Chapter V: Golden Age of Grecian Literature (2)

The poet Epicharmus, also of Megara, but the Sicilian city of that name, first committed his effusions to writing; he was the author of thirty-five comedies, some of them on subjects not mythological.

The development of comedy, however, was interrupted. The Tragic Muse enforced her claims at the expense of her elder sister, and the latter was for a season neglected. But the flourishing era of republican Athens, when the poet was free to lash whom he chose, saw comedy restored to the favor of the satire-loving people. It may be said to have been perfected by Aristophanes. He not only ridiculed the follies and vices of the day, laid bare family secrets on the stage, and edified his audiences by caricaturing the rich and great with masks and costumes which reproduced their peculiarities, but fearlessly assailed the government. When all others shrunk from playing so dangerous a rôle, he himself performed the part of the insolent demagogue Cleon (originally a leather-dresser), whom he mercilessly “cut into sandal-strips” in his “Knights.”

Even the gods were not slighted by the comic poets. The gourmand Hercules devours as fast as the cook can prepare victuals; Prometheus is protected from the elements by an umbrella; Bacchus swaggers as a fop and coward. Comedy in the hands of Aristophanes and his contemporaries was to the Athenians what our press is to us, but went still further. Always personal and sometimes scurrilous in its attacks, too often coarse and licentious in its tone, it yet doubtless accomplished much good in restraining political ambition, checking public corruption, and modifying the prevailing faults of society.

=Aristophanes.=—The oldest comedies extant are those of Aristophanes, a citizen of Athens by birth or adoption, born about the middle of the fifth century B.C. If he was an adopted son, Athens had good reason to be proud of her protégé. His society was sought by the learned and great. He became the idol of the people, who fined such as brought libelsuits against him, and voted him an olive crown for exposing the misconduct of their rulers.

Nor was his fame confined to Athens. All Greece, and Sicily too, laughed at his humorous sallies. The Persian king enjoyed his pungent satires, and regarded him as such a power in Greece that when Spartan ambassadors sought an alliance with Persia against their Athenian rivals, the king asked on which side the comic poet was arrayed; for, said he, “the party whose cause Aristophanes espouses will certainly win.”

Aristophanes was loyal to the true interests of his country, and declined the flattering invitations of Dionysius to dwell in ease at Syracuse with the luminaries of his age. He longed for the glorious Athens of the past, and attacked whatever conflicted with his conservative ideas. None escaped his well-aimed shafts. He was specially severe on the Sophists, a new class of teachers at Athens, whose forte lay in chopping logic and splitting hairs, and who taught the tricks of rhetoric rather than practical morality. In his “Clouds” he derides their sharp practices and unsound system of education, striking them over the head of Socrates, the exponent of true philosophy, whose life was devoted to combating the false teachings of these very pretenders.

That Socrates was merely the scape-goat is plain, for he and Aristophanes were intimate friends. When the play was first exhibited, the philosopher, who was in the audience, took it all in good part, and even rose that the people might compare him with the caricature presented, which exaggerated his eccentricities of dress and figure—his pug-nose, thick lips, shabby garments, and absent-minded stare. The chorus of changing clouds symbolized the meretricious charms of sophistry.

“THE CLOUDS” opens in the sleeping-apartment of Strepsi’ades, an Athenian citizen, his son Pheidippides occupying a pallet near him. The slaves of the household are abed in an adjoining room. Strepsiades, oppressed by debt incurred through the extravagance of his “precious son,” a fast young man addicted to fast horses, is disturbed by the recollection of numerous outstanding bills and notes about to mature. He wakes before daylight and calls a slave:—

“Boy! light a lamp;
Bring me my pocket-book, that I may see
How my accounts stand, and just cast them up. [_Slave obeys._]
Let’s see now. First, here’s Prasias, fifty pounds.
Now, what’s that for? When did I borrow that?
Ah! when I bought that gray. O dear! O dear!
I shall grow gray enough, if this goes on.

PHEIDIPPIDES [_talking in his sleep_].—That’s not fair,
Philo! Keep your own side of the course!

STREPSIADES.—Ay, there he goes! that’s what is ruining me;
He’s always racing, even in his dreams.

PHEIDIPPIDES [_awaking_].—Good heavens! my dear father,
What makes you groan and toss so all night long?

STREPSIADES.—There’s a sheriff’s officer at me—in the bedclothes.

PHEIDIPPIDES.—Lie quiet, sir, do pray, and let me sleep.

STREPSIADES.—Sleep, if you like; but these debts, I can tell you,
Will fall on your own head some day, young man.
Heugh! may those match-makers come to an evil end
Who drew me into marrying your good mother!
There I was, living a quiet life in the country,—
Shaved once a week, maybe, wore my old clothes—
Full of my sheep, and goats, and bees, and vineyards,
And I must marry the fine niece of Megacles.
Marry a fine town-belle, all airs and graces!
A pretty pair we were to come together—
I smelling of the vineyard and sheep-shearing,
She with her scents, and essences, and cosmetics,
And all the deviltries of modern fashion.
Not a bad housekeeper though, I will say that—

SLAVE [_examining the lamp, which is going out_].—This lamp has
got no oil in it.

STREPSIADES.—Deuce take you,
Why did you light that thirsty beast of a lamp?
Come here, and you shall catch it.

SLAVE.—Catch it—why?

STREPSIADES [_boxes his ears_].—For putting such a thick wick in,
to be sure.
Well, in due time, this boy of ours was born
To me and my grand lady. First of all,
We got to loggerheads about his name;
She would have something that had got a _horse_ in it—
Xanthippus—or Charippus—or Philippides;
I was for his grandfather’s name—Pheidonides.[33]
Well, for some time we squabbled; then at last
We came to a compromise upon Pheidippides.
This boy—she’d take him in her lap and fondle him,
And say,‘Ah! when it grows up to be a man,
It shall drive horses, like its uncle Megacles,
And wear a red cloak, it shall.’ Then I would say,
‘He shall wear a good sheep-skin coat, like his own father,
And drive his goats to market from the farm.’”

Strepsiades finally bethinks him of a plan for paying his debts. He will have his son trained by the Sophists; and when the creditors bring the case into court, Pheidippides shall plead his cause, and defeat them with fallacious arguments even in the face of a thousand witnesses. Father and son at once arise, dress, and walk out in the direction of the Sophists’ school. Arrived in front of it, Strepsiades remarks:—

“That’s the great Thinking-school of our new philosophers;
There live the men who teach that heaven around us
Is a vast oven, and we the charcoal in it.
And they teach too—for a consideration, mind—
To plead a cause and win it, right or wrong.

PHEIDIPPIDES [_carelessly_].—Who are these fellows?

STREPSIADES.—I don’t quite remember
The name they call themselves, it’s such a long one;
Very hard thinkers—but they’re first-rate men.

PHEIDIPPIDES.—Faugh! vulgar fellows—I know ’em.
Dirty vagabonds,
Like Socrates there and Chærephon; a low set.

STREPSIADES.—Pray hold your tongue—don’t show your ignorance,
But, if you care at all for your old father,
Be one of them; now do, and cut the turf.

PHEIDIPPIDES.—Not I, by Bacchus! not if you would give me
That team of Arabs which Leogoras drives.

STREPSIADES.—Do, my dear boy, I beg you—go and be taught.

PHEIDIPPIDES.—What shall I learn there?

STREPSIADES.—Learn? Why, they do say
That these men have the secret of both Arguments,
The honest Argument (if there be such a thing) and the other;
Now this last—this false Argument, you understand—
Will make the veriest rascal win his cause.
So if you’ll go and learn for us this glorious art,
The debts I owe for you will all be cleared;
For I shan’t pay a single man a farthing.

PHEIDIPPIDES.—No—I can’t do it. Studying hard, you see,
Spoils the complexion. How could I show my face
Among the knights, looking a beast, like those fellows?

STREPSIADES.—Then, sir, henceforth I swear, so help me Ceres,
I won’t maintain you—you, nor your bays, nor your chestnuts.
Go to the dogs—or anywhere—out of my house!”

Failing to induce his son to enter the Thinking-school, Strepsiades resolves himself to master the fashionable Argument that “pays no bills;” he has an interview with Socrates, and is introduced to the Clouds, the new goddesses of this misty philosophy.

One of the most beautiful passages of the play—having the ring of the true metal—is the chorus of Clouds responding to the call of Socrates—first, behind the scenes, in the distance; then nearer; then rising from the lips of twenty-four gauze-clad nymphs, who descend upon the stage as personifications of the ethereal deities.

CHORUS OF CLOUDS (_in the distance_).

“Eternal clouds!
Rise we to mortal view,
Embodied in bright shapes of dewy sheen,
Leaving the depths serene
Where our loud-sounding Father Ocean dwells,
For the wood-crownèd summits of the hills:
Thence shall our glance command
The beetling crags which sentinel the land,
The teeming earth,
The crops we bring to birth;
Thence shall we hear
The music of the ever-flowing streams,
The low deep thunders of the booming sea.
Lo, the bright Eye of Day unwearied beams!
Shedding our veil of storms
From our immortal forms,
We scan with keen-eyed gaze this nether sphere.”

CHORUS OF CLOUDS (_nearer_).

“Sisters who bring the showers,
Let us arise and greet
This glorious land, for Pallas’ dwelling meet,
Rich in brave men, beloved of Cecrops old;
Where Faith and Reverence reign,
Where comes no foot profane,
When for the mystic rites the Holy Doors unfold.
There gifts are duly paid
To the great gods, and pious prayers are said;
Tall temples rise, and statues heavenly fair.
There at each holy tide,
With coronals and song,
The glad processions to the altars throng;
There in the jocund spring,
Great Bacchus, festive king,
With dance and tuneful flute his Chorus leads along.”
W. L. COLLINS.

But though the Clouds assist Socrates in teaching Strepsiades, the pupil proves an utter dunce. Finally, in a moment of impatience, Socrates kicks him out of the school.

At last Pheidippides is prevailed upon to study with the Sophists. He proves an apt scholar, rapidly developing into an unprincipled scamp. When his education as a sharper is completed, he brings to bear his specious arguments against the creditors, and cheats them out of their dues. So far, so good; but his notions of filial duty have also been greatly modified by the instructions of Socrates. A quarrel arising in the family, he hesitates not to fall upon his father with a cudgel, and threatens to do the same by his mother if she provokes him.

With a curse upon Socrates, the outraged old gentleman calls his slaves, hurries to the Thinking-school, and sets fire to the building. Thus the play ends.

* * * * *

Beneath the pleasantry of Aristophanes is a substratum of solid sense; as is apparent in “the Birds,” an ingenious play in which the woodland songsters take characters. It was produced at a time when the Athenians, puffed up with vanity, confidently looked for the reduction of Sicily and the dominion of Greece. Aristophanes alone, at this critical period, ventured to raise the note of warning, and satirize their foolish ambition. The choruses in this drama ring with the sweet music of the wild woods; they were rendered by twenty-four performers plumed so as to represent as many different kinds of birds. The Hoopoe thus calls his fellows to a mass-meeting:—

“Hoop! hoop!
Come in a troop,
Come at a call
One and all,
Birds of a feather,
All together.
Birds of an humble gentle bill
Smooth and shrill,
Dieted on seeds and grain,
Rioting on the furrowed plain,
Pecking, hopping,
Picking, popping,
Among the barley newly sown.
Birds of bolder, louder tone,
Lodging in the shrubs and bushes,
Mavises and Thrushes.
On the summer berries browsing,
On the garden fruits carousing,
All the grubs and vermin smouzing.

You that in an humbler station,
With an active occupation,
Haunt the lowly watery mead,
Warring against the native breed,
The gnats and flies, your enemies;
In the level marshy plain
Of Marathon pursued and slain.

You that in a squadron driving
From the seas are seen arriving,
With the Cormorants and Mews,
Haste to land and hear the news!
All the feathered airy nation,
Birds of every size and station,
Are convened in convocation.
For an envoy, queer and shrewd,
Means to address the multitude,
And submit to their decision
A surprising proposition,
For the welfare of the state.
Come in a flurry,
With a hurry, scurry,
Hurry to the meeting and attend to the debate.”
FRERE.

STYLE OF ARISTOPHANES.—In weighing the merits of Aristophanes, it must be remembered that many of his peculiar beauties cannot be translated, and that we lose his local hits from our inability to see things from an Athenian standpoint. He is often indelicate in his allusions; he is as ready with town slang and the cant of the shop as with the most elegant phrase. But Attic salt seasons the whole, and none ever handled the versatile Greek tongue more deftly. In his command of language, he is equalled only by Plato, who felt the comic poet’s power when he said that in the soul of Aristophanes the Graces sought an imperishable shrine. Amid all his humor and buffoonery sparkles genius of the highest order. His aim seems to have been to elevate his art. Some of the improvements he claimed to have introduced, are thus set forth in an address which he puts into the mouth of the leader of the chorus in his “Peace:”—

“It was he that indignantly swept from the stage the paltry ignoble
device
Of a Hercules needy and seedy and greedy, a vagabond sturdy and
stout,
Now baking his bread, now swindling instead, now beaten and battered
about.
And freedom he gave to the lacrimose slave who was wont with a howl
to rush in,
And all for the sake of a joke which they make on the wounds which
disfigure his skin.
Such vulgar contemptible lumber at once he bade from the drama
depart,
And then, like an edifice stately and grand, he raised and ennobled
the art.”
THOROLD ROGERS.

Aristophanes outlived the license of the old comedy, which died with liberty. When in 404 B.C. the popular government was overthrown, and Thirty Tyrants, supported by Sparta, lorded it over Athens, a statute was passed making personal attacks on the stage capital offences; an actor who defied the law was actually starved to death. Thenceforth the comic poet dared not individualize the object of his satire; he tilted against vice and folly in general, or thrust at his intended victims indirectly under assumed names.

Aristophanes died about 380 B.C. No other comic poet could vie with him during his lifetime; none worthy to be his successor arose after his death, for “Nature broke the mould in which he was cast.” Of fifty-four comedies from his pen, eleven remain entire.

THE ACHARNIANS 425 B.C. THE KNIGHTS 424 ” THE CLOUDS 423 ” THE WASPS 422 ”

The persons constituting the chorus were girt in tightly about the waist, to make them as wasp-like as possible in appearance; skewers did service as stings.

PEACE 421 ” THE BIRDS 414 ” LYSISTRATA 411 ” THE WOMEN CELEBRATING THE FEAST OF CERES 411 ” Ridicule of Euripides is the staple of this play.

THE FROGS 405 ”
Here again Euripides is the butt. The chorus was made up to represent
frogs, whose croakings were imitated.

THE WOMEN MET IN
ASSEMBLY 392 ”
Certain strong-minded female communists, advocates of women’s rights,
seize on the government and undertake the reformation of public
abuses. This play contains the longest word known, made up of 77
syllables and 169 letters.

PLUTUS 388 ”

HISTORY.

During this halcyon age of Greek poetry, prose also was cultivated, and in the century following the Persian Wars it was brought to maturity. After the victories that secured her freedom, Greece felt the need of a national historian to record the story of her struggles and triumphs. The earliest narrators, as has been shown, confined themselves to mythology and tradition: the times now demanded an artist who could paint with faithful pencil on living canvas those scenes that were the glory of Hellas—and in Herodotus of Halicarnassus that artist appeared.

=Herodotus= (born 484 B.C.).—Halicarnassus was the capital of a Dorian confederacy of states in southern Asia Minor. Its queen Artemisia supported Xerxes in his quarrel with Greece; and although the Athenians, provoked that a woman should take the field against them, offered an immense reward for her capture, she escaped the perils of war, and carried her kingdom safely through the political troubles of the time.

The parents of Herodotus were persons of rank and property. His writings prove him to have been well read in the literature of his country. Though not an Ionian born, he adopted the Ionic dialect—the dress in which Greek prose first appeared.

Herodotus spent the best twenty years of his life in travelling over the greater part of the known world, studying the history, geography, and customs of the countries he visited. Thebes and Memphis, Tyre and Jerusalem, Babylon and Ecbat’ana—with all he made personal acquaintance, extending his tour as far west as the Greek settlements in Italy, and as far south as the first cataract of the Nile.

The marvellousness of the stories he collected brought down upon Herodotus the ridicule of his fellow-citizens; so quitting Halicarnassus when about thirty-seven years of age, he settled at Athens. Here, it is related, he read his history, still in the rough, to the admiring people, who voted him a handsome reward. Here also he seems to have become intimate with Sophocles and his great contemporaries; and here, perhaps, his ambition was kindled to add another star to the galaxy that made Athens the glory of the world.

Not long, however, did Herodotus remain at the capital. As one of a band of colonists sent out by Pericles in 443 B.C., he crossed to Italy, and aided in founding the town of Thurii, near the ruins of Syb’aris (see Map, p. 304). At Thurii he spent his last years in revising, enlarging, and polishing his history; yet we are not to believe that he ceased to indulge his passion for travelling when Sicily and southern Italy lay so invitingly before him. He died at the age of sixty, leaving the great work of his life unfinished.

The main subject of our author’s work is the Græco-Persian War and the triumph of his country. His narrative is from time to time relieved by delightful episodes. Indeed, we owe to him not a few of those romantic tales that invest ancient history with its peculiar charm; while modern research has verified many of the wonder-stories that provoked the derision of his countrymen. Nor do his digressions mar the unity of his history, which is planned and developed as skilfully as a drama of Sophocles.

The style of Herodotus is poetical, clear, familiar, fascinating, and marked by a pleasing variety. “His animation,” says Macaulay, “his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators.” His history is the first work of its kind that has descended to us entire. It is divided into nine books, said to have been read by the author at the Olympic Games, and there to have received the names of the Nine Muses, which they still bear.[34] Certainly no names could have been more appropriately connected with a work that has entitled its author to be called through all time “the Father of History.”—Extracts follow:—

XERXES AND THE PILOT.

“It is said that Xerxes, leaving Athens, came to a city called Eïon, on the banks of the Stry’mon. Hence he proceeded no farther by land, but, intrusting the conduct of his forces to Hydarnes, with orders to march them to the Hellespont, he went on board a Phœnician vessel to cross over into Asia. After he had embarked, a heavy and tempestuous wind set in from the lake; which, on account of the great number of Persians on board, attendant upon Xerxes, made the situation of the vessel extremely dangerous. The king, in a transport of terror, inquired aloud of the pilot if he thought they were safe.

‘By no means,’ was the answer,‘unless we could be rid of some of this multitude.’

Upon this Xerxes exclaimed,‘Persians, let me now see which of you loves his prince; my safety, it seems, depends on you.’

As soon as he had spoken, they first bowed themselves before him, and then leaped into the sea. The vessel being thus lightened, Xerxes was safely landed in Asia. As soon as he got on shore, he rewarded the pilot with a golden crown for preserving the life of the king; but, as he had caused so many Persians to perish, he cut off his head.”—BELOE.

ANECDOTE OF QUEEN NITOCRIS.

“Nitocris had her tomb constructed in the upper part of one of the principal gateways of the city, high above the heads of the passers-by, with this inscription cut upon it:—’If there be one among my successors on the throne of Babylon who is in want of treasure, let him open my tomb, and take as much as he chooses; not, however, unless he be truly in want, for it will not be for his good.’

This tomb continued untouched until Darius came to the kingdom. To him it seemed a monstrous thing that he should be unable to use one of the gates of the town, and that a sum of money should be lying idle, and moreover inviting his grasp, and he not seize upon it. Now he could not use the gate, because, as he drove through, the dead body would have been over his head.

Accordingly, he opened the tomb; but, instead of money, found only the dead body, and a writing which said:—’Hadst thou not been insatiate of pelf, and careless how thou gottest it, thou wouldst not have broken open the sepulchres of the dead.’”

CUSTOMS OF THE BABYLONIANS.

“Of their customs, whereof I shall now proceed to give an account, the following is in my judgment the wisest. Once a year, in each village, the maidens of age to marry were collected all together into one place; while the men stood round them in a circle. Then a herald called up the damsels one by one, and offered them for sale. He began with the most beautiful. When she was sold for no small sum of money, he offered for sale the one who came next to her in beauty. All of them were sold to be wives.

The richest of the Babylonians who wished to wed, bid against each other for the loveliest maidens; while the humbler wife-seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the more homely damsels with marriage-portions. For the custom was that when the herald had gone through the whole number of the beautiful damsels, he should then call up the ugliest—a cripple, if there chanced to be one—and offer her to the men, asking who would agree to take her with the smallest marriage-portion. And the man who offered to take the smallest sum, had her assigned to him. The marriage-portions were furnished by the money paid for the beautiful damsels, and thus the fairer maidens portioned out the uglier.

No one was allowed to give his daughter in marriage to the man of his choice, nor might any one carry away the damsel whom he had purchased without finding bail really and truly to make her his wife. All who liked might come, even from distant villages, and bid for the women.

The Babylonians have no physicians; but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them. And no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.”—RAWLINSON.

=Thucydides=, on whom the mantle of Herodotus descended, was born in a village of Attica about 471 B.C. We may believe that he received a polite education, and became proficient in military science at an early age. It was in the prime of manhood, if the oft-repeated story is to be credited, that the history of Herodotus, read before an assembled throng, brought tears to his eyes and fired him with a desire to emulate its distinguished author. Greece was then on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, in which the rival states Athens and Sparta figured as chief actors. Thucydides anticipated the impending storm, and discerned his opportunity; this war should be his subject, and even before it began he was busy collecting preliminary information.

Nor did he serve his country merely in the capacity of historian. He engaged actively in the contest, and received as his reward the command of an Athenian squadron. But he committed an unpardonable sin by failing to save a town, which surrendered to the Spartans before he could arrive with assistance. Instigated by Cleon, his countrymen deprived him of his position and cast him forth an exile.

Thucydides retired to Thrace, where he had a valuable interest in certain gold-mines, and there devoted himself to the preparation of his history, narrowly watching the progress of events and gathering intelligence with the utmost care. His exile of twenty years was indeed “the Muses’ blessing;” it enabled him to pursue his studies without interruption. Long after his death, the plane-tree in whose shadow he was accustomed to compose, was pointed out to travellers.

Thucydides traced the Peloponnesian War to the middle of its twenty-first year (411 B.C.), leaving it to be finished by another. Why he did not complete it himself, being in possession of the necessary materials, does not appear. After the Athenian power was broken by Sparta (404 B.C.), the decree of banishment was revoked; but whether Thucydides ever returned to Athens is a matter of doubt. According to one account, he went back to fall the victim of a conspiracy; from another we are led to infer that he died a natural death in Thrace about 391 B.C.

The “History of the Peloponnesian War” is remarkable for its accuracy and impartiality. Truth was the great object of its author, who, dispassionate and unprejudiced, ignores the ingratitude of his country, betrays no resentment even when he speaks of Cleon, and does full justice to his Spartan foes. He intended his work to be an authority, “a possession for everlasting.” In it we find the first attempts to treat the philosophy of history, to trace events to their ultimate causes, and deduce from the past lessons for the future. His style is nervous, concise, stately, and even rises to the sublime; but lacks harmony, and is sometimes obscure. About one fourth of his work is composed of speeches, which indeed make an agreeable variety, but are often involved, and in parts all but unintelligible. Antithesis is a frequent figure.

Despite its faults, the history of Thucydides has always been a favorite. Charles V. was never without a copy when on a campaign, and the philosopher Hobbes declared that he valued its eight books above all the rest of Greek historical literature. The extract selected is a description of the plague which broke out at Athens in the year 430, while the Lacedæmonians were ravaging Attica, and which the historian contracted himself, but fortunately survived.

THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS.

“While the nature of this distemper was such as to baffle all description, and its attacks were almost too grievous for human nature to endure, it was still in the following circumstance that its difference from all ordinary disorders was most clearly shown. All the birds and beasts that prey upon human bodies either abstained from touching them (though there were many lying unburied), or died after tasting them. In proof of this, it was noticed that birds of this kind actually disappeared; they were not about the bodies, or indeed to be seen at all. But of course the effects which I have mentioned could best be studied in a domestic animal like the dog.

Meanwhile the town enjoyed an immunity from all the ordinary disorders; or, if any case occurred, it ended in this. Some died of neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost precaution.

By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when they felt themselves sickening; for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder. Besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other. This caused the greatest mortality. On the one hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect: indeed, many houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the other hand, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence. This was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness: a sense of honor prevented them from sparing themselves in their attendance at their friends’ houses, where even the members of the family were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of the disaster. Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience, and had now no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked a second time—never at least fatally. And such persons not only received the congratulations of others, but themselves also in the elation of the moment half entertained the vain hope that they were for the future safe from any disease whatever.

An aggravation of the existing calamity was the influx from the country into the city, and this was especially felt by the new arrivals. As there were no houses to receive them, they had to be lodged at the hot season of the year in stifling cabins, where the mortality raged without restraint; bodies lay one upon another in the agonies of thirst, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and round all the fountains in their longing for water. The sacred places, also, in which they had quartered themselves, were full of corpses of persons that had died there.

All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger’s pile and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse, which they were carrying, on the top of another which was burning, and so went off.

Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague. Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honor was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was laid down as both honorable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped the gods or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them and hung even over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.

Such was the nature of the calamity, and heavily did it weigh on the Athenians; death raging within the city and devastation without. Among other things which they remembered in their distress was, very naturally, the following verse, which the old men said had long ago been uttered:

‘A Dorian war shall come, and with it death.’”
RICHARD CRAWLEY.

=Xenophon=, who in his “Hellenica” continued the story of the Peloponnesian War left unfinished by Thucydides, and carried the history of Greece as far as the battle of Mantine’a, 362 B.C., was born at Athens shortly after the middle of the fifth century. Of his early life we know nothing, save that he was the friend and pupil of Socrates; who, it is related, prepossessed with his intelligent countenance, once stopped him in a narrow way and demanded where men were made good and honest. Confused by the unexpected inquiry from so great a teacher, the boy hesitated; whereupon, the philosopher exclaimed, “Follow me and learn.” Xenophon obeyed, and became a faithful student of his master’s moral and philosophical doctrines. Together they braved the perils of the Peloponnesian War; and in the battle of De’lium (424 B.C.), where the flower of Athens’ chivalry fell, Xenophon’s life is said to have been saved by Socrates.

At the solicitation of his friend, Proxenus the Bœotian, Xenophon joined as a volunteer the famous Expedition of the Ten Thousand, made in the interest of Cyrus the Younger against his elder brother Artaxerxes, who occupied the Persian throne. Feeling the necessity of securing soldiers superior in bravery and discipline to the barbarian hordes through which he must cut his way to the capital, Cyrus supported the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, in order to secure their aid in dethroning Artaxerxes. Accordingly, at his summons, about 10,000 Spartans and other Greeks, deceived at first as to the real object of the campaign, flocked to his standard, and in the spring of 401 B.C., with 100,000 Eastern troops, entered the confines of the Persian Empire.

On the plain of Cunaxa, ninety miles from Babylon, the decisive battle took place between the brothers, Artaxerxes having at his back an army of nearly a million men. Superior numbers, however, availed little against the superior discipline of the Greeks, who quickly routed the wing opposed to them; but Cyrus, already hailed as king, imprudently spurred into the disordered ranks of the foe, and was struck down while engaged in a furious hand-to-hand conflict with Artaxerxes.

The fall of Cyrus was the signal for his Asiatic troops to disperse, and the victors found themselves deserted in the heart of the enemy’s country, more than 1,200 miles from home. Their generals were soon after seized at a conference and put to death. In this crisis, by the advice of Xenophon, inspired as he tells us by a dream, new leaders were chosen, he himself in the place of his friend Proxenus, one of the murdered chiefs. A retreat was determined upon; and during fifteen months of indescribable hardships, he was the patient guide, the sympathetic but vigilant and prudent commander. At last, from a mountain height, the glittering Euxine broke upon the view of the van, a glad shout rent the air—“the Sea! the Sea!”—proclaiming that their sufferings were over, while officers and soldiers wept in each other’s arms. Here, in the neighborhood of Greek settlements, they were safe, and the march home was easy. The 8,600 survivors owed their lives to Xenophon.

This “Retreat” of the Greeks is the subject of Xenophon’s graphic and interesting history in seven books, the “Anabasis” (_march up_, though most of the work is occupied with what happened on the march _down_). The chaste, simple style of the author, who throughout modestly speaks of himself in the third person, recommends his pages to readers of every class. He writes to the point; there is no straining for effect. We extract the passage relating to

XENOPHON’S DREAM.

“After the generals were made prisoners, and such of the captains and soldiers as had accompanied them were put to death, the Greeks were in great perplexity, reflecting that they were not far from the king’s residence; that there were around them, on all sides, many hostile nations and cities; that no one would any longer afford them opportunities of purchasing provisions; that they were distant from Greece not less than ten thousand stadia; that there was no one to guide them on the way; that impassable rivers would intercept them in the midst of their course; that the Babylonians who had gone up with Cyrus had deserted them; and that they were left alone, having no cavalry to support them.

Reflecting, I say, on these circumstances, and being disheartened at them, few tasted food that evening, few kindled fires; and many did not come to the place of arms during the night, but lay down to sleep where they severally happened to be, unable to sleep for sorrow and longing for their country, their parents, their wives and children, whom they never expected to see again. In this state of mind they all went to their resting-places.

When this perplexity occurred, Xenophon was distressed as well as the other Greeks, and unable to rest; but having at length got a little sleep, he had a dream, in which, in the midst of a thunder-storm, a bolt seemed to him to fall upon his father’s house, and the house in consequence became all in a blaze. Greatly frightened, he immediately awoke, and considered his dream as in one respect favorable, inasmuch as, being in troubles and dangers, he seemed to behold a great light from Jupiter; but in another respect he was alarmed, because the dream appeared to him to be from Jupiter, who was a king, and the fire to blaze all around him, lest he should be unable to escape from the king’s territories, but should be hemmed in on all sides by inextricable difficulties.

What it betokens, however, to see such a dream, we may conjecture from the occurrences that happened after the dream. What immediately followed was this. As soon as he awoke, the thought that first occurred to him was,‘Why do I lie here? The night is passing away. With daylight it is probable that the enemy will come upon us; and, if we once fall into the hands of the king, what is there to prevent us from being put to death with ignominy, after witnessing the most grievous sufferings among our comrades, and enduring every severity of torture ourselves? Yet no one concerts measures or takes thought for our defence, but we lie still, as if we were at liberty to enjoy repose. From what city, then, do I expect a leader to undertake our defence? What age am I waiting for, to come to myself? Assuredly I shall never be older, if I give myself up to the enemy to-day.’ After these reflections he arose, and called together, in the first place, the captains that were under Proxenus.

When they were assembled, he said,‘For my part, captains, I cannot sleep, nor, I should think, can you; nor can I lie still any longer, when I consider in what circumstances we are placed. For it is plain that the enemy did not openly manifest hostility toward us, until they thought that they had judiciously arranged their plans; but on our side no one takes any thought how we may best maintain a contest with them. Yet if we prove remiss, and fall into the power of the king, what may we not expect to suffer from a man who cut off the head and hand of his own brother by the same mother and father, even after he was dead, and fixed them upon a stake? What may not we, I say, expect to suffer, who have no relative to take our part, and who have marched against him to make him a subject instead of a monarch, and to put him to death if it should lie in our power? Will he not proceed to every extremity, that by reducing us to the last degree of ignominious suffering, he may inspire all men with a dread of ever taking the field against him? We must, therefore, try every expedient not to fall into his hands.

For myself, I never ceased, while the truce lasted, to consider ourselves as objects of pity, and to regard the king and his people as objects of envy; as I contemplated how extensive and valuable a country they possessed, how great an abundance of provisions, how many slaves and cattle, and how vast a quantity of gold and raiment. But since they have put an end to peace, their own haughtiness and our mistrust seem likewise to be brought to an end; for the advantages which I have mentioned lie now as prizes between us, for whichsoever of us shall prove the better men. And the gods are the judges of the contest, who, as is just, will be on our side; since the enemy have offended them by perjury, while we, though seeing many good things to tempt us, have resolutely abstained from all of them through regard to our oaths; so that, as it seems to me, we may advance to the combat with much greater confidence than they can feel.

We have bodies, moreover, better able than theirs to endure cold and toil; and we have, with the help of the gods, more resolute minds; while the enemy, if the gods, as before, grant us success, will be found more obnoxious to wounds and death than we are. But possibly others of you entertain the same thoughts; let us not then, in the name of Heaven, wait for others to come and exhort us to noble deeds, but let us be ourselves the first to excite others to exert their valor. Prove yourselves the bravest of the captains, and more worthy to lead than those who are now leaders. As for me, if you wish to take the start, in the course, I am willing to follow you; or, if you appoint me to be a leader, I shall not make my youth an excuse, but shall think myself sufficiently mature to defend myself against harm.’”—WATSON.

For his sympathy with Sparta, and possibly for sharing the opinions of his beloved teacher Socrates, Xenophon was banished from Athens; but he was recompensed by the Lacedæmonians with a house and piece of land in E’lis. Here, amid lovely meadows and woodlands, he built a temple to the goddess Diana in fulfilment of a vow he had made when encircled by dangers in Asia. Here, free from the cares of public life, he passed many years, happy in the society of his wife, children, and friends, dividing his time among his farm, his hunting-parks, and his study. He died at the age of ninety.—Of his two sons, one fell on the field of Mantinea, after dealing the great Epaminondas his death-blow.

Besides the “Anabasis” and “Hellenica,” Xenophon wrote the “Cy’ropædi’a” (_education of Cyrus_—the elder Cyrus, king of Persia), a semi-didactic, semi-historical fiction, illustrating a model system of education and setting forth his ideal of government—a perfect monarchy. He is also the author of several works written in defence of Socrates or as expositions of his philosophy, of which the “Memorabilia” (_memoirs_) is particularly interesting, teeming as it does with sayings and anecdotes of the sage.

In addition to his merits as an historian, Xenophon may justly claim the distinction of having been the first essayist: we have from his pen essays on the Policy of Lacedæmon, on the Chase, Horsemanship, and Cavalry Tactics, not to mention several political treatises ascribed to him. A creditable representative of elegant Attic prose, Xenophon has been called _the Attic Muse_.

=Ctesias=, a Greek physician attached to the Persian court, who dressed the wounds of Artaxerxes after the battle of Cunaxa, compiled a history of Persia in twenty-three books, a description of India, and a variety of other works. Of his writings, which were in the Ionic dialect, little has survived.

=Theopompus= (probably 378-304 B.C.) is also worthy of mention as an historian. He wrote a History of Greece from 411 to 394 B.C., and “Philippica,” in fifty-eight books, in which he sketched the character of Philip of Macedon. Of the latter work numerous fragments remain. Ancient critics give him credit for general accuracy, though he took rather too rose-colored views of his hero Philip as the promoter of Grecian civilization.

PHILOSOPHY.

The earliest philosophical investigations were made by Ionians, and THALES of Miletus is recognized as the founder of Greek philosophy. To him and to Pythagoras the various systems may all be traced.

=The Ionic School= of Thales, devoted to physical science, rapidly developed, theory after theory being brought forward to explain the universe and the nature of Deity. One philosopher made the Supreme Being an all-pervading, divine air; another, Heracli’tus “the Obscure,” represented God as a subtile flame, and reduced the universe to an eternal fire.

A notable step in advance was taken by ANAXAGORAS (500-428 B.C.), who succeeded to the leadership of this school. The first to make the study of philosophy fashionable at Athens, he became the instructor of some of her great men, Socrates among the number. He represented God as a divine _mind_, acting on the material world with intelligence and design. Well did Aristotle say that Anaxagoras was like a sober man among stammering drunkards, when compared with earlier philosophers. As an astronomer, he anticipated some of the discoveries of more recent times; he correctly explained eclipses, taught that the sun was a molten ball, that from it the moon borrowed her light, that the lunar surface was diversified with mountains and valleys, and that the earth itself had been the scene of terrible convulsions.

=The Italic School= had meanwhile been founded by PYTHAG’ORAS, of Samos, born about 540 B.C. He settled in Croto’na, a Greek town of southern Italy, and there imparted to his disciples the philosophical principles which he had gathered in other lands, particularly Egypt.

Pythagoras modestly styled himself a lover of wisdom (_philosopher_), not a wise man (_sophist_). Among his doctrines were the mysterious theory that _number_ is the first principle of all things, the transmigration of souls, and a system of future rewards and punishments. He forestalled Copernicus in his discovery of the true theory of the solar system—that the sun, and not the earth, as was then believed, is its centre; he taught that the moon was inhabited and described the heavenly bodies as producing harmonious tones in their passage through ether, from which his followers were accustomed to say that to him the gods had revealed “the music of the spheres.”

With such perfect confidence did his disciples regard their master, who usually gave his instructions from behind a thick curtain, that when any one called their doctrines in question they deemed it sufficient to reply, “He said so” (_ipse dixit_). Indeed, they invested him with supernatural powers, nor, according to his early biographers, did he deny the soft impeachment. On one occasion, we are told, to convince his pupils that he was a god, he showed them his thigh, which was of gold, and declared that he had assumed the form of humanity only the more readily to impart his lessons to mankind.

Pythagoras was the inventor of the monochord, a one-stringed instrument designed to measure musical intervals,—and also of the more useful, if humbler, Multiplication Table. He is the first who practised mesmerism; at least so we may account for his subduing a fierce Daunian bear, and taming beasts and birds by gently passing his hands over their bodies.

There are no genuine remnants of this author. The celebrated “Golden Verses,” long attributed to him, there is reason for supposing to have been inspired by his teachings, but written by one of his pupils:—

FROM THE GOLDEN VERSES.

“Ne’er suffer sleep thine eyes to close
Before thy mind hath run
O’er every act, and thought, and word,
From dawn to set of sun;
For wrong take shame, but grateful feel,
If just thy course hath been;
Such effort, day by day renewed,
Will ward thy soul from sin.”

As the Ionics made physics everything, so the Pythagoreans regarded mathematical science as the _summum bonum_. In their master’s eyes the world was “a living arithmetic,” and virtue a proportion of all the faculties of the soul. A mystical relation between mathematical and moral truths was a principle of his philosophy.

Prominent among the followers of Pythagoras was EMPEDOCLES, of Agrigentum in Sicily (450 B.C.), who combined the previous theories of nature in his own, viz., that four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—enter into the constitution of the universe, and that these are constantly animated by the two opposing forces of Love and Strife. A peculiar doctrine of his was that like is perceived only by like; thus our knowledge of other bodies is due to minute emanations from their substance which enter the pores and impress corresponding elements in our own frames.

Empedocles is said to have arrogated to himself the importance of a god, going about in a purple robe confined with a belt of gold, performing wonderful cures. According to an old legend, he sought to create the belief that he had been translated to heaven, by secretly throwing himself into the crater of Mt. Etna; but the volcano, in a subsequent eruption, cast forth one of his brazen sandals and so exposed the fraud. He probably lost his life by accident while examining the crater.

From the Italic School sprung the sects known as Eleatic, Epicurean, and Skeptic. The Eleatic School was founded by XENOPH’ANES (600-500 B.C.), a contemporary of Pythagoras, and derived its name from the town of E’lea in southern Italy.

Xenophanes asserted the unity of the Deity. “There is one god,” he said, “among gods and men the greatest: unlike to mortals in outward shape, unlike in mind and thoughts.” This was truly a sublime stand to take in an age of polytheism; he who feared not to face a superstitious people with such a doctrine, and ridicule even their divine Homer for his degrading pictures of the deities, deserves to be ranked among the greatest philosophers of Greece.

FRAGMENTS FROM XENOPHANES.

“If sheep, and swine, and lions strong, and all the bovine crew,
Could paint with cunning hands, and do what clever mortals do,
Depend upon it, every pig with snout so broad and blunt,
Would make a Jove that like himself would thunder with a grunt;
And every lion’s god would roar, and every bull’s would bellow,
And every sheep’s would baa, and every beast his worshipped fellow
Would find in some immortal form, and naught exist divine
But had the gait of lion, sheep, or ox, or grunting swine.”

* * * * *

“Homer and Hesiod, whom we own great doctors of theology,
Said many things of blissful gods that cry for large apology—
That they may cheat, and rail, and lie, and give the rein to passion,
Which were a crime in men who tread the dust in mortal fashion.”

* * * * *

“All eyes, all ears, all thought, is God, the omnipresent soul;
And free from toil, by force of mind, he moves the mighty whole.”
BLACKIE.

The noble conception of Deity entertained by Xenophanes was soon perverted. We find his pupil PARMEN’IDES “the Great” in the next century doing away with the personality of God, and confounding the divine nature with pure being, which he made equivalent to thought.

DEMOC’RITUS, of Abde’ra in Thrace (460-357 B.C.), known as the laughing philosopher from his constantly deriding the weaknesses of men, put forth the _atomic theory_,—that the universe is made up of countless minute, intangible atoms, and that in the motion of such atoms, round and fiery, consisted the movements of the mind and soul. God had no place in this philosophy; matter, time, space, and motion, were eternal. Bodies were formed by the fortuitous concurrence of atoms; and by the affinities and motions of atoms in the vacuum that made up the universe, all natural phenomena were produced.

Such was the wisdom of one who laughed at the follies of his fellows, and is stated to have put out his own eyes that nothing might distract the current of his thoughts.