HISTORY OF ATHENIAN LITERATURE DOWN TO THE END OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR. § 1. Characteristics of the early literature of Athens. § 2. Origin of the drama. § 3. Introduction of the drama at Athens. Susarion, Thespis, Phrynichus, Pratinas. § 4. Eschylus. § 5. Sophocles. § 6. Euripides. § 7. Athenian comedy. Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes. § 8. Prose writers of the period. Thucydides. § 9. Xenophon. § 10. Athenian education. § 11. Rhetors and sophists. § 12. Life of Socrates. § 13. How he differed from the sophists. § 14. Enmity against him. His impeachment, trial, and death. § 15. § 1. ALTHOUGH the Ionians were one of the most intellectual of the Grecian races, we have had as yet little occasion to mention the Athenians in the literary history of Greece. In this path they were at first outstripped by their colonists in Asia Minor. The Asiatic Greeks, settled in a fertile and luxurious country, amongst a race wealthier but far inferior to themselves, soon found those means of ease and leisure which, to a certain degree at least, seem necessary to the development of intellectual culture; whilst at the same time their kinsmen in Attica were struggling for a bare existence, and were often hard pressed by the sur rounding tribes. It was not till the time of Pisistratus and his sons that we behold the first dawn of literature at Athens. But this literature was of an exotic growth; the poets assembled at the court of the Pisistratids were mostly foreigners; and it was only after the fall of that dynasty, and the establishment of more liberal institutions at Athens, that we find the native genius shooting forth with vigour. It was probably the democratic nature of their new constitution, combined with the natural vivacity of the people, which caused Athenian literature to take that dramatic form which pre-eminently distinguishes it. The democracy demanded a literature of a popular kind, the vivacity of the people a literature that made a lively impression; and both these conditions were fulfilled by the drama. § 2. Though the drama was brought to perfection among the Athenians, it did not originate with them. Both tragedy and comedy, in their rude and early origin, were Dorian inventions. Both arose out of the worship of Dionysus. There was at first but little distinction between these two species of the drama, except that comedy belonged more to the rural celebration of the Dionysiac festivals, and tragedy to that in cities. The name of tragedy * was far from signifying any thing mournful, being derived from the goat-like appearance of those who, disguised as satyrs, performed the old Dionysiac songs and dances. In like manner, comedy † was called after the song of the band of revellers, who celebrated the vintage festivals of Dionysus, and vented the rude merriment inspired by the occasion in jibes and extempore witticisms levelled at the spectators. It was among the Megarians, both those in Greece and those in Sicily, whose political institutions were democratical, and who had a turn for rough humour, that comedy seems first to have arisen. It was long, however, before it assumed anything like a regular shape. Epicharmus appears to have been the first who moulded the wild and irregular Bacchic songs and dances into anything approaching a connected fable, or plot. He was born at Cos, about B.C. 540, but spent the better part of his life at Syracuse. He wrote his comedies some years before the Persian war, and from the titles of them still extant it would appear that the greater part of them were travesties of heroic myths. They seem, however, to have contained an odd mixture of sententious wisdom and broad buffoonery, for Epicharmus was a Pythagorean philosopher as well as a comic poet. § 3. Comedy, in its rude and early state, was introduced into Attica long before the time of Epicharmus by Susarion, a native of Tripodiscus, in Megara. It was at Icaria, an Attic village noted for the worship of Dionysus, where Susarion had taken up his residence, that he first represented comedy, such as it then existed among the Megarians, in the year 578 B.C. The performances of Susarion took no root; and we hear nothing more of comedy in Attica for nearly a hundred years. It was during this interval that tragedy was introduced into Attica, and continued to be successfully cultivated. We have already observed that tragedy, like comedy, arose out of the worship of Dionysus; but tragedy, in its more perfect form, was the offspring of the dithyrambic odes with which that worship was celebrated. These were not always of a joyous cast. Some of them expressed the sufferings of Dionysus; and it was from this more mournful species of dithyramb that tragedy, properly so called, arose. Arion introduced great improvements into the Dithyrambic odes.* They formed a kind of lyrical tragedy, and were sung by a chorus of fifty men, dancing round the altar of Dionysus. The improvements in the Dithyramb were introduced by Arion at Corinth; and it was chiefly among the Dorian states of the Peloponnesus that these choral dithyrambic songs prevailed. Hence, even in Attic tragedy, the chorus, which was the foundation of the drama, was written in the Doric dialect, thus clearly betraying the source from which the Athenians derived it. In Attica an important alteration was made in the old tragedy in the time of Pisistratus, in consequence of which it obtained a new and dramatic character. This innovation is ascribed to Thespis, a native of the Attic village of Icaria. It consisted in the introduction of an actor, for the purpose, it is said, of giving rest to the chorus. He probably appeared in that capacity himself, taking various parts in the same piece by means of disguises effected by linen masks. Thus by his successive appearance in different characters, and by the dialogue which he maintained with the chorus, or rather with its leader, a dramatic fable of tolerable complexity might be represented. The first representation given by Thespis was in 535 B.C. He was succeeded by Chorilus and Phrynichus, the latter of whom gained his first prize in the dramatic contests in 511 B.C. He deviated from the hitherto established custom in making a contemporary event the subject of one of his dramas. His tragedy on the capture of Miletus was so pathetic that the audience were melted into * See p. 132. tears; but the subject was considered so ill-chosen that he was fined a thousand drachmæ.* The only other dramatist whom we need mention before Eschylus is the Dorian Pratinas, a native of Phlius, but who exhibited his tragedies at Athens. Pratinas was one of the improvers of tragedy by separating the satyric from the tragic drama. As neither the popular taste nor the ancient religious associations connected with the festivals of Dionysus would have permitted the chorus of Satyrs to be entirely banished from the tragic representations, Pratinas avoided this by the invention of what is called the Satyric drama; that is, a species of play in which the ordinary subjects of tragedy were treated in a lively and farcical manner, and in which the chorus consisted of a band of Satyrs in appropriate dresses and masks. After this period it became customary to exhibit dramas in tetralogies, or sets of four; namely, a tragic trilogy, or series of three tragedies, followed by a Satyric play. These were often on connected subjects; and the Satyric drama at the end served like a merry after-piece to relieve the minds of the spectators. The subjects of Greek tragedy were taken, with few exceptions, from the national mythology. Hence the plot and story were of necessity known to the spectators, a circumstance which strongly distinguishes the ancient tragedy from the modern. It must also be recollected that the representation of tragedies did not take place every day, but only, after certain fixed intervals, at the festivals of Dionysus, of which they formed one of the greatest attractions. During the whole day the Athenian public sat in the theatre witnessing tragedy after tragedy; and a prize was awarded by judges appointed for the purpose to the poet who produced the best set of dramas. § 4. Such was Attic tragedy when it came into the hands of Eschylus, who, from the great improvements which he introduced, was regarded by the Athenians as its father or founder, just as Homer was of Epic poetry, and Herodotus of History. Eschylus was born at Eleusis in Attica in B.C. 525, and was thus contemporary with Simonides and Pindar. His father, Euphorion, may possibly have been connected with the worship of Demeter at Eleusis; and hence, perhaps, were imbibed those religious impressions which characterized the poet through life. His first play was exhibited in B.C. 500, when he was 25 years of age. He fought with his brother Cynægirus at the battle of Marathon,† and also at those of Artemisium, Salamis, and Platea. In B.C. 484 he gained his first tragic prize. The first of his extant dramas, the Perso, was not brought out till B.C. 472, when he gained the prize with the trilogy of which it formed one of the pieces. In 468 he was defeated in a tragic contest by his younger rival Sophocles; shortly afterwards he retired to the court of king Hiero, at Syracuse. In 467 Hiero died; and in 458 Eschylus must have returned to Athens, since he produced his trilogy of the Oresteia in that year. This trilogy, which was composed of the tragedies of the Agamemnon, the Choëphora, and the Eumenides, is remarkable as the only one that has come down to us in anything like a perfect shape. His defence of the Areopagus, however, contained in the last of these three dramas, proved unpalatable to the new and more democratic generation which had now sprung up at Athens; and either from disappointment or fear of the consequences Eschylus again quitted Athens and retired once more to Sicily. On this occasion he repaired to Gela, where he died in B.C. 456, in the 69th year of his age. It is unanimously related that an eagle, mistaking the poet's bald head for a stone, let a tortoise fall upon it in order to break the shell, thus fulfilling an oracle predicting that he was to die by a blow from heaven. After his death, his memory was held in high reverence at Athens. A decree was passed that a chorus should be provided at the public expense for any one who might wish to revive his tragedies; and hence it happened that they were frequently reproduced upon the stage. The improvements introduced into tragedy by Eschylus concerned both its form and composition, and its manner of representation. In the former his principal innovation was the introduction of a second actor; whence arose the dialogue, properly so called, and the limitation of the choral parts, which now became subsidiary. His improvements in the manner of representing tragedy consisted in the introduction of painted scenes, drawn according to the rules of perspective, for which he availed himself of the pictorial skill of Agatharchus. He furnished the actors with more appropriate and more magnificent dresses, invented for them more various and expressive masks, and raised their stature to the heroic size by providing them with thick soled cothurni or buskins. He paid great attention to the choral dances, and invented several new figures.* The genius of Eschylus inclined rather to the awful and sub 66 personæ pallæque repertor honestæ Eschylus, et modicis instravit pulpita tignis, Et docuit magnumque loqui, nitique cothurno." HOR., Ar. Poet. 278. |