Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/282

260 2C0 HISTORY OF THE riod that the Greeks outgrew their poetical mythology, and considered contemporary events as worthy of being thought of and written about. From this cause, the history of many transactions prior to the Persian war has perished ; but, without its influence, Greek literature could never have become what it was. Greek poetry, by its purely fictitious character, and its freedom from the shackles of particular truth, ac- quired that general probability, on account of which Aristotle considers poetry as more philosophical than history*. Greek art, likewise, from the lateness of the period at which it descended from the ideal repre- sentation of gods and heroes to the portraits of real men, acquired a nobleness and beauty of form which it could never have otherwise attained. And, in fine, the intellectual culture of the Greeks in general would not have taken its liberal and elevated turn, if it had not rested on a poetical hasis. § 2. Writing was probably known in Greece some centuries before the time of Cadmus of Miletus +, the earliest Greek historian; but it had not been employed for the purpose of preserving any detailed his- torical record. The lists of the Olympic victors, and of the kings of Sparta and the prytanes of Corinth, which the Alexandrian critics con- sidered sufficiently authentic to serve as the foundation of the early Greek chronology ; ancient treaties and other contracts, which it was important to perpetuate in precise terms; determinations of boundaries, and other records of a like description, formed the first rudiments of a documentary history. Yet this was still very remote from a detailed chronicle of contemporary events. And even when, towards the end of the age of the Seven Sages, some writers of historical narratives in prose hegan to appear among the Ionians and the other Greeks, they did not select domestic and recent events. Instead of this, they began with accounts of distant times and countries, and gradually narrowed their view to a history of the Greeks of recent times. So entirely did the ancient Greeks believe that the daily discussion of common life and oral tradition were sufficient records of the events of their own time and country. The Ionians, who throughout this period were the daring innovators and indefatigable discoverers in the field of intellect, took the lead in history. They were also the first, who, satiated with the childish amuse- ment of mythology, began to turn their keen and restless eyes on all sides, and to seek new matter for thought and composition. The Ionians had a peculiar delight in varied and continuous narration. Nor is it to he overlooked, that the first Ionian who is mentioned as a historian, was a Milesian. Miletus, the birth-place of the earliest phi- losophers; flourishing by its industry and commerce ; the centre of the political movements produced by the spirit of Ionian independence ; and the spot in which the native dialect was first formed into written Greek
 * Aristot. Poet. 9. f See above, ch. 4. § 5.