Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

GENERAL VIEW OF THE HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE.

A comprehensive glance over the entire field whose treasures we are about to examine in detail, will enable us the better to appreciate and remember their relative age and value. Beginning, then, with the most distant periods, we find a literature developed in Mesopota’mia, Egypt, Iran, and China, even before 2000 B.C. At that date, the valley of the Euphrates and Tigris was the seat of a civilized Turanian people, the inventors of the complex system of cuneiform writing, thought by some to be the oldest in the world. These Turanian Chaldees, mingled with a Semitic race, were then beginning to enjoy their golden age of letters; at the same time, the ancient Persians and Hindoos were composing hymns; the sages of China were busy on their sacred books; and Egypt had made considerable advance in both poetry and prose.

To trace the progress of literature in these remote times from century to century is impossible. Five hundred years, however, bring us to the Augustan era of romance and satire, epic and devotional poetry, in Egypt: they introduce us to Zoroas’ter, the founder or reformer of the ancient Persian religion, whose teachings are set forth in the Aves’ta; to the Ve’da, or Brahman Bible; to Moses and the Pentateuch; and to Phœnician theology, science, and poetry. Meanwhile Chaldean literature declines, and Assyrian letters come into view. During the next five centuries, poetry and science continue to flourish in Egypt, though not perhaps with their pristine vigor; Phœnicia maintains her literary reputation; the Veda grows; and Persian priests are occupied in enlarging and modifying their sacred texts.

1000 B.C. was the era of great epics. The epic, or narrative poem, based on some important event (in Greek, επος) or chain of events, though first appearing in Egypt, was brought to perfection, about this time, by the Greeks, and some say by the Hindoos also, Aryan nations holding no intercourse with each other. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were paralleled by two stupendous Indian poems, the Râmâyana (rah-mah’-yă-nă) and the Mahâbhârata (mă-hah’bah’ră-tă).[3] To these, all dazzling with Oriental splendor, the epics of the Greek bard may yield in luxuriance of fancy and gorgeous imagery; but in power of description, sublimity of thought, and attractive simplicity of expression, Homer was without an equal.

While, then, the Semitic nations as a rule employed prose as the vehicle of their earliest records of events, Greece and India, types of the Aryan stock, transmitted their legends to posterity in epic verse. Later times have not failed to perpetuate the taste, and measurably the ability; epic poetry has been cultivated by all the Indo-European nations, and to them it has been confined.—Contemporaneously with Homer, native poets were inditing ballads and pastorals in China, and the Hebrews enjoyed their golden age of secular and religious poetry; Egypt had entered on her literary, as well as her political, decline.

Henceforth our interest centres principally in Greece. Until 800 B.C., the poems of Homer and of Hesiod, his contemporary or immediate successor, constituted the bulk of Hellenic literature. Then began a transition to a poetry more natural—a poetry of the emotions—on themes that kindled love, anger, hatred, grief, hope; and for three centuries lyrics in different forms echoed throughout the land. Archil’ochus poured forth his caustic satires; Tyrtæus, his inspiriting war-songs; Sappho, her passionate strains; Anacreon, the joys of the winecup; Simon’ides breathed his touching laments; and Pindar stirred the soul with his grand odes, as with the sound of the trumpet. Prose also received attention, and Ionian authors took the initiative in systematic historical composition. Rude religious festivals suggested dramatic representations; and the pioneers in tragedy and comedy rode about the country, exhibiting their novel art on carts which carried the performers and their machinery.—Meanwhile in the East, Assyrian literature reached its highest development at Nineveh, to be buried beneath the ruins of that city, 625 B.C. Letters then revived at Babylon, and for nearly a century flourished there; Jewish poetry declined; and Confucius, the philosopher of transcendent wisdom, appeared in China.

Early in the 5th century, Greece plunged into a struggle for life or death with the Persian Empire—a struggle from which she emerged covered with glory, united and free. Her triumph is straightway sung in immortal verse, and historians arise to record her exploits. Athens, who faced the enemy at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, and drove him back crippled and disgraced to Asia, now becomes the leader of grateful Hellas, and the centre of literature and refinement. Blossom after blossom unfolds in her genial clime. She makes ample amends for her barrenness in the past by unprecedented fruitfulness, and gives to the nations a drama, lustrous with the names of Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (es’ke-lus, sof’o-kleez, eu-rip’e-deez)—the great tragic trio of antiquity. Comedy also, as represented by Aristophanes, is perfected in her theatre.

Then come the Peloponnesian War and the consequent humiliation of Athens; the overthrow of her democratic government, and the partial decline of literature, particularly poetry, with the fall of free institutions. Still, writers of genius are not wanting. The graphic pens of Thucydides and Xenophon lend additional graces to the history of Greece; Plato and Aristotle make her name immortal in philosophy; and the world’s greatest orators electrify her assemblies with their eloquence. Demosthenes, prince of them all, stands forth as the champion of Grecian liberty, and thunders his Philippics at the wily Macedonian who would enthrall his country. But the star of Macedon was in the ascendant. Chærone’a decided the fate of Greece; and she who had withstood the legions of Xerxes, gave way before the invincible phalanx of Philip and Alexander.

A sad period of decadence followed. Alexandria, in Egypt, founded by the conqueror whose name it bore (332 B.C.), became the centre of learning as well as commerce; and Athens yielded to her fate, wasting her time in empty philosophical discussions and the pursuit of pleasure. Poetry languished, yet flashed out occasionally in epic or didactic form, bringing to mind the glories of the past. It is true that in the idyls of Theocritus (little pictures of domestic life) pastoral verse now bloomed for the first time on European soil, and with fine effect; but it was in far-off Syracuse, not in classic Greece. Here the deepening twilight was fatal to literary growth; and when Egypt fell beneath the power of Rome in the first century B.C., Greek letters sought a new asylum in the city of Romulus.

Turning to Rome, we find that she had long displayed an appreciation of Grecian genius as well as a striking talent for imitation. About the middle of the third century B.C., with little or no literature of her own, she gladly appropriated the foreign treasures held up before her admiring eyes by Liv’ius Androni’cus, a Tarentine Greek, whom the fortunes of war had made the slave of a Roman master. This most ancient of Latin poets put upon the stage versions of the Greek dramas, and with his translation of the Odyssey took his captors captive. Nævius and Ennius, following in the path thus opened, gave Italy its first epics; Ter’ence and Plautus made the people familiar with the humors of comedy; and Cato imparted dignity to Latin prose.

Oratory, for which the Romans had a natural aptitude, culminated in the speeches of Cicero, who ushered in the golden age. In his writings, as well as in the histories of Cæsar, Sallust, and Livy, prose now attracted with its finished periods. Nor was poetry less notably represented. Catullus, vehement and pathetic by turns, transplanted the ode and epigram to Italy; Lucre’tius threw into verse his ideal of philosophy; Tibullus excelled in simplicity and tenderness; while Virgil and Horace rivalled, as they doubtless imitated, the first poets of Greece.

Virgil’s epic, the Æne’id, as remarkable for beauty as Homer’s is for grandeur, secured to its author the first place among Latin poets; and next to him stands Horace, with his faultless mastery of metre and keen observation of men and manners. Their genius shed on the court of the first emperor, Augustus, a peculiar lustre, still recognized in our application of the epithet Augustan to the most brilliant period of a nation’s literature.

It is not strange that under the tyranny of the Cæsars literary decay set in; yet Rome’s silver age was kept bright by the labors of Persius and Juvenal, the unsparing satirists; Lucan, author of the epic Pharsalia; the grave and accurate historian Tacitus; the two Plinies; and Quintilian, the rhetorician. Taste, however, had sadly deteriorated; genius died with patriotism; and despots sought in vain to restore for their own corrupt purposes the ancient spirit which they had crushed out. At length the degenerate Latin writers laid aside their own manly tongue for Greek; and the list of the monuments of Roman genius was complete.

Such has been, in general, the course of every literature. We trace successively the birth of poetry; the gradual perfecting of prose; the ripening of simplicity into elegance; the perversion of elegance into affectation; the language and literature, losing the vigor of manhood, affected with the feebleness of age, and either succumbing at once to some great civil convulsion or perishing by a slow but no less certain living death. As with political, so with literary history:—

“This is the moral of all human tales;

’Tis but the same rehearsal of the past,—

First freedom, and then glory; when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption, barbarism at last;

And History, with all its volumes vast,

Hath but one page.”

Byron.

PART I.
ANCIENT ORIENTAL LITERATURES.

CHAPTER I.
HINDOO LITERATURE.

THE SANSCRIT LANGUAGE.

Characteristics.—Oldest of all the Indo-European tongues, and most closely resembling the common parent that is lost, is Sanscrit—the language spoken by those fair-skinned Aryans who more than thirty centuries ago, swarming through the Hindoo Koosh passes, made the sunny plains of Hindostan their own (page 16). Sanscrit spread over most of the peninsula; and the meaning of the word, perfected, is significant of the flexibility, refinement, regularity, and philosophical system of grammar, by which the language was distinguished. In luxuriance of inflection it was unequalled. Its nouns were varied according to eight cases, and three numbers (singular, dual, and plural); and its verbs, which assumed causal, desiderative, and frequentative forms, were carried in conjugation through three voices, the active, middle, and passive. Its chief fault—a result of its very richness—lay in the frequent use of long compounds, particularly adjectives, presenting what seems to us a confused combination of ideas, sometimes ludicrously lengthened out; as in the expressions, “always-to-be-remembered-with-reverence patriot,” “water-play-delighted maidenn-bathing-fragrant river-breezes” (that is, river-breezes made fragrant by the bathing of maidens delighted with sporting in the water). (Consult Dr. Perry’s “Sanscrit Primer.”)

Brahman Priest.

Neither the parallelism of Hebrew poetry (page 89) nor the rhyme of modern times finds a place in Sanscrit verse; it is distinguished from prose, like Greek poetry, simply by a metrical arrangement of long and short syllables. The measured cadence gave great delight to the cultivated ear of the Hindoos. “There are two excellent things in the world,” says one of their writers—“the friendship of the good, and the beauties of poetry.”

Sanscrit is now a dead language. About three hundred years before the Christian era, dialects similarly derived took its place among the people, and it has since been kept alive only in the conversation and writings of the learned, as the sacred language of the Brahmans, or priestly caste.[4] Yet so extensive is its literature that it costs a Brahman half his life to master a portion of its sacred books alone.

Sanscrit Alphabet.—As to the origin of the Sanscrit alphabet, consisting of fifty letters, history is silent. It is believed that the entire early literature was preserved for centuries by oral repetition. When their polished tongue was first expressed in written characters—derived from the Phœnicians or independently invented—so perfectly did these answer the purpose that the Hindoos styled their alphabet “the writing of the gods.” The Sanscrit letters are still preserved in the written language of the pure Hindoos, but in that of the Mohammedan population have been replaced with the Arabic characters.

History of Sanscrit Researches.—Arabian translations of Sanscrit works were made as early as the reign of the Caliph Haroun’-al-Raschid, at Bagdad (800 A.D.), and appeared from time to time in the succeeding centuries. Europeans first knew of the existence of Sanscrit and its literature during the reign of Au’rungzebe (1658-1707), in whose time the French and English obtained a foothold in Hindostan. Before this, the Jesuit Nobili (no’be-le) had gone to India to study the sacred books with a view to the conversion of the Hindoos, and, having mastered them, boldly preached a new Veda; but he died on the scene of his labors, and Europe profited nothing by his researches. It was left for the Asiatic Society, organized at Calcutta in 1784 by Sir William Jones, to open the eyes of Europe to the importance and magnitude of Brahman literature, of which the translation of Sakoon’talâ (page 50) by this great orientalist gave a most favorable specimen.

Following in the footsteps of the English scholar just mentioned, the German critic Schlegel, in his “Language and Wisdom of the Indians” (1808) laid the permanent foundations of Comparative Philology, a science of recent birth but one that has been of incalculable service to history, establishing the kinship of the Hindoos and Persians with the old Greeks and Romans, as well as the modern nations of the west, by striking resemblances in their respective tongues. Eminent scholars have since prosecuted the work with enthusiasm—especially Bopp, Humboldt, Pott, and Grimm among the Germans, the French savant Bournouf, Max Müller in England, and the American Whitney. Sanscrit is no longer a sealed volume. The leading European universities have their professors of that tongue, who lecture also on comparative grammar. (See Whitney’s article on Philology, Enc. Brit. V. xviii.)

SACRED LITERATURE OF THE HINDOOS.

The Veda.—The language of the ancient Indo-Aryans survives in the Ve’da, the oldest work of Indo-European literature, dating back to the prehistoric era of the Aryan race. The Veda, while rich in striking imagery, is marked by a beautiful simplicity of diction. In its language, we behold the most ancient form of our own tongue; in the hymns of its poets, those germs of Aryan intellectual development that no long time after bloomed in epic and idyl through the fertile valleys of India, bore immortal fruit on the soil of Greece and Rome, and have been brought to perfection in the grand productions of modern genius. (The student is referred to Max Müller’s “Rig-Veda-Sanhita,” and Dr. Arrowsmith’s Translation of Prof. Kaegi’s “Rig-Veda.”)

The word Veda means knowledge. The Mantra, or “song” portion of the Veda, is divided into four parts: the Rig-Veda (knowledge of the stanzas), or Veda of hymns; the Sâma-Veda, of tunes or chants, and the Yajur-Veda, of sacrificial rites (prayers)—both purely ritualistic; and the Artharva-Veda, in the main a collection of incantations and spells: Each of the last-named Vedas is a medley of extracts from the Rig-Veda, with additions from outside sources. Thus it will be seen that the Hindoos were believers in the efficacy of sacrifices, some of which were prolonged for months and even years, as well as of talismans, charms, and incantations to ward off disease, bring riches, and inspire love.

To the metrical parts of the Vedas are attached the Brâhmanas, which abound in tedious descriptions of rites, and were written long after in prose to explain the hymns. There are also collections of rules for worship and sacrifice; and speculations on philosophy and religion, which display no little acuteness, for the Hindoo mind seems to have been prone to metaphysical investigation and ingenious in reasoning even to the verge of sophistry. Supplements to the Vedas contain abundant commentaries on their grammar and language, as well as astronomical facts—the latter mainly borrowed from other nations and not based on original researches or discoveries. Finally, the Upave’das (oo-pă-vā’dăz—appended) treat of diseases and their cure, devotional music, the use of weapons, and the arts; while the Purânas (poo-rah’năz), of more recent birth, believed to have been revealed from heaven like the Vedas, present in verse the mythology of India and the history of its legendary age.

Religion of the Veda.—The Supreme Being first acknowledged by the Aryans was gradually lost sight of, and a worship of Nature arose. In the 1,028 hymns of the Rig-Veda (by several hundred authors, and comprising 10,580 verses), “thrice eleven” gods are invoked as intelligent beings, the principal of whom are Varuna (vur’oo-nah)—god of waters, the sun, the moon, the day, fire, the storm (Indra), the dawn, and the earth; and to “the three and thirty,” offerings were made of cakes, wine, and grain. They were immortal; clothed with power to answer prayer, and punish those who offended them. But as each great god is recognized as supreme in different hymns, it is with good reason thought that, under various names, one omnipotent Being is worshipped, called in the Veda “God above all gods,” “that One alone who has upheld the spheres.” “Wise poets,” says the Rig-Veda, “make the Beautiful-winged, though he is one, manifold by words.”[5]

In the following hymn to Varuna is apparent the belief that evil-doing is hateful to the Almighty, that man is by nature prone to sin, and that God stands ready to exercise forgiveness.

HYMN TO VARUNA.

(We have given Max Müller’s literal translation a dress of verse, the better to bring out the effect of the refrain.)

O Varuna, let me not yet enter the house of clay:

Mercy, Almighty one, thy mercy I pray!

If, like a cloud the sport of winds, I trembling go astray—

Mercy, Almighty one, thy mercy I pray!

Through want of strength, thou strong bright God, I’ve wandered from the way:

Mercy, Almighty one, thy mercy I pray!

Thirst comes upon the worshipper, though round the waters play:

Mercy, Almighty one, thy mercy I pray!

When we do wrong through thoughtlessness, thy hand of vengeance stay:

Transgressors of thy righteous law, thy mercy, God, we pray!

But of all the conceptions of the Vedic writers, that of the Dawn Goddess was the most poetical. Watching for the first flush in the eastern sky, her ancient worshippers, with their hands devoutly placed upon their foreheads, opened their hearts in strains of praise to the gloom-dispelling Dawn, the golden-hued Daughter of Heaven, leading on the sun with her modest smile, “like a radiant bride adorned by her mother for the bridegroom.”

The sun is represented as a glorious prince, hastening after the Dawn-maiden and trying to discover her by a tiny slipper which she has dropped, and which is too small for another to wear; but the prince never overtakes the flying maid. This beautiful myth is the origin of the tale of Cinderella.

The Veda contains no allusions to those corrupt practices which afterward became the distinguishing marks of Brahmanism. At this early period there was no belief in the transmigration of the souls of men into inferior animals; on the contrary, the Vedic Aryans looked for “excellent treasures in the sky.” To caste, they were also strangers; idols were unknown; and suttee, the burning of the widow at her husband’s funeral, was an unheard-of barbarity.

Social Life of the Vedic People.—The hymns of the Rig-Veda picture the manners and customs of an intellectual people, far advanced in the arts. Princely palaces are described, fortified cities, monarchs possessed of fabulous riches, ladies elegantly attired. There were poor as well as rich, workers in the various handicrafts; shipbuilding was practised, and naval expeditions were undertaken. Even at this remote day literary meetings were held.

Nor were the crimes and vices of later times unknown. Liars are denounced; thieves, robbers, and intoxicating drinks, are mentioned; while in one hymn, a gambler laments his ruin by “the tumbling dice,” and warns others not to play, but rather to practise husbandry. (On the lessons of the Veda, see Max Müller’s “India: What can It Teach Us?” p. 141.)

The following extract from one of the secular hymns which are interspersed with those of a religious character, shows some knowledge of human nature:—

EVERY ONE TO HIS TASTE.

“Men’s tastes and trades are multifarious,

And so their ends and aims are various.

The smith seeks something cracked to mend;

The doctor would have sick to tend.

The priest desires a devotee

From whom he may extract his fee.

Each craftsman makes and vends his ware,

And hopes the rich man’s gold to share.

My sire’s a doctor; I, a bard;

Corn grinds my mother, toiling hard.

All craving wealth, we each pursue,

By different means, the end in view,

Like people running after cows,

Which too far off have strayed to browse

The draught-horse seeks an easy yoke,

The merry dearly like a joke,

Of lovers youthful belles are fond,

And thirsty frogs desire a pond.”—Muir.

LAW-BOOKS OF THE HINDOOS.

Laws of Manu.—Of the many Indian treatises on the moral law still extant, the most important is the Institutes of Manu (mun’oo). Early texts transmit the idea of this venerable lawgiver, sprung from Brahma in the Vedic period. That the code now bearing his name embodies the precepts of so ancient a sage, is doubtful. The laws are written in verse. Four distinct castes are recognized, ascending through the successive grades of laborers, farmers, warriors, and princes, to the highest, which consisted of the priests of Brahma, “the soul of the universe, whom eye, tongue, mind, cannot reach,” from whose substance all men proceed and to whom all must return through various states of existence. The childlike religion of the Veda has disappeared.

The word brahma often occurs in the Vedas with the signification of worship, or hymn, the vehicle of worship. In the later Vedic poems it came to mean the universal but impersonal spiritual principle, all-pervading and self-existent. In Manu’s Ordinances, Brahma is endowed with personality, and a definite place is assigned him in the national religious system, as the creative spirit who made the universe before undiscerned discernible in the beginning. He, as the Creator, is united with the three-eyed thousand-named Siva (se’vah) the Destroyer, and Vishnu the Preserver, in the Hindoo triad. Vishnu was the first-begotten of Brahma, a benevolent being who, to overcome the malignant agents of evil, submitted to various embodiments in human or animal form, known as Av’atars. Nine avatars, which the Hindoos believed to have taken place, were favorite themes of Sanscrit poetry; the tenth, still future, would result in the overthrow of the present state of things and the ushering in of a new and better era. (Read Hopkins’s “The Ordinances of Manu.”)

Moral Precepts.—The Institutes of Manu regulated the moral and social life of the people, prescribing certain rules for the government of society and the punishment of crimes. Purity of life was enjoined on all. One of the chief duties was to honor father and mother—the mother a thousand times the most—and the Brahman more than either. Widows are forbidden to remarry, and the duties of a wife are thus described:—

“The wife must always be in a cheerful temper, devoting herself to the good management of the household, taking great care of the furniture, and keeping down all expenses with a frugal hand. The husband to whom her father has given her, she must obsequiously honor while he lives and never neglect him when he dies. The husband gives bliss continually to his wife here below, and he will give her happiness in the next world. He must be constantly revered as a god by a virtuous wife, even if he does not observe approved usages, or is devoid of good qualities. A faithful wife, who wishes to attain heaven and dwell there with her husband, must never do anything unkind toward him, whether he be living or dead.”

The following was the punishment for killing a cow, an animal treated with the honors due to a deity:—

“All day he must wait on a herd of cows, and stand quaffing the dust raised by their hoofs.

Free from passion, he must stand when they stand, follow when they move, lie down near them when they lie down.

By thus waiting on a herd for three months, he who has killed a cow atones for his guilt.”

OTHER EXTRACTS FROM MANU.

“Greatness is not conferred by years nor by gray hairs, by wealth nor powerful kindred. Whoever has read the Veda, he always is great.

A Brahman beginning or ending a lecture on the Veda must always pronounce to himself the syllable OM[6]; for unless the syllable OM precede his learning will slip away from him, and unless it follow nothing will be long retained.

When one among all the organs sins, by that single failure all knowledge of God passes away; as the water flows through one hole in a leathern bottle.

The names of women should be agreeable, soft, clear, captivating the fancy, auspicious, ending in long vowels, resembling words of benediction.”

EPIC POETRY.

Indian literature boasts of two grand epic poems—gems that would shine in the crown of a Homer or a Milton—the Râmâyana (rah-mah’yă-nă—Adventures of Râma) and the Mahâbhârata (mă-hah’bah’ră-tă—Great War of Bhârata), “the Iliad and Odyssey of Sanscrit poetry.” The date of these epics is uncertain. Both contain ancient Vedic traditions, but mingled with these is much that is more recent. It is probable that the old songs and stories were current among the people ages before they were arrayed in their present dress by later poets, who gave them a different religious coloring to suit the Brahmanical doctrines. Their language is an improvement on that of the Veda in polish and softness; improvement would naturally result from oral repetition. (See Monier Williams’s “Indian Wisdom.”)

The Râmâyana, by the poet Vâlmiki (vahl’me-ke), relates the achievements of Râma (the name assumed by Vishnu in his seventh avatar, or incarnation), who descended to earth that he might destroy a demon-prince in Ceylon. Râma becomes the first-born of the monarch of Oude and heir-apparent to the throne, marries a lovely princess, Sîtâ (se’tah), whose hand others had vainly sought, and daily increases in popularity. But Râma’s mother was not the only queen; a younger and more beautiful rival prevails on the old king to appoint her son his successor instead of Râma, and to banish the latter for fourteen years.

Loyal to his father, though he might have seized the crown by force, as his mother in her first disappointment bade him do, Râma set out for the wilderness, accompanied by his bride, who refused to remain behind in the luxurious capital. Soon after his father died of grief; whereupon the younger brother rejected the crown, and, seeking the exile in the jungle, saluted him as king. Râma, however, declined the honor, and, proceeding to fulfil his mission, slew the demon and conquered Ceylon. Then with his faithful wife he returned to Oude, to reign jointly with his brother and usher in a golden age.

The Râmâyana, in this fiction, is supposed to refer to the conquest of southern India and Ceylon by the Aryans. It so delighted the Hindoos that it was said, “He who sings and hears this epic continually has attained to the highest enjoyment, and will finally be equal to the gods.”

FROM THE RÂMÂYANA.

Sîtâ, informed by her husband of his banishment, thus tenderly pleads to be the companion of his exile:—

“I will not be a charge to thee: the wood will give me roots,

The spring will yield me water, and the branch provide me fruits.

In hermit’s humble mantle clad, and guarded by my lord,

I long to wander through the wood, the rivulet to ford,

To climb the rock, and gaze upon the lake that looks so cool;

And oh! the pleasant bathing in the clear and shaded pool,

With waters freshly running from the sweet perennial springs,

All lovely with the lotuses and wild swans’ silver wings.

I would not live in heaven itself, and thou, my love, away;

A thousand years with thee, my love, would seem one blissful day.

Then take me with thee to the wood, nor leave me here alone:

I will not be a burthen sore to thee, mine own! mine own!”

But Râma seeks to dissuade her:—

“The forest life has fears and woes too many to be told:

Thirst, hunger, burning heat by day, by night the bitter cold.

Each moment on some deadly thing the heedless step may fall,

Where serpents with their venomed fangs and poisonous scorpions crawl;

There thro’ the day the tiger roams, the panther and the boar,

And thro’ the night the caverned hills echo the lion’s roar;

There many a river deep and wide will bar thine onward way,

Where fearful crocodiles amid the foaming waters play.

The forest paths, my Sîtâ dear, are rough and hard to pass,

Tangled with knotted creeping plants, and thorns, and matted grass.

O’er many a league the wild woods stretch, and savage beasts abound;

No fruit or flower may there be seen, and water scarce is found;

No bed is there to rest the limbs, but stretched upon a heap

Of fallen leaves and gathered grass the homeless wretch must sleep.

No, such a life is not for thee; cast thou the thought away;

Here in the palace of the king in peace and safety stay.

Though far away from thee I go, and thou remainest here,

Still shalt thou live within the heart to which thou art so dear.”

Yet Sîtâ still refuses to be parted from her husband, and with tearful eyes exclaims:—

“And death to me were sweeter far, with thine arms round me thrown,

Than life in thy father’s palaces, in safety, but alone.

The wife’s eternal duty is, as holy priests declare,

To follow where her husband goes, his weal and woe to share;

And for the true and loving wife remains the endless bliss

Of sharing all this life with him, and the life that follows this.”

But, Râma being still inexorable, Sîtâ bursts forth in anger, upbraids him for his cruelty in deserting her, and finally, overcome by emotion, falls weeping at his feet. Then Râma raises her in his arms, and pours these soothing accents in her ear:—

“Oh! what is heaven without thee, love? With thee I’ll live and die;

Never will Râma stoop to fear, though Brahma’s self come nigh.

Obedience to my father’s will now sends me to the wood;

For paramount of duties this is counted by the good.

Only to try thy mind, my love, thy prayer I first denied:

I never dreamed that aught could harm the lady by my side;

But yet I feared to suffer thee, so delicate and fair,

The troubles of a forest life and all its woes to share.

Now, as the glory of his life the saint can ne’er resign,

Thou too, devoted, brave, and true, shalt follow and be mine.”

Griffith.

As a favorable specimen of the florid description in which Hindoo imagination excels, we quote from the same epic,

THE DESCENT OF THE GANGES.

“From the high heaven burst Ganges forth, first on Siva’s lofty crown;

Headlong then, and prone to earth, thundering rushed the cataract down.

Swarms of bright-hued fish came dashing; turtles, dolphins, and in their mirth,

Fallen, or falling, glancing, flashing, to the many-gleaming earth;

And all the host of heaven came down, sprites and genii in amaze,

And each forsook his heavenly throne, upon that glorious scene to gaze.

On cars, like high-towered cities, seen, with elephants and coursers rode.

Or on soft-swinging palanquin lay wondering, each observant god.

As met in bright divan each god, and flashed their jewelled vestures’ rays,

The coruscating ether glowed, as with a hundred suns ablaze.

And in ten thousand sparkles bright went flashing up the cloudy spray,

The snowy-flocking swans less white, within its glittering mists at play.

And headlong now poured down the flood, and now in silver circlets wound;

Then lake-like spread, all bright and broad, then gently, gently flowed around;

Then ’neath the caverned earth descending, then spouted up the boiling tide;

Then stream with stream, harmonious blending, swell bubbling up or smooth subside.

By that heaven-welling water’s breast, the genii and the sages stood;

Its sanctifying dews they blest, and plunged within the lustral flood.”—Milman.

The Mahâbhârata is a vast collection of miscellaneous poetry, attributed to Vyâsa (ve-ah’să), “the arranger,” containing over 200,000 lines, and relating the history of a struggle between two branches of an ancient royal family. Jealousy led to the separation of the rival parties, one of which, the Pândavas (pahn’dă-văz), cleared the jungle and founded the city of Delhi (del’le). But their enemies, the Kurus (Koo’rooz), resolving to dispossess them, challenged the Pândavas to a gambling match; the latter accepted, but were cheated out of all their possessions by the use of loaded dice, and driven into the wilderness. A savage war ensued, resulting in the triumph of the Pândavas, and their elevation over the neighboring rajahs. (See Arnold’s “Indian Idylls.”)

The great Hindoo epics are both enlivened by charming episodes. The most beautiful of those interwoven in the Mahâbhârata are called “the Five Precious Gems.” Of these, the magnificent philosophical poem entitled The Divine Song withdraws the reader for a while from the tumult of war, and introduces him to a profound theological dialogue between a disguised god and one of the principal combatants. It inculcates the existence of one Immutable, Eternal Being, and teems with grand thoughts not unlike those we should expect from a Christian teacher. The immortality of the soul is thus sublimely set forth by the deity, on the eve of a decisive battle, for the purpose of removing the scruples of the chief, while the latter humanely hesitates to precipitate the conflict in view of the slaughter that would ensue:—

“Ne’er was the time when I was not, nor thou, nor yonder kings of earth:

Hereafter, ne’er shall be the time, when one of us shall cease to be.

The soul, within its mortal frame, glides on thro’ childhood, youth, and age;

Then in another form renewed, renews its stated course again.

All indestructible is He that spread the living universe;

And who is he that shall destroy the work of the Indestructible?

Corruptible these bodies are that wrap the everlasting soul—

The eternal, unimaginable soul. Whence on to battle, Bhârata!

For he that thinks to slay the soul, or he that thinks the soul is slain,

Are fondly both alike deceived: it is not slain—it slayeth not;

It is not born—it doth not die; past, present, future knows it not;

Ancient, eternal, and unchanged, it dies not with the dying frame.

Who knows it incorruptible, and everlasting, and unborn,

What heeds he whether he may slay, or fall himself in battle slain?

As their old garments men cast off, anon new raiment to assume,

So casts the soul its worn-out frame, and takes at once another form.

The weapon cannot pierce it through, nor wastes it the consuming fire;

The liquid waters melt it not, nor dries it up the parching wind:

Impenetrable and unburned; impermeable and undried;

Perpetual, ever-wandering, firm, indissoluble, permanent,

Invisible, unspeakable.”—Milman.

But of all the episodes, that of Nala (nul’ă) and Damayanti is unsurpassed for pathos and tenderness of sentiment. King Nala, enamored of the “softly-smiling” Damayanti, “pearl among women,” finds his love returned, and is accepted by her in preference to many other princes and even four of the gods. A jealous demon, however, possesses him, and causes him to lose at play everything except his bride, whom he cannot be prevailed upon to stake. Yet at last, in his madness, he deserts her in the forest, and Damayanti, after many strange adventures, reaches her father’s court in safety. There she adopts the device of inviting suitors a second time to propose for her hand, in the hope of bringing her lost husband to her side if he should hear that there was danger of his losing her forever.

Nala, meanwhile, disguised as a charioteer, had entered the service of another king, who now sets forth to offer himself to the beauteous princess, driven by her husband. When they arrive Damayanti penetrates the disguise of the charioteer, and to prove the correctness of her suspicions, puts him to the severest test. She contrives to have his children brought before him. The father’s heart is touched at once; he clasps them in his arms, and bursts into tears.

“Soon as he young Indrasena and her little brother saw,

Up he sprang, his arms wound round them, to his bosom folding both.

When he gazed upon the children, like the children of the gods,

All his heart o’erflowed with pity, and unwilling tears brake forth.”

Not wishing, however, to reveal himself to a wife whom he thought false, he added by way of apology for his conduct,

“Oh! so like my own twin children was yon lovely infant pair,

Seeing them thus unexpected, have I broken out in tears.”

Finally Nala makes himself known to Damayanti, and, convinced of her faithfulness, is reunited to her and regains his crown.

Such are the Sanscrit epics and their episodes. They are still recited in the temples of India to vast throngs of appreciative listeners; the reading of the Mahâbhârata is said to occupy from three to six months. (On the epics, consult Muir’s “Metrical Translations from Sanscrit Writers.”)

LYRIC AND DIDACTIC POETRY.

Kâlidâsa.—In lyric poetry, embracing idyls and amatory pieces, Sanscrit is no less rich than in epic, whether quantity or quality be considered. Foremost in this department is Kâlidâsa (kah’le-dah’să), about whose life, and even his exact period, nothing is certainly known, but whose works have crowned him with immortality. He is the author of many charming verses; and his poem, “the Seasons,” which draws fascinating pictures of the luxuriant landscapes of India, displaying on every page the poet’s ardent love for the beauties of nature, has the honor of being the first book ever printed in Sanscrit.

AUTUMN.

FROM KÂLIDÂSA’S SEASONS.

“Welcome Autumn, lovely bride,

Full of beauty, full of pride!

Hear her anklets’ silver ring:

’Tis the swans that round her sing.

Mark the glory of her face:

’Tis the lotus lends its grace.

See the garb around her thrown;

Look and wonder at her zone.

Robes of maize her limbs enfold,

Girt with rice like shining gold.

Streams are white with silver wings

Of the swans that autumn brings.

Lakes are sweet with opening flowers;

Gardens, gay with jasmine bowers;

While the woods, to charm the sight,

Show their bloom of purest white.

Vainly might the fairest try

With the charms around to vie.

How can India’s graceful daughter

Match that swan upon the water?

Fair her arching brow above,

Swimming eyes that melt with love:

But that charming brow can never

Beat that ripple on the river;

And those eyes must still confess

Lilies’ rarer loveliness.

Perfect are those rounded arms,

Aided by the bracelets’ charms:

Fairer still those branches are,

And those creepers, better far,

Ring them round with many a fold,

Lovelier than gems and gold.

Now no more doth Indra’s Bow

In the evening sunlight glow,

Nor his flag, the lightning’s glare,

Flash across the murky air.

Beauty too has left the trees,

Which but now were wont to please;

Other darlings claim her care,

And she pours her blossoms there.

Now beneath the moonlight sweet,

Many troops of maidens meet.

Many a pleasant tale they tell

Of the youths that love them well;

Of the word, the flush, the glance,

The kiss, the sigh, the dalliance.

Not a youth can wander when

Jasmine blossoms scent the glen,

While the notes of many a bird

From the garden shades are heard,

But his melting soul must feel

Sweetest longing o’er it steal.

Not a maid can brush away

Morning dew-drops from the spray,

But she feels a sweet unrest

Wooingly disturb her breast.

As the breezes fresh and cool

From the lilies on the pool,

Sweet with all the fragrance there,

Play, like lovers, with her hair.”

Griffith.

Surpassing “the Seasons” in dignity and elegance, “the Cloud Messenger,” by the same author, contains some fine flights of fancy. It tells how an inferior god, banished for twelve months to a sacred forest and thus separated from a wife whom he fondly loves, commits to a passing cloud a message for his goddess. He directs its imaginary journey through the sky, over forests and hills, to the city of the gods. There it will easily distinguish his wife, whom he paints to the cloud in glowing colors as the “first, best work of the Creator’s hand,” mourning over their separation.

“And sad and silent shalt thou find my wife,

Half of my soul and partner of my life;

Nipped by chill sorrow, as the flowers enfold

Their shrinking petals from the withering cold.

I view her now! Long weeping swells her eyes,

And those dear lips are dried by parching sighs.

Sad on her hand her pallid cheek declines,

And half unseen through veiling tresses shines;

As when a darkling night the moon enshrouds,

A few faint rays break straggling through the clouds.”

He then intrusts the cloud with the tender words that he would breathe; bids it tell his beloved how he sees her in the rippling brooks, how

“O’er the rude stone her pictured beauties rise;”

and finally he charges his messenger to console her afflicted heart with assurances of his unabated love, and to hasten back with tidings that may relieve his soul of its anxiety. The cloud obeys; but meanwhile the supreme deity learns of the message, repents of his severity, restores the exile to his wife, and blesses the pair with ceaseless joy.

Kâlidâsa also wrote three epics of a romantic character, one of them on the adventures of Nala and his devoted Damayanti. Well does he merit the title conferred on him by his admiring countrymen,—“the Bridegroom of Poesy.”

Jayadeva (jī-ă-dā’vă), a poet probably of more recent times, if not equal to Kâlidâsa, yet has given us in Gîtagovinda one of the most enchanting idyls ever written. In this Song of the Shepherd Govinda, the form assumed by the god Krishna, are set forth in voluptuous colors the adventures of the deity and nine shepherdesses, his beautiful attendants. The whole is supposed to be a mystical allegory.

The high estimation in which Jayadeva is held, may be inferred from the following eulogy by an Oriental critic: “Whatever is delightful in the modes of music, whatever is exquisite in the sweet art of love, whatever is graceful in the strains of poetry—all that let the happy and wise learn from the songs of Jayadeva.” (See Arnold’s “Indian Poetry,” p. 86.)

---

Whittier has furnished us the following spirited version of a Hindoo lyric by a poet who flourished in the third century of our era, and who, if we may judge by his writings, had conceptions of God and duty not unworthy of a Christian bard.

GIVING AND TAKING.

“Who gives and hides the giving hand,

Nor counts on favor, fame, or praise,

Shall find his smallest gift outweighs

The burden of the sea and land.

Who gives to whom hath naught been given,

His gift in need, though small indeed,

As is the grass-blade’s wind-blown seed,

Is large as earth, and rich as heaven.

Forget it not, O man, to whom

A gift shall fall while yet on earth;

Yea, even to thy sevenfold birth

Recall it in the lives to come.

Who dares to curse the hands that bless,

Shall know of sin the deadliest cost;

The patience of the heaven is lost

Beholding man’s unthankfulness.

For he who breaks all laws may still

In Siva’s mercy be forgiven;

But none can save, in earth or heaven,

The wretch who answers good with ill.”

THE DRAMA.

The Sanscrit Shakespeare.—Not the least valuable of Sanscrit treasures is its dramatic poetry. Here, as in lyric verse, Kâlidâsa stands prëeminent, the Shakespeare of India. His title to this distinction rests mainly on his drama of Sakoon’talâ, or the Lost Ring, which portrays the simple life and unsophisticated manners of his countrymen with all his characteristic tenderness of expression and rich imagination.

Plot of Sakoontalâ.—In early summer—the fitting season, sacred as it was to the god of love—the play of Sakoontalâ was wont to be acted in ancient India. The heroine, whose name the drama bears, was the daughter of a nymph, and dwelt at a hermitage in the jungle. Led to her retreat by chance in his pursuit of a deer, a neighboring rajah espies the “slender-waisted” forest maid, with two lovely companions, watering the shrubbery. Concealing himself among the trees, he plays eaves-dropper, and as he watches the trio he cannot restrain his admiration; “the woodland plants,” he cries, “outshine the garden flowers.” His heart is lost forthwith. Ordering his camp to be pitched near by, he wooes and finally weds Sakoontalâ, with the assurance that she shall “reign without a rival in his heart.” Then leaving his bride a marriage-ring, engraved with his name, as a token of their union, the rajah goes back to his palace, promising that Sakoontalâ shall soon share his throne.

“Repeat each day one letter of the name

Engraven on this gem; ere thou hast reckoned

The tale of syllables, my minister

Shall come to lead thee to thy husband’s palace.”

Not long after his departure, a sage whose anger she has incurred pronounces a curse upon the pair,—“that he of whom she thought should think of her no more,” should even forget her image, and that the spell should cease only at sight of the marriage-ring. This token of remembrance, however, was secured on her finger; and at length Sakoontalâ, re-assured by a favorable omen, leaves the sorrowing companions of her girlhood, and the venerable hermit, her reputed father, to seek her husband in his capital.

Arrived in safety, she gains access to the royal presence; but the king, laboring under the curse, fails to recognize her. Sakoontalâ is unveiled, and stands before him in all her beauty—a beauty that stirs him to exclaim:—

“What charms are here revealed before mine eyes!

Truly no blemish mars the symmetry

Of that fair form; yet can I ne’er believe

She is my wedded wife; and like a bee

That circles round the flower whose nectared cup

Teems with the dew of morning, I must pause

Ere eagerly I taste the proffered sweetness.”

Then Sakoontalâ seeks her ring, but alas! it is not on her finger; she must have dropped it in the Ganges. In the midst of her confusion a nymph appears, and carries her off to a sacred retreat, where she gives birth to a son.

Meanwhile a fish is caught, in which is found the fatal ring, stamped with the rajah’s name. It is restored to its owner, and at once the recollection of his long-forgotten Sakoontalâ flashes upon his mind. Overwhelmed with poignant regret for her loss, he abandons himself to melancholy for a time, calling on her beloved name, or trying to beguile his grief by tracing with his pencil her features now but too well remembered. At length ambition and piety unite to wake him from his lethargy. He embarks in a campaign against the giants, enemies of the gods; is victorious; and finds the consummation of happiness at last in a union with his long-lost wife, and with his son, whose name, Bhârata, becomes the most distinguished in the mythology of India.

English readers are enabled to enjoy the beauties of Sakoontalâ through the metrical version of Prof. Williams.

EXTRACTS FROM SAKOONTALÂ.

PARTING WORDS OF THE SAGE TO HIS ADOPTED DAUGHTER.

“This day my loved one leaves me, and my heart

Is heavy with its grief: the streams of sorrow,

Choked at the source, repress my faltering voice.

I have no words to speak; mine eyes are dimmed

By the dark shadows of the thoughts that rise

Within my soul. If such the force of grief

In an old hermit parted from his nursling,

What anguish must the stricken parent feel,

Bereft forever of an only daughter!

Weep not, my daughter, check the gathering tear

That lurks beneath thine eyelid, ere it flow

And weaken thy resolve; be firm and true—

True to thyself and me; the path of life

Will lead o’er hill and plain, o’er rough and smooth,

And all must feel the steepness of the way;

Tho’ rugged be thy course, press boldly on.

Honor thy betters; ever be respectful

To those above thee. Should thy wedded lord

Treat thee with harshness, thou must never be

Harsh in return, but patient and submissive.

Be to thy menials courteous, and to all

Placed under thee considerate and kind:

Be never self-indulgent, but avoid

Excess in pleasure; and, when fortune smiles,

Be not puffed up. Thus to thy husband’s house

Wilt thou a blessing prove, and not a curse.

How, O my child! shall my bereaved heart

Forget its bitterness, when, day by day,

Full in my sight shall grow the tender plants

Reared by thy care, or sprung from hallowed grain

Which thy loved hands have strewn around the door—

A frequent offering to our household gods.”

THE KING AND SAKOONTALÂ’S PORTRAIT.

“My finger, burning with the glow of love,

Has left its impress on the painted tablet;

While here and there, alas! a scalding tear

Has fallen on the cheek and dimmed its brightness.

Go fetch the brush that I may finish it.

A sweet Sirisha blossom should be twined

Behind her ear, its perfumed crest depending

Toward her cheek; and resting on her bosom,

A lotus-fibre necklace, soft and bright

As an autumnal moonbeam, should be traced.”

While gazing on the picture, the king in his infatuation mistakes for reality a bee which he has himself painted in the act of settling on the rosy lips of his love, and after attempting to drive it off is apprised of his error by an attendant, whom he thus addresses:—

“While all entranced I gazed upon her picture,

My loved one seemed to live before my eyes,

Till every fibre of my being thrilled

With rapturous emotion. Oh! ’twas cruel

To dissipate the day-dream, and transform

The blissful vision to a lifeless image.

Vain is the hope of meeting her in dreams,

For slumber, night by night, forsakes my couch.

And now that I would fain assuage my grief

By gazing on her portrait, here before me,

Tears of despairing love obscure my sight.”

Monier Williams.

Sakoontalâ may justly be called the pearl of Eastern dramatic poetry. It has been translated into every European tongue, and has elicited the admiration of all civilized nations. In the language of Goethe:—

“Would’st thou the young year’s blossom and the fruits of its decline,

And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed—

Would’st thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?

I name thee, O Sakoontalâ! and all at once is said.”

From the author of this drama we have two other pieces worthy of his fame, “the Hero and the Nymph” and a popular comedy. His era was the golden age of the Hindoo theatre.

Other noted plays, a few out of many, are “the Toy Cart,” a domestic drama with a public underplot; “the Signet of the Minister,” which had a political bearing; “the Stolen Marriage;” and an allegorical play, “the Moonrise of Science.”

The Hindoo Drama, the invention of which was ascribed to an ancient sage inspired by Brahma himself, consisted at first of music, dancing, and pantomime. An outcome of the prevailing mythology, it was made a feature of the Indian festivals, and from very early rude beginnings of which we have no remains gradually progressed to the perfection with which Kâlidâsa invested it. Unfolding the inner life of the people and illustrating their peculiar institutions, it is at once interesting and valuable, original, and in its delineations of character strikingly true to nature. Love is its principal subject; and, what is markedly characteristic, its denouements are always happy. Tragedy is foreign to the Hindoo stage.

The Indian plays began and closed with a benediction or prayer; in many cases there was a preliminary account of the author, or a colloquy between the manager and one of the actors, leading the way to the play itself. The heroes were generally kings or deities. As foils to these, it was usual to introduce mountebanks or buffoons, and as such Brahmans were made to figure. The Hindoo dramatists did not hesitate to set forth their priests in a ridiculous light; a remarkable fact, when we remember that the drama in India was a semi-religious institution, and that the managers of companies were usually themselves Brahmans. The playwright who in Greece should have taken such liberties with his religious superiors would have run the risk of being driven from the stage, if indeed he were not more seriously handled by an indignant audience.

The consistency observed in managing the dialogue is noteworthy. The parts spoken by divinities and heroes, rulers and priests, are always in ancient Sanscrit; while the inferior personages and the female characters use the later and more familiar dialect. Want of acquaintance with the sacred language, which thus formed the staple of the classical plays, no doubt prevented the common people from fully understanding and enjoying dramatic representations; and hence the latter never attained that popularity which they had in other countries. They were the entertainment of the cultured class rather than the masses.

Another curious feature of the Hindoo drama was the absence of scenery, the plays being mostly represented in the open air, the courts of palaces, etc. The great advantage which the modern performer derives from fine scenic effects was entirely wanting. Changes of scene could be indicated only in the text, by minute descriptions of the new locality, thrown into the mouths of the speakers and left for the audience to fill out and remember. No shifting of scenes, for instance, as with us, would denote the entrance of one of the characters from out-doors into a drawing-room; but the personage entering, either in a soliloquy or in colloquy with some other, would immediately call attention to every little point—the threshold, the floor, the ceiling, the walls, the doors, the windows, the furniture—and the glowing fancy of his hearers would at once picture the scene as vividly as if it stood before them in reality.

The proprieties were strictly observed. To represent a death scene would have been intolerable; nor only so, but in the earlier and purer days no dramatist would introduce before his audience a scene of violence, eating, sleeping, or the performance of the marriage ceremony. A charming love-scene in the Sakoontalâ breaks off just at the critical moment when the hero and heroine are about to interchange a token of affection; yet the embrace does not appear always to have been repugnant to the Hindoo ideas of delicacy.

As to the date of the dramas that have been mentioned, they are supposed to have been written during the first ten centuries of the Christian Era; but here, as in the case of the epics and lyrics, we are left to conjecture. Could we know more certainly what times they reflect, our pleasure in perusing them would be complete.

TALES AND FABLES.

India has long enjoyed the reputation, and not without reason, of having been the favorite home of fairy-tale and fable. From her storehouse of fictions, many waifs have crept into the literatures of both Europe and Asia, and striking the popular taste have attained wide currency. Tongues have changed, dynasties have fallen; but these stories by unknown hands still live in the nursery, influencing the pliant minds of the children of to-day as they have done those of the last twenty centuries.

The Sanscrit has two great collections of fables,—the Pankatantra, Five Stories (more properly Five Sections); and the Hitopadesa, Friendly Advice, a charming compilation from the former. The Hitopadesa, translated into many languages, has almost rivalled in circulation the Bible itself. In the following fable, selected from “the Friendly Advice,” will be seen the germ of La Fontaine’s charming imitation, “the Milkmaid and the Pitcher of Milk;” both point the same moral as our own cautionary proverb, “Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched.”

THE STUPID BRAHMAN.

“In the town of Devikotta there lived a Brahman of the name of Devasarman. At the feast of the great equinox he received a plateful of rice. He took it, went into a potter’s shop, which was full of crockery, and, overcome by the heat, he lay down in a corner and began to doze. In order to protect his plate of rice, he kept a stick in his hand; and he began to think: ‘Now if I sell this plate of rice, I shall receive ten cowries. I shall then, on the spot, buy pots and plates, and after having increased my capital again and again I shall buy and sell betel nuts and dresses till I grow enormously rich. Then I shall marry four wives, and the youngest and prettiest of the four I shall make a great pet of. Then the other wives will be so angry and begin to quarrel. But I shall be in a great rage, and take a stick, and give them a good flogging.’

While he said this, suiting the action to the thought, he laid about him with his stick; the plate of rice was smashed to pieces, and many of the pots in the shop were broken. The potter, hearing the noise, ran in; and when he saw his pots broken, gave the Brahman a good scolding and drove him out of the shop.

Therefore I say, ‘He who rejoices over plans for the future will come to grief, like the Brahman who broke the pots.’”—Max Müller.

Of the numerous collections of tales and romances, the best known is “the Ocean of the Rivers of Narratives,” the original of that more familiar compilation, the Arabian Nights.

HISTORY, GRAMMAR, ETC.

Sanscrit is also worthily represented in other departments of literature; on the fine arts we have nothing worthy of notice, but science has not been neglected, while historical, grammatical, and philosophical works, complete the category of its productions. Its chronicles, however, obscured as they are by myths without number, are comparatively valueless; but one deserves the name of history, the Chronicle of Cashmere, or the Stream of the Kings, extending from the fabulous ages to the reign of Akbar, who reduced that province in the 16th century.

But in grammar we must certainly award to Sanscrit the very first place. Commentaries on the constructions of the Veda, dating perhaps from 750 B.C., embody the earliest attempts at grammatical and critical investigation with which we are acquainted; and in the digest of Pânini (pah’ne-ne) (500 B.C.?) we have the first systematic grammar that the world ever produced—a book remarkable for its completeness, declared by Max Müller to be “the perfection of an empirical analysis of language, unsurpassed—nay, even unapproached, by anything in the grammatical literature of other nations.”

In connection with the literature of India, we may also mention inscriptions on monuments, in temples and grottoes, and on plates of marble and copper. These are worthy of study mainly in view of the historical information they may afford.

Such is a history, in outline, of the ancient Sanscrit, of which Prof. Müller has written: “The study of it will open before you large layers of literature as yet almost unknown and unexplored, and allow you an insight into strata of thought rich in lessons that appeal to the deepest sympathies of the human heart.”

The reader is further referred to Sayce’s “Introduction to Comparative Philology;” for an exposition of the religious ideas, to Cox’s “Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” vol. I., and Perry’s “Indra in the Rig-Veda;” for the literature and general history, to Max Müller’s “Hibbert Lectures,” 1878, and Mrs. Manning’s “Ancient and Mediæval India.”

BUDDHIST LITERATURE.

About 500 B.C., a new and purer religion was preached in India by a monk of royal birth, afterward called Buddha (the Enlightened). It met with a hearty reception from the people, for it taught men to live in charity with their neighbors, to reverence their parents, to practise truth and morality; above all, it overthrew the institution of caste, and abolished the foolish system of Brahman sacrifices. The riches and fleeting pleasures of this world, Buddha proclaimed unworthy of pursuit, representing life itself as a burden, and promising his followers a paradise of eternal rest[7] beyond the grave. No wonder that thousands declared in favor of the new faith, which during a struggle of many centuries disputed with Brahmanism for the supremacy of India. Pushing out to the northeast, it made its way into Thibet, China, and Japan; and at the present day has more followers than any other religious system, their number being estimated at 450,000,000. (Consult Hardy’s “Manual of Buddhism.”)

The sacred books of the Buddhists are called the Tripitaka (three baskets); one is metaphysical, another disciplinary, and the third contains the discourses of Buddha. They are written in a dialect of Sanscrit, and are made up of 600,000 stanzas, containing five times as much matter as our Bible. (See Monier Williams’s “Buddhism in its Contrast with Christianity.”)

EXTRACTS FROM THE BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES.

“The succoring of mother and father, the cherishing of child and wife, and the following of a lawful calling,—this is the greatest blessing.

The giving of alms, the abstaining from sins, the eschewing of intoxicating drink, diligence in good deeds, reverence and humility, contentment and gratitude,—this is the greatest blessing.

He who lives for pleasure only, his senses uncontrolled, idle and weak, the tempter will certainly overcome him as the wind throws down a weak tree.

Like a beautiful flower, full of color but without scent, are the fine but fruitless words of him who does not act accordingly.

As the bee collects nectar, and departs without injuring the flower, or its color and scent, so let the sage dwell on earth.

Let no man think lightly of evil, saying in his heart, ‘It will not come near unto me.’ Even by the falling of water-drops a water-pot is filled; the fool becomes full of evil, even if he gathers it little by little.

Let us live happily then, though we call nothing our own; not hating those who hate us, free from greed among the greedy. We shall then be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness.”

NOTES ON HINDOO LITERATURE, ETC.

The literature of India incalculably vast, and its individual works voluminous. The Mahâbhârata six times as long as the Iliad, Odyssey, and Æneid united; the Râmâyana half this size. The eighteen Purânas contain 1,600,000 lines. The library of one of the kings said to have numbered so many books that a hundred Brahmans were employed in taking care of it, and a thousand dromedaries were required to convey it from place to place; twenty years were consumed in condensing its contents, by the royal command, into an encyclopædia of 12,000 volumes. Sir William Jones computed that the longest life would not suffice for the perusal of all the Sanscrit writings.—First century B.C. believed to have been an Augustan age of Indian literature.

Writing apparently unknown to the ancient Hindoos before the time of Pânini. No mention anywhere made, in the early works, of writing materials, pen or brush, paper, bark, or skin. The Vedic hymns sung or repeated probably for a thousand years before they were committed to writing. The use of the alphabet long regarded as impious. First letters appear in Buddhist inscriptions of the 3d century B.C. Later Indian manuscripts, beautifully inscribed on palm leaves. The letters of the Sanscrit alphabet thought to be the oldest forms of our Arabic figures, which came originally from India, as did also our decimal system.

Chess one of the earliest inventions of the Hindoos—called chess (king) from the principal piece. The Brahman inventor, so the story goes, asked of the reigning emperor as his reward, a single grain of wheat for the first square of the chess-board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth; apparently a modest price, but one that it would have taken years to pay with the wheat crop of the whole world. Elephants, horses, foot-soldiers, and chariots, the original chess-men. From India, the game found its way into China, Japan, and Persia, and finally into Europe.—Throwing dice, also, a favorite pastime; the “Game of Four Crowns,” with playing-cards, early known to the Hindoos.

Square copper money coined in the 3d century B.C., and stamped with inscriptions in a Sanscrit dialect.

CHAPTER II.
PERSIAN LITERATURE.

Avesta.—Sprung from the same ancient Aryan tongue as the Sanscrit of India, and distinguished by the same richness of inflection, is Avesta, the earliest language of Persia, still preserved to us in the Persian Scriptures known as the Avesta. The Veda and the Avesta have been described as “two rivers flowing from one fountain-head;” and beyond a doubt the Vedic Aryans and the Avesta-speaking Persians were originally one community, conversing in a common tongue.

The Avesta was first made known to Europeans by a French orientalist; Anquetil Duperron (on^gk-teel’ deu-pa-ron^g’), who went to India for the express purpose of discovering the sacred books of the Parsees. With great difficulty he at length possessed himself of the much-desired Avesta manuscripts, and in 1771, after long and patient effort, he gave his countrymen men the first translation of the Avesta into a European tongue. The language has since been carefully studied, and in our own day has at last been mastered. Time wrought many changes in it; the Persian of Xerxes’ reign differed much more from the Avesta of antiquity than our present language does from the English of Chaucer. Further modifications and the introduction of Arabic elements have made modern Persian still more unlike the ancient vernacular.

The sacred writings of Persia just referred to are among the oldest and most important in the whole range of Indo-European literature. They contain the doctrines of Zoroaster, or Zarathushtra, the Bactrian sage who reformed the religious system of his country. (See Jackson’s Avesta Series, Part I.)

Zoroaster is believed to have flourished about 1400 B.C. Nothing is known of his life or history. Yet, through more than thirty centuries his influence has been felt; and to-day, though they have dwindled to perhaps 150,000 souls, his followers constitute a thrifty and intelligent population in India and Persia. These Parsees, or Fire-worshippers (called by the Mohammedans Guebres, or infidels), still burn the eternal fire, kindled as they believe from heaven, not for idolatrous worship, but as an emblem of Ormazd, the Almighty source of light. They are descendants of those Zoroastrians whom Darius and Xerxes launched against Europe in the mightiest armies ever raised by man, threatening to plant their purer faith amid the ruined shrines of Greece. (Read Haug’s “Essays on the Sacred Language, Writings, and Religion of the Parsis.”)

At a later date, when the Caliph Omar converted Persia to Mohammedanism with the sword (641 A.D.), their forefathers clung to the ancient faith, and found an asylum across the Indus or in the deserts of their native land.

The Avesta (sacred text) contains the only existing monuments of a once extensive literature. It is divided into distinct parts, made up of separate pieces and fragments, which, repeated orally from generation to generation, were probably collected and reduced to writing in their present form many centuries after the period of Zoroaster. The compositions in question are chiefly professed revelations and instructions to mankind, confessions, prayers to the Supreme Being and various inferior deities, and metrical hymns (Gâthâs), simple and some of them so grand as to be deemed the productions of Zoroaster himself.

Zoroaster is represented in the Avesta as conversing with Ormazd, who, in answer to the inquiries of the sage, reveals his will, and prescribes the moral and ceremonial law. Thus, in the following passage, Zoroaster questions Ormazd:—

“O Ormazd (Ahura Mazda), most holy spirit, creator of existent worlds, righteous One! What, O Ormazd, was the Word (more correctly, Ahuna Vairya, the name of a sacred verse) which you pronounced for me before the heaven, before the water, before the cow, before the tree, before the fire, before the righteous man, before the demons and noxious creatures?”

Then Ormazd replies: “I will tell thee, most holy Zoroaster, what was the Creative Word I pronounced for thee before the heaven, before the water, before the cow, before the tree, before the fire, before the righteous man, before the demons and noxious creatures, before all the universe. Such is the whole of the Creative Word, which, even when unpronounced and unrecited, outweighs a thousand breathed prayers, which are not pronounced, nor recited, nor sung. And he who in this world, O most holy Zoroaster, remembers the whole of the Creative Word, or utters it, or sings it, I will lead his soul thrice across the bridge of the better world, to the better existence, to the better truth, to the better days. I pronounced this Speech which contains the Word and its working, before the creation of this heaven, and before the creation of the earth.

“He is a holy man,” says Ormazd elsewhere, “who constructs upon the earth a habitation in which he maintains fire, cattle, his wife, his children, and flocks and herds. He who makes the earth produce grain, who cultivates the fruits of the fields, he maintains purity; he promotes the law of Ormazd as much as if he offered a hundred sacrifices.”

Avesta Philosophy.—The Avesta seems to recognize one eternal Supreme Being, infinite and omnipotent. This was Ormazd (Spiritual Wise One), whom Zoroaster invokes as the source of light and purity, “true, lucid, shining,” all-perfect, all-powerful, all-beautiful, all-wise.” Opposed to Ormazd was a principle of darkness and evil, called Ah’riman (Angra Mainyu, Sinful-minded). The theory of evolution finds no support in the Avesta, which contains an account of the creation of the universe strikingly like that of Moses. Traditions of the fall of man through the falsehood of Ahriman, and of a universal deluge, are also handed down. (On the Avesta, see Müller’s “Sacred Books of the East,” vols. iv., xxiii., xxxi.)

Zoroaster’s mission was to exhort men to follow the right and forsake the wrong. “Choose one of these two spirits, the Good or the Evil,” he said; “you cannot serve both.”

“Of these two Spirits, the Wicked One chose to do evil; the Holy Spirit, whose garment is the immovable sky, chose what is right, as they also do who faithfully please Ormazd by good works.

“And between these two Spirits, the demons chose not aright. Madness came upon them, so that they chose the Worst Mind, and they went over to the side of wrath to destroy the life of mankind.

“Now then, may we be those who make this life perfect; and may Ormazd and Asha (Righteousness) grant their aid, that he whose faith is altered may become of believing heart.

“For at the final reckoning, the blow of annihilation will come upon falsehood; but they who enjoy a good report will see their hopes fulfilled in the blessed abode of the Good Mind.

“If, O men, ye mark these doctrines which Mazda instituted for your well-being, and that torment will come to the wicked and blessing to the righteous, through these will be your salvation.”—Geldner.

Like Buddha, the Persian reformer raised his voice against the priesthood, and the corruptions which had crept into the national religion. Devil-worship, which had come into vogue as a means of averting the evil supposed to be wrought by wicked spirits, he specially denounced, recognizing in sin the cause of all human sorrow, and urging men to wage uncompromising warfare with the powers of darkness, relying for aid on the Good Spirit. “Give offering and praise,” says the Avesta, “to that Lord who made men greater than all earthly beings, and through the gift of speech created them to rule the creatures, as warriors against the evil spirits.” Fire was invoked as the symbol of Divinity, and the sun as “the eye of Ormazd;” but idolatry Zoroaster and his disciples abhorred.

Ormazd was the rewarder of the good, the punisher of the bad. Those who obeyed him, and were “pure in thoughts, pure in words, pure in actions,” were admitted at death into Paradise, “the House of the Angels’ Hymns,” where all was brightness: the wicked were consigned to a region of everlasting darkness, “the House of the Fiend Deceit.” Of all the religions of human origin, Zoroaster’s, though not free from superstition and cumbrous rites, approaches nearest to the truth. It was gladly accepted by the people, and did much to elevate them and improve their condition. We have thrown into verse the following

HYMN TO ORMAZD.

Praise to Ormazd, great Creator,

He it was the cattle made;

Lord of purity and goodness,

Trees and water, sun and shade.

Unto him belongs the kingdom,

Unto him the might belongs;

Unto him, as first of beings,

Light-creator, float our songs.

Him we praise, Ahurian Mazda,

With our life and bodies praise;

Purer than the purest, fairest,

Bright through never-ending days.

What is good and what is brilliant,

That we reverence in thee—

Thy good spirit, thy good kingdom,

Wisdom, law, and equity.

Persian Inscriptions.—In a flower-clad plain of southwestern Persia, shut in from the outer world by lofty hills, and now dotted with pleasant villages, once stood the great palace of Persep’olis, the wonder of the world for its magnificence—which Alexander, in a fit of drunken fury, reduced to a heap of ruins with his wanton torch (331 B.C.). Yet, though silent and deserted, “the piles of fallen Persepolis" speak to us, not only with their strange sculptures, but also through the inscriptions carved upon them in cuneiform letters, originally adorned with gold.

THE ROCK OF BEHISTUN.
MOUNTAIN RECORD OF DARIUS.

Not far from these ruins is the famous rock of Behistun, 1,700 feet high, and inscribed with the same arrow-headed, wedge-shaped characters. Some of these, protected from the weather by a varnish of flint, have been wonderfully preserved to the present time.

This mountain-record was set up by Darius I. (516-515 B.C.), who, in the shadow of the palace-walls of Persepolis, was wont to sit upon a throne of gold, canopied by a vine of the same precious metal bearing clusters of priceless gems. It is his triumphal tablet, graven with figures of himself and several conquered princes. It records his victories, asserts his hereditary right to the throne, and enumerates the provinces of his vast empire, in nearly a thousand lines of cuneiform characters—in three different languages, the Persian, Scythian, and Babylonian—that it might be understood by all his subjects.

Here the Persian monarch announces his dignity, while he attributes the glory of it all to the God Supreme:—

“I am Darius, the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of Persia, the King of the dependent provinces, the son of Hystaspes.

By the grace of Ormazd I am King. Ormazd has granted me my empire. The countries which have fallen into my hands, by the grace of Ormazd I have become king of them.

Within these countries, whoever was good, him have I cherished and protected; whoever was evil, him have I utterly destroyed. By the grace of Ormazd, these countries have obeyed my laws. By the grace of Ormazd, I hold this empire.”

Other inscriptions were cut by order of Xerxes, whose royal name and title they formally declare; but there are none of any later date. Cuneiform letters were also employed by other nations, as will be hereafter seen (page 105). Most of the ancient Persian literature was lost during the struggle with Alexander the Great, and subsequent wars and convulsions. (On the cuneiform monuments, see Johnson’s “Oriental Religions: Persia.”)

NOTES ON PERSIAN LITERATURE, ETC.

Ancient Persian records made on leather; parchment the favorite writing material, the high price of papyrus preventing its adoption. Bricks seldom used for inscriptions. A running hand, different from the cuneiform, probably in use among the people for ordinary purposes, as every educated person could undoubtedly write: no trace of this left.

The kings of Persia founders of a library consisting of historical records, state archives, and royal ordinances. “The house of the rolls" at Babylon is mentioned in the book of Ezra as being searched, during the reign of Darius, for a certain volume supposed to contain a decree of Cyrus, providing for the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem.

The old priestly order of Media and Persia, known as Ma’gi; devoted to scientific studies, in which they attained such eminence that they were believed to possess supernatural powers—whence our word magic. The “wise men” of the New Testament by some supposed to be Persian Magi.

The Zoroastrian religion, which was on the wane, restored and maintained in the third century after Christ by the Sassan’idæ, who measured swords successfully with the Roman emperors, and extended the power of Persia. The Avesta translated into Pahlavi, a mixture of Semitic with Iranian elements, in which are preserved most of the details of the traditions, ceremonies, and customs of the ancient faith. The combined text and Pahlavi translation known as Avesta-Zend, or revelation and commentary. (See “Sacred Books of the East,” vol. v.)

CHAPTER III.
CHINESE LITERATURE.

Chinese Language.—From the Persian Gâthâs and Vedic hymns, let us now turn to the prose writings of the Chinese philosophers, plain, grave, and moral in their tone. The language in which their tenets have been preserved differs materially from the musical Sanscrit and its sister Avesta.

Modern Chinese, which has changed but little from the ancient tongue and is the least developed of all existing languages, is monosyllabic; i. e. each syllable conveys a complete idea, all its words are expressed by single separate sounds. Of these elements, or roots, it contains 450; changes of emphasis and intonation, accompanied with corresponding changes in meaning, increase this number to 1,263.

Chinese may be called a language without grammar, as it dispenses with inflection and conjugation, and leaves the relations of words and their functions as different parts of speech to be determined by the arrangement. Thus sin means honor, honorable, honorably, or to be honorable, according to its position in the sentence. Plurality and gender are generally indicated by adding roots with a modifying signification. Son in Chinese is man-child; daughter, woman-child; a mare is called a mother-horse; people is the word surnames with a hundred prefixed. This grouping together of roots is carried to great lengths. Writing materials is expressed by two words denoting four precious objects (paper, brush, ink, and palette); a trader is a buying-selling-man; a knife is a sword’s-son; while difference of opinion is expressed by four words meaning I east, thou west.

Characters used in Writing.—The written characters of the Chinese were originally outline pictures of visible objects; specimens are presented below. A crescent (1) stood for the moon; three peaks (2), for a mountain; (3) is a tortoise, (4) a fish, (5) a field. Pictographs were frequently combined to represent a single idea. The notion of song, for instance, was conveyed by a mouth and a bird (6); that of tears, by the symbols for eye and water; beauty and goodness, by the representation of a virgin and an infant.

One or more of these hieroglyphic symbols (determinatives) enter into the composition of every modern Chinese character—which has also a phonetic element, like the characters of the Egyptian (p. 120) and Assyrian (p. 106) systems. The ideographic element is indispensable: the one sound tschoo, for example, means ape, whirlpool, island, silk, deep, a wine, a kind of plant, to enclose, to help, to quarrel, to walk, to answer. It would be next to impossible to interpret the written symbol correctly, were not a separate ideogram adopted for each idea. This necessary device, however, involved the wholesale multiplication of characters. Over 40,000 are contained in the fullest dictionaries; but three-fourths of this number are almost wholly unknown, and only about 5,000 are in common use.

It is interesting to notice how, in the course of ages, the old hieroglyphics have been transformed into the present characters. The symbol representing the verb to listen, two folding-doors and an ear between them

is now written

. Two shells exactly alike originally stood for two friends

; this symbol has been changed to

. A mountain is now

; a field

. The most complicated modern character is made by fifty-two strokes of the pen.

Antiquity of Chinese Literature.—China prides herself on her antiquity, and her literature carries us back to the remotest past. From those early days to the present the chain is almost unbroken, notwithstanding the irreparable loss sustained when the ruthless Ching Wang destroyed the great bulk of Chinese literature (220-205 B.C.). This emperor is noted for his erection of the Great Wall, and notorious for his contempt of learning. Thinking to reconcile the masses to his despotism by keeping them in ignorance, and to deceive posterity with the belief that he had founded the empire, he ordered all books, except those on husbandry, divination, and medicine, to be burned. Any person found with a book in his possession was condemned to labor four years on the Great Wall, and several hundred scholars who resisted the royal decree were buried alive.

The dynasty of “the book-burner,” however, was not long after overthrown; and among the succeeding princes was found a “restorer of literature,” who collected and preserved for future generations the writings which, concealed by the people in the walls of their houses or buried beneath the beds of streams, had escaped destruction. To his praiseworthy efforts we are indebted for all that remains of the ancient literature,—the Sacred Books of China, edited by Confu’cius her admirable philosopher, as well as for the works of Confucius himself and his disciples.

Confucius, to whom we are thus introduced, the reverend master, the beloved teacher of his countrymen, stands out in bold relief as the most distinguished personage in Chinese history. His birth, which took place 551 B.C., was mysteriously predicted, as legend tells us, on a precious stone found in his father’s garden: “A child is about to be born, pure as the crystal wave; he shall be a king, but without territorial dominion.” Wonderfully has this prophecy been fulfilled; the child, as we shall see, became a king whose subjects were numbered by hundreds of millions.

Born in an evil age, when corruption had undermined the government, and misrule and violence were everywhere rife, Confucius early dedicated himself to the cause of social and political reform. At twenty-two he entered upon his work as a teacher, thoroughly fitted for the high vocation, for he had been so eager after knowledge as to feel no toil in its pursuit, and sometimes even to forget his food. His merits were recognized; and when at last he was raised to the position of prime-minister, he labored in season and out of season for the welfare of his people—and with the best results. But then, as now, princes were ungrateful, and the neglect of his sovereign led to his resignation. Henceforth the mission of Confucius, no less useful if humbler than before, was simply to disseminate his precepts, wandering from state to state among the fifteen millions who constituted the population of what was then China. Occupied thus and with the study of the Sacred Books, he finally found rest in his native state, and there passed his declining years in the midst of loving disciples, “unconscious,” as he tells us, “that he had reached old age.” He died at seventy-three, lamenting that, despite his prolonged efforts, so little had been accomplished toward elevating the moral standard of the nation.

Confucian Priest.

Yet after his death, his influence was destined far to exceed his most sanguine longings; it has been greater than that of any other human teacher. No other has ever spoken to so many millions, or received such honors from posterity. For more than twenty centuries, his precepts have been taught in the schools of China (and each little village has its common school); at stated times, every scholar, on entering in the morning, still bows in adoration before a tablet sacred to Confucius. The learned can repeat page after page from his classical books; and scores of his maxims are familiar to the masses, who have positively no other moral law to guide them. His tomb, approached by an avenue of cypresses through a gate of exquisite workmanship, is inscribed with the words, “The most sagely ancient Teacher; the all-accomplished, all-informed King.” About the spot are imperial tablets “with glowing tributes to the one man whom China delights to honor;” and in the city near by live 50,000 of his descendants, constituting a distinct class—the head of the family holding large estates as “Duke by imperial appointment and hereditary right, continuator of the sage.” There is a temple of Confucius in every city, and Confucian priests superintend various ceremonies for both mandarins and common people.

Tenets of Confucius.—Confucius claimed no divine inspiration; he founded no new religion. To him the Almighty was “the Unknown God,” and there was no Paul to declare him to the philosopher. He avoided referring to a personal Supreme Being, and thought that the study of themselves should suffice for men. As to death and a future state, he was equally reticent. “While you do not know life,” he said to an inquiring disciple, “what can you know about death?” With polygamy, then an institution of his country, he found no fault; and for women as such he appears to have had no kindly word, or very elevated regard.

The aim of Confucius was to inculcate certain lofty principles of conduct, to govern men in their relations to each other and to the ruling powers. Respect for learning, filial piety,[8] and veneration for the men and institutions of ancient days, were corner-stones of his system, and are still deeply impressed on the Chinese mind. His golden rule “What you do not like when done to yourself, do not to others”—expressed in written language by a single ideogram—was the one word he specially commended as embodying the sum and substance of duty.

The practical workings of this rule, as enforced by the authority of the great master, were recently exemplified in the case of an American traveller. As he and his companion were passing through a Chinese town, their strange faces and unusual costumes attracted a crowd, and hooting seemed likely to be followed by serious violence. With admirable presence of mind, one of the strangers faced the throng, and amid a shower of mud and stones exclaimed: “Is this the way, O people! that you obey the precepts of your philosophers, to treat strangers within your walls tenderly? Have you forgotten the saying of your great master Confucius,—“That which I wish another not to do to me, I must not do to him?” The effect was electric. In a moment every hand was lowered, and the recent assailants sought as best they could to make amends for their rudeness.

The Chinese Classics comprise the Sacred Books already alluded to, viz., the Five King; also the Four Shoo, or Books of the Philosophers (Confucius and the writers of his school). King is the equivalent of our word text, and the Five Sacred Texts are the Yih King, Book of Changes; the Shoo King, Book of History; the She King, Book of Poetry; the Le Ke King, Book of Rites; and the Spring and Autumn, an historical record of events in the native state of Confucius, from 721 to 480 B.C. It was written by that philosopher himself, who so entitled it because “its commendations were life-giving like spring, and its censures life-withering like autumn.” The first four King, which rank with the most ancient creations of the human mind, were compiled and published by Confucius; the Book of Rites, originally drawn up by the ruler of Chow in the twelfth century B.C., received additions from subsequent writers. (See Johnson’s “Oriental Religions: China.”)

Little is known of the true nature of the mysterious Book of Changes; it apparently relates to divination. The Shoo King gives us the history of China from the earliest periods to about 720 B.C., and contains, besides, discourses on music, astronomy, and the principles of government. Part of it was dictated from memory by a blind man after the destruction of the original tablets.

In the She King, we have a collection of 305 odes and hymns. Many of them, more than three thousand years old, were written while the Chinese Empire was as yet a mere bundle of feudal states; here, as in all other lands, the first grand thoughts of the people were cast in the mould of poetry. The odes are in rhyme, and mirror the every-day life and simple manners of antiquity—often in a highly metaphorical style, but with a dignity and attractiveness which the later poetry fails to exhibit. They paint pleasing pictures of rural quiet, contain delicate touches of nature, and in some few cases display a high appreciation of woman’s worth; on the whole, however, the status assigned to the gentler sex is low. Extracts from the Book of Poetry follow.

FESTAL ODE.

(Celebrating a feast given by an ancient king.)

“See how the rushes spring

Thickly along the way!

Ye browsing herds, no foot

Upon those rushes lay!

Grown to their height ere long,

They soft and rich shall shine;

Close as the rushes grow,

Should brethren all combine.

Let all at feast appear,

None absent, none thought mean.

Mats for the young be spread!

On stools let elders lean!

Lo! double mats are spread,

And stools are featly set.

Servants in waiting stand;

See! host and guests are met.

He pledges them; they him;

He drinks, again they fill.

Sauces and pickles come,

Roast meat, and broiled; and still

Palates and tripe are brought.

Then lutes and drums appear,

Singers fine concord make—

The joyous feasters hear.

The feasting o’er, from bow,

Lacquered and strong and bright,

Four well-poised shafts each sends,

That in the target light.

The guests are ranged as they

The mark have nearest hit.

They shoot again; the shafts

Are fairly lodged in it.

Their bearing then is judged;

Each takes his final place,

As mild propriety

Has round him thrown its grace.

The long-descended king

Presides and ends the feast.

With spirits sweet and strong

From vase he cheers each guest.

And for the old he prays,

While all with rapture glow,

That they the wrinkled back

And whitening hair may show;

Striving with mutual help

In virtue’s onward ways,

That brightest happiness

May crown their latest days.”

Legge.

PASTORAL ODE.

(An industrious wife wakens her husband at early dawn.)

“‘Get up, husband, here’s the day!’

‘Not yet, wife, the dawn’s still gray.’

‘Get up, sir, and on the right,

See the morning-star shines bright.

Shake off slumber, and prepare

Ducks and geese to shoot and snare.

All your darts and line may kill,

I will dress for you with skill.

Thus a blithesome hour we’ll pass,

Brightened by a cheerful glass;

While your lute its aid imparts,

To gratify and soothe our hearts.’”

Legge.

ODE TO A BRIDE.

“Gay child of Spring, the garden’s Queen

Yon peach-tree charms the roving sight;

Its fragrant leaves, how richly green!

Its blossoms, how divinely bright!

So softly smiles the blooming bride,

By love and conscious virtue led,

O’er her new mansion to preside,

And placid joys around her spread.”

Sir William Jones.

The Book of Rites prescribes rules of conduct for all occasions, from the most important down to a mere interchange of greetings. With Chinamen ceremonial is everything, and the influence which this book has exerted on manners and society for three thousand years cannot be estimated. It is still the standard of etiquette, a governing board at Pekin being charged with the duty of enforcing its rigid observance.

Spring and Autumn, professedly written in the interests of morality and good order, to inspire wicked officials and undutiful sons with wholesome terror, disappoints us in the reading. It is made up of short, unconnected sentences, stating isolated facts (some of them quite insignificant) in the baldest manner, without any attempt at rhetorical excellence or any expression of condemnation or praise. Whether a temple is struck by lightning, or a father is murdered by his son, or locusts appear, or some glorious exploit is performed, or the ruler goes on a journey, or the sun is eclipsed—it is just stated in so many words—nothing more. The historical style of Confucius is certainly not striking, and we fail to see why the guilty should have “quaked with fear” when his annals appeared.

The Four Shoo are constituted as follows: 1. The Confucian Analects (literary fragments). 2. The Great Learning. 3. The Doctrine of the Mean (as opposed to extremes—the Moderate). 4. The works of Mencius, or the philosopher Meng, a disciple of Confucius, and second only to his master among the sages of China.

The Analects consist of the sayings of Confucius, as they occur in conversations with his followers. Sententious, simple, and sometimes signally beautiful, they contain the very marrow of wisdom based upon observation and experience. They shine among the laconics of the world. A few specimens are subjoined.

EXTRACTS FROM THE ANALECTS.

“The Master said: ‛In the Book of Poetry are three hundred pieces, but the design of all may be embraced in one sentence—Have no depraved thoughts.’

There are cases in which the blade springs, but the plant does not go on to flower. There are cases where it flowers, but no fruit is subsequently produced.

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.

Worship as if the Deity were present.

Good government obtains when those who are near are made happy, and those who are far off are attracted.

Three friendships are advantageous,—friendship with the upright, friendship with the sincere, and friendship with the man of observation. Three are injurious,—friendship with the man of specious airs, friendship with the insinuatingly soft, and friendship with the glib-tongued.

To see what is right and not to do it, is want of courage.

The cautious seldom err.

If I am building a mountain, and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I have failed of my work. But if I have placed but one basketful on the plain and go on, I am really building a mountain.

Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to confess your ignorance—is knowledge.

Extravagance leads to insubordination, and parsimony to meanness. It is better to be mean than insubordinate.

Learn the past, and you will know the future.

A poor man who flatters not and a rich man who is not proud, are passable characters; but they are not equal to the poor who are yet cheerful, and the rich who yet love the rules of propriety.

When you transgress, fear not to return.

Were I to say that the departed were possessed of consciousness, pious sons might dissipate their fortunes in festivals of the dead; and were I to deny their consciousness, heartless sons might leave their fathers unburied.

With coarse rice to eat, water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow—I have still happiness even with these; but riches and honors acquired by unrighteousness are to me as a floating cloud.

What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.”

The Great Learning, based on the teachings of Confucius, and ascribed to one or more of his followers, evinces political sagacity in its suggestions for the perfecting of government, insisting that the welfare of the people should be the single aim, and scouting the idea of any divine right in kings to rule except in accordance with the principles of justice and virtue.

EXTRACTS FROM THE GREAT LEARNING.

“The ancients who wished to establish illustrious virtue throughout the empire, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts.

From the loving example of one family, a whole state becomes loving; and from its courtesies, the whole state becomes courteous: while from the ambition and perverseness of one man, the whole state may be led to rebellious disorder: such is the nature of influence. This verifies the saying: ‘Affairs may be ruined by a single sentence; a kingdom may be settled by its one man.’

It is not possible for one to teach others, while he cannot teach his own family. There is filial piety, there is fraternal submission, there is kindness. Therefore the ruler, without going beyond his family, completes the lessons for the state.

Never has there been a case of the sovereign loving benevolence, and the people not loving righteousness. Never has there been a case where the people loved righteousness, and the affairs of the sovereign have not been carried to completion.

What a man dislikes in his superiors, let him not display in the treatment of his inferiors; what he dislikes in inferiors, let him not display in the service of his superiors. What he hates in those who are before him, let him not therewith precede those who are behind him. What he is unwilling to receive on the right, let him not bestow on the left. This is what is called ‘The principle with which, as with a measuring-square, to regulate one’s conduct.’”

The Doctrine of the Mean was written by the grandson of Confucius, who in his boyhood listened to the wise instructions of the sage, and professed himself ready to carry “the bundle of firewood his grandsire had gathered and prepared,” thus leading Confucius to exclaim with delight: “My undertakings will not come to naught; they will be carried on, and flourish.” The philosophy of this work is obscure; for while it presents examples of filial piety, and draws an ideal of the perfect man, “possessed of all sagely qualities,” who alone is able to “accord with the course of the Mean,” its language with reference to that Mean is decidedly mystical. Thus:—

“While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, or joy, the mind may be said to be in a state of EQUILIBRIUM. When those feelings have been stirred and act in their due degree, there ensues what may be called the state of HARMONY. This equilibrium is the great root from which grow all the human actings in the world, and this harmony is the universal path which they all should pursue.

Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will flourish.

The Master said:—’Perfect is the virtue which is according to the Mean. Rare have they long been among the people, who could practice it! I know how it is that the path of the Mean is not walked in: the knowing go beyond it, and the stupid do not come up to it.’”

Mencius, author of the fourth Shoo, lived in a degenerate age, but without fear or favor threw himself into the arena to wrestle with wickedness. In the society around him he found many fitting marks for his shafts of humor and satire. Purification of heart was his remedy for evil; the sinlessness of childhood, his standard of moral purity. “The great man,” said Mencius, “is he who does not lose his child’s heart.” Virtue and benevolence are insisted on in the voluminous works of this philosopher—the Plato of Chinese literature as Confucius was its Socrates[9]—a benevolence that should not only provide for the physical wants of the people, but also secure their education and moral advancement. We glean the following pointed sentences from the

SAYINGS OF MENCIUS.

“I like life and I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness.

When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart, but because their strength is not adequate to resist. When one subdues men by virtue, in their heart’s core they are pleased, and sincerely submit, as was the case with the seventy disciples in their submission to Confucius.

The noblest thing in the world is the people. To them the spirits of the earth and the fruits of the earth are inferior. The prince is least important of all.

Benevolence brings glory, its opposite brings disgrace.

That whereby man differs from the animals is small. Superior men preserve it, while the mass of men cast it away.

There is a way to get the kingdom; get the people, and the kingdom is got. There is a way to get the people; get their hearts, and the people are got. The people turn to a benevolent rule as water flows downward.

Mencius said: ‘The richest fruit of benevolence is the service of one’s parents; of righteousness, the service of one’s elder brother; of wisdom, the knowing those two things and not departing from them.’”

Spirit of the Chinese Classics.—One prevailing spirit breathes through the nine classical books of the Chinese—a spirit of conservatism. Confucius nowhere encourages men to take independent flights into the realms of original thought. He ignores the future, and exalts the past. His motto was not Go up higher, but Walk in the trodden paths. He sought to reclaim from sin and folly, but only by winning to the purer practices of that venerable antiquity which he so blindly admired. Beyond the old landmarks, he cared not even to point the way. (See Gray’s “China,” p. 75.)

Worshipping the Ancestral Tablet (p.72).

It is hardly strange that under such leadership the nation became wedded to formalism, wrapped itself in a complacent aversion to novelty or progress, eschewed dealings with the outer world, and in a word came to an intellectual standstill for four and twenty centuries.

Other Works.—There are numerous commentaries on the old classics, some themselves quite ancient; but they are mere reproductions or servile imitations of the original texts.

Different, however, are the works of Lao-Tse, who was contemporary with Confucius, and whose writings are so mystical that the matter-of-fact Confucius declared himself unable to comprehend them. He made something which he calls Tao the mainspring of the universe, the source and ultimate destination of all things. Many of his followers, to whom he recommended self-denial and retirement, became recluses; their philosophy was perpetuated, and Taoism is still professed to some extent in China.

Having little imagination for works of fiction and no genius for the higher departments of poetry, the ancient Chinese produced nothing of special note—nothing, at least, that has come down to us—except what has been mentioned. We have indeed numerous chronicles of the various dynasties, industriously and no doubt accurately compiled; but they lack the graces of style, and possess little interest for the general European reader. The Bamboo Annals, found in a royal tomb 284 A.D., is the oldest of these chronicles that have thus far come to light.

We are also told that before the Christian Era numerous treatises were written on philosophy, mathematics, medicine, military affairs, husbandry, law, and geography; but many of these perished in the convulsions which afterward shook the empire. (On the religious books of China, consult Max Müller’s “Sacred Books of the East,” vols. xvi., xxvii.)

---

With the languages of Siam, Burmah, and Thibet—all monosyllabic like the Chinese—are also connected literatures of considerable antiquity. In both Burmah and Siam the drama, often licentious, has always been popular, its exhibitions being sometimes prolonged for days. Burmah has records that purport to carry back its history almost to the Christian Era. The best writings of the Siamese are imitations of Hindoo fictions, while the literature of Thibet is largely made up of commentaries on the Tripitaka.

NOTES ON CHINESE LITERATURE, ETC.

Specimen Cash.

Bamboo tablets and the stylus, the ancient writing implements; these in the reign of Ching Wang, the book-burner, superseded by the brush, and paper made of closely woven silk. Silk paper, found too expensive, replaced in turn by paper made of the inner bark of trees, old rags, and worn-out fishing-nets. Books multiply in consequence. At the Christian Era, the imperial library contained 11,332 sections filled with books on all subjects, but no great productions of genius. The old classics still in the front rank.

Printing practised in China 600 A.D., nearly 900 years before its invention in Europe. Movable types invented by a blacksmith between 1000 and 1100 A.D. The types, made of clay hardened in the fire, reduced to an exact level by a smooth board, and then cemented to an iron plate with a mixture of resin and wax. The production of books thus greatly facilitated. Chinese books at the present day not printed from movable types, but from wooden blocks of the size of the page, on which the characters are cut in relief.

Bronze pieces called cash, worth one-tenth of a cent, coined as early as the 12th century B.C.; strung on cords through holes with which they are pierced; in later times worn as amulets.

The golden age of China’s later ancient literature, the period of the Tang dynasty (620-907 A.D.), when the imperial armies penetrated to Samarcand and Bokhara in Turkestan. Le Taipih, the Chinese Anacreon, the greatest poet of this period; but even he seldom rises above mediocrity.

CHAPTER IV.
HEBREW LITERATURE.

The Semitic Languages, enumerated on page 16, have certain peculiarities in common:—

They are triliteral, i. e. three consonants enter into the composition of every root. Consonants only are represented by letters; vowels, indicated by points and lines, play a subordinate part. The latter vary according to the relation to be expressed; while the consonant root, which conveys the leading idea, remains for the most part unchanged. Thus, in Arabic, the notion of bloodshed is expressed by the triple root q t l; quatl is murder; quitl, enemy; uqtul means to kill; quatala, he kills. The picturesque compounds, so convenient in the Indo-European languages, are here wanting.

The Semitic verb is deficient in mood-forms, and has in general only two tenses, which represent action completed and action continuing. Case, in the later developments of the different languages, is left undistinguished. Brevity is gained, but at the expense of precision.

Distribution of the Semitic Tongues.—The great divisions of the Semitic family of languages are designated as Northern and Southern Semitic. They include the Arama’ic, Hebræo-Phœnician, and Arabic, which are much more alike than the Aryan tongues. Assyrio-Babylonian occupies a peculiar position between the Northern and Southern Semitic groups.

Aramaic (from the Hebrew Arâm—highlands) was spoken in northern Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia. A dialect of it, the Jews gradually adopted after their return from captivity at Babylon (536 B.C.), retaining the Hebrew as their sacred language, but speaking and writing in Aramaic somewhat modified by Greek. Aramaic, therefore, was the tongue in which our Lord and his disciples conversed.

The Hebræo-Phœnician was spread over Palestine, and included the dialects of the Ammonites, Moabites, and Philis’tines. Samaritan was a development of the Western Aramaic, corrupted by the speech of foreign settlers introduced into the land of Israel by the Assyrians, to replace the Ten Tribes whom they had transplanted beyond the Euphrates.

The softer Arabic, musical by reason of its preponderance of vowel sounds, was carried from Arabia into Africa, where it was long the language of the cultivated Ethiopians, and where it still survives in its Abyssinian derivatives, the Amharic, etc.

The Ancient Hebrew shares the imperfections of the Semitic group to which it belongs. It is one of the oldest members of this family, and was long thought to have been the original language of the human race. Its name is derived by some from Heber, ancestor of Abraham and consequently of the people who spoke the classical tongue of the Old Testament; while by many it is believed to mean belonging to the other side, that is, of the Jordan—an epithet applicable to the Chosen People as coming from beyond that river to dispossess the Canaanitish tribes.

The Semitic Family of Languages.

In the days of the patriarch Abraham, whose father dwelt in “Ur of the Chaldees” (see Map, p. 105), about 2000 B.C., the Semitic dialects differed slightly, if at all. Recently separated from the primitive stock, they possessed the same roots, the same grammatical forms and inflections, and conspicuously agreed in regard to rules of order and construction.

The meagre vocabulary and other defects of the Hebrew are counterbalanced by its euphony, simplicity, and power of poetical expression. Conciseness is its crowning merit. A single sonorous word often conveys an idea that would require a clause of four or five words in English. The whole range of literature in other fields affords no such examples of majestic thought, grand imagery, and impetuous, heart-warming outpourings of soul, as the poetry of that sublime Hebrew tongue which was developed by a simple race of shepherds beneath the mild skies of western Asia.

Hebrew Shekel.Hebrew Shekel.

The Hebrew Alphabet.—The Hebrews early profited by the invention of their Phœnician kinsmen, borrowing from them an alphabet which, as may be seen on the opposite page, they changed little from the original. After the Captivity (588-536 B.C.), the more elegant square characters from the Aramaic took the place of the ancient letters; the latter, however, for reasons political as well as religious, were reproduced on the shekels coined during the period of Jewish independence under the Maccabees (168-37 B.C.), by which time the written language was universally expressed in Aramaic characters. (See Land’s “Hebrew Grammar.”)

The oldest Hebrew alphabet (see Table) contained no more than ten or twelve letters; the number was afterward increased to twenty-two—consonants all. These were qualified by vowel sounds, denoted by vowel-points

placed over or under the consonants to which they belonged. Capitals there were none.—While some have held that the names of the letters were given them arbitrarily, merely to facilitate the memorizing of the alphabet, others believe that a connection existed between their names and their forms: that, for example, A, called Aleph (ox), was originally a rough picture of an ox’s head; that B was the representation of a house or tent, such being the meaning of its name Beth, etc.

ANCIENT ALPHABETS.

Spirit of Hebrew Poetry.—The most ancient Semitic poetry is found in the pure musical Hebrew of the oldest books of the Bible. Nearly one half of the Old Testament was in verse, mainly lyrical, ranging from the simplest song or dirge to the sublimest strains of prophecy; yet didactic poetry has also a place, for in it were embodied the proverbs of Israel’s wise men.

Other literatures boast of their epics and dramas; but the Hebrew, without either, has exerted a far more exalted influence on the human mind than any other. In vain do we search the Veda and the Avesta for conceptions as grand as those in the Scriptures. God is apprehended in all his majesty by the Hebrew bards, and speaks through them to nations that are yet to be. The Bible poets wrote not merely for the purpose of pleasing; as teachers and prophets, they had a divine mission and a loftier aim. The graces of rhetoric were employed to present their impressive subjects in the strongest and clearest light. Frequent metaphors embellished their style, and striking personifications endowed it with life and energy. Imagery drawn from the picturesque scenes about them,—the hills, the streams, the plains of Palestine,—or from their every-day employments as tillers and herdsmen, they used without stint; while parallelism, whether it consisted in the repetition of the same sentiment or in a contrasting of opposite ideas, was a peculiar beauty of their poetry.

Their language significant and striking, their thoughts lofty and solemn, their tone severely moral, their themes of the deepest interest to man, what wonder that the Hebrew poets tower above the sublimest writers of other times and countries? “Whatever in our literature,” says Taylor, “possesses most of simple majesty and force, whatever is most fully fraught with feeling, whatever draws away the soul from its cleaving to the dust and lifts the thoughts toward a brighter sphere—all such elements we owe directly or indirectly to the Hebrew Scriptures, especially to those parts that are in spirit and form poetic.”

Parallelism has been mentioned as a distinctive feature of Hebrew poetry. This is defined by Bishop Lowth as “a certain equality, resemblance, or relationship between the members of a period, so that things shall answer to things and words to words, as if fitted to each other by a kind of rule or measure.”

Parallelism may be either cumulative, antithetical, or constructive. In the first, a proposition, after having been once stated, is repeated in equivalent words of similar construction, as in Isaiah, lv., 6, 7:—

“Seek ye the Lord, while he may be found;

Call ye upon him, while he is near.

Let the wicked forsake his way,

And the unrighteous man his thoughts:

And let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him;

And to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Antithetical parallelism is similar, except that the two periods correspond with each other by an opposition of sentiments and terms; as in Proverbs, xxvii., 6:—

“Faithful are the wounds of a friend;

But deceitful are the kisses of an enemy.”

In the third kind of parallelism, there is neither correspondence nor opposition in the sentiment, but simply a similarity of construction in the two periods, as in Psalm xix., 8, 9:—

“The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart;

The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;

The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

DAWN OF HEBREW LITERATURE.

There is good reason for believing that the ancient Hebrews had an extensive literature; but out of their “multitude of books,” all that have descended to us are those of the Old Testament. Their secular poetical and prose works are wholly lost.

The Books of Moses.—The earliest Hebrew writer of whom we have positive knowledge was Moses, author of the greater part of the Pentateuch[10] (five volumes—the first five books of the Bible), or, as it was called by the Jews, the Book of the Law.

The first book of the Pentateuch, Genesis (the generation), tells us all that we know of the Creation, the Deluge, the Confusion of languages, the Dispersion, and the lives of the patriarchs, whose history it sketches till the death of Joseph in Egypt, keeping everywhere prominent the relation of Jehovah to the chosen race.

Exodus (the going out) continues the story of the Hebrews from the death of Joseph, relates their oppression under the Pharaoh Ram’eses the Great, their miraculous escape from the land of bondage in the reign of his successor, and the promulgation of the commandments on Mount Sinai. It is in this book that we catch an early glimpse of Hebrew poetry in the Song of Moses and his sister Miriam—a magnificent triumphal ode, the most ancient in any language. The rescued host pour forth in unison their joy and gratitude; while in response the exulting prophetess, timbrel in hand, leads the women of Israel, on the shore of that sea which had engulfed their enemies, to celebrate their deliverance with sacred dance and rapturous verse. (See Exodus, chapter xv.)

Leviticus (the book pertaining to the Levites) consists of regulations relative to worship and sacrifice, together with historical items touching the consecration of Aaron, his first offering, and the destruction of two of his sons for their impiety. Here is developed the theocratic system that lay at the base of Hebrew society.

Numbers takes its name from the numbering of the Israelites in the wilderness of Sinai; it gives an account of this census, and continues their history during thirty-seven years of subsequent wandering, up to their arrival on the borders of the Promised Land. In this book there are several brief specimens of poetry, commemorative of victory, of the digging of a well in the wilderness, etc.

In Deuteronomy (the second law) the law is repeated and explained by Moses in three fervid discourses, just before the entrance of the Hebrews into Canaan. The Pentateuch closes with a simple but inexpressibly grand outburst of the Hebrew legislator in song (chapter xxxii.), the blessings he pronounces upon the twelve tribes, and an account of his death.

Of the facts presented in these first five books of the Old Testament, some are confirmed by hieroglyphic inscriptions and the traditions of different nations; but of the greater part we should have had no knowledge without the inspired narrative. Aside, therefore, from its religious bearing, the Pentateuch is invaluable as an historical record of primeval ages; while its clear, concise, dignified style, rich with noble thoughts expressed in the venerable manner of antiquity, is worthy of its sublime subjects.

The Historical Books.—The Pentateuch is followed by the historical books of Scripture, which, though extending into the silver age, will for convenience’ sake be here considered together. With the Pentateuch they form a complete summary of national history, in which are interwoven religious matters that explain and illustrate it. We may glance briefly at their authorship and contents.

The Book of Joshua, classed with the Pentateuch (the Torah, or Law) under the name of Hexateuch, covers a period of twenty-five years (about 1425 B.C.); it relates to the conquest of Canaan and the partition of that promised land among the twelve tribes, closing with the farewell exhortation and death of the great leader. Judges, ascribed to the Prophet Samuel, continues the history of the nation to about 1100 B.C.; it tells how the Jews, as a punishment for their apostasy, were at different times reduced to servitude by their heathen enemies, and on their repentance delivered by heroes who became their Judges. Ruth, regarded by the ancient Jews as belonging to the Book of Judges, is of unknown date and authorship, though attributed by some to Samuel. It is an exquisite idyl of domestic life, designed to show the origin of King David. (See Chapman’s “Hebrew Idyls.”)

The Books of Samuel, the first portion of which Samuel probably composed himself, give an account of the magistracy of that prophet and the reigns of Saul and David. The Books of the Kings dwell upon the glorious reign of Solomon, and then take us through the divided lines of Israel and Judah, till both were finally overthrown and carried into captivity; Jewish tradition points to Jeremiah as the author of these books. Ezra seems to have written most of the Chronicles, which is supplementary to the Kings; he was also the author of the book that bears his name. This and Nehemiah describe the return of the Jews from their captivity in Babylon, and the restoration of the temple worship at Jerusalem. The Book of Esther is devoted to a touching episode of the reign of Ahasuerus, king of Persia, supposed to be identical with Xerxes, the son of Darius Hystaspis.

The Book of Job is worthy of special mention, as the most artistic specimen of Hebrew genius. Whether this unique poem was the work of Job himself in his later days, or of some other whose name is lost, its author was evidently proficient in all the scientific knowledge of his time. The hero, a native of northern Arabia, whose name has become a synonym for patient suffering, is reduced to the very depths by family bereavements, bodily anguish, and the well-meant reproaches of his friends; yet his faith in God is unshaken, and in the end that faith is amply vindicated and rewarded. (See Dr. Rossiter W. Raymond’s “The Book of Job.”)

Bold imagery, vividness of description, life-like delineations of lofty passion as well as the gentler emotions, combined with master-touches of dramatic art, stamp this poem as the greatest in Oriental literature. Its passages relating to the war-horse, behemoth, and leviathan (chapters xxxix., xl., xli.), are cited by writers on the sublime as among the grandest illustrations of their subject; and its descriptions of the Deity, as manifested in his works, exhibit the noblest conceptions of the Infinite that man’s finite intellect is capable of forming.

GOLDEN AGE OF HEBREW POETRY.

The Psalms.—The flourishing period of David (1085-1015 B.C.) ushers in the Augustan age of Hebrew poetry. The Lyric was then carried to perfection by the poet-king himself and his contemporaries in their Psalms,—“those delicate, fragrant, and lovely flowers,” as Luther calls them, “springing up out of all manner of beautiful joyous thoughts toward God and his goodness.” The strains of “Israel’s sweet psalmist,” who began as a shepherd-lad to cultivate the arts of music and poetry, breathe a spirit of plaintive tenderness that distinguishes them from the statelier productions of other contributors to Hebrew psalmody.

A utopian theory of the great Plato, but one that he declared could be carried out only by “a god or some divine one,” was the training of the Grecian youth in odes like the Psalms: and this—the religious instruction of the people—was the very object of the Hebrew lyrics. The plan of the Greek philosopher had been put in practice centuries before his day in Palestine, and on a far grander scale than ever he imagined. In the royal city of Jerusalem, four thousand musicians appointed by David chanted hymns of triumph and praise, to the accompaniment of harp and flute; while in the gorgeous temple of David’s son, the sublime worship of Jehovah challenges description.

For three thousand years, these Hebrew anthems, unapproached by the religious songs of any other age or people, have been the glory of the Jewish and the Christian Church, eloquently testifying that “there has been one people among the nations—one among the millions of the worshippers of stocks—taught of God.”

Many of the Psalms date from David’s time; one (Psalm xc.) carries us as far back as Moses, and others were as late as the Captivity. They were probably arranged as we now have them in the fifth century B.C.; though certain critics refer some of them to the Maccabean period (second century B.C.).

Elegiac Poetry.—King David was also a writer of elegy, that kind of song in which the Hebrew poets and prophets poured out their grief in the unaffected language of nature. Some of his Psalms are beautiful specimens of this species of poetry, especially Psalm xlii., “As the hart panteth after the water-brooks,” composed during his exile among the mountains of Lebanon. Another exquisite and pathetic elegy of this poet, rendered below in English verse by Lowth, is the

LAMENTATION FOR SAUL AND JONATHAN.

“Thy glory, Israel, droops its languid head,

On Gilboa’s heights thy rising beauty dies;

In sordid piles there sleep the illustrious dead,

The mighty victor fall’n and vanquished lies.

Yet dumb be Grief; hushed be her clam’rous voice!

Tell not in Gath the tidings of our shame!

Lest proud Philistia in our woes rejoice,

And rude barbarians blast fair Israel’s fame.

The sword of Saul ne’er spent its force in air;

The shaft of Jonathan brought low the brave;

In life united equal fates they share,

In death united share one common grave.

Daughters of Judah! mourn the fatal day,

In sable grief attend your monarch’s urn;

To solemn notes attune the pensive lay,

And weep those joys that never shall return.

With various wealth he made your tents o’erflow,

In princely pride your charms profusely dressed;

Bade the rich robe with ardent purple glow,

And sparkling gems adorn the tissued vest.

On Gilboa’s heights the mighty vanquished lies,

The son of Saul, the generous and the just;

Let streaming sorrow ever fill these eyes,

Let sacred tears bedew a brother’s dust.

Thy firm regard revered thy David’s name,

And kindest thoughts in kindest acts expressed;

Not brighter glows the pure and generous flame

That lives within the tender virgin’s breast.

But vain the tear and vain the bursting sigh,

Though Sion’s echoes with our grief resound;

The mighty victors fall’n and vanquished lie,

And war’s refulgent weapons strew the ground.”

Didactic Poetry.—In the golden age, didactic poetry also reached the acme of perfection. The Proverbs that then flowed from the inspired pen of Solomon, prince of didactic writers as his father was of lyric poets, are too well known, with all their richness of practical wisdom, to require more than a passing mention. Expressed concisely in energetic words, according to the different forms of parallelism, these moral precepts are indeed “like apples of gold in baskets of silver.”

Of the same general scope as the Proverbs, and by the same author, is Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher. In this book is shown the vanity of earthly pleasures; and the whole duty of man is summed up in the sentence, “Fear God and keep his commandments.” The Book of Ecclesiastes has been attributed to Solomon’s latter days; the Proverbs, to his prime; while that sweet pastoral, the Song of Songs—singularly beautiful, whether taken literally as an exponent of happy wedded love, or allegorically as delineating the mutual attachment of God and his people—was the joyous outburst of his youth. Solomon was also the author of a thousand canticles and various works on miscellaneous subjects; books of making which, he tells us, there was no end.

Prophetic Poetry of the Golden Age.—The writings of the earlier prophets, florid with high-wrought imagery, revived for a time the waning glories of the golden age. Foremost of this class in eloquence of diction, sublimity of thought, and versatility of genius, stands Isaiah. Majesty united with elaborate finish; a harmony that delights the soul; a variety that imparts freshness without detracting from dignity; simplicity and unvarying purity of language,—conspire to make the lyric verse of “the Evangelical Prophet” the most appropriate embodiment of the awful messages of God to the Jews, the promise of a Messiah and universal peace.

After a career of nearly seventy years, Isaiah sealed his great work with his blood in the reign of the idolatrous Manasseh (698-643 B.C.). His mind has been pronounced “one of the most sublime and variously gifted instruments which the Spirit of God has ever employed to pour forth its Voice upon the world.”

Even the minor prophets, if we except Jonah the oldest, exhibit in their compositions unwonted grandeur and elegance: Hosea, with his sententious style; Amos, “the herdman and gatherer of sycamore fruit;” Joel and Micah; Habakkuk, whose fervent prayer to the Almighty is graced with the loftiest embellishments, and Nahum, perhaps the boldest and most ardent of all.

And so the Golden Age of Hebrew Literature ends. We know only its sacred poetry, and much indeed of this has disappeared.[11] The harvest and vintage songs which wakened the echoes amid the vales of Palestine, the pastorals that accompanied the shepherd’s pipe on the hill-sides of Ephraim, all are lost forever; “the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the bride,” were forgotten in the streets of Jerusalem, when the land was desolate under the Babylonian and “the daughters of music were brought low.”

SILVER AGE.

The Prophets.—The names of three great prophets—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel—illuminate the first page in the history of the decline of Hebrew literature. But in their writings, and notably so in those of the later minor prophets, poetry was evidently on the wane. They lived in a degenerate day. About half of the prophecy of Jeremiah, denouncing the judgment of Heaven on the disobedient people, is poetry; he lacks the pomp and majesty of Isaiah, but excels in stirring the gentler emotions.

His Lamentations are beautiful elegies on the fall of his country and the desecration of the temple; every letter seems “written with a tear and every word the sound of a broken heart.” The verses of the several chapters in the original begin with consecutive letters of the alphabet, that they may be the more easily memorized, for it was intended that the sins and sufferings of the Jewish nation should never be forgotten. Can anything be more touching than the personification of Jerusalem, sitting as a solitary widow on the ground and mourning for her children?

“Is this nothing to all you who pass along the way? behold and see

If there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is inflicted on me;

Which Jehovah inflicted on me in the day of the violence of his wrath.

For these things I weep, my eyes stream with water,

Because the comforter is far away that should tranquillize my soul.

My children are desolate, because the enemy was strong.”

Ezekiel and Daniel were carried captives to Babylon, where they made known their prophetic visions. The former wrote partly in poetry, characterized by a rough vehemence peculiar to himself. The Book of Daniel, in which history is combined with prophecy, is in prose, and a portion of it in the Aramaic language. (Consult Keith’s “Evidence of Prophecy.”)

The Tomb of Ezra.

Another writer of distinguished merit, belonging to this age, was the scribe and priest Ezra (already mentioned), who was permitted to return from Babylon to Jerusalem with a company of his people, 458 B.C. He settled the canon of Scripture, restoring and editing the whole of the Old Testament.

The Apocrypha (secret writings) consist chiefly of the stories of To’bit and Judith, the first and second books of Esdras and of the Maccabees, Ba’ruch, the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of the Son of Sirach. Composed during the three centuries immediately preceding the Christian Era, they bear internal evidence, in their lack of the ancient poetical power, of belonging to an age of literary decline. They were mostly included in the canon of Scripture by the Council of Trent in 1545, but are rejected by Protestants as uninspired.

Ecclesiasticus, best of the Apocryphal books, is full of moral, political, and religious precepts, its object being to teach true wisdom and its style resembling the didactic poetry of Solomon. The following fine passage, versified by Lowth, personifies

WISDOM.

“Wisdom shall raise her loud exulting voice,

And midst her people glory and rejoice;

Oft the Almighty’s awful presence near,

Her dulcet sounds angelic choirs shall hear.

Me before time itself He gave to-day,

Nor shall my spirit faint or feel decay;

I bowed before Him in His hallowed shrine,

And Sion’s pride and Sion’s strength was mine.

Did I not tall as those fair cedars grow,

Which grace our Lebanon’s exalted brow?

Did I not lofty as the cypress rise,

Which seems from Hermon’s heights to meet the skies?

Fresh as Engaddi’s palm that scents the air,

Like rose of Jericho, so sweet, so fair;

Green as the verdant olive of the groves,

Straight as the plane-tree which the streamlet loves,

Richer than vineyards rise my sacred bowers,

Sweeter than roses bloom my vernal flowers;

Fair love is mine, and hope, and gentle fear;

Me science hallows, as a parent dear.

Come, who aspire beneath my shade to live;

Come, all my fragrance, all my fruits receive!

Sweeter than honey are the strains I sing,

Sweeter than honey-comb the dower I bring;

Me, taste who will, shall feel increased desire,

Who drinks shall still my flowing cups require;

He whose firm heart my precepts still obeys,

With safety walks through life’s perplexing maze;

Who cautious follows where my footsteps lead,

No cares shall feel, no mighty terrors dread.

Small was my stream when first I rolled along,

In clear meanders Eden’s vales among;

With fresh’ning draughts each tender plant I fed,

And bade each flow’ret raise its blushing head;

But soon my torrent o’er its margin rose,

Where late a brook, behold an ocean flows!

For Wisdom’s blessings shall o’er earth extend,

Blessings that know no bound, that know no end.”

The Talmud.—Our treatise would be incomplete without some notice of the mysterious book whose name heads this paragraph,—the Talmud. Comparatively unknown except in name for centuries, it was repeatedly suppressed in the Dark Ages by popes and kings, as likely to be dangerous to Christianity. (See Dr. Jastrow’s “Dictionary of the Talmud.”)

Talmud means learning. It is essentially a digest of law, civil and criminal, and a collection of traditions orally preserved. It consists of two parts, viz., the Mishna, or earlier text; and the Gemara (ghe-mah’ră), a commentary on the Mishna. The age that gave birth to the Talmud was the period after the Captivity, when a passionate love for their sacred and national writings animated the Jews restored to their country and its institutions. Hundreds of learned men, all great in their day, who treasured in their memories the traditions of a thousand years, contributed to its pages.

The Talmud was a cyclopædia treating of every subject, even down to gardening and the manual arts; it depicts incidentally the social life of the people, not of the Jews alone, but of other nations also. It is enlivened by parables, jests, and fairy-tales, ethical sayings, and proverbs; the style is now poetical, anon sublime; and there may be gathered amid its wilderness of themes “some of the richest and most precious fruits of human thought and fancy.”

After two unsuccessful attempts, the Talmud was finally systemized in a code by the Saint Jehuda (about 200 A.D.). A remarkable correspondence exists between it and the Gospel writings, explained by the fact that both reflect in a measure the same times. (Read Sekles’s “Poetry of the Talmud.”)

EXTRACTS FROM THE TALMUD.

“Turn the Bible and turn it again, for everything is in it.

Bless God for the evil as well as the good. When you hear of a death, say ‘Blessed is the righteous Judge.’

Even when the gates of heaven are shut to prayer, they are open to tears.

When the righteous die, it is the earth that loses. The lost jewel will always be a jewel, but the possessor who has lost it—well may he weep.

Life is a passing shadow, says the Scripture. Is it the shadow of a tower, of a tree? A shadow that prevails for a while? No, it is the shadow of a bird in his flight; away flies the bird, and there is neither bird nor shadow.

Teach thy tongue to say, ‘I do not know.’

If a word spoken in its time is worth one piece of money, silence in its time is worth two.

The ass complains of the cold even in July.

Four shall not enter Paradise: the scoffer, the liar, the hypocrite, and the slanderer. To slander is to murder.

The camel wanted to have horns, and they took away his ears.

Thy friend has a friend, and thy friend’s friend has a friend: be discreet.

The soldiers fight, and the kings are heroes.

Love your wife like yourself, honor her more than yourself. Whoso lives unmarried, lives without joy, without comfort, without blessing. He who forsakes the love of his youth, God’s altar weeps for him. It is woman alone through whom God’s blessings are vouchsafed to a house. She teaches the children, speeds the husband to the place of worship, welcomes him when he returns, keeps the house godly and pure, and God’s blessings rest upon all these things. He who marries for money, his children shall be a curse to him.

Men should be careful lest they cause women to weep, for God counts their tears.

The world is saved by the breath of school-children.

When the thief has no opportunity of stealing, he considers himself an honest man. The thief invokes God while he breaks into the house.

Get your living by skinning carcasses in the street, if you cannot otherwise; and do not say, ‘I am a great man, this work would not befit my dignity.’ Not the place honors the man, but the man the place.

Youth is a garland of roses; age is a crown of thorns.

The day is short and the work is great. It is not incumbent upon thee to complete the work: but thou must not therefore cease from it. If thou hast worked much, great shall be thy reward; for the Master who employed thee is faithful in his payment. But know that the true reward is not of this world.”—Deutsch.

RETURNING THE JEWELS.

“Rabbi Meir, the great teacher, was sitting on the Sabbath-day and instructing the people in the Synagogue. In the meantime, his two sons died; they were both fine of growth and enlightened in the law. His wife carried them into the attic, laid them on the bed, and spread a white cloth over their dead bodies.

In the evening, Rabbi Meir came home. ‘Where are my sons,’ inquired he, ‘that I may give them my blessing?’—‘They went to the Synagogue,’ was the reply.—‘I looked round,’ returned he, ‘and did not perceive them.’

She reached him a cup; he praised the Lord at the close of the Sabbath, drank, and asked again, ‘Where are my sons, that they also may drink of the wine of blessing?’—‘They cannot be far off,’ said she, and set before him something to eat. When he had given thanks after the repast, she said: ‘Rabbi, grant me a request.’—‘Speak, my love!’ answered he.

‘A few days ago, a person gave me some jewels to take care of, and now he asks for them again; shall I give them back to him?’—‘This my wife should not need to ask,’ said Rabbi Meir. ‘Wouldst thou hesitate to return every one his own?’—‘Oh! no,’ replied she, ‘but I would not return them without thy knowledge.’

Soon after she led him to the attic, approached, and took the cloth off the dead bodies. ‘Oh! my sons!’ exclaimed the father sorrowfully, ‘My sons!’ She turned away and wept.

At length she took his hand, and said: ‘Rabbi, hast thou not taught me that we must not refuse to return that which hath been intrusted to our care? Behold, the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; praised be the name of the Lord.’

‘The name of the Lord be praised!’ rejoined Rabbi Meir. ‘It is well said: He who hath a virtuous wife hath a greater treasure than costly pearls. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, and on her tongue is the law of kindness.’”

THE PAINTED FLOWERS.

“The power of Solomon had spread his wisdom to the remotest parts of the known world. Queen Sheba, attracted by the splendor of his reputation, visited this poetical king at his own court. There, one day, to exercise the sagacity of the monarch, Sheba presented herself at the foot of the throne: in each hand she held a wreath; the one was composed of natural, and the other of artificial flowers. Art, in constructing the mimetic wreath, had exquisitely emulated the lively hues of nature; so that, at the distance it was held by the queen for the inspection of the king, it was deemed impossible for him to decide, as her question required, which wreath was the production of nature, and which the work of art.

The sagacious Solomon seemed perplexed; yet to be vanquished, though in a trifle, by a trifling woman, irritated his pride. The son of David, he who had written treatises on the vegetable productions ‘from the cedar to the hyssop,’ to acknowledge himself outwitted by a woman, with shreds of paper and glazed paintings! The honor of the monarch’s reputation for divine sagacity seemed diminished, and the whole Jewish court looked solemn and melancholy.

At length an expedient presented itself to the king; and one, it must be confessed, worthy of the naturalist. Observing a cluster of bees hovering about a window, he commanded that it should be opened. It was opened; the bees rushed into the court, and alighted immediately on one of the wreaths, while not a single one fixed on the other. The baffled Sheba had one more reason to be astonished at the wisdom of Solomon.”—D’Israeli.

NOTES ON WRITING, EDUCATION, ETC., AMONG THE HEBREWS.

The art of writing practised by the Hebrews at a very remote period. In primitive times, records of important events cut in stone; the letters sometimes filled with plaster or melted lead. Engraving also practised with the stylus on rough tablets of boxwood, earthenware, or bone. Leather early employed; the Law written on skins (of “clean animals or birds”) in golden characters. The skins rolled round one or two wooden cylinders, the scroll then tied with a thread and sealed. Parchment written on with reed pens, which, together with a knife for sharpening them and an ink of lampblack dissolved in gall-juice, were carried in an inkhorn suspended from the girdle. Letter-writing in vogue from the time of David.

Many ancient Jewish cities far advanced in art and literature. Reading and writing from the first not confined to the learned, for the people were required to write precepts of the Law upon their door-posts, and on crossing the Jordan were commanded to place certain inscriptions on great stones very plainly, that they might be read by all. Scribes in readiness to serve those who could not write. Schools established in different localities in the prophetical age, in which “the sons of the prophets” lived a kind of monastic life, studying their laws and institutions along with poetry and music.

After the Captivity, education recognized as all-important, and at length made compulsory. The Jews in consequence soon noted for learning and scholarship. $2,500,000 paid by Ptolemy Philadelphus (260 B.C.) to seventy Jewish doctors for translating the Old Testament into Greek, at Alexandria; hence the Septuagint, as it is called, or version of the Seventy. By 80 B.C., Palestine filled with flourishing schools. Jerusalem was destroyed because the instruction of the young was neglected—Revere a teacher even more than your father—A scholar is greater than a prophet—common sayings among the Jews. Colleges maintained where lectures were delivered, and the Socratic method of debate was pursued. Every student trained to some trade, the ripest scholars working with their own hands as tent-makers, weavers, carpenters, bakers, cooks, etc. A large library at Jerusalem composed of volumes in history, royal letters, and various works of the prophets. The most learned of the later Platonists the Jew Phi’lo (20 B.C.-50 A.D.), who tried to reconcile the Platonic philosophy with the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Riddles, enigmas, and play upon words, the chief sources of amusement among the Hebrews. Dice mentioned in the Talmud. Public games unknown. Fishing with nets and hooks, favorite sports. Dancing practised as a religious rite; the stage on which it was performed in the temples styled the choir: each Psalm perhaps accompanied by a suitable dance.

CHAPTER V.
CHALDEAN, ASSYRIAN, ARABIC, AND PHŒNICIAN LITERATURES.

Cuneiform Letters.—North of the Persian Gulf, and drained by the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, lay Chalde’a, or Babylonia, the “Land of Shi’nar” (country of the two rivers). Here arose the earliest cities, amid a population principally Turanian and Semitic, with a limited intermixture of the Aryan element. A Semitic dialect prevailed among the people at large; but the Turanian (Non-Semitic or Ural-Altaic) Chaldees, to whom Babylonia was indebted for its aboriginal civilization, through the centuries of their ascendency, political and intellectual, not only kept alive their native tongue in conversation with each other, but, inscribing it on imperishable monuments, caused it to endure through all time.

ASSYRIA and the ADJACENT COUNTRIES

To these Turanians the honor of having invented cuneiform letters must be conceded; an honor, indeed, when we remember that theirs was possibly the most ancient device for embodying human thought. The characters, called wedge-formed or arrow-headed, they appear to have brought with them into the Euphrates valley from the more northerly country which they previously occupied; and their Semitic co-residents in Babylonia were not slow in adopting the ingenious system which they had elaborated. (Consult Budge’s “Babylonian Life,” By-Paths of Bible Knowledge Series, p. 100.)

The cuneiform characters, like the hieroglyphics, were at first rude representations of objects, but in most cases the resemblance to the original was soon lost. In some archaic forms, however, it may be readily detected; as in the character for fish,

. The common signs eventually acquired phonetic values. The Assyrian writing is made up of ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives.

When by the victory of Alexander at Arbe’la (331 B.C.) the great Persian Empire fell, cuneiform writing ceased to be practised, and cuneiform literature was buried in the mounds of Assyria and Babylonia for two thousand years. During the present century it has been disinterred by inquisitive scholars, whose labors have resulted in the restoration of a forgotten history, through the wonderful literature of a people long known only in name. (See Sayce’s “Hibbert Lectures.”)

ASSYRIO-BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.

Writing Materials.—The cuneiform letters heretofore spoken of as in use among the Persians at a later date (p. 66) were doubtless originally intended to be cut on rocks with chisels, and hence were angular instead of round. But the ancient Babylonians preferred bricks and tablets of clay, on which, when moist and soft, they traced their legends, annals, and scientific items, with an ivory or bronze stylus, hardening the surface thus inscribed by drying in the sun. The tablets, from one inch in length upward, are pillow-shaped and covered with characters so minute as to be almost illegible without a glass. After drying, to insure their preservation, they were often enclosed in cases of clay, and on these the inscriptions were duplicated. Such are known as “case-tablets.”

The Assyrians used similar kiln-baked tablets, and, besides, carved their records exquisitely on the stone panels of their palaces, and on colossal human-headed bulls. The tablets above described, together with terra-cotta cylinders, formed the books of this inventive nation, who also engraved with wonderful delicacy glass, metals, the amethyst, jasper, and onyx.

Stone slabs were generally reserved for royal inscriptions; the literary classes of Assyria preferred the cheaper clay, on which they could write more rapidly and quite as legibly with their triangular instruments. Something like paper or parchment seems to have been used to a very limited extent; but if so, it has entirely disappeared. It is also thought that the Chaldeans may have practised a simple method of printing, as wedge-like types of stone have been found among the ruins of their cities.

Golden Age of Babylonian Literature (2000-1550 B.C.).—Not a little of the Assyrio-Babylonian literature has been recovered; but a mine of literary wealth in the valley of the Euphrates still awaits the persevering student, for before 2000 B.C. important works were written in Chaldea. In the twentieth century, a golden age dawned on this ancient land; its great cities became centres of literary refinement, as well as of commerce and art, and a lofty poetical style characterized the writings of the time. Standard texts on religion, science, and history were then and shortly thereafter produced, the copying of which appears to have satisfied the ambition of subsequent generations.

In 1887, numerous Babylonian tablets, dating from the 15th century B.C., were found at Tell-Amarna, Egypt. They contain letters addressed by Asiatic kings to the third and fourth Amenophis (a portion of the correspondence relating to the marriage of an Egyptian monarch with the princess of Mitanni), and imply that the cuneiform writing of Babylonia was in that day the vehicle of correspondence, as was the Aramaic in the time of Persian supremacy.

Among early specimens of Chaldean writing is a set of bricks, discovered near the site of E’rech. They are thought to have been made about 2008 B.C. As these bricks illustrate the most ancient cuneiform character, two of them are here presented, accompanied with a translation.

Chaldean Bricks.

Chaldean Bricks.

“Beltis, his lady, has caused Urukh, the pious chief and king of Ur, king of the land of Accad, to build a temple to her.”

FROM A TABLET OF BABYLONIAN LAWS.

“A certain man’s brother-in-law hired workmen, and on his foundation built an enclosure. From the house the judge expelled him.

His father and his mother a man shall not deny.

A decision. A son says to his mother: ‘Thou art not my mother.’ His hair is cut off; in the city they exclude him from earth and water, and in the house imprison him.

A decision. A mother says to her son: ‘Thou art not my son.’ They imprison her.

A decision. A woman says to her husband: ‘Thou art not my husband.’ Into the river they throw her.

A decision. A husband says to his wife: ‘Thou art not my wife.’ Haifa ma’neh (thirty ounces) of silver he weighs out in payment.

A decision. A master kills his slaves, cuts them to pieces, injures their offspring, drives them from the land. His hand every day a half measure of corn measures out.”

Babylonian literature was rich in the departments of law, mathematics, astrology, grammar, and history. Nor was fiction wanting; fables, in which the lower animals carried on spirited dialogues, were favorites with the people. At a very early date, the inscribed tablets and cylinders were collected, and the chief cities were made the seats of libraries.

From a volume of Chaldean hymns, somewhat similar to the Rig-Veda, are taken the following verses to the Babylonian Venus:—

PRAYER OF THE HEART TO ISTAR.

“Light of heaven, who like the fire dawnest on the world, art thou!

Goddess in the earth, who dawnest like the earth, art thou!

To the house of men in thy descending thou goest: prosperity approaches thee.

Day is thy servant, heaven thy canopy.

Princess of the four cities, head of the sea, heaven is thy canopy.

Exalted of the Sun-god, heaven is thy canopy!

For my father the Moon-god, revolver of the seasons, sanctuaries I build, a temple I build.

For my brother the Sun-god, revolver of the seasons, sanctuaries I

build, a temple I build.

In the beginning the goddess spoke thus to men:

The Lady of Heaven, the divinity of the zenith, am I!

The Lady of Heaven, the divinity of the dawn, am I!

The Queen of Heaven, the opener of the locks of the high heaven, my begetter.

O Istar! Lady of Heaven! may thy heart rest.

O Lady, Queen of Heaven! may thy liver be magnified.

O Lady, Queen of the land of the four rivers of Erech! may thy heart rest.

O Lady, Queen of Babylon! may thy liver be magnified!

O Lady, Queen of the Temple of the Resting-place of the World! may thy heart rest.”—A. H. Sayce.

The Babylonians believed in omens. They gathered auguries from dreams, inspection of the hand, the time of birth, and various phenomena, establishing a national system of divination not without its amusing features. For instance, we have the following

OMENS CONNECTED WITH DOGS.

“If a blue dog enters into a palace, that palace is burned.

If a yellow dog enters into the palace, exit from that palace will be baleful.

If a spotted dog enters into the palace, that palace its peace to the enemy gives.

If a dog to the palace goes and on a bed lies down, that palace none with his hand takes.

If a dog to the palace goes and on the royal parasol lies down, that palace its peace to the enemy gives.

If a white dog into a temple enters, the foundation of that temple is not stable.

If a yellow dog into a temple enters, that temple sees plenty.

If a spotted dog into a temple enters, that temple do its gods love.”

Many charms and exorcisms appear in the ancient language of Babylonia, disease being attributed to possession by evil spirits. Specimens follow.

BABYLONIAN EXORCISMS.

“Wasting, want of health, the evil spirit of the ulcer, spreading quinsy of the throat, the violent and noxious ulcer. Spirit of Heaven! remember; Spirit of Earth! remember.

Sickness of the stomach, sickness of the heart, palpitation of the heart, sickness of the head, noxious colic, the agitation of terror, lingering sickness, nightmare. Spirit of Heaven! remember; Spirit of Earth! remember.

Poisonous spittle of the mouth which is noxious to the voice, phlegm which is destructive, tubercles of the lungs. Spirit of Heaven! remember; Spirit of Earth! remember.”

A belief in a future life is expressed in the Poem on the Descent of Istar, the moon-god’s daughter, to Hades, “the land whence none return,” where “the dead outnumber the living;” and further in the so-called Nimrod-Epic, the most ancient approach to epic poetry known to exist, embodying the Babylonian story of Izdubar (identified with Nimrod)—his rejection of the suit of the goddess Istar, and his victory over the human-headed bull sent to revenge the slight. Nimrod is ferried across the waters of the dead to the shores of the regions of the blessed, where he recognizes his ancestor, Samas-napistim, and exclaims:

“Thy appearance is not changed; like me art thou.

And thou thyself art not changed; like me art thou.”

Chambers of Records at Nineveh.—The Semites who, as the sacred historian informs us, left the land of Shinar to found Nineveh and the neighboring cities, carried with them the civilization and literary culture of the Chaldeans. The earliest permanent seat of letters was Ca’lah (see Map, p. 105), where, during the reign of Shalmane’ser II. (860-824 B.C.) many clay tablets borrowed from the Babylonians were copied by Assyrian scribes. This same king erected at Calah an obelisk of black marble—one of the few Assyrian monuments of its kind commemorative of national triumphs.

The library thus begun at Calah was enlarged under succeeding kings. Removed at length to Nineveh, it there attained vast proportions through the efforts of that munificent patron of letters, Sardanapa’lus (Assur-bani-pal), (668-626 B.C.). The number of engraved tablets reached ten thousand.

Here were grammars[12] and lexicons, law-books and scientific treatises, histories, astronomical and arithmetical works, songs, prayers, hymns sometimes approaching the Hebrew sacred lyrics in sublimity, books of charms and omens, natural histories, botanies, and geographies—a complete encyclopædia of ancient literature. The books of this curious collection were carefully arranged according to their subjects, numbered, catalogued, and placed in charge of librarians. They were public property, intended for the instruction of the people.

Such was the library of Sardanapalus—principally copied from Babylonian texts; such, it was buried beneath the ruins of the palace when “the gates of the rivers were opened and Nineveh became a desolation;” such, it lay amid the débris for centuries, “while the cormorant and the bittern lodged in the upper lintels.”

But the mounds that so long covered the site of Nineveh have recently surrendered their treasures. Clouds that environed the history of the past have been dissipated; ancient nations, for ages wrapped in obscurity, we no longer “see through a glass, darkly;” and the narrative of the inspired writers of the Bible has been in many places confirmed by the inscriptions disentombed in the East. Among the most interesting fragments found scattered through the ruined “Chambers of Records” of the Assyrian palace are the tablets relating to the Creation, the Fall of Man, and the Deluge, copied from Babylonian records hundreds of years older than the Pentateuch.

FROM THE CHALDEAN ACCOUNT OF THE DELUGE.

(Compiled originally about 2000 B.C.)

“The flood reached to heaven: the bright earth to a waste was turned. It destroyed all life from the face of the earth, the strong deluge over the people. Brother saw not brother, they did not know the people. In heaven, the gods feared the tempest and sought refuge: they ascended to the heaven of the King of angels and spirits.

Six days and nights passed; the wind, deluge, and storm, overwhelmed. On the seventh day, in its course, was calmed the storm; and all the deluge, which had destroyed like an earthquake, quieted. The sea he caused to dry, and the wind and deluge ended.

I perceived the sea making a tossing; and the whole of mankind turned to corruption; like reeds the corpses floated. I opened the window, and the light broke over my face; it passed. I sat down and wept; over my face flowed my tears. I perceived the shore at the boundary of the sea. To the country of Nizir went the ship. The mountain of Nizir stopped the ship; and to pass over, it was not able. The first day, and the second day, the mountain of Nizir the same. The third day, and the fourth day, the mountain of Nizir the same. The fifth and sixth, the mountain of Nizir the same. On the seventh day, in the course of it, I sent forth a dove, and it left. The dove went and turned, and a resting-place it did not find, and it returned.

I sent forth a swallow, and it left. The swallow went and turned, and a resting-place it did not find, and it returned.

I sent forth a raven, and it left. The raven went, and the decrease of the water it saw, and it did eat, it swam, and wandered away, and did not return.

I sent the animals forth to the four winds. I poured out a libation. I built an altar on the peak of the mountain.”—George Smith.

SPECIMENS OF ASSYRIAN SACRED POETRY.

A PRAYER FOR THE KING.

“Length of days,

Long, lasting years,

A strong sword,

A long life,

Extended years of glory,

Preëminence among kings,

Grant ye to the King my Lord,

Who has given such gifts

To his gods.

The bounds vast and wide of his empire,

And of his rule,

May he enlarge and may he complete,

May he attain to gray hairs and old age.

And after the life of these days,

In the feasts of the Silver Mountain, the heavenly courts,

The abode of blessedness:

And in the Light

Of the Happy Fields,

May he dwell a life

Eternal, holy,

In the presence of the gods

Who inhabit Assyria.”—H. F. Talbot.

Here is undoubtedly expressed a belief in the soul’s immortality, which also appears in the following prayer for the spirit of a dying man:—

“Like a bird may it fly to a lofty place!

To the holy hands of its god may it ascend!”

A PENITENTIAL PSALM.

“O my Lord! my sins are many, my trespasses are great; and the wrath of the gods has plagued me with disease, and with sickness and sorrow.

I fainted: but no one stretched forth his hand!

I groaned: but no one drew nigh!

I cried aloud: but no one heard!

O Lord! do not abandon thy servant!

In the waters of the great storm, seize his hand!

The sins which he has committed, turn thou to righteousness.”—H. F. Talbot.

HITTITE INSCRIPTIONS.

Altaic Hieroglyphs.—Inscriptions on stones and various objects, in an unknown system of hieroglyphics, have been found near Damascus and elsewhere in the East. They have been ascribed to the Hittites (the Khita of the Egyptian monuments, the Khittim of Scripture), a powerful race of northern Syria, who were constantly at war with the Babylonians, successfully opposed both Assyria and Egypt, and in the thirteenth century B.C. extended their power as far west as the Ægean Sea. It is claimed that the symbols are “the prototypes whence the cuneiform system was developed,” and that the language is an Altaic (Turanian or Accadian) dialect. The date assigned is 1400 B.C. (See opposite engraving of an inscribed stone from Jerabis.) Scholars are now engaged in an attempt to decipher these inscriptions. (The reader is referred to Sayce’s “The Hittites: the Story of a Forgotten Empire.”)

ARABIC LITERATURE.

Himyaritic Inscriptions.—The high-spirited war-loving tribes that roved over the tablelands of Arabia, as well as the more refined inhabitants of her ports on the Red Sea, doubtless cultivated letters. We may suppose the former to have given their florid fancies vent in pastorals, rude songs for the desert bivouac, or triumphal odes. More finished species of poetry would have been congenial to the courtly residents of the cities, whose knowledge of the world was extended by trading expeditions to India, and along the African coast as far as the Mozambique Channel.

Yet of this probable literature we possess little that is older than the era of Mohammed (600 A.D.), at which time the Arabians awoke to a new life, for centuries leading the van of the nations in the march of literature and science. But the little that we have is not without interest.

At least eighteen hundred years before the Christian Era, descendants of Joktan, called Sabæans and afterward Himyarites, established themselves in southwestern Arabia; but not until about 800 B.C. do they appear to have gained permanent dominion over the neighboring tribes. Inscriptions in their language, the Sabæan, a Semitic tongue closely related to the Arabic, if not sufficiently like it to be called by the same name, have been found in the lower part of the Arabian peninsula on walls, tombs, dikes, and bronze tablets.

These are the oldest known Arabic writings, and are believed by scholars to date between the 8th century B.C. and the 4th century A.D. Gems have also been discovered, inscribed with these same characters.

PHŒNICIAN LITERATURE.

Its Lost Treasures.—In the most ancient records, the narrow strip of coast between the Lib’anus Mountains and the Mediterranean was recognized as an important centre of civilization. Its cities were seats of art and commerce; Africa, Sicily, and Spain, were dotted with its colonies and trading-stations; the sails of its merchantmen sparkled on every sea; its language was known throughout the ancient world.

It cannot be that a nation so advanced in knowledge was without a literature; and if works on their philosophy and religion, on history, geography, navigation, and agriculture, didactic poems and love-songs, constitute a literature, vast indeed was that of the Phœnicians. No department of science or belles-lettres appears to have been overlooked by their authors.

The famous “Book City,” Kir´jath-Se´pher, which, during the conquest of Canaan, was taken by Othniel the future Judge, is thought to have been a Phœnician town. Its name implies that it was a repository of books, probably public records and works on law—perhaps an Athens to the nations of Canaan, whither their youth flocked to consult its libraries and receive instruction at its academies. Its valuable collection of manuscripts was doubtless committed to the flames by the Hebrew conqueror.

In like manner, the whole constellation of Phœnician hymns, and lyrics, and prose pieces, has become extinct, except a lonely star left here and there in the works of foreign authors; or a faint light glimmering on some coin or tablet, gem or tombstone.

The only important Phœnician writer known to us is Sanchoni´athon. Fragments of his History, written perhaps in the fourteenth century B.C., have survived through a Greek translation. In accounting for the origin of the universe, Sanchoniathon taught the theory of evolution, that “from certain animals not having sensation, intelligent animals were produced.”

Phœnician Carthage also developed an extensive literature. The records of the city were kept by native historians; and we know that Ma’go’s great work on agriculture, in twenty-eight parts, was highly appreciated at Rome, and there rendered into Latin. When the city of Hannibal fell before her more powerful rival, her vast library was scattered among the African allies of the Romans, and lost to history.

An interesting relic of Carthaginian literature is the Circumnavigation of Hanno, the history of a voyage undertaken in the sixth century B.C. to the coasts of Libya—the oldest history of a voyage existing. This work of Hanno, which used to hang in a temple at Carthage, describes a savage people called Gorillas, whose bodies were covered with hair and who defended themselves with stones. The narrator says: “Three women were taken, but they attacked their conductors with their teeth and hands, and could not be prevailed on to accompany us. Having killed them, we flayed them, and brought their skins with us to Carthage.”

NOTES ON ASSYRIO-BABYLONIAN LITERATURE.

Oldest Semitic cuneiform text written before 3000 B.C. The golden age, 2000-1850 B.C.; oral traditions collected and committed to writing; tile-libraries in all the principal Chaldean cities. Decline begins about 1550 B.C. The term Chaldean long synonymous with man of learning.

Rise of Assyrian literature, 1500 B.C.; confined to archives and records for a number of centuries. Renaissance under Sardanapalus I. and his son Shalmane´ser II. (885-824 B.C.). Enlargement of the national library in the reign of Tig´lath-Pile´ser II. (745-727 B.C.) and of Sargon (722-705 B.C.), followed by a revival of the study of ancient literature. Copies made of the masterpieces of antiquity. Reign of Sardanapalus II. (668-626 B.C.), the golden age of Assyrian letters. Fall of Nineveh, 625 B.C.

Babylon succeeds as the seat of power and the centre of literature in western Asia; attains the height of its glory under Nebuchadnezzar (604-561 B.C.). Great revival of ancient learning: “the Lady of Kingdoms” soon boasts of a library emulating in extent and variety that of her former rival Nineveh. Little of this later Babylonian literature recovered: its restoration left for future laborers in the field of philology.

During these centuries, a wild poetry probably flourished on the highland wastes of Arabia, and Phœnician cities attained literary greatness.—Coins made of British tin, the money of Phœnician commerce.

CHAPTER VI.
EGYPTIAN LITERATURE.

The Egyptian Language.—There yet remains one field of Oriental literature for us to visit, and it is specially interesting on account of the valuable treasures it long concealed. These have recently been brought to light in the writings of that people who settled the fertile valley of the Nile in prehistoric times, and adorned the land of Egypt with monuments inscribed with their mysterious characters.

Thousands of inscriptions—some on the walls of vast temples, or of memorial chapels attached to the tombs of private citizens; others hewn in the living rock, or carefully cut on obelisks of granite with chisels of bronze and steel—have endured to our day; and thousands of papyri have come down to us; some of the rolls many feet in length, and covered with figures of men, birds, insects, and reptiles, in profile, often illuminated with high colors and gold wrought in artistic vignettes. The ingenuity of modern science has wrung from these their secrets, and disclosed a wealth of knowledge in connection with the history, literature, civilization, and religion of the ancient Egyptians.

The Egyptian language is undoubtedly Semitic, and, in its oldest form, perhaps represents the primitive Semitic stock. It contains, however, certain elements that are not Semitic, but that seem to have been derived from a tongue of distinct origin, spoken in the country before its conquest by a Semitic race. The language has therefore been called Egypto-Semitic.

EGYPTIAN WRITING.

Decipherment of the Hieroglyphics.—The decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics will always be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs of the present century. As early as 1652, Kircher (kěěr´ker), a learned German Jesuit, attempted to translate the monumental writing; but, by reason of his absurd renderings, only cast discredit on the science of Egyptology. Scholars of the period preferred the study of Coptic, the language of Egyptian Christianity; it was through their labors in this field that the way was prepared for the final interpretation of the older speech.

The Rosetta Stone.—The finding of the Rosetta Stone, in 1799, led to the brilliant discoveries of the French savant, Champollion (sham-pol´le-on). A French officer, while erecting works at Rosetta, in the delta of the Nile, during Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, unearthed a piece of black basalt, which contained, in equivalent inscriptions in hieroglyphics, Greek, and demotic (popular hand), a decree conferring divine honors on Ptolemy V., a monarch of the second century B.C. The meaning of the Greek text being known, the hieroglyphics through it were translated. Thomas Young, an English mathematician, and the French scholar, independently, and almost simultaneously, succeeded in finding a true solution of the problem. Young determined correctly the value of some of the characters; but the result of Champollion’s labors were vastly more important. He not only gave the correct rendering of long inscriptions and of numerous papyri, but prepared an Egyptian grammar and a hieroglyphic dictionary that for years were unrivalled as authorities.

The Rosetta Stone.

The famous stone rests on a block of red porphyry in the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. Dimensions: 3 ft., 1 in. high; 2 ft., 5 in. broad; 6 to 12 in. thick. (Read the “Report of the Committee appointed by the Philomathean Society of the University of Pennsylvania to translate the Inscription on the Rosetta Stone.”)

Champollion’s work was carried on by other scholars after his death. In 1867, Lepsius discovered in the ruins of Tanis a second trilingual inscription, the so-called decree of Cano’pus, the study of which fully confirmed the theories previously advanced. The work of Lepsius gave a new impulse to Egyptian study. His immediate successor in this line of exploration was Mariette, who built up the museum of Boulaq. Many others in France, England, Germany, and America, have devoted their lives to the study of Egypt and her systems of writing. The problem that baffled alike Greeks, Romans, and all subsequent nations, has been solved at last; and the door has been opened to “a library of stones and papyri in myriads of volumes,” in which every branch of literature is represented. The crumbling walls scattered throughout “the Monumental Land” now utter intelligible words; the very implements and toys have their stories to tell; and many a tomb has yielded up its brittle treasure of papyrus, its eulogy or legend, its history or hymn.

System of Writing.—From the earliest times the Egyptians possessed a phonetic system of writing. They had an alphabet of twenty-two characters, consisting of consonants only, which became the basis of the Phœnician, and through it of every ancient and modern European alphabet. Besides these consonants, there were in use numerous syllabic signs, in which two or three consonant sounds, or a consonant and a vowel sound, were represented by one character. Owing to the absence of vowel signs, it was often next to impossible to discriminate between words composed of the same consonants, but having different significations (as it would be in English, if, for instance, we should write s t r for star, store, stair, or straw, and leave the signification of the three consonants to be determined by the context). To obviate this difficulty, the Egyptians early invented a simple system of determinatives. A determinative is a picture of the object described by the word in question, and was placed after the name. Thus the word rômet, signifying man, was followed by the picture of a kneeling man,

as was also every word signifying a male human being or his occupation. After the word himet, signifying woman, after the names of goddesses, the proper names of women, and all words denoting female human beings, was placed the picture of a woman sitting.

After the names of gods occurred a typical representation of a god. In like manner, to the names of Egyptian cities was attached the representation of a plan of a city, while the picture of a range of hills distinguished foreign localities (mountains being unknown in the Nile Valley).

Some of these determinatives in time came to be used instead of the words they originally determined; and thus arose word-signs (ideograms), which, though at first comparatively few, soon increased in number. In this way, the picture of the city’s plan, originally a mere determinative, was eventually used as the written sign of the word city itself. The Egyptian system of writing is thus extremely complicated, consisting, as it does, of an alphabet, syllabic signs, and word-signs (ideograms), supplemented by a system of determinatives. The whole number of signs exceeds 2000. (See Moldehnke’s “Language of the Ancient Egyptians.”)

Hieroglyphics.—The oldest form of Egyptian writing is called hieroglyphic;[13] its characters are well-drawn pictures of natural objects; but these pictures had no ideographic values. They were originally, as above stated, partly determinative in their nature. The oldest hieroglyphical texts that have come down to us have been referred to the II. Dynasty (now estimated at about 4000 B.C.). The youngest texts date from the period of the Roman Empire.

The inconvenience experienced in writing the hieroglyphics early led to the invention of abbreviated forms. These were of two kinds, viz., the linear hieroglyphics, and a derivative therefrom, the cursive hieratic character, suitable for rapid writing. On some of the stone blocks in the Pyramid of Cheops (ke’ops), the monarch’s name is inscribed in hieratic characters; while the oldest texts of the so-called Book of the Dead are in linear hieroglyphics, which remained the favorite form for this religious work, as well as for most funeral papyri. There are two kinds of hieratic—one closely resembling the old linear hieroglyphics, and in common use during the Middle Empire (2100-1700 B.C.); the other, a simplified and abbreviated form, introduced early in the period styled the New Empire (about 1530 B.C.). From this second form of hieratic, the Phœnicians derived their alphabet (see p. 20, and plate p. 87). In the seventh century B.C., the hieratic gave place to the still simpler demotic, which has not inaptly been called Egyptian short-hand.

LITERARY REMAINS.

Egyptian literature, like other ancient literatures, passed through periods of development and decay. It had its dawn or archaic period, its classical and Augustan era, and its age of decline.

The Archaic Age of Egyptian Literature was the epoch of the Old Empire (3800-2400 B.C.) From this remote period there have come down to us mainly inscriptions carved on the walls of private tombs and royal pyramids. The earliest religious writings, comprising the oldest portions of the Book of the Dead, date also from this time; and a few popular songs remain, but they are difficult of interpretation. There is further a compilation of maxims, attributed to Prince Ptahhôtep, who lived about 2500 B.C. The style of the archaic period is simple, clear, and forcible; the writings are, in the main, intelligible. As specimens, we present the entire text of one inscription, with extracts from another:

INSCRIPTION ON THE SARCOPHAGUS OF KING MENKAURÂ (3700 B.C.)

“O Osiris, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkaurâ,[14] immortal one! Thy father is the heaven, thy mother is Nut (goddess of the heavens), thou art of the family of Qeb (god of the earth). Thy mother Nut bends over thee in the shape of her divine secret. She enables thee to be a god; no longer hast thou enemies hereafter, thou immortal king of Upper and Lower Egypt!”

FROM THE INSCRIPTION OF UNA,
A GENERAL OF THE VI. DYNASTY (2400 B.C.).

“This army went in safety; it devastated the land of the Bedouins. This army went in safety; it destroyed their fortifications. This army went in safety; it cut down their fig-trees and grape-vines. This army went in safety; it killed their troops there by many thousands. This army went in safety; it took very many prisoners alive. His majesty praised me for this above everything. His majesty sent out this army five times to devastate the land of the Bedouins, every time they rebelled. I acted so that his majesty praised me above everything.”—Wendel.

The first extract is of interest as being a translation of the oldest religious text yet found. (On the monuments, consult “Records of the Past,” 1874-1889; and Maspero’s “Les Contes Populaires de l’Egypte.”)

Classical Age of Egyptian Literature.—After the Archaic period there is a great blank in Egyptian history; but about 2100 B.C. we begin again with trustworthy accounts. It would appear that Egypt had been subjected, at the close of Dynasty VI., by foreign invaders, who were expelled by the Theban princes of Dynasty XI. The final regeneration of the empire, however, was accomplished by Amenemhât I., the founder of Dynasty XII., which, with the following, covers the period commonly called the Middle Empire (2100-1800 B.C.), at the close of which Egypt fell a prey to the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings.

This epoch was regarded by later native writers as the classical age of their literature. It is represented by large numbers of inscriptions, and some remarkable papyri. Among the latter are the so-called Prisse papyrus,[15] a collection of ill understood moral maxims attributed to Prince Ptahhôtep; and the memoirs of Prince Saneha, a noble of the time, who was forced to fly from Egypt, and for many years lived among the Bedouins of Asia. Other works of the period are “The Instructions of Amenemhât I. to his son Usertesen I.,” the oldest version of the famous “Minstrel’s Song” (sometimes called the “Festal Dirge”), and several fairy stories, notably the “Tale of Snake Island.” The style of the literature is obscure. Much of it was unintelligible even to scholars of the succeeding periods.

Under the Hyksos, phenomenal encouragement appears to have been given to the study of science. A mathematical hand-book of considerable merit reflects the tendencies of the time, as does more markedly the interesting “Papyrus Ebers,”[16] the oldest medical work in the world—both dating from the 17th century B.C.

Selections from two prose works, and a poem entire, follow, in illustration of the style of the Classical Age:

FROM THE MEMOIRS OF PRINCE SANEHA.

This noble, who held a high command in the army, having been implicated in a conspiracy against King Amenemhât I., was compelled to fly the country, and lived for many years in Syria, among the Bedouins. The Memoirs contain interesting details of his Arab life. He tells us that on reaching the eastern boundary of Egypt, he encountered a line of forts stretching across the isthmus as a protection against the Bedouins. “Then I hid in the bushes for fear the sentinels on the wall would see me. In the night I went on, and reached the land of Peten by daybreak. As I approached Lake Qemwer, thirst came upon me, and my throat was parched; so I said, ‘this is a foretaste of death.’ Suddenly my heart took new courage, and I arose—I had heard the lowing of a herd. I saw a Bedouin. He gave me water, and cooked milk for me.”

Then Saneha proceeds to relate how he found his way into Syria, and was cared for by the king, who gave the fugitive the hand of his daughter in marriage; for the prince had heard who Saneha was, and “all his prowess,” from Egyptians dwelling at the court. “He let me choose a tract from the finest lands on the border of another country. This was the beautiful district of Aaa; there grow in it figs and grapes; it has much wine, and is rich in honey; abundant are its olives, and all kinds of fruits grow on its trees. Wheat and barley mature there, and herds unnumbered find pasturage. And yet greater grace he showed me in making me sheik of a tribe. Every people against which I went, I conquered and drove away from its pastures and wells. I stampeded its herds, enslaved its children, plundered its stores, and killed the people with my sword, my bow, and my wise plans.”—After living in Syria for some years, Saneha was pardoned by his king, and returned to Egypt.

THE TALE OF SNAKE ISLAND.

This charming tale relates how a treasury official is wrecked on an island in the Red Sea, while on his way to the mines of Sinai. The island is ruled by a great serpent, and inhabited only by snakes. The official remains for some time the guest of the prince, and is then dismissed loaded with presents.

“I was travelling to the mines of the king, and had gone to sea on a ship 150 yards long and 40 yards broad (compare with the size of modern vessels), that was manned by 150 of the best Egyptian sailors, who knew heaven and earth, and whose hearts were wiser than those of the lions. When we were at sea, a storm arose; and as we approached land the wind grew stronger, and the waves were eight yards high (only in most violent storms are waves observed whose height from crest to trough is 40 feet). I alone caught hold of a piece of timber; all the others that were on the ship perished. A wave cast me on an island. There I found figs and grapes, melons, fish, and birds. I ate, and of what I had taken too much I laid aside. Then I lighted a fire, and sacrificed to the gods.”

THE MINSTREL’S SONG (2150 B.C.).

“Song which is in the house of the late king Antef, and which is before the minstrel. It is a wise decree of that Good Lord, a perfect fate, that while one body passes away others remain, ever since the time of our ancestors! The gods that once lived (the dead kings) now repose in their tombs The mummies are buried. When houses are built, there is no room for them. What has become of them? I have heard the sayings of Imhotep and Hardedef (two sages), which are sung in numerous lays: ‘What are now their places? Their walls are fallen; they are no more, even as if they had never been.’ No one chants their good qualities or their deeds; no one decides that our hearts shall go where they have gone.

“Thou art in good health; thy heart revolts against the funeral rites. Follow thy heart while thou livest. Put perfumes on thy hair, don fine linen! Anoint thyself with the finest of the salves of the gods! Do more than thou hast hitherto done! Let not thy heart grow sore! Follow thy desire and thy happiness while thou dwellest on the earth, until that day comes for thee when men will pray, and the god whose heart no longer beats (Osiris) hears not those who pray! The lamentations will not rejoice the dead. Have a good time! Assuredly none take their possessions with them! Assuredly no one that hath gone hath yet returned!”—Wendel.

Golden Age of Egyptian Literature.—With the expulsion of the Hyksos by Theban kings (1530 B.C.), the New Empire began; it continued until about 1080 B.C., and was contemporaneous with the Golden Age of Egyptian letters. Under the New Empire, the Egyptian dominion was extended eastward into Asia, and far to the south in Ethiopia. Foreign successes kindled the native imagination; hence the general tone of gayety which pervades the literature of the period. Religious works naturally occupy the first place. They comprise commentaries on the older theological writings embodied in the Book of the Dead,[17] long rituals and liturgies, and numerous sublime hymns to the gods.

Papyrus, from the Collection of the New York Historical Society.

The secular literature is peculiarly brilliant. Magnificent hymns to the kings, legendary accounts of historical events like “The Taking of Joppe” and “The Expulsion of the Hyksos,” charmingly told fairy tales, accounts of travel and adventure, and spirited lyrics—give us an exalted opinion of the literary ability of Egyptian writers. Even an epic is not wanting, if we may so call the poetic description of the battle of Rameses II. with the Hittites. The inscriptions are of great value, for it is from them we have derived our knowledge of the history of the period. Both kings and private citizens have left coherent accounts. Nor was science neglected. Several medical papyri have been found, and in certain tombs have been preserved veritable treatises on astronomy and long astronomical tables. The style is attractive, clear, and vigorous, owing to the fact that the grammatical forms have increased in number, thus permitting a more easy and varied expression. (See Erman’s “Ægypten,” vol. ii., p. 442). Literary specimens follow:

HYMN TO THE SUN GOD RÂ.
(FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD.)

“Hail to thee who art Râ when thou risest, and Atum when thou settest! Thou risest, risest and glowest, glowest crowned as king of the gods! Thou art Lord of heaven and earth, creator of stars and men! Thou art the sole god who hath existed from the beginning, who hath made the lands and created men, who hath made the heavens and created the Nile, who hath made the waters and endowed with life all that therein is! Thou who hath built the hills and created men and the beasts of the field!”—Wendel.

The genius of the poets of the Golden Age may be estimated from the following verses discovered on a monumental tablet among the ruins of Thebes. They are represented as addressed by Amen-Râ (ah’men rah), the supreme god of that city, to Thothmes III., under whom (15th century B.C.) Egypt rose to the zenith of her military greatness, and, according to a popular saying of the day, “placed her frontier where it pleased herself.” The hymn is peculiarly beautiful in the original, by reason of the harmonious cadence of its periods, and that parallelism or “balance of clauses and ideas” which is largely characteristic of Oriental poetry.[18]

HYMN TO THOTHMES III.

“I am come—to give thee power to destroy the princes of Djah:[19]

I cast them beneath thy feet that follow with their peoples.

Like to the Lord of Light, I make them see thy glory.

Thou glowest as my image!

I am come—to give thee power to destroy the people of Asia;

Captive now thou dost lead the Syrian Bedouin chieftains;

Adornèd in thy majesty, I make them see thy glory,

Glittering in thine arms and fighting high in thy war-car.

I am come—to give thee power to trample on western nations;

Cyprus and Phœnicia are lying at thy mercy.

Like a bold young bull, I make them see thy glory,

Strong with piercing horns, whom none approach.

I am come—to give thee power to trample on those in their harbors;

Tremble for fear of thee the distant islands of Metjen.[20]

Like the dreaded crocodile, I make them see thy glory,

Lord of fear in the waters, whom none approach.”

It was by Thothmes III. that the obelisk conveyed from Alexandria to the United States and erected in Central Park, New York (1880), was inscribed with hieroglyphics and set up among “the images of On.” Rameses II. subsequently added to the inscription of Thothmes. (Read Dr. Moldehnke’s “The New York Obelisk.”)

AN EGYPTIAN EPIC.

Among the relics of this age of literary culture are several copies of an epic celebrating the prowess of Rameses the Great in a war with the Hittites—the only representative of its class in all the literature that has been recovered. It has been compared to the Iliad, but lacks many of the qualities which have rendered that poem immortal. The grand central scene, vividly portrayed by the hand of a master artist, discloses the king, forsaken by his cowardly troops in the heat of battle, calling on Amen for aid, and with the god’s assistance discomfiting single-handed the hostile multitude.

“How is this, father Amen? Doth the father forget his son? Naught have I done without thee. Did I not march at thy word? What would these Asiatics before Amen? Miserable he who knoweth not the god. Have I not reared to thee unnumbered monuments and filled them with booty? Shame on him who would scorn thy will! Hail to him who knoweth thee, Amen! I call on thee, my father.

I am in the midst of many peoples! I am alone, my infantry and charioteers have left me! When I called upon them, no one heard me. When I called upon them, I found that Amen was better for me than millions of foot-soldiers and thousands of charioteers, of brothers and sons united. Vain are the works of men; Amen is mightier. He is coming to me! He giveth me his hand! I take courage again! I shoot right and left. I am as a pestilence over them!”

THE TALE OF THE TWO BROTHERS.

One of the most beautiful of the old fairy tales is that bearing the title above. It sets forth the rustic life of two devoted brothers; the false accusation of one by the wife of the other; the flight of the accused after a warning given him by his faithful cattle; his pursuit by the elder brother, and his miraculous escape; the reunion of the brothers; many strange adventures, terminating in the elevation of the younger brother to the throne of Egypt, and of the elder to the proud position of hereditary prince.

It is a curious fact that, with few exceptions, we are left in ignorance of the names of the Egyptian authors. The papyri generally conclude with a remark to the effect that they have been copied at the instance of the royal scribes.

The Period of Decline began about 1080 B.C. Demotic literature contains but two noteworthy works—“The Romance of Setna,” a weird tale of magic, and a half-legendary history known as the “Demotic Chronicles.” Demotic fables, in which animals are represented as conversing, appear to have been imitations of Greek originals. The writings of this period are in the main religious.

Such is the literature which the sands of Egypt have yielded to modern research—a literature which, itself of greater antiquity, furnished models even to the nations that we call ancient. While these later nations, judging from the remains that have thus far come to our knowledge, certainly improved on their masters in artistic finish and grandeur of conception, it must be remembered that we have not yet fully sounded the depths of Egyptian literature. We know not what masterpieces may still lie hid beneath the sand, or bear the mummy company in some undiscovered tomb. We are, indeed, justified in expecting greater works from the land that was the fount of Greek inspiration—the dayspring of knowledge to the Chosen People; whose religion bears in many points a strange analogy to ours; whose lasting structures are emblematic of the soul’s immortality; and whose lotus-blossoms, reopening every morning, symbolize the resurrection from the night of death.

NOTES ON EGYPTIAN EDUCATION, ETC.

Egyptian education in the hands of state officials, who gave instruction in the duties of their several offices. In ancient times, boys born on the same day with a prince educated with him. Those that were to become scribes, sent to school at a very early age; the same advantages enjoyed by poorer pupils as by their richer fellows. No castes. After the children had learned to write, they were given old texts to copy in the form of letters, moral treatises, tales, hymns, etc. Thus they mastered the grammar of their language, and at the same time became acquainted with its literature. Schools dismissed at noon; boys employed during the afternoon in the practical work of the department. Corporal punishment in great repute. Students of theology afterward entered at temple schools. No mention made of the education of girls.

Particular attention bestowed on astronomy and elementary mathematics. Arithmetic and geometry taught; possibly the rudiments of algebra. Considerable progress made in medical science; Egyptian physicians versed in materia medica and physiology, and thoroughly familiar with anatomy. They were adepts in surgery, and practised specialties. Mummies found with gold fillings in their teeth, and bandaged as skilfully as by an expert of to-day.

The ancient Egyptians excelled all other nations in their fondness for recording. The chisel or reed ever busy. Red and black ink employed in inscribing papyri, the former marking the openings of paragraphs. Inks and colors kept in pots fitted in depressions in the oblong palettes.

Dancing, gymnastics, games of ball and draughts, fishing in preserves, or in the swamps of the Delta with hooks, nets, and spears, spearing the hippopotamus from canoes, and hunting wild fowl in the marshes—favorite pastimes. Ladies present at the sports and sumptuous banquets. A keen eye for humor manifested in the fondness of the Egyptians for caricature, from which even their representations of funeral ceremonies were not exempt.

ANCIENT GREECE
with the
COAST OF ASIA MINOR
Russell & Struthers, N.Y.

PART II.
GRECIAN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.
BIRTH OF GRECIAN LITERATURE.

Early Settlement of Greece.—While Chaldea and Assyria were rising to greatness, while Phœnicia was winning for herself maritime supremacy, and wonders in art and science were spreading the renown of Egypt throughout the earth, a simple agricultural people was quietly moving westward toward Greece and Italy. In very early times, Aryan tribes known as Pelasgic quitted their habitations in southwestern Bactria (Map, p. 15), and made their way through Persia and Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. Here, on rich tablelands irrigated by the head-waters of streams flowing into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, presumably among the gold-bearing mountains and vine-grown valleys of Phrygia (see Map), they cultivated their grain, pastured their sheep, made permanent settlements, and rapidly grew into a great nation. These Pelasgic tribes were the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans.

The same general causes that led to emigration from the mother-country crowded toward the coast communities of this Phrygian people, and ultimately obliged them to seek new homes in the west. Perhaps, paddling from island to island in rude galleys, some crossed the Æge’an; perhaps, passing the Hellespont, some picked their way through Thrace and Macedonia, entered the defiles of the northern mountains, and spread over Greece; while others, more adventurous, pushed their course still farther, and peopled the Italian peninsula.

The Pelasgic tribes were probably the first occupants of Greece and Italy. Earlier emigrants from Asia appear to have found all they desired in the accessible districts of central Europe, and not to have climbed the steep ranges that hemmed in those regions on the south. The Greeks themselves claimed with pride to have sprung from the earth; and a golden grasshopper, worn in the hair as an ornament by the Athenians, pointed to this belief in their autochthony.

The Hellenes.—Fresh bodies of Pelasgians continued to arrive from Asia Minor, until all Greece was populated with a thrifty race of husbandmen and shepherds. Upon this primitive Pelasgian stock was afterward engrafted a branch called Hellenic, identical with it in origin, but forced to a higher state of development in the garden of Asiatic culture, and ready to burst into blossom on the soil of Greece. The new-comers were the Helle’nes, a people of greater vigor, physical and intellectual. Mingling with their Pelasgian kinsmen in the Grecian peninsula, they formed a new nation, endowed with fresh life; and the Pelasgic dialect, modified and energized by their more cultivated tongue, was converted into Greek.

The Greeks had a popular proverb, do nothing too much, which they applied in writing as in acting. Pruning away too great exuberance and repressing the Oriental tendency to exaggerate, they reduced everything to the standard of a rigid but elegant correctness. More artistic than the Hindoos, less luxuriant in imagination but with a chaster and severer taste, they established a literature richly furnished in every department, whose influence can be traced in the works of genius that stand out in every age and country. As Professor Jebb says, “the thoughts of the great Greek thinkers have been bearing fruit in the world ever since they were first uttered.” (See Dr. Curtius’s “History of Greece.”)

Thus in Greece, Aryan energy, freed from the trammels of Oriental despotism, seems first to have found its true development. The facilities which this country enjoyed for intercourse with Egypt and Phœnicia, enabled it to draw from the learning of one, to copy the enterprise and adopt the inventions of the other. This accounts for its having been the seat of the earliest European civilization.

At a later period, we find the Hellenes separated into three great families—the Æolians, occupying generally the north of Greece; the Ionians, distributed over the central portions; and the Dorians, settled in the south (the Peloponnesus, island of Pelops). Connected with these three divisions were as many dialects—Æolic, Ionic, and Doric Greek—of which, Ionic was the softest and most polished. This Ionic, refined and perfected, became what is known as Attic Greek; it was the language of Athens in the golden age of her art and poetry, and for centuries was understood by the educated classes throughout a great part of the civilized world.

These Hellenic dialects were also spoken on the islands of the Ægean and the coast of Asia Minor; for the tide of emigration set back again toward the Asiatic shores, and Æolians, Ionians, and Dorians, returned in great colonies to the neighborhood of their early home.

Ancient Greek is the most musical language of the Indo-European group. Sanscrit indeed excels it in regularity, but offends the ear with its sameness, the constant recurrence of a sounds wearying the European reader. No such monotonous repetition mars the harmony of Greek, which, on the other hand, presents a pleasing variety in its vowel sounds, its numerous diphthongs, and consonant combinations. Nor is this variety to be wondered at, for tribes differing in their habits and intellectual traits, mingling on the shores of the Ægean, contributed different elements to the common language. Above all, the Greeks were gifted with a delicate ear, which led them, in the oral transmission of their earliest poetry, to soften all harshness in their tongue and make it melody itself.

In common with Sanscrit, Greek was well adapted to the formation of compound words by the combining of primitives; but this facility for combination was turned to account only so far as was consistent with clearness and taste; the unwieldy polysyllabic compounds of Sanscrit were wanting. The Greek rivals its Indian sister in luxuriance of inflection also, having five cases, three numbers, and three voices for the verb. Accents were used in later days to denote the peculiar key or tone of voice; for the Greeks appreciated the subtle difference between tone (accent) and quantity in pronunciation, a distinction unrecognized in modern languages.

Greek is universally admired for its dignity, versatility, and precision; its blending of strength and elegance, unity and variety. It is suited to all departments of composition; to the effective expression of the various emotions; to stately prose or simple verse. Its perfection at so early a period, particularly in view of the social condition of the people who spoke it, is a phenomenon which we vainly seek to explain.

The Greek Alphabet.—The Phœnician letters were adopted by the Greeks, legend ascribing their introduction to Cadmus, the storied founder of Thebes (1500 B.C.). Some changes were made in these; new characters were added by the Ionians; and about 400 B.C. the resulting alphabet, consisting of twenty-four letters, was officially adopted at Athens. The resemblance between the Greek and the Phœnician alphabet is obvious; see Table, p. 87.

That there was Pelasgian picture-writing in Greece before the Phœnician alphabet reached that country, is by no means improbable.

The Beginnings of Greek Poetry are found in the sacred ode, the metrical response of the oracle, the festal song, and the ballad immortalizing the deeds of heroes during the mythical ages. The art of poetry was coeval with the first settlement of the peninsula; but its higher development followed the transfusion of Hellenic genius into the older Pelasgian race.

The earliest forms of poetry were hymns to the deities. The religion of the Greeks was a worship of Nature. Imagination peopled every nook of their picturesque land with supernatural beings; and each was propitiated with song, from the wood-nymph supposed to reside in the spreading oak to the sun-god Apollo, who, with the Nine Muses, the goddesses of poetry, abode on snow-crowned Parnassus.

To Mother Earth (Deme’ter) were poured forth strains of glowing gratitude for her bounty; the Mother of the Gods (Cyb’ele) was worshipped with wilder verse, accompanied with the sound of cymbals and riotous dances; the god of wine (Diony’sus or Bacchus) was hymned with lively lays in praise of revelry; and so the burden of sacred song varied with the character of the divinity. When spring clothed the earth with beauty, the hymns were joyous; in autumn they breathed a spirit of sadness, and at the grape-harvest was sung a plaintive ditty, the Li’nus, as a coranach for the death of Nature. The perishing of vegetation before the blighting breath of approaching winter was symbolized by the fate of the beauteous youth Linus torn and devoured by furious dogs. Of similar allegorical significance were many of the hymns.

The delights and sorrows of domestic life also found utterance in verse; when the bride was escorted to her new home the nuptial song was sung, and for the dead the funeral dirge was chanted. At first this was no doubt done with solemn pomp, as a religious ceremony; but the tendency in Greece was to popularize song, and both dirge and bridal hymn in time lost their mere ritual complexion, and became changed in the mouths of the people into free outpourings of emotion.

The bard now aimed at entertaining his listeners; he filled an important place at banquets and festivals, where, in short poems, he chanted to the accompaniment of flute or lyre the adventures of heroes, or so transformed old traditions that he was looked upon as their maker (poie’tes, poet). All Greece honored him, regardless of his nationality. Whether Æolian, Dorian, or Ionian, he contributed equally to Hellenic fame, and was entitled to the sympathy and support of all Hellenes. Indeed, he was invested with a sacred character, for he was regarded as divinely inspired.

Thus was laid the foundation of Greek letters. From such rude beginnings, the Greek imagination, by strides unparalleled in history, mounted to the grandest heights ever attained in poetry. Moreover, to original Greek genius we owe the different varieties of literary composition,—epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, history, criticism, and oratory. Without the Grecian models, nowhere has marked superiority been attained; the originals themselves have never been surpassed.

Tradition has given us the names of many poets belonging to the fabulous age. (On the gods and men of the Heroic Period, read Gladstone’s “Juventus Mundi.”)

LEGENDARY POETS OF GREECE.

• Orpheus, the Thracian minstrel, inventor of religious poetry.
• Tham’yris, deprived of his sight and poetical talent for challenging the Muses to a trial of skill on the lyre.
• Eumolpus, a Thracian priest; reputed founder of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
• O’len, earliest prophet of Apollo.
• Chrysoth’emis, the Cretan.
• Musæus (inspired by the Muses), a son or disciple of Orpheus.
• Amphi’on, taught of the god Mercury; raised stones into the walls of Thebes by the strains of his lyre.
• Philammon, son of Apollo, and inventor of choral music.
• Pamphos, author of the first Linus.
• Olympus, introducer of the flute.
• Phemon’oe, first priestess at the Delphic shrine, inventor of hexameters.

CHAPTER II.
AGE OF EPIC POETRY.

HOMER AND HIS WORKS.

Homer.—The oldest literary productions of Greece extant are the poems of Homer, the most ancient monuments of Aryan poetry west of the Persian Gulf. About 1000 B.C., among the legion of ballad-writers, the reciters of battle-songs, myths, and traditions (known as Rhapsodists—ode-stitchers), there arose an Ionian poet who soon towered head and shoulders above them all—a giant among the giants of literature—Homer, of unique genius and world-wide fame.

As to Homer’s life, we must ever remain in the dark. For the honor of giving him birth, seven cities of antiquity disputed,[21] Smyrna seeming to have the best claim. If we may believe tradition, he gave early evidence of his divine powers. Chance took him on a sea-voyage, during which he visited many countries, among them Ithaca, the home of Ulysses, one of his heroes. On the island of Chi’os, his favorite resort, he is thought to have written his epics the Il’iad and Od’yssey, the first in early manhood, the second in old age.

Legend relates that Homer, twice warned by an oracle to beware of the young men’s riddle, went ashore one day on I’os, an island of the Cyc’lades, and there, noticing some boys who had been fishing, asked them, “What luck?” “What we caught we left, what we could not catch we carried with us,” was the reply. Unable to guess the riddle, the old poet died of vexation. According to another account, disease carried him off. He was buried on the sea-shore at Ios, where in after years this epitaph marked his tomb:—

“Here Homer the Divine, in earthy bed,

Poet of heroes, rests his sacred head.”

Homer’s Style.—Homer’s Iliad was the first Greek poem in which were combined ingenuity of plot, unity of subject, and a faithful delineation of character throughout. He deals with heroes, but they are men of like passions with ourselves. The Odyssey, if less sublime, in its pathos and fine touches of nature shows the same rich gifts of genius as the older poem of loftier flight. Both works are written in hexameter verse, the true metre of the ancient epic.

The distinguishing features of Homer’s style are clearness, a vigor which makes us feel we are in the presence of a master, and a childlike simplicity that well accords with his sublime themes. His fidelity to nature is matched only by Shakespeare’s; and imagery, profuse as it is rich, life-like, and appropriate, lights up every page. Simile is Homer’s own figure; and transporting pictures flash ever and anon across the scene, called up by his magic wand. For example:—

“As when, high-fed with grain, a stall-bound steed

Snaps his strong cord, and flies, from bondage freed,

Strikes with resounding hoof the earth, and flies

Where the wide champaign spread before him lies,

Seeks the remembered haunts, on fire to lave

His glowing limbs, and dash amid the wave,

High rears his crest, and tossing with disdain

Wide o’er his shoulders spreads his stream of mane,

And fierce in beauty, graceful in his speed,

Snuffs his known fellows in the distant mead:

Thus Hector—”

“As a young olive, in some sylvan scene,

Crowned by fresh fountains with eternal green,

Lifts its gay head in snowy flowerets fair,

And plays and dances to the gentle air;

When lo! by blasts uprooted, whirled around,

Low lies the plant, extended on the ground:

Thus in his beauty young Euphorbus lay.”

Homer astonishes us with his universal knowledge. He names every part of a vessel technically with all the accuracy of a veteran seaman; he is as conversant with the details of a sacrifice as the officiating priest; he describes a conflict between two warriors with the precision of a master of fence; he sketches the forms and usages of palaces as if born and bred in kings’ courts, and is equally familiar with the manners of the meanest hind. Everywhere he is at home.

Other poets[22] may be stars in the firmament, but Homer, as Longi’nus says, is the sun in the zenith. His poetry is all nature, life, action, fire. It breathes an atmosphere of pure morality, and furnishes ideal characters long held up as models to the Grecian youth, who learned his verses by heart and in some cases could even repeat his entire poems. Human genius has left on earth at intervals of centuries a few imperishable monuments; none nobler among these than the marvellous Greek epics.

Plan of the Iliad.—The Iliad, a poem of twenty-four books, is a tale of the siege of Troy (Il’ium), a city on the coast of Asia Minor (probable date of the siege, 1194-1184 B.C.). The cause of the war was the perfidious conduct of Paris, son of Priam, the Trojan monarch. Hospitably entertained at the court of Menela’us, king of Sparta, he eloped with Helen, the wife of his host, the most beautiful of women, and carried her off to Asia with the treasures of her husband. To avenge this outrage, Menelaus, supported by Nestor the sage of Py’los, called upon the Greek princes, collected an armament of a thousand ships, the command of which was conferred upon his brother Agamemnon, and set sail for Troy. A war of ten years followed, which ended in the capture of the city by stratagem, the slaughter of Priam and his family, and the enslavement of many of the Trojans.

The special subject of the Iliad is the wrath of the Thessalian Achilles (a-kil’leez), the leading warrior of the Grecian host, and the time of the action is near the close of the war. Agamemnon, compelled to restore to her father, a priest of Apollo, the captive maid Chryse’is who had fallen to his share, seizes upon Brise’is, a virgin allotted to Achilles. A quarrel results, and Achilles withdraws from the camp.

Emboldened by his absence, the Trojans redouble their efforts. Misfortunes to the Greek cause follow; and though many heroes second only to Achilles—the stalwart Ajax, the cunning Ulysses, king of Ithaca, Menelaus, and Diomede—exert themselves to turn the tide of battle, the Greek host is made keenly to feel the loss of its puissant champion. Jupiter, king of heaven, sides with the Trojans; and Hector “of the dancing helm-crest” drives the besiegers to their ships.

At length Achilles, still unwilling to join in the fray himself, allows Patro’clus, his bosom-friend, to lead his Myrmidons to the rescue. Arrayed in the armor of the Thessalian chief, Patroclus puts to flight the deceived Trojans; but, pursuing them too far, receives a death-wound from the hand of Hector. The news of his friend’s fall fills Achilles with thirst for revenge. A reconciliation is effected with Agamemnon; Achilles returns to the field; the enemy are thrown into confusion; and Hector, pierced by his spear, is dragged in triumph at Achilles’ chariot-wheels. The wrath of the Greek hero is finally appeased by the sacrifice of twelve Trojan captives at the funeral of Patroclus.

To redeem the body of his son, old Priam, alone and unarmed, enters the Grecian camp, is well received by Achilles, who melts into pity at the sight of the grief-stricken suppliant, accomplishes his purpose, and returns to Troy with Hector’s corpse. This meeting between Achilles and Priam is counted among the finest scenes.—The Iliad closes with the obsequies of Hector. (See Gladstone’s “Homer and the Homeric Age.”)

Achilles, the central figure of the poem, over whose grave Alexander wept jealous tears, was the impersonation of youthful beauty and physical prowess. Brave, generous, passionate, devoted in his friendship but awful in his implacable anger, in him we are brought face to face with the ideal of Greek chivalry. Hector, the magnanimous Trojan hero, was the type of moral courage and domestic virtue. He appears as the affectionate husband, the loving father, kind even to fallen Helen. Homer has painted with exquisite touch a parting scene between Hector and his consort Androm’ache, possessed of every wifely virtue. This passage, herewith presented, is pronounced the most beautiful in the Iliad.

PARTING OF HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.

“Hector left in haste

The mansion, and retraced his way between

The rows of stately dwellings, traversing

The mighty city. When at length he reached

The Scæan gates, that issue on the field,

His spouse, the nobly dowered Andromache,

Came forth to meet him—daughter of the prince

Eëtion, who, among the woody slopes

Of Placos, in the Hypoplacian town

Of Thebè,[23] ruled Cilicia and her sons,

And gave his child to Hector great in arms.

She came attended by a maid, who bore

A tender child—a babe too young to speak—

Upon her bosom; Hector’s only son,

Beautiful as a star, whom Hector called

Scamandrius, but all else Astyanax,—

The city’s lord,—since Hector stood the sole

Defence of Troy. The father on his child

Looked with a silent smile. Andromache

Pressed to his side meanwhile, and all in tears

Clung to his hand, and, thus beginning, said:—

‘Too brave! thy valor yet will cause thy death.

Thou hast no pity on thy tender child,

Nor me, unhappy one, who soon must be

Thy widow. All the Greeks will rush on thee

To take thy life. A happier lot were mine,

If I must lose thee, to go down to earth,

For I shall have no hope when thou art gone,—

Nothing but sorrow. Father have I none,

And no dear mother. Great Achilles slew

My father, when he sacked the populous town

Of the Cilicians,—Thebè with high gates.

‘Twas there he smote Eëtion, yet forbore

To make his arms a spoil; he dared not that,

But burned the dead with his bright armor on,

And raised a mound above him. Mountain nymphs,

Daughters of ægis-bearing[24] Jupiter,

Came to the spot and planted it with elms.

Seven brothers had I in my father’s house,

And all went down to Hades in one day;

Achilles the swift-footed slew them all

Among their slow-paced bullocks and white sheep.

My mother, princess on the woody slopes

Of Placos, with his spoils he bore away,

And only for large ransom gave her back.

But her Diana, archer-queen, struck down

Within her father’s palace. Hector, thou

Art father and dear mother now to me,

And brother and my youthful spouse besides.

In pity keep within the fortress here,

Nor make thy child an orphan nor thy wife

A widow.’

Then answered Hector, great in war: ‘All this

I bear in mind, dear wife; but I should stand

Ashamed before the men and long-robed dames

Of Troy, were I to keep aloof and shun

The conflict, coward-like. Not thus my heart

Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare

And strike among the foremost sons of Troy,

Upholding my great father’s fame and mine;

Yet well in my undoubting mind I know

The day shall come in which our sacred Troy,

And Priam, and the people over whom

Spear-bearing Priam rules, shall perish all.

But not the sorrows of the Trojan race,

Nor those of Hecuba[25] herself, nor those

Of royal Priam, nor the woes that wait

My brothers many and brave,—who all at last,

Slain by the pitiless foe, shall lie in dust,—

Grieve me so much as thine, when some mailed Greek

Shall lead thee weeping hence, and take from thee

Thy day of freedom. Thou in Argos then

Shalt, at another’s bidding, ply the loom,

And from the fountain of Messeis draw

Water, or from the Hypereian spring,

Constrained, unwilling try thy cruel lot.

And then shall some one say who sees thee weep,

“This was the wife of Hector, most renowned

Of the horse-taming Trojans, when they fought

Around their city.” So shall some one say,

And thou shalt grieve the more, lamenting him

Who haply might, have kept afar the day

Of thy captivity. Oh! let the earth

Be heaped above my head in death, before

I hear thy cries as thou art borne away!’

So speaking, mighty Hector stretched his arms

To take the boy; the boy shrank crying back

To his fair nurse’s bosom, scared to see

His father helmeted in glittering brass,

And eying with affright the horse-hair plume

That grimly nodded from the lofty crest.

At this both parents in their fondness laughed,

And hastily the mighty Hector took

The helmet from his brow, and laid it down

Gleaming upon the ground; and, having kissed

His darling son and tossed him up in play,

Prayed thus to Jove, and all the gods of heaven:—

‘O Jupiter and all ye deities,

Vouchsafe that this my son may yet become

Among the Trojans eminent like me,

And nobly rule in Ilium. May they say,

“This man is greater than his father was!”

When they behold him from the battle-field

Bring back the bloody spoil of the slain foe,—

That so his mother may be glad at heart.’

So speaking, to the arms of his dear spouse

He gave the boy; she on her fragrant breast

Received him, weeping as she smiled. The chief

Beheld, and, moved with tender pity, smoothed

Her forehead gently with his hand and said:—

‘Sorrow not thus, beloved one, for me.

No living man can send me to the shades

Before my time; no man of woman born,

Coward or brave, can shun his destiny.

But go thou home, and tend thy labors there,—

The web, the distaff,—and command thy maids

To speed the work. The cares of war pertain

To all men born in Troy, and most to me.’

Thus speaking, mighty Hector took again

His helmet, shadowed with the horse-hair plume,

While homeward his beloved consort went,

Oft looking back and shedding many tears.

Soon was she in the spacious palace-halls

Of the man-queller Hector. There she found

A troop of maidens,—with them all she shared

Her grief; and all in his own house bewailed

The living Hector whom they thought no more

To see returning from the battle-field,

Safe from the rage and weapons of the Greeks.”

Bryant.

The ancients implicitly believed the story of the Iliad, but modern scepticism has doubted its truth and questioned the authenticity of the poem itself. The German critic Wolf and others have even gone so far as to deny that any such person as Homer ever existed, contending that the name means simply a fitter together or compiler, and that the great epic is a mosaic of romantic legends by different rhapsodists, for years kept from perishing merely by oral repetition.

Such, however, is the continuity of the narrative, the identity of style, the consistency in carrying out the several characters, that this theory, ingeniously as it has been urged, lacks credibility. We see no reason to doubt that, despite a few minor discrepancies, one great intellect gave birth in the main to both these epics; that whatever foundations for them may have been laid in previous ballads, the glorious superstructures were reared by one master-builder. It is easier to believe that there was one transcendent genius, than that there were half a dozen of uniform poetic power, competent to have had a hand in works so glorious—works displaying perfect unity of design, and taste so faultless that from them, as standards, have been deduced the very principles of criticism and laws of epic poetry.

Besides the internal evidence of its authenticity, the historical facts woven into the Iliad have received unexpected confirmation in the discoveries of Doctor Schliemann, a German explorer who claims to have unearthed the Ilium of Homer, and to have found among its ruins gold and amber ornaments once worn by King Priam.

Plan of the Odyssey.—In the Odyssey, divided like the Iliad into twenty-four books, Homer has immortalized the story of the return-voyage of Ulysses (Odysseus in Greek) from Troy to Ithaca. After a series of remarkable adventures and hair-breadth escapes, the hero is cast on the lovely island of the sea-nymph Calypso, who, becoming enamored of him, detains him for seven years. During this time, a number of insolent suitors force themselves upon Ulysses’ faithful wife Penelope, take up their residence at her court, and there lead a riotous life, hoping that the queen will bestow her hand on one of them and thus make him lord of Ithaca. They even plan the murder of her son Telem’achus.

Admonished by Jupiter, Calypso reluctantly allows Ulysses to depart, and he finally reaches Ithaca in safety. Disguised as a beggar, he enters his palace after an absence of twenty years, to endure the insults of the suitors, but to concert with his son for their overthrow.

On the following day, a great festival is held, and Penelope agrees to give her hand to him who shall send an arrow from Ulysses’ bow through a row of twelve rings. The suitors try in turn without success; but the beggar, obtaining possession of the bow, draws the shaft to its head and accomplishes the feat. Then turning on the trembling suitors, he showers his arrows among them, and none escape. The true-hearted Penelope is restored to him whom she had wept as lost, and husband and wife sit down together to talk over the sorrows of the past.

“She told him of the scorn and wrong

She long had suffered in her house,

From the detested suitor throng,

Each wooing her to be his spouse;

How, for their feasts, her sheep and kine

Were slaughtered, while they quaffed her wine

In plentiful carouse.

And he, the noble wanderer, spoke

Of many a deed of peril sore,

Of men who fell beneath his stroke,

Of all the sorrowing tasks he bore.

She listened with delighted ear;

Sleep never came her eyelids near,

Till all the tale was o’er.”

Ulysses next discovers himself to his father; and they two, with their friends, succeed in putting down the adherents of the suitors and restoring peace to the kingdom.

Among the most beautiful passages of the Odyssey is that in which the poet introduces us to the happy household of Alcinoüs, king of an island on which Ulysses was thrown. Charming is the simple sketch he gives of the unaffected princess of this isle, just before her marriage, driving her maidens to the river in her father’s chariot, to wash the robes of state, lunch, and disport upon the bank while the clothes are drying. The royal mother superintends the weaving, the royal daughter the washing. We quote Homer’s description of the

PALACE AND GARDEN OF ALCINOÜS.

“Ulysses, then, toward the palace moved

Of King Alcinoüs, but immersed in thought

Stood first and paused, ere with his foot he pressed

The brazen threshold; for a light he saw,

As of the sun or moon, illuming clear

The palace of Phæacia’s mighty king.

Walls plated bright with brass on either side

Stretched from the portal to the interior house,

With azure cornice crowned; the doors were gold,

Which shut the palace fast; silver the posts

Reared on a brazen threshold, and above,

The lintels, silver architraved with gold.

Mastiffs, in gold and silver, lined the approach

On either side, by art celestial framed

Of Vulcan, guardians of Alcinoüs’ gate

Forever, unobnoxious to decay.

Sheer from the threshold to the inner house

Fixed thrones the walls, through all their length, adorned,

With mantles overspread of subtlest warp

Transparent, work of many a female hand.

On these the princes of Phæacia sat,

Holding perpetual feasts, while golden youths

On all the sumptuous altars stood, their hands

With burning torches charged, which, night by night,

Shed radiance over all the festive throng.

Full fifty female menials served the king

In household offices; the rapid mills

These turning, pulverize the mellowed grain;

Those, seated orderly, the purple fleece

Wind off, or ply the loom, restless as leaves

Of lofty poplars fluttering in the breeze;

Bright as with oil the new-wrought texture shone.

Without the court, and to the gates adjoined,

A spacious garden lay, fenced all around

Secure, four acres measuring complete.

There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree,

Pomegranate, pear, the apple blushing bright,

The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth.

Those fruits nor winter’s cold nor summer’s heat

Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang

Perennial, whose unceasing zephyr breathes

Gently on all, enlarging these, and those

Maturing genial; in an endless course

Pears after pears to full dimensions swell,

Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again

Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped)

The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.

There too, well-rooted, and of fruit profuse,

His vineyard grows; part, wide-extended, basks

In the sun’s beams; the arid level glows;

In part they gather, and in part they tread

The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes

Here put their blossom forth, there gather fast

Their blackness. On the garden’s verge extreme

Flowers of all hues smile all the year, arranged

With neatest art judicious, and amid

The lovely scene two fountains welling forth,

One visits, into every part diffused,

The garden ground, the other soft beneath

The threshold steals into the palace court,

Whence every citizen his vase supplies.

Such were the ample blessings on the house

Of King Alcinoüs by the gods bestowed.”—Cowper.

Minor Poems of Homer.—The Iliad and the Odyssey are the only authentic productions of Homer. To their author, however, have been attributed about thirty hymns and several minor poems, which have little claim to so distinguished an origin. Of these, “the Margites,” a satire on a blockhead who knew much “but everything knew ill,” was probably the work of some clever Athenian in an age when epic poetry was a thing of the past; the poem is no longer extant.

“The Battle of the Frogs and Mice,” a mock heroic of comparatively modern birth, is still preserved and appreciated. It is a witty burlesque on the Iliad (perhaps the earliest burlesque extant), written in a bold and flowing style. The plot is brief. A mouse, Crumb-snatcher, son of the Mice-king, flying from an enemy, reaches a pool over which a courteous frog, Puff-cheek, undertakes to carry him. But during the passage a water-snake appears; the frightened frog dives to escape his foe, and thoughtlessly leaves his newly-made friend to drown. The mice gather to avenge the loss of their prince; a great battle ensues, and but for the interference of Jupiter the frogs would have been annihilated.

The so-called Homeric Hymns, which the ancients believed to be the work of Homer, if somewhat inferior in age to the Iliad and Odyssey, are undoubtedly older than the pieces named above. Those addressed to Apollo, Mercury, Venus, and Ceres, the finest in the collection, are regular poems of some length; the others are simple eulogies or brief preludes to longer pieces. The Hymn to Venus has a tenderness and warmth not unworthy of Homer. The one in honor of Ceres relates the abduction of her daughter Pros’erpine by Pluto, king of the lower world, the mother’s search for the stolen maiden, her anger on discovering the ravisher, and the final arrangement that the goddess shall enjoy the society of her daughter during two-thirds of the year. As a favorable specimen of its style, we cite the lines that follow:—

THE ABDUCTION OF PROSERPINE.

“In Nysia’s vale, with nymphs a lovely train,

Sprung from the hoary father of the main,

Fair Proserpine consumed the fleeting hours

In pleasing sports, and plucked the gaudy flowers.

Around them wide the flamy crocus glows,

Through leaves of verdure blooms the opening rose;

The hyacinth declines his fragrant head,

And purple violets deck th’ enamelled mead.

The fair Narcissus far above the rest,

By magic formed, in beauty rose confessed.

So Jove, t’ ensnare the virgin’s thoughtless mind,

And please the ruler of the shades, designed.

He caused it from the opening earth to rise,

Sweet to the scent, alluring to the eyes.

Never did mortal or celestial power

Behold such vivid tints adorn a flower.

From the deep root a hundred branches sprung,

And to the winds ambrosial odors flung;

Which, lightly wafted on the wings of air,

The gladdened earth and heaven’s wide circuit share.

The joy-dispensing fragrance spreads around,

And ocean’s briny swell with smiles is crowned.

Pleased at the sight, nor deeming danger nigh,

The fair beheld it with desiring eye:

Her eager hand she stretched to seize the flower,

(Beauteous illusion of the ethereal power!)

When, dreadful to behold, the rocking ground

Disparted—widely yawned a gulf profound!

Forth rushing from the black abyss, arose

The gloomy monarch of the realm of woes,

Pluto, from Saturn sprung. The trembling maid

He seized, and to his golden car conveyed.

Borne by immortal steeds the chariot flies:

And thus she pours her supplicating cries:—

‘Assist, protect me, thou who reign’st above,

Supreme and best of gods, paternal Jove!’

But ah! in vain the hapless virgin rears

Her wild complaint: nor god nor mortal hears!

Not to the white-armed nymphs with beauty crowned,

Her loved companions, reached the mournful sound.”

Hole.

There are also various fragments styled Homeric, supposed to have been dropped from the poet’s genuine or spurious works. Among these is the beautiful couplet quoted by Plato:—

“Asked and unasked, thy blessings give, O Lord!

The evil, though we ask it, from us ward.”

Cyclic Poets.—After the death of Homer, a host of imitators sprung up in Greece and Asia Minor. Rhapsodists by profession, as they wandered among the Grecian cities reciting the Homeric poems, their attention was naturally directed to epic composition, and they sought to supply in verse like Homer’s what the Iliad and Odyssey had left untold. Confining themselves to the Cycle (circle) of the Trojan War, they were called Cyc’lic poets.

One bard sung of the preparations made by the Grecian chiefs and the events of the war prior to Achilles’ withdrawal; two others took up the narrative where the Iliad left it, and described the sack of Troy; a fourth celebrated the return voyages of the Greek heroes; a fifth supplemented the Odyssey with the later history of Ulysses. Fragments only of these Cyclic epics survive.

HESIOD AND HIS WORKS.

Hesiod.—Homer was an Ionian of Asia Minor. Shortly after his time, or, as some think, contemporaneously with him, a new school of epic poetry appeared in the mother-country. Its founder was Hesiod, who, like Homer, wrote in the Ionic dialect.

Hesiod was born at Ascra in Bœotia, and brought up in the midst of rural life at the base of Mount Helicon. Here first he held free converse with the Muses. On his father’s death, he was defrauded of his portion of the estate by his younger brother Perses, who bribed the judges charged with making the division. Hesiod felt the wrong keenly, yet seems to have regarded his unnatural brother with fraternal interest; for one object of his poem entitled “Works and Days,” was to reclaim Perses from dissolute improvidence and incite him to a life of industry.

The first portion of this work is devoted to moral lessons; some in a proverbial form, and others illustrated by narratives and fables. The latter part contains practical directions for the husbandman, and also treats of the art of navigation, important to the Bœotian farmer because much of his produce was shipped to other countries. The whole abounds in excellent precepts for every-day life, and forms the earliest specimen of didactic poetry among the Greeks. For ages its lines were committed to memory and recited as part of the course of ethics in their schools.

FROM HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS.

RIGHT AND WRONG.

“Wrong, if he yield to its abhorred control,

Shall pierce like iron to the poor man’s soul:

Wrong weighs the rich man’s conscience to the dust,

When his foot stumbles on the way unjust.

Far different, is the path, a path of light,

That guides the feet to equitable right:

The end of righteousness, enduring long,

Exceeds the short prosperity of wrong.

The fool by suffering his experience buys;

The penalty of folly makes him wise.

But they who never from the right have strayed,

Who as the citizen the stranger aid,

They and their cities flourish: genial Peace

Dwells in their borders; and their youth increase:

Nor Jove, whose radiant eyes behold afar,

Hangs forth in heaven the signs of grievous war.

Nor scathe nor famine on the righteous prey;

Feasts, strewn by earth, employ their easy day:

Rich are their mountain oaks; the topmost trees

With clustering acorns full, the trunks with hiving bees.

Still flourish they, nor tempt with ships the main;

The fruits of earth are poured from every plain.

But o’er the wicked race, to whom belong

The thought of evil, and the deed of wrong,

Saturnian Jove, of wide beholding eyes,

Bids the dark signs of retribution rise.

The god sends down his angry plagues from high,

Famine and pestilence: in heaps they die.

Again, in vengeance of his wrath he falls

On their great hosts, and breaks their tottering walls;

Arrests their navies on the ocean’s plain,

And whelms their strength with mountains of the main.”

Elton.

SOME OF HESIOD’S PROVERBS.

‘Than wife that’s good man finds no greater gain,

But feast-frequenting mates are simply bane.

Invisible, the gods are ever nigh.

Senseless is he who dares with power contend.

Know then this awful truth: it is not given

To elude the wisdom of omniscient Heaven.

Toil, and the slothful man shall envy thee.

The more children, the more cares.

Sometimes a day is a step-mother, sometimes a mother.

Whoever forgeth for another ill,

With it himself is overtaken still.

The procrastinator has ever to contend with loss.

The idler never shall his garners fill.

The lips of moderate speech with grace are hung.

When on your home falls unforeseen distress,

Half-clothed come neighbors; kinsmen stay to dress.

Justice is a virgin pure.

The road to vice is broad and easy; that of virtue, difficult, long, and steep

Fools! not to know how better for the soul,

An honest half than an ill-gotten whole.

Oh! gorged with gold, ye kingly judges hear!

Make straight your paths; your crooked judgments fear.

How richer he who dines on herbs with health

Of heart, than knaves with all their wines and wealth.

He who nor knows himself, nor will take rule

From those who do, is either knave or fool.”

Next in importance to the “Works and Days” is “the Theogony,” devoted to the genealogy and history of the Grecian gods, thirty thousand in number. Whatever interest this poem may have possessed for the believer in the Greek mythology, to the reader of the present day it is for the most part tedious, though relieved by occasional grand descriptions of battles between the celestial personages. “The Shield of Hercules” also bears the name of Hesiod; and of works ascribed to him, but not now extant, there are about a dozen.

Hesiod mentions a poetical contest between himself and another, which took place at the funeral of Amphid’amas, king of Eubœa, and in which he obtained a tripod as a prize. Tradition mentions Homer as his competitor on that occasion, and even gives the inscription placed on the tripod by the victor:—

“This Hesiod vows to th’ Heliconian Nine,

In Chalcis won, from Homer the divine.”

But this part of the story rests on insufficient evidence.

Hesiod is said to have been slain, during a visit to the Locrian town of Œnoë, by two brothers, in revenge for an insult offered to their sister by Hesiod’s companion, which caused her to destroy herself. The poet’s body, thrown into the sea, was brought to shore by his dog, or as some say by dolphins. Thereupon the indignant people put the murderers to death and razed their dwellings to the ground—an incident which shows the sacredness attached to the vocation of the bard in those early times.

Though Hesiod ranks far below Homer, and indeed is often commonplace, yet at times his style exhibits enthusiasm and even rises to sublimity. We must respect him for the pure morality of his teachings.

POETS OF THE EPIC CYCLE.

• Arcti’nus of Mile’tus.
  His poem of 9,100 verses had Memnon, an Ethiopian chief, for its hero. It treated of the part taken in the Trojan War by the Amazons, who arrived after Hector’s funeral; the death of their queen, Penthesile’a, at the hand of Achilles; the fall of Achilles himself; and the sack of Troy.
• Les’ches of Mytile’ne.
  Author of the Little Iliad, a supplement to the greater work of that name; it took up the narrative where Homer leaves off, and carried it to the fall of Troy.
• Stasi’nus of Cyprus.
  Wrote the Cypria, in eleven books, narrating the events that preceded the Trojan War, and the incidents of the first nine years of the siege.
• A’gias the Trœzenian.
  His epic in five books, called Nostoi (the Returns), was descriptive of the home-voyages of the Greek heroes.
• Eu’gamon of Cyre’ne.
  The Telegonia, a continuation of the Odyssey to the death of Ulysses, who falls by the hand of Teleg’onus, his son by Cir’ce.

NOTES ON GREEK WRITING, ETC.

The language of epic poetry perhaps once the common tongue of the people, and merely elaborated by the bards. The art of writing, old in Greece; while there is no positive evidence of its being known before 800 B.C., the historian Herodotus (450 B.C.) speaks as if it had been familiar to his countrymen for hundreds of years. Homer’s epics, though by some thought to have been handed down by oral repetition, probably written on metallic or wooden tablets by their author. Hesiod’s works originally committed to leaden tables and deposited in the temple of the Bœotian Muses.

Greek papyrus-factories on the Nile, 650 B.C. Writing first extensively used by priests and bards, particularly at the temple of Delphi.

---

(The student is further recommended to read Cox’s “Mythology of the Aryan Nations,” vol. ii., Harrison’s “Myths of the Odyssey,” Coleridge’s “Minor Poems of Homer,” Tyler’s “Theology of the Greek Poetry,” and Mahaffy’s “History of Classical Greek Literature” vol. i., and “Social Life in Greece.”)