The sacred games and festivals, here alluded to as a class, took hold of the Greek mind by so great a variety of feelings,[136] as to counterbalance in a high degree the political disseverance, and to keep alive among their wide-spread cities, in the midst of constant jealousy and frequent quarrel, a feeling of brotherhood and congenial sentiment such as must otherwise have died away. The Theôrs, or sacred envoys, who came to Olympia or Delphi from so many different points, all sacrificed to the same god and at the same altar, witnessed the same sports, and contributed by their donatives to enrich or adorn one respected scene. Nor must we forget that the festival afforded opportunity for a sort of fair, including much traffic amid so large a mass of spectators,[137] and besides the exhibitions of the games themselves, there were recitations and lectures in a spacious council-room for those who chose to listen to them, by poets, rhapsodes, philosophers, and historians,—among which last, the history of Herodotus is said to have been publicly read by its author.[138] Of the wealthy and great men in the various cities, many contended simply for the chariot victories and horse victories. But there were others whose ambition was of a character more strictly personal, and who stripped naked as runners, wrestlers, boxers, or pankratiasts, having gone through the extreme fatigue of a complete previous training. Kylon, whose unfortunate attempt to usurp the sceptre at Athens has been recounted, had gained the prize in the Olympic stadium: Alexander son of Amyntas, the prince of Macedon, had run for it.[139] The great family of the Diagoridæ at Rhodes, who furnished magistrates and generals to their native city, supplied a still greater number of successful boxers and pankratiasts at Olympia, while other instances also occur of generals named by various cities from the lists of successful Olympic gymnasts; and the odes of Pindar, always dearly purchased, attest how many of the great and wealthy were found in that list.[140] The perfect popularity and equality of persons at these great games, is a feature not less remarkable than the exact adherence to predetermined rule, and the self-imposed submission of the immense crowd to a handful of servants armed with sticks,[141] who executed the orders of the Eleian Hellanodikæ. The ground upon which the ceremony took place, and even the territory of the administering state, was protected by a “Truce of God,” during the month of the festival, the commencement of which was formally announced by heralds sent round to the different states. Treaties of peace between different cities were often formally commemorated by pillars there erected, and the general impression of the scene suggested nothing but ideas of peace and brotherhood among Greeks.[142] And I may remark that the impression of the games as belonging to all Greeks, and to none but Greeks, was stronger and clearer during the interval between 600-300 B. C., than it came to be afterwards. For the Macedonian conquests had the effect of diluting and corrupting Hellenism, by spreading an exterior varnish of Hellenic tastes and manners over a wide area of incongruous foreigners, who were incapable of the real elevation of the Hellenic character; so that although in later times the games continued undiminished, both in attraction and in number of visitors, the spirit of Pan-Hellenic communion, which had once animated the scene, was gone forever.
CHAPTER XXIX.
LYRIC POETRY. — THE SEVEN WISE MEN.
The interval between 776-560 B. C. presents to us a remarkable expansion of Grecian genius in the creation of their elegiac, iambic, lyric, choric, and gnomic poetry, which was diversified in a great many ways and improved by many separate masters. The creators of all these different styles—from Kallinus and Archilochus down to Stesichorus—fall within the two centuries here included; though Pindar and Simonidês, “the proud and high-crested bards,”[143] who carried lyric and choric poetry to the maximum of elaboration consistent with full poetical effect, lived in the succeeding century, and were contemporary with the tragedian Æschylus. The Grecian drama, comic as well as tragic, of the fifth century B. C., combined the lyric and choric song with the living action of iambic dialogue,—thus constituting the last ascending movement in the poetical genius of the race. Reserving this for a future time, and for the history of Athens, to which it more particularly belongs, I now propose to speak only of the poetical movement of the two earlier centuries, wherein Athens had little or no part. So scanty are the remnants, unfortunately, of these earlier poets, that we can offer little except criticisms borrowed at second-hand, and a few general considerations on their workings and tendency.[144]
Archilochus and Kallinus both appear to fall about the middle of the seventh century B. C., and it is with them that the innovations in Grecian poetry commence. Before them, we are told, there existed nothing but the epos, or daktylic hexameter poetry, of which much has been said in my former volume,—being legendary stories or adventures narrated, together with addresses or hymns to the gods. We must recollect, too, that this was not only the whole poetry, but the whole literature of the age: prose composition was altogether unknown, and writing, if beginning to be employed as an aid to a few superior men, was at any rate generally unused, and found no reading public. The voice was the only communicant, and the ear the only recipient, of all those ideas and feelings which productive minds in the community found themselves impelled to pour out; both voice and ear being accustomed to a musical recitation, or chant, apparently something between song and speech, with simple rhythm and a still simpler occasional accompaniment from the primitive four-stringed harp. Such habits and requirements of the voice and ear were, at that time, inseparably associated with the success and popularity of the poet, and contributed doubtless to restrict the range of subjects with which he could deal. The type was to a certain extent consecrated, like the primitive statues of the gods, from which men only ventured to deviate by gradual and almost unconscious innovations. Moreover, in the first half of the seventh century B. C., that genius which had once created an Iliad and an Odyssey was no longer to be found, and the work of hexameter narrative had come to be prosecuted by less gifted persons,—by those Cyclic poets of whom I have spoken in the preceding volumes.
Such, as far as we can make it out amidst very uncertain evidence, was the state of the Greek mind immediately before elegiac and lyric poets appeared; while at the same time its experience was enlarging by the formation of new colonies, and the communion among its various states tended to increase by the freer reciprocity of religious games and festivals. There arose a demand for turning the literature of the age—I use this word as synonymous with the poetry—to new feelings and purposes, and for applying the rich, plastic, and musical language of the old epic, to present passion and circumstance, social as well as individual. Such a tendency had become obvious in Hesiod, even within the range of hexameter verse; but the same causes which led to an enlargement of the subjects of poetry inclined men also to vary the metre.
In regard to this latter point, there is reason to believe that the expansion of Greek music was the immediate determining cause; for it has been already stated that the musical scale and instruments of the Greeks, originally very narrow, were materially enlarged by borrowing from Phrygia and Lydia, and these acquisitions seem to have been first realized about the beginning of the seventh century B. C., through the Lesbian harper Terpander,—the Phrygian (or Greco-Phrygian) flute-player Olympus,—and the Arkadian or Bœotian flute-player Klonas. Terpander made the important advance of exchanging the original four-stringed harp for one of seven strings, embracing the compass of one octave or two Greek tetrachords, and Olympus as well as Klonas taught many new nomes, or tunes, on the flute, to which the Greeks had before been strangers,—probably also the use of a flute of more varied musical compass. Terpander is said to have gained the prize at the first recorded celebration of the Lacedæmonian festival of the Karneia, in 676 B. C.: this is one of the best-ascertained points among the obscure chronology of the seventh century; and there seem grounds for assigning Olympus and Klonas to nearly the same period, a little before Archilochus and Kallinus.[145] To Terpander, Olympus, and Klonas, are ascribed the formation of the earliest musical nomes known to the inquiring Greeks of later times: to the first, nomes on the harp; to the two latter, on the flute,—every nome being the general scheme, or basis, of which the airs actually performed constituted so many variations, within certain defined limits.[146] Terpander employed his enlarged instrumental power as a new accompaniment to the Homeric poems, as well as to certain epic proœmia or hymns to the gods of his own composition. But he does not seem to have departed from the hexameter verse and the daktylic rhythm, to which the new accompaniment was probably not quite suitable; and the idea may thus have been suggested of combining the words also according to new rhythmical and metrical laws.
It is certain, at least, that the age (670-600) immediately succeeding Terpander,—comprising Archilochus, Kallinus, Tyrtæus, and Alkman, whose relations of time one to another we have no certain means of determining,[147] though Alkman seems to have been the latest,—presents a remarkable variety both of new metres and of new rhythms, superinduced upon the previous daktylic hexameter. The first departure from this latter is found in the elegiac verse, employed seemingly more or less by all the four above-mentioned poets, but chiefly by the first two, and even ascribed by some to the invention of Kallinus. Tyrtæus in his military march-songs employed the anapæstic metre, but in Archilochus as well as in Alkman we find traces of a much larger range of metrical variety,—iambic, trochaic, anapæstic, ionic, etc.,—sometimes even asynartetic or compound metres, anapæstic or daktylic, blended with trochaic or iambic. What we have remaining from Mimnermus, who comes about the close of the preceding four, is elegiac; his contemporaries Alkæus and Sappho, besides employing most of those metres which they found existing, invented each a peculiar stanza of their own, which is familiarly known under a name derived from each. In Solon, the younger contemporary of Mimnermus, we have the elegiac, iambic, and trochaic: in Theognis, yet later, the elegiac only. But both Arion and Stesichorus appear to have been innovators in this department, the former by his improvement in the dithyrambic chorus or circular song and dance in honor of Dionysus,—the latter by his more elaborate choric compositions, containing not only a strophê and antistrophê, but also a third division or epode succeeding them, pronounced by the chorus standing still. Both Anakreon and Ibykus likewise added to the stock of existing metrical varieties. And we thus see that, within the century and a half succeeding Terpander, Greek poetry (or Greek literature, which was then the same thing) became greatly enriched in matter as well as diversified in form.
To a certain extent there seems to have been a real connection between the two: new forms were essential for the expression of new wants and feelings,—though the assertion that elegiac metre is especially adapted for one set of feelings,[148] trochaic for a second, and iambic for a third, if true at all, can only be admitted with great latitude of exception, when we find so many of them employed by the poets for very different subjects,—gay or melancholy, bitter or complaining, earnest or sprightly,—seemingly with little discrimination.
But the adoption of some new metre, different from the perpetual series of hexameters, was required when the poet desired to do something more than recount a long story or fragment of heroic legend,—when he sought to bring himself, his friends, his enemies, his city, his hopes and fears with regard to matters recent or impending, all before the notice of the hearer, and that, too, at once with brevity and animation. The Greek hexameter, like our blank verse, has all its limiting conditions bearing upon each separate line, and presents to the hearer no predetermined resting-place or natural pause beyond.[149] In reference to any long composition, either epic or dramatic, such unrestrained license is found convenient, and the case was similar for Greek epos and drama,—the single-lined iambic trimeter being generally used for the dialogue of tragedy and comedy, just as the daktylic hexameter had been used for the epic. The metrical changes introduced by Archilochus and his contemporaries may be compared to a change from our blank verse to the rhymed couplet and quatrain: the verse was thrown into little systems of two, three, or four lines, with a pause at the end of each; and the halt thus assured to, as well as expected and relished by, the ear, was generally coincident with a close, entire or partial, in the sense, which thus came to be distributed with greater point and effect. The elegiac verse, or common hexameter and pentameter (this second line being an hexameter with the third and sixth thesis,[150] or the last half of the third and sixth foot, suppressed, and a pause left in place of it), as well as the epode (or iambic trimeter followed by an iambic dimeter) and some other binary combinations of verse which we trace among the fragments of Archilochus, are conceived with a view to such increase of effect both on the ear and the mind, not less than to the direct pleasures of novelty and variety.