Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/154

Rh tinguish both alike from the historical work of Xenophon in the Anabasis and the Hellenica. Herodotus gives us a vivid drama with the unity of au epic. Thucydides takes a great chapter of contemporary history and traces the causes which are at work throughout it, so as to give the whole a scientific unity. Xenophon has not the grasp either of the dramatist or of the philosopher. His work does not possess the higher unity either of art or of science. The true distinction of Xenophon consists in his thorough combination of the practical with the literary character. He was an accomplished soldier, who had done and seen much. He was also a good writer, who could make a story both clear and lively. But the several parts of the story are not grouped around any central idea, such as a divine Nemesis is for Herodotus, or such as Thucydides finds in the nature of political man. The seven books of the Hellenica form a supplement to the history of Thucy dides, beginning in 411 and going down to 36 J B.C. The chief blot on the Hellenica is the author s partiality to Sparta, and in particular to Agesilaus. Some of the greatest achievements of Epaminondas and Pelopidas are passed over in silence. On the whole, Xenophon is perhaps seen at his best in his narrative of the Retreat of the Ten Thousand -a subject which exactly suits him. The Cyro- pwdia is a romance of little historical worth, but with many good passages. The Recollections of Socrates, on the other hand, derive their principal value from being uniformly matter-of-fact. In his minor pieces on various subjects Xenophon appears as the earliest essayist. It may be noted that one of the essays erroneously ascribed to him that On the Athenian Polity is probably the oldest specimen in existence of literary Attic prose.

The steps by which an Attic prose style was developed, and the principal forms which it assumed, can be traced most clearly in the Attic orators. Every Athenian citizen who aspired to take part in the affairs of the city, or even to be qualified for self-defence before a law-court, required to have some degree of skill in public speaking ; and an Athenian audience looked upon public debate, whether political or forensic, as a competitive trial of proficiency in n fine art. Hence the speaker, no less than the writer, was necessarily a student of finished expression ; and oratory had a more direct influence on the general structure of literary prose than has ever perhaps been the case else where. A systematic rhetoric took its rise in Sicily, where Corax of Syracuse (466 B.C.) devised his Art of Words to assist those who were pleading before the law-courts ; and it was brought to Athens by his disciple Tisias. The teach ing of the Sophists, again, directed attention, though in a superficial and imperfect way, to the elements of grammar and logic; and Gorgias of Leontini whose declamation, however turgid, must have been striking gave an impulse at Athens to the taste for elaborate rhetorical brilliancy.

Antiphon represents the earliest, and what has been called the grand, style of Attic prose; its chief characteristics are a grave, dignified movement, a frequent emphasis on verbal contrasts, and a certain austere elevation. The interest of Andocides is mainly historical ; but he has graphic power. Lysias, the representative of the &quot; plain style,&quot; breaks through the rigid mannerism of the elder school, and uses the language of daily life with an ease and grace which, though the result of study, do not betray their art. He is, in his own way, the canon of an Attic style ; and his speeches, written for others, exhibit also a high degree of dramatic skill. Isocrates, whose manner may be regarded as intermediate between that of Antiphon and that of Lysias, wrote for readers rather than for hearers. The type of literary prose which he founded is distinguished by ample periods, by studied smoothness, and by the temperate use of rhetorical ornament. From the middle of the 4th century B.C. the Tsocratic style of prose became general in Greek literature. From the school of Rhodes, in which it became more florid, it passed to Cicero, and through him it has helped to shape the literary prose of the modern world. The speeches of Isseus in will-cases are interesting, apart from their bearing on Attic life, because in them we see, as Dionysius says, &quot; the seeds and the beginnings &quot; of that technical mastery in rhetorical argument which Demosthenes carries to perfection. Isseus has also, in a degree, some of the qualities of Lysias. Demosthenes excels all other masters of Greek prose not only in power but in variety ; his political speeches, his orations in public or private causes, show his consummate and versatile command over all the resources of the language. In him the development of Attic prose is completed, and the best elements in each of its earlier phases are united. The modern world can more easily appreciate Demosthenes as a great natural orator than as an elaborate artist. But, in order to apprehend his place in the history of Attic prose, we must re member that the ancients felt him to be both; and that he was even reproached by detractors with excessive study of effect. /Eschines is the most theatrical of the Greek orators; he is vehement, and often brilliant, but seldom persuasive. Hyperides was, after Demosthenes, probably the most effective ; he had much of the grace of Lysias, but also a wit, a fire, and a pathos which were his own. The one oration of Lycurgus which remains to us is earnest and stately, re minding us both of Antiphon and of Isocrates. Dinarchus was merely a bad imitator of Demosthenes. There seems more reason to regret that Demades is not represented by larger fragments. The decline of Attic oratory may be dated from Demetrius of Phalerum (318 B.C.), the pupil of Aristotle. Cicero names him as the first who impaired the vigour of the earlier eloquence, &quot; preferring his own sweetness to the weight and dignity of his predecessors.&quot;

The place of Plato in the history of Greek literature is as unique as his place in the history of Greek thought. The literary genius shown in the dialogues is many-sided : it includes dramatic power, remarkable skill in parody, a subtle faculty of satire, and, generally, a command over the finer tones of language. In passages of continuous exposition, where the argument rises into the higher regions of discus sion, Plato s prose takes a more decidedly poetical colouring never florid or sentimental, however, but lofty and austere. In Plato s later works such, for instance, as the Laws, Timceus, Critias we can perceive that his style did not remain unaffected by the smooth literary prose which con temporary writers had developed. Aristotle s influence on the form of Attic prose literature would probably have been considerable if his Rhetoric had been published while Attic oratory had still a vigorous life before it. But in this, as in other departments of mental effort, it was Aristotle s lot to set in order what the Greek intellect had done in that creative period which had now come to an end. His own chief contribution to the original achievements of the race was the most fitting one that could have been made by him in whose lifetime they were closed. He bequeathed an instrument by which analysis could be carried further, he founded a science of reasoning, and left those who fol lowed him to apply it in all those provinces of knowledge which he had mapped out. Theophrastus, his pupil and his successor in the Lyceum, opens the new age of research and scientific classification with his extant works on botany, but is better known to modern readers by his lively Characters, the prototypes of such sketches in our own literature as those of Hall, Overbury, and Earle.

III. The Literature of the Decadence.

The period of decadence in Greek literature begins with the extinction of free political life in the Greek cities. So 