12. The music of the ancients appears to have been very greatly inferior to that of the moderns.

13. The peculiar genius of the Greeks in the fine arts, extended its effects to the revolutions of their states, and influenced their fate as a nation. They consoled themselves for the loss of their liberty by the flattering distinction of being the humanizers of their conquerors, the unpolished Romans.

SECTION XXXI.

OF THE GREEK POETS.

1. THE Greeks were the first who reduced the athletic exercises to a system and considered them as an object of general attention and importance. The Panathenæan, and afterwards the Olympic, the Pythian, Nemæan, and Isthmian games, were under the regulation of the laws, and subject to the rules laid down by the ablest statesmen and legislators. They contributed essentially to the improvement of the nation: and while they cherished martial ardour, and promoted hardiness and agility of body, cultivated likewise urbanity and politeness.

2. The games of Greece were not confined to gymnastic or athletic exercises. They encouraged competitions in genius and learning. They were the resort of the poets, the historians, and the philosophers.

3. In all nations poetry is of greater antiquity than prose composition. The earliest prose writers in Greece, Pherecydes of Scyros, and Cadmus of Miletus, were 350 years posterior to Homer. Any remains of the more ancient poets, as Linus, Orpheus, &c. are extremely suspicious. Homer, of whose birth both the place and era are very uncertain, is generally supposed to have been a native of Ionia, and to have flourished probably between 962-927, B. C.; to have followed the occupation of a wandering minstrel, and to have composed his poems in detached fragments, and separate ballads, and episodes. Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, is said to have been the first who brought from Ionia into Greece complete copies of the Iliad and Odyssey; which, however, were not arranged in the order in which we now see them, till 250 years afterwards by Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens, about 540 B. C. who first employed learned men to collect and methodise these fragments; and to this we owe the complete poems of the Iliad and Odyssey. They were revised by Callisthenes and Anaxarchus, at the command of Alexander the Great; and again finally revised by the celebrated grammarian and critic, Aristarchus, by order of Ptolemy Philometor. But the distinguishing merits of Homer are independent of all artificial arrangement. His profound knowledge of human nature, his masterly skill in the delineation of character. his faith

K

ful and minute description of ancient manners, his command of the passions, his genius for the sublime and beautiful, and the harmony of his poetical numbers, have deservedly established his reputation as the greatest poet of antiquity. His fidelity as a historian has been questioned; but the great outlines of his narrative are probably authentic. The moral of the Iliad is, that dissension among the chiefs of a country is generally fatal to the people; and that of the Odyssey, that prudence joined to courage and perseverance are sufficient to surmount the most powerful obstacles.

4. Hesiod [fl. 859-824.] was nearly contemporary with Homer: a poet, of whose merits we should be little sensible, were they not seen through the medium of an immense antiquity. The poem of the Works and Days contains some judicious precepts of agriculture. The Theogony is an obscure history of the origin of the gods and the formation of the universe. 5. About two centuries after Homer and Hesiod, flourished Archilochus [708—665], the inventor of Iambic verse; and Terpander [fl. 676-644], who is equally celebrated as a poet and a musician, but of whose verses we have no remains. The two succeeding centuries were distinguished by nine lyric poets of great celebrity. Alcman [fl. 671-631] and Stesichorus [fl. 611], of whom we have but a few imperfect remains; Sappho [fl. 608], of whose composition we have two exquisite odes; Alcæus [fl. 611], Simonides [fl. 520], Ibycus [fl. 560], and Bacchylides, of whom there are some fine fragments; and Pindar [f. 518-439] and Anacreon [fl. 559-530], who have left enough to allow an accurate estimate of their merits.

6. Pindar was esteemed by the ancients the chief of the lyric poets. He possesses unbounded fancy and great sublimity of imagery; but his digressions are so rapid and so frequent, that we cannot discover the chain of thought; and his expression is allowed, even by Longinus, to be often obscure and unintelligible.

7. Anacreon is a great contrast to Pindar. His fancy suggests only familiar and luxurious pictures. He has no comprehension of the sublime, but contents himself with the easy, the graceful, and the wanton. His morality is loose, and his sentiments little else than the effusions of a voluptuary, and therefore too immoral to find favour with the friends of virtue.

8. The collection termed Anthologia, which consists chiefly of ancient epigrams, contains many valuable specimens of the taste and poetical fancy of the Greeks, and contributes materially to the illustration of their manners. The best of the modern epigrams may be traced to this source.

9. The era of the origin of dramatic composition among the Greeks, is supposed to have commenced about 590 B. C. Thespis, who is said to have been the inventor of tragedy, was contemporary with Solon. Within little more than a century the

Greek drama was carried to its highest perfection; for Eschylus died 456 B. C. Eschylus wrote seventy-five tragedies; for thirteen of which he gained the first prize of dramatic poetry at the Olympic games. Only seven are now extant. Like Shakspeare, his genius is sublime and his imagination unbounded. He disdained regularity of plan and all artificial restriction; but unfortunately he disdained likewise the restraints of decency and of good morals.

10. Euripides (480—406) and Sophocles (495-405) flourished about fifty years after Æschylus. Euripides is most masterly in painting the passion of love, both in its tenderest emotions and in its most violent paroxysms: yet the characters of his women demonstrate that he had no great opinion of the virtues of the sex. Longinus does not rate high his talent for the sublime; but he possessed a much superior excellence-his verses, with great eloquence and harmony, breathe the most admirable morality. There remain eighteen tragedies of Euripides, out of about 120 said to have been written by him; and of these the Medea is deemed the most excellent.

11. Sophocles shared with Euripides the palm of dramatic poetry; and is judged to have surpassed him in the grand, the terrible, and the sublime. Of 100 tragedies which he composed, only seven remain. They display great knowledge of the human heart, and a general chastity and simplicity of expression, which give the greater force to the occasional strokes of the sublime. The Edipus of Sophocles is esteemed the most perfect production of the Greek stage.

12. The Greek comedy is divided into the ancient, the middle, and the new. The first was a licentious satire and mimicry of real personages exhibited by name upon the stage. The laws repressed this extreme license, and gave birth to the middle comedy, which continued the satirical delineation of real persons, but under fictitious names. The last improvement consisted in banishing all personal satire, and confining comedy to a delineation of manners. This was the new comedy. Of the first species, the ancient, we have no remains. The dramas of Aristophanes (fl. 427-388), of which we have eleven out of fifty-four, are an example of the second or middle comedy. The grossness of his raillery, and the malevolence which frequently inspired it, are a reproach to the morals of that people which could tolerate it. Yet his works have their value, as throwing light upon ancient manners.

13. Of the new comedy, Menander (fl. 330—20) was the bright example; possessing a vein of the most delicate wit, with the utmost purity of moral sentiment. Unfortunately we have nothing of him remaining but a few fragments preserved by Athenæus, Plutarch, Stobaeus, and Eustathius. We see a great deal of his merits, however, in his copyist and translator, Terence.

14. The actors, both in the Greek and Roman theatres, wore

masks, of which the features were strongly painted, and the mouth so constructed as to increase the power of the voice.-It is probable the tragedy and comedy of the Greeks and Romans were set to music, and sung like the recitative in the Italian opera; and sometimes one person was employed to recite or sing the part, and another to perform the corresponding action or gesticulation.

15. The Mimes originally made a part of the ancient comedy, and consisted of grotesque dances played between the acts; but becoming popular with the vulgar, they became a separate entertainment, representing burlesque parodies on the serious tragedy and comedy. The Pantomimes differed from the mimes in this respect, that they consisted solely of gesticulation, and were carried to great perfection. They seem to have been very similar to our modern pantomimes.

SECTION XXXII.

OF THE GREEK HISTORIANS.

1. THE genius of the Greeks was in no department of literary composition more distinguished than in history; and the most eminent of their historians were nearly contemporary with each other. Herodotus, born 484, died in B. C.; Thucydides, born 471, died in 319; and Xenophon, who was about forty years later than Thucydides, died 359. Herodotus, a native of Halicarnassus, one of the Greek cities of Asia, has written the joint history of the Greeks and Persians from the time of Cyrus the Great to the battles of Plataa and Mycale, a period of 120 years (599-479). He treats incidentally likewise of the history of several other nations of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Medes, and Lydians. His veracity is to be depended on in all matters that fell under his own observation; but he admits too easily the reports of others, and is in general fond of the marvellous. His style is pure, and he has a copious elocution.

2. Thucydides was a native of Athens, and of an illustrious family. He was an able general, and has written, with great ability, the history of the first twenty-one years of the Peloponnesian war; introducing it with a short narrative of the preceding periods of the history of Greece. He is justly esteemed for his fidelity and candour. His style is a contrast to the full and flowing period of Herodotus, possessing a sententious brevity which is at once lively and energetic. The history of the remaining six years of the war of Peloponnesus was written by Theopompus and Xenophon.

3. Xenophon commanded the Greek army in the service of Cyrus the younger, in his culpable enterprise against his brother Artaxerxes. (See Sect. XX. § 14.) After the failure of this

enterprise, Xenophon directed that astonishing retreat from Babylon to the Euxine, of which he has given an interesting and faithful narrative. He wrote likewise the Cyropedia, or the history of the elder Cyrus, which is believed to be rather an imaginary delineation of an accomplished prince than a real narration. He continued the history of Thucydides, and has left two excellent political tracts on the constitutions of Lacedæmon and Athens. His style is simple and energetic, familiar, unadorned, and free from all affectation.

4. Greece, in her decline, produced some historians of great eminence. Polybius (fl. 210—124), a native of Megalopolis, in Arcadia, wrote forty books of the Roman and Greek history during his own age; that is, from the beginning of the second Punic war to the reduction of Macedonia into a Roman province; but of this great work only the first five books are entire, with an epitome of the following twelve. He merits less the praise of eloquence and purity than of authentic information and most judicious reflection.

5. Diodorus Siculus flourished (60-30) in the time of Augustus, and composed, in forty books, a general history of the world, under the title of Bibliotheca Historica. No more remain than fifteen books; of which the first five treat of the fabulous periods, and the history of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks, &c., prior to the Trojan war. The next five are wanting. The remainder brings down the history from the expedition of Xerxes into Greece till after the death of Alexander the Great. He is taxed with chronological inaccuracy in the earlier parts of his work; but the authenticity and correctness of the latter periods are unimpeached. His style, though not to be compared to that of Xenophon or Thucydides, is pure, perspicuous, and unaffected.

6. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, eminent both as a historian and rhetorician, flourished in the age of Augustus (d. ab. 7 B. C.) His Roman Antiquities contain much valuable information, though his work is too much tinctured with the spirit of systematizing. Strabo, the great geographer, lived also in this period, from whose writings an accurate account of the principal states of the world is obtained, particularly of Greece, Italy, Sardinia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Judea, which he visited. He was a native of Cappadocia, and died about the year 25 A. C.

7. Plutarch, a native of Charonea in Boeotia, flourished in the reign of Nero (died about 140 A. C.). His "Lives of Illustrious Men" is one of the most valuable of the literary works of the ancients, introducing us to an acquaintance with the private character and manners of those eminent persons whose public achievements are recorded by professed historians. His morality is excellent; his style is clear and energetic, and when the subject demands it, rises frequently to great eloquence.

8. Arrian, a native of Nicomedia, wrote, in the reign of