LECTURES ON POETRY, BY T. CAMPBELL. LECTURE V. PART I. Greek Poetry. HOMER, Hesiod, and the greater part of the earliest Greek poets, were Asiatics. The fine arts had blossomed in Ionia before they were transplanted to proper Greece, and long before they attained to maturity on the Athenian soil. The rise of those Greek states of Asia Minor, which, unlike all modern colonies, took the lead of the parent country in improvement, lies very far back in the national history. Eighty years after the Trojan war, the princes descended from Hercules returned from the north of Greece, wrested back the sceptre of Argos from the house of Pelops, and subdued almost all the Peloponnesus. They rewarded their Doric followers with grants of land, and thus reduced the old inhabitants to slavery or exile. Among the sufferers who were first driven to emigration, was a horde of Æolians, who passed over to the places which had been the scenes of the Iliad, and gave the name of Æolis, or Æolia, to their settlements between the Propontis and the river Hermus, which is now called the Sarbat. Considerably later came another emigration from proper Greece into Asia, which, though connected with other causes, had its primary origin in the oppressive government of the Heraclide. This was called the Ionic migration, from the race who chiefly composed it. Of that race, Attica was considered as the original country. The Athenians were not within the range of the Heracleid conquests, but they received the refugees of the oppressed Peloponnesus, till their scanty and overpeopled territories could no longer support them. At last they took arms against the Dorian conquerors. Codrus, their king, delivered them from this danger by his voluntary martyrdom. But a change of government succeeded, which induced the sons of Codrus to put themselves at the head of adventurers from all parts of Greece; and, under their auspices, Asia Minor received the most important body of her colonists.* The Ionian emigrants, it is true, settled themselves, like their Eolian predecessors, not without bloodshed and violence +, and seized not only on the property but the wives and children of the conquered people. But they planted a range of states south of the Hermus, destined to prosper for a long time under the common name of Ionia, when that appellation was dropped in proper Greece, and when the Athe * There was a third and Doric emigration from Greece to Asia, but of much less consequence than the two preceding ones. + Herodotus, i. 145. Pausanias, vii. 1, 3. Strabo, xiv. 938. nians remembered their descent from Ion only in the pages of their poetry. It has been argued by the ingenious Wood*, that Homer must have lived before those migrations had taken place: otherwise, that he could not have failed to notice events so important both to Europe and Asia. And it is, no doubt, difficult to reconcile his silence respecting them, with the idea of his having known them. Yet the weight of opinion, both ancient and modern, seems inclined, I think, to the supposition that he lived after those migrations But whether Homer sprang up among some earlier Greek tribes, that had lingered in Asia after they had fought under the walls of Troy, or owed his birth to a later race of emigrants, it is certain the Ionian and Eolic colonists preserved his writings, and that they materially influenced the future literature and history of the mother-country. The Asiatic Greeks grew rich, powerful, and polished. The Æolians had the better soil; the Ionians the finer climate and harbours. Of those advantages they availed themselves (the Ionians especially) with that spirit which is natural to adventurers, whose powers of mind have been excited by success, and by new circumstances. Their governments ceased to be hereditary monarchies probably a considerable time before the Olympiads +; and it does not appear, that the people always escaped, in those mutations, from oligarchy or despotism. But still their freedom, till the Orientals conquered them, on the whole survived; and those rulers called symnetest, whom they chose either for life or for a certain number of years, are expressly distinguished by Aristotle from tyrants; for their power, though great, was given them by the people, and was directed by laws. the Asiatic states, though divided and often contending among themselves, were for a long time the outposts of Greek liberty and independence; and though at last they were overwhelmed by Persian invasion, yet they stemmed its progress till Greece was ripe to resist it. Lying almost all in the immediate vicinity of the sea, and many of them at the mouths of navigable rivers, they held the keys of commerce in their own hands; and their factories extending as far as Egypt, their numerous settlements on the coasts of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean ||, and their voyages to regions which had never before been explored by Greeks, were the happy results of their situation and their enterprise. Among the Ionian states, Colophon and Miletus became proverbial for their power and valour; and Samos, the birth-place of Pythagoras, * Wood's Essay on Homer. The Olympiads commence in chronology 776 years B. C. § The Milesians alone established fifty-seven such settlements. Thus was also conspicuously distinguished for that national activity which favours the growth of intellect. It It may be objected, perhaps, that I am here noticing traits in the prosperity of the Asiatic Greeks which have by no means uniformly favoured the progress of poetry. Wealth and commerce may have been often adverse to the poetical spirit of a people, and are neither its necessary nor its primary springs. Homer seems to have existed in the infancy of all the arts. should be always recollected, however, with regard to Homer, that we can only guess at the period in which he lived, and can never make the state of society, in which we suppose him to have existed, a perfectly secure ground of reasoning on the connexion between poetry and the state of human cultivation. But from the date of the Olympiads and the Ionian commonwealths*, the sun of civilization appears to be fairly above the horizon. How much of the previous day-spring had smiled on Homer is but a subject of speculation; but we have henceforward, from this epoch, comparatively clearer data for computing the influence of social improvement on taste and imagination. And, great as Homer was, Greek poetry had yet to fulfil an important and inspired career for ages after him. She had to receive new measures of harmony, new provinces of composition, and new varieties of excellence. In this second period of her expansion into various forms, all pursuits that cherished a genial ardour in the temperament of society must have conduced to her prosperity. The very mechanical arts which facilitated the use of writing, and the means of finding its materials, humbly, but usefully contributed even to Homer's immortality. And the symptoms of an earlier cultivation of the art of writing in Asiatic than in proper Greece, are strongly evident. Wolfe himself concedes the probability of its use, " especially in the Ionian States," as early as the seventh and even eighth centuries before Christianity.+ As to the fine arts, there can be no doubt of their having been earlier cultivated in Asiatic than in proper Greece. The glory of those arts, so congenial with that of the poet in spirit, though not in form, was coeval with the best post-homeric poetry of Greece, and we can have little doubt that the Poetical Muse was reciprocally influenced and refined by the example of her sisters. Can we believe a Greek poet to have felt no glow at his heart, when I prefer the more general term Commonwealths to that of Republics; for the constitutions of those states had many traits which we should scarcely call Republican, in the common and modern sense. +"Neque adeo dubito quin id sæculis VIII et VII (A. C.) in cæteris civitatibus, nominatim Ioniæ et Magnæ Græciæ, fecerint sollertiores quidem homines." By the words" id fecerint" Wolfe means practised writing. Wolfii Prolegomena, p. 70. To save the reader discussions on a subject only indirectly connected with poetry, I refer, for a very clear examination of this subject, to Meiner's History of the Arts and Sciences in Greece, Book 1. he contemplated his native sculpture? It is true, that the statuary might have imbibed his conceptions from Homer. But the inspiration which he borrowed from poetry was not lost to poetry itself. It came back to the lyre of Greece; and, like the light falling on that of Memnon, made it musical. The fine climate and soil of the Asiatic states have been commonly, and with justice, remarked as circumstances propitious to their rise and refinement. Another cause of their rapid advancement has not been so generally observed, namely, the state of the people among whom the founders of the colonies arrived. Unlike European emigrants to America, they had not to hew down woods, nor encounter savages, nor toil upward through the whole process of human civilization. On the contrary, they came among a people not materially different from themselves in descent and language. Among this people they found not artists indeed in the higher sense of the word, but artizans and useful arts superior to those which they had left in their native country. Our settlers adopted, eclipsed, and ultimately ennobled, whatever inventions they found, and originated some of their own which were highly important. In a general view, they elevated art from a mechanical to a spiritual character, from tasteless processes to the pursuits of beautiful design and imagination. Thus the art of sculpturing in marble originated in the Ionian island of Chios; and painting and architecture, though known in other countries, could not be called fine arts until they came into their hands. Still our colonists owed considerable obligations to the race among whom they arrived*; and to come at once to a circumstance strictly connected with poetry, they borrowed from the Lydians and Phrygians much of that music which was "married to their immortal verse." In proper Greece, there were certainly circumstances that contributed a preparatory influence towards her future poetical fertility, and that tended to warm and exalt the character of popular imagination. Among these, though it may seem to be tracing effects to a remote cause, I cannot help reckoning the Delphic oracle. The religion and poetry of Greece were intimately combined. The oracular strains even constituted an important class of Greek poetry, though it is now lost. The shrine of Delphi strengthened the common bond of religion among the Greeks, and even extended a respect for their name among barbarians. It gave a sacred object to their national pride and enthusiasm, and established * There is no doubt that the Corinthians were early acquainted with metallurgy; but it is obvious the Asiatics abounded in the metals earlier than the Greeks, and preceded them in the knowledge of casting and melting them. Herodotus, who informs us of the architecture (if their buildings could be so called) of the Lydians having been so miserable, nevertheless allows that people to have coined money earlier than the Greeks. among themselves a local supremacy over the richly fanciful system of Pagan superstition, on a spot where war could not enter, and where the very aspect of Nature was hallowed by the most imposing associations. Still more obviously were the Pythic, Olympic, and other public games, calculated to awaken not merely the corporeal energies, but the moral genius of a people. Amusements similar to those festivals had prevailed in remote times, but had fallen into disuse, and their renewal served to revive old heroic recollections. They were to the martial spirit of Greece what the tournaments were to the chivalry of modern Europe. And as song will always be found where there is enthusiasm, those games were the scenes of musical and poetical, as well as of athletic emulation. Still there were opposite and counteracting causes to retard the improvement of the mother-country. Crete, the earliest civilized of the Greek states, the probable model of Spartan government, a most ancient teacher of religion, and a great depository of its mysteries and traditions-this island possessed institutions which tended to civilize her only to a stationary point, and which promoted hardy and active, rather than elegant occupations. The Cretans had artists, but they derived the fine arts from Asia. They had some ancient poetical names, but no continued school of poetry, to rescue them from obscurity. Nothing is known of the old Cretan poet Thales, but that he was the friend of Lycurgus. The history of their far-famed Epimenides is involved in fable, and the fragments of works which he is said to have composed after his sleep of fifty years, are scarcely better authenticated than the nap itself. The Cretans, in fact, when not engaged in war, commerce, or navigation, were fonder of hunting, and robust exercises, than the pursuits of inventive imagination, unless we choose to rank under this head those habits of marvellous anecdote, for which they unhappily became but too much reputed.+ * Epimenides, as we are gravely informed by Apollonius Dyosculus and Diogenes Laertius, was once sent out to the field by his father to seek for a lost sheep About mid-day he got tired with walking in the heat of the sun, laid himself down in a grotto, and fell into a sleep, which lasted, without interruption, for fifty-seven years. He awoke, of course, perfectly refreshed, but quite unconscious that he had taken more than an ordinary siesta; and recollecting his father's orders, went out again in search of the sheep. As the animal, however, was already beyond the reach of recovery, Epimenides went back again to the farm to make the best apology he could for his failure. To his surprise, he found it in the possession of strangers, who, we may suppose, could make neither head nor tail of his story about the sheep. In this perplexity, he repaired to the city, and was entering his father's house, when he was stopped by people, demanding who he was. With much difficulty, and no less astonishment, he was at last recognized by his younger brother, who had by this time grown an elderly man, and who enabled him, by comparing dates, to ascertain the length of his slumber. + Among the poets of Crete may be remembered Hybrias, author of the following bravo song-I give the original as well as the translation : |