Karl Otfried Müller

“ The contest, with all its attendant miseries, appears even beneficial in its results. This is the course of the tragedies of Æschylus, and indeed of Greek tragedy in general, so far as it remains true to its object. The tragedies of Æschylus uniformly require faith in a divine power, which, with steady eye and firm hand, guides the course of events to the best issue, though the paths through which it leads may be dark and difficult, and fraught with distress and suffering. The poetry of Æschylus is full of profound and enthusiastic glorifications of Zeus as this power. ”

“ He was therefore nearly in the prime of his life at the time when Xerxes invaded Greece, and the battles of Thermopylæ and Salamis were fought. He thus belongs to that period of the Greek nation, when its great qualities were first distinctly unfolded; and when it exhibited an energy of action, and a spirit of enterprise, never afterwards surpassed, together with a love of poetry, art, and philosophy, which produced much, and promised to produce more. The modes of thought, and style of art, which arose in Athens after the Persian war, must have been unknown to him. ”

“ LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 283 Athenians were not cruel and sanguinary by nature ; but a reckless severity, when there was a question of maintaining principles which they thought necessary to their existence, was implanted deeply in their character ; and circumstances too often impelled them to employ it against their allies. The Athenian policy of compelling so many cities to contribute their wealth in order to make Athens the focus of art and cultivation, was indeed accompanied with pride and selfish patriotism. ”

“ Although both in the Iliad and Odyssey we can clearly discern traces of the infancy of the nation to which they belong, and although a spirit of simplicity pervades them, peculiar to the childhood of the human race, yet the class of poetry under which they fall, appears in them at its full maturity; all the laws which reflection and experience can suggest for the epic form are observed with the most refined taste ”

“ Tragedy could not, in conformity with those associations, consist entirely of the opposition and conflict between the free will of an individual and omnipotent fate; it must appease contending powers and assign to each of them its proper place. Contentions may rise higher and higher, the opposition may be stretched to the utmost, yet the divine guidance which presides over the whole finds means to restore order and harmony, and allots to each conflicting power its own peculiar right. ”

“ The victory, in truth, is always the point upon which the whole of the ode turns; only he regards it, not simply as an incident, but as connected with the whole life of the victor. Pindar establishes this connexion by forming a high conception of the fortunes and character of the victor, and by representing the victory as the result of them. And as the Greeks were less accustomed to consider a man in his individual capacity, than as a member of his state, and his family ”

“ Herodotus lastly shows his awe of the divine Nemesis by his moderation and the firmness with which he keeps down the ebullitions of national pride. For, if the eastern princes by their own rashness bring destruction upon themselves, and the Greeks remain the victors, yet he describes the East, with its early civilization, as highly worthy of respect and admiration; he even points out traits of greatness of character in the hostile kings of Persia; shows his countrymen how they often owed their successes to divine providence and external advantages, rather than to their own valour and ability ”

“ The admonitions which Pindar addresses to Hiero are to cultivate a calm serenity of mind, after the cares and toils by which he had founded and extended his empire, and to purify and ennoble by poetry a spirit which had been ruffled by unworthy passions. Even when the skill of the victor is put in the foreground, Pindar in general does not content himself with celebrating this bodily prowess alone, but he usually adds some moral virtue which the victor has shown, or which he recommends and extols. ”

“ On the other hand, this comparison of languages leads to many results, with respect to the intellectual state of the Greek people, which throw an unexpected light into quarters where the eye of the historian has hitherto been able to discover nothing but darkness. We reject as utterly untenable the notion that the savages of Greece, from the inarticulate cries by which they expressed their animal wants, and from the sounds by which they sought to imitate the impressions of outward objects, gradually arrived at the harmonious and magnificent language which we admire in the poems of Homer. ”

“ The Pisistratids also, like other tyrants, showed a fondness for vast works of art; the temple of the Olympian Zeus, built by them, always remained, though only half finished, the largest building in Athens. In like manner, tyrants were fond of surrounding themselves with all the splendour which poetry and other musical arts could give to their house: and the Pisistratids certainly had the merit of diffusing the taste for poetry among the Athenians, and of naturalising among them the best literary productions which Greece then possessed. ”

“ On Olympus, lying near the northern boundary of Greece, the highest mountain of this country, whose summit seems to touch the heavens, there rules an assembly or family of gods; the chief of which, Zeus, summons at his pleasure the other gods to council, as Agamemnon summons the other princes. He is acquainted with the decrees of fate, and is able to guide them; and, as being himself king among the gods, he gives the kings of the earth their power and dignity. By his side is a wife, whose station entitles her to a large share of his rank and dominion ”

“ We shall now limit our regards to the Greek language alone, and shall attempt to exhibit its more prominent and characteristic features as compared with those of its sister tongues. In the sounds which were formed by the various articulation of the voice, the Greek language hits that happy medium which characterises all the mental productions of this people, in being equally removed, on the one hand, from the superabundant fulness, and, on the other, from the meagreness and tenuity of sound, by which other languages are variously deformed. ”

“ We will now explain, as precisely as possible, the occasion of an epinikian ode, and the mode of its execution. A victory has been gained in a contest at a festival, particularly at one of the four great games most prized by the Greek people [13] , either by the speed of horses, the strength and dexterity of the human body, or by skill in music [14] . Such a victory as this, which shed a lustre not only on the victor himself, but on his family, and even on his native city, demanded a solemn celebration. ”

“ Greek literature, so far as we have hitherto followed its progress, was a common property of the different races of the nation; each race cultivating that species of composition which was best suited to its dispositions and capacities, and impressing on it a corresponding character. In this manner the town of Miletus in Ionia, the Æolians in the island of Lesbos, the colonies in Magna Graecia and Sicily, as well as the Greeks of the mother country, created new forms of poetry and eloquence. ”

“ Nor can any modern European, who forms in his mind a lively image of the classical languages in their ancient grammatical luxuriance, and compares them with his mother tongue, conceal from himself that in the ancient languages the words, with their inflections, clothed as it were with muscles and sinews, come forward like living bodies, full of expression and character ”

“ The works of this period,—which the names of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Phidias are sufficient to call to our minds—exhibit not only a perfection of form, but also an elevation of soul and a grandeur of conception, which fill us almost with as much admiration for those whose minds were sufficiently mature and strong to enjoy such works of art, as for those who produced them. ”

“ In the victory with horses, external advantages were the chief consideration; inasmuch as it required excellent horses and an excellent driver, both of which were attainable only by the rich. The skill of the victor was more conspicuous in gymnastic feats, although even in these, good luck and the favour of the gods might be considered as the main causes of success; especially as it was a favourite opinion of Pindar's, that all excellence is a gift of nature [23] . The good fortune or skill of the victor could not however be treated abstractedly ”

“ Variety of forms, inflexions, and dialects in the Greek language.—§ 5. The tribes of Greece, and their several dialects—characteristics of each dialect.
§ 1. Language, the earliest product of the human mind, and the origin of all other intellectual energies, is at the same time the clearest evidence of the descent of a nation and of its affinity with other races. Hence the comparison of languages enables us to judge of the history of nations at periods to which no other kind of memorial, no tradition or record, can ascend. ”

“ Yet the Athenians did not reduce millions to a state of abject servitude, for the purpose of ministering to the wants of a few thousand persons. The object of their statesmen, such as Pericles, doubtless was, to make Athens the pride of the whole confederacy; that their allies should enjoy in common with them the productions of Athenian art, and especially should participate in the great festivals, the Panathenaea and Dionysia, on the embellishment of which all the treasures of wealth and art were lavished*. ”

“ At the same time, while the Athenians sought to improve their political constitution, they strove to increase the liberty of the people; and a man like Solon could not have arisen in an Ionian state of Asia Minor, to become the peaceful regulator of the state with the approbation of the community. Solon was able to reconcile the hereditary rights of the aristocracy with the claims of the commonalty grown up to manhood; and to combine moral strictness and order with freedom of action. Few statesmen shine in so bright a light as Solon ”

“ It is easy for a fool to shake the stability of a city; but it is hard to place it again on its foundations, unless a god direct the rulers. Gratitude for these good deeds is already in store for thee. Deign therefore to bestow all thy care upon the wealthy Cyrene [10] ."
Thus lofty and dignified was the position which Pindar assumed with regard to these princes; and he remained true to the principle which he so frequently proclaims, that frankness and sincerity are always laudable. But his intercourse with the princes of his time appears to have been limited to poetry. ”

“ We must not pass over one important characteristic of the Greek language, which is closely connected with the early condition of the Greek nation, and which may be considered as, in some degree, prefiguring the subsequent character of its civilisation. In order to convey an adequate idea of our meaning, we will ask any person who is acquainted with Greek, to recal to his mind the toils and fatigue which he underwent in mastering the forms of the language, and the difficulty which he found to impress them on his memory ”

“ Among the Dorians, however, every thing is more strongly expressed, and comes forward in a more prominent light than among the Æolians; and as their dialect everywhere prefers the broad, strong, and rough tones, and introduces them throughout with unbending regularity, so we might naturally look among them for a disposition to carry a spirit of austerity and of reverence for ancient custom through the entire frame of civil and private society. ”

“ Generally, indeed, in extolling both the skill and fortune of the victor, Pindar appears to adhere to the truth as faithfully as he declares himself to do; nor is he ever betrayed into a high flown style of panegyric. A republican dread of incurring the censure of his fellow citizens, as well as an awe of the divine Nemesis, induced him to moderate his praises, and to keep in view the instability of human fortune and the narrow limits of human strength. ”

“ If we compare the Greek with that language which comes next to it in fitness for a lofty and flowing style of poetry, viz., the Sanscrit, this latter certainly has some clashes of consonants not to be found in the Greek, the sounds of which it is almost impossible for an European mouth to imitate and distinguish: on the other hand, the Greek is much richer in short vowels than the Sanscrit, whose most harmonious poetry would weary our ears by the monotonous repetition of the A sound ”