The claim of Moschion on our attention is different from that of his contemporary Chæremon. He wrote a tragedy with the title of Themistocles, wherein he appears to have handled the same subject-matter as Æschylus in the Persæ. The hero of Salamis was, however, conspicuous by his absence from the history-play of the elder poet. Lapse of time, by removing the political difficulties under which the Persæ was composed, enabled Moschion to make the great Themistocles his protagonist. Two fragments transmitted by Stobæus from this drama, the one celebrating Athenian liberty of speech, while the other argues that a small band may get the better of a myriad lances, seem to be taken from the concio ad milites of the hero:
καὶ γὰρ ἐν νάπαις βραχεῖ
πολὺς σιδήρῳ κείρεται πεύκης κλάδος,
καὶ βαιὸς ὄχλος μυρίας λόγχης κρατεῖ.[103]
Another tragedy of Moschion, the Pheræi, is interesting when compared with the Antigone of Sophocles and the Sisyphus ascribed to Critias. Its plot seems in some way to have turned upon the duty which the living owe the dead:
κενὸν θανόντος ἀνδρὸς αἰκίζειν σκιάν·
ζῶντας κολάζειν οὐ θανόντας εὐσεβές.[104]
And, again, in all probability from the same drama:
τί κέρδος οὐκέτ' ὄντας αἰκίζειν νεκρούς;
τί τὴν ἄναυδον γαῖαν ὑβρίζειν πλέον;
ἐπὴν γὰρ ἡ κρίνουσα καὶ θἠδίονα
καὶ τἀνιαρὰ φροῦδος αἴσθησις φθαρῇ,
τὸ σῶμα κωφοῦ τάξιν εἴληφεν πέτρου.[105]
A long quotation of thirty-four iambics, taken apparently in like manner from the Pheræi, sets forth the primitive condition of humanity. Men lived at first in caverns, like wild beasts. They had not learned the use of iron; nor could they fashion houses, or wall cities, or plough the fields, or garner fruits of earth. They were cannibals, and preyed on one another. In course of time, whether by the teaching of Prometheus or by the evolution of implanted instincts, they discovered the use of corn, and learned how to press wine from the grape. Cities arose and dwellings were roofed in, and social customs changed from savage to humane. From that moment it became impiety to leave the dead unburied; but tombs were dug, and dust was heaped upon the clay-cold limbs, in order that the old abomination of human food might be removed from memory of men. The whole of this passage, very brilliantly written, condenses the speculations of Athenian philosophers upon the origin of civilization, and brings them to the point which the poet had in view—the inculcation of the sanctity of sepulture.
Nothing more remains to be said about the Attic tragedians. At the risk of being tedious, I have striven to include the names at least of all the poets who filled the tragic stage from its beginning to its ending, in order that the great number of playwrights and their variety might be appreciated. The probable date at which Thespis began to exhibit dramas may be fixed soon after 550 B.C. Moschion may possibly have lived as late as 300 B.C. These, roughly calculated, are the extreme points of time between which the tragic art of the Athenians arose and flourished and declined. When the Alexandrian critics attempted a general review of dramatic literature, they formed, as we have seen already, two classes of tragedians. In the first they numbered five Athenian worthies. The second, called the Pleiad, included seven poets of the Court of Alexandria; nor is there adequate reason to suppose that this inferior canon, δευτέρα τάξις, was formed on any but just principles of taste. How magnificent was the revival of art and letters, in all that pertained, at any rate, to scenic show and pompous ritual, during the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, how superbly the transplanted flowers of Greek ceremonial flourished on the shores of ancient Nile, and how Hellenic customs borrowed both gorgeous colors and a mystic meaning from the contact with Egyptian rites, may be gathered from the chapters devoted by Athenæus in the fifth book of the Deipnosophistæ to these matters. The Pleiad and the host of minor Alexandrian stars have fared, however, worse than their Athenian models. They had not even comic satirists to keep their names alive "immortally immerded." With the exception of Lycophron, they offer no firm ground for modern criticism. We only know that, in this Alexandrian Renaissance, literature, as usual, repeated itself. Alexandria, like Athens, had its royal poets, and, what is not a little curious, Ptolemy Philopator imitated his predecessor Dionysius to the extent of composing a tragedy, Adonis, with the same title and presumably upon the same theme.