FOOTNOTES:
[13] Worsley's translation, Iliad, vol. i. p. 154.
[14] See vol. i. pp. 91-123.
Lo, if thou fain wouldst benefit the dead,
Or if thou seek to harm them, 'tis all one;
For they can feel no joy nor suffer pain,
Nathless high Nemesis is throned above us,
And Justice doth exact the dead man's due.
[16] See vol. i. pp. 372-435.
O Death, the savior, spurn me not, but come!
For thou alone of ills incurable
Art healer: no pain preyeth on the dead.
Alone of gods Death loves not gifts; with him
Nor sacrifice nor incense aught avails;
He hath no altar and no hymns of gladness;
Prayer stands aloof from him, Persuasion fails.
Love throbs in holy heaven to wound the earth;
And love still prompts the land to yearn for bridals;
The rain that falls in rivers from the sky,
Impregnates earth, and she brings forth for men
The flocks and herds and life of teeming Ceres;
The bloom of forests by dews hymeneal
Is perfected: in all which things I rule.
Zeus is the air, Zeus earth, and Zeus wide heaven:
Yea, Zeus is all things, and the power above them.
This love-disease is a delightful trouble;
Well might I shadow forth its power as thus:
When the clear, eager frost has fallen, boys
Seize with their fingers the firm frozen ice,
And first they feel an unaccustomed pleasure,
But in the end it melts, and they to leave it
Or in their hands to hold it know not how;
Even so the same desire drives wilful lovers
To do and not to do by frequent changes.
Woman, that hast dared all, and more than all!
There is not anything, nor will be ever,
Than woman worse, let what will fall on men.
It is right to observe that Welcker and Ahrens have conjecturally pieced together this and many other scattered fragments, and connected them in such a way as to reconstitute a tragedy with Argos for its scene, not Thebes.
'Tis terrible that impious men, the sons
Of sinners, even such should thrive and prosper,
While men by virtue moulded, sprung from sires
Complete in goodness, should be born to suffer.
Nay, but the gods do ill in dealing thus
With mortals! It were well that pious men
Should take some signal guerdon at their hands;
But evil-doers, on their heads should fall
Conspicuous punishment for deeds ill-done.
Then should no wicked man fare well and flourish.
From the Aletes.
The man who takes delight in always talking
Is irksome to his friends and does not know it.
A reasonable soul, by just perception,
Better than sophists may discover truth.
Money makes friends for men, and heaps up honors,
And sets them on the tyrant's hated throne:
Wealth finds no foes, or none but covert foes,
Climbs pathless ways, and treads where tracks are beaten;
While poor men, what luck gives them, may not use:
A misshaped body, an ill-sounding name,
Wealth turns by words to beauty, gifts with wisdom;
For wealth alone hath privilege of freedom
In joy and sickness, and can hide its sorrow.
[27] Tyrants are wise by wise society.
[28] Man is but wind and shadow, naught besides.
As in the boughs of a tall poplar-tree,
If nothing else, at least her shivering top
Moves 'neath the breeze and waves her leafy pinions.
Love falls not only on the hearts of men
Or women, but the souls of gods above
He furrows, and makes onslaught on the sea:
Against his force Zeus the all-powerful
Is impotent—he yields and bends with pleasure.
Than a bad wife a man can have no greater
Curse, and no greater blessing than a good one.
Each after trial speaks by his experience.
Girls, look you, Kupris is not Kupris only:
In her one name names manifold are blended;
For she is Death, imperishable power,
Frenetic fury, irresistible longing,
Wailing and groaning. Her one force includes
All energy, all languor, and all violence.
Into the vitals of whatever thing
Hath breath of life, she sinks. Who feeds her not?
She creeps into the fishes of the sea
And the four-footed creatures of dry land,
Shakes mid the birds her own aerial plumes,
Sways beasts and mortal men and gods above.
Which of the gods hath she not thrown in wrestling?
If right allow, and to speak truth is right,
She rules the heart of Zeus. Without or spear
Or sword, I therefore bid you know, Dame Kupris
Fells at a blow of gods and men the counsels.
Now am I naught—abandoned: oftentimes
I've noticed how to this we women fall,
How we are naught. In girlhood and at home
Our life's the sweetest life men ever know,
For careless joy is a glad nurse to all:
But when we come to youth, gleeful and gay,
Forth are we thrust, and bought and sold and bartered,
Far from our household gods, from parents far,
Some to strange husbands, to barbarians some,
To homes uncouth, to houses foul with shame.
Yea, let but one night yoke us, all these things
Must needs forthwith be praised and held for fair.
Of one race and common lineage all men at the hour of birth
From the womb are issued equal, sons alike of mother earth;
But our lots how diverse! Some are nursed by fortune harsh and rude,
Some by gentle ease, while others bare their necks to servitude.
To call that man who prospers truly happy
Were vain before his life be wholly done;
For in short time and swift great power and riches
Have fallen by the dower of fate malign,
When fortune veers and thus the gods decree.
There is no trouble worse than length of life.
Old age hath all the ills that flesh is heir to—
Vain thoughts and powerless deeds and vanished mind.
If mourners by their cries could cure our misery,
If tears could raise the dead to life again,
Gold would be valueless compared with crying.
But now, old man, these sorrows nought avail
To bring to light him whom the grave hath covered;
Else had my father, too, by grace of tears,
The day revisited.
The second of these extracts finds a close echo in some beautiful lines on the inutility of tears by Philemon [Sardius fr. i.]
Rightly do bad men call my name Odysseus,
For ill folk odious insults heap upon me.
Even in words there is a pleasure, when
They bring forgetfulness of present woes.
'Tis better not to be than to live badly.
When toil has been well finished, toils are sweet.
Enslave the body—still the soul is free.
The oaths of women I on water write.
O mortals, wretched creatures of a day,
How truly are we naught but like to shadows
Rolling superfluous weight of earth around!
Take courage, lady: many fearful things
That breathed dark dreams in night, by day are solaced.
What may be taught, I learn; what may be found,
I seek; from heaven I ask what may be prayed for.
[38] See Goethe, Sämmtliche Werke, 1840, vol. xxxiii, pp. 22-43.
Of all the thousand ills that prey on Hellas
Not one is greater than the tribe of athletes;
For, first, they never learn how to live well,
Nor, indeed, could they; seeing that a man,
Slave to his jaws and belly, cannot hope
To heap up wealth superior to his sire's.
How to be poor and row in fortune's boat
They know no better; for they have not learned
Manners that make men proof against ill luck.
Lustrous in youth, they lounge like living statues.
Decking the streets; but when sad old age comes,
They fall and perish like a threadbare coat.
I've often blamed the customs of us Hellenes,
Who for the sake of such men meet together
To honor idle sport and feed our fill;
For who, I pray you, by his skill in wrestling,
Swiftness of foot, good boxing, strength at quoits,
Has served his city by the crown he gains?
Will they meet men in fight with quoits in hand,
Or in the press of shields drive forth the foeman
By force of fisticuffs from hearth and home?
Such follies are forgotten face to face
With steel. We therefore ought to crown with wreaths
Men wise and good, and him who guides the State,
A man well-tempered, just, and sound in counsel,
Or one who by his words averts ill deeds,
Warding off strife and warfare; for such things
Bring honor on the city and all Hellenes.
He was my friend; and may love lead me never
Aside to folly or to sensual joy!
Surely there is another sort of love
For a soul, just, well-tempered, strong, and good.
And there should be this law for mortal men,
To love the pure and temperate, and to leave
Kupris, the daughter of high Zeus, alone.
We find a witty contradiction to the sentiment of these lines in a fragment of Amphis [Dithyrambus, fr. 2]:
τί φῄς; σὺ ταυτὶ προσδοκᾷς πείσειν ἔμ' ὡς
ἔρως τις ἐστὶν ὅστις ὡραῖον φιλῶν
τρόπων ἐραστής ἐστι τὴν ὄψιν παρείς;
ἄφρων γ' ἀληθῶς.
Whoso pretends that Love is no great god,
The lord and master of all deities,
Is either dull of soul, or, dead to beauty,
Knows not the greatest god that governs men.
Augè, 269.
When it befalls poor mortal men to love,
Should they find worthy objects for their loving,
Then is there nothing left of joy to long for.
Andromeda, 147.
Mine is a master of resolve and daring,
Filled with all craft to do impossible things,
Love, among gods the most unconquerable.
Hippolytus, 431.
Music, at least,
Love teaches men, unmusical before.
Sthenebœa, 664.
O Love, our lord, of gods and men the king,
Either teach not how beauteous beauty is,
Or help poor lovers, whom like clay thou mouldest,
Through toil and labor to a happy end.
Thus shalt thou gain high honor: otherwise
The loving lessons that men learn of thee,
Will rob thee of their worship and good-will.
Andromeda, 135.
A young man with eyes turned to follow beauty
May not be governed: yea, though he be weak,
Yet is he wise and masterful for loving;
And when Love smiles, what boon surpasseth love?
Antigone, 161.
Love is a sluggard, and of sloth the twin:
Mirrors and hair-dyes are his favorite toys;
Labor he shuns. I take this truth to witness:
No beggar for his bread was known to love,
But with rich men his beauty-bloom abounds.
Dire is the violence of ocean waves,
And dire the blast of rivers and hot fire,
And dire is want, and dire are countless things;
But nothing is so dire and dread as woman.
No painting could express her dreadfulness,
No words describe it. If a god made woman,
And fashioned her, he was for men the artist
Of woes unnumbered, and their deadly foe.
Incert. Fab., 880.
Saving my mother, I hate womankind.
Melanippide, 507.
Good women must abide within the house:
Those whom we meet abroad are nothing worth.
Meleager, 527.
Mothers are fonder of their sons than fathers:
For mothers know they're theirs, while fathers think it.
Incert. Fab., 883.
There is no fort, there is no money-box,
Nor aught besides, so hard to guard as woman.
Danaë, 323.
Instead of fire,
Another fire mightier and more invincible
Is woman.
Hippolytus, 430.
Marry, go to, yea, marry—and then die
By poison at a woman's hand or wiles.
Cretan Women, 467.
Those men who mate with women better born
Or wed great riches, know not how to wed;
For when the woman's part doth rule the house,
The man's a slave; large dowers are worse than none,
Seeing they make divorce more difficult.
Melanippide, 513.
To mate a youth with a young wife is ill;
Seeing a man's strength lasteth, while the bloom
Of beauty quickly leaves a woman's form.
Æolus, 22.
He, leaping to my arms and in my bosom,
Might haply sport, and with a crowd of kisses
Might win my soul forth; for there is no greater
Love-charm than close companionship, my father.
Danaë, 325.
Lady, the sun's light to our eyes is dear,
And fair the tranquil reaches of the sea,
And flowery earth in May, and bounding waters;
And so right many fair things I might praise;
Yet nothing is so radiant and so fair
As for souls childless, with desire sore-smitten,
To see the light of babes about the house.
Ib., 327.
Naught is more dear to children than their mother.
Sons, love your mother; for there is no love
Sweeter than this that can be loved by men.
Erechtheus, 370.
A woman, when she leaves her father's home,
Belongs not to her parents, but her bed;
Men stay within the house, and stand for aye
Avengeful guardians of its shrines and graves.
Danaë, 330.
Who knows if that be life which we call death,
And life be dying?—save alone that men
Living bear grief, but when they yield their breath
They grieve no more and have no sorrow then.
Incert. Fab., 821.
'Twere well for men, when first a babe draws breath,
To meet and wail the woes that he must bear;
But to salute the soul that rests from care
With songs and pæans on the path of death.
Cresphontes, 454.
Let those who live do right ere death descendeth;
The dead are dust; mere naught to nothing tendeth.
Meleager, 537.
In death there dwells the end of human strife;
For what mid men than death is mightier?
Who can inflict pain on the stony scaur
By wounding it with spear-point? Who can hurt
The dead, when dead men have no sense of suffering?
Antigone, 160.
Think'st thou that Death will heed thy tears at all,
Or send thy son back if thou wilt but groan?
Nay, cease; and, gazing at thy neighbor's grief,
Grow calm: if thou wilt take the pains to reckon
How many have toiled out their lives in bonds,
How many wear to old age, robbed of children,
And all who from the tyrant's height of glory
Have sunk to nothing. These things shouldst thou heed.
Dictys, 334.
No man was ever born who did not suffer.
He buries children, then begets new sons,
Then dies himself: and men forsooth are grieved,
Consigning dust to dust. Yet needs must be
Lives should be garnered like ripe harvest-sheaves,
And one man live, another perish. Why
Mourn over that which nature puts upon us?
Naught that must be is terrible to mortals.
Hypsipyle, 752.
Think you that sins leap up to heaven aloft
On wings, and then that on Jove's red-leaved tablets
Some one doth write them, and Jove looks at them
In judging mortals? Not the whole broad heaven,
If Jove should write our sins, would be enough,
Nor he suffice to punish them. But Justice
Is here, is somewhere near us; do but look.
Melanippide, 488.
Justice, they say, is daughter of high Jove,
And dwells hard by to human sinfulness.
Alopé, 149.
Doth some one say that there be gods above?
There are not; no, there are not. Let no fool,
Led by the old false fable, thus deceive you.
Look at the facts themselves, yielding my words
No undue credence: for I say that kings
Kill, rob, break oaths, lay cities waste by fraud,
And doing thus are happier than those
Who live calm pious lives day after day.
How many little states that serve the gods
Are subject to the godless but more strong,
Made slaves by might of a superior army!
Bellerophontes, 293.
Go to now, O ye bad men, heap up honors
By force, get wealth, hunting it whence ye can,
By indiscriminate armfuls, right and wrong;
Then reap of all these things the wretched harvest.
Ino, 420.
Gold! of all welcome blessings thou'rt the best!
For never had a mother's smile for men,
Nor son, nor father dear, such perfect charm,
As thou and they who hold thee for their guest.
If Kupris darts such glamour from her gaze,
No wonder that she breeds a myriad loves!
Bellerophontes, 288.
For mere high birth I have small meed of praise;
The good man in my sight is nobly born;
While he who is not righteous, though his sire
Than Zeus be loftier, seems to me but base.
Dictys, 341.
I know not how to think of noble blood:
For men of courage and of virtuous soul,
Though born of slaves, are far above vain titles.
Melanippide, 496.
Lo, in all places how the nobly born
Show their good breed and spirit by brave bearing!
Danaë, 328.
The whole wide ether is the eagle's way:
The whole earth is a brave man's fatherland.
Incert. Frag. 866.
A young man should be always doing, daring;
For no slack heart or hand was ever famous.
'Tis toil and danger that beget fair fame.
Archelaus, 233.
Who seeks to lead a life of unstirred pleasure
Cannot win fame: fame is the meed of travail.
Ibid. 234.
A life of pleasure and unmanly sloth
Could never raise a house or State to honor.
Ibid. 235.
Fair honor is the child of countless toils.
Ibid. 236.
Is it not right that I
Should toil? Without toil who was ever famous?
What slothful soul ever desired the highest?
Ibid. 238.
'Tis judgment that administers the State,
The household, and in war of force is found;
For one wise word in season hath more strength
Than many hands. Crowds and no brains breed ruin.
Antiope, 205.
There are three virtues to observe, my son:
Honor the gods, the parents that begot you,
The laws that govern Hellas. Follow these,
And you will win the fairest crown of honor.
Ibid. 221.
The man who, when the goods of life abound,
Casts to the winds economy, and spends
His days in seeking after feast and song,
At home and in the State will be a drone,
And to his friends be nothing. Character
Is, for the slaves of honeyed pleasure, gone.
Ibid. 196.
There is satiety of all things. Men
Desert fair wives to dote on ugly women;
With rich meat surfeited, they gladly turn
To humble fare, and find fresh appetite.
Antiope, 187.
Much ivy crept around, a comely growth,
The tuneful haunt of swallows.
Alcmene, 91.
What! Do I see a rock with salt sea-foam
Surrounded, and the image of a maiden
Carved from the stony bastions nature-wrought
By some wise workman's craft?
Andromeda, 127.
What mother or what father got for men
That curse unutterable, odious envy?
Where dwells it? In what member lies its lair?
Is it our hands, our entrails, or our eyes
That harbor it? Full ill would fare the leech
Who with the knife, or potions, or strong drugs,
Should seek to clear away this worst disease.
Ino, 418.
We all are wise for giving good advice,
But when we fail we have no wisdom left.
Incert. Fab. 862.
Good ways of feeling are more safe than law:
No rhetorician can upset the one;
The other he may tumble upside down
With words, and do it often grievous wrong.
Peirithous, 598.
Young, but in spirit not untrained by trouble.
Dictys, 332.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST TRAGIC POETS.
Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.—Criticism among the Ancients.—Formation of Canons.—Libraries.—The Political Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.—Byzantine Scholarship in the Ninth Century.—The Lost MS. of Menander.—Tragic Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by Athenæus, by Stobæus.—Aristotle.—Tragedy before Æschylus.—Fragments of Aristarchus.—The Medea of Neophron.—Ion.—The Games of Achæus.—Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.—The Flower.—Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.—The Family of Æschylus.—Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.—The School of Sophocles.—Influence of Euripides.—Family of Karkinos.—Tragedians ridiculed by Aristophanes.—The Sisyphus of Critias.—Cleophon.—Cynical Tragedies ascribed to Diogenes.—Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.—The Repetition of Old Plots.—Mamercus and Dionysius.—Professional Rhetoricians appear as Playwrights.—The School of Isocrates.—The Centaur of Chæremon.—His Style.—The Themistocles of Moschion.—The Alexandrian Pleiad.—The Adonis of Ptolemy Philopator.
Among the losses in Greek literature few are so tantalizing as the almost absolute extinction of the tragic poets who preceded and followed the supreme Athenian triumvirate. It would have been exceedingly interesting to trace the history of the drama from its rude origins up to the point at which the creative genius of Æschylus gave it an inalienable character, and again to note the deviation of the tragic muse from heroic themes to fables of pure fiction under the influence of Agathon. This pleasant task of analytical criticism, concordant with the spirit of our age, which is not satisfied with admiring masterpieces unless it can also understand the law of their growth and mark the several stages in the process of historical development, will fall to the lot of no student now, unless, indeed, Pompeii render up a treasure-house of MSS. as yet undreamed of, and Signor Fiorelli save the priceless leaflets of charred tinder from destruction.
Why is it that out of the seventy plays of Æschylus only seven are extant; of the Sophoclean one hundred and thirteen (allowing seventeen others which bore his name to have been spurious) only seven; while eighteen—or, if we admit the Rhesus, nineteen—are the meagre salvage from the wreck of at least seventy-five dramas by Euripides? Why is it that of their lost tragedies we possess but inconsiderable fragments—just enough to prove that the compilers of commonplace books like Stobæus might, if they had pleased, have gratified our curiosity beyond the dreams of a Renaissance scholar's covetousness? Why, again, is it that of Agathon, whose dramatic romance, the Flower, was thought worthy of citation by Aristotle, whom Aristophanes named as Ἀγάθων ὁ κλεινός, ἀγαθὸς ποιητὴς καὶ ποθεινὸς τοῖς φίλοις,[70] whose thanksgiving banquet supplied a frame for Plato's dialogue on Love, and whose style, if faithfully depicted by the philosopher, was a very "rivulet of olive-oil noiselessly running"—why is it that of this Agathon we know nothing but what may be inferred from the caricature of the Thesmophoriazusæ, the portrait of the Symposium, and a few critical strictures in the Poetics? Why is it that Ion, who enjoyed a great renown (περιβόητος ἐγένετο) and ranked as fifth in the muster-roll of Athenian tragic poets, is now but a mere empty name? To these questions, which might be rhetorically multiplied ad infinitum on a hundred tones of querulous and sad expostulation with the past, there is no satisfactory answer. Not, as Bacon asserted, has time borne down upon his flood the froth and trash of things; far rather may we thank fate that the flotsam and the jetsam that have reached our shore include the best works of antiquity. Yet, notwithstanding this, "the iniquity of oblivion," in the words of Sir Thomas Browne, "blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity."
The students of antiquity attached less value than we do to literature of secondary importance. It was the object of their criticism, especially in the schools of Alexandria, to establish canons of perfection in style. The few great authors who were deemed worthy to rank as standards received unlimited honor, nor was it thought too much by Aristarchus or Aristophanes to devote a lifetime to their service. For inferior poets, whom we should prize as necessary to a full comprehension of the history of art, they felt less respect, not having grasped the notion that æsthetics are a branch of science, that the topmost peaks of Parnassus tower above the plain by gradual ascent from subordinate mountain-ranges, and that those who seek to scale the final altitudes must tread the intermediate heights. They were contented with representative men. Marlowe, according to their laws of taste, would have been obscured by Shakespeare; while the multitude of lesser playwrights, whom we honor as explaining and relieving by their comradeship the grandeur of the dramatist (ὁ τραγῳδοποιὸς they might have styled Shakespeare, as their Pindar was ὁ λυρικός), would have sunk into oblivion, leaving him alone in splendid isolation. Much might be said for this way of dealing with literature. By concentrating attention on undeniable excellence, a taste for the noblest things in art was fostered, while the danger that we run of substituting the historical for the æsthetic method was avoided.[71] In our own century Auguste
Comte has striven to revive the cultus of unique standards and to re-establish the empire of selective canons.
The scholiasts of Alexandria, working in vast libraries which contained the whole treasures of Greek literature, decided that only a few poets were worthy of minute study. The works of these few poets, again, they classified into masterpieces and inferior productions. A further selection sifted those that seemed best suited for the education of youth. Thus it happened that copies were repeated of certain well-established favorites; and so the treasures of dramatic poetry inherited by us represent the taste of scholiasts and teachers rather than the likings of the Attic audience. To judge by references in the plays of Aristophanes, the lost Myrmidones of Æschylus, the lost Andromeda of Euripides, enjoyed more popularity at Athens than even the Agamemnon or the Medea. Alexandrian and Byzantine pedagogues thought otherwise, and posterity was bound to be their pensioner. The difficulty of multiplying codices must be added as a most important cause of literary waste. It is doubtful whether we should now possess more than a few plays of Shakespeare and Jonson out of the whole voluminous Elizabethan literature, but for the accident of printing. When we consider the circumstances under which the Attic dramatists survived, taking into account the famous fraud whereby Ptolemy Euergetes possessed himself of the MS. of Æschylus,[72] and remembering the vicissitudes successively of Alexandria, of Rome, and of Byzantium, perhaps we ought to be surprised that the sum total of our inheritance is so great. What the public voice of the Athenians had approved, the scholiasts of Alexandria winnowed. What the Alexandrians selected found its way to Rome. What the Roman grammarians sanctioned was carried in the dotage of culture to Byzantium. At each transition the peril by land and sea to rare codices, sometimes probably to unique autographs, was incalculable. Then followed the fury of iconoclasts and fanatics, the firebrands of Omar, the remorseless crusade of Churchmen against paganism, and the three great conflagrations of Byzantium. It is humiliating to the nations of Western Europe to compare the wealth of Greek books enjoyed by Photius in the ninth century, even after the second burning, with the meagre fragments which seem to have survived the pillage of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204. To this final disaster we ought probably to assign the destruction of the larger portion of Greek literature. In addition to all the ruin wrought by fire and pillage must be reckoned the slow decay of learning during the centuries of intellectual apathy that preceded the fall of the Eastern Empire. What the fire and the Frank had spared was still exposed to the tooth of the worm and to the slow corrosion of dust, damp, and mildew.
When the passion for antiquity was rekindled in the fourteenth century by the Italians, they eagerly demanded from Constantinople the treasures that the capital of Greece contained; nor is there any good reason to suppose that the Turkish troops of Mahomet II., in 1453, destroyed many books that had not previously been transferred in copies to Florence and Venice. During at least a quarter of a century before the downfall of the Byzantine Empire the princes of Italy were eagerly competing with each other for the purchase of Greek manuscripts; and throughout this period it was the immediate interest of the palæologi to lay them under such obligations as might enlist their sympathy and call forth a return of friendly service. For the emperor to have closed the doors of the Byzantine libraries against the agents of the Medici and the Venetian nobles, at the same time that he was sending Manuel Chrysoloras as an ambassador for aid against the Turks to Western Europe, would have been ridiculous. We must also bear in mind how many eager Italian scholars, supported by exhibitions from the lords of Florence, and supplied with almost unlimited credit for the purchase of literary treasures, pursued their studies at Constantinople, and returned, like bees, book-laden with the honey of old learning, home; how many Levant merchants, passing to and fro between Italian and Greek ports, discovered that parchments were a more profitable freight than gems or spices. Taking all this into consideration, and duly weighing Curzon's competent opinion—"so thoroughly were these ancient libraries" (of Athos) "explored in the fifteenth century that no unknown classic author has been discovered, nor has any MS. been found of greater antiquity than some already known in the British Museum and other libraries"—we have the right to infer that what the printing-press of Aldus made imperishable, was all, or nearly all, that the degenerate scholars of the later age of Hellas cared to treasure. The comparative preservation of Neoplatonic philosophy, for example, when contrasted with the loss of dramatic literature may be referred to the theological and mystical interests of Byzantine students. Only one codex of first-rate importance is supposed to have perished in Italy after importation from Byzantium and before the age of printing. That was a MS. of Menander, which Vespasiano, the Florentine bookseller, mentioned among the gems of the library of Urbino.[73] Little, however, was known about the Greek dramatic poets at the time when Vespasiano wrote his Lives, and it is not impossible that what he took for a collection of Menander's plays, was really a commonplace book of such fragments as we still possess. Yet the mere mention of this volume raises curious speculation. We know that when Cesare Borgia possessed himself of Urbino in 1502 he carried off from the ducal palace a booty in jewels, plate, furniture, and books to the value of 150,000 ducats. Some of the MSS. found their way into the Vatican collection; others were restored to Urbino, whence they were again transferred to Rome after the extinction of the ducal family in the seventeenth century. It is conceivable that the Menander, if it existed, may have been lost in the hurry of forced marches and the confusion that involved the Borgia's career. Had it been stolen, the thief could hardly have offered it for sale in its splendid dress of crimson velvet and silver clasps stamped with the arms of Montefeltro. It may even now be lurking somewhere in obscurity—a treasure of more value than the Koh-i-noor.
Putting aside the fragments of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, it may be broadly stated that what survives of the other tragic poets of the Attic stage, and what we know about their lives, have been derived in the main from four sources. The plays of Aristophanes and the fragments of the later comic poets, who were the merciless critics of contemporary tragedians, have, in the first place, supplied us with some meagre quotations and with numerous insignificant caricatures. From these questionable authorities we learn, for instance, that Agathon was a man of effeminate manners, that Philocles was horribly ugly, that Morsimus was an indifferent eye-doctor as well as a writer of tame tragedies, that Meletus had no inspiration, that the whole family of Carkinus were barbarians, that Pythangelus and Akestor were no better than slaves, that Gnesippus mismanaged his Choruses, that Hieronymus delighted in horrors, that Nothippus and Morychus were gluttons, that Moschion was a parasite, and so forth. To attach very much weight to comic squibs which dwell exclusively upon personal defects and foibles, and repeat ad nauseam the stock Athenian calumnies of drunkenness and debauchery, would be uncritical; though it must be borne in mind that satire in a Greek city, where all the eminent burghers were well known to the play-goers, was pointless unless it contained a grain of truth. Our second great authority is Athenæus, a man of wide reading and extensive curiosity, whose heart unhappily was set on trifles. Sauces, unguents, wreaths, the various ways of dressing fish, the changes of fashion in wine-drinking, formed the subjects of his profoundest investigations. Therefore the grave and heightened tragedies of our unfortunate poets were ransacked by him for rare citations, capable of throwing light upon a flower, a dish, or a wine-cup. These matters were undoubtedly the veriest parerga to poets bent on moving the passions of terror and pity; nor can we imagine a more distressing torment for their souls in Hades than to know that what remains of a much-pondered and beloved Thyestes is a couple of lines about a carving-knife or meat-dish. To be known to posterity through a calumny of Aristophanes and a citation in the Deipnosophistæ, after having passed a long life in composing tragedies, teaching choruses, and inventing chants, is a caricature of immortality which might well deter a man of common-sense from literature, and induce the vainest to go down speechless to the grave in peace. Those poets who fell under the hands of Stobæus, our third chief source of information, have fared better. It is more consistent with the aims and wishes of a tragic artist to survive, however mangled, in the commonplace book of a moralist, than in the miscellanies of a literary bon vivant. The authors, therefore, of the Euripidean school,
Teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received,
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat
Of fate and chance and change in human life,
may be said to have fared better than their predecessors, whose style rendered them less conveniently subject to the eclectic process of the Macedonian collector. Much of the difficulty, however, which obscures the text of these sententious fragments arises from their collector having in all probability quoted from memory, so that bad grammar, trivial terminations to otherwise well-worded lines, and passages ruthlessly compressed by omissions are frequent. In the fourth place we have to thank Aristotle for a few most precious, though, alas, laconic, criticisms pronounced in the Rhetoric and the Poetics upon his contemporaries, and for occasional quotations in the Ethics to Nicomachus and Eudemus. These criticisms help us to understand the history of the Greek drama by throwing a dim light upon the serious art of many defunct poets, who in their day shook the Attic scene. To Plutarch, to Pausanias, and to the scholiasts we owe similar obligations, though the value of their critical remarks is slight compared with that of every word which fell from Aristotle's pen.
This rapid enumeration of the resources at our command will prepare any one familiar with such matters for spare and disappointing entertainment. The chief interest of such a survey as that which I propose to make consists in the variety and extent of the lost dramatic literature that it reveals. Nothing but a detailed examination of existing fragments suffices to impress the mind with the quantity of plays from which malignant fortune has preserved samples, fantastically inadequate, and, in many cases, tantalizingly uncharacteristic. The quotations from Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, meanwhile, have already supplied matter of more sterling and intrinsic value.
When we take up the collection of Perditorum Tragicorum Omnium Fragmenta, published at Paris by the care of M. Ambroise Firmin Didot, our first sensation, on seeking what may possibly be left of poets before Æschylus, is one of liveliest disappointment. Thespis, to begin with, is a name: we know that he made tragedy dramatic instead of dithyrambic, by introducing monologue in order to support and rest the Chorus; but that is all. Chœrilus is a name: we know that he exhibited above fifty plays, that he was reckoned worthy by the comic poet Alexis to be cited together with Hesiod, Homer, and Epicharmus, and that Aristotle devoted three lost books of critical discussions to the elucidation of difficult passages in his poems as well as in those of Archilochus and Euripides. All the rest is obscure, except that we have reason to believe that Chœrilus excelled in the satyric drama. Pratinas, again, is a name. Dim tradition reports that he invented the satyric drama; and it has thence been inferred with probability that the 150 plays ascribed to him were chiefly composed in tetralogies of one comic and three serious pieces. He was also celebrated for the excellence of his lyrics; while a story, preserved by Suidas, relates how an accident that happened to the wooden stage at Athens during the exhibition of one of his tragedies led to the building of the recently discovered theatre of Dionysus. A few unimportant fragments have survived, in two of which Pratinas avows his preference for the Æolian mood in music. Phrynichus, though his poems have fared no better than those of his contemporaries, stands before us with a more distinguished personality. Herodotus tells the famous tale of his tragedy upon the Taking of Miletus, which moved the Athenian audience to tears, and so angered them by the vivid presentation of a recent disaster that they fined the author in a sum of 1000 drachmas, and forbade the acting of his drama. The sweetness of the songs of Phrynichus has reached us like the echo of a bird's voice in a traveller's narrative. Aristophanes, who loved the good old music of his youth, delighted in it, and invented one of his rare verbal conglomerates to express its quality: καὶ μινυρίζοντες μέλη ἀρχαιομελησιδωνοφρυνιχήρατα is a phrase he puts into the mouth of Bdelycleon in the Wasps, while in the Frogs he describes Phrynichus as making harvest in the meadows of the Muses. Agathon, again, in the Thesmophoriazusæ is represented saying:
And Phrynichus—this surely you have heard—
Was beautiful, and beautifully dressed;
And this, we cannot doubt, was why his plays
Were beautiful; for 'tis a natural law
That like ourselves our work must ever be.
From the passage just referred to in the Frogs (1298-1307) it is clear that much of a tragic poet's reputation for originality at Athens depended upon the invention of melodies; and that the merit of Phrynichus consisted to some extent in the excellence and sweetness of his tunes. No real light can now be thrown upon the dark subject of Greek music in general, and of its relation to lyrical and tragic poetry in particular. All we know serves to excite our inquisitiveness without satisfying it. Thus Plutarch informs us that Phrynichus and Æschylus preferred the harp (κίθαρα) and adhered to the enharmonic scale (ἁρμονία) instead of employing chromatic modulations (χρῶμα). The general drift of this remark is that the early tragic poets maintained a simple and severe style of music, and avoided the allurements of what Aristotle termed the most artificial of the Greek scales. Collateral value is given to Plutarch's observation by the Aristophanic criticism of the melodies in Agathon and Euripides. For speculations on its deeper significance, it is impossible to do more than refer the curious to Professor Donkin, General Perronet Thompson, and Mr. Chappell, with the reiterated warning that the obscurity of the subject is impenetrable. Phrynichus, in conclusion, was celebrated as a ballet-master for his Pyrrhic dances, and, as a practical dramatist, for the introduction of female characters. One line, among the few ascribed to him, calls for quotation by reason of its beauty:
λάμπει δ' ἐπὶ πορφυρέαις παρῇσι φῶς ἔρωτος.
The light of love burns upon crimson cheeks.
Aristias, the next in order of these lost poets, was a son of Pratinas, who lived long enough to compete with Sophocles. The names of his plays, Antæus, Atalanta, Cyclops, Orpheus, and The Fates, show, like similar lists which might be quoted from the meagre notices of his predecessors, that the whole material of Greek mythology was handled and rehandled by the Attic playwrights.
The tragedians who follow can certainly not be considered older than Æschylus, and are, all of them, most probably his juniors. Aristarchus, a native of Tegea, calls for notice because he is reported by Suidas to have determined the length of tragedies, whatever that may mean. Ennius translated his drama of Achilles into Latin, which proves that he retained the fame of a first-rate poet till the beginning of the Græco-Roman period. His fragments recall the Euripidean style; and the two best of them have been preserved by Stobæus, the notorious admirer of Euripides. To omit these, in the dearth of similar heirlooms from antiquity, would be wasteful, especially as they serve to determine the date at which he wrote, and to confirm the report of Suidas that he was a contemporary of Euripides. Here is one that savors strongly of agnosticism:
καὶ ταῦτ' ἴσον μὲν εὖ λέγειν ἴσον δὲ μή·
ἴσον δ' ἐρευνᾶν, ἐξ ἴσου δὲ μὴ εἰδέναι·
πλεῖον γὰρ οὐδὲν οἱ σοφοὶ τῶν μὴ σοφῶν
εἰς ταῦτα γιγνώσκουσιν· εἰ δ' ἄλλου λέγει
ἄμεινον ἄλλος, τῷ λέγειν ὑπερφέρει.[74]
The second treats of love:
ἔρωτος ὅστις μὴ πεπείραται βροτῶν,
οὐκ οἶδ' ἀνάγκης θεσμόν· ᾧ πεισθεὶς ἐγὼ
οὕτω κρατηθεὶς τάσδ' ἀπεστάλην ὁδούς·
οὗτος γὰρ ὁ θεὸς καὶ τὸν ἀσθενῆ σθένειν
τίθησι, καὶ τὸν ἄπορον εὑρίσκειν πόρον.[75]
Next to Aristarchus of Tegea we find Neophron of Sikyon, who claims particular attention as the author of a tragedy acknowledged by antiquity to have been the original of the Medea of Euripides. There are few students of literature who do not recognize in the Medea the masterpiece of that poet, and who have not wondered why it only won the third prize at Athens, in the year 431 B.C. Is it possible that because Euripides borrowed his play from Neophron—τὸ δρᾶμα δοκεῖ ὑποβαλέσθαι παρὰ Νεόφρονος διασκευάσας are the words of the Greek argument to Medea, while Suidas says of Neophron οὗ φάσιν εἶναι τὴν τοῦ Εὐριπίδου Μήδειαν—therefore the public and the judges thought some deduction should be made from the merit of the drama?
Stobæus has handed down a long and precious fragment from the speech in which Neophron's Medea decides to kill her children. A comparison of this fragment with the splendid rhesis composed for Medea by Euripides proves the obligation owed by the younger poet to the elder, both in style and matter.
Here, then, is the monologue of Neophron's Medea:
εἶεν· τί δράσεις θυμέ; βούλευσαι καλῶς
πρὶν ἢ 'ξαμαρτεῖν καὶ τὰ προσφιλέστατα
ἔχθιστα θέσθαι. ποῖ ποτ' ἐξῇξας τάλας;
κάτισχε λῆμα καὶ σθένος θεοστυγές.
καὶ πρὸς τί ταῦτ' ὀδύρομαι, ψυχὴν ἐμὴν
ὁρῶσ' ἔρημον καὶ παρημελημένην
πρὸς ὧν ἐχρῆν ἥκιστα; μαλθακοὶ δὲ δὴ
τοιαῦτα γιγνόμεσθα πάσχοντες κακά;
οὐ μὴ προδώσεις θυμὲ σαυτὸν ἐν κακοῖς.
οἴμοι δέδοκται· παῖδες ἔκτος ὀμμάτων
ἀπέλθετ'· ἤδη γάρ με φοινία μέγαν
δέδικε λύσσα θυμόν· ὦ χέρες, χέρες,
πρὸς οἷον ἔργον ἐξοπλιζόμεσθα· φεῦ·
τάλαινα τόλμης, ἣ πολὺν πόνον βραχεῖ
διαφθεροῦσα τὸν ἐμὸν ἔρχομαι χρόνῳ.[76]
It is hardly possible not to recognize in these lines the first sketch of the picture afterwards worked out so elaborately in detail by Euripides.
Ion was a native of Chios, who came while still a boy (παντάπασι μειράκιον) to Athens, and enjoyed the honor of supping with Cimon in the house of a certain Laomedon. Of his life and work very little is known, although his reputation among the ancients was so great that the Alexandrians placed him among the first five tragic poets. The titles of eleven of his plays have been preserved; but these were only a few out of many that he wrote. He was, besides, a voluminous prose-author, and practised every kind of lyrical poetry. From the criticism of Longinus we gather that his dramas were distinguished for fluency and finish rather than for boldness of conception or sublimity of style. After praising their regularity, Longinus adds that he would not exchange the Œdipus of Sophocles for all the tragedies of Ion put together. Personally, Ion had the reputation of a voluptuary: φιλοπότην καὶ ἐρωτικώτατον are the words of Athenæus which describe him. There is also a story that he passed some portion of his life at Corinth in love-bondage to the beautiful Chrysilla. In short, both as a man and an artist, Ion was true to his name and race. It is unfortunate that the few fragments we possess of Ion's tragedies have been transmitted for the most part by Hesychius and Athenæus in illustration of grammatical usages and convivial customs. The following gnomic couplet, preserved by Plutarch, is both interesting in itself and characteristic of the poet's style:
τὸ γνῶθι σαυτόν, τοῦτ' ἔπος μὲν οὐ μέγα,
ἔργον δ', ὅσον Ζεὺς μόνος ἐπίσταται θεῶν.[77]
Another passage, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, contains an elegant description of the power of Sparta:
οὐ γὰρ λόγοις Λάκαινα πυργοῦται πόλις,
ἀλλ' εὖτ' Ἄρης νεοχμὸς ἐμπέσῃ στρατῷ,
βουλὴ μὲν ἄρχει, χεὶρ δ' ἐπεξεργάζεται.[78]
Almost less can be said about Achæus of Eretria, the fifth, with Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Ion, in the Alexandrian πρώτη τάξις, or first class of tragic worthies. Diogenes Laertius records his skill in the satyric drama; Athenæus remarks that his style was obscure, and that he filled his plays with riddles. The names of some of his dramas—Linus, The Fates, Philoctetes at Troy, Omphale, Peirithous—excite our curiosity; but the fragments are, as usual, cited for some merely frivolous or pedantic purpose.
The following corrupt passage from a play called Ἆθλοι or Ἆθλα, The Games—the loss of which is greatly to be regretted, since it might have thrown a new light upon the feeling of the Greeks for their public contests—presents a lively picture of the physical splendor of trained athletes:
γυμνοὶ γὰρ ὤθουν φαιδίμους βραχίονας
ἥβῃ σφριγῶντες ἐμπορεύονται, νέῳ
στίλβοντες ἄνθει καρτερὰς ἐπωμίδας·
ἄδην δ' ἐλαίου στέρνα καὶ ποδῶν κύτος
χρίουσιν, ὡς ἔχοντες οἴκοθεν τρυφήν.[79]
Another glimpse of athletes may be got from three lines torn out of the same play:
πότερα θεωροῖς εἶτ' ἀγωνισταῖς λέγεις;
πόλλ' ἐσθίουσιν, ὡς ἐπασκούντων τρόπος.
ποδαποὶ γὰρ εἰσιν οἱ ξένοι; Βοιώτιοι.[80]
In this portrait we recognize the young men satirically described by Euripides in a fragment, translated above, of the lost Autolycus, as roaming about the city in the radiant insolence of youth, like animated statues.
Mourn as we may the loss of Ion and Achæus, our grief for that of Agathon must needs be greater. Though he was not placed in the first class by the Alexandrian critics, it is clear from the notices of Plato, Aristophanes, and Aristotle that he enjoyed the widest popularity at Athens, and was, besides, a poet of marked originality. Personally, he was amiable, delicate, pleasure-loving, and extremely beautiful. He is always called—even by Plutarch and Athenæus—Ἀγάθων ὁ καλός, Agathon the beautiful; while the passionate friendship with which he had inspired Pausanias is celebrated by Plato in Protagoras, by Xenophon in the Symposium. Later authors, like Maximus Tyrius, gave him the title of ἁβρότατος, while Lucian compared him to Cinyras or Sardanapalus. Apparently he was rich enough to indulge the most luxurious tastes. One of the best comic scenes in the Thesmophoriazusæ is that in which Aristophanes described Agathon surrounded by all the appliances of a voluptuary, while engaged in the composition of an effeminate play. Euripides, entering this study of a Sybarite, implores him to put on female attire, using these arguments:
σὺ δ' εὐπρόσωπος, λευκός, ἐξυρημένος,
γυναικόφωνος, ἁπαλός, εὐπρεπὴς ἰδεῖν.[81]
In poetry Agathon adopted innovations consistent with his own voluptuous temperament. His style was distinguished by melodious sweetness and rhetorical refinements; in particular, we are told that he affected the flowery tropes and the antitheses of Gorgias. Sophistry was fashionable in his youth, and Aristophanes recognized in Agathon the true companion of Euripides. Leaving the severer music of the elder tragedians, he invented chromatic melodies, which seem to have tickled the sensuality of his Athenian audience.[82]
We are therefore justified in regarding Agathon as the creator of a new tragic style combining the verbal elegances and ethical niceties of the sophists with artistic charms of a luxurious kind. Aristotle observes that he separated the Chorus from the action of the drama to such an extent that his lyrics became mere musical interludes ἐμβόλιμα, equally adapted to any tragic fable.[83] He also remarks that Agathon composed plays upon romantic subjects, inventing the story for himself, instead of adhering to the old usage of rehandling mythological material.[84] The title of one of these dramatic romances, The Flower, has been preserved; but unhappily we are told nothing about its subject, and have no extracts to judge from. That the form of tragedy suffered other changes at the hands of Agathon may be inferred from another passage in the Poetics, where Aristotle censures him for having included a whole epic, The Taking of Troy, in one play.[85] This play, it may be said in passing, was hissed off the stage. The popularity of Agathon may be gathered from the fact that the first tetralogy he exhibited was crowned in 416 B.C. Plato has chosen the supper-party which he gave in celebration of this victory for the scene of the Symposium; and it is there that we must learn to know this brilliant man of letters and of fashion in the wittiest period of Attic social life. It is not a little curious that the most interesting fragments of Agathon are embedded in the Ethics and the Rhetoric of Aristotle, who must have made attentive study of his works. While discussing the subject of free-will, the sage of Stageira quotes this couplet:
μόνου γὰρ αὐτοῦ καὶ θεὸς στερίσκεται,
ἀγένητα ποιεῖν ἅσσ' ἂν ᾖ πεπραγμένα.[86]
Again, on the topic of art and chance, he cites:
τέχνη τύχην ἔστερξε καὶ τύχη τέχνην.[87]
Speaking in the Eudemian Ethics about the true and spurious kinds of courage, he adds:
καθάπερ καὶ Ἀγάθων φησί·
φαῦλοι βροτῶν γὰρ τοῦ πονεῖν ἡσσώμενοι
θανεῖν ἐρῶσι.[88]
Another quotation, for the sake of both the poet and the philosopher, may be adduced from the Rhetoric:
καὶ μὴν τὰ μέν γε τῇ τέχνῃ πράσσειν, τὰ δὲ
ἡμῖν ἀνάγκῃ καὶ τύχῃ προσγίγνεται.[89]
One of the peculiarities to be noticed in the practice of the poetic art among the Greeks was the formation of schools by families of artists, in whom talent continued to be hereditary for several generations. We observe this among the lyrists; but the tragedians offer even more remarkable instances, proving how thoroughly the most complicated of all the arts, the tragic drama—including, as it did, the teaching of music and of dancing to Choruses, the arrangement of stage effects, and the training of actors—was followed as a profession at Athens. That Phrynichus founded a school of playwrights distinguished for their musical rather than their dramatic ability appears from the nineteenth section of the Problemata of Aristotle; but we do not know whether the οἱ περὶ Φρύνιχον there mentioned belonged to the poet's family. It is possible, on the other hand, to draw the pedigree of Æschylus, in which every name will represent a tragic poet. Here it is:
Euphorion.
|
|----------------------------------|
1. Æschylus. A daughter, married to Philopeithes.
|------------| |
2. Bion. 3. Euphorion. 4. Philocles the elder.
|
5. Morsimus.
|
6. Astydamas the elder.
|-----------------------------|
7. Philocles the younger. 8. Astydamas the younger.
The οἱ περὶ Αἴσχυλον, therefore, of whom the scholiasts often speak, numbered, together with Æschylus himself, eight dramatists. Their common characteristic consisted in the adherence to the Æschylean style, in the presentation of tetralogies, and in the privilege successively enjoyed by them of bringing out old plays of Æschylus in competition with the works of younger poets. The dramas of Æschylus were in fact "a property" to his descendants. The Athenians had publicly decreed that they might be from year to year produced upon the scene, and Euphorion, his son, spent his time in preparing them for exhibition. In this way he gained four prizes, taking the first crown upon the notable occasion, in 431 B.C., when Sophocles was second, and Euripides, with the Medea, third. It appears that, as time went on, the original compositions of Æschylus suffered mutilations and alterations at the hands of his posterity, who pretended to improve them—after the manner of Davenant, presumably—and adapt them to the modern taste. At last Lycurgus, about 340 B.C., decreed that after accurate copies had been taken of the authorized text and deposited in the public archives, the clerk of the city should collate them with the acted plays, and see that no deviations from the original became established. We gather from the comic poets that the family of Æschylus also produced their own tragedies, none of which, however, appear to have been very excellent. Philocles the elder was laughed at by Aristophanes partly because he was an ugly, snub-nosed, little man, with a head like a hoopoe; partly because he introduced a comic incident into his tragedy of Pandionis by exhibiting Tereus dressed out with the feathers of a bird. The scholiasts to Aristophanes, in like manner, inform us that Morsimus owed a certain celebrity to his ugliness, to the tameness of his tragic style, and to his want of skill as a professional oculist. Astydamas the elder achieved the same sad sort of immortality through the accident of having received the honor of a public statue before Æschylus. It is lost labor trying to form a clear conception of poets who are only known to us in anecdotes like these.
Frederick Wagner, the collector of the tragic fragments, reckons Meletus, the accuser of Socrates, and Plato, the divine philosopher, among the school of Æschylus, because it appears that both of them composed tetralogies. From a passage in the scholiast to Aristophanes (Frogs, 1302) it may be inferred that Meletus the tragedian and Meletus the informer were one and the same person: κωμῳδεῖται δὲ καὶ ὡς ψυχρὸς ἐν τῇ ποιήσει καὶ ὡς πονηρὸς τὸν τρόπον—"he is satirized both for want of genius as a poet and also for the badness of his moral character." This sentence constitutes his title to fame. He is known to have composed a series of plays with the title Œdipodeia, the plot, as sketched by Hyginus,[90] offering some notable divergences from the Sophoclean treatment of the tale of Thebes. Plato may be numbered among the tragedians on the strength of an anecdote in Ælian,[91] according to which he had composed a tetralogy, and had already distributed the parts to the actors, when he determined to abandon poetry and gave his verses to the flames.
The school of Sophocles includes two sons of the poet, Iophon and Ariston, and his grandson Sophocles. In fact, it combines the actors in that family drama played out before the jury of the tribe, when the singer of Colonus silenced his accuser by the recitation of the Chorus from his second Œdipus. Iophon exhibited tragedies with distinguished success during the life of Sophocles, and even entered into competition with his father. After the old man's death he produced the posthumous works that formed his heirloom, completing such as were unfinished or executing those of which the plan was sketched in outline. He is said to have exhibited fifty plays, and that he was no mean poet appears from the following passage of the Frogs:
H. Is not Iophon a good one?—He's alive, sure?
B. If he's a good one, he's our only good one;
But it's a question; I'm in doubt about him.
H. There's Sophocles; he's older than Euripides—
If you go so far for 'em, you'd best bring him.
B. No; first I'll try what Iophon can do
Without his father, Sophocles, to assist him.[92]
The drift of these lines would be obscure without some explanation to readers who have not studied Aristophanes. All the good tragic poets are dead, and Dionysus is journeying to Hades to fetch one back again to rule the Attic stage. Herakles falls into conversation with him on the subject, and reminds him that Iophon is living. The doubt expressed by Dionysus seems to refer to a suspicion prevalent at Athens that Sophocles helped his son in the composition of his plays. Meanwhile, the qualified praise awarded him by Dionysus implies considerable admiration on the part of so severe a castigator of the tragic dramatists as Aristophanes. Only four and a half lines, and these by no means noticeable, remain of Iophon. His half-brother Ariston has fared better, since we possess a long and curious dialogue upon Providence, quoted by Theophilus of Antioch from an unknown play of his. This fragment supports the Christian belief that, though the careless seem to prosper, while the virtuous get no benefit from their asceticism, justice will eventually be dealt with even hand to all:
χωρὶς προνοίας γίνεται γὰρ οὐδὲ ἕν.
It is right to add that the authorship of these lines must be at least considered doubtful, and that their versification, as it now stands, is unworthy of the Attic drama.
By the middle of the fourth century before Christ the whole dramatic literature of the Athenians, both tragic and comic, was being penetrated with the Euripidean spirit. It is impossible not to notice in the style of these later playwrights either the direct influence of Euripides or else the operation of the laws of intellectual development he illustrated. We cannot, therefore, treat the Euripidean school with the definiteness applicable to that of Æschylus or Sophocles. At the same time it is certain that a son or a nephew bearing his name continued to exhibit his posthumous dramas.
A stronger instance of histrionic and dramatic talent transmitted through four generations is presented by the family of Carkinus, some of whom were famous for mimetic dancing, while others contended in the theatre as playwrights. What we know about Carkinus and his children is chiefly derived from the satires of Aristophanes, who was never tired of abusing them. Their very name serves as a scarecrow, and the muse is invoked to keep them off the stage. To stir the rubbish-heap of obscure allusions and pedantic annotations, in order to discover which of the six Carkinidæ we know by name were poets, and which of them were dancers, is a weary task not worth the labor it involves. Suffice it to say that the grandson of Aristophanes's old butt, himself called Carkinus, produced the incredible number of 160 dramas, was three times mentioned with respect by Aristotle,[93] and has survived in comparatively copious quotations. One passage, though not very remarkable for poetical beauty, is interesting because it describes the wanderings of Demeter through Sicily in search of Persephone. Diodorus, who cites it from an unknown play, mentions that Carkinus frequently visited Syracuse and saw the processions in honor of Demeter.
About the Attic tragedians who lived during the old age of Aristophanes, the first thing to notice is that they may fairly be called the Epigoni of Euripides. Æschylus was old-fashioned. The style of Sophocles did not lend itself to easy imitation. The psychological analyses, casuistical questions, rhetorical digressions, and pathetic situations wherein the great poet of the Hippolytus delighted were exactly suited to the intellectual tastes and temper of incipient decadence. A nation of philosophers and rhetoricians had arisen; and it is noteworthy that many of the playwrights of this period were either professed orators or statesmen. In his own lifetime Aristophanes witnessed the triumph of the principles against which he fought incessantly with all the weapons of the comic armory. Listen to the complaint of Dionysus in the Frogs:
H. But have not you other ingenious youths
That are fit to out-talk Euripides ten times over—
To the amount of a thousand, at least, all writing tragedy?
D. They're good for nothing—"Warblers of the Grove"—
"Little, foolish, fluttering things"—poor puny wretches,
That dawdle and dangle about with the tragic muse,
Incapable of any serious meaning.[94]
To translate the Greek for modern readers is not possible. The pith of the passage is found in this emphatic phrase, γόνιμον δὲ ποιητὴν ἂν οὐκ εὕροις ἔτι, "there's not a sound male poet capable of procreation left." Accordingly he vents his venom on Pythangelus, Gnesippus, Akestor, Hieronymus, Nothippus, Morychus, Sthenelus, Dorillus, Spintharus, and Theognis, without mercy. Not a single fragment remains to judge these wretched poets by. It is better to leave them in their obscurity than to drag them forth into the dubious light of comic ribaldry.
Critias, the son of Callæschrus, the pupil of Socrates, who figures in so many scenes of Xenophon and Plato, and who played a memorable part in the political crisis of 404 B.C., was a tragic poet of some talent, if we are to accept a fragment from the Sisyphus as his. Sextus Empiricus transcribed forty lines of this drama, setting forth the primitive conditions of humanity. First, says Critias, men began by living like the brutes, without rewards for virtue or punishment for vice. Mere might of hand prevailed. Then laws were framed and penalties affixed to crime. Open violence was thus repressed; but evil-doers flourished in secret. Fraud and hypocrisy took the place of force. To invent the dread of gods and to create a conscience was the next step taken by humanity. Then followed the whole scheme of religion, and with religion entered superstition, and men began to fear the thunder and to look with strange awe on the stars. The quotation is obviously imperfect: yet it may advantageously be compared with the speeches of Prometheus in Æschylus, and also with the speculations of Lucretius. The hypothesis of deliberate invention implied in the following phrases,
τηνικαῦτά μοι
δοκεῖ πυκνός τις καὶ σοφὸς γνώμην ἀνὴρ
γνῶναι θέον θνητοῖσιν,[95]
and τὸ θεῖον εἰσηγήσατο,[96] sufficed not only for antiquity, but also for those modern theorists who, like Locke, imagined that language was produced artificially by wise men in counsel, or who, like Rousseau and the encyclopedists, maintained that religions were framed by knaves to intimidate fools.
Cleophon demands a passing notice, because we learn from Aristotle[97] that he tried to reduce tragedy to the plain level of common life by using every-day language and not attempting to idealize his characters. The total destruction of his plays may be regretted, since it is probable that we should have observed in them the approximation of tragedy to comedy which ended finally in the new comic style of the Athenians. About Cleophon's contemporary, Nicomachus, of whom nothing is known except that he produced a great many tragedies on the stock subjects of mythology, nothing need be said. The case is somewhat different with a certain Diogenes who, while writing seven tragedies under the decorous titles of Thyestes, Helen, Medea, and so forth, nevertheless contrived to offend against all the decencies of civilized life. Later grammarians can hardly find language strong enough to describe their improprieties. Here is a specimen: ἀρρήτων ἀρρητότερα καὶ κακῶν πέρα, καὶ οὔτε ὅτι φῶ περὶ αὐτῶν ἀξίως ἔχω.... οὕτω πᾶσα μὲν αἰσχρότης, πᾶσα δὲ ἀπόνοια ἐν ἐκείναις τῷ ἀνδρὶ πεφιλοτέχνηται. To ascribe these impure productions to Diogenes the Cynic, in spite of his well-known contempt for literature, was a temptation which even the ancients, though better informed than we are, could not wholly resist. Yet, after much sifting of evidence, it may be fairly believed that there were two Diogeneses—the one an Athenian, who wrote an innocuous play called Semele, the other a native perhaps of Gadara, who also bore the name of Œnomaus, and who perpetrated the seven indecent parodies. Diogenes of Sinope, meanwhile, was never among the poets, and the plays that defended cannibalism and blasphemed against the gods, though conceived in his spirit, belonged probably to a later period.[98]
Time would fail to tell of Antiphon and Polyeides, of Crates and Python, of Nearchus and Cleænetus, of the Syracusan Achæus and of Dikaiogenes, of Apollodorus and Timesitheus and Patrocles and Alkimenes and Apollonius and Hippotheon and Timocles and Ecdorus and Serapion—of all of whom it may be briefly said we know a few laborious nothings. Their names in a list serve to show how the sacred serpent of Greek tragedy, when sick to death, continued still for many generations drawing its slow length along. Down to the very end they kept on handling the old themes. Timesitheus, for instance, exhibited Danaides, Ixion, Memnon, Orestes, and the like. Meanwhile a few pale shades emerge from the nebulous darkness demanding more consideration than the mere recording of their names implies. We find two tyrants, to begin with, on the catalogue—Mamercus of Catana, who helped Timoleon, and Dionysius of Syracuse. Like Nero and Napoleon III., Dionysius was very eager to be ranked among the authors. He spared no expense in engaging the best rhapsodes of the day, and sent them to recite his verses at Olympia. To deceive a Greek audience in matters of pure æsthetics was, however, no easy matter. The men who came together attracted by the sweet tones of the rhapsodes soon discovered the badness of the poems and laughed them down. Some fragments from the dramas of Dionysius have been preserved, among which is one that proves his preaching sounder than his practice:
ἡ γὰρ τυραννὶς ἀδικίας μήτηρ ἔφυ.[99]
The intrusion of professional orators into the sphere of the theatre might have been expected in an age when public speaking was cultivated like a fine art, and when opportunities for the display of verbal cleverness were eagerly sought. We are not, therefore, surprised to find Aphareus and Theodectes, distinguished rhetoricians of the school of Isocrates, among the tragedians. Of Theodectes a sufficient number of fragments survive to establish the general character of his style; but it is enough in this place to notice the fusion of forensic eloquence with dramatic poetry, against which Aristophanes had inveighed, and which was now complete.
Chæremon and Moschion are more important in the history of the Attic drama, since both of them attempted innovations in accordance with the literary spirit of their age, and did not, like the rhetoricians, follow merely in the footsteps of Euripides. Chæremon, the author of Achilles Thersitoctonos and several other pieces, was mentioned by Aristotle for having attempted to combine a great variety of metres in a poem called The Centaur,[100] which was, perhaps, a tragi-comedy or ἱλαροτραγῳδία. He possessed remarkable descriptive powers, and was reckoned by the critics of antiquity as worthy of attentive study, though his dramas failed in action on the stage. We may regard him, in fact, as the first writer of plays to be read.[101] The metamorphoses through which the arts have to pass in their development repeat themselves at the most distant ages and under the most diverse circumstances. It is, therefore, interesting to find that Chæremon combined with this descriptive faculty a kind of euphuism which might place him in the same rank as Marini and Calderon, or among the most refined of modern idyllists. He shrank, apparently, from calling things by their plain names. Water, for example, became in his fantastic phraseology ποταμοῦ σῶμα. The flowers were "children of the spring," ἔαρος τέκνα—the roses, "nurslings of the spring," ἔαρος τιθηνήματα—the stars, "sights of the firmament," αἰθέρος θεάματα—ivy, "lover of dancers, offspring of the year," χορῶν ἐραστὴς ἐνιαυτοῦ παῖς—blossoms, "children of the meadows," λειμώνων τέκνα, and so forth. In fact, Chæremon rivals Gongora, Lyly, and Herrick on their own ground, and by his numerous surviving fragments proves how impossible it is to conclude that the Greeks of even a good age were free from affectations. Students who may be interested in tracing the declensions of classic style from severity and purity will do well to read the seventeen lines preserved by Athenæus from the tragedy of Œneus.[102] They present a picture of girls playing in a field, too artful for successful rendering into any but insufferably ornate English.
The claim of Moschion on our attention is different from that of his contemporary Chæremon. He wrote a tragedy with the title of Themistocles, wherein he appears to have handled the same subject-matter as Æschylus in the Persæ. The hero of Salamis was, however, conspicuous by his absence from the history-play of the elder poet. Lapse of time, by removing the political difficulties under which the Persæ was composed, enabled Moschion to make the great Themistocles his protagonist. Two fragments transmitted by Stobæus from this drama, the one celebrating Athenian liberty of speech, while the other argues that a small band may get the better of a myriad lances, seem to be taken from the concio ad milites of the hero:
καὶ γὰρ ἐν νάπαις βραχεῖ
πολὺς σιδήρῳ κείρεται πεύκης κλάδος,
καὶ βαιὸς ὄχλος μυρίας λόγχης κρατεῖ.[103]
Another tragedy of Moschion, the Pheræi, is interesting when compared with the Antigone of Sophocles and the Sisyphus ascribed to Critias. Its plot seems in some way to have turned upon the duty which the living owe the dead:
κενὸν θανόντος ἀνδρὸς αἰκίζειν σκιάν·
ζῶντας κολάζειν οὐ θανόντας εὐσεβές.[104]
And, again, in all probability from the same drama:
τί κέρδος οὐκέτ' ὄντας αἰκίζειν νεκρούς;
τί τὴν ἄναυδον γαῖαν ὑβρίζειν πλέον;
ἐπὴν γὰρ ἡ κρίνουσα καὶ θἠδίονα
καὶ τἀνιαρὰ φροῦδος αἴσθησις φθαρῇ,
τὸ σῶμα κωφοῦ τάξιν εἴληφεν πέτρου.[105]
A long quotation of thirty-four iambics, taken apparently in like manner from the Pheræi, sets forth the primitive condition of humanity. Men lived at first in caverns, like wild beasts. They had not learned the use of iron; nor could they fashion houses, or wall cities, or plough the fields, or garner fruits of earth. They were cannibals, and preyed on one another. In course of time, whether by the teaching of Prometheus or by the evolution of implanted instincts, they discovered the use of corn, and learned how to press wine from the grape. Cities arose and dwellings were roofed in, and social customs changed from savage to humane. From that moment it became impiety to leave the dead unburied; but tombs were dug, and dust was heaped upon the clay-cold limbs, in order that the old abomination of human food might be removed from memory of men. The whole of this passage, very brilliantly written, condenses the speculations of Athenian philosophers upon the origin of civilization, and brings them to the point which the poet had in view—the inculcation of the sanctity of sepulture.
Nothing more remains to be said about the Attic tragedians. At the risk of being tedious, I have striven to include the names at least of all the poets who filled the tragic stage from its beginning to its ending, in order that the great number of playwrights and their variety might be appreciated. The probable date at which Thespis began to exhibit dramas may be fixed soon after 550 B.C. Moschion may possibly have lived as late as 300 B.C. These, roughly calculated, are the extreme points of time between which the tragic art of the Athenians arose and flourished and declined. When the Alexandrian critics attempted a general review of dramatic literature, they formed, as we have seen already, two classes of tragedians. In the first they numbered five Athenian worthies. The second, called the Pleiad, included seven poets of the Court of Alexandria; nor is there adequate reason to suppose that this inferior canon, δευτέρα τάξις, was formed on any but just principles of taste. How magnificent was the revival of art and letters, in all that pertained, at any rate, to scenic show and pompous ritual, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, how superbly the transplanted flowers of Greek ceremonial flourished on the shores of ancient Nile, and how Hellenic customs borrowed both gorgeous colors and a mystic meaning from the contact with Egyptian rites, may be gathered from the chapters devoted by Athenæus in the fifth book of the Deipnosophistæ to these matters. The Pleiad and the host of minor Alexandrian stars have fared, however, worse than their Athenian models. They had not even comic satirists to keep their names alive "immortally immerded." With the exception of Lycophron, they offer no firm ground for modern criticism. We only know that, in this Alexandrian Renaissance, literature, as usual, repeated itself. Alexandria, like Athens, had its royal poets, and, what is not a little curious, Ptolemy Philopator imitated his predecessor Dionysius to the extent of composing a tragedy, Adonis, with the same title and presumably upon the same theme.