CHAPTER I.
LITERATURE.
Civilizationis earth's central stream, and all literatures, arts, sciences, philosophies, and religions are but tributaries to swell its tide and increase its current. To indicate the successive sources, describe the multiform elements, and demonstrate the progressive aggregation and enrichment of this unity in diversity, is the object of the present work.
Much patient and critical research will be requisite at each remove, but the chief difficulty lies at the threshold of the undertaking. When and with what does authentic history, illustrated through human progress, begin? Geography, ethnology, and philology must be our chief oracles in reply.
Western Asia was doubtless the cradle of the earliest civilized communities, and the source of all authentic improvement. Mount Kylas gave the termkoilon, heaven, to the Greeks, and is probably the highest eminence on earth. Moorcroft viewed it from a tableland more than seventeen thousand feet high, and describes its sides and craggy summits of still more tremendous altitude, apparently covered thickly with snow. At its base emerges the Indus, that mighty artery of western India, on the bank of which stands Attac, a name which the great civilizing race afterward applied to the fairest realm of their culture. Standing at this fountain-head, we find increased facilities for striking out the great historico-geographical outline which marks the progress of the patriarch bands of India, Egypt, and Europe. The intimate connection between theNilitic valley, Greece, and the lands of the Indus, is rendered yet more evident by the geographical development of the colonization of eastern Europe, in which the ingenious people ofAbu-Sin, Abyssinians, founded the mercantile and prosperous community of Corinthus.Cor-Indus, that is, mouth of the Indus, carried westward, became the classical Corinth. The distance from the Indian shore was not so great but that the sail which spread for Ceylon could waft to the Red Sea, where the fleets of Tyre, of Solomon and of Hiram were to be found. The ancient Institutes of Menu expressly refer to merchants who traffic beyond sea; and, moreover, that the Hindoos were westward navigators from the earliest ages, the vestiges of their religion in the Archipelago abundantly attest. From the same lofty regions descended theParasoos, that is, warriors of the Axe, to penetrate and give name to Persia, while Colchis and Armenia became as distinctly the product and proof of Indian colonization. Down this central route came the Pilgrim Fathers of the first great civilizing nations, making the whole mass of authentic geography a venerable journal of emigration on the most gigantic scale.
Let us now briefly consider the progressive changes which have passed upon this great geographical chart of historical development, and observe their effects. Successive tribes of living beings have perished thereon, and been replaced with better and nobler races, until at last man came to be lord of earth, and to reap from it all the enjoyments increasing culture could bestow. From the beginning, progress has been maintained in and through convulsions, each succeeding tempest alternating with a sublimer calm. Relying on human traditions alone, we can acquaint ourselves with no primary people, no first seat of civilization, no original philosophy, or natural wisdom. Guided by a higher authority, it is necessary to penetrate the intervening mists of symbolical fables, and collect numerous scientific facts, in order to attain secure ground, whereon the first germ of humanity was planted, and whence it has perpetually developed itself under the control of unfaltering law. At the farthest horizon of the most venerable antiquity, several light points appear, the harbingers of civilization, radiating toward each other, and indicating a common point of union in the darkness behind. They resemble the superior lights among the stars of the firmament,whose brightness we perceive amid the eternal suns of the universe, but whose relative distances from our own planet it is impossible to ascertain. The dwelling of a divine spark in the human bosom has, even from the obscurest height of Caucasus, been recognized in the beautiful tradition of Prometheus; but the question of the first springing up of mankind can not be fully elucidated by mere antiquarian research. In the last result, that is a matter to be left to the disclosures of revelation and the exercise of faith.
The Mosaic narrative of creation is the primitive document of our race, and this commemorates the repeated convulsions and prodigious corruption of the world, previous to the Noachian flood. Of the earliest period, it says: "The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep: and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." Gen. i. 2. Of post-diluvian history, every thing was embraced in that last recorded fact of Noah's life, a prophecy delivered in the infancy of mankind, and which every succeeding development has only tended to illustrate and confirm. Gen. ix. 18, 19—"The sons of Noah that went forth from the ark, were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. These are the three sons of Noah, and of them was the whole (inhabited) earth overspread." On these three races distinct destinies were pronounced, they receiving a moral and physical nature accordant to their several allotments. The office of extension was given to Japhet, that of religion to Shem, and servitude to Ham.
Ethnology, the science of nations, in its most recent and profound deductions, differs somewhat in detail, but the great conclusion is the same. The threefold branches radiate from a common stock, and in their growth from east to west, they mark the high road of universal progress, and adorn the stage on which the entire drama of ancient history has been performed. The prediction of Noah is the record of human destiny, and has been subjected to the severest test. Material vestiges of creation, and the earliest monuments of mind, alike place the origin of man in the central East. The people of the Brahmins come down from the Hindo-Khu into the plains of the Indus and the Ganges; Assyria and Bactriana receive their inhabitants from the high lands of Armenia and Persia. Those nations advance rapidly, and, in the remotest antiquity, attained a degree of culture of which the temples and monuments ofEgypt and India, together with the palaces of Nineveh, are glorious witnesses. As the basis of preliminary improvement, they rapidly developed to a degree, then movement was stayed, and thenceforth their stationary remains mark the oriental boundary of the historic race. Ethnology testifies that Ham peopled Egypt, and that the primary emigration thither from Asia may have been ante-Noachian. The native name of Egypt is Chami, the black; and this fact is symbolically represented by the name of its predestined ancestor, Cham, Shem's eldest brother, Japhet being the youngest of the three. When the comprehensive fortunes of the triple founders of our race were foretold, Shem was called the elder brother of Japhet, but not of Ham. Gen. x. 32—"By these were the nations divided after the flood." Thus the great middle country in western Asia is the central point of the general view. On the south, the race of Ham includes degenerate Egypt, and all the sombre African tribes beyond. In the north Caucasian regions, the race of Japhet spread widely; and in central Asia the race of Shem. These general positions have been proved by the ethnologists, Pritchard and Bunsen, and are confirmed by the most reliable archæologists, as well as by the leading physiologists of the world, Morton, Cuvier, and Blumenbach.
But we will pass to the third and most copious means of demonstration, philology. It is believed that a furious religious war, long anterior to the historic Shem, drove a large multitude of oriental inhabitants westward, and that these became the primary stratum of European humanity, afterward superseded by the Japhetic race, wherever the germs of true history took root. The names given by the Pelasgi to the chief mountains of Greece, as well as the name itself of that mysterious people, point to an emigration from India, whence a twofold stream of emigration seems to have flowed. We have alluded above to the one which, under the auspices of the semi-historic Shem, passed through Persia and northern Arabia into Egypt, and adjoined the unhistoric Ham. At a later period, whatever of excellence that transition realm developed passed into southern Greece. The other current, the grandest and most prolific of all, passed through Persia, along the Caspian sea, over mount Caucasus, and thence through Thrace direct to northern Greece. The productive tribes, at their first appearance on thehorizon, enter upon the prospective stage with the elements of language, and with this fundamental power eliminated for their use, they were formed into the social compact of progressive humanity.
The earliest inventors of the glorious art of writing deserve the most grateful regard. The search after them, and their several stages of discovery, tends to strengthen the view held by many, that the common chronology of history embraces too limited a period; and that hoary India, at an era anterior to human record, originated the first pictorial system and communicated it to the Chinese, whose records attribute their mode of writing to a foreign source. But the yellow races of the far East are destined to remain still in the dawn: the sun of civilization has never risen sufficiently high above them to give vital growth to any product they have either invented or received. But the old emigrants of Egypt soon reduced their pictorial language to rough hieroglyphic outlines, and then to signs yet more approximating sounds, which laid the foundation for European alphabets.
Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia, have left us no specimens of their writing, aside from the dubious carvings upon the lofty rocks of Asia. But this "handwriting upon the wall," so long ago interpreted by the prophet Daniel, is now laid open to general comprehension, through Layard and Rawlinson, as a most important link in the philological chain. It was indeed strange that when the Egyptians had broken down the thin partition which separated them from phonetic language, their last monuments should exhibit no nearer approach to it than the first. The cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria render the order of progression perfect, connecting the later achievements in literary research with the previous triumphs of Young and Champollion. We discover syllables at length; and if on the banks of the Nile, we found a full grown adult, but impotent and out of the way, we meet, on the banks of the Euphrates, with a vigorous child, yet imperfect certainly, but actually advancing, and in the right path. Leaving the cumbrous and astute paraphernalia of pictorial and symbolic characters, the speaking signs passed from the arrow-points of Assyria into the flexile and immortal worth of the Phœnician alphabet. As soon as this invention had been planted in a neighboring state, the alphabetic system was appropriated by the great leader of the Hebrews, when they returnedto the land of their fathers, and became neighbors to the Phœnicians. Certain modifications supervened, adapted to their political and religious institutions; but the original names of the signs which constitute the Hebrew alphabet, strikingly prove their derivation from a hieroglyphic system, and indicate clearly a pictorial origin. Moreover, the first allusion to writing in the books of Moses is to thetabletsof stone, "after the manner of a signet," by which we may understand engraved writing, like that of the Assyrian cylinders, or scales.
If the Shemitic tongues exhibit undeniable proof of their being derived from the western part of central Asia, the Indo-European languages present no less evidence of the gradual extension of these races from the eastern part. The Shemitic tribes never extended into Europe, except by temporary excursions. With the exception of Armenia, they have not lost ground in Asia, and have, from the beginning, penetrated into Africa, where no traces of Japhetic origin are discernible. Of Shem, the Arabic, Aramaic, and Hebrew are the three great monuments. Japhet nationalized the Sanscrit, Persian, and Greek, with all their descendants, the languages of beauty, power and progress everywhere.
In early Greece, a purely Egyptian element was planted by Cecrops, a native of Säis, in the Delta, but whether he was a native Copt does not appear. He migratedB.C.about 1550, and married a daughter of the Pelasgi, so it is not likely he introduced any of his own language. The same may be said of the colonist Danaus and his family, though he, as brother of the king Sesostris, was doubtless of unmingled Egyptian race. A much stronger element must be accounted for in the Phœnician immigration of Cadmus, and the constant intercourse kept up by that people with continental Greece. Crete should be regarded as the stepping-stone on the auspicious high way, the first amalgam wherein Egyptian, Pelasgic, and Phœnician civilization mingled, and, when properly blended, was transferred to the main land. Then came the purely Japhetic element, and gave tone and character to all. That great genius of Hellas, whose name has perished like that of the inventor of the plow, but who lives enshrined in the most intellectual of all monuments, worked upon this eastern element as he did upon every other capability submitted to his inventive and intellectualizingpower. He rendered the limited alphabet of Shem universal, eliminating the signs for harsh, guttural sounds, and by preserving those which were rejected, in the series of the numerals. The twenty-two letters of Shem became the twenty-four of Japhet, and thus, by their combined energies, a philosophical alphabet was produced, at once the aggregate of all Asiatic idioms, and the guaranty of all European culture. It was the receiver and transmitter of the most noble treasures ever garnered in the realms of intellect and emotion, a pure medium for the investigating faculty of the senses, as well as the mightiest weapon for the plastic and vitalizing power of imagination, the Greeks ever possessed, and which imperishable heritage they have left as the richest gift to coming generations.
During thrice ten centuries of the early world, the various oriental nations followed in their development an isolated course; and two vast peoples, the Chinese and Indians, have remained to this day in a totally sequestered state. They are in the same condition of immobility now, as at the beginning of the historical nations, that is to say, only six, or at most seven centuries before the Christian era. Still, India, with its philosophy and myths, its literature and laws, is worthy of special study, as it presents a page of the primitive annals of the world. But before the brilliant rays of the East streamed toward us from Hellenic sources, every thing seemed obscure—as to an explorer of the majestic tombs of Egypt, the farther he advances within, the more is he deserted by light. The first reliable guide we meet, is the art of writing; and this, so far from being an invention of recent times, reaches back to the most venerable antiquity. The only key to an understanding of the literature of Media and Persia, and in some respects of Greece, is furnished by the languages of India, and especially by that preserved in the hymns of the Veda, some of which ascend to the remote era ofB.C.2448. A claim to antiquity so great would appear incredible, were it not sustained beyond a doubt by the Assyrian remains recently exhumed. Like the region of its origin, Sanscrit literature is perfectly anomalous, and bears a striking resemblance to the extinct relics of that vast area over which it passed, to become the parent of all those dialects which in Europe are called classical.
Escaping from the mummified civilization of Egypt and the inflexible East, we strike more boldly into the high road of all improvement, and observe how rapidly power of every kind passes from Shem to the irresistible Japhet. The continuous stream of humanity moves clearly and with increased speed through a new and broader channel. As Shem was employed to introduce all religions on earth, so is he made to perform the most prominent part in the theological culture of mankind. But conscious speculation, elegant letters, and beautifying art all belong to the younger Japhet, whose heroes are Hellenes, and whose magnificent progeny are the myriad multitudes of the entire Indo-Germanic stock.
Thus, by the light of linguistic research, we descend from the exalted cradle of the human race to the prepared field of their first grand development. As we approximate the sphere wherein all faculties are free, and each element of excellence soars rapidly to its culminating height, a historical unity becomes manifest in language, wisdom, arts, sciences, and the most comprehensive civilization. These innumerable facts are no patch-work of incoherent fragments, no chance rivulets flowing in isolated beds, but tributaries to one uninterrupted current, correlative proofs of one and the same grand development. Language, the last struggle of the agonized age of Ham, the first triumph of the reason of Shem, was the magnificent medium perfected by Japhet, and through which, under the auspices of the Periclean age, universal man might see all his glories simultaneously revealed. Five hundred years before the Christian era, all nationalities east of Athens had perished; then and there, in consummate literature, we behold God's vanguard on earth. To the Hellenes, the beautiful of every type was revealed.
In fullness, exactness, flexibility and grace, the Greek language surpasses all other linguistic forms, and remains the first great masterpiece of the classic world. As we watch the growth of a tender exotic plant, gradually removed to a higher latitude, and at each stage of its matured beauty experience fresh joy, so the philologist watches the tender shoot of the first European tongue as it unfolds under the mild skies of Ionia, passes to the isles of the Ægean, and finally strikes its strong roots in fruitful Attica. In infancy, it was redolent with the fragrance of festive song; in maturity it scattered abroad priceless worth in every style of literature,art, science and philosophy; till at last, touched by the hand of despotism, its living beauty faded, but even in death, like Medora, is still invested with the lingering charms of youth.
Literature, as we design to use the term, embraces all those mental exertions which relate to man and his welfare; but which, in their most refined form, display intellect as embodied in written thought. The first great original was produced by the Greeks. It is true they received their alphabet and many imperfect elements from the Asiatic nations, but the perfected whole of a national literature was doubtless their own. The Shemite could even excel in the primitive strains of poetry, but the restrictive power of local attachments rendered him incapable of producing any more regular form. That vivid combination of lyric beauty and epic might, the drama, which constitutes a complete representation of national destinies, was entirely unknown to him. The "Song of Solomon," which best represents the mental character of that race, shows that however near the Hebrew mind in its zenith, might approach the higher forms of art, it could not go beyond the ode. Though the elements of all literature, art and science existed in the east, Sesostris of the old empire was obliged to borrow from Japhetic inventors, as Solomon and Hiram did.
The geographical position of Athens is worthy of notice. In the march of civilization from east to west, she stood nearly midway, and extended her open palm to receive and impart the physical and intellectual wealth of nations. Her people united the hardihood of the mountaineer with the elasticity of maritime tribes, and never had a country of such diversified physical qualities, elicited such varied excellences of mind. We look in vain for like effects among the colossal monarchies from which the colonists had been sifted, and are led in wonder to contrast the smallness of the country with the wealth of its products. Ranging from Olympus on the north, to Pænarus, her southern headland, Greece extended but two hundred and fifty miles; while two thirds of that distance would conduct the traveler from the temple of Minerva, on the eastern promontory of Sunium, to Leucadia her western extreme. But if the superfices of that area were insignificant, whereon the dragon teeth were sown, prolific of all inland fruitfulness, its coasts were rich in harbors, from one of which the Argonauts embarkedon their romantic voyage, followed in succeeding ages by numerous larger expeditions in successful search after golden gains. The small but glorious land of Hellas lay within the line of beauty, by which, from the first, the uncouth barbarian was separated from the graceful Greek. Coincident with the happy period of the political history of that land, all her mental glories occupy no greater space than the three centuries which intervened between Solon and Alexander, having Pericles for the culminating point.
It is necessary that the fullness of invention should precede the refinement of art, legend before history, and poetry before criticism. A long period of traditionary wealth existed between the Trojan war and the arts of peace, upon which the plastic spirit of Greece breathed an energizing originality and independence, creating the variety, beauty, and immortality of unrivaled works. The Hellenic race, children of the beautiful, became veritably a nation, in expressing the first great idea of earth, beauty. This entered into all the elements which composed their interior life, as well as outward expressions, and stamped upon all departments a distinct physiognomy. Uncounted millions had roamed the wilds of Africa and Asia, of whom history takes no account, because they matured no idea; but the true dawn of improvement began at length to appear, and representative individuals stood forth as the aggregate of anterior worth and progenitors of prospective glories. A great age was easily read in a few resplendent proper names.
Pericles was the exactest symbol of his age, his character its product, and his career its historian. His advent marked the close of a heroic period in the sudden meridian of fascinating civilization. For forty years he was the ruling genius of that glorious city which it was the ambition of his life to adorn for exhibition, and crown for command. Each individuality fashioned by Homer, expressed some distinct quality of heroic power, and thereby represents a separate class. Grace characterizes Nereus, dignity Agamemnon, impetuosity Hector, massiveness the unswerving prowess of the greater, and velocity the lesser Ajax; perseverance Ulysses, and intrepidity Diomede; but in Achilles alone, all these emanations of energy and elegance, mingle and are combined in one splendid whole. And so the susceptible intellect of Pericles precipitated the world of beauty held in suspense at the period of hisbirth, and laid every element under contribution to nourish his predilections, supply his resources, and consummate the multifarious splendors which forever glorify the culmination of his power. Democratic freedom had inspired lyric melody, epic grandeur, and dramatic force: that music of painting, and sculpture of poetry. Tragedy was exclusively created by the Athenian mind, and joined all the other great masterpieces of human excellence as they gathered in the order of perfection round the Parthenon. With the epos and drama came the harbingers of philosophical history, and historical philosophy. At the feet of Minerva, on the magnificent terrace of the Acropolis, as in the Portico, Lyceum, or Garden, the Japhetic thinker sat in masterly scrutiny over the greatest mystery, the mycrocosm man, and his eternal destiny. Dignified achievements had given rise to historic literature, ethical disquisition required elaborate rhetoric, political debate in the midst of inflamed parties necessitated persuasive speech, and Pericles arose the master of every art. Like the golden lamp, which the exquisite skill of Callimachus hung in the national temple, and which was fed once a year, the great Athenian saw kindled in his age a pharos of literary splendor which will be the genial guide and model of all masters so long as time shall last. Then did thought begin to throb and glow with ardent aspirations. Indian, Egyptian, and Persian works only attest man's power over the dullness of materialism; but Greece demonstrated his sovereignty over the might of intellect. The East was grand, impressive, awful; this fair metropolis of the West as infinitely better than all that, she was beautiful. In Athens was exhibited more than power, or genius coarse and unfettered by the instincts of elegant taste; her ornaments were pure, her magnificence serene. For grace, symmetry, and loveliness, we must look for the best models amongst that wonderful people who still remain in the great past, a centre of literary glory above all competition; from whose poets we derive our best ideas of the beautiful and sublime; from whose artists we copy the eternal rules of taste; and from whose orators we catch the high passions which most thrill the human breast. Such, in general terms, was the age when Pericles ruled in the first of cities, not by the degrading arms of mercenaries, but through the magical influence of genius and talent.
From this comprehensive survey, let us descend to a more specific notice of the superior luminaries in that great constellation, as each shines in his appropriate sphere. And first of all, let us contemplate the blind old minstrel we dreamed of in our childhood, who sang on his way six and twenty centuries ago, and his songs are echoing to the nations with unrivaled enchantment still.
Homer was the encyclopædia of civilization in his time. He fertilized antiquity to such an overflowing extent, that all the parent geniuses were recognized as his children, and the richest harvests ever garnered, were accredited to the seed he had sown. The epic of his creation, mirrored traditionary history in transparent song. The minute was depicted, the grand illuminated, and all the glorious world of heroic character and romantic scenery moved past the spectator in serene dignity and poetic splendor. The highest utterance was requisite to embody the intensest conceptions, and the Ionic dialect was exactly fitted to both. Language is the individual existence of a national spirit, the external reason, as reason is the internal speech; and the purest of idioms sprang perfected from the lips of Homer, as Minerva came completely armed from the brow of Jove. The hexameter therein assumed the freest and most forcible movement possible within the limits of law, and thenceforth epic composition ever remained Ionic in language, measure, and melody. Looking back upon the succeeding age, and its grateful enthusiasm, we need not wonder that a tyrant lived in the affection, and died under the benediction of Greece, for collecting the works of Homer in a volume, and his ashes in an urn.
The epic and cyclic poets were followed by lyrical writers, and the dramatists of Athens, who flourished cotemporaneously with all that is most admirable in the kindred productions of music, painting, sculpture, architecture, philosophy, and the civil forms of democratic life. Orpheus, Linus, Musæus, and others, the earliest poets of Greece, but of whom little is known, indicate the existence of a mass of poetic material extremely antique, which began to be reduced to writing as soon as the Dorians emerged from barbarism and the ignoble pursuits of war. When they awoke to national consciousness, they found themselves surrounded by an enchanted land, teeming everywhere with the fascination of heroic deeds done by heroic men, and the Cadmean Hesiod arose to garner therich harvest in his immortal songs. Subjected to the outer world, and attracted by all that was novel, beautiful, or sublime, the people listened to tales of deified heroes, whose devotion and wanderings filled a preceding age with renown, and their own bosoms with delight. It was thus that popular legends assumed by degrees an epic dignity, or by more flexile art were perfected into the beauty of festive airs. But into whatever mold the golden current was cast, the narrative remained clear, impassioned, varied, minute, as the taste of the age and eagerness of listening multitudes required. Thus Homer and Hesiod were as truly legislators and founders of national polity, as Moses and Zoroaster had been in their respective spheres.
The earliest patrons of literature, were the Peisistratidæ who endeavored to supply the general want of books, by inscribing the select passages on columns along the public streets. All that was most valuable and attainable, such as fragmentary laws, proverbial sentences of wise men, fables of Æsop, verses of Simonides, together with the lyric poets and tragedians of primitive times, Theognis and Solon, were collected in the library which they were the first to found. By the same conservative foresight, Homer was arranged in continuous form, and superseding the foregoing literary world, became the foundation and source of a better one already begun.
Archilochus, memorable as the inventor of Iambic verse; Terpander, celebrated for his exquisite talents as a musician; and Stersichorus, of whom a few beautiful fragments remain, bring us to the consideration of that more renowned trio, Sappho, Pindar and Anacreon. The latter was a voluptuary, whose luxurious pictures might please the sensual, but contained nothing beautiful or sublime.
Pindar was cotemporary with Æschylus, and senior to Bacchylides, Simonides of Ceos, Alcman, and Alcæus, all of whom he excelled in lyrical excellence. Corinna, his famous teacher, beat him five times in musical composition, the fair rival perhaps triumphing by personal charms, rather than through poetical superiority. But in the highest order of his art, Pindar was almost always declared supreme. He had a particular regard for Pan, and took up his abode contiguous to the temple of that deity, where he composedthe hymns which were sung by the Theban virgins in honor of that mystic emblem of universal nature. This Theban eagle, whose pride of place is still undisturbed in the Grecian heavens, dedicated his chief odes to the glory of the Olympic games, when the selectest aspirants of a mighty nation joined in the competition for prizes awarded there.
Sappho, it would seem, was endowed with a soul overflowing with acute sensitiveness, that glorious but dangerous gift. Her life, as indicated by the relics of her composition, was a current of perpetual fluctuation, like a troubled billow, now tossed to the stars, and anon buried in the darkest abyss. "To such beings," is the remark of Frederick Schlegel, "the urn of destiny assigns the loftiest or most degrading fate; close as is their inward union, they are, nevertheless, entirely divided, and even in their overflow of harmony, shattered and broken into countless fragments." Few relics of her harp remain, and these are borne down to us on the stream of time, imbued with the lofty tenderness of cureless melancholy. She was of that old Greek temper that wreathed the skeleton with flowers, and to her might be applied the legend which testifies that the nightingales of sweetest song were those whose nests were built nearest to the tomb of Orpheus. The early lyrics of Greece were productions full of wonders. They glowed with the hues of that orient of their origin, and where all forms appear in purple glory; each flower beams like a morning ray fastened to earth, and eagle thoughts soar to the sun on golden wings. Each style of national poetry grew gracefully and erect, like the palm-tree, with its rich yet symmetrical crown; and while in broad day it was fairest to the eye, even in gloom it bore nocturnal charms, as glow-worms illuminated the leaves, and birds of sweetest note perched on the boughs to sing.
Passing from the fervor of youth to the reflection of maturity, the epic muse retreated before the lyric. Plants of a richer foliage and more pungent perfume sprang up in the garden of poetry. Language more compressed and intense was required, and the Æolic and Doric became the appropriate organ of the latter, as the Ionic had been of the former style. In the Attic era, the partial excellence of earlier times became fully developed under the focal effulgence of universal rays; and, as the altar of Vesta united allthe citizens of the same town, the crowned champions in every department of letters gathered under "the eye of Greece," and paid tribute to the age of Pericles. Then each leading writer, called to conserve all antecedent worth, lived on the capital amassed by unskillful predecessors, and with innate facility wrought it into the continuous chain of human improvement. Not in the colossal and impracticable shapes which float in the mists of the hoary North, was this majestic style of literature produced; nor in the florid barbarism of the effete East and South, but with that profound feeling and piercing expression, elegant and forcible as an arrow from the bow of Ulysses, was it inspired with that lofty spirit of endeavor which leaps evermore towards the azure tent of the stars. If the car of the hero sometimes kindled its axle to a flame, as it neared the goal, his eye was yet undazzled, his hand faltered not on the curb, but the greater the momentum, the firmer was his grasp. So with the Greek poet, every thing was solid and refined, harmoniously fitted in the several parts, and superbly burnished as a whole. Though from the day of their becoming nationalized, the Greeks possessed vast stores of unwrought material, yet was nothing needlessly employed. They enhanced the value of their products by condensing their worth. What Corinna said to Pindar, who, in his youth, showed some inclination to extravagance, "That one must sow with the hand, not with a full sack," illustrates the national taste, and exemplifies a principle which pervades their entire literature. While always earnest, they never violate decorum, but in the greatest extremes of joy or grief, their heroes, like Polyxena, even in death, fall with dignity. It was most natural for the Greeks to symbolize imagination under the image of Pegasus, who bore reins as well as wings. The severity of their taste was yet further indicated by the legend that when borne by this power, Perseus with indecorous temerity flew too near Olympus, he was precipitated by the angry gods, though himself one of their sons.
The drama was the youngest and most perfect of Attic creations, and that great cycle of the arts which had an epic origin, naturally returned into itself by means of this. Tragedy was the purest elimination, and its progress may be easily traced. First, a whole populace assembled in some market-place the miscellaneous chorus, or dance; then the recreation was limited to men capable of bearingarms; and, finally, the people were separated into spectators and trained performers. The lyric hymn of Apollo blended with dithyrambic odes to Bacchus; the strophe was distinguished from the antistrophe, and the epode was added; the dialogue between choragoi and exarchi followed; and, finally, came the separation of the chorus into these speakers and the choreutæ, a distinction as important as the previous one into chorus and spectators. Thus were all the component parts of tragedy completed, before the Persian war, when every thing the Greeks did was great and fascinating, as if created by magic, and their dramatic compositions were the most beautiful of all.
The finest genius of a great era always turns toward the highest sphere for exercise, and thus preserves an equilibrium between popular taste and the direction of its talent. When lyrical poetry had transmigrated into choral song, and epic history merged into a dramatic plot and dialogue, the greatest of tragedians extant was appointed to consecrate the union and preserve its worth. Æschylus was born at Eleusis,B.C.525, about the time Phrynichus elevated the Thespian romance into dramatic personation, and his advent was opportune to impress upon this department of letters a deep and enduring stamp. With an ardent temperament, early exalted by the fervid strains of Homer, he imbibed, in maturity, the ambrosial influence of the above-named precursor, in company with his senior associate, Pindar, and with him wove thoughts to the lofty music of the dithyrambic ode. Passing through this order of excellence to a still higher range, in the same year Athenian valor lighted the flames of the Persian war at the conflagration of Sardis, the son of Euphorion produced his first tragedy. Pratinas and Chœrilus were for a season his competitors; but he soon distanced them all, and won the ivy chaplet, then first bestowed, instead of the goat and ox, as the most glorious literary crown.
At this period the structural skill of the Athenians had greatly improved, and as the celebrity of their drama increased, immense theatres arose on the hill-side, and were thronged by thousands, tier above tier, open to the wonders of expanding nature, embellished by the living sun. The Ægean on one hand, and vast mountains on the other, fanned by the breeze and relieved against brilliant skies, were harmonious features which nature accumulatedround the scene. The gigantic proportions of the theatre, and the mighty range of the audience, were fully equaled by the performance itself, when Themistocles felt honored in appearing as choragus, and through kindred interpreters Æschylus unfolded the mysteries of the thrilling plot. Advancing intellect demanded grand ideal personifications; and, to meet the cravings of an age which even the perfect epic could no longer satisfy, philosophy passed into poetry, and what Homer had done for more material thought, Æschylus achieved for mind. All the vague mysteries and symbolical ethics of the East were measurably purged from alloy, while their substance was melted into the tortured immortality of Prometheus, and bound to that mount of all literary beauty, the Acropolis.
As Æschylus expressed the race and period from which emerged Themistocles and Aristides, Sophocles was the correlative of Phidias, and the great Olympian who was the patron of them both. Indeed, from the majesty of his mien, and the symmetrical grandeur of his genius, he was called the Pericles of poetry. Supreme power lurked in his repose, and his thunders startled all the more because they broke upon the multitude from cloudless skies.
Of all the great originals at Athens, the drama was the most indigenous, and under the culture of Sophocles perfected its growth. Imagination had fulmined with broader and brighter flashes on the preceding generation; but the works of his hand, though equally fresh from the fountains of nature, were more imbued with reason, and the solidity of manly strength. The age of Pericles was peculiarly the age of art; and Sophocles was but one of many who, to excel in his own department, mastered every cognate secret of wisdom or beauty, and brought all into subordination to his own absorbing design. He lived at a time when the trophies of Miltiades, the ambition of Alcibiades, the extravagance of Cimon, and the taste of Pericles, not less than the science and art, erudition and enthusiasm, philosophy and eloquence, diffused through all classes of the general populace, rendered the Athenians at once the most competent to appreciate, and the most difficult to please. Recondite disquisition was a pastime, the Agora itself but a genial academe; so elevated and yet so delicate were the soul and sensibilities of the excited mass, that the wisest of theirsages was justified in asserting that the common people were the most accurate judges of whatever was graceful, harmonious, or sublime.
In the growth of a flower there is continued development, visibly marked by successive mutations, but indivisibly connected from beginning to end. Simultaneous with complete maturity glows the instant of consummate bloom, the highest point of fullness, fragrance, and fascination. That splendid culmination in the progressive refinement which adorned and made fruitful the garden of Greece, was signalized by the faultless forms and transparent language left us by Sophocles. The lucid beauty of his works was the chosen mirror of Athens, to reflect internal harmony, and the greatest beauty of soul. The dazzling glories of Greece in general, and of Athens in particular, imbued the great writers with corresponding ideas of the greatness of human nature, which they endeavored to represent in its struggles with fate and the gods. In the Prometheus of Æschylus especially, the wilderness and other natural horrors are made to relieve the statuesque severity of the scene, and are employed, like the chains and wedge, as instruments by which Jupiter seeks to intimidate the benefactor of mankind. But in such delineations as Edipus at Colonus, Ajax, and Philoctetes, Sophocles, in his glorious art, showed a great advancement beyond his predecessors, by intermingling the emotions of human love, and causing the more cheerful sentiments, inspired by lovelier natural scenes, to become important elements, not merely in the imaginative adornment, but also in the dramatic plan. If the Ionic epic was a tranquil lake, mirroring a serene sky in its bosom, and transfiguring diversified charms along its smiling shores; the Attic drama became a mighty stream which calmly yet resistlessly courses within its stedfast banks, is impeded by no obstacle, diverted by no attraction, salutes with equal dignity the sunny mead and gloomy mountain shadow, and, after a majestic sweep from its far-off source, mingles its strength at last in the omnipotence of the sea. Thus the highest wealth of refined poetry was preserved in the pure casket of the richest tongue, and the Attic drama was left to man as the masterpiece of linguistic art. Sophocles, like the fabled Theban, seems to have built up his elegant fabric with the charms of music; and if Æschylus first elevated tragedy to heroic dignity, he softened itsrugged strength into harmonious sweetness, and stamped upon the precious treasure the signet of immortal worth.
Euripides, like his predecessors, was a proficient in a great variety of arts, but neither sublime in conception, nor severe in style, as Æschylus and Sophocles had been. But his spirit teemed with splendid and amiable qualities, whose captivating power was highly relished by the age it came to decorate and complete. The energetic dignity of the first great master, and the chaste sweetness of his still greater rival, had passed; now appeared one who was indeed worthy of much admiration, but the least divine of the noble triad, whose natural course declined from the elevated cothurnus toward level ground.
When Euripides clothed Pentheus in female dress, and exhibited Hercules as a glutton, he showed himself to be the precursor of comedy, that first symptom of literary decline, and thus won the praise of Menander, as he deserved the lash of Aristophanes. The latter, who was his cotemporary, unceasingly castigated his effeminate prettiness, but never attacked the manly elegance of Sophocles, or the gigantic vigor of Æschylus. Agathon, with others of some note, continued for a season to write for the stage; but in Euripides the forcible and refined tragedy of Greece came to an end. As the nine Muses wept at the funeral of Achilles, so grieved the nations at that mighty fall.
There was the wisdom of a deep moral in that Athenian law, which interdicted a judge of the Areopagus from writing a comedy. Until a grosser age supervened, the Greeks were not inclined to scrutinize the ludicrous side of things. The goddess of the Iliad, who warded off the dart from her favorite, was an apt symbol of the Genius of Civilization, throned on the Acropolis, where Beauty, mother of Excellence, threw down her mantle and intercepted the arrows of every foe. Greek farce was often insolent, but never utterly vicious. While Aristophanes portrayed the foibles of town-life with a caustic hand, he ceased not to keep in view a healthful suburb of gardens in redeeming bloom. As Minerva, with precious elixir, concealed the wrinkles of Ulysses, the age of Pericles performed well its mission of investing every thing venerable and instructive with the most elaborate charms.
All the gentler shapes of fancy that, in the preparatory time,bloomed in the lyrics of Greece, were only flowers unfolding round the aspiring trunk of tragedy, attracted by its superior strength, and sheltered by the majesty of its shade. Æschylus, however triumphant in the field of martial prowess one day, was the next not less ambitious of poetic garlands at the Olympic games. And Thebes was not more gloriously embalmed in the melody of Pindar, than was Colonos through the art of Sophocles, as her melodious thrush in his verse enjoys a perpetual May.
A marked peculiarity of Greek civilization consists in the fact that literature there led all excellence, illustrated and sustained by the harmonious accompaniment of the sister arts. In the East, each work, whatever its kind, stood imperfect and independent of all beside. But in the best age of the best works in the first literary metropolis of the West, it would be nearly, if not quite, impossible to point out a single production that did not refer to the written book, thus furnishing the means of just appreciation, by a comparison with the particular myth or action it was designed to personate. What the writer expressed in words, the correlative artist chanted, painted, sculptured, or built in more material, but not less beautiful forms. The drama most impressively exemplified this fact, using words as a poet, but adding the simultaneous commentary of melody, statuesque motion, pictorial resemblance, and architectural grandeur. This was the absorption of the lyric, the personation of the epic, and the consummation of transcendant dramatic art.
Athens was the inventress of learning, and the first great foundation of republican law. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the emblem of intellectual power, or like the path of lightning through murky air, at each actual advance humanity may seem to recede, but every such retrogressive movement really accumulates force to carry itself in advance. True, patriotism loves its object to such a degree, that it is ready to incur any sacrifice in favor of those it would benefit, but ceases to be a virtue when it selfishly reclines enamored of its own visage. Narcissus was not the type of national benefactors, but the great law-givers of Sparta and Athens were, when they traveled far, and at great hazards, to gather knowledge for the education of their countrymen.
The illustrious son of Eumonius was the great law-giver of the Doric race, whose institutions have excited much curiosity, but which are involved in an obscurity too dense to be easily removed. He was one of the very few great spirits of Sparta, and like his co-patriot Leonidas, passed through a dubious path from an obscure birth to everlasting fame. In the light of history, the whole life of the latter, especially, lies in a single action, and we can learn nothing authentic of him until the last few days of his career. In the annals of renown, only one proud page is dedicated to the memory of such men, and that contains nothing but an epitaph.
Solon, on the contrary, stands out clearly in the effulgence which under more auspicious influences poured on Attica. He was the second and more successful law-giver of his race, and also stood pre-eminent among the sages of his land. Success first attended him in poetry, and it was the opinion of Plato, that if he had elaborated his compositions with maturer care, they would have equaled the most celebrated productions of the ancients. But the prospective good of nations required him to apply the great endowments he possessed to moral and political purposes; and, according to Plutarch, "he cultivated chiefly that part of philosophy which treats of civil obligations." He pursued commerce, traveled widely, and, in patient research, accumulated those stores of observation and erudition which rendered him an honor to Athens, and a great benefactor to mankind.
History, properly so called, originated with the Greeks, and in natural clearness and vivacity, portraiture of diversified incidents and profound observation of man, eminent success was first by that people attained. The great coryphæus in the prosaic chorus, Herodotus, has been compared to Homer, on account of his manifold charms and transparency of narrative. The depth and comprehensiveness of his knowledge, inquiries, attainments, and commentaries on antiquities in general, excite in competent judges the profoundest astonishment. He is called the father of history, as he was the first to pass from the mere traditions which furnished themes to the poets, and gave dignity to didactic prose as an independent branch of literature.
Human reason is progressive chiefly by virtue of remembrance and language; hence were the Muses beautifully represented as beingthe daughters of Memory, the only power through which, in the infancy of letters, the harvests of thought could be garnered and preserved. The first national annals were cast under the patronage of the fair Nine, but the Muses of the great Dorian turned to the Ionic dialect as their most fitting vernacular. The civilization of Greece was the first that was unfolded by a natural growth, and its crowning bloom appeared only when every other portion of the wondrous plant had become perfectly matured. It awoke like a joyous infant, under the fairest heavens, and was nourished by all beautifying and ennobling influences. Its life was led apart from exhausting drudgery and effeminate ease, among fair festivals and solemn assemblies, full of healthful exhilaration, innocent curiosity, and confiding faith. Pindar preferred the Doric dialect to his native Æolic, in which many had sung. Like the other leaders of his race, he imitated his predecessors in nothing, but by inventing; he employed the form demanded by the nature of his art, and chose the language with certainty and care, which refused submission to the yoke of authority. The principle, that in each realm of art, whatever is accidental should be excluded, was thoroughly recognized in Greece, where even what fell in by accident, as the chorus of the drama, soon became entirely fused into the chief parts of the action, like an organic member of the whole. The singer of the Iliad was born under the sky of Ionia, and he molded his native dialect forever to epic poetry. The thoughtful Herodotus preferred the same language to the Doric, his native tongue, and employed the Ionic, which was just then putting forth its fairest buds of promise. Thus, the epos of history was twin-born with the epos of poetry. The wanderings of Ulysses, the Argonauts, and primitive heroes, embrace the whole extent of the then known or imagined world, the various manners, countries, and cities included. All these the great annalist works into the rich and variegated picture, which, like a moving panorama, he unfolds to the enraptured gaze. Minuteness, likeness, and strength were requisite as the medium of expression, and not in the old Doric, but in the new Ionic, were these found happily combined. Hence, in historical writing with the Greeks, as in every other department of art, we see that wonderful concord between the substance and the form,that harmony of inward and outward music, which is the first and most indispensable condition of beauty.
Up to this period, history had been composed expressly for recital at the national games, and was couched in a rhetorical transition from the preceding poetical form. The minstrel of the Homeric banquet became the eulogist of his countrymen before applauding thousands at Olympia; but now arose another master who foresaw that his work would survive the forms of society then existing, and he aimed not so much for a transient hearing, as to be perpetually read. The Attic Thucydides had listened to Herodotus in the great presence of the nation, and became inspired with an enthusiasm which bore him to the height of superior excellence. He was cotemporary with Socrates, and under Anaxagoras and Antiphon, matured that compressed eloquence which was to commemorate an age then dawning full of stirring incident. He renounced the episodic movement common to his great predecessor, and instead of supplying a pastime for the present, aspired to portray universal man, and inculcate profound lessons respecting the Providence that rules the world.
Thucydides perfected that form of historical writing which is peculiarly Greek, and was succeeded by Xenophon, whose third remove was clearly beyond the culminating point. Polybius developed the idea of universal disquisition, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was honored as the first of historic critics; but after the fall of freedom, there was little worthy for one either to portray or appreciate.
It was in the day of Themistocles especially, the Greeks appear to have been sensible that they were instruments in the hands of destiny, and that their greatness was greatly to sway the generations of all coming time. This national consciousness, increasingly intensified in description and illustration, is strongly impressed on the sententious pages of Thucydides. The theme of Herodotus was a particular war, the Persian, and he treated it as an epical artist. But his acuter successor added philosophical composition to the densest power of combination, and was the first to attempt the analysis and portraiture of character. Thus, as in every other literary walk, the march of historical excellence became most extended and regular at the mighty heart of intelligence; on the spotwhere its origin was indigenous, its perfection was most splendidly evolved.
Though fortune for the moment gave the Spartan, Eurybiades, the nominal command at Salamis, genius predestined the Athenian, Themistocles, to actual pre-eminence over his age, that he might command the remotest sequences of events. Certainly he was the greatest of his own age, and was not soon surpassed. Pisistratus, Cimon, Aristides, and Pericles, were of noble birth; but Themistocles was the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rose from the humblest ranks, but none the less ennobled himself, while he elevated the common fortunes in his own ascent. His genius alone was the architect of all his grandeur, and drew from Diodorus the exclamation, "What other man could, in the same time, have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head of Greece, himself at the head of Athens? In the most illustrious age the most illustrious man."
But the age of warlike glory ended with the occasion for its use, and an appropriate link was required between the ostentation of Themistocles and the intellectual sovereignty of Pericles. This was supplied in Cimon, who fostered popular spectacles, and invested them with increased magnificence; built the Theseion, embellished the public buildings before extant, and originated those classic colonnades, beneath which, sheltered from sun or rain, the inquisitive citizens were accustomed to hold civil, literary, or artistic debate. The Agora, adorned with oriental planes; and the palm-groves of Academe, the immortal school of Plato, were his work. His hand formed the secluded walks, fashioned the foliaged alcoves, adorned each nook with its relevant bust or statue, and poured through the green retreats the melodious waters of the Ilissus, in sparkling fountains, or eddying pools, to rest the weary, and exhilarate the sad. Thus he more fully realized the social policy, commenced by Pisistratus, who was the first to elicit diversified talents from the recesses of private life, with the intention of causing all to merge into one animated, multifarious, and invincible public life. The works now written, and the sublime creations of art at this time multiplied, were the first foundation of culture for the futurity of the human mind. It was an age that gave to the world what can nowhere else be obtained. The priceless legacy was producedby that wonderful people during the brief period of freedom and undiminished greatness, when their literature was made to fulmine on the capacities of man, and reflect the brightest glory on the principles of democratic polity.
Pericles was not less ambitious to aggrandize Athens, than were his more martial or plebeian precursors; but he well understood the destiny of his race, and knew on what surer foundations to build than aristocratic or regal titles, which, if he had the power to possess, he always affected to despise. The wider extension of national domain was to yield to the loftier cultivation of the national mind. Obedient to his behest, and in harmony with the popular will, all superior proficients gathered round the Acropolis, a spot too sacred for human habitations, and, by their united labors, soon rendered it the central glory of "a city of the gods."
In his youth, Pericles had known Pindar and Empedocles. He had seen the prison of Miltiades, and turned from a music lesson to gaze after Aristides driven into exile. Æschylus he early loved, and exercised maturer thought with Sophocles, in debates on eloquence. By Euripides had he been instructed in ethical philosophy; and Protagorus and Democritus, Anaxagoras and Meton, did he question as to the best rules of state polity. Herodotus and Thucydides initiated him into history. Acron and Hippocrates imbued him with a beneficent philosophy; Ictinus built to his order, the Parthenon, worthy of Polygnotus to paint; while Phidias set up under the same auspices the tutelary deity of the land, in ivory and gold. Thus trained among a people susceptible and fastidious, that had itself become a Pericles, competent to appreciate, in every department the high excellence they inspired and recompensed, he was the first to mirror to themselves fully, the exalted models after which universal poetry prompted them to aspire. Themistocles had led them to deeds of daring and enterprise, but the adroit son of Xanthippus soon eclipsed every competitor, even that mighty Cimon, whose extraordinary qualities had prepared the way for his supremacy.
The grave aspect of Pericles, his composed gait, the decorous arrangement of his robe, and the subdued modulation of his voice, are dwelt upon by his eulogists, just as if his posthumous statue had been the subject of their comments. It was this close andconstant attention to the inner spirit and external expression of all thought, art, and manners, that distinguished the memorable period when the grand style characterized every thing. To use the words of Plutarch: "Pericles gave to the study of philosophy the color of rhetoric. The most brilliant imagination seconded all the powers of logic. Sometimes he thundered with vehemence, and set all Greece in flames; at other times the goddess of persuasion, with all her allurements, dwelt upon his tongue, and no one could defend himself from the solidity of his argument, and the sweetness of his discourse."
This was the era of great orators, such as Lysias, Eschines, and Isocrates. Like the shout of Stentor, rousing the prowess of comrades, who, single-handed, rushed upon embattled armies, clad in iron, so awoke mighty eloquence, which shook impassioned democracies, annihilated tyrannies, and fostered all ennobling arts. But the age of criticism came after the age of invention; Aristotle after Sophocles, Longinus after Homer, the Sophists after Pericles. Demosthenes was the last great writer whose works were addressed to the Greeks as a nation. His was the genius of industry, always luminous and constantly at work; like that Indian bird which could not only enjoy the sunshine all day, but secured no ignoble resemblance at night, by hanging glow-worms on the boughs about its nest. Demosthenes was a great orator, and nothing more. He represented a period of civilization which had passed, and therefore his downfall was inevitable. So long as the democratic spirit pervaded the masses he performed prodigies in the tribune; but when the empire of beauty was about to be displaced by the empire of force, he ran away at Cherronea, and without dignity. The eloquence of a great nation, expressed in Pericles, was succeeded by the Phillipics of a great partizan, and when this was silenced, the age of its origin had closed.
Pericles was the first to commit his speeches to writing before they were delivered; and, in his pride of universal accomplishment, he signalized the zenith of his country's glory and its decline. In all the progress of Greece up to the splendor of her culmination, originality was sought and exemplified only in some one grand pursuit. The epic bard was not ambitious of rending the ivy destined to adorn the brows of lyric poets; nor did the master oftragedy, with unlaced buskin, stride carelessly over Thalia's stage, to lay irreverent hands on Homer's harp. The historian, studious in private to portray the annals of his country, came not to the Agora to contest honors with the public orator; nor did the latter, with foolish ambition, endeavor to excel the sages who, in the Portico, at the Lyceum, or under plane-trees on the banks of the Ilissus, explained the problems of the universe; but each one made some exalted endeavor the speciality of his life, on it concentrated all the rays of his intellect, and scorned no measure of time or toil requisite to insure absolute perfection in his work. Thoughts so elaborated became never setting stars, to cheer the world, and point unerringly through the cycles of a corrupt taste to ideal excellence. As each growth, minute or majestic, was equally perfect of its kind, though differenced by peculiarity of form and tints, the whole was charmingly blended in that wreath of consummate beauty, which, in the age of Pericles, Greece hung round the constitution of the state, high on the central shrine of the most magnificent temple of her gods.