Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/409

387 LITERATURE OP ANCIENT GREECE. 387 laws, but as subordinated to the spirit which had developed itself in other branches of literature. The lyric poetry and the rhetoric of the time had an especial influence on the form of tragic poetry. We shall endeavour to characterize the lyric poetry of this age in a subsequent chapter (chap. XXX.) ; here we will only remark gene- rally, that it was losing more and more every day the predominance of ideas and feelings, and that the minor accessaries of composition, which were formerly subjected to the ruling conceptions, were now, as it were, gradually becoming independent of them. It hunts about for stray charms to gratify the senses, and consequently loses sight of its true object, to elevate the thoughts and ennoble the sensi- bilities. How much Ch;Eremon, who flourished about Olymp. 100. b. c. 380, was possessed with the spirit of the lyrical poetry of his time, is clear from all that is related of him. The contemporary dithyrambic poets were continually making sudden transitions in their songs from one species of tones and rhythms to another, and sacrificed the unity of character to a striving after metrical variety of expression. But nobody went farther in this than Chaeremon, who, according to Aristotle, mixed up all kinds of metres in his Cenlavr, which seems to have been a most extraordinary compound of epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry.* His dramatic productions were rich in descriptions, which did not, like all those of the old tragedians, belong to the pieces, and contribute to place in a clearer light the condition, the relations, the deeds of some person engaged in the action, but sprung altogether from a fondness for delineating subjects which produce a pleasing im- pression on the senses. No tragedian could be compared with Chaere- mon in the number of his charming pictures of female beauty, in which the serious muse of the great tragedians is exceedingly chaste and re- tiring; the only counterpoise to this is his passion for the multifarious perfumes and colours of flowers. With this mixture of foreign in- gredients, tragedy ceases to be a drama, in the proper sense of the word, in which everything depends on the causes and developements of actions and on manifestations of the will of man. Accordingly, Aris- totle calls this Chaeremon in. connexion with the dithyrambic poet Licymnius, poets to be read, and says, of the former in particular, that he is exact, i. e. careful and accurate in detail, like a professed writer, whose sole object is the satisfaction of his readers. § 7. But this later tragedy was still more powerfully affected by the have beep the foundation oi' the whole. Athenseus xiii. p. 608, calls it a Jja^et f avaytuiTTiKoi. Aristotle Rhetor, iii 12. 2 c 2
 * Aristotle {Poet. 1.) calls it a ^/ktw pu-^uiiu, so that the epic element must