Chapter XVI: The Fragments of the Lost Tragic Poets

Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.--Criticism among the Ancients.--Formation of Canons.--Libraries.--The Political Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.--Byzantine Scholarship in the Ninth Century.--The Lost MS. of Menander.--Tragic Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by Athenæus, by Stobæus.--Aristotle.--Tragedy before Æschylus.--Fragments of Aristarchus.--The _Medea_ of Neophron.--Ion.--The _Games_ of Achæus.--Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.--The _Flower_.--Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.--The Family of Æschylus.--Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.--The School of Sophocles.--Influence of Euripides.--Family of Carkinus.--Tragedians Ridiculed by Aristophanes.--The _Sisyphus_ of Critias.--Cleophon.--Cynical Tragedies ascribed to Diogenes.--Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.--The Repetition of Old Plots.--Mamercus and Dionysius.--Professional Rhetoricians appear as Playwrights.--The School of Isocrates.--The _Centaur_ of Chæremon.--His Style.--The _Themistocles_ of Moschion.--The Alexandrian Pleiad.--The _Adonis_ of Ptolemy Philopator. Page 113

CHAPTER XVII.

_ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY._

Greek Tragedy and the Rites of Dionysus.--A Sketch of its Origin and History.--The Attic Theatre.--The Actors and their Masks.--Relation of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece.--The Legends used by the Attic Tragedians.--Modern Liberty in the Choice of Subjects.--Mystery Plays.--Nemesis.--Modern Tragedy has no Religious Idea.--Tragic Irony.--Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy.--Modern Tragedy offers no #katharsis# of the Passions.--Destinies and Characters.--Female Characters.--The Supernatural.--French Tragedy.--Five Acts.--Bloodshed.--The Unities.--Radical Differences in the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Art. Page 145

CHAPTER XVIII.

_ARISTOPHANES._

Heine's Critique on Aristophanes.--Aristophanes as a Poet of the Fancy.--The Nature of his Comic Grossness.--Greek Comedy in its Relation to the Worship of Dionysus.--Greek Acceptance of the Animal Conditions of Humanity.--His Burlesque, Parody, Southern Sense of Fun.--Aristophanes and Menander.--His Greatness as a Poet.--Glimpses of Pathos.--His Conservatism and Serious Aim.--Socrates, Agathon, Euripides.--German Critics of Aristophanes.--Ancient and Modern Comedy.--The _Birds_.--The _Clouds_.--Greek Youth and Education.--The Allegories of Aristophanes.--The _Thesmophoriazusæ_.--Aristophanes and Plato. Page 171

CHAPTER XIX.

_THE COMIC FRAGMENTS._

Three Periods in Attic History.--The Three Kinds of Comedy: Old, Middle, New.--Approximation of Comedy to the Type of Tragedy.--Athenæus as the Source of Comic Fragments.--Fragments of the Old Comedy.--Satire on Women.--Parasites.--Fragments of the Middle Comedy.--Critique of Plato and the Academic Philosophers.--Literary Criticism.--Passages on Sleep and Death.--Attic Slang.--The Demi-monde.--Theophrastus and the Later Rhetoricians.--Cooks and Cookery-books.--Difficulty of Defining the Middle from the New Comedy.--Menander.--Sophocles and Menander.--Epicureanism.--Menander's Sober Philosophy of Life.--Goethe on Menander.--Philemon.--The Comedy of Manners culminated in Menander.--What we mean by Modernism.--Points of Similarity and Difference between Ancient and Modern Comedy.--The Freedom of Modern Art. Page 216

CHAPTER XX.

_THE IDYLLISTS._

Theocritus: his Life.--The Canon of his Poems.--The Meaning of the Word Idyl.--Bucolic Poetry in Greece, Rome, Modern Europe.--The Scenery of Theocritus.--Relation of Southern Nature to Greek Mythology and Greek Art.--Rustic Life and Superstitions.--Feeling for Pure Nature in Theocritus.--How Distinguished from the same Feeling in Modern Poets.--Galatea.--Pharmaceutria.--Hylas.--Greek Chivalry.--The Dioscuri.--Thalysia.--Bion.--The Lament for Adonis.--Moschus.--Europa.--Megara.--Lament for Bion.--The Debts of Modern Poets to the Idyllists. Page 240

CHAPTER XXI.

_THE ANTHOLOGY._

The History of its Compilation.--Collections of Meleager, Philippus, Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes.--The Palatine MS.--The Sections of the Anthology.--Dedicatory Epigrams.--Simonides.--Epitaphs: Real and Literary.--Callimachus.--Epigrams on Poets.--Antipater of Sidon.--Hortatory Epigrams.--Palladas.--Satiric Epigrams.--Lucillius.--Amatory Epigrams.--Meleager, Straton, Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, Agathias, Plato.--Descriptive Epigrams. Page 281

CHAPTER XXII.

_HERO AND LEANDER._

Virgil's Mention of this Tale.--Ovid and Statius.--Autumnal Poetry.--Confusion between the Mythical Musæus and the Grammarian.--The Introduction of the Poem.--Analysis of the Story.--Hallam's Judgment on Marlowe's _Hero and Leander_.--Comparison of Marlowe and Musæus.--Classic and Romantic Art. Page 345

CHAPTER XXIII.

_THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART._

Separation between the Greeks and us.--Criticism.--Greek Sense of Beauty.--Greek Morality.--Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit. Page 363

CHAPTER XXIV.

_CONCLUSION._

Sculpture, the Greek Art _par excellence_.--Plastic Character of the Greek Genius.--Sterner Aspects of Greek Art.--Subordination of Pain and Discord to Harmony.--Stoic-Epicurean Acceptance of Life.--Sadness of Achilles in the _Odyssey_.--Endurance of Odysseus.--Myth of Prometheus.--Sir H. S. Maine on Progress.--The Essential Relation of all Spiritual Movement to Greek Culture.--Value of the Moral Attitude of the Greeks for us.--Three Points of Greek Ethical Inferiority.--The Conception of Nature.--The System of Marcus Aurelius.--Contrast with the _Imitatio Christi_.--The Modern Scientific Spirit.--Indestructible Elements in the Philosophy of Nature. Page 391

THE GREEK POETS.