"Poetry," says a celebrated French writer, "has almost always been prior to every other kind of learning, which is undoubtedly owing to its being the produce of sentiment and fancy, two faculties of the mind always employed before reason. Sensible minds are led by a kind of instinct to sing their pleasures, their happiness, the gods whom they adore, the heroes they admire, and the events they wish to have engraven on their memories; accordingly poetry has been cultivated in all savage nations. The warmth of the passions has been of great use in promoting this delightful art." It is not to be wondered at, then, that the Athenians, who, to use the words of the same writer, possessed a lively imagination, great fertility of genius, a rich harmonious language, and eminent abilities excited by the most ardent emulation, should be extravagantly fond of poetry, and no less partial to those who displayed a vigorous spirit of emulation in that art, and an ambition to excel in any of the employments that served to illustrate or give it effect. For these reasons they systematically honoured not only dramatic poets but actors.
How much the important concerns of mankind are swayed and pre-influenced by manners and habits is strongly illustrated in the discrepance which maintained between the taste, the amusements, and opinions of the lively Athenians, and those of the austere and exact people of Sparta, though they were in fact one people. In their amusements, and partly in their taste for literature, they differed essentially. The Athenians loved poetry and music; while the Spartans, whose schemes were founded on utility alone, rather rejected them as superfluous. Poets and musicians, however, who confined themselves to sober and simple subjects, and to grave and dignified expression, were not without admirers and supporters in the latter: and when the Spartans destroyed and sacked the city of Thebes, they spared the house that had been inhabited by Pindar, in respect to that great poet's memory. Terpander too, a lyric poet and musician is related by Ælian to have appeased a tumult at Sparta by the sweetness of his notes and the fire of his poetry. They would not, however, endure either poetry or music which did not breathe exalted sentiment, and produce a beneficial impression on the mind.
On the subject of dramatic poetry and its adjuncts, theatres and actors, the Spartans differed as essentially from the Athenians, as the puritans, methodists, quakers, and rigid presbyterians differ from the amateurs of the present day. During a reign of thirty-six years, Agesilaus who held the drama in contempt, discouraged and kept the actors in depression. This extreme austerity prevailed through all ranks of the rigid Lacedemonian people, who indeed carried it to a length equally absurd and cruel; for they punished with great severity a famous poet and musician, for adding three strings to the harp; grounding their sentence upon a principle universally assented to among them, that the softness of musical sounds produced effeminacy among the people. Of the truth of their proposition in the abstract, there can be little doubt; it is in the rigid application and extreme extension of it the fault lies. Music has certainly a powerful influence on the passions, and produces happy effects upon the human heart and mind when cultivated moderately: but when it becomes the general prevailing passion of a nation, or, as it were, gets dominion over them, it unquestionably produces not effeminacy merely, but a hateful depravity of manners. Whether the unexampled depravation of the modern Italians has been caused by their passionate devotion to music, or their passionate devotion to music by their monstrous depravity shall not be discussed in this place. But the closeness of the connexion between the two things, no matter which may be the cause or which the effect, will serve as an illustration of the subject.
It is related that once, when Callipedes a celebrated tragedian, offered his homage to Agesilaus, and for some time received no notice in return, he said to the king, "Do you not know me, sir?" To which the king replied, "You are Callipedes, the actor," and turned from him with contempt. This harshness and severity extended even to the slaves of the Spartans, some of whom, being taken prisoners of war by the Thebans, and ordered to sing the odes of Terpander for their captors, peremptorily refused to comply, because it was forbidden them by their old masters.
In all Greece, however, Sparta stands a solitary instance of this austerity; for the drama, poetry, and music were enthusiastically cultivated in Athens, and even in every country into which the Grecians penetrated. Players became in many instances the confidential friends, counsellors, and ministers of kings themselves; and Alexander the Great sent Thessalus, an actor, as an ambassador to Pexodorus, the Persian governor of Caria, to forbid a marriage intended by the governor between his daughter and Aridœus, an illegitimate son of the late king Philip. The proofs which that mighty conqueror has left on record of his partiality to celebrated professors of the histrionic art, are no less extraordinary than numerous, and in some instances, do no great credit to his judgment. Every general in his camp had along with him his poets, musicians, and declaimers. One time Alexander's favourite, Hephestion, accommodated his musician named Evius, with the quarters which belonged of right to Eumenes, the most worthy and renowned of all the Grecian generals. Eumenes boldly remonstrated, and told Alexander that he plainly saw the best way to acquire promotion in his army would be to throw away arms, and learn to play upon the flute or turn actor.
At a contest of skill between Thessalus, Alexander's favourite actor, and another of the name of Athenodorus, the king, though in his heart deeply interested for the success of Thessalus, would not say a word in his favour, lest it should bias the judges, who actually proclaimed Athenodorus victor: the hero then exclaimed that the judges deserved commendation for what they had done, but that he would have given half his kingdom rather than see Thessalus overcome. This was certainly a striking instance of magnanimity. How unprejudiced and generous that great man's mind was may be collected from a subsequent act of his in a case that concerned that very Athenodorus. That performer being heavily fined by the Athenians for not appearing on the stage at the feast of Bacchus implored Alexander to intercede for him; the just and munificent monarch, however, refused to write in his favour, but, in order to relieve the man, paid the fine for him.
In Greece, declamation was regarded as the principal step to honour and advancement in public life. The greatest men practised it, and as they held action to be the criterion of oratory, made the best actors their models; nor was this a groundless opinion adopted by a few or superficial men; for Demosthenes having remarked with some asperity that the worst orators were heard in the rostrum in preference to him, the celebrated actor Satyrus, in order to show him how much grace, dignity, and action add to the celebrity of a public man, repeated to him several passages from Sophocles and Euripides, which so delighted and astonished Demosthenes that he always afterwards formed his elocution and action on the models of the most celebrated actors.
Having brought the history of the stage to the end of the Greek theatre, this chapter cannot be better concluded than with an extract from an admirable work lately published on the subject in England, to which this history is indebted for some of its materials.
"It remains now only to say, that from the parodies of the ancient writers, begun by Aristophanes, and awkwardly imitated by his contemporaries and successors, sprung mimes, farces, and the grossest buffoonery; and though the Grecian theatre still kept up an appearance of greatness, and there was often some brilliancy beamed across the heterogeneous mass which obscured truth and nature, to which the people were no longer sensible; yet the grandeur and magnificence of public exhibitions decreased; till, at length the fate of the stage too truly foretold the fate of the empire. So certain it is that where the arts are redundant they introduce luxury, and sap the foundation of a state."