A Smaller History of Greece

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The commencement of Greek lyric poetry as a cultivated species of
composition dates from the middle of the seventh century before
the Christian era. No important event either in the public or
private life of a Greek could dispense with this accompaniment;
and the lyric song was equally needed to solemnize the worship of
the gods, to cheer the march to battle, or to enliven the festive
board. The lyric poetry, with the exception of that of Pindar,
has almost entirely perished, and all that we possess of it;
consists of a few songs and isolated fragments.

The great satirist ARCHILOCHUS was one of the earliest and most
celebrated of all the lyric poets. He was a native of the island
of Paros, and flourished about the year 700 B.C. His fame rests
chiefly on his terrible satires, composed in the Iambic metre.
in which he gave vent to the bitterness of a disappointed man.

TYRTAEUS and ALCMAN were the two great lyric poets of Sparta,
though neither of them was a native of Lacedaemon. The personal
history of Tyrtaeus, and his warlike songs which roused the
fainting courage of the Spartans during the second Messenian war,
have already been mentioned. Alcman was originally a Lydian
slave in a Spartan family, and was emancipated by his master. He
lived shortly after the second Messenian war. His poems partake
of the character of this period, which was one of repose and
enjoyment after the fatigues and perils of war. Many of his
songs celebrate the pleasures of good eating and drinking; but
the more important were intended to be sung by a chorus at the
public festivals of Sparta.

ARION was a native of Methymna in Lesbos, and lived some time at
the court of Periander, tyrant of Corinth, who began to reign
B.C. 625. Nothing is known of his life beyond the beautiful
story of his escape from the sailors with whom he sailed from
Sicily to Corinth. On one occasion, thus runs the story, Arion
went to Sicily to take part in a musical contest. He won the
prize, and, laden with presents, he embarked in a Corinthian ship
to return to his friend Periander. The rude sailors coveted his
treasures, and meditated his murder. After imploring them in
vain to spare his life, he obtained permission to play for the
last time on his beloved lyre. In festal attire he placed
himself on the prow of the vessel, invoked the gods in inspired
strains, and then threw himself into the sea. But many song-
loving dolphins had assembled round the vessel, and one of them
now took the bard on its back. and carried him to Taenarum, from
whence he returned to Corinth in safety, and related his
adventure to Periander. Upon the arrival of the Corinthian
vessel, Periander inquired of the sailors after Arion, who
replied that he had remained behind at Tarentum; but when Arion,
at the bidding of Periander, came forward, the sailors owned
their guilt, and were punished according to their desert. The
great improvement in lyric poetry ascribed to Arion is the
invention of the Dithyramb. This was a choral song and dance in
honour of the god Dionysus, and is of great interest in the
history of poetry, since it was the germ from which sprung at a
later time the magnificent productions of the tragic Muse at
Athens.

ALCAEUS and SAPPHO were both natives of Mytilene in the island of
Lesbos, and flourished about B.C. 610-580. Their songs were
composed for a single voice, and not for the chorus, and they
were each the inventor of a new metre, which bears their name,
and is familiar to us by the well-known odes of Horace. Their
poetry was the warm outpouring of the writers' inmost feelings,
and present the lyric poetry of the AEolians at its highest
point.

Alcaeus took an active part in the civil dissensions of his
native state, and warmly espoused the cause of the aristocratical
party, to which he belonged by birth. When the nobles were
driven into exile, he endeavoured to cheer their spirits by a
number of most animated odes, full of invectives against the
popular party and its leaders.

Of the events of Sappho's life we have scarcely any information;
and the common story that, being in love with Phaon and finding
her love unrequited, she leaped down from the Leucadian rock,
seems to have been an invention of later times.

ANACREON was a native of the Ionian city of Teos. He spent part
of his life at Samos, under the patronage of Polycrates; and
after the death of this despot he went to Athens at the
invitation of Hipparchus. The universal tradition of antiquity
represents Anacreon as a consummate voluptuary; and his poems
prove the truth of the tradition. His death was worthy of his
life, if we may believe the account that he was choked by a
grape-stone.

SIMONIDES, of the island of Ceos, was born B.C. 556, and reached
a great age. He lived many years at Athens, both at the court of
Hipparchus, together with Anacreon, and subsequently under the
democracy during the Persian wars. The struggles of Greece for
her independence furnished him with a noble subject for his muse.
He carried away the prize from AEschylus with an elegy upon the
warriors who had fallen at the battle of Marathon. Subsequently
we find him celebrating the heroes of Thermopylae, Artemisium,
Salamis, and Plataea. He was upwards of 80 when his long
poetical career at Athens was closed with the victory which he
gained with the dithyrambic chorus in B.C. 477, making the 56th
prize that he had carried off. Shortly after this event he
repaired to Syracuse at the invitation of Hiero. Here he spent
the remaining ten years of his life, not only entertaining Hiero
with his poetry, but instructing him by his wisdom; for Simonides
was a philosopher as well as a poet, and is reckoned amongst the
sophists.

PINDAR, though the contemporary of Simonides, was considerably
his junior: He was born either at, or in the neighbourhood of,
Thebes in Boeotia, about the year 522 B.C. Later writers tell us
that his future glory as a poet was miraculously foreshadowed by
a swarm of bees which rested upon his lips while he was asleep,
and that this miracle first led him to compose poetry. He
commenced his professional career at an early age, and soon
acquired so great a reputation, that he was employed by various
states and princes of the Hellenic race to compose choral songs.
He was courted especially by Alexander, king of Macedonia, and by
Hiero, despot of Syracuse. The praises which he bestowed upon
Alexander are said to have been the chief reason which led his
descendant, Alexander the Great, to spare the house of the poet
when he destroyed the rest of Thebes. The estimation in which
Pindar was held is also shown by the honours conferred upon him
by the free states of Greece. Although a Theban, he was always a
great favourite with the Athenians, whom he frequently praised in
his poems, and who testified their gratitude by making him their
public guest, and by giving him 10,000 drachmas. The only poems
of Pindar which have come down to us entire are his Epinicia or
triumphal odes, composed in commemoration of victories gained in
the great public games. But these were only a small portion of
his works. He also wrote hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, odes for
processions, songs of maidens, mimic dancing songs, drinking
songs, dirges and encomia, or panegyrics on princes.

The Greeks had arrived at a high pitch of civilization before
they can be said to have possessed a HISTORY. The first essays
in literary prose cannot be placed earlier than the sixth century
before the Christian aera; but the first writer who deserves the
name of an historian is HERODOTUS, hence called the Father of
History. Herodotus was born in the Dorian colony of
Halicarnassus in Caria, in the year 484 B.C., and accordingly
about the time of the Persian expeditions into Greece. He
resided some years in Samos, and also undertook extensive
travels, of which he speaks in his work. There was scarcely a
town in Greece or on the coasts of Asia Minor with which he was
not acquainted; he had explored Thrace and the coasts of the
Black Sea; in Egypt he had penetrated as far south as
Elephantine; and in Asia he had visited the cities of Babylon,
Ecbatana, and Susa. The latter part of his life was spent at
Thurii, a colony founded by the Athenians in Italy in B.C. 443.
According to a well-known story in Lucian, Herodotus, when he had
completed hia work, recited it publicly at the great Olympic
festival, as the best means of procuring for it that celebrity to
which he felt that it was entitled. The effect is described as
immediate and complete. The delighted audience at once assigned
the names of the nine Muses to the nine books into which it is
divided. A still later author (Suidas) adds, that Thucydides,
then a boy, was present at the festival with his father Olorus,
and was so affected by the recital as to shed tears; upon which
Herodotus congratulated Olorus on having a son who possessed so
early such a zeal for knowledge. But there are many objections
to the probability of these tales.

Herodotus interwove into his history all the varied and extensive
knowledge acquired in his travels, and by big own personal
researches. But the real subject of the work is the conflict
between the Greek race, in the widest sense of the term, and
including the Greeks of Asia Minor, with the Asiatics. Thus the
historian had a vast epic subject presented to him, which was
brought to a natural and glorious termination by the defeat of
the Persians in their attempts upon Greece. The work concludes
with the reduction of Sestos by the Athenians, B.C. 478.
Herodotus wrote in the Ionic dialect, and his style is marked by
an ease and simplicity which lend it an indescribable charm.

THUCYDIDES, the greatest of the Greek historians, was an
Athenian, and was born in the year 471 B.C. His family was
connected with that of Miltiades and Cimon. He possessed gold-
mines in Thrace, and enjoyed great influence in that country. He
commanded an Athenian squadron of seven ships at Thasos, in 424
B.C., at the time when Brasidas was besieging Amphipolis; and
having failed to relieve that city in time, he went into a
voluntary exile, in order probably to avoid the punishment of
death. He appears to have spent 20 years in banishment,
principally in the Peloponnesus, or in places under the dominion
or influence of Sparta. He perhaps returned to Athens in B.C.
403, the date of its liberation by Thrasybulus. According to the
unanimous testimony of antiquity he met with a violent end, and
it seems probable that he was assassinated at Athens, since it
cannot be doubted that his tomb existed there. From the
beginning of the Peloponnesian war he had designed to write its
history, and he employed himself in collecting materials for that
purpose during its continuance; but it is most likely that the
work was not actually composed till after the conclusion of the
war, and that he was engaged upon it at the time of his death.
The first book of his History is introductory, and contains a
rapid sketch of Grecian history from the remotest times to the
breaking out of the war. The remaining seven books are filled
with the details of the war, related according to the division
into summers and winters, into which all campaigns naturally
fall; and the work breaks off abruptly in the middle of the 21st
year of the war (B.C. 411). The materials of Thucydides were
collected with the most scrupulous care; the events are related
with the strictest impartiality; and the work probably offers a
more exact account of a long and eventful period than any other
contemporary history, whether ancient or modern, of an equally
long and important aera. The style of Thucydides is brief and
sententious, and whether in moral or political reasoning, or in
description, gains wonderful force from its condensation. But
this characteristic is sometimes carried to a faulty extent, so
as to render his style harsh, and his meaning obscure.

XENOPHON, the son of Gryllus, was also an Athenian, and was
probably born about B.C. 444. He was a pupil of Socrates, who
saved his life at the battle of Delium (B.C. 424). His
accompanying Cyrus the younger in his expedition against his
brother Artaxerxes, king of Persia, formed a striking episode in
his life, and has been recorded by himself in his ANABASIS. He
seems to have been still in Asia at the time of the death of
Socrates in 399 B.C., and was probably banished from Athens soon
after that period, in consequence of his close connexion with the
Lacedaemonians. He accompanied Agesilaus, the Spartan king, on
the return of the latter from Asia to Greece; and he fought along
with the Lacedaemonians against his own countrymen at the battle
of Coronea in 394 B.C. After this battle he went with Agesilaus
to Sparta, and soon afterwards settled at Scillus in Elis, near
Olympia. He is said to have lived to more than 90 years of age,
and he mentions an event which occurred as late as 357 B.C.

Probably all the works of Xenophon are still extant. The
ANABASIS is the work on which his fame as an historian chiefly
rests. It is written in a simple and agreeable style, and
conveys much curious and striking information. The HELLENICA is
a continuation of the history of Thucydides, and comprehends in
seven books a space of about 48 years; namely, from the time when
Thucydides breaks off, B.C. 411, to the battle of Mantinea in
362. The subject is treated in a very dry and uninteresting
style; and his evident partiality to Sparta, and dislike of
Athens, have frequently warped his judgment, and must cause his
statements to be received with some suspicion. The CYROPAEDIA,
one of the most pleasing and popular of his works, professes to
be a history of Cyrus, the founder of the Persian monarchy, but
is in reality a kind of political romance, and possesses no
authority whatever as an historical work. The design of the
author seems to have been to draw a picture of a perfect state;
and though the scene is laid in Persia, the materials of the work
are derived from his own philosophical notions and the usages of
Sparta engrafted on the popularly current stories respecting
Cyrus. Xenophon displays in this work his dislike of democratic
institutions like those of Athens, and his preference for an
aristocracy, or even a monarchy. Xenophon was also the author of
several minor works; but the only other treatise which we need
mention is the MEMORABILIA of Socrates, in four books, intended
as a defence of his master against the charges which occasioned
his death, and which undoubtedly contains a genuine picture of
Socrates and his philosophy. The genius of Xenophon was not of
the highest order; it was practical rather than speculative; but
he is distinguished for his good sense, his moderate views, his
humane temper, and his earnest piety.

The DRAMA pre-eminently distinguished Athenian literature. The
democracy demanded a literature of a popular kind, the vivacity
of the people a literature that made a lively impression; and
both these conditions were fulfilled by the drama. But though
brought to perfection among the Athenians, tragedy and comedy, in
their rude and early origin, were Dorian inventions. Both arose
out of the worship of Dionysus. There was at first but little
distinction between these two species of the drama, except that
comedy belonged more to the rural celebration of the Dionysiac
festivals, and tragedy to that in cities. The name of TRAGEDY
was far from signifying any thing mournful, being derived from
the goat-like appearance of those who, disguised as Satyrs,
performed the old Dionysiac songs and dances. In like manner,
COMEDY was called after the song of the band of revellers who
celebrated the vintage festivals of Dionysus, and vented the rude
merriment inspired by the occasion in jibes and extempore
witticisms levelled at the spectators. Tragedy, in its more
perfect form, was the offspring of the dithyrambic odes with
which that worship was celebrated. These were not always of a
joyous cast. Some of them expressed the sufferings of Dionysus;
and it was from this more mournful species of dithyramb that
tragedy, properly so called, arose. The dithyrambic odes formed
a kind of lyrical tragedy, and were sung by a chorus of fifty
men, dancing round the altar of Dionysus. The improvements in
the dithyramb were introduced by Arion at Corinth; and it was
chiefly among the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus that these
choral dithyrambic songs prevailed. Hence, even in attic
tragedy, the chorus, which was the foundation of the drama, was
written in the Doric dialect, thus clearly betraying the source
from which the Athenians derived it.

In Attica an important alteration was made in the old tragedy in
the time of Pisistratus, in consequence of which it obtained a
new and dramatic character. This innovation is ascribed to
THESPIS, a native of the Attic village of Icaria, B.C. 535. It
consisted in the introduction of an actor for the purpose of
giving rest to the chorus. Thespis was succeeded by Choerilus
and Phrynichus, the latter of whom gained his first prize in the
dramatic contests in 511 B.C. The Dorian Pratinas, a native of
Philius, but who exhibited his tragedies at Athens, introduced an
improvement in tragedy by separating the Satyric from the tragic
drama. As neither the popular taste nor the ancient religious
associations connected with the festivals of Dionysus would have
permitted the chorus of Satyrs to be entirely banished from the
tragic representations, Pratinas avoided this by the invention of
what is called the Satyric drama; that is, a species of play in
which the ordinary subjects of tragedy were treated in a lively
and farcical manner, and in which the chorus consisted of a band
of Satyrs in appropriate dresses and masks. After this period it
became customary to exhibit dramas in TETRALOGIES, or sets of
four; namely, a tragic trilogy, or series of three tragedies,
followed by a Satyric play. These were often on connected
subjects; and the Satyric drama at the end served like a merry
after-piece to relieve the minds of the spectators.

The subjects of Greek tragedy were taken, with few exceptions,
from the national mythology. Hence the plot and story were of
necessity known to the spectators, a circumstance which strongly
distinguished the ancient tragedy from the modern. It must also
be recollected that the representation of tragedies did not take
place every day, but only, after certain fixed intervals, at the
festivals of Dionysus, of which they formed one of the greatest
attractions. During the whole day the Athenian public sat in the
theatre witnessing tragedy after tragedy; and a prize was awarded
by judges appointed for the purpose to the poet who produced the
best set of dramas.

Such was Attic tragedy when it came into the hands of AESCHYLUS,
who, from the great improvements which he introduced, was
regarded by the Athenians as its father or founder, just as Homer
was of Epic poetry, and Herodotus of History. AEschylus was born
at Eleusis in Attica in B.C. 525, and was thus contemporary with
Simonides and Pindar. He fought with his brother Cynaegirus at
the battle of Marathon, and also at those of Artemisium, Salamis,
and Plataea. In B.C. 484 he gained his first tragic prize. In
468 he was defeated in a tragic contest by his younger rival
Sophocles; shortly afterwards he retired to the court of king
Hiero, at Syracuse, He died at Gela, in Sicily, in 456, in the
69th year of his age. It is unanimously related that an eagle,
mistaking the poet's bald head for a stone, let a tortoise fall
upon it in order to break the shell, thus fulfilling an oracle
predicting that he was to die by a blow from heaven. The
improvements introduced into tragedy by AEschylus concerned both
its form and composition, and its manner of representation. In
the former his principal innovation was the introduction of a
second actor; whence arose the dialogue, properly so called, and
the limitation of the choral parts, which now became subsidiary.
His improvements in the manner of representing tragedy consisted
in the introduction of painted scenes, drawn according to the
rules of perspective. He furnished the actors with more
appropriate and more magnificent dresses, invented for them more
various and expressive masks, and raised their stature to the
heroic size by providing them with thick-soled cothurni or
buskins. AEschylus excels in representing the superhuman, in
depicting demigods and heroes, and in tracing the irresistible
march of fate. His style resembles the ideas which it clothes:
it is bold, sublime, and full of gorgeous imagery, but sometimes
borders on the turgid.

SOPHOCLES, the younger rival and immediate successor of Aeschylus
in the tragic art, was born at Colonus, a village about a mile
from Athens, in B.C. 495. We have already adverted to his
wresting the tragic prize from AEschylus in 468, from which time
he seems to have retained the almost undisputed possession of the
Athenian stage, until a young but formidable rival arose in the
person of Euripides. The close of his life was troubled with
family dissensions. Iophon, his son by an Athenian wife, and
therefore his legitimate heir, was jealous of the affection
manifested by his father for his grandson Sophocles, the
offspring of another son, Ariston, whom he had had by a Sicyonian
woman. Fearing lest his father should bestow a great part of his
property upon his favourite, Iophon summoned him before the
Phratores, or tribesmen, on the ground that his mind was
affected. The old man's only reply was--"If I am Sophocles I am
not beside myself; and if I am beside myself I am not Sophocles."
Then taking up his OEDIPUS AT COLONUS, which he had lately
written, but had not yet brought out, he read from it a beautiful
passage, with which the judges were so struck that they at once
dismissed the case. He died shortly afterwards, in B.C. 406, in
his 90th year. As a poet Sophocles is universally allowed to
have brought the drama to the greatest perfection of which it is
susceptible. His plays stand in the just medium between the
sublime but unregulated flights of AEschylus, and the too
familiar scenes and rhetorical declamations of Euripides. His
plots are worked up with more skill and care than the plots of
either of his great rivals. Sophocles added the last improvement
to the form of the drama by the introduction of a third actor; a
change which greatly enlarged the scope of the action. The
improvement was so obvious that it was adopted by AEschylus in
his later plays; but the number of three actors seems to have
been seldom or never exceeded.

EURIPIDES was born in the island of Salamis, in B.C. 480 his
parents having been among those who fled thither at the time of
the invasion of Attics by Xerxes. He studied rhetoric under
Prodicus, and physics under Anaxagoras and he also lived on
intimate terms with Socrates. In 441 he gained his first prize,
and he continued to exhibit plays until 408, the date of his
Orestes. Soon after this he repaired to the court of Macedonia,
at the invitation of king Archelaus, where he died two years
afterwards at the age of 74 (B.C. 406). Common report relates
that he was torn to pieces by the king's dogs, which, according
to some accounts, were set upon him by two rival poets out of
envy. In treating his characters and subjects Euripides often
arbitrarily departed from the received legends, and diminished
the dignity of tragedy by depriving it of its ideal character,
and by bringing it down to the level of every-day life. His
dialogue was garrulous and colloquial, wanting in heroic dignity,
and frequently frigid through misplaced philosophical
disquisitions. Yet in spite of all these faults Euripides has
many beauties, and is particularly remarkable for pathos, so that
Aristotle calls him "the most tragic of poets."

Comedy received its full development at Athens from Cratinus, who
lived in the age of Pericles. Cratinus, and his younger
contemporaries Eupolis and Aristophanes, were the three great
poets of what is called the Old Attic Comedy. The comedies of
Cratinus and Eupolis are lost; but of Aristophanes, who was the
greatest of the three, we have eleven dramas extant.
ARISTOPHANES was born about 444 B.C. Of his private life we know
positively nothing. He exhibited his first comedy in 427, and
from that time till near his death, which probably happened about
380, he was a frequent contributor to the Attic stage. The OLD
ATTIC COMEDY was a powerful vehicle for the expression of
opinion; and most of the comedies of Aristophanes turned either
upon political occurrences, or upon some subject which excited
the interest of the Athenian public. Their chief object was to
excite laughter by the boldest and most ludicrous caricature; and
provided that end was attained the poet seems to have cared but
little about the justice of the picture. Towards the end of the
career of Aristophanes the unrestricted licence and libellous
personality of comedy began gradually to disappear. The chorus
was first curtailed and then entirely suppressed, and thus made
way for what is called the Middle Comedy, which had no chorus at
all. The latter still continued to be in some degree political;
but persons were no longer introduced upon the stage under their
real names, and the office of the chorus was very much curtailed.
It was, in fact, the connecting link between the Old Comedy and
the New, or the Comedy of Manners. The NEW COMEDY arose after
Athens had become subject to the Macedonians. Politics were now
excluded from the stage, and the materials of the dramatic poet
were derived entirely from the fictitious adventures of persons
in private life. The two most distinguished writers of this
school were PHILEMON and MENANDER. Philemon was probably born
about the year 360 B.C., and was either a Cilician or Syracusan,
but came at an early age to Athens. He is considered as the
founder of the New Comedy, which was soon afterwards brought to
perfection by his younger contemporary Menander. The latter was
an Athenian, and was born in B.C. 312. He was drowned at the age
of 52, whilst swimming in the harbour of Piraeus. He wrote
upwards of 100 comedies, of which only fragments remain; and the
unanimous praise of posterity awakens our regret for the loss of
one of the most elegant writers of antiquity. The comedies,
indeed, of Plautus and Terence may give us a general notion of
the New Comedy of the Greeks, from which they were confessedly
drawn; but there is good reason to suppose that the works even of
the latter Roman writer fell far short of the wit and elegance of
Menander.

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