GREEK LITERATURE Greek Literature may be conveniently di vided into four periods, as follows: (1) Ancient or Classical, from Homer to Demosthenes (c. 700 to 300 a.c.); (2) Alexandrian, from 300 B.C. to the subjugation of Greece by Rome in 146 (3) Grmco-Roman, from 146 a.c. to the division of the empire in 330 A.D. ; (4) Byzantine, from 330 A.D. to the capture of Constantinople in 1453 A.D.
I. The Classical Period.—The literature of the classical period is not artificial, but was developed naturally and in orderly succession, each branch of the race, Ionian, ./Eolian, Dorian, contributing its part, till the whole culminated in the glorious Attic, which is still the admiration of the educated world. We have no remains of Greek poetry before the Homeric poems, but the highly developed art displayed in them as well as the smoothness of the metres shows that some form of poetry must have been cultivated before such a state of perfection could have been reached. As forerunners then we may mention the Linus song and the songs of Ialemus and of Hylas, also hymns to the gods, marriage hymns: dirges, all which must have attained considerable artistic form before the Homeric poems were composed. During this mythic period from which we receive barely the names, such as Orpheus, Musmus and Eumolpus, to mention the best known, were developing metrical form, appropriate epithets, fixed phrases, which be came the professional stock of later periods.
1. Epic Poetry.—The only remains of this early period are the Homeric poems, the 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey.' The 'Iliad,' poem of Ilium or Troy, has for its subject the wrath of Achilles, about which is grouped in the most artistic way the development of the events dur ing the 10 years' siege. It consists of 24 books and more than 15,000 lines. The 'Odyssey,' poem of Odysseus or Ulysses, tells of the wanderings and homecoming of Odysseus after the capture of Troy, into which are woven many beautiful myths giving light and shade to the dangers and trials through which the hero passed till he reached his home in Ithaca. This also consists of 24 books, but with only a little over 12,000 lines. Down to the end of the 18th century all the world believed that these poems were the work of one man, Homer, when Wolfe's 'Prolegomena ad Homerum) ap peared in 1795. It is true that the ancients as early as 170 A.D. contended that Homer was the author of the 'Iliad,' though not of the 'Odyssey,' but this was as far as they went, and even then there was great opposition to this view of the c(Separatists,° as they were called. Vico, of Naples, about 1700, had sug gested that Homer was a myth, but it remained for Wolfe to bring forward plausible proofs of. his contention that the poems were not originally one composition, but made up of several shorter poems put together without common plan. Wolfe based his arguments on the belief that writing did not exist before 600 ;lc., and that the poems were first collected and written down by order of Pisistratus and that poems of such length could not be handed down by oral recitation. Following Wolfe,
Lachmann and other scholars divided the poems into lays, which they believed were col lected by a school of singers, called Homeridm, and later put into their present form by order of Pisistratus. The question is still discussed, but scholars now generally accept the view that the two poems belong to separate periods, and that each is a growth from two or three smaller poems. The poems are probably Ionic in origin, though Fick has tried to show that they are lEolic. As epic lays must have existed in abun dance before the (Iliad' and were reduced to form, it is only natural that we should find many remains of epic songs, which along with a number of hymns were all credited to Homer, but which are now described as the Epic Cycle, which has come down to us from Proclus, probably the grammarian of the 2d century after Christ. These poems lack the unity of the and 'Odyssey' and were far inferior to them. Among the most import ant were the and all dealing with Thebes; the and the of Troy,' probably originally one poem, and the 'Little Iliad' were a continuation of the (Iliad,' while the Cyprian lays were an introduction to it the containing the story of the Greek heroes after the fall of Troy, and the dealing with the death of Odysseus by his son Tele gonus, fitted in with the 2. Closely epic poetry is the didactic, which is like epic in form and metre. Its origin is also obscure, but we must also here suppose that some forms existed be fore Hesiod (c. 800 B.c.), its great representa tive. His poem, (Works and Days,' treats of the arts of husbandry with an attached calendar of 60 verses. The poem is a pessimistic com plaint of life, with a high moral tone, filled with saws, maxims, allegories, etc., with occasional flashes of genius. The formerly attributed to Hesiod though probably not by him, treats of the origin of things and the genealogy of the gods. Other works ascribed to Hesiod are the (Catalogue,' the the and the 'Shield of Heracles.) 3. As epic was dying, lyric, which had lain dormant during this brilliant period, and which also has its origin in the above men tioned prehistoric hymns, dirges, etc., began to be artistically cultivated. This is a natural development, for when men began to look less to their overlord and to think more of their own concerns, this change of feeling was re flected in their poetry, and thus the new per sonal lyric sprang up in the place of the old impersonal epic that dealt with kings and their doings. Lyric may be subdivided into the Iambic and Elegiac, which are only partially lyric, and the Melic, the true lyric type, which is itself subdivided into /Eolic (or monodic) and Dorian (or choral) lyric. Preceding both these subdivisions is the nome, cultivated by Terpander and Olympus, of which only frag ments remain.