Mosaics of Grecian History Part 37

Attend to the words of the sovereign birds, Immortal, ill.u.s.trious lords of the air, Who survey from on high, with a merciful eye, Your struggles of misery, labor, and care.

Whence you may learn and clearly discern Such truths as attract your inquisitive turn-- Which is busied of late with a mighty debate, A profound speculation about the creation, And organical life and chaotical strife-- With various notions of heavenly motions, And rivers and oceans, and valleys and mountains, And sources of fountains, and meteors on high, And stars in the sky.... We propose by-and-by (If you'll listen and hear) to make it all clear.

All lessons of primary daily concern You have learned from the birds (and continue to learn), Your best benefactors and early instructors.

We give you the warnings of seasons returning: When the cranes are arranged, and muster afloat In the middle air, with a creaking note,

Steering away to the Libyan sand, Then careful farmers sow their lands; The craggy vessel is hauled ash.o.r.e; The sail, the ropes, the rudder, and oar Are all unshipped and housed in store.

The shepherd is warned, by the kite re-appearing, To muster his flock and be ready for shearing.

You quit your old cloak at the swallow's behest, In a.s.surance of summer, and purchase a vest.

For Delphi, for Ammon, Dodo'na--in fine, For every oracular temple and shrine-- The birds are a subst.i.tute, equal and fair; For on us you depend, and to us you repair For counsel and aid when a marriage is made-- A purchase, a bargain, or venture in trade: Unlucky or lucky, whatever has struck ye-- A voice in the street, or a slave that you meet, A name or a word by chance overheard-- If you deem it an omen you call it a bird; And if birds are your omens, it clearly will follow That birds are a proper prophetic Apollo.

--Trans. by FRERE.

III. HISTORY.

As we have stated in a former chapter, literary compositions in prose first appeared among the Greeks in the sixth century B.C., and were either mythological, or collections of local legends, whether sacred or profane, of particular districts. It was not until a still later period that the Grecian prose writers, becoming more positive in their habits of thought, broke away from speculative and mystical tendencies, and began to record their observations of the events daily occurring about them. In the writings of Hecatae'us of Mile'tus, who flourished about 500 B.C., we find the first elements of history; and yet some modern writers think he can lay no claim whatever to the t.i.tle of historian, while others regard him as the first historical writer of any importance. He visited Greece proper and many of the surrounding countries, and recorded his observations and experiences in a work of a geographical character, ent.i.tled Periodus. He also wrote another work relating to the mythical history of Greece, and died about 467 B.C.

HEROD'OTUS.

MAHAFFY considers Hecatae'us "the forerunner of Herodotus in his mode of life and his conception of setting down his experiences;"

while NIE'BUHR, the great German historian, absolutely denies the existence of any Grecian histories before Herodotus gave to the world the first of those ill.u.s.trious productions that form another bright link in the literary chain of Grecian glory.

Born in Halicarnas'sus about the year 484, of an ill.u.s.trious family, Herodotus was driven from his native land at an early age by a revolution, after which he traveled extensively over the then known world, collecting much of the material that he subsequently used in his writings. After a short residence at Samos he removed to Athens, leaving there, however, about the year 440 to take up his abode at Thu'rii, a new Athenian colony near the site of the former Syb'aris. Here he lived the rest of his life, dying about the year 420. Lucian relates that, on completing his work, Herodotus went to Olympia during the celebration of the Olympic games, and there recited to his countrymen the nine books of which his history was composed.

His hearers were delighted, and immediately honored the books with the t.i.tle of the Nine Muses. A later account of this scene says that Thucydides, then a young man, stood at the side of Herodotus, and was affected to tears by his recitations.

Herodotus modestly states the object of his history in the following paragraph, which is all the introduction that he makes to his great work: "These are the researches of Herodotus of Halicarna.s.sus, which he publishes in the hope of thereby preserving from decay the remembrance of what men have done, and of preventing the great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and the barbarians from losing their due meed of glory; and, withal, to put on record what were their grounds of feud." [Footnote: Rawlinson's translation.] But while he portrays the military ambition of the Persian rulers, the struggles of the Greeks for liberty, and their final triumph over the Persian power, he also gives us a history of almost all the then known world. "His work begins,"

says MR. LAWRENCE, "with the causes of the hostility between Persia and Greece, describes the power of Croe'sus, the wonders of Egypt, the expedition of Darius into Scythia, and closes with the immortal war between the allied Greeks and the Persian hosts.

To his countrymen the story must have had the intense interest of a national ode or epic. Athens, particularly, must have read with touching ardor the graceful narrative of its early glory; for when Herodotus finished his work the brief period had already pa.s.sed away. What aeschylus and the other dramatists painted in brief and striking pictures on the stage, Herodotus described with laborious but never tedious minuteness. His pure Ionic diction never wearies, his easy and simple narrative has never lost its interest, and all succeeding ages have united in calling him 'the Father of History.' His fame has advanced with the progress of letters, and has spread over mankind."

The following admirable description of Herodotus and of his writings is from an essay on "History," by LORD MACAULAY:

Herodotus and his Writings.

"Of the romantic historians, Herodotus is the earliest and the best. His animation, his simple-hearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not written a really good history; for he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We do not here refer merely to those gross fictions with which he has been reproached by the critics of later times, but we speak of that coloring which is equally diffused over his whole narrative, and which perpetually leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt what to reject and what to receive. The great events are, no doubt, faithfully related; so, probably, are many of the slighter circ.u.mstances, but which of them it is impossible to ascertain.

We know there is truth, but we cannot exactly decide where it lies.

"If we may trust to a report not sanctioned, indeed, by writers of high authority, but in itself not improbable, the work of Herodotus was composed not to be read, but to be heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring author looked for his reward.

The great Olympian festival was to witness his triumph. The interest of the narrative and the beauty of the style were aided by the imposing effect of recitation--by the splendor of the spectacle, by the powerful influence of sympathy. A critic who could have asked for authorities in the midst of such a scene must have been of a cold and skeptical nature, and few such critics were there. As was the historian, such were the auditors--inquisitive, credulous, easily moved by the religious awe of patriotic enthusiasm. They were the very men to hear with delight of strange beasts, and birds, and trees; of dwarfs, and giants, and cannibals; of G.o.ds whose very names it was impiety to utter; of ancient dynasties which had left behind them monuments surpa.s.sing all the works of later times; of towns like provinces; of rivers like seas; of stupendous walls, and temples, and pyramids; of the rites which the Magi performed at daybreak on the tops of the mountains; of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks of Memphis. With equal delight they would have listened to the graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of the exact accomplishment of obscure predictions; of the punishment of climes over which the justice of Heaven had seemed to slumber; of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead; of princesses for whom n.o.ble suitors contended in every generous exercise of strength and skill; and of infants strangely preserved from the dagger of the a.s.sa.s.sin to fulfil high destinies.

"As the narrative approached their own times the interest became still more absorbing. The chronicler had now to tell the story of that great conflict from which Europe dates its intellectual and political supremacy--a story which, even at this distance of time, is the most marvelous and the most touching in the annals of the human race--a story abounding with all that is wild and wonderful; with all that is pathetic and animating; with the gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and despotic power; with the mightier miracles of wisdom, of virtue, and of courage. He told them of rivers dried up in a day, of provinces famished for a meal; of a pa.s.sage for ships hewn through the mountains; of a road for armies spread upon the waves; of monarchies and commonwealths swept away; of anxiety, of terror, of confusion, of despair! and then of proud and stubborn hearts tried in that extremity of evil and not found wanting; of resistance long maintained against desperate odds; of lives dearly sold when resistance could be maintained no more; of signal deliverance, and of unsparing revenge. Whatever gave a stronger air of reality to a narrative so well calculated to inflame the pa.s.sions and to flatter national pride, was certain to be favorably received."

THUCYDIDES.

Greater even than Herodotus, in some respects, but entirely different in his style of composition, was the historian Thucydides, who was born in Athens about 471 B.C. In early life he studied in the rhetorical and sophistical schools of his native city; and he seems to have taken some part in the political agitations of the period. In his forty-seventh year he commanded an Athenian fleet that was sent to the relief of Amphip'olis, then besieged by Bras'idas the Spartan. But Thucydides was too late; on his arrival the city had surrendered. His failure to reach there sooner appears to have been caused by circ.u.mstances entirely beyond his control, although some English scholars, including GROTE, declare that he was remiss and dilatory, and therefore Deserving of the punishment he received--banishment from Athens.

He retired to Scaptes'y-le, a small town in Thrace; and in this secluded spot, removed from the shifting scenes of Grecian life, he devoted himself to the composition of his great work. Tradition a.s.serts that he was a.s.sa.s.sinated when about eighty years of age, either at Athens or in Thrace.

The history of Thucydides, unfinished at his death, gives an account of nearly twenty-one years of the Peloponnesian war.

The author's style is polished, vigorous, philosophical, and sometimes so concise as to be obscure. We are told that even Cicero found some of his sentences almost unintelligible. But, as MAHAFFY says: "Whatever faults of style, whatever transient fashion of involving his thoughts, may be due to a Sophistic education and to the desire of exhibiting depth and acuteness, there cannot be the smallest doubt that in the hands of Thucydides the art of writing history made an extraordinary stride, and attained a degree of perfection which no subsequent h.e.l.lenic (and few modern) writers have equaled. If the subject which he selected was really a narrow one, and many of the details trivial, it was nevertheless compa.s.sed with extreme difficulty, for it is at all times a hard task to write contemporary history, and more especially so in an age when published doc.u.ments were scarce, and the art of printing unknown. Moreover, however trivial may be the details of petty military raids, of which an account was yet necessary to the completeness of his record, we cannot but wonder at the lofty dignity with which he has handled every part of the subject. There is not a touch of comedy, not a point of satire, not a word of familiarity throughout the whole book, and we stand face to face with a man who strikes us as strangely un-Attic in his solemn and severe temper." [Footnote: "History of Greek Literature," vol. ii., p. 117.]

The following comparison, evidently a just one, has been made between Thucydides and Herodotus:

Thucydides and Herodotus.

"In comparing the two great historians, it is plain that the mind and talents of each were admirably suited to the work which he took in hand. The extensive field in which Herodotus labored afforded an opportunity for embellishing and ill.u.s.trating his history with the marvels of foreign lands; while the glorious exploits of a great and free people stemming a tide of barbarian invaders and finally triumphing over them, and the customs and histories of the barbarians with whom they had been at war, and of all other nations whose names were connected with Persia, either by lineage or conquest, were subjects which required the talents of a simple narrator who had such love of truth as not willfully to exaggerate, and such judgment as to select what was best worthy of attention. But Thucydides had a narrower field.

The mind of Greece was the subject of his study, as displayed in a single war which was, in its rise, progress, and consequences, the most important which Greece had ever seen. It did not in itself possess that heart-stirring interest which characterizes the Persian war. In it united Greece was not struggling for her liberties against a foreign foe, animated by one common patriotism, inspired by an enthusiastic Jove of liberty; but it presented the sad spectacle of Greece divided against herself, torn by the jealousies of race, and distracted by the animosities of faction.

"The task of Thucydides, therefore, was that of studying the warring pa.s.sions and antagonistic workings of one mind; and it was one which, in order to become interesting and profitable, demanded that there should be brought to bear upon it the powers of a keen, a.n.a.lytical intellect. To separate history from the traditions and falsehoods with which it had been overlaid, and to give the early history of Greece in its most truthful form; to trace Athenian supremacy from its rise to its ruin, and the growing jealousy of other states, whether inferiors or rivals, to which that supremacy gave rise; to show its connection with the enmities of race and the opposition of politics; to point out what causes led to such wide results; how the insatiable ambitions of Athens, gratifying itself in direct disobedience to the advice of her wise statesman, Pericles, led step by step to her ultimate ruin,--required not a mere narrator of events, however brilliant, but a moral philosopher and a statesman. Such was Thucydides. Although his work shows an advance, in the science of historical composition, over that of Herodotus, and his mind is of a higher, because of a more thoughtful order, yet his fame by no means obscures the glory which belongs to the Father of History. Their walks are different; they can never be considered as rivals, and therefore neither can claim superiority." [Footnote: "Greek and Roman Cla.s.sical Literature," by Professor R. W. Browne, King's College, London.]

IV. PHILOSOPHY.

ANAXAG'ORAS.

The most ill.u.s.trious of the Ionic philosophers, and the first distinguished philosopher of this period of Grecian history, was Anaxagoras, who was born at Clazom'enae in the year 499 B.C.

At the age of twenty he went to Athens, where he remained thirty years, teaching philosophy, and having for his hearers Pericles, Socrates, Euripides, and other celebrated characters. While the pantheistic systems of Tha'les, Heracli'tus, and other early philosophers admitted, in accordance with the fictions of the received mythology, that the universe is full of G.o.ds, the doctrine of Anaxagoras led to the belief of but one supreme mind or intelligence, distinct from the chaos to which it imparts motion, form, and order. Hence he also taught that the sun is an inanimate, fiery ma.s.s, and therefore not a proper object of worship. He a.s.serted that the moon shines by reflected light, and he rightly explained solar and lunar eclipses. He gave allegorical explanations of the names of the Grecian G.o.ds, and struck a blow at the popular religion by attributing the miraculous appearances at sacrifices to natural causes. For these innovations he was stoned by the populace, and, as a penalty for what was considered his impiety, he was condemned to death; but through the influence of Pericles his sentence was commuted to banishment. He retired to Lamp'sacus, on the h.e.l.lespont, where he died at the age of seventy-two.

A short time before his death the senate of Lampsacus sent to Anaxagoras to ask what commemoration of his life and character would be most acceptable to him. He answered, "Let all the boys and girls have a play-day on the anniversary of my death." The suggestion was observed, and his memory was honored by the people of Lampsacus for many centuries with a yearly festival. The amiable disposition of Anaxagoras, and the general character of his teachings, are pleasantly and very correctly set forth in the following poem, which is a supposed letter from the poet Cleon, of Lampsacus, to Pericles, giving an account of the philosopher's death:

The Death of Anaxagoras.

Cleon of Lampsacus, to Pericles: Of him she banished now let Athens boast; Let now th' Athenian raise to him they stoned A statue. Anaxagoras is dead!

To you who mourn the master, called him friend, Beat back th' Athenian wolves who fanged his throat, And risked your own to save him--Pericles-- I now unfold the manner of his end:

The aged man, who found in sixty years Scant cause for laughter, laughed before he died, And died still smiling: Athens vexed him not!

Not he, but your Athenians, he would say, Were banished in his exile!

When the dawn First glimmers white o'er Lesser Asia, And little birds are twittering in the gra.s.s, And all the sea lies hollow and gray with mist, And in the streets the ancient watchmen doze, The master woke with cold. His feet were chill, And reft of sense; and we who watched him knew The fever had not wholly left his brain, For he was wandering, seeking nests of birds, An urchin from the green Ionian town Where he was born. We chafed his clay-cold limbs; And so he dozed, nor dreamed, until the sun Laughed out--broad day--and flushed the garden G.o.ds Who bless our fruits and vines in Lampsacus.

Feeble, but sane and cheerful, he awoke, And took our hands and asked to feel the sun; And where the ilex spreads a gracious shade We placed him, wrapped and pillowed; and he heard The charm of birds, the whisper of the vines, The ripple of the blue Propontic sea.

Placid and pleased he lay; but we were sad To see the snowy hair and silver beard Like withering mosses on a fallen oak, And feel that he, whose vast philosophy Had cast such sacred branches o'er the fields Where Athens pastures her dull sheep, lay fallen, And never more should know the spring! Confess You too had grieved to see it, Pericles!

But Anaxagoras owned no sense of wrong; And when we called the plagues of all your G.o.ds On your ungrateful city, he but smiled: "Be patient, children! Where would be the gain Of wisdom and divine astronomy, Could we not school our fretful minds to bear The ills all life inherits? I can smile To think of Athens! Were they much to blame?

Had I not slain Apollo? plucked the beard Of Jove himself? Poor rabble, who have yet Outgrown so little the green gra.s.shoppers From whom they boast descent, are they to blame?

[Footnote: The Athenians claimed to be of indigenous origin-- Autoch'tho-nes, that is, Aborigines, sprung from the earth itself. As emblematic of this origin they wore in their hair the golden forms of the cicada, or locust, often improperly called gra.s.shopper, which was believed to spring from the earth. So it was said that the Athenians boasted descent from gra.s.shoppers.]

"How could they dream--or how believe when taught-- The sun a red-hot iron ball, in bulk Not less than Peloponnesus? How believe The moon no silver G.o.ddess girt for chase, But earth and stones, with caverns, hills, and vales?

Poor gra.s.shoppers! who deem the G.o.ds absorbed In all their babble, shrilling in the gra.s.s!

What wonder if they rage, should one but hint That thunder and lightning, born of clashing clouds, Might happen even with Jove in pleasant mood, Not thinking of Athenians at all!"

He paused; and, blowing softly from the sea, The fresh wind stirred the ilex, shaking down Through c.h.i.n.ks of sunny leaves blue gems of sky; And lying in the shadow, all his mind O'ershadowed by our grief, once more he spoke: "Let not your hearts be troubled! All my days Hath all my care been fixed on this vast blue, So still above us; now my days are done, Let it have care of me! Be patient, meek, Not puffed with doctrine! Nothing can be known; Naught grasped for certain: sense is circ.u.mscribed; The intellect is weak, and life is short!"

He ceased, and mused a little while we wept.

"And yet be nowise downcast; seek, pursue!