HISTORY OF THURSTON PECK n A HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO SAN FKANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO A HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY FROM THE SEVENTH CENTURY B.C. TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY A.D. BY HARRY THURSTON PECK, Ph.D., LL.D. MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ARTS AND LEITERS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1911 All rights reitrv*d Copyright, 1911, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1911. Notfajooti ilresa J. 8. Gushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Korwood, Mass., U.S.A. 51 I VXORI CARISSIMAE 1927016 PREFACE Long experience has convinced the author that, as a rule, classical students, even those who are pursuing the most advanced courses, are very imperfectly informed as to the history of the subjects upon which they are en- gaged. They may be thoroughly trained in various ramifications of Classical Philology, while knowing little or nothing of Classical Philology as a whole. It seems an anomalous thing that any university student should proceed to his doctorate in Greek and Latin without ever having had a conspectus of the entire field of which he is familiar with a part; that, for example, he should be able to give no intelligent account of the i\lexandrian School; that the significance of the Renaissance to a clas- sicist should not be clear to him; that Scaliger, Lipsius, Casaubon, Bentley, Corssen, and Lachmann should be little more than names; and that he should have learned nothing genetically about literary criticism, text criticism, and scientific linguistics. Yet such is very often the case; and though it is to be regretted, it is not a reasonable cause for censure. There vii Vlll PREFACE exist no manuals at the present time to give this general information in a lucid, coherent manner, and without losing sight of the strand which unites all classical studies and makes them parts of a splendid whole. Grafenhan's book in four volumes, the publication of which was begun in 1843, is, of course, quite obsolete to-day. Reinach's Manuel de Philologie Classique is admirable as a work of reference, but, with all its closely packed information, it does not form a continuous narrative. The treatise by Dr. Sandys, published only a few years ago, is a monu- ment to his scholarship and wide reading; yet the multi- plicity of details contained in its three volumes will not unnaturally deter a student, unless he be a very heroic seeker after knowledge. The present work has, therefore, been written with the desire to give a comprehensive and comprehensible knowledge of how classical studies were first developed, and of that gradual evolution which has made Classical Philology a science, possessing at the same time some very distinctly marked aesthetic phases. It has seemed best to mention the names of only such scholars as have helped on this evolution by adding something to the sum of human knowledge. The adoption of such a plan has made it possible to compress into a volume of con- venient size all that is essential ; while the bibliographical references will enable the reader to pursue more exhaus- tively any particular subject that has here been touched PREFACE IX upon. It is hoped that the book may be of some prac- tical service to students of the classics, in helping them to see and understand the unity which in their studies is too often obscured by matters of secondary importance. Harry Thurston Peck. New York, March 29, 191 1. n-.- TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface CHAPTER I. The Genesis of Philological Studies in Greece II. The Pr^-Alexandrian Period III. The Alexandrian Period IV. The Gr^eco-Roman Period V. The Middle Ages . VI. The Renaissance VII. Division into Periods VIII. The Age of Erasmus IX. The Period of Nationalism . X. The German Influence . XI. The Cosmopolitan Period Selected Bibliographical Index General Index PAGES vii-ix S-27 28-87 88-129 130-191 192-259 260-288 289 290-300 301-384 385-455 456-458 461-476 477-491 » INTRODUCTION 3 the past; so that the day of his matriculation (April 8, 1777) has been styled "the birthday of modern philology." Classical Philology is opposed in every way to the spirit of pedantry. Otfried Miiller well said of it that it "does not strive to establish particular facts nor to get an acquaintance with abstract forms, but to grasp the ancient spirit in its broadest meaning, in its works of reason, of feeling, and of imagination." ^ There are four recognized methods of treating the history of Classical Philology. (i) The Synchronistic or Annalistic Method, which deals with the history by periods. (2) The Biographical Method, which treats of the his- tory in the persons of great representative scholars. • Since the study of Sanskrit led to the scientific investigation of the Indo-European languages as related to one another, the new science of Comparative Philology has arisen to complicate still more the meaning of the word "philology" when simply used. The Germans, therefore, have made certain distinctions which it will be convenient for us, also, to adopt. Philology {Philologie) when not modified by an adjective is the general study of language; Comparative Philology is better styled Linguistics (Linguistik) ; while Classical Philology {Klassische Philo- logie or Klassische Allerthumswissenschaft) is that comprehensive study of antiquity which has just now been defined. For the various mean- ings of the word "philology" at different times, see Grafenhan, Ge- schichte der Klassischen Philologie im Allerthum, vol. i (Bonn, 1843); Lehrs, Appendix to Herodiani Scripta Tria (Berlin, 1857); and the interesting references given by Gudeman in pp. 1-4 of his Outlines of the History of Classical Philology {Boston, 1902). In a remarkable passage contained in Seneca's Letters (xviii. v. 30-34, Haase) there is an acute comparison between the different ways in which a philologist, a grammarian, and a philosopher would respectively examine Cicero's treatise De Republica. 4 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY (3) The Eiodographic Method, which describes the his- tory of philology by subjects. (4) The Ethnographic or Geographic Method, which dis- cusses the philological history of a single school or nation separately. In this book it is proposed to follow no single one of these methods to the exclusion of the others; but to give a general survey of the whole subject, keeping constantly in mind the need of chronological symmetry; emphasising and making clear the part which each nation or each school has played; and at the same time bringing into relief the individuals whose life-work gains an added meaning from a knowledge of their personality.^ ^ See Fitz-Hugh, Outlines of a System of Classical Pcedagogy (1900). There is a valuable skeleton history of classical philology by Professor Alfred Gudeman in his Outlines, etc., 3d ed. (Boston, 1903) ; and his more elaborate Grundrlss (Leipzig and Berlin, 1907). See also KroU's brief Geschichte der Klassischen Philologie (Leipzig, 1908). I. THE GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE The origins of the Hellenic people are exceedingly obscure, and they take us back to a remote antiquity. The fact that there was no generic name for the race until after the time when the Homeric poems were com- posed is a very interesting and instructive fact. One cannot even say that the Greeks were homogeneous; and a great deal of the most modern research has served only to darken counsel and to expose the fallacy of earlier theories. Certain it is that, during the Stone Age and afterwards, there streamed over the Grecian peninsula great waves of migratory peoples from the northeast. They forced their way to the southern point of the Morea, just as they also found homes in southern Italy in the Grecian islands, and a sure foothold in Asia Minor. It is a picturesque hypothesis which views the latter country as having once been peopled by an effeminate race of Semitic origin, tracing their descent through polyandrous mothers, and worshipping female deities, among whom the Great Mother, afterwards called Cybele, was supreme. That these enervated Canaanitish shep- herds should have been subsequently overcome by a 5 6 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY horde of virile conquerors from Thrace is another part of the same ethnic theory. These conquerors, tracing their descent through their fathers and worshipping the great male thundering deity, Bronton or Zeus, were possibly true Hellenes, and they established a civilisation of their own in Asia, where they ruled as an aristocracy in the states and cities which they subsequently founded.^ Yet this is only one of many theories, and it presents as many difficulties as it explains. The importance of it lies in the fact that it serves to show how very far back into the past we must look for anything like a beginning of that culture which came afterwards to be regarded as essentially Hellenic. The explorations at Mycenae and Tiryns and elsewhere, though attesting the antiquity of certain of the arts, leave us still at a loss regarding the racial affinities of the early Greeks. One is justified in asserting nothing more than that the lands which became subsequently Hellenized were first populated by sections of the Mediterranean race comprising the so-called Pelas- gians, the Iberians, the Ligurians, and the Libyans,^ A later migration from the north, moving slowly southward, overwhelmed the original inhabitants of what was destined to be known afterwards as Hellas, or Greece. Professor G. W. Botsford has described in a very interesting manner 'See Ramsay, in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, ix. 351; and Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, pp. 28-54 (New York and London, 1892). ^ See Sergi, The Mediterranean Race. Eng. trans. (London, 1901). GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDLES IN GREECE 7 the nature of this migration/ " They came in bands which we call tribes, each under its chief. Their warriors travelled on foot, dressed in skins and armed with pikes, and with bows and arrows, while their women and chil- dren rode in two-wheeled ox-carts. They found Greece, their future home, a rugged, mountainous country, with narrow . valleys and only a few broad plains. Every- where were dense forests, haunted by lions, wild boars, and wolves." These Greeks of the Tribal Age were semi- nomadic in their habits; since at first they built mere huts of brush and clay, which they readily abandoned, and they must for centuries have shifted their uncertain habitations. At the west of their new country the coast- line was nearly straight and with no harbours. " But those who came to the eastern coast found harbours everywhere and islands near at hand. They began at once to make small boats and to push off to the islands. " But they must have been astonished when they saw for the first time strange black vessels, much larger than their own, entering their bays. These were Phoenician ships from Sidon, an ancient commercial city, and in them came ' greedy merchant men, with countless gauds ' ' Botsford, A History of the Orient and Greece (New York and London, 1904). See also E. Meyer, Forschtingen zur alien Geschichte, voL i. (Halle, 1892); Hall, The Oldest Civilisation of Greece (London, 1901); and Ridgeway, The Early Age of Greece (Cambridge, 1901, foil.)- A recent, yet not fully accepted view, regards the Pelasgians as having worked out this ci\-ilisation, the fruits of which were appropriated by the true Hellenic invaders from the north. 8 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY for trading with the natives. Though in most respects the Greeks were then as barbarous as the North Ameri- can Indians, they were eager to learn and to imitate the ways of the foreigners. The chieftains along the east coast welcomed Asiatic arts and artisans. From these strangers they gradually learned to make and use bronze tools and weapons, and to build in stone. Contented in these homes, they outgrew their fondness for roving. Skilled workmen from the East built walled palaces for the native chiefs; artists decorated these new dwellings, painted, carved, and frescoed, made vases and polished gems. Those chieftains who were wise enough to receive this civilisation gained power as well as wealth by means of it. With their bronze weapons they conquered their uncivilised neighbours, and, in course of time, formed small kingdoms, each centring in a strongly fortified castle." The contradictions which meet us in all accounts of early Greece make any positive hypothesis untenable. But they do give us an insight into the character of the Greek sfenius as we have come to know it. There is much plausibility in the view that these Hellenes were racially connected with the Celtic peoples, and that they were not originally of one single stock. Restless, brave, mercurial, full of curiosity, their nomadic life for many centuries made them more brilliant than stable. Po- litically, they also afford a parallel with the Celts, in that GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 9 they lacked the national cohesiveness which was Roman. Their seafaring gave them a larger outlook than the Latins had. It made for separation rather than for unity. On the other hand, it stimulated the intellect, and enhanced the qualities of imagination and specula- tion. To the last, the Greeks were adventurous, ingen- ious, inquisitive, and ever seeking after something new and interesting. The antiquity of Greek culture explains why the oldest monument of Hellenic literature, the Homeric epic, is not a rude specimen of the poetic art, but rather a bit of exquisite workmanship, wrought out with wonderful management of light and colour and melodious sound. It is the climax, the final masterpiece, of epic poetry. Although the Homeric epics tell the story of a fairly primi- tive people, there is nothing primitive in the mode of their construction or the deftness of touch that is every- where to be discovered in them. The Iliad and the Odyssey, though very much older, assume a fairly definite form somewhere in the seventh century B.C., when writing was first generally introduced among the Greeks. Recent scholarship is not indisposed to view these two poems as representing each an organic whole, however numerous may have been the changes which both underwent in parts.^ It does not concern us, indeed, to determine ' See Blass, Die Interpolationen in der Odyssee (Halle, 1904); and Brea!, Four Mieux Connaitre Homere (Paris, 1906). lO HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY whether there actually lived an individual Homer. The student of Classical Philology regards the Homeric epic as a starting-point from which to trace the gradual devel- opment of intellectual pursuits among the Greeks within that period of time when their history can be tested by undoubted facts. Before the general use of writing, there could have been little to be classed under the name of formal scholarship, although for fifteen centuries there was an evolution of the arts which scholarship endeavours to study and explain. Before the Homeric period there must have been thousands of poets who became masters of the lyric, and after that of the epic. We know that Greek tradition held Thrace to be the earliest home of this semi-religious literature, associated with the names of mythical bards such as Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, and Thamyris. Finally, we know that the centre of cultivation shifted from Thrace to the more genial shores of Ionia, whence came the completed epic which is as- cribed to Homer. The chief importance of the epos for our present pur- pose is found in its relation to literary study, to criticism, and even, after a fashion, to scientific speculation, to religion, and to philosophy. The part which the Iliad and the Odyssey played in the early period of Greek education was extraordinary. These poems were, indeed, the basis of all training that was not purely physical. In the schools, which we know to have existed as early GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE II as 700 B.C., Homer was read, not so much as literature, but as an ultimate authority on history, politics, ethics, warfare, medicine, and even religion. Questions that involved titles to lands were settled by an appeal to the Homeric poems, which were consulted according to the theory of their plenary inspiration. In the Odyssey this theory is in fact expressly stated. A poet is one who is inspired by the Muses; and the bard Phemius says to Odysseus: "I am self-taught; but it was a god that breathed into my mind all the various ways of song." A touch of orientalism is found in the notion of Demo- critus (in the fifth century, B.C.), to the effect that all great poets are mad — that is to say, carried away by a sort of divine frenzy. Such a belief accounts for the place which Homer, the greatest of all the poets, held in the intellectual life of Hellas. In the study of his epics, we find the germs of many other studies. Lists were made of the unusual words contained in them. The rela- tions of the gods to each other and to mankind were all thought to be explained by Homer. An apt quotation from the Iliad or Odyssey would silence an opponent in debate, as effectually as a pointed text from the Bible would end a controversy among the Puritans. Indeed, what the Hebrew Bible is to the orthodox Jews, what the New Testament is to the orthodox Protestant Chris- tians, and what the Koran is to orthodox Muhammadans, — this the Homeric poems were to the early Greeks. A 12 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY reverence for Homeric learning was entertained among them at the time when their authentic history begins. Its strong influence affected the minds of men in later centuries, as we shall presently have occasion to see. Even in our own days its existence is discernible in the minutely critical studies which modern scholars have made regarding every topic that was even casually touched upon by Homer.^ It may be added that much of the same inspiration which was ascribed to the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, was also attributed to the minor poets, commonly called the Cyclic Poets, who largely imitated Homer and confined themselves within a certain round or cycle of tradition. There were really two cycles, one a Mythic Cycle, relating to the genealogies of the gods and the battles of the Titans and to cosmogony; and the other a Trojan Cycle, based upon stories con- nected with the Trojan War. The most celebrated of the Cyclic poems were the Cypria, at one time ascribed to Homer, but later to Stasinus or Hegesias, the JEthiopis of Arctinus, and the Nostoi of Agias, not to mention the parodies by Pigres.^ There were likewise the so-called 'See, for example, Sej^mour, Life in the Homeric Age, with the bib- liography, pp. xiii-xvi (New York, 1908) ; and Adam, The Religious Teachers of Greece, pp. 21-67 (Edinburgh, 1908). ^The chief authority for the CycUc poets is the Chrestomatheia of Proclus (41 2-485 A.D.) in the extracts preserved by Photius. See Welcker, Der Epische Cycliis (Bonn, 1865); Lawton, The Successors of Homer (New York, 1898); and for the meaning of the word cyclicus, a paper by D. B. Munro in The Journal of Hellenic Studies (1883). GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 13 Homeric Hymns, and the three works that remain to us under the name of Hesiod (c. 700 B.C.), whose Theogony is the oldest poem that we possess on Greek Mythology. When the Greeks came to know much more than they had known about the geography of the world in which they lived, and when by experience they grew more thoroughly enlightened as to other knowledge which came to them in many ways, then they found that Homer was not to be accepted literally and as a wholly inspired source of wisdom. Thus there arose a Higher Criticism of the Homeric writings as there has arisen a Higher Criticism of the Bible. When so much depended upon the understanding of a line or of a passage, it was essen- tial that every one should be quite sure that the line or the passage was correctly quoted. Even the variation of a single word, or the interpolation of a single verse, might be a matter of extreme importance. Yet the Homeric poems were not, at first, written down according to an accepted text. They differed in many places. Parts of them were recited, detached from the whole, at festivals and public entertainments, by the rhapsodes or de- claimers. Therefore, in the sixth century B.C., a recen- sion of them was necessary so that there should be standard editions of the Iliad and of the Odyssey. That such a recension was actually carried out is scarcely to be doubted, though to whom it is due no one can surely say. Tradition ascribes it to the Athenian 14 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY " tyrant," the brilliant and sagacious Pisistratus, who is said to have committed the work (about 530 B.C.) to a commission of four learned Homeric specialists.^ In this, Pisistratus is said to have followed out a plan conceived by his relative and predecessor, Solon. The tradition referred to is merely a tradition and is based only upon the authority of later writers such as Cicero, Pausanias, Josephus, Libanius, and Tzetzes. Therefore the ascrip- tion of this standard Homeric text to Pisistratus is not necessarily accurate. It has been the custom to credit Pisistratus with an extraordinary number of innovations, — political, social, literary, and artistic. Thus, he is said to have enforced a series of sumptuary laws; to have sup- plied the poor with cattle and seed so that they might leave Athens and betake themselves to agriculture; to have erected beautiful buildings; to have regulated the religious rites and to have instituted the superb festival • See Flach, Peisistratos und seine litterarische Thdtigkeil (Tubingen, 1885). The Greek grammarian Diomedes, quoted by Villoison, says that a sta£f of seventy (or seventy-two) men of letters took part in the work. It has been noticed in modem times that neither Herodotus nor Thucydides nor Plato nor Aristotle, who all frequently mention both Homer and Pisistratus, makes any allusion whatever to this al- leged recension of the Homeric text. So significant is this omission, that modem students of the subject (for example, Wilamowitz) are dis- posed to deny that the story about Pisistratus has any basis of fact at all. One may hold a more moderate opinion and regard Pisistratus as having rearranged the text for purposes of recitation at the Panathenaic festival, yet with no minute consideration of particular lines. See infra, p. 20. GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 1 5 of the Greater Panathensea; to have encouraged Thespis to produce his primitive tragedies at Athens, thus pro- moting the Drama; and to have been the first person in Greece to collect and open a library for public use. Hence it is natural that the establishment of a standard Homeric text should have been ascribed to Pisistratus. In any case it does not matter whether he or some one else brought it into form. There is reason for supposing that he com- pelled the public declaimers to recite the different portions of the poems according to a definite arrangement ; and indeed that a recension was undertaken in his time is highly probable, since the quotations from Homer made by writers prior to the Alexandrian period exhibit very slight variations. The Alexandrians themselves made few im- portant changes. We may be confident that our text of Homer is substantially identical with that which was read five hundred years before the beginning of the Christian era. Thus, one hundred and fifty-two passages from Homer are cited by twenty-nine writers after and in- cluding Herodotus. They amount to about four hundred and eighty lines, but they contain less than a dozen lines which are not in the ordinary text.^ If Pisistratus ever made an Homeric text, it was not the only official text of the two great epics, since we also hear of " city editions " or " civic editions," which ' See Ludwich, Die Homer-vulgata als voralexandrinisch ermesen (Leipzig, 1898). 1 6 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY were standards each in its own country/ The important fact is that at so early a period there should be found a beginning of Text Criticism in which, as now, many sources of knowledge must have been drawn upon — chronology, history, geography, and, to a certain extent, aesthetics, more especially the aesthetics of language. It is interesting to remember that Solon was accused of having interpolated a line in the Iliad so as to make it appear that the Athenians had taken part in the Trojan War, and that Pisistratus had inserted a line in the Odyssey so as to bring in the name of Theseus, the national hero of Athens. We have, therefore, as early as the sixth century, indications of all the difficulties which beset text critics in modern times — variant editions, errors due to carelessness, others due to ignorance, and also conscious al- terations to suit the purpose of the transcriber. Nor was Homer the only author whose text suffered in this way; for there is a story to the effect that Onomacritus was detected in altering the oracles of Musaeus and that he was punished for it. There is some significance in the legend that the first care- fully prepared edition of Homer was made in Athens, rather 1 Seven of these " city editions " are noted — the Massalotic, the Si- nopic, the Chian, the Cyprian, the Argive, the Cretan, and the Lesbian. The first four were Ionic, and the last three were ^olic. All of these editions were supposed to have been copies made from the archetype prepared under the direction of Pisistratus. The Greek term for "city editions" is dKddjeis /card Tr6Xetj. GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 1 7 than among the Asiatic lonians, who had represented a higher form of culture. Athens was destined to be- come the intellectual centre of the Greek world, though it had not yet won supremacy. Ionia has the credit of having first established regular schools with paid teachers for the purpose of imparting a general education. The teaching of which we read in Homer was, of course, physical training with some instruction in music and medicine. The public instruction given to youths in the Doric States such as Sparta and Crete had very much the same character.^ The Bidiaei and Paedonomi, under whose care the Spartan boy was placed after the age of seven, trained the young in gymnastics, in the use of arms, and in choral singing. For such literary education as a man was expected to possess (usually only reading, writing, and a little arithmetic) he depended chiefly upon the instruction which was given by his parents. It is stated by Plutarch that the semi-mythical Lycurgus brought copies of the Homeric poems to Sparta, and made a knowledge of them a requirement in the Spartan schools; but if so, this must have been due to the fact that he had travelled in Asia Minor and had introduced at home a practice which he had observed abroad. Among the lonians, however, literary teaching in regular Schools is found as early as the seventh century B.C., and as these schools were then in a very prosperous condition and ' See Monroe, Source Book of the History of Education (Greek and Roman Period) (New York, 1901). c 1 8 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY very largely attended, they must have been established long before. Herodotus (vi, 27) mentions a boys' school in Chios in the year 500 B.C.; and at the time of the in- vasion of Xerxes, when the Athenians left their own city and took refuge at Trcezen, one of the first things they did was to arrange for their school system during the period of their temporary exile. ^ The Mitylen^eans punished disloyal allies by depriving them of the right to maintain schools. Charondas, about 650 B.C., made state provision for literary instruction in Sicily.^ The teaching of literature appears to have been de- veloped, first of all, as an adjunct to instruction in morals. The earliest intellectual exercise of boys at school, and probably before they had begun to attend school, was the study of the Homeric poems. This anticipated even the learning of the alphabet; for the alphabet was first taught by the jpafx/jbanaTij';, while the Iliad and the Odyssey were read and recited to growing boys, who were urged to learn them gradually by heart. But the early apprecia- tion of the epics was not a literary appreciation at all; and to understand the prominence given to this study, we must remember the peculiar view which the Greeks took with regard to Homer. He was not so much the great poet, the master of heroic verse. He was. rather a moral teacher, an ethical guide, who drew his characters with ' Plutarch, Themistocles , 10. ^ Diodorus Siculus, xii. 12. GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 1 9 a conscious purpose of exhibiting in their actions the quahties that men should emulate or shun. As late as Horace who, like all Romans, was a great lover of the concrete, we find this same thought expressed. " While you are declaiming at Rome," he says to his friend Lollius, " I have been reading over at Praeneste the writer of the Trojan War, who tells us better and more clearly than either Chrysippus or Grantor what is noble and what is base, what is expedient and what is not." And farther on, " Again, as to what virtue and wis- dom are able to effect, he (Homer) has set before us a useful model in the person of Ulysses." The strenuous insistence on a thorough knowledge of Homer was therefore due, first of all, to his moral teach-<: ing. We must remember also that the formal education given in school was much less valued by the Greeks than it is by us. Plato says in his Laws that a knowledge of writing is necessary only so far as to enable one barely to write and read; and that to write fast or with elegance is outside of the range of ordinary education. There may even have existed, as Mahaffy suggests, a prejudice against clear and regular script, because it would recall the writing in books which was done by copyists who were slaves. When we say that a person writes " a clerkly hand " the remark is not altogether complimentary. Hence, the average Greek probably wrote with more or less diffi- 20 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY culty, and did not have, as a rule, much occasion to use the accompHshment. But inasmuch as he memorised most of his learning, he was the more deeply saturated with it. So it came about that the universal familiarity with Homer resulted in a very general criticism of the Homeric poems. As Mr. Saintsbury well says, " It was impossible that a people so acute and so philosophically given as the Greeks, should be soaked in Homer without being tempted to exercise their critical faculties upon the poems." ^ Such was indeed the case; and thoughtful men began to ask themselves whether a great moral teacher who represented the gods as deceitful, faithless, and debauched could be really a moralist at all. Like- wise, contradictions and statements were pointed out which practical knowledge showed to be untrue. Then began an attempt to give an allegorical or a rationalistic inter- pretation of Homer, which should preserve his authority and yet reconcile it with the facts of human life. We find traces of the Solar Myth at about this time, and in- genious interpretations like those which the Rabbinical writers have given of portions of the Hebrew Bible. Here is the beginning of Literary Criticism — though not " literary " in the rightful sense, for it had to do chiefly with mere words and not the form of Homeric and other poetry. Nevertheless, it was a beginning; and in succeed- ' Saintsbury, A History of Criticism, i. pp. 10-12 (New York, 1900). GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 21 ing centuries it became aesthetic, treating literature purely as the product of conscious or unconscious art. It was in Asia Minor that this early criticism had its birth. The lonians were the first, perhaps, to study Homer systematically. They were, therefore, the first to reject his mythical interpretation of nature in the effort to discover a rational and physical interpretation of it. They inquired, " What is the first principle and source of all things?" and with this inquiry Greek Philosophy begins. Before Pisistratus had undertaken to make a standard edition of the Homeric text, Thales, Anaxi- mander, and Anaximenes, all of Miletus, and Heraclitus of Ephesus, taught the intimate connection between life and matter, the one dependent on the other, according to the doctrine known as Hylozoism. Thus Thales [c. 640 B.C.) believed the first principle to be water, since moisture is necessary to life. Anaximander made the first principle an unknown element to which he gave the name aTreipov, from which by eternal motion all things were produced. Anaximenes found the original element to be air, whence came everything through the processes of condensation and rarefaction. On the other hand, Heraclitus (c. 500 b.c), the last of this so-called Ionian School, taught the immanence in all things of fire, and the doctrine of an eternal flux. Pythagoras (c. 500 b.c.) was the most remarkable of these earlier philosophers, and it was he who developed 22 mSTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY a new form of religion and of philosophy, while he was the first great mathematician to arise among the Greeks. In fact, as early as the seventh century, mathe- matics began to be studied, (mainly geometry) which the Greeks learned from the Egyptians. Dr. Cajori re- marks: ^ " Just as Americans in our time go to Germany to study, so early Greek scholars visited the land of the pyramids. Thales, CEnopides, Pythagoras ... all sat at the feet of the Egyptian priests for instruction. While Greek culture is, therefore, not primitive, it commands our enthusiastic admiration. The speculative mind of the Greek at once transcended questions pertaining merely to the practical wants of everyday life. It pierced into the ideal relations of things and revelled in the study of science as science." ^ Thales introduced the study of Geometry into Greece and with him begins the study of scientific Astronomy. The attempt to square the circle is as old as Anaxagoras. All of the Ionic philosophers pursued the study of Mathe- matics. Pythagoras, however, stands alone. Around the life and personality of this great genius there hangs, as it were, a mist of tradition such as envelops all of the most 'See Allmann, Greek Geometry from Thales to Euclid (Dublin, 1889); Tannery, La Geometric Grecque (Paris, 1887); and Cajori, A History of Elementary Mathematics (New York, 1907). ^ An abstract of a history of geometry in Greece, written by Eudemus, is preserved in the commentaries by Proclus (412 a.d.) on the first book of Euclid. GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 23 remarkable characters of history, from Moses to Napoleon. Pythagoras was born in the island of Samos, but after visiting Egypt and the East, he finally made his residence at Crotona, in Southern Italy, where he established a cult the members of which, drawn mainly from the aris- tocratic class, formed a brotherhood under the leadership of Pythagoras. They were bound by a vow to study his theories of religion and philosophy. Three hundred of them formed the highest caste; and they were admitted only by Pythagoras himself, who judged them largely through his knowledge of physiognomy. There was some- thing mystic about all this, for they took an oath of secrecy according to the maxim of their master: " Everything is not to be told to everybody." Pythagoras taught them temperance, self-control, and an ethical righteousness which should make their lives reflect " the music of the spheres," that is to say, the order and harmony of the universe. This principle of harmony ran through all the Pythagorean teaching, which comprised music, arith- metic, geometry, and astronomy. There is a story which tells how he discovered the relations of the musical scale by accidentally observing the various sounds produced by hammers of different weights striking upon an anvil, and suspending by strings other weights equal to those of the respective hammers. He is said to have first dis- covered the so-called Pons Asinorum in geometry. In Religion he taught the transmigration of souls — a doc- 24 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY trine which he had probably learned in India. The essence of all things is Number, according to his teaching; but no existing works, bearing the name of Pythagoras, are gen- uine. His influence among the Italian Greeks, and after- wards among the Athenians, was very great; so that the Pythagorean cult endured for many centuries.* Finally, in the sixth century, the Eleatic School of philosophy arose, numbering among its most distinguished teachers, Xenophanes, already mentioned as having rejected the Homeric idea of God, with Parmenides and Zeno, both of whom asserted that the senses cannot teach us truth, but that verity is apprehended only by the mind.^ The study of nature, which began with the Ionian School, led to the origin of another science. Homer had long been the basis of geographical knowledge. On his statements, Hesiod and the other early poets had depended. It may be said without exaggeration that interest in geography, so far as it had existed before the middle of the seventh century, was spread among the Greeks en- tirely through the poems of Homer. The cliildren in the schools, and the elders who heard the declamations of the rhapsodes, thus became acquainted with the cities, rivers, ^ Gleditsch, Die Pylhagoreer (Posen, 1841); Chaignet, Pythagore et la Philosophie Pylhagorienne (Paris, 1873). For his so-called Golden Verses, see Gottling's edition of Hesiod (Gotha, 1843); and Schnee- berger, Die goldenen Spriiche des Pythagoras (Miinnerstadt, 1862). 'Windelband, History of Ancient Philosophy, pp. 46-52. English translation (New York, 1899). GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 25 and mountains of Greece, and (especially from the Cata- logue of Ships) with the names of the Hellenic tribes. But after first-hand knowledge had been gained by travel, learned men began to formulate a more exact view of physical geography, so that with them the science of Geography began.^ Anaximander of Miletus is said to have made upon a large scale a map of the world as he supposed it to be. His compatriot, Hecataeus (c. 500 B.C.), constructed a bronze plaque or possibly a globe, ^ on which the sphere of the earth, the sea, and the courses of the rivers were given. Maps of countries, however, had not yet be- come important; though descriptive notes were collected from persons who travelled on business or from curiosity. In this manner the data necessary for the preparation of Descriptive Geography were gradually accumulated. To this the great contributors were Hanno of Carthage, who explored the western coast of Africa, his countryman Himilco, and such of the Greeks as came into direct contact with the Persians and Egyptians.^ Hecataeus corrected the chart of Anaximander, adding a commen- tary of which fragments are preserved in quotations.* This is the first geographical work written by any Greek. ' See Bunbury, A History of Ancient Geography (London, 1883). ''X'^^Kfos Trd'tt^ (Herod, v. 125). J See Antichan, Les Grands Voyages de Decouvertes des Anciens (Paris, 1891); and infra, pp. 34-35- ^ Edited by C. and Th. Miiller (Paris, 1841). See the monograph by Schaffer on Hecataeus (BerUn, 1885). 26 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY Writers like Anaximander and Hecataeus committed their observations to Prose. Until their time, poetry had been employed even in philosophical discussion — an example followed by Lucretius in later times among the Romans. But descriptive geography cast aside the restraints of metrical form, though still maintaining a highly poetical character. Only by degrees did it become true prose, but was filled with phrases and turns of expression bor- rowed from the epic writers. Those who employed it were known as Logographi; ^ and presently they began to mingle, with their descriptions of countries, anecdotes and remarks not strictly geographical. In their works, therefore, we find the beginnings of History, which was at first nothing more than annals very simply written. Its true development comes later with Herodotus, who skil- fully combined descriptive geography with the story of nations, interwoven also with personal observations, so that he deserves the name which Grafenhan has given him of "the Humboldt of Antiquity." - Thus it will be seen that out of the study and criticism of Homer there came the elements of many kinds of learning. Homeric study fostered mathematical, geo- graphical, astronomical, and philosophical research, just as it led other poets to write in imitation of their great model. Though Homer gradually ceased to be viewed as a universal teacher, yet the devotion of the Greeks, so • \o7O7/3c£0oi. GENESIS OF PHILOLOGICAL STUDIES IN GREECE 27 long given to his poetry, exercised an influence which made it endure far beyond the time when he was held to be a wholly inspired writer. His great lines had become a part of every man's intellectual equipment. His phrases, his epithets, his many gnomic utterances, were as firmly embedded in the daily speech of the Greeks, as those of the English Bible and of Shakespeare are embedded in our own. In the study of him we are to find the sources of Greek learning. Afterward, while forsaking him as a guide in morals and in science, men still turned to him as a great master of language and an unconscious model of strong yet harmonious expression. [Bibliography. — In addition to the works cited in the preceding chapter, see also Grafenhan, Geschichte der Classischen Philologie, i (Bonn, 1843) ; Reinach, Manuel de Philologie Classique, 2d ed. 2 vols. (Paris, 1885) ; Egger, Essai sur VHistoire de la Cri- tique chez les Grecs (Paris, 18S7); Sandys, A History of Classical Scholarship, i. pp. 1-51, 2d ed. (Cambridge, 1908); Jebb, Homer (Glasgow, 1887); Schomann, Griechische AlterthUmer , 4th ed. (Berlin, 1897); Browne, Handbook of Homeric Stiidy (London, 1905); Cara, Gli Hethei Pelasgi (Rome, 1902); E. CMXthxs, History oj Greece, Eng. trans., 5 vols. (New York, 1868-1872); Mahaflfy, What have the Greeks done for Modern Civilisation ? (New York and London, 1909).] II THE PR.^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD (500-322 B.C.) Throughout the sixth and seventh centuries, suprem- acy in Greek culture had been held by the lonians of Asia Minor. To them were due the intellectual efforts which have been described in the preceding chapter. In Hellas proper, however, both Athens and Sparta had achieved a prominence which was full of latent possibili- ties. The wise and temperate rule of Solon and Pisis- tratus in Athens, and the institutions which at Sparta were ascribed traditionally to Lycurgus, had fitted each of these States to play the important roles by which they are best known in history, Athene and Sparta were different in almost every respect. Athens was democratic, brilliant, and given first of all to intellectual activity. Sparta was aristocratic, subjected to a strict discipline, and caring first of all for warlike power.^ These two States had been gradually acquiring control over the territories which touched their own; so that in the sixth century they became possessed of a civilisation based ' See Jannet, Les Institutions Sociales . . . a Sparte, 2d ed. (Paris, 1880). 28 THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 29 upon strength of body and mind, and ripe for the further cultivation which was to be developed in them. It was in the year 500, that a darkly threatening cloud began to loom over the Greeks of Asia Minor. Their proximity to Persia had always been a danger. Loving liberty, they gradually resented the burden of a despotism which the Persians fostered by imposing petty tyrants upon communities which had been wholly free. In the year 500, their smouldering discontent broke out into a flame. There was a general uprising of the Ionian cities. A republic was proclaimed in Miletus. Soon the cities on the Hellespont and almost the whole of Caria and Cyprus joined in a revolt. An appeal for help was made to the Western Greeks; and though Athens and Eretria were the only States to give immediate aid by sending a small fleet, this marked the beginning of the great Persian Wars which constitute an epoch in the history of Greece and of the world. For the moment, the Ionian fleet was shattered by the Persian allies from Egypt and Phoenicia. Miletus, after a siege of six years (500-494 B.C.), was taken and destroyed in the madness of a frightful vengeance. The whole of Ionia was ravaged with oriental cruelty. It was then that Athens stood forth as the champion of the race; and against her Darius, " the great king," launched two vast expeditions of ships and men. The first was wrecked at Athos. The second came to a disastrous end on the plain of 30 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY Marathon (490 B.C.). One hundred thousand Persians under Datis and Artaphernes were pitted there against ten thousand Athenians under Miltiades. The Asiatics were routed with great loss, and the Athenian victory sent a thrill of triumph throughout all Hellas. Modern historians believe that the exploit of the Athe- nians was greatly exaggerated then, and that it has been misunderstood ever since. Professor K. F. Geldner says, " Probably the Greeks, after having avoided battle for a long time, fell upon the Persians as they were departing, and especially after their powerful cavalry had already embarked." ^ If the able and energetic Darius had com- manded in person, the result would doubtless have been different. Making all allowances, however, it was in effect a victory for Athens, since the Persians abandoned the campaign and returned to Asia. Therefore, Athens leaped at once to a position of great influence which was enhanced when, ten years later, the new Persian king, Xerxes, sought vengeance. An enormous army under his command marched through Macedonia and Thrace, and an overwhelming fleet sailed forth to Thessalonica. The Spartans, who now rushed to arms, suffered the glorious defeat of Thermopylae. The Athenian fleet routed the Persians off Salamis; while both Athenians and Spartans united in shattering the disordered troops of Persia behind their fortifications at Platasa. Finally, * See also Schauer, Die Schlacht bei Marathon (Berlin, 1893). THE PRiE- ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 3 1 the lonians, on the same day, being encouraged by the sight of Grecian ships, shook off once more the shackles of their servitude and destroyed the sixty thousand men who remained out of the great host that had been led forth by Xerxes.^ The two Persian Wars may seem to have had no direct relation to the history of Classical Philology; yet in fact, by compelling the Greeks to put forth all their power, these splendid triumphs stimulated them into extraor- dinary activity wherever the race was represented.^ Such a stimulation is the result of every great war, and it may well serve as a vindication of many historic struggles which have cost so heavily in human life and in apparently wasted treasure. The Punic Wars led at Rome to the first real flowering of Italian genius. The Civil Wars which ravaged Italy in a later century ended with the golden triumphs of the Augustan Age. France was never so glorious, intellectually, as in the battle-years under Louis XIV, and again amid the Napoleonic Wars. The heroic struggle of England against Spain made the Elizabethan Period superbly memorable in the annals of literature and science; and so did her stubborn, unrelenting contest with ' See Cox, The Greeks and the Persians (New York, 1897). ' Note, for example, the remarkable activity displayed by the Athenians in rebuilding and enlarging their city's walls. Men of every station, women, and even children, under the urgent advice of the mighty Themistocles, engaged in this work, tearing down temples and even tombs to afford material for the walls. 32 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY the Corsican Emperor, when at times she stood entirely alone, with a haughty confidence in her ultimate success. Warfare on a great scale brings into play all the energies of men, both physical and mental. It inspires them alike by its victories and by its defeats. It leads nations to cast aside their inglorious love of ease and lets the fierce joy of conflict stir at once the senses, the intellect, and the imagination. Hence it is that we find in the Persian Wars the begin- ning of a great and splendid career for the Hellenic States, and most of all for Athens, which had won such brilliant victories in the field as to rouse Hellenic pride and to make the city of the violet crown the centre of all Hellas, in arts as well as arms. We must now look for the rise of men who were really great, an^ for the develop- ment of those studies which had been only nebulously visible in the two preceding centuries. Certain of the men who became famous early in this period, which ex- tends from the outbreak of the Persian Wars to the death of Aristotle, won their chief distinction through the in- spiration which had come to them because of the Persian assault on Greece. Conspicuous among these was the Theban Pindar, greatest of all the lyric poets. The Thebans were jealous of Athens; yet Pindar was no local poet, but the laureate of the whole Hellenic race; and his exultation over the defeat of the Persians led him to pour forth vivid, joyous lines, ringing with the note of patriotic THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 33 pride. Because of this, his fellow-Thebans imposed on him a heavy fine, which the Athenians paid back to him twofold besides erecting a statue in his honour. The mention of Pindar leads us to note that Lyric Poetry was first cultivated with conscious art among the Cohans and the Dorians. The lyric in general is the most primitive form of poetry, and it must have existed in the earliest ages, at least in a rude form, for it is the spon- taneous utterance of emotion — at first absolutely individ- ual self-expression, a concomitant of the primitive dance, a vocal expression of the " play instinct," seeking naturally after rhythmic movement.^ This originally expressed itself in the trochaic measure, which is the primitive metrical form among all peoples. Then was developed very grad- ually the dactylic hexameter which we find in Homer. Side by side with this hexameter, however, the lighter lyrical movement was cultivated in song. Elegiac and Iambic Poetry forms a transition from epic to lyric composition, and was so known to the lonians. Purely lyrical or Melic Poetry, which was verse intended to be sung to a musical accompaniment, was not Ionic, but first received artistic shape from Terpander of Antissa in Lesbos as early as 700 B.C. In the ^^olic lyric, Alcaeus of Mitylene (later imitated by Horace) , and his contemporary, Sappho, gave it a complete and varied form. So the jovial poems 'See W. Scherer, Poetik (Berlm, 18S8); and Peck, Literature (New York, 1908). D 34 mSTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY of Anacreon (550 B.C.) were composed earlier than Pindar's time. Yet it was Pindar, a Dorian, who raised choral poetry to its highest form at the time of the Persian Wars, together with Simonides and his nephew, Bacchyl- ides.^ The splendid victories of Hellas over its eastern foes led Herodotus of Halicarnassus in Asia Minor to write his remarkable narrative in nine books at a date which is uncertain, but which must have been about the middle of the fifth century B.C. Herodotus, a great traveller, a keen observer, a collector of interesting facts, has been styled " the Father of History." We have seen, however, that history of a sort had been written by the Logographi.^ It was Herodotus who cast aside the dry annalistic form and wrote in a prose style that is at once simple, attractive, and highly picturesque, for it retains a deep tinge of poetic colouring. This genial, learned, and yet pleasing writer took for the subject of his history the Persian Wars. It is, indeed, a great prose epic of the conflict between Hellas and the East, as the first sentence of the first book shows: — " This is a publication of the researches of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, to the end that the deeds of men may not be obliterated by time, and that the great and won- * See Mattel, Die griechischen Lyriker (Berlin, 1892); and the intro- duction to Smyth's Greek Melic Poets (New York, 1900). ^ See p. 26. THE PR.E- ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 35 derful achievements wrought both by Greeks and by bar- barians may not be divested of their glory — and, more- over, to explain the cause which led them to wage war upon each other." Contemporary with Herodotus was Hellanicus of Mity- lene, of whose works only fragments remain. Though he lived to a very old age, dying in 406 B.C., he had none of the literary charm of the new prose. Nevertheless, he was the first writer to introduce something like a chrono- logical arrangement into the traditional records of history and mythology; and his views regarding them were ac- cepted for more than a century after his death. He likewise was a profound student of Genealogy. His records, though having little literary value, were of much service to the later historians; while the notes of Herodotus made during his extensive travels were a rich mine for writers on Descriptive Geography. Just as the Persian Wars had given Herodotus a theme, so the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) inspired the greatest historian who has ever written. This was Thu- cydides (471- c. 399 B.C.), an Athenian who wrote a history of this epoch-making struggle waged between the two leading States of Hellas for the supremacy of the race, — Athens and her allies on the one side, and Sparta and her allies on the other. Thucydides was a man of wealth and character. His fine intellect had been cultivated until it became an instrument of remarkable power, delicacy, and 36 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY finish. He had on the one hand the scientific spirit, and on the other hand an almost unrivalled gift of literary expression. When the war broke out, he was forty years of age, with all his faculties at their very highest; and thus, most naturally, the history which he produced in eight books ^ has become what he desired it to be, a pos- session for all time {Krrj/xa e? det). Herodotus had written with great charm of style. His narrative was illumined by anecdote and the narration of curious facts. He was a prose poet. Thucydides, on the other hand, combined judicial impartiality with a manly, moving eloquence. Lord Macaulay said that his prose was the finest prose that has ever yet been written by any man ; ^ and this in spite of what to the modern mind seems often to be extreme obscurity. His impartiality is the more remarkable in that he was writing contemporaneous his- tory, and that he was himself an Athenian and took part in the war. To quote Dr. F. B. Jevons: " There is hardly a literary production of which posterity has enter- tained a more uniformly favourable estimate than the history of Thucydides. This high distinction he owes to his undeviating fidelity and impartiality as a narrator; to the masterly concentration of his work, in which he ' The eighth book is incomplete and is by some regarded as not the worli of Thucydides himself. ^ Macaulay also said of himself that while he might perhaps dare to believe that he could equal the prose of any other writer, he would never attempt to rival the seventh book of Thucydides. THE PR^-ALEXAISTDRIAN PERIOD 37 is content to give in a few simple yet vivid expressions the facts which it must have often taken him weeks or even months to collect, sift, and decide upon; to the sagacity of his political and moral observations in which he shows the keenest insight into the springs of human action and the mental nature of man; and to his un- rivalled descriptive power. . . , Thucydides when he undertook to record the present, thereby deliberately elected to confine himself to efficient causes. This pref- erence for efficient causes and for scientific history, in the best sense of the term, is intimately connected with the positive nature of his history — that is to say, with his perpetual endeavour to record facts and to distinguish them from inferences drawn from facts." The utmost efforts of modern criticism have been un- able to shake the wonderful structure of his history. In this respect he is to be compared with Gibbon. It is interesting to note that while Niebuhr is popularly said to have first established the scientific principles of histori- cal investigation, Gibbon anticipated Niebuhr in practice just as he himself had been anticipated by Thucydides more than two thousand years before.^ A contemporary of Thucydides, Xenophon, who was * See Miiller-Striibing in the Jahrhuch filr Philologie, cxxxi. 289 foil. ; and Classen's Introduction to his edition of Thucydides, vol. i. 2d ed. (Berlin, 1897); Forbes, The Life and Method of Thucydides (London, 1895); and Jevons, A History of Greek Literature, pp. 327-348 (New York, 1897). 38 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY also an Athenian, is the third great historian to give lustre to the Prae-AIexandrian Period. Serving as a mercenary in a Greek force raised by Cyrus the Persian, he recorded his experiences in the Anabasis, a work which continues to be read in our secondary schools both for the sim- plicity and vivacity of its narrative, and for the facts observed by Xenophon and faithfully recorded in the seven books which make up the work. Xenophon as an historian is inferior to Herodotus and Thucydides, but he is an admirable writer, as his persistent popularity well shows. Besides the Anabasis, he wrote a history of Greece (Hellenica) which practically completed the un- finished work of Thucydides, unlike whom he wrote with a strong bias, in violent contrast with the stern im- partiality of his predecessor.^ Xenophon did not confine himself to historical writing, but composed treatises which had to do with Political Science (the Lacedcemonian Polity, the Cyropcedia, and On the Athenian Finances) as well as quasi-ethical monographs, the most famous of which is the Memorabilia of Socrates. Xenophon writes in a dialect which is not purely Attic, owing to the fact of his long and frequent absences from his native country.^ In the histories of Thucydides and Xenophon there are introduced set speeches, conventionally supposed to have been delivered by generals to their troops, by statesmen * See A. Holm, Griechische Geschichte; Eng. trans. (London, 1894-99). ^ See Alfred Croiset, Xenophon, son Caradcre et son Talent (Paris, 1873)- THE PR^- ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 39 to deliberative assemblies, by ambassadors and by dema- gogues. These speeches do not pretend to be authentic records. They are inserted partly to enliven the narrative by interspersing it with personal touches, and more par- ticularly to sum up effectively and within a short compass the opinions or arguments which the speakers might have been supposed to hold and to utter. They are true in substance though not authentic in form. Their occur- rence in historical writing shows that, during the fifth century. Oratory had become an art. Of course, a certain kind of oratory, rude and extemporaneous, must have been known far back in the prehistoric period, since oratory is one of the accomplishments which make for statesmanship. The primitive chieftain undoubtedly ha- rangued his followers when occasion arose. Even in the poetry of Homer there are speeches set down in hexameter verse. But this untutored oratory was, as Professor Sears describes it, merely " protoplasmic eloquence." The psychological basis of it was not understood. The graces of external form were not yet taught by precept. Such power as oratory had, came from strong feeling and the gift which some possess of swaying the minds and imaginations of their hearers by communicating to them something of their own passion. By the end of the sixth century, however, educated men began to recognise that the gift of eloquence, the end of which is persuasion, could be acquired; so that in a philosophical treatise by 40 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY Diogenes of Apollonia there is found embodied, " like a trilobite in limestone," the following rhetorical injunction, " It appears to me that every one who begins a discourse ought to state the subject with distinctness, and to make the style simple and dignified." ^ In fact, the Greeks, who were essentially a nation of talkers, expected the account of a man's actions to be accompanied and ex- plained by his spoken words, so that all might judge of his intellectual and moral character. Hence it was that at the time of the Persian Wars, eloquence came to be highly valued as indispensable to the statesman, the diplomat, and the commander of armies. Oratory, or, to use the Greek term, Rhetoric {prjTopLKrj), thus arose, comprising both the practical and the theoretical art of speaking. So earnestly was it cultivated that it came to be called at last "the art of arts." Its development was one of the steps which accompanied the decline of poetry and the rise of prose. Just as the lyric supplanted the epic, and pictur- esque prose narrative was gradually preferred to poetry, so oratory — a still further remove from purely imaginative composition — helped to assimilate literature with practical life. Its rapid growth was due, of course, to the spread of democracy by which the government of the State be- came the gift of the assembled people. To dominate the reason, the impulses, and the prejudices of the people were at last the chief functions of the art of oratory. ' See Sears, The History of Oratory, ch. i. (Chicago, 1903). THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 4I Already for the training of legal and judicial pleading, a definite though imperfect system had been set forth. Cicero ^ ascribes it to the Sicilian Greeks, who were famous in antiquity for their ready wit, their love of highly coloured language, and their passion for subtle argument. The first manual professing to instruct men in the art of per- suasive speaking is said to have been written by Corax of Syracuse in Sicily early in the sixth century B.C. With this date then begins the formal development of the art of Rhetoric. Corax opened a school at Syracuse in which he taught the principles laid down in his Te;\;f7;; and his pupil, Tisias, of whom little is known, made some additions to the rules of Corax." Gorgias of Leontini (485-380 B.C.), probably a pupil of Tisias, carried the study of rhetoric to Hellas proper, whither he went as an am- bassador to ask for protection against the encroachments of Syracuse. From that time he had a residence in Athens and another in the city of Larissa in Thessaly, winning widespread fame both as a public speaker and as a practi- cal teacher of rhetoric. So far as any evidences remain of the teaching of Gorgias, it seems plain that his rules looked to a highly artificial and meretricious style of oratory.^ ' Brutus, 46. 'These rules divided an oration into five parts: (i) proem, (2) narra- tive, (3) arguments, (4) subsidiary remarks, and (5) peroration. Both Corax and Tisias made much of the value of what they called etV-6s, that is to say, the semblance to truth which in an oration makes the whole of an argument appear plausible and therefore possesses an appeal to man's sense of what is just and right. *Two orations ascribed to him are extant. See Blass, pp. 44-72. 42 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY Studied antitheses, a profusion of simile and metaphor, apostrophe, and other figures, together with a carefully balanced rhythm, must have made his most finished elo- quence resemble the so-called Euphuism of John Lyly and his fellow-Elizabethans. It was, in fact, a foreshadowing in Greece of the so-called Asiatic style of eloquence adopted in later times by some of the Roman orators. At Athens, however, a less affected mode of eloquence pre- vailed. There were great orators who were conspicuous during the middle of the fifth century B.C., and whose manly, noble eloquence (the Attic style) gained little from teachings such as those of Gorgias. The Age of Pericles — the noblest statesman whom Greece produced — was a period of great splendour. Peri- cles adorned and enriched the city with the wealth con- tributed by the allied States. Athens to him meant Greece just as Paris to the French people has long meant France. Under his patronage, Greek architecture and sculpture reached perfection. He planned the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, the Odeon, and many like magnificent public edifices. He encouraged literature as well as the other arts. He was the centre of a splendid group, in which were Thucydides, ^schylus, Sophocles, Euripi- des, Anaxagoras, Zeno, Protagoras, Pindar, and the great sculptors Phidias and Myron. Athens was brilliant with gorgeous festivals and crowned with the laurels of military glory. The noblest figure of all was Pericles himself. THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 43 Though Thucydides opposed him, he generously records the fact that Pericles never did anything unworthy of his high position, that he neither flattered the people nor oppressed his private enemies, and that with all his un- limited command of public money, he was personally in- corruptible/ Gorgias is said to have instructed both Pericles and Thucydides, but the first Athenian to apply the rules of rhetoric practically in speaking before the public assemblies and the courts was Antiphon (480-41 1 B.C.) . He was also the first to publish speeches as models for rhetori- cal study. If we examine these and the orations inter- woven in the history of Thucydides, we find that they exhibit a certain self-consciousness which is fatal to effective oratory. Lysias (458-c. 378 B.C.) shows purity of style and grace, though he is lacking in energy. Isocrates (436-338 B.C.) is rightly regarded as the father of artistic oratory, properly so called, and by his mastery of style he has in- fluenced oratorical diction throughout all succeeding ages.^ 'Lloyd, The Age of Pericles, 2 vols. (London, 1875); and Abbott, Pericles (London, 1891). 2 Isocrates (Milton's "Old Man Eloquent" and Cicero's "Father of Eloquence") was perhaps as well known for his rhetorical teaching as for his practical application of it. He wrote speeches to be delivered by others, and he gave instruction at the rate of 1000 drachmas, or about $250, for a course of lessons, and he often had a hundred pupils at a time, yielding a revenue equivalent to $25,000. The king of Cyprus paid him 20 talents (about $22,000) for a single oration. These set speeches were not merely delivered once, but were copied and read wherever Greek was understood. On the other hand, he would some- times spend from five to ten years in perfectmg one of these show pieces. 44 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY He spoke with ease, adapting the language of the people to his own usage; his periods were flowing and rhythmical; and he had an instinctive knowledge of everything which tends to the possibilities of harmonious language. It is said that Cicero was a deep student of Isocrates.^ It was not until near the close of the Prae-Alexandrian Period that the most magnil^cent representative of Greek oratory arose in the person of Demosthenes. He com- bined the persuasiveness of Lysias, the animation and boldness of Thucydides, and he understood well the art of speaking in short, terse sentences which would go home like arrows to the minds of an assembled multitude. His superb oration On tJie Crown shows not only an absolute mastery of all the resources of rhetoric employed with great intellectual power, but also patriotic fervour and that sincerity which belongs essentially to the et/co? upon which Corax had insisted.^ So much of the teaching in Greece was given orally that we may perhaps find in this circumstance an explana- tion as to why the oldest rhetorical text-book now in existence belongs to the middle of the fourth century B.C. Corax, already mentioned, had merely discussed the divisions of an oration and the manner of presenting its arguments. In the manual written by Anaximenes (who, by the way, wrote nine books of criticism on Homer), the ' See Blass, Ailische Beredsamkeil, 2d ed., 3 vols. (Leipzig, 1898); and Jebb, Attic Orators, ii. pp. 1-34, 2d ed. (London, 1893). ' See Butcher, Demosthenes, preface to last ed. (London, 1903). THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 45 subject is treated practically rather than philosophically. Anaximenes taught rhetoric to Alexander the Great, who for his sake spared the city of Lampsacus, though it had sided with the Persians. This manual, which is dedicated to Alexander, was, until the last century, included among the works of Aristotle and generally ascribed to him, though with considerable doubt. In 1828, L. Spengel in his treatise on the rhetorical writers prior to Aristotle ' conclusively proved the work to be that of Anaximenes. The author divides oratorical discussion into three cate- gories: (i) Forensic, (2) Deliberative, (3) Declamatory. This threefold division was accepted by the ancients from that time. The manual gives excellent advice as to the proper arrangement of the members of an oration, with some further technical details. The book, however, is brief and its treatment of the subject very meagre. The first scientific treatise with a full analysis and a comprehensive grasp of both theory and practice is that of Aristotle in his Rhetorica, divided into three parts or books. As this is the most important work on rhetoric produced in ancient times, a short account of its plan and development may be given here. The great point of departure in Aristotle's discussion of rhetoric is found in his view of its functions. Rhetoric to him is not the art of ornamenting and beautifying discourse. It is not merely persuasion. It is rather the discovery of the > Published at Stuttgart, 1828. 46 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY possible means of persuasion. Hence, rhetoric is the counterpart of Logic, and the principles of logic enter into its laws as an essential part of them. The uses of rhetoric are: (i) the means by which truth and justice may rise superior to falsehood and injustice; (2) the means of persuasion that are suited to popular assemblies; (3) the means of seeing both sides of a case and of thus dis- covering the weakness of an adversary's argument; and (4) the means of defending one's own case against all possible attacks that can be made upon it. The means of persuasion he sets forth as follows: (i) natural, " in- artificial " proofs, such as the sworn testimony of wit- nesses, documents, etc.; and (2) artificial proofs, which are either (a) logical, involving demonstration by argu- ment; or else (b) ethical, when the weight of a speaker's own character inspires confidence in his hearers, and emotional, when he works upon the feelings of his listeners by appealing to their sympathies or prejudices. Logical proof, he says, depends upon the principle of giving " a syllogism from probability." Of the nature of such syllogisms he distinguishes the common topic or general head, applicable to all subjects, and the special topic drawn from special arts, gifts, or circumstances. Following a division of Anaximenes, rhetoric was divided into three kinds: (i) Deliberative Rhetoric, which has to do with exhortation or persuasion and is concerned with future time as to expediency or inexpediency; (2) Fo- THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 47 rensic Rhetoric, relating to accusation or defence and concerned with time past as to justice or injustice; and (3) Epideictic Rhetoric, relating to eulogy or censure, and usually concerned with the present time and as to honour or distress. The first two books of Aristotle's rhetoric deal with invention, i.e. the discovery of the means of persuasion. The third book relates to expres- sion and arrangement. Under the latter head he treats of the art of delivery, considering verbal expression in which is included the use of metaphor, simile, and terse gnomic sayings, of the rhythm of sentences, and of Style. As to style he notes four varieties: (i) the purely literary, (2) the controversial, (3) the political, and (4) the forensic. Aristotle's Rhetoric is the most exhaustive, analytical, and scientific treatise on the subject that has ever been written. It is, however, as has been truly said, the philosophy of rhetoric rather than rhetoric that he dis- cusses. His mind was intensely analytical and was always seeking for ultimate causes; so that even in this field he is forever verging upon the sphere of the meta- physical. The great importance of the treatise is that it prepared the way for Aristotle's Dialectic or Logic, which in turn furnished many of the distinctions and classifica- tions, destined afterward to be used in a different relation by the originators of Formal Grammar. Aristotle himself regarded rhetoric as standing side by side with logic, since each relates to the process of insur- 48 HISTORY or CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY ing conviction. The orator must be a dialectician if he would reach the highest excellence in his art; and the dialectician, on the other hand, will make his logic most effective through a command of the arts of oratory. Hence Aristotle's rhetoric is really a dialectic science. In his Organon, after he has set forth his system of logic, he develops the methods by which man arrives at knowl- edge. He discloses the laws of thinking and the modes of cognition from a study of man's faculty of cognition, striving to gain an insight into the nature and formation of evidence and conclusion. In the course of this inquiry he tries to classify all possible objects of human knowl- edge under definite heads. In so doing, he drew up his idsaowi, ttn CaXtgox'ms {prcedicamenta). These are: (i) sub- stance, (2) quantity, (3) quality, (4) relation, (5) place, (6) time, (7) situation, (8) possession, (9) action, (10) suffer- ing, that is to say, passivity.^ The mere enumeration of these categories serves to show how intimately they are connected with the classification that we find in our formal grammar. Because, in setting them forth, Aris- totle provided a terminology and a framework for the Alexandrian and other grammarians in the following period, he has been spoken of as the source in which both criticism and grammar find their origin.^ ' These ten categories are really reducible to two: (i) substance, (2) at- tribute; or (i) being, (2) accident. ' Dio Cassius, liii. p. 353; Reiske (294 R). Aristotle's Rhetoric is edited separately with notes by Cope and Sandys, 3 vols. (Cambridge, THE PR^-ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 49 Rhetoric, language study, criticism, literary training, and philosophy were all popularised by a class of teachers who became famous under the name of Sophists {(To(^ivaei or vofxcp). The Eleatics,^ on the other hand, regarded words as given to things arbitrarily; that the names of things, like the names of slaves, might be altered at pleasure; and that, in consequence, no light is to be thrown on mental processes or on the nature of thought, by study- ing the forms in which it is expressed. One of the Eleatics, a Megarian, Diodorus, named his slaves after the con- junctions, thinking to show thereby the absurdity of the Heraclitean doctrine, — which recalls Dr. Johnson's * I.e. the followers of Heraclitus of Ephesus, about 500 B.C. ^ I.e. the followers of Xenophanes and Parmenides of Elea. THE PR^- ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD 57 famous refutation of Berkeley's idealism. Language, therefore, according to the Eleatics, arose by convention {diaei or avv6r]Kri). This controversy has an interest far greater than any merely linguistic discussion could possess. It really strikes down into the most profound recesses of the hu- man mind. It grazes the borderland of a philosophical question that has puzzled metaphysicians ever since men began to reflect upon the mystery of their being, — a question that has never been solved and that, humanly speaking, admits of no solution. It is the question which in the scholastic period of the Middle Ages was known as the question of Realism and Nominalism. It is the question which, in after times, appeared as the question of the Freedom of the Human Will. Its discussion by the ancient philosophers led to the investigation of lan- guage. As it was claimed that language corresponds naturally and inevitably to the thought, just as sensation corresponds to the object which excites it, the first in- quiry which philosophers set before themselves was this: What is language? Heraclitus asserted that language is the immediate product of a natural power which assigns to each thing its proper designation as a necessary element of the thing's existence. Names, he said, are like the natural, not the artificial images of visible things, i.e. they resemble the shadows cast by solid objects, the images seen in mirrors, 58 HISTORY OF CLASSICAL PHILOLOGY the reflected sun in still water. " Those who use the true word do really and truly name the object, while those who do not, merely make an unmeaning noise." That is, words are the immediate copies of things, produced by nature herself, not due to any subjective influence or human caprice, but corresponding to realities by objec- tive necessity; they have an abstract propriety and fit- ness (opdoTTj'i) and an intrinsic force and meaning. This is the extreme statement of the Heraclitean doctrine which was afterward modified by Epicurus so as to make the objective necessity, referred to above, a physical, organic necessity. Against the Heracliteans, the Eleatics defended their thesis that names are given and were always given arbi- trarily by men who might with perfect propriety change them about. Democritus propounded four arguments against the Heraclitean view, (i) The argument of Homonymy. For instance, /cXeiV means both a key and a collar-bone. Now a key and a collar-bone have abso- lutely no relation to each other; hence, if /cXet? be the inevitable and natural name for one of them, it certainly cannot be equally the inevitable and natural name of the other. (2) The argument of Polyonymy. A man is called avdp(iiTro