General History for Colleges and High Schools Part 19

LYSIPPUS.--This artist is renowned for his works in bronze. He flourished about the middle of the fourth century B.C. His statues were in great demand. Many of these were of colossal size. Alexander gave the artist many orders for statues of himself, and also of the heroes that fell in his campaigns.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LAOc.o.o.n GROUP.]

THE RHODIAN COLOSSUS AND SCHOOLS OF ART.--The most noted pupil of Lysippus was Chares, who gave to the world the celebrated Colossus at Rhodes (about 280 B.C.). This was another of the wonders of the world. Its height was about one hundred and seven feet, and a man could barely encircle with his arms the thumb of the statue. [Footnote: The statue was not as large as the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. The height of the latter is 151 feet.] After standing little more than half a century, it was overthrown by an earthquake. For nine hundred years the Colossus then lay, like a Homeric G.o.d, p.r.o.ne upon the ground. Finally, the Arabs, having overrun this part of the Orient (A.D. 672), appropriated the statue, and thriftily sold it to a Jewish merchant. It is said that it required a train of nine hundred camels to bear away the bronze.

This gigantic piece of statuary was not a solitary one at Rhodes; for that city, next after Athens, was the great art centre of the Grecian world.

Its streets and gardens and public edifices were literally crowded with statues. The island became the favorite resort of artists, and the various schools there founded acquired a wide renown. Many of the most prized works of Grecian art in our modern museums were executed by members of these Rhodian schools. The "Laoc.o.o.n Group," found at Rome in 1506, and now in the Museum of the Vatican, is generally thought to be the work of three Rhodian sculptors.

GREEK PAINTING.--Although the Greek artists attained a high degree of excellence in painting, still they probably never brought the art to the perfection which they reached in sculpture. One reason for this was that paintings were never, like statues, objects of adoration; hence less attention was directed to them.

With the exception of antique vases and a few patches of mural decoration, all specimens of Greek painting have perished. Consequently our knowledge of Greek painting is derived chiefly from the descriptions of renowned works, by the ancient writers, and their anecdotes of great painters.

POLYGNOTUS.--Polygnotus (flourished 475-455 B.C.) has been called the Prometheus of painting, because he was the first to give fire and animation to the expression of the countenance. "In his hand," it is affirmed, "the human features became for the first time the mirror of the soul." Of a Polyxena [Footnote: Polyxena was a daughter of the Trojan Priam, famous for her beauty and her sufferings.] painted by this great master, it was said that "she carried in her eyelids the whole history of the Trojan War."

ZEUXIS AND PARRHASIUS.--These great artists lived and painted about 400 B.C. A favorite and familiar story preserves their names as companions, and commemorates their rival genius. Zeuxis, such is the story, painted a cl.u.s.ter of grapes which so closely imitated the real fruit that the birds pecked at them. His rival, for his piece, painted a curtain. Zeuxis asked Parrhasius to draw aside the veil and exhibit his picture. "I confess I am surpa.s.sed," generously admitted Zeuxis to his rival; "I deceived birds, but you have deceived the eyes of an experienced artist."

APELLES.--Apelles, who has been called the "Raphael of antiquity," was the court painter of Alexander the Great. He was such a consummate master of the art of painting, and carried it to such a state of perfection, that the ancient writers spoke of it as the "art of Apelles."

That Apelles, like Zeuxis and Parrhasius, painted life-like pictures is shown by the following story. In a contest between him and some rival artists, horses were the objects represented. Perceiving that the judges were unfriendly to him, and partial, Apelles insisted that less prejudiced judges should p.r.o.nounce upon the merit of the respective pieces, demanding, at the same time, that the paintings should be shown to some horses that were near. When brought before the pictures of his rival, the horses exhibited no concern; but upon being shown the painting of Apelles, they manifested by neighing and other intelligent signs their instant recognition of the companions the great master had created.

NOTE.--Recent excavations (1878-1886) on the site of ancient Pergamus, in Asia Minor, have brought to light a great Altar, dating seemingly from the second century B.C., whose sides were decorated with gigantic sculptures representing the Battle of the Giants against the G.o.ds. The sculptures, which by some are placed next to those of the Parthenon, are now in the Berlin Museum.

CHAPTER XIX.

GREEK LITERATURE.

1. EPIC AND LYRIC POETRY.

THE GREEKS AS LITERARY ARTISTS.--It was that same exquisite sense of fitness and proportion and beauty which made the Greeks artists in marble that also made them artists in language. "Of all the beautiful things which they created," says Professor Jebb, "their own language was the most beautiful." This language they wrought into epics, lyrics, dramas, histories, and orations as incomparable in form and beauty as their temples and statues.

THE HOMERIC POEMS,--The earliest specimens of Greek poetry are the so- called "Homeric poems," consisting of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. The subject of the _Iliad_ (from Ilios, Troy) is the "Wrath of Achilles." The _Odyssey_ tells of the long wanderings of the hero Odysseus (Ulysses) up and down over many seas while seeking his native Ithaca, after the downfall of Ilios. These poems exerted an incalculable influence upon the literary and religious life of the h.e.l.lenic race.

The _Iliad_ must be p.r.o.nounced the world's greatest epic. It has been translated into all languages, and has been read with an ever fresh interest by generation after generation for nearly 3000 years. Alexander, it is told, slept with a copy beneath his pillow,--a copy prepared especially for him by his preceptor Aristotle, and called the "casket edition," from the jewelled box in which Alexander is said to have kept it. We preserve it quite as sacredly in all our courses of cla.s.sical study. The poem has made warriors as well as poets. It incited the military ambition of Alexander, of Hannibal, and of Caesar; it inspired Virgil, Dante, and Milton. All epic writers have taken it as their model.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOMER.]

DATE AND AUTHORs.h.i.+P OF THE HOMERIC POEMS.--Until the rise of modern German criticism, the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ were almost universally ascribed to a single bard named Homer, who was believed to have lived about the middle of the ninth or tenth century B.C., one or two centuries after the events commemorated in his poems. Though tradition represents many cities as contending for the honor of having been his birthplace, still he was generally regarded as a native of Smyrna, in Asia Minor. He travelled widely (so it was believed), lost his sight, and then, as a wandering minstrel, sang his immortal verses to admiring listeners in the different cities of h.e.l.las.

But it is now the opinion of many scholars that the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_, as they stand today, are not, either of them, the creation of a single poet. They are believed to be mosaics; that is, to be built up out of the fragments of an extensive ballad literature that grew up in an age preceding the Homeric. The "Wrath of Achilles," which forms the nucleus of the _Iliad_ as we have it, may, with very great probability, be ascribed to Homer, whom we may believe to have been the most prominent of a brotherhood of bards who flourished about 850 or 750 B.C.

THE HESIODIC POEMS.--Hesiod, who lived a century or more after the age that gave birth to the Homeric poems, was the poet of nature and of real life, especially of peasant life, in the dim transition age of h.e.l.las. The Homeric bards sing of the deeds of heroes, and of a far-away time when G.o.ds mingled with men. Hesiod sings of common men, and of every-day, present duties. His greatest poem, a didactic epic, is ent.i.tled _Works and Days_. This is, in the main, a sort of farmers' calendar, in which the poet points out to the husbandman the lucky and unlucky days for doing certain kinds of work, eulogizes industry, and intersperses among all his practical lines homely maxims of morality and beautiful descriptive pa.s.sages of the changing seasons.

LYRIC POETRY: PINDAR.--The aeolian island of Lesbos was the hearth and home of the earlier lyric poets. Among the earliest of the Lesbian singers was the poetess Sappho, whom the Greeks exalted to a place next to Homer.

Plato calls her the Tenth Muse. Although her fame endures, her poetry, except some mere fragments, has perished.

Anacreon was a courtier at the time of the Greek tyrannies. He was a native of Ionia, but pa.s.sed much of his time at the court of Polycrates of Samos. He seems to have enjoyed to the full the gay and easy life of a courtier, and sung so voluptuously of love and wine and festivity that the term "Anacreontic" has come to be used to characterize all poetry over- redolent of these themes.

But the greatest of the Greek lyric poets, and perhaps the greatest of all lyric poets of every age and race, was Pindar (about 522-443 B.C.). He was born at Thebes, but spent most of his time in the cities of Magna Graecia.

Such was the reverence in which his memory was held that when Alexander, one hundred years after Pindar's time, levelled the city of Thebes to the ground on account of a revolt, the house of the poet was spared, and left standing amid the general ruin (see p. 161). The greater number of Pindar's poems were inspired by the scenes of the national festivals. They describe in lofty strains the splendors of the Olympian chariot-races, or the glory of the victors at the Isthmian, the Nemean, or the Pythian games.

Pindar insists strenuously upon virtue and self-culture. With deep meaning he says, "Become that which thou art;" that is, be that which you are made to be.

2. THE DRAMA AND DRAMATISTS.

ORIGIN OF THE GREEK DRAMA.--The Greek drama, in both its branches of tragedy and comedy, grew out of the songs and dances inst.i.tuted in honor of the G.o.d of wine--Dionysus (the same as the Roman Bacchus).

Tragedy (goat-song, possibly from the accompanying sacrifice of a goat) sprang from the graver songs, and comedy (village-song) from the lighter and more farcical ones. Gradually, recital and dialogue were added, there being at first but a single speaker, then two, and finally three, which last was the cla.s.sical number. Thespis (about 536 B.C.) is said to have introduced this idea of the dialogue; hence the term "Thespian" applied to the tragic drama.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BACCHIC PROCESSION.]

Owing to its origin, the Greek drama always retained a religious character, and further, presented two distinct features, the chorus (the songs and dances) and the dialogue. At first, the chorus was the all- important part; but later, the dialogue became the more prominent portion, the chorus, however, always remaining an essential feature of the performance. Finally, in the golden age of the Attic stage, the chorus dancers and singers were carefully trained, at great expense, and the dialogue became the masterpiece of some great poet,--and then the Greek drama, the most splendid creation of human genius, was complete.

THE THREE GREAT TRAGIC POETS.--There are three great names in Greek tragedy,--aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These dramatists all wrote during the splendid period which followed the victories of the Persian war, when the intellectual life of all h.e.l.las, and especially that of Athens, was strung to the highest tension. This lent nervous power and intensity to almost all they wrote, particularly to the tragedies of AEschylus and Sophocles. Of the two hundred and more dramas produced by these poets, only thirty-two have escaped the accidents of time.

aeschylus (525-456 B.C.) knew how to touch the hearts of the generation that had won the victories of the Persian war; for he had fought with honor both at Marathon and at Salamis. But it was on a very different arena that he was destined to win his most enduring fame. Eleven times did he carry off the prize in tragic composition. The Athenians called him the "Father of Tragedy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: aeSCHYLUS.]

The central idea of his dramas is that "no mortal may dare raise his heart too high,"--that "Zeus tames excessive lifting up of heart." _Prometheus Bound_ is one of his chief works. Another of his great tragedies is _Agamemnon_, thought by some to be his masterpiece. The subject is the crime of Clytemnestra (see p. 96). It is a tragedy crowded with spirit-shaking terrors, and filled with more than human crimes and woes.

Nowhere is portrayed with greater power the awful vengeance with which the implacable Nemesis is armed.

Sophocles (495-405 B.C.) while yet a youth gained the prize in a poetic contest with aeschylus. Plutarch says that aeschylus was so chagrined by his defeat that he left Athens and retired to Sicily. Sophocles now became the leader of tragedy at Athens. In almost every contest he carried away the first prize. He lived through nearly a century, a century, too, that comprised the most brilliant period of the life of h.e.l.las. His dramas were perfect works of art. The leading idea of his pieces is the same as that which characterizes those of aeschylus; namely, that self-will and insolent pride arouse the righteous indignation of the G.o.ds, and that no mortal can contend successfully against the will of Zeus.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SOPHOCLES.]

Euripides (485-406 B.C.) was a more popular dramatist than either aeschylus or Sophocles. His fame pa.s.sed far beyond the limits of Greece. Herodotus a.s.serts that the verses of the poet were recited by the natives of the remote country of Gedrosia; and Plutarch says that the Sicilians were so fond of his lines that many of the Athenian prisoners, taken before Syracuse, bought their liberty by teaching their masters his verses.

COMEDY: ARISTOPHANES.--Foremost among all writers of comedy must be placed Aristophanes (about 444-380 B.C.). He introduces us to the every-day life of the least admirable cla.s.ses of Athenian society. Four of his most noted works are the _Clouds_, the _Knights_, the _Birds_, and the _Wasps_.

In the comedy of the _Clouds_, Aristophanes especially ridicules the Sophists, a school of philosophers and teachers just then rising into prominence at Athens, of whom the satirist unfairly makes Socrates the representative.

The aim of the _Knights_ was the punishment and ruin of Cleon, whom we already know as one of the most conceited and insolent of the demagogues of Athens.

[Ill.u.s.tration: EURIPIDES.]

The play of the _Birds_ is "the everlasting allegory of foolish sham and flimsy ambition." It was aimed particularly at the ambitious Sicilian schemes of Alcibiades; for at the time the play appeared, the Athenian army was before Syracuse, and elated by good news daily arriving, the Athenians were building the most gorgeous air-castles, and indulging in the most extravagant day-dreams of universal dominion.

In the _Wasps_, the poet satirizes the proceedings in the Athenian law-courts, by showing how the great citizen-juries, numbering sometimes five or six hundred, were befooled by the demagogues. But Aristophanes was something more than a master of mere mirth-provoking satire and ridicule: many of the choruses of his pieces are inexpressibly tender and beautiful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HERODOTUS.]

3. HISTORY AND HISTORIANS.