THE GREEK POETS. CHAPTER I. THE PERIODS OF GREEK LITERATURE. Language and Mythology.-The Five Chief Periods of Greek Literature. The First Period: Homer-Religion and State of the Homeric Age -Achilles and Ulysses.-Second Period: Transition-Breaking up of the Homeric Monarchies-Colonization-the Nomotheta-Ionians and Dorians-Development of Elegiac, Iambic, Lyric PoetryBeginning of Philosophy.—Third Period: Athenian Supremacy-— Philosophy at Athens-the Fine Arts-the Drama-HistorySparta and Athens-Pericles and Anaxagoras.-Fourth Period: Hegemony of Sparta- Enslavement of Hellas-DemosthenesAlexander and Achilles-Aristotle-the Hellenization of the East -Menander-the Orators.-Fifth Period: Decline and Decay- Greek Influence upon the World-Alexandria-the Sciences-Theocritusthe University of Athens-Sophistic Literature-Byzantium--Hellas and Christendom. THE most fascinating problems of history are veiled as closely from our curiosity as the statue of Egyptian Isis. Nothing is known for certain about the emergence from primitive barbarism of the great races, or about the determination of national characteristics. Analogies may be adduced from the material world; but the mysteries of organized vitality remain impenetrable. What made the Jew a Jew, the Greek a Greek, is as unexplained as what daily causes the germs of an oak and of an ash to produce different trees. All we know is that in the womb of the vague and infinitely distant past, the embryos of races were nourished into form and individuality by means of the unseen cord which attaches man to nature, his primitive B mother. But the laws of that rudimentary growth are still unknown; "the abysmal deeps of Personality "in nations as in men remain unsounded: we cannot even experimentalize upon the process of ethnical development. Those mighty works of art which we call languages, in the construction of which whole peoples unconsciously co-operated, the forms of which were determined not by individual genius, but by the instincts of successive generations acting to one end inherent in the nature of the race :-those poems of pure thought and fancy, cadenced not in words but in living imagery, fountain-heads of inspiration, mirrors of the mind of nascent nations, which we call Mythologies :—these surely are more marvellous in their infantine spontaneity than any more mature production of the races which evolved them. Yet we are utterly ignorant of their embryology: the true science of Origins is as yet not even in its cradle. Experimental philologers may analyze what remains of early languages, may trace their connections and their points of divergence, may classify and group them. But the nature of the organs of humanity which secreted them is unknown, the problem of their vital structure is insoluble. Antiquarian theorists may persuade us that Myths are decayed, disintegrated, dilapidated phrases, the meaning of which had been lost to the first mythopoeists. But they cannot tell us how these splendid flowers, springing upon the rich soil of rotting language, expressed in form and colour to the mental eye the thoughts and aspirations of whole races, presented a measure of the faculties to be developed during long ages of expanding civilization. If the boy is father of the man, Myths are the parents of philosophies, religions, polities. To these unknown artists of the prehistoric age, to the language-builders and myth-makers, architects of cathedrals not raised with hands but with the Spirit of man for Humanity to dwell therein, poets of the characters of nations, sculptors of the substance of the very soul, melodists who improvised the themes upon which subsequent centuries have written variations, we ought to erect our noblest statues and our grandest temples. The work of these first artificers is more astonishing in its unconsciousness, more effective in its spontaneity, than are the deliberate and calculated arts of sculptor, painter, poet, philosopher, and lawgiver of the historic periods. Some such reflections as these are the natural prelude to the study of a literature like that of the Greeks. Language and Mythology form the vestibules and outer courts to Homer, Pheidias, Lycurgus. It is common to divide the history of Greek literature into three chief periods: the first embracing the early growth of Poetry and Prose before the age in which Athens became supreme in Hellas-that is, anterior to about 480 B.C.: the second coinciding with the brilliant maturity of Greek genius during the supremacy of Athens-that is, from the termination of the Persian war to the age of Alexander: the third extending over the Decline and Fall of the Greek spirit after Alexander's death-that is, from B.C. 323, and onwards, to the final extinction of Hellenic civilization. There is much to be said in favour of this division. Indeed, Greek history falls naturally into these three sections. But a greater degree of accuracy may be attained by breaking up the first and last of these divisions, so as to make five periods instead of three. After having indicated these five periods in outline, we will return to the separate consideration of them in detail and in connection with the current of Greek history. The first may be termed the Heroic, or Prehistoric, or Legendary period. It ends with the first Olympiad, B.C. 776, and its chief monuments are the epics of Homer and Hesiod. The second is a period of transition from the Heroic or Epical to that of artistic maturity in all the branches of literature. In this stage history, properly so called, begins. The Greeks try |