A history of classical Greek literature.

  • Mahaffy, J. P. (John Pentland), 1839-1919.
Date:
1903-1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    wisdom, of experience, which the Ionian elegist and iambist had substituted for the calm of old epic recitation; the common choric song in honour of the gods, with its accom- paniments of music and dancing—these had found their way to Greece, and had soon passed on into peculiar developments. The chorus of Aleman, the Lydian Greek, had learned to speak the poet's sentiments to his hearers, and so to mediate between the personality of the elegy and the impersonality of the choral hymn. The chorus of Stesichorus had learned to introduce the ?iational legends with a new dress and a lyric treatment, and so long as these legends were alive and growing in Greek hearts, they were the sheet anchor of Greek poetry the Atlas whereon the whole world of its literature found a sure support in all its gyrations. Both these un-Ionic features are found in the highly developed and perfectly finished lyrics of Pindar. The myth is now an integral part of the choric hymn ; so is also the word of the poet as a master of wisdom addressing the people through his chorus. But as calm critics have remarked, the occasion of these remarkable poems was not high enough, or the subjects worthy enough, for the splendour of their art. They celebrated local, often trivial, victories ; they praised professional trainers, and obscure ancestors, often, we may suspect, by means of invented genealogies. And, in any case, they were the poetry of the aristocracy, and not of the people. This art was consequently also professional, composed and performed for patrons and for pay, offered to the gods, hot by the people themselves, but for them, at the hands of singers by trade. These facts agree with the non-patriotic attitude of Pindar, on which I have commented in its place.1 The rising democracy of Athens would naturally demand some very different worship, some very different festivals, from those of the old aristocracies. The people who now took part in politics must also take an active part in public religion and its festivals.2 And for this the first suggestion, as in so many 1 § i49- 2 Wilamowitz, Herakles, i. p. 77, quotes the Polity of the Athenians to show how the Demos abolished professional performances of choral music, and undertook this duty itself. This tract, as is well agreed, is not