Note 20 — Chapter I · INTRODUCTION

This is conclusively proved by the selection that determined survival, which was governed not by mere chance but very definitely by a deliberate tendency. The Atticism of the Augustan Age, tired, sterile, pedantic, back-looking, conceived the hall-mark “classical” and allowed only a very small group of Greek works up to Plato to bear it. The rest, including the whole wealth of Hellenistic literature, was rejected and has been almost entirely lost. It is this pedagogue’s anthology that has survived (almost in its entirety) and so fixed the imaginary picture of “Classical Antiquity” alike for the Renaissance Florentine and for Winckelmann, Hölderlin, and even Nietzsche.

[In this English translation, it should be mentioned, the word “Classical” has almost universally been employed to translate the German antike, as, in the translator’s judgment, no literal equivalent of the German word would convey the specific meaning attached to antike throughout the work, “antique,” “ancient” and the like words having for us a much more general connotation.—Tr.]