Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/406

384 384 HISTORY OF THE such an effect on the Athenian public. He borrowed from Gorgias his novel and ingenious combinations of thought, which deluded the hearer into the idea that he had really gained an entirely new insight into the subject, and also the figures of opposition and parallelism (Antitheia, Parisa), which gratified the prevailing taste of the age by giving the structure of the sentence an appearance of symmetry and regularity.* We should, however, have prized very much the possession of such an original work as Agathon's " Flower" (tivfloc) must have been. Still more effeminate must have been the poetry of an author whom Cratinus the comedian designates only as the son of CLeomachus. The Archon, he tells us, gave this poetaster a chorus in preference to Sophocles, although he was not worthy to provide songs for a chorus at the wanton female festival of the Adonia. He compares the chorus- of this poet, which expressed, in soft Lydian melodies, corresponding thoughts and feelings, to licentious women from Lydia, who were ready for all sorts of harlotry. It seems that the same poet, who was probably named Cleomenes, composed erotic poems In a lyrical form, and transferred their characteristics to his tragedies. § 4. About this time the tragic stage received a great influx of poets, which, however, does not prove that a great advance had taken place in the art of tragic poetry. Aristophanes speaks of thousands of tragedy-making prattlers, more garrulous by a good deal than Euri- pides : he calls their poems muses' groves for swallows, comparing their trifling and insignificant attempts at polite literature with the chirping of birds ;+ happily these dilettanti were generally satisfied with presenting themselves once before the people as tragic poets. There was such a taste for the composition of tragedies that we find among those who wrote for the stage men of the most different pursuits and dispositions, such as Critias, the head of the oligar- chical party at Athens, and Dionysius the First, tyrant of Syracuse, who often came forward as a competitor for the tragic prize, and had the satisfaction of receiving the crown once before he died. Such men were fond of availing themselves of tragedy, in the same way that Euripides did, as a vehicle for bringing before the public in a less sus- picious manner their speculations on the political and social interests of probable, that many things not probable would occur among men." f In the difficult passage quoted by Athenaeus xiv. p. 638, where, after i Kkio- f^a-xou, we must write also <rZ KXiepaxoo ; at all events, the converse alteration is less probable. Gnesippus can hardly he this son of Cleomachus, as Athenaeus ex- pressly calls him a writer of jocular songs only. We must, at any rate, suppose with Casaubon that something has fallen out before <rxuTrzi, and it is almost probable that Cleomenes, who is mentioned in connexion with Gn. sipptis, is more precisely referred to in the lost passage. J Aristophanes' Frogs, v. 89. foil., ^tXilivav fttvtrt'x.
 * As in the example quoted by Aristotle Rhetor, ii. 24, 10 : " We might call that