all the political convulsions and consequent changes of dialect which took place after the Trojan war. arises, if we suppose that this was not his only work, and that, even if the others which have come down to us under his name did not proceed directly from him, they nevertheless rep- The two centuries following the beginning of resent the real themes of his song. The most the Olympiads were still very rich in epic song; considerable of them, the Theogony, turns upon and this may be considered as the close of that subjects which might have been thought the poetry which issued in natural and unbroken most foreign of all to the poet of the plough. succession from the schools of Homer and HeIt ascends to the birth of the gods and the ori- siod, though it was revived from time to time gin of nature, and unfolds the whole order of in every subsequent age of Greek literature. the world, in a series of genealogies, which per- The epic poets of the period just mentioned, or sonify the beings of every kind contained in it. a part of them, are usually comprehended under In a third poem, of which only a few fragments the title of the Cyclics, or poets of the Cycle, remain, the poet has not taken a flight quite so terms probably of late invention, and the prelofty; but still, in a vein not more pastoral, he cise meaning of which has been the subject of assigns the birth of the most illustrious he- much dispute. It seems, however, most probaroes to the mortal mothers who drew the in-ble that the word Cycle denoted a collection of habitants of Olympus down to the earth. Some epic poems, the subjects of which were confined explanation is necessary to account for the to a certain range of time, and were so distribuchoice of arguments apparently so incongru-ted as to form one compact body, though there ous; and the most satisfactory seems to be that is no reason to think that the design of such a which is suggested by the legends of the poet's whole entered into the mind of any one of the parentage and education. It was on Helicon, authors. The period over which their subjects the ancient seat of the Thracian Muses, that he were spread began with the union of Heaven was born and bred, and the genealogy which and Earth, or the origin of all things, and ended traced his origin, through a long line of their with the latest adventures of Ulysses in Ithaca, favourites and worshippers, to Apollo himself, the close of the heroic age. The poems themmay be looked upon as a pleasing veil of an in- selves are all lost; but the titles of between teresting truth. He was the poet, not of the twenty and thirty have been preserved, and in Boeotian conquerors, but of the people, of the a few instances a short account of their conpeasantry; which, though overpowered by a tents. The works thus distinguished were those foreign race, preserved its ancient recollections, which related to the story of Troy, and were and a rich treasure of sacred and oracular poe- manifestly designed to fill up the blanks left by try. For this people he collected, in a fuller, the Iliad and Odyssey. Thus one poet sang perhaps, and a more graceful body, the precepts of the events which took place between the with which the simple wisdom of their forefa- death of Hector and that of Achilles: another‡ thers had ordered their rural labours and their supplied those of the interval which followed domestic life. From the songs of their earlier down to the burning of Troy: a third carried bards, and the traditions of their temples, he the heroes to their homes; while a fourth went probably drew the knowledge of nature and of back to the secret origin of the fatal feud, the superhuman things, which he delivered in the counsel of Jupiter to lighten the earth, which popular form of the Theogony; and this subject groaned under the numbers and the arrogance naturally brought him to the birth of the heroes, of mankind, and showed how his purpose was which connected his poetry with the chivalrous accomplished, through the weakness of Helen, epic of Homer. His fame became thus estab- the treachery of the Trojans, and the union of lished as a teacher of Divine and human wis- the Greeks. The whole Cycle was conceived dom, and his name represents the whole poeti- by the Greek critics to depend entirely on Hocal growth of the Baotian and Locrian schools mer: it was sometimes said to be his work; -for Locris likewise claimed him by the legend and some of the principal poems were expressof his death and his grave*-from the Trojan ly ascribed to him;** and even where, as hapwar to the beginning of the Olympiads. pened in a few cases, chiefly those of the poets of what may be called the Trojan cycle, the name of the real author had been preserved from oblivion, he was sometimes represented as Homer's disciple or son-in-law. Yet it seems to have been only on the poets of the Trojan cycle that Homer exerted any direct influence. The others chose their ground in the wide field which lay open to them, probably with as little reference to him as to one another, and some of them may perhaps be more properly regarded as disciples of Hesiod, since we find that their poems were chiefly filled with heroic If this explanation is sufficient to account for the contrast between Homer and Hesiod in the choice of their subjects, it may also serve to throw some light on another point no less obscure their resemblance in that peculiar form of the Greek language which continued ever after to be appropriated to the use of epic poetry. This resemblance between two poets so near to each other in time, and so widely separated by situation, and still more by their genius and aims, may be considered as an indication of the common origin from which their poetry was derived. It was probably among the countrymen of Hesiod, by the labours of the bards from whom he is said to have sprung, in the oracular shrines of Helicon and Parnassus, that the epic style was formed, and hence passed over into Asia with the Ionians, while it was preserved in Boeotia and the rest of Greece unaffected by PROGRESS OF ART AND LITERATURE. genealogies. The legends of Argos, of Corinth, of Thebes, and Orchomenus, the adventures of Hercules, of Theseus, and the Argonauts, supplied abundant materials for all. The remark of a Greek critic,† that the poems of the epic cycle was valued by most readers, not so much on account of their excellence as for the connexion of their contents, though it does not imply that they were deficient in poetical merit, may intimate that the poetical interest, which in the Homeric works is predominant, if not exclusive, was in them subordinate to one of a different kind, which concerned the succession of events. And in this sense the Cycle may be considered as a prelude to history, and as an indication of a tendency to historical research, which, however, did not manifest itself more distinctly till near the close of this period. thing less than a most lively and faithful picture As the principal parts of the mythical outline were gradually filled up, and the public taste began to be satiated with subjects similar in their kind, and treated with a great uniformity of tone and style, the poetical genius of the nation took a new direction, and though it did not abandon the epic field, yet both ranged over it with greater freedom, and explored many fresh regions. The period in which the lyrical poetry of the Greeks was carried to its highest perfection includes the last stage in the career of the epic Muse. After the beginning of the Olympiads, the Cycle seems to have become less and less attractive, while for upward of three centuries a series of great masters of lyric songs were continually enlarging and enTheir names riching the sphere of their art. were not obscured, like those of the Cyclic In the Dorian states poetry and music were poets, by the lustre of Homer's; but of their works, those of Pindar excepted, only a few scanty fragments remain to justify the admira- generally looked upon principally, if not exclution they excited. Yet even these fragments sively, as instruments of education, and hence was regulated by the magistrate or the law. would be sufficient to confirm the unanimous the watchfulness with which their character The themes of the poets were chiefly religious, judgment of antiquity, if its authority left room Thus for any doubt, and to afford the melancholy conviction that the loss we have suffered in the martial, and political in Crete and at Sparta, master-pieces of Greek lyrical poetry is, in a the spirit of the laws and the maxims of the literary point of view, not inferior to any which Constitution were delivered in verse. we have to deplore in the whole range of an- Lycurgus, though by an anachronism, was said cient literature. The extant works of Pindar, to have employed the services of the Cretan admirable as they are, neither compensate for poet Thaletas; and Tyrtæus and Terpander this loss, nor enable us to estimate its full ex- really seconded the views of the legislator, by tent. Even if it was certain that his genius describing and commending his institutions. was unequalled, still it could not replace the Though the Spartans themselves, perhaps, disfreshness which we might expect to find in the dained the labour of poetical composition, they earlier gushes of the lyric vein, nor the peculiar were keenly sensible of the charms both of character which distinguished each of the other music and poetry, and warmly encouraged such poets, nor that which belonged to the several foreign poets as were willing to adapt their schools formed by the great tribes or branches strains to Spartan principles. Archilochus was of the nation; and which, if we had been per- excluded because he did not fulfil this condimitted to compare the happiest productions of tion; but Aleman, though of Lydian origin, the Eolian, the Dorian, and the Ionian lyre, earned a rank next to that of a Spartan citizen would undoubtedly have added much to the by his genius, which may still be discerned in charm of each. And the Theban poet himself the scanty fragments of his works. Here, as is only known to us by works of one class out elsewhere, emulation was kindled by solemn of a great number, each of which must have contests, which took place at certain festivals, The tyrants likewise cherished the lyric exhibited a different exertion of his powers, for the display of poetical and musical talents. and have heightened their effect by variety and contrast. But we have, perhaps, still more to Muse, though in a different manner, and from regret in an historical point of view; for what different motives. We are not, indeed, prewho thinks that they strove to wean their subwe have lost in the Greek lyrical poetry is no-pared to adopt the opinion of a modern author,* • Wachsmuth, iii., 397. As Asius of Samos, Eumelus of Corinth, Cinatho the jects from the heroic poetry, because it celeLaconian, Chersias of Orchomenus. 1 Proclus, p. 378, Gaisf. VOL. I.--DD brated the old legitimate monarchy. Without | enabled better to understand the nature of the any such grounds of policy, they were the natu- influence which she exerted over her female ral patrons of the lyrical poets, who cheered contemporaries, and might have obtained an intheir banquets, applauded their success, and ex- sight into a side of Greek society-the intertolled their magnificence. We have already course of intelligent and accomplished women observed in a preceding chapter that the Olym--which, from its obscurity, has been very little pic and other games afforded constant themes observed. The list of Greek poetesses, who, for poetical panegyrics, which delicately inter- as might have been expected, cultivated scarcewove the praises of the victor with those of his ly any but the lyrical vein, was by no means ancestors, his country, its gods, and heroes. scanty, and included several very celebrated This was only one of the numerous occasions names, which, unhappily, are to us nothing more. for the exertion of poetical powers supplied by During the same period a considerable body of the enterprising and liberal spirit of these fortu- didactic poetry, under various forms, of fable, nate usurpers, who took the lead in the favour- proverb, pithy sentences, or longer moral lesite pursuits of their age. But all the main sons, indicated the growing tendency of the epochs and leading situations in the life of the age to habits of observation and abstraction, and great were deemed to need the aid of song to marked the connexion between its poetical and enliven and adorn them. The war-march, the philosophical spirit. religious and convivial procession,* the nuptial ceremony, the feast, and the funeral, would have appeared spiritless and unmeaning without this accompaniment. it equalled the most elaborate productions of the national poetry. If we may rely on the tradition of later times as to a point which must have been always obscure, Pherecydes, a native of the Isle of Scyros, who flourished about the middle of the sixth century B.C., was the first prose writer: his work seems to have been partly mythical, partly philosophical. Cadmus of Miletus is said first to have applied prose to an historical subject. The early Greek poetry was designed, as we have already observed, for exhibition, more or less public, and it was late before any one appears to have thought of writing, without any This, however, was only one side of the spa- view to recitation, for the satisfaction of indicious and richly varied lyrical field. On this side vidual readers. This could only be the case its limit, by which it bordered on the epic, may when instruction, not pleasure, was the immedibe said to have been occupied by the great choral ate end proposed; and hence the rise of a prose compositions, which imbodied many high sub- literature among the Greeks coincides with that jects of heroic song in a new shape; were early of historical inquiry and philosophical speculacarried to perfection by the art of Arion and Ste- tion. When the object of the authors was no sichorus; and, uniting the attractions of music longer to work on the feelings and the imaginaand action with those of a lofty poetry, formed tion, but simply to convey knowledge or reathe favourite entertainment of the Dorian cities. sonings, they naturally adopted the style of This appears to have been the germ out of familiar discourse, which was gradually enwhich, by the introduction of a new element-nobled and refined, till in the art of composition the recitation of a performer, who assumed a character, and, perhaps, from the first, shifted his mask so as to exhibit the outlines of some simple story in a few scenes parted by the intervening song of the chorus-Thespis and his successors gradually unfolded the Attic tragedy. On the other hand, there was a great mass of lyrical poetry, which only breathed the thoughts and feelings of individual minds. This kind, which may be called the sentimental lyric, was chiefly cultivated in the Ionian and Eolian When, however, we speak of a rising spirit states. In this the resentment of Archilochus, of historical inquiry in the period preceding the Hipponax, and Alcæus, kindled by private or Persian wars, we must be careful to limit our public quarrels, found vent in bitter sarcasm or notions on this head with due regard to the open invective. The delights of the senses character of the people and the circumstances awakened strains of almost delirious rapture in of the age. The first essays at historical comAnacreon and Ibycus, while the recollection position among the Greeks appear to have been of their fugitive nature melted Mimnermus into subordinate on the one hand to poetry, on the a sadness perhaps too gloomy to be pleasing. other to the study of nature. The works of the It is remarkable that the elegy which he adopt- early historians, so far as we can judge of them ed as the organ of his voluptuous melancholy, from the general accounts of Strabo and Dionysand which, in later times, was almost exclusive-ius of Halicarnassus, and from the fragments ly dedicated to similar purposes, had been invented by another Ionian poet, Callinus, as the vehicle of martial and patriotic enthusiasm. But the tenderness of Sappho-whose character has been rescued, by one of the happiest efforts of modern criticism, from the unmerited reproach under which it had laboured for so many centuriest-appears to have been no less pure than glowing. It is not merely her poetical celebrity, nor the exquisite beauty of the little that has been left to justify it, that excites our regret for the rest of her works. Had they been preserved, we should probably have been * Κῶμος. or slight notices which have been preserved of their contents, seem to have been, in part, professedly mythological, and to have given, perhaps, in a more connected form, and with some traditional supplements, the substance of a large portion of the epic cycle. It is apparently to this class that Strabo alludest when he says that Cadmus, Pherecydes, and Hecatæus only got rid of the metrical restraints of their poetical predecessors, but in other respects * See that of Tatian, c. Græcos, c. 33. But Anaximander, who flourished a little earlier, is, per + Plin., N. H, vii., 57. Apuleius, Flor., p. 130, ed. Bip. haps, better entitled to the honour; and if Polyzelus the Messenian, the father of the poet Ibycus, wrote his history By Welcker, in his little work (published 1816), Sappho in prose (Suidas, "16vxos), his claims would be still stronger, von cinem herrschenden Vorurtheil befreyt. + ., p. 34. EARLY SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY. adhered to them so closely as even to retain and became the subject of several pleasing lethe character of their diction. But there was gends, among which the most celebrated is that another, and perhaps a larger class of works, of the golden tripod, which, having been drawn which might have been more properly referred up out of the sea, was, by command of the orato the head of geography or topography than to cle, to be given to the wisest, and, after it had that of history, in which the description of a been offered to each of the seven, and modestly country or a city served as a thread to connect declined by them, was dedicated to the Delphic, its traditions. It must have been this class that or Didymaan god. The men who gained such Dionysius had in view* when he spoke of the renown were all actively engaged in the affairs historians who preceded Herodotus as confining of public life, as statesmen, magistrates, or lethemselves to local limits, and contenting them- gislators; and the sayings ascribed to them selves with simply recording the legends, wheth- breathe a purely practical wisdom, apparently er sacred or profane, of each region or district, drawn from their commerce with the world however incredible, in a style which, though rather than from any deep meditation on the concise and artless, was clear and not ungrace-nature of man. Their celebrity may, perhaps, ful. Though we must not construe this lan- be more properly considered as indicating the guage so strictly as to suppose that these his- novelty and rudeness than the prevalence of torians never interposed their own judgment on philosophical reflection. the matters which they related, it is certain that the faculty of historical criticism, which, indeed, was never very generally awakened among the Greeks, and never attained any high degree of vigour, was long almost entirely dormant. In the selection and arrangement of their materials, they were probably governed, in most cases, by no higher principle than the desire of gratifying patriotic vanity, or the popular taste for the marvellous. But whenever they aspired to the more difficult and glorious task of unravelling any of those mythical webs which must often have perplexed them, they could scarcely fail to aggravate the real confusion by a false show of an artificial harmony It is doubtful how far they comand order. monly descended into the later political vicissitudes of the countries which they described. But before the Persian wars the Greeks did not suspect the importance of their own history, and it was not till long after that either its highest interest or its practical uses began to be distinctly understood. It can excite no surprise that, in a period such as we are now reviewing, when thought and inquiry were stimulated in so many new directions, some active minds should have been attracted by the secrets of nature, and should have been led to grapple with some of the great questions which the contemplation of the visible universe suggests. There can, therefore, be no need of attempting to trace the impulse by which the Greeks were now carried towards such researches to a foreign origin. But it is an opinion which has found many advocates, that they were indebted to their widening intercourse with other nations, particularly with Egypt, Phoenicia, and the interior of Asia, for several of the views or doctrines which were fundamental or prominent parts of their early philosophical systems. The result, however, of the maturest investigation seems to show that there is no sufficient ground even for this conjecture.* On the other hand, it is clear that pendent of the earlier intellectual efforts of the first philosophers were not wholly indePhilosophy may, perhaps, be said to have their own countrymen, and that, perhaps unbegun to dawn among the Greeks in the ear-consciously, they derived the form, if not, in liest period to which their history or their le-part at least, the substance of their speculations, gends go back; for not only do the subjects on which the men commonly distinguished as the first Greek philosophers, speculated, appear to have been, in a great measure, the same with those which employed the meditations of the ancient sages, but the remains which have been preserved to us among the works of He-sophical schools which preceded that of Athens. siod-if we may venture to view them in this Hermippus reckoned up light of those early essays in thinking, discover traces, though under a poetical or mythiwere selected by various authors. Among them may be cal form, of a system, or, at least, of a connect- Thales, Bias, Pittacus, Solon. ed investigation of causes and effects. Still, thirteen more, from which the remainder of the Seven the sixth century B.C. has justly been consid-noticed the Spartan Aristodemus, to whom Diogenes reiers ered as the period in which Greek philosophy the lines of Alceus, which Niebuhr (vol. i., not. 1007) beindeed, evident that the poet is not speaking of a contemtook its rise, because then, for the first time, lieved to have related to the ancient Heracleid. It seems, We allude to Ritter (Geschichte der Philosophie), who it began to be separated from poetry and religion, with which it had been before blended: it t Diogenes of Apollonia, in Crete, and Archelaus, of was then first cultivated by men who were not, p. 159-173) has weighed all the arguments which have bards, or priests, or seers: it was exhibited in been alleged in behalf of this opinion with an even hand. a natural form, without any artificial ornament whom it is uncertain whether he was a Milesian or an the epithet commonly given to the school itself would be or disguise, and it continued thenceforward to Athenian. This, indeed, would make no difference, and unfold itself in a steady and uninterrupted prog-improper, if, according to a strange fancy broached by not to be regarded as an Ionian city, because there was a The character of this age, in its relation Kreuser in his work on the Rhapsodists, p. 105, Miletus is to philosophy, is marked by the fame of the Seven Sages, who were variously enumerated,+ ress. • De Thuc., Jud., v. According to Dicmarchus (Ding. La., i., ◊ 41), there were only four names which were universally admitted: from the old theogonies or cosmogonies. We do not mean to enter into the discussion of subjects which properly belong to the history of philosophy, and must therefore confine ourselves to a few general observations on the character, tendency, and influence of the philo The eldest of these schools-called the Ionian, because, with one or two exceptions, the phi porary. perhaps of Dorians, from Crete. Admitting the fact, we among the Greeks. The same form was re- an opportunity for political deliberation when tained at Cyrene for some generations without occasion called for it. With regard to the Eoany diminution of the royal authority. But af- lians, however, it is not certain that they poster the great addition to the numbers of the col-sessed even such a centre of union; and it is ony, made, as we have mentioned, in the reign on the ground of analogy only, and not on direct of the founder's grandson, the second Battus, evidence, that they have been supposed to have the people seem to have become dissatisfied held annual assemblies near a temple of Apolwith the existing institutions. This disposi-lo, the seat of an ancient oracle, at Grynium.* tion, perhaps, found no opportunity of manifest-The fact is left rather suspicious by the silence ing itself with effect under his successor, Ar- of Herodotus, who mentions the periodical cesilaus II., who was involved in a domestic meetings of the Dorians and Ionians. Those quarrel, which occasioned a revolt of his Libyan of the Dorians took place near the temple of subjects, from whom he suffered a disastrous Apollo, who derived his epithet from the Triodefeat, and he was soon after murdered by one pian headland, where it stood: games were of his brothers. His son and heir, Battus III., celebrated within the sacred precincts, and the was lame, and this defect afforded an occasion victors were enjoined to dedicate their prizes, or pretext for a great political change, the need bronze tripods, to the god. It was the breach of which must have been generally felt before. of this ordinance which caused the separation The Delphic oracle was consulted on the means of Halicarnassus from the five cities, which with of remedying the disorder of the state, and un-it formed the original Dorian Hexapolis. We der its sanction a citizen of Mantinea, named Demonax, pointed out, no doubt, by his previous reputation, was invited to assume the office of mediator-in other words, to frame a new constitution. He began by determining the receiving the whole Ionian body-Panionium, and spective rights of the old and the new colonists, and distributed them into three tribes, of which the descendants of the original settlers formed the first, probably with some peculiar privileges. He then proceeded to deprive the king of all his substantial prerogatives, leaving him only the ensigns of royalty, a domain, and certain priestly offices. This part of the work of Demonax, indeed, was destroyed in the following reign by a counter-revolution, effected with the aid of foreign auxiliaries, and the government then became, in fact, a tyranny; but this accidental result does not affect the case, as an example of a general tendency, and of the mode of its operation. may hence infer how slight the connexion must have been. The meetings of the Ionians were held in a spot at the northern foot of Mount Mycale, called, from its destination-that of re In consecrated to the national god Poseidon. them, too, the religious or festive object was almost exclusively predominant. Yet it would appear that in early times there was among the Ionians a tendency of disposition and of circumstances towards a closer union than subsisted among either their northern or their southern neighbours. All the Ionian cities, except Samos, were ruled, as we have seen, by princes of the house of Codrus, and this was made an indispensable condition of admission into the confederacy. But there is also some ground for believing that the eldest prince of this house enjoyed a supremacy over the rest. Strabo relates, on the authority of Pherecydes, that EpheThe Greek colonies which covered so large sus was anciently the capital of Ionia, as the a part of the coast of Asia Minor, though com- seat of Androclus, who was considered as the prising a great number of tribes very distantly common leader of all the Ionian settlers; and related to each other, were distributed, as we he mentions that, even in his own day, there have seen, into three principal masses, each were at Ephesus descendants of the ancient bearing a name indicating a supposed unity of kings, who were distinguished by certain endescent. The Ionians, moreover, recognised signs of royalty, and exercised some sacred Athens as a common parent-a relation which functions which were originally attached to it. could not be claimed in so strict a sense either No great stress, indeed, can be laid on this fact; by Thebes with regard to the Eolians, or by for similar vestiges may have been long preArgos or Sparta with regard to the Dorians. served in the other Ionian cities, and have disIn each case, however, the feeling or the as- appeared only when the privileged line became sumption of a national affinity was strengthen-extinct. But the active interference of Androed by an unbroken geographical connexion; and clus in the affairs of other Ionian cities may be it might have seemed an almost inevitable con- allowed strongly to confirm this statement of sequence of such proximity of origin and posi-Pherecydes; and when we find him dislodging tion, that even if the three main divisions were the Epidaurians from Samos, and afterward prokept apart from one another, each in itself tecting Priene against the Carians-the enter should have formed a compact political body.prise which cost him his life-he may seem to But causes similar to those which kept the Eu- be acting as chief of the whole body. But unropean Greeks asunder, operated here to the doubtedly the Ionian cities were soon completesame effect; and at the time of the migration, ly insulated; and Miletus in particular, even if there was no power in the neighbourhood of Neleus was really the younger brother, would the new colonies formidable enough to suggest not have long borne the superiority of Ephesus, the thought of a permanent combination of their which it soon greatly surpassed in wealth and forces. In fact, it does not appear that any po- power. No provision was made either for delitical union, properly so called, was ever es- fence against foreign enemies, or for the maintablished even among the cities of the same tenance of internal tranquillity: there was no name; the nearest approach to one consisted common treasure, nor tribunal, nor magistrate, in periodical meetings, founded simply with a nor laws. Yet it may have been very early, religious object, for the celebration of festivals though the time is uncertain, that the Lycians in honour of a tutelary god, but which afforded * Strabo, xiii., p. 622. Paus., 1, 21, 7, |