GREEK LITERATURE. The literature of Greece is doubly unique among those of Europe. In the first place, it developed, up to quite modern times, mainly from within, foreign influences being almost if not entirely absent ; all other European nations have been influenced, more or less profoundly, from without. In the second, it and it alone has a continuous history, extending from the second millennium B.C. to the present day. It is convenient to divide it into three periods, Ancient, Medi aeval, and Modern, whereof the first may be again subdivided into (I) Early, to about the end of the Persian Wars (first quarter of the fifth century B.C.) ; (2) Attic, to about 30o B.C. ; Hel lenistic, to the beginning of the Mediaeval period, conventionally fixed at the beginning of Justinian's reign (529 A.D.) .
Greek afterwards known as Ionic.
Many modern authorities unhesitatingly and uncompromisingly reject, in all its forms, the theory of the multiple authorship of the Homeric poems, commenced in antiquity by the so-called chorizontes or separators (sc., of the author of the Odyssey from the poet of the Iliad) and revived in modern times, first by Wolf, his predecessors and successors, then by the authors of the various theories, such as that of Grote, which suppose one or both of the poems to have grown from a considerable, but still comparatively short, nucleus. The details of this controversy must be left to the article HOMER ; but a statement of the position taken up with regard to it is necessary to make intelligible the chronology of much of this sketch. The separatist theory is ultimately due to that habit of mind which finds it difficult to assume the existence of a transcendent genius. Every argument on which it rests has again and again been refuted.
The Homeric poems, then, existed in substantially their present form by about the beginning of the last millenium B.C. They were published, if that term can be used, chiefly by the recitations of a gild of professional poets and reciters, (rhapsodes, pai'wSoL lit. "song-sewers") the so-called Homeridai (clan of Homer, a common form of gild-name). They were thus exposed to the numerous small changes in detail which naturally attend oral transmission, such as the substitution of current for obsolete words and forms, the addition or omission of single lines, groups of lines, possibly here and there even short episodes, and so forth. But, although aberrant texts were thus produced, it seems probable that there existed from early times more authentic copies, going back ultimately to the poet's own ms. Hence when the Alexandrian critics, and perhaps before them Peisistratus of Athens (sixth century B.C.), attempted to produce an authentic and reliable text, they were not left to mere conjecture or weigh ing of probabilities, but had at their disposal a certain number of mss. which contained genuinely old tradition, not unrecognizably deformed.
With this simultaneous preservation and deformation of the text went imitation and supplementing, not by additions to the Iliad and Odyssey, but by the composition of new poems, which told those parts of the heroic legends which Homer had not touched upon. The authors of these works were Ionians, as were the Homeridai, to whom indeed it is highly likely that at least the earlier poets of this group belonged.
The grammarian Proclus (A.D. 14o) has preserved the names and subjects of some of these ; but the fragments are very scanty. The Nostoi or Homeward Voyages, by Agias (or Hagias) of Troezen, filled up the gap of ten years between the Iliad and the Odyssey; the Lay of Telegonus, by Eugammon of Cyrene, con tinued the story of the Odyssey to the death of Odysseus by the hand of Telegonus, the son whom Circe bore to him. Similarly the Cyprian Lays by Stasinus of Cyprus, ascribed by others to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or Halicarnassus, was intro ductory to the Iliad; the Aethiopis and the Sack of Troy, by Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad, by Lesches of Mytilene, were supplementary to it. These and many other names of lost epics—some taken also from the Theban myths (Tliebais, Epi goni, Oedipodea)—serve to show how prolific were the followers of Homer (see CYCLE).
The epic poetry of Ionia celebrated the great deeds of heroes in the old wars. But in Greece proper there arose another school of epic, which busied itself with religious lore and ethical pre cepts, especially in relation to the rural life of Boeotia. This school is represented by the name of Hesiod. The legend spoke of him as vanquishing Homer in a poetical contest of Chalcis in Euboea; and it expresses the fact that, to the old Greek mind, these two names stood for two contrasted epic types. He is conjecturally placed about 850-80o B.C.; but some would refer him to the early part of the 7th century B.C. His home was at Ascra, a village in a valley under Helicon, whither his father had migrated from Cyme in Aeolis on the coast of Asia Minor. In Hesiod's Works and Days we have the earliest example of a didactic poem. The seasons and the labours of the Boeotian farmer's year are followed by a list of the days which are lucky or unlucky for work. The Theogony, or "Origin of the Gods," describes first how the visible order of nature arose out of chaos; next, how the gods were born. Though it never possessed the character of a sacred book, it remained a standard authority on the genealogies of the gods. So far as a corrupt and confused text warrants a judgment, the poet was piecing together—not always intelligently—the fragments of a very old cosmogonic system, using for this purpose both the hymns preserved in the temples and the myths which lived in folklore. A school of Hesiodic poets grew up, whose works included several long narra tive poems, such as the 'Holm., including the Wooers of Helen (whereof a fragment has been recovered from Egypt) and others. The Shield of Heracles is, at least in form, an episode of the 'Hoiat ; it is 48o lines long and much influenced by Iliad xviii. (the Arms of Achilles). A religious purpose was essentially char acteristic of the Hesiodic school. Its poets treated the old legends as relics of a sacred history, and not merely, in the Ionian man ner, as subjects of idealizing art. Such titles as the Maxims of Cheiron and the Lay of Melampus, the seer—lost poems of the Hesiodic school—illustrate its ethical and its mystic tendencies.
The Homeric Hymns are a collection of pieces, some of them very short, in hexameter verse. Their traditional title is— Hymns or Preludes of Homer and the Homeridai. The second of the alternative designations is the true one. The pieces are not "hymns" used in formal worship, but "preludes" or prefatory addresses (rpooLµLa) with which the rhapsodists ushered in their recitations of epic poetry. The "prelude" might be addressed to the presiding god of the festival, or to any local deity whom the reciter wished to honour. The pieces (of which there are 33) range in date perhaps from 75o to 50o B.C. (though some authorities assign dates as late as the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. see ed. by Sikes and Allen, e.g. p. 228), and it is probable that the collection was formed in Attica, for the use of rhapsodists. The style is an imitation of Homer's, in a much more recent form of Greek, but there are also several traces of the Hesiodic or Boe otian school. The principal "hymns" are (r) to Apollo (generally treated as two or more hymns combined in one) ; (2) to Hermes; (3) to Aphrodite; and (4) to Demeter. The hymn to Apollo, quoted by Thucydides (iii. io4) as Homer's, is of peculiar interest on account of the lines describing the Ionian festival at Delos. Two celebrated pieces of a sportive kind passed under Homer's name. The lost Margites—a comic poem on one "who knew many things but knew them all badly"—is regarded by Aristotle as the earliest germ of comedy, and was possibly as old as 70o B.C. Only a few lines remain. The Batracho(myo)machia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice is of highly uncertain date'.
(b) Elegiac poetry. Homer and his Ionian successors had used the hexameter as a vehicle for elevated narrative of adven ture; the Hesiodic school had found another use for it, namely serious didactic works, such as in a later age were generally set forth in prose, a medium not then recognized as a literary form. But all this while a political change had been operating. Greece had passed from the empire of Agamemnon which Homer de scribed to independent kingdoms and baronies; these in turn gave place to oligarchies, and by the seventh century this system in turn was showing clear signs of decay. Hence the individual, the private citizen, was assuming daily greater relative impor tance. Yet it seems to have been felt that so noble a measure as Homeric or even Hesiodic verse was hardly suitable for the expression of his sentiments; a lighter form, the elegiac couplet (q.v.) was invented, and rapidly became the medium for all manner of compositions, including dirges, love-songs, recruiting songs, and what we should call essays suitable for prose. The new medium became very popular and spread far beyond the Ionian race, as witness the Megarian Theognis (sixth century), who used it for a long series of reflections on personal, ethical and political matters, still extant, the Athenian Solon (somewhat earlier, about 639-559), and Tyrtaeus (seventh century), a man of uncertain nationality, who became the interpreter of con 'Some attribute it, as well as the Margites, to Pigres of Halicarnassus, the supposed brother of the Carian queen Artemisia, who fought on the side of Xerxes at the battle of Salamis.
temporary Spartan aspirations. The name elegos is of uncertain origin, but certainly the first elegists were Ionians (Callinus of Ephesus, first half of the seventh century, is the earliest known). It never quite died out, and after being rather less in favour during the next period of literature, it revived in the Alexandrian epoch. An important offshoot is the epigram, for which it is the favourite, although never the only, metre (cf. ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL).
In the fifth century we find three great lyric poets, all pro fessional, writing to order and for pay, all using a dialect more or less Doric, and all writing poems to be sung by choirs, in elaborate metres, arranged generally on the principle of strophe, antistrophe, and epode (see STROPHE) ; yet none of them a Dorian by nationality. Simonides of Ceos was an Ionian, and lived part of his life at Athens; his nephew was Bacchylides, of whose pretty and neat writings Egypt has provided us with a fairly large sample ; and the greatest of them all was Pindar (Pindaros) of Thebes, who claimed Dorian descent, but was a thorough Boeotian. The fragments which alone remain of the first (556-468) show that he lacked neither power, sweetness, nor variety; he did not confine himself to lyric, for several of the finest epigrams in all Greek are of his writing. Pindar ( 518–c. is represented for us by his epinikian odes, i.e., choral songs in celebration of victories at the various great games, and by large fragments of other forms of ode, as parthenia, hymns, dirges and dithyrambs. All, especially the first, are marked by an extraordinary richness of expression, made extremely difficult for us by the use not only of a somewhat artificial dialect but of a highly conventional style, full of bold and striking metaphors, often very strange to our taste. Compared with him, Bacchylides gives the impression of writing more by rule than Ly inspiration, and of already presenting traces of degeneration ; that lyric poetry did decline markedly is clear from what we have left of Timotheus of Miletus (died 357), whose Persae is a model of designed obscurity, forced would-be elevation of style, and gen eral bad taste.
(f) Prose. It remains only to say that the first use of prose as a literary medium is found among the logographi (q.v.) and philosophers of Ionia; and that their influence was sufficient to make Ionic continue as the recognized medium for historical composition and for some kinds of scientific treatise (notably medical; it is the language of the whole Hippocratic corpus) for a considerable time.
2. ATTIC LITERATURE (a) Tragedy. It had thus become the established convention that works of a conversational tone should be in Ionic, and in iambics, and that choral odes should be in Doric. A form of literature arose which, with modifications, combined these tra ditions and made a new means of expression. This was Tragedy, the first great contribution of Athens to literature. Arising out of the worship of Dionysus, although the details are very obscure, it developed, traditionally under Thespis in the sixth century, into a series of narrative odes relating to the history of that god, or of other divine and heroic figures, interspersed with episodes, as they were called, in which an actor represented some adventure by means of narrative or of dialogue with the chorus. After becoming somewhat more of a regular drama under Phrynichus, Pratinas, and Choerilus, it passed into the hands of Aeschylus (524-456), who became the real founder of tragedy by introduc ing a second actor, and thus rendering the dialogue independent of the chorus. At the same time the choral song—hitherto the principal part of the performance—became subordinate to the dialogue ; and drama was mature. Aeschylus is also said to have made various improvements of detail in costume and the like; the system of the "trilogy" and the "tetralogy" is further ascribed to him,—the "trilogy" being properly a series of three tragedies connected in subject, such as the Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenides, which together form the Oresteia, or Story of Orestes. The "tetralogy" is such a triad with a "satyric drama" added— that is, a drama in which satyrs (q.v.) formed the chorus. The fragmentary Ichneutae of Sophocles and the Cyclops of Euripides are the only extant specimens of a satyric drama. In the seven tragedies which alone remain of the 70 which Aeschylus is said to have composed, besides the grandeur, at times rugged and obscure, of the whole, there is a strain of speculative thought markedly theological in tone. Sophocles, who was born some 3o years after Aeschylus, is the most perfect artist of the ancient drama. No one before or after him gave to Greek tragedy so high a degree of ideal beauty, or appreciated so finely the possi bilities and the limitations of its sphere. He excels especially in drawing character; his Antigone, his Ajax, his Oedipus—indeed, all the chief persons of his dramas—are typical studies in the great primary emotions of human nature. He gave a freer scope to tragic dialogue by adding a third actor; and in one of his later plays, the Oedipus at Colonus, a fourth actor is required. From the time when he won the tragic prize against Aeschylus in 468 to his death in 405 B.C. he was the favourite dramatist of Athens. Euripides was but some 15 years younger than Sophocles ; but when he entered on his poetical career, the old inspirations of tragedy were already failing. Euripides marks a period of transi tion in the drama, and is, in fact, a mediator between the classical and the romantic. He was imbued with the new intellectual scepticism of the day; and the speculative views which were conflicting in his own mind are reflected in his plays. He had much picturesque and pathetic power; he was a master of ex pression ; and he shows ingenuity in devising fresh resources for tragedy—especially in the development of a type of plot alien to that of New Comedy (see below), exemplified in his Ion, which turns on the recognition of a long-lost son under exciting and romantic circumstances. This, and his fondness for characters drawn from everyday life, were noted by ancient critics as well as by moderns; the latter is a commonplace in Aristophanes, the former insisted upon in the recently discovered Life of Euripides by Satyrus (3rd century B.c.). All the great tragic poets of Attica were remarkably prolific. Aeschylus was the reputed author of 7o tragedies, Sophocles of 113, Euripides of 92; and there were others whose productiveness was equally great.
(b) Comedy. Comedy also arose out of the worship of Dionysus (its name is derived from e&i os, see DRAMA), though again the details are obscure. The Dorians perhaps, first added dialogue to the comic chorus. Susarion, a Dorian of Megara, exhibited, about 58o B.e., pieces of the kind known as "Megarian farces." Epicharmus of Cos (who settled at Syracuse) gave literary form to the Doric farce, and treated in burlesque style the stories of gods and heroes, and subjects taken from everyday life. His Syracusan contemporary Sophron (c. 450) was a famous writer of mimes, chiefly scenes from low-class life. The most artistic form of comedy seems, however, to have been developed in Attica. The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and Eupolis; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous succession of comic dramatists, amongst them Plato Comicus, the author of 28 comedies, political satires and parodies after the style of the Middle Comedy. Aristophanes came forward as a comic poet in 427 B.C., and retained his popularity for about 4o years. He presents a perhaps unique union of bold fancy, exquisite humour, critical acumen and lyrical power. His II extant comedies may be divided into three groups, according as the licence of political satire becomes more and more restricted. In the Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps and Peace (425-421) the poet uses unrestrained freedom. In the Birds, Lysistrata, Thesmophoria zusae and Frogs (414-405) a greater reserve may be perceived.
Lastly, in the Ecclesiazusae and the Plutus (392-388) personal satire is almost wholly avoided. The same general tendency continued. The so-called "Middle Comedy" (39o-32o) repre sents the transition from the Old Comedy, or political satire, to satire of a literary or social nature ; its chief writers were Anti phanes of Athens and Alexis of Thurii. The "New Comedy" (3 2o-2 5o) resembled the modern "comedy of manners." Its chief representative was Menander (342-291), the author of 105 comedies. Fragments have been discovered of seven of these, and in the case of at least three, Epitrepontes (The Arbi tration), Perikeiromene (The Eton Crop) and Samia (The Girl from Samos), the plot can be fairly well made out. The chief characters are respectable middle-class Athenians; there are no outstandingly heroic figures and no utter villains. The story is of a kind which was then fairly new, but afterwards became exceedingly hackneyed, later comedians and also novelists copying Attic New Comedy ad nauseam. The Epitrepontes will serve as a sample. Two country fellows have got possession of an ex posed infant and quarrel as to who shall have the jewelry found with it. They refer the dispute to an old gentleman, Smicrines (Mr. Smallways), who decides it for them. Smicrines has a daughter, Pamphile (Miss Lovely), recently married to a young Athenian, Charisius (Mr. Charming), who, to his horror, dis covers that his wife has already borne a child. He therefore seeks consolation from a woman of the town, Habrotonon (Love at-ease). Onesimus (Helpful, Charisius's slave) now finds, in the possession of one of the rustics, a ring belonging to his master, which had been lost in an encounter with an unknown girl at a nocturnal festival. After some complications, it turns out that the child is Pamphile's and that Charisius is the father; the missing end of the play no doubt showed a general recon ciliation.
The merit of such a piece lies in the just, though slight, draw ing of character, and in a certain rather faded elegance of style. Menander was hugely admired in antiquity, but he had neither the joyous exuberance of Aristophanes nor the vigour of his own Latin imitators (see LATIN LITERATURE). So far from Terence being dimidiatus Menander, it is rather the Athenian who is dimidiatus Terentius. Other prominent writers of this class were Diphilus, Philemon, Posidippus and Apollodorus of Carystus. About 33o B.C. Rhinthon of Tarentum revived the old Doric farce in his Hilarotragoediae or travesties of tragic stories. These suc cessive periods cannot be sharply or precisely marked off. The change which gradually passed over the comic drama was simply the reflection of the change which passed over the political and social life of Athens. The Old Comedy, as we see it in the earlier plays of Aristophanes, was probably the most powerful engine of public criticism that has ever existed in any community. Un sparing personality was its essence. The comic poet used this recognized right on an occasion at once festive and sacred, in a society where every man of any note was known by name and sight to the rest. (See DRAMA: Greek.) (c) Historical Prose. It has already been said that prose began in Ionia; hence we find that the first great historical writer, a Dorian by birth and strongly pro-Athenian in sentiment, writes in Ionian. Herodotus of Halicarnassus set out to make an "en quiry" (l rropin) into the great wars between Greece and Persia, and incidentally into the events leading up to that struggle, and the men and manners of the countries directly or indirectly involved. To this task he brought a marvellous gift of lively narrative, a critical mind, tempered by respect for all forms of religion and relish for a good story (whence two characteristic turns of expression, a refusal to go any further with his narrative lest he trespass on a 'Epos Xoyos, or legend which should properly be told only to the initiates in some mystery-cult ; and the telling in full of a tale which he says he himself does not believe), and an interest in all things human which makes him the father, not only of history, but of anthropology. To this must be added a knowledge of the many theories of history, geography, and the development of religious cult then prevalent. The result is a work of inexhaustible interest, generally fully reliable when the author speaks from his own knowledge, and always delightful.
Herodotus was born in 484 B.C. ; and his history was probably not completed before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War B.e.). As might be expected, he owes much of his technique and not a little of his subject matter to earlier writers, notably Hecataeus ; (see LOGOGRAPHI) ; but when we turn to the larger aspects of his work, Herodotus stands forth as an artist whose conception and whose method were his own. His history has an epic unity. Various as are the subordinate parts, the action nar rated is one, great and complete ; and the unity is due to this, that Herodotus refers all events of human history to the principle of divine Nemesis. His weaknesses are lack of insight into polit ical and strategic cause and effect, and a lack of interest in the history of political institutions. Both his strength and his weak ness are seen most clearly when he is contrasted with that other historian who was strictly his contemporary and who yet seems divided from him by centuries.
Thucydides was only thirteen years younger than Herodotus; but the intellectual space between the men is so great that they seem to belong to different ages. Herodotus is the last great Ionian, Thucydides the first great Attic prose writer. Herodotus is the first artist in historical writing; Thucydides is artist and thinker as well. Herodotus interweaves two threads of causation —human agency, represented by the good or bad qualities of men, and divine agency, represented by the vigilance of the gods on behalf of justice. Thucydides concentrates his attention on the human agency (without, however, denying the other), and strives to trace its exact course. Hence, while the older historian may be said to write a prose epic, the younger and greater, without sacrificing an iota of exactness and truth, has all the concentrated interest of a drama. The subject of Thucydides is the Peloponnesian War. In resolving to write its history, he was moved, he says, by these considerations. It was probably the greatest movement which had ever affected Hellas collectively. It was possible for him as a contemporary to record it with approximate accuracy. And this record was likely to have a general value, over and above its particular interest as a record, seeing that the political future was likely to resemble the political past. This is what Thucydides means when he calls his work "a possession for ever." The speeches which he ascribes to the persons of the history are, as regards form, his own essays in rhetoric of the school to which Antiphon belongs. As regards matter, they are always so far dramatic that the thoughts and sentiments are such as he conceived possible for the supposed speaker. They thus take the place of the comment which a modern historian would make in his own person, and serve as the chorus to his tragedy. Xenophon of Athens 354) has not the grasp either of the dramatist or of the philosopher. His work does not possess the higher unity either of art or of science. The true distinction of Xenophon consists in his thorough combination of the practical with the literary character. He was an accomplished soldier, who had done and seen much. He was also a good writer, who could make a story both clear and lively. But the several parts of the story are not grouped around any central idea, such as a divine Nemesis is for Herodotus, or such as Thucydides finds in the nature of political man. The seven books of the Hellenica form a supplement to the history of Thucydides, beginning in 411 and going down to 362 B.C. The chief blot on the Hellenica is the author's partiality to Sparta, and in particular to Agesilaus. Some of the greatest achieve ments of Epameinondas and Pelopidas are passed over in silence. On the whole, Xenophon is perhaps seen at his best in his narra tive of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand—a subject which exactly suits him. The Education of Cyrus is our earliest his torical romance, and that is its chief interest. The Recollections of Socrates fail lamentably to reveal a character which Xenophon admired but never understood ; their historical value has been much exaggerated. In his minor pieces on various subjects Xenophon appears as the earliest essayist. It may be noted that one of the essays erroneously ascribed to him—that On the Athenian Polity—is probably the oldest specimen in existence of literary Attic prose.
His contemporaries Ctesias of Cnidus and Philistus of Syracuse wrote histories of Persia and Sicily. In the second half of the 4th century a number of histories were compiled by literary men of little practical knowledge, who had been trained in the rhetorical schools. Such were Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios, both pupils of Isocrates; and the writers of Attliides (chronicles of Attic history), the chief of whom were Androtion and Philochorus. Timaeus of Tauromenium was the author of a great work on Sicily, and introduced the system of reckoning by Olympiads.
(d) Oratory. The steps by which an Attic prose style was developed, and the principal forms which it assumed, can be traced most clearly in the Attic orators. Every Athenian citizen who aspired to take part in the affairs of the city, or even to be qualified for self-defence before a law-court, required to have some degree of skill in public speaking ; and an Athenian audience looked upon public debate, whether political or forensic, as a competitive trial of proficiency in a fine art. Hence the speaker, no less than the writer, was necessarily a student of finished expression; and oratory had a more direct influence on the gen eral structure of literary prose than has ever perhaps been the case elsewhere. A systematic rhetoric took its rise in Sicily, where Corax of Syracuse (466 B.c.) devised his Art of Words to assist those who were pleading before the law-courts ; and it was brought to Athens by his disciple Tisias. The teaching of the Sophists, again, directed attention to grammar and logic; and Gorgias of Leontini gave an impulse at Athens to the taste for elaborate rhetorical brilliancy.
Antiphon represents the earliest, and what has been called the grand, style of Attic prose; its chief characteristics are a grave, dignified movement, a frequent emphasis on verbal contrasts, and a certain austere elevation. The interest of Andocides is mainly historical; but he has graphic power. Lysias, the repre sentative of the "plain style," breaks through the rigid man nerism of the elder school, and uses the language of daily life with an ease and grace which though the result of study, do not betray their art. He is, in his own way, the canon of an Attic style; and his speeches written for others, exhibit also a high degree of dramatic skill. Isocrates, whose manner may be regarded as intermediate between that of Antiphon and that of Lysias, wrote for readers rather than for hearers. The type of literary prose which he founded is distinguished by ample periods, by studied smoothness and by the temperate use of rhetorical ornament. From the middle of the 4th century B.C. the Isocratic style of prose became general in Greek literature. The speeches of Isaeus in will-cases are interesting,—apart from their bearing on Attic life,—because in them we see, as Dionysius says, "the seeds and the beginnings" of that technical mastery in rhetorical argument which Demosthenes carries to perfection. Isaeus has also, in a degree, some of the qualities of Lysias. Demosthenes excels all other orators not only in power but in variety; his political speeches, his orations in public or private causes, show his consummate and versatile command over all the resources of the language. In him the development of Attic prose is completed, and the best elements in each of its earlier phases are united. The modern world can more easily appreciate Demos thenes as a great natural orator than as an elaborate artist. But, in order to apprehend his place in the history of Attic prose, we must remember that the ancients felt him to be both; and that he was even reproached by detractors with excessive study of effect. Aeschines is the most theatrical of the Greek orators; he is vehement, and of ten brilliant, but seldom persuasive. Hyper eides was, after Demosthenes, probably the most effective ; he had much of the grace of Lysias, but also a wit, a fire and a pathos which were his own. Portions of six of his speeches, found in Egypt between 1847 and 18go, are extant. The one oration of Lycurgus which remains to us is earnest and stately, reminding us both of Antiphon and of Isocrates. Deinarchus was merely a bad imitator of Demosthenes. There seems more reason to regret that Demades is not represented by larger frag ments. The decline of Attic oratory may be dated from De metrius of Phalerum (318 B.c.) , the pupil of Aristotle. He forms a connecting link between Athens and Alexandria, where he found refuge after his downfall and promoted the foundation of the famous library.
(e) Philosophical Prose. The 5th and 4th centuries saw the abandonment of verse (still used by Parmenides) as a medium for serious philosophic works, and the development, at Athens, of a style and vocabulary suited to philosophy. The greatest name is that of Plato. The literary genius shown in his dialogues is many-sided : it includes dramatic power, remarkable skill in parody, a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposi tion, where the argument rises into the higher regions of dis cussion, Plato's prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring— never florid or sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato's later works, notably the Laws, we can perceive the in fluence of Isocrates on his style. Aristotle's influence on the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been con siderable if his Rhetoric had been published while Attic oratory had still a vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other depart ments of mental effort, it was Aristotle's lot to set in order what the Greek intellect had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. Of his own style, which Cicero praises, we can hardly judge, for the surviving works are rather of the nature of lecture notes than of finished literary performances. Accurate and showing full mastery of an elaborate technical vocabulary, they are often condensed to the point of obscurity or so free of ornament as to be cold and dry. Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively Characters, the prototypes of such sketches in English literature as those of Hall, Overbury and Earle.
3. HELLENISTIC LITERATURE The intensely active life of the independent Greek city states was plainly a most important factor in their literature and art. Once the individual Greek ceased to be a relatively important unit of a small self-governing community, his inspiration, although not his technical skill, dwindled, and no more works of the very first order were produced after the conquest of Greece by Philip II. of Macedon. Then came Alexander's conquests ; Greek civ ilization was diffused over Asia and the East by means of Greek colonies in which Asiatic and Greek elements were mingled. The life of such settlements, under the monarchies into which Alex ander's empire broke up, could not be animated by the spirit of the Greek commonwealths in the old days of political free dom. But the externals of Greek life were there—the temples, the statues, the theatres, the porticos. Ceremonies and festivals were conducted in the Greek manner. In private life Greek usages prevailed. Greek was the language most used ; Greek books were in demand. The mixture of races would always in some measure distinguish even the outward life of such a com munity from that of a pure Greek state; and the facility with which Greek civilization was adopted would vary in different places. Syria, for example, was rapidly and completely Hellen ized; Judaea resisted the process to the last. In Egypt a Greek aristocracy of office, birth and intellect existed side by side with a distinct native life. But, viewed in its broadest aspect, this new civilization may be called Hellenism. Hellenism (q.v.) means the adoption of Hellenic ways; and it is properly applied to a civilization, generally Hellenic in external things, pervading peo ple not necessarily or exclusively Hellenic by race. What the Hellenic literature was to Hellas, that the Hellenistic literature was to Hellenism. The literature of Hellenism has the Hellenic form without the Hellenic soul. A great writer is always some thing more than an individual ; thus Sophocles may be said to embody Periclean Athens, Virgil, Augustan Rome, Shakespeare, Elizabethan England. But the Hellenistic writers, subjects of empires that were none of their own creation, had no longer a community which they could symbolize.
This is not, however, to say that Hellenistic literature has no interest or value. On the contrary, there has perhaps never been a time when so many respectable works of the second class were produced, both in verse and in prose, and the study of the writers from about 30o B.C. onwards is full of variety and even fascination. There were many who had something to say, and very many who studied how best to say it, a process which gave rise to a considerable amount of good criticism but also to a too exclusive cult of mere outward form.
The extravagances of Asianism brought about a reaction, how ever, and there grew up a different school of oratory in Rhodes, which claimed to go back to Aeschines, that orator having retired there after his defeat by Demosthenes. It combined with the periodic structure of Attic prose much of the Asianic ornament, used in a less excessive fashion. That it had real merit is apparent from the fact that in a later age Cicero and Caesar were pupils of a rhetorician of this school, Apollonius Molon (Cicero, Brutus, 312, 316; Suetonius, Divus Julius, 4, 1) .
The later, or Graeco-Roman period of Hellenistic literature may be dated from the Roman subjugation of Greece. Rome now gradually became the point to which the greatest workers in every kind were drawn. Greek literature had already made a home there before the close of the 2nd century B.C. Sulla brought a Greek library from Athens to Rome. Such men as Cicero and Atticus were indefatigable collectors and readers of Greek books. The power of speaking and writing the Greek language became an indispensable accomplishment for highly educated Romans, till in the third century A.D. it nearly drove out Latin as a literary medium. Rome became more and more the rival of Alexandria, not only as possessing great libraries, but also as a seat of learning at which Greek men of letters found appreciation and encourage ment. Greek poetry, especially in its higher forms, rhetoric and literary criticism, history and philosophy, were all cultivated by Greek writers at Rome.
The first part of the Graeco-Roman period may be defined as extending from 146 B.C. to the close of the Roman republic. At its commencement stands the name of one who had more real affinity than any of his contemporaries with the great writers of old Athens, and who, at the same time, saw most clearly how the empire of the world was passing to Rome. The subject of Polybius (c. 205-120) was the history of Roman conquest from 264 to 146 B.C. His style, plain and straightforward, proclaims him a scientist rather than a rhetorician. But the distinction of Polybius is that he is the last Greek writer who in some measure retains the spirit of the old citizen-life. He chose his subject with a motive akin to that which prompted the history of Thucy dides—namely, because, as a Greek citizen, he felt intensely the political importance of those wars which had given Rome the mastery of the world. The chief historical work which the following century produced—the Universal History of Diodorus Siculus (fl. c. 5o B.c.)—resembled that of Polybius in recognizing Rome as the political centre of the earth; but Diodorus is a mere compiler, useful because he draws on older works now lost, but often exceedingly dull.
In the manifold prose work of this period, four principal departments may be distinguished. (I) History, with Biography, and Geography. History is represented by Dionysius of Hali carnassus—also memorable for his criticisms on the orators and his effort to revive a true standard of Attic prose—by Cassius Dio, Josephus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Eusebius and Zosinsus. In biography, the foremost names are Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius and Philostratus ; in geography, Hipparchus of Nicaea, Strabo, Ptolemy and Pausanias. (2) Erudition and Science. Under this head may be mentioned such as the lexicon of Julius Pollux, and the lost works drawn upon by Harpocration and Hesychius, Hephaestion's treatise on metre, and Herodian's system of ac centuation ; the commentaries of Galen on Plato and on Hippo crates; the learned miscellanies of Athenaeus, Aelian and Sto baeus ; and the Stratagems of Polyaenus. (3) Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. The most popular writers on the theory of rhetoric were Hermagoras, Hermogenes, Aphthonius and Cassius Longinus—the last the reputed author of the essay On Sublimity. Among the most renowned teachers of rhetoric—now distinctively called "Sophists," or rhetoricians—were Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aris tides, Themistius, Himerius, Herodes Atticus and Libanius. Akin to the rhetorical exercises were various forms of ornamental or imaginative prose—dialogues, letters, essays or novels. Lucian, in his dialogues, exhibits more of the classical style and of the classical spirit than any writer of the later age; he has also a re markable affinity with the tone of modern satire, as in Swift or Voltaire. The emperor Julian was the author both of orations and of satirical pieces.
Recent discoveries have thrown more light on the history of the Greek novel, a genre which begins about a hundred years before our era with the Milesian Tales of Aristeides, and con tinues down to early mediaeval times with the works of such writers as Chariton, Achilles Tatius, Longus, Heliodorus, and others. In all of these, the plot is much the same ; a pair of lovers are separated or for some reason unable to marry, until, after all manner of extraordinary adventures, often suggestive of a cinematograph film, they are made happy. New Comedy is one of the principal sources for characters and part at least of the plot ; but the influence of Oriental romances may reasonably be inferred. Some Christian novels of an edifying type were written; the most famous is the Recognitions falsely ascribed to Clement of Rome, which survives in a Latin translation and is a strange mixture of theology, thaumaturgy, and the re-union of long-lost relatives. The same age gave birth to large collections of the fictitious letters of famous historical and literary charac ters, as Phalaris, Themistocles, Hippocrates, Socrates, Euripides and many others, besides letters from persons wholly imaginary, as some of Alciphron's and all those of Aelian. New Comedy again, and occasionally pastoral poetry, was drawn upon for inci dents and language. (4) Philosophy is represented chiefly by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in both of whom the Stoic ele ment is the prevailing one ; by the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus ; and by Proclus, of that eclectic school which arose at Athens in the 5th century A.D.
The Greek poetry of this period presents no work of high merit. Babrius versified the Aesopic Fables; the two Oppiani wrote didactic poems on fishing and hunting ; Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus made elaborate essays in epic verse ; and Orphism produced some poems and hymns. The so-called Sibyl line Oracles, in hexameter verse, range in date from about 17o B.C. to A.D. 700. By far the most pleasing compositions in verse which have come to us from this age are some of the short poems in the Greek Anthology.
The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid and nearly continuous. Christianity had now learned from it all that it was willing to learn, and a large Chris tian literature existed, estranged from the old ideals. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act had at least a sym bolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another. But it is practically convenient to use such landmarks.
The above sketch represents our knowledge at the time of writ ing. But the study of Greek literature is continually advancing, partly by new discoveries, partly by re-consideration of the old ones. To speak of the former only, within the last generation we have found, among Egyptian rubbish-heaps, besides a large number of fragmentary mss. of authors already known, several poems of Bacchylides, of whom previously we knew practically nothing; much of Pindar; the Constitution of Athens (q.v.), generally ascribed to Aristotle; the lchneutai of Sophocles, bat tered, indeed, but in large part intelligible; a great part of the Hypsipyle of Euripides; the plays of Menander already men tioned ; the Mimes of Herodas ; a considerable fragment of a historian, not certainly identified, of the fourth century B.C. (the "Oxyrhynchus Historian") , and very numerous smaller fragments of many authors from Hesiod down. These are the more im portant literary discoveries; in addition, we have many scraps of popular compositions, songs, farces of the Alexandrian music halls, and the like, and thousands of non-literary documents, as private letters, official correspondence, records and accounts, both public and private, and the like. Herculaneum long ago yielded a number of badly-charred but not wholly illegible rolls, the private library of some one interested in the later Epicurean philosophy; the present excavations (1928) may at any moment produce more books, perhaps containing lost works of great importance. Inscriptions, moreover, are constantly being dis covered, and have already furnished us with several hymns and paeans, the compendium of Epicureanism known as the Testa ment of Diogenes of Oenoanda, and much other interesting information, throwing often a welcome light on the development of literature or philosophy. Hence a final history of the subject cannot be written, so long as there is still work of exploration to do; and even supposing that all is accomplished, and the last pos sible scrap of material found and commented upon, still the productions of so great and fertile a genius as that of Greece would need re-interpretation for each succeeding century.