Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

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Where, Corinth, are thy glories now--
Thy ancient wealth, thy castled brow,
Thy solemn fanes, thy halls of state,
Thy high-born dames, thy crowded gate?
There's not a ruin left to tell
Where Corinth stood, how Corinth fell.
The Nereids of thy double sea
Alone remain to wail for thee.
--Trans. by GOLDWIN SMITH.

The last blow to the liberties of the Hellenic race had now been
struck, and all Greece, as far as Epi'rus and Macedonia, became
a Roman province under the name of Achaia. Says THIRLWALL, "The
end of the Achaean war was the last stage of the lingering process
by which Rome enclosed her victim in the coils of her insidious
diplomacy, covered it with the slime of her sycophants and
hirelings, crushed it when it began to struggle, and then calmly
preyed upon its vitals." But although Greece had lost her
independence, and many of her cities were desolate, or had sunk
into insignificance, she still retained her renown for philosophy
and the arts, and became the instructor of her conquerors. In
the well-known words of HORACE,

When conquered Greece brought in her captive arts,
She triumphed o'er her savage conquerors' hearts.
-Bk. II. Epistle 1.

As another has said, "She still retained a sovereignty which
the Romans could not take from her, and to which they were obliged
to pay homage." In whatever quarter Rome turned her victorious
arms she encountered Greek colonies speaking the Greek language,
and enjoying the arts of civilization. All these were absorbed
by her, but they were not lost. They diffused Greek customs,
thought, speech, and art over the Latin world, and Hellas survived
in the intellectual life of a new empire.

CHAPTER XVII.

LITERATURE AND ART AFTER THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

LITERATURE.

I. THE DRAMA.

As we have seen in a former chapter, Greek tragedy attained its
zenith with the three great masters--AEschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. As MAHAFFY well says, "Its later annals are but a
history of decay; and of the vast herd of latter tragedians two
only, and two of the earliest--Ion of Chi'os, and Ag'athon--can
be called living figures in a history of Greek literature." Even
these, it seems, wrote before Sophocles and Euripides had closed
their careers. But few fragments of their genius have come down
to us. Longi'nus said of Ion, that he was fluent and polished,
rather than bold or sublime; while Agathon has been characterized
as "the creator of a new tragic style, combining the verbal
elegancies and ethical niceties of the Sophists with artistic
claims of a luxurious kind."

While tragedy declined, with comedy the case was different, for
its changes were progressive. Most writers divide Greek comedy
into the Old, the Middle, and the New; and although the boundary
lines between the three orders are very indistinct, each has
certain well-defined characteristics. It is asserted, as we have
elsewhere noted, that the chief subjects of the first were the
politics of the day and the characters and deeds of leading persons;
that the chief peculiarity of the second, in which the action
of the chorus was much curtailed, was the exclusion of personal
and political criticism, and the adoption of parodies of the
gods and ridicule of certain types of character; and that the
New Comedy, in which the chorus disappeared, aimed to paint scenes
and characters of domestic life. The Middle Comedy, however,
still continued to be in some degree personal and political,
and even in the New Comedy these features of the Old are frequently
apparent.

Aristoph'anes, the leader of the Old Comedy, toward the close
of his life produced The Frogs--a work that signalized the
transition from the Old to the Middle Comedy. The latter school,
however, took its rise in Sicily, and its most distinguished
authors were Antiph'anes, probably of Athens, born in 404, and
Alex'is of Thu'rii, born about 394. The New Comedy arose after
Athens had fallen under Macedonian supremacy, and as many as
sixty-four poets belong to this period, the later of whom composed
their plays in Alexandria, in the time of Alexander's successors.
The founder of this school was Phile'mon of Soli, in Cilicia,
born about 360 B.C. Of his ninety plays fragments of fifty-six
remain. The majority of these have been described as "elegant
but not profound reflections on the 'changes and chances of this
mortal life.'" A late critic chooses the following fragment as
illustrative of Philemon, and at the same time favorable to his
reputation:

Have faith in God, and fear; seek not to know him;
For thou wilt gain naught else beyond thy search;
Whether he is or is not, shun to ask:
As one who is, and sees thee, always fear him.
--Trans. by J. A. SYMONDS.

MENANDER.

The acknowledged master and representative of this period, however,
and the last of the classical poets of Greece, was Menan'der,
an Athenian, son of Diopi'thes, the general whom Demosthenes
defended in his speech "On the Chersonese," and a nephew of the
poet Alexis. Menander was born in 342 B.C.; and although only
fragments of his writings exist, he was so closely copied or
imitated by the Roman comic poets that his style and character
can be very clearly traced. MR. SYMONDS thus describes him: "His
personal beauty, the love of refined pleasure that distinguished
him in life, the serene and genial temper of his wisdom, the
polish of his verse, and the harmony of parts he observed in
composition, justify us in calling Menander the Sophocles of
comedy. If we were to judge by the fragments transmitted to us, we
should have to say that Menander's comedy was ethical philosophy
in verse; so mature is its wisdom, so weighty its language, so
grave its tone. The brightness of the beautiful Greek spirit
is sobered down in him almost to sadness. Yet the fact that
Stobae'us found him a fruitful source of sententious quotations,
and that alphabetical anthologies were made of his proverbial
sayings, ought not to obscure his fame for drollery and humor.
If old men appreciated his genial or pungent worldly wisdom,
boys and girls read him, we are told, for his love-stories."

Menander was an intimate friend of Epicu'rus, the philosopher,
and is supposed to have adopted his teachings. On this point,
however, MR. SYMONDS thus remarks: "Speaking broadly, the
philosophy in vogue at Athens during the period of the New Comedy
was what in modern days is known as Epicureanism. Yet it would be
unjust to confound the grave and genial wisdom of Menander with
so trivial a philosophy as that which may be summed up in the
sentence 'eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.' A fragment from
an unknown play of his expresses the pathos of human existence
with a depth of feeling that is inconsistent with mere
pleasure-seeking:

"'When thou would'st know thyself, what man thou art,
Look at the tombstones as thou passest by:
Within those monuments lie bones and dust
Of monarchs, tyrants, sages, men whose pride
Rose high because of wealth, or noble blood,
Or haughty soul, or loveliness of limb;
Yet none of these things strove for them 'gainst time;
One common death hath ta'en all mortal men.
See thou to this, and know thee who thou art.'"

As EUGENE LAWRENCE says: "Most modern comedies are founded on
those of Menander. They revive their characters, repeat their
jokes, transplant their humor; and the wit of Moliere, Shakspeare,
or Sheridan is often the same that once awoke shouts of laughter
on the Attic stage."

* * * * *

II. ORATORY.

Thence to the famous orators repair,
Those ancient, whose resistless eloquence
Wielded at will that fierce democracy,
Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece
To Macedon and Artaxerxes' throne.
--MILTON.

Eloquence, or oratory, which Cicero calls "the friend of peace
and the companion of tranquillity, requiring for her cradle a
commonwealth already well-established and flourishing," was
fostered and developed in Greece by the democratic character
of her institutions. It was scarcely known there until the time
of Themistocles, the first orator of note; and in the time of
Pericles it suddenly rose, in Athens, to a great height of
perfection. Pericles himself, whose great aim was to sway the
assemblies of the people to his will, cultivated oratory with
such application and success, that the poets of his day said
of him that on some occasions the goddess of persuasion, with
all her charms, seemed to dwell on his lips; and that, at other
times, his discourse had all the vehemence of thunder to move
the souls of his hearers. The golden age of Grecian eloquence
is embraced in a period of one hundred and thirty years from
the time of Pericles, and during this period Athens bore the
palm alone.

Of the many Athenian orators the most distinguished were Lys'ias,
Isoc'rates, AEschines, and Demosthenes. The first was born about
435 B.C., and was admired for the perspicuity, purity, sweetness,
and delicacy of his style. Having become a resident of Thurii
in early life, on his return to Athens he was not allowed to
speak in the assemblies, or courts of justice, and therefore
wrote orations for others to deliver. Many of these are
characterized by great energy and power. Dionysius, the Roman
historian and critic, praises Lysias for his grace; Cicero commends
him for his subtlety; and Quintilian esteems him for his
truthfulness. Isocrates was born at Athens in 436. Having received
the instructions of some of the most celebrated Sophists of his
time, he opened a school of rhetoric, and was equally esteemed
for the excellence of his compositions--mostly political
orations--and for his success in teaching. His style was more
philosophic, smooth, and elegant than that of Lysias. "Cicero,"
says a modern critic, "whose style is exceedingly like that of
Isocrates, appears to have especially used him as a model--as
indeed did Demosthenes; and through these two orators he has
moulded all the prose of modern Europe." Isocrates lived to the
advanced age of ninety-eight, and then died, it is said, by
voluntary starvation, in grief for the fatal battle of Chaeronea.

"That dishonest victory.
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Killed with report that old man eloquent."

AESCHINES AND DEMOSTHENES.

The orator AEschines was born in 398 B.C. He is regarded as the
father of extemporaneous speaking among the Greeks, but is chiefly
distinguished as the rival of Demosthenes, rather than for his
few orations (but three in number) that have come down to us,
although he was endowed by nature with extraordinary rhetorical
powers, and his orations are characterized by ease, order,
clearness, and precision. "The eloquence of AEschines," says an
American scholar and statesman, [Footnote: Hugh S. Legare, of
Charleston, South Carolina, in an article on "Demosthenes" in
the New York Review.] "is of a brilliant and showy character,
running occasionally, though very rarely, into a Ciceronean
declamation. In general his taste is unexceptionable; he is clear
in statement, close and cogent in argument, lucid in arrangement,
remarkably graphic and animated in style, and full of spirit
and pleasantry, without the least appearance of emphasis or effort.
He is particularly successful in description and the portraiture
of character. That his powers were appreciated by his great rival
is evident from the latter's frequent admonitions to the assembly
to remember that their debates are no theatrical exhibitions
of voice and oratory, but deliberations involving the safety
of their country."

On leaving Athens, after his defeat in the celebrated contest
with Demosthenes, AEschines went to Rhodes, where he established
a school of rhetoric. It is stated that on one occasion he began
his instruction by reading the two orations that had been the
cause of his banishment. His hearers loudly applauded his own
speech, but when he read that of Demosthenes they were wild with
delight. "If you thus praise it from my reading it," exclaimed
AEschines, "what would you have said if you had heard Demosthenes
himself deliver it?"

By the common consent of ancient and modern times, Demosthenes
stands pre-eminent for his eloquence, his patriotism, and his
influence over the Athenian people. He was born about 383 B.C.
On attaining his majority, his first speech was directed against
a cousin to whom his inheritance had been intrusted, and who
refused to surrender to him what was left of it. Demosthenes
won his case, and his victory brought him into such prominent
notice that he was soon engaged to write pleadings for litigants
in the courts. He devoted himself to incessant study and practice
in oratory, and, overcoming by various means a weakly body and
an impediment in his speech, he became the chief of orators.
Of his public life we have already seen something in the history
of Athens. With all his moral and intellectual force, the closing
years of his life were shaded with misery and disgrace. Fifty
years after his death the Athenians erected a bronze statue to
his memory, and upon the pedestal placed this inscription:

Divine in speech, in judgment, too, divine,
Had valor's wreath, Demosthenes, been thine,
Fair Greece had still her freedom's ensign borne,
And held the scourge of Macedon in scorn!

With regard to the character of the orations of Demosthenes,
it must be confessed that somewhat conflicting views have been
entertained by the moderns. LORD BROUGHAM, while admitting that
Demosthenes "never wanders from the subject, that each remark
tells upon the matter in hand, that all his illustrations are
brought to bear upon the point, and that he is never found making
a step in any direction which does not advance his main object,
and lead toward the conclusion to which he is striving to bring
his hearers," still denies that he is distinguished for those
"chains of reasoning," and that "fine argumentation" which are
the chief merit of our greatest modern orators. While he admits
that Demosthenes abounds in the most "appropriate topics, and
such happy hits--to use a homely but expressive phrase--as have
a magical effect upon a popular assembly, and that he clothes
them in the choicest language, arranges them in the most perfect
order, and captivates the ear with a music that is fitted, at
his will, to provoke or to soothe, and even to charm the sense,"
he regards all this as better suited to great popular assemblies
than to a more refined, and a more select audience--such as one
composed of learned senators and judges. But this is admitting
that he adapted himself, with admirable tact and judgment, to
the subject and the occasion. But while the character thus
attributed to the orations of the great Athenian orator may be
the true one, as regards the Philippics, the speech against
AEschines, and the one on the Crown, it is not thought to be
applicable to the many pleas which he made on occasions more
strictly judicial.

"That which distinguishes the eloquence of Demosthenes above
all others, ancient or modern," says the American writer already
quoted, "is earnestness, conviction, and the power to persuade
that belongs to a strong and deep persuasion felt by the speaker.
It is what Milton defines true eloquence to be, 'none but the
serious and hearty love of truth'--or, more properly, what the
speaker believes to be truth. This advantage Demosthenes had
over AEschines. He had faith in his country, faith in her people
(if they could be roused up), faith in her institutions. He is
mad at the bare thought that a man of Macedon, a barbarian, should
be beating Athenians in the field, and giving laws to Greece.
The Roman historian and critic, Dionysius, said of his oratory,
that its highest attribute was the spirit of life that pervades
it. Other remarkable features were its amazing flexibility and
variety, its condensation and perfect logical unity, its elaborate
and exquisite finish of details, to which must be added that
polished harmony and rhythm which cannot be attained, to a like
degree, in any modern language. Moreover, however elaborately
composed these speeches were, they were still speeches, and had
the appearance of being the spontaneous effusions of the moment.
No extemporaneous harangues were ever more free and natural."

The historian HUME says of the style of Demosthenes: "It was
rapid harmony adjusted to the sense; vehement reasoning without
any appearance of art; disdain, anger, boldness, and freedom,
involved in a continued strain of argument." Another writer says:
"It was his undeviating firmness, his disdain of all compromise,
that made him the first of statesmen and orators; in this lay
the substance of his power, the primary foundation of his
superiority; the rest was merely secondary. The mystery of his
mighty influence, then, lay in his honesty; and it is this that
gave warmth and tone to his feelings, an energy to his language,
and an impression to his manner before which every imputation
of insincerity must have immediately vanished."

* * * * *

III. PHILOSOPHY.

PLATO.

While oratory was thus attaining perfection in Greece, philosophy
was making equal progress in the direction marked out by Socrates.
Among the philosophers of the brighter period of Grecian history
are the names of Plato and Aristotle, names that will ever be
cherished and venerated while genius and worth continue to be
held in admiration. Of the pupils of Socrates, Plato, born in
Athens in 429 B.C., was by far the most distinguished, and the
only one who fully appreciated the intellectual greatness and
seized the profound conceptions of his master. In fact, he came
to surpass Socrates in the profoundness of his views, and in
the correctness and eloquence with which he expressed them. On
the death of his teacher, Plato left Athens and passed twelve
years in visiting different countries, engaged in philosophic
investigation. Returning to Athens, he founded his school of
philosophy in the Acade'mia, a beautiful spot in the suburbs
of the city, adorned with groves, walks, and fountains, and
which his name has immortalized.

Here Philosophy
With Plato dwelt, and burst the chains of mind;
Here, with his stole across his shoulders flung,
His homely garments with a leathern zone
Confined, his snowy beard low clust'ring down
Upon his ample chest, his keen dark eye
Glancing from underneath the arched brow,
He fixed his sandaled foot, and on his staff
Leaned, while to his disciples he declared
How all creation's mighty fabric rose
From the abyss of chaos: next he traced
The bounds of virtue and of vice; the source
Of good and evil; sketched the ideal form
Of beauty, and unfolded all the powers
Of mind by which it ranges uncontrolled,
And soars from earth to immortality.
--HAYGARTH.

To Plato, as the poet intimates in his closing lines, we owe
the first formal development of the Socratic doctrine of the
spirituality of the soul, and the first attempt toward
demonstrating its immortality. As a late writer has well said,
"It is the genius of Socrates that fills all Plato's philosophy,
and their two minds have flowed out over the world together."
Of his doctrine on this subject, as expressed in the Phoe'do,
LORD BROUGHAM thus wrote: "The whole tenor of it refers to a
renewal or continuation of the soul as a separate and individual
existence after the dissolution of the body, and with a complete
consciousness of personal identity: in short, to a continuance of
the same rational being's existence after death. The liberation
from the body is treated as the beginning of a new and more perfect
life." Plato's only work on physical science is the Timoe'us.
His works are all called "Dialogues," which the critics divide
into two classes--those of search, and those of exposition. Among
the latter, the Republic and the Laws give us the author's
political views; and, on the former, More's Uto'pia and other
works of like character in modern times are founded.

"Plato, of all authors," says DR. A. C. KENDRICK, [Footnote:
Article "Plato," in Appleton's American Cyclipoedia.] "is the
one to whom the least justice can be done by any formal analysis.
In the spirit which pervades his writings, in their untiring
freshness, in their purity, love of truth and of virtue, their
perpetual aspiring to the loftiest height of knowledge and of
excellence, much more than in their positive doctrines, lies
the secret of their charm and of their unfailing power. Plato is
often styled an idealist. But this is true of the spirit rather
than of the form of his doctrine; for strictly he is an intense
realist, and differs from his great pupil, Aristotle, far less
in his mere philosophical method than in his lofty moral and
religious aspirations, which were perpetually winging his spirit
toward the beautiful and the good. His formal errors are abundant;
but even in his errors the truth is often deeper than the error;
and when that has been discredited, the language adjusts itself
to the deeper truth of which it was rather an inadequate expression
than a direct contradiction." Concerning the style of Plato's
writings, a distinguished English scholar and translator observes
as follows: "Nor is the language in which his thoughts are conveyed
less remarkable than the thoughts themselves. In his more elevated
passages he rises, like his own Prometheus, to heaven, and brings
down from thence the noblest of all thefts, [Footnote: See the
story of Prometheus.] Wisdom with Fire; but, in general, calm,
pure, and unaffected, his style flows like a stream which gurgles
its own music as it runs; and his works rise, like the great
fabric of Grecian literature, of which they are the best model,
in calm and noiseless majesty." [Footnote: Thomas Mitchell.]

Plato died at the advanced age of eighty-one, his mental powers
unimpaired, and he was buried in the Academe. On his tomb was
placed the following inscription:

Here, first of all men for pure justice famed,
Aris'tocles, the moral teacher, lies:
[Footnote: The proper name of Plato was Aristocles:
but in his youth he was surnamed Plato by his companions
in the gymnasium, on account of his broad shoulders.
(From the Greek word platus, "broad.")]
And if there ere has lived one truly wise,
This man was wiser still: too great for envy.

ARISTOTLE.

Aristotle was born in 384 B.C., at Stagi'ra, in Macedonia. Hence
he is frequently called the "Stag'i-rite;" as POPE calls him
in the following tribute found in his Temple of Fame:

Here, in a shrine that cast a dazzing light,
Sat, fixed in thought, the mighty Stagirite;
His sacred head a radiant zodiac crowned,
And various animals his sides surround;
His piercing eyes, erect, appear to view
Superior worlds, and look all nature through.

He repaired to Athens at the age of seventeen, and soon after
became a pupil of Plato. His uncommon acuteness of apprehension,
and his indefatigable industry, early won the notice and applause
of his master, who called him the "mind" of the school, and said,
when he was absent, "Intellect is not here." On the death of
Plato, Aristotle left Athens, and in 343 he repaired to Macedonia,
on the invitation of Philip, and became the instructor of the
young prince Alexander. In after years Alexander aided him in his
scientific pursuits by sending to him many objects of natural
history, and giving him large sums of money, estimated in all
at two millions of dollars.

In the year 335 Aristotle returned to Athens, and opened his
school in the Lyce'um. He walked with his scholars up and down
the shady avenues, conversing on philosophy, and hence his school
was called the peripatetic. Aristotle nowhere exhibits the merits
of Plato in the service of metaphysics, yet he was the most learned
and most productive of the writers of Greece. He had neither
the poetical imagination nor the genius of his teacher, but he
mastered the whole philosophical and historical science of his
age, and, more than Plato, his intellect has influenced the course
of modern civilization. He was eminently a practical philosopher--a
cold inquirer, whose mind did not reach the high and lofty teaching
of Plato, concerning Deity and the destiny of mankind. We find
the following just estimate of him in BROWNE'S Greek Classical
Literature: "One cannot set too high a value on the practical
nature of Aristotle's mind. He never forgot the bearing of all
philosophy upon the happiness of man, and he never lost sight
of man's wants and requirements. He saw the inadequacy of all
knowledge, unless he could trace in it a visible practical
tendency. But, beyond this one single point, he falls grievously
short of his great master, Plato. All his ideas of man's good
are limited to the consideration of this life alone. It is
impossible to trace in his writings any belief in a future state
or immortality."

For many centuries succeeding the Middle Ages, especially from
the eleventh to the fifteenth, the metaphysical teachings of
Aristotle held a tyrannic sway over the public mind; but they
have been gradually yielding to the more lofty and sublime
teachings of Plato. His investigations in natural science, however,
and his work as a logician and political philosopher, constitute
his greatness, and create the enormous influence that he has
wielded in the world. "Science owes to him its earliest impulse,"
says MR. LAWRENCE. "He perfected and brought into form," says
DR. WILLIAM SMITH, "those elements of the dialectic art which
had been struck out by Socrates and Plato, and wrought them by
his additions into so complete a system that he may be regarded
as at once the founder and perfecter of logic as an art." Says
MAHAFFY, "He has built his politics upon so sound a philosophic
basis, and upon the evidence of so large and varied a political
experience, that his lessons on the rise and fall of governments
will never grow old, and will be perpetually receiving fresh
corroborations, so long as human nature remains the same."
Aristotle was a friend of the Macedonians, and, on the death
of Alexander, he fled, from Athens to Chal'cis, in Euboea, to
escape a trial for impiety. There he died in 322 B.C. In the
lives of the three great philosophers of Greece--Socrates, Plato,
and Aristotle--is embraced what is commonly called "The
Philosophical Era of Athens." To this era MILTON has beautifully
alluded in his well-known description of the famous city; and
for the Academe, or Academia, the beautiful garden that was the
resort of the philosophers, EDWIN ARNOLD expresses these sentiments
of veneration:

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