HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION-EARLY USE OF WRITING-THE INFLUENCES OF RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY AND THE DAWN OF HISTORY IN THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. § 295. Introductory.—The history of Greek prose literature, as we possess it, begins almost at the close of the poetical development of the nation, at least at the close of its original development, for though many poets flourished later than our earliest prose writers, no new species of poetry, except possibly the bucolic, dates its origin from this time, and the later poets were in few cases men of remarkable or enduring originality. Hence it is that, in a logical survey of Greek literature, we may allow ourselves to treat all the poetry before we approach the consideration of prose writing. This, indeed, is now the accepted order among the German writers on the subject. I have in the former volume stated my belief that the composition of any long or elaborate poem postulates the use of writing, and I therefore proposed this condition as giving us the earliest limit for the date of the Iliad as we have it; but many eminent critics have thought differently, and have argued that poetry can be composed and preserved without any such aid. Fortunately this divergence of opinion does not exist in VOL. II.-I the case of prose literature. Everyone admits that prose is impossible without writing-nay, even without the well-established habit of fluent and sustained writing. A few words on the history of the alphabet in Greece may therefore suitably introduce our present subject. $296. The materials for the investigation of early Greek writing are to be found in many various and scattered inscriptions, of which all those discovered up to a certain date are to be found in Boeckh's Corpus Inscriptionum Græcarum, but the later are scattered through various archæological journals. The stricter study of these documents must be prosecuted by means of photographs or facsimiles, as the shape and character of the letters are generally our only means of determining the age of the inscription. Investigations of this kind, when reduced to method, are called the science of Epigraphik, and, with the constantly increasing excavations and discoveries through the Hellenic East, have become the most important and fruitful branch of recent Greek studies. But in England the Universities have completely neglected this study, and the best English Hellenists, with a very few brilliant exceptions, are as helpless in the face of an old Greek inscription as if it were in a Semitic tongue. I can only refer the reader to a German summary of the main results-Kirchhoff's Studien zur Geschichte des griechischen Alphabets (3rd ed. 1877). In this very able book he will find it shown that our earliest inscription of determinable date that of the Greek mercenaries on the leg of a colossal figure at Abu-Simbel-is by no means written in the most primitive form of the Greek alphabet. And yet this inscription cannot have been made later than 600 B.C., more probably about 640 B.C.1 The sepulchral inscriptions found at Melos 1 ΒΑΣΙΛΕΟΣΕΛΘΟΝΤΟΣΕΣΕΛΕΦΑΝΤΙΝΑΝΨΑΜΑΤΙΧΟ ΤΑΥΤΑΕΓΡΑΨΑΝΤΟΙΣΥΝΨΑΜΑΤΙΧΟΙΤΟΙ ΘΕΟΚΛΟΣ (sc. τοῦ Θεοκλέος) ΕΠΛΕΟΝΗΛΘΟΝ ΔΕΚΕΡΚΙΟΣΚΑΤΥΠΕΡΘΕΝΙΣ (sc. ἕως) ΟΠΟΤΑΜΟΣ ΑΝΙΜΑΛΟΓΛΟΣΟΣ (sc. ἀλλόγλωσσος) ΔΗΧΕΠΟΤΑΣΙΜΤΟ ΑΙΓΥΠΤΙΟΣΔΕ ΑΜΑΣΙΣ ΕΓΡΑΦΕΔΑΜΕΑΡΧΟΝ ΑΜΟΙΒΙΧΟ ΚΑΙ ΠΕΛΕΤΟΣΟΥΔΑΜΟ (sc. son of nobody). Cf. Lepsius, Denk. xii. plate 99, No. 531 for a facsimile; also Boeckh, vol. iii. p. 507 (No. 5126). and Thera, though perhaps not older in date, are far more archaic, and point to a condition of writing at least half a century older among the Ionians, who had modified their writing into the character found at Abu-Simbel. These and other facts collected by Kirchhoff with great care show that the Phoenician alphabet of twenty-two letters must have been adopted by the Greeks, and quickly modified to suit the different character of their language before 700 B.C., and perhaps considerably earlier. But for our purposes we need not claim an earlier origin than 700, though perhaps the constant discoveries of old inscriptions at Olympia will soon afford us clearer and fuller evidence. I predict that if such evidence be forthcoming it will tend to increase rather than to diminish the age of the use of writing in Greece. 1 $297. These considerations are confirmed by another phenomenon which we find in Greece about the same period. The rise of lawgivers and of codes of law points distinctly to writing, for we can hardly conceive the ordinances of a statesman entrusted to vague tradition. The date and character of Zaleukos, Charondas, and Lycurgus are indeed subject to dispute, and the extant Spartan rhetra may be suspected to be later in form, but no one can doubt that the Locrian and Spartan constitutions were early fixed in writing, certainly a considerable number of years earlier than those of Drako and Solon, which are fairly determined as shortly before and after the year 600 B.C. Quite in concert with this development of law we hear of the sayings of the Seven Wise Men, whose varying catalogue includes rather the politicians than the early philosophers, and whose wisdom was not only laid down in verse but in those short proverbs which easily fasten on the popular imagination. When Herodotus speaks of Æsop as a It is cited and explained by Plutarch (Lycurgus, c. 6): Aids Evλλavíov καὶ ̓Αθανᾶς Συλλανίας ἱερὸν ἱδροσάμενον, φυλὰς φυλάξαντα καὶ ὠβὰς ὠβάξαντα, τριάκοντα γερουσίαν σὺν ἀρχαγέταις καταστήσαντα, ὥρας ἐξ ὥρας ἀπελλάζειν μεταξὺ Βαβύκας τε καὶ Κνακιῶνος, οὕτως εἰσφέρειν τε καὶ ἀφίστασθαι· δάμῳ δὲ τὰν κυρίαν ἦμεν καὶ κράτος· αἱ δὲ σκολιὰν ὁ δᾶμος ἕλοιτο, τοὺς πρεσβυγενέας καὶ ἀρχαγέτας ἀποστατῆρας ἦμεν. Cf. on this Rawlinson's Herodotus, iii. p. 346; or Grote's Greece, vol. ii. p. 465, sq., and notes. AyoTolós of early date, he seems to point to some form of prose fable far older than his own time. It is remarkable that savage races in our own day have made beast-fables their first literary effort on the discovery of the use of writing.' But all these things have left us but faint and doubtful traces; for the wisdom of the Seven Wise Men, and the fables of Æsop, have come down to us in a rehandled and modern form, and we know nothing of any early prose form in which these things were originally composed. But on the whole, we have ample evidence for the common use of writing throughout the seventh century, evidence which is, in my opinion, necessary to account for the development of Greek lyric poetry, the construction of codes of law, and the general literary culture of the age. In fact, the wonder is, not that prose writing came so early, but so late in the history of Greek literature. But the national taste was so well satisfied by poetry that it required special influences, other than the mere familiarity with writing, to induce men to set down their thoughts in unmetrical form. To these we may now turn. § 298. We cannot embrace in this volume either the history of Greek religion or of Greek philosophy, both large and interesting subjects, and demanding special investigation. We are here concerned with them only so far as they produced a direct effect in moulding either the form or the tendencies of general literature. But as religion underwent great changes in the sixth century, and philosophy then originated, our sketch of Greek literature must embrace the remoter effects of both on the writers of that and succeeding generations. We have already noted 2 in Pindar the allusions to a future world, and to its rewards and punishments, and that this doctrine was due to the Orphic mysteries, which were common through Greece in this century. The origin of these mysteries is uniformly referred to Pieria in Thrace, from which they are said to have been brought to Lesbos, and then spread over Greece. They are closely identified, on the one hand, with the worship of Dionysus, which also originated in Thrace, Cf. my Proleg. to Anc. Hist., pp. 118, 391. 2 Vol. I. p. 213. but had assumed, by contact with Phrygia, an enthusiastic and orgiastic nature, so that the dithyrambs to the god, of old sung to the cithara, were adapted to flute and cymbal accompaniments; on the other hand, the Orphic rites were bound up with the widely spread mysteries of Demeter and Persephone, celebrated at Eleusis. But still more remarkable, and more important than either of these indications, is the identification of Orpheus, as the priest of Apollo, with Dionysus, and the evidences that he and Apollo, with whom he is identified, once in hostility with Dionysus, became reconciled with that god, who, under the title of Zagreus, was made a sort of nightside to the sungod, and ultimately confused with him. This secret doctrine, the identification of Apollo and Dionysus, is said to have been that disclosed in Eschylus' trilogy about Lycurgus. of Thrace, for which he was indicted as guilty of impiety. It is accordingly evident that the Delphic priests had recognised and adopted the Orphic rites as in harmony with their own creed, so that they must have been of real importance in Greece, and widely spread through the hearts of men. § 299. We may infer, however, from the scanty evidence of later writers that this religion of mysteries and rites, whether Orphic or Eleusinian or Dionysiac, was fundamentally distinct from the popular creed. It preached the identification of the most diverse gods, perhaps even the unity of all the gods. It approached the dogma of a world-soul, and of the divinity of the soul of man, if not of all the world, as a manifestation of God. It portrayed the wonder of a suffering deity, and of good overborne by the powers of darkness for a season. It held out the hope of immortality to those who embraced the faith, and made them a chosen people. It replaced, in fact, the old Homeric society of obvious human gods, with their vulgar amours and passions, by mystic principles and half-understood devotions. There seems little doubt that the established Delphic priesthood who adopted it borrowed from Egypt not only many elements of the new creed, such as the murder of the god and his resurrection from the dead, but more distinctly the policy of the Egyptian priests, who are known to have been monotheists or rather pantheists, yet who not only tolerated but taught a most |