Illustrated history of ancient literature, oriental and classical

by John D. Quackenbos

ANCIENT GREECE
with the
COAST OF ASIA MINOR
Russell & Struthers, N.Y.

PART II.
GRECIAN LITERATURE.

CHAPTER I.
BIRTH OF GRECIAN LITERATURE.

Early Settlement of Greece.—While Chaldea and Assyria were rising to greatness, while Phœnicia was winning for herself maritime supremacy, and wonders in art and science were spreading the renown of Egypt throughout the earth, a simple agricultural people was quietly moving westward toward Greece and Italy. In very early times, Aryan tribes known as Pelasgic quitted their habitations in southwestern Bactria (Map, p. 15), and made their way through Persia and Mesopotamia into Asia Minor. Here, on rich tablelands irrigated by the head-waters of streams flowing into the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, presumably among the gold-bearing mountains and vine-grown valleys of Phrygia (see Map), they cultivated their grain, pastured their sheep, made permanent settlements, and rapidly grew into a great nation. These Pelasgic tribes were the ancestors of the Greeks and Romans.

The same general causes that led to emigration from the mother-country crowded toward the coast communities of this Phrygian people, and ultimately obliged them to seek new homes in the west. Perhaps, paddling from island to island in rude galleys, some crossed the Æge’an; perhaps, passing the Hellespont, some picked their way through Thrace and Macedonia, entered the defiles of the northern mountains, and spread over Greece; while others, more adventurous, pushed their course still farther, and peopled the Italian peninsula.

The Pelasgic tribes were probably the first occupants of Greece and Italy. Earlier emigrants from Asia appear to have found all they desired in the accessible districts of central Europe, and not to have climbed the steep ranges that hemmed in those regions on the south. The Greeks themselves claimed with pride to have sprung from the earth; and a golden grasshopper, worn in the hair as an ornament by the Athenians, pointed to this belief in their autochthony.

The Hellenes.—Fresh bodies of Pelasgians continued to arrive from Asia Minor, until all Greece was populated with a thrifty race of husbandmen and shepherds. Upon this primitive Pelasgian stock was afterward engrafted a branch called Hellenic, identical with it in origin, but forced to a higher state of development in the garden of Asiatic culture, and ready to burst into blossom on the soil of Greece. The new-comers were the Helle’nes, a people of greater vigor, physical and intellectual. Mingling with their Pelasgian kinsmen in the Grecian peninsula, they formed a new nation, endowed with fresh life; and the Pelasgic dialect, modified and energized by their more cultivated tongue, was converted into Greek.

The Greeks had a popular proverb, do nothing too much, which they applied in writing as in acting. Pruning away too great exuberance and repressing the Oriental tendency to exaggerate, they reduced everything to the standard of a rigid but elegant correctness. More artistic than the Hindoos, less luxuriant in imagination but with a chaster and severer taste, they established a literature richly furnished in every department, whose influence can be traced in the works of genius that stand out in every age and country. As Professor Jebb says, “the thoughts of the great Greek thinkers have been bearing fruit in the world ever since they were first uttered.” (See Dr. Curtius’s “History of Greece.”)

Thus in Greece, Aryan energy, freed from the trammels of Oriental despotism, seems first to have found its true development. The facilities which this country enjoyed for intercourse with Egypt and Phœnicia, enabled it to draw from the learning of one, to copy the enterprise and adopt the inventions of the other. This accounts for its having been the seat of the earliest European civilization.

At a later period, we find the Hellenes separated into three great families—the Æolians, occupying generally the north of Greece; the Ionians, distributed over the central portions; and the Dorians, settled in the south (the Peloponnesus, island of Pelops). Connected with these three divisions were as many dialects—Æolic, Ionic, and Doric Greek—of which, Ionic was the softest and most polished. This Ionic, refined and perfected, became what is known as Attic Greek; it was the language of Athens in the golden age of her art and poetry, and for centuries was understood by the educated classes throughout a great part of the civilized world.