Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/266

* GKEEK lilTEBATTJEE. 232 GREEK LITERATURE. grandeur almost unpaialleled in literature. Of the ninety plays whieli he is said to have written, but seven have been preserved; among them, however, the single extant trilogy, the Orvslea: Agamemnon, Chui-phori, and Euinenidcs. The Ayamemnon is regarded by many as the greatest Greek tragedy extant. Sophocles (c.496-400 B.C.) was the greatest art- ist among the tragedians of the century. His con- ceptions lack the grandeur of those of -•Eschylus, and he is less humanly pathetic than Euripides, but excels both in representing the great human emotions. His characters are always lofty and noble. He is further the interpreter of the high- est ideals of the age of Pericles, and he mu.st al- ways be interpreted as such. By introducing a third actor he gave tragedy its final form. Of more than 120 plays which were attributed to him, we have but seven. Of these, the (Edipus Tyrannus is the greatest; in the opinion of many critics it rivals the A(/tnncinno}i of .-Eschylus for the first place among ancient tragedies. Euripides (B.C. 480-40G). in contrast to his older contemporary, represents Athens in transi- tion from the age of Pericles to the new condi- tions of the fourth century; with him the decline of tragedy' is usually said to begin. Although it is true that he is the last of the great tragedi- ans, we can more correctly hold that he repre- sents the last stage in the development of ancient tragedy, and marks the way to the later drama. Tragedy in his hands lost much of its ideal char- acter and came down to earth : his heroes talk and act like ordinary men; his language, too, approached that of everyday life. While he was bitterly attacked by Aristophanes, the mouth- piece of the ultra-conservatives, he still enjoyed even during his lifetime the high reputation he de- served. In tender pathos he was unexcelled, as well as in the representation of love and hate, and many scenes in his dramas are unequaled. Yet in the management of his plots he was inferior to his predecessors. Euripides left 92 plays, of whioli we have 18, including the C;/ctops, the unique extant example of a Satyr play. The Ifliesus, which is found with these plays in the manuscripts, is generally regarded as spurious. Among the best of his plays are the Medea, Hip- pohjtus, Bacchw, and Iphigenia at Atilis. ■As has been said above, comedy also developed in connection with the worship of Dionysus. Tradition said that Megara was its first home, and that Susarion (c.580 B.C.) transplanted it to Attica. It came to perfection on Athenian soil more slowly than its sister art tragedy; the Skate did not undertake the expense of iti until about B.C. 470. In the meantime Epicbarmus (C.4S0 B.C.) brought a form of comedy to high development in Sicily, and undoubtedly influenced Athenian writers. Attic comedy is divided into three periods — Old Comedy (sixth centurv B.C. 400) ; Middle Comedy (B.C. 400.336) ; Mew Comedy (B.C. 3.36-2.50). The comic poets at Athens in the early fifth century, Chionides. Ecphantides. and Magnes, are little more than names to us. The great poets of the Old Comedy were Cratinus (died c.421 B.C.). Eupolis (died C.411 B.C.). and Aristophanes (e.4.50-38.5 B.C.). Only fragments of the comedies of the first two are extant : of the plays of Aristophanes, the greatest of the three, we have eleven complete, covering the period B.c 42.5-38S. These exhibit the great genius of their writer, his keen wit and stinging satire, as well as his mastery of broad burlesque; and also show him to have been a lyric poet ul marvelous sweetness. They fur- ther mirror the changing social and political conditions of the time in which they were pro- duced. In the earlier plays the prevailing theme is the sharpest personal and political satire ; in the middle group there is much greater reserve; and in the last plays personal aud political attack is abandoned for literary and social satire. This tendenc}', with the gradual decay of the cliorus, marks the transition to the Jliddle Comedy. In this the choral element was insignificant, and the themes were frequently philosophical and lit- erary criticism, parodies of myth — one of the stock subjects from the earliest period also — and social satire. The chief names in this period are Antiphanes, Ana.xandrides, and Alexis. The New Comedy was distinctly a comedy of manners, with stock characters and situations. The most im- portant poets were Philemon (B.C. 361-263), Di- philus, and aboe all Jlenander (B.C. 342-291). The strength of this comedy was in the fine delin- eation of character, smoothness of verse, and fine- ness of wit. Of it, as of the Middle Comedy, no play has been preserved comjilete ; but the adap- tations of Plautus and Terence with the extant fragments enable us to reconstruct its general characteristics. The Greek drama had reached its full develop- ment before a pro.se literature in the strict sense of the word appeared. The earliest literary prose was used in Ionia, the birthplace of artistic Greek poetry. In the middle of the sixth century B.C. Pherecydes of Syros set forth his philosophical doctrine in prose ; Anaximenes and Ana.ximander also employed the same vehicle. Toward the close of the sixth century there also appeared in Ionia the beginnings of historical writing. The earliest historians were called lofiofirnphoi. writers of prose, to distinguish them from epopoii, the writers of epic verse. Thej' compiled genealogies, myths, and legends, and recorded the history of the founding of cities, the customs and institu- tions of various peoples, both foreign and Greek. Cadmus of ililetus was the earliest of the lo- gographers ; Hecatseus belonged to the period of the Persian wars. Others were Acusilaus. Xan- thus, and Pherecydes of Leros. With Hellanicus of Mitylene (c.4.30 B.C.) more careful work be- gan. He was a prolific writer, both on chronology and on the history of many States in Greece. But the title of 'the' father of history' belongs to Herodotus (c.484-c.425 B.C.). A native of Hali- carnassus. born of a rich and noble family, he w'as a great traveler in Egypt, the remote East, and over most of the Greek world. He visited Athens twice, resided and probably died at Thurii, in Southern Italy. His history was based on the material he collected in his travels and on the work of his predecessors. His purpose was to present a record of the dramatic struggle be- tween Greece and Persia ; as introduction to his main theme he traced the rise and growth of the Persian Empire. In doing this he gave an ac- count of the geography, history, and customs of Persia. Egypt. Libya. Babylonia, Thrace, and Scythia. The last four of his nine books relate the invasion of Greece by Darius and Xer.xes. Herodotus was lacking in critical sense, did not go beneath the surface in seeking the causes of events, and had no interest in constitutional his- tory. Yet his narrative of facts is usually cor-