Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/44

 26 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. of intellect and temper which had made Greeks Greeks, and had given the distinctive and preeminent quali- ties to the creations of the Greek genius, were waning among the people, and were not strenuously adhered to and insisted upon in literature or philosophy. These Greek qualities had, for instance, shown themselves clearly in form, the perfect way in which the veritable subject matter was presented, without impertinences or distractions, as in the tragic drama, or Phidian sculpture. From the Alexandrian times, distractions and impertinences were admitted readily ; the forms of literary productions lost their purity ; the matter was less noble, and less strictly presented. Likewise the subjects of sculpture were less nobly treated, and that art declined from its classic purity, for instance, borrowing picturesque elements from painting. Phi- losophy ceased to hold the grand unity of life, where- in knowledge was a noble element. It became mere ethics, yet first with strenuous reason, as among early Stoics and Epicureans ; then that too relaxed, till with Plutarch there comes a hospitable harboring of popu- lar superstitions and a genial attempt to justify and systematize them. The fact that the Greeks in the fourth century be- fore Christ were ceasing to be themselves as greatly as they had been, made the career of Philip possible. Thereupon, the career of Alexander made Greek civic freedom a thing of past reality, and abolished barriers, if not distinctions, between Hellas and the East. The life of a pliant cosmopolitan was now open to the Greek. As the cleverest man of all the Mediterranean and Asiatic world, he could use whatever circumstances