A plague like this, a tempest big with fate, Once ravaged Athens and her sad domains; Unpeopled all the city, and her paths Swept with destruction. For amid the realms Begot of Egypt, many a mighty tract Of ether traversed, many a flood o'erpassed, At length here fixed it; o'er the hapless realm Of Cecrops hovering, and the astonished race Dooming by thousands to disease and death.

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Thus seized the dread, unmitigated pest Man after man, and day succeeding day, With taint voracious; like the herds they fell Of bellowing beeves, or flocks of timorous sheep: On funeral, funeral hence forever piled. E'en he who fled the afflicted, urged by love Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate, Repented soon severely, and himself Sunk in his guilty solitude, devoid Of friends, of succor, hopeless and forlorn; While those who nursed them, to the pious task Roused by their prayers, with piteous moans commixt, Fell irretrievable: the best by far, The worthiest, thus most frequent met their doom. —Trans. by J. MASON GOOD.

THE DEATH OF PERICLES.

Oppressed by both war and pestilence, the Athenians were seized with rage and despair, and accused Pericles of being the author of their misfortunes. But that determined man still adhered to his plans, and endeavored to soothe the popular mind by an expedition against Peloponnesus, which he commanded in person. After committing devastations upon various parts of the enemy's coasts, Pericles returned to find the people still more impatient of the war and clamorous for peace. An embassy was sent to Sparta with proposals for a cessation of hostilities, but it was dismissed without a hearing. This repulse increased the popular exasperation, and, although at an assembly that he called for the purpose Pericles succeeded, by his power of speech, in quieting the people, and convincing them of the justice and patriotism of his course, his political enemies charged him with peculation, of which he was convicted, and his nomination as general was cancelled. He retired to private life, but his successors in office were incompetent and irresolute, and it was not long before he was re-elected general. He appeared to recover his ascendancy; but in the middle of the third year of the war he died, a victim to the plague.

He perished, but his wreath was won; He perished in his height of fame: Then sunk the cloud on Athens' sun, Yet still she conquered in his name. Filled with his soul, she could not die; Her conquest was Posterity! —CROLY.

Thucydides relates that when Pericles was near his end, and apparently insensible, the friends who had gathered round his bed relieved their sorrow by recalling the remembrance of his military exploits, and of the trophies which he had raised. He interrupted them, observing that they had omitted the most glorious praise which he could claim: "Other generals have been as fortunate, but I have never caused the Athenians to put on mourning"— referring, doubtless, to his success in achieving important advantages with but little loss of life; and which THIRLWALL considers "a singular ground of satisfaction, if Pericles had been conscious of having involved his country in the bloodiest war it had ever waged."

The success of Pericles in retaining, for so many years, his great influence over the Athenian people, must be attributed, in large part, to his wonderful powers of persuasion. Cicero is said to have regarded him as the first example of an almost perfect orator; and Bulwer says that "the diction of his speeches, and that consecutive logic which preparation alone can impart to language, became irresistible to a people that had itself become a Pericles." Whatever may be said of Pericles as a politician, his intellectual superiority cannot be questioned. As the accomplished man of genius, and the liberal patron of literature and art, he is worthy of the highest admiration; for "by these qualities he has justly given name to the most brilliant intellectual epoch that the world has ever seen." The following extract from MITFORD'S History of Greece, may be considered a correct sketch of the great democratic ruler:

The Character of Pericles.

"No other man seems to have been held in so high estimation by most of the ablest writers of Greece and Rome, for universal superiority of talents, as Pericles. The accounts remaining of his actions hardly support his renown, which was yet, perhaps, more fairly earned than that of many, the merit of whose achievements has been, in a great degree, due to others acting under them, whose very names have perished. The philosophy of Pericles taught him not to be vain-glorious, but to rest his fame upon essentially great and good rather than upon brilliant actions. It is observed by Plutarch that, often as he commanded the Athenian forces, he never was defeated; yet, though he won many trophies, he never gained a splendid victory. A battle, according to a great modern authority, is the resource of ignorant generals; when they know not what to do they fight a battle. It was almost universally the resource of the age of Pericles; little conception was entertained of military operations beyond ravage and a battle. His genius led him to a superior system, which the wealth of his country enabled him to carry into practice. His favorite maxim was to spare the lives of his soldiers; and scarcely any general ever gained so many important advantages with so little bloodshed.

"This splendid character, however, perhaps may seem to receive some tarnish from the political conduct of Pericles; the concurrence, at least, which is imputed to him, in depraving the Athenian Constitution, to favor that popular power by which he ruled, and the revival and confirmation of that pernicious hostility between the democratical and aristocratical interests, first in Athens and then by the Peloponnesian war throughout the nation. But the high respect with which he is always spoken of by three men in successive ages, Thucydides, Xenophon, and Isoc'rates, all friendly to the aristocratical interest, and all anxious for concord with Lacedaemon, strongly indicates that what may appear exceptionable in his conduct was, in their opinion, the result, not of choice, but of necessity. By no other conduct, probably, could the independence of Athens have been preserved; and yet that, as the event showed, was indispensable for the liberty of Greece."

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II. THE ATHENIAN DEMAGOGUES.

Soon after the death of Pericles the results of the political changes introduced by him, as well as of the moral and social changes that had taken place in the people from various causes, became apparent in the raising to power of men from the lower walks of life, whose popularity was achieved and maintained mainly by intrigue and flattery. Chief among these rose Cle'on, a tanner, who has been characterized as "the violent demagogue whose arrogant presumption so unworthily succeeded the enlightened magnanimity of Pericles." In the year 428 Mityle'ne, the capital of the Island of Lesbos, revolted against the supremacy of Athens, but was speedily reduced to subjection, and one thousand or more Mityleneans were sent as prisoners to Athens, to be disposed of as the Athenian assembly should direct. Cleon first prominently appears in public in connection with the disposal of these prisoners. With the capacity to transact business in a popular manner, and possessing a stentorian voice and unbounded audacity, he had become "by far the most persuasive speaker in the eyes of the people;" and now, taking the lead in the assembly debate, he succeeded in having the unfortunate prisoners cruelly put to death. From this period his influence steadily increased, and in the year 425 he was elected commander of the Athenian forces. For several years circumstances favored him. With the aid of his general, Demosthenes, he captured Py'lus from the Spartans, and on his return to Athens he was received with demonstrations of great favor; but his military incompetence lost him both the victory and his life in the battle of Amphip'olis, 422 B.C.

What we know of the political conduct of Cleon comes from measurably unreliable sources. Aristoph'anes, the chief of the comic poets, describes him as "a noisy brawler, loud in his criminations, violent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles, a persecutor of rank and merit, and a base flatterer and sycophant of the people." Thucydides also calls him "a dishonest politician, a wrongful accuser of others, and the most violent of all the citizens." Both these writers, however, had personal grievances. Of course Cleon very naturally became a target for the invective of the poet. "The taking of Pylus," says GILLIES, "and the triumphant return of Cleon, a notorious coward transformed by caprice and accident into a brave and successful commander, were topics well suiting the comic vein of Aristophanes; and in the comedy first represented in the seventh year of the war—The Knights—he attacks him in the moment of victory, when fortune had rendered him the idol of a licentious multitude, when no comedian was so daring as to play his character, and no painter so bold as to design his mask." The poet himself, therefore, appeared on the stage, "only disguising his face, the better to represent the part of Cleon." As another writer has said, "Of all the productions of Aristophanes, so replete with comic genius throughout, The Knights is the most consummate and irresistible; and it presents a portrait of Cleon drawn in colors broad and glaring, most impressive to the imagination, and hardly effaceable from the memory." The following extract from the play will show the license indulged in on the stage in democratic Athens, the boldness of the poet's attacks, and will serve, also, as a sample of his style:

Cleon the Demagogue.

The chorus come upon the stage; and thus commence their attack upon Cleon:

Chorus. Close around him, and confound him, the confounder of us all; Pelt him, pummel him, and maul him; rummage, ransack, overhaul him; Overbear him and outbawl him; bear him down, and bring him under. Bellow, like a burst of thunder, robber! harpy! sink of plunder! Rogue and villain! rogue and cheat! rogue and villain, I repeat! Oftener than I can repeat it has the rogue and villain cheated. Close around him, left and right; spit upon him, spurn and smite: Spit upon him as you see; spurn and spit at him like me. But beware, or he'll evade you! for he knows the private track Where En'crates was seen escaping with his mill-dust on his back.

Cleon. Worthy veterans of the jury, you that, either right or wrong, With my threepenny provision I've maintained and cherished long, Come to my aid! I'm here waylaid—assassinated and betrayed"!

Chorus. Rightly served! we serve you rightly, for your hungry love of pelf; For your gross and greedy rapine, gormandizing by yourself— You that, ere the figs are gathered, pilfer with a privy twitch Fat delinquents and defaulters, pulpy, luscious, plump, and rich; Pinching, fingering, and pulling—tempering, selecting, culling; With a nice survey discerning which are green and which are turning, Which are ripe for accusation, forfeiture, and confiscation. Him, besides, the wealthy man, retired upon an easy rent, Hating and avoiding party, noble-minded, indolent, Fearful of official snares; intrigues, and intricate affairs— Him you mark; you fix and hook him, while he's gaping unawares; At a fling, at once you bring him hither from the Chersonese; Down you cast him, roast and baste him, and devour him at your ease.

Cleon. Yes; assault, insult, abuse me! This is the return I find For the noble testimony, the memorial I designed: Meaning to propose proposals for a monument of stone, On the which your late achievements should be carved and neatly done.

Chorus. Out, away with him! the slave! the pompous, empty, fawning knave! Does he think with idle speeches to delude and cheat us all, As he does the doting elders that attend his daily call? Pelt him here, and bang him there; and here, and there, and everywhere.

Cleon. Save me, neighbors! Oh, the monsters! Oh, my side, my back, my breast!

Chorus. What! you're forced to call for help? you brutal, overpowering pest!

[Clean is pelted off the stage, pursued by the Chorus.]

THE PEACE OF NI'CI-AS.

The struggle between Sparta and Athens continued ten years without intermission, and without any successes of a decisive character on either side. In the eleventh year of the struggle (421 B.C.) a treaty for a term of fifty years was concluded—called the Peace of Nicias, in honor of the Athenian general of that name —by which the towns captured during the war were to be restored, and both Athens and Sparta placed in much the same state as when hostilities commenced. But this proved to be a hollow truce; for the war was a virtual triumph for Athens—and interest, inclination, and the ambitious views of her party leaders were not long in finding plausible pretexts for renewing the struggle. Again, the Boeotian, Megarian, and Corinthian allies of Sparta refused to carry out the terms of the treaty by making the required surrenders, and Sparta had no power to compel them, while Athens would accept no less than she had bargained for.

The Athenian general Nicias, through whose influence the Fifty Years' Truce had been concluded, endeavored to carry out its terms; but through the artifices of Alcibi'ades, a nephew of Pericles, a wealthy Athenian, and an artful demagogue, the treaty was soon dishonored on the part of Athens. Alcibi'ades also managed to involve the Spartans in a war with their recent allies, the Ar'gives, during which was fought the battle of Mantine'a, 418 B.C., in which the Spartans were victorious; and he induced the Athenians to send an armament against the Dorian island of Me'los, which had provoked the enmity of Athens by its attachment to Sparta, and which was compelled, after a vigorous siege, to surrender at discretion. Meanwhile the feeble resistance of Sparta, and her apparent timidity, encouraged Athens to resume a project of aggrandizement which she had once before undertaken, but had been obliged to relinquish. This was no less than the virtual conquest of Sicily, whose important cities, under the leadership of Syracuse, had some years before joined the Peloponnesian confederacy.

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III. THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION.

Although opposed by Nicias, Socrates, and a few of the wiser heads at Athens, the counsels of Alcibiades prevailed, and, after three months of great preparation, an expedition sailed from Athens for Sicily, under the plea of delivering the town of Eges'ta from the tyranny of Syracuse (415 B.C.). The armament fitted out on this occasion, the most powerful that had ever left a Grecian port, was intrusted to the joint command of Alcibiades, Nicias, and Lam'achus. The expedition captured the city of Cat'ana, which was made the headquarters of the armament; but here Alcibiades was summoned to Athens on the absurd charge of impiety and sacrilege, connected with the mutilation of the statues of the god Her'mes, that had taken place just before he left Athens. He was also charged with having profaned the Eleusinian mysteries by giving a representation of them in his own house. Fearing to trust himself to the giddy multitude in a trial for life, Alcibiades at once threw himself upon the generosity of his open enemies, and sought refuge at Sparta. When, soon after, he heard that the Athenians had condemned him to death, he answered, "I will show them that I am still alive."

By the death of Lamachus, Nicias was soon after left in sole command of the Athenians. He succeeded in landing near Syracuse and defeating the Syracusans in a well-fought engagement; but he wasted his time in fortifying his camp, and in useless negotiations, until his enemies, having received aid from Corinth and Sparta, under the Spartan general Gylip'pus, were able to bid him defiance. Although new forces were sent from Athens, under the Athenian general Demosthenes, the Athenians were defeated in several engagements, and their entire force was nearly destroyed (413 B.C.). "Never, in Grecian history," says THUCYDIDES, "had ruin so complete and sweeping, or victory so glorious and unexpected, been witnessed." Both Nicias and Demosthenes were captured and put to death, and the Syracusans also captured seven thousand prisoners and sold them as slaves. Some of the latter, however, are said to have received milder treatment than the others, owing, it is supposed, to their familiarity with the works of the then popular poet, Eurip'ides, which in Sicily, historians tell us, were more celebrated than known. It is to this incident, probably, that reference is made by BYRON in the following lines:

When Athens' armies fell at Syracuse, And fettered thousands bore the yoke of war, Redemption rose up in the Attic Muse— Her voice their only ransom from afar. See! as they chant the tragic hymn, the car Of the o'ermastered victor stops; the reins Fall from his hands—his idle scimitar Starts from its belt—he rends his captive's chains, And bids him thank the bard for freedom and his strains. —Childe Harold, IV., 16.

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IV. THE SECOND PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

The aid which Gylippus had rendered the Syracusans now brought Sparta and Athens in direct conflict. The result of the Athenian expedition was the greatest calamity that had befallen Athens, and the city was filled with affliction and dismay. The Spartans made frequent forays into Attica, and Athens was almost in a state of siege, while several of her allies, instigated by Alcibiades, who was active in the Spartan councils, revolted and joined the Spartans. It was not long, however, before Athens regained her wonted determination and began to repair her wasted energies. Samos still remained faithful to her interests, and, with her help, a new flee was built, with which Lesbos was recovered, and a victory was obtained over the Peloponnesians at Miletus. Soon after this defeat Alcibiades, who had forfeited the confidence of the Spartans by his conduct, was denounced as a traitor and condemned to death. He escaped to the court of Tissapher'nes, the most powerful Persian satrap in Asia Minor. By his intrigues Alcibiades, who now sought a reconciliation with his countrymen, partially detached Tissaphernes from the interests of Sparta, and offered the Athenians a Persian alliance as the price of his restoration to his country. But, as he feared and hated the Athenian democracy, he insisted that an oligarchy should be established in its place.

The Athenian generals accepted the proposal as the only means of salvation for Athens; and, although they subsequently discovered that Alcibiades could not perform what he had undertaken, a change of government was effected, after much opposition from the people, from a democracy to an aristocracy of four hundred of the nobility; but the new government, dreading the ambition of Alcibiades, refused to recall him. Another change soon followed. The defeat of the Athenian navy at Ere'tria, and the revolt of Euboea, produced a new revolution at Athens, by which the government of the four hundred was overthrown, and democracy restored. Alcibiades was now recalled; but before his return he aided in destroying the Peloponnesian fleet in the battle of Cys'icus (411 B.C.). He was welcomed at Athens with great enthusiasm, a golden crown was decreed him, and he was appointed commander-in-chief of all the forces of the commonwealth both by land and by sea.

THE HUMILIATION OF ATHENS.

Alcibiades was still destined to experience the instability of fortune. He sailed from Athens in September, 407, and proceeded to Samos. While he was absent from the main body of his fleet on a predatory excursion, one of his subordinates, contrary to instructions, attacked a Spartan fleet and was defeated with a loss of fifteen ships. Although in command of a splendid force, Alcibiades had accomplished really nothing, and had now lost a part of his fleet. An unjust suspicion of treachery fell upon him, the former charges against him were revived, and he was deprived of his command and again banished. In the year 406 the Athenians defeated a large Spartan fleet under Callicrat'idas, but their victory secured them no permanent advantages. Lysander, a general whose abilities the Athenians could not match since they had deprived themselves of the services of Alcibiades, was now in command of the Spartan forces. He obtained the favor of Cyrus, the youngest son of the King of Persia, who had been invested with authority over the whole maritime region of Asia Minor, and, aided by Persian gold, he manned a numerous fleet with which he met the Athenians at AE'gos-pot'ami, on the Hellespont, destroyed most of their ships, and captured three thousand prisoners (405 B.C.). The maritime allies of Athens immediately submitted to Lysander, who directed the Athenians throughout Greece to repair at once to Athens, with threats of death to all whom he found elsewhere; and when famine began to prey upon the collected multitude in the city, he appeared before the Piraeus with his fleet, while a large Spartan army blockaded Athens by land.

The Athenians had no hopes of effectual resistance, and only delayed the surrender of their city to plead for the best terms that could be obtained. Compelled at last to submit to whatever terms were dictated to them, they agreed to destroy their long walls and fortifications; to surrender all their ships but twelve; to restore their exiles; to relinquish their conquests; to become a member of the Peloponnesian Confederacy; and to serve Sparta in all her expeditions, whether by land or by sea. Thus fell imperial Athens (404 B.C. ), in the seventy-third year after the formation of the Confederacy of Delos, the origin of her subsequent empire. Soon after this event, and in the same year, Alcibiades, who had been honored by both Athens and Sparta, and was now the dread of both, met his fate in a foreign land. While living in Phrygia he was murdered by the Persian satrap at the instance of Sparta. It has been said of him that, "with qualities which, if properly applied, might have rendered him the greatest benefactor of Athens, he contrived to attain the infamous distinction of being that citizen who had inflicted upon her the most signal amount of damage."

The war just closed was characterized by many instances of cruelty and heartlessness, in marked contrast with the boasted clemency and culture of the age, of which two prominent illustrations may be given. The first occurred at Plataea in the year 427, soon after the execution by the Athenians of the Mitylene'an prisoners. After a long and heroic defence against the Spartans under King Archida'mus himself, and after a solemn promise had been given that no harm should be illegally done to any person within its walls, Plataea surrendered. But a Spartan court soon after decreed that the Plataean alliance with Athens was a treasonable offence, and punishable, of course, with death. Thereupon all those who had surrendered (two hundred Plataeans and twenty-five Athenians) were barbarously murdered. The other instance occurred at Lamp'sacus, where the three thousand prisoners taken by Lysander at AEgospotami were tried by court-martial and put to death.

Referring to these barbarities, MAHAFFY observes, in his Social Life in Greece, that, "though seldom paralleled in human history, they appear to have called forth no cry of horror in Greece. Phil'ocles, the unfortunate Athenian general at AEgospotami, according to Theophrastus, submitted with dignified resignation to a fate which he confessed would have attended the Lacedaemonians had they been vanquished. [Footnote: Plutarch relates that when Lysander asked Philocles what punishment he thought he deserved, undismayed by his misfortunes, he answered, "Do not start a question where there is no judge to decide it; but, now you are a conqueror, proceed as you would have been proceeded with had you been conquered." After this he bathed, dressed himself in a rich robe, and then led his countrymen to execution, being the first to offer his neck to the axe.] The barbarity of the Greeks is but one evidence out of a thousand that, hitherto in the world's history, no culture, no education, no political training, has been able to rival the mature and ultimate effects of Christianity in humanizing society."

CHANGES IN GOVERNMENT AT ATHENS.

The change of government which followed the Spartan occupation of Athens conformed to the aristocratic character of the Spartan institutions. All authority was placed by Lysander in the hands of thirty archons, who became known as the Thirty Tyrants, and whose power was supported by a Spartan garrison. Their cruelty and rapacity knew no bounds, and filled Athens with universal dismay. The streets of Athens flowed with blood, and while many of the best men of the city fell, others more fortunate succeeded in escaping to the territory of the friendly Thebans, who, groaning under Spartan supremacy, sympathized with Athens, and regarded the Thirty as mere instruments for maintaining the Spartan dominion. A large band of exiles soon assembled, and choosing one Thrasybu'lus for their leader, they resolved to strike a blow for the deliverance of their country.

They first seized a small fortress on the frontier of Attica, when, their numbers rapidly increasing, they were able to seize the Piraeus, where they entrenched themselves and defeated the force that was brought against them, killing, among others, Cri'ti-as, the chief of the tyrants. The loss of Critias threw the majority into the hands of a party who resolved to depose the Thirty and constitute a new oligarchy of Ten. The rule of the Thirty was overthrown; but the change in government was simply a reduction in the number of tyrants, as the Ten emulated the wickedness of their predecessors, and when the populace turned against them, applied to Sparta for assistance. Lysander again entered Athens at the head of a large force; but the Spartan councils became divided, Lysander was deposed from command, and eventually, by the aid of Sparta herself, the Ten were overthrown. The Spartans now withdrew their forces from Attica, and Athens again became a democracy (403 B.C.). Freed from foreign domination, she soon obtained internal peace; but her empire had vanished.



CHAPTER XII.

GRECIAN LITERATURE AND ART I FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE PERSIAN TO THE CLOSE OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS. (500-403 B.C.)

LITERATURE.

In a former chapter we briefly traced the growth of Grecian literature and art from their beginnings down to the time of the Persian wars. Within this period, as we noticed, their progress was the greatest in the Grecian colonies, while, of the cities of central Greece, the one destined to become pre-eminent in literature and the fine arts—Athens—contributed less than several others to intellectual advancement. "She produced no artists to be compared with those of Argos, Corinth, Si'cy-on, and of many other cities, while she could boast of no poets as celebrated as those of the Ionian and AEolian schools." But at the opening of the Persian wars the artistic and literary talent of Greece began to center in Athens, and with the close of that contest properly begins the era of Athenian greatness. Athens, hitherto inferior in magnitude and political importance, having borne the brunt and won the highest martial honor of the conflict with Persia, now took the lead, as well in intellectual progress as in political ascendancy. To this era PROFESSOR SYMONDS refers, as follows:

"It was the struggle with Xerxes which developed all the latent energies of the Greeks, which intensified their national existence, and which secured for Athens, as the central power on which the scattered forces of the race converged, the intellectual dictatorship of Hellas. It was a struggle of spiritual energy against brute force, of liberty against oppression, of intellectual freedom against superstitious ignorance, of civilization against barbarism; and Athens, who had fought and won this battle of the Spirit—by spirit we mean the greatness of the soul, liberty, intelligence, and everything which raises men above brutes and slaves, and makes them free beneath the arch of heaven—became immediately the recognized impersonation of the spirit itself. Whatever was superb in human nature found its natural home and sphere in Athens. We hear no more of the colonies. All great works of art and literature are now produced in Athens, and it is to Athens that the sages come to teach and to be taught." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." First Series, p. 19.]

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I. LYRIC POETRY.

SIMON'IDES AND PINDAR.

The rapid progress made in the cultivation of lyric poetry preceding the Persian wars found its culmination, during those wars, in Simonides of Ceos, the most brilliant period of whose life was spent at Athens; and in Pindar, a native of Thebes, who is considered the greatest lyric poet of all ages. The life of Simonides was a long one, reaching from 556 to 469 B.C. "Coming forward at a time," says MAHAFFY, "when the tyrants had made poetry a matter of culture, and dissociated it from politics, we find him a professional artist, free from all party struggles, alike welcome at the courts of tyrants and among the citizens of free states; he was respected throughout all the Greek world, and knew well how to suit himself, socially and artistically, to his patrons. The great national struggle with Persia gave him the opportunity of becoming the spokesman of the nation in celebrating the glories of the victors and the heroism of the fallen patriots; and this exceptional opportunity made him quite the foremost poet of his day, and decidedly better known and more admired than Pindar, who has so completely eclipsed him in the attention of posterity." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p. 207.]

Simonides was the intimate friend of Miltiades and Themistocles at Athens, of Pausanias at Sparta, and of the tyrants of Sicily. In the first named city he composed his epigrams on Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea—"poems not destined to be merely sung or consigned to parchment, but to be carved in marble or engraved in letters of imperishable bronze upon the works of the noblest architects and statuaries." In his elegy upon Marathon he carried away the prize from AEschylus. He was a most prolific poet, and his writings, comprising all the subjects that human life, with its joys and sorrows, its hopes and disappointments, could furnish, are noted for their sweetness and pure and exquisite polish. He particularly excelled in the pathetic; and the most celebrated of the existing fragments of his muse, the "Lamentation of Dan'a-e," is a piece of this character. The poem is based upon a tradition concerning Danae, the daughter of Acris'ius, King of Argos, and her infant son, the offspring of Jove. Acrisius had been told by the oracle that his life would be taken by a son that his daughter should bear, and, for his own preservation, when the boy had reached the age of four years, Acrisius threw both him and his mother into a chest and set them adrift on the sea. But they were rescued by Dictys, a fisherman of the Island of Seri'phus, whose brother Polydec'tes, king of the country, received and protected them. The boy grew up to manhood, and became the famous hero Per'seus, who accidentally killed Acrisius at the funeral games of Polydectes. The following is the

Lamentation of Dan'a-e.

While, around her lone ark sweeping, Wailed the winds and waters wild, Her young cheeks all wan with weeping, Danae clasped her sleeping child; And "Alas!" cried she, "my dearest, What deep wrongs, what woes are mine; But nor wrongs nor woes thou fearest In that sinless rest of thine. Faint the moonbeams break above thee, And within here all is gloom; But, fast wrapped in arms that love thee, Little reck'st thou of our doom. Not the rude spray, round thee flying, Has e'en damped thy clustering hair; On thy purple mantlet lying, O mine Innocent, my Fair! Yet, to thee were sorrow sorrow, Thou wouldst lend thy little ear; And this heart of thine might borrow, Haply, yet a moment's cheer. But no: slumber on, babe, slumber; Slumber, ocean's waves; and you, My dark troubles, without number— Oh, that ye would slumber too! Though with wrongs they've brimmed my chalice, Grant, Jove, that, in future years, This boy may defeat their malice, And avenge his mother's tears!" —Trans. by W. PETER.

Simonides was nearly eighty years old when he gained his last poetical prize at Athens, making the fiftieth that he had won. He then retired to Syracuse, at the invitation of Hi'ero, where he spent the remaining ten years of his life. He was a philosopher as well as poet, and his wise sayings made him a special favorite with the accomplished Hiero. When inquired of by that monarch concerning the nature of God, Simonides requested one day for deliberating on the subject; and when Hiero repeated the question the next day, the poet asked for two days more. As he still went on doubling the number of days, the monarch, lost in wonder, asked him why he did so. "Because," replied Simonides, "the longer I reflect on the subject, the more obscure does it appear to me to be."

Pindar, the most celebrated of all the lyric poets of Greece, was born about 520 B.C. At an early age he was sent to Athens to receive instruction in the art of poetry: returning to Thebes at twenty, his youthful genius was quickened and guided by the influence of Myr'tis and Corin'na, two poetesses who then enjoyed great celebrity in Boeotia. At a later period "he undoubtedly experienced," says THIRLWALL, "the animating influence of that joyful and stirring time which followed the defeat of the barbarian invader, though, as a Theban patriot, he could not heartily enjoy a triumph by which Thebes as well as Persia was humbled." But his enthusiasm for Athens, which he calls "the buttress of Hellas," is apparent in one of his compositions; and the Athenians specially honored him with a valuable present, and, after his death, erected a bronze statue to his memory. It is probable, however, that while he was sincerely anxious for the success of Greece in the great contest, he avoided as much as possible offending his own people, whose sympathies and hopes lay the other way.

The reputation of Pindar early became so great that he was employed, by various states and princes, to compose choral songs for special occasions. Like Simonides, he "loved to bask in the sunshine of courts;" but he was frank, sincere, and manly, assuming a lofty and dignified position toward princes and others in authority with whom he came in contact. He was especially courted by Hiero, despot of Syracuse, but remained with him only a few years, his manly disposition creating a love for an independent life that the courtly arts of his patron could not furnish. As his poems show, he was a reserved man, learned in the myths and ceremonies of the times, and specially devoted to the worship of the gods. "The old myths," says a Greek biographer, "were for the most part realities to him, and he accepted them with implicit credence, except when they exhibited the gods in a point of view which was repugnant to his moral feelings; and he accordingly rejects some tales, and changes others, because they are inconsistent with his moral conceptions." As a poet correctly describes him, using one of the names commonly applied to him,

Pindar, that eagle, mounts the skies, While virtue leads the noble way. —PRIOR.

The poems of Pindar were numerous, and comprised triumphal odes, hymns to the gods, paeans, dirges, and songs of various kinds. His triumphal odes alone have come down to us entire; but of some of his other compositions there are a few sublime and beautiful fragments. The poet and his writings cannot be better described than in the following general characterization by SYMONDS:

"By the force of his originality Pindar gave lyrical poetry a wholly new direction, and, coming last of the great Dorian lyrists, taught posterity what sort of thing an ode should be. His grand pre-eminence as an artist was due, in great measure, to his personality. Frigid, austere, and splendid; not genial like that of Simonides, not passionate like that of Sappho, not acrid like that of Archil'ochus; hard as adamant, rigid in moral firmness, glittering with the strong, keen light of snow; haughty, aristocratic, magnificent—the unique personality of the man Pindar, so irresistible in its influence, so hard to characterize, is felt in every strophe of his odes. In his isolation and elevation Pindar stands like some fabled heaven-aspiring peak, conspicuous from afar, girdled at the base with ice and snow, beaten by winds, wreathed round with steam and vapor, jutting a sharp and dazzling outline into cold blue ether. Few things that have life dare to visit him at his grand altitude. Glorious with sunlight and with stars, touched by rise and set of day with splendor, he shines when other lesser lights are dulled. Pindar among his peers is solitary. He had no communion with the poets of his day. He is the eagle; Simonides and Bacchyl'ides are jackdaws. He soars to the empyrean; they haunt the valley mists. Noticing this rocky, barren, severe, glittering solitude of Pindar's soul, critics have not infrequently complained that his poems are devoid of individual interest. Possibly they have failed to comprehend and appreciate the nature of this sublime and distant genius, whose character, in truth, is just as marked as that of Dante or of Michael Angelo."

After giving some illustrations of the impression produced upon the imagination by a study of Pindar's odes, the writer proceeds with his characterization, in the following language: "He who has watched a sunset attended by the passing of a thunder-storm in the outskirts of the Alps—who has seen the distant ranges of the mountains alternately obscured by cloud and blazing with the concentrated brightness of the sinking sun, while drifting scuds of hail and rain, tawny with sunlight, glistening with broken rainbows, clothe peak and precipice and forest in the golden veil of flame-irradiated vapor—he who has heard the thunder bellow in the thwarting folds of hills, and watched the lightning, like a snakes tongue, flicker at intervals amid gloom and glory —knows, in Nature's language, what Pindar teaches with the voice of Art. It is only by a metaphor like this that any attempt to realize the Sturm and Drang of Pindar's style can be communicated. As an artist he combines the strong flight of the eagle, the irresistible force of the torrent, the richness of Greek wine, and the majestic pageantry of Nature in one of her sublimer moods." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." First Series, pp. 171, 174.]

Pindar, as we have seen, was compared to an eagle, because of the daring flights and lofty character of his poetry—a simile which has been beautifully expressed in the following lines by GRAY:

The pride and ample pinion That the Theban eagle bare, Sailing with supreme dominion, Through the azure deeps of air.

Another image, also, has been employed to show these features of his poetry. The poet POPE represents him riding in a gorgeous chariot sustained by four swans:

Four swans sustain a car of silver bright, With heads advanced and pinions stretched for flight; Here, like some furious prophet, Pindar rode, And seemed to labor with th' inspiring god.

A third image, given to us by HORACE, represents another characteristic of Pindar, which may be called "the stormy violence of his song:"

As when a river, swollen by sudden showers, O'er its known banks from some steep mountain pours; So, in profound, unmeasurable song, The deep-mouthed Pindar, foaming, pours along. —Trans. by FRANCIS.

As a sample of the religious sentiment of Pindar we give the following fragment of a threnos translated by MR. SYMONDS, which, he says, "sounds like a trumpet blast for immortality, and, trampling underfoot the glories of this world, reveals the gladness of the souls that have attained Elysium:"

For them, the night all through, In that broad realm below, The splendor of the sun spreads endless light; 'Mid rosy meadows bright, Their city of the tombs, with incense-trees And golden chalices Of flowers, and fruitage fair, Scenting the breezy air, Is laden. There, with horses and with play, With games and lyres, they while the hours away.

On every side around Pure happiness is found, With all the blooming beauty of the world; There fragrant smoke, upcurled From altars where the blazing fire is dense With perfumed frankincense, Burned unto gods in heaven, Through all the land is driven, Making its pleasant place odorous With scented gales, and sweet airs amorous.

* * * * *

II. THE DRAMA.

One of the most striking proofs that we possess of the rapid growth and expansion of the Greek mind, is found in the rise of the Drama, a new kind of poetical composition, which united the leading features of every species before cultivated, in a new whole "breathing a rhetorical, dialectical, and ethical spirit" —a branch of literature that peculiarly characterized the era of Athenian greatness. Its elements were found in the religious festivals celebrated in Greece from the earliest ages, and especially in the feast of Bacchus, where sacred odes of a grave and serious character, intermixed with episodes of mythological story recited by an actor, were sung by a chorus that danced around the altar. A goat was either the principal sacrifice on these occasions, or the participants, disguised as Satyrs, had a goat-like appearance; and from the two Greek words representing "goat" and "song" we get our word tragedy, [Footnote: From the Greek tragos, "a goat," and o'de, "a song."] or goat-song. At some of the more rustic festivals in honor of the same god the performance was of a more jocose or satirical character; and hence arose the term comedy, [Footnote: From the Greek ko'me, "a village," and o'de, "a song."] from the two Greek words signifying "village" and "song"—village-song. In the teller of mythological legends we find the first germ of dialogue, as the chorus soon came to assist him by occasional question and remark. This feature was introduced by Thespis, a native of Ica'ria, in 535 B.C., under whose direction, and that of Phryn'icus, his pupil, the first feeble rudiments of the drama were established. In this condition it was found by AEschylus, in 500 B.C., who brought a second actor upon the scene; whence arose the increased prominence of the dialogue, and the limitation and subsidiary character of the chorus. AEschylus also added more expressive masks, and various machinery and scenes calculated to improve and enlarge dramatic representation. Of the effect of this new creation upon all kinds of poetical genius we have the following fine illustration from the pen of BULWER:

"It was in the very nature of the Athenian drama that, when once established, it should concentrate and absorb almost every variety of poetical genius. The old lyrical poetry, never much cultivated in Athens, ceased in a great measure when tragedy arose; or, rather, tragedy was the complete development, the new and perfected consummation, of the dithyrambic ode. Lyrical poetry transmigrated into the choral song as the epic merged into the dialogue and plot of the drama. Thus, when we speak of Athenian poetry we speak of dramatic poetry—they were one and the same. In Athens, where audiences were numerous and readers few, every man who felt within himself the inspiration of the poet would necessarily desire to see his poetry put into action—assisted with all the pomp of spectacle and music, hallowed by the solemnity of a religious festival, and breathed by artists elaborately trained to heighten the eloquence of words into the reverent ear of assembled Greece. Hence the multitude of dramatic poets; hence the mighty fertility of each; hence the life and activity of this—the comparative torpor and barrenness of every other— species of poetry."

1. TRAGEDY.

MELPOM'ENE, one of the nine Muses, whose name signifies "To represent in song," is said to have been the inventress of tragedy, over which she presided, always veiled, bearing in one hand the lyre, as the emblem of her vocation, and in the other a tragic mask. As queen of the lyre, every poet was supposed to proclaim the marvels of her song, and to invoke her aid.

Queen of the lyre, in thy retreat The fairest flowers of Pindus glow, The vine aspires to crown thy seat, And myrtles round thy laurel grow: Thy strings adapt their varied strain To every pleasure, every pain, Which mortal tribes were born to prove; And straight our passions rise or fall, As, at the wind's imperious call, The ocean swells, the billows move.

When midnight listens o'er the slumbering earth, Let me, O Muse, thy solemn whispers hear: When morning sends her fragrant breezes forth, With airy murmurs touch my opening ear, —AKENSIDE.

AESCHYLUS.

AEschylus, the first poet who rendered the drama illustrious, and into whose character and writings the severe and ascetic doctrines of Pythagoras entered largely, was born at Eleu'sis, in Attica, in 525 B.C. He fought, as will be remembered, in the combats of Marathon and Salamis, and also in the battle of Plataea. He therefore flourished at the time when the freedom of Greece, rescued from foreign enemies, was exulting in its first strength; and his writings are characteristic of the boldness and vigor of the age. In his works we find the fundamental idea of the Greek drama—retributive justice. The sterner passions alone are appealed to, and the language is replete with bold metaphor and gigantic hyperbole. Venus and her inspirations are excluded; the charms of love are unknown: but the gods—vast, majestic, in shadowy outline, and in the awful sublimity of power-pass before and awe the beholder. [Footnote: see Grote's "History of Greece," Chap. lxvii.] Says a prominent reviewer: "The conceptions of the imagination of AEschylus are remarkable for a sort of colossal sublimity and power, resembling the poetry of the Book of Job; and those poems of his which embody a connected story may be said to resemble the stupendous avenues of the Temple of Elora, [See Index.] with the vast scenes and vistas; its strange, daring, though rude sculptures; its awful, shadowy, impending horrors. Like the architecture, the poems, too, seem hewn out of some massy region of mountain rock. AEschylus appears as an austere poet-soul, brooding among the grand, awful, and terrible myths which have floated from a primeval world, in which traditions of the Deluge, of the early, rudimental struggle between barbaric power and nascent civilization, were still vital."

"The personal temperament of the man," says DR. PLUMPTRE, [Footnote: "The Tragedies of AEschylus," by E. H. Plumptre, D.D.] seems to have been in harmony with the characteristics of his genius. Vehement, passionate, irascible; writing his tragedies, as later critics judged, as if half drunk; doing (as Sophocles said of him) what was right in his art without knowing why; following the impulses that led him to strange themes and dark problems, rather than aiming at the perfection of a complete, all-sided culture; frowning with shaggy brows, like a wild bull, glaring fiercely, and bursting into a storm of wrath when annoyed by critics or rival poets; a Marlowe rather than a Shakspeare: this is the portrait sketched by one who must have painted a figure still fresh in the minds of the Athenians. [Footnote: Aristophanes, in The Frogs.] Such a man, both by birth and disposition, was likely to attach himself to the aristocratic party, and to look with scorn on the claims of the demos to a larger share of power; and there is hardly a play in which some political bias in that direction may not be traced."

AEschylus wrote his plays in trilogies, or three successive dramas connected. Of the eighty tragedies that he wrote, only seven have been preserved. From three of these, The Persians, Prome'theus, and Agamemnon, we have given extracts descriptive of historical and mythological events. The latter is the first of three plays on the fortunes of the house of A'treus, of Myce'nae; and these three, of which the Choeph'oroe and Eumenides are the other two, are the only extant specimen of a trilogy. The Agamemnon is the longest, and by some considered the grandest, play left us by AEschylus. "In the Agamemnon," says VON SCHLEGEL, "it was the intention of AEschylus to exhibit to us a sudden fall from the highest pinnacle of prosperity and renown into the abyss of ruin. The prince, the hero, the general of the combined forces of the Greeks, in the very moment of success and the glorious achievement of the destruction of Troy, the fame of which is to be re-echoed from the mouths of the greatest poets of all ages, in the very act of crossing the threshold of his home, after which he had so long sighed, and amidst the fearless security of preparations for a festival, is butchered, according to the expression of Homer, 'like an ox in the stall,' slain by his faithless wife, his throne usurped by her worthless seducer, and his children consigned to banishment or to hopeless servitude." [Footnote: "Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature," by Augustus William on Schlegel. Black's translation.]

Among the fine passages of this play, the death of Agamemnon, at the hand of Clytemnes'tra, is a scene that the poet paints with terrible effect. Says MR. EUGENE LAWRENCE, [Footnote: "A Primer of Greek Literature," by Eugene Lawrence, p.55.] "Mr. E. C. Stedman's version of the death of Agamemnon is an excellent one. A horror rests upon the palace at Mycenae; there is a scent of blood, the exhalations of the tomb. The queen, Clytemnestra, enters the inner room, terrible as Lady Macbeth. A cry is heard:

"'Agam. Woe's me! I'm stricken a deadly blow within!' "'Chor. Hark! who is't cries "a blow?" Who meets his death?' "'Agam. Woe's me! Again! again! a second time I'm stricken!' "'Chor. The deed, methinks, from the king's cry, is done.'

At length the queen appears, standing at her full height, terrible, holding her bloody weapon in her hand. She seeks no concealment. She proclaims her guilt:

"'I smote him! nor deny that thus I did it; So that he could not flee or ward off doom. A seamless net, as round a fish, I cast About him, yea, a deadly wealth of robe, Then smote him twice; and with a double cry He loosed his limbs; and to him fallen I gave Yet a third thrust, a grace to Hades, lord Of the under-world and guardian of the dead.'"

But the most finished of the tragedies of AEschylus is Choephoroe, which is made the subject of the revenge of Ores'tes, son of Agamemnon, who avenges the murder of his father by putting his mother to death. For this crime the Eumenides represents him as being driven insane by the Furies; but his reason was subsequently restored. It is the chief object of the poet, in this tragedy, to display the distress of Orestes at the necessity he feels of avenging his father's death upon his mother. To this BYRON refers in Childe Harold:

O thou! who never yet of human wrong Left the unbalanced scale—great Nem'esis! Thou who didst call the Furies from the abyss, And round Orestes bade them howl and hiss For that unnatural retribution—just, Had it but been from hands less near—in this, Thy former realm, I call thee from the dust!

At the close of an interesting characterization of AEschylus and his works—much too long for a full quotation here—PROFESSOR MAHAFFY observes as follows:

"We always feel that AEschylus thought more than he expressed, that his desperate compounds are never affected or unnecessary. Although, therefore, he violated the rules that bound weaker men, it is false to say that be was less an artist than they. His art was of a different kind, despising what they prized, and attempting what they did not dare, but not the less a conscious and thorough art. Though the drawing of character was not his main object, his characters are truer and deeper than those of poets who attempted nothing else. Though lyrical sweetness had little place in the gloom and terror of his Titanic stage, yet here too, when he chooses, he equals the masters of lyric song. So long as a single Homer was deemed the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, we might well concede to him the first place, and say that AEschylus was the second poet of the Greeks. But by the light of nearer criticism, and with a closer insight into the structure of the epic poems, we must retract this judgment, and assert that no other poet among the Greeks, either in grandeur of conception or splendor of execution, equals the untranslatable, unapproachable, inimitable AEschylus." [Footnote: "Classical Greek Literature," vol. i., p.275.]

SOPHOCLES.

AEschylus was succeeded, as master of the drama, by Sophocles— the Raffaelle of the drama, as Bulwer calls him—who was also one of the generals of the Athenian expedition against Samos in the year 440 B.C. He brought the drama to the greatest perfection of which it was susceptible. In him we find a greater range of emotions than in AEschylus—figures more distinctly seen, a more expanded dialogue, simplicity of speech mixed with rhetorical declamation, and the highest degree of poetic beauty. Says a late writer: "The artist and the man were one in Sophocles. We cannot but think of him as specially created to represent Greek art in its most refined and exquisitely balanced perfection. It is impossible to imagine a more plastic nature, a genius more adapted to its special function, more fittingly provided with all things needful to its full development, born at a happier moment in the history of the world, and more nobly endowed with physical qualities suited to its intellectual capacity."

Sophocles composed one hundred and thirteen plays, but only seven of them are extant. Of these the most familiar is the tragedy of OEd'ipus Tyran'nus—"King OEdipus." It is not only considered his masterpiece, but also, as regards the choice and disposition of the fable on which it is founded, the finest tragedy of antiquity. A new interest has been given to it in this country by its recent representation in the original Greek. Of its many translations, it is conceded that none have done, and none can do it justice; they can do little more than give its plan and general character. The following, in brief, is the story of this famous tragedy:

OEdipus Tyrannus.

La'i-us, King of Thebes, was told by the Delphic oracle that if a son should be born to him, by the hand of that son he should surely die. When, therefore, his queen, Jocasta, bare him a son, the parents gave the child to a shepherd, with orders to cast it out, bound, on the hill Cithae'ron to perish. But the shepherd, moved to compassion, deceived the parents, and intrusted the babe to a herdsman of Pol'ybus, King of Corinth; and the wife of Polybus, being childless, named the foundling OEdipus, and reared it as her own.

Thirty years later, OEdipus, ignorant of his birth, and being directed by the oracle to shun his native country, fled from Corinth; and it happened at the same time that his father (Laius) was on his way to consult the oracle at Delphi, for the purpose of ascertaining whether the child that had been exposed had perished or not. As father and son, strangers to each other, met in a narrow path in the mountains, a dispute arose for the right of way, and in the contest that ensued the father was slain.

Immediately after this event the goddess Juno, always hostile to Thebes, sent a monster, called the sphinx, to propound a riddle to the Thebans, and to ravage their territory until some one should solve the riddle—the purport of which was, "What animal is that which goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at evening?" OEdipus, the supposed son of Polybus, of Corinth, coming to Thebes, solved the riddle, by answering the sphinx that it was man, who, when an infant, creeps on all fours, in manhood goes on two feet, and when old uses a staff. The sphinx then threw herself down to the earth and perished; whereupon the Thebans, in their joy, chose OEdipus as king, and he married the widowed queen Jocasta, by whom he had two sons and two daughters. Although everything prospered with him—as he loved the Theban people, and was beloved by them in turn for his many virtues—soon the wrath of the gods fell upon the city, which was visited by a sore pestilence. Creon, brother of the queen, is now sent to consult the oracle for the cause of the evil; and it is at the point of his return that the drama opens. He brings back the response

"That guilt of blood is blasting all the state;"

that this guilt is connected with the death of Laius, and that

"Now the god clearly bids us, he being dead, To take revenge on those who shed his blood,"

OEdipus engages earnestly in the business of unraveling the mystery connected with the death of Laius, the cause of all the Theban woes. Ignorant that he himself bears the load of guilt, he charges the Thebans to be vigilant and unremitting in their efforts,—

"And for the man who did the guilty deed, Whether alone he lurks, or leagued with more, I pray that he may waste his life away, For vile deeds vilely dying; and for me, If in my house, I knowing it, he dwells, May every curse I spake on my head fall."

A blind and aged priest and prophet, Tire'sias, is brought before OEdipus, and, being implored to lend the aid of prophecy to "save the city from the curse" that had fallen on it, he at first refuses to exert his prophetic power.

Tiresias. Ah! Reason fails you an, but ne'er will I Say what thou bidd'st, lest I thy troubles show. I will not pain myself nor thee. Why, then, All vainly question? Thou shalt never know.

But, urged and threatened by the king, he at length exclaims:

Tier. And has it come to this? I charge thee, hold To thy late edict, and from this day forth Speak not to me, nor yet to these, for thou— Thou art the accursed plague-spot of the land!

OEdipus at first believes that the aged prophet is merely the tool of others, who are engaged in a conspiracy to expel him from the throne; but when Jocasta, in her innocence, informs him of the death of Laius, names the mountain pass in which he fell, slain, as was supposed, by a robber band, and describes his dress and person, OEdipus is startled at the thought that he himself was the slayer, and he exclaims,

"Great Zeus! what fate hast thou decreed for me? Woe! woe! 'tis all too clear."

Yet there is one hope left. The man whom he slew in that same mountain pass fell by no robber band, and, therefore, could not have been Laius. Soon even this hope deserts him, when the story is truly told. He learns, moreover, that he is not the son of Polybus, the Corinthian king, but a foundling adopted by his queen. Connecting this with the story now told him by Jocasta, of her infant son, whom she supposed to have perished on the mountain, the horrid truth begins to dawn upon all. Jocasta rushes from the presence of OEdipus, exclaiming,

"Woe! woe! ill-fated one! my last word this, This only, and no more for evermore."

When the old shepherd, forced to declare the truth, tells how he saved the life of the infant, and gave it into the keeping of the herdsman of Polybus, the evil-starred OEdipus exclaims, in agony of spirit:

"Woe! woe! woe! all cometh clear at last. O light! may this my last glance be on thee, Who now am seen owing my birth to those To whom I ought not, and with whom I ought not In wedlock living, whom I ought not slaying."

Horrors still thicken in this terrible tragedy. Word is brought to OEdipus that Jocasta is dead—dead by her own hand! He rushes in:

Then came a sight Most fearful. Tearing from her robe the clasps, All chased with gold, with which she decked herself, He with them struck the pupils of his eyes, With words like these—"Because they had not seen What ills he suffered and what ills he did, They in the dark should look, in time to come, On those whom they ought never to have seen, Nor know the dear ones whom he fain had known." With such-like wails, not once or twice alone, Raising his eyes, he smote them; and the balls, All bleeding, stained his cheek, nor poured they forth Gore drops slow trickling, but the purple shower Fell fast and full, a pelting storm of blood.

The now blind and wretched OEdipus, bewailing his fate and the evils he had so unwittingly brought upon Thebes, begs to be cast forth with all speed from out the land.

OEdipus. Lead me away, my friends, with utmost speed Lead me away; the foul, polluted one, Of all men most accursed, Most hateful to the gods.

Chorus. Ah, wretched one, alike in soul and doom, I fain could wish that I had never known thee.

OEdipus. Ill fate be his who from the fetters freed The child upon the hills, And rescued me from death, And saved me—thankless boon! Ah! had I died but then, Nor to my friends nor me had been such woe.

A touching picture is presented in the farewell of OEdipus, on departing from Thebes to wander an outcast upon the earth. The tragedy concludes with the following moral by the chorus:

Chorus. Ye men of Thebes, behold this OEdipus, Who knew the famous riddle, and was noblest. Whose fortune who saw not with envious glances? And lo! in what a sea of direst trouble He now is plunged! From hence the lesson learn ye, To reckon no man happy till ye witness The closing day; until he pass the border Which Severs life from death unscathed by sorrow. —Trans. by E. H. PLUMPTRE.

Character of the Works of Sophocles.

The character of the works of Sophocles is well described in the following extract from an Essay on Greek Poetry, by THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: "The great and distinguishing excellence of Sophocles will be found in his excellent sense of the beautiful, and the perfect harmony of all his powers. His conceptions are not on so gigantic a scale as those of AEschylus; but in the circle which he prescribes to himself to fill, not a place is left unadorned; not a niche without its appropriate figure; not the smallest ornament which is incomplete in the minutest graces. His judgment seems absolutely perfect, for he never fails; he is always fully master of himself and his subject; he knows the precise measure of his own capacities; and while he never attempts a flight beyond his reach, he never debases himself nor his art by anything beneath him.

"Sophocles was undoubtedly the first philosophical poet of the ancient world. With his pure taste for the graceful he perceived, amidst the sensible forms around him, one universal spirit of Jove pervading all things. Virtue and justice, to his mind, did not appear the mere creatures of convenience, or the means of gratifying the refined selfishness of man; he saw them, having deep root in eternity, unchanging and imperishable as their divine author. In a single stanza he has impressed this sentiment with a plenitude of inspiration before which the philosophy of expediency vanishes—a passage that has neither a parallel nor equal of its kind, that we recollect, in the whole compass of heathen poetry, and which may be rendered thus: 'Oh for a spotless purity of action and of speech, according to those sublime laws of right which have the heavens for their birthplace, and God alone for their author—which the decays of mortal nature cannot vary, nor time cover with oblivion, for the divinity is mighty within them and waxes not old!'"

Sophocles died in extreme old age, "without disease and without suffering, and was mourned with such a sincerity and depth of grief as were exhibited at the death of no other citizen of Athens."

Thrice happy Sophocles! in good old age, Blessed as a man, and as a craftsman blessed, He died: his many tragedies were fair, And fair his end, nor knew be any sorrow. —PHRYN'ICHUS.

Wind, gentle evergreen, to form a shade Around the tomb where Sophocles is laid; Sweet ivy wind thy boughs, and intertwine With blushing roses and the clustering vine. Thus will thy lasting leaves, with beauties hung, Prove grateful emblems of the lays he sung, Whose soul, exalted by the god of wit, Among the Muses and the Graces writ. —SIM'MIAS, the Theban.

EURIP'IDES.

Contemporary with Sophocles was Euripides, born in 480 B.C., the last of the three great masters of the drama—the three being embraced within the limits of a single century. Under Sophocles the principal changes effected in the outward form of the drama were the introduction of a third actor, and a consequent limitation of the functions of the chorus. Euripides, however, changed the mode of handling tragedy. Unlike Sophocles, who only limited the activity of the chorus, he disconnected it from the tragic interest of the drama by giving but little attention to the character of its songs. He also made some other changes; and, as one writer expresses it, his innovations "disintegrated the drama by destroying its artistic unity." But although perhaps inferior, in all artistic point of view, to his predecessors, the genius of Euripides supplied a want that they did not meet. Although his plays are all connected with the history and mythology of Greece, in them rhetoric is more prominent than in the plays of either AEschylus or Sophocles; the legendary characters assume more the garb of humanity; the tender sentiments—love, pity, compassion—are invoked to a greater degree, and an air of exquisite delicacy and refinement embellishes the whole. These were the qualities in the plays of Euripides that endeared him to the Greeks of succeeding ages, and that gave to his works such an influence on the Roman and modern drama.

Of Euripides MR. SYMONDS remarks: "His lasting title to fame consists in his having dealt with the deeper problems of life in a spirit which became permanent among the Greeks, so that his poems never lost their value as expressions of current philosophy. Nothing strikes the student of later Greek literature more strongly than this prolongation of the Euripidean tone of thought and feeling. In the decline of tragic poetry the literary sceptre was transferred to comedy; and the comic playwrights may be described as the true successors of Euripides. The dialectic method, which he affected, was indeed dropped, and a more harmonious form of art than the Euripidean was created for comedy by Menan'der, when the Athenians, after passing through their disputatious period, had settled down into a tranquil acceptation of the facts of life. Yet this return to harmony of form and purity of perception did not abate the influence of Euripides. Here and there throughout his tragedies he had said, and well said, what the Greeks were bound to think and feel upon important matters; and his sensitive, susceptible temperament repeated itself over and over again among his literary successors. The exclamation of Phile'mon that, if he could believe in immortality, he would hang himself to see Euripides, is characteristic not only of Philemon, but also of the whole Macedonian period of Greek literature." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets." Second Series, p. 300.]

Euripides wrote about seventy-five plays, of which eighteen have come down to us. The Me-de'a, which is thought to be his best piece, is occupied with the circumstances of the vengeance taken by Medea on the ungrateful Jason, the hero of the Argonautic expedition, for whom she had sacrificed all, and who, after his return, abandoned her for a royal Corinthian bride. [Footnote: See Argonautic Expedition, p. 81.] But the most touching of the plays of Euripides is the Alces'tis, founded on the fable of Alcestis dying for her husband, Adme'tus. MILTON thus alludes to the story, in his sonnet on his deceased wife:

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint.

The substance of the story is as follows:

Admetus, King of Phe'rae, in Thessaly, married Alcestis, who became noted for her conjugal virtues. Apollo, when banished from heaven, received so kind treatment from Admetus that he induced the Fates to prolong the latter's life beyond the ordinary limit, on condition that one of his own family should die in his stead. Alcestis at once consented to die for her husband, and when the appointed time came she heroically and composedly gave herself to death. Soon after her departure, however, the hero Hercules visited Admetus, and, pained with the profound grief of the household, he rescued Alcestis from the grim tyrant Death and restored her to her family. The whole play abounds in touching scenes and descriptions; and the best modern critics concede that there is no female character in either AEschylus or Sophocles, not even excepting Antig'one, that is so great and noble, and at the same time so purely tender and womanly, as Alcestis. "Where has either Greek or modern literature," says MAHAFFY, "produced a nobler ideal than the Alcestis of Euripides? Devoted to her husband and children, beloved and happy in her palace, she sacrifices her life calmly and resignedly—a life which is not encompassed with afflictions, but of all the worth that life can be, and of all the usefulness which makes it precious to noble natures." [Footnote: "Social Life in Greece, p. 189.] We give the following short extract from the poet's account of the preparations made by Alcestis for her approaching end:

Alcestis Preparing for Death.

When she knew The destined day was come, in fountain water She bathed her lily-tinctured limbs, then took From her rich chests, of odorous cedar formed, A splendid robe, and her most radiant dress. Thus gorgeously arrayed, she stood before The hallowed flames, and thus addressed her prayer: "O queen, I go to the infernal shades; Yet, ere I go, with reverence let me breathe My last request: protect my orphan children; Make my son happy with the wife he loves, And wed my daughter to a noble husband; Nor let them, like their mother, to the tomb Untimely sink, but in their native land Be blessed through lengthened life to honored age."

Then to each altar in the royal house She went, and crowned it, and addressed her vows, Plucking the myrtle bough: nor tear, nor sigh Came from her; neither did the approaching ill Change the fresh beauties of her vermeil cheek. Her chamber then she visits, and her bed; There her tears flowed, and thus she spoke: "O bed To which my wedded lord, for whom I die, Led me a virgin bride, farewell! to thee No blame do I impute, for me alone Hast thou destroyed: disdaining to betray Thee, and my lord, I die: to thee shall come Some other woman, not more chaste, perchance More happy." As she lay she kissed the couch, And bathed it with a flood of tears: that passed, She left her chamber, then returned, and oft She left it, oft returned, and on the couch Fondly, each time she entered, cast herself. Her children, as they hung upon her robes, Weeping, she raised, and clasped them to her breast Each after each, as now about to die. —Trans. by POTTER.

Euripides died in the year 406 B.C., in Macedon, to which country he had been compelled to go on account of domestic troubles; and the then king, Archela'us honored his remains with a sumptuous funeral, and erected a monument over them.

Divine Euripides, this tomb we see So fair is not a monument for thee, So much as thou for it; since all will own That thy immortal fame adorns the stone.

We have now observed the transitions through which Grecian tragedy passed in the hands of its three great masters, AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. As GROTE says, "The differences between these three poets are doubtless referable to the working of Athenian politics and Athenian philosophy on the minds of the two latter. In Sophocles we may trace the companion of Herodotus; in Euripides the hearer of Anaxag'oras, Socrates, and Prod'icus; in both, the familiarity with that wide-spread popularity of speech, and real, serious debate of politicians and competitors before the dikastery, which both had ever before their eyes, but which the genius of Sophocles knew how to keep in subordination to his grand poetical purpose." To properly estimate the influence which the tragedies exerted upon the Athenians, we must remember that a large number of them was presented on the stage every year; that it was rare to repeat anyone of them; that the theatre of Bacchus, in which they were represented, accommodated thirty thousand persons; that, as religious observances, they formed part of the civil establishment; and that admission to them was virtually free to every Athenian citizen. Taking these things into consideration, GROTE adds: "If we conceive of the entire population of a large city listening almost daily to those immortal compositions whose beauty first stamped tragedy as a separate department of poetry, we shall be satisfied that such powerful poetic influences were never brought to act upon any other people; and that the tastes, the sentiments, and the intellectual standard of the Athenians must have been sensibly improved and exalted by such lessons." [Footnote: "History of Greece," Chap, lxvii.]

2. COMEDY.

Another marked feature of Athenian life, and one but little less influential than tragedy in its effects upon the Athenian character, was comedy. It had its origin, as we have seen, in the vintage festivals of Bacchus, where the wild songs of the participants were frequently interspersed with coarse witticisms against the spectators. Like tragedy, it was a Dorian invention, and Sicily seems to have early become the seat of the comic writers. Epichar'mus, a Dorian poet and philosopher, was the first of these to put the Bacchic songs and dances into dramatic form. The place of his nativity is uncertain, but he passed the greater part of his life at Syracuse, in the society of the greatest literary men of the age, and there he is supposed to have written his comedies some years prior to the Persian war. It seems, however, that comedy was introduced into Attica by Susa'rion, a native of Meg'ara, long before the time of Epichar'mus (578 B.C.). But the former's plays were so largely made up of rude and abusive personalities that they were not tolerated by the Pisistrati'dae, and for over a century we bear nothing farther of comedy in Attica—not until it was revived by Chion'ides, about 488 B.C., or, according to some authorities, twenty years later.

Under the contemporaries or successors of Chionides comedy became an important agent in the political warfare of Athens, although it was frequently the subject of prohibitory or restrictive legal enactments. "Only a nation," says a recent writer, "in the plenitude of self-contentment, conscious of vigor, and satisfied with its own energy, could have tolerated the kind of censorship the comic poets dared to exercise."

Characterization of the Old Comedy.

In the preliminary discourse to his translation of the Comedies of Aristophanes, MR. THOMAS MITCHELL, an English critic of note, makes these observations upon the character of the Old Comedy: "The Old Comedy, as it is called, in contradistinction to what was afterward named the Middle and the New, stood in the extreme relation of contrariety and parody to the tragedy of the Greeks —it was directed chiefly to the lower orders of society at Athens; it served in some measure the purposes of the modern journal, in which public measures and the topics of the day might be fully discussed; and in consequence the dramatis personae were generally the poet's own contemporaries, speaking in their own names and acting in masks, which, as they bore only a caricature resemblance of their own faces, showed that the poet, in his observations, did not mean to be taken literally. Like tragedy, comedy constituted part of a religious ceremony; and the character of the deity to whom it was more particularly dedicated was stamped at times pretty visibly upon the work which was composed in his honor. The Dionysian festivals were the great carnivals of antiquity—they celebrated the returns of vernal festivity or the joyous vintage, and were in consequence the great holidays of Athens—the seasons of universal relaxation.

"The comic poet was the high-priest of the festival; and if the orgies of his divinity (the god of wine) sometimes demanded a style of poetry which a Father of our Church probably had in his eye when he called all poetry the devil's wine, the organ of their utterance (however strange it may seem to us) no doubt considered himself as perfectly absolved from the censure which we should bestow on such productions: in his compositions he was discharging the same pious office as the painter, whose duty it was to fill the temples of the same deity with pictures which our imaginations would consider equally ill-suited to the habitations of divinity. What religion therefore forbids among us, the religion of the Greeks did not merely tolerate but enjoin. Nor was the extreme and even profane gayety of the comedy without its excuse. To unite extravagant mirth with a solemn seriousness was enjoined by law, even in the sacred festival of Ceres.

"While the philosophers, therefore, querulously maintained that man was the joke and plaything of the gods, the comic poet reversed the picture, and made the gods the playthings of men; in his hands, indeed, everything was upon the broad grin: the gods laughed, men laughed, and animals laughed. Nature was considered as a sort of fantastic being, with a turn for the humorous; and the world was treated as a sort of extended jest-book, where the poet pointed out the bon-mots [Footnote: French; pronounced bong-mos.] and acted in some degree as corrector of the Press. If he discharged this office sometimes in the sarcastic spirit of a Mephistopheles, this, too, was considered as part of his functions. He was the Ter'roe Fil'ius [Footnote: Terroe Filius, son of the earth; that is, a human being.] of the day; and lenity would have been considered, not as an act of discretion, but as a cowardly dereliction of duty."

It was in the time of Pericles that the comedy just described first dealt with men and subjects under their real names; and in one of the plays of Crati'nus—under whom comedy received its full development—Cimon is highly eulogized, and his rival, Pericles, is bitterly derided. With unmeasured and unsparing license comedy attacked, under the veil of satire, not only all that was really ludicrous or base, but often cast scorn and derision on that which was innocent, or even meritorious. For the reason that the comic writers were so indiscriminate in their attacks, frequently making transcendent genius and noble personality, as well as demagogism and personal vice, the butt of comic scorn; their writings have but little historical value except in the few instances in which they are corroborated by higher authority.

ARlSTOPH'ANES.

Among the contemporaries of Cratinus were Eu'polis and Aristophanes, the latter of whom became the chief of what is known as the Old Attic Comedy. Of his life little is known; but he was a member of the conservative or aristocratic party at Athens, directing his attacks chiefly against the democratic or popular party of Pericles, and continuing to write comedies until about 392 B.C. While his comedies are replete with coarse wit, they are wonderfully brilliant, and contain much, also, that is pure and beautiful. As a late writer has well said, "Beauty and deformity came to him with equal abundance, and his wonderful pieces are made up of all that is low and all that is pure and lovely."

The Muses, seeking for a shrine Whose glories ne'er should cease, Found, as they strayed, the soul divine Of Aristophanes. —PLATO, trans. by MERIVALE.

MR. GROTE characterizes the comedies of Aristophanes as follows: "Never probably will the full and unshackled force of comedy be so exhibited again. Without having Aristophanes actually before us it would have been impossible to imagine the unmeasured and unsparing license of attack assumed by the old comedy upon the gods, the institutions, the politicians, philosophers, poets, private citizens, specially named—and even the women, whose life was entirely domestic—of Athens. With this universal liberty in respect of subject there is combined a poignancy of derision and satire, a fecundity of imagination and variety of turns, and a richness of poetical expression such as cannot be surpassed, and such as fully explains the admiration expressed for him by the philosopher Plato, who in other respects must have regarded him with unquestionable disapprobation. His comedies are popular in the largest sense of the word, addressed to the entire body of male citizens on a day consecrated to festivity, and providing for their amusement or derision, with a sort of drunken abundance, out of all persons or things standing in any way prominent before the public eye." [Footnote: "History or Greece," Chap. lxvii.]

In his introduction to the Dialogues of Plato, REV. WILLIAM SEWELL, an English clergyman and author, observes that "Men smile when they hear the anecdote of Chrys'ostom, one of the most venerable fathers of the Church, who never went to bed without something from Aristophanes under his pillow." He adds: "But the noble tone of morals, the elevated taste, the sound political wisdom, the boldness and acuteness of the satire, the grand object, which is seen throughout, of correcting the follies of the day, and improving the condition of his country—all these are features in Aristophanes which, however disguised, as they intentionally are, by coarseness and buffoonery, entitle him to the highest respect from every reader of antiquity." Yet, while the purposes of Aristophanes were in the main praiseworthy, and the persons and things he attacked generally deserving of censure, he spared the vices of his own party and associates; and, like all satirists, for effect he often traduced character, as in the case of the virtuous Socrates. In an attack on the Sophists, in his play of the Clouds, he gives to Socrates the character of a vulgar Sophist, and holds him up to the derision of the Athenian people. But, as another has said, "Time has set all even; and 'poor Socrates,' as Aristophanes called him—as a far loftier bard has sung—

'Poor Socrates, By what he taught, and suffered for so doing, For truth's sake suffering death unjust, lives now, Equal in fame to proudest conquerors.'" —MILTON.