THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

A DICTIONARY OF ARTS, SCIENCES, LITERATURE AND GENERAL INFORMATION

ELEVENTH EDITION

VOLUME XII SLICE V
Greek Law to Ground-Squirrel

Articles in This Slice

GREEK LAW. Ancient Greek law is a branch of comparative jurisprudence the importance of which has been long ignored. Jurists have commonly left its study to scholars, who have generally refrained from comparing the institutions Greek law and comparative jurisprudence. of the Greeks with those of other nations. Greek law has, however, been partially compared with Roman law, and has been incidentally illustrated with the aid of the primitive institutions of the Germanic nations. It may now be studied in its earlier stages in the laws of Gortyn; its influence may be traced in legal documents preserved in Egyptian papyri; and it may be recognized as a consistent whole in its ultimate relations to Roman law in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire.

The existence of certain panhellenic principles of law is implied by the custom of settling a difference between two Greek states, or between members of a single state, by resorting to external arbitration. The general unity of Greek law is mainly to be seen in the laws of inheritance and adoption, in laws of commerce and contract, and in the publicity uniformly given to legal agreements.

No systematic collection of Greek laws has come down to us. Our knowledge of some of the earliest notions of the subject is derived from the Homeric poems. For the details of Attic law we have to depend on ex parte statements Original authorities. in the speeches of the Attic orators, and we are sometimes enabled to check those statements by the trustworthy, but often imperfect, aid of inscriptions. Incidental illustrations of the laws of Athens may be found in the Laws of Plato, who deals with the theory of the subject without exercising any influence on actual practice. The Laws of Plato are criticized in the Politics of Aristotle, who, besides discussing laws in their relation to constitutions, reviews the work of certain early Greek lawgivers. The treatise on the Constitution of Athens includes an account of the jurisdiction of the various public officials and of the machinery of the law courts, and thus enables us to dispense with the second-hand testimony of grammarians and scholiasts who derived their information from that treatise (see [Constitution of Athens]). The works of Theophrastus On the Laws, which included a recapitulation of the laws of various barbaric as well as Grecian states, are now represented by only a few fragments (Nos. 97-106, ed. Wimmer).

Our earliest evidence is to be sought in the Homeric poems. In the primitive society of the heroic age (as noticed by Plato) written laws were necessarily unknown; for, “in Law in Homer. that early period, they had no letters; they lived by habit and by the customs of their ancestors” (Laws, 680 A). We find a survival from a still more primitive time in the savage Cyclops, who is “unfamiliar with dooms of law, or rules of right” (οὔτε δικας εὖ εἰδότα οὔτε θέμιστας, Od. ix. 215 and 112 f.).

Dikē (δίκη), assigned by Curtius (Etym. 134) to the same root as δείκνυμι, primarily means a “way pointed out,” a “course prescribed by usage,” hence “way” or “fashion,” “manner” Dikē. or “precedent.” In the Homeric poems it sometimes signifies a “doom” of law, a legal “right,” a “lawsuit”; while it is rarely synonymous with “justice,” as in Od. xiv. 84, where “the gods honour justice,” τίουσι δίκην.

Various senses of “right” are expressed in the same poems by themis (θἐμις), a term assigned (ib. 254) to the same root as τίθημι. In its primary sense themis is that which “has been laid down”; hence a particular decision or “doom.” The Themis. plural themistes implies a body of such precedents, “rules of right,” which the king receives from Zeus with his sceptre (Il. ix. 99). Themis and dikē have sometimes been compared with the Roman fas and jus respectively, the former being regarded as of divine, the latter of human origin; and this is more satisfactory than the latest view (that of Hirzel), which makes “counsel” the primary meaning of themis.

Thesmos (θεσμός), an ordinance (from the same root as themis), is not found in “Homer,” except in the last line of the Thesmos. Nomos. original form of the Odyssey (xxiii. 296), where it probably refers to the “ordinance” of wedlock. The common term for law, νόμος, is first found in Hesiod, but not in a specially legal sense (e.g. Op. 276).

A trial for homicide is one of the scenes represented on the shield of Achilles (Il. xviii. 497-508). The folk are here to be seen thronging the market-place, where a strife has arisen between two men as to the price of a man that The trial scene. has been slain. The slayer vows that he has paid all (εὔχετο πάντ᾽ ἀποδοῦναι), the kinsman of the slain protests that he has received nothing (ἀναίνετο μηδὲν ἑλέσθαι); both are eager to join issue before an umpire, and both are favoured by their friends among the folk, who are kept back by the heralds. The cause is tried by the elders, who are seated on polished stones in a sacred circle, and in the midst there lie two talents of gold, “to give to him who, among them all, sets forth the cause most rightly” (τῷ δόμεν ὃς μετὰ τοῖσι δίκην ἰθύντατα εἴποι).

The discussions of the above passage have chiefly turned on two points: (1) the legal questions at issue; and (2) the destination of the “two talents.” (1) In the ordinary view (a), it is solely a question whether the fine or blood-money, corresponding to the Wergeld (see [Wergeld], [Teutonic Peoples], [Britain]: Anglo-Saxon) of the old Germanic law (Grimm, Rechtsalterthümer, 661 f.), has been paid or not. (This is accepted by Thonissen, Lipsius, Sidgwick and Ridgeway.) In the other view (b), it is held that the slayer “claimed to pay” the fine, and the kinsman of the slain “refused to accept any compensation” (so Passow and Leaf, approved by Pollock). (2) The “two talents” (shown by Ridgeway to be a small sum, equal in value to two oxen) are awarded either (a) to the litigant who “pleads his cause most justly before them” (so Thonissen, Shilleto and Lipsius, in accordance with the Attic use of phrases like δίκην εἰπεῖν), or (b) to the judge “who, among all the elders, gives the most righteous judgment” (so Maine, approved by Sidgwick, Pollock, Leaf and Ridgeway).

On this controversy, cf. Maine’s Ancient Law, chap. x. pp. 385 f., 405 f., ed. Pollock; Thonissen, Droit pénal (1875), 27; P. M. Laurence (on Shilleto’s view) in Journal of Philology, viii. (1879), 125 f.; Ridgeway, ib. x. (1882), 30 f., and Journal of Hellenic Studies, viii. (1887), 133 f.; and Leaf, ib. viii. 122 f., and in his Commentary on Iliad, ii. (1902), 610-614; also J. H. Lipsius in Leipziger Studien, xii. (1890), 225-231, criticized by H. Sidgwick in Classical Review, viii. (1894), 1-4.

We are told elsewhere in Homer that sometimes a man accepted blood-money from the slayer of his brother or his son, and that the slayer remained in the land after paying this penalty (Il. ix. 633). As a rule the slayer found it safest to flee (Od. xxiii. 118 f.), but even so, he might be pursued by the friends of the slain (Od. xv. 272-278). If he remained, the land was not (as in later ages) deemed to be polluted by his presence. In Homer, Orestes does not slay Clytaemestra, and he needs no “purification” for slaying Aegisthus.

The laws of Sparta are ascribed to the legislation of Lycurgus, whose traditional date is 884 B.C. Written laws are said to have been expressly forbidden by Lycurgus (Plutarch, Lycurgus, 13); hence the “laws of Sparta” are simply Greek lawgivers: Lycurgus at Sparta. a body of traditional observances. We learn that all trials for homicide came before the Council of Elders and lasted for several days, and that all civil causes were tried by the ephors (q.v.). We are also told that originally the land was equally divided among the citizens of Sparta, and that this equality was enforced by law (Polybius vi. 45-46). Early in the 4th century the ephor Epitadeus, owing to a disagreement with his son, enacted that every Spartan should be allowed to transfer his estate and his allotment to any other person (Plutarch, Agis, 5), while Aristotle, in a much-debated passage of the Politics (ii. 9. 14-15), criticizes the Spartan constitution for allowing the accumulation of property in a few hands, an evil aggravated by the large number of “heiresses”; “a man (he adds) may bestow his heiress on any one he pleases; and, if he dies intestate, this privilege descends to his heir.”

Law was first reduced to writing in the 7th century B.C. A written code is a necessary condition of just judgment, and Era of written laws. such a code was the first concession which the people in the Greek cities extorted from the ruling aristocracies. The change was generally effected with the aid of a single legislator entrusted with complete authority to draw up a code.

The first communities to reach this stage of progress were the Greek colonies in the West. The Epizephyrian Locrians, near the extreme south of Italy, received the earliest written code from Zaleucus (663 B.C.), whose strict Zaleucus at Locri Epizephyrii.
Charondas at Catana, etc. and severe legislation put an end to a period of strife and confusion, though we know little of his laws, except that they attached definite penalties to each offence, and that they strictly protected the rights of property. Two centuries later, his code was adopted even by the Athenian colony of Thurii in south Italy (443 B.C.). Charondas, the “disciple” of Zaleucus, became the lawgiver, not only of his native town of Catana on the east coast of Sicily, but also of other Chalcidian colonies in Sicily and Italy. The laws of Charondas were marked by a Androdamas of Rhegium.
Philolaus of Corinth. singular precision, but there was nothing (says Aristotle) that he could claim as his own except the special procedure against false witnesses (Politics, ii. 12. 11). In the case of judges who neglected to serve in the law courts, he inflicted a large fine on the rich and a small fine on the poor (ib. vi. (iv.) 13. 2). Androdamas of Rhegium gave laws on homicide and on heiresses to the Chalcidians of Thrace, while Philolaus of Corinth provided the Thebans with “laws of adoption” with a view to preventing any change in the number of the allotments of land (ib. ii. 12. 8-14).

Local legislation in Crete is represented by the laws of the important city of Gortyn, which lies to the south of Ida in a plain watered by the Lethaeus. Part of that stream forms a sluice for a water-mill, and at or near this mill The laws of Gortyn. some fragmentary inscriptions were found by French archaeologists in 1857 and 1879. The great inscription, to which most of our knowledge of the laws is due, was not discovered until 1884. It had been preserved on a wall 27 ft. long and 5 ft. high, the larger part of which was buried in the ground, while its farthest extremity passed obliquely athwart the bed of the mill-stream. It was necessary to divert the water before the last four columns could be transcribed by the Italian scholar, Federico Halbherr, whose work was completed in the same year by the excavation and transcription of the first eight columns by the German scholar, E. Fabricius. In the following year Halbherr discovered more than eighty small fragments on the neighbouring site of a former temple of the Pythian Apollo.

These fragments, which are far earlier than the great inscription above-mentioned, have been assigned to about 650 B.C. They precede the introduction of coined money into Crete, the penalties being reckoned, not in coins, but in caldrons. They deal with the powers of the magistrates and the observances of religion, but are mainly concerned with private matters of barter and sale, dowry and adoption, inheritance and succession, fines for trespass and questions of blood-money. As in the code of Zaleucus, we have a fixed scale of penalties, including the fine of a single tripod, and ranging from one to a hundred caldrons.

The great inscription is perhaps two centuries later (c. 450 B.C.). It consists of a number of amendments or additions to an earlier code, and it deals exclusively with private law, in which the family and family property occupy the largest part. The procedure is entirely oral; oaths and other oral testimony are alone admitted; there are no documentary proofs, and no record of the verdict except in the memory of the judge or of his “remembrancer.” All the causes are tried before a single judge, who varies according to the nature of the suit. Where the law specially enjoins it, he is bound to give judgment (δικάδδεν) in accordance with the law and the “witnesses or oaths,” but, in other cases, he is permitted to take oath and decide (κρίνειν) in view of “the contentions of the parties,” as distinguished from “the declarations of the witnesses.” Offences against the person are treated as matters of private compensation according to a carefully graduated tariff. In certain cases the defendant may clear himself by an “oath of purgation” with the support of “cojurors” (ὁμωμόται), the Eideshelfer of old Germanic law (Grimm 859 f.), who have no necessary knowledge of the facts. There is no interference with the exposure of infants, except in the interest of the father (if the child is free-born) or of the lord (in the case of serfs). The law of debt is primitive, though less severe than that of the early Romans. In contrast with these primitive elements we have others which are distinctly progressive. The estates of husband, wife and sons are regarded as absolutely distinct. Wills are unknown, even in their most restricted form. Elaborate provisions are made to secure with all speed the marriage of an “heiress”; she is bound to marry the eldest of her paternal uncles or to surrender part of her estate, and it is only if there are no paternal uncles that she is permitted to marry one (and that the eldest) of their sons. Adoption is made by the simple procedure of mounting a block of stone in the market-place and making a public announcement at a time when the citizens are assembled. The adopted son does not inherit any larger share than that of a daughter. Any one who desires to repudiate his adopted son makes a public announcement as before, and the person repudiated receives, by way of nominal compensation, the gift of a small number of staters. In these later “laws of Gortyn” we have reached the time when payments are made, not in “caldrons,” but in coins. In the inscription itself the laws are simply described as “these writings.”

The text of the great inscription was first published by E. Fabricius in Ath. Mitth. ix. (1885), 362-384; there is a cast of the whole in the Cambridge Museum of Classical Archaeology. Cf. Comparetti’s Leggi di Gortyna (1893); Bücheler and Zittelmann in Rhein. Mus. xl. (1885); Dareste, Haussoullier and Th. Reinach, Inscr. juridiques grecques, iii. (1894), 352-493 (with the literature there quoted). Eng. trans. by Roby in Law Quarterly Review (1886), 135-152; see also E. S. Roberts, Gk. Epigraphy, i. 39 f., 52 f., 325-332; J. W. Headlam in Journal of Hellenic Studies, xiii. (1892-1893), 48-69; P. Gardner and F. B. Jevons, Greek Antiquities (1895), 560-574; W. Wyse in Whibley’s Companion to Greek Studies (1905), 378-383; and Hermann Lipsius, Zum Recht von Gortyns (Leipzig, 1909).

A Roman writer ascribes to the Athenians the very invention of lawsuits (Aelian, Var. Hist. iii. 38), and the Athenians themselves regarded their tribunals of homicide as institutions of immemorial antiquity (Isocr. Paneg. 40). Athens.
The three senior archons. On the abolition of the single decennial archon[1] in 683 B.C., his duties were distributed over several officials holding office for one year only. The judicial duties thenceforth discharged by the chief archon (the archon), in the case of citizens, were discharged by the polemarch in the case of foreign settlers or metics (μέτοικοι); while the king-archon, who succeeded to the religious functions of the ancient kings, decided cases connected with religious observances (see [Archon]). He also presided over the primitive council of the state, which was identical with the council of the Areopagus. It was possibly with a view to the recognition of the rights of the lower classes that, about the middle of the 7th century B.C., the three archons were raised to the number of nine by the institution The thesmothetae. of the joint board of the six thesmothetae, who superintended the judicial system in general, kept a record of all legal decisions, and drew attention to any defects in the laws. It is probable that in their title we have the earliest example in Attic Greek of the use of thesmos in the sense of “law.”

The constitution was at this time thoroughly oligarchical. With a view, however, to providing a remedy for the conflict between the several orders of the state, the first code of Athenian law was drawn up and published by Draco Draco. (strictly Dracon), who is definitely described as a thesmothetēs (621). His laws were known as thesmoi. The distinctive part of his legislation was the law of homicide, which was held in such high esteem that it was left unaltered in the legislation of Solon and in the democratic restoration of 411 B.C. It is partly preserved in an inscription of 409, which has been restored with the aid of quotations from the orators (C.I.A. i. 61; Inscr. jurid. grecques, ii. 1. 1-24; and Hicks, Gk. Hist. Inscr. No. 59). It drew a careful distinction between different kinds of homicide. Of the rest of Draco’s legislation we only know that Aristotle (Politics, ii. 12, 13) was struck by the severity of the penalties, and that the creditor was permitted to seize the person of the debtor as security for his debt.

The conflict of the orders was not allayed until both parties agreed in choosing Solon as mediator and as archon (594 B.C.). Solon cancelled all mortgages and debts secured on the person of the debtor, set free all who had become Solon. slaves for debt, and forbade such slavery for the future (see [Solon]). Thenceforth every citizen had also “the right of appeal to the law-courts,” and the privilege of claiming legal satisfaction on behalf of any one who was wronged. Cases of constitutional law (inter alia) came before large law-courts numbering hundreds of jurors, and the power of voting in these law-courts made the people masters of the constitution (Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, c. 9). Solon’s legislation also had an important effect on the law of property. In primitive times, on a man’s death, his money or lands remained in the family, and, even in the absence of direct descendants, the owner could not dispose of his property by will. Permission to execute a will was first given to Athenian citizens by the laws of Solon. But “the Athenian Will was only an inchoate Testament” (Maine’s Ancient Law, c. vi.); for this permission was expressly limited to those citizens who had no direct male descendants (Dem. Lept. 102; Plutarch, Solon, 21; cf. Wyse on Isaeus, p. 325).

The law of intestate succession is imperfectly preserved in [Dem.] 43, § 51 (cf. Wyse, ib. p. 562 f.). In the absence of direct male descendants, a daughter who survived her father was known as an ἐπίκληρος, not an “heiress,” but a “person who went with the estate”; and, in the absence of a will, the right or duty of marrying the daughter followed (with certain obvious exceptions) the same rules as the right of succession to the estate (cf. Wyse, ib. p. 348 f.).

Among the reforms of Cleisthenes (508) was the law of ostracism (q.v.). The privileges of the Areopagus were Cleisthenes, Ephialtes.
Pericles, Cleon. curtailed (while its right to try certain cases of homicide was left untouched) by the reforms of Ephialtes (462), and of Pericles, who also restored the thirty “local justices” (453), limited the franchise to those of citizen-blood by both parents (451), and was the first to assign to jurors a fee for their services in the law-courts, which was raised to three obols by Cleon (425).

In contrast to legislative reforms brought about by lawgivers entrusted with special authority, such as Draco, Solon and Ordinary course of legislation. Cleisthenes, there was the regular and normal course of public legislation. The legislative power was not exercised directly by the popular assembly (see [Ecclesia]), but the preliminary consent of that body was necessary for the appointment of a legislative commission.

In the 5th century (e.g. in 450 and 446 B.C.) certain commissioners called συγγραφεῖς were appointed to draw up laws which, after approval by the council, were submitted Syngrapheis. Nomothetae. to the assembly. The same term was still in use in March 411 (Thuc. viii. 61). But in October, on the overthrow of the Four Hundred, the commissioners are for the first time called nomothetae (ib. 97).

The procedure in ordinary legislation was as follows. At the first meeting of the assembly in the year, the people was asked whether it would permit motions to be made for altering or supplementing the existing laws. A debate ensued, and, if such permission were granted, any citizen who wished to make a motion to the above effect was required to publish his proposals in the market-place, and to hand them to the secretary of the council (Boulē) to be read aloud at more than one meeting of the assembly. At the third regular meeting the people appointed the legislative commissioners, who were drawn by lot from the whole number of those then qualified to act as jurors. The number, and the duration of the commission, were determined in each case by the people. The proceedings before the commission were conducted exactly in the manner of a lawsuit. Those who desired to see old laws repealed, altered or replaced by new laws came forward as accusers of those laws; those of the contrary opinion, as defenders; and the defence was formally entrusted to public advocates specially appointed for the purpose (συνήγοροι). The number of the commissioners varied with the number or importance of the laws in question; there is evidence for the number 1001 (Dem. xxiv. 27). If a law approved by the commission was deemed to be unconstitutional, the proposer was liable to be prosecuted (by a γραφὴ παρανόμων), just as in the case of the proposer of an unconstitutional decree in the public assembly. Formal proceedings might also be instituted against laws on the sole ground of their inexpediency (see note on Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, p. 219, ed. Sandys). A prosecutor who (like Aeschines in his indictment of Ctesiphon) failed to obtain one-fifth of the votes was fined 1000 drachmae (£40), and lost the right to adopt this procedure in future. When a year had elapsed, the proposer of a law or a decree was free from personal responsibility. This was the case with Leptines, but the law itself could still be attacked, and, in this event, five advocates were appointed to defend it (σύνδικοι), cf. Dem. Lept. 144, 146.

Limits of space make it impossible to include in the present article any survey of the purport of the extant remains of the laws of Athens. Such a survey would begin with the laws of the family, including laws of marriage, adoption The laws of Athens. and inheritance, followed by the law of property and contracts, and the laws for the protection of life, the protection of the person, and the protection of the constitution. The texts have been collected and classified in Télfy’s Corpus juris Attici (1867), a work which can be supplemented or corrected with the aid of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens; while some of the recent expositions of the subject are mentioned in the bibliography at the end of this article. We now proceed to notice the law of homicide, but solely in connexion with jurisdiction.

The general term for a tribunal is δικαστήριον (from δικάζω), Anglicized “dicastery.” Of all the tribunals of Athens those for the trial of homicide were at once the most primitive Jurisdiction; the five primitive tribunals for the trial of homicide. and the least liable to suffer change through lapse of time. In the old Germanic law all trials whatsoever were held in the open air (Grimm 793 f.). At Athens this custom was characteristic of all the five primitive courts of homicide, the object being to prevent the prosecutor and the judges from coming under the same roof as one who was charged with the shedding of blood (Antiphon, De caede Herodis, 11). The place where the trial was held depended on the nature of the charge.

1. The rock of the Acropolis, outside the earliest of the city-walls, was the proper place for the trial of persons charged with premeditated homicide, or with wounding with intent to kill. On the Areopagus. The penalty for the former crime was death; for the latter exile; and, in either case, the property was confiscated. If the votes were equal, the person accused was acquitted. The proceedings lasted for three days, and each side might make two speeches. After the first speech the person accused of premeditated homicide was mercifully permitted to go into exile, in which case his property was confiscated, and in the ordinary course he remained in exile for the rest of his life.

2. Charges of unpremeditated homicide, or of instigating another to inflict bodily harm on a third person, or of killing a slave or a resident alien or a foreigner, were tried at the Palladion, At the Palladion. the ancient shrine of Pallas, east of the city-walls. The punishment for unpremeditated homicide was exile (without confiscation) until such time as the criminal had propitiated the relatives of the person slain, or (failing that) for some definite time. The punishment for instigating a crime was the same as for actually committing it.

3. Trials at the Delphinion, the shrine of Apollo At the Delphinion.
At Phreatto. Delphinios, in the same quarter, were reserved for special cases of either accidental or justifiable homicide.

4. If a man already in exile for unpremeditated homicide were accused of premeditated homicide, or of wounding with intent to kill, provision was made for this rare contingency by permitting him to approach the shore of Attica and conduct his defence on board a boat, while his judges heard the cause on shore, at a “place of pits” called Phreatto, near the harbour of Zea. If the accused were found guilty, he incurred the proper penalty; if acquitted, he remained in exile.

5. The court in the precincts of the Prytaneum, to the north of the Acropolis, was only of ceremonial importance. It “solemnly heard and condemned undiscovered murderers, and animals or At the Prytaneum. inanimate objects that had caused the loss of life.”[2] The writ ran “against the doer of the deed,” and any instrument of death that was found guilty was thrown across the frontier. The trial was held by the four “tribe-kings” (φυλοβασιλεῖς), an archaic survival from before the time of Cleisthenes. (On these five courts see Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, c. 57, and Dem. Aristocr. 65-79.)

In all the courts of homicide the president was the archon-basileus, or king-archon, who on these occasions laid aside his crown. Originally all these courts were under the jurisdiction of an ancient body of judges called the ephetae (ἐφέται), Ephetae. whose institution was ascribed to Draco. The transfer of the first of the above courts to the council of the Areopagus is attributed to Solon. In practice the jurisdiction of the ephetae (see also [Areopagus]) was probably confined to the courts at the Palladion and Delphinion; but even there the rights of this primitive body became obsolete, for trials “at the Palladion” sometimes came before an ordinary tribunal of 500 or 700 jurors (Isocr. c. Callim. 52, 54; [Dem.] c. Neaeram, 10).

Except in the case of the primitive courts of homicide, the right of jurisdiction was entrusted to the several archons until the date of Solon (594). When the direct jurisdiction of the archons was impaired by Solon’s institution The presidents of the tribunals.
The chief archon.
The king-archon. of the “right of appeal to the law-courts,” the dignity of those officials was recognized by their having the privilege of presiding over the new tribunals (ἡγεμονία δικαστηρίου). A similar position was assigned to the other executive officers, such as the strategi (generals), the board of police called the “Eleven,” and the financial officers, all of whom presided over cases connected with their respective departments. In their new position as presidents of the several courts, the archons received plaints, obtained from both parties the evidence which they proposed to present, formally presided at the trial, and gave instructions for the execution of the sentence. The choice of the presiding magistrate in each case was determined by the normal duties of his office. Thus the chief archon, the official guardian of orphans and The polemarch.
The strategi.
The thesmothetae. widows, presided in all cases, public or private, connected with the family property of citizens (Aristotle, u.s. c. 56). The king-archon had charge of all offences against religion, e.g. indictments for impiety, disputes within the family as to the right to hold a particular priesthood, and all actions for homicide (c. 57). The third archon, the polemarch, discharged in relation to resident aliens all such legal duties as were discharged by the chief archon in relation to citizens (c. 58). The trial of military offences was under the presidency of the strategi, who were assisted by the other military officers in preparing the case for the court. The six junior archons, the thesmothetae, acted as a board which was responsible for all cases not specially assigned to any other officials (details in c. 59).

The Forty, who were appointed by lot, four for each of the ten tribes, acted as sole judges in petty cases where the damages claimed did not exceed ten drachmae. Claims beyond that amount they handed over to the arbitrators. The Forty. The four representatives of any given tribe received notice of such claims brought against members of that tribe. It seems probable that they dealt with all private suits not otherwise assigned, but, unlike the archons, they did not prepare any case for the court but referred it, in the first instance, to a public arbitrator appointed by lot (c. 53).[3]

The public arbitrators (διαιτηταί) were a body including all Athenian citizens in the sixtieth year of their age. The arbitrator, on receiving the case from the four representatives of the Forty, first endeavoured to bring the parties The public arbitrators. to an agreement. If this failed, he heard the evidence and gave a decision. If the decision were accepted, the case was at an end, but, if either of the two parties insisted on appealing to a law-court, the arbitrator placed in two caskets (one for each party) copies of all the depositions, oaths and challenges, and of all the laws quoted in the case, sealed them up, and, after attaching a copy of his own decision, handed them over to the four representatives of the Forty, who brought the case into court and presided over the trial. Documents which had not been brought before the arbitrator could not be produced in court. The court consisted of 201 jurors where the sum in question was not more than 1000 drachmae (£40); in other cases the number of jurors was 401 (c. 53).

A small board of five appointed by lot, one for each pair of tribes, and known as the “introducers” (εἰσαγωγεῖς), brought Eisagōgeis. up certain of the cases that had to be decided within a month (ἔμμηνοι δίκαι), such as actions for restitution of dowry, repayment of capital for setting up a business, and cases connected with banking.

The largest and most important of the legal tribunals, the “dicastery” (par excellence), was known as the heliaea. The name, which is of uncertain origin,[4] denotes not only the place where the court was held but also the members Heliaea. of the court,—the heliastae of Aristophanes, the dicastae, or ἄνδρες δικασταί, of the Attic orators. During the palmy days of the Athenian democracy, in the interval between the Persian and the Peloponnesian wars, the total number liable to serve as jurors is said to have been 6000 (Aristotle, u.s. c. 24. 3), and this number was never exceeded (Aristoph. Vesp. 661 f.). Any Athenian citizen in full possession of his rights, and over thirty years of age, was entitled to be placed on the list (Aristotle, u.s. c. 63. 3). At the beginning of the year the whole body of jurors assembled on the hill of Ardēttos looking down on the Panathenaic Stadium, and there took a solemn oath to the effect that they would judge according to the laws and decrees of the Athenian people and of the council of the Five Hundred (Boulē), and that, in cases where there were no laws, they would decide to the best of their judgment; that they would hear both sides impartially, and vote on the case actually before the court.

It has been suggested that, as the normal number of a court was 500, the maximum number of 6000 jurors was probably divided into ten sections of 500 each, with 1000 reserves. There is evidence in the 4th century for courts of 200, 400, 500, 700 and (in important political trials) various multiples of 500, namely, 1000, 1500, 2000 or 2500. To some of these numbers one juror is added; it was probably added to all, to obviate the risk of the votes being exactly equal.

The evidence as to the organization of the jurors in the early part of the 4th century is imperfect. Passages in Aristophanes (Ecclesiazusae, 682-688; Plutus, 1166 f.) imply that in 392-388 B.C. the total number was divided into ten sections distinguished by the first ten letters of the Greek alphabet, A to K. Every juror, on his first appointment, received a ticket of boxwood (or of bronze) bearing his name with that of his father and his deme, and with one of the above letters in the upper left-hand corner. Of the bronze tickets many have been found (see notes on Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, c. 63, and fig. 1 in frontispiece, ed. Sandys). These tickets formed part of the machinery for allotting the jurors to the several courts. To guard against the possibility of bribery or other undue influence, the allotment did not take place until immediately before the hearing of the case. Each court contained an equal number of jurors from each of the ten tribes, and thus represented the whole body of the state. The juror, on entering the court assigned him, received a counter (see fig. 3 in frontispiece, u.s.), on presenting which at the end of the day he received his fee. The machinery for carrying out the above arrangements is minutely described at the end of Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (for details, cf. Gilbert, 397-399, Eng. trans., or Wyse in Whibley’s Companion to Greek Studies, 387 f.).

The law-courts gradually superseded most of the ancient judicial functions of the council and the assembly, but the council continued to hold a strict scrutiny (δοκιμασία) of candidates for office or for other privileges, while Jurisdiction of the council and assembly.
Eisangelia. the council itself, as well as all other officials, had to give account (εὔθυνα) on ceasing to hold office. The council also retained the right to deal with extraordinary crimes against the state. It was open to any citizen to bring such crimes to the knowledge of the council in writing. The technical term for this information, denunciation or impeachment was eisangelia (εἰσαγγελία). The council could inflict a fine of 500 drachmae (£20), or, in important cases, refer the matter either to a law-court, as in the trial of Antiphon (Thuc. viii. 68), or to the ecclesia, as in that of Alcibiades (415 B.C.), and the strategi in command at Arginusae (406; Xen. Hell. i. 7. 19). The term εἰσαγγελία was also applied to denunciations brought against persons who wronged the orphan or the widow, or against a public arbitrator who had neglected his duty (Dem. Meidias, 86 f.).

A “presentation” of criminal information (προβολή) might be laid before the assembly with a view to obtaining its preliminary sanction for bringing the case before a judicial tribunal. Such was the mode of procedure Probolē. adopted against persons who had brought malicious, groundless or vexatious accusations, or who had violated the sanctity of certain public festivals. The leading example of the former is the trial of the accusers who prompted the people to put to death the generals who had won the Battle of Arginusae (Xen. Hell. i. 7. 34); and, of the latter, the proceedings of Demosthenes against Meidias.

Legal actions (δίκαι) were classified as private (ἴδιαι) or public (δημόσιαι). The latter were also described as γραφαί or “prosecutions,” but some γραφαί were called “private,” when the state was regarded as only indirectly injured Classes of legal actions. by a wrong done to an individual citizen (Dem. xxi. 47). A private suit could only be brought by the man directly interested, or, in the case of a slave, a ward or an alien, by the master, guardian or patron respectively; and, if the suit were successful, the sum claimed generally went to the plaintiff. Public actions may be divided into ordinary criminal cases, and offences against the state. As a rule they could be instituted by any person who possessed the franchise, and the penalty was paid to the state. If the prosecutor failed to obtain one-fifth of the votes, he had to pay a fine of 1000 drachmae (£40), and lost the right of ever bringing a similar action.

Lawsuits, whether public or private, were also distinguished as δίκαι κατά τινος or πρός τινα, according as the defeated party could or could not be personally punished. Actions (ἀγῶνες) were also distinguished as ἀγῶνες τιμητοί (“to be assessed”), in which the amount of damages had to be determined by the court, because it had not been fixed by law, and ἀτίμητοι (“not to be assessed”), in which the damages had not to be determined by the court, because they had already been fixed by law or by special agreement.

Among special kinds of action were ἀπαγωγή, ἐφήγησις and ἔνδειξις. These could only be employed when the offence was patent and could not be denied. In the first, the person accused was summarily arrested by the prosecutor and haled into the presence of the proper official. In the second, the accuser took the officer with him to arrest the culprit (Dem. xxii. 26). In the third, he lodged an information with the official, and left the latter to effect the capture. Φάσις, a general term for many kinds of legal “information,” was a form of procedure specially directed against those who injured the fiscal interests of the state, and against guardians who neglected the pecuniary interests of their wards. Ἀπογραφή was an action for confiscating property in private hands, which was claimed as belonging to the state, the term being derived from the claimants’ written inventory of the property in question.

The ordinary procedure in all lawsuits, public or private, began with a personal summons (πρόσκλησις) of the Ordinary legal procedure. defendant by the plaintiff accompanied by two witnesses (κλητῆρες). If the defendant failed to appear in court, these witnesses gave proof of the summons, and judgment went by default.

The action was begun by presenting a written statement of the case to the magistrate who presided over trials of the class in question. If the statement were accepted, court-fees were paid by both parties in a private action, and by the prosecutor alone in a public action. The magistrate fixed a day for the preliminary investigation (ἀνάκρισις), and, whenever several causes were instituted at the same time, he drew lots to determine the order in which they should be taken. Hence the plaintiff was said “to have a suit assigned him by lot” (λαγχάνειν δίκην), a phrase practically equivalent to “obtaining leave to bring an action.” At the ἀνάκρισις the plaintiff and defendant both swore to the truth of their statements. If the defendant raised no formal protest, the trial proceeded in regular course (εὐθυδικία), but he might contend that the suit was inadmissible, and, to prove his point, might bring witnesses to confront those on the side of the plaintiff (διαμαρτυρία), or he might rely on argument without witnesses by means of a written statement traversing that of the plaintiff (παραγραφή). The person who submitted the special plea in bar of action naturally spoke first, and, if he gained the verdict, the main suit could not come on, or, at any rate, not in the way proposed or before the same court. A cross-action (ἀντιγραφή) might be brought by the defendant, but the verdict did not necessarily affect that of the original suit.

In the preliminary examination copies of the laws or other documents bearing on the case were produced. If any such document were in the hands of a third person, he could be compelled to produce it by an action for that Documents. purpose (εἰς ἐμφανῶν κατάστασιν). The depositions were ordinarily made before the presiding officer and were taken down in his presence. If a witness were compelled to be absent, a certified copy of his deposition might be sent (ἐκμαρτυρία). The depositions of slaves were not accepted, unless made under torture, and for receiving such evidence the consent of both parties was required. Either party could challenge the other to submit his slaves to the Challenges. test (πρόκλησις εἰς βάσανον), and, in the event of the challenge being refused, could comment on the fact when the case came before the court. Either party could also challenge the other to take an oath (πρόκλσις εἰς ὄρκον), and, if the oath were declined, could similarly comment on the fact.

Mercantile cases had to be decided within the interval of a month; others might be postponed for due cause. If, on the day of trial, one of the parties was absent, his representative had to show cause under oath (ὑπωμοσία); The trial. if the other party objected, he did so under oath (ἀνθυπωμοσία). If the plea for delay were refused by the court, and it were the defendant who failed to appear, judgment went by default; in the absence of the plaintiff, the case was given in favour of the defendant.

The official who had conducted the preliminary inquiry also presided at the trial. The proceedings began with a solemn sacrifice. The plea of the plaintiff and the formal reply of the defendant were then read by the clerk. The court was next addressed first by the plaintiff, next by the defendant; in some cases there were two speeches on each side. Every litigant was legally required to conduct his own case. The speeches were often composed by professional experts for delivery by the parties to the suit, who were required to speak in person, though one or more unprofessional supporters (συνήγοροι) might subsequently speak in support of the case. The length of the speeches was in many cases limited by law to a fixed time recorded by means of a water-clock (clepsydra). Documents were not regarded as part of the speech, and, while these were being read, the clock was stopped (Goethe found a similar custom in force in Venice in October 1786). The witnesses were never cross-examined, but one of the litigants might formally interrogate the other. The case for the defence was sometimes finally supported by pathetic appeals on the part of relatives and friends.

When the speeches were over, the votes were taken. In the 5th century mussel-shells (χοιρῖναι) were used for the purpose. Each of the jurors received a shell, which he placed in one of the two urns, in that to the front if he voted for acquittal; in that to the back if he voted for condemnation. If a second vote had to be taken to determine the amount of the penalty, wax tablets were used, on which the juror drew a long line, if he gave the heavy penalty demanded by the plaintiff; a short one, if he decided in favour of the lighter penalty proposed by the defendant.

In the 4th century the mussel-shells were replaced by disks of bronze. Each disk (inscribed with the words ΨΗΦΟΣ ΔΗΜΟΣΙΑ) was about 1 in. in diameter, with a short tube running through the centre. This tube was either perforated or closed (see figs. 6 and 7 in frontispiece to Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, ed. Sandys). One of each kind was given to every juror, who was required to use the perforated or the closed disk, according as he voted for the plaintiff or for the defendant. On the platform there were two urns, one of bronze and one of wood. The juror placed in the hollow of his hand the disk that he proposed to use, and closed his fingers on the extremity of the tube, so that no one could see whether it were a perforated disk or not, and then deposited it in the bronze urn, and (with the same precaution to ensure secrecy) dropped the unused disk into the wooden urn. The votes were sorted by persons appointed by lot, and counted by the president of the court, and the result announced by the herald. For any second vote the same procedure was adopted (Aristotle, u.s., c. 68 of Kenyon’s Berlin text).

Pecuniary penalties were inflicted both in public and in private suits; personal penalties, in public suits only. Personal penalties included sentences of death or exile, or different degrees of disfranchisement (ἀτιμία) with or Penalties. without confiscation. Imprisonment before trial was common, and persons mulcted in penalties might be imprisoned until the penalties were paid, but imprisonment was never inflicted as the sole penalty after conviction. Foreigners alone could be sold into slavery. Sentences of death were carried out under the supervision of the board of police called the “Eleven.” In ancient times a person condemned was hurled into a deep pit (the barathrum) in a north-western suburb of Athens. In later times he was compelled to drink the fatal draught of hemlock. Common malefactors were beaten to death with clubs. Fines were collected and confiscated property sold by special officials, called πράκτορες and πωληταί respectively. In private suits the sentence was executed by the state if the latter had a share in any fine imposed, or if imprisonment were part of the penalty. Otherwise, the execution of the sentence was left to the plaintiff, who had the right of distraint, or, if this failed, could bring an action of ejectment (δίκη ἐξούγης).

From the verdict of the heliaea there was no appeal. But, if judgment had been given by default, the person condemned might bring an action to prove that he was not responsible for such default, τὴν ἔρημον (sc. δίκην) ἀντιλαγχάνειν. The corresponding term for challenging the award of an arbitrator was τὴν μὴ οὖσαν ἀντιλαγχάνειν. He might also bring an action for false evidence (δίκη ψευδομαρτυριῶν) against his opponent’s witnesses, and, on their conviction, have the sentence annulled. This “denunciation” of false evidence was technically called ἐπίσκηψις and ἐπισκήπτεσθαι.

The large number of the jurors made bribery difficult, but, as was first proved by Anytus (in 409), not impossible. It also diminished the feeling of personal responsibility, while it increased the influence of political motives. In Character of the Athenian tribunals. addressing such a court, the litigants were not above appealing to the personal interests of the general public. We have a striking example of this in the terms in which Lysias makes one of his clients close a speech in prosecution of certain retail corn-dealers who have incurred the penalty of death by buying more than 75 bushels of wheat at one time: “If you condemn these persons, you will be doing what is right, and will pay less for the purchase of your corn; if you acquit them, you will pay more” (xxii. § 22).

Speakers were also tempted to take advantage of the popular ignorance by misinterpreting the enactments of the law, and the jurors could look for no aid from the officials who formally presided over the courts. The latter were not necessarily experts, for they owed their own original appointment to the caprice of the lot. Almost the only officials specially elected as experts were the strategi, and these presided only in their own courts. Again, there was every temptation for the informer to propose the confiscation of the property of a wealthy citizen, who would naturally prefer paying blackmail to running the risk of having his case tried before a large tribunal which was under every temptation to decide in the interests of the treasury. In conclusion we may quote the opinions on the judicial system of Athens which have been expressed by two eminent classical scholars and English lawyers.

A translator of Aristophanes, Mr B. B. Rogers, records his opinion “that it would be difficult to devise a judicial system less adapted for the due administration of justice” (Preface to Wasps, xxxv. f.), while a translator of Demosthenes, Mr C. R. Kennedy, observes that the Athenian jurors “were persons of no legal education or learning; taken at haphazard from the whole body of citizens, and mostly belonging to the lowest and poorest class. On the other hand, the Athenians were naturally the quickest and cleverest people in the world. Their wits were sharpened by the habit ... of taking an active part in important debates, and hearing the most splendid orators. There was so much litigation at Athens that they were constantly either engaged as jurors, or present as spectators in courts of law” (Private Orations, p. 361).

Authorities.—1. Greek Law. B. W. Leist, Gräco-italische Rechtsgeschichte (Jena, 1884); L. Mitteis, Reichsrecht und Volksrecht in den östlichen Provinzen des römischen Kaiserreichs, mit Beiträgen zur Kenntnis des griechischen Rechts (Leipzig, 1891); J. H. Lipsius, Von der Bedeutung des griechischen Rechts (Leipzig, 1893); G. Gilbert, “Zur Entwickelungsgeschichte des ... griechischen Rechtes” in Jahrb. für kl. Philologie (Leipzig, 1896); H. J. Hitzig, Die Bedeutung des altgriechischen Rechtes für die vergleichende Rechtswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1906); R. Hirzel, Themis, Dike und Verwandtes (Leipzig, 1907); J. J. Thonissen, Le Droit criminel de la Grèce légendaire, followed by Le Droit pénal de la république athénienne (Brussels, 1875).

2. Attic Law. (a) Editions of Greek texts: I. B. Télfy, Corpus juris Attici (Pest and Leipzig, 1868); Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens, ed. Kenyon (London, 1891, &c., and esp. ed. 4, Berlin, 1903); ed. 4, Blass (Leipzig, 1903); text with critical and explanatory notes, ed. Sandys (London, 1893); Lysias, ed. Frohberger (Leipzig, 1866-1871); Isaeus, ed. Wyse (Cambridge, 1904); Demosthenes, Private Orations, ed. Paley and Sandys, ed. 3 (Cambridge, 1896-1898); Against Midias, ed. Goodwin (Cambridge, 1906); Dareste, Haussoullier, Th. Reinach, Inscr. juridiques grecques (Paris, 1891-1904). (b) Modern treatises: K. F. Hermann, De vestigiis institutorum ... Atticorum per Platonis de legibus libros indagandis (Marburg, 1836); Staatsaltertümer, ed. 6, Thumser (Freiburg, 1892); Rechtsaltertümer, ed. 3, Thalheim (Freiburg, 1884); G. Busolt, Staatsund Rechtsaltertümer, ed. 2 (Munich, 1892); U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Aristoteles und Athen (Berlin, 1893); G. Gilbert, Gk. Constitutional Antiquities (vol. i., Eng. trans., pp. 376-416, London, 1895); J. H. Lipsius, (1) new ed. of Meier and Schömann, Der attische Process (Berlin, 1883-1887); (2) ed. 4 of Schömann, Gr. Altertümer (Berlin, 1897-1902); (3) Das attische Recht und Rechtsverfahren (Leipzig, 1905); Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités (Paris, 1877); G. Glotz, La Solidarité de la famille dans le droit criminel en Grèce (Paris, 1904); L. Beauchet, Droit privé de la rép. athén. (4 vols., Paris, 1897); C. R. Kennedy, Appendices to transl. of Dem. vols. iii. and iv. (1856-1861); Smith’s Dictionary of ... Antiquities, ed. 3 (1891); F. B. Jevons, in Gardner and Jevons, Greek Antiquities (1895, pp. 526-597); W. Wyse, in Whibley’s Companion to Greek Studies (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 377-402.

(J. E. S.*)

[1] For further information as to the evolution of the Athenian constitution see [Archon], [Areopagus], [Boulē], [Ecclesia], [Strategus], and articles on all the chief legislators.

[2] In the case of “animals,” we may compare the Mosaic law of Exod. xxxi. 28 and the old Germanic law (Grimm 664); and in that of “inanimate objects,” the English law of deodands (Blackstone i. 300), repealed in 1846. See also Frazer on Pausanias, i. 28. 10.

[3] Cf. R. J. Bonner, in Classical Philology (Chicago, 1907), 407-418, who urges that only cases belonging to the Forty were subject to public arbitration.

[4] Connected either with ἁλίζεσθαι, “to assemble,” or ἥλιος, or Ἥλις (cf. Curt Wachsmuth, Stadt Athen, ii. (1) 359-364). The first is possibly right (cf. Rogers on Aristoph. Wasps, xvii. f.); the second implies that this large court was held in the open air (Lipsius, Att. Recht, 172).

GREEK LITERATURE.—The literature of the Greek language is broadly divisible into three main sections: (1) Ancient, (2) Byzantine, (3) Modern. These are dealt with below in that order.

1. The Ancient Greek Literature

The ancient literature falls into three periods: (A) The Early Literature, to about 475 B.C.; epic, elegiac, iambic and lyric poetry; the beginnings of literary prose. (B) The Attic Literature 475-300 B.C.; tragic and comic drama; historical, oratorical and philosophical prose. (C) The Literature of the Decadence, 300 B.C. to A.D. 529; which may again be divided into the Alexandrian period, 300-146 B.C., and the Graeco-Roman period, 146 B.C. to A.D. 529.

For details regarding particular works or the lives of their authors reference should be made to the separate articles devoted to the principal Greek writers. The object of the following pages is to sketch the literary development as a whole, to show how its successive periods were related to each other, and to mark the dominant characteristics of each.

(A) The Early Literature.—A process of natural growth may be traced through all the best work of the Greek genius. The Greeks were not literary imitators of foreign models; the forms of poetry and prose in which they attained to such unequalled excellence were first developed by themselves. Their literature had its roots in their political and social life; it is the spontaneous expression of that life in youth, maturity and decay; and the order in which its several fruits are produced is not the result of accident or caprice. Further, the old Greek literature has a striking completeness, due to the fact that each great branch of the Hellenic race bore a characteristic part in its development. Ionians, Aeolians, Dorians, in turn contributed their share. Each dialect corresponded to a certain aspect of Hellenic life and character. Each found its appropriate work.

The Ionians on the coast of Asia Minor—a lively and genial people, delighting in adventure, and keenly sensitive to everything bright and joyous—created artistic epic poetry out of the lays in which Aeolic minstrels sang of the old The dialects. Achaean wars. And among the Ionians arose elegiac poetry, the first variation on the epic type. These found a fitting instrument in the harmonious Ionic dialect, the flexible utterance of a quick and versatile intelligence. The Aeolians of Lesbos next created the lyric of personal passion, in which the traits of their race—its chivalrous pride, its bold but sensuous fancy—found a fitting voice in the fiery strength and tenderness of Aeolic speech. The Dorians of the Peloponnesus, Sicily and Magna Graecia then perfected the choral lyric for festivals and religious worship; and here again an earnest faith, a strong pride in Dorian usage and renown had an apt interpreter in the massive and sonorous Doric. Finally, the Attic branch of the Ionian stock produced the drama, blending elements of all the other kinds, and developed an artistic literary prose in history, oratory and philosophy. It is in the Attic literature that the Greek mind receives its most complete interpretation.

A natural affinity was felt to exist between each dialect and that species of composition for which it had been specially used. Hence the dialect of the Ionian epic poets would be adopted with more or less thoroughness even by epic or elegiac poets who were not Ionians. Thus the Aeolian Hesiod uses it in epos, the Dorian Theognis in elegy, though not without alloy. Similarly, the Dorian Theocritus wrote love-songs in Aeolic. All the faculties and tones of the language were thus gradually brought out by the co-operation of the dialects. Old Greek literature has an essential unity—the unity of a living organism; and this unity comprehends a number of distinct types, each of which is complete in its own kind.

Extant Greek literature begins with the Homeric poems. These are works of art which imply a long period of antecedent poetical cultivation. Of the pre-Homeric poetry we have no remains, and very little knowledge. Such Pre-Homeric poetry. glimpses as we get of it connect it with two different stages in the religion of the prehistoric Hellenes. The first of these stages is that in which the agencies or forms of external nature were personified indeed, yet with the consciousness that the personal names were only symbols. Some very ancient Greek songs of which mention is made may Songs of the seasons. have belonged to this stage—as the songs of Linus, Ialemus and Hylas. Linus, the fair youth killed by dogs, seems to be the spring passing away before Sirius. Such songs have been aptly called “songs of the seasons.” The second stage is that in which the Hellenes have now definitively personified the powers which they worship. Apollo, Demeter, Dionysus, Cybele, have now become to them beings with clearly conceived attributes. To this second stage belong Hymns. the hymns connected with the names of the legendary bards, such as Orpheus, Musaeus, Eumolpus, who are themselves associated with the worship of the Pierian Muses and the Attic ritual of Demeter. The seats of this early sacred poetry are not only “Thracian”—i.e. on the borders of northern Greece—but also “Phrygian” and “Cretan.” It belongs, that is, presumably to an age when the ancestors of the Hellenes had left the Indo-European home in central Asia, but had not yet taken full possession of the lands which were afterwards Hellenic. Some of their tribes were still in Asia; others were settling in the islands of the Aegean; others were passing through the lands on its northern seaboard. If there was a period when the Greeks possessed no poetry but hymns forming part of a religious ritual, it may be conjectured that it was not of long duration. Already in the Iliad a secular character belongs to the marriage hymn and to the dirge for the dead, which in ancient India were chanted by the priest. The bent of the Greeks was to claim poetry and music as public joys; they would not long have suffered them to remain sacerdotal mysteries. And among the earliest themes on which the lay artist in poetry was employed were probably war-ballads, sung by minstrels in the houses of the chiefs whose ancestors they celebrated.

Such war-ballads were the materials from which the earliest epic poetry of Greece was constructed. By an “epic” poem the Greeks meant a narrative of heroic action in hexameter verse. The term ἔπη meant at first simply Epos. “verses”; it acquired its special meaning only when μέλη, lyric songs set to music, came to be distinguished from ἔπη verses not set to music, but merely recited. Epic poetry is the only kind of extant Greek poetry which is older than about 700 B.C. The early epos of Greece is represented by the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hesiod and the Homeric hymns; also by some fragments of the “Cyclic” poets.

After the Dorian conquest of the Peloponnesus, the Aeolian emigrants who settled in the north-west of Asia Minor brought with them the warlike legends of their chiefs, the Achaean princes of old. These legends lived in the The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” ballads of the Aeolic minstrels, and from them passed southward into Ionia, where the Ionian poets gradually shaped them into higher artistic forms. Among the seven places which claimed to be the birthplace of Homer, that which has the best title is Smyrna. Homer himself is called “son of Meles”—the stream which flowed through old Smyrna, on the border between Aeolia and Ionia. The tradition is significant in regard to the origin and character of the Iliad, for in the Iliad we have Achaean ballads worked up by Ionian art. A preponderance of evidence is in favour of the view that the Odyssey also, at least in its earliest form, was composed on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. According to the Spartan account, Lycurgus was the first to bring to Greece a complete copy of the Homeric poems, which he had obtained from the Creophylidae, a clan or gild of poets in Samos. A better authenticated tradition connects Athens with early attempts to preserve the chief poetical treasure of the nation. Peisistratus is said to have charged some learned men with the task of collecting all “the poems of Homer”; but it is difficult to decide how much was comprehended under this last phrase, or whether the province of the commission went beyond the mere task of collecting. Nor can it be determined what exactly it was that Solon and Hipparchus respectively did for the Homeric poems. Solon, it has been thought, enacted that the poems should be recited from an authorized text (ἐξ ὑποβολῆς); Hipparchus, that they should be recited in a regular order (ἐξ ὑπολήψεως). At any rate, we know that in the 6th century B.C. a recitation of the poems of Homer was one of the established competitions at the Panathenaea, held once in four years. The reciter was called a rhapsodist—properly one who weaves a long, smoothly-flowing chant, then an epic poet who chants his own or another’s poem. The rhapsodist did not, like the early minstrel, use the accompaniment of the harp; he gave the verses in a flowing recitative, bearing in his hand a branch of laurel, the symbol of Apollo’s inspiration. In the 5th century B.C. we find that various Greek cities had their own editions (αἱ πολιτικαί, κατὰ πόλεις or ἐκ πόλεων ἐκδόσεις) of the poems, for recitation at their festivals. Among these were the editions of Massilia, of Chios and of Argolis. There were also editions bearing the name of the individual editor (αἱ κατ᾽ ἄνδρα)—the best known being that which Aristotle prepared for Alexander. The recension of the poems by Aristarchus (156 B.C.) became the standard one, and is probably that on which the existing text is based. The oldest Homeric MS. extant, Venetus A of the Iliad, is of the 10th century; the first printed edition of Homer was that edited by the Byzantine Demetrius Chalcondyles (Florence, 1488).

The ancient Greeks were almost unanimous in believing the Iliad and the Odyssey to be the work of one man, Homer, to whom they also ascribed some extant hymns, and probably much more besides. Aristotle and Aristarchus seem The Homeric question. to have put Homer’s date about 1044 B.C., Herodotus about 850 B.C. It is not till about 170 B.C. that the grammarians Hellanicus and Xenon put forward the view that Homer was the author of the Iliad, but not of the Odyssey. Those who followed them in assigning different authors to the two poems were called the Separators (Chorizontes). Aristarchus combated “the paradox of Xenon,” and it does not seem to have had much acceptance in antiquity. Giovanni Battista Vico, a Neapolitan (1668-1744), seems to have been the first modern to suggest the composite authorship and oral tradition of the Homeric poems; but this was a pure conjecture in support of his theory that the names of ancient lawgivers and poets are often mere symbols. F. A. Wolf, in the Prolegomena to his edition (1795), was the founder of a scientific scepticism. The Iliad, he said (for he recognized the comparative unity and consistency of the Odyssey), was pieced together from many small unwritten poems by various hands, and was first committed to writing in the time of Peisistratus. This view was in harmony with the tone of German criticism at the time; it was welcomed as a new testimony to the superiority of popular poetry, springing from fresh natural sources, to elaborate works of art; and it at once found enthusiastic adherents. For the course of Homeric controversy since Wolf the reader is referred to the article [Homer].

The Ionian school of epos produced a number of poems founded on the legends of the Trojan war, and intended as introductions or continuations to the Iliad and the Odyssey. The grammarian Proclus (A.D. 140) has Cyclic poems. preserved the names and subjects of some of these; but the fragments are very scanty. The Nostoi or Homeward Voyages, by Agias (or Hagias) of Troezen, filled up the gap of ten years between the Iliad and the Odyssey; the Lay of Telegonus, by Eugammon of Cyrene, continued the story of the Odyssey to the death of Odysseus by the hand of Telegonus, the son whom Circe bore to him. Similarly the Cyprian Lays by Stasinus of Cyprus, ascribed by others to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis or Halicarnassus, was introductory to the Iliad; the Aethiopis and the Sack of Troy, by Arctinus of Miletus, and the Little Iliad, by Lesches of Mytilene, were supplementary to it. These and many other names of lost epics—some taken also from the Theban myths (Thebaïs, Epigoni, Oedipodea)—serve to show how prolific was that epic school of which only two great examples remain. The name of epic cycle was properly applied to a prose compilation of abstracts from these epics, pieced together in the order of the events. The compilers were called “cyclic” writers; and the term has now been transferred to the epic poets whom they used.[1]

The epic poetry of Ionia celebrated the great deeds of heroes in the old wars. But in Greece proper there arose another school of epos, which busied itself with religious lore and ethical precepts, especially in relation to the rural Hesiodic epos. life of Boeotia. This school is represented by the name of Hesiod. The legend spoke of him as vanquishing Homer in a poetical contest of Chalcis in Euboea; and it expresses the fact that, to the old Greek mind, these two names stood for two contrasted epic types. Nothing is certainly known of his date, except that it must have been subsequent to the maturity of Ionian epos. He is conjecturally placed about 850-800 B.C.; but some would refer him to the early part of the 7th century B.C. His home was at Ascra, a village in a valley under Helicon, whither his father had migrated from Cyme in Aeolis on the coast of Asia Minor. In Hesiod’s Works and Days we have the earliest example of a didactic poem. The seasons and the labours of the Boeotian farmer’s year are followed by a list of the days which are lucky or unlucky for work. The Theogony, or “Origin of the Gods,” describes first how the visible order of nature arose out of chaos; next, how the gods were born. Though it never possessed the character of a sacred book, it remained a standard authority on the genealogies of the gods. So far as a corrupt and confused text warrants a judgment, the poet was piecing together—not always intelligently—the fragments of a very old cosmogonic system, using for this purpose both the hymns preserved in the temples and the myths which lived in folklore. The epic lay in 480 lines called the Shield of Heracles—partly imitated from the 18th book of the Iliad—is the work of an author or authors later than Hesiod. In the Hesiodic poetry, as represented by the Works and Days and the Theogony, we see the influence of the temple at Delphi. Hesiod recognizes the existence of δαίμονες—spirits of the departed who haunt the earth as the invisible guardians of justice; and he connects the office of the poet with that of the prophet. The poet is one whom the gods have authorized to impress doctrine and practical duties on men. A religious purpose was essentially characteristic of the Hesiodic school. Its poets treated the old legends as relics of a sacred history, and not merely, in the Ionian manner, as subjects of idealizing art. Such titles as the Maxims of Cheiron and the Lay of Melampus, the seer—lost poems of the Hesiodic school—illustrate its ethical and its mystic tendencies.

The Homeric Hymns are a collection of pieces, some of them very short, in hexameter verse. Their traditional title is—Hymns or Preludes of Homer and the Homeridae. The second of the alternative designations is the true one. The Homeric hymns. The pieces are not “hymns” used in formal worship, but “preludes” or prefatory addresses (προοίμια) with which the rhapsodists ushered in their recitations of epic poetry. The “prelude” might be addressed to the presiding god of the festival, or to any local deity whom the reciter wished to honour. The pieces (of which there are 33) range in date perhaps from 750 to 500 B.C. (though some authorities assign dates as late as the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.; see ed. by Sikes and Allen, e.g. p. 228), and it is probable that the collection was formed in Attica, for the use of rhapsodists. The style is that of the Ionian or Homeric epos; but there are also several traces of the Hesiodic or Boeotian school. The principal “hymns” are (1) to Apollo (generally treated as two or more hymns combined in one); (2) to Hermes; (3) to Aphrodite; and (4) to Demeter. The hymn to Apollo, quoted by Thucydides (iii. 104) as Homer’s, is of peculiar interest on account of the lines describing the Ionian festival at Delos. Two celebrated pieces of a sportive kind passed under Homer’s name. The Margites—a comic poem on one “who knew many things but knew them all badly”—is regarded by Aristotle as the earliest germ of comedy, and was possibly as old as 700 B.C. Only a few lines remain. The Batracho(myo)machia, or Battle of the Frogs and Mice probably belongs to the decline of Greek literature, perhaps to the 2nd century B.C.[2] About 300 verses of it are extant.

In the Iliad and the Odyssey the personal opinions or sympathies of the poet may sometimes be conjectured, but they are not declared or even hinted. Hesiod, indeed, sometimes gives us a glimpse of his own troubles or views. Transition from epos to elegy. Yet Hesiod is, on the whole, essentially a prophet. The message which he delivers is not from himself; the truths which he imparts have not been discovered by his own search. He is the mouthpiece of the Delphian Apollo. Personal opinion and feeling may tinge his utterance, but they do not determine its general complexion. The egotism is a single thread; it is not the basis of the texture. Epic poetry was in Greece the foundation of all other poetry; for many centuries no other kind was generally cultivated, no other could speak to the whole people. Politically, the age was monarchical or aristocratic; intellectually, it was too simple for the analysis of thought or emotion. Kings and princes loved to hear of the great deeds of their ancestors; common men loved to hear of them too, for they had no other interest. The mind of Greece found no subject of contemplation so attractive as the warlike past of the race, or so useful as that lore which experience and tradition had bequeathed. But in the course of the 8th century B.C. the rule of hereditary princes began to disappear. Monarchy gave place to oligarchy, and this—often after the intermediate phase of a tyrannis—to democracy. Such a change was necessarily favourable to the growth of reflection. The private citizen is no longer a mere cipher, the Homeric τις, a unit in the dim multitude of the king-ruled folk; he gains more power of independent action, his mental horizon is widened, his life becomes fuller and more interesting. He begins to feel the need of expressing the thoughts and feelings that are stirred in him. But as yet a prose literature does not exist; the new thoughts, like the old heroic stories, must still be told in verse. The forms of verse created by this need were the Elegiac and the Iambic.

The elegiac metre is, in form, a simple variation on the epic metre, obtained by docking the second of two hexameters so as to make it a verse of five feet or measures. But the poetical capabilities of the elegiac couplet are of a Elegy. wholly different kind from those of heroic verse. ἔλεγος seems to be the Greek form of a name given by the Carians and Lydians to a lament for the dead. This was accompanied by the soft music of the Lydian flute, which continued to be associated with Greek elegy. The non-Hellenic origin of elegy is indicated by this very fact. The flute was to the Greeks an Asiatic instrument—string instruments were those which they made their own—and it would hardly have been wedded by them to a species of poetry which had arisen among themselves. The early elegiac poetry of Greece was by no means confined to mourning for the dead. War, love, politics, proverbial philosophy, were in turn its themes; it dealt, in fact, with the chief interest of the poet and his friends, whatever that might be at the time. It is the direct expression of the poet’s own thoughts, addressed to a sympathizing society. This is its first characteristic. The second is that, even when most pathetic or most spirited, it still preserves, on the whole, the tone of conversation or of narrative. Greek elegy stops short of lyric passion. English elegy, whether funereal as in Dryden and Pope, or reflective as in Gray, is usually true to the same normal type. Roman elegy is not equally true to it, but sometimes tends to trench on the lyric province. For Roman elegy is mainly amatory or sentimental; and its masters imitated, as a rule, not the early Greek elegists, not Tyrtaeus or Theognis, but the later Alexandrian elegists, such as Callimachus or Philetas. Catullus introduced the metre to Latin literature, and used it with more fidelity than his followers to its genuine Greek inspiration.

Elegy, as we have seen, was the first slight deviation from epos. But almost at the same time another species arose which had nothing in common with epos, either in form or in spirit. This was the iambic. The word ἴαμβος, Iambic verse. iambus (ἰάπτειν, to dart or shoot) was used in reference to the licensed raillery at the festivals of Demeter; it was the maiden Iambe, the myth said, who drew the first smile from the mourning goddess. The iambic metre was at first used for satire; and it was in this strain that it was chiefly employed by its earliest master of note, Archilochus of Paros (670 B.C.). But it was adapted to the expression generally of any pointed thought. Thus it was suitable to fables. Elegiac and iambic poetry both belong to the borderland between epic and lyric. While, however, elegy stands nearer to epos, iambic stands nearer to the lyric. Iambic poetry can express the personal feeling of the poet with greater intensity than elegy does; on the other hand, it has not the lyric flexibility, self-abandonment or glow. As we see in the case of Solon, iambic verse could serve for the expression of that deeper thought, that more inward self-communing, for which the elegiac form would have been inappropriate.

But these two forms of poetry, both Ionian, the elegiac and the iambic, belong essentially to the same stage of the literature. They stand between the Ionian epos and the lyric poetry of the Aeolians and Dorians. The earliest of the Greek elegists, Callinus and Tyrtaeus, use elegy to rouse a warlike spirit in sinking hearts. Archilochus too wrote warlike elegy, but used it also in other strains, as in lament for the dead. The elegy of Mimnermus of Smyrna or Colophon is the plaintive farewell of an ease-loving Ionian to the days of Ionian freedom. In Solon elegy takes a higher range; it becomes political and ethical.[3] Theognis represents the maturer union of politics with a proverbial philosophy. Another gnomic poet was Phocylides of Miletus; an admonitory poem extant under his name is probably the work of an Alexandrine Jewish Christian. Xenophanes gives a philosophic strain to elegy. With Simonides of Ceos it reverts, in an exquisite form, to its earliest destination, and becomes the vehicle of epitaph on those who fell in the Persian Wars. Iambic verse was used by Simonides (or Semonides) of Amorgus, as by Archilochus, for satire—but satire directed against classes rather than persons. Solon’s iambics so far preserve the old associations of the metre that they represent the polemical or controversial side of his political poetry. Hipponax of Ephesus was another iambic satirist—using the σκάζων (“limping”) or choliambic verse, produced by substituting a spondee for an iambus in the last place. But it was not until the rise of the Attic drama that the full capabilities of iambic verse were seen.

The lyric poetry of early Greece may be regarded as the final form of that effort at self-expression which in the elegiac and iambic is still incomplete. The lyric expression is deeper and more impassioned. Its intimate union Lyric poetry. with music and with the rhythmical movement of the dance gives to it more of an ideal character. At the same time the continuity of the music permits pauses to the voice—pauses necessary as reliefs after a climax. Before lyric poetry could be effective, it was necessary that some progress should have been made in the art of music. The instrument used by the Greeks to accompany the voice was the four-stringed lyre, and the first great epoch in Greek music was when Terpander of Lesbos (660 B.C.), by adding three strings, gave the lyre the compass of the octave. Further improvements are ascribed to Olympus and Thaletas. By 500 B.C. Greek music had probably acquired all the powers of expression which the lyric poet could demand. The period of Greek lyric poetry may be roughly defined as from 670 to 440 B.C. Two different parts in its development were taken by the Aeolians and the Dorians.

The lyric poetry of the Aeolians—especially of Lesbos—was essentially the utterance of personal feeling, and was usually intended for a single voice, not for a chorus. Lesbos, in the 7th century B.C., had attained some naval Aeolian school. and commercial importance. But the strife of oligarchy and democracy was active; the Lesbian nobles were often driven by revolution to exchange their luxurious home-life for the hardships of exile. It is such a life of contrasts and excitements, working on a sensuous and fiery temperament, that is reflected in the fragments of Alcaeus. In these glimpses of war and love, of anxiety for the storm-tossed state and of careless festivity, there is much of the cavalier spirit; if Archilochus is in certain aspects a Greek Byron, Alcaeus might be compared to Lovelace. The other great representative of the Aeolian lyric is Sappho, the only woman of Greek race who is known to have possessed poetical genius of the first order. Intensity and melody are the characteristics of the fragments that remain to us.[4] Probably no poet ever surpassed Sappho as an interpreter of passion in exquisitely subtle harmonies of form and sound. Anacreon of Teos, in Ionia, may be classed with the Aeolian lyrists in so far as the matter and form of his work resembled theirs, though the dialect in which he wrote was mainly the Ionian. A few fragments remain from his hymns to the gods, from love-poems and festive songs. The collection of sixty short pieces which passes current under his name date only from the 10th century. The short poems which it comprises are of various age and authorship, probably ranging in date from c. 200 B.C. to A.D. 400 or 500. They have not the pure style, the flexible grace, or the sweetness of the classical fragments; but the verses, though somewhat mechanical, are often pretty.

The Dorian lyric poetry, in contrast with the Aeolian, had more of a public than of a personal character, and was for the most part choral. Hymns or choruses for the public worship of the gods, and odes to be sung at festivals on Dorian school. occasions of public interest, were its characteristic forms. Its central inspiration was the pride of the Dorians in the Dorian past, in their traditions of worship, government and social usage. The history of the Dorian lyric poetry does not present us with vivid expressions of personal character, like those of Alcaeus and Sappho, but rather with a series of artists whose names are associated with improvements of form. Thus Alcman (the Doric form of Alcmaeon; 660 B.C.) is said to have introduced the balanced movement of strophe and antistrophe. Stesichorus, of Himera in Sicily, added the epode, sung by the chorus while stationary after these movements; Arion of Methymna in Lesbos gave a finished form to the choral hymn (“dithyramb”) in honour of Dionysus, and organized the “cyclic” or circular chorus which sang it at the altar. Ibycus of Rhegium (c. 540) wrote choral lyrics after Stesichorus and glowing love-songs in the Aeolic style.

The culmination of the lyric poetry is marked by two great names, Simonides and Pindar. Simonides (556-468) was an Ionian of the island of Ceos, but his lyrics belonged by form to the choral Dorian school. Many of his subjects Simonides and Pindar. were taken from the events of the Persian wars: his epitaphs on those who fell at Thermopylae and Salamis were celebrated. In him the lyric art of the Dorians is interpreted by Ionian genius, and Athens—where part of his life was passed—is the point at which they meet. Simonides is the first Greek lyrist whose significance is not merely Aeolian or Dorian but Panhellenic. The same character belongs even more completely to his younger contemporary. Pindar (518-c. 443) was born in Boeotia of a Dorian stock; thus, as Ionian and Dorian elements meet in Simonides, so Dorian and Aeolian elements meet in Pindar. Simonides was perhaps the most tender and most exquisite of the lyric poets. Pindar was the boldest, the most fervid and the most sublime. His extant fragments[5] represent almost every branch of the lyric art. But he is known to us mainly by forty-four Epinicia, or odes of victory, for the Olympian, Pythian, Nemean and Isthmian festivals. The general characteristic of the treatment is that the particular victory is made the occasion of introducing heroic legends connected with the family or city of the victor, and of inculcating the moral lessons which they teach. No Greek lyric poetry can be completely appreciated apart from the music, now lost, to which it was set. Pindar’s odes were, further, essentially occasional poems; they abound in allusions of which the effect is partly or wholly lost on us; and the glories which they celebrate belong to a life which we can but imperfectly realize. Of all the great Greek poets, Pindar is perhaps the one to whom it is hardest for us to do justice; yet we can at least recognize his splendour of imagination, his strong rapidity and his soaring flight.

Bacchylides of Ceos (c. 504-430), the youngest of the three great lyric poets and nephew of Simonides, was known only by scanty fragments until the discovery of nineteen poems on an Egyptian papyrus in 1896. They consist of thirteen (or fourteen) epinicia, two of which celebrate the same victories as two odes of Pindar. The papyrus also contains six odes for the festivals of gods or heroes. The poems contain valuable information on the court life of the time and legendary history. Bacchylides, the little “Cean nightingale,” is inferior to his great rival Pindar, “the Swan of Dirce,” in originality and splendour of language, but he writes simply and elegantly, while his excellent γνῶμαι attracted readers of a philosophical turn of mind, amongst them the emperor Julian.

Similarly, the scanty fragments of Timotheus of Miletus (d. 357), musical composer and poet, and inventor of the eleven-stringed lyre, were increased by the discovery in 1902 of some 250 lines of his “nome” the Persae, written after the manner of Terpander. The beginning is lost; the middle describes the battle of Salamis; the end is of a personal nature. The papyrus is the oldest Greek MS. and belongs to the age of Alexander the Great. The language is frequently very obscure, and the whole is a specimen of lyric poetry in its decline.

(B) The Attic Literature.—The Ionians of Asia Minor, the Aeolians and the Dorians had now performed their special parts in the development of Greek literature. Epic poetry had interpreted the heroic legends of warlike deeds done by Zeus-nourished kings and chiefs. Then, as the individual life became more and more elegiac and iambic poetry had become the social expression of that life in all its varied interests and feelings. Lastly, lyric poetry had arisen to satisfy a twofold need—to be the more intense utterance of personal emotion, or to give choral voice, at stirring moments, to the faith or fame, the triumph or the sorrow, of a city or a race. A new form of poetry was now to be created, with elements borrowed from all the rest. And this was to be achieved by the people of Attica, in whose character and language the distinctive traits of an Ionian descent were tempered with some of the best qualities of the Dorian stock.

The drama (q.v.) arose from the festivals of Dionysus, the god of wine, which were held at intervals from the beginning of winter to the beginning of spring. A troop of rustic Origin of drama.
Tragedy. worshippers would gather around the altar of the god, and sing a hymn in his honour, telling of his victories or sufferings in his progress over the earth. “Tragedy” meant “the goat-song,” a goat (τράγος) being sacrificed to Dionysus before the hymn was sung. “Comedy,” “the village-song,” is the same hymn regarded as an occasion for rustic jest. Then the leader of the chorus would assume the part of a messenger from Dionysus, or even that of the god himself, and recite an adventure to the worshippers, who made choral response. The next step was to arrange a dialogue between the leader (κορυφαῖος, coryphaeus) and one chosen member of the chorus, hence called “the answerer” (ὑποκριτής, hypocritēs, afterwards the ordinary word for “actor”). This last improvement is ascribed to the Attic Thespis (about 536 B.C.). The elements of drama were now ready. The choral hymn to Dionysus (the “dithyramb”) had received an artistic form from the Dorians; dialogue, though only between the leader of the chorus and a single actor, had been introduced in Attica. Phrynichus, an Athenian, celebrated in this manner some events of the Persian Wars; but in his “drama” there was still only one actor. Choerilus of Athens and Pratinas of Phlius, who belonged to the same period, developed the satyric drama; Pratinas also wrote tragedies, dithyrambs, and hyporchemata (lively choral odes chiefly in honour of Apollo).

Aeschylus (born 525 B.C.) became the real founder of tragedy by introducing a second actor, and thus rendering the dialogue independent of the chorus. At the same time the choral song—hitherto the principal part of the performance—became Aeschylus. subordinate to the dialogue; and drama was mature. Aeschylus is also said to have made various improvements of detail in costume and the like; and it was early in his career that the theatre of Dionysus under the acropolis was commenced—the first permanent home of Greek drama, in place of the temporary wooden platforms which had hitherto been used. The system of the “trilogy” and the “tetralogy” is further ascribed to Aeschylus,—the “trilogy” being properly a series of three tragedies connected in subject, such as the Agamemnon, Choëphori, Eumenides, which together form the Oresteia, or Story of Orestes. The “tetralogy” is such a triad with a “satyric drama” added—that is, a drama in which “satyrs,” the grotesque woodland beings who attended on Dionysus, formed the chorus, as in the earlier dithyramb from which drama sprang. The Cyclops of Euripides is the only extant specimen of a satyric drama. In the seven tragedies which alone remain of the seventy which Aeschylus is said to have composed, the forms of kings and heroes have a grandeur which is truly Homeric; there is a spirit of Panhellenic patriotism such as the Persian Wars in which he fought might well quicken in a soldier-poet; and, pervading all, there is a strain of speculative thought which seeks to reconcile the apparent conflicts between the gods of heaven and of the underworld by the doctrine that both alike, constrained by necessity, are working Sophocles. out the law of righteousness. Sophocles, who was born thirty years after Aeschylus (495 B.C.), is the most perfect artist of the ancient drama. No one before or after him gave to Greek tragedy so high a degree of ideal beauty, or appreciated so finely the possibilities and the limitations of its sphere. He excels especially in drawing character; his Antigone, his Ajax, his Oedipus—indeed, all the chief persons of his dramas—are typical studies in the great primary emotions of human nature. He gave a freer scope to tragic dialogue by adding a third actor; and in one of his later plays, the Oedipus at Colonus, a fourth actor is required. From the time when he won the tragic prize against Aeschylus in 468 to his death in 405 B.C. he was the favourite dramatist of Athens; and for us he is not only a great dramatist, but also the most spiritual representative of the age of Pericles. The distinctive interest of Euripides is of Euripides. another kind. He was only fifteen years younger than Sophocles; but when he entered on his poetical career, the old inspirations of tragedy were already failing. Euripides marks a period of transition in the tragic art, and is, in fact, the mediator between the classical and the romantic drama. The myths and traditions with which the elder dramatists had dealt no longer commanded an unquestioning faith. Euripides himself was imbued with the new intellectual scepticism of the day; and the speculative views which were conflicting in his own mind are reflected in his plays. He had much picturesque and pathetic power; he was a master of expression; and he shows ingenuity in devising fresh resources for tragedy—especially in his management of the choral songs. Aeschylus is Panhellenic, Sophocles is Athenian, Euripides is cosmopolitan. He stands nearer to the modern world than either of his predecessors; and though with him Attic tragedy loses its highest beauty, it acquires new elements of familiar human interest.

In Attica, as in England, a period of rather less than fifty years sufficed for the complete development of the tragic art. The two distinctive characteristics of Athenian drama are its originality and its abundance. The Greeks of Attica were not the only inventors of drama, but they were the first people who made drama a complete work of art. And the great tragic poets of Attica were remarkably prolific. Aeschylus was the reputed author of 70 tragedies, Sophocles of 113, Euripides of 92; and there were others whose productiveness was equally great.

Comedy represented the lighter side, as tragedy the graver side, of the Dionysiac worship; it was the joy of spring following the gloom of winter. The process of growth was nearly the same as in tragedy; but the Dorians, not Comedy. the Ionians of Attica, were the first who added dialogue to the comic chorus. Susarion, a Dorian of Megara, exhibited, about 580 B.C., pieces of the kind known as “Megarian farces.” Epicharmus of Cos (who settled at Syracuse) gave literary form to the Doric farce, and treated in burlesque style the stories of gods and heroes, and subjects taken from everyday life. His Syracusan contemporary Sophron (c. 450) was a famous writer of mimes, chiefly scenes from low-class life. The most artistic form of comedy seems, however, to have been developed in Attica. The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and Eupolis; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous succession of comic dramatists, amongst them Plato Comicus, the author of 28 comedies, political satires Aristophanes. and parodies after the style of the Middle Comedy. Aristophanes came forward as a comic poet in 427 B.C., and retained his popularity for about forty years. He presents a perhaps unique union of bold fancy, exquisite humour, critical acumen and lyrical power. His eleven extant comedies may be divided into three groups, according as the licence of political satire becomes more and more restricted. In the Acharnians, Knights, Clouds, Wasps and Peace (425-421) the poet uses unrestrained freedom. In the Birds, Lysistrata, Thesmophoriazusae and Frogs (414-405) a greater reserve may be perceived. Lastly, in the Ecclesiazusae and the Plutus (392-388) personal satire is almost wholly avoided. The same general tendency continued. The so-called “Middle Comedy” (390-320) represents the transition from the Old Comedy, or political satire, to satire of a literary or social nature; its chief writers were Antiphanes of Athens and Alexis of Thurii. The “New Comedy” (320-250) resembled the modern “comedy of manners.”

Its chief representative was Menander (342-291), the author of 105 comedies. Fragments have been discovered of seven of these, of sufficient length to give an idea of their dramatic action. His plays were produced on the stage as late as the time of Plutarch, and his γνῶμαι, distinguished by worldly wisdom, were issued in the form of anthologies, which enjoyed great popularity. Other prominent writers of this class were Diphilus, Philemon, Posidippus and Apollodorus of Carystus. About 330 B.C. Rhinthon of Tarentum revived the old Doric farce in his Hilarotragoediae or travesties of tragic stories. These successive periods cannot be sharply or precisely marked off. The change which gradually passed over the comic drama was simply the reflection of the change which passed over the political and social life of Athens. The Old Comedy, as we see it in the earlier plays of Aristophanes, was probably the most powerful engine of public criticism that has ever existed in any community. Unsparing personality was its essence. The comic poet used this recognized right on an occasion at once festive and sacred, in a society where every man of any note was known by name and sight to the rest. The same thousands who heard a policy or a character denounced or lauded in the theatre might be required to pass sentence on it in the popular assembly or in the courts of law.

The development of Greek poetry had been completed before a prose literature had begun to exist. The earliest name in extant Greek prose literature is that of Herodotus; and, when he wrote, the Attic drama had already Literary prose. passed its prime. There had been, indeed, writers of prose before Herodotus; but there had not been, in the proper sense of the term, a prose literature. The causes of this comparatively late origin of Greek literary prose are independent of the question as to the time at which the art of writing began to be generally used for literary purposes. Epic poetry exercised for a very long period a sovereign spell over the Greek mind. In it was deposited all that the race possessed of history, theology, philosophy, oratory. Even after an age of reflection had begun, elegiac poetry, the first offshoot of epic, was, with iambic verse, the vehicle of much which among other races would have been committed to prose. The basis of Greek culture was essentially poetical. A political cause worked in the same direction. In the Eastern monarchies the king was the centre of all, and the royal records afforded the elements of history from a remote date. The Greek nation was broken up into small states, each busied with its own affairs and its own men. It was the collision between the Greek and the barbarian world which first provided a national subject for a Greek historian. The work of Herodotus, in its relation to Greek prose, is so far analogous to the Iliad in its relation to Greek poetry, that it is the earliest work of art, and that it bears a Panhellenic stamp.

The sense and the degree in which Herodotus was original may be inferred from what is known of earlier prose-writers. For about a century before Herodotus there had been a series of writers in philosophy, mythology, geography Early prose writers. and history. The earliest, or among the earliest, of the philosophical writers were Pherecydes of Syros (550 B.C.) and the Ionian Anaximenes and Anaximander. It is doubtful whether Cadmus of Miletus, supposed to have been the first prose writer, was an historical personage. The Ionian writers, especially called λογογράφοι, “narrators in prose” (as distinguished from ἐποποιοί, makers of verse), were those who compiled the myths, especially in genealogies, or who described foreign countries, their physical features, usages and traditions. Hecataeus of Miletus (500 B.C.) is the best-known representative of the logographi in both these branches. Hellanicus of Mytilene (450 B.C.), among whose works was a history of Attica, appears to have made a nearer approach to the character of a systematic historian. Other logographi were Charon of Lampsacus; Pherecydes of Leros, who wrote on the myths of early Attica; Hippys of Rhegium, the oldest writer on Italy and Sicily; and Acusilaus of Argos in Boeotia, author of genealogies (see [Logographi], and [Greece]: Ancient History, “Authorities”).

Herodotus was born in 484 B.C.; and his history was probably not completed before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War (431 B.C.). His subject is the struggle between Greece and Asia, which he deduces from the legendary rape Herodotus. of the Argive Io by Phoenicians, and traces down to the final victory of the Greeks over the invading host of Xerxes. His literary kinship with the historical or geographical writers who had preceded him is seen mainly in two things. First, though he draws a line between the mythological and the historical age, he still holds that myths, as such, are worthy to be reported, and that in certain cases it is part of his duty to report them. Secondly, he follows the example of such writers as Hecataeus in describing the natural and social features of countries. He seeks to combine the part of the geographer or intelligent traveller with his proper part as historian. But when we turn from these minor traits to the larger aspects of his work, Herodotus stands forth as an artist whose conception and whose method were his own. His history has an epic unity. Various as are the subordinate parts, the action narrated is one, great and complete; and the unity is due to this, that Herodotus refers all events of human history to the principle of divine Nemesis. If Sophocles had told the story of Oedipus in the Oedipus Tyrannus alone, and had not added to it the Oedipus at Colonus, it would have been comparable to the story of Xerxes as told by Herodotus. Great as an artist, great too in the largeness of his historical conception, Herodotus fails chiefly by lack of insight into political cause and effect, and by a general silence in regard to the history of political institutions. Both his strength and his weakness are seen most clearly when he is contrasted with that other historian who was strictly his contemporary and who yet seems divided from him by centuries.

Thucydides was only thirteen years younger than Herodotus; but the intellectual space between the men is so great that they seem to belong to different ages. Herodotus is the first artist in historical writing; Thucydides is the Thucydides. first thinker. Herodotus interweaves two threads of causation—human agency, represented by the good or bad qualities of men, and divine agency, represented by the vigilance of the gods on behalf of justice. Thucydides concentrates his attention on the human agency (without, however, denying the other), and strives to trace its exact course. The subject of Thucydides is the Peloponnesian War. In resolving to write its history, he was moved, he says, by these considerations. It was probably the greatest movement which had ever affected Hellas collectively. It was possible for him as a contemporary to record it with approximate accuracy. And this record was likely to have a general value, over and above its particular interest as a record, seeing that the political future was likely to resemble the political past. This is what Thucydides means when he calls his work “a possession for ever.” The speeches which he ascribes to the persons of the history are, as regards form, his own essays in rhetoric of the school to which Antiphon belongs. As regards matter, they are always so far dramatic that the thoughts and sentiments are such as he conceived possible for the supposed speaker. Thucydides abstains, as a rule, from moral comment; but he tells his story as no one could have told it who did not profoundly feel its tragic force; and his general claim to the merit of impartiality is not invalidated by the possible exceptions—difficult to estimate—in the cases of Cleon and Hyperbolus.

Strong as is the contrast between Herodotus and Thucydides, their works have yet a character which distinguish both alike from the historical work of Xenophon in the Anabasis and the Hellenica. Herodotus gives us a vivid drama Xenophon. with the unity of an epic. Thucydides takes a great chapter of contemporary history and traces the causes which are at work throughout it, so as to give the whole a scientific unity. Xenophon has not the grasp either of the dramatist or of the philosopher. His work does not possess the higher unity either of art or of science. The true distinction of Xenophon consists in his thorough combination of the practical with the literary character. He was an accomplished soldier, who had done and seen much. He was also a good writer, who could make a story both clear and lively. But the several parts of the story are not grouped around any central idea, such as a divine Nemesis is for Herodotus, or such as Thucydides finds in the nature of political man. The seven books of the Hellenica form a supplement to the history of Thucydides, beginning in 411 and going down to 362 B.C. The chief blot on the Hellenica is the author’s partiality to Sparta, and in particular to Agesilaus. Some of the greatest achievements of Epaminondas and Pelopidas are passed over in silence. On the whole, Xenophon is perhaps seen at his best in his narrative of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand—a subject which exactly suits him. The Cyropaedeia is a romance of little historical worth, but with many good passages. The Recollections of Socrates, on the other hand, derive their principal value from being uniformly matter-of-fact. In his minor pieces on various subjects Xenophon appears as the earliest essayist. It may be noted that one of the essays erroneously ascribed to him—that On the Athenian Polity—is probably the oldest specimen in existence of literary Attic prose.

His contemporaries Ctesias of Cnidus and Philistus of Syracuse wrote histories of Persia and Sicily. In the second half of the 4th century a number of histories were compiled by literary men of little practical knowledge, who had been trained in the rhetorical schools. Such were Ephorus of Cyme and Theopompus of Chios, both pupils of Isocrates; and the writers of Atthides (chronicles of Attic history), the chief of whom were Androtion and Philochorus. Timaeus of Tauromenium was the author of a great work on Sicily, and introduced the system of reckoning by Olympiads.

The steps by which an Attic prose style was developed, and the principal forms which it assumed, can be traced most clearly in the Attic orators. Every Athenian citizen who aspired to take part in the affairs of the city, or even Oratory. to be qualified for self-defence before a law-court, required to have some degree of skill in public speaking; and an Athenian audience looked upon public debate, whether political or forensic, as a competitive trial of proficiency in a fine art. Hence the speaker, no less than the writer, was necessarily a student of finished expression; and oratory had a more direct influence on the general structure of literary prose than has ever perhaps been the case elsewhere. A systematic rhetoric took its rise in Sicily, where Corax of Syracuse (466 B.C.) devised his Art of Words to assist those who were pleading before the law-courts; and it was brought to Athens by his disciple Tisias. The teaching of the Sophists, again, directed attention, though in a superficial and imperfect way, to the elements of grammar and logic; and Gorgias of Leontini—whose declamation, however turgid, must have been striking—gave an impulse at Athens to the taste for elaborate rhetorical brilliancy.

Antiphon represents the earliest, and what has been called the grand, style of Attic prose; its chief characteristics are a grave, dignified movement, a frequent emphasis on verbal contrasts, and a certain austere elevation. The Attic orators. The interest of Andocides is mainly historical; but he has graphic power. Lysias, the representative of the “plain style,” breaks through the rigid mannerism of the elder school, and uses the language of daily life with an ease and grace which, though the result of study, do not betray their art. He is, in his own way, the canon of an Attic style; and his speeches, written for others, exhibit also a high degree of dramatic skill. Isocrates, whose manner may be regarded as intermediate between that of Antiphon and that of Lysias, wrote for readers rather than for hearers. The type of literary prose which he founded is distinguished by ample periods, by studied smoothness and by the temperate use of rhetorical ornament. From the middle of the 4th century B.C. the Isocratic style of prose became general in Greek literature. From the school of Rhodes, in which it became more florid, it passed to Cicero, and through him it has helped to shape the literary prose of the modern world. The speeches of Isaeus in will-cases are interesting,—apart from their bearing on Attic life,—because in them we see, as Dionysius says, “the seeds and the beginnings” of that technical mastery in rhetorical argument which Demosthenes carries to perfection. Demosthenes. Isaeus has also, in a degree, some of the qualities of Lysias. Demosthenes excels all other masters of Greek prose not only in power but in variety; his political speeches, his orations in public or private causes, show his consummate and versatile command over all the resources of the language. In him the development of Attic prose is completed, and the best elements in each of its earlier phases are united. The modern world can more easily appreciate Demosthenes as a great natural orator than as an elaborate artist. But, in order to apprehend his place in the history of Attic prose, we must remember that the ancients felt him to be both; and that he was even reproached by detractors with excessive study of effect. Aeschines is the most theatrical of the Greek orators; he is vehement, and often brilliant, but seldom persuasive. Hypereides was, after Demosthenes, probably the most effective; he had much of the grace of Lysias, but also a wit, a fire and a pathos which were his own. Portions of six of his speeches, found in Egypt between 1847 and 1890, are extant. The one oration of Lycurgus which remains to us is earnest and stately, reminding us both of Antiphon and of Isocrates. Dinarchus was merely a bad imitator of Demosthenes. There seems more reason to regret that Demades is not represented by larger fragments. The decline of Attic oratory may be dated from Demetrius of Phalerum (318 B.C.), the pupil of Aristotle, and the first to introduce the custom of making speeches on imaginary subjects as practised in the rhetorical schools. Cicero names him as the first who impaired the vigour of the earlier eloquence, “preferring his own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors.” He forms a connecting link between Athens and Alexandria, where he found refuge after his downfall and promoted the foundation of the famous library.

In later times oratory chiefly flourished in the coast and island settlements of Asia Minor, especially Rhodes. Here a new, florid style of oration arose, called the “Asiatic,” which owed its origin to Hegesias of Magnesia (c. 250 B.C.).

The place of Plato in the history of Greek literature is as unique as his place in the history of Greek thought. The literary genius shown in the dialogues is many-sided: it includes dramatic power, remarkable skill in parody, Philosophical prose—Plato and Aristotle. a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposition, where the argument rises into the higher regions of discussion, Plato’s prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring—never florid or sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato’s later works—such, for instance, as the Laws, Timaeus, Critias—we can perceive that his style did not remain unaffected by the smooth literary prose which contemporary writers had developed. Aristotle’s influence on the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been considerable if his Rhetoric had been published while Attic oratory had still a vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other departments of mental effort, it was Aristotle’s lot to set in order what the Greek intellect had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. His own chief contribution to the original achievements of the race was the most fitting one that could have been made by him in whose lifetime they were closed. He bequeathed an instrument by which analysis could be carried further, he founded a science of reasoning, and left those who followed him to apply it in all those provinces of knowledge which he had mapped out.[6] Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively Characters, the prototypes of such sketches in English literature as those of Hall, Overbury and Earle.

(C) The Literature of the Decadence.—The period of decadence in Greek literature begins with the extinction of free political life in the Greek cities. So long as the Greek commonwealths were independent and vigorous, Greek life Character of the creative age. rested on the identity of the man with the citizen. The city state was the highest unit of social organization; the whole training and character of the man were viewed relatively to his membership of the city. The market-place, the assembly, the theatre were places of frequent meeting, where the sense of citizenship was quickened, where common standards of opinion or feeling were formed. Poetry, music, sculpture, literature, art, in all their forms, were matters of public interest. Every citizen had some degree of acquaintance with them, and was in some measure capable of judging them. The poet and the musician, the historian and the sculptor, did not live a life of studious seclusion or engrossing professional work. They were, as a rule, in full sympathy with the practical interests of their time. Their art, whatever its form might be, was the concentrated and ennobled expression of their political existence. Aeschylus breathed into tragedy the inspiration of one who had himself fought the great fight of national liberation. Sophocles was the colleague of Pericles in a high military command. Thucydides describes the operations of the Peloponnesian War with the practical knowledge of one who had been in charge of a fleet. Ictinus and Pheidias gave shape in stone, not to mere visions of the studio, but to the more glorious, because more real and vivid, perceptions which had been quickened in them by a living communion with the Athenian spirit, by a daily contemplation of Athenian greatness, in the theatre where tragic poets idealized the legends of the past, in the ecclesia where every citizen had his vote on the policy of the state, or in that free and gracious society, full of beauty, yet exempt from vexatious constraint, which belonged to the age of Pericles. The tribunal which judged these works of literature or art was such as was best fitted to preserve the favourable conditions under which they arose. Criticism was not in the hands of a literary clique or of a social caste. The influence of jealousy or malevolence, and the more fatal influence of affectation, had little power to affect the verdict. The verdict was pronounced by the whole body of the citizens. The success or failure of a tragedy was decided, not by the minor circumstance that it gained the first or second prize, but by the collective opinion of the citizens assembled in the theatre of Dionysus. A work of architecture or sculpture was approved or condemned, not by the sentence of a few whom the multitude blindly followed, but by the general judgment of some twenty thousand persons, each of whom was in some degree qualified by education and by habit to form an independent estimate. The artist worked for all his fellow-citizens, and knew that he would be judged by all. The soul of his work was the fresh and living inspiration of nature; it was the ennobled expression of his own life; and the public opinion before which it came was free, intelligent and sincere.

Philip of Macedon did not take away the municipal independence of the Greek cities, but he dealt a death-blow to the old political life. The Athenian poet, historian, artist might still do good work, but he could never again have The transition to Hellenism. that which used to be the very mainspring of all such activity—the daily experience and consciousness of participation in the affairs of an independent state. He could no longer breathe the invigorating air of constitutional freedom, or of the social intercourse to which that freedom lent dignity as well as grace. Then came Alexander’s conquests; Greek civilization was diffused over Asia and the East by means of Greek colonies in which Asiatic and Greek elements were mingled. The life of such settlements, under the monarchies into which Alexander’s empire broke up, could not be animated by the spirit of the Greek commonwealths in the old days of political freedom. But the externals of Greek life were there—the temples, the statues, the theatres, the porticos. Ceremonies and festivals were conducted in the Greek manner. In private life Greek usages prevailed. Greek was the language most used; Greek books were in demand. The mixture of races would always in some measure distinguish even the outward life of such a community from that of a pure Greek state; and the facility with which Greek civilization was adopted would vary in different places. Syria, for example, was rapidly and completely Hellenized. Judaea resisted the process to the last. In Egypt a Greek aristocracy of office, birth and intellect existed side by side with a distinct native life. But, viewed in its broadest aspect, this new civilization may be called Hellenism. Hellenism (q.v.) means the adoption of Hellenic ways; and it is properly applied to a civilization, generally Hellenic in external things, pervading people not necessarily or exclusively Hellenic by race. What the Hellenic literature was to Hellas, that the Hellenistic literature was to Hellenism. The literature of Hellenism has the Hellenic form without the Hellenic soul. The literature of Hellas was creative; the literature of Hellenism is derivative.

Alexandria was the centre of Greek intellectual activity from Alexander to Augustus. Its “Museum,” or college, and its library, both founded by the first Ptolemy (Soter), gave it such attractions for learned men as no other The Alexandrian period.
Poetry. city could rival. The labours of research or arrangement are those which characterize the Alexandrian period. Even in its poetry spontaneous motive was replaced by erudite skill, as in the hymns, epigrams and elegies of Callimachus, in the enigmatic verses of Lycophron, in the highly finished epic of Apollonius Rhodius, and in the versified lore, astronomical or medical, of Aratus and Nicander. The mimes of Herodas (or Herondas) of Cos (c. 200 B.C.), written in the Ionic dialect and choliambic verse, represent scenes from everyday life. The papyrus (published in 1891) contains seven complete poems and fragments of an eighth. They are remarkably witty and full of shrewd observations, but at times coarse. The pastoral poetry of the age—Dorian by origin—was the most pleasing; for this, if it is to please at all, must have its spring in the contemplation of nature. Theocritus is not exempt from the artificialism of the Hellenizing literature; but his true sense of natural beauty entitles him to a place in the first rank of pastoral poets. Bion of Ionia and Moschus of Syracuse also charm by the music and often by the pathos of their bucolic verse. Excavations on the site of the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus have brought to light two hexameter poems and a paean (in Ionic metre) on Apollo and Asclepius by a local poet named Isyllus, who flourished about 280. Tragedy was represented by the poets known as the Alexandrian Pleiad. But it is not for its poetry of any kind that this period of Greek Erudition and science. literature is memorable. Its true work was in erudition and science. Aristarchus (156 B.C.), the greatest in a long line of Alexandrian critics, set the example of a more thorough method in revising and interpreting the ancient texts, and may in this sense be said to have become the founder of scientific scholarship. The critical studies of Alexandria, carried on by the followers of Aristarchus, gradually formed the basis for a science of grammar. The earliest Greek grammar is that of Dionysius Thrax (born c. 166), a pupil of Aristarchus. Translation was another province of work which employed the learned of Alexandria—where the Septuagint version of the Old Testament was begun, probably about 300-250 B.C. Chronology was treated scientifically by Eratosthenes, and was combined with history by Manetho in his chronicles of Egypt, and by Berossus in his chronicles of Chaldaea. Euclid was at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter. Herophilus and Erasistratus were distinguished physicians and anatomists, and the authors of several medical works. The general results Summary. of the Alexandrian period might perhaps be stated thus. Alexandria produced a few eminent men of science, some learned poets (in a few cases, of great literary merit) and many able scholars. The preservation of the best Greek literature was due chiefly to the unremitting care of the Alexandrian critics, whose appreciation of it partly compensated for the decay of the old Greek perceptions in literature and art, and who did their utmost to hand it down in a form as free as possible from the errors of copyists. On the whole, the patronage of letters by the Ptolemies had probably as large a measure of success as was possible under the existing conditions; and it was afforded at a time when there was special danger that a true literary tradition might die out of the world.

The Graeco-Roman period in the literature of Hellenism may be dated from the Roman subjugation of Greece. “Greece made a captive of the rough conqueror,” but it did not follow from this intellectual conquest that Athens The Graeco-Roman period. became once more the intellectual centre of the world. Under the empire, indeed, the university of Athens long enjoyed a pre-eminent reputation. But Rome gradually became the point to which the greatest workers in every kind were drawn. Greek literature had already made a home there before the close of the 2nd century B.C. Sulla brought a Greek library from Athens to Rome. Such men as Cicero and Atticus were indefatigable collectors and readers of Greek books. The power of speaking and writing the Greek language became an indispensable accomplishment for highly educated Romans. The library planned by Julius Caesar and founded by Augustus had two principal departments, one for Latin, the other for Greek works. Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian and Trajan contributed to enlarge the collection. Rome became more and more the rival of Alexandria, not only as possessing great libraries, but also as a seat of learning at which Greek men of letters found appreciation and encouragement. Greek poetry, especially in its higher forms, rhetoric and literary criticism, history and philosophy, were all cultivated by Greek writers at Rome.

The first part of the Graeco-Roman period may be defined as extending from 146 B.C. to the close of the Roman republic. At its commencement stands the name of one who had more real affinity than any of his contemporaries First part: 146-30 B.C. with the great writers of old Athens, and who, at the same time, saw most clearly how the empire of the world was passing to Rome. The subject of Polybius (c. 205-120) was the history of Roman conquest from 264 to 146 B.C. His style, plain and straightforward, is free from the florid rhetoric of the time. But the distinction of Polybius is that he is the last Greek writer who in some measure retains the spirit of the old citizen-life. He chose his subject, not because it gave scope to learning or literary skill, but with a motive akin to that which prompted the history of Thucydides—namely, because, as a Greek citizen, he felt intensely the political importance of those wars which had given Rome the mastery of the world. The chief historical work which the following century produced—the Universal History of Diodorus Siculus (fl. c. 50 B.C.)—resembled that of Polybius in recognizing Rome as the political centre of the earth, as the point on which all earlier series of events converged. In all else Diodorus represents the new age in which the Greek historian had no longer the practical knowledge and insight of a traveller, a soldier or a statesman, but only the diligence, and usually the dullness, of a laborious compiler.

The Greek literature of the Roman empire, from Augustus to Justinian, was enormously prolific. The area over which the Greek language was diffused—either as a medium of intercourse or as an established branch of the higher Second part: 30 B.C.-A.D. 529. education—was co-extensive with the empire itself. An immense store of materials had now been accumulated, on which critics, commentators, compilers, imitators, were employed with incessant industry. In very many of its forms, the work of composition or adaptation had been reduced to a mechanical knack. If there is any one characteristic which broadly distinguishes the Greek literature of these five centuries, it is the absence of originality either in form or in matter. Lucian is, in his way, a rare exception; and his great popularity—he is the only Greek writer of this period, except Plutarch, who has been widely popular—illustrates the flatness of the arid level above which he stands out. The sustained abundance of literary production under the empire was partly due to the fact that there was no open political career. Never, probably, was literature so important as a resource for educated men; and the habit of reciting before friendly or obsequious audiences swelled the number of writers whose taste had been cultivated to a point just short of perceiving that they ought not to write.

In the manifold prose work of this period, four principal departments may be distinguished. (1) History, with Biography, and Geography. History is represented by Dionysius of Halicarnassus—also memorable for his criticisms on Departments of prose literature. the orators and his effort to revive a true standard of Attic prose—by Cassius Dio, Josephus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Eusebius and Zosimus. In biography, the foremost names are Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius and Philostratus; in geography, Hipparchus of Nicaea, Strabo, Ptolemy and Pausanias. (2) Erudition and Science. The learned labours of the Alexandrian schools were continued in all their various fields. Under this head may be mentioned such works as the lexicons of Julius Pollux, Harpocration and Hesychius, Hephaestion’s treatise on metre, and Herodian’s system of accentuation; the commentaries of Galen on Plato and on Hippocrates; the learned miscellanies of Athenaeus, Aelian and Stobaeus; and the Stratagems of Polyaenus. (3) Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. The most popular writers on the theory of rhetoric were Hermagoras, Hermogenes, Aphthonius and Cassius Longinus—the last the reputed author of the essay On Sublimity. Among the most renowned teachers of rhetoric—now distinctively called “Sophists,” or rhetoricians—were Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, Themistius, Himerius, Libanius and Herodes Atticus. Akin to the rhetorical exercises were various forms of ornamental or imaginative prose—dialogues, letters, essays or novels. Lucian, in his dialogues, exhibits more of the classical style and of the classical spirit than any writer of the later age; he has also a remarkable affinity with the tone of modern satire, as in Swift or Voltaire. His Attic prose, though necessarily artificial, was at least the best that had been written for four centuries. The emperor Julian was the author both of orations and of satirical pieces. The chief of the Greek novelists (the forerunner of whom was Aristides of Miletus, c. 100 B.C., in his Milesian Tales) are Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus, representing a purely Greek type of romance, and Heliodorus—with his imitators Achilles Tatius and Chariton—representing a school influenced by Oriental fiction. There were also many Christian romances in Greek, usually of a religious tendency. Alciphron’s fictitious Letters—founded largely on the New Comedy of Athens—represent the same kind of industry which produced the letters of Phalaris, Aristaenetus and similar collections. (4) Philosophy is represented chiefly by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in both of whom the Stoic element is the prevailing one; by the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus; and by Proclus, of that eclectic school which arose at Athens in the 5th century A.D.

The Greek poetry of this period presents no work of high merit. Babrius versified the Aesopic Fables; Oppian (or two poets of this name) wrote didactic poems on fishing Verse. and hunting; Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus made elaborate essays in epic verse; and the Orphic lore inspired some poems and hymns of a mystic character. The so-called Sibylline Oracles, in hexameter verse, range in date from about 170 B.C. to A.D. 700, and are partly the expression of the Jewish longings for the restoration of Israel, partly predictions of the triumph of Christianity. By far the most pleasing compositions in verse which have come to us from this age The Anthology. are some of the short poems in the Greek Anthology, which includes some pieces as early as the beginning of the 5th century B.C. and some as late as the 6th century of the Christian era.

The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid and nearly continuous. The attitude of the church towards it was no longer that which had been held by Clement of Alexandria, by Justin Martyr or by Origen. There was now a Christian Greek literature, and a Christian Greek eloquence of extraordinary power. The laity became more and more estranged from the Greek literature—however intrinsically pure and noble—of the pagan past. At the same time the Greek language—which had maintained its purity in Italian seats—was becoming corrupted in the new Greek Rome of the East. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act had at least a symbolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another. But it is practically convenient, or necessary, to use such landmarks.

Bibliography.—The first attempt at a connected history of Greek literature was the monumental and still indispensable work of J. A. Fabricius (14 vols., 1705-1728; new ed. in 12 vols. by G. C. Harless, 1790-1809); this was followed by F. Schöll’s Hist. de la littérature grecque (1813). Both these works begin with the earliest times and go down to the latest period of the Byzantine empire. Of more modern and recent works the following may be mentioned: G. Bernhardy, Grundriss der griechischen Literatur (1836-1845; 4th ed., 1876-1880; 5th ed. of vol. i., by R. Volkmann, 1892), chiefly confined to the poets; C. O. Müller, History of Greek Literature (unfinished), written for the London Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and published in English in 1840, the translation being by G. Cornewall Lewis and J. W. Donaldson (the latter completed the work to the end of the Byzantine period for the edition of 1858; the German text was published by E. Müller in 1841; 4th ed. by E. Heitz, 1882-1884); W. Mure, Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (1850-1857); T. Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (1872-1894, vols. 2, 3, ed. G. Hinrichs, vol. 4 by R. Peppmüller) containing epos, lyric, drama down to Euripides, and the beginnings of prose; R. Nicolai, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (2nd ed., 1873-1878), useful for bibliography, but in other respects unsatisfactory; J. P. Mahaffy, Hist. of Classical Greek Literature (4th ed., 1903); A. and M. Croiset, Hist. de la littérature grecque (1887-1899, 2nd ed. 1896); W. Christ, Geschichte der griechischen Literatur bis auf die Zeit Justinians (4th ed., 1905; 5th ed., pt. i., by O. Stählin and W. Schmid, 1908), by far the most serviceable handbook for the student. F. Susemihl’s Geschichte der griechischen Literatur in der Alexandrinerzeit (1891-1892) is especially valuable for its notes. Of smaller manuals the following will be found most useful: G. G. Murray, History of Ancient Greek Literature (1897); F. B. Jevons, History of Greek Literature (3rd ed., 1900) down to the time of Demosthenes; A. and M. Croiset, Manuel d’hist. de la littérature grecque (1900; Eng. trans., by G. F. Heffelbower, N.Y., 1904); also the general sketches by U. von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff in Die Kultur der Gegenwart, i. 8 (1905), by A. Gercke in the Sammlung Göschen (Leipzig, 2nd ed., 1905), and by R. C. Jebb in Companion to Greek Studies (Cambridge, 1905). Other works generally connected with the subject are: E. Hübner, Bibliographie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (2nd ed., 1889), pp. 161-17l; W. Engelmann, Bibliotheca scriptorum classicorum (8th ed., by E. Preuss, 1880); J. B. Mayor, Guide to the Choice of Classical Books (1896), p. 86; W. Kroll, Die Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert 1875-1900 (1905), p. 465 foll.; J. E. Sandys, History of Classical Scholarship (1906-1908); “Bibliotheca philologica classica,” in C. Bursian’s Jahresbericht über die Fortschritte der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft; articles in Pauly-Wissowa’s Realencyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (1894—).

(R. C. J.; X.)

II. Byzantine Literature

By “Byzantine literature” is generally meant the literature, written in Greek, of the so-called Byzantine period. There is no justification whatever for the inclusion of Latin works of the time of the East Roman empire. The close of Definition. the Byzantine period is clearly marked by the year 1453, at which date, with the fall of the Eastern empire, the peculiar culture and literary life of the Byzantines came to an end. It is only as regards the beginning of the Byzantine period that any doubts exist. There are no sufficient grounds for dating it from Justinian, as was formerly often done. In surveying the whole development of the political, ecclesiastical and literary life and of the general culture of the Roman empire, and particularly of its eastern portion, we arrive, on the contrary, at the conclusion that the actual date of the beginning of this new era—i.e. the Christian-Byzantine, in contradistinction to the Pagan-Greek and Pagan-Roman—falls within the reign of Constantine the Great. By the foundation of the new capital city of Constantinople (which lay amid Greek surroundings) and by the establishment of the Christian faith as the state religion, Constantine finally broke with the Roman-Pagan tradition, and laid the foundation of the Christian-Byzantine period of development. Moreover, in the department of language, so closely allied with that of literature, the 4th century marks a new epoch. About this time occurred the final disappearance of a characteristic of the ancient Greek language, important alike in poetry and in rhythmic prose, the difference of “quantity.” Its place was henceforth taken by the accent, which became a determining principle in poetry, as well as for the rhythmic conclusion of the prose sentence. Thus the transition from the old musical language to a modern conversational idiom was complete.

The reign of Constantine the Great undoubtedly marks the beginning of a new period in the most important spheres of national life, but it is equally certain that in most of them ancient tradition long continued to exercise an Transitional period. influence. Sudden breaches of continuity are less common in the general culture and literary life of the world than in its political or ecclesiastical development. This is true of the transition from pagan antiquity to the Christian middle ages. Many centuries passed before the final victory of the new religious ideas and the new spirit in public and private intellectual and moral life. The last noteworthy remnants of paganism disappeared as late as the 6th and 7th centuries. The last great educational establishment which rested upon pagan foundations—the university of Athens—was not abolished till A.D. 529. The Hellenizing of the seat of empire and of the state, which was essential to the independent development of Byzantine literature, proceeds yet more slowly. The first purely Greek emperor was Tiberius II. (578-582); but the complete Hellenizing of the character of the state had not been accomplished until the 7th century. We shall, therefore, regard the period from the 4th to the 7th century as that of the transition between ancient times and the middle ages. This period coincides with the rise of a new power in the world’s history—Islam. But though, in this transitional period, the old and the new elements are both to a large extent present and are often inextricably interwoven, yet it is certain that the new elements are, both as regards their essential force and their influence upon the succeeding period, of infinitely greater moment than the decrepit and mostly artificial survivals of the antique.

In order to estimate rightly the character of Byzantine literature and its distinctive peculiarities, in contradistinction to ancient Greek, it is imperative to examine the great difference between the civilizations that produced Mixed character of Byzantine culture. them. The Byzantine did not possess the homogeneous, organically constructed system of the ancient civilization, but was the outcome of an amalgamation of which Hellenism formed the basis. For, although the Latin character of the empire was at first completely retained, even after its final division in 395, yet the dominant position of Greek in the Eastern empire gradually led to the Hellenizing of the state. The last great act of the Latin tradition was the codification, in the Latin language, of the law by Justinian (527-565). But it is significant that the Novels of Justinian were composed partly in Greek, as were all the laws of the succeeding period. Of the emperors in the centuries following Justinian, many of course were foreigners, Isaurians, Armenians and others; but in language and education they were all Greeks. In the last five centuries of the empire, under the Comneni and the Palaeologi, court and state are purely Greek.

In spite of the dominant position of Greek in the Eastern empire, a linguistic and national uniformity such as formed the foundation of the old Latin Imperium Romanum never existed there. In the West, with the expansion of Rome’s political supremacy, the Latin language and Latin culture were everywhere introduced—first into the non-Latin provinces of Italy, later into Spain, Gaul and North Africa, and at last even into certain parts of the Eastern empire. This Latinizing was so thorough that it weathered all storms, and, in the countries affected by it, was the parent of new and vigorous nationalities, the French, the Spaniards, the Portuguese and the Rumanians. Only in Africa did “Latinism” fail to take root permanently. From the 6th century that province relapsed into the hands of the native barbarians and of the immigrant Arabs, and both the Latin and the Greek influences (which had grown in strength during the period of the Eastern empire) were, together with Christianity, swept away without leaving a trace behind. It might have been expected that the Hellenizing of the political system of the Eastern empire would have likewise entailed the Hellenizing of the non-Greek portions of the empire. Such, however, was not the case; for all the conditions precedent to such a development were wanting. The non-Greek portions of the Eastern empire were not, from the outset, gradually incorporated into the state from a Greek centre, as were the provinces in the West from a Latin centre. They had been acquired in the old period of the homogeneous Latin Imperium. In the centuries immediately following the division of the empire, the idea of Hellenizing the Eastern provinces could not take root, owing to the fact that Latin was retained, at least in principle, as the state language. During the later centuries, in the non-Greek parts, centrifugal tendencies and the destructive inroads of barbarians began on all sides; and the government was too much occupied with the all but impossible task of preserving the political unity of the empire to entertain seriously the wider aim of an assimilation of language and culture. Moreover, the Greeks did not possess that enormous political energy and force which enabled the Romans to assimilate foreign races; and, finally, they were confronted by sturdy Oriental, mostly Semitic, peoples, who were by no means so easy to subjugate as were the racially related inhabitants of Gaul and Spain. Their impotence against the peoples of the East will be still less hardly judged if we remember the fact already mentioned, that even the Romans were within a short period driven back and overwhelmed by the North African Semites who for centuries had been subjected to an apparently thorough process of Latinization.

The influence of Greek culture then, was very slight; how little indeed it penetrated into the oriental mind is shown by the fact that, after the violent Arab invasion in the south-east corner of the Mediterranean, the Copts and Syrians were able to retain their language and their national characteristics, while Greek culture almost completely disappeared. The one great instance of assimilation of foreign nationalities by the Greeks is the Hellenizing of the Slavs, who from the 6th century had migrated into central Greece and the Peloponnese. All other non-Greek tribes of any importance which came, whether for longer or for shorter periods, within the sphere of the Eastern empire and its civilization—such as the Copts, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, Rumanians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Albanians—one and all retained their nationality and language. The complete Latinizing of the West has, accordingly, no counterpart in a similar Hellenizing of the East. This is clearly shown during the Byzantine period in the progress of Christianity. Everywhere in the West, even among the non-Romanized Anglo-Saxons, Irish and Germans, Latin maintained its position in the church services and in the other branches of the ecclesiastical system; down to the Reformation the church remained a complete organic unity. In the East, at the earliest period of its conversion to Christianity, several foreign tongues competed with Greek, i.e. Syrian, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, Old-Bulgarian and others. The sacred books were translated into these languages and the church services were held in them and not in Greek. One noticeable effect of this linguistic division in the church was the formation of various sects and national churches (cf. the Coptic Nestorians, the Syrian Monophysites, the Armenian and, in more recent times, the Slavonic national churches). The Church of the West was characterized by uniformity in language and in constitution. In the Eastern Church parallel to the multiplicity of languages developed also a corresponding variety of doctrine and constitution.

Though the character of Byzantine culture is mainly Greek, and Byzantine literature is attached by countless threads to ancient Greek literature, yet the Roman element forms a very essential part of it. The whole political Roman influence. character of the Byzantine empire is, despite its Greek form and colouring, genuinely Roman. Legislation and administration, the military and naval traditions, are old Roman work, and as such, apart from immaterial alterations, they continued to exist and operate, even when the state in head and limbs had become Greek. It is strange, indeed, how strong was the political conception of the Roman state (Staatsgedanke), and with what tenacity it held its own, even under the most adverse conditions, down to the latter days of the empire. The Greeks even adopted the name “Romans,” which gradually became so closely identified with them as to supersede the name “Hellenes”; and thus a political was gradually converted into an ethnographical and linguistic designation. Rhomaioi was the most common popular term for Greeks during the Turkish period, and remains so still. The old glorious name “Hellene” was used under the empire and even during the middle ages in a contemptuous sense—“Heathen”—and has only in quite modern times, on the formation of the kingdom of “Hellas,” been artificially revived. The vast organization of the Roman political system could not but exercise in various ways a profound influence upon Byzantine civilization; and it often seemed as if Roman political principles had educated and nerved the unpolitical Greek people to great political enterprise. The Roman influence has left distinct traces in the Greek language, Greek of the Byzantine and modern period is rich in Latin terms for conceptions connected with the departments of justice, administration and the imperial court. In literature such “barbarisms” were avoided as far as possible, and were replaced by Greek periphrases.

But by far the most momentous and radical change wrought on the old Hellenism was effected by Christianity; and yet the transition was, in fact, by no means so abrupt as one might be led to believe by comparing the Pagan-Hellenic Christianity. culture of Plato’s day with the Christian-Byzantine of the time of Justinian. For the path had been most effectually prepared for the new religion by the crumbling away of the ancient belief in the gods, by the humane doctrine of the Stoics, and, finally, by the mystic intellectual tendencies of Neoplatonism. Moreover, in many respects Christianity met paganism halfway by adapting itself to popular usages and ideas and by adopting important parts of the pagan literature. The whole educational system especially, even in Christian times, was in a very remarkable manner based almost entirely on the methods and material inherited from paganism. Next to the influences of Rome and of Christianity, that of the East was of importance in developing the Byzantine civilization, and in The Orient. lending Byzantine literature its distinctive character. Much that was oriental in the Eastern empire dates back to ancient times, notably to the period of Alexander the Great and his successors. Since the Greeks had at that period Hellenized the East to the widest extent, and had already founded everywhere flourishing cities, they themselves fell under the manifold influences of the soil they occupied. In Egypt, Palestine and Syria, in Asia Minor as far inland as Mesopotamia, Greek and oriental characteristics were often blended. In respect of the wealth and the long duration of its Greek intellectual life, Egypt stands supreme. It covers a period of nearly a thousand years from the foundation of Alexandria down to the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs (A.D. 643). The real significance of Egyptian Hellenism during this long period can be properly estimated only if a practical attempt be made to eliminate from the history of Greek literature and science in pagan and in Christian times all that owed its origin to the land of the Nile. The soil of Egypt proved itself especially productive of Greek literature under the Cross (Origen, Athanasius, Arius, Synesius), in the same way as the soil of North Africa was productive of Latin literature (Tertullian, Cyprian, Lactantius, Augustine). Monastic life, which is one of the chief characteristic elements of Christian-Byzantine civilization, had its birth in Egypt.

Syria and Palestine came under the influence of Greek civilization at a later date than Egypt. In these, Greek literature and culture attained their highest development between the 3rd and the 8th centuries of the Christian era. Antioch rose to great influence, owing at first to its pagan school of rhetoric and later to its Christian school of exegesis. Gaza was renowned for its school of rhetoric; Berytus for its academy of law. It is no mere accident that sacred poetry, aesthetically the most valuable class of Byzantine literature, was born in Syria and Palestine.

In Asia Minor, the cities of Tarsus, Caesarea, Nicaea, Smyrna, Ephesus, Nicopolis, &c., were all influential centres of Greek culture and literature. For instance, the three great fathers of Cappadocia, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus all belonged to Asia Minor.

If all the greater Greek authors of the first eight centuries of the Christian era, i.e. the period of the complete development of Byzantine culture, be classified according to the countries of their birth, the significant fact becomes evident that nine-tenths come from the African and Asiatic districts, which were for the most part opened up only after Alexander the Great, and only one-tenth from European Greece. In other words, the old original European Greece was, under the emperors, completely outstripped in intellectual productive force by the newly founded African and Asiatic Greece. This huge tide of conquest which surged from Greece over African and Syrian territories occupied largely by foreign races and ancient civilizations, could not fail to be fraught with serious consequences for the Greeks themselves. The experience of the Romans in their conquest of Greece (Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit) repeated itself in the conquest of the East by Greece, though to a minor extent and in a different way. The whole literature of Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor cannot, despite its international and cosmopolitan character, disavow the influence of the Oriental soil on which it was nourished. Yet the growth of too strong a local colouring in its literature was repressed, partly by the checks imposed by ancient Greek tradition, partly by the spirit of Christianity which reconciled all national distinctions. Even more clearly and unmistakably is Oriental influence shown in the province of Byzantine art, as Joseph Strzygowski has conclusively proved.

The greater portion of Greek literature from the close of ancient times down to the threshold of modern history was written in a language identical in its principal features with the common literary language, the so-called Language. Koinē, which had its origin in the Alexandrian age. This is the literary form of Greek as a universal language, though a form that scintillates with many facets, from an almost Attic diction down to one that approaches the language of everyday life such as we have, for instance, in the New Testament. From what has been already said, it follows that this stable literary language cannot always have remained a language of ordinary life. For, like every living tongue, the vernacular Greek continually changed in pronunciation and form, as well as in vocabulary and grammar, and thus the living language surely and gradually separated itself from the rigid written language. This gulf was, moreover, considerably widened owing to the fact that there took place in the written language a retrograde movement, the so-called “Atticism.” Introduced by Dionysius of Halicarnassus in the 1st century before Christ, this linguistic-literary fashion attained its greatest height in the 2nd century A.D., but still continued to flourish in succeeding centuries, and, indirectly, throughout the whole Byzantine period. It is true that it often seemed as though the living language would be gradually introduced into literature; for several writers, such as the chronicler Malalas in the 6th century, Leontius of Neapolis (the author of Lives of Saints) in the 7th century, the chronicler Theophanes at the beginning of the 9th century, and the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century, made in their writings numerous concessions to the living language. This progressive tendency might well have led, in the 11th and 12th centuries, to the founding in the Greek vernacular of a new literary language similar to the promising national languages and literature which, at that period, in the Romance countries, developed out of the despised popular idiom. In the case of the Byzantines, unfortunately, such a radical change never took place. All attempts in the direction of a popular reform of the literary language, which were occasionally made in the period from the 6th to the 10th centuries, were in turn extinguished by the resuscitation of classical studies, a movement which, begun in the 9th century by Photius and continued in the 11th by Psellus, attained its full development under the Comneni and the Palaeologi. This classical renaissance turned back the literary language into the old ossified forms, as had previously happened in the case of the Atticism of the early centuries of the empire. In the West, humanism (so closely connected with the Byzantine renaissance under the Comneni and the Palaeologi) also artificially reintroduced the “Ciceronian” Latin, but was unable seriously to endanger the development of the national languages, which had already attained to full vitality. In Byzantium, the humanistic movement came prematurely, and crushed the new language before it had fairly established itself. Thus the language of the Byzantine writers of the 11th-15th centuries is almost Old Greek in colour; artificially learnt by grammar, lexicon and assiduous reading, it followed Attic models more and more slavishly; to such an extent that, in determining the date of works, the paradoxical principle holds good that the more ancient the language, the more recent the author.

Owing to this artificial return to ancient Greek, the contrast that had long existed with the vernacular was now for the first time fully revealed. The gulf between the two forms of language could no longer be bridged; and this fact found its expression in literature also. While the vulgarizing authors of the 6th-10th centuries, like the Latin-writing Franks (such as Gregory of Tours), still attempted a compromise between the language of the schools and that of conversation, we meet after the 12th century with authors who freely and naturally employed the vernacular in their literary works. They accordingly form the Greek counterpart of the oldest writers in Italian, French and other Romance languages. That they could not succeed like their Roman colleagues, and always remained the pariahs of Greek literature, is due to the all-powerful philological-antiquarian tendency which existed under the Comneni and the Palaeologi. Yet once more did the vernacular attempt to assert its literary rights, i.e. in Crete and some other islands in the 16th and 17th centuries. But this attempt also was foiled by the classical reaction of the 19th century. Hence it comes about that Greek literature even in the 20th century employs grammatical forms which were obsolete long before the 10th century. Thus the Greeks, as regards their literary language, came into a cul de sac similar to that in which certain rigidly conservative Oriental nations find themselves, e.g. the Arabs and Chinese, who, not possessing a literary language suited to modern requirements, have to content themselves with the dead Old-Arabic or the ossified Mandarin language. The divorce of the written and spoken languages is the most prominent and also the most fatal heritage that the modern Greeks have received from their Byzantine forefathers.

The whole Byzantine intellectual life, like that of the Western medieval period, is dominated by theological interests. Theology accordingly, in literature too, occupies the chief place, in regard to both quantity and quality. Next to it General character of Byzantine literature. comes the writing of history, which the Byzantines cultivated with great conscientiousness until after the fall of the empire. All other kinds of prose writing, e.g. in geography, philosophy, rhetoric and the technical sciences, were comparatively neglected, and such works are of value for the most part only in so far as they preserve and interpret old material. In poetry, again, theology takes the lead. The poetry of the Church produced works of high aesthetic merit and enduring value. In secular poetry, the writing of epigrams especially was cultivated with assiduity and often with ability. In popular literature poetry predominates, and many productions worthy of notice, new both in matter and in form, are here met with.

The great classical period of Greek theological literature is that of the 4th century. Various factors contributed to this result—some of them positive, particularly the establishment of Christianity as the official religion Theology. and the protection accorded to it by the state, others negative, i.e. the heretical movements, especially Arianism, which at this period arose in the east of the empire and threatened the unity of the doctrine and organization of the church. It was chiefly against these that the subtle Athanasius of Alexandria directed his attacks. The learned Eusebius founded a new department of literature, church history. In Egypt, Antonius (St Anthony) founded the Greek monastic system; Synesius of Cyrene, like his greater contemporary Augustine in the West, represents both in his life and in his writings the difficult transition from Plato to Christ. At the centre, in the forefront of the great intellectual movement of this century, stand the three great Cappadocians, Basil the Great, the subtle dogmatist, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, the philosophically trained defender of the Christian faith, and Gregory of Nazianzus, the distinguished orator and poet. Closely allied to them was St Chrysostom, the courageous champion of ecclesiastical liberty and of moral purity. To modern readers the greater part of this literature appears strange and foreign; but, in order to be appreciated rightly, it must be regarded as the outcome of the period in which it was produced, a period stirred to its depths by religious emotions. For the times in which they lived and for their readers, the Greek fathers reached the highest attainable; though, of course, they produced nothing of such general human interest, nothing so deep and true, as the Confessions of St Augustine, with which the poetical autobiography of Gregory of Nazianzus cannot for a moment be compared.

The glorious bloom of the 4th century was followed by a perceptible decay in theological intellectual activity. Independent production was in succeeding centuries almost solely prompted by divergent dogmatical views and heresies, for the refutation of which orthodox authors were impelled to take up the pen. In the 5th and 6th centuries a more copious literature was called into existence by the Monophysites, who maintained that there was but one nature in Christ; in the 7th century by the Monothelites, who acknowledged but one will in Christ; in the 8th century by the Iconoclasts and by the new teaching of Mahomet. One very eminent theologian, whose importance it has been reserved for modern times to estimate aright—Leontius of Byzantium (6th century)—was the first to introduce Aristotelian definitions into theology, and may thus be called the first scholastic. In his works he attacked the heretics of his age, particularly the Monophysites, who were also assailed by his contemporary Anastasius of Antioch. The chief adversaries of the Monothelites were Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem (whose main importance, however, is due to his work in other fields, in hagiography and homiletics), Maximus the Confessor, and Anastasius Sinaïtes, who also composed an interpretation of the Hexaëmeron in twelve books. Among writers in the departments of critical interpretation and asceticism in this period must be enumerated Procopius of Gaza, who devoted himself principally to the exegesis of the Old Testament; Johannes Climax (6th century), named after his much-read ascetic work Klimax (Jacob’s ladder); and Johannes Moschus (d. 619), whose chief work Leimon (“spiritual pasture”) describes monastic life in the form of statements and narratives of their experiences by monks themselves. The last great heresy, which shook the Greek Church to its very foundations, the Iconoclast movement, summoned to the fray the last great Greek theologian, John of Damascus (Johannes Damascenus). Yet his chief merit lies not so much in his polemical speeches against the Iconoclasts, and in his much admired but over-refined poetry, as in his great dogmatic work, The Fountain of Knowledge, which contains the first comprehensive exposition of Christian dogma. It has remained the standard work on Greek theology down to the present day. Just as the internal development of the Greek Church in all essentials reached its limit with the Iconoclasts, so also its productive intellectual activity ceased with John of Damascus. Such theological works as were subsequently produced, consisted mostly in the interpretation and revision of old materials. An extremely copious, but unfruitful, literature was produced by the disputes about the reunion of the Greek and Roman Churches. Of a more independent character is the literature which in the 14th century centred round the dissensions of the Hesychasts.

Among theologians after John of Damascus must be mentioned: the emperor Leo VI., the Wise (886-911), who wrote numerous homilies and church hymns, and Theodorus of Studium (759-826), who in his numerous writings affords us instructive glimpses of monastic life. Pre-eminent stands the figure of the patriarch Photius. Yet his importance consists less in his writings, which often, to a remarkable extent, lack independence of thought and judgment, than in his activity as a prince of the church. For he it was who carried the differences which had already repeatedly arisen between Rome and Constantinople to a point at which reconciliation was impossible, and was mainly instrumental in preparing the way for the separation of the Greek and Latin Churches accomplished in 1054 under the patriarch Michael Cerularius. In the 11th century the polyhistor Michael Psellus also wrote polemics against the Euchites, among whom the Syrian Gnosis was reviving. All literature, including theology, experienced a considerable revival under the Comneni. In the reign of Alexius I. Comnenus (1081-1118), Euthymius Zigabenus wrote his great dogmatic work, the Dogmatic Panoply, which, like The Fountain of Knowledge of John of Damascus in earlier times, was partly positive, furnishing an armoury of theology, partly negative and directed against the sects. In addition to attacking the dead and buried doctrines of the Monothelites, Iconoclasts, &c., to fight which was at this time a mere tilting at windmills, Zigabenus also carried on a polemic against the heretics of his own day, the Armenians, Bogomils and Saracens. Zigabenus’s Panoply was continued and enlarged a century later by the historian Nicetas Acominatus, who published it under the title Treasure of Orthodoxy. To the writings against ancient heresies were next added a flood of tracts, of all shapes and sizes, “against the Latins,” i.e. against the Roman Church, and among their authors must also be enumerated an emperor, the gifted Theodore II. Lascaris (1254-1258). The chief champion of the union with the Roman Church was the learned Johannes Beccus (patriarch of Constantinople 1275-1282). Of his opponents by far the most eminent was Gregory of Cyprus, who succeeded him on the patriarchal throne. The fluctuations in the fortunes of the two ecclesiastical parties are reflected in the occupation of the patriarchal throne. The battles round the question of the union, which were waged with southern passion, were for a while checked by the dissensions aroused by the mystic tendency of the Hesychasts. The impetus to this great literary movement was given by the monk Barlaam, a native of Calabria, who came forward in Constantinople as an opponent of the Latins and was in 1339 entrusted by Andronicus III. with a mission to Pope Benedict XII. at Avignon. He condemned the doctrine of the Hesychasts, and attacked them both orally and in writing. Among those who shared his views are conspicuous the historian Nicephorus Gregoras and Gregorius Acindynus, the latter of whom closely followed Thomas Aquinas in his writings. In fact the struggle against the Hesychasts was essentially a struggle between sober western scholasticism and dreamy Graeco-Oriental mysticism. On the side of the Hesychasts fought Gregorius Palamas, who tried to give a dogmatic foundation to the mysticism of the Hesychasts, Cabasilas, and the emperor John VI. Cantacuzenus who, after his deposition, sought, in the peaceful retreat of a monastery, consolation in theological studies, and in his literary works refuted the Jews and the Mahommedans. For the greatest Byzantine “apologia” against Islamism we are indebted to an emperor, Manuel II. Palaeologus (1391-1425), who by learned discussions tried to make up for the deficiency in martial prowess shown by the Byzantines in their struggle with the Turks. On the whole, theological literature was in the last century of the empire almost completely occupied with the struggles for and against the union with Rome. The reason lay in the political conditions. The emperors saw more and more clearly that without the aid of the West they would no longer be able to stand their ground against the Turks, the vanguard of the armies of the Crescent; while the majority of Byzantine theologians feared that the assistance of the West would force the Greeks to unite with Rome, and thereby to forfeit their ecclesiastical independence. Considering the supremacy of the theological party in Byzantium, it was but natural that religious considerations should gain the day over political; and this was the view almost universally held by the Byzantines in the later centuries of the empire; in the words of the chronicler Ducas: “it is better to fall into the hands of the Turks than into those of the Franks.” The chief opponent of the union was Marcus Eugenicus, metropolitan of Ephesus, who, at the Council of Florence in 1439, denounced the union with Rome accomplished by John VIII. Palaeologus. Conspicuous there among the partisans of the union, by reason of his erudition and general literary merit, was Bessarion, afterwards cardinal, whose chief activity already falls under the head of Graeco-Italian humanism.

Hagiography, i.e. the literature of the acts of the martyrs and the lives of the saints, forms an independent group and one comparatively unaffected by dogmatic struggles. The main interest centres here round the objects Hagiography. described, the personalities of the martyrs and saints themselves. The authors, on the other hand—the Acts of the Martyrs are mostly anonymous—keep more in the background than in other branches of literature. The man whose name is mainly identified with Greek hagiography, Symeon Metaphrastes, is important not as an original author, but only as an editor. Symeon revised in the 10th century, according to the rhetorical and linguistic principles of his day, numerous old Acts of the Martyrs, and incorporated them in a collection consisting of several volumes, which was circulated in innumerable copies, and thus to a great extent superseded the older original texts. These Acts of the Martyrs, in point of time, are anterior to our period; but of the Lives of Saints the greater portion belong to Byzantine literature. They began with biographies of monks distinguished for their saintly living, such as were used by Palladius about 420 in his Historia Lausiaca. The most famous work of this description is that by Athanasius of Alexandria, viz. the biography of St Anthony, the founder of monachism. In the 6th century Cyril of Scythopolis wrote several lives of saints, distinguished by a simple and straightforward style. More expert than any one else in reproducing the naïve popular style was Leontius of Neapolis in Cyprus who, in the 7th century, wrote, among other works, a life of St John the Merciful, archbishop of Alexandria, which is very remarkable as illustrating the social and intellectual conditions of the time. From the popular Lives of Saints, which for the reading public of the middle ages formed the chief substitute for modern “belles lettres,” it is easy to trace the transition to the religious novel. The most famous work of this class is the history of [Barlaam and Josaphat] (q.v.).

The religious poetry of the Greeks primarily suffered from the influence of the ancient Greek form, which was fatal to original development. The oldest work of this class is the hymn, composed in anapaestic monometers and Religious poetry. dimeters, which was handed down in the manuscripts with the Paedagogus of Clement of Alexandria (d. about 215), but was probably not his work. The next piece of this class is the famous “Maidens’ Song” in the Banquet of St Methodius (d. about 311), in which many striking violations of the old rules of quantity are already apparent. More faithful to the tradition of the schools was Gregory of Nazianzus. But, owing to the fact that he generally employed antiquated versification and very erudite language, his poems failed to reach the people or to find a place in the services of the church. Just as little could the artificial paraphrase of the Psalms composed by the younger Apollinaris, or the subtle poems of Synesius, become popular. It became more and more patent that, with the archaic metre which was out of keeping with the character of the living language, no genuine poetry suited to the age could possibly be produced. Fortunately, an entirely new form of poetical art was discovered, which conferred upon the Greek people the blessings of an intelligible religious poetry—the rhythmic poem. This no longer depended on difference of quantity in the syllables, which had disappeared from the living language, but on the accent. Yet the transition was not effected by the substitution of accent for the old long syllables; the ancient verse form was entirely abandoned, and in its stead new and variously constructed lines and strophes were formed. In the history of the rhythmic sacred poetry three periods are clearly marked—the preparatory period; that of the hymns; and that of the Canones. About the first period we know, unfortunately, comparatively little. It appears that in it church music was in the main confined to the insertion of short songs between the Psalms or other portions of Holy Writ and the acclamations of the congregation. The oldest rhythmic songs date from Gregory of Nazianzus—his “Maidens’ Song” and his “Evening Hymn.” Church poetry reached its highest expression in the second period, in the grand development of the hymns, i.e. lengthy songs comprising from twenty to thirty similarly constructed strophes, each connected with the next in acrostic fashion. Hymnology, again, attained its highest perfection in the first half of the 6th century with Romanos, who in the great number and excellence of his hymns dominated this species of poetry, as Homer did the Greek epic. From this period dates, moreover, the most famous song of the Greek Church, the so-called Acathistus, an anonymous hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, which has sometimes, but erroneously, been attributed to the patriarch Sergius.

Church poetry entered upon a new stage, characterized by an increase in artistic finish and a falling off in poetical vigour, with the composition of the Canones, songs artfully built up out of eight or nine lyrics, all differently Canones. constructed. Andreas, archbishop of Crete (c. 650-720), is regarded as the inventor of this new class of song. His chief work, “the great Canon,” comprises no less than 250 strophes. The most celebrated writers of Canones are John of Damascus and Cosmas of Jerusalem, both of whom flourished in the first half of the 8th century. The “vulgar” simplicity of Romanos was regarded by them as an obsolete method; they again resorted to the classical style of Gregory of Nazianzus, and John of Damascus even took a special delight in the most elaborate tricks of expression. In spite of this, or perhaps on that very account, both he and Cosmas were much admired in later times, were much read, and—as was very necessary—much commentated. Later, sacred poetry was more particularly cultivated in the monastery of the Studium at Constantinople by the abbot Theodorus and others. Again, in the 9th century, Joseph, “the hymn-writer,” excelled as a writer of songs, and, finally, John Mauropus (11th century), bishop of Euchaita, John Zonaras (12th century), and Nicephorus Blemmydes (13th century), were also distinguished as authors of sacred poems, i.e. Canones. The Basilian Abbey of Grotta Ferrata near Rome, founded in 1004, and still existing, was also a nursery of religious poetry. As regards the rhythmic church poetry, it may now be regarded as certain that its origin was in the East. Old Hebrew and Syrian models mainly stimulated it, and Romanos (q.v.) was especially influenced by the metrical homilies of the great Syrian father Ephraem (d. about 373).

In profane literature the writing of history takes the first place, as regards both form and substance. The Greeks have always been deeply interested in history, and they have never omitted, amid all the vicissitudes of their Profane literature; historical accounts. existence, to hand down a record to posterity. Thus, they have produced a literature extending from the Ionian logographers and Herodotus down to the times of Sultan Mahommed II. In the Byzantine period all historical accounts fall under one of two groups, entirely different, both in form and in matter, (1) historical works, the authors of which described, as did most historians of ancient times, a period of history in which they themselves had lived and moved, or one which only immediately preceded their own times; and (2) chronicles, shortly recapitulating the history of the world. This latter class has no exact counterpart in ancient literature. The most clearly marked stage in the development of a Christian-Byzantine universal history was the chronicle (unfortunately lost) written by the Hellenized Jew, Justus of Tiberias, at the beginning of the 2nd century of the Christian era; this work began with the story of Moses.

Byzantine histories of contemporary events do not differ substantially from ancient historical works, except in their Christian colouring. Yet even this is often very faint and blurred owing to close adherence to ancient methods. Apart from this, neither a new style nor a new critical method nor any radically new views appreciably altered the main character of Byzantine historiography. In their style most Byzantine compilers of contemporary history followed the beaten track of older historians, e.g. Herodotus, Thucydides, and, in some details, also Polybius. But, in spite of their often excessive tendency to imitation, they displayed considerable power in the delineation of character and were not wanting in independent judgment. As regards the selection of their matter, they adhered to the old custom of beginning their narrative where their predecessors left off.

The outstripping of the Latin West by the Greek East, which after the close of the 4th century was a self-evident fact, is reflected in historiography also. After Constantine the Great, the history of the empire, although its Latin character was maintained until the 6th century, was mostly written by Greeks; e.g. Eunapius (c. 400), Olympiodorus (c. 450), Priscus (c. 450), Malchus (c. 490), and Zosimus, the last pagan historian (c. 500), all of whom, with the exception of Zosimus, are unfortunately preserved to us only in fragments. Historiography received a great impulse in the 6th century. The powerful Procopius and Agathias (q.v.), tinged with poetical rhetoric, described the stirring and eventful times of Justinian, while Theophanes of Byzantium, Menander Protector, Johannes of Epiphaneia and Theophylactus of Simocatta described the second half of the 6th century. Towards the close of the 6th century also flourished the last independent ecclesiastical historian, Evagrius, who wrote the history of the church from 431 to 593. There now followed, however, a lamentable falling off in production. From the 7th to the 10th century the historical side is represented by a few chronicles, and it was not until the 10th century that, owing to the revival of ancient classical studies, the art of writing history showed some signs of life. Several historical works are associated with the name of the emperor Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus. To his learned circle belonged also Joseph Genesius, who at the emperor’s instance compiled the history of the period from 813 to 886. A little work, interesting from the point of view of historical and ethnographical science, is the account of the taking of Thessalonica by the Cretan Corsairs (A.D. 904), which a priest, Johannes Cameniata, an eyewitness of the event, has bequeathed to posterity. There is also contained in the excellent work of Leo Diaconus (on the period from 959 to 975) a graphic account of the bloody wars of the Byzantines with the Arabs in Crete and with the Bulgarians. A continuation was undertaken by the philosopher Michael Psellus in a work covering the period from 976 to 1077. A valuable supplement to the latter (describing the period from 1034 to 1079) was supplied by the jurist Michael Attaliata. The history of the Eastern empire during the Crusades was written in four considerable works, by Nicephorus Bryennius, his learned consort Anna Comnena, the “honest Aetolian,” Johannes Cinnamus, and finally by Nicetas Acominatus in an exhaustive work which is authoritative for the history of the 4th Crusade. The melancholy conditions and the ever increasing decay of the empire under the Palaeologi (13th-15th centuries) are described in the same lofty style, though with a still closer following of classical models. The events which took place between the taking of Constantinople by the Latins and the restoration of Byzantine rule (1203-1261) are recounted by Georgius Acropolita, who emphasizes his own share in them. The succeeding period was written by the versatile Georgius Pachymeres, the erudite and high-principled Nicephorus Gregoras, and the emperor John VI. Cantacuzenus. Lastly, the death-struggle between the East Roman empire and the mighty rising power of the Ottomans was narrated by three historians, all differing in culture and in style, Laonicus Chalcocondyles, Ducas and Georgius Phrantzes. With them may be classed a fourth (though he lived outside the Byzantine period), Critobulus, a high-born Greek of Imbros, who wrote, in the style of the age of Pericles, the history of the times of the sultan Mahommed II. (down to 1467).

The essential importance of the Byzantine chronicles (mostly chronicles of the history of the world from the Creation) consists in the fact that they in part replace older lost works, and thus fill up many gaps in our historical survey Chronicles. (e.g. for the period from about 600 to 800 of which very few records remain). They lay no claim to literary merit, but are often serviceable for the history of language. Many such chronicles were furnished with illustrations. The remains of one such illustrated chronicle on papyrus, dating from the beginning of the 5th century, has been preserved for us by the soil of Egypt.[7] The authors of the chronicles were mostly monks, who wished to compile handbooks of universal history for their brethren and for pious laymen; and this explains the strong clerical and popular tendency of these works. And it is due to these two qualities that the chronicles obtained a circulation abroad, both in the West and also among the peoples Christianized from Byzantium, e.g. the Slavs, and in all of them sowed the seeds of an indigenous historical literature. Thus the chronicles, despite the jejuneness of their style and their uncritical treatment of material were for the general culture of the middle ages of far greater importance than the erudite contemporary histories designed only for the highly educated circles in Byzantium. The oldest Byzantine chronicle of universal history preserved to us is that of Malalas (6th century), which is also the purest type of this class of literature. In the 7th century was completed the famous Easter or Paschal Chronicle (Chronicon Paschale). About the end of the 8th or the beginning of the 9th century Georgius Syncellus compiled a concise chronicle, which began with the Creation and was continued down to the year 284. At the request of the author, when on his death-bed, the continuation of this work was undertaken by Theophanes Confessor, who brought down the account from A.D. 284 to his own times (A.D. 813). This exceedingly valuable work of Theophanes was again continued (from 813-961) by several anonymous chroniclers. A contemporary of Theophanes, the patriarch Nicephorus, wrote, in addition to a Short History of the period from 602 to 769, a chronological sketch from Adam down to the year of his own death in 829. Of great influence on the age that followed was Georgius Monachus, only second in importance as chronicler of the early Byzantine period, who compiled a chronicle of the world’s history (from Adam until the year 843, the end of the Iconoclast movement), far more theological and monkish in character than the work of Theophanes. Among later chroniclers Johannes Scylitza stands out conspicuously. His work (covering the period from 811 to 1057), as regards the range of its subject-matter, is something between a universal and a contemporary history. Georgius Cedrenus (c. 1100) embodied the whole of Scylitza’s work, almost unaltered, in his Universal Chronicle. In the 12th century the general increase in literary production was evident also in the department of chronicles of the world. From this period dates, for instance, the most distinguished and learned work of this class, the great universal chronicle of John Zonaras. In the same century Michael Glycas compiled his chronicle of the world’s history, a work written in the old popular style and designed for the widest circles of readers. Lastly, in the 12th century, Constantine Manasses wrote a universal chronicle in the so-called “political” verse. With this verse-chronicle must be classed the imperial chronicle of Ephraem, written in Byzantine trimeters at the beginning of the 14th century.

Geography and topography, subjects so closely connected with history, were as much neglected by the Byzantines as by their political forerunners, the Romans. Of purely practical importance are a few handbooks of navigation, Geography. itineraries, guides for pilgrims, and catalogues of provinces and cities, metropolitan sees and bishoprics. The geographical work of Stephanus of Byzantium, which dates from Justinian’s time, has been lost. To the same period belongs the only large geographical work which has been preserved to us, the Christian Topography of Cosmas Indicopleustes. For the topography of Constantinople a work entitled Ancient History (Patria) of Constantinople, which may be compared to the medieval Mirabilia urbis Romae, and in late manuscripts has been wrongly attributed to a certain Codinus, is of great importance.

Ancient Greek philosophy under the empire sent forth two new shoots—Neopythagoreanism and Neoplatonism. It was the latter with which moribund paganism essayed to stem the advancing tide of Christianity. The last great Philosophy. exponent of this philosophy was Proclus in Athens (d. 485). The dissolution, by order of Justinian, of the school of philosophy at Athens in 529 was a fatal blow to this nebulous system, which had long since outlived the conditions that made it a living force. In the succeeding period philosophical activity was of two main kinds; on the one hand, the old philosophy, e.g. that of Aristotle, was employed to systematize Christian doctrine, while, on the other, the old works were furnished with copious commentaries and paraphrases. Leontius of Byzantium had already introduced Aristotelian definitions into Christology; but the real founder of medieval ecclesiastical philosophy was John of Damascus. Owing, however, to his having early attained to canonical authority, the independent progress of ecclesiastical philosophy was arrested; and to this it is due that in this respect the later Byzantine period is far poorer than is the West. Byzantium cannot boast a scholastic like Thomas Aquinas. In the 11th century philosophical studies experienced a satisfactory revival, mainly owing to Michael Psellus, who brought Plato as well as Aristotle again into fashion.

Ancient rhetoric was cultivated in the Byzantine period with greater ardour than scientific philosophy, being regarded as an indispensable aid to instruction. It would be difficult to imagine anything more tedious than the numerous Rhetoric. theoretical writings on the subject and the examples of their practical application: mechanical school essays, which here count as “literature,” and innumerable letters, the contents of which are wholly insignificant. The evil effects of this were felt beyond the proper sphere of rhetoric. The anxious attention paid to the laws of rhetoric and the unrestricted use of its withered flowers were detrimental to a great part of the rest of Byzantine literature, and greatly hampered the development of any individuality and simplicity of style. None the less, among the rhetorical productions of the time are to be found a few interesting pieces, such as the Philopatris, in the style of Lucian, which gives us a remarkable picture of the times of Nicephorus Phocas (10th century). In two other smaller works a journey to the dwellings of the dead is described, after the pattern of Lucian’s Nekyomanteia, viz. in Timarion (12th century) and in Mazaris’ Journey to the Underworld (c. 1414). A very charming representative of Byzantine rhetoric is Michael Acominatus, who, in addition to theological works, wrote numerous occasional speeches, letters and poems.

In the field of scientific production, which can be accounted literature in the modern acceptation of the term only in a limited sense, Byzantium was dominated to an extravagant and even grotesque extent by the rules of what in The sciences. modern times is termed “classical scholarship.” The numerous works which belong to this category, such as grammars, dictionaries, commentaries on ancient authors, extracts from ancient literature, and metrical and musical treatises, are of little general interest, although of great value for special branches of philological study, e.g. for tracing the influences through which the ancient works handed down to us have passed, as well as for their interpretation and emendation; for information about ancient authors now lost; for the history of education; and for the underlying principles of intellectual life in Byzantium. The most important monument of Byzantine philology is, perhaps, the Library of the patriarch Photius. The period from about 650 to 850 is marked by a general decay of culture. Photius, who in the year 850 was about thirty years of age, now set himself with admirable energy to the task of making ancient literature, now for the most part dead and forgotten, known once more to his contemporaries, thus contributing to its preservation. He gave an account of all that he read, and in this way composed 280 essays, which were collected in what is commonly known as the Library or Myriobiblon. The character of the individual sketches is somewhat mechanical and formal; a more or less complete account of the contents is followed by critical discussion, which is nearly always confined to the linguistic form. With this work may be compared in importance the great Lexikon of Suidas, which appeared about a century later, a sort of encyclopaedia, of which the main feature was its articles on the history of literature. A truly sympathetic figure is Eustathius, the famous archbishop of Thessalonica (12th century). His voluminous commentaries on Homer, however, rivet the attention less than his enthusiastic devotion to science, his energetic action on behalf of the preservation of the literary works of antiquity, and last, not least, his frank and heroic character, which had nothing in it of the Byzantine. If, on the other hand, acquaintance with a caricature of Byzantine philology be desired, it is afforded by Johannes Tzetzes, a contemporary of Eustathius, a Greek in neither name nor spirit, narrow-minded, angular, superficial, and withal immeasurably conceited and ridiculously coarse in his polemics. The transition to Western humanism was effected by the philologists of the period of the Palaeologi, such as Maximus Planudes, whose translations of numerous works renewed the long-broken ties between Byzantium and the West; Manuel Moschopulus, whose grammatical works and commentaries were, down to the 16th century, used as school text-books; Demetrius Triclinius, distinguished as a textual critic; the versatile Theodorus Metochites, and others.

Originally, as is well known, Latin was the exclusive language of Roman law. But with Justinian, who codified the laws in his Corpus juris, the Hellenizing of the legal language also began. The Institutes and the Digest were translated Jurisprudence. into Greek, and the Novels also were issued in a Greek form. Under the Macedonian dynasty there began, after a long stagnation, the resuscitation of the code of Justinian. The emperor Basilius I. (867-886) had extracts made from the existing law, and made preparations for the codifying of all laws. But the whole work was not completed till the time of Leo VI. the Wise (886-912), and Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus (912-959), when it took the form of a grand compilation from the Digests, the Codex, and the Novels, and is commonly known as the Basilica (Τὰ βασιλικά). In the East it completely superseded the old Latin Corpus juris of Justinian. More that was new was produced, during the Byzantine period, in canon law than in secular legislation. The purely ecclesiastical rules of law, the Canones, were blended with those of civil law, and thus arose the so-called Nomocanon, the most important edition of which is that of Theodorus Bestes in 1090. The alphabetical handbook of canon law written by Matthaeus Blastares about the year 1335 also exercised a great influence.

In the province of mathematics and astronomy the remarkable fact must be recorded that the revival among the Greeks of these long-forgotten studies was primarily due to Perso-Arabian influence. The Great Syntaxis of Mathematics and astronomy. Ptolemy operated in the oriental guise of the Almagest. The most important direct source of this intellectual loan was not Arabia, however, but Persia. Towards the close of the 13th century the Greeks became acquainted with Persian astronomy. At the beginning of the 14th century Georgius Chrysococca and Isaac Argyrus wrote astronomical treatises based on Persian works. Then the Byzantines themselves, notably Theodorus Metochites and Nicephorus Gregoras, at last had recourse to the original Greek sources.

The Byzantines did much independent work in the field of Military science. military science. The most valuable work of the period on this subject is one on tactics, which has come down to posterity associated with the name of Leo VI., the Wise.

Of profane poetry—in complete contrast to sacred poetry—the general characteristic was its close imitation of the antique in point of form. All works belonging to this category Profane poetry. reproduce the ancient style and are framed after ancient models. The metre is, for the most part, either the Byzantine regular twelve-syllable trimeter, or the “political” verse; more rarely the heroic and Anacreontic measures.

Epic popular poetry, in the ancient sense, begins only with the vernacular Greek literature (see below); but among the literary works of the period there are several which can be compared with the epics of the Alexandrine age. Epic. Nonnus (c. 400) wrote, while yet a pagan, a fantastic epic on the triumphal progress of the god Dionysus to India, and, as a Christian, a voluminous commentary on the gospel of St John. In the 7th century, Georgius Pisides sang in several lengthy iambic poems the martial deeds of the emperor Heraclius, while the deacon Theodosius (10th century) immortalized in extravagant language the victories of the brave Nicephorus Phocas.

From the 11th century onwards, religious, grammatical, astrological, medical, historical and allegorical poems, framed partly in duodecasyllables and partly in “political” Didactic poems. verse, made their appearance in large quantities. Didactic religious poems were composed, for example, by Philippus (ὁ Μονότροπος, Solitarius, c. 1100), grammatico-philological poems by Johannes Tzetzes, astrological by Johannes Camaterus (12th century), others on natural science by Manuel Philes (14th century) and a great moral, allegorical, didactic epic by Georgius Lapithes (14th century).

To these may be added some voluminous poems, which in style and matter must be regarded as imitations of the ancient Greek romances. They all date from the 12th century, a fact evidently connected with the general revival of Romances. culture which characterizes the period of the Comneni. Two of these romances are written in the duodecasyllable metre, viz. the story of Rodanthe and Dosicles by Theodorus Prodromus, and an imitation of this work, the story of Drusilla and Charicles by Nicetas Eugenianus; one in “political” verse, the love story of Aristander and Callithea by Constantine Manasses, which has only been preserved in fragments, and lastly one in prose, the story of Hysmine and Hysminias, by Eustathius (or Eumathius) Macrembolita, which is the most insipid of all.

The objective point of view which dominated the whole Byzantine period was fatal to the development of a profane lyrical poetry. At most a few poems by Johannes Lyrics. Geometres and Christophorus of Mytilene and others, in which personal experiences are recorded with some show of taste, may be placed in this category. The dominant form for all subjective poetry was the epigram, which was employed in all its variations from playful trifles to long elegiac and narrative poems. Georgius Pisides (7th century) treated the most diverse themes. In the 9th century Theodorus of Studium had lighted upon the happy idea of immortalizing The epigram. monastic life in a series of epigrams. The same century produced the only poetess of the Byzantine period, Casia, from whom we have several epigrammatic productions and church hymns, all characterized by originality. Epigrammatic poetry reached its highest development in the 10th and 11th centuries, in the productions of Johannes Geometres, Christophorus of Mytilene and John Mauropus. Less happy are Theodorus Prodromus (12th century) and Manuel Philes (14th century). From the beginning of the 10th century also dates the most valuable collection of ancient and of Byzantine epigrammatic poems, the Anthologia Palatina (see [Anthology]).

Dramatic poetry, in the strict sense of the term, was as completely lacking among the Byzantine Greeks as was the condition precedent to its existence, namely, public performance. Apart from some moralizing allegorical Drama. dialogues (by Theodorus Prodromus, Manuel Philes and others), we possess only a single work of the Byzantine period that, at least in external form, resembles a drama: the Sufferings of Christ (Χριστὸς Πάσχων). This work, written probably in the 12th century, or at all events not earlier, is a cento, i.e. is in great measure composed of verses culled from ancient writers, e.g. Aeschylus, Euripides and Lycophron; but it was certainly not written with a view to the dramatic production.

The vernacular literature stands alone, both in form and in contents. We have here remarkable originality of conception and probably also entirely new and genuinely medieval matter. While in the artificial literature prose is Vernacular Greek literature. pre-eminent, in the vernacular literature, poetry, both in quantity and quality, takes the first place, as was also the case among the Latin nations, where the vulgar tongue first invaded the field of poetry and only later that of prose. Though a few preliminary attempts were made (proverbs, acclamations addressed by the people to the emperor, &c.), the Greek vernacular was employed for larger works only from the 12th century onwards; at first in poems, of which the major portion were cast in “political” verse, but some in the trochaic eight-syllabled line. Towards the close of the 15th century rhyme came into use. The subjects treated in this vernacular poetry are exceedingly diverse. In the capital city a mixture of the learned and the popular language was first used in poems of admonition, praise and supplication. In this oldest class of “vulgar” works must be reckoned the Spaneas, an admonitory poem in imitation of the letter of Pseudo-Isocrates addressed to Demonicus; a supplicatory poem composed in prison by the chronicler Michael Glycas, and several begging poems of Theodorus Prodromus (Ptochoprodromos). In the succeeding period erotic poems are met with, such as the Rhodian love songs preserved in a MS. in the British Museum (ed. W. Wagner, Leipzig, 1879), fairy-tale like romances such as the Story of Ptocholeon, oracles, prayers, extracts from Holy Writ, lives of saints, &c. Great epic poems, in which antique subjects are treated, such as the legends of Troy and of Alexander, form a separate group. To these may be added romances in verse after the manner of the works written in the artificial classical language, e.g. Callimachus and Chrysorrhoë, Belthandrus and Chrysantza, Lybistrus and Rhodamne, also romances in verse after the Western pattern, such as Phlorius and Platziaphlora (the old French story of Flore et Blanchefleur). Curious are also sundry legends connected with animals and plants, such as an adaptation of the famous medieval animal fables of the Physiologus, a history of quadrupeds, and a book of birds, both written with a satirical intention, and, lastly, a rendering of the story of Reynard the Fox. Of quite peculiar originality also are several legendary and historical poems, in which famous heroes and historical events are celebrated. There are, for instance, poems on the fall of Constantinople, the taking of Athens and Trebizond, the devastating campaign of Timur, the plague in Rhodes in 1498, &c. In respect of importance and antiquity the great heroic epic of Digenis Akritas stands pre-eminent.

Among prose works written in the vulgar tongue, or at least in a compromise with it, may be mentioned the Greek rendering of two works from an Indian source, the Book of the Seven Wise Masters (as Syntipas the Philosopher by “Vulgar” prose works. Michael Andreopulus), and the Hitopadera or Mirror of Princes (through the Arabic Kalilah and Dimnah by Simeon Sethus as Στεφανίτης καὶ Ἰκνηλάτης), a fish book, a fruit book (both skits on the Byzantine court and official circles). To these must be added the Greek laws of Jerusalem and of Cyprus of the 12th and 13th centuries, chronicles, &c. In spite of many individual successes, the literature written in the vulgar tongue succumbed, in the race for existence, to its elder sister, the literature written in classical and polished Greek. This was mainly due to the continuous employment of the ancient language in the state, the schools and the church.

The importance of Byzantine culture and literature in the history of the world is beyond dispute. The Christians of the East Roman empire guarded for more than a thousand years the intellectual heritage of antiquity against the General significance of Byzantine literature. violent onslaught of the barbarians. They also called into life a peculiar medieval culture and literature. They communicated the treasures of the old pagan as well as of their own Christian literature to neighbouring nations; first to the Syrians, then to the Copts, the Armenians, the Georgians; later, to the Arabians, the Bulgarians, the Serbs and the Russians. Through their teaching they created a new East European culture, embodied above all in the Russian empire, which, on its religious side, is included in the Orthodox Eastern Church, and from the point of view of nationality touches the two extremes of Greek and Slav. Finally the learned men of the dying Byzantine empire, fleeing from the barbarism of the Turks, transplanted the treasures of old Hellenic wisdom to the West, and thereby fertilized the Western peoples with rich germs of culture.

Bibliography.—1. General sources: K. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Literatur (2nd ed., 1897), supplemented in Die byzantinische Zeitschrift (1892 seq.), and the Byzantinisches Archiv (1898 seq.), which is intended for the publication of more exhaustive matter. The Russian works in this department are comprised in the Vizantiisky Vremennik (1894 seq.).

2. Language: Grammar: A. N. Jannaris (Giannaris), An Historical Greek Grammar (1897); A. Dieterich, “Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der griechischen Sprache von der hellenistischen Zeit bis zum 10ten Jahrhundert,” in Byzant. Archiv, i. (1898). Glossary: Ducange, Glossarium ad scriptores mediae et infimae Graecitatis (1688), in which particular attention is paid to the “vulgar” language; E. A. Sophocles, Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (3rd ed., 1888).

3. Theology: Chief work, A. Ehrhard in Krumbacher’s Geschichte der byz. Lit. pp. 1-218. For the ancient period, cf. the works on Greek patrology (under article [Fathers of the Church]). Collective edition of the Fathers (down to the 15th century); Patrologia, series Graeca (ed. by Migne, 161 vols., 1857-1866). Church poetry: A collection of Greek Church hymns was published by W. Christ and M. Paranikas, entitled Anthologia Graeca carminum Christianorum (1871). Many unedited texts, particularly the songs of Romanos, were published by Cardinal J. B. Pitra, under the title Analecta sacra spicilegio Solesmensi parata (1876). A complete edition of the hymns is edited by K. Krumbacher.

4. Historical literature: A collective edition of the Byzantine historians and chroniclers was begun under Louis XIV., and continued later (1648-1819), called the Paris Corpus. This whole collection was on B. G. Niebuhr’s advice republished with some additions (Bonn, 1828-1878), under the title Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae. The most important authors have also appeared in the Bibliotheca Teubneriana. A few Byzantine and oriental historical works are also contained in the collection edited by J. B. Bury (1898 seq.).

5. Vernacular Greek literature: The most important collective editions are: W. Wagner, Medieval Greek Texts (1870), Carmina Graeca Medii Aevi (1874), Trois Poèmes grecs du moyen âge (1881); E. Legrand, Collection de monuments pour servir à l’étude de la langue néo-hellénique (in 26 parts, 1869-1875), Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire (in 8 vols., 1880-1896).

(K. Kr.)

III. Modern Greek Literature (1453-1908)

After the capture of Constantinople, the destruction of Greek national life and the almost total effacement of Greek civilization naturally involved a more or less complete cessation of Greek literary production in the regions subjected to the rule of a barbarous conqueror. Learned Greeks found a refuge away from their native land; they spoke the languages of foreign people, and when they wrote books they often used those languages, but in most cases they also wrote in Greek. The fall of Constantinople must not therefore be taken as indicating a break in the continuity of Greek literary history. Nor had that event so decisive an influence as has been supposed on the revival of learning in western Europe. The crusades had already brought the Greeks and Westerns together, and the rule of the Franks at Constantinople and in the Levant had rendered the contact closer. Greeks and Latins had keenly discussed the dogmas which divided the Eastern and Western Churches; some Greeks had adopted the Latin faith or had endeavoured to reconcile the two communions, some had attained preferment in the Roman Church. Many had become connected by marriage or other ties with the Italian nobles who ruled in the Aegean or the Heptanesos, and circumstances led them to settle in Italy. Of the writers who thus found their way to the West before the taking of Constantinople the most prominent were Leon or Leontios Pilatos, Georgius Gemistus, or Pletho, Manuel and John Chrysoloras, Theodore Gazes, George of Trebizond and Cardinal Bessarion.

The Ottoman conquest had reduced the Christian races in the plains to a condition of serfdom, but the spirit of liberty continued to breathe in the mountains, where groups of desperate men, the Klephts and the Haiduks, The Klephtic poetry. maintained the struggle against alien tyranny. The adventurous and romantic life of these champions of freedom, spent amid the noblest solitudes of nature and often tinged with the deepest tragedy, naturally produced a poetry of its own, fresh, spontaneous and entirely indigenous. The Klephtic ballads, all anonymous and composed in the language of the people, are unquestionably the best and most genuine Greek poetry of this epoch. They breathe the aroma of the forests and mountains; like the early rhapsodies of antiquity, which peopled nature with a thousand forms, they lend a voice to the trees, the rocks, the rivers and to the mountains themselves, which sing the prowess of the Klepht, bewail his death and comfort his disconsolate wife or mother. Olympia boasts to Ossa that the footstep of the Turk has never desecrated its valleys; the standard of freedom floats over its springs; there is a Klepht beneath every tree of its forests; an eagle sits on its summit with the head of a warrior in its talons. The dying Klepht bids his companions make him a large and lofty tomb that he may stand therein and load his musket: “Make a window in the side that the swallows may tell me that spring has come, that the nightingales may sing me the approach of flowery May.” The wounded Vervos is addressed by his horse: “Rise, my master, let us go and find our comrades.” “My bay horse, I cannot rise; I am dying: dig me a tomb with thy silver-shod hoof; take me in thy teeth and lay me therein. Bear my arms to my companions and this handkerchief to my beloved, that she may see it and lament me.” Another type of the popular poetry is presented by the folk-songs of the Aegean islanders and the maritime population of the Asiatic coast. In many of the former the influence of the Frankish conquest is apparent. Traces of the ancient mythology are often to be found in the popular songs. Death is commonly personified by Charon, who struggles with his victim; Charon is sometimes worsted, but as a rule he triumphs in the conflict.

In Crete, which for nearly two centuries after the fall of Constantinople remained under Venetian rule, a school of Greek poetry arose strongly impressed with Italian influences. The language employed is the dialect of the Candiotes, Cretan poets. with its large admixture of Venetian words. The first product of this somewhat hybrid literature was Erotocritos, an epic poem in five cantos, which relates the love story of Aretē, daughter of Hercules, king of Athens, and Erotocritos, the son of his minister. The poem presents an interesting picture of Greece under the feudal Frankish princes, though professing to describe an episode of the classical epoch; notwithstanding some tedious passages, it possesses considerable merit and contains some charming scenes. The metre is the rhymed alexandrine. Of the author, Vicence Cornaro, who lived in the middle or end of the 16th century, little is known; he probably belonged to the ducal family of that name, from which Tasso was descended. The second poem is the Erophile of George Chortakis, a Cretan, also written in the Candiote dialect. It is a tragic drama, the scene of which is laid in Egypt. The dialogue is poor, but there are some fine choral interludes, which perhaps are by a different hand. Chortakis, who was brought up at Retimo, lived at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries. The third Cretan poem worthy of notice is the Shepherdess, a charming and graceful idyll written by Nicolas Drimyticos, a native of Apokorona, early in the 17th century. Other Cretan poets were J. Gregoropoulos and G. Melissinos (1500), who wrote epigrams, and Maroulos (1493), who endeavoured to write Pindaric odes.

Among the Greeks who were prominent in spreading a knowledge of Greek in Europe after the fall of Constantinople were John Argyropulos, Demetrius Chalcondyles, Constantine and John Lascaris and Marcus Musurus, a Literary activity after the fall of Constantinople. Cretan. These men wrote in the accepted literary language; in general, however, they were rather employed about literature than engaged in producing it. They taught Greek; several of them wrote Greek grammars; they transcribed and edited Greek classical writers, and they collected manuscripts. Their stores enriched the newly founded libraries of St Mark at Venice, of the Escorial, of the Vatican and of the National Library in Paris. But none of them accomplished much in literature strictly so called. The question which most deeply interested them was that of the rival merits of the Platonic and Aristotelian philosophies, over which a controversy of extraordinary bitterness broke out towards the close of the 15th century. The dispute was in reality theological rather than philosophical; the cause of Plato was championed by the advocates of a union between the Eastern and Western Churches, that of Aristotle was upheld by the opposing party, and all the fury of the old Byzantine dogmatic controversies was revived. The patriarch, George Kurtesios or Gennadius, whom Mahommed II. had appointed after the capture of Constantinople, wrote a treatise in favour of Aristotle and excommunicated Gemistus Pletho, the principal writer among the Platonists. On the other hand, George of Trebizond, who attacked Pletho with unmeasured virulence, was compelled to resign his post of secretary to Pope Nicholas V. and was imprisoned by Pope Paul I. Scholarship was not wholly extinct in Greece or among the Greeks for a considerable time after the Turkish conquest. Arsenius, who succeeded Musurus as bishop of Monemvasia (1510), wrote commentaries on Aristophanes and Euripides; his father, Apostoles, made a collection of Greek proverbs. Aemilius Portos, a Cretan, and Leo Allatios (1600-1650) of Chios edited a number of works of the classical and later periods with commentaries and translations; Allatios also wrote Greek verses showing skill and cleverness. Constantine Rhodokanakes, physician to Charles II. of England, wrote verses on the return of that monarch to England. About the time of the fall of Constantinople we meet with some versifiers who wrote poems in the spoken dialect on historical subjects; among these were Papaspondylos Zotikos (1444), Georgilas Limenitis (1450-1500) and Jacobos Trivoles (beginning of the 16th century); their poems have little merit, but are interesting as specimens of the popular language of the day and as illustrating the manners and ideas of contemporary Greeks.

Among the prose writers of the 16th century were a number of chroniclers. At the end of the 15th, Kritobulos of Imbros, who had been private secretary of Mahommed II., wrote the history of his master, Emmanuel Melaxos Historical works. a history of the patriarchate, and Phranzes a history of the Palaeologi. Theodosius Zygomalas (1580) wrote a history of Constantinople from 1391 to 1578. In the 17th century Demetrius Cantemir, a Moldavian by birth, wrote a history of the Ottoman empire, and G. Kontares tales of ancient Athens. Others composed chronicles of Cyprus and Crete, narratives of travels and biographies of saints. Most of these works are written in the literary language, the study of which was kept alive by the patriarchate and the schools which it maintained at Constantinople and elsewhere. Various theological and philosophical works, grammars and dictionaries were written during this period, but elegant literature practically disappears.[8]

A literary revival followed in the 18th century, the precursor of the national uprising which resulted in the independence of Greece. The efforts of the great Phanariote families at Constantinople, the educational zeal of the higher The literary revival. Greek clergy and the munificence of wealthy Greeks in the provinces, chiefly merchants who had acquired fortunes by commerce, combined to promote the spread of education among a people always eager for instruction. The Turks, indifferent to educational matters, failed to discern the significance of the movement. Schools were established in every important Greek town, and school-books and translations from Western languages issued from the presses of Venice, Triest, Vienna and other cities where the Greeks possessed colonies. Young men completed their studies in the Western universities and returned to the East as the missionaries of modern civilization. For the greater part of the 18th century the literature was mainly theological. Notable theological writers of this epoch were Elias Miniates, an elegant preacher, whose sermons are written in the popular language, and Meletios of Iannina, metropolitan of Athens, whose principal works were an ecclesiastical history, written in ancient Greek, and a descriptive geography of Greece in the modern language, composed, like the work of Pausanias, after a series of tours. The works of two distinguished prelates, both natives of Corfu and both ardent partisans of Russia, Nikephoros Theotokes (1731?-1800) and Eugenios Bulgares (1715-1806), mark the beginning of the national and literary renaissance. They wrote much in defence of Greek orthodoxy against Latin heresy. Theotokes, famous as a preacher, wrote, besides theological and controversial works, treatises on mathematics, geography and physics. Bulgares was a most prolific author; he wrote numerous translations and works on theology, archaeology, philosophy, mathematics, physics and astronomy; he translated the Aeneid and Georgics of Virgil into Homeric verse at the request of Catherine II. His writings exercised a considerable influence over his contemporaries.

The poets of the earlier period of the Greek revival were Constantinos Rhigas (q.v.), the Alcman of the revolutionary movement, whose songs fired the spirit of his fellow-countrymen; Christopoulos (1772-1847), a Phanariote, Poets of the Greek revival. who wrote some charming Anacreontics, and Jacobos Rizos Neroulos (1778-1850), also a Phanariote, author of tragedies, comedies and lyrics, and of a work in French on modern Greek literature. They are followed in the epoch of Greek independence by the brothers Panagiotes and Alexander Soutzos (1800-1868 and 1803-1863) and Alexander Rhizos Rhangabēs (Rhankaves, 1810-1892), all three Phanariotes. Both Soutzos had a rich command of musical language, were highly ideal in their conceptions, strongly patriotic and possessed an ardent love of liberty. Both imitated to some extent Byron, Lamartine and Béranger; they tried various forms of poetry, but the genius of Panagiotes was essentially lyrical, that of Alexander satirical. The other great poet of the Greek revival, Alexander Rizos Rhangabē, was a writer with a fine poetic feeling, exquisite diction and singular beauty and purity of thought and sentiment. Besides numerous odes, hymns, ballads, narrative poems, tragedies and comedies, he wrote several prose works, including a history of ancient Greece, a history of modern Greek literature, several novels and works on ancient art and archaeology. Among the numerous dramatic works of this time may be mentioned the Μαρία Δοξιπατρῆ of Demetrios Bernardakes, a Cretan, the scene of which is laid in the Morea at the time of the crusades.

In prose composition, as in poetry, the national revival was marked by an abundant output. Among the historians the greatest is Spiridon Trikoupis, whose History of the Revolution is a monumental work. It is distinguished Prose writers of the revival. by beauty of style, clearness of exposition and an impartiality which is all the more remarkable as the author played a leading part in the events which he narrates. Almost all the chiefs of the revolutionary movement left their memoirs; even Kolokotrones, who was illiterate, dictated his recollections. John Philemon, of Constantinople, wrote a history of the revolution in six volumes. He was an ardent partisan of Russia, and as such was opposed to Trikoupis, who was attached to the English party. K. Paparrhegopoulos’s History of the Greek Nation is especially valuable in regard to the later periods; in regard to the earlier he largely follows Gibbon and Grote. With him may be mentioned Moustoxides of Corfu, who wrote on Greek history and literature; Sakellarios, who dealt with the topography and history of Cyprus; N. Dragoumes, whose historical memoirs treat of the period which followed the revolution; K. Assopios, who wrote on Greek literature and history. In theology Oeconomos fills the place occupied by Miniates in the 17th century as a great preacher. Kontogones is well known by his History of Patristic Literature of the First Three Centuries and his Ecclesiastical History, and Philotheos Bryennios, bishop of Serres, by his elaborate edition of Clemens Romanus. Kastorches wrote well on Latin literature. Great literary activity in the domains of law, political economy, mathematics, the physical sciences and archaeology displayed itself in the generation after the establishment of the Greek kingdom.

But the writer who at the time of the national revival not only exercised the greatest influence over his contemporaries but even to a large extent shaped the future course of Greek literature was Adamantios Coraës (Korais) Coraës. of Chios. This remarkable man, who devoted his life to philological studies, was at the same time an ardent patriot, and in the prolegomena to his numerous editions of the classical writers, written In Greek or French, he strove to awake the interest of his countrymen in the past glories of their race or administered to them sage counsels, at the same time addressing ardent appeals to civilized Europe on their behalf. The great importance of Coraës, however, lies in the fact that he was practically the founder of the modern literary language.

In contemporary Greek literature two distinct forms of the modern language present themselves—the vernacular (ἡ καθομιλουμένη) and the purified (ἡ καθαρεὐουσα). The former is the oral language, spoken by the whole The modern literary language. Greek world, with local dialectic variations; the latter is based on the Greek of the Hellenistic writers, modified, but not essentially altered, in successive ages by the popular speech. At the time of the War of Independence the enthusiasm of the Greeks and the Philhellenes was fired by the memory of an illustrious past, and at its close a classical reaction followed: the ancient nomenclature was introduced in every department of the new state, towns and districts received their former names, and children were christened after Greek heroes and philosophers instead of the Christian saints. In the literary revival which attended the national movement, two schools of writers made their appearance—the purists, who, rejecting the spoken idiom as degenerate and corrupt, aimed at the restoration of the classical language, and the vulgarists, who regarded the vernacular or “Romaic” as the genuine and legitimate representative of the ancient tongue. A controversy which had existed in former times was thus revived, with the result that a state of confusion still prevails in the national literature. The classical scholar who is as yet unacquainted with modern Greek will find, in the pages of an ordinary periodical or newspaper, specimens of the conventional literary language, which he can read with ease side by side with poems or even prose in the vernacular which he will be altogether unable to interpret.

The vernacular or oral language is never taught, but is universally spoken. It has been evolved from the ancient language by a natural and regular process, similar to that which has produced the Romance languages from the Latin, Reforms of Coraës. or the Russian, Bulgarian and Servian from the old Slavonic. It has developed on parallel lines with the modern European languages, and in obedience to the same laws; like them, it might have grown into a literary language had any great writers arisen in the middle ages to do for it what Dante and his successors of the trecento did for Italian. But the effort to adapt it to the requirements of modern literature could hardly prove successful. In the first place, the national sentiment of the Greeks prompts them to imitate the classical writers, and so far as possible to appropriate their diction. The beauty and dignity of the ancient tongue possesses such an attraction for cultivated writers that they are led insensibly to adopt its forms and borrow from its wealth of phrase and idiom. In the next place, a certain literary tradition and usage has already been formed which cannot easily be broken down. For more than half a century the generally accepted written language, half modern half ancient, has been in use in the schools, the university, the parliament, the state departments and the pulpit, and its influence upon the speech of the more educated classes is already noticeable. It largely owes its present form—though a fixed standard is still lacking—to the influence and teaching of Coraës. As in the time of the decadence a κοινὴ διάλεκτος stood midway between the classical language and the popular speech, so at the beginning of the 19th century there existed a common literary dialect, largely influenced by the vernacular, but retaining the characteristics of the old Hellenistic, from which it was derived by an unbroken literary tradition. This written language Coraës took as the basis of his reforms, purging it of foreign elements, preserving its classical remnants and enlarging its vocabulary with words borrowed from the ancient lexicon or, in case of need, invented in accordance with a fixed principle. He thus adopted a middle course, discountenancing alike the pedantry of the purists and the over-confident optimism of the vulgarists, who found in the uncouth popular speech all the material for a langue savante. The language which he thus endeavoured to shape and reconstruct is, of course, conventional and artificial. In course of time it will probably tend to approach the vernacular, while the latter will gradually be modified by the spread of education. The spoken and written languages, however, will always be separated by a wide interval.

Many of the best poets of modern Greece have written in the vernacular, which is best adapted for the natural and spontaneous expression of the feelings. Dionysios Solomos (1798-1857), the greatest of them all, employed the dialect Poetical writers in the vernacular. of the Ionian Islands. Of his lyrics, which are full of poetic fire and inspiration, the most celebrated is his “Ode to Liberty.” Other poets, of what may be described as the Ionic school, such as Andreas Kalvos (1796-1869), Julius Typaldos (1814-1883), John Zampelios (1787-1856), and Gerasimos Markoras (b. 1826), followed his example in using the Heptanesian dialect. On the other hand, Georgios Terzetes (1806-1874), Aristotle Valaorites (1824-1879) and Gerasimos Mavrogiannes, though natives of the Ionian Islands, adopted in their lyrics the language of the Klephtic ballads—in other words, the vernacular of the Pindus range and the mountainous district of Epirus. This dialect had at least the advantage of being generally current throughout the mainland, while it derived distinction from the heroic exploits of the champions of Greek liberty. The poems of Valaorites, which are characterized by vivid imagination and grace of style, have made a deep impression on the nation. Other poets who largely employed the Epirotic dialect and drew their inspiration from the Klephtic songs were John Vilaras (1771-1823), George Zalokostas (1805-1857) in his lyric pieces, and Theodore Aphentoules, a Cretan (d. 1893). With the poems of this group may be classed those of Demetrius Bikelas (b. 1835). The popular language has been generally adopted by the younger generation of poets, among whom may be mentioned Aristomenes Probelegios (b. 1850), George Bizyenos (1853-1896), George Drosines, Kostes Palamas (b. 1859), John Polemes, Argyres Ephthaliotes, and Jacob Polylas (d. 1896).

Contemporary with the first-mentioned or Ionic group, there existed at Constantinople a school of poets who wrote in the accepted literary language, and whose writings serve as models for the later group which gathered at Athens Poetical writers in the conventional language. after the emancipation of Greece. The literary traditions founded by Alexander Rizos Rhangabēs (1810-1892) and the brothers Alexander and Panagiotis Soutzos (1803-1863 and 1800-1868), who belonged to Phanariot families, were maintained in Athens by Spiridion Basiliades (1843-1874) Angelos Vlachos (b. 1838), John Karasoutzas (1824-1873), Demetrios Paparrhegopoulos (1843-1873), and Achilles Paraschos (b. 1838). The last, a poet of fine feeling, has also employed the popular language. In general the practice of versification in the conventional literary language has declined, though sedulously encouraged by the university of Athens, and fostered by annual poetic competitions with prizes provided by patriotic citizens. Greek lyric poetry during the first half of the century was mainly inspired by the patriotic sentiment aroused by the struggle for independence, but in the present generation it often shows a tendency towards the philosophic and contemplative mood under the influence of Western models.

There has been an abundant production of dramatic literature in recent years. In succession to Alexander Rhangabēs, John Zampelios and the two Soutzos, who belong to the past generation, Kleon Rhangabēs, Angelos Vlachos, Dramatists, translators and satirists. Demetrios Koromelas, Basiliades and Bernadakes are the most prominent among modern dramatic writers. Numerous translations of foreign masterpieces have appeared, among which the metrical versions of Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice, by Demetrios Bikelas, deserve mention as examples of artistic excellence. Goethe’s Faust has been rendered into verse by Probelegios, and Hamlet, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, into prose by Damiroles. Among recent satirists, George Soures (b. 1853) occupies a unique position. He reviews social and political events in the Ῥωμῇος, a witty little newspaper written entirely in verse, which is read with delight by all classes of the population.

Almost all the prose writers have employed the literary language. In historical research the Greeks continue to display much activity and erudition, but no great work comparable to Spiridion Trikoupis’s Recent prose writers. History of the Revolution has appeared in the present generation. A history of the Greek nation from the earliest times to the present day, by Spiridion Lampros, and a general history of the 19th century by Karolides, have recently been published. The valuable Μνημεῖα of Sathas, the μελέται Βυζαντινῆς ἱστορίας of Spiridion Zampelios and Mavrogiannes’s History of the Ionian Islands deserve special mention, as well as the essays of Bikelas, which treat of the Byzantine and modern epochs of Greek history. Some of the last-named were translated into English by the late marquis of Bute. Among the writers on jurisprudence are Peter Paparrhegopoulos, Kalligas, Basileios Oekonomedes and Nikolaos Saripolos. Brailas-Armenes and John Skaltzounes, the latter an opponent of Darwin, have written philosophical works. The Ecclesiastical History of Diomedes Kyriakos and the Theological Treatises of Archbishop Latas should be noted. The best-known writers of philological works are Constantine Kontos, a strong advocate of literary purism, George Hatzidakes, Theodore Papademetrakopoulos and John Psichari; in archaeology, Stephen Koumanoudes, Panagiotes Kavvadias and Christos Tsountas have won a recognized position among scholars. John Svoronos is a high authority on numismatics. The works of John Hatzidakes on mathematics, Anast. Christomanos on chemistry, and Demetrios Aeginetes on astronomy are well known.

The earlier works of fiction, written in the period succeeding the emancipation of Greece, were much affected by foreign influence. Modern Greece has not produced any great novelist. The Κρητικοὶ γάμοι of Spiridion Zampelios, Fiction. the scene of which is laid in Crete, and the Thanos Blechas of Kalligas are interesting, the former for accuracy of historical detail, the latter as a picture of peasant life in the mountains of Greece. Original novel writing has not been much cultivated, but translations of foreign romances abound. In later times the short story has come into vogue through the example of D. Bikelas, whose tales have acquired great popularity; one of them, Loukis Laras, has been translated into many languages. The example of Bikelas has been followed by Drosines Karkavitzas, Ephthaliotis, Xenopoulos and many others.

The most distinguished of the writers who adhere to the vernacular in prose is John Psichari, professor of the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He is the recognized leader of the vulgarists. Among the best known of his works Prose writers in the vernacular. are Τὸ ταξεῖδι μου, a narrative of a journey in Greek lands, Τὄνειρο τοῦ Γιαννίρη, Ἡ Ζούλεα, and ὁ Μάγος. The tales of Karkavitzas and Ephthaliotis are also in the vernacular. Among the younger of M. Psichari’s followers is M. Palli, who has recently published a translation of the Iliad. Owing to the limited resources of the popular language, the writers of this school are sometimes compelled to employ strange and little-known words borrowed from the various dialects. The vernacular has never been adopted by writers on scientific subjects, owing to its inherent unsuitability and the incongruity arising from the introduction of technical terms derived from the ancient language. Notwithstanding the zeal of its adherents, it seems unlikely to maintain its place in literature outside the domain of poetry; nor can any other result be expected, unless its advocates succeed in reforming the system of public instruction in Greece.

Many periodicals are published at Athens, among which may be mentioned the Athena, edited by Constantine Kontos, the Ethniké Agoge, a continuation of the old Hestia, the Harmonia and the Διάπλασις τῶν παίδων, an educational Periodicals and Journals. review. The Parnassos, the Archaeological Society and other learned bodies issue annual or quarterly reports. The Greek journals are both numerous and widely read. They contain much clever writing, which is often marred by inaccuracy and a deficient sense of responsibility. Their tendency to exaggerated patriotic sentiment sometimes borders on the ludicrous. For many years the Nea Heméra of Trieste exerted a considerable influence over the Greek world, owing to the able political reviews of its editor, Anastasios Byzantios (d. 1898), a publicist of remarkable insight and judgment.

Authorities.—Constantine Sathas, Νεοελληνικὴ φιλολογία (Athens, 1868); D. Bikelas, Περὶ νεοελληνικῆς φιλολογίας δοκίμιον (London, 1871), reprinted in Διαλέξεις καὶ ἀναμνήσεις (Athens, 1893); J. S. Blackie, Horae Hellenicae (London, 1874); R. Nicolai, Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur (Leipzig, 1876); A. R. Rhangabé, Histoire littéraire de la Grèce moderne (Paris, 1877); C. Gidel, Études sur la littérature grecque moderne (Paris, 1878); E. Legrand, Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire (vol. i., Paris, 1880); J. Lamber, Poètes grecs contemporains (Paris, 1881); Kontos, Γλωσσικαὶ παρατηρήσεις (Athens, 1882); Rhangabé and Sanders, Geschichte der neugriechischen Literatur von ihren Anfängen bis auf die neueste Zeit (Leipzig, 1885); J. Psichari, Essais de grammaire historique néo-grecque (2 vols., Paris, 1886 and 1889); Études de philologie néo-grecque (Paris, 1892); F. Blass, Die Aussprache des Griechischen (3rd ed., Berlin, 1888); Papademetrakopoulos, Βάσανος ἑλληνικῆς προφορᾶς (Athens, 1889); M. Konstantinides, Neo-hellenica (Dialogues in Modern Greek, with Appendix on the Cypriot Dialect) (London, 1892); Rhoïdes, Τἁ Εἴδωλα. Γλωσσικὴ μελέτη (Athens, 1893); Polites, Μελεταὶ περὶ τοῦ βίου καὶ τῆς γλώσσης Ἑλληνικοῦ λάου (2 vols., Athens, 1899).

For the Klephtic ballads and folk-songs: C. Fauriel, Chants populaires de la Grèce moderne (Paris, 1824, 1826); Passow, Popularia carmina Graeciae recentioris (Leipzig, 1860); von Hahn, Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipzig, 1864); Τεφαρίκης, Λιανοτράγουδα (2nd ed., Athens, 1868); E. Legrand, Recueil de chansons populaires grecques (Paris, 1874); Recueil de contes populaires grecs (Paris, 1881); Paul de Lagarde, Neugriechisches aus Kleinasien (Göttingen, 1886); A. Jannaris, Ἄσματα Κρητικά (Kreta’s Volkslieder) (Leipzig, 1876); A. Sakellariou, Τὰ Κυπριακά (Athens, 1891); Ζωγραφεῖος Ἁγών, published by the Ἑλληνικὸς φιλολογικὸς σύλλογος (Constantinople, 1891). Translations: L. Garnett, Greek Folksongs from the Turkish Provinces of Greece (London, 1885); E. M. Geldart, Folklore of Modern Greece (London, 1884). Lexicons: A. N. Jannaris, A Concise Dictionary of the English and Modern Greek Languages (English-Greek) (London, 1895); Byzantios (Skarlatos D.), Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης (Athens, 1895); A. Sakellario, Λεξικὸν τῆς Ἑλληνικῆς γλώσσης (5th ed., Athens, 1898); S. Koumanoudes, Συναγωγὴ νέων λέξεων (Athens, 1900). Grammars: Mitsotakes, Praktische Grammatik der neugriechischen Schrift- und Umgangssprache (Stuttgart, 1891); M. Gardner, A Practical Modern Greek Grammar (London, 1892); G. N. Hatzidakes, Einleitung in die neugriechische Grammatik (Leipzig, 1892); E. Vincent and T. G. Dickson, Handbook to Modern Greek (London, 1893); A. Thumb, Handbuch der neugriechischen Volkssprache (Strassburg, 1895); C. Wied, Die Kunst der neugriechischen Volkssprache durch Selbstunterricht schnell und leicht zu lernen (2nd ed., undated, Vienna); A. N. Jannaris, Historical Greek Grammar (London, 1897).

(J. D. B.)

[1] For authorities and criticisms see T. W. Allen in Classical Quarterly (Jan. and April 1908).

[2] Others attribute it, as well as the Margites, to Pigres of Halicarnassus, the supposed brother of the Carian queen Artemisia, who fought on the side of Xerxes at the battle of Salamis.

[3] The extant fragments of Solon have been augmented by lengthy quotations in the Constitution of Athens.

[4] Since the above was written, four considerable fragments generally assigned to Sappho have been discovered: a prayer to the Nereids for the safe return of her brother Charaxus; the leave-taking of a favourite pupil; a greeting to Atthis, one of her friends, in Lydia; the fourth, much mutilated, addressed to another pupil, Gongyla. They are of great beauty and throw considerable light on the personality of Sappho and the language and metre of her poems.

[5] Recently increased by specimens of the Partheneia (choral songs for maidens) and paeans.

[6] His Constitution of Athens (q.v.), of which a papyrus MS. was found in Egypt and published in 1891, forms part of a larger work on the constitution of 158 Greek and foreign cities.

[7] See Ad. Bauer and J. Strzygowski, “Eine alexandrinische Weltchronik” (1905) (Denkschrift der kaiserlich. Akademie der Wissenschaften, li.).

[8] The patriarch Cyrillos Lucares (1572-1638), who had studied for a time in England and whose sympathies with Protestantism made him many enemies, established a Greek printing-press at Constantinople, from which he had the temerity to issue a work condemning the faith of Mahomet; he was denounced to the Turks by the Jesuits, and his printing-press was suppressed.

GREEK RELIGION. The recent development of anthropological science and of the comparative study of religions has enabled us at last to assign to ancient Greek religion its proper place in the classification of creeds and to appreciate its importance for the history of civilization. In spite of all the diversities of local cults we may find a general definition of the theological system of the Hellenic communities, and with sufficient accuracy may describe it as an anthropomorphic polytheism, preserving many traces of a pre-anthropomorphic period, unchecked by any exacting dogma or tradition of revelation, and therefore pliantly adapting itself to all the changing circumstance of the social and political history of the race, and easily able to assimilate alien ideas and forms. Such a religion, continuing in whole or in part throughout a period of at least 2000 years, was more capable of progress than others, possibly higher, that have crystallized at an early period into a fixed dogmatic type; and as, owing to its essential character, it could not be convulsed by any inner revolution that might obliterate the deposits of its earlier life, it was likely to preserve the imprints of the successive ages of culture, and to reveal more clearly than any other testimony the evolution of the race from savagery to civilization. Hence it is that Greek religion appears to teem with incongruities, the highest forms of religious life being often confronted with the most primitive. And for this reason the student of savage anthropology and the student of the higher religions of the world are equally rewarded by its study.

Modern ethnology has arrived at the conviction that the Hellenic nation, like others that have played great parts in history, was the product of a blend of populations, the conquering tribes of Aryan descent coming from the north and settling among and upon certain pre-Hellenic Mediterranean stocks. The conclusion that is naturally drawn from this is that Hellenic religion is also the product of a blend of early Aryan or Indo-Germanic beliefs with the cult-ideas and practices of the Mediterranean area that were from of old indigenous in the lands which the later invaders conquered. But to disentangle these two component parts of the whole, which might seem to be the first problem for the history of the development of this religion, is by no means an easy task; we may advance further towards its solution, when the mysterious pre-Hellenic Mediterranean language or group of languages, of which traces remain in Hellenic place-names, and which may be lying uninterpreted on the brick-tablets of the palace of Cnossus, has found its interpreter. For the first question is naturally one of language. But the comparative study of the Indo-European speech-group, great as its philological triumphs have been, has been meagre in its contributions to our positive knowledge of the original belief of the primitive stock. It is not possible to reconstruct a common Indo-European religion. The greater part of the separate Aryan cult-systems may have developed after the diffusion and may have been the result of contact in prehistoric days with non-Aryan peoples. And many old religious etymological equations, such as Οὐρανός = Sanskrit Varuna, Ἑρμῆς = Sarameyās, Athena = Ahana, were uncritically made and have been abandoned. The chief fact that philology has revealed concerning the religious vocabulary of the Aryan peoples is that many of them are found to have designated a high god by a word derived from a root meaning “bright,” and which appears in Zeus, Jupiter, Sanskrit Dyaus. This is important enough, but we should not exaggerate its importance, nor draw the unwarranted inference that therefore the primitive Indo-Europeans worshipped one supreme God, the Sky-Father. Besides the word “Zeus,” the only other names of the Hellenic pantheon that can be explained wholly or partly as words of Aryan formation are Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, Dionysus (whose name and cult were derived from the Aryan stock of the Thraco-Phrygians) and probably Pan. But other names, such as Athena, Ares, Apollo, Artemis, Hera, Hermes, have no discovered affinities with other Aryan speech-groups; and yet there is nothing suspiciously non-Aryan in the formation of these words, and they may all have belonged to the earliest Hellenic-Aryan vocabulary. In regard to others, such as Rhea, Hephaestus and Aphrodite, it is somewhat more probable that they belonged to an older pre-Hellenic stock that survived in Crete and other islands, and here and there on the mainland; while we know that Zeus derived certain unintelligible titles in Cretan cult from the indigenous Eteo-cretan speech.

A minute consideration of a large mass of evidence justifies the conclusion that the main tribes of the Aryan Hellenes, pushing down from the north, already possessed certain deities in common such as Zeus, Poseidon and Apollo with whom they associated certain goddesses, and that they maintained the cult of Hestia or “Holy Hearth.” Further, a comparison of the developed religions of the respective Aryan peoples suggests that they tended to give predominance to the male divinity, although we have equally good reason to assert that the cult of goddesses, and especially of the earth-goddess, is a genuinely “Aryan” product. But when the tribes of this family poured into the Greek peninsula, it is probable that they would find in certain centres of a very ancient civilization, such as Argolis and Crete, the dominant cult of a female divinity.[1] The recent excavations on the site of the Hera temple at Argos prove that a powerful goddess was worshipped here many centuries before it is probable that the Hellenic invader appeared. He may have even found the name Hera there, or may have brought it with him and applied it to the indigenous divinity. Again, we are certain that the great mother-goddess of Crete, discovered by Dr Arthur Evans, is the ancestress of Rhea and of the Greek “Mother of the gods”: and it is a reasonable conjecture that she accounts for many of the forms of Artemis and perhaps for Athena. But the evidence by no means warrants us in assuming as an axiom that wherever we find a dominant goddess-cult, as that of Demeter at Eleusis, we are confronted with a non-Hellenic religious phenomenon. The very name “Demeter” and the study of other Aryan religions prove the prominence of the worship of the earth-goddess in our own family of the nations. Finally, we must reckon with the possibility that the other great nations which fringed the Mediterranean, Hittite, Semitic and Egyptian peoples, left their impress on early Greek religion, although former scholars may have made rash use of this hypothesis.[2]

Recognizing then the great perplexity of these problems concerning the ethnic origins of Hellenic religion, we may at least reduce the tangle of facts to some order by distinguishing its lower from its higher forms, and Animism. thus provide the material for some theory of evolution. We may collect and sift the phenomena that remain over from a pre-anthropomorphic period, the imprints of a savage past, the beliefs and practices that belong to the animistic or even the pre-animistic period, fetishism, the worship of animals, human sacrifice. We shall at once be struck with the contrast between such civilized cults as those of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, high personal divinities to whom the attributes of a progressive morality could be attached, and practices that long survived in backward communities, such as the Arcadian worship of the thunder and the winds, the cult of Zeus Κεραυνός “the thunder” at Mantinea and Zeus Καππώτας in Laconia, who is none other than the mysterious meteoric stone that falls from heaven. These are examples of a religious view in which certain natural phenomena or objects are regarded as mysteriously divine or sacred in their own right and a personal divinity has not yet emerged or been separated from them. A noteworthy product of primitive animistic feeling is the universally prevalent cult of Hestia, who is originally “Holy Hearth” pure and simple, and who even under the developed polytheism, in which she played no small part, was never established as a separate anthropomorphic personage.

The animistic belief that certain material objects can be charged with a divine potency or spirit gives rise to fetishism, a term which properly denotes the worshipful or superstitious use of objects made by art and invested Fetishism with mysterious power, so as to be used like amulets for the purposes of protective magic or for higher purposes of communion with the divinity. From the earliest discoverable period down to the present day fetishism has been a powerful factor in the religion of the Graeco-Roman world. The importance of the sacred stone and pillar in the “Mycenaean” or “Minoan” period which preceded Homer has been impressively shown by Dr Arthur Evans, and the same fetishistic worship continued throughout the historic ages of classic paganism, the rude aniconic emblem of pillar or tree-trunk surviving often by the side of the iconic masterpiece. It is a reasonable conjecture that the earliest anthropomorphic images of divinities, which were beginning to make their appearance by the time of Homer, were themselves evolved by slow transformation from the upright sacred column. And the altar itself may have arisen as another form of this; the simple heap of stones, such as those erected to Hermes by the way-side and called Ἑρμαῖοι λόφοι, may have served both as a place of worship and as an agalma that could attract and absorb a divine potency into itself. Hence the fetishistic power of the altar was fully recognized in Greek ritual, and hence also in the cult of Apollo Agyieus the god and the altar are called by the same name.

It has been supposed that the ancestors of the historic Greeks, before they were habituated to conceive of their divinities as in human form, may have been accustomed to invest them with animal attributes and traits. We must not indeed suppose it to be a general law of religious evolution that “theriomorphism” must always precede anthropomorphism and that the latter transcends and obliterates the former. The two systems can exist side by side, and savages of low religious development can conceive of their deities as assuming at one time human, at another bestial, shape. Now the developed Greek religion was devotedly anthropomorphic, and herein lay its strength and its weakness; nevertheless, the advanced Hellene could imagine his Dionysus entering temporarily into the body of the sacrificial bull or goat, and the men of Phigalia in Arcadia were attached to their horse-headed Demeter, and the primitive Laconians possibly to a ram-headed Apollo. Theriolatry in itself, i.e. the worship of certain animals as of divine power in their own right, apart from any association with higher divinities, can scarcely be traced among the Greek communities at any period. They are not found to have paid reverence to any species, though individual animals could acquire temporarily a divine character through communion with the altar or with the god. The wolf might at one time have been regarded as the incarnation of Apollo, the wolf-god, and here and there we find faint traces of a wolf-sacrifice and of offerings laid out for wolves. But the occasional propitiation of wild beasts may fall short of actual worship. The Athenian who slew a wolf might give it a sumptuous funeral, probably to avoid a blood-feud with the wolf’s relatives, yet the Athenian state offered rewards for a wolf’s head. Nor did any Greek individual or state worship flies as a class, although a small oblation might be thrown to the flies before the great sacrifice to Apollo on the Leucadian rock, to please them and to persuade them not to worry the worshippers at the great solemnity, where the reek of roast flesh would be likely to attract them.

Theriolatry suggests totemism; and though we now know that the former can arise and exist quite independently of the latter, recent anthropologists have interpreted the apparent sanctity or prestige of certain animals in Totemism. parts of Greek mythology and religion as the deposit of an earlier totemistic system. But this interpretation, originated and maintained with great acumen by Andrew Lang and W. Robertson Smith, appears now somewhat hazardous; and as a scientific hypothesis there are many flaws in it. The more observant study of existing totem-tribes has weakened our impression of the importance of totemism as a primitive religious phenomenon. It is in reality more important as a social than as a religious factor. If indeed we choose to regard totemism as a mere system of nomenclature, by which a tribe names itself after some animal or plant, then we might quote a few examples of Hellenic tribes totemistic in this sense. But totemism is a fact of importance only when it affects the tribal marriage laws or the tribal religion. And the tribal marriage laws of ancient Greece, so far as they are known, betray no clear mark of totemistic arrangements; nor does the totemism of contemporary savages appear to affect their religion in any such way as to suggest a natural explanation for any of the peculiar phenomena of early Hellenic polytheism. Here and there we have traces of a snake-tribe in Greece, the Ὀφιεῖς in Aetolia, the Ὀφιογενεῖς in Cyprus and Parium, but we are not told that these worshipped the snake, though the latter clan were on terms of intimacy with it. Where the snake was actually worshipped in Hellenic cult—the cases are few and doubtful—it may have been regarded as the incarnation of the ancestor or as the avatar of the under-world divinity.

Finally, among the primitive or savage phenomena the practice of human sacrifice looms large. Encouraged at one time by the Delphic oracle, it was becoming rare and Human sacrifice. repellent to the conscience by the 6th century B.C.; but it was not wholly extinct in the Greek world even by the time of Porphyry. The facts are very complex and need critical handling, and a satisfying scientific explanation of them all is still to be sought.

We can now observe the higher aspects of the advanced polytheism. And at the outset we must distinguish between mythology and religion strictly understood, between the stories about the divinities and the private or public religious service. No doubt the former are often a reflection of the latter, in many cases being suggested by the ritual which they may have been invented to interpret, and often envisaging important cult-ideas. Such for example are the myths about the purification and trial of Orestes, Theseus, Ixion, the story of Demeter’s sorrow, of the sufferings and triumph of Dionysus, and those about the abolition of human sacrifice. Yet Greek mythology as a whole was irresponsible, without reserve, and unchecked by dogma or sacerdotal prohibition; and frequently it sank below the level of the current religion, which was almost free from the impurities which shock the modern reader of Hellenic myths. Nor again did any one feel himself called upon to believe any particular myth; in fact, faith, understood in the sense in which the term is used in Christian theology, as the will to believe certain dogmatic statements about the nature and action of divinity, is a concept which was neither named nor recognized in Hellenic ethics or religious doctrine; only, if a man proclaimed his disbelief in the existence of the gods and refused to join in the ritual of the community, he would become “suspect,” and might at times be persecuted by his fellows. Greek religion was not so much an affair of doctrine as of ritual, religious formulae of which the cult-titles of the divinities were an important component, and prayer; and the most illuminative sources of our knowledge of it are the ritual-inscriptions and other state-documents, the private dedications, the monuments of religious art and certain passages in the literature, philology and archaeology being equally necessary to the equipment of the student.

We are tempted to turn to Homer as the earliest authority. And though Homer is not primitive and does not present even an approximately complete account of Greek religion, we can gather from his poems a picture of an advanced Religion in Homer. polytheism which in form and structure at least is that which was presented to the world of Aeschylus. We discern a pantheon already to some extent systematized, a certain hierarchy and family of divinities in which the supremacy of Zeus is established as incontestable. And the anthropomorphic impulse, the strongest trend in the Greek religious imagination, which filled the later world with fictitious personages, generating transparent shams such as an Ampidromus for the ritual of the Ampidromia, Amphiction for the Amphictiones, a hero Κέραμος for the gild of potters, is already at its height in the Homeric poems. The deities are already clear-cut, individual personalities of distinct ethos, plastically shaped figures such as the later sculpture and painting could work upon, not vaguely conceived numina like the forms of the old Roman religion. Nor can we call them for the most part nature-deities like the personages of the Vedic system, thinly disguised “personifications” of natural phenomena. Athena is not the blue sky nor Apollo the sun; they are simply Athena and Apollo, divine personages with certain powers and character, as real for their people as Christ and the Virgin for Christendom. By the side of these, though generally in a subordinate position, we find that Homer recognized certain divinities that we may properly call nature-powers, such as Helios, Gaia and the river-deities, forms descending probably from a remote animistic period, but maintaining themselves within the popular religion till the end of Paganism. Again, though Homer may talk and think at times with levity and banalité about his deities, his deeper utterances impute an advanced morality to the supreme God. His Zeus is on the whole a power of righteousness, dealing with men by a righteous law of nemesis, never being himself the author of evil—an idea revealed in the opening passage of the Odyssey—but protecting the good and punishing the wicked. Vengeance, indeed, was one of the attributes of divinity both for Homer and the average Greek of the later period, as it is in Judaic and Christian theology, though Plato and Euripides protested strongly against such a view. But the Homeric Zeus is equally a god of pity and mercy, and the man who neglects the prayers of the sorrowful and afflicted, who violates the sanctity of the suppliant and guest, or oppresses the poor or the wanderer, may look for divine punishment. Though not regarded as the physical author of the universe or the Creator, he is in a moral sense the father of gods and men. And though the sense of sin and the need of piacular sacrifice are expressed in the Homeric poems, the relations between gods and men that they reveal are on the whole genial and social; the deity sits unseen at the good man’s festal sacrifice, and there is a simple apprehension of the idea of divine communion. There is also indeed a glimmering of the dark background of the nether world, and the chthonian powers that might send up the Erinys to fulfil the curse of the wronged. Yet on the whole the religious atmosphere is generally cheerful and bright; freer than that of the later ages from the taint of magic and superstition; nor is Homer troubled much about the life after death; he scarcely recognizes the cult of the dead,[3] and is not oppressed by fear of the ghost-world.

If we look now broadly over the salient facts of the Greek public and private worship of the historic period we find much in it that agrees with Homeric theology. His “Olympian” system retains a certain life almost to The post-Homeric period. the end of Paganism, and it is a serious mistake to suppose that it had lost its hold upon the people of the 5th and 4th century B.C. We find it, indeed, enriched in the post-Homeric period with new figures of prestige and power; Dionysus, of whom Homer had only faintly heard, becomes a high god with a worship full of promise for the future. Demeter and Kore, the mother and the girl, whom Homer knew well enough but could not use for his epic purposes, attract the ardent affections and hopes of the people; and Asclepius, whom the old poet did not recognize as a god, wins a conspicuous place in the later shrines. But much that has been said of the Homeric may be said of the later classical theology. The deities remain anthropomorphic, and appear as clearly defined individuals. A certain hierarchy is recognized; Zeus is supreme, even in the city of Athena, but each of the higher divinities played many parts, and local enthusiasm could frustrate the departmental system of divine functions; certain members of the pantheon had a preference for the life of the fields, but as the polis emerged from the village communities, Demeter, Hermes, Artemis and others, the gods and goddesses of the husbandmen and shepherds, become powers of the council-chamber and the market-place. The moral ideas that we find in the Homeric religion are amply attested by cult-records of the later period. The deities are regarded on the whole as beneficent, though revengeful if wronged or neglected; the cult-titles used in prayer, which more than any other witnesses reveal the thought and wish of the worshipper, are nearly always euphemistic, the doubtful title of Demeter Erinys being possibly an exception. The important cults of Zeus Ἱκέσιος and Προστρόπαιος, the suppliant’s protecting deity, embody the ideas of pity and mercy that mark advanced religion; and many momentous steps in the development of morality and law were either suggested or assisted by the state-religion. For example, the sanctity of the oath, the main source of the secular virtue of truthfulness, was originally a religious sanction, and though the Greek may have been prone to perjury, yet the Hellenic like the Hebraic religious ethics regarded it as a heinous sin. The sanctity of family duties, the sacredness of the life of the kinsman, were ideas fostered by early Hellenic religion before they generated principles of secular ethics. In the post-Homeric period, the development of the doctrine of purity, which was associated with the Apolline religion, combining with a growing dread of the ghost-world, stimulated and influenced in many important ways the evolution of the Greek law concerning homicide.[4] And the beginnings of international law and morality were rooted in religious sanctions and taboo. In fact, Greek state-life was indebted in manifold ways to Greek religion, and the study of the Greek oracles would alone supply sufficient testimony of this. In many cases the very origin of the state was religious, the earliest polis sometimes having arisen under the shadow of the temple.

Yet as Greek religion was always in the service of the state, and the priest a state-official, society was the reverse of theocratic. Secular advance, moral progress and the march of science, could never long be thwarted by religious tradition; on the contrary, speculative thought and artistic creation were considered as attributes of divinity. We may say that the religion of Hellas penetrated the whole life of the people, but rather as a servant than as a master.

Distinct and apart from these public worships and those of the clan and family were the mystic cults of Eleusis, Andania and Samothrace, and the private services of the mystic brotherhoods. The latter were scattered broadcast over Hellas, and the influence of the former was strengthened and their significance intensified by the wave of mysticism that spread at first from the north from the beginning of the 7th century onwards, and derived its strength from the power of Dionysus and the Orphic brotherhoods. New ideals and hopes began to stir in the religious consciousness, and we find a strong Salvationist tendency, the promise of salvation relying on mystic communion with the deity. Also a new and vital principle is at work; Orphism is the only force in Greek religion of a clear apostolic purpose, for it broke the barriers of the old tribal and civic cults, and preached its message to bond and free, Hellene and barbarian.

The later history of Greek paganism is mainly concerned with its gradual penetration by Oriental ideas and worships, and the results of this θεοκρασία are discerned in an ever increasing mysticism and a tendency towards monotheism. Obliterated as the old Hellenic religion appeared to be by Christianity, it nevertheless retained a certain life, though transformed, under the new creed to which it lent much of its hieratic organization and religious terminology. The indebtedness of Christianity to Hellenism is one of the most interesting problems of comparative religion; and for an adequate estimate a minute knowledge of the ritual and the mystic cults of Hellas is one of the essential conditions.

Bibliography.—Older Authorities: A. Maury, Histoire des religions de la Grèce antique (3 vols., 1857-1859); Welcker, Griechische Götterlehre (3 vols., 1857-1863); Preller, Griechische Mythologie, 2 vols. (4th edition by C. Robert, 1887), all antiquated in regard to theory, but still of some value for collection of materials. Recent Literature—(a) General Treatises: O. Gruppe, “Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte” in Iwan von Müller’s Handbuch der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, v. 2. 2 (1902-1906); L. R. Farnell’s Cults of the Greek States, 4 vols. (1896-1906, vol. 5, 1908); Miss Jane Harrison’s Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (ed. 1908); Chantepie de la Saussaye’s Lehrbuch der Religionsgeschichte (Greek section, 1904); (b) Special Works or Dissertations: articles in Roscher’s Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, and Pauly-Wissowa Encyklopädie (1894-  ); Immerwahr, Kulte und Mythen Arkadiens (1891); Wide, Lakonische Kulte (1893); de Visser, De Graecorum diis non referentibus speciem humanam (Leiden, 1900). Greek Ritual and Festivals—A. Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen (1898); P. Stengel, “Die griechischen Sacralaltertümer” in Iwan von Müller’s Handbuch, v. 3 (1898); W. H. D. Rouse, Greek Votive Offerings (1902). Greek Religious Thought and Speculation—L. Campbell’s Religion in Greek Literature (1898); Ducharme, La Critique des traditions religieuses chez les Grecs des origines au temps de Plutarque (Paris, 1904). See also articles on individual deities, and cf. [Roman Religion]; [Mysteries]; [Mithras].

(L. R. F.)

[1] This has often been explained as a result of Mutterrecht, or reckoning descent through the female: for reasons against this hypothesis see L. R. Farnell in Archiv für vergleichende Religionswissenschaft (1904); cf. A. J. Evans, “Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult,” in Journ. of Hellenic Studies (1901).

[2] V. Bérard has recently revived the discredited theory of a prevalent Phoenician influence in his ingenious but uncritical work, L’Origine des cultes arcadiens. M. P. Foucart believes in very early borrowing from Egypt, as explaining much in the religion of Demeter and Dionysus; see Les Grands Mystères d’Éleusis and Le Culte de Dionysos en Attique.

[3] This became very powerful from the 7th century onward, and there are reasons for supposing that it existed in the pre-Homeric, or Mycenaean, period; vide Rohde’s Psyche (new edition), Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean Age.

[4] See L. R. Farnell, Evolution of Religion (Hibbert Lectures, 1905), pp. 139-152.

GREELEY, HORACE (1811-1872), American statesman and man of letters, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, on the 3rd of February 1811. His parents were of Scottish-Irish descent, but the ancestors of both had been in New England for several generations. He was the third of seven children. His father, Zaccheus Greeley, owned a farm of 50 acres of stony, sterile land, from which a bare support was wrung. Horace was a feeble and precocious lad, taking little interest in the ordinary sports of childhood, learning to read before he was able to talk plainly, and the prodigy of the neighbourhood for accurate spelling. Before Horace was ten years old (1820), his father became bankrupt, his home was sold by the sheriff, and Zaccheus Greeley himself fled the state to escape arrest for debt. The family soon removed to West Haven, Vermont, where, all working together, they made a scanty living as day labourers. Horace from childhood desired to be a printer, and, when barely eleven years old, tried to be taken as an apprentice in an office at Whitehall, New York, but was rejected on account of his youth. After three years more with the family as a day labourer at West Haven, he succeeded, with his father’s consent, in being apprenticed in the office of The Northern Spectator, at East Poultney, Vermont. Here he soon became a good workman, developed a passion for politics and especially for political statistics, came to be depended upon for more or less of the editing of the paper, and was a figure in the village debating society. He received only $40 a year, but he sent most of his money to his father. In June 1830 The Northern Spectator was suspended. Meantime his father had removed to a small tract of wild land in the dense forests of Western Pennsylvania, 30 m. from Erie. The released apprentice now visited his parents, and worked for a little time with them on the farm, meanwhile seeking employment in various printing offices, and, when he got it, giving nearly all his earnings to his father. At last, with no further prospect of work nearer home, he started for New York. He travelled on foot and by canal-boat, entering New York in August 1831, with all his clothes in a bundle carried over his back with a stick, and with but $10 in his pocket. More than half of this sum was exhausted while he made vain efforts to find employment. Many refused to employ him, in the belief that he was a runaway apprentice, and his poor, ill-fitting apparel and rustic look were everywhere greatly against him. At last he found work on a 32mo New Testament, set in agate, double columns, with a middle column of notes in pearl. It was so difficult and so poorly paid that other printers had all abandoned it. He barely succeeded in making enough to pay his board bill, but he finished the task, and thus found subsequent employment easier to get.

In January 1833 Greeley formed a partnership with Francis V. Story, a fellow-workman. Their combined capital amounted to about $150. Procuring their type on credit, they opened a small office, and undertook the printing of the Morning Post, the first cheap paper published in New York. Its projector, Dr Horatio D. Shepard, meant to sell it for one cent, but under the arguments of Greeley he was persuaded to fix the price at two cents. The paper failed in less than three weeks, the printers losing only $50 or $60 by the experiment. They still had a Bank Note Reporter to print, and soon got the printing of a tri-weekly paper, the Constitutionalist, the organ of some lottery dealers. Within six months Story was drowned, but his brother-in-law, Jonas Winchester, took his place in the firm. Greeley was now asked by James Gordon Bennett to go into partnership with him in starting The Herald. He declined the venture, but recommended the partner whom Bennett subsequently took. On the 2nd of March 1834, Greeley and Winchester issued the first number of The New Yorker, a weekly literary and news paper, the firm then supposing itself to be worth about $3000. Of the first number they sold about 100 copies; of the second, nearly 200. There was an average increase for the next month of about 100 copies per week. The second volume began with a circulation of about 4550 copies, and with a loss on the first year’s publication of $3000. The second year ended with 7000 subscribers and a further loss of $2000. By the end of the third year The New Yorker had reached a circulation of 9500 copies, and had sustained a total loss of $7000. It was published seven years (until the 20th of September 1841), and was never profitable, but it was widely popular, and it gave Greeley, who was its sole editor, much prominence. On the 5th of July 1836 Greeley married Miss Mary Y. Cheney, a Connecticut school teacher, whom he had met in a Grahamite (vegetarian) boarding-house in New York.

During the publication of The New Yorker he added to the scanty income which the job printing brought him by supplying editorials to the short-lived Daily Whig and various other publications. In 1838 he had gained such standing as a writer that he was selected by Thurlow Weed, William H. Seward, and other leaders of the Whig Party, for the editorship of a campaign paper entitled The Jeffersonian, published at Albany. He continued The New Yorker, and travelled between Albany and New York each week to edit the two papers. The Jeffersonian was a quiet and instructive rather than a vehement campaign sheet, and the Whigs believed that it had a great effect upon the elections of the next year. When, on the 2nd of May 1840, some time after the nomination by the Whig party of William Henry Harrison for the Presidency, Greeley began the publication of a new weekly campaign paper, The Log Cabin, it sprang at once into a great circulation; 40,000 copies of the first number were sold, and it finally rose to 80,000. It was considered a brilliant political success, but it was not profitable, and in September 1841 was merged in the Weekly Tribune. On the 3rd of April 1841, Greeley announced that on the following Saturday (April 10th) he would begin the publication of a daily newspaper of the same general principles, to be called The Tribune. He was now entirely without money. From a personal friend, James Coggeshall, he borrowed $1000, on which capital and the editor’s reputation The Tribune was founded. It began with 500 subscribers. The first week’s expenses were $525 and the receipts $92. By the end of the fourth week it had run up a circulation of 6000, and by the seventh reached 11,000, which was then the full capacity of its press. It was alert, cheerful and aggressive, was greatly helped by the attacks of rival papers, and promised success almost from the start.

From this time Greeley was popularly identified with The Tribune, and its share in the public discussion of the time is his history. It soon became moderately prosperous, and his assured income should have placed him beyond pecuniary worry. His income was long above $15,000 per year, frequently as much as $35,000 or more. But he lacked business thrift, inherited a disposition to endorse for his friends, and was often unable to distinguish between deserving applicants for aid and adventurers. He was thus frequently straitened, and, as his necessities pressed, he sold successive interests in his newspaper. At the outset he owned the whole of it. When it was already firmly established (in July 1841), he took in Thomas McElrath as an equal partner, upon the contribution of $2000 to the common fund. By the 1st of January 1849 he had reduced his interest to 31½ shares out of 100; by July 2nd, 1860, to 15 shares; in 1868 he owned only 9; and in 1872, only 6. In 1867 the stock sold for $6500 per share, and his last sale was for $9600. He bought wild lands, took stock in mining companies, desiccated egg companies, patent looms, photo-lithographic companies, gave away profusely, lent to plausible rascals, and was the ready prey of every new inventor who chanced to find him with money or with property that he could readily convert into money.

In September 1841 Greeley merged his weekly papers, The Log Cabin and The New Yorker, into The Weekly Tribune, which soon attained as wide circulation as its predecessors, and was much more profitable. It rose in a time of great political excitement to a total circulation of a quarter of a million, and it sometimes had for successive years 140,000 to 150,000. For several years it was rarely much below 100,000. Its subscribers were found throughout all quarters of the northern half of the Union from Maine to Oregon, large packages going to remote districts beyond the Mississippi or Missouri, whose only connexion with the outside world was through a weekly or semi-weekly mail. The readers of this weekly paper acquired a personal affection for its editor, and he was thus for many years the American writer most widely known and most popular among the rural classes. The circulation of The Daily Tribune was never proportionately great—its advocacy of a protective tariff, prohibitory liquor legislation and other peculiarities, repelling a large support which it might otherwise have commanded in New York. It rose within a short time after its establishment to a circulation of 20,000, reached 50,000 and 60,000 during the Civil War, and thereafter ranged at from 30,000 to 45,000. After May 1845 a semi-weekly edition was also printed, which ultimately reached a steady circulation of from 15,000 to 25,000.

From the outset it was a cardinal principle with Greeley to hear all sides, and to extend a special hospitality to new ideas. In March 1842 The Tribune began to give one column daily to a discussion of the doctrines of Charles Fourier, contributed by Albert Brisbane. Gradually Greeley came to advocate some of these doctrines editorially. In 1846 he had a sharp discussion upon them with a former subordinate, Henry J. Raymond, then employed upon a rival journal. It continued through twelve articles on each side, and was subsequently published in book form. Greeley became personally interested in one of the Fourierite associations, the North American Phalanx, at Red Bank, N. J. (1843-1855), while the influence of his discussions doubtless led to or gave encouragement to other socialistic experiments, such as that at Brook Farm. When this was abandoned, its leader George Ripley, with one or two other members, sought employment from Greeley upon The Tribune. Greeley dissented from many of Fourier’s propositions, and in later years was careful to explain that the principle of association for the common good of working men and the elevation of labour was the chief feature which attracted him. Co-operation among working men he continued to urge throughout his life. In 1850 the Fox Sisters, on his wife’s invitation, spent several weeks in his house. His attitude towards their “rappings” and “spiritual manifestations” was one of observation and inquiry; and in his Recollections he wrote concerning these manifestations: “That some of them are the result of juggle, collusion or trick I am confident; that others are not, I decidedly believe.”

From boyhood he had believed in a protective tariff, and throughout his active life he was its most trenchant advocate and propagandist. Besides constantly urging it in the columns of The Tribune, he appeared as early as 1843 in a public debate on “The Grounds of Protection,” with Samuel J. Tilden and Parke Godwin as his opponents. A series of popular essays on the subject were published over his own signature in The Tribune in 1869, and subsequently republished in book form, with a title-page describing protection to home industry as a system of national co-operation for the elevation of labour. He opposed woman suffrage on the ground that the majority of women did not want it and never would, and declared that until woman should “emancipate herself from the thraldom to etiquette,” he “could not see how the ‘woman’s rights theory’ is ever to be anything more than a logically defensible abstraction.” He aided practical efforts, however, for extending the sphere of woman’s employments. He opposed the theatres, and for a time refused to publish their advertisements. He held the most rigid views on the sanctity of marriage and against easy divorce, and vehemently defended them in controversies with Robert Dale Owen and others. He practised and pertinaciously advocated total abstinence from spirituous liquors, but did not regard prohibitory laws as always wise. He denounced the repudiation of state debts or the failure to pay interest on them. He was zealous for Irish repeal, once held a place in the “Directory of the Friends of Ireland,” and contributed liberally to its support. He used the occasion of Charles Dickens’s first visit to America to urge international copyright, and was one of the few editors to avoid alike the flunkeyism with which Dickens was first received, and the ferocity with which he was assailed after the publication of his American Notes. On the occasion of Dickens’s second visit to America, Greeley presided at the great banquet given him by the press of the country. He made the first elaborate reports of popular scientific lectures by Louis Agassiz and other authorities. He gave ample hearing to the advocates of phonography and of phonographic spelling. He was one of the most conspicuous advocates of the Pacific railroads, and of many other internal improvements.

But it is as an anti-slavery leader, and as perhaps the chief agency in educating the mass of the Northern people to that opposition through legal forms to the extension of slavery which culminated in the election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, that Greeley’s main work was done. Incidents in it were his vehement opposition to the Mexican War as a scheme for more slavery territory, the assault made upon him in Washington by Congressman Albert Rust of Arkansas in 1856, an indictment in Virginia in the same year for circulating incendiary documents, perpetual denunciation of him in Southern newspapers and speeches, and the hostility of the Abolitionists, who regarded his course as too conservative. His anti-slavery work culminated in his appeal to President Lincoln, entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” in which he urged “that all attempts to put down the rebellion and at the same time uphold its inciting cause” were preposterous and futile, and that “every hour of deference to slavery” was “an hour of added and deepened peril to the Union.” President Lincoln in his reply said: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or destroy slavery.... What I do about slavery and the coloured race, I do because I believe it helps to save this Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union ... I have here stated my purpose according to my views of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” Precisely one month after the date of this reply the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.

Greeley’s political activity, first as a Whig, and then as one of the founders of the Republican party, was incessant; but he held few offices. In 1848-1849 he served a three months’ term in Congress, filling a vacancy. He introduced the first bill for giving small tracts of government land free to actual settlers, and published an exposure of abuses in the allowance of mileage to members, which corrected the evil, but brought him much personal obloquy. In the National Republican Convention in 1860, not being sent by the Republicans of his own state on account of his opposition to William Seward as a candidate, he was made a delegate for Oregon. His active hostility to Seward did much to prevent the success of that statesman, and to bring about instead the nomination of Abraham Lincoln. This was attributed by his opponents to personal motives, and a letter from Greeley to Seward, the publication of which he challenged, was produced, to show that in his struggling days he had been wounded at Seward’s failure to offer him office. In 1861 he was a candidate for United States senator, his principal opponent being William M. Evarts. When it was clear that Evarts could not be elected, his supporters threw their votes for a third candidate, Ira Harris, who was thus chosen over Greeley by a small majority. At the outbreak of the war he favoured allowing the Southern states to secede, provided a majority of their people at a fair election should so decide, declaring “that he hoped never to live in a Republic whereof one section was pinned to the other by bayonets.” When the war began he urged the most vigorous prosecution of it. The “On to Richmond” appeal, which appeared day after day in The Tribune, was incorrectly attributed to him, and it did not wholly meet his approval; but after the defeat in the first battle of Bull Run he was widely blamed for it. In 1864 he urged negotiations for peace with representatives of the Southern Confederacy in Canada, and was sent by President Lincoln to confer with them. They were found to have no sufficient authority. In 1864 he was one of the Lincoln Presidential electors for New York. At the close of the war, contrary to the general feeling of his party, he urged universal amnesty and impartial suffrage as the basis of reconstruction. In 1867 his friends again wished to elect him to the Senate of the United States, and the indications were all in his favour. But he refused to be elected under any misapprehension of his attitude, and with what his friends thought unnecessary candour re-stated his obnoxious views on universal amnesty at length, just before the time for the election, with the certainty that this would prevent his success. Some months later he signed the bail bond of Jefferson Davis, and this provoked a torrent of public indignation. He had written a popular history of the late war, the first volume having an immense sale and bringing him unusually large profits. The second was just issued, and the subscribers, in their anger, refused by thousands to receive it. An unsuccessful attempt was also made to expel him from the Union League Club of New York.

In 1867 he was a delegate-at-large to the convention for the revision of the state constitution, and in 1869 and 1870 he was the Republican candidate for controller of the state and member of Congress respectively, but in each case was defeated.

He was dissatisfied with General Grant’s administration, and became its sharp critic. The discontent which he did much to develop ended in the organization of the Liberal Republican party, which held its National Convention at Cincinnati in 1872, and nominated Greeley for the presidency. For a time the tide of feeling ran strongly in his favour. It was first checked by the action of his life-long opponents, the Democrats, who also nominated him at their National Convention. He expected their support, on account of his attitude toward the South and hostility to Grant, but he thought it a mistake to give him their formal nomination. The event proved his wisdom. Many Republicans who had sympathized with his criticisms of the administration, and with the declaration of principles adopted at the first convention, were repelled by the coalition. This feeling grew stronger until the election. His old party associates regarded him as a renegade, the Democrats gave him a half-hearted support. The tone of the canvass was one of unusual bitterness, amounting sometimes to actual ferocity. In August, on representations of the alarming state of the contest, he took the field in person, and made a series of campaign speeches, beginning in New England and extending throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana, which aroused great enthusiasm, and were regarded at the time by both friends and opponents as the most brilliant continuous exhibition of varied intellectual power ever made by a candidate in a presidential canvass. General Grant received in the election 3,597,070 votes, Greeley 2,834,079. The only states Greeley carried were Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee and Texas.

He had resigned his editorship of The Tribune immediately after the nomination; he now resumed it cheerfully; but it was soon apparent that his powers had been overstrained. For years he had suffered greatly from sleeplessness. During the intense excitement of the campaign the difficulty was increased. Returning from his campaign tour, he went immediately to the bedside of his dying wife, and for some weeks had practically no sleep at all. This resulted in an inflammation of the upper membrane of the brain, delirium and death. He expired on the 29th of November 1872. His funeral was a simple but impressive public pageant. The body lay in state in the City Hall, where it was surrounded by crowds of many thousands. The ceremonies were attended by the President and Vice-President of the United States, the Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court, and a large number of eminent public men of both parties, who followed the hearse in a solemn procession, preceded by the mayor and other civic authorities, down Broadway. He had been the target of constant attack during his life, and his personal foibles, careless dress and mental eccentricities were the theme of endless ridicule. But his death revealed the high regard in which he was generally held as a leader of opinion and faithful public servant. “Our later Franklin” Whittier called him, and it is in some such light his countrymen remember him.

In 1851 Greeley visited Europe for the first time, serving as a juryman at the Crystal Palace Exhibition, appearing before a committee of the House of Commons on newspaper taxes, and urging the repeal of the stamp duty on advertisements. In 1855 he made a second trip to Europe. In Paris he was arrested on the suit of a sculptor, whose statue had been injured in the New York World’s Fair (of which he had been a director), and spent two days in Clichy, of which he gave an amusing account. In 1859 he visited California by the overland route, and had numerous public receptions. In 1871 he visited Texas, and his trip through the southern country, where he had once been so hated, was an ovation. About 1852 he purchased a farm at Chappaqua, New York, where he afterwards habitually spent his Saturdays, and experimented in agriculture. He was in constant demand as a lecturer from 1843, when he made his first appearance on the platform, always drew large audiences, and, in spite of his bad management in money matters, received considerable sums, sometimes $6000 or $7000 for a single winter’s lecturing. He was also much sought for as a contributor, over his own signature, to the weekly newspapers, and was sometimes largely paid for these articles. In religious faith he was from boyhood a Universalist, and for many years was a conspicuous member of the leading Universalist church in New York.

His published works are: Hints Toward Reforms (1850); Glances at Europe (1851); History of the Struggle for Slavery Extension (1856); Overland Journey to San Francisco (1860); The American Conflict (2 vols., 1864-1866); Recollections of a Busy Life (1868; new edition, with appendix containing an account of his later years, his argument with Robert Dale Owen on Marriage and Divorce, and Miscellanies, 1873); Essays on Political Economy (1870); and What I know of Farming (1871). He also assisted his brother-in-law, John F. Cleveland, in editing A Political Text-book (1860), and supervised for many years the annual issues of The Whig Almanac and The Tribune Almanac, comprising extensive political statistics.

The best Lives of Greeley are those by James Parton (New York, 1855; new ed., Boston, 1872) and W. A. Linn (N.Y. 1903). Lives have also been written by L. U. Reavis (New York, 1872), and L. D. Ingersoll (Chicago, 1873); and there is a Memorial of Horace Greeley (New York, 1873).

(W. R.)

GREELEY, a city and the county-seat of Weld county, Colorado, U.S.A., about 50 m. N. by E. of Denver. Pop. (1890) 2395; (1900) 3023 (286 foreign-born); (1910) 8179. It is served by the Union Pacific and the Colorado & Southern railways. In 1908 a franchise was granted to the Denver & Greeley Electric railway. The city is the seat of the State Normal School of Colorado (1889). There are rich coal-fields near the city. The county is naturally arid and unproductive, and its agricultural importance is due to an elaborate system of irrigation. In 1899 Weld county had under irrigation 226,613 acres, representing an increase of 102.2% since 1889, and a much larger irrigated area than in any other county of the state. Irrigation ditches are supplied with water chiefly from the Cache la Poudre, Big Thompson and South Platte rivers, near the foothills. The principal crops are potatoes, sugar beets, onions, cabbages and peas; in 1899 Weld county raised 2,821,285 bushels of potatoes on 23,195 acres (53% of the potato acreage for the entire state). The manufacture of beet sugar is a growing industry, a large factory having been established at Greeley in 1902. Beets are also grown as food for live stock, especially sheep. Peas, tomatoes, cabbages and onions are canned here. Greeley was founded in 1870 by Nathan Cook Meeker (1817-1879), agricultural editor of the New York Tribune. With the support of Horace Greeley (in whose honour the town was named), he began in 1869 to advocate in The Tribune the founding of an agricultural colony in Colorado. Subsequently President Hayes appointed him Indian agent at White River, Colorado, and he was killed at what is now Meeker, Colorado, in an uprising of the Ute Indians. Under Meeker’s scheme, which attracted mainly people from New England and New York state, most of whom were able to contribute at least a little capital, the Union Colony of Colorado was organized and chartered, and bought originally 11,000 acres of land, each member being entitled to buy from it one residence lot, one business lot, and a tract of farm land. The funds thus acquired were, to a large extent, expended in making public improvements. A clause inserted in all deeds forbade the sale of intoxicating liquors on the land concerned, under pain of the reversion of such property to the colony. The initiation fees ($5) were used for the expenses of locating the colony, and the membership certificate fees ($150) were expended in the construction of irrigating ditches, as was the money received from the sale of town lots, except about $13,000 invested in a school building (now the Meeker Building). Greeley was organized as a town in 1871, and was chartered as a city of the second class in 1886. The “Union Colony of Colorado” still exists as an incorporated body and holds reversionary rights in streets, alleys and public grounds, and in all places “where intoxicating liquors are manufactured, sold or given away, as a beverage.”

See Richard T. Ely, “A Study of a ‘Decreed’ Town,” Harper’s Magazine, vol. 106 (1902-1903), p. 390 sqq.

GREEN, ALEXANDER HENRY (1832-1896), English geologist, son of the Rev. Thomas Sheldon Green, master of the Ashby Grammar School, was born at Maidstone on the 10th of October 1832. He was educated partly at his father’s school, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, and afterwards at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he graduated as sixth wrangler in 1855 and was elected a fellow of his college. In 1861 he joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and surveyed large areas of the midland counties, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. He wrote (wholly or in part) memoirs on the Geology of Banbury (1864), of Stockport (1866), of North Derbyshire (1869, 2nd ed. 1887), and of the Yorkshire Coal-field (1878). In 1874 he retired from the Geological Survey, having been appointed professor of geology in the Yorkshire College at Leeds; in 1885 he became also professor of mathematics, while for many years he held the lectureship on geology at the school of military engineering at Chatham. He was elected F.R.S. in 1886, and two years later was chosen professor of geology in the university of Oxford. His manual of Physical Geology (1876, 3rd ed. 1882) is an excellent book. He died at Boar’s Hill, Oxford, on the 19th of August 1896.

A portrait of him, with brief memoir, was published in Proc. Yorksh. Geol. and Polytechnic Soc. xiii. 232.

GREEN, DUFF (1791-1875), American politician and journalist, was born in Woodford county, Kentucky, on the 15th of August 1791. He was a school teacher in his native state, served during the War of 1812 in the Kentucky militia, and then settled in Missouri, where he worked as a schoolmaster and practised law. He was a member of the Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1820, and was elected to the state House of Representatives in 1820 and to the state Senate in 1822, serving one term in each house. Becoming interested in journalism, he purchased and for two years edited the St Louis Enquirer. In 1825 he bought and afterwards edited in Washington, D.C., The United States Telegraph, which soon became the principal organ of the Jackson men in opposition to the Adams administration. Upon Andrew Jackson’s election to the presidency, the Telegraph became the principal mouthpiece of the administration, and received printing patronage estimated in value at $50,000 a year, while Green became one of the coterie of unofficial advisers of Jackson known as the “Kitchen Cabinet.” In the quarrel between Jackson and John C. Calhoun, Green supported the latter, and through the columns of the Telegraph violently attacked the administration. In consequence, his paper was deprived of the government printing in the spring of 1831. Green, however, continued to edit it in the Calhoun interest until 1835, and gave vigorous support to that leader’s nullification views. From 1835 to 1838 he edited The Reformation, a radically partisan publication, devoted to free trade and the extreme states’ rights theory. In 1841-1843 he was in Europe on behalf of the Tyler administration, and he is said to have been instrumental in causing the appointment of Lord Ashburton to negotiate in Washington concerning the boundary dispute between Maine and Canada. In January 1843 Green established in New York City a short-lived journal, The Republic, to combat the spoils system and to advocate free trade. In September 1844 Calhoun, then secretary of state, sent Green to Texas ostensibly as consul at Galveston, but actually, it appears, to report to the administration, then considering the question of the annexation of Texas, concerning the political situation in Texas and Mexico. After the close of the war with Mexico Green was sent to that country in 1849 by President Taylor to negotiate concerning the moneys which, by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States had agreed to pay; and he saved his country a considerable sum by arranging for payment in exchange instead of in specie. Subsequently Green was engaged in railway building in Georgia and Alabama. On the 10th of June 1875 he died in Dalton, Georgia, a city which in 1848 he had helped to found.

GREEN, JOHN RICHARD (1837-1883), English historian, was born at Oxford on 12th December 1837, and educated at Magdalen College School and at Jesus College, where he obtained an open scholarship. On leaving Oxford he took orders and became the incumbent of St Philip’s, Stepney. His preaching was eloquent and able; he worked diligently among his poor parishioners and won their affection by his ready sympathy. Meanwhile he studied history in a scholarly fashion, and wrote much for the Saturday Review. Partly because his health was weak and partly because he ceased to agree with the teaching of the Church of England, he abandoned clerical life and devoted himself to history; in 1868 he took the post of librarian at Lambeth, but his health was already breaking down and he was attacked by consumption. His Short History of the English People (1874) at once attained extraordinary popularity, and was afterwards expanded in a work of four volumes (1877-1880). Green is pre-eminently a picturesque historian; he had a vivid imagination and a keen eye for colour. His chief aim was to depict the progressive life of the English people rather than to write a political history of the English state. In accomplishing this aim he worked up the results of wide reading into a series of brilliant pictures. While generally accurate in his statement of facts, and showing a firm grasp of the main tendency of a period, he often builds more on his authorities than is warranted by their words, and is apt to overlook points which would have forced him to modify his representations and lower the tone of his colours. From his animated pages thousands have learned to take pleasure in the history of their own people, but could scarcely learn to appreciate the complexity inherent in all historical movement. His style is extremely bright, but it lacks sobriety and presents some affectations. His later histories, The Making of England (1882) and The Conquest of England (1883), are more soberly written than his earlier books, and are valuable contributions to historical knowledge. Green died at Mentone on the 7th of March 1883. He was a singularly attractive man, of wide intellectual sympathies and an enthusiastic temperament; his good-humour was unfailing and he was a brilliant talker; and his work was done with admirable courage in spite of ill-health. It is said that Mrs Humphry Ward’s Robert Elsmere is largely a portrait of him. In 1877 Green married Miss Alice Stopford; and Mrs Green, besides writing a memoir of her husband, prefixed to the 1888 edition of his Short History, has herself done valuable work as an historian, particularly in her Henry II. in the “English Statesmen” series (1888), her Town Life in the 15th Century (1894), and The Making of Ireland and its Undoing (1908).

See the Letters of J. R. Green (1901), edited by Leslie Stephen.

(W. Hu.)

GREEN, MATTHEW (1696-1737), English poet, was born of Nonconformist parents. He had a post in the custom house, and the few anecdotes that have been preserved of him show him to have been as witty as his poems would lead one to expect. He died unmarried at his lodging in Nag’s Head Court, Gracechurch Street, in 1737. His Grotto, a poem on Queen Caroline’s grotto at Richmond, was printed in 1732; and his chief poem, The Spleen, in 1737 with a preface by his friend Richard Glover. These and some other short poems were printed in Dodsley’s collection (1748), and subsequently in various editions of the British poets. They were edited In 1796 with a preface by Dr Aikin and in 1883 by R. E. A. Willmott with the poems of Gray and others. The Spleen is an epistle to Mr Cuthbert Jackson, advocating cheerfulness, exercise and a quiet content as remedies. It is full of witty sayings. Thomas Gray said of it: “There is a profusion of wit everywhere; reading would have formed his judgment, and harmonized his verse, for even his wood-notes often break out into strains of real poetry and music.”

GREEN, THOMAS HILL (1836-1882), English philosopher, the most typical English representative of the school of thought called Neo-Kantian, or Neo-Hegelian, was born on the 7th of April 1836 at Birkin, a village in the West Riding of Yorkshire, of which his father was rector. On the paternal side he was descended from Oliver Cromwell, whose honest, sturdy independence of character he seemed to have inherited. His education was conducted entirely at home until, at the age of fourteen, he entered Rugby, where he remained five years. In 1855 he became an undergraduate member of Balliol College, Oxford, of which society he was, in 1860, elected fellow. His life henceforth, was devoted to teaching (mainly philosophical) in the university—first as college tutor, afterwards, from 1878 until his death (at Oxford on the 26th of March 1882) as Whyte’s Professor of Moral Philosophy. The lectures he delivered as professor form the substance of his two most important works, viz. the Prolegomena to Ethics and the Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation, which contain the whole of his positive constructive teaching. These works were not published until after his death, but Green’s views were previously known indirectly through the Introduction to the standard edition of Hume’s works by Green and T. H. Grose (d. 1906), fellow of Queen’s College, in which the doctrine of the “English” or “empirical” philosophy was exhaustively examined.

Hume’s empiricism, combined with a belief in biological evolution (derived from Herbert Spencer), was the chief feature in English thought during the third quarter of the 19th century. Green represents primarily the reaction against doctrines which, when carried out to their logical conclusion, not only “rendered all philosophy futile,” but were fatal to practical life. By reducing the human mind to a series of unrelated atomic sensations, this teaching destroyed the possibility of knowledge, and further, by representing man as a “being who is simply the result of natural forces,” it made conduct, or any theory of conduct, unmeaning; for life in any human, intelligible sense implies a personal self which (1) knows what to do, (2) has power to do it. Green was thus driven, not theoretically, but as a practical necessity, to raise again the whole question of man in relation to nature. When (he held) we have discovered what man in himself is, and what his relation to his environment, we shall then know his function—what he is fitted to do. In the light of this knowledge we shall be able to formulate the moral code, which, in turn, will serve as a criterion of actual civic and social institutions. These form, naturally and necessarily, the objective expression of moral ideas, and it is in some civic or social whole that the moral ideal must finally take concrete shape.

To ask “What is man?” is to ask “What is experience?” for experience means that of which I am conscious. The facts of consciousness are the only facts which, to begin with, we are justified in asserting to exist. On the other hand, they are valid evidence for whatever is necessary to their own explanation, i.e. for whatever is logically involved in them. Now the most striking characteristic of man, that in fact which marks him specially, as contrasted with other animals, is self-consciousness. The simplest mental act into which we can analyse the operations of the human mind—the act of sense-perception—is never merely a change, physical or psychical, but is the consciousness of a change. Human experience consists, not of processes in an animal organism, but of these processes recognized as such. That which we perceive is from the outset an apprehended fact—that is to say, it cannot be analysed into isolated elements (so-called sensations) which, as such, are not constituents of consciousness at all, but exists from the first as a synthesis of relations in a consciousness which keeps distinct the “self” and the various elements of the “object,” though holding all together in the unity of the act of perception. In other words, the whole mental structure we call knowledge consists, in its simplest equally with its most complex constituents, of the “work of the mind.” Locke and Hume held that the work of the mind was eo ipso unreal because it was “made by” man and not “given to” man. It thus represented a subjective creation, not an objective fact. But this consequence follows only upon the assumption that the work of the mind is arbitrary, an assumption shown to be unjustified by the results of exact science, with the distinction, universally recognized, which such science draws between truth and falsehood, between the real and “mere ideas.” This (obviously valid) distinction logically involves the consequence that the object, or content, of knowledge, viz. reality, is an intelligible ideal reality, a system of thought relations, a spiritual cosmos. How is the existence of this ideal whole to be accounted for? Only by the existence of some “principle which renders all relations possible and is itself determined by none of them”; an eternal self-consciousness which knows in whole what we know in part. To God the world is, to man the world becomes. Human experience is God gradually made manifest.

Carrying on the same analytical method into the special department of moral philosophy, Green held that ethics applies to the peculiar conditions of social life that investigation into man’s nature which metaphysics began. The faculty employed in this further investigation is no “separate moral faculty,” but that same reason which is the source of all our knowledge—ethical and other. Self-reflection gradually reveals to us human capacity, human function, with, consequently, human responsibility. It brings out into clear consciousness certain potentialities in the realization of which man’s true good must consist. As the result of this analysis, combined with an investigation into the surroundings man lives in, a “content”—a moral code—becomes gradually evolved. Personal good is perceived to be realizable only by making actual the conceptions thus arrived at. So long as these remain potential or ideal, they form the motive of action; motive consisting always in the idea of some “end” or “good” which man presents to himself as an end in the attainment of which he would be satisfied, that is, in the realization of which he would find his true self. The determination to realize the self in some definite way constitutes an “act of will,” which, as thus constituted, is neither arbitrary nor externally determined. For the motive which may be said to be its cause lies in the man himself, and the identification of the self with such a motive is a self-determination, which is at once both rational and free. The “freedom of man” is constituted, not by a supposed ability to do anything he may choose, but in the power to identify himself with that true good which reason reveals to him as his true good. This good consists in the realization of personal character; hence the final good, i.e. the moral ideal, as a whole, can be realized only in some society of persons who, while remaining ends to themselves in the sense that their individuality is not lost but rendered more perfect, find this perfection attainable only when the separate individualities are integrated as part of a social whole. Society is as necessary to form persons as persons are to constitute society. Social union is the indispensable condition of the development of the special capacities of the individual members. Human self-perfection cannot be gained in isolation; it is attainable only in inter-relation with fellow-citizens in the social community.

The law of our being, so revealed, involves in its turn civic or political duties. Moral goodness cannot be limited to, still less constituted by, the cultivation of self-regarding virtues, but consists in the attempt to realize in practice that moral ideal which self-analysis has revealed to us as our ideal. From this fact arises the ground of political obligation, for the institutions of political or civic life are the concrete embodiment of moral ideas in terms of our day and generation. But, as society exists only for the proper development of persons, we have a criterion by which to test these institutions, viz. do they, or do they not, contribute to the development of moral character in the individual citizens? It is obvious that the final moral ideal is not realized in any body of civic institutions actually existing, but the same analysis which demonstrates this deficiency points out the direction which a true development will take. Hence arises the conception of rights and duties which should be maintained by law, as opposed to those actually maintained; with the further consequence that it may become occasionally a moral duty to rebel against the state in the interest of the state itself, that is, in order better to subserve that end or function which constitutes the raison d’être of the state. The state does not consist in any definite concrete organization formed once for all. It represents a “general will” which is a desire for a common good. Its basis is not a coercive authority imposed upon the citizens from without, but consists in the spiritual recognition, on the part of the citizens, of that which constitutes their true nature. “Will, not force, is the basis of the state.”

Green’s teaching was, directly and indirectly, the most potent philosophical influence in England during the last quarter of the 19th century, while his enthusiasm for a common citizenship, and his personal example in practical municipal life, inspired much of the effort made, in the years succeeding his death, to bring the universities more into touch with the people, and to break down the rigour of class distinctions.

Of his philosophical doctrine proper, the most striking characteristic is Integration, as opposed to Disintegration, both in thought and in reality. “That which is” is a whole, not an aggregate; an organic complex of parts, not a mechanical mass; a “whole” too not material but spiritual, a “world of thought-relations.” On the critical side this teaching is now admittedly valid against the older empiricism, and the cogency of the reasoning by which his constructive theory is supported is generally recognized. Nevertheless, Green’s statement of his conclusions presents important difficulties. Even apart from the impossibility of conceiving a whole of relations which are relations and nothing else (this objection is perhaps largely verbal), no explanation is given of the fact (obvious in experience) that the spiritual entities of which the Universe is composed appear material. Certain elements present themselves in feeling which seem stubbornly to resist any attempt to explain them in terms of thought. While, again, legitimately insisting upon personality as a fundamental constituent in any true theory of reality, the relation between human individualities and the divine Person is left vague and obscure; nor is it easy to see how the existence of several individualities—human or divine—in one cosmos is theoretically possible. It is at the solution of these two questions that philosophy in the immediate future may be expected to work.

Green’s most important treatise—the Prolegomena to Ethics—practically complete in manuscript at his death—was published in the year following, under the editorship of A. C. Bradley (4th ed., 1899). Shortly afterwards R. L. Nettleship’s standard edition of his Works (exclusive of the Prolegomena) appeared in three volumes: vol. i. containing reprints of Green’s criticism of Hume, Spencer, Lewes; vol. ii. Lectures on Kant, on Logic, on the Principles of Political Obligation; vol. iii. Miscellanies, preceded by a full Memoir by the Editor. The Principles of Political Obligation was afterwards published in separate form. A criticism of Neo-Hegelianism will be found in Andrew Seth (Pringle Pattison), Hegelianism and Personality. See also articles in Mind (January and April 1884) by A. J. Balfour and Henry Sidgwick, in the Academy (xxviii. 242 and xxv. 297) by S. Alexander, and in the Philosophical Review (vi., 1897) by S. S. Laurie; W. H. Fairbrother, Philosophy of T. H. Green (London and New York, 1896); D. G. Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference (London, 1891); H. Sidgwick, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (London, 1905); J. H. Muirhead, The Service of the State: Four Lectures on the Political Teaching of T. H. Green (1908); A. W. Benn, English Rationalism in the XIXth Century (1906), vol. ii., pp. 401 foll.

(W. H. F.,* X.)

GREEN, VALENTINE (1739-1813), British engraver, was born at Halesowen. He was placed by his father in a solicitor’s office at Evesham, where he remained for two years; but ultimately he decided, on his own responsibility, to abandon the legal profession and became a pupil of a line engraver at Worcester. In 1765 he migrated to London and began work as a mezzotint engraver, having taught himself the technicalities of this art, and quickly rose to a position in absolutely the front rank of British engravers. He became a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1767, an associate-engraver of the Royal Academy in 1775, and for some forty years he followed his profession with the greatest success. The exclusive right of engraving and publishing plates from the pictures in the Düsseldorf gallery was granted him by the duke of Bavaria in 1789, but, after he had issued more than twenty of these plates, the siege of that city by the French put an end to this undertaking and caused him serious financial loss. From this cause, and through the failure of certain other speculations, he was reduced to poverty; and in consequence he took the post of keeper of the British Institution in 1805, and continued in this office for the remainder of his life. During his career as an engraver he produced some four hundred plates after portraits by Reynolds, Romney, and other British artists, after the compositions of Benjamin West, and after pictures by Van Dyck, Rubens, Murillo, and other old masters. It is claimed for him that he was one of the first engravers to show how admirably mezzotint could be applied to the translation of pictorial compositions as well as portraits, but at the present time it is to his portraits that most attention is given by collectors. His engravings are distinguished by exceptional richness and subtlety of tone, and by very judicious management of relations of light and shade; and they have, almost without exception, notable freshness and grace of handling.

See Valentine Green, by Alfred Whitman (London, 1902).

GREEN, WILLIAM HENRY (1825-1900), American Hebrew scholar, was born in Groveville, near Bordentown, New Jersey, on the 27th of January 1825. He was descended in the sixth generation from Jonathan Dickinson, first president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), and his ancestors had been closely connected with the Presbyterian church. He graduated in 1840 from Lafayette College, where he was tutor in mathematics (1840-1842) and adjunct professor (1843-1844). In 1846 he graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary, and was instructor in Hebrew there in 1846-1849. He was ordained in 1848 and was pastor of the Central Presbyterian church of Philadelphia in 1849-1851. From August 1851 until his death, in Princeton, New Jersey, on the 10th of February 1900, he was professor of Biblical and Oriental Literature in Princeton Theological Seminary. From 1859 the title of his chair was Oriental and Old Testament Literature. In 1868 he refused the presidency of Princeton College; as senior professor he was long acting head of the Theological Seminary. He was a great Hebrew teacher: his Grammar of the Hebrew Language (1861, revised 1888) was a distinct improvement in method on Gesenius, Roediger, Ewald and Nordheimer. All his knowledge of Semitic languages he used in a “conservative Higher Criticism,” which is maintained in the following works: The Pentateuch Vindicated from the Aspersions of Bishop Colenso (1863), Moses and the Prophets (1883), The Hebrew Feasts in their Relation to Recent Critical Hypotheses Concerning the Pentateuch (1885), The Unity of the Book of Genesis (1895), The Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch (1895), and A General Introduction to the Old Testament, vol. i. Canon (1898), vol. ii. Text (1899). He was the scholarly leader of the orthodox wing of the Presbyterian church in America, and was moderator of the General Assembly of 1891. Green was chairman of the Old Testament committee of the Anglo-American Bible revision committee.

See the articles by John D. Davis in The Biblical World, new series, vol. xv., pp. 406-413 (Chicago, 1900), and The Presbyterian and Reformed Review, vol. xi. pp. 377-396 (Philadelphia, 1900).

GREENAWAY, KATE (1846-1901), English artist and book illustrator, was the daughter of John Greenaway, a well-known draughtsman and engraver on wood, and was born in London on the 17th of March 1846. After a course of study at South Kensington, at “Heatherley’s” life classes, and at the Slade School, Kate Greenaway began, in 1868, to exhibit water-colour drawings at the Dudley Gallery, London. Her more remarkable early work, however, consisted of Christmas cards, which, by reason of their quaint beauty of design and charm of draughtsmanship, enjoyed an extraordinary vogue. Her subjects were, in the main, young girls, children, flowers, and landscape; and the air of artless simplicity, freshness, humour, and purity of these little works so appealed to public and artists alike that the enthusiastic welcome habitually accorded to them is to be attributed to something more than love of novelty. In the line she had struck out Kate Greenaway was encouraged by H. Stacy Marks, R.A., and she refused to listen to those friends who urged her to return to a more conventional manner. Thenceforward her illustrations for children (such as for Little Folks, 1873, et seq.) attracted much attention. In 1877 her drawings at the Dudley Gallery were sold for £54, and her Royal Academy picture for eighteen guineas; and in the same year she began to draw for the Illustrated London News. In the year 1879 she produced Under the Window, of which 150,000 copies are said to have been sold, and of which French and German editions were also issued. Then followed The Birthday Book, Mother Goose, Little Ann, and other books for children which were appreciated not less by adults, and were to be found on sale in the bookshops of every capital in Europe and in the cities of America. The extraordinary success achieved by the young girl may be estimated by the amounts paid to her as her share of the profits: for Under the Window she received £1130; for The Birthday Book, £1250; for Mother Goose, £905; and for Little Ann, £567. These four books alone produced a clear return of £8000. “Toy-books” though they were, these little works created a revolution in illustration, and so were of real importance; they were loudly applauded by John Ruskin (Art of England and Fors Clavigera), by Ernest Chesneau and Arsène Alexandre in France, by Dr Muther in Germany, and by leading art-critics throughout the world. In 1890 Kate Greenaway was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and in 1891, 1894 and 1898 she exhibited water-colour drawings, including illustrations for her books, at the gallery of the Fine Art Society (by which a representative selection was exhibited in 1902), where they surprised the world by the infinite delicacy, tenderness, and grace which they displayed. A leading feature in Miss Greenaway’s work was her revival of the delightfully quaint costume of the beginning of the 19th century; this lent humour to her fancy, and so captivated the public taste that it has been said, with poetic exaggeration, that “Kate Greenaway dressed the children of two continents.” Her drawings of children have been compared with Stothard’s for grace and with Reynolds’s for naturalness, and those of flowers with the work of van Huysum and Botticelli. From 1883 to 1897, with a break only in 1896, she issued a series of Kate Greenaway’s Almanacs. Although she illustrated The Pied Piper of Hamelin and other works, the artist preferred to provide her own text; the numerous verses which were found among her papers after her death prove that she might have added to her reputation with her pen. She had great charm of character, but was extremely shy of public notice, and not less modest in private life. She died at Hampstead on the 6th of November 1901.

See the Life, by M. H. Spielmann and G. S. Layard (1905).

(M. H. S.)

GREENBACKS, a form of paper currency in the United States, so named from the green colour used on the backs of the notes. They are treasury notes, and were first issued by the government in 1862, “as a question of hard necessity,” to provide for the expenses of the Civil War. The government, following the example of the banks, had suspended specie payment. The new notes were therefore for the time being an inconvertible paper currency, and, since they were made legal tender, were really a form of fiat money. The first act, providing for the issue of notes to the amount of $150,000,000, was that of the 25th February 1862; the acts of 11th July 1862 and 3rd March 1863 each authorized further issues of $150,000,000. The notes soon depreciated in value, and at the lowest were worth only 35 cents on the dollar. The act of 12th April 1866 authorized the retirement of $10,000,000 of notes within six months and of $4,000,000 per month thereafter; this was discontinued by act of 4th February 1868. On 1st January 1879 specie payment was resumed, and the nominal amount of notes then stood at $346,681,000, which is still outstanding.

The so-called Greenback party (also called the Independent, and the National party) first appeared in a presidential campaign in 1876, when its candidate, Peter Cooper, received 81,740 votes. It advocated increasing the volume of greenbacks, forbidding bank issues, and the paying in greenbacks of the principal of all government bonds not expressly payable in coin. In 1878 the party, by various fusions, cast over 1,000,000 votes and elected 14 Congressmen; and in 1880 there was fusion with labour reformers and it cast 308,578 votes for its presidential candidate, J. B. Weaver, and elected 8 Congressmen. In 1884 their candidate Benjamin F. Butler (also the candidate of the Anti-Monopoly party) received 175,370 votes. Subsequently the party went out of existence.

GREEN BAY, a city and the county-seat of Brown county, Wisconsin, U.S.A., at the S. extremity of Green Bay, at the mouth of the Fox river, 114 m. N. of Milwaukee. Pop. (1890) 9069; (1900) 18,684, of whom 4022 were foreign-born and 33 were negroes; (1910 census) 25,236. The city is served by the Chicago & North-Western, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul, the Kewaunee, Green Bay & Western, and the Green Bay & Western railways, by an inter-urban electric railway connecting with other Fox River Valley cities, and by lake and river steamboat lines. Green Bay lies on high level ground on both sides of the river, which is here crossed by several bridges. The city has the Kellogg Public Library, the Brown County Court House, two high schools, a business college, several academies, two hospitals, an orphan asylum and the State Odd Fellows’ Home. It is the seat of a Roman Catholic cathedral, the bishopric being the earliest established in the North-west. The so-called “Tank Cottage,” now in Washington Park, is said to be the oldest house in Wisconsin; it was built on the W. bank of the river near its mouth by Joseph Roy, a French-Canadian voyageur, in 1766, was subsequently somewhat modified, and in 1908 was bought and removed to its present site by the Green Bay Historical Society. Midway between Green Bay and De Pere (5 m. S.W. of Green Bay) is the state reformatory, opened in 1899-1901. Green Bay’s fine harbour accommodates a considerable lake commerce, and the city is the most important railway and wholesale distributing centre in N.E. Wisconsin. Its manufactures include lumber and lumber products, furniture, wagons, woodenware, farm implements and machinery, flour, beer, canned goods, brick and tile and dairy products; and it has lumber yards, grain elevators, fish warehouses and railway repair shops. The total value of the factory product in 1905 was $4,873,027, an increase of 79.9% since 1900. The first recorded visit of a European to the vicinity of what is now Green Bay is that of Jean Nicolet, who was sent west by Champlain in 1634, and found, probably at the Red Banks, some 10 m. below the present city, a village of Winnebago Indians, who he thought at first were Chinese. Between 1654 and 1658 Radisson and Groseilliers and other coureurs des bois were at Green Bay. Claude Jean Allouez, the Jesuit missionary, established a mission on the W. shore of the bay, about 20 m. from the present city. Later he removed his mission to the Red Banks, and in the winter of 1671-1672 established it permanently 5 m. above the present city, at Rapides des Pères, on the E. shore of the Fox river. In 1673 Joliet and Marquette visited the spot. In 1683-1685 Le Sueur and Nicholas Perrot traded with the Indians here. In 1718-1720 Fort St Francis was erected at the mouth of the river on the W. bank, and after being several times deserted was permanently re-established in 1732. About 1745 Augustin de Langlade established a trading post at La Baye and later brought his family there from Mackinac. This was the first permanent settlement at Green Bay and in Wisconsin. The British garrison which occupied the fort from 1761 to 1763, during which time the fort received the name of Fort Edward Augustus, was removed at the time of Pontiac’s rising, and the fort was never re-garrisoned by the English, except for a short time during the War of 1812. The inhabitants of La Baye were, however, acknowledged subjects of Great Britain, the jurisdiction of the United States being practically a dead letter until the American fort (Fort Howard) was garrisoned in 1816. As early as 1810 fur traders, employed by John Jacob Astor, were stationed here; about 1820 Astor erected a warehouse and other buildings; and for many years Green Bay consisted of two distinct settlements, Astor and Navarino, which were finally united in 1839 as Green Bay. The city was chartered in 1854. In 1893 Fort Howard was consolidated with it. The Green Bay Intelligencer, the first newspaper in Wisconsin, began publication here in 1833.

See Neville and Martin, Historic Green Bay (Green Bay, 1893); and Martin and Beaumont, Old Green Bay (Green Bay, 1900).

GREENCASTLE, a city and the county-seat of Putnam county, Indiana, U.S.A., about 38 m. W. by S. of Indianapolis and on the Big Walnut river. Pop. (1900) 3661; (1910) 3790. It is served by the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis, the Chicago, Indianapolis & Louisville, the Vandalia, and the Terre Haute, Indianapolis & Eastern (electric) railways. It has manufactures of some importance, including lumber, pumps, kitchen-cabinets, drag-saws, lightning-rods and tin-plate, is in the midst of a blue grass region, and is a shipping point for beef cattle. The city has a Carnegie library and is the seat of the de Pauw University (co-educational), a Methodist Episcopal institution, founded as Indiana Asbury University in 1837, and renamed in 1884 in honour of Washington Charles de Pauw (1822-1887), a successful capitalist, banker and glass manufacturer. The total gifts of Mr de Pauw and his family to the institution amount to about $600,000. Among the presidents of the university have been Bishop Matthew Simpson, Bishop Thomas Bowman (b. 1817), and Bishop Edwin Holt Hughes (b. 1866), all of the Methodist Episcopal church. The university comprises the Asbury College of Liberal Arts, a School of Music, a School of Art and an Academy, and had in 1909-1910 43 instructors, a library of 37,000 volumes, and 1017 students. Greencastle was first settled about 1820, and was chartered as a city in 1861.

GREENE, GEORGE WASHINGTON (1811-1883), American historian, was born at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on the 8th of April 1811, the grandson of Major-General Nathanael Greene. He entered Brown University in 1824, left in his junior year on account of ill-health, was in Europe during the next twenty years, except in 1833-1834, when he was principal of Kent Academy at East Greenwich, and was the United States consul at Rome from 1837 to 1845. He was instructor in modern languages in Brown University from 1848 to 1852; and in 1871-1875 was non-resident lecturer in American history in Cornell University. He died at East Greenwich, Rhode Island, on the 2nd of February 1883. His published works include French and Italian text-books; Historical Studies (1850); Biographical Studies (1860); Historical View of the American Revolution (1865); Life of Nathanael Greene (3 vols., 1867-1871); The German Element in the War of American Independence (1876); and a Short History of Rhode Island (1877).

GREENE, MAURICE (1695-1755) English musical composer, was born in London. He was the son of a clergyman in the city, and soon became a chorister of St Paul’s cathedral, where he studied under Charles King, and subsequently under Richard Brind, organist of the cathedral from 1707 to 1718, whom, on his death in the last-named year, he succeeded. Nine years later he became organist and composer to the chapel royal, on the death of Dr Croft. In 1730 he was elected to the chair of music in the university of Cambridge, and had the degree of doctor of music conferred on him. Dr Greene was a voluminous composer of church music, and his collection of Forty Select Anthems became a standard work of its kind. He wrote a “Te Deum,” several oratorios, a masque, The Judgment of Hercules, and a pastoral opera, Phoebe (1748); also glees and catches: and a collection of Catches and Canons for Three and Four Voices is amongst his compositions. In addition he composed many occasional pieces for the king’s birthday, having been appointed master of the king’s band in 1735. But it is as a composer of church music that Greene is chiefly remembered. It is here that his contrapuntal skill and his sound musical scholarship are chiefly shown. With Handel, Greene was originally on intimate terms, but his equal friendship for Buononcini, Handel’s rival, estranged the German master’s feelings from him, and all personal intercourse between them ceased. Greene, in conjunction with the violinist Michael Christian Festing (1727-1752) and others, originated the Society of Musicians, for the support of poor artists and their families. He died on the 1st of December 1755.

GREENE, NATHANAEL (1742-1786), American general, son of a Quaker farmer and smith, was born at Potowomut, in the township of Warwick, Rhode Island, on the 7th of August (not, as has been stated, 6th of June) 1742. Though his father’s sect discouraged “literary accomplishments,” he acquired a large amount of general information, and made a special study of mathematics, history and law. At Coventry, R.I., whither he removed in 1770 to take charge of a forge built by his father and his uncles, he was the first to urge the establishment of a public school; and in the same year he was chosen a member of the legislature of Rhode Island, to which he was re-elected in 1771, 1772 and 1775. He sympathized strongly with the Whig, or Patriot, element among the colonists, and in 1774 joined the local militia. At this time he began to study the art of war. In December 1774 he was on a committee appointed by the assembly to revise the militia laws. His zeal in attending to military duty led to his expulsion from the Society of Friends.

In 1775, in command of the contingent raised by Rhode Island, he joined the American forces at Cambridge, and on the 22nd of June was appointed a brigadier by Congress. To him Washington assigned the command of the city of Boston after it was evacuated by Howe in March 1776. Greene’s letters of October 1775 and January 1776 to Samuel Ward, then a delegate from Rhode Island to the Continental Congress, favoured a declaration of independence. On the 9th of August 1776 he was promoted to be one of the four new major-generals and was put in command of the Continental troops on Long Island; he chose the place for fortifications (practically the same as that picked by General Charles Lee) and built the redoubts and entrenchments of Fort Greene on Brooklyn Heights. Severe illness prevented his taking part in the battle of Long Island. He was prominent among those who advised a retreat from New York and the burning of the city, so that the British might not use it. Greene was placed in command of Fort Lee, and on the 25th of October succeeded General Israel Putnam in command of Fort Washington. He received orders from Washington to defend Fort Washington to the last extremity, and on the 11th of October Congress had passed a resolution to the same effect; but later Washington wrote to him to use his own discretion. Greene ordered Colonel Magaw, who was in immediate command, to defend the place until he should hear from him again, and reinforced it to meet General Howe’s attack. Nevertheless, the blame for the losses of Forts Washington and Lee was put upon Greene, but apparently without his losing the confidence of Washington, who indeed himself assumed the responsibility. At Trenton Greene commanded one of the two American columns, his own, accompanied by Washington, arriving first; and after the victory here he urged Washington to push on immediately to Princeton, but was over-ruled by a council of war. At the Brandywine Greene commanded the reserve. At Germantown Greene’s command, having a greater distance to march than the right wing under Sullivan, failed to arrive in good time—a failure which Greene himself thought (without cause) would cost him Washington’s regard; on this, with the affair of Fort Washington, Bancroft based his unfavourable estimate of Greene’s ability. But on their arrival, Greene and his troops distinguished themselves greatly.