Initiation into Literature | Page 8

of his era. More ambitious, and desirous not only of writing an epic fragment like Callimachus, but also of restoring the old-time grand epic poem after the manner of Homer (Callimachus and he had a violent quarrel on the subject), Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautics narrated the expedition of Jason. It was a fine epic poem and especially an astonishing psychological poem. The study of passion and of the progress and catastrophe of the infatuation of Medea form a masterpiece. Assuredly Virgil in his Dido, and perhaps Racine in his _Ph��dre_ remembered Apollonius.
LYCOPHRON.--Lycophron also belongs to this period. He left such an admirable poem (Alexandra, that is Cassandra) that his contemporaries themselves failed to understand it in spite of all their efforts. He is the head and ancestor of that great school of inaccessible or impenetrable poets who are most ardently admired. Maurice Sc��ve in the sixteenth century is the illustrious example.
THE EPIGRAMMATISTS: MELEAGER.--To these numerous men of great talent must be added the epigrammatists--that is, those who wrote very short, very concise, very limpid poems wherein they sought absolute perfection. They were almost innumerable. The most illustrious was Meleager, in whom we can yet appreciate delicate genius and exquisite sensibility.
POLYBIUS.--Reduced to Roman provinces (successively greater Greece, Greece proper, Egypt, Syria), the Grecian world none the less continued to be an admirable intellectual haven. As early as the Punic wars, the Greek Polybius revealed he was an excellent historian, military, political, and philosophical, inquisitive about facts, inquisitive, too, about probable causes, constitutions, and social institutions, the morals, character, and the underlying temperament of races. His principal work is the _Histories_--that is, the history of the Graeco-Roman world from the second Punic war until the capture of Corinth by the Romans. He was an intellectual master; unfortunately he wrote very badly.
EPICTETUS; MARCUS AURELIUS.--It must, however, be recognised that in the first century before Christ and in the first after, Greece--even intellectually--was in a state of depression. But dating from the Emperor Nerva--that is, from the commencement of the second century--there was a remarkable Hellenic revival. Primarily, it was the most brilliant moment since Plato in Grecian philosophy. Stoicism exerted complete sway over the cultivated classes; Epictetus gave his Enchiridion and Manual, wherein are condensed the elevated and profound thoughts most deeply realised of the doctrine of Zeno; later, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, in his solitary meditations entitled For Myself, depicts his own soul, admirable, chaste, pure, severe to himself, indulgent to others, pathetically resigned to the universal order of things and adhering to them with a renunciation and a faith that are truly religious. Less severe, even playful and smiling, Dion Chrysostom (that is, mouth of gold, nickname given to him because of his eloquence) is penetrated with the same spirit a little mingled with Platonism, which makes him, therefore, perhaps, penetrate more easily than the over-austere pure Stoics.
PLUTARCH.--Plutarch, as historian discreetly romantic, as philosophical moralist decidedly dexterous, gently obstinate in conciliation and concord, in a large portion of his Parallel Lives narrated those of illustrious Romans and Greeks to show how excellent they were and how highly they ought to esteem one another; elsewhere, in his moral works, he sought to conciliate philosophy and paganism, no doubt believing in a single God, as did Plato, but also believing in a crowd of intermediary spirits between God and man, which allowed him to regard the deities of paganism as misunderstood beings and even in a certain sense to admit their authority. Emphatically a man who observed the golden mean, he opposed the Stoics for being too severe on human nature and the Epicureans for being too easy or for too lightly risking the future. He was an elegant writer--gracious, self-restraining; nearer, all said and done, to eclecticism than to simplicity, and he must not be judged by the geniality which was virtually imparted to him by Amyot in translating him. Throughout Europe, since the Renaissance, of all the Grecian authors he has perhaps been the most read, the most quoted, the best loved, and the most carefully edited.
THE GREEK HISTORIANS.--Greek historians multiplied about this period. To mention only the most notable: Arrian, philosopher, disciple of Epictetus, and historian of the expedition of Alexander; Appian, who wrote the history of the Roman people from their origin until the time of Trajan; Dion Cassius, who also compiled Roman history in a sustained manner full of elegance and nobility; Herodian, historian of the successors of Marcus Aurelius, who would only narrate what he had himself witnessed, a showy writer who seems over-polished and a little artificial.
A historian of a highly individualistic character was Diogenes of Laertius, who wrote the Lives of Philosophers, being very little of a philosopher himself and too prone to drop into anecdotage, but interesting and invaluable to us because