Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/152

Rh with the family or city of the victor, and of inculcating the moral lessons which they teach. No Greek lyric poetry can be completely appreciated apart from the music, now lost, to which it was set. Pindar s odes were, further, essentially occasional poems ; they abound in allusions of which the effect is partly or wholly lost on us ; and the glories which they celebrate belong to a life which we can but imperfectly realize. Of all the great Greek poets, Pindar is perhaps the one to whom it is hardest for us to do justice ; yet we can at least recognize his splendour of imagination, his strong rapidity, and his soaring flight.

II. The Attic Literature. The lonians of Asia Minor, the /Eolians, and the Dorians had now performed their special parts in the development of Greek literature. Epic poetry had interpreted the heroic legends of warlike deeds done by Zeus-nourished kings and chiefs. Then, as the individual life became more and more, elegiac and iambic poetry had become the social expression of that life in all its varied interests and feelings. Lastly, lyric poetry had arisen to satisfy a twofold need to be the more intense utterance of personal emotion, or to give choral voice, at stirring moments, to the faith or fame, the triumph or the sorrow, of a city or a race. A new form of poetry was now to be created, with elements borrowed from all the rest. And this was to be achieved by the people of Attica, in whose character and language the distinctive traits of an Ionian descent were tempered with some of the best qualities of the Dorian stock.

The drama arose from tho festivals of Dionysus, the god of wine, which were held at intervals from the beginning of winter to the beginning of spring. A troop of rustic worshippers would gather around the altar of the god, and sing a hymn in his honour, telling of his victories or sufferings in his progress over the esrth. &quot; Tragedy &quot; meant &quot; the goat-song,&quot; a goat being sacrificed to Dionysus before the hymn was sung. &quot; Comedy,&quot; &quot; the village-song,&quot; is the same hymn regarded as an occasion for rustic jest. Then the leader of the chorus would assume the part of a messenger from Dionysu?, or even that of the god himself, and recite an adventure to the worshippers, who made choral response. The next step was to arrange a dialogue between the leader (corypkceus) and one chosen member of the chorus, hence called &quot;the answerer&quot; (hypocrites, afterwards the ordinary word for &quot;actor&quot;). This last improvement is ascribed to the Attic Thespis (about 536 B.C.). The elements of drama were now ready. The choral hymn to Dionysus (the &quot;dithyramb&quot;) had received an artistic form from the Dorians ; dialogue, though only between the leader of the chorus and a single actor, had been introduced in Attica. Phrynichus, an Athenian, celebrated in this manner some events of the Persian wars ; but in his &quot; drama &quot; there was still only one actor.

/Eschylus (born 525 B.C.) became the real founder of tragedy by introducing a second actor, and thus rendering the dialogue independent of the chorus. At the same time the choral song hitherto the principal part of the performance became subordinate to the dialogue; and drama was mature. YEschylus is also said to have made various improvements of detail in costume and the like ; and it was early in his career that the theatre of Dionysus under the acropolis was commenced the first permanent home of Greek drama, in place of the temporary wooden platforms which had hitherto been used. The system of the &quot; trilogy &quot; and the &quot; tetralogy &quot; is further ascribed to yEschylus, the &quot; trilogy &quot; being properly a series of three tragedies connected in subject, such as the Agamemnon, Choephori, Eumenidts, which together form the Oresteia, or Story of Orestes. The &quot;tetralogy&quot; is such a triad with a &quot;satyric drama &quot; added that is, a drama in which &quot; satyrs,&quot; the grotesque woodland beings who attended on Dionysus, formed the chorus, as in the earlier dithyramb from which drama sprang. The Cyclops of Euripides is a satyric drama. In the seven tragedies which alone remain of the seventy which /Eschylus is said to have composed, the forms of kings and heroes have a grandeur which is truly Homeric ; there is a spirit of Panhellenic patriotism such as the Persian wars in which he fought might well quicken in a soldier-poet ; and, pervading all, there is a strain of speculative thought which seeks to reconcile the apparent conflicts between the gods of heaven and of the underworld by the doctrine that both alike, constrained by necessity, are working out the law of righteousness. Sophocles, who was born thirty years after Sophoc yEschylus (495 B.C.), is the most perfect artist of the ancient drama. No one before or after him gave to Greek tragedy so high a degree of ideal beauty, or appreciated so finely the possibilities and the limitations of its sphere. He excels especially in drawing character; $ Antigone, his Ajajc, his (Edipus indeed, all the chief persons of his dramas are typical studies in the great primary emotions of human nature. He gave a freer scope to tragic dialogue by adding a third actor ; and in one of his later plays, the CEdipus at Colonus, a fourth actor is required. Erom the time when he won the tragic prize against YEschylus in 468 to his death in 405 B.C. he was the favourite dramatist of Athens ; and for us he is not only a great dramatist, but also the most spiritual representative of the age of Pericles. The distinctive interest of Euripides is of another kind. He Enripii was only fifteen years younger than Sophocles ; but when he entered on his poetical career, the old inspirations of tragedy were already failing. Euripides marks a period of transition in the tragic art, and is, in fact, the mediator between the classical and the romantic drama. The myths and traditions with which the elder dramatists had dealt no longer commanded an unquestioning faith. Euripides him self was imbued with the new intellectual scepticism of the day ; and the speculative views which were conflicting in his own mind are reflected in his plays. He had much picturesque and pathetic power; he was a master of expres sion ; and he shows ingenuity in devising fresh resources for tragedy especially in his management of the choral songs. YEschylus is Panhellenic, Sophocles is Athenian, Euripides is cosmopolitan. He stands nearer to the modern world than either of his predecessors ; and though v ith him Attic tragedy loses its highest beauty, it acquires new elements of familiar human interest. In Attica, as in England, a period of rather less than fifty years sufficed for the complete development of the tragic art. The two distinctive characteristics of Athenian drama are its originality and its abundance. The Greeks of Attica were not the only inventors of drama, but they were the first people who made drama a complete work of art. And the great tragic poets of Attica were remark ably prolific. yEschylus was the reputed author of 70 tragedies, Sophocles of 113, Euripides of 92; and there were others whose productiveness was equally great.

Comedy represented the lighter side, as tragedy the C oin^l graver side, of the Dionysiac worship; it was the joy of spring following the gloom of winter. The process of growth was nearly the same as in tragedy ; but the Dorians, not the lonians of Attica, were the first who added dialogue to the comic chorus. Susarion, a Dorian of Megara, exhibited about 580 B.C. pieces of the kind known as &quot; Megarian farces.&quot; The more artistic form of comedy seems, however, to have been developed in Attica. The greatest names before Aristophanes are those of Cratinus and Eupolis ; but from about 470 B.C. there seems to have been a continuous succession of comic dramatists. Aristophanes came forward as a comic poet in 427 B.C., and retained his popularity for about forty years. He presents 