Part 14 (1/2)
Comedy received its full development at Athens from Cratinus, who lived in the age of Pericles. Cratinus, and his younger contemporaries Eupolis and Aristophanes, were the three great poets of what is called the Old Attic Comedy. The comedies of Cratinus and Eupolis are lost; but of Aristophanes, who was the greatest of the three, we have eleven dramas extant. ARISTOPHANES was born about 444 B.C. Of his private life we know positively nothing. He exhibited his first comedy in 427, and from that time till near his death, which probably happened about 380, he was a frequent contributor to the Attic stage. The OLD ATTIC COMEDY was a powerful vehicle for the expression of opinion; and most of the comedies of Aristophanes turned either upon political occurrences, or upon some subject which excited the interest of the Athenian public. Their chief object was to excite laughter by the boldest and most ludicrous caricature; and provided that end was attained the poet seems to have cared but little about the justice of the picture. Towards the end of the career of Aristophanes the unrestricted licence and libellous personality of comedy began gradually to disappear. The chorus was first curtailed and then entirely suppressed, and thus made way for what is called the Middle Comedy, which had no chorus at all. The latter still continued to be in some degree political; but persons were no longer introduced upon the stage under their real names, and the office of the chorus was very much curtailed. It was, in fact, the connecting link between the Old Comedy and the New, or the Comedy of Manners. The NEW COMEDY arose after Athens had become subject to the Macedonians. Politics were now excluded from the stage, and the materials of the dramatic poet were derived entirely from the fict.i.tious adventures of persons in private life. The two most distinguished writers of this school were PHILEMON and MENANDER. Philemon was probably born about the year 360 B.C., and was either a Cilician or Syracusan, but came at an early age to Athens.
He is considered as the founder of the New Comedy, which was soon afterwards brought to perfection by his younger contemporary Menander.
The latter was an Athenian, and was born in B.C. 312. He was drowned at the age of 52, whilst swimming in the harbour of Piraeus. He wrote upwards of 100 comedies, of which only fragments remain; and the unanimous praise of posterity awakens our regret for the loss of one of the most elegant writers of antiquity. The comedies, indeed, of Plautus and Terence may give us a general notion of the New Comedy of the Greeks, from which they were confessedly drawn; but there is good reason to suppose that the works even of the latter Roman writer fell far short of the wit and elegance of Menander.
The latter days of literary Athens were chiefly distinguished by the genius of her ORATORS and PHILOSOPHERS. There were ten Attic orators, whose works were collected by the Greek grammarians, and many of whose orations have come down to us. Their names are Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isaeus, AEschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides and Dinarchus. ANTIPHON, the earliest of the ten was born B.C. 480.
He opened a school of rhetoric, and numbered among his pupils the historian Thucydides. Antiphon was put to death in 411 B.C. for the part which he took in establis.h.i.+ng the oligarchy of the Four Hundred.
ANDOCIDES, who was concerned with Alcibiades in the affair of the Hermae, was born at Athens in B.C. 467, tend died probably about 391.
LYSIAS, also born at Athens in 458, was much superior to Andocides as an orator, but being a METIC or resident alien, he was not allowed to speak in the a.s.semblies or courts of justice, and therefore wrote orations for others to deliver.
ISOCRATES was born in 436. After receiving the instructions of some of the most celebrated sophists of the day, he became himself a speech-writer and professor of rhetoric; his weakly const.i.tution and natural timidity preventing him from taking a part in public life. He made away with himself in 338, after the fatal battle of Chaeronea, in despair, it is said, of his country's fate. He took great pains with his compositions, and is reported to have spent ten, or, according to others, fifteen years over his Panegyric oration.
ISAEUS flourished between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the accession of Philip of Macedon. He opened a school of rhetoric at Athens, and is said to have numbered Demosthenes among his pupils. The orations of Isaeus were exclusively judicial, and the whole of the eleven which have come down to us turn on the subject of inheritances.
AESCHINES was born in the year 389, and he was at first a violent anti-Macedonian; but after his emba.s.sy along with Demosthenes and others to Philip's court, he was the constant advocate of peace, Demosthenes and AEschines now became the leading speakers on their respective sides, and the heat of political animosity soon degenerated into personal hatred. In 343 Demosthenes charged AEschines with having received bribes from Philip during a second emba.s.sy; and the speech in which he brought forward this accusation was answered in another by AEschines. The result of this charge is unknown, but it seems to have detracted from the popularity of AEschines. We have already adverted to his impeachment of Ctesiphon, and the celebrated reply of Demosthenes in his speech DE CORONA. After the banishment of AEschines on this occasion (B.C. 330), he employed himself in teaching rhetoric at Rhodes. He died in Samos in 314. As an orator he was second only to Demosthenes.
Of the life of his great rival, DEMOSTHENES, we have already given some account. The verdict of his contemporaries, ratified by posterity, has p.r.o.nounced Demosthenes the greatest; orator that ever lived. The princ.i.p.al element of his success must be traced in his purity of purpose, which gave to his arguments all the force of conscientious conviction. The effect of his speeches was still further heightened by a wonderful and almost magic force of diction. The grace and vivacity of his delivery are attested by the well-known anecdote of AEschines, when he read at Rhodes his speech against Ctesiphon. His audience having expressed their surprise that he should have been defeated after such an oration ”You would cease to wonder,” he remarked, ”if you had heard Demosthenes.”
The remaining three Attic orators, viz. LYCURGUS, HYPERIDES, and DINARCHUS, were contemporaries of Demosthenes. Lycurgus and Hyperides both belonged to the anti-Macedonian party, and were warm supporters of the policy of Demosthenes. Dinarchus, who is the least important of the Attic orators, survived Demosthenes, and was a friend of Demetrius Phalereus.
The history of Greek PHILOSOPHY, like that of Greek poetry and history, began in Asia Minor. The earliest philosopher of distinction was THALES of Miletus, who was born about B.C. 640, and died in 554 at the age of 90. He was the founder of the IONIC school of philosophy, and to him were traced the first beginnings of geometry and astronomy. The main doctrine of his philosophical system was, that water, or fluid substance was the single original element from which everything came and into which everything returned. ANAXIMANDER, the successor of Thales in the Ionic school, lived from B.C. 610 to 547. He was distinguished for his knowledge of astronomy and geography, and is said to have been the first to introduce the use of the sun-dial into Greece. ANAXIMENES, the third in the series of the Ionian philosophers, lived a little later than Anaximander. He endeavoured, like Thales, to derive the origin of all material things from a single element; and, according to his theory, air was the source of life.
A new path was struck out by ANAXAGORAS Of Clazomenae, the most ill.u.s.trious of the Ionic philosophers. He came to Athens in 480 B.C., where he continued to teach for thirty years, numbering among his hearers Pericles, Socrates, and Euripides. He abandoned the system of his predecessors, and, instead of regarding some elementary form of matter as the origin of all things, he conceived a supreme mind or intelligence, distinct from the visible world, to have imparted form and order to the chaos of nature. These innovations afforded the Athenians a pretext for indicting Anaxagoras of impiety, though it is probable that his connexion with Pericles was the real cause of that proceeding (see Ch. IX). It was only through the influence and eloquence of Pericles that he was not put to death; but he was sentenced to pay a fine of five talents and quit Athens. The philosopher retired to Lampsacus, where he died at the age of 72.
The second school of Greek philosophy was the ELEATIC which derived its name from Elea or Velia, a Greek colony on the western coast of Southern Italy. It was founded by XENOPHANES of Colophon, who fled to Elea on the conquest of his native land by the Persians. He conceived the whole of nature to be G.o.d.