Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/539

 real and vivid, perceptions which had been quickened in them by a living communion with the Athenian spirit, by a daily contemplation of Athenian greatness, in the theatre where tragic poets idealized the legends of the past, in the ecclesia where every citizen had his vote on the policy of the state, or in that free and gracious society, full of beauty, yet exempt from vexatious constraint, which belonged to the age of Pericles. The tribunal which judged these works of literature or art was such as was best fitted to preserve the favourable conditions under which they arose. Criticism was not in the hands of a literary clique or of a social caste. The influence of jealousy or malevolence, and the more fatal influence of affectation, had little power to affect the verdict. The verdict was pronounced by the whole body of the citizens. The success or failure of a tragedy was decided, not by the minor circumstance that it gained the first or second prize, but by the collective opinion of the citizens assembled in the theatre of Dionysus. A work of architecture or sculpture was approved or condemned, not by the sentence of a few whom the multitude blindly followed, but by the general judgment of some twenty thousand persons, each of whom was in some degree qualified by education and by habit to form an independent estimate. The artist worked for all his fellow-citizens, and knew that he would be judged by all. The soul of his work was the fresh and living inspiration of nature; it was the ennobled expression of his own life; and the public opinion before which it came was free, intelligent and sincere.

Philip of Macedon did not take away the municipal independence of the Greek cities, but he dealt a death-blow to the old political life. The Athenian poet, historian, artist might still do good work, but he could never again have that which used to be the very mainspring of all such activity—the daily experience and consciousness of participation in the affairs of an independent state. He could no longer breathe the invigorating air of constitutional freedom, or of the social intercourse to which that freedom lent dignity as well as grace. Then came Alexander’s conquests; Greek civilization was diffused over Asia and the East by means of Greek colonies in which Asiatic and Greek elements were mingled. The life of such settlements, under the monarchies into which Alexander’s empire broke up, could not be animated by the spirit of the Greek commonwealths in the old days of political freedom. But the externals of Greek life were there—the temples, the statues, the theatres, the porticos. Ceremonies and festivals were conducted in the Greek manner. In private life Greek usages prevailed. Greek was the language most used; Greek books were in demand. The mixture of races would always in some measure distinguish even the outward life of such a community from that of a pure Greek state; and the facility with which Greek civilization was adopted would vary in different places. Syria, for example, was rapidly and completely Hellenized. Judaea resisted the process to the last. In Egypt a Greek aristocracy of office, birth and intellect existed side by side with a distinct native life. But, viewed in its broadest aspect, this new civilization may be called Hellenism. (q.v.) means the adoption of Hellenic ways; and it is properly applied to a civilization, generally Hellenic in external things, pervading people not necessarily or exclusively Hellenic by race. What the Hellenic literature was to Hellas, that the Hellenistic literature was to Hellenism. The literature of Hellenism has the Hellenic form without the Hellenic soul. The literature of Hellas was creative; the literature of Hellenism is derivative.

Alexandria was the centre of Greek intellectual activity from Alexander to Augustus. Its “Museum,” or college, and its library, both founded by the first Ptolemy (Soter), gave it such attractions for learned men as no other city could rival. The labours of research or arrangement are those which characterize the Alexandrian period. Even in its poetry spontaneous motive was replaced by erudite skill, as in the hymns, epigrams and elegies of Callimachus, in the enigmatic verses of Lycophron, in the highly finished epic of Apollonius Rhodius, and in the versified lore, astronomical or medical, of Aratus and Nicander. The mimes of Herodas (or Herondas) of Cos (c. 200 ), written in the Ionic dialect and choliambic verse, represent scenes from everyday life. The papyrus (published in 1891) contains seven complete poems and fragments of an eighth. They are remarkably witty and full of shrewd observations, but at times coarse. The pastoral poetry of the age—Dorian by origin—was the most pleasing; for this, if it is to please at all, must have its spring in the contemplation of nature. Theocritus is not exempt from the artificialism of the Hellenizing literature; but his true sense of natural beauty entitles him to a place in the first rank of pastoral poets. Bion of Ionia and Moschus of Syracuse also charm by the music and often by the pathos of their bucolic verse. Excavations on the site of the temple of Asclepius at Epidaurus have brought to light two hexameter poems and a paean (in Ionic metre) on Apollo and Asclepius by a local poet named Isyllus, who flourished about 280. Tragedy was represented by the poets known as the Alexandrian Pleiad. But it is not for its poetry of any kind that this period of Greek literature is memorable. Its true work was in erudition and science. Aristarchus (156 ), the greatest in a long line of Alexandrian critics, set the example of a more thorough method in revising and interpreting the ancient texts, and may in this sense be said to have become the founder of scientific scholarship. The critical studies of Alexandria, carried on by the followers of Aristarchus, gradually formed the basis for a science of grammar. The earliest Greek grammar is that of Dionysius Thrax (born c. 166), a pupil of Aristarchus. Translation was another province of work which employed the learned of Alexandria—where the Septuagint version of the Old Testament was begun, probably about 300–250 Chronology was treated scientifically by Eratosthenes, and was combined with history by Manetho in his chronicles of Egypt, and by Berossus in his chronicles of Chaldaea. Euclid was at Alexandria in the reign of Ptolemy Soter. Herophilus and Erasistratus were distinguished physicians and anatomists, and the authors of several medical works. The general results of the Alexandrian period might perhaps be stated thus. Alexandria produced a few eminent men of science, some learned poets (in a few cases, of great literary merit) and many able scholars. The preservation of the best Greek literature was due chiefly to the unremitting care of the Alexandrian critics, whose appreciation of it partly compensated for the decay of the old Greek perceptions in literature and art, and who did their utmost to hand it down in a form as free as possible from the errors of copyists. On the whole, the patronage of letters by the Ptolemies had probably as large a measure of success as was possible under the existing conditions; and it was afforded at a time when there was special danger that a true literary tradition might die out of the world.

The Graeco-Roman period in the literature of Hellenism may be dated from the Roman subjugation of Greece. “Greece made a captive of the rough conqueror,” but it did not follow from this intellectual conquest that Athens became once more the intellectual centre of the world. Under the empire, indeed, the university of Athens long enjoyed a pre-eminent reputation. But Rome gradually became the point to which the greatest workers in every kind were drawn. Greek literature had already made a home there before the close of the 2nd century Sulla brought a Greek library from Athens to Rome. Such men as Cicero and Atticus were indefatigable collectors and readers of Greek books. The power of speaking and writing the Greek language became an indispensable accomplishment for highly educated Romans. The library planned by Julius Caesar and founded by Augustus had two principal departments, one for Latin, the other for Greek works. Tiberius, Vespasian, Domitian and Trajan contributed to enlarge the collection. Rome became more and more the rival of Alexandria, not only as possessing great libraries, but also as a seat of learning at which Greek men of letters found appreciation and encouragement. Greek poetry, especially in its higher forms, rhetoric and literary criticism, history and philosophy, were all cultivated by Greek writers at Rome.