John D. Quackenbos

“ It was at this noonday of Attic glory that Grecian literature reached its meridian. Then lyric verse climbed to heights before unattained; and dramatic poetry, tragic and comic, held its listeners spell-bound. History found distinguished representatives in Herodotus the Ionian, and later in Thucydides and Xenophon, the Athenians. Philosophy, in no other age or clime, has had worthier teachers than Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; while the art of persuasion seemed to be impersonated in Pericles, Isoc’rates, Æschines (es’ke-neez) , Demosthenes—all true sons of Attica. ”

“ Rise of Lyric Poetry.—For more than two hundred years after Homer and Hesiod, no one worthy of the name of poet appeared in Greece. Greek genius seemed to have exhausted itself. A few feeble imitators of the great master, and epic poetry was no more. The spirit of the Iliad and the Odyssey died with the monarchies whose chieftains they immortalized. When popular governments arose, the bard no longer celebrated the gods and demigods of the past, or traced the genealogies of kings, but sung the glories of his country, or poured forth without restraint the emotions of his soul. ”

“ He is often indelicate in his allusions; he is as ready with town slang and the cant of the shop as with the most elegant phrase. But Attic salt seasons the whole, and none ever handled the versatile Greek tongue more deftly. In his command of language, he is equalled only by Plato, who felt the comic poet’s power when he said that in the soul of Aristophanes the Graces sought an imperishable shrine. Amid all his humor and buffoonery sparkles genius of the highest order. His aim seems to have been to elevate his art. ”

“ Early in the 5th century, Greece plunged into a struggle for life or death with the Persian Empire—a struggle from which she emerged covered with glory, united and free. Her triumph is straightway sung in immortal verse, and historians arise to record her exploits. Athens, who faced the enemy at Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, and drove him back crippled and disgraced to Asia, now becomes the leader of grateful Hellas, and the centre of literature and refinement. Blossom after blossom unfolds in her genial clime. ”

“ The Veda, while rich in striking imagery, is marked by a beautiful simplicity of diction. In its language, we behold the most ancient form of our own tongue; in the hymns of its poets, those germs of Aryan intellectual development that no long time after bloomed in epic and idyl through the fertile valleys of India, bore immortal fruit on the soil of Greece and Rome, and have been brought to perfection in the grand productions of modern genius. ”

“ Thou risest, risest and glowest, glowest crowned as king of the gods! Thou art Lord of heaven and earth, creator of stars and men! Thou art the sole god who hath existed from the beginning, who hath made the lands and created men, who hath made the heavens and created the Nile, who hath made the waters and endowed with life all that therein is! Thou who hath built the hills and created men and the beasts of the field!”—Wendel.
The genius of the poets of the Golden Age may be estimated from the following verses discovered on a monumental tablet among the ruins of Thebes. ”

“ During this golden age of the Roman empire, poetry for a time recovered its vitality, and through the stinging satires of Juvenal denounced the abuses that had prevailed in the days of Nero and Domitian; while in the histories of Tacitus, prose indignantly broke its enforced silence, and held up to public detestation the despots of the past. But this revival was short-lived. Latin literature rapidly degenerated, for Latin genius was no more. In the later centuries of the empire, science and jurisprudence alone flourished on the soil where poetry had now ceased to bloom. ”

“ Go, lictor, bind the arms which but now wielded those weapons that acquired dominion to the Roman people; cover the head of that man to whom your city owes its liberty; hang him upon the gallows. Scourge him within the Pomœrium; but do it between those pillars to which are suspended the trophies of his victory. Scourge him without the Pomœrium; but do it between the graves of the Curiatii. For to what place can ye lead this youth, where the monuments of his glory would not redeem him from the ignominy of such a punishment? ”

“ A Greek slave, Livius Andronicus, who may be called the father of Roman classical literature, translating the Odyssey into Saturnian verse, introduced his captors to the literary treasures of his country. Enraptured Rome eagerly snatched the crown of letters as it fell from the head of her elder sister, and for a time the borrowed jewels sparkled on her brow. But she paid dearly for her brilliant ornaments; for, with Greek taste and culture, came also Greek effeminacy and vice. ”

“ Foremost of this class in eloquence of diction, sublimity of thought, and versatility of genius, stands Isaiah. Majesty united with elaborate finish; a harmony that delights the soul; a variety that imparts freshness without detracting from dignity; simplicity and unvarying purity of language,—conspire to make the lyric verse of “the Evangelical Prophet” the most appropriate embodiment of the awful messages of God to the Jews, the promise of a Messiah and universal peace. ”

“ GEMS OF GREEK THOUGHT.
HOMER.
“Mob rule is not good; let there be one monarch.—Victory changes oft her side.—Pray, for all men require aid from on high.—Even the fool is wise after the event.—The man whom Jove loves, is a match for many.—Wine leads to folly.—The force of union conquers all.—Too much rest itself becomes a pain.—Noblest minds are most easily bent.—Few sons are equal to their sires.—To sorrow without ceasing is wrong.”
HESIOD.
“Emulation is good for mortals.—The best treasure among men is a frugal tongue.—Idleness, not labor, is disgraceful.” ”

“ Love your wife like yourself, honor her more than yourself. Whoso lives unmarried, lives without joy, without comfort, without blessing. He who forsakes the love of his youth, God’s altar weeps for him. It is woman alone through whom God’s blessings are vouchsafed to a house. She teaches the children, speeds the husband to the place of worship, welcomes him when he returns, keeps the house godly and pure, and God’s blessings rest upon all these things. He who marries for money, his children shall be a curse to him. ”

“ Thus the munificence of Augustus and Mæcenas, themselves both critics and writers, combined with the political quiet that gave leisure for literary pursuits, to make their period the golden age of poetry. Prose, on the other hand, declined. Political eloquence was powerless in the face of despotism; while the veracious historian must needs tread a dangerous path, or seal his lips.
The poets of the Augustan era were deficient, as a rule, in that creative genius which characterized the age of Pericles in Greece, their works being rather the fruits of art and industry. ”

“ At its representation, the audience leaped to their feet and shouted their applause.
But Rome was no genial home for the tragic drama, and both tragedy and comedy soon began to languish. With Terence, the glory of the Roman theatre expired. Rope-dancing, buffoonery, and the games of the circus, offered superior attractions; and as the Republic lapsed into the Empire, the degenerate taste of the people sought gratification in the sports of the arena, where gladiators fought together or with wild beasts hardly more of brutes than themselves. ”

“ Now, too, Italy was prostrated by disasters, either entirely novel or that recurred only after a long succession of ages. Cities in Campania’s richest plains were swallowed up and overwhelmed; Rome was wasted by conflagrations, its oldest temples were consumed, and the Capitol itself was fired by the hands of citizens. Never, surely, did more terrible calamities of the Roman people, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for our punishment. ”

“ But Dido averts her eyes “that neither smiled nor wept,” and moves away in silence to join Sichæus, who “gives her love for love.”
Æneas learns from the lips of Anchises the future of his race, and beholds the shadowy forms of kings, generals, and statesmen that are to shed glory on the Roman name. “Augustus Cæsar, god by birth,” figures, as we should expect, the proudest of the throng. At last he espies the great Marcellus, “the Sword of Rome,” glittering in the spoils of the Punic War; and by his side
“A youth full-armed, by none excelled
In beauty’s manly grace.” ”

“ Xenophanes asserted the unity of the Deity. “There is one god,” he said, “among gods and men the greatest: unlike to mortals in outward shape, unlike in mind and thoughts.” This was truly a sublime stand to take in an age of polytheism; he who feared not to face a superstitious people with such a doctrine, and ridicule even their divine Homer for his degrading pictures of the deities, deserves to be ranked among the greatest philosophers of Greece. ”

“ Homer’s Style.—Homer’s Iliad was the first Greek poem in which were combined ingenuity of plot, unity of subject, and a faithful delineation of character throughout. He deals with heroes, but they are men of like passions with ourselves. The Odyssey, if less sublime, in its pathos and fine touches of nature shows the same rich gifts of genius as the older poem of loftier flight. Both works are written in hexameter verse, the true metre of the ancient epic. ”

“ Thus the goat-song of early days developed into the true drama (action) , the crowning effort of Greek genius. Athens had the honor of creating and perfecting it; while in other departments of verse she fell behind her neighbors, in dramatic poetry she eclipsed them all.
The love of the theatre grew into a passion at Athens. When the first rude structure of boards gave way under the weight of the audience, her citizens erected a permanent edifice of semicircular form, whose seats, rising in tiers, were hewn in the rocky side of the Acropolis. ”

“ The gods too high had raised the Roman state,
Were but their gifts as permanent as great.
What groans of men shall fill the Martian field!
How fierce a blaze his flaming pile shall yield!
What funeral pomp shall floating Tiber see,
When rising from his bed, he views the sad solemnity!
No youth shall equal hopes of glory give,
No youth afford so great a cause to grieve.
The Trojan honor, and the Roman boast,
Admired when living, and adored when lost! ”

“ While there are no stirrings of pleasure, anger, sorrow, or joy, the mind may be said to be in a state of EQUILIBRIUM. When those feelings have been stirred and act in their due degree, there ensues what may be called the state of HARMONY. This equilibrium is the great root from which grow all the human actings in the world, and this harmony is the universal path which they all should pursue.
Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will flourish. ”

“ The dull lessons of dialectics are thus enlivened by graphic portraitures and happy strokes of humor. Plato’s language is the perfection of Attic prose, beautified by a poetical tinge. “If Jupiter should speak Greek,” said ancient critics, “it would be Plato’s.” What Socrates dreamed on the night before the young Plato entered his school—that a cygnet came from the grove of Academus, and, after nestling on his breast for a time, took its flight heavenward, singing sweetly as it rose—is recorded as presaging his pupil’s sweet mastery of words. ”

“ Virgil’s epic was the pride of his countrymen, who, with a pardonable national vanity, pronounced it superior to Homer’s. Tenderness, grace, elegance, rhythmical perfection, brilliance of description, it certainly possesses; yet, with all its beauties, it is not faultless. We miss the wonderful imagination that plays through every page of the Iliad; indeed, Homer furnished the originals of many of its most striking figures. Nor did Virgil disdain levying on Latin authors also. ”

“ Whether Æolian, Dorian, or Ionian, he contributed equally to Hellenic fame, and was entitled to the sympathy and support of all Hellenes. Indeed, he was invested with a sacred character, for he was regarded as divinely inspired.
Thus was laid the foundation of Greek letters. From such rude beginnings, the Greek imagination, by strides unparalleled in history, mounted to the grandest heights ever attained in poetry. Moreover, to original Greek genius we owe the different varieties of literary composition,—epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry, history, criticism, and oratory. ”

“ In vain do we search the Veda and the Avesta for conceptions as grand as those in the Scriptures. God is apprehended in all his majesty by the Hebrew bards, and speaks through them to nations that are yet to be. The Bible poets wrote not merely for the purpose of pleasing; as teachers and prophets, they had a divine mission and a loftier aim. The graces of rhetoric were employed to present their impressive subjects in the strongest and clearest light. ”

“ In its literary productions, a nation bequeaths to posterity an ever-speaking record of its inner life.
The history of literature traces the progress of the human mind from age to age, by landmarks erected by the mind itself. ”

“ In truth, everything that happens agreeably to nature is to be reckoned among blessings. What, however, is so agreeable to nature as for an old man to die? which even is the lot of the young, though nature opposes and resists. And thus it is that young men seem to me to die, just as when the violence of flame is extinguished by a flood of water; whereas old men die, as the exhausted fire goes out, spontaneously, without the exertion of any force. ”

“ RISE OF GREEK PROSE.
Earliest Prose Writings.—For several centuries, the literature of Greece was confined to poetry. In Hellas, as elsewhere, verse for a time at first so charmingly and completely filled the popular ear that there was no desire, no room, for prose. But, as new necessities arose, poetry could not suffice for Greece; not with epic and lyric voice alone were her men of genius to gain a hearing from the world. National achievements must be recorded; the people must be appealed to in the agora; the curtain of metaphysics must be raised ”

“ The Prophets.—The names of three great prophets—Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel—illuminate the first page in the history of the decline of Hebrew literature. But in their writings, and notably so in those of the later minor prophets, poetry was evidently on the wane. They lived in a degenerate day. About half of the prophecy of Jeremiah, denouncing the judgment of Heaven on the disobedient people, is poetry; he lacks the pomp and majesty of Isaiah, but excels in stirring the gentler emotions. ”