Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

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Euripides died in the year 406 B.C., in Macedon, to which country
he had been compelled to go on account of domestic troubles;
and the then king, Archela'us honored his remains with a sumptuous
funeral, and erected a monument over them.

Divine Euripides, this tomb we see
So fair is not a monument for thee,
So much as thou for it; since all will own
That thy immortal fame adorns the stone.

We have now observed the transitions through which Grecian tragedy
passed in the hands of its three great masters, AEschylus, Sophocles,
and Euripides. As GROTE says, "The differences between these
three poets are doubtless referable to the working of Athenian
politics and Athenian philosophy on the minds of the two latter.
In Sophocles we may trace the companion of Herodotus; in Euripides
the hearer of Anaxag'oras, Socrates, and Prod'icus; in both,
the familiarity with that wide-spread popularity of speech, and
real, serious debate of politicians and competitors before the
dikastery, which both had ever before their eyes, but which the
genius of Sophocles knew how to keep in subordination to his
grand poetical purpose." To properly estimate the influence which
the tragedies exerted upon the Athenians, we must remember that
a large number of them was presented on the stage every year;
that it was rare to repeat anyone of them; that the theatre of
Bacchus, in which they were represented, accommodated thirty
thousand persons; that, as religious observances, they formed
part of the civil establishment; and that admission to them was
virtually free to every Athenian citizen. Taking these things
into consideration, GROTE adds: "If we conceive of the entire
population of a large city listening almost daily to those
immortal compositions whose beauty first stamped tragedy as a
separate department of poetry, we shall be satisfied that such
powerful poetic influences were never brought to act upon any
other people; and that the tastes, the sentiments, and the
intellectual standard of the Athenians must have been sensibly
improved and exalted by such lessons." [Footnote: "History of
Greece," Chap, lxvii.]

2. COMEDY.

Another marked feature of Athenian life, and one but little less
influential than tragedy in its effects upon the Athenian character,
was comedy. It had its origin, as we have seen, in the vintage
festivals of Bacchus, where the wild songs of the participants
were frequently interspersed with coarse witticisms against the
spectators. Like tragedy, it was a Dorian invention, and Sicily
seems to have early become the seat of the comic writers.
Epichar'mus, a Dorian poet and philosopher, was the first of
these to put the Bacchic songs and dances into dramatic form.
The place of his nativity is uncertain, but he passed the greater
part of his life at Syracuse, in the society of the greatest
literary men of the age, and there he is supposed to have written
his comedies some years prior to the Persian war. It seems, however,
that comedy was introduced into Attica by Susa'rion, a native
of Meg'ara, long before the time of Epichar'mus (578 B.C.). But
the former's plays were so largely made up of rude and abusive
personalities that they were not tolerated by the Pisistrati'dae,
and for over a century we bear nothing farther of comedy in
Attica--not until it was revived by Chion'ides, about 488 B.C.,
or, according to some authorities, twenty years later.

Under the contemporaries or successors of Chionides comedy became
an important agent in the political warfare of Athens, although
it was frequently the subject of prohibitory or restrictive legal
enactments. "Only a nation," says a recent writer, "in the plenitude
of self-contentment, conscious of vigor, and satisfied with its
own energy, could have tolerated the kind of censorship the comic
poets dared to exercise."

Characterization of the Old Comedy.

In the preliminary discourse to his translation of the Comedies
of Aristophanes, MR. THOMAS MITCHELL, an English critic of note,
makes these observations upon the character of the Old Comedy:
"The Old Comedy, as it is called, in contradistinction to what
was afterward named the Middle and the New, stood in the extreme
relation of contrariety and parody to the tragedy of the Greeks
--it was directed chiefly to the lower orders of society at Athens;
it served in some measure the purposes of the modern journal, in
which public measures and the topics of the day might be fully
discussed; and in consequence the dramatis personae were generally
the poet's own contemporaries, speaking in their own names and
acting in masks, which, as they bore only a caricature resemblance
of their own faces, showed that the poet, in his observations,
did not mean to be taken literally. Like tragedy, comedy
constituted part of a religious ceremony; and the character of
the deity to whom it was more particularly dedicated was stamped
at times pretty visibly upon the work which was composed in his
honor. The Dionysian festivals were the great carnivals of
antiquity--they celebrated the returns of vernal festivity or
the joyous vintage, and were in consequence the great holidays
of Athens--the seasons of universal relaxation.

"The comic poet was the high-priest of the festival; and if the
orgies of his divinity (the god of wine) sometimes demanded a
style of poetry which a Father of our Church probably had in
his eye when he called all poetry the devil's wine, the organ
of their utterance (however strange it may seem to us) no doubt
considered himself as perfectly absolved from the censure which
we should bestow on such productions: in his compositions he
was discharging the same pious office as the painter, whose duty
it was to fill the temples of the same deity with pictures which
our imaginations would consider equally ill-suited to the
habitations of divinity. What religion therefore forbids among
us, the religion of the Greeks did not merely tolerate but enjoin.
Nor was the extreme and even profane gayety of the comedy without
its excuse. To unite extravagant mirth with a solemn seriousness
was enjoined by law, even in the sacred festival of Ceres.

"While the philosophers, therefore, querulously maintained that
man was the joke and plaything of the gods, the comic poet reversed
the picture, and made the gods the playthings of men; in his hands,
indeed, everything was upon the broad grin: the gods laughed,
men laughed, and animals laughed. Nature was considered as a
sort of fantastic being, with a turn for the humorous; and the
world was treated as a sort of extended jest-book, where the
poet pointed out the bon-mots [Footnote: French; pronounced
bong-mos.] and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press.
If he discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit
of a Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his
functions. He was the Ter'roe Fil'ius [Footnote: Terroe Filius,
son of the earth; that is, a human being.] of the day; and
lenity would have been considered, not as an act of discretion,
but as a cowardly dereliction of duty."

It was in the time of Pericles that the comedy just described
first dealt with men and subjects under their real names; and
in one of the plays of Crati'nus--under whom comedy received
its full development--Cimon is highly eulogized, and his rival,
Pericles, is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and unsparing
license comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, not only all
that was really ludicrous or base, but often cast scorn and derision
on that which was innocent, or even meritorious. For the reason
that the comic writers were so indiscriminate in their attacks,
frequently making transcendent genius and noble personality, as
well as demagogism and personal vice, the butt of comic scorn;
their writings have but little historical value except in the
few instances in which they are corroborated by higher authority.

ARlSTOPH'ANES.

Among the contemporaries of Cratinus were Eu'polis and Aristophanes,
the latter of whom became the chief of what is known as the Old
Attic Comedy. Of his life little is known; but he was a member
of the conservative or aristocratic party at Athens, directing
his attacks chiefly against the democratic or popular party of
Pericles, and continuing to write comedies until about 392 B.C.
While his comedies are replete with coarse wit, they are wonderfully
brilliant, and contain much, also, that is pure and beautiful.
As a late writer has well said, "Beauty and deformity came to
him with equal abundance, and his wonderful pieces are made up
of all that is low and all that is pure and lovely."

The Muses, seeking for a shrine
Whose glories ne'er should cease,
Found, as they strayed, the soul divine
Of Aristophanes.
--PLATO, trans. by MERIVALE.

MR. GROTE characterizes the comedies of Aristophanes as follows:
"Never probably will the full and unshackled force of comedy be
so exhibited again. Without having Aristophanes actually before
us it would have been impossible to imagine the unmeasured and
unsparing license of attack assumed by the old comedy upon the
gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets,
private citizens, specially named--and even the women, whose life
was entirely domestic--of Athens. With this universal liberty
in respect of subject there is combined a poignancy of derision
and satire, a fecundity of imagination and variety of turns, and
a richness of poetical expression such as cannot be surpassed,
and such as fully explains the admiration expressed for him by
the philosopher Plato, who in other respects must have regarded
him with unquestionable disapprobation. His comedies are popular
in the largest sense of the word, addressed to the entire body
of male citizens on a day consecrated to festivity, and providing
for their amusement or derision, with a sort of drunken abundance,
out of all persons or things standing in any way prominent before
the public eye." [Footnote: "History or Greece," Chap. lxvii.]

In his introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, REV. WILLIAM SEWELL,
an English clergyman and author, observes that "Men smile when
they hear the anecdote of Chrys'ostom, one of the most venerable
fathers of the Church, who never went to bed without something
from Aristophanes under his pillow." He adds: "But the noble
tone of morals, the elevated taste, the sound political wisdom,
the boldness and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which
is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and
improving the condition of his country--all these are features
in Aristophanes which, however disguised, as they intentionally
are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest
respect from every reader of antiquity." Yet, while the purposes
of Aristophanes were in the main praiseworthy, and the persons
and things he attacked generally deserving of censure, he spared
the vices of his own party and associates; and, like all satirists,
for effect he often traduced character, as in the case of the
virtuous Socrates. In an attack on the Sophists, in his play
of the Clouds, he gives to Socrates the character of a vulgar
Sophist, and holds him up to the derision of the Athenian people.
But, as another has said, "Time has set all even; and 'poor
Socrates,' as Aristophanes called him--as a far loftier bard
has sung--

'Poor Socrates,
By what he taught, and suffered for so doing,
For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now,
Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.'"
--MILTON.

The Comedy of the "Clouds."

It is curious to observe in the Clouds of Aristophanes that while
the main object of the poet is to ridicule Socrates, and through
him to expose what he considers the corrupt state of education
in Athens, he does not disdain to mingle with his low buffoonery
the loftiest flights of the imagination--reminding us of the
not unlike anomaly of Shakspeare's sublime simile of the
"cloud-capp'd towers," in the Tempest. In one part of the play,
Strepsi'ades, who has been nearly ruined in fortune by his
spendthrift son, goes to Socrates to learn from him the logic
that will enable him "to talk unjustly and--prevail," so that
he may shirk his debts! He finds the master teacher suspended
in air, in a basket, that he may be above earthly influences,
and there "contemplating the sun," and endeavoring to search
out "celestial matters." To the appeal of Strepsiades, Socrates,
interrupted in his reveries, thus answers:

Socrates. Old man, sit you still, and attend to my will, and
hearken in peace to my prayer. (He then addresses the Air.)
O master and king, holding earth in your swing, O measureless
infinite Air;
And thou, glowing Ether, and Clouds who enwreathe her with
thunder and lightning and storms,
Arise ye and shine, bright ladies divine, to your student, in
bodily forms.

Then we have the farther prayer of Socrates to the Clouds, in
which is pictured a series of the most sublime images, colored
with all the rainbow hues of the poet's fancy. We are led, in
imagination, to behold the dread Clouds, at first sitting, in
glorious majesty, upon the time-honored crest of snowy Olympus
--then in the soft dance beguiling the nymphs "'mid the stately
advance of old Ocean"--then bearing away, in their pitchers
of sunlight and gold, "the mystical waves of the Nile," to refresh
and fertilize other lands; at one time sporting on the foam of
Lake Maeo'tis, and at another playing around the wintry summits
of Mi'mas, a mountain range of Ionia, The farther invocation
of the Clouds is thus continued:

Socrates. Come forth, come forth, ye dread Clouds, and to
earth your glorious majesty show;
Whether lightly ye rest on the time-honored crest of Olympus,
environed in snow,
Or tread the soft dance 'mid the stately advance of old Ocean,
the nymphs to beguile,
Or stoop to enfold, with your pitchers of gold, the mystical
waves of the Nile,
Or around the white foam of Maeotis ye roam, or Mimas all
wintry and bare,
O hear while we pray, and turn not away from the rites which
your servants prepare.

Then the chorus comes forward and answers, as if the Clouds were
speaking:

Chorus. Clouds of all hue,
Now rise we aloft with our garments of dew,
We come from old Ocean's unchangeable bed,
We come till the mountains' green summits we tread,
We come to the peaks with their landscapes untold,
We gaze on the earth with her harvests of gold,
We gaze on the rivers in majesty streaming,
We gaze on the lordly, invisible sea;
We come, for the eye of the Ether is beaming,
We come, for all Nature is flashing and free.
Let us shake off this close-clinging dew
From our members eternally new,
And sail upward the wide world to view,
Come away! Come away!

Socr. O goddesses mine, great Clouds and divine, ye have
heeded and answered my prayer.
Heard ye their sound, and the thunder around, as it thrilled
through the petrified air?

Streps. Yes, by Zeus! and I shake, and I'm all of a quake,
and I fear I must sound a reply,
Their thunders have made my soul so afraid, and those terrible
voices so nigh--

Socr. Don't act in our schools like those comedy-fools, with
their scurrilous, scandalous ways.
Deep silence be thine, while these Clusters divine their
soul-stirring melody raise.

To which the chorus again responds. But we have not room for
farther extracts. The description of the floating-cloud character
of the scene is acknowledged by critics to be inimitable. There
is one passage, in particular, in which Socrates, pointing to
the clouds that have taken a sudden slanting downward motion, says:

"They are drifting, an infinite throng,
And their long shadows quake over valley and brake"--

which, MR. RUSKIN declares, "could have been written by none
but an ardent lover of the hill scenery--one who had watched
hour after hour the peculiar, oblique, sidelong action of
descending clouds, as they form along the hollows and ravines
of the hills. [Footnote: The line in Greek, which is so vividly
descriptive of this peculiar appearance and motion of the clouds--

dia toy koiloy kai toy daseoy autai plagiai--

loses so much in the rendering, that the beauty of the passage
can be fully appreciated only by the Greek scholar.] There are
no lumpish solidities, no billowy protuberances here. All is
melting, drifting, evanescent, full of air, and light as dew."

Choral Song from "The Birds."

In the following extract from the comedy of The Birds, Aristophanes
ridicules the popular belief of the Greeks in signs and omens
drawn from the birds of the air. Though undoubtedly an exaggeration,
it may nevertheless be taken as a fair exposition of the
superstitious notions of an age that had its world-renowned
"oracles," and as a good example of the poet's comic style. The
extract is from the Choral Song in the comedy, and is a true
poetic gem.

Ye children of man! whose life is a span,
Protracted with sorrow from day to day;
Naked and featherless, feeble and querulous,
Sickly, calamitous creatures of clay!
Attend to the words of the sovereign birds,
Immortal, illustrious lords of the air,
Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye,
Your struggles of misery, labor, and care.
Whence you may learn and clearly discern
Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn--
Which is busied of late with a mighty debate,
A profound speculation about the creation,
And organical life and chaotical strife--
With various notions of heavenly motions,
And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains,
And sources of fountains, and meteors on high,
And stars in the sky.... We propose by-and-by
(If you'll listen and hear) to make it all clear.

All lessons of primary daily concern
You have learned from the birds (and continue to learn),
Your best benefactors and early instructors.
We give you the warnings of seasons returning:
When the cranes are arranged, and muster afloat
In the middle air, with a creaking note,

Steering away to the Libyan sand,
Then careful farmers sow their lands;
The craggy vessel is hauled ashore;
The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar
Are all unshipped and housed in store.
The shepherd is warned, by the kite re-appearing,
To muster his flock and be ready for shearing.
You quit your old cloak at the swallow's behest,
In assurance of summer, and purchase a vest.

For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodo'na--in fine,
For every oracular temple and shrine--
The birds are a substitute, equal and fair;
For on us you depend, and to us you repair
For counsel and aid when a marriage is made--
A purchase, a bargain, or venture in trade:
Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye--
A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet,
A name or a word by chance overheard--
If you deem it an omen you call it a bird;
And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow
That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.
--Trans. by FRERE.

* * * * *

III. HISTORY.

As we have stated in a former chapter, literary compositions
in prose first appeared among the Greeks in the sixth century
B.C., and were either mythological, or collections of local legends,
whether sacred or profane, of particular districts. It was not
until a still later period that the Grecian prose writers, becoming
more positive in their habits of thought, broke away from
speculative and mystical tendencies, and began to record their
observations of the events daily occurring about them. In the
writings of Hecatae'us of Mile'tus, who flourished about 500 B.C.,
we find the first elements of history; and yet some modern writers
think he can lay no claim whatever to the title of historian,
while others regard him as the first historical writer of any
importance. He visited Greece proper and many of the surrounding
countries, and recorded his observations and experiences in a
work of a geographical character, entitled Periodus. He also wrote
another work relating to the mythical history of Greece, and died
about 467 B.C.

HEROD'OTUS.

MAHAFFY considers Hecatae'us "the forerunner of Herodotus in his
mode of life and his conception of setting down his experiences;"
while NIE'BUHR, the great German historian, absolutely denies
the existence of any Grecian histories before Herodotus gave
to the world the first of those illustrious productions that
form another bright link in the literary chain of Grecian glory.
Born in Halicarnas'sus about the year 484, of an illustrious
family, Herodotus was driven from his native land at an early
age by a revolution, after which he traveled extensively over
the then known world, collecting much of the material that he
subsequently used in his writings. After a short residence at
Samos he removed to Athens, leaving there, however, about the
year 440 to take up his abode at Thu'rii, a new Athenian colony
near the site of the former Syb'aris. Here he lived the rest
of his life, dying about the year 420. Lucian relates that, on
completing his work, Herodotus went to Olympia during the
celebration of the Olympic games, and there recited to his
countrymen the nine books of which his history was composed.
His hearers were delighted, and immediately honored the books
with the title of the Nine Muses. A later account of this scene
says that Thucydides, then a young man, stood at the side of
Herodotus, and was affected to tears by his recitations.

Herodotus modestly states the object of his history in the
following paragraph, which is all the introduction that he makes
to his great work: "These are the researches of Herodotus of
Halicarnassus, which he publishes in the hope of thereby preserving
from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing
the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians
from losing their due meed of glory; and, withal, to put on record
what were their grounds of feud." [Footnote: Rawlinson's
translation.] But while he portrays the military ambition of
the Persian rulers, the struggles of the Greeks for liberty,
and their final triumph over the Persian power, he also gives
us a history of almost all the then known world. "His work begins,"
says MR. LAWRENCE, "with the causes of the hostility between
Persia and Greece, describes the power of Croe'sus, the wonders
of Egypt, the expedition of Darius into Scythia, and closes with
the immortal war between the allied Greeks and the Persian hosts.
To his countrymen the story must have had the intense interest
of a national ode or epic. Athens, particularly, must have read
with touching ardor the graceful narrative of its early glory;
for when Herodotus finished his work the brief period had already
passed away. What AEschylus and the other dramatists painted in
brief and striking pictures on the stage, Herodotus described
with laborious but never tedious minuteness. His pure Ionic diction
never wearies, his easy and simple narrative has never lost its
interest, and all succeeding ages have united in calling him 'the
Father of History.' His fame has advanced with the progress of
letters, and has spread over mankind."

The following admirable description of Herodotus and of his writings
is from an essay on "History," by LORD MACAULAY:

Herodotus and his Writings.

"Of the romantic historians, Herodotus is the earliest and the
best. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful
talent for description and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow
of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He reminds
us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of
affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an
intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in
his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest
for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written
an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps,
than the best history; but he has not written a really good history;
for he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We
do not here refer merely to those gross fictions with which he
has been reproached by the critics of later times, but we speak
of that coloring which is equally diffused over his whole narrative,
and which perpetually leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt
what to reject and what to receive. The great events are, no
doubt, faithfully related; so, probably, are many of the slighter
circumstances, but which of them it is impossible to ascertain.
We know there is truth, but we cannot exactly decide where it lies.

"If we may trust to a report not sanctioned, indeed, by writers
of high authority, but in itself not improbable, the work of
Herodotus was composed not to be read, but to be heard. It was
not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only
could possess, that the aspiring author looked for his reward.
The great Olympian festival was to witness his triumph. The interest
of the narrative and the beauty of the style were aided by the
imposing effect of recitation--by the splendor of the spectacle,
by the powerful influence of sympathy. A critic who could have
asked for authorities in the midst of such a scene must have
been of a cold and skeptical nature, and few such critics were
there. As was the historian, such were the auditors--inquisitive,
credulous, easily moved by the religious awe of patriotic
enthusiasm. They were the very men to hear with delight of strange
beasts, and birds, and trees; of dwarfs, and giants, and cannibals;
of gods whose very names it was impiety to utter; of ancient
dynasties which had left behind them monuments surpassing all
the works of later times; of towns like provinces; of rivers
like seas; of stupendous walls, and temples, and pyramids; of
the rites which the Magi performed at daybreak on the tops of
the mountains; of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks
of Memphis. With equal delight they would have listened to the
graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of the
exact accomplishment of obscure predictions; of the punishment
of climes over which the justice of Heaven had seemed to slumber;
of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead; of princesses for whom
noble suitors contended in every generous exercise of strength
and skill; and of infants strangely preserved from the dagger
of the assassin to fulfil high destinies.

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