Page:Masterpieces of Greek Literature (1902).djvu/26

xviii hearing them read aloud, and always learning them, so as to get by heart entire poets; while others select choice passages and long speeches, and make compendiums of them, saying that these ought to be committed to memory, if a man is to be made good and wise by experience and learning of many things." The object of this literary study, as already suggested, was not to impart learned lore, to delight and enrich the imagination, to refine the taste, but to shape character. Aeschines, the orator, expresses the same conception when he says: "I recite these verses, for I maintain that the reason why we learn by heart in boyhood the sentiments of the poets is that when we are men we shall put them into practice."

These citations from Plato and Aeschines suggest the remark that the views expressed by the Greeks in general on the function of poetry are an interesting confirmation of what has been said about the intimate connection between Greek literature and life. And the gradual change in these views reflects the gradual change that took place in this relation. For after the loss of national liberty at Chaeronea there came about a disassociation of all the finer elements of Greek life from each other, and we trace the sad development of individualism, sectionalism, party narrowness, begun earlier, which finally broke up the fabric of Hellenic society. In a familiar passage in the Frogs of Aristophanes there is a scene between Aeschylus and Euripides, who are represented as engaging in a poetical contest in the lower world, the victor in which is to be released and to revisit Athens. The dialogue opens thus: "Tell me," says Aeschylus, "for what qualities we should admire a poet." "For wit and useful wisdom," replies Euripides, with the