Museum of Antiquity Part 48

In comparing Euripides and the other two masters in Grecian tragedy, it may be said that he ranks first in tragic representation and effect; Sophocles first in dramatic symmetry and ornament; aeschylus first in poetic vigor and grandeur. aeschylus was the most sublime; Sophocles the most beautiful; Euripides the most pathetic. The first displays the lofty intellect; the second exercises the cultivated taste; the third indulges the feeling heart. Each, as it were, shows a fine piece of sculpture. In aeschylus, it is a naked hero, with all the strength, boldness, and dignity of olden time. In Sophocles and Euripides, it may be perhaps the same hero; but with the former, he has put on the flowing robes, the elegant address, and the soft urbanity of a polished age; with the latter, he is yielding to some melancholy emotion, ever heedless of his posture or gait, and casting his unvalued drapery negligently about him. They have been compared by an ill.u.s.tration from another art: "The sublime and daring aeschylus resembles some strong and impregnable castle situated on a rock, whose martial grandeur awes the beholder--its battlements defended by heroes, and its gates proudly hung with trophies." Sophocles appears with splendid dignity, like some imperial palace of richest architecture; the symmetry of the parts and the chaste magnificence of the whole delight the eye and command the approbation of the judgment.

The pathetic and moral Euripides has the solemnity of a Gothic temple, whose storied windows admit a dim religious light, enough to show its high embowed roof, and the monuments of the dead which rise in every part, impressing our minds with pity and terror as emblems of the uncertain and short duration of human greatness, and with an awful sense of our own mortality.

ARISTOPHANES.

Very little is known about the life of Aristophanes. He was born about 444 B.C., and devoted himself to comic poetry. He wrote fifty-four plays, of which eleven are extant.

The comedies of Aristophanes are universally regarded as the standard of Attic writing in its greatest purity. His genius was vast, versatile, and original, and his knowledge of human nature surpa.s.sed by Homer and Shakspeare alone.

The n.o.ble 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 coa.r.s.eness and buffoonery, ent.i.tle him to the highest respect from every reader of antiquity. He condescended, indeed, to play the part of jester to the Athenian tyrant. But his jests were the vehicles for telling to them the soundest truths. They were never without a far higher aim than to raise a momentary laugh. He was no farce writer, but a deep philosophical politician; grieved and ashamed at the condition of his country, and through the stage, the favorite amus.e.m.e.nt of Athenians, aiding to carry on the one great common work, which Plato proposed in his dialogues, and in which all the better and n.o.bler spirits of the time seem to have concurred as by a confederacy--the reformation of an atrocious democracy. There is as much system in the comedies of Aristophanes as in the dialogues of Plato. Every part of a vitiated public mind is exposed in its turn.

Its demagogues in the Knights, its courts of justice in the Wasps, its foreign policy in the Acharnians, its tyranny over the allies in the Birds, the state of female society in the Sysistrate and the Ecclesiazusae, and its corrupt poetical taste in the Frogs. No one play is without its definite object; and the state of national education, as the greatest cause of all, is laid open in the Clouds. Whatever light is thrown, by that admirable play, upon the character of Socrates, and the position which he occupies in the Platonic Dialogues--a point, it may be remarked, on which the greatest mistakes are daily made--it is chiefly valuable as exhibiting, in a short but very complete a.n.a.lysis, and by a number of fine Rembrandt-like strokes, not any of which must be overlooked, all the features of that frightful school of sophistry, which at that time was engaged systematically in corrupting the Athenian youth, and against which the whole battery of Plato was pointedly directed.

PLATO.

Plato was born in the year 429 B.C., and died when he was eighty-two years old, on his birthday. He was a pupil of Socrates, the first and purest of moral philosophers. By the rare union of a brilliant imagination with a fondness for severe mathematical studies and profound metaphysical investigations; by extensive foreign travel; by familiar intercourse with the most enlightened men of his time, particularly Socrates, whose instructive conversations he attended for eight years, as well as by the correspondence which he maintained with the Pythagoreans of Magna Graecia, this great philosopher came to surpa.s.s all others in the vastness and profoundness of his views, and in the correctness and eloquence with which he expressed them; while his pure moral character ent.i.tled him to take his place by the side of Socrates. Socrates once said, "For what higher reward could a teacher ask than to have such pupils as Xenophon and Plato?"

The object of Plato was evidently the n.o.ble one of placing before man a high intellectual, and consequently, by implication, a high moral standard as the end and object of his aspirations; to encourage his efforts after the true, the pure, the beautiful, and the virtuous, knowing that the character would be purified in the endeavor, and that the consciousness of the progress made, step by step, would be of itself a reward. The object of science was, as he taught, the true, the eternal, the immutable, that which is; in one alone could these attributes be found united--that is G.o.d. Man's duty, then, according to the Platonic system is to know G.o.d and His attributes, and to aim at being under the practical influence of this knowledge. This the Christian is taught, but much more simply and plainly, to know G.o.d, and Jesus Christ whom He hath sent, and to propose to himself a perfect standard, to be perfect even as his Father in heaven is perfect, and to look forward, by that help which Plato had no warrant to look for, to attain the perfect measure of the fulness of Christ.

Although Plato believed and taught that man ought to strive after and devote himself to the contemplation of the One, the Eternal, the Infinite, he was humbly conscious that no one could attain to the perfection of such knowledge; that it is too wonderful and excellent for human powers. Man's incapacity for apprehending this knowledge he attributed to the soul, during his present state of existence, being cramped and confined by its earthly tabernacle.

Plato defined virtue to be the imitation of G.o.d, or the free effort of man to attain to a resemblance to his original, or, in other terms, a unison and harmony of all our principles and actions according to reason, whence results the highest degree of happiness. Evil is opposed to this harmony as a disease of the soul. Virtue is _one_, indeed, but compounded of four elements--_wisdom_, _courage_, _temperance_, and _justice_. In his practical philosophy he blended a rigid principle of moral obligation with a spirit of gentleness and humanity; and education he described as a liberal cultivation and moral discipline of the mind. Politics he defined to be the application, on a great scale, of the laws of morality; for a society, being composed of individuals, is under similar moral obligations, and the end of politics to be liberty and concord. Beauty he considered to be the sensible representation of moral and physical perfection; consequently it is one with truth and goodness, and inspires love, which leads to virtue.

Would that many so-called Christian legislators and Christian people would go to this "heathen" philosopher and learn of him--learn that to do right is always and ever the highest safety, the highest expediency, the highest "conservatism," the highest good!

How beautifully Akenside expresses this:--

"Thus was beauty sent from heaven, The lovely ministress of truth and good, In this dark world: for TRUTH AND GOOD ARE ONE, AND BEAUTY DWELLS IN THEM, AND THEY IN HER, WITH LIKE PARTIc.i.p.aTION. Wherefore, then, O sons of earth! would ye dissolve the tie?

O wherefore, with a rash, impetuous aim, Seek ye those flowery joys with which the hand Of lavish fancy paints each flattering scene Where beauty _seems_ to dwell, nor once inquire Where is the sanction of eternal truth, Or where the seal of undeceitful good, To save your search from folly! wanting these, Lo! beauty withers in your void embrace, And with the glittering of an idiot's toy Did fancy mock your vows."

THE PERFECT BEAUTY.

(_By Plato._)

"He who aspires to love rightly, ought from his earliest youth to seek an intercourse with beautiful forms, and first to make a single form the object of his love, and therein to generate intellectual excellencies. He ought, then, to consider that beauty in whatever form it resides is the brother of that beauty which subsists in another form; and if he ought to pursue that which is beautiful in form, it would be absurd to imagine that beauty is not one and the same thing in all forms, and would therefore remit much of his ardent preference towards one, through his perception of the mult.i.tude of claims upon his love. In addition, he would consider the beauty which is in souls more excellent than that which is in form. So that one endowed with an admirable soul, even though the flower of the form were withered, would suffice him as the object of his love and care, and the companion with whom he might seek and produce such conclusions as tend to the improvement of youth; so that it might be led to observe the beauty and the conformity which there is in the observation of its duties and the laws, and to esteem little the mere beauty of the outward form. He would then conduct his pupil to science, so that he might look upon the loveliness of wisdom; and that contemplating thus the universal beauty, no longer would he unworthily and meanly enslave himself to the attractions of one form in love, nor one subject of discipline or science, but would turn towards the wide ocean of intellectual beauty, and from the sight of the lovely and majestic forms which it contains, would abundantly bring forth his conceptions in philosophy; until, strengthened and confirmed, he should at length steadily contemplate one science which is the science of this universal beauty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FROM ANCIENT SCULPTURING.]

"Attempt, I entreat you, to mark what I say with as keen an observation as you can. He who has been disciplined to this point in love, by contemplating beautiful objects gradually, and in their order, now arriving at the end of all that concerns love, on a sudden beholds a beauty wonderful in its nature. This is it, O Socrates, for the sake of which all the former labors were endured. It is eternal, unproduced, indestructible; neither subject to increase nor decay; not, like other things, partly beautiful and partly deformed; not at one time beautiful and at another time not; not beautiful in relation to one thing and deformed in relation to another; not here beautiful and there deformed; not beautiful in the estimation of one person and deformed in that of another; nor can this supreme beauty be figured to the imagination like a beautiful face, or beautiful hands, or any portion of the body, nor like any discourse, nor any science. Nor does it subsist in any other that lives or is, either in earth, or in heaven, or in any other place; but it is eternally uniform and consistent, and monoeidic with itself. All other things are beautiful through a partic.i.p.ation of it, with this condition, that although they are subject to production and decay, it never becomes more or less, or endures any change. When any one, ascending from a correct system of love, begins to contemplate this supreme beauty, he already touches the consummation of his labor. For such as discipline themselves upon this system, or are conducted by another beginning to ascend through these transitory objects which are beautiful, towards that which is beauty itself, proceeding as on steps from the love of one form to that of two, and from that of two, to that of all forms which are beautiful; and from beautiful forms to beautiful habits and inst.i.tutions, and from inst.i.tutions to beautiful doctrines; until, from the meditation of many doctrines, they arrive at that which is nothing else than the doctrine of the supreme beauty itself, in the knowledge and contemplation of which at length they repose.

"Such a life as this, my dear Socrates," exclaimed the stranger Prophetess, "spent in the contemplation of the beautiful, is the life for men to live; which, if you chance ever to experience, you will esteem far beyond gold and rich garments, and even those lovely persons whom you and many others now gaze on with astonishment, and are prepared neither to eat nor drink so that you may behold and live forever with these objects of your love! What, then, shall we imagine to be the aspect of the supreme beauty itself, simple, pure, uncontaminated with the intermixture of human flesh and colors, and all other idle and unreal shapes attendant on mortality; the divine, the original, the supreme, the monoeidic beautiful itself? What must be the life of him who dwells with and gazes on that which it becomes us all to seek? Think you not that to him alone is accorded the prerogative of bringing forth, not images and shadows of virtue, for he is in contact not with a shadow but with reality; with virtue itself, in the production and nourishment of which he becomes dear to the G.o.ds, and if such a privilege is conceded to any human being, himself immortal?"--_From the Banquet, translated by the poet Sh.e.l.ley._

THE LAST HOURS OF SOCRATES.

(_By Plato._)

"When the dead arrive at the place to which their demon leads them severally, first of all they are judged, as well those who have lived well and piously, as those who have not. And those who appear to have pa.s.sed a middle kind of life, proceeding to Acheron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive at the lake, and there dwell, and when they are purified, and have suffered punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are set free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds, according to his deserts; but those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of their offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth.

But those who appear to have been guilty of curable, yet great offences, such as those who through anger have committed any violence against father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner, these must fall into Tartarus, but after they have fallen, and have been there for a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicides into Cocytus, but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon; but when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they cry out to and invoke, some those whom they slew, others those whom they injured, and invoking them, they entreat and implore them to suffer them to go out into the lake, and to receive them, and if they persuade them, they go out, and are freed from their sufferings, but if not, they are borne back to Tartarus, and thence again into the rivers, and they do not cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have injured; for this sentence was imposed upon them by the judges. But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, these are they, who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth, as from prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper parts of the earth. And among these, they who have sufficiently purified themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than these, which it is neither easy to describe, nor at present is there sufficient time for the purpose.

"But for the sake of these things which we have described, we should use every endeavor, Simmias, so as to acquire virtue and wisdom in this life; for the reward is n.o.ble, and the hope great.

"To affirm positively, indeed, that these things are exactly as I have described them, does not become a man of sense; that however either this, or something of the kind, takes place with respect to our souls and their habitations--since our soul is certainly immortal--this appears to me most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one who trusts in its reality; for the hazard is n.o.ble, and it is right to allure ourselves with such things, as with enchantments; for which reason I have prolonged my story to such a length. On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about his soul, who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who, having thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself to the acquirement of knowledge, and who having adorned his soul not with a foreign but its own proper ornament, temperance, justice, fort.i.tude, freedom, and truth, thus waits for his pa.s.sage to Hades, as one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You then," he continued, "Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you depart at some future time; but now destiny summons me, as a tragic writer would say, and it is nearly time for me to betake myself to the bath; for it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have bathed myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body."

When he had thus spoken, Crito said, "So be it, Socrates; but what commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your children, or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige you?"

"What I always say, Crito," he replied, "nothing new; that by taking care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine and yourselves, whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but if you neglect yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footprints of what has been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much at present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all."

"We will endeavor then so to do," he said; "but how shall we bury you?"

"Just as you please," he said, "if only you can catch me, and I do not escape from you." And at the same time smiling gently, and looking round on us, he said, "I can not persuade Crito, my friends, that I am that Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodizes each part of the discourse; but he thinks that I am he whom he will shortly behold dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I some time since argued at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no longer remain with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the blessed, this I seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the same time to console both you and myself. Be ye, then, my sureties to Crito," he said, "in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the judges; for he undertook that I should remain; but do you be sureties that, when I die, I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may more easily bear it, and when he sees my body either burned or buried, may not be afflicted for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried. For be well a.s.sured," he said, "most excellent Crito, that to speak improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise occasions some injury to our souls. You must have a good courage, then, and say that you bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is pleasing to you, and as you think is most agreeable to our laws."

When he had said this, he rose, and went into a chamber to bathe, and Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited, therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are deprived of a father, we should pa.s.s the rest of our lives as orphans.

When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two little sons and one grown up, and the women belonging to his family were come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito, and giving them such injunctions as he wished, he directed the women and children to go away, and then returned to us. And it was now near sunset; for he spent a considerable time within. But when he came from bathing he sat down, and did not speak much afterwards. Then the officer of the Eleven came in, and, standing near him, said, "Socrates, I shall not have to find that fault with you that I do with others, that they are angry with me, and curse me, when, by order of the archons, I bid them drink the poison. But you, on all other occasions during the time you have been here, I have found to be the most n.o.ble, meek, and excellent man of all that ever came into this place; and, therefore, I am now well convinced that you will not be angry with me, for you know who are to blame, but with them. Now, then, for you know what I came to announce to you, farewell, and endeavor to bear what is inevitable as easily as possible." And at the same time, bursting into tears he turned away and withdrew.

And Socrates, looking after him, said, "And thou, too, farewell; we will do as you direct." At the same time turning to us, he said, "How courteous this man is; during the whole time I have been here he has visited me, and conversed with me sometimes, and proved the worthiest of men; and now how generously he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let us obey him, and let some one bring the poison, if it is ready pounded, but if not, let the man pound it."

Then Crito said, "But I think, Socrates, that the sun is still on the mountains, and has not yet set. Besides, I know that others have drank the poison very late, after it had been announced to them, and have supped and drank freely. Do not hasten, then, for there is yet time."

Upon this Socrates replied, "These men whom you mention, Crito, do these things with good reason, for they think they shall gain by so doing, and I, too, with good reason shall not do so; for I think I shall gain nothing by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in being so fond of life, and sparing of it when none any longer remains. Go, then," he said, "obey, and do not resist."

Crito having heard this, nodded to the boy that stood near. And the boy having gone out, and stayed for some time, came, bringing with him the man that was to administer the poison, who brought it ready pounded in a cup. And Socrates, on seeing the man, said, "Well, my good friend, as you are skilled in these matters, what must I do?"

"Nothing else," he replied, "than, when you have drank it, walk about until there is a heaviness in your legs, then lie down: thus it will do its purpose." And at the same time he held out the cup to Socrates.

And he having received it very cheerfully, neither trembling, nor changing at all in color or countenance, but, as he was wont, looking steadfastly at the man, said, "What say you of this potion, with respect to making a libation to any one, is it lawful or not?"

"We only pound so much, Socrates," he said, "as we think sufficient to drink."

"I understand you," he said, "but it is certainly both lawful and right to pray to the G.o.ds that my departure hence thither may be happy; which therefore I pray, and so may it be." And as he said this he drank it off readily and calmly. Thus far, most of us were with difficulty able to restrain ourselves from weeping; but when we saw him drinking, and having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me, when he could not restrain his tears, had risen up.

But Apollodorus even before this had not ceased weeping, and then bursting into an agony of grief, weeping and lamenting, he pierced the heart of every one present, except Socrates himself. But he said, "What are you doing, my admirable friends? I indeed for this reason chiefly, sent away the women, that they might not commit any folly of this kind. For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens.

Be quiet, therefore, and bear up."

When we heard this we were ashamed, and restrained our tears. But he, having walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, laid down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval examined his feet and legs; and then having pressed his foot hard, he asked if he felt it; he said that he did not. And after this he pressed his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed us that he was growing cold and stiff. Then Socrates touched himself, and said that when the poison reached his heart he should then depart. But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when, uncovering himself, for he had been covered over, he said, and they were his last words, "Crito, we owe a c.o.c.k to aesculapius; pay it, therefore, and do not neglect it."

"It shall be done," said Crito, "but consider whether you have any thing else to say."

To this question he gave no reply, but shortly after he gave a convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed, and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.

This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the best of all of his time that we have known, and, moreover, the most wise and just.

DEMOSTHENES.

Demosthenes was born 382 B.C. and died 322 B.C., at the age of sixty.

His father died when he was but seven years old and left his son a large estate, which was squandered by his guardians.

Demosthenes, most happily, was forced to depend upon the resources of his own intellect, and determined to devote his life to oratory. He chose Isaeus for his master, and though having a weakly const.i.tution, and an impediment in his speech, yet by steady, persevering effort, and daily practice, he brought himself to address without embarra.s.sment, and with complete success, the a.s.sembled mult.i.tudes of the Athenian people. His first attempts at oratory were made to vindicate his own claims, and recover the property which his guardians had appropriated to themselves. In this he proved entirely successful.

After this, he displayed his ability as an orator on several public occasions, and succeeded by the power of his eloquence in preventing the Athenians from engaging in a war with Persia.