NEW YORK

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

FRANKLIN SQUARE

1880

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

CHAPTER XIV.
GREEK TRAGEDY AND EURIPIDES.
Two Conditions for the Development of a National Drama.—The Attic Audience.—The Persian War.—Nemesis the Cardinal Idea of Greek Tragedy.—Traces of the Doctrine of Nemesis in Early Greek Poetry.—The Fixed Material of Greek Tragedy.—Athens in the Age of Euripides.—Changes introduced by him in Dramatic Art.—The Law of Progress in all Art.—Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides.—The Treatment of εὐψυχία by Euripides.—Menoikeus.—The Death of Eteocles and Polynices.—Polyxena.—Medea.—Hippolytus.—Electra and Orestes.—Injustice done to Euripides by Recent Critics.Page [9]
CHAPTER XV.
THE FRAGMENTS OF ÆSCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES.
Alexandrian and Byzantine Anthologies.—Titles of the Lost Plays of Æschylus.—The Lycurgeia.—The Trilogy on the Story of Achilles.—The Geography of the Prometheus Unbound.—Gnomic Character of the Sophoclean Fragments.—Providence, Wealth, Love, Marriage, Mourning.—What is True of the Sophoclean is still more True of the Euripidean Fragments.—Mutilated Plays.—Phaëthon, Erechtheus, Antiope, Danaë.—Goethe's Restitution of the Phaëthon.—Passage on Greek Athletes in the Autolycus.—Love, Women, Marriage, Domestic Affection, Children.—Death.—Stoical Endurance.—Justice and the Punishment of Sin.—Wealth.—Noble Birth.—Heroism.—Miscellaneous Gnomic Fragments.—The Popularity of Euripides.Page [74]
CHAPTER XVI.
THE FRAGMENTS OF THE LOST TRAGIC POETS.
Apparent Accident in the Preservation of Greek Poetry.—Criticism among the Ancients.—Formation of Canons.—Libraries.—The Political Vicissitudes of Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople.—Byzantine Scholarship in the Ninth Century.—The Lost MS. of Menander.—Tragic Fragments preserved by the Comic Poets and their Scholiasts; by Athenæus, by Stobæus.—Aristotle.—Tragedy before Æschylus.—Fragments of Aristarchus.—The Medea of Neophron.—Ion.—The Games of Achæus.—Agathon; his Character for Luxurious Living.—The Flower.—Aristotle's Partiality for Agathon.—The Family of Æschylus.—Meletus and Plato among the Tragic Playwrights.—The School of Sophocles.—Influence of Euripides.—Family of Carkinus.—Tragedians Ridiculed by Aristophanes.—The Sisyphus of Critias.—Cleophon.—Cynical Tragedies ascribed to Diogenes.—Extraordinary Fertility of the Attic Drama.—The Repetition of Old Plots.—Mamercus and Dionysius.—Professional Rhetoricians appear as Playwrights.—The School of Isocrates.—The Centaur of Chæremon.—His Style.—The Themistocles of Moschion.—The Alexandrian Pleiad.—The Adonis of Ptolemy Philopator.Page [113]
CHAPTER XVII.
ANCIENT AND MODERN TRAGEDY.
Greek Tragedy and the Rites of Dionysus.—A Sketch of its Origin and History.—The Attic Theatre.—The Actors and their Masks.—Relation of Sculpture to the Drama in Greece.—The Legends used by the Attic Tragedians.—Modern Liberty in the Choice of Subjects.—Mystery Plays.—Nemesis.—Modern Tragedy has no Religious Idea.—Tragic Irony.—Aristotle's Definition of Tragedy.—Modern Tragedy offers no κάθαρσις of the Passions.—Destinies and Characters.—Female Characters.—The Supernatural.—French Tragedy.—Five Acts.—Bloodshed.—The Unities.—Radical Differences in the Spirit of Ancient and Modern Art.Page [145]
CHAPTER XVIII.
ARISTOPHANES.
Heine's Critique on Aristophanes.—Aristophanes as a Poet of the Fancy.—The Nature of his Comic Grossness.—Greek Comedy in its Relation to the Worship of Dionysus.—Greek Acceptance of the Animal Conditions of Humanity.—His Burlesque, Parody, Southern Sense of Fun.—Aristophanes and Menander.—His Greatness as a Poet.—Glimpses of Pathos.—His Conservatism and Serious Aim.—Socrates, Agathon, Euripides.—German Critics of Aristophanes.—Ancient and Modern Comedy.—The Birds.—The Clouds.—Greek Youth and Education.—The Allegories of Aristophanes.—The Thesmophoriazusæ.—Aristophanes and Plato.Page [171]
CHAPTER XIX.
THE COMIC FRAGMENTS.
Three Periods in Attic History.—The Three Kinds of Comedy: Old, Middle, New.—Approximation of Comedy to the Type of Tragedy.—Athenæus as the Source of Comic Fragments.—Fragments of the Old Comedy.—Satire on Women.—Parasites.—Fragments of the Middle Comedy.—Critique of Plato and the Academic Philosophers.—Literary Criticism.—Passages on Sleep and Death.—Attic Slang.—The Demi-monde.—Theophrastus and the Later Rhetoricians.—Cooks and Cookery-books.—Difficulty of Defining the Middle from the New Comedy.—Menander.—Sophocles and Menander.—Epicureanism.—Menander's Sober Philosophy of Life.—Goethe on Menander.—Philemon.—The Comedy of Manners culminated in Menander.—What we mean by Modernism.—Points of Similarity and Difference between Ancient and Modern Comedy.—The Freedom of Modern Art.Page [216]
CHAPTER XX.
THE IDYLLISTS.
Theocritus: his Life.—The Canon of his Poems.—The Meaning of the Word Idyl.—Bucolic Poetry in Greece, Rome, Modern Europe.—The Scenery of Theocritus.—Relation of Southern Nature to Greek Mythology and Greek Art.—Rustic Life and Superstitions.—Feeling for Pure Nature in Theocritus.—How Distinguished from the same Feeling in Modern Poets.—Galatea.—Pharmaceutria.—Hylas.—Greek Chivalry.—The Dioscuri.—Thalysia.—Bion.—The Lament for Adonis.—Moschus.—Europa.—Megara.—Lament for Bion.—The Debts of Modern Poets to the Idyllists.Page [240]
CHAPTER XXI.
THE ANTHOLOGY.
The History of its Compilation.—Collections of Meleager, Philippus, Agathias, Cephalas, Planudes.—The Palatine MS.—The Sections of the Anthology.—Dedicatory Epigrams.—Simonides.—Epitaphs: Real and Literary.—Callimachus.—Epigrams on Poets.—Antipater of Sidon.—Hortatory Epigrams.—Palladas.—Satiric Epigrams.—Lucillius.—Amatory Epigrams.—Meleager, Straton, Philodemus, Antipater, Rufinus, Paulus Silentiarius, Agathias, Plato.—Descriptive Epigrams.Page [281]
CHAPTER XXII.
HERO AND LEANDER.
Virgil's Mention of this Tale.—Ovid and Statius.—Autumnal Poetry.—Confusion between the Mythical Musæus and the Grammarian.—The Introduction of the Poem.—Analysis of the Story.—Hallam's Judgment on Marlowe's Hero and Leander.—Comparison of Marlowe and Musæus.—Classic and Romantic Art.Page [345]
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GENIUS OF GREEK ART.
Separation between the Greeks and us.—Criticism.—Greek Sense of Beauty.—Greek Morality.—Greece, Rome, Renaissance, the Modern Spirit.Page [363]
CHAPTER XXIV.
CONCLUSION.
Sculpture, the Greek Art par excellence.—Plastic Character of the Greek Genius.—Sterner Aspects of Greek Art.—Subordination of Pain and Discord to Harmony.—Stoic-Epicurean Acceptance of Life.—Sadness of Achilles in the Odyssey.—Endurance of Odysseus.—Myth of Prometheus.—Sir H. S. Maine on Progress.—The Essential Relation of all Spiritual Movement to Greek Culture.—Value of the Moral Attitude of the Greeks for us.—Three Points of Greek Ethical Inferiority.—The Conception of Nature.—The System of Marcus Aurelius.—Contrast with the Imitatio Christi.—The Modern Scientific Spirit.—Indestructible Elements in the Philosophy of Nature.Page [391]

THE GREEK POETS.