Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/143

 FICTION IN EARLY PROSE 119 ' Story ' And here we meet the other tendency which goes to the forming of prose history, the old Lust zum Fabuliren, taking the form of interest in individuals and a wish to know their characters and their stories. The Story is a younger and lesser sister of the Saga, in some lights not to be distinguished from her. It is impossible to read our accounts of Solon, Croesus, Demokedes, Polycrates, Amasis, without feeling that we are in the realm of imaginative fiction. We are nearer to fact than in the epos ; and the fact behind is more a human fact. The characters are not gods or heroes, they are adventurous prophets and sages and discrowned kings ; the original speaker is not the Muse, but the Ionian travellei*. It may even be supposed that there is a certain truth in the characters, if in nothing else. But that is further than we have a right to go ; Sir John Falstaff is not psycho- logically true to Oldcastle the Lollard; there is no reason to suppose that the low comedian Amasis resembles any Egyptian Aahmes, or to credit the mellow wisdom of our Croesus to the real conqueror of Ionia. Once created, it is true, the character generally stays ; but that is the case even with the men of the epos. The story was early fixed as literature. The famous Milesian and Sybarite stones must date from the sixth century B.C., before Sybaris was destroyed and Miletus ruined. Such instances as have been preserved in late tradition — 'The Widow of Ephesus' in Petronius, and large parts of Appuleius — are pure fiction, tales in the tone of Boccaccio, with imaginary characters. But everything points to the belief that in their first form