Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/228

 214 GREECE (LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE) to this branch are mentioned, but none of their works, of which an immense number were known to the ancients, have been preserved, except in unimportant fragments. The names of three sons of Aristophanes occur in this number. The new comedy was a still further modification which comedy first assumed in the age of Alexander. Its distinguishing charac- teristic was, that all its characters were ficti- tious. The earliest writer was Philippides, who flourished about 323. The two most celebrated names were Philemon and Menan- der, the former of whom wrote 97, and the latter 105 plays. Numerous fragments of Me- nander, some of them of considerable length, show the elegance of his style and the variety and vigor of his genius. The last poet of the new comedy was Posidippus, who began to exhibit in 289 ; he wrote more than 50 pieces. The fertility and excellence of the Greek dra- matic literature were most remarkable. The Dionysiac festivals, celebrated at Athens in the spring, were the principal occasion on which new pieces were brought out, and al- ways in competition for the prize, and under the direction of the chief magistrates. The emulation thus excited among men of the highest genius gave a wonderful impulse to this species of composition, the originality and extent of which have always appeared so sur- prising. The prose compositions that belong to this age were equally distinguished by their appropriate excellences. In history, we have Thucydides, born about 471, whose work on the Peloponnesian war is not only the first specimen of what has been called philosophical history, but remains unsurpassed down to the present time. Xenophon was born about 444. His historical works, though not equal to that of Thucydides in vigor of coloring and depth of reflection, yet are adorned with every grace j of narrative and description. His other works I are valuable for the light they throw on the I spirit of Greek institutions and the peculiar!- j ties of Greek life. Of the' works of Ctesias, Philistus, Theopompus, and Ephorus, which belong to a period somewhat later, none have come down entire. In philosophy, to I which the teachings of Socrates (born in 469) I gave a great impulse, we have the writings of | Plato (about 429) and his pupil Aristotle (384). I Plato was endowed with a brilliant imagina- tion, and loved to soar into the highest region of speculation. His sense of the beautiful was exquisite ; and his style was at once idiomatic and lofty, while in passages it moved with a rich and stately music which all ages have admired. Aristotle was a student and ob- server; practical results were the object of his investigations. His style was terse, logical, close, seldom adorned with poetical embellish- ments, and never with rhetorical exaggera- tions. Everything he wrote embodied the re- sults of careful and extensive observations. He never entered the world of ideas with Plato. His views were comprehensive, and his exposi- tions, except where the writing evidently con- tains only the heads of his discourses, are sin- gularly clear. His works embrace the subjects of logic, rhetoric, physics, metaphysics, natural history, and politics. Plato founded the Aca- demic school, whose point of reunion was the academy, on the Cephissus, north of Athens ; Aristotle established the Peripatetic school, in the lyceum, near the Ilissus, on the opposite side of the city. In the same period, political eloquence, always a characteristic form of Greek utterance, reached its highest perfec- tion. In Homer we find not merely traces of eloquence, but admirable specimens. Public discussion was the general rule in the Greek republics. In Athens especially the states- man could not maintain himself, or exercise the smallest influence, without the faculty of public speaking. The historians relate the speeches of statesmen and generals. Thucydides describes the debates at Athens and elsewhere, on the questions that pre- ceded and the events that occurred in the Peloponnesian war. Herodotus and Xenophon abound in speeches and orations ; Solon, Pisis- tratus, Miltiades, Aristides, Themistocles, and Pericles were orators as well as legislators, counsellors, and generals. Pericles was the first to cultivate the art, and to adorn his mind with the teachings of philosophy and general literary culture. We have no exact report of any of the speeches of this class of statesmen, though Thu- cydides undoubtedly gives us the substance of several of the most important of those of Peri- cles. The rhetorical art in its technical charac- acter originated in Sicily ; and the first rhetor- ical school at Athens was opened by Gorgias of Leontini. Other sophists and teachers of rhetoric were Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, &c. The peculiar judicial system also of Athens made a great demand for the rhetorical talent. The Athenian orators, whose works are extant in whole or in part, are Antiphon, Andocides, and Lysias in the 5th century ; Isasus, Isocrates, Lycurgus, Hyperides, ^schines, Demades, De- mosthenes, and Dinar chus in the 4th. The orations of these men present every variety of excellence, from the subtlest legal argument to the most passionate appeal. Demosthenes com- bines all the excellences of all the others, with some that are peculiar, at least in degree, to himself. After the death of Alexander the Great, although literature continued to be cul- tivated in Greece, and especially in Athens, the rhetorical and philosophical schools holding an eminent position for centuries, yet till the Roman conquest the principal seat of letters and science was Alexandria, under the Ptole- mies in Egypt. This period is called the Alex- andrian age. Its characteristics were erudition, criticism, and the study of science ; and in poe- try the only original species was the bucolic or the idyl. The principal poets were Bion of Smyrna, Theocritus, Aratus (epic), Lycophron (author of "Cassandra"), Callimachus (epic, hymns), and Moschus. The bucolic poets are