Pericles (444 B.C?) was reformed into a democracy. Under Pericles, Athens attained her golden age of literature and art. The drama, history, eloquence and philosophy were carried to their perfection. This brilliant display of the noblest powers of the mind was, nevertheless, accompanied by moral degeneracy and frivolous licentiousness. The victory of Philip at Cheronea, (338 B. C.) destroyed her political independence; but the blessings of her mental labours were felt in future ages. The influence of her literature was especially conspicuous at Alexandria, where extensive literary corporations were formed; it gained a second life by its decided effect upon Roman letters. Under the most adverse circumstances, it was impossible to extinguish it; when Constantinople (1453 A.D.) fell a prey to the Turks, Grecian literature found protection and esteem in the West, and animated study there with new spirit and life. The Greeks were very much indebted to other nations for what may be termed the external forms of civilization, and for the means of appropriating them to social use; but in every thing that belonged to mental developement of the sublimest nature, and to the finished and artful expression of that developement, they displayed a peculiar and striking nationality, as is most evident from the natural representation of their sentiments in poetry, from their productions in science, and above all, from their pure prose, which could not have been borrowed from any Asiatic nation, even by the most civilized. The first seeds of mental activity were sown by priestly wisdom in the East, which grew up and enriched the ancient world; but this merry and sensual people only comprehended what was external, without penetrating into the hidden meaning. All that belonged to theology was excluded from their religious poetry. Natural powers were idolized, and mysterious appearances of earthly life as well as divinities, were personified in the most noble human shape. Thus mythology, in cooperation with practical art, excited, promoted and nourished Greek fantasy, and led to a higher culture, which united the most perfect developement of human powers with cheerful enjoyment of the present, and by its superior moral tendency, and its public show and exhibition, secured a vigorous duration, while it delighted by its ever recurring novelty. This superiority of mental production and enjoyment had its origin in the freedom of the Greeks, in carly times, from priestly guardianship. The sectional peculiarities of the chief tribes of the Hellenic race exercised a decided influence upon the litera ture of the Greeks. This is remarkably conspicuous in the effects produced by the practical and moral life of the Ionians and Dorians. The Ionic republicanism and the Doric aristocracy were long opposed to each other, and contended with the bitterest hatred in the Peloponnesian war. Their views of life were widely different. The merry Ionian endeavoured to colour life with the brightest hues, snatched with eagerness the present moment, and willingly exchanged the old for the new. The Dorian, reared among mountains, loved tranquillity and ancestral manners, was naturally inclined to reflection and moral seriousness, and strove after all that was great and sublime. Among the Ionians, the plastic epos was formed according to the impressions of reality, the epic history from tales and sententious wisdom, the satirical iambic, and the elegy from reflection and experience, and their playful, sensual poetry from joyous humour and sentiment. To the Dorians the higher lyric is indebted for its refinement; it was elevated from a deep sentiment to a serious animation and close reflection on God and man. The Ionic philosophy issued from the outward forms and images of nature and the explanation of their existence; the Doric was occupied with the spiritual essence, and separated pure and abstract reasoning from physiology. The philosophy of the former included realism, and that of the latter idealism. Between the Ionians and Dorians stood the Æolians, with an inferior constitution leaning to anarchy. Among them sprung up the didactic epos, and their passionate temperament produced lyric poems full of glowing sentiments and a corresponding music. The Athenians united the qualities of both the Ionians and Dorians; a lively imagination with serious sublimity, in a very high degree. Hence, the tragedy arose from the epos and solemn lyric; the comedy, from the iambic of republican liberty, ennobled by the dignity of the lyric; hence, the easy, comprehensible history which facilitates the knowledge of the past; hence the amalgamation of realism and idealism into Platonism. Greek literature embraces poetry in its entire variety and excellence-eloquence in its highest signification for public lifehistory in mature perfection-philosophy exhibited in all its relations-politics modelled to an ingenious theory by various experience-natural history and medicine in simplicity and intelligible truth. Still later also, mathematics and astronomy, grammar and criticism, acquired excellent and scientific reformation. The Greek language, susceptible of all the improvements of art, and expressing clearly all abstract notions, is distin guished by its richness, euphony, flexible softness, manly energy, copiousness and precision. It acquired these advantages by the very lively activity of the national spirit-by the publicity of civil life-by a correct feeling for beauty, and by an acute sense for the arts. Its various dialects* were cultivated and brought to great excellence; the Doric and Æolic were energetic, and gloomily or passionately serious-the Ionic was more mild and melodious—the Attic united the good qualities and avoided the deficiencies of the others; it was manly and youthfully fresh, rich and full sounding, tender, subtle and insinuating, and equally satisfying the demands of poetry and eloquence. The art of writing, which Cadmus is supposed to have brought to Greece, (1500 B. C.) must have remained for a long time a dead treasure. The alphabet of sixteen letters, which was, at the beginning of the seventh century, B. C. enriched one-half more by the Ionic Callistratus, was late enough (403 B. C.) exchanged at Athens for another more complete, and it does not seem to have come into public use in the Ionic colonies of Asia Minor before the seventh century. The education of youth was, for a long time, entrusted to the government. The institutions which Pythagoras founded, (600 B.C?) were calculated to exercise the new generation in practical philosophy, and to rear them for the higher services of the state. Solon (594 B.C.) opened at Athens proper public schools, in which language, history and mathematics were taught, but music and gymnastics constituted the chief objects of education and instruction. By means of Gorgias (424 B. C.) were instituted, first, sophistical, and soon after, philosophical schools. The existence of libraries at the time of Pisistratus and Polycrates, is doubtful, and even improbable. They could only have been formed in the fourth century, B. C. and even then to a very limited extent. The early poetry† of the Greeks was of an origin and tenor strictly religious, and appears to have been introduced from Lycia into Thrace by the priests; thence it passed to Thessaly and Boeotia. It consisted in divine sentences of prophets and sybils, in worship and prayers, in solemn songs and exclamations of pious devotion, joined with dancing and music, in moral sentences and symbolic reflections on nature and the world, and in celebrations of the favourites of the Gods. Perhaps it was Comp. Fr. Jacobs, G. Hermann observat: de Gr. dialect: et de dialecto Pindari and Maittaire Græc. Ling. dialec. + Heyne in Opusc. Acad. vol. ii. F. Schlegel Hist. of Roman and Greek Poetry. customary with the mysterious and religious fraternities to style peculiar solemn songs after the founder or superintendent of these corporations, and in this way may posterity have received the mythological names of Eumolpus, Thamyris, Philammon, Melampus, Olen, Linus, and many others. The mythological Orpheus, and his pupil Musæus, were renowned as models, but the poems attributed to both of them are of later times. To Orpheus have been attributed I. Hymns in old fashionable temple-style, rich in mythological traditions and notions. Many suppose Onomacritus (555 B. C.) to have been their author, but they, more probably, had their origin in the Alexandrian ages. II. Argonautica, by an Alexandrian of the fourth century after Christ. III. Lithika, of the secret powers of stone, belongs to the fourth century after Christ. Of the many fragments, that on earth, is the most important. Under the name of Musæus,t come to us the oracles which are supposed to have been brought into vogue by Onomacritus. The author (of the same name) of the pleasant erotic epopee, Hero and Leander, lived long after Christ. In the Ionic Upper Asia, poetry was first divested of its religious cast, and was conversant about the affairs of civil life. The epopee, with the heroic verse which soon became peculiar to it, celebrated the heroes of antiquity. The didactic epopee, which sprung up among the Æolians, took the tone of reflection. Observations on practical and civil life soon began to be made and expressed by the elegy, in diminutive heroic rhythm. Out of this sententious poetry arose the iambic, critical of human faults and vices. The epic and iambic united to form the lyric. Of this class of poetry, there were three styles indicative of the nations who practised them. The first was of a lofty tone, high-souled, with the three-footed metre, and this the Dorians claimed. The impassioned lyric, full of ardent and burning feeling, belonged to the Æolians. The Ionians delighted in the easy and playful versification. The epopee, the iambic and the lyric, woven into a dialogical plot, made up the drama, and this combination attained its perfection at Athens. Besides these, the artful dithyrambic and epigram were also cultivated. All the poetical productions of later ages were but *Fabric. Biblioth. Græc. vol. i. p. 140. + Ibid. p. 123 imitations and artificial compositions, without original freedom or energy of mind. By the bards, who enjoyed great esteem, and who established corporations or schools in the heroic age, poetry was transferred from the sacred precincts of the temples to worldly life, and adapted to the celebration of human exploits, mixed up with mythology and religion, and to the representation of divine agency in the affairs of the world. In the Ionic Upper Asia, various bards celebrated the expedition of the Greek heroes against Troy, soon after this popular and interesting occurrence. This series of epic songs, traditionally delivered by many singers belonging to one school, animated by one idea, and provided with the same knowledge, was susceptible, from the completeness of its single parts, and from the excellence of its representations, of combination into one composition. This poem, thus made up, was styled after Homer, who first suggested this idea and projected the execution of it. This epic collection has been preserved under the protection of a religious, national feeling, not without later additions as to the form, but in unviolated truth as to the mythological and heroic matter. It is the essence of the mythological spirit of the Greeks, the model of a perfect epic language, and its high age is manifest by not touching upon republicanism in any way whatever. The life of Homer is involved in obscurity. Smyrna and Chios, of the seven cities which dispute the honour of his birth, present the justest claims. His age is uncertain. [907 B.C? or 277 after the destruction of Troy? Theopompus and Euphorion fix it at 500 years after the destruction of Troy.] The stories and tales of later ages are less plain and satisfactory than the works which bear his name. The Iliad, in twenty-four rhapsodies, sings of Achilles' wrath, and the revenge which Jupiter obtained for him before the gates of Troy, for the insult received from Agamemnon. The Odyssey, also in twenty-four rhapsodies, represents the adventures of Ulysses. Through many a century these Homeric poems were preserved and circulated by the oral traditions of the bards or rhapsodists, and lived in the hearts of the people. Lycurgus is said to have received a knowledge of some fragments of them from an Homeric family of Creophilus of Crete, and (890 B.C) to have brought them to Greece. To the Attic legislator, Solon, and the Pisistratidæ (594-512 B. C.) is ascribed the merit of having published both of these epopees in * Fabr. Bib. Gr. vol. i. p. 317. F. A. Wolf: Proleg. in Hom. |
