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A HISTORY
GEEEK LITEEATUEE.
A COMPANION VOLUME.
A HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE:

Fuom the Earliest Period to the Times op thk Antonines.
CHARLES THOMAS CRUTTWELL, M.A.,

FELLOW OP MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD; HEAD MASTER OF
MALVERN COLLEGE.
Crown 8uo, cloth, 8s. (!<(.

"Mr. CiiUTTWKi.i, ha* done a real service to all Students of
the Latin Language and Literature. . . Full of good scholar-
ship and good criticism."— Athenaum.
"A most serviceable— indeed Indispensable— guide for the
student. . . . The 'general reader1 will be both charmed
and instructed."— Saturday Jieview.
A HISTORY OF
GREEK LITERATURE
%bt Earliest Jkriob
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FRANK BYRON JEVONS, M.A.,

TUTOR IN TUE UNIVERSITY OK DURHAM.
NEW YORK :
CHARLES SCRIBNER'
1880.
PR
<
\
«*2
TO
THE VENERABLE H. W. W ATKINS, D.D.,

CANON AKD ARCHDEACON OF DURHAM,
PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM,
Ubis Timor??
IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED
THE AUTHOR.
PREFACE.
This, like the preceding volume in this series, " is

designed mainly for Students at our Universities and
Public Schools, and for such as are preparing for the
Indian Civil Service or other advanced Examinations."
But it is also intended to be intelligible, and, it is hoped,
Trill be found interesting to those who know no Greek.
"With this purpose, Greek and all points involving Greek

scholarship have been relegated to the Notes and Appen-
dices.
A list of the works consulted and utilised in writing
this book would occupy many pages. To note on each
page, in the German fashion, every obligation and refer-
ence would swell the work to twice its present size. I
must therefore content myself with saying that I have
endeavoured to draw n all the best treatises on the sub-
ject in English, French, and German. Much, especially
of the German work, deals with isolated points : the prin-
ciples which determined the growth of Greek literature
Vlll PREFACE.
have been comparatively neglected by previous writers.

The present effort may, I hope, contribute towards remedy-
ing this neglect.
I am indebted for valuable guidance to my former
tutor, H. Kichards, Esq., M.A., Fellow of Wadham Col-
lege, Oxford, and to J. T. Danson, Esq., F.S.A.
F. B. J.
University College, Durham,

July 1886
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTORY.
PAOB
Difference between classical period and later periods of Greek litera-

ture— Greek literature the proper introduction to literature
generally — Classical period divisible into poetry (epic, lyric,
and dramatic) and prose (history, oratory, and philosophy) . I
PART I.
EPIC, LYRIC, AND THE DRAMA.
BOOK I.— EPIC POETRY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ILIAD.
Its background — Three ways of painting in a background— Skill of

Homer — The plot — Its unity and interconnection — Artistic dis-
posal of side-issues ......... 7
CHAPTER II.
THE ODYSSEV.
Its modern popularity — Unity — Telemachia — Marchen — The

" kernel " — The climax— Transformation of Odysseus . . 17
CHAPTER III.
THE HOMERIC QUESTION.
The early Separatists— Modern Chorizontes — Wolf— Commission of

Pisistratus — Hermann — Lachmann — Diaskeuasts — Grote —
Paley — Conclusion -5
CONTENTS.
Appendix. — Reading, Writing, and Publication in Classical Greek

Times: — Origin of writing — Date of Greek alphabet — Of a read-
ing public in Greece — Recitation, publication — Homeridae . 41
CHAPTER IV.
THE EPIC CYCLE.
Troclus — His summary of the Cypria, the /Ethiopis, Little Iliad, th

Sack of Troy, the Return, Telegonia — Theban epics ... 54
Appendix. — Relation, of the E\.ic Cycle to Homer :— Homer and the
cycle — Proclus' summary and the original poems Cyclics
avoid Homer — Borrow inspiration — Date what they imitate . 61
CHAPTER V.
THE HOMERIC HYMNS.
Their nature — The proems of rhapsodists — The longer hymns — Other

Homeric poems — Maryites — Balrachuinyomachia, &c. — Homeric
epigrams ........... 69
CHAPTER VI.
HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY.
Difference between Hesiod and Homer— Hesiod didactic — Nature

of didactic poetry — Life of Hesiod — Merit of his work — Works
and Days — 1'htoyony and its origin — Shield of Heracles and lost
works — Genealogical poems ....... 77
CHAPTER VII.
OTHER EPIC POETS AND OTHER WRITERS OF HEXAMETERS.
Peisander — Panyasis — Antimachus of Colophon — Choerilus of Samos

— Arimaspeia of Ariuteas — Orphic poets — Verse philosophers —
Slow development of prose — Connection between philosophy and
poetry — Xenophaues — Parmenides — Empedocles ... 88
BOOK II.— LYRIC POETRY.
CHAPTER I.
TnE ELEGIAC AMI IAMBIC roKTS.
Rise of lyric — Its nature and difference from epic and from modern
lyric — Its germs — Songs of the \ pie Foreign elements; —
Elegiac, iambic, and melie— Elegy — Callinus — Archilochua —
Simonides — Tyrtseua — Mimnermus — Solon .... 106
CONTENTS. XI
CHAPTER II.
PAGE
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC.
Nature of melic — Four periods in its history — Terpander, Clonas,

and Thaletas — Terpander's extension of the nome — Alcman —
Parthenia — Arion — The dithyramb . . . . . .121
CHAPTER III.
MELIC POETRY : ALC.EUS AND SAPPHO.
Life of Alcseus — Political verses — Estimate of antiquity— Drinking-

songs — His work as a whole — Sappho — Her life — Her excellence
and style — Damophila — Erinna — Stesichorus . . . .130
CHAPTER IV.
ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS CONTINUED.
The Theognidea — Life of Theognis — His political, moral, and social

views — Demodocus — Phocylides — Spurious Phocylidea — Hip-
ponax — Other writers of elegiacs or iambics . . . ,147
CHAPTER V.
MELIC AT COURT.
Ibycus — His odes choral — Influence of tyranny and democracy 011

literature — Anacreon — Simonides — Dithyramb — Encomia —
Payment for poetry — Threni — Epigram — Bacchylides and
others 155
CHAPTER VL
PINDAR.
Early life — Tenth Pythian — Pythian games — Sixth Pythian —

Twelfth Pythian— Pindar and Athens — Eleventh Olympian —
Eifth Nemean — Second Period— Fourth Pythian — Third Period
— Relation of choral lyric to previous and subsequent kinds of
poetry — Decay of choral lyric 170
BOOK III.— THE DRAMA.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY TRAGEDY.
Origin of Tragedy — Thespis — Pratinas — Satyric drama - The Cyclops

— Aristias — Phrynichus— Phenician Women — Chojrilus . . 1S3
Appendix. — Metre, Dialect, and Divisions of Tragedy . . .189
Xll CONTENTS.
CHAPTER II.
PAG I
.ESCHYLUS.
Influence of religion — Visit to Sicily — Its cause — His politics — The

Eumenides — The Persians — Suppliants — The Seven — Prometheus
Bound — Characters — Clytemestra — Chorus in Êschylus— Style
— Fragments — "School "of Êschylus — Euphorion — Astydamas 192
CHAPTER III.
SOPHOCLES.
Life — Herodotus — Fatalism and ''irony of Sophocles" — Character-

drawing — The chorus — Style — Lost plays and fragments —
"School" of Sophocles — Ion — Neophron — Carcinus and his
"school" 206
CHAPTER IV.
EURIPIDES.
Life and plays — Popularity — Transitional character of his work —

Consequent defects — Prologue and deus ex machind — Chorus —
Character-drawing — Style — Fragments — " School " — Achaeus,
Agathon — " Reading tragedians '' — Decay of tragedy . . 220
CHAPTER V.
COMEDY : ORIGIN AND GROWTH.
Worship of Dionysius and Phallica — Mimetic dances — Megara —

Maeson and Susarion — Sicilian comedy — Epicharmus — Hebe's
Weddiny — Origin of Sicilian comedy — Influence of Epicharmus
on Attic comedy — Sophrou and his mimes , . . . 234
CHAPTER VI.
THE OLD COMEDY.
The old, the middle, and the new — Magnes — Crates — Cratinus —
Pherecrates — Eupolis, his relations with Aristophanes — His
plays and character — Phrynichus, Plato, and others . . . 243
CHAPTER VII.
ARI8TOPHANES.
Two periods of Aristophanes' work — The Babylonians — The Achar-

nians — The Kniyhts and Cleon — The patriotism of Aristophanes
— The influence of comedy on politics — The Clouds and Socrates
— Aristophanes on philosophy — His discontent with the present —
CONTENTS. xiii
Unsatisfactory text of the Clouds — The real nature of the attack

on Socrates— The Wasps and its construction — Change in Aris-
tophanes' attitude — The Peace — The Birds and its beauty — Lost
plays — Lysistrata and Thesmaphonazusa — Euripides and the
Frogs — Ecclesiazusce — Plutus — Lost plays 253
Appendix — A. The Wasps 277
B. The Parabasis ........ 278
CHAPTER VIII.
MIDDLE COMEDY.
Old and middle comedy — Reason of their difference — Disappearance

of the chorus — Reason thereof — Plot in old, middle, and new —
Characters — Sources of our information — Alexis — Antiphunes —
Anaxandrides — Eubulus — Other comedians .... 279
PART II.
HISTORY, ORATORY, AND PHILOSOPHY.
BOOK I.— HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE.
Prose literature invented in Miletus— Cadmus and Pherecydes — The

logographers — Hecataeus — Dionysius of Miletus — Xanthus —
Hippocrates — His life and works ...... 297
CHAPTER II.
HERODOTUS.
His date and life — Object of his travels — Outline of his History —
Intended for recitation — Incomplete — The Assyrian history —
Unity of his work — Its national sentiment — Nemesis his philo-
sophy of history — His credulity, capacity, honesty, means of
information 306
CHAPTER III.
THUCYDIDES.
Life — Importance of the Peloponnesian war— Its interest — Its moral

— The object of Thucydides — His "positive" character — His
annalistic method — His literary genius — Literary defects and
their causes — Compared with Tacitus 327
xiv CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
PAOE
XKNol'HON.
Life —Works, historical, philosophical, and miscellaneous — Anabasis —

Its authorship — Hellenics — Its defects, and their various explana-
tions—Xenophon and Thucydid.es — Cyropcedia — Other historical
and miscellaneous works— Object of the philosophical works —
Xenophon and Plato 34$
CHAPTER V.
OTHER HISTORIANS.
Ctesias — His relation to Herodotus — Theopompus — Ephorua —

Others 36*
BOOK II.— ORATORY.
CHAPTER I.
-The
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND THE FIRST LOGOGRAPHERS.
-Pro-
Eloquence and its development into oratory— The Sophists — I
ta«'oras— Sicilian rhetoric : Corax and Tisias— Gorgias— '.
logographers and their services — Antiphon— His life — Imma-
turity—The Tetralogies — The " severe " style— His merits . 367
CHAPTER II.
PRACTICAL ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS.
Andocidea — His life — Not a rhetorician — His weaknesses and his

strength— The four surviving speeches — Lysias — His life —
Speeches, spurious, epideictic, deliberative, and forensic— Ethos
— Plain style — Grace — Thrasymacbus, Theodoras, Euenus,
Critias 379
CHAPTEB III.
EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC AND THE TRANSITION.
Isocrates — A logographer then a Sophist — Pan-Hellenism — Style

epideictic — Hiatus avoided — Smoothness— Antisthenes— Alci-
damus — Polycrates — Zoilus the Homenmastix — Anaximenes —
[geus— His influence on Demosthenes 392
CONTENTS. XV
CHAPTER IV. PA OB
DEMOSTHENES : FIRST PERIOD.
Relation of Demosthenes to earlier oratory and to the culture of his

time — His character and early life — His youthful exaggeration —
Want of self -control— Imitation — Lack of artistic sense and ethos 404
CHAPTER V.
DEMOSTHENES: SECOND PERIOD.
His excessive argumentation — His lighter qualities — The speech for

Phormio — Political speeches — Constitutional speeches — The
Demegories — Their ethos — The speech against Midias — On the
Embassy 412
CHAPTER VI.
DEMOSTHENES : THIRD PERIOD— SPEECH OF THE CROWN.
Points at issue between iEschines and Ctesiphon — The speech as

delivered and as we have it — Demosthenes' power of language —
His rhythm — His intellectual superiority — His morality — The
Harpalus affair — Death of Demosthenes . . . . .425
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES: THE ANTI-MACEDONIAN
PARTY'.
Divisions in the Anti-Macedonian party — Hyperides — His life and
character — His grace and charm — Speech for Euxenippus — For
Lycophron — Discovery in Egypt of fragments of Hyperides —
Speech against Demosthenes — Funeral oration — Lycurgus—
Hegesippus and the speech on the Halonnesus — Polyeuctus . 436
CHAPTER VIII.
^SCHINES AND THE ORATORS OF THE MACEDONIAN PARTY.
Êschines — Life — Speeches — Êschines and Demosthenes compared

and contrasted — Demades — Aristogiton — Minor orators — The
decline of oratory — Its causes— A development of pre-existing
tendencies 450
XVI CONTENTS.
BOOK III.— PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
PACK
PLATO AND THE PHILOSOPHERS BEFORE HIM.
Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus — Zeno— Anaxagoras —

Other philosophers — Plato — Life — Acquaintance with Socrates
— Travels — Why he adopted the form of dialogue — Its place in
Greek literature — His style, diction, structure of sentence,
rhythm — Its affinity with poetry and with comedy — Aristotle
on Plato's literary qualities — Authenticity of the works ascribed
to Plato 465
CONCLUSION.
The limits of the range of thought — Physical conditions — Race quali-

ties— Oral communication of Greek literature — Political and
social conditions— Influence of language .....
A
HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
INTRODUCTORY.
Classical Greek Literature begins with Homer, and ends
practically, if not precisely, with the death of Demosthenes.
During this period Greece was free. With the loss of liberty,
literature underwent a change. Greece ceased to produce men
of genius, and this constitutes one difference between the classi-
cal and later periods. A second great difference is that whereas
the literature of the classical period was written not only by
Greeks, but for Greeks, later literature was cosmopolitan ; and
to this change in the literature corresponds the change in the
language, which from pure Greek became Hellenistic Greek.
The earliest period of Greek literature is, then, classical because
it is the work of genius, and is due solely to Greek genius. It
reflects Greek life and expresses Greek thoughts alone, and,
like the language in which it is clad, contains no foreign
elements.
Classical Greek literature is the proper introduction to litera-
ture generally, because in it the laws which determined its
development are simple, and can be easily traced. It was pure
and original, and its development, unlike that of subsequent
literatures, was not complicated by the influence of a foreign
literature. Further, the various kinds of literature, poetry and
prose, epic, lyric, and the drama, history, philosophy, and
oratory, not only remained true, each to its own type, but on
the whole they developed in orderly succession This was
because they were the work of different members of the Greek
race, whose latent literary tendencies required different political
and social conditions to draw them out. They were evoked one
after the other by political and social changes ; and so the stages
A
2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
in the development of literature correspond with those of the

nation's life. The growth of Epic poetry, the earliest form of
the literature which lias bequeathed remains to us, was favoured
by a stage of civilisation in which patriarchal monarchy formed
the political machinery, and family life furnished the society
and the literary public. Lyric, the next branch of literature,
found favouring conditions in the aristocracies which succeeded
to monarchy, and in which the social communion of the pri-
vileged class took the place of family life, and provided a new
public for literature. The Drama was designed for the enter-
tainment oflarge numbers of persons, and was a response to the
demands of democracy. From this time on, literature no longer
found its home in the halls of chieftains, or its audience in the
social meetings of the few ; but when the state came to consist
of the whole of the citizens, literature became united with the
life of the state as a whole, and thenceforward was but one of
the ways in which that life expressed itself. Literary men were
not a class distinguished by their profession from the rest of the
community, nor was literature a thing apart from the practical
matters of life. The Orators were active politicians or men of
law ; and their speeches were not literary displays, but had a
practical object, to turn the vote of the Assembly, or to gain a
verdict. History was the record of a contemporary war, or of a
war which had occurred in the previous generation. Philosophy
was but a picture in words of the conversations between culti-
vated Greeks on the great problems of life. The drama was
not a mere literary entertainment : it was an act of common
worship, in which the genius of man was devoted to the glory
of the gods.
In this book we shall follow the divisions into which Greek
literature naturally falls, and shall complete our survey of each
branch of literature before proceeding to another. Tins method
is not absolutely chronological, for the divisions overlap to a
certain extent ; but it gives a simpler account, and in reality a
truer view of the history, than we should obtain by following
out chronological distinctions to the uttermost. Our division
then will be as follows :— In the fust place, as the rise of poetry
preceded that of prose, we shall divide the history of Greek
literature into two parts, the first containing the history of
poetry, the second of prose. Then the first part will fall into
three divisions — (i.) Epic; (2.) Lyric; (3.) The Drama: and the
second will also fall into three divisions — (1.) History; (2.)
Philosophy; (3.) Oratory.
Our account of Epic poetry will begin with Homer. Other
INTRODUCTORY. 3
poets must have lived before Homer, and must have carried the
development of poetry to a considerable height before such
works as the Iliad and Odyssey could have been composed.
But as there is not a vestige of this pre-Homeric poetry left, we
shall proceed at once to Homer ; and before considering the
question whether there was such a person as Homer, we must
try to gain some idea of what there is in the Iliad and Odyssey
which places them among the world's greatest literary treasures,
and which could make Keats, who only knew the poems through
an inferior English version, say on first looking into Chapman's
Homer —
u Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken ;
Or like stout Cortez — when with eagle eye3
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men
Looked at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent upon a peak in Darien."
IPart f.
EPIC AND LYRIC POETRY.
THE DRAMA,
BOOK I.
EPIC POETRY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ILIAD.
Whatever may have been the authorship, origin, original form,

and date of the Homeric poems, the fact remains that it is in
their present form that they have commanded the admiration
of men for more than two thousand years, have been the model
for epic poetry, the inspiration of puets of all kinds, and have
made the name of Homer greater than any name in literature.
Therefore, before dissecting the poems of Homer, or rather vivi-
secting them, for they yet live, let us admire the beauty of
their form, the firmness of their outlines, the purity of their
Greek features, and the soul which gives expression to them.
And this we may do without pre-judging any of the qne.-tions
to which these poems have given rise ; for those who advocate
the hypothesis of several authors are as warm in the praise of
our existing Homer, as are the supporters of Homers undivided
authorship. Indeed, the example of the frieze of the Parthenon
and some of our own cathedrals shows that a work of art may
possess unity of design and harmony in details, and yet be the
work of not one artist, but several.
Confining ourselves in this chapter to the Iliad, let us first
admire the skill with which the background is painted in.
The subject of the Iliad, the wrath of Achilles and its conse-
quences, isbut an incident in the story of the Trojan war.
Achilles and Agamemnon quarrelled before the walls of Troy,
as we are informed at the beginning of the first book ; but the
reader has to be informed how it came about that Achilles and
Agamemnon were besieging Troy, and this is the story of the
Trojan war, which is presupposed by and forms the background
of the Iliad. In the same way every plot, whether of an epic,

or a drama, or a novel, presupposes a state of things existing
before the action begins; and the way in which the author
contrives to acquaint the reader with this state of things, in
other words to paint in the background, gives us a test of his
skill.
i. The simplest and most inartistic way is that adopted by
Euripides in many of his plays. Before the drama begins, one
of the characters, or even a figure who does not appear in the
play itself, comes on the stage, and, speaking to the audience,
tells them what they have to imagine in order to understand
what is going to be done on the stage. This is the most in-
artistic, because the pleasure one gets from seeing a play depends
on the illusion — depends, that is to say, on our believing for the
time that what we see performed before us is real : and in the
prologues of Euripides the author practically comes forward and
disenchants us by warning us that what is going to come is only
a play. In a novel, too, the author may begin at the beginning
and tell us methodically from point to point all that his story
presupposes ; and then, having got this preliminary matter out
of the way, proceed with his real subject. But this method is
usually repulsive to the reader, whose interest is not awakened,
and he puts down the book.
2. The next and more usual way of painting in the background
is to begin with the real subject, at the point the author thinks
most attractive ; and then, after having gained the reader's
attention, to go back to the beginning of things and explain
the circumstances in which his characters find themselves.
This is more artistic than the first way, though how much
more depends on the artist. It may be done clumsily, the
author without any excuse simply saying in effect, " Now let us
retrace our steps, and see how this came about ; " or it may
be done more skilfully, as when the author arranges things so
that one of the characters naturally relates the antecedent cir-
cumstances for the benefit of another character. Thus, in the
iEneid, Virgil begins with a storm at sea which throws iEneas
on the coast of Carthage ; and the Queen of Carthage naturally
wishes to know the history of the stranger, who then relates at
great length all that is necessary for the reader to know in
order to comprehend the story of the Êueid. Even here there
are degrees of skill, for in some cases it is evident that the
antecedent state of things is narrated by one character to
another, not in the least because he would do so in real life, but
because the information must be (riven to the reader somehow.
epic poetry: the iliad. 9
To make the characters talk at the reader in this way is bad

workmanship.
3. There is yet a third way of painting in the background. It
consists in making the plot itself disclose what it presupposes,
in not telling the reader, but allowing him to infer how what
he sees has come about. This is the best way, not because it
is most natural, but because it most resembles nature. It is
not the method which most naturally suggests itself to the
author ; but it is the way in which the spectator of a scene in
real life, enacted by people unknown to him, gains the know-
ledge necessary for a comprehension of the scene. This, as it
is the best, is also the most difficult method. To construct
scenes which shall be necessary to the plot, and yet at the
same time shall serve the purpose of conveying information to
the reader, demands great power in the artist.
It is the third method, needless to say, which is acted on in
the Iliad. At the beginning of the epic we are simply told
that Achilles and Agamemnon, being Achaeans, quarrelled about
a captive, Brisei's. That they were at the time beleaguering
Troy, we incidentally learn from the words of Brise'is' father,
who prays that the Achaeans may succeed in capturing Troy, if
only they will restore him his daughter. Why the Achaeans
are besieging Troy we are not formally told, but some light is
given us when, in the heat of the angry quarrel, Achilles says
he is here for no advantage of his own, but of Menelaus and
Agamemnon, to gain recompense for them. Evidently, then,
the two sons of Atreus are besieging Troy to right some wrong
they have suffered, and Achilles and others are there to help
them. The hint thus afforded is confirmed, and the information
developed, when in the first engagement we observe Menelaus
single out one of the Trojan warriors and challenge him to
the fight, with the remark, " Thou mayst see what sort of
warrior is he whose lovely wife thou hast." Then during the
preparations for the duel, the cause of the Trojan war, the
carrying off of Helen by Paris, naturally comes out ; and the
picture of the state of things presupposed is completed by the
appearance of Helen herself.
Meanwhile, in other respects the setting of the scene has
been proceeded with. The forces on both sides are mustered
before our eyes, and we discover that the siege has endured for
full nine years. But this information is not conveyed directly
to, nor by talking at, the reader : it comes out in the necessary
course of the action. The general attack, which Agamemnon
has been delusively encouraged by Zeus to deliver, affords a
natural opportunity for giving a list of the Achreans who took

part in this great war, and of their opponents. The same inci-
dent, too, is utilised as a means of allowing the reader to dis-
cover the length of time which the siege has lasted, and the
hardships it has entailed. Before venturing to make a move-
ment of such importance, Agamemnon resolves to try a ruso
and prove his army's mettle by proposing to abandon the siege,
inasmuch as nine years have been fruitlessly spent on it Tho
readiness which the people show in accepting the offer demon-
strates the sufferings they had undergone, and the omen of the
sparrow and her eight young ones devoured by a serpent, an
omen boding the capture of Troy after nine years' siege, further
impresses the reader with the number of the years.
There remains yet one more point to be noticed here before
we dismiss the subject of the skill with which Homer paints in
his background. It is a point of much importance, and has
been sometimes overlooked. In the fighting which followed
on the violation of the truce, and in which Diomede displayed
his valour, when the Aclueans are wavering, Here upbraids
them thus :— " Fie upon you ! . . . While yet noble Achilles
entered continually into battle, then issued not the Trojans even
from the Dardanian gate ; for they had dread of his terrible
spear." l This passage, which is corroborated by others (v. 788,
ix. 352, xv. 721), shows that we are to suppose the Trojans as
confined to their lines for the first nine years. Now that
Achilles is no longer against them, they venture forth : and this
is important, not only because occurring, as the first passage,
does, in a book devoted to the prowess of Diomede, it keeps
the attention of the reader to the absence of Achilles and tho
consequences of his absence, but also because, if we overlook
this aspect of the circumstances preceding the action of the
Iliad, we fail to understand that the total result of the first
day's fighting, though indecisive in itself, is yet, compared with
the previous state of things, most encouraging to the Trojans.
Having examined the background of the, Iliad, let us turn
now to the plot itself. "Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles,
i' son, the ruinous wrath that brought on the Achaians
woes innumerable." In these, the opening words of the Iliad,
we have the subject fully stated ; the poem is the story of
Achilles' wrath and its consequences. The plot is the way in
which the wrath was aroused, displayed, and tinally exhausted.
1 Here and throughout the translations are from the excellent version! of
the Iliad by Messrs. Lang, Leaf, aud Myers; of the Odyssey, by Missis.
Butcher and Lang.
EPIC POETKY : THE ILIAD. I I
If now we examine the Iliad we shall find there is little in it

that was not designed — whether by a single original author, or
by the authors of subsequently added books — for the purpose
of carrying forward the plot. Given the subject, different
authors might work it out in different ways, might imagine
different causes for the quarrel, different forms for Achilles'
anger to take, and different modes of terminating it. But in
the Iliad there are no traces of any differences on any of these
points. The plot is one and the same throughout. The cause
of the quarrel is always the unfair and dishonouring treatment
of Achilles by Agamemnon in the matter of Briseis ; the form
which Achilles' anger takes is always abstention from assisting
the Achaeans ; and the resolution of the entanglement is always
the death of Patroclus, and the consequent renunciation by
Achilles of his punitive inaction.
Let us now examine the plot a little more closely, and see how
the details fit in with the main outline of the story, and are
necessitated by it and by each other. Achilles complains to
Thetis of the wrong put on him, and she obtains from Zeus a
promise that the Achaeans shall suffer for their conduct. This
promise dominates the whole story, there is no hint of any other
reason for the general reverse — in spite of temporary successes
— of the Achaeaus ; and from this interference of Zeus, which is
implied by the whole of the Iliad, flow the events of the first
day's fighting. That these events might have been framed
differently by the poet is true, but this does not show that
they were originally conceived by him in some other way. The
cause, the exhibition, and the termination of Achilles' anger,
might have been worked out in a manner different from that
in which they have actually been developed. But no one
argues from this that they were originally developed differently ;
and the reason is that the actual treatment of any one of these
points is consistent with itself, and harmonises with the rest.
So too the events of the first day's fighting. The deceitful
dream sent by Zeus induces Agamemnon to make a general
attack, which he prefaces by proving the spirit of his men ;
and the Trojans are encouraged by the intervention of Zeus
to accept the engagement. Thus Paris and Menelaus are
brought face to face : the duel naturally and its consequences
necessarily follow. If the duel had boon fought out, and its
terms acted on, the war would have ended, and Zeus' promise
would have been broken. The treachery of Paudarus, there-
fore, and a general engagement were necessitated by the
duel.
12 EISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
The other incidents which helong to this the first day of

fighting, the second of the Iliad's action, follow from the pro-
mise of Zeus, and are implied by what happens after them, as
well as hy the state of things which is represented as existing
at the moment when the Iliad begins. That is to say, the
fighting is necessitated by the treachery of Pandarus (which is
referred to several times, v. 206, vii. 69 and 351); disaster to
the Achaeans is involved by the promise of Zeus ; while the
overwhelming numbers of the Aclneans (ii. 123 ff.), and the
nine years' terror of the Trojans, made it impossible for the
poet to represent the Achaeans as suffering a crushing defeat
the very first time they met their foes in the open field. In
these considerations we find the explanation and justification of
the books which relate the prowess of Diomede. On the one
hand, the promise of Zeus made it imperative that the Achaeans
should sutler defeat ; on the other, the demands of probability
and consistency required that the promise of Zeus should be, if
not overridden, at least to some extent thwarted : and the solu-
tion of this difficulty was found in the intervention of the
deities that sided with the Achaeans — an intervention which
showed itself in supporting Diomede.
Thus the appearance of Diomede rests on conceptions which
are at the very foundation of the plot. On the appearance of
Diomede depend the departure of Hector for Troy to institute
prayers for his repulse, the meeting of Hector and Andromache,
and the contrasted scene between Hector, Paris, and Helen.
All these incidents derive their connection with the plot from
the exploits of Diomede, as the latter in their turn derive
much of their aesthetic value from the fact that the former
depend on them. The next event, the single combat between
Hector and Ajax, does not flow from the exploits of Diomede,
but serves to impress the same conclusion on the reader, viz.,
that the Trojans, who had long been inferior to the Achaeans,
were now proving a match for them.
Put for the Trojans merely to prove a match for the Achaeans
was no fulfilment of the promise made by Zeus to Thetis.
Thanks to the prowess of Diomede and the intervention of
some of the gods, the Achaeans hail by no means Buffered so
severely as the wrath of Achilles and the promise of Zeus de-
manded. It became necessary, therefore, for Zeus to intervene
in a yet more decided manner ; and the angry speech in which
he forbids any of the gods to assist the Achaeans was ne
tated by what had occurred, and shows the close connection
between this part of the Iliad and the preceding books. The
EPIC POETRY : THE ILIAD. I3
success which Zeus now interferes to secure to the Trojans,

sufficient to make Agamemnon desire once more the services of
Achilles, but not sufficiently overwhelming to satiate Achilles'
wrath, naturally results in the embassy to the offended hero,
which as naturally fails. The episode known as the Doloneia
filling the Tenth Book has no connection with the plot. But
in the Eleventh Book we begin to see what is an essential part
of the subject of the Iliad, the " woes innumerable" entailed
by the wrath of Achillas. One after the other, Agamemnon,
Diomede, and Ulysses, as well as inferior Achaean chieftains,
are wounded and have to retire from the fray. What Achilles
had prayed for was beginning to come to pass. Now he has
the Achaeans on the hip : when they came to him before, they
did not understand the fury of his resentment. And this was
but the earnest of what was to come ; for the Trojans attacked
the wall which the Achaeans, thus practically acknowledging
their inferiority, had built at the end of the first day's fighting
to protect their ships.
But though the cup of victory seemed so near the Trojans'
lips, it was not to reach them. To represent the Achaeans. so
long masters of the field, as yielding all the time and making
no stand, was alike opposed to probabilities and to the poet's
patriotism. The necessity for their ill-success was the will of
Zeus, and the only power capable of even temporarily opposing
the father of gods and men was to be found in Poseidon, the
brother, and Here the sister-wife of Zeus. This agency is
accordingly set in action ; and the tide of Trojan victory, which
threatened to be unbroken and monotonous, is checked for a
time, until. Zeus again interferes, and once more the tide rolls
on. Achilles is so far satisfied with the sufferings of the
Achaeans — for now his wrath had, as the proem of the Iliad
summarises it, " hurled down into Hades many strong souls
of heroes, and given their bodies to be a prey to dogs and all
winged fowls" — that he is willing to allow Patroclus to assume
his armour and fight for the Achaeans. After this the plot
moves rapidly and easily. Patroclus is slain : the loss of
Achilles' armour, the- lending of which to Patroclus had been
suggested as far back as the Tenth Book by Nestor, necessitates
the making of new armour, and the vengeance which Achilles
must take compels him, reluctantly enough, to submit to recon-
ciliation with Agamemnon.
With the death of Hector at the hands of Achilles, the action
of the Iliad is sometimes said to be ended. But a little reflec-
tion will show us that this is not quite the case. In order to
be able to avenge the death of Patroclus, Achilles desired the

Acha-ans to move against the Trojans ; but this could only be
done by the order of Agamemnon, and before giving this order
Agamemnon insists on Achilles accepting the gifts he had
already offered. Achilles allows them to be thrust on him, —
plainly because he cares for nothing but vengeance, not because
his feeling against Agamemnon has died out entirely. The
feeling of wrath is outweighed, not banished, by the desire of
revenge ; and it is only in the Twenty-third Book that we find
the wrath of Achilles finally banished from his bosom. In that
book, at the end of the funeral games held in honour of Patro-
clus, Achilles makes an opportunity of paying Agamemnon a
courteous compliment, which shows his resentment to be ended
as plainly as, in the so-called reconciliation of a previous book,
his behaviour showed that he still harboured some feeling of
resentment.
The last book of the Iliad cannot be said to be indispensable
to the action or the plot ; the subject of the epic, the wrath of
Achilles, is exhausted. But for the interest, for the character-
drawing, and on Aristotle's principle that an epic must have, as
■well as a beginning and middle, an end, the Twenty-fourth
Book is indispensable.
Having examined the structure, and seen the essential unity
of the plot, and having admired the way in which Homer con-
veys to the reader's mind the state of things which must be
supposed as preceding the action of the Iliad, we may now con-
sider the skill with which he dismisses the subject, as it were.
The state of things which ensues on the story has to be indi-
cated, as well as that which precedes it ; in other .words, the
background has to be completed. This is done inartistically by
Euripides in some plays by means of an epilogue, in which the
author explains the subsequent fate of his characters— thereby
admitting that his play is not complete and satisfactory in itself,
that, in Aristotle's words, it has not an end. Now although in
the Iliad the subject proper, the wrath of Achilles, is brought
to a full, satisfactory, and tragic termination, there are things
which cannot come to an end within the limits of the action,
which yet the reader wishes to be satisfied about. The interest
inspired by Hector is naturally terminated within the limits of
the plot, because it is part of the plot that he should be killed.
But the fate of Troy, which the story makes a point of interest,
by the conditions of the plot cannot, form part of the plot.
Still more is the reader anxious to knew the fate of Achilles;
and we have now to admire the skill with which the poet satis-
EPIC POETRY : THE ILIAD. I5
fies these natural demands, without violating the laws of illusion

as the epilogues of Euripides violate them.
With consummate art Homer anticipates the feelings which
will be roused in the reader. Instead of waiting till interest
and curiosity are aroused, and then providing the answer, he
gives the information at once. Two advantages obviously re-
sult from this : in the first place, to wait for the curiosity to be
aroused, and then to provide the answer, would be as though
the subsequent events were not really the consequences of the
action, but had been invented by the author to satisfy the
reader — a violation of the laws of illusion which one feels in
the termination of many novels. In the next place, by provid-
ing the solution along with the problem, Homer prevents the
reader's attention from being distracted from the action of the
book to side issues. As an illustration we may take the fate of
Troy. As soon as we have been placed in full possession of the
causes of the Trojan war, have seen Helen, Paris, and Mene-
laus, have seen the forces mustered on both sides, and have had
our sympathies with the Trojans awakened by Hector and
Andromache, at once the question of the fate of Troy is settled,
and speculations on the subject precluded, by means of the gods
in the Fourth Book. Zeus pretends to be thinking of allowing
the duel between Paris and Menelaus to put an end to the war,
in which case " the city of King Priam may yet be an habita-
tion, and Menelaus take back Helen of Argos." But although
he regrets that Troy must be sacked, he gives Here permission
to do as she is minded, and destroy the place. And the destruc-
tion of Troy is felt all through the Iliad to be certain and immi-
nent. The omen of the sparrow and her eight young ones,
indicating the success of the Achaeans in the tenth year, the
confidence of Diomede that Troy is doomed, when Agamemnon
proposes to fly in consequence of the abortive embassy to
Achilles ; and in the Fifteenth Book the express declaration of
Zeus that Achilles shall rout the Trojans " until the Achaiana
take steep Ilion ; " all are touches painting in this necessary
feature of the background.
The fate of Achilles, which was more certain even than the
fate of Troy to rouse the reader's interest, is another necessary
feature of the background, and the skill with which it is painted
in is great. At first the indications of it are only slight : his
death looms at no great distance. But as the story goes on,
and as the figure of Achilles becomes more and more the centro
of the action and the interest, the death which dogs his footsteps
becomes clearer and clearer to our eyes. In tho First Book, as
soon as the quarrel is over, Achilles' words to Thetis, "Mother,

seeing thou didst of a truth hear me to so hrief span of life,"
show us dimly what is to happen. When Achilles next appears
upon the scene, in the Ninth Book, the figure of death takes a
clearer shape. Achilles says to Ulysses, " If I ahide here and
besiege the Trojans' city, then my returning home is taken
from me, hut my fame shall be imperishable ; but if I go home
to my dear native land, my high fame is taken from me, but
my life shall endure long while, neither shall the issue of death
soon reach me." Thus his death is to be not only soon, but
during
Book, isthis Trojan
about war.vengeance
to take "When Achilles, in his
on Hector, the death
Eighteenth
is yet
more sharply denned. Thetis says to him, " Straightway after
Hector, is death appointed unto thee." Then the mode of
death is vaguely brought before our eyes when Achilles says
to Polydorus, "My life, too, some man shall take in battle,
whether with spear he smite or arrow from the string." Soon
this too becomes clearer, for in the Twenty-iirst Book the hero
says, "Under the wall of the mail-clad men of Troy I must die
by the swift arrows of Apollo." Last, in the next book, the
dying Hector warns his slayer "of the day when Paris and
Phoebus Apollo slay thee, for all thy valour, at the Skaian gate."
Is it necessary to dilate on this perfect piece of art? What
to other writers would have been a stumbling-block, Homer
makes into an ornament and a support. The death of Achilles
has nothing to do with the plot of the Iliad ; it is a side-issue
which must be disposed of somehow ; and it is further a side-
issue which threatened to ruin the unity of the epic by becom-
ing more interesting than the proper subject, by thrusting the
latter into a secondary and itself taking the first place. The
side-issue is allowed to develop all its strength and then made
to strengthen the main plot. Whenever Achilles appears before
the reader, it is to the accompaniment of these funeral notes.
They mark his presence on the stage as in a work of Wagner's
a "motive" marks a character's appearance. As the interest of
the subject increases, and as the action advances, these notes
become louder and louder, until the climax of the excitement
is reached and the crescendo ends with Hector's dying pro-
phecy in a final and terrible crash.
EPIC POETRY : THE ODYSSEY. IJ
CHAPTER II.
THE ODYSSEY.
The Odyssey has been more popular in modern times than the
Iliad. This is doubtless partly due to its being domestic and
not military in its subject. Descriptions of fighting done with
obsolete weapons have mainly but an antiquarian interest ; and
the various kinds of wounds and various modes of shedding
blood have less charm for an industrial and domestic society
than have the sufferings of a faithful wife. The domestic
interest is indeed present in the Iliad, and Hector and Andro-
mache, for that reason, tended in the Middle Ages to come to
be regarded as the leading characters and the central interest
of the Iliad — a wholly false conception of the epic. Another
reason for the popularity in modern times of the Odyssey is
that the poem contains fairy tales. Ogres and ogresses, the
floating island of iEolus, the marvellous bag containing the
winds, Scylla and Charybdis, the descent into the realms of the
dead, the enchanted isles of Circe and Calypso, the one-eyed
giant, are all tales which exercise now, as they seem to have
done from the earliest Aryan times, an inexhaustible influence
over the popular fancy. A third reason for the popularity of
the Odyssey is that, in addition to the poetry with which all
these tales are invested, they are woven with consummate artis-
tic skill into a single whole.
Let us now see wherein the unity of the Odyssey, as we have
it, consists ; for that it possesses unity is universally admitted,
though it is disputed whether this unity is the deliberate
design of one artist, or the result of the labours of successive
generations of poets working at the same subject. The theme
of the Odyssey is as simple as that of the Iliad : the one is the
wrath of Achilles and its consequences, the other is the return
of Odysseus home. As Aristotle says {Poetics, 1 7), the argument
of the Odyssey is slight : a man being away from home for man v
years, things at home fall into such a condition that his Bub-
stance is devoured by suitors, and plots are formed against his
son ; at length, after a stormy voyage, the hero comes home, and
having revealed himself to a few people ami having attacked
the suitors, comes olf safe himself and kills his enemies.
Everything else is episode. But these episodes are woven —
whether by one poet or more — so skilfully into the narrative,
that if envious Time had robbed us of the Iliad and left us
B
I8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
only the Odyssey, there never, in all probability, would have

arisen the question whether the Homeric poems are the work
of one author or more.
As in the Iliad, so in the Odyssey, there are at the beginning
of the epic several books which do not advance the action of
the poem, but depict the state of things preceding it and serve
as an exposition. The iirst four books of the Odyssey contain
the journey of Telemachus to Pylos and Sparta in quest of
news of his father. In them Telemachus is the principal figure,
and they have in consequence been called the Telemachia.
From these books, as from certain books of the Iliad, the hero
of the epic is absent. But in the Iliad the absence of Achilles
is necessary, because the Greeks have to be made to feel the
consequences of his wrath. In the Odyssey the absence of
Odysseus from home is equally part of the theme of the poem ;
and for the interest of the poem it is necessary that the state
of things in the hero's home should be depicted, so as to enlist
the reader's sympathy with the hero in his struggles to return,
and with the hero's wife and son in their longing for his return.
The art with which both these objects are attained in the
Telemachia hardly needs pointing out. The insolence of the
suitors is brought into high relief by the device of bringing
Athene on the scene in the guise of a stranger : the impression
made on the seeming stranger by the wantonness of the wooers
is felt to be the judgment which any impartial and honest man
would pass upon their conduct. Further, the evil character of
the suitors comes out more and more, the more we see of them.
The evil which they work is not confined, as it might be inferred
from the First Book, to the house of Odysseus. In the Second
Book we find in the assembly that they behave to the people
of Ithaca as insolently as they treat Penelope and Telemachus ;
and finally, in the Fourth Book, they plot the death of the son
while hoping by force to wed the mother, and they enjoy the
humour of the situation.
By the side of this picture we have that of the faithful wife.
This strand in the thread of the story runs through all the four
books. It appeals not only in the First Book, but in the
Second Book, in the story of the unravelling of the web by
night; and in Hooks iii. and iv. it is brought out by the con-
trast between Penelope and Clytemestra.1 Attention should
also be paid to the way in which, in the Telemachia, the news
about Odysseus, vague at first, takes more and more definite
1 This appears to be the correct way of spelling the name— not Clyteni-
nestra.
EPIC POETltY : THE ODYSSEY. I9
shape as Telenmchus proceeds with the inquiry, but stops when

it reaches the point at which the action of the Odyssey begins.1
At the beginning of Book i. no news is known to Telemachus
of his father. Then, in disguise, comes Athene, who had seen
Odysseus when he started for the war. Next, Nestor has seen
him immediately after the war, but knows nothing more. Then
Menelaus learnt from Proteus still later that Odysseus was con-
fined in Calypso's isle, Ogygia.
This forms the exposition ; and it is only when our interest
and sympathy have been roused, when the distance of Odysseus
from home has been impressed on us, and the desire awakened
in us to know how he came to be in Ogygia, and how he is to
come home, that the poet begins the tale of his wanderings and
his adventures. The tales which are contained in this part
of the Odyssey existed long before Homer's time, and among
many other peoples than the Greeks. The story of the one-
eyed giant is probably not of Aryan origin, for it is found
among Esthonians and Basques, who lived in Europe long before
their Aryan invaders came there. The transformation of men
into beasts is a widely spread belief, and the tale of Circe in
particular appears in the Sanskrit Somadeva, as does also the
land of Phseacia ; though, as the Somadeva was put together
about 1200 a.d., these two tales may have travelled from
Greece to India, as one of the tales in the IJitopadega travelled
from Hindostan to Alexandria by the caravan route, and became
incorporated in the Arabian Nights. Mermaidens such as the
Sirens, ogres and ogresses such as the Laestrygonians, the
octopus which figures as Scylla, the clashing rocks which are
known to the Aztecs, the descent into the realms of the dead,
which is told by the South Sea Islanders, should all, pro-
bably, be regarded, not as the original invention of Homer, but
as popular stories, Marchen, which the poet fused into the
Odyssey.
We have now, however, not to trace the ultimate origin of
these sagas, but to see how they are united into one poem along
with the tale, which existed in other forms before it was
attached to the name of Odysseus, of the hero who after long
absence returned to his faithful wife. In one of these legends,
that of the Cyclops, Odysseus acts in a manner unlike his usual
1 This seems to indicate tlmt the Telemachia probably never existed inde-
pendently of the Odys<ey. Why should a writer who had never heard of
the Odyssey happen, when relating a voyage of Telemachus, to give just
such information as is required for the understanding of the Odyssey, and
then break oft' at the point where another poet, working independently,
happened precisely to begin?
prudence ; he deliberately courts misfortune and voluntarily

enters the Cyclops' den. This was probably an essential feature
in the popular tale ; and Homer, in adopting the story, lias
retained this feature ; but so far from leaving it as an unsightly
inconsistency, ho has turned it to advantage. This piece of
folly in which Odysseus indulges is " the beginning of evil."
It led to the blinding of the Cyclops, which provoked the
wrath of Poseidon, and that was the cause of all Odysseus'
wanderings. From the land of the Cyclops he was carried to
the floating island of iEolus, but the safe return which the
wonderful wallet might have procured for Odysseus waa
frustrated, evidently, as Êolus says, by the gods. After this
indication of the nature of the power that was presiding over
his course, it is not surprising that Odysseus should next lose
all his ships but one among the Loestrygonians, and then be
carried to the enchanted island of Circe. After his year's stay
there, he is sent by Circe down to Hades, there to learn what
wanderings destiny yet has in store for him. Thus his subse-
quent course does not appear to be the arbitrary arrangement of
a poet working up given material, but has the seal of fate set on
it by the appalling scene among the dead. From Circe's isle,
JE&a, he sails by the Sirens, the Rocks Wandering, Scylla and
Charybdis, and thus reaches the Island of the Sun. There his
crew commit the offence they were Avarned against, ami kill
the sacred herds of Helios. Thus all his crew perished, and
Odysseus alone was saved on Calypso's isle. There he spends
eight years, until Athene pleads for him against Poseidon among
the gods, and he is allowed to sail from Ogygia to the land of
the Pha?.acians, not, however, without suffering wreck once more
from Poseidon's power. From Phasacia he reaches Ithaca in
safety.
We see, then, that the latter half of the hero's adventures
are bound together by the utterance of the seer Teiresias in
Hades, and that the descent to Hades was one of the conse-
quences ofthe wrath of Poseidon. The direct intervention of
this god occurs in the wreck of the raft on which Odysseus set
sail from Ogygia, and the misfortunes of Odysseus generally are
ascribed to Poseidon both by Teiresias and by Athene. But
in most of the calamities that overtook Odysseus there is no
special mention of Poseidon as the immediate cause This has
been regarded by some critics as a proof that in the original
Odyssey there was a different conception of the cause of the
hero's wanderings, and (hat the Introduction of Poseidon is
later than the " kernel" of the Odyssey. Put this theory pro-
EPIC POETRY : THE ODYSSEY. 2 I
ceeds on the tacit assumption that if the adventures of Odysseus

had been composed by the same poet who wrote the Telemachia
and the last twelve books, and who ascribed the adventures
and misfortunes of Odysseus to Poseidon's anger, he would in
relating each of them have specially mentioned Poseidon as the
cause. But of this there is no proof, and it may be questioned
whether the continued introduction of Poseidon, time after
time, would not have been monotonous and inartistic. The
popular stories which Homer wove into the Odyssey had origi-
nally no connection with Odysseus, and therefore none with
Poseidon ; and so far the importation of Poseidon into them is
later than the stories themselves. Possibly these stories had
become popularly associated with the name of Odysseus before
Homer wove them together by the device of making Poseidon
the ultimate cause of all Odysseus' adventures. If this be so,
the only question left is whether the poet has made it suffi-
ciently clear that Poseidon was the cause ; and inasmuch as he
three times expressly and as it were officially — by the mouth
of a goddess, of Teiresias and of Odysseus — declares that
Poseidon teas the cause, and twice introduces Poseidon as
directly intervening, it seems to be hypercriticism to require
more, and to ascribe some of the work to one author and the
rest to another, because the poet has not labelled each and
every story with the signature of Poseidon.
The fairyland adventures of Odysseus, then, have all the
unity with each other which stories of such diverse origin
could have. Their connection with the rest of the Odyssey
is even closer. The Telemachia and the Thirteenth Book
both ascribe these adventures to the action of Poseidon. Teire-
sias in Hades prophesies the destruction which overtakes the
wooers in the later books. The appearance of the ghost of
Anticleia in Hades is confirmed by the mention of her death
in the later books. Further, the fidelity of Penelope is a
feature common to all three divisions of the Odyssey. It is
brought out in the same way, that is, by pointed contrast with
the conduct of Clytemestra. in all three ; and the happiness of
Arete and Nausicaa in their home in Phseacia can scarcely be
an accidental contrast to the sufferings of Penelope in her home
in Ithaca. Finally, the summary which Odysseus gives to
Penelope of his adventures confirms the account in Books v.
to xii.
Thus Books v. -xii. arc dominated by the same conception of
the cause of Odysseus' wanderings and of the state of things in
Ithaca as is the rest of the Odyssey. We have now to consider
the skill with which the climax of the Odyssey is wrought out in
Books xiii.-xxiv., and with which these books are interwoven
with the Telemachia. Telemachus having been sent by Athene
to Sparta, is recalled by her to Ithaca, and, in order to avoid the
ambuscade of the suitors, is bidden to laud, not at the city, but
near the steading of Eumseus, the swineherd. Thus Telema-
chus is brought into the company of Odysseus, and the threads
of the Telemachia and Books v.-xii. are united.1 The next
stage in the action is brought about very simply and artistically.
Telemachus, with the same consideration for his mother's feel-
ings as he displays in the Telemachia, where he takes steps to
conceal his journey from her, sends Eumseus to the city to
inform Penelope of his safe return. Thus the stage is cleared
for the recognition of Odysseus. After this, Telemachus goes
first, and Odysseus follows him to the city. The omens indica-
tive of the vengeance that is nigh become more and more fre-
quent, reaching their climax in the vision of Theoclymenus, a
character that appears in the Telemachia as well as in Books
xiii.-xxiv., and helps to unite these two parts of the Odyssey.
While these tokens of the gods' will are manifesting themselves,
the suitors are filling the measure of their wrong-doing by their
fresh plot against the life of Telemachus, by their contumely
towards the disguised Odysseus, in defiance of the protection
which Zeus accords to strangers and beggars, and in strong
contrast to the behaviour of Eumams; while the universal
misery and hatred which the wooers have excited is revealed in
one marvellous flash, when at the dawn of the day of Odysseus'
vengeance the woman at the mill prays to Zeus, " Fulfil now,
I pray thee, even to miserable me, the word that I shall speak.
.... They that have loosened my knees with cruel toil to
grind their barley-meal, may they now sup their last." The
crescendo of the wooers' crimes is common to the Telemachia
and Books xiii.-xxiv.
The excitement of the plot is heightened by the fact that on
the very day Odysseus enters his house in disguise, Penelope,
having, in defiance of public opinion, refused for so long to wed,
has, with infinite grief, resolved to make an end of her resistance
to the suitors. Her husband had charged her to wait, if he did
not return, no longer than till their son was a grown man :
that time had come, and regard for her son's future prompted
her to a decision. Thus she resolves on the trial of the bow ;
1 If the Telemachia did not form part of the original Odyssey, and Tele-
machos was not represented therein as making a voyage, his return to Ithaca
is somewhat inexplicable.
epic poetry: the odyssey. 23
and on that day Odysseus arrives. The situation is dramatic ;

but it is said by some critics that there are indications in the
poem itself that this is not the tale as it was told in the original
Odyssey. In the last book the ghost of Amphimedon ascribes
the trial of the bow to the ingenuity of Odysseus, who suggested
it to his wife in order to bring about the wooers' destruction.
This, we are told, proves that, originally, Penelope was not
about to succumb to the twenty years of weary waiting and
hope deferred that she had suffered. The disguised Odysseus
suggested, and she accepted it, as a means of further delay, since
it was certain that none of the wooers could succeed in the trial.
Thus there was originally no situation : things were going on
much as usual, and there was no particular need for Odysseus
to arrive at this time rather than any other. Consequently our
admiration of the unity of the Odyssey is, at least as regards
this point, misplaced, because here we have not unity, but dis-
crepancy ofdesign.
It does not, however, seem necessary to accept this conclusion.
That Amphimedon, knowing nothing of the facts, should ascribe
the conjunction of events which brought about the slaughter
to the cunning of Odysseus is natural, and is consistent with
the repeated tributes to the hero's cleverness which occur
throughout the poem. To press the words further is unsafe,
and we are not much encouraged to draw from them conclu-
sions about the original form of the Odyssey, when we find
that the passage in which they occur — the second Nekuia — is
regarded by the same critics as having been introduced long
after the original form of the Odyssey had been lost.
The unity of design in the later books of the Odyssey has also
been attacked on other grounds. Athene, having transformed
and re-transformed Odysseus, again gives him the appearance of
a beggar, and in that disguise he goes to his home ; is ill-treated
by, and kills, the suitors. Then, without being changed back
into his proper shape, he is recognised by Penelope. This fact —
that Odysseus is not mentioned as being changed again into his
real shape — is taken to show that originally there was no trans-
forming of Odysseus at all. In the original Odyssey, the hero,
aged and altered by years and suffering, was naturally protected
from immediate recognition. But a later and more "reflective "
age found a supernatural transformation necessary to account
for the non-recognition of Odysseus by his son, wife, and
servants ; and so the original tale was patched with this view.
But fortunately the original conception is still to be seen by
seeing eyes. If Odysseus had originally and really been trans-
formed, then of course the scar on his leg would have been
transformed too. But the scar on his leg was not transformed ;
he shows it to his father, to Eumaeus, and to the neatherd, and
Eurycleia discovered him by it ; therefore Odysseus was not
transformed in the original Odyssey. Consequently, instead of
unity, we have again discrepancy of design ; for these scenes are
a patchwork combination of the work of two very different
ages.
As these arguments have been put forward gravely, they
must receive a grave answer ; and we may say, first, that before
Odysseus is recognised by Penelope, he is, as a matter of fact,
re-transformed (xxiii. 156-163) by Athene. She does not,
indeed, use her wand as she does in first transforming him, but
to the gods all things are possible. Secondly, in all countries
and literature, the supernatural and marvellous precede the
employment of purely natural causes. Fairy tales come early,
not late, in a nation's growth ; so that if two versions of the
story did exist, we should be justified in concluding that the
version which contained a magic change was earlier than that
which relied solely on the changes brought about by the natural
operation of age and suffering. Thirdly, the subject of trans-
formation isa difficult and obscure one. Ir one story the
change seems to leave untouched at least the psychological
identity of the person transformed ; whereas in another a very
simple measure of transformation is enough to cause the person
concerned to ask, "Can this be I V The lLnits within which
are confined the changes wrought by transformation seem to be
shifting, and to be so elastic that, if Homer cays or implies that
Odysseus was indeed transformed, but the transformation did
not take effect upon his legs or the scars upon his legs, we may
fortify ourselves by the analogy of the prince in the Arabian
Niijlits (who conversely had his logs changed into black marble,
but not the rest of his body), and take Homer's word for it.
Without lure entering upon the question as to whether
we have the "original" Odyssey or not, and, if not, how the
changes that have been made were made, we may at least con-
clude that the traces of such changes are not considerable enough
to affect the admiration which critics, from Aristotle onwards,
have felt and expressed for the unity and dramatic interest of
the Odyssey. It is better to profit by the beauty of the poem
as we have it, than to bestow our admiration upon theOd]
•original " it may be, as constructed by some modern critics.
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION, 2 5
CHAPTER IIL
THE HOMERIC QUESTION.
In very early times there seems to have hcen a " Homeric

question," though it has very little in common with the Homeric
question of modern times. From an early period any epic
which pleased the popular fancy appears to have heen ascribed
to Homer, as any law at Athens which had anything to recom-
mend it was ascribed by the orators to Solon. But in the
course of time, and on grounds which, like the epics themselves,
are lost to us, one epic after another was abjudicated from
Homer, and the Iliad and Odyssey were the only epics of
which Homer was allowed to be the author. But the process
of separation did not stop here. Photius, a Patriarch of Con-
stantinople, who died a.d. 891, quotes from a late writer named
Proclus a statement to the effect that Xenon and Hellanicus
denied that the Odyssey was by Homer. Of Xenon we know
nothing (he is mentioned in one of the Scholia — Greek com-
mentaries of various dates — to the Iliad, and that is all) :
Hellanicus was senior to the famous Alexandrian grammarian
and Homeric critic, Aristarchus, whose date is about B.c. 222-
150. The upholders of the view that the Iliad and the
Odyssey were by different authors were called the Ckorizontes
or Separatists, and were combated by Aristarchus. In antiquity
the theory was considered a paradox ; and in modern times the
question whether the two poems are by the same author has
yielded to the question whether either poem is by a single
author.
The arguments on which the ancient separatists proceeded
were partly linguistic and partly mythological, so far as can be
learnt from the scattered notices to be found in ancient Greek
commentaries on the Iliad. As an example of their linguistic
arguments, we may take that based on the use of the word
proparoithen, "before." This word may be used, like the
English "before," either of things in space or of things in time,
and probably was first used of space, and subsequently extended
to time. In the Iliad, the Chorizontes said, the word is used
of space ; in the Odyssey, of time. Obviously, therefore, lan-
guage had undergone some development between the time when
the Iliad and the Odyssey were written. But, as a matter of
fact, the word is used of time in the Iliad as often as in the
Odyssey — once in each poem. An instance of the arguments
26 niSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
drawn from mythology is the fact that in the Iliad Charis is

the wife of Hephaestus ; in the Odyssey, Aphrodite. This is
undeniable; but in the "fluid" state in which mythology was
in early times, the fact does not go for much. A stronger argu-
ment is that in the Iliad there is one Charis, in the Odyssey
there are several Charites. which may indicate that the legend
had undergone development, and thus point to a later origin for
the Odyssey. Another mythological argument used by the
ancient Chorizontes is that in the Iliad Iris appears as the
messenger of the gods ; in the Odyssey, Hermes. But the facts
do not wholly bear out this argument; for although in the
Iliad Iris is frequently the messenger, Hermes also acts on one
important occasion in this capacity ; while in the Odyssey,
though Hermes appears once as messenger, the functions of Iris
had certainly not died out of memory, as is shown by the jest
of calling a beggar who ran messages Irus.1
In modern times the arguments of the ancient Chorizontes
have been taken up for the purpose of showing that — whether
each poem is by one, and only one, author or not — at any rate
the Odyssey belongs to a later period than the Iliad. No one
professes to assign much weight to the arguments used, though
the conclusion is pretty generally accepted. That there are
differences between the two poems is undisputed. The question
is whether the differences are greater than the difference in
subject naturally involves. "Minstrels" are frequently men-
tioned in the Odyssey, but are unknown in the Iliad. But
minstrels were apparently the appanages of a court, not of a
camp. In the Iliad the gods are much more violently opposed
to each other than in the Odyssey, which shows a progress in
religious sentiment. But the strife in Olympus gives majesty
to the mortal conflicts of the Iliad, whereas in the Odyssey
there is no such commotion on earth as to rouse war in heaven.
Again, it is said that the Odyssey, dealing with the return from
Troy, presupposes, and is therefore later than, the Iliad. The
subject of the one certainly presupposes the other. But there
is no reference in the Odyssey to the Iliad. The current
mythology doubtless embraced the tales of the Trojan war and
of the return of the Greeks before either Odyssey or Iliad was
composed ; and this is all that either presupposes. The Odyssey,
again, is supposed to show development of legend ; but the fluid
state of myths and legends makes it quite possible, that variants,
or even different stages, of a legend's growth continued to exist
Bide by side. Arguments have been drawn also from the differ-
1 Sec Geddcs, Problem of the Homeric Poems, 52-60.
epic poetry: the Homeric question. 27
ence in the vocabulary of the two poems, but little weight is

usually given to them. Finally, geographical knowledge in the
Odyssey is said to be wider, and consequently later, than that in
the Iliad. But the Odyssey gives greater scope for the display
of such knowledge ; and the question is further complicated by
the fact that passages which are quoted by the one side are
rejected as interpolations by the other.
But the ancient doubts whether both the Odyssey and Iliad
were by Homer have sunk into insignificance by the side of the
modern doubts whether either the Iliad or the Odyssey is by
Homer — whether there was ever such a person as Homer —
whether either poem is by one author — whether the poems are
not the fortuitous aggregate of unconnected ballads — whether
they are of any antiquity at all. These difficulties, which con-
stitute the modern Homeric question, were first definitely
raised at the end of last century, and to Wolf is justly due the.
honour of having raised them.1 Friedrich August Wolf was
a professor in Halle, and being engaged on an edition of the
Iliad, in his endeavours to gain a safe standing-ground from
which to criticise various readings and to emend faulty readings,
he was led to inquire of himself by what means the text of
Homer had come down to us, and particularly how it had been
transmitted in the earliest times. He found that not only, on
the current view of the great antiquity of Homer, was it ex-
tremely difficult to account for the transmission of so extensive
a text, but that the current view itself was based, as he supposed,
on two impossibilities. First, it implies the existence of writing
in Homer's time ; next, it implies the absence of any difference
between the state of
artificial condition of later
natureGreek
existing in Homer's time and the
civilisation.
In both these difficulties, which Wolf stated in his famous
Prolegomena to Homer (1795), we see the influence of the
general current of thought of the eighteenth century. " Nature"
had been brought into very sharp contrast with the artificial
complexity of modem civilisation by Kousseau, and the same
contrast was sought for in the literature of early and " natural"
times as compared with the productions of an advanced society.
1 Before W"olf learned men bad had transient doubts, e.g. Casaubon
and Perizonius, whether the poems were originally committed to writing;
Bentley, whether Homer intended the poems to be recited as wholes; an
Italian scholar, Vico, had denied the existence of Homer; Wood [Essay
on the Original Genius and Writings of Homer, 1769) had raised the ques-
tion of the antiquity of writing ; Zoega (1788) had called attention to incon-
sistencies inthe poems ; and Herder and Heyne contributed to the compara-
tive study of ballads and epics. Put all these taken together do not impair
the originality and magnitude of Wolf's achievement.
"Works belonging to primitive times must, like the ballads of

our own early literature, be short, simple, inartificial — in fine,
natural. With the advance of society literary compositions
became longer and more complex, and as the resources of art
accumulated, works of art became more artificial. In the
Nibelungenlied was found a parallel to Greek epics : the Nibe-
luuf/enlied was demonstrated to have been made out of ballads,
and the analogy was applied to the Homeric poems. With these
views on the history of literature, there could be no hesitation
in concluding that the Iliad and the Odyssey, in their present
form, belong to the later and more complex period of literary
development. Parts of each poem may belong to the simpler
and earlier period, but they have evidently been overlaid by
the work of the more artificial period.
The other difficulty which Wolf found in the way of tho
popular belief in the great antiquity of the poems as we have
them, resulted from applying to the origin of the Homeric
poems a question which was being put, with equally important
results, in philosophy with regard to knowledge, viz., how is it
possible? What are the conditions necessarily involved in the
supposition that the poems existed in times of great antiquity?
and did these conditions, as a matter of fact, exist ? In the first
place, the transmission of the poems for many centuries implies
the existence of writing. But before, say, B.C. 700, writing did
not exist in Greece. Either, then, the current view is wrung
in attributing to the poems a greater antiquity than B.C. 700 ;
or, if the poems did exist before that date, they must have been
short and simple enough to be committed to memory and trans-
mitted orally. And the latter hypothesis agrees with the view
that the poems of early and natural times were simple and short.
Lut inasmuch as the evidence as to tho date of the introduc-
tion of writing into Greece is scanty, Wolf brings forth another
condition which is indispensable for the composition of such
extensive works as tho Iliad and the Odyssey, and could not
have existed in the time of Homer. An artist must have a
public. A poet writes to be published. Now, whatever the
date at which writing was introduced into Greece, the habit of
reading was not established until very late times. Homer, that
is to say, composed to be recited and heard, not to be read.
But no audience could sit through a reading of the Iliad or tho
Odyssey, each consisting of twenty-four books and over 9000
verses. Therefore, to the impossibility of carrying so long a
work in the memory has to bo added the impossibility of ever
finding an audience for so long a poem. But if there was no
EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 29
audience to be had for such a work, it is pretty certain that no

such work would he composed. The length of a poem in those
times must have depended on the conditions under which it
was to he recited, and those conditions admitted of the recita-
tion of short poems only. Indeed, we know, as a matter of fact,
that in historic times, when Homer was recited at festivals, it
was not the whole Iliad or the whole Odyssey that was given,
hut only short portions of them called rhapsodies.
"We may, then, sum up Wolf's objections to the common view
of the great antiquity of Homer thus : in their present condition
the poems are not of the short and simple character which is
the mark of early and natural literature, and they are too long
to have been transmitted by memory or to have ever even found
an audience. The conclusion he drew was that Homer — whose
existence and genius he did not dispute — living in primitive
times, before writing was in common use, and before the exist-
ence of a reading public, could not have composed the whole,
but only parts, of the Iliad and Odyssey as we have them.
The rest consists of additions made by various subsequent poets
and professional reciters or rhapsodists. Which parts were by
Homer and which by later hands, Wolf made no attempt to dis-
cover, although he lived for many years after framing his theory
and publishing his Prolegomena.
There remains a third point to be noticed in Wolf's theory.
If Homer did not commit his poems to writing, and if the pre-
sent form of the Iliad and Odyssey is not due to Homer, by
whom were the poems committed to writing, and to whom is
their present form due? Wolf foresaw this difficulty and pro-
vided an answer. Pisistratus, the famous tyrant of Athens,
first caused the poems to be committed to writing. He also
united the poems, composed by different hands and recited indi-
vidually, into the two great wholes now known as the Iliad and
Odyssey. And this he did by means of a Commission of four
" Diaskeuasts," whose names, according to Wolf, were Onoma-
critus, Orpheus of Croton, Simonides, and Anacreon. The evi-
dence for these statements Wolf found in passages from Cicero,1
Pausanias2 (an antiquarian who flourished about a.d. 160),
iElian3 (whose date is about a.d. 180), a Life of Homer4 (author
unknown, date late), and a grammarian, Diomedes5 (very late).
Although these writers disagree as to the reason why Pisistratus
1 De Or. iii. 137, "primus Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic dispOBUMM
elicit in- ut nunc liabemus."
2 vii. 26. 3 V. H. xiii. 14.
* In Westermann's Collection.
B In Villoison, Anecdota Qraaa, ii. 182.
caused the poems to be edited into their present shape — some

say it was because previously they had never been committed
to writing, and that Pisistratus gave an obol for every line any
one could provide ; others, because the poems had suffered from
fires, earthquakes, and floods, and were therefore much scattered1
— still they all maintain the present form to be due to Pisistra-
tus ;and so closely does their language in this respect agree,
that it seems probable they either copied from each other or
from some common source. Since Wolf's time, on the strength
of a passage in Tzetzes (a Byzantian grammarian, date about
a.d. n 60), the names of the four Diaskeuasts have been given
as Onomacritus, Orpheus, Zopyrus, and Epikonkylos (the last
name is conjectural). But inasmuch as Tzetzes is separated by
an interval of 1700 years from the time he was writing about,
and is an inaccurate writer, we may dismiss him.
We have now to consider the worth of Wolf's authorities for
the Commission of Pisistratus. In the first place, they are none
of them sufficiently near in point of time to the period of Pisis-
tratus to carry any great weight. Cicero, the earliest of them,
lived 500 years after Pisistratus. How comes it that during
those 500 years no author makes mention of so important a
fact in literary history ? Aristotle, who made extensive inves-
tigations into the history of literature, knows nothing of this
Commission, or of any other form of Homer than that we pos-
sess. The Alexandrine critics of this period, who worked so
much on Homer, know nothing of it. No allusion to it is to
be found in Plato, none in the orators, who had various occa-
sions in their speeches when they would gladly have claimed
for Athens the distinction of such an important literary achieve-
ment had they known of it. It seems improbable that such a
valuable piece of information should have escaped so many
eager and competent students for half a millennium and then
have been discovered by Cicero. A more reasonable explana-
1 Tliis must be placed to the credit of Diomedes, the grammarian. He

too says thai PiaistratUB invited everybody who knew any Homer to contri-
bute their information, and paid them so much a verse. The result was
that Borne spurious verses — the work of those, we may conjecture, " qui lineft
denaria Bcribebant" — were sent in, and they are now marked by an obelisk.
1 riomedes then proceeds to get confused apparently between the revision by
Pisistratus and the Septuagint, for he says thai Pisistratus formed a 00m-
mittee of Beventy-two revisers (each paid an honorarium worthy of learned
critics), who set to work separately on the material thus provided them, and
then compared their results, nnd came to the conclusion that the best version
was that produced by Lvistarohus, the nexi best that of Zenodotus (Aristar-
elms and Zenodotus lived about 400 years after Pisistratus), This is inter-
esting as a specimen of the worth of Byzantine learning.
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 3 I
tion is that it was unknown to them, because it was only

invented after their time.1
The common source of all these stories seems to be an inscrip-
tion quoted in an anonymous Life of Homer, and there said to
have been taken from a statue of Pisistratns. The question
then arises whether the inscription was taken from the statue
of Pisistratus 1 In the first place, the Athenians' hatred of the
Pisistratidse makes it unlikely that any such statue was erected
in memory of Pisistratus ; and, in the next place, the words of
the inscription are remarkable. "Thrice tyrant, thrice the
populace of Athens expelled me, thrice recalled me, the great
Pisistratus, who collected Homer, erewhile sung scatteredly,"
&c. It is improbable that, in an inscription intended to do
honour to Pisistratus, his military achievements and his services
to religion should be entirely omitted, while his repeated ex-
pulsions from Athens — important facts in his life, but not those
which his heirs, wishing to remain tyrants of Athens, would
care to have remembered — are dwelt upon. And what is the
great achievement which, according to the inscription, outweighs
all else that Pisistratus did, and is to constitute his political
rehabilitation 1 A reform of the text of Homer. Assuming
that this reform was the work of Pisistratus, we certainly never
find it mentioned by any historian, orator, or other writer before
Alexandrine times, either as an extenuating circumstance in
Pisistratus' tyranny or in any other way. On the other hand,
we know that the royal patronage extended in Alexandrine
times by the Ptolemies to learning produced a reaction in
favour of discerning tyrants, and that the composition of epi-
grams was a favourite exercise amongst the literary men of
Alexandria. A service then to literature was precisely the one
fact which an Alexandrine writer would regard as worth record-
ing in an epigram on Pisistratus.
This is one suggestion as to the origin of the epigram and
the stories based upon it. It seems, however, more plausible
to trace the epigram to the rivalry which existed between the
two great schools of learning, Alexandria and Pergamum. Cicero,
in whom the story, as far as we can trace it, first appears, had
but little acquaintance with Alexandrian learning. On the
other hand, his education in Rhodes brought him under the
1 The same line of argument maybe applied to the statement that Onoraa-
critu8 was one of the members of the Commission. If he was, how is it that
Herodotus (vii. 6), who knows that Onomacritus " revised" many oraolea in
the interest of Pisistratus, and was expelled from Athens by Hippa rob IIS for
a lesssionacceptable
of Homer? revision of Musffius' oracles, has nothing to say of his ver-
influence of the Pergamum school. In Rhodes, Cicero was a

pupil of Posidonius, who was a pupil of Panaetius, who again
■was one of the followers of Crates of Mallos, the founder of tlie
Pergamum school. Thus Cicero's statement about Pisistratus
seems to go back ultimately rather to Pergamum than Alexan-
dria, and the circumstances which there gave rise to the story
seem to have consisted in the desire to depreciate Alexandria
and its royal patrons, by showing that there was nothing so very
remarkable in learning receiving royal patronage. Even so long
ago as the time of Pisistratus tyrants interested themselves in
literature. Be this as it may, the epigram, in whatever spirit
composed, betrays its late date by the fact that, whereas Pisis-
tratus was expelled twice, it says he was expelled three times.
Thus the authorities on which Wolf relied for proving that
the present shape of the Homeric poems is due to Pisistratus
seem to have their source in an epigram, which, whatever the
motives for composing it, is certainly untrustworthy. Further,
the epigram itself gives no countenance to the inference which
Cicero and other later writers have drawn from it, viz., that
Pisistratus caused a recension of Homer to be made. The epi-
gram says that before Pisistratus Homer was " sung scatteredly."
Now we know on good authority — that of the orators Isocrates,
B.c. 436-338, and Lycurgus, B.C. 395-329 — that the singing
of the rhapsodies at the great Athenian festival was regulated
by law ; but who introduced the law does not seem to have been
known. In Alexandrian times it certainly was a matter of
conjecture who introduced the law : and it is a reasonable in-
ference that in the epigram of which we are speaking we have
nothing
that the more law was than
due the author's conjecture, stated positively,
to Pisistratus.
For thirty years or more nothing was done to carry out the
views which Wolf had expressed in his Prolegomena; ami yet,
as we have pointed out, although Wolf demonstrated the diffi-
culties in the way of the traditional view of Homer, he con-
tributed nothing himself towards pointing out what in the
poems was II. liner's work and what was not. When at last,
after more than thirty years, Hermann took up the question,
although he came forward with a criterion by which to
distinguish the original parts of the poems from subsequent
accretions, he never fully carried out the process of applying
his criterion. Put more important is it. to notice the nature of
his criterion, and the change of view which it involves. For
the purpose of distinguishing between what is Homer and what
is later than Homer in the poems, inconsistencies and discre-
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 33
pancies are important. But no solution of this part of the

Homeric question can be satisfactory which explains only the
inconsistencies. The general consistency of the poems is an
equally important factor in the problem, and a satisfactory
solution must account for the consistency as well as the incon-
sistencies. The natural reaction from the Wolfian theory took
the direction of insisting on the importance of the second
factor, and it is in the explanation of this factor that the
importance of Hermann's work lies. According to Wolf, the
unity of the poems was, as it were, mechanically superinduced
by the Commission of Pisistratus. According to Hermann, if
the poems in their present shape possess unity, it is because the
original kernel possessed unity. Homer sang of the wrath of
Achilles and the return of Odysseus in two poems, short enough
to be carried in the memory and transmitted orally, and these
poems contained in outline the essential structure of our Iliad
and Odyssey. In the process of time later poets inserted
various compositions of their own, expanding incidents in the
original work, and interpolating, so far as the original permitted,
other incidents, and made the expansions and interpolations fit
in with more or less neatness. Thus Hermann provided a solu-
tion capable of accounting for both the general unity and the
particular discrepancies, though he did not or could not work it
out so as to recover the original poems. It should also be noticed
that on Hermann's theory Homer is not regarded as a rude and
primitive bard, but as possessing architectonic genius.
The next attempt to solve the Homeric problem on the lines
laid out by Wolf was that of Lachmann. Starting on the assump-
tion that in primitive times only short lays were possible, he
first attacked the NibelungenMed, and dissected it into twenty
lays. He then in the same way dissected the Iliad into eighteen
lays. The principle upon which he proceeds is that primitive
poets anxiously avoid the least inconsistency in details ; thus,
if we find an inconsistency between any two parts of the Iliad,
we may conclude that these parts belong to different lays.
The lay has no inconsistencies within itself. Thus Lachmann
proceeded considerably farther than Wolf j for Wolf allowed
Homer some share in the composition of the Iliad and the
Odyssey, while Lachmann disintegrated the Iliad into lays
which were composed quite independently of each other, and
became more or less fortuitously agglomerated together in
course of time, and were finally worked into the Iliad as wo
have it by Onomacritus, acting for Pisistratus.
With regard to Lachmann's theory, it should be noticed c
that
any support it may have once derived from the dissection of the
Nibeluntjenlicd is much weakened now, since there is consider-
able reason to believe that that poem is the work of one author,
and not an aggregate of lays. In the next place, analogies drawn
from the literatures of other countries have to be used with cir-
cumspection. The origin of the Mahabharata is disputed. The
French chansons are not epics ; and the literary genius of Greece
is hardly to be measured by restrictions drawn from the analogy
of a Finnish epic — the Kalewala. Setting aside these presump-
tions based on analogies, we have to examine Lachmann's theory
in itself. In the first place, we may use the argumentum ad
hominem. If Lachmann regards an inconsistency as proof of
divided authorship, why does he not subdivide those of his
lays which contain inconsistencies in themselves 1 His principle
rigorously carried out would necessitate the supposition of a
larger number of lays than that which he has resolved the Iliad
into. And this is one fundamental Aveakness of the theory —
it lacks any vestige of proof. The same principle applied by
another hand would discover a different set of lays, and have as
much claim to represent the primitive elements of the Iliad as
the eighteen lays Lachmann has produced. In other words, of
the two things which require explaining in the Homeric poems —
their unity and their inconsistencies — Lachmann overlooks one
— the unity — and only offers for the other an explanation wholly
incapable of proof, and not even consistently carried out by
himself.1 Thus his theory distinctly falls behind the advance
which Hermann had made towards the solution of the problem.
Hermann recognised the double aspect of the question, and
put forward a theory which at least endeavoured to meet both
points. Lachmann sought a one-sided solution, and in framing
a hypothesis to account for all the inconsistencies, he lost sight
of the other factor in the problem, or imagined that Onoma-
critus and Pisistratus were capable of accounting for what unity
the Iliad possesses.
But we have already seen that there is no historical proof of
the existence of the Commission of Pisistratus, and we may
now ask whether the supposition of such a Commission is
capable of accounting for the unity of the Iliad. In the first
place, inasmuch as " diaskeuasts " have been credited with
much activity in the shaping of the Homeric poems, it is well
1 Another serious difficulty in the way of his theory is that of understand-

ing how eighteen different poets, working independently ami in ignorance
of each other's work, should all happen to choose for their subject some
incident relating to the few days of Achilles' absence from the war.
EPIC POETEY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 35
to understand who diaskeuasts were. They were not a class of

men united or distinguished by the possession of any special
experience or innate powers of working up given material into
epic shape. If a playwright touched up or re-wrote a play
of his own, already performed, with a view to producing it a
second time, he was said to diaskeuazein or revise his play.
But, more than this, any man who made a correction in a
manuscript was a diaskeuast ; and if the "correction" was
wrong, he was none the less a diaskeuast. So to say that the
shaping of the Iliad was the work of diaskeuasts may be true,
but it does not help us much, for any man could be a dias-
keuast, but not every man could make an Iliad out of given
material. On Lachmann's theory, indeed, it would require an
artist of consummate skill to give to eighteen wholly inde-
pendent lays the amount of consistency and unity which the
Iliad possesses. Thus the mechanical device of a Commission is
inadequate to the purpose. What is required is a poet of no
mean rank, and Lachmann gives us, with no satisfactory proof,
Onomacritus, who spent his life on Orphic poetry, and would
have worked up his material in accordance with his training in
Orphic poetry, whereas no Orphic elements are to be traced in
our Iliad.
We may further ask what object could Pisistratus have had
in amalgamating separate lays into one whole 1 It could not
have been in the interests of literature, for, according to Lach-
mann, the separate lays are more beautiful than our Iliad.
And further, if this was the case, how did Pisistratus contrive
to supplant the older, better known, and more beautiful lays
by his novel amalgamation 1 His authority extended only to
Athens, but all Greece accepted the Iliad as wo have it. If we
waive this difficulty, the question still remains what was the
object of the amalgamation, since it was not to benefit literature 1
Pisistratus, Ave have seen, was apparently believed by some to
have regulated the text for purposes of recitation ; but the
short lays which Lachmann supposes to have existed would
be much better adapted for recitation than our Iliad, and to
amalgamate these lays into a lengthy whole would not render
their recitation the easier.
We next come to the views put forward by the great his-
torian of Greece, Grote. The question which Wolf had sug-
gested, but had not attempted to solve, viz., what is Homer's
work, and what is not, in the Iliad and Odyssey, Grote took up
and answered. But in other respects he is not a follower of
Wolf. The assumption, universally accepted last century, that
primitive poems or lays must be short, Grote did not accept.

He quotes from Chodsko's Popular Poetry of Persia the fact
that " one of the songs of the Calm tick national balds sometimes
lasts a whole day ; " and refers to the fact, which had been pre-
viously used by Lachmann, that the old German poem Parsifal
contains 24,810 verses, and was the work of a man, Eschenbach,
who could neither read nor write. Thus the composition of the
Iliad or the Odyssey before writing was known in Greece has
nothing impossible in it. Nor has the oral transmission of the
poems ; the songs of the Icelandic Skalds were thus trans-
mitted for more than two centuries; and we may add that the
Vedas were transmitted in this way for a much longer period.
In modern Greece blind singers carry in their memory large
quantities of verse which they recite at village feasts. Fur-
ther, if Homer was, as the oldest traditions relate, blind, writ-
ing, even if known in his time, would have been of no use
to him. In anticipation of the objection that the power of
memory might not be so great among the Greeks as among
other nations, Grote refers to the fact that in Socrates' time,
as we learn from Xenophon, there were many Athenians
who were taught to learn both the Iliad and the Odyssey by
heart, and the rhapsodists professionally repeated the poems
from memory.
Having thus cleared the ground, and shown that there is no
impossibility in composing and transmitting poems of the length
of our Iliad and Odyssey by means of memory alone, Grote
proceeds to investigate the question of the original unity of
these epics on critical grounds, and he begins with the Odyssey.
The question at issue is, as he says, whether the gaps and in-
consistences which constitute the proofs "of mere unprepared
coalescence" preponderate "over the other proofs of designed
adaptation scattered throughout the whole poem 1 " The con-
clusion he reaches is, "The poem as it now stands exhibits
unequivocally adaptation of parts and continuity of structure,
whether by one or several consentient hands. It may. perhaps,
be a secondary formation out of a pre-existing Odyssey of
smaller dimensions ; but if so, the parts of the smaller whole
must have been so far recast as to make them suitable members
of the larger, and are noway recognisable by us." Further,
'• [fa authors cannot have been mere compilers of pre-existing
materials, such as Pisistratus and bis friends; they must have
been ] ts, competent to work Bnch matter as they found into
a new and enlarged design of their own."
The ( M\ Bey, then, is itself a proof of the falsity of the assump-
EPIC TOETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION. 37
ticn that " long continuous epics with an artistical structure

are inconsistent with the capacities of a rude and non-writing
age," for in the Odyssey " the integration of the whole and the
composition of the parts must have been simultaneous." Grote
then applies the same critical method to the Iliad. Here he
finds that the original scheme of the Iliad, viz., to relate
the wrath of Achilles and its consequences — does not com-
prehend the whole poem. Those books which carry out the
original scheme hang together by themselves. Those books
(ii. to vii.) which do not relate to the original scheme
hang on the whole fairly well together, but present dis-
crepancies with the first set. The portion of the Iliad which
has direct relation to the original scheme, as expounded in
the opening lines of the First Book, Grote called an Achilleis.
The other books "are of a wider and more comprehensive
character, and convert the poem from an Achilleis into an
Iliad." They give us, not any information about the wrath
of Achilles, but a picture of the war against Ilium. They
have been worked into a certain conformity with the Achilleis,
and " they belong to the same generation and state of society
as the primitive Achilleis." Finally, Grote thinks that the
Odyssey and Iliad belong to the same age, but are not by
the same author ; that the Odyssey is probably by a single
author, the Iliad probably not.
We may now see how far Grote has laid the difficulties raised
by Wolf. The assumption that primitive poems must be short
seems to break down under the attack made upon it by Grote
and others. As for analogies drawn from other literatures, even
were the fact of a ballad origin for epics established, Homer's
spiritual and intellectual superiority over the balladists makes
comparison unsafe. But the other difficulty raised by Wolf,
viz., as to the possibility of the composition of such poems as
our Iliad and Odyssey in times when writing was unknown,
is not answered by Grote. Everything Grote says about the
possibility of composing and transmitting long poems by means
of the memory alone may be admitted, and must always be
taken into account in any solution of the Homeric question ;
but Homer composed, as Grote admits, not for a reading public
— there was none — but for recitation before an audience : and
although the Athenians in later times would sit for a whole
day listening to the performance of tragedies, a day would not
suffice for the recitation of the Iliad or the Odyssey. Thus,
though the bare possibility of composing the poems without the
aid of writing is fully established by Grote, his admission of
the non-existence of a reading public leaves the difficulty raised

by Wolf unsolved.
But this failure to shake Wolf's main position, so far from
weakening Grote's theory of the Iliad, rather strengthens it.
If AVolf was right in denying the possibility of composing long
poems in very early times, then Grote's Achilleis is a step in the
right direction ; and as a solution of the problem how the Iliad
as we have it arose, it is superior to Lachmann's lays. Grote's
theory does what Lachmann's failed to do — it explains the
general consistency of the poem. But unless there is some
external necessity compelling us to suppose that originally the
Iliad must have been shorter than it now is, Grote's theory is
open to the objection which may be alleged against all attempts
to extract the original from the present Iliad — it is subjec-
tive. The weight assigned to discrepancies or to proofs of design
will always depend on the critic : there is no external standard
whereby to ascertain their real weight, and consequently no hope
of settling the question.
Since Grote, the most important " variety " of the Wolfian
theory that has arisen is the view of Professor Paley. With
Wolf, but more strongly than Wolf, he insists on the late date
of writing, and on the still later date at which a reading public
came into existence. But, unlike the Wolfians, he insists on the
unity of the Iliad. Thus he reaches the conclusion that the
Iliad is posterior to the growth of a reading public, and the
latter he correctly dates, on various grounds, as extending from
about B.c. 430 on. He does not seem to believe in an original
nucleus around which other stories kept collecting, or in a
theory of interpolations. The Iliad is nut the fortuitous work
of time, nor the deliberate work of successive generations, but
the design and execution of a single mind working on ancient
material. The Iliad, he says, may " be aptly compared to a
stained-glass window composed from a quantity of old materials,
more or less detached and of different dates, but rearranged
and filled in with modern glazier's work, so as to form a har-
monious whole, by some cunning artist who had an eye for
unity of design, harmony of colour, and a general antique
effect" The. proofs of this theory are to be found in the non-
existence ofa reading public before b.c. 430 ; in the absence,
from the Tragedians and from early works of art, of any Bigns "f
the inlluence of Homer; in the general absence of references to
Homer1 in Greek literature before Plato, and in the sudden
1 References to " Homer " do indeed occur; but Homer was a name used
to
thatcover nearly anything
references written
to our Homer are in
nothexameters.
found. Professor Faley'e point is
epic poetry: the homeric question. 39
display of acquaintance with Homer in Plato and later authors ;

and, finally, in the language of Homer, which shows, hoth in
grammar and vocabulary, a thorough mixture of old and new,
of genuine and spurious archaisms, which seem to imply that
the dialect was not a living or spoken, but a conventional one.
The argument based by Mr. Paley on the evidence of works
of art is one for specialists to discuss, and it is enough here to
say that it is a question on which specialists disagree. The
same may be said of the argument based on the evidence of
language. But we may add that the words, formations, gram-
matical usages, and the omissions of the digamma which Mr.
Paley cites to show the late character of our Homer, have been
paralleled by Dr. Hayman (u\ his edition of the Odyssey) in
the oldest Greek literature that we possess ; while Mr. Monro
has pointed out (in his article on Homer in the Encyclopaedia
Britannica) the leading features which stamp the dialect of
Homer as the oldest form of the Greek language that we possess.
The fact that Pindar and the Tragedians seem to have preferred
to draw on the Cyclic Poets instead of on Homer for subjects,
does not compel us to infer that our Homer was unknown to
them. There are two good reasons to explain the fact. The
first is one pointed out by Aristotle : the plots of the Iliad and
Odyssey are so simple that they only admit of being dramatised
in one or two ways. The second reason is that Pindar and the
Tragedians were too wise to challenge comparison with Homer
on his own ground, and were too artistic to endeavour to " paint
the lily or gild refined gold." Finally, if Homer is, as Mr.
Paley seems to maintain, a compilation, is the work of a jobber
of ancient literature, is, in fact, a sham literary antique, there
is only one period to which it could be assigned, and that is
the post-classical period. In b.c. 420 nothing of the kind
could become as popular as Homer undoubtedly was, as is
shown by the fact that Antimachus of Colophon did compose
an imitation epic, and the Greek public refused to be put off
with such patchwork. But our Homer, as Mr. Paley admits,
was composed before post-classical times, and we may be sure
that in classical Greek literature the only period capable of pro-
ducing a great epic was the epic period. Antimachus himself
certainly did not compile our Homer, as Mr. Paley suggests,
for we know from Porphyrius that he plagiarised our Homer.
There remains a difficulty raised by Wolf against the anti-
quity of Homer which we have left untouched — that of under-
standing how poems as long as the Iliad and Odyssey could
have been recited. A single recitation, it is said, would nut
suffice. This is true ; and tlie inference is that the poems were
designed to last through several recitations. This simple ex-
planation has long escaped recognition because we are apt to
forget that all classical Greek literature was designed for re-
citation, and that at different times the manner of recitation
dilfered. In the times when an author's audience consisted of
the whole body of citizens (in the time, e.g., of the drama or of
choral lyric), an audience was only got together at long inter-
vals, and therefore what was put before it had to be finished
at a sitting. But in Homeric times the poet's audience con-
sisted ofthe household of a chieftain such as Odysseus or of a
king like Alcinous ; and this audience gathered together night
after night. There is, therefore, nothing in the conditions under
which epic poetry: was produced to make the recitation of the
Iliad and the Odyssey impossible.
Attempts have frequently been made to show that one part
of the Iliad or of the Odyssey is inconsistent with some other
part, and therefore could not have been composed by the same.
author, lint, in the first place, it is still more unlikely that an
interpolator, Avhose first business woidd be to make his inter-
polation harmonise with the original, would make these mis-
takes ; and next, there arc inconsistencies to be found in
Milton, Shakspere, Dante, Virgil, and novelists of all kinds,
quite as great as in Homer. A logical inconsistency goes for
little in these questions ; and a poetical inconsistency yet
remains to be discovered in Homer. We can only protest
against the spirit in which some critics approach the greatest of
poets. They examine the Homeric poems as they would a
candidate's dissertation for a degree, and have no hesitation in
rejecting the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey for not know-
ing his Homer.
The question whether the Iliad and the Odyssey are both
the work of a single hand admits of no positive proof. If it
could bo demonstrated by internal evidence that they must
belong to different ages, the question would he settled. But
there is nothing in the poems to show that they do not
belong to the same age; and although we cannot say that
Greece was incapable of producing two poets possessing the
marvellous genius required to produce such a poem as the Iliad
or the Odyssey, it seems safer to adhere to the literary tradition,
which is not on tin' whole likely In have been mistaken on
such a point of capital importance^ and which attributes both
the Iliad ami the Odyssey to Home;'.
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER III.
READING, WRITING, AND PUBLICATION IN CLASSICAL GREEK TIMES.

41
All alphabets and syllabaries, ex- symbols of every word in the lan-
cept the Sanskrit alphabet, seem to guage, are not letters, nor syllables,
have had their origin in picture- but each is a word. The next stage
writing. The idea of communicat- is reached when the character, hav-
ing information by rough sketches ing long represented merely the
of objects occurs sooner or later to sound of the object's name, comes
most peoples. The Red Indians to stand for the sound of the first
by means of sketches on bark can syllable only. In this stage writing
or could send simple messages to consists of a collection of symbols
each other, as, e.g , the number of representing the sound of syllables,
an advancing enemy. In these that is, a syllabary. Tins is repre-
messages a man is drawn in much sented bythe cuneiform or arrow-
the same way as schoolboys draw headed inscriptions, which, like the
men on a slate — a big circle sur- Chinese " radicals," are descendants
mounted bya smaller one and rest- from sketches. The uniform and
ing on two more or less perpendi- generally rectangular appearance of
cular strokes. If the figure is cuneiform inscriptions is a marked
represented with a hat, it stands instance of the influence exercised
for a white man ; if not, for a red by the nature of the writing material
man. The signature and address 011 the form of the writing itself.
are conveyed by sketches of the Straight strokes thicker at one end
creatures which the chiefs have than at the other are the natural
adopted as totems and taken their result of rapid writing with a pointed
names from- The picture-writing instrument on clay. Using such
of the Aztecs, though still sketch- writing materials, the Assyrians fol-
ing, was capable of expressing more lowed the line of least resistance
ideas and more abstract ideas than and eliminated curves. Finally,
that of the Red Indians. This was the character which at first stood
the result of the continual use of for the whole word and then for
picture-writing for the purposes of the first syllable came to stand for
governing a large and heterogeneous the first letter, and an alphabet was
empire and for recording its history. attained. We have illustrated the
The next stage in the development development of the alphabet Irom
is when the sketch comes to be re- the writing of various nations, but
garded not so much as a picture of in Egyptian all these stages co-exist
the object depicted as the symbol Some characters stand for a word,
of the name of the object ; and by some for a syllable, and some for a
the time the signification of the letter, thus clearly indicating the
sketch has become conventionalised,
origin of alphabets.
the sketch has generally ceased to
have any great resemblance to the Fromciansthe Egyptians the Phoeni-
obtained their alphabet, from
natural object, and is itself a con- the Phoenicians the Greeks, from
ventional symbol. This stage is the Creeks the Romans, from them
modern European nations. The
represented
in Chinese. These which"
214 "radicals
by thecharacters, source from which the various Greek
by themselves, and in composition alphabets were derived is indicated
with other marks, form the written partly by tradition, for the Greeks
42
attributed the alphabet to Cadmus, might be slain." But, as we have
whose name is Semitic ("Kedem," seen, there are more ways of sending
Eastern), partly by the form of a message than by means of an
the letters themselves and partly alphabet ; so tho passage is not
by the names of the letters. When conclusive. In the next place, the
borrowed, the alphabet necessarily passage may have been tampered
underwent some changes, since the with ; and finally, as the date of
Phoenician alphabet contained sym- Homer is vague, it does not help
bols of sounds not used by the us much to date the alphabet.
Greeks (e.g., several sibilants), and The difficulties in the way of
in Greek there were vowel sounds utilising Homer to date the alpha-
not known to the Phoenicians. Wo bet are applicable to all passages
have, however, to do not with the from ancient authors. When we
history of the Greek alphabet, but go farther back than E.c. 500, the
its date. The names of the Greek dates assigned to authors become
letters which end in the " emphatic hard to check ; and there is always
aleph " (contrast, e.g.,bcta, the Greek the possibility — which may or may
name for B, with the Hebrew btth), not amount to a probability — that
show that the alphabet was bor- the passage relied on may not be
rowed from the northern Semites, genuine. With inscriptions, how-
those of Tyre and Sidon ; and it ever, we are on safer grounds : they
has been argued that the borrowing do not admit much of interpolation,
must belong to the period of the and we may rely on their being
Phoenicians' naval and commercial now in the shape — the action of
supremacy over the Mediterranean. time and weather excepted — in
So, too, it has been argued that the
borrowing by the Italians from the which they came from the sculptor's
hands. Forgery is, indeed, possible
Greeks must be referred to Graeco- even on stone, but much less likely
Italic times, i.e., the time when the than in the case of MSS. But in-
Greeks and Italians yet formed one scriptions get destroyed, and the
people. But in these remote ages earlier their age the fewer survive.
we get out of our chronological In the valley of the Nile, indeed,
depth, and we have no means of which has the least destructive
knowing, at any rate at present, climate in the world, inscriptions
what "must" have happened or of enormous antiquity do of course
when. It is better to say that survive, but it is not on the banks
these data are uncertain in them- of tho Nile that wo can expect to
selves and give a general presump- find Greek inscriptions. And yet
tion ofantiquity to the introduction it is there we find the oldest
of the alphabet, which must, how- inscription in Greek that is yet
ever, wait upon better established known or can be dated.
facts. For these facts we may look On the banks of the Nile in
either to ancient Greek authors Nubia is the temple of Abu Simbel.
themselves or to inscriptions. For In the temple of Abu Simbel are
instance, if Homer mentioned writ- huge statues of stone, and on the
ing, and the date of Homer were legs of the second colossus from the
fixed, we should get a dato for writ- south are chipped the names, witti-
ing. As a matter of fact, there is a cisms, and records of travellers of all
well-known passage in tho Iliad ages, in alphabets known and un-
(vi. 169) in which it is said that known. The earliest of the (link
Troitos sent Bellerophou to Lycia, travellers who have thus left their
" and gave him tokens of woe, names are a body of mercenaries.
graving in a golden tablet many They seem to have formed part <»f the
deadly things, and bade him show expedition which was led as far as
these to Anteia's father, that he Elephantine by King rsainmatichos
43
— whether the first monarch of that symbol has to do duty for the long
name or his successor does not and for the short o. Inscriptions
appear.1 From Elephantine they of B.C. 540 have acquired a special
seem to have set out on a voyage symbol for the omega. As we have
of discovery up the river, and to already said, the Greeks, possessing
have gone past Kerkis — the locality a more extensive vowel system than
of which cannot be fixed— as far as the Phoenicians, had to modify the
the stream allowed, perhaps to the alphabet they borrowed ; and the
second cataract. On their return late origin of the sign for the omega
they put in at Abu Simbel, and on is betrayed by that letter's position
in the Greek alphabet. As for the
the"
the left
recordleg ofofthetheir colossus
bold inscribed
voyage. shape of the letters in the Abu
Besides the common record, we find Simbel inscription, the sign for *,
the names of various members of instead of being made with four
the detachment inscribed separately strokes, as in the sigma of the B.C.
by those who wished at once to 540 inscriptions and that of the
display their ability to write and ordinary Greek alphabet (2), is
to perpetuate to all time their con- made by means of three strokes
nection with the expedition. only, which is known on other
This interesting inscription can grounds to be the older form.
be dated by two methods, which Thus the epigrapbic evidence makes
check each other, and thus give the inscription to be some time
tolerable certainty to the result. older than B.C. 540. The evidence
In the first place, the letters used, from the contents of the inscription
and their shape, show that the places the date between B.C. 620-
inscription is older than inscrip- 600, according as we take the
tions, generically similar, which Psammatichos mentioned to be the
are known to belong to about B.C. first or the second king of that
540. For instance, in our inscrip-
tion there is no special symbol for We have, then, got a date for the
name.2
existence of writing in Greece. In
the long 0 of the Greek alphabet,
the omega. One and the same B.C. 600 the art of writing was so
1 A Rhodian piu;ix, discovered lately at Naukratis, which probably belongs

to the time of Psammatichos II., shows epigrapbic peculiarities resembling
those of the Abu Simbel inscriptions. See Mr. E. A. Gardner in the Academy,
No. 700. ,
2 This inscription, having a bearing on the Homeric question, has been dis-
credited. As for the epigrapbic evidence, it is said that it is inconclusive
because against the evideuces given above that the inscription belongs to n.c.
600, we have to set the fact that the writing runs from left to right, whereas
it was only later than this period that this direction was adopted. In the
next place, we have a distinct sign for eta, whieh is again a later introduction.
As for the contents, the fact that iu the inscription there appears not only
a King Psammatichos, but a mercenary— the commander of the exploring
detachment— of the same name, points to the inscription's being a " hoax. '
But if we confine ourselves to the Ionic alphabet, the only evidence we have
whether the sign for eta was current in B.C. 600 is our inscription. We
cannot reject it because wo have no other of B.C. 600. If we go beyond the
Ionic alphabet, we find that in Thera this sign was used about B.C. 600.
So too with regard to the direction of the writing: the left to right direc-
tion only became general in the fifth century B.C., but exceptions before
that period occur. This is one. As for the "hoax" theory, it implies a
knowledge of the early history of the Greek alphabet whieh probably not
even a learned Greek possessed, and may be ou the whole safely denied to
a practical joker.
well established in Greece that in Such a staff, of course, the recipient

a detachment of mercenaries a cer- by arrangement possessed. This
tain number could write. There is, primitive method of cipher con-
however, another point to notice : tinued to be used a long time by
the names of these soldiers show the Spartans for conveying state
that they came from different parts messages. To return to Archilo-
of Greece, some being lonians, chus :the leather from the ekytaU
others Dorians ; but all use the was without the staff an enigma ;
same Ionic alphabet. This means the key to the enigma was tho
that not only was writing well slytati. The fable of Archilochus
enough established for Greeks from was to outward appearance innocent
all parts of Greece to possess the of any recondite meaning, but was
art, but also that since the intro- a "grievous skytale" for the person
duction of writing enough time attacked.
had elapsed for the Ionic alphabet It seems reasonable to accept this
to spread anil to become common passage as indicating a knowlciô
amongst theDorian-speakingpii i [>1< s of writing in Greece about B.C. 700.
in the south-west of Asia Minor. This date allows a century for the
What amount of time we ought to diffusion of the art and the spread
allow for thesa things to come of the Ionic alphabet which are
about, it is impossible to say. Low implied by the Abu Simbel inscrip-
races at the present day pick up tion ; and the passage does not
writing very quickly from our prove too much. It does not im-
colonists ; and amongst the quick- ply even that Archilochus himself
witted Greeks it would spread very could write. The invention or in-
rapidly. Instead of losing our- troduction was sufficiently novel
selves in conjectures, let us look and admirable to furnish a poet
for evidence. with a metaphor ; and the tbytali
.Since writing had in B.C. 600 was probably then, as in later times,
been known for some time in Greece, a governmental institution. Thus
a passage in a Greek author older the mention of a ikytate accords
than B.C. 600 that refers to writing with the probable supposition that
is not, from the mere fact of such writing was used for governmental
reference, suspicious. Now in Ar- purposes before it became common
chilochus.who is generally supposed among the people.
roughly to have lived about B.C. But the knowledge that writing
700, there is a reference to writing. was known in Greece in B.C. 700
Archilochus had a great faculty for is not sufficient for our purpose.
Baying uu pleasant things, and ho It may have been a government
used fables of his own invention monopoly, or at any rate, so little
with great effect. With regard to known as to be useless for literary
one or these fables he speaks meta- purposes. What we want to know
phorically of"a grievous sh is first when a reading public ex-
A tkytall was a stall" on which a isted. We must, however, realise
strip of leather for writing pur- that such a reading public as exists
poses was rolled slant-wise. A at the present time was ne\ or known
message was then written on the in antiquity, for two reasons : first,
[ ; the le.it her was then un- the population, and consequently
rolled and given to the messenger. the possible Dumber of readers, was
Now if the messenger were inter- much less in the city-states ot the
cepted, the message could not be ancii nt world than in the nation-
deciphered, for only when the states of modem history ; secondly,
leather was rolled on a staff pre- ancient authors could not reach
the same sixe as the proper their public by any means of pub-
one would the letters conic right. lication to be compared with the
45
EPIC POETKY : THE HOMERIC QUESTION.
printing-press. Further, the means to "a book, or Prodicus, or bad

of attaining publicity were more company." But we may go a little
restricted in classical Greek times farther back. In fragments of the
than in Rome. The large number old comedy we find as terms of
of literary slaves in Rome made abase such expressions as " an un-
the multiplication of manuscripts lettered man," "a man who does
easy, and cheapened and extended not know his A, B, C." 4 And the
their sale. In Greece, multiplica- extent of education thus implied
tion was less rapid and circulation to exist about B.C. 450 cannot be
more restricted. Recognising then regarded with su-picion when we
the limited extent of the Greek
find in existed
schools Herodotus 5 thatinboys'
in Chios the
reading public in classical times,
we have to see what evidence there time of Histiaeus, say about B.C.
is for its existence at all ; and we
may regard its existence as satis- Before, however, inferring the ex-
factorily proved when we find trade istence of a reading public in r..c.
in books going on. Now we find a 500,
500. we must look rather more
book-market1 mentioned in Eupolis, closely at our evidence. Reading
that is to say, existing between B.C. and writing were taught b.c. 500,
430 and B.c. 405. The trade in and to be unable to read and write
books thus indicated may also be was, half a century later, a thing to
illustrated by a passage from Xeno- be ashamed of. But this does not
phon (who lived about B.C. 444- of itself prove the existence of a
355), in which he says, that from reading public. Enough education
a ship wrecked at Salmydessus on to be able to keep accounts, to read
the Pontus many books a were republic notices, to correspond with
covered. We may therefore take friends or business agents, may
it as reasonably proved that a have been in the possession of every
trade in books existed at the end free Athenian in the period B.C. 500
of the fifth century B.C. Other in- to B.C. 450, and the want of such
dications of a reading public may education may have caused a man
be found in Aristophanes, who in to be sneered at ; but this does not
prove the habit of reading literature.
the l'a</enistce,3 speaking of a young
man gone wrong, ascribes his ruin There is, however, a passage in the
1 ov to, /3i/3\f wâ, Meineke, F. C. ii. 550.

2 TroWal ftipXoi yeypa/j./J.evai, An. VII. v. 14.
3 Fr. 3, 1j pipXiov diecpdopev 7} UpodiKos rj tCiv aoo\€<rx&v e& 7^ Tis. This
passage, and the general proofs that reading was common in Aristophanes'
time, make it improbable that the passage in the Frogs, 1 114, fiij$\iov r lxuv
e/caoros p.avddvet ra 5f£td, is rightly regarded by Mr. Paley as proving read-
ing to be a novelty in B.C. 405. On the contrary, allowing for comic exagg< ra-
tion, it shows the habit wns extensive. The habit of reading at this time is
shown by a striking and important passage in Xenophon, Mtm. i. o, 14, toi's
6r)<Tavpovs tQ>v ird\at aotpHiv ai/§pQi>>, oils Ikuvol KareXurov tv (JifiXiois ypd\f/a-
ires, aveXirTuv koivtj aiiv tols (piXots di€pxo/J.ai, Kai &v rt op&fJ-tv dya06i>
€K\ryop.eOa. It seems from this that not only were Socrates and his friends
in the habit of reading together, but that the habit of writing bonks was
sufficiently well fixed for them to ascribe to it considerable antiquity.
Another passage, Plato, .-1/ ol. 26 D, which has been taken to show that the
physical treatises of Anaxagoras were on sale in the theatre (at other times
than those of theatrical performances) is uncertain, and has been explained
to refer to theatrical programmes.
4 'At>a\<pdj3i]Tos, &ypd/j.n<XTO$.
5 vi. 27, waiai ypap-puxTO. di5a<TKop.£voi<Ti ivtirtee 7} ciiyi).
46
lyric fragments of the poet Theognis, tival, or songs of love and wine
who llourished even still earlier, which were to be sung over the
that is, about B.c. 550, which is of wine after dinner. In neither case
much importance in this connection. was it an existence on paper which
Theognis says he has hit on a de- the lyric poet looked to for his
vice which will prevent his verses work, but oral delivery. Now, re-
being appropriated by any one else ; turning to Theognis, we may safely
he will put his name like a seal on say that if he caused copies of his
them, and so no one will take in- MS. to be multiplied and distri-
ferior work for his when the good is buted, itwas not in order that they
to be had, but everybody will say, might be read, but in order that
" These are the verses of Theognis his friends might learn them and
the Megarian." This passage cer- sing them at drinking-parties or
tainly implies that Theognis com- other social gatherings, In other
mitted his works to writing ; it words, the very nature of Theog-
also implies that the manuscript nis' poetry shows that it was not
would be sufficiently public pro- composed for a reading public.
perty to make it impossible either But this leaves untouched the
for an unscrupulous person to claim question whether Theognis did
to be the author, or for other have copies of his MS. multiplied
and distributed, or whether the
people's inferior poetry to come to
be attributed to Theognis. But "seal," which he prides himself on
does it imply that Theognis pub- having invented, was to be applied
lished for a reading public ? that is, to his own autograph manuscript
caused copies of his MS. to be mul- only. There is nothing in his words
tiplied and sold or distributed to to show that he contemplated the
his friends ? Before answering this multiplication of copies : is there
question we must ask another. If anything that we know of in the
an author in B.C. 550 did not pub- conditions under which he wrote
lish in this way, how did he pub- to show whether he was thinking
lish ? of his autograph copy or of a larger
There are some kinds of litera- number ? We may first investigate
ture which at the present day are what is implied in the multiplica-
brought before the public, but not tion of manuscripts, and then see
by means of the printing-press. whether it was possible in B.C. 550
Sermons, for instance, and plays to publish in this manner. The
may attain much publicity, and yet first condition implied in multi-
never exist out of manuscript, and plying manuscripts is that the
never be meant to be printed. This means of writing should be fairly
was the case with the drama and cheap and not cumbrous. For
the oratory of Athens. Plays and writing letters in ancient times the
speeches were composed for the usual materials were thin wooden
theatre and the assembly; the tablets, the surface of which was
authors — like Shakspcre, it seems — covered with wax ' and Burronnded
had no thought of reaching their by a rim such as surrounds a school-
public by any other means. Bat boy's slate. On this wax the writer
this was the case not only with the wrote by means of a pointed instru-
dramatists and orators of Greece ment. These tablets were called
in classical times, but with writers ddtoi,* and the writing instrument
of all kinds. Lyric authors wrote was called by the Greeks graphil or
either choral lyrics which were to grajtheion,* l>y the Romans sttl'i*.
be performed in public at some fes- Two or more of these tablets of the
2 5Ato«.
1 Or a composition, p.d\0a. 8 -ypa<f>ist ypcMpt'tor.
47
same size might be fastened together known and used for writing pur-
by means of a string run through poses in Egypt from times of the
holes in the tablets. Now, on a greatest antiquity ; and it has been
number of these deltoi an author assumed that as soon as the Greeks
might write his work, but to mul- had any commerce with Egypt they
tiply and circulate copies of his would at once adopt this conveni-
productions would be so cumbrous ent writing material and import it
that it is difficult to believe that largely. This may have been the
any one sought or gained publicity case, but, in the absence of evidence
by such means. Still it must bo to show that it was, we ought not
remembered that the Assyrians car- to build on the supposition. We
ried on business and formed large must look for something more trust-
libraries out of even more unpro- worthy, and this we find in Hero-
mising writing materials — slabs of dotus. In a chapter in which he
clay. When we find that the per- traces the origin and history of the
sons wishing to consult a book in Greek alphabet in a manner shown
an Assyrian library are requested by recent epigraphical researches to
to write the name of the book and be correct, Herodotus declares that
its author on a proper piece of clay from of old 4 the Ionians had used
and hand it in to the librarian, we paj lyrus for writing purposes. Kven
must obviously get rid of some of if we decline to trust Herodotus'
our preconceived notions as to the i;i formation on this point, we must
material difficulties in the way of at any rate admit that papyrus was
circulating waxed tablets. so much in use in his day that there
But although waxed tablets may seemed to him nothing improbable
have been at one time the best in its having been in use for a long
means the Greeks had of commit- time among the Greeks. That is
ting their thoughts to writing, they to
were for literary purposes eventually in say,
B.C. papyrus
450. was well established
superseded by papyrus, on which But between Herodotus, B.C. 450,

the scribe wrote with a reed-pen, andTheognis, B.C. 550, is a century.
calamus,1 and ink, melaii,2 out of an In B.C. 450 the material conditions
inkstand, melanodocheion.* These admitted of the multiplication and
were materials much more adapted circulation of works. In B.C. 550
for literary purposes ; and if we as- they admitted at least of an author's
sume that authors did not begin to committing his works to writing,
circulate copies of their works until but whether at this time an author
papyrus was common in Greece, and had to use waxed tablets or could
if we can date the introduction of use papyrus, we can hardly say.
papyrus, then we shall have a date But this century is precisely the
before which we may perhaps deny period of the rise of prose literature
the multiplication and circulation in Greece, and it may be said that
of manuscripts. Now papyrus was this fact iu itself implies that litora-
1 KaXafxos. 2 rb fitXav. 3 fj.e\avo5oxe'ov.

4 V. 58, xal tcls /S^Xous ditpdtpas Ka'Stovai airb tov va\aiov oi "lwves,
tin kot£ kv ffTrdvi {HvfiXwv ixpii^vro dupdeprjffi al-yirjci re /cot durjiru
On this passage Mr. l'aley says, " The utmost that c:ui be made of the evi-
dence is, that for the few who could write there was not wanting some
material to write upon. Uut the insignificant extent of such literary effort!
must he inferred from the absence of any term for either ' pen ' or 'ink.'''
But if the Greeks did not write on papyrus with pen ami ink, with what did
they write? and if they had pens and ink, of what value is the fact that in
the literature of this period the words for pen and ink do not happen to
occur ?
ture48could be and was circulated. not only Herodotus, but Gorgias,

An orator found his publicity in Hippias, and Empedocles there
the assembly, a playwright on the obtained publicity for their compo-
stage, a lyric poet in the convivial sitions.
gatherings of his friends ; but for It seems, then, that the rise of
what public except a reading public prose literature in the century B.C.
could a philosopher or a historian 550 to E.c. 450 does not necessitate
compose ? Here again we must try the assumption of the existence of
to get rid of some of our prc-con- a reading public, but only of an
ceived notions, and endeavour to audi nee to listen to the author
form our views of Greek literature reading his manuscript. So we
not by our own habits, but by what may sum up the results, so far, of
we know of Greek life. The great- our inquiry into the early history
est of Greek philosophers, Socrates, of reading, writing, and publication
determined the current of Greek as follows: — In B.C. 700 writing
thought and the philosophy of all was known in Greece, as appears
time, not by addressing himself to from the metaphor used by Archilo-
a reading public, but by the power chus of the "grievous skytalc " In
of the living word ; and herein Soc- B.C. 600 the art was so widely spread,
rates exemplifies the Greek mind. that out of a band of mercenaries
So long as the Greek, whether phi- from all parts of Greece, a certain
losopher or orator, lyric or dramatic portion coidd carve their names on
poet, was brought into living con- the colossus at Abu Simbel. In
tact with his fellow Greeks, so long b.c. 550 it was possible forTheognis
the literature of Greece was sponta- and for prose writers to commit
neous, creative, and classic. When their works to writing. In B.C. 500
the audience, whether of the assem- there were schools in Greece. In b.c.
bly, the law court, the theatre, the 450 it was a disgrace to be unable
symposium, or the temple, was re- to read and write. In B.C. 420 we
placed by a reading public, then have proof of the existence of a
the Greek mind ceased to create, reading public in the fact that there
and began to draw its inspiration, was a book trade.
not from Nature and the lite around And now, how does this affect the
it, but from books. It became Homeric question ? In this way :
learned and imitative, pedantic and The epic age — and we must remem-
frigid. If Socrates gave much to ber that although the Iliad ami
the Athenians, he also derived Odyssey are the only epies which
much from his continual attrition have come down to us, there were
with them. His example of per- many other epic poems which sur-
sonal intercourse between the vived until Alexandrine times at
teacher ami the taught was, it need least, — the epic age ended before
hardly be said, followed by Plato B.C. 700, and wo have no evidence
and Aristotle. They composed not to show or reason to believe that
primarily for a reading public, but writing was known in Greece much
lor their own circle. And before before that date. How long before
their time, as Plato read his Phasdo B.C. 703 Homer lived we do nol
to his friends and pupils, so Prota- know. Herodotus conjectures that
goras read his treatise on the go, Is he lived about B.C. 85O, but this
in the house ol Euripides or in the isonly a conjecture, and as we do not
Lye. anil ; and Socrates had listened know the grounds for it, we cannot
to Zeno reading his works. Hero- place much faith in it, especially
dotus read portions o I his in Athens as the existence of sueh a pBTSOO as
at the festival of the Panathensea, Homer is disputed. At any rate,
while at Olympia such readings we have 110 reason to believe that
were specially provided for, and if the epic age could commit
49
their works to writing, however citing their poems over the con-
short or long their poems were, or clusion of a meal. Thus, attached
transmit them except by word of to the court of King Alcinous was
mouth. It seems doubtful indeed the minstrel Demodocus, " whom
whether the means of writing which the Muse loved dearly, and she
were in use among the Greeks be- gave him both good and evil ; of
tween B.C. 700 and B.C. 550 were his sight she reft him, but granted
enough to allow of the transmission him sweet song." In the house of
by writing of any considerable body Odysseus there was Phemius the
of literature. But since many epics minstrel ; and King Agamemnon
were somehow transmitted dining left his wife Clytemestra under the
this period, and since before B.C. care of a minstrel," whom the son of
700 they apparently must have Atreus straitly charged, as he went
been transmitted by word of mouth to
and memory, their transmission TheTroy, to have therefore,
audience, a care of his wife."
to which
does not seem of itself to prove that the minstrel addressed himself was
writing was used B.C. 700 to B.C. 550 that to be found in a great house
for literary purposes. or a royal court. Odysseus says to
But the effort of memory required King Alcinous, "Nay, as for me, I
for the composition and transmis- say that there is no more gracious
sion of poems without the aid of or perfect delight than when a
writing has not, as we have seen, whole people make merry, and the
in itself anything incredible, though men sit orderly at feast in the halls
it implies a power not frequently and listen to the singer, and tables
manifested among us who live by them are laden with bread and
among printed books. If this were flesh, and a wine-bearer drawing the
the only difficulty in the way of be- wine serves it round and pours
lieving that the Iliad and Odyssey it into the cups." To his audience
were composed before B.C. 700, and the minstrel might sing either lays
transmitted substantially as we he had learnt from others or his
have them, the question would be own poems. Phemius says, " None
settled. Memory was equal to the has taught me but myself, and the
task. But the composition of a god has put into my heart all man-
poem implies a public to whom the ner of lays, and methinks I sing to
poem is to be given, and conditions
under which it is brought before thee as abeing
Such god. the
" audience for which
that public. We have now to in- an epic poet composed, and such
quire to what public and how the the conditions under which he pro-
epic poets addressed themselves ? duced his work, the question now
To find an answer we must go to arises whether — granted a poet cap-
the Homeric poems themselves. able of composing the Iliad or the
Whatever the origin and growth of Odyssey, and of carrying the poem
these poems, all inquirers admit in his head — there is anything in
that there is embodied in them these conditions to make the de-
much that is ancient and much livery of so long a poem impossible •
that reflects the life and manners Obviously it would be impossible
of the time before b.c 700. We to finish the recitation in a single
may therefore reasonably seek to evening ; and Wolf argued that
find out from them the position of this proved that the Iliad and
poets iii the earliest times. Now Odyssey could not have been origi-
we find bards mentioned several nally of anything like their present
times in the Odyssey, and they are length. But is it impossible to
always conceived of as attached to suppose that the poet took up the
a great house or a royal court ; and thread ol his story one evening
they are always represented as re- where he had dropped it the previ-
1)
niSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
5o
ous evening * If it is possiblo for ever, isonly a negative conclusion j
us to put down a book one day and when the poems were as a matter of
take it up again the next, and not fact composed, and whether since
lose the thread of the story, there then they have remained substanti-
is no difficulty in imagining the ally unaltered, are questions which
have yet to be answered. There
epic poet's audience listening one remain a couple of subjects to be
night to a story commenced on some
briefly noticed before this chapter
previous night.1 The Arabians, at
any rate, found nothing impossible can bo completed. First, there is
in supposing a Caliph listening to tho method of recitation in post-
tales in this way for a thousand epic times ; second, the question by
and one nights. The ancient Greek whom were the poems transmitted ?
seems to have experienced the same So long as the royal and aristo-
temptation as the modern novel- cratic form of society described in
reader to sit up all night over an the Homeric poems existed, so long
interesting work, for when Odysseus the mode of recitation also described
in Homer would last But with
breaks oil" relating his adventures
to the Phseacians on the ground changes in the social and political
that it was time for sleep, Alcinous, systems of Greece, changes would
who compares him to a minstrel, also come about in the audience and
says. " Heboid the night is of great the manner of addressing the audi-
length, unspeakable, and the time ence. The epic age was succeeded
for Bleep in the hall is not yet ; by the period of iyric poetry, and
tell me therefore of those wondrous the lyric poets fall roughly into tho
deeds. I could abide even till the two classes of poets who composed
bright dawn, so long as thou couldst personal lyrics designed for recita-
endure to rehearse me these woes of tion before the circle of their own
aristocratic friends, and of poets
thine in the hall." And if Odysseus
proceeds to finish his tale, it is not who composed choral lyrics to bo
because the Phseacians would have performed at the expense of a tyrant
refused to listen to its conclusion tho or a government before an audience
following evening, but because be consisting, not of a narrow circle,
wished to return to Ithaca as soou but of the whole population of the
as he might. city. The political conditions that
So far then as concerns the audi- rendered possible the oligarchical
ence and the manner of reciting his society for which personal lyrics
works, the epic poet might well were composed differed from those
have composed a poem too long to described in Homer. Royalty had
be finish >d in a single sitting. And disappeared, and tho aristocracy
we have seen that poems of great were engaged in a struggle with the
length can be composed and trans- people for their privileges ; but tho
mitted without the aid of writing. audiences in an aristocracy were
It seems, therefore, that the difficul- but little different from those in
ties raised by Wolf against the com- the regal times of Homer. They
position of the Iliad and the Odys- were more restricted ; tho royal
Bey in their present form are not hospitality of old times had given
sufficiently great to exclude the hy- way to the exclusive narrowness of
pothesis that we have the Homeric good society ; and the class interests
poems substantially as they were of the audience, being shared by the
originally composed. This, how- poet, who was himself a member of
1 Indeed the Scholiast to Od. iii. 267 says, (v re reus topraU ?v re ro?j
avenravounv tirl 7ro\\as r//xâs avWiyhuvoi tovtwv iJKOvov, el ttov aifii'cs
yCyove v 7) KoXhv tpyov.
EPIC POETRY: THE HOMERIC QUESTION.
their society, tended to injuriously complete in themselves, were re-

affect, both directly and by the recited at public festivals. The por-
action of audience on author, the tions thus chosen were called
character of the lyrics. "rhapsodies," and those who de-
But in the main, the conditions claimed them were called " rhap-
under which epics were recited re- sodists." The word " rhapsodist "
mained the same as in the previous simply means " singer
period, though, as the epic age was The inferences just ofdrawn
verses."
from1
over, the reciters were no longer the nature of the lyric poety of the 51
authors, or at any rate authors of sixth century B.C. as to the method
epics. But when oligarchy was of reciting epic poetry in that cen-
overthrown by either a tyrant or a tury are continued in two ways. In
democracy, the nature of the de- the first place, we know on other
mand for epic recitation changed, evidence that rhapsodies were por-
and along with it the character of tions of a length suitable for recita-
the supply. Tyrants and demo- tion at public festivals ; and in the
cracies alike catered for the amuse- next, we find it is precisely in the
ment, not of a restricted circle, but sixth century that rhapsodists first
of the whole free population of a begin to be known. The earliest
city. This is shown by the char- notice of rhapsodists is the mention
acter of the literature which suc- of them in Herodotus 2 as existing
ceeded personal lyrics. The very in Sicyon in the time of the tyrant
essence of choral lyric is, that it was Cleisthenes (B.C. 600-560). Prizes
performed in public on the occasion were offered at festivals by the vari-
of some public festival, whether of ous cities of Greece to the rhapsodist
religious worship or of general re- who declaimed best ; and conse-
joicing over the honour brought to quently there soon rose a class of
the city by the triumph of some professional rhapsodists, who tra-
citizen at one of the national games velled from place to place to de-
of Greece. Now, whereas a royal claim epic poetry. The change
household or a circle of friends which thus came over the mode of
might be gathered together night recitation is easy to understand,
after night, and thus give the epic and is still testified to by the Eng-
poet the opportunity of reciting a lish meaning of the word "rhap-
poem which required several sit-
tings for its recitation in full, the limited sody." audience Reading in
is aa much
room more
to a
whole population of a city could subdued performance than is decla-
only be gathered together from mation in the open air to a large
time to time, and the occasions number of people ; and we know
were separated by periods too long that the declamation of the rhapso-
to admit of a recitation being re- dists was theatrical and sensational,
sumed, when interrupted by the effects being sought after by gesture
dispersal of the audience for an un- and inflection of the voice, which
certain period. The result of this were unknown in earlier times, and
change in the conditions was, as we were condemned by good en ties
have said, a change in the mothod in later periods. The rhapsodists
of recitation. An epic poem was continued to declaim epic poetry
no longer recited as a whole, but until the latest classical times ; and
those parts of it which could bo at Athens at least their recitation
detached, and which were tolerably of Homer, who alone of poets was
1 Pindar, Nem. ii. 1, '0/j.rjpiSai pairrCiv hriav aoidoi, sons of Homer,

singers of stitched verses. Words are metaphorically said to be Btitched
together into verses, and the word paip-yoos is derived from pdimo, to stitch,
and doi56y, a singer. 3 V. 67
52
allowed to be recited at the Tana- the hero Talthybius. In their
thenasa, was regulated by law, pro- common literary methods we might
bably in the fifth century B.C. The
compare them to the " school " of
rhapsodists contending at the fes- J''.sclivlus, which consisted of dra-
tival, if left to choose their own matists descended from the great
selections, would probably all have tragedian, but that it is incorrect
chosen much the same pieces — those to say — though it is said— that the
they knew the audience liked best. " school " of Êschylus worked on
The law therefore determined that principles common to themselves
the competitors should follow the and their ancestor.
order of the poem, and that one With regard to the Homeridce,
rhapsodist should take up th we have first to say, that though
tation where the last one left off.
they may account for the trans-
Thus the audience,instead of hearing mission of Homer, they leave un-
the same piece over and over again, solved the problem how the other
heard a considerable part, if not the epic poets managed to transmit
whole of the poem. their works. In the next place, we
It remains for us now, having must know who and what the
seen the way in which epic poetry Homeridic were, for the word is
was recited in post-epic times, to used in different senses apparently
briefly consider the way in which it by ancient writers. By Pindar it
wa i ransmitted. During most, if not is used as equivalent to rhapsodists,
all of the period of the rhapsodists, and by Plato as meaning students
writing was probably sufficiently of Homer. Strabo (14, 645) says
developed in Greece for epic poetry the Homcridaj were people wiio
to be safely transmitted on tablets lived in Chios, and were so called
or papyrus ; so that wo need not because they were relatives of
trust to the memory of the rhap- Homer. Now if this were all the
sodists for the transmission of epics. evidence there were to go upon, it
But there remains the time before would be insufficient ; for here we
the rhapsodists, before B.C. 600; have no mention of a guild, nothing
and to account foe the transmis- to show that the soi-disant descen-
sion of Homer, the Homeridse, sons dants of Homer wrote poetry of any
of Homer, have been much used. kind, nothing but the fact that
They have also been used to account there were people living in Chios
who claimed kinship with the great
for the expansion of the "original "
Iliad and Odyssey to their present poet, and that students of Homer
length ; and they have further been were called llomeridae. What then
used to account for Homer himself. is there to supply these missing
It has been supposed, that is to links '! The statement of a scholiast.
say, that the Homerhhe were a According to the scholion on the
guild of epic poets, working on passage of Pindar above referred to
common artistic methods and com- {Nan. ii. 1), the descendants of
mon literary principles, who jointly Homer inherited and sang his
produced epics which 1 hey ascribed poems. These Homeridse were sub-
to the mythical founder of their sequently called rhapsodists, and
guild, Homer. We may compare introduced many verses into the
them, in their descent from a poems.1 What is the worth of a
mythical eponymous founder, to scholiast I A scholiast was any per-
die hereditary heralds at Sparta, son uho wrote scholia or notes on tho
who claimed to he descended from margin of a manuscript of an ancient
1 '0,u7j/)/oas 2\eyoi> rb fiiv dpxa'°" T01's ^"^ T°v Ofiripov 7^01/s, 01 xal n>
■Koiria-iv ai>Tov in otaooxv jjoov, fierd. 5tv Taura Kal oi pa\J/u5ol ovk4ti t6 7«Voj
elt"Ofi7)pov di'ii-yoj'res.
53
author, and some scholia are as late as we may reply, that the diffusion of
A.D. 1400 or a.d. 1500. Being of vari- epic poetry, while it negatives the
ous dates and of very various value, supposition of local guilds, also
scholiasts are now only regarded as indicates a free and spontaneous
trustworthy so far as they can be cultivation of epic poetry, not a
supposed to be quoting from good mechanical system of oral teaching
authorities ; their own conjectures designed to secure the perpetuation
are not to be relied on. Now in of literature. From the way in
the scholion we are concerned with, which Phemius prides himself in
there is no indication that the the Odyssey on composing original
scholiast had before him any other poems, it may be inferred that other
authorities than those we possess ; minstrels recited more poems by
and there is every indication that other composers than works of their
he took the very easy chance which own ; and this is confirmed by the
was given him of making a con- scenes in Alcinous' palace where
jecture of his own. So far as Demodocus is called on for lays
negative evidence has any value, already known to his audience.
it is against this conjecture. The
"We may conjecture, then, that in
scholia to the Iliad, which are valu- epic times a poet, before beginning
able simply because they contain to compose original works, associ-
many quotations from Aristarchus, ated by a natural tendency with
the famous editor of Homer, and other poets, and stored his mind
from other Alexandrine critics, with the epic poetry which was in
never mention the Homeridse ; and part their work and partly learnt
when they mention that a verse by them from older poets. This
was suspected or rejected in anti- may explain the transmission of
quity, they never attribute the spu- epic poetry. It will also explain
rious verse to the authorship of a its diffusion ; for a minstrel who
rhaps de or a Homerides. travelled from place to place would
Not only is the evidence for a doubtless gladly learn and gladly
literary guild of Homeridte weak, teach other minstrels whom he met.
and not only is the assumption of Even when the epic age was over
such a guild inadequate to explain and lyric poetry took the place of
the transmission of the body of epic epic, the mode of transmission and
poetry which was by other authors diffusion seems, until the rhap-
than the real or supposed Homer ; Bodista arose, to have been much
it does not even account for the the same. Poets, though they no
transmission of the Homeric poems. longer wrote epics, declaimed epic
If they were the hereditary property poetry and sought much of their
of a guild resident in Chios, and if inspiration from it. The influ-
it is only by means of such a lite- ence of epic poetry over the lyric
rary organisation that we can ex- poet Stesichorus, for instance, was
plain the transmission of Homer in unduly strong ; while Terpander,
the absence of writing, then the Clonas, Polymnestus, and other
Homeric poems should only have early lyric poets are mentioned l
been known in Chios. Their spread as declaiming epic. In fine, the
throughout Greece remains a greater natural and obvious cultivation of
mystery than ever. But it may bo poetry by free communication and
said a considerable body of epics personal contact between poets in
— whether Homeric or non- Homeric times when writing was not used for
— was transmitted somehow, and if literary purposes suffices to explain
not by some such literary organisa- the transmission and diffusion of
tion, then in what way ? To this
epic.
1 Plutarch de Xvtl 3.
CHAPTER IV.
THE EPIC CYCLE.
There were other epic poets in early times besides Homer.

Their works, though they have not reached us, were preserved
until the time of the Alexandrian grammarians, and probably
for some centuries later. Some of these writers took for their
subject incidents from the history of the expedition against
Thebes; others incidents from the Trojan war. At some time
or other the poems dealing with the Trojan war were arranged
in the order of the events they narrated ; the same thing was
done with those which related the Theban war, and the two
sets of p )ems together formed an epic cycle, so called apparently
because it embraced the whole round of the mythological events
related in epic poetry. Then in later times, when readers did
not care to wade through all these poems, and yet wished to
possess an acquaintance with the mythological events related
in them, a prose summary of their contents was drawn up.
This prose " epic cycle " began at the beginning of all things,
with the wedding of Heaven and Earth, from whom were born
the Cyclops, and related the origin, course, and consequences
of the Theban and Trojan wars, finishing with the death of
Odysseus, unwittingly killed by his son Telegonus. Tins prose
summary was the work of Proclus, but whether of the neo-
Platonic philosopher of that name, who lived in Constantinople
about a.d. 450, or of the tutor of Marcus Aurclius, is somewhat
uncertain. It seems, however, more probable that the latter
should be the author than that a neo-Platonic philosopher
should have condensed the epic poets into a manual of mytho-
logy ;and accordingly Eutychius Proclus of Sicca is generally
regarded as the author.
As it is from the summary of Proclus that we derive our
chief knowledge of the poems contained in the Trojan cycle,
we will give a brief account of the contents of Proclus' work,
as it has come down to us. The principal fragment of his sum-
mary was found prefixed to some of the manuscripts of Homer.
It begins with the epic called the Cyptia. Why the poem was
called the Cypria we cannot now tell. It may have been because
the rape of Helen, which is the main subject of the poem, was
the work of the Cyprian goddess Aphrodite, or because the
author of the poem was born at Cyprus. But who was the
author is also uncertain: some ascribed the poem to Bonier,
EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE. 5 5
but Aristotle expressly denies the Homeric authorship of the

work ; according to others, Stasinus or Hegesias was the author.
This is a point which cannot be settled : let us turn to the con-
tents of the poem. Once on a time Zeus took counsel with
Thetis how the earth, overcrowded with men, might be relieved
of her burden, and he resolved that there should be a great
war, the Trojan war. Therefore Thetis was married to Peleus,
and from them was born the hero of the Iliad, Achilles. At the
marriage-feast the goddess of strife, Eris, appeared, and by the
golden apple which she gave to be awarded to the fairest, brought
the three goddesses Athene, Here, and Aphrodite to contend about
their beauty. They appointed Paris (or Alexander) to decide
between them, and, won over by the promise of the fairest of
wives, he awarded the apple to Aphrodite. She then bade iEneas
set sail with Paris from Troy for Greece ; and, in spite of the
prophecies of Helenus and Cassandra, they departed. In Sparta
they were entertained by Menelaus, the husband of Helen, the
fairest woman in Greece. During the absence of Menelaus Paris
carried off Helen. A storm first drove them to Sidon, which
Paris captured, and thence they went to Troy. At this point
in the poem an episode seems to have been introduced concern-
ing the adventures of Helen's brothers, Castor and Polydeuces,
relating the death of the former and the alternate immorta-
lity conferred on them by Zeus. After this, Iris, the messenger
of the gods, announced to Menelaus the flight of Helen, and
Menelaus along with Agamemnon took steps to gather an army
together to recover her by force of arms. First Menelaus went
to Nestor, who made a long speech about Epopeus and the
daughter of Lycus, about CEdipus and the madness of Heracles,
and about Theseus and Ariadne. Then they gathered together
the chieftains of Greece, except Odysseus, who, foreseeing the
duration of the war, feigned to be mad, but was found out by
the device of Palamedes, on whose suggestion the infant Tele-
machus was placed in the furrow where Odysseus was ploughing.
The expedition then, after prophecies from Calchas, set sail, and
came to Teuthrania, which they sacked.1 There Telephus killed
Thersander, the son of Polyneices, and was himself wounded
by Achilles. When the Greeks proceeded on their voyage they
were caught by a storm. Achilles was carried to Scyrus, where
he wedded Deidameia ; and on his return to Argos he healed
1 In mistake for Troy, nccording to Proclus. This seems extraordinary,

but fcjtrabo says the same tiling ; and it is consistent with what is soon after
saiil, viz., that after this mistake the Greeks got Telejihus to show them the
way to Troy.
Teh-phus in order that ha might guide the Greeks to Troy.

The expedition, scattered by the storm, again assembled at Aulis;
but while there, Agamemnon killed one of the deer sacred to
Artemis, and the goddess in vengeance detained the fleet l>y
contrary winds. When Calchas informed the Greeks that the
anger of the goddess could only be appeased by the sacrifice of
Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, she was brought to
Aulis on the pretext that she was to be wedded to Achilles,
and then was offered as a victim. But Artemis substituted a
deer, and carried off Iphigenia to Tauri, making her immortal.
Then the Greeks, obtaining fair weather, set sail. They touched
at Tenedos, where Philoctetes was bitten by a hydra, and in
consequence of the offensive nature of the wound the Greeks
abandoned him on the isle of Lemnos. On their arrival at the
land of Troy, Achilles quarrelled with Agamemnon on a point
of precedence, and the Trojans at first repelled the Greeks,
Hector slaying Protesilaus. But Achilles joined the fray and
the Trojans were defeated. The Greeks then opened negotia-
tions with the Trojans, demanding back Helen and the wealth
she had carried off. The Trojans rejected the demands, and
the Greeks proceeded to ravage the country. At this time
Achilles was desirous of seeing Helen, and Thetis and Aphro-
dite brought them together. The siege did not advance, and
the mass of the army longed to return home, but Achilles pre-
vented them. They then continued devastating and plunder-
ing, and amongst the spoils Briseis fell to the lot of Achilles,
Cliryseis to Agamemnon. There then follows the death of
Palamedes, the resolve of 7a'\\>. to assist the Trojans by with-
drawing Achilles from the lighting, and a catalogue of the
Trojan allies.
The Cypria was followed by the Iliad of Homer, and the
next poem in the cycle was the JEthiopis, which took up the
Btory where the Iliad left it. The JEthiopis was by Arctinus
of Miletus, the greatest of the epic poets after Homer. His
date is made by the chronologists to he about 776 ac. After
the death and burial of Hector, the Amazon Penthesilea, the
daughter of Ares, came to assist the Trojans, and was killed by
Achilles. The Trojans, by the good offices of Achilles, were
allowed to bury the heroine, and this gave Thersites occasion
to speak evil of Achilles and Penthesilea Enraged at this,
Achilles slew Thersites with a blow from his list, and hence
■ dissension in the Greek army. In the end, Achilles
I to Lesbos, and therehaving sacrificed to Apollo, Artemis,
and Leto, he was purified from the guilt of blood by Odj
EPIC POETRY: THE EPJC CYCLE. 57
After this, Memnon, son of Eos, the dawn, clad in armour

made by Hephaestus, came to the assistance of the Trojans.
Thetis foretold to Achilles the doom which awaited him if he
killed Memnon ; but when Antilochus, the friend of Achilles,
had been slain by Memnon, Achilles in vengeance killed
Memnon, who was conveyed away by his mother, Eos, and
made immortal by Zeus. Achilles routed the Trojans and
chased them into the city, where he fell by the hands of
Paris and Apollo. A fierce fight arose over the body of the
Greek hero, which was at last carried back to the ships by
Odysseus, whilst Ajax kept off the foe. Then Antilochus
was buried, and lamentation was made over Achilles by Thetis
and her nymphs. When the body was placed on the pyre,
Thetis conveyed it away to the isle Leuce ; the Greeks erected
a mound and held funeral games in honour of Achilles ; and
at these games, in which the divine armour of Achilles was
one of the prizes, Odysseus and Ajax contended for the armour,
which was awarded to Odysseus.
The next poem is the Little Iliad. It is generally asso-
ciated with the name of Lesches, who was said to belong to
Lesbos. But Aristotle prefers to speak of the author of the
Little Iliad without pretending to know his name, and it is
therefore probable that he thought there was no authority for
assigning the poem to Lesches. This is confirmed by the fact
that Hellanicus of Lesbos, who on patriotic grounds would pro-
bably have credited his fellow-countryman with the author-
ship if there had been any excuse for doing so, attributes the
work to Cinaethon of Sparta. Further, it has been conjec-
tured that Lesches is not a proper name, but is derived from
the word lesche, a market, and meant merely the man who
sang in the market to the assembled people.
The Little Iliad says that the award of Achilles' divine
armour to Odysseus was due to Athene. Ajax, in his anger at
the slight put upon him by the preference shown to Odysseus,
resolved to slaughter the Greek chieftains ; but Athene sent
madness on him, so that he slew sheep for men, and when
he awoke to a sense of this further disgrace, he killed himself.
After this Odysseus contrived to capture llelenus, by means of
whose prophetic powers the Greeks learned how Troy might
be captured. They sent Odysseus and Diomedes to Lemnos, to
bring to them the wounded Philoetetes. He was healed by
Machaon, and then killed Paris in single combat. The body
of Paris was treated with contumely by Menelaus, but was
given to the Trojans for burial. Helen, Paris being dead.
58 HISTORY OF GREKK LITERATURE.
became the wife of his brother, Deiphobus. At this point in

the poem yet new characters are brought on the scene. Odys-
seus fetched Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, from Seyms, and
gave to him his father's divine armour. For the Trojans, a
fresh hero appeared in Eurypylus, the son of Telephus. Neop-
tolemus and Eurypylus fight as their fathers had (in the
Cypria) fought before them, and Eurypylus is slain. Mean-
while Epeus, inspired by Athene, contrives the famous wooden
horse. Odysseus, having mutilated and disguised himself, steals
into Troy to gather information, and though recognised by
Helen, returns in safety. After this, in company with Diomede,
he succeeded in entering Troy and carrying off the Palladium,
or image of Pallas, which as long as it was in the possession of
the Trojans secured Troy from overthrow. Then picked men
of the Greeks were shut up in a wooden horse ; the rest of the
army burnt their tents and sailed away, as though they had
raised the siege. But they only went as far away as Tenedos.
The Trojans in their joy at the end of the Avar pulled down
part of their wall to admit the horse into the city, and feasted
and rejoiced because they had defeated the Greeks.
Proclus says that the Little Iliad was followed by the Sack
of Troy, the work of Arctinus of Miletus. According to
Arctinus, the Trojans at first were doubtful about the horse.
Some proposed to throw it over a precipice, others to burn it,
others to place it as an offering to Athene in the temple of
the goddess. The last view prevailed, and the Trojans made
merry. Laocoon, who had urged the destruction of the horse,
was killed by two serpents that came out of the sea ; and
iEneas, who had supported Laocoon in his opposition to the
reception of the horse into the city, withdrew with his followers
to Ida. Sinon, a Greek, who had gained entrance into Troy
by a stratagem, then gave the signal to the Greek fleet by a
torch. The Greeks returned, and Troy was simultaneously
attacked from without by the main body, and from within by
those who had gained admittance by means of the horse.
Neoptolenius slew Priam at the altar of Zeus ; Menelaus killed
Deiphobus and carried off Helen to the ships. Cassandra,
daughter of Priam, fled to the temple of Athene, and, still
clinging to the image of the goddess, was dragged away by
Ajax Oileus. Dismayed at this reckless impiety, his fellow-
soldiers would have stoned Ajax to death, but that he lied for
protection to the altar of the. very goddess he had offended ;
and therefore, when the Greeks sailed away, Athene devised
destruction for them on the sea. Astyanax, the little son
EPIC POETRY: THE EPIC CYCLE. 59
of Hector and Andromache, was killed l>y the advice, if not

the hand, of Odysseus ; and Andromache became the prize
of Neoptolemus. Then the city was burnt, and Polyxena
slaughtered on the tomb of Achilles as an offering to the hero's
ghost.
The Sack of Troy was followed by the Nostoi, or " The
Return," or, as it was sometimes called, " The Return of the
Atrida?." 1 Proclus calls the author Agias ; Pausanias, Hegias.
Eustathius says he was a Colophonian. It seems probable that
there were several poems called the Return. The one sum-
marised byProclus takes up the story where the Sack of Troy
left it. The wrath of Athene, roused by the impiety of Ajax
Oileus, and extending to all the Greeks because they failed to
punish Ajax, now begins to manifest itself. First, she caused
the two sons of Atreus to quarrel about setting sail : Agamemnon
stayed to appease Athene, but Menelaus set sail, following the
example of l)iomede and Nestor, who reached their homes in
safety. Menelaus, however, lost all his ships but five, and then
was driven to Egypt. Calchas the seer, Leontes, and Poly-
poetes, went on foot to Colophon,2 and there buried Teiresias.
When Agamemnon was about to sail, the ghost of Achilles
appeared and warned him, but in vain, of his doom. There
next follows the storm in which Ajax perished. Neoptolemus,
by the advice of Thetis, returns by land, meeting Odysseus in
Maroneia ; and eventually, after burying his father's old friend,
the aged knight Phoenix, returns to his grandfather, Peleus.
The poem concludes with the murder of Agamemnon by
iEgisthus and Clytemestra ; the vengeance taken by Orestes
and Pylades, and the return of Menelaus home.
Finally, the tale of Troy was wound up by the Tclegonia,
or story of Telegonus. This epic was by Eugamon of Cyrene,
who lived about b.c. 570. The Tdegonia attached itself to the
Odyssey closely, taking up the story where the Odyssey ended,
viz , with the death of the suitors. The suitors were buried by
their relatives, and Odysseus went to Elis to see the herds
there. lie was entertained by Polyxenus, from whom he
received a bowl on which was chased the story of Trophonius,
Agamedes, and Augeas. He then returned to Ithaca and
accomplished the sacrifices ordained by Teiresias. After this
he went to Thesprotis and married Callidice, queen of the land,
and led the Thesprotians in a war against the E-rygi. The god
1 7] tcDv 'ArpeiSiov icdOoSos.
2 This mention of Colophon confirms slightly Eustathius' statement that
the author was a Colophonian.
of war, however, routed Odysseus' army, but then was fought

by Athene, until Apollo intervened. After the death of Calli-
dice, Polypoetes, the son of Odysseus, inherited the kingdom,
and Odysseus returned to Ithaca. Meanwhile Telegonus, the
eon of Odysseus by Circe, had sailed from .ZEsea in quest of his
father, and had come to Ithaca. He was ravaging the island
when Odysseus came to the assistance of the Ithacans and was
killed by Telegonus. Then Telegonus having discovered who
it was he had slain, took the body of Odysseus, with Teleniachus
and Penelope, to his mother Circe. She made them immortal.
Telegonus married Penelope, Teleniachus Circe.
It may be asked what grounds there are for ascribing a consider-
able antiquity to the AZthiopis, Cypria, the Sack, the Return, &c. ?
In the first place, there is the unanimous belief of antiquity that
the earliest period of Greek literature was an age of epic poetry,
and that these epics belonged to that period. In the next
place, there are the perpetual allusions throughout lyric and
dramatic poetry to the tales of Troy and Thebes which were
told in these epics. Further, in the way of definite external
evidence there is the mention by Herodotus of the Cypria as
distinct from the work of Homer and as inconsistent in some
of its details with the Iliad. The Epigoni also, one of the
poems relating to Thebes which was incorporated in the cycle,
is mentioned by Herodotus (iv. 32). In Theognis, who flour-
ished about b.c. 540, there is a quotation from the Cypria.1
Finally, Callinus, whose date is placed about b.c. 730, mentions
the Thebais, another of the poems incorporated in the cycle
which dealt with Thebes, though he ascribes it to Homer.
As avc have said, the Epic Cycle included n t only a series
of epics relating the story of the Trojan war, but also another
series relating the expedition against Thebes. Of the latter we
have no summary and practically no knowledge. We may gain
some idea of the contents of the Theban epics from tragedies
on the same subject, hut we can form no idea of the way in
which the tale of Thebes was treated by the authors of the epic
poems, nor of their literary merit. The most famous of the
Theban epics was the Thebais. Its author is unknown. It
treated of the history of GEdipus ami his sens, as did also,
to judge from the name, the (Edipodeia, which is ascribed to
Cina'thon. The Epigoni was presumably a continuation of the
1 Theogn. 883 (1053), rov irlvwv &irb filv xa^t7r(*! <r/ff5a<rets /teXeSwvas,
from the lines in tlio Cypria (quoted by Atbeuseus, ii. 35c) —
Olvov tol, MevAae, Otol iroiriaav &pi<rrov
6i>t)toi$ dfflpixiiroKTti' airocKcSdaai /tifXcScDfos.
EPIC POETKY : THE EPIC CYCLE. 61
story of the Thebais, and may have been identical with the
Alcmceonts, though this is uncertain. The Talcing of CEchalia
related the story of the capture of the town by Heracles, who
thus won Iole — a story on which Sophocles' play the Trachinice
was based. The name of the author is Creophylus. The
Minyas may have been identical with the Phocceis; it contained
a descent to Hades, in which Charon appears ; and the name
of the author is given sometimes as Prodicus, sometimes as
Thestorides. The two last-mentioned epics, the Taking of
CEchalia and the Minyas, were not based on Theban myths,
and consequently it may be doubted whether they were in-
corporated into the Epic Cycle. The same may be said of the
Titanomachia, which was ascribed to Arctinus and also to
Eumelus, and of the Atthis or Amazonia.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER IV.
THE RELATION OP THE EPIC CYCLE TO HOMER.
Although Proclus may have given which Here sent, to Sidon and
us a correct version of the tale of captured the place. But Herodo-
Troy as it was to be found in the tus xdistinctly says that, according
Epic Cycle, it does not follow that to the Cypria, Paris reached Troy
we get from his summary a complete in three days, having enjoyed a
or a correct notion of the poems in favourable wind and a smooth sea.
their original separate form. His It is unlikely that Herodotus should
object was to give a clear account make a mistake on this point, be-
of the various events which made cause he relies on his quotation to
up the story, and for this purpose prove that the Cypria was not the
he may have had to omit or to alter work of Homer. He says, accord-
parts of some of the poems. If two ing to Homer, Paris went to Sidon,
poems narrated the same event, he but according to the Cypria, he did
would, for clearness, have to omit not. We have, then, here a case
one account ; and if one poem did in which the version of the Cypria
not join on naturally to that which with which we are acquainted
preceded or that which followed it, through Proclus has been altered
he would have to alter its begin- in order to make the general Bow
ning or end in order to make the of the story harmonious, and parti-
sequence easy and intelligible. We cularly to make the Cypria har-
must therefore endeavour to see if, monise with Homer. It may also
and how much, this has been the seem as though Proclus must have
case. Beginning with the Cypria, omitted a good deal at the end
we find apparently a clear case of of the Cypria; for it is not quite
alteration. According to Proclus, clear how the poem was wound
Paris, when carrying Helen away up satisfactorily, so as to make
to Troy, was driven by a storm, a complete whole in itself; and
11. 117.
further, it seems that, according to cise so great an influence on the

a scholiast,1 the poem mentioned course of the war that an epio
at least one incident, the death could find a natural close, or the
of Polyxena, in the sack of Troy. story of the war find a breathing
But this does not prove that the place therein. If the /Ethiopia did
action of the poem included the not, however, end with the suicide
taking of Troy. The Cypria is of Ajax, where did it end ? The
essentially the narrative of the answer seems to be given by the
beginning of the war, and a refer- fact that Arctinus did actually
ence to an incident at the end of carry on the tale of Troy as far as
the war no more proves that the the taking of Troy. This he related
taking of Troy was a part of the in the poem which Proclus sum-
subject of the poem than the refer- marises and calls the Sack of Troy.
ences in the Iliad to the death of Doubtless Proclus was right in call-
Achilles prove that his death came ing what he summarised the Sack
within the action of the Iliad.2 of Troy ; but it was not a separate
poem : it was part of the Êthiopia,
"We may therefore reasonably con-
clude that the Cypria ended where and this part got its name from its
Proclus makes it end.3 contents, in the same way as different
The Cyjvria was followed in the parts of Homer have received their
cycle by the Iliad, and after the names from their contents. It
Iliad came the /Ethiopia of Arc- seems, therefore, probable that the
tinus. As far as can be judged, beginning of the /Ethiopia was
the beginning of the /Ethiopia placed next after the Iliad because
seems to have originally fitted on it immediately took up the story of
to the end of the Iliad so well that the Iliad. Then the Little Iliad
no alteration or omission was neces- was appended to this portion of the
sary. But when we look to the /Ethiopia because it contained a
rest of the poem, the case is diffe- fuller account of the events which
rent. In the first place, according led up to the making of the wooden
to Proclus, the /Ethiopia ends with horse than the corresponding por-
a quarrel between Ajax and Odys- tion of the /Ethiopia presented.
seus about the armour of Achilles, Then the rest of the /Ethiopia, re-
the issue of which is contained in lating the taking of Troy and called
the Little Iliad. But the /Ethiopia the Sack of Troy, was brought in
could not have ended in the middle to wind up the tale.
of the quarrel ; it too, as well as If the /Ethiopia has suffered by
the Little Iliad, must have related being thus divided into two parts,
the issue. Even there, however, the Little Iliad has also suffered by
it could not have stopped. The being sandwiched between the two
suicide of Ajax was not an evenl of {>arts. The Little Iliad could not
sufficient importance, did not exer- lave begun by relating the issue
1 On Eur. Ilec. 41, i>7r6 N(oirTo\£uov <f>aalv airrrtv {i.e. Polyxena) atyayiao-
09)i>ai Ei'pnrid-qs /cai T/jkkos" 6 5e to. KvirpiaKa iroiTjiras <f>rjaiv &w& 'OHv<r<riws
Kai AwfiT)5ovs if T-rj rrji 7r6Xfa»s dXwaet Tfiax-naTiothiijav diroMcrOai.
- If it he said that Achilles is the principal figure in the Iliad, and there-
fore an allusion to his drat ii was natural, hut, Polyxena is not the principal
figure <>f the <'i/,»-t<i, we may meet this by pointing to the reference in the
Iliad to the deatli of Astyanax (11. xxiv. 735K which also occurred in the
sack of Troy, and is of no more importance to the Iliad thuli the death of
Polyxena to the Cypria.
;1 And as he makes it end, i.e., with a prophecy from Zeus, in which the
poet could insert bo much of the rest of the tale of Troy as was necessary to
wind ui> the loose ends of his own story.
EPIC POETRY : THE EPIC CYCLE.
of the quarrel between Odysseus Odyssey as it was embodied in

and Ajax ; it must have related the cycle was called the " Cyclic
the cause of the quarrel, and pro- Odyssey." The "Trojan Table"
bably the poem covered much the which was found at Bovilke, and
same ground as the beginning of may have formed part of the deco-
the /Ethiopia. So, too, the Little ration of a library, contains pictures
Iliad would not merely relate the and legends which confirm Proclus
making of the wooden horse ; it in the order he places the poems
would also go on to tell how it was composing the cycle in.
used and with what result, i.e., tell When the poems were arranged
the taking of Troy. This is proved so as to form an Epic Cycle is un-
by the fact that Pausanias and other
authors refer to incidents of the certain. The "Trojan Table," which
seems to presuppose the existence of
sack as occurring in the Little the cycle, probably belongs to the
Iliad; while Aristotle says that early part of the reign of Tiberius.
from it tragedians drew the plays The "Cyclic Odyssey" carries the
called the Sack of Troy, Scttiwj Sa il, cycle back to the time of Didymus,
Sin 1 1 a, and Troades. who lived in the reign of Augustus,
Finally, the Return and the Teh- and from whom comes the infor-
ffonia seem to have fitted naturally mation about the alteration of the
final verse of the Iliad and the
into
to have their needed
p'laces in
andthereceived
cycle, and
no
alterations. " Cyclic Odyssey." But further
back than this it is as yet impos-
The question now arises whether sible to trace the arrangement of
the alterations, or rather the omis- the poems into a cycle. We know
sions, just described are to be re- indeed that Zenodotus arranged in
garded as the work of Proclus, or order the poems of Homer ; but
whether the independent poems, this seems to refer rather to the
when they came to be arranged so cataloguing of the Homeric poems
as to form a cycle, were altered so for the library at Alexandria than
as to lit on to each other and make a to the editing of the cycle.
continuous story ? The latter seems We now have to ask what is the
to have been the case. Proclus says relation of these poems to Homer ?
expressly that the poems of the There are many incidents which
cycle were much read, precisely be- they have in common, and which
cause they, or rather it, made a one may have borrowed from the
continuous story. Now, some of the other. The murder of Agamem-
poems in their original form re- non is told in the Odyssey and also
peated a great deal of the story in the Return. There are through-
told in others, as we have seen ; out Homer numerous references and
and if they were embodied in the brief allusions to events which arc
cycle just as they stood, without related in full in the cyclies ; and
any dovetailing or excisions, they we may suppose either that the
would not make a continuous story. cyclies worked out in detail hints
Further, Proclus' statement is con- given in Homer, or wo may say
firmed from other sources. The that Homer had the works of the
last line of the Iliad was altered
cyclies before him, ami was refer-
so as to make it join on to the ring to them. Indeed, when we
jEthiopis.1 The version of the find in the Odyssey that a minstrel
1 Schol. Vict. II. xxiv. 804, 7ives ypa<povcnV <!>s oX-y' ai-uipUirov racpov
"Erropos* r)\0e 5' ' A)xaG<xiv "kpyjos OuyaTyp /j.eya\r)Topos a.v5po<p6voto.
The Iliad ends really —
o)s 017' dfitpievov rd<pov 'E/cropos i7riro5dp:oto.
64
is asked to sing the lay of the sack of Troy, as existing before

horse, we seem to have a reference Homer's time ; while the introduc-
to the Little Iliad or tlie /Ethiopia. tion to the Odyssey says, "Of these
But there are not only references things, goddess, declare them even
between the cyclics and Homer ; unto us," which implies — if the line
there are cross references. If, for is genuine — that the goddess in-
instance, the Iliad presupposes the spired other poets before Homer.
Sack of Troy, the Sack also presup- But although we may be fairly
poses the Iliad, which would prove certain that there existed in popu-
that each poem was later than lar story a common source from
and borrowed from the other. It which Homer and the cyclics may
seems, therefore, that we must seek have drawn without one borrowing
some other explanation. This may from the other, it is very improbable
perhaps be found in supposing that that Homer and the authors of the
the references, say in the Iliad to cyclic poems composed their works
the fate of Astyanax, are not to the simultaneously and independently.
Sack, but to the floating popular It is also very improbable that the
legend. So, too, it would not be authors of the later poems — which-
necessary to assume that the Re- ever were the later poems — were
turn expanded the brief allusion to unacquainted with, and therefore
Agamemnon's death contained in uninfluenced by, the work of their
the Odyssey. Both authors may predecessors. Further, if wo assume
have drawn independently from that all the poets were ignorant of
the stories of the people. In fine, each other's work, we cannot under-
the cyclics need not have borrowed stand how it came about, for in-
from Homer, nor Homer from the stance, that the Cypria just ended
cyclics ; both may have borrowed where the Iliad began, and that the
from a common source. Êthiopia just began where the Iliad
This indeed assumes that there ended. A common source may ex-
was a common source for Homer plain the points which the poets
and the cyclics to draw upon, and have in common, but it does not
it has been denied that we have
explain
subjects.their avoidingit each
Of course, other's
may be said
any proof of the existence of a
that our knowledge of the cyclics
popular legend telling the tale of
Troy. But this denial seems to be comes from Proclus' summary of
made on insufficient grounds and the cycle ; that in the cycle the
to be opposed to facts. In the first poems were cut down so as to fit
on to each other ; and that there-
place, all peoples have their folk- fore we have no right to say that
lore, floating mythology, and popu-
lar legends. In the next plan', the the Return, for instance, in its origi-
comparison of Greek mythology nal form did end where the Odyssey
and legends with those of other begins, or the Tdegonia begin where
Aryan peoples shows thai the Greeks the Odyssey ended. To this wo
had folk-tales long before the epic reply, that we can only Form our
period. Again, each city and place opinion on tins point by means of
in Greece had abundant local myths the evidence we possess. The sum-
and legends. Further, we have mary o\' the Cypria makes it toler-
already Been that many of the tales ably evident that the poem in its
incorporated in the Odyssey, bo far original form did end where the
from being the invention of Homer, summary makes it end ; just as the
are not even the special creation of summary of the /Ethiopia makes it
. bul are found among peoples probable that the original poem be-
of totally distinct origin. Finally, gan where the summary begins (ie.,
we bave in I Corner distinct references at the end of the Iliad), lull did not
to lays.e.'/, of the horse and the end where the summary ends. So,
too, the Return and the Telegonia live by the side of Homer for many
as summarised are evidently poems centuries, while its soundness is
complete in themselves, and there shown by the universal verdict in
is nothing in the summary of them favour of the superiority of Homer.1
which points to their having been Further, it is necessary to ob-
mutilated in order to fit on to the serve that there is the same sharp
Odyssey in the cycle. line between the subjects of Homer
We have then these facts to ac- and Pindar, of Homer and the Tra-
count for : whereas the action of gedians, as there is between Homer
one cyclic poem, e.g., the Jithiopis, and the Cyclics. Now, either Pin-
occupies the same ground as is dar and the Tragedians knew Homer
taken up by that of another, e.g., or they did not. Doth views have
the Little Iliad, the action of the been held ; let us see what each
Iliad and Odyssey does not clash view implies. According to the
with or overlap that of any cyclic view that Pindar and the tragedians
poem. We may say that this is had no acquaintance with Homer,
accidental ; that the authors of the this was because Homer was a late
four poems which touch the Iliad compilation from the floating pop-
and Odyssey knew nothing of ular legend which recounted the
Homer, nor he anything of them, tale of Troy. This compilation was
and that they all happened to just made about B.C. 420, for the satis-
avoid each other's ground. But faction ofthe reading public, which
this is too improbable to be readily then was coming into existence for
accepted. It is much more likely the first time. But according to
that either Homer found the Cyclics this view, not only were the Iliad
or they found Homer in possession and the Odyssey compilations from
of certain ground and intentionally the unwritten tale of Troy, but the
avoided poaching on the preserve. Cypria, sEthiopis, Little Iliad, the
We have therefore to draw one Hark, the Return, and the other
of two conclusions ; either Homer cyclic poems also were compilations
found the Cyclics in existence, and from the same source, and were
forbore to go over their ground made about the same time as the
again, for fear of challenging a Iliad and Odyssey. The same ar-
comparison with them unfavour- guments which show that the Iliad
able to himself — a modesty which and Odyssey as we have them must
has received its reward in the re- have been later than B.C. 430, and
spect shown to Homer by every could not have been the work of an
generation of civilised men since author living before B.C. 700, also
his time ; or the cyclics found show that the Cypria, Êthiopia, &c,
Homer in possession of curtain could not have taken separate and
ground, and seeing that they could distinct form before B.C. 420, and
not improve on Homer, contented could not have been the work of
themselves with occupying the space authors living in the earliest times.
that he had left — a decision the "All these, I am confident," says
wisdom of which is seen in the
Mr. Paley, " were written epitomes
fact that it allowed their work to of different parts of a story, which
1 Of course it might be said that Homer found the Cyclics in possessi,.n of

the field and chose ground not occupied by them, because it w:is best fitted
for his purpose, not because he feared comparison. Bat against this we
have to set the improbability of the Cyclics having jusr left room for the
Iliad between the Cypria and the Êthiopis, and for the Odyssey between the
Return and the Tthijonia. We should also have to assume that Homer
undertook the function of writing au introduction to the Tthtj-'ii'ut, of all
poems !
in the time of oral recitation formed obvious patchwork character, was

one general and undistinguished unanimously declared by Greek
whole." Thus, according to Mr. critics of all kinds to possess the
Paley, Homer and the Cyclics are very highest antiquity and to be a
both later than Pindar and the
model of epic unity.1 There have
Tragedians, and Homer is later been instances of literary forgery
than the Cyclics. Therefore, in in ancient and recent times, but
order to explain why the part of surely none deserves to rank by
the tale of Troy which is found in the side of our Homer, which thus
Homer is not touched on by Pindar, deceived the very elect of nations,
the Tragedians, or the Cyclics, we a people whose taste was trained in
must either believe that Pindar and the finest literature a country ever
the Tragedians, having exactly the possessed, whose linguistic sensi-
same unwritten tale of Troy to draw tiveness is unparalleled, whether
upon as Homer, by some extraor- viewed from the side of philology
dinary chance managed to avoid or of literature, whose collective
precisely the incidents afterwards powers of criticism were a pruning*
selected by the compiler of our knife, that allowed none but the
Homer ; or else we must believe pure works of genius to flourish.
that the unfortunate compiler came Fortunately we are not compelled
on to the field after Pindar, the to accept such an improbable theory
Tragedians, and the compilers of the as results from assuniingthat Homer
cyclic poems had used up all the was later than the Tragedians. We
incidents in the legend of Troy have the alternative of assuming
which they thought lit for their that Homer preceded Pindar and
purpose. Then we must further the Tragedians. But on this as-
believe that the incidents which sumption we have to explain why
lyric poets, dramatists, and epic Pindar and the Tragedians avoided
compilers — indeed all the poets the ground chosen by Homer, and
Greece possessed — hail one after the same explanation should also
another deliberately rejected as un- explain why the cyclicpoets avoided
fit for any kind of poetic treatment Homer's ground. In the first place,
whatever — these incidents, as soon we have the reason given by Aris-
as they were strung together by totle ;the subjects of the Iliad and
some obscure compiler, whose very Odyssey are so simple that they do
name is lost beyond conjecture, at not afford material for more than
once obtained a success and a repu- one or two plays. The subject
tation which wholly eclipsed every of the Odyssey is tho return of
other epic compilation, at once took Odysseus; of the Iliad, the wrath of
rank above the poetry of the great- Achilles. Each subject is indivi-
est poets, was at once honoured sible it
; would be practically im-
with the name of Homer, and, fin- possible to construct a play which
ally, in spite of its modern allusions, should have, say, the first half of
its late and bastard dialect, and its the story in the Iliad for its plot,
1 Mr. Faley at least will not iillege that the fame of our Homer is due to
the way in which bis compiler strung together these incidents, which were
rejected by all other poets. Antimachus, or whoever it was, was merely a com-
piler, not an nuthor. (" I never said or Bpoke of late author»hip."—Pott K/>ic
Ward*, p. 27, n. 1.) The merit of the poems, according to Mr. Paley, is that
they contain pieces of beautiful ancient work sot together, in which, as be-
longing to the "one and undistinguished whole," formed by the tale of Troy
in the time of oral recitation, must have been known to the Tragedians
(though not known hi their present connection). 1,1k1 yct w*™ rejected by
them.
and be complete. In the next place, Greeks, paid in his own person for
to tell the story of Odysseus' re- his followers' fault. iEschylus also
gives a theological colouring, as it
turn or Achilles' wrath over again
in the same way as Homer told it, were, to the cause of Agamemnon's
would be to challenge Homer, the doom ; but instead of attributing it
greatest of poets, on his own ground ; ultimately to the offence of Ajax,
and it is a proof of the sound judg- he uses it to confirm his theory that
ment of Greek authors that none the mystery of undeserved suffer-
we know imagined he could gild ing is to be explained by guilt in
Homer's refined gold,1 or tell Ho- the sufferer's ancestors. In the
mer's tale better than Homer told same way, every incident in the
it.2 But it may be said that even tale of Troy which does not come
if the plot of the Iliad or the Odys- within the action of the Iliad and
sey does not admit of much drama- Odyssey, but belongs to the causes
tisation, there are many episodes or consequences of the action, has
which can be detached from the been worked by other authors into
plot, and would suffice to make a epic or dramatic form. Further,
drama. This is true ; and it is just although neither any epic or any
in dramatising these episodes that tragic poet ventured to challenge
the Tragedians show they were ac- comparison with Homer on his own
quainted with both what is told in ground, the like respect was paid
our Homer, and with the way in neither by epic poets to each other,
which it is told hy our Homer. The nor by the Tragedians to epic poets.
death of Agamemnon is no part of But not only do the epic and
the pilot of the Odyssey, though it tragic poets, both by the incidents
is alluded to in the poem. The in the tale of Troy which they ac-
death of Agamemnon, therefore, cept and those they reject, show
was made the catastrophe of the an evident acquaintance with our
Return and the subject of tragedies. Homer, and distinguish between
Homer's allusions to the matter are the plot and the episodes of each
slight enough to allow of other of the Homeric poems : there are
authors developing the hint, and parallelisms between the Cyclicsand
filling up the sketch in their own Homer which seem to be cases of
fashion ; and we find that the imitation. For instance, in the
author of the Return and iEschylus Tclc/onia, Telegonus, the son of
have each developed Homer's out- Odysseus and Circe, sets forth on
line after their own fashion, and in an expedition to obtain tidings of
a way which shows that vEschylus his father ; in the Odyssey, Tele-
did not follow the non-Homeric machus, the son of Odysseus and
version more closely than he fol- Penelope, does the same. Now it
lows Homer. The author of the seems difficult to avoid the conclu-
Return made the death of Agamem- sion that one author borrowed the
non to be the consequence of the idea from the other ; and if this is
wrath of Athene. The Greeks, by a case of plagiarism, we have to
not punishing Ajax for his offence remember that, in order to prove
against the goddess, incurred her Homer to be later than the Cyclics,
wrath ; and Agamemnon, as the we must say that he plagiarised,
leader and representative of the and plagiarised from an author who
1 Somebody did dramatise Homer's own subjects, for Aristotle says so.
But the very names of both author and tragedy have perished- the punish-
ment of presumption.
3 " To attempt to tell the story [of FalstafT's life] in better words than
Shakespeare, would occur to no one but Miss Braddon, who has epitomised
Sir Walter, &c." — Obiter Dicta, p. 228.
brought his poem to a fitting close agreed upon by the immense majo-
by making Telegonus marry Pene- rity of writers on the subject, the
lope, and Telemachus marry Circe. Cyclics have imitated incidents in
Again, in the Cypria, Achilles and Homer, changing either the names
Agamemnon quarrel. Achilles with- of the actors or the occasion of the
draws from the fighting, and the scene. Put if, as most people will
Trojans gain successes until Achil- allow, this is so, wo may derive
lea comes forth from las tent. In from the cyclics valuable informa-
the Cypria this is but an episode, tion as to the contents of Homer in
while in the Iliad a similar quarrel their time. For instance, the ex-
(which has a different origin) con- pedition of Telegonus in quest of
stitutes the subject of the whole news of his father shows that in
poem. In the jEthiopis, again, the Odyssey, which the author of
Antilochus, the friend of Achilles, the Tclcgonia possessed, the expedi-
is slain by Memnon. Achilles, in dition of Telemachus was an inte-
spite of the prophetic warning of gral portion. That is to say, since
his mother Thetis, takes vengeance we have no reason to doubt the date
on Memnon, kills him, and then is assigned by the chronologists to
killed himself. In the Iliad it is
Eugainon, the author of the Tele-
Patroclus who is slain by Hector, gonia, viz., B.C. 560 or B.C. 570,
and it is the vengeance on Hector then what is called the Telemachia
which Thetis warns Achilles will of our Odyssey was part of the poem
be followed by his own death. An- at the beginning of the sixth cen-
other parallelism from the jEihio- tury. So, too, the scene in the
pis is to be found in the funeral nether world in the Return shows
games with which the body of that the Nekuia of the Odyssey be-
Achilles, as in the Iliad the body longed to the poem when Agias —
of Patroclus, is honoured. From if he was the author— lived. 11 is
the Little Iliad we may take the date we do not know : we can only
way in which Menelaus insults the say that the literary superiority of
body of Paris before it is returned the Return to the Telegonia makes
for burial to the Trojans, as parallel it probable that it belongs to an
to the treatment of Hector's body earlier period. Further, if the Re-
by Achilles in the Iliad. In the turn is but an expansion of the
Return there was a descent to the sketch given in the early books of
nether world, which at once sug- the Odyssey of the adventures of
gests that of Odysseus in the Iliad. Menelaus, Agamemnon, and Nestor
Further, we may notice that the on their return from Troy, we carry
characteristics of certain actors in back the Telemachia, to before the
the tale are repeated in a way not time of the Return.
likely to have occurred indepen- The information we derive from
dently to two authors. In the the Cyclics as to the form and con-
Cypria, Nestor, when consulted by tenta of the Iliad is even more valu-
Menelaus about the recovery of able. The last two books of the
Helen, at once makes a long speech Iliad have been frequently con-
full of ancient instances, exactly demned as Late additions; but at
parallel to his speech in the em- any rate, they were probably an
bassy to Achilles in the Iliad. integral part of the Iliad before
Again, in the Êthiopia, Thersites is the time of the Little Hind or the
as obnoxious as in the Iliad, talk- J-',!liiu is, for the funeral Lames of
ing ribaldry about Achilles and the Achilles in the latter, and the con-
Amazon Pcnthesilea.
In all these cases, if Homer is tumelious treatment of Pal is' body
in the former, are imitated from
inure ancient than the Cyclics, as what is related in Iliad xxiii and
Bound judgment declares, and as is xxiv. Now Lesches, the author of
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 6g
the Liitle Iliad, is dated B.C. 700 ; garrulousness of Nestor in the Cyp-
Arctinus, the author of the Jitlno- ria, are reproductions of scenes
pis, B.C. 770; and although we which occur in Iliad ii. and ix., i.e^
have no means of judging on what in books which, according to Mr.
grounds Eusebius and Hieronymus x Grote, were not part of the original
dated these early authors, we have Iliad. These books then appear to
no grounds for disputing their have been part of the Iliad at least
dates. Again, the behaviour of before B.C. 770. 3
Thersites iu the Êthiopia, and the
CHAPTER V.
THE HOMERIC HYMNS.
The Homeric hymns are a collection of upwards of thirty

poems written in hexameter verse. They vary in length from
three lines to six hundred, the majority being short. They
belong to widely different ages, and consequently to very various
authors. The motives with which they were composed were
different, though the majority appear to have had the same
object. The authorship is in all cases extremely doubtful, and
their literary merit varies considerably. They are called
Homeric because they were supposed to be the work of Homer
or of Homeric poets ; and some are hymns in the original rather
than in the later sense of the word. That is to say, they are
songs, not necessarily addressed to or telling of the gods, and,
when a god is their subject, they are not necessarily of a devo-
tional character. The Greek word hymnos was used by Homer
of the lays of minstrels, such as the lay of the wooden horse,
or of the taking of Troy, or of the loves of Aphrodite and Arcs.
Any song which related the glorious deeds of men or gods was
originally a " hymn." Later, the word in Greek came to have
a special sense, and to mean a prayer in verse ; in which sense
the word rightly describes some of the Homeric hymns.
The majority of the hymns are short, and the short hymns
are prayers and invocations. Let us, therefore, see what is
1 Eusebius was Bishop of Csesarea about A.n. 320. His chronology, which
is of meat value to the historians of ancient times, and has received many
confirmations from modern discoveries, was contained in his llajro&urij
'Ioro/na (from the beginning of the world to A.D. 325). We have only frag-
ments of this work, translated into Latin, and continued by Hieroiivmus.
2 This, of course, does not affect Mr. Qrote's theory, which ie raids the
later books as added on to the Iliad immediately after the time of Homer,
which, according to Herodotus, was about B.C. 850.
7° HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
prayed for, or why the gods arc invoked, and then we may ho
able to see 'why these poems, though of different ages and
origin, have been collected together. "When the collection was
made may be discussed subsequently. In some cases the prayer
seems to be merely a general one for blessing and happiness.
For instance, the hymn to Athene (xi.) contains four lines ad-
dressed tothe goddess describing her attributes, and concludes
" Hail, goddess ! and grant us fortune and happiness." So, too,
in the hymn to Heracles (xv.), the poet says, in effect, I will
sing of Heracles, son of Zeus and Alcmene, who did and suf-
fered many wondrous thing?, and now has a place in Olympus
by the side of Hebe : " Hail, king ! son of Zeus ; grant us pro-
sperity and to deserve it." But in other prayers we find a
much more definite petition. In the hymn to Hestia, the god-
dess of the hearth (xxiv.), the poet prays to her, wherever she
be, to visit this house and give grace to his song. What song
she is to give grace to we see at once from the hymn to Selene
(xxxii.), the moon, which ends, " Hail, goddess ! having begun
with you, I will sing the praise of demi-gods, whose deeds
minstrels make famous." The demi-gods are the heroes of the
story of Troy or of Thebes, and the praise which the bard, after
his invocation of Selene, is about to sing is a lay of his own
composition or a portion of some epic. This is the character
of the collection of the Homeric hymns as a whole. They are
prayers or invocations to some god, made by a minstrel or a
rhapsodist about to recite an epic poem.
Many of the hymns end like the hymn to the Dioscuri
(xxxiii ) : " Hail, Tyndaridse ! riders of fleet horses, and I will
make mention of you in another song." Why the poet should
make mention of tliem, or whatever god he prays to, in another
song appears from the end of the hymn to the Earth (xxx.) :
" Hail, mother of the gods ! spouse of the starry Sky ! graciously
giant me a goodly livelihood in return for my song, while I
will make mention of you in another song." If the god hears
the prayer, the worshipper will continue Ins worship; and he
prays for a goodly livelihood because, whether a wandering bard
or a rhapsodist, it is by the poetic art he makes his living.
Other hymns, like one to Hermes (xviii.), end, " Hail, son of
Zeus and Maia ! having begun with you, I will go on to another
song." These too are evidently preludes to the recitation of
epic poetry, the epic poem recited being the other song which
the hard will go on to. We are therefore justified in conclud-
ing that hymns such as the one to Zeus (xxiii.), ending, " l>o
gracious, son of Kronos, most glorious and greatest," although
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. ? I
they contain no reference to the recitation which the minstrel

is ahont to make, and for the success of which he prays, were,
like the rest, preludes to a recitation. But two exceptions must
be made. The hymn to Poseidon (xxii.) expressly prays that
the god will help those at sea, and the hymn to Ares (viii.)
expressly prays for peace.1 By what accident these two hymns
came to be incorporated in a collection of preludes it is impos-
sible now to say.
Having established the nature of the hymns, let us now see
what is known about the practice of preluding a recitation of
epic poetry by a short invocation. There is in Homer a
passage which, describing the bard Demodocus as beginning
the lay of the horse, is generally translated, "He being stirred
by the god, began ; " but it is probable that it should be trans-
lated, "He being stirred, began with the god," i.e., began with
a brief invocation, such as we have in the hymns.2 In this
case the custom goes back to Homeric times, though it is
doubtful whether any of the hymns go back to so early a date.
There is no reason to doubt that bards, when about to recite
poems of their own composition, made a brief invocation; and
a short hymn to Aphrodite (x.), which prays her to "grant a
delightsome song," seems in those words to be rather the prayer
of a poet about to recite a poem of his own than of a rhapsn-
dist.3 In this case, Hymn x., which has much beauty in its
brief compass, would belong to the epic age, i.e., to the time
1 Probably we ought to include among the exceptions a hymn to Dionysus

(xxvi.), which ends —
56s 5' Tjfias xaipoiras es &pas ai/rts 'Ueadai,
etc 5' out/' dipduf eh tovs xoWovs iviavTofo.
2 Od. viii. 499, 6 5' oppr/deh 'eou TJpxero.
The translation given above is somewhat confirmed by a general resembbmce
between the formula of the hymns and the passnge in the Odyssey. The
latter runs—
pvOrjaopai avdpwTroiaiv
il>s &pa toi wp!xppu)v debs wiracre Oiaiuv aoi5r\v.
ws (pa.0, 6 5' bpp-qdels Oeov ijpxeTO.
A recollection of the passage seems to have coloured the diction of the
hymn to Helios (xxxi.), which ends —
X^pe S."a^, irp6<t>puv 5^ (Hov Oupr/pe' 6ira€e.
i< ffto 5' apZ&fievos, icXflVo fiepjiruv yivos avSpuiv.
(The construction without iic is more frequent in the Hymns; e.g.. ix. 9—
(rev 5' iyib ap^dpevos pier agonal &\\ov is vp.vov).
3 So too xxv., which says (6), ifiijv Tip-fear' aoidrjv ; and vi. 19 —
56s 5' iv aytlivt
vIkt)u r<p5e (pipeadai, ep-qv 5' tvrvvov doiS^.
72 m STORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
when epic poetry was still being composed. Hymns xxx.

ami xxxi., which pray for a goodly livelihood, seem more
appropriate in the mouth of a wandering minstrel, whose living
depended on the success of what he sung, than to a rhapsodist
who won prizes. Hymns xxiv. and xxix., which are addressed
to the goddess of the hearth, indicate the nature of the audience
before whom the minstrel was about to recite. It was an
audience like that which listened to Phemius or Demodocus
in the Odyssey.
But rhapsodists also invoked the gods to favour them when
competing for the prize of recitation. This is clearly shown
by a hymn to Aphrodite (vi.) which ends, "Grant me to win
the victory in this contest." Further, there is a passage of
great interest for our purpose in Thucydides (iii. 104), in which
he quotes from one of the Homeric hymns (that to Apollo, i.)
He ascribes the hymn to Homer, and he quotes it because it
refers to the Ionian festivals held in Delos, and therefore carries
back the festival to the time of Homer. More important even
than this is it that he calls the hymn a " proem," that is, a
prelude, and thus provides external proof for the conclusion
pointed to by the hymns themselves, viz., that they introduced
a recitation of epic poetry. Whether at the festivals in Delos
original poetry alone was recited, or the competition was
between rhapsodists reciting the works of others, there is
nothing to prove. But the lyric poet Terpander composed proems
to prelude recitations of Homer and other epic poetry ; and the
rhapsodists doubtless adopted the practice. Indeed, most of
the hymns may be regarded as the invocations used by rhapso-
dists at musical contests, though we need not go the length of
assuming that the Homeric hymns were a collection of proems
made for the use of rhapsodists competing at musical festivals.
Pindar (Nem. ii. 1-4) also says that rhapsodists preluded
their recitations with an invocation; but he says that they
generally invoked Zeus. At first this seems to present a diffi-
culty, for only one of the Homeric hymns is addressed to Zeus.
But the plausible suggestion has been made that the choice of
a god to be invoked depended frequently on the place in winch
the recitation was held. For instance, a minstrel about to
recite his poem
the goddess in ahearth,
of the chieftain's hall; as
Hestia might veryis naturally
indeed invokeof
done in two
the hymns. A rhapsodist competing in the festivals at Delos
would appropriately invoke the god of the festival and the
island, Apollo. In the same way it is probable that the names
of the gods to whom the various Homeric hymns are addressed
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. 7 3
indicate the locality or the festival at which the recitations

they preluded took place. Thus the hymn to Deraeter was
probably used at Eleusinia. The hymn to Artemis (ix.), in
which Apollo is mentioned, was probably in use at the festival
held in honour of the two deities at Claros near Colophon.
The hymn to Aphrodite (x.), in which Salamis, in Cyprus, is
mentioned, would be connected with the festival of the goddess
in Salamis. Invocations to Zeus being equally appropriate
under all circumstances, would naturally be frequent. Thus
the words of Pindar confirm the conclusion that most of the
hymns were the work of or used by rhapsodists.
As yet we have made no special reference to the first four
Homeric hymns. Three of them are as long as the average
book in Homer, and the other one is over 290 lines. A diffi-
culty therefore has been felt in believing that these long hymns
could have been meant as preludes to a recitation, since they
are long enough for a recitation in themselves. Various ways
out of the difficulty have been imagined. The expansion
theory, which plays so large a part in the reconstruction of the
"original" Homer, has been applied to the Homeric hymns.
It is said that these long hymns were originally short, but were
gradually interpolated and expanded to their present length.
But why rhapsodists should defeat their own object and stultify
themselves in this manner it is difficult to see. If in their
present form they are too long to serve the purpose for which
they were intended, it is vain to say they have reached it by
expansion. If rhapsodists would not compose preludes (or
epics) too long for their purpose, neither would they expand
them to such a length. A more reasonable theory is that the
interpolations are much later than the time of rhapsodists;
that they are the work of stupid scribes, or perhaps of editors.
The text is indeed in a very bad state, and there are many
obscurities, due in all probability to stupid interpolations. In-
deed, the first hymn to Apollo is really two distinct hymns run
together. But, on the other hand, many obscurities are due to
equally stupid omissions. Incomplete as the text is, it would
be much more incomplete had not Matthaei in 1772 discovered
a manuscript in a stable at Moscow containing a fragment of
a hymn to Dionysus and a long hymn to Demeter, hitherto
wanting in the MSS. of the Homeric hymns. It is not im-
probable, therefore, that, with a complete text, we should find
the interpolations in our text balanced by the lacuna-.
Another theory is, that as each rhapsodist preluded his own
recitation by a short invocation, so the whole contest was opened
by a long hymn, which served as a prelude to the whole pro-

ceedings. But tliis is a pure conjecture, supported by nothing
in the hymns themselves, nor by any analogy outside of them.
There remains yet another conjecture to be mentioned ; it is
that the long hymns are not preludes at all, but lays with
which the authors actually competed for the prize ; that, in
fact, we have in them specimens of the lays of which, on the
accretion theory of Homer, the Homeric poems are a fortui-
tous aggregation. This conjecture seems refuted by the fact
that the long hymns, like the short ones, end with the de-
claration that the poet having begun with the god, will now
go on to his recitation. But the general stupidity of the MSS.
makes it possible that these verses have got tagged on to
poems to which they do not belong. A more fatal objection is
that the hymn to Apollo which Thucydides ascribes to Homer,
and which seems to have been a prelude, not an independent
poem, contains 178 lines. Having exhausted the various con-
jectures made on the subject, and having found none of them
satisfactory, we must expand our notions of what rhapsodists
could recite and Greek audiences listen to. If 178 lines were
not too much as a prelude to the real business of recitation,
possibly neither were five hundred.
Although the different hymns belong to different dates, that
to the Delian Apollo being the oldest, they probably most of
them belong, if not to the epic period, to a time not very long
after it. The question how old this collection is is different.
The very faulty condition of the text, with other considerations,
makes it probable that the collection was made after Alexan-
drine times. The oldest reference to be found to it is in Philo-
demos, who was contemporary with Cicero. The difference
between the lines from the hymn to Apollo, as quoted by
Thucydides and as they stand in our text, is considerable, and
shows that the hymn had been transmitted orally — and with
the consequent variations — for some time before it was com-
mitted to writing. At the same time, the spelling shows that
probably it was committed to writing before the completion of
the alphabet in the archonship of Euclides ; whereas the other
hymns were probably not written down until after that period.1
1 E.g., wlien the hymn to Apollo was meta-charac tensed, "ETBON was in-
correctly transliterated into tv.lwv instead of eOfiovv. The nbsenoe of such
mistakes of transliteration in the other hymns makes it probable Unit they
were not transliterated, hut written down for thr first time after the
completion of the alphabet. In xii. 3 the reading aaw may mislead. It
looks like a false transliteration of 2AO = adoi/. Hut the MSS. read cdov.
2dw is a correction (!) by Barnes. Editors should restore aaov.
EPIC POETRY : THE HOMERIC HYMNS. J 5
Here we may appropriately mention some other poems "which,

as well as the hymns, were accounted Homeric in ancient times.
The most famous is the Margites. This poem, which unfortu-
nately has not survived to our time, took its name from the
hero. Margites was the very personification of folly. As we
learn from a fragment, he knew many things, and knew them
all equally badly. Being unable to count more than five, he
set to work to enumerate the waves of the sea. From this we
can infer to a certain extent the nature of the poem. In the
first place, it was not a parody ; in the next, it was not a per-
sonal attack upon any one. It was general in its character,
and depended for its success in provoking mirth on the humour
with which the author described the situations into which
Margites was naturally brought by his folly. Aristotle regarded
it as standing in the same relation to comedy as the Iliad and
Odyssey to tragedy ; and he regarded the Margites, as well as
the Iliad and Odyssey, as the work of Homer. Its popu-
larity was great in antiquity. The Stoic Zeuo is said by Dion
Chrysostom (53, 4) to have written a treatise on it. But it
can be traced back safely farther than the time of Zeno, for
Archilochus, whose date is about B.C. 700, was acquainted with
it. Whether, however, the Margites was the work of Homer,
it is difficult to say. The absence of any mention of it in the
better scholia on Homer has been regarded as an indication that
the Alexandrian critics did not rank it as Homeric. Further,
Suidas 1 and Pioclus attribute it to Pigres, the brother of Arte-
misia, the queen of Halicarnassus, who distinguished herself in
the Persian wars. But this seems to have been merely a con-
jecture based on the inadequate ground that Pigres interpolated
the Iliad with pentameters, and the Margites contained iambics
mixed with hexameters. Further, the poem can be traced
farther back than Pigres, as far as Archilochus. The mixture
of iambics with hexameters does indeed seem to show that the
Margites belongs to a time when iambic poetry was struggling
into being, and the epic age parsing away. This would make
the poem to be post-Homeric : but against it Ave have to sot the
fact that Aristotle regarded Homer as the author.
Other humorous poems attributed t<> Homer, and now lost,
were the Cercopes, the Epicichlidt'S, and the Caminos. The
1 Suidas probably lived about A.r>. 1000. Ho wrote a lexicon, compiled
from a variety of sources, previous dictionaries, scholia, and the writings of
grammarians. He did not possess much power of discriminating between
good and bad authority for a statement ; nnd it is unsafe to rely on what
lie says, unless it is probable, for some reason or otber, that be is quoting
from a good authority.
Cercopes, like the Margites, seems to have heen the literary

version of a popular tale ; and the tale, at least, was of some
antiquity, since it afforded a subject for one of the metopes of
Selinus. Besides these poems which have not survived, there
is another humorous poem which has survived, the Batraeho-
myomachia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice. This is not based
on any popular tale ; it is a parody of warlike epics, and pre-
supposes some literary cultivation for its appreciation. It
possesses, however, no literary merit, and only occasional flashes
of humour, e.g., the reappearance of a combatant after having
been severely wounded or even killed — a just parody on the
disregard of Homeric heroes for wounds which should have put
them liors de combat. The Batrachomyomachia cannot be the
work of Homer, and the only ground for allowing it any
antiquity is the statement of Suidas that it was written by
Pigres. But as he also attributes the Margites to the same
author, it is probable he has confused the two poems. It
may, indeed, be reasonably doubted whether the Batracho-
myomachia belongs to the classical period at all. Be this as it
may, the parody was successful enough to lead to imitations,
such as the Psaromachia, Arachnomachia, and Geranamaekia,
Parodies were in much favour in Athens during the Pelopon-
nesian war, and were regularly recited at festivals, probably at
the Panathensea. The most distinguished author of this kind
was Hegemon of Thasos, a friend of Alcibiades, who composed
a Gigantomachia, which may have contained, at least, refer-
ences to the Sicilian expedition. In the next century Euboeus
of Paros, and after him Boeotus of Syracuse and Matron, seem
to have cultivated parody with success.
Finally, a few Homeric epigrams have survived to our day.
They are of various worth, and probably of different dates.
Whether any go back to Homer's time, there is nothing to show.
They include epitaphs and gnomes in hexameters, and, most in-
teresting ofall, the Eiresione. This poem gets its name from the
olive or laurel twig wound round with threads of wool, winch
was not only carried by supplicants, but was also carried by
boys in the country who went round begging from house to
house, and Singing the Eiresione, much in the same way as boys
in our own country at Christmas-time,
EPIC POETRY: HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. JJ
CHAPTER VI.
HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY.
From Homer to Hesiod the step is a great one. To say that

their only resemblance is that they are both in Greek and both
in hexameters, would be an exaggeration, though not a great
exaggeration. In subject, object, method, style, in the circum-
stances under which they were produced, and the place and
race to which they belong, they differ widely. When Alex-
ander the Great said that Homer was reading for kings, Hesiod
for peasants, he gave utterance to a criticism which has con-
siderable truth in it. The contempt for Hesiod implied in the
judgment is perhaps too strong, though in reading him we can-
not but frequently feel that we are in the tracts of hexameters
rather than in the realms of poetry. This is sometimes as-
cribed to the nature of the subject. But the Georgics of Virgil
suffice to chow that it is possible for a poet to impart at least
as much interest to farming as to fighting ; and the fact re-
mains, that excellent though Hesiod may have been as a man in
all matters of life, he was not a great poet, hardly a poet at all.
If Alexander's criticism does but little injustice to Hesiod's
claims to be counted a poet, it is a yet more just expression
of the difference in the circumstances under which and the
audience for which the two authors composed. Homer was,
as a matter of fact, a composer for kings, and Hesiod for peas-
ants. Homer took for a subject the quarrel between the divine
Achilles and Agamemnon, king of men. Hesiod takes for his
text the lawsuit between his brother and himself, poor farmers
both, though not both honest. In Homer, kings are heroes,
whose prowess it is the poet's privilege to sing of. In Hesiod,
kings are the unjust judges who gave a verdict against the
author, and are to be shown the error of their ways. From this
difference in the subject and its treatment we may fairly infer
a difi'erence in the audience to which the two authors addressed
themselves. Amongst farmers, who had themselves suffered
from the injustice of kings, Hesiod's verses would be as welcome
as was Homer's poetry in a palace; and Alexander's verdict
shows the reception which would have been accorded to Hesiod's
Works and Days by royal readers. Here, as elsewhere through-
out the history of classical Greek literature, we see the reaction
of audience on author, and the way in which the demands of
the public determined the character of the literature.
If Homer and Hesiod differ in their subjects, they differ

quite as much in what is more important, their objects; and
this again is doubtless partly due to their difference in race
and place. Homer's object is simply to tell his story in the
best way. "Tell me, Muse, of that man so ready at need," is
the prayer he puts up; or, "Sing, goddess, the wrath of
Achilles, Peleus' son." But Hesiod's object is not to tell a story,
but to tell the truth. He informs us at the beginning of the
T/ieogony that the Muses appeared to him by night, when
he was with his flocks on the mountain Helicon, and said to
him, " We can tell many lies like unto the truth, but we can,
when we wish, say what is true.'' From this it is clear that
Hesiod regarded the fictions of Homer with the same moral
condemnation as Solon felt for acting, which, being the telling
of lies, was not to be allowed in the state. The Spartans im-
plied the same view by the synonym which they invented for
lying — " Homerising;" while even with us, to "romance" is to
" tell a story," in the uncomplimentary sense. The object of
Hesiod, then, was to tell not a story, but the truth. Now a
poet may choose for his poem anything he likes to take, from
a field-mouse to the fall of man; and, provided that he pro-
duces work beautiful in itself and in accordance with the laws
of poetry, criticism which carps at his choice of subject has no
value. He may choose to tell the truth, and that will not mar
his poetry. Nor will it make mere verses poetry, any more
than it will make a bad verse scan. A statement may be true,
yet not beautifully or poetically expressed : witness the axioms
of Euclid. And the inference is equally false whether we say
this is true and therefore poetical, or this is not true and there-
fore is not poetical. In line, whatever the poet may wish to
relate, his object is to produce poetry, while the object of
Hesiod was nut to produce poetry but to give instruction. The
play of the imagination, which is essential to the poetical
treatment of any theme, Hesiod evidently looked upon with
suspicion: it resulted in "lies like the truth" indeed, but not
the truth. Whereas he wished to give exact information about
the best mode of conducting a farm, about the evil consequences
of idleness and injustice, or about the pedigree of the gods.
Hesiod is the representative of didactic poetry, of the poetry
which is designed to instruct. The popularity he enjoyed in
antiquity was due to the fact that be fulfilled his object. He
did instruct, and be was used largely fur purposes of instruc-
tion. But it is precisely because the aim of instruction wholly
filled his held of vision to the exclusion of the poet's proper
EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 79
object — the production of poetry — that he fails of being a

poet.
We have said that Hesiod's didactic object was due to the
place and race to which he belonged. He was an iEolian and
a Boeotian. Bceotia did indeed produce isolated geniuses — a
poet, Pindar ; a general, Epaminondas. But the dulness of the
atmosphere was matched by, if it was not the cause of, the dul-
ness of the population. The Athenians called their neighbours
"Boeotian pigs;" and country and people alike were better
fitted for cultivation than culture. The Homeric poems, on the
other hand, belonged in their origin to Asia Minor and the
Ionian race, a place and people much better adapted for the
development of the sense of beauty and for the growth of
works of the imagination. Here it should be noticed, that
although didactic poetry was developed in Boeotia and epic in
Ionia, the two kinds of literature were not the exclusive posses-
sion, the one of the one people, the other of the other. As epic
poetry has a history before Homer, so didactic poetry had a
development before Hesiod. Poems as long as those of Hesiod,
and consisting of a string of precepts but loosely bound to-
gether, could only have been built on the foundations laid by
a long line of predecessors. As the Homeric poems are the
literary and artistic version of various popular legends and
myths and folk-lore woven together by the genius of the poet,
so too the wise saws of which Hesiod's Works and Days is
made up were drawn from the experience and also from the
superstitions of the people. Further, as popular legends had
received poetic treatment before Homer's time, so before Hesiod
" the wisdom of many " had been shaped into form by " the
wit of the few." Precepts for the conduct of life were put into
pointed form both before and after Hesiod's time. Such were
the sayings of the Seven Wise Men ; and in later times at
Athens, Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, had verses of this
kind inscribed on the milestones and the images of Hermes.1
Didactic poetry, however, did not limit itself to teaching mora-
lity. Hesiod gives advice concerning the condition of cattle as
well as the conduct of life, on marriage as well as morality.
And so, too, we find didactic passages in the Iliad, e.g., the
advice of Nestor to his son on the subject of racing ; and in
the lost epic Thebais, one of the most famous passages was a
piece of didactic poetry. In fine, this kind of poetry, or rather
this form of conveying instruction, did not originate with
Hesiod, nor was it peculiar to the jEolian Boeotiana But
1 One of these has survived. — C. I. G. i. 12.
nowhere else and from no other poet did it receive such cultiva-
tion. The conditions in Boeotia were more favourable than else-
where to the development of the seeds of didactic poetry. What
were the conditions? A country adapted for farming, and a
population more inclined to the realities of existence than to the
realms of fancy. Hesiod was "a child of his time and people."
His natural bent was to the giving of practical advice ; and
his audience, being practical men. preferred hints on farming to
" lies," even though they were " like the truth," about Troy.
Under the title Works and Days there are comprised in all
probability tAvo works. There is the Works and Days proper,
consisting of advice about farming and husbandry generally, and
constituting the second half of the poem as it now stands.
There is also another poem addressed to Hesiod's brother, and
containing moral advice, which makes the first half of the poem
in its present form. These two poems differ in character
enough to make it probable that they were given to the public
under different conditions. Now it is possible that the real
Works and Days was first given to the public at some "musical "
contest or literary competition. But it is not probable that
Hesiod's warm reprobation of the corrupt and unjust kings was
meant to compete for a prize. It would have great success
with an audience of his neighbours gathered together to hear
his words against an injustice from which they themselves had
suffered or might suffer ; and we may conjecture that it was in
this way the poem was diffused, much as the lampoons of
Archilochus in later times were recited by the author at a ban-
quet, and circulated through the city by those who heard them.
Probably this was also the way in winch the real Works and
Days was made public. A single recitation in a public festival
would give the hearers no opportunity of carrying away in
their memories so long a poem. We must suppose that Eesiod
was frequently called upon to recite his poem in social gather-
ings, and that thus it became diffused.
We have now to ask why the matter of the Works and
Days, which, like other didactic poetry, is essentially prosaic,
was thrown into the form of verse? To this it has been replied
that Hesiod had very strong feelings about the injustice of
judges and the evil of idleness; and the strength of his feelings
was so great, that his soul could not rest until he had given the
most beautiful and imposing expression to his feelings that he
could. And this it is said is the explanation of didactic poetry
in general. Poetry in itself is not the proper vehicle for in-
struction and information : prose is the proper means. But
EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 8 I
the attractive and enthralling heauty of what the author had to

say appeared to him so great, that poetry was the only worthy
expression for it ; and into poetry he put it. Now we will not
insist upon the fact that food for cattle and matters of manure
cannot have this overpowering beauty. The fallacy of the ex-
planation is.that it assumes that Hesiod and other didactic
poets had before them the choice whether to compose in verse
or prose. But in the seventh century B.C. no Greek author had
any such choice. The very idea that it was possible to com-
pose prose was unknown until the latter part of the sixth
century, and then it was in Ionia that the discovery — an
important one — was made. If a man had that within him
which he felt he must give words to — if his thoughts on the
order of things, or his knowledge of the practical matters of
life, seemed to him too precious to die within his own breast,
he had only one way of giving them extensive publicity,
only one way of ensuring that they should live after him, and
that was to put them into verse. A precept is useless if it can-
not be remembered, and cannot be readily learnt by one person
from another. Accordingly, amongst most peoples, rhyme,
metre, or alliteration is used as an aid to memory. Rhyme
and metre have indeed a beauty of their own, which doubt-
less is the secret of their original cultivation. But they have
also the practical recommendation of enabling the memory to
carry a larger amount of facts than it otherwise could retain ;
and so long as writing is unknown to or little used by a people,
verse is not only a means of gratifying man's sense of beauty,
but also bears the burdens which paper or parchment are sub-
sequently made to carry.
Even when prose literature has come into existence, and
when the function of verse has been specialised down to the
sole purpose of adding to the beauty of expression, we still
find that there survives, especially amongst the uneducated, a
large amount of folk-lore in verse. Amongst this folk-lore
there may generally be found rhymes about the weather, about
the proper days for the discharge of certain domestic duties,
and rough and ready maxims of conduct. Now this is pre-
cisely the sort of teaching found in Hesiod's Works ami Days.
The "works" are farming operations, the •'days'' are the days
of the month on which it is lucky to do or avoid certain things.
It seems, therefore, reasonable to suppose that Hesiod was but
following a custom, which already existed among the people, of
couching useful information in verse, because it was easier to
remember than it would have been if put into prose. It is true
F
that a short maxim may have a long life, even in prose, if it is

put in a pithy form, which by its point or its ring strikes the
imagination and impresses itself on the memory. Such maxims
are the proverbs of all peoples. They play an important part
in the education of a nation, and constitute the principal edu-
cation of many illiterate people. But although brief maxims
may, even when expressed in prose, have a wide and long popu-
lar existence, it is because they are brief. A dozen words in
prose may be remembered if they are striking enough, but a
dozen pages of prose not. Hesiod, therefore, who wrote a long
work, had a very obvious reason for giving it the form of verse.
His object was to give useful information ; and however valu-
able his precepts were in themselves, his object would have
been defeated if they were not extensively circulated. Now,
if his sayings were to spread amongst the agricultural popula-
tion of Eceotia, and be handed down from father to son, it was
necessary that they should be in verse, for they were too long
to be remembered or repeated otherwise ; for whatever the
date at winch writing came into use in Greece, we may reason-
ably suppose that the tillers of the soil did no more reading
in Greece than they did in England before the invention of
the printing-press.
It is from the Worlcs and Days and the introduction to the
Theogony that Ave learn all we know about Hesiod's life. His
father ' came from Cyme in /Eolis and settled in Ascra, at the
foot of Mount Helicon, in Bceotia. There, as far as we know,
Hesiod spent his life. After his father's death he lost his
share of his father's property in a lawsuit brought against him
by his brother Perses, who obtained a verdict by bribing the
judges. This, however, seems not to have prevented Hesiod
from obtaining, by careful farming, a livelihood sufficient to
enable him to give assistance to his brother subsequently, when
Perses was in need of aid. Nor did the work which ho had
to do as a farmer prevent him from composing didactic
poetry. The Muses of Helicon inspired him to sing in the
Tkeogony of the origin of the world and the history of the
gods, llis literary fame and triumphs were not limited to the
audience that he found among his farmer neighbours, but on
one occasion he competed with a poem at the funeral of King
1 The name of his father is traditionally given as Dios. This probably ia
due to a misunderstanding of Works and Days, 299—
ipyatev Ntparj oiov yJvos.
Unless wo correct the reading into Aiov 7^05.
EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 83
Amphidamas in Chalcis, and carried off the prize. The law-

suit with his brother was the occasion of Hesiod's composing
the poem which now forms the first part of the Works and
Days ; the appeals of Perses for assistance afforded him the
opportunity for giving the advice contained in the real Works
and Bays. Other poems, of which we will speak shortly, he
composed besides these, but they have not survived. Tradition
says that he left Ascra and died, and was buried in jSaupactus.
There seem to have been two tombs, one in Naupactus, the
other in Ascra, claiming to contain his bones ; and this circum-
stance apparently gave rise to the myth commemorated by
Pindar, that he lived two lives.
Hesiod's verses are not in themselves beautiful, nor does his
subject, even when it of itself suggests poetical treatment, exalt
his style above his ordinary prosaic level. He lacks imagina-
tion. But it is unfair to convert this into a reproach. His
object was to give sound practical advice, and this he does in
a practical, if prosaic, manner. He succeeds in what he aims
at ; and it argues ignorance of the conditions under which he
composed to imagine, that because he necessarily composed in
verse, he therefore necessarily aimed at an imaginative render-
ing of ideas. He says himself his aim was truth, not invention ;
and verse was the proper vehicle for his ideas, not because they
required poetical rendering, but because it was an aid to the
memory. To judge him fairly, and to understand wherein the
merit consisted which made his name great in Greece, we must
consider what he said, not how he said it. He spoke bravely
and earnestly for the worth of work in itself, whether it brought
wealth or not. He preached the faith that justice was better
than injustice, both for men and cities. He took the side of
right against wrong. Besides, he was eminently shrewd and
practical. Trust no man, he says, without a witness — advice
which the Greeks certainly would take care to have taught to
their children. His morality was not so much above their
level as to prevent their being influenced by it. What reward
a man could find in giving to those who did not give to him,
neither Hesiod nor his countrymen could divine. He for-
mulated and they accepted the precept, Give to those only who
give to you. This side of his morality lowers him in our eyes,
but helps to explain his reputation in Greece.
The merit of Hesiod lies in his matter, not in the form with
which he invested it ; and it is illogical to disintegrate his
poems because of their deficiency in organisation and artistic
unity. Further, to plan and execute a work in which the
parts are duly subordinated one to another, implies not only

imagination and a sense of beauty, out considerable mental
grasp ; and in this, too, Ilesiod was lacking. In the Works and
Days, the myth of Pandora is related in an unintelligent
and unintelligible manner. In the Theogony, which is pro-
fes edly a systematic version of the various beliefs about the
g<ids and the origin of things current in Greece, it is obvious
that the difficulty there is in understanding many parts is due
to the fact that Ilesiod himself did not understand what he was
retailing.
Some critics, while accepting the Works and Days as it
stands, have declared that though it is the work of Hesiod, the
Theogony is not, as the Chorizontes or Separatists maintained
that the Iliad was, but the Odyssey was not, the work of
Homer. This view, in the case of Hesiod as of Homer, descends
from antiquity. Pausanias, who flourished about a.d. 160,
says1 that, according to a local tradition current among the
Boeotians near Mount Helicon, the only work of Hesiod's was
the Works and Days, and to this view Pausanias gives his
own firm adherence. But all earlier authorities unanimously
ascribe the Theogony to Hesiod. The Alexandrian critics never
suspected that it was spurious. Herodotus expressly says that
Hesiod made a theogony.2 Heraclitus refers to it.3 Acusilaus,
who flourished about B.c. 500, probably borrowed from it.
Xenophanes (b.c. 570) expressly refers to it as Hesiod's work.4
We have therefore to set against a mere tradition, existing in
the time of Pausanias, about something that happened a thou-
sand yens before, the explicit statements of authors who lived
six or seven hundred years nearer to Hesiod's time. There can
be little doubt that, as far as external evidence goes, it is in
favour of the Theogony being the work of Hesiod. And this
must decide the question of its authorship.
The Theogony not only relates, as its name implies, the birth
of the gods, but is also a cosmogony describing the origin of the
universe. The poem is not tie' invention of Hesiod himself;
it is bis connected version of the floating beliefs and myths of
his time, in which he has incorporated, probably, verses, and
1 xi. 31, 4, BoiwTu>i> ol irepl rbv 'JSikucuva otaoOres trap(i.\ripp.{vrj 56£ 7/

\tyovatv,
1 i'- 53- ws llcriooos &\\o iroiriaai ovdtv, f) to. Zpya.
3 xxxv. ed. Bywater, refers to Theog. 123 and 718. Fr. xvi. only proves
thai Heraclitus knew Hesiod's works, not that be knew the Theogony.
4 TtdvTOi Otois dviOTjKav "Ouripos 6' 'Hcriodos re, 'Qooa trap avOp<lnroi.<nv
6p(i5ea Kal \f/byos iariv, Oi' wXtiaT ttpdiyâvro 0<£>v 6.0fp.ioTia tpya, K.\^7rr< iv
fiotxti'tiv re Kai dWTjXovi diro.Teveti>.
EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIOD1C POETRY. 8 5
even whole passages, of traditional religious poems. In the

beginning, according to his authorities, was Chaos. Out of Chaos
came Earth, and Tartarus, and Love. From Chaos also sprung
Erebos and Night. From Erebos and Night came Day and
JEther. From Earth was born the Sky and the Mountains.
Then the union of Earth and Sky produced the Ocean, Kronos,
the Cyclops, and the Titans. The Sun and Moon were bom
from the Titans. The Sky (Uranus) was the first lord of the
gods : but he was killed by his son, Kronos, and from his body
sprang the Erinnyes and Aphrodite. Kronos himself was de-
posed by his son Zeus. The history of the dynasty of Zeus
follows, and the poem ends with a list of the goddesses who
married mortals.
Like the Works and Days, the Theogony, being a didactic
poem, was used in Greece for educational purposes. From the
orator yEschines we learn that Greek boys were made to learn
the former, and from the rhetorician Libanius that even in
the fourth century after Christ the Theogony was still taught.1
But the llieogony was not only used as a manual of mythology
in schools ; as containing the oldest speculations of the race on
the origin of the universe and of the gods, it was the subject of
discussion among philosophers. The story goes that Epicurus
received his first impulse to philosophy from the Theogony ;
and certainly the Stoic philosophers Zeno, Chrysippus, and
Diogenes of Babylon wrote treatises on it, and endeavoured to
interweave it with their physical philosophy. In earlier times
philosophers treated it with less respect and more judgment.
Heraclitus observed that it showed the difference between
learning and understanding.2 The criticism is a sound one.
Hesiod heaped up all the myths that he was acquainted with in
the Theogony, and his mythological learning was wide ; but in
many cases he seems not to have understood them well enough
even to relate them intelligibly. Another philosopher, Xeno-
phanes, criticised the work on moral grounds; every action
that men consider immoral, theft, adultery, and deceit, Hesiod
attributed to the gods. This criticism also is true ; but the
reproach alfects Hesiod but little, since he did not invent these
tales ; he merely recorded them. The brutal stories found in
the Theogony, e.g. those in which Kronos swallows his own
1 iEschine* in Cies. 135, p. 73, quotes a verge, and says, Xf'Jw 81 xd^w
Ta Zttt}' 3ta touto yap olp.ai ijfib.s iratSas fiiras rat tiLv itoijjtiZj' yvu>fj.as (K/xav.
davtiv, b' 6.v8p€s ivrei aiirots yj>u>/.ieOa. Cf. Libanius, i. 502, o, iv. S74
* Tro\v/j.a6iTf vbov ov diddaKeu 'Hffiouov yap &y t'5t5a£e nal Ilv0ay6pt]f,
k.t.X. xvL ed. By water.
children and mutilates his father Uranus, are descended from

times when the Aryans were no more advanced in civilisation
than the South Sea Islanders. Such stories are found all over
the world, as flint arrow-heads and stone implements are found,
and show that the mind of primitive man was everywhere in-
fluenced bythe same analogies in the endeavour to solve the
problem of the origin of things.
"We have now to mention the other works ascribed to Hesiod.
Of these, the Shield of Hercules alone survives. It is obviously
inspired by the description of the shield of Achilles in Homer,
and the diction contains reminiscences of Homeric phraseology.
As literature, it possesses no great merit. The narrative is life-
less, the description of the shield inartistic. The introduction
now preiixed to the poem does not belong to it, but to the Eoce
of Hesiod. It is said that Stesichorus. the lyric poet who lived
about B.C. 600, expressly ascribed the Shield to Hesiod, but the
critic Aristophanes of Byzantium (circa B.C. 200) declared it
spurious, and his opinion has been unanimously accepted, on
internal grounds, by modern writers.
Other works, now lost, such as the Catalogue of Women, the
E003, Algimios, the Teaching of Cluron, the Wedding of Keyx,
the Mdampodia, were also ascribed to Hesiod, some perhaps
justly, others because they were Hesiodic, i.e. didactic or genea-
logical, or like him in style. The most important of these
works is the Catalogue. It probably formed a continuation of
the Theogony, as it contained the genealogy of heroes, related
in much the same way as the genealogy of the gods is related
in the Theogony. It seems to have consisted of three books ;
and as the Eoo?, consisting of two books and treating of the
same subject, was usually united with it in a work of five books
altogether, it has sometimes been maintained that the Catalogue
and the Eoce 1 are but different names for the same work. But
the fragments of them serin to show that the same myths were
treated in a different way in the two works, and as the Cata-
logue was universally recognised in antiquity as the work of
Hesiod, while there were doubts about the genuineness of the
1 The title Eoce, 'lloiai, is a plural of tlie phrase rj oi'77, and the poem got
its lcmie from the fact that the history of each, heroine began with the words
■J) oi'77. I'"1 instance, the fragment "f the E( a which baa been prefixed to the
Skidd begins —
f) oi'77 irpo\urov<ra 56/jow xai Trarpl5a -yaiav
ijXvtief « Qrifias .... 'AXk/U.ijcj/.
The E»cr, therefore, must have begun with Borne such statement as: Never
were there women so fair as those of antiquity— or such as Alcmene ; and
every heroine was introduced with the words "or such as."
EPIC POETRY : HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY. 8 7
Eoce, it is possible that not only were they different works, but
by different authors. The references to Cyrene in the Eoce make
it probable that the poem was composed after that place came
into the hands of the Greeks, i.e. about B.c. 620, and therefore
some time after Hesiod's date.
Another genealogical poem, the Naupadian Epic, was also
ascribed by some to Hesiod ; others * ascribed it to a poet of
whom we know nothing, Carcinos of Naupactus ; others to a
Milesian. We have no means of deciding whether Carcinos
was the author, but the grounds on which it was assigned to
Hesiod only suffice to show that, like the Eoce, it was Hesiodic
in character. That is to say, it was a genealogical poem ; it
resembled the Catalogue in that it celebrated the heroines of
antiquity,2 and it resembled the Eoce in the fact that the history
of each heroine was introduced with the inartistic formula " or
such as," which implies that the poem began with some such
phrase
whoeveras the
" Never
heroinewaswas.
woman so fair, or such as," Alcmene, or
Genealogical poems took especial root in Greece, as epic
proper owes its cultivation to the colonies in Asia Minor.
These poems being of a semi-historical character, are valuable
for the history of Greek literature, as showing that prose, which
is the proper vehicle for history, and which was, as a matter of
fact, first used for history, was only brought into use after verse
had been many times tried for the purpose of recording history.
At the same time they show by what slow degrees history
began to disengage itself from myth. Amongst the authors of
these semi-historical genealogical poems, the name of Chersias
of Orchomenus has come down to us. He is said to have been
a contemporary of Periander and Chilon. To Eumelus of
Corinth, who was said to have composed the Return, were also
ascribed the Corinthian Epic, the Bougonia. and Europia, which
we may regard as semi-historical poems. Argos also, as well as
Corinth, produced poetry of this kind, the PJtoronis and Danais,
whose authors are unknown. In Sparta, Cinrethon, a contem-
porary of Eumelus, who lived probably about B.C. 776. produced
a genealogical poem. Athens had her representative in Hege-
sinus, who wrote the Atthis ; and in later times in the colonies
Asios of Samos wrote a genealogical poem amongst others.
The Mgimim and the Wedding of Keyx, which were nscribed
to Hesiod, were narrative in character and were short epics.
They originated among the Boeotians and Dorian Locrians, and
1 Pausanias says Charon of Lampsiicus.
2 For this Pausanias, who had Been the poem, is our authority.
88 niSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
betray their origin by the fact that they, like the Shield of
Heracles, took their subjects from the myths in which Heracles
figured. Finally, the Teaching of Chiron was a development
of the didactic side of Hesiod's poetry, as were also the Great
Worlts and the Astronomy, and, in later times, the Astrolfxjia
of Cleostratus of Tenedos.
CHAPTER VII.
OTHER EPIC POETS AND OTHER WRITERS OF HEXAMETERS.
Besides Homer and the poets whose works were incorporated

in after-times into the Epic Cycle, we find that there were other
epic poets, whose works have perished entirely, or are repre-
sented by insignificant fragments only. With the doubtful
exception of Peisahder, all these poets belong to post-epic
times ; that is to say, they devoted themselves to epic composi-
tion at a time when genius had abandoned epic poetry for the
cultivation of other kinds of literature. The epic age is the
period in which genius carried epic poetry to its greatest height,
and in which epic constituted the main if not the sole literary
food of the nation. Although epic poems continued to be pro-
duced throughout the period of lyric poetry and of the drama,
even until the rise of oratory, we may regard the epic age as
ended and the lyric period inaugurated when, in B.C. 700,
genius appeared for the first time in the field of lyric poetry in
the person of Archilochus. The elements of lyric had existed
long before this among the people, but the age of lyric only
began with Archilochus, and when it began the epic age may
be said to cud.
We have therefore now to deal with authors who composed
epics at a time when popular attention, and consequently the
encouragement which national fame can give, was bestowed on
other hinds of literature. Some epics composed under these
unfavourable conditions were incorporated in the Epic Cycle,
and have already been mentioned. Among the epic poets who
remain to be mentioned, the most distinguished was the earliest,
Peisander of Kamiroa in Rhodes. Some authorities regarded
him as belonging to the epic age; others, with more probability,
assign B.O. 650 as his date, and he may be even more modern
than that. He, like the other epic authors of post-epic times,
epic poetry: other epic poets. 89
finding the cycle of Trojan myths already worked out, turned
elsewhere for a subject, which he found in the adventures of
Heracles. The subject had indeed been treated of before in
short Hesiodic poems, such as the Shield of Heracles and the
Marriage of Keyx. But these works, though epic in style, had
only dealt with incidents in the life of the hero. It yet re-
mained for some one to give in the epic style a systematic
account of all the adventures of Heracles. This Peisander did
in his Heradna. The epic consisted of two books, and, as far
as we can judge, seems to have been a well- planned work, pos-
sessing some claims to artistic unity and symmetry of detail,
wherein it differed from the loose and unpoetical character of
the genealogical poems attributed to Hesiod. Beyond this it is
impossible for us to form for ourselves any independent judg-
ment as to the literary merit of Peisander. It is to be noticed
that, as we should expect, we do not find in classical authors
any mention of Peisander. Peisander devoted himself to epic
poetry at a time when no wide reputation was to be gained from
it. and the audience to which he addressed himself was probably
the narrow one of his own circle of friends. On what grounds
the Alexandrian critics, who classed him along with Homer and
Hesiod in their canon of epic poets, did so class him, we do not
know ; but a class which included Hesiod could not have been
constituted simply on grounds of literary merit.
An interesting figure among these later epic poets is that of
Panyasis, the uncle of Herodotus. Panyasis, the son of Poly-
archus of Halicarnassus, lived about B.c. 500, in the time of
the Persian wars. He was not merely a learned archaeologist,
a patient investigator, and a man of letters, but he was a poli-
tician and a patriot, and died in the cause of freedom. His
native city was under the rule, not of a government of the
citizens' own choice, but of a dynasty of tyrants maintained
in their power by the arms and wealth of Persia. The move-
ment of the Persian war afforded the party of freedom an oppor-
tunity to strike for liberty. Temporary success was followed
by the return of the tyrants, and in the struggle Panyasis lost
his life. Like Peisander, Panyasis took Heracles for the
subject of his epic, and wrote a //< nvbia. Peisander had
treated the subject at greater length than bad his predecessors,
and Panyasis far outstripped Peisander. The Heracleia of
Peisander consisted of two books, that of Panyasis of fourteen,
and they numbered nine thousand verses. The fragments do
not allow us to form an opinion on the literary worth of Pan-
yasis' epic; and the statement made by Suidas that he was
ranked next to Homer is a testimonial of no great value, since

we do not know by whom he was ranked next to Homer. An-
other statement made by Suidas, that Panyasis gave a fresh
impulse to epic, which was nearly extinct, confirms what we
have said with regard to Peisander, that the epic age was over.
The Heradcia of Panyasis seems to have owed its length
mainly to the learning with which it was crammed. The author
was indefatigable in collecting local legends ; and everything
that diligent investigation could amass of this kind, Panyasis
seems to have incorporated into his poem on Heracles. His
antiquarian instincts, however, found better room for exercise
in his Ionica. This was a semi historical poem, seven thousand
verses long, in which was embodied all the tradition, myth, and
legend which Panyasis could collect about the early history
of the Ionic race. Finally, we should notice that Panyasis'
services to literature must not be measured by these poems
alone ; for Herodotus doubtless owed to his uncle much of his
education and of his impulse to literature.
Antimachus of Colophon belonged to the generation before
Plato. He seems to have been but little in Athens, to have
spent most of his life in Colophon, and to have died at an
advanced age. Besides an elegiac poem, Lyde, he wrote a very
long epic, a Thebais. His contemporaries paid no more atten-
tion to him than to other epic poets of the post-epic age. It
was only when criticism had declined that his epic was dragged
by Hadrian from its merited obscurity, and ordered by the
Emperor's decree thenceforth to take the place of Homer. A
greater service rendered by Antimachus to literature was his
edition of Homer. Other epic poets, of whom we know scarcely
anything but their names, but who lived probably in post-epic
linns, were Zopyrus, Diphilus, Antimachus of Teos, Phaedimus
of Bisanthe, who wrote a Heracleia and also elegiac poems,
and Diotimus.
Chcerilus of Samos, a contemporary of Herodotus, deserves sepa-
rate mention, though he has shared the obscurity of Antimachus.
Departing from the established custom of epic poets, which was
to take the subjects of their poems from mythology, Chcerilus
wrote a historical epic The period he chose was the Persian
war, and the title of his epic was Persica or Perseis. The idea
was doubtless suggested to him by the fact that Phrynichus
and /Eschylus had found a subject for tragedy in the same
period. But Chcerilus seems not to have had the power to
handle the theme properly. He was somewhat of a hack, and
devoted himself to writing complimentary verses to distinguished
EPIC POETItY : OTHER EPIC POETS. 9 1
men, such as Lysander, the conqueror of Athens, and Archelaus,

king of Macedonia. His Persica was impartially enough de-
voted to the praise of Athens.
Equally noteworthy as a departure from the ordinary round
of epic subjects is the Arimaspeia of Aristeas. The poem takes
its name from the fabulous people of the one-eyed Arimaspes.
Whereas other epic poets, and the Tragedians as well, confined
themselves to mythology, Aristeas of Proconnesus in the Pro-
pontis seems to have drawn on his imagination for his subject,
and to have had a great taste for the marvellous. As to the
date of this poet, some conjectured him to be older even than
Homer, but all that we know is that he was older than Hero-
dotus, from whom (iv. 13-15) what we know of Aristeas is
drawn. Inasmuch as Aristeas laid the scene of his epic among
the Hyperboreans, he may be conjectured to have had some
points in common with the mystic school of poets ; for the
Hyperboreans were a people regarded as specially beloved by
Apollo. To the mystic school also belonged Abaris, who pro-
fessed, or was said in later times, to have come from the Hyper-
boreans on a mission from Apollo. He brought with him an
arrow as a sign that he was sent by Apollo, according to Hero-
dotus (iv. 36) ; but the visionaries of the Neo-Platonic school
in later times related that Abaris rode through the air on this
arrow, and thus traversed the world. Oracles, hymns of puri-
fication, and an epic were ascribed to him, but we have no
means of judging whether the works ascribed to him were really
his. About the works of the Cretan Epimenides we are equally
ill-informed, though it admits of no doubt that he was a
historical personage. He was summoned by the Athenians to
purify their city from the pollution brought upon it by Cylon,
about B.C. 610 : and according to Plato, who, however, lived two
centuries later, he possessed a profound insight into spiritual
things. Tales of a wonderful character were told about him
too. He was brought up by the Nymphse and possessed the
power of projecting his soul into space
Special mention must be made of the Orphic poets. Whether
there ever was such a person as Orpheus, " who with his lute
made trees Bow themselves as he did please," is a point on
which, in the total absence of evidence, we are reduced to con-
jecture. On the one hand, the stories which are told of Ins mar-
vellous powers of music and of his descent to the nether world to
bring back his wife, Eurydice, seem to class him among legendary
personages. On the other hand, there seem to have existed
religious hymns of great antiquity, universally regarded as the
work of Orpheus, which may have been the production of some

poet older even than Homer. At any rate, it is certain that
in historic times associations of men calling themselves " fol-
lowers of Orpheus " were devoted to the worship of Dionysos-
Zagreus. Dionysos in this aspect was a different god from the
god of Avine, and the bacchanalia of the followers of Orpheus
very different from other bacchanalian rites. Dionysos-Zagreus
was a god of the nether world, and the followers of Orpheus led
an ascetic life in search of purity and in hope of future blessed-
ness. When they had partaken of the flesh offered as a sac-
rifice at their initiation, they thenceforward renounced meat.
Like Egyptian priests, they wore white raiment.
Religious hymns bearing the name of Orpheus seem to have
been current among the people from early times ; but an Orphic
literature first arose about the time of the Persian wars. Even
before then, Orphic views had made themselves felt in religious
literature, as, for instance, in the Theogonij of Pherecydes of
Syros, fragments of which still survive. But at the beginning
of the fifth century we find many Orphic poets, Persinus of
Miletus, Timocles of Syracuse, Diognetus, Brontinus, and Cer-
cops ; and a theogony entirely Orphic The most celebrated
of the Orphic poets of this period is Onomacritus, who was
employed by the Pisistratidse to collect and arrange orncles
affecting Athens, and was convicted by the poet Lasos of inter-
polating forgeries. There seems little reason to doubt that in
this age, though more extensively in Neo-Platonic times, hymns
and poems were composed which were not perhaps deliberate
forgeries, but speedily came to be uncritically received as the
works of Orpheus, or as possessing a much greater antiquity
than was really theirs.
The oracles which Onomacritus was employed by the Pisi-
stratidje to collect were those of Musseus. Although regarded
as the pupil of Orpheus, Musseus seems to have written poetry
which was connected with the Eleusinian mysteries, and his
prophecies related exclusively to Attica. Closely connected
with Musaeus was Eumolpus. He was, according to the popular
tradition, descended from MusSBUS. It does not seem that he
composed poetry himself, or, if he did, it perished early ; but ho
preserved and transmitted the verses of Musseus. Another
name which occurs in connection with that of Musseus is Bacis,
Some of his prophecies are quoted by Herodotus (viii. 20, 77,
96, ix. 43), and .11c regarded by the historian as a complete
refutation of the sceptical views existing in his time with
d to prophecies. Another prophet quoted by Herodotus
EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. O 3
is an Athenian named Lysistratus. All these prophecies, as

also those of the Delphian and other oracles, are in hexameter
verse ; and in their diction they show the influence of Homer,
and to a less extent of Hesiod.
To complete our enumeration of the less important writers
of hexameter?, we ought to mention the anonymous authors of
epitaphs. "When the pentameter was invented, elegiac couplets,
consisting of a hexameter and a pentameter, hecame the uni-
versal metre for epitaphs. But before the invention of the
pentameter, hexameter was used. An example is preserved in
the so-called Homeric Epigrams (iii.), which professes to have
been inscribed on the tomb of Midas. There are also found
hexameter epitaphs amongst the oldest stone records which we
possess.1
Finally, this is the proper place for us to speak of the philo-
sophers who wrote in hexameters, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and
Empedoeles. If it fell within the scope of this work to trace
the filiation of philosophic systems, we should properly treat
of these philosophers in connection with those who wrote in
prose, since the form in which they expressed themselves would
not justify us in separating them. But we are concerned with
them only in their literary aspect, and have not to do with
their philosophy. For the history of literature, the importance
of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles is that they show
how difficult a thing it was for a nation, which for centuries
had composed in verse alone, to learn to write in prose. About
the same time that Xenophanes in Elea was formulating his
philosophy in hexameters, that is, about B.C. 570, Pherecydes,
a native of Scyros, one of the Cyclades, and a pupil of the
famous Thales, was making the earliest attempt to write in
prose. Some few specimens of his work have come down to
us. In everything but metre they are poetry, not prose ; and
whereas in poetry an author could compose artistic sentences of
some complexity, in prose at this time he could only ejaculate
short and simple expressions, in their baldness rather resembling
a child's attempt at writing than a philosopher's. A little
later than this, about B.c. 547, another philosopher, Anaxi-
mander of Miletus, again made an effort to write prose, -with
more clearness but scarcely less awkwardness than his pre-
decessor. Half a century later, although the philosophers
Anaximcnes and Heraclitus had carried on the work of estab-
lishing prose, and the logographers Cadmus, Hecataus, and
Acusilaus, the predecessors of the historians, had written
1 Rohl, /. Ant., 37, 62, 78, 340, 342, 343, 407, 531.
geographical, genealogical, and semi-historical works in prose,

avc find that Parmenides preferred poetry. Prose in the hands
of Heraclitus was even less fitted for an intelligible exposition
of philosophy than was poetry. Even as late as B.C. 444, the
year in which Thurii was founded, a time when Herodotus had
already composed and recited much of his history, the first
great work in prose, Empedocles still wrote in verse.
This last fact is instructive, because it directs our attention
to the circumstance that, besides the difficulty of writing prose,
there were difficulties in the way of reading prose. It is
sometimes, if not generally, said that prose, or at least a prose
literature, cannot be developed unless there exists a reading
public, and the existence of a reading public depends upon the
development of the means of multiplying and diffusing copies
of a manuscript. But in the works of the Orators we have a
prose literature which was not designed for a reading public.
Nay, more ; the development of prose as an artistic expres-
sion of thought, possessing a beauty and a rhythm of its own,
distinct from but as marked as those of poetry, is the work of
the Orators, whose object was to produce, not a written litera-
ture, but periods addressed to the ear of their audience. For
this purpose, all that is necessary is that the writing should be
easy enough for the author to put down his thoughts, without
excessive and distracting labour. Now, in B.c. 444 the art of
writing was far enough developed for this, as the existence
of the history of Herodotus shows ; and even in the time of
Xenophanes, B.C. 570, this may have been the case ; for writing
had then been known in Greece for a hundred and thirty years.
If, then, Empedocles, as late as B.C. 444, preferred to use
poetry, we may reasonably conjecture that one reason at least
for his preference was that the Greek public listened more
readily to poetry, to which it was accustomed, than to inartistic
prose. It was only about this time that Greek audiences were
learning to listen to prose, whether the unaffected prose of
Herodotus, or the artificial and florid rhetoric of Gorgias.
When we go back more than a century to the time of Xeno-
phanes, the case is still clearer. The author who wrote in
prose might indeed find a public in the private audience of
pupils or friends whom he collected together to listen to his
writings; but the author who aimed at a wider publicity,
and wished to gain the ear of the assembled population of the
city, could only succeed in his purpose if he wrote in verse,
and declaimed his verses at some public festival, the object
of which was to afford an opportunity for the production of
EPIC POETRY : OTHEK EPIC POETS. 9 5
poetical compositions. The former method was that adopted

by the philosophers who wrote in prose ; the latter that in
which Xenophanes published his works.1
But it must not be inferred that the connection between
philosophy and poetry was accidental, or merely a matter of
form, due solely and wholly to the difficulty of writing and
diffusing prose. There is also an internal bond, and a reason
in the nature of the two things for their connection. A subject
of philosophy may be treated of by poetry, and philosophy may
deal with its own subjects poetically ; but it is only in early
times that the connection between them is maintained. With
the development of knowledge philosophy breaks away from
poetry, and each is specialised to its proper work and methods.
This process of specialisation is not peculiar to poetry and
philosophy, but is the law of the development of knowledge
in all its branches. In the earliest stages of a nation's intel-
lectual history, not only philosophy, but all the nation's
knowledge is comprised in poetry. The works of Hesiod,
for instance, are an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of the
Greeks of his time. His Theoyony contains not only the
nation's theology, but its earliest speculations on physical
philosophy and the origin of the universe. The Cafaloyue
of Women and his genealogical works were the only history
recorded, and led the way to the genealogies of the logo-
graphers, who paved the way for history. In tbe Works and
Days we have not only a manual of practical knowledge, but
a treatise on moral philosophy in embryo. But by degrees the
various branches of knowledge comprised in the poetry of
Hesiod began to break away from poetry and poetical treat-
ment, and to gain a separate existence, an appropriate mode of
expression and methods of their own. The genealogical poems
were followed by the prose genealogies of the logographers,
which in their turn were displaced by the history of Herodotus.
History, again, when it had finally split off from poetry, was
found to contain within it another department of knowledge,
geography, which eventually, with the increase of knowledge,
was developed out of history, as history had been evolved out
of poetry ; and in the present day, physical geography and
political geography are each receiving a special evolution.
A similar process of specialisation took place in philosophy.
For long, theology and philosophy were inseparable : from
philosophy proper, physical philosophy had to be detached ;
and then moral philosophy had to win an existence of its ow
1 Diog. Laert. ix. 18, avrbs (jipaif/y 5ei ra eoirroO.
independent of the philosophy which speculates on first prin-

ciples and the nature of things. But it was only gradually that
philosophy escaped from poetry, and we have here only to do
with its first unsuccessful attempts. Although, as we have
seen, the origin of tilings is a subject which may he dealt with
hy poetry, and Mas dealt with in the various theogonies, the me-
thods bywhich a solution of the problem may be attempted are
different, and are not all equally capable of poetic expression or
consistent with a poet's manner of thought. The method may
be scientific, that is, may consist in the observation of facts —
experiment is a later discovery, unknown to the Greeks — in
recording them, drawing inductions from them, and so even-
tually reaching the end in view. But this is an essentially
prosaic process ; and the Ionic philosophers who employed it
were naturally, we may almost say necessarily, driven to attempt
to write in prose. On the other hand, there were philosophers
who declared that the senses, our only means of observing facts,
are wholly untrustworthy. They are all subject to illusions,
and it is only by exercising our reason that we can detect the
illusion and ascertain the truth. Instead, therefore, of trusting
to the senses, which deceive us, we must rely solely upon
reason, and excogitate the truth out of the mind. Now this
method of reaching conclusions is not inconsistent with the
poet's way of viewing things. He too draws upon his own
internal stores, and creates out of his own genius what did not
exist before. And it was Xenophanes, by nature a poet and
the author of lyric poetry of considerable merit, and his follower
Parmenides, also a poet, who invented this method and founded
the Eleatic school of philosophy. It was therefore the method
employed in philosophy which largely determined whether it
should detach itself from poetry, as in the case of Ionic philo-
sophy, or remain in the pleasing fetters of verse, as in the case
of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Empedocles.
Xenophanes was born in Colophon, which was situated on
the coast of Asia Minor, not far from Ephesus. He lived
certainly to the age of ninety-one, for Diogenes La'ertius (ix. 19)
quotes some verses in which Xenophanes says that since the
time when he was twenty live years of age he had spent sixty-
seven years in mental activity. Ai some point in this long
life he left his native city and sett let [ down in Elea. This
town, the modern Castellamare, situated on the west coast of
South Italy, a little north of Point Palinurum in Lucania, was
a colony founded by the Phocians in b.o 536. Xenophanes
composed an epic poem on the foundation of the city, and it
EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. 97
has been suggested that lie himself took part in the first colo-
nisation of the city. In any case, it seems probable that he
was fairly advanced in years at the time of the foundation of
Elea, for he lived before the time of Heraclitus, whose date is
about B.C. 500.
In addition to the epic poem in two thousand verses already
mentioned, which he is said to have composed on the subject
of the foundation of Elea, but from which no quotations are
made in Greek literature, we have quotations from lyric poems
— not exclusively didactic or moralising in tone, but festive —
and a doubtful iambic. The Parodies from which Athenseus
(ii. 54E) professes to quote half-a-dozen lines, did not belong to
the branch of literature invented, according to Aristotle, by
Hegemon. a contemporary of Epicharmus, for Hegemon lived
after Xenophanes. But, as the verses themselves show, they
were sarcastic in tone, and probably Athenaeus had no other
reason for calling them "Parodies." The same explanation
would suffice to account for the fact that Silli. a species of
satiric poetry, were ascribed to Xenophanes. He could not
have written Silli, for this kind of literature was only invented
tenturies after his date by Timon the Phliasian, surnamed the
Sillographer. Eustathius, the commentator of Homer, who
lived about a.d. 1160, not only, following Strabo, ascribes
Silli to Xenophanes, but even traces their origin back to the
Iliad (ii. 212), thus showing that the only real ground for
ascribing them to Xenophanes was the existence of satiric
passages in his poetry. The error seems to have had additional
life given to it by the fact that Timon the Sillographer in one
of his Silli introduced Xenophanes making jest of Homer and
other poets.
Finally, the philosophy of Xenophanes was couched in hexa-
meters. A few verses are quoted by Greek authors of various
dates, which, however, would not have sufficed to give us much
idea of his philosophy, did we not possess a partial resume in
prose drawn from Theophrastus, the pupil of Aristotle, by Sim-
plicius; and another, said, though it is doubtful, to be the
work of Aristotle. If Xenophanes ever committed his works
to writing, they must have perished early ; for not only does
Simplieius, the commentator of Aristotle, say that he could not
obtain his works, but other authors who cite versos by Xeno-
phanes were evidently quoting at second-hand. Earlier autho-
rities, such as Theophrastus, Empedocles, and Heraclitus, from
whom later writers, like Athenaeus, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus
Empiricus, and others, derived their knowledge of Xenophanes,
a
give the sense more frequently than the actual words of their
author, although his works were prohably known, if not in
writing, by oral tradition, to at least Heraclitus, who lived hut
little later. The title which late authorities give to Xeno-
phanes' philosophical work is On Nature;1 but this is probably
unwarranted. It is a title which fits and belongs to works of
the Ionic philosophers who wrote on physics and science, but
is unsuitable to the metaphysics of Xenophanes, and is based on
no good authority.
Xenophanes is a most interesting figure among the philo-
sophers and authors of his time, and we cannot but regret that
we possess so little of his work. He was a man of great origi-
nality, and the power of his mind is proved by the fact that the
method which he applied to philosophy continued to be exer-
cised and developed through many generations of modern as
well as of ancient philosophers. Although he founded a school
(if philosophy, the Eleatic, he was a man of many interests,
and 1 lis literary activit}', as we have seen, was by no means
limited to a single branch. He possessed powers of penetration
which were not confined to the service of philosophy, but were
exercised on matters of more obvious interest. Although he
himself composed drinking-songs, and was not insensible to the
pleasures which, in moderation, enhance the charm of life, he
noted and protested against the growing luxury that proved the
intellectual ruin of the Ionic cities, which had done so much
for the literature and science of Greece. Xor did the evils of
excessive athleticism escape his observation and reproof. If
a man, he says, wins a foot-race or a boxing-match, or even a
horse-race, in the national games, he is the object of his fellow-
citizens' admiration ; he has an ollicial front-seat awarded to him
at all entertainments, is maintained at the public expense, and
is presented with a gift to be an heirloom for ever. Yet how
much less worthy is the athlete than the philosopher ! Wherein
does the winning of a race conduce to the good government of a
city or to the interests of the people1? Men's minds are much
astray when they set philosophy below fleetncss of foot. The
justice of Xenophant's' protest is continued by its repetition a
century or more later by tragedians and orators. If Xenophanes
thus sets himself against the current of public opinion on
matters athletic, he displayed equal courage in his criticisms
on Hesiod and Homer. Everything, he said, which men con-
sider it disgraceful to do, these poets represent the gods as
doing. Here again Xenophanes was led by no mere striving
1 Dc Natura, irepl <pu<T6ws.
after cheap originality of criticism and self-supposed superiority

to the common view. Philosophy for generations, and through
its most distinguished exponents, echoed the protests which he
first made in the name of morality. Against the anthropo-
morphism of his age and nation Xenophanes hrought to bear
all the varied resources of his many-sided ability. His philo-
sophy was designed not for a chosen few, but for the general
ear, as is shown by the fact that he delivered it in poetry ; and
if, in the summaries of it,which Theophrastus and others have
handed down to us, the reasoning seems close and subtle, the
quotations which they make in the words of Xenophanes him-
self show that he expressed pointed arguments in a manner that
any of his audience could understand. Men think, he says with
profound contempt, that the gods have birth, speak, have bodies,
and wear clothes like themselves ! Why, if horses or cows
could draw like men, they would represent the gods as cows
or horses ! The theory of the transmigration of souls, which
Pythagoras and his followers believed in, met with as little
mercy from Xenophanes as did the anthropomorphism of the
people and the poets. According to the somewhat malicious
invention of Xenophanes, Pythagoras checked a man who was
beating a dog with the words, " Stay your hand ! in the dog is
the soul of one dear to me ; I recognise his voice."
If Xenophanes was the founder and the first of the Elcatic
school, Parmenides was the greatest of its philosophers. Par-
menides, born at Elea, belonged to a wealthy and distinguished
family. He was a pupil of Xenophanes, and he also studied
under Aminias and l)iochaetes, Pythagorean philosophers. But
from the latter, in accordance with the system of Pythagorean-
ism, he seems to have gained rather stimulation to the pursuit
of philosophy than any body of definite doctrine. Later in life,
he in his turn handed on the philosophy he had elaborated to
his pupils Zeno and Melissus. Although a native of Elea, he
seems to have been in communication with, or rather to have
met most of the philosophers of his time, whether they belonged,
like Empedocles, to Sicily, or, like Heraclitus, to so distant a
place as Ephesus. The wealth of Parmenides doubtless afforded
him the means to travel when- he would ; and we fortunately
have in Plato the record of the fact that he visited Athens
and there met Socrates, then a young man. Parmenides came,
according to Plato, for the celebration of the great Athenian
festival, the Panathensea, at a time when he was of mature
years and had already achieved a reputation. This visit is of
interest for two reasons : it gives us the date of Parmenides,
IOO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
and it shows how philosophy was diffused in Greece. As for

the date, Socrates was born b.c. 468, and if we suppose that at
the time of the meeting Socrates was sixteen years of age — and
we can hardly suppose that he was younger — Parmenides visited
Athens in b.c. 452 ; and he was between sixty and seventy
years of age at the time. During the visit lie met many Athe-
nians, with whom he discussed points of philosophy. This
method of diffusing his views was specially suited to Parme-
nides, because the development of»an argument by means of
questioning the pupil or auditor — the dialectic method — was a
characteristic of the school to which he belonged. By him,
probably, for the lirst time the young Socrates heard the method
employed, which he was subsequently to develop to its full per-
fection. But although Parmenides travelled far, and learned,
discussed, taught, and wrote on philosophy, he neither neglected
his duties as a citizen nor performed them perfunctorily. He
proposed laws which were adopted and perpetuated; and his
public life redounded as much to his reputation as his philo-
sophy. In his writings he declares that the study of philosophy
and the successful pursuit of truth demand purity and piety in
the student; and his life confirmed what his theory taught.
We possess fragments of Parmenides' poetry of considerable
length. His sole work seems to have been a poem, the title of
which, On Nature, as it goes back to Theophrastus, may be
genuine, though, if it is, the word "nature" must be used in
an extended sense, for Parmenides was rather a metaphysician
than a man of science. The contrast between reason and sense,
and the superiority of the former, are the points implied in the
philosophy of Xenophanes, which Parmenides developed and
made into the foundation of his philosophy. The senses are
subject to illusion, ami are inferior to the reason. The latter
alone can apprehend truth, the former can only lead to con-
jecture. In the pursuit of knowledge we have to learn to
distinguish between reality and appearances ; and whereas all
that we know by means of the senses is the appearances of
things, it is by reason that we have to discover what they really
are. Keality is truth, and truth is reason ; therefore reason is
the only reality. The evidence of the senses does not go beyond
mere appearances and conjecture. Thought and existence are
the same. On this distinction between truth, reason, and
reality, on the one hand, and conjecture, sense, and appearance,
on the other, is based the division of Parmenides1 poem into
the two parts On Truth and On Conjecture. They have been
id, but on insufficient grounds, as two distinct works.
EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. IO I
It is probable tbat Parmenides did not formally distinguish

them.
The mystic or allegorical character of Parmenides' writing in
the part of his poem which dealt with Conjecture may be illus-
trated by the interesting introduction to the poem, which is
conceived in the same strain. He represents himself as con-
veyed by steeds, as far as thought can reach, along the famous
road by which is reached the goddess who initiates the learned
into all secrets. The way to light was shown him by the
Nymphs of the Sun, who led him to the gates where are the
ways of darkness and light. There they besought admittance
for him from the guardian of the gate of light, Justice, who
bade him welcome, if it was that piety had brought him on this
road so remote from those the vulgar frequent. She then warns
him of the arduous task there is before him, to acquire the sum
of knowledge and to distinguish truth from the conjecture of
the vulgar : and the poem begins.
The steeds which conveyed Parmenides aloft are the lofty
impulses of the philosophic mind. The goddess to whom they
conveyed him is Heavenly Truth, and the road which leads to
her is philosophy. The two ways of light and darkness are the
two kinds of knowledge, truth and conjecture. The nymphs
are Nymphs of the Sun because truth is light ; and the guardian
of the gate is Justice because only the just and pious can
pursue philosophy and attain truth. The allegory is poetical,
and testifies to the exalted conception Parmenides possessed of
the position of philosophy and the attributes necessary in the
philosopher. It helps us further to understand why Parmenides
wrote in poetry, in two ways : first, it shows his poetic tenden-
cies; next, it was quite beyond the capacities of prose, as it
existed in his time, to bear the burden of bodying forth so deep
an allegory. The prose of Plato could and did do greater work
than this, but Plato was not born for a generation after Par-
menides had made his reputation. We are fortunate in possess-
ing so long a fragment of the Eleatic philosopher's work, and
we probably have to thank Plato for it indirectly, Parmenides'
visit to Athens created great interest there in his philosophy.
It made a great impression on Socrates, and through him on
Plato, who has added lustre, by his dialogue entitled Parmen-
ides, to the name. Plato himself studied Parmenides' writings,
as did Plato's pupil Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus ; and
even as late as the fifth century after Christ a copy of his works
seems to have existed in the possession of Proclus, the Neo-
Platonic philosopher.
Empedocles is a remarkable figure in the history of Greek

literature, and a number of remarkable stories have collected
round his name. Perhaps the most widely known is the fable
alluded to by Horace, according to which Empedocles terminated
an extraordinary career by leaping into the crater of JEtnn, in
order that he might seem to have vanished like a god, as he
pretended to be. and was only betrayed by the fact that an
eruption shortly afterwards ejected one of his sandals. The story
has as little truth in it as has the orthodox explanation, which is
to the effect that Empedocles accidentally fell into the crater while
studying volcanic phenomena In the time, and for centuries
after the time, of Empedocles, the very existence of a crater
seems to have been unknown, from the simple fact that no one
ventured to explore the volcano. The fable is a caricature, and
independent of the testimony which it bears to the wit of the
Sicilians who invented it, it is valuable because, being a good
caricature, it departs but little from the real features of the
character which it derides. Empedocles did study natural
science, and he did give himself out to be of divine origin, but
he was no impostor in science, and in his divine origin he at
least firmly believed. His is a character full of apparent con-
tradictionshe
: was an abstract thinker, but a practical poli-
ticianhe
; was steeped in mysticism, but studied the material
welfare of his fellow-citizens ; though he achieved wonders in
natural science, he preferred to claim supernatural powers ; in
him artistic prose, according to Aristotle, has its ultimate
founder, yet he wrote in verse ; he is the most poetical of
philosophers, and yet his works differ from prose only in that
they are in metrical form.
A little younger than the philosopher Anaxagoras, who was
born B.C. 500, and a little older than the rhetorician Gorgias, the
date of whose birth was b.c. 480, Empedocles may be inferred
to have been born about B.C. 490. The place of his birth was
Agrigentum in Sicily, a city which in splendour rivalled Syra-
cuse. He belonged to a wealthy family, for his grandfather,
after whom he was named, won the chariot race at the Olympian
games, and only kings and persons of great wealth could afford
to breed or purchase horses capable of carrying otf this prize.
We have no explicit information about his youth, but the
educational influences which existed in Sicily and in Agri-
gentilm, and to Avhich doubtless he was subjected, explain his
subsequent career. The mysticism of his philosophy was im-
bibed by him from the Pythagoreans, who were scattered
through Sicily and South Italy. His natural science was pro-
EPIC POETRY : OTHER EPIC POETS. I03
bably derived from the celebrated physicians Acron and Pau-

sanias, who flourished in Sicily in his time. Finally, the elo-
quence which served him in his political life was not his pecu-
liar attribute, but distinguished the Sicilian race, to whom the
germs of oratory developed later in Athens were due. The
wealth and position which Empedocles by his birth enjoyed
brought political duties with them ; and when Thero the
tyrant, whose rule had raised Agrigentum to the highest ele-
vation it attained, had died, Empedocles, following the tradi-
tions of his family, assisted in establishing the liberty which
he subsequently did so much to preserve. He purged oligarchy
from the city, and declined to accept the sole rule of the state,
which the citizens offered him. But throughout he was some-
what theatrical : he aimed at effect. When he appeared in
public, it was with a dress and surroundings deliberately designed
to create the impression that Empedocles must not be con-
founded with other people. Yet this was not affectation ; it
was the nature of the man. If he posed, he had an unaffected
admiration for the attitudes he struck. If he arrayed himself
in theatrical costume, he also wrote an appreciative description
of it in his philosophical works. When we find him in the
Iatrica professing not only to heal all known diseases, but ready
to undertake the cure of old age and to provide a remedy for
death, we should be doing him an injustice to dismiss him as a
quack. He, like a medicine-man among the negroes, also pro-
fessed to bring or avert rain, and undoubtedly believed in his
ability to do what he professed as much as any medicine-man,
and with greater reason, since his acquirements in natural science
were considerable, and his mysticism obscured the limits which
Nature has placed on Science. His unequivocal statement in
the Katharmoi that he is no mortal, but an immortal god, is
itself a testimony to his good faith, being but a piece of his
faith in himself. At the same time, as we shall shortly, see,
the assertion loses something of its crudeness when viewed
through the haze of his mystic philosophy.
It is necessary to have some knowledge of the character of
Empedocles in order to appreciate his literary worth at its proper
value. In his case, if ever, the style is the man. In the first
place, he clothed his scientific writings in verse instead of prose,
in the same way as he wore purple, for the sake of effect.1 In
the next place, however, we have to recognise that, notwith-
standing his pretence, he did possess solid literary merit. His
1 Aristotle, Poetics, 1, ov5£v 5t kolvov tcmv'Qp-qpq ko.1 'E/tTTfSoKXef jtXtjc rb
fiirpov 81b rbv nkv ttoitjttiv diiiaiov Ka\eiv, rbv 5t <pvaio\6yov fiaWov 7} iroijjr>;i'.
mysticism was adapted for poetry ; it lent itself to metaphorical

expression and lofty diction ; and Aristotle, who denies that
the medical works of Empedocles are poetry, although they are
in verse, also calls attention to his poetical qualities elsewhere.1
Empedocles speaks of himself as giving oracles to the multi-
tude who thronged round him clamouring for his supernatural
assistance, and his style is frequently oracular in character.
He was grandiose in his writing as in his bearing. Artificiality
is breathed in his verses, and was the breath of his life : the
poetical devices and tricks of expression which marked the
early rhetoricians are to be traced even in the fragments wo
possess ; they are alluded to by Aristotle, who seems to have
regarded him, in spite of his writing in verse, as the first of the
rhetoricians,2 and were probably transmitted by Empedocles to
his pupil Gorgias, Avho transplanted them to Athens.
According to Diogenes Laertius, Aristotle ascribed to Empe-
docles tragedies and other works, the Invasion of Xerxes, a
hymn to Apollo, and a Politics. But as no author quotes a
single line from any of these works, and as a later poet named
Empedocles seems to have certainly composed tragedies, it is
not improbable that Diogenes, who was a somewhat careless
compiler, has confounded the two authors named Empedocles.
The works by the philosopher Empedocles of which we possess
fragments are the Katharmoi, Iatrica, Physics, and some epi-
grams. In the Katharmoi, or Songs of Purification, he pro-
fesses, as the name indicates, to purify from sin or crime all
who come to him, as in the Iatrica, or Songs of Healing, he
professed to cure all diseases, old age, and death. His medical
knowledge was indeed extensive for his age, and he is said to
have effected some remarkable cures, restoring the apparently
dead, and so on. But he professed also to have supernatural
powers, and this profession is connected with the mysticism
which found its exposition in the Physics, or poem on Nature
Into the mixture of mysticism and scientific speculation which
made up the philosophy of Empedocles it is beyond our pro-
vince to go. We will only say that he reached the conception
of four elements, earth, air, lire, and water, or, as he preferred
mystically to call them, Zeus, II era, Aidoneus, and Nestis (the
last name seems to have been his own invention). These ele-
1 In tlio lost Dialogue on the Poets, Aristotle suul,'0/i?7piAcds 6 'E/it7re5o/cXî

leal Seivbs irfpl tt\v (ppdcnv ytyove, fxtnupopixos re Civ ko.1 tol% dXXois roh irepl
iroiyTiK7)v tTTiTei>yna<n xpvp.tvos, as we learn from Diogenes Laertius, viii. 57.
'-' Si-xt. Emp. vii. 6 says, 'Efint5oK\ta p.kv -)dp 6 ' Api<TTOT(\t]s (pr/ai wpCrrov
ffl]TOplKT]V KfKivrjK^vai.
ments are indestructible. They may be combined, and the

compounds into which they combine may be reduced by disso-
lution to the four elements again. But for these processes two
principles are required : the principle of combination, which he
calls mystically Friendship, and which is the Love of Parmenides
and the Pythagoreans; and the principle of dissolution, which he
calls Discord. The tendency of Friendship operating on the
four elements is to produce a Sphere, that is, to give to the
universe a perfect shape ; but there exists the opposite tendency
of Discord, and the history of the universe is the resultant of
their conflict. The principle of Discord, however, is not limited
to the material world in its action. It operates also in the
moral world. It prompts a daemon to some crime, and then
for thrice ten thousand years the daemon, in exile from heaven,
has to inhabit the bodies of men and living creatures. The
poem On Nature begins with a statement of this law, and the
declaration that Empedocles is himself a daemon undergoing
the punishment of a mortal body. After this exordium, the
first book seems to have dealt with the four elements, the
second with the nature and condition of man, the third with
the gods and tilings divine.
Somewhat late in life Empedocles is said to have commenced
his travels. He journeyed to the Peloponnesus, attended the
Olympian games, and there recited his Songs of Purification.
How long a period elapsed before he returned to Sicily is un-
known, but it is reported that he found it impossible to gain ad-
mission into his native town when he did return, and he resumed
his travels. He is said to have visited Athens, and it is not
improbable that, like most celebrated men of the age, he visited
the intellectual centre of Greece. He died between sixty and
seventy years of age. Many strange stories are told of his
death, the mode of which remains unknown.
BOOK II.
LYRIC POETRY.
CHAPTER I.
THE ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS.
Epic poetry was succeeded in Greece by lyric poetry. The

germs of lyric poetry already existed in the epic period, but
for their development it was necessary that a change should
occur in the conditions of social and political life. The poli-
tical and social changes which developed the germs of lyric
poetry were the overthrow of regal governments, the foundation
of colonies, and the extension of commerce. The overthrow
of royal government tended to the liberty of the citizens. The
people ceased to live for the sake of supporting a king, and
began to live for themselves and their country. This shift of
material interests was followed by a corresponding shift in
literary interest. So long as the king was the state, Priam's
fortunes were necessarily the poet's materials; but when the
citizens became the state, their interests, their hopes, and their
fears became the theme which interested them and inspired the
poet. The tendency of colonisation worked to the same end.
Settlers are compelled to rely on their own exertions ; birth nnd
position go for little in the new country ; it is the man of most
capacity and energy who comes fco the top. In a colony, the
individual citizen gained an importance which was beyond his
reach in the old country. It is hardly necessary to say that
the extension of commerce had a similar result. As commerce
grew, there opened before the individual citizen the possibility
of attaining to wealth and importance.
The result of these changes was lyric poetry. Men's thoughts
were fixed on the present, not on the past. Politically and
socially a break had been made. The ideal past, depicted in
epic poetry, was no longer felt to have any relation to the
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I OJ
present, and was, therefore, no longer fitted to supply inspira-

tion to the poet or to engage the attention of his hearers.
The hour called not for a narrative of the fight round Troy,
hut for lays such as those of Callinus or Tyrtasus, which could
rouse a man to fight " for the ashes of his fathers and the
temples of his gods."
The first difference between epic and lyric is that the former
is narrative and the latter is the expression of emotion. But
this difference implies another. In epic the poet never himself
appears. He narrates everything, but never gives his own view
— as his own view — of anything. The essence of lyric, on the
other hand, is that in it the poet expresses his own personal
emotions. Lyric is personal, epic impersonal ; or, as the same
idea is sometimes expressed, the former is subjective, the latter
objective.
The conditions under which lyric poetry was developed in
Greece gave it some characteristics which distinguish it from,
and are brought into relief by, the lyric poetry of other
nations. Modern lyric comprises everything within its range ;
anything which touches the poet and moves him to song may
provide a subject — Chapman's Homer or the west wind, a
nation or a skylark, the future or the past. But Greek
lyric poetry, born of a reaction from contemplation of the
past to action in the present, had not this universal range.
It draws its themes from, and is always related to, the
present. Solon addresses his fellow-citizens not on the past,
but on the present condition of Attica. Theognis deals with
the politics, Tyrtaeus with the wars, of his own time. And
although, in choral poetry, the theme is frequently mythical,
such poetry always was composed for, and related to, a de-
finite religious festival. In fact, it was "occasional poetry,"
as is clearly seen in those odes of Pindar which were written
to celebrate the occasion of some victory in the various national
games of Greece. Greek lyric poetry is, then, distinguished
from other lyric poetry by always having reference to the
present, and this is due to the conditions under which it
was developed. It is also distinguished by the occasional
presence of mythical element. This, as we have said, occurs
in choral lyrics written for some festival, and in honour of the
gods. In this, too, we have a trace of the conditions under
which Greek lyric was developed, for the mythical element is
an inheritance from the epic period. Another inheritance, and
also another distinctive feature of Greek lyric, is the guomic or
didactic element. This was apparent in Hesiod, and reappears
most markedly in Theognis, although it is not confined to him,

hut is present in all varieties of Greek lyric.
We have considered the social and political conditions under
which the germs of lyric poetry were developed, and we have
seen how the characteristics peculiar to Greek lyric were due to
the conditions of its development. We may now proceed to
consider the germs themselves. They were of two kinds —
religious chants and popular songs. No specimen of the former
has come down to us, but we may reasonably conjecture that
they had the same origin and were much the same in kind as
the Saliaric hymns of the Romans. They were probably metrical
invocations of the gods, of a simple and inartistic kind, addressing
the god in all his various attributes and with his various names,
containing much repetition and tautology, and doing the duty of
liturgies. They were preserved by hereditary priesthoods, being
transmitted from generation to generation, and receiving occa-
sional additions. In Attica the Eumolpidee were a hereditary
priesthood of this kind, connected with the worship of Demeter
at Eleusis, whose hymns were traditionally referred to Pamphus
as their author. But as Apollo was the god of song, it was
with his cult that the most important of these religious chants
were associated. The Psean which was the name of the form
of hymn used in the worship of Apollo, seems to have been of
two kinds, corresponding to two attributes of the god. lie
was the god of victory, and to him the Greeks in Homer sing
praises and thanksgiving for victory. The hymn itself was
probably sung by a single voice, and the worshippers sang as a
chorus the refrain, " Io Psean ! Io Psean !" But Apollo was also
the god who sent pestilence, and the people, when threatened or
stricken with plague, prayed in chorus to him for deliverance.
The Nome was another form of hymn with which Apollo was
worshipped, and seems to be distinguished from the Paean by
the fact that it was sung by a priest, and was not a special
prayer for deliverance from pestilence or a special thanksgiving
for victory, but praise of a more general character. Naturally
the songs in honour of Apollo flourished most at the two most
important centres of his worship, Delos and Delphi. The origin
of the Nome was traditionally ascribed to Delphi, and Chryso-
themis and Philammon, mythical personages, were credited with
its authorship. The hymns which for generations had been
sung at Delos were connected with the name of Olen. The
fact that Olen was said to have been a Lycian, taken in con-
nection with the existence in Delos of a Phenician worship
(imported from Lycia) before the Ionic worship, may indi-
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. 1 09
cate that the hymns ascribed to hiin had a foreign element in

them.
A few inconsiderable fragments of songs of the people, quoted
by Athenaeus, Plutarch, Pollux, scholiasts and grammarians,
have come down to us, and from the same sources we hear of
other songs of which we have no specimens. Some of these
fragments are certainly of comparatively late date, but as songs
of the people change very little in the course of time, we may
learn something even from the later fragments. The reason
that so few of these songs have been preserved is that the
literary lyric killed the popular song, and it is only in those
parts of Greece which remained comparatively uncultured that
the people's songs survived. Thus it was in Sparta that cradle-
songs nourished most, and from Sparta come a couple of frag-
ments of songs which accompanied dancing. In one of these
fragments the dancers encourage each other to keep on dancing ;
the other consists of three lines, one of which was uttered by
the young men, the next by the old men, and the third by the
boys. From Bottiaea we have a fragment — "Away to Athens,
hie ! " — of the song which the women of Bottiaea sang while
dancing. Elsewhere also the custom of singing while dancing
prevailed ; and about another fragment which runs, £i Where
are my roses 1 where are my violets ? where are my beautiful
flowers 1 Here are your roses ; here are your violets ; here
are your beautiful flowers," Athenaeus says that the accompany-
ing dance was mimetic. It may be noticed incidentally that
men and women do not seem to have danced together. Games,
as well as dancing, were accompanied by songs. Greek boys
played a game, in which one boy, being blindfolded, sang a
verse, "I will hunt a fly of brass;" to which the other boys
replied, " You may hunt, but you will not catch us ; " and in-
flicted blows on him with straps, till he caught one of them.
Greek girls also had a game of a less violent description, witli
questions and answers to be sung. Greek children invoked the
appearance of the sun in much the same way as in the English
" Rain, rain, go away," &c. The most interesting of these
children's songs is the Rhodian Swallow-song, which lias been
fortunately preserved, apparently complete, by Athenaeus. In
the spring the boys of Rhodes went round from house to house
singing this song, in which they announced the return of the
swallow with the returning year, and demanded to be supplied
with cheese and wine. The Crow-song seems to have been of
the same kind : the boys went about with crows in their hands,
and making much the same request as in the Swallow-song.
I IO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
In these songs the boys played at beggars, but real beggars

also had their songs, although we have no specimen of them.
Working men, bakers, and rowers all had songs to accompany
and lighten their labours. The women had their weaving-
songs ; at Elis, their vintage-songs ; and they sang while wash-
ing clothes and while working in the mill. The song of the
reapers was called Lityerses, and as this was the name of the
son of Midias, king of Phrygia, the song may have come from
that country. The shepherds' songs, at any rate in some
instances, seem to have been of a sentimental kind, and we
have a fragment of one which told a story of unrequited love.
Love-songs naturally formed an important part of the popular
songs, and in Locris such songs were much cultivated ; but we
have a fragment of one only. Drinking-songs can hardly be
reckoned among the pre-lyric popular songs. They were intro-
duced during the lyrical period by Terpander from Asia Minor,
and eventually some, such as those celebrating the glorious
deed of Harmodius and Aristogiton, attained great popularity,
and were genuine songs of the people. More important, as the
roots of lyrical poetry, than any of the songs of the people yet
mentioned, were the wedding-songs and dirges. The dirge was
known to Homer, and as all peoples seem to possess some-
thing of the kind, it may well have been original with the
Greeks, although indications are not wanting that some foreign
— Carian — elements were introduced. This form of song was
afterwards developed by Pindar, and came to be of much im-
portance in the lyrical part of Greek tragedy. The wedding-
song was also known to Homer, who calls it the Hymenaeus.
It became literary and lyrical in the hands of Pindar and
Sappho, and, as the Epithalamion, it has passed into the lyric
poetry of all European nations. Finally, amongst the songs of
the people we have to notice an important class borrowed from
the Mast. Their common feature is that they are laments for
the untimely and undeserved death of some beauteous youth.
In all cases they seem to have been of Oriental origin, to have
originally lamented the departure or death of summer, and to
have been amalgamated with some local Greek myth. Thus
the Linos, of which we have a fragment (perhaps not in its
original form), came from Phenicia (where, as also in Cyprus
and Bithynia, Herodotus recognised it), and was connected with
the story of the beauteous Linos, who was killed by Apollo for
challenging him to a contest in song. The fragment that we
have ascribes the invention of song to Linos, and relates the
death of Linos and the lament of the Muses for him. The
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I II
Linos was sung by a single voice, and the refrain " Ai Linon ! Ai
Linon !" by a chorus. The derivation of Ai Linon may be the
Semitic ai le nu, woe is us. In Tegea of Arcadia the Greeks
explained the lamentation as being for the death of Skephros,
who was killed by his brother. Sterility fell on the land in
consequence, and an oracle ordered a yearly festival, at which
Skephros was to be mourned for ; and hence the song was
called the Skephros. The Hyacinth song has the same origin ;
it was localised in Sparta, and came there through the island of
Cythera, a Phenician settlement of old. Most famous of all
these lamentations was that for Adonis. The Phenician origin
of this song, and of the festival at which it was sung, is indi-
cated by the mythological device of making Adonis the son of
Phoenix ; by the obviously Semitic derivation of the word
(adonai, lord), and by the fact that the song and festival can
be traced back to Samos, and thence to Cyprus, whither they
first spread from Phenicia.
Having seen what were the germs of lyric poetry, and what
were the conditions under which they were developed, we may
now proceed to consider the various kinds of lyric poetry.
They are three, the Elegiac, the Iambic, and the Lyric, in the
narrower or specific sense, or, as it is sometimes called, Melic.
They are alike in that they are all subjective, expressing the
poet's own emotions as such, and that they were all designed
for a musical accompaniment. They differ in metre ; and in
that Elegy and Iambic poetry are more subjective than Melic ;
and that choral odes belong to Melic. In dialect, Elegy and
Iambic poetry, as they originated in Ionia, were Ionic : Melic
poetry drew on the other dialects. Choruses, having originated
both amongst the Dorians and the jEoliuns, contain both iEolic
and Doric, though the latter came in course of time to pre-
dominate. Melic songs, as opposed to choruses, had no fixed
dialect, but each poet used his native dialect.
The origin of elegy is closely connected with the improve-
ments made in the flute in Phrygia. Elegy spread with the
flute from Ionia to Greece, and the word elegy itself can hardly
be regarded as a Greek one, although whether it is derived
from an Armenian word (elegit) meaning a flute or reed, or
from another Armenian word (jilarakan) moaning " mournful,''
is uncertain. The original meaning of the word in Greek
seems to have included both ideas, and to have been a funeral
dirge on the flute. Then the word seems to have been used
of a distich consisting of a hexameter and a pentameter; and
then to have been applied to any poem made up of such
distiches. It is only in Eonian and late Greek times that

elegies were written to be read. Before then, elegies, like all
other poetry of the creative period of Greek literature, were
composed for oral delivery, and were always sung or recited to
a flute accompaniment. The history of Greek elegy falls into
three periods. The first extends from the origin of elegy,
about B.C. 700, to the rise of the drama. The next extends to
Alexandrine times, which constitute the third period. The
elegy originated in Ionia, always continued to be written in
Ionic, and the best representatives of this division of lyric
poetry were Ionians, eg., Callinus and Mimnermus. During
the first and most flourishing period of elegy, it was used for
many other purposes than that of expressing lamentations and
regret Callinus used it for martial purposes. With Tyrtaeua
and Solon it served to convey political precepts. In the hands
of Theognis it was largely gnomic or sententious. Mimnermus
brought it back to its originally mournful character. In this
period also it was used for lighter purposes, love, epigram, and
the praise of wine. In the second period, elegy was over-
shadowed bythe drama, which absorbed the best lyric talent
and grew at the expense of elegy. In the Alexandrine, the
third period, it became, as we see from the specimens preserved
in the Anthology, the vehicle for conveying the mythological
learning and the love-songs of the literati of the time.
The first elegiac poet, as far as we know, was Callinus of
Ephesus. His date cannot be fixed with precision, but as it
seems from his fragments that the town of Magnesia was still
in existence in his time, and as from the fragments of Archi-
lochus it seems that by his time Magnesia had been destroyed,
Callinus was probably rather senior to Archilochus, and lived
aboutcombined
and B.C. 700.it with
"Whether Callinus invented
the hexameter, the know.
we do not pentameter
His
elegiacs are not rudimentary, but we have no reason to believe
that any other poet had cultivated this form of verse before
him, and there is nothing improbable in supposing that he may
have invented them and yet brought them to the stage of
development which we find them in with him. In point of
metre, the elegiac is not greatly different from the verse of epic
poetry, for the pentameter is only a mutilated hexameter, In
style, too, we see from the fragments of Callinus that Greek
poetry only gradually developed from epic to lyric, and did not
pass by a bound from the one stage to the other. The language
of Callinus reminds us of Homer, and the spirit is much the
same. For the fragments which we possess (one of twenty
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I3
lines and three insignificant ones) we are indebted to Stobceus

the anthologist and Strabo the geographer. Strabo probably
knew little or nothing more of his works, and took these quota-
tions from works by Demetrius of Skepsis (a pupil of Aristar-
chus) and Callisthenes. That Callinus' elegies should have
been lost so early is not astonishing, when we reflect that they
were probably not committed to writing, and that having only
an oral, not a literary existence, they would be peculiarly liable
to perish as fast as other elegiac poets arose with competing
verses. The long fragment which has come down to us is of a
martial kind, encouraging his fellow-citizens to advance against
the foe by picturing the disgrace of a coward's death and the
glory of falling nobly. For what occasion these verses were
composed, whether for the war which was carried on between
the poet's own city, Ephesus, and Magnesia, and which even-
tually resulted
of an attack by inthetheCimmerians,
victory of the
who former, or in time
about this ant'cipation
invaded
Lydia, defeated Midas, and threatened the Greek cities, is un-
certain. But the verses themselves have a fine vigour, and ring
out like a true call to battle. It has, indeed, been maintained
that most of this fragment is not by Callinus, but by Tyrtaeus ;
but the weight of critical authority is against the supposition.
About the same time as, but junior to, Callinus was Archilo-
chus, who also wrote elegies, but whose fame is his iambics. As
other poets also frequently wrote both iambics and elegiacs, we
shall find it convenient to treat the two classes of writers side
by side ; and this mode of proceeding has the further justifica-
tion that, different in character as iambic originally was from
elegiac poetry, the two kinds of poetry had certain important
features in common, and they ran through much the same
career. They resemble each other, in the first place, in being
of Ionian origin, being written in the Ionic dialect, and being
peculiarly and distinctively expressive of the qualities of the
Ionic character. Their careers are alike in that both soon lost
the character which they at first possessed ; elegy, as we have
seen, came soon to be employed for many other purposes than
the expression of lamentation, and iambic poetry, as we sliall
see, was at first the means used by Archilochus for conveying
personal satire, but lost that character in the hands of Solon,
although he used iambic verse as a means of combating his
personal opponents. Eventually, as the verse of dialogue in
tragedy, it served to express every emotion of the human heart.
Finally, as elegiac poetry was overshadowed by the drairia, so
the drama absorbed iambic poetry, which, however, did not,
u
I I4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
like elegy, revive again, except in the modified form of the

chol iambics used by late fable writers, such as Babrius.
Although Archilochus was the founder of iambic poetry, he
can hardly be regarded as the inventor of the iambus, and the
origin of the verse is uncertain. The usual account is that it
originated in the worship of Demeter. At the festivals of this
goddess a license was permitted which resembled that of the
saturnalia at Rome. Every restraint at other times put upon
the tongue was on these occasions removed ; abuse, jests, deri-
sion, and satire might be cast bv any man against any other ;
and from this custom, and from a Greek word meaning " to
cast," the word iambics and the abusive nature of the verse are
usually derived. With this view further harmonises the fact
that the worship of Demeter was in great favour in the isle
of Faros, where Archilochus was born. But the word iambus
suggests, by its resemblance, a connection with the words dithy-
rambus, thriambus, which are in all probability not of Greek
origin ; and the only evidence for the connection of the iambus
with Demeter is the story that it was the maid Iambe who, by
her jests, first brought a smile to the face of Demeter after the
loss of her daughter.
About the life of Archilochus we know little more than is to
be inferred from the fragments of his works. These are unfor-
tunately few; but his poetry is so subjective, the man is so open
and frank on all that concerns him, that there is scarcely a frag-
ment, however inconsiderable in size, which does not give us
some information about his life and character. In estimating
his character it is necessary always to bear in mind his complete
innocence of disguise and his even reckless frankness, because
the best known fact in his life — the vengeance which he took
in his verses on Lycambes for first betrothing his daughter
Neobule to him and then refusing him her hand — is liable to
misinterpretation ; and the more so since the later Greeks, in
order to enhance — perhaps to comprehend — the tremendous
nature of his onslaught, added the story that in consequence
of his verses both Lycambes and Neobule committed suicide.
This might lead us to infer that there was something underhand
or even cowardly in this mode of vengeance — that Archilochus'
weapons were not only as keen but as venomous as Pope's. But
this would be to entirely misread his life and character. Archi-
lochus was not only a poet of unsurpassed vigour, lie was a man
of energy and action who touched life at all points. Impetuous
and daring, ho led a life of adventure and romance. Born in
the island of Paros, a block of purest marble, whose perpend i-
LYRIC POETRY I ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I5
cular cliffs run up two thousand feet from the sea, and whose
beauty he saw with a poet's eye (Fragment 51), Archilochus
there became familiar with a sailor's life, and learned to love
the sea, over which he was to wander often. When quite
a youth, having his youthful and ardent imagination fired
with fabulous reports of gold-mines in Thasos, he sailed for
that ancient seat of Phenician mining. His expectations were
high, and his disappointment therefore profound. The vehe-
mence of his expression marks the force of the impression
which Thasos made on him ; it is as rough as a donkey's back,
there is not one fine or lovely or beautifnl place in it (Fr. 21).
In this frame of mind he would be ready to believe that his El
Dorado, if not situated in the island of Thasos, might be on the
mainland over against it ; and, even if gold were no more
to be found there than on the island, at least there would be
fighting. Thither, therefore, he went, and there he was not
disappointed in the fighting. After this he must have returned
to Paros, and there have met Neobule. His love for her was
as passionate as might be expected in a man of his poetical and
impetuous temperament, and some of his fragments (84, 85) still
breathe the flame with which he was consumed. That he was
capable of deep feeling is shown by his elegy on the death of his
sister's husband, and his capacity for suffering may be gauged by
the fact that he could only find for it a remedy which is no
remedy — to endure and not whine like a woman (66). This
capacity for the depths of suffering implies a corresponding
capacity for the exaltation of joy, and it was witli all the
ardour and all the tenderness of this richly endowed nature
that he loved Neobule. He sighed " were it to touch but her
hand" (71), and we have the fragments (29, 30) of a perfectly
lovely picture of Neobule (in which she was drawn with all her
own beauty and the beauty lent to her by the eye of her artist-
lover), with a myrtle branch and rose in her hand, and her
tresses overshadowing her shoulders. As his love had been
great and beyond all measure, so when he was betrayed his fury
knew no bounds. Every taunt which the violence of passion
could suggest and the force of satiric genius could launch he
directed against her who had deceived him. To us this attack
on a woman has something cowardly in it ; but the standard of
morality is a shifting one, and Archilochus, whether judged by
the standard of his own or of our time, was not a coward.
This will be best understood if we consider the famous verses
(6) in which he relates his flight from a battle in Thrace, and
of the loss of his shield. He tells the story lightly. Some
Saian has the shield, and exults in the trophy. Archilochu3

did not abandon it willingly, but he only just escaped death; so
he bids good-bye to the shield ; he can buy another. This view,
that the cost of a shield was the only loss he suffered in running
away, throws a light on the character of Archilochus. These
verses are due neither to the effrontery of shamelessness nor to
the self-torture of a morbid mind. For the former to be the
case, Archilochus must have been a coward ; for the latter, he
must have thought himself one. Horace, who abandoned his
shield at Philippi (and imitated these verses of Archilochus),
was no warrior, and consequently, being a man of the world,
felt that he was not disgraced. Demosthenes, who fled from
Chaeronea, was also no warrior, but had a higher nature, and
felt, probably unreasonably, that he was disgraced. But Archi-
lochus was a warrior ; he was a free-lance (24) ; he sailed from
shore to shore, trusting, as he says (23), his life to the embrace
of the wave ; he fought in many lands, and eventually, in
Eubcea, he fell in battle. If. then, he could jest over his flight,
it was partly because his valour was tried and above suspicion ;
partly because his frank nature scorned concealment ; and
mainly because his fighting experience had taught him that
victory does not always crown the brave, and that there are
times when even the brave must fly or be killed uselessly.
In other words, on this point his morality was that of the
mercenary. Unfortunately, that was his morality on other
matters also. There was, indeed, much chivalry in his nature,
e.g., he will not insult a dead foe (69), nor be overweening in
the hour of triumph, nor abject in defeat, and will take arms
against his troubles (66) ; but supreme over all motives is ven-
geance (65). " One thing I can — requite with great ill the man
who does me ill." This limitation of his chivalry explains his
attack on Neobule.
As a poet, a warrior, a sea-rover, a colonist, a political par-
tisan, an accepted suitor, a disappointed and infuriated lover,
Archilochus touched life at all points, and there was no quar-
ter of the activity into which citizen-life was then breaking
which he did not throw himself into with all the force of his
vigorous nature. If from the poetry of Tyrtams and Solon
we learn much of the, internal political condition of Sparta
and Athens, from the poetry of Archilochus we get valuable
light on the life, manners, and thought of the time. Thus
we see that the position of women was one of much greater
freedom, socially, than was the ease in Athens and among
the Ionic Greeks generally at a later date ; and we find, rather
LYRIC POETRY '. ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I I7
to our surprise, that marriage was preceded by a term of love-

making. At the same time we see (if 19 is really genuine)
that the hetaera was already in the field, and that her position
was as openly recognised then as later. The thought, too, of
the time is reflected even in our scanty fragments to a certain
extent. Archilochus no more propounds to himself or his
audience the great problem of the meaning of life than did
Homer. The Greeks had not yet, apparently, begun to think.
The old gods still in appearance hold their old place. They are
still there to be prayed to ; but in one important respect they
are not quite the same as they were in Epic, for in Archilochus,
as in Greek lyric poetry generally, they have ceased to do any-
thing. Motionless they remain, and Archilochus recognises
them in a general way, especially when he is giving moral
advice to a friend ; but he speaks with more confidence when
he says fate and fortune settle everything. His enjoyment of
the beauty and pleasures of life was marred by no speculative
doubts on religion and morality. Suffering led him to no
searchings of heart ; his comment was that weeping would not
diminish, and enjoying himself would not increase the evil (13).
The sunlight and open air of his life did not allow him to be
haunted by such a question as, Why should we live ? He is
even far from the stage at which the advice to eat, drink, and
bo merry can be given ; for to him and to the Greeks of his time
such a recommendation would have seemed superfluous. The
only indication, and that is casual and indirect, of any reflec-
tion on the deeper problems of life which is to be found in
Archilochus is interesting, both as being characteristic of him
and as showing that, although the old religion remained exter-
nally much the same, there were at work beneath the surface
tendencies of a destructive nature. In one of his fables (88) the
fox prays, " 0 Zeus, Father Zeus, thine is power in heaven ; thou
seest the deeds of men that they are good and bad, and in beasts
too thou visitest insolence and justice." To thus say that the
beasts are quite as moral as man, and that the gods take as much
interest in rewarding and punishing the one class as the other, is
a piece of cynical cleverness which required the genius and the
recklessness of Archilochus to conceive and to utter, as it also
shows that, when thought was turned in this direction, it was
not in support of the old creeds.
From Archilochus to Simonides of Amorgos — what a falling
off! Simonides, like Archilochus, was a colonist, and moved
from his native island Samos to the island Amorgos, from
which he gets the epithet which serves to distinguish him
from the later and more famous Simonides. But Simonides of

Amorgos was a very different kind of colonist from Archilochus.
Instead of the romance in which Archilochus, the poet-warrior,
seemed to always move, we become conscious in Simonides of
the principle of strict attention to business, which better suits
grocery than poetry. We have, indeed, in passing from Archi-
lochus to Simonides, passed from the action of one set of the
general conditions under which lyric poetry developed to that
of another. The liberty of the individual citizen was fostered
in its growth not only by the violent revolution of the sword,
but also by the quiet revolution effected by the expansion of
commerce. The wandering and reckless Archilochus, whose
weapons were at the service of those who could pay for them,
but whose allegiance was rendered to none but the god of war
and the Muses, represents the former set of conditions, while the
prosaic, domestic, and querulous Simonides breathes the air of
the latter. The only fragments of Simonides of importance are
one (i) of 24 lines and another (7) of 118 lines, both in iambics.
The former is good advice to a young man. Simonides explains
(probably to his son) that one never knows what will happen;
that some men fall ill and die ; others fignt and get killed ; others,
for the sake of a living, go to sea and get drowned, and others
commit suicide : trouble is universal, and the moral is to avoid
it as much as possible. It is sometimes said, we may remark,
that the poetry of Simonides is sober, and it has at least the
appearance of having been written in old age. The other
fragment is in the same strain as this. It is a description
of women, who are divided into ten classes: to the first class
Heaven has given the qualities of the pig, to the second those of
the fox, to the next those of the dog ; and so the poet plods
on conscientiously through his 119 lines and his ten classes,
each of which he dockets and puts by carefully labelled with its
ticket; and, in conclusion, for fear any specimens of the nice
should be left unprovided for by his methodical treatment, he
utters an anathema on women in general. To these two £rag-
ments should perhaps be added another, which is generally in-
cluded amongst the remains of Simonides, the younger, of Cos;
it is an elegy, which quotes the famous line of Homer that com-
pares the generations of men to the leaves of trees. With this
line, as a text, the author proceeds to remark that hope springs
in the breast of young men, who think they will never die or
be ill, in which they are very foolish.
The first thing that strikes us in reading the remains of
Simonides is — how limited is his horizon ' When in the first
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC POETS. I 19
fragment his eye takes the widest sweep over human life and
activity that it can, he comprehends precisely what is seen hy
the smug bourgeois. He knows that some men spend their lives
on the sea, but when he goes beyond the fact, and presumes to
divine their motive, the only one which his range of emotions
and experience can suggest is that they do it to earn a living.
Such people, he tells his young friend, get drowned. With
this, contrast the line in which Archilochus (51) bids farewell
to life on the sea. Simonides also knows that men fight (and
get killed), but their motives for doing so he does not attempt
even to conjecture. But when he returns from his excursion
into these unfamiliar fields of human activity, and plants his
foot within the domestic circle, and gets on the subject of that
domestic grievance — woman — then what he says possesses, if not
great depth, at any rate great length.
The roving, fighting life of Archilochus, chequered by victory
and defeat, by the adventures of the gold-seeker, by the passion
and disappointment of love, by the carouses of the camp, and
the strife of politics, afforded a rich variety of material to the
artist's eye and the poet's mind ; but the dull weary round of
daily work could afford Simonides no stimulus to poetry. It
would, in fact, seem that commerce may have — as Freytag shows
in his novel " Soil und Haben " — its romance, but its poetry
hardly. The result of the conditions under which Simonides
produced his work is that there is no joy, no sense of beauty,
no play of fancy in it. He bids no farewell to the beauty of
his native island. That life may be beautiful and joyous he
does not seem to know. He knows, indeed, that if you are
married, you can never have a whole day's peace (7. 99), but
beyond this negative idea he cannot lift his thoughts. Of
all vigour and eager activity he is quite innocent : the most
energetic demonstration he seems to contemplate is not to
dwell on one's misfortunes (1. 24). The public for whom
Simonides wrote indicates the difference between him and
Archilochus. The latter wrote his verses to be sung over the
wine to his boon-companions, amongst whom, we may be sure,
were to be found all the wittiest and cleverest men of the pi.ice
in which he happened to be, and with whom his reckless strokes
of irony and satire, and his finest poetic fancy, would find ready
appreciation. Simonides' verses, as we have said, are advice to
a young man.
Touching the question of how much truth there is in Simon-
ides' views on the women of his time: in view of the resem-
blance there is between him and Hesiod, both in the harrow,
I 20 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
calking spirit of their verse and in their unfavourable esti-

mate of women, we might at first be inclined to think that
Simonides was not drawing on his own observation, but was
simply working out in a spirit of literary conventionality and
tradition a theme which he had borrowed from his epic prede-
cessor. But towards the end of the fragment we find a couple
of verses (112, 113) — "Every man praises his own wife and
depreciates his neighbour's; but we are all in the same plight
without knowing it" — which seem to show that, when Simon-
ides and his friends met together for the recreation of quiet
conversation, their wives were a frequent topic, and that Simon-
ides in his verses is but giving expression to the views of the
honest burghers of Amorgos. The last twenty verses, too, of
the fragment, when the author has conscientiously discharged
the task of labelling all the ten classes of women, and speaks
with that burden off his mind, positively rise to a modified
warmth of feeling which in Simonides must be taken to repre-
sent the fire of conviction. He even, when hinting at a scandal,
ventures on an audacious aposiopesis, which the sympathetic
reader at once understands to have been originally accompanied
by a solemn motion of Simonides' head conveying much mean-
ing. We may then regard what Simonides says on this subject
as not a mere literary exercise, but as the result of his observation
and experience ; and we have to estimate it. In the first place,
we see from his other fragment (1), addressed probably to his
son, that he took a gloomy view of life. He saw trouble every-
where and no remedy for trouble. It is probable, therefore, that
when, out of the ten classes into which he divides women, he
only admits one — the women to whom the qualities of the bee
have been assigned by the gods — to be good, he is colouring his
observations with the same subjective and gloomy view which
in the other fragment permits him to see nothing but miserable
ends to human lives, and in the elegy, which is probably by
him, and not by the other Simonides, permits him to see nothing
in life but death. His condemnation of the women of las time
contains then some falsity : how much truth it contains we cannot
say. What we learn from Archilochus makes it improbable tli.it
the custom — borrowed by the Ionians from the East — which
certainly prevailed later, of shutting women up, was dominant
at this time; and all we are in a position to say is, that if it
was, there was probably a considerable amount of truth in his
diatribe. One other reflection we have to make : the hetaera,
we learu from Archilochus, had already made her appearance;
and it is when liaisons with such women are frequent among
husbands that in literature we find complaints about wives.
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. 12 1
There remain three writers of elegiacs for us to mention, of

whom one was a poet : Tyrtaeus, Mimnermus, and Solon. The
fragments of Tyrtseus are, in accordance with the legend which
represents him as inspiring the Spartans with courage, warlike
in character. As poetry, they are but " the hoarse monotony of
verse lowered to the level of a Spartan understanding." Their
effect on the Spartans, however, was great. During a campaign
his elegies were sung in camp after the evening meal. His
Embateria or March-songs were sung before and during the
battle ; and as the custom was handed down from generation
to generation of singing them before the king's tent, they
became something in the nature of a national hymn, to which
they are the only approach in Greek literature. Mimnermus
of Colophon (or Smyrna) was indeed a poet, and the scanty
remains of his elegies make us regret what we have lost of him.
Solon wrote in verse because prose was not yet invented, and
his fragments, valuable as they are to the historian, have little
interest for the student of literature.
CHAPTER II.
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC.
Melic, the third division of lyric poetry, derives its name

from the Greek word melos, which originally means a member
or part, then a strophe or part of a poem, and then verse sung
to music. Melic poetry was composed in strophes, and it was
also always sung to music ; so that it is uncertain whether the
term is derived from the second or the third meaning of the
word melos. It is an objection to deriving it from the second
meaning that nomes, which are certainly melic, are not writ-
ten in strophes ; on the other hand, although melic poetry was
always accompanied by music, so too — in the creative period
of Greek literature — were the other divisions of lyric poetry,
elegiac and iambic. It is, however, clear that music took
a much more prominent part in melic than in the other two
kinds of lyric poetry. Elegies and iambics were probably Dot
always sung, but mostly recited; and were not accompanied by
music throughout, but prefaced and followed by a prelude and
symphony; and probably in the pauses a few notes were
sounded. On the other hand, the various metres in melic pos-
eessed much greater flexibility than do elegiacs or iambics, and

are thereby much more fitted to be set to music.
Melic poetry falls into two classes, according as it was sung
by a chorus or by one person. It must not, however, be in-
ferred from this that the difference between the two kinds of
melic was merely that between a chorus and a solo — a differ-
ence which in Greek music would not be very great, since tho
only exception to the Greek custom of a chorus singing in uni-
son was singing in diapason. A chorus implies organisation ;
and the organisation in Greece was public ; consequently the
objects for which choruses were organised were public or
national, that is to say, they were acts of public worship, thanks-
givings to the gods, prayers to avert evil, or hymns of praise
or celebration. The song, on the other hand, which is sung by
a single person needs no such organisation, and is dependent on
no such conditions, but belongs to private life, and is the ready
expression of the individual's joy or sorrow. Thus, the chorus
is public and religious, and the song is private and expressive
of every emotion other than that of worship. Further, as
elegiac and iambic poetry were the work of the Ionic race, so
chorus was the work of the Dorian, song of the ^)olian race,
liut here a qualification becomes necessary. Although /Eolian
poetry was distinctively individual both in subject, treatment,
and delivery, yet, as the individual, even in his private capacity,
at times comes into relation with the public, as in the case of
the marriage ceremony or the funeral dirge, iEolian poetry neces-
sarily becomes choral and religious at times, as in the case of
the epithalamion, hymenaeus, and threnos or dirge. So, too,
the public in its collective capacity sometimes interests itself in
the individual, when, for instance, he has rendered services to
the state and is praised for them, or has conferred honour on
his town by a victory in the national games; and thus Dorian
poetry, in the case of encomia ami epinikia, without ceasing to
be choral, occasionally passes beyond the sphere of religion ami
assumes a private character. Another difference between Dorian
and /Eolian melic is in their metrical structure. The former,
as being choral, deliberately organised, publicly performed, and
more formal, is composed of larger and more elaborate strophes
than is /Eolian poetry, and, in addition to strophe and anti-
strophe has an epode, which /Eolian has not. The epode is
directly connected with the movements of the chorus; for the
chorus whilst singing the strophe moved round the altar to the
right, while! singing the antistrophe to the left, and then whilst
standing in front of the altar the epode. /Eolian songs, not
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. I2 3
being acts of worship, involved no such movement and had no

epode. Finally, Ave may notice that a further consequence of
the religious character of Dorian and choral lyric is that praise
of the gods naturally led the poet to relate the works of the
gods, and thus choral lyric naturally has an epic element in it of
a narrative and objective character. So, too, it is a consequence
of the personal character of iEolian song that the poet did not
confine himself to portraying his own feelings and experiences,
but frequently threw himself into the position of others, and
gave poetical form to the emotions which a certain imagined
situation would give rise to. To take a modern illustration,
the lyric poet may either body forth his own feelings, as Shelley
did in the " Stanzas on Dejection, written near Naples," or he
may project himself into the position and sing the lament of a
woman deserted and betrayed, as does the author of " 0 waly,
waly, up the bank."
In this respect, as in others, we see the connection of lyric
song with the songs of the people out of which it originated — a
connection which again may be illustrated by a modern instance,
for in several of Burns' lyrics one verse is traditional, while tho
remainder is the work of Burns in the spirit of the original.
Of the elements out of which melic originated, the hymns,
the dirges, the wedding- songs, of which we get some glimpses
in Homer, the litanies, so to speak, of which we get some
notion by a comparison of the Saliaric hymns at Rome, and
the songs of the people, of which a few fragments, of various
dates, have survived — we have said something already in treating
of the origin of lyric poetry in general. The history of melic
begins for us with Terpander, and, so far as we shall treat of it,
that is, in the creative period of Greek literature, it falls into
four periods. The first period, which began with Terpander
and lasted for about a century, may be called the Spartan
period, for it was in Sparta that during this time melic was pre-
eminently cultivated. This period was marked by the musical
reforms of Terpander, the innovations of Clonas and Thaletaa
and the genius of Alcman. In the second period the scene
shifts from Sparta to Lesbos and to Sicily ; and to the change
in area there corresponds a difference in the character of melic,
for it was in Lesbos and in Sicily that the songs of the people
were developed into lyric song ; and with this branch of lyric
poetry the great names of Alcaeus and Sappho are associated. In
this period also flourished Stesichorus, who, in the quality of
Ins genius and the nature of his art, was the forerunner of
Simonides and Pindar. In the third period we leave the homes
of the people for the courts of tyrants, and return from song to
chorus. This was the period of Simonides and of Anacreon,
though not of the works which commonly pass under the name
of Anacreon. The fourth was again a period of choral lyric,
but it had ceased to be local, and in the hands of Pindar and
Lacchylides became universal. In this period, too, the dithy-
ramb reached its greatest importance.
The part which Sparta during the first period played in the
development of melic is remarkable and instructive. It is re-
markable because, although it was in Sparta that melic grew,
scarcely any of the melic poets were Spartans. It is instructive
because it shows both how important is the function of the
public in the history of art, and how dependent the growth of
poetry, and of literature generally, is on non-poetical and non-
literary conditions. If Sparta was the home and not the mother
of lyric poets at this time — if she produced no genius, but sup-
plied the conditions necessary for its growth, it was because
there existed in Sparta a sympathetic public, which by its
education was capable of furnishing the ready and appreciative
welcome which is the best atmosphere for the growth of art,
and the best stimulus on the artist to excel himself. In the
next place, it is no casual coincidence that the time when the
greatest poets of the age invariably found their way to Sparta,
as did Terpander from Lesbos, Clonas from Thebes, and Thaletas
from Crete, was precisely the time when, in power and reputa-
tion, Sparta was the foremost state, without a rival in Greece.
Doubtless each poet had an appreciative public in his native
city, but the greatness of Sparta offered him the same superior
field for achieving fame as that Athens gave later, and as at
the present day Paris and London present to, the provincials of
Prance and England.
With the musical reforms of Terpander — the extension of the
tetrachord of the cithara into an incomplete octave ] — we shall
not deal. Wc have to speak of him as a poet. Unfortunately,
the few and insignificant fragments which we possess of his
poetry afford us no means whatever of estimating his quality
as a poet or his method. His place in the history of lyric
poetry has to be inferred mainly from the not always satisfac-
tory account given of him by Proclus. The species of reli-
gious lyric to which Terpander's compositions belonged was the
Home. Of the meaning of this word no more satisfactory
1 These reforms of Terpander constitute what was technically called
ri irpurri) KaraaTaaii twu irepl ti)v ftovffiicftp. The Seirrtpa Kard.araai% tQiv
it. t. p.. was the work of Thaletas of Crete and his school.
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. I2 5
account can be given than that it is the Greek word nomos,

which means "law," and that this kind of poetry was called
Nomos because, as opposed to other kinds of which the shape
was determined by the poet, it was subject to certain definite
laws. Thus before Terpander the nome was regularly com-
posed of four parts, and the law of its composition was that the
main body of the hymn should be preceded, by an introduction,
which must consist of two parts, and should be followed by a
conclusion. Terpander developed this division of the nome,
and divided the conclusion and the two introductory parts
again into each two subdivisions, thus making the nome to
consist of seven parts. l So much for the form of the nome ;
we have next to speak of its character, contents, and the way
in which it was executed. In character it was religious, and
thus resembled hymns and paeans ; but in its contents it differed
from the paean, because it was not sung solely in honour of
Apollo, but might be dedicated to any of the gods, and origi-
nally was used in the worship of the nether gods as well as of
Apollo. In content it further differed from the paean, because
the paean was the form in which either thanksgivings for victory
were offered to Apollo or prayers were made to him to avert
pestilence, while the nome rather celebrated the attributes, the
might, and the majesty of the god whom it honoured. In the
way in which it was executed it differed from all other religious
lyrics, because it was not accompanied by dancing, and because
it was not choral, but was sung as a solo ; and from this differ-
ence flows another mark which distinguishes the nome from
other religious lyrics, viz., that it was not written in strophes.
Further, until the time of Clonas, the musical instrument which
accompanied the nome was the cithara.
According to the records kept at Delphi, Terpander won the
prize with his nomes in one of the musical contests there. This
would seem to point to the cultivation at Delphi of such reli-
gious lyric as existed at the time, and in this, as Terpander did
not invent but developed the nome and gave it a place in lite-
rature, there is nothing improbable. But the records, when
relating to events of such great antiquity, are reasonably open
1 The names of the four original divisions were : dpxd, Kararpoird, 6/j.<f>a\6t
and a<ppayls ; of Terpauder's seven divisions : dpxd, fierapxd, Kararpowd,
(leTaKCLTaTpoird, 6pi<pa\6s, o~<ppayls, £irl\oyos. Tho main body of the hymn
was, as the word implies, the 6p.<f>a\6s. The a<f>payis was the "seal" which
stamped the conclusion. To the "seal "Terpander added the epilogtie ; to
the dpxd the nerapxd, and to the KaraTpoird the fieraKaTaTpoTa. See
Pollux, iv. 66.
126 IIISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
to doubt. From Delphi Terpander is said to have been sent

by the oracle to Sparta. There he instituted the celebrated
festival of the Carnea in honour of Apollo, and in the musical
contests which were held regularly ever afterwards at the festi-
val, the prize was for long carried off by the school of Terpander,
the most famous member of which was Kapion.1
The innovation which Clonas of Thebes made in melic was
to compose nomes designed, not for a cithara. but a flute accom-
paniment. In this he was followed by Polymnestus of Colo-
phon, and Sakadas of Argos, and Echembrotus of Arcadia. As
we possess not even a fragment by any one of these composers
of nomes (except a dedication on an offering by Echembrotus),
we need not say more of them.
Tho development of the paean is ascribed to Thrdetas of
Crete. Of his works we possess no fragment, and know
nothing ; but he seems to have exercised a decisive influence
on the course of melic, for, after his time nomes gave way to
the paean, solo to chorus, and the cithara to the flute. It is
interesting to note, too, that his connection with Sparta was
set down to the action of the oracle of Delphi, as was also that
of Terpander and of Tyrtaeus. Whatever may be the historical
value of the incidents with which this connection is clothed in
the case of these three important early lyric poets, the fact that
they were said to have been sent by the oracle to Sparta shows the
closeness of the relations between Delphi and Sparta, and that
lyric poetry was associated with Delphi. The new path marked
out for melic by Thai etas was followed by Xenodamos, who
brought from Crete the hyporcheme, a species of melic in which
the mimetic dancing was the most important element, and by
Xenocritus, who took as the subject of his poems the adventures,
not of the gods, but of heroes, thus paving the way for the
dithyramb.
In Alcman we at last come to a poet of whom, from his frag-
ments, few and mutilated as they are, Ave can form at hast
some idea for ourselves. His date is uncertain, and of his life
we only know two things — that his poetry was performed and
composed by him in Sparta — and that he came from Sardis.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus said, indeed, that Alcman was a
Spartan by birth; but Stephanus of Byzantium quotes some
1 One of the eight nomes which Terpander was said to have composed was
called K:i)>i"i>, after this favourite pupil. The others are said to have been
called AioXios and Boubrtos, after the musical scales or keys of those names ;
Opdios
for and which
reasons Tpoxa-'os, afterbe the
cannot metres, and '0£i/s, Terpaoldios, Tepirdi>8petos,
discovered.
lyric poetry: melic. 127
verses from Alcman which explicitly state that he came from

lofty Sardis. Whether he was a slave, as Suidas, following
Crates, affirms, and Dionysius denies, or a freeman ; whether
he was a Lydian or a Greek, and how he came from Sardis to
Sparta, whether as a slave, or as an artist attracted by the
chance of fame in Sparta ; and at what age, whether as a child or
as a man — these are all questions which cannot be satisfactorily
settled. It seems improbable that, if he Avere a slave, he would
ever have been permitted to obtain the rights of citizenship in
Sparta, and take such an important part in the direction of
public worship. About his nationality his name proves little,
for though it is Greek, it may not have been his original
name ; nor do the two alternative names which Suidas gives his
father, though both are Greek, prove more ; for neither may be
genuine. Finally, whether he left Sardis before he was old
enough to have been materially influenced by Lydian art, or im-
ported Lydian tendencies into Sparta, is a question to which
the fragments we possess are insufficient to give an answer.
Turning from these questions, let us try to see what were
bis contributions to melic, and why the Alexandrine critics
regarded him as a classic, and placed him in their canon of the
nine great lyric poets. The direction in which Alcman made
his advance, and the nature of his work, were determined by
the previous history of melic and the existing conditions in
Sparta. That is to say, Alcman found melic exclusively de-
voted to religious worship in Sparta, and accordingly it was to
the lyric of worship that he directed his genius. He found
that Thaletas had diverted the current of lyric from nomes in
solo to worship in chorus, and he followed out the channel thus
opened, composing paeans, hymns, wedding-songs, and prosodia
or processional hymns. But his genius was too powerful to be
confined to merely working out tendencies which he found
already existing. Although he started from and developed the
religious and choral elements of lyric, lie confined himself to
neither. It is the function of lyric to give poetic form to all
the emotions, not to that of worship only, and it is the essence
of lyric to give more prominence to the subjectivity and the
personality of the poet than choral poetry, at any rate in its
earlier stages, permitted. As a true lyric poet, then, Alcman
felt the need to teach in song other feelings than the religious,
and to set forth his own experiences with more directness than
the impersonal nature of choral poetry, as it then existed, was
compatible with. At the same time these tendencies were con-
ditioned bythe character of his public, which, being Spartan,
12 8 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
demanded religious and choral poetry. Alcman had, therefore,

to seek for some variety of Dorian melic, which should satisfy
Spartan taste and yet admit of heing developed into an instru-
ment for conveying his feelings and his own views on life as his
own. This he found in the Parthenia, or girls' choruses, which
had long existed in Sparta. Such choruses, sung and danced
hy girls, imply that women were allowed to freely appear in
public, and that they received some education in music and
dancing. It is, therefore, interesting to note that the history
of the condition of Greek women receives some light from the
history of these Parthenia. In the oldest times they were pro-
bably common to all the Greeks, for dances of this kind are
mentioned in Homer and the Homeric hymns.1 For some
time they continued to be usual, not only among the Dorians
and JEolians, but also among the Ionians. Eventually, how-
ever, the Athenian practice of secluding women, of allowing
them to leave the house only for religious worship, and of
teaching them nothing but the most elementary household
duties, caused the Parthenia to decay among the Athenians. In
Sparta, however, where the state took the education of girls
into its own hands with as much care as that of boys, and
where women occupied a place of some independence by the
side of man, the Parthenia long continued to flourish.
Arion is not represented by a single fragment, for the hymn
of thanksgiving commemorating his miraculous escape on the
back of a dolphin from death at the hands of a treacherous crew,
which zElian (H A. xii. 45) quotes as the work of Arion, is
generally regarded now as the work of a later hand. It is the
more to be regretted that we should possess nothing of his,
because he not only wrote hexameters (to the number of 2000)
and nomes, but first gave a place in literature to the dithyramb,
which was the seed out of which the drama was to grow ; and
the early history of the dithyramb is a matter of some obscurity.
The worship of Dionysus was probably of great antiquity in
Greece, and may reasonably be supposed to date from before
the composition of the Homeric hymn to Dionysus. The power
of wine had excited by its mystery the wonder of man in
Aryan times, for it is celebrated in the Vedas, where the virtues
of soma are the marvel of the poet. But as the worship of
Dionysus was a different thing from the praise of soma, so the
dithyramb was not the same thing as the early hymns to
1 Iliad, xvi. 182 ; Hymns, xxx. 14. The dance of Artemis and her train,
Hymns, xxvii. 15, was probably suggested by the practice of ordinary life,
as was also Hymns, v. 5.
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC. 129
Dionysus. The proper, and presumably the original, subject of

the dithyramb was the birth of Dionysus, as we learn from
Plato (Laws, iii. 700), though eventually any portion of his
history came to be matter for dithyrambic poets. But it was
less in the matter than in the manner of delivery that the
dithyramb differed from the hymns. The dithyramb was
orgiastic, and this, together with the name (for which no
Greek etymology can be found), seems to point to a foreign
origin. This view of the nature and origin of the dithyramb
is strengthened by the fact that it was in Corinth, which en-
couraged orgiastic rites and was specially connected with the wor-
ship of Cotyto, that the dithyramb first found a home in Greece ;
and that it was from Methymna in Lesbos, where phallic wor-
ship flourished, that Anon brought the dithyramb to Corinth.
The first mention of the dithyramb is in a time before
Anon, in a fragment (77B) of Archilochus, who says that he
knows how, when he is smitten by wine as by a thunderbolt, to
lead off the dithyramb. From this fragment, as well as from
the general course of melic poetry, it probably follows that the
dithyramb was, until the time of Arion (who was a contem-
porary of Periander, B.c. 628-585), sung not in chorus, but in
monody, as was the case with other melic poetry until Tha-
letas, and still more effectively Alcman, brought choral poetry
into the position of importance which nomes originally occu-
pied. At any rate, the singing of the dithyramb by an organised
and trained chorus (as opposed to the extempore singing of a
refrain, as in the case of the earliest preans and wedding-songs),
was due to Arion. The position of the chorus in the dithy-
ramb, too, was new, and was due to Arion. Instead of being
drawn up in a rectangular body, as was the case with all
Dorian choruses, and moving from right to left, and left to
right, round the altar, the chorus was arranged in a circle
round the altar, and hence was called a Cyclic chorus. Another
innovation made by Arion was to dress the chorus as satyrs ;
the choreuta?, or members of the chorus, thus came to be
called in Greek tragoi, goats or satyrs, and their song was
the goat- or satyr-song, trag-oedia. This, and not the offering of
a goat as a prize, it is which is the origin of the word " tragedy."
The number of choreutaj in Arion's time is not known. The
first mention of the number fifty is later, and occurs in a frag-
ment of Simonides (147) ; whether this was the number of
Arion's chorus there is nothing to show. A further innova-
tion ascribed to Arion is, that he gave a "tragic turn " 1 to the
1 roayiKos Tpbiros. — Hesyclrius.
I
dithyramb, and what this means is uncertain. It has been sup-

posed to mean that Avion did not confine himself to the birth
or the adventures of Dionysus for the subject of his dithyrambs,
but substituted heroic myths.1 But probably it refers to tho
nature of the dancing with which the dithyramb was accom-
panied. This was more lively and more extravagant than in
the case of other choral poetry ; it was probably highly mimetic,
and, as danced by the satyr-clad choreutae, dramatic.
CHAPTER IIL
MELIO POETItY I ALCiEUS AND SAPPHO.
WniLST the Ionians had been developing elegiac and iambic

poetry, and whilst in Sparta melic poets, attracted from all
parts of the Greek world, had carried nomes as far as the simple
nature of such poetry permitted, and then had begun to lay the
foundations of choral poetry, in Lesbos the other division of
melic poetry, which consisted of odes, individual and subjective
in character, and which corresponded rather to what we under-
stand at the present day by lyric poetry, was being quietly but
steadily developed. Of the stages between the songs of the
people in Lesbos and the poetry of Alcaeus absolutely no trace
has come down to us ; we have neither a word nor the name of
a single poet. It is indeed only inference, but it is a necessary
inference from the developed character of Alcaeus' rhythm, that
such stages occurred.
At the beginning of the sixth century B.C., in the time of
Alcaeus, who was a contemporary of Solon, Lesbos was in a state
of political convulsion, the shocks of which threw down one
form of government after another, oligarchical, tyrannic, and
democratic, until the wisdom and power of Pittacus, the Solon
of Lesbos, secured peace for his country. In these revolutions
and counter-revolutions Alcams took an eager part Born of a
noble family, and reared in the political faith of his fathers,
Alcaeus was by nature and by education an ardent partisan of
the oligarchy, which in his earlier years ruled without fear or
check in Lesbos. But the good time of oligarchy was drawing
to an end, and that in Lesbos was exploded in the usual way —
from within. Finding the position winch he shared in common
1 A change of this kind was suppressed at Sicyon by Cleisthenes. Hdt.
v. 67.
LYRIC POETRY : ALCAEUS AND SAPPHO. I3 I
with his fellow-oligarchs not of sufficient freedom, Melanchrus

contrived to constitute himself tyrant ; and this proceeding led
to a complication of revolutions, tyrannicides, exiles, imprison-
ments, usurpations, conspiracies, and insurrections, which at this
distance of time it is almost impossible to disentangle. Melan-
chrus was eventually assassinated, hut the oligarchy was not to
be restored. In the division, however, between, the oligarchs
and the people, who had united to verthrow the tyranny, but
split on the question of oligarchy or democracy, another oligarch,
Myrsilus, throwing over his own party, forced his way to the
tyranny. Probably at this time Alcaeus and his brothers were
driven into exile ; and we may perhaps measure the force of
this political eruption by the distance to which, and the divers
directions in which, these exiles were ejected ; for Alcaeus landed
in Egypt, and took service under the Pharaoh Hofra, while his
brother Antimenidas was projected east, and entered the army
of Nebuchadnezzar. Myrsilus shared the fate of Melanchrus,
and was assassinated, and after this a popular government was
established by Pittacus. But Al casus was impartially opposed
both to the usurpations of tyrants and the people's encroach-
ments on the rights of the oligarchs, and he made war both
with his sword and his verse on Pittacus and the popular govern-
ment. The insurrection failed, however, and Alcaeus was thrown
into prison. There he implored for release from Pittacus, whom
he had despised and abused. Pittacus released him with the
comment, " To forgive is better than to take vengeance." After
this we know nothing more of Alcaeus' history.
Alcaeus' compositions made at least ten books, and included
hymns to the gods, as well as the-odes for which he was more
famous. The latter are sometimes divided into political (stasio-
iika), drinking (skolia), and love (eroti/ca) songs; but it is hard
to observe this division of classes, for the wine seems to have
got into all of them, and they were probably all delivered in the
same way, to the same audience, and on the same sort of occa-
sion. That is to say, they were probably sung by Alcseus, to his
own accompaniment, over the wine to his political and personal
friends. Hence his songs, when they are something more than
drinking-songs, would still naturally contain allusions to wine,
and even those Avhich began as drinking-son^s might, without
any inconsequence, turn to love or politics. The fragments of
his works are disappointing reading, and this is not because
time has, so far as we can judge, treated Alcaeus more hardly
than other lyric poets of the same or greater antiquity. Rela-
tively, indeed, to the elegiac poets, Alcaeus is not fortunate in
the size of the fragments from which we have to form our opinion
of him, and we can assign a natural reason for this : the lines
of cleavage are not the same in elegiac poetry as in odes of a
more complex metrical formation. A large proportion of the
fragments of Alcaeus have reached us embedded in the works of
grammarians, who quote Alcaeus only to illustrate a metrical
point or a peculiarity of dialect; and such quotations, usually
short, never necessarily contain a complete thought. Quotations
from the elegiac poets, on the other hand, are made not for such
purposes, but usually for the sake of the thought contained in
them. Hence we have complete elegies by Solon, Tyrtaeus, or
Mimnermus, but only fragments of Alcaeus. Still, compared
with Archilochus or Alcman, Alcaeus is well represented ; but
whereas in the little that survives of Alcman there are to bo
found two fragments which at once put him at least on a level
with his reputation, in the more extensive fragments of Alcaeus
there is nothing which is worthy of the great name that Alcaeus
enjoys.
The fragments of his hymns to the gods contain nothing
which is above poetical commonplace; and probably the hymns
in their entirety were of no great merit, for Alcaeus was not by
inclination likely to excel in, nor was he in after-time famous
for, religious and choral lyric. It is his political and martial
verse which antiquity is unanimous in extolling as constituting
his greatness as a lyric poet. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (2. 8),
Athenaeus (xiv. 627A), Quintilian (10. 1. 63), and the epigram-
matists in the Greek Anthology, all select his stasiotika as his
distinctive excellence. We turn, therefore, with interest to the
fragments of tliese odes, and find that fortunately among them
are some of the most considerable and famous of his fragments.
For instance, we have the original of Horace's " 0 navis ! refe-
rent in mare te" (C. i. 14), in which, under the metaphor of a
ship, the distress of the state is pictured (18). We have, again,
the original of Horace's ''Nunc est bibendum," with the re-
joicing over the murder of Myrsilus (20). And, as the expres-
sion of Alcseus' martial spirit, we have a description (15) of
his room decorated with helmets ami greaves and bucklers, and
all the appurtenances of war ; and also (33) his welcome to his
brother, who had returned from his service under Nebuchad-
nezzar with a beautiful ivory-hilted sword, which lie had taken
from a giant whom he had slain in fair and open light.
All these fragments are good, and they confirm what Dionv-
eius and Quintilian say, that he is not diffuse, and that his
style possesses grandeur ; but they do not reach the level of
LYRIC POETRY : ALCÛS AND SAPPHO. I33
the highest poetry. The finest is the metaphor of the ship,

with the waves rising against it on all sides, and its sails in
rags. Compared with the diligent but lifeless work of Horace's
imitation, the Greek has the merit of being sketched after
nature ; but if we wish to see the difference between this and
the best poetry, " to know the change and feel it," we have
only to compare the lines in which Homer x describes, not a
storm — Alcaeus' stanzas are not very stormy ; he has to tell us
that the weather is bad — but the motion of a ship. Setting
aside other differences, in the one case we feel that we are on
the ship, and in the other we do not. In the description of
his room, too, we are sensible of a somewhat similar deficiency ;
but in this case the deficiency is in the spirit, not in the reality
of the description. As a picture of an artistic interior, it would
rank in literary merit with similar work in Thôphile Gautier
or Balzac, and have the advantage of brevity. When, how-
ever, Athenaeus (/. c.) asks us to admire in this the martial
spirit of a man who was more than warlike enough, our atten-
tion is at once drawn to the difference in spirit between these
verses, in which weapons play the part of aesthetic mural decora-
tions, and those in which Tyrtaeus describes the Spartan warrior,
with teeth set, feet firmly planted on the ground, covered by
his shield, holding his burly lance in his hand, learning in
battle how to fight.
Thus, then, not only do the fragments which we happen to
possess fail to bear out the high opinion which the ancients
held of the stasiotika, but one of them is actually a passage
which Athenaeus quotes to prove his opinion. If Athenaeus
has thus misjudged the merit of Alcaeus, it becomes worth
while to examine the criticisms of Dionysius and Quintilian
more closely, and with some independence of judgment. What
Dionysius singles out as above all excellent in Alcaeus is the
ethos of the political odes ; and Quintilian explains this for us
when he praises Alcaeus for attacking tyrants. This, then, was
the ethos of the political odes — hatred to tyrants. And this was
Alcaeus' distinctive excellence. Liberty is a subject which may
inspire the highest poetry, as it does in the lines —
" Two voices are there : one is of the sea,
One of the mountains ; each a might; voice :
In both from a<:e to age thou didst rejoice ;
They were thy chosen music — Liberty ! "
But it must be liberty which fills the poet ; and when we set
1 Odyss. ii. ad fin.
Alcaeus, with his " Now must we soak ! now must a man per-
force be made to drink, since Myrsilus is dead," by the side of
Wordsworth's " There came a tyrant, and . . . thou fought'st
against him," we not only see that the stasiotika failed of the
highest excellence as poetry, but we also feel that hatred of
tyrants is not, as Dionysius and Quintilian seemed to think,
the same thing as love of liberty. Alcaeus fought against the
tyranny of one, but for the tyranny of the few.
Leaving the fragments of the political odes, we find among
the drinking-songs, or skolia, two pieces of much greater beauty,
which seem to show that Dionysius and Quintilian ranked
the stasiotika above all the rest of Alcaeus, not because of their
poetical, but their political merit, in the same way as Alcaeus'
popularity at Athens, which is testified to by Aristophanes,
seems to have attached itself to the political odes (for it is a
stasiotikon which he quotes in the Wasps, 1234), and to have
been due to the tyranno-phobia from which the democracy,
according to Aristophanes, suffered.1 The two fragments which
give us a higher opinion of Alcaeus than anything in the poli-
tical odes are a winter-piece (34) and a summer-piece (39).
The former is the original of Horace's " Vides ut alta stet nive
candidum " (C. i. 9), and is a picture of the time " when icicles
hang by the wall," and " all around the wind doth blow." The
latter was written —
" While that the sun, with his beams hot,
Scorched the fruits in vale and mountain."
But when we have felt the beauty of these two fragments, and
recognise the brevity and the grandeur of the style, we are
conscious of the same deficiency as in the other fragments.
Although he has a sympathy with and a love for nature, the poet
is not absorbed in his subject ; as, for instance, Airman in his
description of a sleeping landscape : he is thinking of something
else — wine and women. In Shakespeare, " When icicles hang
by the wall," and " When all around the wind doth blow,"
"Then nightly sings the staring owl." But in Alcaeus, when
the storm blows and the rivers freeze, or when the fruits are
scorched and the grasshopper sings, then Alcaeus says, "Let us
drink." It is perhaps, however, unfair to contrast Alcaeus with
Shakespeare or any modern lyric poet, for this reason, that the
1 It is significant that, as soon as tyranno-phohin, both in the Athenians
and in critics, dies out, a proper appreciation of Ale-ens' merit as a poet
begins to emerge. It is Bimerius who reveals to us the existence of an
Appreciation "f Alcana' sympathy with nature, when he s;irs of some ode
that the birds sing in it as You would expect birds to sing in Alcasus.
LYRIC POETKY : ALCLEUS AND SAPPHO. I35
Greeks did not make the sharp severance between man and
nature that we do in modern times. The Greeks were from
two to three thousand years nearer than we to the time of those
primitive stories in which the hero is addressed by and talks
to a snake or a bird or a stream or a rock as familiarly as to
any other of his acquaintances. In Greek literature, too, the
relations of man and nature are the same : nature is always
conceived of as sympathising with the sufferings of man or
ministering to his joys. Nature was still the mother of the
Greek, and he was old enough to sympathise with her, and to
go to her to be comforted and consoled, but not old enough or
self-conscious enough to know as well as feel that he loved her.
A Greek might perhaps have felt, but could not have said, with
Shelley—
" I love snow and all the forms
Of the radiant frost ;
I love waves, and winds, and storms,
Everything almost
Which is Nature's, and may be
Untainted by man's misery."
Still further was the Greek from discovering that nature is
indifferent to man, with an indifference which Burns has given
expression to —
" Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh au' fair !
How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary, fu' o' care ! "
It was, then, characteristic of Greek lyric, and not a peculiar de-
ficiency inAlcaeus, that he could only treat nature as a back-
ground to man, could not work with his eye solely on nature to
the exclusion of man, as Shelley did in his two verses beginning,
" A widow bird sate mourning for her love." But within the
limits between which Greek thought moved, Alcaeus does not
in his pictures of nature attain the excellence of Alcman, or of
iEschylus in the Prometheus Bound, or Sophocles in the Ajcuc.
Of the love-songs of Alcaeus nothing remains but fragments,
which give us no idea of their worth ; and the names of the
objects of his all'ection, e.g., Lycus, show that these odes would
not have been acceptable to modern ears. Having considered
the hymns, the stasiotika, the skolia, and the erotika of Alcaeus,
we have now to estimate his work as a whole. To begin with
his rhythms, not only was the logaoxlic verse which beats Ins
name his invention, ami still, by the name Alcaic, testifies to
his excellence in this form of strophe, but sapphics also were
the product of his genius. The fragment which describes his

room is in a metre peculiar to Alcaeus, and he tried many other
experiments in the combination of metres. In the next place,
the qualities of his style are, as Dionysius said, and as even we at
the present day can to some extent see, brevity and magnificence.
His matter — except in the hymns, which are not characteristic
— is personal, and, like his metre and his style, genuinely lyric.
Occurring in the period of growth and creation in the history of
Greek literature, he is original in his matter as in his metres ;
and this gives to his work the note of reality which we miss in
Horace. When Alcaeus shows us the ship of state in distress,
he, at least, pictures himself as on board ; but to the Roman ship
of state Horace in his ode stands in the attitude of an apostro-
phising spectator on shore. The difference between an original
and an adaptation comes out even more strongly in the ode,
which in Alcaeus celebrates the assassination of Myrsilus, and
in Horace is adapted to the suicide of Cleopatra. Alcaeus had
indeed suffered at the hands of Myrsilus, had been perhaps
exiled by him, certainly deprivod of his oligarchical privileges.
He, therefore, when Myrsilus was killed, could sing, " Now
must we drink," and mean it. But Cleopatra's existence had not
been, as Horace would imply, a crushing weight which scarcely
permitted him or any other Roman to breathe while it lasted.
AVThen, therefore, Horace — Avhose digestion was a source of
anxiety to him — says, " Now must we drink," it is because the
word of command has been uttered by Augustus.
In the choice of his subjects Alcaeus is limited. He found
his main inspiration in good wine and inferior politics. But
if his range is narrow, within its limits he shows considerable
variety of treatment. Athenaeus remarked that there was no
circumstance or occasion which Alcaeus could not convert into
an excuse for drinking ; and summer and winter, joy and sorrow,
love and politics, do all lead to the bowl with him. But this
fact should not be interpreted to mean that he was solely de-
voted to the worship of wine. Unfortunately this was not the
case, or his drinking-songs would have been better. He never
wrote anything so thorough as the lines in the Cyclops of
Euripides — " I would give
All that the Cyclops feed upon their mountains
And pitch into the brine oft" some white cliff,
Having got once well drunk and cleared my brows.
How mad is he whom drinking makes not glad ! " *
Shelley's translation (with Swinburne's additions).

LYRIC POETRY : ALCJEUS AND SAPPHO. I37
The wine, and that which Alcseus mixes with it, both suffer in
the mixing. The explanation of all things ending in wine
with Alcseus is, as we have already said, the occasion and the
audience to which he addressed himself. But if his treatment
of his themes is varied, it is not profound ; he does not com-
pensate for the narrowness of his range by intensity of feeling.
Herein he differs from Archilochus, with whom he has exter-
nally points of resemblance. Both lived in unquiet times, both
wandered far, and both spent much time in camp. Neither was
troubled by the deeper problems of life, and neither found a
better remedy or a better moral for suffering than " Let us
drink." But here the resemblance ceases. When Archilochus
used his iambics as weapons, he struck home. Alcaeus only
abused Pittacus ; and his verses on the death of Myrsilus, which
are flown with wine and insolence, are marked by the impetu-
osity of youth, not by the strength of genius. •
Contemporary with Alcceus, and a native of Lesbos, was
Sappho, or, as the name is written in her own dialect, Psappha.
Of her life we know remarkably little. Herodotus (2. 135)
tells us that her father's name was Skamandronymos, and that
her brother Charaxus wasted his money on the famous courtesan
Rhodopis (or Doricha), whom he brought home with him from
Egypt, for which Sappho ridiculed him much. From the Parian
Marble (36) we learn that she went into exile to Sicily along
with the other aristocrats of Lesbos, but as the inscription is
much obliterated here, the date is matter of conjecture. From
Aristotle (Iihet. i. 9), we learn that Alcaeus addressed an ode
(55) ^0 Sappho, to the effect that he had something which he
wished to say, but shame prevented him ; and that Sappho
replied with an ode (28) saying that had his wish been for any-
thing good and honourable, shame would not have prevented
him from speaking. If to this scanty information about the
life of Sappho we add the tradition, on which antiquity is
agreed, and which the fragments of her works confirm, that, in
accordance with a practice not infrequent among the iEolians
and the Dorians, she collected round her a number of younger
women, in much the same way as younger men collected round
Socrates, then we shall have before us all that is known about
the life of Sappho. Other and probably erroneous statements
owe their existence to misunderstandings and uncertain infer-
ences from her works and mode of life. Thus, because one frag-
ment (85) says, "I have a fair daughter, like a golden bios-
Bom, my beloved Kle'is, whom 1 would not part with for all
Lydia,"it has been inferred that Sappho was married and had a
child, Kiel's ; which is as though we were to infer from a

fragment of Campbell that the poet was " the chief of Ulva's
isle " and married " Lord Ullin's daughter." It is probable
that the story of her bopeless love for Phaon had its origin
in a similar misunderstanding of some of Sappho's verses ;
but it was the existence of her school, following, "fringe,"
coterie, or club — none of the words will convey at once the
idea both of the literary and artistic objects of these meetings
and the personal affection which was the indispensable basis of
the connection between the teacher and the pupil — that afforded
an application for the meaning of her verses, and gave to the
coarsest imaginings of exhausted lasciviousness an opportunity
and an appetite for stripping Passion of her poetry and violating
her in the name of history. The process of outrage was be-
gun by the comedians of Athens, and is carried on, openly and
secretly, in the literature of to-day by writers whose knowledge
of literature is profound enough only to enable them to misspell
the name of Sappho. The amount of freedom which the iEolians
and Dorians allowed their women was unintelligible to the
Athenians, or at least to the Athenians of a later time than this,
the beginning of the sixth century B.C. ; and though the iEolians
or Dorians might think that such meetings as those of Sappho
and her followers were for literature or art, the Athenians —
especially those who were separated by two centuries from the
facts which they undertook to explain — possessed much more
discernment. Ameipsias, and then comedian after comedian,
throughout the old, the middle, and the new comedy, took
Sappho as the subject and the name of works, of whose refine-
ment the Lyeistrata, the Thusmoplwriazusce, and the Ecclesiazusce
of Aristophanes may give us some faint idea. ' Then ancient
historians of literature, eg. Chameleon, in their search for
materials for a biography of Sappho, seized on these comedies
as trustworthy sources of information — thus proving, for in-
stance, that amon0 Sappho's lovers were Archilochus (who lived
a century earlier), or Anacrevn (who lived about as much later) —
and thereby left future workers in the same field only their
imagination to draw on for their facts. But so alarmingly
luxuriant did this prove, that even the name of Sappho, hy-
word of shame as it had become, was not regarded as capable
and relief was all'orded
of bearingtheall burden
whence thus put
that wascame; a newit, and
for upon wholly imaginary
Sappho was invented, who walks the pages of lexicographers
like Suidas with the honour in dishonour of the name she
bears.
LYEIC POETRY: ALCMVS AND SAPPHO. I 39
But none of these mephitic exhalations from the bogs of per-

verted imaginings availed to dim the glorious light of Sappho's
poetry ; for ancient critics, at least, seem to have judged a work
of art by the standard of art, and not by referring to the morality
of the artist. Many, indeed, of the expressions of amazement
at Sappho's work which are to be found in Greek writers are
open to some suspicion, as being based on not wholly satisfactory
grounds. "When Strabo (xiii. 617) calls Sappho "a marvellous
phenomenon," he seems to do so because no other woman could
approach her in merit ; and the same inadequate standard seems
to be implied in the expressions " a Homer among women,"
"a tenth Muse," "a Pierian bee," and so on, which are fre-
quently applied to her in Greek writers. If this were all that
could be said of Sappho, that no other woman who wrote in
Greek could rival her, her rank would not be high, for although
a considerable number of women in Greece did write, they did
not attain great excellence. It is a better testimony both to the
criticism of ancient critics and to the value of Sappho that she
was ranked among the nine great lyric poets by the Alexandrine
school. But even this does not convey the full tribute to " that
ineffable glory and grace as of present godhead, that subtle
breath and bloom of very heaven itself, that dignity of divinity
which informs the most passionate and piteous notes of the
unapproachable poetess with such grandeur as would seem im-
possible to such passion." x "The highest lyric work is either
passionate or imaginative," Mr. Swinburne has said ; 2 and as
Coleridge is the greatest representative among lyric poets of
imaginative poetry, so Sappho's poetry stands highest in the
passionate lyric of all times and ages. Her work has no more
variety than Coleridge's, and suffers no more for want of it.
But though it is one, it is not the same, as the sea is one
but not the same. In one as in the other, the languid volup-
tuous swell, which reflects now the sun, now the midnight
moon (52), and the stars which by the moon "pale their in-
effectual fires " (3), is ruffled into darkness by the winds, or
flashes with " the lightning of the noontide ocean." It is to
the sea rather than to fire that Sappho should be likened ; for
although her verses are indeed, as ancient critics remarked,
mixed with fire, and her passion blazes out now here, now
there, and glows always, her verses and her passion arc oceanic
in their depth and tidal in their strength. Above all, the ocean
has a voice —
1 Swinburne, Essat/s
* lb. ami
275. Studio, p. 93.
" And a tone
Arises from its measured motion — ]
How 6weet 1 "
Some of the fragments which we possess {e.g. 95 and 109) have
been preserved expressly because of the beauty of their sound,
and in all we hear " the echo of that unimaginable song, with
its pauses and redoubled notes, and returns and falls of sound,
as of honey dropping from heaven — as of tears and fire and
seed of life — which, but though run over and repeated in thought,
pervades the spirit with 'a sweet possessive pang.'"1 Her
grasp of the mechanism of verse, which is implied in this com-
mand of melody, was greater, as is the number (15) of her
metres, even in the fragments we have, than any other lyric
poet possessed.
Amongst the remains of Sappho's poetry are one complete
ode to Aphrodite (1) and a considerable fragment — four stanzas
— of another ode (2), imitated by Catullus (51). The passion
of these odes is such as elseAvhere is portrayed as only existing
between a lover and his mistress ; but in those odes the object
of Sappho's passion is a woman, and the fragments of the rest
of the odes (as opposed to the epithalamia and hymnsy resemble
these. This has driven many respectable commentators into
taking refuge in a various reading, thereby making the first
ode applicable (as they vainly imagine) to a man. The second
ode cannot be thus remedied; and commentators back abashed
into a cloud of words — all true — about climate, social conditions,
the difference between the modern and the Greek view of
friendship, &c. First, however, the mystery of Sappho's pas-
sion cannot be dispersed, or be anything but aggravated, by
various readings : next, it is not scientific demonstration which
can make any man feel what is the real beauty of a thing ; and
to set down to the heat of the climate or the conditions of life
in Lesbos that passion which gives to Sappho's music "a value
beyond thought and beyond price," is to do a very poor service
to her poetry for the sake of arming her reputation with a
treacherous and superfluous weapon. But this error, radical as
it is, will do Sappho but little harm, for, as a critical estimate,
it lacks even that grain of truth without which no error can
exist. More serious is the mistaken view of Sappho's quality
as a poetess which is conveyed in Horace's phrase "mascula
Sappho;" — more serious because there is enough truth here to
make the error current. It is perfectly true that the language
of Sappho is that of a lover to his mistress : whoever can read
1 Swinburne, p. 92.
LYRIC POETRY : ALCLEUS AND SAPPHO. 141
Sappho can see that. It is the most obvious and the most
superficial trait in her work. To take this characteristic, and
offer it to the world as the sum of Sappho's poetry, as though
it were the inversion and not the intensity of passion which
we are to admire, is a shallow misconception which serves to
mark the standard of taste for lyric poetry in Rome in Horace's
day. To for
reserved discover
Rome the and sex
for oftheSappho's
curious poetry
in suchandmatters.
passion The
was
author of the treatise on the Sublime, and Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus, critics from whom we can learn how to understand the
beauty of Greek literature, were not thus misled, but, with un-
erring instinct, at once seized on the perfection in delineation
and colouring, and on the marvellous fidelity in her representa-
tion of the passion of love. The former critic says (10), " Tho
feelings which result from the madness of love Sappho always
draws after their symptoms and from reality itself. And where-
in does she show her excellence ? In that she is marvellous in
selecting and combining the extremest and most violent of
them." He then quotes the second of our fragments, and goes
on to say, " Are you not amazed how she beats and drives
into it soul, body, hearing, speech, sight, complexion, all things
which are regarded as disconnected with each other ; and how
at one and the same momeirt she is both frozen with chill and
consumed by fire, distraught of reason and perfectly logical,
alarmed with fear and all but dead — all that her feeling may
seem to be, not a single thing but, a melee of passions 1 "
Athenaeus (xv. 6S7A) calls Sappho a thorough woman, although
a poetess, and this is a view which has been adopted by some
modern critics. But although she expresses all a woman's con-
tempt for a rival who cannot hold her dress properly (70), and
says (68) to another, "When you die, no one will remember
you, for you have no share in the roses of Pieria ; " still it is
not these fragments by which Sappho rises to the pre-eminence
which she enjoys. Her love of flowers, however, of the rose,
for which, says Philostratus (Ep. 71), she always has some new
chaplet of praise ; her tender sympathy for the hyacinth which
is crushed under the feet of the shepherds on the mountains
and stains purple the ground (94), for the tender flower of the
grass which is trodden down by the dancers (54) ; her joy in
" the sweet-voiced harbinger of spring, the nightingale " (39) ;
her pity for the doves which are shot by men, '-and their life
becomes culd and their wings fall " (16) : all these are emotions
which are more common in women than in men, but in poetry
are not peculiar to or distinctive of poetesses.

heart Wordsworth's
" with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils."
Shelley loves
" The fresh Earth in new leaves drest,"
or
" a rose embower'd
and Keats In its own green leaves ; "
" The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild,"

and " all little birds that are " fill English lyric " with their
sweet jargoning."
In point of style, Dionysius (de Comp. Verb. 23) takes Sappho
as the greatest lyric representative of smoothness and polish
of style, and in illustration of his meaning he quotes the ode
which now stands first in Bergk's collection. He goes on to
say that the grace and beauty of this style consists in the flow
of its melody! To express the quality of Sappho's verse we
must borrow a comparison from Sappho herself ; it is " more
delicate than water" (122). It makes a pleasant noise—
" A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."
Dionysius also says that it is flower-like ; not that beauties are
woven into her style, as Demetrius (de Eloc. 166) says, but her
verse is itself (again we must borrow from Sappho herself)
"more delicate than the rose" (123). For examples of her
"redoubled notes and returns and falls" of song we thank
Demetrius, although he does present them to us with the labels
"anaphora," "anadiplosis,'' attached (ib. 141); but most grate-
ful are we to a scholiast (Hennog. vii. 983) who lias preserved
us three lines "more precious than gold" (123), in which Sappho
likens an unmarried girl to an apple which reddens "atop of
the topmost twig," and the apple-gatherers have forgotten it-
no ! not forgotten it ; they were nut able to reach it.
Astronomers have calculated the law of the distance which
separates the planets from each other, and have discovered
thereby that in one region where, according to this law, there
should* be a planet, there is no planet, but asteroids. These are
the fragments of what once was alike planet. Of Sappho's poetry
we have only fragments, but they, the asteroids, show where
a planet was once.
LYRIC POETRY : ALCEUS AND SAPPHO. 143
Amongst the school of Sappho are usually placed Damophila

and Erinna. No fragment by the former has come down to us,
and with regard to her life we know nothing. About the latter
more information is forthcoming, but on every matter concerned
with her either our authorities are in hopeless conflict or grave
doubts have been raised in modern times. Tenos, Telos, Rhodes,
and Lesbos have been assigned as her birthplace, but the fact
that the epigrams which go by her name are written in Dorian
has inclined most modern critics to regard Telos as the place of
her birth. Still greater are the discrepancies with regard to her
date. On the one hand, she is made to be a contemporary of
Sappho, and a doubtful reading in one of Sappho's fragments
(77) may conceal her name. On the other hand, Eusebius gives
as her date B.C. 352, a difference of two centuries or more. This
uncertainty as to her date makes it difficult to decide whether
the story of her untimely death at the age of nineteen is pro-
bably based on good authority, or is a misinterpretation of some-
thing in her own writings. She is said to have written a poem
of 300 hexameters, which was entitled the Distaff. Of this we
have three insignificant fragments (one of doubtful authenticity),
which reveal nothing as to the nature of the poem, and we have
no other information on the subject. It has been conjectured
that it resembled the idyll of Theocritus (28), which bears the
same name. Some admirer of her poetry in antiquity compared
her to Homer ; but if this were not an exaggeration, we should
probably have had more frequent mention of her, and more
frequent quotations. The three epigrams which go by her
name in the Anthology do not show any genius.
While the ode and personal lyric were being wrought to their
greatest perfection in Lesbos, in Sicily the other branch of
melic, choral poetry, was being developed by Stesichorus. The
importance which was attached to his services to choral music
is indicated by the name " Stesichorus," which means "founder
of chorus," and superseded entirely the original name of the
poet, which was Teisias. The place of his birth is uncertain ;
it is sometimes said to have been Matauros, sometimes Himera,
and modern writers usually combine these two traditions by
saying that he was born at Himera, but belonged by extraction
to Matauros. If his date were fixed, it might help to settle the
question, for he may have been born before the foundation of
Himera ; but the time is even more uncertain than the place of
his birth, and all we can say is, that, roughly, he belongs to the
first half of the sixth century B.C. About his life we know
absolutely nothing, for the story told by Plato (Ph. 243) that
he was smitten with blindness by Helena because he had in >•

poem declared her to be the source of Troy's woes, cannot be
made to yield any residuum of fact. Probably he did make
some such statement in some poem, and he certainly in another
poem, from which Plato quotes, declared that the story about
Helen was untrue ; that she never crossed the sea to Troy (32).
The contradictory nature of these two statements may have led
to the second being regarded as a recantation, for Plato terms
it " the so-called palinode." The next step would be to speculate
on the poet's reason for recanting, and thus the story of his
blindness would arise. The mode of expression which Plato
uses, " the so-called palinode," suggests that the poem was not
really a palinode or recantation, and the lines which he quotes
rather imply that the story which Stesichorus was denying was
one told by others, not one of his own telling which he was
recanting. However, although the so-called palinode cannot be
made to yield any information as to the life of Stesichorus, it
has a value in the history of literature ; for in it the story which
Euripides took for the plot of his Helena, and which was known
to Herodotus, that Helena stayed in Egypt and her phantom
went to Troy with Paris, made, so far as we know, its first
appearance in literature. In connection with the life of Stesi-
chorus another story is told, that he warned his fellow-citizens
against the designs of a certain tyrant by the fable of the horse
which, for the purposes of vengeance, obtained the assistance of
man, and found that he had to pay for his vengeance by the
loss of his liberty. The warning was disregarded, the tyrant
was successful, and Stesichorus had to fly to Catana, where he
is said to have died. The uncertainty as to Stesichorus' date
makes it uncertain who the tyrant was, whether Gelon or Pha-
laris, but we are most likely to be safe if we cling to the autho-
rity of Aristotle (Ithct. 2. 20), who says it was Phalaris of
Acragas. This story too has its interest in the history of litera-
ture, for it is one of the subjects treated of in the famous letters
of Phalaris.
Although Stesichorus was later in date than Alcman, he is in
no other sense his successor. Stesichorus did not take up choral
lyric where Alcman left it, but made a fresh departure. Alcman
had imported the subjective and personal element into choral
poetry, and had thereby helped to purify it of the narrative
character which is alien to lyric, and into which poetry cele-
brating the deeds of the gods was peculiarly apt to fall. Stesi-
chorus was not affected by the advance thus made by Alcman ;
he started from and belonged to an earlier stage in the history
lyric poetry: alcleus and sappho. 1 45
of choral lyric, although in time he was later than Alcman.

The epic element is even more visible in Stesichorus than the
subjective in Alcman, for in the former poet the epic element
is not qualified by any other. The poems of Stesichorus are
sometimes spoken of as "epic lyric" or " melic epic." They
seem to have been long narratives of the exploits of various
heroes. Thus the Gerijonis related the combat of Heracles with
the triple-bodied Geryon ; the Cycnus, Heracles' combat with
Cycnus, the son of Ares ; the Cerberus told how Heracles
fetched the dog Cerberus from the nether world ; the Srylla his
adventures with Scylla. The Oresteia, as its name implies, was
the story of Orestes, and the title of the Sack of Troy tells its
own subject. These poems or ballads were as purely narrative
as epic, but were written in lyric metres, and were sung by a
chorus. Thus they were lyrical in form but not in spirit, and
yet their spirit, as far as we can judge, was not that of epic ;
for Stesichorus abandoned the purely objective character of epic
poetry without attaining the subjective character of lyric poetry.
That is to say, he did not in his narratives confine himself to
narrative, but developed the psychological interest, and is thus
the forerunner of the earliest Greek novelists. But he was still
further removed from the spirit of epic in that he was not in-
clined to accept and hand on the old tales with implicit belief,
but assumed an attitude of criticism — historical and moral —
with regard to them, and altered them to suit his own rational-
ism. It is difficult to see how Stesichorus, being thus out of
sympathy with his subject-matter, could have treated it success-
fully, and Quintilian (10. i. 62) implies that his treatment was
not wholly successful. Quintilian, however, apparently thinks
that this was because the subjects handled by Stesichorus were
too great to admit of lyrical treatment; but this only shows
that Stesichorus had misconceived or failed to realise the propel
province of his art. Yet, although Stesichorus was not pos-
sessed bythe spirit of either epic or lyric, and his " epic lyric"
was consequently neither epic nor lyric, he still enjoyed con-
siderable reputation both as a writer and as a pioneer in the
field of lyric. How was this ?
As Stesichorus' poetry was lyrical only in form, it is to the
form of lyric that we must look for the innovations and im-
provements which he made. The earliest form which melic
took in literature was that of nomes, songs of worship and
praise delivered as solos. This form of melic was succeeded by
choral lyrics, and it was by giving to choral lyric the distinctive
form which it ever afterwards bore that Stesichorus acquired
K
the place which he holds in the history of melic. The fact

that the invention of hymns is ascribed to him conceals beneath
its surface the real innovation which he introduced. Hymns
had existed long before the time of Stesichorus and before
the beginning of the history of lyric poetry. They also had
existed even in the history of melic before Stesichorus, fur the
choral odes of Thaletas were hymns. Dut the division of the
hymn into the three parts — strophe, antistrophe, and epode,
which corresponded to the movements of the chorus round the
altar, was, even if not invented by Stesichorus, but borrowed by
him from existing usage in Sicily, at any rate introduced and
established in choral melic by him. In this tripartite division of
the choral ode Stesichorus left his mark permanently on lyric.
In another and minor point he also opened a path which his
successors followed : he carried the length of the strophe and
antistrophe much farther than had ever been done before, and
by thus increasing the length gained additional room for varying
and developing the metre.
But in addition to the services he rendered to lyric, Stesi-
chorus has the reputation of being a great writer. On this
point we have to rely upon the opinion of Dionysius of Hali-
carnassus, the author of the treatise on the Sublime, and Quin-
tilian. Stesichorus' treatment of the subject-matter, as we have
seen, Quintilian defends with little zeal and less discretion ; but
both he and Dionysius (Script. Vet. Cens. 2. 7) say that Stesi-
chorus excelled in character-drawing. There is nothing in the
fragments which in the least degree enables us to check or con-
firm this statement ; but this quality is the other and better
side of that tendency to psychological analysis which marks
Stesichorus as alien to the spirit of epic and allied to romance.
In this connection we should mention that, as well as the hero-
myths which Stesichorus used in the poems we have already
mentioned, the Gert/onis, Cerberus, Scylla, Cycnus, &c, love-
Btories and pastoral scenes were taken by him as themes. Thus
Stesichorus was the forerunner of bucolic as well as of novel-
writers. Whether his erotica and bucolica were of the same
form, and were sung chorally as well as his other lyrics, is a
point on which no evidence is forthcoming. The poems which
celebrated the deeds of Heracles or other heroes would naturally
be performed at some festival in honour of the hero ; but it is
hard to imagine on what occasion such a poem as the Kali/Ira,
which told how Kalyka fell in love with Euathlos, and having
prayed in vain to Aphrodite that she might marry him, hanged
herself, could be sung publicly as a chorus. On the other hand,
lyric poetry: elegiac and iambic writers. 147
to suppose that this and the Radina were composed for solo
recitation or singing in private has nothing positive in its sup-
port. In connection with the subject of Stesichorus' character-
drawing, we may note as interesting that Athenseus (xiv. 6190),
from whom we get the sketch of the plot of the Kalyka, remarks
with evident satisfaction that the character of Kalyka, as drawn
hy Stesichorus, was extremely moral. She desired the love
of Euathlos, but only on the condition of becoming his lawful
wife.
CHAPTER IV.
ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS (continued).
Under the name of Theognis two hooks of elegiacs have come

down to us, of which the first consists of 1230 verses, and the
second,, which is preserved only in one manuscript — the best,
the Mutinensis, A — of 159 verses. These books do not consti-
tute one single poem, but contain a great number of aphorisms,
gnomes, reflections, elegies, epigrams, parodies, and amatory
verses, arranged on no uniform principle, though at times pieces
seem to follow each other because of their resemblance ; at others,
because of their contrast ; and at other times, again, the juxta-
position ofthe pieces seems to be satirical ; while repetitions are
not unfrequent, and have given rise to many hypotheses as to
the original arrangement of the contents of the books. But
although all the manuscripts give the name of Theognis to their
contents, these are not all by Theognis, nor was the collec-
tion originally intended to be passed off as the work solely of
Theognis. It was rather intended as an anthology of the older
elegiac writers, and as that part of its contents which is poli-
tical is violently oligarchical, it was — unless put together at a
time when, or a place where, political feeling was extinct —
addressed to aristocratic readers. In course of time the value fo*
practical life of its shrewd maxims seems to have caused it to be
regarded as eminently suited for educational purposes ; and its
adoption as part of a Greek boy's education may have been
helped by the feeling, which was growing up even in Plato's
time, that the old system of confining a boy to one or two
authors, whom he learnt by heart, might with advantage be
replaced by a curriculum of wider range, a use to which this
anthology would lend itself excellently.
As it is by reference to the life and times of Theognis that

his works in the Theoynidea are to be distinguished from the
poems which are not by him, the question arises, what do we
know of his life and times? And at the outset it must be
confessed that it is unfortunately from this anthology, the
T/ieor/nidea, which undoubtedly contains poems by Theognis,
and also undoubtedly contains poems not by him, that we have
to get our information. But suspicious as this circular mode of
argument naturally makes us, we can reasonably accept the out-
lines, ifnot the details, which it puts before us. Theognis was
born in Megara — the Megara in Greece, not in Sicily — and,
although his date is disputed, probably in the first half of the
sixth century b.c, so that he flourished about the middle or in
the latter half of that century. When Megara had thrown off
the yoke of Corinth, she began to display great activity in'
colonisation, and especially in planting colonies on the shores
of the Black Sea. This activity was accompanied by a great
extension of her commerce and by a considerable increase in her
wealth. But the distribution of this wealth was unequal : riches
grew, but poverty also grew, and the gap between the two
widened until the social fabric split. An oligarch was, as always
in these times, found to betray his fellow-oligarchs and to delude
the people. Theagenes put himself at the head of the reform
party, and utilised his position to make himself tyrant. Even-
tually he was overthrown, and then oligarchy and democracy
found themselves face to face. A time of confusion and strug-
gling followed, in which sometimes oligarchy, sometimes demo-
cracy, got the upper hand, and neither, when victor, showed
mercy to the fallen. Each took from the other what was to be
had : the democrats confiscated the oligarchs' property, and the
oligarchs, to use an expression of Theognis' own in this con-
nection (314), "drank the blood " of the democrats. Weight
tells in these encounters, and victory finally remained with the
democracy.
These were the political and social conditions under which
The. ignis lived. The part which he personally took in the
struggles of his time we know little about, except that, as is
plain from the hatred which his verses show for the democrats,
he belonged to the oligarchs. He probably lost his property
(345) and went into exile, hut after war. Is returned to his native
country. One elegy (783) states that the author went to Sicily
and to Euhcea, and that he was received kindly, hut that
nothing could reconcile him to exile from his native country.
Another couplet (209) complains that, an exile has no friends.
lyric poetky: elegiac and iambic writers. 149
It has been inferred (from 261, 257, and 1097) that the woman
whom he loved was given in marriage by her parents to some
roturier because of his wealth, and that after marriage, as before,
she preferred Theognis. But although the frequent and bitter
complaints of poverty which occur are probably by Theognis
(e.g. 619 and 649), it is rash to draw such detailed inferences as
the above solely on the strength of a combination of passages
which may be by different authors and not contain even a word
by Theognis. It is better to abandon the attempt to extract
personal details, and to content ourselves with the picture which
our collection gives of the morality, the society, and the poli-
tical feeling of the time. The fierce savagery which seems to
have been latent at all times among the Greeks, displayed
itself in all its murderous cruelty when political conflicts neared
or reached the stage of revolution. Theognis prayed " to drink
the blood " of the democrats. Elsewhere (847) he says, " Tram-
ple on the people, smite them with the keen goad," and so
on. It is, however, impossible to live at high pressure always,
and Theognis cannot keep up to this level continually. In
default, he has a rair of " perpetual epithets," which serve to
quietly mark the ever-present oligarchical feeling in his mind
towards the mob. Whenever he speaks of "the good," it is
understood that he does not mean chiefly men who are dis-
tinguished for exemplary lives and morality of conduct, but
those Avho were of the same political views as himself. So
when he speaks of " the base," " the craven," he not only
meant to connote all that is bad, but also to denote the people.
There was one other class of men whom the oligarchs of the
time hated as much as, perhaps more than, they did the mob :
these were the oligarchs who betrayed their fellows and made
themselves tyrants. Not only does Theognis decline to associate
with tyrants or mourn over their tombs (1203), he even advo-
cates tyrannicide (11S1). Perhaps it was because he hated
tyrants on the one side and the democracy on the other, and
also because he had the wit to see that even oligarchical rulers
did not always govern in the best possible manner (S55), that
he imagined he followed a via media in politics. At any rat.',
he is never tired of posing as a model of political moderation,
and as a pattern which the rising generation should mould
themselves on (e.g. 219, 367, 331, 544, 945).
The political verses of Theognis, although they would in-
cidentally serve the purpose of educating the rising generation
in the right creed, were probably not meant solely for that
purpose, but were mainly intended as a relief to, and as the
expression of, his own feelings ; and we can imagine that,

delivered over the wine after dinner to the accompaniment of
the flute, and amid the applause of a sympathising audience,
they may have passed for poetry. In those verses which deal
with society the didactic element is a large part, though here,
too, there are many things which cannot have heen intended
for the instruction of the young. Beginning with the didactic
element, we find that Theognis' advice to his young friend
Cyrnus is largely coloured by political considerations. He gives
him the excellent advice to associate only with the good ; to sit
at dinner as near as possible to a good man, so as to carry off
some benefit from what he says (563) ; to always consult, even
at the cost of some trouble, a good man (71), for from him you
will get good advice (29). The advice to avoid the bad is
equally sound; their word is not to be relied on (11 68) ; they
are treacherous (65) and unjust (279). But when we find that
" the bad " are the people who are responsible for all civil war
(44), and are in power (411), we see that the corruption to
which the young man who associates with them is liable (35)
is rather political than moral ; and that " the good," who never
bring trouble on a state (43), are the aristocracy. The advice,
however, which Theognis gives on the choice and behaviour
of friends is better. Gold can be readily tested, but not men
(117); time (967) and need (641) are required to show the
worth of a man ; your friendship should not be forced on any
one (371) ; and when you have gained a friend, you should be
slow to believe anything said against him, and should not quarrel
about trifles — these are conditions on which alone friendship can
exist among men (323, 1 151) ; on the other hand, you must not
from a false conception of friendship praise what you do not
approve in your friend's conduct ; to encourage him in wrong
brings punishment from the gods (1081, 851).
From other passages, less didactic in tone, we gather Theognis'
views on the state of society in his time. The rock ahead
which fills most of his vision is the general worship of wealth.
You may be as clever as Sisyphus, as eloquent as Nestor, and
as upright as Khadamanthus himself, but as against wealth all
these qualities are nothing worth (699). "Wealth is the most
desirable of the gods ; it can even make a " bad " man a <; good "
one (11 17) ; the poor man is despised and his tongue is bound
(621, 267, 177). The result of this unhealthy state of things
is that the " bad " rich intermarry with the "good," the most
fundamental social distinctions are overthrown, the race is con-
sequently deteriorating, and there is but .little hope for the
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS. I5 I
country (1 109, 1 83). "With society in this state and the govern-
ment in the hands of the had (44), we are not surprised to
find that friends are treacherous (811), filial ingratitude ram-
pant and not ashamed (273), that no one on earth is happy
(167), that the bad triumph insolently over the good (289), and
that the best thing for a man is not to be born into this world
at all, and the next best thing is to die at once (425).
But it would be an error to imagine that the elegiacs which
Theognis delivered after dinner were permanently of this melan-
choly hue. He had not " le vin triste" always. Much wine,
he says (509), is a bad thing, "but if a man drinks scientifi-
cally, itis a good thing ; " and presumably by this he means
attaining to the stage which, with much satisfaction, he else-
where describes himself as being in — the stage, that is, of " being
no longer sober and not yet verydrunk" (478); on which occasion,
being in a didactic mood, he tells Simonides that he should
not wake the sleepers, nor compel any one to stay who does not
wish to stay, and not turn out any one who does not wish to go,
and should charge the glasses of those who want wine ; that he,
being in the aforesaid state, is going home. It is perhaps, how-
ever, only fair to Theognis to say that it is uncertain how much
of this elegy belongs to him. But Theognis was of a sociable
disposition, for he declares (627) that it is a disgrace to be
drunk when the company is sober, but also a disgrace to be
sober when the company is drunk. He lays down the same
principle of adapting oneself to the society one is in elsewhere
when he says (313), "Amongst the uproarious I am very up-
roarious, and amongst the proper no man more proper than I."
He expressly sets it forth as a rule of conduct by which his
young friends are to guide themselves in life, to be friendly in
word to everybody (63), and to trust no one, even though he
swears by the name of Zeus himself (283). Still more clearly
does he express himself when he tells Cyrnus (213) to change
his complexion as often as he changes his company, and to take
pattern by the cuttlefish, which has no colour of its own, but
takes its hue from the rock on which it happens to be.
This last passage does not give us a very high opinion of
Theognis' code of morality, and we shall see that he nowhere
rises above the level of his time, and that, in place of elevating
moral ideas, he gives us worldly wisdom. The ordinary precepts
are to be found in Theognis : fear and worship the gods (1179),
for from them come good and evil (171); they are to be prayed
tc in tribulation (554), for they can grant our requests (n 15).
Courage is not made so much of by him as we should have
expected from the high place which it took in antiquity among

the virtues. The references to it and to war are singularly few.
Theognis does not expressly enjoin courage anywhere, but ho
implies that cowardice is disgraceful (889), especially when the
country is in danger (825). Against lying he speaks frequently
and decidedly (85, 118, 875, 1071), on the ground that it does
not do much good, to begin with, and always proves disgraceful
(607). Children should honour their parents, because the days
of those who do not are few in the land (821). Justice, too,
is inculcated : give no man except what is his own (332), and
do not yield to the temptations of lucre (465) ; in justice is
comprised every virtue (147). But the golden rule for conduct
is, Exceed in nothing; the mean is best in all things (335).
This is the better side of the morality of the time ; the worse
comes out in Theognis quite as nakedly as in any other Greek
writer, perhaps more so. It is folly to treat the bad well ; you
may as well sow the sea, for the good you will reap (105). There
are two good reasons for doing no such thing : you waste your
own things, and you get no gratitude (955). Theognis goes on
a different principle : he prays to Zeus that he may get his ene-
mies on the hip (338), and have revenge (345), plunder them of
their property, and drink their blood (561). " Speak your enemy
fair," he says (363) ; " then, when y u have him down, strike,
and heed not his prayers."
Invaluable as this collection of elegiacs is for the light which
it throws on the manners, thought, politics, and morality of tlio
time, it has little value from the point of view of art. There
is from beginning to end scarcely a single beauty of thought,
expression, or imagery, to be found in it. What apparently
was the proem of Theognis' works (19-24), which is addressed
by Theognis in name to his friend Cyrnus, rises above the
other pieces in the confidence with which the author promises
Cyrnus and himself eternal and universal fame. There is also
another elegy (667-682), comparing the condition of the state
to a ship in a storm, which is of considerable beauty, and is far
above anything else in the collection ; but it is doubtful whether
this is the work of Theognis. As a rule, these elegiacs are
"lowered to the level of the Dorian understanding." Simple
the poetry of Theognis is; sensuous scarcely ever, and never
impassioned. Not only does it lack beauty, but it rarely shows
any profundity of thought ; though, perhaps, this is the common
defect of the age, for it is only when the drama and philosophy
appear that the Greeks seem to have pondered much on tho
problems of life. There is no trace of any such speculations in
LYRIC POETRY : ELEGIAC AND IAMBIC WRITERS. I53
ihe early iambic writers or the melic poets, whether writers of

choral poetry, as Alcman or Stesichorus, or of personal lyric, as
Sappho and Alcseus. Among the elegiac writers we find melo-
dious plaints on the necessity of death in Mimnermus, and
querulous fretfulness about the miseries of life in Simonides ;
but it is not till we come to Solon that we see signs of earnest
thought. In Theognis we find that the poet marvels at Zeus,
who possesses honour and might, and yet treats the just and the
unjust alike (373) ; how do the gods expect any one to worship
them if they continue this course? (743). The conclusion is
that the will of Heaven is not plain, nor the Avay in which a
man should walk to please the immortals (743).
To the middle of the sixth century b.c. also belong Demo-
docus of Leros and Phocylides of Miletus. About the former
we know nothing, except that he wrote iambics and epigrams,
of which latter one served to suggest to Porson his verses on
Hermann. Demodocus said, " The Chians are bad ; not one
here and one there, but all, except Procles, and Procles is a
Chian." With similar wit he attacked the Milesians, of whom
he said that they were not stupid, but they acted stupidly.
Among the elegiacs of Phocylides we find a couplet which,
with the substitution of Lerian for Chian, is word for word the
same as that of Demodocus. From this it is inferred that the
two poets engaged in a warfare of wit, and that in these two
couplets we have the attack and retort. But for the credit of
Greek humour it is to be hoped that the inference, which has
no basis except the existence of the two couplets, is erroneous.
Phocylides, of whose life nothing is known, wrote in hexa-
meters as well as in elegiacs. Usually his utterances in hexa-
meters were brief and gnomic ; but we have a longer poem,
which was a satire on women, conceived in the same strain and
form as that of Simonides. Phocylides, however, instead of ten,
has four classes of women, one of which is derived by extraction
from the dog, another from the bee, another from the sow, and
the fourth from the mare. The shorter utterances are good,
practical common sense, and as far removed from being port it
as possible. A small city well governed, he says, is better than
a Nineveh (5). Birth is no good if a man can speak neither
pleasantly nor sensibly (4). First get a living, then think about
improving yourself (10).
Under the name of Phocylides there passed, until the six-
teenth century, a long poem in hexameters of :co verses, con-
taining a string of moral precepts. " The useful poetry of
Phocylides," as it is entitled in some manuscripts, is arranged
in a very disorderly and disconnected manner, is not unfre-

quently ungrammatical, is mixed in its vocabulary, and contains
many sentiments quite foreign to Greek thought and ethics. It
was this last fact which aroused the suspicions of Sylburg in
the sixteenth century, who, however, only ventured to point out
that some lines were probably not the work of Phocylides, but
of a Christian writer. Joseph Scaliger declared the whole poem
to be a forgery and the work of some Christian or Jewish writer,
but, after contenting himself with throwing out the hint, left it
for some one else to work out. This Jacob Bernays did ( Ueber
das phokylideische Gedicht, Berlin, 1856), and showed that
although there are many traces of Jewish beliefs (e.g. 84, 139, 140,
147, 207), there is none of any acquaintance with the New Testa-
ment. The poem, then, may be set down as the work of a Greek-
speaking Jew, who lived probably not before the second century
B.c. The place of its origin seems likely to have been Alexandria,
for it was there that the Jews came most in contact with Greek
learning. The object of the author does not seem to have been
a literary forgery, such as have been famous in modern times,
for there is no attempt to imitate the style of Phocylides or the
brevity of his utterances. Rather the writer seems to have
been so concerned with winning acceptance for the morality he
preached as to be willing to sacrifice the fame of authorship,
if only the name of Phocylides would gain a hearing for him.
The decline of the Alexandrine school removed an effectual
check on the circulation of forgeries of this and other kinds,
and we may thus probably date the pseudo-Phocylidea.
The claim of Hipponax to fame is based on the invention of
a new kind of metre, the choliambus or scazon. It is in reality
the iambic line with the substitution of a spondee or trochee for
an iambus in the last foot. This change gives the line a limping
elfect — whence the name choliambus or scazon — and deprives it
of all beauty, thus making it the appropriate vehicle for the
unlovely contents with which Hipponax charged it. Appropriate
as the metre was to the use he put it to, its essential deformity
prevented it from becoming a favourite or common form of verse,
except among fable writers such as Babrius. Hipponax nourished
about B.c, 540 as we learn from the Parian Marble (42). He
was born at Ephesus, and seems to have been expelled thence.
Possibly he may have attacked the governor of the city in his
verses, and have therefore been turned out; but we have nothing
but conjecture to rely on for this. From Ephesus he went to
ClazomenA', and there he seems to have spent the rest of his
life, with no very pleasant feelings towards his old home.
LYRIC POETRY '. MELIC AT COURT. I 55
From Clazomense he was not expelled, but he spent a large part

of his time in writing and declaiming defamatory verses against
most people he came in contact with. His person seems to have
been remarkably ngly : this, which is hard at all times, was par-
ticularly sofor a Greek, for whom nothing — intellect, virtue, or
wealth — could redeem this defect. In the case of Hipponax it
was doubly unfortunate, for it gave the enemies he made by his
verses an invaluable means of attack, and one which a sculptor,
such as En pal us, could turn to great account. The merits of
this encounter between scazons and sculptors are unknown to
us, as also is the result. Whether the poverty which Hipponax
complains of was much exaggerated by him or not is uncertain,
and we are equally ignorant of the date and manner of his death.
In addition to the scazon, parody is put down to his invention,
but before him Asius had written parodies. As Archilochus
wrote iambics and used them against his enemies, it is usual to
compare Hipponax with him. But Archilochus was a man of
education, refinement, and genius, and he was a poet ; whereas
Hipponax possessed none of these qualities. His language is
that of the gutter when it is not that of the brothel ; his vitu-
peration isnoisy and not effective ; his parodies, such as we
nave, possess no humour.
Of Ananius, a a\ riter of parodies in iambics, scarcely anything
is known. He is said to have been less personal than Hipponax ;
but there seems to have been some difficulty in deciding whether
the works ascribed to him were by him or by Hipponax.
Amongst other writers of elegiacs or iambics in later times may
be mentioned the tragedian Ion of Chios ; Evenus of Paros, the
sophist : Critias, one of the thirty tyrants ; Hermesianax of Colo-
phon; Hermippus, Herodas, and Kerkidas of Megalopolis.
CHAPTER V.
MELIC AT COURT.
In the verses of Theognis and Alcaeus we have seen how oli-

garchy and tyranny fell out, ami democracy — such as it w;is in
ancient times — came by its own. Democracy having triumphed,
did not prohibit freedom of speech, and the oligarchs gave vent
in their verses to the feelings which exile, confiscation, and loss
of power roused in their breasts. It is only from Solon's verses
that we see the other side of the shield, and learn to understand
how under oligarchy the people were rohhed of their land, driven
from their native country, and sold into slavery. But demo-
cracy did not triumph everywhere ; in various cities tyrants
established themselves and their dynasties with more or less per-
manence. The ii 1st use to which they put the wealth that came
into their hands by usurpation, was to fortify their position by
means of mercenaries ; the next, to surround themselves with
all the splendour which art and literature could lend to their
bad eminence. Thus melic poetry, which had been originally
attracted by the fame which Sparta could extend to genius,
now left Sparta " in gilded courts to dwell." Some tyrants,
as the Pisistratidse at Athens, turned the resources of art to the
adornment of the city over which they exercised their unlawful
rule. But most tyrants, as those of Samos and of Syracuse,
required artists to celebrate, whether in marble or in poetry,
their own virtues, magnificence, exploits, and victories in the
national games of Hellas. In both cases, however, what melic
poetry now shows us is no longer the spirit animating a nation,
as in Tyrtseus, but the luxury of court. The tyrant was now
the state ; the sufferings or the aspirations of the people could
find no voice, and naturally tyrannicidal verses, such as those of
Theognis or Alcaeus, no hearing.
We may form some idea of the force which the attractions of
court exercised when, remembering the difficulties and dangers
of ancient travelling, we learn that Ibycus was drawn from his
native town in Italy, Khegium, across land and sea to Samos.
Beyond this fact we know little of the life of Ibycus. He
seems to have spent some time in Himera and Catana, and
may, as is conjectured, have gone to Samos on the invitation of
the tyrant iEaees, for the purpose of educating the young Poly-
crates. But to decide this we ought to know the date of Ibycus,
which cannot be given more precisely than that lie lived in the
latter half of the sixth century B.C. The story of his death,
according to Suidas, is that he was plundered and killed by
robbers. While dying he pointed to some cranes living over-
head, and declared that they would be his avengers. The
robbers returned to the neighbouring town, the name of which
Suidas does not give, and were sitting in the theatre, when one
of them, seeing a crane, remarked jeeringly to his fellows,
"There is one of Ibycus" avengers." This was overheard, and,
as Ibycus had disappeared in a remarkable manner, the men
were seized, made to confess, and executed. This account has
an air of improbability about itj the more so because it is a type
LYRIC POETKY '. MELIC AT COURT. I 57
of story not uncommon in folk-lore. When, further, we find

that the earliest authority for it is an epigram by An ti pater of
Sidon, who lived about a hundred years B.C., i.e. four hundred
years after the fact which he professes to relate, we have very
good reason for doubting the accuracy of the story. The origin
of the tale as applied to Ibycus we are not in a position to
trace ; but the name of the poet bears sufficient resemblance
to the Greek word ibykeS, which means birds of some kind, to
make it probable that a false etymology attracted this floating
story to the name of Ibycus.
We have very few fragments by Ibycus, and very little in-
formation about his work in ancient authors. Consequently
there is considerable doubt as to the character of his poems and
the occasions on which they were delivered. That some of his
work must have been of the same nature as the " epic lyric "
of Stesichorus seems to be shown by the fact that ancient
critics were doubtful whether certain fragments were by Ibycus
or Stesichorus. Further, the metre, the length of the strophes,
and the large number of mythical allusions in the fragments
of Ibycus, show that in method Ibycus followed Stesichorus.
But side by side with these pieces of evidence we find in the
fragments indications of a wide difference between the two
poets. It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude, that whilst
Ibycus was in Sicily he was influenced by Stesichorus, and
wrote " epic lyric " such as his master wrote, and as the Sicilians
had been accustomed to hear from Stesichorus. But to endea-
vour, on the hints afforded by casual and doubtful mention of
mythical names, to determine the subject and the titles of
poems of which we have only the most inconsiderable fragments,
and which only conjecturally come under the head of " epic
lyric," is an attempt which not even Welcker or Flaeh can
induce us to share in.
In Samos Ibycus seems to have modelled himself on Anacreon,
who had come to the court of Polycrates before him. as in Sicily
on Stesichorus. Love and wine were the themes which the
luxurious surroundings and the native taste of Anacreon prompted
him to sing of; and though we have no reason to believe that
Ibycus sang of wine, love was the never-ending burden of his
melodies. In the ardour and violence of his passion, Ibycus,
according to Cicero (Tusc. iv. 33. 71), far outstripped Anacreon.
Stesichorus had treated of love in bis poem-;, but in his poetry
it had either been subordinate to the epic interest of his lyric,
or, if it had formed the main subject of some of his poems, as
it probably did in the Jiadina and the Calijca, it was treated
of by him in narrative form, and he related the hopeless love of

some imaginary hero or heroine. But Ihycus treated of love,
not in a narrative, but in a lyric strain. It was his own feeling
which he was pouring forth in his versos ; and although he
sought for parallels in ancient story, and interwove mythological
incidents into his odes in the fashion of Pindar, the source and
the subject of his song were his own emotions. In short, in
passing from Sicily to Samos, he left behind the somewhat cold
and artificial mode ■ f conception which characterised Stesi-
chorus, and entered the glowing atmosphere which developed
iEolian lyric.
In one important point, however, the melic of Ibycus differed
from that of Lesbos ; his odes were choral, whereas those of
Alcams and Sappho were for solo delivery ; and this raises the
difficult question, how did Ibycus reconcile his subject with the
occasions and manner of choral execution 1 In his attempt to
fuse the expression of the personal feelings of the lyric poet
with that of the sentiments associated with a public festival
or ceremonial, Ihycus reminds us of Alcman, who in Sparta
attempted the same experiment, and it is natural to conjecture
that Ibycus set to work in the same way as Alcman. But there
are no traces in the few fragments we possess of any such
addresses of the poet to the chorus or individual members of
the chorus as are found in Alcman's odes, and nothing in any
ancient authority to support the conjecture. The suggestion
that these choral odes were composed and sung in honour of
the victors in contests of personal beauty, such as were indeed
held in various Greek cities, seems to be rebutted by the con-
sideration that there is no evidence to show the existence of
such contests in Samos, and that such contests were for female
beauty only. The solution of the difficulty must be sought
elsewhere. The fact that the odes of Ibycus were, as is shown
by their metre, choral, and therefore performed in public, shows
that the young men who were thus celebrated had achieved
some success which called for public congratulation ; and it
seems easiest to suppose that this success was in the public
games, and that the odes thus resembled the encomia and epi-
nikia which Pindar wrote.
Few as the fragments by Ibycus are, they give us a high
opinion of his poetical merit ; and small as most of them are,
they bear the mark of grace and beauty. In reading them we
are transported into a region of sweet sounds and beautiful
sights. We are surrounded by roses, violets, and myrtles (6) ;
there are kingfishers (8) in the flowing streams which run
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. I 59
through maidens' gardens (1); the nightingales (7) sing as the

stars shine the long night through (3) ; all breathes spring,
and joy, and peace, except the poet's heart, where a blast as of
Boreas rages beneath the lightning (1).
Among the literary consequences of the introduction of
tyranny into the system of Greek politics was not only the
crystallisation of choral poetry round tyrants' courts, but also
the attraction thither of poets such as Anacreon, who wrote
lyric songs after the fashion of the iEolian ode. To assign this
centripetal force as the sole cause of this phenomenon would,
however, be an inadequate explanation ; we must consider the
negative as well as the positive conditions, that is, why lyric
song did not survive under democracies on the fall of oligarchy,
as well as why it migrated to tyrannies. That department of
melic poetry of which the greatest representatives were Sappho
and Alcaeus, and which, to distinguish it from choral melic, we
will call lyric song, although its roots are to be found in the
songs of the people, attained to literary form and merit only in
oligarchies. It was only among the ruling classes of oligarchi-
cally governed states that there existed the literary and musical
cultivation necessary for the production of high work, and for
the intelligent appreciation and encouragement of it when
produced. The public to which the lyric poet thus addressed
himself was narrow, but it contained all whose criticism was
worth obtaining, and whose praise the poet cared for. Further,
the very narrowness of the poet's circle, in which all were ac-
quaintances and most were friends, was the most favourable
condition under which a kind of poetry, whose essence is the
expression of the poet's personal emotions, could possibly be
developed; for the poet's mode of life was that of his hearers,
his feelings were their feelings, his prejudices their prejudices,
his politics, when he touched on them, his beliefs and his mo-
rality, the same as theirs. All this, when oligarchy was over-
thrown, was changed. At first sight it might appear as though
there were no reason why, when democracy succeeded oligarchy,
lyric song should uot have continued to flourish, if only the poet
would address himself to the new public which was grow-
ing, and seek his inspiration in the wider circle of emotions and
beliefs which all Greeks felt in common. But this is to overlook
an important condition which regulated the development of Greek
literature, and was the cause of the difference in form between
the literature of Greek and of modern times. Without a public,
art and literature cannot exist. The manner, therefore, in which
an artist is brought into contact with his public is a matter of
the greatest importance in its effects on the course and form of

literature. Until the time of Isocrates, a Greek author obtained
publicity, not by means of the multiplication and circulation of
copies of his works, but by means of the oral delivery of his
productions. In the case of choral poetry, the performance by
the chorus constituted this oral delivery ; and as choruses were
performed in public and on public occasions, the audience con-
sisted of all the citizens of the state, and was the largest to
which an author could address himself. In the case of lyric
song the poet was his own performer ; the occasion was private,
not public, being some banquet at which the author's friends
were gathered together, and his public was consequently con-
siderably smaller. It is this fact which mainly explains the
decay of lyric song under democracy. Under an oligarchy the
poet's public was small, but it was practically in intelligence
and power the state. When democracy supervened, the oligar-
chical classes no longer had the monopoly of government and
culture ; they sank into the subordinate position of a party, and
of a party out of joint with the times. The audience of the
poet thus became narrow in all senses of the word ; and although
Theognis was an elegiac and not a melic poet, he shows in the
confined and lifeless flight of his verse how evilly a clique
reacts on an artist. Within the area, then, of democracy, lyric
song disappeared, and in tyrannies it survived, for there the
court formed a centre of art and culture, and provided a public
whose appreciation was for some poets as powerful an allure-
ment as were the more material rewards offered by the tyrant
to others. But before proceeding to consider the effect which
the change from oligarchy to tyranny had on lyric song, we
have to notice a fact which confirms and completes our theory
of the disappearance of lyric song under democracy. It is this,
that as soon as in democracy occasions and means were found
by which the lyric poet could reach the great public, i.e. the
whole body of citizens, then great poets were forthcoming to
give expression to emotions and beliefs which all their fellow-
citizens, and not merely a clique, could feel and understand.
The contrivance which, under democracy, put the poet into
direct relation with the great public, was the theatre: lyric
som;, choral poetry, and iambics were fused and transmuted
into drama ; and in the melic parts of tragedy we hear the lyric
poet uttering, to an audience greater than that which he ad-
dressed, his meditations on the meaning of life.
Anacreon, who was born of good family and connected with
Solon, was a native of the island of Teos. When the tide of
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. I6 I
Persian invasion swept over Teos as over other islands off the
coast of Asia Minor, Anacreon seems to have emigrated with
his fellow-citizens to Ahdera in Thrace. How long he remained
there we do not know, but thence he proceeded to Samos. probably
a few years before Ibycus arrived there. From the time that
Polvcrates was a boy until the time when he was treacherously
murdered by the Persian satrap Oroetes, Anacreon enjoyed the
friendship an I confidence of the tyrant of Samos. Doubtless
it was as a minister to the pleasures and as an ornament to the
court of Polvcrates that Anacreon chiefly figured in Samos, but
he also exercised an occasional influence over the greedy and
cruel policy of the despot. After the assassination of Polvcrates
Anacreon -went to Athens, though whether he went straight
there or first went to Asia Minor or to Abdera, is uncertain.
In any case, his reputation as a poet was so well established that
Hipparchus. the tyrant of Athens, invited him to his court, and
sent a vessel to convey him thither. It was at Athens probably
that Anacreon died, in his eighty-fifth year, in the enjoyment of
a fresh and green old age.
Anacreon wrote some short hymns to the gods, but his chief
work, and that on which his reputation was based, comprised
five books of elegies, iambics, and lyric song. He did not open
up any new field in lyric, but contented himself in following with
less genius and less earnestness the paths which Archilochus
and the Lesbian poets had made before him. At the same time
he availed himself of all the technical improvements in metre
and music with which successive generations of poets had en-
riched their art, to a degree and with a skill in which Sappho
alone surpassed him. It is in finish, not force, in workmanship,
not genius, in the lightness of his touch, not earnestness of
feeling, that the merit of Anacreon lies. Dionysius (Je Contp.
Verb. 23) selects him, after Sappho, as representative of the
"smooth" style or harmony. On this authority we may take
it that in the qualities of melody Anacreon excelled. Unfortu-
nately the few notes which are left are so scattered that we can-
not reconstruct the melody. But in perfect music there is. as
well as melody, harmony ; and in the fragments of a perfect
poet, although time may obliterate much, harmony is left, though
the melody be past reconstruction. Thus Sappho struck chords
which still vibrate, but in Anacreon the melody has perished ;
harmonies there never were. This want of depth in Anacreon's
poetry corresponds to and is the result of a want of depth in
his nature. By this we do not mean merely the absence of
any reflection on the more serious problems and aspects of life.
L
There is no obligation on the poet to treat of such subjects, and

the absence of such reflections does not constitute a poetical
■delinquency. No subject is forbidden the artist which he can
make matter of art; but having chosen his subject, he must treat
it as art. He must deal with morality, if he chooses the sub-
ject, or politics, not as a moralist or a politician, but as an artist ;
and whether his work be good moral or political philosophy,
or Avhether it be bad, are considerations which, when settled,
obviously do not in the least help us to decide whether his work
is or is not good poetry. It is therefore, on the terms of art, no
charge against Anacreon that he did not philosophise on life,
and did sing " the praise of love and wine ; " but it does detract
from his worth as a poet that his notes are not full, and that
his song lacks expression.
Of the three qualities necessary to poetry, that it should be
" simple, sensuous, and impassioned," Anacreou's work possesses
the first only in any eminent degree ; and it is in the compara-
tive failure of the other two that his weakness consists. Images
are rare in Anacreon, and in this rarity we have a partial expla-
nation of his inferiority to Sappho, who also sang the praise
of love, and whose smallest fragments may contain a picture, a
vision, and a thing of beauty. The most serious defect, however,
is that Anacreon wrote of love and wine, the sources of violent
emotions, and his poetry is inadequately impassioned. As there
are things to the beauty of which a certain magnitude is neces-
sary, so for the emotions a certain intensity is requisite ; and
this intensity Anacreon failed of. There is no impetuosity in
his drinking-songs, and no irresistible enchantment in his love-
songs. Love and wine are amusements with him, and the
amusements of a man who has nothing to do but amuse himself.
They aroused only superficial feelings in him — there was nothing
more to arouse — and his expression of them is superficial His
touch was light, but not tender.
Anacreon's defects as a poet made for his success as a court
bard. In a court in which ministers of pleasure of both sexes
were collected from all parts of F.urope and Asia Minor for the
entertainment of the tyrant, Anacreon naturally attained a high
position. His verses were not too high for the intelligence,
or too deep for the feelings, of his patron and his audience.
His character, too, was equally well suited to his surroundings.
AY bile avoiding all excess — he lived to be eighty-five — he is
described (Critias in Ath. xiii. 6ood) as charming in manner, a
deceiver of women, and the life of a drinking-party. His con-
quests were as facile as his verses, and his potations as deep
lyric poetry: melic at court. 163
as his poetry. Anacreon reflects life at court as faithfully as

Alcseus does the life of an oligarch. But the difference between
the latter, who wrote " because the numbers came," and the
court poet, who celebrated in lyric verse the reigning beauty of
either sex from time to time, was great. In Alcaeus or Sappho
we have a poet singing songs unbidden —
" Till the world is wrought
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not."
In Anacreon we have a poet who wrote, not to command, in-
deed, but on all occasions ; and the poet who writes indifferently
on any occasion is in danger of writing indifferently on all.
However, the poetry of Anacreon marks the highest point to
which the atmosphere of tyranny would allow lyric song to
grow ; and that it grew so high and so shapely was because the
temperament of Anacreon harmonised so well with the demands
of his post and his patron. The passion of a Sappho would
have found little sympathy, or the pride of an Alcaeus little
room, in such a court as that of Polycrates. Anacreon's nature,
less deep and less lofty, was adapted to the environment, and
was further endowed with the gift of a finished literary style.
But this conjunction of qualities did not occur afterwards or
elsewhere, and tyranny, though it promised to support lyric
song, proved more barren of substance than did democracy.
Simonides, as we learn from an inscription (Fr. 147B) which
he wrote to commemorate the victory, in a choral contest at
Athens, of the tribe Antiochis with a poem of his composing,
was the son of Leopredes, and was eighty years of age at the
time of this victory. As he mentions the archonship of Adei-
mantus as the date of this event, it follows that he was born in
the year b.o. 556. The place of his birth was a small island,
Ceos, one of the Cyclades. The inhabitants of the island were
Ionians, but the neighbourhood of the Peloponnesus affected the
Ceans in various ways, and, what is important for our purpose,
familiarised them with the choral worship of Apollo, and with
the custom of parthenia or choruses sung by girls. The culti-
vation in Ceos of choral poetry decided the line which Simonides'
impulse to poetry was to take. At an early age he was con-
cerned in the production of choruses, and fulfilled the duties of
choir-master. Although, unlike Anacreon, he possessed some
patriotism, and celebrated his country in his song (223), he was
not content to remain for ever a choir-master in Ceos, but was
attracted, by visions of fame, fortune, and themes greater thin
Ceos could afford, to travel far and wide to brilliant courts and
centres of cultivation. In Athens the tyrant Pisistratus bad

been succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus, and they
were carrying on the work, which their father had begun, of
decorating Athens and educating the Athenians by means of
everything which art, literature, and learning could supply. In
pursuit of this policy the Pisistratidse freely lavished money,
and Simonides received large sums from them.
The form of choral poetry which at this time was chiefly cul-
tivated atAthens was the dithyramb. This, which at once was
a religious service, a form of literature, and an entertainment for
the people, was not in its origin, nature, or object specially sub-
servient to tyranny. It was not performed for the gratification
or the honour of the tyrant ; nor was it merely an entertain-
ment for the people, to keep them in good-humour with the
tyranny ; it was also an entertainment by the people. As in
later times dramatists competed for a prize at the festivals of
Dionysus, and each poet applied to the state for a choregus to
put his play upon the stage, and the chorus which performed in
the play was furnished by one of the tribes ; so in the times of
the Pisistratidse and of the dithyramb, the author of a dithy-
ramb applied for a choregus and a tribe which should supply a
chorus to learn, rehearse, and finally perform his dithyramb in
the contests at the festivals of Dionysus. When the drama
developed out of the dithyramb, this manner of procedure con-
tinued and
; this explains how it was that in th'i time of the
drama the choregus, although he bore all the expenses entailed
by the maintaining, teaching, and dressing of those members of
his tribe who formed the dramatic chorus, had not to bear any
part of the rest of the expense incurred in the production of the
play. The prize which the successful poet in a dithyramb con-
test won was not any pecuniary benefit to the victor, for it was
dedicated by him as a votive ottering to the god. The gold
which Simonides carried off from Athens came to him as gifts,
either from the tyrant, who was gratified to have so good a poet
compete in his city, or possibly from rich citizens for whom
Simonides had specially composed poems in celebration of some
victory they had achieved in the public games or in the memory
of some relative they had lost. The epinikia which he thus
composed remained popular in Athens for generations, and were
in the mouths of the Athenians in the time of Aristophanes.1
With his competitors, amongst whom at Athens was Lasus,
Simonides never seems to have got on well. He was a formid-
able rival not only in the exercise of his art, but even more
1 Eq. 407 ; Nub. 1356.
LYRIC POETRY : MELIG AT COURT. I6 5
80 in the tact, the worldly wisdom, and the courtly deference

which won him so much success in dealing with the great.
In Thessaly, as well as in Athens, Simonides was the guest of
tyrants. We still have almost complete (5) an encomium or
eulogy written by Simonides in honour of Scopas on his death.
Scopas was a tyrant whose rule does not seem to have been light
nor his character amiable. But Simonides, having to eulogise
him professionally, adroitly and artistically steers between the
risk of offending the Scopadae and the danger of exciting ridi-
cule by lauding virtues which the deceased had not. He con-
fines himself to generalities : perfectly virtuous men do not
occur ; practically we have to take the good with the evil. Pit-
tacus, the sage, much understated the fact when he said that it was
hard to be good — that is an attribute of God, not man ; the man
who does not voluntarily do anything disgraceful is much to be
praised, but against destiny, of course no one can fight. The
skill of this cannot be denied ; and although Simonides takes
up the dead Scopas very tenderly and delicately, he cannot be
accused of servility. To only hint that Scopas had his failings
may have -been gross adulation. We do not know. But having
to write an encomium and to write it for gold, Simonides could
not have well sold less of his conscience. Other poets with less
sense of artistic propriety would have sold more. We know
little about the Scopadae. It seems probable that the whole
dynasty perished suddenly and together; and this is perhaps
the only kernel of fact which is contained in the story that
Scopas gave Simonides half the reward he expected for a eulogy,
and bade him apply to the Dioscuri, whom Simonides had also
] a-aised in the eulogy, for the other half. At this moment
Simonides was summoned from the hall to speak with two
strangers, and no sooner was he in the open air than the build-
ing fell with a crash, killing Scopas and all his family. The
Dioscuri had paid their debt.
The Scopadae were not the only tyrants in Thessaly that
Simonides visited. He also went to Larissa, and placed his
services at the disposal of the Aleuadae, who were maintaining
secret and treacherous relations with the Persian king, and were
offering to assist him in his invasion of Greece. From this
court Simonides went again to the city which was the soul and
the centre of the Greek resistance to Persia — Athens — there to
celebrate by the epigrams, on which his fame principally rests,
the defeat of the Persians at Marathon, at Salamis, and at
Plataea. In Athens the democracy had triumphed over the
tyranny; Hipparchus had been slain, Hippias had tied to Persia;
and Simonides became as much at home under the democracy

as he had been under the tyranny. He was as intimate with
Themistocles as with the Pisistratidae, and he glorified the
assassins of Hipparchus as readily and as artistically as he had
honoured Hipparchus himself. His former relations with the
tyrants did not prevent the Athenians from intrusting him
with the honour of celebrating in verse their victories over the
Persians, nor induce them to prefer the epigram on Marathon
by their own iEschylus to that written by Simonides. In
Corinth and in Sparta he was welcomed as much as in Athens,
and he made himself the friend of the haughty Pausanias as
successfully as he had won the friendship of the astute Themi-
stocles.
But at this time art, literature, and culture found their best
field and their most munificent reward in Sicily, at the court of
Syracuse. Not only was Epicharnms performing his comedies
there, but iEschylus voyaged thither, and there wrote and put
on the stage tragedies, of which some were inspired by his visit,
as the Women of jEtna, some had been already performed in
Athens. To Syracuse, also, Pacchylides, the nephew, of Simo-
nides, was drawn, and, greater than either, Pindar, now only
a young man, but great enough already to defeat Simonides.
Between Simonides and Pindar there existed the same rivalry,
embittered by personal feelings, as at Athens had intervened be-
tween Simonides and Lasus ; and, though the fragments of Simo-
nides show no traces of this rivalry, it appears in passages of
Pindar. With Hiero, however, the tyrant of Syracuse, Simo-
nides was on the best of terms, and we find him assuring
Hiero's wife, with the courtier-like suavity which characterised
him, that wealth is before wisdom. It would not be altogether
fair to condemn Simonides of insincerity in saying this, for
lie was the first poet who wrote for gold. This shocked the
Greeks, as teaching for pay also shocked them. Art and learn-
ing were sacred things. It was as disgraceful to traffic in them
as in beauty. This feeling is ] robably largely responsible for the
accusations of avarice which were made against Simonides, though
there was also much in his conduct to give countenance to the
charge. Sicily he must have found a fertile field, for com-
missions were not forthcoming from Syracuse and Hiero alone,
but from Agrigentum, Rhegium, and (J rot on as well. Up
to the latest year of his life he seems to have worked, and
his command over the technical resources of his art, his tact,
skill, and adroitness in managing his subjoct-matter, seem to
have gained more and more as he gained more experience,
lyric poetry: melic at court. 167
until he died B.C. 467, in Syracuse, at the age of eighty-

nine.
Simonides was a writer of choral poetry, not of lyric song,
and in his long life he attained a mastery over every form of
choral melic. He composed hymns to the gods, pagans to
Apollo, dithyrambs in honour of Dionysus, hyporcliemes with
their accompaniment of dancing, prosodia or processional
hymns, and parthenia ; but his poetry was not confined to
the worship of the gods, he applied it also to honouring and
commemorating men, both for their public achievements and
their private virtues, and with this object he composed en-
comia, epinikia, and threni or dirges, and in addition to these
choral forms of poetry also skolia or drinking songs, elegies, and
epigrams. In the domain of religious poetry Simonides did not
attain such celebrity as in the rest of choral melic. His com-
mand of language, his exquisite diction, the smoothness and
sweetness of his style, his mastery over all the technical re-
sources of his art, raised even his religious poetry to a high
standard ; but this formal excellence could not compensate for
shallowness of feeling and the want of profound conviction.
But even here, where his natural defects were most conspicuous
and most damaging, his grasp was so firm that he set dithyramb
on the path it was to follow, though he wrested it from the
special service of the god whom it was originally intended
to honour. We have nothing left of his dithyrambs except
the titles of two, the Memnon and the Rape of Europa, and
although we have no conception of the way in which he con-
trived to harmonise these subjects with the form and the tradi-
tions of the dithyramb, the titles are enough to show that
Simonides abandoned the custom of taking the adventures of
Dionysus as the subject of the dithyramb. This was a step of
great importance, for it determined the subsequent history of
this form of choral poetry.
Thus even on religious melic Simonides left his mark, and
on the rest of choral lyric he exercised even greater influence.
He elevated the threnos or dirge from the level of monody to
the dignity of choral performance. He gave to epinikia, the
public celebration of a victory in the national games, the shape
which they were destined to retain. Encomia, which belonged
to the same genus as epinikia, but were laudations of a more
private character, were the work of his invention. In poetry
not choral, epigram, though its functions had been determined
by his predecessors, Simonides exalted to a pinnacle of fame in
literature to which no other poet could have lifted it. As it
was to these forms of poetry that Simonidea gave their make and
shape in literature, it was in them that lie attained his highest
excellence. In epinikia, smooth and finished as his work was,
and high as he ranked, he could not be compared with Pindar.
Setting aside the difference between the inspired and the unin-
spired poet, we find that even in respect of style and excellence
of form Pindar was superior, though in a different way, to Simo-
nides ; for whereas Simonides shares with Anacreon the honour
of the second place in representing the "smooth " style of lyric,
Pindar occupies without rival the highest position in the
" severe " style. In encomia, which were a lower form of art,
Simonides achieved greater excellence. These eulogies on people
who frequently had but little worthy of eulogy afforded admir-
able opportunities for the exercise of the tact, courteousness,
and knowledge of the world which Simonides possessed in an
eminent degree, and which explain both his invention and his
successful cultivation of encomia. In dirges or thrcni his repu-
tation stood even higher : in these poems not only was the
style excellent, as always with Simonides, but that which it
clothed was also excellent. Simonides' poetry rarely soared
with the bold flight of genius, but in the threni it did affect the
emotions. It was pathetic and extremely moving. This form
of poetry Simonides must have cultivated with affection — with
the affection which comes of and to successful work ; for he
did not content himself with composing dirges for real persons,
as, e.g. on the Scopadae, but took mythical heroes and heroines
as subjects. This gave him more room to work in, and he
accordingly produced better work. It fortunately happens that
we still have a fragment of his threnos on Danae (37), amongst
the most beautiful of the bequests from Greek literature
which time has allowed to come down to us. Aerisius having
been warned by an oracle that he would meet his death at
the hands of a child born of his daughter Danae, committed
her and her child Perseus to the waves in a chest to perish.
The fragment by Simonides pictures Danae and Perseus in
the darkness of the coffer driven by the wind over the stormy
sea. Danae, with her arm round her sleeping child and his face
against hers, talks to him : he sleeps and she is so full of care ; he
would not sleep if he knew their danger. . Then she says to him,
'* But sleep, baby j and sleep, sea and trouble too. Zeus! grant
us respite and forgive my prayer." This fragment enables us
to see for ourselves the two qualities which ancient critics
recognised as existing to a high degree in Simonides' poetry —
his clearness and his pathos. By clearness is meant the poet's
LYRIC POETRY : MELIC AT COURT. I 69
power of conveying to the reader's or hearer's mind the very

picture which the poet himself sees with his mind's eye. In
this fragment the pathos consists partly in the picture of the
child sleeping " avec l'ignorance de l'ange," and of the mother
talking to the child of the danger which he does not under-
stand. Pathetic, however, as Simonides, by the testimony of this
fragment, was, he was probably inferior even in this quality to
Pindar, who stood to him in the same relation as iEschylus to
Euripides. Pathos has been considered the special province of
Euripides as of Simonides, but the strength of iEschylus enabled
him on fitting occasions to excel Euripides in intensity of
pathos, as probably Pindar's strength gave him pathetic powers
greater, if more rarely used, than those of Simonides. The
department of poetry in which Simonides stands without a rival
is that of epigram. The glorious victories which the Greeks
achieved over the Persians were celebrated by offerings to the
gods, and these offerings required some inscription worthy of
the deeds commemorated, as did also the graves of the Avarriors
who fell nobly for their country. In Simonides was found the
poet capable of composing the epigrams thus called for. His
success in this form of composition was due to the quality of
self-restraint that is the chief merit of all his poetry. The
defeat of the Persian was a theme on which a contemporary
would find it difficult to be anything but expansive. It fur-
nished Phrynichus and iEschylus with the material for monu-
ments of genius in the shape of tragedies depicting the down-
fall of the innumerable host of the barbarians. The tribute of
tragedy to the heroes of Hellas was properly monumental, but
in epigrams, which were themselves to be but inscriptions on
monuments, whether to the gods or to- the fallen patriots,
qualities of another kind were required. Description, such as
was appropriate in tragedy, was excluded by the brevity that
the form of epigram necessitated. Praise, in any direct form,
would be superfluous, and even offensive, on memorials, and for
deeds which were themselves their own praise. Many words
were to be avoided; self-restraint was above all necessary, and.
considering the pride of patriotism, above all difficult. The tact
that could select precisely what should be said, and, saying little,
could yet say all, was the prerogative of Simonides. It was not
SO much genius as artistic feeling, the sense of propriety and
perfect workmanship, that epigram called for ; and these quali-
ties were precisely those in which the excellence of Simonides
consisted. And this may stand for our judgment on the poetry
of Simonides in general. The praise which we have accorded
to him all will admit to be deserved, and for abjudicating his

claims to genius we have the authority of Pindar (01. ii. 86),
■who, although he was a rival of Siinonides and spoke with
somewhat of the acerbity of rivalry, was likely, even if he struck
harder than a more impartial critic, not to strike at the wrong
place, but to detect more surely than any modern critic the
weak point in Simonides.
The low estimate formed by Pindar of Bacchylides has been
generally accepted. Bacchylides was the nephew of Simonides,
who probably initiated him into the service of the Muses. Like
Simonides, Bacchylides cultivated all kinds of lyric poetry, and
in all cases Bacchylides seems to have faithfully followed in the
footsteps of Simonides. Other choral lyric poets of this period
were Lasus of Hermione, who was cultivated by Hipparchus,
was devoted especially to the composition of dithyrambs, and
was said to have given instruction to Pindar ; Melanippides
the elder, Apollodorus of Athens, Tynnichus of Chalcis, Lam-
prokles, Kydias, Hybrias, and Diagoras.
CHAPTER VL
PINDAR.
Pindar was born b.c. 521 (less probably b.c. 517) in Cynos-
cephalae, a suburb of Thebes, and, appropriately enough in one
who was to sing of victories achieved in the national games of
Hellas, he was born in the month Munychion, during the cele-
bration ofthe Pythian games. He belonged to the illustrious
family of the ^Cgidse (Pyth. v. 72), who traced their pedigree
to tin; time of Cadmus, and counted distinguished branches in
Dorian lands as well as in Thebes. Thus by descent Pindar
was inclined to sympathise with Dorian and aristocratic ten-
dencies, while the connection of the iEgidae with the temples
and oracles of Greece may partly account for his cultivation of
the choral poetry that was devoted mainly to the worship of the
gods. In spite of the contempt which the Athenians had for
the Boeotians — " Boeotian swine" was one of the expressions
in which this contempt found vent — the Boeotians were neither
wholly excluded from refining influences by their depressing
climate, nor wholly destitute of native artists. The music of
the flute was cultivated with much success, and Pindar, though
by fax the greatest, was not the only poet whom Boeotia pro-
LYRIC POETKY : PINDAR. I7 I
duced. The existence of Pindar would of itself point to the

cultivation of music and choral poetry in Boeotia, if we knew
nothing more, as the knowledge of the position of some of the
stars possessed by some ancient nations proves their acquaintance
with a certain amount of mathematics, though these have left
no other trace. But we are not reduced to conjecture of this
sort in the present case. The earliest instruction given to
Pindar, and the earliest artists who fired his poetic instincts,
Avere Boeotian. His knowledge of the flute was derived from
Scopelinus, who is sometimes stated to have been his father,
sometimes his stepfather ; and from the poetesses Myrtis and
Corinna, Pindar learned something, though whether in the way
of instruction or rivalry is uncertain ; probably they aifected
him in both ways. There is a story that Corinna criticised his
early efforts adversely, on the ground that they displayed a
poverty of mythological content. This is a charge which can-
not justly be brought against those odes of his that we possess ;
and Corinna herself seems to have recognised this, for later
she warned him '• to sow with the hand and not with the
sack."
The earliest fact that we know with certainty in Pindar's
literary career is the composition of the tenth Pythian Ode,
which he wrote at the early age of twenty. The Pythian games,
which were one of the four national games of Hellas — the
Olympian, the Pythian, the Nemean, and the Isthmian — derived
their name from Pythius, an epithet of Apollo, given him in com-
memoration ofhis slaying the dragon Pytho. They were held
on the Crissaean plain in the neighbourhood of Delphi, the
oracle of Apollo. Originally the contests at this festival were
musical, and the subject of the nomes that were composed
for the contest was the praise of Apollo. In course of time
athletic games were added, in imitation of the Olympian games ;
but at all times the musical, literary, and artistic competitions
were the distinguishing feature of the Pythian, and excelled even
those of the Olympian games. Although athletic games were
added in imitation of the Olympian festival, the Amphictyons,
who had the management of the Pythia, did not slavishly con-
fine themselves to the programme of the Olympia, but introduced
events which the Olympians subsequently borrowed. Among
these contests was the double foot-race (diatdos) for boys, i.e. a
race to the end of the course (stadium) and back again — 440 yards.
It is in honour of Hippoeleas, who won this race in b.c. 502,
that Pindar composed the tenth of the Pythian Odes, which, like
the rest, are arranged not chronologically, but according to the
I7 2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
importance of the victory celebrated. That is to say, chariot or

horse races are ranked first, and then come boxing and wrestling
matches, the pancratia, and finally the foot races. Odes com-
posed in honour of a victor in the national games were sometimes
sung on the spot, but more frequently they were performed by
his friends on his return home. The celebration of the victory
was not merely a public, but also a religious ceremony, for thanks
were publicly paid to the gods for the honour which by their
favour the victor had won for the city. A solemn procession
•was made to the temple, thanks and a sacrifice were offered to
the gods, and the proceedings closed with a banquet. During
some part of the ceremony the triumphal ode, which some
friend of the victor engaged a poet to compose, was sung by a
chorus trained for the occasion. Sometimes the ode was sung
during the procession to the temple, but more frequently at the
banquet The tenth Pythian Ode, which was composed by
Pindar at the request of Thorax, one of the Aleuada?, who reigned
at Larissa, was probably sung at the banquet. The subjects
which Pindar had to treat of in this ode were, as we can see,
pretty well defined beforehand. Hippocleas, the victor, and
Thorax would naturally lie mentioned: and as they both belonged
to the family of the Aleuadse, some myth connected with that
family would naturally suggest itself. Again, as the father of
Hippocleas had himself won victories in the national games, the
fact would appropriately be referred to in a triumphal ode honour-
ing his son. Finally, the god Apollo, at whose festival the victory
had been won, would claim some verses from the poet. To these
necessary topics Pindar confines himself ; but in this, the first
of his triumphal odes, he already shows complete skill in inter-
weaving his subjects in such a manner that they seem to rise as
a series of pictures spontaneously to the poet's mind, and not to
be the ingenious mosaic of a professional writer of occasional
verse. The Aleuadae claimed to be descended from Heracles,
Avhose descendants ruled also in Lacedaemon; and with an allusion
to this connection between the two states — a connection of which
Thessaly would be proud to be reminded — Pindar opens the ode,
justifying this compliment to Thessaly on the ground that it is
of one of the Aleuadae, Hippocleas, the winner of the Diaulos,
that he is about to sing. To Apollo is due the praise for this
victory, as for the victories of Hippocleas' father at Olympia and
at the Pythia. Father and son have thus attained the greatest
happiness and pride which are possible for mortals : to do more,
to achieve such an exploit as to penetrate to the mysterious land
of the Hyperboreans, is only for the gods, or for such a hero as
LYRIC POETRY : PINDAR. I7 3
Purseus (an ancestor of Heracles and therefore of the Alenadael

aided by a god. Pindar then describes the happy race of Hyper-
boreans, who know neither sickness nor death, labour nor war,
but laugh, sing, dance, and carouse "with golden bay-leaves in
their hair." From this story of Perseus Pindar recalls himself
suddenly — for "his song of praise flitteth like a honey-bee from
tale to tale " 1 — as though he had been carried away by his verse ;
and, with a compliment to Thorax and the Aleuadse, who govern
the Thessalians well, he concludes.
Although Pindar received his earliest instruction in Thebes
from Scopelinus, Myrtis, and Corinna, he went to Athens to
learn more. There he found Apollodorus, Agathocles. and Lasus
of Hermione at work, and them he took as his masters. At
this early period of his life was laid the foundation of that
friendship which ever after existed between him and the
Athenian people, in spite of Pindar's Theban birth. This visit
to Athens probably had its influence on Pindar's style, as it
certainly had on his vocabulary, though we cannot trace it very
precisely.
The next fact which is known to us in Pindar's literary
career is the composition of the sixth Pythian Ode, at the age of
twenty-eight (B.C. 340). This ode commemorates the victory of
a chariot driven by Thrasybulus, to whose father, Xenocrates, the
brother of Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum, the chariot and horses
belonged, and who was consequently proclaimed as victor. The
ode is short, is addressed to Thrasybulus, and was probably sung
at Delphi ; for this ode, like the tenth, celebrates a Pythian
victory. It is indeed probable, seeing that the four earliest
odes by Pindar celebrate victories at the Pythia, the festival of
the god of Delphi, that Pindar's family connection with Delphi
determined the direction of his first' efforts to the celebration of
Pythian victories. The sixth Pythian Ode is short and simple
alike in style and composition ; this victory in the chariot race
has earned for Xenocrates a treasure of song which " neither
wind nor wintry rain-storm coming from strange lands, as a
fierce host born of the thunderous cloud, shall carry into tho
hiding-places of the sea." Thrasybulus, the son, and also the
charioteer of Xenocrates, has honoured his father ; and in his
filial piety he is like Antilochus, who, when his father's horses
were killed in the battle by Paris, ami his father, Nestor, was
being attacked by Memnon, bought his father's life by his own.
" These things are of the past," Pindar admits, "but of men
1 Throughout this chapter the quotations are from the admirable transla-
tion of Pindar by Mr. Ernest Myers (Macmillan, 1884).
that now are, Thrasybulus hath come nearest to our fathers'

In the same year (B.C. 494) that Xenocrates won the chariot
gauge."
race at the Pythian games, Midas of Akragas, for whom the
twelfth Pythian Ode was written, won the flute-playing match.
The same player was winner in the same contest in B.o. 490,
and it is uncertain for which victory the ode was composed.
The twelfth ode is shorter, and even more simple in structure,
than the sixth. It was probably sung during the procession
to the temple, for it contains only strophes and antistrophes ;
whereas those odes which contain also epodes were probably
sung at the banquet ; for it was customary for the chorus to
stand still during the singing of the epodes, a fact which would
seem to point to the conclusion that odes containing epodes
could hardly well be sung during a procession. The ode opens
with an appeal to the fair city of Akragas to welcome Midas,
who has beaten all Hellas " in the art which once on a time
Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce
Gorgon's death-lament." By means of this transition Pindar is
carried on to tell the story of Perseus, who penetrated to tho
dim mysterious country of the three Grey Sisters, robbed them
of the one eye which they possessed in common, and slew the
Gorgon Medusa, whose head even in death possessed the power of
changing to stone whatever it was turned on. Armed with the
Medusa's head, Perseus took vengeance on Polydectes, his mother's
oppressor. Tims Perseus, like Midas, achieved a victory ; but
(and, with this implied warning to Midas not to exult overmuch
in the moment of triumph, the ode closes) there shall be a
time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him
one thing beyond his hope, but another it shall bestow not yet.
In B.o. 490 Pindar wrote the seventh Pythian Ode to com-
memorate the victory of Megacles, the Athenian, in the chariot-
race. The ode is short, which is not strange, as it was sung at
Delphi on the evening of the victory ; and it is perfunctory.
Megacles belonged to the distinguished family of the Alcmseo-
nida;, who had contributed large sums to the rebuilding of the
temple of Delphi He had himself won many victories in the
various national games, and had been banished from Athens
twica Pindar touches very briefly on these topics, and dis-
misses the whole matter in a score of lines. The year B.C. 490,
the thirty-second of Pindar's life, was the date of something
more important even than victories in chariot-racing. It was
the year in which the Athenians defeated the Persians at Mara-
thon. On this great victory, however, Pindar at the time looked
LYRIC POETRY : PINDAR. I/ 5
with the sume eyes as his fellow-Thebans. Later, indeed, lie

came to understand the value of the services which Athens at
this time and in the second Persian war rendered to all Hellas ;
but at fisst he probably, like his fellow-citizens, only saw in the
battle of Marathon a victory for the state with which Thebes
was frequently at war, and for which she always entertained
feelings of hostility. With any victory won by the democracy
of Athens the aristocrats of Thebes could have but little sym-
pathy. Between the battle of Marathon, B.c. 490, and the
battle of Salamis, b.c. 480, there are only three odes written
by Pindar that are preserved. The tenth Olympian Ode was
written in honour of the victory of Agesidamus, an Epizephy-
rian Locrian in the boys' boxing-match, B.C. 484. The ode is
one of those which were composed and sung on the spot. It
is brief, and consists mainly of a promise to compose a more
elaborate work in the future. The promise was, after an un-
certain interval, and probably not before B.c. 476, redeemed in
the eleventh Olympian Ode. In the latter ode Pindar acknow-
ledges his debt, praises Agesidamus and his trainer, and says
(86-90), "Even as a son by his lawful wife is welcome to a
father, who hath now travelled to the other side of youth, and
maketh his soul warm with love — for wealth that must fall to a
strange owner from without is most bateful to a dying man —
so also, Agesidamus, when a man who hath done honourable
deeds goeth unsung to the house of Hades, this man hath spent
vain breath and won but brief gladness for his toil." But
Pindar's song is washed along as the rolling pebble is by the
wave, as he himself says (10), and from the victor in the Olym-
pian games the poet turns to the games themselves and tills
the mythical story of their institution. According to this
account, Heracles having been cheated of the reward promised
him by Augeas for cleansing his stables, proceeded to take
vengeance, and Augeas " saw his rich native land, his own city,
beneath fierce fire and iron blows sink down into the deep moat
of calamity." Augeas himself was slain. "Of strife against
stronger powers," says Pindar in one of the gnomes that he is
famous for, " it is hard to be rid." After his victory, Heracles
gathered together his host at Pisa, by the ancient tomb of Pelops,
made offerings from the spoil and held the first Olympian games.
The third ode, which falls between the battles of Marathon
and Salamis, is the fifth Nemean. It was composed in honour
of Pytheas of Êgina, winner in the boys' pankration at the
Nemean games. The kernel of the ode is the favour which
the gods showed to the .Êacidae, the patron heroes of ZBgina,
Having thus brought the victor into connection with the heroes
who before
select from the himmyths
brought glory towith
connected JEg'ma, Pindar proceeds
the iEacidie one whichto
was told of Peleus, the eldest of the sons of Êacus, and which
conveyed the moral lesson which is to be found in most of Pin-
dar's odes. The moral value of athletic training is the self-
control which it necessitates ; and the story which Pindar relates
of the continence of Peleus, and his reward in gaining Thetis
for his wife, evidently means that the self-control which Pytheas
had exercised as a boy, with the glorious reward of victory, was
equally necessary throughout life, and equally certain to meet
with a fitting return. Apart, however, from the myth and the
moral which constitute the substance of the ode, the introduc-
tion is interesting as showing the function of odes of victory in
Greek life. A triumph in the national games not only brought
honour and joy to the victor and to his city ; it was also a mark
of the favour of the gods, for it was by their goodwill alone so
great a glory could be bestowed. The commemoration, there-
fore, of this act of divine favour was a religious duty, and
claimed the services of the arts. Sculpture and poetry vied in
giving expression to this sentiment of obligation to the gods and
of public rejoicing. But poetry, Pindar says in the introduction
to this ode, has a wider rafige than sculpture, for poetry travels
everywhere. " No statuary I, that I should fashion images to
rest idly on their pedestals ; nay, but by every trading ship and
plying boat fortli from yEgina fare, sweet song of mine, and
bear abroad the news, how that Lampon's son, the strong-
1 imbed Pytheas, hath won at Nemea the pankratiast's crown,
while on his cheeks he showeth not as yet the vine-bloom's
mother, mellowing midsummer."
In the odes composed between the battles of Marathon and
Salamis no mention occurs of the services of Athens to Greece
in the Persian wars ; and it is probable that Pindar's Theban
feeling prevented him from recognising — what perhaps was not
then generally recognised — how great these services were. But
some time after the battle of Salamis — how long after, itisdiffi-
cult to say — he did realise the magnitude of the danger which
had been averted from Greece, and the pity of it that Thehes
had had no share in the glory of patriotic self-sacrifice. In the
seventh Isthmian Ode he alludes to the grief thus caused to
him: "I, albeit heavy at heart, am bidden to call upon the
golden Muse. Yea, since we are come forth from our sore
troubles, let us not fall into the desolation of crownlessness,
neither nurse our griefs ; but having ease from our ills that are
LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR. 1 77
past mending, we will set some pleasant thing before the people,
though it follow hard on pain : inasmuch as some god hath put
away from us the Tantalus-stone that hung above our heads, a
curse intolerable to Hellas."
At the time of the battle of Salamis, Pindar was about forty
years of age. He was then entering on the second period of his
literary career, and his reputation was spreading beyond the
seas to the farthest colonies of Greece. Even before this he had
received commissions from Sicily, and his name, and to a certain
extent his works, must have been known there. But now we
find him writing odes for the king of Cyrene, and for other in-
habitants ofthat distant colony. Indeed, it is inferred from these
odes that Pindar himself travelled to Cyrene. However this
may be, it seems beyond reasonable doubt that Pindar visited
Sicily, and stayed for a long time in the island. Of the forty-
four odes of victory which have come down to us, fourteen were
composed for Sicilian victors. With Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse,
Pindar seems to have been on terms of some intimacy. The
odes in his honour (0. 1, P. 1, 2, 3) reveal a close acquaintance
with the private affairs as well as the public policy of the tyrant.
But Pindar's acquaintance with Sicily was not confined to the
court of Syracuse ; he seems to have been known in Akragas
(0. 2. 3, P. 6. 12, I. 2), Camarina (0. 4. 5), and Himera (0.
12). Next to Sicily, JEgina fills the most important place in
Pindar's epinikia or odes of victory. One fourth of the odes
have to do with iEginetan victors ; and Pindar seems to have
had an especial affection for the place. He calls it "the com-
mon light of all, which aideth the stranger with justice ; " the
place "where saviour Themis, who sitteth in judgment by Zeus,
the stranger's succour, is honoured more than anywhere else
among men." "From the beginning is her fame perfect, for she
is sung of as the nurse of heroes, foremost in many games and in
violent fights ; and in her mortal men also is she pre-eminent."
"We find Pindar's odes also in Argos, Locris, Corinth, Orcho-
menus, Athens, and Thessaly ; and we may reasonably suppose
that the poet himself visited these places.
To this period of Pindar's literary career belongs the fourth
Pythian Ode. This is the finest of all the work of Pindar that
has come down to us. The ode is written in honour of the
victory gained in the Pythian chariot-race by Arkesilas, king of
Cyrene. The myth which forms the substance of the poem is
the tale of the expedition of Jason in the Argo in quest of the
golden fleece. The connection between the myth and Cyrene
is that Cyrene was said to have been colonised by the descen-
M
dants of Euphemus, one of the Argonauts. The ode appears to

have had another object than the ostensible one of celebrating
the victory of Arkesilas : it seems to have been designed either
to reconcile or to mark the reconciliation of Arkesilas with his
kinsman Demophilus. who had taken part in an unsuccessful
aristocratical rebellion, and had been exiled in consequence.
The ode is on a larger scale than is usual with Pindar; the
myth is much longer, and the introduction is proportionately
increased. The work is consequently not so close ; and as the
parts are exhibited in greater magnitude, their relation is more
easily discerned than in odes of greater condensation. The
narrative is exquisitely beautiful ; the scenes which succeed
each other in the history of the expedition are painted with all
the brilliancy of Pindar's opulent vocabulary, and with a dis-
tinctness and reality not surpassed by any other poet. The
simplicity of this ode is much assisted by the fact that Pindar
devotes himself purely to the business of narrating the myth ;
whereas in other odes he seeks to cast light on some central
idea from all points of view, and to do this he shifts his ground
with a rapidity which is dazzling, and before one myth has had
time to die away from the retina, as it were, of the mind's eye,
he throws on it another and yet another. The greater sim-
plicity of the ode, it should be remarked, is not confined to
the clearness of the narrative merely ; the metre is not of the
highly elaborate character to be found elsewhere in Pindar. It
approaches to the hexameter, as the tone of the narrative ap-
proaches the style of epic ; and we may conjecture with proba-
bility that the greater clearness of the narrative and the greater
simplicity of the metre point to a much less elaborate musical
accompaniment than was designed for the other odes.
The third period of Pindar's literary career extends from the
time when Ik; was sixty-five years of age to the date of his death.
When he died is uncertain. The tradition usually accepted
makes him to be eighty years of age at his death. All that
Ave know is that the fourth Olympian Ode was in all pro-
bability composed in B.C. 452, and we cannot be certain that
any of the odes we possess belong to a later date, although the
eighth Olympian is sometimes considered as having been com-
posed in B.C. 450. To the third period belong, in addition to
the two odes just mentioned, the. fifth and ninth Olympian
Odes and the sixth Isthmian. A decline of power is traced in
the odes of this period by .^>nie critics, but it is only to a slight
extent that Pindar falls below himself.
In addition to the collection of odes of victory that have sur
LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR. I 79
vived to our time, Pindar also wrote paeans, parthenia, prosodia

or processional songs, hymns, hyporchemata, encomia, drinking-
songs, dirges, and dithyrambs ; but although we possess frag-
ments of some of these, the fragments are inconsiderable. It
is, however, fortunate for the history of Greek literature that
we should have specimens of choral lyric such as the odes of
victory which have been preserved. They serve to show us the
connection of choral lyric with previous genres of poetry, and
its difference from the chorus of tragedy, and thus they ex-
hibit alink in the development of Greek literature which other-
wise would have been lost. As regards the connection with
earlier kinds of poetry, we may notice that choral lyric shows
that its roots are in epic poetry, not only by the epic •words
which we find in Pindar, and by the myths and legends which
he borrows from the epic poets, but essentially by the fact that
it possesses the element of narrative, which constitutes epic
poetry and is absent from personal lyrics. But under the term
"epic" poetry is included not only narratives such as those of
Homer and the Cyclic poets, but also the didactic poetry of
Hesiod and his school. With this class of epic also the choral
lyric of Pindar has points in common. As a rule, Pindar has a
moral lesson to teach even in his odes of victory, and thus he
reproduces the spirit and the characteristic of Hesiodic poetry.
The epic of Homer and of Hesiod was followed by the personal
lyrics of the iEolian poets, Alcaeus and Sappho, and in the
choral lyric of Pindar we find comprised the leading qualities
of personal lyrics as well as of epic and of didactic poetry.
Choral does indeed differ from personal lyric in the occasion
of its composition and production. The lyric poets of Lesbos
were not bound down by times and seasons, but gave expression
to their emotions as their emotions prompted them, whereas
the composer of choral lyric had to wait for a commission. But
the two kinds of lyric poetry have this in common, that in both
the poet appears in person, whereas in the Iliad or the Odyssey
the poet never brings himself before the reader. In Pindar
this self-consciousness is extreme. In virtue of his genius and
his divine gift of song, he feels himself the equal of princes;
and on the victor, great as victory makes him, he of his good-
will can confer a boon second only to victory itself. Thus, then,
the choral lyric of Pindar sums up in itself all that had gone
before in Greek poetry. We have now to see in what respect,
and why, choral lyric changed when it became incorporated in
the drama. In the lirst place, the element of narrative in this
kind of lyric was reduced to a minimum in the drama. Myths
are alluded to rather than narrated in the chorus of tragedy;

and the reason is obvious. Narrative in the drama found its
place in the speeches of the messengers or other subordinate
characters, who in all, or nearly all Greek tragedies, relate the
events which, for one reason or another, could not be performed
upon the stage. In the next place, choral lyric in becoming
the chorus of tragedy lost its personal character. We cannot
look to the chorus for the personal views of a Greek tragedian
on the moral or other problems raised in his play. The drama-
tist holds up these problems for investigation in all kinds of
lights, from the point of view first of one character, then of
another. But his own personal view need never find direct
expression ; and frequently the chorus simply sums up the
action of the play, so far as it has proceeded, and does not
express any opinion thereon, or at the most reflects the feel-
ings which the audience may be expected to experience. In
fine, the difference between choral lyric and the chorus of
tragedy is partly of degree, partly of kind. In degree, because
narrative is minimised; in kind, because the opinions expressed
are not professedly the poet's. In one respect, however, choral
lyric underwent no change when incorporated into the drama.
It still remained highly musical In the tragic chorus, as in
choral lyric, the musical accompaniment was at least as impor-
tant as the words. In both, the function of the words seems to
have been, not so much to present a logical series of definite
ideas, as to evoke a series of emotions, and to pass before the
mind's eye bright and beautiful or impressive images, which
succeeded each other too rapidly for analysis, but not too rapidly
to produce the feeling designed by the poet.
If, now. in conclusion, we must say a word of Pindar's quality
as a poet, it will be to point out that it is in the special func-
tion, as just described, of choral lyric that his special excellence
consists. Image after image is presented by him to our eyes:
from this point and from that, and from yet another, light of
the brightest is thrown on the point which he wishes to illumine.
To endeavour to discriminate between the effects which thus
rapidly succeed each other is to lose the total impression which
the whole is intended to convey. Doubtless there always was
a thread running through all the ideas contained in an ode;
and in many cases the thread by diligent study can even now
be distinguished ; but it seems improbable that the audience,
whose attention was claimed by the music as well as the words,
either were able or were expected by Pindar to analyse logically
the ode as they heard it. The ideas and emotions aroused in
LYRIC POETRY : PINDAR. I8 I
the audience Avere as satisfactory, but probably not more definite,

than those aroused by music. The two chief qualities of Pin-
dar's poetry are rapidity and radiance. In his desire to illus-
trate his thought from every point of view, he not only flashes
from one illustration to another before the mind of the hearer
has wholly taken in the force of the first; but within a single
sentence he fuses two conceptions, whose joint effect is more
rapid and more dazzling than that which would be produced by
their separate enunciation. As for the radiance of his poetry,
it is seen not only in his fondness for epithets of brightness and
effulgence, but in the vividness and persistency with which the
images of the persons and things described by him remain on
the mind's eye ; and we cannot conclude better than by quoting
from the fourth Pythian as an illustration the description of
Jason : " So in the fulness of time he came, wielding two
spears, a wondrous man ; and the vesture that was upon him
was twofold, the garb of the Magnetos' country close fitting to
his splendid limbs, but above he wore leopard-skin to turn the
hissing showers ; nor were the bright locks of his hair shorn
from him, but over all his back ran rippling down. Swiftly he
went straight on, and took his stand, making trial of his daunt-
less soul, in the market-place when the multitude was full."
Connected with Pindar are the names of Myitis and Corinna.
The former is said to have been born at Anthedon in Bceotia.
We should not even know that she composed lyric poetry, were
it not that Corinna has recorded the fact that she competed
against Pindar. Corinna, born in Tanagra, is said, like Pindar,
to have been taught by Myrtis. She too competed against
Pindar, and is said to have five times defeated him for the
prize — a result which Pausanias conjectures to have been due
to the fact that she composed in the local dialect, while Pindar
employed Doric. Here we may mention the name of some
other poetesses. Telesilla of Argos, who lived at the end of the
sixth century B.C., not only composed verses, but took up arms
against the Spartans when they invaded Argos under Cleomenes.
Praxilla of Sicyon, who flourished about B.C. 450, composed
dithyrambs, lyric poetry, a small epic, gave her name to two
kinds of metre, and was especially distinguished for lrr drink-
ing-songs or skolia, which were extremely popular in Athens.
Clitagora flourished between B.C. 560 and b.c. 527, and was
famous for a skolion she composed. Other poetesses, whoso
dates are unknown, and who may or may not belong to the
classical period, are Charixena, Eriphanis, Salpe, Myia, Clito,
Learchis, Menarchis, Telarchis, Mystis, Praxigoris, and Arignote.
"With Pindar choral lyric reached its highest development ;

after him not only was there no poet, except Bacchylides, who
cultivated all kinds of lyric poetry, hut many kinds, e.g. par-
thenia, prosodia, hy porch emata, ceased to be cultivated at all,
while others, such as paeans and hymns, were comparatively
neglected. Dithyrambs alone continued to be cultivated, but
in such a way as shows that the period of choral lyric is past.
Pindar had allowed the musical accompaniment quite its full
importance, but the dithyrambic poets of the next generation
made the music of more importance than the words. The
clearest sign of the decay of choral lyric is the fact that the
dithyramb was no longer true to its type, but sought to produce
effects by means properly peculiar to a distinct branch of art,
the drama ; just as the decay of the drama was indicated by the
tendency to oratorical effects in the plays of Euripides. The
symptoms of decay in the dithyramb were first noticeable in
Melanippides of Melos, in Democritus of Chios and Crexus,
contemporaries of Pindar. During the Peloponnesian war, the
most celebrated composer of dithyrambs was the younger Mela-
nippides, who bought Philoxenus of Cythera as a slave, taught
him lyric, and saw him achieve success in dithyrambs. Con-
temporary with the younger Melanippides was Plirynis of Myti-
lene in Lesbos, who gained victories in the dithyramb contests
at the Panathenaea. After Melanippides, Cinesias became tho
favourite dithyramb writer at Athens, and was much attacked
by the comedians. Cinesias was succeeded by Timotheus of
Miletus, who visited the court of Archelaus in Macedonia, but
spent most of his time in Athens. He seems to have possessed
greater talent than any of these later dithyrambic poets. To
Athens also were attracted Polyeidus, Kekeides, Licymnius of
Chios, Telestes of Selinus, Ariphron of Sicyon, Anaxandrides
of Kaneiros, Theodoridas of Syracuse and Argas, who all com-
peted at various times for the dithyramb prize.
BOOK III.
THE DRAMA.
CHAPTER L
EARLY TRAGEDY.
"Both tragedy and comedy were originally improvisations.

The former had its origin with the choir-masters of the dithy-
ramb, the latter with those of the phallic hymns, which even
now in many cities remain in use. Tragedy gradually advanced
by such successive improvements as were most obvious, and,
after many changes, reposed at length when it had acquired its
proper form. The number of actors iEschylus first advanced
from one to two ; he abridged the chorus, and gave the dialogue
the principal role. Sophocles introduced three actors and stage
decorations. Further, the originally short fables acquired a
proper magnitude, and the number of episodes was increased.
As tragedy developed from the satyric drama, it was late before
it threw off comic language and assumed its proper dignity.
Iambics displaced trochaic tetrameters ; for originally trochaius
were used because tragedy, like the satyric drama, was com-
posed for dancing. But when dialogue was introduced, nature
pointed out the appropriate metre; for of all metres the iambic
is the most colloquial."
This is what Aristotle says l of the origin and early history
of the drama, and it is almost all we know on the subject.
From this it would seem that in the earliest stage of tragedy,
the author of the dithyramb, who was also the choir-master,
during a pause between one part of the dithyramb and the next,
came forward and improvised a short story, relating probably
to some adventure of the god Dionysus, in whose honour the
dithyramb was being performed. This story was told in trochaic
verse, contained much that was comic, involved a good deal of
1 Poetics, 4. 11-14.
dancing, and was accompanied by music. At first the choir-

master appeared only once during the dithyramb in his charac-
ter of improvisatore, but in course of time such " episodes "
became more numerous. At first, too, the poet simply recited
his story, probably to the accompaniment of sympathetic and
explanatory gestures, and dancing on the part of the satyr-
chorus, which had come to be associated with the dithyramb.
Even thus the actor might, by retiring during the dithyramb
and changing his dress, appear at several times in various cha-
racters, e.g. as a hero reciting what he had done, or as a mes-
senger reciting what had been done, and thus produce an effect
not unlike that of a whole play. But it could not have been
long before the poet conceived the idea of addressing himself to
and provoking replies from the chorus ; thus dialogue naturally
arose, and when it did, the metre naturally changed from tro-
chaics to iambics.
It will be noticed that Aristotle in his account of the origin
of tragedy does not mention Thespis, to whom the introduction
of an actor, and consequently the "invention" of tragedy, is
usually ascribed.1 Whether Aristotle was acquainted with this
view and (as in that case his silence Avould show) tacitly rejected
it, or whether the view only originated after Aristotle's time, is
hard to say. The earliest reference to it that we have is in the
pseudo-Platonic Minos, which was not composed until after the
death of Aristotle. There 2 we have the. statement that " tra-
gedy did not, as people think, originate with Thespis or Phry-
nichus," which implies that some people at the time of the
Avriting of the Minos ascribed the invention of tragedy to
Thespis. But if the evidence in the possession of Aristotle
did not lead him to ascribe the introduction of an actor, and
subsequently of dialogue, to Thespis, we may infer that the
claims made for Thespis had no strong basis; in which inference
we are confirmed by a passage in the grammarian Pollux,3 which
expressly mentions the existence of dialogue before Thespis.
The ascription of the "invention" of tragedy to Thespis was
1 Horace, A.P. 285 :—
"Ignotum tragicse genus invenisse Camoenw
Dicitur, et plaustris vezisse poemata Thespis,
Quae canerent agerentque peruncti fajcibus ora."
The " waggons" belong to the early history of comedy, which Horace mixet
up with that of tragedy.
2 32 1 A, t) 5t rpayipSla iarl iraXatbv ivddSe, o!>x ws otovrai dxd QtffviSos dp-
£a/j.ii>r), ov8 dirb 'Ppwlxov.
3 iv. 123, Aeds 5' ty rpAirffy apxaia e<p' ty *7>o O^ririSos eh Tts avafiat
reus xoptiTah direKpivaro.
THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. 18 5
probably due to tbe difficulty which the Greeks had in under-

standing the action of a process, and their consequent tendency
to ascribe all things to the intentional action of persons. All
good laws were at Athens ascribed to Solon ; the constitution
of Sparta, the result of a process of external pressure operating
during many generations, was ascribed to Lycurgus ; and so the
invention of tragedy was ascribed to Thespis. Thespis must
have rendered considerable services to tragedy to have been
credited with its invention, but what these services were we
do not know. The orator Themistius l (who lived at Constan-
tinople and flourished about a.d. 360) refers to Aristotle as say-
ing that Thespis invented prologue and rhesis ; but no such
passage occurs in the Poetics, and although possibly Themistius
may be referring to some now lost work of Aristotle, e.g. that
On Poets, it is more probable that here, as elsewhere, he is in-
accurate, and that the quotation does not come from Aristotle.
In any case, it is difficult to know what the statement means;
for although Thespis may have been the first poet who appeared
before the audience before the dithyramb began, and thus may
be said to have invented the prologue, the statement that he
invented the rhesis (i.e. a long passage of iambics delivered
by the actor, and spoken, not sung) is hard to understand. If
it refers to the improvised recitations of the earliest choir-
masters, orif it refers to the subsequent introduction of spoken
iambics in the place of the melic trochaics, it is hard to recon-
cile with the passage quoted above from the Poetics, which does
not ascribe either invention to Thespis.
The character of the drama of Thespis must be inferred from
the fact that it was neither tragedy nor satyric drama, but the
common ancestor from which both these forms of dramatic
representation were shortly to be evolved. The chorus con-
sisted of satyrs,2 but the argument of the play was not therefore
always merry.3 The Pentheus, from its title, could hardly have
been anything but tragic, and the fact that tragedy was de-
scended from the drama of Thespis implies that it contained
the elements of tragedy.
Pratinas of Phlius (b.c. 500) is said to have invented the
1 xx vi. 3 i6d, oil irpoaexov-t" 'A-piffroreXti Sri . . . Q(<nris irpoXoyov re
Kal f>ij<Tiv eêvpev.
2 The fact, however, that Pratinas is said to have invented the s:it\ic
drama may imply that Thespis gave up the chorus of satyrs, and that PratuiRS
reintroduced them.
3 Bentley (Opusctda, 285) thought otherwise. But the view given in the
text is also taken by Dahlmann (Prinmrdui, 8), Jacob (Quasi. Soph. [13),
Schneider [Oriyin. T. O. 54), Welcker (NaclU. 256), and Hermann (Opusc.
vii. 2 1 3).
satyric drama, and his fame as a writer of this kind of play

survived till the time of Pausanias. Of him we have no fur-
ther information, but we may consider that after his time
tragedy was distinguished from the satyric drama, and that
the chorus of satyrs was confined to the latter kind of play,
while to tragedy were appropriated the more dignified qualities
now associated with it.
Satyric drama resembled tragedy, inasmuch as its figures were
those of tragedy, and their characters were drawn with much
the sama majesty and in the same outlines as those of tragedy.
But the subjects of the satyric drama were either of a lighter
kind, dealing with love and wine, in order to be in keeping
Avith the chorus of satyrs, or, if deeds of blood were introduced,
they were, like the blinding of Polyphemus, such as would
rather enliven than sadden the audience. Again, the centre of
a Greek drama was the chorus, and the character of the chorus
determined the character of the play. As the traditional con-
ception of the satyrs was that of an idle and mischievous race,
it would be obviously out of place to expect from such a chorus
any serious reflections, or through such a chorus any of the
poet's profounder speculations. Between the satyric chorus
anil the hero there could be no confidences, or only those of
a nature adapted to the character of the satyrs. The satyric
drama proper, with its playful chorus, its comic Silenus, and
cheerful termination, was unlike tragedy in many respects, but
it was also unlike comedy. The scene of a satyric drama was
always laid in the country, to suit the satyr-chorus. Its inci-
dents were often grave, and it was broadly distinguished from
comedy by containing nothing which approached to parody.
The only satyric drama which has come down to us is the
Cyclops by Euripides. The subject of the play is, as the name
indicates, the blinding of Polyphemus, the Cyclops, by Odysseus.
The scene in which Polyphemus is made drunk by Odyaseua
before being blinded is amusing, though rather long, and the
character of Silenus and of the satyrs is also amusing. But the
humour is throughout quiet and somewhat suppressed, so we
are inclined to believe that this is not a good specimen of the
satyric drama. The little information which ancient writers
give us on the satyric dramas of iEschylus and Sophocles leads
to the inference that their plays, in this kind, were much
more boisterous, contained more horse-play, and were somewhat
coarse.
Pratinas is sometimes said to have invented the satyric
drama. This, however, must not be taken to mean that he
THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. I87
was tlie first dramatist to introduce a chorus of satyrs into a

play. The tradition of antiquity represents the satyr-drama of
Pratinas rather as the revival of an older than the introduc-
tion of a more advanced form of drama. Of satyric drama,
however, as a play which was attached to a tragedy or tragedies,
and could not he performed independently, Pratinas may he
regarded as the inventor. Pratinas competed with iEschylus
and Choerilus in B.c. 500, and his son Aristias, who produced
some of his father's satyr-dramas, was second to iEschylus in
the competition of B.C. 468. According to Pausanias, iEschylus
alone wrote hetter satyr-dramas than Pratinas and Aristias.
Put, to return to tragedy, Phrynichus, the tragic poet (d.c.
500), was a man of greater mark. Here we have a man whose
boldness and originality were such that they betray themselves
even in the very few facts known to us about him, and to
whose originality Greek tragedy very probably owed much of
the progress it made before the time of iEschylus. He ventured
not only to abandon the myths connected with Dionysus, but
to abandon myths altogether, and to take for the subjects of
at least some of his plays historical events. In one of his
tragedies entitled the Taking of Miletus, he so painfully affected
his audience that (according to Herodotus) the Athenians in-
flicted afine on him for reminding them so vividly of the mis-
fortunes ofa friendly state.
Subsequently he was more fortunate. He selected the defeat
of the Persians as the subject of his Phenician Women. Plu-
tarch says, on the authority of an inscription, that Phrynichus
won the tragic prize in B.C. 476, and that Themistocles was his
choregus. This it has been supposed was the occasion on which
the Phenician Women was produced, and it is not impossible.
Be this as it may, Phrynichus' treatment of the subject shows
genuine artistic power. The chorus consisted of Phenician
women,1 and the scene was laid in Persia. Phrynichus thus
avoided the dangers that would have attended any attempt to
represent on the stage events at which many of his audience
1 Inasmuch, however, as ol rrjs apxv* Trapedpoi probably appeared in tins
play, it has been inferred that Phrynichus subdivided the chorus, and had,
in fact, two choruses, one of Phenician women, the other of Persian elders.
That the chorus consisted, in Phrynichus' time, of fifty choreutc (the num-
ber of Arion's cyclian dithyrambic chorus) is inferred from the fact that 01 e
of his plays was entitled the Danaides, whose traditional number was fifty.
From these two inferences we may further gather that it w.i^ to this sub-
division that the reduction of the number of the ehoreutte to twelve (the
number in Êschylus) was due. It has also been conjectured that the reduc-
tion is connected with the introduction of the tetralogy, the chorus of fifty
being divided between the four plays.
had probably been present, while he invested those events with

the poetry and interest attaching to a representation conceived
from a new and impressive point of view. By introducing the
news of the Persian defeat at an early period in the play, he
lost the interest of expectation which might have pervaded the
tragedy ; but this was due rather to the undeveloped state of
the drama in his time than to any fault of the author.
Removed as he was so little from the dithyrambic origin of
tragedy, it was natural that Phrynichus should display more
command of the lyric element than of the economy of the
drama. Accordingly the Phenician lVome.n consisted mainly of
lamentations over the Persian defeat, uttered probably by Atossa
and Xerxes. The audience were agreeably and delicately flat-
tered, and the poet gained an opportunity of displaying his pecu-
liar powers.
It is a tribute to the genius of Phrynichus that iEschylus,
when he subsequently took up the same subject in his Persians,
adhered in several important points to the treatment of his
predecessor. It is also interesting to notice that in the Phe-
nician Women we observe the counter-influence of iEschylus
on Phrynichus. The elder poet in this play avails himself of
his junior's innovation by introducing a second actor. This
must have conduced to freedom in the action of the play,
though precisely to what extent it did so we are not in a
position to infer.
But Phrynichus not only availed himself of the innovations
of others, he was himself an innovator. He not only developed
the music and the dances ' of the drama, but also introduced for
the first time female characters on the stage. He did this not
only in the Phenician Women, but also (as is indicated by the
titles of the plays) in the Women of Pleuron, the Daughters
of Danati8, and the Alcestis.
After B.c. 476 we hear no more of Phrynichus, and the earli-
est date at which he is mentioned as winning the tragic prize is
n.c. 511. His contemporary, Chocrilus, is said to have appeared
before the public as early as B.C. 524, and to have lived to a
great age. We are not able, however, to assign to him any
share in the development of tragedy (though he is said to have
done something for the costumes of the actors),2 or to form any
opinion of his merits as a dramatist3
1 Tlius in the Jlvp'pixai the chorus probably danced an intricate sort of
Bwonl-ihiiK'n. ^ n
2 Kara rivas tois irpoaonriiois «ai T-jj ffKtvrj rQiv otoKuiv tirexeiptjae. —
Bnidas ». r. X.
3 l'liotius (Patriarch of Constantinople about A.D. 850) quotes a verse
I89
THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY.
APPENDIX TO CHAPTER I.
METRE, DIALECT, AND DIVISIONS OF TRAGEDY.
Although the draîa had its origin the emotions of the speakers. The
in the choral songs in honour of disposition of the verses shows the
Dionysus, the essence of drama is same growing tendency to lightness
the dialogue. In that early stage and rapidity of action. Set speeches
of the drama, when tragedy and the of any considerable length must re-
satyric drama were not yet diffe- tard the movement of a play ; but
rentiated, and when consequently the conflict of wills, which is the
tragedy proper was not yet marked basis of all tragedy, demands for its
by the statnliness which after- adequate representation a duel of
wards characterised it, the metre of words, in which the thrust and-
the dialogue was the trochaic tetra- parry of argument follow on each
meter. With the separation, how- other with the rapidity of foils in
ever, of the satyric element from a fencing-match. Hence the prac-
tragedy there came a change in the tice, common to all the tragedians
metre of the dialogue. Trochaics but less frequent in Êschylus than
were probably still the form into in his predecessors, of stichomuthia,
which the lively dialogue of the or dialogues in which each speech
satyrs was thrown : buf for the consists of one line only. Hence,
dialogue of tragedy the iambic tri- too, the further process (of which
meter was perceived to be the ap- only two instances are to be iound
propriate expression. Iambics are in iEschylus, Sept. 217 and P. V.
the verses into which the conver- 980) of dividing a single line be-
sation of real life most frequently tween two or even three characters
unintentionally fall, and iambics (the portions of a line thus divided
were the verses into which the con- received, by a metaphor from wrest-
versation of tragedy was instinc- ling, the name avrtXapai). Finally
tively thrown. The tendency to may be here mentioned the recur-
model the dialogue of tragedy on rence of interjections outside the
that of life, which displayed itself verse altogether, a device adapted
thus early, continued to develop lor the expression of outbursts of
steadily throughout the history of feeling, which is more frequent in
tragedy. It shows itself partly in Euripides than in Sophocles, and
the metrical constitution of the in Sophocles than in jEsehylus.
verse, and partly in the disposition Vivacity and rapidity were not
of the verses. Of all the tragedians, all that was aimed at in the dispo-
iEschylus observed the strictest sition of the iambics of tragedy.
rules of versification, and his suc- Symmetry also was sought after ;
cessors worked with greater free- and as the antistrophe of a chorus
dom, admitting, e<j., with increas- corresponds to the strophe, so the
ing frequency divisions which he iambics which stand connected with
avoided. The iambic verse thus, the chorus not un frequently corre-
although it grew laxer, came to pos- spond in number. Hence toe prac-
sess more variety and more move- tice of symmetrical disposition ex-
ment, and to reflect more directly tended to speeches which stand in
from an unknown poet, 7)vIko. /j.ev /3a<Ti\eus Jjv ~Koipi\os 4p aarvpots (iii. 32),
•which is sometimes taken to mean that Ohosrilus excelled in satyric drama.
But the passage is obscure, and, if it were intelligible, not kuowing who was
the author, we should not know what value to put on the verse as evidence.
do connection with the chorus ; and, the chorus became not only re-
especially in Euripides, we find that duced in length, but less carefully
in the set speeches of two contend- composed and less wealthy in variety
of metres.
ing persons, the number of lines in The ode which the chorus sang
the reply corresponds exactly to
when it first entered was called the
that of the speech to which it is an
answer. Parodos (Pollux, iv. 108, r\ p.kv etaooot
The dialect of the chorus is not Tov xopov irdpooos Ka\e7rai). Origi-
real hut conventional Doric, because nally itwas prefaced by some ana-
the choral odes were originally paests delivered by the Coryphaeus
Doric dithyrambs, and the various or leader of the chorus as it marched
kinds of literary composition tended in. Then the melic part was sung
in Greece to adhere to the dialect by the whole chorus grouped round
in which they were first composed. the altar or thymele in the middle
It is in the history of the chorus of the orchestra. After that, the
that we find the explanation of its chorus took its proper place between
dialect ; and there, too, we find the the thymele and the stage. This
explanation of its metres. The dated from the time before tragedy,
chorus originated in the worship of when the dithyramb was sung
Dionysus, and thus it inherited and round the altar of Dionysus in
transmitted to tragedy the nume- honour of the god. But in course
rous kinds of metre which the inof time the anapaests were dropped,
genuity of poets and the approval and a piece of music substituted in
of the people had stamped as pecu- their place. The chorus marched
liarly adapted for expressing the straight to its place in the orchestra,
various emotions roused by the and there — not round the altar —
worship of the wine-god. Hymns sang the strophe and antistrophc of
of praise, processional songs, strains which the melic was composed. In
of exaltation or lamentation, had the Persians, the Suppliants, and
the Rliesus. the play opens with the
provided for tragedy various metri-
cal systems, the dactylic, anapaes- parodos ; but in all the other plays
tic, trochaic, iambic, i am bo -trochaic, we possess, the parodos is preceded
choriainbic, logacedic, and cretic. by a speech or speeches from one or
These metres tragedy worked out more of the actors, which speech or
in its own way, developing some speeches are called the Prologue.
and neglecting others. Trochaic The introduction of a prologue is
strophes, simple in structure and ascribed to Thespis in a passage
profound in their effect upon the professing to be quoted from Aris-
feelings, gave way, as tragedy de- totle (Themistius, xxvi. p. 382. 17,
veloped its own style, before iambic ou Trpoctx0^" TV 'A/wrortXet 5ti t6
strophes, which adapt themselves fi.ei> irpGirov 6 x°P^ 5efttftwv fjoev «'r
more speedily to sudden changes of tous Oeovs, Qtffnis irp6\oyov re
feeling. A still further result of teal prjaiv ii-ivpti'). In the Ajax,
the tendency thus shown was the in- the Alcestu, and the Helena, the
troduction—probably bEuripides
y chorus leaves the theatre in the
— of iambo-trochaics, and the culti- middle of the play (e.<j. in order
vation of logacedic verses largely that Ajax may kill himself) ;
to the exclusion of other metres. Dtry was called Kpiparodos
But although some metres were (I'ollux, iv. 10S, 7] 8e Kara xPei-a"
thus specially cultivated by the J£o5os il'j ird\tv eicrwvTwv nerdara-
tragedians the chorus was all the as, i} be fxera. TavT-qv tlooSos iwnrd-
time declining in importance and
i way before the development The other songs of the chorus
po5o%).
of the essentially dramatic elements were called Stasima, because they
of the drama. Thus the lyrics of were sung by the chorus, not
THE DRAMA : EARLY TRAGEDY. I9I
/whilst entering or at the altar, hut in the commos to have a share in

when standing in its usual place the lyrics, it was inevitable that it
in the orchestra. The number of should encroach ; and the result
stasima was usually four, thus was the songs from the stage, which
dividing the play into five parts. were lyrics sung by the actor8
Three of these parts were called alone, either by several (ra &/io3ala)
Episodes, i.e. the three which were or by one, solo (fiovySia). Eventu-
both preceded and followed by a ally the songs from the stage be-
stasimon, for the prologue and the came, as lyrics, more important
exodos were not called episodes. even than the chorus, and Euri-
The name " episode " goes back to pides carried the composition of
the time when an actor was intro- monodies to its greatest height.
duced to give the chorus breathing- The musical instrument used in
time. The chorus first made its the theatre was the flute ; not so
entrance, elaoSos, sang its dithy- much, as is sometimes said, because
ramb, and then the actor made the penetrating notes o( this instru-
his appearance, itrtLabfaov. Thence ment were needed if the music was
the name episode was extended to to be heard all over the theatre,
all that occurred between two but probably because of the tradi-
stasima. Normally the stasimon tional connection of the flute with
summarises and comments on that ecstatic worship, such, e.g. as that
part of the action of the play which of Cybele, in connection with which
precedes it, but in Euripides it the Greeks made their first ac-
frequently bears no relation to it : quaintance with the flute. There
the chorus has become as foreign seem to be no grounds for thinking
to the drama as the actor originally that the iambic trimeter of tragedy
was to the dithyramb. or of comedy was delivered in a sort
We have considered those parts of recitative to the accompaniment
of a Greek tragedy which are pecu- of the flute ; nor is there any evi-
liar to the chorus, and those which dence that the trochaic tetrameter
are peculiar to the actors : we now was accompanied in tragedy, though
have to examine those which arise perhaps it was in comedy. How
from communication between the the anapaests were delivered is un-
chorus and the actors. With re- certain. When they formed part
spect to ordinary dialogue between of the parodos of tragedy they must
an actor and the leader of the have been sung, and perhaps were
chorus, there is nothing to add to always sung. On the other hand,
what we have said as to dialogue when they were used conversation-
between the actors : it is in iambics ally in comedy, they must have
and in conventional old Attic. But
been spoken.
when the actors enter into the The lines of the dramatic poet,
melic {i.e. the part sung) of the however, were accompanied not
tragedy, there arise new divisions only by music but also by dancing.
of the play. First we have the With the vivacity of the Southern
Commos : the coin in os is a lyric of temperament, the Greeks found
lamentation. In metre and dialect dancing rs natural an outlet for the
it resembles the other lyrics of the feelings as song, and before the
chorus, but it differs from them in drama rose there existed a largo
that, as the actors take part in it, number o' dances of the most vari-
it is dramatic. The stasima ac- ous kinds. Many of these were
company, the commi partake in adopted by the drama, and modified
the action of the play. Next we by it to its own requirements.
have the songs from the stage (tA These varied in character from the
airb 7-775 ffKrjvrjs). When once the emuieloia, the most stately of the
dramatic element had been allowed dances in tragedy, to the indecent
cordax of comedy. To associate by the movements and the grouping

dancing with tragedy is hard for of the choreutae, would naturally
us at the present time ; but we among the Greeks tend to take
may understand it if we reflect that harmonious and recurring forms,
the chorus (luring the action of the and thus be "dancing." In this
play could not stand cold and im- respect, as in others, less and less
passive, but must by some byplay attention was paid to the chorus as
have expressed the feelings sup- the drama developed. Pratinasand
posed to be aroused by the events Phrynichus made much more of
of the drama ; and this expression the dances of the chorus than did
of feeling by gesture and attitude, Sophocles and Euripides.
CHAPTEE II.
iESCHYLDS.
The facts of iEschylus' life which are known to us are unfor-

tunately insignificant, alike in number and in meaning. They
tell us little of his mental growth or of his artistic development.
He was born B.C. 525 and died B.c. 456. These dates imply
that the whole of the mature life of iEschylus fell in the period
of the Persian wars, and so came under the influence of all the
feelings which the great events of that period caused or inten-
sified among the Greeks. Before these wars the Greeks were
conscious that they were one people. Their community of
language, customs, and religion was an internal force and co-
hesion which resulted in a Pan-Hellenic sentiment. But the
consciousness of unity thus generated might have remained
sterile had not hostile pressure by the Persian power brought it
into operation, and converted the mere barren consciousness into
a sentiment of Pan-Hellenism fruitful both in the world of
action and the world of thought. In later times, as the fear of
the Persian passed away, the feeling of Pan-Hellenism again
ceased to be operative. But /Eschvlus was exposed to the full
strength of the sentiment, and bis view of things was much
influenced by it. He was exposed to it not merely as a Greek,
but as a citizen of that state in which the feeling was deepest.
Athens profited by the sentiment of nationality among the
Greeks at this time, not because she was looked upon, as was
Sparta, as the head of the Greeks, but in that she made sacrifices
for the common interests and the liberty of Hellas unparalleled in
Greek history. Also iEschylus' interest in the public events of
his time was not merely that of a spectator — philosophical or
political — or that of a historian, but that of an actor. He fought
THE DRAMA ! .ESCHYLUS. 19 3
■with conspicuous courage at Marathon, at Platsea, and at Salamis.

As one of those Athenians who were said (inaccurately) to be the
first Greeks that dared to even look upon the Persians, he had
risked his life at Marathon and had sacrificed his home before
Salamis, and had thereby shown that he, like his fellow-citizens,
felt and was proud of his nationality as a Hellene. And he shows
in his poetry the eifect which the overthrow of the Persian
had upon his religious views. To all Greeks the hand of the
gods was clearly visible in the Persian defeat. To Herodotus it
was only the greatest of many instances of the Nemesis which
visited the too-powerful. To /Eschylus it was a confirmation
of the awful might of the gods and the nothingness of the
mightiest of men. That the gods showed their strength at
Marathon and at Salamis was a national conviction, of which
iEschylus, least of all men, could escape the effects. Eorn at
Eleusis, he must from his earliest years have been moved by
the mysterious processions he beheld there, and still more by
the mystery of the rites which he was not yet permitted to see.
Sprung, too, of a noble family which was connected with the
celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, he must have felt the
effect of family traditions fitted to develop his speculations on
the might and majesty of the gods. That his family was noble
and had taken an energetic part in politics, and that his brother
met a glorious death at Marathon, are facts which go to account
for the bold and powerful character of the poet, but otherwise
throw no light on his life or work.
JEschylus died in Sicily, but whether he paid only one visit
or more to that island, there is no evidence to show. If, as is
assumed with some probability, he went there at the invitation
of Hiero, this must have happened before Hiero's death in B.C.
467. But as he lived eleven years longer, and during this
period several of his plays were produced on the Athenian stage,
it has been supposed that he made at least two, perhaps three,
journeys to Sicily. AVe do not know, however, that it was at
Hiero's invitation he went to Sicily ; while, if Aristophanes
could get his comedies produced by friends, perhaps the tra-
gedies of Êschylus could also be put on the stage in the author's
absence. That .Eschylus composed a play, the Women of
Êtua, in celebration of, or suggested by, the foundation of the
town iEtna in bo. 476, leaves it quite unsettled whether he
was in Sicily immediately after that date ; nor does the pro-
phecy in the Prometheus Bound (372) of an eruption of yEtna
prove that he witnessed the eruption of B.C. 475 (or perhaps
B.c. 479). And although the poet's evident familiarity N with
fishing seems to indicate familiarity with the sea, we are not

thereby warranted in assuming, as is sometimes done, that he
went three times to Sicily.
More interesting are the speculations as to the cause of the
poet's going to Sicily. It has been generally assumed that he
did not leave Athens willingly, and explanations, some dis-
creditable to the Athenians, some discreditable to .^schylus,
have been put forward in ancient, and accepted in modern
times, but all without evidence. Some casual words of Aris-
totle (N. E. III. ii.) make it probable that lie was accused of
revealing certain of the. religious mysteries. How the accusa-
tion was made, and what was the issue, are alike unknown, and
that it led to his retiring to Sicily there is nothing to show.
That Êschylus was banished no one asserts ; and if he chose to
visit Sicily, it does not follow that he was disgusted with his
treatment at Athens. Fifty -two of his plays are said to have
received prizes at Athens, and this evinces the estimation in
which he was held there. On the other hand, we know that
the people of Sicily had an enthusiasm for dramatic poetry so
great that many captive Athenians after the Sicilian expedition
owed their release to their ability to recite from Euripides.
This enthusiasm, and the existence in Sicily of a court which
included Simonides, Epicharmus, and Pindar among its guests,
may be deemed in themselves sufficient to account for the jour-
ney to Sicily.
" iEschylus' attitude towards the politics of his day has been
the subject of much discussion. The Eumenides was produced
in B.C. 458, only two years before his death, and at a time of great
political excitement in Athens. The oligarchical party had just
been defeated on both their foreign and their home policy.
Their foreign policy was alliance with Sparta. Alliance with
an oligarchical state was the natural policy for the oligarchical
party, and, further, was supposed to be necessary for those
offensive operations against Persia which Cimon conducted
with so much energy and success. The home policy of the
party consisted in opposing such changes in the constitution as
would give more power to the people, and at this time also
consisted particularly in supporting the powers and privileges
of the Areopagus against the attacks of the democratic party.
Shortly before the production of the Eumenides, the Spartans
had first requested the assistance of the Athenians against a
revolt of the Helots, and had then dismissed the Athenians in
an insulting manner. Such indignation was thereon felt in
Athens, that the democratic party were enabled to break off the
THE DRAMA : ^SCHYLUS. I9 5
alliance with Sparta, and to substitute for it an alliance with

Argos, the enemy of Sparta. At about the same time, the
democrats under Ephialtes succeeded in depriving the Areo-
pagus of its political powers, leaving to it only the right of try-
ing cases of homicide.1
It was at this time that iEschylus chose to present, in the
Eiimenides, his view on the foundations and functions of the
Areopagus. We might infer his views from individual pas-
sages of the play, but it is safer to rely upon its entire plot.
According to the legend adopted by iEschylus, Clytemestra,-
having murdered her husband, Agamemnon, is, in accordance
with the express command of Apollo, herself put to death by
her son Orestes. For killing his mother, Orestes is claimed by
the Furies or Erinyes, but is protected by Apollo. Eventually
the conflicting claims of the Erinyes and Apollo are referred to
Athene, who institutes the court of the Areopagus for the pur-
pose of deciding between them, and Orestes is acquitted The
fate of Orestes is the least important part of the Eumenides.
In this, as in other dramas of iEschylus, the interest centres
in a great problem having a religious and a moral issue. The
climax of the play is, not the release of Orestes, but the solu-
tion of the religious problem. With the early Greeks, as with
other primitive peoples, the nearest relative of a murdered man
was bound to avenge him. This duty involved the further
shedding of blood, that is to say, the fulfilment of a moral
obligation results in the violation of a moral law. These con-
flicting duties (the moral side of the problem), iEschylus repre-
sents as reconciled by the institution of a court, the Areopagus,
which shall take upon itself the decision of questions touching
homicide. The religious problem is to reconcile the commands
of Apollo, the god of vengeance and the representative of the
younger dynasty of gods, with the claims of the Erinyes, who
represent the older gods, and are the punishers of those who
spill human blood. So far as these conflicting claims are not
reconciled by the institution of the Areopagus, they are harmo-
nised bythe worship promised in the play to the Erinyes, whose-
cult was, as a matter of fact, connected with the Areopagus, and
is explained by Êschylus as a compensation for any slight to
their powers which might conceivably be regarded as resulting
from the foumhtion of the court of the Areopagus.
1 Philochorus in the Lexicon Cantab. 674. 6: 'EîdVn/s fibva KarfKnre rg

£!; ' Apeiov irdyov /3oiAtj Ta VTrtp tov <n6/*aTOS.
2 Inscriptions and the best MSS. spell the name KXvrai,ui}<rrpa, which is
supported by the Latin form, C/ytcmestra. SeePhilol. Wochensckrift, vi. 291.
The Eumenides is sometimes said to be a panegyric on the

Areopagus, and sometimes even to have been a call to all good
men to join in preserving to it the political powers which it
had long exercised. But it is probable that the Eumenides was
produced after the reforms of Ephialtes ; and as Êschylus re-
presents the Areopagus to have been founded to try cases of
homicide, the very class of cases which Ephialtes left to it, it
is more reasonable to regard the play as having been intended
to reconcile those who strove for the preservation of the
political powers of the Areopagus to the new state of things,
which /Eschvlus shows to be in harmony with the original
nature of the court. This view receives some support from the
fact that the alliance with Argos, to which the oligarchical
party was opposed, is also shown by iEschylus (727 et seq.)
to be in harmony with tradition, myth, and religion.
\ In the history of the Greek drama our guiding clue through-
out is the changing position of the chorus. It was out of the
chorus of Dionysus that the drama was developed, and even
when an actor had been assigned a part in this form of the
worship of Dionysus, his share was relatively much smaller than
that of the chorus. A second and a third actor were added, and
the functions of the chorus were correspondingly reduced in ex-
tent and importance, until in the drama of Euripides the chorus
ihas no organic relation to the play, but becomes a mere cus-
/ tomary incident, which, being meaningless, has become little
better than a hindrance. By the aid of this clue we may trace
not only the general history of the drama, but the artistic de-
velopment ofthat of Êschylus. The introduction of a second
actor was his work ; it is, however, probable that such a change
would not be made by iEschylus in the first, or even the second
play he wrote, but oidy when he had had some experience in
composition, and had come to feel the need of such a change,
and the advantages which it would bring. Of the first stage of
his work, when the whole action of the play was carried on be-
tween the chorus and a single actor, we have nothing left; no
play, no fragment of one, and not even the name, so far as we
know, of a play. Nor arc the seven extant plays all capable of
being played by two actors; the so-called trilogy, consisting of
\\w Atjamemuon, the Choephnri ,and the Eumenides, requires three
actors ; and although the Prometlteua Bound rai^b.t, by the aid of
a supernumerary, be played by means of two actors only, it was
1 e probably performed l>y three. The introduction of a third
actor was the work of Sophocles. The plays of iEschylus above
mentioned must, therefore, be later in time than this innovation
the drama: ^schylus. 197
by Sophocles, and are the latest works by iEschylus which we

possess. The three remaining works, the Persians, the Seven
against Thebes, and the Suppliants, therefore most probably
belong to the period after Êschylus used one actor and before
he advanced under the influence of Sophocles to the use of three.
In the history of literature the Persians is interesting as show-
ing hew gradual was the development of the Greek drama, and
how far even genius such as that of iEschylus is fettered by the
usage of the time. The Persians is indeed the only historical
drama in Greek literature which we possess, but it was not
the only one written. The Phenician Women of Phrynichus
was on the same subject as the Persians, and iEschylus has bor-
rowed from his predecessor's play. In the Phenician Women
the scene was laid in Persia, with true artistic feeling ; for,
properly to view the exploit of Hellas some perspective was
necessary : that of time was inapplicable, and that of distance
was substituted ; and iEschylus showed his power as an artist in
borrowing this mode of treating the subject from Phrynichus.
The slowness of the early growth of the drama is shown by
the Persians in another respect. In the early days of the Greek
drama only two kinds of poetry were known to the Greeks — the
epic, in which a story was told, and the lyric, in which the
emotions of the poet were expressed. The Greeks had not the
literature of a more advanced nation before them from which to
learn that the essence of the drama is that the actions which
narrative poetry relates should, in a play, be actually done by
the actors in the view of the spectators. The Greek dramatists
were not only without this knowledge, but they did not even
rapidly attain to it. They for some time modelled their drama-
tic works on the only two kinds of poetry with which they had
any acquaintance, the epic and the lyric. Thus the real subject
of the Persians is the conflict of Xerxes with the Greeks ; but
no attempt is made to put this on the stage ; it is brought before
the audience, not as a dramatist would now be expected to bring
it, but as an epic poet would have done, i.e. it is simply related
by a 3 lessen ger.
The third point in which the Persians illustrates the imma-
turity of the drama at this time is the little use to which the
second
mainly actor
carriedisonput. "Whatthedialogue
between chorus there is inof the
and one the play
actors,is
not between the two actors ; and thus in this respect /Eschylus,
although he uses two actors in his play, gets little more out of
them than could have been effected by the use of one.
As to the date of the Suppliants, there is no external evidence,
and its composition and style do not enable us to settle its date
relatively to the Persians and the Seven against Thebes. The
action of a story may be said to consist of the attempt of a
central figure to do something, and of the opposition encoun-
tered by, and the consequences following on, this effort. In an
epic this action is related ; in the drama it should be acted before
the audience. Now in this respect the Suppliants as a work of
art is in advance of both the other plays. In the Persians the
formal influence of the epic is still so strong, that the action of
the play is related, not acted. In the Seven against Thebes
the action of the play is partly carried on before the spectator,
inasmuch as the central figure, Eteocles. appears on the stage,
although the opposing figure, Polynices, does not appear, but
is only heard of. In the Suppliants, both the central figures,
the chorus and the herald, the representative of the sons of
iEgyptus, come upon the stage, and thus the attempt of the
chorus to obtain protection in Argos is made, and opposed,
and carried out before the eyes of the spectator. On the other
hand, the Suppliants is in some respects less mature than the
Seven. The latter play requires a supernumerary in addition to
the two actors, while the Suppliants contains only three char-
acters and needs only two actors. More important is it that
in the Suppliants the chorus, both in the number of lines
assigned to it and in its importance for the plot, occupies the
greater part of the play. On the ground, then, that the advance
of the drama may in some degree be measured by the decline
of the chorus, the Seven might be put later than the Suppliants.
But the Eumenides may serve to show us that logical develop-
ment and chronological succession are not always identical, for
the chorus plays a more important part in the Eumenides than
in the Seven, yet the Eumenides is undoubtedly later in date.
For the date of the Prometheus Bound there is no external
evidence, except that the allusion to the eruption of ,-Etna in
B.C. 475 shows that it is later than that year ; and if, as is
probable, three actors were employed in the play, it belongs to
a later period than the three plays already described. This
conclusion is strengthened by general consideration of the style
of the play. It is less stiil than the previous dramas; there
is a reduction of the part assignee! to the lyrical element, and
the dialogue is more dominant. The myth of Prometheus, as
treated by ^Rschylus, differs from the version of Hesiod. Ac-
cording to llesiod, Prometheus instigated mankind to cheat
Zeus of his offerings. In requital of this, Zeus deprived men
of lire. Prometheus stole fire from heaven and again gave it to
THE DRAMA: .ESCHYLUS. I 99
man For this Prometheus was punished by Zeus. iEschylua

makes or avails himself of a different version. In the struggle
between Zeus and the elder gods, Prometheus had at first taken
the side of the latter; but the Titans disdained his wisdom,
and he went over to Zeus. But Zeus, after his victory over
the Titans, prepared to destroy mankind and to create a new
race. To this Prometheus was opposed. He therefore gave
to man what (according to this version) man had not possessed
before — fire and the seeds of civilisation. Zeus condemned
Prometheus, for thus opposing his design, to be nailed to a
rock in Scythia. At this point the Prometheus Bound begins.
Hephaestus and two attendants bring in Prometheus, taunt him,
and nail him through the chest to a huge rock. To their
taunts Prometheus answers nothing; only when his torturers
have departed does he appeal to earth, and sky, and sea to
witness his unjust suffering. The chorus, the daughters of
Ocean, now enter, in sympathy Avith and compassion for Pro-
metheus, who tells them that a danger, the secret of which he
alone knows, threatens Zeus. The old god Ocean then comes
and tries to show Prometheus how unreasonable is his resist-
ance to Zeus; but Prometheus will not hear him. There
follows a long episode, in which Io, another victim of Zeus,
appears in the course of her frenzied wanderings. Prometheus
foretells that Zeus will be overthrown by a descendant of Io,
and she departs. The daughters of Ocean again try to per-
suade Prometheus to make his peace with Zeus, but he will
not be persuaded. Then Hermes enters, bearing the order of
Zeus that Prometheus shall reveal his secret, and threatening
him in case of contumacy ; but Prometheus will not be com-
pelled, and the play ends as Zeus dispatches Prometheus, amid
thunder and lightning, to Tartarus.
iEschylus' work has often been compared to statuary, and the
comparison particularly illustrates the nature of his plots. Each
play consists of a single situation and of a very slight amount
of action. The monotony which might be expected from so
rudimentary a form of drama is, however, relieved in several
ways. Although there is little or no action, there is a gradation
of interest which reaches its climax in the central situation ;
light and shade in the picture are produced by variety of incr-
dent, and simple but powerful contrasts are attained by the
grouping of figures. The play falls into three parts, each marked
by the entrance of a fresh character, whose appearance gives the
motive or key to what follows. In this wo see the force of
tradition. When only one actor appeared in a tragedy, he ap-
peared successively in different parts, changing his costume

during a choral ode, and although, with the introduction of a
second and a third actor, the necessity for this severe distribu-
tion of the play ceased, the distribution was not at once cast
aside. Even in the Agamemnon, the greatest of the works of
Êschylus, this tripartite division of the play is observed. Yet
not only is the Agamemnon the grandest of the plays of iEschy-
lus, hut the command which it shows of the advances then
being made in the management of the drama by Sophocles
indicates that it must be one of the latest. A third actor is
required, and the chorus is increased to fifteen choreutae. The
character of Clytemestra is drawn in such detail as shows the
influence of Sophocles on his rival. Pathos appears, for the
first time, in the treatment of Cassandra, and the irony which
is distinctive of Sophocles is clearly to be discovered in the
Agamemnon,
The Ghoephori is but little connected with the Agamemnon.
Each drama is independent of the other. The connection of
the Choephori w;*,h the Eumenides is closer. The latter drama
takes up the s>*,ry of the former immediately, and the scene of
the Eumenides (Delphi) is, as it were, formally announced at
the end of the Ghoephori.
The characters of iEschylus are not drawn with minute detail,
but in majestic outline. There is little of the psychological
analysis which is the result of a developed art. His figures
are commanding or terrible, and their very silence is such as to
inspire awe.1 In the Persians, the queen-mother, Atossa, listens
in long and painful silence to the news of the Persian disaster.2
In the Prometheus Bound, Prometheus endures in impressive
silence all the taunts of his mocking torturers. In the Aga-
memnon, Cassandra is present but speechless, whilst Clytemestra
receives with over-acted affection the husband she is about to
murder, yEschylus' employment of the eloquence of silence is
interesting, not merely because of its effect in his hands, but
because it illustrates vividly the art with which he turns to
advantage the very obstacles which the rudimentary state of
the drama in his time threw in his way. When the dramatist
had only two actors to perform a play, he might, by means of
supernumeraries, have on the stage in. re than two characters at
once, as in the Prometheus Bound. Prometheus and his tor-
turers, Hephaestus, Kratos, and Bia, are all on together, but
only two of them could speak. It was no doubt this enforced
1 Aristoph. Frogs, 922. 3 Persce, 294.

THE DRAMA: ^SCHYLUS. 201
silence which suggested to Êschylus the dramatic use to which

silence might be put.
Although iEschylus' characters are drawn with powerful and
decided outlines, and are further brought out by contrasts, such
as that between the royal Agamemnon and the wretched iEgis-
thus, whose courage consists in sharing the benefit and the dis-
grace, but not the danger of the murder ; his characters have
this common fault, that, high or low, free or slave, messenger or
king, they all speak with the same exalted and majestic words
and metaphors.
In two respects the character-drawing of the Agamemnon
differs from that of other plays of Êschylus. Elsewhere his
figures are majestic or terrible. In the character of Cassandra
alone is iEschylus pathetic. "When the spirit of prophecy leaves
her she becomes a thorough woman, and a woman whose mis-
fortunes and impending death unite to touch us with a pity
which .ZEschylus does not at other times appeal to. In the
delineation of Clytemestra we have detailed work such as is not
to be found elsewhere in Êschylus. In the quiet contempt
with which, in almost her first words, she receives the chorus'
suggestion that she has learnt the news of Troy's fall by means
of a dream, she reveals her impiety. Her unwomanly self-
reliance is .shown in the disdain with which throughout she
ignores the Argive elders. To appreciate this, we should com-
pare her with Atossa in the Persians, Êschylus' type of a
womanly woman. Atossa, in the same situation as Clytemestra,
puts a belief, fully justified by the event, in the dreams sent by
Heaven, consults the chorus of aged Persians, and follows their -
advice with the most implicit reliance. In the welcome with
which Clytemestra receives Agamemnon, the unreality of her
words is delicately revealed by the rhetoric with which she
slightly overacts her part, and by the self-consciousness with
which she hastens to assure Agamemnon that she is not deceiv-
ing him. Up to this point of the play, any indications of her
real feelings which have escaped her have been involuntary.
When, however, Agamemnon is safely in her toils and she is
left alone with Cassandra, then Clytemestra, partly in her secu-
rity and partly in her hatred of Cassandra, loses a little of her
self-restraint, am1., with all the virulence of a bad woman's
hatred, taunts the unfortunate Trojan princess with being a
slave. To all Clytemestra's attempts to extort a word from her,
Cassandra replies with a silence more powerful — in a woman
above all — than words. Clytemestra then enters the palace to
commit her crime, and when afterwards she is revealed in the
triumph of her deed, she glories in what she has done with an
intensity of passion terrible even for Êschylus. This speech,
which is soaked with blood, is the culmination of the violenco
of Clytemestra's character. The reaction now slowly begins.
Hitherto, absorbed in the excitement of entrapping her prejr,
she has had no thought for aught else. Now she begins to
justify her work, and her self-justification and her self-reliance
are of so little avail that she must openly declare that she looks
for her "great shield of courage" to iEgisthus, who even yet
has not mustered spirit enough to crawl from his hiding-place.
The chorus in the iEschylean drama has a double function.
As the representative of the lyrical element of the drama, it is
the means by which iEschylus conveys speculations on moral
and religious problems, a belief in the justice of the gods,
and above all in the righteousness of Zeus.1 On the other
hand, the chorus takes a part in the action of the play. The
actors represent gods or heroes ; the chorus represents average
humanity.2 Accordingly we find in iEschylus the character of
the chorus drawn in firm outlines. In the Agamemnon, the
chorus is composed of old men, and, as is natural in old men,
they like to dwell on old memories,3 they prefer the gloomy
view of things,4 are doubtful and cautions,5 and are reliant on
oracles and dark sayings.6 At the same time, old and weak as
they are, under the spur of a crime so revolting to humanity as
that of Clytemestra, they speak out in open condemnation 7 and
brave iEgisthus' threats.8
In the Prometheus, as in the Eumenides, the chorus, although
not of mortals but of goddesses, has a distinct character, and the
character of the chorus of Oceanides is specially interesting,
because it shows that although /Eschylus habitually worked in
colours almost oppressively sombre, it was possible for him to
reach the highest level of art when painting what is bright and
fair. From the time of Aristophanes 9 at least, the choric odes
of iEschylus have been accused of excessive length, and their
length is one of the consequences of the original predominance
of the chorus and the rudimentary state of the drama in his
time. Although by the introduction of a second actor he made
the dialogue the most important part of the drama,10 still, like
the speeches of the actors, the odes of the chorus for some time
retained an inordinate length. These long speeches and odea
are, from a modern point of view, a drag upon the action of the
1 E.g. Ag. 1 55-161, 167-171, 360 ff. 2 Aristot. Prob. xix. 4a

1 Ag. 104 ff. 4 H). 120. 6 lb. 462, 1315. l! lb. 104 ff.
T lb. 1378. 8 lb. 164 ff. ° Frogs, 879. ]° Aristot. Poetics, iv. 16.
THE DRAMA: iESCHYLUS. 203
piny, and contribute largely to the immobility of the iEschylean

drama. On the other hand, the variety of emotions depicted in
an ode gave an amount of light and shade which, to a people
accustomed to recitations and new to the drama, doubtless,
compensated greatly for the absence of dramatic action.
In the style of Êschylus we see the man. His indepen-
dence and force of character are shown in the words he coined,1
in his martial expressions,2 in his fondness for imagery drawn
from the action of the more pugnacious or dangerous animals,3
from the chase,4 from field or river sports,5 and his naval
metaphors.'5 His metaphors and similes are usually bold, and
sometimes startling ; thus Iphigenia is described as having, not
a fair face, but a fair prow ; 7 the sea covered with floating
corpses after a storm is likened to a field spotted over with
flowers ; and Clytemestra compares herself, drenched with the
blood of her husband, to a field wet with rain from heaven.
To claim simplicity for iEschylus' style may sound para-
doxical, but his type of sentence is simple. He prefers co-
ordinate tosubordinate sentences, and asyndeton and anacolu-
thon by their frequent occurrence mark an early simplicity of
6yntax. His obscurity is largely due to his abundant meta-
phors ;these are based on close observation of nature,8 but are
too luxuriant. He suffers from a plethora of ideas and a pleo-
nasm of imagery, and hence becomes obscure. But this is
throughout the spontaneous overflow of a poet's mind, and not
the overcrowded decoration of artificial and laboured rhetoric.
The seven plays by iEschylus which we have were certainly
far from being the only plays he wrote. The rest have, how-
ever, perished, and all we know about them is what is to be in-
ferred from the quotations made from them by various ancient
writers. These quotations, when gathered together and placed
under the names of the plays from which they were quoted, are
E.g. in the Agamemnon :— Se/tmor^pT/s, yvtopaprjs, XayoSairt]!, Kevayyjs,

ira\u>Tvxvs. 6p8o5ar)s, iro\vKavr)s, (povoKi^-fp, dofioo-ipaXfy, dpxvycys, ev<f>i\ris,
Srj/xioTrXvdrjs. iraXip./j.riKrjs, alvo\a/j.irTis, /xeXap-tray^. vvicnipt(pT)s, 6/xoioirptirr)s,
<ppevofiavqs, \ifi60vns, Ifforpip-ns, Synoppupr/s, and for others cf. Mitchell's
Frogs, 788.
E.g. xapbs e*c 5opnrd\TOV, "on the spear-throwing hand," for the right
hand, Ag. 115 ; or yvvtwcbs alx/J-r/ for "a woman's disposition."
' E.g. vultures, Ag. 49;
wolves, Cho. 413; vipers, Cho.eagles, An. 114, Cho. 239; lions, Ag. 696;
240 ; snakes, Pers. 81.
4 E.g. Ag. 125, 840, 1062, 1156, 1347 ; Cho. 567; Pers. 97.
• E.g. Ag. 349, 675, 1015, 1030, 1061, 1155, 1346, 1601.
• E.g. Ag. 775, 976 et seq., 1596 ; Cho. 381.
ardfuiTOi KaWnrpypov, Ag. 227.
8 For this cf. Ag. 548, 865, 887.
called the " Fragments " of iEschylus. The play from which
more quotations happen to have been made by ancient writers
than from any other is the Prometheus Unbound. The reason
is that in the Prometheus Unbound Êschylus inserted some
geographical descriptions dealing with remote nations, which
proved to he useful to later writers on geography, such as Strabo
(born b.o. 66, died ad. 24) or Arrian (born about B c. 100),
who quoted from them.
Many of the citations from Êschylus occur in lexicographers,
such as Hesychius (who lived about A.D. 400), who inserted in
their lexicons strange or remarkable words found in the tra-
gedians, and explained them, appending the name of the play
in which they occurred. Many quotations, also, consisting of
single words, occur in the grammarians of various period?, who
quote to prove the usage of Attic writers. From such quota-
tations as these we can learn little more than the names of the
lost plays, and we find the names of altogether eighty-two.
Many of these plays were on the same subjects, and some have
the same names, as those of later tragedians. Thus iEschylus
as well as Euripides wrote an Iphigenia and a Heradidas. The
Bassarides and Edoni were on the same subject as the Baccha? of
Euripides. The Women of J2tna was probably an outcome of
the tragedian's visit to Sicily. The Psychostasia or Weighing
of the Souls seems, according to the description of it given by
Plutarch, to have been very characteristic of iEschylus. In the
first place, the author had the daring to lay the scene in heaven
(this we learn from Pollux, iv. 130, a grammarian who lived
about a.d. 180). This was probably the only time in the Greek
drama that Zeus was brought before the eyes of the spectators.
Next, he took the subject from Homer; third, as in the Eume-
trides he put into visible shape the Furies, who up to that time
existed for the Greeks only as vague and shapeless terrors of the
mind ; so in the Weighing of the Souls he actually made Zeus
weigh the souls of Hector and Achilles in a pair of scales.1
Lastly, he who had done so much for the Greek stage and the
accessories of the drama invented for this play probably a special
1 It is interesting to note tliat Aristophanes, who was to comedy what

Êschyhis was to tragedy, possessed the same boldness of conception, and in
the same way gave bodily form to a metaphor or a simile (see below eh. vii.)
Indeed, part of the Froga contains a "weighing of the souls " of JSsobylus and
Euripides, done by means ofapajrof "property " scales, It is also interest-
ing to note that later the " Homeromastix " seised on precisely the passage,
of Homer on which the Psychostasia is based to ridicule Homer. Both
iEschylus and the Homeromastix seem to have been ignoraut of the specific
difference between dramatic and narrative poetry.
the drama: .eschyltjs. 205
stage, high in the air, on which he made Zeus and the other
gods appear.
Finally, there are a number of quotations from the lost plays
of ^schylus in an anthology made by Stobaeus (about a.d. 520),
which shows that, even then, many plays survived which have
since been lost. These quotations were apparently chosen by
Stobaeus on account of their general applicability to life and
human affairs, rather than because they surpassed in poetic
merit the rest of the play from which they were taken, e.g.
" useful, not extensive, knowledge makes the sage," or "bad
men successful are not to be borne." " Brass is the mirror of
the body, wine of the mind," may remind us that water and
brass were what the Greeks used as looking glasses. Late
learning, which provoked the mirth of Plato and Theophrastus,
is not always matter for raillery. " To learn wisdom is an honour
even to the aged." Until Christianity taught us otherwise, men
held that "death is preferable to a hard life, and to never be,
better than to have been born to suffer." Again, ^schylus said,
"An oath is no pledge for a man ; the man is the pledge for the
oath." If "a fool fortunate is a grievous burden," yet there is
a word of hope for us in " Heaven helps the man who works."
The sons of iEschylus, and his descendants for some genera-
tions, appear to have followed the dramatic profession, as also
did those of Sophocles and Euripides ; and it is accordingly
usual to speak of the family or school of iEschylus, or Sophocles,
or Euripides. There is, however, no evidence to show that
such a school worked on a common artistic method, whether
inherited from their illustrious ancestor or peculiar to them-
selves ;nor is there evidence to show that they had any bond
of community beyond that of their common ancestry. The
conjectures that they alone had the right to produce their
ancestor's plays, or (in the case of the school of iEschylus) that
they were marked by an adherence to the trilogy, are disproved
by inscriptions containing the official didascaliae. These in-
scriptions show that certainly in B.C. 340 three plays were not
necessarily produced at a time ; that when three plays were
simultaneously produced, even by a member of the school of
Êschylus, they had not that inner bond of connection distinc-
tive of the trilogy of JEschylus ; and, finally, that old plays
were produced, not by the school of the author, but by the
protagonist.
iEschylus' son, Euphoiion, four times won the prize with
tragedies of his father hitherto not produced on the stage. He
also wrote plays of his own ; but with what success, or of
what merit, we do not know. The nephew of Êschylus,

Philocles, although his style was accused of harshness, must
have been a tragedian of considerable distinction, for he won
the prize against Sophocles when the latter produced his (Edipus
Rex. Philocles, amongst other plays, seems to have produced
a tetralogy, the Pandionis, which appeared some time before B.C.
414; for it is alluded to in the Birds of Aristophanes. Mor-
simus, the son of Philocles, vests his claim to mention less on
his tragedies, which were frigid, than on the distinction of his
son and grandson, who both bore the name of Astydamas.
The elder Astydamas was originally trained in the school of
Socrates, but eventually cultivated tragedy. The importation of
rhetoric into tragedy, which had been begun by Euripides, was
thus carried on by Astydamas. His style, like that of Euri-
pides, was gnomic, and his versification was loose. Some
confusion has been made between Astydamas the father and
Astydamas the son. It is generally stated that the father was
the more distinguished tragedian, and that his Parthenopceus
was of such merit that the Athenians awarded him the honour,
hitherto only accorded to the three great tragedians, of a statue.
Stone records, however, show that it was the younger Astydamas
who brought out the Parthenopceus, and it follows that the son
was the more successful poet of the two. This is also borne
out by the fact that, even according to the few inscriptions at
present known, the younger Astydamas won the prize two years
running. In B.c. 431 he brought out the Achillevs, Athamas,
and Antigone. The Alcmceon mentioned by Aristotle (Poetics,
xiv. 15) is generally ascribed to the elder Astydamas.
CHAPTER IIL
SOPHOCLES.
Sophocles was born at Colonus about 495 b.o. His father,

Sophillus, was a smith, that is to say, he owned slaves who
worked as smiths, and from their work he obtained his income,
as the father of Demosthenes gained his wealth by employing
a large number of slaves to mnnufftcture weapons. The worship
at Colonus of Prometheus, the Titan who gave to man fire,
seems to indicate that the art of working metals had been esta-
blished for some time in the deme, and the "brazen threshold,"
THE DRAMA: SOPHOCLES. 207
if the words of Sophocles1 are to he taken literally, would

point to the existence there of a guild of metal-workers. The
beauty of his birthplace is celebrated by Sophocles in the
famous ode of the (Edijms Coloneus,2 and we may see traces of
the early associations of Sophocles in the chorus of smiths ^^
brought into his lost play Pandora, and in the introduction in *
another play of Kedalion, the gnome who taught Hephaestus
smithying.3 Sophillus' wealth was sufficiently great to give
Sophocles the best of educations, and to place him in a good
position in Athenian society. He was chosen (b.c. 480) to lead
the chorus of boys who sang the Psean in honour of the victory
at Salamis. The first occasion on which, to our knowledge, he
won a tragic prize was in B.C. 468. For the date and the fact
that he won the prize we have the authority of a stone record.*
The other particulars supposed to be connected with this event
— that Cimon had just returned from his expedition to Scyrus,
and that the Arch on Apsephion, in consequence of the height
to which feeling ran among the spectators, made Cimon and his
colleagues award the prize instead of the proper judges — rest
only on the authority of Plutarch.5 Leasing has conjectured
that the victorious play was the Triptolemw.6 As to the plays
produced by Sophocles between B.c. 468 and B.C. 440, we have
not even conjectures. This, the first, period of Sophocles'
dramatic development is, as far as his literary activity is con-
cerned, an entire blank for us. We know, besides, on the
authority of an inscription, that he was on the board of trea-
surers who managed the tribute paid to Athens by her allies,
in the year B.c. 442 ;7 but that is all. In B.c. 440 he was
elected strategus or general, and the production of the Antigone
is generally associated with this event.8 It fell to his lot to
assist as strategus with Pericles in conducting the naval war
against Samos. His duties took him to Lesbos among other
places, and fortunately we have an account of his proceedings,
written by some one who met him there. Ion, the tragedian,
1 (E. C. 57 : x^kottovs ^6s. 2 lb. 668.
8 Fragments 724 and 734 (Dind.) point to the same fact.
* C. I. G. 2374.
6 And are exceedingly improbable. (1) Cimon went to Scyrus in B.C. 476.
Sophocles won the prize in B.C. 468. (2) If this was Sophocles' first contest,
how could the spectators' feelings be so excited about an unknown compe-
titor? (3)The Archon had no power to reject the legally appointed judges.
6 But it is only a doubtful conjecture from Plin. N. H. xviii. 65.
7 C. I. A. i. 237: Soi/xwcXtJs KoXuvrjOev 'EWijvora.u'as ty.
8 Aristophanes of Byzantium, who would be an authority, does not
guarantee the statement, in the Argument to the Antigone, that Sophocles'
election was duo to the Antigone, The statement is puerile. The tmgic
prize, not naval or military command, was awarded to a victorious poet.
in bis Epidemiol l (a record of the visits of celebrated men to

Chios) says :— " I met the poet Sophocles in Chios at the time
when he came as strategus to Lesbos. He is a playful man
over his wine and -witty. He was entertained by the Athenian
consul, Hermesilaus, a friend of his. In the course of conver-
sation, Sophocles happened to quote the line of Phrynichus,
' In purple cheeks there shines the light of love.' Whereupon
a schoolmaster from Eretria or Ery three remarked, ' You are a
great poet, Sophocles, but, for all that, it was inaccurate of
Phrynichus to speak of purple cheeks. If an artist were to put
purple cheeks in a picture, they would not look beautiful. It
is utterly wrong to compare what is beautiful to something
which is not.' Sophocles replied with a laugh, ' Then, sir, in
opposition to universal opinion, you do not approve of Simonides'
line, " A maid who speaks with purple lips," nor of the poet
who speaks of golden-haired Apollo? for if a painter made the
god's hair gold and not black, the painting would be a bad one.
Nor of the poet who talks of rosy-fingered Dawn 1 for an artist
who used paint of a rose-colour would give her the hands of a
dyer, not of a pretty woman V" A roar of laughter extinguished
the schoolmaster, and Ion goes on to say that Sophocles, having
cheated a pretty child into giving him a kiss, explained to the
company, "Pericles says I am a poet, not a general; so I am
practising generalship. Do not you think my stratagem suc-
ceeded very well?" Ion adds, "Public business he did not
know or care much about, except as befitted a decent Athenian."
The story is equally creditable to the discernment of Pericles
and the good temper of Sophocles. Pericles, moreover, seems
to have acted on his opinion. Being the chief strategus, Peri-
cles directed the movements of the other generals, and accord-
ingly, so far as possible, engaged Sophocles with fetching up
reinforcements and such work. In fact, it was because he was
sent to Lesbos for reinforcements and supplies that Sophocles
got an opportunity for the stratagem which Ion describes. It
was the most successful stratagem of the war, so far as Sopho-
cles was concerned, for when Pericles had to leave him to con-
duct the. siege of Sanios, he at once contrived to get defeated.
Few other facts are known with regard to his life. Whether
the Sophocles whom Aristotle mentions2 as having been one of
the ten Probuli who consented to establish the tyranny of the
Four Hundred in B c. 413 is the poet is uncertain. The story of
his being accused by his son Iophon of madness, and of his
vindicating his sanity by reading the CEdipus, is full of dilli-
1 Atlitnircus, xiii. 604E. - H/tct. iii. 18. 6.
THE DRAMA: SOPHOCLES. 200.
culties.1 Sophocles died about B.C. 405, and there are various
supernatural stories as to the manner of his death.2
Before proceeding to consider the tragedies of Sophocles, we
may say that the supposition as to Herodotus and Sophocles
having been acquainted is extremely probable. There are simi-
larities in certain passages of the two authors,3 though too
much weight must not be assigned to these similarities. We
have the beginning of an elegy by Sophocles dedicated to Hero-
dotus,4 and Herodotus spent so much time in Athens that it is
almost impossible that he should not have met Sophocles. It
has been imagined that there are in Herodotus' history traces
of views and information which would naturally come only
from Pericles ; but at any rate, it is not unreasonable to imagine
that Herodotus may have met Sophocles at the house of Peri-
cles. "Wherever
of looking at the they
world,met, theyviews
their would sympathise.
of Fate Their were
and Nemesis, way
the same.
By bringing down philosophy from the skies to the earth,
Socrates gave a new direction to philosophy, which philosophy
1 It is not impossible that the story is based on a misunderstanding of a

scene in some comedy in which Sophocles and Iophon may have been made
fun of. At any rate, a charge of madness could not have been brought before
the Phratores, as the story has it, for such cases were brought before the
Archon only. Lex. Seg. 199. 10, and Poll. viii. 89.
2 The story that he was choked by a grape originates in a stupid misun-
derstanding ofthe younger Simonides' epigram (Anth. Pal. vii. 20) —
'Eo73f<r#775, yrjpaie 2o0o»cXeey, ILvdos aoiduv,
Olvwirbv Bclkxov fiorpvv ipeiTTd/j.fvos.
These lines, which mean that Sophocles died whilst engaged on a tragedy,
which, being a tragedy, was dedicated to Bacchus, were taken literally,
8 E.g. the dream of Clytemestra, El. 417, and of Astvages, Hdt. i. 108,
the reference in Track. 1 to Solon's maxim, the legend of the oracle of
Dodona, Hdt. ii. 55, followed in the Trachiniai. the customs of the Scyths in
Fr. 429 and Hdt. iv. 64, the description of the Egyptians in O. C. 337. The
passage in Aiitig. 905-915 is almost identical with Hdt. 3. 119. In both
cases the argument is that a sister, when her parents are dead, is bound to
sacrifice everything to her brother, because he cannot be replaced. As to
the Antigone, however, it has been said that this argument is inconsistent,
sophistical, ignoble, and misplaced. From this some have inferred that
Sophocles has borrowed from Herodotus, or that the passage in the Antigone
is spurious. On the other hand, it is said that Sophocles shows his truth to
nature in making Antigone's feelings before and after her deed different, and
that the argument is not sophistical or misplaced, but primitive, and appro-
priate in Greek, though not in modern times.
4 Plut. Mor. 785B: —
(fiSty 'H/)o56t(j> Teu£ei> Soiô/cXtjs £rt'ui> &>v tt^t' iirl irevr-fjKOVTa.

If this could be relied on, and the date of Sophocles' strategia were cer-
tainly B.C. 440 — and both points are uncertain — this would show that
Sophocles probably met Herodotus at Samoa.
O
2 IO HISTORY OK GREEK LITERATURE.
has retained to this day. In a different sense, Sophocles brought

down the drama from the skies to the earth, and the drama
still follows the course which Sophocles first marked out for it.
It was on the gods, the struggles of the gods, and on destiny
that iEschylus dwelt ; it is with man that Sophocles is con-
cerned. From this difference flow all the differences between
the two poets, and herein consists the advance which Sophocles
made in the development of the drama. Such action as the
plays of iEschylus possess they derive from the force of destiny.
What is done by a character in the iEschylean drama is, it is
true, consistent with that character. The murder of Agamem-
non could be expected from Clytemcstra alone. But although
she is suited to the deed and the deed to her, if we ask
why she murdered Agamemnon, we shall find that the reason
lies, not in her character nor in her circumstances but, in
her destiny. This conclusion is confirmed by the fact that
one critic attributes her act to wounded maternal feelings,
another to her adultery, and each critic rejects the reason
alleged by the other; whereas Clytemestra herself says it was
not she who killed Agamemnon, but the evil " destiny of the
Atridse " taking her form. In Sophocles, on the other hand,
the motive force of the drama is always to be found in the
passions of men, and not in the external action of destiny.
The Ajax of Sophocles commits suicide, not because he is fated
to do so, but because to him, after his disgrace, life is not
merely distasteful, but impossible. The force at work here is
internal, and consists in the feelings of Ajax. On the contrary,
the Orestes of iEschylus has no proper motion of his own. He
is simply the channel through which the action of the gods
flows. What he does is not his own doing, but what Apollo
bids.- The force is from without, not from within. Contrast
this with Sophocles. Every action of OZdipus is the natural
necessary outcome of his character and his circumstances, and
when peace does come to him, it is from within ; whereas, in
the case of Orestes, there is a purely external conflict between
Apollo and the Erinyes, and Orestes' absolution comes not from
within, but from without. In iEschylus we have symbolism,
in Sophocles poetic truth.
Although, in Sophocles, the mainspring of man's actions is
men's passions, we still find fatalism in Sophocles, but not the
fatalism of iEschylua With iEschvlus, Atreus commits a
crime, and the punishment falls upon his children for genera-
tions in the shape of a destiny compelling them to crimes.
With Sophocles, the house of the Labdacidse is indeed under a
THE DRAMA : SOrHOCLES. 2 I I
similar curse, but the cause of CEdipus' deeds is not destiny, but
circumstances and himself. The fatalism of Sophocles is that
of Herodotus, and probably of the ordinary Greek of the time.
It may be illustrated from Herodotus. According to the his-
torian, Croesus, the father of Atys, learning from an oracle that
his son was destined to perish by an iron weapon, confined him
to the house with the purpose of evading the doom foretold by
the oracle. The son, however, persuaded Croesus to allow him
to go to the chase, and then was accidentally killed hy the very
person to whose care Croesus, in his dread of the oracle, had
intrusted him. This is the worst kind of fatalism, for it teaches
that man cannot avoid his fate, whatever he may do, and thus
encourages helpless and indolent resignation to an imaginary
necessity.1 This was1 the fatalism which Sophocles found and
accepted. But if he adopted- this and other common beliefs,
he, as a poet, by adopting them elevated and refined them.
It is probably impossible to discuss Sophocles' attitude to-
wards fatalism without reading into him at least some ideas
which could not be present to the mind of any Greek. It is
difficult to always realise that Sophocles knew nothing of the
free-will controversy, and consequently felt no alarm at fatalism.
Remembering, however, this fact, we shall not consider it a
paradox to say that Sophocles shows how men run on their fate
of their own free-will. GLdipus is warned by Apollo of his
doom, and he fulfils his doom ; but all his acts are his own ;
neither man nor God can be blamed. The lesson as well as the
art of Sophocles is that man's fate, though determined by the
gods, depends on his actions, and his actions on himself and his
circumstances. The contradiction which to us is involved -in
this did not exist for Sophocles. If Sophocles did not find
out any incompatibility between free-will and fatalism, neither
did he see in fatalism any imputation on the justice of the gods.
Indeed, the contrary is the case. The action of the gods in
foretelling to GSdipus and to Atys their fate is open to a double
construction. It is possible to regard it as mere cruel deception
(for the parents of whom CEdipus was told were not the parents
that he supposed to be meant, nor was the weapon that actually
proved fatal the weapon which Atys supposed). But if this
view of the gods was held by others, it was not the view of
Sophocles. In him we find no complaint of the injustice of
the gods. On the contrary, the gods warn man, and yet man
does what they have tried to save him from. The heavens
1 Antigone, 236. Cf. JSsck. S. c. Th. 263. Plato (Gorg. 512K) calls it a
woman's creed.
2 I2 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
speak to man, but be understands tbem not. If CEdipus is not

to be blamed, neither certainly are the gods. For Sophocles,
fatalism was consistent both with free-will and with the justice
of the gods ; on neither subject had he any doubts to solve.
Nor does his tragedy concern itself to give an answer to the
question, why do the innocent surfer? The innocent do Buffer,
and that fact is the tragedy of life. His plays are not works of
theology; their object is not to solve problems. The sufferings
of the innocent cause pity and fear, and thus serve in tragedy
to redeem the crudity of fatalism. Winn Deianiia in her love
for her husband innocently causes his death, we feel the pity
which it is the part of tragedy to excite ; and when we read of
CEdipus and his undeserved sufferings, we feel so much fear as
is implied in obeying the utterance " Judg'e not"
In this connection we may consider the ''irony of Sophocles."
In argument irony has many forms. That which best illus-
trates the irony of Sophocles is the method by which the
ironical man, putting apparently innocent questions or sugges-
tions, leads some person from one preposterous statement to
another, until, perhaps, the subject of the irony realises his
situation and discovers that when he thought he was most
brilliant or impressive, then he was really most absurd. There
are, or may be, three persons who assist at an ironical argu-
ment— the ironical man, the subject, and the spectator ; and
they appreciate the irony at different times, the subject retro-
spectively, the ironical man prospectively, and the spectator
contemporaneously. Their feelings will vary according to cir-
cumstances. The spectator may sympathise with the ironical
man or with the victim, and his feelings will be accordingly
those of enjoyment or of compassion. What the ironical man
feels will depend largely on his motive. He may feel amuse-
ment simply or triumph, or his object may be that of Socrates,
whose irony was intended to rouse nun to a sense of their
ignorance and to a real desire for knowledge. In the case of
Socratc ••. successful irony must have been accompanied by the
consciousness of having rendered a service to philosophy, to
the person with whom he conversed, and to those who listened.
We are now in a position to see how the term irony may
be extended from its use as applied to argument, and he also
applied to human action. When CEdipus was told by Apollo
that he would kill his father and commit incest with his
mother, he at once fled from his home at Corinth, and found
his way to Thebes. There he married the queen, became king,
was blest 'with children and a glorious reign. When the
THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I3
revelation comes, he looks back upon his life only to see that
the flight from Corinth, which was to take him far from his
parents, led him to meet and kill his father and to wed his
mother; that the children in whom he thought himself blest
are the fruit of incest, and that the glory of his reign was a
revolting horror. But if his glance was retrospective, that of
the gods was prospective. His feelings are such as no one
can help him to bear the burden of : l what are those of the
gods? That is a question to which Sophocles never gives an
answer. Perhaps he thought it inscrutable. But as there is
a third party to the irony of argument, so there is to the irony
of life, that is, the spectator. His feelings are not inscrutable.
Pity he will feel, and if the irony of Socrates could teach the
bystander a lesson against intellectual pride, the irony of Sopho-
cles may teach the spectator a lesson against moral pride.
For the full appreciation of the irony of Sophocles, and of
its artistic value in heightening the interest of the drama,
it must be remembered that whereas the torturing contrast
between the condition of (Edipus. as he fancies it, and as it
really is, is only discovered by CEdipus at the last moment,
this contrast is perpetually present from the beginning to the
spectator. The artistic value of this is double. In the first
place, the spectator having known the real state of things from
the first, has all along been in the state of mind in which
(Edipus finds himself when the revelation has come ; and the
consequence is that the spectator needs no explanation from
CEdipus of his state of mind, but comprehends and sympathises
at once with CEdipus when he blinds himself. Thus the
action of the drama is enabled to proceed with a directness and
rapidity which would be impossible if CEdipus had to explain
the motives of his self-mutilation. In the second place, the
contrast between CEdipus' fancied height of glory and his really
piteous position is present to the mind of the spectator through-
out. Thus every word in the drama has a doubled effect upon
the feelings.
The drama owes its origin to religion and its development
to art. It is but another way of stating this fact to say that
one sign of the growth of the. Greek drama was the diminution
of its religious significance. This is partly illustrated by the
diminishing importance of the chorus. It is also illustrated in
that displacement of destiny by character as the motive force.
The characters of Sophocles are bound up with his plots in
such an artistic and harmonious whole, that to attempt to con-
» O. T. 1414.
sider his characters apart is an unsatisfactory proceeding His

plots depend upon his characters, for the plot of a play consists
of the actions of the dramatis persona', and it is part of the
excellence of Sophocles that the actions of his dramatis per sonce
are motived, not by stage necessity or by an external destiny,
but by the character ascribed to them. On the other hand, it
is equally true that his characters depend upon Ins plots. The
frequent revolutions and the catastrophes of the Sophoclean
drama do not by themselves constitute the interest of the play,
as neither does the painting of character constitute the whole
or the most important part of his tragedies. The plot has its
intrinsic interest, but it also develops the characters. For in-
stance, unless Electra were deceived into believing that Orestes
was dead, the spectator would witness neither her despair, nor
the bold resolve which that despair serves only to create. If
Philoctetes were not first exalted to hope and then reduced to
helplessness, his pertinacity in abiding by his resolution would
not be brought into relief. Sophocles shows us not only the
action and outward bearing of a King (Edipus, but also the
inner struggles of feeling which result in action and outward
bearing. The spectator of the Agamemnon knows little more of
Clytemestra's character than does the chorus, or perhaps it is
that there is little more to know. The spectator of the Ajax,
on the contrary, knows of Ajax' inward struggles what no other
character but Ajax knows..
The criticism1 that Euripides drew men as they are, Sophocles
as he ought, must not be understood to mean that Euripides
drew them with greater truth. Euripides' characters have not
unf requently that worst of faults, faultlessness ; whereas Sophocles
never makes that mistake. Qidipus is proud and hasty ; Kleetra
is hard ; Neoptolemus consents to practise a deception against
which his better feelings protest ; Antigone, when the moment
of action is over, becomes a thorough woman. Finally, the
truth with which Sophocles makes Antigone and Ajax regret
the life they are about to lose is apt to escape modern notice.
Christianity
Ave forget hehasis so alsofamiliarised
mortal. Butus with man's immortality
no Greek writer forgotthat
it,
least of all did Sophocles, and to this unforgetfulness we owe
passages in Sophocles of the greatest beauty.
If we now proceed to examine the position and functions of
the chorus in the Sophoclean drama, we shall find its func-
tions much the Bame as in iEschyhis, but its position much less
prominent There are choral odes in Sophocles as in Êschylus,
1 Aristotle, Poetics, 25, gives it as Sophocles' own criticism.
THE DEAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I5
but they are much, shorter. The chorus takes a part in the
action of the play, but it is unimportant. In Êschylus the
chorus is sometimes, e.g. in the Persce or the Eumenides, the
chief character of the play. In Sophocles the chorus is, as
it were, enclitic ; it always depends on one of the principal
characters,1 in sympathy with whom it grieves2 or rejoices3 or
prays to the gods.4 In harmony with these duties, the chorus
always consists of free people (not of slaves, as in the Choephori
of iEschylus), either in a humble position, as the sailors in the
Philoctetes and the Ajax, or of an age or sex from which action
would not be expected, e.g. the old men of the King (Edipus,
the (Edipus at Colonus, and the Antigone, or the young maidens
of the Trachinice. The chorus in Sophocles, as in Êschylus, is
invested with a definite and individual character.5 It is not an
impersonal entity ; it is not intended to represent the poet's
view of an impartial spectator, nor is it the means of conveying
Sophocles' speculations on moral and religious questions. The
lyrical odes occur at the points where there is necessarily or
naturally a pause in the action of the drama, and they review
what has happened and resume the situation.6
The subordinate position which the chorus is made in all re-
spects to take in the Sophoclean drama must be connected
with the fact that Sophocles raised the number of actors 7 from
two to three. At first sight, this latter change looks as though
it gave to Sophocles one actor more than iE-chylus had. But
it must be remembered that what Sophocles gained by the in-
crease in the number of his actors, he partially surrendered by
the restrictions he placed upon the action of the chorus. In
yEschylus the chorus was not unfrequently the leading character
of the piece. In Sophocles the chorus has no such position.
1 Mostly on the hero or heroine, hut sometimes, as in the Philoctetes or in
the Antigone, on the character opposed to the hero or heroine.
2 E.g. Aj. 139-141, 165-167 ; El. 121-123, 130, 137 et seq., 153 et seq., 173
et seq. ; Track. 103, 123 et seq., 136 et seq.
3 E.g. Ant. 100-154.
4 E.g. O. T. 151, 187, 202, 204, 206 ; Track. 94 ; El. 162, 173.
5 See Aj. 165, 229, 245, 866, 925, 1185-1223 ; Philoc 169, 708-718, 721,
836, 855, 963-965, 1071, 1469. o. C. 669-720, 829 et seq., 1054 et seq., 1211
et seq.
6 E.g. in the O. T., when OSdipus has announced that he is expecting
Creon's return, there is naturally a pause, and the chorus describe the situa-
tion, that is, the plague. After the scene with Teiresias, in which (Edipus
is himself accused of being the cause of the phigue, Creon is expected to
come and defend himself from (Edipus' charge of collusion with Teiresias.
The interval of waiting is filled up by an ode, expressing the doubt as to who
is the guilty man ; and so on.
7 As Êschylus employs three actors in the Oresteia, this innovation must
have been made by Sophocles before B.C. 460.
2l6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
The real change effected by Sophocles was not that he intro-

duced a greater number of interlocutors, but that he transferred
the burden of the piece almost entirely to the actors. At the
same time that he practically excluded the chorus from the
development of the action of the play, he developed the func-
tions of the chorus in the sphere to which it was now confined.
He raised the number of the choreutae from twelve to fifteen,
and it is reasonable to suppose that, as a consequence of this
change, he introduced the Tritostates by the side of the Para-
states and Coryphaeus. So long as the chorus numbered only
twelve, the movements of the Coryphaeus were to a certain extent
limited. For instance, when it was necessary for the chorus to
divide into two Hemichoria, the Coryphaeus was bound to range
himself with one of the Hemichoria, and so far for the time
abdicate his position as leader of the whole chorus. When,
however, the chorus numbered fifteen, it might divide into two
Hemichoria of seven choreutae each. Then the two Hemichoria
would be under the command of the Parastates and the Tritos-
tates, while the Coryphaeus would be at liberty to attend wholly
to those parts of the dialogue in which he had a share, and to
leave the evolution of the chorus to the care of his two subordi-
nate officers, the Parastates and the Tritostates.
The style, like the character-drawing, of Sophocles bears a
closer relation to life than does that of Êscliylus. The work
of each poet has beauty and truth, but the means by which
they obtain the same end are different. The structure of the
iEschylean sentence resembles that of Cyclopean masonry. It
consists of huge words roughly thrown together. The con-
struction of Sophocles' sentences resembles that of his plays.
Under an appearance of simplicity is concealed an amount of
thought almost inexhaustible. In this respect, and in the
ductility of his sentence, Sophocles may be compared with
Thucydides. Though the words of Sophocles have become
simpler, his syntax is more complex than that of iEschylus.
The hearer may be set thinking by Sophocles' expressions, but
he is not startled by them. The harmony with which Sophocles
combines the most various elements of the drama is equally
characteristic of his style. He borrows w< rds from /Esehylus ;
he invents words of his own ; he naturally, from the study of
the founders of iambic verse, brings away Ionic words ; and on
him, as on ^schylus, the study of Homer has its effect. Yet
the whole is marked by a predominant Attic colouring, and by
a sweetness which is distinctive of Sophocles.
Of lost plays of Sophocles we have fragments and the titles
THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 IJ
of about one hundred. Of these, nearly one-fourth apparently

drew their subjects from the tale of Troy ; and it is signifi-
cant, both for the temper of the time and for Sophocles' tendency
to psychological analysis, that Odysseus frequently appeared in
these plays. Of the character of Odysseus as conceived by
Sophocles Ave can fortunately form an idea from the sketch in
the surviving play, Philoctetes. Several of the lost plays were
on subjects also treated of by Euripides, e.g. the Women of
Colchis, the Scyths, and the Rhizotomi (or Witches), which all
dealt with the tale of Medea ; and the Phaedra, Iphigenia,
Alcmeon, and Alexander. Some of the lost plays, such as the
T/iptolemus, Oreithuia, Niobe, and Thamyras, may have treated
of their subjects in the Êschylean way, and may thus belong
to the first period of Sophocles' style, while lie was yet under
the influence of iEschylus.1 Finally, we may notice the names
of a considerable number of satyric dramas, sucli as the Kedalion
(a gnome whose story, as we have said above, was connected
with Colonus), Pandora, Momus, Ichneutce, Heracles at Tana-
rum, Amycus, Helen's Wedding, Am2)hiareos, Syndeipni, Dio-
nysiacus, &c.
Among the fragments which are too long to quote, we may
refer to two beautiful descriptions of love ; 2 two passages, one
on the changes, the other on the injustice, of fortune ; 3 two
others on money and poverty ; 4 another on the discoveries of
Palamedes;5 and finally, a tender, graceful, and sympathetic
description of the hard lot of women,6 conceived in the spirit
of the Tracliiniie. To the Litter we may add the metaphor,
quoted from the Phcedra, by which Sophocles speaks of children
as the anchors of a mother's life ;7 and contrast a line from the
Acrisius embodying the current view that silence is a woman's
ornament.8 Among the shorter fragments, the most interesting
are those in which the psychological penetration of Sophocles
is to be seen, as when in the Creusa he says that a lost oppor-
tunity and an injury inflicted on one by oneself are the most
1 Plutarch has preserved some remarks made by Sophocles on his own

development as an artist, which, although somewhat difficult to interpret aa
given by Plutarch, still convey some information which we should otherwise
not possess. Sophocles distinguished three stages in his own development.
First Sophocles was influenced by the magnificence of iEschylus' style ; then
he began ridding himself of obscurity and artificiality ; and finally he turned
his atteution to the expression of character. Of the first of these three
stages we have nothing left: to the third, the Antigone and the (Edipus at
Colonus must, and all the surviving dramas may, belong.
2 Namk. 154 and 856.
8 786, 104. 4 860, 327. 6 3(,6. 6 521. 7 619. * 61.
painful of things.1 From the Laocoon2 we have an anticipation

uf Virgil's reflection, "Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit ;"
and from the Mi/si a poetical expression of the psychological
law that contrast heightens pleasure,3 another exemplification of
which may be found in a fragment of the Tympanistce, which
dwells on the pleasure after a voyage of being under a good
roof and listening to the rain with drowsy mind.4 The con-
nection between mental and bodily illness had not escaped
Sophocles' fine observation.5 His wisdom comes out in his
reflections in the Aletes that justice and kindliness profit more
than sophistry : 6 in the Aleadce that the right always has
great might:7 in the Acrisius that a lie cannot flourish long;8
in the Aleadce on the beauty of silence.9 Finally, it is con-
sonant with the amiability of Sophocles' character that there is
a limit to the questions which a man with consideration for
others' feelings can put.10
As belonging to the "school" of Sophocles, there are men-
tioned his son Iophon and his grandson Sophocles. Iophon
won the second tragic prize in B.C. 429, and seems to have been
suspected of receiving assistance from his father. In spite,
however, of this, he is criticised as being frigid and tedious.
The grandson, if, as is reported, he won the tragic prize twelve
times, was a more successful, if not a better tragedian than
Iophon, and Avon the prize oftener than did any one of the
three great tragedians. Sophocles, the grandson, produced the
CEdipus at Coluuus after his grandfather's death, but whether
the play had or had not been produced before, and what share
the grandson had in the play, are uncertain points.
An interesting figure among the tragedians contemporary
with Sophocles is that of Ion. Born in Chios and possessed
of considerable wealth, he travelled much in Greece, and met
all the distinguished Greeks of his time. He is, perhaps, the
earliest recorded instance of an universal genius. His works
included not only tragedies, but elegies, dithyrambs, epigrams,
skolia, the ''antiquities of Chios," and personal reminiscences,
from the last of which a specimen was quoted at the beginning
of this chapter. He first produced plays on the Athenian Btage
in B.C. 452, and we know that in B.C. 428, when Euripides and
Iophon carried off the first and second prizes, Ion won the third.
He died some time before B.C. 41S, the year in which the Peace
of Aristophanes was produced ; for his death is alluded to in
that comedy (835). The subjects of his tragedies were largely
1 323- 2 344- s 372. * 574- 3 The Tyro, 597.
6 98. 1 78. 8 59. » 79. 10 lb. 81.
THE DRAMA : SOPHOCLES. 2 I9
taken from Homer ; but in other cases his plots departed widely
from the ordinary form of the myths prevalent among the
Greeks. For instance, he makes Antigone and Ismene to be
burnt in the temple of Hera by the son of Eteocles. His
plays, though correct and careful, lacked the vigour and origi-
nality which mark a tragedian of genius. In point of style, he
was at times forcible, and his figures were bold, but he was apt
to become pompous, and occasionally obscure. His vocabulary
differs from that of Athenian tragedies ; he uses words of his
own invention, retains many Ionicisms, and borrows a large
proportion of words from epic writers.
The age of Neophron of Sicyon is doubtful ; but if it is true
that he first introduced a Psedagogus on the stage, he must date
from before the Electro, of Sophocles. It is, however, more
interesting that Neophron wrote a Medea, to which Euripides'
play of the same name was indebted. The fragments of Neo-
phron's drama show that he was a poet of no small merit, and
also point to the conclusion that Euripides, if indebted to his
predecessor, borrowed in the treatment of the plot rather than
from the style of Neophron. Yet in one point, even in the
economy of the play, Euripides seems to have departed from
Neophron's treatment; for whereas the latter makes Êgcus
come expressly to consult Medea, the former makes him come
to consult Pittheus, and thus what is essential to the plot is left
by Euripides, as it was not left by Neophron, to chance.
Among the older contemporaries of Sophocles must be placed
Carcinus of Agrigentum. His plays were of an antiquated
description, and choral songs and dances predominated in them.
He is better known as a founder of a '-school " than as a poet.
His son Xenocles defeated Euripides in B.C. 415, and Carcinus,
the son
him of Xenocles,
in the Poetics andis distinguished
the Rhetoric. byHeAristotle's
seems toreferences
have beento
careless in the treatment of his plays, and at times artificial.
Amongst other plays of his are mentioned an CEdipus, a Medta,
and an Orestes. His style was flowing, he was inclined to be
sententious, and had a tendency to philosophy. His versification
is lax and somewhat conversational.
CHAPTER IV.
EURIPIDES.
Euripides was born B.o 485, in the island of Salamis, where

his parents, with the rest of the Athenians, had taken refuge on
the approach of the Persians. We have the express statement
of Philochorus (who lived about B.C. 300) for the fact that his
mother, Clito, was of good family ; and his father, Mnesarchus,
must have been possessed of some wealth, for Euripides led
the chorus of boys at the Thargelia, and later in life attended
the lectures of Prodicus, whose fees are well known to have
been exceedingly high. It is said that Euripides was at first
trained as an athlete, and that he subsequently became a painter.
The latter statement is somewhat confirmed by the numerous
allusions in his plays to painting and to art generally, and by
the fact that his situations were so arranged that they became
the subjects of many works of art. In his marital relations he
is said to have been unhappy, though on this point we are
treated to much scandal, but to no facts. Some, at least, of
these stories l were invented to account for a misogynism which
does not exist in his tragedies. If he says many severe things
against women, he draws pure, affectionate, self-sacrificing
women with a grace and tenderness unsurpassed. It is not
strange that a poet who could conceive such characters should
find in the women of Athens much that came short of his ideal.
Under the system of seclusion which then prevailed in Athens,
there is little reason to hesitate in accepting Aristotle's opinion,2
that women might be good, but were generally inferior. If
Euripides spares not the faults of women, he at least sees, what
most other Greeks did not see, that the system under which
they lived was to blame.3 He is said to have been married
twice, and to have had by his first wife three sons, the younger
Euripides and two others. At the age of twenty-five he brought
out Ins first play, the lost Peliades ; but of his first thirteen
years' work as a dramatic author we know nothing. The
earliest of his plays which have survived is the Alcestis. The
date of this play is said to have been B.C. 438, of the Medea,
b.o. 431, and of the Hippolytus, b.c. 428. The Medea won the
third prize. Euripides, according to the scholiasts, won the
1 E.g. Sophocles' comment on the statement that Euripides lmted women

— " in his tragedies, yes."
2 Poet, xv. 3. 3 Medea, 231-251.
THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 22 I
tragic prize only five times. Whatever want of popularity this

may be taken to imply was due probably to the fact that the
movements with which he was in sympathy only came to
triumph in later times. The story that, when called upon by
an audience to alter something in one of his plays, he said he
wrote tragedies for their instruction, not his, is intrinsically
improbable, and cannot be taken as showing the relations which
existed between Euripides and his public ; for we know that
the Hippolytus, which we have, was constructed with a view to
avoid the faults that had caused the failure of an earlier play
by Euripides on the same subject.
If on many social and speculative questions Euripides was
too far ahead of his time to be in harmony with it, in his
patriotism at least he Avas at one with the Athenians of his
day. Although he took no part in the internal politics of
Athens, and utters no sentiment on them beyond the proud
loyalty to her republican constitution and her history which
also finds expression in Sophocles,1 he takes a keen interest in
Athenian foreign politics. After the Hecuba, the date of which
is fixed to be B.C. 425 by the allusion in line 462 to the puri-
fication ofDelos, and by the parody of line 174 in the Clouds,
1 165, the next three plays which we possess, the Andromache,
the Suppliants, and the Heraclidm, all have a political object for
their prime motive and belong to the period of B.c. 424 — B.C.
418. The Andromache is an attack upon Sparta, and the other
two plays were designed to promote or to confirm the alliance
which Athens concluded with Argos in B.C. 420. The next four
plays whose dates are known to us are the Troades, B.C. 415 ;
the Helena, b.c. 412 ; the Phcenissai, B.C. 411 ; and the Orestes,
B.c. 408. When the Ion, the Hercules Furens, the Iphigenia
in Tauris, or the Electra was produced we do not know, though
on grounds of style and metre various dates have been assigned
to them. The date is also unknown of the Cyclops, the only
surviving specimen of the satyric drama.
In B.o. 409 Euripides went, for what reason we do not know,
to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. There he pro-
duced the Archelaus in honour of his royal host ; and there too
1 He represents Athens as growing great by her chivalrous defence of the
weak in the Suppliants and the Heraclidce, and sums up the philosophy of
her growth in the words iv rots wvvouriv adêrat, Supp. 323. The intro-
duction ofTheseus into the Medea, the myth of which has no connection with
Athens, the conclusion of the Ortstea and of the Hercules Furens, are other
instances of Euripides1 patriotism. Cf. also Hec. 464 ; Tro. 210, 216, 220,
980; Orest. 1666; Heracli. 183; Ion, 192, 272, 281, 683; Here. Fur. 477,
1409.
he -wrote the Bacchce. The subject of this play, which is a

celebration of the power of Dionysus, was doubtless suggested
to Euripides by his visit to a country in which the worship of
the god greatly flourished. The Bacchce is not only interesting
as the only surviving play which has the cult of Dionysus for
its subject, but is also, from the point of view of art, one of the
finest of Greek tragedies. It further has an interest as showing,
that although Euripides felt deeply the inconsistencies and the
frequent immorality of polytheism,1 he never so utterly aban-
doned the religion of his country as to find it impossible to
acquiesce in at least some part of traditional religion. In this
respect, as in others, Euripides faithfully mirrors the life ot
Athens. The difficulties which he felt with regard to poly-
theism were not felt by him alone ; and although, as might be
expected from a friend of Socrates, he occasionally attained to
higher conceptions,2 still in not finally or wholly renouncing
polytheism he is again the faithful exponent of his age. The
Bacchce and the fyhigenia at Aulis, were only put upon the
Athenian stage after his death, which took place in Macedonia
in b.c. 406.
The popularity of Euripides was in ancient times very great.
His plays were performed even in Parthia, and many of the
Athenians who became prisoners in Sicily after the disastrous
termination of the Sicilian expedition, regained their liberty if
they were able to recite from Euripides' works. He is referred
to and quoted frequently by ancient writers ; and although the
fact that he is much quoted by composers of anthologies and
such works tends to show that his popularity was partly due to
the ease with which general reflections, aphorisms, &c, might
be detached from his works, still, on the other hand, the
1 E.g. Here. Fur. 344, 1341 ; Ion, 444 ; Iph. T. 380. There are many such
passages; but to imagine that Euripides is always covertly ridiculing the
myths which were almost necessarily the subjects of his plays, and that
Euripides' plays were designed for two audiences — for the ignorant crowd, who
did not see any of the poet's mockery, and for the author's fellow-sceptics in
the audience, who enjoyed the mockery— is going too far. It is the logical
consequence of such criticism that a German writer maintains that the
Bacchce
travesty isofa the
burlesque
worship— aof parody on the poet's enemy, Aristophanes, and a
Dionysus.
s E.y. Frag. 960 (Nauck) :—
Qebv 5£ irotov eliri fioi vo-nriov ;
rof irdvd' bpwvTa k avrbv oi'% opib/xtvop.
Or Fiag. 968 :—
iraiLos 6" &.v olkos tcktovwv ir\acrdtis Ciro
S^ftas tA Oetov irepi/3dXoi toIxwv Tri'xaTs ;
THE DRAMA I EURIPIDES. 2 2 3
approval of Virgil,1 Horace,2 Ovid,3 or Theocritus 4 must be set

in Euripides' favour. The popularity which is manifested by
quotations is evidence to a certain extent that in Euripides the
harmony of the whole is sacrificed to the beauty of the parts ;
but the popularity which is testified to by the fact that consi-
derably more plays of Euripides have been preserved than of
Êschylus and Sophocles together, is evidence that Euripides
was appreciated both as a tragedian and as a poet. Further,
the artistic beauty of his situations in themselves is shown by
the numerous works of art inspired by his tragedies.5 His
popularity is in part doubtless due to his "anticipating the
spirit of the age," although the Bacchce, which, as far as we
know, was the most popular of his plays, is in motive and
treatment rather behind than in advance of the poet's time.
However, it is true that Euripides' sympathies were with
advanced ideas. His association with Socrates brought him
into connection with the movement which was about to impart
a new direction to philosophy, and to make Greek thought not
only Greek, but universal. In the controversy with regard to
slavery, which Aristotle incidentally shows existed in his time,6
Euripides had already taken the side of the slaves.7 Above all,
Euripides strove hard to inspire the Greeks with humanity. In
that respect he rose to a height attained neither by iEschylus,
Sophocles, nor any poet among his predecessors.8
1 Ên. iv. 301, 469 et seq., vii. 385 et seq.
9 Odes, II. xix., III. i. 1-14. xxv. ; Sat. II. iii. 302 ; Ep. I. xvi. 73.
3 Met. iii. 511 et seq., iv. 1 et seq., vi. 587 <t seq.
4 xxvi. Euripides is also alluded to in Catullus, Ixiii. 23, lxiv. 61, 252
et seq. ; Propertius, III. xvii. 24, xxii. 35 ; Persius, i. 100 ; Seneca, Gftf.404 ;
Statius, Thcb. iv. 1565 et seq.
5 E.g. scenes from the Hippolytus are found in the sarcophagus from
Agrigentum and on a relief in the Louvre ; from the Hecuba on a Lucanian
vase. Timomachus painted subjects from the Iphigenia in Tauris and Medea.
Scopas sculptured a Bacchante from the description in the Bacchce, and
the Farnese bull represents a scene from the Antiope. Twenty-three of
Euripides' plays furnish subjects for painting or sculpture to our knowledge,
and probably the number would be increased if we knew more about the lost
plays.
6 Ar. Pol. i. c. 3, p. 1253b, 14 and 20.
7 See Andr. 82, 89, 136 seq., 155 seq., 186 seq. ; Pliceii. 392 ; Iph, Aul. 313 ;
Jon, 674, 854 ; Orest. 1522 ; Hec. 291, 348 seq., 358 ; Troad. 302, 489 stq. ;
Hel. 1640, 726, 744 ; Ale. 138, 918. He sees plainly that slaves have faults,
but that is due to their slavery. El. 633 ; Orest. n 15, 1522 ; Jon, 983 ; and
Frag. 49, 50, 52, 253, 690, 966.
8 Not only does he maintain that a slave may be the equal of his master in
point of worth, and frequently show that it wan due solely to the cruel acci-
dents of war that men and women were enslaved, but he is never weary of
dwelling on the horrors of war, and of demonstrating to his audience that a
man or woman need not be a Greek to suffer and to deserve sympathy. E.g.
the Hecuba and the Medea. In the latter play, not only does Euripides, tiie
But if, on the one hand, Euripides owes some of his success
to his anticipation of the spirit of the age, on the other hand,
it is to this very cause that most of his faults must be attri-
buted. He exhibits all the awkwardness and defects of a
transition stage. If Sophocles laid his scenes in " a past which
never was present," he at any rate adhered to his imaginary
period with fidelity. But Euripides lays his scenes in a time
which is neither past nor present, but an incongruous and
impossible epoch, in which Theseus defends the republican in-
stitutions of Athens,1 and Hecuba regrets the high price of
Sophists' lectures.2 Euripides was impelled towards reality by
a true instinct and by dramatic feeling, but it was impossible
for him to discard myths as the subjects of his plays, and on
no other condition could the reality he wished to depict be
attained. At the same time, if the history of tragedy and of art
drove him in the direction of real life, comedy already fully
occupied the field on which he wished to enter.
If now, commencing with the plot, we proceed to examine the
elements of the Euripidean drama, we shall find that throughout
Euripides is hampered, and is conscious that he is hampered, by
a tradition which he feels is antiquated, but has not the power
entirely to abandon.
The two most obvious changes or additions which Euripides
introduced with regard to the plot are the prologue 3 and the
"deus ex machina" to assist the denoument.4 The prologue is
generally spoken by one of the characters taking part in the
play, although occasionally, as. for instance, in the Hecuba, by
woman-hater, show that the woman is right and the man wrong (a paradox
which he insists on in the chorus of 410). but he also claims sympathy for the
" barbarian " woman against her Greek lover.
1 Supp. 405 et scq.
- Hec. 816.
3 A vpoXoyos in the Greek sense (Arist. Poet. xii. ftrri 5£ irpb\oyos fih
(itpos b\ov rpayijioias rb irpb xopov irapboov) is to be found in Êschylua and
Sophocles, and in both poets the irpbXoyos includes an exposition of those
facts which it is necessary that the spectator should he put in possession of.
But Êschylus and Sophocles contrive to give the spectator this information
by means of soliloquies (e.g. the Agamemnon, Choephori, and Eumenides of
JBschylus ; the Trachinice of Sophocles does not begin with a soliloquy) or
dialogue, which are so natural or necessary to the action of the play as not
to have the appearance of being devised for the benefit of the audience.
(This, however, cannot he said of the two earliest plays of -Eschylus, the
Pei'sce and the Sit/rpliants, which have no 7^6X0705, and a very artificial
exposition.) Euripides, however, gives op ;i11 attempt at dramatic illusion,
and puts into the mouih of an actor a narrative, the avowed object of which
is the enlightenment of the audience.
4 The Philoctetes is terminated by means of n " deus ex machina," but here
Sophocles was possibly taking a hint from Euripides.
THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 2 2 5
a character who does not again appear. Frequently the pro-

logue issomething considerably more than what we understand
by a prologue, that is to say, it not only includes a narration of
those events of which a knowledge is requisite for the apprecia-
tion of the play, but also gives a sketch of the plot of the play.
Sometimes, however, as in the Electra or the Iphigenia in
Tauris, the prologue contains no foreshadowing of the play,
and gives no information which could not, in the absence of
the prologue, be inferred from the play as it proceeds.
The object with which the deus ex machina is made to
intervene is tolerably apparent. The poet thus gains much
time which would otherwise be spent in unravelling the plot.
This on the whole is probably also the object with which the
prologue is written. Even when the prologue sketches the
play which is to follow, Euripides only gives the myth as it
was generally known. The particular means by which the
various events notified by the prologue are to be brought about
are, of course, not alluded to. In both cases the motive seems
to have been to give as little time as possible to the myth as
traditionally related, in order to concentrate attention on the
incidents and situations of Euripides' own making. Euripides
could not throw off the myths altogether, but got rid of them
as much as possible by relegating them to the prologue and to
the deus ex machina. Whatever the motive with which these
two devices were used, they are none the less bad art;1 and
although historically they may have been demanded by circum-
stances, this is a consideration which explains but hardly justi-
fies them. Setting aside the prologue and this form of denou-
ment, we cannot but be amazed at the interest which Euripides
contrives to put into his plots. There is an excitement about
them which is not to be found in Sophocles, nor to be looked
for in iEschylus. The inventiveness and fertility of Euripides
in this respect shows his technical skill as a playwright. These
remarks, it must be noticed, are not intended to apply to all
the dramas of Euripides, though they do apply to those which
are characteristic of him. It is almost impossible to make any
one assertion which shall be true of all his plays, so much does
he vary. Not being separated by time from the form of the
drama which precedes his own, but seeing it year after year put
1 The soliloquy which opens the Medea must be excepted from this criti-
(which cism.
is Itsalmost
qualityindistinguishable
is comparable with
from the opening although
a soliloquy, of feophocles'
it is Trachinicc
addressed
to Deiauira'a household slaves), and it shows that Euripides, although lie
generally employed the more bald form of prologue, was capable of a simple,
effective, and artistic exposition.
P
on the stage by Sophocles, Euripides did not experience the

difficulty which would be felt by an author endeavouring to go
back to a style of composition which had ceased to be practised.
On the contrary, in the drama of Sophocles Euripides saw a
method of composition living with success, which it was com-
petent for him to try, and which he did try. Hence it is that
we have from Euripides plays such as the Hernclidoi, the
Supplices, the Hecuba, &c., which do not rely upon exciting
the spectator's curiosity, but depend for their interest on the
pity, or, in the case of the Bacchce, on the religious sentiment
which they evoke. But his powers are not limited to any one
or to some few resources; they extend to all the resources of
tragic art. Exciting plots, as in the Iphigenia in Tauris,
terror, as in the Hercules Furens or the Medea, pathos of the
purest and most simple kind, as in the Iphigenia at Aulis, the
Alcestis, and many other plays, constitute the excellence of
Euripides. His character-drawing is in some cases of the
highest kind, but he frequently sacrifices consistency in the
delineation of character to the temptation of producing a strik-
ing situation ; or perhaps it is more accurate to say that he
did not possess the power which marks Sophocles of conceiving
a character whose actions naturally and necessarily result in
impressive situations. Euripides possesses the technical skill
of the playwright to a much greater extent than he possesses
the genius of the dramatist.
There are plays of Euripides in which the chorus discharges
the functions of sympathy and comment in the same way, and
with as little awkwardness, as in Sophocles. Such plays arc the
Bacchce, the Heraclidai, and the Hecuba. In the Ion, indeed,
the chorus is made to take an important share in the action of
the drama by revealing Xuthus' intentions with regard to Ion,
and thus the central event of the play, the attempted murder of
Ion by his mother, is brought about. But in spite of these ex-
ceptions, itis characteristic of Euripides that he feels (and makes
little attempt to conceal) that the chorus is a clog on the develop-
ment of a play. Even Sophocles had found that the continual
presence of the chorus throughout a tragedy was inconsistent
with ends and effects which a poet may legitimately endeavour
to attain, and in the Ajax Sophocles boldly dismisses the chorus
from the stage, in order that Ajax may deliver his famous soli-
loquy. It is strange that although Euripides himself repeats
this experiment in the Alcestis and the lit Una, he never de-
veloped itinto a regular practice. The strength of tradition
was so great in this case, that Euripides, rather than break
THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 2 27
through it, retained the chorus even when its presence produced
effects the most inartistic. There are many occurrences in real
life which are fit subjects for dramatic representation, but are
not such as are conducted in the presence of twelve or fifteen
comparative strangers. Although even the private life of an
Athenian was considerably more public than is modern private
)life, Euripides, whose strength lies in domestic scenes, was likely
' to find the chorus a greater difficulty than did Sophocles. At
the same time, the surprises and complications which he aimed
at producing by the construction of his plots were, by the con-
tinual presence of the chorus, rendered difficult to obtain. Thus,
in the Hippolytus, the chorus, who have been present when
Phaedra declares her passion for Hippolytus to the nurse, and
who consequently know that the charge made by Phaedra against
Hippolytus is untrue, do not tell the truth and save Theseus
from causing his son's death, because they have been sworn to
secrecy. Euripides adopts the same stage device in the Medea
to account for the chorus not revealing Medea's designs of
murder. In the Eledra, Euripides does not take the trouble
even to administer the oath of secrecy to the chorus, but says
that they will keep the secret. The value of the chorus' oath
in Euripides' eyes is shown by the readiness with which they
break it when necessary, as in the Hippolytus. It is not, there-
fore, surprising that in the Iphigenia at Aulis Euripides aban-
dons all attempt at dramatic illusion, and allows the chorus to
be present at a secret interview between Agamemnon and Mene-
laus, without reference to the fact that the chorus would natu-
rally reveal what it knew to Clytemestra and Iphigenia.
In Sophocles the continual presence of the chorus is rendered
plausible, because the chorus is placed in relations of sympathy
or confidence with some leading character (with the heroine in
the Eledra, or with the character opposed to the heroine in the
Antigone), who occupies the stage almost continually.1 Owing
to the more intricate plots of Euripides, it is almost impossible
for one character to remain perpetually present on the stage ;
plans and events have to be revealed to the spectator which
must be concealed from the hero, and thus the chorus, which
still in Euripides continues to stand in a closer relation to the
hero than to any other character, is frequently left, by the neces-
sary absences of the hero, in an isolated and somewhat false
position, as is the case in the Iphigenia at An/ 'in.
1 In the Philoctetes Sophocles made the chorus consist of sailors, thus de-
parting from tradition, obviously because, as Neoptolemus, nut Philoctetes,
occupies the stage continuously, the chorus must be attached to the former.
As the presence of the chorus is without effect on the action

of the play, so the odes assigned to it have usually in Euripides
little to do with the subject of the play. They often bear no
special relation to the scene which has preceded, and occasion-
ally have no reference to anything in the play. Euripides thus
closely approaches the practice of later dramatists, whose choral
odes might be with equal propriety sung in any play, and were
merely designed to all'ord the spectator that relief which is given
in modern times by an interval between the acts.1 In Euri-
pides the choral odes are poems, which rely on their intrinsic
beauty as poetry rather than on the interest which attaches to
expressions of the poet's own opinions on religious and moral
questions. iEschylus frequently conveyed his opinions on such
subjects through the odes of the chorus, but Euripides dis-
tributes the duty of expressing his views among all his charac-
ters impartially ; and hence we have slaves, kings, and heroines,
all uttering sentiments admirable in themselves, although some-
what frigid and unnatural under the circumstances.
The constraints of a transition period which cramp Euripides
elsewhere have left their mark upon his character-drawing also.
Compelled by the tradition of the tragic art to take his subjects
from mythology, Euripides was impelled by his instinct as an
artist to draw his characters from real life ; and to present the
heroes of mythology acting from everyday motives and with
everyday feelings, was to attempt in most cases an impossible
fusion. The slaying of Clytemestra, by Orestes is a proper sub-
ject for the art of Sophocles or Êschylus, but is wholly unsuited
to the new form of art which Euripides was making for. To
the Greeks, accustomed to the figures of Sophocles or wiEschvlus,
it must have seemed, as it seemed to Aristotle, that the dramatis
personal of Euripides often had characters unnecessarily bad.
In his endeavours to substitute truth to nature for truth to lite-
rary tradition, Euripides had to work upon materials and with
tools not designed for the eifects which he wished to produce.
It is, then, striking proof of his power that he rose above all
these obstacles, and gave to the world such triumphs of charac-
ter-drawing ashis Alcestis, Medea, or Iphigenia, He depicts
the madness of Hercules and the passion of Phredra with the
force and intensity of a master ; and it is true that, great as
Euripides is in the anatomy, he is still greater in the pathology
1 "The performers in the orchestra of a modern theatre .ire little, I

believe, aware tbat they occupy the place, and may consider themselves
as the lineal descendants, of the ancient chorus."— Twining's Aristotle.
p. 103 n.
THE DRAMA: EURIPIDES. 2 29
of the soul. But love and madness are not the only emotions
■which he is capable of representing, and if Phaedra is a subject
which is "neither morally nor artistically pure,"1 Alcestis may
be quoted to prove the power and the purity of Euripides both
morally and artistically. It remains true, however, that Euri-
pides is in artistic purity, as in character-drawing, inferior to
Sophocles, and in genius inferior to both Sophocles and iEschy-
lus. The discords which exist in Euripides' plays between his
character-drawing and his situations, between his sentiments
and his mythical subjects, between the necessities of his plots
and the presence of the chorus, are discords which Sophocles
avoided and Euripides could not or would not convert into har-
monies.
Euripides' style is characterised by a smoothness and polish
which imply much hard work. In point of vocabulary, Euri-
pides made a greater advance towards the ordinary Attic of the
day than Sophocles had done. In respect also of expression
and imagery, Euripides adopts a style far less exalted than that
of Sophocles ' or iEschylus. This difference in style between
Euripides and the two older tragedians is quite in keeping with
the difference between their art and the newer form for which
Euripides was preparing the way. If there are truths which
demand lofty language for their proper expression, there are
also truths which require more precise enunciation ; and there
are few emotions for which the simplest words are not the best
utterance. In the pleadings of an Iphigenia, the self-sacrifice
of a Macaria, the sorrows of an Andromache, we want no wealth
of words or luxury of ideas to stand between us and the beauty
of the character. Euripides, being an artist, appreciated the
worth of simplicity. The metaphors and similes of iEschylus
are drawn mostly from nature — from pugnacious nature. Those
of Sophocles are also drawn from nature, but from her more
peaceful aspect. In Euripides we meet with similes and meta-
phors fromwhich
the effect art,2 showing at once
the Athens the 'poet's
of Pericles made susceptibility, and
upon the citizens
of Athens.
The fragments of Euripides' lost plays which are to be found
in various anthologists, grammarians, lexicographers, and others
are more numerous than those either of iEschylus or Sophocles.
1 Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, ii. 451.

2 E.g. from architecture, Ale. 311, 457. Med. 390, Or. 1203, Cycl 352,
353. 477, Tro. 489, Phcen. 84, Hel. 44. 605, Iph. Tain: 1462, Frag. 362,
779 ; from sculpture, Hec. 561, Frag. 124 ; fr°m painting, Hel. 255,
Bee. 807.
23O HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
The "best known is " Evil communications corrupt good man-

ners." l The knowledge of human nature which is shown in
this famous fragment appears again in a fragment of the
Alcmene, which declares the need of wisdom in the hour of
prosperity,2 and in another which says that " most evils are of
men's own doing." s The same knowledge takes a somewhat
cynical turn when he says in the Cretan Women* that "all
men are friendly to the wealthy." But the poet's own heart
was sound, for in the Didys* he notices that the poor are
oftener wiser than the wealthy, and often more pious with their
scanty offerings than the ricli with their offerings of bulls. His
faith in the right shines out often in the fragments. "Gold
and silver are not the only currency," he says in the (Edipus ; a
" Virtue is current everywhere." Justice may limp — " claudo
pede " — but she overtakes the wrong-doer ; 7 and all evil deeds
must out, he says in the Melanippe.* This faith in morality
could not fail to have its effect on his religious beliefs, and we
find in the (Enomaus? " When I see the wicked fall, then I say
there are gods." And although he does formulate the some-
what transcendental ist tenet that " the god in each man is his
mind," 10 at other times in a more ordinary strain he says,
"Without God there is no prosperity for man,"11 and "the
ways of Heaven are mysterious." 12 Among the fragments are
many relating to women; and although we find such state-
ments in the (Edipus as that " every wife is worse than her
husband, should the worst man marry the best," 13 and in
the Ahpe that educating women is a mistake, because " the
well-educated deceive us more than the neglected ; " u still else-
where, in the Melanippe, he says that "though there is nothing
worse than a had woman, there is nothing better than a good
one." 15 Witli sound common sense he declares in the Protesilcuis
that a man who classes all women together is a fool ; some are
good and some bad : 16 and elsewhere that all men are not
unlucky in marriage any more then all men are lucky ; it depends
on the wife a man gets ; 17 and in the Melanippe that " bad
women have given a had name to the whole sex."18 What
Euripides thought of marriage with a good wife we may see
from such passages as this from the Antigone*9 "A man's best
possession is a sympathetic wife,'' and "A loving husband is
1 Nauck, T. G. F. 1013. - Ih. 100. 3 It.. 1015. < lb. 465.
6 lb. 329, 940. 6 lb. 546. 7 lb. 969. 8 lb. 509. » lb. 581.
10 lb. 1007. » II). 1014. 12 lb. 941. 13 lb. 550. " lb. 112.
1B lb. 497. 18 lb. 658. » lb. 1042. 'a lb. 496. i» lb. 164.
THE DRAMA : EURIPIDES. 2 3 I
a woman's wealth."1 In the Phrixus,2 too, he dwells on the

charms of a wife's ministrations in times of sickness and dis-
tress, and elsewhere 3 on the influence of a good wife in saving
the home which a dissolute husband would otherwise ruin. In
the Dictys* he has verses on the happiness of paternal, and in
the Erec/dheus5 of maternal love. It is consistent with his just
remarks on marriage that botli in the Antiope6 and in the
(Edi/ms7 he says that beauty in a woman without nobility of
mind is little worth. Elsewhere — in the Melanijipe8 — he is
fatalistic : marriages are made in heaven, and it is useless to go
against destiny. His fatalism comes out also in the Peliades,9
where his advice is "not to kick against the pricks." On the
subject of slavery Euripides' utterances in the fragments are
divided. In the Phrixus 10 he says, " All that is disgraceful in
many slaves is the name : in mind they are often less slavish
than the free." But in the Alcmeon,11 " Whoso trusts a slave is
a fool." The problems of heredity seem to have exercised his
mind : good men have good sons,12 and a good child cannot
come of a bad father.13 On the other hand, you may have a
fine child from inferior parents, he says in the Meleager.u
Good birth he thinks inferior to good acts;15 and in the Alcmene 16
we have a partial Greek translation for noblesse oblige.
The only member of the "school" of Euripides who is men-
tioned to us is the nephew Euripides, who, after his uncle's
death, brought out the Iphigenia at Aulis, the Alcmceon, and the
Bacchce, and won the prize with them. He is said also to have
written tragedies himself, but we know nothing of them, and,
indeed, are uncertain whether this Euripides was the nephew
or the son of the famous poet.
Four years older than Euripides, and a rival of Euripides and
Sophocles, was Acha3us of Eretria. Of his life we know nothing
except that he once won the tragic prize; and since he is not men-
tioned byAristophanes in the Frogs as among the survivors of
Sophocles, it has been inferred that he had died before the pro-
duction ofthat comedy. His satyric dramas, the titles of seven
of which have come down to us, are said to have been in the
first rank. The subjects of several of his tragedies are taken
from the Cyclic poets, e.g. His Adrastus, (Edipns, Pirithous,
and Philodetes ; and in his Theseus he paid Athens the compli-
ment of selecting an Attic myth. His style is apt to become
1 Nauck, 1047. - 111. 819. 3 lb. 1041. * lb. 333.

6 lb. 360. 6 ib. 211. 7 lb. S52. 8 lb. 503.
» Ib. 607. 10 lb. 828 ; cf. 515. « Ib. 87. 1- lb. 76.
M lb. 344. W lb. 531. ' « Ib. 9. 1« Ib. 99.
obscure, his diction is ornate and sometimes artificial, his de-

scriptions minute, and pushed rather too far.
The greatest, however, of Euripides' rivals was the Athenian
Agathon. Porn probably about B.C. 447, Agathon was a man
of education and refinement. His natural abilities at an early-
age impressed Socrates, and the charm of his character secured
him the friendship of Plato, whose Symposium was written to
celebrate Agathon's victory in the tragic contest of B.C. 416.
The time of his death is uncertain, but fell about B.C. 400.
Placed by the Alexandrine grammarians in their canon amongst
the first tragedians, he probably ranked next to the Three.
Aristotle not only mentions him several times in the Poetics,
but testifies practically to his merit, and shows his own fondness
for this tragedian by the frequency with which he quotes him
in the Ethics and the Rhetoric. Agathon's power as a tragedian
is shown by the freedom with which he treated the chorus,
the music, and the subjects of the drama. The musical inno-
vations which he made it is impossible for us to appreciate,
though the songs which Aristophanes makes him sing in the
Thcsmophoriazusce exemplified his changes in the music of the
drama. With regard to the chorus, we know that he first com-
posed odes capable of being sung with equal appropriateness in
any drama whatever, and thus these choruses l came to serve
only the same purpose as the music of the orchestra between
the acts in a modern theatre. In his selection of subjects he
had the courage to execute what Euripides had only the power
to conceive. That is, he, at any rate in the Anthos (if this was
the name of the piece), abandoned the domains of myth and
history entirely, and composed a tragedy which was original in
its subject as well as in its treatment. In this proceeding ho
shows the influence of the circumstances in which he found
himself. All that could be made out of the myths suitable for
the stage had already been drawn from them by his predecessors,
and he was thus compelled either to have recourse to his own
imagination for a subject, as he did with success in the case of
the Anthos, or to crowd into one play mythical incidents enough
to have furnished forth half-a-dozen dramas in earlier times, —
a proceeding which, according to Aristotle, proved fatal to one
play (unnamed) of Agathon's, otherwise not unworthy of success.
Agathon's style also, as was natural in an admirer of Gorgias,
shows traces of the fatal influence which rhetoric was beginning
to asseit. over the drama. Antitheses and plays upon thoughts
and words, for instance, are frequent
1 l/JLf}6\tflA.
THE DRAMA: EURIPIDES. 233
Amongst other contemporaries of Euripides may be mentioned

Aristarclius, who is said to have lived a hundred years, to have
written a hundred tragedies, and to have won the prize twice ;
Morychus, Acestor, Gnesippus, Hieronymus, Nothippus, Sthene-
lus, Spintharus, Cleophon, Theognis, Nicomachus, who defeated
Euripides once, Pythangelus, Pantacles, and, finally, Critias,
the Sisyphus
the chief of the Thirty Tyrants.
of Critias, "We havetimes
which in ancient a long
was fragment
attributedof
doubtfully to Euripides. The grounds for this seem to have
been an inadequate appreciation of Euripides' religious opinions,
and an erroneous assumption that no tragedian but Euripides
could have doubts on religion. The passage in question makes
the gods to be an invention of state-craft, designed for the
prevention of offences which elude the law. That such a dis-
sertation could have any artistic appropriateness in a tragedy is
impossible, and it serves to show the value of the drama of the
time. The style of the fragment is clear, but scarcely poetical ;
the metre is exceedingly lax.
The tragedians of the fourth century are little more than
names to us, as, for instance, Mamercus, Apollodorus, Timesi-
theus, and Dicaeogenes. The elder Dionysius, tyrant of Syracuse,
devoted himself with much zeal to the drama, and had some of
his tragedies put upon the Athenian stage in a manner regard-
less of expense, to the great amusement of the Athenians.1 Of
more merit as a tragedian was Antiphon (not the orator), who
is quoted, as though generally known, by Aristotle. Eheto-
ricians, such as Aphareus and Theodectes, continued to be im-
ported into the ranks of the tragedians. Both Theodectes and
Aphareus were pupils of Isocrates. The style of the former was
correct and elegant, and his metre exceedingly free. As was to
be expected, he developed the rhetorical element in tragedy to a
considerable extent, and being throughout an orator rather than
a poet, he not unnaturally conceived numerous scenes in the
spirit rather of the law court than of the stage. Aristotle
seems to have been well acquainted with his works, for at
different times he mentions seven of his tragedies. Finally, we
must mention Chaeremon, one of the " Reading Tragedians." 2
Among the symptoms of the decline of tragedy is over-refine-
ment and a striving after literary effects which cannot be
1 Dionysius' claims to be considered a poet may l>e judged by the words

be coined. His epithet for a maid was fitvavbposi because a maid is on
the look-out, /tern, for a husband, dvdpa. Mouse-holes were /ii/cTv-.a,
since it is there that a mouse, /tOs, watches, rrjpei.
- 'AvcLyvwaTiKoi.
?34 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
legitimately obtained on the stage. At Athens the result was

seen in the composition of plays not intended for the stage,
but for reading. The disease showed itself not only in tragedy,
but in the dithyramb; and poets whose works were not written
to be acted or sung by the dithyrambic chorus, but by their
fineness and detail were designed for a smaller and more
critical audience, were called Readers. It seems, however,
that Chseremon also wrote acting plays. Indeed, he seems not
to have confined himself to any one kind of poetry, and, further,
to have invented a kind of his own, for his Centaur, which was
a medley of all kinds of metre, is sometimes called a tragedy,
sometimes a rhapsody, and sometimes an epic, and so may be
inferred to have comprised features peculiar to each of those
forms of composition.
The forces of disintegration were at work on the drama in
the time of Euripides, as we have seen above. He felt them
and recognised them, but the power and genius with which he
controlled them would be much better appreciated if we only
had a complete work of one of his successors to show us the
contrast between Euripides and the dramatists who followed
him.
Rhetoric invaded tragedy with more and more success, and
culminated in the work of Theodectes, who combined the pathos
of Euripides with the finish of Isocrates. Learning and philo-
sophy replace creative power and technical knowledge. In-
capacity for the real work of tragedy led to the insertion of
what was good, and even beautiful, but not appropriate. Indi-
viduality and distinctive characteristics are wanting, for political
exhaustion was accompanied by a tendency to mechanical and
routine work, liecause the strength to deal with a tragedy as a
whole was lacking, attention was paid more and more to detail,
much labour was bestowed on trivialities of thought and of expres-
sion, and as a result work became finer but feebler. When
genius ceases, ingenuity begins.
CHAPTER V.
COMEDY : ORIGIN AND GROWTH.
TnE Greeks were not much given to the scientific investigation

of the early history of institutions, and it is matter rather for
regret than for surprise that Aristotle should complain that little
the drama: comedy. 235
or nothing was known about the early history of comedy. Even

in his time, however, as may be inferred from the Poetics, the
" invention " of comedy was claimed both by the Athenians and
the Megarians, and the dispute renders it still further necessary
to exercise reserve in accepting the various statements on this
subject made by ancient authorities. If we proceed to investi-
gate the growth, and renounce the investigation of the " inven-
tion " of comedy, we shall see that the germs of comedy are of
two kinds, and that these germs may be found amongst various
members of the Greek race.
As tragedy sprang from the serious side of the worship of
Dionysus, so comedy has its root in the joyous aspect of that
ritual. When or how the phallus became associated with the
feasts of Dionysus is uncertain ; but, at least in Graeco-Italian
times, the Ithyphalli were to be found associated with the wor-
shippers ofDionysus, and phallic songs were amongst the modes
by which they expressed the joy of their worship. In later
times this rade worship, practically dropped by the inhabitants
of towns, survived only in the villages — Komai — and hence the
name of comedy. With regard to the phallic songs we know
nothing. Probably they were sung in strophes by a double
chorus, and in matter and style were appropriate to the subject.
As Aristotle says that comedy was the creation of the leaders
of these phallic choruses, it is not improbable that the choruses
were originally followed by a monody from the leader of the
chorus. This monody was derisive and abusive in character,
and was directed against any person, whether unpopular or
merely conspicuous, who was regarded as a subject likely to
excite the laughter of the crowd.
The other root of comedy is to be found in the mimetic
dances which were practised by many of the Greeks. These
dances, though not confined to the festivals of Dionysus, were
particularly characteristic of them. The Spartans developed
these performances to a considerable extent, and took great
delight in dances representing the robbery of fruit from orchards
or meat from the Syssitia, with the discovery of the offender
and his behaviour under the consequent penalties. These per-
formances were not always limited to dumb show, for the per-
formers1 represented also foreign quack-doctors, and in this case
the humour consisted in the fact that they were supposed to
gain the preference over native doctors simply because they
gave foreign names to their drugs.
1 These performers were called in Sparta fieiKTjXioraL ; in Italy, tf>\va.K(t ;
iu Thebes, ideXovral ; in Sicily, oi>To\d/35a\oi.
Such were the germs of comeily that were to be found in

various parts of Greece. For their development two conditions
were necessary. The first was, that there should be enough
political freedom to allow the trivial and personal abuse of the
Phallica to take on a political interest. The second condition
was, that the country worship of Dionysus should be taken in
hand and celebrated under the guidance of the state. The first
state apparently to realise the former condition was Megara,
and the expulsion of the tyrant Theagenes in the sixth century
Avas followed by a rapid development of comedy. The monody
of the leader of the chorus was developed into a dialogue between
the chorus and its leader, and eventually this dialogue was
invested with some dramatic form. The precise nature of these
short farces it is impossible to ascertain. Their literary value
cannot have been great, for Megarian comedy has left no traces
of any literary representative. Maeson of Megara is said to
have invented two masks, that of a slave and that of a cook.
This indicates, not only the nature of the figures out of which
the fun of these farces was obtained, but that the characters
were of fixed and traditional types.
Although the Athenians affected to despise the stupidity of
Megarian farces, Athenian comedy was influenced by them to
no small extent in its origin. Susarion, to whom the "inven-
tion" of Attic comedy was ascribed by the Greeks, was a
Megarian, and probably transferred to Attic soil the comedy of
his native state. To what stage of development Megarian
comedy had attained in the time of Susarion is uncertain. The
plays of Susarion were never committed to writing, and there
is no good authority for supposing even that they were in verse.
They were not wholly extempore : Susarion probably communi-
cated beforehand to his actors the general outline, and arranged
witli them the principal situations. The rest would be left
mainly to the inspiration of the moment. The result would be
a concatenation of loosely connected scenes of a broad and
burlesque description.
The conditions, however, in Athens at this time were not
favourable for the development of comedy. The rule of the
Pisistratidw did not admit of that political interest which,
as the subsequent history of comedy at Athens showed, was
necessary to produce, the action and reaction of poet and public
indispensable for the growth of art. During this period of (for
comedy) depression at Athens, we must look to Sicily for the
next stage of development.
The Sicilians seem at all times to have been a merry people.
THE DRAMA : COMEDY. 237
In later times even the grinding weight of Roman government

and the oppressions of a Verres could not rob the light-hearted
Sicilians of their enjoyment of, and capacity for, a joke. Here,
as elsewhere in Hellas, mimetic dances existed, and the names
— though little more— of an immense number of them have
come down to us. Indeed, Theophrastus ascribed the invention
of dancing to a Sicilian. There was, however, if the evidence
of vases is rightly interpreted, existing in Sicily — and par-
ticularly atTarentum in Lower Italy — another source of comedy,
and that was the practice of parodying myths. In later times
the actors of these parodies attained great celebrity, and were
much patronised at the courts of Alexander and the Diadochae.
The best known name is that of Rhinthon. He was a Tarentine
of the time of the first Ptolemy, and composed thirty-eight of
these parodies. Blaesus, Sciras, and Sopater also were famous
for this kind of performance.1 But it is supposed that not only
in these later days, but before the time of comedy, mythology
was travestied. This interpretation of the evidence afforded by
painted vases is, however, not beyond dispute. If it is correct,
its importance is considerable, for in such travesties we have
what is conspicuous by its absence in the early efforts of comedy
— that is, a real dramatic element.
The development of comedy in Sicily was assisted not only
by the disposition of a people naturally inclined to see the comic
side of things, and by their dances and possibly travesties of
myths, but also by the existence of a cultured and literary court
in Syracuse.
It was under these conditions that Sicilian comedy originated.
The three comedians of this island known to us, Dinolochus,
Phormus, and Epicharmus, were probably not the only come-
dians to whom Sicily gave birth, but it is certain that all others
were eclipsed by the last-mentioned, Epicharmus. Phormus,
who is ranked by Aristotle with Epicharmus for his services to
comedy, was tutor to the children of Gelon, tyrant of Syracuse,
wrote seven comedies, probably mythological travesties, and
contributed some improvements to the costume of the actors
and the decoration of the stage. Dinolochus is represented oidy
by a few fragments.
Epicharmus was born in Cos some time between ac. 540 and
B.C. 532. When a few months old he was taken by his father,
Helothales, to Megara in Sicily. There he spent most of his
youth, and there the boy must have often witnessed the rudi-
mentary farces which the Megarians of Sicily had brought with
1 Called IXapoTpaytfidla.
them from their mother country. It is also extremely probable

that Megara was the scene of Epicharmus' own first attempts
at comedy, though we only have direct evidence that he worked
in Syracuse. Some time before this, however, he must have
visited Magna Grsecia, for he was a disciple of Pythagoras.
Whether he attained to the esoteric circle of the famous philo-
sopher or not, we cannot say, but the influence of Pythagoras
on Epicharmus was considerable in extent, and lasting in its
effects. Pythagoras died probably before bo. 510, and, there-
fore, Epicharmus' acquaintance with him cannot be placed after
that date. Megara was destroyed B c. 485, and Epicharmus
probably proceeded before then to Syracuse. There he worked,
and there at an advanced age he died, probably shortly after
the death of Hiero, B.C. 467.
The points in which the comedy of Epicharmus constitutes
an advance on the rude farces of the Mogarians are clear and
of easy comprehension. The Megarian farces were not com-
mitted towriting. The comedy of Epicharmus has a permanent
literary value. It is not certain, as already mentioned, that
the former were even in verse, and at all times they were un-
doubtedly little more than improvisations. Epicharmus, on the
other hand, was a poet, and his comedies were invested with
literary form. Megarian comedy was extravagant, and its
situations were connected in but the flimsiest manner. Epi-
charmus was possessed of psychological penetration, and he
endued comedy with a plot and imparted unity to it. Finally,
he did not confine himself merely to the absurd side of human
nature, but gave expression to his reflections on life in the
shape of moral sentiments.
Epicharmus did not attain to these high results immediately.
His early efforts were probably in the spirit of the farces which,
as a boy, he had witnessed in Sicilian Megara, and to this
period must be assigned many of his parodies on mythology.
Hephaestus is a comic figure even in Homer, and the Comaslae
or Hephaestus of Epicharmus probably developed the comic
side of the limping god's character to an extravagant extent.
So, too, the adventures of Heracles with Pholus, which included
much drinking on the part of Heracles, and much fighting on
the part of everybody, seem to show that the Heracles witli
Pholus was distinguished rather by humour of a rough-and-
ready description than by character-drawing or artistic plot
In tins rude stage of comedy, however. Epicharmus was net
destined to remain long. His poetical instinct, his powers of
observation, and his aesthetic feelings, urged him to work of a
THE DRAMA : COMEDY. 239
more refined kind, and his removal from Megara to Syracuse

must have contributed to this result. The action of Syracuse
on Epicharmus was twofold. It gave him a better public, and
it introduced him to the literary circle of the court of Syracuse.
The large population of this wealthy city probably possessed
at this time the same generous appreciation for genius as it did
in the time of Euripides. The literary circle of the court
embraced all the most cultured men of Syracuse, as it also
comprised all other Greeks of distinction whom Hiero could
attract to Sicily. Under these favouring conditions Epicharmus
proceeded to those comedies of character in which his real
strength lay. All that was refined in his work, careful in its
finish, and witty in conception and expression, was developed.
But although studies of character, which, as the names of the
plays indicate, were contained in his Boor1 or his Megarian
Woman, necessarily fall within Epicharmus' later and Syracusan
period, when his observations of life had borne fruit, still they
do not complete the sum of his activity at this period. Mytho-
logical travesties also give scope for artistic work. The figures
in such plays are indeed gods, but their absurdities are those of
men. In the heroes and gods of these parodies were parodied
the Sicilians of Epicliarmus' own time. This is obvious in the
case of his play Hebe's Wedding (reproduced under the title of
The Muses). The great and general wealth which under Gelo
and Hiero rapidly spread among the Syracusans was not em-
ployed by them always in the best of directions, and the
wealthy classes seem to have been particularly subject to
gluttony. In Hebe's Wedding the central fact of the piece is
the wedding-feast, and this is portrayed from all points of
view as something which even the Syracusans must have
allowed to be excessive. Naturally the bridegroom, Heracles,
whose appetite was admitted in sober mythology, performed
wonderful feats in the consumption of food. The Muses were
brought on to the stage to subserve the leading idea of the
piece. But the spectators, who were prepared to see the young
and beauteous nymphs of Pimpleia and Pieria,'-' must have been
overcome with amazement and amusement when they saw them
appear as sturdy fishwives, bearing as their contributions to the
feast innumerable fishes much prized by Syracusan gourmands.
After this, the audience would not be surprised at witnessing
1 'kypdiarlvot — Attic aypoiKOS.

2 In forms suggesting the notions conveyed by the words ttIuv and irfyt-
x\T)fj.i rather than Pieria and Pimpleia.
Athene playing the flute and the Dioscuri executing a pas de

deux of a cuiuic character.
This sketch of Hebe's Wedding may enable us to comprehend
the nature of Sicilian comedy as represented by Epicharmus.
The introduction of the Dioscuri and Athene was episodic in
character, and could have no strict connection with the plot.
Like all other ancient comedy — indeed, like ancient tragedy —
Sicilian comedy did not rely on the intrigues of a complicated
plot, but contained one simple leading idea, round which vari-
ous episodes and comic situations were grouped. The drama,
the latest form of poetry to arise, was the longest to develop,
and it is only in modern times that the plot, both in comedy
and tragedy, has come to be the leading feature of a play.
Further, Sicilian comedy was essentially burlesque, and Hebe's
Wedding surprises us by its resemblance to modern burlesques
on ancient mythology. But this was no peculiarity of Epi-
cliarmusit
; is equally distinctive of Aristophanes and of the
old Attic comedy in general. It was only in the course of
time and of development that the burlesque character of old
comedy was toned down to comedy in the modern sense. It
may appear from this criticism that Epicharmus, after all, did
not rise very much above the Megarian farces. But it must be
remembered that the very same incidents and situations will
serve to form merely a rude farce or a comedy of higher merits,
according as they are or are not adequately motived and artisti-
cally woven together. The unity of a comedy of Epicharmus
may be inferior to that of a comedy of Shakespeare, and yet
may have been infinitely above that of Dorian comedy.
In the next place, Hebe's Wedding may help us to understand
the strength of Epicharinian comedy. Its strength was the de-
lineation of character. It is necessary, however, to premise
that what, in this respect, holds good of Greek tragedy also
holds good of Greek comedy. A character in Shakespeare is
drawn not only with that truth to human nature which makes
the picture the possession of all time ; it is not only idealised,
but it is individual and real as well as ideal, inasmuch as it is
not a servile imitation, but an artistic representation of real
life. To this combination of the real and the ideal ancient
dramatists were forbidden, by the early place they held in the
history of the drama, to attain. Epicharmus stdects some folly
or failing of human nature, and concentrates all the expression
of that folly or failure in some one character. Such concentra-
tion does not, of course, occur in real life, and, therefore, when
presented in comedy, is the result of comic idealisation. A
THE DRAMA : COMEDY. 24 I
character of this kind is a type, and is not individual. As this

is the nature of Epicharmus' character-drawing, it is obvious
how suited to his purposes a mythological travesty might be.
Thus, Heracles as a god was capable of an amount of gluttony
which no Syracusan could hope to attain, and the traditional
attributes of Heracles were such as this gluttony would not
be out of harmony with, whereas the exaggeration would have
been intolerable in the case of any human character.
If we now proceed to compare the comedy of Epicharmus with
that of Aristophanes, the first and most obvious difference is that
of range. Everything which had an interest for the citizens of
a free state was material for Aristophanes, whereas Epicharmus
was by his position excluded from politics.1 Thus Epicharmus
in his highest work was limited to the reproduction of Sici-
lian character and life. His characters are types of follies and
faults. In Aristophanes, on the other hand, we have not types
of character, but the personification of movements and of forces —
a Socrates and a Demos. Aristophanes is distinguished by the
boldness of reckless genius, Epicharmus by more minute work
and psychological study. In Aristophanes we have nothing
but what is essentially the negative side of comedy — ridicule.
In Epicharmus we have much that is of a practical moral
value. Aristophanes does his best poetical work in his lyrics.
Epicharmus had no chorus — he certainly had no chorus in the
Greek sense ; no fragment of any choral ode from any comedy
of his has come down to us. At the same time, it is probable
that there was a chorus in such a play as Hebe's Wedding — a
chorus, that is, resembling much more that of a modern comic
opera than that of a Greek play. Such a chorus would be
required for the wedding-song in Hebe's Wedding, for the revel
in the Hephaestus or Comastce, for the triumphal song in Amyc.us,
and in all these cases, as, too, in the Cltoreuontes, such a chorus
would naturally dance. But there are no traces that the
chorus ever took part in the dialogue of any of Epicharmus1
comedies.
This characteristic absence of a chorus, in the technical sense,
from Sicilian comedy seems to show that the connection of the
drama with Dionysus was not so strongly felt in Sicily as in
Athens. The presence of the chorus in Attic drama would, in
the absence of all other evidence, be enough to show the origin
of the drama. Alongside of this absence of a chorus from
1 It is true that it has been imagined that Epicharmus wrote politics in
some of his comedies, but this is based only on a fragment of four words,
the titles merely of two plays, aud au insufficient remark of a scholiast.
242 HrSTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
Sicilian comedy we may place our ignorance of the occasions

on which, and the persons by whom, plays were performed at
Syracuse. As we do not know at what, if any, festivals they
were produced, nor whether they were, as at Athens, under the
direct and avowed control of the state, and as we do know that
the mimetic dances, to which comedy was at least in part due,
were by no means confined to, or distinctive of, the festivals of
Dionysus, it is merely conjecture — supported, indeed, by the
analogy of Attic drama — that Sicilian comedy is derived from
the Dionysia. It is probable that more than three actors were
required, but how many pieces were produced at a time, how
many poets competed, or, indeed, whether there was any com-
petition between the poets, are all points on which we have
no information. The Syracusans must, however, have learned
much from /Eschylus, who, having done so much for the
theatre and in the way of stage-management at Athens, would
probably be helpful also to the Syracnsan stage.
As for the influence of Epicharmus on his successors, it is
probable that before Old Comedy definitely and finally assumed
a political cast, some of the older poets — Crates is especially
mentioned — were influenced by Epicharmus. In the case of
the Middle and New Comedy, the traces of his influence are
clear. He was the inventor of many types of character which
persisted in later Attic Comedy. Thus the drunkard, the
gourmand, the gourmet, and above all the parasite, are all
types which, by their persistence, testify to the influence of
Epicharmus.
Here we must say something of Sophron, if it is only to state
that we know little, almost nothing, about him. He was a
Syracusan who lived about b.c. 420. He composed Mimes,
which were introduced into Athens by Plato. He did not
invent Mimes, but he first gave them a place in literature, and
his literary powers must have been considerable, for Plato is
said to have slept with the works of Sophron by his pillow,
and to have been influenced by them in the composition of his
Dialogues. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that Sophron
composed in prose ; that Aristotle classed the Dialogues of Plato
and the Mimes of Sophron as belonging to the same form of
art; and that there are traces in Plato's language of Syracusan
idioms and expressions. Beyond this, we have no information
about Sophron, and can only endeavour to form some idea of
his work from the Adoniazusce of Theocritus, which is a repro-
duction inhexameter of one of the Mimes. Before the time, of
Sophron, it would seem that Mimes were not literary works, but
the drama: the old comedy. 243
improvisations. The Adoniazusce points to tlie lower orders as
the classes from which Sophron drew his characters. But the
precise nature of his Mimes and the mode of their perform-
ance are uncertain. " The Mime at first differed from other
kinds of comedy — (1) in having no proper plot; (2) in not
being represented primarily on the stage ; (3) in having but
one actor."1 Perhaps, therefore, we may conjecture, from
Aristotle's comparison of Sophron and Plato, that Sophron
recited the whole of one of his Mimes, with appropriate change
of voice, expression, and gesture for eacli of the characters,
interweaving with their speeches so much of narrative or ex-
planation as was necessary in his own voice and character. For
an entertainment of this kind — not uncommon at the present
day — a stage would not be absolutely necessary, and this would
accord with the indications that Sophron gave his entertain-
ments on the occasion of public festivals, irrespective of the
theatre and theatrical performances.
CHAPTEE VL
THE OLD COMEDY.
Attic Comedy falls into three divisions, the Old, the Middle,
and the New. The Old Comedy, whose limits may roughly be
considered to be B.C. 460-390, was a public aud a political
institution. The choregus was appointed by the state ; the
choregia was a public duty ; and the comedian who obtained a
choregus from the state thereby and so far obtained the state
sanction for his satire. Although the Old Comedy ridiculed
every institution and everything out of which a laugh could be
raised, it was above all personal. Laws to restrain this per-
sonal abuse were made at various times, in B.C. 440 and B c.
416, and it is probable that in B.C. 412 and B.o. 405, when the
democracy was gagged, comedy was gagged also ; but it was
only when comedy ceased to be a state institution that it
ceased to be personal, and it was only when Athens lost her
proud consciousness of political independence that comedy
ceased to be supported by state authority. From B.c. 390 to
B.c. 320, the Middle Comedy, in which the chorus disappears,
relied for its humour on its representation of social life and its
1 Cruttwell's History of Roman Literature, p. 239.
caricatures of philosophy and literature. Finally, from B.C. 320

to B.C. 250 we have the New Comedy, which is the comedy of
character and manners.
Between the time of Susarion and the period in which
comedy became a state institution at Athens, there fall the
names of some Attic comedians of whom we practically know
nothing. Euetes, whose very existence is doubtful, and Euexe-
nides are mentioned only by Suidas. Myllus figures in a pro-
verb,1 which has given rise to various attempted explanations,
none satisfactory. Chionides wrote a Persians in imitation of a
play of the same name by Epicharmus. We have now reached
a time when Athens, having recovered from the danger and the
losses of the Persian wars, was reaping the fruit of her disin-
terested action in those wars. The powers, of which she had
become conscious then, she was now putting forth in all direc-
tions, and her political, social, and sesthetic life was showing in
all fields of action the quickening it had received in the great
struggle with the Persian. It is at this time, about B.C. 460,
that we find Magnes flourishing, the first comedian known to
us as having won a prize in a dramatic contest. He is said to
have won the com'ic prize eleven times, but to have lost his
popularity in his old age. Magnes is an interesting figure in
comedy, for in him we have a link between the mimetic dances
(which, as we saw in the last chapter, formed one of the sources
of comedy) and Aristophanes. One favourite form of dance
consisted in the imitation of all sorts of animals, and in this
dance we must see the direct ancestor of the Birds and the
Frogs of Magnes ; while these again rob Aristophanes of the
credit of originality, so far as the idea of making a chorus of
birds or other creatures is concerned. Indeed, these comedies
of Magnes had many descendants, such as the Goats of Eupolis,
the fishes of Archippus, the Snakes of Menippus, the Nightin-
gales of Cantharus, the Ants of Plato, &c. These plays are
lost, and Aristophanes is left solitary and lofty ; whether his
height would be to us the same could his former rivals be now
seen by his side, is an insoluble problem ; but at any rate, in a
history of comedy it must not be forgotten that, in the organic
development of literature, phenomena which to our fragmentary
knowledge appear isolated were never actually solitary, but
were always connected in an unbroken line with what preceded
them. Passing over Ecphantides, the "cloudy,"2 we find in
Crates another link which might easily have been lost in the
chain of development leading up to Aristophanes. The con-
1 Mi'Wos ndvT aKovei. '-' KairvLas.
THE DRAMA : THE OLD COMEDY. 245
trast which in the Clouds of Aristophanes the Just and the

Unjust Reason are made to draw between the actual and the
old-fashioned mode of life, seems to have been anticipated in
the Beasts of Crates. This piece is further interesting as con-
taining a very early plea for vegetarianism. The beasts who
formed the chorus urged on man that he should give up meat ;
and we still have a fragment of the play in which one character
expresses comic dismay at the idea of giving up the sausages so
dear to heroes of Aristophanic comedy. Crates also produced
the earliest preserved specimen of nonsense verses — verses, that
is, which are strung together with the intention of producing
only the semblance of sense. More serious services, however,
than these were rendered to comedy by Crates, according to
Aristotle. True to the tradition of its origin, comedy hitherto
at Athens seems to have consisted mainly of that personal
abuse which was characteristic of the country Phallica. Crates
not only abandoned this, but is ranked by Aristotle along with
Epicharmus, and is credited with having first produced in Attica
comedies with a claim to real dramatic action. His subjects,
whether taken from his own imagination or from real life, were
transmuted by the poefs power into plays possessing general,
natural, and necessary truth, and were no longer bald reproduc- '
tions of events which did happen, or might at least have hap-
pened, but would not strike one as probable in themselves.
Not only was the line followed by Crates analogous to that of
Epicharmus, but in some instances he directly borrowed from
the Sicilian comedian. Thus the character of the drunkard
was transferred by Crates from the comedy of Epicharmus to
the Athenian stage. His style was elegant and simple, and if,
as Aristophanes alleges, his plays were somewhat thin, they
were ensured success at Athens by their fertility in ingenious
thoughts.
About the same time as Crates lived Cratinus, though
whether Cratinus is to be considered as a predecessor or as a
successor of Crates is a point on which our evidence scarcely
allows us to decide. It may, however, be asserted with some
certainty that the services of Cratinus to Attic comedy were of
a much more decided and effective character than those of Crates.
The boisterous and reckless tendencies of Attic comedy found
a faithful exponent in Cratinus. Aristophanes, in the parabasia
of the. Knights, tells us on the best authority — for we still have
extant Cratinus' own words for it — that the torrent of Cratinus'
words was so impetuous as to bear down everything before it.
His audacity of attack was considered by the ancients to exceed
even that of Aristophanes himself. He earned the title of

"the people's lash," and he certainly applied the lash all round.
Few things or men seem to have escaped him. Pericles he
pelted with abusive epithets unsparingly ; and lie seems to
have been never weary of jesting at the peculiarly-shaped head
of the Zeus of Athens. That there was some reason for this
seems shown by the fact that artists found it uniformly neces-
sary to provide the statues of Pericles with a helmet to relieve
the fault of nature. Personalities and politics do not exhaust
the subjectsand
Tarantini of Cratinus'
elsewhere.comedies. PhilosophyWomen
In his Thracian is derided in the
he attacks
the worship of Bendis, which seems to have been then establish-
ing itself in Athens. In his Kleobulinm he ridicules the fashion,
to which Athenian ladies were then devoted, of composing
riddles. Innovations in music were met with conservative deri-
sion in the Eunidce. The Nomoi demonstrated the superiority
of the old-fashioned ignorance of reading and writing to the new-
fangled education in such unnecessary acquirements, and the Solon
exalted the good old times as compared with modern degeneracy.
In all these sallies, the humour must have had a great deal that
was good-natured ; for so impartial is Cratinus in the objects
of his comedies, that he does not even exempt himself. His
affection for wine pointed the jokes of many contemporary
comedians.1 Cratinus went farther, and made his own failing
the subject of a comedy, the Flask. When Aristophanes in
the Knights treated him as a played-out old man, Cratinus
waited for the year to come round, and then at the next contest
of comedians defeated a piece of Aristophanes' with the Flash.
In this comedy Cratinus represents himself as wedded to
Comaedia, but unfortunately yielding to the charms of Met he.
Consequently his lawful wife proceeds to institute an action
for divorce and cruelty.2 Mutual friends do their best to dis-
suade Comcedia from this course, but she persists. Eventually
Cratinus abandons his mistress, and devotes himself entirely to
Comedy.
In addition to these plays, which are in the true spirit of the
Old Comedy, Cratinus wrote, probably during the action of one
of the gagging laws,3 mythological travesties after the fashion
of Epicharmus. In the face of the statement of Aristotle that
it was unknown who determined the number of actors in
comedy, it will not do to accept the assertion that Cratinus
1 To one of these must be attributed the statement - generally accepted
seriously — that Cratinus belonged ttjs OlvrjiSos <t>v\ijs.
a KaKwaaos. 3 Mi) KUfiySe'tv dvo/xaarL
THE DRAMA : THE OLD COMEDY. 247
rendered this service. In Cratinus we may see the iEschylna

of comedy ; but it is in the force of the impression which the
personality of Cratinus made on comedy that we must seek to
justify the comparison. Both poets possessed the audacity of
genius, and in each case the boldness of the man revealed itself
in both conception and expression. About the justice of the
criticism that Cratinus was happier in the conception than in
the carrying out of his plots, the fragments that are left do not
enable us to judge. The purity and " Atticity " of his style,
however, are shown by his fragments, and by the fact that
Aristophanes did not disdain to borrow verses occasionally from
him.
Although the Old Comedy is, on the whole, characterised by
the fact that it based itself on the amusement which was to be
made out of contemporary events, still there was always present
a tendency to mythological travesties, which did not depend for
their success on local or political allusions. Sometimes this
latter tendency received external aid, as when personalities were
forbidden by law ; but at other times the genius of a comedian
of itself turned him rather to the parody of myths than to the
ridicule of the present. Of such a comedian we have an instance
in Pherecrates. A contemporary and rival of Cratinus and
Crates, he is said to havn started life as one of Crates' actors.
If this be true, it is easy to understand that Pherecrates fol-
lowed in the steps of Crates, who himself, as we have seen,
followed at Athens the line of direction originally traced by
Epicharmus at Syracuse. Gluttony, which afforded so much
material for Epicharmus, was utilised as subject-matter by
Pherecrates in his Good Men. Fixed types of character, such
as the parasite in the Thalaita, or the hetaira in the Corianno
or the Petala, or pictures from low life, such as occurred in his
J'annychis, at once show that his literary ancestor is Epichar-
mus, and demonstrate that the Middle and New Comedy were
no sudden, or even new departure, but simply the persistence of
a type of comedy which had always existed, and which, in the
struggle for existence, only needed the extinction of its formid-
able competitor in order to reach its full development. It must
not, however, be imagined that Plieiecratea cultivated nothing
but the Epicharmian tendency in comedy. As Cratinus at
times turned to the travesty of myths, so Pherecrates occasion-
ally made attacks, as on Alcibiades, of a political nature, or, as
on Melanthius, of a literary kind. Nor is it merely as a prede-
cessor of the New Comedy that he must be regarded, for Aris-
tophanes owes something to him. Pherecrates was credited in
antiquity with much originality and power of invention, ana

although it is little more than conjecture that the Tyrannis had
for its subject the rule of woman, and, therefore, so far anti-
cipated Aristophanes, it is certain that the idea of laying the
scene of a comedy in the nether world, as in the Frogs, did not
originate with Aristophanes, but must be placed to the credit of
Pherecrates. It is interesting to note that in this play — the
Crapatali — iEschylus is brought on the stage, and is drawn
witli the same touches as is the character in the Frogs. Indeed,
from the fragment of a speech of iEschylus,1 it would appear
that in the Crapatali, as well as in the Frogs, the merits of
Êschylus as a poet were in question.
Teleclides seems to have been a political partisan, who sup-
ported Nicias, and was joined by another comedian, Hermippus,
in virulent attacks on Pericles. Hermippus availed himself
particularly of the feeling in Athens at the time of the first
Peloponnesian invasion to abuse Pericles for not risking an en-
gagement with the enemy. Pericles, however, has been treated
with more kindness by fortune than Cleon, for the attacks
upon Pericles have perished, whereas those of Aristophanes on
Cleon remain. Pericles was not the only victim of Hermippus ;
Hyperbolus and Hyperbolus' mother were also favourite sub-
jects for abuse, which, perhaps, had as little truth in it as Aris-
tophanes' slanders with regard to Euripides' mother. In Her-
mippus, again, we find the two tendencies of the Old Comedy
struggling with each other. He was not entirely devoted to
political comedy, but, in his Birth of Athene, he set the example
of a species of mythological travesty which found frequent
imitators among the poets of the Middle Comedy. About
Myrtilus, the brother of Hermippus, and about Alcimenes we
know nothing. Philonides was the friend and senior of Aristo-
phanes, whose Banqueters Philonides brought out, possibly
because Aristophanes was not of the age required by law in a
comic poet.2 Philonides also brought out the Frogs on behalf
of Aristophanes. With regard to the writings of Philonides
himself we can say little. His Cothurni or Turncoats may
have been written about the time when Theramenes earned the
epithet of Cothurnus, though it is going beyond our evidence
to imagine any causal connection between the two events.
In antiquity, Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes were re-
garded as forming a triad among comedians comparable tc
iEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides among tragedians. The
1 "OffTis 7' avrois irapidioxa Ttx"Vv M-tya^V t£oiKodofi-/)<Ta.S.
1 But see below, clmp. vii.
the drama: the old comedy. 249
first comedy of Enpolis was produced upon the stage in b.c.
429, and it is said that he was at the time a mere hoy of seven-
teen. The date and manner of his death, which have heen the
subject of various absurd and impossible stories, cannot he
decided ; all that can be said is that he was not dead in B.C.
412. His relations with Aristophanes were originally of an
intimate kind, but eventually such as led to recrimination, and
our knowledge with regard to them is derived mainly from the
mutual abuse of the two comedians. That lines 1 288-1 312 of
the Knights of Aristophanes are the work of Eupolis was the
universal opinion of antiquity, and seems to be based on unim-
peachable tradition. Whether, however, this was a case of
literary piracy is another question. Cratinus in his Flask had
no hesitation in accusing Aristophanes of literary theft. It is,
however, safer to take Eupolis' own statement in the Baptce,1
from which it would seem that Eupolis collaborated with Aris-
tophanes in the production of the Knights. The attempts to
trace Eupolis' hand or suggestions elsewhere in the play are not
satisfactory, and perhaps we may be content to believe that
Eupolis' claim was excessive, and that Aristophanes' acknow-
ledgment of his real debt was insufficient. In this episode in
the lives of Eupolis and Aristophanes we may, perhaps, see
traces of the existence of a literary clique formed by these two
poets and other young comedians for the purpose of driving
the older authors from the comic stage. Political clubs were
frequent in Athens, and a literary "hetseria" is not impossible
to conceive, although the evidence for its existence is, it must
be confessed, not particularly strong. Turning to the merits of
Eupolis as a comedian, we find that, although he was as violent
in his expressions of attack and abuse as was his great prede-
cessor Cratinus, .he yet managed to carry it off with a grace
peculiarly his own. His flights of imagination were lofty and
daring, and his genius was at once artistic and inventive. The
vein of personal abuse was strong in him : Cleon and Alcibiades,
politicians, profligates, and philosophers, were visited with im-
partiality. Socrates was the object of a personal bitterness such
as can scarcely be discovered in Aristophanes, and Socrates'
chief offence, according to Eupolis, was his poverty. It is per-
haps in consequence of, certainly in accordance with, this Archi-
lochian vein that Eupolis produced no mythological travesties.
With the exception of his Capnv, which, as far as we know,
was not of a distinctively political tendency, all his comedies
1 KdK£/coi/s tous 'In-Was ffvvf.iroiijaa ry <f>a\anpip TpoiKa K&5upT)(T<iiJ.vi>.

2 50 UISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
were probably concerned with events of tbe day. In his frag-

ments, as in the fragments of a shattered mirror, we may see
reflected imperfectly tbe bistory of his time, and that is largely
the bistory of the Peloponnesian war. As in Euripides and
Sophocles, the Spartans, when introduced in a tragedy, arc
made to play invidious parts, so in the Helots of Eupolis we
may be sure that that institution, the most dangerous to Sparta
of all Spartan institutions, was not represented under its most
favourable light. In the Taxiarchi, Athens' naval hero, Phor-
mio, was introduced upon the stage. At the time of this
comedy, Athens was fighting with a light heart, and the hard-
ships of war were presented on their comic side, in the ludicrous
complaints of the effeminate Dionysus, who found in the Taxi-
archi military service as unpleasant as in the Frogs he finds
rowing. Later in the war, service was more of a duty than a
jest, and in the Malingerer we, have Eupolis directing his talents
to scorn of the young men who had not the stuff of soldiers in
them. Perhaps in no respect does Eupolis show more clearly
Jiis claims to be considered a comedian of the Old Attic Comedy
than in his relations to the politicians of his time. His literary
activity begins after the death of Pericles, but not after the
death of Cleon or Hyperbolus, and hence the difference in his
attitude towards these statesmen respectively. Pericles, whom
Cratinus, Teleclides, Hermippus, and doubtless all real come-
dians, derided unceasingly, had now been elevated on the pedes-
tal of the " good old times," and it is from comedy that Pericles
obtains his best known eulogy. Cleon and Hyperbolus, how-
ever, were guilty of the unpardonable fault of being yet alive,
and this fault is visited with condign punishment in the Mori-
eds and the Golden Age. " Maricas" is a foreign word, and is
used as an insulting epithet for Hyperbolus ; the Golden Ag«
was directed at the Athenians' infatuation for Cleon. So suc-
cessful had he been, that, according to Eupolis, the Athenians
quite relied upon his restoring the age of gold. With a bold-
ness which is creditable to his courage, and, according to the
lalile, cost him his life, Eupolis did not spare. Alcibiades from
attack. The argument, however, of the Bajptce, in which the
attack was delivered, is lost, apparently beyond recovery, and it
can only be conjectured that it was rather on the ground of
public morality than of politics that Alcibiades was held up to
derision. It seems also that here, too, as iu the case of the
worship of Bendis, comedy undertook the duty of protecting
the country from the invasion of new religions ; for the ]><//>/<<■
was directed against the worship of Cotytto as much as against
THE DRAMA : THE OLD COMEDY. 25I
Alcibiades himself. Politics, philosophy, religion, and, lastly,
law, came under the comprehensive sweep of Eupolis. The
litigiousness of the Athenians, which afforded material for the
Wasps of Aristophanes, gave a subject for the Frospaltii (inha-
bitants of the deme of Prospaltos, apparently much given to
lawsuits) of Eupolis.
Inadequate as is the above account of this comedian's works
and scope, it may serve to show that Eupolis was one of the
greatest exponents of the Old Comedy. A true Athenian, he
knew the life of Athens on every side. Everything that could
interest an Athenian citizen he laid under contribution to pro-
vide material for his comedies. The comic possibilities of any-
thing and any person he at once seized on. He managed his
style and its huge compounded words with as much ease and
grace as he controlled his wild plots. His personifications, e.g.
of the triremes of the Athenian navy or of the allied cities of
the Athenian confederacy, may be ranked for daring and suc-
cess with those of Aristophanes, for whom, we may say, to char-
acterise him, he was no unworthy collaborator.
Phrynichus, to be distinguished from the general and from
the tragedian of the same name, though not ranked in the first
class of comedians by the Alexandrine critics, was considered
by them as a writer of importance in the history of the Old
Comedy. Commencing his literary career at the same time as
Eupolis, and dying before Aristophanes, Phrynichus seems to
have at one time belonged to the same literary set as those two
poets. For Aristophanes, when retorting on Eupolis the charge
of piracy, adds the further charge that Eupolis stole from
Phrynichus as well as from the Knights. As a political com-
batant, Phrynichus does not appear to have made any great
mark on the history of the Old Comedy. At the same time, his
comedy Monotropus, which, from its title, might have been a
character-comedy, does not really justify us in ranking him
as one of the ancestors of the New Comedy. Although the
writers of the New Comedy produced more than one piece
bearing this title, and although such plays were undoubtedly
general studies of this type of character, we are excluded from
comparing with them the comedy of Phrynichus, because the
author expressly declares by the mouth of one of the characters
that the character was a caricature of a contemporary Athenian,
the celebrated misanthrope Timon. Perhaps the work of Phry-
nichus that would have had most interest for us, if it had been
preserved, is the Muses, from which comes a celebrated tribute
to Sophocles.1 From it, and from the title of the comedy, it

has been conjectured that in this play, as in the Frogs of
Aristophanes, there was a criticism of the dramatic merits of
Sophocles and Euripides. The Muses was put on the stage
at the same time as the Frogs, and was defeated by it. We
have already seen that this kind of literary criticism occurs in
Old Comedy at least as early as the time of the Crapatali of
Pherecrates.
Plato, the comedian, was a contemporary of Aristophanes.
His fierce invective and brilliancy of expression class him with
Cratinus. To his long life and varied experience correspond
the large number and great variety of his comedies. Politicians,
orators, and tragedians were attacked and exposed in such
plays as his Ilgperbolus, Cleophon, and Cinesias. His fellow-
comedians did not escape, and in his Victories he made merry
over the colossal figure of Peace which Aristophanes introduces
in his comedy of that name. He wrote also various mytho-
logical and some domestic comedies, which may reasonably be
supposed to have been composed rather from fear of the law
than from any preference to this style of play on the part of the
author himself.
Of some twenty-five other comedians who were classed by
Alexandrine critics among the writers of the Old Comedy,
practically nothing is known. Ameip?ias twice defeated Aris-
tophanes. Archippus put a chorus of fishes on the stage, and
the plot. of his Fishes seems to have consisted in a war between
the fishes and the fish-eating Athenians, which was eventually
concluded by a more or less comic treaty. From one fragment2
it would seem that sea-sickness was sufficiently appreciated jn
the time of Archippus to furnish fortli a joke. Callias, perhaps,
lets us into the secret why the followers of Socrates and the
students of philosophy were not always loved in Athens, when
he touches on the conceit of young philosophers.3 And from
Lysippus we have a fragment4 which not only shows the
1 /xaKCKp 2o<poK\tr)$, 5s iro\vv XP0V0V /3*oi'i
atridavev, ev8alp.wv avrjp Kal d(£i6s,
woXXds iroitfaas Kal KaXdr rpayu>Slai'
/caXuis 5' ire\evrrj(r\ ovdev virop.tivas k<xk6p.
2 wj 7/5i) TTt]v OaXarrav airb r»)s yrji 6pav,
w pvrjrip, Iotl ixt) TtXiovTa nti8a.fj.ov.
* A. tI bi\ o~i> aefitot Kal (ppovrfs ovtoj fitya, ;
B. ?£e<m yap fioi. SuKpdrr)? yap atrws.
* (I p.)) reOtaaai rds ' hOfyas, or^Xexos ft,
el 8t TfOJao-ai /xi] redrjpfvaai 5', 6vos
tt 5' fvapearuiv airoTptx*1* KavO^\ios.
THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 2 53
Athenians' pride in Athens, hut further informs us that the

donkey was there regarded as a stupid animal. The names of
the remaining comedians are but names to us — Aristonymus,
Aristomenes, Hegemon, Lycis, Leuco, Metagenes, who was the
son of a slave, and wrote comedies intended to be read, not
acted ; Strattis, whose jokes were weak, and who parodied plays
of Euripides ; Alca?us, Eunicus, Cantharus, Diodes, one of
whose fragments shows that he was a writer of some elegance
and reflection ; Nicochares, Nicophron, Philyllius, Polyzelus,
Sannyrio, Demetrius, Apollophanes, Cephisodorus, Epilycus,
and Euthycles. As to these writers, who, as was said above,
were placed among the writers of the Old Comedy by the
Alexandrine critics, we can say nothing more than that, to judge
from the names of their plays, they must have inclined much
more to the Middle than to the Old Comedy.
CHAPTER VIL
ARISTOPHANES.
Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the deme of Cydathenaion,

was born about B.C. 444, and died about b.c. 380. What little
we know about his life is mainly derived from the scanty and
usually ambiguous hints to be found in his own plays. The
fact that he could be charged with being an alien, and, per-
haps, the complaint of Eupolis that the Athenians showed more
favour to foreign than to native comedians, show that there was
something which at least had the appearance of irregularity in
Aristophanes' extraction.1
For us, the life of Aristophanes is his works. These may be
divided into two groups — that which precedes and that which'
follows the Sicilian expedition. In both groups there are
comedies primarily political, but those of the earlier group are
distinguished by greater freedom of attack and more unre-
strained personalities than those of the second. In both there
are comedies dealing with philosophy or literature, but the
earlier ones treat those subjects in their relation to and effect
1 Attempts have been made to combine tins with Ach. 653, and to infer
that Aristophanes or his father obtained a KXrjpovxia in .JSgiiiii ; but it is un-
certain whether the parabasis of the Acharnians refers to Aristophanes him-
self or to CallistmtUB, in whose name the piece was brought out, and conse-
quently little reliance can be placed on the combination.
on the life of the nation, while the later ones treat them apart
from any such relation. The attitude Aristophanes assumed
towards the new tendencies of his time was at first that of un-
compromising hostility, subsequently that of qualified opposi-
tion, and later still that of his early years. But of this change
of attitude Aristophanes himself was hardly conscious, and it
does not correspond to the division into two groups which we
have laid down. It is, however, only in the later group that
we find such plays as the Plutus or Aeolosieon, which are of a
purely mythological cast, and belong to the Middle rather than
to the Old Comedy.
Before composing comedies of his own, Aristophanes seems
to have done something in the way of comic writing, assisting
his friends.1 When he took to composing independently, he
brought out his first three plays not in his own name. but. under
that of Callistratus, and perhaps Philonides. The reason for this
has been supposed, on the authority of a scholiast, to have been
that the law forbade any poet of less than forty years of age to re-
ceive a chorus from the Archon. As, however, in all probability,
^schylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Eupolis produced plays in
their own names before attaining thai age, and as Aristophanes
himself was not even thirty years old when he personally
brought out the Knights, it seems probable that the law in
question owes its existence to confusion with a law, which cer-
tainly did exist though disregarded, that no person under that
age should be choregus to the chorus of boys. It is reasonable
to suppose, however, that the Archon would decline to give a
mere boy of eighteen or twenty years of age a chorus. If to this
we add that, as Aristophanes himself gives us to understand in
the parabasis of the Knights? the training of the chorus and the
production of a comedy required much practical experience,
which Aristophanes at that. age did not possess, we have a
sufficient explanation of his course of procedure.
The DoetaleU or Banqueters, b.o. 427, was the first comedy
^produced by Aristophanes/1 and it obtained the second prize.
Like the Clouds, this piece dealt with education, and represented
the older methods as exclusively productive of morality, and
the new tendency as making tor the dishonest quibbles of
superficial rhetoric. In tin; following year Callistratus brought
1 Vcsp. 1018 :—
ov <pai>e/)Cj$, d\\' tiriKovf>u>i> KpvfiSrjv eripoifft Tronjrah.
2 5i6, 541.
3 Nub. 5254; whether in the name <>f Pkilouidea or Callistratus 13 un-
curtain.
THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 255
out the Babylonians on behalf of Aristophanes. The date we

know from the parabasis of the Acharnians,1 which shows that
the Babylonians contained some allusions to the embassy of
Gorgias, who had been sent by the Leontini the previous year
to obtain the assistance of Athens against Syracuse. The title
of the play seems to have been a word used at Athens in a
general sense for foreign slaves, and the chorus consisted accord-
ingly of slaves branded on the forehead with the mark of the
owl, indicating that they were the property of Athens — a view
of things which could hardly have heen felt as complimentary
by the allied states, whom this chorus of branded slaves was
intended to represent. As, moreover, this comedy Was per-
formed in the spring, when large numbers of the allies were
present in Athens 2 for the purpose of paying their tribute, the
audacity of thus representing the oppression and extortion to
which these very allies were, according to Aristophanes, sub-
jected, amounted to recklessness. The consequence was a pro-
secution instituted by Cleon,3 probably against Callistratus,
who would be legally responsible for the play, though every-
body would know that Aristophanes was the person really im-
plicated.
In B.C. 425, the next year, Callistratus produced another
comedy for Aristophanes, the Acharnians. This, the earliest of
the eleven plays which have survived to our times, obtained
the first prize. It may be regarded as a type of Aristophanic
comedy. Its object is simple : to set before the Athenians the
desirability of peace. Its machinery is equally simple and
direct. Dicseopolis concludes a private peace with the Lace-
daemonians, and then there follows a series of scenes in which
the charms of peace are presented, not by description, to the
minds of the spectators, but sensuously and concretely to the
eyes of all beholders. This trick of materialising an idea, of
dramatising a simile, is at the base of Aristophanic comedy.
Aristophanes does not call the allied states " slaves " of Athens ;
he brings them on the stage dressed an 1 branded as " Baby-
lonians." Instead of comparing the dikasts of Athens to a
swarm of pestering insects, he produces them arrayed in the
similitude of " wasps." Not satisfied with the mere word "air-
walking," 4 to describe the pursuits of Socrates, he discloses him
suspended in a hanging basket. Such simplicity of treatment
obviously can only be attained at the expense of probability, and
often of possibility. At the festival of the wine-god ordinary
1 635. 2 Ach. 502. s Aclt. 377.
4 aepofta.Teii'.
256 HISTORY OF GKEEK LITERATURE.
rules ami conventions were conventionally and as a rule sup-

posed not to hold, and the comedian's freedom of treatment was
shown by, and allowed in, not only his mode of dealing with real
events and persons, but also in his disregard for the limits of
time and space. Thus, in the Acharnians, the scene, originally
laid in Athens, shifts without warning or apology to the country.
The seasons are equally accommodating, and spring succeeds to
autumn at command. The moment Dicasopolis concludes his
peace with the Peloponnesians, the Boeotians and Megarians,
who have evidently been waiting behind the scenes so as to
appear without a second's delay, appear as if by magic to trade
with him. Not only are the external and mechanical categories
of space, and time treated thus cavalierly,1 but the bonds of in-
ternal probability of connection between one scene or character
and another are equally despised. Of the twenty characters or
more that belong to the play, most appear upon the scene for no
other reason than that the author needs them, and, having
raised a laugh, depart, passing over the stage with as little con-
nection between each other as have the people who pass one in
a busy street or the victims who defile by the clown in a harle-
quinade. But the incidents in a comedy of Aristophanes,
though linked by no internal chain of causation or probability,
all subserve the main purpose of the play — in the case of the
Acharnians that of proving the attractions of peace : and more
than tins is not expected from the primitive stage in which the
Old Comedy was. Moreover, each of the incidents is comic in
its own way. The variety thus gained precludes any danger of
monotony, and the absence of motive in the incidents is con-
cealed bythe rapidity and force with which Aristophanes' tide
of humour carries his comedy along.
In the next year, B.C. 424, Aristophanes appeared before the
public of Athens for the first time in his own name with the
Knights. In this comedy Aristophanes concentrates himself
again on one simple object, that of attacking Cleon. Whether
1 It must, however, always be remembered that ns the Clouds and the

Wasps which have come down to us are probably not the Cloudt and tlm
Wa&pi which were performed <>n the Athenian Btage, but amalgamations <>r
"contaminations" of, in each case, two distinct comedies at least, so too
possibly the changes of place and time in the Acharniana are doe t<> a "con-
tamination.'' Rut, on the othei hand, the changes— at any rate of place — in
the Frogt are quite parallel to those of the Achaftiiant, and are above mis-
pioiou. Generally, too, we may say that these ohangea <>f place and time are
characteristic <>f the early stage of drama (<•/". 1 11 e Agamemnon), and may bo
readily distinguished from inconsistencies .such as, in the Clowls, making
the play turn first upon the stupidity and then on the cleverm
Btrepsiades.
Cleon had been subjected to similar attentions on the part of

Aristophanes in the Babylonians, we cannot say. It is, there-
fore, hard to decide whether the prosecution which Cleon then
instituted was due to personal motives, or was really prompted
by desire for the public good. It is, however, impossible to
deny that from the time of that prosecution the matter became
one of personal enmity between Aristophanes and Cleon. For
a year Aristophanes allowed the matter to rest, possibly not
caring to involve Callistratus in any further lawsuits ; when,
however, he came before the world in his own name he made
such an onslaught, in the Knights, on Cleon as must have been
unusual even at the festival of Dionysus. Cleon's reply was a
vexatious charge made at law, that Aristophanes was not a true-
born Athenian citizen.1 The story goes, that Aristophanes
replied to the charge — which must then have been that not
Philippus, but a foreigner was his father — by an apt citation
from Homer.2 If it is true that this procured his acquittal, it
shows that apposite quotations were valuable as evidence in an
Atheniandaw court. How much further Cleon carried his re-
prisals, and whether a passage in the Wasps3 is to be taken
literally to mean that Cleon thrashed Aristophanes, or caused
him to be thrashed, is uncertain. Only one thing is clear, and
that is, that Aristophanes learned prudence, and for the rest of
his life did not allow his muse or his feelings to carry him into
danger again.
The knights who are represented by the chorus of Aristo-
phanes' comedy, are not to be confused with the division of
citizens made by Solon into Pentacosiomedimni. Knights, Zeu-
gitae, and Thetes. In the time of Aristophanes the knights were
chosen4 from each tribe by the two hipparchs ; and as their
service was not limited to the dangers of war, but brought much
distinction in peace, volunteers were always forthcoming. In
many festivals, and particularly in the Panathenaea, the knights
rode in the processions in full array. At all times the cavalry
has 1 een the branch of the service which the wealthy classes
have affected, and Athens was no exception to the rule. Be-
tween this class and the lamp-sellers and tanners, who aspired
to rule the state, there were, in addition to the difference of
politics which separated them, distinctions of social position to
embitter still further their strife. It was then extremely natu-
1 £ei>la.s ypa<prj.
2 firirrjp utv t' ip.4 <prj<ri rod t/jLixevai ' avrbp fy&rye
ovk 618', ov y&p rroi t«s ebv ybvov aiirbs aviyvu.
3 1285. * Subject to a doKiftavla by the fSovX-fj.
K
ral that Aristophanes, when about to attack Cleon, should intro-

duce a chorus of knights. That the choreuta? actually were
knights in this case, is probably a misinterpretation of a passage
in the comedy,1 just as the tale that no one but Aristophanes
himself dared act the part of Cleon, and that he had to do so
without a mask, is a misunderstanding of another passage 2 in
the play.
Treating the Knights now from the literary rather than the
political point of view, we notice that the tendency to personifi-
cation, and to the concrete rather than the abstract, finds its ex-
pression inbringing on the stage a character who is the people
itself, Demos. This means of showing the relation between Cleon
and the people is comic in itself, and much that is humorous
is got out of it; but, as compared with the Acharnians, the
Knights cannot be pronounced rich or varied in incidents. The
business repeats itself considerably, and it is testimony to the
comic genius of Aristophanes that, in spite of this, the monotony
which threatens is scarcely felt. The piece is declamatory
rather than dramatic, and the declamation of abuse, even though
every imaginable species of turpitude is alleged against Cleon,
does not lend itself to dramatic treatment. Whether this is
really the explanation of the want of invention in the Kitigltts,
and whether this was the literary penalty which Aristophanes
had to pay for the choice of his subject, or whether the want
of invention in this case is due to the irregular action of genius,
the fact remains. Aristophanes, however, has more strings than
one to his bow. His command extends over the whole range
of the comic, and if in the Knights there is less variety than in
the Acharnians, all the other resources of humour are freely used.
The contest of oracles, for instance, in which the Paphlagonian
and the Sausage-seller engage, is fertile in the most ingenious
and amusing parodies on the mystic style of oracular expression.
The enormously long speeches which a Messenger inevitably
makes in a Greek tragedy are delightfully parodied by the
Sausage-seller. Nor must the sarcasm be overlooked with
which it is represented that the only man who can possibly
contend with this leather-seller is a sausage-seller, that Athens'
sole hope of political salvation rests on the slender chance of
finding a bigger blackguard than Cleon.
In ( Dection with the political comedies of Aristophanes,
we are often told that Aristophanes was certainly a poet, hut
first of all a patriot, that behind the grinning mask of comedy
is the serious face of a great political teacher. In estimating
1 505. ' 230.
the literary value of Aristophanes' work such considerations are

wholly out of place. Literature must be judged by its own
canons, and to introduce personal considerations is as relevant
as it would be to claim beauty for a line of verse because it
expressed a scientific truth in the terms and with the precision
of science. Patriotism has its beauty, and poetry has its beauty
but the beauty of the one thing is quite distinct from the beauty
of the other ; and to prove that Aristophanes has the beauty of
patriotism will not in the slightest degree prove that he pos-
sesses that of poetry, nor will it at all help us to feel the beauty
of his poetry. Each kind of art has its appropriate function to
fulfil, its peculiar pleasure to excite, and no amount of demon-
stration that a given specimen of art or literature performs some
function or excites some pleasure other than that proper to it,
will make that piece of art or of literature good of its kind.
That in the case of comedy, of all forms of literature, a mistake
on this point should be possible is strange. The object of
comedy is plainly to amuse, and a comedy which should not
amuse could not be a good comedy, though it sent you away
with the most patriotic aspirations or the most virtuous resolves.
Further, it may be questioned whether Aristophanes himself
would have claimed that his vocation was that of patriot rather
than poet. It is true that, in the Frogs,1 he speaks as though
the function of tragedy were to make men brave and good, and
it may perhaps be inferred that he held some similar but erro-
neous theory as to the function of comedy. But Aristophanes
would not be the only man whose practice was better than his
theory. The passages 2 which have been quoted to show that
he regarded himself as having rendered great services to, and as
having shown great courage on behalf of, the state, need only
be examined to show their real nature. When, for instance, in
the Acharnians, Aristophanes says that the Great King pro-
phesied that the Athenians were sure to defeat the Spartans,
because they had Aristophanes to guide them, and that the
Spartans claimed yEgina solely because they thereby hoped to
deprive Athens of their patriot comedian, it requires but little
humour to appreciate the joke, and to see that Aristophanes'
ridicule spared nothing, not even himself. To imagine that
such a passage betrays the proud consciousness of a man who
feels a high calling to a solemn duty is simply a ponderous
misapprehension.
If it were true that the Old Comedy had had no political
1 1022 and 1055.
- E.g. Vcsp. 1028, 1043, Ach. 645, Eq. 511, Pax 760, Nub. 549.
direction imparted to it until the time of Aristophanes, if it

were true, as the passages in the Clouds and the Peace seem to
imply, that Aristophanes was the first comedian to attack public
men or, at least, the prominent statesmen of the day, then there
would be some reasonable ground for believing that Aristophanes
was a comedian because he was a politician. But comedy was
political long before Aristophanes wrote comedies, and, from
Pericles downwards, the greatest men of Athens were attacked
by the comedians of their day. If proof were needed that
Aristophanes was a politician because he was a comedian, and
did not become a comedian because he was a politician, it would
be afforded by the mere fact that when comedy ceased to be
political Aristophanes still continued to write comedies. That
Aristophanes wrote poetry because he was a poet, and not be-
cause he was a patriot, is proved by the lyrical passages, whose
pure and intrinsic beauty places him by the side of Shakspere.
That he was urged to comedy by the instinct of the comedian,
and not by the aims of the politician, would be shown by the
early age at which the instinct manifested itself, if it were not
sufficiently demonstrated by the irresistible flood of comic power
which carries off the loosely and inartistically connected scenes
of his comedies. Finally, when in the Knights Aristophanes
talks of his victory over Cleon, his own words show that the
triumph in which he gloried did not consist in the political
annihilation of Cleon, for Cleon flourished more than ever, but
in the Comic prize awarded to his play.
It is only those who do not understand that poetry and
humour can have merits of their own, and must be judged by
standards of their own, who will think that the fame of Aris-
tophanes isimpaired by recognising that earnestness was not
always or primarily the object of Aristophanes' jests. But
although the question of Aristophanes' patriotism and his
politics has nothing to do with his literary rank, in considering
his character as a man they have to be taken into account. In
the small city-states of Greece, and owing to the very fact of
their smallness, the demands of the state upon the citizen were
much more considerable than in the nation-states of modern
days. To the mind of Aristotle, indeed, it had occurred that
there were other duties than those of citizenship, and that it
was possible to be a good man and yet not a good citizen; but
before his time it may lie questioned whether it was not the
universal assumption that he who performed duly all the func-
tions of a citizen, thereby discharged the whole duty of man.
Fur the average citizen who had no ideas but those derived
THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 26 I
from the current stock in use amongst his neighbours, and

whose feelings, sympathies, objects, and interests were those
of his fellow-citizens, such a state of things was adapted. But
for the man whose intellectual growth raised him to a height
that enabled him to see beyond the limits of the city, and gave
him interests beyond its local and transient interests, such a
state of things was not adapted. A want of harmony between
him and his fellows would necessarily be felt by both, and as
Greek science knew nothing of evolution, and Greek philoso-
phers had no conception of progress, as Greek poets could not
look forward, and as Greek statesmen had no notion that per-
fection was in the future and not in the past, it necessarily
resulted that those minds, whose greatness put them out of
joint with the present, looking for a better state of things, saw
it in the past. They looked before, not after, and pined for
what was not. Plato, Thucydides, Isocrates, and Aristophanes,
were all aristocrats. Euripides, in whom, indeed, were concen-
trated all the new tendencies of his time, had no faith in the
future, and was as much estranged from the mass of the citizens
as the most reactionary of oligarchs. In his general political
views then, and especially in his longing for peace, Aristophanes
was undoubtedly sincere. In some cases, as in that of Cleon,
it is idle to deny that personal feeling had more to do with his
views than had any other emotion, and in no case is it reason-
able to imagine that the particular charges or epithets have
necessarily or probably any ground other than the humour
attaching to abuse. In his aristocratical sympathies and his
opposition to the war, however, we may, as we have said, recog-
nise Aristophanes' sincerity, and. whether such views were or
were not admirable in themselves, he is at least entitled to all
the merit that is due to a man who fights an up-hill battle, and
who holds to the struggle his life through. Throughout his
life, Aristophanes was opposed in politics to the majority of the
citizens before whom his comedies were presented, and this
raises the question as to the political influence of Aristophanes'
comedies.
In the first place, it is hard to imagine that a comedian would
have ventured to attack so unsparingly the views of the majority
of his audience, if the attack were to be taken seriously. In
this respect we may consider religion and politics together, and
if the ridicule poured upon Dionysus in the Frogs was taken by
the audience in jest, and was not regarded by them as any
serious argument against the worship of the god, then we may
conclude that the audience regarded in the same lkiht the ridi-
cule poured upon the politician they believed in. It was excel-
lent fooling, but did not prevent the Athenians from bestowing
offerings on Dionysus, or office on Cleon. It may, however, be
said that the ridicule of the gods, though not intended by Aris-
tophanes soto operate, yet did act as a solvent on the national
religion. This is true, but it does not follow that Aristophanes'
ridicule had a similar effect on the democratical party. It is
much more probable that in this case, too, the solvent operated
in a manner unexpected by Aristophanes, and that it destroyed,
not the faith of the democrats in democracy, but the faith of
the Athenians in the honour of their public men.
In the next place, if we look at history and endeavour to
trace the effect of comedy on politics, we see that whatever its
effect may have been, it was too minute to be visible at this
distance of time. Pericles, as we have already seen, if abuse
could have effected it, would have governed Athens but a brief
time. The effect of the Baln/lonians on the political fortunes of
Cleon is to be inferred from the fact, that it was only after that
play that Cleon reached the height of his power. Again, the
Athenians hear and crown the Knights, and immediately de-
spatch Cleon to Thrace with full powers of command. Of all
the lesser leaders of the people, Eucrates, Lysicles, Hyperbolus,
&c. not one, so far as we know, was prevented by the attacks
of the comedians from attaining and exercising influence over
the people. Aristophanes had nearly twenty-seven years in
which to persuade the people to make peace, but his efforts
were not crowned with success.
To these considerations we may add what we have said above,
that even in the parabases Aristophanes does not take himself
too seriously. He puts forward his claims to have done sober
service to the state with such comic exaggeration, that it would
be quite open to his hearers to believe either that he did or did
not mean his words seriously ; and, as the majority of his audi-
ence would not have relished his words if they thought them
serious, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the majority
enjoyed them as a joke merely. Lastly, to dismiss the question
of the political influence of comedy, it must be acknowledged
that for a poet to select comedy as the means for doing service
to the state, would be a somewhat stupid choice. The very
nature of comedy is its negative character, As a weapon of de-
struction itmay be effective, but as a tool for construction it
must be a failure. To understand this, we have only to ask
how many practical suggestions the political comedies of Aris-
tophanes contain for bringing about the state of things which
THE DRAMA: ARISTOPHANES. 263
the author desired to see, and the very question is ridiculous.

In such comedies as those of Aristophanes, where every situa-
tion, character, idea, and allusion, depends for success on its
absurdity, we can expect, as we get, no more practical sugges-
tion for concluding the Peloponnesian War than that an ambas-
sador should hire a beetle to convey him aloft to interview
Zeus on the subject. In respect of only one thing does it seem
necessary to modify this view of the essentially negative char-
acter of comedy. The lyrical passages of comedy did give
Aristophanes an opportunity of dwelling with true poetic power
on the charms of peace, and of this opportunity he does not fail
to avail himself.1 But in all other respects, comedy is politi-
cally sterile.
The comedies of Aristophanes, however, are by no means
all or exclusively political, as the Clouds, produced the year
(b.c. 423) after the Knights, may serve to remind us. Every
person or thing which for any reason occupied the public atten-
tion, was thereby potentially, and as a rule actually, a subject
for the Old Comedy of Athens. The object of the Clouds was
to ridicule Socrates and the new tendencies in philosophy and
rhetoric. That Socrates, who morally is recognised as the
greatest man outside of Christianity, and who gave to philo-
sophy the direction which it has followed to our own. days,
should have been chosen by Aristophanes for ridicule, has been
regarded as a fact requiring much explanation. Indeed, so long
as we persist in regarding Aristophanes not as a poet and the
greatest of comedians, but as a mighty thinker whose penetrat-
ing glance pierced to the philosophical foundations of things,
whose absorbing purpose was, not to make the Athenians laugh,
but at all costs to rescue his fellow- citizens from political and
moral perdition, so long the Clouds will remain an insoluble
problem. It is not, however, necessary to proceed on any such
assumption ; on the contrary, as there is not the least shred of
evidence that Aristophanes did know anything about philosophy,
and as the Clouds — our only positive evidence — £oes to prove
that he did not possess any philosophical knowledge, it is per-
haps advisable to renounce the assumption. We may proceed
from a fact, the fact that Aristophanes was a comedian. A
comedian is distinguished from his fellow-men, not by superior
philosophical or political capacities, but by his seeing the comic
side of things, and by the fact that his function and his satis-
faction as an artist consist in giving appropriate expression to
that perception. Philosophers in general, and a philosopher in
1 Pax. 566-581.
particular possessing the personal appearance of Socrates, offer a

fair field for the exercise of the comic faculty, and this itself
•will account for Aristophanes writing the Clouds ; wo are not
compelled to assume that the comedy could only be prompted
by the fervour of moral passion or philosophical conviction.
Certainly Plato, and therefore, probably, Socrates, did not regard
the Clouds in any such serious light.
But although a consuming zeal for his country's good was not
the sole or a dominant motive in Aristophanes' mind, it is quite
probable that his sober opinions on philosophy coincided with
his instincts as a comedian, nor is it any objection to this view
that he knew nothing about philosophy. A man may be earnest
in his opposition to what he does not understand. On the other
hand, the fact that Aristophanes ridicules philosophy would not
by itself prove that he did not believe in philosophy. Such a
line of argument would prove that he did not believe in the
religion of his fathers, in himself, or in anything. There can,
however, be no doubt that in respect of philosophy, as of every-
thing else, Aristophanes was opposed to the changes which he
saw going on around him. But although the general tendency
of his comedies is unmistakably this, it must not be ignored
that, living in a time of transition, Aristophanes, though oppos-
ing the new movements, is yet carried along by them to an
extent of which he was perhaps himself unconscious.
Based originally on family ties, the small states of antiquity
exacted from their members a subordination to the state as much
in excess of our notions of what is right, as the Koman patria
potestas exceeded what we regard as the limits of paternal power.
But the intellectual growth of the sons of Athens was too great
to be restrained by any such bonds, and Aristophanes lived at
a time when these bonds were cracking in all directions. With
this intellectual growth Aristophanes had no sympathy — indeed,
it may be doubted whether he even understood that it was
growth. He only saw that the bonds which had held Athens
together were breaking, and his intellectual rank was not high
enough to enable him to dimly look into the future, and see
that these bonds must break before Athens could take her
proud and rightful place in the march of mind and the history
of the world.
The Sophists, in declaring that man was the measure of all
things, were but giving expression to the struggle of individual
genius with the bondage of tradition ; and Aristophanes himself,
though in the Clouds ho declares for bondage, yet had outgrown
the limits which he desired to impose on growth. Though he
fights against the future, he is none the more in harmony with

the present. The discord which exists between him and the
citizen community lias the same root as that between Plato or
Euripides and the Athenians. They have outgrown the old
state of things. Hence the contradiction and inconsistencies in
Aristophanes. Socrates in the Clouds is not more a satire on
the movement Aristophanes is attacking, than is Strepsiades on
the state of things which he is defending. The new-fangled
gods of the Clouds are not more ridiculous, or more ridiculed,
than the gods of his fathers. While abusing his political oppo-
nents for playing upon the greedy and mercenary instincts of
the people, Aristophanes relies for victory on outbidding the
demagogues in appeals to the very same feelings. At the same
time, he betrays his own estimate of his fellow-citizens by basing
his arguments for peace — with the exception of some beau-
tiful lyrics in the Pax — on the pleasures of eating and drinking
and on sensual enjoyments of a lower order. In short, discon-
tented without knowing that the cause of his discontent lay in
himself, he turns longing looks to an imaginary past — the crea-
tion of his own romantic and poetic spirit — and finds in his
dissatisfaction with the present a sufficient proof of the superi-
ority of the " good old times."
Our text of the Clouds is in such an unsatisfactory condition
that to endeavour to draw any conclusions from it is difficult,
and perhaps rash. We know that originally the play was pro-
duced in B.C. 423. and was unsuccessful. Whether it was again
put on the stage, with the alterations necessitated by such a re-
production, idoubtful.
s In any case, the Clouds as we have it
was never performed on the stage. Even in the absence of
direct evidence, this would be certain from the fact that with
three actors the piece could not be acted as it stands. For in-
stance, neither at the beginning nor at the end of the famous
scene of the Jud and the Unjust Reason is a second's time given
for the actors, who have been taking or are about to take the
parts of Strepsiades and Socrates, to change their masks and
dresses. This difficulty might indeed be explained by assuming
that the play, as we have it, was not intended to be acted, but
to be read. This hypothesis, however, would not explain the
numerous other inconsistencies and pieces of bad workmanship.
For example, it would not explain how it is that Strepsiades is
at first represented so incapable of taking on sophistic culture
that he gives it up in de: pair, and then subsequently is made
to appear as having been bo completely successful in this sort
of education that he can bewilder all his creditors. Nor would
this hypothesis give any satisfactory explanation of the parahasis

(518-562) being thrust into the middle of a scene, instead of
coming, as it ought to do, where there is some sort of pause in
the action.
These are only two of the many crudities which demonstrate
that the Clouds cannot have been given to the world by Aris-
tophanes as we have the play. Indeed, probably even in Alex-
andrine times, the grammarians stated that Aristophanes com-
menced not merely a revision l but re-writing the play,2 and that
we have the play only hnlf re-written. Incomplete the re-writ-
ing3 certainly is, if it is by Aristophanes; but it is also so
bundling that even sober criticism may be allowed to wonder
whether we have before us Aristophanes' attempt to re-write
the Clouds, and not really two comedies of Aristophanes
jumbled into one by some would-be improver.
If now we recognise that it is unsafe to judge of Aristophanes'
attack upon Socrates solely by the Clouds as we have the piece,
we must look elsewhere for materials to correct false con-
clusions drawn on this subject from the Clouds. Fortunately
we find such material in Plato's Apology. Plato distinguishes
between the misrepresentations of Aristophanes and the charges
formally laid against Socrates by his accusers Anytus, Mele-
tus, and Lycon. Aristophanes, Plato says (19 B.C.), represented
Socrates as engaged in physical investigations, and walking in
the air and other such absurdities, whereas Anytus accused him
of corrupting the youth (24B). Prom this it is, on the whole,
fair to infer that Aristophanes had not accused Socrates of per-
verting the youth, and hence that the " education " of Phidip-
pides, which makes a large part of our Clouds, was no part of
the Clouds as acted. It seems also to follow that the scene of
the Just and the Unjust Reason did not occur in the Clouds of
B.o. 423. If these deductions are made from the Clouds as we
have it, most of the sting is taken out of the attack on Socrates.
Tlie picture of the philosopher still remains something more
than a caricature, for there are points in it which are distinctly
unhistorical. Socrates did not, though the Sophists did, accept
money, and Socrates was too practical a man to be guilty of the
extravagant asceticism put down to his teaching in the Clouds.
But these details prevented neither Plato nor Socrates from
enjoying the picture ; and, apart from this, what remains of the
Clouds was as much a satire on the people who imagined that
the Sophists could impart the secret of fraud with impunity, as
it was on tlie new philosophy itself.
1 5i6p0u>(Tii. 2 twOKtvaSeiv. a biaoKivi).
Viewing the Clouds as a work of art, we are obviously bound

to bear in mind that we have not before us what Aristophanes
would have wished us to have, and this will give us a better
appreciation of what is really admirable in the work. The
manner in which the subject of the Clouds was worked out in
the original version can be for us only a matter of speculation,
not of admiration. But we are still free to enjoy the poetry of
Aristophanes' conception of making the clouds of the sky to be
his chorus ; although some choral odes are lost, those that remain
are of exquisite beauty; and above all, in the speech of the Just
Reason, descriptive of the older education, we have work that
for its intrinsic literary merit would of itself establish Aristo-
phanes among the great poets of the world.
In the following year, b.c. 422, the Wasps pained the second
prize. This comedy is badly constructed. It is mainly based
on the absurdities of the Athenian jury system as finally shaped
by Pericles. Any Athenian citizen of the legal age who chose
to attend the law courts, and act as dikast or juror, received a
trifling sum in payment of his services. This payment was in-
tended to compensate the poorer citizens who otherwise could
not have afforded the time, and would have been practically
excluded from discharging this part of the duties of an Athe-
nian citizen. But Aristophanes represents the mass of the
citizens as attending the law courts, not from a feeling of duty,
but for the purpose of getting a day's wages without doing a
day's work. A further result was that the habit of attending
the law courts became a positive mania, according to Aristo-
phanes, with the citizens, who, in their capacity of jurors with
a tendency to convict, are represented in the chorus as wasps.
Philocleon, suffering from the mania, is confined to the house
by his son Bdelycleon, and calls to his assistance the chorus,
who, however, together with Philocleon himself, are eventually
convinced by Bdelycleon's arguments. Philocleon is induced
to forego attendance at court by being allowed to hold mock
trials at home, and here the character of the play suddenly
changes, and a set of totally different motives, having no neces-
sary or probable connection with the hitherto dominant idea of
the piece, begin to work Bdelycleon, it seems, as indeed his
name imports, belongs to the young ami fashionable oligarchs,
who bore the greatest enmity to the low-caste leaders of the
democratic part)'. Bdelycleon, having rescued his father from
political defilement, now proceeds to convert him into a man of
fashion. But Philocleon, on his very first entry into society,
gets drunk, and the piece concludes with the comic situations
which.result from this unsuccessful attempt at culture.
Judged by no higher standard than that of Aristophanes him-
self, the construction of the Wasps is faulty In the other
plays of Aristophanes there is only one central idea, and that
is of such simplicity and so dominates everything else, that un-
mistakable and satisfactory unity is thereby given to the piece.
In the Wasps we have nothing of the kind. The absurdities
of the dikasteria are at first the subject of the comedy, and the
fact that the chorus is related to this idea is enough to establish
its claim to being the central idea of the play. But the latter
part of the piece throws all the emphasis on the social and poli-
tical antithesis implied in the contrasted names, Philocleon and
Bdelycleon. In other comedies of Aristophanes the various
scenes have, indeed, no connection with each other, but they
gain all necessary unity by being all related to and exponent of
the central idea. But in the Wasps the latter part of the play,
if it is not co-ordinate in importance with what has hitherto
been considered the leading idea, cannot as a subordinate con-
ception be regarded as having any connection either with the
other scenes or with the leading idea. [See Note A.]
Apart from the faults of construction the Wasps is amusing.
Except when Philocleon and his son are arguing for and against
the dikast system — and then the piece conies to rather a stand-
still— the comedy is full of life, movement, and business. The
trial of the two dogs has won a place for itself in the history of
literature which is not much threatened by the imitation in the
Plaideurs of Racine. The concluding scenes are in the bois-
terous humour of the Old Comedy, and are highly amusing.
Turning from the literary and comic side of the piece, we find
that the Wasps is of much importance for the history of Aristo-
phanes. At the beginning of his public life he threw in his lot
with the reactionary party in politics, and lent that party all
the fire of his youthful genius. Conspicuously in ac. 424 in
the Knights did he identify himself with the Cleon haters, the
Bdelycleons. But in b.c. 423 he temporarily left politics, and
applied his attention to the other forces which were growing,
and which by their expansion threatened to break up the old
state of thing-;. In c.c. 422 ho returns to politics in the Wasps,
but he does so only to find that it is impossible to take up his
old position. He is no fonder than he was of Cleon — though
he is more guarded in his expressions — but if he has undergone
little change in that respect, he is otherwise much altered, for
be no longer can identify himself with the Bdelycleons. The

fact, concealed from himself, that he was one of those very sons
of Athens whose growth was too great for the limits imposed
upon them by the old regime, manifests itself by imperceptibly
elevating him above a party strife which, however important
for the history of Athens as a city-state, has little meaning for
the greater history of the world. In the Wasps, Aristophanes
has attained a point of view from which he can see the absur-
dities of the Bdelycleons as well as of the Philocleons, and
in the Birds, as we shall see, he seeks a still higher point
of view, from which both Bdelycleons and Philocleons shall
be invisible.
In b.o. 421, the Peace won the second prize. Simplicity in
the subject-matter could hardly be carried further than in this
play, for it may be summed up in the sentence that a farmer
goes to heaven and fetches down peace. The treatment of the
subject is as bald as the subject itself. The notion of sending
Trygseus up to heaven on the back of a beetle, in parody of the
Pegasus of Euripides, and on the authority, as Aristophanes is
careful to inform us, of the fable of Êsop, is really amusing,
but the rest of the play is neither particularly artistic nor very
funny. The rejoicings in the second part of the play have been
more than once termed a comic idyll, and some of the lyrics
dwelling with affection on the good time when there was peace
in the land are indeed beautiful, and amongst Aristophanes'
best work. But the interest of the Peace lies less in its literary
merits than in its relation to the history of the time. It was
performed just half a year after the deaths of Clcon and Brasidas,
and consequently at a time when the hope of peace was strong.
Indeed, we may perhaps reckon this comedy as one of the minor
causes which contributed to the establishing, a few weeks after-
wards, of the peace — which was no peace — of Nicias.
In b.o. 414, seven years after the Peace, comes the next and
the best of the comedies of Aristophanes that survive, the Birds.
The notion that this play was a profound allegory on the
Sicilian expedition, is now generally and properly given up. It
had indeed no basis, but the tacit assumption that it is not
poetry but politics — and party politics — which constitute a great
poem. To regard the Sicilian expedition as the subject of the
Birds, is as though one were to maintain that the Spanish
Armada was the subject of the Midsumnu r Niahtfa Dream. If
any other evidence than the comedy itself were needed to prove
that the tendency of the Birds is not political or personal, it would
be forthcoming in the fact that this play of Aristophanes was
produced at a time when the psephism of Syracosius l was in

operation.
The motive and the keynote of the whole comedy are given
in the first two lines of the epirrhema of the parabasis.2 The
poet will leave Athens, its war, its party strife, its plague of
dikasts, its false philosophy, and seek a home in the realms of
poetry. His soul takes to itself the wings of a dove, and seeks
rest. And it is just because he is no longer tied down by the
necessity of writing for a purpose — however good — as a bird is
tied by a string, that Aristophanes in the Birds soars to a height
of poetry, to which he nowhere else attains. Here he rises on
the wings of song above earth-born care. Mounting with the
lark, he ascends to pure and peaceful upper air, and takes
pattern by the birds who know no politics. " Come hither," he
says to his fellow-citizens, " come hither, come hither, here
shall ye see no enemy but winter and rough weather." The
whole comedy, delightfully simple and straightforward in its
construction, flows right on as sweetly and joyously as a bird's
song, and with precisely the same moral and purpose. It is
beautiful, as a poet's midsummer night's dream should be, and
nothing more. There is no bitterness in the play, and if the
mockery, from which in Aristophanes nothing escapes, occa-
sionally breaks out, it disappears again as suddenly as it came,
and by its gloom only serves to enhance the joyous beauty of
the whole.
Unique in ancient comedy, there is only one other work in
all the literature of antiquity that the Birds can be compared
with for pure play of fancy, and for sympathy with the beauty
of nature; and that other work is. the Bacchce of Euripides.
But the Bacchce, although in the quality of its work it resembles
the Birds, is bathed in a sad religious light, so that we more
gladly compare the Birds with our own Midsummer Nigh f8
Dream. In both, there is the same lightness of treatment) the
same absence of reference to the realities of life, and, above
all, in both the purely poetic treatment of a purely poetic con-
ception. The birds themselves are drawn with a delightful
tenderness and love, which could only come of intimate and affec-
tionate acquaintance with their nature and their ways. Above
all, though for the good of us mortals they talk in human lan-
guage, the birds remain birds. They are quite different from
those of Rabelais in his description of Vide sonnante, which
were indeed birds, "mats bienressemblants aux homme*." This
difference in treatment between Rabelais and Aristophanes is,
1 fir) KuifUfideiffdai 6vo/xa<TTi Tim. 2 753-
THE DRAMA : ARISTOPHANES. 27 I
of course, due to their difference in object, or rather we should

perhaps say to the fact that Rabelais had an object, whereas
Aristophanes had none. By VIsle sonnante Rabelais meant the
Roman Catholic Church, with its bells, and consequently his
birds are " Clergaux, monagaux, prestregaux, abbegaux, evhgaux,
cardingaux, et papegaut, qui est unique en son espece," and so on.
If Aristophanes had meant his play as a satire on the Sicilian
expedition, his treatment of the subject would not have been
purely poetical, his birds would not have been what they are,
but like those of Rabelais, " Men ressemblants aux homines."
What constitutes, however, the charm of the Birds and en-
titles Aristophanes to the name of poet, more than the humour
and grace of the play as a play, is the beauty of the lyrics.
Here the poet " turns his merry note Unto the sweet bird's
throat." What a poet hears when he listens to the birds,
what a poet's sympathy teaches him of their hopes and fears,
that we may read in the Greek of Aristophanes. His liquid
strains of " unpremeditated art," pour forth, like those of the
bird, from the mere joy that singing brings him. He gives him-
self up to his art to carry him where it will. His sole concern
is to find expression for the power of song within him, and such
free and joyous notes of pure beauty were never heard from a
bird again till Shelley's skylark.
Among the lost plays which date from before the Sicilian
expedition are the Merchantmen, the Proagon, and the Amphi-
araus. The Merchantmen Is referred to in the parabasis of the
Wasps} and was probably produced in the previous year. It is
thought to take its name from the ships in which was con-
veyed the corn that was distributed among Athenian citizens
gratis, after the expedition made against Eubcea about that
time. Among the results of this corn-distribution was that of
causing much litigation, for it naturally raised the question
whether all the claimants were really Athenian citizens. The
Proaion, produced at the same time as the Wasps, was a literary
comedy; directed mainly against Euripides. The title means a
preliminary dramatic performance of some kind The Amphi-
araus, produced in the same year as the Bird.?, was, like the
BlsIs, of a non political character, and probably turned upon a
c • apposed to be, but not really effected by, the miraculous
power of the deceased hero, Amphiaraus. Possibly, we may also
refer to this period the Lemnkv, an attack upon the worship of
Bendis, the Farmers, an argument for peace resembling the
1 1037.
Acharnians, the Heroes, TripJiales, Geras, and Anagyrus.
The Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusos, and Ecclesiazusce, form a

group on which it is convenient to make a remark of general
application to the plays of Aristophanes. It is generally ad-
mitted now that not even these comedies of Aristophanes are
immoral in purpose or tendency. As to their nakedness, on the
one hand, it is historically unjustifiable to convict Aristophanes
of indecency by reference to the standard of the present day.
He knows no fig-leaves, but he knew no Genesis. On the other
hand, it is historically equally unjustifiable to convict the
present day of prudery or hypocrisy by reference to the standard
of Aristophanes. On no grounds does it seem justifiable to
import his patriotism as an excuse. More than this it is un-
neces ary tosay. Mr. Symonds, in his admirable " Studies of
the Greek Poets," has treated the question boldly and well, and
it is impossible to do better than read him on this, as on all
other points of which he treats.
The Lysistrata, produced in B.c. 411 at a time of great dis-
tress in Athens just before the establishment of the t3rranny of
the Four Hundred, is tinged by the general melancholy of the
time, and in places almost becomes pathetic. The subject is
worked out consistently, but not with the wealth of inventive
power which characterises the best comedies of Aristophanes.
The character-drawing, however, is good, and some of the situa-
tions are very comic. Like the Ecclesiazusce and the Plutus,
the Lysistrata has no parabasis, and it is further distinguished
by the fact that the chorus is divided into two halves, each
consisting of twelve choreutse, one half being of men, the other
of women.
The Thesmophoriazusce was produced in B.c. 411, probably at
the Great Dionysia after the overthrow of the Four Hundred,
which is alluded to.1 In point of construction, the Tlw.smopho-
riazv.soi is a great advance on any of the previous surviving
comedies. Although situations, action, and plot are, in Greek
drama, generally in so rudimentary a stage of developmen » tliat
they can scarcely be said to exist, in the T/usmop/ioriaztiscefhey
are all to be found. The women of Athens, enraged &v\ the
misogynist tragedies of Euripides, resolve to take counsel at the
Thesmophoria, a feast to which only women were adnfr^d,
how to kill Euripides by way of revenge. Hearing t!;i • 1
pides eventually persuades a relation to disguise himseli
woman, attend the Thesmophoria, and plead for him. The
relation, Mnesilochus, is, however, discovered by the women to
1 Thesm. 670, 808, 1140. Other events, fixing the date, are alluded to 805,
860, 10C0.
THE DRAMA: ARISTOPHANES. 2/3
be a man, and is handed over to the law for punishment. Even-

tually, however, Euripides effects a compromise with the women,
and by a stratagem cheats the law of its victim. Here we have
an undeniable plot, and although what is really incidental and
subordinate, i.e. the rescue of Mnesilochus, comes to occupy
more room than what is logically the end of the piece, i.e. the
preservation of Euripides, still there is a great deal of action,
and in the discovery of Mnesilochus a striking situation. The
play is thoroughly non-political ; the humour consists largely
in the parodies of Euripides, which occupy a large part of the
comedy and are extremely amusing. The choral odes are short
and unimportant, and the parabasis is cut down.1
The next of the surviving comedies, the Frogs, was produced
some six years after the Thesmophoriazusce, in B.c. 405, shortly
after the victory of Arginusae and before the final overthrow of
Athens in the Peloponnesian war. In point of construction it
is greatly inferior to the T/iesmo]>horiazusce. The Frogs falls
into two parts, which have, indeed, an external, but no internal
connection with each other. The first part consists of Dionysus'
journey to the nether world, and is burlesque in character. The
second part consists of a comparison of iEschylus and Euripides,
and is literary and learned in character. The play gained the
first prize, and is said to have been repeated, with some altera-
tions, in consequence of its success. In later times the work
has enjoyed great popularity, though possibly not altogether on
grounds of pure taste. There are, indeed, passages of poetic
beauty which belong to Aristophanes' best work, such as the
choruses of the first part ; and the whole range of humour, from
the roughest horse play to the most delicate allusions, is dis-
played in this comedy, but with commentators and students the
elaborate and extensive parodies have been the matter of most
impoi'tance.
The second part of the Frogs is practically an attack upon
Euripides, and the justice of the attack has been in later times
a matter of much discussion. Both the opinions of Euripides
and the literary form in which he expressed them are unspar-
ingly denounced by Aristophanes. In his opinions Euripides
sympathised with the intellectual and forward movements of
his time. Aristophanes neither sympathised with nor under-
1 Subsequently Aristophanes wrote another ThesmophoriazutCB. This Thes-

mophoriazusce II. was not a SidpOuan or SiacrKeinj of Tit. I., but was an
entirely new play, which, however, as being a satire on women, received the
name of the previous comedy, to indicate its general nature and tendency.
S
stood these intellectual movements. In order to take her place

in the intellectual history of the world, Athens had to lose her
importance in the political history of Greece. But Aristophanes
did not understand this. He only saw that if the new ten-
dencies were victorious, Athens, glorious in the past, could no
longer he what she once had been. From his own point of
view Aristophanes may have been right, hut for us his point
of view is wrong. The Persian wars once over, the destinies of
mankind depended on the philosophers, not on the hoplites, of
Athens. Aristophanes, however, thought more of the hoplites
than of the philosophers.
Before proceeding to consider Aristophanes' criticisms on Euri-
pides as a poet, we ought to say one word on the immorality with
which the comedian charges the tragedian. On this point we
have in the plays of Euripides a good deal of evidence before
us, and there is consequently little excuse for a hesitating deci-
sion on the question. It is, however, necessary to remember
that in polemics, as in other things, the standard of decency is
a shifting one. Terms which one age would hesitate to apply
to the most abandoned villain are in another century of such
frequent use as practically to be meaningless. Bearing this in
mind, and remembering the extremely excitable nature cf the
Greeks, we shall not think it extravagant to say that the charges
of immorality which Aristophanes brings against Euripides and
his plays are simply Aristophanes' way of saying that on various
points he totally disagrees with Euripides. In his literary criti-
cism Aristophanes is more fortunate. Living at a time when
the old was giving place to the new, Euripides shows in his
work all the inconsistencies of methods and uncertainty of
object which necessarily characterise a transition period. This
gives Aristophanes a great field for criticism, which, though
often one-sided, is often just. Aristophanes, not only as a poet,
and a great poet, possessed taste, but he also enjoyed the comic
power necessary for the most telling expression of his criticism,
and a better poet than Euripides would have escaped scarcely
better from such a slashing attack. Indeed, even /Eschylus,
the poet of Aristophanes' own choice, does not by any means
come off scot-free.
After a long interval conies, in B.C. 393, the next of the sur-
viving comedies, the Ecclesiaztisce. This, on the whole, is infe-
rior to the rest of Aristophanes' plays. Like many of them, the
Ecdmazusae really consists of a series of scenes illustrating a
simple theme. Inasmuch, however, as in this case the theme
(that community of property and women is practically impos-
eible) is of an abstract nature, the Ecclesiazusce lacks concentra-

tion and admits of no plot, even in the sense in which we may
speak of Aristophanes' plots. The women of Athens disguise
themselves as men, attend the ecclesia, and by a snatch-vote
decree that the state shall henceforth be governed by women.
The women then institute communism, and a series of scenes,
most of them amusing, follows. Eventually the play stops, not
because any catastrophe has supervened, or because any appro-
priate period in the development of the subject has been reached,
but solely because the play must stop somewhere ; and this is
the more unsatisfactorj' because, although the scenes chosen to
illustrate the practical consequences of communism show clearly
that the object of the piece is to demonstrate the impossibility
of communism, yet when the play ends, communism is appa-
rently left in possession of the field. The Ecclesiazusce bears
no reference to contemporary political events or personages, but
simply enjoys itself at the expense of a philosophical theory,
which is stated also in the Rejtublic of Plato. In conclusion,
the choric odes are of no great merit ; there is no parodos, pro-
perly speaking, and there are no parabases or stasima.
In the Plutus, as in the Ecclesiazusce, there is neither plot
nor that heightening of the interest towards the end of the play
which, in the Acharnians, for instance, takes the place of catas-
trophe and denoiiment in a plot properly so called. Further,
the Plutus, like the Eixlesiazusce, consists of a series of scenes
illustrating an abstract theme. The theme of the Plutus is the
desirability of the good being rich. This is the purpose for
which, and the plea on which, Chremes, Avho has been fortunate
enough to catch the blind god of riches, persuades him to allow
himself to be cured of his blindness. The god must have his
sight to see who are good. But although this is the avowed
purpose of the play, there is much in the piece that is not merely
inconsistent, but irreconcilable with this avowed purpose. When
Plutus has recovered his sight, we rind scenes following which
at one moment seem to show that the good only have been
made rich and the bad poor, and at another can only be under-
stood on the assumption that everybody indiscriminately has
been made rich. In fact, Poverty, after an argument, is utterly
banished from the earth, and the gods are reduced to the utmost
need, because, as all men have become rich, no man has any
motive for making offerings to the gods. There is really no
unity of purpose in the Plutus, and if the play, as we have it,
came from the hands of Aristophanes, then in his old age he
lost his certainty of touch, and being unable to conceive clearly
his own purpose, wavered between two inconsistent ends with-

out realising their incompatibility.1
The Plutus is sometimes said to belong to the Middle Comedy,
and sometimes to be a transition stage between the Old and the
Middle. If we look merely at the scenes which illustrate the
desirability of the good being made rich, we see that they have
the moral tendency which is a feature of the Middle Comedy.
If, however, we look at the scenes which illustrate the conse-
quences of all men being rich, we are reminded of the Eccle-
siazitsce, which illustrates the consequences of communism, and
of the Clouds, which illustrates the consequences of philosophy;
or again, looking at the distress of the gods -when their sup-
plies are stopped, we are reminded of the Birds. There is, then,
in the Plutus a strain of the Old as well as of the Middle
Comedy.2
To this period of Aristophanes' literary career, finally, must
be referred those lost plays whose titles show that they dealt
with mythological subjects, and therefore do not belong to the
earlier time when comedy was political in its nature. Such
plays are the Daughters of Danaus, the Plienician Women, the
Centaur,3 in which Aristophanes, like Epicharmus, made fun of
the tremendous appetite of Heracles ; the Datdalits,4 in which
Leda appeared with her egg like a hen. There probably also
belong to this period the Horce, the Telmessenses, and the Pohji-
dus, which were, directed against the new religions now creeping
into Athens. Polyidus, according to the story, recalled Glaucus
1 It characterises the taste of the Byzantine scholars that the Plutus was
their favourite comedy.
- Indeed, so distinct are the two strains, that it has been maintained that
in the Plutus, as in the Clouds and the Wasps, we have an amalgamation or
"contamination'' of two distinct comedies, and that, at least iu the case of
the Plutus, one of these two comedies belongs to the Middle, and not to
Aristonhanic comedy. Traditionally, however, our Plutus is regarded as hav-
ing been produced in B.C. 388, and as being a revision [SLOfjOucns rather than
Sioctkeuij) of an earlier form of thcP/utus produced in B.C. 408. Thus Plutus
I. possessed the choral odes which are wanting in Plutus II. But the tradi-
tional view has difficulties of its own; for instance, a scholiast commenting
mi one passage Bays this passage is taken from Plutus II., as though he had
iidt go! 1'tulii-i II. before him.
'■'■ This comedy hail an alternative title, Dramata, which was also appa-
rently an alternative title I'm- another oomedy, the ffi bus. But it is uncer-
tain whether there was any difference between the Centaur and the Niobus,
except, that erne was a later version of the other. It is not even certain that
the JViiifius was by Aristophanes; ami unless Niobus whs a male and comic
Niobe, the subject of the play cannot lie guessed.
1 The chum (li.iii Plato also mete :i oomedy under this title, and there seem
to have been recriminations between the two 1 ts on tin' subject <>( plagi-
arism. The same charge was broughtby Aristophanes against Eupolis((
553), and against seme unknown 1 oet (Fr. 18 of the Anagyrus), and by Plato
I some poet, possibly Aristophanes (Frag, of the Paduriu).
to life ; Telmessu?, we learn from Cicero,1 was famous for its

augury ; and in the fragments of the Horce we find Sabazius, a
new god, mentioned.2 Other comedies of this period probably
are the Pelargi or Stories, in which the bird's reputed piety was
perhaps contrasted with the impiety of the Athenians ; the
Gerytades, a play whose name is unintelligible to us, but which
seems to have had a subject similar to that of the Frogs ; the
Tagenistce or Men of the Frying-pan, in which flatterers and
their cupboard love filled the main place. The last two plays
by Aristophanes, the Cocalus and Êolosicon, were put on the
stage by his son Araros. Cocalus was the king of the Camicii,
who gave Daedalus protection against Minos, and even boiled
Minos to death in a bath. The name ôlo-sicon seems to be
a compound of the names of /Eolus and Sicon, of whom the
latter was a cook of much celebrity. The hero of the play then
combined probably the attributes as well as the names of iEolus
and Sicon ; and if nations, like men, grow more critical in culi-
nary matters as they grow older, probably this tendency was
the object of Aristophanes' satire. Both the Cocalus and the
JEolosicon, according to the author of the Greek life of Aristo-
phanes, belonged in character to the comedy of Menander ami
Philemon. They had no chorus or paiabasis, and they had
plots.
APPENDICES TO CHAPTEE VIL
A. — "THE WASPS."
The discrepancies between the two longing to a distinctly higher class

parts
to the ofconjecture
the II 'ax/isthat
have here
given
too,rise
as of
intosociety.
all sorts Again, Philocleon
of difficulties, and gets
the
in the case of the Clouds, we have play leaves him in them. Further,
an amalgamation of two distinct the chorus is alternately represented
comedies. This view is borne out as having the energy and rigour
by a closer examination of the of young wasps and as enf
comedy. Philocleon is at first re- by old age. (Contrast 1060-1069
presented as belonging to the class with 1070-1090, 1091-1100 with
of poor dikasts, to whom the pay 1101-1121 ; so too in 441-456 the
was of importance, and then as be- chorus utterly and incomprehen-
1 De Div. i. 41 : Telmessus in Caria est, qua in urbe excellit haruspicum

disciplina.
2 The worship of Sabazius, attacked by Aristophanes, bad become quite
fashionable in the time of Theophrastus, for the late-learner (viii.) " wben
initiated into the rites of Sabazius, will be eager to acquit himself best in the
eyes of the priest " (Jebb's trans.)
sibly belies the activity which it logue scene, 8-135 '< the scenes with
displays immediately before and im- the supernumerary chorus of boys,
mediately ufter). This lends colour 248-272 and 290-317, who are not
to the conjecture that the lirst half wanted to carry the wasps' lanterns,
of the Wasps is mainly taken from for the wasps carry them them
the original comedy of that name ; 218 and 246 ; the financial scene,
whereas parts of the first half and 686-697, in which the cost to the
most of the second half are taken state of the dikast system, 150
from some other comedy — possibly talents, is absurdly high, and has
the Geras or Old Age, in which, as in probably been transferred from somo
the Wasps (1333 f. and 1351 f.), an context in which the sum repre-
old man is made young again. Other sents the expenditure not on the
passages which are probably inter- dikasts, but on the ecclesia, the
polated are the very inartistic pro- Boule, theorica, &c
B. — THE PARABASIS.
The divisions into which a comedy the name Parabasis is a survival
falls were the same as those of tra- from this stage in the origin of
gedy, with one exception. In a comedy, and refers to the " coming
comedy, as in a tragedy, the ode forward " of the poet to deliver his
which the chorus sang when it first views ; but the name is generally
entered was called the Parodos ; referred to the "march by " of the
those which it sang when stand- chorus, when it left its post between
ing in its usual place between the the altar and the stage and marched
altar and the stage were called round the orchestra by the specta-
Stasima ; the parts between two tors. A complete Parabasis (in the
stasima were called Episodes ; aud widest sense of the word) consisted
thai before the first stasimon was of seven parts. First came the
the Prologue ; and that following Kommatiou, a few lines delivered
the last stasimon the Exodos. But by the Coryphaeus dismissing the
the Parabasis was peculiar to com- actors (who at this point left the
edy. The point at which the Para- stage), and notifying the audience
basis occurred was not fixed by any that the Parabasis was about to be-
definite considerations, but was gin. Next came the Parabasis pro-
inserted by the poet wherever he per (in the strict sense of the word),
thought the action of the comedy delivered by the Coryphaeus, who,
rendered it mosl convenient. What on behalf of the poet, stated the
characterises the Parabasis is that it
poet's defence of himself or his
bears no relation, as do the stasima, plays, or criticised his rivals, or
to the action of the play, but ex- otherwise glorified or justified him-
self. The Parabasis is generally in
views of pounds
thethe author's
author, onviews, as the
any matter
of interest on which he thinks lit anapaests or trochaics, and is con-
cluded by the Pnigos or Makron,
to directly address tin- audience, it -till Bpoki n by the Cory-
is thus not only charactei i phffius on the same subject as the
comedy, but is probably the oldest Parabasis, and gaining their name
element of comedy. It seems to be because they had to be rattled Ollt
a survival from the time before in one breath, and thus left the
comedy, when, at the COnclusiOD of
Coryphaeus I Thesi ind
ence laughing. the parts,
three audi-
the choral ode to Dionysus, the
leader of the chorus, who was also ommation, the ParabamB, and
the poet, came forward and made the Pnigos, constituted the first
his jc.-ts iii id eon 11 neti ts on the topics half of the Parabasis; and here it
and [lerstnsoi the time. Possibly should be noticed that the Komma-
279
THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY.
tion and the Pnigos were sometimes antepirrhema. Sometimes there are
dispensed with. The second half of two Parabases in one play. This
the Parabasis commenced with the seems to be a survival from the
Strophe, which was sung by the time when the chorus was the domi-
chorus, and was generally an ode nant element in the worship of
to some god. This was followed by Dionysus, and the actors were only
the Epirrhema, delivered by a single reliefs to the chorus.
choreutes, probably the Coryphaeus, The Parabasis of the Acharnians
and ridiculing some public event is divided as follows :—
or person. Then, continuing the First Parabasis: — Kommation,
same subject, came the Antistrophe, 626-627. Parabasis, 628-658. Pni-
sung by the chorus, and correspond- gos, 659-664. Strophe, 665-675.
ing in metre and music to the Epirrhema, 676-691. Antistrophe,
strophe. Finally came the Ante- 692-701. Antepirrhema, 702-7 iS.
pirrhema, delivered by a single Second Parabasis :— Kommation,
choreutes, and corresponding, as 1143-1149. Strophe, 1 150-1161.
the name implies, to the epir- Antistrophe, 1 162-1 173.
rhemathis
: concluded the Parabasis. Those of the Knights as follows :—
Whether the strophe and anti- First Parabasis : — Kommation,
strophe were sung each by the 498-506. Parabasis, 507-546. Pni-
whole chorus, or by the two hemi- gos, 547-55°- Strophe, 551-564.
choria respectively is uncertain. If Epirrhema, 565-580. Antistrophe,
by the whole chorus, then probably 581-594. Antepirrhema, 595-610.
the epirrhema and the antepir- Second Parabasis : — Strophe,
rhema were delivered by the Cory- 1263-1273. Epirrhema, 1274-1289.
phaeus if
; by the hemichoria, then Antistrophe, 1290-1299. Antepir-
probably the leaders of the hemi- rhema, 300-1
1 315.
choria delivered the epirrhema and
CHAPTER VIII.
MIDDLE COMEDY.
In order to understand how the Middle Comedy differs, on the

one hand, from Old Comedy, and, on the other, from the New,
it is necessary to understand, first, the fundamental identity of
these three stages of comedy. They are fundamentally identical,
because they are one and all Attic Comedy, and one and all
reflect the manners and the life of the age in which they occur.
It is true that the comedy of Aristophanes does not reflect the
philosophy of Socrates or the policy of Cleon with historical
accuracy, but it does what is as valuable — it reflects them as
Aristophanes saw them ; and though the Middle and New
Comedy are mirrors of their time, they are shattered mirrors,
for we possess no complete play belonging to these stages of
Attic Comedy, but only fragments. The three stages of comedy,
then, are alike, inasmuch as they all reflect the Athens of their
time : the later forms developed out of the earlier, and they
2 SO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
differ because Athens differed at these three periods. This is

not the sole cause of difference, but it is the one which we will
first consider.
Roughly speaking, the Old Comedy ends at the battle of JEg03-
potami, and the .Middle Comedy at the battle of Chaeronea.
From the end of the Peloponnesian War to the battle of Chae-
ronea, Athens was still free, although she was no longer the
first among the cities of Greece. After "that dishonest vic-
tory, at Chaeronea, fatal to liberty," she, with the rest of Greece,
was no longer free. The period, then, between iEgospotami
and Chaeronea is politically and socially much more akin to
the time preceding than to the time following it. The period
between iEgospotami and Chaeronea is the last period of the
creative power of Attic literature ; after Chaeronea begins the
imitative age. The Middle Comedy, then, bears more resem-
blance to the Old than to the New. The comedy of Aristo-
phanes drew its material from everything which had an interest
for the citizens of Athens, politics, philosophy, religion, science,
literature, art, and scandal. The New Comedy drew its material
from that which most interested every Athenian of the time,
his private life ; it was a comedy of manners, and its subject
was practically love only. Between these two "well-defined
stages came the Middle Comedy, which, like the period it re-
flects, was a stage of transition. Like the New Comedy, it had
its love-plays, but its subjects were mostly the same as those
of the Old Comedy. Plato and the Academy took the place of
Socrates ; Euripides was still attacked, although by that time
there were to be found also comedians to defend him ; mytho-
logy was still a fertile source of parody and ridicule ; but from
politics the Middle Comedy drew but scantily or not at all.
For this difference between the Old and the Middle Comedy,
the reason always given is that after the Peloponnesian war
Athens was politically played out. Aristophanes, it is said,
wrote political comedies because, politics interested his audi-
ence ;the writers of the Middle Comedy, like those of the
New, did not write political comedies, for the reason that their
era did not take an interest in politics. But this would
not seem to be the case : never was the Assembly better at-
tended, and never had the oratory of its speakers attained to
the level which it reached in the period that culminates in
I >i mosthenes. Some other reason must be sought why politics
were not reflected in the Middle Comedy, and the same reason
must explain why the litigious tendencies of the Athenians,
stronger at this time than when Aristophanes wrote the Wasps,
THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 28 I
furnished no more matter for the Middle Comedy than did poli-
tics. The explanation is that the Assembly and the Law Courts
were not less, but more interesting than ever, and this was the
result of the growth of oratory. The first of the Ten Attic
Orators was Antiphon, whose name is associated with the esta-
blishment of the Thirty Tyrants towards the end of the Pelo-
ponnesian war ; and we may well say that the period of the
Middle Comedy is the time of the Orators. For the develop-
ment of oratory it is necessary that the audience should be
critical. Badly educated hearers demand speeches not beyond
their own powers of comprehension and appreciation. The
growth, therefore, of oratory in the period between the Pelo-
ponnesian war and the battle of Cheeronea would of itself prove
that politics deeply engaged the attention of the Athenians of
that time. But in order to understand fully how much they
engaged the attention of the Athenians, it is necessary to re-
member that the Athenians were not a nation of readers ; they
took in their literature through their ears, and not through their
eyes. Further, the largest audience which a writer could get
was the Assembly or the Law Courts. Again, at this time,
with the exception of Plato, the literary genius of Athens was
all directed to oratory. From these considerations it follows
that the Athenians, who all the year got their literary food
from the Law Courts and the Assembly, required a change of
diet at the festivals of Dionysus ; and the writers of comedy
again, doubtless, felt not only that this change was demanded
from them, if they wished to be successful, but also that they
were unable to rival the speakers in the Assembly and the
Courts on their own ground. They had before them the warn-
ing of tragedy. Writers of tragedy had indeed entered on the
contest; Euripides had imported into tragedy much that was
only appropriate in lawsuits, but the measure of his ill success
may show us how little likely it is that his successors in tragedy,
lacking his genius, were successful where he failed. The main
reason then that, in not reflecting politics, the Middle Comedy
differed from the Old was that politics engaged the attention of
the Athenians more than ever, but engaged them only in the
Assembly, and when treated oratorically.
But the Peloponnesian war had broken the spirit of the
Athenians thus far ; they would talk in the Assembly but not
act in the field ; and this fact is of importance as explaining
why, although the Middle Comedy ceased to be political, it yet
did not become the comedy of private life, as did the New. In
the time of the Old Comedy, the public duties of a citizen occu-
pied most of his life, for lie had not only to take in the Assem-
bly his share of governing the country, but he had at all times
to be prepared to fight for his country. There was, however, a
tendency to differentiate these functions, which was worked out
in the time of the New Comedy. Pericles was both a general
and the leader of the Assembly. By the time of Demosthenes,
it was impossible to combine these two functions ; Demosthenes
was an orator, but not a general. The same tendency was at work
amongst the body of Athenian citizens as amongst its leaders ;
and in the time of Demosthenes the military duties of the
citizens were frequently delegated to paid mercenaries. But
although the Athenian citizen of the time of the Middle Comedy
was putting off his military duties, he had not yet become, as
after Chseronea — when the employment of mercenaries had re-
sulted in the loss of freedom— he did become, wholly absorbed
in the relations of private life. Although he did not go in per-
son abroad on foreign service, and consequently took but little
interest in what was going on in Olynthus or in Thrace, he
still had a vote and a voice in determining the destinies of
his country, and this is the reason why at that time comedy
could not exclusively devote itself to private life.
We began by saying that the difference in the ages they
reflect is not the only difference between the three stages of
comedy. One obvious distinction is, that the chorus is practi-
cally absent from the New and the Middle Comedy. Originally
the duty of providing and paying for a chorus fell upon some
rich citizen chosen by the "inspectors"1 of the tribe to repre-
sent his tribe. The Peloponnesian war impoverished Athens,
and in consequence sometimes, even in the time of the Old
Comedy, no choregus and no chorus were appointed for eomedy.
What was the custom between the end of the Peloponnesian
war and the battle of Chseronea we do not know, but the diffi-
culty which was experienced in providing a chorus for tragedy
— the expense was thrown on two members of the same tribe
or of two tribes — makes it probable that a chorus was only
rarely provided during the period of the Middle Comedy. From
b.c. 306 the evidence of inscriptions shows that it was no longer
the custom to elect a choregus from a single tribe or from two
tribes, but to elect an Rgonothetes, who took (or might decline
to lake) the duty of producing both the tmgedyand the comedy.
sometimes furnishing a chorus and sometimes not. Some years
no agonothetes probably was elected, and some years he would
furnish no chorus either tragic or comic, but simply produce a
1 iirt/j.t\r]Tai.
THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 283
tragedy and a comedy without a chorus ; and sometimes, we

may conjecture, he would furnish a chorus for tragedy but not
for comedy. On the whole, then, it would seem that it was
rather the exception than the rule for plays of the Middle and
New Comedies to have a chorus.
As to the cause of this, Horace has given wide currency to
the idea that the chorus was suspended by law on account of
the license of the poets of the Old Comedy. But there is no
warrant for this ; nor is the reason wholly to be found in the
impoverishment of the citizens ; for although the Peloponnesian
war may have produced some distress, in the time of the New
Comedy Athens seems to have enjoyed considerable material
prosperity. The reason is that the growth of the drama pushed
the chorus on one side. The drama at Athens had readied the
point at which further development was impossible, if the chorus
was still to be retained. Euripides, in his attempt to show
" the very age and body of the time his form and pressure,"
was perpetually hampered by the chorus. He wished to take
the forward step which afterwards was taken by the drama, but
it was made impossible for him to do so by the restrictions
under which tragedy as it was conceived at Athens lay. The
development of modern drama could only come alter those
restrictions had been removed. From some of them comedy at
Athens had at all times been free. The tragic poet was bound,
the comic poet was not, to adhere to myths. Tragedy had
always to remember that it was a religious function, but comedy
was apt to forget its religious functions. To reflect the life of
the time was almost as essential to comedy as it was inconsistent
with tragedy. Science, rhetoric, and philosophy, when intro-
duced by Euripides are felt to jar with the mythical scenes in
which they are placed ; but in comedy no such discrepancy is
felt. The characters which Euripides drew after average Athe-
nians are ill at ease when appearing under the garb and title
of heroes of mythology; but in the comedy of Menander such
characters moved in the same surroundings as they did in life.
The one obstacle which prevented the illusion of comedy, when
it undertook to represent real life, from being perfect was the
chorus. This doubtless was first felt by the writers of comedy,
who would, iu consequence, put but little pressure on a reluctant
agonothetes or choregus to produce a chorus. The people, on
the other hand, soon came to appreciate the superiority of comedy
without a chorus, and consequently showed no anxiety to elect
an agonothetes to provide a chorus; or, if a chorus were i i di-
vided, they paid such scant attention to the choral odes, that
there was not much inducement for a wealthy citizen again to

furnish comedy with a chorus.
What the difference between Middle and New Comedy was
with regard to the chorus, we have no direct evidence to show ;
we are reduced to conjecture, and it seems probable that in this,
as in other respects, the Middle Comedy was transitional, and
that the chorus gradually decreased in importance, being much
less frequent in Middle than in Old Comedy, and practically
disappearing in the New. We do not know certainly that there
was no chorus in the New Comedy ; indeed, one authority
speaks of Menander as finally abandoning the chorus, which
would imply that until his time the chorus still survived, though
with little practical importance. This is what might have been
expected, and is illuminating for the history of the Greek
drama. Euripides, in his attempt to develop tragedy in direc-
tions untrodden by his predecessors, devoted much labour to the
production of more complex plots, and to the working out of
domestic scenes as a subject for tragedy. In both these experi-
ments he was clogged by the chorus. It remained for Meuander
to throw off this clog altogether. If any confirmation were
needed of the fact that Menander took up the struggle where
Euripides left it, it would be found in the similarity of the
circumstances of the two poets ; for the comedian, like the
tragedian, was impelled to put the chorus on one side by the
development of his drama in the direct inn of domestic scenes
and complexity of plot. Greek drama originated in the chorus,
and finally threw it aside altogether.
Horace is also responsible tor the idea that the Middle and
New Comedy differ from the Old in being less abusive, and
that this fact was due to the action of the law. It is not, how-
ever, exactly true that personalities were wanting in the Middle
Comedy, though they were in the New ; nor is it true that
covert attacks were made upon individuals, who were pilloried
under fictitious names on the stage. We have the titles of
fifty or sixty plays of the Middle Comedy which lake their names
from real persons, and although doubtless not all of these were
attacked, some probably were. But there was a difference
between the Old and Middle Comedy in the mode of attack, as
we learn from Aristotle: that of the Old Comedy was abuse;
that of the Middle, raillery; and thus in this respect also the
Middle Comedy was but the stage which Attic Comedy passed
through in its transition from the ( »ld to the New.
In point of plot, the difference between the < >ld and the New
Comedy is unmistakable ; but with regard to the Middle Comedy
it is harder to form an opinion. A play of the Old Comedy

consisted of a series of scenes having no connection with each
other, hut deriving their unity from their connection with the
central idea of the piece, which was some such simple theme as
that " peace is desirable." The plays of Menander, on the other
hand, had an intrigue and a plot ; the scenes developed out of
each other and ended in a denoument. This is indeed almost
implied in the statement that his were generally love-comedies,
which naturally result in a marriage after the obstacles to the
course of true love have been removed. In two respects Men-
ander'streatment of the plot reminds us of Euripides ; he em-
ployed a prologue, and, if not a deus ex mackina, at any rate
artificial means of proving at the last that, for instance, the
heroine, hitherto supposed to be a hetaera, is really a free-born
Athenian — a discovery which was the indispensable condition
of the marriages with which his plays ended. So far as our
scanty information extends, there seems to be no evidence that
prologues were common, if used at all, in Middle Comedy, though
" recognitions " certainly occurred ; and as the subjects of the
Middle Comedy more frequently resembled those of the Old
than those of the New, it seems probable that the treatment
also rather resembled that of the Old. Many of the Middle
Comedies do indeed take their name from hetaerse ; but they
seem to have been treated of in those plays in their capacity of
public characters rather than, as in the New, in connection with
private life. A further consideration tending to show that the
plots of the New Comedy were superior in interest and illusion
to those of the Middle is the fact that by the time of the New
Comedy Aristotle's works on the drama were beginning to have
their effect. The period after Cbaeronea was one of study of the
great dramatists, of reflection on their methods, and of conscious
employment of the knowledge thus gained. Aristotle laid it
down in the Poetics that the plot was the most important
element of a play, and Menander is reported to have said on
some occasion that his play was all but ready ; he had worked
out the plot, and had only the verses to write.
In respect of the characters put on the stage by the Middle
and New Comedy, there seems to have been little difference;
Both show a resemblance to Sicilian comedy, which might be
expected from the similarity of the circumstances under which
the later Athenian comedy and that of Epicharmus were pro-
duced. Epicharmus was precluded from taking political sub-
jects, and consequently sketched Ins characters from the society
in which he found himself. These characters, however, were
not individuals, but types ; and in this respect the writers of the
Middle and New Comedy resemble Epicharmus. The parasites,
the braggarts, the boors, the fish-dealers, the lovers, the mis-
tresses, the cooks, and the slaves of the later Attic Comedy are
all types, not individuals, and are most of them types which
had occurred previously in the works of Epicharmus. How far
these characters were from possessing individuality we may
understand when we remember that each of these types had its
own mask, and that, e.g. the parasite, in whatever play by what-
ever author he appeared, was recognised the moment he entered
the stage by the mask he wore. When a mask appeared with
a dark complexion, thick lips, and a flat nose, everybody knew
that he was the Boor ; when another entered with a dark com-
plexion, hooked
a nose, and a beaming appearance, with a dash
of the prizefighter in it,1 the audience knew without being told
that he was the Parasite. The nearest approach to individuality
was that these species were in some cases divided into sub-
species. Thus the young hetaera wore a simple fillet round her
hair, the elderly hetaera side ringlets, the expensive one much
gold in her hair, and so on ; which shows the care that had been
devoted to working out this character. Although the circum-
stances under which the later comedians at Athens wrote were
much the same as with Epicharmus, and would lead to the same
sort of work, probably the Attic comedians borrowed directly
from Epicharmus ; for we find them in the Middle Comedy
also adopting the parodies of mythological subjects which Epi-
charmus had instituted with great success. These, however,
practically disappeared in the New Comedy ; and with regard
to character-drawing, the difference seems to have been that
Menander and his contemporaries attained to greater skill than
their predecessors. Unfortunately, we cannot judge for our-
selves on this point ; but the " Characters " of Theophrastus,
which date from the same time as the New Comedy, are in all
probability work of the same stamp as the character-drawing of
Menander; and in the Boastful Man of Theophrastus we pro-
bably have something very like the Boaster of comedy.
Our knowledge of the poets and plays of the Middle Comedy
comes from grammarians, Lexicographers, writers of anthologies,
and largely from Athenseus, who says that he had read more
than eight hundred plays of t lie Middle Comedy. Unfortunately,
Athenseus concentrated his attention, in the '' Deipnosophists,"
on culinary matters, and consequently his quotations relate
1 rip 5i irapaaLTtp naWov Karia-ye rh. &to. (prize-fightera in Greece got
tluir ears broken), Pollux iv. 148, from winch the nbove is taken.
chiefly to the kitchen, and leave us in ignorance of other and

important points. We gain some information on the difference
between the three stages of comedy from the work "On the
Difference of the Comedies " by Platonius, a Greek rhetorician
of uncertain date. The value of the information, with regard
to the lives and works of the comedians, which we get from
grammarians, scholiasts, and lexicographers, varies in each case.
These writers had at times good authorities to draw from. The
Didascaliae of Aristotle we have mentioned. Theophrastus,
the greatest of Aristotle's pupils, wrote a work " On Comedy "
which is mentioned by Diogenes Laertius1 and Athenaeus.2
The latter author also mentions3 a similar work by Chamseleon,
another pupil of Aristotle. Philochorus belonged to about the
same date (b.c. 280), and wrote a work on the dramatic contests
at Athens, which is referred to by Suidas and probably quoted
in Athenseus.4 At Alexandria, Callimachus, the librarian of
Alexandria, composed a catalogue of didascaliae j 5 and his suc-
cessor, Eratosthenes, wrote a book in twelve volumes " On
Comedy," quoted by Photius.6 At Pergamum, Crates, Carystius,
and Herodicus 7 devoted themselves to the history of the drama ;
and in the time of Augustus, Didymus wrote works on comedy
from which Meineke8 thinks Hesychius, Photius, and others
largely borrowed.
The most important poet of the Middle Comedy was Alexis,
who, although he was a citizen of Athens, was born at Thurii,
probably about B.C. 390, and died not before B.c. 288. lie is
said to have written 245 plays, and we have fragments of about
140 of them. These are, however, not sufficient to enable us
to form any very good judgment of his poetical powers, and
unfortunately we have in no ancient writer any detailed criti-
cism of his work. The great age which he reached carried
him into the time of the New Comedy, and he presents some
of its features ; but, on the whole, he belongs undoubtedly
to the Middle Comedy. We find some political allusions in
his fragments; for instance, he joins with the Macedonian
party in making jest of the distinction which was made in the
pseudo-Demosthenic speech on the Halonnesus between Philip's
"giving" the island of Halonnesus to the Athenians and "giving
1 v. 2. 47. 2 vi. 26 1 1). 3 ix. 374A and 4060. 4 xi. 46.) F.
8 trlva^ rCiv Kara \povovs nai air' apxys ytvofiivuv 5ida<jKa.\twv.
6 Sub voce eCK\eia
7 Crates composed avaypacpas Spa/idruv, Ath. viii. 336E ; Carystius, irtpl
SiSaffKaXiCiv, Ath. vi. 235E ; Herodicus, Kw/xipSov/xem, Ath. xiii. 5S6A ; and
Harpocration, s.v. îvwir-q. 8 H. C. G. 14.
it back " to them. Again, the titles of some of his plays, e.g. the
Helen, the Seven against Thebes, &c., show that they were on
mythological subjects — a kind of play which the Middle Comedy
borrowed from Epicharmus, and was fertile in. It is also a
mark that he belongs to the Middle Comedy that he has allu-
sions to the philosophers Plato, Aristippus, Xenocrates, and
makes joke of the vegetarianism of the Pythagoreans.1 Fur-
ther, he has allusions to literary men {e.g. Araros, the son of
Aristophanes), and parodies Euripides. The quality which is
most conspicuous in the fragments of Alexis is his refinement.
Next to Alexis, the most important poet of the Middle
Comedy was Antiphanes, who was born about B.C. 408, began
to produce plays about B.c. 388, and died about B.C. 332.
There is some doubt as to the place of his birth ; but it is im-
portant as showing the decline of the creative powers of Athens,
that Antiphanes, like Alexis, was not an Athenian. The num-
ber of plays which he wrote is uncertain, statements varying
from 280 to 360, but we still possess the titles or fragments of
about 150. The number was, at any rate, so large, that it is
probable not all the comedies of Antiphanes were intended to
be produced on the stage. Such plays as he wrote without
intending to produce them on the stage he probably wrote to be
read ; not to be read by single individuals, but to be read aloud
by the possessor of the MS. to a circle of friends. This mode
of publicity was the one adopted by the rhetorician Isocrates,
who lived at the same time as Antiphanes. though he was
somewhat older (b.c. 436—338) than the comedian. It was also
adopted by another contemporary, the tragedian Chseremon, who
was the author of the practice of composing tragedies which were
meant solely to be read in this manner.2 This practice, which
thus was becoming so common in the period between the Pelo-
ponnesian Mar and the battle of Chaeronea, is interesting as
being the transition stage through which the Greeks passed from
being a nation which received its literature through its ears to
becoming a nation of readers.3 The evidence afforded by the
fragments of Antiphanes accords with the verdict of antiquity,
1 Ath. vi 223F.
2 Writers of such tragedies were called dvayvwaTiKol.
3 The comedies of Antiphanes were probably recited at banquets, as
those of Menander seem to have been afterwards, (k tovtov . . . MefdvSpif)
. . . to. ovpuruaia x^Pav HSioKfi; Pint. Mor. 818: & 8i yitvavSpos pLtrd
Xaplrcov /xaXiara âi/riv avrdptCT) irap4axrlK(V< iv dedrpoii, £v Starpifiais, iv
<TV/j.Tro<rLois, dvdyv Utopia, ko.1 p.ddrjp.a nal dywvHTpM noiv6raTov 2>v ify'EXX&s
(vr/voxe KaXQv wap^x031' Tfy' voirjaiv, ib. 1040. So, too, p. 867 and De
Vit. Pud. xvi.
that Antiphanes was a graceful and perspicuous writer. The

subjects of his plays, so far as they are indicated by the titles,
were the ordinary subjects of Middle Comedy. The number of
burlesques on mythology was considerable among his plays, e.g.
the Adonis, Deucalion, Omphale, Orpheus, &c. Parodies of the
tragedians were also numerous, to judge from the titles, e.g. the
Alcestis, Bacchce, Medea, Philoctetes, Athamas, &c. The frag-
ments, again, contain allusions to and parodies on Euripides 1
and Sophocles.2 The titles of some plays also indicate clearly
that they contained literary criticism, e.g. Poetry, Sappho,z &c.
From the Poetry there survives a fragment 4 of considerable in-
terest for the history of the drama, in which Antiphanes com-
plains that whereas the tragedian takes for the subject of his
plays myths known to all the audience, and consequently has
not to go to the trouble of explaining the situation at the be-
ginning ofhis play, or of narrating the antecedents of his char-
acters, the hard-worked comedian has to rely for everything on
his own powers of invention and of conveying the nece.-sary
information to his audience. Another feature of the Middle
Comedy, inherited from the Old, and distinguishing it from
the New, which occurs in the plays of Antiphanes, is the ridi-
cule of philosophy. Plato and his school come in for the
satire which was levelled by the Old Comedy at Socrates. Ex-
ternals still catch the comedian's attention ; but it is the
neatness, no longer the negligence, of philosophers' attire which
furnishes matter for jest — a fact which harmonises with the
stories told of the greatest of Plato's pupils, Aristotle, to the
effect that he was foppish in dress, and carried his "fads" so
far as to cause it to be understood that he expected people who
dined with him to come washed. Thus Antiphanes describes an
old gentleman wearing a white mantle, beautiful brown tunic,
soft cap, elegantly balanced cane — in fine, the Academy in per-
son. It is not, however, solely the philosopher's attire which is
made fun of ; his philosophy also is satirised.
Other points in which Antiphanes shows the common stamp
of the Middle Comedy are that he has some mild political allu-
sions that
; he is sarcastic on the matter of marriage, e.g. " He is
married. B. What ! married ! and I left him walking about
alive ; " he is sarcastic also on women in general : you may as
well, he says, proclaim a secret by the town-crier as tell it to
» E.g. Traumatias 1 (Meiii. F. C. M. 120).
2 E.g. Antig. 712 is parodied Inccrt. 10.
8 And the Tpira^t^vicrTris.
* F. C. M. 105.
a woman. The practice of asking riddles, which is ridiculed

frequently in Middle Comedy, is also illustrated in Antiphanes.
The Parasite is drawn in some of the fragments that remain to
us with much care ; he requires no more invitation to dinner
than does a fly, and it is as hard to get him away as to get him
out of a well ; resentment he cannot feel ; his amiability is in-
exhaustible, hisappreciation for your jokes unlimited ; he wishes
his friends nothing but prosperity. The Parasite's own view of
the matter is that he renders innumerable services to his friends,
is a regular earthquake at forcing doors, a thunderbolt in figlit,
a slip-knot for strangling inconvenient people, and ready with
his sworn testimony on any matter for the service of his friend.
True, some people laugh at him ; but they are only young
men, and he has the consciousness of his own good services.
What life is so happy as his, whose most arduous occupation
is to smile, to joke, and drink deep? The Parasite himself, at
any rate, ranks it next to being wealthy. To dine well without
^having to think of the bill is the life of the gods.
Although Antiphanes resembles the other comedians of his
time in his philosophy of life, and advises men, being mortal,
to limit themselves to things mortal ; and although he holds
that if you take away the pleasures from life there is nothing
left except to die, still this is outweighed (at any rate in the
fragments we possess) by his moral aphorisms; e.g. base gains
bring little pleasure and much pain : the consciousness of a just
life is the best of pleasures ; since man must die, it is folly to
die for nothing ; adorn not your body with bright colours, but
your heart with clean works ; honourable poverty is better than
base wealth. Antiphanes' humour peeps out in the fragment
in which he says that it is not on the perjurer, but on the man
who trusts him that divine vengeance descends. He was a man
of the world, as is shown by his maxim that one should do at
Sparta as Sparta does; and he anticipated the expression that
the dead are not dead but "gone before." Finally, we may
notice that in some respects Antiphanes foreshadows the New
Comedy, and thus gives additional proof that the Middle Comedy
was but a transition stage; for the titles of scum.' of bis comedies
seem to show that their plots were of the more developed kind
which were characteristic of the New Comedy. Such are the
Marriage, the Twins, the Unfortunate Lovers, the Heiress, the
Lost Money, Sec.1
The next poet of the Middle Comedy of whom we possess
'Add, amongst others, the' Avaff^ô/ievw., which was performed in B.C. 356,
according to the Didascnlia preserved to us in a stone record. C. I. G. i. 354.
THE DRAMA : MIDDLE COMEDY. 29 I
any considerable fragments is Anaxandrides ; and as Aristotle

several times quotes him, it is probable that he was a comedian
of some merit. Anaxandrides, too, like Alexis and Antiphanes,
was not by birth an Athenian. He seems to have commenced
his career as a comedian about B.c. 376, and to have continued
until about B.C. 345 or B.C. 340. He did write dithyrambs, but
was best known as a comedian. Of his thirty-six comedies
whose titles we are acquainted with, one-third were mythological
burlesques ; and in respect of his subjects, literature, philosophy,
hetaerae, &c, he seems to have been in accord with the other,
poets of the Middle Comedy. Suidas says that he was the first
comedian to introduce love plots, but the author of the Greek
life of Aristophanes says that it was Aristophanes who first in-
troduced them in the lost play Cocalus. Although in Anax-
andrides we find the usual attacks on marriage, we also find
him opposed to divorce. But perhaps the two most remarkable
fragments are that in which he declares his agnosticism,1 and
that in which he insists on the relativity of religions.2 Thus
the Egyptians worship cows, the Greeks eat them ; the former
adore dogs, the latter thrash them ; and a similar variation of
the religious sentiment is to be observed in the treatment by the
two peoples of cats.
In Eubulus at last we come to a comedian of Athenian birth.
According to Suidas, he lived about B.C. 376, but his life must
have been prolonged for some time later, as he was contem-
poraryandwiththe
ments Demosthenes
titles of aboutand fifty
Hyperides.
comedies "We
; andpossess frag-
from these
it would seem that Eubulus particularly affected mythological
burlesque. Allied with this is a fondness for parodying the tra-
gedians, particularly Euripides, and, with more justice, Diony-
sius, the tyrant of Syracuse, whose tragedies seem to have been
bad. In diction, Eubulus, from his fragments, appears to have
been terse and elegant.
Of the other thirty poets of the Middle Comedy we have not
space to speak in detail. What remains of Am phis makes us
regret the loss of his plays. He had discovered that the best
solace for misfortune is work ; that one dislikes the scenes of
one's misfortunes ; that solitude is golden ; that silence is invalu-
able, and that death is everlasting. A still greater loss is that
of the plays of Timocles, who seems to have possessed an excel-
1 The Canephwos (F. C. M. 171): —
diravTfs iofikv wpbs ra 6eV afSfXrepoi
kovk ia/j.(f ovSif.
2 The Poleis (F. C. M. 1S1).
lent style, considerable power, and much audacity. Several

of his fragments contain political allusions, and in them he
shows that he belonged to the Macedonian party ; for in the
Delos, where he alludes to the Harpalus affair, he not only,
in accordance with the general suspicion of the time, accuses
Demosthenes of having been bribed by Harpalus, but also
makes the sanle charge against Hyperides. Elsewhere also he
attacks these, the most prominent orators of the anti-Macedonian
party. We also have an interesting fragment of nineteen lines
by Timocles expounding the theory of tragedy, to the effect
that men find, consolation for their own misfortunes in seeing
represented the greater misfortunes which the heroes of tragedy
bear. Ephippus gives an amusing sketch of a foppish young
follower of Plato, about to make a speech, and . posed in a
beautiful attitude, with one foot (toe on the ground, heel in the
air) crossing the other ankle, displaying his carefully arranged
'Straps and elegant sandals, mantle aesthetically draped, and him-
,self majestically leaning on his cane. The followers of Plato
also/furnish the subject of a long fragment by Epicrates, who
represents them as much exercised as to the definition of colo-
cynth, whether, it is animal, vegetable, or mineral ; for, says
Epicrates, they spent their time in defining things. In the frag-
ments of Anaxilas we find a long diatribe against another class
in Athenian society, the hetaerse ; it is illuminating for the
social sanction of the time to notice that Anaxilas does not
complain that hetserae are immoral, but that they are expensive.
Elsewhere he complains that some people are as suspicious as
snails, who carry their very houses about with them. Dionysios
in a long fragment gives us an amusing picture of a cook, who
treats his art with the respect which its importance in the time
of the Middle Comedy entitled it to : it is above definition ;
any man may roast or boil, but to be a cook is another thing.
This cook seems to have been an Aristotelian, for the Stagnate
about this time was drawing exactly the same distinction ; any
man may do a just act, but to be a just, man is a different thing.
Aristophon draws a Parasite in a way which reminds us of the
Parasite of Antiphanesj he is an Argive at ejecting drunken
guests, a ram at breaking open doors, and he is so regular in
appearing at dinner that he has earned the nickname "Soup."1
Axionicus and Diodorus also draw the character of the Parasite,
but do not add any fresh traits to the character. Thcophilus
1 4c tk iffriq., irapei/xt irpwros, iiiar 1j5t) ttciXcu

. . . fw/tdj Ka\ovfj.ai.
thedeama: middle comedy. 293
call* music a great treasure ; l and Mnesimachus has a beautiful

comparison of sleep to death, for which there is no English
equivalent.2 The other poets of whose plays we have frag-
ments and titles do not call for special mention. They are:
Araros and Nicostratus, sons of Aristophanes ; Antidotus, Cra-
tinus (the younger), Dromo, Epigenes, Eriphus, Eubulides,
Heniochus, Heraclides, Heraclitus, Orphelio, Philetserus, Phi-
liscus, Sophilus, Sotades, Timotheus, and Xenarchus.
1 In the Citharcedus (F. C. M. 628) :— ,
/xeyas 6rj<xavp6i ion ko.1 /3^3<«os v ovoiK-f/.
« Incert (F. C. M. 579) :—
"Tirvos to, fiiKpa tov 6o.vo.tov /xvoT^ptOm
part ££♦
HISTORY, ORATORY, AND PHILOSOPHY.

BOOK I.
HISTORY.
CHAPTER I.
THE BEGINNINGS OP PROSE.
Poetry precedes prose composition generally in the history of

a nation's literature, partly because poetry can be more easily
composed and transmitted without the aid of writing than can
prose, and partly because the charm of verse or rhythm appeals
more powerfully and more directly than that of prose. Further,
prose requires that the means of writing should be developed to
a certain extent ; and in the case of the Greeks, we must add
that a reading public only came into existence late and gradu-
ally. The Greek lived more in the open air than in his own
house ; transacted business, private and political, orally more
than by means of writing ; and, by the constitution of the society
lie lived in, listened to rather than read his literature. The
Greek aversion to the solitary and unsociable mode of acquir-
ing information by reading is illustrated in the Phcedrus of
Plato,1 where Socrates says of written works : " You would
imagine that they had intelligence ; but if you want to know
anything and put a question to one of them, the speaker always
gives one unvarying answer. And when they have been once
written down, they are tumbled about anywhere, among those
who do, and among those who do not understand them. And
they have no reticences or proprieties towards different classes
of persons; and, if fhey are unjustly assailed or abused, their
parent is needed to protect his otl'spring, for they cannot protect
or defend themselves."
This passage shows that people did read books in Plato's time ;
but in the sixth century b.c, when prose literature begins to
make its appearance for the first time in Greece, there was no
1 275 (Jowett's translation).
reading public, and prose authors composed their works rather

to be delivered as lectures than to be circulated as books.
Writing at the time seems to have been developed enough to
aid composition, but not enough to diffuse literature. As
was to be expected in a new art, the art of composing prose
was one which only gradually attained freedom and grace.
Indeed, the very idea of prose literary composition was one
which only occurred to the Greek mind when poetry had
made several unsuccessful attempts to narrate history and ex-
pound philosophy — two functions which do not properly belong
to poetry. Laws and treaties between states had, doubtless,
been expressed in prose and inscribed on stone or metal before
the sixth century, but they are no more literature than are
the lists of Olympian victors, which also existed probably
before the sixth century. If, then, setting aside laws, treaties,
lists of officials, &c, as not belonging to our subject, we turn
to the earliest prose literature of Greece, we find that history
and philosophy are the two subjects which, having been de-
veloped in poetry, at least as far as was compatible with the
laws of poetry, were the first to burst the bonds of rhythm and
find expression in prose.
Prose, like other forms of Greek literature, although carried
to its highest pitch in the mother-land, originated in the colo-
nies ;and it is to Miletus especially that the honour of invent-
ing prose belongs. The earliest prose writers, Hecatseus, Phere-
cydes the historian, Dionysius, Anaximander, and Anaximenes,
were either born in Miletus, or, like Bion, Deiochus, and
Charon, in colonies founded by Miletus. Pherecydes of Syros,
who disputes with Cadmus of Miletus the honour of being the
first Greek prose writer, did not indeed belong to Miletus, hut
to the colonies. The very existence of Cadmus lias, however,
been disputed. According to the ordinary account, he lived
ahout B.C. 550 and wrote an account of the Foundation or
Colonisation of Miletus, which, according to Suidas, consisted
of four books. It seems, however, extremely improbable that
the works which in the time of Augustus went under the
name of Cadmus were genuine ; and although there may have
been a writer named Cadmus who lived in the middle of the
sixth century B.C., it must be said that he is not even men-
tioned by any classical writer, or, indeed, by any author before
Strabo. The existence, on the other hand, of a genuine work
by Pherecydes of Syros On Nature seems to bo generally
accepted ; hut, the evidence as to his date is conflicting, and
it is only conjecturally that he is placed in the middle of the
history: the beginnings of prose. 299
sixth century B.c , though the conjecture is confirmed by both
the language and the style of the few fragments which have
come down to us. The language is Old Ionic, and the style has
the "jerkiness" and abruptness characteristic of the earliest
attempts to write prose. It is in favour of the antiquity of
Pherecydes and the genuineness of the fragments that he is
mentioned by Aristotle.1 From Pherecydes of Syros who wrote
a poem On Nature it is necessary to distinguish Pherecydes of
Leros, who lived about the time of the Persian wars, and wrote
on the Antiquities of Attica in ten books, beginning with the
beginning of the world and coming down to the Ionic coloni-
sation of Asia Minor. With regard to Bion of Proconnesus,
another early prose writer, who wrote on the early history of
Ionia, it is uncertain at what period he lived. He is said to
have been contemporary with Pherecydes, but with which
Pherecydes is doubtful. Acusilaus of Argos is said to have
lived shortly after Cadmus ; but, like Cadmus, his existence
lacks the satisfactory support of a mention in classical writers,
and we cannot, therefore, feel any great confidence in what is
told us about him. He is said to have composed a genealogical
work, which began with Chaos and came down to the Trojan
war, and which resembled in everything but metre the genea-
logical poems of the Hesiodic school. Even in the time of
Hadrian this work existed, but, as in the case of the works of
Cadmus, it seems more probable that we have to do with a
forgery than with a genuine work. The very nature of the
work is inconsistent with the idea involved in the term "logo-
grapher," which is applied to the early prose writers who paved
the way for history, when it at length appeared in the work of
Herodotus. By the name " logographer " is meant a ]>erson
who collects and commits to writing facts, in contradistinction
to one who collects myths ; whereas, if the work which went in
Hadrian's time under the name of Acusilaus were genuine,
Acusilaus would mereby have paraphrased in prose the myths of
Hesiod. Before proceeding to those logographers of whom we
know something, we will briefly mention those of whom we
know little but their names. Deiochus of Proconnesus is said
to have written an account of the city of Cyzicus. Hippys of
Rhegium lived in the time of the Persian wars, and wrote an
account of Argos. Eugeon of Sam s, Eudemus of Paros (or
Naxos), Democles, Melesagoras, Xenomedes of Chios, and
Damastes, are little more than names to us.
The most distinguished of the logographers was Hecataeus of
1 Metaphys. N. H. 1092B 9.
Miletus, a man who figures in the history of his country as Avell

as in the history of literature, and for ■whom we conceive a dis-
tinct admiration. The date of his birth and death there is
nothing to fix, but the time at which he flourished fortunately
admits of no doubt. Herodotus not only frequently refers to
him and quotes from him, but gives us valuable information
about his life. In the time of the Ionic revolt, Hecatseus was
a man of position, influence, and character. lie was among the
leading men whom Aristagoras consulted when about to insti-
gate Ionia to revolt, and he showed his insight and his com] ire
hension of the enormous power of the Persian empire by endea-
vouring todissuade his countrymen from attempting to match
themselves against their powerful masters. This was from no
sympathy with the Persians, from no want of patriotism or of
love of freedom, on the part of Hecatseus, but because he, with
a cool head and with the knowledge he had acquired of the
resources of the Persian empire, foresaw the hopelessness of
the struggle. The revolt once decided on, Hecataeus showed
the same cool perception of the advantages possessed by the
Ionians, and advised them, if they undertook the struggle, to
employ every means to bring it to a successful issue. The trea-
sures of the great Apollo temples at Branchidffi would fall into
the hands of the Persians if left alone, and he therefore adviser!
the Ionians to employ these temple treasures for the purposes
of the revolt rather than leave them to be used by the enemy.
This advice, however, shared the same fate as his previous pro-
posal. A third time Hecataeus showed his practical wisdom,
and a third time his advice was rejected, when, just before the
battle of Lade, he proposed that the inhabitants of Miletus
should leave their city, withdraw to the island of Leros, and
there, awaiting the issue of events, watch for a favourable mo-
ment for establishing themselves firmly once more in Miletus.
Hecatseus was a man of good birth ; he traced his descent to
a god, and must have been possessed of some wealth to make
the extensive travels, the fruits of which he embodied in his
Description of the World. This work consisted apparently of
two parts, one describing Europe, the other Asia — the latter in-
cluding Egypt and Libya. There are several points of interest
in connection with this work. In the first place, we find that
in it geography is hardly yet distinguished from history. The
plan of the work is indeed topographical, but the description of
the places mentioned in it included a history of the places aa
well. In the next place, it has been maintained, both in ancient
and in recent times, that Herodotus not only quotes from this
work with acknowledgment, but has also "stolon" passages

from his predecessor's Description of the World, and tried to
pass them off as his own. Of this point, as far as it affects
the cha'acter of Herodotus, we shall have to speak subsequently.
In this place we have to consider the question only so far as it
may tLrov light on the authenticity of the works ascribed to
Hecataeus.
Whether Hecataeus gave names to the two parts of his work,
or even gave a title to the whole work, may, perhaps, be
doubted.1 It may, however, be regarded as a certain inference
from the quotations in Herodotus that lie did write a descrip-
tion of places in Europe and Asia In Alexandrine times and
later, there Avas in circulation a Description of the World pro-
fessing to be by Hecataeus, and divided into two parts — a
Description of Europe and a Description of Asia But Eratos-
thenes (bom B.C. 276) seems to have had great doubt whether
the latter part was genuine. Instances of literary forgery we
have already seen, in all probability, in the works which passed
under the names of Cadmus and Acusilaus ; and it seems pro-
bable that here too wre have the work of a forger, who, knowing
that Hecataeus had written a description of Asia which had
perished, proceeded to reconstruct the work, and in doing so
borrowed many passages, almost verbatim, from Herodotus' de-
scription ofEgypt.2 Then, in later times, there arose among
uncritical and not impartial men the belief that, since Herodotus
was later in date than Hecataeus, these passages must have been
stolen by the later from the earlier writer. "Whether the De-
scription ofEurope, the first part of the work, was accepted as
genuine by the critics of Alexandria, we do not know. "We
have no expression of their opinion for or against it. But the
spuriousness of the one part throws suspicion on the other.
Finally, a work entitled the Genealogies, which was in circu-
lation until late times, was ascribed to Hecataeus. But the
mythical character of the work is not much in accord with
what little we know of Hecataeus' writings; and frequently, as
1 Herodotus does not quote the work by name. He says, e.g. vi. 137,
E/caraios fxkv 6 'HyqcrdvSpov i<pi)<re iv to:<tl Xoôiai k.t \.
2 If this be the case, then the qualities usually ascribed to the stvle and
language of Hecataeus on the authority of Herniogenes— that it was purer
Ionic than Herodotus sweet, but less sweet than Herodotus— can no longer
be predicated of it ; for Hermogenes was speaking with reference to the for-
gery, as is shown by the words with which lie begins his criticism. /'
Dicendi, ii. 12, 'E/carcuos 5i 6 M(Xi)<T(os, irap' ob S'rj /jukXiara a'pcXijrat 6
H/><S5oros, although the debt of Herodotus is by some taken to mean indebted-
ness in style, not in matter.
Herodotus refers to him, he never cites him in such a way as to

countenance the belief that he wrote more than one work.
Contemporary with Hecataeus seems to have been Dionysius
of Miletus, who wrote probably a Persian History, and Charon
of Lampsacus, who seems to have been nothing more than an
annalist. A man of far different powers was Hellanicus of
Mitylene, who wrote numerous prose works of various kinds.
His date cannot be fixed precisely, but he was a contemporary
of Herodotus, and lived long enough to bring his History of
Attica down to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, as we
learn from Thucydidcs (i. 97). His works may be divided into
three classes — genealogical, topographical, and chronological.
The genealogical works included the Deiicalioneia, which, fol-
lowing the Thessalian myth, began with Deucalion after tho
flood, and probably dealt with Thessalian traditions ; and the
Troica, which not only related many new facts about the Trojan
war, but followed the history of the Trojan colonies founded
after the fall of Troy. The topographical works included much
history, as well as the description of places ; for instance, the
Atthis, or History of Attica, included a sketch of Attic history
from the time of Cecrops to the beginning of the Peloponnesian
war. The Persica comprised a history not only of the Persians,
hut also of the Medes and Assyrians from the time of Ninus to
the time of Hellanicus. The JEolica or Lesbica also probably
included the history as well as a description of Lesbos. The
chronological works or annals, the Priestesses of the Argive Herd
and the Cwneonicas, were based on official lists, in the one case
of the priestesses, in the other of the winners at the Carnean
games ; but they were something more than bare lists. It is
probable that even the official lists comprised something more
than mere names, and that important events were also briefly
noted down. Hellanicus, again, may have collected together
and synchronised information drawn from various data; for
there was at this time no mode of reckoning the years common
to all the Greeks.
Finally, among the logogra pliers earlier than or contemporary
with Herodotus, we must mention Xanthus of Lydia, who com-
posed an account of his native country. It is doubtful whether
he wrote before Herodotus or not. Ephorus, a later historian,
however, affirms that the work of Herodotus was indebted to
Xanthus, and the authority for making Xanthus later than
Ibrodotus is not strong enough to outweigh the evidence of
Ephorus. Before leaving the logographers, we may say, on the
authority of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, which is confirmed by
the fragments that we possess and by knowledge derived from

other sources, that the logographers bore a close likeness to eacli
other both in their methods and in their style. Their object
was to give publicity to traditions which had only an oral cur-
rency, and to the events of the past recorded in the lists and
other documents preserved in temples or other public places.
In the arrangement of the material which they collected they
showed no skill. They simply heaped together all the informa-
tion they could get, and classed it solely hy the nation or town
to which it related. As poetry is fitted for works of the ima-
gination, so is prose for precision ; and although the logogra-
phers had little or no notion of historical criticism, their inten-
tion was to collect facts, as their name implies, not myths.
Finally, as regards their style, it was clear, simple, correct,
brief, and free from rhetorical decoration. The earliest of them
evidently find prose a difficult instrument to handle. They
eject short sentences with a sharp effort. The movement of
their writing is jerky. Their vocabulary and metaphors are
those of poetry rather than of prose ; and periods which even in
Homer have attained a certain development and complexity are
unknown in the earliest prose.
Contemporary with, but junior to. Herodotus was the celebrated
physician Hippocrates. He was born between B.C. 470 and B.C.
460 in the island of Cos, and belonged to the family of the
Asclepiadse, who traced their origin to the fabulous Êsculapius.
In his youth he became familiar with the theory and prac-
tice of medicine by his connection with the Asclepion of Cos,
and he was specially instructed by Herodicus, who first intro-
duced the use of gymnastics as a part of medicine. He then
made extensive travels, as may be inferred from his works. In
what order he visited the places which he mentions, we cannot
say ; but he seems to have been acquainted with Delos, Thasos,
Abdera, and other places in Thrace and Thessaly. In Athens
he must have spent much time, and although there is no satis-
factory evidence for the story that he rendered important services
during the great plague which broke out at the beginning of the
Peloponnesian war, there is nothing intrinsically improbable in tin;
story. Macedonia it seems probable he visited, for he describes
Pella and Acanthus ; and we know that his son became court-
physician to Archelaus, king of Macedonia. It is also said that
he declined an invitation to attend the king of Persia. Neither
has this story any improbability in itself, for before the time of
Hippocrates a Greek physician, Democedes, had boon attached
to the Persian court, and in Hippocrates' own time his relation
Ctesias was the Persian court-physician. But there is no good

evidence for the story. Hippocrates died at Larissa some time
between B.C. 380 and B.C. 360, at an advanced age.
The works of Hippocrates are the earliest treatises on medi-
cine known to us in Greek, but they are in themselves proof
that the art must have been cultivated in Greece long before
his time. Considerable as the genius of "the great Hippo-
crates "undoubtedly is, and vast as was his own observation,
he was to some extent indebted to his predecessors. But the
amount and nature of the debt are hard to determine. The
Asclepia, or temples of iEsculapius, which were established in
various parts of Greece, corresponded in many respects to the
hospitals of the present day. Patients went there to be treated,
and there physicians acquired practical knowledge and skill.
In many points the treatment usual in the Asclepia was far
from scientific, but the facts that they were usually situated
near thermal springs, that attention was paid to diet, that tho
imagination of the patient was worked upon, help us to under-
stand the character of the treatment pursued. On the other
hand, though the art was cultivated, the science was not ne-
glected. The physicians carefully noted down the symptoms
presented by the patient when first brought, and then with
equal care noted the course of the disease and the results con-
sequent upon the exhibition of various kinds of medicine.
Hippocrates shows his greatness in the way in which he
rejects what was unsound in the medical methods of his day,
and carries forward all that was scientific. Viewing him, there-
fore, in connection with the medicine of his time, we have to
notice first his break with it, next his connection with it.
With all quackery, with " amulets and complicated machines
to impose on the credulity of the ignorant multitude," ' he
broke once and for all. At the same time, his early practice
in the hospital of Cos saved him from indulging in the useless
speculations and quasi-philosophical theories of medicine, which
were popular among the intellectual men of the day, and must
have been particularly seductive to a man of the mental power
of Hippocrates.
multitude "While
on the, one he and
hand, thusof broke with the on
the cultivated errors
the of the
other,
Hippocrates adhered to and developed the scientific tendencies
present in Greek medicines. As we have said, the course of
diseases was studied carefully in the Asclepia of Greece j this
implies patient observation, and results in considerable skill in
prognosis. Now, it is in prognosis thai Hippocrates excels,
1 The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, i. 18.
HISTOKY: THE BEGINNINGS OF PROSE. $C<
while throughout his works the basis of all his investigations

and conclusions is observation and experience. His theory of
symptoms has been the marvel and the model of all succeeding
generations of physicians ; while his conspectus of the remoter
causes of disease, e.g. atmosphere, seasons of the year, local
conditions, &c, is a remarkable example of insight and accu-
rate observation. It is sometimes said that in Greece specu-
lation reigned to the exclusion of observation ; but the works
of Hippocrates are an everlasting proof to the contrary. Expe-
riment, with all that it may be made to reveal, was unknown
to the Greeks ; nor had they the accumulated observations of
thousands of years, which modern men of science possess, to
work upon ; but they were not lacking in the power of obser-
vation. The boldness and success of Hippocrates in surgical
operations shows how fully he availed himself of the oppor-
tunities of observation afforded him by the frequent accidents
in the national games of Greece ; though in anatomy and gen-
eral pathology he is now, of course, obsolete. But, much as
Hippocrates trusts to experience, he is no mere empiric. He
employed reason on the results of observation, and the first
of his Aphorisms is justly famous. It runs, " Life is short
and the Art long ; the occasion fleeting, experience fallacious,
andThejudgment difficult." x
dialect in which Hippocrates wrote is Ionic. Prose had
not yet been adopted by the Athenians as their own ; but the
Ionic of Hippocrates differs somewhat from that of Herodotus in
the greater number of Atticisms which it includes. In style Hip-
pocrates iscompared by Dionysius to Thucydides ; and in his
desire to crowd as much thought into one sentence as possible, he
is apt to becume obscure. But his brevity is the terseness of a
vigorous thinker, not the inadequacy resulting from poverty of
ideas. The number of works which have come to be ascribed
to him is great. The Prognostics, First and Third Epidemics,
On Regimen in Acute Diseases, On Airs, Waters, and Places,
On Wounds of the Head, and the Aphorisms are universally
regarded as by Hippocrates. To give merely a list of the
other treatises, of which some in all probability are by Hippo-
crates, would take more space than can be here afforded.
A commentary on the works of Hippocrates was written by a
celebrated physician, Herophilus of Chalcedon in Bithynia, who
flourished about b.o. 300. This, however, has perished along
with the other works of Herophilus.
1 Hi/ypocrates, ii. 697.
3 GO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CHAPTER II.
HERODOTUS.
Halicarnassus, the birthplace of Herodotus, was situated on the

south-west coast of Asia Minor, and was originally occupied by
Carians. Dorian emigrants from Troezene ' then settled there,
and for some time the place belonged to a confederation con-
sisting of six Dorian cities, but eventually was excluded or
withdrew from the alliance.2 Like the other Greek colonies
on the coast of Asia Minor, Halicarnassus became subject first
to the Lydian power,3 and then, when Cyrus conquered the
Lydian kingdom, to the Persian empire.4 In pursuance of the
policy which they employed elsewhere, the Persians did not
directly govern Halicarnassus, but established or confirmed the
rule, of a native Tyrant, who was a vassal of the great king,
and was responsible for the payment to the local satrap of a
fixed tribute, and for raising troops when required. During the
boyhood of Herodotus, Halicarnassus was ruled by a queen,
Artemisia, who took, as Herodotus tells us6 with evident pride,
high position for her courage and sagacity in the counsels and
esteem of Xerxes during the second Persian invasion.
The best evidence that we have of the date of Herodotus is
afforded by the historian himself when he tells us6 that he had
a conversation with Thersander of Orchomenus, who had been
present at a banquet given by Mardonius during the second
Persian war, and to wdiom on that occasion a Persian had con-
fided his presentiment — destined to be fulfilled — that shortly
the Persian host would be destroyed, and but few would survive.
This is good though indefinite evidence. It shows that Hero-
dotus was not old enough to tell the tale of the Persian wars
from his own experience, but yet was old enough to meet people
who had taken part in them. Thus, although we cannot regard
Pamphik's " statement, which would make Herodotus to have
been burn b.c. 484, as anything more than a conjecture, we may
take it as approximately correct, for the supposition that lie was
born some time hetween the first and the second Persian wars
(i.e. between B.C. 490 and 480) accords with tradition, and with
what little we know of his life.
1 Herodotus, vii. 99. a i. 144. 3 i. 28. 4 i. 174.

D vii 99. 8 ix. 16.
1 Pamphila was an authoress of the time of Nero. The passage in question
la preserved iu Aulus Gellius, N. A. xv. 23.
HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 307
According to Suidas,1 Herodotus belonged to a good Halicar-

nassian family. His most distinguished relative was Panyasis,
a literary man, who must be supposed to have exercised some
influence on his literary and mental development. Herodotus
■was doubtless by nature inclined to put much belief in omens,
portents, and prodigies of all kinds ; and an acquaintance with,
the epic poets was part of the education of his time ; but it
could not have been wholly without effect upon Herodotus that
Panyasis applied the method of observation to portents, &c,
and obtained some distinction as an epic writer. "We know,
further, that Panyasis wrote a poem on the adventures of Hera-
cles, aHeracleiad ; and Herodotus himself took so much interest
in the myths connected with Heracles, that he voyaged to Tyre
solely in order to investigate one of them. Finally, we find
that Herodotus' taste for the antiquities of history, and probably
to some extent his knowledge of the subject, were forestalled in
a work by Panyasis on the colonisation of Ionia.
Of the life of Herodotus, all that we know practically is, that
he undertook extensive travels over all the world then known.
The result of these travels was the History of Herodotus which
we now possess, divided by the grammarians of Alexandria into
nine books, named after the nine Muses. Whether Herodotus
from the beginning of his explorations entertained the design of
writing the history of the long struggle between the Greeks and
the barbarians which resulted in the Persian wars, there is no
direct evidence to show. There is, however, nothing impro-
bable in making the assumption, and the whole tone of the
work is much more in harmony with the feelings which ani-
mated Hellas in the time of Herodotus' youth, than with those
which were rife when, in his declining years, he was reducing
to form at Thurii the materials which he had laboriously col-
lected. The history of Herodotus is throughout nat'Snal. It
is the story, not of the struggle and success of some one Greek
state, but of all the Hellenes against the barbarians; and this
sentiment belongs to the time of the Persian wars and the
time which immediately succeeded them — the period of Hero-
dotus' youth — rather than to the time when the feeling of
national unity had yielded before the divisions produced by the
great struggle between Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian
1 Suidas, whose date is unknown, but is generally put down about A.n.
1000, composed a lexicon in which lie draws on a variety of older works of
scholiasts, grammarians, lexicographers. He was an uncritical writer, and
it is hard to distinguish the good from the bad in him, inasmuch as his
sources sometimes are, aud sometimes are not, trustworthy.
war. Further, the defeat of the barbarians is treated of by

Herodotus as an historical verification of the religious theory
that no mortal power can become exceeding great without incur-
ring the disfavour of the gods, and eventually meeting destruc-
tion from them. This sentiment, again, is one which was
much more dominant in the early than the late years of Hero-
dotus, and was likely to influence his conception of his History
from the time when he first thought of writing it. and not to
have grown up during the writing of it. Finally, the history
of his own native place, which, as we have already seen, went
through every phase of the national conflict with the barbarian,
was the thread round which all his later knowledge crystallised,
and naturally determined the way in which he would regard
the Persian wars, i.e. as the result of a long series of collisions
between the Greek and the barbarian worlds. In other words,
the view which Herodotus takes is that of the Greeks who
lived on the eastern side of the iEgaean. This view he learned
in his youth before he left Halicarnassus, not when he settled
in Thurii ; and it was this view which determined the informa-
tion he would collect, not the information which he collected
that determined his point of view.
Herodotus begins his History by declaring that his purpose is
to tell the causes of the wars between the Greeks and the bar-
barians. The wrongs and reprisals on both sides, which belong
to the domain of myth, he sets aside without giving an opinion
on them ; he prefers to begin with what he knows, and the first
thing he can vouch for is, that Croesus, the king of Lydia,
attacked and subjugated the Greek cities on the coast of Asia
Minor. This leads him to give a history of the Lydian kings —
including the wonderful story of Gyges and his magical ring,
and the famous interview of Solon with Croesus— and a descrip-
tion of the country of Lydia and its most noteworthy sights.
The wrong Croesus did to the Asiatic Greeks and the excessive
wealth which he acquired brought down on him the wrath of
Heaven, and he was overthrown by the Persian Cyrus. Then
follows an account of the Medos and their history to the time
of Astyages, of the birth and exposure of his grandson Cyrus,
and of the way in which Cyrus at the head of the Persians
overthrew the Median kingdom. We are thus brought into the
domain of Persian history, and the growth of the Persian king-
dom until it collided with Greece is the main subject of the
first six books of Herodotus. He describes the customs of the
Persians, their conquest under Gyrus of the Asiatic Greeks, of
Bubylon, and of the Massagetne— in each case giving a descrip-
history: HERODOTUS. 3 09
tion of the country and an account of the history of the con-

quered people. Cyrus was succeeded by Cambyses, who under-
took the invasion of Egypt, and this gives Herodotus an
opportunity for introducing his wonderful description of tho
land of Egypt, of the strange customs of its peoples, of its
marvellous history and its astounding monuments. This fills
the whole of the Second book, which is to us, as it was to the
Greeks, the most enthralling qf all the nine books.
In the Third book, he returns to the invasion of Egypt and
its conquest by Cambyses. The death of Cambyses was followed
by the appearance of a pretender to the throne, the pseudo-
Smerdis. Herodotus relates his dethronement and the trick by
which Darius contrived to obtain the crown for himself. ' At this
point Herodotus introduces the history of the celebrated tyrant
of Samos, Polycrates ; the tale of his unsuccessful attempt to
avert the Nemesis of the gods which his over-great prosperity was
doomed to bring upon his head, and his fall. Darius organised
the government of the now vast kingdom of Persia with a broad
statesmanship and minute attention to detail which stamp him
as the greatest of the Persian monarchs ; and the review of the
Persian kingdom and its resources thus introduced serves to
impress the reader with the magnitude of the danger threaten-
ing Greece, and to heighten the interest of Herodotus' tale.
The Fourth book is occupied by Darius' attempt against the
Scyths, which was unsuccessful, and by an account of their
country and the countries bordering on it. The history of
Cyrene is also introduced in this book, on the ground, which we
may doubt, that Darius meditated an invasion in this direction
also. But the plea serves as an excuse for the development of
all the information about the tribes on the north coast of Africa
between Cyrene and Egypt, which Herodotus had picked up from
the traders along that coast. The invasion of Scythia, though
unsuccessful, and all but the destruction of Darius and his army,
paved the way for the invasion of Greece under Xerxes, inas-
much as it incidentally resulted in the conquest of the south
of Thrace, through which Xerxes' army eventually marched.
Accordingly the Fifth book opens with a description of Thrace ;
and then we come to the proximate causes of the first Persian
invasion of Greece.
Histiseus, the tyrant of Miletus, who had once saved Darius,
but was regarded by that monarch as too clever to be allowed
entire liberty, was nominally a guest, and really an honoured
prisoner at the Persian court. Growing weary of this, he secretly
instigated the Ionian cities to revolt, in order that he might be
3 lO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
sent to quell the insurrection and thus gain his liberty. In this
revolt the Ionians were supported by the Athenians, but not by
the Spartans, to whom they first applied for help. The revolt
failed, and the attention of Darius was drawn to the necessity
of crushing Greece. The first expedition which he sent for this
purpose failed, and the second resulted in the glorious Athenian
victory at Marathon, a victory which owes not a little of its
immortal fame to the History of Herodotus. This closes the
Sixth book.
The Seventh book opens with the preparations of Darius to
take condign vengeance on Athens, and the opportune revolt of
Egypt, which, by delaying the invasion of Greece until the
death of Darius, left it in the hands of his unworthy successor,
Xerxes, and thus probably saved Greece. The inception of the
second Persian war is conceived by Herodotus in an epic spirit.
Xerxes is loth to undertake the invasion of Greece, but the
time is come for the wrath of the gods, provoked by the over-
weening greatness of the Persians, to descend upon this mighty
empire, and false dreams are sent to Xerxes to drive him on
destruction. War once resolved on, preparations of astounding
magnitude were made. Magazines were prepared along the route
in advance, and the neighbouring peoples engaged for months
in filling them with stores. A canal was driven through Athos,
that the fleet might escape the dangerous necessity of rounding
this dangerous point. Bridges were built across the Hellespont,
and all the many nations comprised in the Persian empire called
upon to furnish contingents of troops. The dress and arms of
all these peoples are described in the pages of Herodotus, and
the advance of this army, numbering, according to Herodotus,
over five millions altogether, and probably the greatest the
world has ever seen, traced from Sardis on. This prepares the
reader to realise the dismay of the Greeks, the despair of their
very oracles, which Herodotus pictures, and the valour of the
handful of Greeks who, under Leonidas, waited for death and
glory at Thermopylae. The main incidents of the Eighth book
are the battle of Salamis and the flight of Xerxes, as arc the
battle of Plataea and the flight of the Persian army of the Ninth
hook.
Herodotus is such simple and delightful reading, he is so
unaffected and entertaining, his Btory flows so naturally and
with such ease, that we have a difficulty in bearing in mind
that, over and above the hard writing which goes to make easy
reading, there is a perpetual marvel in the work of Herodotus.
It is the first artistic work in prose that Greek literature pro-
HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 II
duced. This prose work, •which for pure literary merit no sub-
sequent work has surpassed, than which later generations, after
using the pen for centuries, have produced no prose more easy
or more readable, this was the first of histories and of literary
prose.
Without attempting to analyse the literary merit of Hero-
dotus, itwill be enough here to point out one or two of its
constituent elements, a comprehension of which will throw light
on the development of Greek literature and the position of
Herodotus in that development. In the contemplation of any
work of art, after the first period of enjoyment, the thought
usually travels with reverence to the artist — what manner of
man was he to whom it was granted to -conceive and execute
this 1 And whereas a picture or a statue conveys but little defi-
nite information about the artist as a man, and the imagination
has to draw on its own stores for a likeness which may have
but little resemblance to the original, it is the privilege of
literature to convey information much more definite in kind
and more extensive in range. The extent to which we thus
become acquainted with the man through his writing may vary,
from the marked and deliberate way in which Thucydides with-
draws himself and his own views from the reader's gaze, to the
delightful intimacy which in reading Charles Lamb we come to
feel with the man. But even with Thucydides we come to be
acquainted, for his very withdrawal from us gives us the man's
character. Herodotus, however, belongs to the type, not of
Thucydides, but of Charles Lamb. Even if the tale of how
the Greeks fought well for liberty, and thus bequeathed to us
the heritage of their art and literature, were not of interest
to us, we still should read it for the sake of making the
acquaintance of Herodotus, by listening to him as he tells the
tale. Or again, if, forgetting the sack of Sardis, Herodotus
says that the Athenians at Marathon were the first Greeks who
dared to look the Persians in the face, or makes the total of
Xerxes' army too great by a million, or some other conjec-
tural sum, this lessens our affection for Herodotus as little as
it lessens our admiration for the Greeks. They fought well,
and he tells the tale well, and we are the better for the tight
and for the tale. Dulce et decorum est. The charm of Hero-
dotus is, then, that in him we are listening to one who has
seen many cities and known many men, and is not writing
a book, but telling in his fresh old age the brave deeds that
were done in the days before him, and describing the marvels
of the strange lands which in his vouth he had himself seen.
That Herodotus' narrative has the characteristics of a tale told

rather than of a book written is no accident, nor is it to be
explained solely by reference to the temper of the man. It is
due to the fact that Herodotus wrote his work for oral delivery,
and not for a reading public. The Greeks of his time were not
in the habit of perusing literature, each man in the privacy
of his own home. Epic poetry they were accustomed to hear
recited in public. Lyric poetry they became acquainted with
either by hearing choruses perform it at some sacred festival,
or — as in the case of triumphal odes — on some public occasion,
or by listening to some friend reciting an ode of Alcseus or
Theognis after a banquet. Dramatic literature reached the
Greek not in the form of books, but by being performed before
him on the stage. A reading public can scarcely be said to have
existed at this time ; for although some public libraries were to
be found, Euripides was the first private man who possessed a
library. It was not, therefore, by spreading written copies of
his work that an author could hope to gain much publicity.
The prose writer at first naturally adopted the same means as
the poet for bringing his work before the notice of the public ;
that is, he sought for some opportunity when large numbers of
his fellow-countrymen were gathered together, and he would be
able to read to them his productions.1 Such an opportunity was
found in such a festival as the Panathenaea at Athens, or the
national games of Greece. At the latter we know prose works
were regularly read, and special provision made for their recita-
tion. This, then, was the way in which Herodotus had to gain
the ear of the public. The idea is so alien to the notions of the
present day, with its printing-press, that at first we are inclined
to doubt the possibility of any considerable portion of a prose
work — to say nothing of the whole of Herodotus — being thus
recited. But when we reflect that a speech such as that of
Demosthenes On the Crown, or that On the Embassy, is longer
than the longest book of Herodotus, and that the Greeks (like
the Japanese of the present day) were accustomed to listen for
a whole day to the performance of play after play, we shall
have little difficulty in believing that Herodotus might easily
read at a sitting, say, the whole of the Second book, describing
the land, the manners and customs, and the history of Egypt.
More than this we are not called upon to believe, for what
evidence there is on the point seems to indicate that these reci-
1 It is to this practice that such expressions refer in Thucydides as
i. 21, iirl rb irpoaaywydrepov t§ aapodaet ; i. 22, nal is /*£»< aKp6a.oi»
£1/7 Karat ; i. 2, &ywvi<rp.a is t6 irapaxpTJP-o- £v-fKUTCU.
HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 3 I3
tations or lectures of Herodotus extended not to the whole, hut

only to parts of his work.
The well known story that Thucydides, as a hoy, being pre-
sent at one of these recitations, burst into tears, and that Hero-
dotus thereupon declared the boy's nature was ripening towards
learning, has the appearance of being an invention due to the
desire of grammarians to bring the two great historians into
connection with each other, and, further, is hard to believe be-
cause of the chronological difficulties. If we suppose that the
recitation took place when Thucydides was fifteen years old,
B.c. 456, Herodotus can scarcely have been thirty years of age
then, had probably not yet visited Egypt, and could hardly have
composed any of his work. But although we may reject this
story, there is no reason to doubt that Lucian * is right in say-
ing that Herodotus gave recitations at the Olympia, in Athens,
Corinth, Argos, and Sparta. As far as Athens is concerned, the
testimony of Lucian is amply con tinned by Eusebius,2 and by
the author of the attack on Herodotus (De Malignitate Herodoti)
which goes under the name of Plutarch. The latter (c. 26)
states that the Athenians decreed a gift of ten talents to Hero-
dotus, and the former states that Herodotus was " honoured "
by the Boule of the Athenians for reciting his works to them.
These statements may be regarded as referring to the same cir-
cumstance, and as proving a recitation at Athens at least.
Taking it as proved that Herodotus did give readings of his
History, we shall see that the work is not complete, and that
therefore his readings were probably of selections from, and not
the whole of his history. In the first place, the last chapter of
the last book was presumably not meant to conclude the work.
It contains no indication that it is the last chapter, does not
sum up the work, nor does it present anything corresponding
to the introduction at the beginning of the history. In the
next place, the History does not comprise the last [liases of the
struggle hetween the Greeks and the barbarians, the battles at
the Eurymedon and Salamis in Cyprus.3 It thus seems that
1 Lucian flourished about A.D. 160, was a Syrian by birth, a lawyer by
profession ; was procurator of Egypt under Marcus Aurelius, and died under
Commodus. He wrote, in Greek, a large number of amusing works. The
passage to which reference is made in the text ooours in Luoian'a Herod* tut
or Jidov, a light and humorous appeal to the educated public of .Mace-
donia to give Lucian's works a favourable reception.
2 See ante, p. 69 n.
3 But, on the other hand, it should be observed that Herodotus may have
regarded the Persian wars as the consummation of tin- struggle between
Greek and barbarian, and may have considered the repulse of the latter from
Greece as the natural conclusion of the tight for liberty. In that case, to
Herodotus roust have contemplated continuing his work down

to a later date than it reaches as we have it. If, in ohjection
to this, it is alleged that the division of the work into nine
books, named after the Muses, excludes the possibility of a
teuth having been added, it is only necessary to point out that
there is no evidence in the work itself of any such division.
When Herodotus wishes in any passage to refer to some other
passage, he does not refer to the number of the book, as Jose-
phus, for instance, does, but says "in the former" or "the
latter part of my History." * Tbe first author who knows the
division into books is Diodorus Siculus,2 and the first who
knows them by tbe names of the Muses is Lucian. From this
we may infer that it was by the Alexandrine grammarians that
the names of the Muses were given to the books.
Not only does Herodotus seem to have broken off without
bringing his History down to its proper termination, but he also
seems not to have finished that which he did write. Thus he
promises3 to say more about Ephialtes (who betrayed the
Greeks at Thermopylae) in a later part of the History, but never
does say anything more. He also promises4 to give an account
of the capture of Nineveh by the Medes, but he never redeems
his promise. Again,5 he promises to say more about the Baby-
lonian kings in bis " Assyrian History," but we have no Assy-
rian history. Whether Herodotus ever wrote the Assyrian
history which he promises, and whether, if he wrote it, he in-
tended to publish it separately or as part of the work we have,
are questions which do not seem to admit of being settled.
Aristotle0 alludes to an account of the siege of Nineveh — by
Herodotus according to some MSS., by Hesiod according to
most MSS. It is difficult to imagine how Hesiod could come
to be writing of the siege of Nineveh, and this difficulty, to-
gether with the fact that Herodotus, as we have seen, certainly
intended, at least, to give an account of the siege, incline us
rather to think that Herodotus did write his Assyrian history.7
relate the operations of Cimon on tbe const of Asia Minor would be an anti-
climax, ami, further, would have carried Herodotus into the period of inter
nal dissension which led to the Peloponnesian war, and is as repugnant to
the national feeling which predominates his work as it was lamentable to his
pan-Hellenic mind.
1 In v. 36 he refers to i. 02 ; in i. 75 to i. 107 ; in vii. 93 to i. 171 ; in 11.
161 to iv. 159; in v. 22 to viii. 137 ; in vi. 19 to i. 92.
- xi. 37. Diodorus of Sicily flourished ahout B.C. 40 : he wrote a huge his-
tory in forty hooks (3ip\to0r)Kri). dealing with a period of 1 [00 years (ending
with the conquest of Caul by Ceeaar . We have IJooks L-v. and xi.-xx.
s vii. 2I3. 4 i. 106.
r. j ,g4. 6 Hist. An. viii. 18.
7 The difficulty of the word Treiroi-rjKc being used by Aristotle— a word
HISTORY : HEKODOTUS. 3 I5
In this case, it was not incorporated1 with, the work which we

possess, as Herodotus seems to have intended, and this is a
fresh indication that the work is incomplete. Thus, although
Herodotus gave various readings from his work hefore he finally
settled down in Thurii, and evidently wrote or revised many
the last thefour books during his stay at Thurii,'2 he
yet neitherof brought
passages work to a conclusion nor completed his
revision.
Unfinished though the work is, it is so far from being left in
a disorderly state, that one of its charms, and of its points of
superiority over previous prose, is its unity. This unity is due
to its simplicity of conception. Herodotus' one theme is the
conflict between the Greeks and the barbarians, and with this
theme all the episodes have a direct connection. To this simple
conception Herodotus was led by the sentiment of nationality,
which nerved the better-minded Greeks to their successful re-
sistance, but unfortunately was disappearing rapidly in the later
years of Herodotus' own life. The Hellas of Herodotus includes
Miletus and Gyrene, Sicily and Rhodes.3 He evidently has
great sympathy with that state which made the greatest sacri-
fices for the national good in the Persian wars — Athens ; and
with a boldness which, in view of the envy and hatred that
was rife against Athens at the time he wr te, deserves credit,
he does not hesitate to show it. Thus he properly calls atten-
tion4 to the patriotism of the Athenians in resigning the com-
mand of the fleet to the Spartans (though, as they contributed
the largest contingent, they had the best claim to take the mari-
time lead), rather than cause dissension among the allied Greeks ;
and he rather goes out of his way to declare5 that, however
more naturally applying to the poet Hesiod rather than the historian Hero-
dotus—goes for little. Lucian uses the word q8uv of Herodotus.
is That Ctesias towrote
no evidence show.in order
But iftoHerodotus
explode Herodotus'
did write anAssyrian
Assyrianhistory there
history, we
might conjecture that Ctesias' ohject was to attack him.
1 i. 84 seems to show that Herodotus intended to incorporate it, and iii.
160 would he the natural place. That the Medes, and not the Persians, de-
stroyed the Assyrian power (Bach of, Fleckeisen's Jahrbuch, 1877) would not
prevent Herodotus from utilising his Assyrian notes.
- Stein (Iutrod. 23) gives the following passages referring to B.C. 43a or
later: v. 77, mention of the Propylaea, finished in B.C. 431 ; vii. 233, seizure
of Platseae by the Thebans, js.c. 431 ; vi. 91, expulsion of the iEgineta), B.o.
431; vii. 137, execution of the Spartan ambassadors at Athens, b.c. 430;
ix. 73 and vi 98, references to the Peloponnosian war. Thurii was founded
B.C. 444, and, even if Herodotus did not go there in that year, he probably
was there from B.C. 432 on.
:i See Stein and Wood (Catena Classicorum) on i. 92. See also vii. 157 ami
ii. 182.
4 viii. 3. 5 vii. 139.
unpopular the opinion may be, he is convinced that the Athe-

nians, when they abandoned Athens and took to their " wooden
walls" in accordance with the oracle, saved Hellas. The demo-
cratic government of Athens also pleased him. He disapproved
of tyranny and of oligarchy, and believed in equality; and he
ascribes the rise of Athens to her escape from tyranny.1 But
this liking for Athens does not make him a blind partisan. He
has praise for Athens' great rival, Sparta,2 and even for the
courage of the Boeotians,3 although they were traitors, and for
the Corinthians.4
Herodotus' breadth of view and his sentiment of nationality
is due in part to his extensive travels, which tended to make
him cosmopolitan, and feel his kinship with all Hellenes where-
soever planted ; but it is still more due to his being an Asiatic
Greek. The natural boundary of the Persian kingdom towards
the west was the /Egsean, and farther than this Persian states-
men would have had little temptation to extend their rule but
for the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor. The relation of
Greece to the Persian empire was in the time of Darius much
like that of Britain to the Roman empire. The Channel might
have remained the boundary of Roman rule but for the fact
that the tribes of Gaul found a perpetual refuge and an ever-
ready assistance from their kinsfolk in Britain, and therefore
peace could hot be lasting in Gaul until Britain also was sub-
dued. The Greek cities in Asia Minor, in the same way, could
not be expected to become contented subjects of the great king
so long as their brethren across the .Êâean remained free. It
was to the Greeks in Greece, without distinction, that the Greeks
in Asia Minor looked for assistance in their struggles against
the barbarians, whether Persian or Lydian, and this of itself
served to make the Asiatic Creeks think little of minor divi-
sion- and much of their common nationality.
A strong national feeling, then, running all through Hero-
dotus' work, is one thing which gives unity to his History.
Another is the predominance of the religious feeling of Nemesis,
a theory which the overthrow of the enormous power of Persia
by a handful of Greeks is regarded by Herodotus as verifying.6
Nemesis, the visitation which lights from heaven on over-great
prosperity, as the lightning strikes the tallest trees and the
1 v. 78. 3 vii. 102, 220.

3 'X. 67. 4 v. 75, 92.
ix.5 112.
1-8, 13, 34, 91, 130, 141, 189; iv. 1 ; vi. 44 ; vii, 8- 12, 16, 18, 20, 203;
loftiest houses,1 does not appear in Homer,2 but is to be found

in Hesiod,3 in Pindar,4 iEschylus,5 Sophocles,6 and Euripides.7
The workings of Nemesis are seen by Herodotus not only in the
defeat of Persia, but in the fall of Croesus8 and of Apries,9
and in the tales of Polycrates (iii. 40), Orcetes (iii. 128), Ary-
andes (iv. 166), Pheretime (iv. 205), Cleomenes (vi. 84), Talthy-
bius (vii. 137), and the death of Mardonius (ix. 64) ; in the
result of Cyrus' expedition against the Massagetae, that of
Cambyses against the Ethiopians, and of Darius against the
Scyths (vii. 18). Nemesis is incurred by conspicuous pros-
perity, but the absence of such prosperity is no safeguard,10
for no one may escape from the "envy" or "jealousy" of the
gods. Short as life is, Herodotus says,11 there never yet was
or will be a man who does not wish more than once that he
were dead : Heaven gives man a taste, but grudges him more of
the pleasure of life. Thus Nemesis and jealousy, together cover-
ing the whole of human experience, afford a universally appli-
cable explanation of the vicissitudes through which indivi-
duals and countries go ; and these vicissitudes it is the business
of the historian to record. This is Herodotus' philosophy of
history.
His God is not only a jealous God, but one who visits the,
6ins of the fathers on the children. That Heaven punished
offenders in their own persons and rewarded the righteous,
Herodotus firmly believed, and he records many instances in
which this happened.12 But there remained cases which Hero-
dotus, like Solon and iEschylus, seemed to think found a satis-
factory explanation in ancestral guilt. Thus Croesus paid the
penalty for Gyges' crime.13
Polytheism Herodotus practically abandons. He prefers not
I vii. 10.
5 But we find, e.g. Od. xiv. 283 —
Aids £eiviov, Sare /j.d\i<na ve/tecrcrarcu Kaica fpya.
8 Op. 198 ; Th. 223. * P.nth. x. 65 ; 01. viii. 114.
6 8. c. Th. 419 and 430 et scq. ; P. V. 936. 6 Aj. 758 ; Phil. 776.
7 Fr. 964. s i. 34. 9 iii- 40.
10 Herodotus does indeed say, vii. 10, that whereas God does not allow the
great to vaunt themselves, the small cause him no irritation. But this pro-
bably should be considered merely an antithetical way of emphasizing the
doctrine of Nemesis, and not as inconsistent with the passage referred to in
the next note.
II vii. 46.
13 E.g. i. 19, 22, 34, 86, 87, 91, 130, 159, 167 ; ii. in, 113. 120 ; iii. 126 ; iv.
136, 205; v. 56, 66, 72, 76, 79, 80; vi. 72, 84, 86 ; viii. 36, 37, 67, 129 ; ix.
93. 94-
13 See i. 8, 13, 91. Other instances, iv. 149 ; vn. 137, 197.
to commit himself,1 and, though he tells many stories of the

gods, is careful not to guarantee them,2 when he does not deny
them.3 In the spirit of toleration he allows that the effects
of an earthquake might be regarded as the work of Poseidon.4
Strange to say, he speaks of the sun as a god.5 Perhaps this is
a mere, and natural inconsistency, or he may have deliberately
used the expression to guard himself from the charge of atheism,
which a denial of the sun's divinity brought on Anaxagoras,
with whom he may have been, and with whose works he pro-
bably was, acquainted.6 But, although not a polytheist, Hero-
dotus was not an atheist. He believes in a God and in fate.7
From fate neither man 8 nor even god can escape.9 It is thus
that many things, otherwise hard to understand, are to be ex-
plained10
; and Herodotus is never weary of pointing out how
everything was ordained by Providence.11 Consistently with
this belief in fate, Herodotus believes in oracles as a means
of finding out what is fated.12 Instances of non-fulfilment of an
oracle are, of course, explained away ; either the inquirer was
guilty in some way,13 or the oracle was a forgery,14 or due to
bribery.15 It further harmonises with this belief in fate and
oracles that Herodotus helieved also in omens.16
1 ix. 65.
2 E.g. i. 122 ; ii. 44, 50, 53, 57, 122, 123 ; iii. 7, 16, m ; iv. 15, 179 ; v. 86 ;
vi. 69, 80, 105, 117 ; vii. 129, 152.
3 E.g. i. 182 ; ii. 57. * vii. 129. 5 ii. 24.
6 Cf. his derivation, ii. 52, of Beds — Kbe/my Ofvres — with Anaxagoras*
account of creation (Ritter and Preller, 52), iravra xpiWra ?ji> 6/j.ov. eira.
vovs i\0£oi> aura 5i€Kb<r/j.7)(re.
7 6 6tbs, 6 dai/xwf, rb bai/j-buiov, rb xpevv, fJ-oipa, Trcwpupev-rj. Cf the ex-
pressions £5ee, £/xe\\e, xpVvaly Kara Kacpiuivov, i. 8, 91 ; ii. 133, 161 ;
iii. 139, 153 ; iv. 92 ; vi. 64 ; vii. 116, 146 ; viii. 54 ; ix. 93, 109.
8 i. 91 ; iii. 44, 65 ; vii. 17 ; viii. 6, 13 ; ix. 16.
9 i. 91.
10 E.g. i. 45. 86, 87, 90, 129, 155, 162 ; ii. 120, 133, 139. 161 ; iii. at, 30. 43,
119 ; iv. 79 ; v. 33, 92 ; vi. 64, 135 ; vii. 10, 12, 16; ix. 91.
11 • 45, 53-55> 62, 87. 91, 118, 120, 155, 159 ; ii. 120, 133, 139, 161 ; iii. 77,
108, J42 ; iv. 8, 79, 150-159, 164 ; v. 92 ; vii. 170 ; viii. 6-13, 94, 100, 101 ;
ix. 91.
12 The chief instances of oracles are : i. 7, 13, />6. 53, 55, 65 seq., 91, 165 ;
ii. 18, 29, 139, 155 ; iii. 57, 64 ; iv. 150-156, 203 ; v. 90 seq. ; vi. 76 seq., 86,
135; vii. in, 140-148, 220; viii. 36, 114, 134; ix. 33,93.
»1:1 vii.
E.g. 6.Glaucus, vi. 86, or Croesus, i. 91.
35 Especially in the case of the Pythia, e.g. ii. 49 ; v. 63 ; vi. 66.

16 i. 23, 59, 78, 87, 159, 167, 175 ; ii. 10, 46, 82 ; iii. 76, 86, 153 ; iv. 64, 79,
203 ; v. 90 ; vi. 27, 82, 98, 107, 117 ; vii. 37, 57 feq„ 219 seq. ; viii. 20. 37 ttq.,
41, 64 seq. ; ix. 91. With this belief in destiny and oracles Herodotus natu-
rally presents us with examples of the irony of fortune, «.</. the tale of
Ailrastus, whose very endeavour to save is the means of his killing Croesus'
son Atys, whose deatli hy a spear had been f retold to and guarded against
by Croesus (i. 34-45). It is inteiesting to observe that the irony of fortune,
The belief of Herodotus in Nemesis and fate gives unity to

his work, for the history which he relates is regarded by him
as but the working out of a divine plan preordained from all
time. But a theory is dangerous for a historian, who may un-
consciously bedrawn into adapting facts to suit his theory, and
it thus becomes necessary to examine the credibility of Hero-
dotus. The credibility of a writer depends on his capacity, his
honesty, and his means of information. Under the head of
capacity we have to distinguish between the capacity of a writer
for stating the results of his own observation and his capacity
for estimating the evidence of others : and in the case of Hero-
dotus it is the more necessary to observe this distinction, be-
cause, in conformity with the custom of logographers, he regarded
it quite as much part of his task to describe the land, monu-
ments, habits, and customs of the peoples whose history he was
writing, as to write their history. The historical events which
Herodotus recorded happened before his time, and came to him
from the lips of others ; but the descriptions of countries and
peoples are, to a great extent, the result of his own travels.
With regard, then, to his capacity for this portion of his work,
the essential conditions are that he should have been an accu-
rate observer, and that he should be able to distinguish in his
statements between what he himself observed and what he was
told by others. But in forming our opinion we should be on
our guard against applying the standard of modern times to an
ancient author. Thus, naturalists of the present day — owing
partly to the modern taste for sport and to modern weapons of
precision — are accustomed to much closer study, both of speci-
mens and of the habits of the living animal, than any Greek
naturalists. We are not, therefore, surprised to find that the
acquaintance of Herodotus with crocodiles and hippopotami was
a distant one ; that he has no accurate measurements of the
latter, and little knowledge of the conformation of the jaws
of the former ; that he is apt to confound the poisonous asp
with the equally venomous horned viper ; that he makes mis-
takes about pisciculture ; and accepts without close investigation
what he was told by the natives. In this branch of knowledge,
which, though it is not, as has sometimes been supposed, a peculiarly Sopho-

clean conception, is thoroughly rooted in Greek literature from Homer on-
wards, is not by any means peculiar to, nor is its earliest instance found in,
Greek literature. Seventeen hundred ye:irs before Christ, a story, which is
preserved in the Harris papyrus (500, translated in the ffcwda of the Past,
ii. 153-160), was told in Egypt of a prince whose death, Fated and foretold,
was, in accordance with the prediction, brought about by his dog, which
tried to save hiin.
Herodotus falls below the modern, but not below the ancient,
standard, and will compare favourably with Aristotle, who
wrote on zoology. If we set aside this special department of
inquiry, and consider him not as a naturalist, but as a general
observer, we find, in the first place, that he recognises the dif-
ference between the evidence of his own eyes and hearsay,1
and that he is generally careful to inform us to which kind of
testimony a statement belongs.2 In the next place, it is gene-
rally admitted that " what he saw himself he may be supposed
to describe with fair accuracy." 3 Everything, of course, he did
not observe. He does not state, for instance, that the Egyptians
used gold and glass as well as bronze for drinking vessels ; that
they ate wh eaten as well as other bread ; 4 that women as well
as men plied the loom in Egypt,5 and that they drove the woof
upwards as well as downwards. But, nevertheless, he gives
us a picture of Egypt as he saw it, the charm of which is in-
disputable, and which is as valuable as it is charming.
As an observer, then, Herodotus may be credited with capa-
city. In the historical portions of his work we must look for
other qualities to establish his capacity. To begin with, he has
the first great quality of a historian : he distinguishes between
facts and his inferences from them. What was told to him ho
tells to us, and gives us his authority : he draws his own infer-
ences, but also gives his reader the opportunity to draw other
inferences.6 Further, he does not present us with that version
alone of an event which he considers most likely, but lays
before the reader all the versions with which he is acquainted,
choosing one himself, but also leaving the reader liberty of
choice.7 Again, he is free from the error of infallibility ; if he
cannot test the truth of a story, he admits his ignorance.8
As Hero. lotus is so careful to distinguish between what he
has heard and what he infers therefrom, and to give his autho-
rities, his capacity for estimating evidence becomes a matter of
1 ii. 99-
2 E.g. ii. 99; i- 184 ; ii. 120, 29, 53, 113 ; ni. 45 ; iv. 173, 179, 187.
3 Prof. Sayce'8 Herodotus, p. xxxii.
4 ii. 37. B ii. 36.
6 vii. 152 ; ii. 123, 146 ; iii. 9 ; iv. 195 ; v. 45 ; vii. 239.
7 E.g. he gives two accounts of Cambyses' murder of his sister, of the
origin of Cambyses' war against Egypt (iii. t), of tlie fate of the Samians
sent to Cambyses by Polycratea iii. 45), <>f the motives of certain Spartaua
in supporting the insurgents against Polycratea (iii. 46), of the loss of the
Spartan bowl sent to Cyrus (i. 701, of the story of Io (i. 3), of the motives
of Orestes in assassinating Polycratea, of the origin of the Scyths, and of
the feud between Alliens and Egiua.
8 oiiK tx<* irptKius dicelv is a perpetually recurring formula with
him.
HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 32 1
less consequence. But he is fully aware of the importance of

getting evidence at first hand, if possible,1 and naturally prefers
that version of an event which has the best evidence to support
it. It is, however, at this point that his theory of Nemesis and
fate affects his credibility as a historian. When the evidence
for two versions of an event was about equal, Herodotus cannot
be blamed for choosing that version which accords with his
theory. In such a case it is perfectly legitimate to take into
account the tendency of a general law, and to give weight to
general considerations. What is not legitimate is for the his-
torian to imagine that conformity with his theory dispenses him
from the necessity of further investigation ; and there can be little
doubt that his theory frequently led Herodotus into taking a
superficial view of history, accepting fate as a sufficient explana-
tion of an event, about the causes of which he might have found
out and told us more. On the other hand, there is not the least
reason to believe that he ever rejected the better-attested ver-
sion because it did not harmonise with his theory. He believed
his theory to be wed enough established to dispense with such
props, and has no hesitation in rejecting an application of the
doctrine of Nemesis when the facts do not support it. Nor does
his appetite for the marvellous — although it occasionally led
him to record, if not to believe, some very extraordinary tales told
him in the East, as, e.g. that about the cats in Egypt — prevent
him from exercising a perpetual criticism on what he was told or
from frequently rejecting the stories he heard.
Herodotus' capacity as a historical writer is marred by his
tendency to overlook general causes and to see only personal
motives, to substitute occasions for causes. Thus, he ascribes
the revolt of the Persians from the Medes to personal motives
on the part of Harpap;us and Cyrus ; the conquest of Egypt by
Cambyses to an eye-doctor's desire for revenge ; Darius' design
of invading Greece to the intrigues of Democedes, the enslaved
physician, who longed to return to Greece ; the Ionian revolt to
the pecuniary difficulties of Aristagoras ; the Persian invasion
of Samos under Darius to the monarch's -'latitude to Syloson ;
and the effeminacy of the Lydians to Cimsus' suggestion to
Cyrus that they should be compelled to live luxuriously. But
here, again, Herodotus is no worse than the greatest philosophers
of Greece, who imagined, for instance, that the Unnatural camp-
life of the Spartans was, not the result of hostile pressure from
without, exerted for centuries, but due to the fiat "f a single
lawgiver, and also believed 1that a similar state of things could
iii. 115.
X
be brought about elsewhere by the mere command of a philo-

sophical king.
Another defect which Herodotus shared in common with
other Greek writers, and which, though in a different way,
marred the philosophy as well as the history of Greek writers,
was ignorance of foreign languages. In the course of his
travels he picked up about a score of foreign words;1 but
when he says " that Persian proper names express always some
bodily or mental excellence, and that they invariably end in s,
he betrays his ignorance of the language. So, too, his remark
that the language of the Troglodytes,3 of the Egyptians, and of
foreigners generally 4 was like the chirping of birds, shows that
he had learnt no language but his own.
The result of this ignorance of foreign languages was that
Herodotus had to depend for much of his information about
the foreign countries he visited on interpreters ; and this brings
us to the second point we have to consider in connection with
the credibility of Herodotus — his means of information. In
the ease of public monuments or documents, of which there
existed authentic translations from the original into Greek,
Herodotus' linguistic ignorance would not vitiate his statements,
and it is probable that it was on such translations that his
accounts of Darius' cadastral system,5 the itinerary to Sardis,6
and the description of Xerxes' army 7 rested. But in the case
of inscriptions which he had to get translated by his interpreter,
e.g. the inscriptions about the amount of onions consumed dur-
ing the building of a pyramid,8 or about the method of building
a pyramid,9 or the pillars in Palestine commemorating the eon-
quests, whether of Sesostris or Kameses II. or the Hittites,10
obviously the translation depended on the capacity of the trans-
lator, not of Herodotus, and is of uncertain value. Considera-
tions of this sort apply to the whole of Herodotus' Persian and
Egyptian history. He depended entirely on his interpreter or
dragoman, and the result is that Ave have rather folkdore than
history, the tale of Rharapsinitus, and not the real history of the
Egyptian dynasties j and we are the gainers. The monui
will reveal to us in course of time the history of the kin
Egvpt, but Herodotus has given us what the monuments cannot
1 They will be found in i. 105. no, 139, 172, 187, 192 ; ii. 2, 30, 46, 69, 77,
81, 94, 105. 143 ; iii. 8, 88 ; iv. 23, 27, 52, 59, no, 117, 155, 192 ; v. 9 ; vi. 98,
119 ; viii. 85, 98 ; ix. no.
i i. 140. 3 iv. 183. * ii. 57. s iii. 89.
« v. 52. 7 \ ii. 60 tcq. 8 ii. ■ 9 ii- 136.
10 ii. iq?, 136. Commentators differ <rvry mucli on these passages. Other
erroneously translated inscriptions, i. 187 ; iii. 88.
HISTORY : HERODOTUS. 323
reveal, and what would have otherwise utterly perished — a faith-

ful and charming version of the popular stories current in the
streets of Memphis in his da)r.
With Herodotus' Greek history the case is different. Some
of the inscriptions which he consulted were undoubtedly for-
geries, e.g. the Cadmeian inscriptions at Thebes,1 and were
known by himself to be forgeries, e.g. the offerings of Croesus at
Delphi falsely inscribed as offerings from Sparta.2 But many
Avere genuine and valuable, e.g. those on the field of Thermo-
pylae,3 the list at Delphi of the Greeks at Salamis 4 and Plataepe.5
and that of Mandrocles in the temple of Here at Samos.0 The
value of his accounts of the various ancient works of art which
he saw is less than that of the inscriptions. Thus what Hero-
dotus tells us of Croesus, Alyattes, and Gyges may possibly have
been the tales which clung to the offerings sent by those rulers
to Delphi.7 But the myth which was told about Arion*in con-
nection with the erection on Ttenarum,8 and that about Ladike
and her offering at Cyrene,9 suffice to show that little confidence
can be placed in this kind of evidence.
By far the larger part of Herodotus' information, however,
was necessarily drawn from the lips of the people with whom
he became acquainted. The history of the Persian wars had
not been committed to writing, and Herodotus had, therefore,
to rely on oral testimony. This is for the purposes of history
generally inferior evidence, but its value is materially affected
by the number of persons through whom it is transmitted.
Next to the evidence of eye-witnesses, that of contemporaries
ranks, and Herodotus could and did get information from both
classes. This guarantees the substantial truth of his history,
but does not allow us to put much faith in his statistics, or in
any point in which minute accuracy is needed.
But although Herodotus depends mainly on oral testimony,
he is not unacquainted with the literature of his country. He
not only, being an educated man, possesses familiarity with the
poets, eg. Archilochus,10 the Cyclic poems,11 Sappho,12 Êschy-
lus,13 liesiod,14 Pindar,15 Olen,16 Alcaeus,17- Solon,18 Simon-
ides,19 and Phrynichus ;20 but he has references to Pythagoras,21
Anaxagoras,22 and possibly Anaximander.-3 Whether Hero-
dotus was acquainted with the logographers is hard to say,
4 1.viii.
24. 8a.
2 i. Si- s vii. 228.
1 v. 59-61. '•• 135-
'v-
• ix. 81. 6 iv. 88.
10 i. 12. 7 i. 50-52, 25, 14.
1S ii.
vi. 35-
4.
• ii. 181. 11 iii. 53,
38. 118 ; iv. 32.
13 ii. 156. 14 ii.
18 S3 ; iv. 32.
v. 113. 28 ii. 15.
19 v. 112 ; vii. 228.
Z ?■ 95-
21 11. 123. 23 ii. 20 seq.
because we know so little of them. Hellanicus was later than,

and therefore unknown to Herodotus, as was Dainastes, the
pupil of Hellanicus. Bion, Deiochus, Hippyas, Eugeon, Eude-
nius, Democles, Melesagoras, and Xenomedes are mere names to
us, and there is no hint to be found anywhere that Herodotus
either used or knew their works. The few fragments that go
under the name of Dionysius are probably spurious, and the
celebrated voyager Scylax probably did not write any account
of his travels, certainly was not known as an author to Hero-
dotus.1 What little we know about Charon seems to show that
Herodotus was unacquainted with his works.2 Xanthus was
said by the historian Ephorus to have given Herodotus the
starting-point,3 but the few fragments left of Xanthus throw
no light on the meaning of this statement. With Cadmus,
Acusilaus, and Pherecydes, Herodotus may have been acquainted,
but thel-e is nothing to show that he was. With Hecatseus the
case is different. We have the best of authority— that of Hero-
dotus himself — for believing that he knew the works of Heca-
tseus. In two places he refers to him by name, and quotes his
genealogies.4 Elsewhere he refers, in all probability, to him,
but does not mention his name; as when he ridicules people who
draw maps of the world and put a mathematically circular
Oceanus round it, without knowing anything about it ; 5 or
when he condemns the theory of the Nile flowing out of the
Oceanus, as having no basis in facts.6 From these passages it
seems clear that Herodotus had only a poor opinion of Hecatseus.
But according to Porphyry, Herodotus was indebted to Heea-
tseus for a good deal of his book on Egypt ; and this leads us to
the third point which we have to consider in connection with
the credibility of Herodotus — his honesty.
If Herodotus borrowed without acknowledgment from Heca-
tseus, he was, according to modern notions, guilty of literary
dishonesty; and if he tried to pass off the matter thus borrowed
as the result of his own observation or inquiry, he is an untrust-
worthy historian. The passages -specified by Porphyry as bor-
rowed are those about the phoenix, the hippopotamus, and the
1 iv. 44.
* Had I \rvt>ih>t'isri-.\t\ Charon'* &pw.Aanij/a.Ki}v&i>. he would have understood
the threat of Croesus that he records in vi. 37. Whether Charon wrote about
Sparta is extremely doubtful; anyhow, there is no reason to suspect a covert
reference to him in vi. 54.
3 Ath. xii. 515, 'UpoooTbj rds drpopfias 8c5wk6tos.
* vi. 137; ii. 143. 5 »v. 36.
6 ii. 20 xrq. T<> these may be added iv. 20 (ef. Frag. 154), 1. 201 (Fr. 168),
ii. 156 (Fr. 284), ii. 15 scq., 133; iv. 8 ; i. 146 ; iv. 45 ; in all of which pas-
sages Herodotus probably criticises Hecatseus.
HISTORY: HERODOTUS. 325
method of hunting crocodiles. These passages apparently l are

intended by Herodotus to be regarded as the result of his own
observation and of his own inquiries from the natives ; as, there-
fore, we have not a single fragment by Hecataeus bearing on
these passages, and as Porphyry is our only authority 2 — and
we do not even know him at first hand — for l;Lis plagiarism, it
becomes necessary to inquire what Porphyry could know about
it. We learn from Eusebius 3 that Porphyry, in discussing the
question of plagiarism, accused Herodotus, along with Menander,
Hyperides, Ephorus, Theopompous, Hellanicus, and others, and
quoted in support of his accusation a work on the "thefts" of
Herodotus by a certain Pollio. Now Porphyry * himself is of
very late date; he flourished about a. 0. 270, and Pollio probably
was very little earlier than Porphyry. In the next place, in
the time of Athenaeus, about a.d. 180, and of Arrian. about
a.d. 100, there were spurious works in circulation under the
name of Hecataeus.5 Further, we learn from Athenaeus that in
the time of Callimachus, about b.c. 250, these spurious works
were already in circulation. It becomes therefore probable that
Pollio, like Arrian and Athenaeus, had the spurious works of
Hecataeus before him, and we may suppose that between Hero-
dotus and the spurious Hecataeus there was sufficient resem-
blance to make it probable that the later author copied from
his predecessor ;6 but we have no ground for believing that the
spurious Hecataeus is the earlier author. On the contrary, it
seems more probable that the spurious Hecataeus was partly
made out of materials taken from Herodotus. We may, there-
fore, reasonably on the whole say, although there is no certainty
to be attained either way, Porphyry's charge of plagiarism rests
on unsatisfactory testimony.
The speeches, e.rj. those of Artabanus and Xerxes, or of the
Persian conspirators, are not historically true ; but no one would
think of accusing Herodotus therefore of dishonesty in inserting
them. It was natural to the Greek to throw into the lively
form of dialogue or debate the considerations which moved, or
1 This is the natural inference from ii. 99.

2 What Suidas (.v. v. Hecatseus) says oomea from Porphyry. Cf >' lidaa
s. v. 4>e/)6Ki/5jjs Bd;ii>os and t. v. <bepeic. 'A.$i)vcuos, and see Rheiu. Mitt txxiii.
in. What Hermogenea (irepi IS- ii. 12) says refers to the style, jt the
matter: see Hollander, Dc HccaUvi Deseriptione, Boun, 1861.
8 Prap. Ev. x. 2.
4 Porphyry was a Syrian. His name is a translation of the Syrian Mdek,
and he was a pupil cf Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist
5 Ath. ii. 70 ; Arrian, Exp. Alex. v. 6.
6 This is supported by the comparison of Herod, ii. 77 with Atn. iii. 8o^
x. 147c, 418E.
were supposed to have moved, the agents in historical events ;

and it was as unnecessary for the historian to warn his fellow-
Greeks that the speeches were his own inferences from what
facts he knew, as it is for a modern historian to give a similar
warning as to the motives which — in the confidence of know-
ledge— he feels justified in ascribing, though they are but infe-
rences, tohistorical personages. And when llercdotus repeats
with asseveration that the speecli he ascribed to Otanes was,
whatever some Greeks might think, actually delivered, he
means that the grounds he has for inferring the delivery of
some such speech were quite convincing to his mind. In one
or two places in the book on Egypt,1 Herodotus says that he
went to Thebes, and even as far as Elephantine. But it seems
quite clear that in reality he never went to either place. As,
therefore, in one passage the MS. authority for the statement
in question is doubtful,- and in the other the statement seems
to have little connection with the context ; 3 and as both state-
ments are in ludicrous contradiction to what Herodotus himself
says,4 we seem justified in following Professor Sayce in striking
them out.
To sum up, then, the argument for the credibility of Hero-
dotus:his impartiality and honesty in the matter of Greek
history seem beyond doubt. With regard to his journeys, a
suspicion has been cast upon hi in, but not successfully, that he
was more than liable to the infirmity which is often imputed to
travellers when telling their tales. In capacity he was rather
above than below the standard of his age. But his means of
information were poor. In the case of his Greek history, his
information, though the best at his command, was only oral
testimony. In the case of his Oriental history, even when he
met trustworthy informants, as the priest of Neith at Sais, or
Zopyius the son of Megabyzus, he was entirely at the mercy of
1 ii. 3: ii. 29. " »• 29-
3 ii. 3. Prof. Sayce says (xxvi. n. 2): "I have bracketed the words &
Gr)/3oj re ical, winch I believe to have been inserted by a copyist. Heliopolia
alone, toandtestnot Thebes, was near enough for Herodotus to 'turn into,' in
order what was told him at Memphis. His reason for doing so was
that 'the people of lleliopolis were considered the best authorities.' There
is no reference to the Thehans."
4 It is unreasonable to imagine that Herodotus could tell the absurd story
about Kvophi and M6phi, and in almost the same breath say that he had
been t.. Elephantine. If Herodotus really wenl to Elephantine, be would
have appended to his tale about Krftpbi and M6phi, "hut I indeed did not
■ ni." If he was a liar, he would have said he did see them.
With regard to ii. 142 143, this being carelessly expressed, would lead a
commentator alone to infer that Herodotus had been to Thebes, and would
lead only another commentator to infer that Herodotus wrote to deceive.
history: thucydides. 327
his interpreter, and his Oriental history therefore is that of the

dragoman, not of the monuments.
CHAPTEK IIL
THUCYDIDES.
" Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war in

which the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against
one another. He began to write when they first took up arms,
believing that it would be great and memorable above any pre-
vious war. For he argued that both states were then at the
full height of their military power, and he saw the rest of the
Hellenes either siding or intending to side with one or other
of them. No movement ever stirred Hellas more deeply than
this ; it was shared by many of the barbarians, and might be
said even to affect the world at large." l These are the words
with which Thucydides begins his history. He was born in
the Athenian deme Halimus, belonging to the tribe Leontis, on
the coast between Phalerum and Colias. His father, Olorus,-
was related, though in what degree we do not know, to the
Thracian Olorus, whose daughter married the famous Miltiades,3
and was mother of Cimon. At the outbreak of the Pelopon-
nesian war in b.c. 432, when Thucydides, as he himself say?,
began to write, he was probably about forty years of age. The
first twenty years of his life were spent under the administra-
tion of his great relative Cimon, and the next twenty under
that of the man for whom Thucydides had such admiration,
Pericles. About Thucydides' early life and education we have
no direct information. We may, however, fairly assume that
he met and learned from all the great men who at this time
lived in or found their way to Athens. The philosopher Anaxa-
goras, who has left traces of his influence even on Herodotus,
may be credited with having contributed to the formation of
the mind of Thucydides, whose views on natural science and
on religion are more closely connected with those of Anaxa-
goras than are even those of Herodotus. The orator Antiphon.
whose style resembles that of Thucydides — both are classed by
Dionysius as belonging to the " severe style " — may have been
1 Time i. 1. Prof. Jowett's translation (Clarendon Press, 1881), from which
air taken all the translations of Thucydides in this chapter.
2 iv. 104. 5 Herod, vi. 39.
Thucydides' literary model, and was certainly in other relations

known to and studied by Thucydides, as is shown by the man-
ner in which he speaks of Antiphon.1 The sophist Protagoras,
Gorgias the rhetorician, and Prodicus, have all left marks of
their influence on the style of Thucydides. At Athens, though
not at Olympia, he in all probability, when about twenty-five
years of age, heard Herodotus read portions of his history.
iEscbylus he may well have seen ; Sophocles. Euripides, Aristo-
phanes, and Phidias he must have met. Poetry, architecture,
science, philosophy, and rhetoric all found in Athens, or sent
there their best exponents ; all helped to shape the citizens of
Athens, and to make it right for one of her sons to say, " We
are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes, and we cul-
tivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we employ,
not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real use for
it. To avow poverty with us is no disgrace ; the true disgrace
is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen does not
neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and
even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair
idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest
in public affairs, not as a harmless, but a useless character ; and
if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy." 2
With these convictions Thucydides could not but " fix his eyes
upon the greatness of Athens, until he became filled with the
love of her, and impressed with the spectacle of her glory."3
Educated in this city and by these means, and endowed with
an originality and energy of mind which have elevated him to
the level of the greatest minds the world has produced, Thucy-
dides began in b.c. 432 to write the history of the Peloponnesian
war, then commencing. Possessing extensive property and the
right of working gold-mines in Thrace, and being consequently
one of the leading men in Thrace,1 Thucydides must have Bpent
a certain part of every year there. Hut the larger part of his
time be passed in Athens. The speeches of Pericles he certainly
heard : his admiration for Pericles' statesmanship is shown by
what be says of it;5 and he may have been among the personal
friends of Pericles. In B.C. 430 the plague, which wrought
great harm to Athens, nearly deprived the world of Thucydides'
history. He was, he says, himself attacked, and witnessed the
Bufferings of others.6 The celebrated debates on the fate of the
.M itylenaaiis in B.C. 427, and the Spartan proposals for peace in
n.c. 425, in consequence of the affair of Pylos, he was present
1 Thuc. viii. 68. - ii. 40. 3 ii. 43.
4 iv. 105. * iL 65. 6 ii. 48.
at ; and he may have taken part in some of the military opera-

tions of the earlier years of the war. At any rate, in B.c. 424
he acted as strategus. being one of the two Athenian generals
intrusted with the protection of Thrace.1 He allowed, how-
ever, the Spartan Brasidas to occupy Amphipolis, the key to
the whole of that country ; the result of this serious disaster
being that Thucydides was an exile from Athens for twenty
years! That this was a heavy punishment to him it is impos-
sible to doubt : but so far from its injuring the prosecution of
his work, it had the opposite effect. It set him free from other
claims on his time and attention ; his work probably became the
sole palliative to the exile's grief ; and his enforced absence from
Athens gave him the opportunity he could not have otherwise
enjoyed of visiting the Peloponnese, and seeing the war from
both sides. He says,2 " For twenty years I was banished from
my country after I held the command at Amphipolis, and asso-
ciating with both sides, with the Peloponnesians quite as much
as the Athenians, because of my exile, I was thus enabled to
watch quietly the course of events." He seems to have visited
the places affected by the war not only in Greece, but, as his
acquaintance with the topography and early history of Sicily
shows,3 in Sicily and Italy ; and everywhere he sought out eye-
witnes es, "of whom," he says,4 " I made the most careful and
particular inquiry." At length, in B.C. 404, he returned after
his protracted exile to his country, six months after the destruc-
tion of the walls of Athens by Lysander.5 How long he lived
after this is uncertain. He perhaps died before b.c. 396, for
he says,6 when mentioning the eruption of Etna, which took
place in B.C. 426, that only three eruptions were known to have
place "since
takenstatement the Hellenes first settled in Sicily." and
this was not true after the eruption of b.c. 396. But
he may have lived after B.C. 396, and not revised the passage
in question. Nor will a passage,7 in which he is supposed to
imply that Archidamas at the time of writing was dead, hear
much pressing. In fine, we do not know when he died, <>r
where or how, though tradition says he was killed by a robber
1 iv. I04. - v. 26.
:; v-i. 2-6. Prof. Jowett says (vol. ii. p. 341) : " That he may have 1> irrowed
from Antiochus of Syracuse "is possible, Thepossible
it is equally
hutinquiries. that his .In-
Blight coincidences
scription is the result of his own travels or
of language or statement which are found in the fragments of Antioehm,
when compared with Thucvdides, are by no means sufficient to support the
hypothesis, first suggested' bv Niebuhr, ami confidently maintained by Later
writers, that the accouut of Sicily in Thucydides is derived from his contem-
porary."
i j, 22. 6 i. 93. 6 ii>- II6- "• IO°-
in Thrace. He lived long enough after the end of the war to

put into shape most of the history which he began to write at
the beginning of the war, as is shown by various passages, such
as the reference in the first book l to the destruction of the
walls of Athens by Lysander, or the analysis in the second
book 2 of the causes which led to the final defeat of Athens,
passages which can only have been written at the end of the
war. On the other hand, he did not live long enough to com-
plete his history, for the last book does not seem to have received
the author's final revision, and instead of coming down to the
end of the war, brings us only down to B.C. 411, the twenty-
first year of this seven and-twenty years' war.
Thucydides began to write the history of the Peloponnesian
war, " believing that it would be great and memorable above
any previous war." " No movement," he says, " stirred Hellas
more deeply than this." The importance of the war, long as it
was, and great as the sufferings it caused, is not to be measured
by its length or destructiveness. It was, on the whole, a strug-
gle between the two great Greek races, the Ioniana and the
Dorians.3 and between oligarchy and democracy.4 On the issue
of the war it depended whether Athens, which was in possession
of the intellectual supremacy of Greece, was also to hold the
political; or whether the Spartans, who knew how to fight but
not how to live, were to be at liberty to plant rapacious and
irresponsible oligarchies in the cities that they conquered.
These issues, and they were momentous enough, Thucydides
saw ; one other consequence, and that an inevitable one, Thucy-
dides must have seen, though he could not know how soon it
1 i. 93. The words are ical ^KoZ6p.t)aau rrj iKeivov yv&^ri rb irdxos rod
reixovs 6irep vvv tri. 5rj\6v iffTi irepl rbv Ilftpaia, — " This width may still be
traced at the Peirseus" (Jowett), which seems to imply that elsewhere — in
consequence of the destruction by Lyaander — it could not be traced. Strange
to say, the next words of the sentence, bvo yap &/xaâi km'ai dXX^Xais
toi>s \l60vs iwriyov, are considered by Prof. Jowett, in his notes, to he paro-
died in Arist. Birds, 1126. If Thucydides is parodied by Aristophanes, this
book of Thucydides must have been published before B.C. 415, the date of the
Birds. But so trivial an expression contains hardly enough material for a
parody. The passage in the Birds in also claimed (with equal reason) as ■>
parody of Herodotus i. 179, and the inference from the firs! part of Thucy-
dides' senteuce is much the stronger, and, if correct, fatal to the supposed
parody.
" ii- 65.
1 See vi. 79. 6. 82, and for the exceptions vii. 57.
* iii. 82. The Lacedaemonians planted oligarchies amongst their allies, i.
19, 76; v. 81. The oligarchs in various cities favoured Sparta, the democrats
Athens, iii. 47, 82; viii. 64. 21. Revolts from Athens were not the people's
doing, iv. 84, 104, 106, no seq., 123 : viii. 9, 14, 4 1 ; iii 27. The Four Huu-
dred at once tried for peace with and submission to Sparta, viii. 70, 90, 91.
was to become in its turn a cause and produce other conse-
quences— the necessary exhaustion of Greece, after so long a
struggle, that led to the ruin of Greece. Two generations after
the end of the Peloponnesian war, Greece lost her political
liberty, and with it her literary genius, for want of the
strength which had been wasted in the war of which Thucy-
dides wrote.
If these, the political, results were all that is to be learnt
from the story of the Peloponnesian war, it would have perhaps
an interest for the students of history only. But for those who
view the history of Greece from the standpoint of Athens— and
erroneous as, for the purposes of history, this view may be, it is
the view which gratitude for the art and literature we have in-
herited from Athens inclines most of us to take — the tale of this
war must have, independent of its consequences, something of
the fascination which the war itself had for such an onlooker
as Thucydides. The hopes and fears with which such a specta-
tor witnessed the successes and disasters of Athens as they fol-
lowed on one another we who read of them do not feel, for we
know from the beginning the result. But notwithstanding, as
we read, our hearts are stirred by admiration for the courage
with which the Athenians rose above each new disaster, and by
regret that so much courage should be doomed only to aggra-
vate their suffering. Still, as we read of each new chance of
peace offering itself, now after the success at Pylos, now at the
one year's truce, now when Cleon and Brasidas, the two ob-
stacles to peace, are gone, we sigh that the opportunity should
be lost, that Athens should persist in treading or be forced
along the path of destruction. We watch her with a regret
more intense than that with which we watch, impotent to help
where we fain would save, the errors of some hero of fiction or
the drama ; for this is truth and that is fiction ; the one is the
story of a single imaginary sufferer, the other of the very suffer-
ings of a nation.
"Werenesianthis
war hastheupon
only our
holdinterest,
which itthewould
history
be of the Pelopon-
enough to earn
eager readers for Thucydides in all ages. But this is not all.
The losses in wealth and blood, the material disasters and the
political humiliation of Athens, which at first sight seem t>
make up the cost of the war, though they constitute claims on
our sympathy for Athens, are not the whole price which Greece
or Athens paid for this great and memorable war. as they are
not that in the war which touches us most deeply. What
touches us most closely is not the sufferings — great as they were
— bravely borne by the Athenian people, but Athens' moral

fall. That the Athenians, who abandoned hearth and home to
the Persian invader for the common good, whose self-sacriiicin^
devotion to the national cause of Hellas put them far above,
not merely the craven Greeks who joined the Persians, hut far
ahove the selfish indifference of the Peloponnesians to anything
but the safety of the Peloponnese ; that the Athenians who
saved Eellas should have grasped at empire, should have hcconio
a menace to Greece, and hrought about the war which two gene-
rations after gave the independence of Hellas over into the
hands of the. Macedonian conqueror — this we feel is "the pity
of it," As we trace in the pages of Thucydides the course and
causes of this falling off, we begin to understand that the fear
and pity which it is the function of tragedy to inspire may be
excited by the historian as well as the poet, by the actual events
of history when told by a great historian, as well as by the
creations of a poet's mind. The story of (Edipus, as Sophocles,
the contemporary of Thucydides, tells it. tills us witli pity for
the man " more sinned against than sinning,'' and with fear for
ourselves when, seeing how every step which (Edipus takes to
avoid the crimes he is fated to commit only leads him inevit-
ably to commit them, we become possessed witli a sense of the
ruthless power of Heaven, and the fearful catastrophes to winch
the slightest deviations from the paths of righteousness may
had. The same sentiments are aroused by the, history of the
Peloponnesian war as Thucydides tells it. It was her very
patriotism and self-sacrifice which led to the moral fall of
Athens. Not only of our vices, but of our virtues do the gods
make whips to scourge us. The services of Athens to the
national cause made the Greeks look up to her as their leader;
she was placed by them at the head of the confederacy of 1 >eloa ;
her energy in prosecuting the Avar, and the indolence of the
allies who allowed her to do the fighting against the Persians,
emverted her leadership practically into empire.1 "That em-
pire," as the Athenians said to the Lacedaemonians in B.O. 432,
shortly before the outbreak of the' war, '"was nut acquired by
force; but you (the Lacedaemonians) would not stay and make
an end of the barbarians, and the allies came of their own accord
ami asked us to lie their leaders. The subsequent development
of our power was originally forced upon us by circumstances " -
And the Athenians go on to say, •"An empire was iiHered to ns ;
can you wonder that, acting as human nature always will,
we accepted it. and refused to give it up again?" :! The excuse
» i. 96-100. * i. 75- :1 >• 76.
HISTORY I THUCYDIDES. 333
may be accepted, but excuses, even when accepted, cannot pre-

vent our actions from producing their consequences; and the
consequence of the Athenian acceptance of empire was the Pelo-
ponnesian war. Thucydides says,1 " The real though unavowed
cause [of the war] I believe to have been the growth of the
Athenian power, which terrified the Lacedaemonians and forced
them into war." The war once begun, the next result of
empire was the impossibility of withdrawing from the war.
When the Athenians, overwhelmed by the unexpected disastei
of the plague, were inclined to peace, Pericles put before them,
in B.c. 43Q, the simple truth, which admitted of no reply:2
"Once more, you are bound to maintain the imperial dignity of
your city, in which you all take pride, for you should not covet
the glory unless you will endure the toil. And do not imagine
that you are fighting about a simple issue, freedom or slavery ;
you have an empire to lose, and there is the danger to which
the hatred of your imperial rule has exposed you. Neither can
you resign your power, if, at this crisis, any timorous or inactive
spirit is for thus playing the honest man. For by this time your
empire has become a tyranny which, in the opinion of mankind,
may have been unjustly gained, but which cannot be safely
surrendered. The men of whom I was speaking, if they could
find followers, would soon ruin a city, and if they were to go
and found a state of their own, would equally ruin that." The
principle which Pericles thus laid down, Cleon, in b.c. 427,
proceeded to put into application. The Mitylenaeans, who had
originally joined the confederacy of Delos, and now found them-
selves belonging to the Athenian empire, withdrew. They were,
however, attacked as rebels, and conquered by the Athenians ;
and the Athenians decreed that every man in Mitylene should
be killed and the women and children enslaved. As Cleon said
to the Athenians,3 " If they Mere ri»ht in revolting, you must be
wrong in maintaining your empire. But if, right or wrong, you are
resolved to rule, then rightly or wrongly they must be chastised
for your good. Otherwise, you must give up your empire, and,
when virtue is no longer dangerous, you may be as virtuous as
you please." The same year as that in which the Mitylenseans
Buffered was to show that the consequences of our actions can-
not be limited to ourselves, and that the innocent pay the
penalty as well as the authors of a misdeed ; for in this year
the Plataeans, who had stood a rigorous siege with remarkable
bravery, succumbed, and thus the war brought it about that the
Spartans, who had defeated the Persians at Plataea with the aid
1 i- 23- 'J i». 63. » iii. 40.
of the PlataBans, were about to slaughter the Plateaus, and raze

to the ground their city, memorable for the defeat of the com-
mon foe of Hellas. The pity of it is summed up in one sen-
tence of the Plateeans' appeal to the Spartans.1 " The Platseans,
who were zealous in the cause of Hellas even beyond their
strength, are now friendless, spurned, and rejected by all.
None of our old allies will help us, and we fear that you, O
Lacedaemonians, our only hope, are not to be depended upon."
The imperial position of Athens, which in this year necessitated
the slaughter of a thousand Mitylenaeans, whose offence was
struggling for their freedom, produced more fruit eleven years
later ; for as the necessities of empire made, it impossible for
Athens to retire, so they offered her every inducement to ad-
vance. "The Melians," says Thucydides,2 " were colonists of
the Lacedaemonians, who would not submit to Athens like the
other islanders. At first they were neutral, and would take no
part ; but when the Athenians tried to coerce them by ravaging
their lands, they were driven into open hostilities." The Melians,
therefore, being weak, were to be crushed, and the conscience of
Athens, having adapted itself to its imperial position, felt no
need of excuses. " We Athenians," said they 3 to the Melians,
" will use no fine words ; we will not go out of our way to
prove at length that we have a right to rule because we over-
threw the Persian, or that we attack you now because we are
Buffering any injury at your hands. We should not convince
you if we did. . . . You and we should say what we really
think, and aim only at what is possible, for we both alike know
that into the discussion of human affairs the question of justice
only enters where the pressure of necessity is equal, and that
the powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what
they must." Melos was annexed, and Athens continued to
advance, whereby she not merely left the question of justice
behind, but also neglected the advice which Pericles had given
her twenty years before, "Not to seek to enlarge her dominion
while the war was going on."4 Sicily was next attacked.
" They virtuously professed that they were going to assist their
own kinsmen and their newly-acquired allies, but the simple
truth was that they aspired to the empire of Sicily," says
Thucydides,6 an Athenian. The Sicilian expedition failed
disastrously, and contributed more than any other error on the
part of Athens to her fall. And it. too, was recommended
by arguments drawn from the imperial position of Athens.
"We cannot," said Alcibiades,6 "cut down an empire as we
1 iii. 54. a v. 84. 3 v. 89. * i. 65. 5 vi. 5. 6 vi. 18.
HISTOKY : THUCYDIDES. 335
might a household ; but having once gained our present posi-

tion, we must keep a firm hold upon some, and contrive
occasion against others ; for if we are not rulers, we shall be
subjects.'
It is this tale told in detail, with no striving after effect, but
with a calm and cold veracity which imprints the story with
painful distinctness on the imagination and the mind, that
makes Thucydides as interesting as Sophocles, and the fate of
Athens a moral study as absorbing as that of GEdipus. One
difference, however, will strike those who read both authors.
Destiny, which is the eventual source of all GEdipus' actions,
plays no part in Thucydides. How universally useful destiny
might be to the historian, Herodotus had already shown. It
was a key to which no lock could fail to open. If a storm
wrecked Persian ships, this was " in order that " the Persian
fleet might not be larger than the Greek fleet. If Xerxes made
a mistake in his campaign, this was because destiny had de-
creed his defeat. But this crude use of destiny could have as
little attraction for Thucydides when applied to the solution of
historical problems, as for Sophocles when applied to moral pro-
blems. Sophocles uses it more sparingly and more effectively.
As far as (Edipus is concerned, fate only interposes directly
once : in the oracle warning him of the crimes he will com-
mit— and granted but this one interposition, all the actions of
(Edipus flow naturally and inevitably. But Thucydides knows
not even this refined form of destiny. To Thucydides, a man's
own actions
decrees what are his fate
he shall ; they
do and whatarehea shall
man'sbe.
destiny, which
The absence
of any other kind of destiny from the history of Thucydides
does not prove that Thucydides had no belief in destiny. Its
absence is satisfactorily accounted for by its being no part of
Thucydides' design to entertain theological considerations. His
object was to set down only facts, which admit of closer proof
than destiny is susceptible of. It will help to the understand-
ing of this and other points to read his own words :—
"Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from
any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own ;
1 have described nothing but what I either saw myself or learnt
from others, of whom I made the most careful and particular in-
quiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of
the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they
remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the
other. And very likely the strictly historical character of my
narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who de-
336 ni STORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
sires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which
have happened, and of the like events which may be expected
to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pro-
nounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satis-
fied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize com-
position which is heard and forgotten." l
The object of Thucydides, then, was to give a strict and
faithful account of facts. He had no preconceived theory to
his history was to estab-
prove, no " notion of his own " which distortions
lish. The actual facts, free from the of inaccurate
memories or of prejudiced eyes, once established, his history
would be an everlasting possession for the guidance of future
generations. To the actual facts, then, he confines himself,
without moralising and without theorising. For instance, in
his great description of the plague he says : 2 " No human art
was of any avail, and as to supplications in temples, inquiries of
oracles, and the like, they were utterly useless, and at last men
by the calamity and gave them all up."
What overpowered
were he himself thinks on the objective utility of prayer he
does not say ; he simply notes the fact that in this case suppli-
cations were useless, with the same abstention from theorising
as he notes, in the next chapter, that the disease after attacking
the throat moved down to the chest. Moral disorders he treats
in the same positive way as he describes the plague ; he notes
that a symptom of extreme demoralisation is disregard of law,
human and divine. In the same way he records3 both that
Brasidas thought that he captured Lecythus by supernatural
aid, and that when Lecythus was attacked the walls happened
to be accidentally deserted. So, too, he notes 4 that the Spartans
celebrated their religious festivals regardless of the military
situation, and that their enemies profited by the fact The
Lacedaemonians, in accordance with their tradition, consulted
oracles, but did not guide their policy by them— p. q. they con-
sulted Delphi at the beginning of the war as to whether they
should declare war or "not,5 hut they left the decision to the
general meeting of their allies ; and the Corinthians used the
oracle to silence scruples as to the justice of the war,6 but trusted
to grounds of policy as the means of convincing their hearers.7
The Spartans also employed the imputed "pollution" of Pericles,
not from religious motives, but for purposes of policy ;s as they
and other Greeks regularly appealed to the gods rather from
wont than conviction.9 Amongst the Athenians the religion of
1 i. 22. 2 ii. 47. 3 iv. 115, 116. 4 v. 54, 82. 8 i. 118.
9 i 123. "> i. 120. 8 i. 126. 9 i. 78 ; ii. 7*. 74 ! 'ii- M ; iv- 87.
...
msTORY: thucydides. 337
their forefathers "was held in no better esteem. They purified.

Delos * conventionally. The celebrated affair of the Hermae
■was a religious offence, but was converted into political capital.
Even for their unjustifi able attack on the Mehans, the Athenians
count on the approval of the gods. And Thucydides recounts
all these things with no comment and no expression of his own
opinion : he gives the facts. With regard to oracles and por-
tents he is equally reserved. He observes 2 that in times of ex-
citement everything of the nature of a portent is curiously noted;3
and he records that after the failure of the Sicilian expedition
the Athenians were furious " with the soothsayers and prophets,
and all who by the influence of religion had at the time
inspired them with the belief that they would conquer Sicily."
He is aware that ambiguity is of much virtue in an oracle :
he says 4 of the Athenians during the plague, " In their
troubles they naturally called to mind a verse which the elder
men among them declared to have been current long ago :—
'A Dorian war will come and a plague with it.' There was
a dispute about the precise expression ; some saying that limos,
a famine, and not loimos, a plague, was the original word.
Nevertheless, as might have been expected — for men's memories
reflected their sufferings — the argument in favour of loimos pre-
vailed at the time. But if ever in future years another Dorian
war arises which happens to be accompanied by a famine, they
will probably repeat the verse in the other form." The vague-
ness of another oracle — " Better the Pelasgian ground left
waste " — allows him to say for it,5 " The oracle, without men-
tioning the war, foresaw that the place would be inhabited some
day for no good." Though whether the foresight of the oracle
is to be regarded as human or divine, he does not say. When
an oracle is fulfilled he notes the fact ; in estimating the length
of the war he says,6 " He who reckons up the actual periods of
time will find that I have rightly given the exact number of
years. He will also find that this was the solitary instance in
which those who put their faith in oracles were justified by tin-
event. For I well remember how, from the beginning to the
end of the war, there was a common and often-repeated saying
that it was to last thrice nine years. I lived through the whole
of it, and was of mature years and judgment, and 1 took great
pains to make out the exact truth." This being so, the Athe-
nians had grounds, therefore, it would seem — whether the fulfil-
ment of this solitary oracle was supernatural or casual — for
1 iii. 104. - ii. 8. 3 viii. I.
4 ii. 54. 8 ii. 17. 6 v. 26.
33S HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
advising the Melians not to have recourse " to prophecies and

oracles and the like, which ruin men by the hopes ■which they
inspire in them." :
In the same way as he thus prefers to record historical facts
without having recourse to any theory, whether of destiny or
divine intervention, he records such natural phenomena as were
considered portentous, and what was known about them. Thus
he duly narrates 2 how when the Athenians were about to leave
Sicily, the occurrence of an eclipse of the moon terrified them
into delaying their departure, and thus brought about the de-
struction ofthem all But he also notes elsewhere,3 with regard
to solar eclipses, that it is apparently only at the beginning of
the lunar month that they are possible. In one place4 he
observes that during a battle in Sicily, " as is often the case in
the fall of the year, there came on a storm of rain and thunder,
whereby tin; Athenians were yet more disheartened, for they
thought that everything was conspiring to their destruction."
Of another engagement he says,5 " During the battle there
came on thunder and lightning and a deluge of rain ; these
added to the terror of the inexperienced who were fighting for
the first time, but experienced soldiers ascribed the storm to the
time of the year, and were much more alarmed at the stubborn
resistance of the enemy." The plague was considered by many
people to be a fulfilment of the promise <>f Apollo to assist the
Spartans. Thucydides says.6 "The disease certainly did set
in immediately after the invasion of the Peloponnesians, and did
not spread into the Peloponnesus in any degree worth speaking
of, while Athens felt its ravages most severely, and next to
Athens the places which were most populous." But he had a
few chapters before7 said, "The disease is said to have begun
south of Egypt in Êthiopia ; thence it descended into Egypt
and Libya, and after spreading over the greater part of the
Persian empire, suddenly fell upon Athens." lie records all
the facts, but does not express " any notion of his own."
The determined resolution of Thucydides to adhere to the
facts of the war has materially influenced the form of his work.
Baving no preconceived theory of his own. no philosophy of
history from which to deduce the tarts of the war a priori,
Thucydides follows, not a logical, but a strictly chronological
order. The events of each year are i-auged under that year.
The story of a siege, for instance, such as that of Platen, which
laste,] three years, is not told in one continuous section, but
l v. ioo. = vii. 50. 3 ii. 28. 4 vii. 79.
6 vi. 70. ■ ii. 54- " i;- 48-
what happened in each year is told under the head of that year,
and thus the story of the siege is twice dropped and twice
picked up again. The adoption of this annalistic method by
Thucydides is the more noteworthy because there were no
annalists in Greece. The materials out of which annals sprang
in the Middle Ages, lists of magistrates, festivals, &c, and
family records, existed in Greece ; but before annals could be
developed out of them, Thucydides produced history. To us
this chronological method of Thucydides seems, as it is, some-
what clumsy. It fetters the historian without apparently afford-
ing any compensation. But it must be remembered that in the
time of Thucydides there was no uniform system of chronology
current throughout Greece. Later, the method of reckoning
years by Olympiads, i.e. by the recurrence of the Olympic games
every four years, was universally adopted by the Greeks. But
in the time of Thucydides each state had its own mode of reck-
oning, and commenced its civil year, not on the same day as any
other state, but when its own chief magistrate entered on office,
or on some other such principle. This latter difficulty Thucy-
dides evaded by disregarding the civil year and following the
natural year, which he divides into summer and winter. Tins
procedure had this advantage, that it suited admirably a record
of military operations, which, in the case of the Greeks, ceased
in the winter and were carried on only in the summer. The
other difficulty which arose in the absence of a uniform chrono-
logy, that of specifying the year, Thucydides got over as best
he could by counting from the date of some well-known event,
and by reference to the chronological system of various states.
This, for instance, is his way of specifying the year in which the
Peloponnesian war began:1 "For fourteen years the thirty
years' peace which was concluded after the recovery of Euboea
remained unbroken : but in the fifteenth year, when Chrvsis
the high-priestess of Argos was in the forty-eighth year of her
priesthood, Ênesias being the Ephor at Sparta, and at Athens
Pythodorus having two months of his archonship to run, in the
sixth month after the engagement at Potidsea, and at the begin-
ning of spring," &c. We, with our fixed system of chrom
say "in B.C. 431." Modern historians, who can specify the date
of an event with three strokes of the pen, may arrange events
in any order they think most lucid ; but Thucydides, having
once specified his year, had good reason for adhering to the
chronological order of events. The annalistic method might
fetter the historian, but it secured his chronology, which other

wise might have fluctuated.
Beyond this division into summers, winters, and years, no
other seems to have been designed by Thucydides. The divi-
sion into eight books, as we have his work, though made early,1
was not made by Thucydides. There are traces in the scholiasts
of a division into thirteen books,2 and Diodorus mentions a
division into nine books.3 But these divisions are probably
later even than the one we have. Thucydides, however, does
sometimes speak of "the first war " or "the ten years' war," and
of "the Sicilian war," and the "Ionic war;"'4 and so it "has
been conjectured that he intended a division into five parts — the
introduction,5 the ten years' war,0 the period before the Sicilian
expedition,7 the Sicilian war,8 and the Ionic war.9 But the
narrative flows on without regard to the subdivisions;10 the
references which Thucydides makes to them are few, and they
exercise no influence on the form or matter of his work. In-
deed, he seems to have neglected any attempt to break up his
work into sections possessing balance, symmetry, proportion, or
form, with as much contempt as he disclaims any design of
making his history pleasing to the car. The division into years
is "strictly historical." Nothing more is aimed at. At any
rate, the notion that Thucydides' history is composed on the
analogy of a drama, and is arranged in a prologue and five acts,
is purely fanciful, and as grotesquely incongruous with Thucy-
dides' conception of the functions of the historian as any piece
of " subjectivity " could be. Of all manifestations of power,
self-restraint impresses men most, partly because it is the form
which power least often takes ; and there is scarcely a page of
Thucydides that does not exemplify Ins strength in this respect
Where Btrong expression seems justifiable, where even it seems
demanded, Thucydides contents himself with a sober statement.
Events which call aloud for some expression of pity or of hi rror
he Leaves to speak for themselves, without a word from him.
Where the temptation to any other writer to comment or to
moralise would be irresistible, Thucydides resists it. He places
1 It was known to Dionysius (p. 867) and the early grammarians,

- Schol. ii. 78 ; iv. 78, i 1 |.
3 xii. 502; xni. 573. But possibly our eight books are here referred to—
tin- ninth being the firs! two 1 ks i>f the Hellenica, which continue the
story of the war from where Thucydides breaks off to the end, ami wire
sometimes ascribed to Thucydides.
* v. 20, 2.4, 25, 26; iv. 81 ; vii. 18, 28, 85 ; viii. 11.
■'■ i. 1 1 I*.. G ii. i-v. 24. 7 v. 25-v. ti6.
8 vi. i-viL 87. ' vie. 1 ad fin, iU Except at v. 26.
HISTORY: THUCYDIDES. 34 I
before the reader the agonies of a nation, as in his account of

the Sicilian expedition, or the presence of death, as in his
description of the plague, with grave silence.
Problems of political morality, which he had studied for
years and in which his keen intellect took the profoundest
interest, he states so far as they Avere debated or exemplified in
the war ; but he is not betrayed into speculation ; he confines
himself to facts. On the great problems of life it is sometimes
said that it is impossible for a man to hold his judgment in
perpetual suspense ; but Thucydides seems to have had them
perpetually present to his mind, and to have perpetually regarded
the material before him as inadequate for the formation of a
decision. It is this habit of never going beyond his facts, of
never losing sight of his purpose to ascertain and record facts,
this self-restraint which never relaxes, that makes the reader
respect and marvel at the power of Thucydides. It creates
absolute confidence in him, in his will and his power to record
the plain truth. It makes his very silence eloquent, and his
least word weighty beyond the superlatives, the exclamations, or
asseverations of other writers. This, however, is only the nega-
tive side of his power. His silent self-restraint prepares us to
be impressed by his words, but his words also impress us. His
facts are more valuable than others' comments, and for this
there is a reason. In Thucydides' history we have the facts of
the war as Thucydides saw them ; and the difference between
his work and that, say, of Xenophon, who continued Thucy-
dides' incomplete work, is much the same as that between what
a geologist and a navvy see in a railway cutting, or a botanist and
a ploughboy see in a hedge-bottom, or between what Shelley
and a farm-labourer hear in a skylark's song. Tiiat is to say,
Thucydides had a knowledge of what happened in the war com-
parable to the geologist's or botanist's knowledge of his science,
and he further had, like Shelley, the genius to transmute what
he heard into words more precious than gold. Beyond this, in
the way of analysis, it is not possible to go far. The intimate
acquaintance which he gives us with the Peloponnesian war is
proof of the clearness and grasp with which he realised all the
details and the whole significance of the war ; but to ask how
this clear sight was acquired or conveyed is fully. It is better
to try and profit by than spy into genius.
The genius of Thucydides is seen in the way in which he not
only conveys to the reader his own clear perception of the facts
and the course of the war, but also arouses in the reader the
emotions with which he himself followed the various incidents
of the struggle. In other words, Thucydides' literary genius is

as great as his historical genius. Over the literary as well as
the historical difficulties involved by his chronological method
of relating facts he rides triumphant. It is said that his work
is without a plan, and this is true ; there is no more plot or
plan in his annals than there would be in a diary of the war.
But this defect is rather apparent than real. Every incident
is viewed by Thucydides in the light thrown on it by the
whole war, and thus its importance and position is assigned to
it as unerringly and as clearly as though all the other events
narrated by Thucydides had been grouped with the purpose of
giving this one incident its proper literary value. But although
Thucydides disdains to strive after the external balance and
harmony which he might have obtained by articulating his his-
tory, and by grouping his facts so as to reach the consum-
mation of a culmination, still this is, from a literary point of
view, even more than compensated for by the internal proportions
of his work, in virtue of which each incident receives its proper
amount of attention and receives light from and throws light
on every other incident and the whole course of t lie war. But
although everything which belongs to the narrative of the war
fits in with the narrative harmoniously, there are various digres-
sions having nothing to do with the Avar, e.g. that about Uar-
modius and Aristogiton, which, however valuable in themselves,
absolutely spoil the form of the work, as they also constitute an
undeniable exception to the strictness with which Thucydides
otherwise excludes all matter which does not bear directly on
his subject. Whether this is due to simple neglect, or to ahso-
lute contempt for literary form, may be doubted. Errors of
taste are to be found in Thucydides — they occur precisely when,
abandoning his general principle, he strives after effect — and
these digressions may have been inserted by him under the
impression that a history to possess literary form must have
episodes, since they were to be found in Herodotus and the
raphers. At the same time, though his annalistic method
involves literary disadvantages, it also brings with it some com-
pensating advantages. The system of dropping one thread of
the narrative when the end of a year is reached, and then tak-
ing up the narrative of the other events of the year, though it
sometimes, as in the case of the Sicilian expedition, interrupts
with foreign matter the main narrative, yet elsewhere and more
generally affords a welcome relief, and a variety such as is
attained in a drama by means of a secondary plot.
But it is in the matter, not in the manner, of his work that
Th ucyd ides' literary greatness makes itself most felt. And here
it is difficult to determine what department and what quality
in his work claims our greatest admiration. For the political
philosopher of all ages, and for the student of Greek thought, the
speeches will ever rank as the greatest work of " the greatest
historian that ever lived." x And it is a pardonable error if, in
the luminous profundity of the thought contained in them, we
lose sight of " the antitheses, the climaxes, the plays of words,
the point which
ture. It is ratheris to
no the
point," 2 that that
narrative mar the
we speeches
must lookas for
litera-
the
literary perfection of Thucydides ; and there we must turn, not
to the philosophical disquisition — great and justly famous as it
is — on the effects of civil war, but to the description of the
plague, which has had many and able imitators, from Lucretius
onwards, but none to approach Thucydides ; or to the seventh
book, the retreat from Syracuse, of which Macaulay said,
" There is no prose composition in the world, not even the De
Corona, which I place so high," and Gray, "Is it or is it not
the finest thing you ever read in your life 1 " 3 Macaulay
speaks of the " intense interest," the " magnificent light and
the terrible shade of Thucydides ; " 4 and these words apply not
only to the Sicilian expedition, but to the whole narrative. . In
some instances they apply also to the speeches. The speeches
are not in all instances devoted wholly to political wisdom.
Characters are drawn, as, e.g. in the speeches of Alcibiades,
Nicias, Archidamus, and Pericles. While in other speeches,
e.g. the funeral oration, the appeal of the Plataeans, the final
speech of Nicias to his men, the light is as magnificent and the
shade as terrible as in any part of the narrative.
The language of Thucydides is often considered obscure and
difficult. Obscure, in the sense that he does not quite know
what he wishes to express, he certainly is not. With regard
to the difficulty of his style, it is necessary to draw a distinc-
tion. When he is narrating events, his style is simple, powerful,
and beautiful. When he begins to philosophise and to genera-
lise, he begins to be difficult to understand. But here again we
must distinguish. The philosophical reflections of Thucydides
are contained mostly in the speeches, and it is in the speeches
that he most conspicuously departs from his resolve to describe
the simple facts of the war without any attempt to please the
ear. It is in the speeches that Thucydides deliberately makes
an attempt at form, and whereas when he makes no effort he
1 Life of Lord Macaulay, App. 475. 2 Jowett's Thucydides, xiv
3 See Life of Macaulay, i. 449. * Ibid. 438.
doc? attain form, he as signally fails when he is faithless to his

principle of not seeking after effect. Doubtless, in throwing
his own recollections or the reports of others into the form of
direct speeches, Thucydides was practically obeying necessity.
To the Greek, in whose life, from the time of Homer, public
speaking occupied a huge place, to the Athenian above all.
whose main occupation in time of peace was the making and
hearing of political speeches, a history which contained no
speeches would have been no faithful reflection of political
life. Thus Tlmcydides felt himself to a certain extent con-
strained by his desire to write a faithful history to introduce
direct oration ; and thus he was constrained to strive after
form ; for to merely reproduce by an act of memory the original
form in which the speeches were delivered was, as he tells us,
impossible. In this attempt at form Thucydides allowed him-
self to be guided by the precept and the example of the early
rhetoricians, who, though they helped to lay the foundations of
Greek oratory, were immeasurably removed from even the natu-
ral ease and grace of Lysias, much more from the perfection of
Demosthenes. Thus the mistakes of Thucydides are the mistakes
of his masters, not his own, and their mistakes were incidental
to and inevitable in the earliest attempts to form artistic prose.
The florid rhetoric of Gorgias appears in had taste to us, but to
the Athenians of his time it was a revelation. It showed that
beauty was possible in prose as well as in verse. Its principal
defect — that it ignored the difference between poetry and prose
— we, who have great prose-writings to compare with it, can
readily see. But Thucydides, who had to create prose, may be
excused for joining the rest of Athens in admiration of the
rhetoricians. Thus the conceits of Thucydides, to which his
difficulty is partly due, are owing to the early stage of develop-
ment to which prose and orati rv in his time had reached.
A second cause is to be found in the undeveloped stage of
the language. Although there seems no reason to doubt that
thought is to a limited extent possible without language, no
considerable or continuous advance of thought is so possible.
An idea, once captured and imprisoned, so to speak, in a word,
is thenceforward available to succeeding generations. Thus the
child in learning the meanings of words is storing its mind
with ideas. By means of language the child, as with seven-
leagued hoots, traverses large .-paces in the realm of thought,
which its ancestors took years to subjugate By means of lan-
guage, and which are still firmly held by the words they
planted there. We at the present day inherit a language the
history: thucydtdes. 345
total number of whose words is several times greater than the
number any single one of us uses ; while though there are
many words — technical ones — which the majority of us do not
even know the meaning of, we can, when necessary, acquire
that knowledge by a reference to a dictionary. It is, therefore,
hard for us to realise a stage of language in which there were
more ideas than there were words to express them, and in
which there was not only no dictionary to explain the mean-
ing of words, but the very idea that it was possible to define
the meaning of a word was a new and startling conception,
which was used by Socrates, the originator thereof, as long as
he had a monopoly of it, to the utter discomfiture of all who
came in argument against him. Yet this was the state of the
language by means of which Thucydides had to convey ideas
that the world had yet never conceived of. Further, at the
present day our linguistic conscience permits us to take a word
wherever we find it if we want it, or, indeed, if we do not much
want it. From naked savages on opposite sides of the world
we take the words "palaver" and "taboo," as readily as we
appropriate a technicality from languages that are dead. But
Thucydides borrowed neither ideas nor the words to clothe
them in. He writes pure Attic.
Hitherto we have spoken as though the lack of a vocabulary
were the only difficulty with which Thucydides had to contend ;
but a still more serious difficulty was that the language had as
yet no settled or recognised grammar. By this is meant not
merely that some centuries had yet to elapse before Dionysius
Thrax Mas to make the first attempt to throw together a body
of rules which may be regarded as the beginning of Greek
grammar. People may and must sneak grammatically before
the principles on which they— or those best worth attention —
speak can be observed and noted in a grammar. But Thucy-
dides belongs to a time when people did not, even uncon-
sciously, systematically follow the same analogies or the same
principles under similar circumstances. It is not, therefore, to
be wondered at if, in the absence of grammatical moulds to
receive it, the, thought of Thucydides should overflow in some
sentences, or solidify into some shape for which later literature
has no parallel or only a distant analogy. Nor is it strange
if, under the weight of Thucydides' thought, which would have
strained the strength of a more developed language, Attic in
its then cartilaginous and plastic condition should have some-
times yielded, and have sometimes betrayed the weight thrown
on it.
34&
It has been the custom to institute comparisons between
Thncydides and other historians, mainly, one would suppose,
because Thucydides is by far the greatest of historians. Be-
tween him and Herodotus or Xenophon the comparison must
be one of contrast, and is one which the reader may be left to
draw out for himself; but on the comparison between him and
Roman historians a word must be said. In the first place, in
any such comparison it should be noticed that Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Xenophon, whatever the differences between
them, all belong to a literature which is essentially original and
creative ; whereas the Roman historians belong to a literature
which is not original or creative. In the next place, the three
Greek historians belong to the best period of Greek literature,
but the Roman historians do not belong to the golden age of
Latin literature. As to the comparison between Thucydides
and Sallust, what resemblance imitation could produce there
is; but genius cannot — certainly that of Thucydides cannot —
be imitated. Between Thucydides and Tacitus there are some
points of resemblance. Both are great historians ; both have a
profound knowledge of human nature ; and both take some-
what pessimistic views of human nature and of life. As to
style, both possess great power ; both are difficult at times to
understand, and brevity is one of the characteristics of each.
But to imagine that to Thucydides in his own line it is possible
to compare Tacitus, great as he is, is a mistake. The first
quality demanded of a historian is credibility ; and whatever
conclusion Ave may come to about the credibility of Tacitus, it
is impossible to maintain that his reputation stands as high as
that of Thucydides in this respect. Thucydides laid the foun-
dations of scientific history, but Tacitus has built elsewhere.
Both historians draw largely on oral testimony: hut whereas
Thucydides understood that the historian should go only to
witnesses of the events he wished to record, and that their
evidence, and even his own recollection of what he has himself
seen, require testing and corroborating, Tacitus was content
with hearsay evidence at third or fourth hand. When Thucy-
dides had recourse to documentary evidence, it was, as far as
we can discover, to official documents that he went; or, if he
has occasion to refer to other histories, it is in a way which
shows that he criticised them closely. Tacitus, on the other
hand, has as little notion of criticising documentary as oral
ti stimony, and relies on partisan memoirs as though they were
wholly true.
"We expect in a historian not only capacity to ascertain facts,
HISTORY : THUCYDIDES. 347
but impartiality in stating them ; and this quality no historian,

possesses so eminently as Thucydides. He writes an impartial
history of a struggle in which he himself was one of the com-
batants. Tacitus writes a partial history of events from which
he was so far removed in time that we might have reasonably
expected from him an unbiassed history. Thucydides' love for
his native country — and it was great — never leads him to exag-
gerate the successes or minimise the defeats or the defects of
Athens. Tacitus shares the weak amiability of Livy in never
admitting a Roman defeat if it is possible to close his eyes
to it. In politics there is the same distance between the two
historians. Thucydides had political views, but he was a mode-
rate politician, and his views were such that they rather assisted
him than prevented him from comprehending the standpoint of
others. Tacitus, on the other hand, shared the yearning of his
order after a state of things which it was impossible to restore
— yearnings which the nobility of Rome expressed the more
virulently because they were conscious that they had not the
energy or the courage to do anything to get what they sighed
for. Tacitus was, on the whole, hostile to the political regime
which he undertook to portray.
Let us now consider Tacitus and Thucydides, not as histo-
rians, but from the literary point of view. Both suffer from the
inconveniences entailed by their following the annalistic method ;
but these inconveniences are felt much more strongly in Tacitus
than in Thucydides. It is no depreciation of Tacitus to say
that, great as is the interest with which we read him, it is not
the intense interest which Thucydides inspires. The power of
Tacitus as a writer is great and undeniable, and he is a master
of light and shade, but it is not the magnificent light and the
terrible shade of Thucydides.1 Both writers have the power
of brevity, and this is frequently considered to constitute a great
resemblance between them ; but there is no difference between
them so great and so characteristic as this supposed point of
resemblance. Where the sentences of Thucydides are brief,
it is because they are surcharged with thought ; they are
weighty with wisdom, and they sink into the mind. The
sentences of Tacitus are brief because ejaculatory, exclamatory,
objurgatory. The one is the brevity of condensation, the
other of amputation. Thucydides' is the brevity of dignity,
Tacitus' the brevity of breathlessness. In tine, Tacitus is a
"stylist," Thucydides is none. Thucydides is a perpetual
1 See Macaulnv, loc. cit.
demonstration that there is a higher art than that of concealing

art— the art of dispensing with it.
CHAPTER IY.
XENOPHON.
Xenophon, an Athenian, was prohably born about B.o. 429,

for at the time of the expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks
under Cyrus, which took place in B.C. 401, he seems to have
been under thirty years of age.1 Yet lie cannot have been
much under that age, for ho was already married,2 and had
come to be on intimate terms with Socrates, whose advice he
asked whether he should join the expedition or not. On the
other hand, there is a story that Xenophon took part in the
battle of Delium, B.C. 424, and was saved in the flight of the
Athenians by Socrates. If this were true, then Xenophon
must have been about twenty years old in b.c. 424. But the
Btory seems to be of late origin. It receives no confirmation
either from Plato, who mentions a similar story about Socrates
saving Laches in the flight at Delium,3 or from Xenophon
himself; while the passages in the Anabasis which bear on
Xenophon's age at the time of the expedition are inconsistent
with the story.
About the early life of Xenophon we have no information.
He belonged to the order of the knights, for his son Gryllus
served as a knight in the battle of Man tinea; and the knights,
by the support they rendered to the Thirty Tyrants, were so
unpopular at Athens that we can readily understand why
Xenophon should be inclined to leave his native city for service
abroad. What we know aboul Xenophon's life is derived from
his writings, and the first fact that we thus have knowledge of
is that his friend Proxenus, a Haitian, who had taken Bervice
under Cyrus, wrote to him from Sardia inviting him to join
the Greek contingent. The offer seems to have been a tempting
one. Xenophon says that the reputation of Cyrus attracted
numbers, not. of | ' and broken-down Greeks, but of well-to-do
men of all ages. Some abandoned wife and children, others
1Anab. VI. iv. 25 he snys, 6 Eero<£uip. . . . tftoridet Ka.1 ol dXXot ol ixtxpt
rmaKovra, which is supported by Anab. III. i. 14.
-'( 8c. de I a '■' "/. i. 31.
3i>i/ni]ios. 221A.
history: xenophon. 349
ran away from home ; and others not only emharked in the
adventure themselves, but lent their friends the money where-
with to do likewise. Although Xenophon consulted Socrates
on the advisability of joining the expedition, his own desire to
go was toowhostrong
Socrates, to admit
probably saw ofthat
his tostaying in Athens.
join Cyrus "When
would render
Xenophon unpopular in Athens, advised him to consult the
gods, Xenophon complied indeed, but instead of asking the
oracle at Delphi whether he should or should not go, he asked
to what god he should offer sacrifice in order to be successful
in his adventure. For an account of the attempt of Cyrus to
dethrone his brother Artaxerxes, the death of Cyrus, the perils
and hazards through which the Ten Thousand Greeks went in
their struggle to return home, the reader must be referred to
the Greek historian. It is ej*ough to say here that it was
mainly due to the imperturbable presence of mind and cool
generalship of Xenophon that the Ten Thousand owed their
safety. One incident in the return must also be mentioned.
It is that when the Greeks had at last forced their way to the
coast of the Euxine, Xenophon conceived the idea of founding a
great Greek city on that shore. His project was undermined
by intrigue, and was not wholly acceptable to the Ten Thousand
themselves ; but it illustrates the boldness of Xenophon's con-
ceptions and the looseness of the ties which bound him to
his native city.
Circumstances were, indeed, destined to show clearly the
weakness, or rather the want, of patriotism in Xenophon.
Shortly after the return of the Ten Thousand, Athens found
herself at war with Sparta. Xenophon, however, following the
fortunes of the section of the Ten Thousand with which he had ^
identified himself, accompanied the Spartan Agesilaus, and thus,
in B.C. 394, found himself in arms against Athens at the battle
of Coronea. The result of this behaviour was naturally that
a decree of banishment from Athens was issued against him.
His services to Sparta, however, procured him a new home.
He was allowed to purchase lands in Skillus, and there, living
in a country which was adapted to the gratification of his taste
for sport, he seems to have devoted himself to the composition
of various literary works, and perhaps of his account of the
expedition and return of the Ten Thousand. The neighbour-
hood of Olympia to Skillus gave him the opportunity of meeting
Greeks from all quarters, while his permanent residence in
Laeedsemon increased the tendency ho naturally had to sym-
pathise with Sparta and take the Spartan view of the history
3 5° HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
of Greece. After he had resided in Skillus for some twelve
years or so, the Tlieban victory at Leuctra. B.C. 371, over Sparta
made it necessary for Xenophon to find a fresh home, since
the Eleans once more entered into possession of Skillus.
But the circumstances which drove him from Skillus threw
Sparta into the arms of Athens, and led to the revocation of the
decree of exile that had been in force against Xenophon. He
does not, however, seem to have availed himself of the oppor-
tunity to settle again in Athens. He preferred to establish
himself in Corinth, where he is said ta have died. The date of
his death is uncertain. It is sometimes said to have been b.o.
360. But he mentions events which occurred in B.C. 357 (Hell.
VI. iv. 37), and his death therefore must be placed later, though
it is difficult to say how much later, than B.C. 357.
Among the numerous works which have come down to us
under Xenophon's name probably are included all that Xeno-
phon ever wrote — for we nowhere find mention made of any
others composed by him — and several •which are not from his
hand. They fall into three divisions, which may be called,
roughly, historical, philosophical, and miscellaneous. The first
two classes can only be described as historical and philosophi-
cal somewhat inaccurately, for under the head of historical we
must include some which, like On Revenues, are political, and
the Gyropcedia, which is romance rather than history ; while,
although it is difficult to find any other term than philosophical
to comprehend those works in which Socrates figures, the term
is misleading if it is taken to imply that Xenophon was a
philosopher.
The work on which the reputation of Xenophon as an author
must always rest, and which justly causes him to rank high,
though not amongst the highest, in Creek literature, is his account
of the expedition of Cyrus — the Anabasis. The dates at which
this work was composed and when it was published are some-
what uncertain. It seems necessary to suppose that he must
have made notes during the expedition, for he not only gives
minute topographical descriptions, but states the distance of
each halting-place from the previous one; and the fact that ho
accompanied the expedition, in the firsl instance, as a friend of
Proxenus, and not as an officer in the contingent, seems to show
that he had at least the leisure to make notes, if he did not
from the first intend to write an account of the campaign. But
as he describes his residence in Skillus in the Anabasis (V. iii.
7), it would seem as though he could not have given the work
its final form before he had been for some little time in Skillus.
HISTORY : XENOPHON. 35I
Whether we are to place the composition of the work still later,

after B.C. 371, when Xenophon removed to Corinth, depends
upon the interpretation we put upon the tenses of some of the
verbs used in describing his residence at Skillus; and the weight
of authority is rather in favour of regarding the passage as
describing a place in which at the time of writing Xenophon
had ceased to live.
"With regard to the authorship of the Anabasis, difficulty has

been felt in consequence of a passage in the Hellenics [III. i. 2),
in which Xenophon refers to an account of the expedition of
Cyrus written by one Theinistogenes of Syracuse. It has been
supposed that Xenophon is referring to his own work, and, for
some reason or other, instead of calling it his own, prefers to
ascribe it to an imaginary person. On the other hand, it has
been supposed that he is referring to a work distinct from his
own, and really by Themistogenes, of whom and of whose work
we know nothing more. A third view is that Themistogenes
collaborated with Xenophon to some extent in producing the
Anabasis. In favour of this last view there is nothing. As
for the second view, we know that other members, or another
member, of the expedition, Sophaenetus, wrote an account of it
under the same title as Xenophon's work. While for the first
view it may be said that there is some reason for conjecturing
that in the CEconomims also Xenophon conceals himself under
a fictitious name, Ischomachus. But this is supporting a con-
jecture bya conjecture, and the second view is the one against
which there is least to be said.
The story of the expedition of Cyrus and of the return of
the Ten Thousand is one which in its very nature is full of
interest and excitement ; but it is not just to credit the subject
with all, and the author with none, of the interest which the tale
inspire?. Doubtless in dull hands the story would have been
dull ; and certainly the interest we feel is to a large extent an
interest in the writer, as well as in tlie fate of Cyrus and of the
Ten Thousand. The tale is told in a plain and manly, simple
and tmaffected manner, which at once wins the sympathy of the
reader for the writer. Xenophon writes of himself always in
the third person, but he contrives to do so without awkward-
ness. There is no affectation, and no affectation of being un-
affected. There is nothing in Xenophon to rouse the suspicion
of any arriere pensee, as there is in the case of Caesar, who also
wrote in the third person, but so wrote with an object. The
language and style of Xenophon are a reflection of his manly and
straightforward character. The style is manly not only in its
vigour, but in that it is graceful yet not adorned. It is trans*

parent, and therein it faithfully mirrors the mind of Xenophon,
which was clear and shallow. His language is Attic, hut it is
not pure Attic. He was true neither to his native city nor to
his native tongue. His want of patriotism brought a necessary
literary Nemesis. Attic in its purity could only he spoken by
those Athenians who lived in Alliens in constant intercourse
with their fellow-citizens. The Athenian who chose to live
abroad among foreigners speaking bad Greek, or native Greeks
speaking other dialects than that of Athens, necessarily picked
up words, phrases, and turns of expression which the literary
instinct of home-keeping Athenians eschewed. Hence the voca-
bulary of Xenophon presents many variations from the best
Attic, and many points of resemblance to the common dialect.
The Hellenics, in seven books, relates the history of Greece
from B.C. 41 1 to the battle of Mantinea in B.C. 362. The work
was evidently not written all at one time, and seems to fall into
three parts, composed probably at considerable intervals. The
first pari consists of Books I. and II., which take up the history
of the Peloponnesian war at the point at which the uncompleted
work of Thucydides' finishes, and end with the end of the
struggle between Athens and Sparta. The second part consists
of Books III. and IV. It is distinguished from the first part
both by differences of language and by a difference of plan. In
the first part Xenophon follows the annalistic method of Thucy-
dides, arranging events according to the years in which they
occurred ; while in the second part lie does not follow this strict
and inconvenient chronological method, but groups events and
traces out the history of one group before entering on another.
From the third part the second is distinguished by a change
of political feeling which evidently has come over Xenophon.
Whereas in the first two parts of his work he has a great admi-
ration and affection for Sparta, by the time he came to write
the third part, his admiration for Sparta had received a great
shock. The Spartans had sworn during the Peloponnesian war
to give the cities of < Ireece freedom, had violated their oath, and
had been visited by a punishment which, by its nature, showed
beyond the possibility of doubt that it was inflicted by Heaven.
The very people to whom the Spartans had especially perjured
themselves the Thebans— had unassisted brought vengeance
on Sparta (Hell. Y. iv. 1). Further, there are internal indica-
tions that- the first pari of the Hellenics was composed earlier
than the third. The third part contains a reference to the
death of Alexander of PheWB, which took place about B.C. 359-
histoky: xenophon. 353
357, and must have received its final form after that date;
whereas the first part cannot have been composed so long as
forty years after the amnesty of Thrasybulus.1
Before accepting the unfavourable verdicts which have been
passed on the Hellenics as history, we must examine the leading
defects which have been brought against it, and the causes
which have been imagined to explain them. The work is
alleged to be both deficient and redundant, to be inconsequen-
tial in the narrative, and unfaithful to its plan. But here we
must distinguish between the first part, consisting of Books I.
and II., and the rest of the work. In the first part it is true
that many events are neglected or treated with great brevity
which from their importance demanded a fuller treatment,
while points of much less importance are related in great detail
It is true also that in the first part many things are related in
an inconsequential maimer, are brought suddenly before the
reader without any introduction or necessary explanation ; and
it is true that Xenophon does not adhere with fidelity to the
annalistic method, which, on the whole, he evidently intends to
follow. But with the rest of the work the case is different. In
the second and third parts Xenophon abandons the annalistic
method wholly ; the deficiencies, redundancies, and want of
sequence are inconsiderable, and the defects of style and care-
lessness of language of the first two books are much less
noticeable.
But in the first two books the defects do exist, and various
attempts have been made to account for them. It has been
said that Xenophon omits what was to the prejudice of Sparta
or to the credit of Athens, and dwells on things discreditable
to Athens and creditable to Sparta. But although Xenophon
had an honest admiration for the constitution of Sparta and for
her military character, he certainly has not followed any syste-
matic design of depreciating his native country and extolling
the country of his affections by means of the suppressio n ri.
The omissions can by no means all be accounted for on this
hypothesis, nor can the redundancies. It has therefore been
suggested that the key to the Disproportionate treatment of
events in the Helleyiies is Xenophon's likes and dislikes gene-
rally, not merely his political tendencies. This, like the pre-
vious hypothesis, accounts for some of the facts, but fails to
account for the majority. Persons in whom Xenophon for one
1 II. iv. 43 : Kal 6/j,6<xavT€s opicovs J} mV P-V p.vT)<TiKa.KT)<reiv (tl ko.1 vvv bp.ov
re TT-oXireiWai Kal rots opKots ipptvei 6 Sijfios— words which must have been
written before the recollection and necessity of the amnesty had died ouU
reason or another took a special interest lie naturally described

at length ; and yet military matters in which he took a special
interest are in many cases dismissed with surprising brevity.
A third hypothesis supposes that Xenophon's information varied
in amount. Places he had visited, events he had witnessed,
and persons he had himself met, he would have a good deal of
information about ; whereas he would know less of others. And
it is true that many places and events which he had himself
been present at are described very fully, but many are dismissed
very briefly; and he also possesses full information derived from
other sources than personal observation.
The three hypotheses each contribute something towards the
explanation of the very considerable blemishes which mar the
first two books of the Hellenics. But though they explain them,
they do not in the least excuse them. It is the business of the
historian to allow neither political feeling nor private prejudice
to influence him, and it is also his business to obtain informa-
tion of events which he did not himself witness. If Xenophon
suppressed the truth and neglected to acquaint himself with the
facts he ought to have narrated, he was a bad, and a very had
historian. The only possible way of saving his credit is to sup-
pose that the first two books are an incomplete work, and then
further to suppose that Xenophon would have corrected the
deficiencies in his work if he had completed it But these are
suppositions which admit of no proof, and find but little sup-
port. The first two books were probably composed before
Xenophon joined the expedition of Cyrus, and as he lived forty
or more years after that, it cannot be alleged he had not time
to revise and complete tin; work. We may indeed add to con-
jecture conjecture, and conjecture that other literary projects —
the Anabasis, the Cyrqpcedia, &c. — drove the revision of the
first part of the Hellenics out of his head ; and then wc may
further conjecture, that although Xenophon took up the history
of Greece, and wrote, and perhaps published, the two other parte
of the Hellenics, the first part was never revised by him, and
only published after his death, lint, if we, bear in mind that
Xi nophon was a young man at the time when he probably
wrote the first part of the Hellenics, ami that he was a Greek
ami belonged to the party which supported the Thirty Tyrants,
we Bhall not have much difficulty in believing that lie was to
some extent influenced by political feeling ; that he was not
exempt from private prejudice ; and that the interval between
the death of Thueydides (before which the Hellenics could not
well have been begun) and the expedition of Cyrus was short
history : xenophox. 355
enough to prevent Xenophon from obtaining full information

on all points treated of in the first two books.
Two other attempts have indeed been made to save Xeno-
phon's credit as an historian. It lias been maintained that we
have not his work as he wrote it, but an epitome ; and in sup-
port of this view it has been pointed out that Plutarch, in his
lives of Alcibiades, Agesilaus, and Lysander, while frequently
agreeing with Xenophon, frequently has full information where
the Hellenics is silent. The inference drawn from this is that
Plutarch had before him the original Hellenics, while we have
only extracts or an epitome. But it is difficult to believe that
any one endeavouring to summarise the Hellenics would have
produced such an uneven and disproportioned work as the Hel-
lenics ;while the argument drawn from Plutarch only shows
that Plutarch had other sources besides Xenophon to draw upon.
The Hellenics in nowi-e resembles an epitome, and there is no
reason to believe that Plutarch possessed the Hellenics in any
form different to the one in which we have the work.
The other attempt is based upon the fact that Xenophon
takes up the history of Greece where Thucydides stopped. It
assumes that the materials which Thucydides had collected for
the history of the end of the Peloponnesian war. but which he
did not live to work into shape, came into the hands of Xeno-
phon, who was intrusted with the duty or conceived the idea
of completing Thucydides' history. These materials, it is fur-
ther assumed, were of varying character ; hence the deficiencies
and redundancies of the Hellenics. The sole support for this
theory is a statement made by Diogenes Laertius that Xeno-
phon rescued the work of Thucydides from the obscurity which
threatened to engulph it. P>ut even were Diogenes to be relied
on, he says nothing about the materials for the conclusion of
Thucydides' work ; and it would have been the duty of Xeno-
phon to supply the deficiency in the materials which Thucydides
had collected, and not aggravate the defect by treating other
points redundantly. But the whole theory is inconsistent with
the character of the Hellenics, and may safely be rejected. It
leads us. however, to an interesting question, that is, the rela-
tion of Xenophon's work to that of Thucydides,
Xenophon certainly takes up the history of Greece where
Thucydides stops, but it is uncertain whether he designed his
work as the completion of Thucydides' unfinished history, or,
wishing to write a history of Greece, abstained from going again
over ground which the greatest of historians had made his own.
On the one hand, the Hellenics has no formal opening, such aa
3 56 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATI/RE.
the histories of Herodotus and Thucyilides have, hut opens

with a sentence and in a way which are only intelligible if the
reader has the concluding words of Thucydides in his mind.
Further, there seems some reason to suppose that fur a time the
first two books of the Hellenics commonly made part of the
same manuscript as contained the work of Thucydides, and
were even regarded as forming a ninth book to Thucydides.
Finally, in the first two books, Xenophon adopts Thucydides'
method of relating events according to the years in which they
occurred, while in the rest of the Hellenics he adopts a less con-
strained system. On the other hand, it is said that Theopom-
pus also began his history of Greece at the point where Thucy-
dides' work ceases, as also did Cratippus; and in the case of
Theopompus there seems reason to believe that he prefixed a
general introduction to his work, thus showing that, although
the point at which he began was determined by the extent of
Thucydides' history, he did not intend his work merely to
supply the gap which death made in Thucydides' design. The
absence of an introduction to the Hellenics lias been used as
an argument to show that the work is incomplete, but several
other of Xenophon's works lack an introduction, and, whatever
may be the reason of this, the fact suffices to rebut the inference.
As for Xenophon's use of the annalistic method, it is said the
reason why he employs it in the first two books and not in the
rest of the Hellenics is that it is specially adapted for narrating
the course of a war, and is not adapted for the more general
hi toiy in the later books. This argument, however, is not
conclusive, for if the annalistic method is awkward for general
history, it is also very awkward for the history of a war ; and
if Xenophon abandoned it in the one case and not in the < ther,
lie probably had some reason for his proceeding. It seems, on
the whole, probable that the desire to complete what Thucy-
dides' death left incomplete was the motive which firsl induced
Xenophon to undertake the Hellenics; and that when he had
carried the history to the end of the struggle between Athens
and Sparta, i.e. written the. first two books, he had no intention
of writing more, lie may even have given those locks to the
world before he conceived the idea of continuing the history of
Greece. At any rate, a long tune probably elapsed before he
be hi the second part of the Hellenics, which was followed at
an interval by t lie third part.
The Hellenics and the Anabasis are, strictly speaking, the only
historical works of Xenophon. In the other works which we
group with them there is more or less of history, hut they have
HISTORY : XENOPHON. 3 57
other objects than that of narrating events as they occurred.

Our opinion of Xenophon as a historian must be based on the
Anabasis and the Hellenics. He is seen at his best in the
Anabasis. The places which he has himself visited, the events
in which he himself took part, he gives an excellent account of.
He writes simply, clearly, and effectively. We feel that lie is
stating truthfully the results of keen observation. Further, the
subject being military, is one in which he was versed practi-
cally and on which he wrote authoritatively. But other qualities
are needed in a historian than the power to describe a military
expedition or to narrate clearly his own experiences ; and when
we come to the Hellenics, we find that Xenophon was wanting
in those qualities. He has not the intellectual power to grasp
the whole of his subject and the general tendency of different
sets of events. Consequently he fails to give the proper pro-
portions to the various parts of his work. Nor has he the moral
qualities which go to the making of a great historian. Admir-
able as Xenophon was in all matters of private life, he lacked
the power to subordinate his prejudices to the desire of stating
the whole truth. He was indeed free from the bias of patriot-
ism, but he was incapable of holding the. scale between Athens
and Sparta, or of taking the impersonal view of history which
honourably distinguishes Tlmcydides.
The Cyropmdia or Education of Cyrus relates not merely the
education but the life of Cyrus, and the fruits of his education
as shown in his life. The work is biographical in character,
but it is not a biography designed as a contribution to history.
It is a biography with a purpose. Xenophon chose Cyrus for
the subject of a biography because in him he saw the model of
a king, and in a description of his career he saw the possibility
of demonstrating the superiority of monarchy to democracy.
The Cyropcedia is, therefore, didactic as much as biographical.
Further, the didactic purpose of Xenophon demanded that the
character of Cyrus should be idealised. His object was not
to discover by careful investigation what the actual facts of
Cyrus' life were, but to describe the life as he conceived it to
be. Granted, as Xenophon was led to believe, that Cyrus was
a perfect king; all that remained was for Xenophon to describe
a perfect king. For this purpose it was not necessary to weigh
conflicting traditions against one another, or to pursue historical
investigations into a period so remote from Xenophon's own
time as that of the great Cyrus. It was only necessary that
Xenophon should draw on his own conceptions of what quali-
ties make a great kins and what things a great king would
do. Accordingly we find that in the Cyropcedia are reproduced

the favourite convictions of Xenophon on political and ethical
matters ; and we can see clearly that they, and not historical
evidence, are the sources of the Cyropcedia. For Xenophon
the model of a state was Sparta; accordingly we find him attri-
buting to the Persians Spartan customs. Xenophon's teacher
in morals was Socrates, ami accordingly wc find the Cyropa
imbued with Socratic ideas. For the younger Cyrus, whose
expedition he joined, Xenophon had a great admiration, and it
is not accidental that the great Cyrus in the Cyropcedia has
many qualities in common with his descendant.
The Cyropcedia is frequently called a political or philoso-
phical novel. It is written, as we have said, with a political and
a philosophical purpose; but it is hardly a novel. A novel
must have a plot, while the Cyropctidia is a biography and has
not a plot. At the same time there is much in it which has no
claim to historical truth, and some things which are in contra-
diction with the truth of history ; while the scenes, and to some
extent the characters, are shadowy, and have no claim to be
regarded as real or historical. It is, therefore, fiction to a
certain point, although there is in it a residuum of historical
truth, which Xenophon may have picked up partly from the
works of Ctesias, and partly during his travels with the Ten
Thousand. The work, therefore, seems better described as an
with
biographyit as
idealised criticise a didactic purpose. "We must not
therefore history or as fiction, hut rather from the
point of view of the author, that is, as a didactic, work. From
this point of view it fully deserves the high position which has
at all times been assigned to it. Judged from the strictly
literary point of view, it ranks highest among all Xenophon's
works. The lucidity, ease, and grace which are characteristic
of his style are here conspicuous. To apply the test of history
to it is false criticism, and to criticise it as fiction is perhaps
unfair, since the author had no intention of writing fiction. Yet
it is impossible not to note the weakness of the character-drawing
in the Cyropcedia. In this respeel there i< the same difference
between the Anabasis and the Cyropcedia as in general power
there is between the Anabasis and the Hellenics. Keen obser-
vation Xenophon possessed, as the Anabasis shows; but con-
structive power he possessed only in an inferior degree, as is
shown by the; Hellenics; and the same thing is noticeable in the
character drawing of the Anabasis ami the Cyropasdia. In the
former work the characters of the generals are drawn excellently
and with obvious accuracy and truth. In tie Cyropaidia, when
HISTORY : XENOPHON. ?59
Xenophon has to construct characters, he is far less successful.

The lights are too high and the shadows too deep : the good
characters are too good — Cyrus possesses wholly superhuman
powers — and the bad too had.
The other works belonging to the historical group are the
Agesilaus, a panegyric of the Spartan king of that name under
whom Xenophon served ; the Constitution of Sparta, an undis-
criminating eulogy of the institutions popularly ascrihed to
Lycurgus ; On Revenues, the proposal of a policy designed to
increase the revenues of Athens ; the Constitution of Athens,
the production of an oligarch, composed probably before B.o.
413, and not by Xenophon ; and the Hiero, a fictitious dialogue
represented as having taken place between Hiero the tyrant of
Syracuse and Simonides the lyric poet, on the vulgar fallacy
that monarchy brings happiness to the monarch. The miscel-
laneous group of Xenophon's works, which may here be men-
tioned before we proceed to the philosophical works, consists of
the treatises On Riding, the Duties of a Cavalry General, and
the interesting work On Hunting.
The philosophical works consist of the Memorabilia, the
Symposium, the GZconomir/is, and the Apology, of which the last
is generally admitted not to be the work of Xenophon. With
regard to the others, they are connected together not only by the
fact that in each Socrates is the leading figure, but also because
they have one common object, namely, to defend Socrates'
memory from the misunderstandings and misrepresentations -to
which the philosopher had himself fallen a victim. Socrates
had been condemned to death in Athens in b.c. 399, before
Xenophon had yet returned from Asia Minor, and the composi-
tion of the philosophical works in all probability must be placed
later than that date. During the life of Socrates the Athenians
were generally incapalle of understanding him, as we may fairly
infer from the ludicrous misrepresentations of Aristophanes;
and after his death misrepresentations still continued to be put
forward, even by persons having, or professing to have, some
tincture of philosophy ; as, for instance, the Sophist Polycrates.
Xenophon, therefore, who had been intimately acquainted with
Socrates, and in whom Socrates had inspired the greatest affec-
tion and admiration, undertook to give to the world a true
image of the man and to vindicate the morality of his teat h-
ing and the nobility of his character. With this purpose he
wrote memoirs of Socrates, the Memorabilia, in which he has re-
corded conversations between Socrates and various Athenians on
various subjects. Most of these conversations Xenophon him-
self seems to have heard ; some, he says, he is reporting at

second-hand. In all eases, however, the object of Xenophon is
to defend Socrates' memory by simply showing what Socrates
was ;defence.
best and his conviction rightly was that Socrates' life was his
In artistic merit the three philosophical works of Xenophon
differ considerably. The dialogues which make up the Memo-
rabilia are disjointed ; they have no unity beyond the fact that
Socrates figures in all, and they do not give a complete repre-
sentation of the character of Socrates. On the other hand,
the (Economicus, which is a treatise on the duties of a house-
holder, possesses all the unity which the subject admits of, and
shows signs of a plan designed with clearness and coherency,
which, allowing for corruptions and interpolations, is satisfactorily
carried out. It is further justly celebrated as containing the
brightest picture of the relations between man and wife in
Greece to be found in Greek literature. But in artistic merit
both the Memorabilia and the (Economicus fall short of the
excellence of the Symposium. The scene of the dialogue in
this work is laid at an entertainment — whence the name — given
by Callias in celebration of the victory of Autolycus in the
Pancratium ; and while the description of the scene is remark-
ably graceful, the manner in which the dialogue is introduced
and the entertainment at length brought to a close, affords an
example of dramatic unity not to be found in the other works.
The resemblance of this dialogue to that of Plato's of the same
name, and the dilferenees, have given rise to much difficulty and
many conjectures First there is the difficulty of determining
which work was written first, and then determining with what
object the later work was composed. It has been supposed that
Xenophon first wrote his work and then Plato composed his
Symposium ;is a criticism of Xenophon's and an attack on its
author. But as there are no other traces of hostility between
these two pupils of one master, this theory may lie rejected. If
we suppose; that Xenophon's work was the earlier, we may
indeed say that Plato in his Symposium stated his views with-
out any intention of implying a criticism on those of Xenophon,
but this we can only do by closing our eyes to many of the
points of difference. Further, there still remains the question
whether Xenophon's work was the earlier; and, in the absence
of external data for dating the two compositions, we are thrown
on to internal evidence, which Boems to point toau acquaintance
on Xenophon's part not only with the Symposium of Plato, hut
also with the J'hadrus. It is, however, hard to believe that
HISTOKY : XENOPHON. 36 I
Xenophon did possess this acquaintance with Plato's works,

and the suspicion is therefore aroused that the Symposium
which goes under the name of Xenophon is not a genuine
work.
Finally, the two Symposiums had to a question which, though
it scarcely properly belongs to the sphere of this book, may on
account of its interest be briefly alluded to here. It is whether
Plato or Xenophon reproduces Socrates the more faithfully.
On the one hand, Xenophon was no philosopher, and therefore,
it is argued, was incapable of fully understanding Socrates;
while Plato's genius was in accord with that of Socrates and
capable of reflecting it. On the other hand, it is said that
Xenophon's very want of philosophical genius is a guarantee
that he has transmitted to us a faithful image of Socrates;
while Plato has necessarily invested the teaching of Socrates
with the hues of his own genius. On these conflicting views
we may remark, that if the Memorabilia were reports of Socrates'
conversation made at the time by Xenophon, we might credit
Xenophon's account of Socrates with greater accuracy than that
of Plato. If even Xenophon, composing his philosophical works
many years after the death of Socrates, had relied purely on his
memory for the conversations which he professes to report, we
might believe that the treacherousness of memory was the only
impediment to our believing in the superior accuracy of Xeno-
phon. Put the (Eronomicus suffices to show that in Xenophon
we have not to do merely with a writer striving to give an
exact account of what he has heard, but with a writer who is
giving the general impression made on him by certain scenes.
In the CEconomicus we And dissertations on Persian matters put
into the mouth of Socrates, which are much more probably the
result of Xenophon's own experience than the utterance of
Socrates ; while the fact that in the same work Xenophon pro-
fesses to have heard a conversation between Socrates and Crito-
bulus which he can scarcely have been present at, seems to show
that he allowed himself considerable license in his personal
recollections of Socrates. In tine, if we have to judge whether
the impression made on Xenophon by Socrates' life and charac-
ter was or was not more like the reality than that made on
Plato, there can be little doubt that we must prefer Plato. In
Plato we have indeed something more than Socrates, but in
Xenophon we have considerably less.
CHAPTER V.
OTHER HISTORIANS.
Ctesias of Cnidus in Caria was a contemporary of Xenophon.

He was a physician by profession, and belonged to the family
of the Asclepiadse. In b.c. 315 he became attached as court-phy-
sician to the Persian king Artaxerxes Mnemon, and remained in
that capacity for seventeen years in Persia, when he returned
to Greece and settled in Sparta. His long residence in Persia
inspired him with the idea and afforded him the opportunity of
writing a history of Persia. This work, the Persica, consisted
of twenty-three books. The first three books dealt with the
Assyrian monarchy ; the next three with the Medes ; the next
seven related the foundation of the Persian empire down to the
time of Xerxes, whilst the remaining books brought down the
history to the time of Ctesias himself. This work has not sur-
vived to our times, but Diodorus Siculus has preserved the
substance of much of the Assyrian and Median portion of the
history ; while other quotations from the Persica have been
made by Photius, Athenaus, and Plutarch. In addition to the
Persica, Ctesias also wrote an Indica, in which he gathered
together all the legends and information he could obtain in
Persia about India. This work survived certainly till the time
of Nero, but has only come down to us in an abridgment
The historical credibility of Ctesias has an interest for us,
even though we do not possess his works, because not only did
his statements conflict with those of Herodotus, but he very
emphatically accused Herodotus of falsity. There can be little
doubt that Ctesias had much better materials for an Oriental
history than had Herodotus. He not only lived for seventeen
years among the Persians, but he spoke their language and had
access to the royal archives. Even with our fragmentary ac-
quaintance with his work-, we can see that, in consequence of
his superior opportunities, his work was, as history, in one respect
superior to that of Herodotus. Whereas Herodotus conceives
Oriental history from a wholly Greek point of view, assigning
k customs, modes of thought* and motives to the Medea
and Persians ; Ctesias, on the other hand, owing to his acquaint-
ance with Persian life and his access to Persian documents,
thoroughly realised the Persian view of life, and was at least
free from the error of ascribing manners and motives to the
Persians which were quite alien to them. Put credibility in a
HISTORY: OTHER HISTORIANS. 363
historian requires something more than the opportunity of using

good materials. The historian must he honest and capable.
Whether Ctesias was capable, we have no direct means of ascer-
taining, but it is not probable that he was in advance of his age
in the investigation of historical truth, or that he could distin-
guish between good and bad evidence for events of remote anti-
quity. His honesty is open to more serious doubts. His Indira
was generally regarded in antiquity as abounding in falsehoods;
and, further, he seems to have represented himself as engaged
in a diplomatic character after the battle of Cnnaxa, which, as
far as we can judge, was not the case. This inclination to ex-
aggerate his own importance at the expense of the truth pro-
bably receives another exemplification in his eagerness to attract
attention to himself by loudly calling Herodotus a liar.
A loss much more to be regretted than the disappearance of
Ctesias' works is that of Theopompus' histories. Theopompus
was born of good family in Chios about B.C. 380. At an early
age he shared the exile of his father, who was banished from
Chios because of his sympathy or his intrigues witli the Lace-
daemonians. This, however, had no ill effect upon the educa-
tion of Theopompus, who became the most distinguished pupil
of the celebrated orator Isocrates at Athens. After this Theo-
pompus made extensive travels, and he himself said that there
was no Pan-Hellenic festival and no important town in which
he had not delivered a speech and left behind him a reputation.
About B.c. 350 he won the prize which was offered for orators
by the Carian queen Artemisia in honour of 'her deceased hus-
band Mausolus. He was eventually restored to his native Chios,
thanks to Alexander of Macedon, and there led the Macedonian
party. When, however, the anti-Macedonian party gained the
upper hand he was forced to flee, and, after seeking a refuge in
vain in various Greek towns, he found shelter in Egypt. The
date, place, and manner of his death are unknown.
Theopompus was a prolific writer. In addition to numerous
epideictic speeches, he composed a Hellenica in twelve books,
and a Pliilijypica in fifty-eight. His history of Greece covered
the period from B.C. 411, at which the history of Thucydides
ceases, to the sea-fight of Cnidus in B.C. 394. His Philippic^
was a history of Greece during the reign of Philip of Macedonia,
B.C. 360 to B.C. 336. The enormous extent of the latter is
accounted for by the fact that it was full of long episodes, in
winch not even the name of Philip occurred. Indeed, when
the later Philip excluded extraneous matter of this kind from
the work, it was found that of the fifty-eight books of the
Philippica only sixteen were left relating to Philip. This helps

us to understand the remark made by Isocrates with regard to
his two pupils Theopompus and Ephorus, that the latter needed
the spur, the former the rein. The historical work of Theo-
pompus seems to have been marked by great impartiality and
considerable power. He was not blind either to the merits or
the faults of Philip, and he brought both into strong relief.
His criticism of the Athenians of his time is severe : the young
men devoted themselves to hetrerae and flute-players, the older
men to dicing, and the whole population to festivals and feast-
ing rather than to the affairs of the state. He seems to have
hail the power of psychological analysis and of divining motives,
especially of the less creditable kind. Pie had strong aristo-
cratical tendencies, but was not prevented by them from doing
justice to the greatness of Pericles; and although in some cases
personal prejudice seems to have had undue but not unnatural
weight with him, he seems to have been honourably distin-
guished both by the. desire and the capacity to tell the truth.
Prom Thucydides he differed in two important respects; he
wrote much more in quantity, and consequently much less care-
fully ;and he was a purely literary, not a practical man, as was
shown by his descriptions of battles, which not unfrequently,
when compared with the localities in which the battles actually
took place, were seen to be quite impossible.
Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates who needed the spur, also
wrote a history in thirty books, from the return of the Hera-
clidse to the siege of Perinthus, B.C. 341, which was continued
by his son Demophilus. Ephorus was born in the little town
of Cyme in Êolis, probably about b.u. 3S0. He was sent by
his father to Athens to be educated as an orator and a practical
statesman under Isocrates; but when be bad gone through the
ordinary course of Isocrates, he. had made such little way that
his father paid a second fee of a thousand drachmae, and had
him put through the course again. Even then be was none the
bettor lifted for practical life, although he had made advance
enough to win the crown which Isocrates offered every month
to his most successful pupil. Accordingly, being possessed of
independent means, In' devoted himself, on the advice of Iso-
crates, to writing history. Although he seems to have been
ju>tly ranked in antiquity as inferior to Theopompus, Ins con-
ception of history ami of the methods of historical investiga-
tion shows a distinct advance on his predecessors who had
devoted themselves to the history of remote times. He was
the first author to compose a universal history. He seems to
HISTORY : OTHER HISTORIANS. 365
have recognised in theory the distinction between mythical and

historical times, though in practice he failed always to observe
the distinction, much as in the same way lie wrote on style,
though not in good style. In selecting his authorities for
ancient history, he seems to have recognised the necessity of
obtaining contemporary evidence wherever possible, and with
this object he quoted verses of Tyrtams and Alcman, and
utilised inscriptions. But even here he failed in discretion.
For the time of Pericles he took as his authorities the comic
poets, who were, indeed, contemporary, but not trustworthy.
Finally, we seem to find the measure of the man — an amiable
man indeed — in what Strabo tells us : his affection for his little
native town was unbounded, and at the close of each section of
his history he always remarks, " during this period the Cymseans
remained quiet."
Simonides of Cos, according to Suidas, lived before the Pelo-
ponnesian war, and wrote a Genealogy, apparently mythical,
in four books. Herodorus of Heraclea was a contemporary of
Socrates. He seems to have endeavoured to extract history
from epic poems which have not survived to our time, and to
have written works on Heracles and the Argonauts, in which
he treated geographical and chronological questions at length.
Ion, the dramatic poet, is said to have written, in addition to
the Epidemiol, a work on the colonisation of Chios. Stesim-
brotus of Thasos, a contemporary of Pericles, lived and taught
at Athens. He spent much labour on explaining Homer alle-
gorically, and one of his pupils, Antimachus, seems to have
been urged by his example to undertake the task of editing
Homer. His work on Themistocles, Thucydides, and Pericles,
seems to have been not so much history as a violent political
attack upon those politicians, and quite devoid of any value for
purposes of history. Hippias the Elean, a learned Sophist, made
a List of Victors in the Olympian Games. Anaximander of
Miletus, not to be confused with the philosopher, was a con-
temporary ofCtesias, and wrote a mythical history entitled the
Heroologia. Critias, the chief of the Thirty Tyrants, not only
was an orator, a philosopher, a dramatist, and a writer of politi-
cal elegy, but also wrote on the Constitution of Sparta, the
Constitution of Thessaly, and, more doubtful, on the Constitu-
tion ofAthens. Sophsenetus of Stymphalus wrote an account
of the expedition of Cyrus entitled the Anabasis, in which he
had himself taken part. Cratippus wrote a continuation of
Thucydides' history, covering the same period as Theopompus
in his Hellenica dealt with. Aristippus of Cyrene wrote a
History of Africa. A History of Sicily was written by Hermias

of Methymna ; histories of Greece by Dionysodorus, a Boeotian,
and by Anaxis, also a Boeotian ; a History of Amphipolis and of
Greece from the earliest times to the death of Philip by Zoilus
the Homeromastix ; a History of the Sacred War by Cephiso-
dorus ; a History of Africa by Theochrestus ; histories of Persia
by Heraclides of Cyme and by Dino ; a History of Egypt by
Aristagoras of Miletus, who is not to be confounded with either
the author of the Ionic revolt or the comic poet of that name ;
while Dionysius the elder, tyrant of Syracuse, and Theocritus
of Chios, a Sophist, are also mentioned as historians. A rela-
tion by marriage of Dionysius the elder was Philistus of Syra-
cuse. Although an adherent of tyranny, he was banished by
Dionysius, and in exile he composed his History of Sicily in
seven books, which began a century before the Trojan Avar, and
came down to the capture of Agrigentum in B.c. 406, thus
including the reign of the elder Dionysius. He was recalled
from exile by the younger Dionysius, and began a history of
his reign, which, however, he did not live to complete. The
opinion of antiquity was adverse to Philistus, who is spoken of
as a petty sycophant, who wrote his history to natter Dionysius
ami obtain a revocation of his sentence of exile. But, in accept-
ing this verdict, we must allow for the fact that its unfavourable
character was probably due in part to the exaggerations of
Timreus, a later historian. Philistus seems to have imitated
Thucydides — according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus he carried
his imitation so far as to leave his work incomplete !— and to
have plagiarised from his account of the Sicilian expedition.
The uncompleted history of Philistus was continued by Athanis
(or Athanas) of Syracuse. Other writers of Syracusan history
were Antandioa and Pallias. Here, finally, we may mention
/Eneas, surnamed the Tactician, who wrote on strategics, a work
in several books, of which one only, on sioge defence, has come
down to us. Its literary worth is of the slightest. The devia-
tions from the best Attic, which are a feature of Xenophon's
6tyle, are carried by iEneas to the point of barbarism,
BOOK II.
ORATORY.
CHAPTER
M I.
THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC AND THE FIRST LCG0GRAIHER3.
Eloquence at all times existed among the Greeks, but of

oratory we find no traces until the time of the Peloponnesian
war. In Homer eloquence ranks as high as doughty deeds ; 1
Kestor,2 Odysseus,3 and Menelaus have each his own style, dis-
tinguished and characterised in a manner which shows the
existence and appreciation of eloquence in the earliest times.4
Most of the tyrants in the various cities of Greece owed the
power they usurped in no small degree to the eloquence which
enabled them to gain ascendancy over the people, and the exist-
ence of such proper names as Pythagoras, Euagoras, Protagoras,
&c. — all implying abilities in speaking — shows the value com-
monly set upon a quality so useful in political life. Even with-
out the express testimony of Thucydides,5 we should have no
hesitation in ascribing the achievements of Themistocles to his
powers of eloquence ; and the thunders of Pericles, though their
echoes reach our ears only in a few phrases which Aristotle
has preserved, are testified to by both the historian and the
comedians6 of his time.
In all these cases, however, the triumphs of eloquence were
due rather to matter than manner. It was the force of Themis-
tocles' genius
influenced theirandaudience
the comprehensive
: whatever grasp of Pericles'
of charm there wasmind that
in their
speeches, though not without effect upun their hearers, was
1 II. ix. 443. 2 II. i. 248. s //. iii. 212.
4 For an explicit recognition of the power of eloquence, cf. Od. viii. 167.
6 i. 138 : kclI <L p.ev fiera xe</><*s ^X0' xal ^V") yaaffdai otos re.
6 Arist. Ach. 530 : HepiKXerjs ovXvfiwios ijcrpairT
'EXXdSo. (jjpdrra. twetcilNL '-tjj>
$68 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
probably not premeditated or deliberately aimed at by tbe

speakers. Speech is an instrument for the communication of
ideas and feelings, which has to be used for some considerable
time before the instrument itself becomes an object of attention,
and before its capacities are realised, improvements added or
beauty consciously imparted to it. It is only when men have
come to recognise that ihe end at which eloquence aims can be
better attained when aided by art, that native and untutored
eloquence becomes finished oratory.
For the development of eloquence the first requisite is
freedom of speech. Under an Asiatic despotism there is no
public speaking : in a Homeric aristocracy there was lacking
the reaction of audience on speaker, which is essential to
eloquence. It is only when a free citizen must rely on words
to influence or to guide his fellow-citizens that eloquence can
grow. In the next place, when the eloquence which is the
fruit of political freedom has been called into existence, its
further development is conditioned by the general culture of
the time. The lower the level of education in the audience,
the lower the quality of eloquence capable of being used
with effect. When, however, in consequence of the spread
of culture, the general body of citizens becomes more critical,
eloquence, to effect its object, must rise in quality. The third
condition on which the rise of oratory depends is the conception
of the. possibilities of prose composition. Poetry is the first
form which a literature takes, and, owing to the action of
" the cake of custom," it is only when poetry has run most of
its course that the possibility dawns on men of investing prose
with literary merit.
We now are in a position to recognise that, although previ-
ously eloquence had existed in many Greeks as a faculty and a
gift, it was not until the concurrence of the conditions we have
enumerated that oratory was possible as an art. Al Athens
the political freedom of speech which is the first requisite for
the growth of eloquence followed the Persian wars; and the
Athenians had not long enjoyed this condition before tho
Sophists by their encyclopaedic kc md their systematic
instruction brought about the second requisite, that of an
elevation of the standard of general culture. At the same
time, too, and indirectly owing to the labours of the Sophists,
history, in the shape of Herodotus' work, demonstrated by
example the possibility of literary prose
Among the Sophists mention must he made of Protagoras,
who specially exercised some influence on the development of
oratory: the beginnings of rhetoric. 369
oratory. Protagoras of Abdera (b.c. 485-415) offered the youth

of Athens an education of a general description which should
fit them for all the requirements of life ; and public speaking,
being one of the chief requirements of life at Athens, was
naturally included in this education. By means of his dialectic
he professed to enable his pupils, without being geometers, to
defeat a geometer in argument, and generally to make the
weaker argument victorious.1 It is important also to notice
that Protagoras composed "common-places"2 of general applica-
bility, which he made his pupils learn and introduce into their
speeches.
But while the Sophists from the East were either directly,
as Protagoras, or indirectly, as Prodicus and Hippias, preparing
the ground at Athens, the seeds of oratory were being sown
in the West ; for although Athens was the eventual home of
Hellenic oratory, she was in the earlier stages of the art out-
stripped bythe colonies. The eloquence of Themistocles was
practised and that of Pericles was prepared, while the pupils
of the Sophists committed portions of their speech to memory
before proceeding to deliver it, but in all these cases method
was wanting and theory was unknown. It was in Sicily that
the first attempts were made to provide a theory of rhetoric.
The Sicilians had the reputation of being a controversial
people,3 and it was from the practical needs of the time that
the theory of rhetoric was wrought out.4 When the tyrant
Thrasybulus was overthrown in Syracuse and a democracy was
established, innumerable lawsuits for the restitution of pro-
perty, alleged to have been violently taken by the tyrant and
his creatures from the lawful owners, were instituted, and the
practical necessity of defending or regaining one's own by
speaking before a democratic court of law brought into pro-
minence the advantage of knowing how to make an intelligible
and effective speech. Thus, to meet the needs of those who
were or might be forced into law, Corax framed a rudimentary
theory of rhetoric.5 This consisted of little more than dis-
tinguishing and stating the parts of which a speech should
consist — the introduction, exposition, arguments, subsidiary
remarks, and peroration — and bringing into prominence the
1 rbv iJTTW \6yov Kpeirru) iroitiv. 8 t6ttoi, loci.
3 Cic. Brut. 46 (quoting from Aristotle) : quod esset acuta ilia gens et con-
troversa natura.
4 Ibid. Itaque ait Aristoteles cum eublatis in Sicilia tyrannis res private
longo intervallo iudiciis repeterentur, turn prinram e oontroversia 11.it am
artem et praecepta Coracem efc Tisiam conscripsisse.
6 t4x"V-
2 A
argument from probability.1 This argument, which was still

further developed by Tisias, the pupil of Corax, whether used
to supplement or to take the place of evidence, consisted, as its
name implies, in demonstrating how probable, a priori, it was
that what the speaker alleged really happened.
The law-courts of Athens, though fur different reasons, were
as busy as those of Syracuse, and thus, as the conditions of the
two places were similar, it is easy to see how readily the rhetoric
of Sicily was transferred to the soil of Attica. This transfer-
rence was not effected by Gorgias, as is sometimes said, although,
the way for it was prepared by him. Sent in B.C. 427 by his
native city, Leontini, to implore the aid of Athens against Syra-
cuse, Gorgias made a deep impression on the Athenians by the
brilliance of his oratory. Gorgias' oratory, however, was not
based on the theory of Corax or Tisias, nor did it owe its success
to this. It was not by method or arrangement, but by the
mere beauty (as it was then considered) of his diction that
Gorgias gained his fame and roused the Athenians to a sense
of what was possible in oratory. Tested by the standard of
later oratory, Gorgias cannot be ranked high. As was natural
at a time when prose was only beginning to exist, Gorgias con-
ceived but inadequately the difference between it and poetry,
and consequently foisted into his prose expressions suited only
to poetry. His fragments (for the two speeches, the Encomium
and the speech for Palamedes ascribed to him are of doubtful
authenticity) show much extravagance of antithesis and paral-
lelism, and suffer from a plethora of words.
The theory of rhetoric Gorgias did not teach, and in point of
style, in his endeavour to compensate by poetry of expression
for the loss of the metre of verse, he exercised more influence
on the prose of Thucydides than on Athenian forensic oratory.
At Athens, as at Syracuse, many a man found himself in the
position of having to appear in a law-court without being able
to make a speech. This gave rise at Athens to the practice of
procuring some one else to write the needful speech, and then
committing it to memory. The men who wrote these speeches,
and thus developed the idea suggested by the common-places of
Protagoras and Gorgias, were called logographers.8 Their im-
portance istwofold. In the first place, they raised oratory to an
1 «V6s.
2 Schol. Plat. Phtrdr. \\ 31 7, Bekk : \oyoypdtpovs yap {kclXow ol ira\aiol
roi'S (irl p.i<r0tp \6yovs ypdtpovras nai nnrpaaKovrai airrovs et's diKaarripia, fnjro-
pas oi rovs 61' eavrun' X^yoiras.
oratory: the beginnings of rhetoric. 371
art ; and next, they made it, what it had not hitherto been, a
department of literature.
Both these results were due to the practice, introduced by
the logographers, of writing speeches. Previously, statesmen,
being concerned only with the practical object of carrying out
their plans, and not interesting themselves in developing their
speeches artistically, had no reason for writing them out before-
hand, or, when they had attained their object, for publishing
them subsequently. And even when the practice of composing
and publishing speeches had established itself, the traditions of
statesmanship were opposed to a politician's descending to the
level of a Sophist in this respect. For not only were the
Sophists suspected of speaking rather for effect than truth, but
they also received money for their services, which was repug-
nant to Athenian sentiment. The logographers, on the other
hand, were led by professional reasons to write out the whole
of a speech for a client, and having done so, when the trial was
at a successful end, were naturally inclined to publish the
speech for the sake of advertising their ability. Thus we owe
to the logographers the literature of oratory.
The earliest known logographer is Antiphon of Athens. Of
him we know practically little more than is told us in the
famous chapter of Thucydides,1 which gave rise in antiquity to
the conjecture that the historian was a pupil of the orator.
Born in the time of the Persian wars, rather younger than
Gorgias and some years older than Thucydides, Antiphon, the
son of Sophilus, of the deme of Rhamnos, gave early proof of
his oligarchical tendencies in politics by defending the peoples
of Samothrace and Lindus against charges as to the non-pay-
ment by them of their tribute as allies to Athens. After the
defeat of the Sicilian expedition, he took the main share in
establishing the tyranny of the Four Hundred. On the failure
of this revolution, Antiphon joined the extreme oligarchs in
their resolve to make — in opposition to the moderate oligarchs
— no concessions to the people, and departed as member of an
embassy to treat with Sparta for assistance on any terms against
the people. When he returned to Athens he was impeached
before the council ; was thereupon charged with treason, con-
demned, and executed (b.c. 41 1).2
1 viii. 68.
2 The speech which ho made in his defence, entitled 4v ry irepl /nera-
<rT(ic€ws, and which has not come down to us, was the greatest he ever com-
posed, and is referred to in the Eudeminn Ethics, iii. 5 : ko.1 ftaWov 6m
<Ppovrlcti(v a.VT)p fi€ya\6\f/vxos ri 8ok€i ivl awovSakp ij iroXXois rott Tvyx,d-
In the troubled times of the later years of the Peloponnesian

war, Antiphon's is a dark and mysterious figure. He was,
according to Thucydides, the greatest orator of his day, and yet
he himself practically never spoke in public. His talent Mas
so great as to be suspicious in the eyes of the people. He toiled
for years in the darkness and underground workings of oligar-
chical clubs and secret societies, and only emerged to the sur-
face of politics voluntarily when he could at last establish the
tyranny of the Four Hundred. Though destitute of the politi-
cal morality which teaches that an existing constitution should
be changed only by legal agitation, faithless to the oath which
bound him, as other citizens, to maintain the democracy of
Athens, author of a reign of terror which was based on metho-
dical and wholesale assassination, Antiphon is called a man of
unsurpassed virtue by Thucydides. The explanation of this is
that he was an oligarch distinguished by two qualities ; he had
no personal ambition, and he was faithful to his cause. He
worked for his party during many years without putting him-
self forward for office or reward, and, when the hour of triumph
came,
Hundred he didfell,not
he abuse it for
did not, likepersonal gain. desert
Theramenes. "When his
the cause,
Four
nor, like his fellow-ambassadors to Sparta, fly from the danger
incurred by returning to Athens. He would sacrifice to Sparta
everything that gave an Athenian cause to be proud of his
country in order to destroy the democracy of Athens, but he
faced death rather than betray his party.
Few as are the works of Antiphon which have come down to
us (and although probably all of these few fall within the ten
years which follow the peace of Nicias), they not • nly show us
the beginnings of Attic prose, but they also permit us to see
Attic prose and Attic oratory in the process of development.
As we have already said, the practice of writing a whole speech
for another person to deliver was but the extension of the sys-
tem of composing "common-places," or general arguments to be
inserted in speeches otherwise extemporary. The speeches of
Antiphon, however, were not only composed to be delivered as
wholes, but they also contain many common-places repeated in
the various speeches, and thus we have present in Antiphon
both the old system of the rhetoricians and the new system of
the logograph aed to take the place of the old.
Again, one of the first things that received attention and
illustration at the hands of the Sicilian rhetoricians was the
vovaw, wavep 'Avrupwv itprj irpbt 'Aydffwva KaTtif/Tjcpia ntvos rr)v airoKoyiav
iwainaavra.
ORATORY : THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC. 373
argument from general probability;1 and here, too, Antiphon

betrays the rudimentary stage in which his oratory still is.
His strength lies mainly in his treatment of general probabili-
ties, and he is never weary of reproducing such arguments in a
variety of forms. The analysis and development of evidence
could only come later in the history of forensic oratory, and
while this, the true mode of procedure, remained in embryo,
general probability and matter really foreign to the point natu-
rally received the orator's greatest attention. Correlated with
this immaturity is Antiphon's inferiority in the exposition of
the facts of his case. His own mind and the sophistical temper
of his time impelled him to neglect the simple business of nar-
rating facts, in order that he might devote himself to the more
congenial work of employing his subtlety in a priori arguments
and ingenious hypotheses.
A further indication of immaturity is to be noticed in the
absence of individual ethos2 from the speeches of Antiphon.
His speeches have an ethos, but it is the same in all. They
all have the same character of manly simplicity and honest
direct!. ess. But there is no attempt to make any difference
between the character of the speech put in the mouth of the
young Mitylenaean who is defending himself from the charge of
having murdered Herodes, and that of the speech of the Athe-
nian charged with the death of a choreutes, who had discharged
the duties of choregus more than once, was a member of the
Council, and must therefore have been of advanced years and
large experience. From an artistic point of view such indis-
crimination must be considered a defect, and from a practical
point of view it is a still more serious fault ; for the practice of
employing a logographer, though much adopted, was not con-
sidered very creditable,3 and consequently it would be a practi-
cal duty of the logographer to suit the speech to the character
and position of the speaker as much as possible, in order to
avoid arousing suspicion. Accordingly, in Lysias we find that
each speech has its individual ethos.
These immaturities are naturally found with the greatest dis-
tinctness inthe Tetralogies. These speeches were composed by
Antiphon as common forms, and it has been conjectured that
they formed the illustrative part of a work by him on the
theory of rhetoric;4 but as the existence of such a work is
1 ek-6s.
2 By ethos is technically meant the impression produced on the hearer by
the character of the speaker, as revealed 111 his speech.
3 Plato, Euthyd. 2890; Phccd. 2570, D ; and cf . Met. ad Alex. 36.
merely conjecture, the conjecture can hardly be adopted. The

Tetralogies, as the name implies, consisted each of four speeches,
for they treat of charges of homicide ; and at Athens in such
cases the prosecution spoke first, the defence replied, the prose-
cution then rejoined, and, finally, the defence concluded with
another speech.
The First Tetralogy is based on the supposition that an Athe-
nian citizen has been found killed, and that another Athenian,
against whom the deceased was about to bring a lawsuit, is
accused of murdering him. The first speech for the prosecution
commences with a warning that the defendant's cunning is so
great as to make it difficult to prove a case against him. How-
ever, in the first place, the death must have been the result of
deliberate murder, for the facts of the case exclude any other
supposition. Thieves would have taken the deceased's clothes ;
time and place show that it could not have been the result of a
quarrel : if it had been a drunken fray, his fellow-drinkers would
have come forward ; and the deceased could not have been killed
in mistake for some one else, for his slave also was killed. In
the second place, the general probabilities point to the defendant
— smarting under previous defeats and dreading still farther
disgrace in a pending lawsuit — as the man who committed the
murder. Finally, the murdered slave recognised him, and before
dying stated the fact.
The defendant replies :— If he is so cunning, would he
commit a murder of which he was sure to be immediately
suspected ? However, in the first place, the prosecution has
failed to show deliberate murder, for thieves might have been
frightened off before they could strip the deceased. But granted
it was a case of murder, what could be more probable than
that some other enemy of the murdered man committed the
murder, knowing suspicion would fall at once on the defen-
dant? In the next place, as to the slave's evidence, the slave
might easily be mistaken ; and if it is said that the slave was
probably not mistaken, against thai probability must be set the
probability that if the defendant planned the murder he would
not run the risk of detection by being present in person. As
for the impending lawsuit, the danger from it would be as
nothing compared with the danger of committing such a murder.
Finally, the. defendant appeals to his services to the state.
In its rejoinder, the prosecution reiterates that the case is
one of deliberate murder. H the thieves were frightened off,
where are the people who frightened them 1 The attempt,
moreover, to inculpate some other enemy of the murdered man,
ORATORY : THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC. 375
less endangered and therefore less open to suspicion, fails, be-

cause those less in danger would have less motive. In the next
place, the slave's evidence remains unshaken ; for the proba-
bility is that the defendant was alone present, as he thereby
made sure that the deed was done, and avoided the danger of
being betrayed by an accomplice. As for the danger of com-
mitting murder being greater than that from the impending
lawsuit, the opposite is the, case. The defendant had no chance
of evading the lawsuit, but he had a chance of not being
brought to trial for the murder. Again, the defendant says that
the knowledge that he would be at once suspected was enough
to prevent his committing such a murder. But if the fear of
being suspected was sufficient to divert him from the attempt,
how much more would it deter people with less motive for
murder? Finally, his services to the state show his wealth,
not his innocence.
The defendant replies, first, that the hypothesis of thieves
still holds good, for the passers-by, whose coming frightened off
the thieves, would themselves be afraid of being found with two
dead bodies. Secondly, the slave's evidence cannot be admitted :
he was not tortured, and as his approaching death assured him
that he could not be tortured for falsehood, he naturally gave
the answer his owners wanted. Finally, the defendant can
prove an alibi. (This decisive point is reserved till now, be-
cause now the prosecution cannot reply.)
In the Tetralogies, although the case is framed rather to suit
the arguments than the arguments the case, Antiphon shows
his. subtlety and keenness in argument to the best advantage;
but these speeches also show forensic oratory in the process of
development. Intended as models, they present to our eyes the
intermediate step between theory and practice. They naturally
contain no exposition of the facts of the case, for they are meant
not for a jury, but for the education of Antiphon's pupils, and,
stripped of everything which would encumber the argument,
they lay before us the method of procedure adopted by a
skilful advocate. At the same time, as we have said, in the
excessive use of the argument from probability and of
ralitics, and in the absence of any attempt at individual ethos,
they mark an immature stage f forensic oratory.
It is, however, not only in the treatment of the subject-
matter that the Tetralogies are tentative : their style also is
inferior to the level attained in the speeches delivered in real
trials. Antiphon is traditionally regarded as the representative
of the severe style of oratory.1 This style has for its character-
1 aiKTTTjpa apuovta.
istic dignity and majesty, not life and movement, and it is not
periodic. These qualities of the severe style are found to excess
in the Tetralogies. In the real speeches, Antiphon, for prac-
tical purposes, modified the elevated but stiff style which lie
felt at liberty to employ in the Tetralogies.
Antiphon is classed by Dionysius of Halicarnassus with
/KmIiyIus and Pindar as representative of the " severe" style
generally; and Antiphon may be called the iEschylus of Ora-
tory, for the changes which came over oratory subsequently
are analogous to those experienced by Tragedy in the hands
of Sophocles and Euripides. Moreover, the religious views of
Antiphon, being of the same old-fashioned stamp as those of
iEschylus, naturally find expression in terms which, appropriate
as they were to the ideas intended to be conveyed, were inevit-
ably disappearing from common use in proportion as these ideas
themselves were being left behind by the movement of thought.
In this preference, partly instinctive and partly deliberate, for
archaisms of language we have one of the elements which go
to make up the elevation and dignity of the " severe " style.
Amongst other elements may be noticed, so far as the vocabu-
lary of Antiphon is concerned, the use of poetical expressions.
Tins, doubtless, was inevitable while prose was young and the
position of poetry was dominant in literature ; but in the em-
ployment ofwords and expressions, which, without being poeti-
cal, were yet not usual in ordinary life, we have the indication
of a conscious endeavour to exalt the language of oratory above
that of ordinary of life. Still more unmistakable in this respect
is the evidence afforded by the use of words and of stiif combi-
nations ofwords peculiar to Antiphon himself. The traditional
and still powerful influence of poetry, on the other hand, is
responsible for the ornate epithets, the accumulation of syno-
nyms, and the use of periphrases.
Leaving the vocabulary of Antiphon, wo find that the severe
style is conventionally said to be not " periodic,'' but " running," 1
being thus opposed to the smooth style,2 of which Isocrates
is the representative. In the " running " style, the principal
word or words of the sentence come lirst, and then there follow
the attributes or qualifications of the principal word in a string.
Any or all of tl ments may be cut oil*, but the
head (so to speak) will still retain its vitality unimpaired. The
traditional example of such a style is to be found in the open-
ing words of Herodotus.3 In the periodic style, however, the
1 flpo/ieyrj X^£tj. a y\a<pvpa apuovla.

8 Kpoicros ty Ai<56$ p.tv y/vo$, wah 5^ AXudrrecj, ivpavvos 5Z (6t>(t.!)v tQ>v
ORATORY C THE BEGINNINGS OF RHETORIC. T>7 7
principal or independent word does not come first, but some

dependent word : thus the beginning of the period presupposes
the end, and cannot exist without it.
It would be incorrect to say that Antiphon writes in the
" running " style, if by that it were meant that he has no periods.
No author writes entirely in the "running" style. Even Hero-
dotus, when he abandons narrative for disquisition on the causes
or effects of historical events, naturally strives after periods.
Much more does this happen in those parts of Antiphon's
speeches which contain the arguments. This, however, is not
the only limitation which has to be placed on the statement
that Antiphon writes in the " running " style. It is characteristic
of the periodic style that the parts of which the periods are
made up are balanced with much cave : they are either made
equal in length, or, if unequal, then the longer is put at the end,
so that the weight of the sentence is thrown forward. This
balance of the parts of the periods, though specially distinctive
of Isocrates, the representative of the smooth style, is not absent
from Antiphon. The latter author is perpetually striving after
antitheses, and in a long sentence, in which the later clauses
(being antithetical and parallel to the earlier clauses) are deter-
mined in length and structure by the earlier clauses, the result
is a periodic arrangement of the strictest kind. Such antithetical
sentences occur so frequently in Antiphon as to produce mono-
tony, and lead not rarely to the insertion of padding solely for
the sake of filling out the sentence and completing the rhythm.
At the same time, in marked contrast to later writers, Antiphon
often quite deliberately makes his sentences as irregular as
possible. It is this irregularity, and the absence or misuse of
connecting particles, that give to Antiphon's speeches the slow
and deliberate movement which is sometimes mere stiffness, but
more often impressive and majestic.
Finalty, the early stage which Antiphon occupies in the
development of oratory is marked by the absence of most of
the "figures of speech"1 and all the "figures of thought."2
Under the "figures of speech" are included asyndeton, the
repetition of the same word or words at the beginning of suc-
cessive sentences (anaphora), the assonance of whole words
£vt6s "AXvos TroTa.fj.ov. Blass puts these words into the periodic style as
follows :— 'AXvclttov /j.ti> vibs i)v Kpoltroj, yivos St Av56s, tQiv ivrbs'Wvos xora-
fM\i Tvpavvos iOv£>v (Att. Bered., p. 122).
Note that by a "colon" is technically meautnot a complete sentence, but
a smaller whole capable of being pronounced in a single breath. Thus the
period just given includes three cola marked by the commas.
1 o~x.i]/J.o.Ta X^£ews. a o~xVfxaTa Stocot'ai.
(parechesis) or of the ends of words (homoioteleuton), questions

supposed to be put by the opposite side (hypophora), &c. The
"figures of thought" include irony, aposiopesis, feigned per-
plexity (aporesis), &c.
In this respect, as well as in point of style generally and in
the treatment of his subject-matter, Antiphon not only presents
to us an early stage of prose and of oratory, but also allows us
to see, even in those few works of his which have come down
to us, the process of development going on. In the speech
"Against a Step-mother on a Charge of Poisoning," if it is
genuine, we have Antiphon's style and powers of argument in
their most primitive and least developed form.
The speech " On the Murder of Herodes " shows him at his
best. Though not periodic in style, the speech is strengthened
throughout by the antitheses and parallelisms which, as we have
said, result in a periodic arrangement. The language is not so
archaic or so highly coloured as in the Tetralogies, for in his
real speeches Antiphon feels the necessity laid on the orator of
being readily intelligible to his hearers. The arguments are
lively, and in general we may say, that while the " Herodes "
presents to us the points peculiar to Antiphon and distinctive
of the " severe " style in a manner which makes the speech
sufficiently characteristic of the author, these points are yet so
modified as to meet the practical demands made on an orator.
The speech " On the Choreutes," though inferior in merit to
the "Herodes," is later in development. The language approaches
more nearly to that of ordinary life, and the speech possesses
more life and fire than do the rest. But although the more
sparing use of antitheses makes the "Choreutes" less artificial,
we miss to a large extent in this speech the stateliness of
Antiphon.
In conclusion, the merits of Antiphon must be tested, not by
comparison with the orators of later times, but by the standard
of his own age. This standard we have given to us in the
words of Thucydides, a contemporary and himself the represen-
tative in history, as was Antiphon in oratory, of the severe style.
Thucydides says of Antiphon that his two merits lay in the
power <>f his ideas and the clearness of his expression. Vivacious
or natural his style does not pretend to be, but to the clear and
dignified i □ of clever arguments he did attain ; and it is
in the success with which he realised the end which he proposed
to himself that the merit of Antiphon as an artist consists.
oratory: andocides and lysias. 379
CHAPTER II.
PRACTICAL ORATORY : ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS.
The name of Andocides is associated with, the mutilation of the

Hermse. In B.C. 415, when the Sicilian expedition was on the
point of sailing, Athens was thrown into a state of indescribable
alarm by the mutilation of all the images of Hermes throughout
the city. Such a deed could only have been executed by an
organised body of men, and must therefore have been the work
of one of those secret oligarchical clubs whose object was the
overthrow of the democracy. Further, as these oligarchs habi-
tually maintained relations with the enemies of Athens, a con-
certed attack from without was momentarily expected, though
from what quarter no man knew. To the anticipation of these
practical and immediate dangers were added in the minds of the
Athenians the yet greater calamities to be expected from the
wrath of the offended gods. From the age of Homer to the
latest times of the Roman Empire, the belief held that if the
gods of a city were tempted or driven to go over to the enemy,
defeat was inevitable ; and it must have been regarded as the
purpose of the mutilators to ensure by this insult to the gods
the defeat of the Sicilian expedition and the ultimate victory of
the Peloponnesian enemy.
The state of suspense in which the Athenianswere thus plunged
furnished the conditions favourable to the appearance of aspi-
rants after notoriety, and the demand for information created
the supply. Informers of various kinds were soon forthcoming
with tales calculated to exaggerate the existing alarm, and many
innocent persons were inculpated. At length Andocides, when
most of the real authors of the mutilation had escaped, and
when his father and other innocent relatives were along with
himself in danger of death, was prevailed on to reveal the truth.
According to his account, the mutilation was the wild exploit
of a club of young men — the "Mohocks" of the time — to which
he belonged. Whether Andocides himself actually took part
in the proceeding is difficult to say, but his revelations, reducing
the affair to its proper proportions, restored quiet to the city,
and thus for the time defeated the designs of Peisander and
other oligarchs, who for purposes of their own were at least foster-
ing the panic.
For thus interfering with the plans of Peisander, Andocides
soon paid the penalty; for he was banished by the action of
a decree of Isotimides, ostensibly directed generally against

those who had committed and confessed impiety, but really
against Andocides solely. Having spent some time in Cyprus
as a merchant, and having there rendered services to the
democracy of Athens, in 411, unaware of the overthrow of the
democracy by the Four Hundred, he returned to Athens, and
was lucky to escape from the hands of the tyrants with his life.
In 410, having rendered fresh services to Athens, he made
another attempt to establish himself in his native city. The
speech which he at this time made "on his return" is still
extant. It was, however, unsuccessful, and Andocides returned
to exile once more, until the amnesty of B.c. 403 restored him
to his country.
For some time Andocides lived in peace, discharging expen-
sive "liturgies" and otherwise serving his country ; but in B.C.
399, his enemies, reviving the old tales against him, charged him
with impiety and with breaking the decree of Isotimides, by
which he had originally been banished. In his defence he
delivered the speech on the Mysteries, and was acquitted.
In the fourth year of the Corinthian war, b.c. 390, he
appears again, and for the last time, to our view. Sent by the
Athenians with full powers to negotiate peace with Sparta, he
returned nevertheless to Athens, and laid before the people the
terms of the Spartans in the extant speech " On the Peace."
Andocides was not a rhetorician, but an orator. He received
no technical instruction in rhetoric and had no acquaintance
with the theory of speaking. His knowledge of oratory was
perfectly empirical, and such as could lie picked up by attend-
ance at the Ecclesia. He is generally acknowledged to be the
least worthy of the ten orators of the canon; but the fact that
he is included at all points to some good qualities in 1dm, and
he has at least the interest attaching to an orator who shows
the level to which at that time an Athenian of natural but
uncultivated eloquence could attain.
Perhaps the most obvious indication of his ignorance of the
theory of speaking is his inability to arrange his subject-matter.
The distinction between farts and inferences or arguments from
facts is an important one, and is marked by such writers as
Antiphon or Lysias by assigning distinct parts of the speech to
the narrative and to the argument, but of any such distinction
Andocides is quite innocent. His facts and his arguments pour
out just as they come to mind. Moreover, they continue to
pour out as long as any are left. To distinguish between the
essential and the nonessential facts of a tale implies professional
ORATORY : ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 38 I
skill quite as much as does discrimination in the arrangement

of the subject-matter ; and the lack of this professional skill
has for its result that Antiphon lets his facts run away with
him. Parentheses of great length are frequent, and lead to
many repetitions and much disorder. Terse Andocides cannot
be, and his want of brevity entails want of clearness.
Again, while in the case of Antiphon we saw that the
tendency of the technical orator was to develop, strength in
argument, in Andocides we see that the orator without technical
cultivation is unaccustomed to deal with general propositions
and arguments. Particulars, however, he can grasp, and thus he
is naturally led to convert everything into narrative. But, on
the other hand, this tendency to particulars and to copious
narrative, though distinct from the artistic brevity and clearness
of a Lysias, has by a law of compensation a strength of its own.
In the first place, the tendency is natural and leads to a
natural arrangement of the topics of the speech. Next, and
this is more important, the details in which Andocides delights
give a reality and vividness to his descriptions which constitute
his chief claim to rank as an orator. This graphic power is
considerably assisted by his practice of introducing dialogue
into his speeches. This practice is indeed only another charac-
teristic of the type of mind, or rather of the level of oratory,
which luxuriates in particulars and details. But what it lacks
in artistic repression it compensates for in vivacity and natural-
ness. Further, in Andocides, as in most cases, the mind which
finds a difficulty in generalisations but delights in the parti-
cular has a keen appreciation of the personal. Accordingly we
find that Andocides supplements his powers of setting a scene
vividly before our eyes with the power, equally graphic, of strik-
ing character-drawing.
In the language of Andocides we find the same qualities as
in the treatment of his subject-matter. His language is that of
ordinary everyday life, used without any straining either after
effect or after a definite artistic result. He has not the splen-
dour or the archaisms of Antiphon. Like Antiphon, however,
he has words and phrases of a poetical colour, but the method
of using them is entirely different in the two orators. By
Antiphon they are used with the deliberate object of realising
the conception which he had formed of an elevated and mag-
nificent style. In the case of Andocides, they fell from the
speaker's lips like his anecdotes and his details, just as they are
suggested by the association of ideas, in a manner perfectly
natural and quite inartistic; whereas Antiphon's general level
of language is lofty enough to admit of poetical expressions

being used without any great discord, and the vocabulary of
Andocides is such that these words act as a purple patch.
The style of Andocides is even more loose and sprawling
than might have been expected. The absence of a distinctly
periodic style in his predecessor, Antiphon, is remedied to a large
extent by his frequent use of antitheses and parallelisms ; but
as Andocides does not make any systematic or regular use even
of this form of composition, he is delivered over without hope
to clumsiness and long-windedness. Not only do his facts, but
his words run away with him. The want of artistic expression
and the lack of technical instruction are even more obvious in
the style than in the subject-matter of Andocides.
Of the four speeches which have come down to us under the
name of Andocides, one, the speech against Alcibiades, is cer-
tainly not genuine. Of the other three, the greatest is that " On
the Mysteries." In spite of its technical defects, this is a good
speech, not merely because it possesses all the good qualities of
Andocides which we have mentioned above, but because we
feel that the speaker kept touch throughout with his audience.
Giving us this impression, the speech possesses a reality which
many more artistic productions fail to produce. Specially notice-
able in this speech is the ethos. It was the speaker's object to
produce a good impression of himself among his hearers, and he
poses with great success.
In this last respect the speech " On his Return " is a great con-
trast to that " On the Mysteries." The ethos is equally marked,
but it is of a different kind. The impression produced in the
speech "On his Return" is not that of a man whose good con-
science assures him that he has nothing to fear, but of a man
who depends, and whose hopes are based, on admitting that he
relies purely on the good-will of his hearers. In other respects,
too, the speech "On his Return " is both less pleasing and less
good than that " On the Mysteries." The former is much more
artificial than the latter, and for that very reason inferior to it.
Andocides is only good when lie is natural. The "Return'' is
brief, and consequently the sentences are more compact, but in
other respects the condensation is that of amputation ; and An-
docides deprived of his details is shorn of bis strength. The
circumstances under which the Bpeech "On his Return" was
delivered did not afford Andocides much hope of success, and
he is consequently throughout chilled and depressed, lie never
reaches the comfortable warmth which is the condition of a good
anecdote, and is never sufficiently at his ease to fall into a
reminiscence or quotation from the poets. This does indeed
render his style more even, hut it deprives it of variety.
The speech "On the Peace," unjustly suspected of not heing
genuine, is inferior to that " On the Mysteries," but presents all
the characteristics of Andocides. It possesses no order or method
in the treatment of the subject-matter ; it runs mainly to narra-
tive, and abounds in parentheses and ill-constructed sentences.
It is vivid and natural, and presents instances of dialogue in the
Andocidean manner. It is patched with reminiscences from the
poets, and is generally inartistic. Moreover, and this is charac-
teristic of Andocides, the references to history are thoroughly
untrustworthy.
Lysias was the son of the Syracusan Cephalos, who had
settled as a resident alien at Athens, and in whose house Plato
lays the scene of his Republic. Lysias himself, although born
at Athens and in character wholly Attic, remained always a
metic. The year of his birth is uncertain. On the one hand,
as he went to Thurii at the age of fifteen, and Thurii was only
founded in B.C. 444, he cannot have been born at the earliest
before B.c. 459. On the other hand, he was senior to Isocrates,
and therefore was born before B.C. 436. From Thurii he was
driven out in B.c. 412 by the anti-Athenian party on the failure
of the Sicilian expedition. He returned to Athens, and there
lived in peace until the time of the Thirty Tyrants. In B.c.
404 the Thirty, veiling their real motive of plunder under poli-
tical accusations, attacked various Avealthy metics, among whom
were Lysias and his brother Polemarchos. The latter was exe-
cuted, but Lysias managed to escape from Athens to Megara,
There he rendered great services to the cause of the Athenian
democracy, and on the overthrow of the Thirty in B.C. 403 the
citizenship was accordingly conferred on him, but the decree,
owing to some informality, was, on the motion of a political
opponent, nullified. The first thing Lysias did on his return to
Athens was to appeal to the law for vengeance for the death of
his brother. The speech which he made on this occasion has,
in addition to its intrinsic merits, the interest of being the
earliest of his extant speeches, and is, further, the only speech
recorded to have been delivered by Lysias himself. From this
time on he must have worked hard as a logographer, for over
two hundred speeches by him were known to antiquity, although
only thirty-four speeches, whole or fragmentary, have comedown
to us. This activity as a logographer was probably rendered
necessary for him by the poverty to which the Thirty reduced
him. He died at the age of eighty, and of the later years of
his life nothing is known. But no work of his, so far as we

know, can be dated after B.C. 380. Of the thirty- four speeches
which we possess, the speech for Polystratus (xx.), that against
Andocidcs (vi.), that " To his Companions" (viii.), that " For the
Soldier" (ix.), and the Funeral Oration (ii.), must be rejected
as spurious. The remainder may be divided into epideictic,
deliberative, and forensic speeches. The epideictic speeches
are represented by a fragment (quoted by Dionysius of Halicar-
nassus,1 Lysias, c. 29) of the Olympic oration. An epideictic
speech is one delivered neither in debate nor in a court of law,
but, as its name implies, for the sake of showing off the oratori-
cal skill of the speaker. The existence of this class of speeches
is an indication of the fact that the literature of Greece was
oral: The early Sophists, as Hippias and Gorgias, when they
wished to display their skill in the new accomplishment of
prose composition, did not attempt to do so by publishing their
com positions, but attended the great festivals of Greece and
there recited their work. The choice of a subject on which to
hang their display was determined by the character of the festi-
vals, and as these were mostly pan-Hellenic, so was the subject
of "Olympic," and other speeches of the same kind. Gorgias
achieved much fame by his Olympic oration, in which he ex-
horted the Greeks to unity, and in B.C. 388 Lysias delivered his
Olympic oration on the same subject, and with special reference
to the need of common Greek action, under the leadership of
Sparta, to release Sicily from the tyranny of Dionysius. The
deliberative speeches of Lysias are represented by a fragment of
one only, entitled a " Plea for the Constitution." This was writ-
ten by Lysias for some citizen to deliver on an occasion when a
proposal was made that only those citizens who were landowners
should have the right of voting. The rest of his speeches aro
forensic.
Like Antiphon, Lysias was a logographer, but, unlike Anti-
phon, Lysias adapted the character of his speeches to the cha-
racter of the persons who were to deliver them, and from thi3
difference logically flow the distinctions which differentiate
Lysias from his predecessor. The considerations which infiu-
1 Dionysius of Halicarnassus (to be distinguished from Dionysius Thrax,
who wrote the fit st grammar, Dionysiua the elder, tyrant of Syracuse, who
wrote trageilits. and Dionysius of Simms. who wrote an epic poem in four
books entitled BacnraptKct), horn in Haliearnassus B.C. 70, came to Rome
nbout B.C. 30, and there taught rhetoric. Died B.C. 8. His largest work was
his 'FufiaiKT) 'A/>xa<°^07'a> m twenty books (of which nine remain), on the
v of Rome to the beginning of the Punic wars. He alBO wrote a nnn>
ber of works on rhetoric.
ORATORY : ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 385
enced Lysias in the direction of ethos and character-drawing

are not hard to conjecture. In the first place, he was an emi-
nently practical man, and his speeches had the business-like
object of winning the cause in which they were delivered.
The stories of his marvellous success, if not true, yet show the
reputation which he had for success, and this success would
have been much compromised if he had adhered to the fashion
of composing orations which might bring much literary fame to
the composer who wrote them, but could not be mistaken for
the words of the client who delivered them. To avoid rousing
a suspicion that the speaker had consulted a logographer was
the first duty of a practical speech-writer.
Eut, in the next place, Lysias was an artist, and his feeling
of proportion and harmony would make him instinctively shrink
from the jarring discrepancies which must regularly arise when
a logographer delivered to speakers varying in character speeches
which never varied in style. Lastly, Lysias was a student of
human nature, and, good as he was in argument, he knew per-
fectly well that men are influenced by. other means than reason.
He acted implicitly on what Menander formulates explicitly in
the words: "It is the character of a speaker, not his speech,
which persuades us." Subtly delineating in a favourable light
his client's character by means of strokes individually too fine
to arouse the suspicion of his hearers, Lysias succeeds in the
result in producing a strong feeling in favour of his client. This
ethos it is which gained him his practical success and has estab-
lished his literary fame.
Inasmuch as the ordinary man does not talk in lofty language,
and as it was the ordinary man who sought Lysias' services, it
is obvious that in the speeches which Lysias puts into his
clients' mouths, we cannot expect to find the magnificence of
Antiphon or the semi-poetry and florid colouring of Gorgias.
Lysias, in fact, is the representative, and, as far as oratory is
concerned, he may be said to be the inventor of the plain style.1
In liis diction is exemplified particularly what is meant by the
plain style. The forms of words which he uses belong to the
new Attic, and his words themselves belong to the vocabulary
of pure Attic. Furthermore, he uses his words in their right
and proper sense, observing those shades of- meaning and those
impalpable associations of ideas which, though they defy defini-
tion, determine decidedly whether a word under given circum-
stances can or cannot be used with correctness and prop]
Poetical words, archaisms, and unusual words are avoided. The
1 lax^ yivos, genus tenue. 2 B
practice of duplicating a word or idea by means of synonyms,

not unfrequently employed for decorative purposes by Antiphon,
is used by Lysias only for purposes of pathos. Artistic orna-
ment is unknown, with the exception of antithesis of the vari-
ous kinds ; but antithesis was too firmly ingrained in the oratory
of the day f< >r Lysias to escape from it. The few figures of speech
and thought which he uses, as asyndeton, polysyndeton, and
hypophora, are rather natural than rhetorical; while paromoia l
(i.e. assonances), so far from being artistic, are of essentially
popular origin, and characteristic of a rude stage of literature.
In expression Lysias is brief, concise, and clear. His sentences
arc pregnant, and he contrives to say in a few words what in
other people would need many words.
As all ornament and splendour is excluded from the plain
style, so. too, pathos in the strict sense2 is not to be attained by
it ; and partly for the same reason. The cases put into Lysias'
hands did not admit either of magniiicent language or much
appeal to the emotions. Partly, also, the renunciation of mag-
nificence inlanguage involves the renunciation of pathos. The
man who either can only or will only use everyday language is
thereby precluded from an oratorical appeal to the emotions.
On the other hand, so far as a simple recital of the bare facts
can touch the feelings, the plain style is capable of pathos, and
in Lysias we find this — the pathos of facts. In this respect he
is much aided by his power of setting before our eyes the scene
which he describes.3 This is effected not unfrequently by the
introduction of some trivial detail, which it is not below the
dignity of the plain style to record. Thus, in the speech against
Eratosthenes, the scene of the agents of the Thirty plundering
the house of Polemarchus is brought clearly before us by the
remark that they took the very ear-rings from his wife's ears.
To another speech, that on the murder of Eratosthenes, we may
refer for a picture of an Athenian interior, which, in its simplicity,
reality, and interest, is as vivid as anything in Greek literature.
The power of vividness implies not onty observation but
truth to nature, and in this Lysias is unsurpassed. It is a
quality imperatively demanded by the end at which he is per-
petually aiming, viz,, to harmonise the speech with the speaker.
Lysias studied the character of his clients, and had the power
of reproducing that character in his speech. Furthermore, the
1 Sucli as /3ou\f vtiv and 8ov\eueii>.

- " Quo deturbantur animi et concitantur, in quo uno regnat oratio."—
Cicero, Or. 37, 12S.
a Technical!) called ivdpyeta.
ORATORY: ANDOCIDES AND LYSTAS. 387
speech is not only one that the man might have delivered, but
one that is inspired by the situation. Along with this truth
to nature there goes in Lysias an exquisite literary truth. His
words are a simple and faithful translation of his thoughts.
There is nothing false, ambitious, or vulgar in his plain style.
Figurative language and metaphors he avoids, and thus the
clearness of his meaning and the transparency of his argument
are secured. He is thus also saved from the danger of false
taste, to which figurative language is apt to lead. There is
nothing strained or over-wrought in his style. For Lysias the
right word is quite strong enough.
It is in this lucidity of style that Lysias' highest claim to
rank as an orator consists. The most important element in the.
modern conception of oratory is passion and fire, and it is by
outbursts of such a kind that the great oratorical reputations of
modern times have been made. Fire is indeed inseparable from,
though it is not the whole of the best oratory, and in fire Lysias
is wanting. The qualities which go to make the plain style are,
in fact, incompatible with passion and fire. For argument vigo-
rous and sober, Lysias' style is adapted, but it is by its very nature
excluded from those higher levels and more daring flights of
language to which the impassioned orator ascends. The end,
however, which Lysias does propose to himself he secures. In
clear argument and description he is unsurpassed, and this is a
great merit in an orator ; for an orator's first duty is to be in-
telligible. The more difficult a speaker is to follow, the sooner
his audience's power of attention is exhausted and the more of
his speech is wasted.
As in diction, so too in composition the plain style has its
distinguishing characteristics. Generally speaking, there is no
effort after rhythm and rounded periods ; but it is necessary to
add certain qualifications to this general statement. The poli-
tical speeches of Lysias differ in this respect from the private
speeches, and in the same speech the argument will differ from
the narrative. The political speeches and the argument are
more rounded and rhythmical than the private speeches and
the narrative. In the political speeches particularly, two or
three periods are united into a larger rhythmical whole, and the
larger periods thus formed recur with a regularity which gives a
somewhat stiff air to the speech, and are apt to become monoto-
nous. In the narrative of public speeches, however, the sen-
tences are longer and looser, while the narrative of private
speeches is decidedly "running" in character, though th<> grace
which characterises it is such as could only come from a writer
who had also composed in periods. In tb° argument of private

speeches there is a certain resemblance to the composition of
the political speeches. Two or three periods in the narrower
sense are united into a larger whole, but these wholes are relieved
by the interposition of more freely constructed clauses. The
apparent irregularity thus gained is calculated to allay any
suspicion that the speech is not the work of the speaker him-
self. But, although this subtle art is one of Lysias' characteristic
excellences, the end of a sentence, on examination, generally
shows to a reader, what perhaps would escape the hearer, that
tin', whole sentence has a unity and an art which the sentence
in its earlier development would scarcely lead you to expect.
If we now turn to Lysias' treatment of the subject-matter,
his arrangement and division, we shall find that as he lavishes
his subtlest art on the composition of the narrative, so too it is
in the substance of the narrative that Lysias is strongest. He
has the art of telling a story so simply and frankly, and of
making his own point of view so intelligible and satisfactory,
that when he comes to the argument his work is done. He has
won over the judges already without their knowing it. The
character of his client has incidentally been painted in such
favourable colours that imperceptibly the hearer has been in-
duced to accept it as a strong proof that the cause Lysias pleada
is good.
In the argument it is generally accepted that Lysias is not so
strong as in the narrative, even though his logical mind and his
powers of penetration made him excellent in "invention," tech-
nically so termed. It is a criticism as old as Plato x that Lysias'
arguments are not organically united, but merely agglomerated
together. But, in the first place, we see, especially in such a
speech as that for Mantitheus, that, viewed as the outcome of
the speaker's character, the arguments have an artistic propriety
in their relation to each other which approaches to the unity of
an organism ; and in the next place, when the arguments are
really disjointed, this very want of connection, like the looser
form of composition adopted in the narrative of the private
speeches, i.- calculated to accord with the professedly inartistic
but really artistic character of the speech.
Finally, among the rmaraoteristics of Lysias is the grace of his
style, which both ancient commentators and modern have recog-
ni sed as belonging peculiarly to Lysias. To define it has always
been impossible, and to feel it is necessarily a matter of more
difficulty with modem readers than it was with ancient. In
1 Phanl. 2G4B-K.
respect of this quality, however, we recognise the work of that

reaction of audience on speaker on which the advance of oratory
depends. Sculpture arid the drama had by the time of Lysias
developed to a high degree the natural Athenian feeling for the
beautiful in art. The best Greek art is characterised by the
easy grace which is the opposite of over-straining and painful
effort. When, therefore, a variety of oratory appeared which
was distinguished by this grace, it found itself placed under the
very conditions calculated to develop it. Had the speeches of
Lysias found a less prepared public, they would have deteriorated
to its level for lack of the sympathetic reaction which is the life
of art.
It is impossible here to say something of all the surviving
orations of Lysias, but the leading characteristics of a few of
the most interesting speeches may be briefly mentioned. The
greatest of his speeches is the one against Eratosthenes (xii.),
which Lysias himself delivered. Beyond the personal interest
which the speech has for us as giving us some information with
regard to the orator himself, and as showing the courage which
he must have had to deliver certain passages at such a time,
this speech is of the greatest historical interest, as making us,
in virtue of its vividness, as it were, actual spectators of the
reign of terror instituted by the Thirty Tyrants. The tale of
Lysias' own adventures and escape is vivid and exciting. More
elevated, more pathetic, and more fiery than his other speeches,
though in these respects inferior to later Greek eloquence, this
speech stands quite by itself in the orations of Lysias, both as
to its character and as to the circumstances under which it was
delivered.
Most characteristic of Lysias' power of drawing character is
the speech for Mantitheus (xvi.) Mantitheus, an Alcibiades
without his faults, is one of the most sympathetic and charming
pieces of character-drawing in all Greek literature. The simple
self-confidence which led Mantitheus to volunteer for dangerous
service in the field, and now presses him to discharge his duties
of a citizen in the assembly, his frank contempt for what some
people think, and his boyish desire to command the good opinion
of others, are all drawn with a genuine delight in youth which
is truly Greek.
The speech on the murder of Eratosthenes we have already
mentioned as being a vivid picture even for such a master as
Lysias. As a sketch of manners, as a source of information
about Athenian households, and for dramatic interest as "vv ell as
literary merit, it is equally striking.
On the so-called defence on a charge of seeking to abolish the

democracy (xxv.), which is really a speech on behalf of some
one undergoing the scrutiny for some public office, critics are
divided. Dobree and Reiske ranked it extremely high ; Mr.
Jebb x is inclined to think it was written in irony. What the
speech amounts to is that in politics no man has convictions,
but only interests. This view the speaker advances with an air
of quiet pity for people who, from no fault of their own, have
not the knowledge of the world and the brain-power requisite
for grasping this great generalisation. It would seem that those
critics rank the speech high who believe that this discovery
exhausts the science of politics. I>ut recognising that this
axiom is only a half-truth, and a misleading half-truth, we may
be content to say nothing more of it than that it was an
excellent line of defence, and would win many votes at tho
present day, as having " no humbug " about it.
The speech against Philon (xxxi.) should be read as a com-
panion piece to the last mentioned. Both speeches were de-
livered on the occasion of a scrutiny. In both cases the chief
objection to the candidate seems to have been that he had
done little for, if nothing against, the democracy; and in the
two speeches we have Lysias' way of dealing with both sides of
the question. It is hard to conceive that Lysias believed in tho
interest-theory of politics ; it is equally hard to conceive that
he thought as badly of Philon as he says ; and in neither case
are Ave compelled to conceive any such thing.
In the speech for the invalid (xxiv.) we have an illustration
cf the humour which in a more suppressed form is to be found
elsewhere in Lysias. In this speech not only are various
passages humorous, but the whole treatment of the subject is
comic.
In conclusion, the speech on the property of Aristophanes
(xix.) is deservedly famous for the extreme skill with which in
it Lysias fights a case full of difficulties. It is an admirable,
indeed the best, example of the subtlety with which he ap-
proaches adeep-seated prejudice in the minds of the judges and
the delicacy with which he handles or rather avoids it.
Lysias, in point of style, steered a middle course between the
ordinary everyday language of Andocides and the florid semi-
poetical prose of Gorgias. It must not, however, be supp
that this middle style was attained without any intermediate
links in the evolution. Lysias had his predecessors in his own
particular course. One of these predecessors was Thrasymachus,
,A.0.1248.
ORATORY : ANDOCIDES AND LYSIAS. 39 I
the Sophist, who has gained unenviable notoriety from the

sketch of his character given by Plato in the first book of the
Republic. He is there represented as a mercenary and some-
what brutal Sophist, who openly avows that the whole of morality
is based on the axiom that might is right. He is defeated in
argument by Socrates, and even comes to do, what Socrates says
he had never seen him do before — blush.1 Whatever the value
of his teaching as -a Sophist may have been, he rendered services
to Greek prose as a rhetorician. Born probably about B.C. 457,
he came to Athens about B.C. 412 and there taught rhetoric —
a means of gaining a living apparently not pleasant enough to
prevent him from committing suicide, if we may believe Juvenal.2
For the instruction of his pupds he wrote common-places, proems,
«fcc, and also pattern speeches. It is in the latter rather than
in his contributions to the technic of rhetoric that his services
to Attic prose lie. We have nothing but insignificant fragments
of his speeches left, but ancient critics, such as Aristotle and
his pupil Theophrastus, who had his speeches before them, give
us sufficient information to enable us to form an idea of the
nature of his contributions to the development of Attic oratory.
As Gorgias had endeavoured to write in a style intermediate
between everyday language and poetry, with the result of
keeping too closely to the side of poetry, so Thrasymachus
endeavoured to form a style between the prose of Gorgias and
the language of ordinary life, with the result of paving the way
to a more successful attempt on the part of Lysias. Thrasy-
machus also first framed periods of a kind adapted to practical
oratory, and employed a prose rhythm — based on the paean —
suitable for an orator. In these two respects, as in Ids avoid-
ance of hiatus, we see that Thrasymachus had before his mind
the needs of a speaker, not merely of a writer.
Theodorus and Euenus are two other Sophists who receive
from Plato, in the Phcedrus, treatment little more complimentary
than does Thrasymachus in the Republic. Both seem to have
contributed something to the theory of rhetoric, but of the style
of Euenus we know nothing, while that of Theodorus seema
to have been closer to that of Gorgias than of Thrasymachus,
1 Thrasymachus is further characterised by the remark made to him by
Herodicus or Prodicus : del dpaau/xaxos (t.
2 vii. 203 : " Poenituit multos fans stenlisque cathedne, neat Throsy-
machi probat exitus." To which the ^Scholiast adds : " Rhetoria apud
Athenas, qui suspendio periit." Atheiiaus, x. 454F, giTea an epitaph oa
him in which his name is ingeniously introduced into a hexameter :—
IoCvo/jui drjra pQ) &\<pa oav v fiv a\(pa X' ov <sa.v
Jlarpls KaXx^Su." ' ij dt rex1"? <r<xpirj.
Further, Critias, the infamous memher of the Thirty, must be

mentioned among the predecessors in his own line of Lysias.
We have already mentioned Critias among the dramatists of
the decline : his literary activity seems to have been wide, and
in oratory he was much more successful than he was in poetry.
We have nothing left of his speeches whereby to judge him, but
the value set on him by such critics as Phrynichus l and Philos-
tratus2 is so high that he can have been but little inferior to Lysias.
Critias is an interesting example of how at this time the condi-
tions of intellectual life at Athens favoured the development of
oratory at the expense of the drama. If the attractions of the
new world of prose were not, as in his case, strong enough to
withdraw a man of ability entirely from poetical composition, still
the openings in the field of prose were so much more numerous
that he had much greater chance of distinguishing himself there.
CHAPTER III.
EPIDEICTIO RHETORIC AND THE TRANSITION.
On Isocrates critics have passed the most opposite opinions,

from Milton, who pays a passing tribute to " the old man elo-
quent," to Niebuhr, who calls him "a thoroughly miserable and
despicable writer," who did indeed create an art, but one which
consisted solely of words without a single idea. If, then, we
wish to arrive at the truth of the matter, we must first recog-
nise that Isocrates, like most writers, cannot be dismissed in a
single sentence. There were various ends at which Isocrates
aimed, and consequently there are different standards by which
we must test him. The result of one of these tests must not
blind us to the result of the rest.
Disposed by his natural inclinations to take part in politics,
Isocrates had neither the voice nor the nerve to make a speech
in public. Impelled, however, by his faculty for composition
to write speeches, even if he could not deliver them, he wrote
and circulated political orations. These were in effect political
pamphlets, and, to a certain extent, the practice of issuing such
pamphlets may be compared to the journalism of the present
day. Thus, in the first place, Isocrates appears as a politician,
1 Grammarian of second century A.n. and a purist in Attic Creek.
1 Sophist
other works. of third century A.D., author of "Lives of the Sophists " and
oratory: epideictic rhetoric. 393
and judged as a politician he cannot be valued very highly.
Political life is concerned more with details than with prin-
ciples, but for details Isocrates had much the same feeling as
philosophy at certain times has had for particulars. Universals
in the one case and abstract political propositions in the other
had such a lofty and mysterious dignity about them, that no
politician or philosopher of this stamp would defile himself by
touching details or particulars. A man who imagined that
votes could be secured in the assembly or the business of
government carried on by means of irrelevant dissertations on
the desirability of freedom for the cities of Ionia, was also
capable, as was Isocrates, of persuading himself that words
could influence a Philip or a Dionysius.
It may be said, however, that, although government is largely
a matter of detail, great and leading ideas are indispensable for
statesmanship, and that it is precisely in favour of these great
conceptions that Isocrates renounces petty details. To a certain
extent this is true ; but, in the first place, it must be noticed
that a statesman must not only possess great ideas, but must
also have some notion of how to realise them ; and it is just
because Isocrates never even puts the question to himself
whether his ideals are in any way practicable that he is no
statesman.
It is not, however, solely as a political pamphleteer that
Isocrates appears before us, nor is the test of statesmanship the
only one that has to be applied to him. Although in the earlier
years of his life (B.C. 403-393) he was a logographer, and we
have still extant six of his speeches thus written, he subse-
quently entirely repudiated forensic rhetoric, spoke with much
contempt of it, and earned his living by teaching. He was, in
fact, a Sophist, much as he disliked to be ranked with that use-
ful class of men. On his own showing his object was the same
as theirs, although, according to his own perhaps not too im-
partial verdict, he was as superior to them as, to use a compa-
rison of his own, a Phidias to a doll-maker. He gave to his
pupils, he says, a more thorough education, and imparted to
tin in much nobler sentiments. As far as we are in a position
to check his statements, it would seem that the education he
gave was more thorough than that of other Sophists, inasmuch
as he proceeded on the sound plan of making his pupils work
themselves instead of contenting himself with placing before
them his own finished specimens of composition. As to the
nobler sentiments which he imparted, he possessed only a very
superficial acquaintance with moral philosophy, and perhaps Ins
claim has its real basis in the pan-Hellenic views which coloured
his work.
Isocrates was a fashionable teacher. He takes a pride in
having wealthy pupils, and pan-Hellenism was the fashion. The
causes which led to this are tolerably clear. The tendency to
autonomy, always strong in dividing the Greeks, was in the
time of Isocrates gaining fatal strength. At the same time the
solvent effects of a higher culture, which had at first worked
only on the greater minds — consciously on Euripides, for in-
stance, unconsciously on Aristophanes — were now sinking
deeper, and were dissolving the old conceptions of a citizen's
duties, even in the minds of those who merely possessed culture
and not genius. On the other hand, the more a man of educa-
tion felt the impossibility of complying with the exacting
demands made of old by the state upon its citizens, the more
closely he was drawn to the educated men of other states, with
whom he had the tie of a common culture. Ineffectual as were
Isocrates' pamphlets from a political point of view, they yet
circulated amongst the literary classes of every city in Greece.
Thus, pan-Hellenism became a mark of culture, and Isocrates
puts it well forward as one of the advantages which his method
of education ottered.
It is a testimony, at any rate, to the success of Isocrates as a
teacher, that among his pupils may be found rhetoricians and
politicians of distinction. Unfortunately, however, of the his-
torians who were his pupils, Ephorus and Theopompus, and
who might have been valuable proofs of his power as a teacher,
we do not know enough to affect our estimate of Isocrates in
this capacity. Leaving this side of Isocrates' character, in
which he appears to greater advantage than In" does as a politi-
cian, we have now to consider him in his true light as a man of
liteTary style.
Unfortunately for our appreciation of Isocrates' literary merit,
we at the present day regard prose composition not as an end in
itself, but as a means for conveying ideas, and we are apt to
judge a writer by the worth of what he has to say rather than
by the way in which he says it. The privilege of paying atten-
tion solely to form, with little regard to matter, is now restricted
to writers of verse. The idea that a prose writer may rely on
the intrinsic beauty of his expression, without any care to con-
vey information or impart conviction, is foreign to our practical
mode of thought. Even in that form of modem literature — tho
novel - which has its end in itself, and has not, as a rule, any
ulterior and practical end, the tendency is more and more to lay
ORATORY : EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 395
stress on the plot or the character- drawing, instead of aiming,

as might be expected, at affording the pleasure which results
directly from beauty of expression. Without passing any
opinion on the character of this tendency — which might be fur-
ther illustrated by the fact that prose dramas are driving out
dramas in verse — we must, to obtain a fair appreciation of Iso-
crates, insist that he ought not to be judged exclusively from
the modern point of view, but should be tested by the success
with which he effected what he strove after, and by the services
which he rendered to prose literature.
As Antiphon and Lysias had each his own theory of oratory
— Antiphon magnificence and Lysias simplicity — the realisation
of which constitutes his claim to celebrity, so Isocrates must be
judged by the success with which he developed the florid style
of rhetoric originated by Gorgias. The rhetoric of Gorgias and
Isocrates is epideictic ; it aims not at instruction or conviction,
but at the display of beautiful prose. Accordingly, we see that
when Cicero ] says of Isocrates' style that it is " pompae quarn
pngnse aptius," or when Quintilian2 says Isocrates is "palaestrae
quam pugnae magis accommodatus," or, in Mr. Sandy's3 words,
" At the end of our perusal we feel that it is the graceful rheto-
rician and not the vehement orator, the dexterous fencer and
not the bold man of battle, that has engaged our attention,"
these criticisms are indeed true, but they are not condemnatory
of Isocrates. Just as the plain style of Lysias is in its nature
and by its definition precluded from stirring appeals to the
emotions, so too epideictic oratory aims confessedly at pomp
and not at doing battle, at a display of dexterous fencing, and
not at bold deeds of arms. It is no condemnation of Lvsias or
of Isocrates that they do not attain qualities which were incom-
patible with the theory of oratory which each was concerned in
developing.
If now we inquire whether Isocrates realised his ideal, we
find that he was successful in his theory of his art. Gorgias in
his endeavours to create beautiful prose fell into the mistake of
transplanting into prose the beauties of poetry, instead of devel-
oping the beauties of prose itself. This is seen in two things :
first, he decorated prose with purple patches of poetical expres-
sions, and next he imported into prose the rhythms of poetry.
These two sins of taste Isocrates avoided. His diction is pure
Attic, in the same sense as is that of Lysias. His vocabulary
excludes unusual and poetical words, while at the same time,
1 Orat. 42. » Inst. Or. X. i. 49.
8 Isocrates (Rivingtons), p. xvii.
39<-> HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
although using almost exclusively the vocabulary of everyday

life, he yet, by his manipulation of it, raises it to a literary level
above that of ordinary conversation In the next place, instead
of borrowing the rhythms of poetry, Isocrates perfected prose
rhythm. It is his rhythm which is at once Isocrates' chief
characteristic and his great contribution to the prose of all later
times and literatures. If to these excellences of Isocrates we
add that his full and rounded periods, though massed together
in sentences of great volume, are balanced so perfectly and con-
structed so regularly that the sentence is thoroughly transparent
in spite of its luxuriant growth, we then shall have enumerated
the qualities which make up the success of Isocrates' style.
Before going on to state what may be said on the other side,
we must here notice a remarkable element in the smoothness of
Isocrates' composition. Isocrates is the first prose writer who
systematically avoids the hiatus which arises when a word end-
ing in a vowel is followed by another beginning with a vowel.
Throughout the history of Greek poetry the tendency to avoid
hiatus is present. It may be seen in epic and lyric poetry ; it
becomes stronger in tragedy, and strongest of all in comedy.
Its importance for us is that it is an indication, which cannot
be mistaken, that Greek poetry was intended for the ears of
hearers, not for the eyes of reader?. It was because hiatus was
unpleasant in speaking that the poets were at pains to avoid it.
We now find that when Greek prose was on the point of attain-
ing perfection the same systematic avoidance of hiatus appears;
and it is instructive that it is precisely Isocrates, who might be
thought to inaugurate a literature designed for a reading public,
who pays the greatest attention to a point which appeals only
to an audience and not to a reader. The explanation is that,
according to the custom of the time, works such as those of
Isocrates were read aloud by one critic to a company of others,
and Is >crates addressed himself to the most critical and culti-
vated audiences in Greece. This consideration also explains the
attention paid by Isocrates to rhythm, which is of greater im-
portance in a work intended for oral delivery than in one in-
tended for reading.
But Isocrates has the defects of his qualities. The essence
of epideictic oratory is the development of the form to the neglect
of the matter of a speech, and this neglect is a mistake which
inevitably entails its wn punishment. The rotundity of Iso-
crates isoften procured only by padding, his regularity becomes
mere tautology, his luxuriant sentences identical propositions.
Thus padded and bolstered with periphrases and synonyms, his
ORATORY: EPIDEICTIC RHETORIC. 397
thought, never vigorous, succumbs altogether. Of his antithesis,

his parallel sentences of equal length or similar sound, Mr. Jebb 1
has profoundly said, "The idea of all these three 'figures' is the
same — that idea of mechanical balance in which the craving for
symmetry is apt to take refuge when it is not guided by a really
flexible instinct or by a spiritual sense of fitness and measure."
On the other hand, his arrangement can be praised without
the reserve which it is necessary to observe in speaking of his
style, and between his arrangement and his style a parallel may
to a certain extent be drawn. In both there is the same smooth
regularity. The component parts of a speech, as of a sentence,
are woven together by him witii the greatest skill, and in both the
thought is so set before the reader that it may be followed with
the greatest ease. The transitions from one part of the speech
to the next are effected imperceptibly, whether by means of the
antithesis or of the similarity between the concluding thought
of the one part and the introductory thought of the next part,
or by the logical coherence of the two parts. Again, as in the
period, the important word which gives the colour to the period
is kept to the end, so the main thesis of the speech, though
continually kept in sight, is reserved to the last in such a manner
that the interest of the reader, who is kept in a state of expecta-
tion throughout, is maintained to the end. Finally, the unity
of the speech, attained by this tension and by the skilful way
in which the various divisions of the speech are woven together,
is diversified by the introduction of digressions which save the
uniformity of the speech from degenerating into monotony.
Viewing Isocrates, then, as the representative of epi deictic
rhetoric,2 we see that he carried his theory of oratory to its
greatest development, and achieved the success which is due to
the artist who accomplishes the end at which he aims. At the
same time, he does not escape from the defects inherent in the
rhetoric of display. But these defects do not constitute the
worst charge which can be brought against Isocrates. His want
1 A.O.2 65.
2 All the works of Isocrates are essentially epideictio, but then are only
five of his speeches which are avowedly epideiotic in their objeot or in the
circumstances under which they were supposed to he delivered. Of these,
we may specially mention the Panegyric : the others are tin' Panathenaio
oration (intended, as its name implies, to be recited at the Pauathenasa),
which contains the praises of Athens ; the Evagoras, a funeral oration ; and
the Busiris and Encomium of Helen. The last two are criticisms intended
to show how these hackneyed subjects ought to he treated for epid
purposes. (Busiris was a kiii£ of Egypt, whose services to mankind were
mixed with crimes, and were thus supposed to make a good theme tor show
orations.)
of " a spiritual sense of fitness and measure " betrays itself not
only in the mechanical balance of his sentences and in the
looseness of his translation of thoughts into words, but also
reveals itself in the fact that he did not consistently adhere to
his proper sphere of rhetoric. He is essentially epideictic in
his rhetoric, but he was not content to be avowedly what he
was in reality. "With an affectation thoroughly characteristic
of the man, he pretends that his speeches have a practical
object. Thus he professes to aim at an end which his rhetoric
by its very nature is precluded from attaining, and which lie
obviously cares very little about. What he really hoped to do
was not to persuade Sparta to renounce her supremacy in Greece,
or Athens to dismiss her subject states — even Isocrates must
have known more about practical politics than to hope for, that
— but he did hope to establish his fame as a prose writer and
to write something worthy of that fame. Yet nothing could
have done more to defeat his object or to bring into prominence
the inherent weaknesses of epideictic rhetoric than this renun-
ciation ofsimplicity and directness.
Any attempt to estimate Isocrates as a writer and to strike
the balance between the conflicting views which have been held
with regard to his merits would be incomplete if it omitted to
notice the influence which he exercised on succeeding genera-
tions of orators. If Isocrates himself did not reach the highest
level of oratory, he at least paved the way for Demosthenes.
And although probably, if Demosthenes had had no Isocrates,
we should have had a very different Demosthenes, the influence
of Isocrates is not to be seen merely in the speeches of Demos-
thenes. It is in Cicero that Isocrates lives again. In the
speeches of Cicero the rhetoric of Isocrates appears with a
vigour and a practical purpose which it lacked in Isocrates, and
through Cicero Isocrates has influenced the oratory of the world.
The influence of Isocrates, however, was not deferred, but
took immediate effect. It is visible in his contemporaries, and
even in the rival Sophists of his time. Antisthenes, Alcida-
mas, Polycrates, Zoilus, and Anaximenes all show the effect
which Isocrates' style immediately produced, in the regularity
• of their sentences and in their avoidance of hiatus, figures, and
poetical decoration. Antisthenes was the son of an Athenian
citizen by a Thracian slave. He seems to have possessed a
wide range of learning, but Aristotle implies that he was un-
educated,1 and Plato,2 with some raillery, calls him a '• late-
1 Metajjh. ix. 3 : oi 'AvTioBiixtoi /cot ol oi/tujs anaiSevroi.
• SopU. 25 IB.
oratory: epi deictic rhetoric. 399
learner." 1 From this it would seem that at Athens, at least, the

self-educated man played the same part in the intellectual world
as the self-made man in the social world. Even the fragmen-
tary state of our knowledge, however, with regard to Antis-
thenes cannot conceal the vigour and energy of his character.
At first he hecame a pupil of Gorgias. Then he associated
much with such Sophists as Prodicus and Hippias. Then he
attached himself with the whole force of his character to Socrates,
and became as strongly opposed to his earlier master, Gorgias,
as he was now devoted to Socrates. Finally, he became the
founder of the Cynic school and author of the tradition that it
is necessary to be disagreeable to be good. He attacked Plato
fiercely — the slave-woman's son and the Athenian aristocrat
would be little likely to agree — and was probably at variance
with Aristotle. Theophrastus, however, the pupil of Aristotle,
Xenophon, and Theopompus, the historian, all greatly respected
his character, in spite of the vanity with which he affected the
garb of ostentatious poverty. Possibly, there was also a certain
kind of vanity in the acquisition and display of the learning
which he, the uneducated man, the son of the slave-woman,
had obtained by his own exertions, as also in his scathing de-
nunciations ofAlcibiades, the brilliant representative of the
aristocracy. The same feeling prompted his choice of a place in
which to expound philosophy. A philosopher, who was also an
Athenian citizen, might teach in a gymnasium, the Academy,
or the Lyceion, where pure-bred Athenians alone had the right
of training. Antisthenes would teach in the gymnasium, the
Cynosarges, which Athenian pride had set aside for the exer-
cise of bastards. Hence the name of the Cynic philosophy,
which in later times false etymology referred to the "doglike "
character of those who professed this philosophy. The works
of Antisthenes extended to moral philosophy, natural science,
1 To appi-eciate this the "late-learner,'* as depicted by Theophrastus in
his "Characters," should be seen. I quote from Mr. Jebb's translation:
" Late-learning would seem to mean the pursuit of exercises for which cue
is too old. The late-learner is one who will study passages for recitation
when he is sixty, and break down in repeating them over bis wine U
a conjuror's performance he will sit out three or four audiences, trying to
learn the songs by heart ; and when he is initiated into the rites of Sabasius,
he will be eager to acquit himself best in the eyes of the priest. Riding into
the country on another's horse, he will praotise lis horsemanship by the .
way, and falling, will break his head. . . . He will play at tableaux vivanta
with his footman ; and will have matches at archery and javelin-throwing
with his children's attendant, whom he exhoits, at the sain.' time, to learn
from Aim, as if t«he other knew nothing about it either. At the bath he
will wriggle frequently, as if wrestling, in order that he may appear educated ;
and when women are near, he will practise dancing-steps, warbling i.
accompaniment."
logic, grammar, the criticism of the Homeric poem?, and various

polemical writings. There has come down to us a pair of
speeches, the Ajax and Odysseus, only. These are speeches only
in name ; the two heroes state their claims to the arms of the
dead Achilles, and the object of the composition is to set forth
the superiority of intellectual power, which Odysseus is the
type of, over stupid strength, of which Ajax is the type.
Thus Antisthenes does not profess to set an example of style,
as did the rhetoricians, or such a Sophist as [socrates, nor did he
compose these speeches as models of sophistical ingenuity in
argument. They rather belong to his moral philosophy, as did
his dialogue " Heracles or Midas," in which he expounded his
theory of strength and sobriety of character.
Alcidamas, born in Elsea of /Eolis, was. like Antisthenes, a
pupil of Gorgias, and, like Antisthenes, possessed an encyclo-
paedic knowledge. Uidike Antisthenes, however, he gave in-
struction in the way usual among the Sophists, and did not
achieve any distinction as a philosopher. From other Sophists
of his time he was distinguished by giving instruction, not in
the theory, but in the art of speaking. His worlds may have
been numerous, but, exclusive of the two speeches which have
come down to us under his name, We have only fragments of a
few. One of these fragments is important. It occurred in the
so-called Messenian speech. This must have formed a pendant to
the Archidamus of Isocrates. The latter represents the Spartan,
the former the Messenian view of the enfranchisement of the
Messeniahs from the Spartan yoke. In the speech of Alci-
damus occurred the words, " Freedom God granted all men ; no
man has Nature made a slave." This shows that already men of
a daring mind were denying the assumptions on which the
defence of slavery was based, and is a credit to the Sophist for
ever. The two speeches which have come down to us under
his name are the Odysseus (in which Odysseus accuses Palamedes
of treason) and that on the Sophists. .Most modern critics are
of opinion that the two speeches are not by the same author,
and if either is by Alcidamas, it is that on the Sophists. This
speech is a polemic against those Sophist- (particularly Is. urates)
who teach their pupils only to write speeches, instead of prac-
tising them in extempore speeches. Alcidamas brings forward
various arguments in support of his attack, such as that a man
who is evidently delivering from memory a prepared speech
becomes an object of suspicion to his audience : written speeches
cannot be remembered entirely ; hence improvisation on some
points, and consequently uuevenness in the total effect j the
memory of the speaker, further, is likely to betray him ; and a

prepared speech cannot adapt itself to the sudden needs of the
moment ; it has no more movement than a statue. The opinion
of ancient critics was not favourable to the oratory of Alcidamas,
and this speech is open to criticism on several points. It has
no systematic development in its argument. The style is not
that of a practical speech, nor is the expression. The periods,
however, are shaped with regularity, and not much below those
of Isocrates. The adverse criticism, too, which Aristotle1 passes
on the metaphors of Alcidamas is such as to illustrate the
difference between modern taste and that of Aristotle rather
than to secure our assent. Thus Aristotle condemns Alcidamas
for terming the Odyssey "a mirror of human life." "Wet
sweat," however, and similar redundancies, Aristotle justly
blames. The speech of Odysseus against Palamedes for treason
is weak in matter, but there is nothing in its style to show that
it may not have belonged to the time, if it was not the work of
Alcidamas.
Polycrates, an Athenian, was also a contemporary of, but a
younger man than, Isocrates. Like Alcidamas, he, as a Sophist,
professed to give an education in practical speaking. He pro-
bably devoted more attention to the matter than the style of his
speeches ; and his choice of subjects, such as a laudation of
Clytemestra, shows the ingenuity and paradoxical nature of his
arguments. Other works were laudations of Agamemnon, of a
Mouse, of Voting-pebbles,2 &c. None of his works have been
preserved. Most of our knowledge about him conies from the
Busiris of Isocrates, in which Isocrates criticises the way in
which Polycrates treats the story of Busiris. The criticism is
severe, and probably deserved.
Zoilus, the famous Homeromastix, who was born B.C. 400, and
died B.C. 330, was a pupil of Polycrates. Like Antisthones, he
possessed a wide knowledge of Homer, but he used it to ridicule,
not to illuminate his author. He objected to Homer that it
was absurd to talk of pigs weeping, as the poet does when
Odysseus' companions are turned into swine by Circe. The
dogs which Apollo (the plague-god) first destroys, in Iliad i.. are
small deer for a deity. " Well-greaved companions perished, from
1 Rhet. iii. 3.
2 Probably also of salt and of /9oju/9i'Xto£ (which would seem to mean, not
bumble-bees, as sorue have imagined, but a kind of drinking Teasel. SehoL
to Apoll. Rhod. ii. 569 : ponpuXfi d5os neXicrcrrjs, ko.1 ironjotov He d5os,
ws A.vrio'divys irapa5i5u<nf Han St tovto <TTefoTpdx-q\oi'. Pollux, vi. 98 and
x. 68, says that it was in the Protrepticon of Autisthenes. Cf. also Ath. xi.
784D aud xiii. 485A).
2 0
each ship six."1 "As though at word of command," says

Zoilus. In the same strain he wrote a eulogy of Polyphemus.
His most serious work was a history from the origin of the gods
to the time of Philip. He made no contributions to the advance
of style.
Anaximenes, who was born at Lampsacus in B.c. 380, and
died B.o. 320. was a pupil of Zoilus. Like his master, he was
a Sophist and a rhetorician, and he composed a history of the
same period as Zoilus. Amongst his writings we hear of a work
on Homer, an encomium of Helen, deliberative speeches, and
Ave have fragments apparently of some work on philosophy.
Most interesting, however, is his work on the theory of speak-
ing, the "Rhetoric to Alexander." The Alexander is Alexander
the Great, who was a pupil of Anaximenes. The work, doubtless,
owes its preservation to the mistake that it was the work of
Aristotle. It is, however, unscientific in spirit, and confirms the
adverse verdict of ancient critics on Anaximenes. In his ocean
of words the drops of sense are few. Compared, however, with the
Pthetoric of Aristotle it has the advantage of being a distinctly
practical work.
Before proceeding to a consideration of the greatest of orators,
we must say a few words on Isaeus. The widening rift between
the interests of the citizen and the interests of the man, which
was at once the condition and the consequence of the approach
of Athens' intellectual empire of the world, alfected Isaeus as it
affected Isocrates. That is to say, it enabled both to pursue
their vocation without taking part in politics. In the case of
Isocrates, indeed, this fact is concealed from us by his pan-
Hellenism. But the pan-Hellenism of Isocrates, so far from
being a genuine political factor, was merely a literary cloak,
which served to conceal his political insignificance. Isaeus, on
the other hand, had no connection, and did not pretend to have
any connection, with politics ; and as his speeches, being com-
posed on behalf of others, give us no information with regard to
himself, we know nothing about his life. It is uncertain whether
he was an Athenian or a metic, and there are stories of his per-
sonal connection with Isocrates and Demosthenes. Roughly,
his literary career may be dated B.O. 390-350.
The interest of Isaeus for us is that he carries on the tradi-
tion of practical oratory — whereas Isocrates represents literary
rhetoric — and constitutes the transition from Lysias to Demos-
thenes. In point of diction Isaeus resembles Lysias. He avoids
etrange or poetical words, or words not in ordinary Attic use ;
1 O.l. x. 60.
though, so far as there is any difference between the two
writers, Lysias writes the purer Attic. The same relation exists
between them with respect to the brevity which is regarded as
one of Lysias' merits. With regard to composition, we have
seen that although Lysias frequently relieves his periods by the
insertion of more loosely constructed sentences, still his char-
acteristic combination of two or three periods into a greater
whole recurs with a persistence that imparts a certain air of
stiffness to his style. Isaeus is much more free in his com-
position, and this difference between the two logographers is
important, because it implies something deeper and beyond the
mere difference in style.
Well-rounded periods and formal sentences are beautiful,
but they are not business-like, and Isseus was a much more
thoroughly professional man than Lysias. Those speeches of
Isseus which have come down to us relate entirely to testa-
mentary cases. This is partly due to the habit ancient com-
mentators had of arranging the speeches of an orator according
to their subject-matter, and partly to the fact that that depart-
ment in which an orator excelled was most likely to survive, as
was the case also with Antiphon, whose extant speeches all relate
to cases of homicide. Now, Athenian testamentary law was of a
complex nature, and the mere knowledge that Isaeus was strong
in this branch of the law would be sufficient, even if we had
not the speeches themselves to conlirm it, to show that Isa3us
possessed a thorough knowledge of the law generally.
In the practical and professional power resulting from this
knowledge of the law lies the difference between Isaeus and
Lysias. Lysias tells his story witli such winning simplicity, that
the mere statement of his case is enough to win over the judges
to his side. Isaeus, although he, too, like Lysias, pays much
attention to ethos, continually appeals to the intelligence of his
hearers with the confidence of a man whose force of mind and
professional knowledge enable him to compel the assent of any
one who will follow his argument. This technical mastery,1
which appears in Isaeus side by side with the simpler devices of
the "plain" style, not only makes the difference between Isa?us
and Lysias, but also makes Is&us the forerunner of Demos-
thenes. The " figures of thought " — feigned perplexity or sur-
prise or questions — which appear rarely in Lysias, more fre-
quently in Isaeus, and still more frequently in Demosthenes, are
but the form in which this confidence naturally finds expres-
sion. Being the outcome of1 Seu^ri/s. qualities essentially practical rather
than epideictic, these " figures " both in themselves give a busi-
ness-like colour to a speech, and, as we started by saying, by
breaking up the rounded periods of oratory give a speech the
freedom of movement requisite for meeting at every point the
argument of an adversary.
Finally, this freedom of movement is further facilitated by
another means, which, while on the one hand it differentiates
the oratory of Isseus from that of Lysias, and brings it nearer to
the perfection of Demosthenes, on the other hand constitutes
the resemblance between Isseus and Isocrates, which may either
be the origin or a confirmation of the story that makes the
former a pupil of the latter orator. In Lysias, a speech, when
it is divided, is always divided into the same four divisions :
preface, narrative, argument, and epilogue. The division of
Isocrates, on the other hand, though tending to the same regu-
larity, is less segmentary and more organic. In Isseus, how-
ever, a speech is not divided according to rule or in an invari-
able manner, but suited to the needs of the individual case.
This flexibility of division is both due to and a proof of the
more practical quality of Isseus' oratory. A speech dealing in
the thorough and argumentative manner of Isseus with abstruse
and complex and legal questions, would frequently be impos-
sible to follow if the formal separation of statement from
argument were observed. It is, on the contrary, necessary for
him to divide his statement into its natural sections, and at the
conclusion of each section deal with the argument and proofs
pertaining to that section.
With this last instance of the way in which the practical
needs of the law-courts, whereby the art of rhetoric was called
into existence, continued to determine the development of sys-
tematic oratory, we may leave Isseus, and proceed to Demos-
thenes.
CHAPTER IV.
DEM0STI1KNKS, : FIRST PEKIOD.
Xot having any pre-existing literature of another nation to

impart an unnatural direction to its growth, Greek literature
developed freely and on its own lines. The result of this free-
dom is a simplicity of development which iii its main outlines
is easy to trace. The conditions which produce and explain
ORATORY: DEMOSTHENES. 405
any stage in this evolution are to be found in the previous

development of Greek literature itself, and have not to be sought
elsewhere. The drama in two of its main departments — the
choric and the narrative — presupposes the development of lyric
and epic poetry. Oratory also in two of its main departments
— the argument and the narrative — implies the previous de-
velopment of dialectic and history. So too within the history
of oratory itself, the highest form is only evolved when the lower
forms have completed their development each in its own direc-
tion.
In the chapters on Antiphon, Lysias, and Isocrates, we have
seen that each of these orators achieved artistic success by
realising his own theory of his art. But in each case the con-
centration of effort necessary for carrying through the new
theory was obtained only at the cost of neglecting other qualities
equally essential to oratory of the highest kind. The plain style
of Lysias is the most perfect vehicle of ethos, but is incom-
patible with pathos, while the oratory of Antiphon, impressive
as it is, makes no attempt at ethos ; both styles, however, are
eminently adapted for practical purposes, and thus are widely
distinguished from the beautiful epideictic of Isocrates. Thus
the resources of the art had been ascertained in different direc-
tions by different explorers, but it yet remained for one man,
bringing to bear all these resources, to unite in himself the
excellences of all three styles; and that man was Demos-
thenes.
But although the history of Greek literature was not influenced
in its course by the action of any foreign literature, it was in-
fluenced bythe social and political history of Greece itself, and
in no department could this influence be expected to operate
with more effect than in that of oratory. The first attempts of
even untutored eloquence are only possible on the condition of
political freedom. The level of oratory can only rise as the
general culture of society rises ; and finally, the greatest oratory
demands the greatest themes. In the case of Demosthenes these
external conditions co-operated with the internal development
of oratory.
In the first place, by the time of Demosthenes, not only had
the general culture of the Athenians been considerably elevated
by the educational labours of the Sophists, and their natural
faculty of artistic criticism developed bo an unparalleled extent
by the sculptors and dramatists of Pericles' day, hut also in the
special domain of oratory itself, the law-courts, which had first
called oratory as an art into existence, had made the Athenians
every day more exacting judges of an orator's merits. The

consciousness of this unsparing criticism was ever present to the
orator, whether in the law-court or in the ecclesia, and con-
tinually drove him to look more and more carefully to the form
as well as to the matter of his speech. Nowhere does this
reaction of the audience on the speaker Defray itself to the
modern reader with more startling effect than in the speeches
of Demosthenes and Êschines on the Crown. At a moment
when a policy involving the fate of the nation was on trial, in
the heat of a conflict entailing the political annihilation of one
or other of the combatants, these great orators in their greatest
speeches can criticise each others' language and delivery.
Further evidence of the minute criticism to which a speaker's
style was at this time subjected, and of the effect which this
criticism had on the speaker, is to he found in the care with
which Demosthenes polished and revised his speeches. Thus
Ave find that, for instance, our copy of the speech on the Em-
bassy is not open to the objections which Êschines brings
against some of its expressions. The explanation is that De-
mosthenes in revising his speech accepted his opponent's criti-
cisms as just, and corrected his language accordingly. Again,
we find that in some of Demosthenes1 speeches whole sections
occur which neglect the rules that he elsewhere observes in
avoiding hiatus; which shows that his practice was to first
write out a speech and then go through it again, carefully re-
adjusting those collocations of words which presented a hiatus,
though for some reason or other he has not thus corrected these
particular sections. Another indication of careful revision is to
be found in those passages in which he pretends to anticipate
his adversary's arguments. Such passages are really replies to
the opposing speech, and have been inserted subsequently in
order to make Demosthenes' own speech complete at all points.
Finally, the practice of repeating in one speech whole pas
which have been previously u^rA in some other speech finds its
explanation in the care with which the author originally elabo-
rated those passages. If Demosthenes repeats a passage word
for word, it is evidence that he is of opinion the topic treated
therein has received the best and most artistic treatment which
he can give it. and it is in accordance with the true Greek
instinct that he refuses to try to "paint the lily.'' At the same
time, however, it is true that he sometimes himself excuses this
repetition on the ground of a change of audien ■<•.
These instances may Buffice to show how the general culture
of society reacted on the oratory of the time, and we may
ORATOKY : DEMOSTHENES. 407
now consider the action of a different set of external circum-

stances. With Demosthenes we return to the domain of
practical political oratory. As we have explained in a previous
chapter, logographers had inducement to circulate their speeches,
which served both to advertise their author and to instruct his
pupils ; but statesmen were prevented from following this
example by the fear of being classed with the Sophists. The
result is that the typical orators of the canon up to the time
of Demosthenes are logographers or the Sophist Isocrates.
Demosthenes, however, although a statesman, did publish his
speeches. The example of Isocrates as a pamphleteer sufficed
to show him that the influence of a speech might be made to
extend over a greater area than merely that filled by those who
heard the speech, and it was for this practical object that he
circulated his speeches. Isocrates, on the other hand, was never
more than the literary artist. His themes indeed sound great,
but they have no practical meaning, while the subjects of Daeus
or Lysias are certainly practical, but not being the highest
subjects, do not admit of the highest treatment. The part of
Demosthenes, however, was cast in the last act of the drama of
Greek freedom. Once more a crisis as great as that of the
Persian wars had occurred, and once more a field of action Mas
thrown open to oratory as great as that opened to the eloquence
of Themistocles. The events of the time were great, and they
give a corresponding elevation to the oratory of the time.
Above all, in Demosthenes we have the nobility and grandeur
which a share in the struggle that saved, if not the liber-
ties, at any rate the honour of his country was able to impart
to the oratory of the patriot.
The internal development of Greek rhetoric, and the external
circumstances, social and political, at this time, formed an en-
vironment favourable to the growth of the highest oratory; but
the environment is not everything. It must have something to
environ, and for this something we must look to the character
of Demosthenes. Of the enormous care which he bestowed on
Ins speeches we have already seen some instances. To this
" capacity for taking pains " we must add what is perhaps but
another manifestation of the same power — his strength of char-
acter. He started with physical incapacities much greater than
those before which Isocrates succumbed. His gesticulation was
awkward, his voice weak, and his lisp distressing. But he did
not, like Isocrates, surrender to these natural defects. The
stories which are told of him in this respect are not incredible ;
and even if they are not true, they show how much his biogra-
pliers were impressed by the strength of his iron will. To cure

himself of an awkward trick of shrugging up one shoulder, he
practised speaking with a sword so suspended that the peccant
shoulder when moved was pierced by it. To gain presence of
mind in the face of a tumult he matched his voice against the
sea-waves, and to gain clearness of articulation he practised
speaking with his mouth full of pebbles. For the purposes of
his studies in declamation he constructed an underground cham-
ber, which was still pointed out in Plutarch's time; and in order
that he might not be tempted to desert these studies, he would
shave half his head. He remained for a month at a time in
the underground chamber. The importance which he attached
to a good delivery is illustrated by his saying, that of the three
things necessary for an orator, the first was delivery, the second
delivery, and the third delivery. To a man who complained to
him of having been assaulted, he calmly said, " You have not
been assaulted." "What!" shrieked the man, "not assaulted!"
" Ah ! " said Demosthenes, "now you speak like a man who has
been assaulted."
That the best teacher of rhetoric is the pen was a fact with
which Demosthenes seems to have been acquainted, for he was
assiduous in committing to writing any conversation he had
heard, or anything else which was likely to be of use. He
worked far into the night, and for longer hours than any work-
man in Athens. It was said that more oil than wine went to
the composition of his speeches, for he was a water-drinker.
A life of this studious description seems incompatible with
the unsupported aspersions sometimes made on his morality.
It is true that he committed the crime of wearing comfortable
clothing, but our views on luxury are so different from those
of the ancient world, that we can scarcely in the present day
regard fine linen as a good and sufficient reason for taking
away a man's character.
In the following pages it will be impossible to deal with
the political side of Demosthenes' life, and yet to abstract the
politics from Demosthenes' speeches is more unsatisfactory even
than are most attempts to consider the form apart from the
matter. Demosthenes is above all things intensely practical;
lie never sinks into the mere literary artist. He never writes
for display; he has only one preoccupation, and that is his
subject. As Fenelon said of him, "Tout est dit pour le salut
commuu, aucun mol n'est pour I'orateur." But we must endea-
vour to put ourselves at the same purely literary standpoint
which xKschines must have occupied when, in his banishment.
ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 409
he could first read out to his pupils, with the appreciation of an

artist, the very speech in which Demosthenes covered him with
infamy, and could then remark, "Ah! but you should have
heard the beast himself."
Demosthenes, the son of Demosthenes, of the deme Pseania,
was born about b.c. 383. His father, who was a weapon manu-
facturer and possessed considerable wealth, died when Demos-
thenes was only seven years old. Demosthenes was a weakly
child, with an aversion to outdoor sports, and was permitted by
his mother to indulge this aversion, so that he grew up in entire
ignorance of the gymnasium and the hunting which constituted
a large portion of the education of the ordinary young Athenian.
This fact is doubly important, as showing both that Demos-
thenes' want of physical courage Avas innate, and that he did
not even go through the ordinary physical training which might
to some extent have remedied the defect.
Demosthenes' guardians, if they were not guilty of fraud,
were at least extremely negligent in the discharge of their
duties, and Demosthenes, when quite a boy, probably discovered
that his inheritance would be much smaller than it ought to
have been when it reached him. From this dates the determi-
nation, which he stuck to with all the pertinacity of his deter-
mined nature, to become an orator in order to seek for himself,
and by himself, redress from the law. That he had any lessons
from Isocrates is improbable, although it is clear that he must
have studied Isocrates' published speeches with care.
From Isaeus, however, he did receive instruction. Isaeus was
a profound and practised lawyer, and Demosthenes was well
advised in becoming his pupil ; for the prolonged litigation in
which he became involved with his guardians was such as to
require, on Demosthenes' part, a more than ordinary acquaint-
ance with tiie law. The power which Demosthenes caught
from Isasus of thoroughly grasping a subject, and of then treat-
ing it with a freedom which disregarded both technical divisions
and artificial deduction, is one which is as conspicuous in his
political as in his forensic speeches.
Demosthenes' literary career may be divided into three
periods. The first stretches from B.C. 363, the date of his first
action against his guardians, to B.C. 359 ; the second from B.c.
355 to B.C. 341, and the third from B.C. 330 to B.C. 323.
The first period begins in B.C. 363 with the speeches against
Aphobus and Onetor. Although Demosthenes was successful
in obtaining verdicts against his guardians, Ids patrimony was
for the most part gone beyond recovery, and he found himself
4 IO HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
compelled, in B.C. 359, to resort to logography in order to gain

a living.
The speeches for the Naval Crown and against Callicles and
Spudias, together with the speeches delivered in his litigation
with his guardians, make up the total composed by Demos-
thenes in the first period of his literary career. Tins period is
distinguished from his later style by the characteristics of youth.
Demosthenes was only twenty years of age when he delivered
his first speech against his guardians, and only twenty-four
when he became a logographer. Most characteristic of youth
is a tendency to exaggeration. This shows itself to a certain
extent in his language, which is sometimes too strong, but more
unmistakably in his avoidance of hiatus. In the later periods,
although he normally avoids hiatus between two words in the
same sentence, he allows it at the end of a colon, just as in
tragedy hiatus may be allowed between the end of one line and
the beginning of the next. It is, however, the peculiar charac-
teristic ofthe period, B.C. 363-359, that not even this exception
is allowed to occur.
Akin to exaggeration is want of self-control. Demosthenes'
nature was excitable even beyond the excitability of the ordi-
nary Southern temperament. The ardour with which he threw
himself into everything, and the enthusiasm by which he was
liable to bo carried away in speaking, are instances of one
extreme, that of exaltation; while the other extreme to which
his imagination bore him is at any rate illustrated, if it is not
proved, by the story that in his flight from the field of Chaero-
nea he roared out "Mercy!" when he was caught by a bramble-
bush. This was the nature which he had to keep, and did keep,
under control by the force of will. liut this control, even in
matters artistic, did not come at first or without effort; and
whereas in his later speeches he makes extremely sparing use of
appeals for compassion, in the speeches against Aphobus there
is a marked absence of such self-control.
If exaggeration and want of self-control are youthful faults,
imitation is equally characteristic of the immature writer, who,
because his own style is as yet unformed, has not the courage
to walk his own way, but guides himself by the example of a
master. This is what happened in the case of Demosthenes
with regard to Issbus. The speeches Rgainsl Aphobus were
modelled on the speech of [sseus on tin' inheritance of Ciron.
N<>t only are the common-place., often identical in both c
but the treatment of Isseus is imitated by Demosthenes. He
does not relegate the narrative into a distinct part of the speech,
ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 I I
but interweaves it with the argument and proofs, and even (in
the second speech) with the epilogue. Moreover, he shows the
same freedom in recapitulation as his master, and even a greater
skill in weaving the various parts of the speech together.
The diffidence which leads to imitation further shows itself in
Demosthenes' language. A writer who is not confident in his
own powers will not call a trivial thing by its trivial name, and
hesitates to quit the safe paths of respectability so far as to
use a familiar expression or a vivacious exclamation. In this
respect the difference between the first period of Demosthenes
and his later styles is marked. In his earlier style he does not
know the capacities of his art in this direction, and is so far cut
off from the variety, the life and movement of his mature style.
Another concomitant of immaturity is the fact that the feel-
ing of artistic propriety has not yet had sufficient exercise to
become a second nature. The feeling is there, for Demosthenes
was from the beginning an artist, but it is not yet sufficiently
developed. This is most obvious in his inability to resist the
temptations of the epideictic style. The stringency of his rules
on hiatus in this period, which we have already noticed, is c n a
sure indication of the influence of Isocrates. Another instance
is to be seen in his use of epideictic figures, assonance, parallel-
isms, and antithesis of all kinds. This kind of writing, un-
suited as it is to practical deliberate speeches, is still more out
of harmony with forensic oratory ; and that Demosthenes should
have used it in the speeches against Aphobus, although very
natural in a young writer, is proof that he was not yet in full
possession of the tine feeling which subsequently enabled him
to adapt his style to his subject with perfect artistic propriety.
It is, however, instructive to notice how soon Demosthenes
developed this power. Even the speech on the Naval Crown
shows a great advance.
The same mistake and the same early discovery of the mis-
take is obvious in the structure of the periods of this time. In
the speeches against Aphobus, the sentences have the luxuri-
ant length, the regularity, and the balance of Isocrates, and
are consequently unsuited to the practical purposes of a
court of law. But even in the speech against Onetor an
improvement is visible ; the speech is lighter and the com-
position better rounded. In this speech, too, Demosthenes
begins to free himself from the influence of Thucydides which
is visible in the speeches against Aphobus in a certain stiffness
and want of smoothness.
A perfect adjustment of means to ends comes only with ex-
perience, and the lack of this adjustment is further evident in

the absence of ethos in the speeches against Aphobus. These
speeches are very far from leaving, or attempting to leave, the
impression of an inexperienced youth making his first untutored
attempts at oratory. A character of this kind imparted to the
speeches would have been excellently adapted to secure success,
but Demosthenes relies on pathos rather than ethos. So, too,
the arguments of these speeches, though excellent in themselves,
have not the directness of attack which goes straight to the
vulnerable points of the adversary's case, while there is con-
siderable scorn and trampling on the opponent, which is not
much to the point.
Finally, in this period we see the seeds of much that was to
appear in its complete form only later. Thus, for instance, the
rhythm of his later style depends largely on his rule of not
allowing three short syllables to occur together. The first opera-
tions of his rule are observable in the speeches against Aphobus
and Onetor, and are still more visible in the speecli on the Naval
Crown, but perfection only comes later. The same remark
applies to other qualities — his grace and his power, which are
present, if not perfect — and we may say of Demosthenes, in
this period, his faults were merely those of immaturity. They
left him as he crew.
CHAPTER V.
DEMOSTHENES : SECOND PERIOD.
Between the first period of Demosthenes' literary career, ending

B.C. 359, and the second period, commencing B.O. 355, is a space,
of four years, represented by no speeches, which Demosthenes
probably spent in preparing himself, in his characteristically
determined and assiduous manner, for his profession. His
object in life was political oratory, and logography was for him,
beyond a means of living, only a means to his final object.
For this reason, and because bis private speeches are inferior to
his political orations, it is advisable to consider the private
Bpeeches first, With regard to these speeches, it is to be noticed
that not only do they ceasa alto-ether as soon as Demosthenes
becomes for the. first time a politician of weight, about n.c. 345,
but for some time before that they begin to fall off in merit.
The more actively he came to participate in politics the less
ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 I3
time and work he could bestow upon private speeches. Another

effect of the same cause is to be seen in the tendency of tbese
later private speeches to grow more and more rhetorical in
quality and less and less forensic.
Between deliberative and forensic oratory the difference in
subject is one that necessarily finds expression in a difference of
style. In the one case the interests of an individual, in the
other case the interests of a nation, are at stake, and to the
more important subject a more exalted style and loftier flights
of language are adapted. On Demosthenes this difference tells
with marked effect. His earnestness and single-minded pat-
riotism find their proper field in political oratory, and give it
the irresistible force which is his greatest characteristic. But
this very force is too irresistible and too excessive a strain for
forensic oratory to bear. Being unable to find an outlet in
those higher regions of oratory which are the province of deli-
berative rhetoric, this force is diverted into the channel of
argument. Demosthenes' earnestness does not allow him to be
easy unless he is arguing, and here again the difference between
deliberative and forensic oratory contributed to exaggerate this
fault. The political problems with which an Athenian states-
man had to deal were of comparatively simple nature, and
neither demanded nor admitted of complex argument. Athenian
law, however, was of a much more complicated nature, and
gave full scope to Demosthenes' tendency to argumentation.
From the literary point of view this tendency is a mistake,
because the perpetual argument is too great a strain on the
reader's power of attention ; and from a practical point of view
it is also a fault, because it inspires the distrust which excessive
cleverness arouses. Demosthenes' conclusions may be right,
but if he had been employed on the other side he would pro-
bably have proved his case quite as conclusively.
It is this over-anxiety to prove his point which compels us to
rank Demosthenes as a logographer below Lysias or Hyperides.
It is not that Demosthenes is incapable of simple and easy narra-
tive. The first of the private speeches of this period, that against
Conon, is proof to the contrary. The speech in its simple statement;
of the assault and battery which gave rise to the action is quite
as effective as anything in Lysias, while the language is not only
as graceful as that of Lysias, but is powerful to a degree attained
only by Demosthenes. Moreover, the ethos is good. The com-
plainant, Ariston, leaves on one the impression of being a
thoroughly inoffensive citizen, so inoffensive, indeed, and so
orthodoxly respectable, that there is something comic in the
bare supposition that he could possibly have commenced a fight

which had for its results that he was carried home, and his
" mother rushed out aud the women set up such a crying and
wailing that some of the neighbours sent to ask what was the
matter." 1
All this is more than worthy of Lysias. But it is isolated
among the speeches of Demosthenes. It is not, indeed, the
only instance which shows that Demosthenes' touch could be
light. In his political orations, certainly, his irony takes its
colour from the dominant tone of these speeches, and becomes
somewhat grim ; but in the private speeches it sometimes
beconvs bright and quite delightful One speech, the first
against Boeotus (the second is pseudo-Demosthenic), is, as a
whole, cast in a lighter vein than is usual with Demosthenes.
This speech involves a point of Attic law which has only lately
been properly understood.2 It seems that for a child at Athens
to be legitimate, and to exercise the rights of citizenship, it was
only necessary that the parents, both being Athenian citizens,
should have been formally affianced, and this even if the father
was already fully married. In the present case, the complainant,
Man tithe us, was the son of the full wife, and the defendant,
Boeotus, the son of the half wife. The latter, however, had
assumed, in lieu of his proper name, Boeotus, the name Manti-
theus, and this forms the subject of the action. A real griev-
ance was involved, for at Athens a man's full legal title consisted
of his own name, his father's, and the name of his township. As,
then, the titles of the real and the false Mantitheus would in all
legal and other documents be precisely the same, inextricable
confusion would be the result. " Mantitheus, smi of Mantias of
Thoricus," is condemned to a fine, and each legal owner of the
title says it is the other man who is fined. " Mantitheus, S'>n
of Mantias of Thoricus," is appointed by lot to office, and each
man says it is lie who is appointed, with the result, as the com-
plainant says,1 that " we shall abuse each other, and the success-
ful talker will get the office." The difficulties of this kind
which might ensue are developed in a tone of subdued humour
by Demosthenes, and with a fertility of imagination, which is
really due to his legal knowledge, but is worthy of the "Comedy
of Errors," and the concluding appeal to "you tiresome Bceotus"
is conceived in the same light strain.
But if these two speeches, against Conon and against Boeotus,
show that 1 Demosthenes was capable of .simple narrative, effective
1 Kennedy's Trans., v. 174. - See Buer's "Drei Studien."
2 Kennedy, 258.
ethos, and delightful humour, his other speeches show equally

clearly that he did not often allow himself to give rein to this
capacity. The latest of the private orations, that against Eubu-
lides, has not received the orator's finishing touches, and the
two which chronologically immediately precede it, those against
Pantaenetus and Nausimachus, suffer from the fact that the
author's
them. heart was in political speaking whilst he was writing
The speech for Phormio, which is considered to be Demos-
thenes' best private oration, shows how completely he trusted
to argument rather than to any other means of producing con-
viction. Humour there is none. Narrative has no independent
footing, but is chopped into bits and served up solely for the
sake of the argument, and the argument goes on with a
mechanical precision which is somewhat deadening. The
seriousness of the speech darkens into scorn at times, but' never
brightens into light or gracefulness. Finally, this argumenta-
tion ruins the ethos of the speech. Phormio is made out to be
good and Apollodorus bad ; but Demosthenes is not content to
convey these impressions in the most effective way — that is, in-
directlyhis
: technical power,1 which in this speech is developed
to the utmost, is too strong to permit him to do that. He has
the case so thoroughly in his own hands, and the law so com-
pletely at his finger-ends, that he can come into court and
simply demonstrate that Conon is an honourable man and
Apollodorus a treacherous and insolent villain. Unfortunately,
however, mathematical demonstrations do not appeal to one's
emotions, and so the ethos of this speech fails of its object.
It is possible that but for two facts the unsatisfactory nature
of the ethos of this speech would have been less patent to us.
First, Demosthenes in a later speech reverses the characters of
Phormio and Apollodorus as given in his speech for Phormio ;
and, secondly, we possess the speech. Tiie speech in question
is the first against Stephanos, and was composed by Demos-
thenes for Apollodorus to be used in prosecuting Stephanas
(one of Demosthenes' witnesses in the previous trial) for per-
jury. In the absence of a full knowledge of the. facts, this
sudden change of front on the part of Demosthenes has seemed
so strange that in antiquity it gave rise very naturally to various
stories not to the credit of Demosthenes. So strongly has it
been felt by modern students of Demosthenes to reflect on the
honour of Demosthenes that the speech has been on this ground
rejected as not genuine. But the speech is both marked by the
1 5ai-6TT)s.
power of Demosthenes and responds to the finer test of the law

of rhythm, so that it must be accepted as genuine. Nor, if we
class the other speeches for Apollodorus amongst the pseudo-
Demosthenic group, to which they belong, can we accept the
explanation that Demosthenes formed an early and lasting con-
nection with Apollodorus, composed many speeches for him, but
quarrelled with him, and so delivered the speech for Phormio
against him, and then finally became reconciled with him, and
again composed a speech, the present one, for him.
Demosthenes, however, was always anxious to divert the
theoric fund to military purposes, and it happened that at the time
when he composed this speech for Apollodorus, Apollodorus
succeeded in persuading the senate that the assembly should
have the power of deciding whether the surplus revenues of the
state should be devoted to the theoricon or to the war depart-
ment. From this coincidence it has been conjectured that the
speech for Apollodorus against Stephanus was the price Demos-
thenes paid in order to obtain Apollodorus' support for his
political scheme. Whether this explanation be accepted or
not, the evidence as we have it is not enough to warrant us in
condemning Demosthenes. Further, to return to the purely
literary aspect of the question, we may conclude that it was
because neither Phormio nor Apollodorus deserved the strong
characters which Demosthenes gives them in the speech for
Phormio, that in that speech he found it advisable to trust
entirely to the technical power of which he was so consummate
a master, and which is there developed to the detriment of the
ethos.
We now come to the political orations of Demosthenes. These
fall naturally into two classes. There are first the deliberative
speeches properly so called, the demegories, which comprise both
groups of the Philippics, and by which Demosthenes is best
known : next the speeches composed by 1 ►emosthenes, and some-
times delivered by him, as synegorus for other people. With
the latter class, consisting of the speeches against Androtion,
Leptines, Timocrates, and Aristocrates, we will begin.
These three speeches, together with that against the law of
Leptines, which we shall consider separately, are differentiated
from the demegories by the fact thai they are not purely political,
but are mainly concerned with points of constitutional law.
They thus form a genus of speeeh intermediate in nature between
the purely legal character of the private orations and the purely
l> lineal character of the demegories ; and at the same time they
in. ike the stepping-stone by which Demosthenes passed f^""3"^
ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 4 IJ
logography to politics. Marking as they do a period when

Demosthenes had as yet established no independent footing in
politics, they naturally cease when Demosthenes becomes estab-
lished as a statesman (i.e. at the time of the second group of
Philippics).
The difference between these speeches and the demegories
does not rest merely on these external differences. There is
also a difference of style between them analogous to the difference
between the political and the private orations. On the one
hand, they do not, like the demegories, treat of the highest
subjects of oratory. On the other hand, the orator has the
power to appeal to patriotic and allied sentiments, which to the
purely forensic orator is comparatively denied. This difference
of subject produces, or ought to produce, a corresponding dif-
ference instyle, and it is one of the great merits of Demosthenes
as an artist that he can and does invest each kind of subject
with the style which is artistically proper to it. The range of
power which enabled Demosthenes to vary his style so com-
pletely in this manner is in itself proof that he possessed many
excellences. Examination will show that, as a constitutional
lawyer, as well as in his private speeches, he attains the highest
excellence.
Typical of Demosthenes' constitutional speeches at their best
is the speech against the law of Leptines. Aphepsion and
Ctesippus wishing to repeal this law, employed respectively
Phormio and Demosthenes to speak for them. Phormio opened
the case, and Demosthenes, who thus appeared as synegorus in
a political case for the first time (b.c. 355), followed with this
speech, which is accordingly technically called a deuterology.1
The law of Leptines abolished once and for ever the exemptions
enjoyed by various Athenians from the expensive and burden-
some duties of the choregia and other "liturgies." A subject of
this kind does not admit of the impassioned flights of eloquence
which the approach of a national calamity would demand. On
the other hand, it does permit the orator to appeal to the honour.
the gratitude, and the good name of the country, and to call for
the postponement of niggardly parsimony to moral obligations.
To this level of honourable patriot ism and political morality
Demosthenes keeps the speech all through ; and it is its eleva-
tion of tone and sentiment which has gained for this speech
much of its high reputation. The language in which he clothes
1 The writer of a deuterology was not expected to deal systematically with
the whole of the opponent's case, but exercised his own discretion in the
choice of points to dilate upon.
2 D
these sentiments, is like them, quiet and unexaggerated through-

out. When the moment conies for praising the merits of those
who have enjoyed the exemptions in question in the past, his
style appropriately hecomes somewhat epideictic ; but elsewhere
his language is never bolder or stronger than the treatment of
the subject requires.
Although, however, the ethos is thus successfully developed,
the reasoning is by no means neglected. On the contrary, it is
close and effective, but it is not thrust unduly forward. The
desire to prove his point does not mislead him into reducing
everything to an argument ; and the same absence of constraint
is visible in his freedom of arrangement and his looseness, per-
haps even carelessness, of connection. The ease and grace of
the speech has caused it to be compared to the work of Lysias
in style. But although the similarity is undoubtedly great,
the points of difference are important. The art of Lysias con-
sists in writing in a simple easy style, which apparently anybody,
certainly the man in whose mouth the speech is put, might use.
In the speech of Demosthenes, however, there is no pretence of
this kind. The work is a work of art, and is, without attempt
at disguise, the work of a practised and skilful orator.
Moreover, the style of Lysias is always graceful, but it is
always slender. The oratory of Demosthenes has more flesh on
his bones; its forms are fuller and rounder. This is the ease
even with the speech against the law of Leptines, which in
this respect is less developed than the remainder of the set of
speeches to which it belongs. Variety of expression, wealth of
words, and the use of metaphors all help to give more substance
to the speeches against Timocrates (b.c. 353) and Aristocrates
(B.C. 352), while in the latter the professional skill of Demos-
thenes has been employed in further smoothing the transitions
from one part of t he speech to another.
The demegories fall into two groups — those delivered by De-
mosthenes before B.C. 349, while he was yet bidding for power,
and those delivered when he had become a politician of some
consequence {i.e. after n.c. 346).
The speeches on the Navy Boards (b.c. 354), for the Mega-
lopolitans (b.c. 353), and on the liberty of the Rhodians (d.c.
350) are the speeches of a young politician trying to bring
himself into notice. The speech on the Navy Boards, delivered
when Demosthenes was thirty years of age, is practical and
sensible. The other two speeches display considerable courage
in advocating unpopular views. In style, these three speeches
are very similar, though the last is perhaps the most inferior.
Their common feature is their Thucydidean character. They

are in passages artificial, harsh, difficult, and even obscure.1
Doubtless the imitation of Thucydides was intentional on the
part of Demosthenes, who wished to transfer to his own speeches
the brevity, the compression, the force, and the sting of the
historian, but had not yet learnt that it is possible to be im-
pressive without being obscure. In later times the influence of
Isocrates counteracted that of Thucydides on Demosthenes, and
the result is that, while these speeches are more forcible than the
speech against the law of Leptines, they are more clumsy than
the later demegories. In one respect, however, the influence of
Thucydides, which here is so plain, persisted throughout the
oratory of Demosthenes. The severe style, of which Thucy-
dides and Antiphon are representatives, trusted much more to
the effect of single words than of the sentence ; and, that these
cardinal words may have the more effect, they are thrown into un-
usual and emphatic positions. This means of gaining emphasis
was one which Demosthenes would never forego ; and herein he
differs from Lysias, who sacrifices less to emphasis ; and still more
from Isocrates, whose dominant motive is a clearness and trans-
parency ofsentence against which abnormal disposition of words
would militate.
The first group of the Philippics further includes the First
Philippic (b.c. 351) and the Olynthiacs2 (n.c. 349). These
speeches were designed to waken the Athenians to the danger
which Philip's growing power threatened them with, and to
arouse them to a sense of the necessity of active measures to
meet the danger.3 Demosthenes, however, was still far from
rivalling Eubulus, who then directed the fortunes of Athens,
and these orations consequently, like the earlier demegories,
shared the fate of the speeches of an unsupported speaker.
The first impression left by these speeches on the reader is
their intense earnestness. Whether Demosthenes is stating a
danger, exposing the means of resistance, rebuking the indo-
lence of his countrymen, or encouraging them yet to resist, this
terrible earnestness is always present. In this respect, the
speeches are doubtless a true reflection of the man's character.
1 E.g. on the Naval Board, 4, 5, 13, 26. The construction of the neuter
article with the infinitive or with the genitive is Thucydidean.
2 The proper order of the Olynthiacs is a question belonging rather to the
literature of history than to the history of literature, and does uot seem
capable of any very satisfactory settlement.
3 The subject-matter of these speeches belongs to Greek history, and con-
sequently the reader is referred for their contents to some historian of
Greece.
Munificent towards the state, generous and tender-hearted as

he was to his poor relations, Demosthenes, the water-drinker
and hard worker, was not an agreeable acquaintance. He was
too much concentrated on his work to be social, and we should
wrong his memory to imagine him as ever entertaining or
amusing.
These speeches and the demegories generally, have, then, a
distinct and remarkable ethos, but it is not an ethos consciously,
and as it were artificially, imparted to them, as in the case of
Lysias' speeches. It is the natural and necessary feeling in-
spired in the reader by a man who is plainly speaking from the
very bottom of his heart, who mingles with his work no thought
for himself, no wish for aught but for the welfare of his fellow-
citizens and the honour of his country.
The earnestness which inspires this confidence in the sin-
cerity, unselfishness and patriotism of Demosthenes is a quality
which, easily appreciated, has at all times largely contributed to
the fame which he justly enjoys. But, at the same time, it is
this very quality which sets to his power limits beyond which
he cannot go either in range or in height. Demosthenes' oratory
is of the kind which carries you with it or crushes you, but it can
hardly be said to soar. Its loftiest height is rather a moral than
an oratorical one, an unshaken confidence in the eternal laws of
right and wrong, and an elevated trust (supported by argument)
in political morality. What concentration and earnestness can
attain to is attained, but above this plane his eloquence scarcely
rises.
Demosthenes' is not the power to excite to tears or move to
laughter, still less to mingle tears and laughter. His earnestness
neither needed the one nor allowed of the other. Laughter
may be a legitimate relief in modern oratory, as in modern
tragedy, but it is no more to be looked for in Demosthenes than
in ^schylus. In this respect the great Athenian orator and
the great Athenian dramatist may well be compared. The
work of each is of simple structure as compared with the com-
plexity ofcorresponding modern work, and is suffused, or rather
overshadowed, by the gloom of impending calamity. In both
cases the only relief to this oppressive apprehension is an occa-
sional gleam of humour (e.^.the Nurse iniEschylus), which, how-
ever, itself is apt to become somewhat grim ; as, for instance,
when Demosthenes assures the Philippising orators that they
are really much indebted to him : if there were no opposition tc
Philip, they would have nobody to protect them from Philip
oratory: demostheyes. 421
Irony,1 sarcasm, satire, and parody are the forms in which his
surcharged feelings find relief. Even thus he often relapses into
a bitterness which harmonises, indeed, with the tone of the
speech, but evidently troubles instead of relieving the orator
himself, and only intensifies instead of lightening the prevailing
gloom. Thus'he lashes the Athenian craving for news. "Xews!
Why, could there be greater news than a man of Macedonia
subduing Athenians and directing the affairs of Greece?"2
Of their carpet-knights, who were fonder of conducting pro-
cessions in the market-place at home than war abroad, he says
with scorn, " Like puppet-makers, you elect your infantry and
cavalry officers for the market-place, not for war." 3 So, too,
where he cuttingly remarks that their generals' courage was
shown in rather facing the extreme penalty of the law than
die in battle.4 Scorn, indignation, anger, and disdain are the
feelings which he evokes to diversify and to give point to his
forebodings.
Equally consonant is it with his earnestness that petty graces
or ambitious ornament he alike despises. His oratory is clothed
in its strength alone. As Fenedon says, (i C'est ie bon sens qui
parle, sans autre ornement que sa force." Without grace his
oratory distinctly is not ; but it is not the grace of Lysias' slim
and slender beauty ; it is the grace which accompanies the exer-
cise of perfect strength. Demosthenes has grace, though scarcely
graces. His forms, though rounder and fuller, as we have said,
than those of Lysias, are made so by the addition of muscle, not
of useless flesh. That is to say, his style includes every "figure"
known to oratory, and these figures are used never idly or for
show, but always to contribute to the force of the speech.
Thus he is very fond of antitheses ; not in the sense that he
is perpetually using them, but that he uses them as though he
loved them, making them very sharp, and bringing them down
with tremendous effect ; as when he summarises the situation in
B.C. 351, "The beginning of this war was to chastise Philip,
the end is to protect ourselves against his attacks." 5 For the
expression of the stronger emotions alliteration is adapted. It
arrests and directs the attention to the words which convey the
anger, irony, or emotion, and thereby increases the effect. Poly-
1 E.i/. Phil. iii. 66 : atoXtjc y ol troWol vvv airei\-f)<pacnv 'QpeirQsv x°-PLV —
Ka\rjv y 6 orjuos b ' V.ptTpUuiv — kclXQs 'OXvfOiuv ((pdaaro.
2 Phil. ii. io (Kennedy's tnins.)
3 Il»., 26. 4 Ik, 47-
5 II)., 43. Demosthenes' affection for antithesis >;ives the point to Timooles
irony when he describes him as ov5tiru;iroTe 'AvridfTov einwv 01'fcV \ihe
Heroes, Meineke, Frag. Com. Med., p. 598).
syndeton, drawing out and prolonging the effect of an enumera-

tion, renders it all the more impressive ; while paralipsis, i.e.
the omission of what might he taken into account, gives the
impression of fairness and reserved power.1 Characteristic of
Demosthenes, as compared with earlier orators, is his use of
anadiplosis, i.e. the repetition of a word for emphasis, as, e.g.
in Shakespeare, " Oh, horrihle ! oh, horrible ! most horrible ! " 2
Anaphora 3 and antistrophe 4 — the repetition of a word at the
beginning or at the end of successive clauses — asyndeton,6
apostrophe, feigned objections, questions, exclamations, and
aposiopesis are all brought into play by Demosthenes when
anything is to be gained by using them.
Before proceeding to consider the second group of Philippics,
we must deal with the speech against Midias (written B.C. 349).
Demosthenes while discharging his duties as choregus was in-
sulted and assaulted in the theatre by Midias, an ancient enemy.
The assembly, which was held in the theatre immediately after
the plays to give a preliminary decision on such disputes as
might arise out of the plays, decided in Demosthenes' favour,
and it was now for Demosthenes to take further legal proceed-
ings. As Demosthenes was at this time just succeeding in his
long endeavour to rise into notice as a statesman, it was natural
that he should feel it impossible to quietly submit to the affront
so publicly and outrageously put upon him. But Midias was a
man of wealth, and therefore of power. It was consequently
no easy matter, as Demosthenes found, to bring him to justice.
Midias managed to delay the trial by instigating various vexa-
tious suits against Demosthenes, and succeeded so far that he
gained a delay, which was long enough to make it exceedingly
probable that the popular indignation against him had subsided
into indifference. The result was that Demosthenes, who for
long strenuously refused to accept any mediation, at length saw
that, as far as rehabilitating his dignity was concerned, to push
the matter to a trial would be quite ineffectual. At the same
1 In Phil. iii. 26, alliteration (of <r, conveying anger), polysyndeton (repeti-
tion of the Kai). and paralipsis all occur: — "OXvpOov pti> 5?j Kai Mttoijii Kai
ATroWuvlav Kai ovo Kai Tpt&KOvra 7ru\fis iwl QpaKrjs iu>, fis d7rricras ovtws
(bfiQs avypriKev,
- E.g. Ohm. ii. 10 : ou yap tariv, ovk lariv us &i>5pts 'AOrjvatoi.
3 E.g. 01. ii. 31 : \tyuy 5jj KtcpdXaiov, iravras ilvQipiiv d<p' Scruv tKaaros ?xet
rb taov' ndm-as iÛvai Kara, pipos k.t.X.
4 E.g. Phil. i. 27 : Ta£iap\ovs wap vpwv, Imrdpxovs trap vpuiv.
* The breathless asyndeton, which has no time for conjunctions, is best
known by Caesar's " Veni, vidi, vici." It may also be used, as by Julian, to
point a pieco of wit : lyfwv, avlyvuv, Kariyvwv.
time the fall of Olynthus necessitated peace, and Demosthenes

could not refuse to co-operate for this object with Eubulus, who,
moreover, was active in mediating between Demostbenes and
Midias. Doubtless, also, the prospect of public employment in
negotiating the peace, as well as his patriotism, had some effect
in inducing Demosthenes to accept the compromise.
Thus tbe speech against Midias, though written, was never
delivered, and there seem to be no grounds, from the facts of
the case, for the more or less absurd imputations which have
been cast upon Demosthenes in connection with it. The speech,
as we have it, is unfinished in many places, but its power is
nevertheless undeniable. Written by Demosthenes while he
was yet smarting throughout his sensitive nature under the
insult put upon him, this speech is the blow which he returns
to his assailant.- Every means which his eloquence suggests,
which Ins skill affords him, which his experience had accumu-
lated, is brought into play to give force and weight to his
strokes. Although the matter was essentially a personal one,
the assault was also an outrage upon the people whose repre-
sentative Demosthenes was as choregus. This aspect of the
case was naturally the one which Demosthenes chose to put
upon it, and in his endeavour to do so he assumes the style
which in its weight and dignity is characteristic of the deme-
gories. It was not in the eyes of Athenians, and according to
the usage of the law-courts of Athens, inconsistent with this
object or with this style that Demosthenes should launch forth
into a long invective against the life and manners of Midias.
But to no orator, however great, is it given to descend to per-
sonalities without paying the penalty thereof by degradation
to the level of his subject. Therefore, to all times, as to us, the
speech against Midias must seem, great as it- technically is,
below the reputation of Demosthenes
At the age of forty, Demosthenes, supported by the war partv,
and co-operating with Hyperides, Hegesippus, and others, was
now (b.c. 344) for the first time in a position of power, and for
the first time a statesman of acknowledged rank. To this perio I
belongs the second group of Philippics, consisting of the speech
on the Peace (rc. 346); the Second Philippic (n.c. 344) ; tin1
speech on the Chersonese (b.c. 341); ami the Third Philippic
(B.C. 341). Of the speech on the Peace and the Second Phi-
lippic little need be said but that in point of style they belong
to this period. The speech on the Chersonese is interesting as
being the demegory which is least open to the charge of a want
of conclusiveness in its reasoning. Demosthenes' inferiority
elsewhere in this respect is in part doubtless due to his defi-

ciency in method. The earlier orators secured a certain amount
of" clearness and organisation by means of a formal and artilicial
division of a speech into such parts as introduction, narrative,
argument, and conclusion. These divisions [ssbus broke up,
or, more strictly speaking, he broke down the division between
narrative and argument. Demosthenes followed the example of
his master, and left only the introduction and the conclusion
untouched. But although he deserted the old arrangement, he
introduced nothing to take its place. If he announces a plan
at the beginning of a speech, he does not adhere to it ; and more
often he announces no plan at all. He thus is at liberty to
interrupt his argument and then resume it, repeat himself, or
fail to resume the argument thus interrupted. That is to say,
he has abandoned the artilicial method without attaining to a
logical arrangement.
Partly also in his want of conclusiveness we see the limits
on the intellectual side which were imposed on him by his ear-
nestness. On the emotional side we have seen that his earnest-
ness confines him to scorn, indignation, ami other stormy displays
appropriate to the presage of calamity. < »n the intellectual side
t he concentration which his earnestness leads to gives him a
much clearer apprehension of what he wants than of the objec-
tions which might be conceivably brought forward against it.
He sees things from his own side with perfect distinctness, but
he makes little attempt to place himself at the opposite point of
view and work from that. On the other hand, concentration
gives force. He does not weaken his attack by dividing it, but
throws his whole force into pressing his one point. If h<
only his own side of the matter, he sees that all the more clearly ;
and if he does not render his own position absolutely impreg-
nable, he at least succeeds in making his ideas and his feelings
clear to his hearers beyond the possibility of misconception.
Finally, from the artistic standpoint, his earnestness and con-
centration give to his speeches the unity they possess, while his
freedom from the restraints of either a logical or an artilicial
arrangement leaves him at liberty to arrange his matter in accord-
ance with the dictates of his instinct as an artist.
In connection with the subject of arrangement, it may be
observed that an oration, like a tragedy, at Athens usually ter-
minated in the simplest and quietest of strains. This practice,
which is observed by Demosthenes, is m>ted as unpractical by
Lord Brougham j1 and undoubtedly, for the purposes of raising
1 Works, vii. 25, 184.
enthusiastic cheering, something more in the nature of a bravura

note is required. But to see clearly how utterly impossible any
such ending is for Demosthenes, we have only to look at th_e
Third Philippic. This is the greatest and the noblest of all
Demosthenes' demegories. It contains passages of the very
grandest oratorical power.1 It is throughout sad and solemn,
with the majesty and grandeur of a funeral march. It is the
music with which Greek freedom went down into, the grave.
Could such a speech conclude amid cheers 1 Nothing more
self conscious and unlike Demosthenes, nothing in worse taste
or more vulgar could be suggested. There was only one way to
worthily end such a speech, and that is the simple way in
whicli Demosthenes ended it.2
The speech on the Embassy (b.c. 344) largely resembles the
speech against Midias. As a display of technical power, and as
a move in the game of politics, it possesses all the merit which
Demosthenes, when personally touched, might be expected
to show ; but otherwise it does not increase our respect for
him.3
CHAPTER VI.
DEMOSTHENES : THIRD PERIOD — SPEECH ON THE CROWN.
The interval (rc. 341-330) between the second and third

periods of Demosthenes' literary career is not represented by
any of the orations that have come down to us. This is not, of
course, because Demosthenes delivered no speeches at that time.
On the contrary, he was probably more active as a statesman
and an orator at this than at any other time of his life. It was
the time of the final struggle which ended on the fatal field of
Chseronea (b.c. 338), the death of Philip (b.c. 336), and the
unsuccessful attempt of the Spartan Agis to throw off the
Macedonian yoke. The "reason we have none of the many
speeches which Demosthenes made at such a time of activity
1 E.g. the comparison of Philip to a disease, and the wonderful irony of
66 (quoted in extenso in a previous note).
2 The whole of the epilogue consists of these few words, 74 : fytj) ^j<
877 ravra Xtyu), ravra ypdcpw Kal otofj.cn Ktxi viv in iTravopffuO^vai an ra.
vp6.yp.ara rovrtov yiyvopiivwv. el 54 rtt Hx(l tovtwv f3t,\rioi>, \e-)erw Kal
<Tvp.(3ov\eveT0). 6 ti 8' ip.1v 56£et, rovr', w iravrts Oeoi, criveviyKot. The doubt
and almost despair of Demosthenes breaks out in the u> Trd^res t)(oi.
3 Some notice of the subject-matter will be found in the chapter on
•£schinea.
is that his very activity left him no time to publish the speeches
which be delivered. Further, as a statesman of established
position, he was no longer under the necessity of publishing for
the sake of gaining a political footing.
The third period of Demosthenes' style (b.c. 330-323),
although the second and third letters, if genuine, belong to
this period, is practically represented by the speech on the
Crown. In B.C. 336 Ctesiphon proposed in the Boule that a
golden crown should be publicly presented to Demosthenes in
the theatre at the great Dionysia, in recognition of his services
to the state. This would have been in effect a condemnation of
tbe Macedonian party at Athens. If Demosthenes' policy was
deserving of the public approval, that of tbe Macedonian party
was thereby publicly condemned. Opposition to the proposal
of Ctesiphon was therefore forthcoming from this quarter, and
at the bead of it was yEschines — the second orator of Athens —
who had already come into frequent and violent collision with
Demosthenes.
For reasons which are unknown to us, the matter did net come
to a trial until B.C. 330, when iEsehines indicted Ctesiphon for
illegality on three grounds — that to confer a reward on a man
whose accounts as a public officer had not been audited was
illegal; that to proclaim the reward in the theatre at the
Dionysia was illegal ; and that it was illegal to make false
statements in public documents. As to these three points, tbe
iirst was undoubtedly perfectly good in law. At the time of
the proposal Demosthenes was a treasurer of the Theoricon and
a conservator of the walls, and had not rendered account of bis
office. The second point was probably not good in law. But
the most important was the third point. It raised the whole
question whither the policy of Demosthenes in encouraging
Athens to stand forth as the champion of Greece against Mace-
donia was a right and good policy or not. The strength of
/Kxhines lay in the first point of his indictment, and in the
purely legal aspect of the case; and it is in this part of his
speech against Ctesiphon that his argument shows to most
advantage. In reply Ctesiphon said probably very little, but
gave way to Demosthenes, who followed with the (so-called)
speed 1 "ii the Crown.
Whether we have the speech as Demosthenes delivered it, is
a question harder to answer with regard to the speecli on the
Crown than with regard to any other of Demosthenes' speeches.
lli.-> deliberative speeche- he wrote out before delivering them —
his aversion to improvisation is known — and if he chose to
circulate, or merely indeed to retain without destroying his copy,

we can understand its coining down to us. His forensic speeches
are all speeches for the prosecution, and consequently could be
composed before going into court. There is, accordingly, no
difficulty in understanding how it is that in the case of these
speeches also we have the words as Demosthenes uttered them
— allowing, that is, for his subsequent erasures, additions, and
corrections. But the case of the speech on the Crown is dif-
ferent. Itcould not have been taken into court ready written
out, for it is a reply, and a pretty close reply, to the speech of
iEschines, which Demosthenes would not hear until he got into
court. It is evident, then, that at least some of the speech was
not written out beforehand. The question arises, how much 1
In the first place, all the documents, of whatever kind, quoted,
and they are in this case pretty numerous, had to be produced
at the preliminary investigation (anacrisis). This shows that
the main lines of the speech had been resolved on by Demos-
thenes before the actual trial, otherwise he would not have
known what documents to put in at the anacrisis. In the next
place, the very beginning of the speech shows that it was already
planned, and that Demosthenes adhered to the plan. vEschines
had in his speech 1 demanded that Demosthenes should follow
the order in which he had treated the various topics of the trial.
Demosthenes having arranged his speech beforehand, naturally
says 2 to the court, " You must allow the parties to adopt such
order and course of defence as they severally choose and prefer."
Again, a little farther on in the speech there occurs a passage
which at first sight looks as though the speech were going to be
largely extempore, but which really is merely a rhetorical device
for concealing the fact that the speech was previously prepared.
Demosthenes says, 3 " I shall take the charges in the same
order as my adversary, and discuss them all one by one without
a single intentional omission." But as a matter of fact, /E-^chines
had no choice as to the order of the charges, and the order was
known to Demosthenes before the trial began quite as well as to
his opponent. Equally rhetorical is the device of pretending4
that he enters on a justification of his state policy solely b icause
iEschines first introduced the subject. This was the very matter
which was at trial, and which the crowds of visitors from all
parts of Greece had come to hear. For six years the trial had
hung fire, and Demosthenes hail had the whole of that time to
think out his defence. In fact, Demosthenes must — as indeed
1 In Ctes. 203. '- Dt Cor. 2 ^Kennedy).
8 lb 69 * lb. 10.
his speech shows — have known the weak points of his own case
as well as yEschines did, and must have known very fairly where
to expect each blow. Indeed, he anticipated one blow which
/Eschines did not deliver. He made sure that, amongst other
terms of abuse. /Eschines would bring up his nickname, Battalus,
and accordingly prepared an effective reply. But iEschines
never alluded to the nickname ; and accordingly Demosthenes'
words now run — not " I, whom you call Battalus," but — " I,
whom you would call Battalus." 1
On the whole, then, it seems that the differences between the
speech as Demosthenes took it prepared into court, and as lie
delivered it after hearing and in reply to iEschines' speech,
were probably not very considerable, and that there is no diffi-
culty in understanding how it is that we have the speech as
delivered by Demosthenes. Undoubtedly both he and iEschines
went home and made such additions to or corrections in their
arguments as their mutual criticism seemed to them to necessi-
tate. /Eschines certainly introduced several such alterations. -
One of these passages is extremely instructive. /Eschines says3
that he hears Demosthenes is going to compare him, in an
uncomplimentary sense, to the Sirens, and retorts on Demos-
thenes with a tu quoque. This of course means that Demosthenes
did in his speech on the Crown compare .Kschines to the Sirens,
and that kschines when the trial was over inserted this retort,
But in our copy of the speech on the Crown no such comparison
is to be found. Evidently, therefore, Demosthenes, in making
the final copy of his speech for circulation, omitted this passage ;
but of this omission iEschines, who was replying to the speech
as spoken in court, was unaware. If /Eschines had been answer-
ing the circulated copy of the De Corona, there would have been
no need for him to reply to a passage which did not occur in it.
From this it would seem, then, that the other passages of -Eschines
which imply acquaintance with Demosthenes' speech are good
evidence that the sections of Demosthenes against which they
are directed were really delivered in court.
It has been said4 that the sources of Demosthenes' power
as an orator are three : his lofty morality, his intellectual supe-
riority, and the magical power of his language. We will begin,
therefore, our criticism of the speech on the Crown with an
examination of the language. The variety of effects which De-
mosthenes iscapable of producing is due, in the first place, to
his extensive i imand of language. In this respect, even in
1 Scliaefer, Demonthenes, B. 80.
* K.'i. in Ctes. 228. 3 II). 229.
4 Weatermanu, Oetchichte der Beredtamkeit, i. 109.
his other speeches, the range of Demosthenes is much wider

than that of any previous orator ; and in this, his greatest speech,
he shows a fertility and copiousness which even he had never
hefore displayed. Antiphon, writing in the severe style, -was
limited in his choice of words and expressions by the limited
object which he had in view, namely, to produce an effect of
magnificence and grandeur. Lysias, writing in the plain style,
was equally limited in his resources, although his theory of the
art — that it should confine itself to such modes of expression as
were within the reach of the ordinary man — directed his labours
to a totally different part of the field to that which Antiphon
had been labouring. Isocrates, again, who was no practical orator,
indulged in an academic fastidiousness of diction which limited
his vocabulary in a distinctly artificial manner.
Demosthenes, however, fills all these fields. He not only
avails himself freely of the magnificence of Antiphon, the sim-
plicity of Lysias, or the precision of Isocrates, as occasion
requires ; but he has no hesitation in borrowing the " by Zeus I"1
of ordinary, not to say vulgar life. Kor has he any prudery to
prevent him calling a plain tiling by its plain name. His in-
nate sense of power enabled him to deal freely with what others
touched timidly. The level of culture at which a stock of
proverbs constitutes a man's education is that of Sancho Panza :
and consequently, proverbs, however apt, are frequently avoided
by writers as wanting in dignity. But Demosthenes, if he wants
a proverb, uses it.2 So, too, if comedy can be laid under con-
tribution to yield a means of ridicule, Demosthenes goes un-
hesitatingly tocomedy.3 If the language as it is does not afford
1 Demosthenes uses not only vrj rbv Aid, but the form vh. Aid, which exces-
sive usage had worn it down to. An equally lively and vulgar expression is
& rav. This expression was originally respectable ((/. & Ira, Alcaeus in
Athen. 481A). Sophocles puts it into a messenger's mouth, 0. T. 1145. An
interesting indication that Demosthenes did not confine himself with abso-
lute strictness to "pure" Attic is to be found in his use of the preposi-
tion avv. In Xenophon, who has no claims to " purity," avv is used more
frequently than fxtrd (the proportion is avv used 556 times, /txero 275 times).
In Homer avv is used freely. In Herod6tus fxera begins to seriously rival
avv (avv 72, fierd 65). In Attic Greek the "law of parcimony," which, as
Mr. Rutherford in his " New Phrynichus " has shown, would not tolerate if
it could not differentiate synonyms, practically killed avv. In Plato we
have avv 87, fxerd 586 ; in Demosthenes avv 12 (15), fjurd. 346 ; in Lysias
avv 2, fierd 102 ; and in Isocrates, Lycurgus, and Hyperides avv does not
occur, nerd is in undisturbed possession of the field. "Why fierd killed avv
we do not know. See T. Hommson, Progr. Frankfurt, 1847.
2 De Cor. 24, 72, 263. In the demegories, however, he never does more
than alliule to proverbs.
3 lb. 242, 261 ; the diminutives are from comedy.
430 I1IST0RY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
anything strong enough to express his feelings of contempt, he

coins a word which shall be strong enough.1 In the other direc-
tion, for the expression of lofty and solemn sentiments he has
at command adequate words. Thus he employs adjurations,2
unusual words,8 and stately phrases of a tragic cast.4
Isocrates purposely avoided metaphors, and Lysias instinc-
tively shunned figurative language. In both cases clearness of
thought was thus gained. Demosthenes, however, is a thinker
powerful enough to master his language, and is never mastered
by it ; and he accordingly adds to the variety and charm of his
style by a free use of similes and metaphors. His similes have
the widest range, and are taken with equal freedom from com-
merce,5 building,6 war and athletics,7 and disease.8 More seldom
and more poetical are those from sea and sky.9 His metaphors
are partly nautical10 (as might be expected from the orator of a
maritime nation), but still more largely from that which gave a
young Athenian much of his education and occupied a good deal
of the thoughts of all Athenians, the gymnasium. And within
this range we have metaphors from running,11 wrestling,1- and
boxing,1^ as well as from the decision of the judges14 and the
offering of prizes.15
The power of Demosthenes' language, however, cannot be
accounted for solely by the wealth of his vocabulary or his
variety of expression. Words appeal as well to the ear as to
the mind, and, above all, in oratory a sentence must have its
melody as well as its meaning. As, however, in music, no
more precise definition of melody can be found than that it is a
pleasing combination of musical sounds, so of the melody of
prose we can say little more than that it is the pleasing combi-
nation of spoken sounds, and the ultimate test of melody must
be made by the ear. This, in the case of Demosthenes, is for
us, with our defective knowledge of the pronunciation of Greek,
1 lb. 139, 209, 242 ; the compounds are Demosthenes' coinage.

2 Adjurations are unknown to Isceus and Andooides, am] are rare in other
orators, but numerous in Demosthenes. We have, e.<j. the Homeric vt) t6i>
Aid Kai rbv 'AirdWoj teal ttjv 'AOijvav ', also vq rbv 'HpaKXed, vr) ttjv Aîjrpa.
For other forms see lh I'm: 1, 8,141, 158, 199, 201, 261, 294, 307, 324, 385.
■ /'■ Cor. 195, 199, 204, 207. 4 l'>. 141. 270.
5 E.g. ohm. i. 11, 15 ; Peace 12; Phil. iii. 38 ; ]>■
6 E.g. ol 'ii. ii. 10 j Phil. i. 26. 7 E.g. Olyn. iii. 17 ; Phil. iii. 17, i. 4a
B E.g. 01. ii. 21, iii. 33; Phil. iii. 2.) ; I>< I'm: 243.
8 E.g. Phil. iii. 69, Ih Cor. 153 (celebrated), 194. 214, 308 (these and the
followii g refevenoea from Rebdanta). i0 E.g. {nro<TTei\dnti>os, Phil. i. 51.
11 E.g. iraptpxtrai, De Cor. 7. u E.g. vnocnceXlfciv, ib. 138.
1S Developed into a simile, Phil. i. 40. 14 E.g. Ppafte vovai, Ol. iii. 27.
1 E.g. if p.{aifi ice irat, Phil. i. 5.
obviously a matter of difficulty. Hence it is advisable to rely

on the ancient theories of prose rhythm.
As poetry falls into verses, so prose falls into divisions called
cola, which should, on the average, be the length of a hexa-
meter, i.e. about fifteen syllables. A colon is, of course, rarely
this precise length, but is generally longer or shorter, and not
unfrequently much longer or shorter. The next thing to under-
stand with regard to the colon is how it is related to what we
understand by a sentence. Several cola together make, a period,
and a period is always a sentence in our sense of the word,
though a sentence is not always a period, for a sentence may
consist of a single colon. Thus, "I have no ambition" is a
colon. It is also a sentence. But it is not a period. On the
other hand, " I have no ambition, unless it be the ambition to
break your chain and contemplate your glory," is a sentence
and is also a period, consisting of two cola, the first of which
is, " I have no ambition." A colon, therefore, is a complete
thought, or a portion complete in itself of a thought.
A colon of prose is, like a verse of poetry, divisible into
metrical feet ; but it is a mark of bad taste or of negligence if
a prose writer falls into verse,1 for prose and poetry are different
things. The metre of poetry is definite and recurrent, while
that of prose is not at all, or in a less degree, definite and recur-
rent. But although the metre of prose must not be identical
with, it majr suggest that of poetry. The end of a verse may
be used at the beginning of a colon, or the beginning at the
end. Moreover, the more unusual the verse suggested, the more
closely the colon may be made to resemble the metre of the
verse.2
Demosthenes shows an advance on previous orators in respect
of prose rhvthm. He systematically avoids more than two short
syllables at a time, and in the rhythmical termination of a
sentence he displays much variety. As a rule, a long syllable
followed by short ones has a diminuendo effect, while short
syllables followed by long ones have a crescendo effect, and con-
sequently the latter kind of rhythm is naturally adapted for the
termination of a sentence. Isocrates, on this principle, usually
concludes with two or more long syllables. Demosthenes, how-
1 A great number of iambics may be found in Demosthenes ; but inas-

much as the iambic does not in any case coincide with the colon, hut is
divided between two cola, it is really broken np by the pause between the
two cola, and is thus no violation of the rule that verse should not occur iu
prose.
- E.g. the anapsestic dimeter or a logaoedic.
ever, without lessening the impressive effect of a termination

of tliis kind, avoids the monotony of too many long syllables.1
Further, there are to be found in Demosthenes traces of recur-
rent rhythm, i.e. cases in which the cola of a period correspond
metrically to each other. Such cases of rhythm naturally do
not pervade a speech, but are to be looked for only in passages
which, for some reason or other, are carefully and deliberately
elaborated in this respect.
Demosthenes' intellectual superiority, the second source of his
oratorical power, is most manifest when he is compared with
any other man of his own day. He saw the danger with which
Macedon threatened Greece before any other Athenian citizen,
and when the news with regard to Elatea wakened Athens to
the truth, there is no doubt that Demosthenes was, as he him-
self says, the only man who had any reasoned ideas on the mea-
sures which it was necessary to take. Again, the intellectual
power of Demosthenes as an orator is shown by the skill with
which, at the age of twenty, he carried on the complicated liti-
gation against his guardians. This continued throughout his
career, and is strongly illustrated by the speech on the Crown,
which illustrates the mental grasp which enabled him to suc-
cessfully handle a large mass of facts ; and still more clearly do
Ave see from the speeches for Phormio and against Stephanur.
(I.), arguing, as they practically do, the same case from opposite
sides, how thoroughly Demosthenes could understand a case.
The restless energy of the man may be seen in almost any of
his speeches, for in all the stream of argument is all-pervading
and perpetual.
"Whether, however, the intellectual superiority of Demosthenes
is equally great when he is compared with modern orators is
another question. It is said on the one hand, that modern
statesmen, having to deal with problems of much greater
complexity than any which were propounded to the orators
of Athens, are educated into treating these complex problems
with corresponding thoroughness in their speeches ; while
Athenian orators for want of this education attained to less
power cf treatment. On the other hand, it is sa.'d that Demos-
thenes, ifhe did not attain certainty of demonstration, at least
succeeds in conveying to the minds uf his hearers the conclu-
1 The epitritic ending of the Second Olynthiac is a favourite one — fifKrLov

■*tl'v 6\wv irpayndrwif iiulv ix^VTWV' Demosthenes, indeed, uses every pos-
sible mode of termination, but the choriambus and the fourth paeon"" — )
nre most frequent,
sions he wished them to adopt and the reasons for adopting

them, with a clearness not to be gainsaid or surpassed. He
attacks in column and not in line. Both views may be true.
His attack is irresistible at the point on which he directs it;
but he does not defeat the whole of the enemy's line. There
remain difficulties and objections which he has not overthrown,
because he has not attacked them. In this respect therefore
— as compared with the comprehensive power shown in modern
expositions of policy — the intellectual superiority of Demos-
thenes needs qualification.
As to the morality of Demosthenes there can be no doubt ;
indeed the tendency is to make too much of it. Demosthenes
was not the only just man in the Athens of his day. We are
apt to be so much impressed by his gloomy pictures of Athens
as a city full of people who set their hearts on unworthy objects
and gave themselves up to those wicked orators who lulled them
into false security and ignoble ease, that we come to think of
Demosthenes as a voice crying in the wilderness of selfishness
and corruption. But although it is true that there was an
increasing dearth of earnest patriotism at Athens, it is equally
true that there were many other public men besides Demos-
thenes who scorned Philip's gold and Alexander's threats.
Premising, then, that Demosthenes had not a monopoly of
patriotism and was not the sole purveyor of political morality
to the Athenians of his time, we may fully recognise that his
speeches are uniformly inspire 1 with a conviction of the para-
mount duty of doing what is right. Many of the finest passages
of the Philippics contain the sentiment that the wicked cannot
prosper, expressed in accents of real feeling, and with a force of
conviction that cannot be resisted.
Above all, and most appropriately, the speech on the Crown
is marked by the peace of mind which belongs to the man who
has known the right and done it. This speech has much in it
that offends, and justly offends, modern taste. Like the speech
against Midias and that on the Embassy, it has at first sight a
narrow and personal basis. Like those speeches, it is besmirched
with abuse, personalities, and coarseness. From the very nature
of its subject it was impossible that it should lie conceived or
delivered in the spirit of pure patriotism and self-effacement
which is characteristic of the Philippics. Of those speeches it
could be truly said, " Tout est dit pour le saint commun, aucun
mot n'est pour l'oratenr." But from a speech delivered under
the conditions of that on the Crown we can at most hope that
the common safety will not come oil' worse than the 2 E orator.
434 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE
In spite, however, of all these inevitable defects, the speech is

the greatest which Demosthenes ever made, and this is partly
because the laudation which it contains of himself and the
country is tolerable, and even laudable, as it was pronounced in
the hour of misfortune, which he shared with the country, and
not at a moment of triumph. Principally, however, it is great
because the speech is that of a man who followed honour and
the right steadfastly, although they led to failure, and who in
spite of adversity has not departed from his faith in duty.
1 )« mosthenes' patriotism and political morality has always
been the subject of eulogy, but his private character have not
been so uniformly fortunate. Whether he was or was not loose.
in his private life is a question which can be hardly answered
in the negative, solely on the ground of his notorious habits of
hard work ; nor can we say that the charge is improbable, cer-
tainly not impossible, and this is all we need say. His physical
feebleness and cowardice may be admitted. He fled from
Chceronea, like many other Athenians ; and from his earliest
years he showed a constitutional aversion to physical training
and hardships. That his cowardice, however, was physical, not
moral, Ave have only to look at his life to see. His struggles
with his guardians betray no weak-heartedness. His earliest
demegories took up the unpopular and righteous side of the
questions he dealt with ; and throughout his subsequent political
life he was mainly engaged in telling the people, from whoso
approval alone he could expect any reward, unpleasant truths.
Finally, There remains the charge of corruption. He was said
to hive accepted secret presents of gold from the great king;
but a charge of that kind was easily made, and, if believed at all,
was likely to be damaging, though hard or impossible to prove
or disprove, and may be disregarded. Demosthenes is more
seriously implicated in the Harpalus affair. When, in B.C. 324,
Harpalus, Alexander's treasurer, having absconded with 700
talents of his master's money, had received refuge in Athens,
the Athenians wore alarmed by an imperative demand for his
surrender. Harpalus certainly made a free use of bribes, and
Demosthenes' condud gave rise to a suspicion that lie too had
been bribed. In the first place, he spoke against surrendering
Harpalus. In the next, he connived at lie esca] e of Harpalus
from Athens ; and thirdly, when at this time Alexander de-
manded to he included amongst the gods of the Athenians,
Demosthenes advised compliance with the somewhat impious
request. The rosull of this suspicious behaviour was a pre-
liminary investigation by the Areopagus*, which named Demos-
ORATORY : DEMOSTHENES. 43 5
thenes as one of the orators bribed by Harpalus. The prosecution

which followed was conducted by Hyperides, and ended in the
condemnation of Demosthenes, who thereupon fled into exile.
In discussing the Harpalus affair, it is advisable to begin by
stating that the decision of the Areopagus and the result of
the trial cannot be regarded as proving anything The people
were in a state of panic, such that their only idea was to con-
demn somebody, while the Areopagus, if not incapable, was not
adapted to ascertaining the truth. We are then reduced to
examining the conduct of Demosthenes, to see whether it is
capable of being explained on no better hypothesis than that of
bribery. His behaviour was certainly tortuous ; but it is clear
that he had no intention from the first of fighting Alexander,
else he would not have taken the steps he did for making Har-
palus' money — the very nerves of war — unavailable by making
the state responsible for it. On the other hand, it is equally
clear that he had no intention of surrendering Harpalus, else he
would not have connived at his escape. It seems, therefore,
that, with the wiliness supposed to be characteristic of the Greek,
he endeavoured to steer a middle course between the danger of
affronting Alexander and the national disgrace of surrendering
Harpalus. This he might think he could succeed in if Har-
palus happened to escape and leave his money behind. Tiia
Athenians would have the sufficient reason that Harpalus was
no longer in their hands to allege for not surrendering him :
while they might hope to soothe any resentment on the part of
Alexander by returning the money. If so, the plan was spoiled
by the deficiency in Harpalus' accounts. The Athenians found
they had neither the money nor the person of Harpalus where-
with to satisfy Alexander. Hence came the necessity of sub-
mitting— and to Demosthenes it was probably a hard necessity
— to Alexander's demand to be worshipped as a god.
The conduct of Demosthenes is then quite intelligible without
supposing that he was bribed by Harpalus. This is all we ran
say. In all probability, however, Demosthenes has himself to
thank for any suspicions which may still attach t<> him. He
has dwelt so powerfully upon the universal corruption among
his contemporaries, and has been taken so literally at his word,
that it is not strange that there should be doubts whether, if
bribery was so common, even he was altogether spotless.
In exile he continued to exert himself for the cause of Greek
independence. "When recalled, Demosthenes, to escape from
Antipater, committed suicide at rEgina in B.C. 422.
4 $6 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CHAPTER VII.
THE CONTEMPORARIES OF DEM08THENE8 ! THE ANTI-
MACEDONIAN PARTY.
We have said tliat it would be a mistake to imagine that

Demosthenes was the only patriot amongst the orators of his
time in Athens. In addition to Hyperides,1 Lycur_us, and
Hegesippus, of whom we shall have to say something in this
chapter, we can quote2 other orators who, like Demosthenes,
ottered a worthy resistance to the Macedonian power, such as
Polyeuctus, Sphettus, Diophantus, Moerocles, whose surrender
was demanded by Alexander, Aristophon, and Deniochares, the
nephew of Demosthenes. Further, though less important,
there are Callisthenes, Democrates, Ephialtes, Damon, Timar-
chus, Hegesander, Himerseus, Demon, Aristonicus, and Clito-
machus.
That there should be differences of opinion amongst such a
numerous party on the precise means by which their common
object was to be obtained is not surprising ; and we rind that
here, as elsewhere in politics, there was an extreme and a
moderate party. Of the former section, which advocated, even
after the battle of Chaeronea, desperate and uncompromising
resistance to the Macedonians, the foremost orator was Hyper
rides. The division between the extreme and moderate sections
of the anti-Macedonian party came to a violent breach in con-
sequence of the Harpalus affair. Demosthenes, who then had
the guidance of affairs, was averse to breaking into open oppo-
sition toAlexander, and accordingly brought forward a proposal
which, by making the state responsible to Alexander for the
money Harpalus had absconded with to Athens, effectually pre-
cluded .any possibility of using this money for the purpose of
war against Alexander. Further, when his scheme for appeas-
ing Alexander and yet preserving the dignity of Athens broke
down, Demosthenes was reduced to advocate the claim of Alex-
ander to be included among the Athenian gods. This piece of
servility alone was needed to complete the exasperation of the
extreme party, whose desire was from the first for a straight-
forward policy of open war, which might have been desperate,
but would have ben honourabla This policy had now been
rendered completely impossible by the line of action taken by
1 The proper spelling is llyi» nides.
* See Westennnnn, (■'. B. I. 93.
ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 437
Demosthenes, but he might be prevented from further mischief,

and accordingly we find Hyperides acting as his accuser in the
trial which ended in Demosthenes' flight.
When Hyperides was born is uncertain, but as he was de-
livering political speeches1 in B.C. 360, he can hardly have been
younger than Demosthenes, who was born B.C. 383, and de-
livered his first speech in B.C. 363. He was probably a pupil
of Isocrates (though he bears no deep marks of his influence),
but not, as is sometimes said, of Plato. Hyperides, as he staked
his life for his country, so was at all times ready to spend his
money in the serVice* of the country. In B.C. 350 he contri-
buted towards the expedition to Euboea against Philip, spon-
taneously, two fullogouipped triremes ; and ten years later
he not only discharJHkthe. expensive duties of choregus in a
magnificent nminjj^wifcVdisdaining to avail himself of the
immunity allowa^P^- lanv, also contributed his share to the
expedition a.gamHByzantium. And he did not limit his patri-
otism to merelygiving his money, but was always ready to
give his services, and especially at times of despair and danger.
After the fall of Elatea, and again after the battle of Chseronea,
he was foremost inMps endeavours to organise every possible
kind of resist^j^jpfei the absence of Demosthenes, after the
Harpalus affair, 'B^^^pes, together with Leosthenes (on win mi
he subsequently pronounced the Funeral Oration which has
come down to us), commenced and carried on the Lamian war.
Finally, after the defeat at Crannon, he was captured and killed
with circumstances of cruelty by Antipater in B.C. 322.
Whether Hyperides did wisely for the state in attacking
Demosthenes over the Harpalus affair is a question we need
not here discuss, but his policy of open and honourable action
against Alexander wins our sympathy, as the pure, unselfish,
and uniform patriotism of his life commands our admiration.
And his speeches show us, what he who reads only Demosthenes
would hardly discover, that at Athens a man might be a poli-
tician, a patriot, and yet a gentleman. The speech of Hyperides
against Demosthenes contains none of the vulgar abuse which
defaces the pages of Demosthenes' speeches against Midias or
on the Embassy, or even on the Crown. Hyperides was un-
doubtedly aprofligate. It is he of whom the story is told that,
when pleading for Phryne, and despairing of winning the cast-
by any other means, he revealed the charms of his client and
secured a verdict. The story is false, lie did, however, plead
for Phryne, and for or against half-a-dozen other hetserce ; and
1 The last speech against Autocles dates B.C. 560.
scandal goes so far as to allege that he carried on liaisons with

as many as three of these ladies at once. But whereas the scan-
dals connected with Demosthenes make us think of Tiberius,
Hyperides reminds us of, and we can be no more angry with
him than we are with Charles Surface. The same wit, polish,
and good breeding characterise both.
In the history of Greek oratory Hyperides is a second Lysias.
When we come to Hyperides, we miss the intense and mar-
vellous earnestness of Demosthenes, which is apt to become1
monotonous, and we are no longer exposed to his powerful, and
indeed overpowering, command of oratory. On the other hand,
and in compensation, we get back to the grace, the ease, and the
simplicity of Lysias. There is nothing stilted or studied about
Hyperides. His speeches read as though they were thrown off
by the author without the least effort or even premeditation.
They are none the less effective. Easy and unconcerned as
Hyperides is, he has an iron grasp. Although in his longer
sentences he lets his words fall from his lips in the most natural
manner, just as they occur to him, he brings the sentence to a
graceful close, which is the more effective because unexpected.
Like most other authors, he has his anacolutha, and he is in
particular liable to a careless yet not offensive repetition of
words. Again, although he generally allows the course of the
sentence to wander about in this unconcerned way, only recall-
ing it when it has to be brought to a conclusion, he can, when
he cares to rouse himself for a moment from his often languid
attitude (which one suspects is not languid at all in reality, but
assumed to avoid making a display of his strength), rap out
sharp, short sentences, which show anything but weakness. In
fact, Hyperides has all the grace and charm of Lysias with the
further advantage, which Lysias did not enjoy, of living after
Lysias. Hyperides has before him the example of Lysias and
of another generation in oratory. He has power as well as grace
of expression ; nor is he so limited in the range of his vocabu-
lary as was Lysias. Hyperides is even less constrained and
more easy in his choice of words than Demosthenes, lie speaks
in a distinctly conversational style, and uses words which might
pass in conversation or in comedy, but were usually avoided in
compositions as wanting in dignity.2 But still more is he supe-
1 As the writer wepl Ci/'ons even seems to have felt, c. 34, ov iravra c^fjs
Kal /j.ovot6i><i>s el's 6 Ari/xocrOî'rjs X^y«.
'-' K.11. Kpbvos, in the sense of ";m old fool"; KOKtctifrlv = "to cock-a-doodle-
doo," whereas it was proper to talk of the cock's song (<jiSeiv)—yn\edypa (a
cat-trap) for "piison;" and the comic superlative and diminutives, fiov-
ORATORY : CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 439
rior to Lvsias in the arrangement of his subject-matter. The

arguments of Lvsias are brought forward one after another in a
disjointed manner with no pretence of connection or unity. But
Hyperides, who had Isocrates before him, effects the transition
from one argument to another in the smoothest and neatest of
ways. Above all, and most characteristic of Hyperides is it
that he is throughout a gentleman. His politeness, especially
when he is making a crushing retort, is scrupulous. Emotion
probably, the display of emotion certainly, he regarded as bad
form. Accordingly, he not only avoids anything tragic or ex-
aggerated himself, but he is especially happy in the quiet irony
with which he treats any such display from the opposite side.
He met a solemn appeal to and a dreadful picture of the terrors
of the next world by the simple query, " And if a sword does
hang over the neck of Tantalus, how is the defendant to
blame?"
It will, however perhaps be better to study Hyperides in
the concrete, and for this purpose we will take the speech for
Euxenippus. This speech was delivered under these circum-
stances. When the common land of Oropus, which was given
to the Athenians by Philip after the battle of Chseronea, had
been divided by lot among the tribes of Athens, it was dis-
covered that the portion which fell to the lot of two of the tribes
had been previously dedicated to the hero Amphiaraus ; and, in
order to discover whether to occupy this land would provoke the
hero's wrath, Euxenippus was commissioned to sleep in the temple
of Amphiaraus and report his dreams — which not unnaturally
were in favour of occupying the land. Whereupon, a certain
Polyeuctus proposed that, notwithstanding, the land should be
appropriated to the hero and not to the tribes. His proposal was
rejected and he was fined. Polyeuctus then proceeds to bring
an impeachment1 against Euxenippus, in that, being an orator2
(which Euxenippus was not), he had not advised people for the
best.
Athenian law, although it insisted that the parties to any suit
should themselves speak, permitted a man's friends to also speak
for him. One of the supporters3 of Euxenippus on this occa-
sion, doubtless paid, as were such supporters usually, was Hype-
rides. He did not deliver the leading speech, but followed with
a deuterology. Accordingly he has not to set forth the facts ,<{
wtcitos, Trcuddpiov, d(pa.ir6vriov, dvopairddia. Add K6p7j (a maiden), meaning
an Attic coin bearing the image of Athene ; <•/. " yellow-boys," For a com-
plete list see H. Hager, De Grcecitate Hi/perhiea.
1 eUra-yyeXla.
2 I.e. a politician by profession, such as Demosthenes. a aW1pl0p0L
the case, but to say what he can to make a favourable impres-

sion on behalf of Euxenippus, and this is the delightfully
casual way in which he begins : " Well, gentlemen, I, as 1 was
just saving to those sitting near me, am astonished you are not
sick of impeachments of this kind." Formerly men were im-
peached for betraying ships or towns. "But now what happens
is quite absurd. Diognides and Antidorus, the metic, are im-
peached for paying more than the law allows for flute-players ;
and Euxenippus for the dreams he says he hasimpeached had," neither of
which offences makes a man liable to be accord-
ing to the law of impeachment. But Polyeuctus says, Do not
look at what the law says. Whereas, this is just what I indeed
should have said was the first thing to do. In a democracy
(note the adroit appeal to the jury's patriotism) we act accord-
ing to the law. " A man commits sacrilege : indict him before
the king-archon ! is undutiful to his parents : the archon tries
the case ! a man proposes illegal motions : there is the college
of the Thesmothctse ! merits summary proceedings : the Eleven
are in existence," and so on. Every offence has its law, and
every law has its offences against which it is directed. The law
of impeachment is expressly limited to " orators," and very
sensibly too, else orators would get all the profits of their pro-
fession, and run no risks. However. Polyeuctus says that to
this law, in virtue of which he is bringing this charge, you must
pay no attention ! Other complainants, indeed, insist on your
keeping the defendant to the law, but you (turning politely to
Polyeuctus) say, Do not let him rest his defence on the law.
Moreover, he says that the defendant, inexperienced as he is in
speaking, ought not to be allowed to have any friends to assist
him ; whereas this has always been allowed. Did you (again
turning to Polyeuctus, and more politely than before) never
avail yourself of this custom? Why, when you were put on
your defence by Alexander of Oios, you applied for ten sup-
porters to assist you, and I was one of them. Need more be
said? except that on the present trial you have Lycurgus,
whom we all respect, and who is the best orator of our day, to
render you assistance. Then, whether defendant or plaintiff,
you, who can speak well enough to bother a whole city, are to
have assistance, and Euxenippus, who is old and not accustomed
to public speaking, is to have none? But, of course, you will
say he has committed such dreadful crimes. Let us there-
fore see. If he spoke the truth about his dream, where is his
crime ? if not, you ought to have gone to Delphi and inquired
the truth. But instead, you brought forward a proposal (which
ORATORY: CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES. 44 I
was not only unjust, but contradicted itself), and got fined,
and so Euxenippus must suffer, and not be even buried in
Attic ground, because (this bridges over the transition to the
next charge alleged against Euxenippus) he allowed Olympias
to dedicate an offering to Hygieia, thereby showing his Mace-
donian tendencies. But the very boys from school know who
takes Macedonian gold, and nobody imagines Euxenippus ever
thought of such a thing. But there seems to me, Polyeuctus,
nothing you cannot convert into an accusation. Yet, with your
power of oratory (auain notice Hyperides' politeness), you
ought to prosecute men who really can injure the country, not
men like Euxenippus — or any of the jury (note the dexterous
identification). That is what I did when I impeached Aristo-
phon and Diopithes and Philocrates, and I quoted the very
words in which they failed to advise the city for the best,
whereas you can quote no such words uttered by Euxenippus
(Euxenippus, of course, had been commissioned to dream, and
he dreamed, but he never offered any advice of any description
to the city). And then you try to rouse ill feeling against him
by accusing him of being rich. " You do not seem to know,
Polyeuctus, that there is no democracy in the whole world, no
monarch nor nation, more noble than the democracy of Athens,"
and that consequently sycophants (here he gives instances) are
righteously punished here. "Before sitting down, I will make one
short remark more about the vote you are going to give. When,
gentlemen of the jury, you are about to consider your verdict,
bid the clerk read to you the impeachment, the law of impeach-
ment, and the juror's oath. Put on one side all our speeches.
Look at the impeachment and the law, and what you think just
and true, that give as ycur verdict. Now, Euxenippus, I have
done my best for you. The next thing is to get leave from the
jury, and call your friends, and bring up your children."
This summary can only give a faint idea of t lie careless grace
of the speech for Euxenippus. "We can well understand that
the author of the ancient treatise " On the Sublime" was quite
right in saying1 that "no one ever felt frightened when leading
Hyperides." But Polyeuctus must have felt a certain amount
of alarm when he saw Hyperides get up from his bench, break-
ing off a conversation with his neighbours, and begin in his
calm unconcerned manner to quietly but effectually pull him to
pieces. The power of Hyperides is rendered all the more forcible,
in the first place, because he makes no display of his strength.
On the contrary, he is so strong1 Ch. 34.that he feels no need to put
forth his strength, but treats everybody with consideration and

inbred politeness. Thus at the end of the speech for Euxenippus
lie modestly says, "Now, Euxenippus, I have done my best
fur you. The next thing is," &c. With this we may compare
the end of the speech for Lycophron. "If you will allow me,
gentlemen, I will ask some one to support me. Come here,
Theophilus, and say what you can for me. The jury give you
permission." In the next place, the power of Hyperides is
rendered the more forcible by the attitude which he assumes.
Demosthenes, even in his deuterologies, always takes up a some-
what hostile attitude towards the jury. He uses his technical
power and his irresistible force of argument as though the jury
were not with him. Lysias, on the other hand, does not rely
on his arguments ; he seeks to bring over the jury by his
winning and artless manner of stating his case. But Hyperides
in the speech for Euxenippus does not seem to be speaking as
an advocate at all. His attitude is rather that of a bystander —
a bystander, however, wTho, as he casually allows it to be seen,
knows a good deal about the matter in band, and who merely
gets up to see fair play. " Never mind what the advocates
say, but judge of the law for yourselves," is what he says to the
jury. With all this gentleness of manner, however, and apparent
impartiality, he was capable of making some very sharp thrusts,
as when he disposed of the rhetoric of Demeas (son of Demades
by a flute-player) with the quiet criticism, " Pray cease ! you
make more noise than your mother."
The speech for Lycophron, delivered some time before B.C. 338,
is like the speech for Euxenippus, an instance of how the law
of impeachment might be abused. One section of this law
provided that any man might be impeached who, "being an
orator, advised the people not for the best." It was, however,
a considerable strain on the law, as Hyperides points out, to
bring it against Euxenippus, who was not an orator (in this
sense of the term), ami had not offered any advice of any
kind, but only had a dream, as required by the state. So too
I .. c phron, if guilty, was guilty of adultery, but he was accused
by Lycurgus under the section of the law directed against
attempts to "subvert the democracy," the argument being that
attacks on private morality shook the foundations of govern-
ment. (If Hyperides' speech on behalf of Lycophron we possess
only fragments, but the history of these and of the other three
hes of Hyperides which we possess is extremely interesting.
ite as the sixteenth century there was a considerable number
of Hyperides' speeches extant in MS. in the King's Library at
Buda, but after the capture of that city by the Turks in 1526,
this copy of Hyperides disappeared. From that time, con-
sequently, for more than three centuries, beyond the descriptions
of Hyperides' style to be found in ancient literary critics, such
as Dionysius of Halicarnassus (b.c. 70-B.c. 8) or Longinus (a.d.
213-273), the only knowledge of Hyperides was what might be
obtained from words of his quoted by lexicographers, such as
Julius Pollux (who flourished about a.d. 180, and wrote an
Onomasticon), or Harpocration (who lived in the third or fourth
century after Christ, and wrote a " Lexicon of the Ten Orators "),
and from passages (especially the peroration of the Funeral
Oration) quoted by Stobseus (flourished about a.d. 520) in his
"Selections or Anthology of Apophthegms and Precepts."
But in 1847 Mr. A. C. Harris purchased at Thebes in Egypt
from an Italian dealer in antiquities some rolls of papyrus, which
proved to contain fragments of Hyperides' speech against De-
mosthenes, and of the beginning of that for Lycophron. In the
same year and at the same place, Mr. Joseph Arden was offered
by the Arabs of the neighbourhood a papyrus volume which he
bought, and which was discovered to contain the latter part of
the speech for Lycophron, and the whole of that for Euxenippus.
Nine years later, in 1856, Mr. H. Stobart purchased at Thebes
a papyrus volume which turned out to be the Funeral Oration
by Hyperides.
The papyri of Mr. Harris and Mr. Arden originally consti-
tuted one volume, which was torn up by the Arabs in order to
obtain a price for each of the parts. As to the age of this
volume, so great an authority as the present Bishop of Durham
has placed it, on palaeographic grounds, not later than the mid-
dle of the second century before Christ ; but, while palaeography
is in its present immature state, it does not seem possible to do
more, on palaeographic grounds, than place the manuscript, as
Blass l does, between that date and the time of Hadrian or the
Antonines. Mr. Stobart's volume, which contains the Funeral
Oration, admits of a more precise date. It contains, in addition
to the Funeral Oration, a horoscope, of which the language is
mainly Egyptian, though written in Greek characters. This
horoscope contains the position of the planets at the time of
the taking of the horoscope, and it has been ascertained by
astronomical computations that the horoscope was cast either
for April 1, a.d. 95, or for May 15, a.d. 155. And as the horo-
scope was written on the papyrus before the funeral oration,
the latter must be later than a.d. 95. If these astronomical
1 Hyperides: Triibner, 1881.
calculations may be relied on, and the volume containing the

Funeral Oration (although much more carelessly written) belongs,
as is probable, to the same date as the other volume, then we
have another reason for not dating the volume containing the
law speeches before Christ, at all events.
The speech against Demosthenes1 we have already alluded
to in connection with the Harpalus affair. The leading speech
for the prosecution in this trial was made by Stratocles, who
was probably followed by several other speakers before it came
to the turn of Ilyperides to deliver his speech. The text ha3
unfortunately suffered at the hands of the Arabs who tore up
this papyrus before selling it, but the outline of the speech can
be made out still. As, like the speech for Euxenippus, this is
a deuterology, Hyperides has not to set forth the facts of the
case, but to make as damaging an impression as possible. This
he does without any heat and without any vulgarity. He be-
gins in the same easy manner as in the speech for Euxenippus :
" Well, gentlemen, I am astonished so much ceremony should
be made about Demosthenes." The accusation he treats as re-
quiring no proof — the investigation by the Areopagus has settled
the matter. Moreover, Demosthenes had not attempted to de-
fend himself, but instead, "you go about challenging the senate
to say where you got the money, who gave it you, and when.
Perhaps you will proceed to also ask what you did with the
money when you got it, as though the senate kept your banking
account." The admissions of Demosthenes' friends were equally
damaging, for they hinted that the money had indeed gone, but
gone to remedy a deficit in the public treasury. Then Hyper-
ides, having done his best to prove that Demosthenes was
bribed by Harpalus, goes on to prove that he had also been for
a long time in the hahit of taking bribes from Alexander.
After this the speech becomes very fragmentary, and we will
not attempt any further analysis. We will only say, that if
even Eyperides could not satisfactorily explain the behaviour
of Demosthenes on the hypothesis that he was bribed by Har-
palus, but had to resort to the further (and very improbable)
hypothesis that he was also bribed by Alexander, we may con-
clude that the ease against Demosthenes, so far as being bribed
by Harpalus is concerned, is not very strong.
By far the most important discovery, however, among the
papyri, indeed the most important for a century back, was that
of the Funeral Oration. For more than a century and a half it
was the custom at Athens for a funeral oration to be publicly
1 Kara. Arj/xoffd^vovi virtp rQ>v ' hpira\elu>v.
delivered at the public funeral of those men who had met their
death while fighting for the country. In the famous Funeral
Oration of Pericles, as given by Thucydides, we doubtless have
most of the ideas expressed by Pericles in that speech, but the
language and the form are unmistakably the work of Thucy-
dides. In addition to this, we have a Funeral Oration falsely
ascribed to Lysias, and another equally falsely ascribed to
Demosthenes. But up to the time of Mr. Stobart's purchase
there was no funeral oration known which had really been
delivered at Athens over the dead ; for the orations ascribed to
Lysias and Demosthenes are mere exercises, and Gorgias' speech,
of which we have a fragment, could not have been delivered in
any official capacity by him, as he was not an Athenian. The
appointment of an orator to discharge this function was a matter
of serious deliberation on the part of the senate, and a mark of
great popularity on the part of the orator chosen. The appoint-
ment of Hyperides, therefore, in B.c. 322, to deliver this oration
marks the position of importance which he occupied during the
Lamian war, of which he had been in large measure the pro-
moter, and in which the dead over whom he was to speak had
fallen.
The orator on these occasions was allowed little latitude in
the choice of his subjects or in the form of his speech. It was
ordained by custom that the orator, after a few opening words,
the proem, should dwell upon the glorious history of Athens,
then praise the dead warriors, then speak some words of advice
and consolation to their relatives, and end by bidding his hearers
raise the funeral cry.1 As the orator was limited to these
topics, and the speeches were made during a century and a half,
the funeral oration is a marked example of the difference which
we and the Athenians make in the value sit upon the treatment
of a subject. With the Athenians the treatment was every-
thing. With us the subject-matter is everything. The same
difference is to be observed with regard to the drama. At
Athens mythological subjects, perfectly well known to all the
audience, supplied the plot — which, consequently, had no sur-
prise in store for the spectators — and also supplied the figures,
which, as a rule, preserved the characters conventionally as-
signed to them. The Athenians, therefore, were alive to the
finest variations in the details of the treatment which a myth
or a character received at the hands of various dramatist-;.
1 (Dem.) Epitaphios 37 : dfith 5k airoSvpa/nevoi ml Tct irpoa^Kovra &s \
ko.1 v6[u/j.a iroir)<TavTes dirtre. (Lys.) Epitaphiot 81 : depairfvovras top
1rd.Tp1.ov vbpLCv 6\o<pvptcr0ai toi>5 6aTrTO/J.kvovs.
446 HISTOKY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
Moreover, their familiarity with the myth, and their opportuni-

ties of comparing the different modes of working on the same
myth, must have given them, as critics, almost the same advan-
tage as a man would have who had tried himself to write a
play. This familiarity with the dramatist's materials had the
further result of making it indispensable at Athens that a play
should be written in verse and not in prose. The modern ten-
dency, on the other hand, is to judge a play by the plot, pay
little attention to treatment, and write in prose ; so that in no
remote future we may wonder as much at the Athenian custom
of writing plays in verse as we now do at their having covered
their marble buildings and statuary with paint.
A funeral oration could not indeed be written in verse, but it
essentially belonged to that class of orations — the epideictic —
which Isocrates says have the same functions to discharge and
aim at the same effect as poetry or music. The topics of a
funeral oration, like the plot of a play, were fully known to the
audience beforehand. The Athenians listened, not in order to
satisfy the cravings of a restless intellect, but to gratify their
artistic instincts
In the treatise " On the Sublime," Hyperides' Funeral Oration
is ranked as the highest effort of panegyric oratory, and we may
accept this judgment. Finally, it must not be overlooked that
in one important and significant respect Hyperides transgresses
the lines laid down by custom for the orator on these occasions
to follow. It was inconsistent with the practice of democratic
Athens that any of the dead should be mentioned by name : in
Athens equality did not end, as neither did it begin, at the
grave. The violation of this equality and the decline of the
democracy are signalised by Hyperides' trangression of this
practice in the last funeral oration delivered while Athens was
free.
Lycurgus, the next orator of the patriotic party whom we
have to consider, we have already incidentally mentioned as
taking the opposite side to Hyperides in the cases of Euxenippus
and Lycophron. As an orator he was distinctly inferior to
Hyperides. He had no natural gift for oratory, but worked at
the subject with great determination and perseverance. His
education under Isocrates, moreover, was not the most suitable
for his object, as Isocrates is purely an epideictic orator, while
Lycurgus needed oratory only for practical purposes. Even
thus, with the education he had received and the hard work he
1 -.wed upon the art of speaking, he seems only to have
spoken when circumstances compelled him; for, as far as our
knowledge goes, all his speeches date from between the battle
of Chaeronea and his death in B.C. 322. In other respects than
his oratory he was a complete contrast to Hyperides. Born
about b.c. 390, some few years before Hyperides and Demos-
thenes, Lycurgus was the only politician of good family among
the orators of his day ; and the character of the man through-
out his life showed the effect of the family traditions under
which he was born and educated. As was usual in a man of
aristocratic extraction, he had a certain leaning to Sparta and
to the Spartan mode of life, politics, and thought. The quota-
tions he makes from the poets bear witness to the fact that his
family clung to the traditional mode of education ; while his
religious views remained unaffected by the growing tendency to
sceptical investigation. Although a true patriot and a loyal
son of democratic Athens, he always preserved the attitude of
superiority to the ordinary citizen which came naturally to a
man of good descent and old-fashioned severity of life. He
was accordingly respected by the Athenians to an extent almost
indistinguishable from fear, and whatever Lycurgus said the
Athenians accepted as true. The service which he rendered to
his country, beyond that of the example of his life, lay in his
finance. His powers in this respect were quite unequalled in
the history of Greece, and Boeckh1 calls him almost the only
real financier that antiquity produced. In the history of litera-
ture, also, Lycurgus deserves an -honourable name, for it was on
his proposal that an authorised text of the works of JEschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides was drawn up and deposited in the
state archives, so that the alterations, interpolations, and " gags "
introduced by the actors might henceforth be rendered impossible.
Of the fifteen speeches which we hear of as having been de-
livered byLycurgus. only one, that against Leocrates, has come
down to us. In addition to it, however, we have some of his
decrees and laws, which inscriptions have preserved for us.J
His vocabulary and his metaphors are poetical to an extent which
would have been more intelligible in the immaturity of Attic
oratory than it is at its close. At the same time, Lycurgus was
a diligent pupil of Isocrates, and the influence of his master is
visible in the epideictic character of his speech. For practical
purposes both these tendencies were ill adapted ; they have,
however, a harmony with the character of Lycurgus. Much
speaking he seems not to have done ; but when he did speak, it
was to be impressive and solemn, and in this he was aided by
both his unusual vocabulary and his epideictic manner. His
1 S. I. 569. 2 C. I. A. ii. 162 (163), 168, 173, 176, 180, iSob, 202.
oratory is thus distinct in quality both from the technical

power of Demosthenes and the easy authority of Hyperides.
His hard work, not being supplemented by any great natural
capacity for oratory, betrays itself in the monotony which makes
tin1 speech against Leocrates somewhat tedious.
Hegesippus, who belonged to the extreme section of the patri-
otic party, was probably a little older than Demosthenes, and
died about B.C. 324. The most important fact that we know
with regard to his life is that he was at the head of an embassy
sent in is.c. 343 from Athens to Philip to negotiate about the
restoration of the island of Halonnesus and other matters.
Philip rejected the terms of the Athenians, but in the following
year sent an embassy and a letter, offering, among other things,
to present the island to Athens. During the debate on this
offer was delivered the speech on the Halonnesus, which is in-
cluded among Demosthenes' works, but is really the composition
of Hegesippus.
The political tone and sentiments of the speech are exactly in
the vein of Demosthenes. The distinction between " giving "
and " giving back " the island is expressly ascribed to Demos-
thenes byiEschines;1 and, lastly, Demosthenes did deliver a
speech on this occasion on this subject. On the other hand, if
the political tone is that of Demosthenes, the literary style Is
certainly not. In the periods of Demosthenes the colon which
gives the keynote to the sentence is reserved to the end. As
thus the dependent thoughts come first, and the weight of the
sentence is thrown forward, the hearer's attention is kept on
the alert to the end, and consequently highly complex sen-
tences are possible, which resemble an organism, in that the
parts are not separable and independent, but are conditioned by,
and only have a meat dug in connection with, the whole. This
rhetorical structure of the period is not presented by the speech
on the Halonnesus, which in the structure of its sentences is
neither rhetorical nor epideictic, but rather resembles Hyperides
in the somewhat chance sequence of its cola, although the easy
flow of Hyperides' sentences is missing. .Moreover, not only is
there no attempt in the speech to limit the occurrence of hiatus
in accordance with the rules observed l.y Demosthenes, but there
is no attempt to avoid hiatus at all.- As to the distinction be-
tween "giving " and " giving back " the island, this was doubt-
1 3, S^ : ' A\6wt]<tov toidov 6 5' airrjydpevt /ii] \afx[3&.i>eiv, tl SiSuaiv, dXXA
fx-t) airoSLSwffi, irepl <ri'\\a/3coj' 5ia<pep6/.Lfi>os.
-' The expression with which the speech conoludes has been taken to be too
coarse for Demosthenes, but such an argument is worthless.
less a party cry, and used by every orator who got up to speak
on that side : and against this argument for ascribing the speech
to Demosthenes we may fairly set a passage 1 which probably
implies that the speaker was a member of the embassy sent to
Philip, as indeed Hegesippus was, although Demosthenes was
not. Finally, the fact that Demosthenes delivered a speech on
this occasion, and on this subject, is probably the reason why,
in the absence of Demosthenes' speech, the speech of Hegesippus,
whose oratory shows the influence of Demosthenes, came to be
inserted among the great orator's speeches.
The speech on the Treaty with Alexander 2 which is usually
published among the works of Demosthenes, is not by Demos-
thenes, but by some contemporary speaker of the anti-Macedonian
party. The date of the speech is about B.C. 335, and its object
is to rouse the Athenians to shake off Alexander's yoke, on the
ground that he had broken the treaty which constituted him
protector of the Greeks. The speech is in places illogical and
obscure. There is little fire about it ; the language is not always
pure Attic, and there seem to be no grounds for attributing
the speech, as has been done, either to Hege-ippus or Hyperides.
Polyeuctus of Sphettus is spoken of highly by Demosthenes,
to whose section of the anti-Macedonian party he seems to have
belonged, for we find that in the Harpalus affair, he, unlike
Hyperides, took the side of Demosthenes. None of his speeches
have come down to our time, but we know that he supported
Lycurgus in accusing Cephisodotus of illegality, in that lie pro-
posed to erect in the market-place a statue of Demades, who by
means of his relations with Macedonia had been able to save
Athens from being destroyed by Alexander. A fragment of
this speech has been preserved,3 which shows that he had some
of the quiet power of Hyperides. He inquires what sort of a
statue they were to put up to Demades : they could not have
him represented with a shield, for he threw it away at Chaaronea :
if he was represented resting on the gunwale of a ship, the
question would be suggested, when did he or his father give a
ship to the state: "then with a scroll in his hand? containing
the
so on.indictments and impeachments he has gone through i " and
1 £Xe7e>' 5t nal irpb, •fyuas toiovtous \6yovs, fire ir/soj avrov iirpeaîijanev.
3 irepi tu)v irpbs ' AXâv5pov cvvd-qKwv.
8 Iu Apsines, Speugol llhttvres Uracci, i. 387.
2 P
CHAPTER VIII.
.ESCHINES AND THE ORATORS OF THE MACEDONIAN PARTY.
Our knowledge of the life of vEschines is drawn in the main

directly or indirectly from the speeches of Demosthenes and of
iEschines himself. The sketch drawn by Demosthenes1 is the
one best known, but it is merely a caricature — drawn in the
style and with the recklessness of Aristophanes — which in those
particulars that we have not facts to contradict, must be regarded
as probably either untrue or only having the very slenderest sub-
stratum of fact. According to Demosthenes the parents of
yEschines were both of them slaves by birth. His father,
Tromes, became an Athenian citizen, and having risen in life,
added a couple of syllables to his name — a practice not unknown
in English society — and became Atrometus. His mother, Glau-
cothea, nicknamed Empusa, was a hetsera of the commonest kind,
who imitated the greater members of her profession, such as
Phryne, and initiated people into a mystery-worship of her own
invention. The son, jEschines, combined the duties of menial
attendant in the school which his father held, with those of
chest-bearer, fan-bearer, &c, in the rites of his mother. Such
is the story of Demosthenes. Whether the father was or was
not a slave by birth we have no evidence : the utmost that can
be shown is that Demosthenes' account is possible. There is no
reason for regarding it as probable.2 Still less probable is the
change of name on the part of the father. The mother was of
respectable origin, daughter of Glaucus of Acharnse, and sister
of Cleobulus the general. By the poverty, which at the end of
the Peloponnesian war fell on many Athenians, she may have
been compelled to conduct mysteries, and this is probably the
only ground for aspersions on her mode of life. With n
generally to what Demosthenes makes out in the speech on the
Crown, it is enough to say that he is there raking up what had
happened — or rather not happened — some fifty years before:
that in his earlier speech on the Embassy, he seems to have
known nothing of all this, and that the basis of it all is pro-
bably to be found in the fact that the position in life which
Êschines and his two brothers earned for themselves was much
higher than that which they started from.
1 De Cor. 129 et stqq., and 258 et seqq.
2 ^schines liimself (De mala yesta Uffatione, 147) says his father was a
citizen, and of the deme Cothocidae.
ORATORY : jESCHINES. 4 5I
iEschines was bom about B.c. 390, six years before Demos-
thenes. Ehetorical or philosophical education he does not seem
to have received ; but bis fondness for talking about education
seems to show that he at least was not ashamed of having been
taught by his father the schoolmaster. At the age of eighteen
he entered on the military service usually imposed on Athenian
citizens, and bore himself with courage and distinction,1 especially
at Tamynse. He then became clerk in some government office,
a profession which, as it was paid, was looked down upon by
Athenians of good position. With a versatility, however, which
testifies both to the energy and to the natural abilities of the
man, he then took to the stage. In point of social status this
was no advance on his previous position, especially as he did not
rise to the higher ranks of his profession. Some merit, how-
ever, he must have had, else so good a judge as Theodoras would
never have chosen him as his tritagonist.2 His quitting this
profession was due to an accident which is interesting as illumi-
nating the limits imposed on stage action by the costume of
tragedy. In the character of Oenomaus (in the play of that
name by Sophocles), iEschines had to give chase to Pelops.
The buskins, the bolsters, the mask and the topknot, the padding
and gloves, however, in which he was arrayed were not adapted
for such active exercise. iEschines fell, and had to be igno-
miniously set up again by the leader of the chorus. He returned
to his earlier profession of clerk, and this time attached himself
to two distinguished statesmen, Aristophon and Eubulus, by
whose assistance he might hope to gain political distinction.
iEschines' experience in life up to this point had been varied,
and had given him various qualifications for superficial success
as a politician. As an actor he learnt to manage his voice,
which was fine, to declaim, and to pose. He also acquired a
more than usually accurate acquaintance with the dramatists,
and this was a large portion of Athenian education. With the
routine of official life, his experience as clerk had made him
familiar, and his command of the technicalities of the phrase* >1< »gy
of laws and decrees would give him the air of a politician with
a knowledge of the constitution. On the other hand, he had
had no systematic education in philosophy or rhetoric, as De-
mosthenes orHyperides had had, nor did he inherit any family
traditions such 'as, in the case of Lycurgus, introducemore menthan
to
statesmanship. Accordingly, iEschines never became
1 This is an offence which Demosthenes could never forgive him (De Cur.
326).
2 Dein. xix. 246.
a second-rate politician. He did not speak with much regularity

in the Assembly, and the embassies on which he was sent
were not of the lirst importance, as the one in B.C. 348 to the
Peloponnese ; or if, as in the case of those to Philip in 346, or
after Chreronea in 338, they were of importance, the part
assigned to him was subordinate. It is to his collisions with
Demosthenes on the subject of the embassy to Philip, of which
they were both members, that .Eschincs owes in great part the
celebrity which attaches to his name. Once more iEschinea
ventured to attack Demosthenes, in the matter of the crown,
and this brought about his own extinction ; for, having failed
to obtain one-fifth of the votes in this trial, he, rather than pay
the fine and submit to the disgrace consequent on his failure,
left Athens and never returned. Whither he went and how he
died are matters of uncertainty. He is said to have gone to
Rhodes, and to have set up a school of rhetoric there.
iEschines seems to have committed but few of his speeches
to writing, and only three of those have come down to us, that
against Timarchus, that on the Embassy, and the one against
Ctesiphon. These three speeches were published by Êschines
to justify his personal and political character. Other motives
for publication he had none, as he was neither a logograplier, to
wish to advertise himself, nor a great statesman, to wish to
publish his policy as widely as possible, nor a teacher of style.
As in the history of Attic oratory we have in Hyperides a
reversion to the type of oratory displayed by Lysias, so in
.Esehines we have a reversion to the type of Andocides. Be-
tweeu .I'.sel lines and Andocides, however, there are great differ-
ences. /Eschines had a natural talent, which Andocides did
not possess ; was swayed by better oratorical traditions, and
had before him better models in oratory than was the case
with Andocides. Neither iEschines nor Andocides spoke regu-
larly in public; neither was a logographer, and neither had
received a technical education in oratory. Making allowance
for the difference in talent and in time between the two
orators, the results of this want of practice and education on
each are the same. To bring this out in detail we shall have
to compare with Machines Demo.sthenes, the practised and
educated orator. The comparison is the more necessary as
. I . chines undoubtedly ranks next to Demosthenes as an orator,
and it is important to see why ami how these orators differ.
The highest excellence of ,/Eschines lies in his power of
expression Tin' firsl quality demanded of an orator is that he
should express himself clearly, and a certain amount of educa-
oratory: .eschines. 453
tion and practice will enable a man to be intelligible when he

especially strives to be so. But to be always clear and intel-
ligible demands fuither education and practice. The habit of
clear expression must be exercised until it becomes a second
nature ; and it is just this further education and practice which
Demosthenes had and iEschines had not. iEschines is intel-
ligible when he has a particular motive to be so, but is not
clear always. The same defect also betrays itself in his awk-
ward repetition of words. Clearness of expression, however, is
not the only quality demanded of an orator : his expressions
must also be felicitous. For this end a man must obviously
have a wide range of words at his command, in order to fit
each thought with the words which will appropriately and
happily express it. Like Demosthenes, iEschines possesses this
necessary command of language, and it is his highest and a
very high excellence. So far as the two orators differ — to the
prejudice of iEschines — the difference mainly consists in the
way in which they employ their resources. An expression may
be excellently calculated to convey a given thought, and yet
from want of dignity, from the association of ideas, or from
some other reason, be in a given case not appropriate. In other
words, an Attic orator had to limit the brilliance or grandeur of
his language by considerations of correctness and of purity of
style. The perfect exercise of these limitations is always the
result of special education and of practice, reinforced by natural
taste. To illustrate the superiority of Demosthenes in this
respect the grander passages of the two orators should be com-
pared. For the expression of lofty sentiments lofty words are
required, for the style should rise and fall with the subject.
In exalted passages, therefore, the tendency of an Attic orator
was to rise from the tone of ordinary life towards the tone of
tragedy. In an early stage of oratory this was done by Ando-
cides by the introduction of phrases almost immediately from
tragedy, and the result is that between the passages thus in-
troduced and the rest of the speech there is a difference of
quality so great that the purity of Andocides' style is consider-
ably marred. iEschines, like Andocides, lacked the rhetorical
education necessary to prevent him from making this mistake,
but by the time of iEschines the critical faculty was improved
so much that JSschines could not sin in this respect to the
same extent as Andocides, and in IEschines, although we have
words which distinctly belong to the tragedians, we no longer
have whole phrases lugged in. Demosthenes, on the other
hand, does not imbed either such words or such phrases in his
oratory. He takes his tone and not his words from tragedy.
What he borrows from the tragedians he gives out again in
a shape which is all his own, and consequently does not jar
with the rest of the passage.
We have seen in the chapter on Demosthenes that one source
of his strength is his complete command of all the figures of
speech and of thought, and that in this respect he far outstrips
any previous orator. In this he has a close rival in iEschines,
whose wide range of language is also supplemented by a wide
and varied command of figures: Here, also, such superiority as
Demosthenes may possess is due to his greater experience in
oratory. The result of this experience is that Demosthenes has
command of language ; on the other hand, iEschines' words are
apt to run away with him, as was also the case with the less
experienced Andocides. This is in part due to the copious
vocabulary and facile flow of language which in other respects
constitutes the strength of iEschines. He finds it so easy to
talk that he is apt to degenerate into mere talk. Assonances of
words, or of the ends of words, are sometimes sought solely for
their own sake, not for the sake of giving force and weight to
his words ; and this is the abuse of figures of speech. The expe-
rience of Demosthenes and his sense of limit enabled him to exer-
cise due restraint in the use of figures of all kinds, hut iEschines
weakens their effect by using them to excess.1 Not only does
this want of restraint sometimes weaken the effect of iEschines'
words and figures, it sometimes also betrays him into sentences
of extreme clumsiness. The sentences of Isocrates are long, hut
they are always constructed with such perfect regularity that
they are quite transparent Demosthenes has sentences of great
length, but there is always so much obvious design in them,
and they are penetrated by such unity of thought, that their
length is not felt. Hyperides wanders through long sentences
apparently of the most casual structure, or want of structure,
but his native grace and his concealed power always enable him
to bring his sentences to a happy and effective close. .Kschines,
on the other hand, when off his guard, drifts into a sentence of
1 An example of effective use of the figure nntistrophe, i.e. the repetition

of a word at tin; end <>f successive clauses, is the famous passage in Ctes. 202,
/j.Tjd1 if apery rovd' v/xwu îr/5eis KaraXoyiiiadai, 6s av iiravepoM-ivov Kxtjai-
<pu>vTos, el KaXiari Atip.o<rd{i>7)v, irpCrros avafioiiar) " /fdXei Ka\ei." iwi aavrov
Ka\ds, tnl Toi/s v6p.ovs na\us, iirl tt)v dynoKpartdv *aXe?s. But the effect of
this passage is weakened by the use of the same figure shortly before, 198,
fio-ris p.et> olv h rfj Tip.r]au rr)v \pri<pov a/re?, tt)v 6pyr)i> tijv vperipav 7rapaf-eiT(u
6'crm o'tv r<$ wpd'T^ \6yip rrjv \prj<pov alrei, vbfxov alrei, uv otire alrijaai
oidiv (tciov ovdevi otir' ah-qOivra iriptfi Sovvcu.
oratory: /eschines. 455
■which " you see no reason in its structure why it should ever
come to an end, and you accept the conclusion as an arrange-
ment of Providence rather than of the author."
There are three ends at which, roughly speaking, we may say an
orator has to aim : to express himself clearly and felicitously ; to
convince his hearers ; and to inspire them with his own feelings.
With regard to the first of these we have now seen that so good
are the natural gifts of yEschines that it is only because of
Demosthenes' superior experience and practice as a public speaker
and a logographer that he just manages to outstrip him. When,
however, we come to the second of the three objects an orator
has to aim at, we find the difference between the two orators is
great. In dealing with Andocides we saw that his lack of
experience in arguing cases made him vastly inferior in argu-
ment when compared with Antiphon. The same difference is
visible between yEschines and Demosthenes, and is made still
greater by the superior intellectual power of Demosthenes. In
the arrangement of his subject-matter, indeed, yEschines is clever
enough. This, however, is a power easily acquired by imitation,
and in it we may clearly see the advance which the general
level of oratory made between the time of Andocides and of
yEschines. The powers of yEschines seem to have been reten-
tive rather than original. His speeches contain a large amount
of information— usually inaccurate — but like his loans from
tragedy it has not been assimilated. His want of mental power
is seen again when he undertakes to expound the law. He
expends many words on explaining the laws he quotes, and ends
by not explaining them. His arguments, moreover, are not
unfrequently illogical, and he gladly takes refuge, for instance,
in misty declamations based on popular superstition l rather
than submit his argument to the light of logical criticism.
Above all, however, if an orator fails to convey to the minds of
his audience his own view of the case, it is mainly because he
is himself not clear in his view. This is the reason why his
great attack upon Demosthenes in the matter of the crown fails.
To attack the policy of Demosthenes successfully it was neces-
sary to state an alternative line of action. If the policy of
opposing Macedonia was wrong, then there must have been some
other policy which was right, and that policy it was /Eschines'
business to propound. But yEschines has no such alternative
line of action to propose. If, instead of employing an argument,
he imputes a motive — and bribery, bribery, bribery is, aignifi-
1 In Ctes. 106-158 (the diatribe against the ill-luck and impiety of Demos-
thenes).
cantly enough, the only motive which iEschines can imagine—

it is because he has no argument. Not only, however, is he
destitute of any constructive idea, but his criticism is weak.
He can only say that Demosthenes' policy failed. And of all
criticisms the cheapest and the most worthless is criticism by
results.
It is not, however, an orator's business to merely demonstrate
a theorem. He has also to command the feelings of his audi-
ence. Now there are certain sentiments to which Êschines
frequently, and Demosthenes rarely appeals. They are the
sentiments which cluster round the family hearth, the worship
of the gods, and the history of the past. Again, Demosthenes
is not, strictly speaking, pathetic. Some of his speeches do
indeed appear to us pathetic, but that is not because they were
designed for pathos, but because we know and read them in
the light of the subsequent history of Greece. iEsehines, on
the other hand, as, for instance, in the peroration of the speech
on the Embassy, aims at pathos. And in the peroration of the
speech against Ctesiphon, iEschines challenges comparison with
Demosthenes, even in the power of raising patriotic indignation.
In fine, /Eschines works on a larger number of more varied
emotions than Demosthenes, and yet, by general consent,
Êschines is less effective than Demosthenes. Undoubtedly
the earnestness of Demosthenes is intense to a greater degree
than is that of iEschines or any other orator, and, consequently,
he works on our feelings more powerfully than yEschines. But
it is also true that the superiority of Demosthenes has been
exalted at the expense of iEschines by means of extraneous
considerations. In the case of the speeches on the Crown this
is clear. Public opinion was on the side of Demosthenes, and
Demosthenes had the better cause. Demosthenes has our sym-
pathies before we open iEschines. But this, which is itself an
explanation partly why iEsehines takes less hold of our feel-
ings, may be pushed too far, and the unfair inference be drawn
that, because Êschines failed to prove Demosthenes a traitor,
therefore /Kschines was a traitor himself. Hence it is said that
.<Esrhines fails to make us believe in him, because he did not
believe in himself, and that his oratory is pervaded with the
taint of insincerity. He poses as a religious citizen and admir-
able father of a family for the sake of respectability. He
assumes patriotism though he has it not, and he trades on
pathetic passages because he was an actor by training and by
nature theatrical.
The truth, however, seems to be that Êschines was in morals
ORATORY : ^SCHINES. 457
as in intellect not above the average level of his time, whereas

Demosthenes was distinctly above it. ./Eschines is accused by
Demosthenes of having rendered no services to the state ; and
Demosthenes is always accusing the citizens of Athens generally
with reluctance to make any sacrifice for their country. JEschines
apparently thought resistance to Philip impossible, and saw no
way for Athens to remain great and free, a view in which he
was supported by so good a man as Phocion. Bribery, iEschines
as a practical man regarded as admitting of extenuating circum-
stances.1 As a practical man also he discountenanced the ex-
travagant indulgence of the desires, and, as was the case with
many other people, respectability exhausted the sum of his
morality. This is not a nattering character of iEschines, and
it is unnecessary to go beyond our evidence and accuse him of
hypocrisy. Êschines has himself challenged comparison with
Demosthenes, and by an optical illusion, to which the mind's
eye is liable, iEschines seems below the ordinary level of
morality, because Demosthenes is so much above it.
In discussing Demosthenes we said that the three sources
of his power as an orator were the magic of his language, the
force of his intellect, and his lofty morality. In the present
chapter, in order to show how iEschines is inferior to his
rival, we have compared the two orators, and we have seen
that while in the first of the three points mentioned /Eschines
is little below Demosthenes, in the remaining two points he
is much below him. In order now to mark the fact that
Êschines, though inferior to Demosthenes, could yet contest
priority with him, we must contrast the two orators. In the
first place, as we have already seen, Demosthenes is the trained
and practised orator, while iEschines is a man with a natural
gift of eloquence. And as Êschines represents nature, Demos-
thenes art, we find that the former usually spoke extempore,
while the latter rarely spoke without preparation. A further
consequence of this difference between the two orators is that
whereas Demosthenes has greater capacity for argument than
1 i, 88. Poverty and old age he regards as extenuating : iiceivoi /xti> ye ol

Takaiirwpoi ov 8vvd.fj.evoi yijpas a/xa Kai weviav vireveyKelv, to. fieyiara rdv iv
avOpuirois ko.kCov. This was not a view peculiar to, and therefore specially
condemnatory of iEschines, l>nt the common one. Timocles, a poet of the
Middle Comedy, says in the Deios, alluding to the Harpalas affair :
A. ei\i)<pe Kai AiJ/uaje re Kai KaWw^n/s,
B. TrevrjTts rjaav, there <TvyyviL'/j.r)i> lxu-
(Meineke, F.C.M. 591.)
We must judge J£schines hy the standard of his own time. Bribery is uot
uufrequently defended at the present day.
for narrative, with iEschines the reverse is the case. As, how-
ever, argument makes greater demands on the attention of the
hearer than does narrative, a speech by Demosthenes is harder
to follow than is one by iEschines ; and as argument gives
less scope than narrative for the graces of oratory, the speeches
of iEschines, apart from considerations as to the matter, are
more pleasing than those of Demosthenes. As regards the
emotions, iEschines relied chiefly on pathos, whereas Demos-
thenes appealed to the indignation of his hearers. iEschines
looked by preference to the glorious past, Demosthenes to the
calls of honour in the present. iEschines was satisfied if he
complied with the observances of religion, Demosthenes was
possessed with the necessity of morality. These points of con-
trast may suffice to indicate that, although between Demos-
thenes and iEschines there is a difference in decree, there is
also an equally important diversity in genius. iEschines has
not and does not deserve our sympathies ; but more closely
than any other orator he approached the merit of Demosthenes.
Amongst the orators of the Macedonian party Demades1 is
next in importance to iEschines. Demades seems to have
been about the same age as and to have died two years later
than Demosthenes, i.e., b.c. 320. He first appears to our
notice after the battle of Chau'onea. He had no shame in
avowing that Philip had bought him, and, in spite of that fact,
he continued until Alexander's death the most important man
in Athens, with the exception of Demosthenes. After the
destruction of Thebes, Demades saved Athens from the wrath
of Alexander ; and the Athenians, in return, erected a statue of
I >emades in the market-place. In natural power Demades was
said to exceed Demosthenes, and the judgment of Theo-
plirastus2 is well known, that as an orator Demosthenes was
worthy of Athens, Demades above it. Unlike Demosthenes,
he spoke extempore, and consequently none of his Bpeech.es
have come down to us. As he himself said, his master in
rhetoric was the platform; his speeches, therefore, probably
lacked art both in the treatment of the subject-matter and
the arrangement of his speech. On tin' other hand, he had
the reputation in antiquity8 of being the most witty of Attic
orators ; and from this it would seem that the power of his
1 &T]nd8ris is contracted from A?7,ufd5?)S.
2 Theophrastus, a pupil of Aristotle, was bora n.o. 372 and died about
B.C. 283. Of the two hundred or more works whioli lie wrote we possess Ins
lharaofcers," " Science of Plants," " Natural Causes," " Mineralogy," and
"'• 1i »n Fire," more or le-s complete.
3 " Demades prater cetcros fertur (facetus)." Cicero, Orat. 90.
oratory : jESChines. 459
oratory resembled that of Pericles in consisting of pointed and

striking expressions. The impression which these made on
his hearers may he inferred from the fact of some of them
having floated down to our own time. Thus, Macedonia, he
said, after the loss of Alexander, was a blinded Cyclops. The
theatre-money which the Athenians received was the glue of
the democracy. The herald of the city was the public cock.
Demosthenes was like the swallows, who will neither let you
sleep nor wake you. He defended his policy on the ground
that he was steering the wreck of Athens. When the Athe-
nians objected to worship Alexander as a god, he told them to
mind that, in their anxiety to defend heaven, they did not lose
the earth. When a report came to Athens that Alexander was
dead, and the Athenians were much delighted. Demades said,
"Alexander is not dead. If he were, the whole world would
smell his corpse."
Aristogiton, against whom the second speech of Dinarchus
is directed, was probably born about B.C. 370. He was most
active after the battle of Chseronea, when he opposed the
measures of Hyperides. The names of some of his speeches
are given by Suidas and Photius, and quotations from him
occur in Harpocration.1 Athenseus, Tsetzes,2 and elsewhere. He
seems to have employed much abuse and to have set himself
up as the " watch-dog of the democracy." Pytheas, born about
B.C. 356, began his political life as an anti-Macedonian, but
went over on the occasion of the Harpalus affair and became a
wealthy man. On the death of Alexander, he. like others of
the Macedonian party at Athens, suffered. His end is not
known to us. We have quotations from him in Rutilius Lupus.8
His speeches seem to have been, according to Suidas,4 inso-
lent and disjointed. The quotations show an affection for
antithesis. Menessechmus succeeded Lycurgus in the adminis-
tration of finance at Athens, but whether lie was an opponent
of or belonged to the extreme section of the patriotic party is
unknown. We have nothing by him, and he seems to have
1 In his lexicon to the "Ten Orators." His date is the third or fourth
century A.D.
2 Johannes Tsetzes, about a.d. 1160, was a Learned grammarian of Con-
stantinople, the author of Scholia to Homer, Hesiod, Aristophanes, fee,
and of a work entitled Xi\iddes, containing much mixed information, and
composed in so-called political verses.
3 Rutilius Lupus lived in the time of Tiberius, and wrote "De Figuria
Sententiarum et Elocutionii ; " and in illustration of the figures of thought
and speech he quotes from various authors (translating Greek quotations)
4 oi/K (Kpidri /xera tQ>v XoittGiv pijropuv (i.e. in the canon of the "Ten Orators ")
ws Opacriis Kal Steairacrpîvos.
been watery and weak.1 To Callicrates, the Pergamum school

ascribed a speech accusing Demosthenes of illegality ; and
Philinus' name has come down to us because he opposed the
proposal of Lycurgus that statues should be erected of the
three great tragedians. Eubulus, the political patron of JEs-
chines, at first opposed to and then a supporter of Philip,2 is
mentioned by Aristotle3 as quoting Plato in one of his speeches
to the effect that many people admitted they were bad. Of
Philocrates, one of the ambassadors sent to treat for peace with
Philip, who openly boasted of having been bribed, we have
not the least fragment left. Hagnonides accused Theophrastus
of impiety unsuccessfully,4 and Phocion of treason successfully,
and wrote an Accusation of Oratory.5 Stratocles, "the most
persuasive and pernicious of men," 6 was conspicuous for the
vileness of his servility to Philip and his shameless joy at the
disasters of his country. One or two sentences alone of his
have survived.7 and Cicero credits him with being the inventor
of the story that Thcmistocles poisoned himself with the blood
of a bull.8 Of Androtion, against whom a speech of Demos-
thenes is directed, we have a simile preserved by Aristotle.9
Cydias made a speech on the colonisation of Samos.10 /E-ion
was a fellow-pupil with Demosthncs, and is praised by Aris-
totle for his metaphors, although to us they appear worn out.11
To these may be added the names of Democles (or Democlides),
1 Dionysius, Dinarclius 11, i>5a/r!js Kal Ke\v/j.(vos Kal xj/vxpds.

- I >em. 19, 292. Kal iv ixh Tip tjripup KartipCb «t>iXtTT7r£jj /ecu Kara rCiv waiduv
Cbuwes Jj /xt]v air o\w\ivai <$>i\nnroi' av fiovXicrdat. Cf. De Cor. 21.
3 Rhet. i. 15. olov YjVjiovKos iv rois diKaaTrjpiois ixpycraro Kara. XdprjTos <p
JlXdruv dire 7r/>os 'Apxi-piov, 0TL iTri-oiSwKev iv rjj ir6\ei to bp.o\oydv wovt)-
poi)s dvai.
4 Tli is we learn from the "Lives of the Philosophers," by Diogenes Laer-
tius (37), who lived about A.n. 200, and came from Laertia in Cilicia.
5 Quintilian, ii. 17, 15: "Agno quidem detraxit sibi Lnaoriptione ipsa
fideni, qua rhetoricea accusationem profesaua est.
1 1 1, in. adv. Pant. 994O. 2Tpa.T0K\ei rip iriOavoTaTip iravrQiv &v6pibirwv
Kal irovrjpoTdTip.
7 Photius, 447A, 17. dpovrai Kal <nreipeTai rb Qrif-iaiuv &<rrv, rCiv avva-
yuiviaapivwv bfuv rbvvims <i>i\<.Tnroi'
irpbsinvehi iroXc/xov. Rutilius Lupus, ii. 20 ; ' Nam
vehementer eorum non licebat, reticere omnino non expediebat:
Bnspiciose loqui potissimuni placebat. '
8 1 .1 ut us, 11 : " Strntoclem, ut Themistoclia mortem rhetoricc et tragice
ornare posset, finxiBae ilium cum taurum immolayisset, excepisse Banguinem
el eo poto mortuum concidisse." (This imjx.ssil.le story, however,
goes back to the time of Aristophanes.) If Si ran.. Irs thought this method of
death tragic Ids taste was as defective as his knowledge.
0 Rhet. iii. 4: 6ril6p.ot.os ["Lbpievs fjv] toi's iic tCiv 5e op.G>v kvviSIois ' iKftm
-rrpoffiriTrrovTa baKvav Kal 'lbpiia
re 10yipii, XvOivra iic tQv feop-wv dvai xoXejr6i'.>
13 lb. iii. 10. E.<i. " Greece cries aloud.
oratory: j2Schines 401
a pupil of Theophrastus ; and probably Archon, in B.C. 316 ;l

Leosthenes, a sycophant;2 Charisius;3 Euthias, the accuser
of Phryne ; 4 and Lacritus, of whom mention is made in the
speech of [Demosthenes] against Lacritus.5
In conclusion it remains for us to say a few words with regard
to the causes of the decline of oratory after the death of Demos-
thenes. They are two : the loss of political freedom and the
cessation of the reaction of the public on the artist. The effect
of the loss of political freedom on political oratory is readily
understood. When the fate of the country was at stake, and
when the Assembly had the power of deciding that fate, an
orator and a patriot like Demosthenes had the highest incentive
to put forth all his powers of oratory in order to move the
Assembly to the proper and honourable course of action. "When,
on the other hand, the Assembly lost its power of deciding what
the action of the country should be, and when consequently
political debates could have no practical result, then patriotism
could supply no incentive to the orator, and deliberative oratory
so far as it survived was unreal. Thus the loss of political
freedom resulted in the decline of deliberative, the highest kind
of oratory. It also brought about the decline of forensic oratory.
Its action in this case is not quite so obvious, but it was equally
effective. Matter for decision was not withdrawn from the law
courts so entirely as it was practically from the Assembly ; but
all that important part of Attic law which dealt with con-
stitutional, and therefore political points, naturally shared the
fate of political debate; and in dealing with the remaining
cases the citizens of Athens had in the first place to do only
with petty matters, not fitted to develop the moral and intel-
lectual qualities of an orator ; and in the second place, even in
dealing with these trivial cases they were not acting as a free
people giving judgment in accordance with their own free laws.
In analysing the superiority of Demosthenes as an orator, we
found that it consisted of his moral and intellectual power and
the beauty of his language : and these three elements are indis-
pensable for oratory of the highest kind. Applying this test
to the oratory of the decline, we see then that forensic 01
never had for its subject issues admitting of fervour, right
indignation, or self-sacrifice; and that the matters it dealt with
were not momentous enough to call for or develop the po"W
a great mind. It was only the third element of oratory which
admitted of cultivation, and this, separated from the others, ran
1 Ruhnken, Rut. Lup. 92. 2 JEschines, Falsa Reg. 124.

8 Rut. Lup. i. 10. * Lexicon Seguieranum, 57. J 15 and 41.
to rank luxuriance. This excessive attention to form resulting

from the negligence of matter is partly -what is meant by
" Asianism." What we have said with regard to the decline of
oratory applies to all Greek oratory, wherever cultivated, until
about B.c. 150. As, however, it was in Asia Minor that oratory
during this period was principally cultivated, the qualities of
the oratory of the decline have come to he grouped together
under the term Asianism. After B.C. 150, a reaction in favour
of the oratory of Demosthenes set in and was termed " Atticism."
It
waswould, however,
confined be Minor.
to Asia a mistakeTheto imagine
seeds of that " Asianism
it were sown in"
Athens even before the time of Demosthenes, for Isocrates
cultivated form to the exclusion of matter ; and its results are
plainly visible in Dinarchus, the last of the ten Attic orators.
The first characteristic then of Asianism, excessive attention to
the mere language of a speech, is only the development of a
tendency already exi.-ting in Attic oratory. But although
Asianism may thus be traced back to Isocrates, it is very dif-
ferent from him, and it is this difference which constitutes the
second characteristic of Asianism. Isocrates worked on a method
and with a theory : Asianism had none. Here again Asiani.-ni
was but the development of a had tendency already existing in
Attic oratory. iEschines, like Isocrates, was lacking in the
intellectual and moral elements of oratory, and therefore achieves
his greatest success in the domain of mere language. But he
differs from Isocrates in the fact that he had no theory, no
culture, and but rarely wrote a speech beforehand, Avhile Isocrates
would spend ten years in writing an oration. iEschines was a
native orator, Isocrates a trained rhetorician. In this respect
then iEschines is, rather than Isocrates, the direct ancestor of
Asianism. But although Asiatic oratory resembles that of
iEschines in being based on no method, there is this difference
between them, that the one is successful, the other not. Doubt-
1 he reason partly is that iEschines possessed natural gifts
which the Asiatic orators did not: but this does not wholly
account for the extravagances of Asianism, and for a full ex-
planation we must turn to the second main cause of the decline
of oratory after the death of Demosthenes — the cessation of the
reaction of public on artist.
In the case of oratory even more than in any other branch
of literature or art is it clear that the artist is reacted on by bis
public; for the practical object of speaking is conviction, and
in order to convince his audience a speaker must neither rise
above their comprehension nor sink below their expectations.
ORATORY: iESCHINES. 463
The success which spurs to further and higher exertion comes

more directly to the orator than to any other artist, as does also
the failure which teaches a lesson for the future. The function
then of the public in the development of art or literature is to
encourage merit and check extravagance. Eemove the check,
and extravagance develops without restraint. In the period
of Asianism the check was removed and the extravagance was
developed which was characteristic of Asianism. In order to
understand how and why this check was removed, we must call
to mind first the difference in size between the city-states of
Greece and the countries or nation-states of modern Europe ;
and secondly, the different means of reaching the public in the
two cases. The modern public reads, the ancient public
listened. All the citizens of Athens could be gathered to-
gether in the theatre to hear a drama : every citizen might be
present at the Assembly : great festivals drew a large concourse
of people together in whom the essayist or the historian could
find an audience. During the creative period of Greek lite-
rature the normal way of reaching the public was through their
ears, not, as is the case in modern times, through their eyes ;
for even if most Athenians were able to decipher the letters of
the alphabet, they were not in the habit of reading. But every
Athenian was in the habit of hearing the oratory of the law
courts and the Assembly, the epic and lyrical poetry recited by
the rhapsodists, the essays and histories — or portions thereof
— read at the great festivals and the dramas performed in
the theatre : and in consequence the literary education of the
Athenians was, at any rate in the best time of Athens, better
than that of a modern nation, even with the advantage which
the latter possesses of the printing press. But in the period of
the decline of oratory the Greeks were going through a transi-
tion stage : the law-courts and assembly were less attended, the
theatre was no longer the means of conveying the best tragedies
to the public ; literature was ceasing to reach the public through
the ear, while at the same time the cost of multiplying copies of
a manuscript had not yet been so much reduced as to enable the
public to become as a rule readers. But although the mean- of
conveying literature, whether orally or by means of manuscripts,
were thus temporarily decreasing, the demand was not decreas-
ing. The result was the practice by which the owner of a manu-
script collected his friends together and read it. aloud to them.
We have seen that this had already been clone in the case of
Isocrates' orations. It was even done in the ease of tragedies :
tragedians who composed solely for this kind of publicity had
4.64 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
eome to be called " Keaders." The comedies of Menander were,

many of them, written not to be performed, but to be read in
this manner at social gatherings. The consequence of this was
that an author's works did not become known to the whole or
to the larger part of the public, as before and after this time,
but only to small groups. That is to say, the cheek which the
great public puts on extravagance was almost entirely taken off;
the general recognition of the public was not to be obtained,
and thus the artist's greatest incentive was removed. From this
point of view it is important to notice that the improvement in
taste which brought Atticism into favour and drove out Asianism
dates from the time when the systematic employment of slave
labour by the Komans for multiplying manuscripts reinstated
the general public to its critical function.
The decline of Greek oratory was then due to the develop-
ment by appropriate conditions of bad tendencies already exist-
ing in the oratory of Athens. These tendencies were : to neglect
matter for form, as in the case of Isocrates ; to dispense with
the theory and training necessary for an orator, as in the case
of JEschines; and to deviate, when unchecked, from the standard
of taste and propriety. The conditions which developed these
tendencies were : the decrease, due to the loss of political free-
dom, in the demand on the mpral and intellectual qualities of
the orator ; and the cessation of the reaction of public on artist,
due to the difficulty of publication at that time.
BOOK III.
PHILOSOPHY.
CHAPTER I.
PLATO AND THE PHILOSOPHERS BEFORE HIM.
"With
We aretheconcerned history of philosophy
with we have only
the philosophers nothing hereastothev
so far do.
affected the history of Greek literature, and consequently it will
be found that many names of philosophical interest are omitted.
In the first place, philosophers like Thales, Socrates, and Pytha-
goras, who left nothing in writing, find no place in a history of
literature. In the next place, philosophers like Xenophanes
and Parmenides, who composed in verse, have indeed a place in
a history of literature, but not in the section of it dealing with
the history of prose. While, finally, Sophists like Antisthenes,
who were engaged in philosophical pursuits, hut were pro-
fessedly rhetoricians, find their natural place in the history of
prose ; but they are links in the chain of oratorical, not philoso-
phical prose, and are not, therefore, dealt with in this section.
The first prose philosopher — if we set aside Pherecydes of
Syrus, about whom, as we have seen, there is some doubt — was
Anaximander of Miletus, who lived about the beginning of the
sixth century b.c, and seems to have been a person of some
importance in his native town. His philosophy was of a physi-
cal description, and he wrote a work to which (probably in
later times) the common title On Nature was given. The dialei t
which he employed was naturally Ionic, and the influence i
cised by poetry even on those who strove to write prose, was
to be traced in the poetical cast of his writings. About the
same time as Anaximander lived Anaximoius, also of .Miletus.
He probably was acquainted with Anaximander : his philosophy
2 G
was physical, his work was entitled On Nature, his dialect was
Ionic, and his style was bald. As followers of Anaximenes are
mentioned Diogenes of Apollonia and Idseus of Himera. More
interesting is Heraclitus of Ephesus, who flourished about B.c.
500. lie was of royal descent, and is said to have been offered
the supreme magistracy of the town, and to have refused it.
Whether this is or is not actually true — and we have no trust-
worthy information about the facts of his life — it accords with
the character of the man, as it shows itself in the fragments of
his work On Nature. He, if not a misanthrope, certainly had
a strong contempt for most men. He dedicated his work to
Diana, for he did not expect men to appreciate it. He played
with children, and asked whether that was not a better occupa-
tion than politics. Poets, historians, and philosophers he had
no high opinion of. Learning was not the same thing as intelli-
gence, he said, as may be seen in the case of Hesiod, Pythagi >ras,
Xenophanes, and Hecatseus. As for Homer and Archilochus,
they deserved public scourging.
Heraclitus was surnamed " the obscure," and although there
is no doubt that his obscurity was in its nature and causes much
akin to that of Thucydides, and would have characterised him
to a large extent even if he had lived at a later stage in the
development of prose, still the immaturity of prose composition
doubtless added to the difficulty which Heraclitus found in im-
pressing himself. The simple narration of events is a task which
prose naturally first comes to perform with ease and success.
The exposition of an argument is a matter of more difficulty,
and requires time. Even Herodotus shows this, for the spei
which occur in his history are considerably more complicated in
syntax and less easy of apprehension than his narrative ; whilo
in Thucydides the same thing is even more apparent. His nar-
rative isvery clear, but the speeches are difficult. Philosophy
is, again, more difficult to express clearly than is an oral
argument. It contains an argument, like a speech, but it deals
much less with concrete ideas, and much more with what is
vague, as well as abstract, than oratory does ; and consequently
in the history of Greek prose literature we find that philo-
sophical prose is later and longer in developing than
oratorical prose, while both philosophy and oratory required
much more Labour than history to bring them to perfection.
Zeno of Elea was horn about b.o. 500, and became the pupil
of Parmenides, and one of the greatest of the Eleatic school of
philosophers. Most of his life he spent at Elea by preference,
though he visited Athens occasionally ; he was heard by Socrates,
PHILOSOPHY : PLATO. 467
and instructed Pericles. His life was patriotic, and he rendered

great services to his native city. Finally, when he returned
from Athens to Elea, he found it in the power of a tyrant,
against whom he conspired. The conspiracy was, however,
detected ; and when he was questioned as to his fellow-con-
spirators, he,by a bold stroke, named all the adherents of the
tyrant. It is said that, availing themselves of the dismay thus
caused in the tyrant, the people rose and killed him. The
manner of Zeno's death is unknown. Zeno took up the system
of Parmenides, and endeavoured to establish it, not directly and
positively, but negatively, by refuting the arguments brought
against it. For this purpose, or rather in this endeavour, he
was led to the use of the dialectical method. This method had,
indeed, been used, to a certain extent, before Zeno by Parme-
nides. Probably the same circumstances compelled Zeno as
compelled Parmenides to use it. i.e., the necessity of meeting
the arguments brought against the Eleatic philosophy by the
keen reasoning powers of the Athenians, whom both Parmenides
and Zeno endeavoured to win over to their philosophy. The
essence of the dialectical method was to convict an opponent of
the falsity of his opinions by reducing them to an absurdity.
Thus Zeno endeavoured to show that Opinion was untrust-
worthy bythe absurdities which it led to, and for this purpose
he invented his four arguments against the possibility of Motion
— Motion being testified to by Opinion, but disapproved by
Reason. Of these four arguments, the best known is that known
as "Achilles and the Tortoise." A simpler one, however, is the
first : " Motion is impossible, because before that which is in
motion can reach the end, it must reach the middle point ; but
this middle point then becomes the end, and the same objection
applies to it, since to meet it the object in motion must traverse
a middle point ; and so on ad infinitum, seeing that matter is
infinitely divisible." 1
Anaxagoras was born in Clazomence in Ionia about B.C. 500.
Unlike Zeno and Parmenides, he took no part in p litical or
practical affairs, but devoted himself solely to philosophy. He
allowed nothing to stand between him and his philosophical
pursuits. All his worldly substance was sacrificed to this fixed
idea, and he declared himself well pleased with the return
which philosophy brought him for the sacrifice. If he sought
truth thus passionately and devotedly, he showed equal coi
and determination in publishing the truth. The sun, he had
satisfied himself, was a molten stone of considerable size, and
1 Lewes' History of Philosophy, i. 63.
this opinion he did not conceal. But to the Athenians, who

believed that Helios, the sun, was a god, Anaxagoras' declaration
was blasphemy and atheism of an unmitigated character; and
Anaxagoras, who had long enjoyed the intimacy of Pericles and
the acquaintance of all the many men of genius to be met at
Athens, was banished. He consoled himself in Lampsacus
with the reflection that it was not he who had lost Athens,
but Athens that had lost him. He died in Lampsacus at the
age of seventy-three.
Finally, we can only make brief mention of some other
philosophers. Hippo of Samos lived at Athens in the time
of Pericles and belonged to the school of Thales. Aristotle1
speaks contemptuously of him, and seems to think he hardly
deserves the name of philosopher. Cratylus followed the doc-
trines of Heraclitus and was a tutor of Plato's. Philolaus,
a contemporary of Socrates, was the first Pythagorean to com-
mit the tenets of the school to writing, though it is doubtful
whether the fragments which have come down to us under his
name are genuine. Belissus of Samos continued the teaching
of the Eleatic school after Zeno. Hermotimus, Archelaus, and
Metrodorus were pupils or followers of Anaxagoras. Demo-
critus of Abdera was born about B.C. 460. He travelled more
widely, he boasted, than any other man, and was received when
he returned to Abdera with the greatest respect for his travels
and his learning. The distinction of founding the philosophy
which regards all things as ultimately consisting of atoms
is shared between him and Leucippus, whose birthplace is
variously given as Abdera, Miletus, or Elea. Amongst the
Sophists, in addition to the most famous, Protagoras, Prodicus,
Gorgias, Thrasymachus, and Hippias, who have been mentioned
elsewhere, we must here give the names of Polus, Euthydemus,
and Dionysodorus. Amongst the followers of Socrates must be
mentioned Euclides (not the mathematician nor the archon) of
Megara, who was present at the death of Socrates; Phaedo of
Elis and his pupil Menedemus ; Antisthenes, who has been
mentioned elsewhere ; Aristippus, the founder of the Cyrenaic
school : while to this school belonged Theodoras, Bion, and
Euemeras, who invented a means of explaining mytholoj
containing the exploits of famous men who after death came
to be regarded as gods, which is only now dying out
Plate, whose real name was Aristocles, but who came to bo
called Plato because of either the breadth of his brow or the
breadth of his shoulders, was born, according to one account, in
1 De Anima, i. 2 ; Met. i. 3.
philosophy: plato. 469
iEgina, where his father held a colonial allotment, or, according

to another more probable account, in Athens. The year of his
birth was either B.C. 428 or B.C. 427 ; and the seventh day of
the month Thargelion was celebrated for centuries by his dis-
ciples as the day of his birth. On his mother's side he was
said to be connected with Solon, while his father was descended
from Codrus. Critias, the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, and
Charmides were closely related to Plato ; and thus he was born
and bred in the midst of aristocratic conditions. He owed his
introduction into political life to Critias and Charmides, and he
seems to have been conscious and proud of his illustrious de-
scent.1 He had two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus (who
cannot be the Glaucon and Adeimantus of the Republic, because
the dialogue is supposed to have taken place before his brothers
were born), and a sister named Potone.
He was fully educated in the three branches of Greek educa-
tion— letters, music, and athletics. Dionysius, a grammarian,
taught him to read and write ; Dracon and Metellus of Agri-
gentum taught him music ; Ariston of Argos gymnastics, in
which he is said to have become so proficient as to carry off
prizes at the Isthmian and Olympian games. In his youth he
is said to have made essays in all kinds of literature — epic,
tragedy, dithyramb, and lyric, and in painting as well as in
poetry. It is uncertain at what age Plato was instructed in
philosophy by Cratylus, the follower of Heraclitus, but perhaps
we may regard it as previous to the time when Plato made the
acquaintance of Socrates. This event, important in the life of
Plato and the history of philosophy, took place probably about
B.c. 407, when Plato was twenty years of age ; and the ac-
quaintance, formed possibly through Critias, lasted until the
time of Socrates' death in B.C. 399. " But," says Mr. Grote,
"though Plato may have commenced at the age of twenty his
acquaintance with Socrates, he cannot have been exclusively
occupied in philosophical pursuits between the nineteenth and
twenty-fifth year of hia age — that is, between 409-403 b.c.
He was carried, partly by his own dispositions, to other matters
besides philosophy ; and even if such dispositions had nol existed.
the exigencies of the time pressed upon him imperatively as an
Athenian citizen. Even under ordinary circumstances, a young
Athenian of eighteen years of age, as soon as lie was enrolled on
the public register of citizens, was required to take the memo-
rable military oath in the chapel of Aglaurus, and to serve on
active duty, constant or nearly constant, for two years in various
1 Charm. 155A, 157E ; Tim. 20D.
posts throughout Attica for the defence of the country. But

the six years from 409-403 B.C. were years of an extraordinary
character. They included the most strenuous public efforts, the
severest suffering, and the gravest political revolution that had
ever occurred at Athens. Every Athenian citizen was of neces-
sity put upon constant (almost daily) military service, either
abroad or in Attica, against the Lacedaemonian garrison estab-
lished in the permanent fortified post of Dekeleia, within sight
of the Athenian Acropolis. So habitually were the citizens
obliged to be on guard, that Athens, according to Thucydides,
became a military post rather than a city. It is probable that
Plato, by his family and its place on the census, belonged to
the Athenian Hippeis or horsemen, who were in constant em-
ployment for the defence of the territory. But at any rate,
either on horseback, or on foot, or on shipboard, a robust young
citizen like Plato, whose military age commenced in 409, must
have borne his fair share in this hard but indispensable duty.
. . . Prom the dangers, fatigues, and sufferings of such an his-
torical decade no Athenian citizen could escape, whatever might
be his feeling towards the existing democracy, or however averse
he might be to public employment by natural temper. But
Plato was not thus averse during the earlier years of his adult
life. We know from his own letters that he then felt strongly
the impulse of political ambition usual with young Athenians of
good family. . . . Whether Plato ever spoke with success in
the public assembly we do not know : he is said to have been
shy by nature, and his voice was thin and feeble, ill adapted
for the Pnyx. However, when the oligarchy of Thirty was
established,"aft er the capture and subjugation of Athens, Plato
was not only relieved from the necessity of addressing the
assembled people, but also obtained additional facilities for rising
into political influence through Kritias (his near relative) and
Charmides, leading men among the new oligarchy. Plato
affirms that he had always disapproved of the antecedent demo-
cracy, and that he entered on the new scheme of government
with the full hope of seeing justice and wisdom predominant
He was soon undeceived. The government of the Thirty proved
juinary and rapacious tyranny, tilling him with disappoint-
ment ami disgust. He was especially rev.. lied by their treat-
ment of Socrates, whom they not only interdicted from continuing
his habitual colloquy with young men, but even tried to impli-
in nefarious murders, by ordering him, along with others,
1., arrest Leon the Salaminian, one of their intended victimo— an
order which Socrates at the peril of his life disobeyed. Thus
PHILOSOPHY: PLATO. 471
mortified and disappointed, Plato withdrew from public functions.

. . . His repugnance was aggravated to the highest pitch of
grief and indignation by the trial and condemnation of Socrates
(399 yearsof after
b.c.)thefourdeath the renewal of the democracy."1
After Socrates, Plato commenced his travels by
going to Megara, where he associated with Euclides, one of the
followers of Socrates, and where also he probably met Hermo-
genes, one of the Eleatic school. How long a time he spent at
Megara is unknown, but from Megara he went to Cyrene on a
visit to the mathematician Theodoras, whom he probably had
known at Athens, for in the Thecetetus Plato represents Theo-
doras as conversing with Socrates. From Cyrene he went to
Egypt. It has been disputed that Plato ever really visited
Egypt. Our earliest authority for the visit is Cicero ; 2 and
although Plato's works contain nothing which necessitates the
belief that he did visit Egypt, there is nothing improbable in
his being tempted when in Cyrene to extend his travels to the
Nile. He next visited the South of Italy, where he is said at
Tarentum to have met Archytas, and at Locri Timaeus, and to
have purchased the works of Philolaus at the high price of a
hundred minae. From Italy he went to Sicily, where in Syra-
cuse he was introduced by Dion to the elder Dionysius, brother-
in-law of Dion and tyrant of Syracuse. But Plato eventually
offended the tyrant, who spared his life indeed at the request of
Dion, but handed him over to Pollis, the Spartan ambassador,
who sold him as a slave in jEgina, whence the Athenians had
been driven out, and where they were especially detested. He
was, however, set at liberty by Anniceris, whom he had known
at Cyrene, and who purchased him for twenty or thirty minae, — a
price which contrasts suspiciously, or, if it be true, instructively
with the price paid by Plato for the works of Philolaus.
Thus Plato returned to Athens about B.C. 3S7 or 386 ; and,
on his return, "Dionysius wrote, hoping that he would not
speak ill of him. Plato contemptuously replied that he had
not leisure to think of Dionysius."3 He was more profitably
employed in philosophy. He bought a house and garden dose
to the precinct of the hero Academus, which contained walks
and a gymnasium, and was known as tho Academia. Hither
men from all quarters of the Greek world came to listen to his
discourses and to discourse with him. But, as in his travels,
he was a contrast to his great master, who never left Greece
1 Grote's Plato, i. 118-120.

2 De Fin. v. 29 ; Dc Repub. i. 10. 3 Lewes, i. 205.
and only once left Athens, so in his mode of teaching he

differed from him. Socrates conversed in the streets and the
market-place with any one and every one. Plato discoursed in
the Academy, a mile from Athens, to a small number only.
He did nut indeed demand fees, but he accepted presents ; and,
if payment was not required for permission to hear his dis-
courses, other conditions were probably exacted for admission.
Here, for some ten years, Plato continued to teach philosophy,
until he went, the elder Dionysius being dead, to Sicily for
a second time, in B.C. 367, on the invitation of Dion. The
object of his visit was that he might exert his influence over
the younger Dionysius, who had succeeded to the tyranny of
Syracuse, and produce a philosopher-kin^. But Dionysius
exiled Dion, and Plato had much ado to return to Athens.
Some years later, when he was sixt3'-nine years of age, Plato
voyaged a third time to Sicily, in the hope of reconciling Dion
and Dionysius; but the attempt failed, and it was fortunate
that Plato succeeded in returning once more to Athens. Of
the last ten years of his life we know nothing. He died at
the age of eighty in b.c. 346, bequeathing his house and garden
at the Academia to his nephew Speusippus, and to the Academy
an undying name.
The life of Plato is, it must be confessed, less instructive and
more disappointing than that of any other great Greek author.
The fact that it throws little lights on his intellectual develop-
ment may be in part at least due to defective tradition; what
we know of his life is little and lacks the best evidence. This
may also account for there being nothing in his life, as we
know it, which at all corresponds to or explains his charm as a
man of letters. It may also account for the anecdotes, which
in late times became numerous, and which represent Plato in a
very unfavourable light. In the absence of facts, fictions were
invented, and their unfavourable character, if it had no basis
in fad, must he ascribed to the heated feelings of partisanship
in philosophy. But defective tradition wiil not account for the
fact that, however uobly Plato wrote, he did nothing, as far as
we know, great or noble; and it seems probable that, if his
life had impressed his contemporaries as being as exalted as
his philosophy, or as charming as his literary style, succeeding
I itions would, in his case, as in others, have invented anec-
dotes, in default of fact-', to give pointed expression to the
genera] love and respect for him. Anecdotes and lictions of
various kinds were indeed invented, hut they were either
malevolent, or else silly inventions of weak minds, which could
only express their admiration for his philosophy by feigning
that his father was a god and his mother a virgin.
How different the impression made by his philosophy and by
his life is may be seen from what Goethe says of the former :
" Plato's relation to the world is that of a superior spirit,
whose good pleasure it is to dwell in it for a time. It is not
so much his concern to become acquainted with it — for the
world and its nature are things which he presupposes — as
kindly to communicate to it that which he brings with him,
and of which it stands in so great need. He penetrates iiô
its depths more that he may replenish them from the fulness
of his own nature than that he may fathom their mysteries.
He scales its heights as one yearning after renewed participa-
tion in the source of his being. All that he utters has reference
to something eternally complete, good, true, beautiful, whose
furtherance he strives to promote in every bosom." 2 With this
divine spirit Plato yet was neither patriotic as Demosthenes,
nor amiable as Sophocles. Philosophy has indeed gained
more than Athenian politics lost; but whether the gain to
philosophy is gain to the world we may doubt when we reflect
that Socrates, though great as a philosopher, was greater as a man.
The reasons why Plato withdrew from political life are tolerably
evident. By birth and education he was at discord with de-
mocracy, while experience of the Thirty Tyrants had shown
him the base aspect of oligarchy. Plato, therefore, withdrew
from political life. Socrates, we may remark, discharged his
duties as a citizen regardless of democracy or oligarchy, ami did
what was right undaunted by either. The temperament of
Plato, however, even as shown in his philosophy, was unfitted
for practical life. For practical life some steady and abiding
convictions are necessary. Plato had none even in his philo-
sophy. Anything which he affirms in one dialogue may be
found to be refuted by him in another. This was partly due
to the infancy of philosophy. Plato "is the poet or maker of
ideas, satisfying the wants of his own age, providing the in-
struments ofthought for future generations. He is no dreamer,
but a great philosophical genius struggling with the unequal
conditions of light and knowledge under which he is living."8
But the conditions are not wholly responsible for the shitting
ground of Plato's philosophy. Aristotle found linn ground ;
and if Plato continually changed his premisses in order to see
what conclusions would be the consequence, we must asoribe
1 Quoted in Ueberweg's Hist, of Philos. i. 103 (Morris's English tmus.)
- Prof. Jowett, Dialogues of Plato, I. i.\.
this continual change, in part at least, to the temperament of the

individual philosopher, as well as to the condition of philo-
sophy at the time. " Plato was not wanting in dogmatic im-
pulse, but he was unable to patiently think out a system ; and
the vacillating lights which shifted constantly before him, the
very scepticism which gave such dramatic flexibility to his
genius, made him aware that any affirmation he could make
was liable to be perplexed by crossdights, or would admit of
unanswerable objections." x
Setting aside the Ldtevs of Plato, the authenticity of which
is doubtful, his works consist of Dialogues, except the Apology
and the Menexenus, which are speeches. The first question,
then, vjhich we have to consider is, why did Plato cast his
philosophical work into the form of dialogues 1 For this there
seem to be several reasons. The most obvious answer to our
question is afforded by the fact that in all the Dialogues Soc-
rates is the central and most important figure. Plato himself
never figures in any of the Dialogues, and is only even referred
to twice. Obviously, therefore, it is Socrates and his philosophy
— as Plato conceived it — which he set himself to work to re-
produce ;and as Socrates never expounded his philosophy, but
confined himself to questioning others, professing that he him-
self knew nothing, Plato, in giving even an idealised picture of
Socrates, was compelled, as much as was Xenophon, to adhere to
historical truth, at least so far as to represent Socrates as con-
versing, and thus was compelled to write dialogues. In the
next place, the form of dialogue was essentially appropriate to
Plato's philosophy, since Plato was rather searching for truth
than expounding a system. In the third place, Plato was
conscious of the inferiority of books to the living word for the
investigation of truth. The reader of a book has to make the
best of it that he can, and often is in a difficulty which a simple
question addressed to the writer would solve. It is impossible to
argue with a book ; and a matter is rarely fully understood by any
one until be lias argued it out. To remedy this defect, inherent
in the communication of ideas by means of a book, Plato seems
to have resolved to throw his philosophy into dialogue form, and
thus argue out every question from as many points of view as
le or ai cessary. Again, whether Plato intend* '1 to derive
any advantage for the views he put forward from the likes and
dislikes of his readers or not, it is a fact that by the way in
which lie sketches the characters in his Dialogues, he enlists our
sympathies for Socrates and very decidedly against his opponents.
1 Lewes, i. 222.
This leads us to the last reason which we shall assign for the
dialogue form of Plato's works. It is that Plato was an artist.
He wrote philosophy and he also wrote literature. He had a
keen perception for character, and a satirical power as great as
that of Archilochus. As an artist, therefore, he was naturally
led to select the most artistic form for his work provided by
literature ; and dialogue had the same advantages over other
existing forms of prose as the drama had over other forms of
poetry.
We have compared the position of dialogue in prose to that
of the drama in poetry, and the comparison is not merely a
superficial one, as we shall see if we consider what antecedents
dialogue, as written by Plato, had, and what place dialogue takes
in the history of Greek literature. We not only find it said
several times by ancient authors that Plato had the greatest
affection for the Mimes of Sophron, and that it was he who first
brought them from Sicily to Athens, but we find that Aristotle
classes the Mimes of Sophron and the Dialogues of Plato
together as belonging essentially to the same branch of literature.
The excellence of Sophron's Mimes consisted in the success with
which he depicted character ; and we may form some idea at
second-hand of his power in this line from the Adoniazusce of
Theocritus, which is taken from one of the Mimes. It is, then,
in this power of depicting character amusingly that the resem-
blance between Plato's Dialogues and Sophron's prose Mimes,
we can hardly doubt, existed. Thus the comparison of the
Dialogues with the drama is not merely the superficial resem-
blance consisting in the fact that there are interlocutors in each
of these forms of literature, but is based on a similarity of aim
in both, and on a similarity in the artistic means by which that
aim is effected.
In the next place, if we compare the development of prose
and poetry in Greek literature, we shall see that the two forms
ran parallel, and that dialogue occupies in the one the place of
the drama in the other. The first form which poetry took in
Greek literature was that of epic, which is essentially narrative
in character. The next was lyric, which is individual and sub-
jective. Finally, there arose the drama, which muted the spirit
of both in a form of its own. So too in prose, the first form
which literature took was that of history, which, like epic poetry,
is essentially narrative in character. The next form was oratory,
which is individual, and is expressive of the speaker's own views.
Finally, there arose dialogue, which united the narrative of h ■
with the subjectivity of oratory in a vivid and dramatic form of
its own. Dialogue has over the other forms of prose the same
advantages as drama over other forms of poetry : it possesses a
greater multiplicity of elements, a greater variety of effects, and
a greater wealth of resources. Let us therefore see what light
is thrown on Plato's style when it is viewed from the stand-
point of the development of Greek prose, and as the highest
level attained by Greek prose. If the Dialogues of Alexamenus
of Teos, who wrote before Plato, had been preserved, it would
have been possible for us to discuss the characteristics of
dialogue generally as a form of Greek prose ; but as they are
lost, Greek dialogue is for us Plato.
Under the head of style are comprised three things at least :
the choice and range of" words over which the writer has com-
mand, that is to say, diction ; the structure of his sentences,
which differs in complexity, regularity, and clearness, not only
in different writers according to their individual capacities, but
is also affected by the nature of the subject on which the author
is writing ; and, finally, the rhythm of the period, which may
flow harmoniously or may offend the ear, and which is aided by
the subtle repetition of such sounds as are pleasing, or by the
harmonious blending of contrasted sound. Now in all three
points the style of Plato is neither that of the historians nor
that of the orators, but a union of the two. The difference
between the historian and the orator in point of style is most
obvious in the structure of their sentences. The full and well-
rounded periods of the orator are much longer, more full of
subordinate clauses, and more impressive in their effect than
are the simple sentences in which the historian tells his tale.
It is only necessary to compare the artless conversational tone
of Herodotus with the sounding periods of Demosthenes' orations
to perceive the difference. Each style has its charm, but each
runs the danger of monotony. Herodotus, however, is preserved
by his complete freedom from artificiality and by the natural
beauty of his style. Demosthenes was aware of the danger be
ran, and to avoid it he deliberately introduces sentences irregular
in fcheir construction — anacolutha — which may relieve the regular
succession of elaborate periods. Plato commits himself to neither
style, but blends the two. Irregularly constructed sentences are
too frequent in his writing to be suspected of being introduced
as artificial foils, while there is a tinge of oratory throughout
which lifts him above the merely conversational style. This
happy blending of the essence of both styles characterises his
writing throughout. Setting aside such pieces of work as the
Menexenue, which is of deliberate design oratorical, we may say
that it is not true that Plato is conversational in some parts of

a dialogue and oratorical in others. Even when he passes from
dialogue to a long speech by one of the characters, he does not
drop the conversational and assume the oratorical style, but he
retains the same structure of sentence, the same happy mean
between the two styles, as elsewhere.
In rhythm Plato unites the excellences of historical and
philosophical prose as in the structure of his sentences. He
neither writes regardless of rhythm, leaving it to chance whe-
ther the sentence happens to be pleasing in sound, nor does
he rush into the opposite extreme of producing sentences which,
like those of Isocrates, balance each other clause for clause and
word for word. Hiatus, which was especially abhorred by Iso-
crates, Plato admits less freely than do the historians, but more
freely than do the orators. What is true of the rhythm and
the structure of Plato's sentences is also true of his diction ; he
neither limits himself to the vocabulary of ordinary conversa-
tion, nor does he concern himself to avoid it. But diction is a
particularly sensitive element in style ; it is affected not only by
the rhythm and the structural necessities of a sentence, which
perpetually determine whether this or that of two words nearly
synonymous is to be used, but it reflects the mood of the writer,
is exalted when he is exalted, precise when his thought is exact,
and vague when his ideas are dreamy. Now Plato has many
moods : he " was sceptic, dogmatist, religious mystic and in-
quisitor, mathematician, philosopher, poet (erotic as well as
satirical), rhetor, artist — all in one, or at least all in succession,
throughout the fifty years of his philosophical life. At one
time his exuberant dialectical impulse claims satisfaction, mani-
festing itself in a string of ingenious doubts and unsolved con-
tradictionsat
; another time he is full of theological antipathy
against those who libel Helios and Selene, or who deny the
universal providence of the gods; here we have, unqualified
confessions of. ignorance, and protestations against the false
persuasion of knowledge, as alike wide-spread and deplorable —
there, we find a description of the process of building up the
kosmos from the beginning, as if the author had been privy to
the inmost purposes of the Demiurgus" (Grote, i. 215). Be-
fore, then, we can complete our account of Ins diction, we must
proceed to consider the poetic element in Plato.
According to Aristotle, whose competence as a literary critic
is above doubt, Plato's works were a mean between poetry and
prose. By this it is not meant that, in some passages, his
diction is purely poetical and in others pure prose — although
47 S HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
within certain limits the diction of a passage may vary in this

respect according to the nature of the subject-matter — but that
throughout a dialogue Plato unites the qualities of prose and
poetry, just as the structure of his sentences is throughout half
conversational, half oratorical. Now this, which is the charac-
teristic-of Plato's diction, is not mere accident or caprice, but
has a definite connection with the literary form into which
Plato threw his philosophy. That form, according to Aristotle,
is the same as that of Sophron's Mimes. In other words, the
Dialogues of Plato, although in point of matter philosophical,
are works of the imagination in the same way as were the Mimes
of Sophron. Not only are the circumstances and scene in which
a dialogue is represented as taking place probably due to Plato's
invention, but the characters which he gives to the interlocutors,
though, like the figures in Sophron's Mimes, to a certain extent
suggested by life, are in their artistic shape the creation of the
author. Jmt with the exception of Sophron's Mimes, the only
works of the imagination known to the Greeks were written in
poetry. Prose fiction was unknown. It was then almost in-
evitable that the first prose works of the imagination should
be influenced to a considerable extent by the poetical works on
which they were largely modelled and by which they were partly
inspired. In fine, the style of Plato is a union of prose and
poetry, because his Dialogues were a form of literature uniting
the imaginative qualities of the drama with the philosophical
purposes of dialectic.
Here it is necessary to point out what poetry it is with which
the Dialogues have points of community. Obviously it is with
the drama; but the drama includes tragedy and comedy, and
the question arises whether it is with comedy or with tragedy
that the Dialogues have a resemblance, or whether the resem-
blance is to the drama generally and not to either tragedy or
comedy especially 1 The Alexandrian grammarians apparently
considered that the Dialogues were more like tragedy, for they
divided them into trilogies. But in this they committed the
error of allowing the matter, which is serious, to influence
them in deciding as to the form of the Dialogues.1 The truth
is indicated to us by Aristotle, who, in grouping the Dialogues
1 On the other hand, " the riiaedo is the tragedy of which Socrates is the
protagonist, and Simraias and Cebes the secondary performers. No dialogue
peatei unit} of Buhjeot and feeling. Plato has certainly fulfilled the
condition of Greek, or rather of all air, which requires that scenes of death
and Buffering .should be clothed in beauty. . . . There is nothing in all
tragedians, ancient or modern, nothing in poetry or history (with one excep-
tion), like the last hours of Socrates in Plato " (Jowett, i. 4->7).
with the Mimes, which were a species of comedy, signifies the

connection between the Dialogues and comedy. This is in
harmony with the tradition that makes Sophron and Aristo-
phanes the favourite authors of Plato. Plato attacks the
Sophists, for instance, with all the force that humour can give,
as Aristophanes attacked the leather-sellers and lampmakers
who figured in the political world. But Plato's satire has an
exquisite finish which Aristophanes rarely equals. For instance,
take this side-blow at the Sophists. It occurs at the beginning
of the Protagoras. Socrates and Hippocrates were going to
make a call on Callias in order to see Protagoras, and Socrates,
describing it afterwards, said : " We proceeded on our way until
we reached the vestibule of the house, and there we stopped
in order to conclude a dispute which had arisen as we were
going along; and Ave stood talking in the vestibule until we
had finished and come to an understanding. And I think that
the doorkeeper, who was a eunuch, and Avho was probably
annoyed at the great inroad of the Sophists, must have heard
us talking. At any rate, when we knocked at the door, and he
opened and saw us, he grumbled, ' They are Sophists — he is
not at home ; ' and instantly gave the door a hearty bang with
both his hands. Again we knocked, and he answered without
opening, ' Did you not hear me say that he is not at home,
fellows 1 ' ' But, my friend,' I said, ' you need not be alarmed, for
we are not Sophists, and we are not come to see Callias, but Ave
want to see Protagoras ; and I must request you to announce
us.' At last, after a good deal of difficulty, the man Avas per-
suaded to open the door." x This passage, and still more the
way in which Plato draAvs the character of Thrasymachus, the
Sophist, in the Republic, compels us to admit the justice of
Gorgias' criticism when he spoke of Plato as a terrible satirist
and as a new Archilochus. Other conspicuous instances of his
satiric powers may be found in the fine parody in the Phcedrus
on the dithyrambic style, in the speech of Agathon in the
Symposium on the oratorical style, and in the MenexentiS.
In parodies such as those just mentioned, the style is poetical
or oratorical according to circumstances, but the diction of Plato,
except when he thus deliberately departs from his ordinary
course, is a mixture of prose and poetry ; and this is because
the form of his Dialogues is a union of dialogue, employed for
dramatic purposes, and dialectic used for purposes of philosophy.
The advantages of this new form of composition as compared
with any pre-existing form are obvious in its vivacity and variety.
1 Protarj. 384 (Jowett's trans.)
But it also labours under defects. " With regard to the dramatic
power exhibited, there has perhaps been little exaggeration in
the praise of critics ; but there has been an oversight in regard
to the sudden cessation of the dramatic ventriloquence (so to
speak), which, having animated the raise en scene of the characters,
disappears as soon as the business of the dialogues begins. In
the introduction the characters speak ; in the argument it is
Plato who speaks just what the needs of his argument require,
and the debaters, instead of debating, assent, inquire, and ex-
pound, but rarely speak dramatically." 1 This criticism is true
of the Republic, for instance, and some of the longer Dialogues,
but by no means of all. In the Protajoras, for example, the
interlocutors maintain their character throughout. But the fact
remains that frequently Plato sinks the artist in the philosopher,
and, in order to make his writing fill as satisfactorily as
possible the place of the living word, he loads his work with
vain repetitions, and justifies the criticism of Montaigne, who
found the Dialogues of Plato drag, thought he stifled his subject
too much, and complained " of the time spent in vain inter-
rogatories bya man who had such far better things to say."
The form of the Dialogues and their diction are intermediate
between prose and poetry ; the structure and harmony of the
sentences are intermediate between those of oratory and those
of ordinary conversation. These, then, are the characteristics of
the Dialogues considered as a branch of Greek literature ; but
we must also endeavour to form some idea of the literary qualities
of Plato himself. Here, again, we shall base our remarks upon
Aristotle. According to him (Pol. II. iii. 3), four qualities
distinguish the Dialogues : elevation, finish, originality, and
the spirit of inquiry. The first quality, so far as it refers
to style, implies that the Dialogues, though conversational,
are not vulgar ; that the structure of the sentences, though
not artificial, is not slipshod ; that in both respects the
Dialogues are above the common. As regards the matter of
the Dialogues, they are elevated in tone, and are marked by
what Greek critics called Uhos, that is, their tone is such
as to excite to virtue and turn from vice. The finish which
Plata's work shows is to be seen in the polish of his satire,
(Plato impales his victims "as though he loved them") ; in his
exquisite drawing of character (contrast his Socrates with the
incomplete and inartistic picture given by Xenophon) ; in the
ease and grace with which the philosophical subject of adialoguo
1 Lewes, i. 198.
is introduced ; a in the harmonious proportions of such a dialogue

as the Symposium, with its Greek purity of form ; or in the
grouping and contrast of the characters of the First Book of the
Republic. Plato's originality shows itself alike in form and
matter. The Dialogues of Alexamenus have perished so com-
pletely that we may safely conjecture that they can have im-
paired hut little Plato's claim to have invented philosophical
dialogue. The merit of this original service to mankind, though
great, is apt to he overlooked. It gave philosophy as high a
rank in literature as it occupies in knowledge, and it gave to
philosophical discussion a literary interest serviceahle alike to
philosophy and to literature. The same creative power shows
itself elsewhere in the additions which Plato made hoth to the
technical phraseology of metaphysics and to the general voca-
hulary of the Greek language. As regards the matter of his
works, Plato's originality consists not so much in any positive
addition of permanent value that he made to the sum of human
knowledge, as in the fact that he was " a maker of ideas " and
provided "the instruments of thought for future generations."
The fourth quality ascribed to Plato by Aristotle, the spirit
of inquiry, is one exhibited in the matter of the Dialogues,
though their form was appropriate to it, and was doubtless
partly determined by it. The spirit which examines all things
and investigates each thing from every point of view ; which is
dissatisfied, not with negative results, but only if it leaves any
argument or any method of search untouched — this is Plato's
spirit of inquiry, and is a mode of philosophy for which, employ-
ing, or rather consisting of, dialectic, as it does, dialogue is the
appropriate form. The Dialogues of Plato were divided by
Thrasyllus, a rhetorician of the time of Tiberius, into two classes,
dialogiies of search and expository dialogues. These classes
fail to include all the dialogues, but of those which properly
belong to them, the majority, according to Mr. Grote, come
under the head of dialogues of search. This, however, is a
matter to be decided by philosophers, and cannot properly lie
here discussed. Nor is it necessary here to more than mem ion
the fact that Schleiermacher arranged all the dialogues in
accordance with a philosophic scheme which he imagines that
Plato conceived in his youth, and devoted his life to working
out. This hypothesis is improbable, incapable of proof (it pro-
of 1Plato
The art
which of concealing art trial
describe the "is and
nowhere
death more perfect than
"t Socrates. Theirin oharm
those writings
is their
simplicity, which gives them verisimilitude ; and yet they touoh, as if inci-
dentally, and hecauso they were suitable to the occasion, on some of the
deepest truths of philosophy " (Jowett, i. 427). 2 U
ceeds on internal and subjective grounds), and is rejected by

other students of Plato, who bring forward each a scheme of
his own. Another theory, equally subjective, but more gene-
rally intelligible, is that of Munk, who conceives that Plato
intended in the Dialogues " to depict the life and working of a
philosopher, in successive dramatic exhibitions, from youth to
old age. The different moments in the life of Socrates, indi-
cated in each dialogue, mark the place which Plato intended it
to occupy in the series" (Grote, i. 181). But with the classi-
fications based on philosophical grounds we have nothing to do.
External proof as to the date of composition does not exist in
the case of a single dialogue ; and the historical events men-
tioned in a dialogue give us no information, as sometimes the
same dialogue is represented in one passage as having been held
in one year, and in another passage as having been held at a
wholly different time. So far as the purely literary study of
the Dialogues throws any light on their relative order, we may
notice that in some dialogues Plato is at pains to avoid hiatus.
in others not; and that in the Laws, which, on other grounds,
arc generally admitted to be amongst the latest of Plato's works,
the hiatus is most carefully avoided. Other dialogues which
show the same avoidance of hiatus, and are therefore probably
among the later works, are the Pltilebus, Timceus, Critias,
Sophistes, Politicm, and Phaidrus.1
Finally, we must speak briefly of the question as to the
authenticity of the works that go under Plato's name. In the
reign of Tiberius, Thrasyllus drew up a list of the works which,
according to him, were universally regarded as genuine in anti-
quity. This list may be identical with that of the works
recognised as genuine in the library at Alexandria, and the
library list may have been obtained from the Platonic school at
the Academy. Put although an authentic canon may have
been thus transmitted to the time of Thrasyllus, it is more
likely that spurious works came to be regarded as genuine, and
were incorporated in the list of Thrasyllus. Tins probability
is considerably strengthened when we find that even Thrasyllus
himself doubts the genuineness of one of the works included in
his list. But if we reject the list of Thrasyllus, the question
remains, what works of those ascribed to Plato are genuine?
and no completely satisfactory answer is forthcoming. Aristotle
1 It should perhaps be stated that Thrasyllna arranged the Dialogues in
groups of four, which lie called Tetralogies, and 1 hat Aristophanes of Byzan-
tium (tho librarian of Alexandria, who lived between 260-184 B.O.) is said
by Diogenes Laertius to have arranged them into Trilogies. But both
arrangements were purely fanciful.
mentions many of Plato's works, and those which he mentions

may safely be regarded as genuine. But he does not mention
all, and we cannot infer anything from his silence. He never
expressly mentions the Protagoras, yet there is no doubt that the
Protagoras is genuine. Again, he sometimes mentions or quotes
from some of the dialogues that we possess, but does not ex-
pressly say that they are the work of Plato : these dialogues,
then, may or may not be genuine. They may contain the
teaching of Plato, and bo the work of some members of the
Platonic school. Finally, there are some dialogues which, both
in antiquity and in modern times, have been universally re-
jected. Such are the Axioelms, Demodocus, Sisyjrfius, Eryxias,
Halcyon, Midon, Phceaces, Chelidon, Hebdome, and Epimenides.
Dialogues which may or may not be genuine are the Lesser Hip-
pias, First Alcibiades, and the Menexenus. The Letters, although
defended by Grote, are rejected by every one else. They con-
tain gross historical errors and many plagiarisms.
4&4 HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
CONCLUSION.
The history of Greek literature is the proper introduction to

the study of literature in general, not merely because of the
excellence of Greek literature in itself, and because it has
influenced both directly and indirectly all subsequent Euro-
pean literatures, but because the causes which determine the
development of literature in Greece are more easily discernible
and more obvious in their operation than is the case in any
other country. If many a village Hampden, because his lot
forbids, withstands no greater foe than " the little tyrant of
his fields," many a Milton also remains mute and inglorious,
or, if he finds a voice, achieves glory in some other branch of
literature than epic poetry. Of all men of genius, the man of
letters might seem to be the least fettered by external condi-
tions. The range of thought is limited neither by time nor
space. It is the peculiar power of the imagination to transport
us out of the age and country, nay, out of the very world to
which Ave belong. Given the power, which genius possesses,
of expressing his thought or fancy, the poet might seem to be
beyond any control save his own, and consequently produce
any kind of poetry in any age or in any country. Yet, even
here, where the mind of man has a freedom to which it is hard
to conceive limits, law and order rule.
When a cannon is levelled horizontally, the shot, whether
gently dropped from the muzzle or discharged with the full
force of the most powerful explosive, takes precisely the same
time to reach the ground. Gravity, according to its law, acts
no more and no less on the rushing shot than on the shot which
is dropped from the cannon's mouth. So, too, however far
thought or the imagination is projected, it never escapes beyond
the 'hounds of
community its laws.
to winch Land and
the author language,
addresses race and
himself and for
place, the
whose
approbation he looks, the means by which he addresses it, the
literature which existed before him — all these things help to
determine the direction which genius takes; and the operation
of these and other causes on the literary genius of a nation con-
stitutes the history of its literature. Hut the more complex
civilisation grows, and the longer the past which any generation
is heir to, the more difficult it is to distinguish the causes which
CONCLUSION. 485
substantially affect the evolution of literature from those which

do not. It is, therefore, an advantage to study a literature in
which the factors of the problem are simpler and less obscured ;
and such a literature is that of Greece in classical times. The
course of Greek literature did not suffer perturbations from
the influence of any other nation's literature ; the civilisation
of Greece was in the main its own. It is to Greece and to
Greek literature alone that we must look for the causes which
determined its nature and regulated its development.
First among these causes we will consider the country in
which the Greeks lived. The effects of the physical conditions
of a land on its inhabitants did not escape the Greeks' fine sense
of observation. Not only did men of science like the physi-
cian Hippocrates systematically work out the effects of the
physical environment on the organism of the nation, not only
did philosophers like Plato take into account the surroundings
of youth as a factor in education, but Herodotus calls special
attention to the effect of favourable physical conditions on the
iolonies in Asia Minor. And the exhilarating influence of the
atmosphere of Athens, the depressing influence of the heavy air
of Bceotia on the inhabitants of the two countries, were a com-
mon-place among the dramatic poets. The physical character
of a country acts on literature directly and indirectly : directly
by its beauty, which is reflected in the literature ; indirectly by
its influence on the social, political, and moral development
of the community to which the author belongs. The direct
influence of nature on Greek poets has been sometimes over-
looked and sometimes denied. But the sense of beauty which
the Greeks possessed to a greater extent than any other people
could not fail to be caught by the exceptionally beautiful
natural surroundings in which they lived ; and their literature,
at any rate their poetry, bears abundant testimony to the fact.
Small though Greece is, it contains a greater variety, both in
harmony and contrast, of natural beauty than most countries,
however great. Its latitude gives it a southern climate, while
its mountains allow of the growth of a vegetation found in
more northern climes. Within a short space occur all the
degrees of transition from snow-topped hills to vine-clad foun-
tains. And the joy with which the. beauty of their country
filled the Greeks maybe traced through all their poetry. In
Homer we need only refer to the descriptions of the garden oi
Alcinous and the cave of Calypso, and the similes drawn from
nature throughout. In the lyric poetry, whether of Sappho
or of Alcman, we find a sympathy with nature, animate and
inanimate, and a power of expressing that sympathy, which is

not surpassed in modern literature. In tragedy, what need to
refer to Sophocles' description of his native Colonus ? in comedy,
to the Birds of Aristophanes ? The attitude of the Greek to
nature was not that of modern times ; the contrast between
nature and the corruptions of civilisation only came into litera-
ture when civilisation had become corrupt. The classical Greek
did not regard himself as something apart from nature, but
appeals to her as Prometheus appeals, or took leave of her as
Ajax bids farewell — as one of her children.
The two leading facts in the physical aspect of Greece are
the sea and the mountains. As Europe is the most indented
and has relatively the longest coast-line of all the continents of
the world, so of all the countries of Europe the land of Greece
is the most interpenetrated with arms of the sea. "We have
now to consider how these distinctive features acted indirectly
on Greek literature through their effects on the moral, political,
and social condition of the Greek people.
" Two voices are there : one is of the Sea,
One of the Mountains ; each a mighty voice :
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice ;
They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! "
Both voices spoke impressively to Greece, and her literature
echoes their tones. So long as Greece was free and the spirit
of freedom animated the Greeks, so long their literature was
creative and genius marked it. When liberty perished, litera-
ture declined. The field of Chaeronea was fatal alike to the
political liberty and to the literature of Greece.
The love of liberty was indeed pushed even to an extreme
in Greece ; and this also was due to the physical configura-
tion of the country. Mountains, it has been said, divide ; seas
unite. The rise and the long continuance in so small a country
of so many cities, having their own laws, constitution, separate
history, and independent existence, can only be explained by
the fact that in their early growth they were protected, each by
the mountains which surrounded it, so effectually, and the love
of liberty in this time was developed to such an extent, that no
single city was able to establish its dominion over the others,
as Rome, did in Italy, and creates Creek empire. With the
political effects of the mountains of Greece vre have, however,
only to do so far as they affected the literature ; and their effect
on it was very great. Every one of the numerous -tabs, whose
separate political existence was guaranteed by the mountains,
CONCLUSION. 487
was actually or potentially a separate centre of civilisation and of

literature. In some one of these states each, kind of literature
could find the conditions appropriate or necessary to its develop-
ment. Even a state which produced no men of literary genius
itself might become the centre at which poets collected and
encourage the literature it could not produce, as was the case
with Sparta, to which Greece owed the development of choral
lyric.
But the service which Sparta, for instance, rendered to litera-
ture by attracting lyric poets to herself and encouraging the
growth of choral lyric, would have been, if not impossible, at
least materially diminished, had not the sea afforded an easy
means of communication, and united the colonies with the
mother-land. The eastern basin of the Mediterranean has de-
served well of literature, for it brought Greece into communi-
cation with her colonies on the islands and on the surrounding
coasts, and enabled the numerous Greek cities to co-operate in
the production of a rich and varied literature, instead of being
confined each to a one-sided and incomplete development. The
process of communication began in the earliest times, as is
shown by the spread of epic literature. Originating in Ionia, it
was taken up in Cyprus, where the epic called the Cypria was
composed, and at the beginning of the sixth century it was on
the coast of Africa in the colony of Cyrene. The rapid spread
of elegiac poetry is even more strikingly illustrated, for we find
Solon in Athens quoting from his contemporary Mimnermus of
Colophon. Choral lyric, which originated in Asia Minor, was
conveyed to Sparta by Alcman, and by Simonides of Ceos all
over the Greek world. But although in early times we find
as much interchange and reaction in the colonies amongst
themselves as between the colonies and the mother-country,
with the advance of time we find the centripetal tendency be-
coming dominant. The mother-country becomes more and more
the centre to which all literature and art gravitate. At the
beginning of the sixth century Sparta attracted poets from the
colonies in Asia Minor, but the only form of literature which
Sparta rewarded and encouraged was choral lyric. No such
narrowness characterised Athens, and when she established
herself as the intellectual capital of Greece, all men of genius
received a welcome there, and we find all forms of literature
deserting their native homes, even their native dialects, to
come to Athens. Iambic poetry, which was the work of
Archilochus, born in the island of Paros, found its finest de-
velopment inthe dialogue of Athenian drama. The dithyramb,
Q
which was brought by Arion from Lesbos to Greece, was adopted

in Attica, and there developed into tragedy. Choral lyric, which
grew under the hands of Simonides of Ceos, and of Alcman before
him, was recalled from the circumference of the Greek world,
where it had been at the service of tyrants, to add to the beauty
of Attic drama and to the enjoyment of the Athenian demo-
cracy. Comedy, which Epicharmus had developed in Sicily,
deserted that island for Athens. Prose, which the Ionian logo-
graphers had painfully pioneered ; history, which has Herodotus
of Halicarnassus for father ; rhetoric, the seeds of which were
sown, on the one hand in Sicily, on the other in Tonia ; philo-
sophy, which germinated in Sicily, Ionia, and Elea on the west
cnast of Italy — all found their way to Athens, there to be carried
to a height of perfection impossible in their places of origin.
But this was the beginning of the end. As long as literature
had many centres, there was no danger of all falling by a single
stroke ; but when it was centralised in Athens, and the blow
delivered by Philip at Choeronea had fallen on Athens, classical
Greek literature perished in a generation.
It is somewhat difficult to distinguish race-qualities from the
characteristics impressed on a people by the conditions under
which it lives, since the latter by accumulation and transmission
from generation to generation eventually become race-qualities.
Thus the Spartans possessed qualities common to them and the
Dorians, of whom they were a branch, and also qualities peculiar
to themselves, which distinguish them from other Dorians. But
the latter qualities, at any rate, so far as they affect the relation
of Sparta to literature, seem to be the work of the peculiar con-
ditions under which the Spartans lived. When the Dorians in-
vaded Greece cannot be accurately determined. The invasion
belongs to prehistoric times. It seems to have been subsequent,
if not to Homer, at least to the state of things depicted in the
Iliad and Odyssey. When, however, it did take place, those
Dorians who lodged themselves in Sparta, and became known
to history as Spartans or Lacedaemonians, found themselves sur-
rounded bya hostile population, to whose attacks for an uncer-
tain but considerable period they were perpetually exposed.
This pressure, exercised for generations, not only necessarily
made the Spartans a military people — it made them a military
people and nothing else. The ordinary life of a Spartan citizen
was that of a soldier in camp or garrison, rather than that of a
member of a political community, and this system of life was
highly unfavourable to literature. It crushed out individuality ;
for obedience, not independent action, is the quality needed in
CONCLUSION. 489
a soldier ; and it inculcated silence, not discusssion. Spartan —

" laconic " — brevity is proverbial, and its reason is obvious.
The word of command is short and sharp, and must be received
with the briefest indication that the subordinate understands
his superior. At first, the connection between Spartan brevity
and Spartan sterility in literature is not obvious, for with us a
man may achieve literary success and speak but little. But in
Greece literature was oral. Not only the orator, but the epic
poet, the lyric poet, the historian, and the philosopher themselves
delivered their words to the audience, not on paper, but with
their own voices. Where, therefore, as in Sparta, the oppor-
tunities ofspeech were reduced to a minimum, and speech itself
was necessarily and deliberately discouraged, there could be but
little chance for literary genius to struggle into light. But if
Sparta thus debarred herself from producing literature, she at
least encouraged it to a certain extent ; and the extent to
which she could encourage it was strictly defined by her exclu-
sively military and one-sided growth. An individual existence
the Spartan was not allowed to have ; collectively the citizens
might assent to the legislative proposals of the senate, and take
the field under the king's command. Any kind of literature,
therefore, which was to flourish in Sparta must be such as could
be participated in by a large body acting under the word of com-
mand ;and such a kind of literature was forthcoming in the
lyric poetry, which was performed by choruses.
Other Dorians, not hemmed in by such unfavourable con-
ditions as the Spartans, did provide some contributions to the
literature of Greece, and in the nature of their contributions
we may detect the qualities of the race. The Dorians in Sicily
sowed the seeds of rhetoric and carried comedy to considerable
perfection. Of imagination the race seems destitute : it did not
produce poets. On the other hand, the race is eminently prac-
tical as well as prosaic, and their humour was of a nature which
corresponded to these qualities. Personal peculiarities struck
them as comic, and practical jokes afforded them groat amuse-
ment. The highest altitude at which comedy could survive
amongst them was the level of a modern burlesque. Their per-
ception, within its own range — the practical affairs of lite — was
quick. Repartee was brisk, and when circumstances brought
the law-courts into great activity, the rapidity of thrust and
parry, which was inherent in the race, at once found its proper
practical application in the service of litigation. But the
forensic oratory which originated in Sicily had to be trans-
planted toAttica and to be cultivated with Attic taste before
it could take its place among the branches of the national
literature.
The iEolians form a contrast both to the Spartans and to the
Athenians. The development of individuality is as characteris-
tic of the iEolians as its absence is of the Spartans. But the
iEolians, first of all Greeks, possessed a cavalry, and this means
that they were wealthy and aristocratic ; for in Greece, as in
the early periods of every nation's history, the advantage in
combat ensured to the class wealthy enough to have horses to
fight on resulted in the elevation of that class above others
and the formation of an aristocracy. This gives us the dis-
tinction between the iEolians and the Athenians : among the
former, individuality was developed in the aristocracy alone ;
among the latter, in all the citizens. The iEolians added to the
crown of Greek literature one of the brightest of its jewels —
lyric poetry, as we understand lyric in modern times, that is, the
expression of the poet's feelings, on any subject whatever,
as his individual feeling. It is further to the honour of the
/Eolian aristocracy that its social constitution assigned woman
a rank and allowed her a freedom which she enjoyed in no other
Greek race ; and the merited reward of this enlightenment was
not wanting, for to the zEolian race belongs the woman who in
poetry ranks above all women, in lyric poetry above all poets,
Sappho.
But it was the Ionians who rendered the greatest services to
Greek literature. They were a quick-witted race, full of enter-
prise, full of resources. In them we see reflected the character
of the sea, as in the Dorians the character of the mountains.
The latter partook of the narrowness and exclusiveness of their
own homes, hemmed in by mountains, and by them protected
from the incursion of strangers and strange innovations. The
Ionians, on the other hand, were open as the sea, and had as many
moods. They were eminently susceptible to beauty in all its
forms, to the charm of change and to novelty. They were ever
ready to put any belief or institution to the test of discussion,
and were governed as much by ideas as by sentiments. Keen-
ness of intellect, taste in all matters of literature and art, grace
in expression, and measure in everything distinguished th.ni
above all Greeks. The development of epic poetry, the origin
of prose, the cultivation of philosophy, are the proud distinction
of the Ionian race.
In Athens we have the qualities of the Ionian race in their
finest flower. Inhabiting a city by the sea, the Athenians were
in open communication with all the eastern colonies of Greece,
CONCLUSION. 49 1
while the main routes to the colonies of the west converged at

Athens. The capacities of the sea were developed fully by the
Athenians. Their empire was a maritime empire, and their
commercial supremacy was established by the sea. It was the
naval victory of Salamis which made democracy inevitable, and
gave to every citizen of Athens the right to help in governing
the city which he had helped in saving. The citizens into
whose hands was thus given the government of this great city
were essentially an enlightened people. No seed of science,
art, or literature was sown among them in vain ; no attempt to
improve or embellish life was rejected by them because it was
unknown to their fathers or foreign to their prejudices. So far
as the Athenians differ from the Ionians, of whom tbey were a
branch, the difference is the same as that between Greece and
the colonies generally. The Athenians were less original but
more receptive than the Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor.
If they were less ready at striking out a new line, they were
more persistent in working out an old one. If they invented
no instrument, they added new strings to the instruments in-
vented byothers, and extracted tones of beauty unsuspected by
the inventors. Eminently enlightened, they not only appreciated
and welcomed every form of literature which existed in Greece,
but they extracted the essence from epic, iambic, and lyric
poetry, and, by uniting them in the drama, gave them a form
which gratified the eye as well as the ear, and marked the
culminating point of Greek poetry. In prose their taste was
equally catholic, and their services to literature equally great.
They furnished Herodotus with his most appreciative audiences ;
their city was the centre to which rhetoricians and philosophers
congregated from all quarters of Greece. History was given a
profound and scientific basis by Thucydides ; philosophy was
given by Socrates the direction which it has since ever followed,
by Plato a literary form which it has since never surpassed ; and
finally, oratory, developed by a series of artists in word?, reached
its zenith in the speeches of Demosthenes.
Although, up to this point, our object has been to see only
how Greek literature was affected by the race-qualities of the
Greeks and the physical conditions under which they lived, we
have been compelled incidentally to take into consideration the
influence of political and social conditions. But before we ran
estimate their influence fully, or fully comprehend the influence
of the Greek language on Greek literature, we must have some
idea of the way in which, in classical times, literature was com-
municated to the public. It is a matter of doubt whether
writing was even known in Greece much before B.C. 700. It

is probable that for a century and a half after that date it was
only used for purposes of commerce and correspondence. For
a century after that it seems as though the only use it was to
literature was to enable an author to write out a single copy of
his works. It is only about B.C. 430 or 420 that we rind copies
of manuscripts multiplied and diffused, and for a century after
that time it was not to the reading public that authors addressed
themselves. In other words, writing seems not to have been
known during the period of epic poetry, not to have been used
for literary purposes during the age of lyric (except towards the
end), to have been used by the early historians, philosophers,
and dramatists only as an aid to composition, and not to have
been needed as a means of publication by the orators, witli
whom classical Greek literature ends.
Greek literature, then, was communicated to the public orally,
not by means of the multiplication and diffusion of manuscripts.
But oral communication implies the collection of an audience to
whom the author can address his words ; and the occasion on
which, the purposes for which, the place in which, and the fre-
quency with which the audience is collected, exercise a consider-
able influence on the literary form of the work presented to it.
Further, the reaction of the audience on the author being more
immediate, was more effectual than it is even in these days of
the printing-press. Let us then see the nature of the audiences
to whose approval the various kinds of Greek literature were
submitted, and their influence on the development of that litera-
ture. In the earliest times, the period of epic poetry, it was to
the kings and chieftains that the poets looked for patronage,
and it was in a chieftain's hall that the minstrel found an audi-
ence to appreciate his poetry and reward his efforts. It was
not unnatural, therefore, that the minstrel chose for his theme
the exploits and adventures of famous heroes in whom his
patrons saw tho mythical reflection of themselves, and to whom,
in many cases, they traditionally traced their origin. When
this state of things passed away, literary genius found the most
favourable conditions for its development in another race and
another place. The culture of tho iEolians and the natural
beauties of Lesbos fostered the growth of lyric poetry. But
the audience to whom this kind of poetry was addressed was
more exclusive than were the audiences who listened to epic
poetry. The latter consisted of all the household of the chief-
tain, which was addressed by a wandering minstrel The audi-
ence of lyric poetry consisted of the iEolian aristocracy exclu-
CONCLUSION. 493
sively, who were addressed by a member of their own order,

possessing the same general views of life and society as them-
selves. Hence the personal and intimate character of lyric
poetry, which was the outpouring of the poet's heart to those
on whose sympathy he could confidently rely. But in other
countries, both at the same time as, and later than, the develop-
ment of personal lyrics in Lesbos, the social and political con-
ditions were different, produced a different kind of audience,
and resulted in a different kind of lyric. In Sparta, for in-
stance, as we have seen, the citizens were, by the bonds of their
condition, only allowed to participate in literature collectively.
For them something was required, in the production of which
a large body could partake, and to which the whole body of
citizens could listen at once. These conditions resulted in the
development of choral lyric. The rise of democracy at Athens,
and the consequent demand for a form of literary entertainment
which the whole population of the great city could simulta-
neously bo present at, were conditions which forced the growth
of the drama. But dramas were only produced in Athens at
stated and somewhat long intervals, while the people became
more and more eager for literary food, and the result was that
the assembly and the law-courts, in which the people found
themselves gathered with great frequency, became the means
of gratifying the literary instincts of the Athenians. Orators
sought to impart to prose an artistic beauty of its own which
should rival that of poetry ; and, under the sound and watchful
criticism of their audience, the Athenian people, they at last
succeeded.
Thus the oral communication of classical Greek literature
and the conditions under which it was communicated together
materially influenced the course of its development To these
causes must also be assigned their contribution to the excellence
of Greek literature. Aristotle rightly recognised that, on the
whole and in the long-run, the judgment of a large public was
more sound, less liable to eccentricity, one-sidedness, and exag-
geration, than are cliques and sections. Now, in Athens, oratory
and the drama were necessarily thus subjected to the criticism
of the whole people, who, as far as we may judge by results,
discharged the function of criticism with judgment and dis-
crimination. This was, doubtless, partly duo to the natural
taste of the Athenians; but taste requires cultivation, and it is
the oral communication of literature to which we must ascribe
the cultivation of tin Athenians. If an Athenian at times
heard inferior dramas and inferior oratory, he could not go to
the assembly and the theatre without also hearing great drama-
tists and fine orators ; whereas, at the present day, a man may
read and read, and not read the masterpieces which alone cul-
tivate the mind. Further, the literature which is read costs
money; the literature to which the Athenians listened was free.
Finally, the value we have here put upon oral communication
is confirmed by the decline literature underwent when it ceased
to be communicated orally. The narrowness of the reading
public, to whom authors of the Alexandrian times addressed
themselves, is reflected in the narrowness of their point of
view, and the incapacity of this narrow public to discharge its
literary and critical functions seems indicated by the fact that
it did not succeed in developing any writer of genius.
Bearing in mind that classical Greek literature was designed
to be uttered aloud, and was necessarily tested by the ears of
the audience, whose sense of beauty its sound had to gratify,
Ave can estimate the importance of the chief characteristics
of the language to the literature. In the changes which all
languages, not dead, undergo, one of the most important causes
is man's desire to express himself with the least amount of
trouble. Some words are found to be as intelligible when
docked of a letter as when they are pronounced in full; and
gradually the letter is dropped. Some sounds are hard, some
easy to repeat in quick succession, and, accordingly, when such
combinations occur in a word, one of the sounds, if hard to
repeat, is altered, " dissimilated," or a sound easy to repeat is
substituted for some other sound, which is thus " assimilated "
to the other. The result in all cases is a word easier to pro-
nounce in the new than in the old form. But although the
unconscious striving after ease in pronunciation is at the bottom
of many changes, there is also at work a tendency to gratify
the ear by making changes which result in producing Bounds
pleasant in themselves to listen to, and by avoiding sounds of
the opposite description.1 On the strength of this latter in-
stinct mainly depends the beauty of a language as judged by
the ear; and the instinct was strong in the Greeks and potent
1 Ultimately, the conception of beauty in sound may, perhaps, be traoed
back to ease of pronunciation. Movements are graceful which are pro-
duced with the minimum of effort. Flowing lines are more graceful than
because they BUggest the idea that they have been produced with
more ease, 80, too, the reason why some Bounds are pleasant to the eai may
be that they Buggesl the idea that they How without effort. Of course, this
would only apply, or apply mainly only, to spoken sounds. Singing and
music require other explanations, though the difference in effort between
singing, which is pleasant, and screaming, which is not, points in the same
direction.
conclusion. 495
in the formation of their language. Whether the disappearance

of the w sound of the digamma and the y sound of the iota
was determined by a proper exercise of instinct or only by a
capricious repugnance, the aversion to the hissing sound of a
succession of sibilants was certainly a gain to the beauty of
the language.1 Even clearer cases of gain are the systematic
avoidance of a congeries of consonants, and the repugnance to
ending a word with a consonant, and thus bringing it up with
a jerk at the end. Assimilation and dissimilation both of con-
sonants and vowels were used also with a sense of the beauty
to be got out of them. The vowel system was so developed
as to give variety and lightness to the language. In a word of
several syllables, instead of repeating the same vowel sound in
syllable after syllable, so that the sound of the word was dull
and monotonous, the vowels were varied. When once this
variation of vowels had established itself in certain words, the
influence of analogy reinforced the strength of the original
tendency, and the dissimilation of vowels became the recog-
nised principle regulating the addition of terminations (such as
those of the comparative and superlative of adjectives) and the
process of word-formation.
The two principles which underlie the production of things
beautiful, whether in painting, music, or literature, are variety
in harmony and variety in contrast. These two qualities are
conspicuous in the Greek language, judged by the ear ; and to
them must be added the quality which characterised Greek arfc-
generally — measure in all things. The Greeks allowed play to
the tendency to express themselves with as little trouble as
possible, but they did not allow it to proceed so far as to mili-
tate against intelligibility. They rejected consonants which
were hard to pronounce or disagreeable to hear, but they
stopped in this process at the point beyond which it would
have been impossible to go without depriving the language of
the variety of contrast between the vowel and the consonantal
systems. They inherited a vowel system in which the variety
of contrast existed, and they supplemented it by differentiating
the broad sound of the a so as to add variety in harmony.
This, then, was the instrument which Greek authors received
from the Greek people, and with which they had to express
their thoughts in sounds which would satisfy the ear of the
nation which had created so fair a language. What the instinot
of the people had done for the words of the language, the
1 Of this aversion the Greeks were conscious. Euripides was ridiculed
by the comedians for offending against it.
49 ^ HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
literary men in their turn did for the sentenco and the period.
The sentence, and then the period, first in poetry and after-
wards in prose, were, as regards the beauty of their sound,
gradually invested with the same variety of harmony and con-
trast, the same balance, ease of pronunciation, and gratification
to the sense of hearing, as already marked the separate words
of the language. This constitutes one of the beauties of Greek
literature, and is a beauty intimately connected with its oral
communication. Modern literature is taken in by the eyes
rather than the ears ; and modern readers so rarely hear litera-
ture, that it is sometimes even necessary to explain that prose
quite as much as poetry has its own rhythms, and that in the
mere sound of a sentence beauty may reside.
But although art may take words as its material and create
beauty out of them as well as out of musical sounds, the prac-
tical object of language is to express our thoughts. We have
therefore to consider how the Greek language performed this its
main function. The first and greatest quality of the language
from this point of view is its clearness. Both in the formation
of words and in the structure of its sentences it is transparent.
As regards the former, a word in Greek at once shows by its
form what other words it is by derivation connected with, what
is the root of the word, how it is formed from the root, and
what modification in meaning the root has undergone along
with its modification in form or with its extension by the addi-
tion of a termination. The structure of the sentence is also
transparent. In common with other inflectional languages, it
possessed the advantage of stamping each word as it proceeded
from the mouth of the speaker with the inflectional mark which
indicated its position and function in the sentence. But it is not
in all inflectional languages that the structure of the sentence can
be thus readily seen through; and the superior transparency
of Greek, as we have it in the literature preserved to us, is due
to the oral character of the literature. In works that are de-
signed to be read, clearness is not so imperatively demanded as
it is in works that reach an audience, through its ears only. A
reader, if he fails to catch the author's meaning at first, can
read through the sentence again and again until he puzzles the
meaning out. But an audience listening to an orator, a drama,
or the recitation of any work, whether in prose or poetry, has
no such opportunity. Consequently, the author's first business,
if he wishes to retain the attention of the audience whose ap-
prova] he is seeking, is to write in such a manner that he who
listens can readily understand. Hence the rareness of paren-
conclusion. 497
theses in Greek, and the aversion to heaping up relative clauses,

which necessarily have a looseness of connection, in which hotli
author and audience have a tendency, which is difficult to
obviate, to lose sight of the point of view from which the sen-
tence started. Terseness, too, was demanded of the Greek
author, and was largely obtained by the use of participles.
What with us becomes a causal, concessive, temporal, or hypo-
thetical clause, Avas expressed in Greek by a participle. A
marked feature of the Greek language is its extensive use of anti-
thesis the
; value of which for an oral literature is considerable.
It substitutes for complex sentences simple ones ; for a pro-
longed strain a short and easy appeal to the hearer's attention.
To the general clearness of Greek literature there are two classes
of exceptions. The first is constituted by the few authors who,
like Thucydides, wrote to be studied in private, and not to be
produced before the assembled public. The second consists of
poetry, such as the choruses of plays and the lyric poetry of
Pindar, which was destined to be produced with the most
elaborate musical accompaniment known to the Greeks, and in
which, accordingly, clearness of thought seems to have been
subordinated to beauty of sound.
The second great quality of the Greek language is its life.
The apparatus of terminations and inflections with which the
language was extensively provided, and which could only be
worked by means of a considerable attention to regularity, was
never allowed to reduce the formation either of words or
sentences to a merely mechanical process. In Latin literature
the observance of the laws of the language was insisted on before
everything. The Greeks pushed nothing to excess ; nor did they
sacrifice to monotonous regularity and dull formality the ad-
vantages which an independent exercise of reason might secure
in the way of ease, grace, and variety. Hence we not only find
that Herodotus frequently and unintentionally wanders off in a
sentence which is perfectly transparent and intelligible, but
which never comes to a strictly grammatical conclusion. "We
also find that anacolutha of this kind are deliberately introduced
by Demosthenes to afford relief to perfect periods and artisti-
cally rounded sentences. The same tendency to set the spirit
above the law of the language is seen in the Greek fondness for
constructions in which greater regard is paid to the sense than
to the grammatical structure of the sentence. The language is
instinct with life; it never tolerates a mere automatic attention,
it is transparent to those who will take the trouble to look
through it, but it requires always u a seeing eye ; " it is
2 Ithe pro-
49§ HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE.
duct of an intelligent people, and requires intelligence therefore

to follow it. Greek thought played like lightning over the
sentence while it was in course of formation, and frequently
fused two sentences into one pregnant whole. Hence the attrac-
tion of the antecedent into the clause of the relative, the attraction
of the relative to agree in case with the demonstrative pronoun,
and in certain cases the disappearance of the demonstrative
altogether.1
But the life there is in the Greek language must not be
supposed to consist merely in violations of strict and formal
grammar. The linguistic instinct of the Greeks allowed them
only to pursue the somewhat dangerous path of departing from
grammar so far as it led to increased vividness and ease without
incurring the risk of unintelligibility. The most triumphant
display of the quality we are considering occurs within the
range of strict grammar : it consists in the development of the
Greek particles. They are essentially the work of an intelligent
people, and they require for their proper use an insight into the
language which Aristotle remarked was not in his day usually
possessed by foreigners. In reading a modern writer, it is very
rarely that we find his words of themselves indicating on what
part of the sentence he intended the stress to be laid ; and the
absence of such indication frequently leaves us, not perhaps
in doubt as to his precise meaning, but in ignorance of the
importance which a certain word is intended to have. The
" forcible feeble " device of italics may in such a printed sen-
tence as " He said so " be made to convey an imputation on the
speaker's accuracy ; but it ought to be possible to express this
imputation by as slight a modification in the sentence as we
make in the tone with which the sentence is pronounced. In
Greek it can be done by the insertion of a particle of two letters.
Nothing can testify more plainly to the habitual liveliness
Avith which the Greeks spoke and thought than the fact that
it modified their language so completely that every significant
inflection of the voice could be reflected in the words of the
sentence.
Hitherto we have considered the Greek language as a whole,
but it was divided into dialects, and they played an important
part in the literature of Greece. There were three main dialects,
Doric, Ionic, and /Eolic, and many varieties and sub-varieties
of these. Indeed, each locality seems to have had peculiarities
of speech, doubtless minute, distinguishing it from other localities
i Hence, too, the fusion of two strictly speaking incompatible points o'
view in such sentences as oloO' 5 dpanov.
conclusion. 499
in -which the same main dialect was spoken. The three main
dialects were probably sprung from one common ancestor, but
when the differentiation took place is unknown. The germs of
the difference may have been in existence before Greek was a
language by itself : the rise of the three dialects is certainly
pre-historic. On the differences between them this is not the
place to speak. It is sufficient for our purpose to say that
Doric retained more of the old sounds belonging to the original
language than the other dialects, and that changes and innova-
tions were most frequent in Ionic. The difference corresponds
with the difference in character between the conservative Dorians
and the more progressive Ionians. The Dorians spoke, as in
matters political and social they moved, slowly and deliberately.
The Ionians, especially the Athenians, spoke rapidly and volubly.
Accordingly, in Doric we find that the voAvel sounds are broader
and fuller, and the combinations of consonants require more effort
to pronounce ; while in Ionic the attrition of perpetual usage
has worn down both classes of sound into greater flexibility.
Ionic was therefore naturally the dialect for prose, as it was the
dialect of the race in which discussion was most free and most
frequent. Doric, on the other hand, seems to have been spe-
cially suited for musical accompaniment, and was the dialect in
which lyric poetry was written.
With regard to the functions of the dialects in literature, it
is generally said that each kind of literature continued to be
composed in the dialect of the race which invented it. This
with considerable modifications is true. The conditions which
determined what kind of literature each race should produce
would to a very large extent be the same as those which deter-
mined the dialect of the race ; and consequently between the
literature and the dialect of any place there would be an
affinity and harmony which was not likely to escape the fine
perception of the Greeks, nor to be violated by them. The best
example is afforded by choral lyric, which, whether the poet
who took it up came from Boeotia or from Ionia, and even when
it was incorporated into the Attic drama, still continued to be
composed in Doric. But even this example is not wholly satis-
factory, for although Sparta was the place in which choral lyric
received its earliest development, choral lyric was in no measure
the work of Spartan poets. And in the next place, in the drama
at least, the Doric of the choruses is not precisely Doric as it
was ever spoken, but a conventional literary dialect, in which
words were inserted borrowed from other dialects or invented
by the poet himself. The dialect in which the Homeric poems
were composed was indeed followed, as being the proper dialect

for epic poetry ; but it probably also is a conventional dialect,
used for literary purposes, and not anywhere used as the lan-
guage of ordinary life. Of the three remaining kinds of litera-
ture, iambic poetry, personal lyrics, and prose, none retained its
original dialect throughout its history. Personal lyric originated
among the Êolians, but when transplanted to any other people,
naturally took the dialect of the poet whose individual feelings
it was employed to convey. Iambic poetry may be regarded
as having originated in Paros through the genius of Archi-
lochus, and for long it retained its native dialect. But when it
was adopted by the Athenians for the dialogue of drama, it
took the dialect used in ordinary life by the audience who heard
it, and became Attic. In the same way, and for the same rea-
sons, prose, which was the work of the Ionians in Asia Minor
originally, and which for some time retained its native Ionic,
was no sooner adopted by the Athenians than it became Attic
itself. The chief instrument in the development of artistic
prose was Athenian oratory ; and it was impossible that the
Athenians should transact their political discussions and cases
at law in a dialect not their own. Put in these cases, where a
branch of literature was finally invested with a dialect other
than that of the race which invented it, the change was amply
justified by the result.
If the final elaboration of prose and of the iambic took place
in Attic, it was partly because iambics and prose found the same
conditions favourable to their development as favoured the de-
velopment ofthe Attic dialect. What were these conditions?
Mainly the native tendency of the Athenians to speak much
and discuss everything. Perpetual use gave the polish, per-
petual care the keenness, which, as an instrument of thought,
their language possessed. These conditions are also obviously
suitable to the development of prose in literature, and to the
development of iambic poetry. Iambics are in poetry what
prose is in literature. They are the vehicle for dialogue and
discussion. They have the most affinity, as Aristotle pointed
out, with the rhythm of ordinary conversation. They are framed
by nature for pointed, terse, and telling blows, such as might be
given by orators in debate. It is, therefore, by no accident that
iambics were developed amongst a people who delighted in
discussion, and no casual coincidence that the period of the drama
was followed by that, of the orators. The iambics of the stage
had prepared the language, literature, and people for the oratory
of the law-courts and the assembly.
CONCLUSION. 501
Finally, as regards the language, its decay is instructive for

the history of the literature. As the centralisation of literature
in Athens facilitated its sudden fall, so the decay of the lan-
guage -was accelerated by the fact that Attic drove the other
dialects out of the field. When Attic succumbed the other
dialects had no recuperative forces to supply to the language,
because Attic had already drained them of their vitality. Lan-
guage and literature did indeed continue to exist for many cen-
turies after the death of Demosthenes ; but the literature was
cosmopolitan, not specifically Greek, the language Hellenistic,
not classical. For language and literature alike the price of
dissemination was decay. The conditions which were indispen-
sable, if the language and literature of Greece were to become
universal, were fatal to their further development as purely
Greek. The literature of Greece could only become the pro-
perty of the whole civilised world when literature ceased to be
diffused orally, and came to be spread by the multiplication of
manuscripts ; and, as we have seen already, the written com-
munication ofliterature was inconsistent with that collective
criticism of the people, whose function was to foster what was
good and weed out what was bad. So, too, the language of
Greece, or rather Attic, could only become universal in the
ancient world by being in everybody's lips ; and the language
could not be used by foreigners of all kinds, and by people
inferior in culture and intelligence to the Athenians without
suffering.1 Its two great qualities, clearness and life, are essen-
tially due to the powers of reason which the Greeks pre-emi-
nently possessed, developed by the continual contact of mind
with mind. " Nothing but constant communion with his con-
temporaries could have produced [in an Athenian] that marvel-
lous precision of language which is observable in Aristophanes,
Plato, and the Orators." 2 This constant communion was im-
possible to foreigners, even when they possessed the natural
powers of intellect which might have benefited thereby, and
was forfeited by natives who, like Xenophon, spent much of
their time abroad.
In fine, Greek literature was classical as long as it was oral
The character and extent of the audience addressed changed as
social and political conditions changed. When the character
and extent of the audience changed, fresh means of addressing
it were discovered. The character and extent of the audience,
1 Compare the remark of Aristotle's, referred to already, that foreigners

could not master the use of the Greek particles.
2 The New Pli.ru uiciius, p. 163.
together with the means adopted for addressing it, determined

the form of the matter addressed to it. To the successive
changes in the former correspond the successive forms of the
literature — epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, historical, oratorical,
and philosophical prose. That is the history of Greek litera-
ture.
INDEX.
Abaris, 91 Anaxilas, 292

Acestor, 233 Anaximander, philosopher, 93, 465
Achaeus, 231 Anaxiinander, historian, 365
Achilleis, 37 Anaximenes, 93, 298, 398, 465
Acron, 103 Anaximenes, the orator, 402
Anaxis, 366
Actors, 196, 197, 198
Acusilaus, 84, 299, 30 1, 324 Andocides, 379 ff., 390, 452, 454
jEyimios, 86 Androtion, 460
Annalists, 339
iElian, 29, 128
iEneas, the tactician, 366 Antandros, 366
Antidotus, 293
./Eolians, their place in Greek litera- Antimachus, 365
ture, 490
iEschines, 85, 406, 450 ff. Antimachus of Colophon, 39, 90
Êschylus, 67, 135, 166, 169, 183, Antimachus of Teos, 90
187, 188, 189, 192 ff., 210, 215, Antiochus of Syracuse, 329 n.
223, 247, 273, 376, 450 ff. Antiphanes, 287
/Esion, 460 Antiphon, the tragedian, 233
Jithiopis, 56, 60, 62, 68 Antiphon, the orator, 327, 371 ff.,
Agathocles, 173 385. 405
Agathon, 232 Antisthenes, 398 ff., 465
Agias, 59 Aphareus, 233
Alcaeus, 123, 130 ff., 156, 163 Apollodorus, lyrist, 173
Alcasus, the comedian, 253 Apollodorus, tragedian, 233
Alcidamas, 398, 400 ff. Apollophanes, 253
Alcimenes, 248 Araclmomachia,
Araros, 293 76
Alcmaonis, 61
Alcman, 123, 126 ff., 144, 158, 485, Archelaus, 46S
487, 488 Archilochus, 44, 75, SS, H3ff., 129,
Alexamenus, 476 487
Alexander, 77 Archippus, 244, 252
Alexandrians, 30, 31 Arctinus, 56, 58, 61
Alexis, 287
Amazonia, 61 Argas, 182
Arignote,
Avion, 12S,1814SS
Ameipsias, 252
Aminias, 99
Ariphron, 1S2
Ampins, 291 Aristagoras, the historian, 366
Anacreon, 124, 1 57, 160 Aristarchus, 25
Anaxagoras, 327, 467 Aristarchus,
Aristeas, 91 the tragedian, 233
Anaxandrides, lyric poet, 182
Anaxandrides, comedian, 291 Aristias, 1S7
504 INDEX.
Aristippus, 365, 468 Carcinus, tragedian, 219

Aristocles, 468 Catalogue of women, 86
Aristogiton, 459 Cephisodorus, the comedian, 253
Aristomenes, 253 Cer copes, 75 the historian, 366
Cephisodorus,
Aristonicus, 436 Cercops, 92
Ariston}rnius, 253 Chaeremon, 233, 234
Aristophanes of Byzantium, 86 Charisius, 461
Aristophanes, 241, 244, 245, 246,
247, 24S, 253 ff., 330 n., 394, 479, Charixena, 181
Charon, 298, 302, 324
Chersias, 87
Aristophon,
486 the comedian, 292 Chionides, 244
Aristophon, the orator, 436
Aristotle, 1 7, 30, 39, 75 Chios, Homeridae in, 53
Asianism, 462 ff. Chcerilus, epic poet, 90
Asios, 87 Chcerilus, the dramatist, 187, 188,
Assyrian writing, 41 ; libraries, 47 and n.
Astrologia, 88 Choral lyric, 179 ff., 182
Astronomy, 88 Chorizontes, 25, 84
Astydamas, 206 Chorus of Greek drama, 179 ff.,
Athanis, 366 186, 187 n., 190, 196, 200, 202,
Athenaeus, 286 214, 226, 282 ff. 339
Athens, her services to Greek litera- Chronology, Greek,
ture, 491 Chrysippus, 85
Atthis, 61, 87 Chrysothemis, 108
Audiences, for epic poems, 49 ; for Cicero, 29, 30, 31, 74 ; and Isocrates,
lyric, 50 ff. ; reaction on authors, ias,
Cines thon, 182
C i n a e 57, 60, 87
Axionicus,
406 292
ical reek iterature,
Class G l iotns na-
r ducti
Bacchylides, 166, 170, 182 ture, 1; prope intro to
Bacis, 92 literature generally, I, 484
Cleophon,8 233
Background of Euripides' plays, 8, .39
of the Êneid, 8 Cleostratus, 88
Basques, 19 Clitagora, 181
Batrachomyomachia, 76 Clito, 181
Belissus, 468 Clitomachus, 436
Bion, 298 ff., 468 Clonas, 123, 124, 125, 126
Blaesus, 237 Clytemestra, 18 n., 19 n.
Bceotus, 76 Comedy, 234 ff. ; Sicilian, 24I ; old,
Books, trade in, 45 ff. 243 ; political influence, 262 ;
Bougonia, 87 middle, 279 ff. ; new, ib.
Brontinus, 92 Commo8, the, 191
Bucolics, 146 Communication, rapid, of early
Greek literature, 4S7
Byzantine learning, 30 n.
"Contamination,"
Corax. 369 277
Cadmus, 42, 29S ff., 301, 324
, 3 51 ( 'orinthian Epic, 87
Callias, 252 Corinna, 1 71, 173, 1S1
Callicrates, 460 Cosmopolitan character of later
Callinus, 60, 107, 112 ff. Greek literature, 1
CaUisthenes, 436 Crates of Mallos, 32
( '■nut mix, 75 Crates, the comedian, 244 ff.
Cantharus, 244, 253 < 'latinus, 245 ff., 249
Carcinus of Naupactus, 87 Cratinus, the younger, 293
INDEX. 505
Cratisspus, 365 Dionysodorus, philosopher, 468

Cratylus, 468 Dionysus-Zagreus, 92
Creophylus, 6 1 Diophantus, 436
Crexus, 1S2 Diophilus, 90
Diotimus, 90
Critias, 155, 233, 365, 392
Crow-song, the, 109 Dithyramb, 128 ff., 164, 167, 182,
Ctesias, 362 ff. 1 S3 ff, 234, 487
Cyclic chorus, 129 Divisions of Greek literature, 2
Doloneia, 13
Cyclic Odyssey, 63
Cycle, epic, 54 ff., 61 ff. Dorians, their4S9services
literature, to Greek
Cydias, 460
Drama,
Dromo, 2932
Cypria, 54 ff., 60, 61
Damastes, 299
Damon, 436 ECHEMBROTUS, 126
Damophila, 143 Ecphantides, 244
Eircsionc, 76
Danais, 87
Deiochus, 298 ff.. Elegy, in ff., 147 ff.
Demades, 449, 458 ff. Empedocles, 93, 102 ff.
Demetrius, 253 Eoce, 86
Demochares, 436 Ephialtes, 436
Democles, the logographer, 299 Ephippus, 292
Democles, the orator, 460 Ephorus, 302, 325, 364 ff.
Democlides, 460
Epic, I
Democracy, its influence on Greek Epic age, 88
literature, 159 Epic lyric, 145
Democrates, 436I Epicharmus, 166, 237 ff., 245, 246,
Democritus of Chios, lyric poet, 182 247, 285, 4S8
Epicichlidcs, 75
Democritus, the philosopher, 468
Demodocus of Teros, 153 Epicrates, 292
Demon, 436 Epicurus, 85
Demosthenes, 282, 403, 404 ff., 450, " Epideictic " speeches, 3S4
453. 455 ff-» 476 Epigenes, 293
Development of Greek literature, Epigoni, 60
492 ff. Epigrams, 76
Diagoras, 170 Epikonkylos, 30
Dialogues, 478 Epilycus, 253
Diaskeuasts, 29 ff., 34 ff. Epimenides, 91
Dicaeogenes, 233 Epinikia, 172, 176
Didactic poetry, 77, So ff. Episodes,
Erinna, 143191
Dino, 366
Dinolochus, 237 Eriphanis,
Eriphus, 293181
Diochaetes, 99
Diocles, 253 Esthonians, 19
Eubceus, 76
Diodorus, 292 Eubulides, 293
Diogenes of Apollonia, 466
Diogenes of Babylon, 85 Eubulus, the comedian, 291
Diognetus, 92 Eubulus, orator, 460
Diomedes, 29, 30 Euclides, the archon, 74
Dionysius, the elder, his tragedies, Euclides, philosopher, 40$
Eudemus, 299
366
nys3.ius , comedian, 292 Euemerus, 468
Dio,23 Euenua, 391
Dionysius, historian, 298, 302 Euetes, 244
Dionysodorus, lyric poet, 366
INDEX.
$o6
Euexinides, 244 Hermippus, 155, 248
Eu'-amoii, so Hermotimus,
Herodas, 155 468
Jiugon, 299 Herodorus, 365
Eumelus, 61, 87
Eumolpus, 92 Herodotus, 84, 209 and n., 300,
Eunicus, 253 301, 306 ff., 328, 335, 342, 346,
Euphorion, 205 368, 476, 4S8
Herophilus, 305
Eupolis, 244, 248 ff., 251
Hesiod, 77 ff., 314
Euripides' epilogues, 15 ; back- Hiatus, avoidance of, 396, 410
ground, 8; 136, 144, 169, 182,
190, 191, 214, 219, 220 ff., 273, Hieronymus, the tragedian, 233
28 r, 283, 394 Hieronymus,43669 and a.
Himeraeus,
Euripides, the younger, 231
Europia, 87 Hipparchus, 79
Eusebius, 69 and n. Hippias, 365, 369
Eustathius, 59, 97 Hippo, 468
Euthias, 461 Hippocrates, 303 ff.
Euthycles, 253 Hipponax, 154
Euthydemus, 468 Hippys, 299
Evenus of Paros, 155 Historical dramas, 197
Evolution of Greek literature, 404 ; History, 2, 297 ff.
of Greek oratory and of the Hitopadega, 19
drama, 405 Homer, 3, 26 ff. ; date of, 48, 65 ; the
tragedian, 66 ; parodied, 97, 4S5
Fables, 117 Homeric epigrams, 93
Fairy tales, 17, 19, 24 Homeric hymns, 69 ff.
Folk-lore, 81 Homeric poems, origin, 27 ff.
Forgeries, literary, 154, 299 Homeridse, 51, 52 ff.
Hyacinth song, 1 10
Genealogical poems, 87 Hybrias, 170
Geranomachin, 76 Hymn, meaning of, 69
Gigantomachia, 76 Hyperides, 436 ff., 449, 452, 454
Gnesippus, 233
Iambic, 113, 114
Gorgias, 32S, 370, 385, 390, 391
Ibycus, 156 ff.
Idaeus, 466
Hagnonides, 460
Harpocration, 459 n. Iliad, background, 7, 9 ; plot, if ;
Hecatseus, 298. 300 ff., 324. 325 Bk. xxiv., 14 ; false conception of,
Hegemon, writer of parodies, 76, 17 ; age of, 26
97. 253 Inscriptions, 42 ff. ; at Abu Simbel,
Hegesander, 436
Hegesias, 5; Ion, 155, 218, 365
I [i gesinus, S7 42 ff. 490
lnnians, ture,
their place in Greek litera-
HegesippuB, 44S ff.
Hegias, 59 Iophon, 209 n., 218
li. Qanicus, 25, 57, 302, 325 Isteua, 402 ff., 407, 409
Heniochus, 293 [socrates, 32, 160, 261,392 ff., 405,
Heraclides, comedian, 293 407
Heraclides, historian. 366 KaU vula, 34
Heraclitus, philosopher, 84, 85, 93,
iiB, dian, 293 Rapion,
k'k.ides, 126182
H( 4ra6ol6it azc,ome Kerkidas, 155
Hi rmess,ian 155
Hirmia 366 Kydias, 170
INDEX. 507
Lacritus, 461 Myllus, 244
Lamprokles, 170 Myrtilus, 248
Lasus, 92, 164, 173 Myrtis, 171, 173, i8l
Learchis, 181 Mystis, 181
Leosthenes, 46 1 Mythology, 26
Lesches, 57
Leucippus, 468 Naupactian Epic, 87
Leuco, 253 Nekuia, the, 68
Libanius, 85 Neophron, 219
Licymnius, 182 Nibelungenlied, 28, 33
Nichochares, 253
Linos, no
Literary classes, 2 Nicomachus, the tragedian, 233
Nicophron, 253
Little Iliad, 57, 62, 68 Nicostratus, 293
Logographers, in history, 93, 299, Nostoi, 59
303 ; in oratory, 37 1, 407 Nonies, 108, 125 and n,
Lucian, 313
Nothippus, 233
Lycis, 253
Lycurgus, 32 Octopus, 19
Lycurgus, orator, 446 ff.
Lyric poetry, 106 ff. Odyssey, popularity, 1 7 ; unity, 1 7 ;
Lysias, 383 ff., 403, 405, 452 argument, 1 7 ; exposition, 18;
Lysippus, 252 "kernel" of, 19; climax, 22;
" original Odyssey," 23, 24 ; unity
Mêson, 236 of design, 23 ; age of, 26 ; geo-
Magnes, 244 ff. graphical knowledge of, 27
Mamercus, 233 CEdipodeia, 60
Manuscripts, 492 Ogres, 17
Margites, 75 Olen, 108
Matron, 76 Oligarchy, its influence on Greek
Melampodia, 86 literature, 160
Melanippides, 170, 1 82 Olympic orations, 384
Melanippides, the younger, 182 Onomacritus, 29, 30, 31 n.
Melesagoras, 299 Oral character of Greek literature,
Melic, III, 121 ff. ; at court, 155 48 ; transmission, 46 ; delivery,
Melic epic, 145 49 ff., 159, 396 ; its influence,
Melissus, 99 492 ff. ; of prose, 384
Menander, 283, 284, 285, 325 Orators, 2
Menarchis, 18 1 Oratory,
Orphelio, 367
293 ff. ; its decline, 461 flL
Menedemus, 468
Menessechmus, 459 Orpheus, 29, 30
Menippus, 244 Orphic poetry, 35
Metacharacterisation, 74 n. Orphic poets, 91
Metagenes, 253
Metrodorus, 468 PiEAN, 108
Mimes, 242, 475, 478 Palinode of Stesichorus, 144
Mimnennus, 112, 121,487 Pallias, 366
Mioyas, 61 Pamphus,
Pan- 108
Hellenis
Mnesimachus, 293 m, 394
Pansetius, 32
Mcerocles, 436
Morality, in Hesiod, 83 Panathentea,
l'antacles, 233the, 76
Morsimus, 206
Morychus, 233 Panyasis, S9
Musaeus, 31 n., 92 Parabaais, 27S
Myia, 181 Parmenides, 93, 91, 99 ff., 467
INDEX.
508
Parodos, the, 190 Porphyry, 39, 324, 325
Posidonius, 32
Parthenia, 128
Parthenon, 7 Pratinas, 185 ff., 192
Pausanias, 29, 84 Praxigoris, 18 1
Pausanias, physician, 103 Praxilla, 1S1
Peisander, 88 tf. Proclus, 54 ff., 61 ff., 75, 101, 124
Pergamum, 31, 32 Prodicus, 61, 32S, 369
Pericles, 367 Prologue, of tragedy, 190, 224, 225
"Periodic" style, 376 Prose, discovery of, 81 ; beginning
Perigonius, 27 n. of, 93, 297 ff.
Perses, 82 Protagoras, 48, 32S, 368 ff.
Persiims, 92 Psaromachia, 76
Phsedimus, 90 Publication, 28
Pheedo, 468 Pythagoras, 465
Pherecrates, 247 Pythangelus, 233
Pytheas, 459
Pherecydes of Syros, 92, 93, 29S
«., 465
Pherecydes, historian, 298 ff., 324 "Reading tragedians," 233 ff.
Philammon, 10S Recitation, 29 ; of Homer, 40, 312
Philistus, 366 Return, the, 59, 60, 63, 67, 68
Philetaerus, 293 Rhapsodists,
Rhinthon, 23751 ff.
Philinus, 460
Philiscus, 293 " Running style," 376
Philocles, 206
Philocrates, 460 SnrJc of Troy, 58, 60, .62
Philodemos, 74 Sakadas, 126
Philolaus, 468 Salpe, 181 253
Sannyrio,
Philonides, 248
Satire,
Philosophy, 2, 465 Sappho, 479
123, 137 ff., 161, 163, 4S5
Philoxenus, 182
Fhilyllius, 253 Satyric drama, 1S6
Phocceis, 61 " School, in
" of Êschylus, 205
Phocylides, 153 Schools B.C. 500, 45
Sciras, 237
Phormus, 237
Pkoronis, 87 Separatists, 25
Photius, 25 Septuagint, 30 n.
Phrynichus, tragedian, 1S7 ff., 192 Setting Sail, the, 63
Phrynichus, comedian, 251 Silli,
Sh i> lil97of //' miles, 86
Phrynis, 182 Sicilian rhetoric, 369
Pigres, 75
Pindar, 39, 65, 72, 107, 123, 170 Simonides of Amorgos, 117 ff., 153
ff., 376 Simonides of Ceos, 123, 163, 487,
Pisistratus, commission of, 29 ff.
" Plain style," 385 Simonides of Cos, historian, 365
Plato, philosopher, 101, 261, 266, Sinon, the,
Skalds, 36 63
275, 281, 297, 360, 468 tf. 4SS.
Plato, the comedian, 244, 252 Skepkros, no
Pollio, 325 SkytalO, 44 ff., 48
Polus, 46S Socrates, 99, 100, 209, 212, 222,
Poljcratea, 398, 401 465
223 ; and Aristophanes, 263, 359,
Polycidus, 182
Polyeuctus, 436, 449 Solon, 107, 112, 116, 155, 156, 487
Polymnestus, 126 Somadeva, 19
Polyzeeus, 253
Songs, popular, 109 ff.
INDEX. 509
Sopater, 237 Theophilus, 292

Sophsenetus, 365 Theopompus, 325, 363 ff.
Sophilus, 293 Thespis, 184 ff.
Sophists, 264, 368, 465 Thestorides, 61
Sophocles, 135, 183, 189, 207 ff., Thrasymachus, 390 ff.
223, 227, 332, 335, 486. Thucydides, 261, 313, 327 ff., 355,
Sophocles, the younger, 218 TimarchuSj 436
Sophron, 242, 475, 478 Timesitheus, 233
Sotades, 293 .356> 37o
Sparta, her services to literature, Timocles, Orphic poet, 92
Timon, 97 comedian, 291
Timocles,
487 ; race qualities, 4S8 ff.
Sphettus, 436 Timotheus, 293
Spintharus, 233 Tisias, 370
Stasima, 190 ff.
Stasinus, 55 Titanomachia, 6 1
Stesichorus, 86, 123, 143 ff., 157 Tragedians and Homer, 65 ff.
Stesimbrotus, 365 Tragedy, 129, 1S3 ff.
Stheneeus, 233 Tragic turn, the, 129
Strattis, 253 Transformation, 24
Stratocles, 460 Trilogy, 196, 205, 478
Suidas, 75 and n., S9, 90, 127, 307 Trojan table, 63
Susarion, 236, 244 Tynnichus, 170
Swallow-song, the, 109 Tyranny,
literature,its 159
influence on Greek
Syracuse, 166
Tyrtoeus, 107, 112, 1 16, 126
Tacitus, compared with Thucy- Tzetzes, 30, 459 n.
dides, 346 ff.
Taking of (Echa/ia, 61 Vedas, the, 36, 128
Virgil, 77
Teaching of Chiron, 86 Verse, practical value of, 8l
Telarchis, 1 81
Teleclides, 248
Telegonia, 59, 63, 67 Wedding of Kcyx, 86
Telemachia, iS, 68 Wolf, 27 ff.
Telesilla, 1 81 Women, their position, 120, 128
Telestes, 182 Writing, 28 ; origin, &c, 41 ff. ; in
Terpander, 72, no. 123 ff. Homer, 42 ; date of, in Greece.
Tetralogies of Antiphon, 374 43; materials for, 46, 491
Thales, 465
Thaletas, 123, 124, 126, 127 Xanthtjs, 302, 324
Xenarchus, 293
Thebais, 60, 79, 90
Themistocles, 367 Xenocles, 219
Themistogenes, -51 Xi nocritus, 126
Theochrestus, 366 Xenodamos, 126
Xenoinedes, 299
Theocritus, 242 Xenon, 25
Theocritus, Sophist, 366
Theodectes, 233 Xenophanes, S4, 85, 93, 96 ff.
Theodoridas, 1S2 Xenophon, 341, 340, 348 ff., 474
Theodoras, philosopher, 391, 468
Theognidea, 148. Zkno, 48, 75, 85, 99, 466 ff.
ZenodotuB, 30 n.
Theognis, his "seal," 46, 107, 1 12,
147 ff Xoilus, 366, 398, 401 ff.
Theognis, the tragedian, 233 Zopyrus, 29, 30, 90
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s

A HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE:

CHARLES THOMAS CRUTTWELL, M.A.,

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FRANK BYRON JEVONS, M.A.,

THE VENERABLE H. W. W ATKINS, D.D.,

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM,

This, like the preceding volume in this series, " is

"With this purpose, Greek and all points involving Greek

have been comparatively neglected by previous writers.

University College, Durham,

Difference between classical period and later periods of Greek litera-

EPIC, LYRIC, AND THE DRAMA.

BOOK I.— EPIC POETRY.

Its background — Three ways of painting in a background— Skill of

Its modern popularity — Unity — Telemachia — Marchen — The

The early Separatists— Modern Chorizontes — Wolf— Commission of

Appendix. — Reading, Writing, and Publication in Classical Greek

Troclus — His summary of the Cypria, the /Ethiopis, Little Iliad, th

Their nature — The proems of rhapsodists — The longer hymns — Other

HESIOD AND HESIODIC POETRY.

Difference between Hesiod and Homer— Hesiod didactic — Nature

OTHER EPIC POETS AND OTHER WRITERS OF HEXAMETERS.

Peisander — Panyasis — Antimachus of Colophon — Choerilus of Samos

BOOK II.— LYRIC POETRY.

Nature of melic — Four periods in its history — Terpander, Clonas,

Life of Alcseus — Political verses — Estimate of antiquity— Drinking-

The Theognidea — Life of Theognis — His political, moral, and social

Ibycus — His odes choral — Influence of tyranny and democracy 011

Early life — Tenth Pythian — Pythian games — Sixth Pythian —

BOOK III.— THE DRAMA.

Origin of Tragedy — Thespis — Pratinas — Satyric drama - The Cyclops

Influence of religion — Visit to Sicily — Its cause — His politics — The

Life — Herodotus — Fatalism and ''irony of Sophocles" — Character-

Life and plays — Popularity — Transitional character of his work —

Worship of Dionysius and Phallica — Mimetic dances — Megara —

Two periods of Aristophanes' work — The Babylonians — The Achar-

Unsatisfactory text of the Clouds — The real nature of the attack

Old and middle comedy — Reason of their difference — Disappearance

HISTORY, ORATORY, AND PHILOSOPHY.

BOOK I.— HISTORY.

Prose literature invented in Miletus— Cadmus and Pherecydes — The

Life — Importance of the Peloponnesian war— Its interest — Its moral

Life —Works, historical, philosophical, and miscellaneous — Anabasis —

Ctesias — His relation to Herodotus — Theopompus — Ephorua —

BOOK II.— ORATORY.

Andocidea — His life — Not a rhetorician — His weaknesses and his

Isocrates — A logographer then a Sophist — Pan-Hellenism — Style

DEMOSTHENES : FIRST PERIOD.

Relation of Demosthenes to earlier oratory and to the culture of his

His excessive argumentation — His lighter qualities — The speech for

DEMOSTHENES : THIRD PERIOD— SPEECH OF THE CROWN.

Points at issue between iEschines and Ctesiphon — The speech as

THE CONTEMPORARIES OF DEMOSTHENES: THE ANTI-MACEDONIAN

^Eschines — Life — Speeches — ^Eschines and Demosthenes compared

BOOK III.— PHILOSOPHY.

Anaximander, Anaximenes, and Heraclitus — Zeno— Anaxagoras —