Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

§ 85. We have come to the real close of political Greek history,—at a point upon which historians have been unanimous. And yet the Greeks would hardly have been worth all this study if the sum of what they could teach us was a political lesson. They showed indeed in politics a variety and

an excellence not reached by any other ancient people. But their spiritual and intellectual wealth is not bounded by these limits; and they have left us, after the close of their independence, more to think out and to understand than other nations have done in the heyday of their greatness.

On this spiritual history I shall not say more than a few words. The earlier part of it, extending to the moment when, under Trajan, Christianity came forth from its concealment, and became a social and political power, I have recently treated in a volume entitled The Greek World under Roman Sway. The reader who cares to unfold this complicated and various picture of manners, of ideas, of social habits and moral principles, will find the Greek subjects of the Roman Empire full of interest, and will even find, in the authors of that age, merits which have long been unduly ignored. The crowded thoroughfares of Antioch and Alexandria; the great religious foundations of Comana, Stratoniceia, and Pessinus, each ruled by a priest no less important than the prince-bishops of Salzburg or Würtzburg in recent centuries; the old-world fashions of Borysthenes, of Naples, of Eubœa; the gradual rise of Syrian and of Jewish Hellenism, the fascinating rivalries of Herod and of Cleopatra for Roman favour, the Hellenism of Cicero, of Cæsar, of Claudius, and of Nero, the fluctuations of trade from Rhodes to Delos, from Delos to Puteoli and Corinth, the splendours and the dark spots

in the society which Dion, Apuleius, and Plutarch saw and described—these and many other kindred topics make up a subject most fascinating, though from its complexity difficult to set in order, and impossible to handle without the occurrence of error.

The great bequests of the Roman period.

I am sure it is below the mark to say that more than half the Greek books now extant date from the period of the Roman domination. And if it be true that in style there is nothing to equal the great poets and prose-writers from Æschylus to Demosthenes, it is equally true that in matter the later writers far exceed their predecessors. All the exacter science got from the Greeks comes from that large body of Alexandrian writings which none but the specialist can understand. The history of Diodorus, embracing an immense field and telling us a vast number of facts otherwise lost; the great geographies of Strabo, of Ptolemy, and that curious collection which can be read in Carl Müller's laborious Corpus; the moral essays of Dion Chrysostom; the social encyclopædia of Plutarch; the vast majority of the extant inscriptions, come to us from Roman times.

But most of these are special. Is there nothing of general interest? Assuredly there is. No Greek book can compare for one moment in general importance with that collection of history and letters called the New Testament, all written in Greek, and intended to reach the civilized world through the mediation of Greek.

The Anthology, Lucian, Julian,

I will not here enter upon Christian Greek literature, but point to Plutarch, who has certainly been more read and had more influence than any other Greek writer on the literature of modern Europe. Nay, in the lighter subjects, and where the writers must trust to style to commend them to the reader, not only is there a good deal of poetry once thought classical,—such as the Anacreontics and the Anthology—which is in great part the produce of later Greek genius, but the wit of Lucian and the seriousness of Julian found in the Greek language their appropriate vehicle.