The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03

by Unknown

It was a wise counsel which the old state organisers gave the tyrants, that they should bestow on their rule as much as possible the character of ancient royalty, so that the usurping origin of their power might be forgotten. Thus Pisistratus did not, like the Cypselidæ and Orthagoridæ, desire to break with the past of the state, but rather to connect himself closely with the ancient and glorious history of the country, so that after all the evil which the party government of the nobility had brought on Attica, she might be restored the blessing of a united rule. Standing superior to the parties, as a relative to the ancient royal house, he believed himself especially chosen to accomplish this end. With this view, he lived on the citadel, near the altar of Zeus Herceios, the family hearth of the ancient princes of the country, watching over the turbulent citizens from the summit of the rock, which, before the building of the Propylæa, was still more inaccessible than afterwards. The very position of his dwelling must have drawn him into a close relation with the goddess of the citadel and her priesthood.

The public life of the Athenians was awakened and transformed in every direction. Athens became a new town within and without. With her new highways and military roads, her town squares, gymnasia, fountains and aqueducts, her new altars, temples and temple festivals, she stood out prominently from the crowd of Greek towns, and the Pisistratidæ neglected nothing which might contribute to lend her new importance by means of numerous alliances with the islands and shores of the Ægean Sea.

To this end, it was not enough that the Athenians ruled in Delos, Naxos, and at the Hellespont, but they must also appropriate to themselves the intellectual treasures of the further coasts where the Hellenic spirit showed itself at its best, and thus enrich their own life. For this purpose Solon had already introduced the Homeric rhapsodies into Athens, and ordained their public recitation at the festivals. Pisistratus joined in these efforts, with a full appreciation of the importance of the matter, though not with the disinterestedness of the Solonian love for art, but designedly, and for his own advantage. For he ministered at once to the fame of his ancestors and the splendour of his house.

These songs had hitherto been passed down by word of mouth, and the noblest abilities of the nation had been dedicated to the preservation of this national treasure in widely disseminated schools of bards. Nevertheless, even with the utmost power of memory, it was unavoidable that all kinds of confusion should be introduced into the tradition, that the original should be disfigured, what was authentic be lost, spurious matter creep in, and the whole, the most important collection possessed by the Hellenic people, fall to pieces. The danger became the more threatening, the higher rose the turbulence of the times, and the more the individual states deviated in special directions and the interests of modern times gained primary importance. It became, therefore, a state obligation to meet this danger, and to take in hand the task which individual ability had not succeeded in accomplishing; and the state was all the more concerned in the matter since the recital of the Homeric poems had been prescribed in the ordinances for the public festivals.

It is to the great merit of Pisistratus to have clearly recognised that nothing could create for the Athenians a greater and more lasting renown than could be achieved by assuming this task. He therefore summoned a number of learned men, and commissioned them to collect and compare the texts of the rhapsodies, to cut out what did not belong, to unite what was scattered, and fix the Homeric epos as a whole, a great record of national life, in a standard form. Thus Onomacritus the Athenian, Zopyras of Heraclea, and Orpheus of Croton worked under the superintendence of the regent; they formed a scientific commission, which had an extensive sphere of labour; for not only were the Odyssey and Iliad revised, but also that later epos, that is to say the poetic writings of the so-called “cyclic poets,” which had come into existence as a sequel supplementary to the Iliad and Odyssey, together with the whole treasure of the Ionic epos, which was united under the name of Homer, besides Hesiod and the religious poems. Pisistratus took a personal interest in the work, and even here we can trace the character of a tyranny in that alterations, omissions, and interpolations were made according to his taste or policy. Thus, for example, in the catalogue of ships the Salaminians were ranged among the Athenian levies, in order to supply a traditional authority for an ancient claim of Athens.

The end and aim of the proceeding was completely attained. The most important branch of the poetic art, which had developed amongst the Hellenes, namely, the epic of the Ionic and Bœotian schools, was transplanted to Athens. Here for the first time a Hellenic philology was founded: for, in the work of collecting, the critical faculty was first awakened, since the collecting involved the distinction of genuine from spurious, ancient from modern, and, though the scientific performance as such could not bear a very close scrutiny, yet still the treasure of the Homeric poems received from the Athenians the first appreciation of its national significance, and it was now that writing was for the first time employed to secure an irreplaceable national possession against the dangers of a merely verbal tradition. The poems were not, however, by any means alienated from ordinary life, but were raised to a higher position in the festivals of the town and the education of the young. The city of Pisistratus acquired an authoritative reputation in the domain of national poetry; through him a Homer and Hesiod came into existence which could be read in the same form to the ends of the Greek world.

The collection and investigation went back beyond Homer to the most ancient sources of Hellenic theology, of which the Thracian Orpheus was regarded as the founder, and which Onomacritus now worked up into a new system of mystic wisdom, while at the same time it was utilised to give enhanced importance to the favourite cult of the dynasty, the worship of Dionysus. With it was joined the collection of oracular sayings, upon which the Pisistratidæ placed a special value, as well as the arrangement of the historical records, especially the genealogies.

Thus Athens became a centre of scientific learning and labour. If any one wished to gain a sight of any poem worthy of remembrance which had been written in the Hellenic tongue, or of anything concerning the knowledge of the gods and of ethics which had been thought out by the ancients and handed down by tradition from former times, he must journey to Athens. Here, on the citadel of Pisistratus, the whole treasure was united; here the works of the nation’s poets and wise men were collected together, carefully inscribed in rolls, well arranged, and suitably disposed.

Yet it was not enough to garner what remained from ancient times; there was also a desire to encourage living art and to have its masters in Athens, and specially those in the lyric art, which had succeeded the epic, and during the age of the tyrants was in full vigour. The lyric poets were especially qualified to enhance the brilliance of courts, and to ennoble their feasts, and were consequently summoned from one place to another. Thus the Pisistratidæ sent out their state ships to fetch Anacreon of Teos, the joyous poet and comrade of Polycrates, to Athens, and thus Simonides of Ceos and Lasus of Hermione dwelt at the tyrant’s Court of the Muses.

But quite new germs of national poetry were also unfolded under them and by their means. For they were already the fosterers of the worship of Dionysus [or Bacchus], and at the latter’s festivals were developed not only the choral dance and choral song of the Dithyrambus, which Arion had invented and Lasus further improved, but mimic representations were added to them, in which masked choruses appeared, and singers who assumed a rule opposite the choruses, spoke to the latter and conducted conversations with them. Thus an action, a drama, developed itself, and after the thing had been invented it was freed from the bacchanalian material and changed in contents as in masks; the whole cycle of heroic legends was gradually drawn on for dramatic treatment, and the founder of this Dionysian play was Thespis of Icaria.