Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Speakers were also tempted to take advantage of the popular ignorance by misinterpreting the enactments of the law, and the jurors could look for no aid from the officials who formally presided over the courts. The latter were not necessarily experts, for they owed their own original appointment to the caprice of the lot. Almost the only officials specially elected as experts were the strategi, and these presided only in their own courts. Again, there was every temptation for the informer to propose the confiscation of the property of a wealthy citizen, who would naturally prefer paying blackmail to running the risk of having his case tried before a large tribunal which was under every temptation to decide in the interests of the treasury. In conclusion we may quote the opinions on the judicial system of Athens which have been expressed by two eminent classical scholars and English lawyers.

A translator of Aristophanes, Mr B. B. Rogers, records his opinion
"that it would be difficult to devise a judicial system less adapted
for the due administration of justice" (Preface to _Wasps_, xxxv. f.),
while a translator of Demosthenes, Mr C. R. Kennedy, observes that the
Athenian jurors "were persons of no legal education or learning; taken
at haphazard from the whole body of citizens, and mostly belonging to
the lowest and poorest class. On the other hand, the Athenians were
naturally the quickest and cleverest people in the world. Their wits
were sharpened by the habit ... of taking an active part in important
debates, and hearing the most splendid orators. There was so much
litigation at Athens that they were constantly either engaged as
jurors, or present as spectators in courts of law" (_Private
Orations_, p. 361).

AUTHORITIES.--1. Greek Law. B. W. Leist, _Graco-italische
Rechtsgeschichte_ (Jena, 1884); L. Mitteis, _Reichsrecht und
Volksrecht in den ostlichen Provinzen des romischen Kaiserreichs, mit
Beitragen zur Kenntnis des griechischen Rechts_ (Leipzig, 1891); J. H.
Lipsius, _Von der Bedeutung des griechischen Rechts_ (Leipzig, 1893);
G. Gilbert, "Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des ... griechischen Rechtes"
in _Jahrb. fur kl. Philologie_ (Leipzig, 1896); H. J. Hitzig, _Die
Bedeutung des altgriechischen Rechtes fur die vergleichende
Rechtswissenschaft_ (Stuttgart, 1906); R. Hirzel, _Themis, Dike und
Verwandtes_ (Leipzig, 1907); J. J. Thonissen, _Le Droit criminel de la
Grece legendaire_, followed by _Le Droit penal de la republique
athenienne_ (Brussels, 1875).

2. Attic Law. (a) Editions of Greek texts: I. B. Telfy, _Corpus juris
Attici_ (Pest and Leipzig, 1868); Aristotle's _Constitution of
Athens_, ed. Kenyon (London, 1891, &c., and esp. ed. 4, Berlin, 1903);
ed. 4, Blass (Leipzig, 1903); text with critical and explanatory
notes, ed. Sandys (London, 1893); Lysias, ed. Frohberger (Leipzig,
1866-1871); Isaeus, ed. Wyse (Cambridge, 1904); Demosthenes, _Private
Orations_, ed. Paley and Sandys, ed. 3 (Cambridge, 1896-1898);
_Against Midias_, ed. Goodwin (Cambridge, 1906); Dareste,
Haussoullier, Th. Reinach, _Inscr. juridiques grecques_ (Paris,
1891-1904). (b) Modern treatises: K. F. Hermann, _De vestigiis
institutorum ... Atticorum per Platonis de legibus libros indagandis_
(Marburg, 1836); _Staatsaltertumer_, ed. 6, Thumser (Freiburg, 1892);
_Rechtsaltertumer_, ed. 3, Thalheim (Freiburg, 1884); G. Busolt,
_Staatsund Rechtsaltertumer_, ed. 2 (Munich, 1892); U. von
Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, _Aristoteles und Athen_ (Berlin, 1893); G.
Gilbert, _Gk. Constitutional Antiquities_ (vol. i., Eng. trans., pp.
376-416, London, 1895); J. H. Lipsius, (1) new ed. of Meier and
Schomann, _Der attische Process_ (Berlin, 1883-1887); (2) ed. 4 of
Schomann, _Gr. Altertumer_ (Berlin, 1897-1902); (3) _Das attische
Recht und Rechtsverfahren_ (Leipzig, 1905); Daremberg and Saglio,
_Dictionnaire des antiquites_ (Paris, 1877); G. Glotz, _La Solidarite
de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grece_ (Paris, 1904); L.
Beauchet, _Droit prive de la rep. athen._ (4 vols., Paris, 1897); C.
R. Kennedy, _Appendices to transl. of Dem._ vols. iii. and iv.
(1856-1861); Smith's _Dictionary of ... Antiquities_, ed. 3 (1891); F.
B. Jevons, in Gardner and Jevons, _Greek Antiquities_ (1895, pp.
526-597); W. Wyse, in Whibley's _Companion to Greek Studies_
(Cambridge, 1905), pp. 377-402. (J. E. S.*)

FOOTNOTES:

[1] For further information as to the evolution of the Athenian
constitution see ARCHON, AREOPAGUS, BOULE, ECCLESIA, STRATEGUS, and
articles on all the chief legislators.

[2] In the case of "animals," we may compare the Mosaic law of Exod.
xxxi. 28 and the old Germanic law (Grimm 664); and in that of
"inanimate objects," the English law of deodands (Blackstone i. 300),
repealed in 1846. See also Frazer on Pausanias, i. 28. 10.

[3] Cf. R. J. Bonner, in _Classical Philology_ (Chicago, 1907),
407-418, who urges that only cases belonging to the Forty were
subject to public arbitration.

[4] Connected either with [Greek: halizesthai], "to assemble," or
[Greek: helios], or [Greek: Helis] (cf. Curt Wachsmuth, _Stadt
Athen_, ii. (1) 359-364). The first is possibly right (cf. Rogers on
Aristoph. _Wasps_, xvii. f.); the second implies that this large
court was held in the open air (Lipsius, _Att. Recht_, 172).

GREEK LITERATURE.--The literature of the Greek language is broadly divisible into three main sections: (1) Ancient, (2) Byzantine, (3) Modern. These are dealt with below in that order.

1. THE ANCIENT GREEK LITERATURE

The ancient literature falls into three periods: (A) _The Early Literature_, to about 475 B.C.; epic, elegiac, iambic and lyric poetry; the beginnings of literary prose. (B) _The Attic Literature_ 475-300 B.C.; tragic and comic drama; historical, oratorical and philosophical prose. (C) _The Literature of the Decadence_, 300 B.C. to A.D. 529; which may again be divided into the Alexandrian period, 300-146 B.C., and the Graeco-Roman period, 146 B.C. to A.D. 529.

For details regarding particular works or the lives of their authors reference should be made to the separate articles devoted to the principal Greek writers. The object of the following pages is to sketch the literary development as a whole, to show how its successive periods were related to each other, and to mark the dominant characteristics of each.

(A) _The Early Literature._--A process of natural growth may be traced through all the best work of the Greek genius. The Greeks were not literary imitators of foreign models; the forms of poetry and prose in which they attained to such unequalled excellence were first developed by themselves. Their literature had its roots in their political and social life; it is the spontaneous expression of that life in youth, maturity and decay; and the order in which its several fruits are produced is not the result of accident or caprice. Further, the old Greek literature has a striking completeness, due to the fact that each great branch of the Hellenic race bore a characteristic part in its development. Ionians, Aeolians, Dorians, in turn contributed their share. Each dialect corresponded to a certain aspect of Hellenic life and character. Each found its appropriate work.

The dialects.

The Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor--a lively and genial people, delighting in adventure, and keenly sensitive to everything bright and joyous--created artistic epic poetry out of the lays in which Aeolic minstrels sang of the old Achaean wars. And among the Ionians arose elegiac poetry, the first variation on the epic type. These found a fitting instrument in the harmonious Ionic dialect, the flexible utterance of a quick and versatile intelligence. The Aeolians of Lesbos next created the lyric of personal passion, in which the traits of their race--its chivalrous pride, its bold but sensuous fancy--found a fitting voice in the fiery strength and tenderness of Aeolic speech. The Dorians of the Peloponnesus, Sicily and Magna Graecia then perfected the choral lyric for festivals and religious worship; and here again an earnest faith, a strong pride in Dorian usage and renown had an apt interpreter in the massive and sonorous Doric. Finally, the Attic branch of the Ionian stock produced the drama, blending elements of all the other kinds, and developed an artistic literary prose in history, oratory and philosophy. It is in the Attic literature that the Greek mind receives its most complete interpretation.

A natural affinity was felt to exist between each dialect and that species of composition for which it had been specially used. Hence the dialect of the Ionian epic poets would be adopted with more or less thoroughness even by epic or elegiac poets who were not Ionians. Thus the Aeolian Hesiod uses it in epos, the Dorian Theognis in elegy, though not without alloy. Similarly, the Dorian Theocritus wrote love-songs in Aeolic. All the faculties and tones of the language were thus gradually brought out by the co-operation of the dialects. Old Greek literature has an essential unity--the unity of a living organism; and this unity comprehends a number of distinct types, each of which is complete in its own kind.

Pre-Homeric poetry.

Songs of the seasons.

Hymns.

Extant Greek literature begins with the Homeric poems. These are works of art which imply a long period of antecedent poetical cultivation. Of the pre-Homeric poetry we have no remains, and very little knowledge. Such glimpses as we get of it connect it with two different stages in the religion of the prehistoric Hellenes. The first of these stages is that in which the agencies or forms of external nature were personified indeed, yet with the consciousness that the personal names were only symbols. Some very ancient Greek songs of which mention is made may have belonged to this stage--as the songs of Linus, Ialemus and Hylas. Linus, the fair youth killed by dogs, seems to be the spring passing away before Sirius. Such songs have been aptly called "songs of the seasons." The second stage is that in which the Hellenes have now definitively personified the powers which they worship. Apollo, Demeter, Dionysus, Cybele, have now become to them beings with clearly conceived attributes. To this second stage belong the hymns connected with the names of the legendary bards, such as Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, who are themselves associated with the worship of the Pierian Muses and the Attic ritual of Demeter. The seats of this early sacred poetry are not only "Thracian"--i.e. on the borders of northern Greece--but also "Phrygian" and "Cretan." It belongs, that is, presumably to an age when the ancestors of the Hellenes had left the Indo-European home in central Asia, but had not yet taken full possession of the lands which were afterwards Hellenic. Some of their tribes were still in Asia; others were settling in the islands of the Aegean; others were passing through the lands on its northern seaboard. If there was a period when the Greeks possessed no poetry but hymns forming part of a religious ritual, it may be conjectured that it was not of long duration. Already in the _Iliad_ a secular character belongs to the marriage hymn and to the dirge for the dead, which in ancient India were chanted by the priest. The bent of the Greeks was to claim poetry and music as public joys; they would not long have suffered them to remain sacerdotal mysteries. And among the earliest themes on which the lay artist in poetry was employed were probably war-ballads, sung by minstrels in the houses of the chiefs whose ancestors they celebrated.

Epos.

Such war-ballads were the materials from which the earliest epic poetry of Greece was constructed. By an "epic" poem the Greeks meant a narrative of heroic action in hexameter verse. The term [Greek: epe] meant at first simply "verses"; it acquired its special meaning only when [Greek: mele], lyric songs set to music, came to be distinguished from [Greek: epe] verses not set to music, but merely recited. Epic poetry is the only kind of extant Greek poetry which is older than about 700 B.C. The early epos of Greece is represented by the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, Hesiod and the Homeric hymns; also by some fragments of the "Cyclic" poets.

The "Iliad" and the "Odyssey."

After the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus, the Aeolian emigrants who settled in the north-west of Asia Minor brought with them the warlike legends of their chiefs, the Achaean princes of old. These legends lived in the ballads of the Aeolic minstrels, and from them passed southward into Ionia, where the Ionian poets gradually shaped them into higher artistic forms. Among the seven places which claimed to be the birthplace of Homer, that which has the best title is Smyrna. Homer himself is called "son of Meles"--the stream which flowed through old Smyrna, on the border between Aeolia and Ionia. The tradition is significant in regard to the origin and character of the _Iliad_, for in the _Iliad_ we have Achaean ballads worked up by Ionian art. A preponderance of evidence is in favour of the view that the _Odyssey_ also, at least in its earliest form, was composed on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. According to the Spartan account, Lycurgus was the first to bring to Greece a complete copy of the Homeric poems, which he had obtained from the Creophylidae, a clan or gild of poets in Samos. A better authenticated tradition connects Athens with early attempts to preserve the chief poetical treasure of the nation. Peisistratus is said to have charged some learned men with the task of collecting all "the poems of Homer"; but it is difficult to decide how much was comprehended under this last phrase, or whether the province of the commission went beyond the mere task of collecting. Nor can it be determined what exactly it was that Solon and Hipparchus respectively did for the Homeric poems. Solon, it has been thought, enacted that the poems should be recited from an authorized text ([Greek: ex hypoboles]); Hipparchus, that they should be recited in a regular order ([Greek: ex hypolepseos]). At any rate, we know that in the 6th century B.C. a recitation of the poems of Homer was one of the established competitions at the Panathenaea, held once in four years. The reciter was called a _rhapsodist_--properly one who weaves a long, smoothly-flowing chant, then an epic poet who chants his own or another's poem. The rhapsodist did not, like the early minstrel, use the accompaniment of the harp; he gave the verses in a flowing recitative, bearing in his hand a branch of laurel, the symbol of Apollo's inspiration. In the 5th century B.C. we find that various Greek cities had their own editions ([Greek: hai politikai, kata poleis] or [Greek: ek poleon ekdoseis]) of the poems, for recitation at their festivals. Among these were the editions of Massilia, of Chios and of Argolis. There were also editions bearing the name of the individual editor ([Greek: hai kat' andra])--the best known being that which Aristotle prepared for Alexander. The recension of the poems by Aristarchus (156 B.C.) became the standard one, and is probably that on which the existing text is based. The oldest Homeric MS. extant, Venetus A of the _Iliad_, is of the 10th century; the first printed edition of Homer was that edited by the Byzantine Demetrius Chalcondyles (Florence, 1488).

The Homeric question.

The ancient Greeks were almost unanimous in believing the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ to be the work of one man, Homer, to whom they also ascribed some extant hymns, and probably much more besides. Aristotle and Aristarchus seem to have put Homer's date about 1044 B.C., Herodotus about 850 B.C. It is not till about 170 B.C. that the grammarians Hellanicus and Xenon put forward the view that Homer was the author of the _Iliad_, but not of the _Odyssey_. Those who followed them in assigning different authors to the two poems were called the Separators (_Chorizontes_). Aristarchus combated "the paradox of Xenon," and it does not seem to have had much acceptance in antiquity. Giovanni Battista Vico, a Neapolitan (1668-1744), seems to have been the first modern to suggest the composite authorship and oral tradition of the Homeric poems; but this was a pure conjecture in support of his theory that the names of ancient lawgivers and poets are often mere symbols. F. A. Wolf, in the _Prolegomena_ to his edition (1795), was the founder of a scientific scepticism. The _Iliad_, he said (for he recognized the comparative unity and consistency of the _Odyssey_), was pieced together from many small unwritten poems by various hands, and was first committed to writing in the time of Peisistratus. This view was in harmony with the tone of German criticism at the time; it was welcomed as a new testimony to the superiority of popular poetry, springing from fresh natural sources, to elaborate works of art; and it at once found enthusiastic adherents. For the course of Homeric controversy since Wolf the reader is referred to the article HOMER.

Cyclic poems.

The Ionian school of epos produced a number of poems founded on the legends of the Trojan war, and intended as introductions or continuations to the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The grammarian Proclus (A.D. 140) has preserved the names and subjects of some of these; but the fragments are very scanty. The _Nostoi_ or _Homeward Voyages_, by Agias (or Hagias) of Troezen, filled up the gap of ten years between the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_; the _Lay of Telegonus_, by Eugammon of Cyrene, continued the story of the Odyssey to the death of Odysseus by the hand of Telegonus, the son whom Circe bore to him. Similarly the _Cyprian Lays_ by Stasinus of Cyprus, ascribed by others to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or Halicarnassus, was introductory to the _Iliad_; the _Aethiopis_ and the _Sack of Troy_, by Arctinus of Miletus, and the _Little Iliad_, by Lesches of Mytilene, were supplementary to it. These and many other names of lost epics--some taken also from the Theban myths (_Thebais_, _Epigoni_, _Oedipodea_)--serve to show how prolific was that epic school of which only two great examples remain. The name of _epic cycle_ was properly applied to a prose compilation of abstracts from these epics, pieced together in the order of the events. The compilers were called "cyclic" writers; and the term has now been transferred to the epic poets whom they used.[1]

Hesiodic epos.

The epic poetry of Ionia celebrated the great deeds of heroes in the old wars. But in Greece proper there arose another school of epos, which busied itself with religious lore and ethical precepts, especially in relation to the rural life of Boeotia. This school is represented by the name of Hesiod. The legend spoke of him as vanquishing Homer in a poetical contest of Chalcis in Euboea; and it expresses the fact that, to the old Greek mind, these two names stood for two contrasted epic types. Nothing is certainly known of his date, except that it must have been subsequent to the maturity of Ionian epos. He is conjecturally placed about 850-800 B.C.; but some would refer him to the early part of the 7th century B.C. His home was at Ascra, a village in a valley under Helicon, whither his father had migrated from Cyme in Aeolis on the coast of Asia Minor. In Hesiod's _Works and Days_ we have the earliest example of a didactic poem. The seasons and the labours of the Boeotian farmer's year are followed by a list of the days which are lucky or unlucky for work. The _Theogony_, or "Origin of the Gods," describes first how the visible order of nature arose out of chaos; next, how the gods were born. Though it never possessed the character of a sacred book, it remained a standard authority on the genealogies of the gods. So far as a corrupt and confused text warrants a judgment, the poet was piecing together--not always intelligently--the fragments of a very old cosmogonic system, using for this purpose both the hymns preserved in the temples and the myths which lived in folklore. The epic lay in 480 lines called the _Shield of Heracles_--partly imitated from the 18th book of the _Iliad_--is the work of an author or authors later than Hesiod. In the Hesiodic poetry, as represented by the _Works and Days_ and the _Theogony_, we see the influence of the temple at Delphi. Hesiod recognizes the existence of [Greek: daimones]--spirits of the departed who haunt the earth as the invisible guardians of justice; and he connects the office of the poet with that of the prophet. The poet is one whom the gods have authorized to impress doctrine and practical duties on men. A religious purpose was essentially characteristic of the Hesiodic school. Its poets treated the old legends as relics of a sacred history, and not merely, in the Ionian manner, as subjects of idealizing art. Such titles as the _Maxims of Cheiron_ and the _Lay of Melampus_, the seer--lost poems of the Hesiodic school--illustrate its ethical and its mystic tendencies.

The Homeric hymns.

The _Homeric Hymns_ are a collection of pieces, some of them very short, in hexameter verse. Their traditional title is--_Hymns_ or _Preludes of Homer and the Homeridae_. The second of the alternative designations is the true one. The pieces are not "hymns" used in formal worship, but "preludes" or prefatory addresses ([Greek: prooimia]) with which the rhapsodists ushered in their recitations of epic poetry. The "prelude" might be addressed to the presiding god of the festival, or to any local deity whom the reciter wished to honour. The pieces (of which there are 33) range in date perhaps from 750 to 500 B.C. (though some authorities assign dates as late as the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; see ed. by Sikes and Allen, e.g. p. 228), and it is probable that the collection was formed in Attica, for the use of rhapsodists. The style is that of the Ionian or Homeric epos; but there are also several traces of the Hesiodic or Boeotian school. The principal "hymns" are (1) to Apollo (generally treated as two or more hymns combined in one); (2) to Hermes; (3) to Aphrodite; and (4) to Demeter. The hymn to Apollo, quoted by Thucydides (iii. 104) as Homer's, is of peculiar interest on account of the lines describing the Ionian festival at Delos. Two celebrated pieces of a sportive kind passed under Homer's name. The _Margites_--a comic poem on one "who knew many things but knew them all badly"--is regarded by Aristotle as the earliest germ of comedy, and was possibly as old as 700 B.C. Only a few lines remain. The _Batracho(myo)machia_, or _Battle of the Frogs and Mice_ probably belongs to the decline of Greek literature, perhaps to the 2nd century B.C.[2] About 300 verses of it are extant.

Transition from epos to elegy.

In the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ the personal opinions or sympathies of the poet may sometimes be conjectured, but they are not declared or even hinted. Hesiod, indeed, sometimes gives us a glimpse of his own troubles or views. Yet Hesiod is, on the whole, essentially a prophet. The message which he delivers is not from himself; the truths which he imparts have not been discovered by his own search. He is the mouthpiece of the Delphian Apollo. Personal opinion and feeling may tinge his utterance, but they do not determine its general complexion. The egotism is a single thread; it is not the basis of the texture. Epic poetry was in Greece the foundation of all other poetry; for many centuries no other kind was generally cultivated, no other could speak to the whole people. Politically, the age was monarchical or aristocratic; intellectually, it was too simple for the analysis of thought or emotion. Kings and princes loved to hear of the great deeds of their ancestors; common men loved to hear of them too, for they had no other interest. The mind of Greece found no subject of contemplation so attractive as the warlike past of the race, or so useful as that lore which experience and tradition had bequeathed. But in the course of the 8th century B.C. the rule of hereditary princes began to disappear. Monarchy gave place to oligarchy, and this--often after the intermediate phase of a tyrannis--to democracy. Such a change was necessarily favourable to the growth of reflection. The private citizen is no longer a mere cipher, the Homeric [Greek: tis], a unit in the dim multitude of the king-ruled folk; he gains more power of independent action, his mental horizon is widened, his life becomes fuller and more interesting. He begins to feel the need of expressing the thoughts and feelings that are stirred in him. But as yet a prose literature does not exist; the new thoughts, like the old heroic stories, must still be told in verse. The forms of verse created by this need were the Elegiac and the Iambic.

Elegy.

The elegiac metre is, in form, a simple variation on the epic metre, obtained by docking the second of two hexameters so as to make it a verse of five feet or measures. But the poetical capabilities of the elegiac couplet are of a wholly different kind from those of heroic verse. [Greek: elegos] seems to be the Greek form of a name given by the Carians and Lydians to a lament for the dead. This was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute, which continued to be associated with Greek elegy. The non-Hellenic origin of elegy is indicated by this very fact. The flute was to the Greeks an Asiatic instrument--string instruments were those which they made their own--and it would hardly have been wedded by them to a species of poetry which had arisen among themselves. The early elegiac poetry of Greece was by no means confined to mourning for the dead. War, love, politics, proverbial philosophy, were in turn its themes; it dealt, in fact, with the chief interest of the poet and his friends, whatever that might be at the time. It is the direct expression of the poet's own thoughts, addressed to a sympathizing society. This is its first characteristic. The second is that, even when most pathetic or most spirited, it still preserves, on the whole, the tone of conversation or of narrative. Greek elegy stops short of lyric passion. English elegy, whether funereal as in Dryden and Pope, or reflective as in Gray, is usually true to the same normal type. Roman elegy is not equally true to it, but sometimes tends to trench on the lyric province. For Roman elegy is mainly amatory or sentimental; and its masters imitated, as a rule, not the early Greek elegists, not Tyrtaeus or Theognis, but the later Alexandrian elegists, such as Callimachus or Philetas. Catullus introduced the metre to Latin literature, and used it with more fidelity than his followers to its genuine Greek inspiration.

Iambic verse.

Elegy, as we have seen, was the first slight deviation from epos. But almost at the same time another species arose which had nothing in common with epos, either in form or in spirit. This was the iambic. The word [Greek: iambos], _iambus_ ([Greek: iaptein], to dart or shoot) was used in reference to the licensed raillery at the festivals of Demeter; it was the maiden Iambe, the myth said, who drew the first smile from the mourning goddess. The iambic metre was at first used for satire; and it was in this strain that it was chiefly employed by its earliest master of note, Archilochus of Paros (670 B.C.). But it was adapted to the expression generally of any pointed thought. Thus it was suitable to fables. Elegiac and iambic poetry both belong to the borderland between epic and lyric. While, however, elegy stands nearer to epos, iambic stands nearer to the lyric. Iambic poetry can express the personal feeling of the poet with greater intensity than elegy does; on the other hand, it has not the lyric flexibility, self-abandonment or glow. As we see in the case of Solon, iambic verse could serve for the expression of that deeper thought, that more inward self-communing, for which the elegiac form would have been inappropriate.

But these two forms of poetry, both Ionian, the elegiac and the iambic, belong essentially to the same stage of the literature. They stand between the Ionian epos and the lyric poetry of the Aeolians and Dorians. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtaeus, use elegy to rouse a warlike spirit in sinking hearts. Archilochus too wrote warlike elegy, but used it also in other strains, as in lament for the dead. The elegy of Mimnermus of Smyrna or Colophon is the plaintive farewell of an ease-loving Ionian to the days of Ionian freedom. In Solon elegy takes a higher range; it becomes political and ethical.[3] Theognis represents the maturer union of politics with a proverbial philosophy. Another gnomic poet was Phocylides of Miletus; an admonitory poem extant under his name is probably the work of an Alexandrine Jewish Christian. Xenophanes gives a philosophic strain to elegy. With Simonides of Ceos it reverts, in an exquisite form, to its earliest destination, and becomes the vehicle of epitaph on those who fell in the Persian Wars. Iambic verse was used by Simonides (or Semonides) of Amorgus, as by Archilochus, for satire--but satire directed against classes rather than persons. Solon's iambics so far preserve the old associations of the metre that they represent the polemical or controversial side of his political poetry. Hipponax of Ephesus was another iambic satirist--using the [Greek: skazon] ("limping") or choliambic verse, produced by substituting a spondee for an iambus in the last place. But it was not until the rise of the Attic drama that the full capabilities of iambic verse were seen.

Lyric poetry.

The lyric poetry of early Greece may be regarded as the final form of that effort at self-expression which in the elegiac and iambic is still incomplete. The lyric expression is deeper and more impassioned. Its intimate union with music and with the rhythmical movement of the dance gives to it more of an ideal character. At the same time the continuity of the music permits pauses to the voice--pauses necessary as reliefs after a climax. Before lyric poetry could be effective, it was necessary that some progress should have been made in the art of music. The instrument used by the Greeks to accompany the voice was the four-stringed lyre, and the first great epoch in Greek music was when Terpander of Lesbos (660 B.C.), by adding three strings, gave the lyre the compass of the octave. Further improvements are ascribed to Olympus and Thaletas. By 500 B.C. Greek music had probably acquired all the powers of expression which the lyric poet could demand. The period of Greek lyric poetry may be roughly defined as from 670 to 440 B.C. Two different parts in its development were taken by the Aeolians and the Dorians.

Aeolian school.

The lyric poetry of the Aeolians--especially of Lesbos--was essentially the utterance of personal feeling, and was usually intended for a single voice, not for a chorus. Lesbos, in the 7th century B.C., had attained some naval and commercial importance. But the strife of oligarchy and democracy was active; the Lesbian nobles were often driven by revolution to exchange their luxurious home-life for the hardships of exile. It is such a life of contrasts and excitements, working on a sensuous and fiery temperament, that is reflected in the fragments of Alcaeus. In these glimpses of war and love, of anxiety for the storm-tossed state and of careless festivity, there is much of the cavalier spirit; if Archilochus is in certain aspects a Greek Byron, Alcaeus might be compared to Lovelace. The other great representative of the Aeolian lyric is Sappho, the only woman of Greek race who is known to have possessed poetical genius of the first order. Intensity and melody are the characteristics of the fragments that remain to us.[4] Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound. Anacreon of Teos, in Ionia, may be classed with the Aeolian lyrists in so far as the matter and form of his work resembled theirs, though the dialect in which he wrote was mainly the Ionian. A few fragments remain from his hymns to the gods, from love-poems and festive songs. The collection of sixty short pieces which passes current under his name date only from the 10th century. The short poems which it comprises are of various age and authorship, probably ranging in date from c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400 or 500. They have not the pure style, the flexible grace, or the sweetness of the classical fragments; but the verses, though somewhat mechanical, are often pretty.

Dorian school.

The Dorian lyric poetry, in contrast with the Aeolian, had more of a public than of a personal character, and was for the most part choral. Hymns or choruses for the public worship of the gods, and odes to be sung at festivals on occasions of public interest, were its characteristic forms. Its central inspiration was the pride of the Dorians in the Dorian past, in their traditions of worship, government and social usage. The history of the Dorian lyric poetry does not present us with vivid expressions of personal character, like those of Alcaeus and Sappho, but rather with a series of artists whose names are associated with improvements of form. Thus Alcman (the Doric form of Alcmaeon; 660 B.C.) is said to have introduced the balanced movement of strophe and antistrophe. Stesichorus, of Himera in Sicily, added the epode, sung by the chorus while stationary after these movements; Arion of Methymna in Lesbos gave a finished form to the choral hymn ("dithyramb") in honour of Dionysus, and organized the "cyclic" or circular chorus which sang it at the altar. Ibycus of Rhegium (c. 540) wrote choral lyrics after Stesichorus and glowing love-songs in the Aeolic style.

Simonides and Pindar.

The culmination of the lyric poetry is marked by two great names, Simonides and Pindar. Simonides (556-468) was an Ionian of the island of Ceos, but his lyrics belonged by form to the choral Dorian school. Many of his subjects were taken from the events of the Persian wars: his epitaphs on those who fell at Thermopylae and Salamis were celebrated. In him the lyric art of the Dorians is interpreted by Ionian genius, and Athens--where part of his life was passed--is the point at which they meet. Simonides is the first Greek lyrist whose significance is not merely Aeolian or Dorian but Panhellenic. The same character belongs even more completely to his younger contemporary. Pindar (518-c. 443) was born in Boeotia of a Dorian stock; thus, as Ionian and Dorian elements meet in Simonides, so Dorian and Aeolian elements meet in Pindar. Simonides was perhaps the most tender and most exquisite of the lyric poets. Pindar was the boldest, the most fervid and the most sublime. His extant fragments[5] represent almost every branch of the lyric art. But he is known to us mainly by forty-four _Epinicia_, or odes of victory, for the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian festivals. The general characteristic of the treatment is that the particular victory is made the occasion of introducing heroic legends connected with the family or city of the victor, and of inculcating the moral lessons which they teach. No Greek lyric poetry can be completely appreciated apart from the music, now lost, to which it was set. Pindar's odes were, further, essentially occasional poems; they abound in allusions of which the effect is partly or wholly lost on us; and the glories which they celebrate belong to a life which we can but imperfectly realize. Of all the great Greek poets, Pindar is perhaps the one to whom it is hardest for us to do justice; yet we can at least recognize his splendour of imagination, his strong rapidity and his soaring flight.

Bacchylides of Ceos (c. 504-430), the youngest of the three great lyric poets and nephew of Simonides, was known only by scanty fragments until the discovery of nineteen poems on an Egyptian papyrus in 1896. They consist of thirteen (or fourteen) epinicia, two of which celebrate the same victories as two odes of Pindar. The papyrus also contains six odes for the festivals of gods or heroes. The poems contain valuable information on the court life of the time and legendary history. Bacchylides, the little "Cean nightingale," is inferior to his great rival Pindar, "the Swan of Dirce," in originality and splendour of language, but he writes simply and elegantly, while his excellent [Greek: gnomai] attracted readers of a philosophical turn of mind, amongst them the emperor Julian.

Similarly, the scanty fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (d. 357), musical composer and poet, and inventor of the eleven-stringed lyre, were increased by the discovery in 1902 of some 250 lines of his "nome" the _Persae_, written after the manner of Terpander. The beginning is lost; the middle describes the battle of Salamis; the end is of a personal nature. The papyrus is the oldest Greek MS. and belongs to the age of Alexander the Great. The language is frequently very obscure, and the whole is a specimen of lyric poetry in its decline.

(B) _The Attic Literature._--The Ionians of Asia Minor, the Aeolians and the Dorians had now performed their special parts in the development of Greek literature. Epic poetry had interpreted the heroic legends of warlike deeds done by Zeus-nourished kings and chiefs. Then, as the individual life became more and more elegiac and iambic poetry had become the social expression of that life in all its varied interests and feelings. Lastly, lyric poetry had arisen to satisfy a twofold need--to be the more intense utterance of personal emotion, or to give choral voice, at stirring moments, to the faith or fame, the triumph or the sorrow, of a city or a race. A new form of poetry was now to be created, with elements borrowed from all the rest. And this was to be achieved by the people of Attica, in whose character and language the distinctive traits of an Ionian descent were tempered with some of the best qualities of the Dorian stock.

Origin of drama.

Tragedy.

The drama (q.v.) arose from the festivals of Dionysus, the god of wine, which were held at intervals from the beginning of winter to the beginning of spring. A troop of rustic worshippers would gather around the altar of the god, and sing a hymn in his honour, telling of his victories or sufferings in his progress over the earth. "Tragedy" meant "the goat-song," a goat ([Greek: tragos]) being sacrificed to Dionysus before the hymn was sung. "Comedy," "the village-song," is the same hymn regarded as an occasion for rustic jest. Then the leader of the chorus would assume the part of a messenger from Dionysus, or even that of the god himself, and recite an adventure to the worshippers, who made choral response. The next step was to arrange a dialogue between the leader ([Greek: koryphaios], _coryphaeus_) and one chosen member of the chorus, hence called "the answerer" ([Greek: hypokrites], _hypocrites_, afterwards the ordinary word for "actor"). This last improvement is ascribed to the Attic Thespis (about 536 B.C.). The elements of drama were now ready. The choral hymn to Dionysus (the "dithyramb") had received an artistic form from the Dorians; dialogue, though only between the leader of the chorus and a single actor, had been introduced in Attica. Phrynichus, an Athenian, celebrated in this manner some events of the Persian Wars; but in his "drama" there was still only one actor. Choerilus of Athens and Pratinas of Phlius, who belonged to the same period, developed the satyric drama; Pratinas also wrote tragedies, dithyrambs, and _hyporchemata_ (lively choral odes chiefly in honour of Apollo).

Aeschylus.

Sophocles.

Euripides.

Aeschylus (born 525 B.C.) became the real founder of tragedy by introducing a second actor, and thus rendering the dialogue independent of the chorus. At the same time the choral song--hitherto the principal part of the performance--became subordinate to the dialogue; and drama was mature. Aeschylus is also said to have made various improvements of detail in costume and the like; and it was early in his career that the theatre of Dionysus under the acropolis was commenced--the first permanent home of Greek drama, in place of the temporary wooden platforms which had hitherto been used. The system of the "trilogy" and the "tetralogy" is further ascribed to Aeschylus,--the "trilogy" being properly a series of three tragedies connected in subject, such as the _Agamemnon_, _Choephori_, _Eumenides_, which together form the _Oresteia_, or Story of Orestes. The "tetralogy" is such a triad with a "satyric drama" added--that is, a drama in which "satyrs," the grotesque woodland beings who attended on Dionysus, formed the chorus, as in the earlier dithyramb from which drama sprang. The _Cyclops_ of Euripides is the only extant specimen of a satyric drama. In the seven tragedies which alone remain of the seventy which Aeschylus is said to have composed, the forms of kings and heroes have a grandeur which is truly Homeric; there is a spirit of Panhellenic patriotism such as the Persian Wars in which he fought might well quicken in a soldier-poet; and, pervading all, there is a strain of speculative thought which seeks to reconcile the apparent conflicts between the gods of heaven and of the underworld by the doctrine that both alike, constrained by necessity, are working out the law of righteousness. Sophocles, who was born thirty years after Aeschylus (495 B.C.), is the most perfect artist of the ancient drama. No one before or after him gave to Greek tragedy so high a degree of ideal beauty, or appreciated so finely the possibilities and the limitations of its sphere. He excels especially in drawing character; his _Antigone_, his _Ajax_, his _Oedipus_--indeed, all the chief persons of his dramas--are typical studies in the great primary emotions of human nature. He gave a freer scope to tragic dialogue by adding a third actor; and in one of his later plays, the _Oedipus at Colonus_, a fourth actor is required. From the time when he won the tragic prize against Aeschylus in 468 to his death in 405 B.C. he was the favourite dramatist of Athens; and for us he is not only a great dramatist, but also the most spiritual representative of the age of Pericles. The distinctive interest of Euripides is of another kind. He was only fifteen years younger than Sophocles; but when he entered on his poetical career, the old inspirations of tragedy were already failing. Euripides marks a period of transition in the tragic art, and is, in fact, the mediator between the classical and the romantic drama. The myths and traditions with which the elder dramatists had dealt no longer commanded an unquestioning faith. Euripides himself was imbued with the new intellectual scepticism of the day; and the speculative views which were conflicting in his own mind are reflected in his plays. He had much picturesque and pathetic power; he was a master of expression; and he shows ingenuity in devising fresh resources for tragedy--especially in his management of the choral songs. Aeschylus is Panhellenic, Sophocles is Athenian, Euripides is cosmopolitan. He stands nearer to the modern world than either of his predecessors; and though with him Attic tragedy loses its highest beauty, it acquires new elements of familiar human interest.

In Attica, as in England, a period of rather less than fifty years sufficed for the complete development of the tragic art. The two distinctive characteristics of Athenian drama are its originality and its abundance. The Greeks of Attica were not the only inventors of drama, but they were the first people who made drama a complete work of art. And the great tragic poets of Attica were remarkably prolific. Aeschylus was the reputed author of 70 tragedies, Sophocles of 113, Euripides of 92; and there were others whose productiveness was equally great.

Comedy.

Aristophanes.

Comedy represented the lighter side, as tragedy the graver side, of the Dionysiac worship; it was the joy of spring following the gloom of winter. The process of growth was nearly the same as in tragedy; but the Dorians, not the Ionians of Attica, were the first who added dialogue to the comic chorus. Susarion, a Dorian of Megara, exhibited, about 580 B.C., pieces of the kind known as "Megarian farces." Epicharmus of Cos (who settled at Syracuse) gave literary form to the Doric farce, and treated in burlesque style the stories of gods and heroes, and subjects taken from everyday life. His Syracusan contemporary Sophron (c. 450) was a famous writer of mimes, chiefly scenes from low-class life. The most artistic form of comedy seems, however, to have been developed in Attica. The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and Eupolis; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous succession of comic dramatists, amongst them Plato Comicus, the author of 28 comedies, political satires and parodies after the style of the Middle Comedy. Aristophanes came forward as a comic poet in 427 B.C., and retained his popularity for about forty years. He presents a perhaps unique union of bold fancy, exquisite humour, critical acumen and lyrical power. His eleven extant comedies may be divided into three groups, according as the licence of political satire becomes more and more restricted. In the _Acharnians_, _Knights_, _Clouds_, _Wasps_ and _Peace_ (425-421) the poet uses unrestrained freedom. In the _Birds_, _Lysistrata_, _Thesmophoriazusae_ and _Frogs_ (414-405) a greater reserve may be perceived. Lastly, in the _Ecclesiazusae_ and the _Plutus_ (392-388) personal satire is almost wholly avoided. The same general tendency continued. The so-called "Middle Comedy" (390-320) represents the transition from the Old Comedy, or political satire, to satire of a literary or social nature; its chief writers were Antiphanes of Athens and Alexis of Thurii. The "New Comedy" (320-250) resembled the modern "comedy of manners."

Its chief representative was Menander (342-291), the author of 105 comedies. Fragments have been discovered of seven of these, of sufficient length to give an idea of their dramatic action. His plays were produced on the stage as late as the time of Plutarch, and his [Greek: gnomai], distinguished by worldly wisdom, were issued in the form of anthologies, which enjoyed great popularity. Other prominent writers of this class were Diphilus, Philemon, Posidippus and Apollodorus of Carystus. About 330 B.C. Rhinthon of Tarentum revived the old Doric farce in his _Hilarotragoediae_ or travesties of tragic stories. These successive periods cannot be sharply or precisely marked off. The change which gradually passed over the comic drama was simply the reflection of the change which passed over the political and social life of Athens. The Old Comedy, as we see it in the earlier plays of Aristophanes, was probably the most powerful engine of public criticism that has ever existed in any community. Unsparing personality was its essence. The comic poet used this recognized right on an occasion at once festive and sacred, in a society where every man of any note was known by name and sight to the rest. The same thousands who heard a policy or a character denounced or lauded in the theatre might be required to pass sentence on it in the popular assembly or in the courts of law.

Literary prose.

The development of Greek poetry had been completed before a prose literature had begun to exist. The earliest name in extant Greek prose literature is that of Herodotus; and, when he wrote, the Attic drama had already passed its prime. There had been, indeed, writers of prose before Herodotus; but there had not been, in the proper sense of the term, a prose literature. The causes of this comparatively late origin of Greek literary prose are independent of the question as to the time at which the art of writing began to be generally used for literary purposes. Epic poetry exercised for a very long period a sovereign spell over the Greek mind. In it was deposited all that the race possessed of history, theology, philosophy, oratory. Even after an age of reflection had begun, elegiac poetry, the first offshoot of epic, was, with iambic verse, the vehicle of much which among other races would have been committed to prose. The basis of Greek culture was essentially poetical. A political cause worked in the same direction. In the Eastern monarchies the king was the centre of all, and the royal records afforded the elements of history from a remote date. The Greek nation was broken up into small states, each busied with its own affairs and its own men. It was the collision between the Greek and the barbarian world which first provided a national subject for a Greek historian. The work of Herodotus, in its relation to Greek prose, is so far analogous to the _Iliad_ in its relation to Greek poetry, that it is the earliest work of art, and that it bears a Panhellenic stamp.

Early prose writers.

The sense and the degree in which Herodotus was original may be inferred from what is known of earlier prose-writers. For about a century before Herodotus there had been a series of writers in philosophy, mythology, geography and history. The earliest, or among the earliest, of the philosophical writers were Pherecydes of Syros (550 B.C.) and the Ionian Anaximenes and Anaximander. It is doubtful whether Cadmus of Miletus, supposed to have been the first prose writer, was an historical personage. The Ionian writers, especially called [Greek: logographoi], "narrators in prose" (as distinguished from [Greek: epopoioi], makers of verse), were those who compiled the myths, especially in genealogies, or who described foreign countries, their physical features, usages and traditions. Hecataeus of Miletus (500 B.C.) is the best-known representative of the _logographi_ in both these branches. Hellanicus of Mytilene (450 B.C.), among whose works was a history of Attica, appears to have made a nearer approach to the character of a systematic historian. Other logographi were Charon of Lampsacus; Pherecydes of Leros, who wrote on the myths of early Attica; Hippys of Rhegium, the oldest writer on Italy and Sicily; and Acusilaus of Argos in Boeotia, author of genealogies (see LOGOGRAPHI, and GREECE: _Ancient History_, "Authorities").

Herodotus.

Herodotus was born in 484 B.C.; and his history was probably not completed before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). His subject is the struggle between Greece and Asia, which he deduces from the legendary rape of the Argive Io by Phoenicians, and traces down to the final victory of the Greeks over the invading host of Xerxes. His literary kinship with the historical or geographical writers who had preceded him is seen mainly in two things. First, though he draws a line between the mythological and the historical age, he still holds that myths, as such, are worthy to be reported, and that in certain cases it is part of his duty to report them. Secondly, he follows the example of such writers as Hecataeus in describing the natural and social features of countries. He seeks to combine the part of the geographer or intelligent traveller with his proper part as historian. But when we turn from these minor traits to the larger aspects of his work, Herodotus stands forth as an artist whose conception and whose method were his own. His history has an epic unity. Various as are the subordinate parts, the action narrated is one, great and complete; and the unity is due to this, that Herodotus refers all events of human history to the principle of divine Nemesis. If Sophocles had told the story of Oedipus in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_ alone, and had not added to it the _Oedipus at Colonus_, it would have been comparable to the story of Xerxes as told by Herodotus. Great as an artist, great too in the largeness of his historical conception, Herodotus fails chiefly by lack of insight into political cause and effect, and by a general silence in regard to the history of political institutions. Both his strength and his weakness are seen most clearly when he is contrasted with that other historian who was strictly his contemporary and who yet seems divided from him by centuries.

Thucydides.

Thucydides was only thirteen years younger than Herodotus; but the intellectual space between the men is so great that they seem to belong to different ages. Herodotus is the first artist in historical writing; Thucydides is the first thinker. Herodotus interweaves two threads of causation--human agency, represented by the good or bad qualities of men, and divine agency, represented by the vigilance of the gods on behalf of justice. Thucydides concentrates his attention on the human agency (without, however, denying the other), and strives to trace its exact course. The subject of Thucydides is the Peloponnesian War. In resolving to write its history, he was moved, he says, by these considerations. It was probably the greatest movement which had ever affected Hellas collectively. It was possible for him as a contemporary to record it with approximate accuracy. And this record was likely to have a general value, over and above its particular interest as a record, seeing that the political future was likely to resemble the political past. This is what Thucydides means when he calls his work "a possession for ever." The speeches which he ascribes to the persons of the history are, as regards form, his own essays in rhetoric of the school to which Antiphon belongs. As regards matter, they are always so far dramatic that the thoughts and sentiments are such as he conceived possible for the supposed speaker. Thucydides abstains, as a rule, from moral comment; but he tells his story as no one could have told it who did not profoundly feel its tragic force; and his general claim to the merit of impartiality is not invalidated by the possible exceptions--difficult to estimate--in the cases of Cleon and Hyperbolus.

Xenophon.