Part 9 (1/2)

The most eminent of the contemporaries of Demosthenes were Isaeus (420-348 B.C.), an artificial and elaborate orator; Lycurgus (393-328 B.C.), a celebrated civil reformer of Athens; Hypereides, contemporary of Lycurgus; and, above all, Aeschines (389-314 B.C.), the great rival of Demosthenes, of whose numerous speeches only three have been preserved. At a later period we find two schools of rhetoric, the Attic, founded by Aeschines, and the Asiatic, established by Hegesias of Magnesia. The former proposed as models of oratory the great Athenian orators, the latter depended on artificial manners, and produced speeches distinguished rather by rhetorical ornaments and a rapid flow of diction than by weight and force of style.

In the historical department, Thucydides (471-391 B.C.) began an entirely new cla.s.s of historical writing. While Herodotus aimed at giving a vivid picture of all that fell under the cognizance of the senses, and endeavored to represent a superior power ruling over the destinies of princes and people, the attention of Thucydides was directed to human action, as it is developed from the character and situation of the individual. His history, from its unity of action, may be considered as a historical drama, the subject being the Athenian domination over Greece, and the parties the belligerent republics. Clearness in the narrative, harmony and consistency of the details with the general history, are the characteristics of his work; and in his style he combines the concise and pregnant oratory of Pericles with the vigorous but artificial style of the rhetoricians. Demosthenes was so diligent a student of Thucydides that he copied out his history eight times.

Xenophon (445-391 B.C.) may also be cla.s.sed among the great historians, his name being most favorably known from the ”Anabasis,” in which he describes the retreat of the ten thousand Greek mercenaries in the service of Cyrus, the Persian king, among whom he himself played a prominent part.

The minuteness of detail, the picturesque simplicity of the style, and the air of reality which pervades it, have made it a favorite with every age.

In his memorials of Socrates, he records the conversations of a man whom he had admired and listened to, but whom he did not understand. In the language of Xenophon we find the first approximation to the common dialect, which became afterwards the universal language of Greece. He wrote several other works, in which, however, no development of one great and pervading idea can be found; but in all of them there is a singular clearness and beauty of description.

7. SOCRATES AND THE SOCRATIC SCHOOLS.--Although Socrates (468-399 B.C.) left no writings behind him, yet the intellect of Greece was powerfully affected by the principles of his philosophy, and the greatest literary genius that ever appeared in h.e.l.las owed most of his mental training to his early intercourse with him. It was by means of conversation, by a searching process of question and answer, that Socrates endeavored to lead his pupils to a consciousness of their own ignorance, and thus to awaken in their minds an anxiety to obtain more exact views. This method of questioning he reduced to a scientific process, and ”dialectics” became a name for the art of reasoning and the science of logic. The subject-matter of this method was moral science considered with special reference to politics. To him may be justly attributed induction and general definitions, and he applied this practical logic to a common-sense estimate of the duties of man both as a moral being and as a member of a community, and thus he first treated moral philosophy according to scientific principles. No less than ten schools of philosophers claimed him as their head, though the majority of them imperfectly represented his doctrines. By his influence on Plato, and through him on Aristotle, he const.i.tuted himself the founder of the philosophy which is still recognized in the civilized world.

From the doctrine held by Socrates, that virtue was dependent on knowledge, Eucleides of Megara (fl. 398 B.C.), the founder of the Megaric school, submitted moral philosophy to dialectical reasoning and logical refinements; and from the Socratic principle of the union between virtue and happiness, Aristippus of Cyrene (fl. 396 B.C.) deduced the doctrine which became the characteristic of the Cyrenian school, affirming that pleasure was the ultimate end of life and the higher good; while Antisthenes (fl. 396 B.C.) constructed the Cynic philosophy, which placed the ideal of virtue in the absence of every need, and hence in the disregarding of every interest, wealth, honor, and enjoyment, and in the independence of any restraints of life and society. Diogenes of Sinope (fl. 300 B.C.) was one of the most prominent followers of this school. He, like his master, Antisthenes, always appeared in the most beggarly clothing, with the staff and wallet of mendicancy; and this ostentation of self-denial drew from Socrates the exclamation, that he saw the vanity of Antisthenes through the holes in his garments.

Plato (429-348 B.C.) was the only--one of the disciples of Socrates who represented the whole doctrines of his teacher. We owe to him that the ideas which Socrates awakened have been made the germ of one of the grandest systems of speculation that the world has ever seen, and that it has been conveyed to us in literary compositions which are unequaled in refinement of conception, or in vigor and gracefulness of style. At the age of nineteen he became one of the pupils and a.s.sociates of Socrates, and did not leave him until that martyr of intellectual freedom drank the fatal cup of hemlock. He afterwards traveled in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Italy, and Sicily, and made himself acquainted with all contemporary philosophy. During the latter part of his life he was engaged as a public lecturer on philosophy. His lectures were delivered in the gardens of the Academia, and they have left proof of their celebrity in the structure of language, which has derived from them a term now common to all places of instruction. Of the importance of the Socratic and Pythagorean elements in Plato's philosophy there can be no doubt; but he trans.m.u.ted all he touched into his own forms of thought and language, and there was no branch of speculative literature which he had not mastered. By adopting the form of dialogue, in which all his extant works have come down to us, he was enabled to criticise the various systems of philosophy then current in Greece, and also to gratify his own dramatic genius, and his almost unrivaled power of keeping up an a.s.sumed character. The works of Plato have been divided into three cla.s.ses: first, the elementary dialogues, or those which contain the germs of all that follows, of logic as the instrument of philosophy, and of ideas as its proper object; second, progressive dialogues, which treat of the distinction between philosophical and common knowledge, in their united application to the proposed and real sciences, ethics, and physics; third, the constructive dialogues, in which the practical is completely united with the speculative, with an appendix containing laws, epistles, etc.

The fundamental principle of Plato's philosophy is the belief in an eternal and self-existent cause, the origin of all things. From this divine Being emanate not only the souls of men, which are immortal, but that of the universe itself, which is supposed to be animated by a divine spirit. The material objects of our sight, and other senses, are mere fleeting emanations of the divine idea; it is only this idea itself that is really existent; the objects of sensuous perception are mere appearances, taking their forms by partic.i.p.ation in the idea; hence it follows, that in Plato's philosophy all knowledge is innate, and acquired by the soul before birth, when it was able to contemplate real existences, and all our ideas of this world are mere reminiscences of their true and eternal patterns. The belief of Plato in the immortality of the soul naturally led him to establish a high standard of moral excellence, and, like his great teacher, he constantly inculcates temperance, justice, and purity of life. His political views are developed in the ”Republic” and in the ”Laws,” in which the main feature of his system is the subordination, or rather the entire sacrifice of the individual to the state.

The style of Plato is in every way worthy of his position in universal literature, and modern scholars have confirmed the encomium of Aristotle, that all his dialogues exhibit extraordinary acuteness, elaborate elegance, bold originality, and curious speculation. In Plato, the powers of imagination were just as conspicuous as those of reasoning and reflection; he had all the chief characteristics of a poet, especially of a dramatic poet, and if his rank as a philosopher had been lower than it is, he would still have ranked high among dramatic writers for his life- like representations of the personages whose opinions he wished to combat or to defend.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) occupies a position among the leaders of human thought not inferior to that of his teacher, Plato. He was a native of Stagyra, in Macedonia, and is hence often called the Stagyrite. He early repaired to Athens, and became a pupil of Plato, who called him the soul of his school. He was afterwards invited by Philip of Macedon to undertake the literary education of Alexander, at that time thirteen years old. This charge continued about three years. He afterwards returned to Athens, where he opened his school in a gymnasium called the Lyceum, delivering his lessons as he walked to and fro, and from these saunters his scholars were called Peripatetics, or saunterers. During this period he composed most of his extant works. Alexander placed at his disposal a large sum for his collections in natural history, and employed some thousands of men in procuring specimens for his museum. After the death of Alexander, he was accused of blasphemy to the G.o.ds, and, warned by the fate of Socrates, he withdrew from Athens to Chalcis, where he afterwards died.

In looking at the mere catalogue of the works of Aristotle, we are struck with his vast range of knowledge. He aimed at nothing less than the completion of a general encyclopedia of philosophy. He was the author of the first scientific cultivation of each science, and there was hardly any quality distinguis.h.i.+ng a philosopher as such, which he did not possess in an eminent degree. Of all the philosophical systems of antiquity, that of Aristotle was the best adapted to the physical wants of mankind. His works consisted of treatises on natural, moral, and political philosophy, history, rhetoric, criticism,--indeed, there was scarcely a branch of knowledge which his vast and comprehensive genius did not embrace. His greatest claim to our admiration is as a logician. He perfected and brought into form those elements of the dialectic art which had been struck out by Socrates and Plato, and wrought them, by his additions, into so complete a system, that he may be regarded as, at once, the founder and perfecter of logic as an art, which has since, even down to our own days, been but very little improved. The style of Aristotle has nothing to attract those who prefer the embellishments of a work to its subject- matter and the scientific results which it presents.

PERIOD THIRD.

EPOCH OF THE DECLINE OF GREEK LITERATURE, 322 B.C.-1453 A.D.

1. ORIGIN OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE.--As the literary predominance of Athens was due mainly to the political importance of Attica, the downfall of Athenian independence brought with it a deterioration, and ultimately an extinction of that intellectual centralization which for more than a century had fostered and developed the highest efforts of the genius and culture of the Greeks. While the living literature of Greece was thus dying away, the conquests of Alexander prepared a new home for the muses on the coast of that wonderful country, to which all the nations of antiquity had owed a part of their science and religious belief. In Egypt, as in other regions, Alexander gave directions for the foundation of a city to be called after his own name, which became the magnificent metropolis of the h.e.l.lenic world. This capital was the residence of a family who attracted to their court all the living representatives of the literature of Greece, and stored up in their enormous library all the best works of the cla.s.sical period. It was chiefly during the reigns of the first three Ptolemies that Alexandria was made the new home of Greek literature. Ptolemy Soter (306-285 B.C.) laid the foundations of the library, and inst.i.tuted the museum, or temple of the muses, where the literary men of the age were maintained by endowments. This encouragement of literature was continued by Ptolemy Philadelphus (285-247 B.C.). He had the celebrated Callimachus for his librarian, who bought up not only the whole of Aristotle's great collection of works, but transferred the native annals of Egypt and Judea to the domain of Greek literature by employing the priest Manetho to translate the hieroglyphics of his own temple- archives into the language of the court, and by procuring from the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem the first part of that celebrated version of the Hebrew sacred books, which was afterwards completed and known as the Septuagint, or version of the Seventy. Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222 B.C.) increased the library by depriving the Athenians of their authentic editions of the great dramatists. In the course of time the library founded at Pergamos was transferred to Egypt, and thus we are indebted to the Ptolemies for preserving to our times all the best specimens of Greek literature which have come down to us. This encouragement of letters, however, called forth no great original genius; but a few eminent men of science, many second-rate and artificial poets, and a host of grammarians and literary pedants.

2. THE ALEXANDRIAN POETS.--Among the poets of the period, Philetas, Callimachus, Lycophron, Apollonius, and the writers of idyls, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus are the most eminent. The founder of a school of poetry at Alexandria, and the model for imitation with the Roman writers of elegiac poetry, was Philetas of Cos (fl. 260 B. C), whose extreme emaciation of person exposed him to the imputation of wearing lead in the soles of his shoes, lest he should be blown away. He was chiefly celebrated as an elegiac poet, in whom ingenious, elegant, and harmonious versification took the place of higher poetry. Callimachus (fl. 260 B.C.) was the type of an Alexandrian man of letters, distinguished by skill rather than genius, the most finished specimen of what might be effected by talent, learning, and ambition, backed by the patronage of a court. He was a living representative of the great library over which he presided; he was not only a writer of all kinds of poetry, but a critic, grammarian, historian, and geographer. Of his writings, a few poems only are extant.

Next to Callimachus, as a representative of the learned poetry of Alexandria, stands the dramatist Lycophron (fl. 250 B.C.). All his works are lost, with the exception of the oracular poem called the ”Alexandra,”

or ”'Ca.s.sandra,” on the merits of which very opposite opinions are entertained. Apollonius, known as the Rhodian (fl. 240 B.C.), was a native of Alexandria, and a pupil of Callimachus, through whose influence he was driven from his native city, when he established himself in the island of Rhodes, where he was so honored and distinguished that he took the name of the Rhodian. On the death of Callimachus, he was appointed to succeed him as librarian at Alexandria. His reputation depends on his epic poem, the ”Argonautic Expedition.”

Of all the writers of the Alexandrian period, the bucolic poets have enjoyed the most popularity. Their pastoral poems were called Idyls, from their pictorial and descriptive character, that is, little pictures of common life, a name for which the later writers have sometimes subst.i.tuted the term Eclogues, that is, _selections_, which is applicable to any short poem, whether complete and original, or appearing as an extract. The name of Idyls, however, was afterwards applicable to pastoral poems. Theocritus (fl. 272 B.C.) gives his name to the most important of these extant bucolics. He had an original genius for poetry of the highest kind; the absence of the usual affectation of the Alexandrian school, constant appeals to nature, a fine perception of character, and a keen sense of both the beautiful and the ludicrous, indicate the high order of his literary talent, and account for his universal and undiminished popularity. The two other bucolic poets of the Alexandrian school were Bion (fl. 275 B.C.), born near Smyrna, and his pupil Moschus of Syracuse (fl. 273 B.C.). It appears, from an elegy by Moschus, that Bion migrated from Asia Minor to Sicily, where he was poisoned. He wrote harmonious verses with a good deal of pathos and tenderness, but he is as inferior to Theocritus as he is superior to Moschus, whose artificial style characterizes him rather as a learned versifier than a true poet.

3. PROSE WRITERS OF ALEXANDRIA.--Many of the most eminent poets were also prose writers, and they exhibited their versatility by writing on almost every subject of literary interest. The progress of prose writing manifested itself from grammar and criticism to the more elaborate and learned treatment of history and chronology, and to observations and speculations in pure and mixed mathematics. Demetrius the Phalerian (fl.

295 B.C.), Zenodotus (fl. 279 B.C.), Aristophanes (fl. 200 B.C.), and Aristarchus (fl. 156 B.C.), the three last of whom were successively intrusted with the management of the Library, were the representatives of the Alexandrian school of grammar and criticism. They devoted themselves chiefly to the revision of the text of Homer, which was finally established by Aristarchus.

In the historical department may be mentioned Ptolemy Soter, who wrote the history of the wars of Alexander the Great; Apollodorus (fl. 200 B.C.), whose ”Bibliotheca” contains a general sketch of the mystic legends of the Greeks; Eratosthenes (fl. 235 B.C.), the founder of scientific chronology in Greek history; Manetho (fl. 280 B.C.), who introduced the Greeks to a knowledge of the Egyptian religion and annals; and Berosus of Babylon, his contemporary, whose work, fragments of which were preserved by Josephus, was known as the ”Babylonian Annals.” While the Greeks of Alexandria thus gained a knowledge of the religious books of the nations conquered by Alexander, the same curiosity, combined with the necessities of the Jews of Alexandria, gave birth to the translation of the Bible into Greek, known under the name of Septuagint, which has exercised a more lasting influence on the civilized world than that of any book that has ever appeared in a new tongue. The beginning of that translation was probably made in the reigns of the first Ptolemies (320-249 B.C.), while the remainder was completed at a later period.

The wonderful advance, which took place in pure and applied mathematics, is chiefly due to the learned men who settled in Alexandria; the greatest mathematicians and the most eminent founders of scientific geography were all either immediately or indirectly connected with the school of Alexandria. Euclid (fl. 300 B.C.) founded a famous school of geometry in that city, in the reign of the first Ptolemy. Almost the only incident of his life which is known to us is a conversation between him and that king, who, having asked if there was no easier method of learning the science, is said to have been told by Euclid, that ”there was no royal path to geometry.” His most famous work is his ”Elements of Pure Mathematics,” at the present time a manual of instruction and the foundation of all geometrical treatises. Archimedes (287-212 B.C.) was a native of Syracuse, in Sicily, but he traveled to Egypt at an early age, and studied mathematics there in the school of Euclid. He not only distinguished himself as a pure mathematician and astronomer, and as the founder of the theory of statics, but he discovered the law of specific gravity, and constructed some of the most useful machines in the mechanic arts, such as the pulley and the hydraulic screw. His works are written in the Doric dialect. Apollonius of Perga (221-204 B.C.) distinguished himself in the mathematical department by his work on ”Conic Elements.” Eratosthenes was not only prominent in the science of chronology, but was also the founder of astronomical geography, and the author of many valuable works in various branches of philosophy. Hipparchus (fl. 150 B.C.) is considered the founder of the science of exact astronomy, from his great work, the ”Catalogue of the Fixed Stars,” his discovery of the precession of the equinoxes, and many other valuable astronomical observations and calculations.

4. ALEXANDRIAN PHILOSOPHY.--Athens, which had been the centre of Greek literature during the second or cla.s.sical period of its development, had now, in all respects but one, resigned the intellectual leaders.h.i.+p to the city of the Ptolemies. While Alexandria was producing a series of learned poets, scholars, and discoverers in science, Athenian literature was mainly represented by the establishment of certain forms of mental and moral philosophy founded on the various Socratic schools. Two schools of philosophy were established at Athens at the time of the death of Aristotle: that of the Academy, in which he himself had studied, and that of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.) founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics were developed into Stoics by Zeno (341-260 B.C.), who borrowed much from the Megaric school and from the Old Academy; and, finally, the Middle and New Academy arose from a combination of doctrines which were peculiar to many of these sects.

Though these different schools, which flourished at Athens, had early representatives in Alexandria, their different doctrines, coming in contact with the ancient religious systems of the Persians, Jews, and Hindus, underwent essential modifications, and gave birth to a kind of electicism, which became later an important element in the development of Christian history. The rationalism of the Platonic school and the supernaturalism of the Jewish Scriptures were chiefly mingled together, and from this amalgamation sprang the system of Neo-Platonism. When the early teachers of Christianity at Alexandria strove to show the harmony of the Gospel with the great principles of the Greco-Jewish philosophy, it underwent new modifications, and the Neo-Platonic school, which sprang up in Alexandria three centuries B.C., was completed in the first and second centuries of the Christian era. The common characteristic of the Neo- Platonists was a tendency to mysticism. Some of them believed that they were the subjects of divine inspiration and illumination; able to look into the future and to work miracles. Philo-Judaeus (fl. 20 B.C.), Numenius (fl. 150 A.D.), Ammonius Saccas (fl. 200 A.D.), Plotinus (fl, 260 A.D.), Porphyry (fl. 260 A.D.), and several fathers of the Greek Church are among the princ.i.p.al disciples of this school.

5. ANTI-NEO-PLATONIC TENDENCIES.--While the Neo-Platonism of Alexandria introduced into Greek philosophy Oriental ideas and tendencies, other positive and practical doctrines also prevailed, founded on common sense and conscience. First among these were the tenets of the Stoics, who owed their system mainly and immediately to the teaching of Epictetus (fl. 60 A.D.), who opposed the Oriental enthusiasm of the Neo-Platonists. He was originally a slave, and became a prominent teacher of philosophy in Rome, in the reign of Domitian. He left nothing in writing, and we are indebted for a knowledge of his doctrines to Arrian, who compiled his lectures or philosophical dissertations in eight books, of which only four are preserved, and the ”Manual of Epictetus,” a valuable compendium of the doctrines of the Stoics. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius not only lectured at Rome on the principles of Epictetus, but he left us his private meditations, composed in the midst of a camp, and exhibiting the serenity of a mind which had made itself independent of outward actions and warring pa.s.sions within. Lucian (fl. 150 A.D.) may be compared to Voltaire, whom he equaled in his powers both of rhetoric and ridicule, and surpa.s.sed in his more conscientious and courageous love of truth. Though the results of his efforts against heathenism were merely negative, he prepared the way for Christianity by giving the death-blow to declining idolatry. Lucian, as a man of letters, is on many accounts interesting, and in reference to his own age and to the literature of Greece he is ent.i.tled to an important position both with regard to the religious and philosophical results of his works, and to the introduction of a purer Greek style, which he taught and exemplified. Longinus (fl. 230 A.D.), both as an opponent of Neo- Platonism and as a sound and sensible critic, occupies a position similar to that of Lucian, in the declining period of Greek literary history.

During a visit to the East, he became known to Zen.o.bia, queen of Palmyra, who adopted the celebrated scholar as her instructor in the language and literature of Greece, her adviser and chief minister; and when Palmyra fell before the Roman power he was put to death by the Roman emperor. To his treatise on ”The Sublime” he is chiefly indebted for his fame. When France, in the reign of Louis XIV., gave a tone to the literary judgments of Europe, this work was translated by Boileau, and received by the wits of Paris as an established manual in all that related to the sublime and beautiful.

6. GREEK LITERATURE IN ROME.--After the subjugation of Greece by the Romans, Greek authors wrote in their own language and published their works in Rome; ill.u.s.trious Romans chose the idiom of Plato as the best medium for the expression of their own thoughts; dramatic poets gained a reputation by imitating the tragedies and comedies of Athens, and every versifier felt compelled by fas.h.i.+on to revive the metres of ancient Greece. This naturalization of Greek literature at Rome was due to the rudeness and poverty of the national literature of Italy, to the influence exerted by the Greek colonies, and to the political subjugation of Greece.