Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/251

229 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 229 CHAPTER XVI. § 1. Moral improvement of Greek poetry after Homer especially evident in the notions as to the state of man after death. § 2. Influence of the mysteries and of the Orphic doctrines on these notions. § 3. First traces of Orphic ideas in Hesiod and other epic poets. § 4. Sacerdotal enthusiasts in the age of the Seven Sages; Epimenides, Abaris, Aristeas, and Pherecydes. §5. An Orphic litera- ture arises after the destruction cf the Pythagorean league. § 6. Subjects of the Orphic poetry ; at first cosmogonic, § 7, afterwards prophetic, in reference to Dionysus. § 1. We have now traced the progress of Greek poetry from Homer to Pindar, and observed it through its different stages, from the simple epic song to the artificial and elaborate form of the choral ode. Fortu- nately the works of Homer and Pindar, the two extreme points of this long series, have been preserved nearly entire. Of the intermediate stages we can only form an imperfect judgment from isolated frag- ments and the statements of later writers. The interval between Homer and Pindar is an important period in the history of Greek civilization. Its advance was so great in this time that the latter poet may seem to belong to a different state of the human race from the former. In Homer we perceive that infancy of the mind which lives entirely In seeing and imagining, whose chief enjoyment consists in vivid conceptions of external acts and ohjecls, without caring much for causes and effects, and whose moral judgments are determined rather hy impulses of feeling than by distinctly-con- ceived rules of conduct. In Pindar the Greek mind appears far more serious and mature. Fondly as he may contemplate the images of beauty and splendour which he raises up, and glorious as are the forms of ancient heroes and modern athletes which he exhibits, yet the chief effort of his genius is to discover a standard of moral government; and when he has distinctly conceived it, he applies it to the fair and living forms which the fancy of former times had created. There is too much truth in Pindar's poetry, it is too much the expression of his genuine feelings, for him to attempt to conceal its difference from the ancient style, as the later poets did. He says* that the fame of Ulysses has become greater through the sweet songs of Homer than from his real adventures, because there is something ennobling in the illusions and soaring flights of Homer's fancy; and he frequently rejects the narra- tives of former poets, particularly when they do not accord with his own purer conceptions of the power and moral excellence of the godsf. Hut there is nothing in which Pindar differs so widely from Homer as in his notions respecting the state of vian after death. According t See, for example, 01. i. 52 (82) ; ix. 35 (54).
 * Nem. vii. 20 (29).