Many private libraries were established during the golden age, but no circulating or public libraries. As early as 400 B.C. Athens carried on quite a trade in manuscripts, one quarter of the market-place being called “the book-mart.” Books were generally abundant and cheap, being copied by slaves, but rare works were very costly. Plato paid $1,600 for three books. (The reader is referred to Becker’s “Charicles; or, Illustrations of the Private Life of the Ancient Greeks.”)
Wooden tablets for accounts sold for 18 cts. each about 400 B.C. A small blank book of two wax tablets was worth less than a penny. Pencils are said to have been invented 408 B.C. by Apollodorus, the self-styled “Prince of Painters.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE ALEXANDRIAN PERIOD.
Decline of Letters.—The triumph of the Doric states over Athens in the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.) gave the first blow to the intellectual power of Greece. Literary decay forthwith set in; its progress was hastened by internal dissensions, and completed when liberty was hopelessly extinguished by Philip of Macedon and his successors.
Alexander indeed benefited the East by introducing the Greek language and culture, and building magnificent cities in return for her hordes of barbarians slain; but his policy left out of view the interests of Greece. While Athens remained the seminary of Europe for several centuries after his death, Alexandria, founded by him at the mouth of the Nile, became the intellectual as well as commercial capital of the world. From this city, the period we are about to consider derives its name. It extends from the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.) to the conquest of Egypt by the Romans (30 B.C.).
The Alexandrian Age produced no grand masterpieces. No glorious struggle for freedom inspired the historian; there was no further need for the efforts of the orator; science and criticism flourished instead of poetry; and a host of imitators usurped the place of the mighty originals of the olden time. The national taste had sadly deteriorated; an affected obscurity was fashionable; and gaudy tinsel was more highly valued than true gold.
Yet one bright bloom gladdened this waste—Idyllic Poetry, which expanded into a perfect flower in the hands of Theoc’ritus the Sicilian. A new school of comedy was also established by Menander and Phile’mon; and many seeds of Greek genius that Alexander had scattered broadcast over the earth sprung up on foreign soil, and yielded fruit—but fruit inferior to that ripened under its native sun.
DRAMATIC POETRY.
The New Comedy dealt with the follies and vices of society at large, not with individuals, the actor no longer venturing, since the downfall of political liberty, to imitate Aristophanes in representing living characters. Its simple plot was generally based on some love-intrigue. Though the broad fun of the Old Comedy was wanting, quiet humor contrasted happily with pathos, the grave with the gay; the audience, provoked by turns to laughter and to tears, were all the time learning some useful principle or moral lesson. Cicero styled the New Comedy “the mirror of real life.”—The chorus now ceased to take part in the representation, and the play was divided into acts separated by intervals of time.
Of the sixty-four poets associated by the ancients with the New Comedy, the greatest were Menander and Philemon, both citizens of Athens, though Philemon was foreign-born. Not until both had passed from the stage of life was the meed of superior excellence awarded to Menander.