time. Indeed, both Solon and Anacreon celebrated the beauty of the ancestors of Critias. We hear through Xenophon and Plato that Critias applied himself much to mental culture, and attended the teaching of Socrates, but would not be dissuaded by him from pursuing immoral objects, and hence quarrelled with the philosopher. Nevertheless it is very remarkable that a man who made literature only a stepping-stone to political influence should have attained so high a point in various kinds of writing. He may have been born about 450 B.C., but showed little prominence up to the time of the Four Hundred, of whom his father Callæschrus was a prominent member. Of course he was always an oligarch, but he probably spent his earlier life in study, and did not see a proper scope for his energies. It is remarkable that he took no strong side with the Four Hundred, so that he not only remained at Athens, but proposed decrees about the recall of Alcibiades, and the enquiry into Phrynichus' death, which show a desire to agree with the democracy. Yet he roused the suspicions of Cleophon, who had him banished. It was during his exile, in the dissolute society of Thessalian nobles, that he developed that strong hatred of the democracy, and that general lawlessness and violence, which make his name a byword among later Athenians. His career as one of the Thirty, and his death in battle against Thrasybulus, are matters of notoriety. He was evidently a man of strong clear head and logical consistency, but probably a sceptic in morals, and an advocate of the worst theories of the sophists whom Plato brings up as opponents to Socrates. Though highly cultivated in music and literature, though a good artist in various kinds of poetry and prose, he was a ruthless and cruel man, upon whose nature the refinement of aristocratic birth and good society had no effect. His political misdeeds have, however, probably obscured his literary merits; for he sums up in himself all the forms and kinds of Attic literature, and in all of them he attained a certain eminence. We have spoken above (§ 137) of his poetry, of his elegiacs and hexameters, which were political and aristocratic in tone, and of 1 Xen. Memor. i. 2, §§ 12, sq. his tragedies (§ 232), which seem to have quite outdone Euripides in preaching scepticism and a contempt for received dogmas. Nevertheless, the frequent attribution of his plays to Euripides shows how high was their poetical merit. In prose he wrote descriptions of the polities of Sparta, Thessaly, and other states; lives of celebrated men, such as Homer and Archilochus; and philosophical discussions, of which Galen quotes one on the nature of love. Hermogenes quotes as to oratory his προοίμια δημηγορικά. His prose works are said to have been the best, but, being long neglected on account of the deep hatred which his life inspired, were first revived and praised by Herodes Atticus, and then criticised next to the Ten by Hermogenes, by Philostratus and others. It excites some surprise that he did not supplant Andocides in the Canon of the Ten orators. Unfortunately we only possess a few trifling fragments of his prose, and need not therefore discuss the judgments of the critics. They praise his taste and purity, and remark that he rather belonged to the new Attic writers, having none of the harshness of Thucydides, who nevertheless survived him. He was subtle and persuasive, but not, say they, fiery or vehement. His political violence was, we may fear, rather the result of deliberate selfishness and cruelty than of wild passion, for even in his poetry this latter quality seems absent, or under strict control. But from his manysidedness, and from his strictly aristocratic tone, he would have been a very good representative of Periclean culture, and of the older bloom of letters at Athens, which passed away or changed with the Restoration. ' Cf. Philostratus' interesting critique of his style, Vit. Soph. p. 213. CHAPTER VI. ATTIC LITERATURE OF THE RESTORATION LYSIAS AND ISÆUS. §386. FROM this time onwards the aristocrats, as a party, seem to have been absorbed or destroyed, and though Plato shows plainly enough his tendencies, he lives apart from the people, and seldom attempts to influence the politics of his day. Charges of hostility to the demos are indeed still common in the quarrels of the day; there is hardly a speech on public matters in the collection of Lysias in which it is not urged by the speaker against his adversary, and likewise pressed as a counter-charge. Even Thrasybulus does not escape it. But parties had been so broken up and confused by the disorders of fifteen years; the adherents of the Four Hundred were so often enemies of those of the Thirty; so many aristocrats had been exiled as too moderate; so many time-servers had changed sides, that we cannot show any definite aristocratic party after this date. But it was a time of sad memories and of poignant regrets; in spite of the amnesty voted, and honestly enough observed by the demos, every private accusation, every charge of peculation or violence, gave occasion for hints of former treason, and for suggestions that the over-indulgence of the state might now be rectified by condign punishment on another score. § 387. It is of course not easy to draw lines of distinction in an epoch where a great number of literary men of various kinds were working collaterally, and where no year or decad could. be wanting in intellectual work. But yet it seems, by some curious coincidence, that the lives of most of the great older lights of Attic literature closed during the dark troubles towards the end of the Peloponnesian war. Beginning with Antiphon, we can enumerate Sophocles, Euripides, and Agathon in poetry; Critias, Socrates, and Thucydides-all of whom died within a few years of the archonship of Eucleides. It does not appear indeed that among so many authors more than two-Aristophanes and Andocides-of those whom we know, wrote before this crisis, and also after it. Andocides, as I have explained, is not of much importance. The later work of Aristophanes is perhaps the strongest evidence we have of the altered tone of literature after the year 399 B.C. Attic life was no longer the stormy existence of a tyrant democracy, ruling a great dominion, and occupied with imperial interests a society keen and intellectual, but rude withal, and in some respects coarse and cruel. The Athens of Isocrates and Plato is a tamer and more refined city, in which for a generation political interests sink into a secondary place, and in which intellectual and moral culture come into the foreground. This is really the time in which the change took place from the Periclean to the Demosthenic citizen.1 The Athenians of the Restoration, excluded from empire by the predominance of Sparta, sought material wealth and social refinement; they paid mercenaries to perform the military duties which had no vital importance in their eyes. And for awhile all enterprise, even in art, paused. The glories of Pheidias found no rival till the schools of Scopas and Praxiteles, a generation later, rekindled the torch. Attic poetry decayed, and never recovered. The New Comedy gained its greatness at the expense of all the higher flights of fancy, and cannot rank higher than the genteel comedy of Sheridan. It cannot, however, be held that the years immediately following Eucleides were merely days of rest and weariness, for, as if to mark the epoch of the Restoration, several eminent men, who attained maturity some years before, now enter the field of literature, and perfect the development of Attic prose. Of these four stand pre-eminent above the rest-Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, and Xenophon. These men, historians, pamphleteers, philosophers, court advocates, occupy the field till circumstances again brought Athens into the 1 Grote's Hist., vol. xi. p. 390, and my Social Life in Greece, p. 269. position of asserting Hellenic interests against foreign domination; then political oratory revives with Demosthenes and his compeers. The lighter literature of the epoch-the many anecdotists whom later compilers quote, the Middle Comedy, which gave a picture of the society of the day, are unfortunately lost, and though fragments of comedies survive in hundreds, we can form no adequate notion of the merits of even Antiphanes and Alexis. The dramatic side of Plato and of Xenophon only gives us a glimpse into aristocratic life, a few realistic pictures in Lysias' speeches show an ugly counterpart in the poorer ranks. But if the social aspects of Athens are in this period but partially preserved, her intellectual development stands before us in a very clear and instructive way, for we have ample specimens of the style-the way of thinking-of all the great prose writers of the age. § 388. We will commence with LYSIAS, the oldest of them, whose technical education must have been completed in the earlier epoch, but whose literary activity, though late in development, starts with peculiar freshness and vigour at the very opening of the Restoration. With him, moreover, we enter upon a new phase of oratory, and that which is the most characteristic of old Greek thought and culture. I have sketched in the last page the general condition of Attic society after the return of Thrasybulus, how external peace and an enforced amnesty left many private feuds, and embittered many new disputes. I may add that the Athenians, who had no longer a great empire to control, turned to a closer scrutiny of domestic affairs and of home finance. The state was now poor, and the citizens unable to bear heavy taxation; it is not unlikely that many men of doubtful character, who had made money abroad, came to Athens, and were allowed to obtain or regain civic rights (like Andocides), because they would undertake liturgies and other expensive, state burdens. On the other hand, there were constant complaints of peculation and waste among public servants—one man is charged with embezzling the revenues in the administration of foreign affairs, another is capitally accused for squandering the public chest in adding to the public sacrifices |