Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/301

279 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 279 rived from the consciousness of every citizen that he has a share in the common weal*. This statement of Herodotus refers, indeed, princi- pally to the warlike enterprises of Athens, but it is equally true of her intellectual productions. It is, indeed, a remarkable fact that Athens produced her most excellent works in literature and art in the midst of the greatest political convulsions, and of her utmost efForts for self- preservation or conquest. The long- dominion of the Pisistratids, not- withstanding the concourse of foreign poets, produced nothing more important than the first rudiments of the tragic drama ; fur the origin of comedy at the country festivals of Bacchus falls in the time before Pisistratus. On the other hand, the thirty years between the expul- sion of Ilippias ami the battle of Salamis (b. c. 510 to 4S0) was a period marked by great events both in politics and literature. During this period, Athens contended with energy and success against her neighbours in Beeotia and Eubeea, and soon dared to interfere in the affairs of the Ionians in Asia, and to support them in their revolt against Persia; after which, she received and warded off the first powerful attack of the Persians upon Greece. During the same period at Athens, the pathetic tragedies of Phrynichus, and the lofty tragedies of yEschylus, appeared on the stage ; political eloquence was awakened in Themistocles; historical researches were commenced by Pherecydes ; and everything seemed to give a promise of the greatness to which Athens afterwards attained. Even sculpture at Athens did not flourish under the encouragement which it doubtless received from the enter- prising spirit of the Pisistratids, but first arose under the influence of political freedom. While, from b.c. 540, considerable masters and whole families and schools of brass-founders, workers in gold and ivory, &c, existed in Argos, Laceckemon, Sicyon, and elsewhere, the Athens of the Pisistratids could not boast of a single sculptor ; nor is it till the time of the battle of Marathon, that Antenor, Critias, and Hegias are mentioned as eminent masters in brass-founding. But the work for which both Antenor and Hegias were chiefly celebrated was the brazen statues of Harmcdius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides and liberators of Athens from the yoke of the Pisistratids, according to the tradition of the Athenian peoplet. § 4. The great peril of the Persian war thus came upon a race of high spirited and enterprising men, and exercised upon it the hardening and elevating influence, by which great dangers, successfully overcome, become the highest benefit to a state. Such a period withdraws the mind from petty, selfish cares, and fixes it on great and public objects. At the moment when half Greece had quailed before the Persian army, the Athenians, with a fearless spirit of independence, abandon their
 * Herod. V. 78. t Ch. 13. § 17.