Extinction of Greek Genius.—The long period which now engages our attention is marked by a further decline, and the ultimate extinction of letters. Roman despotism was inimical to literature; Greece lay prostrate and broken-spirited; night was fast settling down on the world. Poetry, a faint shadow of its former self, appeared principally in epigrams. The prose of the early Christian centuries exhibits some exceptional gleams, but they are only the flickerings of a dying flame.
About the Christian Era is gathered a group of geographical and historical writers with Stra’bo, Diodo’rus Sic’ulus, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus as the prominent figures. The first century after Christ presents to us the authors of the New Testament; Clement of Rome, an eminent authority with the early Christians; and Josephus, the Jewish historian, all of whom wrote in Greek. Plutarch, the eminent biographer, born about 50 A.D., lived through the first twenty years of the second century, which was also adorned with the names of Lucian and Pausanias the geographer. In the third century flourished Longi’nus, the greatest rhetorician of this later age; while the writings of the Christian fathers extend over a period of several hundred years, from the time of Clement just named.
After the fall of Rome (476 A.D.), Constantinople became the sole centre of letters, and there for nearly a thousand years they languished. After Mahomet II. carried the city by storm in 1453, the native scholars dispersed over Europe, and by awakening an interest in classical studies contributed not a little to the revival of letters.
Diodorus Siculus (the Sicilian) was the author of “the Historical Library,” which cost him thirty years of labor. Unfolding the story of the human race from remote antiquity to the time of Julius Cæsar, his work contains much valuable information.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus.—The longest production of this writer is his “Roman Antiquities,” a history of Rome prior to the Punic wars, pervaded by an evident partiality for Greece and her institutions. Dionysius was also a rhetorician of the highest rank, as his critical essays on the eloquence of Demosthenes, the style of Thucydides, and other subjects, testify.
Strabo, of Pontus in Asia Minor, must be remembered in connection with his “Geography,” still extant, an interesting work in seventeen books, for which he prepared himself by travels in Asia, Africa, and Europe. It is not a mere tissue of names and statistics, but is lighted up with sketches of social life, pleasant stories, and epitomes of political history, thus entertaining at the same time that it instructs.
What this lively writer records of India may interest the reader:—
THE WONDERS OF INDIA.
“Between the Hydaspes and the Acesi’nes is the country of Porus, an extensive and fertile district, containing nearly three hundred cities. Here also is the forest in which Alexander cut down a large quantity of fir, pine, cedar, and a variety of other trees fit for shipbuilding, and brought the timber down the Hydaspes. With this he constructed a fleet near the cities which he built on each side of the river, where he had crossed it and conquered Porus. One of these cities he called Bucephalia, from the horse Bucephalus, which was killed in the battle with Porus. The name Bucephalus (ox-headed) was given to the animal from the breadth of his forehead.
In the forest before mentioned it is said there is a vast number of monkeys, as large as they are numerous. On one occasion the Macedonians, seeing a body of them standing in array on some bare eminences, prepared to attack them as real enemies.
The chase of this animal is conducted in two different ways. The hunters, when they perceive a monkey seated on a tree, place in sight a basin containing water, with which they wash their own eyes; then, instead of water, they put a basin of bird-lime, go away, and lie in wait at a distance. The animal, being an imitative creature, leaps down, and besmears itself with the bird-lime, and when it winks, the eyelids are fastened together. The hunters then come upon it, and take it. The other method of capturing them is as follows: the hunters dress themselves in bags like trousers and go away, leaving behind them others which are downy, with the inside smeared over with bird-lime. The monkeys put them on, and are easily taken.
A very singular usage is related of the high estimation in which the inhabitants of Cathaia (the tract between the Hydaspes and Acesines) hold the quality of beauty. They elect the handsomest person as king. A child, two months after birth, undergoes a public inspection. They determine whether it has the amount of beauty required by law. The presiding magistrate then pronounces whether it is to be allowed to live, or to be put to death. The bride and the husband are respectively the choice of each other, and the wives, it is related, burn themselves with their deceased husbands. The reason assigned for this practice is, that the women sometimes fell in love with young men, and deserted or poisoned their husbands. This law was therefore established in order to check the practice of administering poison; but neither the existence nor the origin of the law is probable.
The dogs in this territory are said to possess remarkable courage. Alexander received from Sopeithes, the monarch, a present of one hundred and fifty of them. To prove them, two were set at a lion; when these were mastered, two others were set on; when the battle became equal, Sopeithes ordered a man to seize one of the dogs by the leg, and to drag him away; or to cut off his leg, if he still held on. Alexander at first refused his consent to the dog’s leg being cut off, as he wished to save the dog. But on Sopeithes saying, ‘I will give you four in the place of it,’ Alexander consented; and he saw the dog permit his leg to be cut off by a slow incision rather than loose his hold.
Nearchus is surprised at the multitude and the noxious nature of the reptiles. They retreat from the plains to the settlements at the period of inundations, and fill the houses. For this reason the inhabitants raise their beds from the ground, and are sometimes compelled to abandon their dwellings. Charmers go about the country, and are supposed to cure wounds made by serpents. This seems to comprise nearly their whole art of medicine, for disease is not frequent among them, owing to their frugal manner of life, and to the absence of wine. Whenever diseases do occur, they are treated by the Sophists (wise men).
All the Indians are frugal in their mode of life, and are happy on account of their simple manners. They never drink wine but at sacrifices. Their beverage is made from rice instead of barley, and their food consists for the most part of rice pottage. The simplicity of their laws appears from their having few lawsuits. Theft is very rare among them. Their houses and property are unguarded. These things denote temperance and sobriety. Others of their customs no one would approve; as their eating always alone, and their not having all of them one common hour for their meals, but each taking food as he likes. As an exercise of the body they prefer friction in various ways, but particularly by making use of smooth sticks of ebony, which they pass over the surface of the skin. They marry many wives, who are purchased from their parents, and give in exchange for them a yoke of oxen.
Megasthenes divides the philosophers into two kinds, the Brahmans and the Garmanes. The Brahmans are held in greater repute. They do not communicate their philosophy to their wives, for fear they should divulge to the profane anything which ought to be concealed. They discourse much on death, and discipline themselves to prepare for it. According to the Brahmans, the world was created and is liable to corruption; it is of a spheroidal figure; the god who made and governs it, pervades the whole of it; the earth is situated in the centre of the universe. Many other peculiar things they say of the principles of generation and of the soul. They invent fables also, after the manner of Plato, on immortality and on the punishment in Hades; and other things of this kind.”—Falconer.
Josephus, born A.D. 37 at Jerusalem, was the scion of a noble line. At the early age of fourteen he astonished the chief priests by his mental power and familiarity with the intricacies of Jewish law. We next hear of him as spending three years in the desert with a hermit, and then as joining the Pharisees.
The revolutionary tendencies of his countrymen brought on a war with the Romans, in the course of which Josephus, after the brave defence of a city under his command, was made prisoner by the Roman general Flavius Vespasian. Prophesying that Vespasian would one day wear the purple of the emperors, he alone of the captives was spared; the fulfilment of this prediction about three years later insured him the favor of the Flavian family, whose name he prefixed to his own. Vespasian’s son, Titus, he accompanied to the siege of Jerusalem, receiving at the hands of the victorious general after its capture the lives of two hundred and forty of his friends, together with the sacred volumes which he greatly prized.
From the desolation of his country, Josephus returned to Rome as the honored guest of the emperor and his sons, during whose reigns he produced his great works,—“the History of the Jewish War” and “Jewish Antiquities.” These interesting standards, though written in a style which has led to their author’s being called “the Grecian Livy,” are yet tinged with vanity and skepticism.
Plutarch (50-120 A.D.), the great biographer of antiquity, was born in Chæronea, a Bœotian town. After completing his education at Athens, he sailed to Egypt, and in Domitian’s reign (81-96 A.D.) visited Rome, where his lectures won golden opinions from the learned.
From Italy, Plutarch returned to his native city, and there passed the last twenty or thirty years of his life, happy in the society of his wife, a paragon of good sense, economy, and virtue. Literature was henceforth his pursuit; but believing it a duty to devote part of his time to the public good, he accepted office from his fellow-townsmen, and was finally made chief-magistrate of Chæronea. He tells us with relish how his neighbors often laughed at his doing what they considered beneath his dignity. When they wondered that so great a man should carry fish from market in his own hands, he told them, “Why, it’s for myself;” and when they found fault with him for personally superintending the building of public edifices, he silenced them with the reply, “This service is not for myself, but for my country.” “The meaner the office you sustain,” said Plutarch, “the greater the compliment you pay to the public.”
In his delightful retreat at Chæronea, Plutarch compiled from two hundred and fifty authorities the work that has given him a niche in the Temple of Fame—“Parallel Lives”—sparkling with interest and animation, as it is underlaid by good judgment. His plan was to present the biography of a distinguished Greek, follow it with that of some Roman, and then critically compare the two characters. But the “Lives,” as we have it, is not the complete work its author probably left at his death, inasmuch as a number of biographies and parallels are wanting. Though Plutarch’s passion for story-telling sometimes carries him beyond the bounds of the probable, yet his work is an invaluable storehouse; his capital literary portraits have stood the test of time, and are still universally admired. The charms of a book in which are recorded “the greatest characters and most admirable actions of the human race” can never fade.
Among the best of Plutarch’s Parallels is his
COMPARISON OF DEMOSTHENES AND CICERO.
“Omitting an exact comparison of their respective faculties in speaking, yet thus much seems fit to be said: That Demosthenes, to make himself a master in rhetoric, applied all the faculties he had, natural or acquired, wholly that way; that he far surpassed in force and strength of eloquence all his contemporaries in political and judicial speaking, in grandeur and majesty all the panegyrical orators, and in accuracy and science all the logicians and rhetoricians of his day: That Cicero was highly educated, and by his diligent study became a most accomplished general scholar in all these branches, having left behind him numerous philosophical treatises of his own on Academic principles; as, indeed, even in his written speeches, both political and judicial, we see him continually trying to show his learning by the way.
One may discover the different temper of each of them in their speeches. For the oratory of Demosthenes was without any embellishment or jesting, wholly composed for real effect and seriousness; not smelling of the lamp, as Pytheas scoffingly said, but of the temperance, thoughtfulness, austerity, and grave earnestness of his temper. Whereas Cicero’s fondness for mockery often ran him into scurrility; and in his love of laughing away serious arguments in judicial cases by jests and facetious remarks, with a view to the advantage of his clients, he paid too little regard to what was decent: saying, for example, in his defence of Cælius, that he had done no absurd thing in indulging himself so freely in pleasures, it being a kind of madness not to enjoy the things we possess, especially since the most eminent philosophers have asserted pleasure to be the chief good. So also we are told that when Cicero, being consul, undertook the defence of Murena against Cato’s prosecution, by way of bantering Cato, he made a long series of jokes upon the absurd paradoxes, as they are called, of the Stoic sect; so that, a loud laugh passing from the crowd to the judges, Cato, with a quiet smile, said to those who sat next him, ‘My friends, what an amusing consul we have!’
Cicero was by natural temper very much disposed to mirth and pleasantry, and always appeared with a smiling and serene countenance. But Demosthenes had constant care and thoughtfulness in his look, and a serious anxiety, which he seldom, if ever, laid aside; and, therefore, he was accounted by his enemies, as he himself confessed, morose and ill-mannered.
It is very evident, also, from their several writings, that Demosthenes never touched upon his own praises but decently and without offence when there was need of it, and for some weightier end; but, upon other occasions, modestly and sparingly. But Cicero’s immeasurable boasting of himself in his orations argues him guilty of an uncontrollable appetite for distintion, his cry being evermore that arms should give place to the gown, and the soldier’s laurel to the tongue. And at last we find him extolling not only his deeds and actions, but his orations also, as well those that were only spoken as those that were published; as if he were engaged in a boyish trial of skill, who should speak best, with the rhetoricians Isocrates and Anaximenes, not as one who could claim the task to guide and instruct the Roman nation, the
Soldier full-armed, terrific to the foe.
Moreover, the banishment of Demosthenes was infamous, upon conviction for bribery; Cicero’s very honorable, for ridding his country of a set of villains. Therefore when Demosthenes fled his country, no man regarded it; for Cicero’s sake, the senate changed their habit and put on mourning, and would not be persuaded to make any act before Cicero’s return was decreed.
Cicero, however, passed his exile idly in Macedonia. But the very exile of Demosthenes made up a great part of the services he did for his country; for he went through the cities of Greece, and everywhere, as we have said, joined in the conflict on behalf of the Grecians, driving out the Macedonian ambassadors, and approving himself a much better citizen than Themistocles and Alcibiades did in the like fortune. After his return, he again devoted himself to the same public service, and continued firm in his opposition to Antipater and the Macedonians. Whereas Lælius reproached Cicero in the senate for sitting silent when Cæsar, a beardless youth, asked leave to come forward, contrary to the law, as a candidate for the consulship; and Brutus, in his epistles, charges him with nursing and rearing a greater and more heavy tyranny than that they had removed.
Finally, Cicero’s death excites our pity; for an old man to be miserably carried up and down by his servants, flying and hiding himself from that death which was, in the course of nature, so near at hand—and yet at last to be murdered. Demosthenes, though he seemed at first a little to supplicate, yet, by his preparing and keeping the poison by him, demands our admiration; and still more admirable was his using it. When the temple of the god no longer afforded him a sanctuary, he took refuge at a mightier altar, freeing himself from arms and soldiers, and laughing to scorn the cruelty of Antipater.”—Clough.
A moralist as well as a biographer, Plutarch wrote many ethical and philosophical essays. The death of his daughter called forth a feeling letter to his wife,—“the Consolation,”—in which he affectionately bids her not give way to extravagant grief, but submit with resignation to the blow, comforting her with thoughts of immortality; it may be added that he held Plato’s views on this subject as on others.
In his “Essay on Inquisitiveness” he condemns all eagerness to learn news and impatience in opening letters, or “biting the strings in two, as many will if they do not succeed at once with their fingers.” As an example of dignified patience, he instances Rusticus at Rome, who in the midst of a lecture received a letter from the emperor Domitian, but would not open it till Plutarch had finished speaking.
Lucian (probably 120-200 A.D.); one of the wittiest of Greek writers, was a native of Syria, and passed his boyhood on the banks of the Euphrates. Doubtless his favorite amusement of moulding wax into figures weighed with his parents, no less than their own poverty, when they bound him as an apprentice to his mother’s brother to learn the sculptor’s art. The young Lucian enthusiastically fell in with their decision, fondly anticipating the time when he should astonish his playfellows with little gods cut from the marble by his own hands. But his maiden attempt in the statuary’s shop resulted in a broken slab and a cruel whipping at the hands of his uncle. “The first wages I earned,” he said, “were tears”—but they were also the last. He never returned to the chisel and mallet.
After picking up a rhetorical education, by what means he does not tell us, Lucian established himself at Antioch as a lawyer; but failing of success, he set out on a lecture tour through Europe. In Gaul, where rhetoric, the art he taught, was in special demand, he accumulated a fortune; with which he retired from his profession in the prime of life, and took up his residence at Athens. Here he prosecuted his literary studies, exchanged his Syrian Greek for pure Attic, and is believed to have written his finest Dialogues.
At the age of seventy, Lucian found himself so reduced as to be obliged to accept from the Roman emperor the clerkship of the Alexandrian courts. This position, which allowed him to continue his literary labors, he is said to have enjoyed until his death.
Lucian’s Style and Writings.—Piquant humor, inimitable power of satire, and wonderful versatility, are Lucian’s strong points. His style is clear and graceful. Of his voluminous writings the most popular are the “Dialogues” on various subjects, serious and humorous. He attacked falsehood and trickery, folly and superstition; and the deadly blows he rained upon his country’s mythology, which led to his being called “the Blasphemer,” indirectly, though unintentionally, helped the spread of Christianity.
In the “Dialogues of the Gods,” the deities talk over the domestic affairs of the Olympian household, gossip, and wrangle, and pry into one another’s secrets, quite after the manner of humans. Such a belittling of the national divinities could not be without an unsettling effect on the popular faith.—The “Dialogues of the Dead” are equally rich with humor and ridicule.
Against the philosophers of his day, whom he looked upon as miserable charlatans, Lucian launched the laughable Dialogue entitled “the Sale of the Philosophers,” in which the founders of the old schools are disposed of at auction by Jupiter in a slave-market, Mercury playing the part of auctioneer. Pythagoras is put up first and sells for $175; Diogenes, the next, brings less than sixpence; while Socrates commands the high price of two talents. Pyrrho, the universal doubter, will not believe that he has been sold, even after he has seen himself paid for and delivered. The laughing Democritus and weeping Heraclitus fail to find a purchaser. The attempted sale of these two philosophers is thus depicted:—
“Jupiter.—Bring out another. Stay—those two there, that fellow from Abdera, who is always laughing, and the Ephesian, who is always crying; I’ve a mind to sell them as a pair.
Mercury.—Stand out there in the ring, you two.—We offer you here, sirs, two most admirable characters, the wisest we’ve had for sale yet.
Customer.—By Jove, they’re a remarkable contrast! Why, one of them never stops laughing, while the other seems to be in trouble about something, for he’s in tears all the time. Holloa, you fellow! what’s all this about? What are you laughing at?
Democritus.—Need you ask? Because everything seems to me so ridiculous—you yourselves included.
Customer.—What! do you mean to laugh at us all to our faces, and mock at all we say and do?
Democritus.—Undoubtedly; there’s nothing in life that’s serious. Everything is unreal and empty—a mere fortuitous concurrence of indefinite atoms.
Customer.—You’re an indefinite atom yourself, you rascal! Confound your insolence, won’t you stop laughing? But you there, poor soul [to Heraclitus], why do you weep so? for there seems more use in talking to you.
Heraclitus.—Because, stranger, everything in life seems to me to call for pity and to deserve tears; there is nothing but what is liable to calamity; wherefore I mourn for men and pity them. The evil of to-day I regard not much: but I mourn for that which is to come hereafter—the burning and destruction of all things. This I grieve for, and that nothing is permanent, but all mingled, as it were, in one bitter cup—pleasure that is no pleasure, knowledge that knows nothing, greatness that is so little, all going round and round, and taking their turn in this game of life.
Customer.—What do you hold human life to be then?
Heraclitus.—A child at play, handling its toys, and changing them with every caprice.
Customer.—And what are men?
Heraclitus.—Gods—but mortal.
Customer.—And the gods?
Heraclitus.—Men—but immortal.
Customer.—You speak in riddles, fellow, and put us off with puzzles. You are as bad as Apollo Loxias, giving oracles that no man can understand.
Heraclitus.—Yea; I trouble not myself for any of ye.
Customer.—Then no man in his senses is like to buy you.
Heraclitus.—Woe! woe to every man of ye, I say! buyers or not buyers.
Customer.—Why, this fellow is pretty near mad—I’ll have naught to do with either of them, for my part.
Mercury [turning to Jupiter].—We shall have this pair left on our hands too.”—Collins.
“The Sale of the Philosophers” has a sequel in “the Resuscitated Professors.” Permitted to return to earth for a day to revenge themselves on Lucian, the Philosophers capture him, and bring him to trial before the goddess of philosophy. He clears himself by showing that he has not attacked the venerable sages themselves, but only the impostors who cheat the world under their great names. In the beginning of the Dialogue, Lucian is thus assailed by the belligerent Socrates and his confrères:—
“Socrates.—Pelt the wretch! pelt him with volleys of stones—throw clods at him—oyster-shells! Beat the blasphemer with your clubs—don’t let him escape! Hit him, Plato! and you, Chrysippus! and you! Form a phalanx, and rush on him all together. As Homer says—’Let wallet join with wallet, club with club!’ He is the common enemy of us all, and there is no man among ye whom he has not insulted. You, Diogenes, now use that staff of yours, if ever you did! Don’t stop! let him have it, blasphemer that he is! What! tired already, Epicurus and Aristippus? Aristotle, do run a little faster! That’s good! we’ve caught the beast! We’ve got you, you rascal! You shall soon find out whom you’ve been abusing! Now what shall we do with him? Let us think of some multiform kind of death that may suffice for all of us, for he deserves a separate death from each.
Philosopher A.—I vote that he be impaled.
Philosopher B.—Yes—but be well scourged first.
Philosopher C.—Let his eyes be gouged out.
Philosopher D.—Ay—but his tongue should be cut out first.
Socrates.—What think you, Empedocles?
Empedocles.—He should be thrown down the crater of some volcano,[39] and so learn not to revile his betters.
Plato.—Nay—the best punishment for him will be that, like Pentheus or Orpheus,
‘Torn by the ragged rocks he meet his fate.’
Lucian.—Oh! no, no, pray! spare me, for the love of Heaven!
Socrates.—Sentence is passed: nothing can save you.”
Collins.
Lucian is also famous in another line. His “True History,” a burlesque on the Munchausen stories of the old poets and historians, recounts the stirring adventures of a party of voyagers who sail westward from the Pillars of Hercules (Strait of Gibraltar). It describes their visit to the moon, their sojourn in a country where wine flowed in rivers, their twenty months’ experience inside of a sea-monster that swallowed their vessel, and their discovery of “the Island of the Blest,” with its golden-paved city and vines loaded with monthly fruitage. The lunarians happened to be engaged in war with the people of the sun, at the time of Lucian’s arrival, and he had the good fortune to witness a grand review of the lunar army. There were cavalry mounted on lettuce-winged birds, darters of millet-seed, garlic-fighters, wind-coursers, and archers who rode elephantine fleas. Spiders as large as islands hovered on their flanks. On the side of the sun were mustered horse-ants that covered two acres, archers on colossal gnats, slingers who discharged fetid radishes, and dog-headed men astride of winged acorns.—Had novel-writing been in vogue in Lucian’s time, he would no doubt have excelled in that department of fiction.
Pausanias, the Lydian geographer, was a contemporary of Lucian’s. It has been said that “no writer of antiquity except Herodotus has stored away so many valuable facts in a small volume” as he in his “Itinerary of Greece.” Pausanias made art items a special feature of his Itinerary.
Other Writers of the Second Century.—In the second century, Claudius Ptolemy, the astronomer, put forth his theory of the universe: that the earth is stationary and the centre of eight huge, hollow, crystal spheres, placed one within another. The moon he located in the nearest sphere, Mercury in the next, Venus in the third, the Sun in the fourth, Mars in the fifth, Jupiter in the sixth, and Saturn in the seventh. The eighth sphere he appropriated to the stars, which, despite their distance, were still visible through the transparent crystal. All these heavenly bodies he believed to revolve in their respective spheres around the earth. Ptolemy’s “Syntaxis,” or “Construction,” embodying these views, was received as authority until Copernicus, fourteen hundred years later, taught the true theory of the solar system.
In this century, also, Justin Martyr wrote his “Apologies” in defence of Christianity against paganism; and Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, his “Epistle to the Philippians”—both sealing their faith with their blood. From Irenæus, bishop of Lyons, we have inherited a valuable legacy in his “Treatise against Heresies.”
Origen, the gifted pupil of Cle’mens the Alexandrian, an ardent Christian philosopher, flourished in the third century. Among his writings, which, including his discourses, were numbered by thousands, are “Commentaries on the Scriptures,” in the preparation of which he was assisted by clerks who wrote in short-hand from his dictation. Origen also replied effectively to Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher who some years before had attacked Christianity in his “True Story,” a powerful and much-read work of the time.
Neo-Platonism.—The Academic philosophy, modified by its later professors and wrapped in a veil of mysticism, gave rise to the eclectic school of the Neo-Platonists, which was popular among the learned till the time of Constantine. The seeds of this philosophy were planted by Philo the Jew, mentioned on page 104 as attempting to reconcile Plato’s doctrines with the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Ammonius, of Alexandria, was the real founder of Neo-Platonism, which, as it left his hand, was a medley of Plato’s and Aristotle’s tenets harmonized with the leading doctrines of Christianity. Though Ammonius enjoined his disciples to keep the mysteries of his philosophy to themselves, Ploti’nus, one of his distinguished pupils, unfolded them in his writings and taught them publicly at Rome, where he went to live 244 A.D.
After Plotinus, Porphyry became a shining light of the Neo-Platonists; but he was an outspoken opponent of Christianity, maintaining that the world was without beginning, and denying the divinity of our Saviour. His work “Against the Christians” was afterward burned by order of the Roman emperor Theodosius the Great.
Iamblichus, a successor of Porphyry, went back to the mystical speculations of Pythagoras, and, taking quite a different view from the early Neo-Platonists, turned his philosophy to the support of paganism. The emperor Julian the Apostate was one of his converts.
Eusebius, the learned ecclesiastical historian, bishop of Cæsare’a in the fourth century, was among those who repelled the assaults of Porphyry on the Christian faith. He was a favorite of Constantine, whose life he wrote.
Longinus (213-273 A.D.) was the greatest critic and most learned philosopher of his age. He studied and taught at Athens, and by reason of his extensive information was styled “the Living Encyclopædia.” The most distinguished of his pupils was Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, a woman of refined tastes and unusual talent. By his advice, she revolted from Rome; overpowered by the emperor Aurelian, 273 A.D., she sought to exculpate herself by throwing the blame upon her counsellor, and Longinus was put to death.
Part of this author’s “Treatise on the Sublime” is all that remains of his many works.
Athanasius.—A century after Longinus, lived Athanasius, one of the main pillars of the early Christian Church. His life was spent in contentions with Arius and his followers, who denied the equality of Christ with the Father; in controversy with them, his vigorous pen was constantly employed.
St. Chrysostom (golden-mouthed, so called from his eloquence—350-407) was the most famous of the Greek fathers. He was archbishop of Constantinople, and a voluminous writer of homilies, epistles, and commentaries. His language is elegant, and his fund of figures inexhaustible.
Novel-Writers.—The novel and romance are not unrepresented in Greek literature. Heliodo’rus, a Phœnician by birth, who lived toward the close of the fourth century, obtained a well-deserved reputation as the author of “Æthiopica,” a touching, pure-toned, but somewhat sensational, romance. Its heroine, Charicle’a, an Ethiopian princess, exposed by her mother in infancy and brought up in ignorance of her birth, with her lover Theagenes, falls into the hands of pirates and undergoes a variety of adventures. The tale ends happily, quite in the modern style.
Heliodorus, later in life, gave up novel-writing for a mitre, being made bishop of Tricca in Thessaly.
Another Greek novelist, perhaps a contemporary of Heliodorus, perhaps belonging to a later generation, was Longus, author of the “Loves of Daphnis and Chloë.” The scene of this pastoral love-story is laid in the groves of Lesbos, where the hero and heroine have grown up together in the bonds of innocent affection, à la “Paul and Virginia.”
The “Story of Leucippe and Cli’tophon,” by Achilles Ta’tius, an Alexandrian rhetorician who flourished about 500, stands next to the “Æthiopica” among the Greek novels.
Hierocles.—The “Facetiæ” of Hierocles (5th century) must not be forgotten in this connection. Though a Neo-Platonist, grave and learned enough to discuss “Providence and Fate” and make a volume of profound commentaries on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, he evidently enjoyed a good joke. He has left us twenty-eight brief stories of Scholastici, or bookworms so unsophisticated and unused to the ways of the world that we may call them simpletons. A few of these are given as samples of his humor; from which it may be seen that some of the wit that passes for modern is as old as Hierocles.
STORIES OF SIMPLETONS.
A simpleton, wishing to swim, was nearly drowned; whereupon he swore that he would never touch the water until he had learned how to swim.
A simpleton, visiting a sick person, inquired about his health. He, however, was not able to reply. Thereupon the simpleton, being angry and scolding the man, said: “I hope that I shall be sick some of these days, and then when you come to ask how I am, I will not answer.”
A simpleton, wishing to teach his horse to be a small eater, gave him no food at all. At length the horse having starved to death, he exclaimed: “I have suffered a great loss, for now that he had just learned not to eat he has died.”
A simpleton, looking out of the window of a house which he had bought, asked the passers-by whether the house was becoming to him.
A simpleton, having dreamed that he had trodden on a nail and that the wound pained him, on waking bound up his foot. Another simpleton, having learned the cause, remarked: “It served you right, for why do you sleep without sandals?”
A simpleton, meeting a doctor, hid himself behind a wall. Some one asking the cause, he answered: “I have not been sick for a long time, and therefore I am ashamed to come into the sight of a physician.”
A simpleton had sealed up a vessel of Aminæan wine which he had. His servant, having made a hole in the vessel beneath and drawn off some of the wine, he was astonished to see the contents diminished while the seals remained unbroken. A neighbor having told him to look whether it had not been taken out from below, he replied: “Why, you fool, it’s the upper part, not the lower, that is missing.”
A simpleton, meeting another simpleton, said, “I heard you were dead.”—“And yet,” replied the other, “you see that I am still alive.”—“Well,” said the first in perplexity, “I don’t know what to believe, for he who told me is much more deserving of confidence than you.”
A simpleton, learning that the raven would live more than two hundred years, bought one and brought it up, that he might test the matter.
Of twin brothers, one died. A simpleton, thereupon, meeting the survivor, asked, “Is it you that died, or your brother?”
A simpleton, in danger of being shipwrecked, called for his tablets that he might make his will. Seeing, thereupon, his slaves lamenting their lot, he said, “Do not grieve, for I am going to set you free.”
A simpleton, wishing to cross a river, went on board the boat on horseback. When some one asked the reason, he answered that he wanted to get over in a hurry.
A simpleton and a bald man and a barber, travelling together, agreed to keep watch in turn four hours each while the others slept. The barber’s turn came first. He quietly shaved the head of the sleeping simpleton, and when the time elapsed awoke him. The latter, scratching his head as he got up, and finding it bare, cried out: “What a rascal that barber is; he’s waked the bald man instead of me!”
The list of sophists, grammarians, historians, and other writers belonging to the Byzantine period, contains names without number and without lustre. A love-song of the Justinian era (527-565 A.D.), by the emperor’s privy-councillor, will give an idea of the poetry of this age.
THE DRENCHED LOVER.
The Anthology (bunch of flowers) is a collection of more than four thousand short pithy poems, from the pens of about three hundred Greek writers.
Melea’ger was the first gatherer of these literary flowers; his “Garland” contained choice morsels of poetry from the time of Sappho down, many of the best pieces being the work of his own hand. “Meleager’s poetry,” says Symonds, “has the sweetness of the rose, the full-throated melody of the nightingale.” Others added to Meleager’s collection, the last ancient anthologist being the historian Aga’thias, who flourished at Constantinople in the reign of Justinian.
The pieces of the Greek Anthology are epigrams and fugitive verses, amatory, witty, and didactic. Some of them compare favorably with the best efforts of the writers already considered; while not a few are plainly the sources of some of the household sayings and proverbial philosophy of modern times. (Consult Macgregor’s “Greek Anthology.”)
FLOWERS FROM THE ANTHOLOGY.
A PIOUS ACT REWARDED.
THE PARTNERSHIP.
ENVY.
THE FLEAS OUTWITTED.
CURES FOR LOVE.