Sappho, it would seem, was endowed with a soul overflowing with acute sensitiveness, that glorious but dangerous gift. Her life, as indicated by the relics of her composition, was a current of perpetual fluctuation, like a troubled billow, now tossed to the stars, and anon buried in the darkest abyss. "To such beings," is the remark of Frederick Schlegel, "the urn of destiny assigns the loftiest or most degrading fate; close as is their inward union, they are, nevertheless, entirely divided, and even in their overflow of harmony, shattered and broken into countless fragments." Few relics of her harp remain, and these are borne down to us on the stream of time, imbued with the lofty tenderness of cureless melancholy. She was of that old Greek temper that wreathed the skeleton with flowers, and to her might be applied the legend which testifies that the nightingales of sweetest song were those whose nests were built nearest to the tomb of Orpheus. The early lyrics of Greece were productions full of wonders. They glowed with the hues of that orient of their origin, and where all forms appear in purple glory; each flower beams like a morning ray fastened to earth, and eagle thoughts soar to the sun on golden wings. Each style of national poetry grew gracefully and erect, like the palm-tree, with its rich yet symmetrical crown; and while in broad day it was fairest to the eye, even in gloom it bore nocturnal charms, as glow-worms illuminated the leaves, and birds of sweetest note perched on the boughs to sing.
Passing from the fervor of youth to the reflection of maturity, the epic muse retreated before the lyric. Plants of a richer foliage and more pungent perfume sprang up in the garden of poetry. Language more compressed and intense was required, and the Æolic and Doric became the appropriate organ of the latter, as the Ionic had been of the former style. In the Attic era, the partial excellence of earlier times became fully developed under the focal effulgence of universal rays; and, as the altar of Vesta united all the citizens of the same town, the crowned champions in every department of letters gathered under "the eye of Greece," and paid tribute to the age of Pericles. Then each leading writer, called to conserve all antecedent worth, lived on the capital amassed by unskillful predecessors, and with innate facility wrought it into the continuous chain of human improvement. Not in the colossal and impracticable shapes which float in the mists of the hoary North, was this majestic style of literature produced; nor in the florid barbarism of the effete East and South, but with that profound feeling and piercing expression, elegant and forcible as an arrow from the bow of Ulysses, was it inspired with that lofty spirit of endeavor which leaps evermore towards the azure tent of the stars. If the car of the hero sometimes kindled its axle to a flame, as it neared the goal, his eye was yet undazzled, his hand faltered not on the curb, but the greater the momentum, the firmer was his grasp. So with the Greek poet, every thing was solid and refined, harmoniously fitted in the several parts, and superbly burnished as a whole. Though from the day of their becoming nationalized, the Greeks possessed vast stores of unwrought material, yet was nothing needlessly employed. They enhanced the value of their products by condensing their worth. What Corinna said to Pindar, who, in his youth, showed some inclination to extravagance, "That one must sow with the hand, not with a full sack," illustrates the national taste, and exemplifies a principle which pervades their entire literature. While always earnest, they never violate decorum, but in the greatest extremes of joy or grief, their heroes, like Polyxena, even in death, fall with dignity. It was most natural for the Greeks to symbolize imagination under the image of Pegasus, who bore reins as well as wings. The severity of their taste was yet further indicated by the legend that when borne by this power, Perseus with indecorous temerity flew too near Olympus, he was precipitated by the angry gods, though himself one of their sons.
The drama was the youngest and most perfect of Attic creations, and that great cycle of the arts which had an epic origin, naturally returned into itself by means of this. Tragedy was the purest elimination, and its progress may be easily traced. First, a whole populace assembled in some market-place the miscellaneous chorus, or dance; then the recreation was limited to men capable of bearing arms; and, finally, the people were separated into spectators and trained performers. The lyric hymn of Apollo blended with dithyrambic odes to Bacchus; the strophe was distinguished from the antistrophe, and the epode was added; the dialogue between choragoi and exarchi followed; and, finally, came the separation of the chorus into these speakers and the choreutæ, a distinction as important as the previous one into chorus and spectators. Thus were all the component parts of tragedy completed, before the Persian war, when every thing the Greeks did was great and fascinating, as if created by magic, and their dramatic compositions were the most beautiful of all.
The finest genius of a great era always turns toward the highest sphere for exercise, and thus preserves an equilibrium between popular taste and the direction of its talent. When lyrical poetry had transmigrated into choral song, and epic history merged into a dramatic plot and dialogue, the greatest of tragedians extant was appointed to consecrate the union and preserve its worth. Æschylus was born at Eleusis, B.C. 525, about the time Phrynichus elevated the Thespian romance into dramatic personation, and his advent was opportune to impress upon this department of letters a deep and enduring stamp. With an ardent temperament, early exalted by the fervid strains of Homer, he imbibed, in maturity, the ambrosial influence of the above-named precursor, in company with his senior associate, Pindar, and with him wove thoughts to the lofty music of the dithyrambic ode. Passing through this order of excellence to a still higher range, in the same year Athenian valor lighted the flames of the Persian war at the conflagration of Sardis, the son of Euphorion produced his first tragedy. Pratinas and Chœrilus were for a season his competitors; but he soon distanced them all, and won the ivy chaplet, then first bestowed, instead of the goat and ox, as the most glorious literary crown.
At this period the structural skill of the Athenians had greatly improved, and as the celebrity of their drama increased, immense theatres arose on the hill-side, and were thronged by thousands, tier above tier, open to the wonders of expanding nature, embellished by the living sun. The Ægean on one hand, and vast mountains on the other, fanned by the breeze and relieved against brilliant skies, were harmonious features which nature accumulated round the scene. The gigantic proportions of the theatre, and the mighty range of the audience, were fully equaled by the performance itself, when Themistocles felt honored in appearing as choragus, and through kindred interpreters Æschylus unfolded the mysteries of the thrilling plot. Advancing intellect demanded grand ideal personifications; and, to meet the cravings of an age which even the perfect epic could no longer satisfy, philosophy passed into poetry, and what Homer had done for more material thought, Æschylus achieved for mind. All the vague mysteries and symbolical ethics of the East were measurably purged from alloy, while their substance was melted into the tortured immortality of Prometheus, and bound to that mount of all literary beauty, the Acropolis.
As Æschylus expressed the race and period from which emerged Themistocles and Aristides, Sophocles was the correlative of Phidias, and the great Olympian who was the patron of them both. Indeed, from the majesty of his mien, and the symmetrical grandeur of his genius, he was called the Pericles of poetry. Supreme power lurked in his repose, and his thunders startled all the more because they broke upon the multitude from cloudless skies.
Of all the great originals at Athens, the drama was the most indigenous, and under the culture of Sophocles perfected its growth. Imagination had fulmined with broader and brighter flashes on the preceding generation; but the works of his hand, though equally fresh from the fountains of nature, were more imbued with reason, and the solidity of manly strength. The age of Pericles was peculiarly the age of art; and Sophocles was but one of many who, to excel in his own department, mastered every cognate secret of wisdom or beauty, and brought all into subordination to his own absorbing design. He lived at a time when the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades, the extravagance of Cimon, and the taste of Pericles, not less than the science and art, erudition and enthusiasm, philosophy and eloquence, diffused through all classes of the general populace, rendered the Athenians at once the most competent to appreciate, and the most difficult to please. Recondite disquisition was a pastime, the Agora itself but a genial academe; so elevated and yet so delicate were the soul and sensibilities of the excited mass, that the wisest of their sages was justified in asserting that the common people were the most accurate judges of whatever was graceful, harmonious, or sublime.
In the growth of a flower there is continued development, visibly marked by successive mutations, but indivisibly connected from beginning to end. Simultaneous with complete maturity glows the instant of consummate bloom, the highest point of fullness, fragrance, and fascination. That splendid culmination in the progressive refinement which adorned and made fruitful the garden of Greece, was signalized by the faultless forms and transparent language left us by Sophocles. The lucid beauty of his works was the chosen mirror of Athens, to reflect internal harmony, and the greatest beauty of soul. The dazzling glories of Greece in general, and of Athens in particular, imbued the great writers with corresponding ideas of the greatness of human nature, which they endeavored to represent in its struggles with fate and the gods. In the Prometheus of Æschylus especially, the wilderness and other natural horrors are made to relieve the statuesque severity of the scene, and are employed, like the chains and wedge, as instruments by which Jupiter seeks to intimidate the benefactor of mankind. But in such delineations as Edipus at Colonus, Ajax, and Philoctetes, Sophocles, in his glorious art, showed a great advancement beyond his predecessors, by intermingling the emotions of human love, and causing the more cheerful sentiments, inspired by lovelier natural scenes, to become important elements, not merely in the imaginative adornment, but also in the dramatic plan. If the Ionic epic was a tranquil lake, mirroring a serene sky in its bosom, and transfiguring diversified charms along its smiling shores; the Attic drama became a mighty stream which calmly yet resistlessly courses within its stedfast banks, is impeded by no obstacle, diverted by no attraction, salutes with equal dignity the sunny mead and gloomy mountain shadow, and, after a majestic sweep from its far-off source, mingles its strength at last in the omnipotence of the sea. Thus the highest wealth of refined poetry was preserved in the pure casket of the richest tongue, and the Attic drama was left to man as the masterpiece of linguistic art. Sophocles, like the fabled Theban, seems to have built up his elegant fabric with the charms of music; and if Æschylus first elevated tragedy to heroic dignity, he softened its rugged strength into harmonious sweetness, and stamped upon the precious treasure the signet of immortal worth.
Euripides, like his predecessors, was a proficient in a great variety of arts, but neither sublime in conception, nor severe in style, as Æschylus and Sophocles had been. But his spirit teemed with splendid and amiable qualities, whose captivating power was highly relished by the age it came to decorate and complete. The energetic dignity of the first great master, and the chaste sweetness of his still greater rival, had passed; now appeared one who was indeed worthy of much admiration, but the least divine of the noble triad, whose natural course declined from the elevated cothurnus toward level ground.
When Euripides clothed Pentheus in female dress, and exhibited Hercules as a glutton, he showed himself to be the precursor of comedy, that first symptom of literary decline, and thus won the praise of Menander, as he deserved the lash of Aristophanes. The latter, who was his cotemporary, unceasingly castigated his effeminate prettiness, but never attacked the manly elegance of Sophocles, or the gigantic vigor of Æschylus. Agathon, with others of some note, continued for a season to write for the stage; but in Euripides the forcible and refined tragedy of Greece came to an end. As the nine Muses wept at the funeral of Achilles, so grieved the nations at that mighty fall.