yKvKvSaKpvs aeiXaXos wkus arap^^s 
 (TijUct yeXwf 'jrT€p6eiS vSna ^apeTpo^6pos. 
 
 Again he calls him afipoTvilikoci 'ipiog (delicate-sandalled Love) 
 and fashions words like xpyy^airarriQ, vwaTrarijQ (soul-cheating 
 and sleep-cheating), to express the qualities of the treacherous 
 god. In some of his metaphorical descriptions of passion he 
 displays a really fervid imagination. To this class of creation 
 belong the poem on the Soul's thirst (ii. 414), on the memory 
 of beauty that lives like a fiery image in the heart (ii. 413), and 
 the following splendid picture of the tyranny of Love. He is 
 addressing his soul, who has once again incautiously been 
 trapped by Eros : § 
 
 (TTraipeis ; avTbs epws to Trrepii aov SeSeKev, 
 
 * " I pray thee, Earth, all-nourishing, in thy deep breast, O mother, 
 to enfold her tenderly, for whom my tears must flow for aye.'' 
 
 f ' ' This one boon I ask of thee, great mother of all gods, beloved 
 Night ! Nay, I beseech thee, thou fellow wanderer with Revelry, O holy 
 Night ! " 
 
 J " The boy is honey-teared, tireless of speech, swift, without sense of 
 fear, with laughter on his rogueish lips, winged, bearing arrows in a quiver 
 on his shoulders.'' 
 
 § ' ' Why vainly in thy bonds thus pant and fret ? Love himself bound 
 
392 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 Kat a' iir\ Trvp earriffe^ fivpois 5' ep^ave MtrSirtiovv, 
 
 Surely a more successful marriage of romantic fancy to classic 
 form was never effected even by a modern poet. This line 
 again contains a bold and splendid metaphor : * 
 
 KWfi6.^oi 5* ovK oivov uTrii <pp4j/a Trvp Se yefxiffBeis. 
 
 Meleager had a soul that inclined to all beautiful and tender 
 things. Having described the return of spring in a prolonged 
 chant of joy, he winds up with words worthy of a Troubadour 
 on Minnesinger in the April of a new age : t 
 
 The cicada, Spoacpuli arayovtnai fieQvaQue (drunken with honey- 
 drops of dew), the avTO(pvcg fjiixrifia Xvpac (nature's own mimic 
 of the lyre) — a conceit by the way in the style of Marini or 
 of Calderon — the bee whom he addresses as ai'tiv^iaire fxiXiaaa 
 (flower-pasturing bee), and all the flowers for which he has 
 found exquisite epithets, the (j>i\ofiPpoc rapKiaaog (narcissus 
 that loves the rain of heaven), the (jtiXsparr-a pdSa (roses to 
 lovers dear), the ovp6(Ti<()oiTa Kpiva (lilies that roam the mountain 
 sides), and again ra yekUvTa KpLra (laughing lilies), testify to 
 the passionate love and to the purity of heart with which he 
 greeted and studied the simplest beauties of the world. J In 
 
 thy wings and set thee on a fire, and rubbed thee, when thy breath grew 
 faint, with myrrh, and when thou thirstedst, gave thee burning tears to 
 drink." 
 
 * "A reveller I go freighted with fire not wine beneath the region of 
 my heart. " 
 
 t " How could it be that poet also should not sing fair songs in 
 spring." 
 
 J Those who on the shores of the Mediteranean have traced out beds 
 of red tulips or anemones or narcissus from terrace to terrace, over rocks, 
 and under olive branches, know how delicately true to nature is the 
 thought contained in the one epithet oipealipona — roaming like nymphs 
 along the hills — now single and now gathered into companies, as though 
 their own sweet will had led them wandering. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 393 
 
 dealing with flowers he is particularly felicitous. Most ex- 
 quisite are the lines in which he describes his garland of the 
 Greek poets and assigns to each some favourite of the garden 
 or the field, and again those other couplets which compare the 
 boys of Tyre to a bouquet culled by love for Aphrodite. Baia 
 jutr a\Ao pdSa (slight things perhaps, but roses) : these are the 
 words in which Meleager describes the too few but precious 
 verses of Sappho, and for his own poetry they have a peculiar 
 propriety. Ttai ^iiovaiv ajjSpctc (thy nightingales still live) we 
 may say, quoting Callimachus, when we take leave of him. 
 His poetry has the sweetness and the splendour of the rose, 
 the rapture and full-throated melody of the nightingale. 
 
 Next in artistic excellence to Meleager among the amatory 
 poets is Straton, a Greek of Sardis, who lived in the second 
 century. But there are few readers who, even for the sake 
 of his pure and perfect language, will be prepared to put up 
 with the immodesty of his subject-matter. Straton is not so 
 delicate and subtle in style as Meleager : but he has a mascu- 
 line vigour and nettete of phrase peculiar to himself It is not 
 possible to quote many of his epigrams. He suffers the 
 neglect which necessarily obscures those men of genius who 
 misuse their powers. Yet the story of the garland-weaver 
 Cii. 396), and the address to schoolmasters (ii. 2r9), are too 
 clever to be passed by without notice. The following epigram 
 on a picture of Ganymede gives a very fair notion of Straton's 
 style (ii. 425):* 
 
 aiCTC, Tcis ditpvus iKTrerdaai -nrepvyas^ 
 
 ' Soar upward to the air divine : 
 Spread broad thy pinions aquiline : 
 Carry amid thy plumage him, 
 Who fills Jove's beaker to the brim : 
 Take care that neither crooked claw 
 Make the boy's thigh or bosom raw ; 
 
394 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 rhv Aths TjSiaToiv oivox^ov KuXtKoip ' 
 
 ffyeiSeo 5' ai^uct^ai Kovpov yafiypcljvvx^ Tapff^ 
 
 fj.^ Zeus aKyfjffTi tovto $apvv6^evos. 
 
 To this may be added an exhortation to pleasure in despite of 
 death (ii. 288).* 
 
 Callimachus deserves mention as a third with Meleager and 
 Straton. His style, drier than that of Meleager, more elevated 
 than Straton's, is marked by a frigidity of good scholarship 
 which only at intervals warms into the fire of passionate 
 poetry. In writing epigrams Callimachus was careful to pre- 
 serve the pointed character of the composition. He did not 
 merely, as is the frequent wont of Meleager, indite a short 
 poem in elegiacs. This being the case, his love poems, 
 though they are many, are not equal to his epitaphs. 
 
 To mention all the poets of the amatory chapters would be 
 impossible. Their name is legion. Even Plato the divine, 
 by right of this epigram to Aster : t 
 
 affr^pas elffadpeis atrr^p ^fj.6s ' eXde ysj/OL/jiTjv 
 ovpayhs us tvoWqis uiifxaffiv els ae ^X4iru — 
 
 and of this to Agathon : f 
 
 T^v ^vx'fl^ ^AydSuva ^i\uv eirl x^iKcffiv effxoy ' 
 ^K6e yhp 7} T\i}fiuv us Sia^ijiTo^fPT] — 
 
 For Jove will wish thee sorry speed 
 If thou molest his Ganymede. " 
 
 * ' ' Drink now, and love, Democrates ; for we 
 Shall not have wine and boys eternally : 
 Wreathe we our heads, anoint ourselves with myrrh 
 Others will do this to our sepulchre : 
 Let now my living bones with wine be drenched ; 
 Water may deluge them when I am quenched." 
 
 t " Gazing at stars, my star? I would that I were the welkin, 
 Starry with infinite eyes, gazing for ever at thee ! " 
 
 Frederick Farrar. 
 J " Kissing Helena, together 
 
 With my kiss, my soul beside it 
 Came to my lips, and there I kept it, — 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 395 
 
 takes rank in the erotic cycle. Yet we may touch in passing 
 on the names of Philodemus and Antipater, the former a native 
 of Gadara, the latter a Sidonian, whose epitaph was composed 
 by Meleager. Their 'poems help to complete the picture of 
 Syrian luxury and culture in the cities of North Palestine, which 
 we gain when reading Meleager. Of Philodemus the liveliest 
 epigram is a dialogue, which seems to have come straight from 
 the pages of some comedy (i. 68) ; but the majority of his verses 
 belong to that class of literature which finds its illustration in 
 the Gabinetto Segreto of the Neapolitan Museum. Occasion- 
 ally he strikes a true note of poetry, as in this invocation to 
 the moon : * 
 
 tpaive Si' eiiTprirtav fiaWofikVTi dupidav ■ 
 aijya^e xp^<^^V KaWitTTiov • es Tct (pL\e{/VTav 
 epya KaTOTTTeveij/ ov <l>66yos aflai/aT?;. 
 
 ual ycip (r^v ^vx^v e<j)\e'y€V 'EivSvixitov. 
 
 Antipateri shines less in his erotic poems than in the numerous 
 epigrams which he composed on- the earlier Greek poets, 
 especially on Anacreon, Erinna, Sappho, Pindar, Ibycus. He 
 lived at a period when the study of the lyrists was still flou- 
 rishing, and each of his couplets contains a fine and thoughtful 
 piece of descriptive criticism. 
 
 Another group of amatory poets must be mentioned. Aga- 
 thias, Macedonius, and Paulus Silentiarius, Greeks of Byzantium 
 
 For the poor thing had wandered thither, 
 To follow where the kiss should guide it, 
 Oh cruel I to intercept it ! " 
 
 Shelley. 
 
 * " Shine forth, night- wandering, horned, and vigilant queen. 
 Through the shy lattice shoot thy silver sheen ; 
 Illume Callistion : for a goddess may 
 Gaze on a pair of lovers while they play. 
 Thou enviest her and me, I know, fair moon, 
 For thou didst once burn for Endymion." 
 
396 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 about the age of Justinian, together with Rufinus, whose date 
 is not quite certain, yield the very last fruits of the Greek 
 genius, after it had been corrupted by the lusts of Rome and 
 the effeminacy of the East. Very pale and hectic are the hues 
 which give a sort of sickly beauty to their style. Their epi- 
 grams vary between querulous lamentations over old age and 
 death, and highly coloured pictures of self-satisfied sensuality. 
 Rufinus is a 'kind of second Straton in the firmness of his touch, 
 the cynicism of his impudicity. The complaint of Agathias to 
 the swallows that twittered at his window in early dawn (i. 102), 
 his description of RhodantHe and the vintage feast (ii. 297),* 
 and those lines in which he has anticipated Jonson's Xjcic on the 
 kiss which made the wine within the cup inebriating (i. 107), 
 may be quoted as fair specimens of his style. Of Paulus 
 Silentiarius I do not care to allude to more than the poem in 
 which he describes the joy of two lovers (i. 106). What Ariosto 
 and Boiardo have dwelt on in some of their most brilliant 
 episodes, what Giorgione has painted in the eyes of the shep- 
 herd who envies the kiss given by Rachel to Jacob, is here 
 compressed into eighteen hues of great literary beauty. But 
 a man need be neither a prude nor a Puritan to turn with sad- 
 ness and with loathing from these last autumnal blossoms on 
 the tree of Greek beauty. The brothel and the grave are all 
 that is left for Rufinus and his contemporaries. Over the one 
 
 * 
 
 " We trod the brimming wine-press ankle-high, 
 Singing wild songs of Bacchic revelry : 
 Forth flowed the must in rills ; our cups of wood 
 Like cockboats swam upon the honeyed flood : 
 With these we drew, and as we filled them, quaffed, 
 With no warm Naiad to allay the draught : 
 But fair Rhodanthe bent above the press, 
 And the fount sparkled with her loveliness : 
 We in our souls were shaken ; yea, each man 
 Quaked beneath Bacchus and the Paphian. 
 Ah me ! the one flowed at our feet in streams— 
 The other fooled us with mere empty dreams 1 " 
 
TBE ANTHOLOGY. 397 
 
 hangs the black shadow of death ; the other is tenanted by 
 ghosts of carnal joy : 
 
 ' ' when lust, 
 By unchaste looks, loose gestures, and foul talk, 
 But most by lewd and lavish acts of sin. 
 Lets in defilement to the inward parts, 
 The soul grows clotted by contagion, 
 Imbodies, and imbrutes, till she quite lose 
 The divine property of her first being. 
 Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp 
 Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres. 
 Lingering, and sitting by a new-made grave, 
 As loth to leave the body that it loved. 
 And linked itself by carnal sensuality 
 To a degenerate and degraded state." * 
 
 One large section of the Anthology remains to be considered. 
 It contains what are called the tViypa/jyuara i-KlinKTiKo., or poems 
 upon various subjects chosen for their propriety for rhetorical 
 exposition. These epigrams, the favourites of modern imita- 
 tors, display the Greek taste in this style of composition to the 
 best advantage. The Greeks did not regard the epigram merely 
 as a short poem with a sting in its tail — to quote the famous 
 couplet : 
 
 " Omne epigramma sit instar apis : sit aculeus illi : 
 Sint sua mella : sit et corporis exigui. " + 
 
 True to the derivation of the word, which means an inscription 
 or superscription, they were satisfied if an epigram were short 
 and gifted with the honey-dews of Helicon.| Meleager would 
 
 * Comus, 463, &c. 
 
 t " Three things must epigrams, like bees, have all ; 
 A sting and honey and a body small. " 
 
 Riley. 
 
 t A certain Cyril gives this as his definition of a good epigram (ii. 75 
 compare No. 342 on p. 69) : 
 
 Toiis rpeis, lia^tfj^Gis kovk iiriypafifia K^yeis. 
 
 " Two lines complete the epigram — or three : 
 Write more ; you aim at epic poetry." 
 
398 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 have called his collection a Beehive, and not a Flower-garland, 
 if he had acknowledged the justice of the Latin definition which 
 has just been cited. The epigrams of which I am about to 
 speak are simply little occasional poems, fugitive pieces, Gele- 
 genheitsgedichte, varying in length from two to twenty lines, 
 composed in elegiac metre, and determined, as to form and 
 treatment, by the exigencies of the subject. Some of them, 
 it is true, are noticeable for their point ; but point is not the 
 same as sting. The following panegyric of Athens, for ex- 
 ample, approximates to the epigram as it is commonly con- 
 ceived (ii. 13) : * 
 
 7p juey cap K6(rfios ■jroKvSei'^peos, ald4pL S' ^ffrpa^ 
 
 The same may be said about the lines upon the vine and the 
 goat (ii. 15 ; compare 20) : t 
 
 KJ^v iJ.e (pdyTis ewl ^i^av bfJLWs en Kap-no<pQpT]iya 
 Strffov eTTltnretaat ffoi rpiye dvofieytfi ; 
 
 Here the essence of this kind of poetry is said to be brevity. But nothing 
 is said about a sting. And on the point of brevity, the Cyril, to whom 
 this couplet is attributed, is far too stringent when judged by the best 
 Greek standards. The modem notion of the epigram is derived from a 
 study of Martial, whose best verses are satirical and therefore of necessity 
 stinging. 
 
 * " Spring with her waving trees 
 
 Adorns the earth : to heaven 
 
 The pride of stars is given : 
 
 Athens illustrates Greece ; 
 
 She on her brows doth set 
 
 Of men this coronet. '' 
 
 t "Though thou shouldst gnaw me to the root, 
 Destructive goat, enough of fruit 
 I bear, betwixt my horns to shed, 
 When to the altar thou art led." 
 
 Merivale. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 399 
 
 and the following satire, so well known by the parody of Porson 
 (ii. 325) : * 
 
 Again the play of words in the last line of this next epigram 
 (ii. 24) gives a sort of pungency to its conclusion : f 
 
 ardl K6pa ficKidpeTrre^ \d\os Kd^ov apird^aaa 
 
 TiTTiya TrTavo7s Batra <p4peis reKeffti/^ 
 rhv \d\oi/ d AaXdeffcra, rhf evnT^pov d TTTepdefTtra, 
 
 rhv ^4vov d ^eiya, Thv Qepiyhy Bepivd ; 
 Koh-xl rdxos fti^ets ; ov yap Befits ovBe S'lKawv 
 
 6Wvff&' v/j,voir6\ovs vfivoTr6\ois ariiiaffiv. 
 
 The Greek epigram has this, in fact, in common with all 
 good poems, that the conclusion- should be the strongest and 
 most emphatic portion. But in liberty of subject and of 
 treatment it corresponds to the Italian Sonnet. Unquestion- 
 ably of this kind is the famous poem of Ptolemy upon the 
 
 * ' ' The Germans at Greek 
 Are sadly to seek, 
 Not five in five-score, 
 But ninety-five more ; 
 All — save only Hermann ; 
 And Hermann's a German." 
 
 Porson, 
 t ' ' Attic maid ! with honey fed, 
 
 Bear'st thou to thy callow brood 
 Yonder locust from the mead, 
 Destined their delicious food ? 
 
 " Ye have kindred voices clear 
 Ye alike unfold the wing, 
 Migrate hither, sojourn here. 
 Both attendant on the spring. 
 
 " Ah ! for pity drop the prize ; 
 Let it not with truth be said. 
 That a songster gasps and dies. 
 That a songster, may be fed." 
 
 W. CowPER. 
 
40O THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 stars (ii. ii8), which ,^ recalls to mind the saying of Kant, that 
 the two things which moved his awe were the stars of heaven 
 above him and the moral law within the soul of mah : * 
 
 o?S' Srt Bvarbs eyio KoX i<f>dfj.epos' aW' orav ^ffrpwy 
 
 fiaiTTeia -TrvKivks ctfupLSpSfiovs e\iKas, 
 ovKer^ iiri}pai(i) yait]? vo&tv, aKKa irop' aiiT^ 
 
 Zrjvl Beorpetpeos iriinvKafjiai afi^poa'iTts. 
 
 The poem on human life, which has been attributed seve- 
 rally to Poseidippus and to Plato Comicus, and which Bacon 
 thought worthy of imitation, may take rank with the most 
 elevated' sonnets of modern literature (ii. 71) :t 
 
 iroiriv Tts ^LOTOio rafir} rpi^oy • elv ayopij fxhy 
 l/elKea Kal ;^aA6Trai irpii^ies' iv Se Sdfiots 
 
 tpp6vTLSes ' ev 5' aypols Ka^aTcaj/ S,\ts' ef Se 6a\dff<T7] 
 rrdp^os' e)ri ^eivTjs 5', ^v ^jiXir %XV^ "^^ Seos* 
 
 * ' ' Though but the being of a day, 
 
 When I yon planet's course survey, 
 
 This earth I then despise : 
 Near Jove's eternal throne I stand, 
 And quaff from an immortal hand 
 The nectar of the skies." 
 
 Philip Smyth. 
 t Bacon's version, "The world's a bubble, and the life of man— " is 
 both well known and too long to quote. The following is from the pen of 
 .Sir John Beaumont : 
 
 " What course of life should wretched mortals take? 
 In courts hard questions large contention make : 
 Care dwells in houses, labour in the field. 
 Tumultuous seas affrighting dangers yield. 
 In foreign lands thou never canst be blessed ; 
 If rich, thou art in fear ; if poor, distressed. 
 In wedlock frequent discontentments swell ; 
 Unmarried persons as in deserts dwell. 
 How many troubles are with children born ; 
 Yet he-that wants them counts himself forlorn. 
 Young men are wanton, and of wisdom void ; 
 Grey hairs are cold, unfit to be employed. 
 Who would not one of these two offers choose, 
 Not to be born, or breath with speed to lose ? " 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. ' 401 
 
 ^v 5" StiTop^s, a.viT)p6v ' ^x^^s ydfioj/ ; ovic af^epi^yos 
 
 ^trffeai • ov yafjL4eiS ; (^s ex' ip7i[j.6Tepos ' 
 TeKva •jrivotf wfjpaxns ^irais $tos * at veSrrtTes 
 
 &(l>poy€s, at TToKtai 5' e^traKtv aSpavees ' 
 ^y &pa Totv ^iffffotv kvhs atp^ffLs, ^ t5 yevdffOat 
 
 /ATjSeTTOT' ^ rb Qav^'iv avriKa riicTdfjievov. 
 
 The reverse of this picture is displayed with much fehcity 
 and geniality, but with less of force, by Metrodorus (ii. 72) :* 
 
 iravToiTjy $t6Toio rdfj-oiv rpifiov • ey ayop^ fxey 
 
 ' K'uSea Koi TTivmaX irpij^tes' ey 5e S6ixols 
 &fnravfj.^' 4y 5' aypots (ftiifTios x*^f** ' ^^ ^^ 9a\dir(rTj 
 
 KepSos' 6jrl *|€ii/i7$, ^y fiev exris Tt, /cAeos " 
 ^y S' iiropps fx6vos oWas ' ^x^'^ ^a^uoy ; oTkos &pt(rTOS 
 
 ^aff€Tat ' ov ya/xeeis ; 0"s ^t' 4\a<pp6T€pos ' 
 TSKya irAOos, &(ppoyTii &irats fiios' at vetJriJTes 
 
 pwfxaKiai, TToKiai 5' €,UTra\tv euce^Sees * 
 ovK &pa Tuy Sifftruy kyhs a'lpetns, ^ ri yeyeffdat 
 
 jUT/SeiroT* ^ t6 flaverv • irdyra ykp 4ff6\ci ^it^. 
 
 Some of the epigrams of this section are written in the 
 true style of Elegies. The following splendid Threnody by 
 Antipater of Sidon upon the ruins of Corinth, which was 
 imitated by Agathias in his lines on Troy, may be cited as per- 
 fect in this style of composition (ii. 29) :t 
 
 * "In every way of life true pleasure flows : 
 Immortal fame from public action grows : 
 Within the doors is found appeasing rest ; 
 In fields the gifts of nature are expressed. 
 The sea brings gain, the rich abroad provide 
 To blaze their names, the poor their wants to hide : 
 All households best are governed by a wife ; 
 His cares are light, who leads a single life : 
 Sweet children are delights which marriage bless ; 
 He that hath none disturbs his thoughts the less. 
 Strong youth can triumph in victorious deeds ; 
 Old age the soul with pious motions feeds. 
 All states are good, and they are falsely led 
 Who wish to be unborn or quickly dead." 
 
 Sir John Beaumont 
 
 . t " Where, Corinth, are thy glories now. 
 Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow, 
 D D 
 
402 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 iroS rb trepl^K^trTov /caWos treo, A(o/)2 KiptvBe ; 
 
 iroC ffreiftavoL -jr^pycoVj ttov t& 7ro\o£ Kr^ava, 
 TTOv viioi fiaKcipwv, TTOV S,(ifiaTa, irov Se ddfiapres 
 
 ^KTiJ^iai, Xawv 0' at ttotg fivptddes ; 
 ouSe yitp ou5' Ix^o^t iroAuKtija/Aope, ffeto AeAenrrat, 
 
 irai/Ta 5e trvfifidp^as i^e(t>ayey ir(J\€/ios ' 
 juoOf/ai O7r(5p07;TOi Ni7p7ji'Ses, 'ilKeavo7o • 
 
 Kovpat, (Tttiv &%€«!/ fiifivofiGV d\Kv6yes ' 
 
 It is ^ grand picture of the queen of pleasure in her widow- 
 hood and desolation mourned over by the deathless daughters 
 of the plunging sea. Occasionally the theme of the epigram 
 is historical. The finest, perhaps, of this sort is .a poem by 
 Philippus on Leonidas (ii. 59) :* 
 
 ■jrov\v AetoABeui KariScbf Se/xas avToiouKTOv 
 s.4plT]S ^x^^^^'ou tpd-pei TToptpvpetp • 
 
 KTiK ViKVWV 5' ^Xf\^^^ ^ '''"^ STctpTOy TZ0\VS ^pwS ' 
 
 ch S^xofiat Trpo5(jTots fiiffShv 6(pei\6fiGyov * 
 atrnls efxol TVfjL^ov KAtr/jios fi4yas' aJpe to, Hepffuu 
 X^^o) Keis atSyiv Sds AaKeSatfi6i/ios. 
 
 Few, however, of the epigrams rise to the altitude of those 
 I have been lately quoting. Their subjects are for the most 
 part simple incidents, or such as would admit of treatment 
 
 Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state, 
 
 Thy high-bom dames, thy crowded gate ? 
 
 There's not a ruin left to tell 
 
 Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell. 
 
 The Nereids o'f thy doilble sea 
 
 Alone remain to wail for thee." 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith. 
 
 * " Seeing the martyred corpse of Sparta's king 
 
 Cast 'mid the dead, 
 Xerxes around the mighty limbs did fling 
 
 His mantle red. 
 Then from the shades the glorious hero .cried ; 
 "Not mine a traitor's guerdon. 'Tis my pride 
 This shield upon my grave to wear. 
 
 Forbear ^ 
 
 Your Persian gifts ; a Spartan I will go 
 
 To Death below." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 403 
 
 within the space of an engraved gem. The story of the girls 
 who played at dice upon the house-roof is told very prettily in 
 the following lines (ii. 31) : * 
 
 ai TfiaaaX irore iraTSej 4v aWiiKauriv tiroifui' 
 
 Koi Tpls fifv x^'P''" ej8a\oj' Ki$ov, ^\8e Se ■a-aa-ai' 
 is iiiav • 7j 5* ^7€Aa K\yjpoj/ 6^et\6fiej'ov ' 
 
 ex -riyeos yap ScXittoj/ eireir' &\t(r6€ irdarnia 
 Sitrfiopos, f s S' atSqi' flXvOev, ws eXax^v 
 
 4i/(cu5^)s d K\rjpos irtf KaK6v • is Se -rh \ifov 
 out' €ir;^ai QfTjTOis eijtnoxoi oijre X^P^s- 
 
 Not the least beautiful are those which describe natural 
 objects. The following six lines are devoted to an oak-tree 
 (ii. 14) : t 
 
 K\uyes aTrri6pioL Taj/a?)? ^pvhs^ eiiirKtov St^os 
 
 ai/dptiffiv &Kprirov Kavfia. (pvXaffaofiivois, 
 evTreroKoi, Kepdfiaiv tTreyav^epoi, oiKia (parruv, 
 
 otKia reTriywy, eySioi aKpefi6vGS, 
 Kijfie rhv vfierepaKTiy vtroKKivBivra K6fjt>aiffbi^ 
 
 ^i5ffafT0', aKTivtcv TjeXlov tpvydda. 
 
 Here again is a rustic retreat for lovers, beneath the spread- 
 ing branches of a plane (ii. 43) : J 
 
 * " One day three girls were casting lots in play, 
 
 Which first to Achercm should take her way ; 
 
 Thrice with their sportive hands they threw, and thrice 
 
 To the same hand returned the fateful dice ; 
 
 The maiden lauglied when thus her doom was told • 
 
 Alas ! that moment from the roof she rolled ! 
 
 So sure is Fate whene'er it bringeth bale, 
 
 While, prayers and vows for bliss must ever fail. " 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 t " Aerial branches of tall oak, retreat 
 
 Of loftiest shade for those who r.hun the heat, 
 
 With foliage full, more close than tiling, where 
 
 Dove and cicada dwell aloft in air. 
 
 Me, too, that thus my head beneath you lay, 
 
 Protect, a fugitive from noon's fierce ray. " 
 
 GoLDWiN Smith,, 
 + *' Wide-spreading plane-tree, whose thick branches meet 
 
 To form for lovers an obscure retreat, 
 
404 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 a x^oeph. trXardi'tp^Tos iS* us eKpvi^e tpiKevvrwv 
 
 6pyia, T&c iepkp </)i/Wa5a reiro/xeya ■ 
 afjupl S' &p' aKpefiSuefftriv lots KexapKTpLeuos &paiS 
 
 7}fi€piSos Kaprjs fiSrpvs atroKpefxaTctt ' 
 ovTus, S wKardviffTe^ (p6ots ' x\oepo 5' arrh ffeto 
 
 <l)vWas ael ueddot robs TLa^irjs odpovs. 
 
 Of the same sort are this invitation (ii. 529) :* 
 
 ^piffffovffav TtvKivQLS Kwvov vTrb Zetp^pois, 
 Kai (Tot KaxJ^'d^ovfftv ifxois irapct vdixaffi <r{>pty^ 
 SeKyofiivav S$€t KUfxa /caret ^\e<pdp(ov. 
 
 and this plea from the oak-tree to the woodman to be spared 
 (ii. 63) : t 
 
 Sifep T^v $ahdvai]/ rav fjiarepa (peiSeo KtJirreic, 
 
 (jyeiSeo • y7ipa\4av 8* eKKepAt^e Trirvv^ 
 ^ Tte^Kav^ "^ T^i/5e iroXvffT^Kexov iraKiovpov, 
 
 ^ irpivoj/, ^ T&y ava\4av KSfJMpov ' 
 rTiKoBi 5* Iftrxe Bpvbs -rKK^Kvi/ ' KoKvai yap e\€^ai/ • 
 
 a^iy iis TrpSrepai fiarepes iyrl Bp6es. 
 
 Among the epigrams which seem to have been composed in 
 the same spirit as those exquisite Httle capricci engraved by 
 
 Whilst with thy foliage closely intertwine 
 The curling tendrils of the clustered vine, 
 Still mayst thou flourish, in perennial green, 
 To shade the votaries of the Paphian queen.'' 
 
 W. Shepherd. 
 * ' ' Come sit you down beneath this towering tree. 
 
 Whose rustling leaves sing to the zephyr's call ; 
 My pipe shall join the streamlet's melody, 
 And slumber on your charmed eyelids fall." 
 
 J. A. Symonds, M.D. 
 t " Spare the parent of acorns, good wood-cutter, spare ! 
 
 Let the time-honoured fir feel the weight of your stroke. 
 The many-stalked thorn, or acanthus worn bare. 
 
 Pine, arbutus, ilex — but touch not the .oak I 
 Far hence be your axe, for our grandams have sung 
 JHow the oaks. are the mothers from whom we all sprung.'' 
 
 Merivale. 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 405 
 
 Greek artists upon gems, few are more felicitous than the three 
 following. The affection of the Greeks for the grasshopper is 
 one of their rriost charming ndiveth. Everybody knows the 
 pretty story Socrates tells about these Mouo-Jii' ■!rpocl>fjTnt, or 
 Prophets of the Muses, in the Phadrus — how they once were 
 mortals who took such delight in the songs of the Muses that, 
 " Singing always, they never thought of eating and drinking, 
 until at last they forgot and died : and now they live again in 
 the grasshoppers, and this is the return the Muses make to 
 them — they hunger no more, neither thirst any more, but are 
 always singing from the moment that they are born, and 
 never eating or drinking." Thus the grasshoppers were held 
 sacred in Greece, like storks in Germany and robins in 
 England. Most of the- epigrams about them turn on this 
 sanctity. The following is a, plea for pity from an imprisoned 
 grasshopper to the rustics who have caught him (ii. 76) :* 
 
 TtTTTe jLte T'iiv tpiKeprjfj.oi' avatb4i Troifieves Aypy 
 
 TCTTiya SpofTepwv €\k6t' ott' aKpefi6v(iiv, 
 T^v NvfKpau TTopoSiTiV oLTiSSya, K^fiart fi4(T<T(p 
 
 oUpeirt Kal iTKiepats ^ov0a \a\evuTa ydirais y 
 ijviSe KoX Kix^T\v Koi k6(T<j'u(I>ov, TivlSe rSffCovs 
 
 )^cipas, apoupaiifis apirayas eviroplrjs ' 
 KapirSiv d7i\7ir7jpas i\e7v 04fj.is " ^\Kvt eKeivovsr • 
 
 <p6\\cov Kal x^oepTJs rls (p66i/os itrrl Spdaou ; 
 
 Another epigram on the same page tells how the poet found 
 a grasshopper struggling in a spider's web and released it 
 with these words: — "Go safe and free with your sweet 
 
 * ' ' Why, ruthless, shepherds, from my dewy spray 
 In my lone haunt, why tear me thus away ? 
 Me, the Nymphs' wayside minstrel, whose sweet note 
 O'er sultry hill is heard and shady grove to float ? 
 Lo ! where the blackbird, thrush, and greedy host 
 Of starlings fatten at the farmer's cost ! 
 With just revenge those ravages pursue : 
 Butgnidge not my poor leaf and sip of grassy dew." 
 
 Wrangham. 
 
4o6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 voice of song ! " But the prettiest of all is this long story 
 (ii. 119) :* 
 
 EiivofioVj &TroWov, ail fiiv oladii fie, ttcSs ttot* iviKwy 
 
 ^irdpTLv b AoKphs eydJ • irevflojueVois 5*. iveTrai, 
 ou6kov iv KtOdptf if6fj.ov eKpeKov, 4v 5e fieffsvffc^ 
 
 t^8a p.0L ;topScin/ ithaKipov aireKpefiaaev ' 
 Kai fioi (p66yyov eroifiov b-jraviKa Kaiphs airprei, 
 
 €19 aKocts pvOfiuv TurpeKes ovk ^ysfiev ' 
 Kai Tts &7r' auTOfidTu Ktddpas enl Trrj^vy iwtirTar 
 
 T€TTi^ ^'K\'fjpov Toi/Wnres dpfiovias ' 
 nvpa yip tj irivaxraov W ipSo/idTas 5e /j.eKoifuu' 
 
 XopScis, T^v toiJtw yripvv eKLXpdfJiida • 
 irphs ydp ifxav fieXeTav d fieffafi^pivhs oijpefftp (p5hs 
 
 77JV0 rb iroifievLKbv ii>64yfxa fj.t6T)pfi6(raro, 
 Kai fL€V St6 (pBeyyotTO, abv ^il/i^xois tiJko vevpa7s 
 
 r(p p.eTa^aWopi^ytp ffufifieTeirnrTe Bp6(p ' 
 - -. ToijyeKa ffvfiiptivtp fief exat X^i*^^ ' ^^ ^^ TviruiQels 
 
 XdhKeos dfierepas e^eff virep KLddpas. 
 
 So friendly were the relations of the Greeks with the grass- 
 hoppers. We do not wonder when we read that the Athenians 
 wore golden grasshoppers in their hair. 
 
 Baths, groves, gardens, houses, temples, city-gates, and 
 works of art furnish the later epigrammatists with congenial 
 subjects. The Greeks of the Empire exercised much ingenuity 
 in describing — whether in prose, like Philostratus, or in verse, 
 
 * ' ' Phoebus, thou know'st me — Eunomus, who beat 
 S partis : the tale Tor others I repeat : 
 Deftly upon my lyre I played and sang, 
 When 'mid the song a broken harp-string rang, 
 And seeking for its sound, I could not hear 
 The note responsive to my descant clear. 
 Then on my lyre, unasked, unsought, there flew 
 A grasshopper, who filled the cadence due ; 
 For while six chords beneath my fingers cried, 
 He with his tuneful voice the seventh supplied : 
 The mid-day songster of the mountains set 
 His pastoral ditty to my canzonet ; 
 And when he sang, his modulated throat 
 Accorded with the lifeless strings I smote. 
 Therefore I thank my fellow-minstrel : — he 
 Sits on my lyre in brass, as you may see." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 407 
 
 like Agathias — the famous monuments of the maturity of 
 Hellas. In this style the epigrams on statues are at once the 
 most noticeable and the most abundant. The cow of Myron 
 has at least two score of little sonnets to herself. The horses 
 of Lysippus, the Zeus of Pheidias, the Rhamnusian statue of 
 Nemesis, the Praxitelean Venus, various images of Eros, the 
 Niobids, Marsyas, Ariadne, Herakles, Alexander, poets, 
 physicians, orators, historians, and all the charioteers and 
 athletes preserved in the museums of Byzantium or the groves 
 of Altis, are described with a minuteness and a point that 
 enable us to identify many of them with the surviving monu- 
 ments of Greek sculpture. Pictures also come in for their due 
 share of notice. A Polyxena of Polycletus, a Philoctetes of 
 Parrhasius, and a Medea, which may have been the original of 
 the famous Pompeian fresco, are specially remarkable. Then 
 again cups engraved with figures in relief of Tantalus or Love, 
 seals inscribed with Phoebus or Medusa, gems and intaglios 
 of all kinds furnish matter for other epigrams. The following 
 couplet on the amethyst turns upon an untranslateable play of 
 words (ii. 149) : 
 
 Amid this multitude of poems it is difficult to make a fair or 
 representative selection. There are, however, four which I 
 cannot well omit. The first is written by Poseidippus on a lost 
 statue of I.ysippus (ii. 584) : * 
 
 tU Tr66ev 6 irXi,iTTi\s ; %iKvtivios ■ oifvo/ua 5?; tIs ; 
 
 AiffLTTTTOS. ffit Se ris ; Kaiphs & irav^afidTt^ p ' 
 tItttc 8" iir' &Kpa p4$7iKas ; otel Tpoxda. t1 Si rapa-obs 
 
 TToffalp exeis Supveis ; 'linaf* vtniviiiios ' 
 
 *" The sculptor's country ? Sicyon. His name? 
 Lysippus. You ? Time that all things can tame. 
 Why thus a-tiptoe? I have halted never. 
 Why ankle-winged ? I fly like wind for eve 
 
4o8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 X^ifi Se SefiTep^ t1 (piptts ^upSv ; i,pSpi<n Seiyixa 
 
 Q)S a/cju^s irdffTjs o^iirepos reKedto. 
 7] Se k6^t} tI Kar' o\l/iv ; vravrtdtravrt \aj3e(r0ai. 
 
 1/7^ ^ /a Ta^6irt6ev 5' €is t1 <^aAaKpa ireAei ; 
 T^|/ 7ap Offal TTTTivoitn iTapaBp^^GVTd jue iroaffXtf 
 
 oiris €0* ifieipaiv Bpd^sTat ^SirtQev, 
 
 Totivex ^ T€XviT7]S ff€ 5t€7rA.OO'€I/ ; iiveKev u/iwj/, 
 
 leije ■ (foi iv irpoBvpois BrJKe StSaaKa\iriv. 
 
 The second describes the statue of Nemesis erected near 
 ]^arathon by Pheidias — that memorable work by which the 
 greatest of sculptors recorded the most important crisis in the 
 world's history (ii. 573) :* 
 
 \aorvTios Tfi'ii^as irerpoTiJ^OiS aKiffi 
 M7}Bos iTTOvTOirSpevaev, '6irws dvSpef/ceAa revert, 
 
 TT}s Kar' A6T]vaiwv ffv^^oXa KafjLfioviTjs ' 
 as 5e Sa'i^o/xevots MapaO^f apreKTuwe Tlepffats 
 
 Kol vies vypoirdpovv x^^f^f^^" otfiaKeois, 
 eleaav 'ABp^tXTeiav aptcrr^Stves 'Afl^^at, 
 
 daifiov' vneptpidKois avTi-iraKov fjiepSnwv ' 
 ayTiTaKavTe6o3 rets eXiriSas ' eijul Se koI vvv 
 
 NIkt] ^EpexOeiSais, 'Affffvplots Ne/xetrts. 
 
 But in your hand that razor ? 'Tis a pledge 
 
 That I am keener than the keenest edge. 
 
 Why falls your hair in front ? For him to bind 
 
 Who meets me. True : but then you're bald behind ? 
 
 Yes, because when with winged feet I have passed 
 
 'Tis vain upon my back your hands to cast. 
 
 Why did the sculptor carve you ? For your sake 
 
 Here in the porch I stand ; my lesson take." 
 
 ' My snowy marble from the mountain rude 
 A Median sculptor with sharp chisel hewed, 
 And brought me o'er the sea, that he might place 
 A trophied statue of the Greeks' disgrace. 
 But when the routed Persians heard the roar 
 Of Marathon, and ships swam deep in gore, 
 Then Athens, nurse of heroes, sculptured me 
 The queen that treads on arrogance to be : 
 I hold the scales of hope : my name is this — 
 Nike for Greece, for Asia Nemesis." 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 409 
 
 The third (\elebrates the Aphrodite of Praxiteles in Cnidos, 
 whose garden has been so elegantly described by Lucian 
 (ii. 560) : * 
 
 T] na0£7} KudcpEia 5i' oyS^uaTos H KviSov ijXfle 
 
 irdiTri 8* adpiiffaffa TrepiffKevrtp iv\ x^PVt 
 (fjQey^aro ' irov yvi^v^v eiSe fie Tlpa^iTcKys ; 
 
 The fourth is composed with much artifice of style upon a 
 statue of Love bound by his arms to a pillar (ii. 567) : t 
 
 ■K\a'i€ 5v(T€K(pvKra)s ffcpiyx^^'i-s x^P^^i &KpiTe Satfiov^ 
 
 (TU)(ppo<rvyas v^pt&ra^ ippeyoK\6Tre, A77(rT& XoytfffioVj 
 
 •jrravhv Trvp, ypvx^s rpavp.' auparoi^, '^'Epas ' 
 Bfarois fiev,\iJtTis effrl yotov d aits, &Kptre, 5e<rfx6s' 
 
 ^ (r(^i7;t0eis KutpeTs Trefiire Ktras avefxois ' 
 hy Se fipoTOLs onpi\aKros ^ye(/)\e7€s iv </>pe(ri irupffhv 
 
 &6pei vvv inrit ffStv ff^^vvvp-evov ^aKpiwv. 
 
 * " Bright Cytherea thought one day 
 To Cnidos she'd repair, 
 Gliding across the watery way 
 To view her image there. 
 But when arrived, she cast around 
 
 Her eyes divinely bright, 
 And saw upon that holy ground 
 The gazing world's delight, 
 Amazed, she cried— while blushes told 
 
 •The thoughts that swelled her breast — 
 Where did Praxiteles behold 
 
 My form ? or has he guessed ? " 
 
 J. H. Memvale. 
 
 ' Weep, reckless god ; for now your hands are tied : 
 Weep, wear your soul out with the flood of tears, 
 Heart-robber, thief of reason, foe to pride. 
 Winged fire, thou wound unseen the soul that sears ! 
 Freedom from grief to us these bonds of \thine. 
 Wherein thou wailest to the deaf winds, bring : 
 Behold ! the torch wherewith thou mad'st us pine, 
 Beneath thy frequent tears is languishing ! " 
 
4IO THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 In bringing this review of the Anthology to a close I feel 
 that I have been guilty of two errors. I have wearied the 
 reader with quotations. Yet I have omitted countless epigrams 
 of the purest beauty. The very riches of this flower-garden of 
 little poems are an obstacle to its due appreciation. Each 
 epigram in itself is perfect,' and ought to be carefully and 
 lovingly studied. But it is difficult for the critic to deal in 
 a single essay with upwards of four thousand- of these precious- 
 gems. There are many points of view which with adequate 
 space and opportunity might have been taken for the better 
 illustration of the epigrams. Their connection with the later 
 literature of Greece, especially with the rhetoricians, P-hilos- 
 tratus, Alciphrdn, and Libanius, many of whose best com- 
 positions are epigrams in prose — as Jonson knew when he 
 turned them into lyrics ; their still more intimate sesthetic 
 harmony with the engraved stones and minor bas-reliefs, 
 which bear exactly the same relation to Greek sculpture as the 
 epigrams to the m.pre august forms of Greek poetry ; the lives 
 of their authors ; the historical events to which they not unfre- 
 quently allude — all these are topics for elaborate dissertation. 
 
 Perhaps, however, the true secret of their charm is this ; 
 that in their couplets, after listening to the choric raptures of 
 triumphant public art, we turn aside to hear the private 
 utterances, the harmoniously modulated whispers of a multi- 
 tude of Greek poets telling us their inmost thoughts and 
 feelings. The unique melodies of Meleager, the chaste and 
 exquisite delicacy of Callimachus, the clear dry style of 
 Straton, Plato's unearthly subdety of phrase, Antipater's per- 
 fect polish, the good sense of Palladas, the fretful sweetness 
 of Agathias, the purity of Simonides, the gravity of Poseid- 
 ippus, the pointed grace of Philip, the few but mellow tones 
 of Sappho and Erinna, the tenderness of Simmias, the biting 
 wit of I^ucillius, the sunny radiance of Theocritus — all these 
 good things are ours in the Anthology. But beyond these 
 
THE ANTHOLOGY. 411 
 
 perfumes of the poets known to fame, is yet another. Over 
 very many of the sweetest and the strongest of the epigrams is 
 written the pathetic word inliaitoTuv — without a master. Hail 
 to you, dead poets, unnamed, but dear to the Muses ! Surely 
 with Pindar and with Anacreon and with Sappho and with 
 Sophocles the bed of flowers is spread for you in' those 
 " black- petalled hollows of Pieria " where Ion bade farewell 
 to Euripides. 
 
412 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 THE ' GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 
 
 Separation between the Greeks and us. — Criticism. — Nature. — The Olive. 
 — Greek Sculpture. — Greek Sense of Beauty. — Greek Morality. — 
 Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit. 
 
 The Greeks had no past : " no hungry generations trod them 
 down '' : whereas the multitudinous associations of immense 
 antiquity envelop all our thoughts and feelings.* " O Solon, 
 Solon," said the priest of Egypt, " you Greeks are always 
 children ! " The world has now grown old ; we are grey 
 from the cradle onwards, swathed with the husks of outworn 
 creeds, and rocked upon the lap of immemorial mysteries. 
 The travail of the whole earth, the unsatisfied desires of many 
 races, the anguish of the death and birth of successive civiliza- 
 tions, have passed into our souls. Life itself has become a 
 thousandfold more complicated and more difficult for us than 
 it was in the springtime of the world. With the increase of 
 the size of nations, poverty and disease and the struggle for 
 bare existence have been aggravated. How can we then 
 bridge over the gulf which separates us from the Greeks ? 
 How shall we, whose souls are aged and wrinkled^ with the 
 
 * This chapter was written with the purpose of simply illustrating the 
 CBsthdic spirit of the Greeks. I had no intention of writing a complete 
 essay on the spirit of the Greeks as illustrated by their history and 
 philosophy. To the last chapter of my Second Series of Studies of Greek 
 Poets, I may refer the reader for a supplemental treatment of several 
 important points suggested in these pages. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 413 
 
 long years of humanity, shake hands across the centuries with 
 those young-eyed, young-limbed immortal children ? Can we 
 make criticism our Medea — bid the magnificent witch pluck 
 le'aves and flowers of Greek poetry and art and life, distilling 
 them for us to bathe therein and regenerate our youth like 
 iEson? 
 
 Like a young man newly come from the wrestling-ground, 
 anointed, chapleted, and vefy calm, the Genius of the Greeks 
 appears before us. Upon his soul there is no burden of the 
 world's pain ; the creation that groaneth and travaileth to- 
 gether, has touched hiio with no sense of anguish ; nor has 
 he yet felt sin. The pride and tlie' strength of adolescence 
 are his — audacity and endurance, swift passions and exquisite 
 sensibilities, the alternations of sublime repose and boyish 
 noise, grace, pliancy, and stubbornness and power, love of all 
 fair things and splendours of the world, the frank enjoyment 
 of the open air, free merriment, and melancholy well beloved. 
 Of these adolescent qualities, of this clear and stainless per- 
 sonality, this conscience whole and pure and reconciled to 
 Nature, what survives among us now ? The imagination must 
 be strained to the uttermost before we can begin to sympathize 
 with such a being. The blear-eyed mechanic, stifled in a 
 hovel of our sombre northern towns, canopied through all the 
 year with smoke, deafened with wheels that never cease to 
 creak, stiffened by toil in one cramped posture, oblivious of 
 the sunlight and gi-een fields, could scarcely be taught even to 
 envy the pure clear Ufe of Art made perfect in Humanity, 
 which was the pride of Hellas. His soul is gladdened, if at 
 all, by a glimpse of celestial happiness far off : the hope that 
 went abroad across the earth so many centuries ago, has raised 
 his eyes to heaven. How can he comprehemd a mode of ex- 
 istence in which the world itself was adequate to all the wants 
 of the soul, and when to yearn for more than life aifords was 
 reckoned a disease? 
 
414 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 We may tell of blue ^gean waves, islanded with cliffs 
 that seem less real than clouds, whereon the temples stand, 
 burning like gold in sunset or turning snowy fronts against the 
 dawn. We may paint high porches of the gods, resonant wfth 
 music and gladdened with choric dances ; or describe per- 
 petual sunshine and perpetual ease — no work from year to 
 year that might degrade the body or impair the mind, no 
 dread of hell, no yearning after heaven, but summer-time of 
 youth, and autumn of old age, and loveless death bewept and 
 bravely borne.* The life of the schools, the theatre, the 
 wrestling-ground, the law-courts ; generous contests on the 
 Pythian or Olympian plains ; victorious crowns of athletes 
 or of patriots ; Simonidean epitaphs and funeral orations of 
 Pericles for fallen heroes ; the prize of martial prowess or 
 poetic skill ; the honour paid to the pre-eminence of beauty ; — 
 a,ll these things admit of scholar-like enumeration. Or we 
 may recall by fancy the olive-groves of the Academy ; discern 
 Hymettus pale against the burnished sky, and Athens guarded 
 by her glistening goddess of the mighty brow — Pallas, who 
 spreads her shield, and shakes her spear above the labyrinth 
 of peristyles and pediments in which her children dwell. 
 Imagination can lead us to the plane-trees on Cephisus' shore, 
 the labours of the husbandmen who garner dues of corn and ■ 
 oil, the galleys in Peiraean harbourage. Or with the Lysis 
 and the' Charmides beneath our eyes, we may revisit the 
 haunts of the wrestlers and the runners, true-born Athenians, 
 
 * But, while we tell of these good things, we must not conceal the 
 truth that they were planted, like exquisite exotic flowers, upon the black 
 rank soil of slavery. That is the dark background of Greek life. Greek, 
 slaves may not have been worse off than other slaves — may indeed most 
 probably have been better treated than the serfs of feudal Germany and 
 Spanish Mexico. Yet who can forget the stories of Spartan Helotry, or 
 the torments of Syracusan stone-quarries, or the pale figiire of Phsedon 
 rescued, true-born Elean as he was, by Socrates from an Athenian 
 brothel ? 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 415 , 
 
 fresh from the bath and crowned with violets, chaste, vigo- 
 rous, inured to rhythmic movements of the passions and the 
 soul. 
 
 Yet after all, when the process of an elaborate, culture has 
 thus been toilsomely accomplished, when we have trained our 
 soul to sympathize with that which is so novel and so strange 
 and yet so natural, few of us can fairly say that we have touched 
 the Greeks at more than one or two points. Novies Styx 
 interfusa coercet : between us and tl^em crawls the nine times 
 twisted stream of Death. The history of the human race is 
 one j and without the Greeks' we should be nothing. But just 
 as an old man of ninety is not the same being as the boy of nine- 
 teen,T-nay, cannot even recall to memory how and what he felt 
 when the pulse of manhood was yet gathering strength within 
 his veins, — even so now civilized humanity looks back upon 
 the youth of Hellas and wonders what she was in that blest 
 time. A few fragments yet remain from which we strive to re- 
 construct the past. Criticism is the product of. the weakness 
 as well as of the strength of our age. In the midst of our 
 activity we have so little that is artistically salient or character- 
 istic in our life, that we are not led astray by our own indi- 
 viduality or tempted to interpret the past wrongly by making it 
 square with the present. Impartial clearness of judgment in 
 scientific research, laborious antiquarian zeal, methodic scrupu- 
 lousness in preserving the minutest details of local colouring, 
 and an earnest craving to escape from the dreary present of 
 common-place respectability into the spirit-stirring freedom of 
 the past — these are qualities of the highest value which our 
 century has brought to bear upon history. They make up in 
 some measure for our want of the creative faculties which more 
 productive but less scientific ages have possessed, and enable 
 those who have but little original imagination to enjoy imagi- 
 native pleasures at second hand, by living as far as may be in 
 the clear light of antique beauty. 
 
4i6 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 The sea, the hills, the plains, the sunlight of the South, to- 
 gether with some ruins which have peopled Europe with phan- 
 toms of dead art, and the reliques of Greek literature, are our 
 guides in the endeavour to restore the past of Hellas. Among 
 rocks golden with broom-flowers, murmurous with bees, burning 
 with anemones in spring and oleanders in summer, and odorous 
 through all the year with thyme, we first assimilate the spirit of 
 the Greeks. In the , silence of mountain valleys, thinly grown 
 with arbutus and pine and oak, open at all seasons to pure 
 air, and breaking downwards to the sea, we understand the 
 apparition of Pan to Pheidippides, and divine the secret of an 
 architecture which aimed at definition before all things. The 
 Bay of Naples, the coast of Sicily, are instinct with the .sense 
 of those first settlers, who coasting round the silent promon- 
 tories, ran their keels upon the shelving shore, and drew them 
 up along the strand, and named the spot Neapolis or Gela. 
 The boys of Rome were yet in the wolfs cavern. Vesuvius 
 was a peaceful hill on which the olive and the vine might slumber. 
 The slopes of Pozzuoli were green with herbs, over which no 
 lava had been poured. Wandering about Sorrento, the spirit of 
 the Odyssey is ours. Those fishing-boats with lateen sail are 
 such as bore the heroes from their ten years' toil at Troy. 
 Those shadowy islands caught the gaze of ^neas straining for 
 the promised land. Into such clefts and rents of rock strode 
 Herakles and Jason when they sought the golden apples and . 
 the golden fleece. Look down. There gleam the green and 
 yellow dragon-scales, coiled on the basement of the hills, and 
 writhing to each curve and cleavage of the chasm. Is it a 
 dream? Do we in fact behold the mystic snake, or in the 
 twilight do those lustrous orange-trees deceive our eyes ? Nay : 
 there are no dragons in the ravine— only thick boughs, and 
 burnished leaves, and snowy bloom, and globes of glitteriiig 
 gold. Above them on the cliff sprout myrtle-rods, sacred 
 to Love, myrtle-branches, with which the Athenians wreathed 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 417 
 
 their swords in honour of Harmodius. Lilies and jonquils 
 and hyacinths stand, each straight upon his stem — a youth, as 
 Greeks imagined, slain by his lover's hand, or dead for love of 
 his own loveliness, or cropped in love's despite by death, that 
 is the foe of love. Scarlet and white anemones are there, some 
 born of Adonis' blood, and some of Aphrodite's tears. All 
 beauty fades : the flowers of earth, the bloom of youth, man's 
 strength, and woman's grace, all wither and relapse into the 
 loveless and inexorable grave. This the Greeks knew, min- 
 gling mirth with melancholy, and love with sadness, their 
 sweetest songs with elegiac melodies. 
 
 Beneath the olive-trees, among the flowers and ferns, move 
 stately maidens and bare-chested youths. Their eyes are starry- 
 softened or flash fire, and their lips are parted to drink in the 
 breath of life. Some are singing in the fields, an antique world- 
 old monotone of song. Was not the lay of Linus, the burden 
 of fxaKpal ral Spvtc (3 Mfi'uXica (High are the oak-trees, O 
 Menalcas), some such canzonet as this? These late descen- 
 dents of Greek colonists are still beautiful — like moving statues 
 in the sunlight and the shadow of the boughs. Yonder tall 
 straight girl, whose pitcher, poised upon her head, might have 
 been filled by Electra or Chrysothemis with lustral waters for a 
 father's tomb, carries her neck as nobly as a Fate of Pheidias. 
 Her body sways upon the hips, where rests her modelled arm ; 
 the ankle and the foot are sights to sit and gaze at through a 
 summer's day. And where, if not here, shall we meet with 
 Hylas and Hyacinth, with Ganymede and Hymenseus, in the 
 flesh ? As we pass, the laughter and the singing die away. 
 Bright dresses and pliant forms are lost. We stray onward 
 through the sheen and shade of olive-branches. 
 
 The olive was Athene's gift to Hellas, and Athens carved 
 its leaves and berries on her drachma with the head of Pallas 
 and her owl. The light which never leaves its foliage, silvery 
 beneath and sparkling from the upper surface of burnished 
 
4i8 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 green, the delicacy of its stem, which in youth and middle and 
 old age retains the distinction of finely accentuated form, the 
 absence of sombre shadow on the ground beneath its branches, 
 might well fit the olive to be the symbol of the purity of classic 
 Art. Each leaf is cut into a lance-head of brilliancy, not 
 jagged or fanciful or woolly like the foliage of northern trees. 
 There is here no mystery of darkness, no labyrinth of tortuous 
 shade, no conflict of contrasted forms. Excess of light some- 
 times fatigues the eye amid those airy branches, and we long 
 for the repose of gloom to which we are accustomed in our 
 climate. But gracefulness, fertility, power, radiance, pliability, 
 are seen in every line. The spirit of the Greeks itself is not 
 more luminous and strong and subtle. The colour of the 
 olive-tree, again, is delicate. Its pearly greys and softened 
 greens in no wise interfere with the lustre which is the true 
 distinction of the tree. Clear and faint like Guide's colours in 
 the . Ariadne of St. Luke's at Rome, distinct as the thought in 
 a Greek epigram, the olive-branches are relieved against the 
 bright blue of the sea. The mountain slopes above are clothed 
 by them with light as with a raiment : clinging to knoll and 
 vale and winding creek, rippling in hoary undulations to the 
 wind, they wrap the hills from feet to flank in lucid haze. 
 Above the olives shine bare rocks in steady noon or blush 
 with dawn and evening. * Nature is naked and beautiful beneath 
 the sun — like Aphrodite, whose raiment falls waist-downward 
 to her sandals on the sea, but whose pure breasts and foreheg-d 
 are unveiled. 
 
 Nature is thus the first,chief element by which we are enabled 
 to conceive the .spirit of the Greeks. The key to their mytho- 
 logy is here. Here is the secret of their sympathies, the well- 
 spring of their deepest thoughts, the primitive potentiality of all 
 
 * See the introduction to my chapter on Athens in Sketches in Italy 
 and Greece for the characteristic quality given to Attic landscape by grey 
 timestone mountain ranges. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 419 
 
 they have achieved in art. What is Apollo but the magic of 
 the sun whose soul is light ? What is Aphrodite but the love- 
 charm of the sea ? What is Pan but the mystery of Nature, 
 the felt and hidden want pervading all? What again are 
 those elder, dimly-discovered deities, the Titans and the brood 
 of Time, but forces of the world as yet beyond the touch and 
 ken of human sensibilities ? But Nature alone cannot inform 
 us what that spirit was. For though tlie Greeks grew up in 
 scenes which we may visit, they gazed on them with Greek 
 eyes, eyes different from ours, and dwelt upon them with 
 Greek minds, minds how unlike our own ! Unconsciously, in 
 their long and unsophisticated infancy, the Greeks absorbed 
 and assimilated to their own substance that loveliness which it 
 is left for us only to admire. Between them and ourselves — 
 even face to face- with mountain, sky, and sea, unaltered by 
 the lapse of years — flow the rivers of Death and Lethe, and 
 the mists of thirty centuries of human life are woven like a 
 veil. To pierce that veil, to learn even after the most partial 
 fashion how they transmuted the splendours of the world into 
 aesthetic forms, is a work which involves the further interro- 
 gation of their sculpture and their literature. 
 
 The motives of that portion of Greek sculpture which brings 
 us close to the incidents of Greek life are very simple. A 
 young man binding a fillet round his head ; a boy drawing a 
 thorn from his foot ; a girl who has been wounded in the 
 breast, raising her arm to show where the sword smote her ; 
 an athlete bending every sinew to discharge the quoit ; a line 
 of level-gazing youths on prancing horses, some faring forward 
 with straight eyes, one turning with bridle-hand held lightly to 
 encourage his companion, another with loose mantle in the act 
 to mount, others thrown back to rein upon their haunches 
 passionate steeds ; a procession of draped maidens bearing 
 urns : — such are the sculptured signs by which we read the 
 placid physical fulfilment of Greek life. That the serenity of 
 
420 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 satisfied existence is an end in itself and that death in the 
 plenitude of vigour is desirable, the reliefs of Pheidias and the 
 ^ginetan marbles teach us. In these simple but consummate 
 works of art the beauty of mere health, animal enjoyment, 
 temperance, mental vigour, and heroic daring mingle and 
 create one splendour of a human being sensitive to all influ- 
 ences and vital in every faculty. Excess can nowhere be 
 discovered. Compare with these forms for a moment the Genii 
 painted by Michael Angelo upon the roof of the Sistine 
 Chapel. Over them has passed the spirit with its throes : la 
 ■maladie de la pmsk is there. Of no Phoebus and no Pallas are 
 they the servants ; but ministers of prophets and sibyls, angels 
 of God fulfilling His word, they incarnate the wrestlings and 
 the judgments and the resurrections of the soul. Now take a 
 banquet-scene from some Greek vase. Along the cushioned 
 couch lie young men, naked, crowned with myrtles : in their 
 laps are women, and at their sides broad jars of honeyed wine. 
 A winged Eros hovers over them, and their lips are opened to 
 sing a song of ancient love. Yet this is no forecast of Borgia 
 revels in Rome, or of the French Regent's Pare aux Cerfs. 
 When Autolycus entered the symposium of Xenophon, all 
 tongues were stricken dumb ; man gazed at man in wonder 
 at his bloom of adolescence. When Charmides, heading the 
 troop of wrestlers, joined Socrates in the palaestra, the soul of 
 the philosopher was troubled ; he saw the boy's breast within 
 the tunic, and blushed, and felt his heart aflame. Simoetha, in 
 the Pharmaceutria of Theocritus, beheld the curls of youths 
 on horseback like laburnum-flowers, and their bosoms whiter 
 than the moon. 
 
 We need not embark on antiquarian, or metaphysical, or 
 historical discussions in order to understand the sense of 
 Beauty which was inherent in the Greeks. Litde hints 
 scattered by the wayside are far more helpful. Take for 
 example the Clouds of Aristophanes, and after reading the 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 421 
 
 speech of the Dikaios Logos, stand beneath the Athlete of 
 Lysippus,* in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican. « Fresh and 
 fair in beauty-bloom you shall pass your days in the wrestling- 
 ground, or run races beneath the sacred olive-trees, crowned 
 with white reed, in company with a pure-hearted friend, 
 smelling of bindweed and leisure hours and the white poplar 
 that sheds her leaves, rejoicing in the prime of spring, when 
 the plane-tree whispers to the lime." This life the Dikaios 
 Logos offers to the young Athenian, if he will forgo the law- 
 courts and the lectures of the sophists and the house of tlie 
 hetaira. This life rises above us imaged in the sculptor's 
 marble. The athlete, tall and stately, tired with running, lifts 
 one arm, and with his strigil scrapes away the oil with which 
 he has anointed it. His fingers hold the die that tells his 
 number in the race. Upon his features there rests no shade 
 of care or thought, but the delicious languor of momentary 
 fatigue, and the serenity of a nature in harmony with itself A 
 younger brother of the same lineage is the Adorante of the 
 Berlin Museum. His eyes and arms are raised to heaven. 
 Perfect in humanity, beneath the lightsome vault of heaven 
 he stands and prays — a prayer of joy and calm thanksgiving, 
 a Greek prayer — no Roman adoration with veiled eyes and 
 muttering Ups, no Jewish prostration with the putting off of 
 sandals on the holy ground, no Christian genuflexion like the 
 bending of wind-smitten reeds beneath the spirit-breath of 
 sacraments. lamos in the mid-waves of Alpheus might have 
 prayed thus when he heard the voice of Phoebus calHng to him 
 and promising the twofold gift of prophecy. All the statues 
 of the athletes bear the seal and blossom of ntoippoavvri — that 
 
 * This statue, usually called the Apoxyomenos, may possibly be a copy 
 in marble of the Athlete of Lysippus which Tiberius wished to remove 
 from the Baths of Agrippa. The Romans were so angry at the thought 
 of being deprived of their favourite, that Tiberius had to leave it where it 
 stood. 
 
422 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 truly Greek virtue, the correlative in morals to the passion for 
 Beauty. " When I with justice on my lips flourished," says 
 the Dikaios Logos, " and modesty was held in honour, then a 
 boy's voice was not heard ; but they went orderly through the 
 streets in bands together from' their quarters to the harp- 
 player's school, uncloaked and barefoot, even though it snowed 
 like meal." Of this sort are the two wrestling boys at 
 Florence, whose heads and faces form in outline the ellipse 
 which is the basis of all beauty, and whose strained muscles 
 exhibit the chord of masculine vigour vibrating with tense 
 vitality. If we in England seek some living echo of this 
 melody of curving lines, we must visit the water-meadows 
 where boys bathe in early morning, or the playgrounas of our 
 public schools in summer, or the banks of the Isis when the 
 eights are on the water, or the riding-schools of young soldiers. 
 We cannot reconstitute the elements of Greek life : but here 
 and there we may gain hints for adding breath and pulse and 
 movement to Greek sculpture. 
 
 The charm which the simplest things acquired under the 
 hand of a Greek artificer may be seen in the adornment of a 
 circular hand-mirror.* Ivy-branches, dividing both ways from 
 the handle, surround its rim with a delicate tracery of sharp-cut 
 leaf and corymb. The central space is occupied by four 
 figures — on the right the boy Dionysus, who welcomes his 
 mother in heaven, on the left Phoebus and a young Paniscus 
 playing on the double pipes. Grace can go no further than in 
 the attitude and the expression of this group. Dionysus is 
 thrown backward ; both his arms are raised to encircle the 
 neck of Semele, who bends to kiss his upturned lips. A neck- 
 lace with pendent balls defines the throat of the stripling where 
 it meets his breast, suggesting by some touch beyond analysis 
 the life that pulses in his veins. He has armlets too below 
 the elbow, and his rich hair ripples in ringlets between cheek 
 
 * Engraved in MuUer's Denkmdler der alien Kunst, Plate XLI. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 423 
 
 and shoulder. The little Paniscus is seated, attending, only 
 to his music, with such childish earnestness as shows that his 
 whole soul goes forth in piping. Phoebus, half-draped and 
 lustrous, stands erect beside a slender shaft of laurel planted on 
 the ground. Such are the delights of Paradise to which, as 
 Greeks imagined, a deity might welcome his earthly mother, 
 leading her by the hand from Hades. It would be easy enough 
 to fill a volume with such descriptions — to unlock the cabinets 
 of gems and coins, or to linger over vases painted with the 
 single figure of a' winged boy in tender red upon their black- 
 ness, and showing the word KAAOS negligently written at the 
 side. 
 
 But it is more to the purpose to note in passing that delicate 
 perception of associated qualities which led the Greeks to 
 maintain a sympathy between cognate deities, while distinguish- 
 ing to the utmost their specific attributes. Aphrodite, Er6s, 
 Dionysus, Hermes, Hermaphrodite, the Graces, the Nymphs, 
 the Genius of Death — these, for example, though carefally 
 individualized, are still of one kindred. They blend and 
 mingle in a concord of separate yet interpenetrating beauties. 
 Between the radiant Aphrodite of Melos, who in her trium- 
 phant attitude seems to be an elder sister of the brazen-winged 
 Victory of Brescia, and the voluptuous Aphrodite Callipygos, * 
 a whole rhythm of finely modulated forms may be drawn out, 
 each one of which corresponds to some mood or moment of the 
 enamoured spul. Her immortal son in the Eros of Pheidias t 
 is imaged as the "first of gods," flEwc Trpwrioroc, upstarting in- 
 his slenderness of youth from Chaos — the keen fine light of 
 dawn dividing night /rom day. In the Praxitelean Cupid, 
 
 " that most perfect ol" antiques, 
 They call the Genius of the Vatican, 
 Which seems too beauteous to endure itself 
 In this rough world — " 
 
 * Neapolitan Museum. t British Museum. 
 
424 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 he becomes the deity described by Plato in the Phcedrus, an 
 incarnation of the tenderest passion, tinged, in spite'of his own 
 radiance, with sadness. What thought has made him sorrow- 
 ful and bowed his head? Perhaps Theognis can tell us : * — 
 
 &^poves &p6pu)not Kal vfl'Trioi, oVre Oavdvras 
 K\alov<r' ovS' fi;87)j &v6os iarowifiivov. 
 
 The winged boy, again, bending his bow against the hearts of 
 lovers, with his lion's skin beside him, t is the Eros of Agathon 
 — he who delights to walk dehcately upon the tender places of 
 the soul, Next we find him asleep upon his folded pinions, 
 the mischievous child who rewarded Anacreon's hospitality by 
 wounding him, and who gave to the thirsty heart of Meleager 
 scalding tears to drink. How in the last place are we to dis- 
 tinguish Love from Harpocrates,- the silent, with one finger 
 on his lip ? 
 
 Turn next to Hermes. When the herald of Olympus met 
 Priam midway between Troy-town and Achilles' tent, he was, 
 says Homer, 
 
 irpSnov {nnivijTTj, rouirep X'^^P^^^'^^'^V ^^, — 
 
 " like a young man, with budding beard, whose bloom is in the 
 prime of grace.'' This adolescent loveliness belongs through- 
 out to Hermes. As the genius of the gymnasium, J he is a 
 divinized athlete, scarcely to be distinguished from the quoit- 
 throwers and the runners he protects. The Hermes, who woos 
 a nymph with his arm around her waist, § has Persuasion for 
 his parent, Again the seated Hermes with wings upon his 
 
 * " Ah, vain and thoughtless men, who wail the dead, 
 But not one tear for youth's frail blossom shed ! " 
 
 t Of this statue there are many slightly different copies. The best is 
 in the Vatican, 
 
 t See the so-called Antinous of the Belvedere. 
 
 § Engraved in Clarac, Musee de Sculpture, Planches, vol. iv. pi. 666 c. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 425 
 
 ankles is the swiftness of auroral light incarnate. Nor lastly, 
 when, with chlamys thrown upon his shoulder and petasos 
 slung from his neck, he leads souls to Hades, caduceus in 
 hand, has he lost this quality of youth and lustre. He upon 
 Aphrodite begat Hermaphrodite. Their union — the union of 
 athletic goodliness and consummate womanhood — produced a 
 blending of two beauties forgotten by an oversight of nature. 
 There exists a Term or Hermes* which combines Aphrodite, 
 Priapus, and Hermaphrodite in one — three heads upon a 
 common pedestal — forming atrinity of sensuous joy. 
 
 How various again is Bacchus, passing from the stately 
 mildness of the bearded Indian god to the luxuriant wanton- 
 ness of Phales, the " night-wandering reveller '' ! At one time 
 you can scarcely distinguish him from young Apollo or young 
 Herakles ; at another his brows and tresses have the chastity of 
 Love ; again he assumes the voluptuous form which befits the 
 sire by Aphrodite of Priapus. The fascination of the grape- 
 juice lends itself to all qualities that charm the soul of man. 
 Yet another of these cognate deities may be mentioned. That 
 is the Genius of Eternal Slumber, \ reclining with arms folded 
 above his head, upright against a tree. To judge- by his 
 attitude, he might be Bacchus, wine-drowsy, as in a statue of 
 the gallery at Florence. Ix)oking at his long tresses, we call 
 him Love : and what deities are of closer kin than Love and 
 Death ? His stately form, not unlike that of Phoebus, makes 
 us exclaim in ^schylean language (5 fli'irMrt ivniciv (O Death, 
 the Healer !) But he is stronger and more perdurable, less 
 swift to move, less light of limb, than any of these. It was 
 a deep and touching intuition of the Greeks which prompted 
 them to ascribe these kinships to Death. Who knows even 
 now whether the winged and sworded Genius of the Ephesus 
 column be Love or Death ? To trace such analogies further 
 
 * Engraved in Clarac, Musie de Sculpture, Planches, vol. iv. pi. 613. 
 + Louvre. 
 
426 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 would be fanciful : it is enough to pluck at random a few 
 blossoms, and to scatter them for lovers. To Winckelmann 
 and the antiquaries may be left the accurate distinctions of the 
 Greek deities. Without seeking to confound these, but rather 
 studying them most carefully, we may yet discern by passing 
 hints that purity of tact which enabled the Greeks to interpret 
 in their statuary every nuance of feeling and of fancy, and to 
 mark by subtlest suggestions their points of agreement as well 
 as of divergence. 
 
 When Hippolytus in Euripides first appears upon the scene, 
 he greets Artemis with these words : — 
 
 ' ' Lady, for thee, ■ this garland have I woven 
 
 Of wilding flowers, plucked from an unshorn meadow, 
 Where neither shepherd dares to feed his flock, 
 Nor ever scythe hath swept, but through the grasses 
 Unshorn in spring the bee pursues her labours. 
 And maiden modesty with running rills 
 Waters the garden." 
 
 Before the Meleager of the Vatican, so calm and strong and 
 redolent of forest odours, this orison rings in our memory, and 
 the Diana of the Louvre seems ready to spring forth, and loose 
 her hind, and call on the hero to hunt with her. The life of 
 woods and mountains was divined and interpreted with ex- 
 quisite sensibility by the Attic sculptors. Children of the 
 earth, and conscious of their own recent birth from the bosom 
 of the divine in nature, they loved all fair and fresh things of 
 the open world fraternally. Therefore they could "carve the 
 mystery of the Praxitelean Faun, * whose subtle smile is a lure 
 for souls, and the voluptuous sleep of the Barberini Faun,t 
 who seems to have but half escaped from elemental existence, 
 and still tb own some kindred with unconscious things. The 
 joy of the shepherd who carries on his back a laughing child 
 at Naples ; the linked arms of Bacchus and Ampelus ; the • 
 
 * The Capitol. t Glyptothek, Munich. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 427 
 
 young Triton * whoblows his horn over the crests of the waves, 
 and calls upon his brethren the billows to rejoice with him, as 
 he bears his nymph away ; the subtle charm of double life in 
 Hermaphrodite, in whom two sexes are hidden, like a bitter 
 and a sweet almond in one beautiful but barren husk ; the 
 frank sensuality of Silenus and Priapus ; the dishevelled hair 
 and quivering flanks of Msnads ; the laughter of Eros wreathed 
 around with coils of the enamoured dolphin's tail ; f the pride 
 of the eagle soaring heavenward with Ganymede among his 
 plumes : from tokens like these, together with the scenes of 
 the Bacchae and the Cyclops of Euripides, the Idylls of 
 Theocritus, and the dedicatory epigrams of the Anthology, 
 we learn of what sort was the sympathy of the Greeks for 
 nature. Their beautiful humanity is so close to the mother 
 ever youthful of all life, to the full-breasted earth, that they 
 seem calling through their art to the woods and waves and 
 rivers, crying to their brethren that still tarry : " Come forth, 
 and be like us ; begin to feel and know your happiness ; put 
 on the form of flesh in which the world's soul reaches con- 
 sciousness " ! Humanity defined upon the borderland of nature 
 is the life of all Greek sculpture. Even the gods are films of 
 fleshly form emergent on the surface of the elements. The circle 
 of the sun dilates, and Phoebus grows into distinctness with 
 the glofy round him ; out of the liquid ether gaze the divine 
 eyes of Zeus ; Poseidon rises breast high from the mirrors of 
 the sea. Man for the first time conscious of his freedom, yet 
 clinging still to the breasts that gave him suck, like a flower 
 rooted to the kindly earth, expresses all his thought and feeling 
 in the language of his own shape. " The Greek Spirit," says 
 Hegel, "is the plastic artist forming the stone into a work of 
 art." And this work of art is invariably the image of a man 
 or woman. The most sublime aspirations, the subtlest in- 
 
 * The Vatican. t Naples. 
 
428 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 tuitions, the darkest forebodings, the audacities of passion, the 
 freedom of the senses, put on personaHty in Hellas and assume 
 a robe of carnal beauty. In Egypt and the Orient humanity 
 lay still upon " the knees of a mild mystery." The Egyptians 
 had not discovered the magic word by means of which the 
 world might be translated into the language of mankind : their 
 art still remained within the sphere of symbolism which excludes 
 true sympathy. The Jews had concentrated their thought upon 
 moral phenomena : in their jealousy of the abstract purity of 
 the soul they banned the arts as impious. 
 
 Theognis tells us that when the Muses and the Graces came 
 down from Olympus to the marriage-feast of Cadmus and 
 Harmonia, they sang a song with this immortal burden :* 
 
 Stti KaX^i', (piKov iffri' rh 5' ov Ka\hv oii tpiKov itTriv. 
 
 This Strikes the keynote to the music of the Greek genius. 
 Beauty is the true province of the Greeks, their indefeasible 
 domain. But their conception of beauty was both more com- 
 prehensive and more concrete than any which a modem race, 
 perturbed by the division of the flesh and spirit, conscious of 
 Jewish no less than Greek tradition, can attain to. When 
 Goethe expressed his theory of life in the following couplet : 
 
 " Im Ganzen Guten Schbnen 
 Resolut zu leben : " f 
 
 he supplied us with a correct definition of the spirit which 
 governed Hellas. Beauty to the Greeks was one aspect of 
 the universal synthesis, commensurate with all that is fair in 
 manners and comely in morals. It was the harmony of man 
 with nature in a well balanced and complete humanity, the 
 
 * See above, p. 98 note, for an English version of tliis line. 
 
 t " To live with steady purpose in the whole, the Good, the Beautiful." 
 These two lines are generally misquoted— Schbnen being exchanged for 
 Wahren, Beauty for Tnith. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 429 
 
 bloom of health upon a conscious being, satisfied, as flowers 
 and beasts and stars are satisfied, with the conditions of tem- 
 poral existence. It was the joy-note of the whole world, heard 
 and echoed by the sole being who could comprehend it — Man. 
 That alone was beautiful which uttered a sound in unison with 
 the whole ; and all was good which had this quality of con- 
 cord. To be really beautiful was to be an integral part of the 
 world's symphony, to be developed fully in all parts, without 
 an undue preference for the soul before the body or for the 
 passions before the reason — to maintain the rhythm and the 
 measure and the balance of those faculties which characterize 
 man, nature's masterpiece. The profounder reaches of this 
 thought were explored by philosophers, who figured the soul 
 as a Harmony, who conceived of God as the Idea of Beauty, 
 or who, like Marcus Aurehus, defined virtue to be a living and 
 enthusiastic syrfipathy with Nature. In the region of social 
 life it led the Greeks to treat the State as an organic whole, 
 which might be kept in preservation by the balance of its 
 several forces. In the sphere of religion it produced a race 
 of gods, each perfect in his individuality, distinct and self- 
 contained, but blending, like the colours of the prism, in the 
 white light of Zeus, who was the whole.* In actual life it 
 facilitated the development of characters which, by the free 
 expansion of personaHty and by a conscious culture, were 
 themselves consummate works of art. Just as the unity of the 
 Greek religion was not the unity of the One but of the Many 
 blent and harmonized in the variety that we observe in Nature, 
 so the ideal of Greek Hfe imposed no commonplace conformity 
 to one fixed standard on individuals, but each man was en- 
 couraged to complete and realize the type of himself to the 
 
 * The Greek Pantheon, regarded from one point of view, represents an 
 exhaustive psychological analysis. Nothing in human nature is omitted ; 
 but each function and each quality of man is deified. To Zeus as the 
 supreme reason all is subordinated. 
 
430 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 utmost. Pericles devoted his energy to the perfecting of 
 statesmanship and became the incarnation of the Athenian 
 spirit ; Pindar was a poet through and through ; for the 
 Olympian victor it was enough to be a splendid animal ; 
 Pheidias lived in concord with the universe by his exclusive 
 devotion to his art. Thus, formed and modelled to the utmost 
 perfection each of his own kind, these characters, when con- 
 templated together from a distance, like the deities of Olympus, 
 present, in the harmony that springs from difference, an ideal 
 of Humanity. The Greek no less than the Christian might 
 need to cut off his right hand, — to debar himself like Pericles 
 from the pleasures of society, — or to cast aside the sin. that 
 doth so easily beset us — like Socrates who trampled under foot 
 his sensual instincts, — for the attainment of that self-evolution 
 which gave him the right to be one note in the concord of the 
 whole, one colour in the prism of humanity. The one thing 
 needful to him was, not belief in the unseen, nor of necessity 
 holiness, but a firm resolve to comprehend and cultivate his 
 own capacity, and thus to add his quota to the sum of beauty 
 in the world. 
 
 The Greeks were essentially a nation of artists. Of the in- 
 finite attributes of God, of the infinite qualities of the whole, they 
 clearly apprehended Beauty. That they conceived largely and 
 liberally, not narrowly, as we are wont to do. And like con- • 
 summate craftsmen, they did thoroughly whatsoever in the 
 region of things plastic their hands found to do — so thoroughly 
 that men have only done the work again in so far as they have 
 followed the Greek rule. When we speak of the Greeks as 
 an aesthetic nation, this is what we mean. Guided by no 
 supernatural revelation, with no Mosaic law for conduct, they 
 trusted their aitrdno-ie, delicately trained and preserved in a 
 condition of the utmost purity. This tact is the ultimate 
 criterion in all matters of art — a truth which we recognize in 
 our use of the word aesthetic, though we too often attempt to 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 431 
 
 import the alien elements of metaphysical dogmatism and 
 moral prejudice into the sphere of beauty. This tact was also 
 for the Greeks the ultimate criterion of ethics. 'Xymivtiv ^xiv 
 apiuTov avSpl OvaT^, says Simonides.* A man in perfect health 
 of mind and body, enjoying the balance of mental, moral, and 
 physical qualities, which health implies, carried within himself 
 the norm and measure of propriety. Those were the days 
 when " love was an unerring light, and joy its own security.'' 
 What we call the conscience, our continual reference to the 
 standard of the Divine will, scarcely existed for the Greek. But 
 instead of it he. had for a guide this true artistic sensibility, 
 developed by centuries of training, fortified by traditional 
 canons of good taste and prudence, and subject to continual 
 correction by reciprocal comparison and dialectical debate. 
 The lawgiver, the sculptor, the athlete, the statesman, the 
 philosopher, the poet, the warrior, the musician, each added 
 something of his own to the formation of a kou >) a'ia-driaic, or 
 common taste, by which the individual might regulate his 
 instincts. 
 
 To suppose that the Greeks were not a highly moralized 
 race is perhaps the strangest misconception to which religious 
 prejudice has ever given rise. If their morality was aesthetic and 
 not theocratic, it was none the less on that account humane 
 ■ and real. The, difficulty for the critic is to seize exactly that 
 which is Hellenic — enduring and common to the race, not 
 transient and due to individuals — in their religion and their 
 ethics. In order to appreciate the first fine flavour of the 
 Greek intellect it is necessary to go back to Homer, who 
 represents a period when the instincts of the Hellenes had not 
 been sophisticated by philosophical reflection or vitiated by 
 contact with Asiatic luxury. Homer joins hands with Pheidias 
 and Aristophanes and Sophocles in a chain of truly Greek 
 
 * See above, p. 131, for a translation of this Scolion attributed to 
 Simonides. 
 
432 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 tradition. Biit side by side with them there runs a deeper anci 
 more mystic strain. The blood-justice .of the Eumenides, the 
 asceticism of Pythagoras, the purificatory rites of Empedocles 
 and Epimenides, the fetichistic belief in a jealous God, and 
 the doctrine of hereditary guilt in Theognis, Herodotus, and 
 Solon, are fragments of primitive or Asiatic superstition unhar- 
 monized with the serene element of the Hellenic spirit. At 
 the same time the orgiastic cult of Dionysus, and the volup- 
 tuous worship of the Corinthian Aphrodite are intrusions from 
 without. To eliminate such cruder moral and religious notions 
 was the impulse of the vigorous Greek mind. Yet at one critical 
 moment of history mysticism attained a Titanic development 
 and bid fair to force the Hellenic genius into uncongenial 
 regions. The Persian war, by its lesson of a mortal peril escaped 
 miraculously, quickened the spiritual convictions of the race.* 
 It was tlien that ^schylus produced his tragedy of Retribution, 
 whereof the motto is rw Spairairt TrafleTi', and Pindar sounded 
 with an awful sense of mystery the possible abysses of a future 
 life. Greece, after the struggle with Xerxes, passed through 
 a period of feverish exaltation, in which her placid contem- 
 plation of the beauty of the world was interrupted. She, whose 
 vocation it was to see only by the light of the serene and 
 radiant sun, seemed on the verge of becoming a clairvoyante. 
 But the balance was soon righted. Even in Pindar, moral 
 
 * I have already touched on this point at page 204. It is indeed 
 very interesting to trace the growth of the morality of Nemesis and the 
 Divine ipB6i>os in the earlier Greek authors, its purification by jEschylus 
 and still further siibsequent refinement by Sophocles, finally its rejection by 
 Plato, who says emphatically • " Envy has no place in the heavenly choir. " 
 A childish fear of the divine government pervaded the Greeks of the age 
 of Herodotus. This by the Dramatists was exalted to a conception of the 
 holy and the jealous God. But the good sense of the Greeks led the 
 philosophers to eliminate from their theory of the world even the sublime 
 theosophy of vEschylus. The soul of man, as analyzed by Plato in the 
 Republic, has only to suffer from the inevitable consequences of its own 
 passions. Plato theorizes the humanity implicit in Homer. 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 433 
 
 mysticism is, as it were, encysted, like an alien deposit, in 
 the more vital substance of esthetic conceptions. Sophocles 
 corrects the gloomy extravagance of ^schylus. The law of 
 tragedy in Sophocles is no longer that the doer of a deed must 
 suifer, but that he who offends unwittingly will be accounted 
 innocent. Euripides shifts the ground of moral interest from 
 religious beliefs to sophistical analysis. Meanwhile Aristo- 
 phanes, the true Athenian conservative, is equally opposed to 
 metaphysical subtleties and to superstitious fancies ; while 
 Socrates directs his polemic against sciolism in philosophy and 
 childishness in mythology, without thinking it worth while to 
 attack the Itiaiiaifxovia. of the mystics. In Plato's- ethics the 
 highest altitude of sane Greek speculation is attained. Aristo- 
 phanes reflects the clearest image of Greek versatility and 
 cheerfulness. Pericles, freed by Anaxagoras from foolish fears, 
 realizes the genuine Greek life of cheerful, self-reliant activity. 
 The drama of Sophocles sets forth a complete view of human 
 destiny as conceived by the most perfect of Greek intellects. 
 Antigone dares to trust her o^vn aio-flijo-is in opposition to unna- 
 tural law. CEdipus suffers no further than his own quality of 
 rashness justifies. When we arrive at Aristotle, who yields the 
 abstract of all that previously existed in the Greek mind, we 
 see that the scientific spirit has achieved a perfect triumph. 
 His science is the correlative in the region of pure thought to 
 the Art which in Sculpture had pursued an uninterrupted course 
 of natural evolution. 
 
 In the adolescent age of the Greek Genius, mankind, not 
 having yet arrived at spiritual self-consciousness, was still as 
 sinless and simple as any other race that lives and dies upon 
 the globe, forming a part of the natural order of the world. 
 The sensual impulses, like the intellectual and the moral, were 
 then held void of crime and harmless. Health and good taste 
 controlled the physical appetites of man, just as the appetites 
 of animals are regulated by unerring instinct. In the same 
 
 F F. 
 
434 THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 way a standard of moderation determined moral virtue and 
 intellectual excellence. But in addition to this protective 
 check upon the passions, a noble sense of the beautiful, as that, 
 which is balanced and restrained within limits, prevented the 
 Greeks of the best period from diverging into Asiatic ex- 
 travagance of pleasure. Licence was reckoned barbarous, and 
 the barbarians were slaves by nature, ^u<7£i lovXoi : Hellenes, 
 born to be free men, took pride in temperance. Their 
 craxbpoavvri, coextensive as a protective virtue with the whole 
 of their to kuXov, was essentially Greek — the quality beloved 
 by Phoebus, in whom was no dark place nor any flaw. With 
 the Romans, humanity, not having yet transcended the inerely 
 natural order, remaining unconscious of a higher religious ideal, 
 and at the same time uncontrolled by exquisite Greek sense 
 of fitness, began to wax wanton. To the state of Paradisal 
 innocence succeeded the Fall. The bestial side of our mixed 
 nature encroached upon the spiritual, and the sense of beauty 
 was perturbed by lust. That true health, without which the 
 a'iaOntrte is a false guide, failed ; no fine law of taste corrected 
 appetite. It was at this moment that Christianity convicted 
 mankind of sin. The voice of God was heard crying in the 
 garden. The unity of man with nature was abruptly broken. 
 Flesh and spirit were defined and counter-posed. Man, 
 abiding far from God in his flesh, sought after God in his 
 spirit. His union with God was no longer an actual state of 
 mundane innocence, but a distant, future, dim, celestial possi- 
 bilitv, to be achieved by the sacrifice of this fair life of earth. 
 " Your lives are hid with Christ in God." Together with this 
 separation of the flesh and spirit wrought by Christianity, 
 came the abhorrence of beauty as a snare, the sense that 
 carnal affections were tainted with sin, the unwilling toleration 
 of sexual love as a necessity, the idealization of celibacy and 
 solitude. At the same time humanity acquired new faculties 
 and wider sensibilities. A profounder and more vital feeling 
 
THE, GENIUS OF GREEK ART. 435 
 
 of the mysteries of the Universe arose. Our Hfe on earth was 
 seen to be a thing by no means rounded in itself and perfect, 
 but only one term of an infinite and unknown series. It was 
 henceforward impossible to translate the world into the language 
 of purely aesthetic form. This stirring of the spirit marks the 
 transition of the ancient to the modern world. 
 
 At the time of the Renaissance the travail was well-nigh 
 over ; the lesson had been learned ; mankind began to resent 
 the one-sidedness of monastic Christianity, and to yearn once 
 more for the fruit and flowers of the garden which was Greece. 
 Yet the spirit and the flesh still remained in unreconciled 
 antagonism. Over the gate of Eden the arm of the Seraph 
 waved his terrible sword. But humanity in rebellion, while 
 outcast from God and convicted of sin, would not refrain from 
 plucking the pleasure of the sense. This was the time of the 
 insolence of the flesh, when Antichrist sat in St. Peter's chair, 
 and when man, knowing his nakedness, submitted to the 
 fascinations of the siren, Shame. The old health of the Greeks 
 was gone : to recover that was impossible. Christ crowned 
 with thorns, the Sabbaths and ablutions of the Jews, the 
 " thundrous vision " of St. Paul had intervened and fixed a 
 gulf between Hellas and modern Europe. In that age the 
 love of beauty became a tragic disease like the plague which 
 Aphrodite sent in wrath on Phsedra. Even Michael Angelo at 
 the end of a long life spent in the service of the noblest art, 
 remembering Savonarola, felt constrained to write : 
 
 " Now hath my life across a stormy sea, 
 
 Like a frail bark, reached that wide port where all 
 Are bidden ere the final judgment fall, 
 Of good and evil deeds to pay the fee. 
 Now know I well how that fond phantasy, 
 
 Which made my soul the worshipper and thrall 
 Of earthly art, is vain ; how criminal 
 Is that which all men seek unwillingly. 
 F F 2 
 
436 THE GREEK POETS., 
 
 Those amorous thoughts which were so lightly dressed. 
 What are they when the double death is nigh ? 
 The one I know for surej the other dread. 
 
 Painting nor sculpture now can lull to rest 
 My soul, that turns to His great love on high, 
 Whose arms to clasp us on the cross were spread." 
 
 In his work Sculpture is forced to express what lies beyond its 
 province — the throes and labour of the spirit. Michael Angelo 
 was not a plastic character in the sense in which Hegel used 
 this phrase. His art reflects the combat of his nature and his 
 age ; whence comes what people call its extravagance and 
 emphasis. Raphael from the opposite side introduced Pagan 
 form and feeling into his purely religious work of art ; whence 
 came what people call his decadence. Puritan England, 
 Inquisition-ridden Spain, and critical Germany offer still more 
 permanent signs of this deep-seated division in the modem 
 world between the natural instincts and the spiritual aspira- 
 tions of humanity. Even to the present day this division 
 distorts our sense of beauty and prevents our realizing an 
 ideal of art. 
 
 After all, the separation between the Greeks and us is due 
 to something outside us rather than within— principally to the 
 Hebraistic culture we receive in childhood. We are taught to 
 think that one form of religion contains the whole truth, and 
 that one way of feeling is right, to the exclusion of the hu- 
 manities and sympathies of races no less beloved of God and 
 no less kindred to ourselves than were the Jews. At the same 
 time the literature of the Greeks has for the last three centuries 
 formed the basis of our education ; their thoughts and senti- 
 ments, enclosed like precious perfumes in sealed vases, spread 
 themselves abroad and steep the soul in honey-sweet aromas. 
 Some will always be found, under the conditions of this double 
 culture, to whom Greece is a lost fatheriand, and who, passing 
 through youth with the mal du pays of that irrecoverable land 
 upon them, may be compared to visionaries, spending the 
 
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART. . 437 
 
 nights in golden dreams and the days in common duties. Has 
 then the modern man no method for making the Hellenic 
 tradition vital instead of dream-like — invigorating instead of 
 enervating ? There is indeed this one way only — to be natural. 
 We must imitate the Greeks, not by trying to reproduce their 
 bygone modes of life and feeling, but by approximating to 
 their free and fearless attitude of mind. While frankly recog- 
 nising that much of their liberty would for us be licence, and 
 that the moral progress of the race depends on holding with 
 a firm grasp what the Greeks had hardly apprehended, we 
 ought still to emulate their spirit by cheerfully accepting the 
 world as we find it, acknowledging the value of each human 
 impulse, and aiming after virtues that depend on self-regulation 
 rather than on total abstinence and mortification. To do this 
 in the midst of our conventionalities and prejudices, our inter- 
 minglement of unproved expectations and unrefuted terrors, is 
 no doubt hard. Yet if we fail of this, we lose the best the 
 Greeks can teach us. 
 
 In the struggle of the adverse forces, felt so strongly ever 
 since the reactionary age of the Renaissance, there is, however? 
 now at least a hope of future reconciliation. A mediator may 
 be confidently expected — even if he has not already appeared 
 in Goethe, who, holding science in his right hand as a lamp, 
 fearlessly explored the world, and lived a Greek life in the 
 nineteenth century. The motto 
 
 " Im Ganzen Guten Schonen 
 Resolut zu leben " 
 
 is not a strictly Christian sentence. St. Paul had said : " To 
 me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." But it is essen- 
 tially human. The man who lives by it is restored to that 
 place in the world which he has a right to occupy, instead of 
 regarding himself as an alien and an outcast from imagined 
 heavefl. Science must be our redeemer. Science which 
 
438 . THE GREEK POETS. 
 
 teaches man to know himself, and explains to him his real 
 relation to Nature. Through scientific certainty God and the 
 human conscience shall at last be reconciled, not in the merely 
 paradisal unity which the Greeks, enjoyed, not in the spiritual 
 union of an unrealized future promised by Christianity, but in 
 a natural union. The healthy acceptance of the physical law^ 
 to which we are subordinated, need not prevent our full con- 
 sciousness of moral law. It is true that the beautiful Greek 
 life, as of leopards and tiger-lilies and eagles, cannot be restored. 
 Yet neither need we cling to the convent or the prison 
 life of early Catholicity. The new freedom of man must 
 consist of submission to the order of the universe as it exists. 
 The final discovery that thare is no antagonism between our 
 physical and spiritual constitution, but rather a most intimate 
 Connection, must place the men of the future upon a higher 
 level and a firmer standing-ground than the Greeks. They by 
 experience and demonstration will know what the Greeks felt 
 instinctively. Their aia-drjais will be fortified by the recog- 
 nition of immutable Law. The tact of healthy youth will be 
 succeeded by the calm reason of maturity. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 SAPPHO'S HYMN TO APHRODITE. 
 See above, p. 140. 
 
 « Glittering-throned, undying Aphrodite, 
 Wile-weaving daughter of high Zeus, I pray thee. 
 Tame not my soul with heavy woe, dread mistress, 
 
 Nay, nor with anguish ! 
 But hither come, if ever erst of old time 
 Thou didst incline, and listenedst to my crying. 
 And from thy father's palace down descending, 
 
 Camest with golden 
 Chariot yoked : thee fair swift-flying sparrows 
 Over dark earth with multitudinous fluttering, 
 Pinion on pinion, thorough middle ether 
 
 Down from heaven hurried. 
 Quickly they came like light, and thou, blest lady, 
 Smiling with clear undying eyes didst ask me 
 What was the woe that troubled me, and wherefore 
 
 I had cried to thee : 
 What thing I longed for to appease my. frantic 
 Soul ; and whom now must I persuade, thou askedst, 
 Whom must entangle to thy love, and who now, 
 
 Sappho, hath wronged thee ? 
 Yea, for if now he shun, he soon shall chase thee ; 
 Yea, if he take not gifts, he soon shall give them ; 
 Yea, if he love not, soon shall he begin to 
 
 Love thee, unwilling. 
 Come to me now too, and from tyrannous sorrow 
 Free me, and all things that my soul desires to 
 Have done, do for me, queen, and let thyself too 
 
 Be my great ally ! 
 
440 APPENDIX. 
 
 DESDEMONA'S DEATH. 
 
 In the first edition of this book I had printed the words in the 
 text, p. 288, thus : dying by her husband's knife. I have now 
 altered the phrase because the manner of Desdemona's death is 
 uncertain. Othello intended to put an end to her by smothering ; 
 and he had certainly begun to execute this purpose with the 
 pillow, when her struggles proved too terrible, arid at the same 
 time a knocking was heard at the door. He then exclaimed : 
 
 " I that am cruel am yet merciful ; 
 I would not have thee linger in thy pain : — 
 So, so ! " 
 
 At this point there is no new stage-direction to indicate that he 
 used any other means to kill her but suffocation. Yet the fact that 
 she afterwards regained sufficient breath to cry out, 
 
 " O falsely, falsely murdered ! " 
 
 seems to show that, if Shakspere vividly conceived her death- 
 scene, he meant Othello at the words So, so ! to draw the dagger, 
 with which he afterwards stabs himself, arid to plunge it into 
 Desdemona's breast ; since it is impossible that a woman, not 
 otherwise injured, should so far recover from being stifled as to 
 speak several lines articulately, and then die without further 
 violence. The editors of the Variorum Shakspere (1803, vol. xix. 
 p. 500) call attention to this point, and quote the Sic, sic of Virgil's 
 Dido : and it may be added that Retzsch, in the Illustrations of 
 Shakspere, represents Othello as stabbing Desdemona at the 
 moment when the knocking is heard at the door. It is probable 
 that he had seen it thus upon the stage : for it was the custom till 
 lately so to play the last act of Othello. Against the theory here 
 advanced, it may be urged that Othello's settled intention was to 
 stifle, not to stab ; that his exclamation after the murder. Act V. 
 Scene 2, hne 205, accords with stifling better than stabbing ; and 
 finally, that the impossibihty of Desdemona's recovering her 
 voice after stifling is no argument, seeing that to expect accuracy 
 in such details, even from a poet so vivid in imagination as 
 Shakspere, is uncritical. I have thought the subject of sufficient 
 interest to justify this lengthy and somewhat irrelevant note. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 THEOCRITUS : IDYLL XXIX. 
 
 See above, p. 319. 
 
 " Wine, my boy, and truth — so runs the proverb : 
 Therefore in our cups we must be truthful ; 
 And what lies within my soul, I'll tell you. 
 Not with all your little heart you love me ; 
 Well I know, for half my life is hidden 
 In the thought of you, the rest is ruined. 
 When you smile, the days are bright above me 
 Like a god's ; you frown, and all is darkness. 
 Is it right your lover thus to torture ? 
 Listen to my words, for I am older ; 
 Heed, and you shall profit much, and praise me. 
 Make one nest upon one sheltering tree-top, 
 Where no savage beast may come and harm you : 
 Now upon this bough to-day you settle. 
 And next day on that, for ever flitting ; 
 Let but some one see and praise your beauty, 
 Straight you treat him to a three years' friendbhip. 
 And your old love is a friend of three days. 
 Yea, your haughtiness is more than human ! 
 But I bid you seek the same man always ; 
 For if thus you live, you shall be reverenced 
 In the city ; yea, and Love shall bless you. 
 Love who tames the heart of whom it likes him, 
 Love who turned my steely soul to softness. 
 By this little mouth I kiss, I warn you 
 
 • 'Twas but yesterday you were a baby ; 
 And old age o'ertakes us in a twinkling, 
 Wrinkled age : yet no man may recapture 
 Youth, for youth hath wings upon his shoulder, 
 And our fee are slow to catch the flying. 
 This I bid you mind, and be more gentle, 
 And your lover recompense with loving ; 
 That, when manhood shades your cheek, together 
 We may live like Achilleian comrades. 
 
 ,441 
 
442 APPENDIX., 
 
 But if to the winds you cast my warning, 
 Murmur in your heart — why will you plague me ? 
 Though this hour I'd fetch for you the golden 
 Apples, or drag Cerberus from Hades, 
 Then I'd let you call, nor stir to meet you 
 At the doorstep ; cured of tyrannous longing." 
 
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