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LIBRARY OF USEFUL KNOWLEDGE.
HISTORY
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE,
PERIOD OF XSOCRATES.
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN MANUSCRIPT OF
K. 0. MULLER,
PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF G0TT1NGEN,
BY GEORGE CORNWALL LEW T IS, M.A ,
LATE STUDENT OF CHRIST CHURCH, OXFORD,
AND THE
REV. 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.
1850.
o*
?ni
\4
9
LONDON :
GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON,
ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET.
THE TRANSLATORS' PREFACE.
The following History of Greek Literature has been composed
by Professor K. O. Miiller 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.
PAOK
Introduction — Subject 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.
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 H ylas and Adonis 18
§ 4. The Paean, its origin and character 19
VI CONTENTS.
PAGE
§ 5. The Threnos, or lament for the dead, 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 early 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 .... 29
§ 2. Epic poems sung at the feasts of princes and nobles, and at public
festivals 30
§ 3. Manner of reciting epic poems, explanation of rhapsodists and rhapso-
dising 32
§ 4. Metrical form, and poetical character of the epic poetry ..... 35
§ 5. Perpetuation of the early epic poems by memory and not by writing . 37
§ 6. Subjects and extent of the ante-Homeric epic poetry ...... 39
CHAPTER V.
HOMER.
§ 1. Opinions on the birth-place and country of Homer 41
§ 2. Homer probably a Smyrnsean : early history of Smyrna 42
§ 3. Union of ./Eolian and Ionian characteristics in Homer 44
§ 4. Novelty of Homer's choice of subjects for his two poems 47
§ 5. Subject of the Iliad : the anger of Achilles 48
§ 6. Enlargement of the subject by introducing the events of the entire war . 50
§ 7. And by dwelling on the exploits of the Grecian heroes 52
§ 8. Change of tone in the Iliad in its progress 53
§ 9. The Catalogue of Ships 54
§ 10. The later books, and the conclusion of the Iliad 56
§ 11. Subject of the Odyssey : the return of Ulysses 57
§12. Interpolations in the Odyssey 60
§ 13. The Odyssey posterior to the Iliad % but both poems composed by the
same person ib.
§ 14. 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 -^thiopis of Arctinus of Miletus ... 65
CONTENTS. Vli
PAQB
§ 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.
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. Hyinn to Hermes ib.
§ 6. Hymn to Aphrodite 76
§ 7. Hymn to Demeter * ib.
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
§ 5. The Marriage of Ceyx, the Epithalamium of Peleus and Thetis, the
Descent of Theseus and Pirithous into Hell, the Shield of Hercules. . 98
CHAPTER IX.
OTHER EPIC POETS.
§ 1. General character of other Epic Puets • • . . 100
§ 2. Cinaethon of Lacedaemon, Eumelus of Corinth, Asius of Samos, Chersias
of Orchomenus ib.
§ 3. Epic Poems on Hercules; the Taking of CEchalia; 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
Vill 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. Tyrfaeus, 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 13 1
§ 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 I35
$ 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.
6 13. Iambic Poems of Hipponax; invention of choliambics ; Ananias . . 141
§ 14. The Fable ; its application among the Greeks, especially in Iambic
p° etr y o 143
§ 15. Kinds of the Fable, named after different races and cities . . . .144
§ 16. JEsoip, his Life, and the Character of his Fables . . . . . , .145
CONTENTS. IX
PAGK
§ 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 Cithar a 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 iEOLIC SCHOOL OF LYRIC POETRY.
§ 1. Difference between the Lyric Poetry of the vEolians, 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 Hetserae 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 Caliistratus 189
CHAPTER XIV.
CHORAL LYRIC POETRY.
§ 1. Connexion of lyric poetry with choral songs gradual rise of regular forms
from this connexion . . 190
CONTENTS.
1'AGE
First stage.— § 2. Aleman; his origin and date; mode of recitation and form
of his choral songs 193
§ 3. Their poetical character 19 6
6 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 iu 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
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.
§ 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 Hecataeus ; 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
§ S. Xanthus, an acute observer. Dionysius of Miletus, the historian of the
Persian wars ib.
§ 9. General remarks on the composition and style of the logogt aphers . . 265
CHAPTER XIX
HERODOTUS.
§ 1. Events of the life of Herodotus 266
§ 2. His travels. . . * 267
§ 3. Gradual formation of his work 268
I 4. Its plan ' . 269
Xll CONTENTS.
PAGE
V 5. Its leading ideas • 271
§6. Defects and excellencies of his historical researches. ....... 272
§ 7. Style of his narrative ; 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 XXI.
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
CHAPTER XXII.
FORM AND CHARACTER OF THE GREEK TRAGEDY.
§ 1. Ideal character of the Greek tragedy ; splendid costume of the actors . 296
§ 2. Cothurnus j masks ^ 297
§ 3. Structure of the theatre . . ♦ t 29a
§ 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. Xlll
PAGE
§ 8. Meaning of the protagonist, deuteragonist, tritagonist, 305-
§ 9. The changes of the scene inconsiderable j 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.
^ESCHYLUS. x
§ 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 ^tnaean 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 . 333
§ 14. General characteristics of the poetry of vEschylus 335
§ 15. His latter years and death • . . . . 336
CHAPTER XXIV.
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 (Edipus ib.
§ 9. The Ajax 348
§ 10. The Philoctetes 350
§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.
PAGE
§ 1. Difference between Sophocles and Euripides. The latter essentially spe- .
culative. Tragedy, a subject ill-suited for his genius 357
£ 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 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 Hfecuba 369
§ 12. Epochs in the mode of treating his subject: -the Heracleidse. . . . 370
§ 13. The Suppliants 371
§ 14. The Ion ib.
§ 15. The raging Heracles 372
§ 16. The Andromache 373
§ 1 7. 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 POETS.
§ 1. Inferiority of the other tragic poets 381
§ 2. Contemporaries of Sophocles and Euripides : Neophron, Ion, Aristaichns,
Achaeus, Carcinus, Xenocles 382
6 3. Tragedians somewhat more recent : Agathon ; the anonymous son of
Cleomachus. Tragedy grows effeminate 3g3
£ 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 iEschyleans, Sophocleans, and
the younger Euripides 335
6 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
Also connected with the Comus at the lesser Dionvsia : Phallic Songs . 393
Beginnings of dramatic comedy at Megara, Susari'on, Chionides, &c. . 395
§ 2
5 3.
CONTENTS. ■ XV
l'AGE
'$ 4. The perfectors of the old Attic comedy 397
§ 5. The structure of comedy. What it has in common with tragedy . . . 398
§ 6. Peculiar arrangemeut 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
§ 2. His dramas ; the Da/aleis ; the Babylonians ........ 406
§ 3. The Acharnians analyzed 408
§ 4. The Knights 412
§ 5. The Clouds 415
§ 6. The Wasps 419
§ 7. The Peace 420
§ 8. The Birds 420
§ 9. The Lysistrata, Tkesmojzhoriqzusaz . 423
§ 10. The Frogs ". ... 425
§11. The Ecclesiazvsce ; the second Plutus. Transition to the middle comedy . 426
CHAPTER XXIX.
§ 1. Characteristics of Gratinus . . 423
§ 2. Eupolis .• 430
§ 3. Peculiar tendencies of dates; his connexion with Sicilian comedy . .431
6 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 44b"
§ 2. New style of the Dithyramb introduced by Melanippides, Philoxenus,
Cinesias, Phrynis, Timutheus, 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 6. Epic poetry, Panyasis, Chcerilus, Antiinachus 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
6 4. Characteristics of their oratory in relation to their opinions and modes of
thought 459
§ 5. Form and style of their speeches 460
XVI CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXII.
PAGK
§ 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 .............. -166
y 5. His forms of expression 467
CHAPTER XXXIII.
§ i. 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
v 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
o 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 his own impulses and4)y
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.
y 1 . Early training of Isocrates ; but slightly influenced by Socrates . . . 504
y 2. School of Isocrates ; its great repute ; his attempts to influence the poli-
tics of the day without thoroughly understanding them 505
y 3. The form of a speech the principal matter in his judgment .... 507
y 4. New development which he gave to prose composition 508
§ 5. His structure of periods 509
§ 6. Smoothness and evenness of his style .511
y 7. He prefers the panegyrical oratory to the forensic 512
HISTORY
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE,
INTRODUCTION.
In undertaking 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
tljeir 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 cf
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 make a
beginning, by treating of the extant works of Grecian writers in their
chronological order. We mig-ht 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-worthy
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
Iliad 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.
CHAPTER I.
§ I . 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, m 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 Ten tonic, 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 the American aborigines are often confined to a very
b2
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.
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
RISK
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 mouth 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, maybe 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 Wends of the srods 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
yEtolian, 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
iEolian race, in southern iEtolia, in possession of Calydon ; this frag-
ment of the zEolians, 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 iEolis 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 iEolians who were in fact considered as belonging
to the ^olian. race, and not all the tribes which were ruled by heroes, whom Hesiod,
in the fragment of the holm, calls sons of iEolus ; 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
Solids Athamas and Cretheus, were of ./Eolian 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.
lO 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 whieh, 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 iRolic, 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
very similar, by the ancient Acheears; 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 JEolic 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 Cohans ; 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 OP ANCIENT GREECE. 1 I
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 lonians, 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 : —Ze us, Jupiter; Hera, Juno; Athena, Minerva; Ares, Mars;
Artemis, Diana ; Hermes, Mercury ; Demeter, Ceres ; Cvra, Proserpine ; Hephcesius,
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
was 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 OV 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 rpfer 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 (Dili) with the same signification, even
in the Sanscrit*, and by the preservation of several of its derivatives
which 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, Cora, 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 (Hephcestus) 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 Cytheraf by the influence of
* The root DIU is most clearly seen in the oblique cases of Zeus, AiFoe AtFi, in which
the U has passed into the consonant form F : whereas in Zsbs, as in other Greek
words, the sound DI has passed into Z, and the vowel has been lengthened. In the
Latin lovis (Iuve in Umbrian) the D has been lost before I, which; however, is pre-
served in many other derivatives of the same root, as dies, ilium.
f See Herod, i. 105; and Hist, of Rome, pp. 121, 122.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 15
Syroplicenician 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 any part in the events described by him ; in general they keep aloof
* aWi^i vaiuv' vitpiX'/iyzgsTVi;.
16 HISTORY OF THE
from the circle of the Olympic gods. Demeter is never mentioned as
assisting any hero, or rescuing him from danger, or stimulating him to
the battle ; but if any one were thence to infer that this goddess was not
known as early as Homer's time, he would be refuted by the incidental
allusions to her which frequently occur in connexion with agriculture
and corn. Doubtless Demeter (whose name denotes the earth as
the mother and author of life*) was in the ancient Pelasgic time
honoured with a general and public worship beyond any other deity ; but
the notions and feelings excited by the worship of this goddess and
her daughter (whom she beheld, with deep lamentation, torn from her
every autumn, and recovered with excessive joy every spring) constantly
became more and more unlike those which were connected with the other
gods of Olympus. Hence her worship gradually obtained a peculiar
form, and chiefly from this cause assumed the character of mysteries:
that is, religious solemnities, in which no one could participate without
having undergone a previous ceremony of admission and initiation. In
this manner Homer was, by a just and correct taste, led to perceive that
Demeter, together with the other divine beings belonging to her, had
nothing in common with the gods whom the epic muse assembled about
the throne of Zeus ; and it was the same feeling which also prevented him
from mixing up Dionysus, the other leading deity of the mystic worship
of the Greeks, with the subject of his poem, although this god is
mentioned by him as a divine being, of a marvellous nature, stimu-
lating the mind to joy and enthusiasm.
CHAPTER III.
§ 1. First efforts of Greek poetry. Plaintive songs of husbandmen. — § 2. Descrip-
tion of several of these songs, viz. the Linus. — § 3. The Ialemus, the Scephrus,
the Lityerses, the Bormus, the Maneros, and the laments for Hylas and Adonis.
— § 4. The Paean, its origin and character. — § 5. The Threnos, or lament for the
dead, and the Hymenceos, or bridal song. — § 6. Origin and character of the chorus.
— § 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 hi. With the Phrygian worship of the mother of the Gods, of
the Corybantes, &c. — § 8. Explanation of the Thracian origin of several of the
early Greek poets. — § 9. Influence of the earlv Thracian or Pierian poets on the
epic poetry of Homer.
§ 1. Many centuries must have elapsed before the poetical language of
the Greeks could have attained the splendour, the copiousness, and the
fluency which so strongly excite our admiration in the poems of Homer.
The service of the gods, to which all the highest energies of the mind
were first directed, and from which the first beginnings of sculpture,
* A>J p'/imp, that is, y*j ftfcnf.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 17
architecture, music, and poetry proceeded, must for a long- time have
consisted chiefly in mute motions of the body, in symbolical gestures, iti
prayers muttered in a low tone, and, lastly, in loud broken ejaculations
(d\o\t>y/ide), such as were in later times uttered at the death of the
victim, in token of an inward feeling ; before the winged word issued
clearly from the mouth, and raised the feelings of the multitude to
religious enthusiasm — in short, before the first hymn was heard.
The first outpourings of poetical enthusiasm were doubtless songs
describing, in few and simple verses, events which powerfully affected
the feelings of the hearers. From what has been said in the last chapter
it is probable that the earliest date may be assigned to the songs which
referred to the seasons and their phenomena, and expressed with sim-
plicity the notions and feelings to which these events gave birth : as
they were sung by peasants at the corn and wine harvest, they had their
origin in times of ancient rural simplicity. It is remarkable that songs
of this kind often had a plaintive and melancholy character ; which cir-
cumstance is however explained when we remember that the ancient
worship of outward nature (which was preserved in the rites of Demeter
and Cora, and also of Dionysus) contained festivals of wailing and
lamentation as well as of rejoicing and mirth. It is not, hovyever, to
be supposed that this was the only cause of the mournful ditties in
question, for the human heart has a natural disposition to break out
from time to time into lamentation, and to seek an occasion for grief
even where it does not present itself — as Lucretius says, that " in the
pathless woods, among the lonely dwellings of the shepherds, the sweet
laments were sounded on the pipe*."
§ 2. To the number of these plaintive ditties belongs the song Linus,
mentioned by Homer t, the melancholy character of which is shown by
its fuller names, AiXivog and OlroXwog (literally, " Alas, Linus !" and
" Death of Linus"). It was frequently sung in Greece, according to
Homer, at the grape-picking. According to a fragment of HesiodJ,
all singers and players, on the cithara lament at feasts and dances Linns,
the beloved son of Urania, and call on Linus at the beginning and the
end ; which probably means that the song of lamentation began and
ended with the exclamation At AtVe. Linus was originally the subject
of the song, the person whose fate was bewailed in it ; and there were
many districts in Greece (for example, Thebes, Chalcis, and Argos) in
v. hich tombs of Linus were shown. This Linus evidently belongs to
a class of deities or demigods, of which many instances occur in the
* Inde minutatim dulceis didicere querelas,
Tibia quas fundit digitis pulsata canentum,
Avia per nemora ac sylvas saltusque reperta,
Per loca pastorum deserta atque otia dia. — Lucretius, v. 1383 — 1386,
f Iliad, xviii. 569.
\ Cited in Eustat-hius, p. 1 163 (fragm. 1, ed. Gaisford).
c
IS HISTORY OF THE
religions of Greece and Asia Minor ; hoys of extraordinary beauty, and
in the flower of youth, who are supposed to have been drowned, or de-
voured by raging dogs, or destroyed by wild beasts, and whose death is
lamented in the harvest or other periods of the hot season. It is obvious
that these cannot have been real persons, whose death excited so general
a sympathy, although the fables which were offered in explanation of
these customs often speak of youths of royal blood, who were carried off
in the prime of their life. The real object of lamentation was the tender
beauty of spring destroyed by the summer heat, and other phenomena
of the same kind, which the imagination of these early times invested
with a personal form, and represented as gods or beings of a divine
nature. According to the very remarkable and explicit tradition of the
Argives, Linus was a youth, who, having sprung from a divine origin,
grew up with the shepherds among the lambs, and was torn in pieces by
wild dogs ; whence arose the " festival of the lambs," at which many
dogs were slain. Doubtless this festival was celebrated during the
greatest heat, at the time of the constellation Sirius; the emblem of
which, among the Greeks, was, from the earliest times, a raging dog.
It was a natural confusion of the tradition that Linus should afterwards
become a minstrel, one of the earliest bards of Greece, who begins a
contest with Apollo himself, and overcomes Hercules in playing on the
cithara ; even, however, in this character Linus meets his death, and
we must probably assume that his fate was mentioned in the ancient
song. In Homer the Linus is represented as sung by a boy, who plays
at the same time on the harp, an accompaniment usually mentioned with
this song ; the young men and women who bear the grapes from the
vineyard follow him, moving onward with a measured step, and uttering
a shrill cry*, in which probably the chief stress was laid on the excla-
mation cu \ive. That this shrill cry (called by Homer ivyjioc) was not
necessarily a joyful strain will be admitted by any one who has heard
the IvyfAug of the Swiss peasants, with its sad and plaintive notes,
resounding from hill to hill.
§ 3. Plaintive songs of this kind, in which not the misfortunes of a
single individual, but an universal and perpetually recurring cause of
grief was expressed, abounded in ancient Greece, and especially in Asia
Minor, the inhabitants of which country had a peculiar fondness for
mournful tunes. The Ialemus seems to have been nearly identical with
\\\& Linus, as, to a certain extent, the same mythological narrations are
applied to both. At Tegea, in Arcadia, there was a plaintive song,
called Sccphrua, which appears, from the fabulous relation in Pausaniasf,
* To7. — Hymn. Apoll. 20.
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 pceans
(eiapivdi 7raiaveg), 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 (icaQapaLz), 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 f."
From these passages it is evident that the paean was sung by several
persons, one of whom probably led the others (ktapyuv), and 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
(cpopHiyt) 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 (jraiwvL'Cetv) 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. f Iliad, xxii. 391. J Horn. Hymn. Apoll. 514.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 21
those events of private life which strongly excited the feelings, cdled
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 threnos 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 Hymenceo*, the joyful and merry bridal
song, of which there are descriptions by Homer J 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 hymeneeos arises : young
men dance around ; while flutes and harps ((popfityyeQ) 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 wilh beauty. Both (i. e. both the youths who accompany 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 (crvpiyt,) 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'p/xiy£)." 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 (kw/xos) 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 maybe seen so often re-
presented on vases of a much later age, belonging to southern Italy).
* uoiho) fywm i^u^xoi- — Iliad, xxiv. 720 — 722.
f Odyssey, xxiv. 59—61. J Iliad, xviii. 492—495.
c.,i, 274—280.
22 HISTORY OF THE
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 jilace for dancing : hence in the Iliad and Odyssey ex-
pressions occur, such as levelling the chorus (\etaiveiv xopoV), that is,
making the place ready for dancing ; going to the chorus (yopov^e
lEpxEffdat), &c. : hence the choruses and dwellings of the gods are
mentioned together ; and cities which had spacious squares are said to
have wide choruses (evpvyppoC). 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 Phseacian
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 lonians 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 presenoe of a
chorus ; as, for example, Demodocus, in the palace of the Phseacian
king, sings the loves of Ares and Aphrodite during the dances of the
youths \. 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
Phseacian youths who form the chorus to the song of Demodocus,
* Scut, 281—285. ■ f Iliad, xviii. 593. j Odyssey, viii. 266.
§ hyovfAtvos op%ntftaio.—Od. xxiii. 134, compare Hi.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 23
admires not the sweetness of their voices, or the excellence of their
singing-, but the rap'd motions of their feet*. At the same time,
the reader must guard against a misapprehension of the terms fioX-rur] and
fxiX-KeaQai, which, although they are sometimes applied to persons
dancing, as to the chorus of Artemis f, and to Artemis herself]:, neverthe-
less are not always connected with singing, but express any measured and
graceful movement of the body, as for instance even a game at ball §.
When, however, the Muses are described as singing in a chorus ||,
they are to be considered only as standing in a circle, with Apollo in
the centre as citharist, but not as also dancing : in the prooemium to the
Theogony of Hesiod, they are described as first dancing in chorus on
the top of Helicon, and afterwards as moving through the dark, and
singing the race of the immortal gods.
In the dances of the choruses there appears, from the descriptions
of the earliest poets, to have been much, variety and art, as in the
choral dance which Vulcan represented on the shield of Achilles % : —
" At one time the youths and maidens dance around nimbly, with
measured steps, as when a potter tries his wheel whether it will run ; at
another, they dance in rows opposite to one another (a dance in a ring
alternately with one in rows). Within this chorus sits a singer with the
phorminx, and two tumblers {KvjSicrTrjTijpe, the name being derived from
the violent motions of the body practised by them) turn about in the
middle, in accordance with the song." In a chorus celebrated by the
gods, as described in one of the Homeric hymns**, this latter part is
performed by Ares and Hermes, who gesticulate (jrai^ovai) in the
middle of a chorus formed by ten goddesses as dancers, while Apollo
plays on the cithara, and the Muses stand around and sing. It cannot
be doubted that these Kv(3i(TTr]Tfjp£Q* or tumblers (who occurred chiefly in
Crete, where a lively, and even wild and enthusiastic style of dancing
had prevailed from early times), in some measure regulated their ges-
tures and motions according to the subject of the song to which they
danced, and that a choral dance of this kind was, in fact, a variety of
hyporcheme {hicopxw*')* as a species of choral dances and songs was
called, in which the action described by the song was at the same time
represented with mimic gestures by certain individuals who came forward
* f&etgpeiguycc} 'irfaiZ.ov ocxo x.^'/{htfjcva fiaXovtrat.
Tn Vi Kv(ht xaXu aXXehv ubro$ i-yriXOav
ccXXov y , it (/.'/i tuv o'i oriutoipyrn su.oi)gwi,
yi x.u) Qitr-TTtv ctoiSov, o kzv rigTyiiriv aitbaiv ;
evrei ycc(> aX'/iroi yi (loorcov \, o; p r,siht •ffu^a. ftv'/iffTVOfftv ocvciyxn.
7]roi o v o\vt(->aX>.tro koXov uifisiv. — Od. i. 153 — 5.
| See, for example, Od. iv. 17: —
(lira. *h'i trQiv iftiXvtro h7os koto's
(pogfAl^OJV' loito Vz XvfhtffTVirYIQi. XBiT CCUTOVg
fiokTiis l%ci(}%ovTis Wmvav xet.ru, fiifftrovf.
I Hence the expression, os, as the symbolical sign of the poetical
office, is also ascribed to Homer, Pausan. ix. 30 ; x. 7 ; Gottling ad Hesiod, p. 13.
|| See, for example, Plato, Leg. ii. p. 658, and the inscriptions quoted above, p. 32,
34 HISTORY OF THE
gether. The term rhapsodising applies equally well to the bard who
recites his own poem (as to Homer, as the poet of the Iliad and
Odyssey*), and to the declaimer who recites anew the song that has
been heard a thousand times before. Every poem can be rhapsodised
which is composed in an epic tone, and in which the verses are of equal
length, without being distributed into corresponding parts of a larger
whole, strophes, or similar systems. Thus we find this term applied to
philosopkical songs of purification by Empedocles (gadap/jot), and to
iambics by Archilochus and Simonides, which were strung together in
the manner of hexameters f ; it was, indeed, only lyric poetry, like
Pindar's odes, which could not be rhapsodised. Rhapsodists were also
not improperly called (xtv^dIol |, because all the poems which they re-
cited were composed in single lines independent of each other (trrixoi).
This also is evidently the meaning of the name rhapsodist, which, ac-
cording to the laws of the language, as well as the best authorities §,
ought to be derived from pdirreiv aoiB/;v, and denotes the coupling to-
gether of verses without any considerable divisions or pauses — in other
words, the even, unbroken, and continuous flow of the epic poem. As
the ancients in general show great steadiness and consistency, both in
art and literature, and adhered, without any feeling of satiety or craving
after novelty, to those models and styles of composition, which had been
once recognised as the most perfect ; so epic poems, amongst the Greeks,
continued to be rhapsodised for upwards of a thousand years. It is
true, indeed, that at a later period the Homeric poems, like those of
Hesiod, were connected with a musical accompaniment [|, and it is said
that even Terpander the Lesbian adapted the hexameters of Homer, as
well as his own, to tunes made according to certain fixed nomes or styles
of music, and to have thus sung them at the contests ^[, and that Ste-
sander the Samian appeared at the Pythian games as the first who sung
the Homeric poems to the cithara**. This assimilation between the
delivery of epic and lyric poetry was however very far from being gene-
rally adopted throughout Greece, as the epic recitation or rhapsodia is
always clearly distinguished from the poems sung to the cithara at the
musical contests ; and how great an effect an exhibition of this kind,
* Homer, px-^uhT tiouuv, the Iliad and Od)'ssey, according to Plato, Rep. x.
p. 600 D. Concerning Hesiod as a rhapsodist, Nicocles ap. Schol. Pindar., Nem.ii. 1.
t See Atheneeus, xiv. p. 620 C. Compare Plato, Ion. p. 531.
% Menaechmus in Schol. Pind., Nem. ii. ].
§ The Homerids are called by Pindar, Nem. ii. 2, pa-rrav zvriav uoi^oi, that is, car-
Tninum perpetua oratione recitatorum, Dissen. ed. min. p. 371. In the scholia to this
rassage a verse is cited under the name of Hesiod, in which he ascribes the j>a. produced upon the listeners, and how much it excited their sym-
pathy, is most plainly described by Ion, the Ephesian rhapsodist, whom
Plato, in one of his lesser Dialogues, has brought forward as a butt for
the irony of Socrates.
§ 4. The form which epic poetry preserved for more than a thousand
years among' the Greeks agrees remarkably well with this composed and
even style of chaunting recitation which we have just described. In-
deed, the ancient minstrels of the Homeric and ante-Homeric age had
probably no choice, since for a long period the hexameter verse was the
only regular and cultivated form of poetry, and even in the time of Ter-
pander (about Olymp. 30) was still almost exclusively used for lyric
poetry ; although we are not on that account to suppose, that all popular
songs, hymeneals, dirges, and ditties (such as those which Homer repre-
sents Calypso and Circe as singing at the loom), were composed in
the same rhythm. But the circumstance of the dactylic verse, the hexa-
meter, having been the first and, for a long time, the only metre which
was regularly cultivated in Greece, is an important evidence with respect
to the tone and character of the ancient Grecian poetry, the Ho-
meric and ante- Homeric epic. The character of the different rhythms,
which, among the Greeks, was always in exact accordance with that of
the poetry, consists in the first place in the relation of the arsis and
thesis, of the strong or weak cadence — in other words, of the greater
or less exertion of the voice. Now in the dactyl these two elements
are evenly balanced J, which therefore belongs to the class of equal
rhythms § ; and hence a regular equipoise, with its natural accompani-
ment, an even and steady tone, is the character of the dactylic measure.
This tone is constantly preserved in the epic hexameter ; but there were
other dactylic metres, which, by the shortening of the long element, or
the arsis, acquired a different character, which will be more closely
examined when we come to treat of the JEolian lyric poetry Accord-
ing to Aristotle ||, the epic verse was the most dignified and composed
of all measures ; its entire form and composition appears indeed pecu-
liarly fitted to produce this effect. The length of the verse, which con-
sists of six feet %, the break which is obtained by a pause at the end **,
the close connexion of the parts into an entire whole, which results
* Plato, Ion. p. 530. The sumptuous dress of the rhapsodist rVlagnes of Smyrna,
in the time of Gyges, is described by Nicolaus Damasc. Fragm. p. 268, ed. Taucfe-
nitz. In later times, when the Homeric poetry was delivered in a more dramatic
style (v-race/vsTo Sgu/u,xri%&iTZ(>ov),th.e Iliad was sung by the rhapsodist s in a red, the
Odyssey in a violet, dress, Eustath. ad Iliad, A. p. 6, 9, ed. Rom.
t Plato, Ion. p. 535. From this, in later days, a regular dramatic style of acting
(uvrofcgm;) for the rhapsodists or Homerists was developed. See Aristot. Poet. 26
Rhetor, hi. 1, 8; Achill. Tat. ii. 1.
I For in Ivv, I is equal to two times, as well as uu. § yivos "Tccro'j kou oyxuliffTdTov rav fiirpuv lerrlv.
^[ Hence versus longi among the Romans. ** kutuXt^h,
d2
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 rhap-
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 asres, 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, Musseus, and other Pierian bards f ;
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 metrum, and stated to be an invention of the priestess
Phemonoe, Dorians, ii. eh. 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. 3,^2 ? seq.
LITERATURE OF 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 5
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"
(oY/juara Xvypa)) commanding the destruction of Bellerophon, which
Proetus sends to Jobates : 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 ofivritten 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 Lycurgus, 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
data founded upon written documents, of the period before the com-
meneement 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 wilting : 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 — thatfreedom 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
* -boivr/Juci in Herod, v. 58. Likewise in the inscription known by the name of
Dircs Tetorfttn,
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 constantly-
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
memory 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 Wolf's 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 Clytsemnestra by her crimes, became respec-
tively a tender and a dismal strain for posterity!; 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 1 1. 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 Achssans ft, and the revenge of
Orestes JJ. 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
* 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. J Od. xxiv. 197, 200.
§ See Miillers Dorians, Append, v. § 14, vol. i. p. 543.
|| Od. xn. 70 : ' h^yu •xaiTii^i'koviTO!..
*[ The words are very remarkable : —
Movtr ag aoibov av?,xiv aiihif^tvai xXia , A$nva7oi ^.f&ugvav tt.<7ra)x,iv } Proclus in Gaisford's Hephaestion^
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 books, 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 one 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 Phaeacians, a careless, peaceable, and
effeminate nation on the confines of the earth, to whom war is only
known by means of poetry ; borne by a marvellous Phseacian vessel, he
reaches Ithaca sleeping ; here he is entertained by the honest swine-
herd Eumseus, 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 |.
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 ariangement 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
* 'ClyuytK from 'ilyvynf, who was originally a deity of the watery expanse which
covers all things.
f Kakv^d, the Concealer.
1 There would be nothing abrupt in the transition from Menelaus to the suitors
in Od. iv. 624, if it fell at the beginning oi* 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 eonte*mpo-
*Od.i. 302; iii. 200.
•}■ Od. xvi. 295? The u6irviovp.ivos (M-fci 1 T % s k'Xo-
(Mctrsui 'oWfl-s&/j Tni iU 'I6a,xviv. — Proclus, ubi sup.
68 HISTORY OF THE
their common reference to Homer), but the whole mythology, from the
marriage of Heaven and Earth to the last adventures of Ulysses ; for
which purpose use must have been made of poems totally distinct from
each other, and of whose original connexion, either in their execution or
design, no trace whatever is discoverable*.
§ 4. The poem which in the Cyclus preceded the Iliad, and was
clearly intended by its author himself for that purpose, was the Cypria,
consisting of eleven books, which may be most safely ascribed to Sta-
sinus of the island of Cyprus, who, however, according to the tradition,
received it from Homer himself (transformed on that account into a
Salaminian from Cyprus), as a portion on the marriage of his daughter.
And yet the fundamental ideas of the Cypria are so un-Homeric,
and contain so much of a rude attempt at philosophising on mytho-
logy, which was altogether foreign to Homer, that Stasinus certainly
cannot be considered as of an earlier date than Arctinus. The Cypria
began with the prayer of the Earth to Zeus, to lessen the burdens of the
race of man, already become too heavy ; and then related how Zeus,
with the view of humbling the pride of mankind, begot Helen upon
the goddess Nemesis, and gave her to be educated by Leda. The promise
by Venus of the woman whose beauty was to cause the destruction of
heroes to the shepherd Paris, as a reward for the decision respecting the
apple of discord, her abduction from Sparta during the absence of her
husband Menelaus in Crete, and while her brothers, the Dioscuri, are
slain in battle by the sor>s of Aphareus, were all related in conformity with
the usual traditions, and the expedition of the heroes of Greece against
Troy was derived from these events. The Greeks, however, according to
the Cypria, twice set out from Aulis against Troy, having the first time
been carried to Teuthrania in Mysia, a district ruled by Telephus, and
in sailing away having been driven back by a storm ; at their second
departure from Aulis the sacrifice of Iphigenia was related. The nine
years' contest before Troy, and in its vicinity, did not occupy near so
much space in the Cypria as the preparations for the war ; the full
stream of tradition, as it gushes forth from a thousand springs in the
Homeric poems, has even at this period dwindled down to narrow
dimensions : the chief part was connected with the incidental mentions
of earlier events in Homer ; as the attack of Achilles upon iEneas near
the herds of cattle f, the killing of Troilus J, the selling of Lycaon to
Lemnos § ; Palamedes — the nobler counterpart, of Ulysses — was the only
* As an additional proof of a point which indeed is almost self-evident, it may-
be also mentioned that, according to Proclus, there were Jive, and afterwards two
books of Arctinus in the epic cyclus : according to the Tabula Borgiana, however, the
poems of Arctinus included 9,100 verses, which, according to the standard of the
books in Homer, would at least give twelve books.
f II. xx. 90, seq.
X II. xxiv. 257. The more recent poetry combines the death of Troilus with the
last events of Troy. § II. xxi. 35.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 69
hero either unknown to or accidentally never mentioned by Homer.
Achilles was throughout represented as the chief hero, created for the
purpose of destroying the race of man by manly strength, as Helen by
female beauty; hence also these two beings, who otherwise could not
have become personally known to each other, were brought together in
a marvellous manner by Thetis and Amphitrite. As, however, the war,
conducted in the manner above described, did not destroy a sufficient
number of men, Zeus at last resolves, for the purpose of effectually
granting the prayer of the Earth, to stir up the strife between Achilles
and Agamemnon, and thus to bring about all the great battles of the
Iliad. Thus the Cypria referred altogether to the Iliad for the com-
pletion of its own subject; and at the same time added to the motive
supposed in the latter poem, the prayer of Thetis, a more general one,
the prayer of the Earth, of which the Iliad knows nothing. In the
Cypria a gloomy destiny hovers over the whole heroic world ; as in
Hesiod* the Theban and Trojan war is conceived as a general war
of extermination between the heroes. The main origin of this fatality
is, moreover, the beauty of the woman, as in Hesiod's mythus of Pan-
dora. The unwarlike Aphrodite, who in Homer is so little fitted for
mingling in the combats of heroes, is here the conductor of the whole ;
on this point the Cyprian poet may have been influenced by the im-
pressions of his native island, where Aphrodite was honoured before all
other deities.
§ 5. Between the poems of Arctinus and Lesches and the Odyssey
came the epic of AGiAsf the Troezenian, divided into five books, the
Nostoi. A poem of this kind would naturally be called forth by the
Odyssey, as the author in the very commencement supposes that all the
other heroes, except Ulysses, had returned home from Troy. Even m
Homer's time there existed songs on the subject of the homeward
voyages of the heroes ; but these scattered lays naturally fell into ob-
livion upon the appearance of Agias's poem, which was composed with
almost Homeric skill, and all the intimations to be found in Homer were
carefully made use of, and adopted as the outlines of the action %. Agias
began his poem with describing how Athene executed her plan of ven-
geance, by exciting a quarrel between the Atridae themselves, which pre-
vented the joint return of the two princes. The adventures of the Atridee
furnished the main subject of the poem§. In the first place the wan-
derings of Menelaus, who first left the Trojan coast, were narrated
almost up to his late arrival at home ; then Agamemnon, who did not
sail till afterwards, was conducted by a direct course to his native land :
* Hesiod. Op. et D. 160, seq.
f 'Ay/a? is the correct form of his name, in Ionic 'Uylxs ; Auyia$ is a corruption.
I See particularly Od. iii. 135.
§ Hence, probably, the same poem is more than once in Athenseus called k y(Zus, in Suidas * AptyiuQuov i%t\ivcris,
§ II. v. 409.
|| Thus the scholiast on Apoll. Rhod. i. 308, in the account of Manto, cites the
Thebaid for the Epigoni.
^[ Nuv uvff o9rXoTtpcov uvt^uv u^iftifet^ Movffut.
** See Pindar, Pyth. viii. 48. It can be shown that Pindar, in his mentions ot
this fable, always keeps near to the Thebaid.
72 HISTORY 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, but 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 is 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 the 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
procemium of a single poem, or part of a poem, may be seen from the
* See, for example, Hymn xxxi. 18. \x, Ao I' agdpsvos xkwo-a fitgo'iruv yUo$
a^houv yiftrfiav, and XXXli. 18. oio o ug%oftzvo; xXia {p&/Twv utropoti 7if&t6iwv uv xXilovtr*
'ioypar koiho'i. A prayer for victory also sometimes occurs': x,oug tXucofrxiQxgt, y*»*
xvfAiiKi^i, Vet l' h ayvvi vixnv rahi ^igitr&ocu Hymn vi s 19.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 73
1 8th of the Homeric hymns, the short one to Hermes, which has been
abridged from the long- one for this purpose.
With the actual ceremonies of the divine worship these hymns had
evidently no immediate connexion. Unlike the lyric and choral songs,
they were sung neither on the procession to the temple (7ro/z7T7/), nor at
the sacrifice (dvcria), nor at the libation ((nrovh']), with which the
public prayers for the people were usually connected ; they had only a
general reference to the god as patron of a festival, to which a contest
of rhapsodists or poets had been appended. One hymn alone, the
eighth to Ares, is not a procemium, but a prayer to the god : in this,
however, the entire tone, the numerous invocations and epithets, are so
different from the Homeric, that this hymn has been with reason re-
ferred to a much later period, and has been classed with the Orphic
compositions*.
§ 2. But although these procemia were not immediately connected
with the service of the gods, and although a poet might have prefixed
an invocation of this kind to an epic composition recited by him alone,
without a rival, in any meeting of idle persons f, yet we may perceive
from them how many and different sacred festivals in Greece were at-
tended by rhapsodists. Thus it is quite clear that the two hymns to
Apollo were sung, the one at the festival of the nativity of the god in
the island of Delos, the other at that of the slaying of the dragon at Pytho ;
that the hymn to Demeter was recited at theEleusinia, where musical con-
tests were also customary ; and that contests of rhapsodists were connected
with the festivals of Aphrodite J, particularly at Salamis in Cyprus§, from
which island we have also seen a considerable epic poem proceed.
The short hymn to Artemis, which describes her wanderings from the
river Meles at Smyrna to the island of Claros (where her brother Apollo
awaits her) |j, appears also to have been recited at a musical contest,
which was connected with the festival of these two deities in the re-
nowned sanctuary of Claros, near Colophon. Festivals in honour of the
Magna Mater of Phrygia may have likewise been celebrated in the
towns of Asia Minor, also accompanied with contests of rhapsodists.
That these procemia were composed by rhapsodists of Asia Minor,
nearly the same as those who were concerned in the Homeric cycle,
and not by minstrels of the school of Hesiod, is proved by the fact that
we find among them no hymn to the Muses, with whom the poet of
* Ares is in this hymn, viii. 7, 10, also considered as the planet of the same
name : the hymn, therefore, belongs to a time when Chaldsean astrology had been
diffused in Greece. The contest for which the aid of Ares is implored is a purely
mental one, with the passions, and the hymn is in fact philosophical rather than
Orphic.
f For example, in a xicr%?i, a house of public resort, where strangers found an
abode. Homer, according to Pseudo-Herodotus, sang many poetical pieces in
places of this description.
I Hymn vi. 19. § Hymn x. 4. Comp. ch. 6. x) 4. j] Hymn ix. 3, seg.
74 HISTORY OP THE
the Theogony as he himself says, began and ended his strains*. One
short hymn however, formed of verses borrowed from the Theogony, has
found its way into this miscellaneous collection-}-. By a similar argu-
ment we may refute the opinion that these hymns were exclusively the
work of the Homerids, that is, the house of Chios : these, as we know
from the testimony of Pindar, were accustomed to commence with an
invocation to Zeus ; while our collection only contains one very small
and unimportant procemium to this god {.
Whether any of the preludes which Terpander, the Lesbian poet and
musician, employed in his musical recitation of Homer § have been
preserved in the present collection, must remain a doubtful question :
it seems however probable that those hymns, composed for an accom-
paniment of the cithara, must have had a different tone and character.
Moreover, these hymns exhibit such a diversity of language and
poetical tone, that in all probability they contain fragments from every
century between the time of Homer and the Persian war. Several, as
for instance that to the Dioscuri, show the transition to the Orphic
poetry, and several refer to local worships, which are entirely un-
known to us, as the one to Selene, which celebrates her daughter by
Zeus, the goddess Pandia, shining forth amongst the immortals ; of
whom we can now only conjecture that the Athenian festival of Pandia
was dedicated to her.
§ 3. We will now endeavour to illustrate these general remarks by
some special explanations of the five longer hymns. The hymn to the
Delian Apollo is (as has been already stated) || ascribed by Thucydides
to Homer himself ; and is, doubtless, the production of a Homerid of
Chios, who, at the end of the poem, calls himself the blind poet who
lived on the rocky Chios. But the notion that this poet was Cinaethus,
who did not live till the 69th Olympiad^, appears only to have
originated from the circumstance that he was the most celebrated of
the Homerids. If any one of these hymns comes near to the age of
Homer, it is this one ; and it is much to be lamented that a large
portion of it has been lost**, which contained the beginning of the
narration, the true ground of the wanderings of Latona. We can only
conjecture that this was the announcement, probably made by Here,
that Latona would produce a terrible and mighty son : of which
a contradiction is meant to be implied in Apollo's first words, where he
calls the cithara his favourite instrument, as well as the bow, and
* Theogon. 48. Endings of this kind, called by the grammarians Itpvpna, are
also mentioned in the Homeric hymns, xxi. 4, and xxxiv. 18, and the short song,
Hymn xxi. is probably one of them. Comp. Theognis, v. i. (925), Apollon. Rhod.
Arg. iv. 1774.
f See Hymn xxv. and Theog. 94 — 7. % Hymn xxiii.
§ Plutarch de Musica, c. 4, 6 ; and above, chap, iv. § 3 (p. 34).
|| Above, chap. v. § 1 (p. 42).
•Jf Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1 . ** Hymn i. 30.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE.
75
declares his chief office to be the promulgation of the councils of Zeus*.
The entire fable of the birth of Apollo is treated so as to give great honour
to the island of Delos, which alone takes pity on Latona, and dares to
offer her an asylum ; the fittest subject of a hymn for the joyful spring
festival, to which the Ionians flocked together from far and wide on
their pilgrimage to the holy island.
§ 4. The hymn to the Pythian Apollo is a most interesting record
of the ancient mythus of Apollo in the district of Pytho. It belongs
to a time when the Pythian sanctuary was still in the territory of Crissa :
of the hostility between the Pythian priests and the Crissseans, which
afterwards led to the war of the Amphictyons against the city of
Crissa (in Olymp. 47.), there is no trace ; a passage of the hymn also
shows that horse-races f had not as yet been introduced at the Pythian
games, which began immediately after the Crissaean war : the ancient
Pythian contests had been confined to music. The following is the
connexion of this hymn. Apollo descends from Olympus in order to
found a temple for himself; and while he is seeking a site for it in
Boeotia, he is recommended by a water-goddess, Tilpiiussa or Delphussa,
to place it in the territory of Crissa in the ravine of Parnassus : her ad-
vice being prompted by the malicious hope that a dangerous serpent,
which abode there, would destroy the youthful god. Apollo accepts
her counsel, but frustrates her intent: he founds his temple in this
solitary glen, slays the dragon, and then punishes Tilphussa by stopping
up her fountain|. Apollo then procures priests for the new sanctuary,
Cretan men, whom he, in the form of a dolphin, brings to Crissa, and
consecrates as the sacrificers and guardians of his sanctuary.
§ 5. The hymn to Hermes has a character very different from the
others; which is the reason why modern critics have taken greater
liberties with it in the rejection of verses supposed to be spurious. With
that lively simplicity which grves an air of credibility to the most
marvellous incidents, it relates how Hermes, begotten by Zeus in
secret, is able, when only a new-born child, to leave the cradle in
which his mother believed him to be safely concealed, in order to steal
Apollo's cattle from the pastures of the gods in Pieria. The miraculous
child succeeds in driving them away, using various contrivances for con-
cealing his traces, to a grotto near Pylos, and slays them there, with all
the skill of the most experienced slaughterer of victims. At the same time
he had made the first lyre out of a tortoise which had fallen in his way on
his first going out ; and with this he pacifies Apollo, who had at length,
* iln fjtot xidagis y a.v6gw<7roi See Thucyd. iii.2; vii. 57; viii. 100.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. $\
such as this that the fame of the heroic poetry, which at that time was
flourishing in the colonies, must have been spread over the mother country.
The ancients have eagerly seized upon this point of union in the two
schools of poetry, in order to prove that a near relationship existed
between Homer and Hesiod. The logographers (or historians before
Herodotus) — as Helianicus, Pherecydes, and Damastes— have combined
various names handed down by tradition into comprehensive genealogies,
in which it appears that the two poets were descended from a common
ancestor: for example, that ApelJis (also called Apelles, or ApeUaeus)
had two sons — Maeon, the supposed father of Homer, and Dius, who,
according to an ancient but justly rejected interpretation of a verse in
the Works and Days, was made the father of Hesiod*.
But it is not our intention to support the opinion that the poetry of
Hesiod was merely an offset from the Homeric stock transplanted to
Boeotia, or that it is indebted to the Homeric poems either for its dialect,
versification, or character of style. On the contrary, the most generally re-
ceived opinion of antiquity assigns Hesiod and Homer to the same period ;
thus Herodotus makes them both about four centuries earlier than his own
timet : in such cases, too, Hesiod is commonly named before Homer, as,
for instance, in this passage of Herodotus. As far as we know, it was first
maintained by Xenophanes of Colophon | that Hesiod was later than
Horner ; on the other hand, Ephorus, the historian of Cyme, and many
others, have endeavoured to prove the higher antiquity of Hesiod. At
any rate, therefore, the Greeks of those times did not consider that
Homer had formed the epic language in Ionia, and that Hesiod had
borrowed it, and only transferred it to other subjects. They must
have entertained the opinion (which has been confirmed by the re-
searches of our own time), that this epic dialect had already become the
language of refinement and poetry in the mother-country before the
colonies of Asia Minor were founded. Moreover, this dialect is only
identical in the two schools of poetry so far as its general features are
concerned. Many differences occur in particular points : and it can be
proved that this ancient poetical language among the Boeotian tribe
adopted many features of the native dialect, which was an iEolism
approaching nearly to the Doric §. Neither does it appear that the
phrases, epithets, and proverbial expressions common to both poets were
* V. 299. 'Epyugiu, Higery, A7ov yivos. \ ii. 53
I In Gelliu*, Noct. Att. lii. 17. Xenophanes, the founder of the Eleatic school of
philosophy, who flourished about the 70th Olympiad, was also an epic poet, and
may perhaps, in his xritrtf KoXotpuvos, have found many opportunities of speaking of
Homer, whom the Colophoaians claimed as a countryman. See above, p. 43
(chap. v. § 2).
§ Thus Hesiod often shortens the ending a$ in the accusative pluial of the first
d* cension, like Alcman, Stesichorus, and Epicharmus . it has indeed been observed
that it only occurs long where the syllaole is in the aihis, or where it is lengthened
by position. On the whole, there is in Hesiod a greater tendency to shorter, often
to contracted forms ; while Homer's ear appears to have found peculiar delight in
the multiplication of vowel byllables.
G
bi HISTORY OF THE
supposed by the ancient Greeks to have been borrowed by one from
the other : in general, too, they have the appearance of being separately
derived from the common source of an earlier poetry ; and in Hesiod
especially, if we may judge from statements of the ancients, and from the
tone of his language, sayings and idioms of the highest antiquity are
preserved in all their original purity and simplicity*.
The opinion that Hesiod received the form of his poetry from Homer
cannot, moreover, well be reconciled with the wide difference which ap-
pears in the spirit and character of the two styles of epic poetry. Besides
what we have already remarked upon this subject, we will notice one
point which shows distinctly how little Hesiod allowed himself to be
governed by rules derived from Homer The Homeric poems, among
all the forms in which poetry can appear, possess in the greatest degree
what in modern times is called objectivity; that is, a complete aban-
donment of the mind to the object, without any intervening conscious-
ness of the situation or circumstances of the subject, or the individual
himself. Homer's mind moves in a world of lofty thoughts and ener-
getic actions, far removed from the wants and necessities of the present.
There can be no doubt that this is the noblest and most perfect style of
composition, and the best adapted to epic poetry. Hesiod, however,
never soars to this height. He prefers to show us his own domestic
life, and to make us feel its wants and privations. It would doubtless
be an erroneous transfer of the manners of later poets to this primi-
tive age, if we regarded Hesiod's accounts of his own life as mere
fictions used as a vehicle for his poetic conceptions. Moreover,
the tone in which he addresses his brother Perses has all the frank-
ness and naivete of reality ; and, indeed, the whole arrangement of
the poem of the Works and Days is unintelligible, unless we conceive
it as founded on a real event, such as the poet describes.
§ 2. This poem (which alone, according to Pausanias, the Boeotians
hold to be a genuine work of Hesiod, and with which, therefore, we
may properly begin the examination of the several works of this school)
is so entirely occupied with the events of common life, that the author
would not seem to have been a poet by profession, as Homer was de-
* Thus the verse of the Works and Days, (juo-&o$ %' av\) tplxu ilgvpivos agxtos un
(v. 370), was attributed to Pittheus of Troezen, a sage and prince of the early-
fabulous times. (See Aristotle in Plutarch. Theseus, c. 3.) The meaning, according
to Buttmann, is, "Let the reward be surely agreed on with a friend." Homer has
the shorter expression : pttrtc,; Vi ol agxio; ttrrett. (See Buttmann's Lexilogus, in cloxio;,
p. 164, Engl, transl.) So likewise the phrase of Hesiod, aXXa. rin poi ravra. tzp) IpZv
r> nig) vevrgny (Theog. 35), is doubtless derived from the highest antiquity; it is
connected with the Homeric, Ob [*,iv tw; vZv s&ra o.to ogvos ov8 uto tztp'/js too haottz-
fAivai, and Ow yap cctto ^^vos leal Ta.Xa.iipa.Tov ov$ avro Tvr^ns- The oak and the rock
here represent the simple country life of the Greek autochthons, who thought that
they had sprung from their mountains and woods, and whose thoughts dwelt
only upon these ideas, in primitive innocence and familiarity. These words,
with which Hesiod breaks off his description of the scene of the shepherds
sleeping with their flocks, sound just like a saying of the ancient Pierian bards
among the Pelasgians. (Above, p. 27 — 8.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 83
scribed by the ancients, but some Boeotian husbandman, whose mind
had been so forcibly moved by peculiar circumstances as to give a
poetical tone to the whole course of his thoughts and feelings. The
father of Hesiod, as was before mentioned, had settled at Ascra as a
farmer; and although he found the situation disadvantageous, from
its great heat in summer and its storminess in winter, yet he had
left a considerable property to his two sons, Hesiod and a younger
brother, Perses. The brothers divided the inheritance ; and Perses, by
means of bribes to the kings (who at this time alone exercised the office
of judge), contrived to defraud his elder brother. But Perses showed a
disposition which in later times became more and more common among
the Greeks : he chose rather to listen to lawsuits in the market-place,
and to contrive legal quibbles by which he might defraud others of their
property, than to follow the plough. Hence it came to pass that his
inheritance, probably with the help of a foolish wife, was soon dissipated ;
and he threatened to commence a new suit against his elder brother, in
order to dispute the possession of that small portion ot their lather's
land which had been allotted to him. The peculiar situation in which
Hesiod was thus placed called forth the following expression of his
thoughts. We give only the principal heads, in order to point out their
reference to the circumstances of the poet*.
"There are two kinds of contention" (the poet begins by saying),
" the one blameable and hateful, the strife of war and litigation ; the
other beneficial and praiseworthy, the competition of mechanics and
artists. Avoid the first, O Perses ; and strive not again through the
injustice of the judges to wrest from me my own ; keep rather to the
works of honest industry. For the gods sent toil and misery among
men, when they punished Prometheus for stealing fire from heaven by
sending Pandora to Epimetheus, from whose box all evils were spread
among mankind. We are now in the fifth age of the world, the age of
iron, in which man must perpetually contend with want and trouble.
I will now relate to the judges the fable of the hawk which killed
the nightingale, heedless of her song. The city where justice is
practised will alone flourish under the protection of the gods. But to
the city where wicked deeds are done, Zeus sends famine and plague.
Know, ye judges, that ye are watched by myriads of Jove's immortal
spirits, and his own all-seeing eye is upon you. To the brutes have the
gods given the law of force — to men the law of justice. Excellence is
not to be acquired, O Perses, except by the sweat of thy brow. Labour
is pleasing to the gods, and brings no shame : honest industry alone
gives lasting satisfaction. Beware of wrongful acts ; honour the gods ;
hold fast good friends and good neighbours ; be not misled by an im-
* I pass over the short prooemium to Zeus, as it was rejected by roost of the
ancient critics, and probably was only one of the introductory strains which the
Hesiodean rhapsodists could prefix to the Works and Days.
g2
84 HISTORY OP THE
provident wife ; and provide yourself with a plentiful, but not too nume-
rous an offspring, and you will be blessed with prosperity."
With these and similar rules of economy (of which many are, perhaps ;
rather adapted to the wants of daily life than noble and elevated) the first
part of the poem concludes ; its object being to improve the character and
habits of Perses, to deter him from seeking riches by litigation, and to
incite him to a life of labour as the only source of permanent prosperity.
Mythical narratives, fables, descriptions, and moral apophthegms, partly
of a proverbial kind, are ingeniously chosen and combined so as to
illustrate and enforce the principal idea.
In the second part, Hesiod shows Perses the succession in which his
labours must follow if he determines to lead a life of industry. Observing
the natural order of" the seasons, he begins with the time of ploughing
and sowing, and treats of the implements used in these processes, the
plough and the beasts which draw it. He then proceeds to show how
a prudent husbandman may employ the winter at home, when the
labours of the field are at a stand ; adding a description of the storms
and cold of a Boeotian winter, which several modern critics have
(though probably without sufficient ground) considered as exaggerated,
and have therefore doubted its genuineness. With the first appearance
of spring follows the dressing and cutting of the vines, and, at the rising
of the Pleiades (in the first half of our May), the reaping of the grain.
The poet then tells us how the hottest season should be employed, when
the corn is threshed. The vintage, which immediately precedes the
ploughing, concludes the circle of these rural occupations.
But as the poet's object was not to describe the charms of a country
life, but to teach all the means of honest gain which were then open to
the Ascreean countryman, he next proceeds, after having completed the
subject of husbandry, to treat with equal detail that of navigation.
Here we perceive how, in the time of Hesiod, the Boeotian farmer
himself shipped the overplus of his corn and wine, and transported it
to countries where these products were less abundant. If the poet had
had any other kind of trade in view, he would have been more explicit
upon the subject of the goods to be exported, and would have stated how a
husbandman like Perses was to procure them. Hesiod recommends for
a voyage of this kind the late part of the summer, on the 50th day after
the summer solstice, when there was no work to be done in the field,
and when the weather in the Greek seas is the most certain.
All these precepts relating to the works of industry interrupt, some-
what suddenly, the succession of economical rules for the management
of a family*. The poet now speaks of the time of life when a man
* It would be a great improvement if the verses relating to marriage (697 — 705,
ed. Gottling) could be placed before Mouvoyivbs Tt tui's tin (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
ccouomy would all refer to the maxim, %Z B' otiv adavxrav ukko-^uv Trxpukayftivo; uvea.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 85
should take a wife, and how he should look out for her. He then
especially recommends to all to bear in mind that the immortal gods
watch over the actions of men ; in all intercourse with others to keep
the tongue from idle and provoking words ; and to preserve a certain
purity and care in the commonest occurrences of every-day life. At
the same time he gives many curious precepts, which resemble
sacerdotal rules, with respect to the decorum to be observed in acts of
worship, and, moreover, have much in common with the symbolic rules
of the Pythagoreans, which ascribed a deep and spiritual import to
many unimportant acts of common life.
Of a very similar nature is the last part of this poem, which treats of
the days on which it is expedient or inexpedient to do this or that busi-
ness. These precepts, which do not relate to particular seasons of the
year, but to the course of each lunar month, are exclusively of a super-
stitious character, and are in great part connected with the different
worships which were celebrated upon these days : but our knowledge is far
too insufficient to explain them all*.
If we regard the connexion of this poem, as indicated by the heads
which we have mentioned, it must be confessed that the whole is
perfectly adapted to the circumstances of the case ; and conformable to
the poet's view of turning his brother Perses from his scheme of enrich-
ing himself by unjust lawsuits, and of stimulating him to a life of la-
borious husbandry. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that the
poet has failed in producing so perfect an agreement of the several
members of his work, that by their combination they form, as it were,
one body. Indeed, the separate parts have often very little connexion
with each other, and are only introduced by announcements such
as these, " Now, if thou wilt, I will tell another story;" or, " Now I will
relate a fable to the kings," &c. This plainly shows much less art in
composition than is displayed in the Homeric poems ; the reason of
which was the far greater difficulty which must have been felt at that
time of forming general reflections upon life into a connected whole,
than of relating a great heroic event.
Yet in the general tone of the poem, and in the sentiments which it
displays, a sufficient uniformity is not wanting. We feel, as we read it,
that we are transported back to an age of primitive simplicity, in which
even the wealthy man does not disdain to increase his means by the
labour of his own hands ; and an attention to economical cares was not
considered ignoble, as it was among the later Greeks, who from hus-
bandmen became mere politicians. A coarse vein of homely good
* On the seventh day the poet himself remarks the connexion with Apollo. The
rsrga? of the beginning and ending of the month is a day on which evils are to be
feared: it was considered as the birthday of the toil-worn Hercules. On the 17th
the corn is to be brought to the threshing floor: the 17th of Boedromion was the
sacrificial day of Demeter and Cora at Athens (Boeckh, Corp. Inscript. Gr. No. 523\
and a great day of ihe Eleusinia.
86* HISTORY OF THE
sense, nay, even a dash of interested calculating shrewdness, which
were deeply rooted in the Greek character, are combined with
honourable principles of justice, expressed in nervous apophthegms
and striking images. When w 7 e consider that the poet was brought
up in these hereditary maxims of wisdom, and moreover that he was
deeply convinced of the necessity of a life of laborious exertion, we
shall easily comprehend how strongly an event sacli as that in which
he was concerned with his brother Perses was calculated to strike
his mind ; and from the contrast which it offered to his convictions,
to induce him to make a connected exposition of them in a poem.
This brings us to the true source of the Didactic Epos, which never
can proceed from a mere desire to instruct ; a desire which has no
connexion with poetry. Genuine didactic poetry always proceeds
from some great and powerful idea, which has something so absorbing
and attractive that the mind strives to give expression to it. In the Works
and Days this fundamental idea is distinctly perceptible ; the decrees
and institutions of the gods protect justice among men, they have made
labour the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered the year that
every work has its appointed season, the sign of which is discernible by
man. In announcing these immutable ordinances and eternal laws,
the poet himself is impressed with a lofty and solemn feeling, which
manifests itself in a sort of oracular tone, and in the sacerdotal style
with which many exhortations and precepts are delivered*. We have
remarked this priestly character in the concluding part of the poem,
and it was not unnatural that many in antiquity should annex to the
last verse, " Observing the omens of birds, and avoiding transgressions,"
another didactic epic poem of the same school of poetry upon divination-^.
It is stated that this poem treated chiefly of the flight and cries of
birds; and it agrees with this statement, that Hesiod, according to
Pausanias, learned divination among the Acarnanians : the Acarnanian
families of diviners deriving their descent from Melampus, whose ears,
when a boy, were licked by serpents, whereupon he immediately under-
stood the language of the birds.
A greater loss than this supplement on divination is another poem
of the same school, called the Lessons of Chiron (Xapwvog vTrodrJKai),
as this was in some measure a companion or counterpart to the Works
and Days. For while the extant poem keeps wholly within the circle
of the yearly occupations of a Boeotian husbandman, the lost one repre-
sented the wise Centaur, in his grotto upon Mount Pelion, instructing the
young Achilles in all the knowledge befitting a young prince and hero.
* We allude particularly to the piyx vnvris. nigtry of Hesiod, and the piya. vrt-rn
YLoo7vi6i(tavrtiu,v, anvtx. ' A-rokXuvios o 'Pottos kforu. — Proclus
on the Works and Days, at the end, v. 824.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREFCE. 87
We might not improperly apply to this poem the name of a German
poem of the middle ages, and call it a Greek Ritterspiegel.
§ 3. We now follow this school of poetry to the great attempt of
forming from the Greek legends respecting the gods a connected and
regular picture of their origin and powers, and in general of the entire
polytheism of the Greeks. The Theogony of Hesiod is not, indeed, to
be despised as a poem ; besides many singular legends, it contains
thoughts and descriptions of a lofty and imposing character ; but for the
history of the religious faith of Greece it is a production of the highest
importance. The notions concerning the gods, their rank, and their affini-
ties, which had arisen in so much greater variety in the different dis-
tricts of Greece than in any other country of the ancient world, found
in the Theogony a test of their general acceptance. Every legend
which could not be brought into agreement with this poem sank into
the obscurity of mere local tradition, and lived only in the limited
sphere of the inhabitants of some Arcadian district, or the ministers
of some temple, under the form of a strange and marvellous tale,
which was cherished with the greater fondness because its uncon-
formity with the received theogony gave it the charm of mystery*. It
was through Hesiod that Greece first obtained a kind of religious code,
which, although without external sanctions or priestly guardians and
interpreters (such as the Vedas had in the Brahmans, and the Zenda-
vesta in the Magians), must have produced the greatest influence on
the religious condition of the Greeks ; inasmuch as it impressed upon
them the necessity of agreement, and as the notions prevalent among
the most powerful races, and at the most renowned temples, were em-
bodied by the poet with great skill. Hence Herodotus was justified
in saying that Hesiod and Homer had made the theogony of the
Greeks, had assigned the names, offices, and occupations of the gods,
and had determined their forms.
According to the religious notions of the Greeks, the deity, who
governs the world with omnipotence, and guides the destinies of man
with omniscience, is yet without one attribute, which is the most
essential to our idea of the godhead — eternity. The gods of the
Greeks were too closely bound up with the existence of the world
to be exempt from the law by which large, shapeless masses are de-
veloped into more and more perfect forms. To the Greeks the gods
of Olympus were rather the summit and crowning point of organized
and animate life, than the origin of the universe. Thus Zeus, who
must be considered as the peculiar deity of the Greeks, was doubtless,
long before the time of Homer or Hesiod, called Cronion, or Cronides,
* Numbers of these fables, which cannot be reconciled with the Theogony, were,
as we know from Pausanias, in currency, especially in Arcadia; but how little should
wt know of them from writers who addressed themselves to the entire nation.. The
Attic tragedians likewise, in their accounts of the affinities of the gods, follow the
Hesiodear. Theogony far more than the local worships and legends of Attica.
88 HISTORY OF THE
which, according to the most probable interpretation, means the " Son
of the Ancient of Days*;'' and, as the ruler of the clear heaven, he was
derived from Uranus, or heaven itself. In like manner all the other
gods were, according to their peculiar attributes and character, con-
nected with beings and appearances which seemed the most ancient.
The relation of the primitive and the originating to the recent and
the derived was always conceived under the form of generation and
birth — the universe being considered to have a life, like that of animals;
and hence even heaven and earth were imagined to have an animal
organization. The idea of creation, of so high antiquity in the east,
and so early known to the Indians, Persians, and Hebrews, which sup-
posed the Deity to have formed the world with design, as an earthly
artificer executes his work, was foreign to the ancient Greeks, and could
only arise in religions which ascribed a personal existence and an eter-
nal duration to the godhead. Hence it is clear that theogonies, in the
widest sense of the word — that is, accounts of the descent of the gods —
are as old as the Greek religion itself ; and, doubtless, the most ancient
bards would have been induced to adopt and expand such legends in their
poems. One result of their attempts to classify the theogonic beings,
is the race of Titans, who were known both to Homer and Hesiod, and
formed a link between the general personifications of parts of the
universe and the human forms of the Olympic gods, by whose might
they were supposed to be hurled into the depths of Tartarus.
., Surrounded as he was by traditions and ancient poems of this kind, it
would have been impossible for Hesiod (as many moderns have con-
ceived) to form his entire Theogony upon abstract philosophical prin-
ciples of his own concerning the powers of matter and mind : if his sys-
tem had been invented by himself, it would not have met with such
ready acceptance from succeeding generations. But, on the other hand,
Hesiod cannot be considered as a mere collector of scattered traditions
or fragments of earlier poems, which he repeated almost at random,
without being aware of their hidden connexion : the choice which he
made among different versions of the same fable, and his skilful arrange-
ment of the several parts, are of themselves a sufficient proof that he
was guided by certain fundamental ideas, and that he proceeded upon a
connected view of the formation of outward nature.
To make this position more clear, it will perhaps be most advisable
to illustrate the nature of the primitive beings which, according to the
Theogony, preceded the race of the Titans ; with the view of showing
the consistency and connexion of Hesiod's notions : for the rest, a more
general survey will suffice.
* Whatever doubts may exist with regard to the etymology of xi°* 0i (whether
the name comes from xguiw, or is allied with stgovos), yet everything stated of him
agrees with this conception, his dominion during the golden age, the representation
of a simple patriarchal life at the festival of the K^y<«, Cronus as the ruler of the
departed heroes, &c.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 89
" First of all (the Theogony, strictly so called, begins) was Chaos"* ;
that is, the abyss, in which all peculiar shape and figure is lost, and of
which we arrive at the conception by excluding all idea of definite form.
It is evident, however, that, as Hesiod represents other beings as spring-
ing out of Chaos, he must have meant by this word not mere empty
space, but a confused mixture of material atoms, instinct with the prin-
ciple of life. " Afterwards arose (that is from Chaos) the wide-bosomed
Earth, the firm resting-place of all things ; and gloomy Tartar a in the
depth of the Earth; and Eros, the fairest of the immortal godsf."
The Earth, the mother of all living things, according to the notion of
the Greeks and many oriental countries, is conceived to arise out of the
dark abyss ; her foundations are in the depth of night, and her surface
is the soil upon which light and life exist. Tartara is, as it were, only
the dark side of the Earth ; by which it still remains connected with
Chaos. As the Earth and Tartara represent the brute matter of Chaos
in a more perfect form, so in Eros the living spirit appears as the
principle of all increase and development. It is a lofty conception of
the poet of the Theogony, to represent the God of Love as proceed-
ing out of Chaos at the beginning of all things ; though probably
this thought did not originate with him, and had already been expressed
in ancient hymns to Eros, sung at Thespise. Doubtless it is not an
accidental coincidence that this city, which was 40 stadia from Ascra,
should have possessed the most renowned temple of Eros in all Greece ;
and that in its immediate neighbourhood Hesiod should have given to
this deity a dignity and importance of which the Homeric poems con-
tain no trace. But it appears that the poet was satisfied with borrowing
this thought from the Thespian hymns without applying it in the
subsequent part of his poem. For although it is doubtless implied that
all the following marriages and births of the gods spring from the in-
fluence of Eros, the poet nevertheless omits expressly to mention its
operation. " Out of Chaos came Erebus,' 9 the darkness in the depths
of the Earth, " and black Night," the darkness which passes over the
surface of the Earth. " From the union of Night and Erebus pro-
ceeded Mther and Day." It may perhaps appear strange that these
dark children of Chaos bring forth the ever-shining iEther of the
highest heavens, and the bright daylight of the earth ; this, however,
is only a consequence of the general law of development observed in the
Theogony, that the dim and shapeless is the prior in point of time ;
and that the worM is perpetually advancing from obscurity to bright-
* %a.o $, literally synonymous with ^aV/«a, chasm.
f Plato and Aristotle in their quotations of this passage omit Tartara (also called
Tartarus) ; but probably only because it has not so much importance among the
principia mundi as the others. Tartara could also be considered as included under
the Earth, as it is also called Ta^a^a. yalvs. But the poet of the Theogony must
have stated his origin in this place ; as lower dowa he describes Typhoeus as the
son of the Eaith and Tartarus.
00 HISTORY OF THE
ness. Light bursting from the bosom of darkness is a beautiful image,
which recurs in the cosmogonies of other ancient nations. " The Earth
then first produced the starry heaven, of equal extent with herself, that
it might cover her all round, so as to be for ever a firm resting-place for
the gods ; and also the far-ranging mountains, the lovely abodes of the
nymphs." As the hills are elevations of the Earth, so the Heaven is con-
ceived as a firmament spread over the Earth ', which, according to the
general notion above stated, would have proceeded, and, as it were,
grown out of it. At the same time, on account of the various fertilizing
and animating influences which the Earth receives from the Heaven, the
Greeks were led to conceive Earth and Heaven as a married pair*, whose
descendants form in the Theogony a second great generation of deities.
But another offspring of the Earth is first mentioned. " The Earth
also bore the roaring swelling sea, the Pontus, without the joys of mar
riage.'' By expressly remarking of Pontus that the Earth produced
him alone without love, although the other beings just enumerated
sprung from the Earth singly, the poet meant to indicate his rough
and unkindly nature. It is the wild, waste salt sea, separated at
its very origin from the streams and springs of fresh water, which
supply nourishment to vegetation and to animal life. These are all
made to descend from Ocean, who is called the eldest of the Titans.
These, together with the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, were produced
by the union of Earth and Heaven ; and it is sufficient here to remark
of them that the Titans, according to the notions of Hesiod, represent a
system of things in which elementary beings, natural powers, and notions
of order and regularity are united into a whole. The Cyclopes de-
note the transient disturbances of this order by storms, and the Heca-
toncheires, or the hundred-handed giants, signify the fearful power of
the greater revolutions of nature.
The subsequent arrangement of the poem depends on its mixed
genealogical and narrative character. As soon as a new generation of
gods is produced, the events are related through which it overcame
the earlier race and obtained the supremacy. Thus, after the Titans
and their brethren, the Cyclopes and Hecatoncheires, are enumerated, it
is related how Cronus deprives his father of the power, by producing
new beings, of supplanting those already in existence ; whereupon follow
the races of the other primitive beings, Night and Pontus. Then suc-
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 GREECE. 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 Typhosus (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. Like-
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
]d,f the shield of Achilles in
the Iliad, but nevertheless quite peculiar, and executed in the genuine
spirit of the Hesiodean 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 date 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 Aehilles 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 (fyaicovros 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 hoars
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
{I'xif Kvriuv,\. 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).
HSJ
100 HISTORY OF THE
grammarians, some are doubtful, as they do not occur 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 Lac.edaemon, Eumelus
of Corinth, Asius of Samos^ Chersias of Orchomenus. — § 3. Epic Poems on Her-
cnles ; 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 king's of
Sparta, Procles and Eur'ysthenes, 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 ; at 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 legends 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,
'.he 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 votrroi in Schol. Pind. Olymp. xiii. 31.
f The passage quoted from it by Pausan. iv. 33. 3.
Tw yccg ' l§ai[/,u,u)voi 0.1X0), Pindar.
108 HliTORY OF THE
find in Tyrtaeus, Archilochus, Xenophanes, Anacreon, and especially in
Theognis, so many instances of the reference of elegiac poetry to ban-
quets, that we may safely consider the convivial meeting, and especially
the latter part of it, called Comas, as the appropriate occasion for the
Greek elegy*.
§ 3. That the elegy was not originally intended to make a completely
different impression from the epic poem, is proved by the slight devia-
tion of the elegiac metre from the epic hexameter. It seems as if the
spirit of art, impatient of its narrow limits, made with this metre its first
timid step out of the hallowed precinct. It does not venture to invent
new metrical forms, or even to give a new turn to the solemn hexame-
ter, by annexing to it a metre of a different character : it is contented
simply to remove the third and the last thesis from every second hexa-
meter t ; and it is thus able, without destroying the rhythm, to vary the
form of the metre in a highly agreeable manner. The even and regular
march of the hexameter is thus accompanied by the feebler and hesi-
tating gait of the pentameter. At the same time, this alternation pro-
duces a close union of two verses, which the hexametrical form of the
epos, with its uninterrupted flow of versification, did not admit ; and
thus gives rise to a kind of small strophes. The influence of this metri-
cal character upon the structure of the sentences, and the entire tone of
the language, must evidently have been very great.
§ 4. Into the fair form of this metre the Ionic poets breathed a soul,
which was vividly impressed with the passing events, and was driven to
and fro by the alternate swelling and flowing of a flood of emotions. It
is by no means necessary that lamentations should form the subject of
the elegy, still less that it should be the lamentation of love ; but emo-
tion is always essential to it. Excited by events or circumstances
of the present time and place, the poet in the circle of his friends
and countrymen pours forth his heart in a copious description of hits
experience, in the unreserved expression of his fears and hopes, in cen-
sure and advice. And as the commonwealth was in early times the
first thought of every Greek, his feelings naturally gave rise to the poli-
tical and warlike character of the elegy, which we first meet with in the
poems of Callinus.
The age of Callinus of Ephesus is chiefly fixed by the allusions
to the expeditions of the Cimmerians and Treres, which occurred in his
poems. The history of these incursions is, according to the best ancient
authorities, as follows : — The nation of the Cimmerians, driven out by
* The flute is described as used at the Comus in the passage of Hesiod cited
above, p. 21 (ch. hi. § 5).
t Thus, in the first lines of the Iliad and the Odyssey, by omitting the thesis of
the third and sixth feet, a perfect elegiac pentameter is obtained.
M??wv audi fea\n*i\\'/ii'cc%iw 'A%i\ri\o;\
Avfyu pot ivvtvi Movlffoi ■3?o\Xvr^b<7rov os fiu\oc which must be considered as the period at which Callinus
flourished.
We certainly do not give implicit credit to the story of later writers
that Tyrtaeus was a lame schoolmaster at Athens, sent out of insolence
by the Athenians to the Spartans, who at the command of an oracle had
applied to them for a leader in the Messenian war. So much of this
account may, however, be received as true, that Tyrtaeus came from
Attica to the Lacedaemonians ; the place of his abode being, according
to a precise statement, Aphidnae, an Athenian town, which is placed by
the legends about the Dioscuri in very early connexion with Laconia.
* It is even doubtful whether the part of this elegiac fragment iu Stobaeus which
follows the hiatus, in fact belongs to Callinus, or whether the name of TyrtaBus has
not fallen out.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. Ill
If Tyrtaeus came from Attica, it is easy to understand how the elegiac
metre which had its origin in Ionia should have been used by him, and
that in the very style of Callinus. Athens was so closely connected
with her Ionic colonies, that this new kind of poetry must have been
soon known in the mother city. This circumstance would be far
more inexplicable if Tyrtaeus had been a Lacedaemonian by birth, as
was stated vaguely by some ancient authors. For although Sparta was
not at this period a stranger to the efforts of the other Greeks in poetry
and music, yet the Spartans with their peuliar modes of thinking would
not have been very ready to appropriate the new invention of the
Ionians.
Tyrtaeus came to the Lacedaemonians at a time when they were not
only brought into great straits from without by the boldness of Aristo-
menes, and the desperate courage of the Messenians, but the state was
also rent with internal discord. The dissensions were caused by those
Spartans who had owned lands in the conquered Messenia : now that the
Messenians had risen against their conquerors, these lands were either in
the hands of the enemy, or were left unfilled from fear that the enemy
would reap their produce ; and hence the proprietors of them demanded
with vehemence a new division of lands — the most dangerous and
dreadful of all measures in the ancient republics. In this condition of
the Spartan commonwealth Tyrtaeus composed the most celebrated of his
elegies, which, from its subject, was called Ewiomia, that is, " Justice,"
or " Good Government," (also Politeia, or " The Constitution"). It
is not difficult, on considering attentively the character of the early
Greek elegy, to form an idea of the manner in which Tyrtaeus probably
handled this subject. He doubtless began with remarking the anarchi-
cal movement among the Spartan citizens, and by expressing the con-
cern with which he viewed it. But as in general the elegy seeks to
pass from an excited state of the mind through sentiments and images
of a miscellaneous description to a state of calmness and tranquillity, it
may be conjectured that the poet in the Eunomia made this transition
by drawing a picture of the well-regulated constitution of Sparta, and
the legal existence of its citizens, which, founded with the divine assist-
ance, ought not to be destroyed by the threatened innovations ; and that
at the same time he reminded the Spartans, who had been deprived of
their lands by the Messenian war, that on their courage would depend
the recovery of their possessions and the restoration of the former pros-
perity of the state. This view is entirely confirmed by the fragments
of Tyrtaeus, some of which are distinctly stated to belong to the Euno-
mia. In these the constitution of Sparta is extolled, as being founded
by the power of the Gods ; Zeus himself having given the country to
the Heracleids, and the power having been distributed in the justest
manner, according to the oracles of the Pythian Apollo, among the
kings, the gerons in the council, and the men of the commonalty in the
popular assembly.
112 HISTORY OP THE
§ 6. But the Eunomia was neither the only nor yet the first elegy in
which Tyrtoeus stimulated the Lacedaemonians to a bold defence against
the Messenians. Exhortation to bravery was the theme which this poet
took for many elegies*, and wrote on it with unceasing spirit and ever-
new invention. Never was the duty and the honour of bravery im-
pressed on the youth of a nation with so much beauty and force of
language, by such natural and touching motives. In this we perceive
the talent of the Greeks for giving to an idea the outward and visible
form most befitting it. In the poems of Tyrtaeus we see before us
the determined hoplite firmly fixed to the earth, with feet apart,
pressing his lips with his teeth, holding his large shield against the
darts of the distant enemy, and stretching out his spear with a strong
hand against the nearer combatant. That the young, and even the old,
rise up and yield their places to the brave ; that it beseems the youthful
warrior to fall in the thick of the fight, as his form is beautiful even in
death, while the aged man who is slain in the first ranks is a disgrace to
his younger companion from the unseemly appearance of his body :
these and similar topics are incentives to valour which could not fail to
make a profound impression on a people of fresh feeling and simple
character, such as the Spartans then were.
That these poems (although the author of them was a foreigner)
breathed a truly Spartan spirit, and that the Spartans knew how to value
them, is proved by the constant use made of them in the military expe-
ditions. When the Spartans were on a campaign, it was their custom,
after the evening meal, when the paean had been sung in honour of the
Gods, to recite these elegies. On these occasions the whole mess did not
join in the chant, but individuals vied with each other in repeat-
ing the verses in a manner worthy of their subject. The successful
competitor then received from the polemarch or commander a larger
portion of meat than the others, a distinction suitable to the simple taste
of the Spartans. This kind of recitation was so well adapted to the
elegy, that it is highly probable that Tyrtaeus himself first published his
elegies in this manner. The moderation and chastised enjoyment of a
Spartan banquet were indeed requisite, in order to enable the guests to
take pleasure in so serious and masculine a style of poetry : among
guests of other races the elegy placed in analogous circumstances natu-
rally assumed a very different tone. The elegies of Tyrteeus were, how-
ever, never sung on the march of the army and in the battle itself ; for
these a strain of another kind was composed by the same poet, viz., the
anapaestic marches, to which we shall incidentally revert hereafter.
§ 7. After these two ancient masters of the warlike elegy, we shall pass
to two other nearly contemporary poets, who have this characteristic in
common, that they distinguished themselves still more in iambic than in
* Called 'Yvrofaxai V \\tyila,s (Suidas) i. e. Lessons and exhortations in elegiac
verse.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 113
elegiac poetry. Henceforward this union often appears: the same poet
who employs the elegy to express his joyous and melancholy emotions,
has recourse to the iambus where his cool sense prompts him to censure
the follies of mankind. This relation of the two metres in question is
perceptible in the two earliest iambic poets, Archilochus and Simo-
tmides of Amorgus. The elegies of Archilochus (of which considerable
fragments are extant, while of Simonides we only know that he com-
posed elegies) had nothing of that bitter spirit of which his iambics were
full, but they contain the frank expression of a mind powerfully affected
by outward circumstances. Probably these circumstances were in great
part connected with the migration of Archilochus from Paros to Thasos,
which by no means fulfilled his expectations, as his iambics show. Nor
are his elegies quite wanting in the warlike spirit of Callinus. Archi-
lochus calls himself the servant of the God of War and the disciple of
the Muses*; and praises the mode of fighting of the brave Abantes in
Eubcea, who engaged man to man with spear and sword, and not from
afar with arrows and slings ; perhaps, from its contrast with the prac-
tice of their Thracian neighbours who, perhaps, greatly annoyed the colo-
nists in Thasos by their wild and tumultuary mode of warfaref . But
on the other hand, Archilochus avows, without much sense of shame,
and with an indifference which first throws a light on this part of the
Ionic character, that one of the Saians (a Thracian tribe, with whom the
Thasians were often at war) may pride himself in his shield, which he
had left behind him in some bushes; he has saved his life, and will get
a shield quite as good some other time|. In other fragments, Archilo-
chus seeks to banish the recollections of his misfortunes by an appeal to
steady patience, and by the conviction that all men are equal sufferers ;
and praises wine as the best antidote to care§. It was evidently very
natural that from the custom already noticed among the Spartans, of
singing elegies after drinking parties (ffvjUTroo-ia), there should arise a
connexion between the subject of the poem and the occasion on which it
was sung ; and thus wine and the pleasures of the feast became the sub-
ject of the elegy. Symposiac elegies of this kind were, at least in later
times, after the Persian war, also sung at Sparta, in which, with all
respect for the gods and heroes, the guests were invited to drinking and
merriment, to the dance and the song ; and, in the genuine Spartan
feeling, the man was congratulated who had a fair wife at home. | Among
* "Elf/,) V lyei> fegccfuv f/Xv '"Evueikioio civjuxres
Kai Movtricuv ipccro^ oojqov iwurrKp.ivos.
j- Gaisford, Poet. Gr. Min frag. 4. % I°- h' a g- 3. § Frag. 1, v. 5 ; and frag. 7.
II It is clear that the eleos ficco-iXsus outyi^ « trarr^ ts) was a Proclid,
— that is, from the date, probably, Archklamus.
I
114 HISTORY OF THE
the Ionians the elegy naturally took this turn at a much earlier period,
and all the various feelings excited by the use of wine, in sadness or in
mirth, were doubtless first expressed in an elegiac form. It is natural
to expect that the praise of wine was not dissociated from the other orna-
ment of Ionic symposia, the Hetaerae (who, according to Greek manners,
were chiefly distinguished from virgins or matrons by their participation
in the banquets of men) ; and there is extant a distich of a symposiac
elegy of Archilochus, in which " the hospitable Pasiphile, who kindly
receives all strangers, as a wild fig tree feeds many crows," is ironically
praised ; in relation to which an anecdote is preserved by Athenseus*.
This convivial elegy was allowed to collect all the images fitted to drive
away the cares of life, and to pour a serene hilarity over the mind.
Hence it is probable that some beautiful verses of the Ionic poet Asius,
of Samos, (already mentioned among the epic poets,) belonged to a
poem of this kind ; in which a parasite, forcing himself upon a marriage
feast, is described with Homeric solemnity and ironical seriousness, as
the maimed, scarred, and gray-haired adorer of the fragraney of the kit-
chen, who comes unbidden, and suddenly appears among the guests a
hero rising from the mudf.
§ 8. This joyous tone of the elegy, which sounded in the verses of
Archilochus, did not however hinder this poet from also employing the
same metre for strains of lamentation. This application of the elegy
is so closely connected with its origin from the Asiatic elegies, that it
probably occurred in the verses of Callinus ; it must have come from
the Ionic coast to the islands, not from the islands to the Ionic coast.
An elegy of this kind, however, was not a threnos, or lament for the
dead, sung by the persons who accompanied the corpse to its burial
place : more probably it was chanted at the meal (called Treptienvvov}
given to the kinsmen after the funeral, in the same manner as elegies
at other banquets. In Sparta also an elegy was recited at the solemni-
ties in honour of warriors who had fallen for their country. A distich
from a poem of this kind, preserved by Plutarch, speaks of those whose
only happiness either in life or death consisted in fulfilling the duties of
both. Archilochus was induced by the death of his sister's husband,
who had perished at sea, to compose an elegy of this description, in
which he expressed the sentiment that he would feel less sorrow at the
event if Hephaestus had performed his office upon the head and the
fair limbs of the dead man, wrapt up in white linen ; that is to say, if
he had died on land, and had been burnt on a funeral pi!e|.
§ 9. Even in the ruins in which the Greek elegy lies before us, it is
still the best picture of the race among which it chiefly flourished, viz.,
* Fragm. 44.
f Athen. iii. 125. The earliest certain example of parody, to which we willretum
in the next chapter. On Asms, see above, ch. ix.
I Fragm 6.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 1)5
the Ionian. In proportion as this race of the Greeks became more un-
warlike and effeminate, the elegy was diverted from subjects relating to
public affairs and to struggles for national independence. The elegies
of Mimnermus were indeed in great part political ; full of allusions to
the origin and early history of his native city, and not devoid of the ex-
pression of noble feelings of military honour ; but these patriotic and
martial sentiments were mingled with vain regrets and melancholy,
caused by the subjection of a large part of Ionia, and especially of the
native city of Mimnermus, to the Lydian yoke. Mimnermus flourished
from about the 37th Olympiad (634 b. c.) until the age of the Seven
Wise Men, about Olymp. 45 (600 b. c.) : as it cannot be doubted that
Solon, in an extant fragment of his poems, addresses Mimnermus,
as living — " But if you will, even now, take my advice, erase this ; nor
bear me any ill-will for having thought on this subject better than you ;
alter the words, Ligyastades, and sing — May the fate of death reach me
in my sixtieth year" (and not as Mimnermus wished, in his eightieth,*).
Consequently the lifetime of Mimnermus, compared with the reigns of
the Lydian kings, falls in the short reign of Sadyattes and the first part
of the longreign of Hal yattes, which begins in Olymp. 40, 4, b. c. 617.
The native city of Mimnermus was Smyrna, which had at that time long-
been a colony of the Ionic city Colophonf. Mimnermus, in an extant
fragment of his elegy Nanno, calls himself one of the colonists of
Smyrna, who came from Colophon, and whose ancestors at a still earlier
period came from the Nelean Pylos. Now Herodotus, in his accounts
of the enterprises of the Lydian kings, states that Gyges made war upon
Smyrna, but did not succeed in taking it, as he did with Colophon.
Halyattes, however, at length overcame Smyrna in the early part of
his reign j. Smyrna, therefore, together with a considerable part of
Ionia, lost its independence during the lifetime of Mimnermus, and lost
it for ever, unless we consider the title of allies, which Athens gave to
its subjects, or the nominal libertas with which Rome honoured many
cities in this region, as marks of independent sovereignty. It is im-
portant to form a clear conception of this time, when a people of a noble
nature, capable of great resolutions and endued with a lively and sus
* 'AXX'i/ fjcoi x,a) vvv in •TTi'uria.i, 'i%eki rovro, yitjjBs fiiyat^, on trtu Xu'iov icp^affd/ufiv,
xcti f&irxwoiqtrov, AtyvourraSri, uhi B' cities, &C. The emendation of Aiyva(rTa,%yi for
K oivototu'&v, T&eiKtu *«< ToXiy.ov
'hctxpvoivrx Xtyu. (Athen. xi. p. 463.)
j- Fragg. 1 — 5. i Fragm. 3.
118
HISTORY OF THE
stone where the heralds were wont to stand, and sang in an impassioned
tone an elegy, which began with these words :— " I myself come as a
herald from the lovely island of Salamis, using song, the ornament of
words, and not simple speech, to the people." It is manifest that the
poet feigned himself to be a herald sent from Salamis, and returned
from his mission ; by which fiction he was enabled to paint in far live-
lier colours than he could otherwise have done the hated dominion of the
Megarians over the island, and the reproaches which many Salaminian
partizans of Athens vented in secret against the Athenians. He described
the disgrace which would fall upon the Athenians, if they did not re-
conquer the island, as intolerable. '* In that case (he said) I would
rather be an inhabitant of the meanest island than of Athens ; for wher-
ever I might live, the saying would quickly circulate — ' This is one of
the Athenians who have abandoned Salamis in so cowardly a man-
ner*.'" And when Solon concluded with the words "Let us go to
Salamis, to conquer the lovely island, and to wipe out our shame,*' the
youths of Athens are said to have been seized with so eager a desire of
fighting, that an expedition against the Megarians of Salamis was un-
dertaken on the spot, which put the Athenians into possession of the
island, though they did not retain it without interruption.
§ 12. A character in many respects similar belongs to the elegy of
which Demosthenes cites a long passage in his contest with JEschines
on the embassy. This, too, is composed in the form of an exhortation
to the people. " My feelings prompt me (says the poet) to declare to
the Athenians how much mischief injustice brings over the city, and
that justice everywhere restores a perfect and harmonious order of
things." In this elegy Solon laments with bitter regret the evils in the
political state of the commonwealth, the insolence and rapacity of the
leaders of the people, i. e. of the popular party, and the misery of the
poor, many of whom were sold into slavery by the rich, and carried to
foreign countries. Hence it is clear that this elegy is anterior to Solon's
legislation, which, as is well known, abolished slavery for debt, and
made it impossible to deprive an insolvent debtor of his liberty.
These verses give us a livelier picture of this unhappy period of Athens
than any historical description. " The misery of the people (says
Solon) forces itself into every man's house : the doors of the court-yard
are no longer able to keep it out ; it springs over the lofty wall, and
finds out the wretch, even if he has fled into the most secret part of
his dwelling."
But in other of Solon's elegies there is the expression of a subdued and
tranquil joy at the ameliorations brought about in Athens by his legisla-
tive measures (Olymp. 46,3. 594 n. c), by which the holders of property
and the commonaltvhad each received their due share of consideration and
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 119
power, and both were protected by a firm shield*. But this feeling- of
calm satisfaction was not of long continuance, as Solou observed and
soon expressed his opinion in elegies, '* that the people, in its ignorance,
was bringing itself under the yoke of a monarch (Pisistratus), and that
it was not the gods, but the thoughtlessness with which the people put
the means of obtaining the sovereign power into the hands of Pisistra-
tus, which had destroyed the liberties of Athens f."
Solon's elegies were therefore the pure expression of his political feel-
ings ; a mirror of his patriotic sympathies with the weal and woe of his
country. They moreover exhibit an excited tone of sentiment in the
poet, called forth by the warm interest which he takes in the affairs of
the community, and by the dangers which threaten its welfare. The
prevailing sentiment is a wide and comprehensive humanity. When
Solon had occasion to express feelings of a different cast — when he
placed himself in a hostile attitude towards his countrymen and contem-
poraries, and used sarcasm and rebuke, he employed not elegiac, but
iambic and trochaic metres. The elegies of Solon are not indeed quite
free from complaints and reproaches ; but these flow from the regard
for the public interests, which animated his poetry. The repose w^hich
always follows an excited state of the mind, and of which Solon's elegies
would naturally present the reflection, was found in the expression of
hopes for the future, of a calm reliance on the gods who had taken
Athens into their protection, and a serious contemplation of the conse-
quences of good or evil acts. From his habits of reflection, and of reli-
ance on his understanding, rather than his feelings, his elegies contained
more general remarks on human affairs than those of any of his prede-
cessors. Some considerable passages of this kind have been preserved ;
one in which he divides human life into periods of seven years, and
assigns to each its proper physical and mental occupations |; another in
which the multifarious pursuits of men are described, and their inability
to command success ; for fate brings good and ill to mortals, and man
cannot escape from the destiny allotted to him by the gods§. Many
maxims of a worldly wisdom from Solon's elegies are likewise pre-
served, in which wealth, and comfort, and sensual enjoyment are
recommended, but only so far as was, according to Greek notions, con-
sistent with justice and fear of the gods. On account of these general
maxims, which are called yvw/xcu, sayings or apophthegms, Solon has
been reckoned among the gnomic poets, and his poems have been
denominated gnomic elegies. This appellation is so far correct, that the
gnomic character predominates in Solon's poetry ; nevertheless it is to
be borne in mind that this calm contemplation of mankind cannot
* Frcigm. 20.
+ Fragg. 18. 19. The fragm. 18 has received an additional distich from Diod.
Exc. 1. vii. — x. in Mai Script, vit. Nov. Coll. vol. li. p. 21.
+ Fragm. 14. § Fragm. 5.
120 HISTORY OF THE
alone constitute an elegy. For the unimpassioned enunciation of moral
sentences, the hexameter remained the most suitable form : hence the
sayings of Phocylides of Miletus (about Olymp. 60. b.c. 540), with
the perpetually recurring introduction " This, too, is a saying of Phocy-
lides," appear, from the genuine remnants of them, to have consisted
only of hexameters *.
§ 13. The remains of Theognis, on the other hand, belong both in
matter and form to the elegy properly so called, although in all that
respects their connexion and their character as works of art, they have
come down to us in so unintelligible a shape, that at first sight the most
copious remains of any Greek elegiac poet that we possess — for more
than 1400 verses are preserved under the name of Theognis — would
seem to throw less light on the character of the Greek elegy than the
much scantier fragments of Solon and Tyrtseus. It appears that from
the time of Xenophon, Theognis was considered chiefly as a teacher of
wisdom and virtue, and that those parts of his writings which had a
general application were far more prized than those which referred to
some particular occasion. When, therefore, in later times it became
the fashion to extract the general remarks and apophthegms from the
poets, everything was rejected from Theognis, by which his elegies
were limited to particular situations, or obtained an individual colour-
ing ; and the gnomology or collection of apophthegms was formed,
which, after various revisions and the interpolation of some fragments
of other elegiac poets, is still extant. We know, however, that Theog-
nis composed complete elegies, especially one to the Sicilian Megari-
ans, who escaped with their lives at the siege of Megara by Gelon
(Olymp. 74, 2. 483 b. c.) ; and the gnomic fragments themselves
exhibit in numerous places the traces of poems which were composed for
particular objects, and which on the whole could not have been very
different from the elegies of Tyrtseus, Archilochus, and Solon. As in
these poems of Theognis there is a perpetual reference to political sub-
jects, it will be necessary first to cast a glance at the condition o*
Megara in his time.
§ 14. Megara, the Doric neighbour of Athens, had, after its separation
from Corinth, remained for a long time under the undisturbed domi-
nion of a Doric nobility, which founded its claim to the exercise of the
sovereign power both on its descent, and its possession of large landed
estates. But before the legislation of Solon, Theagenes had raised him-
self to absolute power over the Megarians by pretending to espouse
* Two distichs cited under the name of Phocylides, in which in the first person
he expresses warmth and fidelity to friends, are probably the fragment of an elegy.
On the other hand, there is a distich which has the appearance of a jocular appendix
to the yvuftcci, almost of a self-parody : —
Kal root iaiKv\'ioioj' Aiotoi xazoi' ov% i ftiv^ 05 5' eu'
Tlctyrit, tf>.viv UpokXzovs, xk) TlgoscKtvis Ai^iog.
(Gaisford, fragm. b.)
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 12l
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,
was 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 in 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 Fenced, 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 (ayadol, ecrOXol and
kcikoI, SeiXoi), 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 chiet
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 or
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, spq. ed Bekker. f v. 1297, seq. % 53, seq.
122 HISTORY 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," as he
says i .
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. t; 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 UoXvrxilyi is to be read as a patronymic. The
remark is certain, as lloy.vra.ilyi 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 K^vs and UoXwrai^yi are also closely connected.
-xaXviras (with the long et) has the same meaning as a-oXuTu/xeov, a rich proprietor.
j| In v. 667 — 82 there is a manifest allusion to the y%$ a,vuo > a,cr/u,o{ in the verses
X^s^ara 5* a.gtfd^ovtri (Zr/i, xofffzos V a^oXuXiv,
ActtrjAo; Oovk'it ' 1jf ■
128 HISTORY OF THE
the Athenians had set up in a grotto under their acropolis, because the
Arcadian god had, according to the popular belief, assisted them at
Marathon. " Miltiades set up me, the cloven-footed Pan, the Arca-
dian, who took part against the Medians, and with the Athenians/'
But Simonides sometimes condescended to express sentiments which he
could not have shared, as in the inscription on the tripod consecrated at
Delphi, which the Greeks afterwards caused to be erased : " Pausanias,
the commander of the Greeks, having destroyed the army of the Medes,
dedicated this monument to Phoebus*." These verses express the arro-
gance of the Spartan general, which the good sense and moderation of
the poet would never have approved. The form of nearly all these epi-
grams of Simonides is the elegiac. Simonides usually adhered to it
except when a name (on account of a short between two long syllables)
could not be adapted to the dactylic metref ; in which cases he employed
trochaic measures. The character of the language, and especially the
dialect, also remained on the whole true to the elegiac type, except that
in inscriptions for monuments designed for Doric tribes, traces of the
Doric dialect sometimes occur.
CHAPTER XL
§ 1. Striking contrast of the Iambic and other contemporaneous Poetry. — § 2.
Poetry in reference to the bad and the vulgar. — § 3. Different treatment of it in
Homer and Hesiod § 4. Homeric Comic Poems, Margites, &c. — § 5. Scurri-
lous songs at meals, at the worship of Demuter ; the Festival of Demeter o aros
the cradle of the Iambic poetry of Archilochus. — § 6. Date and Public Life of
Archilochus. — § 7. His Private Life ; subject of his Iambics. — § 8. Metrical form
of his iambic and trochaic verses, and different application of the two asynaitetes ;
epodes. — § 9. Inventions and innovations in the musical recitation. — § 10. In-
novations in Language. — § 11. Simonides of Amorgus; his Satirical Poem against
Women. — § 12. Solon's iambics and trochaics. — § 13. Iambic Poems of Hippo-
nax ; iuvention of choliambics ; Ananias. — § 14. The Fable ; its application
among the Greeks, especially in Iambic poetry. — § 15. Kinds of the Fable, named
after different races and cities. — § 16. ^Esop, his Life, and the Character of his
Fables. — § 17. Parody, burlesques in an epic form, by Hipponax. — § 18. Batra-
chomyomachia.
§ 1. The kind of poetry distinguished among the ancients by the name
Iambic, was created by the Parian poet Archilochus, at the same time
as the elegy. In entering on the consideration of this sort of poetry,
and in endeavouring by the same process as we have heretofore em-
ployed to trace its origin to the character of the Grecian people, and to
estimate its poetical and moral value, we are met at the first glance by
facts more difficult, and apparently more impossible of comprehension,
than any we have hitherto encountered. At a time when the Greeks
* Fr. 40. f As *Ag%ivuvryis, 'lwbvixoi.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 129
accustomed only to the calm unimpassioned tone of the Epos, had but
just found a temperate expression of livelier emotions in the elegy,
this kind of poetry, which has nothing in common with the Epos,
either in form or in matter, arose. It was a light tripping- measure,
sometimes loosely constructed or purposely halting and broken, and
well adapted to vituperation, unrestrained by any regard to morality or
decency*.
The ancients drew a lively image of this bitter and unscrupulous
spirit of slanderous attack in the well-known story of the daughters of
Lycambes, who hanged themselves from shame and vexation. Yet
this sarcastic Archilochus, this venomous libeller, was esteemed by
antiquity not only an unrivalled master in his peculiar line, but, gene-
rally, the first poet after Homerf. Where, we are compelled to ask,
is the soaring flight of the soul which distinguishes the true poet?
"Where that beauty of delineation which confers grace and dignity even
on the most ordinary details ?
§ 2. But Poetry has not only lent herself, in every age, to the descrip-
tions of a beautiful and magnificent world, in which the natural powers
revealed to us by our own experience are invested with a might and a
perfection surpassing truth : she has also turned back her glance upon
the reality by which she was surrounded, with all its wants and its
weaknesses ; and the more she was filled with the beauty and the
majestic grace of her own ideal world, the more deeply did she feel,
the more vividly express, the evils and the deficiencies attendant on
man's condition. The modes in which Poetry has accomplished this
have been various ; as various as the tempers and the characters of
those whom she has inspired.
A man of a serene and cheerful cast of mind, satisfied with the order
of the universe, regarding the great and the beautiful in nature and
in human things with love and admiration, though he distinctly per-
ceives the defective and the bad, does not suffer his perception of
them to disturb his enjoyment of the whole : he contemplates it as the
shade in a picture, which serves but to bring out, not to obscure, the
brilliancy of the principal parts. A light jest drops from the poet's
tongue, a pitying smile plays on his lip ; but they do not darken or
deform the lofty beauty of his creations.
The thoughts, the occupations, of another are more intimately
blended with the incidents and the conditions of social and civil life ; and
as a more painful experience of all the errors and perversities of mau
is thus forced upon him, his voice, even in poetry, will assume a more
angry and vehement tone. And yet even this voice of harsh rebuke
* Avtrruvri; "u.fA.fioi, raging iambics, says the Emperor Hadrian. (Brunck, Anal. ii.
p. 286.;
"In celeres iambos misit furentem." Horace.
f Maximus poeta aut certe summo pvoxiraus; as he is called in Valerius Maximus.
K
130 HISTORY OF THE
may be poetical, when it is accompanied by a pure and noble conception
of things as they ought to be.
Yet more, the poet may himself suffer from the assaults of human
passions. He may himself be stained with the vices and the weak-
nesses of human nature, and his voice may be poured forth from amidst
the whirl and the conflict of the passions, and may be troubled, not only
by disgust at the sight of interruptions to the moral order of the world,
but by personal resentments and hatreds. The ancients in their
day, and we in ours, have bestowed admiring sympathy on such a poet,
if the expressions of his scorn and his hate did but betray an unusual
vehemence of feeling and vigour of thought ; and if, through all the
passionate confusion of his spirit, gleams of a nature susceptible of
noble sentiments were apparent ; for the impotent rage of a vulgar
mind will never rise to the dignity of poetry, even though it be adorned
with all the graces of language.
§ 3. Here, as in many other places, it will be useful to recur
to the two epic poets of antiquity, the authors of all the principles
of Greek literature. Homer, spite of the solemnity and loftiness
of epic poetry, is full of archness and humour ; but it is of that
cheerful and good-natured character which tends rather to increase
than to disturb enjoyment. Thersites is treated with unqualified
severity ; and we perceive the peculiar disgust of the monarchi-
cally disposed poet at such inciters of the people, who slander every-
thing distinguished and exalted, merely because they are below
it. But it must be remarked that Thersites is a very subordinate
figure in the group of heroes, and serves only as a foil to those
who, like Ulysses, predominate over the people as guides and
rulers. When, however, persons of a nobler sort are exhibited in
a comic light, as, for instance, Agamemnon, blinded by Zeus and
confident in his delusion and in his supposed wisdom *, it is done
with such a delicacy of handling that the hero hardly loses any of his
dignity in our eyes. In this way the comedy of Homer (if we may
use the expression) dared even to touch the gods, and in the lottiest
regions found subjects for humorous descriptions: for, as the gods
presided over the moral order of the universe only as a body, and no
individual god could exercise his special functions without regard to the
prerogatives of others, Ares, Aphrodite, and Hermes might serve as
types of the perfection of quarrelsome violence, of female weakness, and
of finished cunning, without ceasing to have their due share of the
honours paid to divinity.
Of a totally different kind is the wit of Hesiod; especially as it is
employed in the Theogony against the daughters of Pandora, the female
sex. This has its source in a strong feeling of disgust and indignation,
* See ch. v. § 8.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 131
which leads the poet, in the bitterness of his mood, to overstep the bounds
of justice, and to deny all virtue to women.
In the Works and Days, too, which afford him frequent opportunities
for censure, Hesiod is not deficient in a kind of wit which exhibits the
bad and the contemptible with striking vigour ; but his wit is never
that gay humour which characterises the Homeric poetry, of which
it is the singular property to reconcile the frail and the faulty with the
grand and the elevated, and to blend both in one harmonious idea.
§ 4. Before, however, we come to the consideration of the third stage
of the poetical representation of the bad and the despicable, the exist-
ence of which we have hinted at in our mention of Archilochus, we must
remark that even the early epic poetry contained not only scattered
traits of pleasantry and satire, but also entire pictures in the same tone,
which formed small epics. On this head we have great reason to
lament the loss of the Mar gites 9 which. Aristotle, in his Poetics, ascribes,
according to the opinion current among the Greeks, to Homer himself,
and regards as the ground- work of comedy, in like manner as he regards
the Iliad and the Odyssey as the precursors of tragedy. He likewise
places the Margites in the same class with poems written in the iambic
metre ; but he seems to mean that the iambus was not employed
for this class of poetry till subsequently to this poem. Hence it
is extremely probable that the iambic verses which, according to
the ancient grammarians, were introduced irregularly into the Mar-
gites, were interpolated in a later version, perhaps by Pigres the Hali-
carnassian, the brother of Artemisia, who is also called the author
of this poem*.
From the few fragments and notices relative to the Homeric Margites
which have come down to us, we can gather that it was a representa-
tion of a stupid man, who had a high opinion of his own cleverness, for
he was said "to know many works, but know all badly t;" and we
discover from a story preserved by Eustathius that it was necessary to
hold out to him very subtle reasons to induce him to do things which
required but a very small portion of intellect |.
There were several other facetious small epics which bore the name of
Homer ; such as the poem of the Cercopes, those malicious, and yet merry
elves whom Hercules takes prisoners after they have played him many
mischievous tricks, and drags them about till they escape from him by
* Thus the beginning of the Margites was as follows : —
v B.kfi $Z' ! ' BU y&P. 'S^W)
where the skin is not called tender generally, but in reference to the former bloom of
the person addressed ; and as (fragm. 55)
where the rock is not called dark generally, but in reference to the difficulty of
avoiding a rock beneath the surface of the water. Such epic epithets as vrulV "Apia
ptntp'ovov (fragm. 116) are very rare.
§ E. g. fragm. 58 : roiuvbi V Z -trU-wi, rhv vruyhv £,££/?, where the article separates
rotKv^s. from -rvyh : " such are the posteriors which you have."
|| We may cite, as instances of the simple language of Archilochus, two fragments
evidently belonging to a poem which had some resemblance to Horace's 6th epode.
In the beginning was fragment 122, sroAA' oTB' uXutwI, «a.x' \%?n$ h psyx', "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 Amorgus 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. a). 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
(urn 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) h V ivio-rapau (tiya., Tov
zxxtoi ri \uvto. feivoTs avrup.u(Zio-0ut xocxo7g, by which words the poet applied to him-
self the image of the hedgehog: he had the art of retaliating on those who ill-
treated him. Consequently the first fragment would be an incomplete trochaic
tetrameter .
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 141
party and order its due share of power, he had not succeeded in
satisfying any. In order to shame his opponents, he wrote some
iambics, in which he calls on his censors to consider of how many citizens
the state would have been bereaved, if he had listened to the demands of
the contending- factions. Asa witness of the goodness of his plans, Solon
calls the great goddess Earth, the mother of Cronus, whose surface had
before his time been covered with numerous boundary stones, in sign of
the ground being mortgaged : these he had succeeded in removing, and
in restoring the land in full property to the mortgagers. This frag-
ment is well worth reading*, since it gives as clear an idea of the poli-
tical situation of Athens at that time, as it does of Solon's iambic style.
It shows a truly Attic energy and address in defending a favourite
cause, while it contains the first germs of that power of speecht,
which afterwards came to maturity in the dialogue of the Athenian
stage, and in the oratory of the popular assembly and of the courts of
justice. In the dialect and expressions, the poetry of Solon retains
more of the Ionic cast.
In like manner the few remnants of Solon's trochaics enable us to
form some judgment of his mode of handling this metre. Solon wrote
his trochaics at nearly the same time as his iambics ; when, notwith-
standing his legislation, the struggle of parties again broke out between
their ambitious leaders, and some thoughtless citizens reproached
Solon, because he, the true patriot, the friend of the whole community,
had not seized the reins with a firm hand, and made himself monarch :
" 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 £." 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 Athenagoras 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 hiv'ortis, t Fragment 25, Gaisford.
142 HISTOHY OF THE
which found an utterance in the iambics of 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."
His 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 % 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 « clppuA/xov.
£ la Tyrwhitt, Dissert.de Babrio, p. 17,
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. I43
larly lengthening the penultimate short syllable. Some remains of this
kind are extant. Hipponax 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
xelation to the iambic : — the Fable (originally called clIvoq, and after-
wards, less precisely, /j,v%g and Xoyoc), 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 I carry thee, though
thou art a songstress ; I can tear thee in pieces or I can let thee «-o 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.
% tfuytintris. See Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 281.
§ Op. et D. v. 202, seq. \\ Fr. 38, ed. Gaisford 5 see note on fr. 39.
144 HISTORY OF THE
on 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
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 J.
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. S). 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, llvtiav kUukuuv awaymyn, c. i. Aristonh. Av. 651, ascribes the fable
f See Gaisford, fr. 39.
\ Arist. Rhet. ii. 20. The fable of Menenius Agrippa is similarly applied ; but
it is difficult to believe that the ainos, 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 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 (yeXoia).
§ 16. To return to iEsop : 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
Ehetor. Grec. vol. ii. p. 12.
+ 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.
iEsop 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 Cotyeeon 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 vEsop 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 Delphians, of the beetle who found means to revenge
himself on the eagle }.
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 Phyedrus), 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
* Euyiwv, or Evyztav, falsely written Euyuruv, in Suidas in v. A'Uwzos-
f Mesembria, Pattymbria, and Selymbria, are Thracian names, and mean the
cities of Meses, Pattys, and Selys.
% Aristoph. Vesp. 1448. cf. Pac. 129. Coraes, ^Esop. c. 2.
§ A distich of an ^sopian fable is, however, attributed by Diogenes Laartius to
Socrates. Fragments of fables in hexameters also occur.
LITERATURE OV 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 de^ ice of parody.
We have already alluded to a fragment of Asius* in elegiac measure,
which is not imked 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 was
ascribed without hesitation to Homer himself.
* Ch. x. § 7. f Ap. Athen. xv. p. 698, B.
X The passage of Plutarch de Malign. Herod, c. 43. ought to be written as foU
lows: — TiXo; Vi xadnpivous h YiXaraiocls ocyvoyitmi [ti%pi tsXovs rov ayuvot. ?ovs"Ek\yvotf,
uff'Tto (Zur(>uxop,vo{£a,%ic&s yivopiv/is (jjv Hty^ns o ' A^rtfAttria? Iv STStn wai^av xec) (fikvapat
tygetyj/tv) v\ ffiuvrq ^iecycuvitrocffdai ffuvfa/tivwv, 7v« XaQeoet 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 |J. 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 (01. 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. hi. § 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.
f Ch. i. § 5 (p. 9). % Chap.ii. § 8.
§ vrutriuv B' Iffrh aothoraryi, 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.
*j[ Miiller's Dorians, b. iv. ch. vi. §2.
** Marmor Parium, ep.'xxxiv. 1. 49, compared with Piutatch 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 been 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. w Disdaining the
four-stringed song, we shall sound new hymns on the seven-stringed
phorminx." The tetrachord was strung so that the two 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
springs, 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 semitone. 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
* % vrpcoryi xaruffrafft: ruv Tig) a,v'/iTvi, <7Ttt.Qa.[Ai(rn, fiiffy, ki%a,ves, vrxgvvdm, vTcirfi. The intervals
were 1, 1, 1J, 1, 1, ^, if the heptachord was strung, according to the diatonic scale,
in the Doric style.
f In proof of the account of the heptachord given in the text, see Boeckh de
Metris Pindari, iii. 7, p. 205, sqq.
I Of these short intervals, however, the one is greater than the other, the former
being more, the latter less, than a semitone. The first is called apotome, the other
leimma.
§ See Plutarch de Musica, 7, 11, 20, 29, 33; a treatise full of valuable notices,
but written with so little care that the author often contradicts himself.
\\ For example, whether the intervals of the diatonon are \, 1, 1, as in the Doric
style, or 1, $, 1, as in the Phrygian, or 1, 1 £, as in the Lydian.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 153
peculiar character was the origin of these styles. Yet their fixed
and systematic relation to the Doric style must have been the work
of a Greek musician, probably of Terpander himself, who, in his native
island of Lesbos, had frequent opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the different musical styles of his neighbours of Asia Minor. Thus
a fragment of Pindar relates, that Terpander, at the Lydian feasts, had
heard the tone of the pectis, (a Lydian instrument, with a compass of
two octaves,) and had formed from it the kind of lyre which was called
Barbiton* . The Lesbians likewise used a particular sort of cithara,
called the Asiatic ('Acme) ; and this was by many held to be the inven-
tion of Terpander, by others to be the work of his disciple Cepion f.
It is manifest that the Lesbian musicians, with Terpander at their head,
were the means of uniting the music of Asia Minor with that of the
ancient Greeks (which was best preserved among the Dorians in Pelopon-
nesus), and that they founded on it a system, in which each style had its
appropriate character. To the establishment of this character the
nomes (vojuoi) contributed, musical compositions of great simplicity and
severity, something resembling the most ancient melodies of our church
music. The Doric style appears from the statements of all the wit-
nesses to have had a character of great seriousness and gravity, pecu-
liarly calculated to produce a calm, firm, collected frame of mind. "With
regard to the Doric style (says Aristotle), all are agreed that it is the
most sedate, and has the most manly character." The Phrygian style
was evidently derived from the loud vehement styles of music employed
by the Phrygians in the worship of the Great Mother of the gods and
the Corybantes J. In Greece, too, it was used in orgiastic worships,
especially in that of Dionysus. It was peculiarly adapted to the
expression of enthusiasm. The Lydian had the highest notes of any
of the three ancient styles, and therefore approached nearer to the
female voice ; its character was thus softer and feebler than either of
the others. Yet it admitted of considerable variety of expression, as
the melodies of the Lydian style had sometimes a painful and me-
lancholy, sometimes a calm and pleasing character. Aristotle (who, in
his Politics, has given some judicious precepts on the use of music in
education) considers the Lydian style peculiarly adapted to the musical
cultivation of early youth.
In order to complete our view of this subject, we will here give
an account of the other styles of Greek music, although they were
* In Athenaeus. xvi. p. 635. There are great difficulties as to the sense of this
much contested passage. Pindar's meaning probably is, that Terpander formed
the deep-resounding barbiton, by taking the lower octave from the pectis (or magadis).
Among the Greek poets, Sappho is said to have first used the pectis or magadis,
then Anacreon.
f Plutarch de Mus. 6. Anecd. Bekker, vol. i. p. 452. Compare Aristoph. Thesm.
120. with the Scholia.
X Seech. hi. §8.
154 HISTORY OF THE
invented after the time of Terpander. Between the Doric and Phry-
gian styles — with respect to the height and lowness of the tones, —
the Ionic was interpolated; and between the Phrygian and Lydian,
the iEolic. The former is said to have had a languid and soft, but
pathetic tone ; it was particularly adapted to laments. The latter was
fitted for the expression of lively, and even impassioned feelings ; it is
best known from its use in the remains of the Lesbian poets and
of Pindar. To these five styles were then added an equal number
with higher and lower tones, which were annexed, at their respective
extremes, to the original system. The former were called Hyperdorian,
Hyperiastian, Hyperphrygian, &c. ; the others Hypolydian, Hypoaeolian,
Hypophrygian, &c. Of these styles none belong to this period except
those which approximate closely to the first five, viz., the Hyperlydian,
and the Hyperdorian, which was also called Mixolydian, as bordering
upon the Lydian. The invention of the former is ascribed to Polym-
nestus *, that of the latter to the poetess Sappho ; this latter was pecu-
liarly used for laments of a pathetic and tender cast. But the entire
system of the fifteen styles was only brought gradually to perfection
by the musicians who lived after the times of Pindar.
§ 5. Another proof that Terpander reduced to a regular system the
styles used in his time is, that he was the first who marked the dif-
ferent tones in music. It is stated, that Terpander first added musical
notes to poems t- Of his mode of notation, indeed, we know nothing ;
that subsequently used by the Greeks was introduced in the time of Py-
thagoras. Hence, in later times, there existed written tunes by Terpander,
of the kind called nomes J, whereas the nomes of the ancient bards, Olen,
Philammon, &c, were only preserved by tradition, and must there-
fore have undergone many changes. These nomes of Terpander
were arranged for singing and playing upon the cithara. It cannot,
indeed, be doubted that Terpander made use of the flute, an instrument
generally known among the Greeks in his time ; Archilochus, the con-
temporary of Terpander, even speaks of Lesbian pseans being sung to
the flute§ ; although the cithara was the most usual accompaniment for
songs of this kind. But it appears, on the whole, from the accounts of the
ancients, that the cithara was the principal instrument in the Lesbian
music. The Lesbian school of singers to the cithara maintained its
pre-eminence in the contests, especially at the Carnean festival at Sparta,
up to Pericleitus, the last Lesbian who was victorious on the cithara,
* See § 11.
f MiXos -7fgunrat oregnfaiu v /jl'-Xti vipihv-u abitv iv ro7$ ayuaiv. Plutarch de Mus. 3, after
Heraclides.
% Above, ch. iii. § 7.
§ Autos ildp^uv irgos uuXov Awfiiov nxivovec,, Archilochus in Athen. v. p. 180, E. fr. 58.
Gaisford. It may also be conjectured from the mutilated passage of the Parian
marble, Kp. 35, that Terpander practised flute-playing.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 155
and who lived before Hipponax (Olym. 60)*. Probably some of these
nomes of Terpander were improvements on ancient tunes used in
religious rites; and this appears to be the meaning of the statement
that some of the nomes noted down by Terpander were invented by the
ancient Delphic bard Philammon. Others seem to have grown out of
popular songs, to which the names of iEolic and Boeotian nomes allude f.
The greater number were probably invented by Terpander himself.
These nomes of Terpander were finished compositions, in which a cer-
tain musical idea was systematically worked out ; as is proved by the
different parts which belonged to one of them J.
The rhythmical form of Terpander's compositions was very simple.
He is said to have added musical notes to hexameters §. Jn particular
he arranged passages of the Homeric poems (which hitherto had only
been recited by rhapsodists) to a musical accompaniment on the cithara;
he also composed hymns in the same metre, which probably resembled
the Homeric hymns, though with somewhat of the lyric character ||.
But the nomes of Terpander can scarcely all have had the simple uni-
form rhythm of the heroic hexameter. That they had not, is proved
by the names of two of Terpander's nomes, the Orthian and the
Trochaic ; so called (according to the testimony of Pollux and other
grammarians) from the rhythms. The latter was, therefore, composed
in trochaic metre ; the former in those orthian rhythms, the peculiarity
of which consists in a great extension of certain feet. There is like-
wise a fragment of Terpander, consisting entirely of long syllables, in
which the thought is as weighty and elevated as the metre is solemn
and dignified. " Zeus, first cause of all, leader of all ; Zeus, to thee
I send this beginning of hymns ^[." Metres composed exclusively of
long syllables were employed for religious ceremonies of the greatest
solemnity. The name of the spondaic foot, which consisted of two long
syllables, was derived from the libation (ottovc^), at which a sacred
silence was observed **. Hymns of this kind were often sung to Zeus
in his ancient sanctuary of Dodona, on the borders of Thesprotia and
Molossia ; and hence is explained the name of the Molossian foot, con-
* Hence in Sappho, fr, 52, Blomf. (69, Neue), the Lesbian singer is called wippo^os
ukXooeLs, Plutarch deMus.c 10 ; cf. c. 15. Hence also, inc. 7, an-
le tic nomes are ascribed to Olympus; but in c. 3 the first aulodic nomes are ascribed
to Clonas.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 159
of Greece, it is natural that his precise date should not have been
recorded. His date, however, is sufficiently marked by the advances of
the Greek music and rhythm due to his efforts ; and the generation to
which he belonged can thus be determined. For, as it appears both
from the nature of his inventions and from express testimony that
music had made some progress in his time, he must be later than Ter-
pander; on the other hand, he must be prior to Thaletas, according to
the statement just mentioned ; so that he must be placed between the
30th and 40th Olympiads (b. c. 660—20) *.
§ 9. Thaletas makes the third epoch in the history of Greek music.
A native of Crete, he found means to express in a musical form the
spirit which pervaded the religious institutions of his country, by which
he produced a strong impression upon the other Greeks. He seems
to have been partly a priest and partly an artist; and from this circum-
stance his history is veiled in obscurity. He is called a Gortynian, but
is also said to have been born at Elyrus ; the latter tradition may per-
haps allude to the belief that the mythical expiatory priest Carmanor
(who was supposed to have purified Apollo himself from the slaughter of
the Python, and to have been the father of the bard Chrysothemis)
lived at Tarrha, near Elyrus, in the mountains on the west of Crete.
It is at any rate certain that Thaletas was connected with this ancient
seat of religious poetry and music, the object of which was to appease
passion and emotion. Thaletas was in the height of his fame invited
to Sparta, that he might restore peace and order to the city, at that
time torn by intestine commotions. In this attempt he is supposed to
have completely succeeded ; and his political influence on this occasion
gave rise to the report that Lycurgus had been instructed by him f.
In fact, however, Thaletas lived several centuries later than Ly-
curgus, having been one of the musicians who assisted in perfecting
Terpander's musical system at Sparta, and giving it a new and fixed
form. The musicians named by Plutarch, as the arrangers off this
second system, are Thaletas of Gortyna, Xenodamus of Cythera, Xeno-
critus the Locrian, Polymnestus of Colophon, Sacadas of Argos.
Among these, however, the last named are later than the former $ as
Polymnestus composed for the Lacedaemonians a poem in honour of
Thaletas, which is mentioned by Pausanias. If, therefore, Sacadas was
a victor in the Pythian games in Olymp. 47, 3 (b. c. 590), and if
this may be taken as the time when the most recent of these musi-
cians flourished, the first of them, Thaletas, may be fixed not later
* According to Suidas, Olympus was contemporary with a king Midas, the son of
Gordius ; but this is no argument against the assumed date, as the Phrygian kings,
down to the time of Croesus, were alternately named Midas and Gordius.
t Nevertheless Straho, x. p. 481, justly calls Thaletas a legislative man. Like the
Cretan training in general (iElian V. H. ii. 39,) he doubtless combined poetry and
music with a measured and well-ordered conduct.
160 HISTORY OF THE
than the 40th Olympiad (b. c. 620); which places him in the right rela-
tion to Terpander and Olympus*.
§ 10. We now return to the musical and poetical productions of
Thaletas, which were connected with the ancient religious rites of his
country. In Crete, at the time of Thaletas, the predominating worship was
that of Apollo ; the character of which was a solemn elevation of mind,
a firm reliance in the power of the god, and a calm acquiescence in the
order of things proclaimed by him. But it cannot be doubted that the
ancient Cretan worship of Zeus was also practised, with the wild war
dances of the Curetes, like the Phrygian worship of the Magna Mater f.
The musical and poetical works of Thaletas fall under two heads — pceans
and hyporchemes. In many respects these two resembled each other ;
inasmuch as the paean originally belonged exclusively to the worship of
Apollo, and the hyporcheme was also performed at an early date in
temples of Apollo, as at Delos J. Hence paeans and hyporchemes were
sometimes confounded. Their main features, however, were quite dif-
ferent. The paean displayed the calm and serious feeling which pre-
vailed in the worship of Apollo, without excluding the expression of an
earnest desire for his protection, or of gratitude for aid already vouch-
safed. The hyporcheme, on the other hand, was a dance of a mimic
character, which sometimes passed into the playful and the comic.
Accordingly the hyporchematic dance is considered as a peculiar species
of the lyric dances, and, among dramatic styles of dancing, it is com-
pared with the cord ax of comedy, on account of its merry and sportive
tone §. The rhythms of the hyporcheme, if we may judge from the
fragments of Pindar, were peculiarly light, and had an imitative and
graphic character.
These musical and poetical styles were improved by Thaletas, who
employed both the orchestic productions of his native country, and the
impassioned music and rhythms of Olympus. It has already been re-
marked that he borrowed the Cretan rhythm from Olympus, which doubt-
less acquired this name from its having been made known by Thaletas
of Crete. The entire class of feet to which the Cretan foot belongs,
were called Pceons, from being used in paeans (or paeons). Thaletas
doubtless gave a more rapid march to the paean by this animated and
vigorous rhythm || . But the hyporchematic productions of Thaletas
must have been still gayer and more energetic. And Sparta was the
* Clinton, who, in Fast. Hellen. vol. 1. p. 199, sq., places Thaletas before Ter-
pander, rejects the most authentic testimony, that concerning the xccrcto-Tuins of
music at Sparta ; and moreover, does not allow sufficient weight to the far more
artificial character of the music and rhythms of Thaletas.
■f Kovgwris n ho) %yizoff uh\
&c, No. 83, ed. Blomfield, No. 46, ed. Neue, alludes to some imitation of a Cretan
166 HISTORY OF THE
was the expression of individual ideas and sentiments, with warmth and
frankness. These sentiments found a natural expression in the native
dialect of these poets, the ancient iEolic, which has a character of sim-
plicity and fondness ; the epic dialect, the general language of Greek
poetry, was only used sparingly, in order to soften and elevate this po-
pular dialect. Unhappily the works of these poets were allowed to
perish at a time when they had become unintelligible from the singu-
larity of their dialect, and the condensation of their thoughts. To this
cause, and not to the warmth of their descriptions of the passion of love,
is to be attributed the oblivion to which they were consigned. For if lite-
rary works had been condemned on moral grounds of this kind, the
writings of Martial and Petronius, and many poems of the Anthology,
would not exist ; while AlcaBus and Sappho would probably be extant.
As, however, the productions of these two poets have not been preserved,
we must attempt to form as perfect an idea of them as can be obtained
from the sources of information which are open to us.
§ 2. The circumstances of the life of Alceus are closely connected
with the political circumstances of his native city Mytilene, in the island
of Lesbos. Alcaeus belonged to a noble family, and a great part of his
public life was employed in asserting the privileges of his order. These
were then endangered by democratic factions, which appear to have
placed ambitious men at their head, and to have given them powerful
support, as happened about the same time in Peloponnesus. In many
cases the demagogues obtained absolute, or (as the Greeks called it)
tyrannical power. A tyrant of this kind in Mytilene was Melanchrus,
who was opposed by the brothers of Alcaeus, Antimenidas and Cicis, in
conjunction with Pittacus, the wisest statesman of the time in Lesbos,
and was slain by them in the 42d Olympiad, 612 B.C. At this time
the Mytileneans were at war with foreign enemies, the Athenians, who,
under Phrynon, had conquered and retained possession of Sigeum, a
maritime town of Troas. The Mytileneans, among whom was Alcreus,
were defeated in this war ; but Pittacus slew Phrynon in single combat,
Olymp. 43. 3. 606 b. c. Mytilene henceforth was divided into parties,
from the heads of which new tyrants arose, such as (according to
Strabo) Myrsilus, Megalagyrus, and the Cleanactids. The aristocratic
party, to which Alcseus and Antimenidas belonged, was driven out of
Mytilene, and the two brothers then wandered about the world. Alcseus,
being exiled, made long sea voyages, which led him to Egypt ; and
Antimenidas served in the Babylonian army, probably in the war which
Nebuchadnezzar waged in Upper Asia with the Egyptian Pharaoh
Necho, and the states of Syria, Phoenicia, and Judaea, in the years from
dance round the altar; and dances of this kind were, perhaps, often combined with
the hymns of the iEolians ; see Anthol. Palat. 1, 189. Anacreon's poems were also
sung by female choruses at nocturnal festivals, according to Critias ap. Athen. xiii 8
p. 600 D.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 167
b. c. 606 (01. 43. 3) to 584 (Ol. 49. 1), and longer* Some time
after this we again find the brothers in the neighbourhood of their native
city, at the head of the exiled nobles, and trying to effect their return
by force. Pittacus was then unanimously elected dictator by the people,
to defend the constitution, ((uffv/jv^nje). The administration of Pit-
tacus lasted, according to the accounts of ancient chronologers, from
Olymp. 47. 3. (b. c. 590), to 50. 1. (b. c. 580). He was so fortunate
as to overcome the exiled party, and to gain them over by his clemency
and moderation. He also (according to a well authenticated statement)
was reconciled with Alcaeus ; and it is probable that the poet, after
many wanderings, passed his latter days in the quiet enjoyment of his
home.
§ 3. In the midst of these troubles and perils, Alcaeus struck the
lyre, not, like Solon, with a spirit of calm and impartial patriotism, to
bewail the evils of the state, and to show the way to improvement, but to
give utterance to the passionate emotions of his mind. When Myrsilus
was about to establish a tyrannical government in Mytilene, Alcaeus
composed the beautiful ode, in which he compares the state to a ship
tossed about by the waves, while the sea has washed into the hold, and
the sail is torn by the wind. A considerable fragment of this ode has
been preserved t ; and we may also form some idea of its contents from
the fine imitation of it by Horace, which, however, probably falls short
of the original J, When Myrsilus dies, the joy of the poet knows no
bounds. " Now is the time for carousing, now is the time for chal-
lenging the guests to drink, for Myrsilus is dead §." Horace has also
taken the beginning of this ode for one of his finest poems j[. After
the death of Myrsilus, we find Alcaeus aiming the shafts of his poetry
at Megalagyrus and the Cleanactids, on account of their attempts
to obtain illegal power ; although, according to Strabo, Alcaeus himself
was not entirely guiltless of attempts against the constitution of Myti-
lene. Even when Pittacus was chosen dictator by the people, the dis-
content of the poet with the political state of his country did not cease ;
on the contrary, Pittacus (who was esteemed by all a wise, moderate,
and patriotic statesman, and who had clearly shown his republican
virtue by resigning his power after a ten years' administration) now be-
came the prime object of the vehement attacks of Alcaeus. He reproaches
the people for having unanimously chosen the ignoble % Pittacus to be
tyrant over the ill-fated city ; and he assails the dictator with vitupera-
* The battle of Carchemish, or Circesium, appears from Berosus to fall in 604 b. c,
the year of Nabopoiassars death; but 606 b. c, the date of the biblical chronology,
is probably right.
1 Fragm. 2. Blomf. 2. Matth. cf. 3.
J Carm. 1, 14. O navis referent —
§ Fragm. 4. Blomf. 4. Matth.
|| Carm. 1. 37. Nunc est bibendum —
Gfi rev Ke*9*dTe$a Uittkxov. Fragm. 23. Blomf. 5. Matth.
16S HISTORY OF THE
tive epithets which appear fitter for iambic than for lyric poetry. Thus
he taunts him in words of the boldest formation, sometimes with his
mean appearance, sometimes with his low and vulgar mode of life *.
As compared with Pittacus, it seems that the poet now deemed the
former tyrant Melanchrus, " worthy of the respect of the city f/ 3
In this class of his poems (called by the ancients his party poems,
StXoaTCMTicMTTiKa), Alcaeus gave a lively picture of the political state of
Mytilene, as it appeared to his partial view. His war-songs express a
stirring martial spirit, though they do not breathe the strict principles of
military honour which prevailed among the Dorians, particularly in
Sparta. He describes with joy his armoury, the walls of which glit-
tered with helmets, coats of mail, and other pieces of armour, " which
must now be thought upon, as the work of war is begun J." He
speaks of war with courage and confidence to his companions in arms;
there is no need of walls (he says), " men are the best rampart of the
city § ;" nor does he fear the shining weapons of the enemy. " Em-
blems on shields make no wounds ||." He celebrates the battles of his
adventurous brother, who had, in the service of the Babylonians, slain a
gigantic champion %; and speaks of the ivory sword-handle which this
brother had brought from the extremity of the earth, probably the pre-
sent of some oriental prince **. Yet the pleasure he seems to have felt
in deeds of arms did not prevent him from relating in one of his poems,
how in a battle with the Athenians he had escaped indeed with his life,
but the victors had hung up his castaway arms as trophies, in the
temple of Pallas at Sigeum f '[.
§ 4. A noble nature, accompanied with strong passions, a variety of
character frequent among the iEolians, appears in all the poetry of
Alcseus, especially in the numerous poems which sing the praises of
love and wine. The frequent mention of wine in the fragments of
Alcseus shows how highly he prized the gift of Bacchus, and how in •
genious he was in the invention of inducements to drinking. Now it is
the cold storms of winter which drive him to drink by the flame of the
* In Diog. Laert. 1. 81. Fragm. 6. Matth. Thus he calls Pittacus ga^aga-fta?, that
is, who sups in the dark, and not in a room lighted with lamps and torches.
f Fragm. 7. Blomf. 7. Matth.
I Fragm. 24. Blomf. 1. Matth. comp. below § 5.
§ Fragm. 9. Blomf. 11, 12. Matth.
|| Fragm. 13. Matth.
•|f The fragment in Strabo xiii. p. 61 7, (86. Blomf. 8. Matth.) has been thus emended
by the author in Niebuhr's Rheinisches Museum, vol. i. p. 287. — K«i tov a.hxv\uv'iot; trv^fia^ouvra. tovcov
kvtov? pv:iv.
f In Suidas in 2«ov(fi' ^apa,} Yi tz tfoptyvpov Sli^cg.
Demetrius de elocut. c. 106, quotes these verses without a name; but it can
scarcely he 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.
j| Himerius, Orat. I. 4. § 16.
•fl" 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. 2$
n2
ISO 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 Pergsean 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/\.a,\a-??)> 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 f.
§11. We now come to Anacreon, whose poetry may be considered
as akin to that of Alcseus 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
iEgsean 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
* In Strabo xiv. p. 644. A fragment in Schol. Odyss. viii. 293. (fragment 132.
ed. Bergk,) also reiVrs 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. ^Eschyl.Prom. 128. This Critias was at that
time (Olymp. 64) about sixteen years old; for he was born m 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 Time p. 216, eighty years younger than
his grandfather. Consequently, the birth of the younger Critias falls in Olymp.
80, which agrees perfectly with the recorded events of his life. The Critias born in
Olymp. 60, is however called a son cf 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 (Elvrifitvui Kgiviy sn/^cV^/^i starts a«ovuv s &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
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 183
Polycrates kept about his person, and of whom some had been procured
from a distance ; as, for example, Smerdies, from the country of the
Thracian Ciconians. Some of these youths enlivened the meals of Po-
lycrates by music ; as Bathyllus, whose flute-playing and Ionic singing
are extolled by a later rhetorician, and of whom a bronze statue was
shown in the Temple of Juno at Samos, in the dress and attitude of a
player on the cithara ; but which, according to the description of Apu-
leius, appears to have been only an Apollo Citharcedus, in the ancient
style. Other youths were perhaps more distinguished as dancers.
Anacreon offers his homage to all these youths, and divides his affection
and admiration between Smerdies with the flowing locks, Cleobulus
with the beautiful eyes, the bright and playful Lycaspis, the charming
Megistes, Bathyllus, Simalus, and doubtless many others whose names
have not been preserved. He wishes them to sport with him in drunken
merriment* ; and if the youth will take no part in his joy, he threatens
to fly upon light wings up to Olympus, there to make his complaints,
and to induce Eros to chastise him for his scorn f. Or he implores Diony-
sus, the god with whom Eros, and the dark-eyed nymphs, and the purple
Aphrodite, play, — to turn Cleobulus, by the aid of wine, to the love of
Anacreon J. Or he laments, in verses full of careless grace, that the
fair Bathyllus favours him so little §. He knows that his head and temples
are grey ; but he hopes to obtain the affection of the youths by Ins
pleasing song and speech ||. In short, he pays his homage to these
youths, in language combining passion, and playfulness.
§ 13. Anacreon, however, did not on this account withhold his admi-
ration from female beauty. " Again (he says, in an extant fragment)
golden-haired Eros strikes me with a purple ball, and challenges me to
sport and play with a maiden with many-coloured sandals. But she, a
native of the well-built Lesbos *f[, despises my grey hairs, and prefers an-
other man." His amatory poetry chiefly consists of complaints of the
indifference of women to his love ; which, however, are expressed in so
light and playful a manner, that they do not seem to proceed from ge-
nuine regret. Thus, in the beautiful ode, imitated in many places by
Horace ** : " Thracian filly, why do you look at me askance, and avoid
me without pity, and will not allow me any skill in my art ? Know, then,
that I could soon find means of curbing your spirit, and, holding the
* Anacreon has a peculiar term to express this idea, viz. yfixv or ffvr/ifiuv. One of
the amusements of this kind of life is gambling, of which the fragment in Schol.
Horn. II. xxiii. S8, fragment 44. Bergk. speaks : " Dice are the vehement passion
and the conflict of Eros."
f Fragm. in Hephsest. p. 52, (22. Bergk.), explained hy Julian Epist. IS
p. 386. B.
X Fragm. in Dio Chrysost, Or. II. p. 31, fr. 2. Bergk,
§ Horat. Ep. xiv. 9. sq.
jj Fragm, in Maxim. Tyr. vhi. p. 96, fr. 42. Bergk.
«j[ In Athen. xiii. p. 599. C. fr. 15. Bergk. That it does not refer to Sappho is
proved by the dates of her lifetime, and of that of Anacreon.
** In Heraclid. Allegor. Horn. p. 16, ed, Schow. fr, 79, Bergk,
184 HISTORY OF THE
reins, could guide you in the course round the goal. Still you wander
about the pastures, and bound lightly round them, for there has been
no dexterous hand to tame you." But such loves as these are far dif-
ferent from the deep seriousness with which Sappho confesses her pas-
sion, and they can only be judged by those relations between the sexes
which were universally established among the Ionians at that time. In
the Ionic states of Asia Minor, as at Athens, a freebom maiden was
brought up within the strict limits of the family circle, and was never
allowed to enter the society of men. Thence it happened that a separate
class of women devoted themselves to all those arts which qualified
them to enhance the charm of social life — the Hetaeroe, most of them
foreigners or freed women, without the civic rights which belonged to
the daughter of a citizen, but often highly distinguished by the elegance
of their demeanor and by their accomplishments. Whenever, there-
fore, women are mentioned by Ionic and Attic writers, as taking part
in the feasts and symposia of the men, and as receiving at their dwell-
ing the salutations of the joyous band of revellers, — the Comus, —
there can be no doubt that they were Hetserse. Even at the time of the
orators *, an Athenian woman of genuine free blood would have lost
the privileges of her birth, if she had so demeaned herself. Hence it
follows, that the women with whom Anacreon offers to dance and sing,
and to whom, after a plenteous repast, he addresses a song on the
Pectis -f-, are Hetserse, like all those beauties whose charms are cele-
brated by Horace. Anacreon 's most serious love appears to have been
for the " fair Eurypyle ;" since jealousy of her moved him to write a
satirical poem, in which Artemon, the favourite of Eurypyle, who was
then passing an effeminate and luxurious life, is described in the mean
and necessitous condition in which he had formerly lived {. Anacreon
here shows a strength and bitterness of satirical expression resembling
the tone of Archilochus ; a style which he has successfully imitated in
other poems. But Anacreon is content with describing the mere sur-
face, that is, the outward marks of disgrace, the slavish attire, the low-
bred demeanor, the degrading treatment to which Artemon had been
exposed ; without (as it appears) touching upon the intrinsic merit or
demerit of the person attacked. Thus, if we compare Anacreon Avith
the iEolic lyric poets, he appears less reflective, and more occupied with
external objects. For instance, wine, the effects of which are described
by Alcaeus with much depth of feeling, is only extolled by Anacreon as
a means of social hilarity. Yet he recommends moderation in the use
of it, and disapproves of the excessive carousings of the Scythians,
which led to riot and brawling §. The ancients, indeed (probably with
* Demosth. Nessr, p. 1352, Reiske, and elsewhere ; Isseus de Fvrrhi Hered.p. 30.
§ 14.
f In Hephsest. p. 59. fr. 16. Bergk.
t In Athen. xii. p. 533. E. fr. 19. Bergk.
§ In Athen. x. p. 427. A. fr. 62. Bergk. Similarly Horace I. 27. 1. *«?.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. IS5
justice), considered the drunkenness of Anacreon as rather poetical
than real, In Anacreon we see plainly how the spirit of the Ionic race,
notwithstanding the elegance and refinement of Ionian manners, had
lost its energy, its warmth of moral feeling, and its power of serious re-
flexion, and was reduced to a light play of pleasing thoughts and senti-
ments. So far as we are able to judge of the poetry of Anacreon, it
seems to have had the same character as that attributed by Aristotle to
the later Ionic school of painting of Zeuxis, that "it had elegance of
design and brilliancy of colouring, but was wanting in moral character
(to Tjdog.y 9
§ 14. The Ionic softness, and departure from strict rule, which cha-
racterizes the poetry of Anacreon, may also be perceived in his versifi-
cation. His language approached much nearer to the style of common
conversation than that of the iEolic lyric poets, so as frequently to seem
like prose embellished with ornamental epithets ; and his rhythm is also
softer and less bounding than that of the iEolians, and has an easy and
graceful negligence, which Horace has endeavoured to imitate. Some-
times he makes use of logacedic metres, as in the Glyconean verses, which
he combines into strophes, by subjoining a Pherecratean verse to a
number of Glyconeans. In this metre he shows his love for variety and
novelty, by mixing strophes of different lengths with several Glyconean
verses, yet so as to preserve a certain symmetry in the whole *. Anacreon
also, like the iEolic lyric poets, sometimes used long choriambic verses,
particularly when he intended to express energy of feeling, as in the
poem against Artemon, already mentioned. This metre also exhibits a
peculiarity in the rhythm of the Ionic poets, viz., an alternation of dif-
ferent metres, producing a freer and more varied, but also a more care-
less, flow of the rhythm. In the present poem this peculiarity consists
in the alternation ot choriambics with iambic dipodies *j\ The same cha-
racter is still more strongly shown in the Ionic metre (Ionici a minori)
which was much used by Anacreon. At the same time he changed its
expression (probably after the example of the musician Olympus) J, by
* So in the long fragment in Schol. Hephsest. p. 125. fr. 1. Bergk.
yovvouftat a lkxju,t%fais, %o/u.'/iv — ■
Two such verses as these are then followed by an iambic dimeter, as an epode :
TFay&jva, r \xriri\p,'i)>oi,
% Seech. 12. §7.
186 HISTORY OF THE
combining two Ionic feet, so that the last long syllable of the first foot was
shortened and the first short syllable of the second foot was lengthened ;
by which change the second foot became a trochaic dipody *. By this
process, called by the ancients a bending, or refraction (avo_o_o_o
oo_^o_ I _/oo_
Here the hendecasyllables begin with a composed and feeble tone ; but a more
rapid rhythm is introduced by the anapeesiic beginning of the third verse ; and tbe
two expressions are reconciled by the logaoedic members in the last verse.
X Praxilla (who, according to Eusebius, nourished in Olymp. 81. 2, u. c. 451 ,
and is mentioned as a composi-r of odes of an erotic character) is stated to be the
author of the Scolion 'lVo -pravr) xiSoo, which was in the Tagoivix Uoa%iWm- (Schol.
Rav. in Aristoph. Thesm. 528). and of the Scoliom Oi/% ttrnv akusr&}ii%u», (Schol.
Vesp. 1279. [1232.])
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 189
We will not include in this number the seven wise men ; for although
Diogenes Laertius, the historian of ancient philosophy, cites popular
verses of Thales, Solon, Chiton, Pittacus, and Bias, which are some-
what in the style of scolia * ; yet the genuineness of these sententious
songs is very questionable. With respect to language and metre, they
all appear formed upon the same model ; so that we must suppose the
seven wise men to have agreed to write in an uniform style, and more-
over in a kind of rhythm which did not become common until the time
of the tragedians f. Nevertheless they appear, in substance, to be as
early as the age to which they are assigned, as their tone has a great
resemblance to that of the scolia in the iEolic manner. For example,
one of the latter contains these thoughts : " Would that we could open
the heart of every man, and ascertain his true character ; then close it
again, and live with him sincerely as a friend ; " the scolion, in Doric
rhythms, ascribed to Chiton, has a similar tone : " Gold is rubbed on the
touchstone, and thus tried ; but the minds of men are tried by gold,
whether they are good or bad." Hence it is probable that these scolia
were framed at Athens, in the time of the tragedians, from traditional
sayings of the ancient philosophers.
§ 17. Although scolia were mostly composed of moral maxims or of
short invocations to the gods, or panegyrics upon heroes, there exist
two, of greater length and interest, the authors of which are not other-
wise known as poets. The one beginning, "My great wealth is my
spear and sword," and written by Hybrias, a Cretan, in the Doric
measure, expresses all the pride of the dominant Dorian, whose right
rested upon his aims; inasmuch as through them he maintained his
sway over bondmen, who were forced to plough and gather in the
harvest, and press out the grapes for him J. The other beginning, "In
the myrtle-bough will I bear my sword," is the work of an Athenian,
named Callistratus, and was written probably not long after the Persian
war, as it was a favourite song in the time of Aristophanes. It celebrates
* Diogenes generally introduces them with some such expression as this : ruv %'
a&oyAvuv ulrov y.u.XiiTTa ivhoKty/iinv tuuvo.
f They are alliu Doric rhythms (which consist of dactylic members and trochaic
dipodies), but with an ithyphallic (— <-> - o _ o) at the close. This composite kind
of rhythm never occurs in Pindar, occurs only once in Simonides, but occurs regu-
larly in the Doric choruses of Euripides. The following scolion of Solon may serve
as an example :
Tii^vXctyyAvo; rivboa taaffTov ogee,
M*j y.^W7Cro'i sy%o; 'ix, uv Koati'^ (§u.u>qw Tt^oa'ivviT^ cr^off&j'z'M,
Vkaiaaa. %'i at h%opu()os 'm fAZko&i-
vet; (pgivo; yiyuvr,.
Also the following one of Pittacus :
"E%ovra, !)$7 rb'^a. aa) lohbxov (pugi-r^vv tr~u%itv -tot) (puree xattov,
Ilitrrov yu.(> ovTtv yXufftra. ha tr-opxro; XuX<7 } !$i%b/u,v$ov 'i%oucrx
In that of Thales (Diog. Laert. I. i. 35,) the ithyphallic is before the last verse,
; See Muller's Dorians., B, III, c\i. 4. § 1,
190 HISTORY OP THE
the liberators of the Athenian people, Harmodius and Aristogiton, for
having, at the festival of Athene, slain the tyrant Hipparchus, and re-
stored equal rights to the Athenians ; for this they lived for ever in the
islands of the blest, in community with the most exalted heroes, and on
earth their fame was immortal *. This patriotic scolion does not indeed
rest on an historical foundation ; for it is known from Herodotus and
Thucydides, that, though Hipparchus, the younger brother of the tyrant,
was slain by Harmodius and Aristogiton, this act only served to make
the government of Hippias, the elder brother, more cruel and suspicious;
and it was Cleomenes the Spartan, who, three years later, really drove
the Pisistratids from Athens. But the patriotic delusion in which the
scolion was composed was universal at Athens. Even before the
Persian war, statues of Harmodius and Aristogiton had been erected,
as of heroes ; which statues, when carried away by Xerxes, were after-
wards replaced by others. Supposing the mind of the Athenian poet
possessed with this belief, we cannot but sympathize in the enthusiasm
with which he celebrates his national heroes, and desires to imitate
their costume at the Panathenaic festival, when they concealed their
swords in boughs of myrtle. The simplicity of the thoughts, and the
frequent repetition of the same burden, " for they slew the tyrant," is
quite in conformity with the frank and open tone of the scolion ; and we
may perhaps conjecture that this poem was a real impromptu, the pro-
duct of a rapid and transient inspiration of its author.
CHAPTER XIV.
§ 1. Connection of lyric poetry with choral songs : gradual rise of regular forms
from this connection. First stage, — § 2. Alcman ; his origin and date ; mode of
recitation and form of his choral songs. — § 3. Their poetical character. — § 4.
Stesichorus ; hereditary transmission of his poetical taste ; his reformation of
the chorus. — §5. Subjects and character of his poetry. — §6. Erotic and bucolic
poetry of Stesichorus. — § 7. Arion. The dithyramb raised to a regular choral
song. Second stage. — § 8. Life of Ibycus ; his imitation of Stesichorus. — § 9.
Erotic tendency of his poetry. — § 10. Life of Simonides. — § 11. Variety and
ingenuity of his poetical powers. Comparison of his Epinikia with those of
Pindar. — § 12. Characteristics of his style. — § 13. Lyric poetry of Bacchylides,
imitated from that of Simonides. — § 14. Parties among the lyric poets ; rivalry
of Losus, Tiraocreon, and Pindar with Simonides.
§ 1. The characteristic features of the Doric lyric poetry have been
already described, for the purpose of distinguishing it from the iEolic.
These were ; recitation by choruses, the artificial structure of long
strophes, the Doric dialect, and its reference to public affairs, especially
* These, and most of the other scolia, are in Athenseus, xv. p. 694, sq.
t LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 191
to the celebration of divine worship. The origin of this kind of lyric
poetry can be traced to the earliest times of Greece : for (as has been
already shown) choruses were generally used in Greece before the time
of Homer ; although the dancers in the ancient choruses did not also
sing, and therefore an exact correspondence of all their motions with the
words of the song was not requisite. At that period, however, the joint
singing of several persons was practised, who either sat, stood or
moved onwards ; as in paeans and hymenseals ; sometimes the mimic
movements of the dancer were explained by the singing, which was
executed by other persons, as in the hyporchemes. And thus nearly
every variety of the choral poetry, which was afterwards so elaborately
and so brilliantly developed, existed, even at that remote period, though
in a rude and unfinished state. The production of those polished forms
in which the style of singing and the movements of the dance were
brought into perfect harmony, coincides with the last advance in musical
art ; the improvements in which, made by Terpander, Olympus, and
Thaletas, have formed the subject of a particular notice.
Thaletas is remarkable for having cultivated the art of dancing as
much as that of music ; while his rhythms seem to have been nearly as
various as those afterwards employed in choralpoetry. The union of song
and dance, which was transferred from the lyric to the dramatic choruses *,
must also have been introduced at that time ; since the complicated
structure of the strophes and antistrophes is founded, not on singing
alone, but on the union of that art with dancing. In the first century
subsequent to the epoch of these musicians, choral poetry does not,
however, appear in its full perfection and individuality ; but approaches
either to the Lesbian lyric poetry, or to the epos ; thus the line which
separated these two kinds (between which the choral songs occupy a
middle place) gradually became more distinct. Among the lyric poets
whom the Alexandrians placed in their canon, Alcman and Stesichorus
belong to this period of progress ; while finished lyric poetry is repre-
sented by Ibycus, Simonides with his disciple Bacchylides, and Pindar.
We shall now proceed to take a view of these poets separately ; class-
ing among the former the dithyrambic poet Arion, and among the latter
Pindar's instructor Lasus, and a few others who have sufficient indivi-
duality of character to distinguish them from the crowd.
We must first, however, notice the erroneous opinion that choral
poetry existed among the Greeks in the works of these great poets
only ; they are, on the contrary, to be regarded merely as the eminent
points arising out of a widely extended mass ; as the most perfect re
presentatives of that poetical fervour which, at the religious festivals,
inspired all classes. Choral dances were so frequent among the Greeks
* Ua.Xa.1 p\v yag ot al/ro) xa} fiov xai u^ovvro, says Lucian de Saltat. 30, comparing
the modern pantomimic style of dancing with the ancient lyric and dramatic style.
192 KISTORY OF THE
at this period, among the Dorians in particular, and were performed by
the whole people, especially in Crete and Sparta, with such ardour and
enthusiasm, that the demand for songs to be sung as an accompani-
ment to them must have been very great. It is true that, in many
places, even at the great festivals, people contented themselves with the
old traditionary songs, consisting of a few simple verses in which the
principal thoughts and fundamental tone of feeling were rather touched
than worked out. Thus, at the festival of Dionysus, the women of
Elis sang, instead of an elaborate dithyramb, the simple ditty, full
of antique symbolic language : " Come, hero Dionysus, to thy holy sea-
temple, accompanied by the Graces, and rushing on, oxen-hoofed ; holy
ox ! holy ox* !"
At Olympia too, long before the existence of Pindar's skilfully com-
posed Epinikia, the little song ascribed to Archilochus t was sung in
honour of the victors at the games. This consisted of two iambic verses ;
iC Hail, Hercules, victorious prince, all hail !
Thyself and lolaus, warriors bold,"
with the burden " Tenella ! victorious !" to which a third verse, in
praise of the victor of the moment, was probably added extempore. So
also the three Spartan choruses, composed of old men, adults and boys,
sang at the festivals the three iambic trimeters :
" Once we were young, and strong as other youths.
We are so still ; if you list, try our strength.
We shall be stronger far than all of you J."
But from the time that the Greeks had learned the charm of perfect
lyric poetry, in which not merely a single chord of feeling was struck by
the passing hand of the bard, but an entire melody of thoughts and
sentiments was executed, their choruses did not persist in the mere
repetition of verses like these ; songs were universally demanded, dis-
tinguished for a more artificial metre, and for an ingenious combina-
tion of ideas. Hence every considerable town, particularly in the
Doric Peloponnesus, had its poet who devoted his whole life to the
training and execution of choruses — in short to the business, so im-
portant to the whole history of Greek poetry, of the Chorodidascalus.
How many such choral poets there were, whose fame did not extend
beyond their native place, may be gathered from the fact that Pindar,
while celebrating a pugilist of iEgina, incidentally mentions two lyric
poets of the same family, the Theandrids, Timocritus and Euphanes.
Sparta also possessed seven lyric poets besides Alcman, in these early
times §. There too, as in other Doric states, women, even in the time
* Plutarch, Qusesf. Graec. 30. f See above, p. 138. note f.
X Plutarch, Lycurg. 21. These triple choruses are called tropic*, in Pollux IV.
107, where the establishment of them is attributed to Tyrtseus.
§ Their names are Spendon, Dionys-odolus, Xenodamus, (see Chap. xii. § 1].)
Gitiadas, Areius, Eurytus, and Zurex.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 193
of Alcman, contributed to the cultivation of poetry; as, for example,
the maiden whom Alcman himself celebrates in these words *, " This
gift of the sweet Muses hath the fair-haired Megalostrata, favoured
among 1 virgins, displayed among us." From this we see how widely
diffused, and how deeply rooted, were the feeling and the talent for such
poetical productions in Sparta; and that Alcman, with his beautiful
choral songs, introduced nothing new into that country, and only em-
ployed, combined and perfected elements already existing. But neither
Alcman, nor the somewhat earlier Terpander, were the first who
awakened this spirit among the Spartans. Even the latter found the
love for arts of this description already in existence, where, according
to an extant verse of his, " The spear of the young men, and the
clear-sounding muse, and justice in the wide market-place, flourish."
§ 2. According to a well known and sufficiently accredited account,
Alcman was a Lydian of Sardis, who grew up as a slave in the house
of Agesidas, a Spartan ; but was emancipated, and obtained rights
of citizenship, though of a subordinate kind -f. A learned poet of
the Alexandrian age, Alexander the iEtolian, says of Alcman, (or
rather makes him say of himself,) " Sardis, ancient home of my
fathers, had I been reared within thy walls, I were now a cymbal-
bearer J, or a eunuch-dancer in the service of the Great Mother, decked
with gold, and whirling the beautiful tambourine in my hands. But
now I am called Alcman, and belong to Sparta, the city rich in sacred
tripods ; and J have become acquainted with the Heliconian Muses,
who have made me greater than the despots Daskyles and Gyges."
Alcman however, in his own poems, does not speak so contemptuously
of the home of his forefathers, but puts into the mouth of a chorus of
virgins, words wherein he himself is celebrated as being " no man of
rude unpolished manners, no Thessalian or iEtolian, but sprung from
the lofty Sardis §." This Lydian extraction had doubtless an influence
on Aleutian's style and taste in music. The date at which he lived is
usually placed at so remote a period as to render it unintelligible how
lyric poetry could have already attained to such variety as is to be
found in his works. It may indeed be true that he lived in the reign
of the Lydian king Ardys ; but it does not thence follow that he lived
at the beginning of it ; on the contrary, his childhood was contemporary
with the close of that reign. (Ol. 37. 4. b. c. 629.) Alcman, in one
of his poems, mentioned the musician Polymnastus, who, in his turn,
* Fragm. 27. ed. Welcker.
t According to Suiclas he was a,%i rtu(>6(vots ocu^ttv.
The first verse is logaoedic, the second iambic.
§ Fragm 4. |J Fragm. 68.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 195
claim, " Oh father Zeus, were he but my husband* !" was doubtless in
a Parthenion. If we inquire more minutely into the relation of the
poet to his chorus, we shall not find, at least not invariably, that it as
yet possessed that character to which Pindar strictly adhered. The
chorus was not the mere organ of the poet, and all the thoughts and
feelings to which it gave utterance, those of the poet f. In Alcman,
the virgins more frequently speak in their own persons ; and many
Parthenia contain a dialogue between the chorus and the poet, who
was at the same time the instructor and the leader of the chorus. We
find sometimes addresses of the chorus of virgins to the poet, such as
has just been mentioned; sometimes of the poet to the virgins asso-
ciated with him ; as in that beautiful fragment in hexameters, " No
more, ye honeyvoiced, holy-singing virgins, no more do my limbs
suffice to bear me ; oh that I were a Cerylus, which with the halcyons
skims the foam of the waves with fearless heart, the sea-blue bird of
spring J !"
But, doubtless, Alcman composed and directed other choruses,
since the Parthenia were only a part of his poetical works, besides
which Hymns to the Gods, Paeans, Prosodia§, Hymeneals, and love-
songs, are attributed to him. These poems were generally recited or
represented by choruses of youths. The love-songs were probably-
sung by a single performer to the cithara. The clepsiambic poems,
consisting partly of singing, partly of common discourse, and for which
a peculiar instrument, bearing the same name, was used, also occurred
among the works of Alcman, who appears to have borrowed them, as
well as many other things, from Archilochus||. Alcman blends the
sentiments and the style of Archilochus, Terpander, and Thaletas, and,
perhaps, even those of the iEolian lyric poets : hence his works ex-
hibit a great variety of metre, of dialect, and of general poetical tone.
Stately hexameters are followed by the iambic and trochaic verse of
Archilochus, by the ionics and cretics of Olympus and Thaletas, and by
various sorts of logacedic rhythms. His strophes consisted partly of
verses of different kinds, partly of repetitions of the same, as in the ode
which opened with the invocation to Calliope above mentioned ^[. The
connexion of two corresponding strophes with a third of a different
* Schol. Horn. Od. VI. 244.
f There are only a few passages in Pindar, in which it has been thought that
there was a separation of the person of the chorus and the poet; viz. Pyth. v. 68.
(96.) ix. 98. (174.) Nem. i. 19. (29.) vii. 85. (125.); and these have, by an accu-
rate interpretation, been reduced to the abovementioned rule.
I Fragrn. 12. See Muller's Dorians, b. iv. ch. 7- § 11.
§ Tlgotro'Sici, songs to be sung during a procession to a temple, before the sacrifice.
|| Above, p. 139, note f, with Aristoxenus ap. Hesych. in v. KAe^/a^/^.
•T Mw' clyz, KuXXio-ra, Qvyart^ Aiog. Dactylic tetrameters of this kind were com-
bined into strophes, without hiatus and syllaba anceps, that is, after the manner of
systems.
02
196
HISTORY OF THS
kind, called an epode, did not occur in Alcman. He made strophes of
the same measure succeed each other in an indefinite number, like the
iEolic lyric poets : there were, however, odes of his, consisting of
fourteen strophes, with an alteration (perafioXii) in the metre after
the seventh*; which was of course accompanied with a marked change
in the ideas and in the whole tone of the poem.
It ought also to be mentioned that the Laconic metre, a kind of
anapaestic verse, used as a march (Efifiarfjpiov), which the Spartan
troops sang as they advanced to attack the enemy, is attributed to
Alcman f ; whence it may be conjectured that Alcman imitated Tyr-
taeus, and composed war-songs similar to his, consisting not of strophes,
but of a repetition of the same sort of verse. The authority for such
a supposition is, however, slight. There is not a trace extant of any
marches composed by Alcman, nor is there any similarity between their
form and character and any of his poetry with which we are acquainted.
It is true that Alcman frequently employed the anapaestic metre, but
not in the same way as Tyrtaeus J, and never unconnected with other
rhythms. Thus Tyrtaeus, who was Alcman's predecessor by one gene-
ration, and whom we have already described as an elegiac poet, appears
to have been the only notable composer of Embateria. These were
sung to the flute in the Castorean measure by the whole army ; and, as
is proved by a few extant verses, contained simple, but vigorous and
manly exhortations to bravery. The measure in which they were
written was also called the Messenian, because the second Messenian
war had given occasion to the composition of war-songs of peculiar
force and fervour.
§ 3. Alcman is generally regarded as the poet who successfully over-
came the difficulties presented by the rough and intractable dialect of
Sparta, and invested it with a certain grace. And, doubtless, inde-
pendent of their general Doric form, many Spartan idioms are found
in his poems §, though by no means all the peculiarities of that dialect ||.
Alcman's language, therefore, agrees with the other poetical dialects of
Greece, in not representing a popular dialect in its genuine state, but
in elevating and refilling it by an admixture with the language of epic
poetry, which may be regarded as the mother and nurse of every variety
of poetry among the Greeks.
We may also observe that this tinge of popular Laconian idioms is
by no means equally strong in all the varieties of Alcman's poetry ; they
* Hephsest. p. 134. ed. Gaisford.
f The metrical scholia to Eurip. Hec. 59.
I According to the La ; in metrical wiiters, Servius and Marius Victorinus, the
dimeter hypercatalectos, the trimeter catalecticus, and the tetrameter, brachycata-
lectos were called Alcmanica metra. The embateria were partly in the dimtter
catalecticus, partly in the tetrameter cataltcticus.
§ As ff for 6 (o-dxxtv for daXXiv, &c), tha rough termination o: in pxKccgs, Tle^'t^g.
|| For example, not M£a, Tipofoog. &kxo£ (for mrxoi), &c.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 197
are most abundant in certain fragments of a hearty, simple character*,
in which Alcman 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 J,
which ancient grammarians attribute to Alcman. 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 §.
Alcman 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 Alcman'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 Alcman, that he can in no respect be regarded as suc-
* Fragm. 24. 28.
X Especially in the sound OI2 for an original ON2, as in tp^oitra. It appears,
however, that the pure Doric form Mara ought to be introduced everywhere for
MoTircc. In the third person plural, Alcman probably had, like Pindar, either
aiviovn (fr. 73), or su^ota-iv. The 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'
(^vk'Xto^^cicrfcaXoe), 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
* 'ils Aiuvvir/iV uvkktos xaXov l%ccg?ai [sAXo;
ap. Athen. xiv. p. 628.
f See ch. iii. § 5.
I Pind. 01. xiii. 18. (25.), where the recent editors give a full and accurate ex-
planation of the matter.
§ Hence Arion is said to have been the son of Cycleus.
|| T^uyiKos rgoTo;. Suidas in 'Aq'imv, Concerning the satyrs whom Arion is said to
have used on this occasion, see below, chap. xxi.
^[ Chap. xxi. The finest specimen of a dithyramb of the joyful kind is the frag'
ment of a dithyramb by Pindar, in Dion. Hal. de Comp. Verb. 22. This dithy-
ramb was intended for the great Dionysia (to, piyaXa. or ?a u &c.
<^[ Above, ch. xiii. § 12.
** Citations of Stesichorus or Ibycus, or (for the same expression) of Stesichorus
and 1 Ibycus, occur in Athen. iv. p. 172 D., Schol. Ven. ad II. xxiv. 259. iii. 114. He-
eych. in fyvuxUrou, 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 of Ibycus 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, Ibycus 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 Ibycus 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 Ibycus 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
Ibycus ; 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 Ibycus 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 poet 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 Greecia, with the inscription " the boy is beau-
tiful" (koXoq 6 7rcue), and scenes from gymnastic exercises and
social life. But that in the poems of Ibycus, as well as of Pindar, the
Vratislav. ad Pind. 01. ix. 128. (oJ mfi "ifiuxoi xx) 2rn — <=>
_/ o ^ — o o S ^ — y.
This arrangement necessitates no other alterations than those which have been
for other reasons : except that uvrofa, * straightways,' should be written for alre<
in v. 6.
214 HISTORY OF THE
glitter with gold and ivory ; corn-bearing ships bring hither from
Egypt, across the glancing deep, the abundance of wealth. To such
heights soars the spirit of the drinker." Here too we remark that ela-
borate and brilliant execution which is peculiar to the school of Simo-
nides ; and the same is shown in all the longer fragments of Bacchy-
lides, among which we shall only quote the praise of peace :
" To mortals belong lofty peace, riches, and the blossoms of honey-
voiced song. On altars of fair workmanship burn thighs of oxen and
thick-fleeced sheep in golden flames to the gods. The cares of the
youths are, gymnastic exercises, flute-playing, and joyous revelry (avXol
teal kv/jloi). But the black spiders ply their looms in the iron-bound
edges of the shields, and the rust corrodes the barbed spear-head, and,
the two-edged sword. No more is heard the clang of brazen trumpets ;
and beneficent sleep, the nurse and soother of our souls, is no longer
scared from our eyelids. The streets are thronged with joyous guests,
and songs of praise to beautiful youths resound*."
We recognise here a mind which dwells lovingly on the description
of these gay and pleasing scenes, and paints itself in every feature, but
without penetrating deeper than the ordinary observation of men reaches.
Bacchylides, like Simonides, transfers the diffuseness of the elegy to
the choral lyric poem ; although he himself composed no elegies, and
followed the traces of his uncle only as an epigrammatist. The reflec-
tions scattered through his lyrics, on the toils of human life, the insta-
bility of fortune, on resignation to inevitable evils, and the rejection of
vain cares, have much of the tone of the Ionic elegy. The structure of
Bacchylides' verse is generally very simple ; nine tenths of his odes, to
judge from the fragments, consisted of dactylic series and trochaic dipo-
dias, as we find in those odes of Pindar which were written in the Doric
mode. Bacchylides, however, gave a lighter character to this measure ;
inasmuch as in the places where the syllable might be either long or
short, he often preferred the latter.
We find, in his poems, trochaic verses of great elegance ; as, for ex-
ample, a fragment, preserved by Athenseus, of a religious poem in
which the Dioscuri are invited to a feast f. But its character is feeble
and languid ; and how different from the hymn of Pindar, the third
among the Olympian odes, in celebration of a similar feast of the
Dioscuri, held by Theron in Agrigentum !
§ 14. The universal esteem in which Simonides and Bacchylides were
held in Greece, and their acknowledged excellence in their art, did not
prevent some of their contemporaries from striking into various other
paths, and adopting other styles of treating lyric poetry. Lasos of
Hermione was a rival of Simonides during his residence in Athens, and
* Stobseus, Serm. LIN. p. 209. Grot. Fr. 12. Neue.
f Athen. xi. p. 500 B. Fr. 27. Neue.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 215
likewise enjoyed high favour at the court of Hipparchus*. It is how-
ever difficult to ascertain, from the very scanty accounts we possess of
this poet, wherein consisted the point of contrast between him and his
competitor. He was more peculiarly a dithyrambic poet, and was the
first who introduced contests in dithyrambs at Athens t? probably in
Olymp. 68. 1. b. c. 508 {. This style predominated so much in
his works, that he gave to the general rhythms of his odes a dithy-
rambic turn, and a free movement, in which he was aided by the variety
and flexibility of tone of the flute, his favourite instrument §. He was
also a theorist in his art, and investigated the laws of music (s\ e.
the relation of musical intervals to rapidity of movement), of which
later musicians retained much. He was the instructor of Pindar in
lyric poetry. It is also very possible that these studies led him to
attach excessive value to art; for he was guilty of over-refinement in
the rhythm and the sound of words, as, for example, in his odes written
without the letter a- (a — for there were others still more wild and extravagant,-—
and which probably formed a part of the long poetical collection of
" Sacred Legends," which has been already mentioned.
We see, at the very outset of the Orphic theogony, an attempt to
refine upon the theogony of Hesiod, and to arrive at higher abstrac-
tions than his chaos. The Orphic theogony placed Chronos 5 Time, at
the head of all things, and conferred upon it life and creative power.
Chrouos was then described as spontaneously producing chaos and
aether, and forming from chaos, within the aether, a mundane egg, of
brilliant white. The mundane egg is a notion which the Orphic poets
had in common with many Oriental systems; traces of it also occur in
ancient Greek legends, as in that of the Dioscuri ; but the Orphic poets
first developed it among the Greeks. The whole essence of the world
was supposed to be contained in this egg, and to grow from it, like the
life of a bird. The mundane egg, which included the matter of chaos,
was impregnated by the winds, that is, by the aether in motion; and
thence arose the golden-winged Eros*. The notion of Eros, as a
cosmogonic being, is carried much further by the Orphic poets than by
Hesiod. They also culled him Metis, the mind of the world. The
name of Phanes first became common in Orphic poetry of a later date.
The Orphic poets conceived this Eros-Phanes as a pantheistic being;
the parts of the world forming, as it were, the limbs of his body, and
being thus united into an organic whole. The heaven was his head,
the earth his foot, the sun and moon his eyes, the rising and setting
of the heavenly bodies his horns. An Orphic poet addresses Phanes
in the following poetical language : " Thy tears are the hapless race
of men ; by thy laugh thou hast raised up the sacred race of the
gods." Eros then gives birth to a long series of gods, similar to that
in Hesiod. By his daughter, Night, he produces Heaven and Earth;
these then bring forth the Titans, among whom Cronus and Rh^a
become the parents of Zeus. The Orphic poets, as well as Hesiod,
made Zeus the supreme god at this period of the world. He was,
therefore, supposed to supplant Eros-Phanes, and to unite this being
with himself. Hence arose the fable of Zeus having swallowed
Phanes ; which is evidently taken from the story in Hesiod, that Zeus
swallowed Metis, the goddess of wisdom. Hesiod, however, merely
meant to imply that Zeus knows all things that concern our weal or
woe ; while the Orphic poets go further, and endow their Zeus with
the anima mundi. Accordingly, they represent Zeus as now being the
first and last; the beginning, middle, and end; man and woman;
and, in fine, everything. Nevertheless, the universe was conceived to
* This feature is al>o in the burlesque Orphic cosmogony in Aristoph. Av. 694;
according to which ihe Orphic verse in Schol. Apoll. Khod. iii. 26. should be thus
understood :
Avtcco tpura x po ' vo f ( n °t K»ovo;*) xa) Tvtvf/.ara. tfdvra (In the nominative case)
l/iKVOIfffV.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 237
stand in different relations to Zeus and to Eros. The Orphic poets also
described Zeus as uniting the jarring elements into one harmonious
structure ; and thus restoring, by his wisdom, the unity which existed
in Phanes, but which had afterwards been destroyed, and replaced by
confusion and strife. Here we meet with the idea of a creation, which
was quite unknown to the most ancient Greek poets. While the
Greeks of the time of Homer and Hesiod considered the world as an
organic being, which was constantly growing into a state of greater
perfection ; the Orphic poets conceived the world as having been formed
by the Deity out of pre-existing matter, and upon a predetermined plan.
Hence, in describing creation, they usually employed the image of a
" crater," in which the different elements were supposed to be mixed
in certain proportions ; and also of a " peplos," or garment, in which
the different threads are united into one web. Hence " Crater," and
" Peplos," occur as the titles of Orphic poems.
§ 7. Another great difference between the notions of the Orphic
poets and those of the early Greeks concerning the order of the world
was, that the former did not limit their views to the present state of
mankind ; still less did they acquiesce in Hesiod's melancholy doctrine
of successive ages, each one worse than the preceding ; but they looked
for a cessation of strife, a holy peace, a state of the highest happiness
and beatitude of souls at the end of all things. Their firm hopes of
this result were founded upon Dionysus, from the worship of whom
all their peculiar religious ideas were derived. According to them,
Dionysus-Zagreus was a son of Zeus, whom he had begotten, in the
form of a dragon, upon his daughter Cora-Persephone, before she was
carried off to the kingdom of shadows. The young god was supposed
to pass through great perils. This was always an essential part of the
mythology of Dionysus, especially as it was related in the neighbour-
hood of Delphi ; but it was converted by the Orphic poets, and espe-
cially by Onomacritus, into the marvellous legend which is preserved
by later writers. According to this legend, Zeus destined Dionysus
for king, set him upon the throne of heaven, and gave him Apollo and
the Curetes to protect him. But the Titans, instigated by the jealous
Here, attacked him by surprise, having disguised themselves under a
coating of plaster (a rite of the Bacchic festivals), while Dionysus,
whose attention was engaged with various playthings, particularly a
splendid mirror, did not perceive their approach. After a long and
fearful conflict the Titans overcame Dionysus, and tore him into seven
pieces*, one piece for each of themselves. Pallas, however, succeeded
in saving his palpitating heartf, which was swallowed by Zeus in a
drink. As the ancients considered the heart as the seat of life, Diony-
sus was again contained in Zeus, and again begotten by him. Zeus
* The Orphic poets added Phovcys and Dio.-ie to the Titans and Titanides of Hesiod,
f KoatTiw ■3 , ty.X?.cp.iv?iv, an etymological fable.
238 HISTORY OF THE
at the same time avenges the slaughter of his son by striking and con-
suming the Titans with his thunderbolts. From their ashes, according
to this Orphic legend, proceeded the race of men. This Dionysus, torn
in pieces and born again, is destined to succeed Zeus in the government
of the world, and to restore the golden age. In the same system Dio-
nysus was also the god from whom the liberation of souls was expected ;
for, according to an Orphic notion, more than once alluded to by Plato,
human souls are punished by being confined in the body, as in a prison.
The sufferings of the soul in its prison, the steps and transitions by
which it passes to a higher state of existence, and its gradual purifica-
tion and enlightenment, were all fully described in these poems ; and
Dionysus and Cora were represented as the deities who performed the
task of guiding and purifying the souls of men.
Thus, in the poetry of the first five centuries of Greek literature,
especially at the close of this period, we find, instead of the calm enjoy-
ment of outward nature which characterised the early epic poetry, a
profound sense of the misery of human life and an ardent longing for
a condition of greater happiness. This feeling, indeed, was not so
extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation ; but it took
deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more serious
and spiritual views of human nature.
We will now turn our attention to the progress made by the Greeks,
in the last century of this period, in prose composition.
CHAPTER XVII.
§ 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks ; causes of the intro-
duction of prose writings, § 2. The lonians give the main impulse ; tendency of
philosophical speculation among the lonians. § 3. Retrospect of the theological
speculations of Pherecydes. § 4. Thales; he combines practical talents with
hold ideas concerning the nature of things. § 5. Anaximander, a writer and
inquirer on the nature of things. § 6. Anaximenes pursues the physical in-
quiries of his predecessors. § 7. Heraclitus ; profound character of his natural
philosophy. § 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the
physical speculations of the lonians. § 9. Diogenes continues the early doctrine.
Archelaus, an Anaxagorean, carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens. § 10. Doc-
trines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes ; their enthusiastic character is
expressed in a poetic form. § 11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doc-
trines of Xenophanes; plan of his, poem. § 12. Further development of the
Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno. § 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras
and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty ideas of his own. § 14. Italic school ; re-
ceives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by the Doric character of
the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical tendency with its philosophical
principle.
§ 1. As the design of this work is to give a history, not of the philo-
sophy, but of the literature of Greece, we shall limit ourselves to such a
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 239
view of the early Greek philosophers as will illustrate the literary pro*
gress of the Greek nation. Philosophy occupies a peculiar province of
the human mind ; and it has its origin in habits of thought which are
confined to a few. It is necessary not only to possess these habits of
thought, but also to be singularly free from the shackles of any parti-
cular system, in order fully to comprehend the speculations of the an-
cient Greek philosophers, as preserved in the fragments and accounts
of their writings. Even if a history of physical and metaphysical spe-
culation among the early Greek philosophers were likely to interest the
reader, yet it would be foreign to the object of the present work, which
is intended to illustrate the intellectual progress and character of the
entire Greek nation. Philosophy, for some time after its origin in
Greece, was as far removed from the ordinary thoughts, occupations,
and amusements of the people, as poetry was intimately connected with
them. Poetry ennobles and elevates all that is most characteristic of a
nation; its religion, mythology, political and social institutions, and
manners. Philosophy, on the other hand, begins by detaching the
mind from the opinions and habits in which it has been bred up ; from
the national conceptions of the gods and the universe ; and from the
traditionary maxims of ethics and politics. The philosopher attempts
as far as possible to think for himself; and hence he is led to disparage
all that is handed down from antiquity. Hence, too, the Greek philo-
sophers from the beginning renounced the ornaments of verse ; that is,
of the vehicle which had previously been used for the expression of
every elevated feeling. Philosophical writings were nearly the earliest
compositions in the unadorned language of common life. It is not
probable that they would have been composed in this form, if they had
been intended for recital to a multitude assembled at games and festi-
vals. It would have required great courage to break in upon the rhyth-
mical flow of the euphonious hexameter and lyric measures, with a
discourse uttered in the language of ordinary conversation. The most
ancient writings of Greek philosophers were however only brief records
of their principal doctrines, designed to be imparted to a few persons.
There was no reason why the form of common speech should not be
used for these, as it had been long before used for laws, treaties, and
the like. In fact, prose composition and writing are so intimately con-
nected, that we may venture to assert that, if writing had become com-
mon among the Greeks at an earlier period, poetry would not have so
long retained its ascendancy. We shall indeed find that philosophy, as
it advanced, sought the aid of poetry, in order to strike the mind more
forcibly. And if we had aimed at minute precision in the division of
our subject, we should have passed from theological to philosophical
poetry. But it is more convenient to observe, as far as possible, the
chronological order of the different branches of literature, and the de-
pendence of one upon another ; and we shall therefore classify this phi-
240 HISTORY OF THE
losophical poetry with prose compositions, as being* a limited and pecu-
liar deviation from the usual practice with regard to philosophical
writings.
§ 2. However the Greek philosophers may have sought after origin-
ality and independence of thought, they could not avoid being influ-
enced in their speculations by the peculiar circumstances of their own
position. Hence the earliest philosophers may be classed according to
the races and countries to which they belonged ; the idea of a schoo*
(that is, of a transmission of doctrines through an unbroken series of
teachers and disciples) not being applicable to this period.
The earliest attempts at philosophical speculation were made by the
Ionians ; that race of the Greeks, which not only had, in common life,
shown the greatest desire for new and various kinds of knowledge, but
had also displayed the most decided taste for scientific researches into
the phenomena of external nature. From this direction of their in-
quiries, the Ionic philosophers were called by the ancients, " physical
philosophers," or " physiologers." With a boldness characteristic of
inexperience and ignorance, they began by directing their inquiries to
the most abstruse subjects ; and, unaided by any experiments which
were not within the reach of a common man, and unacquainted with
the first elements of mathematics, they endeavoured to determine the
origin and principle of the existence of all things. If we are tempted
to smile at the temerity with which these Ionians at once ventured upon
the solution of the highest problems, we are, on the other hand, asto-
nished at the sagacity with which many of them conjectured the con-
nexion of appearances, which they could not fully comprehend without
a much greater progress in the study of nature. The scope of these
Ionian speculations proves that they were not founded on a priori rea
sonings, independent of experience. The Greeks were always distin-
guished by their curiosity, and their powers of delicate observation.
Yet this gifted nation, even when it had accumulated a large stock of
knowledge concerning natural objects, seems never to have attempted
more than the observation of phenomena which presented themselves
unsought ; and never to have made experiments devised by the investi-
gator.
§ 3. Before we pass from these general remarks to an account of the
individual philosophers of the Ionic school, (taking the term in its most
extended sense,) we must mention a man who is important as forming
an intermediate link between the sacerdotal enthusiasts, Epimenides,
Abaris, and others, noticed in the last chapter, and the Ionic physio-
logers. Pherecydes, a native of the island of Syros, one of the Cyc-
lades, is the earliest Greek of whose prose writings we possess any
remains*, and was certainly one of the first who, after the manner of the
* See chap. 13. § 3,
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 241
Ionians (before they had obtained any papyrus from Egypt), wrote
down their unpolished wisdom upon sheep-skins.* But his prose is
only so far prose that it has cast off the fetters of verse, and not because
it expresses the ideas of the writer in a simple and perspicuous manner.
His book began thus : " Zeus and Time (Chronos), and Chthonia ex-
isted from eternity. Chthonia was called Earth (yrj), since Zeus
endowed her with honour." Pherecydes next relates how Zeus trans-
formed himself into Eros, the god of love, wishing to form the world
from the original materials made by Chronos and Chthonia. " Zeus
makes (Pherecydes goes on to say) a large and beautiful garment ;
upon it he paints Earth and Ogenos (ocean), and the houses of Ogenos ;
and he spreads the garment over a winged oak."t It is manifest,
without attempting a complete explanation of these images, that the
ideas and language of Pherecydes closely resembled those of the Orphic
theologers, and that he ought rather to be classed with them than with
the Ionic philosophers.
§ 4. Pherecydes lived in the age of the Seven Sages; one of
whom, Thales op Miletus, was the first in the series of the Ionic
physical philosophers. The Seven Sages, as we have already had
occasion to observe, were not solitary thinkers, whose renown for
wisdom was acquired by speculations unintelligible to the mass of the
people. Their fame, which extended over all Greece, was founded
solely on their acts as statesmen, counsellors of the people in public
affairs, and practical men. This is also true of Thales, whose sagacity
in affairs of state and public economy appears from many anecdotes.
In particular, Herodotus relates, that, at the time when the Ionians
were threatened by the great Persian power of Cyrus, after the fall of
Croesus, Thales, who was tb«n very old, advised them to establish an
Ionian capital in the middle of their coast, somewhere near Teos,
where all the affairs of their race might be debated, and to which all
the other Ionic cities might stand in the same relation as the Attic
demi to Athens. At an earlier age, Thales is said to have foretold to
the Ionians the total eclipse of the sun, which (either in 610 or. 603
B.C.) separated the Medes from the Lydians in the battle which was
fought by Cyaxares against Halyattes.J For this purpose, he doubt-
less employed astronomical formula?, which he had obtained, through
Asia Minor, from the Chaldeans, the fathers of Grecian, and indeed
* Herod. V. 58. The expression it^tKvtov litpfi^m probably gave rise to the fable
that Pherecydes was flayed as a punishment for his atheism ; a charge which was
made against most of the early philosophers.
f See Sturz Commentatio de Pherecyde utroque, in his Pherecydis Fragmenta,
ed. alt. 1824. The genuineness of the fragments is especially proved by the rare
ancient Ionic forms, cited from them by the learned grammarians, Apollonius and
Herodian.
\ If Thales was (as is stated by Eusebius) born in Olymp. 35. 2. b.c. 639, he
was then either twenty-nine or thirty-six years old.
R
242 HISTORY OF THE
of all ancient astronomy; for his own knowledge of mathematics
could not have reached as far as the Pythagorean theorem. He is said
to have been the first teacher of such problems as that of the equality
of the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle. In the main, the
tendency of Thales was practical ; and, where his own knowledge
was insufficient, he applied the discoveries of nations more advanced
than his own in natural science. Thus he was the first who advised
his countrymen, when at sea, not to steer by the Great Bear, which
forms a considerable circle round the Pole; but to follow the example
of the Phoenicians (from whom, according to Herodotus, the family
of Thales was descended), and to take the Lesser Bear for their Polar
star.*
Thales was not a poet, nor indeed the author of any written work,
and, consequently, the accounts of his doctrine rest only upon the
testimony of his contemporaries and immediate successors; so that it
would be vain to attempt to construct from them a system of natural
philosophy according to his notions. It may, however, be collected
from these traditions that he considered all nature as endowed with
life : " Everything (he said) is full of gods;"t and he cited, as proofs
of this opinion, the magnet and amber, on account of their magnetic
and electric properties. It also appears that he considered water as a
general principle or cause ; J probably because it sometimes assumes a
vapoury, sometimes a liquid form ; and therefore affords a remarkable
example of a change of outward appearance. This is sufficient to show
that Thales broke through the common prejudices produced by the
impressions of the senses ; and sought to discover the principle of
external forms in moving powers which lie beneath the surface of ap-
pearances.
§ 5. Anaximander, also a Milesian, is next after Thales. It seems
pretty certain that his little work "upon nature" (-Kepi cpvarewg),— as
the books of the Ionic physiologers were mostly called, — was written
in Olymp. 58, 2, b.c. 547, when he was sixty-four years old.§ This
may be said to be the earliest philosophical work in the Greek language ;
for we can scarcely give that name to the mysterious revelations of
* This constellation was hence called $omx'/i. See Schol. Arat. Phoen. 39. Probably-
some traditions of this kind served as the basis, of the vavrix.fi aar^oXoy'ia., which was
attributed to Thales by the ancients, but, according to a more precise account, was the
work of a later writer, Phocius of Samos.
f In the passage of Aristotle, de Anima, i. 5. the words uifta. The expression fyx* was first used by Anaximander.
§ From the statement of Apollodorus, that Anaximander was sixty-four years old
in Olymp. 58. 2. (Diog. Laert. ii. 2), and of Pliny (N. H. ii. 8.), that the obliquity
of the ecliptic was discovered in Olymp. 58, it may be inferred that Anaximander
mentioned this year in his work. Who else could, at that time, have registered such
discoveries ?
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 243
Pherecydes. It was probably written in a style of extreme concise-
ness, and in language more befitting poetry than prose, as indeed
appears from the few extant fragments. The astronomical and
geographical explanations attributed to Anaximander were probably
contained in this work. Anaximander possessed a gnomon, or sun-
dial, which he had doubtless obtained from Babylon J* and, being at
Sparta (which was still the focus of Greek civilization), he made ob-
servations, by which he determined exactly the solstices and equinoxes,
and calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic. f According to Erato-
sthenes, he was the first who attempted to draw a map ; in which his
object probably was rather to make a mathematical division of the
whole earth, than to lay down the forms of the different countries corn-
posing it. According to Aristotle, Anaximander thought that there
were innumerable worlds, which he called gods ; supposing these
worlds to be beings endowed with an independent power of motion.
He also thought that existing worlds were always perishing, and that
new worlds were always springing into being ; so that motion was per-
petual. According to his views, these worlds arose out of the eternal,
or rather indeterminable, substance, which he called to a7reipov; he
arrived at the idea of an original substance, out of which all things
arose, and to which all things return, by excluding all attributes and
limitations. " All existing things (he says in an extant fragment)
must, in justice, perish in that in which they had their origin. For
one thing is always punished by another for its injustice (i. e., its in-
justice in setting itself in the place of another), according to the order
of time." {
§ 6. Anaximenes, another Milesian, according to the general tradi-
tion of antiquity, followed Anaximander, and must, therefore, have
flourished not long before the Persian war. § With him the Ionic
philosophy began to approach closer to the language of argumentative
discussion \ his work was composed in the plain simple dialect of the
Ionians. Anaximenes, in seeking to discover some sensible substance,
from which outward objects could have been formed, thought that air
best fulfilled the conditions of his problem ; and he showed much in-
genuity in collecting instances of the rarefaction and condensation of
bodies from air. This elementary principle of the Ionians was always
considered as having an independent power of motion ; and as endowed
* Herod. II. 109. Concerning Anaximander's gnomon, see Diog. Laert. II. 1,
and others.
f The obliquity of the ecliptic (that is, the distance of ihe sun's course from the
equator) must have been evident to any one who observed it with attention ; but
Anaximander found the means of measuring it, in a certain manner, with the
gnomon.
\ Simplicius ad Aristot. Phys. fol. 6.
§ The more precise statements respecting his date are so confused, that it is dif-
ficult to unravel them. See Clinton in the Philological Museum, vol. i. p. 9 1 .
r2
244
HISTORY OF THE
with certain attributes of the divine essence. " As the soul in us (says
Anaximenes in an extant fragment),* which is air, holds us together,
so breath and air surround the whole world."
§ 7. A person of far greater importance in the history of Greek phi-
losophy, and especially of Greek prose, is Heraclitus of Ephesus.
The time when he flourished is ascertained to be about the 69th Olym-
piad, or b.c. 505. He is said to have dedicated his work, which was
entitled " Upon Nature" (though titles of this kind were usually not
added to books till later times), to the native goddess of Ephesus, the
great Artemis -as if such a destination were alone worthy of it, and
he did not consider it worth his while to give it to the public. The
concurrent tradition of antiquity describes Heraclitus as a proud and
reserved man, who disliked all interchange of ideas with others. He
thought that the profound cogitations on the nature of things which
he had made in solitude, were far more valuable than all the informa-
tion which he could gain from others. " Much learning (he said) does
not produce wisdom ; otherwise it would have made Hesiod wise, and
Pythagoras, and again Xenophanes and Hecatseus."t He dealt rather
in intimations of important truths than in popular expositions of them,
such as the other Ionians preferred. His language was prose only
inasmuch as it was free from metrical shackles; but its expressions
were bolder and its tone more animated than those of many poems.
The cardinal doctrine of his natural philosophy seems to have been,
that every thing is in perpetual motion, that nothing has any stable or
permanent existence, but that everything is assuming a new form or
perishing. " We step (he says, in his symbolical language) into the
same rivers and we do not step into them" (because in a moment the
water is changed). " We are and are not" (because no point in our
existence remains fixed), J Thus every sensible object appeared to
him, not as something individual, but only as another form of some-
thing else. " Fire (he says) lives the death of the earth ; air lives
the death of fire ; water lives the death of air ; and the earth that of
water ;'§ by which he meant that individual things were only different
forms of a universal substance, which mutually destroy each other. In
* Stobaeus, Eclog., p. 296.
f In Diog. Laert. x. 1: -roXv^aSln voov oh Itbao-xu (better than Quii)' 'HrioSov yug
av thtiuti xa.) Tlv6a,yo^y,v, auS't; v dva ptyttfin'ryiroY 7ra(>i.%i' oftputrtv mo rid'/iTTcj?, &c.
In like manner the Muse says to the poet:
(TV oiiv Itu owpivot;. Eupolis in the Demi.
f The annual revenue of Athens at the time of Pericles is estimated at 1000
talents (rather more than 200,000/.) ; of which sum 600 talents flowed from the tri-
butes of the allies. If we reckon that the Propylaea (with the buildings belonging
to it) cost 2012 talents, the expense of all the buildings of this time, — the Odeon,
the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the temple at Eleusis, and other contemporary
temples in the country, as at Rhamnus and Sunium, together with the sculpture and
colouring, statues of gold and ivory, as the Pallas in the Parthenon, carpets, &c, —
cannot have been less than 8000 talents. And yet all these works fell in the last
twenty years of the Peloponnesian war.
282 HISTORY OF THE
in Greece the doctrine of a regulating intelligence*. The house of
Pericles, particularly from the time when the beautiful and accom-
plished Milesian Aspasia presided over it with a greater freedom of in-
tercourse than Athenian usage allowed to wives, was a point of union
for all the men who had conceived the intellectual superiority of Athens.
The sentiment attributed by Thucydides to Pericles in the celebrated
funeral oration, that " Athens is the school of Greece," is doubtless, if
not in words, at least in substance, the genuine expression of Periclesf.
§ 6. It could not be expected that this brilliant exhibition of human
excellence should be without its dark side, or that the flourishing state
of Athenian civilization should be exempt from the elements of decay.
The political position of Athens soon led to a conflict between the patri-
otism and moderation of her citizens and their interests and passions.
From the earliest times, Athens had stood in an unfriendly relation to
the rest of Greece. Even the Ionians, who dwelt in Asia Minor, sur-
rounded by Dorians andiEolians, did not, until their revolt from Persia,
receive from the Athenians the sympathy common among the Greeks
between members of the same race. Nor did the other states of the
mother country ever so far recognise the intellectual supremacy of
Athens, as to submit to her in political alliances; and therefore Athens
never exercised such an ascendency over the independent states of
Greece as was at various times conceded to Sparta. At the very
foundation of her political greatness, Athens could not avoid struggling
to free herself from the superintendence of the other Greeks ; and since
Attica was not an island, — which would have best suited the views of
the Athenian statesmen, — Athens was, by means of immense fortifica-
tions, as far as possible isolated from the land and withdrawn from the
influence of the dominant military powers. The eyes of her statesmen
"were exclusively turned towards the sea. They thought that the national
character of the Ionians of Attica, the situation of this peninsula, and
its internal resources, especially its silver mines, fitted Athens for mari-
time sovereignty. Moreover, the Persian war had given her a powerful
impulse in this direction ; and by her large navy she stood at the head
of the confederate islanders and Asiatics, who wished to continue the
war against Persia for their own liberation and security. These confe-
derates had before been the subjects of the King of Persia; and had
long been more accustomed to slavish obedience than to voluntary
exertion. It was their refusals and delays, which first induced Athens
to draw the reins tighter, and to assume a supremacy over them. The
* The author of the first Alcibiades (among the Platonic dialogues), p. 118, unites
the philosophical musicians, Pythocleides and Damon, with Anaxagoras, as friends
of Pericles. Pericles is also said to have been connected with Zeno the Eleatic and
Protagoras the sophist.
f Thucyd. II. 41. \un\uv ts Xiyu rSfv trccffav totle.
f According to the very important statements concerning the parts of these fes-
tivals, which are in the documents cited in the speech of Demosthenes against
Midias. Of the Lenaea it is said, h isr) Anva'too <7roy,7rh xcc.) ol r^aycSho) xou ol xu^o^hol ;
of the greater Dionysia, ro~s h acrra Aiowo-lois h Kof&Th xou ol vrouo'is xou h y.u^oi you ol
xuftcSho) xou ol r^ocyoShoi ; of the lesser Dionysia in the Piraeus, h ffop.'ffh $i auhs Tis. V. 758, ff.
f V. 346—595. comp. chap. XXXII. § 10.
\ Compare the ambiguous words in the deceitful speech : — «xx' uui *p'o$ n Xovrpa,
&c, v. 654, ff.
350 HISTORY OF THE
the very person whom Ajax had hated most bitterly, comes forward on
the side of Teucer, openly and distinctly acknowledging tire excellences
of the deceased warrior.* And thus Ajax, the noble hero, whom the
Athenians too honoured as a hero of their race,f appears as a striking
example of the divine Nemesis, and the more so as his heroism was
altogether spotless in every other respect.
§ 10. In the Philoctetes, which was not represented till Olymp. 92. 3.
b. c. 439, when the poet was eighty-five years old, Sophocles had to
emulate not only JEschylus, but also Euripides, who had before this
time endeavoured to impart novelty to the legend by making great
alterations in it, and adding some very strange contrivances of his own. J
Sophocles needed no such means to give a peculiar interest to the
subject as treated by himself. He lays the chief stress on a skilful
outline and consistent filling up of the characters ; it is the object of his
drama to depict the results of these characters in the natural, and, to a.
certain extent, necessary developement of their peculiarities. In this
piece, however, this psychological developement, starting from an hy-
pothesis selected in the first instance and proceeding in accordance
with it, leads to results entirely different from those contained in the
original legend. In order to avoid this contest between his art and the
old mythological story, Sophocles has been obliged for once to avail
himself of a resource which he elsewhere despises, though it is fre-
quently employed by Euripides, namely, the Deus ex machina, as it is
called, i. e. the intervention of some deity, whose sudden appearance
puts an end to the play of passions and projects among the persons
whose actions are represented, and, as it were, cuts the Gordian knot
with the sword
Sophocles having assumed that Ulysses has associated with himself
the young hero Neoptolemus, in order to bring to Troy Philoctetes, or
his weapons, we have from the beginning of the piece an interesting con-
trast between the two heroes thus united for a common object. Ulysses
* It is not till this incident that we have the Peripeteia, which was always a
violent change in the direction of the piece (h %l$ to havrlov tuv ^otrrofciveav
fAiTK^oXn, Aristot. Poet. 11); the death of Ajax, on the other hand, lay quite in the
direction which the drama had taken from the very beginning.
f It is worthy of remark that he speaks only of the sword of Eurysaces, and not
of Philaeus, from whom the family of Miltiades and Cimon derived their descent.
Sophocles manifestly avoids the appearance of paying intentional homage to dis-
tinguished families.
| Euripides had feigned that the Trojans also sent an embassy to Philoctetes and
offered him the sovereignty in return for his aid, in order (as Dio Chrysostom
remarks, Orat. 52. p. 549) to give himself an opportunity of introducing the long
speeches, pro and con, of which he is so fond. Ulysses, disguised as a Greek whom
his countrymen before Troy had ill-used, endeavours to induce him to assist his
countrymen, rather than the enemy. The proper solution of the difficulties in this
piece is still very doubtful.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 351
relies altogether on the ambition of Neoptolemus, who is destined by
fate to be the conqueror of Troy, if he can obtain the aid of the weapons
of Philoctetes, and Neoptolemus does, in fact, suffer himself to be pre-
vailed upon to deceive Philoctetes by representing himself as an enemy
of the Greeks who are besieging Troy, and is just on the point of car-
rying him off to their camp, under the pretence of taking him home ;
meanwhile Neoptolemus is deeply touched, in the first place, by the
unsophisticated eloquence of Philoctetes, and then by the sight of his
unspeakable sufferings;* but it is long before the resolute temper of
the young hero can be drawn aside by this from the path he has once
entered on. The first time he departs from it is after Philoctetes has
given him his bow to take care of, when he candidly admits the truth,
that he is obliged to take him to Troy, and cannot conduct him to his
home. Yet he still follows the plans of Ulysses, though much against
his own inclination, and this drives Philoctetes into a state of despair,
which almost transcends all his bodily sufferings, until Neoptolemus
suddenly reappears in violent dispute with Ulysses, as himself, as the
simple-minded, straightforward, noble young hero, who will not in any
case deceive the confidence of Philoctetes ; and as Philoctetes cannot
and will not overcome his hatred of the Achaeans, he throws aside all
his ambitious hopes and wishes, and is on the point of escorting the
sick hero to his native land, when Hercules, the Deus ex machina,
suddenly makes his appearance, and, by announcing the decrees of
fate, produces a complete revolution in the sentiments of Philoctetes
and Neoptolemus. This drama, then, is exceedingly simple, for the
foundation on which it is built is the relation between three characters,
and it consists of two acts only, separated by the stasinon before the
scene, in which the change in Neoptolemus's views is brought about.
But if we consider the consistent and profound developement of the
characters, it is by far the most artificial and elaborate of all the works
of Sophocles. The appearance of Hercules only effects an outward
peripeteia, or that sort of revolution which bears upon the occurrences
in the piece ; the intrinsic revolution, the real peripeteia in the drama
of Sophocles, lies in the previous return of Neoptolemus to his genuine
and natural disposition, and this peripeteia is, quite in accordance with
the spirit of Sophocles, brought about by means of the characters and
the progress of the action itself.
§ 11. In all the pieces of which we have spoken hitherto, the pre-
vailing ideas are ethical, but necessarily based on a religious foundation,
since it is always by reference to the divinity that the proper bias is
* V. 965 : , 'E/u.o) ft&v o'ix. x.u.xurr'
avh^uv rt\us, v. 974, and ending with the words a.Koixrofi.a.1 fth, v. 1074, is just as
characteristic as any speech could have been.
352 HISTORY OF THE
given to human actions in every field. There is, however, one drama
in which the religious ideas of Sophocles are brought so prominently
forward that the whole play may be considered as an exposition of the
Greek belief in the gods.
This drama, the (Edipus at Colonus, is always connected in the old
stories with the last days of the poet. Sophocles attained the age of
89, or thereabouts, for he did not die till Olymp. 93. 2. b. c. 406,* and
yet he did not himself bring out the (Edipus at Colonus ; it was first
brought on the stage in Olymp. 94. 3. b. c. 401, by his grandson, the
younger Sophocles. This younger Sophocles was a son of Arislon, the
offspring of the great poet and Theoris of Sicyon. Sophocles had also
a son Iophon by a free -woman of Athens, and he alone, according to
the Attic law, could be considered as his legitimate son and rightful
heir. Iophon and Sophocles both emulated their father and grand-
father ; the former brought tragedies on the stage during his father's
lifetime, the latter after his grandfather's death : the whole family
seems, like that of iEschylus, to have dedicated itself to the tragic muse.
But the heart of the old man yearned towards the offspring of his be-
loved Theoris ; and it was said, that he was endeavouring to bestow
upon his grandson during his own lifetime a considerable part of his
means. Iophon, fearing lest his inheritance should be too much di-
minished by this, was urged to the undutiful conduct of proposing to
the members of the phratria (who had a sort of family jurisdiction)
that his father should no longer be permitted to have any control over
his property, which he was no longer capable of managing. The only
reply which Sophocles made to this charge was to read to his fellow-
tribesmen the parodos from the (Edipus at Colonus ;t which must,
therefore, have been just composed, if it were to furnish any proof for
the object he had in view ; and we think it does the greatest honour to
the Athenian judges, that, after such a proof of the poet's powers of
mind, they paid no attention to the proposal of Iophon, even though
he was right in a legal point of view. Iophon, it seems, became sensible
of his error, and Sophocles afterwards forgave him. The ancients found
* The old authorities give Olymp. 93. 3. as the year of Sophocles' death : this
was the year of the Archon Callias, in which Aristophanes' Frogs were brought out
at the Lenaea, and the death of Sophocles is presupposed in this comedy as well as
that of Euripides. The Vita Sophoclis, however, following Istrus and Neanthes,
places the death of Sophocles at the Choes ; and as the Choes, which belonged to
the Anthesteria, were celebrated in the month Anthesterion, after the Lenaea, which
fell in the month Gamelion, the death of Sophocles must be referred to the year
before the archonship of Callias, consequently to Olymp 93. 2. If we suppose that
some confusion has taken place, and substitute for the Choes the lesser, or country
Dionysia, we should still be very far short of the necessary time for conceiving,
writing, and preparing for the stage such a comedy as the Frogs, even though we
should also suppose an intercalaty month inserted between Poseideon and Gamelion.
f Evl'-rn-ou, %ivt, ravbi x,*'P a $i v# 668 ff. Comp. chap. XXII. § \2.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 353
an allusion to this fact in a passage of the (Edipus at Colonus,* where
Antigone says, by way of apology for Polyneices, " Other people, too,
have had bad children, and a choleric temper, but have been induced
by the soothing speeches of their friends to give up their anger."
§ 12. It was then in the latter years of his life that Sophocles com-
posed this tragedy, which the ancients justly designate as a sweet and
charming poem ;f so wonderfully is it pervaded by gentle and amiable
feelings, so deeply tinged with a tone mixed up of sorrow for the
miseries of human existence and of comforting and elevating hopes.
This drama impresses every susceptible reader with a warmth of sensi-
bility as if it treated of the weal of the poet himself; here, more than
in any other poem, one can recognize the immediate language of the
heart. J In this play the aged Sophocles has plunged into the recollec-
tions of his youth, during which the monuments and traditions of his
rustic home, the village of Colonus near Athens, had made a deep and
lasting impression on his mind : in the whole piece, and especially in
the charming parodos-song which celebrates the natural beauties and
ancient glory of Colonus, he expresses in the most amiable manner his
patriotism and his love for his home. At Colonus were hallowed spots
of every kind, consecrated by faith in the powers of darkness ; a grove
of the Erinnyes, who were designated as " the venerable goddesses"
{(TEfivai) ; " a brazen threshold/' as it was called, which was regarded
as the portal of the subterranean world ; and, among other things, also
an abode where (Edipus was said to dwell beneath the earth as a pro-
pitious deity, conferring upon the land peace and bliss, and destroying
its enemies, especially the Thebans. The touching thought that this
(Edipus, whom the Erinnyes had so cruelly persecuted in his life-time,
should find rest from his sorrows in their sanctuary, had been mythically
expressed in other places, and was connected with particular localities.
That such a sacrifice, however, to the avenging goddesses, one recon-
ciled to them, and even tranquillized by them, should also possess the
power of conferring blessings, depends upon the fundamental ideas of
the worship of the Chthonian deities among the Greeks, which directly
ascribe to the powers of the earth and the night a secret and mysterious
fulness of life. It was in reference to these,§ according to the views of
* aXX' 'ice, abrov' i\ff\ %a.rsgot$ yovou x.ctx.a.t. V. 1192 ff.
f Mollissimum ejus carmen de CEdipode. Cicero de Fin., v. i. 3.
\ Not to touch upon the higher ideas, we may also refer to the complaints of the
chorus about the miseries of old age, v. 1211. There is a counterpoise to these
laments in the subsequent praises of an easy death, at peace with the gods.
§ Sophocles himself says, v. 62, of the temples and monuments of Colonus,
toikvtu. not ro&vr itfriv, Z ^iv, ob "koyoti rtfjt.uf/.iv aXXa wcdv, -ffaXhis' iv oJs yu^ X«£ij vi Xdov'tx gyv y a.-roxura.i, Tsv0i7v oil
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 35.)
It cannot have escaped any attentive reader how much in this mythus,
so treated, is applicable not merely to the old hero GEdipus, but also to
the destiny of man in general, and how a gentle longing for death, as a
deliverance from all worldly troubles and as a clearing up of our ex-
istence, runs through the whole; and certainly the political references
to the position of Athens at that time in regard to other states, even
though they are more prominent in this than in other pieces, are quite
subordinate in comparison with these leading ideas.*
§ 13. Thus the tragedies of Sophocles appear to us as pictures
of the mind, as poetical developements of the secrets of our souls and
of the laws to which their nature makes them amenable. Of all the
poets of antiquity, Sophocles has penetrated most deeply into the re-
cesses of the human heart. He bestows very little attention on facts ;
he regards them as little more than vehicles to give an outward mani-
festation to the workings of the mind. For the representation of this
world of thought, Sophocles has contrived a peculiar poetical language.
If the general distinction between the language of poetry and prose is
that the former gives the ideas with greater clearness and vividness,
and the feelings with greater strength and warmth ; the style of
Sophocles is not poetical in the same degree as that of iEschylus, because
it does not strive after the same vivid description of sensible impres-
sions, and because his art is based upon a delineation of the manifold
delicate shades of feeling, and not on an exhibition of the strong and
uncontrollable emotions. Accordingly, the style of Sophocles comes a
good deal nearer to prose than that of iEschylus, and is distinguished
from it less by the choice of words than by their use and connexion, and
by a sort of boldness and subtilty in the employment of ordinary ex-
pressions. Sophocles seeks to make his words imply something which
people in general would not expect in them : he employs them ac-
cording to their derivation rather than according to their actual use ;
and thus his expressions have a peculiar pregnancy and obscurity f
which easily degenerates into a sort of play with words and significa-
* It is true that the whole piece is full of references to the Peloponnesian war
and to the devastations to whfch Attica was subjected, though they spared the
country abowl Colonus and the Academy, and the holy olive-trees. Difficulties, too,
are occasioned by the tone of commendation in which Theseus speaks of the character
of Thebes in general (v. 9 1 9), for Thebes was certainly at this period one of the foes
of Athens ; and it might be supposed that this passage was added by the younger
Sophocles after Thrasybulus had liberated Athens with the aid of the Thebans. The
drama, however, is too much of one character to give any room for such a surmise;
and we must therefore conclude, that Sophocles knew there existed among the people
of Thebes a disposition favourable to Athens, whereas the aristocrats who had the
upper hand in the government were hostile to that city. After the termination of
the Peloponnesian war, the democratic party at Thebes showed themselves more
and more in favour of Athens and opposed to Sparta.
f Especially also one, of which the speakers themselves are unconscious; so that,
without knowing it, they often describe the real state of the case. This belongs es-
sentially to the tragical irony of Sophocles, of which we have spoken above (§ 8.)
2 a 2
356 HISTORY OP THE
tions. With regard to this, it must be remarked that, at the period
when he wrote, the spirit of the Greek nation was in a state of progres-
sive developement, in which it entered upon speculations beyond its
own impulses and their utterance by means of words and sentences,
and in which the reflecting powers were every day gaining more and
more the mastery over the powers of perception. In such a period
as this, an observation of and attention to words in themselves is
perfectly natural. Besides, at this time of vehement excitement, the
Athenians had an especial fondness for a certain difficulty of expression.*
An orator would please them less by telling them everything plainly
than by leaving them something to guess, and so giving them the satis-
faction of acquiring a sort of respect for their own sagacity and discern-
ment. Thus Sophocles often plays at hide and seek with the significa-
tions of words, in order that the mind, having exerted itself to find out
his meaning, may comprehend it more vividly and distinctly when it is
once arrived at. In the syntactical combinations, too, Sophocles is very
expressive, and to a certain extent artificial, while he strives with great
precision to mark all the subordinate relations of thought. Perspicuity
and fluency are incompatible with such a style as this ; and, indeed,
these properties were not generally characteristic of the rhetoric of the
time. The style of Sophocles moves on with a judicious and accurate
observation of all incidental circumstances, and does not hurry forwards
with inconsiderate haste ; though in this very particular there is a dif-
ference between the older and the more recent tragedies of Sophocles,
for several speeches in the Ajax, the Philoctetes, and the (Edipus at
Colonus have the same oratorical flow which we find in Euripides. t In
the lyrical parts, this distinct exhibition and clear illustration of the
thoughts are combined with an extraordinary grace and sweetness :
several of the choral odes are, even taken by themselves, master-pieces
of a sort of lyric poetry, which rivals that of Sappho in beauty of de-
scription and grace of conception. Sophocles, too, has with singular
good taste cultivated the Glyconian metre, which is so admirably calcu-
lated for the expression of gentle and kindly emotions.
* Uieon says (in Thucydides III. 38) that the Athenians may easily be deceived
by novelties of style ; that they despise what is common, admire what is strange,
and, though they speak not themselves, are nevertheless so far rivals of the speaker
that they follow close upon him with their thoughts, and even outrun him.
f See the speeches of Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Teucer, in the second part of
**ie Ajax, and CEdipus' defence in v. 960 of the (Edipus at Colonus.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 357
CHAPTER XXV.
§ 1. Difference between Sophocles and Euripides. The latter essentially speculative.
Tragedy a subject ill-suited for his genius. § 2. Intrusion of tragedy into the
interests of the private and, § 3, public life of the time. § 4. Alterations in the
plan of tragedy introduced by Euripides. Prologue and, § 5, Dcus ex machina.
§ 6. Comparative insignificance of the chorus. Prevalence of monodies. § 7.
Style of Euripides. § 8. Outline of his plays: the Alcestis; § 9. the Medea;
§ 10. the Hippolytus ; § 11. the Hecuba. § 12. Epochs in the mode of treating
his subject: the Heracleidae; § 13. the Suppliants; § 14. the Ion; § 15. the
raging Heracles; § 16. the Andromache; § 17. the Trojan Women; § 18. the
Electra; § 19. the Helena; § 20. the Iphigenia at Tauri; §21. the Orestes;
§ 22. the Phoenician Women ; § 23. the Bacchanalians ; § 24. the Iphigenia at
Aulis. § 25. Lost pieces: the Cyclops.
§ 1. The tragedies of Sophocles are a beautiful flower of Attic genius,
which could only have sprung up on the boundary line between two
ages differing widely in their opinions and mode of thinking.* Sophocles
possessed in perfection that free Attic training which rests upon an
unprejudiced observation of human affairs ; his thoughts had entire
freedom, and the power of mastering outward impressions; yet with all
this, Sophocles admits a something which caunot be moved and must
not be touched, which is deeply rooted in our conscience, and which a
voice from within warns us not to bring into the whirlpool of specula-
tion. He is, of all the Greeks, at once the most pious and most en-
lightened. In treating of the positive objects of the popular religion of
his country, he has hit upon the right mean between a superstitious
adherence to outward forms and a sceptical opposition to the traditionary
belief. He has always the skill to call attention to that side of his re-
ligion, which must have produced devotional feelings even in a reflect
ing and educated mind of that time.t
The position of Euripides, in reference to his own time, was totally
different. Although he was only eleven years younger than Sophocles,
and died about half a year before him, he seems to belong to an entirely
different generation, in which the tendencies, still united in Sophocles
and presided over by the noblest perception of beauty, had become irre-
* Comp. chap. XX. § 7.
t The respect which Sophocles everywhere evinces for the prophetic art is highly
worthy of remark, and to a modern reader must be particularly surprising. It does
not, however, appear in his dramas as ail inexplicable guessing at accidental occur-
rences, but as a thorough initiation into the great and just dispensations of provi-
dence. In the Ajax, the Philoctetes, the Trachinian Women, the Antigone, the
two CEdipuses, the prophecies express profound ideas though enveloped occasionally
in a mystical phraseology. Euripides has no sympathy with this reverence for the
prophetic art.
358 HISTORY OF THE
concileably opposed to one another. Euripides was naturally a serious
character, with a decided bias towards nice and speculative inquiries into
the nature of things human and divine. In comparison with the cheer-
ful Sophocles, whose spirit without any effort comprehended life in
all its significance, Euripides appeared to be morose and peevish.*
Although he had applied himself to the philosophy of the time and had
entered deeply into Anaxagoras' ideas with regard to matters relating
principally to physical science in general, while in regard to moral
studies he had manifestly allowed himself to be allured by some of the
views of the sophists ; nevertheless, the philosophy of Socrates, the op-
ponent and conqueror of the sophists, had, on the whole, gained the
upper hand in his estimation. We do not know what induced a person
with such tendencies to devote himself to tragic poetry, which he did,
as is well known, in the twenty-sixth year of his age, and in the very
same year in which iEschylus died (Olymp. 81. 1. b. c. 455. )f Suffice
it to say, that tragic poetry became the business of his life, and he had no
other means of giving to the world the results of his meditations. With
respect to the mythical traditions, however, which the tragic muse
had selected as her subjects, he stood upon an entirely different footing
from iEschylus, who recognized in them the sublime dispensations of
providence, and from Sophocles, who regarded them as containing a
profound solution of the problem of human existence. He found him-
self placed in a strange, distorted position with regard to the objects of
his poetry, which were fully as disagreeable as they were attractive to
him. He could not bring his philosophical convictions, with regard to
the nature of God and his relation to mankind, into harmony with the
contents of these legends, nor could he pass over in silence their incon-
gruities. Hence it is that he is driven to the strange necessity of
carrying on a sort of polemical discussion with the very materials and
subjects of which he had to treat. He does this in two ways : some-
times, he rejects as false those mythical narratives which are opposed to
purer conceptions about the Gods; at other times, he admits the
legends as true, but endeavours to give a base or contemptible appear-
ance to characters and actions which they have represented as great
and noble. Thus, the two favourite themes of Euripides are, to re-
present Helen, whom Homer has had the skill, notwithstanding her
failings, to clothe with dignity as well as loveliness, as a common
* He is called trrputpvos and pitroyiXus by Alexander ./Etolus, in the verses quoted
by Gellius N. A. xv. 20. 8.
f This is in accordance with the Vita Euripidis, which Elmsley published from a
MS. in the Ambrosian Library, and which, with several alterations and additions, is
also found in a Paris and Vienna MS. According to Eratosthenes, who gives the
age of 26 for his first appearance and of 75 for his death, he must have been born in
Olymp. 74 3. b. c. 482-1, although the Parian marble places his birth at Olymp.
73. 4. It is clearly only a legend that he was born on the day of the battle of
Salamis.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 359
prostitute, and Meuelaus as a great simpleton, who, in order to get back
his worthless wife, has brought so many brave men into distress and
danger — and distinctly to blame and misrepresent the deed of Orestes
as a crime to which he had been urged by the Delphic oracle ; whereas
iEschylus has striven to exhibit it as an unavoidable though a dreadful
deed.
§ 2. Although Euripides, as an enlightened philosopher, might have
found pleasure in showing the Athenians the folly of many of the tra-
ditions which they believed in and considered as holy, yet it is somewhat
strange that he all along kept close to these mythical subjects, and did
not attempt to substitute for them subjects of his own invention, as his
contemporary Agathon did, according to Aristotle, in his piece called
" the Flower" (avdog). It is certain that Euripides regarded these
mythological traditions as merely the substratum, the canvas, on which
he paints his great moral pictures without the restraint of any rules.
He avails himself of the old stories in order to produce situations in
which he may exhibit the men of his own time influenced by mental
excitement and passionate emotion. There is great truth in the dis-
tinction which Sophocles, according to Aristotle, made between the
characters of his plays and those of Euripides, when he said that he re-
presented men as they ought to be, Euripides men as they are :* for,
while Sophocles' persons have all something noble and great in the»**
composition, and even the less noble are in a measure justified and
ennobled by the sentiments of which they are the vehicle, f Euripides, on
the other hand, strips his of the ideal greatness which they claimed as
heroes and heroines, and allows them to appear with all the petty pas-
sions and weaknesses of people of his own timej — properties which
often make a singular contrast to the grave and measured speeches and
the outward pomp which the tragic cothurnus carries with it. All the
characters of Euripides have that loquacity and dexterity in the use of
words§ which distinguished the Athenians of his day, and that vehe-
mence of passion which, formerly restrained by the conventions of
morality, was now appearing with less desire for concealment every day.
They have all an extraordinary fondness for arguing, and consequently
* Arist. Poet. 25.
f Like the Atridae in the Ajax, Creon in the Antigone, Ulysses in thePhiloctetes.
Tnere are no absolute villains in Sophocles ; but in Euripides, Polymestor in the
Hecuba, Menelaus in the Orestes, and the Achaean princes in the Troades, very
nearly deserve that appellation. In general, every person in ancient tragedy is, to
a certain extent, ri^ht in his way of thinking : the absolutely insignificant and con-
temp ib!e occupy by no means so much space in ancient tragedy as in our own.
% Thus, Euripides represents heroes, like Bellt-rophon and Ixiou, as mere misers.
With similar caprice, he turns the seven heroes warring against Thebes into so
many characters from common life, interesting enough, it is true, but not elevated
above the ordinary standar.i.
§ (ttco/^vXiu, Iztvorws. Co up- chap. XX. § 7.
360 HISTORY OF THE
are on the vratch for every opportunity of reasoning on their views of
things human and divine. Along with this, objects of common life are
treated with the minutest attention to petty circumstances of daily oc-
currence,* as when Medea makes a detailed complaint of the unhappy
lot of women, who are obliged to bring a quantity of money as dowry
in order to purchase for themselves a lord and master ;t and as Her-
mione, in the Andromache, enlarges on the topic, that a prudent hus-
band will not allow his wife to be visited by strange women, because
they would corrupt her mind with all sorts of bad speeches.^ Euripides
must have bestowed the greatest pains on his study of the female
character. Almost all his tragedies are full of vivid sketches and in-
genious remarks referring to the life and habits of women. The deeds
of passion, bold undertakings, fine-spun plans, as a general rule, always
originate with the female characters, and the men often play a very de-
pendent and subordinate part in their execution. One may easily con-
ceive what a shock would be given by thus bringing forward the women
from the domestic restraint and retirement in which they lived at
Athens. But it would be doing Euripides great injustice if we were,
like Aristophanes, to make this a ground for calling him a woman-
hater. The honour which his mode of treating the subject confers on
the female sex is quite equal to any reproaches which he puts upon
women. Euripides also brings children on the stage more frequently
than his predecessors ; perhaps he did this for the same reason that
made people, when brought before the criminal courts on charges in-
volving severe punishment, produce their children to the judges in order
to touch their hearts by the sight of their innocence and helplessness.
He brings them on in situations which must have moved the heart of
every affectionate father and mother among his audience,§ although
they were seldom introduced as speaking or singing, because this was
not possible without making some tedious arrangements. |J
§ 3. Euripides also avails himself of every opportunity of touching
upon public events, in order to give weight to his opinions on political
subjects, whether favourable or unfavourable. He expresses himself
* olxsTa. -r^dyfiara, oT? %geuf&sf, «7y %vvurftiv, says Aristophanes, Frogs, 959.
f Euripides, Medea, 235.
% Eurip. Androm. 944.
§ As when Peleus holds up the little Molossus to untie the cords with which his
mother is bound {Androm. 724). Astyanax, in the Troades, is first embraced by his
mother in the midst of her bitter grief, and afterwards brought in dead upon a
shield. The infant Orestes must coax Agamemnon, so as to make him listen to the
prayers of Iphigenia.
|t As in the scenes in the Alcestis and the Andromache (for the children of
Medea are heard crying out from behind the scenes). One of the chorus then stood
behind the scenes and sang the part which the child acted, and which was called
tu£u,r he had actually found the means of reconciling and uniting
in himself the old deep-rooted morality and the more enlightened views
of the age. That the Athenians were conscious of this, and that in
his life-time Euripides had not so many partizans as we might have
supposed, may be seen in the fact that, although he wrote a great
number of plays (in all ninety-two),* he did not gain nearly so many
tragic victories as Sophocles. t
§ 4. We may connect with these remarks on the developement of
the thoughts in the tragedies of Euripides, some observations on their
form or outward arrangement, since it may easily be shown how nearly
this is connected with his mode of treating the subjects. There are
two elements in the outward form of tragedy which are almost entirely
due to Euripides — the prologue and the dens ex machina, as it is called,
In the prologue, some personage, a god or a hero, tells in a monologue
who he is, how the action is going on, what has happened up to the
present moment, to what point the business has come, nay more, if the
prologuer is a god, also to what point it is destined to be carried. j
Every unprejudiced judge must look upon these prologues as a retro-
grade step from a more perfect form to one comparatively defective. It
is doubtless much easier to show the state of affairs by a detached nar-
rative of this kind than by speeches and dialogues which proceed from
the action of the piece ; but the very fact that these narratives have
nothing to do with the context of the drama, but are only a make-shift
of the poet, is also a reason why the form of the drama should suffer
from them. That Euripides himself probably felt this appears from the
manner in which he has been at the pains of justifying, or at least ex-
cusing, this sort of prologue in the Medea, one of the oldest of his re-
maining plays. The nurse of Medea there says, after having recounted
the hard fate of her mistress and the resentment which it has excited in
her, that she has herself been so overcome with grief on Medea's ac-
count, that she is possessed with a longing to proclaim to earth and
heaven her mistress's unhappy lot.§ Euripides, however, with his peculiar
tendencies, could not well have dispensed with these prologues. As it
is his sole object to represent men under the influence of passion, he
found it necessary to lay before the spectator a concise statement of the
* Of which seventy-five are spoken of as extant ; and of these three were not con-
sidered genuine.
f Euripides did not gain a victory till Olymp. 84. 3. b. c. 441. His victories
amounted on the whole to five ; according to some writers, to fifteen. Sophocles
gained eighteen, twenty, or twenty-four victories.
I For example, in the Ion, the Hippolytus, and the Bacchae ; in the Hecuba, too,
the shade of Polydorus appears with the divine power of foretelling the future. In
the Alcestis, however, the whole form of the prologue is different. Jn the Troades
the prologue, included in the dialogue between Poseidon and Athena, goes a good
way beyond the action of the piece. Comp. § 16.
§ Eurip. Med. 56 foil.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 363
circumstances which had brought them to that point, in order that he
might be able, as soon as the piece actually began, to paint the parti-
cular passion in all its strength.* Besides, so complicated are the
situations into which he brings his characters, in order to have an op-
portunity of thoroughly developing a varied play of affections and pas-
sions, that it would be difficult to make them intelligible to the specta-
tors otherwise than by a circumstantial narration, especially when
Euripides, in his arbitrary treatment of the old stories, ventures to give
a different turn to the incidents from that with which the Athenians
were already familiar from their traditions and poetry.f
§ 5. With regard to the deus ex machina, it is much the same sort
of contrivance for the end of a play of Euripides that the monologues
we have mentioned are for the beginning. It is a symptom that dra-
matic action had already lost the. principle of its natural developement,
and was no longer capable of producing, in a satisfactory manner, from
its own resources, a connexion of beginning, middle, and end. When
the poet had by means of the prologue pointed out the situation, from
which resulted an effect on the passions of the chief character and a
contest with opposing exertions, he introduced all sorts of complica-
tions, which rendered the contest hotter and hotter, and the play of pas-
sions more and more involved, till at last he can hardly find any side on
which he may bring the impassioned actions of the characters to a
definite end, whether it be a decided victory of one of the parties, or
peace and a reconciliation of the contending interests. Upon this,
some divinity appears in the sky, supported by machinery, announces
the decrees of fate, and makes a just and peaceable arrangement of the
affair. Euripides, however, by degrees only, became bolder in em-
ploying this sort of denouement. He winds up his earliest plays
without any deus ex machina ; then follow pieces in which the action
is brought to its proper end by the persons themselves, the deity being
introduced only to remove any remaining doubt and to complete the
work of tranquillizing the minds of those who might be discontented ;
and it was not till the end of his career that Euripides ventured to lay
all the weight on the deus ex machina, so that it is left to this power
alone, not to undo, but to cut asunder the complicated knot of human
passions, which otherwise would be inextricable.J The poet attempted
to make up for any want of satisfaction which this might occasion to
the mind, by endeavouring to gratify the bodily eye : he often intro-
* As in the Medea, the Hippolytus, and other plays.
f Examples confirmatory of these views may be derived from the Orestes, the
Helena, and the Electra.
I This applies to the Orestes. Besides this, we find the Deus ex machina in the
Hippolytus, ihe Ion, the Iphigenia at Tauri, the Suppliants, the Andromache, the
Helena, the Electra, and the Bacchas.
364 HISTORY OF THE
duced the divinity in such a manner as to surprise, or even, in the first
instance, to terrify the spectator, by exhibiting' him in all his greatness
and power, and surrounding him with a halo of light ; in some cases he
combined with this other startling appearances, which could not have
been brought forward without some acquaintance with the science of
optics.*
§ 6. The position of the chorus also was essentially perverted by the
changes which Euripides allowed himself to make in the outward form
of tragedy. The chorus fulfils its proper office when it comes forward
to mediate between, to advise, and to tranquillize opposing parties, who
are actuated by different views of the case, and who have, or at least for
the time appear to have, each of them the right on their own side. The
special object of the stasirna is, by reference to higher ideas, to which
the contending powers ought to submit, to introduce a sort of equili-
brium into the irregularities of the action. The chorus fulfils this office
in very few of the plays of Euripides ;t it is generally but little suited
for so dignified a position. Euripides likes to make his chorus the
confidant and accomplice of the person whom he represents as under
the influence of passion ; the chorus receives his wicked proposals, and
even lets itself be bound by an oath not to betray them, so that, how-
ever much it may wish to hinder the bad consequences resulting from
them, it is no longer capable of doing so.* As a chorus so related to
the actors is seldom qualified to pronounce weighty and authoritative
opinions, by which a restraint may be placed on the unbridled passions
of the actors, it generally fills up the pauses, in which its songs take
place, with lyrical narrations of events which happened before, but have
some reference to the action of the piece. How many of the choral
songs of Euripides consist of descriptions of the Grecian hosts which
sailed for Troy and of the terrible destruction of that city ! In the
Phoenissae, the subject of which is the contest of the hostile brothers at
Thebes, the choral songs tell all the terrible and shocking stories con-
nected with the house of Cadmus. We might almost class these
stasima with the species of choral songs mentioned by Aristotle, and
* In the Helena it is clear that, while the Dioscuri are speaking, we see Helen
escape from the shore (v. 1662); so also in the Iphig. Taur., v. 1446, we see the
ship with the fugitives out at sea. In the Orestes, v. 1631, Helen appears hovering
in the air. It is clear that these were images, which must have been prepared and
lighted up in some peculiar manner so as to produce the desired impression. For
this purpose, no doubt, they used the h/zixuxkiov, of which Pollux says (IV. § 1 31) that
distant objects were represented by means of it, such as heroes swimming in the sea
or carried up to heaven.
t Most of all perhaps in the Medea, where the stasima, altogether or in part com-
posed in the lively rhythms of the Doric mode, are sometimes designed to represent
the justice of Medea's wrath and hatred against Jason, at other times to mitigate
her revenge which is hurrying her to extremes.
X Thus in the Hippolytus, v. 904.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 365
called embolima, because they were arbitrarily inserted as a lyrical and
musical interlude between the acts, without any reference to the sub-
ject of the play; much in the same way as those pauses are now-a-days
filled up with instrumental music ad libitum. We are told that these
embollma were first introduced by Agathon, a friend and contemporary
of Euripides.*
The tragedy of Euripides did not, however, on this account lose its
lyrical element; it only came more and more into the hands of the
actors, in the same proportion as it was taken from the chorus. The
songs of persons on the stage form a considerable part of the tragedies
of Euripides, and especially the prolix airs or monodies, in which one of
the chief persons declares his emotions or his sorrows in passionate
outpourings.t These monodies were among the most brilliant parts of
the pieces of Euripides: his chief actor, Cephisophon, who was nearly
connected with the poet, showed all his power in them. A lively ex-
pression of the emotions, called forth by certain outward acts, was their
chief business; we must not expect here that elevation of soul which is
nurtured by great thoughts. With Euripides in particular, this species
of lyric poetry lost more and more in real, sterling value ; and these
descriptions of pain, sorrow, and despair degenerated into a trifling play
with words and melodies, to which the abrupt short sentences, tumbling
topsy-turvy, as it were, the questions and exclamations, the frequent
repetitions, the juxta-position of words of the same sound, and other
artifices, imparted a sort of outward charm, but could not make up for
the want of meaning in them. There is a feeble, childish, affected tone
in these parts of the later pieces of Euripides, which Aristophanes, who
never spares him, not only felt himself, but rendered obvious to others
by means of striking parodies.^
The laxity and shallowness of these lyrical pieces is also shown in
the metrical form, which is always growing looser and more irregular
in several ways, especially in the accumulation of short syllables.
In the Glyconic system, in particular, Euripides, after Olymp. 89.
(about b. c. 424.), allowed himself to take some liberties by virtue of
which the peculiar charms of this beautiful metre degenerated more
and more into voluptuous weakness.§
* A Latin critic of some weight, the tragedian and reviewer Accius, who in his
Didascalice imitated the similar labours of the Alexandrine grammarians, says in-a
fragment quoted by Nonius, p. 178. ed. Mercer., Euripides, qui choros temerarius in
fabulis. — Former critics have supposed that a choral song in the Helena of Euripides
(v. 1301) has been interpolated from another tragedy; and indeed some things in it
would be more intelligible if the choral song had originally belonged to the
Protesilaus.
t See above Chap. XXII. § 13.
I See Aristophan. Frogs, v. 1330 foil.
§ G. Hermann has in several places called attention to the revolution which oc-
curred in Olymp. 90. in the mode of treating several metres.
366 HISTORY OF THE
§ 7. The style of Euripides in the dialogue cannot be distinguished
in any marked manner from the mode of speaking then common in the
public assemblies and law courts. The comedian calls him a poet of law-
speeches ; conversely, he esserts, it is necessary to speak "in a spruce
Euripidean style "* imthe public exhibitions. The perspicuity, facility,
and energetic adroitness of this style made the greatest impression at the
time. Aristophanes, who was reproached with having learned much
from the poet to whom he was so constantly opposed, admits that he had
adopted his condensation of speech, but adds, sarcastically, that he takes
his thoughts less from the daily intercourse of the market-place. f
Aristotle remarks,! that Euripides was the first to produce a poetical
illusion by borrowing his expressions from ordinary language ; that
his audience needed not for illusion's sake to transport themselves into
a strange world, raised far above themselves, but remained at Athens in
the midst of the Athenian orators and philosophers. Euripides was
incontestably the first who proved on the stage the power which a fluent
style, drawing the listener along with it by means of its beautiful
periods and harmonious falls, must exert upon the public mind ; nay
more, he even produced a reaction on Sophocles by means of it. But
it cannot be denied that he gave himself up too much to this facility
also, and his characters sometimes display quite as much garrulitv as
eloquence : the attentive reader often misses the stronger nourishment
of thoughts and feelings furnished by the style of Sophocles, which,
though more difficult, is at the same time more expressive. Euripides,
too, descends so low to common life in his choice of expressions
that he actually uses words of a nobler meaning in the sense which
they bore in the common colloquial language. § Finally, it must be
remarked, though the establishment of this position belongs to the
history of the Greek language, that we find traces in Euripides of an
impaired feeling for the laws of his own language. In the lyrical pas-
sages he uses forms of inflexion.; and in the dialogue compound words,
which offend against the well-founded analogy of the Greek language ;
and he is perhaps the first of all the Greek authors who can be charged
with this.
§ 8. In these considerations of the poetry of Euripides in general we
have often referred to the distinction which subsists between the earlier
* KOju.i^svPi'Tix.a; : The Knights, V. 18.
•f %(>Zuoc.i yk() ocvt3V vov ff-TOfAccros -rZ ffrpoyyvkco,
tov; vov; o ocyooaiov; y,ttov « 'x.uvo; woiu :
—Fragment in the Scholia to Plato's Apology, p. 93, 8. Fragm. No. 397. Dindorf.
t Rhetor. III. 2. § 5.
6 Thus he used c-epvos in a bad sense, as signifying "proud," "arrogant-"
Medea, 219, see Elmsley ; Hippolyt.93, 1056; VKXcuorn; as signifying « simDlicity'"
" foolishness:" Helenas 1066. x
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 367
and later plays of this poet; in the following remarks en some of the
separate plays we shall endeavour to make this distinction still clearer
and more definite.
The first, in point of time, of the extant plays of Euripides is, as it
happens, not adapted to serve as a striking example of the style of his
tragedies at that time. The same authority* that has made known to
us the year in which the Alcestis was brought out (Olymp. S5. 2. b. c.
438), also informs us that this drama was the last of four pieces, conse-
quently, that it was added instead of a satyr ic drama to a trilogy of
tragedies. This one notice places us at once on the right footing with
regard to it, and sets us free from a number of difficulties which would
otherwise interfere with our forming a right judgment of the piece.
When we consider all the singularities of this play — its hero, Admetus,
allowing his wife to die for him, and reproaching his father with not
having made this sacrifice ; the toper Hercules making a most unmusical
uproar in the house of mourning as he feasts like a glutton and drinks
potations pottle-deep ; and especially the farcical concluding scene, in
which Admetus, the sorrowing widower, strives long not to be obliged
to receive Alcestis, who has been won back from death and is intro-
duced to him as a stranger, because he is afraid for his continence —
we must admit that this piece deserves the name of a tragi-comedy
rather than that of a tragedy proper. We cannot get rid of the
comicality of these situations by an excuse derived from the rude naivete
of the ancient poetry. The shortness of the drama, in comparison with
the other plays of this poet, and the simplicity of the plan, which requires
only two actors,t all this convinces us that we must not include this
play in the list of the regular tragedies of Euripides. As it is, however,
it perfectly fulfils its destination of furnishing a cheerful conclusion to
a series of real tragedies, and thus relieving the mind from the stress of
tragic feeling which they had occasioned.
§ 9. The Medea, on the contrary, which was brought out Olymp.
87. 1. b. c. 431, is unquestionably a model of the tragedies of Euripides,
a great and impressive picture of human passion. In this piece Euri-
pides takes on himself the risk, and it was certainly no slight risk in
those days, of representing in all her tearfulness a divorced and slighted
wife : he has done this in the character of Medea with such vigour, that
all our feelings are enlisted on the side of the incensed wife, and we
follow with the most eager sympathy her crafty plan for obtaining, by
dissimulation, time and opportunity for the destruction of all that, is dear
* A didascalia of the Alcestis, e cod. Faticano, published by Dindorf in the Oxford
Edition of 1834.
f For Alcestis, when she returns to the stage as delivered from the power of death,
is represented by a mute. The part of Eumelus is a parachoregem.i, as it was called.
See above, & 2 note.
368 HISTORY OF THE
to the faithless Jason ; and, though we cannot regard this denouement
without horror, we even consider the murder of her children as a
deed necessary under the circumstances. The exasperation of Medea
against her husband and those who have deprived her of his love
certainly contains nothing grand : but the irresistible strength of this
feelin"-, and the resolution with which she casts aside all and every
of her own interests, and even rages against her own heart, produces a
really great and tragic effect. The scene, which paints the struggle in
Medea's breast between her plans of revenge and her love for her
children, will always be one of the most touching and impressive ever
represented on the stage. The judgment of Aristotle, that Euripides,
although he does not manage everything for the best, is neverthe-
less the most tragical of the poets,* is particularly true of this piece.
Euripides is said to have based his Medea on a play by Neophron, an
older or contemporary tragedian, in which Medea was also represented
as murdering her own children. f Others, on the contrary, maintain
that Euripides was the first who represented Medea as the murderess,
of her children, whereas the Corinthian tradition attributed their death
to the Corinthians, — but certainly he did not make this change in the
story because the Corinthians had bribed him to take the imputation of
guilt from them, but because it was only in this way that the plot
would receive its full tragical significance.
§ 10. The Hippolytus Crowned,\ brought out Olymp. 87. 4. b.c. 428,
is related to the Medea in several points, but is far behind it in unity
of plan and harmony of action. The unconquerable love of Phaedra for
her step-son, which, when scorned, is turned into a desire to make him
share her own ruin, is a passion of much the same kind as that of
Medea. These women, loving and terrible in their love, were new ap-
pearances on the Attic stage, and scandalized many a champion of the
old morality ; at any rate, Aristophanes often afreets to believe that the
morals of the Athenian women were corrupted by such representations
on the stage. The passion of Pheedra, however, is not so completely
the main subject of the whole play as Medea's is : the chief character
from first to last is the young Hippolytus, the model of continence, the
companion and friend of the chaste Artemis, whom Euripides, in con-
sequence of his tendency to attribute to the past the customs of his own
age, has made an adherent of the ascetic doctrines of the Orphic school ;§
the destruction of this young man through the anger of Aphrodite,
whom he has despised, is the general subject of the play, the proper
* Poet. c. 13.
t According to the fragments of Neophron in the Scholia.
X As distinguished from an older play, the Veiled Hippolytus, which appeared in
an altered and improved form in the Hippolytus Crowned.
§ Comp. Chap. XVI. § 3.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 369
action of the piece ; and the love of Phaedra is, in reference to this
action, only a lever set in motion by the goddess hostile to Hippolytus.
It cannot be denied that this plot, as it turns upon the selfish and cruel
hatred of a deity, can give but little satisfaction, notwithstanding the
great beauties of the piece, especially the representation of Phaedra's
passion.
§ 11. The Hecuba also, although a little more recent,* belongs to
this class of tragedies, in which the emotion of passion, a pathos in the
Greek sense of the word, is set forth in all its might and energy. The
piece has been much censured, because it is deficient in unity of action,
which is certainly much more important to tragedy than the unity of
time or place. The censure, however, is unjust. It is only necessary
that the chief character, Hecuba, should be made the centre-figure
throughout the piece, and that all that happens should be referred to
her, in order to bring the seemingly inconsistent action to one harmo-
nious ending. Hecuba, the afflicted queen and mother, learns at the
very beginning of the piece a new sorrow ; it is announced to her that
the Greeks demand the sacrifice of her daughter Polyxena at the
tomb of Achilles. The daughter is torn from her mother's arms,
and it is only in the willing resignation and noble resolution with
which the young maiden meets her fate that we have any alleviation of
the pain which we feel in common with Hecuba, Upon this, the female
servant, who was sent to fetch water to bathe the dead body of
Polyxena, finds on the sea- shore, washed up by the breakers, the
corpse of Polydorus, the only remaining hope of his mother's declining
age. The revolution, or peripeteia, of the piece consists in this, that
Hecuba, though now cast down into the lowest abyss of misery, no
longer gives way to fruitless wailings ; she complains now much less
than she did before of this last and worst of misfortunes ; but she, a
weak, aged woman, a captive, and deprived of all help, nevertheless finds
means in her own powerful and active mind (for the Hecuba of Euri-
pides is from first to last a woman of extraordinary boldness and free-
dom of mindf) to take fearful vengeance on her perfidious and cruel
enemy, the Thracian king, Polymestor. With all the craft of a woman,
and by sagaciously availing herself of the weak as well as of the good
side of Agamemnon's character, she is enabled not merely to entice the
* Aristophanes ridicules the play in the Clouds, consequently in Olvmp. 89. 1.
b. c. 423. The passage v. 649 seems to refer to the misfortunes of the Spartans at
Pylos in b. c. 425.
f She is also a sort of free-thinker. She says (Hecuba, 794) "that law and
custom (y'opo$) rule over the gods ; for it is in conformity with custom that we be-
lieve in the gods." And in the Troades (v. 893) she prays to Zeus, whoever he may
be in his inscrutable power whether he is the necessity of nature or the mind of men ;
upon which Menelans justly remarks that she has " innovated" the prayers to the
gods (ib%oii Ixociviffcci^)
2 B
370 HISTORY OF THE
barbarian to the destruction prepared for him, but also to make an
honourable defence of her deed before the leader of the Greek host.
§ 12. It seems as if Euripides had exhausted at rather an early
period the materials most suited to his style of poetry: no one of his
later pieces paints a passion of such energy as the jealousy of Medea
or the revengeful feelings of Hecuba. It is possible too that his
method generally may not have had such capabilities as the manner
in which Sophocles has been able to make the old legends applicable
to the developement of characters and moral tendencies. Euripides
endeavours to find a substitute for the interest, which he could no
longer excite by a representation of the effects of passion, in the intro-
duction of a greater number of incidents on the stage and in a greater
complication of the plot. He calls up the most surprising occurrences
in order to keep the attention on the stretch ; and the action is designed
to represent the proper developement of a p,reat destiny, notwithstand-
ing the accidents which may thwart and oppose it. The pieces of this
period are also particularly rich in allusions to the events of the day
and the relative position of the parties which were formed in the Greek
states, and calculated in many ways to flatter the patriotic vanity
of the Athenians. But on this it must be remarked, that he does not,
like iEschylus, consider the mythical events in any real connexion with
the historical, and treat the legends as the foundation, type, and pro-
phecy of the destinies of the time being, but only seeks out and eagerly
lays hold of an opportunity of pleasing the Athenians by exalting their
national heroes and debasing the heroes of their enemies.
The Heracleidm can afford us no satisfaction unless we pay attention
to these political views. This play narrates with much circumstantial
detail and exactness, like a pragmatical history, how the Heracleidae,
as poor persecuted fugitives, find protection in Athens, and how by the
valour of their own and the Athenian heroes they gain the victory over
their oppressor, Eurystheus ; it does not, however, create much tragic
interest. The episode, in which Macaria with surprising fortitude
voluntarily offers herself as a sacrifice, is designed to put a little spirit
into the drama ; only it must be allowed that Euripides makes rather
too much use of the touching representation of a noble, amiable maiden
yielding herself up as a sacrifice, either of her own accord or at least
with singular resolution.* All the weight, however, in this piece is laid
upon the political allusions. The generosity of the Athenians to the
Heracleidse is celebrated in order to charge with ingratitude their
descendants, the Dorians of the Peloponnese, who were such bitter
enemies to Athens, and the oracle which Eurystheus makes known at
the end of the play, that his corpse should be a protection to the land
* Polyxena. Macaria, Iphigenia at Aulis.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 371
of Attica against the descendants of the Heracleidae when they should
invade Attica as enemies, was obviously designed to strengthen the
confidence of the less enlightened portion of the audience in regard to
the issue of this struggle. The drama was probably brought out at
the time when the Argives stood at the head of the Peloponnesian con-
federacy, and it was thought probable that they would join the Spartans
and Boeotians in their march against Athens, about Olymp. 89. 3.
b. c. 421.
§ 13. The Suppliants has a considerable affinity to the Heracleidae.
In this play also a great political action is represented with circum-
stantial detail and with an ostentatious display of patriotic speeches and
stories. The whole turns on the interment of the fallen Argive heroes,
which was refused by the Thebans, but brought about by Theseus. It
is highly probable that Euripides had in view the dispute between the
Athenians and Boeotians after the battle of Delium, on which occasion
the latter refused to give up the dead bodies for sepulture (Olymp.
89. 2. b. c. 424.) The alliance which Euripides makes the Argive
ruler contract with Athens on behalf of all his descendants, refers un-
questionably to the alliance which actually took place between Athens
and Argos about this time (Olymp. 89. 4. b. c. 421). The piece has,
however, besides this political bearing, some independent beauties,
especially in the songs of the chorus, which is composed of the mothers
of the seven heroes and their attendants; to which are added, later in
the piece, seven youths, the sons of the fallen warriors. The temple of
Demeter at Eleusis, where the scene is laid, forms an imposing back-
ground to the whole piece. The burning of the dead bodies, which is
seen on the stage, the urns with the bones of the dead which are
carried by the seven youths, are scenes which must have produced a
great outward effect; and the frantic conduct of Evadne, who of her
own accord throws herself on the blazing funeral pi'e of her husband
Capaneus, must have created emotions of terror and surprise in the
minds of the spectators. It is clear that in this play Euripides sum-
moned to his aid all the resources which might contribute to make its
representation splendid and effective.
§ 14. The Ion of Euripides possesses great beauties, but is defective
in the very same points as those which we have just described. No
great character, no violent passion predominates in the poem; the
only motive by which the characters are actuated is a consideration of
their own advantage ; all the interest lies in the ingenuity of the plot,
which is so involved that, while on the one hand it keeps our expecta-
tion on the stretch and agreeably surprises us, on the other hand the
result is highly flattering to the patriotic wishes of the Athenians.
Apollo is desirous of advancing Ion, his son by Creusa, the daughter
of Erechtheus, to the sovereignty of Athens, but without acknowledging
2 b 2
372 HISTORY OF THE
that he is his father. With this view he delivers an ambiguous oraele,
which induces Xuthus, the husband of Creusa, to believe that Ion is
his own son, begotten before his marriage with the Athenian princess.
The violence of Creusa, however, hinders the success of this plan. She
endeavours to poison him, whom she considers as her husband's
bastard and as an intruder into the ancient royalty of the Erechtheidae,
and Ion, protected by the gods from her attempt upon his life, is about
to take a bloody revenge on the authoress of the murderous design.
Upon this, the woman who took care of Ion in his infancy appears with
the tokens which prove his origin, and Ion at once embraces as his
mother the enemy whom he was about to punish. The worthy
Xuthus, however, whom gods and men leave in his error, undoubtingly
receives the stranger youth into his house and kingdom as his son and
heir. It is clear that the general object of this play is to maintain
undimmed and undiminished the pride of the Athenians, their au-
tochthony, their pure descent from their old earth born patriarchs and
national kings. The common ancestor of the Ionians who ruled in
Attica must not be the son of a stranger settled in the country, an
Achaean chieftain, like Xuthus, but must belong to the pure old Attic
stock of the Erechtheidae.
§ 15. The Raging Hercules contains very definite indications that
the poet composed it at a time when he began to feel the inconvenience
of old age, which might easily be the case from Olymp. 89. 3. b.c. 422 *
This piece is also constructed so as to produce a great effect in the way
of surprise, and contains scenes — such as the appearance of the goddess
Lyssa (Madness), and the representation, by means of an eccyclema, of
Hercules, bound and recovering from his madness — which must have
produced a powerful effect on the stage. But it is altogether want-
ing in the real satisfaction which nothing but a unity of ideas per-
vading the drama could produce. It is hardly possible to conceive
that the poet should have combined in one piece two actions so totally
different as the deliverance of the children of Hercules from the
persecutions of the blood-thirsty Lycus, and their murder by the hands
of their frantic father, merely because he wished to surprise the
audience by a sudden and unexpected change to the precise contrary of
what had gone before. We believe that the afflictions of Hercules and
his family are over, when suddenly the goddess of madness appears to
bring about a new and greater sorrow, and to destroy the children by
the hands of the very person who had delivered them from death in
the first part of the play, and that too with no apparent ground, except
that Hera, will give no rest to Hercules, although he has got over all the
labours hitherto imposed upon him.
* In the choral song, v. 639 foil, a vioras pot tp'iXov — especially in the words U roi
yio&tv aoihoi xskuhT {Avu/too-vvKv. Compare with this Cresphontes, frag. 15, ed. Matthia.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 373
§ 16. We have assigned the two last pieces to this epoch not from
any external grounds, but on the evidence of their contents. Other
pieces, the date of which may be definitely assigned, show still more
clearly the form which the tragedy of Euripides assumed from after
Olymp. 90. b. c. 420. It became more and more his object to repre-
sent the wayward and confused impulses of human passion, in which,
by sudden and surprising changes, now the one side, now the other,
gains the mastery ; the plans of the wicked fal, but even the just
suffer adversity and affliction, without our being able to perceive any
solid foundation on which those varied destinies of the individual actors
are based.
This is particularly applicable to the Andromache, in which, at first,
the helpless wife of Hector, who is represented in the play as the slave
of Neoptolemus, is persecuted to the uttermost by his wife Hermione
and her father Menelaus ; then, by the opportune intervention of
Peleus, Andromache is set free, Menelaus compelled to retire, and
Hermione plunged into the most desperate sorrow; upon this Orestes
appears, carries off Hermione, who was betrothed to him before, and
contrives plans for the destruction of her husband, Neoptolemus; the
news soon arrives that Neoptolemus has been slain at Delphi in conse-
quence of the intrigues of Orestes; and Thetis, who comes forward as
the deus ex mackina, brings consolation and tranquillity, not from the
past, but from the future, by promising to the descendants of Andro-
mache the sovereignty of the Molossi, and to Peleus immortality
among the deities of the sea. If we must seek in this play for a sub-
ject which goes all through the piece, it is the mischief which a bad
wife may, in many ways, direct and indirect, bring upon a family.
Hermione causes mischief in the family of Neoptolemus, as well by the
jealous cruelty which she exercises in the house as by faithlessly leaving
her husband for a stranger. The political references bear a very pro-
minent part in the piece. The bad characters are throughout Pelopon-
nesians, and especially Spartans ; and Euripides embraces, with a de-
light which cannot be mistaken, this opportunity of giving vent to all
the ill-will that he felt towards the cruel and crafty men and the disso-
lute women of Sparta. The want of honour and sincerity with which
he charges the Spartans* appears to refer particularly to the transac-
tions of the year 420, Olymp. 89. 4.f so that the play seems to have
been brought out in the course of the 90th Olympiad.
§ 17. The Troades, or Trojan fVomen, of which we know with
* See v. 445 foil., especially the words xiyovns uX\a ph yXurtrri, tpgovovvnt VaXXa..
t When Alcibiades, by his intrigues, had got the Spartan ambassadors to say
before the people something different from what they had intended and wished to
speak — a deceit which no one saw through ut the time. — Thucyd. v. 45.
374 HISTORY OF THE
certainty that it was brought out Olymp. 91. 1. b. c. 415,* is the
most irregular of all the extant pieces of Euripides. It is nothing
more than a picture of the horrors which befall a conquered city and of
the cruelties exercised by arrogant conquerors, though it is continually
hinted that the victors are in reality more unhappy than the vanquished.
The distribution of the Trojan women among the Achaeans; the selec-
tion of the prophetic maiden, Cassandra, to be the mistress of Aga-
memnon, whose death she prophesies; the sacrifice of Polyxena at the
tomb of Achilles, Astyanax torn from his mother's arms in order that
he may be thrown from the battlements of the city walls ; then the
strange contest between Hecuba and Helen before Menelaus, in which
he pretends to desire to bring the authoress of all the calamities to a
severe account, but is clearly in his heart actuated by different motives,
and is willing to take his faithless wife home with him ; lastly, the
burning of the city, which forms the grand finale of the piece ; what
are all these but a series of significant pictures, unfolded one after the
other and submitted to the contemplation of the reflective spectator ?
The remarkable feature, however, in this play is, that the prologue goes
a good way beyond the drama itself, and contains the proper conclusion
of the whole ; for in it the deities, Athena and Poseidon, determine
between themselves to raise a tempest as the Greeks are returning
home and so make them pay for all the sins they have committed at
Troy. In order to gain an end which will satisfy the intentions of the
poet, we must suppose that this compact is really fulfilled at the end of
the piece. We almost feel ourselves compelled to conjecture that we
have lost the epilogue, in which some deity, Poseidon or Athena, ap-
peared as the cleus ex machina, and described the destruction of the
fleet as in the act of taking place ; there might also have been a per-
spective view, such as that which we have pointed out in several other
pieces (§ 5 note), representing the sea raging and the fleet foundering;
and thus there would be contrasted with the burning city another pic-
ture, necessary to give a suitable conclusion to the ideas developed in
the drama and to satisfy the moral requisitions suggested by it.
§ 18. We must next speak of the Electra, which must obviously be
assigned to the period of the Sicilian expedition,! In this piece Euri-
pides goes farther than in any other in his endeavour to reduce the old
* In conjunction with two other pieces, the Alexander and the Palamedes, which
likewise referred to the Trojan war. and followed in chronological order (for the
Alexander referred to the discovery of Paris hefore the Trojan war, and the Pala-
medes to the earlier part of the war itself), without, however, constituting a trilogy
according to the views of JEschylus.
f The passage {y. 1353) in which the Dioscuri propose to themselves to protect
the ships in the Sicilian sea, clearly refers to the fleet which sailed from Athens to
Sicily ; and the following lines possibly refer to the charge of impiety under which
Aleibiades then laboured.
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 375
mythical stories to the level of everyday life. He has invented an
incident, not altogether improbable — that iEgisthus married Electra to
a common countryman, in order that her children might never gain
power or influence enough to endanger his life — -and this enables the
poet to put together a set of scenes representing domestic arrangements
of the most limited and trifling kind. The king's daughter spends her
time in labours of housewifery, not so much from need, as in a spirit of
defiance, in order to show how ill she is treated by her mother; she
represents an economical manager, who scolds her husband for
bringing into their poor cottage guests of too great expectations ; she
tells him he must go out and get something to eat from an old friend
of his, for it is impossible to obtain anything from her father's house.
Euripides considers the murder of iEgisthus and Clytemnestra as
proceeding from the vindictive spirit of the brother and sister; they
bitterly regret it as soon as done, and even the Dioscuri, who ap
pear as dii ex machina, censure it as the unwise act of the wise god
Apollo.
§ 19. In the concluding scene of the Electra,* Euripides hints at an
alteration in the story of Helen, which he worked out shortly after
(Olymp. 91. 4. b. c. 412) in a separate play, the Helena^ in which
this personage, so often abused by Euripides, is on a sudden repre-
sented as a most faithful wife, a pattern of female virtue, a most
noble and elevated character. This is effected by assuming and arbi-
trarily adapting to his own purpose an idea started by Stesichorus,| that
the Trojans and Achaeans fought for a mere shadow of Helen. Of
course it is not to be imagined that Euripides was in earnest when he
adopted this idea, and that he considered this form of the tradition as
the true and genuine one; he uses it merely for this tragedy, and, as
we may see in the Orestes, soon returns to the easier and more con-
genial representation of Helen as a worthless runaway wife. The
Helena turns entirely on the escape of this heroine from Egypt, where
the young king wishes to compel her to marry him. Her deliverance
is effected entirely by her own cunning plans, and Menelaus is only a
subordinate instrument in carrying them into execution. The country
* V.1290.
f The Helena was performed along with, the Andromeda (Schol. Ravenn. on
Aristoph. Thesm. 1012); and the Andromeda came out in the eighth year before
the Frogs of Aristophanes (SchoL on the Frogs, 53), which appeared in Olymp.
93. 3. b. c. 405. The Andromeda is parodied in the Thesmophonazusce (Olymp.
92. 1. b. c. 411), as a piece brought out the year before ; and in several passages of
the same play, Aristophanes also ridicules the Helena : consequently, the Helena
must have been brought out Olymp. 91. 4. b. c. 412. This applies very well to the
violent invectives against the soothsayers (v. 744 foil.), probably occasioned by the
recent failure of the Sicilian expedition, wbich (according to Thucydides and Aris-
tophanes) the soothsayers of Athens had especially urged the people to undertake.
I On this see Chap. XIV. § 5.
376 HISTORY OF THE
and people of Egypt, who are in most points represented under a Greek
type, form a very interesting' back-ground to the drama. The king's
sister, Theonoe, a virgin priestess skilled in the future, but full of
sympathy for the troubles of mankind, and presiding like a protecting
goddess over the plans of Helen and her husband, is a grand and
beautiful conception of the poet.
§ 20. From the manner in which Euripides has treated the story of
Helen in the piece we have just spoken of, it bears a strong resem-
blance to the action in the Iphigenia at Tauri, except that the ancient
poet has made no use of the incentive of love in this latter play, for
Thoas is sufficiently constrained by religious motives to prevent the
escape of the priestess of the Tauric Artemis and of the strangers
destined to be sacrificed at her altar. From an argument, too, deriv-
able from the metrical form of the choral songs, we should feel obliged
to place the Tauric Iphigenia about this time (Olymp. 92). The
efforts of the poet in this piece are chiefly directed to construct an arti-
ficial plot, to introduce, in a surprising but at the same time natural
manner, the recognition of Orestes by his sister Iphigenia, and to form
a plan of flight, possible under the circumstances, and taking into the
account all the difficulties and dangers of the case. The drama, how-
ever, has other beauties — of a kind, too, rather uncommon in Euripides
— in the noble bearing and moral worth of the characters. Iphigenia
appears as a pure-minded young maiden, who has inspired even the
barbarians with reverence ; her love for her home, and the conviction
that she is doing the will of the gods, are her only incentives to flight,
and these are sufficient excuses, according to the views of the Greeks,
for the imposition which she practises upon the good Thoas. The
poet, too, has taken care not to spoil the pleasure with which we con
template this noble picture, by representing Iphigenia as a priestess
who slays human victims on the altar. Her duty is only to consecrat
the victims by sprinkling them with water outside the temple ; others
take them into the temple and put them to death.* Fate, too, has
contrived that hitherto no Greek has been driven to this coast. j- When
she flies, however, a symbolical representation is substituted for the
rites of an actual sacrifice,:): whereby the humanity of the Greeks
triumphs over the religious fanaticism of the barbarians. Still more
attractive and touching is the connexion of Orestes and Pylades, whose
friendship is exalted in this more than in any other play. The scene
in which the two friends strive which of them shall be sacrificed as a
victim and which shall return home, is very affecting, without any de-
sign on the part of the poet to call forth the tears of the spectators.
According to our ideas, it must be confessed, Pylades yields too soon to
* V. 625 foil. f V. 260 foil. 1 V. 1471 foil.
e
:;
■
LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GRFECE. 377
the pressing entreaties of his friend, partly because the arguments of
Orestes actually convince him, partly because, as having more faith in
the Delphic Apollo, he still retains the hope that the oracle of the god
will in the end deliver them both ; whereas we desire, even in such
cases, an enthusiastic resignation of all thoughts to the one idea, in
which no thought can arise except the deliverance of our friend. The
feelings of the people of antiquity, however, were made of sterner stuff;
their hardihood and simplicity of character would not allow them to be
so easily thrown off their balance, and while they preserved the truth of
friendship, they could keep their eyes open for all the other duties and
advantages of life.
§ 21. We have a remarkable contrast to the Iphigenia at Tauri in
the Orestes, which was produced Olymp. 92. 4. b. c. 408, and conse-
quently was not far removed in point of time from the last-mentioned
drama. The old grammarians remark that the piece produced a great
effect on the stage, though all the characters in it are bad, with the ex-
ception of Pylades ;* and that the catastrophe inclines to the comic.
It seems to have been the design of Euripides to represent a wild chaos
of selfish passions, from which there is absolutely no means of escape.
Orestes is about to be put to death for matricide by virtue of the decree
of an Argive tribunal, while Menelaus, on whom he had placed his
dependence, deserts him out of pure cowardice and selfishness. En-
raged at this abandonment, he determines not to die till he has
taken vengeance on Helen, the cause of all the mischief, who has
hidden herself in the palace through fear of the Argives; and when
she, in a surprising manner, vanishes to heaven, he threatens to slay
her daughter Hermione, unless Menelaus will pardon and rescue him.
Upon this the Dioscuri appear, bid him take to wife the damsel at whose
throat he is holding the drawn sword, and promise him deliverance
from the curse of the matricidal act. In this manner the knot is out-
wardly untied, or rather cut asunder, without any attempt or hint at
unravelling the real intricacies, the moral questions to which the
tragedy leads, or purifying the passions by means of themselves, which
is the object of tragedy, in the proper sense of the word. So far from
attaining to this object, the only impression produced by such a drama
as the Orestes is a feeling of the comfortless confusion of human exer-
tions and relations.
§ 22. The Phcenissce, or Phoenician Women^ was not much later than
the Orestes. We know on sure testimony that it was one of the last
* The old critics have also remarked upon the references to the state of affairs at
the time in the character of Menelaus, who may he considered as a representative of
the vacillating and uncertain policy of Sparta at that period. See Schol. on v.
371,772,903.
378 HISTORY OF THE
pieces which Euripides brought out at Athens,* but it is certainly by
no means one of the least valuable of his works. In general, it would
be very difficult to discern in the last pieces of Euripides any marks of
the feebleness of age, which seems, on the whole, to have had little effect
on the poets of antiquity. There are great beauties in the Phcenissse,
such as the splendid scene at the beginning, — in which Antigone, at-
tended by an aged domestic, surveys the army of the seven heroes from
a tower of the palace, — and the entrance of Polyneices into the hostile
city ; we might add the episode about Menceceus, were it not a mere
repetition of the scene about Macaria in the Heracleidse; besides,
Euripides has made too much use of these voluntary self-sacrifices to
produce any striking effect by means of them. Notwithstanding, how-
ever, all the beauties of "the details and all the abundance of the ma-
terials (for the piece contains, in addition to the fall of the hostile
brother, also the expulsion of (Edipus and Antigone's two heroic re-
solves to perform the funeral rites for her brother and to accompany her
banished fatherf), we miss in this play, too, that real unity and harmony
of action which can result only from an idea springing from the depths
of the heart and ripened by the genial warmth of the feelings.
§ 23. Three pieces, of which two are still extant, were brought out
by the younger Euripides, a son, or more probably a nephew, of the
celebrated tragedian, and were performed, after the death of the author,
as new plays at the great Dionysia. These were the Iphigenia at
Aulis, the Alcmseon, a lost play,| and the Bacchae. Of these three
plays the Bacchce was, as far as we can see, completed by the author
himself; not, however, immediately for Athens, but for representation
in Macedonia. Euripides spent the last years of his life, when Athens
was groaning under the weight of the Peloponnesian war, at the court
of the Macedonian king, Archelaus, who was not a man of exalted
moral character, but a politic ruler who had taken great pains in
civilizing his country, and for that object had collected around himself
a considerable circle of Greek poets and musicians. It is the common
tradition of antiquity that Euripides died here. The worship of Bac-
chus was very prevalent in Macedonia, especially in Pieria near Olympus,
where, at a later period, Olympias, the mother of Alexander, roamed
about with the Mimallones and Clodones ; Archelaus may have cele-
brated the feast of Bacchus here with dramatic spectacles,§ at which
* Schol. on Aristoph. Frogs, 53.
f One does not see, however, how Antigone could find it possible to carry both
her resolutions into effect at once.
% This was the 'ax*^«/^v ha Koglvdov, for the 'Akxpatcuv ha, "Ycofihs was brought
out by Euripides alori£ with the Alcestis.
§ As he also instituted dramatic contests at Dion in Pieria in honour of Zeus and
the Muses. Diodor. Sic.xvii. 16. Wesseling on xvi. 56.
LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 379
the Bacchfle was performed for the first time. To this there is an
allusion in the words of the chorus* — " Happy Pieria, thee Bacchus
honours, and lie will come in order to dance in thee with Bacchic
revelry ; he will conduct his Maenads over the swift flowing Axius and
the Lydias, whose streams pour forth blessings." Euripides would
hardly have celebrated these rivers in such a manner had not Pella, the
residence of the Macedonian kings, been situated between them, and
had not the court of the king come to Pieria in order to bear a part in
the dramatic festival celebrated there.
The Bacchce, or Bacchanalians, developes the story of Pentheus,
who was so fearfully punished for his attempt to keep the Dionysian
rites from being introduced into Thebes, and gives a lively and compre-
hensive picture of the impassioned and enthusiastic nature of this
worship ; at the same time, this tragedy furnishes us with remarkable
conclusions in regard to the religious opinions of Euripides at the close
of his life. In this play he appears, as it were, converted into a positive
believer, or, in other words, convinced that religion should not be ex-
posed to the subtilties of reasoning; that the understanding of man
cannot subvert ancestral traditions which are as old as time; that the
philosophy which attacks religion is but a poor philosophy, and so
forth ;f doctrines which are sometimes set forth with peculiar impres-
siveness in the speeches of the old men, Cadmus and Teiresias, or, on
the other hand, form the foundation of the whole piece : although it
must be owned that Euripides, with the vacillation which he always dis-
plays in such matters, ventures, on the other hand, to explain the offen-
sive story about the second birth of Bacchus from the thigh of Zeus, by
a very frigid pun on a word which he assumes to have been misunder-
stood in the first instance. %
§ 24. The case is different with the Iphigenia at Aulis, which has
obviously not come down to us in so perfect a state from the hands of
the author. In its really genuine and original parts, this Iphigenia is
one of the most admirable of this poet's tragedies, and it is based upon
such a noble idea that we might put it on the same footing with the
works of his better days, such as the Medea or the Hecuba. This idea
is, that a pure and elevated mind, like that of Iphigenia, can alone find
a way out of all the intricacies and entanglemeuts caused by the pas-
sions and efforts of powerful, wise, and brave men, contending with
and running counter to one another. In this play Euripides has had
the skill to invest the subject with such intense interest by depicting the
fruitless efforts of Agamemnon to save his child, the too late compunc-
* V. 566.
f See v. 200, ovhh ffopt&piffQa To7