Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/260

238 238 HISTORY OF THE at the same time avenges the slaughter of his son by striking and con- suming the Titans with his thunderbolts. From their ashes, according to this Orphic legend, proceeded the race of men. This Dionysus, torn in pieces and born again, is destined to succeed Zeus in the government of the world, and to restore the golden age. In the same system Dio- nysus was also the god from whom the liberation of souls was expected; for, according to an Orphic notion, more than once alluded to by Plato, human souls are punished by being confined in the body, as in a prison. The sufferings of the soul in its prison, the steps and transitions by which it passes to a higher state of existence, and its gradual purifica- tion and enlightenment, were all fully described in these poems ; and Dionysus and Cora were represented as the deities who performed the task of guiding and purifying the souls of men. Thus, in the poetry of the first five centuries of Greek literature, especially at the close of this period, we find, instead of the calm enjoy- ment of outward nature which characterised the early epic poetry, a profound sense of the misery of human life and an ardent longing for a condition of greater happiness. This feeling, indeed, was not so extended as to become common to the whole Greek nation ; but it took deep root in individual minds, and was connected with more serious and spiritual views of human nature. We will now turn our attention to the progress made by the Greeks, in the last century of this period, in prose composition. CHAPTER XVII. § 1. Opposition of philosophy and poetry among the Greeks ; causes of the intro- duction of prose writings. § 2. The Ionians give the main impulse ; tendency of philosophical speculation among the Ionians. § 3. Retrospect of the theological speculations of Pherecydes. § 4. Thales ; he combines practical talents with bold ideas concerning the nature of things. § 5. Anaximander, a writer and inquirer on the nature of things. § 6. Anaximenes pursues the physical in- quiries of his predecessors. § 7. Heraclitus ; profound character of his natural philosophy. § 8. Changes introduced by Anaxagoras ; new direction of the physical speculations of the Ionians. § 9. Diogenes continues the early doctrine. Archelaus, an Anaxagorean, carries the Ionic philosophy to Athens. § 10. Doc- trines of the Eleatics, founded by Xenophanes ; their enthusiastic character is expressed in a poetic form. § 11. Parmenides gives a logical form to the doc- trines of Xenophanes ; plan of his poem. § 12. Further development of the Eleatic doctrine by Melissus and Zeno. § 13. Empedocles, akin to Anaxagoras and the Eleatics, but conceives lofty ideas of his own. § 14. Italic school; re- ceives its impulse from an Ionian, which is modified by the Doric character of the inhabitants. Coincidence of its practical tendency with its philosophical principle. § 1. As the design of this work is to give a history, not of the philo- sophy, but of the literature of Greece, we shall limit ourselves to such a