μαστῆρ’ ἐπελθεῖν πᾶσαν ἐν κύκλῳ χθόνα.
To turn from this dingy verbiage to his amazing brilliance in epigram is like passing from an auctioneer’s showroom into a lighthouse. (The difference, we note, is between narrative and “rhetoric”.) Such a sentence as οὐδεὶς ἔπαινον ἡδοναῖς ἐκτήσατο (“no man ever won praise by his pleasures”) positively bewilders by its glitter. It is perhaps not absolutely perfect: its miraculous ease might allow a careless reader to pass it by; but that is a defect which Carcinus shares with most masters of epigram, notably with Terence and Congreve. More substantial is the wit of this fragment:—
χαίρω σ’ ὁρῶν φθονοῦντα, τοῦτ’ εἰδώς, ὅτι
ἓν δρᾷ μόνον δίκαιον ὧν ποιεῖ φθόνος·
λυπεῖ γὰρ αὐτόχρημα τοὺς κεκτημένους.
“I rejoice to see that you harbour spite, for I know that of all its effects there is one that is just—it straightway stings those who cherish it.” One notices the exquisite skill which has inserted the second line, serving admirably to prepare for and throw into relief the vigorous third verse.
Theodectes of Phaselis enjoyed a brilliant career. During his forty-one years he was a pupil of Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, obtained great distinction as an orator (Cicero[103] praises him), produced fifty plays, and obtained the first prize at eight of the thirteen contests in which he competed. Alexander the Great decked his statue with garlands in memory of the days when they had studied together under Aristotle. That philosopher quotes him several times, and in particular pays Theodectes the high honour of coupling him with Sophocles; the examples which he gives[104] of peripeteia are the Œdipus Tyrannus and the Lynceus of Theodectes. The same drama is used[105] to exemplify another vital point, the difference between Complication and Dénouement.
He was doubtless a brilliantly able man and a popular dramatist with a notable talent for concocting plots. But all that we can now see in his remains is a feeble copy of Euripides, though he was, to be sure, audacious enough to place Philoctetes’ wound in the hand instead of the foot—for the sake of gracefulness, one may imagine. For the rest, we possess a curious speech made by some one ignorant of letters, who describes[106] as a picture the name “Theseus”—this idea is taken bodily from Euripides—and sundry sententious remarks, one of which surely deserves immortality as reaching the limit of pompous common-place:—
Widely through Greece hath this tradition spread
O aged man, and ancient is the saw: