CHAPTER XXIX

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LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.

The interval between 776-560 B. C. presents to us a remarkable expansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, iambic, lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was diversified in a great many ways and improved by many separate masters. The creators of all these different styles—from Kallinus and Archilochus down to Stesichorus—fall within the two centuries here included; though Pindar and Simonidês, “the proud and high-crested bards,”[143] who carried lyric and choric poetry to the maximum of elaboration consistent with full poetical effect, lived in the succeeding century, and were contemporary with the tragedian Æschylus. The Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, of the fifth century B. C., combined the lyric and choric song with the living action of iambic dialogue,—thus constituting the last ascending movement in the poetical genius of the race. Reserving this for a future time, and for the history of Athens, to which it more particularly belongs, I now propose to speak only of the poetical movement of the two earlier centuries, wherein Athens had little or no part. So scanty are the remnants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few general considerations on their workings and tendency.[144]

[143] Himerius, Orat. iii, p. 426, Wernsdorf—ἀγέρωχοι καὶ ὑψαυχένες.

[144] For the whole subject of this chapter, the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of O. Müller’s History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, wherein the lyric poets are handled with greater length than consists with the limits of this work, will be found highly valuable,—chapters abounding in erudition and ingenuity, but not always within the limits of the evidence.

The learned work of Ulrici (Geschichte der Griechischen Poesie—_Lyrik_) is still more open to the same remark.

Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods. We must recollect, too, that this was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the age: prose composition was altogether unknown, and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, apparently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive four-stringed harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice and ear were, at that time, inseparably associated with the success and popularity of the poet, and contributed doubtless to restrict the range of subjects with which he could deal. The type was to a certain extent consecrated, like the primitive statues of the gods, from which men only ventured to deviate by gradual and almost unconscious innovations. Moreover, in the first half of the seventh century B. C., that genius which had once created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no longer to be found, and the work of hexameter narrative had come to be prosecuted by less gifted persons,—by those Cyclic poets of whom I have spoken in the preceding volumes.

Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain evidence, was the state of the Greek mind immediately before elegiac and lyric poets appeared; while at the same time its experience was enlarging by the formation of new colonies, and the communion among its various states tended to increase by the freer reciprocity of religious games and festivals. There arose a demand for turning the literature of the age—I use this word as synonymous with the poetry—to new feelings and purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical language of the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, social as well as individual. Such a tendency had become obvious in Hesiod, even within the range of hexameter verse; but the same causes which led to an enlargement of the subjects of poetry inclined men also to vary the metre.

In regard to this latter point, there is reason to believe that the expansion of Greek music was the immediate determining cause; for it has been already stated that the musical scale and instruments of the Greeks, originally very narrow, were materially enlarged by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia, and these acquisitions seem to have been first realized about the beginning of the seventh century B. C., through the Lesbian harper Terpander,—the Phrygian (or Greco-Phrygian) flute-player Olympus,—and the Arkadian or Bœotian flute-player Klonas. Terpander made the important advance of exchanging the original four-stringed harp for one of seven strings, embracing the compass of one octave or two Greek tetrachords, and Olympus as well as Klonas taught many new nomes, or tunes, on the flute, to which the Greeks had before been strangers,—probably also the use of a flute of more varied musical compass. Terpander is said to have gained the prize at the first recorded celebration of the Lacedæmonian festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C.: this is one of the best-ascertained points among the obscure chronology of the seventh century; and there seem grounds for assigning Olympus and Klonas to nearly the same period, a little before Archilochus and Kallinus.[145] To Terpander, Olympus, and Klonas, are ascribed the formation of the earliest musical nomes known to the inquiring Greeks of later times: to the first, nomes on the harp; to the two latter, on the flute,—every nome being the general scheme, or basis, of which the airs actually performed constituted so many variations, within certain defined limits.[146] Terpander employed his enlarged instrumental power as a new accompaniment to the Homeric poems, as well as to certain epic proœmia or hymns to the gods of his own composition. But he does not seem to have departed from the hexameter verse and the daktylic rhythm, to which the new accompaniment was probably not quite suitable; and the idea may thus have been suggested of combining the words also according to new rhythmical and metrical laws.

[145] These early innovators in Grecian music, rhythm, metre, and poetry, belonging to the seventh century B. C., were very imperfectly known, even to those contemporaries of Plato and Aristotle who tried to get together facts for a consecutive history of music. The treatise of Plutarch, De Musicâ, shows what very contradictory statements he found. He quotes from four different authors,—Herakleidês, Glaukus, Alexander, and Aristoxenus, who by no means agreed in their series of names and facts. The first three of them blend together mythe and history; while even the Anagraphê or inscription at Sikyon, which professed to give a continuous list of such poets and musicians as had contended at the Sikyonian games, began with a large stock of mythical names,—Amphion, Linus, Pierius, etc. (Plutarch, Music. p. 1132.) Some authors, according to Plutarch (p. 1133), made the great chronological mistake of placing Terpander as contemporary with Hippônax; a proof how little of chronological evidence was then accessible.

That Terpander was victor at the Spartan festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C., may well have been derived by Hellanikus from the Spartan registers: the name of the Lesbian harper Perikleitas, as having gained the same prize at some subsequent period (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1133), probably rests on the same authority. That Archilochus was rather later than Terpander, and Thalêtas rather later than Archilochus, was the statement of Glaukus (Plutarch, De Mus. p. 1134). Klonas and Polymnêstus are placed later than Terpander; Archilochus later than Klonas: Alkman is said to have mentioned Polymnêstus in one of his songs (pp. 1133-1135). It can hardly be true that Terpander gained _four_ Pythian prizes, if the festival was octennial prior to its reconstitution by the Amphiktyons (p. 1132). Sakadas gained three Pythian prizes _after_ that period, when the festival was quadrennial (p. 1134).

Compare the confused indications in Pollux, iv, 65-66, 78-79. The abstract given by Photius of certain parts of the Chrestomathia of Proclus (published in Gaisford’s edition of Hephæstion, pp. 375-389), is also extremely valuable, in spite of its brevity and obscurity, about the lyric and choric poetry of Greece.

[146] The difference between Νόμος and Μέλος appears in Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1132—Καὶ τὸν Τέρπανδρον, κιθαρῳδικῶν ποιητὴν ὄντα νόμων, κατὰ νόμον ἕκαστον τοῖς ἔπεσι τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ καὶ τοῖς Ὁμήρου μέλη περιτιθέντα, ᾅδειν ἐν τοῖς ἀγῶσι· ἀποφῆναι δὲ τοῦτον λέγει ὀνόματα πρῶτον τοῖς κιθαρῳδικοῖς νόμοις.

The nomes were not many in number; they went by special names; and there was a disagreement of opinion as to the persons who had composed them (Plutarch, Music. p. 1133). They were monodic, not choric,—intended to be sung by one person (Aristot. Problem. xix, 15). Herodot. i, 23, about Arion and the Nomus Orthius.

It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately succeeding Terpander,—comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we have no certain means of determining,[147] though Alkman seems to have been the latest,—presents a remarkable variety both of new metres and of new rhythms, superinduced upon the previous daktylic hexameter. The first departure from this latter is found in the elegiac verse, employed seemingly more or less by all the four above-mentioned poets, but chiefly by the first two, and even ascribed by some to the invention of Kallinus. Tyrtæus in his military march-songs employed the anapæstic metre, but in Archilochus as well as in Alkman we find traces of a much larger range of metrical variety,—iambic, trochaic, anapæstic, ionic, etc.,—sometimes even asynartetic or compound metres, anapæstic or daktylic, blended with trochaic or iambic. What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about the close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries Alkæus and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres which they found existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of their own, which is familiarly known under a name derived from each. In Solon, the younger contemporary of Mimnermus, we have the elegiac, iambic, and trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, the elegiac only. But both Arion and Stesichorus appear to have been innovators in this department, the former by his improvement in the dithyrambic chorus or circular song and dance in honor of Dionysus,—the latter by his more elaborate choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê, but also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by the chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise added to the stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus see that, within the century and a half succeeding Terpander, Greek poetry (or Greek literature, which was then the same thing) became greatly enriched in matter as well as diversified in form.

[147] Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 671, 665, 644) appears to me noway satisfactory in his chronological arrangements of the poets of this century. I agree with O. Müller (Hist. of Literat. of Ancient Greece, ch. xii, 9) in thinking that he makes Terpander too recent, and Thalêtas too ancient; I also believe both Kallinus and Alkman to have been more recent than the place which Mr. Clinton assigns to them; the epoch of Tyrtæus will depend upon the date which we assign to the second Messenian war.

How very imperfectly the chronology of the poetical names even of the sixth century B. C.—Sappho, Anakreon, Hippônax—was known even to writers of the beginning of the Ptolemaic age (or shortly after 300 B. C.), we may see by the mistakes noted in Athenæus, xiii, p. 599. Hermesianax of Kolophon, the elegiac poet, represented Anakreon as the lover of Sappho; this might perhaps be not absolutely impossible, if we supposed in Sappho an old age like that of Ninon de l’Enclos; but others (even earlier than Hermesianax, since they are quoted by Chamæleon) represented Anakreon, when in old age, as addressing verses to Sappho, still young. Again, the comic writer Diphilus introduced both Archilochus and Hippônax as the lovers of Sappho.

To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection between the two: new forms were essential for the expression of new wants and feelings,—though the assertion that elegiac metre is especially adapted for one set of feelings,[148] trochaic for a second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them employed by the poets for very different subjects,—gay or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly,—seemingly with little discrimination.

[148] The Latin poets and the Alexandrine critics seem to have both insisted on the natural mournfulness of the elegiac metre (Ovid, Heroid. xv, 7; Horat. Art. Poet. 75): see also the fanciful explanation given by Didymus in the Etymologicon Magnum, v. Ἔλεγος.

We learn from Hephæstion (c. viii, p. 45, Gaisf.) that the anapæstic march-metre of Tyrtæus was employed by the comic writers also, for a totally different vein of feeling. See the Dissertation of Franck, Callinus, pp. 37-48 (Leips. 1816).

Of the remarks made by O. Müller respecting the metres of these early poets (History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xi, s. 8-12, etc.; ch. xii, s. 1-2, etc.), many appear to be uncertified and disputable.

For some good remarks on the fallibility of men’s impressions respecting the natural and inherent ἦθος of particular metres, see Adam Smith (Theory of Moral Sentiment, part v, ch. i, p. 329), in the edition of his works by Dugald Stewart.

But the adoption of some new metre, different from the perpetual series of hexameters, was required when the poet desired to do something more than recount a long story or fragment of heroic legend,—when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his enemies, his city, his hopes and fears with regard to matters recent or impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, too, at once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, like our blank verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon each separate line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined resting-place or natural pause beyond.[149] In reference to any long composition, either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained license is found convenient, and the case was similar for Greek epos and drama,—the single-lined iambic trimeter being generally used for the dialogue of tragedy and comedy, just as the daktylic hexameter had been used for the epic. The metrical changes introduced by Archilochus and his contemporaries may be compared to a change from our blank verse to the rhymed couplet and quatrain: the verse was thrown into little systems of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the end of each; and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and relished by, the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire or partial, in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with greater point and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and pentameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and sixth thesis,[150] or the last half of the third and sixth foot, suppressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode (or iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other binary combinations of verse which we trace among the fragments of Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase of effect both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct pleasures of novelty and variety.

[149] See the observations in Aristotle (Rhetor. iii, 9) on the λέξις εἰρομένη as compared with λέξις κατεστραμμένη·—λέξις εἰρομένη, ἣ οὐδὲν ἔχει τέλος αὐτὴ καθ᾽ αὑτὴν, ἂν μὴ τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸ λεγόμενον τελειώθη·—κατεστραμμένη δὲ, ἡ ἐν περιόδοις· λέγω δὲ περίοδον, λέξιν ἔχουσαν ἀρχὴν καὶ τελευτὴν αὐτὴν καθ᾽ αὑτὴν καὶ μέγεθος εὐσύνοπτον.

[150] I employ, however unwillingly, the word _thesis_ here (arsis and thesis) in the sense in which it is used by G. Hermann (“Illud tempus, in quo ictus est, _arsin_; ea tempora, quæ carent ictu, _thesin_ vocamus,” Element. Doctr. Metr. sect. 15), and followed by Boeckh, in his Dissertation on the Metres of Pindar (i, 4), though I agree with Dr. Barham (in the valuable Preface to his edition of Hephæstion, Cambridge, 1843, pp. 5-8) that the opposite sense of the words would be the preferable one, just as it was the original sense in which they were used by the best Greek musical writers: Dr. Barham’s Preface is very instructive on the difficult subject of ancient rhythm generally.

The iambic metre, built upon the primitive iambus, or coarse and licentious jesting,[151] which formed a part of some Grecian festivals (especially of the festivals of Dêmêtêr as well in Attica as in Paros, the native country of the poet), is only one amongst many new paths struck out by his inventive genius; whose exuberance astonishes us, when we consider that he takes his start from little more than the simple hexameter,[152] in which, too, he was a distinguished composer,—for even of the elegiac verse he is as likely to have been the inventor as Kallinus, just as he was the earliest popular and successful composer of table-songs, or Skolia, though Terpander may have originated some such before him. The entire loss of his poems, excepting some few fragments, enables us to recognize little more than one characteristic,—the intense personality which pervaded them, as well as that coarse, direct, and out-spoken license, which afterwards lent such terrible effect to the old comedy at Athens. His lampoons are said to have driven Lykambês, the father of Neobulê, to hang himself: the latter had been promised to Archilochus in marriage, but that promise was broken, and the poet assailed both father and daughter with every species of calumny.[153] In addition to this disappointment, he was poor, the son of a slave-mother, and an exile from his country, Paros, to the unpromising colony of Thasos. The desultory notices respecting him betray a state of suffering combined with loose conduct which vented itself sometimes in complaint, sometimes in libellous assault; and he was at last slain by some whom his muse had thus exasperated. His extraordinary poetical genius finds but one voice of encomium throughout antiquity. His triumphal song to Hêraklês was still popularly sung by the victors at Olympia, near two centuries after his death, in the days of Pindar; but that majestic and complimentary poet at once denounces the malignity, and attests the retributive suffering, of the great Parian iambist.[154]

[151] Homer, Hymn. ad Cererem. 202; Hesychius, v. Γεφυρὶς; Herodot. v, 83; Diodor. v, 4. There were various gods at whose festivals scurrility (τωθασμὸς) was a consecrated practice, seemingly different festivals in different places (Aristot. Politic. vii, 15, 8).

The reader will understand better what this consecrated scurrility means by comparing the description of a modern traveller in the kingdom of Naples (Tour through the Southern Provinces of the Kingdom of Naples, by Mr. Keppel Craven, London, 1821, ch. xv, p. 287):—

“I returned to Gerace (the site of the ancient Epizephyrian Lokri) by one of those moonlights which are known only in these latitudes, and which no pen or pencil can portray. My path lay along some cornfields, in which the natives were employed in the last labors of the harvest, and I was not a little surprised to find myself saluted with a volley of opprobrious epithets and abusive language, uttered in the most threatening voice, and accompanied with the most insulting gestures. This extraordinary custom is of the most remote antiquity, and is observed towards all strangers during the harvest and vintage seasons; those who are apprized of it will keep their temper as well as their presence of mind, as the loss of either would only serve as a signal for still louder invectives, and prolong a contest in which success would be as hopeless as undesirable.”

[152] The chief evidence for the rhythmical and metrical changes introduced by Archilochus is to be found in the 28th chapter of Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1140-1141, in words very difficult to understand completely. See Ulrici, Geschichte der Hellenisch. Poesie, vol. ii, p. 381.

The epigram ascribed to Theokritus (No. 18 in Gaisford’s Poetæ Minores) shows that the poet had before him hexameter compositions of Archilochus, as well as lyric:—

ὡς ἐμμελὴς τ᾽ ἔγεντο κἀπιδέξιος ἐπεά τε ποιεῖν, πρὸς λύραν τ᾽ ἀείδειν

See the article on Archilochus in Welcker’s Kleine Schriften, pp. 71-82, which has the merit of showing that iambic bitterness is far from being the only marked feature in his character and genius.

[153] See Meleager, Epigram. cxix, 3; Horat. Epist. 19, 23, and Epod. vi, 13 with the Scholiast; Ælian. V. H. x, 13.

[154] Pindar, Pyth. ii, 55; Olymp. ix, 1, with the Scholia; Euripid. Hercul. Furens, 583-683. The eighteenth epigram of Theokritus (above alluded to) conveys a striking tribute of admiration to Archilochus: compare Quintilian, x, 1, and Liebel. ad Archilochi Fragmenta, sects. 5, 6, 7.

Amidst the multifarious veins in which Archilochus displayed his genius, moralizing or gnomic poetry is not wanting, while his contemporary Simonides, of Amorgos, devotes the iambic metre especially to this destination, afterwards followed out by Solon and Theognis. But Kallinus, the earliest celebrated elegiac poet, so far as we can judge from his few fragments, employed the elegiac metre for exhortations of warlike patriotism; and the more ample remains which we possess of Tyrtæus are sermons in the same strain, preaching to the Spartans bravery against the foe, and unanimity as well as obedience to the law at home. They are patriotic effusions, called forth by the circumstances of the time, and sung by single voice, with accompaniment of the flute,[155] to those in whose bosoms the flame of courage was to be kindled. For though what we peruse is in verse, we are still in the tide of real and present life, and we must suppose ourselves rather listening to an orator addressing the citizens when danger or dissension is actually impending. It is only in the hands of Mimnermus that elegiac verse comes to be devoted to soft and amatory subjects. His few fragments present a vein of passive and tender sentiment, illustrated by appropriate matter of legend, such as would be cast into poetry in all ages, and quite different from the rhetoric of Kallinus and Tyrtæus.

[155] Athenæus, xiv, p. 630.

The poetical career of Alkman is again distinct from that of any of his above-mentioned contemporaries. Their compositions, besides hymns to the gods, were principally expressions of feeling intended to be sung by individuals, though sometimes also suited for the kômus, or band of festive volunteers, assembled on some occasion of common interest: those of Alkman were principally choric, intended for the song and accompanying dance of the chorus. He was a native of Sardis in Lydia, or at least his family were so; and he appears to have come in early life to Sparta, though his genius and mastery of the Greek language discountenance the story that he was brought over to Sparta as a slave. The most ancient arrangement of music at Sparta, generally ascribed to Terpander,[156] underwent considerable alteration, not only through the elegiac and anapæstic measures of Tyrtæus, but also through the Kretan Thalêtas and the Lydian Alkman. The harp, the instrument of Terpander, was rivalled and in part superseded by the flute or pipe, which had been recently rendered more effective in the hands of Olympus, Klonas, and Polymnêstus, and which gradually became, for compositions intended to raise strong emotion, the favorite instrument of the two,—being employed as accompaniment both to the elegies of Tyrtæus, and to the hyporchemata (songs, or hymns, combined with dancing) of Thalêtas; also, as the stimulus and regulator to the Spartan military march.[157]

[156] Plutarch, De Musicâ, pp. 1134, 1135; Aristotle, De Lacedæmon. Republicâ, Fragm. xi, p. 132, ed. Neumann; Plutarch, De Serâ Numin. Vindict. c. 13, p. 558.

[157] Thucyd. v, 69-70, with the Scholia,—μετὰ τῶν πολεμικῶν νόμων ... Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ βραδέως καὶ ὑπὸ αὐλητῶν πολλῶν νόμῳ ἐγκαθεστώτων, οὐ τοῦ θείου χάριν, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα ὁμαλῶς μετὰ ῥυθμοῦ βαίνοιεν, καὶ μὴ διασπασθείη αὐτοῖς ἡ τάξις.

Cicero, Tuscul. Qu. ii, 16. “Spartiatarum quorum procedit Mora ad tibiam, neque adhibetur ulla sine anapæstis pedibus hortatio.”

The flute was also the instrument appropriated to Kômus, or the excited movement of half-intoxicated revellers (Hesiod. Scut. Hercul. 280; Athenæ. xiv, pp. 617-618).

These elegies (as has been just remarked) were sung by one person, in the midst of an assembly of listeners, and there were doubtless other compositions intended for the individual voice. But in general such was not the character of music and poetry at Sparta; everything done there, both serious and recreative, was public and collective, so that the chorus and its performances received extraordinary development. It has been already stated, that the chorus usually, with song and dance combined, constituted an important part of divine service throughout all Greece, and was originally a public manifestation of the citizens generally,—a large proportion of them being actively engaged in it,[158] and receiving some training for the purpose as an ordinary branch of education. Neither the song nor the dance, under such conditions, could be otherwise than extremely simple. But in process of time, the performance at the chief festivals tended to become more elaborate, and to fall into the hands of persons expressly and professionally trained,—the mass of the citizens gradually ceasing to take active part, and being present merely as spectators. Such was the practice which grew up in most parts of Greece, and especially at Athens, where the dramatic chorus acquired its highest perfection. But the drama never found admission at Sparta, and the peculiarity of Spartan life tended much to keep up the popular chorus on its ancient footing. It formed, in fact, one element in that never-ceasing drill to which the Spartans were subject from their boyhood, and it served a purpose analogous to their military training, in accustoming them to simultaneous and regulated movement,—insomuch that the comparison between the chorus, especially in its Pyrrhic, or war-dances, and the military enomoty, seems to have been often dwelt upon.[159] In the singing of the solemn pæan in honor of Apollo, at the festival of the Hyakinthia, king Agesilaus was under the orders of the chorus-master, and sang in the place allotted to him;[160] while the whole body of Spartans without exception,—the old, the middle-aged, and the youth, the matrons, and the virgins,—were distributed in various choric companies,[161] and trained to harmony both of voice and motion, which was publicly exhibited at the solemnities of the Gymnopædiæ. The word _dancing_ must be understood in a larger sense than that in which it is now employed, and as comprising every variety of rhythmical, accentuated, conspiring movements, or gesticulations, or postures of the body, from the slowest to the quickest;[162] cheironomy, or the decorous and expressive movement of the hands, being especially practised.

[158] Plato, Legg. vii, p. 803. θύοντα καὶ ᾅδοντα καὶ ὀρχούμενον, ὥστε τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἱλέως αὑτῷ παρασκευάζειν δυνατὸν εἶναι, etc.: compare p. 799; Maximus Tyr. Diss. xxxvii, 4: Aristophan. Ran. 950-975; Athenæus, xiv, p. 626; Polyb. iv, 30; Lucian, De Saltatione, c. 10, 11, 16, 31.

Compare Aristotle (Problem xix, 15) about the primitive character and subsequent change of the chorus; and the last chapter of the eighth book of his Politica: also, a striking passage in Plutarch (De Cupidine Divitiarum, c. 8, p. 527) about the transformation of the Dionysiac festival at Chæroneia from simplicity to costliness.

[159] Athenæus, xiv, p. 628; Suidas, vol. iii, p. 715, ed. Kuster; Plutarch, Instituta Laconica, c. 32,—κωμῳδίας καὶ τραγῳδίας οὐκ ἠκρόωντο, ὅπως μήτε ἐν σπουδῇ, μήτε ἐν παιδίᾳ, ἀκούωσι τῶν ἀντιλεγόντων τοῖς νόμοις,—which exactly corresponds with the ethical view implied in the alleged conversation between Solon and Thespis (Plutarch, Solon, c. 29: see above, ch. xi, vol. ii, p. 195), and with Plato, Legg. vii, p. 817.

[160] Xenophon, Agesilaus ii, 17. οἴκαδε ἀπελθὼν εἰς τὰ Ὑακίνθια, ὅπου ἐτάχθη ὑπὸ τοῦ χοροποιοῦ, τὸν παιᾶνα τῷ θεῷ συνεπετέλει.

[161] Plutarch, Lykurg. c. 14, 16, 21: Athenæus, xiv, pp. 631-632, xv, p. 678; Xenophon, Hellen. vi, 4, 15; De Republic. Lacedæm. ix, 5; Pindar, Hyporchemata, Fragm. 78, ed. Bergk.

Λάκαινα μὲν παρθένων ἀγέλα.

Also, Alkman, Fragm. 13, ed. Bergk; Antigon. Caryst. Hist. Mirab. c. 27.

[162] How extensively pantomimic the ancient orchêsis was, may be seen by the example in Xenophon, Symposion, vii, 5, ix, 3-6, and Plutarch, Symposion, ix, 15, 2: see K. F. Hermann, Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer der Griechen, ch. 29.

“Sane ut in religionibus saltaretur, hæc ratio est: quod nullam majores nostri partem corporis esse voluerunt, quæ non sentiret religionem: nam cantus ad animum, saltatio ad mobilitatem corporis pertinet.” (Servius ad Virgil. Eclog. v, 73.)

We see thus that both at Sparta and in Krête (which approached in respect to publicity of individual life most nearly to Sparta), the choric aptitudes and manifestations occupied a larger space than in any other Grecian city. And as a certain degree of musical and rhythmical variety was essential to meet this want,[163] while music was never taught to Spartan citizens individually,—we farther understand how strangers like Terpander, Polymnêstus, Thalêtas, Tyrtæus, Alkman, etc., were not only received, but acquired great influence at Sparta, in spite of the preponderant spirit of jealous seclusion in the Spartan character. All these masters appear to have been effective in their own special vocation,—the training of the chorus,—to which they imparted new rhythmical action, and for which they composed new music. But Alkman did this, and something more; he possessed the genius of a poet, and his compositions were read afterwards with pleasure by those who could not hear them sung or see them danced. In the little of his poems which remains, we recognize that variety of rhythm and metre for which he was celebrated. In this respect he (together with the Kretan Thalêtas, who is said to have introduced a more vehement style both of music and dance, with the Kretic and Pæonic rhythm, into Sparta[164]) surpassed Archilochus, and prepared the way for the complicated choric movements of Stesichorus and Pindar: some of the fragments, too, manifest that fresh outpouring of individual sentiment and emotion which constitutes so much of the charm of popular poetry. Besides his touching address in old age to the Spartan virgins, over whose song and dance he had been accustomed to preside.—he is not afraid to speak of his hearty appetite, satisfied with simple food and relishing a bowl of warm broth at the winter tropic.[165] And he has attached to the spring an epithet, which comes home to the real feelings of a poor country more than those captivating pictures which abound in verse, ancient as well as modern: he calls it “the season of short fare,”—the crop of the previous year being then nearly consumed, the husbandman is compelled to pinch himself until his new harvest comes in.[166] Those who recollect that in earlier periods of our history, and in all countries where there is little accumulated stock, an exorbitant difference is often experienced in the price of corn before and after the harvest, will feel the justice of Alkman’s description.

[163] Aristot. Politic. viii, 4, 6. Οἱ Λάκωνες—~οὐ μανθάνοντες ὅμως~ δύνανται κρίνειν ὀρθῶς, ὥς φασι, τὰ χρηστὰ καὶ τὰ μὴ τῶν μέλων.

[164] Homer. Hymn. Apoll. 340. Οἷοί τε Κρητῶν παιήονες, etc.: see Boeckh. De Metris Pindari, ii, 7, p. 143; Ephorus ap. Strabo, x, p. 480: Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1142.

Respecting Thalêtas, and the gradual alterations in the character of music at Sparta. Hoeckh has given much instructive matter (Kreta. vol. iii, pp. 340-377). Respecting Nymphæus of Kydonia, whom Ælian (V. II. xii, 50) puts in juxtaposition with Thalêtas and Terpander, nothing is known.

After what is called the second fashion of music (κατάστασις) had thus been introduced by Thalêtas and his contemporaries.—the first fashion being that of Terpander,—no farther innovations were allowed. The ephors employed violent means to prohibit the intended innovations of Phrynis and Timotheus, after the Persian war: see Plutarch Agis, c. 10.

[165] Alkman. Fragm. 13-17. ed. Bergk, ὁ πάμφαγος Ἀλκμάν: compare Fr. 63. Aristides calls him ὁ τῶν παρθένων ἐπαινέτης καὶ σύμβουλος (Or. xlv, vol. ii, p. 40. Dindorf).

Of the Partneneia of Alkman (songs, hymns, and dances, composed for a chorus of maidens) there were at least two books (Stephanus Byzant. v. Ἐρυσίχη). He was the earliest poet who acquired renown in this species of composition, afterwards much pursued by Pindar, Bacchylidês, and Simonidês of Keôs: see Welcker, Alkman. Fragment. p. 10.

[166] Alkman, Frag. 64, ed. Bergk.

Ὥρας δ᾽ ἐσῆκε τρεῖς, θέρος Καὶ χεῖμα κ᾽ ὠπώραν τρίταν· Καὶ τέτρατον τὸ ἦρ, ὅκα Σάλλει μὲν, ἐσθίειν δ᾽ ἄδαν Οὐκ ἐστί.

Judging from these and from a few other fragments of this poet, Alkman appears to have combined the life and exciting vigor of Archilochus in the song properly so called, sung by himself individually,—with a larger knowledge of musical and rhythmical effect in regard to the choric performance. He composed in the Laconian dialect,—a variety of the Doric with some intermixture of Æolisms. And it was from him, jointly with those other composers who figured at Sparta during the century after Terpander, as well as from the simultaneous development of the choric muse[167] in Argos, Sikyôn, Arcadia, and other parts of Peloponnesus, that the Doric dialect acquired permanent footing in Greece, as the only proper dialect for choric compositions. Continued by Stesichorus and Pindar, this habit passed even to the Attic dramatists, whose choric songs are thus in a great measure Doric, while their dialogue is Attic. At Sparta, as well as in other parts of Peloponnesus,[168] the musical and rhythmical style appears to have been fixed by Alkman and his contemporaries, and to have been tenaciously maintained, for two or three centuries, with little or no innovation; the more so, as the flute-players at Sparta formed an hereditary profession, who followed the routine of their fathers.[169]

[167] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 9, p. 1134. About the dialect of Alkman, see Ahrens, De Dialecto Æolicâ, sects. 2, 4; about his different metres, Welcker, Alkman. Fragm. pp. 10-12.

[168] Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 32, p. 1142, c. 37, p. 1144; Athenæus, xiv, p. 632. In Krête, also, the popularity of the primitive musical composers was maintained, though along with the innovator Timotheus: see Inscription No. 3053, ap. Boeckh, Corp. Ins.

[169] Herodot. vi, 60. They were probably a γένος with an heroic progenitor, like the heralds, to whom the historian compares them.

Alkman was the last poet who addressed himself to the popular chorus. Both Arion and Stesichorus composed for a body of trained men, with a degree of variety and involution such as could not be attained by a mere fraction of the people. The primitive dithyrambus was a round choric dance and song in honor of Dionysus,[170] common to Naxos, Thebes, and seemingly to many other places, at the Dionysiac festival,—a spontaneous effusion of drunken men in the hour of revelry, wherein the poet Archilochus, “with the thunder of wine full upon his mind,” had often taken the chief part.[171] Its exciting character approached to the worship of the Great Mother in Asia, and stood in contrast with the solemn and stately pæan addressed to Apollo. Arion introduced into it an alteration such as Archilochus had himself brought about in the scurrilous iambus. He converted it into an elaborate composition in honor of the god, sung and danced by a chorus of fifty persons, not only sober, but trained with great strictness; though its rhythm and movements, and its equipment in the character of satyrs, presented more or less an imitation of the primitive license. Born at Methymna in Lesbos, Arion appears as a harper, singer, and composer, much favored by Periander at Corinth, in which city he first “composed, denominated, and taught the dithyramb,” earlier than any one known to Herodotus.[172] He did not, however, remain permanently there, but travelled from city to city, exhibiting at the festivals for money,—especially to Sicilian and Italian Greece, where he acquired large gains. We may here again remark how the poets as well as the festivals served to promote a sentiment of unity among the dispersed Greeks. Such transfer of the dithyramb, from the field of spontaneous nature into the garden of art,[173] constitutes the first stage in the refinement of Dionysiac worship; which will hereafter be found still farther exalted in the form of the Attic drama.

[170] Pindar, Fragm. 44, ed. Bergk: Schol. ad Pindar. Olymp. xiii, 25; Proclus, Chrestomathia, c. 12-14. ad calc. Hephæst. Gaisf. p. 382: compare W. M. Schmidt, In Dithyrambum Poetarumque Dithyrambicorum Reliquias, pp. 171-183 (Berlin, 1845).

[171] Archiloch. Fragm. 72, ed. Bergk.

Ὡς Διωνύσου ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι μέλος Οἶδα διθύραμβον, οἴνῳ ξυγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας.

The old oracle quoted in Demosthen. cont. Meidiam, about the Dionysia at Athens, enjoins—Διονύσῳ δημοτελῆ ἱερὰ τελεῖν, ~καὶ κρατῆρα κεράσαι~, καὶ χοροὺς ἱστάναι.

[172] Herodot. i, 23; Suidas, v. Ἀρίων; Pindar, Olymp. xiii, 25.

[173] Aristot. Poetic. c. 6, ἐγέννησαν τὴν ποίησιν ἐκ τῶν αὐτοσχεδιασμάτων; again, to the same effect, _ibid._ c. 9.

The date of Arion seems about 600 B. C., shortly after Alkman: that of Stesichorus is a few years later. To the latter the Greek chorus owed a high degree of improvement, and in particular the last finished distribution of its performance into the strophê, the antistrophê, and the epôdus: the turn, the return, and the rest,—the rhythm and metre of the song during each strophê corresponded with that during the antistrophê, but was varied during the epôdus, and again varied during the following strophês. Until this time the song had been monostrophic, consisting of nothing more than one uniform stanza, repeated from the beginning to the end of the composition;[174] so that we may easily see how vast was the new complication and difficulty introduced by Stesichorus,—not less for the performers than for the composer, himself at that time the teacher and trainer of performers. Both this poet and his contemporary the flute-player Sakadas of Argos,—who gained the prize at the first three Pythian games founded after the Sacred War,—seem to have surpassed their predecessors in the breadth of subject which they embraced, borrowing from the inexhaustible province of ancient legend, and expanding the choric song into a well-sustained epical narrative.[175] Indeed, these Pythian games opened a new career to musical composers just at the time when Sparta began to be closed against musical novelties.

[174] Alkman slightly departed from this rule: in one of his compositions of fourteen strophês, the last seven were in a different metre from the first seven (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.; Hermann, Elementa Doctrin. Metricæ, c. xvii, sect. 595). Ἀλκμανικὴ καινοτομία καὶ Στησιχόρειος (Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1135).

[175] Pausanias, vi, 14, 4; x, 7, 3. Sakadas, as well as Stesichorus, composed an Ἰλίου πέρσις (Athenæus, xiii, p. 609).

“Stesichorum (observes Quintilian, x, 1) quam sit ingenio validus, materiæ quoque ostendunt, maxima bella et clarissimos canentem duces, et epici carminis onera lyrâ sustinentem. Reddit enim personis in agendo simul loquendoque debitam dignitatem: ac si tenuisset modum, videtur æmulari proximus Homerum potuisse: sed redundat, atque effunditur: quod, ut est reprehendendum, ita copiæ vitium est.”

Simonidês of Keôs (Frag. 19. ed. Bergk) puts Homer and Stesichorus together: see the epigram of Antipater in the Anthologia, t. i, p. 328, ed. Jacobs, and Dio Chrysostom. Or. 55, vol. ii, p. 284, Reisk. Compare Kleine, Stesichori Fragment. pp. 30-34 (Berlin 1828), and O. Müller, History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. xiv, sect. 5.

The musical composers of Argos are affirmed by Herodotus to have been the most renowned in Greece, half a century after Sakadas (Her. iii, 131).

Alkæus and Sappho, both natives of Lesbos, appear about contemporaries with Arion, B. C. 610-580. Of their once celebrated lyric compositions, scarcely anything remains. But the criticisms which are preserved on both of them place them in strong contrast with Alkman, who lived and composed under the more restrictive atmosphere of Sparta,—and in considerable analogy with the turbulent vehemence of Archilochus,[176] though without his intense private malignity. Both composed for their own local audience, and in their own Lesbian Æolic dialect; not because there was any peculiar fitness in that dialect to express their vein of sentiment, but because it was more familiar to their hearers. Sappho herself boasts of the preëminence of the Lesbian bards;[177] and the celebrity of Terpander, Perikleitas, and Arion, permits us to suppose that there may have been before her many popular bards in the island who did not attain to Hellenic celebrity. Alkæus included in his songs the fiercest bursts of political feeling, the stirring alternations of war and exile, and all the ardent relish of a susceptible man for wine and love.[178] The love-song seems to have formed the principal theme of Sappho, who, however, also composed odes or songs[179] on a great variety of other subjects, serious as well as satirical, and is said farther to have first employed the Mixolydian mode in music. It displays the tendency of the age to metrical and rhythmical novelty, that Alkæus and Sappho are said to have each invented the peculiar stanza, well-known under their respective names,—combinations of the dactyl, trochee, and iambus, analogous to the asynartetic verses of Archilochus; they by no means confined themselves, however, to Alkaic and Sapphic metre. Both the one and the other composed hymns to the gods; indeed, this is a theme common to all the lyric and choric poets, whatever may be their peculiarities in other ways. Most of their compositions were songs for the single voice, not for the chorus. The poetry of Alkæus is the more worthy of note, as it is the earliest instance of the employment of the Muse in actual political warfare, and shows the increased hold which that motive was acquiring on the Grecian mind.

[176] Horat. Epistol. i, 19, 23.

[177] Sappho, Fragm. 93, ed. Bergk. See also Plehn, Lesbiaca, pp. 145-165. Respecting the poetesses, two or three of whom were noted, contemporary with Sappho, see Ulrici, Gesch. der Hellen. Poesie, vol. ii, p. 370.

[178] Dionys. Hal. Ant. Rom. v, 82; Horat. Od. i, 32, ii, 13; Cicero, De Nat. Deor. i, 28; the striking passage in Plutarch, Symposion iii, 1, 3, ap. Bergk. Fragm. 42. In the view of Dionysius, the Æolic dialect of Alkæus and Sappho diminished the value of their compositions: the Æolic accent, analogous to the Latin, and acknowledging scarcely any oxyton words, must have rendered them much less agreeable in recitation or song.

[179] See Plutarch, De Music. p. 1136; Dionys. Hal. de Comp. Verb. c. 23, p. 173, Reisk, and some striking passages of Himerius, in respect to Sappho (i, 4, 16, 19; Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. xxiv, 7-9), and the encomium of the critical Dionysius (De Compos. Verborum, c. 23, p. 173).

The author of the Parian marble adopts, as one of his chronological epochs (Epoch 37), the flight of Sappho, or exile, from Mitylênê to Sicily somewhere between 604-596 B. C. There probably was something remarkable which induced him to single out this event; but we do not know what, nor can we trust the hints suggested by Ovid (Heroid. xv, 51).

Nine books of Sappho’s songs were collected by the later literary Greeks, arranged chiefly according to the metres (C. F. Neue, Sapphonis Fragm. p. 11, Berlin 1827). There were ten books of the songs of Alkæus (Athenæus, xi, p. 481), and both Aristophanês (Grammaticus) and Aristarchus published editions of them. (Hephæstion, c. xv, p. 134, Gaisf.) Dikæarchus wrote a commentary upon his songs (Athenæus, xi, p. 461).

The gnomic poets, or moralists in verse, approach by the tone of their sentiments more to the nature of prose. They begin with Simonidês of Amorgos or of Samos, the contemporary of Archilochus: indeed, the latter himself devoted some compositions to the illustrative fable, which had not been unknown even to Hesiod. In the remains of Simonidês of Amorgos we trace nothing relative to the man personally, though he too, like Archilochus, is said to have had an individual enemy, Orodœkidês, whose character was aspersed by his muse.[180] His only considerable poem extant is devoted to a survey of the characters of women, in iambic verse, and by way of comparison with various animals,—the mare, the ass, the bee, etc. It follows out the Hesiodic vein respecting the social and economical mischief usually caused by women, with some few honorable exceptions; but the poet shows a much larger range of observation and illustration, if we compare him with his predecessor Hesiod; moreover, his illustrations come fresh from life and reality. We find in this early iambist the same sympathy with industry and its due rewards which are observable in Hesiod, together with a still more melancholy sense of the uncertainty of human events.

[180] Welcker, Simonidis Amorgini Iambi qui supersunt, p. 9.

Of Solon and Theognis I have spoken in former chapters. They reproduce in part the moralizing vein of Simonidês, though with a strong admixture of personal feeling and a direct application to passing events. The mixture of political with social morality, which we find in both, marks their more advanced age: Solon bears in this respect the same relation to Simonidês, as his contemporary Alkæus bears to Archilochus. His poems, as far as we can judge by the fragments remaining, appear to have been short occasional effusions,—with the exception of the epic poem respecting the submerged island of Atlantis; which he began towards the close of his life, but never finished. They are elegiac, trimeter iambic, and trochaic tetrameter: in his hands certainly neither of these metres can be said to have any special or separate character. If the poems of Solon are short, those of Theognis are much shorter, and are indeed so much broken (as they stand in our present collection), as to read like separate epigrams or bursts of feeling, which the poet had not taken the trouble to incorporate in any definite scheme or series. They form a singular mixture of maxim and passion,—of general precept with personal affection towards the youth Kyrnus,—which surprises us if tried by the standard of literary composition, but which seems a very genuine manifestation of an impoverished exile’s complaints and restlessness. What remains to us of Phokylidês, another of the gnomic poets nearly contemporary with Solon, is nothing more than a few maxims in verse,—couplets, with the name of the author in several cases embodied in them.

Amidst all the variety of rhythmical and metrical innovations which have been enumerated, the ancient epic continued to be recited by the rhapsodes as before, and some new epical compositions were added to the existing stock: Eugammon of Kyrênê, about the 50th Olympiad, (580 B. C.) appears to be the last of the series. At Athens, especially, both Solon and Peisistratus manifested great solicitude as well for the recitation as for the correct preservation of the Iliad. Perhaps its popularity may have been diminished by the competition of so much lyric and choric poetry, more showy and striking in its accompaniments, as well as more changeful in its rhythmical character. Whatever secondary effect, however, this newer species of poetry may have derived from such helps, its primary effect was produced by real intellectual or poetical excellence,—by the thoughts, sentiment, and expression, not by the accompaniment. For a long time the musical composer and the poet continued generally to be one and the same person; and besides those who have acquired sufficient distinction to reach posterity, we cannot doubt that there were many known only to their own contemporaries. But with all of them the instrument and the melody constituted only the inferior part of that which was known by the name of music,—altogether subordinate to the “thoughts that breathe and words that burn.”[181] Exactness and variety of rhythmical pronunciation gave to the latter their full effect upon a delicate ear; but such pleasure of the ear was ancillary to the emotion of mind arising out of the sense conveyed. Complaints are made by the poets, even so early as 500 B. C., that the accompaniment was becoming too prominent. But it was not until the age of the comic poet Aristophanês, towards the end of the fifth century B. C., that the primitive relation between the instrumental accompaniment and the words was really reversed,—and loud were the complaints to which it gave rise;[182] the performance of the flute or harp then became more elaborate, showy, and overpowering, while the words were so put together as to show off the player’s execution. I notice briefly this subsequent revolution for the purpose of setting forth, by contrast, the truly intellectual character of the original lyric and choric poetry of Greece; and of showing how much the vague sentiment arising from mere musical sound was lost in the more definite emotion, and in the more lasting and reproductive combinations, generated by poetical meaning.

[181] Aristophan. Nubes, 536.

Ἀλλ᾽ αὑτῇ καὶ τοῖς ἔπεσιν πιστεύουσ᾽ ἐλήλυθεν.

[182] See Pratinas ap. Athenæum, xiv, p. 617, also p. 636, and the striking fragment of the lost comic poet Pherekratês, in Plutarch, De Musicâ, p. 1141, containing the bitter remonstrance of _Music_ (Μουσικὴ) against the wrong which she had suffered from the dithyrambist Melanippidês: compare also Aristophanês, Nubes, 951-972; Athenæus, xiv, p. 617; Horat. Art. Poetic. 205; and W. M. Schmidt, Diatribê in Dithyrambum, ch. viii, pp. 250-265.

Τὸ σοβαρὸν καὶ περιττὸν—the character of the newer music (Plutarch, Agis, c. 10)—as contrasted with τὸ σεμνὸν καὶ ἀπερίεργον of the old music (Plutarch, De Musicâ, _ut sup._): ostentation and affected display, against seriousness and simplicity. It is by no means certain that these reproaches against the more recent music of the Greeks were well founded; we may well be rendered mistrustful of their accuracy when we hear similar remarks and contrasts advanced with regard to the music of our last three centuries. The character of Greek poetry certainly tended to degenerate after Euripidês.

The name and poetry of Solon, and the short maxims, or sayings, of Phokylidês, conduct us to the mention of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Solon was himself one of the seven, and most if not all of them were poets, or composers in verse.[183] To most of them is ascribed also an abundance of pithy repartees, together with one short saying, or maxim, peculiar to each, serving as a sort of distinctive motto;[184] indeed, the test of an accomplished man about this time was his talent for singing or reciting poetry, and for making smart and ready answers. Respecting this constellation of wise men,—who in the next century of Grecian history, when philosophy came to be a matter of discussion and argumentation, were spoken of with great eulogy,—all the statements are confused, in part even contradictory. Neither the number, nor the names, are given by all authors alike. Dikæarchus numbered ten, Hermippus seventeen: the names of Solon the Athenian, Thalês the Milesian, Pittakus the Mitylenean, and Bias the Prienean, were comprised in all the lists,—and the remaining names as given by Plato[185] were, Kleobulus of Lindus in Rhodes, Myson of Chênæ, and Cheilon of Sparta. By others, however, the names are differently stated: nor can we certainly distribute among them the sayings, or mottoes, upon which in later days the Amphiktyons conferred the honor of inscription in the Delphian temple: Know thyself,—Nothing too much,—Know thy opportunity,—Suretyship is the precursor of ruin. Bias is praised as an excellent judge, and Myson was declared by the Delphian oracle to be the most discreet man among the Greeks, according to the testimony of the satirical poet Hippônax. This is the oldest testimony (540 B. C.) which can be produced in favor of any of the seven; but Kleobulus of Lindus, far from being universally extolled, is pronounced by the poet Simonidês to be a fool.[186] Dikæarchus, however, justly observed, that these seven or ten persons were not wise men, or philosophers, in the sense which those words bore in his day, but persons of practical discernment in reference to man and society,[187]—of the same turn of mind as their contemporary the fabulist Æsop, though not employing the same mode of illustration. Their appearance forms an epoch in Grecian history, inasmuch as they are the first persons who ever acquired an Hellenic reputation grounded on mental competency apart from poetical genius or effect,—a proof that political and social prudence was beginning to be appreciated and admired on its own account. Solon, Pittakus, Bias, and Thalês, were all men of influence—the first two even men of ascendency,[188]—in their respective cities. Kleobulus was despot of Lindus, and Periander (by some numbered among the seven) of Corinth. Thalês stands distinguished as the earliest name in physical philosophy, with which the other contemporary wise men are not said to have meddled; their celebrity rests upon moral, social, and political wisdom exclusively, which came into greater honor as the ethical feeling of the Greeks improved and as their experience became enlarged.

[183] Bias of Priênê composed a poem of two thousand verses, on the condition of Ionia (Diogen. Laërt. i, 85), from which, perhaps, Herodotus may have derived, either directly or indirectly, the judicious advice which he ascribes to that philosopher on the occasion of the first Persian conquest of Ionia (Herod. i, 170).

Not merely Xenophanês the philosopher (Diogen. Laërt. viii, 36, ix, 20), but long after him Parmenidês and Empedoklês, composed in verse.

[184] See the account given by Herodotus (vi, 128-129) of the way in which Kleisthenês of Sikyon tested the comparative education (παίδευσις) of the various suitors who came to woo his daughter,—οἱ δὲ μνήστηρες ἔριν εἶχον ἀμφί τε μουσικῇ καὶ τῷ λεγομένῳ ἐς τὸ μέσον.

[185] Plato, Protagoras, c. 28, p. 343.

[186] Hippônax, Fragm. 77, 34, ed. Bergk—καὶ δικάσσασθαι Βίαντος τοῦ Πριηνέος κρείττων.

... Καὶ Μύσων, ὃν ὡς πολλὼν Ἀνεῖπεν ἀνδρῶν σωφρονέστατον πάντων.

Simonidês. Fr. 6, ed. Bergk—μωροῦ φωτὸς ἅδε βουλά. Diogen. Laërt. i, 6, 2.

Simonidês treats Pittakus with more respect, though questioning an opinion delivered by him (Fragm. 8, ed. Bergk; Plato, Protagoras, c. 26, p. 339).

[187] Dikæarchus ap. Diogen. Laërt. i. 40. συνετοὺς καὶ νομοθετικοὺς δεινότητα πολιτικὴν καὶ δραστήριον σύνεσιν. Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 2.

About the story of the tripod, which is said to have gone the round of these Seven Wise Men, see Menage ad Diogen. Laërt. i, 28, p. 17.

[188] Cicero, De Republ. i, 7; Plutarch, in Delph. p. 385; Bernhardy, Grundriss der Griechischen Litteratur, vol. i, sect. 66, not. 3.

In these celebrated names we have social philosophy in its early and infantine state,—in the shape of homely sayings or admonitions, either supposed to be self-evident, or to rest upon some great authority divine or human, but neither accompanied by reasons nor recognizing any appeal to inquiry and discussion as the proper test of their rectitude. From such unsuspecting acquiescence, the sentiment to which these admonitions owe their force, we are

## partially liberated even in the poet Simonidês of Keôs, who (as

before alluded to) severely criticizes the song of Kleobulus as well as its author. The half-century which followed the age of Simonidês (the interval between about 480-430 B. C.) broke down that sentiment more and more, by familiarizing the public with argumentative controversy in the public assembly, the popular judicature, and even on the dramatic stage. And the increased self-working of the Grecian mind, thus created, manifested itself in Sokratês, who laid open all ethical and social doctrines to the scrutiny of reason, and who first awakened among his countrymen that love of dialectics which never left them,—an analytical interest in the mental process of inquiring out, verifying, proving, and expounding truth. To this capital item of human progress, secured through the Greeks—and through them only—to mankind generally, our attention will be called at a later period of the history; at present, it is only mentioned in contrast with the naked, dogmatical laconism of the Seven Wise Men, and with the simple enforcement of the early poets: a state in which morality has a certain place in the feelings,—but no root, even among the superior minds, in the conscious exercise of reason.

The interval between Archilochus and Solon (660-580 B. C.) seems, as has been remarked in my former volume, to be the period in which writing first came to be applied to Greek poems,—to the Homeric poems among the number; and shortly after the end of that period, commences the era of compositions without metre or prose. The philosopher Pherekydês of Syros, about 550 B. C., is called by some the earliest prose-writer; but no prose-writer for a considerable time afterwards acquired any celebrity,—seemingly none earlier than Hekatæus of Milêtus,[189] about 510-490 B. C.,—prose being a subordinate and ineffective species of composition, not always even perspicuous, but requiring no small practice before the power was acquired of rendering it interesting.[190] Down to the generation preceding Sokratês, the poets continued to be the grand leaders of the Greek mind: until then, nothing was taught to youth except to read, to remember, to recite musically and rhythmically, and to comprehend poetical composition. The comments of preceptors, addressed to their pupils, may probably have become fuller and more instructive, but the text still continued to be epic or lyric poetry. We must recollect also that these poets, so enunciated, were the best masters for acquiring a full command of the complicated accent and rhythm of the Greek language,—essential to an educated man in ancient times, and sure to be detected if not properly acquired. Not to mention the Choliambist Hippônax, who seems to have been possessed with the devil of Archilochus, and in part also with his genius,—Anakreon, Ibykus, Pindar, Bacchylidês, Simonidês, and the dramatists of Athens, continue the line of eminent poets without intermission. After the Persian war, the requirements of public speaking created a class of rhetorical teachers, while the gradual spread of physical philosophy widened the range of instruction: so that prose composition, for speech or for writing, occupied a larger and larger share of the attention of men, and was gradually wrought up to high perfection, such as we see for the first time in Herodotus. But before it became thus improved, and acquired that style which was the condition of wide-spread popularity, we may be sure that it had been silently used as a means of recording information; and that neither the large mass of geographical matter contained in the Periegêsis of Hekatæus, nor the map first prepared by his contemporary, Anaximander, could have been presented to the world, without the previous labors of unpretending prose writers, who set down the mere results of their own experience. The acquisition of prose-writing, commencing as it does about the age of Peisistratus, is not less remarkable as an evidence of past, than as a means of future, progress.

[189] Pliny, H. N. vii, 57. Suidas v. Ἑκαταῖος.

[190] H. Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie, ch. vi, p. 243) has some good remarks on the difficulty and obscurity of the early Greek prose-writers, in reference to the darkness of expression and meaning universally charged upon the philosopher Herakleitus.

Of that splendid genius in sculpture and architecture, which shone forth in Greece after the Persian invasion, the first lineaments only are discoverable between 600-560 B. C., in Corinth, Ægina, Samos, Chios, Ephesus, etc.,—enough, however, to give evidence of improvement and progress. Glaukus of Chios is said to have discovered the art of welding iron, and Rhœkus, or his son Theodôrus of Samos, the art of casting copper or brass in a mould: both these discoveries, as far as can be made out, appear to date a little before 600 B. C.[191] The primitive memorial, erected in honor of a god, did not even pretend to be an image, but was often nothing more than a pillar, a board, a shapeless stone, a post, etc., fixed so as to mark and consecrate the locality, and receiving from the neighborhood respectful care and decoration, as well as worship. Sometimes there was a real statue, though of the rudest character, carved in wood; and the families of carvers,—who, from father to son, exercised this profession, represented in Attica by the name of Dædalus, and in the Ægina by the name of Smilis,—adhered long, with strict exactness, to the consecrated type of each particular god. Gradually, the wish grew up to change the material, as well as to correct the rudeness, of such primitive idols; sometimes the original wood was retained as the material, but covered in part with ivory or gold,—in other cases, marble or metal was substituted. Dipœnos and Skyllis of Krête acquired renown as workers in marble, about the 50th Olympiad (580 B. C.), and from them downwards a series of names may be traced, more or less distinguished; moreover, it seems about the same period that the earliest temple-offerings, in works of art, properly so called, commence,—the golden statue of Zeus, and the large carved chest, dedicated by the Kypselids of Corinth at Olympia.[192] The pious associations, however, connected with the old type were so strong, that the hand of the artist was greatly restrained in dealing with statues of the gods. It was in statues of men, especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other sacred games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first aimed at and in part attained, from whence they passed afterwards to the statues of the gods. Such statues of the athletes seem to commence somewhere between Olympiad 53-58, (568-548 B. C.).

[191] See O. Müller, Archäologie der Kunst, sect. 61; Sillig. Catalogus Artificium,—under Theodôrus and Teleklês.

Thiersch (Epochen der Bildenden Kunst, pp. 182-190, 2nd edit.) places Rhœkus near the beginning of the recorded Olympiads; and supposes two artists named Theodôrus, one the grandson of the other; but this seems to me not sustained by any adequate authority (for the loose chronology of Pliny about the Samian school of artists is not more trustworthy than about the Chian school,—compare xxxv, 12, and xxxvi, 3), and, moreover, intrinsically improbable. Herodotus (i, 51) speaks of “_the_ Samian Theodôrus,” and seems to have known only one person so called: Diodôrus (i, 98) and Pausanias (x, 38, 3) give different accounts of Theodôrus, but the positive evidence does not enable us to verify the genealogies either of Thiersch or O. Müller. Herodotus (iv, 152) mentions the Ἡραῖον at Samos in connection with events near Olymp. 37; but this does not prove that the great temple which he himself saw, a century and a half later, had been begun before Olymp. 37, as Thiersch would infer. The statement of O. Müller, that this temple was begun in Olymp. 35, is not authenticated (Arch. der Kunst. sect. 53).

[192] Pausanias tells us distinctly that this chest was dedicated at Olympia by the Kypselids, descendants of Kypselus; and this seems credible enough. But he also tells us that this was the identical chest in which the infant Kypselus had been concealed, believing the story as told in Herodotus (v, 92). In this latter belief I cannot go along with him, nor do I think that there is any evidence for believing the chest to have been of more ancient date than the persons who dedicated it,—in spite of the opinions of O. Müller and Thiersch to the contrary (O. Müller, Archäol. der Kunst, sect. 57; Thiersch, Epochen der Griechischen Kunst, p. 169, 2nd edit.: Pausan. v, 17, 2).

Nor is it until the same interval of time (between 600-550 B. C.) that we find any traces of these architectural monuments, by which the more important cities in Greece afterwards attracted to themselves so much renown. The two greatest temples in Greece known to Herodotus were, the Artemision at Ephesus, and the Heræon at Samos: the former of these seems to have been commenced, by the Samian Theodorus, about 600 B. C.,—the latter, begun by the Samian Rhœkus, can hardly be traced to any higher antiquity. The first attempts to decorate Athens by such additions proceeded from Peisistratus and his sons, near the same time. As far as we can judge, too, in the absence of all direct evidence, the temples of Pæstum in Italy and Selinus in Sicily seem to fall in this same century. Of painting, during these early centuries, nothing can be affirmed; it never at any time reached the same perfection as sculpture, and we may presume that its years of infancy were at least equally rude.

The immense development of Grecian art subsequently, and the great perfection of Grecian artists, are facts of great importance in the history of the human race. And in regard to the Greeks themselves, they not only acted powerfully on the taste of the people, but were also valuable indirectly as the common boast of Hellenism, and as supplying one bond of fraternal sympathy as well as of mutual pride, among its widely-dispersed sections. It is the paucity and weakness of these bonds which renders the history of Greece, prior to 560 B. C., little better than a series of parallel, but isolated threads, each attached to a separate city; and that increased range of joint Hellenic feeling and action, upon which we shall presently enter, though arising doubtless in great measure from new and common dangers threatening many cities at once,—also springs in part from those other causes which have been enumerated in this chapter as

## acting on the Grecian mind. It proceeds from the stimulus applied to

all the common feelings in religion, art, and recreation,—from the gradual formation of national festivals, appealing in various ways to tastes and sentiments which animated every Hellenic bosom,—from the inspirations of men of genius, poets, musicians, sculptors, architects, who supplied more or less in every Grecian city, education for the youth, training for the chorus, and ornament for the locality,—from the gradual expansion of science, philosophy, and rhetoric, during the coming period of this history, which rendered one city the intellectual capital of Greece, and brought to Isokratês and Plato pupils from the most distant parts of the Grecian world. It was this fund of common tastes, tendencies, and aptitudes, which caused the social atoms of Hellas to gravitate towards each other, and which enabled the Greeks to become something better and greater than an aggregate of petty disunited communities like the Thracians or Phrygians. And the creation of such common, extra-political Hellenism, is the most interesting phenomenon which the historian has to point out in the early period now under our notice. He is called upon to dwell upon it the more forcibly, because the modern reader has generally no idea of national union without political union,—an association foreign to the Greek mind. Strange as it may seem to find a song-writer put forward as an active instrument of union among his fellow-Hellens, it is not the less true, that those poets, whom we have briefly passed in review, by enriching the common language, and by circulating from town to town either in person or in their compositions, contributed to fan the flame of Pan-Hellenic patriotism at a time when there were few circumstances to coöperate with them, and when the causes tending to perpetuate isolation seemed in the ascendant.

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