Part 2 — CHAPTER V. GOLDEN AGE OF GRECIAN LITERATURE.

(480-330 B.C.)

The Attic Period.—In their wars with the Persians (492-479 B.C.), the Hellenic people fully demonstrated their military superiority, vindicating their manhood on the fields of Marathon and Platæa, and in the sea-fight with Xerxes at Salamis. Under the stimulus of these national triumphs, conducing to national unity, as well as of the free institutions now generally established, the Greek mind was awakened to renewed action; literature made unprecedented growth, and in the fifth century B.C. matured its choicest products.

Athens, the laurel-crowned saviour of Greece, hitherto but an indifferent contributor to art and poetry, now became the centre of letters, aspiring through her statesman Pericles (469-429 B.C.) to both literary and political supremacy. Her Attic dialect, nervous but not rough, harmonious without a too effeminate softness—the perfection of the Greek language—materially helped to make her the “mother of eloquence,” the home of poets and philosophers, the school of the nations; while Pericles extended her imperial dominion over many cities and islands, and filled her coffers with their tribute. Her sculptor Phidias devoted his genius to the erection and decoration of public edifices; his grand creations in marble adorned her fanes; and the Parthenon, whose classic beauty has passed into a proverb, owed to him its graceful embellishments as well as its renowned statue of Minerva. Another colossal image of the goddess surmounted the Athenian Acropolis, which was crowned with noble temples; and votaries of the sister art added to the attractions of the city with their brush and colors.

It was at this noonday of Attic glory that Grecian literature reached its meridian. Then lyric verse climbed to heights before unattained; and dramatic poetry, tragic and comic, held its listeners spell-bound. History found distinguished representatives in Herodotus the Ionian, and later in Thucydides and Xenophon, the Athenians. Philosophy, in no other age or clime, has had worthier teachers than Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; while the art of persuasion seemed to be impersonated in Pericles, Isoc’rates, Æschines (es’ke-neez), Demosthenes—all true sons of Attica.

LYRIC POETRY.

Pindar.—Lyric poetry culminated in the sublime odes of Pindar, who ushered in the golden age. Pindar was born of noble parents about 520 B.C., near Thebes, a city of Bœotia. The celestials are fabled to have danced at his birth, and the dropping of honey on his infant lips by a swarm of bees was interpreted as an omen of a brilliant literary career.

An early display of poetical talent led his father to yield to the boy’s desire and send him to Athens for instruction; thence he returned to Thebes, to study under the direction of the Bœotian poetesses, Myrtis and Corinna, who gave the finishing touches to his education. At the age of twenty, he composed an ode which established his reputation throughout Greece, and brought him into great request with princes and heroes who craved immortality for victories at the national games. Corinna was the rival of his youth; though she reproached Myrtis for entering the lists against Pindar, she was herself tempted to contend with her former pupil, and five times bore away from him the fillet of victory.

Pindar made choral poetry his profession, and was handsomely paid out of the treasuries of the Greek princes and free cities for laudatory odes written to their order. But he never descended to flattery or falsehood; on the contrary, he leavened his panegyrics with salutary advice, and fearlessly denounced pride, cupidity, and tyranny, even in monarchs. To the king of Cyrene, for example, whose tyranny afterward cost him his throne, he said: “It is easy for a fool to shake the stability of a city, but it is hard to place it again on its foundations.”

Pindar’s home was at Thebes, near Dirce’s fountain;[28] but he travelled much in Greece. For a time he was the honored guest of the Athenians; and no wonder, for when his native city sided with Persia in the deadly struggle with that empire, the poet condemned so pusillanimous a course and upheld Athens in her resistance, styling her “the Pillar of Greece.” It is told that he received from the Athenians a gift of 10,000 drachmas ($1,800), and that when the Thebans mulcted him for the bold expression of his views, the former generously paid the fine. At Delphi, which Pindar often visited, the people contributed their finest fruits for his entertainment by order of the priestess; and an iron chair was set apart for his use in the temple, where he was wont to sit and sing the praises of Apollo, god of poetry. He lived four years with Hiero, and doubtless sojourned with others of his patrons. But Pindar was no boon companion of kings like Simonides, and while he accepted their costly presents he never forfeited the respect of his countrymen.

Pindar died at the age of eighty, in the theatre, it is related, amid the acclamations of the audience. He had been taking part as usual, and overcome with weariness, rested his head on the knees of a favorite pupil, and fell into a slumber from which his friends vainly strove to wake him. A tradition, more in accordance with the Greek love of the marvellous, informs us that a few days before he died Proserpine (goddess of the lower world) appeared to him, and having reproached him for slighting her in his odes, announced that he should soon compose a song in her honor within the confines of her own kingdom. Shortly after, Pindar’s death occurred; and on the following day, Thebes resounded with a hymn to Proserpine sung by an old woman, who declared the poet’s ghost had dictated it to her in a dream.

Statues were erected to Pindar at Athens and in the hippodrome of Thebes; a hundred years after, when Alexander the Great destroyed the latter city in consequence of its rebellion, he bade his soldiers spare the house hallowed by having once been the residence of the Theban bard. Statues and dwelling have since passed away, and the only surviving monument of Pindar is that reared by himself in the deathless odes he has left us.

The Pindaric Ode.—Pindar’s fertile pen enriched every department of lyric poetry; but all his compositions are lost except a few fragments of pæans and dirges, with forty-five Triumphal Odes (which we have entire) written to commemorate victories at the Great Games of Greece.

These games were celebrated at Olympia, Delphi, Neme’a, and on the Corinthian Isthmus: they consisted of athletic sports, races, literary and musical contests. All Greece was represented at them. Peasant and prince, trader and priest, poet and historian, painter and sculptor, hurried to the exciting scene as contestants or spectators; and the simple crown of olive or laurel, pine or parsley, that was placed on the conqueror’s brow, was valued beyond price. All that was needed to complete the triumph was an ode in its honor from the Great Lyrist. This, when obtained, was sung at an honorary banquet or solemn procession, amid great rejoicings; and was annually rehearsed in the victor’s native town to the accompaniment of soul-stirring music—for his family, town, and state, participated in the victor’s glory.

Pindar’s Style is original, chaste, full of splendor and majestic energy. The Theban eagle, as he has often been called, soaring to the sun, seems to disdain the commonplace in his solitary flight. His style, however, is not faultless. The over-boldness of his metaphors confuses; his massing of magnificent images and high-sounding epithets wearies; his Doric condensation obscures his meaning; his metre is too complicated for the uneducated ear, and his transitions are so abrupt that the reader has difficulty in finding the connection. His subjects were hard to treat; but Pindar found material and lent variety to his odes by skilfully interweaving legendary lore, history, and fragments of mythology. This was by Corinna’s advice; but her young pupil carried it to such excess in his first attempt that his fair teacher warned him, “One should sow with the hand, not with the whole sack.”

Pindar’s tone is everywhere moral. He merits indeed the title of “Sacerdotal Poet;” for he upheld the religion of Greece in its purity, rejecting all sensual notions of “the blessed ones,” and asserting his faith in their holiness and justice. He taught the immortality of the soul; “things of a day” are men, but after death there is in store “a gladsome life.” His belief in an existence beyond the grave is indicated in the following lines from one of his dirges. And here be it observed that no translation can do justice to Pindar; the Doric diamonds cease to flash when removed from their Doric setting.

The more characteristic extract given below consists of portions of the Seventh Olympic Ode, in which the poet sings the praises of Diag’oras of Rhodes for having gained a victory with the cestus (made of leather thongs and worn round the hands in boxing). This ode was so much admired by the Rhodians that they wrote it in golden letters on the wall of Minerva’s temple at Lindus. It relates the birth of their patron goddess and the story of their own origin, closing with an invocation to Jupiter, who was worshipped on Ataby’ris, a mountain of the island. Here stood a temple, dedicated to him, containing the fabulous brazen bulls that bellowed when any calamity threatened.

ODE TO DIAGORAS.

Antimachus.—An elegiac poet of the golden age was Amtim’achus of Col’ophon, whose “Ly’de,” an elegy on his lost love, enjoyed considerable celebrity. When, however, Antim’achus undertook to read his long “Theba’is” to an audience, their patience became exhausted and one after another departed, until finally he had but a single listener left,—the young Plato.

DRAMATIC POETRY.

Rise of the Attic Drama.—The Greek drama, like the Hindoo, had a religious origin. In the festivals of Bacchus, the wine-god, which consisted of licentious dances and songs round his altar by persons disguised in goat-skins as fauns and satyrs (beings half-man and half-goat), we must look for its earliest phase. From the dress of those who composed the chorus, or because a goat was sacrificed, or a goat-skin of wine awarded to the poet who wrote the best ode for the occasion, such ode was called a tragedy (goat-song); and the name was afterward extended to the entire department of dramatic poetry to which these rude hymns gave rise.

Comedy, on the contrary, was elaborated from the village-songs rife during the gala-days of the vintage, when companies of noisy revellers (in Greek, kōmoi), their cheeks stained with wine-lees, went about from town to town, plunging into all kinds of excesses, and garnishing their songs with jokes at the expense of the spectators.

The Father of Greek tragedy was Thespis, the Icarian,[29] who refined the coarse Bacchanalian orgies, and introduced a single actor (generally sustaining the part himself), to alternate with the chorus or enter into a dialogue with its leaders (536 B.C.). Between the hymns, the poet, having smeared his face with paint, would mount a table and recite with copious gestures some mythological legend, perhaps relating to Bacchus.

With a trained chorus, Thespis strolled about Greece, stopping at the towns to give his exhibitions on the wagon which carried his machinery and skin-clad troupe. Dancing was a prominent feature of his entertainments. His pupil Phryn’icus improved the performance by exchanging myths for real events and introducing female characters; but the recitations were still disconnected and the plays lacked method; albeit Phryn’icus was fined by the Athenians for moving their feelings too deeply by one of his pieces.

Birth of Tragedy.—Out of these rude materials, Æschylus, who was born about ten years after the first Thespian exhibition, constructed genuine tragedy. He added a second actor and remodelled the chorus, making it secondary to the dialogue, and instituting a connection between its songs and the events represented on the stage. Appropriate theatrical costumes, stationary scenery, painted masks, and thick-soled buskins to increase the height of the performers, complete the list of his innovations. Thus the goat-song of early days developed into the true drama (action), the crowning effort of Greek genius. Athens had the honor of creating and perfecting it; while in other departments of verse she fell behind her neighbors, in dramatic poetry she eclipsed them all.

The love of the theatre grew into a passion at Athens. When the first rude structure of boards gave way under the weight of the audience, her citizens erected a permanent edifice of semicircular form, whose seats, rising in tiers, were hewn in the rocky side of the Acropolis. This new theatre accommodated thirty thousand persons, who sat under the shadow of Athens’ patron-goddess, and with reverent gaze watched actors and chorus go through their parts round the altar of Bacchus.

The performances took place by day, and in the open air, the theatre not being roofed. They began immediately after the morning meal, and on great occasions seats were secured and occupied during the preceding night. It was the custom of those who desired a comfortable sitting to bring their own cushions. Tickets of admission at first cost one drachma (18 cents); but Pericles reduced the price to six cents, and thus placed dramatic entertainments within the reach of the poorest citizens. The audience sometimes remained in the theatre twelve hours, gossiping during the intervals, and refreshing themselves with cake, wine, and sweetmeats.—In ancient Greece, the actor’s profession was lucrative and honorable; dramatic authors not unfrequently performed parts in their own plays. (Read Donaldson’s “Theatre of the Greeks.”)

Under the favoring skies of Athens the drama advanced to perfection with marvellous rapidity. In the hands of Æschylus it was all grandeur; Sophocles invested it with beauty, and Euripides with pathos. These three tragic poets, almost contemporaries, were the brightest ornaments of the Attic capital, where there were many bright. Their triumphs cover a period of seventy-eight years (484-406 B.C.), including the proud age of Pericles, but extending beyond it till the Peloponnesian War had deprived Athens of her supremacy. Simultaneously with Sophocles and Euripides flourished Aristophanes, under whom comedy reached its climax.

It has been computed that during the golden age 250 dramatic poets flourished, who produced more than 3,400 plays. Out of this vast number, only 44 have survived to our time.

Æschylus (525-456 B.C.).—Eleusis, a hamlet of Attica, was the birthplace of Æschylus. It is related that in his youth he was charged with watching grapes, and overcome by slumber, saw Bacchus in his dreams, who bade him devote himself to tragedy. The boy forgot not the injunction; he applied himself diligently to study, and in his twenty-fifth year contended, though unsuccessfully, for the chaplet of ivy.

Ten years afterward, he acquitted himself so bravely in the battle of Marathon as to receive a special prize, and have his deeds immortalized in a painting which was hung in the theatre at Athens. He also won distinction at Salamis and Platæa; and the name of one of his brothers was long remembered in connection with the sinking of the Persian admiral’s galley. During the flourishing period of Athenian history that followed, the literary reputation of Æschylus became as great as his military renown. He was the hero of thirteen poetical victories.

In 468 B.C. Æschylus left Athens for the court of Hiero, the Syracusan prince, round which so many great men clustered. According to some, the unjust award of the tragic prize to Sophocles, for political reasons, was the cause of his going. The more probable account is that his exile followed a public accusation of impiety, for disclosing certain religious mysteries in one of his plays. The popular excitement ran high; the poet was attacked with stones, when his brother happily averted the fury of the mob by uncovering before them the stump of his own arm, which had been mutilated at Salamis in defence of his country.

Hiero received our author hospitably; and the poet made return by writing for him a drama called “the Women of Etna.” Æschylus may have visited Athens after this; but if so, he returned to Sicily to die, in the sixty-ninth year of his age. While he sat in a field near Gela absorbed in thought, so the fable goes, an eagle, hovering over the spot with a tortoise in its talons, let the tortoise fall on his bald crown, which it mistook for a shining cobble-stone, for the purpose of breaking the shell. The bird’s aim was true; and the blow fractured the poet’s skull. Thus, in fulfilment of an oracular prediction, Æschylus received his death-stroke from heaven.

In sublimity and power of dealing with the terrible, Æschylus is unequalled. Even the resources of the versatile Greek tongue were hardly adequate to the expression of his conceptions. He found congenial subjects only among the gods and demigods of mythology or the tragical events of the heroic period. His genius enabled him to give life and shape to the vast and the supernatural, as few others have done—and most effectively, though his plot is always simple.

Sir Walter Scott thus speaks of Æschylus in his Essay on the Drama:—“At his summons, the mysterious and tremendous volume of destiny, in which are inscribed the dooms of gods and men, seemed to display its leaves of iron before the appalled spectators; the more than mortal voices of deities, Titans, and departed heroes, were heard in awful conference; Olympus bowed, and its divinities descended; earth yawned, and gave up the pale spectres of the dead; and the yet more undefined and grisly forms of those infernal deities who struck horror into the gods themselves. All this could only be dared and done by a poet of the highest order.”

But seven of the seventy-five tragedies of Æschylus are extant. Of these, “Prometheus Chained” is considered the greatest, and from it we have selected our extracts. The opening scene is laid on the grim ocean’s shore near frowning Caucasus, to which, in obedience to Jove’s command, the giant Prometheus is to be chained. For thirty thousand years a vulture is to tear his vitals, constantly growing out afresh, as a punishment for his having given fire to mortals, and taught them useful arts in opposition to the will of heaven. Strength and Force, grandly personified, drag the victim to the place of torture; and Vulcan, the god of fire, rivets his fetters to the rock. The chorus is composed of sea-nymphs, who come to offer their sympathy to the sufferer and advise him to submit; but Prometheus, who is the embodiment of stern independence, fortitude, and decision, endures unyieldingly to the last. Even amid “the thunder’s deepening roar, blazing wreaths of lightning, and eddying sands whirled on high,” while the earth rocks to its centre, and “boisterous billows rise, confounding sea and sky,” he hurls a proud defiance at his oppressors.

SCENE FROM PROMETHEUS CHAINED.

Prometheus may be regarded as typifying the spirit of progress, bound by the shackles of inevitable destiny, chafing under its enslavement, but enduring contumely and suffering rather than yield to tyranny. The weird wail of Io on leaving Prometheus, wrung from her by the persecution of Juno, is thus rendered by Mrs. Browning, with all the wildness and fire of the original:—

EXTANT PLAYS OF ÆSCHYLUS.

Prometheus Chained.

Seven against Thebes. Founded on the siege of Thebes by seven Argive chiefs, who espouse the cause of Polyni’ces against his brother Ete’ocles, the latter having seized the crown contrary to agreement. A great favorite, and the poet’s special pride.

The Persians. Subject, the overthrow of Xerxes: thought to be the oldest Greek drama extant.

The Suppliants. Danaus and his fifty daughters solicit of the king of Argos protection from their enemies. The weakest of the seven.

Agamemnon. The murder of Agamemnon, on his return from Troy, by his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Ægisthus, is the material part of the plot.

Choëphoræ (libation-bearers). Based on the avenging of the crime by Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, who slays his mother and her guilty partner.

The Furies. Here we have the pursuit of the parricide by the Furies.—Clytemnestra, the Lady Macbeth of the Greek stage; her deep-laid plan, her cunning welcome of her husband, the fatal strokes dealt by her own hand, her fiendish glorying in the deed of blood,—touched with masterly skill.

The three tragedies last named constitute what is called a trilogy, or group of three dramas founded upon one story. “Prometheus Chained” was one of a trilogy, of which the other two members are lost.

Sophocles (495-405 B.C.), the rival of Æschylus, was born at Colo’nus, an Attic borough a short mile from the capital. He was fortunate in having a father able to give him a liberal education, and entered the service of the Muses at an early age. His skill in music and the exercises of the gymnasium won him many a garland; and when hardly sixteen, unrobed and crowned, he led the choir of boys with his ivory lyre in the chant of triumph which the Athenians poured forth round the trophy raised at Salamis.

Sophocles made his début as a tragic writer in that successful contest with Æschylus which, some think, cost Athens her grand old dramatist. Fame spread the news, and Greece looked to Sophocles as the coming man. A succession of plays extended his popularity. He added nineteen prizes to the one wrested from Æschylus in 468 B.C. In the year 440 he completed the drama of “Antig’one,” the oldest of his seven surviving tragedies, which secured for him an important official position. The “Antigone” ushered in the most active portion of its author’s literary life, during which eighty-one of his pieces were written. Although history throws little light on this period of his career, we know that, unlike his great contemporaries, he never left his native city to enjoy the munificence of foreign patrons. The Greek theatre was indebted to him for a third actor, improvements in scenery, and a further modification of the chorus, which no longer took an active part in the play.

In his eightieth year, Sophocles was charged with imbecility by an ungrateful son, who regarded with jealous eyes his partiality for a favorite grandchild, and hoped in this way to obtain control of his property. The defence of the alleged dotard was to read before his judges a choral song from a play which he had just finished—“Œdipus at Colonus” (p. 206). The vindication was complete; the judges at once rendered a decision in the old poet’s favor, and in a burst of enthusiasm bore him home in triumph. He died at the age of ninety. Some tell us that while he was repeating the pathetic plaints of his “Antigone,” his breath suddenly ceased; others, that after gaining a tragic victory, he died of excessive joy as the crown was placed on his brow. He left the Athenians 113 dramas.

Style of Sophocles.—As Æschylus is the impersonation of grandeur, so is Sophocles of beauty and harmony. He descends from the sublime heights Æschylus loved to tread, and, appealing to our sympathy with humanity, finds his way into the secret chambers of the heart. His language is pure; his style, elegant, dignified, vivacious—faultless; in allusion to his sweet diction, he was called by the ancients the Bee of Attica. The type of manly beauty and intellectual power, æsthetic culture and lofty morality, it seems as if Sophocles had been “specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection.”

The Masterpiece of Sophocles is “King Œdipus.” Laïus, a Theban monarch, told by an oracle (such was the legend) that his children would be the cause of his death, had his infant son Œdipus exposed on Mount Cithæron, hoping thus to escape his destiny. But the boy was discovered by some herdsmen and carried to Corinth, where he grew to man’s estate as the adopted son and heir of the king.

Warned at the Delphic shrine to beware of his native land lest he should imbrue his hands in his father’s blood, and believing Corinth to be his birthplace, he withdrew to Thebes; but on the way he met Laïus, and, not knowing who he was, killed him in a quarrel. Arrived at Thebes, he won the hand of the widow Jocasta, his own mother, who bore him four children. All went well for a time. At length, however, an epidemic broke out; and the oracle assigned as its cause the presence of the late king’s murderer. Œdipus strained every nerve to discover the offender, and at last, to his horror, fastened the crime, and the more terrible guilt of parricide, upon himself. Unhappy Jocasta hanged herself in the palace, and Œdipus in his frenzy beat out his eyes with her gold-embossed buckles.

The play opens at Thebes, during the plague. Œdipus, in conversation with a priest and Creon, Jocasta’s brother, is informed of Apollo’s will,—that, to avert the evil, the land must be purified by the punishment of the assassin. After the catastrophe above related, blinded Œdipus bemoans his lot in heart-rending utterances, but finally accepts his fate with resignation. We give the

CLOSING SCENE OF KING ŒDIPUS.

[Enter Creon.]

[Enter Antigone and Ismene.]

Œdipus ended his days in exile at Colonus, where he was received by Theseus, the hero of Attica, and attended to the last by his faithful daughter Antigone. His death is the subject of the play “Œdipus at Colonus,” written at the close of the poet’s life and reflecting the gentleness and serenity of his last days. It contains one of the gems of Sophocles—that chorus which has immortalized the lovely scenery about Colonus—which the old poet recited before the Athenian judges to prove his sanity. Bulwer furnishes us a spirited version of this famous passage:—The chorus informs the outcast Œdipus that he has come to Colonus,

EXTANT PLAYS OF SOPHOCLES.

King Œdipus: this and the next two tragedies form a trilogy.

Œdipus at Colonus: well adapted to flatter the local pride of the Athenians.

Antigone: based on the story of “the Seven against Thebes.” Antigone was the daughter of Œdipus. Her uncle, King Creon, forbids the burial of her brother Polyni’ces, the instigator of the war and one of its victims. Sisterly affection proves stronger than fear of the royal decree; Antigone performs the last sad offices for her brother, and is entombed alive for her disobedience.

The Trachinian Women: subject, the poisoning of Hercules by his wife Deïanira.

Electra: called from the heroine, Electra, daughter of Agamemnon, who is overpowered by hatred for her unnatural mother and Ægisthus. The plot culminates with the slaughter of the guilty pair by Orestes the avenger. Finest passage, the meeting between Orestes and his sister.

Ajax: founded upon the madness of Ajax in consequence of the bestowal of Achilles’ arms on Ulysses in preference to himself; his suicide and funeral.

Philocte’tes: the hero was a Thessalian prince, whom the Greeks treacherously abandoned on the island of Lemnos. Afterward, when informed by the oracle that Troy would not fall until the arrows of Hercules, which Philoctetes had, were brought to bear on its defenders, they induced him to take part in the war.

Euripides.—In 480 B.C., on the island of Salamis, while the battle that was to decide the future of Greece raged in the neighboring waters, Euripides first saw the light. Æschylus, in his prime, was at the time bravely fighting on an Athenian galley; while Sophocles, but fifteen years of age, stood ready, should the gods grant his countrymen success, to celebrate the victory with the arts in which he excelled.

The third of the illustrious tragic trio was carefully trained; painting, rhetoric, and philosophy, besides the customary gymnastic exercises, engaged his attention; and he had not attained his eighteenth year when he finished his first drama. Not, however, until 441 B.C. did he, by winning the tragic prize, verify a prediction made before his birth that he would be crowned with sacred chaplets.

His reputation was now secure; and though he was exposed to bitter partisan attacks, his plays became widely popular. The philosopher Socrates always went to see them performed, and is even suspected of having had a hand in their composition. So great was the estimation in which they were held at Syracuse, that, after the surrender of the Athenian armies which had attempted the reduction of that city (413 B.C.), such of the soldiers as could teach their captors verses of Euripides were exempted from the cruelties inflicted on their fellows, and sent home to thank the author for their liberty. Athens itself is said to have been saved nine years later, when the Spartan general Lysander was minded to lay it in ashes, by the singing of a chorus of Euripides at the triumphal banquet; who could raise his hand against the city of one that had discoursed poetry so sweet?

Like his brother tragedians, Euripides drew his subjects from the mythical history of his country. His plays numbered seventy-five, some say ninety-two; and the best of them rank with the best pieces on the roll of dramatic literature. He composed slowly and with care. On one occasion, it is related, when he had completed only four verses in three days, Euripides was told by a poetaster that in the same time he had produced a hundred. “And yours,” replied the great man, “will live for three days; mine, forever.”

Euripides spent the last two years of his life at the Macedonian court, then the abode of many illustrious men. He went there in search of rest, but found that he had only exchanged persecution at home for jealousy abroad. The honors heaped upon him by the Macedonian prince, together with his own superior genius, raised him up enemies. In the king’s savage hounds, if we may credit the legend, they saw the means of removing an obnoxious rival; and while Euripides was walking in his patron’s garden, he was attacked and fatally mangled by the fierce brutes (406 B.C.).

Athens felt the loss, and went into mourning at news of his death; vainly she supplicated the Macedonian king for his ashes. They were magnificently interred at Pella; while his country was forced to remain content with a statue, and a cenotaph on which was inscribed, “All Greece is the monument of Euripides.” His verses, as he predicted, were immortal; admiration of them led an epigrammatist to write:

With Euripides, the glory of the Athenian stage descended into the tomb; and Tragedy found no one worthy to fill his place till Shakespeare’s day.

Style of Euripides.—Sophocles once remarked that he represented men as they ought to be, Euripides as they are. This holding of the mirror up to nature was what Athenian taste began to demand; Euripides had the tact to see what was wanted, and the genius to make the innovation successfully. His heroes and heroines talked and acted like men and women of the day; hence he has been accused of degrading his art by introducing the commonplace into his dramas, of lowering Greek tragedy to the level of every-day life.

A more serious charge also was laid at his door—that of impiety. Euripides rejected the faith of his fathers; we need not, therefore, look in his plays for the religious fervor of Æschylus, or even for the high moral tone of Sophocles. In one of his lines the doctrine of mental reservation appears,

a sentiment which led to his prosecution for justifying perjury.

While Euripides was inferior to Æschylus in majesty, to Sophocles in symmetry and finish, he surpassed both in delineating character, and particularly in representing the human passions. He was the most pathetic of the three, and in the portraiture of woman stands second to no poet, ancient or modern. His heroines are his master-figures. Traces of art are sometimes apparent in his writings, and occasionally he verges on the sensational.

The Mede’a is the chef d’œuvre of this author. Its plot is derived from the story of Medea, a Colchian princess proficient in sorcery. She won the love of the Greek prince Jason, who came to Colchis in the ship Argo to obtain possession of the Golden Fleece, helped him to secure the object of his search, and eloped with him to Greece. But when Jason beheld the fair Glaucè, daughter of the King of Corinth, he resolved to thrust aside Medea in favor of his new love, forgetful of the dark power of the enchantress.

The opening scene is laid at Corinth, after the nuptials of Jason and Glaucè. The infidelity of her husband has transformed Medea into a tigress, whose conflicting passions the poet touches with consummate skill—the anger of the dishonored wife, the love of the tender mother, the steeling of the woman’s heart against its deep affection, the all-absorbing thirst for vengeance.

The play ends with Medea’s terrible revenge. Banished by the king from Corinth, she begs for one day of preparation, in which she sends to the bride a costly robe and golden wreath poisoned by her fell arts. The unsuspecting Glaucè smilingly arrays herself in these presents; but her smiles give place to shrieks of agony as the enchanted garments burn into her flesh and the chaplet blazes in her hair. Her father tries to save her, and perishes in her flaming embrace. Medea completes her work by the murder of her two children—Jason’s sons—and after jeering at her husband’s grief disappears with the corpses in a chariot whirled through the air by dragons.

One of the most affecting passages in Euripides is found in

MEDEA’S LAST WORDS TO HER SONS.

EXTANT PLAYS OF EURIPIDES.

Alcestis, first represented 438 B.C. Medea, ” 431 ” Hippol’ytus, ” 428 ” Hecuba, ” 423 ” Heracli’dæ, ” 421 ”

The Suppliants.

Ion.

The Raging Hercules.

Andromache.

The Trojan Women, 415 B.C.: pathetic by reason of the plaints of the captive women.

Electra, first represented 413 B.C.

Helen, first represented 412 ”

Iphigeni’a at Tauris.

Orestes, 408 B.C.: demoralizing in its portraiture of crime.

The Phœnician Women.

The Female Bacchanalians: produced at the Macedonian court.

Iphigenia at Aulis: not acted till after the author’s death.

Cyclops: a satyric drama (chorus of satyrs).

Lost Tragedies.—Dramatic literature has sustained an irreparable loss, not only in the missing plays of the three great masters, but also in those numberless works of their contemporaries and occasionally successful competitors now buried in oblivion. From the allusions of two or three Greek authors, a few meagre particulars may be gleaned, now of one, now of another—but they only serve to make us more painfully conscious of our loss.

Greek Comedy.—Comedy was older than tragedy in Greece. Thirty years before the time of Thespis, Susa’rion of Meg’ara, in his burlesque exhibitions, improved somewhat on the extempore jests and village-songs of the Bacchic revellers, and hence has been called the inventor of comedy. Susarion was no great lover of the fair sex, if we may judge by an ungallant sentiment of his which has been preserved: “Woman is a curse, but we cannot conduct our household affairs without this curse; therefore to marry is an evil, and not to marry is an evil.” Perhaps he had taken to wife a Xantippe.

The poet Epicharmus, also of Megara, but the Sicilian city of that name, first committed his effusions to writing; he was the author of thirty-five comedies, some of them on subjects not mythological.

The development of comedy, however, was interrupted. The Tragic Muse enforced her claims at the expense of her elder sister, and the latter was for a season neglected. But the flourishing era of republican Athens, when the poet was free to lash whom he chose, saw comedy restored to the favor of the satire-loving people. It may be said to have been perfected by Aristophanes. He not only ridiculed the follies and vices of the day, laid bare family secrets on the stage, and edified his audiences by caricaturing the rich and great with masks and costumes which reproduced their peculiarities, but fearlessly assailed the government. When all others shrunk from playing so dangerous a rôle, he himself performed the part of the insolent demagogue Cleon (originally a leather-dresser), whom he mercilessly “cut into sandal-strips” in his “Knights.”

Even the gods were not slighted by the comic poets. The gourmand Hercules devours as fast as the cook can prepare victuals; Prometheus is protected from the elements by an umbrella; Bacchus swaggers as a fop and coward. Comedy in the hands of Aristophanes and his contemporaries was to the Athenians what our press is to us, but went still further. Always personal and sometimes scurrilous in its attacks, too often coarse and licentious in its tone, it yet doubtless accomplished much good in restraining political ambition, checking public corruption, and modifying the prevailing faults of society.

Aristophanes.—The oldest comedies extant are those of Aristophanes, a citizen of Athens by birth or adoption, born about the middle of the fifth century B.C. If he was an adopted son, Athens had good reason to be proud of her protégé. His society was sought by the learned and great. He became the idol of the people, who fined such as brought libelsuits against him, and voted him an olive crown for exposing the misconduct of their rulers.

Nor was his fame confined to Athens. All Greece, and Sicily too, laughed at his humorous sallies. The Persian king enjoyed his pungent satires, and regarded him as such a power in Greece that when Spartan ambassadors sought an alliance with Persia against their Athenian rivals, the king asked on which side the comic poet was arrayed; for, said he, “the party whose cause Aristophanes espouses will certainly win.”

Aristophanes was loyal to the true interests of his country, and declined the flattering invitations of Dionysius to dwell in ease at Syracuse with the luminaries of his age. He longed for the glorious Athens of the past, and attacked whatever conflicted with his conservative ideas. None escaped his well-aimed shafts. He was specially severe on the Sophists, a new class of teachers at Athens, whose forte lay in chopping logic and splitting hairs, and who taught the tricks of rhetoric rather than practical morality. In his “Clouds” he derides their sharp practices and unsound system of education, striking them over the head of Socrates, the exponent of true philosophy, whose life was devoted to combating the false teachings of these very pretenders.

That Socrates was merely the scape-goat is plain, for he and Aristophanes were intimate friends. When the play was first exhibited, the philosopher, who was in the audience, took it all in good part, and even rose that the people might compare him with the caricature presented, which exaggerated his eccentricities of dress and figure—his pug-nose, thick lips, shabby garments, and absent-minded stare. The chorus of changing clouds symbolized the meretricious charms of sophistry.

“The Clouds” opens in the sleeping-apartment of Strepsi’ades, an Athenian citizen, his son Pheidippides occupying a pallet near him. The slaves of the household are abed in an adjoining room. Strepsiades, oppressed by debt incurred through the extravagance of his “precious son,” a fast young man addicted to fast horses, is disturbed by the recollection of numerous outstanding bills and notes about to mature. He wakes before daylight and calls a slave:—

Strepsiades finally bethinks him of a plan for paying his debts. He will have his son trained by the Sophists; and when the creditors bring the case into court, Pheidippides shall plead his cause, and defeat them with fallacious arguments even in the face of a thousand witnesses. Father and son at once arise, dress, and walk out in the direction of the Sophists’ school. Arrived in front of it, Strepsiades remarks:—

Failing to induce his son to enter the Thinking-school, Strepsiades resolves himself to master the fashionable Argument that “pays no bills;” he has an interview with Socrates, and is introduced to the Clouds, the new goddesses of this misty philosophy.

One of the most beautiful passages of the play—having the ring of the true metal—is the chorus of Clouds responding to the call of Socrates—first, behind the scenes, in the distance; then nearer; then rising from the lips of twenty-four gauze-clad nymphs, who descend upon the stage as personifications of the ethereal deities.

But though the Clouds assist Socrates in teaching Strepsiades, the pupil proves an utter dunce. Finally, in a moment of impatience, Socrates kicks him out of the school.

At last Pheidippides is prevailed upon to study with the Sophists. He proves an apt scholar, rapidly developing into an unprincipled scamp. When his education as a sharper is completed, he brings to bear his specious arguments against the creditors, and cheats them out of their dues. So far, so good; but his notions of filial duty have also been greatly modified by the instructions of Socrates. A quarrel arising in the family, he hesitates not to fall upon his father with a cudgel, and threatens to do the same by his mother if she provokes him.

With a curse upon Socrates, the outraged old gentleman calls his slaves, hurries to the Thinking-school, and sets fire to the building. Thus the play ends.

Beneath the pleasantry of Aristophanes is a substratum of solid sense; as is apparent in “the Birds,” an ingenious play in which the woodland songsters take characters. It was produced at a time when the Athenians, puffed up with vanity, confidently looked for the reduction of Sicily and the dominion of Greece. Aristophanes alone, at this critical period, ventured to raise the note of warning, and satirize their foolish ambition. The choruses in this drama ring with the sweet music of the wild woods; they were rendered by twenty-four performers plumed so as to represent as many different kinds of birds. The Hoopoe thus calls his fellows to a mass-meeting:—

Style of Aristophanes.—In weighing the merits of Aristophanes, it must be remembered that many of his peculiar beauties cannot be translated, and that we lose his local hits from our inability to see things from an Athenian standpoint. He is often indelicate in his allusions; he is as ready with town slang and the cant of the shop as with the most elegant phrase. But Attic salt seasons the whole, and none ever handled the versatile Greek tongue more deftly. In his command of language, he is equalled only by Plato, who felt the comic poet’s power when he said that in the soul of Aristophanes the Graces sought an imperishable shrine. Amid all his humor and buffoonery sparkles genius of the highest order. His aim seems to have been to elevate his art. Some of the improvements he claimed to have introduced, are thus set forth in an address which he puts into the mouth of the leader of the chorus in his “Peace:”—

Aristophanes outlived the license of the old comedy, which died with liberty. When in 404 B.C. the popular government was overthrown, and Thirty Tyrants, supported by Sparta, lorded it over Athens, a statute was passed making personal attacks on the stage capital offences; an actor who defied the law was actually starved to death. Thenceforth the comic poet dared not individualize the object of his satire; he tilted against vice and folly in general, or thrust at his intended victims indirectly under assumed names.

Aristophanes died about 380 B.C. No other comic poet could vie with him during his lifetime; none worthy to be his successor arose after his death, for “Nature broke the mould in which he was cast.” Of fifty-four comedies from his pen, eleven remain entire.

The Acharnians 425 B.C.

The Knights 424 ”

The Clouds 423 ”

The Wasps 422 ”

The persons constituting the chorus were girt in tightly about the waist, to make them as wasp-like as possible in appearance; skewers did service as stings.

Peace 421 ”

The Birds 414 ”

Lysistrata 411 ”

The Women celebrating the Feast of Ceres 411 ”

Ridicule of Euripides is the staple of this play.

The Frogs 405 ”

Here again Euripides is the butt. The chorus was made up to represent frogs, whose croakings were imitated.

The Women met in Assembly 392 ”

Certain strong-minded female communists, advocates

of women’s rights, seize on the government and undertake the reformation of public abuses. This play contains the longest word known, made up of 77 syllables and 169 letters.

Plutus 388 ”

HISTORY.

During this halcyon age of Greek poetry, prose also was cultivated, and in the century following the Persian Wars it was brought to maturity. After the victories that secured her freedom, Greece felt the need of a national historian to record the story of her struggles and triumphs. The earliest narrators, as has been shown, confined themselves to mythology and tradition: the times now demanded an artist who could paint with faithful pencil on living canvas those scenes that were the glory of Hellas—and in Herodotus of Halicarnassus that artist appeared.

Herodotus (born 484 B.C.).—Halicarnassus was the capital of a Dorian confederacy of states in southern Asia Minor. Its queen Artemisia supported Xerxes in his quarrel with Greece; and although the Athenians, provoked that a woman should take the field against them, offered an immense reward for her capture, she escaped the perils of war, and carried her kingdom safely through the political troubles of the time.

The parents of Herodotus were persons of rank and property. His writings prove him to have been well read in the literature of his country. Though not an Ionian born, he adopted the Ionic dialect—the dress in which Greek prose first appeared.

Herodotus spent the best twenty years of his life in travelling over the greater part of the known world, studying the history, geography, and customs of the countries he visited. Thebes and Memphis, Tyre and Jerusalem, Babylon and Ecbat’ana—with all he made personal acquaintance, extending his tour as far west as the Greek settlements in Italy, and as far south as the first cataract of the Nile.

The marvellousness of the stories he collected brought down upon Herodotus the ridicule of his fellow-citizens; so quitting Halicarnassus when about thirty-seven years of age, he settled at Athens. Here, it is related, he read his history, still in the rough, to the admiring people, who voted him a handsome reward. Here also he seems to have become intimate with Sophocles and his great contemporaries; and here, perhaps, his ambition was kindled to add another star to the galaxy that made Athens the glory of the world.

Not long, however, did Herodotus remain at the capital. As one of a band of colonists sent out by Pericles in 443 B.C., he crossed to Italy, and aided in founding the town of Thurii, near the ruins of Syb’aris (see Map, p. 304). At Thurii he spent his last years in revising, enlarging, and polishing his history; yet we are not to believe that he ceased to indulge his passion for travelling when Sicily and southern Italy lay so invitingly before him. He died at the age of sixty, leaving the great work of his life unfinished.

The main subject of our author’s work is the Græco-Persian War and the triumph of his country. His narrative is from time to time relieved by delightful episodes. Indeed, we owe to him not a few of those romantic tales that invest ancient history with its peculiar charm; while modern research has verified many of the wonder-stories that provoked the derision of his countrymen. Nor do his digressions mar the unity of his history, which is planned and developed as skilfully as a drama of Sophocles.

The style of Herodotus is poetical, clear, familiar, fascinating, and marked by a pleasing variety. “His animation,” says Macaulay, “his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators.” His history is the first work of its kind that has descended to us entire. It is divided into nine books, said to have been read by the author at the Olympic Games, and there to have received the names of the Nine Muses, which they still bear.[34] Certainly no names could have been more appropriately connected with a work that has entitled its author to be called through all time “the Father of History.”—Extracts follow:—

XERXES AND THE PILOT.

“It is said that Xerxes, leaving Athens, came to a city called Eïon, on the banks of the Stry’mon. Hence he proceeded no farther by land, but, intrusting the conduct of his forces to Hydarnes, with orders to march them to the Hellespont, he went on board a Phœnician vessel to cross over into Asia. After he had embarked, a heavy and tempestuous wind set in from the lake; which, on account of the great number of Persians on board, attendant upon Xerxes, made the situation of the vessel extremely dangerous. The king, in a transport of terror, inquired aloud of the pilot if he thought they were safe.

‘By no means,’ was the answer, ‘unless we could be rid of some of this multitude.’

Upon this Xerxes exclaimed, ‘Persians, let me now see which of you loves his prince; my safety, it seems, depends on you.’

As soon as he had spoken, they first bowed themselves before him, and then leaped into the sea. The vessel being thus lightened, Xerxes was safely landed in Asia. As soon as he got on shore, he rewarded the pilot with a golden crown for preserving the life of the king; but, as he had caused so many Persians to perish, he cut off his head.”—Beloe.

ANECDOTE OF QUEEN NITOCRIS.

“Nitocris had her tomb constructed in the upper part of one of the principal gateways of the city, high above the heads of the passers-by, with this inscription cut upon it:—’If there be one among my successors on the throne of Babylon who is in want of treasure, let him open my tomb, and take as much as he chooses; not, however, unless he be truly in want, for it will not be for his good.’

This tomb continued untouched until Darius came to the kingdom. To him it seemed a monstrous thing that he should be unable to use one of the gates of the town, and that a sum of money should be lying idle, and moreover inviting his grasp, and he not seize upon it. Now he could not use the gate, because, as he drove through, the dead body would have been over his head.

Accordingly, he opened the tomb; but, instead of money, found only the dead body, and a writing which said:—’Hadst thou not been insatiate of pelf, and careless how thou gottest it, thou wouldst not have broken open the sepulchres of the dead.’”

CUSTOMS OF THE BABYLONIANS.

“Of their customs, whereof I shall now proceed to give an account, the following is in my judgment the wisest. Once a year, in each village, the maidens of age to marry were collected all together into one place; while the men stood round them in a circle. Then a herald called up the damsels one by one, and offered them for sale. He began with the most beautiful. When she was sold for no small sum of money, he offered for sale the one who came next to her in beauty. All of them were sold to be wives.

The richest of the Babylonians who wished to wed, bid against each other for the loveliest maidens; while the humbler wife-seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the more homely damsels with marriage-portions. For the custom was that when the herald had gone through the whole number of the beautiful damsels, he should then call up the ugliest—a cripple, if there chanced to be one—and offer her to the men, asking who would agree to take her with the smallest marriage-portion. And the man who offered to take the smallest sum, had her assigned to him. The marriage-portions were furnished by the money paid for the beautiful damsels, and thus the fairer maidens portioned out the uglier.

No one was allowed to give his daughter in marriage to the man of his choice, nor might any one carry away the damsel whom he had purchased without finding bail really and truly to make her his wife. All who liked might come, even from distant villages, and bid for the women.

The Babylonians have no physicians; but when a man is ill, they lay him in the public square, and the passers-by come up to him, and if they have ever had his disease themselves or have known any one who has suffered from it, they give him advice, recommending him to do whatever they found good in their own case, or in the case known to them. And no one is allowed to pass the sick man in silence without asking him what his ailment is.”—Rawlinson.

Thucydides, on whom the mantle of Herodotus descended, was born in a village of Attica about 471 B.C. We may believe that he received a polite education, and became proficient in military science at an early age. It was in the prime of manhood, if the oft-repeated story is to be credited, that the history of Herodotus, read before an assembled throng, brought tears to his eyes and fired him with a desire to emulate its distinguished author. Greece was then on the eve of the Peloponnesian War, in which the rival states Athens and Sparta figured as chief actors. Thucydides anticipated the impending storm, and discerned his opportunity; this war should be his subject, and even before it began he was busy collecting preliminary information.

Nor did he serve his country merely in the capacity of historian. He engaged actively in the contest, and received as his reward the command of an Athenian squadron. But he committed an unpardonable sin by failing to save a town, which surrendered to the Spartans before he could arrive with assistance. Instigated by Cleon, his countrymen deprived him of his position and cast him forth an exile.

Thucydides retired to Thrace, where he had a valuable interest in certain gold-mines, and there devoted himself to the preparation of his history, narrowly watching the progress of events and gathering intelligence with the utmost care. His exile of twenty years was indeed “the Muses’ blessing;” it enabled him to pursue his studies without interruption. Long after his death, the plane-tree in whose shadow he was accustomed to compose, was pointed out to travellers.

Thucydides traced the Peloponnesian War to the middle of its twenty-first year (411 B.C.), leaving it to be finished by another. Why he did not complete it himself, being in possession of the necessary materials, does not appear. After the Athenian power was broken by Sparta (404 B.C.), the decree of banishment was revoked; but whether Thucydides ever returned to Athens is a matter of doubt. According to one account, he went back to fall the victim of a conspiracy; from another we are led to infer that he died a natural death in Thrace about 391 B.C.

The “History of the Peloponnesian War” is remarkable for its accuracy and impartiality. Truth was the great object of its author, who, dispassionate and unprejudiced, ignores the ingratitude of his country, betrays no resentment even when he speaks of Cleon, and does full justice to his Spartan foes. He intended his work to be an authority, “a possession for everlasting.” In it we find the first attempts to treat the philosophy of history, to trace events to their ultimate causes, and deduce from the past lessons for the future. His style is nervous, concise, stately, and even rises to the sublime; but lacks harmony, and is sometimes obscure. About one fourth of his work is composed of speeches, which indeed make an agreeable variety, but are often involved, and in parts all but unintelligible. Antithesis is a frequent figure.

Despite its faults, the history of Thucydides has always been a favorite. Charles V. was never without a copy when on a campaign, and the philosopher Hobbes declared that he valued its eight books above all the rest of Greek historical literature. The extract selected is a description of the plague which broke out at Athens in the year 430, while the Lacedæmonians were ravaging Attica, and which the historian contracted himself, but fortunately survived.

THE PLAGUE AT ATHENS.

“While the nature of this distemper was such as to baffle all description, and its attacks were almost too grievous for human nature to endure, it was still in the following circumstance that its difference from all ordinary disorders was most clearly shown. All the birds and beasts that prey upon human bodies either abstained from touching them (though there were many lying unburied), or died after tasting them. In proof of this, it was noticed that birds of this kind actually disappeared; they were not about the bodies, or indeed to be seen at all. But of course the effects which I have mentioned could best be studied in a domestic animal like the dog.

Meanwhile the town enjoyed an immunity from all the ordinary disorders; or, if any case occurred, it ended in this. Some died of neglect, others in the midst of every attention. No remedy was found that could be used as a specific; for what did good in one case, did harm in another. Strong and weak constitutions proved equally incapable of resistance, all alike being swept away, although dieted with the utmost precaution.

By far the most terrible feature in the malady was the dejection which ensued when they felt themselves sickening; for the despair into which they instantly fell took away their power of resistance, and left them a much easier prey to the disorder. Besides which, there was the awful spectacle of men dying like sheep, through having caught the infection in nursing each other. This caused the greatest mortality. On the one hand, if they were afraid to visit each other, they perished from neglect: indeed, many houses were emptied of their inmates for want of a nurse: on the other hand, if they ventured to do so, death was the consequence.

This was especially the case with such as made any pretensions to goodness: a sense of honor prevented them from sparing themselves in their attendance at their friends’ houses, where even the members of the family were at last worn out by the moans of the dying, and succumbed to the force of the disaster. Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience, and had now no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked a second time—never at least fatally. And such persons not only received the congratulations of others, but themselves also in the elation of the moment half entertained the vain hope that they were for the future safe from any disease whatever.

An aggravation of the existing calamity was the influx from the country into the city, and this was especially felt by the new arrivals. As there were no houses to receive them, they had to be lodged at the hot season of the year in stifling cabins, where the mortality raged without restraint; bodies lay one upon another in the agonies of thirst, and half-dead creatures reeled about the streets and round all the fountains in their longing for water. The sacred places, also, in which they had quartered themselves, were full of corpses of persons that had died there.

All the burial rites before in use were entirely upset, and they buried the bodies as best they could. Many from want of the proper appliances, through so many of their friends having died already, had recourse to the most shameless sepultures: sometimes getting the start of those who had raised a pile, they threw their own dead body upon the stranger’s pile and ignited it; sometimes they tossed the corpse, which they were carrying, on the top of another which was burning, and so went off.

Nor was this the only form of lawless extravagance which owed its origin to the plague. Men now coolly ventured on what they had formerly done in a corner, and not just as they pleased, seeing the rapid transitions produced by persons in prosperity suddenly dying and those who before had nothing succeeding to their property. So they resolved to spend quickly and enjoy themselves, regarding their lives and riches as alike things of a day. Perseverance in what men called honor was popular with none, it was so uncertain whether they would be spared to attain the object; but present enjoyment, and all that contributed to it, was laid down as both honorable and useful. Fear of gods or law of man there was none to restrain them. As for the first, they judged it to be just the same whether they worshipped the gods or not, as they saw all alike perishing; and for the last, no one expected to live to be brought to trial for his offences, but felt that a far severer sentence had been already passed upon them and hung even over their heads, and before this fell it was only reasonable to enjoy life a little.

Such was the nature of the calamity, and heavily did it weigh on the Athenians; death raging within the city and devastation without. Among other things which they remembered in their distress was, very naturally, the following verse, which the old men said had long ago been uttered:

‘A Dorian war shall come, and with it death.’”

Richard Crawley.

Xenophon, who in his “Hellenica” continued the story of the Peloponnesian War left unfinished by Thucydides, and carried the history of Greece as far as the battle of Mantine’a, 362 B.C., was born at Athens shortly after the middle of the fifth century. Of his early life we know nothing, save that he was the friend and pupil of Socrates; who, it is related, prepossessed with his intelligent countenance, once stopped him in a narrow way and demanded where men were made good and honest. Confused by the unexpected inquiry from so great a teacher, the boy hesitated; whereupon, the philosopher exclaimed, “Follow me and learn.” Xenophon obeyed, and became a faithful student of his master’s moral and philosophical doctrines. Together they braved the perils of the Peloponnesian War; and in the battle of De’lium (424 B.C.), where the flower of Athens’ chivalry fell, Xenophon’s life is said to have been saved by Socrates.

At the solicitation of his friend, Proxenus the Bœotian, Xenophon joined as a volunteer the famous Expedition of the Ten Thousand, made in the interest of Cyrus the Younger against his elder brother Artaxerxes, who occupied the Persian throne. Feeling the necessity of securing soldiers superior in bravery and discipline to the barbarian hordes through which he must cut his way to the capital, Cyrus supported the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, in order to secure their aid in dethroning Artaxerxes. Accordingly, at his summons, about 10,000 Spartans and other Greeks, deceived at first as to the real object of the campaign, flocked to his standard, and in the spring of 401 B.C., with 100,000 Eastern troops, entered the confines of the Persian Empire.

On the plain of Cunaxa, ninety miles from Babylon, the decisive battle took place between the brothers, Artaxerxes having at his back an army of nearly a million men. Superior numbers, however, availed little against the superior discipline of the Greeks, who quickly routed the wing opposed to them; but Cyrus, already hailed as king, imprudently spurred into the disordered ranks of the foe, and was struck down while engaged in a furious hand-to-hand conflict with Artaxerxes.

The fall of Cyrus was the signal for his Asiatic troops to disperse, and the victors found themselves deserted in the heart of the enemy’s country, more than 1,200 miles from home. Their generals were soon after seized at a conference and put to death. In this crisis, by the advice of Xenophon, inspired as he tells us by a dream, new leaders were chosen, he himself in the place of his friend Proxenus, one of the murdered chiefs. A retreat was determined upon; and during fifteen months of indescribable hardships, he was the patient guide, the sympathetic but vigilant and prudent commander. At last, from a mountain height, the glittering Euxine broke upon the view of the van, a glad shout rent the air—“the Sea! the Sea!”—proclaiming that their sufferings were over, while officers and soldiers wept in each other’s arms. Here, in the neighborhood of Greek settlements, they were safe, and the march home was easy. The 8,600 survivors owed their lives to Xenophon.

This “Retreat” of the Greeks is the subject of Xenophon’s graphic and interesting history in seven books, the “Anabasis” (march up, though most of the work is occupied with what happened on the march down). The chaste, simple style of the author, who throughout modestly speaks of himself in the third person, recommends his pages to readers of every class. He writes to the point; there is no straining for effect. We extract the passage relating to

XENOPHON’S DREAM.

“After the generals were made prisoners, and such of the captains and soldiers as had accompanied them were put to death, the Greeks were in great perplexity, reflecting that they were not far from the king’s residence; that there were around them, on all sides, many hostile nations and cities; that no one would any longer afford them opportunities of purchasing provisions; that they were distant from Greece not less than ten thousand stadia; that there was no one to guide them on the way; that impassable rivers would intercept them in the midst of their course; that the Babylonians who had gone up with Cyrus had deserted them; and that they were left alone, having no cavalry to support them.

Reflecting, I say, on these circumstances, and being disheartened at them, few tasted food that evening, few kindled fires; and many did not come to the place of arms during the night, but lay down to sleep where they severally happened to be, unable to sleep for sorrow and longing for their country, their parents, their wives and children, whom they never expected to see again. In this state of mind they all went to their resting-places.

When this perplexity occurred, Xenophon was distressed as well as the other Greeks, and unable to rest; but having at length got a little sleep, he had a dream, in which, in the midst of a thunder-storm, a bolt seemed to him to fall upon his father’s house, and the house in consequence became all in a blaze. Greatly frightened, he immediately awoke, and considered his dream as in one respect favorable, inasmuch as, being in troubles and dangers, he seemed to behold a great light from Jupiter; but in another respect he was alarmed, because the dream appeared to him to be from Jupiter, who was a king, and the fire to blaze all around him, lest he should be unable to escape from the king’s territories, but should be hemmed in on all sides by inextricable difficulties.

What it betokens, however, to see such a dream, we may conjecture from the occurrences that happened after the dream. What immediately followed was this. As soon as he awoke, the thought that first occurred to him was, ‘Why do I lie here? The night is passing away. With daylight it is probable that the enemy will come upon us; and, if we once fall into the hands of the king, what is there to prevent us from being put to death with ignominy, after witnessing the most grievous sufferings among our comrades, and enduring every severity of torture ourselves? Yet no one concerts measures or takes thought for our defence, but we lie still, as if we were at liberty to enjoy repose. From what city, then, do I expect a leader to undertake our defence? What age am I waiting for, to come to myself? Assuredly I shall never be older, if I give myself up to the enemy to-day.’ After these reflections he arose, and called together, in the first place, the captains that were under Proxenus.

When they were assembled, he said, ‘For my part, captains, I cannot sleep, nor, I should think, can you; nor can I lie still any longer, when I consider in what circumstances we are placed. For it is plain that the enemy did not openly manifest hostility toward us, until they thought that they had judiciously arranged their plans; but on our side no one takes any thought how we may best maintain a contest with them. Yet if we prove remiss, and fall into the power of the king, what may we not expect to suffer from a man who cut off the head and hand of his own brother by the same mother and father, even after he was dead, and fixed them upon a stake? What may not we, I say, expect to suffer, who have no relative to take our part, and who have marched against him to make him a subject instead of a monarch, and to put him to death if it should lie in our power? Will he not proceed to every extremity, that by reducing us to the last degree of ignominious suffering, he may inspire all men with a dread of ever taking the field against him? We must, therefore, try every expedient not to fall into his hands.

For myself, I never ceased, while the truce lasted, to consider ourselves as objects of pity, and to regard the king and his people as objects of envy; as I contemplated how extensive and valuable a country they possessed, how great an abundance of provisions, how many slaves and cattle, and how vast a quantity of gold and raiment. But since they have put an end to peace, their own haughtiness and our mistrust seem likewise to be brought to an end; for the advantages which I have mentioned lie now as prizes between us, for whichsoever of us shall prove the better men. And the gods are the judges of the contest, who, as is just, will be on our side; since the enemy have offended them by perjury, while we, though seeing many good things to tempt us, have resolutely abstained from all of them through regard to our oaths; so that, as it seems to me, we may advance to the combat with much greater confidence than they can feel.