Mosaics of Grecian History Part 24

The design of Hesiod, as a prominent writer observes, was "to communicate to his brother in emphatic language, and in the order, or it might be the disorder, which his excited feelings suggested, his opinions or counsels on a variety of matters of deep interest to both, and to the social circle in which they moved. The Works and Days may be more appropriately ent.i.tled 'A Letter of Remonstrance or Advice' to a brother; of remonstrance on the folly of his past conduct, of advice as to the future. Upon these two fundamental data every fact, doctrine, and ill.u.s.tration of the poem depends, as essentially as the plot of the Iliad on the anger of Achilles." [Footnote: Mure's "Language and Literature of Ancient Greece," vol. ii., p.384.] The whole work has been well characterized by another writer as "the most ancient specimen of didactic poetry, consisting of ethical, political, and minute economical precepts. It is in a homely and unimaginative style, but is impressed throughout with a lofty and solemn feeling, founded on the idea that the G.o.ds have ordained justice among men, have made labor the only road to prosperity, and have so ordered the year that every work has its appointed season, the sign of which may be discerned."

There are three remarkable episodes in the Works and Days. The first is the tale of Prome'theus, which is continued in the Theogony; and the second is that of the Four Ages of Man. Both of these are types of certain stages or vicissitudes of human destiny. The third episode is a description of Winter, a poem not so much in keeping with the spirit of the work, but "one in which there is much fine and vigorous painting." The following extract from it furnishes a specimen of the poet's descriptive powers:

Winter.

Beware the January month, beware Those hurtful days, that keenly-piercing air Which flays the herds; when icicles are cast O'er frozen earth, and sheathe the nipping blast.

From courser-breeding Thrace comes rushing forth O'er the broad sea the whirlwind of the north, And moves it with his breath: the ocean floods Heave, and earth bellows through her wild of woods.

Full many an oak of lofty leaf he fells, And strews with thick-branch'd pines the mountain dells: He stoops to earth; the crash is heard around; The depth of forest rolls the roar of sound.

The beasts their cowering tails with trembling fold, And shrink and shudder at the gusty cold; Thick is the hairy coat, the s.h.a.ggy skin, But that all-chilling breath shall pierce within.

Not his rough hide can then the ox avail; The long-hair'd goat, defenceless, feels the gale: Yet vain the north wind's rushing strength to wound The flock with sheltering fleeces fenced around.

He bows the old man crook'd beneath the storm, But spares the soft-skinn'd virgin's tender form.

Screened by her mother's roof on wintry nights, And strange to golden Venus' mystic rites, The suppling waters of the bath she swims, With shiny ointment sleeks her dainty limbs; Within her chamber laid on downy bed, While winter howls in tempest o'er her head.

Now gnaws the boneless polypus his feet, Starved 'midst bleak rocks, his desolate retreat; For now no more the sun, with gleaming ray, Through seas transparent lights him to his prey.

And now the horned and unhorned kind, Whose lair is in the wood, sore-famished, grind Their sounding jaws, and, chilled and quaking, fly Where oaks the mountain dells embranch on high: They seek to conch in thickets of the glen, Or lurk, deep sheltered, in some rocky den.

Like aged men, who, propp'd on crutches, tread Tottering, with broken strength and stooping head, So move the beasts of earth, and, creeping low, Shun the white flakes and dread the drifting snow.

--Trans. by ELTON.

The Theogony embraces subjects of a higher order than the Works and Days. "It ascends," says THIRLWALL, "to the birth of the G.o.ds and the origin of nature, and unfolds the whole order of the world in a series of genealogies, which personify the beings of every kind contained in it." A late writer of prominence says that "it was of greater value to the Greeks than the Works and Days, as it contained an authorized version of the genealogy of their G.o.ds and heroes--an inspired dictionary of mythology--from which to deviate was hazardous." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets,"

by John Addington Symonds.] This work, however, has not the poetical merit of the other, although there are some pa.s.sages in it of fascinating power and beauty. "The famous pa.s.sage describing the Styx," says PROFESSOR MAHAFFY, "shows the poet to have known and appreciated the wild scenery of the river Styx in Arcadia; and the description of Sleep and Death, which immediately precedes it, is likewise of great beauty. The conflict of the G.o.ds and t.i.tans has a splendid crash and thunder about it, and is far superior in conception, though inferior in execution, to the battle of the G.o.ds in the Iliad." [Footnote: Mahaffy's "History of Cla.s.sical Greek Literature," vol. i., p. 111.] The poems of Hesiod early became popular with the country population of Greece; but in the cities, and especially in Sparta, where war was considered the only worthy pursuit, they were long cast aside for the more heroic lines of Homer.

II. LYRIC POETRY.

From the time of Homer, down to about 560 B.C., many kinds of composition for which the Greeks were subsequently distinguished were practically unknown. We are told that the drama was in its infancy, and that prose writing, although more or less practiced during this period for purposes of utility or necessity, was not cultivated as a branch of popular literature. There was another kind of composition, however, which was carried to its highest perfection in the last stage of the epic period, and that was lyric poetry. But of the masterpieces of lyric poetry only a few fragments remain.

CALLI'NUS.

The first representative of this school that we may mention was Callinus, an Ephesian of the latter part of the eighth century B.C., to whom the invention of the elegiac distich, the characteristic form of the Ionian poetry, is attributed. Among the few fragments from this poet is the following fine war elegy, occasioned, probably, by a Persian invasion of Asia Minor:

How long will ye slumber! when will ye take heart, And fear the reproach of your neighbors at hand?

Fie! comrades, to think ye have peace for your part, While the sword and the arrow are wasting our land!

Shame! Grasp the shield close! cover well the bold breast!

Aloft raise the spear as ye march on the foe!

With no thought of retreat, with no terror confessed, Hurl your last dart in dying, or strike your last blow.

Oh, 'tis n.o.ble and glorious to fight for our all-- For our country, our children, the wife of our love!

Death comes not the sooner; no soldier shall fall Ere his thread is spun out by the sisters above.

Once to die is man's doom: rush, rush to the fight!

He cannot escape though his blood were Jove's own.

For a while let him cheat the shrill arrow by flight; Fate will catch him at last in his chamber alone.

Unlamented he dies--unregretted? Not so When, the tower of his country, in death falls the brave; Thrice hallowed his name among all, high or low, As with blessings alive, so with tears in the grave.

--Trans. by H. N. COLERIDGE.

[Footnote: The "sisters" here alluded to were the Par'coe, or Fates--three G.o.ddesses who presided over the destinies of mortals: 1st, Clo'tho, who held the distaff; 2d, Lach'esis, who spun each one's portion of the thread of life; and, 3d, At'ropos, who cut off the thread with her scissors.

Clotho and Lachesis, whose boundless sway, With Atropos, both men and G.o.ds obey. --HESIOD.]

ARCHIL'OCHUS.

Next in point of time comes Archilochus of Pa'ros, a satirist who flourished between 714 and 676 B.C. He is generally considered to be the first Greek poet who wrote in the Iambic measure; but there are evidences that this measure existed before his time.

This poet was betrothed to the daughter of a n.o.ble of Paros; but the father, probably tempted by the alluring offers of a richer suitor, forbade the nuptials. Archilochus thereupon composed so bitter a lampoon upon the family that the daughters of the n.o.bleman are said to have hanged themselves. Says SYMONDS, "He made Iambic metre his own, and sharpened it into a terrible weapon of attack.

Each verse he wrote was polished, and pointed like an arrow-head.

Each line was steeped in the poison of hideous charges against his sweetheart, her sisters, and her father." [Footnote: "The Greek Poets;" First Series, p. 108.]

Thenceforth Archilochus led a wandering life, full of vicissitudes, but replete with evidences of his merit. "While Hesiod was in the poor and backward parts of central Greece, modifying with timid hand the tone and style of epic poetry, without abandoning its form, Archilochus, storm-tossed amid wealth and poverty, amid commerce and war, amid love and hate, ever in exile and yet everywhere at home--Archilochus broke altogether with the traditions of literature, and colonized new territories with his genius." [Footnote: "Cla.s.sical Greek Literature," vol. i., p.157.]

He is said to have returned to Paros a short time before his death, where, on account of a victory he had won at the Olympic festival, the resentment and hatred formerly entertained against him were turned into grat.i.tude and admiration. His death, which occurred on the field of battle, could not extinguish his fame, and his memory was celebrated by a festival established by his countrymen, during which his verses were sung alternately with the poems of Homer. "Thus," says an old historian, "by a fatality frequently attending men of genius, he spent a life of misery, and acquired honor after death. Reproach, ignominy, contempt, poverty, and persecution were the ordinary companions of his person; admiration, glory, respect, splendor, and magnificence were the attendants of his shade." With the exception of Homer, no poet of cla.s.sical antiquity acquired so high a celebrity.

Among the Greeks and Romans he was equally esteemed. Cicero cla.s.sed him with Sophocles, Pindar, and even Homer; Plato called him the "wisest of poets;" and Longinus "speaks with rapture of the torrent of his divine inspiration."

ALC'MAN.

Pa.s.sing over Simonides of Amorgos, who is chiefly celebrated for a very ungallant but ingenious and smooth satire on women, and over Tyrtae'us, whose animating and patriotic odes, as we have seen, proved the safety of Sparta in one of the Messenian wars, we come to the first truly lyric poet of Greece--Alcman-- originally a Lydian slave in a Spartan family, but emanc.i.p.ated by his master on account of his genius. He flourished after the second Messenian war, and his poems partake of the character of this period, which was one of pleasure and peace. They are chiefly erotic, or amatory, or in celebration of the enjoyments of social life. He successfully cultivated choral poetry, and his Parthenia, made up of a variety of subjects, was composed to be sung by the maidens of Tayge'tus. "His excellence," says MURE, "appears to have lain in his descriptive powers. The best, and one of the longest extant pa.s.sages of his works is a description of sleep, or rather of night; a description unsurpa.s.sed, perhaps unrivalled, by any similar pa.s.sage in the Greek or any other language, and which has been imitated or paraphrased by many distinguished poets." [Footnote: "History of Greek Literature," vol. iii., p.

205.] The following is this author's translation of it:

Now o'er the drowsy earth still night prevails.

Calm sleep the mountain tops and shady vales, The rugged cliffs and hollow glens; The wild beasts slumber in their dens, The cattle on the hill. Deep in the sea The countless finny race and monster brood Tranquil repose. Even the busy bee Forgets her daily toil. The silent wood No more with noisy hum of insect rings; And all the feathered tribes, by gentle sleep subdued, Roost in the glade and hang their drooping wings.

ARI'ON AND STESICH'ORUS.

Arion, the greater part of whose life was spent at the court of Periander, despot of Corinth, and Stesichorus, of Himera, in Sicily, who flourished about 608 B.C., were two Greek poets especially noted for the improvements they made in choral poetry.

The former invented the wild, irregular, and impetuous dithyramb, [Footnote: From Dithyrambus, one of the appellations of Bacchus.] originally a species of lyric poetry in honor of Bacchus; but of his works there is not a single fragment extant.

The latter's original name was Tis'ias, and he was called Stesichorus, which signifies a "leader of choruses." A late historian characterizes him as "the first to break the monotony of the choral song, which had consisted previously of nothing more than one uniform stanza, by dividing it into the Strophe, the Antistrophe, and the Epodus--the turn, the return, and the rest." PROFESSOR MAHAFFY observes of him as follows: "Finding the taste for epic recitation decaying, he undertook to reproduce epic stories in lyric dress, and present the substance of the old epics in rich and varied metres, and with the measured movements of a trained chorus. This was a direct step to the drama, for when anyone member of the chorus came to stand apart and address the rest of the choir, we have already the essence of Greek tragedy before us." [Footnote: "Cla.s.sical Greek Literature," vol. i., p.

203.] The works of Stesichorus comprised hymns in honor of the G.o.ds and in praise of heroes, love-songs, and songs of revelry.

ALCae'US.

Among the lyric poets of Greece some writers a.s.sign the very first place to Alcaeus, a native of Lesbos, who flourished about 610 B.C., and who has been styled the ardent friend and defender of liberty, more because he talked so well of patriotism than because of his deeds in its behalf. The poet AKENSIDE, however, calls him "the Lesbian patriot," and thus contrasts his style with that of Anac'reon:

Broke from the fetters of his native land, Devoting shame and vengeance to her lords, With louder impulse and a threat'ning hand The Lesbian patriot smites the sounding chords: "Ye wretches, ye perfidious train!

Ye cursed of G.o.ds and free-born men!

Ye murderers of the laws!

Though now ye glory in your l.u.s.t, Though now ye tread the feeble neck in dust, Yet Time and righteous Jove will judge your dreadful cause."

The poems of Alcaeus were princ.i.p.ally war and drinking songs of great beauty, and it is said that they furnished to the Latin poet Horace "not only a metrical model, but also the subject-matter of some of his most beautiful odes." The poet fought in the war between Athens and Mityle'ne (606 B.C.), and enjoyed the reputation of being a brave and skilful warrior, although on one occasion he is said to have fled from the field of battle leaving his arms behind him. Of his warlike odes we have a specimen in the following description of the martial embellishment of his own house:

The Spoils of War.

Glitters with bra.s.s my mansion wide; The roof is decked on every side, In martial pride, With helmets ranged in order bright, And plumes of horse-hair nodding white, A gallant sight!

Fit ornament for warrior's brow-- And round the walls in goodly row Refulgent glow Stout greaves of bra.s.s, like burnished gold, And corselets there in many a fold Of linen foiled; And shields that, in the battle fray, The routed losers of the day Have cast away.

Euboean falchions too are seen, With rich-embroidered belts between Of dazzling sheen: And gaudy surcoats piled around, The spoils of chiefs in war renowned, May there be found: These, and all else that here you see, Are fruits of glorious victory Achieved by me.

--Trans. By MERIVALE.

SAPPHO.