Ever since I have known enough about Greek literature to form an opinion of my own on its merits, it has been a matter of surprise to me that the authors who flourished in the century or two immediately preceding and succeeding the Christian era, are treated with so much neglect. The histories of Greek literature, whose name is legion, frequently end with Grecian independence; or if they continue the subject some centuries longer, treat the later periods in a half-hearted and perfunctory manner, as if they were deserving of nothing better. While it is true, that in some departments the field is relatively infertile, there are many writers well worth a careful study, and several eminently so. The storm and stress period is over; the centuries of vigorous productions well-nigh past; yet the Greek mind is not dead; the field of authorship still bears many fine ears and occasionally a large sheaf for the careful gleaner. The times that could produce a Polybius, a Plutarch, an Epictetus, an Arrian, a Dion Chrysostomus, a Lucian, to say nothing of Josephus and Philo, together with others, a score or more in number, cannot justly be charged with intellectual stagnation. If the form in which the later writers express their thoughts has no longer the elegance, nor the thoughts themselves the profundity, of their predecessors, they are far from being unworthy of painstaking study. If men reflected less, they did more, or were at least active in a larger sphere. Greeks were now to be found in all parts of the civilized world; they still provided its intellectual nourishment; Athens was still its university and it is of the Greeks of these centuries more than of the earlier that Horace could say,
Graeca capta ferum victorem cepit et artes
Intulit agresti Latio.
Greek culture had become so widespread that a sojourn in Athens was no longer necessary for those who were ambitious to learn the language in its purest form. Though this city was still looked upon with a certain filial regard, half a score of rivals had sprung up in three continents that at times seriously threatened its prestige. The centuries that meet at the birth of Christ are the link that unites the golden age of Greek literature with the Renaissance. In them was coined much of the small change of Greek thought, which was by reason of its form the more widely circulated. That much of it was silver, so to speak, only made it the more generally available.
But while the writings of these three or four centuries have suffered greatly from neglect at the hands of the moderns, the language in its narrower sense, except that of the New Testament, has been almost wholly ignored. It needs but a brief examination of the current Greek dictionaries to convince the student that here is an ample field for profitable work. Even the great Thesaurus of Stephanus often leaves one sadly in the lurch; besides, it is both too extensive and too expensive for general use. What we need is a careful lexicographical and grammatical study of the individual authors and the presentation of the results in as succinct a form as possible.
It is a pleasure to note the signs of a revival in this quarter—for that it is not a misnomer to speak of a revival will be evident to those who know that the reader of some of the authors above named, together with others, is largely compelled to rely on texts that are more than half a century old, in some cases much more. In this laudable work of rediscovery, Professor Mahaffy in Great Britain, and Professor Krumbacher in Germany, may be regarded as the leaders. The former, by his various works upon the Greeks under Roman sway, and the latter by his masterly Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur and his Byzantinische Zeitschrift have done more than any two writers in the present century to awaken an interest in a subject that has long been in a comatose condition. The present volume, though bearing upon the general theme, is concerned with but a small portion of it. I have tried to throw a little light upon two authors, in whose writings are many passages that put them in some sort of relation to nascent Christianity. While it is almost absolutely certain that neither Seneca nor Plutarch had any knowledge of the new doctrines first preached in their time, it ought surely to be a matter of interest to every thinking man to note how closely the best that is in the old philosophy approached the new religion; or, to state the case somewhat differently, that the old philosophy and the new religion are in many points identical.
The French have, almost from the beginning of their national literature, been ardent admirers of Plutarch. Amyot reduced some of his precepts to rhyme in order that they might the more readily be taught to children, and regarded his writings as more profitable than any other except the Scriptures. Gui-Patin makes Pliny, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Seneca constitute an entire family,—father, mother, older and younger brother—and thus in a sense represent the whole circle of literature. Rollin copies his Parallel Lives almost literally into his Ancient History. Rousseau cites him among the few authors that he read in his old age. He is the last consolation of St. Pierre. Laharpe regards him as by nature the most moral man that ever lived; and Joubert calls him the Herodotus of Philosophy, and deems his Lives the wisdom of antiquity in its entirety. Montaigne says, “I never settled myself to the reading of any authors but Plutarch and Seneca.” Again, “Plutarch had rather we should applaud his judgment than commend his knowledge, and had rather leave us with an appetite to read more, than glutted with that we have already read. He knew very well that a man may say too much even upon the best subjects, and that Alexandrides did justly reproach him who made very elegant but too long speeches to the Ephori, when he said: ‘O stranger, thou speakest the things thou oughtest to speak, but not after the manner thou shouldst speak them.’” Elsewhere he recurs to the subject with these words, “As to what concerns my other reading that mixes a little more profit with the pleasure and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch and Seneca. Both of them have this great convenience suited to my humor, that the knowledge I there seek is discoursed in some pieces that do not require any great trouble of reading long, of which I am incapable.” In his Essays, Montaigne refers to or quotes Plutarch more than two hundred times, and Seneca almost as often. So far as Plutarch’s Lives are concerned, the translation published by Jacques Amyot, bishop of Auxerre, in 1559, is still regarded as a masterpiece. This version is of special interest to English-speaking people, because from it Sir Thomas North made his translation, published some twenty years later, and Shakespeare, in turn, took the material for his plays dealing with antique life. Of later English translations, that of the Langhorne is undoubtedly the most popular, though the one known as Dryden’s, albeit he had little to do with it, as revised by A. H. Clough, is much read. That of Stewart and Long is not generally known. There seems to be no English translation of Plutarch’s Moral Writings except that made by a number of Oxford scholars some two centuries since and edited by Professor Goodwin. The German version made by Kaltwasser just one hundred years ago, is an excellent piece of work. The Lives have been frequently translated.
About sixty miles northwest of the city of Athens near the road leading from Delphi to Lebadeia, midway between the gulf of Corinth and the northern end of the Euripus, lies to-day the town of Chaeroneia, or rather its modern representative, Capraena. Though never a municipality of much importance, its inhabitants, before the time of Plutarch, had been the spectators of many stirring events. Epaminondas called the plain near it the dancing-plot of Ares, an epithet that was abundantly justified by preceding and succeeding occurrences. Lying in a measure between northern and southern Greece it was rich in historical reminiscences and in traditions. Already known to Homer as Arne, it subsequently witnessed the countless hosts of Dareius and Xerxes pass beneath its walls. Near it Philip of Macedon completely overthrew the allied Thebans and Athenians, B. C. 338. In Plutarch’s time the mound erected in honor of the king’s soldiers who lost their lives here, was still in a fair state of preservation, and the oak under which Alexander had erected his tent was yet standing. In 279 the Gauls passed over the plain of Chaeroneia leaving desolation in their track. Twenty-eight years later the Boeotians were defeated near the town in a battle with the Aetolians. Still later, by a century and a half, Sulla inflicted a crushing blow on his enemies, for the most part Greeks, under the command of Archelaus, the lieutenant of Mithridates. It was two citizens of Chaeroneia who performed for the Roman general a service similar to that rendered to Xerxes by Ephialtes. In order to leave a memorial of his success he erected a trophy on the summit of an adjacent hill. Another trophy, dating from this time and of special significance to the Chaeroneans, was the statue of Lucius Lucullus, a Roman commander, that stood in their marketplace. They had become involved in a quarrel with their old enemies, the Orchomenians, on the charge of having caused the death of a Roman officer and several of his attendants; but through the interposition of Lucullus had obtained a verdict from the home government in their favor.
But the pen is mightier than the sword. Posterity is not greatly interested in wars and battles in which no great principles are involved; besides, all sanguinary conflicts are of more or less local significance. Hence it is that Chaeroneia is chiefly known, not because of the two hundred thousand men who lost their lives or limbs near it, but as the birthplace and lifelong residence of one of the best-known characters in the literary history of the world. About half a score of years after the crucifixion, this august yet kindly personage, first saw the light in what was, even for Greece, an obscure town, but which he never left for any considerable time, until the day of his death, at a ripe old age. The visible remains of the first great battle fought here in historic times are the fragments of a colossal lion erected to commemorate, not a victory, but the valor of those who fell fighting for their country and for what they believed to be its freedom. There is also a village of some fifty houses, a church, a schoolhouse and a stone seat which its inhabitants fondly imagine to have been the property of their illustrious fellow townsman, and which they eagerly show as such, to the traveler. Small as the village is to-day, it can never have been a place of much importance, a fact that is attested by the scant remains of its ancient theater, one of the smallest in Greece.
In Plutarch’s time the chief industry of his native town consisted in its trade in oil and the manufacture of perfumes and unguents from the numerous flowers and herbs that grew in the vicinity. In conformity to ancient usage, this business was chiefly carried on by slaves, while its citizens, having no political affairs to engage their attention, and but little interest in philosophical discussion, gave themselves up largely to gossip and other equally profitless ways of passing time.