Problems in Greek history Part 21

[Sidenote: Not so in artistic or literary history,]

[Sidenote: where the French and Germans are superior;]

-- 92. When we come to the literary and artistic side, the foreign historians have a decided advantage. The philosophical side of Greek literature has indeed been treated by Grote and other English writers with a fulness and clearness that leave little to be desired; but on the poetry and the artistic prose of the Greeks, foreign scholars write with a freshness and a knowledge to which few of us attain. Of course a Frenchman, with the systematic and careful training which he gets in composition, must have an inestimable advantage over people, like us, who merely write as they list, and have no rules to guide their taste or form their style. And the German, if as regards style he is even less happily circ.u.mstanced than the Englishman, whose language has at least been moulded by centuries of literature, has yet on the side of archaeology and art enjoyed a training which is only just now becoming possible in England or America.

[Sidenote: especially in art.]

Hence it is that the earlier part of Curtius' history has such a charm,--though we must not detract from the individual genius of the man, which is manifest enough if we compare him with the solid but prosaic Duncker. However complete and well articulated the bones of fact may lie before us, it requires a rare imagination to clothe them with flesh and with skin, nay, with bloom upon the skin, and expression in the features, if we are to have a living figure, and not a dry and repulsive skeleton.

[Sidenote: Importance of studying Greek art.]

-- 93. What I think it right, in conclusion, to insist upon is this: that a proper knowledge of Greek art, instead of being the mere amus.e.m.e.nt of the dilettante, is likely to have an important effect upon the general appearance of our public buildings and our homes, and to make them not only more beautiful, but also instructive to the rising generation. The day for new developments of architecture and of decorative art seems past, though the modern discovery of a new material for building--iron--ought to have brought with it something fresh and original. In earlier ages the quality of the material can always be shown to be a potent factor in style.

[Sidenote: Modern revivals of ancient styles,--Gothic, Renaissance.]

If, however, we are not to have a style of our own, we must necessarily go back to the great builders and decorators of former ages, and make them the models of our artists. This has in fact been the history of the revivals since the universal reign of vulgarity in what we call the early Queen Victoria period in England. First there was a great Gothic revival, when we began to understand what the builders of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries meant, and to reproduce their ideas with intelligence. This has since given way to the Renaissance style, in which most recent buildings have been erected, and which has beauties which the Gothic revivalists used to regard with horror.

There is no probability that the last ideal will be more permanent than the last but one; it will presently be replaced by some other model.

This, however, will have been gained,--that our ordinary lay public will have been trained to understand and appreciate not only the great Gothic works of the early, but the great Renaissance works of the late Middle Ages. We can now even tolerate those curious vampings, so common in Holland and Germany, where one style has been laid upon the other or added to it[211:1].

[Sidenote: Probability of h.e.l.lenic revival.]

It is more than likely that the next revival will be a h.e.l.lenic revival.

Renaissance architecture, as is well known, is the imitation of Roman or late h.e.l.lenistic art, with certain peculiarities and modifications forced upon the builders by their education and surroundings. But many of them thought they were reproducing pure Greek style, concerning which they were really in total darkness. The few earlier attempts in this century to imitate Greek buildings show a similar ignorance. Thus the builders of the Madeleine in Paris thought, I suppose, they were copying the Parthenon, whereas they knew nothing whatever about the art of Ictinus. How far this inability to understand the art of a distant century may go, is curiously exemplified in the drawings taken (in 1676) from the yet un-ruined Parthenon by Jacques Carrey, by the order of the Marquis of Nointel. These drawings are positively ludicrous travesties of the sculpture of Phidias in seventeenth-century style[211:2].

[Sidenote: Greek art only recently understood. Winckelmann, Penrose, Dorpfeld.]

Not until a long series of great students, beginning with Winckelmann, had studied with real care the secrets of Greek art, till Mr. Penrose had disclosed the marvellous subtlety in the curves of the Parthenon, till Dr. Dorpfeld had a.n.a.lyzed the plan and materials and execution of the Olympian treasure-houses and temples, could we say that we were beginning to have a clear perception of the qualities which made Greek sculpture and architecture so superior to all imitations which have since been attempted.

[Sidenote: Its effect upon modern art when properly appreciated,]

-- 94. It is high time that all this profound research, this recondite learning, these laborious excavations, should be made known in their results, and brought home to the larger public. Then when the day comes that we undertake to carry out a h.e.l.lenic Renascence, we shall know what we are about; we shall abandon the superst.i.tion of white marble wors.h.i.+p, and adopt colours; we shall learn to combine chast.i.ty of design with richness of ornamentation; we shall revert to that harmony of all the arts which has been lost since the days of Michael Angelo.

[Sidenote: and upon every detail of our life.]

If it be true that there is in heaven a secret treaty between the three sovran Ideas that enn.o.ble human life,--the Good, the Beautiful, and the True--which enacts that none of them shall enrich us without the co-operation of the rest, then our study of this side of Greek perfection may even have its moral results. May not the ideas of measure, of fitness, of reserve, which are shown in all the best Greek work, radiate their influence into our ordinary life, and, making it fairer, prepare it for the abode of larger truth and more perfect goodness?

[Sidenote: Greek Literature hardly noticed in this Essay.]

-- 95. Thus far I have sought to bring out the political lessons which are the peculiar teaching of history, and have only suggested what may yet result from the artistic lessons left us by this wonderful people.

The reader may wonder that I have said little or nothing concerning another very prominent side of Greek perfection,--the wonders of the poetry which ranks with the best that has been produced by all the efforts of man before or since. My reason for this omission was, that here, if anywhere, the excellence of the extant h.e.l.lenic work is acknowledged, while the fact that all those ignorant of the language are excluded from enjoying it, makes any discussion of it unsuited to the general public. For whatever may be said of good translations of foreign prose, poetry is so essentially the artistic expression of the peculiar tongue in which it originates, that all transference into alien words must produce a fatal alteration. A great English poet may indeed transfer the ideas of a Greek to his page; but he gives us an English poem on Greek subjects, not the very poem of his model, however faithful his report may be.

[Sidenote: Demands a good knowledge and study of the language.]

If, therefore, we are to benefit by this side of h.e.l.lenic life, there is no short cut possible. We must sit down and study the language till we can read it fluently; and this requires so much labour, that the increasing demands of modern life upon our time tend to thrust aside the study of bygone languages for the sake of easier and more obvious gains.

-- 96. Nevertheless, it seems well-nigh impossible that a h.e.l.lenic Renascence, such as I have antic.i.p.ated, can ever be thorough and lasting unless the English-speaking nations become really familiar with the literary side of h.e.l.lenic life. Revivals of the plays of aeschylus and Sophocles must not be confined to the learned stage and public of an English or American university, but must come to be heard and appreciated by a far larger public.

[Sidenote: Other languages must be content to give way to this pursuit.]

This can hardly be done until we make up our minds that the subjects of education must not be increased in number, and that moreover they may be alternated with far more freedom than is now the case. There is, for example, a superst.i.tion that everybody must learn Latin before learning Greek, and that French is a sort of necessary accomplishment for a lady, whereas it is perfectly certain that the cultivation to be attained through Greek is ten times as great as that we can gain through Latin; while in the second case it is no paradox to a.s.sert that any woman able to understand the _Antigone_ of Sophocles or the _Thalusia_ of Theocritus would derive from them more spiritual food than from all the volumes of French poetry she is ever likely to read. If we cannot compa.s.s all, the lesser should give way to the greater; and it is not till our own day that the supremacy of Greek has been acknowledged by all competent judges.

[Sidenote: The nature and quality of Roman imitations.]

-- 97. What has promoted the reign of Latin, and has told against Greek in our schools, is partly, I believe, the bugbear of a strange alphabet; partly also--and this among more advanced people--the want of a clear knowledge how closely most Roman poetry was copied from Greek models.

Were the Greek models now extant, the contrast would probably cause the Roman imitations to disappear, as indeed many such must have disappeared when the Roman readers themselves approached the great originals. Even now, if the lyrics of Sappho and Alcaeus were recovered from some Egyptian tomb or from the charred rolls of Herculaneum, it might have a disastrous effect on the popularity of Horace.

[Sidenote: The case of Virgil.]

But in most cases the Romans copied from inferior poets of the Alexandrian age; and before the reader and I part company, it is of importance to insist upon this,--that the best of Roman poetry was often a mere version of third-rate Greek. By far the greatest of the Roman poets is Virgil; and if he alone remained, Latin would be worth learning for his sake. But even Virgil copies from second-rate Alexandrian poets, Apollonius and Aratus--from the latter to an extent which would be thought shameful in any independent literature. It may be true that the translations are in this case not only equal, but far superior, to the originals. I will not dispute this, as my case does not require any doubtful supports. For even granting that he can exceed a second-rate Greek model, what shall we say when he attempts to imitate Theocritus in his _Bucolics_? Here he is taking a really good Greek poet for his model, and how poor is the great Roman in comparison! Even therefore in imitating an Alexandrian master, we can see that the first of Latin poets cannot bear the comparison.

[Sidenote: Theocritus only a late flower in the Greek garden of poetry.]

-- 98. If I had not written fully on this subject in my recent _Greek Life and Thought_, and my _Greek World under Roman Sway_, I should fain conclude with some brief account of the after-glow of h.e.l.lenic genius, when the loss of freshness in the language and the life of the people had made pedantry and artificiality common features in the writing of the day. Yet these patent faults did not strike the Romans, whose poets, with only few exceptions, copied Callimachus and Parthenius as the finest models in the world.

From my point of view, though I have cited these facts to show what a superst.i.tion the preference of Latin to Greek is, I can urge them as but another evidence of the supremacy of Greece and its right to a spiritual empire over cultivated men. Even debased and decaying h.e.l.lenism could produce poetry too good for the ablest disciples to rival, too subtle for any other tongue to express. Can we conclude with any greater tribute to the genius of the race, with any higher recommendation of their history than this, that it is the history of a people whose gifts have never ceased to illumine and to sustain the higher spirits in every society of civilized men?

FOOTNOTES:

[190:1] I am of course speaking generally, nor do I venture to decide without argument the difficult question of the exact status of Greece in the years after 146 B.C.

[196:1] _Greek Life and Thought, from Alexander to the Roman Conquest._ Macmillan, 1887.

[202:1] The old belief in an original Hebrew Gospel, from which Saint Matthew's was translated, now turns out to have no better foundation than the existence of an old version into Hebrew (Aramaic) for the benefit of the common people who were too ignorant to read Greek. Cf.

Dr. Salmon's _Introduction to the New Testament_.

[203:1] Cf. further details in my _Greek Life and Thought_, pp. 140, 372.

[206:1] Cf. Mr. W. Pater's _Marius the Epicurean_, which is built on this idea; also the excellent account in Mr. Bury's new _History of the Later Roman Empire_, vol. i. chap. i.

[206:2] The reader who fears to attack Libanius directly, may find all the facts either in Sievers' (German) _Life of Libanius_, or in Mr. W.

W. Capes's excellent book on _University Life at Athens_ (London, 1877).

[211:1] Of this confusion the hall of the Middle Temple in London is a very interesting specimen, seeing that the Renaissance screen, a splendid thing, is only two years later than the Gothic hall.

[211:2] They are not, however, one whit worse than the ordinary attempts at Greek dress made by nineteenth-century ladies who go to Fancy Fairs.