THE LITERATURE OF GREECE Commencing with Homer, ancient Greek literature may be considered as extending down to Justinian (A.D. 527), thus cover ing a period of something like 14 centuries. Within this period it is usual to distinguish (1) the Classical period extending from Homer to the death of Alexander (3 23 B.c. ), (2) the Alexandrine period from 323 B.C.—A.D. 100, (3) the Post-Alexandrine period A.D. 100-529. The Byzantine period from 529 to the capture of Constantinople by the Turks produced no Greek literature of first-rate importance.
The unique feature of Greek literature and one which lends it a unique interest, in addition to its intrinsic merit, is its original ity. The Greeks invented all the great types of literature alike in poetry and in prose. Thus epic, lyric, elegy, tragedy, comedy in poetry; history, rhetoric, philosophy in prose—were all alike, as the very names declare, the invention of this extraordinarily gifted people. A people whose literature is based upon f oreign models may devote themselves to the cultivation of the different types in any order of succession, or may cultivate the several types in the same age with equal enthusiasm. But the Greeks, having no models, discovered and developed the different forms in logical succession, one being evolved from the other according to the spiritual and social impulses of the time. Moreover, when any one form was developed to its full perfection, they seem to have passed on to another. Hence it is that in Greek litera ture more than in any other we can speak of a given age as the age, not of this individual writer or of that, but as the age of a particular form of literature.
There is evidence enough in these poems that they are themselves not primitive in the sense of being a first pioneer effort in the writing of epic. The recurrent epithets and conventional for mulae, nay, the very metre in which they are written, imply a long ancestry of poetic practice and experiment. What makes these two epics unique among the epics of all literature is that on the one hand they are sufficiently near the dawn of literature to have yet upon them the dew of the morning, to have all the directness and simplicity and naivete which we associate with primitive poetry ; and on the other hand they belong to a stage of development so far advanced as to have outlived the imper fection of form, and the triviality or vulgarity of thought which, in early poetry, are apt to offend the cultured reader. Moreover, they have developed at once a language and a metre--from what elements and by what stages developed we do not here enquire— which together constitute a vehicle for narrative epic such as no other people have ever possessed. And because of this union of a language uniquely suited to the metre, and a metre uniquely suited to the language, the union has resisted divorce. Down to the latest times, the same language and the same metre continued to be the one medium of Greek epic. The Romans borrowed the metre, but in Roman hands its character is entirely changed, and whatever other merits Roman epic may possess, they are assuredly quite other than the merits of Homeric epic. Attempts to transplant the hexameter (q.v.) into English were—for reasons which cannot be here elaborated—foredoomed to failure. And what has be come the favourite medium for epic in English, viz., blank verse, suffers in comparison with the Homeric hexameter much in the same way as the Roman hexameter does in comparison with the Greek, a lack of lightness and mobility : defects which both in Roman epic and in English, find their compensation in certain other qualities which are, however, of value only from the point of view of poetry in general, assuredly not from the point of view of epic poetry in particular.
Alongside the Homeric type of Epos, i.e., the epic of chivalry, which had for its subject the story of war and adventure in the heroic age, the i XEa avopc7v of Iliad, ix. 189, etc., the Greeks early developed quite another type of Epos, which had for its business to inculcate the traditional wisdom of the race. As Hesiod, the earliest of the didactic poets, belongs roughly to the Homeric age—in Greek tradition Homer and Hesiod are regu larly coupled together and regarded as contemporaries : Herod ii. 53; Plato, Rep. 363 A; 377 D; 599 D; Aristoph., Ran. 1,033 seq. —he naturally chose for his didactic poems the Homeric hexam eter. Two didactic poems are ascribed to Hesiod—the Theogony and the Works and Days. True to Greek custom the hexameter remained down to the latest times the recognized medium for didactic poetry. The Theogony of Hesiod may be regarded as the forerunner of the philosophical poems bearing the title IIEpi (UQEon (On Nature), of which three were especially notable : (I) that of Xenophanes of Colophon, the founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, in the second half of the 6th century, whose protest against the unworthy ideas of Homer and Hesiod regard ing the gods is well known: ("Homer and Hesiod ascribed to the gods everything that men think scandalous and shameful. . . . They recounted very many wrongful acts of the gods—theft, fornication and deception of each other.") ; (2) Parmenides of Elea, the most distinguished of the Eleatics (c. 504 B.c.) ; (3) Empedocles of Acragas (born c. 495 B.c.), whose poem was the direct model of the De Reruns Natura of Lucretius (Lucret. I. 726 sqq.). On the other hand Hesiod's Works and Days was the prototype of a long series of poems of the practical type, including the Theriaca and Alexiphar maca of Nicander of Colophon, the Phaenosnena of Aratus, the Halieutica of Oppian the Cilician, the Cynegetica, attributed to Oppian, but the work of a later poet from Apameia in Syria—all of which are extant, and of the no longer extant Halieutica of Caecalus, Numenius, Pancrates, Poseidonius, as well as of the Georgics of Virgil, the Cynegetica of Grattius and Nemesianus in Latin.
To the epic age succeeds that of iambus and elegy. Iambus, as a literary form, although it had a long life, from Semonides of Amorgos (c. 625 B.c.) to Callimachus and Herondas in Alexan drine times, never achieved an important independent existence. The reason is sufficiently obvious. The iambus—a short syllable followed by a long (see IAMBIC)—as the chief component of or dinary prose speech is not of itself adequate to support an inde pendent type of poetry. It is true that it does so in modern lit erature, as for example in English. But the mere name "blank verse" by which the iambic metre is usually described practically admits that "blank verse" differs from ordinary prose in either one of two ways. Either it betrays its poetic intention by an exactness of rhythm which is repugnant to prose, i.e., by a rhythm the recurrences of which produce metre, or by the quite adventi tious use of rhymed endings, "the invention," as Milton says, "of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame metre." But in any case the iambus as an independent form never attained first-rate importance in early times, nor does its recrudescence in Alexandrine times in any way suggest that it could ever be of great importance by itself. As we shall immediately see, in con junction with lyric metres in tragedy and comedy it was able to find a place which could not have been taken either by the epic hexameter or by any other metre.
Elegy, on the other hand, consisting of alternate hexameters and pentameters (qq.v.) is the nearest approximation to epic. But there does not seem ever to have been the least danger in Greek of confusing the function of elegy with that of epic. The name EXEyos, EXEyf .ov, iXEyEia, EXEyEia is of quite uncertain origin, but everything tends to show that from the first it was essentially of a plaintive character, being regularly accompanied not by the lyre, the instrument of mirth, but by the flute, the instrument of mourning (EAEyoc of ran avXov kh6 i€vo 6pi)voc, Didymus ap. schol. Aristoph., Av. 7 ; Pausan. x. 7.5 ; cf. Aesch., Ag. 990, Eumen. 332; Soph., Tr. 64o sqq.; Eurip., Hel. 85, Iph. Taur. 146, 1091; Ovid, Ep. xv. 7, Amor. iii. 9.3 ; Hor. c. i. 33.2). Who invented the form is not known (Hor. A.P. 77) .
Quintilian, curiously enough, regards Callimachus as the chief elegiac poet, and Philetas of Cos as the second (x.1.58), and Propertius regards these two poets as his masters (v.1. I) . In any case the Greeks, at a very early period, extended the range of elegy far beyond the dirge or lament to poems of war and of traditional wisdom. But they did not, like Ovid, use the elegiac metre as practically a substitute for the epic hexameter. The text of Theognis (of Nisaean Megara, c. 50o B.c.) in two books, is the longest elegy that has come down to us. It hangs together very loosely and is rather a series of elegies of varying length than a single poem. In the Alexandrine age we have various frag ments of the Aitia of Callimachus and the whole (with one slight lacuna) of his Hymn entitled the Bath of Pallas (Aovrpa IlaXXkSos) in 142 lines. But the type of elegy which was car ried to the highest perfection by the Greeks was what is gen erally known as the epigram, a highly polished poem in elegiacs, varying in length from a single distich to half-a-dozen or more, and of very various content. This type makes up the great bulk of the collection known as the Greek Anthology (q.v.).
Next in order of development and, of course, to some extent coincident in point of time, we have lyric poetry or song, and this of two types—on the one hand the individual or personal song, and on the other the choral lyric. Of the first the remains are exceedingly meagre and, indeed, are chiefly confined to the fragments of Alcaeus and Sappho. Of the high merits of the latter the Greeks seem to have entertained no doubt, and modern critics—whether professed classical scholars or amateurs like Swinburne—have vied with one another in finding words of en.. thusiastic and extravagant eulogy.
Of choral lyric, on the other hand, we have very extensive re mains, both as an independent literary form, and as an element of tragedy and comedy. Of the first our most important repre sentative is Pindar, of whom, apart from considerable fragments, we possess some 45 odes classed—not always correctly—as epi nician odes, or odes in celebration of victors in the games (Olym pian, Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian). We have also recovered in recent years (1896) a papyrus containing a certain amount of his junior contemporary Bacchylides, about six poems being prac tically complete. The manner in which these poets succeed in contriving that a poem which is in the first instance written to celebrate such an ephemeral event as a victory in the games should be of permanent appeal, is a very interesting literary study, which will be more fittingly discussed in connection with Pindar (q.v.). The next important development is the drama, including, of course, both tragedy (with the Satyric drama) and comedy. While in all likelihood these two species of drama were of con temporaneous origin, tragedy was the earlier to attain a high de gree of perfection: Aristotle's statement (Poet., c. v., 1449a36) of the comparatively late date at which comedy was not formally recognized by the State, is confirmed by epigraphic evidence from which it appears the comedy was not officially recognized by the State until 488-487 B.C., while Thespis, the father of Attic tragedy, is said to have produced his first tragedy in 534 B.C.
Tragedy is said by Aristotle to have originated afro TWv E apxovrcwv Tov 81.O1)paµ0ov ("with the leaders of the dithy ramb," Poet. 10) , and this seems to agree with the facts. The literary development of the dithyramb in honour of Diony sus is associated with the Dorian Corinth, and Greek tragedy on the face of it seems to be a combination of Doric choral song with Ionic dialogue. The great period of Attic tragedy is the 5th century B.C. and is mainly represented for us by the re mains of the three great tragedians, Aeschylus (525-456 B.c.), Sophocles (496-406 B.c.) and Euripides (c. 480-406 B.c.) (qq.v.). We also possess Euripides' Cyclops, the only extant Satyric drama, the recently discovered Ichneutai of Sophocles being in a frag mentary form. The usual method of the production of tragedy in the 5th century was in the form of a trilogy of tragedies fol lowed by a bpaµa aarvpLK6v (Satyric drama). The relation of this last form of drama, in which the spirit is in the vein of comedy, while the chorus is a choir of satyrs, to tragedy is a subject of debate. Aristotle regards the satyric element as orig inal (Poet. 4.1449a19) which seems the more probable view. On the other hand it has been held, both in ancient and modern times, that the satyric element was not original. According to an old view it was superadded to tragedy by way of comic relief (Hor., A.P. 220 sqq.) . Prof. Ridgeway, holding that tragedy orig inally was non-Dionysiac, but connected with the solemn com memoration of the dead, derives saturoi from Satrai, a Macedo nian tribe, and holds that the introduction of the satyric element was coincident with the introduction of the worship of Dionysus at Athens towards the end of the 7th century B.C.
Comedy originated, according to Aristotle, aro TOW T a 4aXXLKa (E apXnvrcwv) a ETC Kai vvv iv 7roXXaiS TWV ir6X€wv va voµL"o/€va, "with the leaders of the phallic songs which still survive in many cities as an institution" (Poet. 4.1449a 11). This again seems a very probable account, the name Kcoµcpbia being derived, not from KW,un, village, but from KcWpos, a company of revellers (Arist., Poet. 3.1448a36 ff). These phallic songs were sung (Aristoph., Ach. 261, "And I will follow and sing the phallic song,") by lewdly dressed processionalists, phallophoroi, and the intention was by mimetic symbolism to promote fertility (Athen. 621 E. For their dress and procedure cf. Athen. 622 B) . Similar customs exist even at the present day, e.g., in Macedonia.
The Alexandrine scholars distinguished Attic comedy into Old (7raXaua) and New (via), the further distinction of Middle (µEar) comedy dating only from the time of Hadrian. For us the only poet of the Old Comedy of whom a complete play is ex tant is Aristophanes (q.v., c. 446-385 B.c.).
We note some features which belong to the earliest stages of comedy. We notice first the frequency with which the chorus, from which the comedy takes its name, represents some species of animal. Similarly we hear of plays by Magnes entitled Birds, Frogs, Gall-wasps (cf. Aristoph. Eq. 522 seq.) . It is impossible to doubt that tragedy in the same way got its name from the fact that the chorus was represented as He-goats (rpayot), or that the Satyric drama was also named from its chorus of (aarvpoi, cf. wrv) Is. 13.21. Puck = Bock (Ger.) = Buck (Eng.) . Then we have the Parabasis or address to the spec tators, also primitive, as is the Agon or debate between two op ponents. The later plays of Aristophanes show a considerable divergence from the earlier. The three earliest plays—Achar mians, Knights, Wasps—have a fully developed Parabasis, while in three of the later plays—Lysist., Eccl., Plutus—the Parabasis has completely disappeared. Similarly with the place of the chorus in general. Thus in the Plutus the office of the chorus is confined to dialogue, and there are no choral songs. The later plays thus exhibit tendencies which are carried still farther in the New Comedy. Menander (q.v., c. 323-293 B.c.), though his date falls in the Alexandrine period, has nothing to do with the Alexandrines: he declined the invitation of Ptolemy I. to go to Alexandria and remained in Athens. The characteristic feature of his comedy seems to have been faithful representation of life (cf. Syrian. in Hermog. 2 p.23 8 Rabe). Although his scanty re mains have been greatly augmented in recent years by discovery of papyri, we still have no complete play. The word Xopov ap pears after Epitrepontes 201: otherwise, Chorus, Agon, Parabasis have completely disappeared.
Three historians in this period are represented by complete works. First we have the History of Herodotus (q.v., c. B.c.) . His conception of the function of history is clearly stated in his opening paragraph : `Hpoborov `AXuKapvno os to roping arro bE is d r ATE TQ Evo Eva E av8 6.nrwv ovo E iT Xa µ'7 y µ P . XP rl Ev rac ATE E a E 6.Xa Owu aara ra Ev `'EXX ai 'Y rI µ P'Y µ µ , µ rl , bl j3apf3apoiai 6.7robeXOEvra, aKXEa y4v?Jrac, Tot TE 6.XXa Kai bi' v atrinv oX Eµnaav aXX,iXocac. "This is the history of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, published in order that what has happened may not be forgotten of men by the passing of time, and that the great and admirable actions of the Greeks and the barbarians may not become unappreciated, and in particular the reasons for the war between them." His object is thus simply to prevent the achievements of the past from being obliterated by time ; he has no notion that a knowledge of the past should have any bearing either on the conduct of the present or the anticipa tion of the future. As to his conception of the duty of the his torian, we need only note that he travelled widely and used all the sources of information open to him, whether monumental or oral. In matters of dispute, he endeavours to state both sides of the question, but with refreshing candour he warns the reader that he does not affirm the truth of either side (ii. 123, vii. 152). On any view Herodotus must always be regarded as one of the most charming of historians. His air of candour and naivete (Quintil. x. 1.73) heightened by the archaic suggestion of the dialect (Ionic) in which he writes and the simple structure of his composition (XE is €ipojs v ), his digressions, his picturesqueness give him an irresistible appeal.
Thucydides of Athens (q.v., c. 396 B.c.) wrote a History of the Peloponnesian War, now divided into eight books. He tells us (i. 1) that he commenced to write his History as soon as the war began, as he foresaw that it was likely to be a greater and more important war than any that had yet taken place, an opinion founded on the fact that both the Athenians and the Lacedaemo nians were at the height of their power, while the other Greek States were likely to range themselves on the side of one or other of the protagonists in the conflict. His failure in 424 to save Amphipolis led to his going into exile, a circumstance which gave him the opportunity to study the war from both sides (v.26) . His conception of the function of history differs mark edly from that of Herodotus. His idea is that a knowledge of the past is the best guide to the future (i. 22). Two peculiarities of his History must be noted. First the annalistic order of treat ment. That is to say, in3tead of treating an episode of the war as a whole, he narrates events Karl 9Epos xamOiva, i.e., after the form of a diary--all the events of a particular summer are grouped together, however unconnected they may be, and these are then followed by the, events of the ensuing winter. Another remarkable feature is the use of set speeches composed in a highly elaborate form—showing the exaggerated use of the antith esis which characterized early Greek rhetoric. His own account of the conception of these speeches is given in i. 22: "as to the speeches delivered by the several combatants either when they were about to go to war, or when they were already involved in it, it was difficult both for me in the case of speeches which I heard myself, and for those who reported to me speeches from other quarters, to remember the exact words. I have written what it seemed the various speakers would have said if they spoke to the purpose, while keeping as close as possible to the general sense of what was actually said." The third of the historians is Xenophon of Athens (q.v., c. 355 B.C.). His Hellenica in seven books continues the his tory of Greece from the point reached by Thucydides (41i B.c.) down to the battle of Mantineia in 362 B.C. His Anabasis in seven books describes the expedition of Cyrus, the Persian prince, against his elder brother Artaxerxes II. In this expedition 1 o,000 Greek mercenaries took part. When Cyrus fell in the battle of Cynaxa (4o1 B.c ) and the Greek leaders were put to death by Tissaphernes, Xenophon caused new leaders to be chosen, in cluding himself. The main part of the Anabasis describes the re treat of the Greek mercenaries. Other strictly historical works by Xenophon are his essay upon Agesilaus, king of Sparta; an essay on Athenian Revenues; another on Lacedaemonian Polity.
The art of rhetoric was a development of the 5th century, the pioneer professional teachers of Oratory of whom we chiefly hear being Corax of Syracuse, his pupil Tisias and Gorgias of Leon tini (whose style we can infer from the extant fragments) . The Alexandrine canon recognized ten Attic orators: (1) Antiphon (q.v., c. 480-411 B.c.) of whom we possess three Tetralogies, each consisting of four speeches, and three speeches in real cases. The interest of these speeches is twofold, first as examples of early forensic oratory, and secondly, all being concerned with cases of murder, as throwing light upon some intimate matters of Athenian social life which would otherwise be obscure; (2) An docides (q.v., born c. 44o), under whose name four speeches are extant; (3) Lysias (q.v.), son of a Syracusan js roLKOc, of whom 34 speeches are extant. Simple and unaffected in style, they throw a flood of light on Athenian domestic and social life ; (4 ) Isocrates (q.v., 436-338 B.C., when "that dishonest victory at Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Kill'd with report that old man elo quent"), of whom we have 21 orations. His interest is chiefly stylistic; he greatly influenced Cicero and through him modern prose style; (5) Isaeus (q.v., fl. c. 36o B.c.) , of whom we have 12 speeches (11 and 12 being incomplete). All the speeches, ex cept No. 12, deal with the testamentary disposition of property and are of inestimable value for the knowledge of Attic private law; (6) Demosthenes (q.v., b. 384 B.c.), under whose name we have 69 orations (not all, however, being orations, and not all genuine), the greatest oratory of antiquity (Quintil. x. 1.76). While his fame rests especially on the Philippics, Olynthiacs, De Falsa Legatione, and, above all, the De Corona, many of the other speeches are of high merit, while his private forensic speeches are extremely valuable for the information they afford, particularly in regard to the operations of commerce in ancient Greece; (7) Aeschines (q.v., b. 390 B.c.), the great rival of Demosthenes, of whom we have three orations; (8) Lycurgus (q.v., born c. 390 B.c.): one speech extant; (9) Hypereides (q.v., born c. 390 B.c.), of whom we have fragments of six speeches, recovered since 1847 from papyri; (I o) Deinarchus (born c. 36o B.c.): three speeches extant.
Philosophic prose is represented by Plato (q.v., b. 427 B.c. on the seventh of the month Thargelion, a day afterwards celebrated annually by the Platonic school—d. 348-7 [his will is quoted Diog. L. iii. 41 ] ), under whose name we have 42 dialogues, be sides some dozen letters. Some of the dialogues (in all of which, except the Laws, Socrates is an interlocutor) are certainly spuri ous, others of doubtful authenticity. All we need note here is that in Plato Greek prose attains its supreme perfection, a grace and ease and flexibility, capable of every emotion of which the soul is capable, such as perhaps no other prose in any language has attained. And this, coupled with sublimity and beauty of thought, with power to strengthen those hopes of men which aspire to immortality and seem to promise it, will ensure that such works as the Apology, the Phaedrus, the Phaedo, the Republic, will al ways remain among the most precious heritages of humanity.
For convenience we may here include Aristotle's successor as head of the Peripatetic school, Theophrastus of Eresos (c. 372– 287 B.c.), of whose writings we possess only: 1. Historia Plan tarum (II€pi Ovr(.v ivropias). 2. De causis plantarum (IIEpi airccov). 3. Characters (XapaKripes), and a few short pieces such as De Signis (IIEpi a7/Eiwv), which was apparently one of the sources used by Aratus for that part of the Phaenomena 11 S4) which is called Atoanµtac, and some smaller fragments.
The Alexandrine Age, 323 B.C.–A.D. 100.—i. Before re viewing the Alexandrine poets individually, it is worth while to note certain characteristics of the Alexandrine poetry in general. In the first place it is no longer an original poetry like that of the Classical period, but imitative. One symptom of this is that quite different kinds of poetry are cultivated by the same poet. Next it is a learned poetry for the most part, and makes its appeal in the first place to a learned audience—being full of learned allusions, strange or archaic or dialectic words (yXcoaaac) which had little meaning for the ordinary man. Again, as in all learned poetry, the mere knowledge of the work of an earlier poet impels the imitator in the search for novelty to sacrifice sim plicity. What is meant can be well seen by comparing Homer's description of the abode of the gods in Odyssey vi. 42 sqq. with the successive imitations by Lucretius, Tennyson, Swinburne and again Tennyson. And the need for extreme elaboration tends to the cult of the short and highly polished poem rather than of the longer poem in which such uniformly high polish would make an excessive demand alike on the poet and on his reader. Again we note that the passion of love becomes now not a subsidiary, but a leading motive. Finally we notice a tendency—not perhaps un connected with the growth of large cities—to take for theme the happiness of the simple peasant's life.
We hear of a Pleiad of eminent tragedians of the time of Ptolemy Philadelphos, but we have no extant comedy or tragedy. Lycophron, one of the Pleiad, has left us, besides a few short fragments of tragedy, a poem of notorious difficulty called Alex andra, i.e., Cassandra. Elegy is largely cultivated, the most famous elegist being Philitas (Philetas) of Cos (c. 30o B.c.), whose name is also associated with that of Callimachus by Propertius (iv. r . I) .
The one important new poetic development of the period is the bucolic idyll associated with the names of Theocritus (born c. 305 B.C. in Syracuse, cf. A P. ix. 434, Athen. 284 A) and the later Bion and Moschus (probably 2nd century B.c.). This type of poetry, a short poem in hexameters dealing with country life, and especially with herdsmen, goatherds and shepherds, became the model for the Bucolics of Virgil, and through him of all later pastoral poetry. The beautiful lament for Bion (= Mosch. Id.), the authenticity of which some now deny, was the model for Virg. Bucol. X., Milton's "Lycidas," and Shelley's "Adonais." The curious type of poetry called a mime, which has apparently some affinity with the idyll, is now represented by the eight mimes of Herondas (discovered in Egypt, 1890). The papyrus ms. obtained from the Fayum is in the possession of the British Museum.