Literature of the World

This is the underlying purpose of his work. He was impartial, critical, and painstaking, and his contribution to the history of the era in which he lived has always been considered important.

Plutarch (A.D. 46–120) wrote in Greek, but he seems to be associated in our minds with Latin literature rather than with Greek. He was a thoroughgoing Greek, born in Boeotia and educated in Athens. His knowledge of Latin was far from complete, but his interest in Roman affairs was keen, and he was a trained thinker and writer. His works were varied. Sixty or more treatises, designated as "morals," dealt with subjects historical, ethical, and literary, and are of special interest because of their quotations from Greek classics now lost. Plutarch's "Lives of Famous Men" have made his name a household word. The lives are in pairs, twenty-three Greek and twenty-three Roman-a somewhat artificial plan. He shows more skill and accurate knowledge in his presentation of the lives of Greeks. His erudition, diligence, and other qualities entitle him to be considered one of the thief writers of the ancient world. If Herodotus was the father of history, Plutarch was the father of biography. English-speaking peoples have known him for centuries. North's vigorous and delightful translation was used by Shakespeare as the foundation of his Roman historical plays.

Epictetus was born in Phrygia about A.D. 60. He was deformed and a slave, but in due time he secured his freedom. He had a logical mind and was a natural teacher. While he wrote nothing himself, his pupil Arrianus has left us in the "Discourses of Epictetus" a picture of his master's philosophy and ideas. Three centuries earlier another Greek, Epicurus, had formulated a philosophy which we denominate as Epicureanism-a philosophy which regards pleasure as the end of human action and as the most important thing in life, since ultimate pleasure means freedom. Epictetus, on the other hand, was one of the exponents of Stoicism. His convictions were set forth with the greatest candor and lucidity. Everything in life, he conceived, may be divided into two classes-those things that are within our control and those that are not. The inward life is the important matter, since we can regulate it with the help of God; external events are of less consequence. "If you always remember

that God stands by as a witness of whatever you do, either in soul or body, you will never err, either in your prayers or actions, and you will have God abiding with you."

Lucian (A.D. 120-180) was born in a town in northern Syria. He was a prose Aristophanes, witty, satirical, an unsparing critic. His knowledge of Greek was profound; he wrote in the purest Attic style. A large number of his genuine writings have come down to us. His ordinary form is the dialogue. An analysis of his pieces reveals a genuine humorist, a frank unbeliever in the gods and in the systems of philosophy. Since the days of the Renaissance Lucian has been widely read. Raphael and Dürer have illustrated him. Walter Pater has helped to make him known to English readers.

A century after Lucian's day lived the celebrated critic Longinus, reputed to be the author of the essay "The Sublime," a famous critical document.

Late poetry. There are two books of extraordinary beauty and charm which should be widely known by those who love the good things of literature-Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus rendered into English prose," by Andrew Lang, and Mackail's "Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology:"

The idyl, as represented by Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus, is a little picture, whether concerned with country or city life, with legends, or with personal experience. Theocritus was a Syracusan who lived in the third century B.C. His later life was spent in Alexandria, but he never forgot the soft air, the blue sky, or the rustic beauty of southern Sicily, and his pastoral poetry has all the freshness of the earlier day. The dialogues of rural swains discoursing of their loves must have seemed as remote to the court of the Ptolemies as they do to us. Yet the poetic ardor of Theocritus had found a fitting form of expression. "Sweet, meseems, is the whispering of yonder pine tree, goatherd, that murmureth by the wells of water; and sweet are thy pipings"—this is the enchanting beginning of the first idyl. We are lured on insensibly to share in the fortunes of the rustic lovers. Daphnis sings, "Sweet is the voice of the heifer, sweet her breath, sweet to lie beneath the sky in summer, by running water," and we are fain to partake of his simple joys.

Of Bion we know little except that his birthplace was at Smyrna. His "Lament for Adonis" is a beautiful poem, upon which the English poet Shelley modeled his "Adonais." The finest of the idyls of Moschus is his lament for Bion. How exquisite this passage:

"Ah me, when the mallows wither in the garden, and the green parsley, and the curled tendrils of the anise, on a later day they live again, and spring in another year; but we men, we, the great and mighty, or wise, when once we have died, in hollow earth we sleep, gone down into silence; a right long, and endless, and unawakening sleep."

The Greek Anthology consists of four thousand selections made at Constantinople, partly in the tenth and partly in the fourteenth century. Mackail has translated five hundred of these. The earliest of the poems, as he points out, "date from 700 B.C., and they extend from that time almost continuously down to A.D. 1000. Throughout all that period they present little or no change in language or versification. A form of poetry which remained alive for seventeen centuries is unique in literary history, and bears striking testimony to the extraordinary vitality of the Greek genius."

Here is an epitaph from Callimachus:

"What stranger, O shipwrecked man? Leontichus found me here a corpse on the shore, and heaped this tomb over me, with tears for his own calamitous life: for neither is he at peace, but flits like a gull over the sea."

And a graceful poem on a wayside god, written by an unknown author:

"Go and rest your limbs here for a little under the juniper, O wayfarers, by Hermes, Guardian of the Way, not in crowds, but those of you whose knees are tired with heavy toil and thirst, after traversing a long road; for there a breeze and a shady seat and the fountain under the rock will lull your toil-wearied limbs; and having so escaped the midday breath of the autumnal dogstar, pay his due honour to Hermes of the Ways."

And this on Pandora's box, by Macedonius:

"I laugh as I look on the jar of Pandora, nor do I blame the woman, but the wings of the Blessings themselves; for they flutter through the

sky over the abodes of all the earth, while they ought to have descended on the ground. But the woman behind the lid, with cheeks grown pallid, has lost the splendour of the beauties that she had, and now our life has missed both ways, because she grows old in it, and the jar is empty."

Reference List

BREASTED. Ancient Times. Ginn and Company.

BAIKIE. Sea Kings of Crete. The Macmillan Company.
GAYLEY. Classic Myths. Ginn and Company.

MAHAFFY. Social Life of the Greeks. The Macmillan Company.
DICKINSON. Greek View of Life. Doubleday, Page & Company.
MURRAY. Ancient Greek Literature. D. Appleton and Company.
JEBB. Primer of Greek Literature. American Book Company.
COOPER. The Greek Genius and its Influence. Yale University Press.
MAHAFFY. What have the Greeks Done for Modern Civilization? G. P.
Putnam's Sons.

PATER. Greek Studies. The Macmillan Company.

WENDELL. Traditions of European Literature from Homer to Dante.
Charles Scribner's Sons.
KELLER. Homeric Society.
LANG. Homer and his Age.
LEAF. Homer and History.

Longmans, Green & Co.
Longmans, Green & Co.
The Macmillan Company.

SCOTT. The Unity of Homer. University of California Press.
SEYMOUR. Life in the Homeric Age. The Macmillan Company.
MACKAIL. Lectures on Greek Poetry. Longmans, Green & Co.
SYMONDS. The Greek Poets (2 vols.). Harper & Brothers.
FLICKINGER. The Greek Theater and

Press.

its Drama. University of Chicago

LANG. Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. The Macmillan Company. MACKAIL. Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology. Longmans, Green & Co.

Loeb Classical Library (many volumes). Send to G. P. Putnam's Sons for list.

Bohn Library (a number of volumes). Send to Harcourt, Brace and Company for list.

Everyman's Library has a number of English editions of Greek classics. E. P. Dutton & Company.

Translations (various publishers):

Homer's Iliad (Lang, Leaf, and Myers; Bryant).

Homer's Odyssey (Butcher and Lang; Palmer).

Hesiod (Mair).

Eschylus (Blackie).

Sophocles (Plumptre).

Euripides (Gilbert Murray).

Aristophanes (Rogers).

Herodotus (Rawlinson).
Thucydides (Crawley).
Demosthenes (Kennedy).
Plato (Jowett).
Plutarch (Long).
Epictetus (Long).

Llibres

Literature of the World: An Introductory Study