GRECIAN LITERATURE AND ART I FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN TO THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. (500-403 B.C.)
LITERATURE.
In a former chapter we briefly traced the growth of Grecian literature and art from their beginnings down to the time of the Persian wars. Within this period, as we noticed, their progress was the greatest in the Grecian colonies, while, of the cities of central Greece, the one destined to become pre-eminent in literature and the fine arts—Athens—contributed less than several others to intellectual advancement. "She produced no artists to be compared with those of Argos, Corinth, Si'cy-on, and of many other cities, while she could boast of no poets as celebrated as those of the Ionian and Æolian schools." But at the opening of the Persian wars the artistic and literary talent of Greece began to center in Athens, and with the close of that contest properly begins the era of Athenian greatness. Athens, hitherto inferior in magnitude and political importance, having borne the brunt and won the highest martial honor of the conflict with Persia, now took the lead, as well in intellectual progress as in political ascendancy. To this era PROFESSOR SYMONDS refers, as follows:
"It was the struggle with Xerxes which developed all the latent energies of the Greeks, which intensified their national existence, and which secured for Athens, as the central power on which the scattered forces of the race converged, the intellectual dictatorship of Hellas. It was a struggle of spiritual energy against brute force, of liberty against oppression, of intellectual freedom against superstitious ignorance, of civilization against barbarism; and Athens, who had fought and won this battle of the Spirit—by spirit we mean the greatness of the soul, liberty, intelligence, and everything which raises men above brutes and slaves, and makes them free beneath the arch of heaven—became immediately the recognized impersonation of the spirit itself. Whatever was superb in human nature found its natural home and sphere in Athens. We hear no more of the colonies. All great works of art and literature are now produced in Athens, and it is to Athens that the sages come to teach and to be taught." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." First Series, p. 19.]
I. LYRIC POETRY.
SIMON'IDES AND PINDAR.
The rapid progress made in the cultivation of lyric poetry preceding the Persian wars found its culmination, during those wars, in Simonides of Ceos, the most brilliant period of whose life was spent at Athens; and in Pindar, a native of Thebes, who is considered the greatest lyric poet of all ages. The life of Simonides was a long one, reaching from 556 to 469 B.C. "Coming forward at a time," says MAHAFFY, "when the tyrants had made poetry a matter of culture, and dissociated it from politics, we find him a professional artist, free from all party struggles, alike welcome at the courts of tyrants and among the citizens of free states; he was respected throughout all the Greek world, and knew well how to suit himself, socially and artistically, to his patrons. The great national struggle with Persia gave him the opportunity of becoming the spokesman of the nation in celebrating the glories of the victors and the heroism of the fallen patriots; and this exceptional opportunity made him quite the foremost poet of his day, and decidedly better known and more admired than Pindar, who has so completely eclipsed him in the attention of posterity." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p. 207.]
Simonides was the intimate friend of Miltiades and Themistocles at Athens, of Pausanias at Sparta, and of the tyrants of Sicily. In the first named city he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylæ, Salamis, and Platæa—"poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects and statuaries." In his elegy upon Marathon he carried away the prize from Æschylus. He was a most prolific poet, and his writings, comprising all the subjects that human life, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish, are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of the existing fragments of his muse, the "Lamentation of Dan'a-ë," is a piece of this character. The poem is based upon a tradition concerning Danaë, the daughter of Acris'ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring of Jove. Acrisius had been told by the oracle that his life would be taken by a son that his daughter should bear, and, for his own preservation, when the boy had reached the age of four years, Acrisius threw both him and his mother into a chest and set them adrift on the sea. But they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman of the Island of Seri'phus, whose brother Polydec'tes, king of the country, received and protected them. The boy grew up to manhood, and became the famous hero Per'seus, who accidentally killed Acrisius at the funeral games of Polydectes. The following is the
Lamentation of Dan'a-ë.
While, around her lone ark sweeping,
Wailed the winds and waters wild,
Her young cheeks all wan with weeping,
Danae clasped her sleeping child;
And "Alas!" cried she, "my dearest,
What deep wrongs, what woes are mine;
But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest
In that sinless rest of thine.
Faint the moonbeams break above thee,
And within here all is gloom;
But, fast wrapped in arms that love thee,
Little reck'st thou of our doom.
Not the rude spray, round thee flying,
Has e'en damped thy clustering hair;
On thy purple mantlet lying,
O mine Innocent, my Fair!
Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow,
Thou wouldst lend thy little ear;
And this heart of thine might borrow,
Haply, yet a moment's cheer.
But no: slumber on, babe, slumber;
Slumber, ocean's waves; and you,
My dark troubles, without number—
Oh, that ye would slumber too!
Though with wrongs they've brimmed my chalice,
Grant, Jove, that, in future years,
This boy may defeat their malice,
And avenge his mother's tears!"
—Trans. by W. PETER.