% t I PA 3 ./V\S- iSAo LIBRARY OP USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. % HISTORY OP THE LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE, TO THE j PERIOD OF ISOCRATES. TRANSLATED. FROM THE GERMAN MANUSCRIPT OF K. 0. MULLER, ^ , PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF GOTTINGEN, s * »v BY GEORGE CORNWALL LEWIS, M.A., LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD, AND THE REY. JOHN WILLIAM DONALDSON, B.D., LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. NEW EDITION, CORRECTED. PUBLISHED UNDER THE SUPERINTENDENCE OF THE SOCIETY FOR THE DIFFUSION OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE. LONDON:—ROBERT BALDWIN, 47, PATERNOSTER ROW. LONDON GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON ANGEL C0URT, SKINKER STREET, i + f s! 1 bUbiil I THE TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE. The following History of Greek Literature has been composed by Professor K. 0. Muller of Gottingen, at the suggestion of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and for its exclusive use. The work has been written in German, and has been translated under the superintendence of the Society, but the German text has never been published, so that the present translation appears as an original work. Before the publication of the present work, no history of Greek Literature had been published in the English language. The Society thought that, since the Greek Literature is the source from which the literature of the civilized world almost exclusively derives its origin; and since it still contains the finest productions of the human mind in Poetry, History, Oratory, and Philosophy; a history of Greek Literature would be properly introduced into the series of works published under their superintendence. The present work is intended to be within the compass of the general reader; but at the same time to be useful to scholars, and particularly to persons commencing or pursuing the study of the Greek authors. Agreeably with this view, the chief original authorities for the a 2 IV THE TRANSLATORS’ PREFACE. statements in the text are mentioned in the notes: but few references have been given to the works of modern critics, either foreign or native. The translation has been executed in correspondence with the author, who has read and approved of the larger part of it. Mr. Lewis was the translator of the first 22 chapters; and the rest of the version was executed by Mr. Donaldson. CONTENTS. t PAGE Introduction—S ubject and Purposes of the Work . 1 FIRST PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. THE RACES AND LANGUAGE OF THE GREEKS. / § ]. General account of the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family . • • 3 § 2. Origin and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages—multiplicity of their grammatical forms . ...... 4 § 3. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other lan¬ guages of the Indo-Teutonic family. .......... 6 § 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language ... 7 § 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects—characteristics of each dialect 8 CHAPTER II. THE RELIGION OF THE GREEKS. \ 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems.... ... 11 § 2. The Olympic deities, as described by Homer. ....12 § 3. Earlier form of worship in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature *.... . • . ib. § 4. Character and attributes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of Nature.. ....13 § 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as displayed in the Homeric description of the same deities .•••..••..». 15 CHAPTER III. ’W * • ♦. • « » » * m p • * EARLIEST POPULAR SONGS. § 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen ... 16 § 2. Description of several of these songs, viz. the Linus ...... 17 § 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus, the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for II ylas and Adonis.. § 4. The Psean, its origin and character. ......19 \ VI CONTENTS. PAGK § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the (lead, and the Hymenceos, or bridal song . 20 § 6. Origin and character of the chorus.22 § 7. Ancient poets who composed sacred hymns, divided into three classes, viz. those connected, i. With the worship of Apollo ; ii. With the worship of Demeter and Dionysus ; and iii. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of the Corybantes, &c.24 $ 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the eafly Greek poets . 25 § 9. Influence of the early Thracian or Pierian poets on the epic poetry of Homer.28 CHAPTER IV. ORIGIN OF THE EPIC POETRY. § 1. Social position of the minstrels or poets in the heroic age .... § 2. Epic poems sung at the feasts of princes and nobles, and at public festivals. $ 3. Manner of reciting epic poems, explanation of rhapsodists and rhapso¬ dising . § 4. Metrical form, and poetical character of the epic poetry. § 5. Perpetuation of the early epic poems by memory and not by writing § 6. Subjects and extent of the ante-Homeric epic poetry. 29 30 32 35 37 39 § 1- § 2 . § 3. § 4 . § 5. § 6 . § 7. § 8 . § 9. § 10 . § 11 . § 12 . § 13. § 14. CHAPTER V. HOMER. * * J » ' V w O * *** . <* * '* * * ® Opinions on the birth-place and country of Homer.41 Homer probably a Smyrnaean: early history of Smyrna.42 Union of iEolian and Ionian characteristics in Homer.44 Novelty of Homer’s choice of subjects for his two poems.47 Subject of the Iliad : the anger of Achilles.48 Enlargement of the subject by introducing the events of the entire war . 50 And by dwelling on the exploits of the Grecian heroes.52 Change of tone in the Iliad in its progress .53 The Catalogue of Ships . . . . . .• • • » .54 The later books, and the conclusion of the Iliad.56 Subject of the Odyssey : the return of Ulysses.57 Interpolations in the Odyssey.60 The Odyssey posterior to the Iliad : but both poems composed by the same person.ib. Preservation of the Homeric poems by" rhapsodists, and manner of their recitation.62 CHAPTER VI. THE CYCLIC POETS. $ 1. General character of the Cyclic poems ..64 § 2. The Destruction of Troy and ASthiopis of Arctinus oi Miletus ... 65 CONTENTS. \ 11 PAGE § 3. The little Iliad of Lesches.66 § 4. The Cypria of Stasinus.68 § 5. The Nostoi of Agias of Troezen.69 § 6. The Telegonia of Eugammon of Cyrene.70 § 7. Poems on the War against Thebes.ib. CHAPTER VII. - I * -r- ♦' ‘ • > * r y - ( THE HOMERIC HYMNS. § 1. General character of the Homeric Hymns, or Prooemia . ..... 72 § 2. Occasions on which they were sung: Poets by whom, and times at which, they were composed.73 § 3. Hymn to the Delian Apollo.74 § 4. Hymn to the Pythian Apollo.75 § 5. Hymn to Hermes.ib. § 6. Hymn to Aphrodite. ....76 § 7. Hymn to Demeter . ib. - e r *» p i CHAPTER VIII. HESIOD. § 1. Circumstances of Hesiod’s Life, and general character of his Poetry . . 77 § 2. The Works and Days, the Poem on Divination, and the Lessons of Chiron 82 § 3. The Theogony...87 § 4. The Great Eoise, the Catalogues of Women, the Melampodia, the JEgi- mius.95 6 5. The Marriage of Ceyx, the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, the Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Heft, the Shield of Hercules. . 98 CHAPTER IX. OTHER EPIC POETS. § 1. General character of other Epic Poets.100 § 2. Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, Eumelus of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chersias of Orchomenus.. . • . ib. § 3. Epic Poems on Hercules; the Taking of (Echalia; the Heraclea of Pei sander of Rhodes.102 • •’.. ***•*•****♦. * CHAPTER X. THE ELEGY AND THE EPIGRAM. § 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical period; influence of the change in the forms of Government upon Poetry.104 V1II CONTENTS. PAGE § 2. Elegeion, its meaning; origin of Elegos ; plaintive songs of Asia Minor, accompanied by the flute ; mode of Recitation of the Elegy * . .105 § 3. Metre of the Elegy.. 106 § 4. Political and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus; the circumstances of his time ib. § 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life ; occasion and subject of his Elegy of Eunomia . .110 § 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus . . . .112 § 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets; mixture of convivial jollity (Asius). ..........ib. § 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus.. .... 114 § 9. Mimnermus; his Elegies; the expression of the impaired strength of the Ionic nation. ..ib. §10. Luxury, a consolation in this state; the Nanno of Mimnermus . . .116 § 11. Solon’s character; his Elegy of Salamis . . . . • • . . .117 §12. Elegies before and after Solon’s Legislation; the expression of his poli¬ tical feeling; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides) . • • .118 § 13. Elegies of Theognis; their original character . ....... 120 § 14. Their origin in the political Revolutions of Megara ...... ib. § 15. Their personal reference to the Friends of Theognis ...... 122 § 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency. ..... 124 § 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and pathetic spirit of his Poetry; general View of the course of Elegiac Poetry .. .125 § 18. Epigrams in elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a Composer of Epigrams.. 126 CHAPTER XI. IAMBIC POETRY. § 1. Striking contrast of the Iambic and other contemporaneous Poetry • • 128 § 2. Poetry in reference to the bad and the vulgar . . . • . . • .129 § 3. Different treatment of it in Homer and Hesiod. 130 § 4. Homeric Comic Poems, Margites, &c.. • • . 131 § 5. Scurrilous songs at meals, at the worship of Demeter; the Festival of Demeter of Paros, the cradle of the Iambic poetry of Archilochus • 132 § 6. Date and Public Life of Archilochus.133 § 7. His Private Life; subject of his Iambics.134 § 8. Metrical form of his iambic and trochaic verses, and different application of the two asynartetes; epodes.135 § 9. Inventions and innovations in the musical recitation ..138 § 10. Innovations in Language.-.139 § 11. Simonides of Amorgus; his Satirical Poem against Women .... 140 § 12. Solon’s iambics and trochaics.ib. § 13. Iambic Poems of Hipponax; invention of choliambics; Ananias • . 141 § 14. The Fable; its application among the Greeks, especially in Iambic poetry. 143 § 15. Kinds of the Fable, named after different races and cities .... 144 §16. Aisop, his Life, and the Character of his Fables ....... 145 / CONTENTS. ix PAGE § 17* Parody, burlesques in an epic form, by Hipponax.146 § 18. Batrachomyomachia.147 CHAPTER XII. PROGRESS OF THE GREEK MUSIC. § 1. Transition from the Epos, through the Elegy and Iambus, to Lyric Poetry; connexion of Lyric Poetry with Music.148 § 2 . Founders of Greek Music; Terpander, his descent and date . . . 149 § 3. Terpander’s invention of the seven-stringed Cithara.151 § 4. Musical scales and styles.152 § 5. Nomes of Terpander for singing to the Cithara; their rhythmical form 154 § 6 . Olympus, descended from an ancient Phrygian family of flute-players 156 § 7 . His influence upon the development of the music of the flute and rhythm among the Greeks .. ...ib. § 8 . His influence confined to music.158 § 9. Thaletas, his age .. 159 § 10. His connexion with ancient Cretan worships. Paeans and hyporchemes of Thaletas.160 § 11. Musicians of the succeeding period—Clonas, Hierax, Xenodamus, Xeno- critus, Polymnestus, Sacadas.161 § 12. State of Greek Music at this period . . . 163 CHAPTER XIII. THE JEOLIC SCHOOL OF LYRIC POETRY. § 1. Difference between the Lyric Poetry of the ^Eolians, and the Choral Lyric Poetry of the Dorians..164 § 2. Life and Political Acts of Alcaeus.166 § 3. Their connexion with his Poetry.167 § 4. The other subjects of his Poems.168 § 5. Their metrical form ..170 § 6 . Life and moral character of Sappho. .172 § 7. Her Erotic Poetry to Phaon.174 § 8 . .Poems of Sappho to women .. ..176 § 9. Hymenseals of Sappho.178 § 10. Followers of Sappho, Damophila, Erinna.179 § 11. Life of Anacreon.180 § 12. His Poems to the youths at the Court of Polycrates.182 § 13. His Love-songs to Hetaerae.183 § 14. Character of his versification.185 § 15. Comparison of the later Anacreontics.186 § 16. Scolia ; occasions on which they were sung, and their subjects . . . 187 § 17. Scolia of Hybrias and Callistratus.189 CHAPTER XIV. CHORAL LYRIC POETRY. § 1. Connexion of lyric poetry with choral songs gradual rise of regular forms from this connexion .. . , 190 X CONTENTS. PAGE First stage .—§ 2. Aleman; his origin and date; mode of recitation and form of his choral songs... .193 § 3. Their poetical character...196 § 4. Stesichorus; hereditary transmission of his poetical taste; his reforma¬ tion of the chorus.197 § 5. Subjects and character of his poetry.199 § 6. Erotic and bucolic poetry of Stesichorus.202 § 7. Arion. The dithyramb raised to a regular choral song.203 Second stage .—§ 8. Life of Ibycus ; his imitation of Stesichorus .... 205 $ 9. Erotic tendency of his poetry.206 § 10. Life of Simonides. 207 §11. Variety and ingenuity of his poetical powers. Comparison of his Epi- nikia with those of Pindar.209 § 12. Characteristics of his style. 212 § 13. Lyric poetry of Bacchylides, imitated from that of Simonides ... 213 § 14. Parties among the lyric poets; rivalry of Lasus, Timocreon, and Pindar with Simonides.214 CHAPTER XV. PINDAR. § 1. Pindar’s descent; his early training in poetry and music ..... 216 § 2. Exercise of his art; his independent position with respect to the Greek princes and republics.218 § 3. Kinds of poetry cultivated by him.220 § 4. His Epinikia; their origin and objects.222 § 5. Their two main elements ; general remarks, and mythical narrations . 224 § 6 . Connexion of these two elements; peculiarities of the structure of Pindar’s odes.226 § 7. Variety of tone in his odes, according to the different musical styles . 227 CHAPTER XVI. THEOLOGICAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL POETRY. § 1. Moral improvement of Greek poetry after Homer especially evident in the notions as to the state of man after death. ^ ..... 229 § 2. Influence of the mysteries and of the Orphic doctrines on these notions . 230 § 3. First traces of Orphic ideas in Hesiod and other epic poets .... 232 § 4. Sacerdotal enthusiasts in the age of the Seven Sages; Epimenides, Abaris, Aristeas, and Pherecydes.233 § 5. An Orphic literature arises after the destruction of the Pythagorean league.235 § 6 . Subjects of the Orphic poetry ; at first cosmogonic.235 § 7 . afterwards prophetic, in reference to Dionysus.237 CHAPTER XVII. THE EARLY GREEK PHILOSOPHERS. § 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks; causes of the introduction of prose writings.238 t CONTENTS. XI PAGE § 2. The Ionians give the main impulse ; tendency of philosophical speculation among the Ionians. 240 § 3. Retrospect of the theological speculations of Pherecydes.ib. § 4. Thales; he combines practical talents with bold ideas concerning the nature of things. 241 § 5. Anaximander, a writer and inquirer on the nature of things .... 242 § 6 Anaximenes pursues the physical inquiries of his predecessors . . . 243 § 7. Heraclitus; profound character of his natural philosophy.244 § 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the physical specu¬ lations of the Ionians. 246 § 9. Diogenes continues the early doctrine. Archelaus, an Anaxagorean, carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens.248 §10. Doctrines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes; their enthusiastic character is expressed in a poetic form . . . *.249 § 11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doctrines of Xenophanes; plan of his poem .•. 251 § 12. Further development of the Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno . . 252 § 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty ideas of his own ..253 § 14. Italic school; receives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by the Doric character of the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical tendency with its philosophical principle ... ...» 255 CHAPTER XVIII. THE EARLY GREEK HISTORIANS. 6 1. High antiquity of history in Asia; causes of its comparative lateness among the Greeks.258 § 2. Origin of history among the Greeks. The Ionians, particularly the Mile¬ sians, took the lead.260 § 3. Mythological historians; Cadmus, Acusilaus.261 § 4. Extensive geographical knowledge of Hecatseus; his freer treatment of native traditions.ib. § 5. Pherecydes; his genealogical arrangement of traditions and history . 263 § 6. Charon ; his chronicles of general and special history.ib. § 7. Hellanicus; a learned inquirer into mythical and true history. Beginning of chronological researches.264 § 8. Xanthus, an acute observer. Dionysius of Miletus, the historian of the Persian wars.ib. § 9. General remarks on the composition and style of the logographers . . 265 CHAPTER XIX HERODOTUS. § 1. Events of the life of Herodotus.266 § 2. His travels ..267 § 3. Gradual formation of his work.268 § 4. Its plan. 269 XU CONTENTS. PAGE § 5. Its leading ideas .....••••••••••• ^^1 § 6. Defects and excellencies of his historical researches. ...... 272 § 7. Style of his narrative j character of his language .273 SECOND PERIOD OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER XX. LITERARY PREDOMINANCE OF ATHENS. § 1. Early formation of a national literature in Greece . . . • • . .275 § 2. Athens subsequently takes the lead in literature and art. Her fitness for this purpose ........ .. . • • ib. § 3. Concurrence of the political circumstances of Athens to the same end. Solon. The Pisistratids ..277 § 4. Great increase in the power of Athens after the Persian war . . . .279 § 5. Administration and policy of Pericles, particularly with respect to art and literature. 280 § 6. Seeds of degeneracy in the Athenian Commonwealth at its most flourish¬ ing period .. 282 § 7. Causes and modes of the degeneracy.283 § 8. Literature and art were not affected by the causes of moral degeneracy . 285 CHAPTER XXL ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA. § 1. Causes of dramatic poetry in Greece .....•••••• 285 § 2. The invention of dramatic poetry peculiar to Greece.287 § 3. Origin of the Greek drama from the worship of Bacchus.ib. § 4. Earliest, or Doric form of tragedy , a choral or dithyrambic song in the worship of Bacchus . 289 § 5. Connexion of the early tragedy with a chorus of satyrs • • • • • 290 § 6. Improvement of tragedy at Athens by Thespis ...••••• 292 § 7. By Phrynichus 293 § 8. And by Choerilus. Cultivation of the satyric drama by the latter ... 294 § 9. The satyric drama completely separated from tragedy by Pratinas . . 295 t% •» >• « A ^ CHAPTER XXII. t. n rt « •*«*»'• FORM AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK TRAGEDY. § 1. Ideal character of the Greek tragedy; splendid costume of the actors . 296 § 2. Cothurnus; masks .••••••••••..... 297 § 3. Structure of the theatre 298 § 4. Arrangement of the orchestra in connexion with the form and position of the chorus .. 299 § 5. Form of the stage, and its meaning in tragedy.300 § 6. Meaning of the entrances of the stage ..302 § 7. The actors ; limitation of their number.303 CONTENTS. XUI PAGE § 8. Meaning of the protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist,.305 § 9. The changes of the scene inconsiderable; ancient tragedy not being a picture of outward acts. ......307 § 10 Eccyclema ..309 §11. Composition of the drama from various parts ; songs of the entire chorus 310 § 12. Division of a tragedy by the choral songs. .312 § 13. Songs of single persons, of the chorus, and of the actors.ib. §14. Parts of the drama intermediate between song and speech . . . .315 § 15. Speech of the actors; arrangement of the dialogue and its metrical form • 316 CHAPTER XXIII. AESCHYLUS. § 1. Life of ^Eschylus. .....317 § 2. Number of his tragedies, and their distribution into trilogies. . . . 319 § 3. Outline of his tragedies; the Persians. 320 § 4. The Phineus and the Glaucus Pontius ..........321 § 5. The ^Itnaean women .. 322 § 6. The Seven against Thebes. 323 § 7. The Eleusinians.324 § 8. The Suppliants; the Egyptians ..325 § 9. The Prometheus bound .. 327 § 10. The Prometheus unbound. 329 § 11. The Agamemnon .. 331 § 12. The Choephorce. 332 § 13. The Eumenides, and the Proteus.. § 14. General characteristics of the poetry of jEsehylus.335 § 15. His latter years and death .. *.... 336 CHAPTER XXIY. SOPHOCLES. § 1. Condition in which tragic poetry came into the hands of Sophocles. His first appearance.. 337 § 2. Subsequent events of his life; his devotion to the drama.338 § 3. Epochs in the poetry of Sophocles.340 § 4. Thorough change in the form of tragedy.341 § 5. Outline of his plays; the Antigone.342 § 6. The Electra.344 § 7. The Trachinian Women.346 § 8. King QEdipus. .....ib. § 9. The Ajax.. § 10. The Philoctetes.. §11,12. The CEdipus at Colonus, in connexion with the character and conduct of Sophocles in his latter years ... 351 § 13. The style of Sophocles...355 XIV CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXV. EURIPIDES. FAGK § 1. Difference between Sophocles and Euripides. The latter essentially spe¬ culative. Tragedy, a subject ill-suited for his genius.357 6 2. Intrusion of tragedy into the interests of the private.359 § 3. And public life of the time.360 § 4. Alterations in the plan of tragedy introduced by Euripides. Prologue . 362 § 5. And j Deus ex machina .363 § 6 . Comparative insignificance of the chorus. Prevalence of monodies . . 364 § 7. Style of Euripides.366 § 8 . Outline of his plays : the Alcestis.ib. § 9. The Medea.367 § 10. The Hippolytus.368 § 11. The Hecuba.369 § 12. Epochs in the mode of treating his subject: the Heracleidae. . . . 370 § 13. The Suppliants.371 § 14. The Ion.ib. § 15. The raging Heracles . 372 § 16. The Andromache. 373 § 17. The Trojan Women.. . . ib. § 18. The Electra.374 § 19. The Helena.375 § 20. The Iphigenia at Tauri.376 § 21. The Orestes.377 § 22. The Phoenician Women.ib. § 23. The Bacchanalians.378 § 24. The Iphigenia at Aulis.379 § 25. Lost pieces: the Cyclops.380 CHAPTER XXVI. THE OTHER TRAGIC TOETS. § 1. Inferiority of the other tragic poets.381 § 2. Contemporaries of Sophocles and Euripides : Neophron, Ion. Aristarchus, Achseus, Carcinus, Xenocles.382 6 3. Tragedians somewhat more recent: Agathon ; the anonymous son of Cleomachus. Tragedy grows effeminate.383 4. Men of education employ tragedy as a vehicle of their opinions on the social relations of the age.384 § 5. The families of the great tragedians : the JSschyleans, Sophocleans, and the younger Euripides. 335 § 6. Influence of other branches of literature ; tragedy is treated by Chseremon in the spirit of lax and effeminate lyric poetry ,.386 § 7. Tragedy is subordinated to rhetoric in the dramas of Theodectes. . • 387 CHAPTER XXVII. § 1 . The comic element in Greek poetry due to the worship of Bacchus . .391 5 2. Also connected with the Comus at the lesser Dionysia : Phallic Songs . 393 6 3. Beginnings of dramatic comedy at Megara, Susarion, Chionides, &c. . 395 CONTENTS. \V PAGB 6 4. The perfectors of the old Attic comedy .......... 397 § 5. The structure of comedy. What it has in common with tragedy . • . 398 § 6. Peculiar arrangement of the chorus ; Parabasis ....... 400 § 7. Dances, metres, and style...402 CHAPTER XXVIII. § 1. Events of the life of Aristophanes; the mode of his first appearance . . 405 6 2. Ilis dramas ; the Dcetaleis ; the Babylonians .406 § 3. The Acharnians analyzed . 408 § 4. The Knights.412 6 5. The Clouds.415 § 6. The Wasps.419 6 7. The Peace.420 6 8; The Birds.420 § 9. The Lysistrata , Thesmophoriazusce .423 § 10. The Frogs. .425 § 11. The Ecclesiazusce ; the second Plutus. Transition to the middle comedy . 426 CHAPTER XXIX. § 1. Characteristics of Cratinus. 428 § 2. Eupolis ..430 § 3. Peculiar tendencies of Crates; his connexion with Sicilian comedy . .431 § 4. Sicilian comedy originates in the Doric farces of Megara .... 432 § 5. Events in the life of Epicharmus; general tendency and nature of his comedy ..433 § 6. The middle Attic comedy : poets of this class akin to those of the Sicilian comedy in many of their pieces.436 § 7. Poets of the new comedy the immediate successors of those of the middle comedy. How the new comedy becomes naturalized at Rome . . 438 § 8, Public morality at Athens at the time of the new comedy .... 440 § 9. Character of the new comedy in connexion therewith .443 CHAPTER XXX. § 1. The Dithyramb becomes the chief form of Athenian lyric poetry. Lasus of Hermione.446 § 2. New style of the Dithyramb introduced by Melanippides, Philoxenus, Cinesias, Phrynis, Timotheus, Polyeidus.. . 447 § 3. Mode of producing the new Dithyramb : its contents and character. . 450 § 4. Reflective lyric poetry.452 § 5. Social and political elegies. The Lyde of Antimachus essentially different from these...452 § 6. Epic poetry, Panyasis, Choerilus, Antimachus ........ 454 CHAPTER XXXI. § 1. Importance of prose at this period.456 § 2. Oratory at Athens rendered necessary by the democratical form of govern¬ ment . 456 § 3. Themistocles; Pericles: power of their oratory.458 § -4. Characteristics of their oratory in relation to their opinions and modes of thought.459 § 5. Foim and style of their speeches ..460 XVI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXII. PAGE § 1. Profession of the Sophists; essential elements of their doctrines. The principle of Protagoras.462 § 2. Opinions of Gorgias. Pernicious effects of his doctrines, especially as they were carried out by his disciples.463 § 3. Important services of the Sophists in forming a prose style : different ten¬ dencies of the Sicilian and other Sophists in this respect .... 465 § 4. The rhetoric of Gorgias. 466 § 5. His forms of expression. 467 CHAPTER XXXIII. § 1. Antiphon’s career and employments.469 § 2. His school exercises, the Tetralogies.471 § 3. His speeches before the courts ; character of his oratory.472 § 4, 5. More particular examination of his style ......... 474 § 6. Andocides; his life and character. . 477 CHAPTER XXXIV. § 1. The life of Thucydides : his training that of the age of Pericles . . . 479 § 2. His new method of teaching history ..481 § 3. The consequent distribution and arrangement of his materials, as well in his whole work as.. 482 § 4. In the Introduction.483 § 5. His mode of treating these materials; his research and criticism . . 485 § 6. Accuracy and,.486 § 7. Intellectual character of his history.487 § 8, 9. The speeches considered as the soul of his history.488 § 10,11. His mode of expression and the structure of his sentences . . .491 CHAPTER XXXV. § 1. Events which followed the Peloponnesian War. The adventures of Lysias. Leading epochs of his life.. 495 § 2. The earliest sophistical rhetoric of Lysias.. . 497 § 3. The style of this rhetoric preserved in his later panegyrical speeches . 499 § 4. Change in the oratory of Lysias produced by Ins own impulses and by his employment as a writer of speeches for private individuals . . . 500 § 5. Analysis of his speech against Agoratas.501 § 6. General view of his extant orations.503 CHAPTER XXXVI. § 1. Early training of Isocrates; but slightly influenced by Socrates . . . 504 § 2. School of Isocrates ; its great repute ; his attempts to influence the poli¬ tics of the day without thoroughly understanding them.50) $ 3. The form of a speech the principal matter in his judgment .... 507 § 4. New development which he gave to prose composition ..... 508 § 5. His structure of periods. 509 § 6. Smoothness and evenness of his style.511 § 7. He prefers the panegyrical oratory to the forensic.512 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. INTRODUCTION. In undertaking 1 to write a history of Grecian literature, it is not our intention to enumerate the names of those many hundred authors whose works, accumulated in the Alexandrine Library, are reported, after passing through many other perils, to have finally been burnt by the Khalif Omar—an event from which the cause of civilisation has not, perhaps, suffered so much as many have thought; inasmuch as the inheritance of so vast a collection of writings from antiquity would, by engrossing all the leisure and attention of the moderns, have diminished their zeal and their opportunities for original productions. Nor will it be necessary to carry our younger readers (for whose use this work is chiefly designed) into the controversies of the philosophical schools, the theories of grammarians and critics, or the successive hypotheses of natural philosophy among the Greeks—in short, into those departments of literature which are the province of the learned by profession, and whose influence is confined to them alone. Our object is to consider Grecian literature as a main constituent of the character of the Grecian people, and to show how those illustrious compositions, which we still justly admire as the classical writings of the Greeks, naturally sprung from the taste and genius of the Greek races, and the constitution of civil and domestic society as established among them. For this pur¬ pose our inquiries may be divided into three principal heads:—1. The development of Grecian poetry and prose before the rise of the Athenian literature; 2. The flourishing era of poetry and eloquence at Athens; and, 3. The history of Greek literature in the long period after Alex¬ ander; which last, although it produced a much larger number of writings than the former periods, need not, consistently with the object of the present work, be treated at great length, as literature had in this age fallen into the hands of the learned few, and had lost its living influence on the general mass of the community. In attempting to trace the gradual development of the literature of 2 HISTORY OP THE ancient Greece from its earliest origin, it would be easy to maiie a beginning, by treating of the extant works of Grecian writers in their chronological order. We might then commence at once with Homer and Hesiod: but if we were to adopt this course, we should, like an epic poet, place our beginning in the middle of the history; for, like the Pallas of Grecian poetry, who sprang full-armed from the head of Jupiter, the literature of Greece wears the perfection of beauty in those works which Herodotus and Aristotle, and all critical and trust-worth} inquirers among the Greeks, recognised as being the most ancient that had descended to their times. Although both in the Iliad and Odyssey we can clearly discern traces of the infancy of the nation to which they belong, and although a spirit of simplicity pervades them, peculiar to the childhood of the human race, yet the class of poetry under which they fall, appears in them at its full maturity ; all the laws which reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed with the most refined taste; all the means are employed by which the general effect can be heightened; no where does the poetry bear the character of a first essay or an unsuccessful attempt at some higher poetical flight; indeed, as no subsequent poem, either of ancient or modern times, has so completely caught the genuine epic tone, there seems good reason to doubt whether any future poet will again be able to strike the same chord. It seems, however, manifest, that there must have been many attempts and experiments before epic poetry could reach this elevation ; and it was, doubtless, the perfection of the Jliad and Odyssey, to which these prior essays had led, that buried the productions of former bards in oblivion. Hence the first dawn of Grecian literature is without any perfect memorial; but we must be content to remain in ignorance of the connexion of literature with the character of the Greek races at the outset of their national existence, if we renounced all attempt at forming a conception of the times anterior to the Homeric poems. In order, therefore, to throw some light on this obscure period, we shall first consider those creations of the human intellect which in general are prior to poetry, and which naturally precede poetical composition, as poetry in its turn is followed by regular composition in prose. These are language, and religion. When these two important subjects have been examined, we shall proceed, by means of allusions in the Homeric poems themselves, and the most credible testimonies of later times, to inquire into the progress and character of the Greek poetry before the time of Homer. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 3 CHAPTER I. § 1. General account of the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family.—§ 2. Origin and formation of the Indo-Teutonic languages—multiplicity of their grammatical forms—§ 3. Characteristics of the Greek language, as compared with the other languages of the Indo-Teutonic family.—§ 4. Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language.—§ 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects—characteristics of each dialect. § 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. In modern times, this subject has been studied with more comprehensive views and more systematic methods than formerly: and from these researches it appears that a large part of the nations of the ancient world formed a family, whose languages (besides a large number of radical words, to which we need not here particularly advert) had on the whole the same grammatical structure and the same forms of derivation and inflexion. The nations between which this affinity subsisted are—the Indians , whose language, in its earliest and purest form, is preserved in the Sanscrit; the Persians , whose primitive language, the Zend, is closely allied with the Sanscrit; the Armenians and Phrygians , kindred races, of whose language the modern Armenian is a very mutilated remnant, though a few ancient features preserved in it still show its original resemblance; the Greek nation, of which the Latin people is a branch; the Sclavonian races , who, notwithstanding their intellectual inferiority, appear from their language to be nearly allied with the Persians and other cognate nations; the Lettic tribes , among which the Lithuanian has preserved the fundamental forms of this class of languages with remarkable fidelity; the Teutonic , and, lastly, the Celtic races, whose language (so far as we can judge from the very degenerate remains of it now extant), though deviating widely in some respects from the general character perceptible in the other languages, yet unquestionably belongs to the same family. It is remarkable that this family of languages, which possess the highest perfection of grammatical structure, also includes a larger number of nations, and has spread over a wider extent of surface, than any other: the Semitic family (to which the Hebrew, Syrian, Phoenician, Arabian, and other languages belong), though in many respects it can compete with the Indo-Germanic, is inferior to it in the perfection of its structure and its capacity for literary development; in respect of its diffusion likewise it approaches the Indian class of lan¬ guages, without being equal to it; while, again, the rude and meagre languages of American aborigines are often confined to a very 4 HISTORY OF THE narrow district, and appear to have no affinity with those of the other tribes in the immediate vicinity*. Hence, perhaps, it may be inferred, that the higher capacity for the formation and development of language was at this early period combined with a greater physical and mental energy—in short, with all those qualities on which the ulterior improve¬ ment and increase of the nations by which it was spoken depended. While the Semitic branch occupies the south-west of Asia, the Indo- Germanic languages run in a straight line from south-east to north¬ west, through Asia and Europe : a slight interruption, which occurs in the country between the Euphrates and Asia Minor, appears to have been occasioned by the pressure of Semitic or Syrian races from the south; for it seems probable that originally the members of this national family succeeded one another in a continuous line, although we are not now able to trace the source from which this mighty stream originally flowed. Equally uncertain is it whether these languages were spoken by the earliest inhabitants of the countries to which they be¬ longed, or were introduced by subsequent immigrations ; in which latter case the rude aborigines would have adopted the principal features of the language spoken by the more highly endowed race, retaining at the same time much of their original dialect—an hypothesis which appears highly probable as regards those languages which show a general affinity with the others, but nevertheless differ from them widely in their grammatical structure and the number of their radical forms. § 2. On the other hand, this comparison of languages leads to many results, with respect to the intellectual state of the Greek people, which throw an unexpected light into quarters where the eye of the historian has hitherto been able to discover nothing but darkness. We reject as utterly untenable the notion that the savages of Greece, from the inar¬ ticulate cries by which they expressed their animal wants, and from the sounds by which they sought to imitate the impressions of outward objects, gradually arrived at the harmonious and magnificent language which we admire in the poems of Homer. So far is this hypothesis from the truth, that language evidently is connected with the power of abstracting or of forming general notions, and is inconsistent with the absence of this faculty. It is plain that the most abstract parts of speech, those least likely to arise from the imitation of any outward impression, were the first which obtained a permanent form; and hence those parts of speech appear most clearly in all the languages of the Indo-Teutonic family. Among these are the verb “ to be,” the forms of which seem to alternate in the Sanscrit, the Lithuanian, and the Greek; the pronouns, which denote the most general relations of persons and things to the speaker; the numerals, also abstract * Some of the American languages are rather cumbersome than meagre in their grammmatical forms; and some are much more widely spread than others .—Note by Editor. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 5 terms, altogether independent of impressions from single objects ; and, lastly, the grammatical forms, by which the actions expressed by verbs are referred to the speaker, and the objects expressed by nouns are placed in the most various relations to one another. The luxuriance of grammatical forms which we perceive in the Greek cannot have been of late introduction, but must be referred to the earliest period of the language; for we find traces of nearly all of them in the cognate tongues, which could not have been the case unless the languages before they diverged had possessed these forms in common: thus the distinc¬ tion between aorist tenses, which represent an action as a moment, as a single point, and others, which represent it as continuous, like a prolonged line, occurs in Sanscrit as well as in Greek. In general it may be observed, that in the lapse of ages, from the time that the progress of language can be observed, grammatical forms, such as the signs of cases, moods, and tenses, have never been increased in number, but have been constantly diminishing. The history of the Romance, as well as of the Germanic, languages, shows in the clearest manner how a grammar, once powerful and copious, has been gradually weakened and impoverished, until at last it preserves only a few frag¬ ments of its ancient inflections. The ancient languages, especially the Greek, fortunately still retained the chief part of their gram¬ matical forms at the time of their literary development; thus, for example, little was lost in the progress of the Greek language from Homer to the Athenian orators. Now there is no doubt that this lux¬ uriance of grammatical forms is not an essential part of a language, considered merely as a vehicle of thought. It is well known that the Chinese language, which is merely a collection of radical words destitute of grammatical forms, can express even philosophical ideas with tolerable precision; and the English, which, from the mode of its formation by a mixture of different tongues, has been stripped of its grammatical inflections more completely than any other European language, seems nevertheless, even to a foreigner, to be distinguished by its energetic eloquence. All this must be admitted by every unprejudiced inquirer; but yet it cannot be overlooked, that this copiousness of grammatical forms, and the fine shades of meaning which they express, evince a nicety of observation and a faculty of distinguishing, which unques¬ tionably prove that the race of mankind among whom these languages arose was characterized by a remarkable correctness and subtlety of thought. Nor can any modern European, who forms in his mind a lively image of the classical languages in their ancient grammatical luxuriance, and compares them with his mother tongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections, clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living bodies, full of expression and character; while in the modern tongues the words seem shrunk up into mere skeletons. Another advantage which belongs to the fulness of grammatical forms is, that words of 6 HISTORY OF THE similar signification make likewise a similar impression on the ear; whence each sentence obtains a certain symmetry and, even where the collocation of the words is involved, a clearness and regularity, which may be compared with the effect produced on the eye by the parts of a well- proportioned building; whereas, in the languages which have lost their grammatical forms, either the lively expression of the feeling is hin¬ dered by an unvarying and monotonous collocation of the words, or the hearer is compelled to strain his attention, in order to comprehend the mutual relation of the several parts of the sentence. Modern lan¬ guages seem to attempt to win their way at once to the understanding without dwelling in the ear; while the classical languages of antiquity seek at the same time to produce a corresponding effect on the outward sense, and to assist the mind by previously filling the ear, as it were, with an imperfect consciousness of the meaning sought to be conveyed by the words. § 3. These remarks apply generally to the languages of the Indo- Germanic family, so far as they have been preserved in a state of inte¬ grity by literary works and have been cultivated by poets and orators. We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the super¬ abundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. If we com¬ pare the Greek with that language which comes next to it in fitness for a lofty and flowing style of poetry, viz., the Sanscrit, this latter certainly has some classes of consonants not to be found in the Greek, the sounds of which it is almost impossible for an European moufy to imitate and distinguish: on the other hand, the Greek is much richer in short vowels than the Sanscrit, whose most harmonious poetry would weary our ears by the monotonous repetition of the A sound; and it possesses an astonishing abundance of diphthongs, and tones produced by the contraction of vowels, which a Greek mouth could alone distin¬ guish with the requisite nicety, and which, therefore, are necessarily confounded by the modern European pronunciation. We may likewise perceive in the Greek the influence of the laws of harmony , which, in different nations, have caused the rejection of different combinations of vowels and consonants, and which have increased the softness and beauty of languages, though sometimes at the expense of their ter¬ minations and characteristic features. By the operation of the lattei cause, the Greek has, in many places, lost its resemblance to the original type, which, although not now preserved in any one of the extant languages, may be restored by conjecture from all of them ; even here, however, it cannot be denied that the correct taste and feeling; LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 7 of the Greeks led them to a happy mixture of the consonant and vowel sounds, by which strength has been reconciled with softness, and har¬ mony with strongly marked peculiarities; while the language has, at the same time, in its multifarious dialects, preserved a variety of sound and character, which fit it for the most discordant kinds of poetical and prose composition. § 4. We must not pass over one important characteristic of the Greek language, which is closely connected with the early condition of the Greek nation, and which may be considered as, in some degree, pre¬ figuring the subsequent character of its civilisation. In order to con¬ vey an adequate idea of our meaning, we will ask any person who is acquainted with Greek, to recal to his mind the toils and fatigue which he underwent in mastering the forms of the language, and the difficulty which he found to impress them on his memory; when his mind, vainly attempting to discover a reason for such anomalies, was almost in despair at finding that so large a number of verbs derive their tenses from the most various roots; that one verb uses only the first, another only the second, aorist, and that even the individual persons of the aorist are sometimes compounded of the forms of the first and second aorists respec¬ tively ; and that many verbs and substantives have retained only single or a few forms, which have been left standing by themselves, like the remains of a past age. The convulsions and catastrophes of which we see so many traces around us in the frame-work of the world have not been confined to external nature alone. The structure of languages also has evidently, in ages prior to the existence of any literature, suffered some violent shocks, which may, perhaps, have received their impulse from migrations or internal discord ; and the elements of the language, having been thrown in confusion together, were afterwards re-arranged, and combined into a new whole. Above all is this true of the Greek lan¬ guage, which bears strong marks of having originally formed part of a great and regular plan, and of having been reconstructed on a new system from the fragments of the former edifice. The same is doubtless also the cause of the great variety of dialects which existed both among the Greeks and the neighbouring nations ;—a variety, of which mention is made at so early a date as the Homeric poems*. As the country inhabited by the Greeks is intersected to a remarkable degree by moun¬ tains and sea, and thus was unfitted by Nature to serve as the habitation of a uniform population, collected in large states, like the plains of the Euphrates and Ganges; and as, for this reason, the Greek people was divided into a number of separate tribes, some of which attract our attention in the early fabulous age, others in the later historical period; so likewise the Greek language was divided, to an unexampled extent, into various dialects, which differed from each other according to the * In Iliad, ii. 804, and iv. 437, there is mention of the variety of dialects among the allies of the Trojans ; and in Odyssey, xix. 175, among the Greek tribes in Crete. 8 HISTORY OF THE several tribes and territories. In what relation the dialects of the Pelasgians, Dryopes, Abantes, Leleges, Epeans, and other races widely diffused in the earliest periods of Grecian history, may have stood to one another, is indeed a question which it would be vain to attempt to answer; but thus much is evident, that the number of these tribes, and their frequent migrations, by mixing and confounding the different races, contributed powerfully to produce that irregularity of structure which characterises the Greek language in its very earliest monuments. § 5. The primitive tribes just mentioned, which were the earliest occupants of Greece known to tradition, and of which the Pelasgians, and after them the Leleges, were the most extended, unquestionably did much for the first cultivation of the soil, the foundation of insti¬ tutions for divine worship, and the first establishment of a regular order of society. The Pelasgians , widely scattered over Greece, and having their settlements in the most fertile regions (as the vale of the Peneus in Thessaly, the lower districts of Boeotia, and the plains of Argos and Sicyon), appear, before the time when they wandered through Greece in isolated bodies, as a nation attached to their own dwelling- places, fond of building towns, which they fortified with walls of a colossal size, and zealously worshipping the powers of heaven and earth, which made their fields fruitful and their cattle prosperous. The mythical genealogies of Argos competed as it were with those of Sicyon; and both these cities, by a long chain of patriarchal princes (most of whom are merely personifications of the country, its mountains and rivers), were able to place their origin at a period of the remotest antiquity. The Leleges also (with whom were connected the Locrians in Northern Greece and the Epeans in Peloponnesus), although they had fewer fixed settlements, and appear to have led a rougher and more warlike life—such as still prevailed in the mountainous districts of Northern Greece at the time of the historian Thucydides—yet cele¬ brated their national heroes, especially Deucalion and his descendants, as founders of cities and temples. But there is no trace of any peculiar creation of the intellect having developed itself among these races, or of any poems in which they displayed any peculiar character; and whe¬ ther it may be possible to discover any characteristic and distinct features in the legends of the gods and heroes who belong to the territories occupied by these different tribes is a question which must be deferred until we come to treat of the origin of the Grecian mythology. It is however much to be lamented that, with our sources of information, it seems impossible to form a well-grounded opinion on the dialects of these ancient tribes of Greece, by which they were doubtless precisely distinguished from one another; and any such attempt appears the more hopeless, as even of the dialects which were spoken in the several territories of Greece within the historical period we have only a scanty knowledge, by means of a few inscriptions and the statements of gram- LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 9 marians, wherever they had not obtained a literary cultivation and celebrity by the labours of poets and prose writers. Of more influence, however, on the development of the intellectual faculties of the Greeks was the distinction of the tribes and their dialects, established at a period which, from the domination of war¬ like and conquering races and the consequent prevalence of a bold spirit of enterprise, was called the heroic age. It is at this time, before the migration of the Dorians into Peloponnesus and the settlements in Asia Minor, that the seeds must have been sown of an opposition between the races and dialects of Greece, which exercised the most important influence on the state of civil society, and thus on the direction of the mental energies of the people, of their poetry, art, and literature. If we consider the dialects of the Greek language, with which we are ac¬ quainted by means of its literary monuments, they appear to fall into two great classes, which are distinguished from each other by characteristic marks. The one class is formed by the Molic dialect; a name, indeed, under which the Greek grammarians included dialects very different from one another, as in later times everything was comprehended under the term iEolic, which was not Ionic, Attic, or Doric. According to this acceptation of the term about three-fourths of the Greek nation consisted of iEolians, and dialects were classed together as iEolic which (as is evident from the more ancient inscriptions) differed more from one another than from the Doric ; as, for example, the Thessalian and /Etolian, the Boeotian and Elean dialects. The iEolians, however, pro¬ perly so called (who occur in mythology under this appellation), lived at this early period in the plain of Thessaly, south of the Peneus, which was afterwards called Thessaliotis, and from thence as far as the Paga- setic Bay. We also find in the same mythical age a branch of the ZEolian race, in southern iEtolia, in possession of Calydon; this frag¬ ment of the iEolians, however, afterwards disappears from history, while the iEolians of Thessaly, who also bore the name of Boeotians, two generations after the Trojan war, migrated into the country which was called after them Boeotia, and from thence, soon afterwards, mixed with other races, to the maritime districts and islands of Asia Minor, which from that time forward received the name of ^Eolis in Asia Minor*. It is in this latter iEolis that we become acquainted with the iEolian dialect, through the lyric poets of the Lesbian school, the origin and character of which will be explained in a subsequent chapter. On the * We here only reckon those ^olians who were in fact considered as belonging to the ^lolian race, and not all the tribes which were ruled by heroes, whom Hesiod, in the fragment of the ««7a<, calls sons of .#5olus ; although this genealogy justifies us in assuming a close affinity between those races, which is also confirmed by other testimonies. In this sense the Minyans of Orchomenus and Iolcus, ruled by the /Eolids Athamas and Cretheus, were of Alolian origin ; a nation which, by the stability of its political institutions, its spirit of enterprise, even for maritime expe¬ ditions, and its colossal buildings, holds a pre-eminent rank among the tribes of the mythical age of Greece. (See Hesiod, Fragm. 28, ed. Gaisford. 10 HISTORY OF THE whole it may be said of this dialect, as of the Boeotian in its earlier form, that it bears an archaic character, and approaches nearest to the source of the Greek language; hence the Latin, as being connected with the most ancient form of the Greek, has a close affinity with it, and in general the agreement with the other languages of the Indo-Ger- manic family is always most perceptible in the iEolic. A mere variety of the iEolic was the dialect of the Doric race, which originally was confined to a narrow district in Northern Greece, but was afterwards spread over the Peloponnesus and other regions by that important move¬ ment of population which was called the Return of the Heracleids. It is characterized by strength and breadth, as shown in its fondness for simple open vowel sounds, and its aversion for sibilants. Much more different from the original type is the other leading dialect of the Greek language, the Ionic , which took its origin in the mother-country, and was by the Ionic colonies, which sailed from Athens, carried over to Asia Minor, where it underwent still further changes. Its character¬ istics are softness and liquidness of sound, arising chiefly from the concurrence of vowels, among which, not the broad a and o, but the thinner sounds of e and ?/, were most prevalent; among the consonants the tendency to the use of s is most discernible. It may be observed, that wherever the Ionic dialect differs either in vowels or consonants from the iEolic, it also differs from the original type, as may be discovered by a comparison of the cognate languages; it must there¬ fore be considered as a peculiar form of the Greek, which was deve¬ loped within the limits of the Grecian territory. It is probable that this dialect was spoken not only by the Ionians, but also, at least one v6ry similar, by the ancient Achaeans; since the Achaeans in the genealogical legends concerning the descendants of Hellen are repre¬ sented as the brothers of the Ionians : this hypothesis would also explain how the ancient epic poems, in which the Ionians are scarcely men¬ tioned, but the Achaean race plays the principal part, were written in a dialect which, though differing in many respects from the genuine Ionic, has yet the closest resemblance to it. Even from these first outlines of the history of the Greek dialects we might be led to expect that those features would be developed in the institutions and literature of the several races which we find in their actual history. In the Molic and Doric tribes we should be prepared to find the order of society regulated by those ancient customs and principles which had been early established among the Greeks; their dialects at least show a strong disposition to retain the archaic forms, without much tendency to refinement. Among the Dorians, however, every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more prominent light than among the iEolians; and as their dialect every¬ where prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 11 them for a disposition to carry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society. The Ioitians , on the other hand, show even in their dialect a strong tendency to modify ancient forms according to their taste and humour, together with a constant endeavour to polish and refine, which was doubtless the cause why this dialect, although of later date and of secondary origin, was first employed in finished poetical compositions. CHAPTER II*. § 1. The earliest form of the Greek religion not portrayed in the Homeric poems.— § 2. The Olympic deities, as described by Homer.—§ 3. Earlier form of worship in Greece directed to the outward objects of Nature.—§ 4. Character and attri¬ butes of the several Greek deities, as personifications of the powers and objects of Nature.—§ 5. Subsequent modification of these ideas, as displayed in the Ho¬ meric description of the same deities. § 1. Next to the formation of language, religion is the earliest object of attention to mankind, and therefore exercises a most important influence on all the productions of the human intellect. Although poetry has arisen at a very early date among many nations, and ages which were as yet quite unskilled in the other fine arts have been dis¬ tinguished for their poetical enthusiasm, yet the development of religious notions and usages is always prior, in point of time, to poetry. No nation has ever been found entirely destitute of notions of a superior race of beings exercising an influence on mankind; but tribes have existed without songs, or compositions of any kind which could be considered as poetry. Providence has evidently first given mankind that knowledge of which they are most in need; and has, from the beginning, scattered among the nations of the entire world a glimmering of that light which was, at a later period, to be manifested in brighter effulgence. , This consideration must make it evident that, although the Homeric poems belong to the first age of the Greek poetry , they nevertheless cannot be viewed as monuments of the first period of the development of the Greek religion. Indeed, it is plain that the notions concerning the gods must have undergone many changes before (partly, indeed, by means of the poets themselves) they assumed that form under which * We have thought it absolutely essential, for the sake of accuracy, in treating of the deities of the ancient Greek religion, to use the names by which they were known to the Greeks. As these, however, may sound strange to persons not ac¬ quainted with the Greek language, we subjoin a list of the gods of the Romans with which they were in later times severally identified, and by whose names they are commonly known: —Zeus, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena , Minerva; Ares , Mars; Artemis, Diana ; Hermes, Mercury ; Demeter , Ceres ; Cora, Proserpine ; Hephceslus, Vulcan; Poseidon. Neptune; Aphrodite, Venus ; Dionysus, Bacchus. 12 HISTORY OF THE they appear in the Homeric poems. The description given by Homer of the life of the gods in the palace of Zeus on Olympus is doubtless as different from the feeling and the conception with which the ancient Pelasgian lifted up his hands and voice to the Zeus of Dodona, whose dwelling was in the oak of the forest, as the palace of a Priam or Aga¬ memnon from the hut which one of the original settlers constructed of un¬ hewn trunks in a solitary pasture, in the midst of his flocks and herds. § 2. The conceptions of the gods, as manifested in the Homeric poems, are perfectly suited to a time when the most distinguished and prominent part of the people devoted their lives to the occupation of arms and to the transaction of public business in common ; which time whs the period in which the heroic spirit was developed. On Olympus, lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to guide them; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion; and a daughter of a masculine complexion, a leader of battles, and a protec¬ tress of citadels, who by her wise counsels deserves the confidence which her father bestows on her; besides these a number of gods, with various degrees of kindred, who have each their proper place and allotted duty in the divine palace. On the whole, however, the attention of this divine council is chiefly turned to the fortunes of nations and cities, and especially to the adventures and enterprises of the heroes, who, being themselves for the most part sprung from the blood of the gods, form the connecting link between them and the ordinary herd of mankind. § 3. Doubtless such a notion of the gods as we have just described was entirely satisfactory to the princes of Ithaca, or any other Greek territory, who assembled in the hall of the chief king at the common meal, and to whom some bard sung the newest song of the bold adven¬ tures of heroes. But how could this religion satisfy the mere country¬ man, who wished to believe that in seed-time and in harvest, in winter and in summer, the divine protection was thrown over him; who anxiously sought to offer his thanks to the gods for all kinds of rural prosperity, for the warding off of all danger from the seed and from the cattle ? As the heroic age of the Greek nation was preceded by another, in which the cultivation of the land, and the nature of the different districts, occupied the chief attention of the inhabitants (which may be called the Pelasgian period ), so likewise there are sufficient traces and remnants of a state of the Grecian religion, in which the gods were considered as exhibiting their power chiefly in the operations of outward nature, in the changes of the seasons, and the phenomena of the year. LITERATURE Oh ANCIENT GREECE. 13 Imagination—whose operations are most active, and whose expressions are most simple and natural in the childhood both of nations and indi¬ viduals—led these early inhabitants to discover, not only in the general phenomena of vegetation, the unfolding and death of the leaf and flower, and in the moist and dry seasons of the year, but also in the peculiar physical character of certain districts, a sign of the alternately hostile or peaceful, happy or ill-omened coincidence of certain deities. There are still preserved in the Greek mythology many legends of a charming, and at the same time touching simplicity, which had their origin at this period, when the Greek religion bore the character of a worship of the powers of Nature. It sometimes also occurs that those parts of mythology which refer to the origin of civil society, to the alliances of princes, and to military expeditions, are closely interwoven with mythical narratives, which when minutely examined are found to contain nothing definite on the acts of particular heroes, but only describe physical phenomena, and other circumstances of a general character, and which have been combined with the heroic fables only through a forgetfulness of their original form; a confusion which naturally arose, when in later times the original connexion of the gods with the agencies of Nature was more and more forgotten, and those of their attributes and acts which had reference to the conduct of human life, the government of states, or moral principles, were perpetually brought into more pro¬ minent notice. It often happens that the original meaning of narratives of this kind may be deciphered when it had been completely hidden from the most learned mythologists of antiquity. But though this process of investigation is often laborious, and may, after all, lead only to uncertain results, yet it is to be remembered that the mutilation and obscuring of the ancient mythological legends by the poets of later times affords the strongest proof of their high antiquity; as the most ancient buildings are most discoloured and impaired by time. § 4. An inquiry, of which the object should be to select and unite all the parts of the Greek mythology which have reference to natural phenomena and the changes of the seasons, although it has never been regularly undertaken, would doubtless show that the earliest religion of the Greeks was founded on the same notions as the chief part of the religions of the East, particularly of that part of the East which was nearest to Greece, Asia Minor. The Greek mind, however, even in this the earliest of its productions, appears richer and more various in its forms, and at the same time to take a loftier and a wider range, than is the case in the religion of the oriental neighbours of the Greeks, the Phrygians, Lydians, and Syrians. In the religion of these nations, the combination and contrast of two beings (Baal and Astarte), the one male, representing the productive, and the other female, representing the passive and nutritive powers of Nature, and the alternation of two states, viz., the strength and vigour, and the weakness and death of 14 HISTORY OF THE the male personification of Nature, of which the first was celebrated with vehement joy, the latter with excessive lamentation, recur in a perpetual cycle, which must in the end have wearied and stupified the mind. The Grecian worship of Nature, on the other hand, in all the various forms which it assumed in different places, places one deity, as the highest of all, at the head of the entire system, the God of heaven and light; for that this is the meaning of the name Zeus is shown by the occurrence of the same root ( Diu ) with the same signification, even in the Sanscrit*, and by the preservation of several of its derivatives whigh remained in common use both in Greek and Latin, all containing the notion of heaven and day. With this god of the heavens, who dwells in the pure expanse of ether, is associated, though not as a being of the same rank, the goddess of the Earth, who in different temples (which may be considered as the mother-churches of the Grecian religion) was worshipped under different names, Hera , Demeter , Dione, and some others of less celebrity. The marriage of Zeus with this god¬ dess (which signified the union of heaven and earth in the fertilizing rains) was a sacred solemnity in the worship of these deities. Besides this goddess, other beings are associated on one side with the Supreme God, who are personifications of certain of his energies; powerful deities who carry the influence of light over the earth, and destroy the opposing powers of darkness and confusion: as Athena , born from the head of her father, in the height of the heavens; and Apollo, the pure and shining god of a worship belonging to other races, but who even in his original form was a god of light. On the other side are deities, allied with the earth and dwelling in her dark recesses; and as all life appears not only to spring from the earth, but to return to that whence it sprung, these deities are for the most part also connected with death: as Hermes , who brings up the treasures of fruitfulness from the depth of the earth, and the child, now lost and now recovered by her mother Demeter, Com, the goddess both cf flourishing and of decaying Nature. It was natural to expect that the element of water ( Poseidon ) should also be introduced into this assemblage of the personified powers of Nature, and should be peculiarly combined with the goddess of the Earth : and that fire ( Hephvestus ) should be represented as a powerful principle derived from heaven and having dominion on the earth, and be closely allied with the goddess who sprang from the head of the god of the heavens. Other deities are less important and necessary parts of this system, as Aphrodite , whose worship was evidently for the most part propagated over Greece from Cyprus and Cythera •f 1 by the influence of * The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, AiFo; A iFi, in which the U has passed into the consonant form F : whereas in Z ius, as in other Greek words, the sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the Latin Iovis (lave in Umbrian) the D has been lost before I, which, however, is pre¬ served in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, dium. f See Herod, i. 105; and Hist, of Home, pp. 121, 122. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 15 Syrophoenician tribes. As a singular being, however, in the assembly of the Greek deities, stands the changeable god of flourishing, decaying, and renovated Nature, Dionysus , whose alternate joys and sufferings, and mar¬ vellous adventures, show a strong resemblance to the form which religious notions assumed in Asia Minor. Introduced by the Thracians (a tribe which spread from the north of Greece into the interior of the country), and not, like the gods of Olympus, recognized by all the races of the Greeks, Dionysus always remained to a certain degree estranged from the rest of the gods, although his attributes had evidently most affinity with those of Demeter and Cora. But in this isolated position, Dionysus exercises an important influence on the spirit of the Greek nation, and both in sculpture and poetry gives rise to a class of feelings which agree in displaying more powerful emotions of the mind, a bolder flight of the imagination, and more acute sensations of pain and pleasure, than were exhibited on occasions where this influence did not operate. § 5. In like manner the Homeric poems (which instruct us not merely by their direct statements, but also by their indirect allusions, not only by what they say , but also by what they do not say), when atten¬ tively considered, clearly show how this ancient religion of nature sank into the shade as compared with the salient and conspicuous forms of the deities of the heroic age. The gods who dwell on Olympus scarcely appear at all in connexion with natural phenomena. Zeus chiefly exercises his powers as a ruler and a king; although he is still designated (by epithets doubtless of high antiquity) as the god of the ether and the storms*; as in much later times the old picturesque expression was used, “What is Zeus doing?” for “What kind of weather is it?” In the Homeric conception of Hera, Athena, and Apollo, there is no trace of any reference of these deities to the fertility of the earth, the clearness of the atmosphere, the arrival of the serene spring, and the like ; which, however, can be discovered in other mythical legends concerning them, and still more in the ceremonies practised at their festivals, which generally contain the most ancient ideas. Hephaestus has passed from the powerful god of fire in heaven and in earth into a laborious smith and worker of metals, who performs his duty by making armour and arms for the other gods and their favourite heroes. As to Hermes, there are some stories in which he is represented as giving fruitfulness to cattle, in his capacity of the rural god of Arcadia; from which, by means of various metamorphoses, he is transmuted into the messenger of Zeus, and the servant of the gods. Those deities, however, which stood at a greater distance from the relations of human life, and especially from the military and political actions of the princes, and could not easily be brought into connexion with them, are for that reason rarely mentioned by Homer, and never take anj' part in the events described by him ; in general they keep aloof * uM'igi wluv' vil civ xi6a.^iZ 1 i. A/vov S’ vto xuA.ov czithi Xt^rakiri (pwvy' to) Se pw/nrovrs; a/u-agr f.to'krrri r luyfAM te. vrotr) i-rovro. —-Iliad, xviii. 569—572, on the meaning of in this passage, see below, § 6. t viii. 53, 2. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE ID to have been sung- at the time of the summer heat. In Phrygia, a melancholy song, called Lityerses , was sung at the cutting of the corn. At the same season of the year, the Mariandynians, on the shores of the Black Sea, played the mournful ditty Bormus on the native flute. The subject of their lamentation may be easily conjectured from the story that Bormus was a beautiful boy, who, having gone' to fetch water for the reapers in the heat of the day, was, while drawing it, borne down by the nymphs of the stream. Of similar meaning are the cries for the youth Hylas , swallowed up by the waters of the fountain, which, in the neighbouring country of the Bithvnians, re-echoed from mountain to mountain. In the southern parts of Asia Minor we find, in connexion with the Syrian worship, a similar lament for Adonis *, whose untimely death was celebrated by Sappho, together with Linus; and the Maneros , a song current in Egypt, especially at Pelusium, in which likewise a youth, the only son of a king, who died in early youth, was bewailed ; a resemblance sufficiently strong to induce Herodotus -ft who is always ready to find a connexion between Greece and Egypt, to consider the Maneros and the Linus as the same song 4 . § 4. A very different class of feelings is expressed in another kind of songs, which originally were dedicated only to Apollo, and were closely connected with the ideas relating to the attributes and actions of this god, viz. the pceans ( 7 rairioveg in Homer). The ppeans were songs, of which the tune and words expressed courage and confidence. “ All sounds of lamentation” (cuAtva), says Callimachus, “ cease when the Ie Paean, Ie Paean, is heard §.” As with the Linus the interjection cu, so with the Paean the cry of irj was connected; exclamations, un¬ meaning in themselves, but made expressive by the tone with which they were uttered, and which, as has been already mentioned, dated back from the earliest periods of the Greek worship; they were different for different deities, and formed as it were the first rudiments of the hymns which began and ended with them. Paeans were sung, not only when there was a hope of being able, by the help of the gods, to overcome a great and imminent danger, but when the danger was happily past; they were songs of hope and confidence as well as of * Beautifully described in the well-known verses of Milton:— “ Thammuz came next behind, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate In amorous ditties, all a summer’s day, While smooth Adonis from his native rock Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood Of Thammuz yearly wounded.”—Paradise Lost, i. 446. f ii. 79. X On the subject of these plaintive songs generally see Muller’s Dorians, book ii. ch. 8, § 12 (vol. i. p. 366, English translation), and Thirl wall in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p 119. § ovSi &&ns ’A%iXr,a xivv^irou ouXiva. ftvrni*, oxtit \a UttAOj, ixou/rri. v, w, —Hymn, Apoll. 20. C 2 20 HISTORY OF THE thanksgiving for victory and safety. The custom, at the termination of the winter, when the year again assumes a mild and serene aspect, and every heart is filled with hope and confidence, of singing vernal pceam (elapit'ol naiavEo), recommended by the Delphic oracle to the cities of Lower Italy, is probably of very high antiquity. Among the Pythago¬ reans likewise the solemn purification (mdapcrie), which they performed in spring, consisted in singing paeans and other hymns sacred to Apollo. In Homer*, the Achaeans, who have restored Chryseis to the priest her father, are represented as singing, at the end of the sacrificial feast, over their cups, a paean in honour of the far-darting god, whose wrath they thus endeavour completely to appease. And in the same poet, Achilles, after the slaughter of Hector, calls on his companions to return to the ships, singing a paean, the spirit and tone of which he expresses in the following words: “ We have gained great glory; we have slain the divine Hector, to whom the Trojans in the city prayed as to a god t-’’ From these passages it is evident that the paean was sung by several persons, one of whom probably led the others (s£a an d that the singers of the paean either sat together at table (which was still custo¬ mary at Athens in Plato’s time), or moved onwards in a body. Of the latter mode of singing a paean the hymn to the Pythian Apollo fur¬ nishes an example, where the Cretans, who have been called by the god as priests of his sanctuary at Pytho, and have happily performed a miraculous voyage from their own island after the sacrificial feast which they celebrate on the shores of Crissa, afterwards ascend to Pytho, in the narrow valley of Parnassus. “ Apollo leads them, holding his harp (0oppy£) in his hand, playing beautifully, with a noble and lofty step. The Cretans follow him in a measured pace, and sing, after the Cretan fashion, an Iepaean, which sweet song the muse had placed in their breasts J.” From this paean, which was sung by a moving body of persons, arose the use of the paean ( 'TzaiwvL'Ceiv ) in war, before the attack on the enemy, which seems to have prevailed chiefly among the Doric nations, and does not occur in Homer. If it was our purpose to seek merely probable conclusions, or if the nature of the present work admitted a detailed investigation, in which we might collect and combine a variety of minute particles of evidence, we could perhaps show that many of the later descriptions of hymns belonging to the separate worships of Artemis, Demeter, Dionysus, and other gods, originated in the earliest period of Greek literature. As, however, it seems advisable in this work to avoid merely conjectural inquiries, we will proceed to follow up the traces which occur in the Homeric poems, and to postpone the other matters until we come to the history of lyric poetry. § 5. Not only the common and public worship of the Gods, but also * Iliad, i. 473. | Iliad, xxii. 391. J Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 514. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 21 those events of private life which strongly excited the feelings, called forth the gift of poetry. The lamentation for the dead , which was chiefly sung by women with vehement expressions of grief, had, at the time described by Homer, already been so far systematised, that singers by profession stood near the bed where the body was laid out, and began the lament; and while they sang it, the women accompanied them with cries and groans*. These singers of the threnoa were at the burial of Achilles represented by the Muses themselves, who sang the lament, while the sisters of Thetis, the Nereids, uttered the same cries of grieff. Opposed to the threnos is the Hymenreos , the joyful and merry bridal song, of which there are descriptions by Homer \ in the account of the designs on the shield of Achilles, and by Hesiod in that of the shield of Hercules §. Homer speaks of a city, represented as the seat of bridal rejoicing, in which the bride is led from the virgin’s apartment through the streets by the light of torches. A loud hymenaeos arises : young men dance around; while flutes and harps (( popfuyyeg ) resound. The passage of Hesiod gives a more finished and indeed a well-grouped picture, if the parts of it are properly distinguished, which does not appear to have been hitherto done with sufficient exactness. According to this passage, the scene is laid in a fortified city, in which men can abandon themselves without fear to pleasure and rejoicing: “ Some bear the bride to the husband on the well-formed chariot; while a loud hymenaeos arises. Burning torches, carried by boys, cast from afar their light: the damsels (viz., those who raise the hymenaeos) move forwards beaming with beauty. Both (i. e. both the youths who accompaay the car and the damsels) are followed by joyful choruses. The one chorus, con¬ sisting of youths (who accompanied the car), sings to the clear sound of the pipe (o-vpiy^) with tender mouths, and causes the echoes to resound: the other, composed of damsels (forming the hymenaeos, properly so called), dance to the notes of the harp (0o'ppy£).” In this passage of Hesiod we have also the first description of a comos, by which word the Greeks de¬ signate the last part of a feast or any other banquet which is enlivened and prolonged with music, singing, and other amusements, until the order of the table is completely deranged, and the half-intoxicated guests go in irregular bodies through the town, often to the doors of beloved damsels: “ On another side again comes, accompanied by flutes, a joy¬ ous band (idb/iog) of youths, some amusing themselves with the song and the dance, others with laughter. Each of these youths moves onwards, attended by a player on the flute (precisely as may be seen so often re¬ presented on vases of a much later age, belonging to southern Italy). * a.oibo\ G(r/\vcov — Iliad, xxiv. 720—722. f Odyssey, xxiv. 59—61. J Iliad, xviii. 492—495. Scut* 274—280. 2 2 HISTORY OF THF. The whole city is filled with joy, and dancing, and festivity The circumstances connected with the comos afforded (as we shall hereafter point out) many opportunities for the productions of the lyric muse, both of a lofty and serious and of a comic and erotic description. § 6. Although in the above description, and in other passages of the ancient epic poets, choruses are frequently mentioned, yet we are not to suppose that the choruses of this early period were like those which sang the odes of Pindar and the choral songs of the tragedians, and accompanied them with dancing and appropriate action. Originally the chorus had chiefly to do with dancing: the most ancient sense of the word chorus is a place for dancing : hence in the Iliad and Odyssey ex¬ pressions occur, such as levelling the chorus (Xeiaiveiv x;opoV), that is, making the place ready for dancing ; going to the chorus (xopovSe tpXeadcu), &c.: hence the choruses and dwellings of the gods are mentioned together; and cities which had spacious squares are said to have wide choruses ( evpvxppoi ). To these choruses young persons of both sexes, the daughters as well as the sons of the princes and nobles, are represented in Homer as going : at these the Trojan and Phaeacian princes are described as being present in newly-washed garments and in well-made armour. There were also, at least in Crete, choruses in which young men and women danced together in rows, holding one another by the hands t: a custom which was in later times unknown among the Ionians and Athenians, but which was retained among the Dorians of Crete and Sparta, as well as in Arcadia. The arrangement of a chorus of this description is as follows : a citharist sits in the midst of the dancers, who surround him in a circle, and plays on the phorminx, a kind of cithara: in the place of which (according to the Homeric hymn to Hermes) another stringed instrument, the lyre, which differed in some respects, was sometimes used; whereas the flute, a foreign, originally Phrygian, instrument, never in these early times was used at the chorus, but only at the comos, with whose boisterous and unrestrained character its tones were more in harmony. This citharist also accompanies the sound of his instrument with songs, which appear to have scarcely differed from such as were sung by individual minstrels, without the presence of a chorus; as, for example, Demodocus, in the palace of the Phaeacian king, sings the loves of Ares and Aphrodite during the dances of the youths J. Hence he is said to begin the song and the dance §. The other persons, who form the chorus, take no part in this song; except so far as they allow their movements to be guided by it: an accompa¬ niment of the voice by the dancers, such as has been already remarked with respect to the singers of the paean, does not occur among the chorus-dancers of these early times : and Ulysses, in looking at the Phaeacian youths who form the chorus to the song of Demodocus, * Scut. 281—285. f Iliad, xviii. 593. J Odyssey, viii. 266. § t’lyoijptvos cp%-/j0ftoio. —Od. xxiii. 134, compare 144. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 23 admires not the sweetness of their voices, or the excellence of their singing, but the rapid motions of their feet*. At the same time, the reader must guard against a misapprehension of the terms juo\ m) and fii\7 T£i 7vav xx\z7 aXXohv xuros i-7ei\6uv xXXov y, u [ay\ ruv o'i ^YifAioz^yoi 'ixffiv j [Acu/nv v\ Inrriga xaxuv v t'zktovx ^ovpuv, n kx) Ghmiv xotiov, o zzv v mentions instead the Xaos uv iyooitn xa.6rip.ivoi, in a republican sense, the people having taken the place of kings. || Theogony, v. 84. 32 HISTORY OF THE bard Thamyris, who, oil his road from Eurytus, the powerful ruler of CEchalia, was struck blind at Dorium by the Muses, and deprived of his entire art, because he had boasted of his ability to contend even with the Muses*. The Boeotian minstrel of the “ Works and Days ” gives an account of his own voyage to the games at Chalcis, which the sons of Amphidamas had celebrated at the funeral of their father; and says, that among the prizes which were there held out, he carried off* a tripod, and consecrated it to the Muses on Mount Helicon j\ Later authors converted this into a contest between Hesiod and Homer. Finally, the author of the Delian Hymn to Apollo, which stands the first amongst those attributed to Homer, entreats the Delian virgins (who were them¬ selves well versed in the song, and probably obeyed him with pleasure), that when a stranger should inquire what bard had pleased them most, they would answer the blind man of Chios, whose poetry every where held the first rank. It is beyond doubt that at the festivals, with which the Ionians celebrated the birth of Apollo at Delos, contests of rhapso- dists were also introduced, just as we find them spread throughout Greece, at a time when Grecian history assumes a more connected form and, as may be inferred with respect to the earlier period, from numerous allusions in the Homeric hymns. § 3. The mention of rhapsodists leads us to consider the circum¬ stance from whence that name is derived, and from which alone we can collect a clear and lively idea of epic poetry, viz., the manner in which these compositions were delivered. Homer everywhere applies the term aoidri to the delivery of poems, whilst hvrj merely denotes the every-day- conversation of common life ; on the other hand, later authors, from Pindar downwards, use the term hzr) frequently to designate poetry, and especially epic, in contradistinction to lyric. Indeed, in that primitive and simple age, a great deal passed under the name of ’Aot^, or song, which in later times would not have been considered as such; for in¬ stance, any high-pitched sonorous recitation, with certain simple modu¬ lations of the voice. The Homeric minstrel makes use of a stringed instrument, which is * Iliad, ii. 594, seq. f v. 654, seq., compare above p. 31, note §. .+ Contests of rhapsodists at Sicyon, in the time of the tyrant Clisthenes, Herod, v. 77 ; at the same time at the Panathencea, according to well known accounts; in Syracuse, about Olymp. 69, Schol. Find. Nem. ii. 1 ; at the Asclepiea in Epidaurus, Plato, Ion, p. 530 ; in Attica also, at the festival of the Brauronian Artemis, Hesych. in B/vuugwv'iois ; at the festival of the Charites in Orchomenos ; that of the Muses at Thespice, and that of Apollo Ptous at Acrcephia, Boeckh. Corp. Inscript. Gr., Nos. 1583—1587, vol. i. p. 762—770 ; in Chios, in later times, but doubtless from ancient custom, Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 2214, vol. ii. p. 201; in Teos, under the name u-rop>oXr,s avrocvrobotecoi, according to Boeckh. Prooem. Lect. Berol. aestiv. 1834. Poems were likewise sometimes rhapsodised in Olympia , Diog. Laert. viii. 6, 63; Diod. xiv. 109. Contests of rhapsodists also suited the festivals of Dionysus , Athenaeus, vii. p. 275; and those of all gods, which it is right to remark for the proper compre¬ hension of the Homeric hymns. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 33 called a cithara, or, more precisely, phorminx *, ail instrument by which dances were also accompanied. When the phorminx was used to lead a dancing-chorus, its music was of course continued as long as the dancing lasted f; whilst, at the recitation of epic poetry, it was only em¬ ployed in the introduction (ava/3o\?/), and merely served to give the voice the necessary pitch }. A simple accompaniment of this description is very well adapted to the delivery of epic poetry; and in the present day the heroic lays of the Servians, which have most faithfully retained their original character, are delivered in an elevated tone of voice by wandering minstrels, after a few introductory notes, for which the gurla , a stringed instrument of the simplest construction, is employed. That a musical instrument of this nature was not necessary for the recital of epic poetry is proved by the fact, that Hesiod did not make use of the citliara, and on that account is said to have been excluded from the musical contests at Delphi, where this instrument was held in the highest estimation, as the favourite of Apollo himself. On the other hand, the poets of this Boeotian school merely carried a laurel staff §, as a token of the dignity bestowed by Apollo and the Muses, as the sceptre was the badge of judges and heralds. In later times, as music was more highly cultivated, the delivery of the two species of poetry became more clearly defined. The rhap- sodists, or chaunters of epic poetry, are distinguished from the citharodi, or singers to the cithara ||. The expression pcu//w£o'e, paxpudeiv, signifies nothing more than the peculiar method of epic recitation; and it is an error which has been the occasion of much perplexity in researches re¬ specting Homer, and which has moreover found its way into ordinary language, to endeavour to found upon this word conclusions with respect to the composition and connexion of the epic lays, and to infer from it that they consisted of scattered fragments subsequently joined to- * That the phorminx and cithara were nearly the same instrument appears not only from the expression (pogfiiyyi xida^uv, which often occurs, but from the con verse expression, xiSdpu tpo^^uv, which is used in the Odyssey:— xwgvZ, tv %t(>(r)v xiOagiv iu xufiurryrvgt xar olrov; fioX'XYii t^d^ovrts tYivtvov xa.ro. fittroovi. { Hence the expression, twrzgov),t}\e Iliad was sung by the rhapsodists in a red, the Odyssey in a violet, dress, Eustath. ad Iliad, A. p. 6, 9, ed. Rom. f Plato, Ion. p. 535. From this, in later days, a regular dramatic style of acting (v-roKgiirts) for the rhapsodists or Homerists was developed. See Aristot. Poet. 26 Rhetor, iii. 1, 8; Achill. Tat. ii. 1. I For in Ivv, i is equal to two times, as well as vv. § yivos ‘hrov. II Poet. 24, ro iiowpcov trracfiy.uTa.ro') xai oyKuYztrrcirov rw fitrgatv Itrrtv. Hence versus longi among the Romans. ** Ku.ru.'kv^tt. D 2 36 HISTORY OF THE from the dovetailing of the feet into one another, the alternation of dac¬ tyls with the heavy spondees, all contribute to give repose and majesty and a lofty solemn tone to the metre, and render it equally adapted to the pythoness who announces the decrees of the deity*, and to the rliap- sodist who recites the battles and adventures of heroes. Not only the metre, but the poetical tone and style of the ancient epic, was fixed and settled in a manner which occurs in no other kind of poetry in Greece. This uniformity in style is the first thing that strikes us in comparing the Homeric poems with other remains of the more ancient epic poetry—the differences between them being apparent only to the careful and critical observer. It is scarcely possible to account satisfac¬ torily for this uniformity—this invariableness of character—except upon the supposition of a certain tradition handed down from generation to generation in families of minstrels, of an hereditary poetical school. We recognise in the Homeric poems many traces of a style of poetry which, sprung originally from the muse-inspired enthusiasm of the Pierians of Olympus or Helicon, was received and improved by the bards of the heroic ages, and some centuries later arrived at the matured excellence which is still the object of our admiration, though without losing all connexion with its first source. We shall not indeed undertake to defend the genealogies constructed by Pherecydes, Damastes, and other collectors of legends from all the various names of primitive poets and minstrels extant in their time—genealogies, in which Homer and Hesiod are derived from Orpheus, Musaeus, and other Pierian bards t; but the fundamental notion of these derivations, viz., the connexion of the epic poets with the early minstrels, receives much confirmation from the form of the epic poetry itself. In no other species of poetry besides the epic do we find generally prevalent certain traditional forms, and an invariable type, to which every poet, however original and inventive his genius, submits; and it is evident that the getting by heart of these poems, as well as their extem¬ poraneous effusion on particular‘occasions and at the inspiration of the moment, must have been by these means greatly facilitated. To the same cause, or to the style which had been consecrated by its origin and tradition, we attribute the numerous and fixed epithets of the gods and heroes which are added to their names without any reference to their actions or the circumstances of the persons who may be described. The great attention paid to external dignity in the appellations which the heroes bestow on each other, and which, from the elevation of their tone, are in strange contrast with the reproaches with which they at the same time load each other—the frequently-recurring expressions, par¬ ticularly in the description of the ordinary events of heroic life, their * Hence called Pjthium metmm, and stated to be an invention of the priestess Phemonoe, Dorians, ii. ch. 8, § 13. f These genealogies have been most accurately compared and examined with cri* tical acuteness by Lobeck, in his learned work, Aglaophamus, vol. i, p. 322, seg. LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 37 assemblies, sacrifices, banquets, &c.—the proverbial expressions and sentences derived from an earlier age, to which class may be referred most of the verses which belong in common to Homer and Hesiod—and, finally, the uniform construction of the sentences, and their connexion with each other, are also attributable to the same origin. This, too, is another proof of the happy tact and natural genius of the Greeks of that period ; since no style can be conceived which would be better suited than this to epic narrative and description. In general, short phrases, consisting of two or three hexameters, and usually termi¬ nating with the end of a verse; periods of greater length, occurring chiefly in impassioned speeches and elaborate similes ; the phrases care¬ fully joined and strung together with conjunctions; the collocation simple and uniform, without any of the words being torn from their connexion, and placed in a prominent position by a rhetorical artifice ; all this appears the natural language of a mind which contemplates the actions of heroic life with an energetic but tranquil feeling, and passes them successively in review with conscious delight and complacency. § 5. The tone and style of epic poetry is also evidently connected with the manner in which these poems were perpetuated. After the researches of various scholars, especially of Wood and Wolf, no one can doubt that it was universally preserved by the memory alone, and handed down from one rhapsodist to another by oral tradition. The Greeks (who, in poetry, laid an astonishing stress on the manner of delivery, the observance of the rhythm, and the proper intonation and inflection of the voice) always, even in later times, considered it necessary that per¬ sons, who were publicly to deliver poetical compositions, should previ¬ ously practise and rehearse their part. The oral instruction of the chorus was the chief employment of the lyric and tragic poets, who were hence called chorodidascali. Amongst the rhapsodists also, to whom the cor¬ rectness and grace of delivery was of much importance, this method of tradition was the most natural, and at the same time the only one pos¬ sible, at a time in which the art of writing was either not known at all to the Greeks or used only by a few, and by them to a very slight extent. The correctness of this supposition is proved, in the first place, by the silence of Homer , which has great weight in matters which he had so frequently occasion to describe; but particularly by the “fatal tokens” ( arj/iara \vypa), commanding the destruction of Bellerophon, which Proetus sends to lobates: these being clearly a species of symbolical figures, which must have speedily disappeared from use when alpha¬ betical writing was once generally introduced. Besides this we have no credible account of written memorials of that period ; and it is distinctly stated that the laws of Zaleucus (about Olymp. 30) were the first committed to writing: those of Lyeurgus, of earlier date, having been at first preserved only by oral tradition. Additional confirmation is afforded by the rarity and worthlessness of any historical 38 HISTORY OF THE da,ta founded upon written documents, of the period before the com mencement of the Olympiads. The same circumstance also explains the Late introduction of prose composition among the Greeks, viz., during the time of the seven wise men. The frequent employment of writing for detailed records would of itself have introduced the use of prose. Another proof is afforded by the existing inscriptions , very few of which are of earlier date than the time of Solon ; also by the coins which were struck in Greece from the reign of Phidon, king of Argos (about Olymp. 8), and which continued for some time without any inscription, and only gradually obtained a few letters. Again, the very shape of the letters may be adduced in evidence, as in all monuments until about ‘the time of the Persian war, they exhibit a great uncouthness in their form, and a great variety of character in different districts; so much so, that we can almost trace their gradual development from the Phoenician character (which the Greeks adopted as the foundation of their alphabet) until they obtained at last a true Hellenic stamp. Even in the time of Herodotus, the term “ Phoenician characters”* was still used for writing. If now we return to Homer, it will be found that the form of the text itself, particularly as it appears in the citations of ancient authors, dis¬ proves the idea of its having been originally committed to writing, since we find a great variety of different readings and discrepancies, which are much more reconcilable with oral than written tradition. Finally, the language of the Homeric poems (as it still appears after the nume¬ rous revisions of the text), if considered closely and without prejudice, is of itself a proof that they were not committed to writing till many cen¬ turies after their composition. We allude more particularly to the omis¬ sion of the vau , or (as it is termed) the iEolic digamma, a sound which was pronounced even by Homer strongly or faintly according to cir cumstances, but was never admitted by the Ionians into written com¬ position, they having entirely got rid of this sound before the introduc¬ tion of writing: and hence it was not received in the most ancient copies of Homer, which were, without doubt, made by the Ionians. The licence as to the use of the digamma is, however, only one instance of the freedom which so strongly characterizes the language of Homer ; but it could never have attained that softness and flexibility which render it so well adapted for versification—that variety of longer and shorter forms which existed together—that freedom in contracting and resolving vowels, and of forming the contractions into two syllables—if the practice of writing had at that time exercised the power, which it necessarily pos¬ sesses, of fixing the forms of a language. Lastly, to return to the point, for the sake of which we have entered into this explanation, the poetical style of the ancient epic poems shows the great use it made of those aids of which poetry, preserved and transmitted by means of * -I >otviK?iiK in Herod, v. 58. Likewise in the inscription known by the name of Dircs Teiurum. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 39 memory alone, will always gladly avail itself. The Greek epic, like heroic poems of other nations which were preserved by oral tradition, as well as our own popular songs, furnishes us with many instances, where, by the mere repetition of former passages or a few customary flowing phrases, the mind is allowed an interval of repose, which it gladly makes use of in order to recal the verses which immediately follow. These epic expletives have the same convenience as the conslantly- recurring burdens of the stanzas in the popular poetry of other nations, and contribute essentially towards rendering comprehensible the marvel (which, however, could only be accounted as such in times when the powers of memory have been weakened by the use of writing) involved in the composition and preservation of such poems by the means of memorv alone*. § 6. In this chapter our inquiries have hitherto been directed to the delivery, form, and character of the ancient epic, as we must suppose it to have existed before the age of Homer. With regard, however, to any particular production of this ante-Homeric poetry, no historical testimony of any is extant, much less any fragment or account of the subject of the poem. And yet it is in general quite certain that at the period when Homer and Hesiod arose, a large number of songs must have existed respecting the actions both of gods and heroes. The compositions of these poets, if taken by themselves, do not bear the character of a com¬ plete and all-sufficient body, but rest on a broad foundation of other poems, by means of which their entire scope and application was deve¬ loped to a contemporary audience. In the Theogony, Hesiod only aims at bringing the families of gods and heroes into an unbroken genealo¬ gical connexion ; the gods and heroes themselves he always supposes to be well known. Homer speaks of Achilles, Nestor, Diomed, even the first time their names are introduced, as persons with whose race, family, preceding history, and actions, every person was acquainted, and which require to be only occasionally touched upon so far as may be connected with the actual subject. Besides this, we find a crowd of secondary personages, who, as if well known from particular traditions, are very slightly alluded to; persons whose existence was doubtless a matter of notoriety to the poet, and who were interesting from a variety of circumstances, but who are altogether unknown to us, as they were to the Greeks of later days. That the Olympian council of the gods, as represented in Homer, must have been previously arranged by earlier poets, has been already remarked ; and poetry of a similar nature to one part of Hesiod’s Theogony, though in some respects essentially different, * The author has here given a summary of all the arguments which contradict the opinion that the ancient epics of the Greeks were originally reduced to writing ; principally because, in the course of the critical examination to which Wolfs in¬ quiries have been recently submitted in Germany, this point has been differently handled by several persons, and it has been again maintained that these poems were preserved in writing from the beginning. 40 HISTORY OF THE must have been composed upon Cronus and Japetus, the expelled deities languishing in Tartarus*. In the heroic age, however, every thing great and distinguished must have been celebrated in song, since, according to Homer’s notions, glo¬ rious actions or destinies naturally became the subjects of poetry f. Penelope by her virtues, and Clytaemnestra by her crimes, became respec¬ tively a tender and a dismal strain for posterity j;; the enduring opinion of mankind being identical with the poetry. The existence of epic poems descriptive of the deeds of Hercules, is in particular established by the peculiarity of the circumstances mentioned in Homer with respect to this hero, which seem to have been taken singly from some full and detailed account of his adventures §; nor would the ship Argo have been distinguished in the Odyssey by the epithet of “ interesting to all,” had it not been generally well known through the medium of poetry ||. Many events, moreover, of the Trojan war were known to Homer as the subjects of epic poems, especially those which occurred at a late period of the siege, as the contest between Achilles and Ulysses, evidently a real poem, which was not perhaps without influence upon the Iliad ^[, and the poem of the Wooden Horse**. Poems are also men¬ tioned concerning the return of the Achseanstt, and the revenge of Orestes J];. And since the newest song, even at that time, always pleased the audience most§§, we must picture to ourselves a flowing stream of various strains, and a revival of the olden time in song, such as never occurred at any other period. All the Homeric allusions, however, leave the impression that these songs, originally intended to enliven a few hours of a prince’s banquet, were confined to the narration of a single event of small compass, or (to borrow an expression from the German epopees) to a single adventure , for the connexion of which they entirely relied upon the general notoriety of the story and on other existing poems. Such was the state of poetry in Greece when the genius of Homer arose. * That is to say, it does not, from the intimations given in Homer, seem probable that he reckoned the deities of the water, as Oceanus and Tethys, and those of the light, as Hyperion and Theia, among the Titans, as Hesiod does. f See Iliad, vi.358; Od. iii. 204. + Od. xxiv. 197, 200. 6 See Muller’s Dorians, Append, v. § 14, vol. i. p. 543. || Od. xii. 70 : * A^yu tfxa.vvvcroivrc& ro/Ta.vru.Kts H'ldjeoJ'iv ’A6nvatuv, xoc) Tg)s i-Tfnya.yi'vo, rov piyccv tv fZouX/i HttiriffTpKrov, oj rov "Opypov yfyoitrtii, ffTo^abnv to Tg'iv uti^optvov. fipiTtgos yug xi7vo; o %(>vcnos r hv orokiyrn;, uwt^ ’Kiwaloi Spugvuv cirfMx'iira.piv. t The opinion of Aristarchus is briefly stated by Pseudo-Plutarch Vita Homeri ii. 2. Its foundation may be seen by comparing, for example, the Schol. Venet. on Iliad xiii. 197, e cod. A, which, according to recent investigations, contain extracts from Aristarchus. | Simonides in Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2, and others. Compare Theocritus, vii. 17. § Concerning this yivo;, see the statements in Harpocration in c O pnpfiai, and Bek¬ ker’s Anecdota, p. 288, which in part are derived from the logographers. Another and different use of the word 'O pnfiai occurs in Plato, Isocrates, and other writers, according to which it means the admirers of Homer. 42 HISTORY OF THE hero, from whom they derived their name*. A member of this house of Homerids was, probably, “ the blind poet,” who, in the Homeric hymn to Apollo, relates of himself, that he dwelt on the rocky Chios, whence he crossed to Delos for the festival of the Ionians and the con¬ tests of the poets, and whom Thucydides f took for Homer himself; a supposition, which at least shows that this great historian considered Chios as the dwelling-place of Homer. A later Homerid of Chios was the well-known Cinaethus, who, as we know from his victory at Syracuse, flourished about the 69th Olympiad. At what time the Homerid Par- thenius of Chios lived is unknown J. But notwithstanding the ascer¬ tained existence of this clan of Homerids at Chios, nay, if we even, with Thucydides, take the blind man of the hymn for Homer himself, it would not follow that Chios was the birthplace of Homer: indeed, the ancient writers have reconciled these accounts by representing Homer as having, in his wanderings, touched at Chios, and afterwards fixed his residence there. A notion of this kind is evidently implied in Pindar’s statements, who in one place called Homer a Smyrnaean by origin, in another, a Chian and Smyrnaean §. The same idea is also indicated in the passage of an orator, incidentally cited by Aristotle; which says that “ the Chians greatly honoured Homer, although he was not a citizen ||.” With the Chian race of Homerids may be aptly compared the Samian family; although this is not joined immediately to the name of Homer, but to that of Creophylus, who is described as the contemporary and host of Homer. This house also flourished for several centuries; since, in the first place, a descendant of Creophylus is said to have given the Homeric poems to Lycurgus the Spartan *[ (which statement may be so far true, that the Lacedaemonians derived their knowledge of these poems from rhapsodists of the race of Creophylus) ; and, secondly, a later Creophylid, named Hermodamas, is said to have been heard by Py¬ thagoras**. § 2. On the other hand, the opinion that Homer was a Smyrnaean not only appears to have been the prevalent belief in the flourishing times of Greece ft? but is supported by the two following considerations :—first, the important fact, that it appears in the form of a popular legend, a rnythvs , the divine poet being called a son of a nymph, Critheis, and the * Niebuhr, Hist, of Rome, vol. i. note 747 (801). Compare the Preface to Muller’s Dorians, p. xii. seq. English Translation. f Thucyd. iii. 104. $ Suidas in Ila^tvios. It may be conjectured that this vlos Qlarooos, uvoyovos 0/u.ripov, is connected with the ancient epic poet, Thestorides of Phocsea and Chios mentioned in Pseudo-Herodot. Vit. Horn. § See Boeckh. Pindar. Fragm. inc. 86. || Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23. Comp. Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn., near the end. See particularly Heraclid. Pont. craXm/wv, Fragm. 2. ** Suidas in HuHxyogoL; hH/Aio;, p. 231, ed. Kuster. tt Besides the testimony of Pindar, the incidental statement of Scylax is the most remarkable. iv rj''0{tyigos ?v, p. 35, ed. Is. Voss. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 43 Smyrmean river Meles *; secondly, that by assuming Smyrna as the central point of Homer’s life and celebrity, the claims of all the other cities which rest on good authority (as of the Athenians, already men¬ tioned, of the Cumaeans, attested by Ephorus, himself a Cumaean t, 01 the Colophonians, supported by Antimachus of Colophon }), may be ex¬ plained and reconciled in a simple and natural manner. With this view, the history of Smyrna is of great importance in connexion with Homer, but from the conflicting interests of different tribes and the partial accounts of native authorities, is doubtful and obscure: the following O account is, at least, the result of careful investigation. There were two traditions and opinions with respect to the foundation or first occupa¬ tion of Smyrna by a Greek people : the one was the Ionic ; according to which it was founded from Ephesus, or from an Ephesian village called Smyrna, which really existed under that name § ; this colony was also called an Athenian one, the Ionians having settled Ephesus under the command of Androclus, the son of Codrus||. According to the other, the JEolian account, the iEolians of Cyme, eighteen years after their own city was founded, took possession of Smyrna ^[, and, in con¬ nexion with this event, accounts of the leaders of the colony are given, which agree well with other mythical statements**. As the Ionic settlement was fixed by the Alexandrine chronologists at the year 140 after the destruction of Troy, and the foundation of Cyme is placed at the year 150 after the same epoch (which is in perfect harmony with the succession of the iEolic colonies), the two races met at about the same time in Smyrna, although, perhaps, it may be allowed that the Ionians had somewhat the precedence in point of time, as the name of the town was derived from them. It is credible, although it is not distinctly stated, that for a long time the two populations occupied Smyrna jointly. The /Eolians, however, appear to have predominated, Smyrna, according to Herodotus, being one of the twelve cities of the * Mentioned in all the different lives of Homer. The name or epithet of Homer, Melesigenes, can hardly be of late date, but must have descended from the early epic poets. f See Pseudo-Plutarch, ii. 2. Ephorus was likewise, evidently, the chief autho¬ rity followed by the author of the life of Homer, which goes by the name of Hero¬ dotus. $ Pseudo-Plutarch, ii.,2. The connexion between the Smyrnsean and Colophonian origin of Homer is intimated in the epigram, ibid. i. 4, which calls Homer the son of Meles, and at the same time makes Colophon his native country. 'T/s Mik'/jros, 7} Tourt rrvpp.Kxnrd.vTuv, Proclus in Gaisford’s HephaestiOD, p. 476. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 57 against the first part of the Iliad, principally against the second, and also against the fifth, sixth, and tenth hooks, rests on the later ones, and on those which follow the death of Hector. A tragedy, which treated its subject dramatically, might indeed have closed with the death of Hector, but no epic poem could have been so concluded; as in that it is necessary that the feeling which has been excited should be allowed to subside into calm. This effect is, in the first place, brought about by means of the games ; by which the greatest honour is conferred on Patroclus, and also a complete satisfaction is made to Achilles. But neither would the Iliad at any time have been complete without the cession of the body of Hector to his father, and the honourable burial of the Trojan hero. The poet, who everywhere else shows so gentle and humane a disposition, and such an endeavour to distribute even- handed justice throughout his poem, could not allow the threats of Achilles* to be fulfilled on the body of Hector; but even if this had been the poet’s intention, the subject must have been mentioned ; for, according to the notions of the Greeks of that age, the fate of the dead body was almost of more importance than that of the living; and in¬ stead of our twenty-fourth book, a description must have followed of the manner in which Achilles ill-treated the corpse of Hector, and then cast it for food to the dogs. Who could conceive such an end to the Iliad possible? It is plain that Homer, from the first, arranged the plan of the Iliad with a full consciousness that the anger of Achilles against Hector stood in need of some mitigation—of some kind of atonement— and that a gentle, humane disposition, awaiting futurity with calm feel¬ ings, was requisite both to the hero and the poet at the end of the poem. § 11. The Odyssey is indisputably, as well as the Iliad, a poem pos¬ sessing an unity of subject; nor can any oqe of its chief parts be re¬ moved without leaving a chasm in the development of the leading idea; but it differs from the Iliad in being composed on a more artificial and more complicated plan. This is the case partly, because in the first and greater half, up to the sixteenth book, two main actions are carried on side by side; partly because the action, which passes within the compass of the poem, and as it were beneath our eyes, is greatly extended by means of an episodical narration , by which the chief action itself is made distinct and complete, and the most marvellous and strangest part of the story is transferred from the mouth of the poet to that of the inventive hero himself 'f*. The subject of the Odyssey is the return of Ulysses from a land lying beyond the range of human intercourse or knowledge, to a home invaded by bands of insolent intruders, who seek to rob him of his wife, and kill his son. Hence, the Odyssey begins exactly at that point * II. xxii. 35 ; xxiii. 183. f It appears, however, from his soliloquy, Od. xx. 18—21, that the poet did not intend his adventures to be considered as imaginary. 58 HISTORY OP THE where the hero is considered to be farthest from his home, in the island of Ogygia*, at the navel, that is, the central point of the sea; where the nymph Calypso f has kept him hidden from all mankind for seven years; thence having, by the help of the gods, who pity his misfortunes, passed through the dangers prepared for him by his implacable enemy, Poseidon, he gains the land of the Phseacians, a careless, peaceable, and effeminate nation on the confines of the earth, to whom war is only known by means of poe.try; borne by a marvellous Phseacian vessel, he reaches Ithaca sleeping; here he is entertained by the honest swine¬ herd Eumaeus, and having been introduced into his own house as a beg¬ gar, he is there made to suffer the harshest treatment from the suitors, in order that he may afterwards appear with the stronger right as a terri¬ ble avenger. With this simple story a poet might have been satisfied ; and we should even in this form, notwithstanding its smaller extent, have placed the poem almost on an equality with the Iliad. But the poet, to whom we are indebted for the Odyssey in its complete form, has interwoven a second story, by which the poem is rendered much richer and more complete; although, indeed, from the union of two actions, some roughnesses have been produced, which perhaps with a plan of this kind could scarcely be avoided J. For while the poet represents the son of Ulysses, stimulated by Athena, coming forward in Ithaca with newly excited courage, and calling the suitors to account before the people; and then afterwards describes him as travelling to Pylos and Sparta to obtain intelligence of his lost father; he gives us a picture of Ithaca and its anarchical con¬ dition, and of the rest of Greece in its state of peace after the return of the princes, which produces the finest contrast; and, at the same time, prepares Telemachus for playing an energetic part in the work of vengeance, which by this means becomes more probable. Although these remarks show that the arrangement of the Odyssey is essentially different from that of the Iliad, and bears marks of a more artificial and more fully developed state of the epos, yet there is much that is common to the two poems in this respect; particularly that pro¬ found comprehension of the means of straining the curiosity, and of keeping up the interest by new and unexpected turns of the narrative. The decree of Zeus is as much delayed in its execution in the Odyssey as it is in the Iliad: as, in the latter poem, it is not till after the building of the walls that Zeus, at the request of Thetis, takes an active part * ’tlywy'uz. from ’nyvym, who was originally a deity of the watery expanse which covers all things. f Kthe Concealer. + There would be nothing abrupt in the transition from Menelaus to the suitors in Od. iv. 624, if it fell at the beginning of a new book; and, yet this division into books is a mere contrivance of the Alexandrine grammarians. The four verses 620-4, which are unquestionably spurious, are a mere useless interpolation ; as they contri¬ bute nothing to the junction of the parts. LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 59 against the Greeks ; so, in the Odyssey, he appears at the very begin¬ ning willing to acquiesce in the proposal of Athena for the return of Ulysses, but does not in reality despatch Hermes to Calypso till several days later, in the fifth book. It is evident that the poet is impressed with a conception familiar to the Greeks, of a divine destiny, slow in its preparations, and apparently delaying, but on that very account marching with the greater certainty to its end. We also perceive in the Odyssey the same artifice as that pointed out in the Iliad, of turning the expectation of the reader into a different direction from that which the narrative is afterwards to take; but, from the nature of the subject, chiefly in single scattered passages. The poet plays in the most agreeable manner with us, by holding out other means by which the necessary work of vengeance on the suitors maybe accomplished ; and also after we have arrived somewhat nearer the true aim, he still has in store another beautiful invention with which to surprise us. Thus the exhortation twice addressed to Telemachus in the same words, in the early books of the Odyssey, to imitate the example of Orestes* * * § (which strikes deep root in his heart), produces an undefined expectation that he himself may attempt something against the suitors; nor is the true meaning of it perceived, until Telemachus places himself so undauntedly at his father’s side. After¬ wards, when the father and son have arranged their plan for taking vengeance, they think of assaulting the suitors, hand to hand, with lance and sword, in a combat of very doubtful issue f. The bow of Eurytus, from which Ulysses derives such great advantage, is a new and unex¬ pected idea. Athena suggests to Penelope the notion of proposing it to the suitors as a prize J, and although the ancient legend doubtless repre¬ sented Ulysses overcoming the suitors with this bow, yet the manner in which it is brought into his hands is a very ingenious contrivance of the poet §. As in the Iliad the deepest interest prevails between the Battle at the Ships and the Death of Hector, so in the Odyssey the narrative begins, with the fetching of the bow (at the outset of the twenty-first book), to assume a lofty tone, which is mingled with an almost painful expectation; and the poet makes use of every thing which the legend offered, as the gloomy forebodings of Theoclymenus (who is only intro¬ duced in order to prepare for this scene of horror ||) and the contempo- * Od. i. 302; iii. 200. f Od. xvi. 295. The hbiTwis of Zenodotus, as usual, rests on insufficient grounds, and would deprive the story of an important point of its progress. | Od. xxi. 4. § That this part of the poem is founded on ancient tradition appears from the fact that the AStolian tribe of the Eurytanians, who derived their origin from Eurytus (probably the Aitolian CEchalia also belonged to this nation, Strabo, x. p. 448), pos¬ sessed an urac/e of U/ysses. Lycophron, v. 799 ; and the Scholia from Aristotle. || Among these the disappearance of the sun (Od. xx. 356) is to be observed, which is connected with the return of Ulysses during the new moon (Od. xiv. 162; xix. 307), when an eclipse of the sun could take place. This also appears to be a trace of ancient tradition. 60 HISTORY OF THE raneous festival of Apollo (who fully grants the prayer of Ulysses tc secure him glory in the battle with the bow * * * § ), in order to heighten the marvellous and inspiriting parts of the scene. § 12. It is plain that the plan of the Odyssey, as well as of the Iliad, offered many opportunities for enlargement , by the insertion of new passages; and many irregularities in the course of the narration and its occasional diffuseness may be explained in this manner. The latter, for example, is observable in the amusements offered to Ulysses when en¬ tertained by the PhEeacians; and even some of the ancients questioned the genuineness of the passage about the dance of the Pheeacians and the song of Demodocus on the loves «of Ares and Aphrodite, although this part of the Odyssey appears to have been at least extant in the 50th Olympiad, when the chorus of the Pheeacians was represented on the throne of the Amyclsean Apollo f. So likewise Ulysses’ account of his adventures contains many interpolations, particularly in the nekyia , or invocation of the dead, where the ancients had already attributed an important passage (which, in fact, destroys the unity and connexion of the narrative) to the diaskeuastce , or interpolators, among others, to the Orphic Onomacritus, who, in the time of the Pisistratids, was employed in collecting the poems of Homer *. Moreover, the Alexandrine critics, Aristophanes and Aristarchus, considered the whole of the last part from the recognition of Penelope, as added at a later period §. Nor can it be denied that it has great defects; in particular, the description of the arrival of the suitors in the infernal regions is only a second and feebler nekyia , which does not precisely accord with the first, and is introduced in this place without sufficient reason. At the same time, the Odyssey could never have been considered as concluded, until Ulysses had embraced his father Laertes, who is so often mentioned in the course of the poem, and until a peaceful state of things had, been restored, or began to be restored, in Ithaca. It is not therefore likely that the original Odyssey altogether wanted some passage of this kind; but it was pro¬ bably much altered by. the Homerids, until it assumed the form in which we now possess it. § 13. That the Odyssey was written after the Iliad, and that many differences are apparent in the character and manners both of men and gods, as well as in the management of the language, is quite clear ; but * The festival of Apollo (the vioprivtos) is alluded to. Od. xx. 156, 250, 278; xxi. 253. Comp. xxi. 267; xxii. 7. f Pausan. iii. 18, 7. | See Schol. Od. xi. 104. The entire passage, from xi. 568-626, was rejected by the ancients, and with good reason. For whereas Ulysses elsewhere is represented as merely, by means of his libation of blood, enticing the shades from their durb abodes to the asphodel-meadow, where he is standing, as it were, at the gate ot Hades ; iu this passage he appears in the midst of the dead, who are firmly bound to certain spots in the infernal regions. The same more recent conception prevails in Od. xxiv. 13, where the dead dwell on the asphodel-meadow. § From Od. xxiii. 296, to the end. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 61 it is difficult and hazardous to raise upon this foundation any definite conclusions as to the person and age of the poet. With the exception of the anger of Poseidon, who always works unseen in the obscure distance; the gods appear in a milder form; they act in unison, without dissension or contest, for the relief of mankind, not, as is so often the case in the Iliad, for their destruction. It is, however, true, that the subject afforded far less occasion for describing the violent and angry passions and vehe¬ ment combats of the gods. At the same time the gods all appear a step higher above the human race; they are not represented as descending in a bodily form from their dwellings on Mount Olympus, and mixing in the tumult of the battle, but they go about in human forms, only dis¬ cernible by their superior wisdom and prudence, in the company of the adventurous Ulysses and the intelligent Telemachus. But the chief cause of this difference is to be sought in the nature of the story, and, we may add, in the fine tact of the poet, who knew how to preserve unity of subject and harmony of tone in his picture, and to exclude every thing of which the character did not agree. The attempt of many learned writers to discover a different religion and mythology for the Iliad and the Odyssey leads to the most arbitrary dissection of the two poems*; above all, it ought to have been made clear how the fable of the Iliad could have been treated by a professor of this supposed religion of the Odyssey, without' introducing quarrels, battles, and vehement excitement among the gods; in which there would have been no diffi¬ culty, if the difference of character in the gods of the two poems were introduced by the poet, and did not grow out of the subject. On the other hand, the human race appears in the houses of Nestor, Menelaiis, and especially of Alcinous, in a far more agreeable state, and one of far greater comfort f and luxury than in the Iliad. But where could the enjoyments, to which the Atridae, in their native palace, and the peace¬ able Phaeacians could securely abandon themselves, find a place in the rough camp? Granting, however, that a different taste and feeling is shown in the choice of the subject, and in the whole arrangement of the poem, yet there is not a greater difference than is often found in the inclinations of the scnne man in the prime of life and in old age; and, to speak candidly, we know no other argument adduced by the Chorizontes j, both of ancient and modern times, for attributing the wonderful genius of Homer to two different individuals. It is certain that the Odyssey, in respect of its plan and the conception of its chief characters, of Ulysses * Benjamin Constant, in particular, in his celebrated work, De la Religion, tom. iii. has been forced to go this length, as he distinguishes trois especes de mythologie in the Homeric poems, and determines from them the age of the different parts. f The Greek word for this is ; which, in the Iliad, is only used for the care of horses, but in the Odyssey signifies human conveniences and luxuries, among which hot baths may be particularly mentioned. See Od. viii. 450. I Those Greek grammarians who attributed the Iliad and Odyssey to different authors were called « %agigovrtj, “ The Separaters.” 62 HISTORY OF THE himself, of Nestor and Menelaiis, stands in the closest affinity with the Iliad; that it always presupposes the existence of the earlier poem, and silently refers to it; which also serves to explain the remarkable fact, that the Odyssey mentions many occurrences in the life of Ulysses, which lie out of the compass of the action, but not one which is celebrated in the Iliad*. If the completion of the Iliad and the Odyssey seems too vast a work for the lifetime of one man, we may, perhaps, have recourse to the supposition, that Homer, after having sung the Iliad in the vigour of his youthful years, in his old age communicated to some devoted disciple the plan of the Odyssey, which had long been working in his mind, and left it to him for completion. § 14. It is certain that we are perpetually met with difficulties in en¬ deavouring to form a notion of the manner in which these great epic poems were composed, at a time anterior to the use of writing. But these difficulties arise much more from our ignorance of the period, and our incapability of conceiving a creation of the mind without those appli¬ ances of which the use has become to us a second nature, than in the general laws of the human intellect. Who can determine how many thousand verses a person, thoroughly impregnated with his subject, and absorbed in the contemplation of it, might produce in a year, and con¬ fide to the faithful memory of disciples, devoted to their master and his art ? Wherever a creative genius has appeared it has met with persons of congenial taste, and has found assistants, by whose means it has completed astonishing works in a comparatively short time. Thus the old bard may have been followed by a number of younger minstrels, to whom it was both a pleasure and a duty to collect and diffuse the honey which flowed from his lips. But it is, at least, certain, that it would be unintelligible how these great epics were composed, unless there had been occasions , on which they actually appeared in their integrity, and could charm an attentive hearer with the full force and effect of a com¬ plete poem. Without a connected and continuous recitation they were not finished works; they were mere disjointed fragments, which might by possibility form a whole. But where were there meals or festivals long enough for such recitations? What attention, it has been asked, could be sufficiently sustained, in order to follow so many thousand verses? If, however, the Athenians could at one festival hear in suc¬ cession about nine tragedies, three satyric dramas, and as many comedies, * We find Ulysses, in his youth, with Autolycus (Od. xix. 394; xxiv. 331) during the expedition against Troy in Delos, Od. vi. 162 ; in Lesbos, iv. 341; in a contest with Achilles, viii. 75; near the corpse and at the burial of Achilles, v. 308; xxiv. 39; contending for the arms of Achilles, xi. 544; contending with Philoctetes in shooting with the bow, viii. 219 ; secretly in Troy, iv. 242; in the Trojan horse, iv. 270 (comp. viii. 492; xi. 522); at the beginning of the return, iii. 130; and, lastly, going to the men who know not the use of salt, xi. 120. But nothing is said of Ulysses’ acts in the Iliad: his punishment of Thersites; the horses of Rhesus; the battle over the body of Patroclus, &c. In like manner the Odyssey intentionally records different exploits and adventures of Agamemnon, Achilles, Menelaus, and Nestor, from those celebrated in the Iliad. LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 63 without ever thinking that it might he better to distribute this enjoyment over the whole year, why should not the Greeks of earlier times have been able to listen to the Iliad and Odyssey, and, perhaps, Jther poems, at the same festival ? At a later date, indeed, when the rhapsodist was rivalled by the player on the lyre, the dithyrambic minstrel, and by many other kinds of poetry and music, these latter necessarily abridged the time allowed to the epic reciter; but in early times, when the epic style reigned without a competitor, it would have obtained an undivided attention. Let us beware of measuring, by our loose and desultory reading, the intension of mind with which a people enthusiastically devoted to such enjoyments*, hung with delight on the flowing strains of the minstrel. In short, there was a time (and the Iliad and Odyssey are the records of it) when the Greek people, not indeed at meals, but at festivals, and under the patronage of their hereditary princes, heard and enjoyed these and other less excellent poems, as they were intended to be heard and enjoyed, viz. as complete ivholes. Whether they were, at this early period, ever recited for a prize, and in competition. with others, is doubtful, though there is nothing improbable in the suppo¬ sition. But when the conflux of rhapsodists to the contests became per¬ petually greater ; when, at the same time, more weight was laid on the art of the reciter than on the beauty of the well-known poem which he recited; and when, lastly, in addition to the rhapsodizing, a number of other musical and poetical performances claimed a place, then the rhap¬ sodists were permitted to repeat separate parts of poems, in which they hoped to excel; and the Iliad and Odyssey (as they had not yet been reduced to writing) existed for a time only as scattered and unconnected fragments f. And we are still indebted to the regulator of the contest of rhapsodists at the Panathenaea (whether it was Solon or Pisistratus), for having compelled the rhapsodists to follow one another, according to the order of the poem j, and for having thus restored these great works, which were falling into fragments, to their pristine integrity. It is indeed true that some arbitrary additions may have been made to them at this period; wdiich, however, we can only hope to be able to distin¬ guish from the rest of the poem, by first coming to some general agree¬ ment as to the original form and subsequent destiny of the Homeric compositions. * Above, p. 30, note ff. t ^utrwxo'fAtvx, ffvro^xbm a^o/xtvx. See the sure testimonies on this point in Wolf’s Prolegomena, p. exliii. + l| vcroX^du; (or in Diog. Laert. I£ uvoGnXyis) pa^eo^uv. 64 HISTORY OF THE CHAPTER VI. $ 1. Genera* character of the Cyclic poems.—§ 2. The Destruction of Troy and ./Ethi- opis of Arctinus of Miletus.—§ 3. The little Iliad of Lesches.—§ 4. The Cypria of Stasinus.—§ 5. The Nostoi of Agias of Troezen.—§ 6. The Telegonia of Eu- garamou of Cyrene.—§ 7. Poems on the War against Thebes. § 1. Homer’s poems, as they became the foundation of all Grecian literature, are likewise the central point of the epic poetry of Greece. All that was most excellent in this line originated from them, and was connected with them in the way of completion or continuation; so that by closely considering this relation, we arrive not only at a proper understanding of the subjects of these later epics, but even are able, in return, to throw some light upon the Homeric poems themselves,— the Iliad and Odyssey. This class of epic poets is called the Cyclic , from their constant endeavour to connect their poems with those of Ho¬ mer, so that the whole should form a great cycle. Hence also originated the custom of comprehending their poems almost collectively under the name of Homer*, their connexion with the Iliad and Odyssey being taken as a proof that the whole was one vast conception. More accurate accounts, however, assign almost all these poems to particular authors, who lived after the commencement of the Olympiads, and therefore con¬ siderably later than Homer. Indeed, these poems, both in their cha¬ racter and their conception of the mythical events, are very different from the Iliad and Odyssey. These authors cannot even have been called Homerids, since a race of this name existed only in Chios, and not one of them is called a Chian. Nevertheless it is credible that they were Homeric rhapsodists by profession, to whom the constant recitation of the ancient Homeric poems would naturally suggest the notion of continuing them by essays of their own in a similar tone. Hence, too, it would be more likely to occur that these poems, when they were sung by the same rhapsodists, would gradually themselves acquire the name of Homeric epics. From a close comparison of the extracts and fragments of these poems, which we still possess, it is evi¬ dent that their authors had before them copies of the Iliad and Odyssey in their complete form, or, to speak more accurately, comprehending the same series of events as those current among the later Greeks and our¬ selves, and that they merely connected the action of their own poems with the beginning and end of these two epopees. But notwithstanding the close connexion which they made between their own productions and the Homeric poems, notwithstanding that they often built upon particular allusions in Homer, and formed from them long passages of their own 0/ ft'tvroi k(>%u7oi xct) ouos’ r.Xfo S’ ’ AfAct^uv 6vyv.TV\^ [AiyetAyro^o; kv$(>oyo; oitibi ha vroXv'biipiov, itOa ccvxxTis. + Hence the entire poem is in Pseudo-Herod. Vit. Horn. c. 9, called ’ A^tx^tu l%iAxtr!ri i; ®yfixs } in Suidas ’ A/xtyixgaou § II. v. 409. || Thus the scholiast on Apoll. Rhod. i. 308, in the account of Manto, cites the Thebaid for the Epigoni. Nt/v xuff oTrXoTifuv xvh^xv xf>%&(/.t6x) Tslovaxi. ** See Pindar, Pyth. viii. 48. It can be shown that Pindar, in his mentions ot this fable, always keeps near to the Thebaid. 72 HJSTORY OF THE freer from guilt, and thereby become more worthy of glory. Diomed and Sthenelus, the sons of the wild Tydeus and the reckless Capaneus, equalled their fathers in power, while they surpassed them in modera¬ tion and respect for the gods. Even these few, hut authentic accounts exhibit glorious materials for genuine poetry; and they were treated in a style which had not de¬ generated from Homer; the only difference being that an exalted heroic life was not, as in the Iliad and Odyssey, exhibited in one great action, and as accomplishing its appointed purpose : but a longer series of events was developed before the listeners, externally connected by their reference to one enterprise, and internally by means of certain general moral reflections and mythico-philosophical ideas. CHAPTER VII. § 1. General character of the Homeric Hymns, or Prooemia.—§ 2. Occasions on which they were sung : Poets by whom, and times at which, they were composed. —§3. Hymn to the Delian Apollo.— § 4. Hymn to the Pythian Apollo.—§ 5. Hymn to Hermes.—§ 6. Hymn to Aphrodite—§ 7. Hymn to Demeter. § 1. One essential part of the epic style of poetry consisted of hymns . Those hymns which were recited by the epic poets, and which we com¬ prehend under the name of Homeric, were called by the ancients prooemia , that fs preludes , or overtures. They evidently in part owed this name to their having served the rhapsodists as introductory strains for their recitations: a purpose to which the final verses often clearly refer; as, “ Beginning with thee I will now sing the race of the demi¬ gods, or Ihe exploits of the heroes, which the poets are wont to cele¬ brate But the longer hymns of this class could hardly have served such a purpose; as they sometimes are equal in extent to the rhapsodies into which the grammarians divided the Iliad and Odyssey, and they even contain very detailed narratives of particular legends, which are sufficient to excite an independent interest. These must be considered as preludes to a whole series of epic recitations, in other words, as intro¬ ductions to an entire contest of rhapsodists; making, as it were, the transition from the preceding festival of the gods, with its sacrifices, prayers, and sacred chaunts, to the subsequent competition of the singers of heroic poetry. The manner in which it was necessary to shorten one of these long hymns, in order to make it serve as a prooemium of a single poem, or part of a poem, may be seen from the * See, for example, Hymn xxxi. 18. lx trio ccot&fzivos xXvitru y'svos y k (juSiwv, and XXXli. 18. trio S’ a^o/zivo; xX'ix tpcoruv a. kou xa.p.<7vv\a. rc^ot,, %f>r,t]v (Theog. 35), is doubtless derived from the highest antiquity; it is connected with the Homeric, Oy ptiv j (376). Then all the pru¬ dential maxims relating to neighbours, friends, wife, and children, would be explained before the labours of agriculture, and the subsequent rules of domestic economy would all refer to the maxim, so 2’ otfiv uDuveZruv uxxxgav ceed the descendants of the Titans. In speaking of Cronus, the poet relates how Zeus was preserved from being devoured by his father, and of Iapetus, how his son Prometheus incensed Zeus by coming for¬ ward as the patron of the human race, though not for their benefit. Then follows a detailed account of the battle which Zeus and his kindred, assisted by the Hecatoncheires, waged against the Titans ; with * The same notion had prevailed, though in a less distinct form, in the early religion of outward nature among the Greeks. See above ch. ii. § 4. (p. 14). LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GiKEECE. 91 the description of the dreadful abode of Tartara, in which the Titans were imprisoned. This part, it must be confessed, appears to be over¬ loaded by additions of rhapsodists. An afterpiece to the battle of the Titans is the rebellion of Typhceus (born of the Earth and Tartara) against Zeus. The descendants of Zeus and the Olympian gods, united with him, formed the last part of the original Theogony. Notwithstanding the great simplicity of this plan, we may yet remark a number of refinements which show a maturely considered design on the part of the poet. For instance, Hesiod might have connected the descendants of Night (born without marriage)* with the children which she bore to Erebus, namely iEther and Dayf. But he relates first the battle of Cronus against Uranus, and the mutilation of the latter; whereby the first interruption of the peaceable order of the world is caused, and anger and curses, personified by the Furies, are introduced into the world. The mutilation, however, of Uranus caused the production of the Melise, or Nymphs of the Ash Trees, that is, the mightiest productions of vegetation ; the Giants, or most powerful beings of human form ; and the Goddess of Love herself. It is not till after this disturbance of the tranquillity of the world that Night produces from her dark bosom those beings, such as Death, and Strife, and Woe, and Blame, which are connected with the sufferings of mankind. lake- wise the race of Pontus, so rich in monsters, with which the heroes were to fight their fiercest battles, are properly introduced after the first deed of violence upon Uranus. It is also evidently by design that the two Titans, Cronus and lapetus, also named together by Homer, are, in the genealogy of their descendants!, arranged in a different order than at the first mention of the Titans §. In the latter passage Cronus is the youngest of all, just as Zeus is in Hesiod the youngest among his brothers; whilst in Homer he reigns by the right of primogeniture. But Hesiod supposes the world to be in a state of perpetual develop¬ ment; and as the sons overcome the fathers, so also the youngest sons are the most powerful, as standing at the head of a new order of things. On the other hand, the race of lapetus, which refers exclusively to the attributes and destinies of mankind||, is placed after the de¬ scendants of Cronus, from whom the Olympic gods proceed ; because the actions and destinies of those human Titans are entirely determined by * v. 211, seq. f v. 124. J v. 453, 507. § v. 132, seq. || In the genealogy of lapetus in the Theogony are preserved remains of an ancient poem on the lot of mankind. lapetus himself is the “ fallen man'’ (from root IAn), the human race deprived of their former happiness. Of his sons, Atlas and Menoetius represent the Oopo; of the human soul: Atlas (from rAW/, TAA), the enduring and obstinate spirit, to whom the gods allot the heaviest bur¬ dens ; and Menoetius (f*'ivos and olros), the unconquerable and confident spirit, whom Zeus hurls into Erebus. Prometheus and Epimeiheus, on the other hand, personify y ovs ; the former prudent foresight, the latter the worthless knowledge which comes after the deed. And the gods contrive it so that whatever benefits are gained for the human race ty the former are! ost to it again through his brother. 92 HISTORY OF THE their relation to the Olympians, who have reserved to themselves alone a constantly equal measure of prosperity, and act jointly in repelling with equal severity the hold attempts of the Iapetids. Although therefore this poem is not merely an accumulation of raw materials, hut contains many connected thoughts, and is formed on a well-digested plan, yet it cannot he denied that neither in the Theogony nor in the Works and Days can that perfect art of composition he found v/hich is so conspicuous in the Homeric poems. Hesiod has not only faithfully preserved the ancient tradition, and introduced without altera¬ tion into his poetry many time-honoured sayings, and many a verse of earlier songs, hut he also seems to have borrowed long passages, and even entire hymns, when they happened to suit the plan of his poem; and with¬ out greatly changing their form. Thus it is remarkable that the battle of the Titans does not begin (as it would be natural to expect) with the resolution of Zeus and the other Olympians to wage war against the Titans, but with the chaining of Briareus and the other Hecatoncheires by Uranus; nor is it until the poet has related how Zeus set free these Hecatoncheires, by the advice of the Earth, that we are introduced to the battle with the Titans, which has already been some time going on. And this part of the Theogony concludes with the Hecatoncheires being set by the gods to watch over the imprisoned Titans, and Briareus, by his marriage with Cymopoleia, becoming the son-in-law of Poseidon. This Briareus, who in Homer is also called YEgeeon, and represents the violent commotions and heavings of the sea, was a being who in many places seems to have been connected with the worship of Poseidon*, and it is not improbable that in the temples of this god hymns were sung celebrating him as the vanquisher of the Titans, one of which Hesiod may have taken as the foundation of his narrative of the battle of the Titans. It seems likewise evident that the Theogony has been in many places interpolated by rhapsodists, as was naturally to be expected in a poem handed down by oral tradition. Enumerations of names always offered facilities for this insertion of new verses; as, for example, the list of streams in the Theogony, which are called sons of the Oceanf. Among these we miss exactly those rivers which we should expect most to find, the Boeotian Asopus and Cephisus ; and we find several which at any rate lie beyond the sphere of the Homeric geography, such as the Ister, the Eridanus, and the Nile, no longer the rfver of Egypt, as in Homer, but under its more modern name. The most remarkable cir¬ cumstance, however, is that in this brief list of rivers, the passage of Homer J which names eight petty streams flowing from the mountains of Ida to the coast, has been so closely followed, that seven of (hem Poseidon, from cttyis* which signifies waves in a state of agitation, was aho called AiyetTo; and A lyociuv. f V. 338, seq. 1 Iliad, xii. 26. LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 93 are named in Hesiod. This seems to prove incontestably that the Theogony has been interpolated by rhapsodists who were familiar with the Homeric poems as well as with those of Hesiod. It has been already stated that the Theogony originally terminated with the races of the Olympian gods, that is, at v. 962 ; the part which follows being only added in order to make a transition to another and longer poem, which the rhapsodists appended as a kind of continuation to the Theogony. For it seems manifest that a composer of genealogical legends of this kind would not be likely to celebrate the goddesses who, “joined in love with mortal men, had borne godlike children” (which is the subject of the last part in the extant version), if he had not also intended to sing of the gods who with mortal women had begotten mighty heroes (a far more frequent event in Greek mythology). The god Dionysus, and Hercules, received among the gods (both of whom sprang from an alliance of this kind), are indeed mentioned in a former part of the poem*. But there remain many other heroes, whose genealogy is not traced, of far greater importance than Medeius, Phocus, ./Eneas, and many other sons of goddesses. Moreover, the extant concluding verses of the Theogony furnish a complete proof that a poem of this description was annexed to it; inasmuch as the women whom the Muses are in these last verses called on to celebrate j* can be no other than the mortal beauties to whom the gods came down from heaven. As to the nature of this lost poem of Hesiod something will be said hereafter. Hitherto we have said nothing upon that part of the Theogony which has furnished so intricate a problem to the higher department of criti¬ cism, viz., the prooemium , as it is only after having taken a general view of the whole poem that we can hope to succeed in ascertaining the original form of this part. It can scarcely be questioned that this procemium, with its disproportionate length (v. 1—115), its intolerable repetition of the same or very similar thoughts, and the undeniable in¬ coherences of several passages, could not be the original introduction to the Theogony; it appears, indeed, to be a collection of all that the Boeotian bards had produced in praise of the Muses. It is not, how¬ ever, necessary, in order to explain how this confused mass was formed, to have recourse to complicated hypotheses; or to suppose that this long prooemium was designedly formed of several shorter ones. It appears, indeed, that a much simpler explanation may be found^ if we proceed upon some statements preserved in ancient authors!. The genuine * v. 940, seq. ■j- Nvv 5s yuvu.ix.wv (fiuXov kuau ts lit virtual Moutrxi , &C. | Especially the statement in Plutarch (tom. ii. p. 743, C. ed. Francof.) that the account of the birth of the Muses from Hesiod’s poems (viz., v. 36—67 in our proem) was sung as a separate hymn; and the statement of Aristophanes, the Alex¬ andrine grammarian (in the scholia to v. 68), that the ascent of the Muses to Olympus followed their dances on Helicon. 94 HISTORY OF THE procemium contained the beautiful story above mentioned of the visit of the Muses to Helicon, and of the consecration of Hesiod to the office of a poet by the gift of a laurel branch. Next after this must have fol¬ lowed the passage which describes the return of the Muses to Olympus, where they celebrate their father Zeus in his palace as the vanquisher of Cronus, and as the reigning governor of the world; which might be succeeded by the address of the poet to the Muses to reveal to him the descent and genealogies of the gods. Accordingly the verses 1—35, 68—74, 104—115, would form the original procemium, in the con¬ nexion of which there is nothing objectionable, except that the last in¬ vocation of the Muses is somewhat overloaded by the repetition of the same thought with little alteration. Of the intervening parts one, viz., v. 36—67, is an independent hymn, which celebrates the Muses as Olympian poetesses produced by Zeus in Pieria in the neighbourhood of Olympus, and has no particular reference to the Theogony. For the enumeration contained in it of the subjects sung by the Muses in Olympus, namely, first, songs to all the gods, ancient and recent, then hymns to Zeus in particular, and, lastly, songs upon the heroic races and the battle of the Giants, comprehends the entire range of the Boeotian epic poetry ; nay, even the poems on divination of the school of Hesiod are incidentally mentioned*. This hymn to the Muses was therefore peculiarly well fitted to serve not only as a separate epic song, but, like the longer Homeric hymns, to open the contest of Boeotian minstrels at any festival. But the Muses were, according to the statement of this prooemiumf, celebrated at the end as well as at the beginning; consequently there must have been songs of the Boeotian epic poets, in which they returned to the Muses from the peculiar subject of their composition. For a concluding address of this kind nothing could be more appropriate than that the poet should address himself to the princes, who were pre¬ eminent among the listening crowd, that he should show them how much they stood in need of the Muses both in the judgment-hall and in tlie assemblies of the people, and (which was a main point with Hesiod) should impress upon their hearts respect for the deities of poetry and their servants. Precisely of this kind is the other passage inserted in the original procemium, v. 75—103, which would have pro¬ duced a good effect at the close of the Theogony ; by bringingback the poetry, which had so long treated exclusively of the genealogies of the gods, to the realities of human life; whereas, in the introduction, the whole passage is entirely out of place. But this passage could not remain in the place to which it belongs, viz., after v. 962, because the part relating to the goddesses who were joined in love with mortal men was inserted here, in order that the mortal women who had been loved by gods might follow, and thus the Theogony be infinitely prolonged. Hence, in 38. v[*nvtroii rot. r lovrct rex. r lertro/jotvex ergo r lovret. t v. 34. LITERATURE UF ANCIENT GREECE. 95 making an edition of the Theogony, in which the pieces belonging lo it were introduced into the series of the poem, nothing remained but to insert the hymn to the Muses as well as the epilogue in the procemium; an adaptation which, however, could only have been made in an age when the true feeling for the ancient epic poetry had nearly passed away*. Lastly, with regard to the relation between the Theogony and the Works and Days, it cannot be doubted that there is a great resemblance in the style and character of the tw r o poems; but who shall pretend to decide that this resemblance is so great as to warrant an opinion that these poems were composed by an individual, and not by a succession of minstrels? If is, however, certain that the author of the 'fheo^onv and the author of the Works and Days wish to be considered as the same person; viz., as the native of Helicon who had been trained to a country life, and had been endowed by the Muses with the gift of poetry. Nor can it be doubted that the original Hesiod, the ancestor of this family of poets, really rose to poetry from the occupations of common life; although his successors may have pursued it as a regular pro¬ fession. It is remarkable how the domestic and economical spirit of the poet of the Works appears in the Theogony, wherever the wide dif¬ ference of the subjects permits it; as in the legend of Prometheus and Epimetheus. It is true that this takes a somewhat different turn in the Theogony and in the Works; as in the latter it is the casket brought by Pandora from which proceed all human ills, while in the former this charming and divinely endowed maiden brings woe into the world by being the progenitress of the female sex. Yet the ancient bard views the evil produced by women not in a moral but in an econo¬ mical light. He does not complain of the seductions and passions of which they are the cause, but laments that women, like the drones in a hive, consume the fruits of others’ industry instead of adding to the sum. § 4. It is remarkable that the same school of poetry which was accustomed to treat the weaker sex in this satiric spirit should have produced epics of the heroic mythology which pre-eminently sang the praises of the women of antiquity, and connected a large part of the heroic legends with renowned names of heroines. Yet the school of Hesiod might probably find a motive in existing relations and political institutions for such laudatory catalogues of the women of early times. The neighbours of the Boeotians, the Locrians, possessed a nobility consisting of a hundred families, all of which (according to Poiybiust) founded their title to nobility upon their descent from heroines. * That there was another and wholly different version of the Theogony, which contained at the end a passage deriving the origin of Hephaestus and Athene from a contest of Zeus and Here, appears from the testimony of Chrysippus, in Galen de Hippocratis et Platonis dogm. iii. 8, p. 349, scq. f xii- 5. 96 HISTORY OP THE Pindar, also, in the ninth Olympian ode, celebrates Protogeneia as the ancestress of the kings of Opus. That the poetry of this school was con¬ nected with the country of the Locrians also appears from the tradition mentioned by Thucydides* that Hesiod died and was buried in the temple of Zeus Nemeius, near Oeneon. The district of Oeneon was bordered by that of Naupactus, which originally belonged to the Locrians ; and it cannot be doubted that the grave of Hesiod, mentioned in the territory of Naupactusf, is the same burying place as that near Oeneon. Hence it is the more remarkable that Naupactus was also the birth-place of an epic poem, which took from it the name of Nau- pactia , and in which women of the heroic age were celebrated^. From all this it would follow that it was a Locrian branch of the Hesiodean school of poets whence proceeded the bard by whom the Eoiae were composed. This large poem, called the Eoice , or the Great Eoiae, (peyaXcu ’Hotai), took its name from the circum¬ stance that the several parts of it all began with the words r) o. On the fragments of this part of the Eoiae, see Dorians, vol, i. p. 540, Engl Tran si. f For example, in the scholia to Apoll. Rhod. II. 181. Moreover, the part of the Eoiae in which Coronis was celebrated as the mother of Asclepius, was in contradiction with the K araXoyoi Atuxia“rlluv,\n which Arsinoe, the daughter of Leucippus, according to the Messenian tradition, was the mother of Asclepius, as appears from SchoL Theogon. 142. il 98 HISTORY OF THE originated with the settlement of the Greeks of Thera, among whom were noble families of Thessalian origin. Of the remaining poems which in antiquity went by the name of Hesiod, it is still less possible to give a complete notion. The Melam- podia is as it were the heroic representation of that divinatory spirit of the Hesiodean poetry, the didactic forms of which have been already mentioned. It treated of the renowned prince, priest, and prophet of the Argives, Melampus ; and as the greater part of the prophets who were celebrated in mythology were derived from this Melampus, the Hesiodean poet, with his predilection for genealogical connexion, pro¬ bably did not fail to embrace the entire race of the Melampodias. § 5. The JEgimius of Hesiod shows by its name that it treated of the mythical Prince of the Dorians, who, according to the legend, was the friend and ally of Hercules, whose son Hyllus he is supposed to have adopted and brought up with his own two sons Pamphylus and Dyman, a legend which referred to the distribution of the Dorians into three Phylae or tribes, the Hylleis, Pamphylians, and Dymanes. The frag¬ ments of this poem also show that it comprehended the genealogica 1 traditions of the Dorians, and the part of the mythology of Hercule closely allied to it; however difficult it may be to form a well-grounded idea of the plan of this Epos. An interesting kind of composition attributed to Hesiod are the smaller epics , in which not a whole series of legends or a complicated story was described, but some separate event of the Heroic Mythology, which usually consisted more in bright and cheerful descriptions than in actions of a more elevated cast. Of this kind was the marriage of Ceyx , the well-known Prince of Trachin, who was abo allied in close amity with Hercules; and a kindred subject, The Epithalamiam of Peleus and Thetis . We might also mention here the Descent of The¬ seus and Pirithous into the Infernal Regions, if this adventure of the two heroes was not merely introductory, and a description of Hades in a religious spirit the principal object of the poem. We shall best illus¬ trate this kind of small epic poems by describing the one which has been preserved, viz., the Shield of Hercules. This poem contains merely one adventure of Hercules, his combat with the son of Ares, Cycnus, in the Temple of Apollo at Pagasae. It is clear to every reader of the poem that the first 56 verses are taken out of the Eoiae, and only inserted be¬ cause the poem itself had been handed down without an introduction. There is no further connexion between these two parts, than that the first relates the origin of the hero, of whom the short epic then relates a separate adventure. It would have been as well, and perhaps better, to have prefixed a brief hymn to Hercules. The description of the Shield of Hercules is however far the most detailed part of the poem and that for which the whole appears to have been composed; a descrip- LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 99 tion which was manifestly occasioned by that of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad, but nevertheless quite peculiar, and executed in the genuine spirit of the Ilesiodean school. For while the reliefs upon the shield of Achilles are entirely drawn from imagination, and pure poetical imagi¬ nation, objects are represented upon the shield of Hercules which were in fact the first subjects of the Greek artists who worked reliefs in bronze and other decorative sculptures*. We cannot, therefore, sup¬ pose the shield of Hesiod to be anterior to the period of the Olympiads, because before that time nothing was known of similar works of art among the Greeks. But on the other hand, it cannot be posterior to the 40th Olympiad, as Hercules appears in it armed and equipped like any other hero ; whereas about this dste the poets began to represent him in a different costume, with the club and lion’s skin f. The entire class of these short epics appears to be a remnant of the style of the primitive bards, that of choosing separate points of heroic history, in order to enliven an hour of the banquet, before longer compositions had been formed from them J. On the other hand, these short Hesiodean epics are connected with lyric poetry , particularly that of Stesichorus, who sometimes composed long choral odes on the same or similar subjects (as for example, Cycnus), and not without reference to Hesiod. This close approximation of the Hesiodean epic poetry and the lyric poetry of Ste¬ sichorus doubtless gave occasion to the legend that the latter was the son of Hesiod, although he lived much later than the real founder of the Hesiodean school of poetry. Of the other names of Hesiodean Poems, which are mentioned by * The shield of Achilles contains, on the prominence in the middle, a representation of earth, heaven, and sea: then in the next circular band two cities, the one engaged in peaceable occupations, the other beleagured by foes : afterwards, in six depart¬ ments (which must be considered as lying around concentrically in a third row), rural and joyous scenes—sowing, harvest, vine-picking, a cattle pasture, a flock of sheep, a choral dance : lastly,in the external circle, the ocean. The poet takes a delight in adorning this implement of bloody war with the most pleasing scenes of peace, and pays no regard to what the sculptors of his time were able to execute. The Hesiod- . ean poet, on the other hand, places in the middle of the shield of Hercules a terrible dragon (Spaxovros Qofiov), surrounded by twelve twisted snakes, exactly as the gorgo- neum or head of Medusa is represented: on Tyrrhenian shields of Tarquinii other monstrous heads are similarly introduced in the middle. A battle of wild boars and lions makes a border, as is often the case in early Greek sculptures and vases. It must be conceived as a narrow band or ring round the middle. The first consi¬ derable row, which surrounds the centre piece in a circle, consists of four depart¬ ments, of which two contain warlike and two peaceable subjects. So that the entire shield contains, as it were, a sanguinary and a tranquil side. In these are repre¬ sented the battle of the Centaurs, a choral dance in Olympus, a harbour and fishermen, Perseus and the Gorgons. Of these the first and last subjects are among those which are known to have earliest exercised the Greek artists. An external row (vTsp uvrtvv, v. 237) is occupied by a city at war and a city at peace, which the poet borrows from Homer, but describes with greater minuteness, and indeed overloads with too many details. The rim, as in the other shield, is surrounded by the ocean. t See the remarks on Peisander below, ch. ix. § 3. + See above, p. 40, (ch. iv. § 6); 100 HISTORY OF THE grammarians, some are doubtful, as they do not oocur in ancient au¬ thors, and others do not by their title give any idea of their plan and subject; so that we can make no use of them in our endeavour to con¬ vey a notion of the tone and character of the Hesiodean poetry. CHAPTER IX. § 1. General character of other Epic Poets.—§ 2, Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, Eumelus of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chersias of Orchomenus.—§ 3. Epic Poems on Her¬ cules ; the Taking of CEchalia ; the Heraclea of Peisander of Rhodes. § 1. Great as was the number of poems which in ancient times passed under the name of Homer, and were connected in the way of supple¬ ment or continuation with the Iliad and Odyssey, and also of those which were included under the all-comprehensive name of Hesiod, yet these formed only about a half of the entire epic literature of the early Greeks. The hexameter was, for several centuries, the only perfectly developed form of poetry, as narratives of events of early times were the general amusement of the people. The heroic mythology was an inex¬ haustible mine of subjects, if they were followed up into the legends of the different races and cities; it was therefore natural, that in the most various districts of Greece poets should arise, who, for the gratifi¬ cation of their countrymen, worked up these legends into an epic form, either attempting to rise to an imitation of the Homeric style, or con¬ tenting themselves with the easier task of adopting that of the school of Hesiod. Most of these poems evidently had little interest except in their subjects, and even this was lost when the logographers collected into shorter works the legends of which they were composed. Hence it happened only occasionally that some learned inquirer into tradi¬ tionary story took the trouble to look into these epic poems. Even now it is of great importance, for mythological researches, carefully to collect all the fragments of these ancient poems ; such, for example, as the Phoronis and Danais (the works of unknown authors), which con¬ tained the legends of the earliest times of Argos ; but, for a history of literature, the principal object of which is to give a vivid notion of the character of writings, these are empty and unmeaning names. There are, however, a few epic poets of whom enough is known to enable us to form a general idea of the course which they followed. § 2, Of these poets several appear to have made use of the links of genealogy , in order, like the poet of the Hesiodean catalogues, to string together fables which were not connected by any main action, but which often extended over many generations. According to Pausanias, the works of Cinaethon the Lacedaemonian, who flourished about the 5th Olympiad, had a genealogical foundation ; and from the great pleasure which the Spartans took in the legends of the heroic age, it is probable LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 101 that he treated of certain mythical subjects to which a patriotic interest was attached. His Heraclea, which is very rarely mentioned, may have referred to the descent of the Doric Princes from Hercules; and also his (Edipodia may have been occasioned by the first kings of Sparta, Procles and Eurysthenes, being, through their mother, descended from the Cadmean kings of Thebes. It is remarkable that the Little Iliad, one of the Cyclic poems, which immediately followed Homer, was by many* attributed to this Cinaethon ; and another Peloponnesian bard, Eumelus the Corinthian, was named as the author of a second Cyclic Epos, the Nostoi. Both statements are probably erroneous ; ai least the authors of these poems must, as members of that school who imitated and extended the Homeric Epopees, have adopted an entirely different style of com¬ position from that required for the genealogical collections of Pelopon¬ nesian legends. Eumelus was a Corinthian of the noble and governing house of the Bacchaids, and he lived about the time of the founding of Syracuse (11th Olympiad, according to the commonly received date). There were poems extant under his name, of the genealogical and his¬ torical kind; by which, however, is not to be understood the later style of converting the marvels of the mythical period into common history, but only a narrative of the le'gends of some town or race, arranged in order of time. Of this character (as appears also from fragments) were the Corinthiaca of Eumelus, and also, probably, the Europia , in which perhaps a number of ancient legends were joined to the genealogy of Europa. Nevertheless the notion among the ancients of the style of Eumelus was not so fixed and clear as to furnish any certain criterion ; for there was extant a Titanomachia, as to which Athenaeus doubts whe¬ ther it should be ascribed to Eumelus, the Corinthian, or Aretinus, the Milesian. That there should exist any doubt between these two claimants, the Cyclic poet who had composed the iEthiopis, and the author of genealogical epics, only convinces us how uncertain all literary decisions in this period are, and how dangerous a region this is for the inquiries of the higher criticism. Pausanias will not allow anything of Eumelus to be genuine except a prosodion , or strain, which he had composed for the Messenians for a sacred mission to the Temple of Delos; and it is certain that this epic hymn, in the Doric dialect, really belonged to those times when Messenia was still independent and flourishing, before the first war with the Lacedaemonians, which began in the 9th Olym- piadf. Pausanias also ascribes to Eumelus the epic verses in the Doric * See Schol. Vatic, ad Eurip. Troad. 822. Eumelus ^corrupted into Eumolpus) is called the author of the *oaroi in Schol. Find. Olymp. xiii. 31. f The passage quoted from it by Pausan. iv. 33. 3. Too ya.(> ’ iQoofcc&ra, Ka.rix.6vfjt.ioi ’i^rXiro M otaa, A xa6a^a xu.) I'kivQifj'U. a,trfixr (?) i%outru } appears to say that the muse of Eumelus, which had composed the Prosodion, had also pleased Zeus Ithomatas ; that is, had gained a prize at the musical con¬ tests among the Ithomaeans in Messenia. 102 HISTORY OF THE dialect, which were added to illustrate the reliefs on the chest of Cyp- selus, the renowned work of ancient art. But it is plain that those verses were contemporaneous with the reliefs themselves, which were not made till a century later, under the Government of the Cypselids at Corinth*. Asms of Samos, often mentioned by Pausanias, was a third genealogical epic poet. His poems referred chiefly to his native coun¬ try, the Ionian island of Samos ; and he appears to have taken occasion to descend to his own time; as in the glowing and vivid description of the luxurious costume of the Samians at a festival procession to the temple of their guardian goddess, Here. Chersias, the epic poet of Orcho- menus, collected Boeotian legends and genealogies: he was, according to Plutarch, a contemporary of the Seven Wise Men, and appears, from the monumental inscription above mentioned, to have been a great admirer and follower of Hesiod. § 3. While by efforts of this kind nearly all the heroes (whose remem¬ brance had been preserved in popular legends) obtained a place in this endlessly extensive epic literature, it is remarkable that the hero on whose name half the heroic mythology of the Greeks depends, to whose mighty deeds (in a degree far exceeding those of all the Achaian heroes before Troy) every race of the Greeks seem to have contributed its share, that Hercules should have been celebrated by no epic poem corresponding to his greatness. Even the two Homeric epopees furnish some measure of the extent of these legends, and at the same time make it probable that it was usual to compose short epic poems from single adventures of the wandering hero; and of this kind, probably, was the “ Taking of CEchalia,” which Homer, according to a well-known tra¬ dition, is supposed to have left as a present to a person joined to him by ties of hospitality, Creophylus of Samos, who appears to have been the head of a Samian family of rhapsodists. The poem narrated how Her¬ cules, in qrder to avenge an affront early received by him from Eurytus and his sons, takes GEchalia, the city of this prince, slays him and his sons, and carries off his daughter Iole, as the spoil of war. This fable is so far connected with the Odyssey that the bow which Ulysses uses against the suitors is derived from this Eurytus, the best archer of his * Pausanias proceeds on the supposition that this chest was the very one in which the little Cypselus was concealed from the designs of the Bacchiads by his mother Labda, which was afterwards, in memory of this event, dedicated by the Cypse¬ lids at Olympia. But not to say that this whole story is not an historial fact, but probably arose merely from the etymology of the word Ku-^iXof, (from a chest,) it is quite incredible that a box so costly and so richly adorned with sculp¬ tures should have been used by Labda as an ordinary piece of furniture. It is far more probable that the Cypselids, at tbe time of their power and wealth (after Olymp. 30), had this chest made among other costly offerings, in order to be dedi¬ cated at Olympia, meaning, at the same time, by the name of the chest (xv\fiiXy) •—quite in the manner of the emb/cmes parlans on Greek coins—to allude to themselves as donors. Another argument is, that Hercules was distinguished on it by a pecu¬ liar costume (o-^^ac); and therefore was not, as in Hesiod’s shield, represented in the common heroic accoutrements. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 103 time. This may have been the reason that very early Homerids formed of this subject a separate epos, the execution of which does not appear to have been unworthy of the name of Homer. Other portions of the legends of Hercules had found a place in the larger poems of Hesiod, the Eoise, the Catalogues, and the short epics; and Cinaethon the Lacedaemonian may have brought forward many legends little known before his time. Yet this whole series of legends wanted that main feature which every one would now collect from poets and works of art. This conception of Hercules could not arise before his contests with animals were combined from the local tales separately related of him in Peloponnesus, and were embellished with all the ornaments of poetry. Hence, too, he assumed a figure different from that of all other heroes, as he no longer seemed to want the brazen helmet, breast-plate, and shield, or to require the weapons of heroic warfare, but trusting solely to the immense strength of his limbs, and simply armed with a club, and covered with the skin of a lion which he had slain, he exercises a kind of gymnastic skill in slaying the various monsters which he encounters, sometimes exhibiting rapidity in running and leaping, sometimes the highest bodily strength in wrestling and striking. The poet who first represented Hercules in this manner, and thus broke through the monotony of the ordinary heroic combats, was Peisander, a Rhodian, from the town of Cameirus, who is placed at the 33d Olympiad, though he probably flourished somewhat later. Nearly all the allusions in his Heraclea may be referred to those combats, which were considered as the tasks imposed on the hero by Eurystheus, and which were properly called 'HpcucAtovc aO\oi. It is, indeed, very pro¬ bable that Peisander was the first who fixed the number of these labours at twelve , a number constantly observed by later writers, though they do not always name the same exploits, and which had moreover esta¬ blished itself in art at least as early as the time of Phidias (on the tem¬ ple of Olympia). If the first of these twelve combats have a somewhat rural and Idyllian character, the later ones afforded scope for bold ima¬ ginations and marvellous tales, which Peisander doubtless knew how to turn to account; as, for example, the story that Hercules, in his expedi¬ tion against Geryon, was carried over the ocean in the goblet of the Sun, is first cited from the poem of Peisander. Perhaps he was led to this invention by symbols of the worship of the Sun, which existed from early times in Rhodes. It was most likely the originality, which prevailed with equal power through the whole of this not very long poem, that induced the Alexandrian grammarians to receive Peisander, together with Homer and Hesiod, into the epic canon, an honour which they did not extend to any other of the poets hitherto mentioned. Thus the Greek Epos, which seemed, from its genealogical tendency, to have acquired a dry and steril character, now appeared once more animated with new life, and striking out new paths. Nevertheless it 104 HISTORY OF THE may be questioned whether the epic poets would have acquired this spirit if they had never moved out of the beaten track of their ancient heroic song, and if other kinds of 'poetry had not arisen and re¬ vealed to the Greeks the latent poetical character of many other feelings and impressions besides those which prevailed in the epos. We now turn to those kinds of poetry which first appear as the rivals of the epic strains*. CHAPTER X. § 1. Exclusive prevalence of Epic Poetry, in connexion with the monarchical period} influence of the change in the forms of Government upon Poetry. —§ 2. Elegeiou, its meaning; origin of Elegos; plaintive songs of Asia Minor, accompanied by the flute; mode of Recitation of the Elegy.—§ 3. Metre of the Elegy.—§ 4. Po¬ litical and military tendency of the Elegy as composed by Callinus; the circum¬ stances of his time.—§ 5. Tyrtaeus, his Life } occasion and subject of his Elegy of Eunomia.—§ 6. Character and mode of recitation of the Elegies of Tyrtaeus. § 7. Elegies of Archilochus, their reference to Banquets ; mixture of convivial jollity (Asius).—§ 8. Plaintive Elegies of Archilochus.—§ 9. Mimnermus ; his Elegies ; the expression of the impaired strength of the Ionic nation.— b 10. Luxury a consolation in this state; the Nanno of Mimnermus.—§ 11. Solon’s character; his Elegy of Salamis.—§ 12. Elegies before and after Solon’s Legislation; the ex¬ pression of his political feeling; mixture of Gnomic Passages (Phocylides).— § 13. Elegies of Theognis; their original character.—§ 14. Their origin in the political Revolutions of Megara.—§ 15. Their personal reference to the Friends of Theognis.—§ 16. Elegies of Xenophanes ; their philosophical tendency. — § 17. Elegies of Simonides on the Victories of the Persian War; tender and pathetic spirit of his Poetry; general View of the course of Elegiac Poetry.— § 18. Epigrams in elegiac form ; their Object and Character; Simonides, as a Composer of Epigrams. § 1. Until the beginning of the seventh century before our era, or the 20th Olympiad, the epic was the only kind of poetry in Greece, and the hexameter the only metre which had been cultivated by the poets with art and diligence. Doubtless there were, especially in connexion with different worships, strains of other kinds and measures of a lighter movement, according to which dances of a sprightly character could be executed; but these as yet did not form a finished style of poetry, and were only rude essays and undeveloped germs of other varieties, which hitherto had only a local interest, confined to the rites and customs of particular districts. In all musical and poetical contests the solemn and majestic tone of the epopee and the epic hymn alone prevailed; and the soothing placidity which these lays imparted to the mind was the only feeling which had found its satisfactory poetical expression. As yet the heart, agitated by joy and grief, by love and anger, could not give utter- * Some epic poems of the early period, as the Minyis, A/cmcvonis, and Thesprotia , will be noticed in the chapter on the poetry connected with the Mysteries. LITERATURE O? ANCIENT GREECE. 105 ance to its lament for the lost, its longing after the absent, its care for the present, in appropriate forms of poetical composition. These feel- in o-s were still without the elevation which the beauty of art can alone confer. The epopee kept the mind fixed in the contemplation of a former generation of heroes, which it could view with sympathy and in¬ terest, but not with passionate emotion. And although in the econo¬ mical poem of Hesiod the cares and sufferings of the present time fur¬ nished the occasion for an epic work, yet this was only a partial descent from the lofty career of epic poetry ; for it immediately rose again from this lowly region, and taking a survey of things affecting not only the entire Greek nation but the whole of mankind, celebrated in solemn strains the order of the universe and of social life, as approved by the Gods. This exclusive prevalence of epic poetry was also doubtless connected with the political state of Greece at this time. It has been already re¬ marked* how acceptable the ordinary subjects of the epic poems must have been to the princes who derived their race from the heroes of the mythical age, as was the case with all the royal families of early times. This rule of hereditary princes was the prevailing form of government in Greece, at least up to the beginning of the Olympiads, and from this period it gradually disappeared; at an earlier date and by more vio¬ lent revolutions among the Ionians, than among the nations of Pelopon¬ nesus. The republican movements, by which the princely families were deprived of their privileges, could not be otherwise than favourable to a free expression of the feelings, and in general to a stronger development of each man’s individuality. Hence the poet, who, in the most perfect form of the epos, was completely lost in his subject, and was only the mirror in which the grand and brilliant images of the past were reflected, now comes before the people as a man with thoughts and objects of his own ; and gives a free vent to the struggling emotions of his soul in elegiac and iambic strains. As the elegy and the iambus, those two contemporary and cognate species of poetry, originated with Ionic poets, and (as far as we are aware) with citizens of free states; so, again, the remains and accounts of these styles of poetry furnish the best image of the internal condition of the Ionic states of Asia Minor and the Islands in the first period of their republican constitution, § 2. The word elegeion , as used by the best writers, like the word epos, refers not to the subject of a poem, but simply to its form. In general the Greeks, in dividing their poetry into classes, looked almost exclusively to its metrical shape; but in considering the essence of the Greek poetry we shall not be compelled to depart from these divisions, as the Greek poets always chose their verse with the nicest attention to the feelings to be conve)ed by the poem. The perfect harmony, the accurate correspondence of expression between these multifarious me- * Chap. iv. § b 2. 106 HISTORY OF THE trical forms and the various states of mind required by the poem, is one of the remarkable features of the Grecian poetry, and to which we shall frequently have occasion to advert. The word eXeyeloy , therefore, in its strict sense, means nothing more than the combination of an hexameter and a pentameter, making together a distich; and an elegeia (tXeyeia) is a poem made of such verses. The word elegeion is, however, itself only a derivative from a simpler word, the use of which brings us nearer to the first origin of this kind of poetry. Elegos (eXeyoc) means pro¬ perly a strain of lament, without any determinate reference to a metri¬ cal form; thus, for example, in Aristophanes, the nightingale sings an elegos for her lost Itys; and in Euripides, the halcyon, or kingfisher, sings an elegos for her husband Ceyx* * * § ; in both which passages the word has this general sense. The origin of the word can hardly be Grecian, since all the etymologies of it which have been attempted seem very improbablef ; on the other hand, if it is borne in mind, how cele¬ brated among the Greeks the Carians and Lydians were for laments over the dead, and generally for songs of a melancholy cast]:, it will seem likely that the Ionians, together with ditties and tunes of this kind, also received the word elegos from their neighbours of Asia Minor. However great the interval may have been between these Asiatic dirges and the elegy as embellished and ennobled by Grecian taste, yet it cannot be doubted that they were in fact connected. Those laments of Asia Minor were always accompanied by the flute, which was of great antiquity in Phrygia and the neighbouring parts, but which was unknown to the Greeks in Homer’s time, and in Hesiod only occurs as used in the boisterous strain of revellers, called Comos§. The elegy, on the other hand, is the first regularly cultivated branch of Greek poetry, in the recitation of which the flute alone, and neither the cithara nor lyre, was employed. The elegiac poet Mimnermus (about Olympiad 40, 620 b. c.), according to the testimony of Hipponax||, nearly as an¬ cient as himself, played on the flute the Kpa^irjg vo/iog ; that is, literally, “ the fig-branch strain,” a peculiar tune, which was played at the Ionic festival of Thargelia, when the men appointed to make atonement for the sins of the city were driven out with fig branches. Nanno, the beloved of Mimnermus, was a flute player, and he, according to the * Aristoph. Av. 218. Eurip. Iph. Taur. 1061. t The most favourite is the derivation from Vs Xsyuv ; but Xsyuv is here an im¬ proper form, and ought in this connexion to be Xoyo The entire composition is, moreover, very strange. 1 Carian and Lydian laments are often mentioned in antiquity (Franch Callinus, p. 123, seq.); and the antispastic rhythm - -’, in which there is something dis¬ pleasing and harsh, was called xagixo ;; which refers to its use in laments of this kind. It is also very probable that the word vm/a. came from Asia Minor (Pollux )v. 79), and was brought by the Tyrrhenians from Lydia to Etruria, and thence to Rome. § Above, chap. iii. § 5. || In Plutarch do Musica, c. ix. comp. Hesycli. in xga.'Siw vo/u.o{. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 107 expression of a later elegiac poet, himself played on the lotus-wood flute, and wore the mouthpiece (the Qopfieia ) used by the ancient flute players when, together with his mistress, he led a comos*. And in en¬ tire agreement with this the elegiac poet Theognis says, that his beloved and much praised Cyrnus, carried by him on the wings of poetry over the whole earth, would be present at all banquets, as young men would sing of him eloquently to the clear tone of little flutesf. Nevertheless, we are not to suppose that elegies were from the begin¬ ning intended to be sung, and to be recited like lyric poems in the narrower sense of the word. Elegies, that is distichs, were doubtless accompanied by the flute before varied musical forms were invented for them. This did not take place till some time after Terpander the Les¬ bian, who set hexameters to music, to be sung to the cithara, that is, pro¬ bably, not before the 40th Olympiad^. When the Amphietyons, after the conquest of Crissa, celebrated the Pythian games (Olymp. 47, 3 b.c. 590), Echembrotus the Arcadian came forward with elegies, which were intended to be sung to the flute : these were of a gloomy plaintive character, which appeared to the as¬ sembled Greeks so little in harmony with the feeling of the festival, that this kind of musical representations was immediately abandoned §. Hence it may be inferred that in early times the elegy was recited rather in the style of the Homeric poems, in a lively tone, though probably with this difference, that where the Homerid used the cithara, the flute was employed, for the purpose of making a short prelude and occasional interludes ||. The flute, as thus applied, does not appear alien to the warlike elegy of Callinus: among the ancients in general the varied tones of the flutesf were not considered as necessarily having a peaceful character. Not only did the Lydian armies march to battle, as Hero¬ dotus states, to the sound of flutes, masculine and feminine; but the Spartans formed their military music of a large number of flutes, in¬ stead of the cithara, which had previously been used. From this how¬ ever we are not to suppose that the elegy was ever sung by an army on its march, or advance to the fight, for which purpose neither the rhythm nor the style of the poetry is at all suited. On the contrary, we shall * This, according to the most probable reading, is the meaning of the passage of H-ermesianax in Athen. xiii., p. 598 A. K ukro ph N uvvovs, voXim V *<**} vroXXoixi A utm xvftufois (according to an emendation in the Classical Journal, vii. p. 238); Kufjt.ovi trrt7%i This familiar address completes the proof that Mimnermus was then still living. f On the relations of Colophon and Smyrna; see above, ch. v. § 2. + This appears first, because Herodotus, 1. 16, mentions this conquest imme¬ diately after the battle with Cyaxare3 (who died 594 b.c.) and the expulsion of the Cimmerians; secondly, because, according to Strabo, xiv. p. 646, Smyrns, having been divided into separate villages by the Lydians, remained in that state for 400 years, until the time of Antigonus. From this it seems that Smyrna fell into the Roads of the LydianS before 600 b. c. ; even in that case the period cannot have amounted to more than 300 years. 116 HISTORY OF THE ceptible temperament, but wanting in the power of steady resistance and resolute union, bids a half melancholy, half indifferent, farewell to liberty; it is important, I repeat, to form a clear conception of this time and this people, in order to gain a correct understanding of the poetical character of Mimnermus. He too could take joy in valorous deeds, and wrote an elegy in honour of the early battle of the Smyrnaeans against Gyges and the Lydians, whose attack was then (as we have already stated) successfully repulsed. Pausanias, who had himself read this elegy*, evidently quotes from itf a particular event of this war in question, viz., that the Lydians had, on this occasion, actually made an entrance into the town, but that they were driven out of it by the bravery of the Smyrnseans. To this elegy also doubtless belongs the fragment (pre¬ served by Stobaeus), in which an Ionian warrior is praised, who drove before him the light squadrons of the mounted Lydians on the plain of the Hermus (that is in the neighbourhood of Smyrna), and in whose firm valour Pallas Athene herself could find nothing to blame when he broke through the first ranks on the bloody battle-field. As in these lines the poet refers to what he had heard from his predecessors, who had themselves witnessed the hero’s exploits, it is probable that this brave Smyrnaean lived about two generations before the period at which Mimnermus flourished—that is precisely in the time of Gyges. As the poet, at the outset of this fragment, says—“ Not such , as I hear, was the courage and spirit of that warrior,” &C.J, we may conjecture that the bravery of this ancient Smyrnsean was contrasted with the effemi¬ nacy and softness of the actual generation. It seems, however, that Mimnermus sought rather to work upon his countrymen by a melan¬ choly retrospect of this kind, than to stimulate them to energetic deeds of valour by inspiriting appeals after the manner of Callinus and Tyrtseus: nothing of this kind is cited from his poems. § 10. On the other hand, both the statements of the ancients and the extant fragments, show that Mimnermus recommended, as the only consolation in all these calamities and reverses, the enjoyment of the best part of life, and particularly love, which the gods had given as the only compensation for human ills. These sentiments were expressed in his celebrated elegy of Nanno, the most ancient erotic elegy of antiquity, which took its name from a beautiful and much-loved flute player. Yet even this elegy had contained allusions to political events: thus it lamented how Smyrna had always been an apple of discord to the neigh¬ bouring nations, and then proceeded with the verses already cited on the taking of the city by the Colophonians§ : the founder of Colophon, An- drsemon of Pylos, was also mentioned in it. But all these reflections on the past and present fortunes of the city were evidently intended only to recommend the enjoyment of the passing hour, as life was only worth • * ix. 29. f iv. 21. J Fragm. 11. ad Gaisford. § Fragm. 9, LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 117 having* while it could be devoted to love, before unseemly and anxious old acre comes on*. These ideas, which have since been so often re- peated, are expressed by Mimnermus with almost irresistible grace. The beauty of youth and love appears with the greater charm when accom¬ panied with the impression of its caducity, and the images of joy stand out in the more vivid light as contrasted with the shadows of deep-seated melancholyt. § 11. With this soft Ionian, who even compassionates the God of the Sun for the toils which he must endure in order to illuminate the earthf, Solon the Athenian forms an interesting contrast. Solon was a man of the genuine Athenian stamp, and for that reason fitted to produce by his laws a permanent influence on the public and private life of his coun¬ trymen. In his character were combined the freedom and susceptibility of the Asiatic Ionian, with the energy and firmness of purpose which marked the Athenian. By the former amiable and liberal tendencies he was led to favour a system of “ live and let live,” which so strongly distinguishes his legislation from the severe discipline of the Spartan constitutions : by the latter he was enabled to pursue his proposed ends with unremitting constancy. Hence, too, the elegy of Solon was dedi¬ cated to the service of Mars as well as of the Muses; and under the combined influence of a patriotic disposition like that of Callinus, and of a more enlarged view of human nature, there arose poems of which the loss cannot be sufficiently lamented. But even the extant fragments of them enable us to follow this great and noble-minded man through all the chief epochs of his life. The elegy of Salamis, which Solon composed about Olymp. 44 (604 b. c.) had evidently more of the fire of youth in it than any other of his poems. The remarkable circumstances under which it was written are related by the ancients, from Demosthenes downwards, with tolerable agreement, in the following manner. The Athenians had from an early period contested the possession of Salamis with the Megarians, and the great power of Athens was then so completely in its infancy, that they were not able to wrest this island from their Doric neighbours, small as was the Megarian territory. The Athenians had suffered so many losses in the attempt, that they not only gave up all propositions in the popular assembly for the reconquest of Salamis, but even made it penal to bring forward such a motion. Under these circumstances, Solon one day suddenly appeared in the costume of a herald, with the proper cap (jriXiov) upon his head, having previously spread a report that he was mad; sprang in the place of the popular assembly upon the # That the subject of the elegy should not be contest and war, but the gifts of the Muses and Aphrodite for the embellishment of the banquet, is a sentiment also expressed by an Ionian later by two generations (Anacreon of Teos), who himself also composed elegies : Ov .bv II goxXtov;, kou Aigiof. (Oaisford, fragm. 5.) LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 121 the popular cause. After he had been overthrown, the aristocracy was restored, but only for a short period, as the commons rose with vio¬ lence against the nobles, and founded a democracy, which however led to such a state of anarchy, that the expelled nobles found the means of regaining their lost power. Now the poetry of Theognis, so far as its political character extends, evidently falls in the beginning of this democracy, probably nearer to the 70th (500 b. c.) than the 60th Olympiad (540 b.c.) : for Theognis, although according to the ancient accounts he was born before the 60th Olympiad, yet from his own verses appears to have lived to the Persian war (Olymp. 75. 480 b. c.). Re¬ volutions of this kind were in the ancient Greek states usually accom¬ panied with divisions of the large landed estates among the commons; and by a fresh partition of the Megarian territory, made by the democratic party, Theognis, who happened to be absent on a voyage, vvas deprived of the rich heritage of his ancestors. Hence he longs for vengeance on the men who had spoiled him of his property, while he himself had only escaped with his life ; like a dog who throws every thing away in order to cross a torrent*, and the cry of the crane, which gives warning of the season of tillage, reminds him of his fertile fields now in other men’s hands f. These fragments are therefore full of allusions to the violent political measures which fin Greece usually accompanied the accession of the democratic party to power. One of the principal changes on such occasions was commonly the adoption into the sove¬ reign community of Periceci , that is, cultivators who were before excluded from all share in the government. Of this Theognis says J, “ Cyrnus, this city is still the city, but a different people are in it, who formerly knew nothing of courts of justice and laws, but wore their country dress of goat skins at their work, and like timid deer dwelt at a distance from the town. And now they are the better class; and those who were formerly noble are now the mean: who can endure to see these things ?” The expressions good and bad men (ayafiot, ecrOXol and KctKoi, foiXcl), which in later times bore a purely moral signification, are evidently used by Theognis in a political sense for nobles and commons ; or rather his use of these words rests in fact upon the supposition that a brave spirit and honourable conduct can be expected only of men de¬ scended from a family long tried in peace and war. Hence his chief complaint is, that the good man, that is, the noble, is now of no account as compared with the rich man; and that wealth is the only object of all. “ They honour riches, and thus the good marries the daughter of the bad, and the bad marries the daughter of the good: wealth cor¬ rupts the blood§. Hence, son of Polypas, do not wonder if the race of the citizens loses its brightness, for good and bad are confounded toge- * v. 345, srq. ed Bekker. f v. 1297, seq. + 53, seq. § vrXoi/To; y'ivo 122 HISTOItY OF THE ther Theognis doubtless made this complaint on the debasement of the Megarian nobility with the stronger feeling of bitterness, as he him¬ self had been rejected by the parents of a young woman, whom he had desired to marry, and a far worse man, that is, a man of plebeian blood, had been preferred to himf. Yet the girl herself was captivated with the noble descent of Theognis : she hated her ignoble husband, and came disguised to the poet, “ with the lightness of a little bird, 5 ’ as he says t. With regard to the union of these fragments into entire elegies, it is important to remark that all the complaints, warnings, and lessons having a political reference, appear to be addressed to a single young friend of the poet, Cyrnus, the son of Polypac §. Wherever other names occur, either the subject is quite different, or it is at least treated in a different manner. Thus there is a considerable fragment of an elegy addressed by Theognis to a friend named Simonides, at the time of the revolution, which in the poems addressed to Cyrnus is described as passed by. In this passage the insurrection is described under the favourite image of a ship tossed about by winds and waves, while the crew have deposed the skilful steersman, and entrusted the guidance of the helm to the common working sailor. “ Let this (the poet adds) be revealed to the good in enigmatic language ; yet a bad man may under¬ stand it, if he has sense ||.” It is manifest that this poem was composed during a reign of terror, which checked the freedom of speech; on the other hand, in the poems addressed to Cyrnus, Theognis openly dis¬ plays all his opinions and feelings. So far is he from concealing his hatred of the popular party, that he wishes that he could drink the blood of those who had deprived him of his property § 15. On attempting to ascertain more precisely the relation of Cyrnus to Theognis, it appears that the son of Polypas was a youth of noble family, to whom Theognis bore a tender, but at the same time paternal, regard, and whom he desires to see a “ good ” citizen, in his sense of the word. The interest felt by the poet in Cyrnus probably appeared much more clearly in the complete elegies than in the gnomic extracts now preserved, in which the address to Cyrnus might appear a mere superfluity. Several passages have, however, been preserved, in which the true state of his relation to Theognis is apparent. “ Cyrnus (says the poet) when evil befals you, we all weep; but grief for others is with * v. 189, seq* f v. 261, seq. J v. 1091. § Elmsley has remarked that IloXvcrcc'1%/] is to be read as a patronymic. The remark is certain, as n oXvorxfin never occurs before a consonant, but nine times be¬ fore a vowel, and moreover in passages where the verse requires a dactyl. The exhortations with the addresses Kugvi and HoXvauil'A are also .closely connected. vroXvvrxs (with the long a) has the same meaning as 7roXv7ru.fjt.uv, a rich proprietor. || In v. G67—82 there is a manifest allusion to the yr,$ kvct.1u.crpot in the verses 5’ u^ttu^ovui pin, xotr/xos uoroXuXiv, Autr/uo; %'ovx'it 1cro$ ytyvirui is ro fc'ftrov. f v. 349. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 123 you only a transient feeling*. 5 ’ “ I have given you wings, with which you will fly over sea and land, and will he present at all banquets, as young* men will sing of you to the flute. Even in future times your name will be dear to all the lovers of song, so long as the earth and sun endure. But to me you shew but little respect, deceiving me with words like a little boyj\” It is plain that Cyrnus did not place in Theognis that entire confidence which the poet desired. It cannot, however, be doubted that these alfectionate appeals and tender re- proaches are to be taken in the sense of the earlier and pure Doric cus¬ tom, and that no connexion of a criminal nature is to be understood, with which it would be inconsistent that the poet recommends a married life to the youth Cyrnus also is sufficiently old to be sent as a sacred envoy (deojfoog) to Delphi, in order to bring back an oracle to the city. The poet exhorts him to preserve it faithfully, and not to add or to omit a word §. The poems of Theognis, even in the form in which they are extant, place us in the middle of a circle of friends, who formed a kind of eat¬ ing society, like the philitia of Sparta, and like the ancient public tables of Megara itself. The Spartan public tables are described to us as a kind of aristocratic clubs ; and these societies in Megara might serve to awaken and keep alive an aristocratic disposition. Theognis himself thinks that those who, according to the original constitution of Megara, possessed the chief power, were the only persons with whom any one ought to eat and drink, and to sit, and whom he should strive to please ||. It is therefore manifest that all the friends whom Theognis names, not only Cyrnus and Simonides, but also Onomacritus, C'learistus, Demo- cles, Demonax, and Timagoras, belonged to the class of the “ good, *’ although the political maxims are only addressed to Cyrnus. Various events in the lives of these friends, or the qualities which each shewed at their convivial meetings, furnished occasions for separate, but probably short elegies. In one the poet laments that Clearistus should have made an unfortunate voyage, and promises him the assistance which is due to one connected with his family by ancient ties of hospitality 5 ^: in ano¬ ther he wishes a happy voyage to the same or another friend **. To Simonides, as being the chief of the society, he addresses a farewell elegy, exhorting him to leave to every guest his liberty, not to detain any one desirous to depart, or to waken the sleeping, &c.+t; and to Onoma¬ critus the poet laments over the consequences of inordinate drinking J Few of the persons whom he addresses appear to have been without this circle of friends, although his fame had even in his lifetime spread § v. 805, seq. ff v. 4G9, seq. * v. 655, seq. || v. 36, seq. f v. 237, seq. f v. 1225. T] y.511, seq. ** V. 601, seq. v. 305, seq. 124 HISTORY OF THE far beyond Megara, by means of his travels as well as of his poetry; and his elegies were sung in many symposia* * * § . The poetry of Theognis is full of allusions to symposia : so that from it a clear conception of the outward accompaniments of the elegy may be formed. When the guests were satisfied with eating, the cups were filled for the solemn libation ; and at this ceremony a prayer was offered to the gods, especially to Apollo, which in many districts of Greece was expanded into a poean. Here began the more joyous and noisy part of the banquet, which Theognis (as well as Pindar) calls in general KWfjLOQ, although this word in a narrower sense also signified the tumul¬ tuous throng of the guests departing from the feast t. Now the Comos was usually accompanied with the flute l : hence Theognis speaks in so many places of the accompaniment of the flute-player to the poems sung in the intervals of drinking § ; while the lyre and citliara (or phorminx) are rarely mentioned, and then chiefly in reference to the song at the libation ||. And this was the appropriate occasion for the elegy, which was sung by one of the guests to the sound of a flute, being either addressed to the company at large, or (as is always the case in Theognis) to a single guest. § 16. We have next to speak of the poems of a man different in his character from any of the elegiac poets hitherto treated of; a philoso¬ pher, whose metaphysical speculations will be considered in a future chapter. Xenophanes of Colophon, who about the 68th Olympiad (508 b.c.) founded the celebrated school of Elea, at an earlier period, while he was still living at Colophon, gave vent to his thoughts and feelings on the circumstances surrounding him, in the form of elegies^ - . These elegies, like those of Archilochus, Solon, Theognis, &c. were symposiac : there is preserved in Athenseus a considerable fragment, in which the beginning of a symposion is described with much distinctness and elegance, and the guests are exhorted, after the libation and song of praise to the gods, to celebrate over their cups brave deeds and the exploits of youths (i. e. in elegiac strains) ; and not to sing the fictions * Theognis himself mentions that he had been in Sicily, Euboea, and Sparta, v. 387, seq. In Sicily he composed the elegy for his countrymen, which has been men¬ tioned in the text, the colonists from Megara ofMegara Iiyblsea. The verses 891—4 must have been written in Euboea. Many allusions to Sparta occur, and the pas¬ sage v. 880—4 is probably from an elegy written by Theognis fora Spartan friend, who had a vineyard on Taygetus. The most difficult of explanation are v. 1200 and 1211, seq., which can scarcely be reconciled with the circumstances of the life of Theognis. f See Theogn. v. 829,940, 1046, 1065, 1207. J See above § 2. § v. 241, 761, 825, 941, 975, 1041, 1056, 1065. || v. 534, 761, 791. There are, however, in Diogenes Laertius elegiac verses of Xenophanes, in which he states himself to be ninety-two years old, and speaks of his wanderings in Greece. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 125 of ancient poets on the battles of Titans, or giants, or centaurs, and such like stories. From this it is evident that Xenophanes took no pleasure in the ordinary amusements at the banquets of his countrymen; and from other fragments of the same writer, it also appears that he viewed the life of the Greeks with the eye of a philosopher. Not only does he blame the luxury of the Colophonians, which they had learnt from the Lydians*, but also the folly of the Greeks in valuing an athlete who had been victorious at Olympia in running or wrestling, higher than the wise man; a judgment which, however reasonable in our eyes, must have seemed exceedingly perverse to the Greeks of his days. § 17. As we intend in this chapter to bring down the history of the elegy to the Persian war, we must also mention Simonides of Ceos, the renowned lyric poet, the early contemporary of Pindar and iEschylus, and so distinguished in elegy that he must be included among the great masters of the elegiac song. Simonides is stated to have been vic¬ torious at Athens over iEschylus himself, in an elegy in honour of those who fell at Marathon (Olymp. 72, 3; 490 b.c.), the Athenians having instituted a contest of the chief poets. The ancient biographer of iEs- chylus, who gives this account, adds in explanation, that the elegy re¬ quires a tenderness of feeling which was foreign to the character of iEschylus. To what a degree Simonides possessed this quality, and in general how great a master he was of the pathetic is proved by his cele¬ brated lyric piece containing the lament of Danae, and by other remains of his poetry. Probably, also, in the elegies upon those who died at Marathon and at Plateea, he did not omit to bewail the death of so many brave men, and to introduce the sorrows of the widows and orphans, which was quite consistent with a lofty patriotic tone, particularly at the end of the poem. Simonides likewise, like Archilochus and others, used the elegy as a plaintive song for the deaths of individuals ; at least the Greek Anthology contains several pieces of Simonides, which appear not to be entire epigrams, but fragments of longer elegies lamenting with heartfelt pathos the death of persons dear to the poet. Among these are the verses concerning Gorgo, who dying, utters these words to her mother:—“Remain here with my father, and become with a happier fate the mother of another daughter, who may tend you in your old age.” From this example we again see how the elegy in the hands of different masters sometimes obtained a softer and more pathetic, and sometimes a more manly and robust tone. Nevertheless there is no reason for dividing the elegy into different kinds, such as the military, political, symposiac,erotic, threnetic, and gnomic; inasmuch as some of * The thousand persons cloathed in purple, who, before the lime of the Tyrcnifs, were, according to Xenophanes (in Athen. xii. p. 526), together in the market-place, formed an aristocratic body among the citizens (to vroXWiUfxcz) ; such as, at this time of transition from the ancient hereditary aristocracies to democracy, also existed in Rhegium, Locri, Croton, Agrigentum and Cyme in ASolis. 126 HISTORY OF THE these cnaracters are at times combined in the same poem. Thus the elegy was usually, as we have seen, sung 1 at the symposion ; and, in most cases, its main subject is political; after which it assumes either an amatory, a plaintive, or a sententious tone. At the same time the elegy always retains its appropriate character, from which it never departs. The feelings of the poet, excited by outward circumstances, seek a vent at the symposion, either amidst his friends or sometimes in a larger assembly, and assume a poetical form. A free and full expression of the poet’s sentiments is of the essence of the Greek elegy. This giving a Tent to the feelings is in itself tranquillizing; and as the mind disbur¬ dens itself of its alarms and anxieties a more composed state naturally ensued, with which the poem closed. When the Greek nation arrived at the period at which men began to express in a proverbial form general maxims of conduct,—a period beginning with the age of the Seven Wise Men, these maxims, or yvtopcu, were the means by which the elegiac poets subsided from emotion into calmness. So far the elegy of Solon, Theog- nis, and Xenophanes, may be considered as gnomic, although it did not therefore assume an essentially new character. That in the Alexandrine period of literature the elegy assumed a different, tone, which was, in part, borrowed by the Roman poets, will be shown in a future chapter. § 18. This place is the most convenient for mentioning a subordinate kind of poetry, the epigram, as the elegiac form was the best suited to it; although there are also epigrams composed in hexameters and other metres. The epigram was originally (as its name purports) an inscrip¬ tion on a tombstone, on a votive offering in a temple, or on any other object which required explanation. Afterwards, from the analogy of these real epigrams, thoughts, excited by the view of any object, and which might have served as an inscription, were called epigrams, and expressed in the same form. That this form was the elegiac may have arisen from the circumstance that epitaphs appeared closely allied with laments for the dead, which (as has been already shown) were at an early period composed in this metre. However, as this elegy compre¬ hended all the events of life which caused a strong emotion, so the epigram might be equally in place on a monument of war, and on the sepulchral pillar of a beloved kinsman or friend. It is true that the mere statement of the purpose and meaning of the object,—for exam¬ ple, in a sacred offering, the person who gave it, the god to whom it was dedicated, and the subject which it represented—was much prized, if made with conciseness and elegance ; and epigrams of this kind were often ascribed to renowned poets, in which there is no excellence besides the brevity and completeness of these statements, and the per¬ fect adaptation of the metrical form to the thought. Nevertheless, in general, the object of the Greek epigram is to ennoble a subject by elevation of thought and beauty of language. The unexpected turn of the thought and the pointedness of expression, which the moderns con LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 127 sider as the essence of this species of composition, were not required in the ancient Greek epigram; in which nothing more is requisite than that the entire thought should be conveyed within the limits of a few dis- tichs: and thus in the hands of the early poets the epigram was remarkable for the conciseness and expressiveness of its language; differing in this respect from the elegy, in which a full vent was given to the feelings of the poet. Epigrams were probably composed in an elegiac form, shortly after the time when the elegy first arose ; and the Anthology contains some under the celebrated names of Archilochus, Sappho, and Anacreon. No peculiar character, however, is to be observed in the genuine epi¬ grams of this early period. It was Simonides, with whom we have closed the series of elegiac poets, who first gave to the epigram the perfection of which, consistently with its purpose, it was capable. In this respect Simonides was favoured by the circumstances of his time ; for on account of the high consideration which he enjoyed both in Athens and Peloponnesus, he was frequently employed by the states which fought against the Persians to adorn with inscriptions the tombs of their fallen warriors. The best and most celebrated of these epi¬ taphs is the inimitable inscription on the Spartans who died at Ther¬ mopylae, which actually existed on the spot: “ Foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians that we are lying here in obedience to their laws*.” Never was heroic courage expressed with such calm and unadorned grandeur. In all these epigrams of Simonides the characteristic peculia¬ rity of the battle in which the warriors fell is seized. Thus in the epigram on the Athenians who died at Marathon—“ Fighting in the van of the Greeks, the Athenians at Marathon destroyed the power of the glittering Medians!.” There are besides not a few epigrams of Simonides which were intended for the tombstones of individuals: among these we will only mention one which differs from the others in being a sarcasm in the form of an epitaph. It is that on the Rhodian lyric poet and athlete Timocreon, an opponent of Simonides in his art: “ Having eaten much, and drunk much, and said much evil of other men, here I lie, Timocreon the Rhodian j.” With the epitaphs are naturally connected the inscriptions on sacred offerings, especially where both refer to the Persian war ; the former being the discharge of a debt to the dead, the latter a thanksgiving of the survivors to the gods. Among these one of the best refers to the battle of Marathon, which, from the neatness and elegance of the expression, loses its chief beauty in a prose translation §. It was inscribed on the statue of Pan, which * Simonides, fr 27. ed. Gaisford. f In Lycurgus and Aristides. J Fr. 58. § The words are these (fr. 25— T on rgctyowouv tfit I rov ' A^zulu,, rov Ku.ru. Tev (nr ’A6 r,vutuv a.TU)) kou ixnfZoXou ’ AvroXXavos, $i\ws ix, uv ’ iv /C*P cr ' iv w$0°yy ov Xvoyv, Concerning l igres, see below, § 18. He also interpolated the Iliad with penta¬ meters. f IlaA A’ r,7rttrrx?o cgyec, Kctx.us ’hn»r the word iambus: the most probable suppo¬ sition is, that it originated in exclamations, oXokvypo), expressive of joy. Similar in form are the Bacchic festival procession ; h6v^ufx(io;, a Bacchic hjmn, and "fiv/xfios, also a kind of Bacchic song. f The great painter Polygnotus, a native of Thasos, contemporary with Cimou, in the painting of the infernal regions, which he executed at Delphi, repre¬ sented in the boat of Charon the Parian priestess Cleoboea, who had brought this mystic worship to Thasos. Avifirirpos uyvtj; xa) K og’/i; rr.v ‘Tsivyiyvgiv fftfledv, is a verse from these poems preserved by Hephaestion, fragm. 68, Gaisford. HISTORY OF THIS 134 Lydian king Gyges, whose wealth he mentions in a verse still extant* ; but is mainly to be regarded as the contemporary of Ardys (from Olymp. 25, 3 to 37, 4. b. c. 678—29). In another versef he mentions the cala¬ mities of Magnesia, which befel that city through the Treres, and, as we have seen, not in the earliest part of Ardys’ reignj. Archilochus draws a comparison between the misery of Magnesia and the melancholy condition of Thasos, whither he was led by his family, and was dis¬ appointed in his hopes of finding the mountains of gold they had expected. The Thasians seem, indeed, never to have been contented with their island, though its fertility and its mines might have yielded a considerable revenue, and to have tried to get possession of the opposite coast of Thrace, abounding in gold and in wine ; an attempt which involved them in wars not only with the natives of that country—for example the Saians §—but also with the early Greek colonists. We find in fragments of Archilochus that they had, even in his time, extended their incursions so far eastward as to come into conflict with the inhabitants of Maronea for the possession of Stryme ||, which at a later period, during the Persian war, was regarded as a city of the Thasians. Dissatisfied with the posture of affairs, which the poet often represents as desperate, (in such expressions as, that the cala¬ mities of all Hellas were found combined in Thasos, that the stone of Tantalus was hanging over their heads, &c.,)^[ Archilochus must have quitted Thasos and returned to Paros, since we are informed by credible writers that he lost his life in a war between the Parians and the inha¬ bitants of the neighbouring island of Naxos. § 7. From these facts it appears, that the public life of Archi¬ lochus was agitated and unsettled; but his private life was still more exposed to the conflict of contending passions. He had courted a Parian girl, Neobule, the daughter of Lycambes, and his trochaic poems expressed the violent passion with which she had inspired him**. Lycambes had actually promised him his daughterftj and we are ignorant what induced him to Withdraw his consent. The rage with which Archilochus assailed the family, now knew no bounds; and he not only accused Lycambes of perjury, but Neobule and her sisters of the most abandoned lives. It is unintelligible how the Parians could suffer the exasperated poet to heap such virulent abuse on persons with whom he had shortly before so earnestly desired to connect himself, had not these iambics first appeared at a fes¬ tival whose solemnization gave impunity to every license; and had it not been regarded as a privilege of this kind of poetry to exag¬ gerate at will the evil reports for which any ground existed, and * Fragm. 10. f Fragm. 71. The reading @ctu,V U'otktudZ/zivo;, where the rock is not called dark generally, but in reference to the difficulty of avoiding a rock beneath the surface of the water. Such epic epithets as wouV " Aoua fiwipovou (fragm. 116) are very rare. § E. g. fragm. 58 : reidv^s S’ u vifazz, rbv wuykv where the article separates 'roiu.'tbi from wyw: “ such are the posteriors which you have.” || We may cite, as instances of the simple language of Archilochus, two fragments evidently belonging to a poem which had some resemblance to Horace’s 6th epode. In the beginning was fragment 122, vroAA' l^Ttos tv ptiycc; “the 140 HISTORY OF THE As we have laboured to place the great merit of Archilochus in its true light, we may give a shorter account of the works of his followers in iambic poetry. His writings will also furnish a standard of com¬ parison for the others. § 11. Simonides of Amorg us follows Archilochus so closely that they may be considered as contemporaries. He is said to have flou¬ rished in the period following Ol. 29 (664 b.c.). The principal events of his life, as of that of Archilochus, are connected with the foundation of a colony: he is said to have led the Samians to the neighbour¬ ing island of Amorgus, and to have there founded three cities. One of these was Minoa, where he settled. Like Archilochus, Simonides composed iambics and trochaic tetrameters; and in the former metre he also attacked individuals with the lash of his invective and ridicule. What the family of Lycambes were to Archilochus, a certain Orodcecides was to Simonides. More remarkable, however, is the peculiar appli¬ cation which Simonides made of the iambic metre: that is to say, he took not individuals, but whole classes of persons, as the object of his satire. The iambics of Simonides thus acquire a certain resemblance to the satire interwoven into Hesiod’s epic poems ; and the more so, as it is on women that he vents his displeasure in the largest of his extant pieces. For this purpose he makes use of a contrivance which, at a later time, also occurs in the gnomes of Phocylides; that is, he derives the various, though generally bad, qualities of women from the variety of their origin ; by which fiction he gives a much livelier image of female characters than he could have done by a mere enumeration of their qualities. The uncleanly woman is formed from the swine, the cunning woman, equally versed in good and evil, from the fox, the talkative woman from the dog, the lazy woman from the earth, the unequal and changeable from the sea, the woman who takes pleasure only in eating and sensual delights from the ass, the perverse woman from the weasel, the woman fond of dress from the horse, the ugly and malicious woman from the ape. There is only one race created for the benefit of men, the woman sprung from the bee, who is fond of her work and keeps faithful watch over her house. § 12. From the coarse and somewhat rude manner of Simonides, we turn with satisfaction to the contemplation of Solon’s iambic style. Even in his hands the iambic retains a character of passion and warmth, but it is only used for self-defence in a just cause. After Solon had introduced his new constitution, he soon found that although he had attempted to satisfy the claims of all parties, or rather to give to each fox uses many arts, but the hedgehog has one great one,’’ viz. to roll himself up and resist his enemy. And towards the end (fragm. 118) IV X Wurra^xi /xsyx, T ov xkxm; ti 'h^uvTx 'biivol; u.vrx[/.ii(hi “ Solon was not a man of deep sense or prudent counsel; for when the god offered him blessings, he refused to take them : but when he had caught the prey, he was struck with awe, and drew not up the great net, failing at once in courage and sense: for else he would have been willing, having gained dominion and obtained unstinted wealth, and having been tyrant of Athens only for a single day, afterwards to be flayed, and his skin made a leathern bottle, and that his race should become extinct f.” The other fragments of Solon’s trochaics agree with the same subject; so that Solon probably only composed one poem in this metre. § 13. Far more nearly akin to the primitive spirit of the iambic verse was the style of Hipponax, who flourished about the 60th Olympiad (540 b. c.). He was born at Ephesus, and was compelled by the tyrants At.henagoras and Comas to quit his home, and to establish himself in another Ionian city, Clazomenae. This political persecution (which affords a presumption of his vehement love of liberty) probably laid the foundation for some of the bitterness and disgust with which he regarded mankind. Precisely the same fierce and indignant scorn * Solon, No. 28, Gaisford. t 'Ssivorm. \ Fragment 25, Gaisford. 142 HISTORY OF THE which found an utterance in the iambics or Archilochus, is ascribed to Hipponax. What the family of Lycambes was to Archilochus, Bupalus and Athenis (two sculptors of a family of Chios, which had produced several generations of artists) were to Hipponax. They had made his small, meagre, and ugly person the subject of a caricature; an insult Hipponax avenged in the bitterest and most pungent iambics, of which some remains are extant. In this instance, also, the satirist is said to have caused his enemy to hang himself. The satire of Hipponax, however, was not concentrated so entirely on certain individuals; from existing fragments it appears rather to have been founded on a general view of life, taken, however, on its ridiculous and grotesque side. The luxury of the Greeks of Lesser Asia, which had already risen to a high pitch, is a favourite object of his sarcasms. In one of the longest frag¬ ments he says*, “ For one of you had very quietly swallowed a continued stream of thunny with dainty sauces, like a Lampsacenian eunuch, and had devoured the inheritance of his father ; therefore he must now break rocks with a mattock, and gnaw a few figs and a little black barley bread, the food of slaves.” H is language is filled with words taken from common life, such as the names of articles of food and clothing, and of ordinary utensils, current among the working people. He evidently strives to make his iambics local pictures full of freshness, nature, and homely truth. For this purpose, the change which Hipponax devised in the iambic metre was as felicitous as it was bold; he crippled the rapid agile gait of the iambic by transforming the last foot from a pure iambus into a spondee, contrary to the fundamental principle of the whole mode of versification. The metre thus maimed and stripped of its beauty and regularity!, was a perfectly appropriate rhythmical form for the delineation of such pictures of intellectual deformity as Hip¬ ponax delighted in. Iambics of this kind (called choliambics or trimeter scazons) are still more cumbrous and halting when the fifth foot is also a spondee ; which, indeed, according to the original struc¬ ture, is not forbidden. These were called broken-backed iambics (ischior- rhogics), and a grammarian J settles the dispute (which, according to ancient testimony, was so hard to decide), how far the invention of this kind of verse ought to be ascribed to Hipponax, and how far to another iambographer, Ananius, by pronouncing that Ananius invented the ischiorrhogic variety, Hipponax the common scazon. It appears, how¬ ever, from the fragments attributed to him, that Hipponax sometimes used the spondee in the fifth foot. In the same manner and with the same effect these poets also changed the trochaic tetrameter by regu- * Ap. Athen. vii. p. 304. B. f to uppu0/xov. ! In Tyrwhitt, Dissert.de Babrio, p. 17. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. U3 larly lengthening the penultimate short syllable. Some remains of this kind are extant. Ilipponax likewise composed pure trimeters in-tie style of Archilochus; but there is no conclusive evidence that he mixed them with scazons. Ananius has hardly any individual character in literary history dis¬ tinct from that of Hipponax. In Alexandria their poems seem to have been regarded as forming one collection; and thus the criterion by which to determine whether a particular passage belonged to the one or to the other, was often lost or never existed. Hence in the uncertainty which is the true author, the same verse is occasionally ascribed to both*. The few fragments which are attributed with cer¬ tainty to Ananius are so completely in the tone of Hipponax, that it would be a vain labour to attempt to point out any characteristic dif¬ ference t- § 14. Akin to the iambic are two sorts of poetry, which, though differing widely from each other, have both their source in the turn for the delineation of the ludicrous, and both stand in a close historical relation to the iambic :—the Fable (originally called alvog , and after¬ wards, less precisely, yvSog and Xuyog), .and the Parody. With regard to the fable, it is not improbable that in other countries, particularly in the north of Europe, it may have arisen from a child¬ like playful view of the character and habits of animals, which frequently suggest a comparison with the nature and incidents of human life. In Greece, however, it originated in an intentional travestie of human affairs. The alvog is, as its name denotes, an admonition^, or rather a reproof, veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness or from love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among beasts. Such is the character of the ainos, at its very first appearance in Hesiod §. “Now I will tell the kings a fable, which they will understand of themselves. Thus spake the hawk to the nightingale, whom he was carrying in his talons aloft in the air, while she, torn by his sharp claws, bitterly lamented— Foolish creature, why dost thou cry out? One much stronger than thou has seized thee; thou must go whithersoever 1 carry thee, though thou art a songstress; I can tear thee in pieces or I can let thee go at my pleasure.” Archilochus employed the ainos in a similar manner in his iambics against Lycambes ||. He tells how the fox and the eagle had con¬ tracted an alliance, but (as the fable, according to other sources, goes * As in Athen. xiv. p. 625 C. f There is no sufficient ground for supposing that Herondas, who is sometimes mentioned as a choliambic poet, lived in this age. The mimiambic poetry ascribed to him will be treated of in connexion with the Mimes of Sophron. + vugoi'ivttri;. See Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 281. § Op. et D. v. 202, seq. || Fr. 38, ed. Gaisford; see note on fr. 39. 144 HISTORY OF THE oil to tell) * the eagle was so regardless of her engagement, that she ate the fox’s cubs. The fox could only call down the vengeance of the gods, and this shortly overtook her; for the eagle stole the flesh from an altar, and did not observe that she bore with it sparks which set fire to her nest, and consumed both that and her young ones. It is clear that Archilochus meant to intimate to Lycambes, that though he was too powerless to call him to account for the breach of his engagement, he could bring down upon him the chastisement of the gods. Another of Archilochus’s fables was pointed at absurd pride of rankf. In like manner Stesichorus cautioned his countrymen, the Hime- rseans, against Phalaris, by the fable of the horse, who, to revenge him¬ self on the stag, took the man on his back, and thus became his slave +. And wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the origin of the iEsopian fable, we find it to be the same. It is always some action, some project, and commonly some absurd one, of the Samians, or Delphians, or Athenians, whose nature and consequences iEsop describes in a fable, and thus often exhibits the posture of affairs in a more lucid, just, and striking manner than could have been done by elaborate argument. But from the very circumstance, that in the Greek fable the actions and business of men are the real and prominent object, while beasts are merely introduced as a veil or disguise, it has nothing in common with popular legendary stories of beasts, nor has it any con¬ nexion with mythological stories of the metamorphoses of animals. It is exclusively the invention of those who detected in the social habits of the lower animals points of resemblance with those of man ; anil while they retained the real character in some respects, found means, by the introduction of reason and speech, to place them in the light required for their purpose. § 15. It is probable that the taste for fables of beasts and nume¬ rous similar inventions, found their way into Greece from the East; since this sort of symbolical and veiled narrative is more in harmony with the Oriental than with the Greek character. Thus, for example, the Old Testament contains a fable completely in the style of iEsop (Judges, ix. 8). But not to deviate into regions foreign to our purpose, we may confine ourselves to the avowal of the Greeks themselves, contained in the very names given by them to the fable. One kind of fable was called the Libyan , which we may, therefore, infer was of African origin, and was introduced into Greece through Cyrene. To this class belongs, * Coraes, M 66uv AIruvniuv cuvaycoyri, c. i. Aristoph. Av. 651, ascribes the fable ^Esop. f See Gaisford, fr. 39. I Arist. Rhet. ii. 20. The fable of Menenius Agrippa is similarly applied ; but it is difficult to believe that the aims, so applied, was known in Latium at that time and it seems probable that the story was transferred from Greece to Rome. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE 145 according 1 to iEschylus * * * § , the beautiful fable of the wounded eagle, who, looking at the feathering of the arrow with which he was pierced, exclaimed, “ I perish by feathers drawn from my own wing.” From this example we see that the Libyan fable belonged to the class of fables of animals. So also did the sorts to which later teachers of rhetoric t give the names of the Cyprian and the CUician; these writers also men¬ tion the names of some fabulists among the barbarians, as Cybissus the Libyan and Connis the Cilician. The contest between the olive and the laurel on mount Tmolus, is cited as a fable of the ancient Lydians J. The Carian stories or fables, however, were taken from human life, as, for instance, that quoted by the Greek lyric poets, Timocreon and Simonides. A Carian fisherman, in the winter, sees a sea polypus, and he says to himself, “ If I dive to catch it, I shall be frozen to death ; if I don’t catch it, my children must starve §.” The Sybaritic fables men¬ tioned by Aristophanes have a similar character. Some pointed saying of a man or woman of Sybaris,with the particular circumstances which called it forth, is related ||. The large population of the wealthy Ionian Sybaris appears to have been much given to such repartees, and to have caught them up and preserved them with great eager¬ ness. Doubtless, therefore, the Sicilian poet Epicharmus means, by Sybaritic apophthegms^, what others call Sybaritic fables. The Sybaritic fables, nevertheless, occasionally invested not only the lower animals, but even inanimate objects, with life and speech, as in the one quoted by Aristophanes. A woman in Sybaris broke an earthen pot; the pot screamed out, and called witnesses to see how ill she had been treated. Then the woman said, “ By Cora, if you were to leave off calling out for witnesses, and were to make haste and buy a copper ring to bind yourself together, you would show more wisdom.” This fable is used by a saucy merry old man, in ridicule of one whom he has ill treated, and who threatens to lay a complaint against him. Both the Sybaritic and iEsopian fables are represented by Aristophanes as jests, or ludicrous stories (yiKola). § 16. To return to^Esop: Bentley has shown that he was very far from being regarded by the Greeks as one of their poets, and still less as a writer. They considered him merely as an ingenious fabulist, under whose name a number of fables, often applicable to human affairs, were current, and to whom, at a later period, nearly all that were either * Fragment of the Myrmidons. f Theon, and in part also Aphthonius. A fragment of a Cyprian fable, about the doves of Aphrodite, is published in the excerpts from the Codex Angelicus in Walz Rhetor. Grec. vol. ii. p. 12. J Callim. fr. 93. Bentl. § From the Codex Angelicus in Walz Rhet. Gr. vol. ii. p. 11., and the Proverbs of Macarius in Walz Arsenii Violetum, p. 318. || Aristoph. Vesp. 1259, 1427, 1437. Suidas in v, L 146 HISTORY OF THE invented or derived from any other source, were attributed. His history has been dressed out by the later Greeks, with all manner of droll and whimsical incidents. What can be collected from the ancient writers down to Aristotle is, however, confined to the following. jEsop was a slave of the Samian Iadmon, the son of Hephaestopolis, who lived in the time of the Egyptian king Amasis. (The reign of Amasis begins Olymp. 52, 3, 570 b. c.) According to the state¬ ment of Eugeon, an old Samian historian, * * * § he was a native of the Thracian city Mesembria, which existed long before it was peopled by a colony of Byzantines in the reign of Darius f* According to a less authentic account he was from Cotyaeon in Phrygia. It seems that his wit and pleasantry procured him his freedom ; for though he remained in Iadmon’s family, it must have been as a freedman, or he could not, as Aristotle relates, have appeared publicly as the defender of a dema¬ gogue, on which occasion he told a fable in support of his client. It is generally received as certain that jEsop perished in Delphi; the Del- phians, exasperated by his sarcastic fables, having put him to death on a charge of robbing the temple. Aristophanes alludes to a fable which iEsop told to the Delpliians, of the beetle who found means to revenge himself on the eagle J. The character of the iEsopian fable is precisely that of the genuine beast-fable, such as we find it among the Greeks. The condition and habits of the lower animals are turned to account in the same manner, and, by means of the poetical introduction of reason and speech, are placed in such a light as to produce a striking resemblance to the inci¬ dents and relations of human life. Attempts were probably early made to give a poetical form to the iEsopian fable. Socrates is said to have beguiled his imprisonment thus. The iambic would of course suggest itself as the most appro¬ priate form (as at a later period it did to Pheedrus), or the scazon, which was adopted by Callimachus and Babrius§. But no metrical versions of these fables are known to have existed in early times. The aenus was generally regarded as a mode of other sorts of poetry, particularly the iambic, and not as a distinct class. § 17. The other kind of poetry whose origin we are now about to trace, is the Parody. This was understood by the ancients, as well as by ourselves, to mean an adoption of the form of some cele¬ brated poem, with such changes in the matter as to produce a totally different effect; and, generally, to substitute mean and ridiculous for elevated and poetical sentiments. The contrast between the grand and * Ely'iuv, or E uyt'iuv, falsely written E uyuruv, in Suidas in v. Ahrwno;. «. f Mesembria, Pattymbria, and Selymbria, are Thracian names, and mean the cities of Meses, Pattys, and Selys. J Aristoph. Vesp. 1448. cf. Pac. 129. Coraes, ^sop. c. 2. § A distich of an iEsopian fable is, however, attributed by Diogenes Laertius to Socrates. Fragments of fables in hexameters also occur. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 147 sublime images suggested to the memory, and the comic ones introduced in their stead, renders parody peculiarly fitted to place any subject in a ludicrous, grotesque, and trivial light. The purpose of it, however, was not in general to detract from the reverence due to the ancient poet (who, in most cases was Homer), by this travestie, but only to add fresh zest and pungency to satire. Perhaps, too, some persons sporting with the austere and stately forms of the epos, (like playful children dressing themselves in gorgeous and flowing robes of state,) might have fallen upon the device of parody. We have already alluded to a fragment of Asius* in elegiac measure, which is not indeed a genuine parody, but which approaches to it. It is a comic description of a beggarly parasite, rendered more ludicrous by a tone of epic solemnity. But, according to the learned Polemon f, the real author of parody was the iambographer Hipponax, of whose pro¬ ductions in this kind a hexametrical fragment is still extant. § 18. The Batrachomyomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and the Mice (which has come down to us among the lesser Homeric poems), is totally devoid of sarcastic tendency. All attempts to discover a satirical meaning in this little comic epos have been abortive. It is nothing more than the story of a war between the frogs and the mice, which, from the high-sounding names of the combatants, the detailed genealo¬ gies of the principal persons, the declamatory speeches, the interference of the gods of Olympus, and all the pomp and circumstance of the epos, has completely the external character of an epic heroic poem ; a cha¬ racter ludicrously in contrast with the subject. Notwithstanding many ingenious conceits, it is not, on the whole, remarkable for vigour of poetical conception, and the introduction falls far short of the genuine tone of the Homeric epos, so that everything tends to show that the Batrachomyomachia is a production of the close of this era. This sup¬ position is confirmed by the tradition that Pigres, the brother of the Halicarnassian tyrant Artemisia, and consequently a contemporary of the Persian war, was the author of this poem J, although at a later period of antiquity, in the time of the Romans, the Batrachomyomachia wa ascribed without hesitation to Homer himself. * Ch. x. § 7. f Ap. Athen. xv. p. 698, B. I The passage of Plutarch de Malign. Herod, c. 43. ought to be written as fol¬ lows :—TtXas 3s xxDvpc'svous tv II XxrxtxTs xyvovitrxi [t'tfcpi rtXovs rov xyuvx rovs"EXXvvxs, utrvrto fixrgx%o/xvo/xx%'ix; yivo/xtvys (>jv Tityftrts o ’Agrt/xicr'ixs tv tyrtfft itx'iZ,uv xxi v ty^x^J/tv') ri S ixyuv'i the country to which the worship of the Muses and the Thracian hymns belonged J; and they probably brought with them the first rudiments of poetry. This migration of the art of the Muses is ingeniously expressed by the legend that, after the murder of Orpheus by the Thracian Maenads, his head and lyre were thrown into the sea, and borne upon its waves to the island of Lesbos ; whence singing and the music of the cithara flourished in this, the most musical of islands §. The grave supposed to contain the head of Orpheus was shown in Antissa, a small town of Lesbos; and it was thought that in that spot the nightingales sang most sweetly ||. In Antissa also, according to the testimony of several ancient writers, Terpander was born. In this way, the domestic impressions and the occupations of his youth may have prepared Terpander for the great undertaking which he afterwards performed. The date of Terpander is determined by his appearance in the mother country of Greece : of his early life in Lesbos nothing is known. The first account of him describes him in Peloponnesus, which at that time surpassed the rest of Greece in political power, in well-ordered govern¬ ments, and probably also in mental cultivation. It is one of the most certain dates of ancient chronology, that in the 26th Olympiad (b. g. 676) musical contests were first introduced at the feast of Apollo Car- neius, and at their first celebration Terpander was crowned victor. Terpander was also victor four successive times in the musical contests at the Pythian temple of Delphi, which were celebrated there long before the establishment of the gymnastic games and chariot races (Ol. 47), but which then recurred every eight, and not every four years^f. These Pythian victories ought probably to be placed in the period from the 27th to the 33rd Olympiad. For the 4th year of the 33rd Olympiad 645 b. c.) is the time at which Terpander introduced among the Lace¬ daemonians his nomes for singing to the cithara, and generally reduced music to a system**. At this time, therefore, he had acquired the greatest renown in his art by his most important inventions. In Lace- * There were in several of the Greek states, houses or gentes, yivn, in which the performance of musical exhibitions, especially at festivals, descended as an heredi¬ tary privilege. Thus, at Athens, the playing of the cithara at processions belonged to the Eunids. The Eumolpids of Eleusis were originally, as the name proves, a gens of singers of hymns (see above, p. 25, ch. iii. § 7). The flute-players of Sparta con¬ tinued their art and their rights in families. Stesichorus and Simonides also be longed to musical families, as we will show below. + Ch.i. § 5 (p. 9). * Chap.ii. § 8. § oruAuv hrriv aoi^oTam, says Phanocles, the elegiac poet, who gives the most elegant version of this legend (Stob. tit. lxii. p. 399). || Myrsilus of Lesbos, in Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. c. 5. In the account in Nicomachus Geraes. Enchir. Harm. ii. p. 29. ed. Meibom. Antissa is mentioned on the same occasion. % Midler’s Dorians, b. iv. ch. vi. §2. ** Marmor Parium, ep. xxxiv. 1. 49, compared with Piutarch de Musica, c. 9. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 151 daemon, whose citizens had from the earliest times been distinguished for their love of music and dancing, the first scientific cultivation of music was ascribed to Terpander * ; and a record of the precise time had beeji preserved, probably in the registers of the public games. Hence it appears that Terpander was a younger contemporary of Calli- nus and Archilochus; so that the dispute among the ancients, whether Terpander or Archilochus were the elder, must probably be decided by supposing them to have lived about the same time. § 3. At the head of all the inventions of Terpander stands the seven- stringed cithara. The only accompaniment for the voice used by the early Greeks was a four-stringed cithara, the tetrachord ; and this instrument had been so generally used, and held in such repute, that the whole system of music was always founded upon the tetrachord. Terpander was the first who added three strings to this instrument; as he himself testifies in two extant verses f. “ Disdaining the four-stringed song, we shall sound new hymns on the seven-stringed phorminx.” The tetrachord was strung so that the twp extreme strings stood to one another in the relation called by the ancients diatessaron , and by the moderns a fourth; that is to say, the lower one made three vibrations in the time that the upper one made four. Between these two strings, which formed the principal harmony of this simple instrument, there were two others; and in the most ancient arrangement of the gamut, called the diatonic , these two were strung ,so that the three intervals between these four strings produced twice a whole tone, and in the third place a semito.ne. Terpander enlarged this instrument by adding one tetrachord to another: he did not however make the highest tone of the lower tetrachord the lowest of the upper, but he left an interval of one tone between the two tetrachords. By this arrangement the cithara would have had eight strings, if Terpander had not left out the third string, which must have appeared to him to be of less import¬ ance. The heptachord of Terpander thus acquired the compass of an octave, or, according to the Greek expression, a diapason; because the highest tone of the upper and the lowest of the lower tetrachord stood in this relation, which is the simplest of all, as it rests upon the ratio of 1 to 2; and which was soon acknowledged by the Greeks as the funda¬ mental concord. At the same time the highest tone of the upper tetra¬ chord stands to the highest of the lower in the relation of the fifth, the arithmetical expression of which is 2 to 3 ; and in general the tones were doubtless so arranged that the simplest consonances after the * fi Qog/xiyyi viovs xtXoihriaofiiv v/xvovs. 152 HISTORY OF THE octave—that is to say, the fourth and fifth—governed the whole* * * § . Hence the heptachord of Terpander long remained in high repute, and was employed by Pindar; although in his time the deficient string of the lower tetrachord had been supplied, and an octachord produced f. § 4. It will be convenient in this place to explain the difference between the scales (yeVr/), and the styles or harmonies (jponoi, apyoviai) of Greek music, since it is probable that they were regulated by Terpander. The musical scales are determined by the intervals between the four tones of the tetrachord. The Greek musicians describe three musical scales, viz., the diatonic, the chromatic, and the enhar¬ monic. In the diatonic, the intervals were two tones and a semi¬ tone ; and hence the diatonic was considered the simplest and most natural, and was the most extensively used. In the chromatic scale the interval is a tone and a semitone, combined with two other semi¬ tones This arrangement of the tetrachord was also very ancient, but it was much less used, because a feeble and languid, though pleasing character, was ascribed to it. The third scale, the en¬ harmonic, was produced by a tetrachord, which, besides an interval of two tones, had also two minor ones of quarter-tones. This was the latest of all, and was invented by Olympus, who must have flourished a short time after Terpander §. The ancients greatly preferred the enharmonic scale, especially on account of its liveliness and force. -But from the small intervals of quarter tones, the execution of it required great skill and practice in singing and playing. These musical scales were further determined by the styles or harmonies , because on them depended, first, the position or succession of the inter¬ vals belonging to the several scales ||, and, secondly, the height and depth of the whole gamut. Three styles were known in very early times,—the Doric, which was the lowest, the Phrygian, the middle one, and the Lydian, the highest. Of these, the Doric alone is named from a Greek race; the two others are called after nations of Asia Minor, whose love for music, and particularly the flute, is well known. It is probable that national tunes were current among these tribes, whose * The strings of the heptachord of Terpander were called, beginning from the highest, upi%dv. In Clemens Alex. Strom, vi. p. 784, who also states that this hymn to Zeus was set in the Doric style. ** thipYiflltX. 156 HISTORY OF THE sisting of three long syllables, by which the fragment of Terpander ought probably to be measured. § 6. The accounts of Terpander’s inventions, and the extant remains of his nomes, however meagre and scanty, give some notion of his merits as the father of Grecian music. Another ancient master, how¬ ever, the Phrygian musician Olympus, so much enlarged the system of the Greek music, that Plutarch considers him, and not Terpander, as the founder of it. The date, and indeed the whole history of this Olympus, are involved in obscurity, by a confusion between him (who is certainly as historical as Terpander) and a mythological Olympus, who is connected with the first founders of the Phrygian religion and worship. Even Plu¬ tarch, who in his learned treatise upon music has marked the distinc¬ tion between the earlier and the later Olympus, has still attributed inventions to the fabulous Olympus which properly belong to the his¬ torical one. The ancient Olympus is quite lost in the dawn of mythical legends; he. is the favourite and disciple of the Phrygian Silenus, Mar- syas, who invented the flute, and used it in his unfortunate contest with the cithara of the Hellenic god Apollo. The invention of nomes could only be ascribed to this fabulous Olympus, and to the still more ancient Hyagnis, as certain nomes were attributed by the Greeks to Olen and Philammon; that is to say, certain tunes were sung at festivals, which tradition assigned to these nomes. There was also in Phrygia a family said to be descended from the mythical Olympus, the members of which, probably, played sacred tunes on the flute at the festivals of the Magna Mater: to this family, according to Plutarch, the later Olympus belonged. § 7. This later Olympus stands midway between his native country Phrygia and the Greek nation. Phrygia, which had in general little connexion with the Greek religion, and was remarkable only for it3 enthusiastic rites and its boisterous music, obtained, by means of Olympus, an important influence upon the music, and thus upon the poetry, of Greece. But Olympus would not have been able to exercise this influence, if he had not, by a long residence in Greece, become acquainted with the Greek civilization. It is stated that he produced new tunes in the Greek sanctuary of Pytho; and that he had disciples who were Greeks, such as Crates and Hierax the Argive *. It was by means of Olympus that the flute attained an equal place in Greek music with the cithara ; by which change music gained a much greater com¬ pass than before. It was much easier to multiply the tones of the flute than those of the cithara; especially as the ancient flute-players were accustomed to play upon two flutes at once. Hence the severe censors * The former is mentioned by Plutarch de Mus. 7; the latter by the same writer, c. 26, and Pollux iv. 10. 79. Accordingly it is not probable that this second Olympus was a mythical personage, or a collective appellation of the Phrygian inus'c in its improved state. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 157 of music in antiquity disapproved of the flute on moral grounds, since % they considered the variety of its tones as calculated to seduce the player into an unchaste and florid style of music. Olympus also in- vented and cultivated the third musical scale, the enharmonic ; the powerful effects of which, as well as its difficulties, have been already mentioned. His nomes were accordingly auletic , that is, intended for the flute, and belonged to the enharmonic scale. > Among the different names which have been preserved, that of the Harmateios Nomos may be particularly mentioned, as we are able to form a tolerably correct idea of its nature. In the Orestes of Euripides, a Phrygian Eimuch in the service of Helen, who has just escaped the murderous hands of Orestes and Pylades, describes his dangers in a monody, in which the liveliest expression of pain and terror is blended with a character of Asiatic softness. This song, of which the musical accompaniment was doubtless composed with as much art as the rhythmical structure, was set to the harmatian nome, as Euripides makes his Phrygian say. This mournful and passionate music appears to have been particularly adapted to the talent and taste of Olympus. At Delphi, where the solemnities of the Pythian games turned principally upon the fight of Apollo with the Python, Olympus is said to have played a dirge in honour of the slain Python upon the flute and in the Lydian style *. A nome of Olympus played upon several flutes (£vvav\la) was well known at Athens. t Aristophanes, ir. the beginning of his Knights, describes the two slaves of Demus as giving utterance to their griefs in this tune. But from the esteem in which Olympus was held by the ancients, it seems improbable that all his compositions were of this gloomy character; and we may therefore fairly attribute a greater variety to his genius. His nome to Athene probably had the energetic and serene tone which suited the worship of this goddess. Olympus also shows great richness of invention in his rhythmical forms, and particularly in such as seemed to the Greeks expressive of enthusiasm and emotion. It appears probable from a statement in Plutarch, that he introduced the rhvthm of the son«*s to the MagnaMater, or Galliambi f. The Atys of Catullus shows what an impression of melancholy, beauty and tenderness this metre was capa¬ ble of producing, when handled by a skilful artist. A more important fact, however, is, that Olympus introduced not only the third scale of music, but also a third class of rhythms. All * With this is connected the account that Olympus the Mysian cultivated the Lydian style, hpi\or'%vvuo, U uu_L, &c.), to which last the theoretical writers of antiquity ascribe much life and energy, and at the same time, loftiness of expression. That the poets and musicians considered it in the same light may be inferred from the use which they made of it. Olympus was the first who cultivated this rhythm, as we learn from Plutarch, and it is almost needless to remark that this exten¬ sion of the rhythms agrees with the other inventions of Olympus f. § 8. It appears, therefore, that Olympus exercised an important influence in developing the rhythms, the instrumental music, and the musical scales of the Greeks, as well as in the composition of numerous nomes. Yet if we inquire to what words his compositions were arranged, we can find no trace of a verse written by him. Olympus is never, like Terpander, mentioned as a poet; he is simply a musician J. His nomes, indeed, seem to have been originally executed on the flute alone, without singing; and he himself, in the tradition of the Greeks, was celebrated as a flute-player. It was a universal custom at this time to select the flute-players for the musical performances in Greek cities from among the Phrygians : of this nation, according to the testimony of Athenaeus, were Iambus, Adon and Telos, mentioned by the Lacedae¬ monian lyric poet Aleman, and Cion, Codalus, and Babys, mentioned by Hipponax. Hence, for example, Plutarch says, that Thaletas took the Cretan rhythm from the flute-playing of Olympus §, and thus acquired the fame of a good poet. Since Olympus did not properly belong to the Greek literature, and did not enter the lists with the poets * Above, chap. xi. §8. f According to Plutarch de Mus. c. 29. Some also ascribe to Olympus the Bxx%i~os fvSpos (tr —which belongs to the same family, though its form makes a less pleasing impression. I Suidas attributes to him /xekti and which may be a confusion between compositions in the lyric and elegiac style and poetical texts. fylxrvs’OXufvroua,vXyit, Ki/XXdvxg 0 fj-ibn? (as participle, with the ALolic accent, tor /u.i'&il;'), UTl OTOl/UtVtS orotrtri Kuruo'Tt'ifioviri * * * § %u/kol) 3s Tt orogtpvgov uv6o$. Demetrius tie elocut. c. 106, quotes these verses without a name; but it can scarcely be doubted that they are Sappho’s. In Catullus, the young women use the same image as the young men in Sappho. + Fragm. 42. Blomf. 34. Neue. § Fragm. 39. Blomf. 73. Neue. I| Himerius, Orat. I. 4. 6 16. i^[ Fragm. 43. Blomf. 38. Neue. It is worthy, of remark, that Demetrius de elocut. c. 167, expressly mentions the chorus in relation to this fragment. ** In Stobaeus, Serm. xxix. 28 N 2 180 HISTORY OF THE one of her poems, he is said to have exclaimed, that he would not wil¬ lingly die till he had learned it by heart. Indeed the whole voice of antiquity has declared that the poetry of Sappho was unrivalled in grace and sweetness. And doubtless from that circle of accomplished women, of whom she formed the brilliant centre, a flood of poetic warmth and light was poured forth on every side. A friend of hers, Damophila the Pamphy- lian, composed a hymn on the worship of the Pergaean Artemis (which was solemnized in her native land after the Asiatic fashion) ; in this the iEolic style was blended with the peculiarities of the Pamphylian man¬ ner*. Another poetess of far higher renown was Erinna, who died in early youth, when chained by her mother to the spinning-wheel; she had as yet known the charm of existence in imagination alone. Her poem, called “ The Spindle” (’H/Wctr^), containing only 300 hex¬ ameter verses, in which she probably expressed the restless and aspiring thoughts which crowded on her youthful mind, as she pursued her monotonous work, has been deemed by many of the ancients of such high poetic merit as to entitle it to a place beside the epics of Homer +• § 11. We now come to Anacreon, whose poetry may be considered as akin to that of Alcaeus and Sappho, although he was an Ionian from Teos, and his genius had an entirely different tone and bent. In respect also of the external circumstances in which he was placed, he belonged to a different period; inasmuch as the splendour and luxury of living had, in his time, much increased among the Greeks, and even poetry had contributed to adorn the court of a tyrant. The spirit of the Ionic race was, in Callinus, united with manly daring and a high feeling of honour, and in Mimnermus with a tender melancholy, seeking relief from care in sensual enjoyment; but in Anacreon it is bereft of of all these deeper and more serious feelings; and he seems to consider life as valuable only in so far as it can be spent in love, music, wine, and social enjoyments. And even these feelings are not animated with the glow of the iEolic poets; Anacreon, with his Ionic disposition, cares only for the enjoyment of the passing moment, and no feeling takes such deep hold of his heart that it is not always ready to give way to fresh impressions. Anacreon had already arrived at manhood, when his native city Teos was, after some resistance, taken by Harpagus, the general of Cyrus. In consequence of this capture, the inhabitants all took ship, and sailed for Thrace, where they founded Abdera, or rather they took possession of a Greek colony already existing on the spot, and enlarged the town. This event happened about the 60th Olymp. 540 b. c. Anacreon was among these Teian exiles; and, according to ancient testimony, he * Philostrat. Vit. Apollon, i. 30, p. 37. ed. Olear. f The chief authority is Anthol. Palat. ix. 190. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 181 himself called Abdera, “ The fair settlement of the Teians About this time, or at least not long after, Polycrates became tyrant of Samos ; for Thucydides places the height of his power under Cambyses, who began to reign in Olymp. 62. 4. b. c. 529. Polycrates was, according to the testimony of Herodotus, the most enterprising and magnificent of all the Grecian tyrants. His wide dominion over the islands of the yEgaean Sea, and his intercourse with the rulers of foreign countries (as with Amasis, king of Egypt), supplied him with the means of adorning his island of Samos, and his immediate retinue, with all that art and riches could at that time effect. He embellished Samos with exten¬ sive buildings, kept a court like an oriental prince, and was surrounded by beautiful boys for various menial services; and he appears to have considered the productions of such poets as Ibycus, and especially Anacreon, as the highest ornament of a life of luxurious enjoyment. Anacreon, according to a well known story of Herodotus, was still at the court of Polycrates, when death was impending over him; and he had probably just left Samos, when his host and patron was murdered by the treacherous and sanguinary Oroetes (Olympiad 64. 3. b. c. 522). At this time Hippias, the son of Pisistratus, ruled in Athens; and his brother Hipparchus shared the government with him. The latter had more taste for poetry than any of his family, and he is particularly named in connexion with institutions relating to the cultivation of poetry among the Athenians. Hipparchus, according to a Platonic dialogue which bears his name, sent out a ship with fifty oars, to bring Anacreon to Athens; and here Anacreon found several other poets, who had then come to Athens in order to adorn the festivals of the city, and, in particular, of the royal family. Meanwhile Anacreon devoted his muse to other distinguished families in Athens; among others he is supposed to have loved the young Critias, the son of Dropides, and to have extolled this house distinguished in the annals of Athens t. At this time the fame of Anacreon appears to have reached its highest * Iu Strabo xiv. p. 644. A fragment in Schol. Odyss. viii. 293. (fragment 132. ed. Bergk,) also refers to the Sintians in Thrace, as likewise does an epigram of Anacreon (Anthol. Palat. viii. 226) to a brave warrior, who had fallen in the defence of his native city Abdera. f Plato, Charmid. p. 157 E. Schol. ASschyl. Prom. 128. This Critias was at that time (Olymp. 64) about sixteen years old; for he was born in Olymp. 60 ; and this agrees with the fact, that his grandson Critias, the statesman, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, was, according to Plato Tim. p. 216, eighty years younger than his grandfather. Consequently, the birth of the younger Critias falls in Olymp. which agrees perfec tly with the recorded events of his life. The Critias born in Olymp. 60, is however called a son of the Dropides, who is stated to have been a friend of Solon, and to have succeeded him in the office of Archon in Olymp. 46. 4. b. c. 593. It seems impossible to escape from these chronological difficulties, ex¬ cept by distinguishing this Dropides, and his son Critias, to whom Solon’s verses refer (E/Ve^svai "x-aroos ixovuv, &c.), from the Dropides and Critias in Anacreon’s time. Upon this supposition the dates of the persons of this family would stand thus : Dropides, born about Olymp. 36 ; Critias o (for &c. 197 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. are most abundant in certain fragments of a hearty, simple character* * * § , in which Aleman depicts his own way of life, his eating- and drinking, of which, without being absolutely a glutton, he was a great lover f. But even here we may trace the admixture with the iEolic character which ancient grammarians attribute to Aleman. It is explained by the fact that Peloponnesus was indebted for the first perfect specimen of lyric poetry to an iEolian of Lesbos, Terpander. In other frag¬ ments the dialect approximates more nearly to the epic, and has re¬ tained only a faint tinge of Dorism; especially in all the poems in hexameters, and, indeed, wherever the poetry assumes a dignified, majestic character §. Aleman is one of the poets whose image is most effaced by time, and of whom we can the least hope to obtain any accurate knowledge. The admiration awarded to him by antiquity is scarcely justified by the extant remains of his poetry; but, doubtless, this is because they are extremely short, or are cited only in illustration of trifles. A true and lively conception of nature pervades the whole, elevated by that power of quickening the inanimate which descended from remote antiquity : thus, for instance, the poet calls the dew, Hersa, a daughter of Zeus and Selene, of the God of the Heavens and the Moon ||. He is also remarkable for simple and cheerful views of human life, connected with an intense enthusiasm for the beautiful in whatsoever age or sex, especially for the grace of virgins, the objects of Aleman’s most ardent homage. The only evidence that his erotic poetry is somewhat voluptuous is to be found in the innocence and simplicity with which, in the true Spartan fashion, he regarded the relation between the sexes. A corrupt, refined sensuality neither belongs to the age in which he lived, nor to the character of his poetry; and although, perhaps, he is chiefly conversant with sensual existence, yet indications are not wanting of a quick and profound conception of the spiritual **. § 4. The second great choral poet, Stesichorus, has so little in common with Aleman, that he can in no respect be regarded as suc- * Fragm. 24. 28. O • •f o vrufttpuyos ’ Akxftav. \ Especially in the sound 012 for an original ON2, as in (p'i^oura.. It appears, however, that the pure Doric form M utra. ought to be introduced everywhere for M o~idp/uy£), the instrument used in this worship. In the worship of Dionysus, on the other hand, an irregular band of revellers, led by a flute-player, was the prominent feature +. Arion, according to the concurrent testimonies of the historians and grammarians of antiquity, was the first who practised a chorus in the representation of a dithyramb, and therefore gave a regular and dignified character to this song, which before had probably consisted of irregular expressions of excited feeling, and of inarticulate ejacula¬ tions. This improvement was made at Corinth, the rich and flourish¬ ing city of Periander ; hence Pindar in his eulogy of Corinth exclaims : “ Whence, but from Corinth, arose the pleasing festivals of Dionysus, with the dithyramb, of which the prize is an ox|?” The choruses which sang the dithyramb were circular choruses (kvkXioi x°P°0 '-> so called, because they danced in a circle round the altar on which the sacrifice was burning. Accordingly, in the time of Aristophanes, the expressions “ dithyrambic poet,” and “ teacher of cyclian choruses’ (icvicXiodidacrKaXog), were nearly synonymous §. With regard to the subjects of the dithyrambs of Arion we know nothing, except that he introduced the tragic style into them ||. This proves that he had dis¬ tinguished a choral song of a gloomy character, which referred to the dangers and sufferings of Dionysus, from- the ordinary dithyramb of the joyous kind; as will be shown in a subsequent chapter^. With regard to the musical accompaniment of the dithyrambs of Arion, it may be remarked, that the cithara was the principal instrument used in it, and not the flute, as in the boisterous comus. Arion was himself the first cithara-player of his time : and the exclusive fame of the Les¬ bian musicians from Terpander downwards was maintained by him 5,! 'Oj A luvvtrnv xvxxros xxAov i^xp^xt /xsXos OT^as 1tQvpxy,$ov oIvm xvyxi^xuvuh)s when he was compelled to throw himself from a ship into the sea, and was miraculously saved by a dolphin J. Arion is also stated, as well as Terpander, to have composed procemia, that is, hymns to the gods, which served as an introduction to festivals §. § 8. In descending to the choral poets who lived nearer the time of the Persian war, we meet with two poets of very peculiar characters; the vehement Ibycus, and the tender and refined Simonides. Ibycus was a native of Rhegium, the city near the southernmost point of Italy, which was closely connected with Sicily, the country of Stesi- chorus. Rhegium was peopled partly by Ionians from Chalcis, partly by Dorians from Peloponnesus ; the latter of whom were a superior class. The peculiar dialect formed in Rhegium had some influence on the poems of Ibycus ; although these were in general written in an epic dialect with a Doric tinge, like the poems of Stesichorus ||. Ibycus was a wandering poet, as is intimated in the story of his death having been attested and revenged by cranes; but his travels were not, like those of Stesichorus, confined to Sicily. He passed a part of his time in Samos with Polycrates; whence the flourishing period of Ibycus may be placed at Olymp. 63. (b. c. 528) ^[. We have already explained the style of poetry which was admired at the court of Polycrates. Ibycus could not here compose solemn hymns to the gods, but must accommo¬ date his Doric cithara, as he was best able, to the strains of Anacreon. Accordingly, it is probable that the poetry of Ibycus was first turned mainly to erotic subjects during his residence in the court of Poly¬ crates ; and that his glowing love-songs (especially to beautiful youths), which formed his chief title to fame in antiquity, were composed at this time. But that the poetical style of Ibycus resembled that of Stesichorus is proved by the fact that the ancient critics often doubted to which of the two a particular idea or expression belonged**. It may indeed be * Herod. I, 23. This fable probably arose from a sacred offering in a temple at Taenarum, which represented Taras sitting on a dolphin, as he appears on the coins of Tarentum. Plutarch,' Conv. Sept. Sap. c. 18. mentions the Pythian instead of the orthian nome. f The orthian nome was mentioned above, chap. xii. § 15, in connexion with Po¬ ly mnes'us. + The nomos orthios was sung to the cithara (Herod. 1. 24. Aristoph. Eq. 1276. Ran 1308, et Schol.), but also to the Phrygian flute (Lucian 4). § Suidas in v. The ode to Neptune which .TElian H. A., xii. 45, ascribes to Arion, is copious in words, but poor in ideas, and is quite unworthy of such a poet as Arion. It also presupposes the truth of the fable that Arion was saved by a dolphin. || A peculiarity of the Rheginian dialect in Stesichorus was the formation of the third persons of barytone verbs in Xtynm, &c. Above, ch. xiii. § 12. ** Citations of Stesichi rus or Ibycus, or (for the same expression) of Stesichorus and Ibycus, occur in Athen. iv. p. 172 D., Schol. Ven. ad II. xxiv. 259. iii. 114. Ha- sych. in SavuXUrai, vol. i. p. 774. ed. Alb., Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1302, Schol. 206 HISTORY OF THE conjectured that this doubt arose from the works of these two poets being united in the same collection, like those of Hipponax and Ananius, or of Simonides and Bacchylides ; but their works would not have been so united by the ancient editors if there had not been a close affinity between them. The metres oflbycus also resemble those of Stesicho- rus, being- in general dactylic series, connected together into verses ot different lengths, but sometimes so long, that they are rather to be called systems than verses. Besides these, Ibyeus frequently uses logaoedic verses of a soft or languid character : and in general his rhythms are less stately and dignified, and more suited to the expression of passion, than those of Stesichorus. Hence the effeminate poet Aga- thon is represented by Aristophanes as appealing to Ibyeus with Ana¬ creon and Alcaeus, who had made music more sweet, and worn many- coloured fillets (in the oriental fashion), and had led the wanton Ionic dance *. § 9. The subjects of the poems of Ibyeus appear also to have a strong affinity with those of the poems of Stesichorus, For although no poems with such names as Cycnus or the Orestea are attributed to Ibyeus; yet so many peculiar accounts of mythological stories, espe¬ cially relating to the heroic period, are cited from his poems, that it seems as if he too had written long poems on the Trojan war, the ex¬ pedition of the Argonauts, and other similar subjects. That, like Stesichorus, he dwelt upon the marvellous in the heroic mythology, is proved by a fragment in which Hercules is introduced as saying: “ I also slew the youths on white horses, the sons of Molione, the twins with like heads and connected limbs, both born in the silver egg f.” The erotic poetry of Ibyeus is however more celebrated. We know that it consisted of odes to youths, and that these breathed a fervour of passion far exceeding that expressed in any similar productions of Greek literature. Doubtless the pnet gave utterance to his own feel¬ ings in these odes; as indeed appears from the extant fragments. Nevertheless the length of the strophes and the artificial structure of the verses prove that these odes were performed by choruses. Birth¬ days or other family festivals or distinctions in the gymnasia may have afforded the poet an opportunity of coming with a chorus into the court-yard of the house, and offering his congratulations in the most imposing and brilliant manner. The occasions of these poetical con¬ gratulations were doubtless the same as those which gave rise to the painted vases in Magna Graecia, with the inscription “ the boy is beau¬ tiful” (icaXuQ 6 7rcue), and scenes from gymnastic exercises and social life. But that in the poems of Ibyeus, as well as of Pindar, the Vratislav. ad Pind. 01. ix. 128. (a/ wifi ”l(ivxov xa.) ’2 Etyinol. Gud. io KTtgWVOf, p.98.31. * Thesm. 161. f Ap. Athen. p. 57 F. (Fr. 27. coll. Schneidewin). LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 207 chorus was the organ of the poet’s thoughts and feelings, is sufficiently proved (as has been already remarked) by the extant fragments. In a very beautiful fragment, the versification of which expresses the course of the feeling with peculiar art, Ibycus says* * * § : “In the spring the Cydonian apple-trees flourish, watered by rivulets from the brooks in the untrodden garden of the virgins, and the grapes which grow under the shady tendrils of the vine. But Eros gives me peace at no season ; like a Thracian tempest, gleaming with fightning, he rushes from Cvpris, and, full of fury, he stirs up my heart from the bottom.” In some other extant verses he says j-: “ Again Eros looks at me from beneath his black eyelashes with melting glances, and drives me with blandishments of all kinds into the endless nets of Cypris. I tremble at his attack ; as a harnessed steed which contends for the prize in the sacred games, when he approaches old age, unwillingly enters the race¬ course with the rapid chariot.” These amatory odes of Ibycu§ did not however consist merely of descriptions of his passion, which could scarcely have afforded sufficient materials for choral representation. He likewise called in the assist¬ ance of mythology in order to elevate, by a comparison with divine or heroic natures, the beauty of the youth or his own passion. Thus in a poem of this kind, addressed to Gorgias, Ibycus told the story of Ganymedes and Tithonus, both Trojans and favourites of the gods; who were described as contemporary and were associated in the narrative. Ganymedes is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle, in order to become his favourite and cup-bearer in Olympus ; and, at the same time, Eros incites the rising Aurora to bear away from Ida, Tithonus, a Trojan shepherd and prince §. The perpetual youth of Ganymedes, the short manhood and the melancholy old age of Tithonus, probably gave the poet occasion to compare the different passions which they excited, and to represent that of Zeus as the more noble, that of Aurora the less praiseworthy. § 10. Leaving Ibycus in the obscurity which envelopes all the Greek lyric poets anterior to Pindar, we come to a brighter point in Simonides. This poet has been already described as one of the greatest masters of the elegy and the epigram ; but a full account of him has been reserved for this place. Simonides was born at Julis in the island of Ceos, which was in- * Fragm. l.coll. Schneidewin. The end of the fragment is very difficult; the translation is made from the following alteration of the text: a,rip(!>ri o K fios olx ocuxi'iws &c. are to be understood as is indi¬ cated in the text, is proved by the manner in which Aristoph. Nub. 1355. gives the substance of the song, which was sung at Athens at meals, from a patriotic interest, like a scolion. The contest must be placed about Olymp. 70. b. c. 500 P 2 212 HISTORY OF THE an ancient critic observes, was not as lofty as that of Pindar; but what he lost in sublimity he gained in pathos * * * § . While Pindar’s soaring flights extolled the happiness of the dead who had finished their earthly course with honour, and enjoyed the glories allotted to them in another existence, Simonides gave himself up to the genuine feelings of human nature; he expressed grief for the life that was extinguished ; the fond regret of the survivors; and sought consolation rather after the manner of the Ionian elegiac poets, in the perishableness and weari¬ ness of human life. The dirges of Simonides on the hapless Scopad, and the Aleuad Antiochus, son of Echecratides f, were remarkable ex¬ amples of this style; and doubtless the celebrated lament of Danae was part of a threne. Enclosed with her infant Perseus in a chest, and exposed to the raging of the storm, she extols the happiness of the un¬ conscious sleeping babe, in expressions full of the charm of maternal tenderness and devotion § 12. Simonides did not, like Pindar, in the overflowing riches of his genius, touch briefly on thoughts and feelings; he wrought out every thing in detail with care and finish §; his verses are like a diamond which throws a sparkling light from each of its many polished faces. If we analyze a passage, like the fragment from the eulogy on the heroes of Thermopylae, we are struck with the skill and grace with which the hand of the master plays with a single thought; the glory of a great action before which all sorrow disappears; and the various lights under which he presents it. ‘‘Those who fell at Thermopylae have an illustrious fate, a noble des¬ tiny : their tomb is an altar, their dirge a song of triumph. And neither eating rust, nor all-subduing time, shall obliterate this epitaph of the brave. Their subterranean chamber has received the glory of Hellas as its inhabitant. Of this, Leonidas, the king of Sparta, bears witness, by the fair and undying renown of virtue which he left behind him ||.” Some idea may be formed of this same kind of description naturally leading to a light and agreeable tissue of thoughts ; of this easy graceful style of Simonides, so extremely dissimilar to that of Pindar, from a feeble prosaic translation of another fragment taken from an ode to a conqueror in the Pentathlon, which treats of Orpheus : Countless birds flew around his head ; fishes sprang out of the dark waters at his beautiful song. Not a breath of wind arose to rustle the leaves of the trees, or to interrupt the honied voice which was i * T i olx,rl1^t02. LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 219 ambition, which his courtiers well knew how to turn to a had account. Pindar exhorts him to tranquillity and contentedness of mind, to calm cheerfulness, and to clemency, saying to him*: “ Be as thou knowest how to be; the ape in the boy’s story is indeed fair, very fair; but Rhadamanthus was happy because he plucked the genuine fruits of the mind, and did not take delight in the delusions which follow the arts of the whisperer. The venom of calumny is an evil hard to be avoided, whether by him who hears or by him who is the object of it; for the ways of calumniators are like those of foxes.” Pindar speaks in the same free and manly tone to Arcesilaus IV., king of Cyrene, who afterwards brought on the ruin of his dynasty by his tyrannical severity, and who at that time kept Damophilus, one of the noblest of the Cyre- neans, in unjust banishment. u Now understand the enigmatic wisdom of CEdipus. If any one lops with a sharp axe the branches of a large oak, and spoils her stately form, she loses indeed her verdure, but she gives proof of her strength, when she is consumed in the winter fire, or when, torn from her place in the forest, she performs the melancholy office of a pillar in the palace of a foreign prince f. Thy office is to be the physician of the country : Paean honours thee ; therefore thou must treat with a gentle hand its festering wounds. It is easy for a fool to shake the stability of a city; but it is hard to place it again on its foundations, unless a god direct the rulers. Gratitude for these good deeds is already in store for thee. Deign- therefore to bestow all thy care upon the wealthy Cyrene J.” Thus lofty and dignified was the position which Pindar assumed with regard to these princes ; and he remained true to the principle which he so frequently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are always laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of his time appears to have been limited to poetry. We do not find him, like Simonides, the daily associate, counsellor, and friend of kings and statesmen; he plays no part in the public events of his time, either as a politician or a courtier. Neither was his name, like that of Simonides, distinguished in the Persian war; partly because his fellow-citizens, the Thebans, were, together with half of the Grecian nation, on the Persian side, whilst the spirit of independence and victory were with the other half. Nevertheless the lofty character of Pindar’s muse rises superior to these unfavourable circumstances. He did not indeed make the vain attempt of gaining over the Thebans to the cause of Greece; but he sought to appease the internal dissensions which threatened to destroy * Pyth. II. 72. (131.) This ode was composed by Pindar at Thebes, but doubt¬ less not till after he had contracted a personal acquaintance with Hiero. + In this allegory, the oak is the state of Cyrene; the branches are the banished nobles ; the winter fire is insurrection ; the foreign palace is a foreign conquering power, especially Persia. : Pyth- IV. 220 HISTORY OF THE Tiiebes during’ the war, by admonishing his fellow citizens to union and concord*: and after the war was ended, he openly proclaims, in odes intended for the iEginetans and Athenians, his admiration of the heroism of the victors. In an ode, composed a few months after the surrender of Thebes to the allied army of the Greeks t (the seventh Isthmian), his feelings appear to be deeply moved by the misfortunes of his native city ; but he returns to the cultivation of poetry as the Greeks were now delivered from their great peril, and a god had re¬ moved the stone of Tantalus from their heads. He expresses a hope that freedom will repair all misfortunes: and he turns with a friendly confidence to the city of .dSgina, which, according to ancient legends, was closely allied with Thebes, and whose good offices with the Pelo- ponnesiajis might perhaps raise once more the humbled head of Bceotia. § 3. Having mentioned nearly all that is known of the events of Pindar’s life, and his relations to his contemporaries, we proceed to consider him more closely as a poet, and to examine the character and form of his poetical productions. The only class of poems which enable us to judge of Pindar’s general style are the epinikia or triumphal odes. Pindar, indeed, excelled in all the known varieties of choral poetry ; viz. hymns to the gods, paeans and dithyrambs appropriate to the worship of particular divinities, odes for processions (rrpocrodia), songs of maidens (7rapdiy£:a), mimic dancing songs ( VTvopyjipara ), drinking songs (oTcoXta), dirges (Spigot), and en¬ comiastic odes to princes (gy/cw^ta), which last approached most nearly to the epinikia. The poems of Pindar in these various styles were nearly as renowned among the ancients as the triumphal odes ; which is proved by the numerous quotations of them. Horace too, in enu¬ merating the different styles of Pindar’s ‘poetry, puts the dithyrambs first, then the hymns, and afterwards the epinikia and the threnes. Nevertheless, there must have been some decided superiority in the epinikia, which caused them to be more frequently transcribed in the later period of antiquity, and thus rescued them from perishing with the rest of the Greek lyric poetry. At any rate, these odes, from the vast variety of their subjects and style, and their refined and elaborate structure,—some approaching to hymns and paeans, others to scolia and hyporchemes,—serve to indemnify us for the loss of the other sorts of lyric poetry. We will now explain, as precisely as possible, the occasion of an epi- nikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A victory has been gained in a contest at a festival, particularly at one of the four great games most prized by the Greek people J, either by the speed of horses, the * Polyb. iv. 31. 5. Fr. incert. 125. ed. Boeckh. f In the winter of Olymp. 75. 2. b-. c. 479. | Olympia, Pythia, Nemea, Isthmia. Some of the epinikia, however, belong to other games. For example, the second Pythian is not a Pythian ode, but probably LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 221 strength and dexterity of the human body, or by skill in music *. Such a victory as this, which shed a lustre not only on the victor himself, but on his family, and even on his native city, demanded a solemn ce¬ lebration. This celebration might be performed by the victor’s friends upon the spot where the victory was gained ; as, for example, at Olym¬ pia, when in the evening after the termination of the contests, by the light of the moon, the whole sanctuary resounded with joyful songs after the manner of encomia t. Or it might be deferred till after the victor’s solemn return to his native city, where it was sometimes repeated, in following years, in commemoration of his success J. A celebration of this kind always had a religious character; it often began with a procession to an altar or temple, in the place of the games or in the native city ; a sacrifice, followed by a banquet, was then offered at the temple, or in the house of the victor; and the whole solemnity con¬ cluded with the merry and boisterous revel called by the Greeks tcajfxog. At this sacred, and at the same time joyous, solemnity, (a mingled cha¬ racter frequent among the Greeks,) appeared the chorus, trained by the poet, or some other skilled person §, for the purpose of reciting the triumphal hymn, which was considered the fairest ornament of the fes¬ tival. It was during either the procession or the banquet that the hymn was recited ; as it was not properly a religious hymn, which could be combined with the sacrifice. The form of the poem must, to a cer¬ tain extent, have been determined by the occasion on which it was to be recited. From expressions which occur in several epinikian odes, it is probable that all odes consisting of strophes without epodes || were sung during a procession to a temple or to the house of the victor; although there are others which contain expressions denoting movement, and which yet have epodes ^[. It is possible that the epodes in the latter odes may have been sung at certain intervals when the procession was belongs to games of Iolaus at Thebes. The ninth Nemean celebrates a victory in the Pythia at Sieyon, (not at Delphi ;) the tenth Nemean celebrates a victory in the Hecatombaea at Argos ; the eleventh Nemean is not an epinikion, but was sung at the installation of a prytanis at Tenedos. Probably the Nemean odes were placed at the end of the collection, after the Isthmian ; so that a miscellaneous supplement could be appended to them. * For example, Pyth. XII., which celebrates the victory of Midas, a flute-player of Agrigenium. f Pindar’s words in Olymp. XI. 76. (93), where this usage is transferred to the mythical establishment of the Olympia by Hercules. The 4th and 8th Olympian, the 6th, and probably also the 7th Pythian, were sung at the place of the games. J The 9th Olympian, the 3d Nemean, and the 2nd Isthmian, were produced at a memorial celebration of this kind. § Such as tineas the Stymphalian in Olymp. VI. 88. (150), whom Pindar calls “a just messenger, a scytala of the fair-haireu Muses, a sweet goblet of loud-sounding songs,” because he was to receive the ode from Pindar in person, to carry it to Stym- phaltis, and there to instruct a chorus in the dancing, music, and text. || 01. XIV. Pyth. VI. XII. Nem. II. IV. IX. Isthm.VII. 01. VIII. XIII. The expression rovfo xu/aov 5s doubtless means, t( Receive this band of persons who have combined for a sacrificial meal and feast.” Hence too it appears that the band went into the temple. 222 HISTORY OF THE not advancing; for an epode, according to the statements of the an¬ cients, always required that the chorus should be at rest. But by far the greater number of the odes of Pindar were sung at the Comus, at the jovial termination of the feast : and hence Pindar himself more fre¬ quently names his odes from the Comus than from the victory * * * § . § 4. The occasion of an epinikian ode,—a victory in the sacred games,—and its end,—the ennobling of a solemnity connected with the worship of the gods,—required that it should be composed in a lofty and dignified style. But, on the other hand, the boisterous mirth of the feast did not admit the seventy of the antique poetical style, like that of the hymns and nomes ; it demanded a free and lively expression of feeling, in harmony with the occasion of the festival, and suggesting the noblest ideas connected with the victor. Pindar, however, gives no detailed description of the victory, as this would have been only a re¬ petition of the spectacle which had already been beheld with enthusi¬ asm by the assembled Greeks at Olympia or Pytho ; nay, he often bestows only a few words on the victory, recording its place and the sort of contest in which it was won f. Nevertheless he does not (as many writers have supposed) treat the victory as a merely secondary object; which he despatches quickly, in order to pass on to subjects of greater interest. The victory, in truth, is always the point upon which the whole of the ode turns; only he regards it, not simply as an incident, but as connected with the whole life of the victor. Pindar establishes this connexion by forming a high conception of the fortunes and cha¬ racter of the victor, and by representing the victory as the result ot them. And as the Greeks were less accustomed to consider a man in his individual capacity, than as a member of his state, and his family; so Pindar considers the renown of the victor in connexion with the past and present condition of the race and state to which he belongs. Now there are two different points from which the poet might view the life of the victor ; viz. destiny or merit J; in other words, he might celebrate his good fortune or his skill. In the victory with horses, external ad¬ vantages were the chief consideration ; inasmuch as it required excellent horses and an excellent driver, both of which were attainable only by the rich. The skill of the victor was more conspicuous in gymnastic feats, although even in these, good luck and the favour of the gods might be considered as the main causes of success ; especially as it was a favourite opinion of Pindar’s, that all excellence is a gift of nature §. * i