GREEK LITERATURE, ANCIENT

-our knowl- edge of ancient greek literature has been increased greatly since the beginning of the century. in 1918 sir frederick kenyon knew of 920 literary papyri: professor oldfather in 1923 counted 1,167. no entirely new authors have been discovered equal in importance to bacchylides, herondas and timotheus, and no new treatise quite equal to aristotle’s covstiiution of athens. the new comedy.—of menander we have considerable frag- ments—found in t907—from seven plays, ranging from 550 lines to 88, and can form some opinion of at least three: the epitrepontes (appeal to arbitration), with ten characters; the perikeiromene (girl with her hair cut), with eleven; and per- haps the samian woman. again, we have part of the plot of the priestess. a man’s wife has left him (possibly for religious reasons) and become a priestess; he does not know what she did with their son, and the priestess is unapproachable. his slave pretends to be possessed by a demon, and so gets taken in to the priestess to be treated. he finds out that the boy is being reared as their own by certain neighbours, and tells the father, who goes straightway to claim his son. but these neighbours also have a genuine son of their own, and by mistake the old gen- tleman lights upon him. the boy decides that the old man is mad, and tells his foster brother, who, consequently, when his father approaches him on the same subject, humours him as a lun atic...« 5. ¢ an opening like this shows how far we have travelled from the simple pv@or of the 5th century. wecan see that menander invented his plots, and invented them with an ingenuity and complexity utterly beyond the conceptions of the great trage- dians. we can appreciate his exquisite style; colloquial, yet refined, subtle and witty and capable of much emotional power. it is palely reflected in the urbanites of terence. contempo- raries who were still under the spell of tragedy and the old comedy could ask themselves “ whether menander copied life or life menander ”; but on a modern reader he will not make an impression of realism. lost or exposed children, recognitions, be- trayed maidens, captured cities and heroines sold into slavery, faithful or ingenious slaves, indulgent or cross parents, play a larger part on his stage than they ever did in real life. yet the general effect does give a vivid picture of hellenistic athens. it is an casy-going and cultivated commercial society, steering as best it can, with much understanding and sympathy and humour, amid the shipwrecks of a tormented world. there are no villains, no cruelty; the women have character, the be- trayed maidens have generally been betrayed in the excitement of some wild religious festival, and the betrayer suffers torments of remorse. except in the exposing of children, a favourite motive _ of hellenistic fictions, menandecr’s moral outlook would com- pare favourably with that of moliere, not to speak of congreve. callimachus.—callimachus too has become a reality and we can understand the immense influence he exercised upon the augustan poets. we possess many fragments from his ifie or origins, one of them 80 lines long. unfortunately nothing ts complete; but the fragments show a mastery of the greck elegiac couplet unknown before. the diction is rather precious. the style often reminds one of ovid, romantic with a touch of sclf-mockery, as though the poct felt the absurdity as well as the loveliness of the archaic legends which he collected with so much zest. the alexandrian courtier is shown in his ‘ lament on the death of arsinoe,” his “‘ coma berenices ” (which we know in a latin version by catullus) and other fragments. his gnomic poems are written in the assumed character of the ancient hip- ponax, but have none of that satirist’s ferocity. one tells the story of the prize for wisdom, which was offered first to thales but refused by him because bias was wiser, and by bias because someone else was wiser and so on by all the wise men in turn. another contains a contest for superiority between the laurel and the olive, somewhat flat to modern taste. another acquisition is a large fragment of a life of euripides by satyrus, a peripatetic of the 3rd century b.c. it takes the form of a dialogue; one of the characters is a woman; and the tone is that of drawing room belles letires rather than history. there 287 is much gossip and anecdote, given for what it is worth; many quotations, and some good literary criticism, e.g., the observa- tion that euripides wrote the “ things that held the new comedy together, peripatetics, betrayed maidens, supposititious children, recognitions by rings and necklaces, ete.’”’ the frag- ment comes from satyrus’ lives in six books, the last of which dealt with the lives of the tragedians. it is extremely interesting as a specimen of the new subject of study introduced by the disciples of aristotle, personal biography of writers and savanis. satyrus seems to have been the chief authority for the anony- mous life which has come down to us with the mss. of euripides. lyric poets-—another new author of great interest is the boeotian poetess corinna, a contemporary and compatriot of pindar, though curiously different from him. she stands right outside the sphere of homeric influence. her language is the colloquial bocotian which she spoke, unaffected by literary tradition. her themes, to judge from the two poems preserved, “the contest of kithaeron and helicon,” and ‘‘ the daughters of asopus,” are little more than local folklore. she cannot have been quite uneducated; her metre is too correct; but her work leaves the impression that boeotian women in the 5th century, though they learnt afousike, did not know much literature. unlike sappho, she was a neither a bluestocking nor a genius. sappho herself is now represented by about 100 new fragments, but the papyri have been so crushed and broken that very little is continuous or intelligible. the most beautiful of the new songs is perhaps equal to the best known before and has the same poignancy. it begins: “ . and simply i long to be dead. she left me sobbing, and said: ‘sappho, we have suffered terrible things. i swear, against my will i leave you.’’”’ the exception- ally careful study of the whole material by mr. lobel has shown, first, that the papyri are very exact in reproducing dialect, and secondly that sappho, except in poems modelled upon epic, wrote almost entirely in her native lesbian. she stands between the rusticity of corinna and the literary polish of alcaeus. alcacus also is represented by more than roo new fragments, various in subject and mctre, but seldom large enough to yield continuous sense. a comparison of ielen and thetis, a few lines about sisyphus’ attempt to outwit death, much about dura navis, dura fugae mala, dura belli confirm but do not greatly enrich the impression made by the previous fragments. there is style, spirit, vigour, variety and there must have been a mass of minute and intimate history. but we find perhaps more continu- ous beauty in the new fragment of ibycus, passing in dreamy memory the great shadows of the trojan war, or the short burst of lyrical hexameters in the style of aleman. pindar, of whom we had before only epinikia (victory songs) is now represented by considerable fragments of paeans, par- thenia (girl songs) and dithyrambs. the paeans show the same abrupt and tortured magnificence of style as the extant epinikia; the parthenia, as dionysius of halicarnassus (demosth. 39) had remarked, are simpler, and show pindar in a new mood, ‘“ maid- enly thoughts be mine and maidenly speech upon my tongue,” says one fragment. the drama.—tyhere is also much beauty in the lyrics of euripides’ hypsipyle, one of which is a nurse’s song to a baby, with the accompaniment of a rattle and a new effect in one of the scenes where a mother, raging against the nurse who has inad- vertently caused the death of her child, is suddenly reduced to silent tears by the presence of the gentle sage, amphiaraus. the quiet exit of amphiaraus to his foreseen death, and the subtle indications of eypsipyle’s life-song devotion to jason, the brief romance of her youth, are in euripides’ most characteristic style. the fragments of sophocles’ satyr-play, the ichneutue (track- ers), have great charm. the infant hermes has stolen the cattle of apollo; the satyrs go as detectives to track the thief, and hear underground the first music known on earth—the child playing on the lyre he has made. the remains of sophocles’ eurypylus are very small, but show the great 5th century style. increase of historical knowledge.—if we turn from our direct gains in beautiful literature and try to estimate the new light thrown by recent discoveries on the history of greek literature 288 as a whole, the results are much larger. the excavations of minoan crete, though they have brought us no greek text, make a difference to our understanding of the ilomeric poems and of the whole heroic tradition. we see quite clearly now that the poems do not stand at the beginning of literature. there were ages of literature before them. even their heroic subjects can in many cases be shown to have been already known in or before the 16th century b.c. gems and frescoes of that date show us the siege of a city, like troy; a man under the belly of a ram and clinging to its long wool, like odysseus escaping from the cyclops’ cave; a scene in a deep glen, where a young man attacks an older man ina chariot, as oedipus attacked laius. this means that some of the main romantic motives used in greek heroic poetry were already traditional then, attached to what names we know not. again, the celebrated “‘ ring of nestor”? (jour. hellenic studies, 1925) shows scenes of initiation and of the next life, ideas which have generally been considered post-itomeric and even for the most part post-classical. we sce now that they were in existence be- fore homer as well as after; and the characteristic theology of homer, with its avoidance of these ideas, shows itself to be not a thing of primeval simplicity, but a peculiar product of the “ he- roic age ”’ (i.e., the age of the destruction of minoan civilisation by the northern invaders). again, while the excavations incli- cate pretty clearly that neither of the homeric poems as a whole is ‘“‘ history,” they also show that both are full of historic mem- ories, in various degrees confused and fragmentary, and trans- muted into the “ heroic’? mould. variety in greek literature —but what we chiefly learn from the papyri is to appreciate the immense variety of greek litera- ture, especially in the hellenistic age. we have now specimens of three satyr-plays, instead of only the cyclops. we have large masses of the new comedy. we know something of the alex- andrian elegy and idyll, including bits of euphorion as well as callimachus. we discover the prevalence of poems in the style of different ancient writers: compositions in imitation of tlip- ponax, of epicharmus, of anacreon, of aleman and letters pro- fessing to come from hippocrates. we are reminded of the delian hymn with its claim to be by ‘‘ homer ” himself. religious or ritual poetry is represented by several hymns and paeans connected with the temple of apollo at delphi or that of asclepius at ipidaurus. the most curious is a paean to asclepius, which occurs in four almost identical copies of dif- ferent dates and places. it seems to have been a stock form, with places left open, so to speak, for the names of the particular city or individual wishing to perform the rite. more primitive worships, though in late form, are expressed tn the cretan hymn to the kouretes and the eretrian hymn to the idaean dactyls. the religious literature connected with egyptian gods, such as isis and serapis, is of course extensive, but is generally in prose. peculiarly striking 1s the great mass of light lyric poetry from fellenistic or early roman times. a poignant ‘ paraclausithy- ron,” or “* weeping outside the door,”’ by a woman; another, less good, by a man; several love-songs in loose ionic metres (one starting with the poignant line xartdxeuar pel? erepov, ce peeya dtrovea); soldiers’ songs; sailors’ songs; a song to the rhodian winds; a song of spring in the woods; a lament by a boy who has lost his pet cock; a powerful though roughly written com- plaint, of roman date, by a girl whose lover is being sent to fizht intheamphitheatre as a mirmillo, and who desperately wants to buy him off; a charming quasi-philosophic tlute-song, written in a tricky metre with a refrain (aver wor), the first letters of each stanza forming an acrostic. novels and light verse—our own commonest form of light literature, the novel, is also well represented. there are three fragments of the preposterously romantic chaireus and callirhoe of chariton, which had evidently great popularity: one of achilles tatius. the new evidence shows that these romances are much earlier than was supposed, chariton about 200 a.p. and achilles about 300. there are also fragments of several novels hitherto unknown—semiramis and ninus, herpvilis, chione, the dream of nectanebo, etc. the supply of novels ts equalled by that of ‘ mimes,”’ or short realistic dialogues for greek literature, ancient acting or reading aloud. they are poor stuff, illustrating per- haps the pleasure in sheer coarseness which sometimes marks an over-refined age. more interesting are the poets who write under the inspiration of the cynic “ diatribe,” or popular philosophical appeal to conscience. the confusions and inequalities of hellenistic society stimulated a contempt for worldly standards and civilised conventions and a tendency to exalt the poor, the untaught, and the oppressed. in poetry this led to a revival of the scazons, or “lame iambics,”’ of old hipponax, which affected both calli- machus and herondas in later times, and has left us fragments of a 3rd-century anthology, in which the chief figure is phoenix of colophon. better than these scazons are the “‘ meliambi ” of kerkidas the cynic (flor. 250 b.c.), who is known as a friend of the general aratus, and is perhaps to be regarded as the author of the anthology itself. they are full of strange words and fan- tastic compounds which suit the mordant and rather brutal style of his “ diatribe.”’ it is instructive to observe that cle- anthes the stoic, when writing his more ideal exhortations, avoids the deliberately fractious metres and uses the harmonious hexa- meter or iambic. in prose philosophy we have some striking specimens of 5th- century sophistic; a fragment of hippias (?) on music, deriding the theories which invested it with subtle moral values; and two of antiphon the sophist, known previously for his denuncia- tions of slavery, with a highly provocative treatment of the difference between phusts and nomos. there is also a fragment of a dialogue by that strange character, aeschines socraticus. and meantime the charred remains of the library of the epi- curean philosopher at herculaneum are slowly being deciphered; much philodemus, polystratus ‘‘ on unreasoning contemptu- ousness,” with fragments of demetrius laco, and the stoic licrocles. nor should we forget the uncommonly interesting ie-picurean gospel, inscribed by diogenes of oenoanda on a large wall, so that the world may read and be saved (2nd century ad.) “ grammatike”’ or philology is represented by chresto- mathies, ‘‘ lives” or ‘‘ sayings ” of eminent writers, by scholia and glossaries and by a valuable fragment of didymus’ com- mentary on demosthenes. ifistory, etc.—the additions to our historical literature are considerable. besides the cowstitution of athens we have more than soo complete lines of a 4th century historian, who after much controversy seems likely to be identified with e;phorus, rather than with theopompus or cratippus. it deals chiefly with the year 395 b.c. other fragments attributed to ephorus treat the history of sicyon and other subjects. there are small pieces of timaeus, the sicilian historian, and of philochorus, the attic chronicler. there are bits of what seem to be the authentic despatches of the third and second ptolemies, and perhaps also of the first (?. oxy., 679), dealing with their own campaigns; also of sosylus, who lived in, hannibal’s camp, and, according to polybius, “ gossipped like a barber,’ on the “ deeds of hannibal.” of satyrus we have spoken above. there is some history also in the new fragments of the orators lysias and hyperides. but both as history and as literature the largest and most sur- prising additions to our knowledge are to be found in the non- literary papyri, of which there must be more than 10,000. they may be divided into (a) official and (8) private, the first consisting of laws, rescripts, edicts, documents about taxes, judicial pro- ceedings and the like, the second of contracts, receipts, wills, manumissions and private letters or memoranda. ‘their value is increased by the fact that they often fall into large coherent groups, such as the papers about the serapeum, the correspond- ence of cleon, the public architect, or of zenon, the great estate agent. combined with the rich mass of hellenistic inscriptions, these documents have illuminated the life and social history of the hellenistic age to a degree undreamed of before. bibliography.—the new texts are to be found in the principal collections of papyri, e.g., b. p. grenfell and a. s. hunt, zhe oxy- rhynchus papyri (1898, etc.), the tebtunis papyri (1902) and the ilibeh papyri (1906). see also berliner klassikertexte, berliner griechische urkunden, boll. della societa papyrologica [taliana, greek literature, modern—greek religion archiv fiir papyrologie, and the various publications of the british museum. the following separate publications are convenient (dates refer to first edition): s. sudhaus, menandri religuiae (1914); qo. schrveder, novae comoediae fragmenta (1915); r. pfeiffer, callimucht fragments (1923); e. diehl, supplemenium lyricum (1910); hans von arnim, supplementum euripideum (1913); fe. diehl, supplementum sophocleum (1913); f. bilabel, adeznere historikerfragmente (1923); f. blass, bacchylidis carmina (1982); o. crusius, hlerondae mimiambi (1923); b. lavagnini, eroticoruim graecorum fragmenta papyracea (1922); a. s. hunt, lhellenica oxyrhynchia with fragments of theopompus (1909) and tragicorum graecorum fragmenta papyracea (1912), larger and more important are w. g. headlam and a. d. knox, jzerodas (cambridge, 1922); e. lobel, sappho (oxford, 1925); j. u. powell, collectanea alexandrina —smaller fragments of poets of alexandrine age, epic, elegiac, lyric and ethical (1925). see also the lists in w. schubart's einfiihrung in die papyruskunde (1918) and the greek literary texts from greco- roman egypt, by c. h. oldfather, university of wisconsin (1923); wilamowitz- moellendorff, afenander, das schiedsgericht (1925). (g. g, a. m.) greek literature, modern (sce 12.524).—the troubled years from 1910 to 1925 were marked by one event of capital importance to the literature of modern greece, the all but total conquest of the entire literary field by the spoken language, commonly called the demotic or romaic, after a century’s struggle with the official or scholastic tongue, called the pure or cathare- voussa. in 1910, costis palamas published the remarkable narrative lyrical poem the king’s flite, in which he celebrates, in the moving atmosphere of byzantium, the continuity of greek throughout theages. in the immutable life he appears as a bold innovator, inspired by french intellectualism, and definitely es- tablishes his position as a poet of world wide fame. before losing himself in memories of his childhood, as he does in his next work (longings for the lagoon, 1912) he shows that he possesses the eternal spirit of ancient hellas, of byzantium and of modern greece. he is a poet of theintellect and of thought, whose work, while showing the influence of western symbolism, is yet filled with imagery and with glowing verbal music. in works such as lambs and anapaesis and the grave he has given expression to the deepest emotions. he was strongly influenced by the pro- phetic geniusof joannes psuchares, a master in every genre of prose, who introduced into greece all the most recent linguistic theories. without his example it is unlikely that palamas would have suc- cecded in realising his powers. so was founded the new school of athens. palamas, himself an occasional novelist and critic, became the centre of the popular renaissance. among the stylists pure and simple of the school we find john gryparis, a disciple of heredia; laurence mavilis, strongly in- fluenced by italian literature, who was killed in the war of 1912; the baudelairean papantoniou costas ouranis; aristos cam- banis, whose work is chaste and, if anything, a little cold; and the delicate genius of malakassis, who owes much to moreas and to phe intermezzo. peter vlastos wanders from sphere to sphere, revelling in subtlety of rhythm and metre. all the storied past of greece comes to life in his work. apart from these, the dreamy lambros porphyras has written his shadows; sotiris skipis has sung of his longings for his own country (song of a pollo) and the sufferings of the fugitives from anatolia. myrtiotissa in his mov- ing work has sung of passion, while g. souris and pol arcas have turned to satire, and drossinis, forerunner of many others, has produced his picturesque idylls. but apart from simple melodists like these tardy parnassians, the newer poets venture even further than palamas into un- charted territory. among them are angelos sikelianos, who rediscovered the secrets of the ancient myths of sea and land, and who hymns the greatness of life; rigas golphis, bitter, eloquent and passionate; the fiery varnalis, ph. yophyllis, who embodies in his work the minutest details of modern life, and kavaphis, who, apart from the others, evokes, in a strange and unadorned style, the alexandrian decadence which resembles his own depression. prose writings.—modern greek prose is unusually rich both in conte and in the novel. the scattered but recently collected work of papadiamandis, who disappeared in 1908, remains 289 unequalled. carcavitsas and ephtaliotis painted the sea and the islands, and left models for others, as also did the regretted poet, novelist, critic and translator, c. hatzopoulos. costis passay- annis, vlakhoyannis and the epirote ch. christovassilis are accomplished writers of the heroic and the picturesque. d. vou- tyras is more deeply moved by the troubles of the working classes. there are also c. theotokis of corfu,who combined criticism of society with the study of character, and showed himself in his novels, the slaves tn their chains and the life and death of karavelas,as a cruel and unrelenting realist, also c. paroritis, the powerful author of red he-goat, and madame j. dendrinos, who excels in depicting the ravages of passion. no one, however, in the novel or the theatre has excelled g. xenopoulos, the creator of a whole gallery of pictures of zante and athens (/sabcl, woman from three aspects). but xenopoulos is not alone among greek dramatists. paulos nirvanas, that fine critic and subtle observer, brought ibsenism into fashion. spyros melas and pandelis horn achieved remark- able work with a high social aim, d. tangopoulos distinguished himself in philosophical drama and n. poriotis shows in rhodopi that tragedy in verse is still to be found in greece. among the younger writers constantinides in phodinoula reveals himself as a coming dramatist, and valsa wrote a model of philosophic comedy in the council of afinisters. in other spheres, we may mention the names of j. dragoumis as a critic, of philindas and of triandoephyllides in philology and the study of language, while we must not forget the well-known psuchares, lambros in history, politis in folklore, andreades in political and social economy, xenopoulos, nirvanas and cam- banis in literary criticism, voutieridis in the history of literature. the influence of the literary reviews 1s shown by the fact that modern greek literature is becoming more and more westernised in inspiration and form and ceasing to be byzantine. (p. le.)