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A HISTORY 



OF 



CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP 



ilonlion: C. J. CLAY and SONS, 

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, 

AVE MARIA LANE. 

Clasgoto: 50, WELLINGTON STREET. 




ILeipjie: F. A. BROCKHAUS. 

^£to lorfe: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

JSombag anti Calcutta : MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 



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< g 



O _g- 






A HISTORY 



OF 



CLASSICAL SCHOLARSHIP 

Ji'J^OM THE SIXTH CENTURY B.C. 
TO THE END OF THE MIDDLE AGES 



BY 



JOHN EDWIN SANDYS, LiTT.D., 

FELLOW AND LECTURER OF ST JOHn's COLLEGE, 

AND PUBLIC ORATOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, 

HON. LITT.D. DUBLIN 




SEEN BY 

PRESERVATION 

SERVICES 



DATE....y^^.^..>. 



.^v>.: 



CAMBRIDGE 

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1903 



S3 

v./ 



Qtiid est aetas hommts, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum 
cum superiorum aetate contexitur? 

Cicero, Orator, § 120. 



I 



PREFACE. 

THE present work owes its origin to the fact that, some nine 
years ago, at the kind suggestion of my friend Professor 
Jebb, I was in\ated by the editor of Social England to prepare a 
brief survey of the History of Scholarship, which was included in the 
volumes published in 1896 and 1897. In course of time I formed 
a plan for a more comprehensive treatment of the History of 
Classical Scholarship in general, which should begin with its birth 
in the Athenian age, should trace its growth in the Alexandrian 
and Roman times, and then pass onwards, through the Middle 
Ages, to the Revival of Learning, and to the further developements 
in the study of the ancient Classics among the nations of Europe 
and in the English-speaking peoples across the seas. I was already 
familiar with the Outlines of the History of Classical Philology by 
Professor Gudeman of Philadelphia ; and I may add that, if, in 
place of the eighty pages of his carefully planned Outlines, the 
learned author of that work had produced a complete History on 
the same general lines, there might have been little need for any 
other work on the same subject in the English language. But, in 
the absence of any such Histor}-, it appeared to be worth my 
while to endeavour to meet this obvious want, and, a few years 
ago, my proposal to prepare a general History of Classical 
Scholarship was accepted by the Syndics of the University Press. 
My aim has been, so far as practicable, to produce a readable 
book, which might also serve as a work of reference. I confess 
that the work has grown under my hands to a far larger bulk than 



PREFACE. 



I had ever contemplated ; but, when I reflect that a German 
' History of Classical Philology ', which does not go beyond the 
fourth century of our era, fills as many as 1900 large octavo pages, 
I am disposed to feel (like Warren Hastings) 'astounded at my 
moderation '. I had hoped to complete the whole of my task in 
a single volume, but this has proved impossible, owing mainly to 
the vast extent and the complexity of the literature connected 
with the history of classical learning in the West of Europe during 
the eight centuries of the Middle Ages. In studying this part of 
my subject, I have found myself compelled to struggle with a 
great array of texts, in various volumes of the Rolls Series., the 
Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and Migne's Patrologia Latina; 
and to master the contents of a multitude of scattered mono- 
graphs in French, German and Italian, as well as English, publi- 
cations. With these and other resources I have endeavoured to 
trace the later fortunes of the Latin Classics, to deal with all the 
more important indications of the mediaeval knowledge of Greek, 
and to give an outline of the Scholastic Philosophy. Without 
taking some account of the latter, it is impossible to have an 
adequate understanding of the literature of the Middle Ages. 
And it is a necessary part of my subject, in so far as it arose out 
of the study of translations of Greek texts, and was inextricably 
bound up with the successive stages in the gradual expansion of 
the mediaeval knowledge of the works of Aristotle. But, in tracing 
the general course of a form of philosophy, which, however valu- 
able as a kind of mental gymnastic, was on the whole unfavourable 
to the wide and liberal study of the great masterpieces of Classical 
Literature, I have mainly confined myself to the points of immediate 
contact with the History of Scholarship ; and thus (if I may give 
a new turn to a phrase in Seneca), quae philosophia futt, facta 
philologia esf^. In the work in general I have studied the History 
of Scholarship in connexion with the literary, and even, to some 
slight extent, the political history of each period. But the treat- 
^ Ep. 108 § 23. 



PREFACE. 



ment of the principal personages portrayed in the course of the 
work has not been on any rigidly uniform scale. Thus, among 
the three great authors of far-reaching influence, who stand on the 
threshold of the Middle Ages, there is necessarily far less to be 
said about the personality of Priscian than about that of Boethius 
or of Cassiodorus. Many names of minor importance, which are 
only incidentally mentioned in the text, have been excluded from 
the final draft of the Index, and space has thus been found for 
the fuller treatment of more important names, such as those of 
Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Virgil. The study of the subject 
will, I trust, be further facilitated by means of the twelve chrono- 
logical tables. A Hst of these will be found on page xi. 

Of the twelve divisions of my subject (set forth on page 14), 
the first six are included in the present volume, which aims at 
being complete so far as it extends, and, in point of time, covers 
as many as nineteen of the twenty-five centuries, with which those 
divisions are concerned. In continuation of this work, I hope to 
produce, at no distant date, a separate volume on the Histor}' of 
Scholarship from the time of Petrarch to the present day. The 
first draft of a large part of that volume has already been pre- 
pared, and, in the Easter Vacation of last year, I was engaged in 
the further study of the literature of the Renaissance, as well as of 
certain portions of the Middle Ages, in the hospitable libraries of 
Florence. In the spring of the present year I visited the homes 
of mediaeval learning on the Lx)ire, and also studied the sculptured 
and the written memorials of the mediaeval system of education, 
which still sur\-ive as a visible embodiment of the influences that 
moulded the mind of John of Salisbury in 'the classic calm of 
Chartres '. 

It is a pleasure to conclude this preface by offering the tribute 
of my thanks to all who in any way have helped towards the 
completion of what has unavoidably proved a very laborious 
undertaking. My gratitude is due, in the first place, to the 
Syndics of the University Press, and to the staff" of the same, 



PREFACE. 



not forgetting the ever-attentive Reader, who (besides more 
important corrections) has endeavoured to reduce the spelling 
of mediaeval names to a uniformity little dreamt of in the 
Middle Ages themselves. If, in the next place, I may here record 
my thanks to those under whose influence this volume has been 
prepared, I cannot forget the friend who (as I have stated in 
the opening words of this preface) gave the first impulse which 
led to the ultimate production of the present work. If, again, I 
may give a single example of all that I owe to two other scholars — 
one of whom I have happily known for forty years, the other, 
alas ! for too few — a hint from the late Lord Acton gave me my 
first clear impression of the erudition of Vincent of Beauvais ; 
a word from Professor Mayor set me at work on Joannes de 
Garlandia. Among the Fellows of Trinity, Dr Henry Jackson 
has been good enough to supply me with a clear statement of 
his views on Plato's Cratylus, and Mr James Duff has kindly 
tested and confirmed my opinion as to a point connected with 
the mediaeval study of Lucretius \ The College catalogues and 
other works of Dr James have brought to my knowledge not a 
few points of interest in the mediaeval manuscripts of Cambridge. 
1 have thus been led to include among iho. facsimiles an autograph 
of Lan franc, an extract from a copy of the works of John of 
Salisbury, which once belonged to Becket, and the colophon of 
an early transcript of a translation by William of Moerbeke. 
Four of the facsitniles are here published for the first time. To 
Sir Edward Maunde Thompson, and to his publishers, Messrs 
Kegan Paul and Co., I am indebted for the use of five of the 
many facsimiles which adorn his well-known Handbook of Greek 
and Latin Palaeography. I have also borrowed two short extracts 
from the three hundred facsimiles in Chatelain's Paleographie 
des Classiques Latins, and one from those in Wattenbach and 
von Velsen's Exeinpla Codicum Graecorum. I have to thank 
the Registrary of the University for the use of a single illustra- 
1 p. 51511. 3. 



PREFACE. 



tion (and the offer of more) from his important volume on the 
Care of Books ; and I gratefully recall the trouble taken on my 
behalf by the Librarian and the staff of the University' Library ; 
by the Librarians of Peterhouse, Gonville and Caius, Corpus Christi, 
Magdalene, and Trinity Colleges ; by the Librarian and Assistant 
Librarian of my own College ; and by one of my former pupils, 
Professor Rapson, of the British Museum. My debt to the 
published works of scholars at home and abroad is fully shown 
in the notes to the following pages. 



J. E. SANDYS. 



Merto.v House, 
Cambridge, 

October, 1903. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

List of Illustrations ^tii 

Titles of Certain Works of Referenxe . . . xv 

Abbreviations xviii 

Addenda and Corrigenda xviii 

Outline of Principal Contents of pp. i — 650 . . xix 

Index 651 

Greek Index 672 



■ 



CONSPECTUS OF CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 

Greek Literature ore. page Latin Literature ^c. page 

r. 840 — 300B.C 18 c. 300 — I B.C 166 

c. 300 — I B.C 104 I— 300A.D 186 

I — 30OA.D 262 300 — 60OA.D 204 

300 — 6CXJA.D 340 600— ioooa.d 430 

600 — IOOOA.D 378 1000 — 1200 A.D 496 

1000— 1453 A.D 400 1200 — 1400 A.D 538 



b2 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



(i) Scenes from the Schools of Athens, early in the fifth century B.C., from 
a vase-painting by Duris on a Cylix with red figures on a black ground, found 
at Caere in 1872 and now in the Berlin Antiquarium (no. 2285). Reproduced 
partly from the large coloured copy in Monumenti del InsHtuto, ix (1873), 
pi. 54, and partly from the small lithographed outline in the Archdologische 
Zeitung, xxxi (1874), i — 14. The central design is from the inside, the rest 
from the outside of the Cylix . . Frontispiece, described on p. 42 

(2) Masks of Comedy and Tragedy, British Mttscum . . 51 

(3) Seated figure of ' Aristotle '. Spada Palace, Koine . . 66 

(4) From the earliest extant MS of the Phaedo of Plato ; Petrie papyrus 
in the British Aliiseum ......... 87 

(5) Portrait of Alexander the Great ; on a silver tetradrachm of Lysimachus, 
king of Thrace. British Museum ....... 102 

(6) Portraits of Ptolemy I and II, Founders of the Alexandrian Library ; 
on a gold octadrachm of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II. British Museum 143 

(7) Portrait of Eumenes II, Founder of the Pergamene Library; on a 
silver tetradrachm in the British Museum ..... 164 

(8) From Codex Sangallensis 1394 (Century iv or v) of Virgil. 
St Gallen 185 

(9) From Codex Laurentianus XLVi 7 (Century x) of Quintilian. Laurentian 
Library, Florence .......... 203 

(10) From Codex Laurentianus LXiii 19 (Century x) of Livy. Laurentian 
Library, Florence .......... 236 

(11) From the Biblical Commentary of Monte Cassino, written before 
569 B.C. Monte Cassino ......... 260 

(12) From the Codex Parisinus (914 A.D.) of Clemens Alexandrinus. 
Bibliotheque Nalionale, Paris . . . . . . . . 326 

(13) From a Paris manuscript (1223 A. D.) of a student's copy of David th« 
Armenian's Commentary on Porphyry's Introduction to Aristotle's Categories. 
Bibliotheque Natio?iale, Paris . . . . . . . . 338 

(14) Beginning of the last Dialogue in the Bodleian Plato (895 A. D.). 
Reproduced from a photograph taken from the Leyden Facsimile of the 
original MS in the Bodleian Library, Oxfot-d 376 



I 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Xlll 

( 1 5) End of Scholia on Hesiod's Works and Days by Manuel Moschopulus, 
in the handwriting of Demetrius Triclinius, finished on Aug. 20, hSiKTiwvoi 
IS', frovi ^S'ukS' (6824 A.M. of the Byzantine era= 1316 A.D.). Biblioteca 
Marciana, Venice .......... 428 

(16) From Cambridge University MS (Century Xl) of /Elfric's Latin 
Grammar. Reproduced fi-om a photograph taken from the original in the 
University Library, Cambridge 495 

(17) Specimens of Christ Church, Canterburj', hand (<r. 1070-84) from 
near the end of a MS of Decretals and Canons bought by Lanfranc from the 
abbey of Bee and given by him to Christ Church, Canterbury. The first of 
the two specimens is almost certainly in the hand-^rriting of Lanfranc: — Hujtc 
librum data precio emptum ego Lanfraneus archiepiscopus de Beccensi cenobio 
in Anglicam terram deferri feci et Ecclesiae Christi dedi. Si quis eum de iure 
prcufatae Ecclesiae ahstiilerit, anathema sit. The second is a copy of the first 
of five letters addressed to Lanfranc by the Antipope 'Clement III' (1084 — 
iioi), beginning Clemens episcopus, servus servorum Dei, Lanfranco Cantuar- 
beriensi archiepiscopo salutem el apostolicam benedictionem, and ending omnesque 
coepiscopos fratres nostras ex nostra parte saliita, et ad honorem et utilitatem 
sanctcu Romanae Ecclesiae studio santtitatis fraterne hcrtare (in line 4 there 
must be a lacuna after exoptamust. Reproduced from a photograph taken 
from the original in Trinity College Library, Cambridge . . . 503 

(rS) From a MS of John of Salisbury's Policraticus and Metalogicus (i 159), 
formerly in the possession of Becket. Reproduced from a photograph taken 
from the original in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge . 516 

(19) Philosophy and the Liberal Arts, versus the Poets. From the 
Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad von Landsperg (d. 1 195), destroyed at Strassburg 
in 1870. The inscriptions are as follows. On the outer circle : — Haec cxercicia 
quae mundi philosophia \ investigavit, investigata notavit, \ scripto firmavit 
et alumnis insinttavit. j! Septem per studia docet artes philosophia. \ ffaec 
elementorum scrutatur et abdita rerum. ;: On the inner circle : — Arte regens 
omnia quae sunt ego philosophia \ subjectas artes in septem druido partes. 
Above the Seven Arts (Grammar with scopae). Per me quivis discit, vox, 
littera, syllaba, quid sit. (Rhetoric with stilus and tabula) Causarum vires 
per me, rhetor alme, requires. (Dialectic with caput cam's) Argumenta sino 
concurrere more canino. (Music with crganistrum, cithara and lira) Musica 
sum late doctrix artis variatae. (Arithmetic) Ex numeris consto, quorum 
discrimina /nonstro. (Geometry) Terra e men suras per mult as dirigo cur as. 
(Astronomy) Ex astris nomen traho, per qttae discitur omen. In the upper 
half of the inner circle : — Philosophia, with her triple crown of Ethiea, Logica 
and Physica, displays a band, bearing the inscription: — Omnis sapientia a 
Domino Deo est; soli quod desiderant facere possunt sapientes. Below this are 
the words : — Septem fontes sapientiae fltiunt de philosophia, quae dicuntur 
liberales artes. Spiritus Sanctus inventor est septem liberalium artium, quae 
sunt Grammatica, Rhetorica, Dialectica, Musica, Arithmetica, Geometria, 
Astronomia. In the lower half of the same circle and above the philosophi. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Socrates and Plato, runs the line: — Nattiram universae rei quern dociiit 
Philosophia. To the left of Socrates : — Philosophi primtim Ethica, postea 
Physica, deinde Rhetoricatti docuerunt, and to the right of Plato : — Philosophi 
sapientes 77iundi et gentitim clerici fuerunt. Outside and below the two circles 
are four Poetae vel Magi, spiritu immundo instincti, with the following ex- 
planation: — Isti imt?tundis spiritibus inspirati scribunt artem magicam et 
poetriam i.e. fabulosa commenta . . . . . . . . 537 

(20) Altar-piece by Francesco Traini (1345) in the Church of S. Caterina, 
Pisa. From the ' Christ in Glory ' a single ray of light falls on each of the six 
figures of Moses and St Paul and the four Evangelists, here represented as 
bending forward from the sky, and holding tablets inscribed with passages 
from the books of the Scriptures which bear their names. In addition to the 
rays that proceed from each of these figures, three from the ' Christ in Glory ' 
may be seen descending on the head of the seated form of St Thomas Aquinas, 
who displays an open book with the first words of his Summa contra 
Gentiles: — Veritatetn meditabitur guttiir tneum, et labia mea detestabuntur 
impium (Proverbs, viii 7), while some of his other works are lying on his lap. 
The figure is stated by Vasari to have been copied from a portrait lent by the 
abbey of Fossanuova (North of Terracina), where Thomas Aquinas died in 
I ■274. Two other rays are represented as coming from the open books dis- 
played by Aristotle on the left and Plato on the right, and described by Vasari 
as the Ethics and Timaens respectively. Another ray, not a beam of illumina- 
tion, but a lightning-flash of refutation, falls from the Summa contra Gentiles, 
striking the edge of a book lying on the ground beside the writhing form of its 
author, Averroes. Many other rays may be seen descending from the several 
works of St Thomas on the two crowds of admiring and adoring Dominicans 
below. In the original, among the rays on the left, may be read the text, hie 
adinvenit omnem viam disciplinae (Baruch, iii 32), and, among those on the 
x\^\1, doctor gentium in fide etveritate (i Tim. ii 7). Cp. Vasari, Vite, Orgagna, 
ad fin., i 6i2f Milanesi; Ro%\m, Storia delta Pittura Italiana {i^^o),\\ 86f,93; 
Renan, Averroes, 305-8'*; Hettner, Italienische Studien (1879), 102-8; and 
Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, i 459 E.T. facing -p. 560 

(21) Colophon of the 'Theological Elements' of Proclus, from a xiii 
century copy of the translation finished at Viterbo by William of Moerbeke, 
18 May, 1268. Prodi Dyadochi Lycii, Platonici philosophi, elementatio theo- 
logtca explicit capitulis 211. Completa fuit translatio hujus opeiis Viterbii a 

fratre G. de Morbecca ordinis fratritm praedicatorum xv KaUndas Junii Anfio 
Domini M^CC sexagesimo ociauo. Reproduced from a photograph taken from 
the original in Peterhouse Library, Cambridge 566 

(22) Grammar and Priscian, from the figures of the Seven Liberal Arts 
and their ancient representatives in the right-hand doorway of the West Front 
of Chartres Cathedral ......... 645 

For the sources from which this and certain of the other cuts are derived, 
see letterpress under the several cuts. 



TITLES OF CERTAIN WORKS OF REFERENCE. 



The following list is limited to those works of reference which 
are most frequently quoted in the present volume, either by the 
author's name alone, or by a much abbreviated title. It has no 
pretensions to being a complete bibliography of the subject, or 
indeed of any part of it. The leading authorities on all points of 
importance are cited in the notes, e.g. on pp. 504, 640. For the 
bibliography in general, the best book of reference is that of 
Hiibner, which is placed at the head of the list. In the case of 
literature later than 1889, this may be supplemented from other 
sources, such as Bursian's Jahresbericht, the Biblioth^ca Philologica 
Classica, and the summaries in the principal Classical periodicals 
of Europe or the United States of America. 

HCTBNER, E. Bibliographie der klassischen Allerthttmswissenschaft ; 
Grundriss zu Vorlesttngen ilber die Geschichte und Encyklopadu der klassischen 
Philologie, ed. 2, 8vo, Berlin, 1889. 

On the Athenian, Alexandrian or Roman Ages. 

Christ, W. Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur bis auf die Zeit Jus- 
tinians (1889*, 1890*); ed. 3, pp. 944; large 8vo, Miinchen, 1898. 

Croiset. Histoire de la Litterature Grecqite, in five vols. (1887-99), esp. 
vol. V pp. I — 314 {Periode Alexandrine) by Alfred Croiset; and pp. 315 — 1067 
{Periode Romaine) by Maurice Croiset; 8vo, Paris, 1899. 

Egger, E. £ssai stir F Histoire de la Critique chez les Grecs (1849); 
ed. 3, pp. 588; small 8vo, Paris, 1887. 

GrafeN'HAN, a. Geschichte der klassischen Philologie im Alterthum, to 
400A.D. ; four vols., pp. 1909; large 8vo, Bonn, 1843-50. 

Nettleship, H. (i) Lectures and Essays on subjects connected -with Latin 
Literature and Scholarship, pp. 381; and (ii) Lectures and Essays, pp. ■269; 
crown 8vo, Oxford, 1885-95. 



XVI TITLES OF CERTAIN WORKS OF REFERENCE. 

Saintsbury, G. a History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe 
from the earliest texts to the present day, vol, I pp. xv + 499 (Classical and 
Mediaeval Criticism) ; 8vo, Edinburgh and London, 1900. 

SCHANZ, M. Geschichie der Rdmischen Litteratur bis zum Gesetzgebung 
des Kaisers Justinian ; two editions of parts i and ii, in three vols., and one ed. 
of part iii, large 8vo, ending (at present) with 324 A.D. MUnchen, 1890 — 1901. 

Steinthal, H. Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft bei den Griechen und 
Romerti (1863), 2 vols. 8vo ; ed. 2, Berlin, 1890-r. 

SusEMiHL, F. Geschichte der griechischen Litteraiur in der Alexandriner- 
zeit, two vols. 8vo, pp. 907 + 771; Leipzig, 1891-2. 

Teuffel, W. S. History of Roman Literature (to about 800 A. D.), revised 
and enlarged by L. Schwabe, translated from the fifth German ed. (1890) by 
G. C. W. Warr, 2 vols. 8vo, pp. 577 + 615; London and Cambridge, 1900. 

On the Middle Ages. 

BURSIAN, C. Geschichte der classischen Philologie im Deutschland, 2 vols. 
8vo, vol. I pp. I — 90, Munchen, 1883. 

Cramer, < Joannes > Fredericus. De Graecis Medii Aevi Studiis, sc. 
De Graecis per Occidentem Studiis (i) usque ad Carolum Magnum, pp.44; 
(2) usque ad expeditiones in Terram Sanctatn susceptas, pp. 65 (the pages in 
both cases are those of the complete editions), small 4to pamphlets, Sundiae 
(Stralsund), 1849-53. 

Ebert, a. Geschichte der Literatur des Mittelalters im Abendlande bis 
zum Beginne des XL Jahrhunderts; 3 vols. 8vo, 1874-87; ed. 2 of vol. i, 
Leipzig, 1889. 

GiDEL, C. Les Etudes grecques eti Europe (fourth cent. — 1453), pp. i — 
289 ol Nouvelles Etudes, 8vo, Paris, 1878. 

Gradenigo, G. Ragionamento Lstorico-Critico intorno alia Letteratura 
Greco- Ltaliana, pp. 176, 8vo, Brescia, 1759. 

Graf, Arturo. Ro7na nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni del Medio 
Evo, two vols, small 8vo; esp. vol. 11 153 — 367 (quoted in notes to pp. 606- 
27); Torino, 1882-3. 

Haur£au, B. La Philosophie Scolastique (1850); ed. 2, vols. I, and II 
(parts i and ii), 8vo, Paris, 1872-80. 

Heeren, a. H. L. Geschichte der classischen Litteratur im Mittelalter, 
2 vols, small 8vo; vol. I, Book i, pp. 10 — 170 (c. 330 — 900 A.D.) ; Book ii, 
pp. 171 — 376(900 — 1400 A.D.), Gottingen, 1822. 

Histoire Literaire de la France, begun at Saint-Germain-des-Pres by the 
Benedictines of the Congregation of Saint-Maur (vols. I — xii, i7.',3-63); and 
continued, as the Hist. Litteraire etc. (vols, xiii — xxxil, 1814-98) by the 
Institut of France. (Victor Le Clerc's survey of cent, xiv in vol. xxiv i — 602 
is quoted from the separate 8vo ed. of 1865.) 4to, Paris, 1733 — 1898. 

JoURDAiN, Amable. Recherches critiques sur Pdge et Vorigine des traduc- 
tions latines d'Aristote, et sur les commentaires grecs ou arabes employes par 
les docteurs scolastiques (1819); ed. 2 (Charles Jourdain), 8vo, Paris, 1843. 



I 

■ 



TITLES OF CERTAIN WORKS OF REFERENCE. xvil 

KORTING, G. Die Anfange der Rencussance-litteratur in Italien, nominally 
vol. Ill but really introductory' to vols, i (Petrarch) and ii (Boccaccio) in the 
unfinished Geschichte der Litteratur Italietis im Zeitalter der Renaissance 
(1878-80); 8vo, Leipzig, 1884. 

Krumbacher, K. Geschiehte der byzantinischen Litteratur von Justinian 
bis sum Efide des Ostromischen Reiches (527 — 1453 A.D.), ed. i, pp. 495, 1890; 
ed. 1, pp. 1 193; large 8vo, Miinchen, 1897. 

Leyser, Polycarp (of Helmstadt). Historia Poetarum et Poematum Medii 
Aeii {400 — 1400A.D.), pp. 1 132; small 8vo, Halle, 1721 and (with new title- 
page) 1 741. 

Maitland, S. R. The Dark Ages (1844), ed. 3; 8vo, London, 1853. 

Maitre, Leon. Les £coles ilpiscopales et Monastiques (768 — 1180A.D.); 
8vo, Paris, 1866. 

MiGXE, L' Abbe J. P. Patrologiae Ctirsus Completus; Series Latina; 217 
vols, royal 8vo, including a large part of the poetic, epistolary, historical and 
philosophical (as well as the ' patristic ') Latin literature of the 2000 years from 
Tertullian (d. 240) to Innocent III (d. 1216), Paris, 1844-55; followed by four 
vols, of Indices, 1862-4. 

Monumenta Gernianiae Historica, folio series of Scriptores etc, edited by 
Pertz and others (Hanover), 1826-91; continued in quarto series, the latter 
including (for the later Roman Age) the best editions of Ausonius, Symmachus, 
Sidonius, and the Variae of Cassiodorus, and (for the Middle Ages) Gregory 
of Tours, the Letters of Gr^ory the Great, and the works of Venantius 
Fortunatus, with four vols, of Poetae Latini, vols, i and 11 edited by DUmmler, 
III by Traube, and iv i by Winterfeld. Berlin, 1877- (in progress). 

MULLIXGER, J. B. The Schools of Charles the Great (quoted mainly in 
chap, xxv), pp. XX +193; 8vo, London, 1877. 

MULLINGER, J. B. History of the University of Cambridge, vol. I, esp. 
pp. I — 212 (containing the introductory chapters on the Middle Ages); 
pp. 686; 8vo, Cambridge, 1873. 

NoRDEN, E. Die Antike Kunstprosa vom VI Jahrhundert v. Chr. bis in 
die Z^it der Renaissance; two vols. 8vo, pp. 969; esp. pp. 657 — 763 {Das 
Mittelalter...). Leipzig, 1898. 

PoOLE, Reginald Lane. Illustraticns of the History of Medieval Thought, 
pp. 376; 8vo, London, 1884. 

Prantl, Carl von. Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, esp. vol. il (1861) ; 
ed. 2, Leipzig, 1885; four vols. Leipzig, 1855-70. 

Rashd\ll, Hastings. Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, vol. i, 
and II (in two Parts); 8vo, Oxford, 1895. 

Renan, E. Aterroes et PAverroisme (1852); ed. 4; 8vo, pp. 486, Paris, 
1882. 

'Rolls Series' ; Re rum Britannicarum Medii Aez'i Scriptores, or Chronicles 
and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published 
under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 244 vols, royal 8vo. The vols, 
quoted are mainly those containing the works of WUliam of Malmesbury, 



xviii ABBREVIATIONS. ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 

Alexander Neckam, Giraldus Cambrensis, Grosseteste, Matthew Paris, 
Roger Bacon and the 'Satirical Latin Poets of cent, xii', i and ii. London, 
1858-96. 

TiRABOSCHi, G. Storia della Letteratura Italiana{&A. i, Modena, 1772- ); 
esp. vols. Ill — V (476-1400 A. D.) of ed. 2, Modena, 1787-94. 

ToUGARD, L'Abbe A. V HelUnisme dans les £crivams du Moyen-Age du 
septihne au douzieme siecle, pp. 70; large Svo, Paris, 1886. 

Ueberweg, F. Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. I (1864); 
ed. 8 Heinze, 1894; E. T. London, 1872 etc. 

Wattenbach, W. Das Schrift%vesen im Mittelalter (1871); ed. 2 (used 
in this vol.), 1875; ed. 3, Leipzig, 1896. 

Wattenbach, W. Deutschlands Geschichtsqudlen im Mittelalter, ending 
c. 1250 (ed. I, 1858); ed. 6, Berlin, 1893-4. 

The latest survey of Mediaeval Latin Literature from 550 to 1350 A. D. is 
to be found in Grober's Grundriss der Ro/naniscken Philoloi^ie, ii 97 — 432, 
Strassburg, 1902. That of Italy is very briefly sketched in Gaspary's //a/«a« 
Literature, i i — 49, E.T. 1901. 



ABBREVIATIONS. 

In the notes and index MA stands for Mittel- Alter, and for Middle Ages. 
A smaller numeral added to that of the volume or page, e.g., ii'^ or 123* 
denotes the edition to which reference is made. 



ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA. 

p. 249 1. 25 and n. 7; for Einsiedlen, read Einsiedeln. 

p. 256 n. 3 1. 5; for 1800, read 1880. 

p. 303, head-line; for aureli, read aurelius. 

p. 334 n. 3 (Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle De Sensu) ; add ed. 
Wendland (1901). 

p. 342 n. I ; after Fotheringhani, add announced, but not yet published, 
n. 3; after E. H. Gifford, add published in 1903. 

p. 346 n. 2; add Themistius on Aristotle, De Caelo, ed. Landauer (1902). 

p. 365 n. 2 (Syrianus on the Metaphysics); add ed. Kroll (1902). 

p. 403 n. 7 (Michael of Ephesus); add, on Ethics v, ed. Hayduck (1901). 

p. 430 col. 4; add Ekkehard II d. 990; and, in col. 5, for 651-90 Aidan 
(where -90 is accidentally repeated from next item), read 651 d. Aidan. 

p. 462 1. 2; for Osnabruck, read Osnabrlick, and see Index. 

p. 465 1. 18; for (emp. Lothair) d. 869, read d. 855. 

p. 507 n. 5 1. 3; for 1817, read 1819. 



I 



OUTLINE OF PRINCIPAL CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. Definition of ' Scholar ' and * Scholarship ';' Scholarship ' 
and ' Philology '. ^X6\o7os, ypafi/iaTiKds, KpiriKhs. Modern ' Philology '. 
General plan of proposed work . . . . . . . i — 15 

BOOK I. THE ATHENIAN AGE, .. 600— ^. 300 B.C. 17—102 

Chronological Table, c. 840— 300 B.C. ... 18 

CHAPTER II. The Study of Epic Poetry. Homer and the rhapsodes. 
Solon, Peisistratus and Hipparchus. Early interpolations. Influence of 
Homer on early Greek poets. Homer and the Sophists. All^orical inter- 
pretation of Homeric mythology. Homer in Plato, Aristophanes and 
Isocrates. Quotations from, and early 'editions' of. Homer. Aristotle on 
Homer. The Study of Hesiod, Antimachus and Choerilus . 19 — 40 

CHAPTER III. The Study of Lyric Poetry. Plato on the study of 
poetry ; vase-painting by Duris. ' Lyric ' and ' melic ' poets. The study of 
the 'melic', elegiac, and iambic poets 41 — 51 

CHAPTER IV. The Study and Criticism of Dramatic Poetry. Literary 
criticism in Attic Comedy. The text of the Tragic Poets. Quotations from 
the dramatists. Dramatic criticism in Plato and Aristotle . . 52 — 66 

CH.A.PTER V. The theory of poetry in Homer, Democritus, Plato and 
Aristotle. Aristotle's treatise on Poetry ..... 67 — 75 

CHAPTER VI. The Rise of Rhetoric, and the Study of Prose. Plato's 
Gorgias and Phaedrus. Aristotle's Rhetoric. Aristotle's relations to Isocrates 
and Demosthenes. Literarj- criticism a branch of Rhetoric. Place of Prose 
in Athenian education. Early transmission of the works of Plato and 
Aristotle. Libraries in the Athenian age 76 — 87 

CHAPTER VII. (i) The Beginnings of Grammar and Etymology. 
Early speculations on the origin of language. Plato's Cratyhis, Grammar 
in Aristotle. (2) History and Criticism of Literature in the Peripatetic 
School. Theophrastus, Praxiphanes and Demetrius of Phaleron 88 — 102 



OUTLINE OF PRINCIPAL CONTENTS. 



BOOK II. THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE, f. 300— I B.C. 103-164 
Chronological Table, 300 — i B.C. . . . 104 

CHAPTER VIII. The School of Alexandria. The Library and the 
Librarians..'' Philetas. Zenodotus. Alexander Aetolus. Lycophron. Calli- 
machus. Eratosthenes. Aristophanes of Byzantium. Aristarchus. Calli- 
stratus. Hermippus. ApoUodorus of Athens. Ammonius. Dionysius Thrax. 
Tyrannion. Didymus 105 — 143 

CHAPTER IX. The Stoics and the School of Pergamon. The Grammar 
of the Stoics. The Pergamene Library. Polemon of Ilium. Demetrius of 
Scepsis. Crates of Mallos. Pergamon and Rome . . . 144 — 164 



BOOK III. THE ROMAN AGE OF LATIN 

SCHOLARSHIP, c. 168 B.C.—^. 530 A. D. . 165—260 

Chronological Table, 300^1 B.C. . . . 166 

CHAPTER X. Latin Scholarship from the death of Ennius (169 B.C.) 
to the Augustan Age. Greek influence before 169 B.C. The battle of Pydna 
and Crates of Mallos (168 B.C.). Accius. Lucilius. Aelius Stilo. Varro. 
'Analogy' and 'Anomaly' from Varro to Quintilian. Literary Criticism in 
Varro, Cicero and Pollio. Atticus and Tiro. Nigidius Figulus. L. Ateius 
Praetextatus. Valerius Cato. Grammatical Terminology. Literary Criticism 
in Horace. Early Study of Virgil and Horace . . . 167 — 185 

Chronological Table, i— 300A. D. . . . 186 

CHAPTER XL Latin Scholarship from the Augustan Age to 300 A. D. 
Hyginus. Fenestella. Verrius Flaccus. Palaemon. The two Senecas. 
Petronius. Persius. Asconius. Pliny the elder. Probus. Quintilian. 
Tacitus. Pliny the younger. Martial. Juvenal. Statius. Suetonius. 
Grammarians. Fronto. Gellius. Terentianus Maurus. Pompeius Festus. 
Aero and Porphyrio. Censorinus ...... 187 — 203 

Chronological Table, 300 — 600 A.D. . , . 204 

CHAPTER XII. Latin Scholarship from 300 to 500 A.D. Nonius. 
Ausonius. Paulinus. Symmachus. The Study of Virgil. Victorinus. Aelius 
Donatus. Charisius and Diomedes. Servius. St Jerome and St Augustine. 
Macrobius. Martianus Capella. Recensions of Solinus, Vegetius and Pom- 
ponius Mela ; and abridgement of Valerius Maximus. Apollinaris Sidonius. 
Schools of learning in Gaul. Grammarians and Commentators. Recension 
of Virgil by Asterius (494) 205 — 236 

CHAPTER XIII. Latin Scholarship from 500 to 530 A.D. Boethius. . 
Cassiodorus. Benedict and Monte Cassino. Priscian . . 237 — 260 



OUTLINE OF PRIN'CIPAL CONTENTS. 



BOOK IV. THE ROMAN AGE OF GREEK 

SCHOLARSHIP, c. i—c. 530 A. D. . 261—375 

Chronological Table, 1 — 300 A.D. . . . 262 

CHAPTER XIV. Roman Study of Greek between 164 B.C. and 14A.D. 
Histories of Rome written by Romans in Greek. The influence of Greek 
studies on Varro and Cicero ; on Lucretius, Catullus, Cinna and Varro Atacinus ; 
on Caesar, Nepos and Sallust ; on Virgil, Horace, Gallus, Propertius and 
Ovid; and on Pompeius Trogus and Li\-y .... 263 — 272 

CHAPTER XV. Greek Literary Criticism in the First Century of the 
Empire. Dionysius of Halicamassus. Caecilius of Calacte. The Treatise 
on the Sublime 273 — 286 

CHAPTER XVI. Verbal Scholarship in the First Century of the Empire. 
Juba, Pamphilus and Apion. Minor Grammarians . . . 287 — 290 

CHAPTER XVII. The Literary Revival at the end of the First Century. 
Dion Chrysostom. Plutarch. Favorinus . .... 291 — 301 

CHAPTER XVIII. Greek Scholarship in the Second Century. Hadrian. 
Herodes Atticus. M. Aurelius. Arrian and other historians. Philon of 
Byblus, Phlegon of Tralles and Ptolemaeus Chennus. Pausanias. Literary 
rhetoricians : — Aristides and Maximus Tyrius ; Lucian and Alciphron. 
Technical rhetoricians :—Aelius Theon, Hermogenes and Demetrius. Gram- 
marians : — ApoUonius Dyscolus, Herodian and Nicanor. Lexicc^raphers 
and ' Atticists': — Phrj-nichus, Moeris, Harpocration and Pollux. Hephaestion. 
SjTnmachus on Aristophanes. Commentators on Plato. Galen. Sextus 
Empiricus. Clement of Alexandria ...... 302 — 326 

CHAPTER XIX. Greek Scholarship in the Third Century. The 
Philostrati and Callistratus. Aelian. Athenaeus. Rhetoricians: — Apsines, 
Minucianus, Menander and Longinus. Diogenes Laertius. Alexander of 
Aphrodisias. Rise of Neo-PIatonism. Origan. Plotinus and Porphyry. 
Aristides Quintilianus 327 — 338 

Chronological Table, 300 — 600 A.D. . . . 340 

CHAPTER XX. Greek Scholarship in the Fourth Century. Eusebius. 
Dexippus, Himerius, Themistius, Libanius and Julian. Quintus Smymaeus. 
Theodosius, Ammonius and Helladius 341 — 355 

CHAPTER XXI. Greek Scholarship from 400 to 530 a.d. Poets, 
Historians and Philosophers. Hypatia, Sjmesius and Palladas. Neo- 
Platonists: — Plutarchus, Hierocles, Syrianus, Proclus, Hermeias, Ammonius 
and Damascius. The School of Athens closed by Justinian (529). Simplicius 
and Olympiodoras II. ' Dionysius the Areopagite '. Grammarians, Lexico- 
graphers, Authors of Chrestomathies and Rhetoricians. Schools of learning 
in the East. The end of the Roman Age (529) . . . 356 — 375 



OUTLINE OF PRINCIPAL CONTENTS. 



BOOK V. THE BYZANTINE AGE, 

c. 530— f. 1350 A. D. . . . 376-428 

Chronological Table, 600 — 1000 A. D. . , . 378 

CHAPTER XXII. Byzantine Scholarship from 529 to 1000 A. D. 

Period I (529 — 641). Choeroboscus. Stephanus of Alexandria. The 
Chronicon Paschale and Malalas. 

Period II {641 — 850). John of Damascus. Theognostus. The study of 
Aristotle among the Syrians and Arabians. 

Period III (8,50 — 1350). The Classics in the Ninth Century. Photius and 
Arethas. The encyclopaedias of Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The Anthology 
of Cephalas. The lexicon of Suidas ..... 379 — 399 

Chronological Table, looo — c. 1453 A.D. . . 400 
CHAPTER XXIII. Period III continued. Byzantine Scholarship, 1000 — 
1350 A.D. and after. Psellus. Commentators on Aristotle. Etymological and 
other Lexicons. Tzetzes. Theodorus Prodromus. Eustathius. Gregorius 
Corinthius. The Latin conquest of Constantinople (1204). Constantinople 
and the West. Scholars under the Palaeologi:— Planudes, Moschopuhis, 
Thomas Magister, Triclinius and Chrysoloras. Characteristics of Byzantine 
Scholarship. The Greek Classics in and after Century ix. Their preser- 
vation in the Byzantine Age. The Turkish conquest of Constantinople 
(1453) 401—428 

BOOK VI. THE MIDDLE AGES IN THE WEST, 

c. 530— f. 1350 A.D. . . . 429—650 

Chronological Table, 600 — 1000 A.D. . . . 430 

CHAPTER XXIV. Gregory the Great. Gregory of Tours. ' Virgilius 
Maro', the Grammarian. Columban and Bobbio; Gallus and St Gallen. 
Isidore of Seville. Greek in Spain, Gaul, Italy, and Ireland. Theodore of 
Tarsus. Aldhelm. Bede. Boniface and Fulda . . . 431 — 454 

CHAPTER XXV. Charles the Great and Alcuin. Theodulfus of 
Orleans. The Irish monks, Clement, Dungal and Donatus. Einhard. 
Rabanus Maurus. Walafrid Strabo. Servatus Lupus and the Classics. 
Joannes Scotus. Eric and Remi of Auxerre. The Classics at Pavia, 
Modena and St Gallen.' 'The monk of Einsiedeln'. Ecclesiastical use 
of Greek. Hucbald and Abbo 'Cernuus'. Alfred the Great and his 
translations .......... 455 — 482 

CHAPTER XXVI. The Tenth Century. Regino of Priim and Ratherius 
of Liege. Gesta Berengarii. Odo of Cluni. Bmno. Gunzo. Hroswitha. 
Hedwig and Ekkehard II. Walther of Speier. Gerbert, Fulbert and Richer. 
Luitprand. Abbo of Fleury. ^Ifric of Eynsham . . . 483 — 495 



OUTLINE OF PRINCIPAL CONTENTS. 



Chronological Table, looo— 1200 A.D. . . . 496 
CHAPTER XXVII. The Eleventh Century. Chartres, St Evroult 
and Bee. Bamberg and Paderbom. Lambert of Hersfeld and Adam of 
Bremen. Notker Labeo and Hermannus ' Contractus '. Anselm of Bisate. 
Desiderius, Alfanus and Petrus Damiani. Greek in the eleventh century. 
Greek Lectionary of St Denis. Dudo of St Quentin. Carthusians and 

Cistercians 497 — 503 

CHAPTER XXVIII. The Twelfth Century. The early Schoolmen and 
the Classics. The Schciastic Problem ; Realism and Nominalism. Mediaeval 
knowledge of Plato; and of Aristotle prior to 11 28 A.D. Lanfranc and 
Anselm. Abelard. Bernard of Chartres, William of Conches, Adelard of 
Bath, Gilbert de la Porree. Otto of Freising. Theodoric of Chartres. 
Bernard Silvester of Tours ....... 504 — 516 

CHAPTER XXIX. The Twelfth Century continued. John of Salisbury. 
Peter of Blois. Giraldus Cambrensis. Natives of England, who wrote 
historical Latin Prose in Centuries Xll — xiv. Latin Verse in Centuries 
XII — XIII, in Italy, England, France and Germany. Greek in France, 
Germany, Italy and England ....... 517 — 536 

Chronological Table, 1200 — 1400A.D. . . . 538 

CHAPTER XXX. The Thirteenth Century. The new Aristotle. 
Arabian and Jewish exponents of Greek philosophy. Latin translations from 
the Arabic. Early study of Aristotle in Paris. Alexander of Hales. Edmund 
Rich. William of Auvergne. Grosseteste. Vincent of Beauvais. Albertus 
Magnus. Thomas Aquinas. William of Moerbeke . Siger of Brabant. Gilles 
de Paris. Geoffrey of Waterford ...... 539 — 566 

CHAPTER XXXI. The Thirteenth Century and after, (i) Roger 
Bacon. Raymundus Lullius. Duns Scotus. William Shirwood. William of 
Ockham. Walter Burley. Bradwardine. Richard of Bury. Buridan. Jean 
de Jandun. (2) Imerius and Accursius at Bologna; Balbi of Genoa; Petrus 
of Padua. The teaching of Greek, and the study of the Latin Aristotle, in 
Paris. Precursors of the Renaissance in Northern Italy. The Latin studies 

of Dante 567 — 593 

CHAPTER XXXII. The mediaeval copyists and the Classics. Sur^nval 
of the Latin Classics in France, Germany, Italy and England. Rise of the 
mediaeval Universities. Sur%-ey of the principal Latin Classics quoted or 
imitated in the Middle Ages, recorded in mediaeval Catalogues, and preserved 
in mediaeval Manuscripts. Grammar in the Middle Ages. The study of the 
mediaeval 'Arts' versus the study of the Classical Authors. The conflict 
between the grammatical and literary School of Orleans and the logical School 
of Paris. The Battle of the Seven Arts (c. ii-jo). The prophecy of the author 
of that poem fulfilled by the birth (in 1304) of Petrarch, the morning-star of 
the Renaissance ^9^ — 650 



Es tu scolaris ? Sum. Quid est scolaris ? Est homo discens 
virtutes cum solicitudine....Qualis substantia est scolaris 1 Est 
substantia animata sensiiiva scientiae et virtutum susceptibilis. 

From Es tu scolaris?, a. mediaeval 
catechism of Grammar printed in 
Babler's Beitrdge (1885), pp. 190 f. 



I 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

The term ' scholar ', in its primary sense a ' learner ', is applied 
in its secondary sense to one who has learned 
thoroughly all that ' the school ' can teach him, one Psthoilr" °^ 
who through his early training and his constant 
self-culture has attained a certain maturity in precise and accurate 
knowledge. Thus Shakespeare says of Cardinal Wolsey : — ' he 
was a scholar, and a ripe and good one'^ The term is specially 
appHed to one who has attained a high degree of skill in the 
master)' of language, as where Ruskin says in Sesame and Lilies : — 
' the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once 
mark a scholar ". It is often still further limited to one who ' has 
become familiar with all the very best Greek and Latin authors ',. 
'has not only stored his memory with their language and ideas, 
but has had his judgment formed and his taste corrected by living 
intimacy wth those ancient wits'^ The true scholar, though in 
no small measure he necessarily lives in the past, will make it his 
constant aim to perpetuate the past for the benefit of the present 
and the future. He ^nll obey the bidding of George Herbert : — 
' If studious, copie fair what Time hath blurr'd '^. Even if he has 
long been in the position of a teacher of others, he will never 
cease to be a learner himself; his motto will be discendo docebis, 
docendo disces ; like the ' Clerk ' in Chaucer's Prologue, ' gladly 
wolde he leme, and gladly teche ' ; as he advances in years, he 
will still endeavour to say with Solon : — yrjpda-Kw 8' aici iroXXd 
8i8acrKd/i,€vos ; and, when he dies, he may well be content if his 
brother-scholars or his pupils pay him any part, however small, of 

1 J7e»ry VIII, iv ii 51. -' p. 24 (1888). 

* Donaldson's Ctcusical Scholarship and Classical Learning, 1856, p. 150. 

* The Church Porch, xv. 



INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 



the honour paid to a votary of learning by a Robert Browning, 
and deem him not unworthy of A Grammarian'' s Funeral. 

' Scholarship ' may be defined as ' the sum of the mental 
attainments of a scholar '. It is sometimes identified 
' s^ho"arship°^ ^i^'^ * learning ' or ' erudition ' ; but it is often con- 
trasted with it. Nearly half a century ago this 
contrast was clearly drawn by two eminent contemporaries at 
Oxford and Cambridge. ' I maintain,' says Donaldson, ' that 
not all learned men are accomplished scholars, though any accom- 
plished scholar may, if he chooses to devote the time to the 
necessary studies, become a learned nian'\ 'It is not a know- 
ledge ', writes Mark Pattison, ' but a discipline, that is required ; 
not science, but the scientific habit ; not erudition, but scholar- 
ship '^ 'Classical Scholarship' may be described as being, 
and in the present work is understood to be, ' the accurate study 
of the language, literature, and art of Greece and Rome, and of 
all that they teach us as to the nature and the history of man '. 
As compared with the term 'philology', often borrowed in 
Schoiarshi English from the languages of France and Germany, 
and ' Phiio- the term ' scholarship ' has the advantage of being a 
more distinctively English word, and of having the 
terms ' scholar ' and ' scholarly ' in exact correspondence with it, 
whereas ' philology ' is in England a borrowed word of ambiguous 
meaning, while 'philologer' and 'philologist' are apt to be used in 
a linguistic sense alone. Thus, Scott in the Antiquary makes one 
of his characters say of the question whether a particular word is 
Celtic or Gothic : — ' I conceive that is a dispute which may be 
easily settled by philologists, if there are any remains of the 
language '^ We may also recall the memorable words of Sir 
William Jones : — ' No philologer could examine the Sanskrit, 
Greek, and Latin without believing them to have sprung from 
some common source '■•. ' Philologer' is hardly ever used in any 
wider sense ; even in the linguistic sense, the word we generally 
prefer is 'scholar'. 'When I speak contemptuously o{ philology', 
says Ruskin, ' it might be answered me, that I am a bad scholar''^. 

1 Classical Scholarship and Classical Leartiing, p. 149 (1856). 

2 Essays, i 425 (written in 1855). * c. vi p. 61 of Centenary ed. 

•* Works, iii 34, ed. 1807. ' Modem Painters, IV xvi § 38 n. 



I.] SCHOLARSHIP AND 'PHILOLOGY'. 3 

The present confusion in the English use of the word ' philology ' 
may be illustrated by the fact that in a standard work bearing the 
title of a ' Manual of Comparative Philology ', the term ' Philology ' 
is frequendy used in the same sense as ' Comparative Philology ', 
and as a synonym for ' the Science of Language '. The author, I 
need hardly add, is fully conscious of the confusion between the 
English and German senses of the word. " In Germany " (as he 
justly observes) "the word Philologie means only the body of 
knowledge dealing with the literary side of a language as an 
expression of the spirit and character of a nation and consequently 
the department dealing with language as language forms but a 
subordinate part of this wide science. But in England the study 
of language as such has developed so largely in comparison with 
the wider science of Philology under which it used to rank, that it 
has usurped for itself the name of ' Comparative Philology ' and in 
recent years of ' Philology ' without any limitation '" '. Similarly, in 
the article on ' Philology ' in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia 
Britantiica :— " Philology is the generally accepted comprehensive 
name for the study of the word ; it designates that branch of 
knowledge which deals with human speech, and with all that 
speech discloses as to the nature and history of man. Philology 
has two principal divisions, corresponding to the two uses of 
' word ' or ' speech ', as signifying either what is said, or the 
language in which it is said, as either the thought expressed — 
which, when recorded, takes the form of literature — or the instru- 
mentality of its expression : these dixnsions are the literary and 
the linguistic... Continental usage (especially German) tends 
more strongly than English to restrict the name ' philology ' to " 
the literary sense. Meanwhile, in England, it is unfortunately the 
fact that ' philology ' and ' comparative philology ' are constantly 
confounded with one another. Yet, some forty years ago, Max 
Miiller insisted that comparative philology has really nothing what- 
ever in common with philology in the wider meaning of the word. 
^ Philology... IS, an historical science. Language is here treated 
simply as a means. The classical scholar uses Greek or Latin... 
as a key to the understanding of the literary monuments which 
bygone ages have bequeathed to us, as a spell to raise from the 

^ P. Giles, Manual of Comparative Philology, p. 3 f. 

I — 2 



INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 



tomb of time the thoughts of great men in different ages and 
different countries, and as a means ultimately to trace the social, 
moral, intellectual, and religious progress of the human race.... 
In comparative philology the case is totally different. In the 
science of language, languages are not treated as a means ; 
language itself becomes the sole object of scientific inquiry ' ^ 

The above reasons are sulificient to justify the choice of the 
title ' History of Classical Scholarship ' for a work appealing 
primarily to students and scholars who, in England or elsewhere, 
claim English as their mother-tongue. But, whether, in this 
connexion, we prefer to use the English word 'Scholarship', 
or the foreign word ' Philology ', in either case the history of the 
latter term is part of the history of our subject, and a few pre- 
liminary paragraphs may well be devoted to a brief examination 
of the ancient Greek originals from which that term and also the 
terms 'philologer', ' grammarian ' and ' critic ' are directly derived. 
The variations in the meanings of the ancient terms themselves, 
as compared with those of their modern derivatives, are not 
uninteresting or unimportant. 

The word <j>iXoXoyia has a somewhat varied history^. It is 
first found in Plato, where it means the ' love of dialectic ' or ' of 
scientific argument '^. The corresponding adjective ^tXoAoyos is 
applied to ' a lover of discourse '*, as contrasted with 
ipi o 0-yos ^ 'hater of discourse '■\ It is apphed to Athens 
as a city 'fond of conversation', in contrast with Sparta and Crete 
with their preference for brevity of speech". Socrates applies it to 
himself in a studiously ambiguous sense, either ' fond of talking ', 
or 'fond of speeches' (like those of the orator Lysias)". Else- 
where, when added to ^iAoo-o</)os, it means a 'lover of reason '^ 
Thus its uses in Plato are as varied as the meanings of the word 
Xoyos, 'speech', 'discourse', 'conversation', 'argument', 'reason'. 

^ Lectures on the Science of Language, i 24, ed. 1866. 

^ Lehrs, De vocabulis <f>L\6\oyos, ypafi/xaTiKds, kpitik6s (Konigsberg, 1838); 
reprinted in Appendix to Herodia7ii scripta tria, p. 379 — 401, 1848; cp. 
Boeckh, Encyklopadie...der philologischen Wis sense haft en, p. 22 — 24. 

^ Theaet. 146 A. * ib. 161 A. ' Laches 188 c. 

^ Laws 641 E; cp. Isocr. Antid. 296, where <f>i\o\oyia and evrpaireXia are 
characteristic of Athens. 

'' Phaedrus 236 E. ^ Rep. 582 E. 



I.] *IA0A0r02. 



I 



Aristotle describes the Spartans as having made Chilon, one of 
the ' Wise Men ' of Greece, a member of their Council, although 
they were rJKia-Ta <^iXoA.oyoi, 'the least literary of all people"; 
and in the ' Aristotelian ' writings we find included under the 
general phrase, ocra irepl <f)LXoXoyiav, questions of reading, rhetoric, 
style and history-. Thus far, the word has not yet acquired any 
narrower signification. When Stobaeus (in the fifth centurj' of 
our era) in telling an anecdote of Pericles, uses ^lAoAoyos in one 
of its later senses, that of ' educated ', in contrast to ' uneducated ' 
(ttTratStirro?), he is not really quoting the language of Pericles 
himself, but is only reflecting the usage of a later age^ 

The first to assume the title of <j>ik6koyo<; at Alexandria was 
the learned and versatile scholar, astronomer, geographer, chrono- 
loger, and literary historian, Eratosthenes (c. 276-195 B.C.). The 
same title was assumed at Rome by a friend of Sallust and Pollio, 
a Roman freedman of Athenian birth, Lucius Ateius Praetextatus 
{^. 86-29 B.C.)*. The term is applied by Plutarch to those who, 
in reading poetr}-, are attracted by its beauty of expression*. In 
late Greek it is mainly found in two senses (i) 'studious', 'fond 
of learning ', (2) ' learned ', ' accomplished '^ The first is approved 
by the Atticist Phr}nichus ; the second is condemned^. 

The word is frequent in the familiar Latin of Cicero's Letters ; 
philologia is there applied to the study of literature '*, and philo- 
logiis means 'learned' or 'literar)''*. Vitruvius calls Homer 
poetarum parais philologiaeque omnis dux, ' the father of poetr)- and 
the foremost name in all literature ', and describes the Pergamene 
princes as prompted to found their famous Library by the delights 

^ Rh€t. ii 23, II. - Probl. x^i, p. 916/J. 

^ Stobaeus, 70, 17. 

■• Suetonius, Dd Graniniaticis, 10. 

® De Audiendis Poetis, c. 1 1 . 

* Lehrs I.e. p. 380, (i) erttditionis amicus, sttuiiosus ; (2) eruditus, litte- 
raius. 

' p. 483 Rutherford, (pCKoKoyov <pL\Cov Xoyovt koI a-rovSa^uy repl rai- 
Beiav oi Se vvv eVi efMireipiav riOiaaiv ovk 6pdQ)S. 

* Ad Alt. ii 17, I ; (Cicero filius) ad Fam. xvi 21,4; avfxipiXoKoyetv = una 
studere, ib. § 8. 

' Ad An. xiii 12, 3; 52, 2; xv 15, 2 ; used as a Subst. in xv 29, i and ad 
Quint.fr. ii 10, 3. 



INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 



oi phiiologia, or ' literature ' \ In Seneca's l^tttr^ philologus is 
contrasted with grammaticus in the lower sense of the latter : the 
philologus (he observes) will notice points of antiquarian interest ; 
the grammaticus, matters of expression^. Lastly, in the fanciful 
allegory de nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, written by Martianus 
Capella in the fifth century, the bride Philologia appears as 
the goddess of speech, attended by seven bridesmaids personifying 
the seven liberal Arts. In modern Latin the meaning oi philologus 
had been made much more comprehensive. It is now used in the 
sense of a ' scholar ', thus including all that ancient writers under- 
stood by grafnmaticus in the higher sense of the term, and much 
more besides, — not only a knowledge of the languages of Greece 
and Rome but also a knowledge of all that contributes to the 
accurate understanding of their literature and their art. Those 
who in modern Latin are called philologi were in ancient times 
known either as gram?natici (in its higher sense), or as critici. 

Having briefly traced the history of the word ^lAoAoyos, we 
may now deal no less briefly with the two terms which in modern 
Latin, and in French and German, it has ultimately superseded, 
the terms ypa/A/xaTiKos and KptriKos. 

In the golden age of Greek literature the common meaning of 
ypa/A/Aara is 'letters of the alphabet', and ypa/A- 
fx.arLK6<i is applied to one who is familiar with those 
letters, knows 'their number and their nature'*; one in short who 
has learnt to read'*. In the same age rix^-q ypafjifiaTiK-rj is simply 
the art of ypa/x/Aara^, the art of reading". Not in the same age 
only, but in all later ages, ypa/x^iano-Tr/s is a teacher of ypa/x/Aara, 
a teacher of reading and writing''. The Latin term corresponding 
to ypa[ji.fxaTia-T7]<i is Htterator'^ . 

1 vii Praef. § 8 and § 4. 

^ Ep. 108 § 29. 

^ Plato, Philcbus 17 B; cp. Theaet. 207 B; Xen. Mem. iv 2, 20. 

* Plato, Rep. 402 B. 

® Philebits 18 D, Cratylns 431 E; Soph. 253 A; cp. t\ tQ>v ypafj,fj.dTwv ixdOrj- 
a-is ( Theaet. 206 A, 207 D ; Protag. 345 A). 

6 Aristotle, Pol. 1337 <5 25 f ; Categ. c. 9; Top. vi 5, 142 b 31 f. 

^ Plato, Eiithydeinus 279 E, irepi ypafiixdroiv ypa<f>ris re Kai dvayi>u}(r€0}s ol 
ypa/x/jLaTiffrai, cp. Prolag. 326 D, Laws 812 A. 

^ Suetonius, De Granwiaticis 4. 



I.] rPAMMATIKOS. 



I 



In the earlier time ypd/iftara seldom means ' literature ' ' ; but 
it is to this sense of the word that we owe the new meaning given 
to its derivative ypa/x/iaTiKos in the Alexandrian age. That new 
meaning is a ' student of literature ', especially of poetical litera- 
ture ; and similarly ypa/t/zariKjf now comes to mean the * study of 
literature ', especially of poetry. ypafifjMTiKrj in this new sense of 
the term is sometimes said to have begun with Theagenes of 
Rhegium (y?. 525 B.C.), who was the earliest of the allegorical 
interpreters of Homer'-. \Mien Plato is described as the first who 
speculated on the nature of ypafiixaTiKij^, we may assume that the 
reference is to the Crafj/us, a dialogue in which he discusses the 
nature of words. Aristotle is similarly described as the founder 
of the art of ypafiftaTiiaj in that higher sense which implies the 
learned study of poetic literature*. But this is only the language 
of /afer writers, and we may be sure that neither Theagenes nor 
Plato nor Aristotle would have described himself as ypafifxaTiKo-s, 
except in the sense applicable to all who could read and wTite. 

The first who was called ypa/x/AariKos in the new sense of the 
term was a pupil of Theophrastus, the Peripatetic Praxiphanes of 
Rhodes {Ji. 300 B.C.), the author of certain works on history and 
poetry. According to another tradition, the first who received 
this designation was Antidorus of Cumae, who wTote a treatise on 
Homer and Hesiod, and also a work on Style, and may be placed 
ver}' early in the Alexandrian age. After the time of Antidorus, 
we find Eratosthenes giving the title ypa/i/xarixa to two of his 
works, but their contents are unknown'. Dionysius Thrax (bom 

^ It seems to bear this meaning in Plato ^po/. 26 D, aTelpovi ypa/inarufy, 
though this is denied by Kailiel in Hermes xxv (1890) 102 f. 

^ Schol. on Dionysius Thrax, p. 729, 22, {ypa/ifiaTiKri) ap^an^vri nh avb 
Qeayevovs, reXeaOeura Si rapa tuh IleptxaTTjrticwi' npa^i^dyovs kcu 'ApurrO' 
reXoi/s. 

2 Diogenes Laertius, iii 25, irpQnoi iOewprjae Trjs ypafinaTuciji Tr)y dvvafuy. 

* Dion Chrysostom, Or. 53, i, d<f>' o5 <f>a<Ti tt/v KpiriKi^v re Kai y pafifiaTiKiiv 
apxh" Xa^ety. Cp. Susemihl, Geschichte der Gr. Lift, in der Alexandriturzeit, 
ii 663—5. 

* Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromateis i p. 309, 'Avriddjpoi ('AwoXX65wpos MS) 
6 KvixaTos irpCiTo% toO KpiTiKov uffrryvaaTo {wapTiT-qaaTO Usenet) TOtvoixa acoJ 
ypafj-fjutTiKos irpoariyopevdri. ivioi Se 'EpaToadeyr] rov Kvprjvaioy (pcunv, eT€i5r] 
i^edwKev ovros ^i^XLa 8vo, ypafJLfJMTiKa einypd\pas. wvo^Aad-q 5i ypafXfj.aTiK6s, «s 
vvy (c. 200 A.D.) ovo/xd^ofiev, vpQros l\pa!^i.<t>dvTp {c. 300 B.C.). 



8 INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 

about 1 66 B.C.), in the earliest treatise on Grammar now extant, 
defined ypa/x/xariKr; as being ' in general the practical knowledge 
of the usage of writers of poetry and prose ' '. He divided it into 
six parts: — (i) accurate reading, (2) explanation of poetic figures 
of speech, (3) exposition of rare words and of subject-matter, 
(4) etymology, (5) statement of regular grammatical forms. These 
five parts form the ' minor ' or ' imperfect ' art of Grammar, the 
' perfect ' art including : (6) 'the criticism of poetry, which is the 
noblest part of all'^ A better subdivision gives us only four 
parts, (i) correction of the text, (2) accurate reading, (3) exposi- 
tion, (4) criticism". Dionysius of Halicarnassus twice describes 
rrjv ypafjLfxaTLKrjv as including the art of reading and writing and 
the art of grammar, without extending its meaning to literary 
criticism*. 

In the Roman age the Alexandrian meaning of ypa/x/xaTtKos is 
noticed by Suetonius who makes the borrowed word grammaticus 
synonymous with the Latin litteratus^. He adds that Cornelius 
Nepos agrees with this view, and regards litterati and gratnmatici 
as equivalent to poetarum interpretes. Similarly Cicero treats 
grammatica (neuter plural) as synonymous with studium litterarion^^ 
and includes in its province poetarum pertractatio, historiarum 
cognitio, verborum interpretatio, pronuntiandi quidam sonus''. Else- 
where he describes grammatici as interpretes poetarum*. Just as 
Cicero identifies the science with studium litteranmi, so Quin- 
tilian describes it as sometimes translated by litteratura^, and as 
including disquisitions on style and subject-matter, the explanation 
of difficulties and the interpretation of poetry'". He divides it 
into two parts, (i) 'the science of correct language', (2) 'the 

^ ifiTreipla lis iirl to ttoXu tQv trapa Troi-qrals re /cat (rvyypacpeuaL Xeyo/xdvuif 
(Iwan M tiller's Handbuch i 130^, 152^). 

'^ Cp. Philo p. 348 B c and 462 g; and Sext. Emp. pp. 224, 226, quoted 
by Classen, De Gram. Gr. primordiis, p. 12 f. 

'^ Schol. on Dion. Thrax in Bekker's Anecd. 736, (fJ.4pos) diopOuTiKdv, cwa- 
yvucTTiKdv, i^TjyriTiKdv, kpitlk6v. 

* De Dent. p. 11 15 R, De Comp. Verb. p. 414 Schaefer (c. 14). 

' De Grammaticis 4. *• De Or. i § 10. ^ ?(^. § 187. 

8 De Div. i § 34; cp. ib. 116 and Orator % 72. Cp. ad Ait. vii 3, 10, quo- 
niam grammaticus es, si hoc mihi i'riTrj/j.a persolveris, magna me molestia libe- 
raris. 

» II i 4. i« I ii 14. 



I 

I 



I.] PHILOLOGUS AND GRAMMATICUS. 9 

interpretation of poetry"; the former, he adds, must include 
'correct writing', and the latter must be preceded by 'reading 
aloud with correctness'. It thus embraces correct reading and 
correct writing, and, beside these, criticism, which detects spurious 
lines or spurious works, and draws up select lists of approved 
authors -. Seneca, as an adherent oC the Stoic philosophy, which 
had paid special attention to Grammar, uses grammaticus in a 
somewhat narrower sensed He also compares the different lights 
in which Cicero's treatise de Republica is viewed by a philosophus, 
a philologus and a grammaticus. While the philosophus wonders 
that so much can be argued on the side contrary to that of 
Justice, the philologus notices that, of two kings of Rome, the 
father of the one (Ancus) and the mother of the other (Xuma) 
were unknown ; also that Romulus is said to have p>erished during 
an eclipse of the sun, that the dictator was formerly called the 
magister populi, and that there was a provocatio ad populum even 
in the time of the kings, 'as Fenestella also holds'. But the 
grammaticus (he continues) notices (i) verbal expressions, such as 
reapse for re ipsa, (2) changes in the meaning of words, as the use 
of calx for creta, of opis pretiutn (in Ennius) for operae pretium, 
(3) the phrase cculi porta, borrowed by Ennius from Homer, and 
itself borrowed in turn by Virgil \ Lastly, when Aulus Gellius 
(/?. 150 A.D.) wished to ascertain the meaning of the phrase ex 
iure manum consertum, he applied to a grammaticus, who professed 
to expound Virgil, Plautus and Ennius, but (as it happened) was 
quite unaware that this legal phrase was actually found in Ennius'. 
Thus it appears that, in and after the Alexandrian age, ypa/xfia- 
Tuco's mainly implied aptitude in the study and interpretation of 
poetry, and ypafjLftaTiKrj included not only Grammar but also (in 
its higher sense) the criticism of the poets. 

^ I iv 2. 

2 I iv 3, (iudicium) quo quidem ita severe sunt usi veteres grammatici, ut 
non versus modo censoria quadam virgula notare et libros, qui falso viderentur 
inscripti, tanquam subditos summovere familia permiserint sibi, sed auctores 
alios in ordinem redegerint, alios omnino exemerint numero. 

^ £/>. 88 § 3. grammaticus circa curam sermonis versatur, et, si latius eva- 
gari vult, circa historias, iam ut longissime fines suos proferat, circa carmina. 

* Ep. 108 §§ 30—34. 

' Gellius, XX 10. 



INTRODUCTORY, [CHAP. 



The Alexandrian use of ypa/x/iaTtKos in the above sense was 
apparently somewhat later than the use of KptrtKos 
in the same general sense. The word Kpirtfcos is 
found in a pseudo-platonic dialogue of uncertain date, in a passage 
in which the Greek boy, on reaching the age of seven, is humor- 
ously described as 'suffering much at the hands of tutors and 
trainers, and teachers of reading and writing ' (ypa/A/Aarto-Tai), and 
as 'passing, as he grows up, under the control of teachers of 
mathematics, tactics and criticism ' ((cptriKoi)'. There is reason to 
believe that, just as this use of KpiTiKol probably preceded that of 
ypa/x/AttTtKoi in its Alexandrian sense, similarly the term kpltlktj 
was earlier than the corresponding term ypa/i,/AttTi»cr;^. 

Criticism was regarded as founded by Aristotle, and among 
its foremost representatives in the Alexandrian and Pergamene 
age were Aristarchus at Alexandria and Crates at Pergamon^ 
Crates and his pupils of the Pergamene School subordinated 
ypafifjLaTLKij to KpLTLKrj, and preferred to be called kpltlkol*. Criti- 
cism was among the higher functions of the ypafxp.ariK6<;. Thus 
Athenaeus {fl. c. 200 a.d.) describes the authorship of certain 
poems as a matter for the critical judgement (Kpiveiv) of the best 
ypapLixaTLKoi^ ; and Galen (130-200 a.d.) wrote a treatise on the 
question whether any one could be kpltik6<; and also ypa/xynariKo's, 
implying a certain distinction between these terms. 

Meanwhile, more than two centuries before Galen, Cicero in 
one of his letters, after alluding to Aristarchus, describes himself 

^ Axiochus 366 E. Cp. P. Girard, P J^ducation Athhiienne, p. 224 — 7. 

^ Schol. on Dionysius Thrax, p. 673, 19, eTnyiypavrai yap to vaphv aiy- 
ypaixfia Kara ^iv Tiva% irepl ypa/xpLaTiKTJt, Kara di er^povs Trepi KpLTiKTJs rix"''!^' 
KpiTiKT] de X^yerai r) rix^V f'^ '''°^ KaWlffrov fi^povi. Bekker, Anecdota, p. 1140, 
t6 irpdrepov KpiTiKJ) eXiyero (17 ypafifiariKri), xal ol ra^TTiv fi€Ti6vTes KpiriKol. Cp. 
Usener in Susemihl i.e. ii 665. 

^ Dion Chrysostom, Or. 53, i/Apia-rapxos Kal Kpdrrjs Kal Srepoi wXelovs tCiv 
v<TTfpov ypa/jL/u-aTiKLOv k\t]04vtwv, irpbrepov 5i KpiTLKwv, Kal Stj Kal ainbi 6 
'Api(7T0T^\7]i, d(f>' ov <j>a<Ti Tr}v KpiTiKifiP T€ Kal ypaixfJLaTiKTjv apxhv Xa^Seiv. 

■* Sextus Emp., Math, i 79, (K/adrTjs) l\^y€ bia^iptiv tov KpiriKbv tov ypafi- 
p.aTLKOv- Kal TOV fikv KpiTiKou Trdcmjs, <t)r)<Ti, del XoyiKrjs iinaTrifj.7]s l/iireipov elvai' 
rhv S^ ypafj-fiaTLKOv aw\G)S yXucrffQu i^7)yy)TLKOV Kal Trpoffipdias diroSoTiKhv kt\,, 
and 248, Tai/piffKOj 6 KpaTr^Tos (XKOvffTrjS, ucrirep ol &\\oi KpiTiKoL, viroTciaffuv 
Ty KpiriKy TTjv ypa/j./j.aTiKr]i> kt\. 

^ p. 116. 



I.] KPITIK02 AND CRITICUS. II 

as about to decide, tamquam criticus anttquus, whether a certain 
document is genuine or spurious*. The term is also used by 
Horace, in a passage in which he calls Ennius an alter Homerus, 
ut critici dicurit, where Varro is probably meant". It also occurs 
repeatedly in the Commentar>- on Virgil by Servius, in the frequent 
phrase notant critici^. Lastly, KpiriKo's is found as a designation of 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus ; also of Munatius of Tralles (the 
tutor of Herodes Atticus) in the second century, and of Cassius 
Longinus in the third*. Thus it appears that, owing to a certain 
ambiguity in the term ypa/x/xaTiKos with its lower sense of ' gram- 
marian ' and its higher sense of ' scholar ', and a corresponding 
ambiguity in the term ypafiftaTiiaj with its lower sense of 'grammar' 
and its higher sense of ' scholarly criticism ', the term KpirtKo's 
was generally applied to those of the ypa/i/xarticoi who excelled in 
the higher branch of ypafifiaTLKTJ, that of literarj' criticism. We 
may conclude on the whole that one who in modern times is in 
English called a ' scholar ', in French a philologue, and in German 
a philolog, would in ancient times have been called either a gram- 
maticus or a criticus, according to his degree of distinction, the 
latter being the higher term of the two ; while the term philologus 
in general designated a lover of learning, or a learned student of 
varied accomplishments and especially of antiquarian tastes®. 

In modern times the first who called himself studiosus philo- 
logiae was F. A. Wolf, the founder of the modern 
German school of scholarship, who thus described . phuorogy ' 
himself in the matriculation-book of the University 
of Gottingen on 8 April 1777, a date which has accordingly been 
designated as the ' birthday of Philology '^ In after years Wolf 
himself was dissatisfied with the term Philologie because its 
Alexandrian associations confined it to the study of Literature 
alone, to the exclusion of Art, and also because in modem times 
it was apt to be regarded as synonymous with the Science of 

^ ad Fain, ix 10, i. - £p. II i 51. 

* Servius on Aen. i 71, viii 731, xi 188 etc. (ap. Lehrs I.e., p. 397 note). 
•* Usener on Dionysius Hal. lie Imitatione p. 1 33 note ; and Lehrs /. c. 
P- 395- 

' Lehrs I.e. p. 379. 

® F. Haase in Ersch und Gruber, s.v. ' Philologie,' p. 383 n. 29. 



INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 



Language. He therefore preferred the term Alterthwtis-wissen- 
schaft, 'the Science of Antiquity". Other terms have been sug- 
gested at various times ^, but in France and Germany the term 
Philologie still holds its own. 

'Philology' was for a long time Hmited to linguistic studies, and 
was regarded as only including grammar, lexicography, exegesis, 
and textual and literary criticism ; but, since the time of Wolf, it 
has been generally understood in a wider sense, as including the 
study of ancient life in all its phases, as handed down to us in the 
literature, the inscriptions, and the monuments, of Greece and 
Rome I It has thus been interpreted by scholars such as Ast 
and Bernhardy, Boeckh and Otfried Miiller, Ritschl and Haase*. 
In contrast to the comprehensive definition given by these, we 
have the narrower view best represented by Gottfried Hermann, 
who saw in ' Philology ' a science of language alone*. 

The varied studies included within the province of 'Philology' 
have been grouped and classified in different ways by Wolf and 
Bernhardy, Boeckh and Miiller, Ritschl, Reichardt and Haase''. 
The tendency in the later classifications of the subject has been to 
make Grammar not a merely instrumental means towards the 
study of 'Philology', but one of the main subjects of study in 
itself It has also become increasingly necessary to include 

^ Kleine Schriften, ii 814 f. 

^ e.g. 'classical learning', studia humani talis, and the unclassical term 
hiimaniora (criticised by Boeckh, Encyklopddie der philologischen Wissen- 
schaften, p. 24 f). 

3 Kleine Schriften, ii 826. 

* Ast, Griindriss der Philologie (1808) p. i ; Bernhardy, Grundlinien zur 
Encyklopddie der Philologie (1832) p. 48 — 53; Boeckh, Rheinisches Museum 
(1827) i 41; Miiller (1836) Gottingen gel. Anzeiger, p. 169; Ritschl, Convers.- 
Lexikon, s.v. Philologie p. 501; and Haase in Ersch u. Gruber iii 23 p. 390 
(all quoted in Freund's Triemtium Philologicum, i p. 5). 

* Hermann's view was attacked by Boeckh and Miiller I.e. In the preface 
to the Acta Societatis Graecae he had spoken with contempt of the Comparative 
Philologists 'qui ad Brachmanas et Ulphilam confugiunt atque ex paucis non 
satis cognitarum linguarum vestigiis quae Graecorum et Latinorum verborum 
vis sit explanare conantur' (cp. Freund, pp. 12, 15). 

^ Wolf, Kleine Schriften, ii 894; Bernhardy, Grundlinien, p. xi; Boeckh, 
Encyklopddie, ^\). l\ — 64; Miiller, Ac. ; Ritschl, /.ir. ; Reichardt, die Gliederung 
der Philologie (1846); and Haase, I.e. (transcribed in P'reund, I.e. p. 8 — 14). 



I 

I 



I.] RANGE OF MODERN 'PHILOLOGY'. 1 3 

among the introductory studies, the general and also the compara- 
tive Science of Language. Inscriptions, which were classed by 
Wolf under the heading of Art, are now rightly regarded as part 
of the written records of antiquity, and as supplying, side by 
side with Literature, part of the documentary evidence for the 
history and the antiquities of the Greek and Roman world*. 

The history of Classical Scholarship corresponds to the last 
of the four and twenty subdivisions of ' Philolog)' ' 
suggested by Wolf; and is the first of the studies classical 
introductor>- to ' Philology ' in the scheme proposed Scholarship 
by Haase, and also in that elaborately carried out in the encyclo- 
paedic work known as Iwan Miiller's Handbuch der klassischen 
Altertiimswissenschaft (1886 f). A knowledge of the general course 
of the histor}' of Classical Scholarship in the past is essential to 
a complete understanding of its position in the present and its 
prospects for the future. Such a knowledge is indispensable to the 
student, and even to the scholar, who desires to make an intelli- 
gent use of the leading modern commentaries on classical authors 
which necessarily refer to the labours of eminent scholars in 
bygone days. And the study of that history is not without its 
incidental points of interest, in so far as it touches on themes of 
such variety, and such importance, as the earliest speculations on 
the origin of language, the growth of literary and dramatic criticism 
at Athens, the learned labours of the critics and grammarians of 
Alexandria and Rome, and of the lexicographers of Constantinople. 
It also has its points of contact with the Scholastic Philosophy of 
the Middle Ages, with the Revival of Learning and the Reforma- 
tion of Religion, and with the foundations of the educational 
systems of the foremost nations of the modern world. 

The volume now offered to the public is the first instalment of 
a History of Classical Scholarship from the sixth 

Subdivisions 

century B.C. to the present day. That history may of the proposed 
be most conveniently distributed over the following '*'°^^ 
twelve divisions of the subject, but the dates of the limits assigned 
to each division must be regarded as only approximate. 
^ Boeckh, Introd. to Corp. Inscr. Gr. vol. \-ii. 



14 INTRODUCTORY. [CHAP. 

I. The Athenian Age, from 600 to 300 B.C. 
II. The Alexandrian Age, from 300 B.C. to the beginning 
of the Christian era. 

III. The Roman Age oi Latin Scholarship, from 168 B.C. to 

530 A.D. 

IV. The Roman Age of Greek Scholarship, from the be- 

ginning of the Christian era to 530 a.d. 
V. The Byzantine Age, or the Middle Ages in the East, 

from 530 to 1350 A.D. 
VI. The Middle Ages in the West, from 530 to 1350 a.d. 
VII. The Revival of Learning in Italy from 1350 a.d. to the 

death of Leo X in 152 1, with the subsequent history 

of scholarship in Italy. 
The modern history of scholarship in (VIII) P'rance, (IX) 
Holland, (X) England, (XI) Germany, and (XII) the other 
nations of Europe and the United States of America. 

The time to be traversed will ultimately extend to as much 
as two thousand five hundred years, and in the sequence of the 
centuries the narrative will pass from one home of learning to 
another, from Athens to Alexandria and Pergamon, from Pergamon 
and Alexandria to Rome, and from Rome to Constantinople. It 
will also range over the vast expanse of the Middle Ages in the 
West, as well as in the East of Europe, pausing for a time in Italy 
at the date of the death of Dante (132 1). On some future day it 
may invite us to visit the studious haunts of Petrarch at Vaucluse 
and Arqua ; to linger for a while in Florence and in other 
famous cities of Italy ; and then to turn to the chief centres of 
scholarship in the northern lands which were successively reached 
by the Revival of Learning. For three centuries of this survey our 
interest will be mainly fixed on Athens, for three on Alexandria, 
for more than five on Rome ; then, for eight centuries, it will be 
first concentrated on Constantinople, and afterwards diffused over 
the West of Europe. Rather less than six centuries will thus 
await our study at some not far distant time. In any future review 
of the period of exactly two centuries that divides the death of 
Dante from the death of Leo X, our attention will be almost 
exclusively confined to Italy, and, in the final period of little more 
than 380 years, we shall look forward to tracing the progress of 



I.] PLAN OF THE PROPOSED WORK. 1 5 

scholarship in Italy and in other lands from the close of the 
Italian Renaissance down to the present day. 

In that final period, even more than in the far earlier ' Ages ' 
of the present volume, a historj- of scholarship must necessarily 
to a large extent consist of notices of the lives and works of 
individual scholars. In the case of the more important names, 
some estimate of the value of their services will naturally be 
expected. In the case of names of minor importance, the briefest 
mention must suffice ; and, in a work so limited in compass as 
compared with the wide extent of the subject, many will unavoid- 
ably be omitted altogether. Every endeavour will however be made 
to give accurate details as to the dates connected with those who 
are mentioned in these pages. Names of special importance in 
the annals of literature or scholarship will also find a place in the 
chronological tables, in which an attempt will be made to give a 
brief conspectus of the more than nineteen centuries over which 
the present volume extends. The reader may remember that Cicero, 
in his Orator, tells us that his friend Atticus, in composing a 
comprehensive work extending over seven centuries, had succeeded 
' by a strict observance and specification of dates, without omitting 
any notable event, in including within the compass of a single 
volume the annals of seven hundred years'. Elsewhere he makes 
the author modestly ask, ' what his work could possibly contain, 
that was either new or particularly useful to Cicero', and himself 
vouchsafes a reassuring reply as to its 'utility', and as to its 
containing ' much that was new to him '. I trust that the reader, 
whether in using the present work he finds much or little that is 
new to him, will at any rate find in its chronological tables, 
unpretentious as they are, the same kind of utility that Cicero 
found in the liber atinalis of Atticus : — id explicatis ordinibus 
temporum uno in conspectu onmia viderem^. 

^ Cicero, Orator 120, Brutus 14 f. For a conspectus of the periods covered 
by these tables, and the pages on which they will be found, see p. xi supra. 



BOOK I 



THE ATHENIAN AGE 



^I'cXojv A.€-yw T^v Tza.(Ta.v ttoKlv ttJs EXXaoos Tratdcvoriv eivai. 

Thucydides, ii 41 § I. 

Toa-ovTov 8' aTToXcXowrev 77 iroXts jy/uwoi' Trept to <f>pov€LV koi kiyeiv 
Toi'S dXXov5 di'^poMrous, <L<tO^ o'l Taunjs fuidrp-ai tcSv aXAto)' SiSaaKoAoi 
y€-yova(Tt, koI to twv 'EXXi^vcDf ovofia miroitjKi fn^K€Tt. Tov ycvov? dXXa 
T^s 8iavotas BoK€LV etvat, icat fxaXXov 'EXXryvas KoXelaOai tovs tt^s 
7rai8eva€w? T179 >;/x€T€pas ^ tovs T17S koiv^s ^ucrews /i.eT€;^o»'Tas. 

IsocRATES, Panegyric, § 50. 



Conspectus of Greek Literature &c., 


c. 840—300 B.C. 


Epic Poets 


Lyric Poets 


Dramatists 


Philosophers 


Historians 


Orators &c. 


floruit 












c. 840 ? Homer 












c. 720 ? Hesiod 












Before 700 












earlier Cyclic 












Poets, Stasi- 












nus, CyPria, 












Arctinus, Ae- 












thiopis, Iliu- 












persis, and 












Agias, Nostoi 












Trtft 












1 690 Callinus' 










676 Terpander 










Intermediate ^'^S Tyrtaeus^ 










Cyclic Poets; 
c. 660 Lesches, 


657 Alcman 










650 Archilo- 










Little Iliad 


chus'^' 
62s Semonides 










C.645 Peisander 


of Amorgos' 
620 Mimner- 

mus' 
620 Stesichorus 
612 Alcaeus 
612 Sappho 










600 


600 Arion 










594 Solon"- 




585 Thales 








c. 639-559 
544 Ibycus 
542 Hipponax' 


s8oSusarion<^ 


c. 624-548 






Later 




575Anaximander 






Cyclic Poets ; 


54oTheognis' 




c. 611—547 


550 Cadmus of 




c. 566 Eugam- 


537 Phocylides'? 


536 Thespis 


550 Anaximenes 


Miletus 




mon, Tele- 


530 Anacreon 




c. 588-524 






gonia 






530 Pythagoras 
c. 580— c. 500 

530 Xenophanes 
c. 576—480 


500 Hecataeus 




500 


Simonides of 


Epicharmus^ 


500 Heracleitus 




466 Corax 


489 Panyasis 


Ceos 556-468 


540—450 


c. 535—475 




Tisias 




Bacchylides 


Phrynichus 


495 Parmenides 




427 Gorgias 


Antimachus 
fl. c. 464—410 


fl. 476—452 
Pindar 


Aeschylus 






c. 485—380 
Pericles 




c. 522— c. 443 


^525— 456 


455 Empedocles 




493—429 






Sophocles 


450 Anaxagoras 


Herodotus 


447 Protagoras 






495—405 


c. 500—428 


c. 484— c. 425 


c. 480 — 411 






449 Cratinus<^ 
Euripides 


Socrates 


430 Hellanicus 


435 Prodicus 






469—399 


thucydides 


435 Hippias 






480—406 
429 Eupolis<^ 


420 Democritus 
460—357 


471 or 455— 400 


Antiphon 






429 Phrynichus*^ 
Aristophanes <^ 






480—411 
Thrasymachus 






c. 450-385 






c. 457—400 
Andocides 


404 Choerilus 










c. 440—390 


iOO 


- 








Lysias 
f. 445-378 


Critics 


Musicians 


Middle Comedy 


400 Antisthenes Ctesias 


Isocrates 


(525 Theagenes) 


(676? Terpander) 


390^320 
Antiphanes"^ 


, fl. 415—398 
Plato 420—348 i Xenophon 


436-338 
Isaeus 420—348 




(508 Lasus) 


An:ixandrides<^ 


Aristotle i c. ^,^^,—c. 359 
384—322 I 360 Cleidemus 


Demosthenes 


Zoilus 


Melanippides 


Alexis-^ 


384—322 


3^-^tUetdes 

Ponticus 
Chamaeleon 


T.i-y 




Theophrastus ! Ephorus 


Aeschines 


Philoxenus 


New Comedy 


372—287 ' c. 405—330 


389—314 


Timotheus 


320—250 
Philemon-^ 


Zeno 
c. 350—260 


1 352 Theo- 
pompus 


Lycurgus 
fl. 338-326 
Hypereides 




d- 357 


c. 363—263 


Epicurus 


346 Androtion 
Dicaearchus 






Menander<^ 


341—270 


fl. 344-322 






1 344—292 




Timaeus 


Deinarchus 




310 Aristoxenus 


I Diphilus^ 




fl. 342—291 


Praxiphanes 








352—256 
Philochorus 


Demetrius of 
Phaleron 


300 




' 




c. 306—261 


fl. 317-307 1 



elegiac, ' iambic. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE STUDY OF EPIC POETRY. 

The earliest poems of Greece supplied the Greeks with their 
earliest themes for study, for exegesis, and for Homer and 
literary criticism. From about 600 b.c. we have ^^ rhapsodes 
definite proof of the recitation of the Homeric poems by rhap- 
sodes in many parts of the Greek world, — at Chios, at Delos, at 
Cyprus, at Syracuse, at Sicyon, and in Attica. The recitations in 
Attica were probably connected with the festivals of Dionysus at 
Athens and with a similar festival at Brauron ' ; and, by an ordi- 
nance of Solon, the date of whose archonship is 
594 B.C., the rhapsodes were required to recite con- 
secutive portions of the Homeric poems, instead of selecting 
isolated passages*. The effect of this ordinance would be not 

^ Clearchus in Athen. vii i, ^ twv pa^j/tpSQi' (iopTTi), rjp Tjyov Kord rifv tQv 
\iowffiwv. Hesychius, Bpavpc/vloii ■riji' 'IXidSa y8ov pa\l/<^Soi iv Bpavpdyi t^s 
'Attuc^. Cp. Welcker, D^r epische Cyclus, i p. 391 f ; A. Mommsen, Heor- 
tologie, pp. 122, 138. 

2 Diogenes Laertius, Life of Solon ^ i 2, 57, rd re 'O/t^pof ^| v-wo^o\r\% 
fiypaxtx fM^<p5ei<rdai, olov 5rov 6 rpHros fKri^fv, eKeiOer ipXfffOcu tov ixbufvov. 
I here understand i^ viro^okrft not as the exact equivalent, but as the correla- 
tive of t| I'lroX^^ews in [Plato], Hipparchus, 228 B (quoted on p. 21), ef 
i>xO|3o\%, ' by the giving of a cue ', referring to the first of two successive 
reciters, who ends at a given cue and leaves the second to take it up (uxo- 
/SdXXei), and e| vro\-n^ecjs, 'by the taking up of a cue', to the next reciter, 
who ta^es up the cue (wroXo/ij3dj'«). e'l v-ro^oXijs has been much discussed. 
The various interpretations may be stated thus: (1) ' se invieem excipiendo' 
' in continuous (or alternate) succession ' (Wolf, Boeckh, Wilamowitz) ; 
(2) ex praecepto, 'according to a prescribed rule', the rhapsodes omitting what 
they were told to omit, but reciting the rest unaltered (Nitzsch) ; similarly (3) 
tx exemplari praescripto, '^adfidem exemplaris probcUi\ 'from an authorised 



20 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

merely to cause the competition to be more severe, but also to 
promote on the part of the audience, no less than on that of the 
reciters, a more consecutive and more complete knowledge of the 
contents of the poems themselves. Moreover, the competitions 
between rhapsode and rhapsode, like the contests between poet 
and poet in an earlier time, would excite in the audience a faculty 
for discriminating not only between the competing reciters but 
also between their competing recitations, and would thus give an 
early impulse to a widely diffused and popular form of literary 
criticism. 

The above tradition regarding the Athenian legislator Solon 
has its counterpart in a legend relating to the Spartan legislator 
Lycurgus. The date of Lycurgus is uncertain, one account 
placing him in 776 b c, at the beginning of the Olympic era, and 
another a century earlier. According to Plutarch', Lycurgus met 
with the Homeric poems in Crete, and brought a copy back with 
him to Greece. Plutarch's authority for this may possibly have 
been Ephorus, a historian of the fourth century B.C. Even on 
Attic soil, Solon has a rival in Peisistratus, whose 

Peisistratus , . , , . ^ , , , . 

rule at Athens began m 560 and ended in 527 B.C. 
According to the well-known story, he is said to have been the 
first to collect the scattered poems of Homer and to arrange them 
in order. The story is not found in any earlier author than 
Cicero, or in any extant Greek writer earlier than Pausanias 
(7?. 174 A.D.)^; but the question whether it was Solon or Peisis- 

text ' to be exactly followed by the reciter (Grafenhan, Gesch. d. kl. Phil, i 
268; Bernhardy, Gr. Litt. i 330*); (4) praesente aliqiio qui verba subiceret, 
'with prompting' (Hermann, Mr Monro, and others), omitting olov oirov — 
rbv exofJ^evov. Part of the extensive literature of the controversy may be seen 
in Wolf, Froleg. c. xxxii ; Boeckh, Corpus Inscr. Gr. ii 676 tf; Nitzsch, 
Quaestio Hotnerica iv (1828), De Hist. Humeri ii 132 (1837), Sagenpoesie, 
p. 413 (1852); Hermann, Opusc. v 300 — 311, vii 65 — 87 (1834 — 9); Wila- 
mowitz, HomeriscJie Untersuchtmgen, p. 263 — 6 (1884). Cp. Ritschl, 
Opusc. i 56; Sengebusch, Diss, ii 111; A. Mommsen, Heortologie, p. r38; 
Bergk, Gr. Lit. i 499, Christ, Gr. Litt., § 37*; Professor Jebb's Homer, p. 77; 
and Mr Andrew Lang's Homer and the Epic, p. 36. 

^ Lycurgus, c. 4, discussed by Wilamowitz, Horn. Unt. p. 267 — 285. 

^ Cicero, De Or. iii 137, qui primus Homeri libros, confusos antea, sic 
disposuisse dicitur, ut nunc habemus; Pausanias, vii 26, lleto-to-r/jaros ^ttt; rb. 
'Ofirjpov 8i€<nracr/j.€va re Kal &\Xa dXXaxoO fivrifiovevb/xeva TjOpoi^ero, Cp. Wolf's 



II.] HOMER AND THE RHAPSODES. 21 

tratus who did a signal service to the Homeric poems was appa- 
rently familiar to a Megarian historian of the fourth century B.C. ^ 
The story about Peisistratus, it need hardly be added, has been 
much discussed. Accepted unreservedly by some eminent scholars 
and rejected entirely by others, it has sometimes been accepted in 
a limited sense by those who hold that the story need only imply 
the restoration of a unity which in process of time had been 
gradually ignored*. The festival of the Panathenaea, at which 
the Homeric poems were in after times usually recited^ was cele- 
brated with sjjecial splendour by Peisistratus, who is even some- 
times called the founder of the festival* ; and, according to a 
dialogue attributed to Plato, it was one of the sons of Peisistratus, 
namely Hipparchus (';2 7-';i4 B.C.), who 'was the 

^ . u • • L- , J 1 r TT Hipparchus 

first to brmg mto this land the poems of Homer, 
and who compelled the rhapsodes to recite them successively, in 
regular order, at the Panathenaea, as they still do at the present 
day' *. The story is inconsistent with the statement that the poems 
of Homer were recited at Athens in the time of Solon, but it is 
possibly true that the recitations at the Panathenaea in particular 

Prolegomena c. xxxiii; Egger, Histoire de la Critiqtte (ed. 1887), pp. 9 — 18; 
Wilamowitz, /. c, pp. 235 — 266; and Flach's Peisistratos und seine litterarische 
Thcitigkeit (1885); also Jebb's Homer, p. 114, A. Lang, Homer and the 
Epic, p. 37, and T. \V. Allen in Classical Review, xv (190?) p. 7f. 

^ Diogenes Laertius, i 2, 57, ^laXXoi' ohf 'ZdXuv'Ofiripov ((fuJoTiffev rj Yleitxia- 
rparos, < Dr Leaf, Iliad, 1900, p. xviii, here inserts eKeivos yap r/v 6 to. ?irrj eis 
t6v KardXoyov ifjuroiricai Kal ov UfiffiffTpaTOS, > (Iw (pijffi Auvx^Sas iv Tre/xiTTip 
MeyapitQv. On the date of Dieuchidas, cp. Wilamowitz, /. c, p. 240 f. 

2 Jebb's Homer pp. ii4f. It is accepted in this sense by Ritschl, but 
rejected altogether by Ludwich, Wilamowitz and Flach. It had been accepted 
by Wolf and Lachmann, both of whom regard the written Homer as dating 
from Peisistratus. This view has recently been gaining ground. Dr Leaf 
(/. c. p. xix) now believes that ' an official copy of Homer was made in Athens 
in the time of Solon and Peisistratus'. 

^ Lycurgus c. Leocr. 102, ouraj ya.p viriXa^ov vfiQv oi raripei airovSdlov 
ehai iroitf-rqv , ajore vopMV Idevro Kad' eKdffT7]v Trevreniplda pi-bvov tQv iWuv 
■KOiffrGiv pa^tpbilffdai. to. ftrr;. 

•* Scholiast on Aristeides Panath. p. 323 Dindorf. The athletic contests 
of the Great Panathenaea had however been instituted in 566 B.C. (Busolt, Gr. 
Gesch. ii- 344), six years before Peisistratus became tyrant. 

' [Plato], Hipparchus 228 D, i^viriKaat tovs paipifdovs UavaOrivaiois f| 
wxoX^^ewj i(p€^T)s a&ra 5uivai. Cp. note 2 on p. 19. 



U^ 



22 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

were introduced by Hipparchus. It was on the invitation of 
Hipparchus' that Simonides of Ceos lived at Athens from about 
522 to 514 B.C., and it is interesting to notice that it is in 
Simonides that we find the earliest extant quotation from Homer 
in a line which he ascribes to ' the man of Chios ', — ol-qir^p (ftvWwv 
yeverj, TonjSe kol dvSpwv^. 

There are some dubious stories of early interpolations in the 
Early inter- Homeric poems. Thus Peisistratus is said to have 
poiations introduced into the Odyssey a line in honour of the 

Attic hero, Theseus^ ; and both Solon and Peisistratus are credited 
with the insertion of a line referring to Ajax, for the supposed 
purpose of proving that Salamis was an ancient possession of 
Athens'*; but, as the recovery of Salamis took place in Solon's 
time, while Peisistratus was still a boy, Solon alone should have 
been mentioned in this connexion^ Onomacritus, who is said to 
have been one of the four who put together the Homeric poems 
under the authority of Peisistratus®, was, according to Herodotus, 
caught in the act of interpolating the oracles of Musaeus, and was 
banished by the tyrant's son, Hipparchus''. 

Meanwhile, Homer had been frequently imitated by Hesiod 

(y?. c. 720? B.C.), had been described by the early 

nlmeTor °^ elegiac poet Callinus {c. 690) as the author of an 

early Greek gpi^ called the Thebais^, and had been copied in 

poets 

various ways by the earliest of the iambographers, 
Archilochus i^fl. 650), whom 'Longinus' (c. 13 § 3) describes as 



^ ib. 228c, and Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, c. 18 § i, where 
Hipparchus is also called 4>t\6iJ.ov<xos. 

2 //iadyi 148. 

^ Od. xi 631, Qrja-^a Ileipidoov re, deQv fpiKvdia riKva. Plutarch, Tlieseus 
20; cp. Flach, p. 27. 

* //. ii 558, <STr\(y€ 5' dywy, :c' 'Adrjvaiuyv 'icravTO (pdXayyes. Strabo, 
p. 394; cp. Flach, p. 29. 

^ Cp. Diog. Laert. i 2, 57, and see Busolt, Gr. Gesch. ii^ 220. 

® Tzetzes, Proleg. in Aristoph. reffadpuv ovtuv <TCbv> iwl HeKnarpaTov 
ffvvdivTuv T6v"Ofiripov. Cp. La Roche, J/om. Textkr. p. 10, and Jebb's Homer 
p. 115". 

^ Her. vii 6. 

® Pausanias ix 9, 5. 



II.] HOMER AND PINDAR. 2$ 

'most Homeric', and by melic poets such as Alcman (about 657), 
and Stesichorus (640-555)'. 

In the age succeeding the expulsion of the Peisistratidae, 
Pindar, with a conscious reference to the origin of 
the word Rhapsodos'^, describes the Rhapsodes as 
'the sons of Homer, singers of deftly woven lays'^ He also 
alludes to the laurel-branch that they bore as an emblem of poetic 
tradition. Homer himself (he tells us) had 'rightly set forth all 
the prowess of Ajax, leaving it as a theme for other bards to sing, 
by the laurel- wand of his lays divine'*. Pindar's praise of Amphi- 
araus is a clear reminiscence of a Homeric line in praise of 
Agamemnon'. He describes the ' fire-breathing Chimaera ' in a 
phrase like that of Homer®, but differs from him in minor details 
as to Bellerophon, Ganymede and Tantalus". He shows a similar 
freedom in giving a new meaning to a phrase borrowed from his 
own countrj-man the Boeotian poet, Hesiod, by applying to the 
athlete's toilsome training a proverbial admonition originally 
referring to the work of the farm^ In the age of Pindar, and in 
the Athenian age in general, the poet and his audience were alike 
saturated with the study of the old poets. Homer and Hesiod, and 
a touch alone was wanted to awaken the memory of some long- 
familiar line. 



1 Mahaffy, Gr. Lit. i 31, cp. for Hesiod, Christ, § 65*; for Archilochus 
and Stesichorus, Bei^k ii 191 and 293, and (in general) i 483. 

' pa.\f/(^b()s, from pdxreiv dotSiJi' ( Hesiod, yra^. 227), catitexere carmen, pan- 
^ere versus. Cp. Bergk, Gr. Lit. i 490. 

^ Nem. ii i, 'O/itjpidai, pairrCov (lit. 'stitched') iireuv doiSoi. 

* Isth. iii 55, "0/i77poj...ira<rai' (5/)^w<rats aperav Kara pd^8ov i<ppaffev ffeare- 
ffluv iiriwv \onrois ddOpeiv. Cp. Bergk, Gr. Lit. i 492. 

* 0/. vi 17, afjiipOTepov pmi/tiv t djadov Kal Sovpl fiApvaffdau, and Iliad iii 
179, an<f>6Tepov, ^affiXevs r ayadoi Kparepos t aixiJ-VTn^- The reminiscence is 
far less clearly marked when he says that Homer 0776X01' iaXbv l<f>a rifiap 
/leyiffTav irpdyfjMTi Travri ^tpeiv {Pyth. iv 278), a phrase which has no nearer 
parallel in our own Homer than the line, — i<r6\bv Kai ro rirvKrai or' iyyeXoi 
alffi/ia flSy (7/iad XV 207). 

* Pindar, 01. xiii 90 and //. vi 182. 

' Oi. xiii 67 (Gildersleeve's n.) : i 43, 57 (Fennell's n.). 

* Isth. V 67, fieXirav ipyois oira^wv. and Hesiod, Works and Days 411, ^e- 
\iTr\ Se Toi ipyov d^fWei. 



24 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

The influence of the Homeric poems on the tragic poets of 
Athens was very considerable. Notwithstanding 
poll's^ '^^^^"' Aristotle's statement that 'the I/iad and the Odyssey 
each furnish the theme of one tragedy, or of two, 
at the most'S we find that they supplied Aeschylus with the theme 
of at least six tragedies and one satyric drama, Sophocles with 
that of three tragedies (A/ausicaa, and the Phaeacians, and possibly 
the Phrygians), and Euripides with that of one satyric drama, the 
Cyclops. The unknown author of the Rhesus derived his theme 
from the Iliad; and Achilles and Hector, with Laertes, Penelope 
and her Suitors, were among the themes of the minor tragic poets 
of the fifth and fourth centuries. Aristotle's statement is practi- 
cally true of Sophocles and Euripides, but not of Aeschylus, 
whom he almost ignores in his treatise on Poetry. It is however 
the fact that, among the tragic poets in general, a far larger 
number of their subjects were suggested by other poems of the 
Epic Cycle, namely the Cypria, the Aethiopis, the Litt/e I/iad, 
the Iliupersis, the Nostoi and the Telegonia'^. 

Aeschylus himself probably regarded ' Homer ' as the author 
of all the poems of the Epic Cycle, when he 

Aeschylus , •, j u • j .1 r 1 

descnbed his dramas as 'slices from the great 
banquets of Homer^ '. In the Frogs of Aristophanes, he is made 
to confess that it was from ' Homer the divine ' that his mind 
took the impress of noble characters like those of the ' lion-hearted ' 
heroes, Teucer and Patroclus^. The influence of Homer shows 
itself in many of his picturesque epithets, and in the use of not a 
few archaic nouns and verbs, as well as in Homeric phrases and 
expressions, and Homeric similes and metaphors ^ 

Sophocles is described by Greek critics as the only true 
disciple of Homer, as the 'tragic Homer', and as 
the admirer of the Epic poet". His verbal indebt- 
1 Poet. 23 § 4. 

* See Nauck, Tragicorum Graecortim Fragmenta, pp. 963 — 8, or Haigh, 
Tragic Drama of the Greeks, p. 473 — 6. 

'^ Athen. 347 E, Tefidxv tQv 'O/x-qpov fieydXcov belirvuv. 

* Frogs, 1040. 

^ For details, see Haigh, I.e. p. 85. 

* Ion, in vita SophocHs, fji.6vov...'OfJi'fipov ixadrjrriv. Polemo, ap. Diog. 
Laert. iv 20, "Ofxripov rpayiKbv. Eustathius on Iliad, pp. 440, 605, 851, 902 



II.] HOMER AND THE TRAGIC POETS. 2$ 

edness to Homer is less than that of Aeschylus, though, like 
other dramatists, he borrows certain epic forms and epithets, as 
well as certain phrases and similes. His dramas reproduce the 
Homeric spirit. He is also Homeric in the ideal, yet human, 
conception of his characters', and in the calm self-control, which 
characterises him even in scenes of violent excitement. Here, as 
elsewhere, 'he has caught the impress of Homers charm'*. 
While ver)' few of his dramas were directly suggested by the //iad 
or Odyssey, he is described as ' delighting in the Epic Cycle ' ^ 
The extant plays connected with that Cycle are the Ajax and 
Philoctetes. 

Of the extant plays of Euripides, the Cyclops alone is directly 
taken from Homer's Odyssey, while the Epic Cycle 
is represented by the Iphigeneia in AuUde, Hecuba, 
Iroades, Andromache, Helen, Electra, Iphigeneia in Tauris and 
Orestes. The plot of no extant play that was certainly written by 
Euripides is inspired by the Iliad, but the opening scene of the 
Phoenissae, where Antigone and her aged attendant view from the 
palace-roof the movements of the Argive host outside the walls of 
Thebes, is clearly a reminiscence of the memorable scene in the 
Iliad, where Helen and Priam watch the Greek heroes from the 
walls of Troy\ 

Turning from the tragic poets to the historians, we find 
Herodotus speculating on the date of Homer. He 
places Hesiod, as well as Homer, about four hun- 
dred years before his own time, i.e. about 400 years (or exactly 
12 generations) before 430 B.C.* He assumes that other poems 
beside the Iliad and Odyssey were generally attributed to Homer, 
namely the Cypria and the Epigoni. He doubts the Homeric 
authorship of the Epigoni \ and denies that of the Cypria'' ; but 

etc., ^iXofirjpos. Cp. Lechner, De Sophode poeta 'OfjirjpiKorrdTtt) (1859); Schnei- 
dewin's Sophokles p. 27; Bergk, Gr. Litt. i 830, iii 369 f; and Haigh, I.e., 
p. 202 f. 

1 Arist. Pod. 3 § 2. 

^ Vita Soph. 'Ofir)piK7]v eKfurndfievos x«P"'- 

^ Athen. 297 D, ix°-ip€...Ti^ ea-t^^J w/cXy. Cp. Christ, Gr. Litt. § 175 p. 250'. 

^ //. iii 139—244. 

' Her. ii II. 6 Hej_ j^ ^j 

' Her. ii 117. 



26 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

his denial of the latter is founded on the fact that, in the form in 
which he knew the poem, it implied that Paris, on leaving Sparta, 
sailed for Troy, and not for Sidon as stated in the Iliad\ As 
Professor J ebb has aptly observed, 'this suggests how little these 
attributions probably regarded the evidence of style, language, or 
spirit. Unless there was some contradiction on the surface, the 
attribution could pass current, or could be left an open question 'I 
Thucydides regards the Phaeacians as a historical people and 
the Homeric catalogue as a historical document '. 

Thucydides t^ i i i r i • r r^ 

But he makes the story of the siege of Iroy a 
theme for rationalising criticism. In this spirit he suggests that 
the Greek chiefs were compelled to go to Troy, not by the obliga- 
tions of their oath to Helen's father, but by the superior power of 
Agamemnon ; and that the long duration of the siege was due to 
the Greeks being forced to spend part of their time in keeping up 
their supply of provisions^ In a far different spirit to that of the 
earlier age which interpolated lines in Homer to the credit of 
Athens, he makes Pericles proudly declare in his funeral oration 
that Athens needs no Homer to praise her^. 

Among the earliest treatises on Homer was that ascribed to 

Democritus (460-3=57 B.C.), though we know nothing 

Democritus ,. V ^ -r. „ , i 

of its purport . But, if he really wrote such a work, 
it may have contained some of the sayings on Homer attributed 
to him by later writers, who quote Democritus as speaking of 
Homer's divine genius, the varied beauty of his epic verse, and 
the happy union of order and variety which marked the com- 
position of his poems'. It was possibly his study of Homer that 
inspired him with the lofty and often poetical language for which 
he is eulogised by Cicero". 

For the three centuries between 600 and 300 B.C. the Homeric 

1 //. vi 290. ^ Homer, p. 86. '^ ib. p. 85. 

* Thuc. i 9 and 11. ^ ii 4 1 , 4. 

® Diog. Laert. IX vii 13 § 48, irspi 'O/J-i^pov 7j{?) dpdoeireLTjs Kal y\u(rffecov. 
Cp. Egger, /.c, p. 107^, and Saintsbury's History of Criticism, i 15. 

^ Dion Chrysostom, Or. 53 init., "O/njpos (pijcrfus Xaxi^v dea^oucrrji eiriwv 
Kbfffiov eT^KT-qvaro TravToiwV ws ovk ivbv &vtv deia^ Kal daifxovias (pvffeui oUtu 
Ka\a Kal <To<f>a ^irij €pya.(Ta<xdai, and Clemens Alexandrinus, Stromat. vi 18. 

^ De Or. i 49; Orator 67. 



II.] HOMER AND THE SOPHISTS. 2/ 

poems were the subject of a considerable amount of uncritical 

study. Homer was ' the educator of Hellas'^; and, 

during the fifth century B.C., the Sophists, who the Sophists 

were among the most active educators of their 

age, had naturally much to say of one whose poems formed the 

foundation of all education at Athens. Thus Pro- 

Protagoras 

tagoras {c. 480-411 B.C.), who classified the modes 
of expression under the heads of question, answer, prayer and 
command, ventured to criticise the opening words of the Iliad, 
for expressing what was meant as a prayer to the Muse in the 
form of a command, firjviv aciSc Oed ; but Aristotle, who quotes this 
criticism, justly observes that it is not of any special value as 
applied to poetry^. A specimen of his criticism of Simonides is 
given in the Protagoras of Plato, and it is probably this specimen 
alone that has prompted an enthusiastic student of Plato and 
Aristotle in the fourth centurj' a.d. to describe Protagoras as 
* ex-pounding the poems of Simonides and other poets". 

Hippias of Elis, so far as we can infer from the two dialogues 
in the Platonic collection, which bear his name, was „. . 

' ' rlippias 

interested, not only in the accurate study of letters 
and syllables, and rh}1:hms and harmonies*, but also in discussing 
the characters of the Homeric heroes, holding the 'frank and 
straightforward' Achilles superior to the 'wily and false' Odysseus'. 
He probably agreed with the father of one of the interlocutors in 
the Lesser Hippias in considering the Iliad a finer poem than 
the Odyssey, Odysseus being the central figure of the one poem, 
and Achilles of the other*. Like the historian Ephorus, in the 
following centur}', he supposed that Homer was a native of 
Cumae'^. He collected parallel passages from Homer, Orpheus, 
Musaeus and Hesiod*; and he observed with truth that the term 
rvpa.vvo% did not belong to the Homeric age, but came into use in 

^ Plato. Rep. 606 E, TT]v 'EXXaSa TreirotSeKcej'. 

* Poet. c. 19 § 5. 

' Themistius, Or. 23, rd ^ifMwviSov re Kal aXXajv iroiri/jLaTa e^Tiyovfji€i>os. 

•* Hippias Major, 285 B ; Minor, 368 D. 

^ Hippias Minor, 365 B. ^ ib. 363 B. 

" The Sixth Life of Homer in Westermann's Btoypa^ot, p. 30 f. 

® Possibly in a work entitled awa-yotyi), quoted in Athen. 609 a. 



28 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the time of Archilochus, whereas in Homer even the lawless king 
Echetus is called a /3ao-tA.€vs'. 

His namesake, Hippias of Thasos, gave a new sense to two 
passages of Homer by proposing an emendation in each. He 
altered the indicative SiSo/xci/ into the infinitive SiSo/^cv in the 
words BlSo/x€v Be ol e^xos apeaOai, ' we grant him to obtain his 
prayer', which appear to have been introduced from /had xxi 297 
in place of the words Tpayeaat Se. kt/Sc' l^rjiTTai occurring thrice in 
Jliad ii 15, 32, 69. The objection to the indicative is that it 
implies that Zeus himself was intentionally deceiving Agamemnon 
in sending the Dream-god on his errand to the hero, but the 
infinitive only removes the charge of deception one step further, 
as the Dream-god, who is prompted to deceive the hero, is un- 
doubtedly sent by Zeus. The difficulty, such as it is, seems only 
to have been founded on a mistake, as it is only by misplacing the 
phrase of Jliad xxi that any difficulty arises. In the other passage 
(//tad xxiii 328) an ambiguous ov is supposed to have been mis- 
understood as ov, ' of it', in which case the lines in question would 
have run as follows : — 

€(TTr)K€ ^v\ov avov, ocrov t opyvi , vivip aiT^s, 

rj Spvb^ rj TrevKT/s- to p.lv ov KaraTrvOeTai ofxfipta. 

' There stands a withered trunk, some six feet high, 
Of oak, or pine, half-roiied by the rain ' ^. 
Hippias appears to have proposed to change ov into ov {' half- 
rotted' into ' w«-rotted '), which is the reading in our present 
text". 

Lastly, Gorgias {c. 485-380 B.C.) probably composed a 

Eulogy of Achilles*. He is the author of two 

^"^^'^^ extant speeches connected with the tale of Troy, 

1 Od. xviii 84; see Argument to Soph. 0. T., and cp. Friedel, De Hippiae 
Sophistae studiis Homericis, Halle, 1872, and De Sophistartcm sttidiis Honiericis 
in Dissert. Philol. Halemes, i (1873) pp. 130—188. 

2 Lord Derby's rendering, except so far as ' half-rotted ' is here substituted 
for his translation of the ordinary text, ' unrotted'. 

3 Aristotle, Poet. c. 25 § 1 1 and De Soph. El. iv 8, witli Wolf's Proleg. ad 
HomerufH, c. xxxvii p. 102 Wagner, and Vahlen's Beitrdge zu Aristoteles 
Poelik, iii 368. On the other hand, Ritter on Poet. I.e. supposes that ov was 
the old text, read by Hippias as ov. 

* Aristot. Rhet. iii 17. 



II.] HOMER AND THE ALLEGORISTS. 29 

namely the ' Encomium of Helen ' and the ' Defence of Pala- 
medes'. Among the pupils of Gorgias, Licymnius may perhaps be 
identified with an expositor of Homer mentioned in the Homeric 
scholia ': while Alcidamas appears to have written a declamation 
on the Odyssey, which he describes as 'a fair mirror of human 
life'^. 

The Homeric representations of the gods roused a protest on 
the part of the founder of the Eleatics, Xenophanes 

of Colophon ijl. 540-500 B.C.), who says that against the 

' Homer and Hesiod have imputed to the gods all ^^g^o^ 
that is blame and shame for men'^ It was on 
other grounds that his contemporar}', Heracleitus, declared that 
'Homer and Archilochus deserved a sound thrashing'*, nor did 
he spare Hesiod. He apparently held that the first two poets 
were wrong in regarding happiness as dependent on the will of 
Heaven, and the third in distinguishing between lucky and un- 
lucky days*. Another great contemporary, Pythagoras, is said to 
have descended to the world below, and to have seen the soul of 
Hesiod bound to a brazen column, squeaking and gibbering; 
and that of Homer hanging from a tree and encircled by serpents, 
in punishment for all that he had said concerning the gods *. 

In reply to protests such as these, some of the defenders of 
Homer maintained that the superficial meaning 
of his myths was not the true one, and that there defended by 
was a deeper sense lying below the surface. This allegorical 

1 » 1 • 11 1 1 interpretation 

deeper sense was, in the Athenian age, called the 
vTToVoia", and the virovouai of this age assumed the name of 
'allegories' in the times of Plutarch ^ Theagenes of Rhegium 
{fl. 525 B.C.), who suggested a two-fold form of allegory, moral 

1 On //. ii 106. 

2 Aristot. Khel. iii 3 § 4 ; cp. §§1,3. 
' Sextus Emp., Math, ix 193, ■wama ffeois ayiOi)K(u> 'Onrfpfn 0' 'B.aioS(K re \ 

oaaa. xap' dvOpwirouTU' dveiSea koI xpbycK iarlv (Zeller's Pre-socratic Philosophy, 
i 561, and Jebb's Homer, p. 88 n.). Cp. in general Grafenhan, Gesch. d. kl. 
Phil, i 202 f, 211 f, and Egger, I.e., p. 96* f. 

* Diog. Laert. ix i. * Zeller, l.e., i 10, 32, 102 f. 

* Diog. Laert. viii § 21. 
' Xen. Symp. 3 § 6; cp. Plato Rep. 378 D. 
" De auiiiendis poetis, c. 4 p. 19 E. 



30 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

and physical, regarded the names of the gods as expressing either 
the mental faculties of man or the various elements of nature. 
Thus Apollo was, in his view, opposed to Poseidon, as fire to 
water ; Pallas to Ares, as wisdom to folly ; Hera to Artemis, as 
the air to the moon ; Hermes to Leto, as reason, or intelligence, 
to forgetfulness'. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae {c. 500-428 B.C.) 
■ saw the rays of the sun in the arrows of Apollo. Not content 
with this obvious anticipation of Solar Mythology, he is said 
(whether truly or not) to have found in the web of Penelope an 
emblem of the rules of dialectic, the warp being the premises, the 
woof the conclusion, and the flame of the torches, by which she 
executed her task, being none other than the light of reason ^ 
Though he is stated to have been the first to interpret the 
Homeric myths in a moral sensed this is probably true of his 
pupils only, especially of Metrodorus of Lampsacus (d. 464 B.C.), 
who maintained that Hera, Athene and Zeus were the elements 
of nature ^ and that Agamemnon' represented the air. Such 
interpreters as these may well have been in Aristotle's mind, when 
he mentions the 'old Homerists, who see small resemblances, 
but overlook large ones'*. 

In the Memorabilia of Xenophon the rhapsodes are described 
as ' very precise about the exact words of Homer, but very foolish 
themselves 'I Among the rhapsodes who were also celebrated as 
interpreters of Homer, were Stesimbrotus of Thasos, a contem- 
porary of Pericles, and Ion of Ephesus, a con- 
pilto^s /OH temporary of Socrates. Ion, who gives his name 

to one of the most interesting of the shorter 
dialogues of Plato, was not only a reciter, but also an inter- 
preter of Homer. He comes to recite Homer to more than 20,000 
Athenians at the Panathenaea. He wears a golden crown and is 
arrayed in a magnificent robe. He is ' possessed ' with an enthu- 
siasm for Homer, and he transmits his enthusiasm to his audience. 



1 Schol. Venet. on //. xx 67. 

2 Schol. on Od. ii 104. ^ Diog. Laert. ii 1 1 
■* Tatian c. Graecos 202 D (Zeller, I.e., ii 372). 

* Hesychius, s.v. 

® ot dpxatoi 'OfirjpiKoi, Met. xiii 6, 7. 

^ Mem. iv 1, 10. 



II.] PLATO ON HOMER. 3 I 

It is through him that the magnetic influence, which has passed 
from the Muse to the poet, passes from the poet to the listener, 
who is the last link in the magnetic chain \ Ion was also the 
author of a commentary on Homer. He declares that he * can 
speak about Homer better than anyone else', — better than Metro- 
dorus or Stesimbrotus ; and it may fairly be assumed that the 
fluent rhetorical exposition, with which he ' embellished ' Homer, 
was in the main a fanciful allegorical interpretation of the poet's 
meaning. 

But no apologetic interpretation of the Homeric mythology 
was of any avail to save Homer from being expelled Homer in 
with all the other poets from Plato's ideal Republic. Plato's He- 
Plato insists that the stories of gods and heroes told 
by Homer and Hesiod give a false representation of their nature ^ 
The poet is a mere 'imitator', and 'we must inform him that 
there is no room for such as he in our State '^ ' The awe and love 
of Homer', of which Plato had been conscious from his child- 
hood, ' makes the words falter on his lips ; but the truth must be 
spoken ^' 'All the poets, from Homer downwards, are only imi- 
tators ; they copy images of \-irtue, but the truth they never 
reach". ' We are ready to admit that Homer is the greatest of 
poets . . , but we must remain firm in our comiction that hymns 
to the gods and eulogies of famous men are the only poetry which 
ought to be admitted into our State'®. Homer's expulsion from 
Plato's Republic called forth a considerable controversial litera- 
ture". Athens, notwithstanding this expulsion, continued to 
learn Homer by heart', and this ancient custom was continued 
far beyond the Athenian age. Even at the close of the first 
centur}' of our era there were Greeks in the Troad who taught 
their children Homer from their earliest years^ In fact, from 
the Athenian age to the present day, the study of Homer has 
never ceased. 

^ ^"W 535 D—E. 

- Rep. 377 D — 378 E. Hesiod is also clearly meant, though not mentioned, 
in Laws 886 B — c. 

3 Rep. 398 A. •« 595 B. 5 600 E. « 607 A. 

'' Sengebusch, Diss, i 119 (Mahaffy, Gr. Lit. i 33). 

* Xen. Symp. 3 § 5. 

^ Dion Chrjsostom, Or. 1 1 p. 308 R. 



32 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

In connexion with the use of Homer as an educational text- 
book, we may recall two anecdotes of some little interest in 
Plutarch's Life of Alcibiades'. We are there told that when 
Alcibiades ' was just emerging from boyhood, he went to a school- 
master and asked him for a book of Homer ; and, on the master's 
replying that he had nothing whatsoever of Homer's, Alcibiades 
struck him with his fist, and went on his way'. Another school- 
master told him that he ' had a copy of Homer, emended by him- 
self. 'What?' said Alcibiades, 'are you really content to teach 
reading and writing, when you are capable of emending Homer ? 
Why are you not instructing young men?' The first of these 
anecdotes shows that a young Athenian held he had a right to 
expect even an elementary teacher to possess part at least of the 
poems of Homer ; the second presents us with an early example 
of amateur textual criticism ; and both imply that Homer was 
really better suited as a text-book for young men than for mere 
children. 

In the earliest play of Aristophanes there was a scene in which 
a father, who believed in the old-fashioned style of 

Aristophanes ... .... 

poetic education, is represented as examining his 
son as to the meaning of certain 'hard words in Homer'*: the 
son, who has a preference for the prose of practical life, retorts by 
asking his father the meaning of obsolete terms in the laws of 
Solon. In the Fivgs, ' the divine Homer ' is counted among the 
nobler poets, because he is preeminently the poet of the art of 
wa^^ He is also quoted or parodied in several passages*. 

Turning from the comic poet to one of the gravest of the 

ancient rhetoricians, we find Isocrates, in his letter 

of exhortation to Nicocles, expressing his own 

admiration for Homer and for the early tragic poets', and 

rebuking his contemporaries for preferring the most paltry comedy 

1 Plut. Alcib. 7. 

2 Aristoph. AotraXets, quoted by Galen in praef. lexici Hippocratici, p. 404 
Franz, Trpdj raSjTO. ah \ii,ov 'O/xripeiovs yXwrras, rl KaXovai K6pviJ.§a...,TL koXovo' 
afxevT)va Kaprjua. 

^ Frogs 1036. 

* Birds 575, 685, 910, 914, Peace 1089 ff, Clouds 1056. 

^ Isocr. 2 § 48. 



I 



II.] QUOTATIONS FROM HOMER. 33 

to the poems of Hesiod and Theognis and Phocylides'. In his 
Patugyric he describes the fame of Homer as enhanced by the 
fact that ' he pronounced a splendid eulogy on those who fought 
against the foreign foe', adding that this was the reason why he 
had been honoured by Athens in the instruction of her youth*. 
In his pamphlet Against the Sophists he points out why it is that 
Homer, who ' is deemed the wisest of men', describes the gods as 
deliberating. It is because he desires to teach mortal men that 
even the gods cannot discern the future*. Lastly, in his Pana- 
thenaic, written in the 95th year of his age, he speaks of the 
frequenters of the Lyceum as reciting the poems of Homer and 
Hesiod, and as ' talking twaddle ' about them ; but he defers his 
own remarks on those poets to a more convenient season, which 
never came\ — It was probably in the time of the pupils of 
Isocrates that Homer became the theme of the paltry criticisms 
of Zoilus (see p. 108 f). 

The quotations from the 'Homeric poems' in the Athenian 
age sometimes differ from our present texts. Thu- 
cydides* quotes two passages from the 'Homeric' fr^°H*o*^er 
hymn to Apollo* in a form slightly different from 
that handed down to us in the mss of the hymns, while he identi- 
fies with Homer the ' blind man ' there described as ' dwelling in 
rocky Chios'. Similar divergences may be noticed in Plato's 
quotations. Some of these are clearly intentional, while others 
are almost certainly due to mistakes of memory". Aeschines 
quotes a passage of fifteen lines from the Iliad^, the longest quoted 
by any classical writer, with at least four variations ; and Lycurgus 
a shorter passage with very slight changes'. Further, about 
twenty-one of Aristotle's quotations from Homer differ from our 
ordinary text", and there are also five passages in which he refers 

1 Isocr. 2 §§ 43, 44. * Paneg. 159. 

* 13 § 2. * 12 §§ 33, 34. 5 Thuc. iii 104. 
® Homeric Hymn, i 145 — 150 and 165 — 172. 
^ >?<?/. 379 D. 388 A, 389 E, 405 E, 424 B. 

* //. xxiii 77 — 91, quoted by Aeschin. i 149. 
» //. XV494— 9; Lye. § 103. 
^" Iliad ii 32, 196, 391 f, iv 125, vi 200, vii 63, viii 18 f, 84, ix 385 f, 538 f, 

'592 f, XI, 12, 457, xi 542, xiv 217, XV 245 ; Odyssey iv 567, xi 598, xv 399, 

xix 121. Cp. R. Wachsmuth, De Aristotelis Studiis Homtricis Capita Selata, 

S. o 



34 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

very loosely to the language of the Homeric poems\ All these 
variations may be due to errors of memory, and they appear to 
throw little (if any) light on the state of the Homeric text in the 
fifth and fourth centuries B.C. On the whole, the evidence of 
quotations shows that the text of those centuries was practically 
the same as ours ^. 

The epic poet Antimachus, of Colophon in Ionia {fl. 464-410), 
who was among the older contemporaries of Plato, prepared a 
text of Homer, which is mentioned seven times in the Venetian 
Scholia on Homer^, and was supposed by Mr F. A. Paley to 

^^^j be perhaps the first publication of the Iliad and 

» editions ' of Odyssey in their present form^ An 'edition' of 

°^^^ Homer is also attributed to Aristotle by Plutarch and 

Strabo. The former in his life of Alexander quotes Onesicritus as 
stating that Alexander constantly kept under his pillow, with his 
dagger, a copy of the Iliad, which Aristotle had corrected for 
him, called 'the casket copy'^ Strabo calls Alexander an 
admirer of Homer {(f>L\6fx.r]po<:), adding that there was a recen- 
sion of Homer called ' that of the casket ' ; that Alexander 
had perused and annotated certain parts of it with the help of 
men like Callisthenes and Anaxarchus ; and that he kept it in 
a casket of costly workmanship which he had found in the 
Persian treasure®. On the eve of his victorious career in Asia, 
he visited the plains of Troy, and placed a garland on the 
tomb of Achilles, declaring him happy in having had, in his 
life, a faithful friend, and in his death a mighty herald of his 
fame^ 

pp. I — 19, and on the variations in Plato and Aeschines, as well as in 
Aristotle, Laroche, Homerische Textkritik (1866), p. 23 — 36, with Wilamowitz 
Horn. Unt., p. 299. Cp. Romer, Sitzungsb. d. Munchmer Acad, xvii {1884) 
264—314, 639 ff. 

1 Eth. ii 9, iii 11 ; Pol. viii 3, p. 1338^; Rhet. iii 4; Poet. 8. 

2 A. Ludwich, Die Homer-vulgaia als voralexandHnische erwiesen, 1898. 

^ T] ' AvTi/mxov (sc. ^Kdoffis), i] Kara ' Avri/xaxov , i] 'AvTifidxeios. Schol. on 
//. i 298, 424, 598; V 461; xiii 60; xxiii 870; and Od. i 85. 

* Homei-i quae nunc exstant an reliquis Cycli carminibus antiquiora hire 
habita sint (1878), p. 39, quis ille fuerit qui Homerum nostrum litteris primum 
mandavit, si non fuit Antimachus, ego ignoro. 

5 Plut. Alex. 8, y\ e'/c rov va.pOy)Ko%. 

« Strabo p. 594. ^ Plut. Alex. 15. 



ARISTOTLE OX HOMER. 



Aristotle, in his Poetic, describes Homer as 'representing men as 
better than they are ' (2 § 3), and as ' pre-eminent in 
the serious style of poetry- ' (4 § 9), as ' the eariiest and HomeV"^ °° 
the most adequate model' of all the excellences of 
epic poetr)', and as ' unequalled in diction and thought ' (24 §§ i, 2). 
The poet keeps himself in the background, lea\'ing his characters, 
which are clearly marked, to speak for themselves (§ 7). He has 
taught all other poets the true art of illusion (§ 9). In * unity of 
plot', as in all else, he is of surpassing merit; he has made the 
Iliad, and also the Odyssey, centre round a single action (8 § 3). 
These two poems ' have many parts, each with a certain magnitude 
of its own ; yet they are as perfect as possible in structure ' 
(26 § 6)\ In the Rhetoric Aristotle, in explaining what he means 
by ' bringing things before the eye ', or vividness of expression, cites 
a series of metaphors from Homer : — the stone of Sisyphus ' re- 
morseless ' in its bounding down into the valley, the flying arrow 
' yearning ' for its mark, the javelins ' thirsting ' for the foeman's 
blood, and the 'passionate' spear-point, speeding through the 
heros breast. The same vivid effect, he adds, is produced by the 
similes, in which Homer gives life and movement and animation 
to things inanimate, as in the line where he says of the ' waves of 
the bellowing ocean', — ' Arch'd and crested with foam, they sweep 
on, billow on billow''. 

Aristotle's interest in Homer led him to draw up a collection 
of Homeric Problems, a subject which he approaches in the 
chapter on ' critical difficulties and their solutions ' towards the 
close of his treatise on Poetry ^ These Problems are only pre- 
ser\'ed in a fragmentary form^ For most of our knowledge of 
their purport we are indebted to the scholia on the mss of Homer, 
especially in the Venice MS B (cent. xi). They are there quoted 
. in twenty-one places, not to mention isolated passages of Strabo, 

I Plutarch and Athenaeus ; they were also familiar to the Neo- 



^ Cp. Jebb's Homer, p. 4 f. ^ Rhet. iii 1 1 §§ 3, 4. 

' Poet. 25, xept wpo^Xrjiiarwv Kal Xvaeijv, esp. §§ lo, ii. 

•• aTopTifjMTa, -rpo^XrifiaTa or ^rp-qixaTa (originally in either 6, 7 or 10 
books), Aristot. frag. 142 — 179 Rose. In one of these fragments we find the 
verb if-rbprriaev (159), in five the corresponding verb Xvuv (149, 160, 161, 164, 
174) and in one (179) the title 'Ap. ' Ofiripucoh axop-qfuiau'. 



36 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

platonist Porphyry, the author of a similar work in the third 
century of our era. The points raised concern the ethical and 
dramatic sense of the poems, rather than verbal or literary 
criticism \ For example, ' Why does Agamemnon tempt the 
army to return to Greece?'^ 'When the Greeks are fleeing to 
their ships, why is it that Odysseus flings off" his cloak, when he 
runs at the bidding of Athene to stay their flight?'^ ' Why does 
Homer assign to Crete one hundred cities in the Iliad, and only 
ninety in the OdysseyT*^ 'Why are we told in the Iliad \haX the 
sun-god sees and hears everything, and yet in the Odyssey he 
needs a messenger to tell him of the slaughter of his oxen ? '" 'If 
the gods drink nothing but nectar, why is Calypso described as 
mixing a draught for Hermes, mixing implying the addition of 
water? '® " What is meant by ' more of the night than two of the , 
three parts is gone, and (yet) the third part still remains'?^ " 'Why 
are two talents of gold (an apparently large amount) given as a 
fourth prize in a chariot-race?'^ Part of Aristotle's reply to this 
last question is to the effect that the Homeric talent was smaller 
than the Attic talent ; and, so far, modern scholars are in entire 
accord with Aristotle. Once we seem to reach the region of 
textual criticism when the question is asked, "why is the epithet 
auS;/€o-o-a, 'voiceful', 'speaking with human voice', applied to the 
'goddesses' Circe and Calypso**, as well as to the once mortal 
Ino?" '" Here it is strangely proposed in the first two cases to read 
av\y](.(x<ja, which can only mean 'apt at playing on the flute', and 
yet is described as a synonym for /xovcuSt;?, 'apt in singing a solo'; 
and, in the case of Ino, to read oT;87fecro-a, ' earthly'. These frag- 
mentary Homeric problems, as a whole, are very disappointing; and 
it may well be doubted whether Aristotle himself is really re- 
sponsible for them, any more than for much that has come down 
under his name in the varied contents of the general Problems^\ 

' Cp. Egger, I.e. pp. 188 — 194^ and Saintsbury, I.e., pp. 49 f. 

^ //. ii 73. 

3 //. ii 305. * II. ii 649; Od. xix 173. 

5 //. iii 277; Od. xii 374. « Od. v 93. '' //. x 253. 

^ //. xxiii 269; Arist. Frag. 164 Rose. 

^ Each of these is called a deh% avdrjeaffa in Od. x 136 etc., and xii 449. 

1" Oi/. V 334, ppoTos aiidrjea-ffa. ^^ Zeller, Aristotle, i 96, 104. 



II.] THE STUDY OF HESIOD. 37 

It is refreshing to turn from these to the passage in his Poetic^ 
where he quotes the Homeric phrase, describing the comrades of 
Diomede as sleeping with their spears standing upright on their 
butt-ends, 'their spears stood upright on the spike", instead of 
being laid level with the ground, in which case (as observed by the 
scholiast) there would have been no risk of a spear falling, and 
raising an alarm.. Aristotle solves the difficulty caused by the ex- 
ceptional position of the spear, by simply suggesting that ' this was 
the custom then, as it is now among the Illyrians'-. It was prob- 
ably in one of his lost chapters on Poetr}' that Aristotle observed 
that 'the most striking thing in Homer' was the passage describing 
the effect produced on the Trojans when they first see Patroclus, 
gleaming in the armour of Achilles, and fancy for the moment that 
Achilles has laid aside his ' wrath ', and has been reconciled to the 
Greeks: — 'each several man peered round^ to seek escape from sheer 
destruction'. This, adds Aristotle, is characteristic of barbarians'. 

We have seen thus far that, from the days of Solon to those 
of Aristotle, Homer was constantly studied and quoted, and 
was a favourite theme for allegorizing interpretation and for 
rationalistic or rhetorical treatment. He was also the subject of 
a very limited amount of verbal criticism. Of any literary criti- 
cism of his poems, we have scanty evidence, with the important 
exception of Aristotle's treatise on Poetry. The criticism of 
his text was in the main reserved for the Alexandrian age. 

Apart from Homer, the epic poets studied in the Athenian 
age included those of the 'Epic Cycle' {c. 776-566 B.C.) which (as 
we have already seen) supplied the tragic poets with many of their 
themes. The Theogony oi Yiesiod. {floruit c. 720? 
B.C.) was also studied as a text-book of mythology, 
and the questions which it raised may well have been em- 
barrassing to instructors who had to deal with exceptionally 
precocious pupils. We are told that Epicurus, before the age 

^ //. X 152 f, ?7Xfa S^ <^'t>^ I 6p0' iiri ffavpwTrjpos. 

2 Poet. 25 § 7. 

^ Townley Schol. on //. xvi 283 (Aristot. Fra^. 130 Rose) xairTrjvev : 
SewdTaTov tQv iirCiif 'Ofi-qpov tovt6 (prjaiv 'Apto-roreXi;? iv (J irayres <f>(VKTiQ<n, 
Kal oiKfiov ^ap^p-jyv. 



38 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

of fourteen {c. 328 b.c), asked certain schoolmasters and sophists 
some puzzling questions about Hesiod's account of Chaos ; and 
that, dissatisfied with their replies, he resolved on devoting 
himself to the study of philosophy'. Still more popular was 
his poem on Works and Days, which with its moral maxims 
and its precepts of farming is the prototype not only of Tusser's 
Points of Good Husbandrie but also of Tupper's Proverbial 
Philosophy. Aristophanes makes Aeschylus name Hesiod among 
the 'noble poets', because he tells of 'tilling the soil and times 
for ploughing and seasons of harvest'^. One passage from this 
poem, that on Fame or Rumour, is quoted by Aristotle, as well 
as twice by Aeschines'', who also quotes on two occasions a 
passage of political import ^ and in the second of these last 
occasions introduces the lines by observing that ' the reason why 
we learn the precepts of the poets by heart in our boyhood is 
in order that we may obey them when we arrive at man's estate '. 
Hesiod was also the reputed author of a versified form of 
the precepts of reverence and obedience, which Achilles learnt 
from the centaur Cheiron ; and the fame of Cheiron's precepts 
is attested not only by Pindar' and Plato", but also by that 
unknown artist who on a vase in the Berlin Museum represents 
two boys standing and listening with rapt attention to a boy 
seated between them who is reading from a scroll, with a box 
before him on which rests a second scroll bearing in archaic 
characters the title +IRONEIA^ The Hesiodic authorship of this 
work was first denied in the Alexandrian age, by Aristophanes 
of Byzantium ^ 

Only two more epic poets need here be mentioned. The 
^ . , first of these, Antimachus of Colophon ifl. c. 464- 

Antimachus ' i \y t t 

410), the author of a prolix poem called the 

^ Diog. Laert. x 2. 2 Progs, 1034. 

^ Works and Days 761; Aeschin. i § 129, 2 § 144 (cp. Dem. 19 § 243); 
Aristot. Eth. vii 13, 5. 

•* ib. 240 f; Aeschin. 2 § 158, 3 § 135. 

^ Pyth. iv 102. 

« Rep. 391 B— c. 

'' See cut in Klein, Ejiphronios, 283-; Daremberg and Saglio, s.v. Educa- 
tion, p. 469; or P. Girard, Ed. Ath., p. 149. 

^ Quint, i I, 15 (cp. Kinkel, Ep. Gr. Frag, i pp. 148 f). 



II.] ANTIMACHUS AND CHOERILUS. 39 

TTtebais, is said to have begun the story of the return of Diomede 
with the death of Meleager, and to have reached the end of 
Book XXIV before getting the Seven heroes before the gates 
of Thebes'. Nevertheless he appears to have been approved 
by Plato, who is said to have been present on the occasion 
when the poet recited his voluminous work. One by one the 
company slipped away, till Plato alone remained. 'I shall go 
on reading', said the poet unperturbed, 'Plato alone in my 
opinion is worth a thousand'-. The philosopher is also said to 
have sent to Colophon for a complete collection of his poems, 
and to have preferred him to Choerilus^ an opinion which 
was afterwards opposed in the Pergamene School by Crates of 
Mallos*. In the Alexandrian age the diffuseness of his epic 
poem was condemned by Callimachus*, whose condemnation is 
echoed by Catullus*. Nevertheless he was awarded a high 
place in the Canon of the epic poets'", and was even preferred to 
Homer by the emperor Hadrian*, possibly because he was easier 
to imitate. Mention has already been made of his ' edition ' of 
Homer, some of the readings of which are recorded in the 
Homeric scholia^. 

The second of these epic poets, Choerilus of Samos {fl. 404 
B.C.), who was regarded by the Spartan general, 
Lysander, and by the Macedonian king, Arche- 
laus, as one of the foremost poets of his time*", was the author 
of an imjxjrtant Epic on the Persian wars. Choerilus broke 
new ground by abandoning the old mythological themes in 
favour of a national and historical subject. He attained the 
unique honour of a decree pro\'iding apparently for the public 
recitation of his poems together with those of Homer". Aris- 

' Porphyrion on Horace, A. P. 146. 

* Cic. Brutus, 191. 
' Proclus on Plato, Tim. i p. 28 c (Kinkel I.e. p. 274). 

* Anth. Pal. xi 218. 
' Frag. 441. 6 Q^ g^^ jQ 7 Quint, x i 53. 

8 Dio Cass. Ixix 4 (cp. Hist. Aug. Baiir. 15). 

9 Supra, p. 34, note 3. Cp. A. Ludwich, Aristarchs HomeriscJu Text- 
kriiik,i 18; ii432, 383. 

^" Plutarch, Lysand. 18 ; Athen. 345 D. 

^* Suidas, (fin t«j 'Ofii^pov dfaywu>ffK€<r$ai €\j/7)<f>i<Tdrj (Kinkel l.c. p. 265). 



I 



40 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. H. 

totle in the Topics^ considers the Homeric similes clearer than 
those of Choerilus. In the Rhetoric'^'' he quotes what is ob- 
viously part of the exordium of his Epic, immediately after 
the first phrase of the Iliad and the Odyssey. 

From another passage early in this poem Aristotle quotes 
a single phrase as an example of an apologetic exordium :— 
vvv 8' oTf. iravra ScSao-rat, 'now that all has been apportioned'. 
His readers were doubtless familiar with the context, which has 
fortunately been preserved in an ancient scholium, and in the 
form of the following paraphrase may fitly close the present 
chapter : 

Oh! the bards of olden ages, blessed bards in song-craft skill'd, 
Happy henchmen of the Muses, when the field was yet untill'd. 
All the land is now apportion 'd ; bounds to all the Arts belong; 
Left the last of all the poets, looking keenly, looking long, 
I can find no bright new chariot for the race-course of my song-*. 

' viii I. 

^ iii 14. 

'^ a fidKap, 6<XTis ?r]v Keivov xp^''Of (Spis dotS^s, 

Movffdwv depdxojv, or aKriparos ^v ^ri Xeitxdiv 
vvv d' ore iravra MSaarai, ^ov<Ti di Treipara Tex"**') 
iiaraToi ware dpdfiov KaTaXelwofJied' , oi^i tt^; ^an 
wavT-q iraiTTaivovTa veo^vy^s ap/j.a ireXdaaai.. 



Since the above chapter was m type, Mr D. B. Monro has published, in the 
Appendix to his edition of Odyssey xiii-xxiv (1901), important papers on 
'■Homer and the Cyclic poets' {pp. 340 — 354), and on the ''History of the 
Homeric poems' {pp. 355— 454)- 



CHAPTER III. 



THE STUDY OF LYRIC POETRY. 

Ax interesting picture of the normal course of education at 
Athens is drawn by Protagoras in the dialogue of 
Plato which bears that name. In the picture in poetry, 
question special stress is laid on the study of the p^g^^^Jas 
poets. 

When the boys have learned their letters, and are banning to understand 
the sense of what is written.... their teachers set beside them the works of 
excellent poets, and compel the boys, w^hile seated on the benches, to read 
them aloud and learn them by heart. In these are contained many admo- 
nitions, many detailed narratives and eulogies and laudations of brave men of 
old. These are learnt by heart, in order that the boy may emulate and imitate 
those brave men, and be eager to become like them.... Then, again, the 
teachers of the cilhara, as soon as their pupils have learned to play on that 
instrument, instruct them in the works of other excellent poets, the composers 
of songs^, which they set to music, forcing the very souls of the boys to become 
familiar with their rhythms and their melodies, in order that they may be more 
gentle, and be belter fitted for speech and action by becoming more beautifully 
' rhythmical ' and ' melodious ' ; for the whole of man's life has need of beauty 
of rhythm and of melody. Besides all this, their parents send them to the 
master of gymna.stic, in order that they may have their bodies in better 
condition and able to minister to the virtue of their minds, and not be 
compelled by the weakness of their bodies to play the coward either in war or 
in any other action^. 

The study of the poets is also emphasised in the references to 
the ordinar)' course of education contained in Plato's Laws : 

We have very many poets (says 'the Athenian' in that dialogue), writing 
in hexameter verse, and in (iambic) trimeters, and in all other kinds of 

' /xcXorotwK. * Plato, Protag. 325 C — 326 E. 



42 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

'metres', some with a serious purpose, others aiming merely at raising a 
laugh. With these the many myriads of Athens say that young men, who are 
being rightly educated, should be nurtured and saturated, by being made to 
have much to hear at recitations, and much to learn, and by getting whole 
poets by heart ; while others select choice passages out of all the poets and 
make a collection of certain complete set-speeches, and say that these are what 
should be committed to memory by anyone who is to be made good and wise 
by a variety of experience and a variety of learning^. 

The artistic counterpart of these pictures is to be found in the 
scenes from an Athenian school which adorn the 
ingtTy Duris outsidc of an Attic vase executed by Duris in the 
early part of the fifth century b.c. In the centre of 
one of the two scenes the master, seated on a chair, holds a scroll 
half open, and listens to a boy standing before him, who may 
either be saying by heart the lesson that he has learnt, or com- 
mitting it to memory under the master's prompting. The open 
part of the scroll bears a rather inaccurate copy of a line from 
some ancient Hymn : — Molad /xoi dfx(f>i ^Ka/xavSpov iippoov dpypp.ai 
deiScLv. To the left is a bearded master playing a seven-stringed 
lyre, face to face with a pupil who is playing on a smaller instru- 
ment of the same kind ; both of these are seated on stools. To 
the right, seated on another stool, is a bearded man with a staff 
in his hand, probably the boy's tutor or supervisor, the TraiSaywyo's, 
In the centre of the second scene a youthful teacher sits holding 
a tablet in his left hand and a stylus in his right. He is ap- 
parently correcting an exercise written by the boy who stands 
before him. To the left another youthful teacher is playing the 
double flute as a lesson to a second boy standing before him. 
To the right, as in the first scene, sits a bearded man with a staff, 
watching the giving of the lesson. A variety of articles are 
suspended on the walls, including a scroll tied up, a pair of 
writing-tablets fastened together by a string, a wicker-basket, two 
flat drinking-cups, a cross-like object consisting of two intersecting 
pieces (possibly for drawing angles and straight lines), and lastly a 
flute-case, and three lyres ^ 

^ Plato, Laws 8io E. 

- Published (with red figures on black ground) in Mon. d. Inst, ix pi. 54 ; 
also, with article by Michaelis, in Arch. Zeitung, xxxi p. i. See Frontispiece. 



III.l THE STUDY OF LYRIC POETRY. 43 

The stringed instrument of the Homeric poems is the 
phorminx or cithara or citharis. The citharis and 
the 'lyre' are synonymous in the Hymn to Hermes, andtheiyre 
where the ' lyre ' is first mentioned. But a distinc- 
tion is sometimes drawn between the 'lyre' and the cithara. 
While the 'lyre' (with projecting 'horns' and with a simple 
equivalent for the original tortoise-shell body) is the instrument 
depicted in the vase-painting, and also mentioned in the context 
of the passage from the Laws^, it is the 'cithara' (in which the 
' shell ' is replaced by a wooden case and the ' horns ' superseded 
by a prolongation of the case on either side of the strings) that is 
mentioned in the passage from the Protagoras. Elsewhere, both 
the instruments are mentioned together-. But, although the lyre 
and the ' cithara ', and especially the former, were the instruments 
ordinarily used in education, the poets, whose songs were set to 
the music of these instruments, were never known 
in the Athenian age as the ' lyric ' poets, but as . l^l^^^ ^^^ 
fjLfXoiroioL, ' makers of fieXr] ' or ' songs ' \ For the 
earliest use of the term ' lyric ' we have to wait until the Alex- 
andrian age, in which a pupil of Aristarchus, the grammarian 
Dionysius Thrax*, refers to 'lyric poetry'; while, for the first 
mention of a ' melic ' poet, we have to wait still longer, even until 
the rime of Plutarch' (7?. 80 a.d.). 

In contrasting the old and the new style of education 
Aristophanes, in a play whose date is in or after 
423 B.C., describes the master of the good old days andTh^^nts^ 
as making his pupils learn the song of ' Pallas, 
dread sacker of cities', composed by Lamprocles (c. 476 B.C.), the 
fellow-pupil of Pindar and the instructor of Damon ^, or the 

^ 809 E, \vpas aipaadai. - Plato, Rep. 399 D. 

* Also as Kidap<i)doi (Bergk, Gr. Litt. ii 117). 

■» Ars Gramm. p. 6 /. 10 Uhlig, \vpiKT] iroirfffis (cp. Smyth's Greek Melic 
Poets, p. xviin.). Cp. Varro's Relliquiae, p. 187 Wilmanns, and Cicero's 
Orator, 183. 

* ii 120 c, Tou ixiKiKov YiivZapov, cp. Plin. A".H. vii 89, 192 ; poematU melici 
is found as early as Cicero, De Opt. Gen. Or. i. 

® IlaXXaSa wipaevoKiv, deivav debv eypeKijSoifiov, 
iroTtfcXjfw TToXe/jiaddKoi', ayvai' 
irdida Atds fieydXov Sa/xaanrirov (cp. Smyth, /. c. p. 340). 



IK 

r 



44 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

'loudly sounding strain' of Cydides (or Cydias of Hermione), — 
songs marked by the grave and severe melody of the olden 
time, as contrasted with the difficult and complicated turns and 
flourishes of the modern style of the Lesbian Phrynis'. Else- 
where he frequently denounces the dithyrambic poet, Cinesias, 
who with the foreigners Phrynis, Melanippides and Timotheus 
is also attacked by Pherecrates in a celebrated passage preserved 
by Plutarch 2. 

The study of the ' melic ' poets in the Athenian age may be 

partly inferred from citations. A line of Alcaeus 
Sappho"^ ^" {fl- 612-580 B.C.) addressed to Sappho {fl. 612), 

and four lines of her reply are preserved by 
Aristotle^; and the famous palinode of Stesichorus is quoted 

in the Phaedrus of Plato". Anacreon of Teos 
Sim^onwir" {fi- 530 I'-c.) and Simonides of Ceos (556-468 B.C.) 

were both invited to Athens by Hipparchus. As 
the singer of love and wine, Anacreon does not lend himself 
either for purposes of education, or for quotation by grave 
philosophers or orators. He is the poet of the symposium. The 
sweetness of his melodies is mentioned by Aristophanes*, who 
couples his name with that of Ibycus of Samos {fl. 544 B.C.). A 
much more serious poet is Simonides. A popular definition of 
justice as 'paying one's debts', ascribed to Simonides, is criticised 
in the Republic*^. In the Protagoras., one of his poems is selected 
by Protagoras as a thesis for discussion ^ In that poem the 
Sophist professes to find a contradiction. The poet first says, 
' hard it is for a man to become good ' ; and then inconsistently 
reproaches Pittacus for saying, ' hard it is to be good '. The 
solution offered by Socrates, who draws a distinction between 
being and becoming, is probably 'a caricature of the methods of 
interpretation' practised by the Sophists, and the discussion on 
the passage as a whole may be ' regarded as Plato's satire on the 

^ Ar. Clouds, 966 — 972. 

2 De Musica, p. 1 141 § 30 (on Phrynis, cp. Smyth, p. Ixvi, on Melanippides 
and Timotheus, ib. 454, 462). 

3 Rhet. i 9 (cp. Smyth, p. 239). 
■* 243 A ; cp. Rep. 586 c. 

5 Thesm. 161. ® i P- 33i D— E. 

'' P- 339 (Smyth, pp. 54, 309). 



I 



in.] SIMONIDES AND PINDAR. 45 

tedious and hypercritical arts of interpretation which prevailed in 
his own day". His elegiac epigram on those who fell at Marathon 
is quoted by Lycurgus^ who also quotes one of his two epigrams 
on the heroes of Thermopylae, both of which are quoted by 
Herodotus^. In none of these cases is the name of the author 
mentioned, though the epigram on the seer Megistias is expressly 
ascribed to Simonides. The opening line of his ode in honour of 
the victory in the mule-race won by Anaxilas of Rhegium, or 
possibly by his son, is quoted by Aristotle as an example of the 
use of epithets to lend elevation to a subject : — *' When the victor 
in the mule-race offered him a small fee, he declined to compose 
the ode in honour of the victory on the ground that he was 
shocked at the thought of writing on the subject of semi-asses ; 
but when the victor actually gave him sufficient pay, he wrote : — 
' Hail to the brood of the storm -footed coursers'*." 

The Theban Pindar {c. 522-443 B.C.) must have been popular 
at Athens, not because he celebrated the Pythian 
victory of Megacles the Alcmaeonid^ but because 
he recognised Salamis as the glory of the Athenians*, and Athens 
herself as 'the gleaming city of the violet crown' and 'the 
bulwark of Hellas''. It is said that in consequence of these 
praises of Athens, Pindar was fined by his countrymen, but that 
the Athenians paid the poet twice the amount of the fine and set 
up a statue of bronze in his honour^ Pindar is repeatedly 
quoted by Plato, for example in the Meno, where he is counted as 
one of the ' divine poets ', and a splendid passage is cited from his 
dirges". The lines on the reign of Law seem to have been 
Plato's favourite quotation, for he refers to them in the Protagoras, 
the Gorgias and the Symposium, and also in the Laws^'^. The 

^ Jowett's Plato, i 113^, I24*'. 

' Leocr. 109. * vii 228. 

* Rhet. iii -2, 14, xaiptT deX.XoiroSwj' dvyarpes tirirwv. 

* Pyth. vii. « Pyth. i 75. 

'' Frag. 46, at re \nrapal /cat loffT^^ayoi /toi aoiSifioi, 'EXXdSoy Ipeitr/ia, 
icXeivad 'A6dvcu, Scufiopiov -rroXUdpoif, cp. Nem. iv 18, Isih. ii 20, and Aristoph. 
Ach. 636 — 640. 

8 [Aeschin] Ep. iv (Donaldson's Pindar p. 346); cp. Isocr. Antid. i66. 

9 Meno, p. 81 B. 
^° Frag. 151, yo/uos 6 vavrijiv ^a<n\fvs kt\. 



46 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

same passage is cited by Herodotus', and by the rhetorician 
Alcidamasl Pindar was held in honour all over the Greek 
world. He was early known in Thessaly, as well as in his native 
Thebes and in Orchomenus ; one at least of his odes was familiar 
to Tenedos ; he was still more famous in Aegina ; he was not 
unknown at Argos and Sicyon and Corinth ; his name must have 
lived on the lips of men at the scenes of the celebration of the 
great Greek games, at the Isthmus and at Nemea, at Delphi and 
Olympia. He was bound by the ties of hospitality with the 
Achaeans dwelling above the Ionian sea on the Thesprotian 
border of Epirus^ where 'the mountain-pastures sweep downwards 
from Dodona to the Ionian main'*. His fame extended to the 
western as well as the eastern Locrians ; in the south-east to 
distant Cyrene, and in the west, as far as Himera and Camarina 
and Acragas and Syracuse. The lines of the Sixth Olympian ode 
bidding men 'remember Syracuse and Ortygia, where Hieron 
ruleth with unsullied sceptre and with perfect counsel, while he 
tendeth not only the worship of Demeter with her ruddy feet, and 
the festival of her daughter, Persephone, with her white horses, 
but also the might of Zeus, the lord of Aitna', have been found 
stamped on an ancient brick at Syracuse, possibly by Hieron's 
own order^ ; and the Seventh Olympian in honour of the most 
famous of Greek boxers, Diagoras of Rhodes, was inscribed in 
golden letters in the temple of Athene in the Rhodian town of 
Lindos". Pindar composed an encomium in honour of the 
Macedonian king, Alexander 'the Philhellene"; and, one hundred 
and fifty years afterwards, at the sack of Thebes (335 B.C.), it was 
in memory perhaps of that encomium that another Alexander, 



1 Her. iii 38. ^ Arist. Rhet. iii 3 § 3. 

■* Neni. vii 64 f. 

* Nem. iv 52 f. 

^ 01. vi 93 — 96; Zeitschr. f. Alterth. 1846, p. 616; Bergk ad loc; and 
Freeman's Sicily, ii 539. 

® Gorgon ap. Schol. Cp. A. Croiset, Le podsie de Pindare, p. 18. C. Graux, 
Rev. de Phil, v 117 ( = Notices Bibl. 302), supposes that the ode was written in 
gold ink on the inner surface of a little roll of parchment or fine leather 
(Gildersleeve's Pindar, p. 184). 

7 Frag. 121 [86]. 



III.] PINDAR AND BACCHYLIDES. 47 

' The great Emathian conqueror, bid spare 
The house of Pindarus, when temple and tower 
Went to the ground ' ^. 



Bacchylides 



Of the rest of the nine principal ' melic ' poets of Greece 
neither the earliest, Alcman of Sparta {fl. 657 B.C.), 
nor the latest, Bacchylides of Ceos {fl. 476-452), is 
quoted by any of the authors of the Athenian age. Bacchylides, 
however, and his uncle, Simonides, are supposed to have been in 
Pindar's mind in a well-known passage of the Second Olympian, 
in honour of Theron : — ' many swift arrows have I beneath my 
bended arm within my quiver, arrows vocal to the intelligent 
((^wmevTa cru^eToio-iv), though for their full meaning they need 
interpreters. Wise is he that knoweth much by nature; but, 
when men have merely learnt their lore, they are turbulent and 
intemperate of tongue, even as a pair of crows idly chattering 
(yapvcrov) against the divine bird of Zeus' {jOl. ii 91-97). But 
time has brought some compensation to Bacchylides. We now 
know that, in the ode in honour of an Olympian victory of 
Hieron won in the same year as that of Theron (476 B.C.), Pindar's 
rival compared his own range of flight to that of an eagle (v 16 — 
27); and that, in celebrating another victory of Hieron eight 
years afterwards (468 B.C.), he too could say : ' I utter words 
intelligible to the prudent ' (iii 85, ^povkovri auvcra yapvo)). 

In Aristotle's treatise on poetry (i § 2), mention is made of 
'dithyrambic poetry', and 'the music of the flute and the cithara' ; 
but in that treatise, in its present form, lyric poetry is never 
discussed. The author, however, was not necessarily unsym- 
pathetic towards this kind of composition. We still possess 
a grave and dignified ode to Virtue written by Aristotle him- 
self ^ 

The lyric poetry of Greece may be conveniently regarded as 
including not only the 'melic' but also the 'elegiac' and 'iambic' 
poets. All alike were associated with song, and were generally 
accompanied by music, the instrument, in the case of 'melic' 
poets, being the lyre or the cithara, and in the case of 'elegiac' 

1 Milton, Sonnet 8 ; cp. Pliny vii 109; Aelian, Var. Hist, xiii 7. 
^ ap. Athen. 695 A (Srnyth, pp. 142, 468). 



48 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

and 'iambic' poets the flute'. Of the elegiac poets, one of the 

earUest (in the ordinary view) is Tyrtaeus {fl. 685- 

Tyrfaeus''"^*^' 668 B.C.). His poem On Good Government (Eu- 

nomia) is specially mentioned by Aristotle, while 

not less than thirty-two lines from his spirited and stirring 

Exhortations are quoted in court by the orator Lycurgus. Two 

other portions of the same poem are embodied in passages in the 

Laws of Plato, where their author is called a ' most divine poet ', 

though Plato regrets that personal bravery in battle is the only 

kind of virtue that wins his praised Mimnermus 

Mimnermus r r^ i rt ^ \ ' i t-i -i 

of Smyrna {fl. 620 B.C.) is partly a pohtical and 
still more a sentimental poet. He sighs as he prays: — 'Ah! 
that from sickness safe and bitter cares, Death may o'ertake me, 
e'en at sixty years ' (frag. 6). The sentiment meets with a protest 
from the sturdy good sense of Solon who, addressing Mimnermus, 
says : — -" But, if, even now, you will take my advice, erase this ; 
nor bear me any ill-will for having thought on this theme better 
than you ; emend the words, Ligyastades, and sing : ' May death 
o'ertake me, e'en at eighty years'" (frag. 20). In 
Solon's case, the prayer was apparently answered, 
for he seems to have died at the age of eighty {c. 639-559). I" 
his poems elegiac and iambic verse are alike represented. Among 
his elegiacs are some forty lines of a vigorous and patriotic poem 
on Athens, which Demosthenes calls upon the clerk of the court 
to read aloud in the course of the speech for the prosecution of 
Aeschines, and also two or three passages, probably from the 
same poem, which Aristotle quotes in his Constitution 0/ Athens, 
together with thirty-five iambic lines on his political reforms, and 
nine trochaic lines on the same topic. In his Rhetoric he quotes 
a single line of admonition to Critias. Plato cites a couplet in 
the Lysis, without the author's name, and elsewhere mentions 
Solon and his contemporaries*. 

In the Timaeus in particular Critias (who died in 404 B.C.) 

■^ Cp. Jebb's Growth and Influence of Classical Greek Poetry, pp. 108, 117, 
122. 

2 Arist. Pol. V 6, 2 ; Lycurg. Leocr. 107 ; Plato, Laws 629 A, E, 660 E. 

3 Dem. 19 § 255; Arist. Const. Ath. c. 5 and 12; Rhet. i 15; Plato, Lys. 
212 E, Charmid. 157 F, Tim. 20 E and esp. 2r B — c. 



III.] ELEGIAC POETRY. 49 

recalls an incident which happened when he was a boy of about 
ten years of age. It was on the day of the Apaturia set apart for 
the registration of boys ; and, in accordance with the custom of 
that festival, parents gave prizes for recitation (pai/r<i)Sta), many 
poems were recited, and among them ' many of us boys sang the 
poems of Solon, which were new at the time ' (i.e. recently 
introduced into public recitations). Someone said to the boy's 
grandfather, a contemporary and relation of Solon's, that, in his 
judgment, Solon was ' not only the wisest of men, but also the 
noblest of poets '. The old man smiled and said that, ' if Solon 
had only made poetry the business of his life,... he would have 
been as famous as Homer or Hesiod, or any poet '. 

The elegiac epigrammatists Demodocus of Leros and Phocylides 
of Miletus {fl. 537 B.C.) are cited by Aristotle in Phocyiides. 
the Ethics (vii 9) and Politics (iv 11, 9) respectively, Theognis 
the former passage describing the character of the Milesians, and 
the latter the advantage of belonging to the middle classes. 
Theognis of Megara {fl. 540 B.C.) is commended in Plato's Laws 
for eulogising political loyalty, and is paraphrased in the Meno, 
while his proverbial sayings are quoted by Xenophon and Aris- 
totle'. Most of his verses are of a political, and indeed intensely 
aristocratical, type, and they could hardly be expected to be 
popular in democratic Athens. The only evidence adduced to 
show that he was one of the standard school-authors is the 
proverbial line : — ' 7 hat indeed I knew before Theognis was 
born '"^ All that this proves is that his moral maxims were often 
quoted and had long been very trite. They seem to have 
inspired much of the worldly wisdom of Isocrates, who names 
Theognis (wnth Hesiod and Phocylides) as a wise counsellor who 
was neglected in comparison with the comic poets of the day 
(2 § 43). His lighter verses were expressly meant to be sung at 
the symposium to the strains of flutes, and a phrase from one of 
them has actually been found inscribed on a wine-cup of Tanagra^ 

^ Plato, Laws 630, Meno 95 e ; Xen. Mem. i 1, 20, Symp. ii 5 ; Arist. 
Eth. i 8, X 9. 

- Tovri fiev rjSeiv vpu' Qioypiw yeyovivai (Doiisa ad Lucil. frag, incert. 102, 
quoted by Grafenhan, 171); Plut. Afor. ii 777. Cp. Schomann, 0/>. iv 25 f. 

* 1365, w iraiduv KoXXiffTf, cp. 241 f ; Christ, Gr. Litt. § 90', § 100'. 
S. A 



so THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

The foremost of the early iambic poets, Archilochus of Paros 
{fl. 650), though ranked with Homer by the 
Archilochus*^ ancients, is described by Pindar, at a distance of 
two centuries, as 'the bitter-tongued Archilochus, 
who fell full often into distress by battening on virulent abuse of 
his enemies' {Fyth. ii 55). Pindar also mentions 'the chant of 
Archilochus, vocal at Olympia, even the song of victory, swelling 
with its thrice-repeated refrain ', which, in the absence of any 
special ode, was sung as the ancient counterpart of our modern 
strain of victory: — 'See the conquering hero comes'. Archi- 
lochus is twice imitated by Aristophanes', twice quoted by 
Aristotle^, and twice in the Platonic dialogues-'. His poems were 
recited by rhapsodes, and sung to music like those of Homer and 
Hesiod, Mimnermus and Phocylides\ The other 'iambic' poets, 
Semonides of Amorgos and Hipponax of Ephesus, are not quoted 
in the Athenian age. The ' iambics ' of Solon have been already 
noticed (p. 48). 

It must not be inferred from the limited range of the quo- 
tations from the elegiac, iambic and melic poets in the Athenian 
age, that those poets were comparatively unknown. Almost all 
of their poetry was 'occasional'; much of it was ephemeral; 
and few besides Pindar could say : — ' longer than deeds liveth 
the word' {Nem. iv 6). Many however of their poems played 
a part in the private life of Athens, either in the school, or at 
the symposium, or both. Elegiac poetry lasted for sixteen cen- 
turies, beginning with Callinus {c. 690 B.C.) and ending with 
the Greek Anthology of Constantinus Cephalas {c. 920 a.d.). 
In the Greek drama this metre is only used once, in the lament 
of Andromache (Eur. Andr. 103-116); but iambic poetry found 
a fresh lease of life in the dialogue, and melic in the chorus of 
the drama ; while the epic poetry of narration survived in the mes- 
senger's speeches of Greek tragedy. The canon of Greek lyric 
poetry closes in 452 B.C., the date of the last known odes of 
Pindar and Bacchylides. Meanwhile the personal and reflective 

^ Ranae 704, Pax 603. 

2 Pol. vii 6, 3, Khet. iii 17. 

3 Rep. 365 c, Eryx. 397 E. 
* Athen. 620. 



III.] 



IAMBIC POETRY. 



51 



interest, which lyric poetry had excited in the individual, had 
begun to abate in the presence of the public enthusiasm aroused 
in vast audiences by the drama. Aeschylus had won his first 
tragic prize in 484 B.C.; Sophocles in 468, about the time of 
the death of Simonides; and Euripides in 442, about the time 
of the death of Pindar; while the year 450 is the approximate 
date of the successes gained in the Old Attic Comedy by Crates 
and Cratinus, and also of the birth of Aristophanes. 



X 


^^1 


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%>: 


if^'yj^^ 


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' f^ 


'^" ■•; 




^^^3 


V 


' ^^S^ 






m^ 


\ 






c^ 


\ ^ 


^' 






^ 


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^ 



Masks of Comedy and Tragedy. 
(From the British Museum.) 



4—^ 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE STUDY AND CRITICISM OF DRAMATIC POETRY. 



Literary criticism was promoted at Athens not only by 
the epic recitations of the rhapsodes (p. 20), but also by the 
contests for the prizes offered for lyric, and much more by those 
for dramatic poetry. But such criticism was purely of a popular 
and unprofessional kind. The contests of the 
poetry and drama Were at first decided by acclamation, and 

fcrhic^^ the voice of the people awarded the prize. Sub- 

sequently the decision was made by five judges 
in comic, and probably the same number in tragic, contests. 
This small number of judges was appointed by lot, out of a 
large preliminary list elected by vote. It speaks well for the 
general competence of the judges that Aeschylus and Sophocles 
were usually successful ; but, strange to say, at the presentation 
of the Oedipus Tyrannus, Sophocles was defeated by a minor 
poet, Philocles, a nephew of Aeschylus. Euripides won the prize 
on five occasions only, while Aeschylus is credited with thirteen 
victories, and Sophocles with at least eighteen. The decisions 
pronounced by the judges on such occasions were not without 
their effect in leading to the improvement of plays which were 
unsuccessful at their first presentation. The revision and repro- 
duction of unsuccessful plays was not an uncommon practiced 

Dramatic criticism occasionally found its way into the plays 
themselves. Euripides, in his Eledra (1. 522-544), openly criti- 
cises the means adopted by Aeschylus in the Choephoroe for 



Egger, Hist, de la Critique, p. 26 f. 



CHAP. IV.] CRITICISM IN ATTIC COMEDY. 53 

bringing about the recognition of Orestes by his sister. Such 

criticism, singularly out of place in tragedy, was 

more frequent and more appropriate in comedy. AttilTc^e'dy 

More than sixty years after the memorable occasion, 

when the contest between Aeschylus and Sophocles had been 

decided for the first time in favour of the latter by the verdict of 

Cimon and his colleagues (468 B.C.), the comic 

poet, Phrynichus, represented the nine Muses o/ph^n'ichus 

themselves as assembled in court to decide on the 

respective merits of the tragic poets, and passed an encomium on 

the dramatic career of Sophocles \ 

On the above occasion the Muses of Phrj-nichus competed 
with the play familiar to ourselves under the name 
of the Frogs of Aristophanes (405 B.C.). In that AristophaMs^ 
play, it will be remembered that Sophocles takes 
no part in the contest for the throne of Tragedy. Aeschylus and 
Euripides enter the lists and criticise passages in one another's 
plays. These criricisms extend over nearly three hundred lines 
(1119-1413), but a very brief analysis will here suffice. 

Euripides begins by taking Aeschylus to task for his bombastic style, 
while Aeschylus criticises his rival's prologues. Euripides next claims credit 
for making Tragedy more familiar, more domestic; Aeschylus, for inspiring 
his countrymen w-ith a patriotic spirit by means of martial plays, such as 
the Se-c'en against Thebes and the Persae. He also taunts his opjxjnent %vith 
bringing on to the stage not only women with strange passions, but also 
fallen kings in rags and tatters. Thereupon Euripides attacks the opening 
lines of the Choephoroe, finding fault (among other things) with one or two 
tautological phrases, ' listen ' and 'hear ', and ' I have come' and ' I revisit'*. 
In the latter case Aeschylus triumphantly retorts that the second verb is rightly 
added, being particularly appropriate to return from exile. Aeschylus rejoins 

|»25"th an attack on Euripides for the monotony of his prologues, and ridicules the 
^Bdo frequent recurrence of the pause after the fifth syllable of the iambic line, 
^Kdding to all the verses in which this pause occurs, and in which the gram- 
^Bsatical construction allows, a burlesque and trivial conclusion, — 'lost his 
^^pttle flask of oil' (\i7icu^ioi» oTojXefrey), by which the poet's tragic phrase 
^P ^ Egger, /. c. p. 38 f ; cp. Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum ii 592 Meineke, 
ftaKap 1,o<f>OK\4ris, oj iroXiiv XP^"**" ^iovs \ a-ridavev, eidaifiuv dvr)p koI 
Se^ids, I iroXXas von^ffai kcu KoXai Tpayifsdiar | icaXws 5' ^eXei/Tij<r', oiSb' 
inrofiflvas Kaxov. 

- 1 128, TJKW yap els yrjy -HivSe Kai KaTfpxofuu. 



54 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

is made to end in bathos. Euripides in reply attacks the choruses of 
Aeschylus, stringing together a number of pompous phrases, and criticising 
their obscurity, their ponderous metres, and their monotonous refrains. Aes- 
chylus returns the compliment with a series of affectedly pretty verses from 
the choruses of Euripides, exemplifying (among other things) his innovations 
in choral music and metre. He next parodies his rival's monodies, in choral 
lines combining the false sublime with the vulgar pathetic, and both with 
impertinent appeals to the help of Heaven. Lastly, the two poets put their 
verses to the test of the balance. A large pair of scales is produced ; 
Aeschylus stands beside one of the scales and Euripides by the other ; each 
in turn repeats a single line from one of his own plays, and the scale is 
supposed to rise or fall, according as the sense of the line is light or heavy. 
In the end Aeschylus, weary of competing line against line, challenges 
Euripides to a final and comprehensive contest. With the challenge he 
combines a sly allusion to the help that Euripides was supposed to derive from 
his slave Cephisophon in the composition of his plays, and to the book- 
learning already noticed in a line describing him, as ' from learned scrolls 
distilling the essence of his wit ' (943) : — 

Come ! no more line for line ! Let him bring all, — 
His wife, his children, his Cephisophon, 
And mount the scale himself, with all his books. 
I shall outweigh them with two lines alone. 

Dionysus, the arbiter of this conflict of wits, finally decides in favour of 
Aeschylus, who is accordingly brought back to the upper world. In the 
ensuing chorus (1482- 1499) Aristophanes dwells on the triumphant recall 
of Aeschylus as a tribute to the good taste and sound sense characteristic 
of the true poet, while the fate of Euripides is a warning that it is not well 
to sit and chatter with Socrates, denouncing the art of poetry and neglecting 
the noblest aims of the tragic art. 

The passing attack on Socrates does not fairly apply to the 
Socrates whom we know in Plato ; but, in the controversy as 
a whole, we feel that, although the author is clearly prejudiced 
against Euripides, the points selected for criticism on both sides 
are both interesting and instructive. The criticism of Aris- 
tophanes (as has been well observed) " rests upon a reasoned 
view of art and taste as well as of politics and religion. He 
disapproves the sceptical purpose, the insidious sophistic, the 
morbid passion of his victim ; but he disapproves quite as 
strongly the tedious preliminary explanations and interpolated 
narratives, the ' precious ' sentiment and style, the tricks and 
the trivialities". Yet he 'is far too good a critic and far too 



IV.] CRITICISM IN ATTIC COMEDY. 55 

shrewd a man not to allow a pretty full view of the Aeschylean 
defects, as well as to put in the mouth of Euripides himself a 
ver)' fairly strong defence of his own merits '. Notwithstanding 
this signally effective dramatic example of the 'direct criticism 
of actual texts ', it is remarkable that ' formal criticism in prose ' 
was long in making its appearance, and when it appeared 
showed 'much less master)* of method". 

The traces of literar)^ criticism preserved in the fragments 
of Attic Comedy are neither ver\' numerous nor very trustworthy. 
Hesiod was quoted and parodied in the Cheiron of Pherecrates, 
a play in which Music complains of the maltreatment she has 
received from some of the lyrical composers of the day^ In 
the Hesiodi of Telecleides^we have some references to contempo- 
rary' poets, and a passage on Euripides, referring to his being 
aided in his tragedies by Mnesilochus and Socrates, possibly 
comes from this play I Other plays of the Old Comedy, like 
the Tragedians of Phrynichus and the Poets of Plato, were 
possibly concerned with literary criticism. The lovers of Euripides 
were satirised in the Phileuripides of Axionicus*, and of Phi- 
lippus or Philippides*. Sappho was the title of six plays; of 
four of these we know next to nothing ; but in that of Antiphanes* 
she was represented as propounding and solving riddles ; and 
in that of Diphilus', as having among her admirers Archilochus, 
who flourished forty years before her time, and Hipponax, seventy 
years after it In the case of Sappho in particular, any inference 
that we may draw from the mere titles of such plays, must 
necessarily be uncertain. 

There is a passage in the comic poet Timocles, humorously 
describing the consolations enjoyed by the spectator of a tragedy 
who finds his own troubles lightened by the contemplation of 

^ Saintsbury's History of Criticism, i p. 2 2f. See also Jebb's Classical 
Greek Poetry, pp. 230 — 3. The terseness of Euripides was appreciated by 
Aristophanes (frag. 397 d). 

* Athen. 364 A, B; Plut. De Musica, § 30; cp. Meineke, Fr. Com. Gr. il 
334 f ; Egger, /. c, 39. 

* Meineke, i 88, II 371. * Athen. 175 B (Meineke, I 417). 

* Meineke, I 341, 474. 
« ib. 277 f. 

" i^- 447- 



56 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the troubles of others in the play. There is also a passage from 
the Poiesis of Antiphanes, insisting that Tragedy is far easier 
to write than Comedy because in Tragedy the story is already 
familiar to the audience^ But neither of these passages really 
contains any literary criticism. It is far otherwise with the very 
striking fragment ascribed to Simulus (a comic poet about 399 
B.C.), which is welcomed with enthusiasm by an excellent judge 
of literary criticism, as advancing ' not only a theory of poetry 
and poetical criticism, but one of such astonishing completeness 
that it goes far beyond anything that we find in Aristotle, and 
is worthy of Longinus himself at his very happiest moment'-. 
I offer the following rendering : 

Nature of Art bereft will not suffice 
For any work whate'er in all the world; 
Nor Art again, devoid of Nature's aid. 
And, e'en if Art and Nature join in one, 
The poet still must find the ways and means, 
Passion, and practice; happy chance and time; 
A critic skilled to seize the poet's sense. 
For, if in aught of these he haply fail. 
He cannot gain the goal of all his hopes. 
Nature, good will, and pains, and ordered grace 
Make poets wise and good, while length of years 
Will make them older men, but nothing more*. 

The philosopher Xenocrates, when attacked by Bion, declined 
to defend himself ; 'Tragedy' (he said), 'when satirised by Comedy, 

^ Athen. vi 222 A, 223 B. 

2 Saintsbury's History of Criticism, i 25. 

' Stobaeus, 60, 4, oCre ipiai^ Ikuvt) yLyverat rix^V^ "^^P I ""/aos ovSh imrT^- 
devfia vapdirav oiidtvl, \ oSre irdXi rix^'"! M 'P'JCiv K€KTqixiprf. \ tojjtuv ofioiws tQp 
dvoiv ffwrufjiivui' \ eU raiirbv, iri. 5e? irpoffXa^elv xopvy^o-"^ I ^p^-iTa, ixeK^T-qv, 
KCLLpbv eiKpvrj, XP^"""} I KpiTT)v t6 pr)dev Swd/xevov (TVfapird<Tai. \ iv (p yap &v 
TOijTwv Tts diroXet(/)^eij t^XVj I oi^*^ ^PX^''"' ^''"' '''^ Tip/na toO irpoKeifiivov. \ (pijcris, 
0e\r](n$, iwL/j.i\ei' , evra^ia, | (ro<pov9 Tidrjffi Kdyaffovs' irCou 8i roi \ dpi6/j.6s ovdiy 
aXXo TrXr/c yrjpas TTOiet. In 1. 6 — 7 Meineke on Stob. (omitting xp^fo" as 
superfluous) aptly suggests Kaipdv, fv<pvr} Kpiri^v, oTrai' t6 ptjOiv kt\. ; but €i<pvr) 
Kaipov occurs in Polybius i 19, 12. In Frag. Com. Gr. I xiii he considers TrdXi 
and rixvfi in 1. 3, and to before pt)div in 1. 7, foreign to Attic Comedy, and 
identifies the author of this and two partly similar passages with a didactic 
poet named Simulus little earlier than the Augustan age. The passage is 
partly parallel to Horace, A. P., 408 — 413. 



IV.] THE TEXT OF THE TRAGIC POETS. S7 

does not deign to reply". There is in fact very little evidence 
that the attacks of the Comic poets led to any changes in the 
text of the Tragic writers. It is possible that a line in the Medea 
may owe its present form to a jest in the Clouds of Aris- 
tophanes*. The prologues of the Meleager and Oeneus of Eu- 
ripides, which were ridiculed in the Frogs, were apparently altered 
by Euripides the younger before those plays were again put on 
the stage". That of the Iphigeneia in Aulide is not attacked by 
Aristophanes ; in fact the play was not produced until after the 
Frogs*; but it has two alternative openings: — (i) a dialogue in 
anapaests, (2) an ordinary Euripidean prologue. Possibly the 
latter was superseded by the former owing to the gibes of Aris- 
tophanes against the poet's prologues in general. A line from 
a scene in the Telephus of Euripides representing Achilles playing 
at dice, ' Achilles has thrown twice — Twice a deuce ace ', quoted 
in the Frogs (1400), is said to have been afterwards omitted by 
the poet, with the whole of the context ; but the omission cannot 
have been due to the Frogs, as Euripides died shortly before 
that play was produced. Hence it was either omitted by Eu- 
ripides the younger, or, if by the poet himself, the omission 
may have been suggested by a possibly earlier attack by Eupolis. 

The plays of Aeschylus were frequently reproduced after his 
death, but in the fourth century Sophocles was more popular, 
and finally Euripides was left without a rival. In process of 
time, alterations made by actors and copyists led to uncertainties 
as to the true text. A decree was accordingly carried by the 
eminent Athenian statesman and orator, Lycurgus (396-323 B.C.), 
providing, not only for the erection of bronze statues of the 
three great tragic poets, but also for the preservation of a copy 
of their tragedies in the public archives. The town-clerk was 
to collate the actors' copies with this text, and no departure 
therefrom was to be allowed in acting'. Possibly the manuscript 

^ Diog. Laert. iv § 10. 

- Eur. Med. 131 7, ri raffSe Kivets /cdpa^oxXei^eis irvXas (with Person's and 
Verrall's notes), Ar. Clouds 1397, ahv lipyov w kouvCov errCsv KivrjTa kuI fwx^fVTd. 

* Fritzsche on Ar. Ranae, 1206. 

* Introd. to my ed. of Eur. Bacchae, p. xliii. 

' [Plutarch], Lives of the Ten Orators, p. 841 F, rdj rpaytfiSias avrdiv iv 



58 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

included only those of the plays which continued to be acted 
after their authors' death. It is said to have been this manu- 
script that was borrowed for the Alexandrian Library by Ptolemy 
Euergetes (247 or 146 B.C.), who deposited the sum of fifteen talents 
as a pledge for its safe return, but instead of returning it, forfeited 
his pledge, kept the original, and sent the Athenians a sumptuous 
copy in its place'. If it ever reached Alexandria at all, it does 
not appear to have been regarded as a final authority. Other- 
wise we should not find mere conjectures on the part of the 
Alexandrian critic, Aristophanes, mentioned in the Scholia on 
the Tragic poets. It is probable that the object of Lycurgus 
was not so much to restore the original text of the plays, as 
to record the current acting-version, so as to prevent unauthorised 
departures from the form which long experience had approved. 
The official copy thus supplied a test for rejecting alterations 
due to actors of later date than the time of Lycurgus ^ 

The leading tragic poets are quoted as authorities by orators 
and (not without occasional criticism) by philoso- 

Quotations ^ . 

from tragic phers. Lycurgus cites no less than 55 lines from 

^°^ ^ the Erechtheus of Euripides, with two shorter pas- 

sages from unnamed tragic poets'; Aeschines (i § 154) two short 
passages from Euripides, and Demosthenes (19 § 247) 16 lines 
from the Aniigone of Sophocles (175-190), as illustrating maxims 
of political conduct which Aeschines had violated. Plato quotes 
from Aeschylus three passages of the Septem Contra Thebas", but 
protests against the language respecting Apollo, which, in another 
play, the poet puts in the lips of Thetis'l He never quotes a line 
from Sophocles, while he ascribes to Euripides a line which also 



Koivi^ ypaxl/a/jLivovs (puXdrreii', Kal rbv ttjs TroXews ypafifiaria TrapavayiyvcbcTKeLV 
Totj vTroKpivofiivois, ovK e^elvat. yap <irap added by Grysar> avras [al. d'XXws) 
{)TroKplv€adai. 

^ Galen, in Hippocralis Epidem. ill 2. See below, p. iii. 

^ p. 15 of V^oxn, De publico Aesc/iyli Sophoclis Euripidis fabularuni exem- 
plari Lycurgo atictore confecto, Bonn (1863) pp. 34; cp. Wilamowitz in 
Hermes xiv 151 and in Eur. Herakles i 130. 

^ Leocr. §§ icx), 92, 132. 

* S. C. T. I {Euthyd. 291 D), 451 {Rep. 551 c), 592 f {Rep. 361 B, 362 a). 

» Rep. 383 B. Cp. 380 A, 563 c, Phaedo 180 A, Symp. 383 B. 



IV.] THE STUDY OF THE DRAMATISTS. 59 

occurred in the Atas Locrus of the former'. In this connexion he 
says that 'people regard tragedy on the whole as wise, and 
Euripides as a master therein '. He also quotes Euripides twice 
in the Gorgias*. Of Aristotle it is enough to say that his citations 
from Aeschylus are verj- few, those from Sophocles more numerous, 
while those from Euripides are taken from as many as ten of his 
extant plays, not to mention fourteen others^. Aristophanes is 
one of the persons who take part in Plato's Symposium, but the 
language of the comic poets is ver)' rarely quoted by the philoso- 
phers, and never by the orators. 

To the Athenian the theatre was mainly a place of amuse- 
ment, but it was also to some extent a means of 
education. Aristophanes makes Aeschylus say to ^he dramatist 
Euripides : ' ^^'hat the master is to childhood, the 
poets are to youth; therefore we poets are bound to be strictly 
moral in our teaching' {FrogSy 1055). The teaching of Euripides 
may not have been entirely sound, but it was widely popular. 
His popularity throughout the Greek world is partly attested by 
Plutarch. In the Life of iVicias (29), we are told that, at the 
disastrous close of the Sicilian expedition (413 B.C.), some of the 
Athenian prisoners at Syracuse owed their liberty to the fact that 
they were able to recite passages from Euripides ; and that, at 
Caunus, on the Carian coast, opposite to Rhodes, a vessel pursued 
by pirates was not allowed to enter the port, until it was found 
that some of those on board knew by heart the songs of Euripides, 
— stories which have supplied Browning with the theme of 
Balaustiofis Adventure. Similarly, in the Life of Lysander (15), 
we learn that, nine years later, when Athens had been conquered 
by Sparta, and a Theban proposed that the city should be 
destroyed and its site left desolate, the Spartan captains were 
deeply moved by a Phocian who sang before them the opening 
chorus of the Electra of Euripides. But, whatever compunction 
may have been caused by this pathetic incident, the walls were 
undoubtedly demolished, though, to the fancy of Milton, 

^ aoiftvii Tvpavvox. tGjp (twftSsv <ruvowsiq. (Rep. 568 A with schol., and Theag. 
125 B). 

* 484 E, 491 E. Melanippe in Symp. 177 a. 

* See the Index of Bonitz or of Heitz. 



60 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

' the repeated air 
Of sad Electra's poet had the power 
To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare'^. 

In and after the times of Euripides, selections from the tragic 
poets were probably learnt by heart in the schools of Athens. 
Such may have been the set speeches (pT/o-tis), mentioned in 
Plato's Latvs (8ii a). The study of 'tragedy', as an alternative 
subject at school, is implied by the comic poet Alexis, who repre- 
sents the legendary musician Linus as setting before the youthful 
Hercules a number of volumes and telling him to look carefully 
at their titles and choose the one that strikes his fancy most. 
The choice includes a tragedy (author not named), as well as 
Orpheus, Hesiod, Choerilus, Homer, Epicharmus and 'all kii>ds 
of books ' ; but the choice of Hercules characteristically falls on a 
manual of cookery (Athen. 164 b). 

In the midst of the dramatic contest between Aeschylus and 
Euripides, Aristophanes pays his audience the compliment of 
assuming that ' each has got his little book, to prompt him to be 
clever' {Frogs, 11 14); and he is generous enough towards Euri- 
pides to make Dionysus confess that reading a copy of the poet's 
Andromeda on board ship has smitten him with a sudden desire 
to see Euripides once more {ib. 54). But Aristophanes himself, 
and the poets of the Old Attic Comedy, with their unbridled 
license of personal attack on public characters, were unsuited for 
the purposes of education, though the plays of their Sicilian 
precursor Epicharmus (d. 450), appear to have been rich in moral 
maxims ^ The later Attic Comedy was more appropriate for this 
purpose ; and ' Comedy ' as well as ' Tragedy ' was among the 
subjects for which prizes were given to junior boys at a school in 
Teos in the second century b.c.^ In the Roman age an alpha- 
betical list of some 850 sententious sayings was collected from the 
plays of Menander. As in Comedy, so also in Tragedy. Early 
in the Christian era the Tempter might appropriately represent 
Athens as the place for hearing and learning all that 

1 Milton, Sonnet 8. 

^ Diog. Laert. viii 78, yvufioKoye?. 

^ Boeckh, C. I. G. 3088 ( = 110. 913 in Michel's Reciieit). 






IV.J DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN PLATO. 6 1 

' the lofty grave tragedians taught 
In Chorus or lambick, teachers best 
Of moral prudence, with delight receiv'd, 
In brief sententious precepts, while they treat 
Of fate, and chance, and change in human life. 
High actions and high passions best describing'^. 

Dramatic criticism in Plato is represented mainly by certain 
important passages of the Republic, and also by n m ti 
some incidental references in other dialogues. In criticism in 
the Phaedrus (268 c) a person coming to Sophocles 
or Euripides, and saying that he 'knows how to compose verj' 
long speeches about a small matter and ver)' short speeches 
about a great matter, and also pathetic or terrible and menacing 
speeches', is described as 'knowing only the preliminaries of 
Tragedy' (269 a), while Tragedy itself is the 'arranging of all 
these elements in a manner suitable to one another and to the 
whole ' (268 d). Tragedy, in brief, must be an organic whole. 
In the Philebus (48 a) the passions excited by Tragedy and 
Comedy are described as producing a feeling of pleasure mixed 
with pain. In the Gorgias (502 b) the aim of 'that grave and 
august personage, Tragedy,' is narrowly scrutinised. Her aim is 
merely to please the spectators, and her creations are denounced 
as only another form of flattery. At the close of the Symposium, 
in the early morning, when the rest of the company have either 
withdrawn or have fallen asleep, we find Socrates still discoursing 
Avith the comic poet, Aristophanes, and the tragic poet, Agathon, 
and pressing both of them to admit ' that the genius of comedy 
was the same as that of tragedy, and that the truly artistic writer 
of tragedy ought also to be a writer of comedy', but the two 
poets (we are assured) were 'getting very sleepy, and did not 
quite understand his meaning' (223 d). That meaning may 
possibly have been that the object of tragedy as well as comedy 
is to influence men's hearts; tragic, as well as comic effect, if 
it is to be attained by means of true art, must 'presuppose 
a scientific knowledge of mankind, and this knowledge will fit 
its possessor equaUy for either capacity '^ Tragedy and Comedy, 



^ Milton, p. R. iv 261—6. 

* Zeller, Plato and the Older Academy, p. 509 n. 66. 



62 . THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

not as they might be, but as they were, find very scanty appre- 
ciation in the Republic and the Laws. Plato urges that the 
' imitation ', or (as we should say) representation, of what is bad 
and unworthy, which plays so prominent a part in music and 
in poetry, and especially in the drama, imperceptibly familiarises 
both artists and the public with thoughts and acts which are 
reprehensible'. Further, the effect, which Tragedy produces on 
the audience, depends on the excitement of pity and grief; that 
of Comedy, on the excitement of laughter and (ultimately) exult- 
ation over the misfortunes of others. The poets (he continues) 
claim our sympathy for the passions of love, anger, fear, jealousy, 
and the rest, — all of them unworthy passions, which we do not 
approve in ourselves, and the representation of which ought 
not to afford us any pleasure^. The excitement of pity and 
fear by means of Tragedy is, according to this view, relaxing 
and enfeebling, these emotions being apt to degenerate into 
sentimentality and to make men unmanly. For these and 
similar reasons Plato banishes dramatic poetry from his ideal 
Republic. 

While Plato thus objects to Tragedy as tending to make men 
cowardly and effeminate by the excitement of their 
A^fstotie sympathies, Aristotle tacitly opposes this view in his 

famous definition of Tragedy. The closing words 
of that definition imply that Tragedy presents us with noble 
objects for the exercise of the feelings of pity and fear, and 
affords relief by removing them from our system: — 'through 
pity and fear accomplishing ' (not the purification but) ' the pur- 
gation of those emotions ' {Poet. 6 § 2). That the latter is the 
true meaning of katharsis was seen by Milton in his preface 
to Samson Agonistes (1671). Milton's interpretation had been 
anticipated in Italy by Scaino (1578) and Galuzzi (1621)^: 
and the exact sense of the term has since been discussed 
by Twining (1789), by Weil (1847) ^"d Bernays (1857), and 
by many others ^ 

1 Rep. 395 c C 401 B ; Laws 816 D (Zeller, /. c. , p. 510). 

2 J?ep. 603 c — 607 A, 387 c f, Latvs 800 c f (Zeller, /. c, p. 511). 

3 Byv/ater, /ottrnat 0/ P/n/o/ogy, xxvii 266 — 275 (1900). 

* e.g. Egger, /. c, pp. 267 — 300; Susemihl and Hicks, Politics of Aristotle, 



IV.] DRAMATIC CRITICISM IN ARISTOTLE. 63 

The Poetic includes a slight sketch of the historical develop- 
ment of Tragedy. In the fuller form of the treatise, or in some 
other work, Aristotle must have mentioned Thespis as introducing 
the 'prologue and the set speech '\ The treatise, in its present 
form, tells us that Aeschylus was the first to introduce a second 
actor, that he made the chorus more subordinate and gave 
greater prominence to the dialogue; also that Sophocles intro- 
duced a third actor, and added scene-painting (4 § 13). In 
the only other reference to Aeschylus, apart from a passing 
mention of his Niobe (18 § 5), it is noticed that Euripides had 
improved on a line in Aeschylus by altering an ordinary word 
into one that was rarer, thus producing a beautiful instead of 
a trivial effect^. Sophocles and Euripides are twice contrasted, 
firstly, when Aristotle insists that the chorus ' should be regarded 
as one of the actors and be an integral part of the whole and 
join in the action, in the manner of Sophocles but not of Eu- 
ripides ' (18 § 7); and secondly, when he tells us that 'Sophocles 
said that he drew men as they ought to be (or * to be drawn '), but 
Euripides as they are'^. There are at least four references to the 
Oedipus*, a play which Aristotle obviously admires. Euripides 
is defended against the criticism of those, who ' censure him for 
making many of his plays end unhappily ' ; this (says Aristotle) 
is ' the right ending ' ; such plays ' have the most tragic effect ', 
and in this respect Euripides, ' faulty as he is in the management 
of the rest, is recognised as the most tragic of the poets' (13 § 6). 
His Medea, his Iphigeneia in Tauris and his Orestes are noticed. 
Poets who have ' dramatised the whole story of the Fall of Troy, 
instead of selecting portions, like Euripides, have been unsuc- 
cessful' (18 § 5). In the Rhetoric (iii 2, 5) Euripides is described 
as having set an example to others by the skilful selecrion of his 
vocabulary from the language of ordinary life. The only actual 

pp. 641 — 656; and Butcher's Aristotle's Theory of Poetry, pp. 236—268. The 
relations between Aristotle's Poetic and Plato are discussed by Chr. Belger, De 

Y^^Aristotele etiam in Arte Poetica componenda Platonis discipulo (Berlin), 1890, 

I^Bpnd by G. Finsler, Platon und die aristotelische Poetik (Leipzig), 1900. 

I^K 1 Themistius, Or. 26, 316D. 

I^K '^ 22 § 7, ^owarcu for iffdUi. 

\^m ^ 25 § 6, cp. Butcher /. t. p. 361'-. 

I' -— 



64 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

mention of Aristophanes in the Poetic is where Sophocles is 
described as ' from one point of view, an imitator like Homer, 
both imitating higher types of character ' ; from another, like 
Aristophanes, both being dramatic poets (3 § 2). The chapters 
on Comedy have not come down to us ; but, even from the 
treatise as it stands, it is clear that Aristotle preferred the poets 
of the Middle Comedy, with its growing preference for generalised 
types of character, to the personal satire and rude invective of the 
Old Attic Comedy. A ' lampooner ' is the label which Aristotle, 
by implication, attaches to its foremost extant representative, 
Aristophanes ^ 

Aristotle's interest in the Drama led to his laying the founda- 
tion of its history in the form of a collection of 
did^ca°^ae ^ abstracts of the archives recording the dates of the 
several plays. From the term (SiSdaK^iv), applied 
to the teaching and training of the chorus and actors and the 
general rehearsal of a play, the play itself, or the connected group 
of plays produced by a poet at a single festival, was called a ^uias- 
calia. The same designation would naturally be given to the 
public record of the result, and hence the title of Aristotle's 
work. Such a work was doubtless largely founded on the various 
records of success in the dramatic contests. These records were 
of five kinds: (i) the documents preserved by the State in the 
public archives ; (2) the inscriptions on the monuments erected 
at private expense by the citizen, who as choregtis had borne the 
cost of the production of the play ; (3) public lists of victors in 
all the contests at one particular festival ; (4) similar lists of the 
victors at one particular kind of contest at such a festival; 
(5) lists of tragic and comic actors and tragic and comic poets, 
with numerals denoting the total number of their victories. 
Plutarch has preserved an early example of (2), commemorating 
a victory won in 476 B.C., when the choregus was Themistocles^ 
As an example of (3) we have the list of the victors' names, 
including that of Aeschylus, for 458 B.C., the year in which he 
produced the trilogy of the Oresteia. Aristotle's work, founded 

^ 5 § 3 ; 9 § 5 ; Butcher, /. c, p. 370 f. 

'^ Plutarch, Them. 5 § 3, QefjLKXTOKXrjs ^pedppios exopvyei, ^ptjvixos edldacTKev, 



IV.] ARISTOTLE'S 'DIDASCALIAE'. 65 

on records like these, is the ultimate source of our knowledge 
of the results of the dramatic contests in which poets such as 
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were competi- 
tors. It was the foundation of a similar work by Callimachus 
(c. 260 B.C.), which in its turn supplied the facts embodied by 
Aristophanes of Byzantium {c. 200 B.C.) in a work which sur- 
vives in the fragments quoted from it by the Scholiasts in 
the Arguments to Greek plays still extant. There are thirteen 
fragments of Aristotle's didascaliae, five of them with Aristotle's 
name and the rest without it^ The accuracy of the tradi- 
tion beginning with the public records of Athens and passing 
through the works of Aristotle Callimachus and Aristophanes of 
Byzantium down to the Scholiasts who transcribed the Arguments 
which ultimately reach us in the mss of the Greek dramatists, 
has in one important particular received a striking confirmation. 
Though some fourteen or fifteen centuries had elapsed between 
the date of the Medicean MS of Aeschylus (tenth or eleventh 
century), and the date of the first performance of the Agamemnon 
(458 B.C.), the copyists written record of the name of the choregus 
and the archon of the year and the fact that the first prize was 
won by Aeschylus, was confirmed by an inscription found on the 
Acropolis in 1886, giA^ng a complete list of the victors at the 
City Dionysia of the year in question '. 

Aristotle is also said to have written a work on Dionysiac 
Victories, but it is never quoted and is probably only another 
name for his Didascaliae. Lastly, he drew up lists of victors in 
the Olympian and Pythian games ^ One of these Olympian 
victors he mentions in the Ethics*, in illustration of a particular 
kind of ambiguity of designation. Notwithstanding the state- 
ment made by an ancient commentator on Aristotle, Alexander 
of Aphrodisias, that 'Av^/jcottos was here a proper name, the name 

^ Aristot. Frag. 618 — 630 Rose. Cp. Trendelenburg, Gramniaticorum 
Graecorum de arte tragica indicia, pp. 3 f ; A. MuUer's Biihnenalterthiimer 
P- 375 f; Haigh's Attic Theatre, pp. 59 — 64, 319 — 328; and Jebb in Smith's 
Diet. Ant. ii 865 A. 

* Haigh /. c, pp. 18, 64, 319. The only point in which the copyist has 
gone wrong is in writing Olympiad 28 (ki]) by mistake for 80 (ir). 

' Dic^. Laert. v 21, 'OXuju.TtovZKai and WvOiovIkoj. (Frag. 615 — 7 Rose). 

* vii 4, 'Aj'^ponros 6 ra '0\i)/iirta vikSiv. 

S. 5 



66 



THE ATHENIAN AGE. 



[CHAP. IV. 



in fact of a successful boxer at Olympia, the editors have gene- 
rally rejected this explanation and printed the word with a small 
initial letter, avOputTro^. But a papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus, 
and first published in 1899, shows that the old Greek Commen- 
tator was right, for we there find the name "Ai'^pwTro? as that of 
the winner of the Olympian boxing-match for 456 B.C. ' 

1 Grenfell and Hunt, Uxyihyiiclius papyri, ii p. 93, and Classical Review, 
xiii 290. 




'Aristotle.' 
(In the Spada Palace, Rome.) 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CRITICISM OF POETRY IN PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 

The earliest Greek theor}' of poetr)' is that which we find in 
the Homeric poems. In the Odjssej' the source of 
poetr}' is found in ' inspiration '. The blind bard The Theory 
Demodocus is 'beloved by the Muse', who gave Homer "^'^ 
him the gift of 'sweet song'; he is 'prompted to 
sing the glorious deeds of heroes ' by the Muse, who ' loves the 
race of bards ' and has ' taught them all the ways of song ' ; he is 
'taught by the Muse, the child of Zeus, or by Apollo'; and, when 
he begins to sing, he is ' impelled by a god ' '. Similarly, the bard 
Phemius, the unwilling servant of the suitors of Penelope, says in 
pleading for his life before Odysseus : — ' self-taught am I ; but it 
was a god that inspired my mind with all the varied ways of song ' 
{Od. xxii 347). 

A belief in the divine inspiration of the poet is one of the 
doctrines of Democritus, whose recognition of the 

Democritus 

mspiration of Homer has been already noticed 
(p. 26). Of poets in general he says: — 'all that a poet writes 
under the influence of enthusiasm and of holy inspiration is 
exceedingly beautiful'. He 'denies that any one can be a great 
poet, unless he is mad'". 'Poets who are sober', he excludes 
from the haunts of Helicon^ 

^ Od. viii 63—5, 73 ayiJKfy, 481 ot/ms, 488, 499 bpiiifieii dtov. 

Clemens, Strom. 698 B, ■roirjTi)i 8^ axr<ra new hv ypa<prj fier' eyOovaiofffioO 
I lepov rvevftaros iraXd icdpra effri. 

• Cicero, Divin. i 80. 

* Horace, A. P. 295. 

5—2 



68 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

The theory of * inspiration ' is also prominent in Plato. In 
Plato's view, the source of all artistic and poetic 
creation, as also of philosophy, is a higher inspira- 
tion. In the Phaedrus he describes the ' state of being possessed 
by the Muses' as a kind of 'madness, which, on entering a 
delicate and virgin soul, arouses and excites it to frenzy in odes 
and other kinds of poetry, with these adorning the myriad exploits 
of ancient heroes for the instruction of posterity. But he that is 
without the Muses' madness when he knocks at the doors of 
Poesy, fancying that art alone will make him a competent poet, — 
he and his poetry, the poetry of sober sense, will never attain 
perfection, but will be eclipsed by the poetry of inspired madmen ' 
(245 a). In the Apology Socrates consults the poets — 'tragic, 
dithyrambic, and the rest', asks them the meaning of their finest 
passages, and finds that there was hardly any one of the 
bystanders who could not have talked better about their poetry 
than they did themselves. He soon concludes that it was not 
by wisdom that poets wrote poetry, but (like diviners and sooth- 
sayers) by a kind of genius and inspiration (22 b). In the Laws 
it is 'an old story', which has been an immemorial tradition at 
Athens and is accepted everywhere else, that ' whenever a poet is 
enthroned on the tripod of the Muse, he is not in his right mind ' 
(719 c). In the Meno the epithet 'divine' is applied to poets 
and statesmen, as well as to ' diviners and prophets, who say 
much that is true without knowing what they say' (99 d). But 
the fullest expression of this thought is to be found in the Ion, a 
dialogue whose genuineness has been doubted or denied by some 
critics (including Ast, Schleiermacher, Susemihl and Zeller), while 
others (such as K. F. Hermann, Stallbaum, Steinhart and Grote) 
accept it as one of Plato's earliest works : — 

It is not by art, but by being inspired and possessed, that all good epic 
poets produce their beautiful poems; and similarly with all good melic poets, 
— ^just as the Corybantic revellers are not in their right mind when they are 
dancing, even so the melic poets are not in their right mind when they are 
composing their beautiful strains. On the contrary, when they have fallen 
under the spell of melody and metre, they are like inspired revellers, and on 
their becoming possessed, — even as the Maenads are possessed and not in their 
right senses, when they draw honey and milk from the rivers, — the soul of 
the melic poets acts in like manner, as they themselves admit. For the poets. 



v.] CRITICISM OF POETRY IN PLATO. 69 

tell us (as you remember) that they cull their sweet strains from 'fountains 
flowing with honey', 'out of the gardens and dells of the Muses', and bring 
them to us like bees ; for, like bees, they are ever on the wing. And what 
they say is true; for the poet is a light and winged and holy being; he 
cannot compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses, with his 
mind no longer in him ; but, so long as he is in possession of his senses, not 
one of them is capable of composing, or of uttering his oracular sayings. 
Many as are the noble things that they say about their themes of song, like 
your own sayings, Ion, about Homer, yet, inasmuch as it is not by Art that 
they compose but by the gift of God, all that the poet can really succeed in 
composing is the theme to which he is impelled by the Muse. Thus, one of 
them composes dithyrambs, and another hymns of praise, and another epic or 
iambic verses ; and each of them succeeds in one kind of composition only, 
for it is not by Art that they produce these poems but by a power divine 
...And the reason why God takes away their senses, when he uses them as 
his ministers, even as he uses the ministrations of soothsayers and prophets 
divine, is in order that we who hear them may know that, since they are out 
of their senses, it is not these poets who utter the words which we prize so 
highly, but it is God himself who is the speaker, and it is through them that 
he is speaking to us (533 E-534 d). 

Elsewhere, Plato uses far more sober language, when he 
calmly analyses the process by which the art of poetry comes into 
being. Poetr}' is then described not as an ' inspiration ', but as a 
kind of 'imitation". 'Imitation' is the characteristic of all art, 
and of the poetic art in particular. In the third book of the 
Republic the question is started whether 'all imitation is to be 
prohibited ', ' whether tragedy and comedy are to be admitted 
into the State ', and it is contended that the same person cannot 
play a serious part in life and also imitate many other parts ; 
and that, even in forms of imitation that are closely connected, as 
in Tragedy and Comedy, the same persons cannot succeed in 
both. All imitative poetry is accordingly rejected {Rep. 394-5). 
In the tenth book the attack on poetry as an imitative art is 
renewed. All poetic imitations are there denounced as dangerous 
to those who have not discerned their true nature (595 b). Just 
as the painter makes only a superficial likeness of a thing, and 
not the actual thing itself, much less the ideal thing, so the whole 
tribe of imitators, including the poet and the tragic poet in 
particular, are 'in the third degree removed' (or, as we should 
say, 'twice removed') 'from the truth' (597 e). 
^ Zeller's Plato, p. 509 — 513. 



70 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Plato's description of art as a kind of ' imitation ' has not 
unnaturally met with a considerable amount of criticism. Thus 
it has been justly observed, that ' in modern times we should say 
that art is not merely imitation, but rather the expression of the 
ideal in forms of sense". Poets and painters are more than 
mere imitators, as Plato himself admits elsewhere in the case of 
the painter. ' How ', he asks, ' would a painter be in any less 
degree a good painter who having painted a perfect pattern of the 
highest human beauty, and left nothing lacking in the picture, is 
unable to prove that such a man might possibly exist ? ' and the 
answer is, 'He would not' {Rep. 472 d). 'No theory', it has 
been remarked, ' can be more erroneous than that which degrades 
art into mere imitation, which seeks for beauty in the parts and 
not in the whole.... The requirement of composition in a work of 
art is alone an evidence that mere imitation is not art '^ Of the 
passage from the Gorgias, above cited, it has been frankly said 
that 'the censure... is too sweeping even from Plato's point of 
view, for Euripides at any rate aimed at a moral purpose of one 
sort or other, and sacrificed to his zeal as an instructor much of 
the popularity and much also of the poetic beauty of his plays. 
As a criticism on Sophocles and Aeschylus it is, to modern 
apprehension, still more deplorable '. One of the passages 
already quoted from the Phaedrus (268 c) 'proves that Plato had 
a thorough perception of poetic excellence whenever it suited 
him to forget his political theories '^ 

Even when we pass from Plato to Aristotle, we are still 
pursued by the description of Poetry as one of the 

Aristotle f . . . , , ^ ^ , n. ^ • • 

'imitative arts, and of Poetry and Music in par- 
ticular as 'modes of imitation' {Poet, i § 2). But there is a 
change in the point of view corresponding to the difference 
between the philosophy of Plato and the philosophy of Aristotle. 
Plato, ' starting from the notion of pure Being ', and regarding the 
world of ' ideas ' as the world of true existence, and sensible 
phenomena as merely copies of a suprasensuous archetype, in the 

^ Jowett's Plato, ii 130 ed. 1871. 
^ Jowett and Campbell on Rep. 596 D. 

' W. H. Thompson on Gorg. 502 B.— See also Saintsbury's History of 
Criticism, i 17 — 20. Cp. p. 61 supra. 



v.] CRITICISM OF POETRY IN ARISTOTLE. /I 

domain of art has apparently but a small opinion of the earthly 
counterparts of the celestial originals. In Plato's view the poet 
and the painter (as we have seen) make an imperfect copy of the 
actual, while the actual in its turn is only a distant adumbration 
oi the ideal. Plato accordingly regards a work of art, whether a 
poem or a picture, as in the degraded position of a copy of a 
copy, and therefore twice removed from the truth. Poets and 
painters alike are superficial in their knowledge of the things 
which they 'imitate' or represent, and the result of such imper- 
fect knowledge cannot be worthy of admiration'. The contrast 
between Plato and Aristotle is thus summed up by Zeller^: — 
' While Plato and Aristotle agree in regarding art as a species of 
imitation, they draw very different conclusions from this account 
of it. Plato thinks of it only as the imitation of sensible phe- 
nomena and accordingly expresses the utmost contempt for the 
falsity and worthlessness of art ; Aristotle, on the other hand, 
looks upon artistic presentation as the sensible vehicle to us of 
universal truths and thus places it above the empirical knowledge 
of individual things'. Here and elsewhere, Aristotle, in whose 
philosophy the fundamental doctrine was not Being but Becoming, 
has a higher regard for the processes of growth and development 
and for the phenomena of the visible world. Hence his greater 
regard not only for the study of physical science but also for the 
appreciation of the products of imitative art, whether in painting 
or in poetr}-. In short, while 'imitation' is a term common in 
this connexion to Aristotle and to Plato, the suggestion of con- 
tempt implied in Plato's use of the term has disappeared'. 

The impression given to a modern reader by the somewhat 
narrow term 'imitation' with its suggestion of a slavishly me- 
chanical copy, is sufficiently corrected by the hints supplied by 
Aristotle himself. While art is traced by Aristotle to the natural 
love of ' imitation ', and to the pleasure felt in recognising 
likenesses {Foef. 2 § i; 15 § 8), art is not confined to mere 

^ Cp. Timaetts, 19 D. 

' Aristotle, ii 307. 

' This is fully set forth by Professor Butcher, /. c, pp. 12 r — 162^ esp. 
pp. 158 — 160; see also esp. Zeller's Aristotle, ii 300—324, and Belger and 
Finsler, quoted on p. 63 n. 



72 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

copying. Art not only imitates Nature, but also completes its 
deficiencies \ Art endeavours to seize the universal type in the 
individual phenomena. Poetry (as compared with History) 
represents things in their universal aspect {Poet. 9 §§ 1-3). 
Immediately after speaking of 'imitation', Aristotle recognises 
that the poet, in particular the tragic poet, may represent men as 
better than they are, just as Polygnotus depicted men as nobler 
than they were (i § 4). He also allows room for the play of 
genius and even for the transport of phrensy, when he says that 
' poetry demands either a natural quickness of parts, or a touch of 
madness ', adding that poets of the former type can mould them- 
selves to the characters which they represent, while those of the 
latter are transported out of themselves (17 § 2)^. But, while 
Aristotle recognises the workings of poetic phrensy, he has no 
term to express ' imagination ', in the sense of a ' creative faculty '. 
In the Rhetoric (i 11, 6) he describes phaniasia a.^ 'a kind of 
feeble sensation ' ; elsewhere he defines it as 'a movement re- 
sulting from the actual operation of the faculty of sense '^ i.e. as 
' the process by which an impression of sense is pictured and 
retained before the mind '■*. Even among the most imaginative 
of peoples, the workings of the ' imagination ' had not yet been 
analysed. For phantasia in the sense of ' creative imagination ' 
we have to wait for more than five centuries till we find it in 
Philostratus^ 

Aristotle's Theory of Poetry is partially unfolded in his Poetic, 

^ Phys, ii 8, t] rixvi] to. fxev eTrcTeXei d i) (pixTLi aSwartt airtpydaaadai, to. 
d^ fxiixeirai. 

^ Cp. AV/g/. iii 7, II, fvdeov ij Tro/T/cts, Probl. xxx i, lAa.pa.Kos..a.p.dvwv r\v 
TTOiTjTT^s, Sr' eKOTTairi, and Plato's /on, quoted on p. 68; also Finsler, t.c, 172 — 

191- 

•* De Anima iii 3, 429 a i, Kivrjais virb ttjs aiaOrjo-eus rrjs Kar iv^pyeiav 
•yi.-fvoiJ.ivT) (ed. E. Wallace, p. 153). 

* E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philosophy of Aristotle, p. 90^; cp. Cope on 
Rhet. i p. 205; Freudenthal, (pavraala bei Arist.; Bonitz, Index, s. v. 

* Vita Apollonii, vi 19 (cp. Saintsbuiy, /. c., i 120); of the images of the 
gods carved by a Pheidias or a Praxiteles, (pavraala ravr' dpydcaTo, a-0(f>u- 
ripa /xt/UTjo-ews Sr]/j.iovpy6s. /jii)j.rj<Tis /jAv yap drj/xiovpyTjcrei 8 eiSev, (pavraala. 5k 
kolI 6 ^iTj elSiV virodrjffeTai yap avrb wpos tt]v dva<popav toD 6vtos. /cat 
fiifXTicFLv fxkv 7roX\d/ctj ^KKpoiei ^kwXtj^is, (pavraalav 8' ovMv X'^P^* y^^P dviK- 
■ir\T)KTos irpds 8 avrii vxidiTo. 



v.] ARISTOTLE'S TREATISE ON POETRY. 73 

a most suggestive work which has come down to us in an un- 
satisfacton' condition, imperfect in some of its parts and inter- 
polated in others. Its general outline (omitting interpolations) 
is as follows : — 

The arts of Poetry, Music, Dancing, Painting and Sculpture rest on a 
common principle of ' imitation ' ; but they difiFer in the means, objects and 
manner of imitation. In Poetry, the means are rhythm, language, and melody 
(c. i). The objects of imitation are persons in action, either persons of a higher 
type as in Tragedy, or of a lower type as in Comedy (c. 2). The manner of 
imitation may be either a combination of direct and dramatic narrative, as 
in Homer, or direct narrative alone ^, or pure drama, as in Tragedy and 
Comedy (c. 3). 

Poetry originated in the instinct of imitation, and of melody and rhythm. 
It soon parted in two directions, as is proved by the Iliad and Odyssey, as 
compared with the Margites, a satirical pxjem (here ascribed to Homer), and 
by Tragedy, as compared with Comedy. Then follows a sketch of the 
history of Tragedy (c. 4) and Comedy. Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in 
being an imitation, in verse, of characters of the higher type, but epic action 
has no limits of time, and Tragedy has some constituent parts peculiar to 
itself (c. 5). Tragedy is then defined as ' an imitation of an action that is 
serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude ; in language embellished with 
each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate 
parts of the play ; in the form of action, not of narrative ; through pity and 
fear effecting the proper purgation of these {lit. 'such') emotions '^ It 
has six elements ; three external, scenic presentment, lyrical song (/leXoroua), 
and diction; and three internal, plot, character, and thought (c. 6). The 
plot must be a whole, complete in itself, and of adequate magnitude (c. 7). 
It must have a unity of action (c. 8). Dramatic unity can be attained only 
by the observance of poetic truth (c. 9). The plot may be either simple, 
when the turning-point is reached without reversal of fortune (xepiWreta), 
or without recognition (d>'07»'wptffts) ; complicated, when it is reached by either 
or both (c. 10). Reversal of fortune and dramatic incident {-KaBm) are next 
defined (c. 11). A perfect tragedy should imitate actions which excite pity 
and fear. Pity is excited by unmerited misfortune ; fear, by the misfortunes 
of men like ourselves (c. 13). These emotions should spring from the plot 
itself (c. 14). The character represented must be good, appropriate, true 

' i.e. either ' as in some of the later epic poets ', cp. 24 § 7 (Bywater, 
Jintrnal of Philology, xiv 42), or ' as in certain types of lyric poetry', cp. 
with dTOT-yAXoi'To Plato Rep. 394 c, 5t' airay^tKiai tov roirjTov (of dithy- 
rambs). But Ritter and Vahlen rightly hold that only two kinds of poetry 
are here noticed, epic and dramatic, not three as in Plato l.c. Cp. Belger, 
PP- 34—44- 

' Butcher's transl. Cp. p. 62. 



11^ 



74 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

to life, consistent ; it should also be idealised (c. 15). Recognition may be 
brought about in various ways (c. 16). The tragic poet should follow certain 
rules : (i) with a view to a perfect and consistent realisation of the dramatis 
personae, he must place the scene before his eyes, and in imagination act 
the parts himself; (ii) he must first draw the outline of the play, and then 
fill in the episodes (c. 17). He must be careful about the complication 
(S^cris) and especially about the disentangling or denouement (XiJo-ts) of the 
plot. He should combine varied forms of poetic excellence. He must not 
overload a Tragedy with details suitable to an Epic poem. He must make 
the choral odes an organic part of the whole (c. 18). Thought (Stdvom), 
or the intellectual element in Tragedy, may be expressed by dramatic speeches 
or by dramatic incidents. Diction mainly belongs to the province of decla- 
mation, rather than that of poetry (c. 19). Various kinds of words are next 
distinguished, and metaphor, in particular, defined and exemplified (c. 21). 
Elevation of language may be combined with perspicuity by a certain infusion 
of rare, or metaphorical, or ornamental words, with those that are common ; 
or by the use of words which have been extended, contracted, or otherwise 
altered (c. 22). 

Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in unity of action (c. 23), also in being 
either simple or complicated, ' ethical ' or ' pathetic ', in having the same 
parts (with the exception of song and scenery), and in requiring artistic 
thought and diction. It differs in scale, and in metre, and in the art of 
giving an air of reality to fictions which are really incredible (c. 24). The 
principles on which critical objections brought against Poetry should be met, 
are then set forth (vtpl irpopXv/J.a.Twv /cat Xtjcrewv). Poetic truth, as distin- 
guished from ordinary reality, is next elucidated (c. 25). Epic poetry is 
sometimes supposed to be superior to Tragedy, because it appeals to a 
cultivated audience, which has no need of gesture. Tragedy, however, is 
really the higher art : it has all the elements of Epic poetry, with the addition 
of music and scenic accessories ; it also attains its end within narrower limits 
of time, and it has more unity of action (c. 26)^ 

Of the ' Three Unities ' of Action, Time and Place, popularly 
ascribed to Aristotle, it will be observed that Unity of Action 
is the only one which he actually enjoins ^ As a treatise on 
poetry the work is obviously incomplete. Lyric poetry being 
practically ignored, and Comedy noticed only in a slight sketch 
of its origin. The author (c. 6) undertakes to treat of Comedy, 
but his treatment of the subject has not reached us. He defines 

1 For a more detailed analysis see Butcher, I.e., pp. i — 3 ; cp. Saintsbury, 
I.e., pp. 32 — 39 ; and Prickard's Lecture on Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, 
pp. 9—18. 

2 Egger, I.e., 265^; Butcher, I.e., 283 — 295^ 



v.] ARISTOTLE'S TREATISE ON POETRY. 75 

' the ludicrous ' (c. 5 § i), but the ' different kinds of the ludicrous', 
which, as we know from the Rhetoric (iii 18), were once dis- 
criminated in the Poetic, doubtless in connexion with Comedy, are 
not to be found in the present text'. In the Politics (1341 b 39), 
while briefly treating of katharsis, he promises to express him- 
self more clearly on this point in his treatise on Poetr>' (cv tois 
Trepi 7roir]TiKr}s), but this part of the definition of Tragedy (6 § 2) 
is unfortunately not explained in the Poetic-. In the complete 
work he also treated of synonyms, as stated in the Rhetoric 
(iii 2, 7)^; and he could hardly have failed to mention Thespis 
(p. 63). His treatise On Poets, probably in. three books, may 
have contained materials for his treatise on Poetr)', which in 
its original form probably consisted of two. Even in its present 
condition it is an invaluable work. Severely scientific and mas- 
terly in method, unadorned in style, and almost entirely destitute 
of literary grace and charm, it nevertheless stands out con- 
spicuously in Greek literature as the earliest example of a syste- 
matic criticism of Poetry; and, in our present survey of the 
critical literature of the past, we shall find nothing in Greek 
literature to rival it as a model of literary criticism until, in the 
Roman age, we ultimately reach the celebrated treatise On the 
Sublime. 

' Cp. Vahlen's 3rd ed. (rSSf), pp. 77 — 80. 
^ See Frag. 5 (Vahlen and By water). 
' Frag. 4 Vahlen, = i Bywater. 



CHAPTER VI. 



THE RISE OF RHETORIC AND THE STUDY OF PROSE. 

The greater part of the materials for the early history of Greek 
rhetoric has been collected by Spengel in his Artiiim Scriptores 
(1828), by Westermann in his Geschichte der Beredtsamkeit (1833- 
5), and by Cope in his articles on the Sophistical Rhetoric in the 
Cambridge Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology (1855-7). 
The history itself has been fully set forth by Professor Blass in 
the first volume of his Attische Beredsamkeit (1868), and has been 
brilliantly sketched by Sir Richard Jebb in his Attic Orators 
(1876, vol. I, pp. cviii-cxxxvii), while it has also been briefly 
traced in the Introduction to the De Oratore of Cicero, as edited 
by Professor Wilkins (1879) ^'^d in that to the Orator, as edited 
by the present writer (1885, pp. ii-xi). All that is here attempted 
is a very short survey of the subject, so far as it concerns our 
immediate purpose. 

In the heroic age some of the foremost heroes are described 

in the Homeric poems as orators as well as 
omoi^^"'^ warriors. Achilles is trained to be 'a speaker of 

words, as well as a doer of deeds ' (//. ix 443) ; 
Nestor is the clear-voiced orator, from whose lips 'sweeter than 
honey flowed the stream of speech ' (i 249) ; Menelaus touches 
only on salient points 'in words though few, yet clear' (iii 214); 
while Odysseus, though awkward in action, is beyond compare 
with his ' deep voice ' and with his ' words that fall like flakes of 
wintry snow' (iii 222). 

In historic times Athens was the only city of Greece where 

eloquence found a home. The eloquence of 

Pericles is said to have been singularly persuasive. 



i 



CHAP. VI.] GORGIAS. ^7 

We are told by Eupolis that 'a power persuasive rested on his 
lips ; such was his charm ; alone among the speakers, he ever left 
his sting in them that heard him' (Pliny Ep. i 20, 17); while 
Aristophanes describes him as, like the Olympian Zeus, 'lightening 
and thundering and confounding Greece' {Ach. 531). But his 
eloquence was of a purely practical kind, uninfluenced by the 
theoretical treatment of the art, which had sprung into being in 
Sicily, but apparently made little, if any, impression on Athens 
until after the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. 

Greek rhetoric had arisen in Sicily with the establishment of 
democracy at Acragas in 472 B.C., and at Syracuse in 466. Its 
earliest professors had been Corax and Tisias, and 

Gorgias 

Pericles had passed away two years before Gorgias, 
the famous pupil of Tisias, made his first appearance in Athens 
in 427. He came as an envoy to invite Athens to aid his native 
town of Leontini against the encroachments of Syracuse. The 
embassy is described by Thucydides (iii 68) ; but, although the 
speech delivered by Gorgias made a singular sensation, the name 
of Gorgias is not mentioned. It is a Sicilian historian, Diodorus 
(xii 53), who tells us that ' the Athenians, clever as they were and 
fond of orator)' (<^iXoAoyoi), were struck by the singular distinction 
of the style of Gorgias, with its pointed antitheses, its symmetrical 
clauses, its parallelisms of structure and its rhyming endings, 
which were then welcomed owing to their novelty'. These figures 
of speech are most simply classified as follows : — 

avTiOeo-Ls = contrast of sense, 
iropwrujo-is = parallelism of structure, 
irapofjioi&jo-is = parallelism of sound. 

The last is subdivided into ofiotoKdrapKrov, 6|ioioT^e\rrov and 
■n-opovofiao-io, according as the 'parallelism of sound' affects the 
beginning, or the end, or the whole, of the two contrasted words. 
Gorgias was the founder of an artificial or semi-artistic type of 
Greek prose. His style had a strongly poetical colouring (Arist. 
Rhet. iii i, 9) ; even at the close of his life he observed in a 
poetic vein : ' At last Sleep lays me with his brother Death ' ; and 
another of his last sayings finds its parallel in Waller's line 
describing the body in old age as 'the soul's dark cottage. 



7^ THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

battered and decayed '. His sentences were broken up into 
short symmetrical clauses, which had a general effect very similar 
to that of actual metre ; and his example was closely followed by 
certain writers of artificial prose in later ages, especially among 
the adherents of ' Asianism ' in the third and following centuries 
B.C., who had their counterpart in the ' Euphuism ' of our own 
1 6th century \ 

The figures of speech characteristic of Gorgias were retained 
by his pupil, the eminent rhetorician, Isocrates 
(436-338 B.C.). Isocrates, however, unlike the 
later ' Asiatic ' adherents of Gorgias, with their cramped and jerky 
sentences, succeeded in expanding the unduly concise and 
monotonous clauses of his master by moulding them into an 
ampler and more varied periodic form, in which metrical and 
symmetrical effects were diversified by meandering melodies of 
rhythm and subtle harmonies of cadence. A very short specimen 
of his prose may here be quoted from the latter part of his 
Panegyric (§ 186) : — (pijixrjv 8k kol fivrjfxiqv koL 86$av \ iroa-qv TLva 
Xpr) vofJiL^eLV, I 7] ^tovras e^av, \ 7) reXiVTrjdavTa^ KaraXeLij/eiv, | tovs 

€v Tois ToiovTOL<; (.pyoLs dpicTTcwavTa? ; The Style of Isocrates 
was in the main the foundation of the style of Cicero ; and the 
style of Cicero has in its turn supplied the languages of Europe 
with a model for some of the most highly finished forms of the 
ampler types of modern prose. 

While rhetoricians of the Sicilian school of Gorgias, in culti- 
vating a semi-poetic type of prose, aimed mainly at ' beauty of 

language ' (eueVeia), the Greek school of certain 

Protagoras. Other Sophists, such as Protagoras, Prodicus and 

Hippias Hippias, aimed at ' correctness of language ' (op- 

Ooeireta)^. Protagoras classified the modes of 
speech ; Prodicus, whose style is parodied in Plato's Protagoras 
(337 ^~c), dwelt on distinctions between synonyms ; while 

Hippias aimed at a correct and elevated style of 
Thrasyma- expression. Two more names may be briefly 

noticed. Thrasymachus of Calchedon {c. 457- 

400 B.C.) marked an epoch in Greek prose by 



chus and 
Theodorus 



1 Norden, Die Afitike Kunstprosa, pp. 25 f, 134 f, 786 f. 

2 Plato, Phaedrus, 267 c ; Spengel, Artium Scriptores, p. 40 f. 



VI.] PLATO'S PHAEDRUS. 79 

forming a style intermediate between the 'elaborately artificial' 
style of Thucydides and the ' simple and plain ' style of Lysias, 
and became in this respect a precursor of Plato and Isocrates^; 
while Theodorus of Byzantium (/. 412 B.C.), who is regarded as 
a prominent rhetorician both by Plato and Aristotle, introduced 
some novel terms for the subdinsions of a speech, and is described 
in the Phaedrus (266 e) as a 'cunning speech-wright ' (A.f)yo8ai- 
SaXos), a phrase implying master)' in rhetorical artifice. 

The two dialogues of Plato specially concerned with rhetoric 
are the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. In the former 
it is described, not as an art, but as a happy knack Plato's 

Gorgias and 

acquired by practice and destitute of scientific Phaedrus 
principle (463 b, 501 a). In both dialogues Plato 
casts ridicule on the wTiters of the popular rhetorical treatises ; 
but, in the Phaedrus, instead of denouncing rhetoric unreservedly, 
he draws up an outline of a new rhetoric founded on a more 
philosophic basis, resting partly on dialectic, which aids the orator 
in the invention of arguments, and pardy on psychology', which 
enables him to distinguish between the several varieties of human 
character in his audience and to apply the means best adapted 
to produce that persuasion which is the aim of his art". 

The hints which Plato throws out in the Phaedrus are 
elaborately expanded in the Rhetoric of Aristotle, 
especially in the first two books, which deal with R^^^t^^'^ 
the modes of producing persuasion. In the first 
book these are classified; while the second includes (i) 'a careful 
analysis of the affections of which human nature is susceptible, 
and also of the causes by which such affections are called forth ; 
(2) a descriptive catalogue of the various modifications of the 
human character, and the sort of arguments adapted to each'^ 
The first two books, which thus deal with the invention of 
arguments (cvpecri?), are followed by a third occupied with the 
two other parts of rhetoric, style (A.e^ts) and arrangement (ra'^is). 

The third book includes criticisms on the poetic style of Gorgias (c. i), 

1 Dion. Hal. de adm. vi dicendi Dem. c. i — 3. 
■■' Thompson's Phtudrus, p. xiv. 
3 ib. p. XX. 




8o THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

defines the main merits of style as perspicuity and propriety (c. 2), touches on 
'metaphors ' and ' epithets', gives examples of bad taste in the use of compound 
or foreign words, or of redundant epithets, in prose (c. 3), and distinguishes 
between 'similes' and 'metaphors', with examples of the latter (c. 4). Purity 
of Greek depends on the proper use of connecting words or clauses {o-Ovdeufxoi), 
on the avoidance of periphrasis and ambiguity, and the proper use of gender 
and number. As a general rule, every written composition should be easy to 
read, and easy to deliver. Therefore it must avoid all excess of connecting 
words or clauses, and everything that is difficult to punctuate (a yoir; fx^diov 
StaffTtfat). It must also avoid zeugma and parenthesis (c. 5). Amplitude of 
style may be produced by the use of periphrasis ; conciseness by its avoidance. 
We must make our meaning clear by the use of metaphors and epithets, but 
we must avoid the poetical. Amplitude may also be produced by the use of 
the plural for the singular, i)y the repetition of the article before the epithet as 
well as before the noun, and by the enumeration of negative characteristics 
(c. 6). Propriety of style may be attained by making it expressive of the emo- 
tions, true to character, and appropriate to the subject (c. 7). Prose must have 
rhythm, without metre. The first paean (-^^^) supplies an appropriate 
rhythm for the beginning; the fourth {—'^- — ) for the end of a sentence. It 
is best to end with a long syllable ; and the conclusion must be made clear, 
not by the transcriber or by any marginal mark of punctuation {xapaypa(pr)) , 
but by the rhythm (c. 8). Prose style may either be the continuous style (Xe'^ts 
elpofi^vrj), which runs on with a continuity supplied by connecting particles 
alone, a style like that of Herodotus, or the compact and periodic style (X^|ts 
KaTeaTpa/j-IJiivr]). The period must be neither too short nor too long ; if it 
consists of several clauses, it must be easily pronounced in a single breath. 
The clauses may either be simply parallel to one another, or antithetically 
contrasted ; ten examples of these are added from the Panegyric of Isocrates. 
Besides avTiOecrLs or 'contrast of sense', there is also Trapi<TU(ns, where the 
two parallel clauses are equal in length, and Trapo/xoiwcrts, where there is a 
resemblance either in the beginning or in the end of the contrasted words 
(c. 9). Among graces of style may be mentioned ' metaphor ' (c. 10) and vivid 
personification (c. 11). The written style is different from the style of debate, 
whether deliberative (i.e. parliamentary) or forensic. The written style is 
precise ; that of debate lends itself to effective delivery. Delivery must not be 
monotonous, but appropriately varied. Deliberative speaking is like scene- 
painting : before a large audience minute details are useless. The forensic 
style is more precise. The ' epideictic ' style (that of encomium) lends itself 
best to writing ; its aim is to be read ; next to this is the forensic— The rest of 
the book is concerned with the arrangement of the several parts of the 
speech : — exordium (■n-poolixiov, c. 14), narrative {di7iyr)(Ti.s, c. 16), proofs 
(iriffTfis, c. 17), and peroration {tTriXoyos, c. 19). 

Aristotle was born at Stageirus in 384, lived at Athens from 
367 to 347, was tutor to Alexander from 343 to 340, returned 



VI.] ARISTOTLE'S RHETORIC. 8 1 

to Athens from 335 to 323, and died at Chalcis in 322. The 
Rhetoric was not completed before 338 B.C. (ii 23, 6), probably 
not before 336 (ii 23, 18). If 336 was the date of 
its completion, the author was then 48 years of age, relations \o 
and a new interest is added to his own statement isocratesand 

Demosthenes 

that the mind is in its prime '■about the age of 
49' (ii 14, 4). Possibly, while writing these very words, the 
author was himself conscious for a moment that he had approxi- 
mately reached the prime of his own intellectual life. The year 
338 B.C. is the date not only of the battle of Chaeroneia, but also 
of the death of 'that old man eloquent', Isocrates, who eight 
years pre\-iously had urged Philip to levy war on Persia {Or. 5 ; 
346 B.C.); and, after the battle, wrote to the victor rejoicing that 
many of his own hopes were already fulfilled. Notwithstanding 
the traditional feud between Isocrates and Aristotle, which has 
been assigned to the latter part of Aristotle's first residence in 
Athens, both were inspired with Macedonian sympathies. More- 
over, the artificial style of Isocrates lent itself readily to citations 
illustrating rhetorical forms of expression. Hence we are not 
surprised to find that there is no author from whom Aristotle 
quotes more frequently in the Rhetoric; there are as many as ten 
citations from him in a single chapter (iii 9). A\Tiile Isocrates 
was 52 years older than Aristotle, Demosthenes was his exact 
contemporary. But, although Aristotle was at Athens during the 
delivery of the First Philippic (351) and the Three Olynthiacs 
(349), he never illustrates a single rule of rhetoric from any of the 
speeches of the great orator. To Demosthenes he ascribes an 
isolated simile, which is not to be found in his extant speeches 
(iii 4, 3), while he cites the sajing of a minor orator, that the 
p>olicy of Demosthenes was the cause of the disasters of Athens, 
as an example of fallacious reasoning (ii 24, 8). He mentions 
the 'orators at Athens, and Isocrates' (iii 17, 10), and (in a 
passage open to suspicion) describes hyperbole as a favourite 
figure with the 'Attic orators' (iii 11, 16). He quotes striking 
metaphors from speakers such as Iphicrates, Leptines, Cephiso- 
dotus, Peitholaiis, Moerocles and Polyeuctus, but his quotations 
are apparently not derived from any published works, being 
rather of the nature of ' parliamentary ' anecdotes from the every- 
s. 6 



82 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

day talk of the Lyceum'. He illustrates the metaphorical use of 
jiorja-aL from an obscure contemporary of Demosthenes (iii lo, 7), 
though he might have illustrated it better from Demosthenes 
himself (19 §§ 92, 129). It is not entirely fanciful to suppose 
that Aristotle, who lived as a foreigner at Athens, and had close 
relations with Philip and Alexander, may have felt a sense of 
delicacy in exempHfying the precepts of rhetoric from the speeches 
of the great opponent of Macedonia. He never quotes the other 
anti-Macedonian orators, Lycurgus and Hypereides, but he also 
makes no mention of the Macedonian orator, Aeschines. In 
relation to the foreign policy of Athens, he apparently deemed it 
best, as a foreigner, to remain neutral. Of the Ten whom a later 
age recognised as the 'Attic orators', Isocrates is the only one 
whom he quotes by name ; while a passage, which has come 
down to us in the funeral oration wrongly ascribed to Lysias 
(2 § 60), is quoted by Aristotle without the name of any author 
whatsoever {Rhet. iii 10, 7), being probably written by an un- 
known imitator of Isocrates. 

The study of the style of prose in the Athenian age was 

mainly connected with the study of rhetoric. The 
rheU)ric'to^ ° prose of public spcech was the first to attain an 
^etuTrai" artistic form, but other kinds of prose had a closer 

connexion with it than they have in modern times. 
In the domain of history, the Style of Thucydides shows the 
influence of the Sicilian rhetoric ; and the historian readily resorts 
to speeches as a means of expressing the political opinions of the 
day, while he employs the medium of a dialogue to give a 
dramatic representation of the controversy between Athens and 
Melos. In the next century, two. prominent historians, Ephorus 
and Theopompus, were both of them pupils of that trainer of 
rhetoricians, Isocrates. The criticisms in the Rhetoric are not 
confined to the criticism of speeches. A particular kind of prose- 
style is there (iii 9, 2) exemplified from Herodotus, while many of 
the precepts apply to prose in general, and not a few to poetry as 
well. From the time of Aristotle downwards literary criticism 
forms part of the province of rhetoric. 

^ Cp. Wilamowitz, Aristoteles tind Athett, i 350. 



VI.] THE STUDY OF PROSE AUTHORS. 83 

The earliest complete work in Greek prose now extant is that 
of Herodotus (484-^. 425 B.C.), who, according to 
the Chronicle of Eusebius, read his ' books ' aloud prose' auufws 
to the Council at Athens about 446-4 B.C. Ac- 
cording to Lucian {Action, i), he recited his history to an 
enraptured audience at Olympia, and his books, which were nine 
in number, were thenceforth known by the names of the nine 
Muses. The biographers of Thucydides have added that the 
future historian of the Peloponnesian war was himself present and 
was moved to tears by the recital ; but the story is generally 
regarded as unworthy of credit \ Some of the statements of 
Thucydides on early Greek navies may have been derived from 
Herodotus, whom he apjjears to be tacitly correcting in his 
account of the affair of Cylon (Thuc. i 126) and the prerogatives 
of the Spartan kings (i 20). He claims that his own conclusions 
on the early state of Hellas are more trustworthy than those 
derived from his predecessors, whether 'poets' or 'writers of 
prose' (i 21), but the only historian whom he mentions by 
name is Hellanicus (i 97)-. Similarly the only historian named 
by Herodotus is Hecataeus (ii 143 etc.), who had already 
been criticised by Heracleitus in the celebrated saying : ' much 
learning does not teach sense; else it would have taught He- 
siod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and Hecataeus ' 
(frag. 16). Thucydides in turn was studied by Demosthenes, 
as is clear from the style' as well as from the matter* of his 
speeches, however little we may credit Lucian's statement that 
the orator transcribed the work of the historian eight times 
over {adv. Jndodum, 4). The st)'le of Demosthenes, again, 
is studied and criticised by Aeschines (iii 166), who quotes a 
series of harsh metaphors, which he ascribes to his opponent. 
Lastly, the dialogues of Plato were studied and quoted by his 
great pupil, Aristotle. The citations fall under four heads: 
either (a) the name of Plato, or Socrates, is added to the title of 

^ Dahlmann's Life of Herodotus (G. V. Cox, 1845) ; and Stein's ed., p. xxi. 

* On 'Prose Writings in Thucydides' time,' see Thuc. i, ed. Forbes, 
p- xli — Ixxx. 

5 Dion. Hal. Thuc. 53, 54 (Dem. 14 § 13) ; cp. Blass AU. Ber. ni i» 19, 37. 

* Phil, iii 47—51, 01. iii 21, Lept. 73. 

6—2 



84 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the dialogue ; or {b) the title alone is given ; or {c) the name of 
Plato is mentioned without specification of any particular work ; 
or {d) the reference is in general terms and in the plural number, 
introduced by phrases such as ' certain persons say ' or ' think,' 
where some particular work of Plato's is either certainly or 
probably meant \ The evidence of these citations is of some 
importance in determining the genuineness of the dialogues 
ascribed to Plato ^ 

While the place of poetry in Athenian education was due 
partly to a belief in the poet as a teacher and as an 

Place of f / ^ 

Prose in mspired bemg, partly to the fact that poetry attained 

education ^^ artistic form at an earlier date than prose (besides 

being easier to commit to memory), the place of prose was 
distinctly subordinate. In elementary education prose appears to 
have been partly represented by the traditional fables of Aesop 
(Ar. Birds 471). In Plato's Phaedrus (274 c) Socrates is 
described as disparaging reading and writing in comparison with 
talking and memory; but in Xenophon's Memorabilia (i 6, 14) we 
find him unrolling and perusing, with his friends, ' the treasures 
of the wise men of old, which they wrote down in books and left 
behind them.' As a young man, he had ' heard someone reading 
aloud ' a book of Anaxagoras, and hastened to obtain it {Phaedo 
97 b). 'Strains written in prose,' and 'compositions in prose, 
without rhythm or harmony,' are discussed, as well as poetry, in 
the scheme of education in Plato's Laws (809 b, 810 b), but the 
' works handed down by many writers of this class ' (whether in 
prose or verse) are deemed 'dangerous,' while a discourse like 
that in the Laws is described as ' inspired of heaven ' and ' exactly 
like a poem,' and as in fact an appropriate pattern for other 
discourses to be used in the education of youth (811 c-e). 

After the death of Plato the original manuscripts of his 

dialogues were possibly preserved in the school 

mSsiin oTthe o^ ^hc Academy. For eight years the school was 

works of Plato under the care of his nephew and successor, Speu- 

and Aristotle . ^ ^ ^ 

sippus, and afterwards for twenty-five under that 
of Xenocrates, who was succeeded by Polemon and others. 

■^ See the Index of Bonitz, and of Heitz. 
* Zeller's Plato, 54—77. 



VL] MSS of PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 85 

Copies of the original mss were doubtless made at an early date, 
and some of these may have been transmitted from Athens to 
Alexandria, possibly through the agency of Demetrius of 
Phaleron^ The earliest extant ms of any part of Plato has 
been found in Eg}pt. It is the Petrie papjTus from Gurob in the 
FaiyAm, containing about 12 columns of the Phcudo, being 
portions of a neatly written trade-copy assigned to the middle 
of the third century b.c.^ 

On the death of Aristotle, the school of the Lyceum, with the 
library of its founder, remained for more than 34 years under 
the control of his successor Theophrastus. During this time 
Aristotle's pupil, Eudemus of Rhodes, wrote to Theophrastus 
for a transcript of a passage in the Physics which was missing in 
; his own copy of that work', and doubtless other copies of the 
master's manuscripts were in circulation during his successor's 
life-time*. Theophrastus, on his death in or about 287 B.C., left his 
OAvn librar)' and that of Aristotle to his pupil Neleus, who removed 
it to his home at Scepsis in the Troad. A few years later the 
town passed into the possession of the Kings of the Attalid 
dynasty, who from about 230 B.C. began to found a great 
Library at Pergamon to vie with that of the Ptolemies at 
Alexandria. The heirs of Neleus prudently concealed the mss 
in a cellar, awaiting an opportunity for sending them safely out of 
the country. The mss had thus remained in their jxjssession 
for more than 150 years, when, about 100 B.c, they were bought 
by Apellicon of Teos, and restored to Athens. After the capture 
of Athens by Sulla in 86 B.C., they were transported from Athens 
to Rome, where they were consulted by scholars such as T}Tan- 

Kn, Andronicus', and others ; but, owing to long neglect, many 
^ Grote's Plato, i 122, 135, 169; criticised in Zeller's Plato, 51 — 3, and 
. in Gomperz, Platonische Aufsatze, ii 1899. 

* Mahaffy's Petrie Papyri (1891) pi. viii— x ; E. M. Thompson's Palaeo- 
graphy, p. 1 20 ; and Kenyon's Palaeography of Gk papyri, p. 59 — 63. Exhibited 
in the British Museum ; Case A, i. See p. 87. 

' Zeller's Aristotle, i 136; Grote's Plato, i 140. 

* Stahr, Aristotelia, ii i — 166, 294 f ; Susemihl, Gr. Litt. AUx., ii 299 f, 
note 324. 

* Added in Plutarch's Sulla, 26. 



86 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

of them had become illegible, and the copies made after they had 
passed into the hands of Apellicon were disfigured with unskilful 
conjectures and restorations. The above story of their fortunes 
is told us by Tyrannion's pupil, Strabo, who adds that Aristotle 
was the first to 'collect books,' thus setting 'an example after- 
wards followed by the Kings of Egypt'.' The story is partly 
confirmed in one passage of Athenaeus (214 D e), but contradicted 
in another (3 b), carelessly asserting that all the books of Aristotle 
in the possession of Neleus were purchased for the Alexandrian 
library by Ptolemy II, who is elsewhere described as possessing 
more than 1000 books or rolls of the Aristotelian writings I The 
earliest extant manuscript of any of the Aristotelian writings is the 
papyrus containing Aristotle's Constitution of Athens, found in 
Egypt in 1890 and ascribed to about 100 a.d.^ 

Apart from Aristotle's library we hear of no important collec- 
tion of books in the Athenian age, though books are said to have 
been collected by Polycrates of Samos, by Peisistratus and 
Euripides (Athen. p. 3), and by a pupil of Plato and Isocrates, 
the 'tyrant' Clearchus who founded a library at the Pontic 
Heraclea in Bithynia before 364 B.C. (Photius Bibl. 222 b), while 
in 400 B.C. ' many books ' are mentioned by Xenophon {Anab. vii 
5, 14) as found in the cargo of some vessels wrecked on the coast 
of the Euxine. In or after the first century B.C. an incomplete 
title of a speech of Demosthenes and of certain portions of 
Hellanicus appears by the side of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Crates, 
Diphilus, and the Meleager and Alcmaeon of Euripides, in an 
inscription conjecturally supposed to contain a list of books 
presented by Athenian youths to the library of their gymnasium*. 
We know for certain that 100 volumes were annually presented by 
the youth of Athens to the library of the gymnasium called the 
Ftolemaion, which was founded at Athens early in the Alexandrian 
age (probably by Ptolemy Philadelphus) and was visited in the 

^ Strabo, pp. 608 — 9 ; Grote's Plato, i 138 f. 

^ Schol. Arist. 22 a 12. Cp. Zeller's Aristotle, c. iii, and Shute's History 
of the A7-istotelian Writings, pp. 29 — 45. 

* Complete facsimile edited by Kenyon (1891) ; specimen given by E. M. 
Thompson /. c. p. 140. 

* C. I. A. ii 992. 



VI.] LIBRARIES. 87 

Roman age by Cicero* and Pausanias". But in the Athenian age 
itself, it was not so much the books that the Athenian read as 
the words that he heard, in the theatre, in the law-courts, in the 
groves of Academe and in the walks of the Lyceum, that served 
to complete his education. In the language of John Henry 
Newman, ' it was what the student gazed on, what he heard, what 
he caught by the magic of sympathy, not what he read, which 
was the education furnished by Athens ^" 

* De Finibus v r, i . 

- i 17, 2 (with Frazer's note). Cp. C. I. A. ii 465, 468, 478, 480, 482, 
idoffav Kai /Si/3Xia (Is rqv iv JlroXe/xaiV ?i^\io6i)Krjv, and Dittenbei^er, De 
Ephebis, p. 51 ; Curtius, Stadtgeschichte von A then, Ixxxii 238, 282 ; and 
P. Girard, V Education Athenienne, p. 159 f. 

' Historical Sketches, p. 40. 



-^^ rrc9A{rAiAayo)xrcftA(i-rAfA")c5 
Xtyfc A|T7jf^fv-fi^jAeMH4fhHAAAvq 

From the earliest extant ms of the Phaedo of Plato, 
p. 83 a (c. 250 B.C.). 

(E. M. Thompson's Palaeography, p. 120.) 



<o.iaBy\> aiijsv iretdovffa de eK rovrufJ. 
<fie>v cwaxupfw oaofi fii) avayicri 
Xfnia<9>ai avn]v 5' ets coimyi' ffu\- 
XeyeffOai Kai aOpoi^effdai TrapaKt- 
\eve(r<d>ai Triareveiv Se firiSevi aWwi 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF GRAMMAR AND ETYMOLOGY. 

We are told by Herodotus (v 58) that the Phoenicians who 
came with Cadmus brought with them the letters of 

Herodotus . . ° 

the Phoenician alphabet, and that in course of time 
they adapted the method of writing them to the requirements of 
the Greek language. In the temple of the Ismenian Apollo at 
Thebes, Herodotus had himself seen three tripods inscribed with 
'Cadmeian' letters, 'for the most part resembling those of the 
lonians '. He assigns the three inscriptions to the age of Laius 
in the third, and to those of Oedipus and Laodamas in the fourth 
and sixth generations from Cadmus (v 59-61). We are also told 
by Herodotus that the lonians who lived nearest to the Phoe- 
nicians (e.g. in Cyprus and Rhodes) borrowed the Phoenician 
alphabet, with a few changes, and that they habitually called 
them the ' Phoenician ' letters (v 58),— a statement confirmed by 
an inscription found near the Ionian town of Teos^ 

Spelling was taught by means of a series of syllables combining 
the consonants with all the vowels in succession. Fragments of 
a tile have been found in Attica bearing the syllables ap ftap yap 
Sap, ep fiep yep Sep etc. ^ The comic poet Callias wrote a ' letter- 
play ' {ypa/jufxariKr] TpaywSta) in which the dramatis personae were 
the letters of the alphabet, all of which were enumerated in the 
prologue, with a separate enumeration of the vowels at a later 
point. The play included a spelling-chorus, ^^]Ta aX^a /3a etc., 
and some of its choral arrangements are said to have been 

1 C /. G. 3044 = /. G. A. 497 B 37 {c. 475 B.C.), 6s &!'... ^otwKijia iKK6\j/ei 
(Roberts, Greek Epigraphy, p. 170). 

2 Philistor, iv 327. 



CHAP. VII.] THE GREEK ALPHABET. 89 

imitated in the Medea of Euripides (431 B.C.), — a statement of no 
value except as an indication of the probable date of the play^ 
In the Theseus of Euripides a slave who could not read was 
represented as describing the shape of each of the characters in the 
name of 0H2EY2, and the same device was adopted in the case 
of the same name by Agathon and Theodectes, while Sophocles 
is said to have represented the shapes of various letters of the 
alphabet, in one of his satyric dramas, by means of the attitudes 
assumed by a dancer (Athen. p. 453-4). In the archonship of 
Eucleides (403 B.C.) it was ordered at Athens on the proposal of 
Archinus that all public documents should be written in the Ionic 
characters^; and the 'treaty with the barbarian' (commonly 
called the 'peace of Cimon' or 'Callias', after 466 or 449 b.c) 
is denounced by Theopompus as a fabrication, on the ground 
that the characters used in the inscription recording it were those 
of the Ionic instead of the Attic alphabet ^ The fact that 
Euripides, who died three years before the archonship of Eu- 
cleides, recognises H as the second letter of ' Theseus ' (as above 
noticed) is part of the proof that the Ionic alphabet was in 
literary and private use at Athens before 403 B.C. 

The current division of letters (aroixcia), as may be inferred 
from three passages of Plato, was as follows : 
(i) 'voiced' or 'vocal' letters (<^wi'T7cvTa, vocales), 
our 'vowels'; (2) 'voiceless' letters {atftoiva), our 'consonants'. 
The latter were divided into (a) letters not only ' voiceless ' but 
also ' without sound ' (a^wva xai a^^oyya), our ' mutes ' ; and 
(b) letters that are ' not vocal ', but ' not without sound ' (^wvT^erra 
fjiky ov, ov fjitvTOL ye a(^^oyya), i.e. A, fi, v, p, s, afterwards known as 
'semivowels' (jy/xi'^wva)*. A passage in the Timaeus (75 d) 
mentions the ' teeth ', ' tongue ' and ' lips ' as producing ' the 
river of speech ', which is ' the fairest and noblest of all streams '. 
In the Cratylus (394 d) Plato notices that the only letters which 
have no special names are E, Y, O, fi, thus showing that the 

' Cp. Verrall's Medea, p. xxiii. 
^ Suidas, s.v. ^a/uuv 5^/xoj. 
' Harpocration, s.v. 'AttikoU ypdfifiacnv. 

* Cratylus 424 c ; Philebus 18 B, c (where rot fjukaa. are the ' semivowels ') ; 
Theaet. 203 B. 



90 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

names epsilon, upsilon, omicron and omega are of later origin, the 
Greeks in this age calUng these letters ei, v, ov and w. The name 
epsilon, or 'simple' c, was afterwards introduced to distinguish 
that letter from the diphthong ai, and similarly upsilon, or 'simple' 
u, to distinguish that letter from the diphthong oi, and both these 
names belong to the late Byzantine age, when c and at, and v and 
oi respectively, were pronounced alike. The name omega is also 
late : aX^a and O, (not omega) are recognised in the best MSS of 
the Greek Testament, eyw ti/Ai to aA<^a koI to <S {Rev. i 8), and in 
Prudentius : — ' aXcfta et w cognominatus ". 

The earliest trace of any classification of words is to be found 
in Plato. ' Grammar ' was at first regarded mainly as the art of 
reading and writing (p. 6) ; but it also included the theory of the 
nature of sounds and of accent, with questions of quantity and 
rhythm, and in these respects it was closely connected with 
Music. With the classification of words grammar entered on a 
new stage. It is traditionally held that Plato was the first to 
distinguish between the Noun and the Verb, calling the former 
ovofia and the latter prjixa. But the correspondence between 
these terms is incomplete^ and the distinction drawn by Plato 
between ovo/ta and prj/xa does not answer to the grammatical 
distinction between Noun and Verb, but to the logical distinction 
between Subject and Predicate ^ This is true even of the passage 
in the Sophistes (261 e), which is the main support of those who 
ascribe to Plato the first distinction between Noun and Verb as 
parts of speech. He there says : — ' There are two kinds of inti- 
mations of being which are given by the voice ', ' one of them 
called ord/Aara and the other prjixara ' ; ' that which denotes action 
we call prjfjia ', ' the articulate sign set on those who do the actions 
we call ovofia ' ; ' a succession of ovofiara or prjixara alone is not 
discourse'; 'it is only when they are mingled together that 
language is formed'*, p^/xa in Plato includes every kind of 

^ Mayor's Firsi Greek Reader, p. lii ; Blass, Pronunciation of Ancient 
Greek, p. 20. 

"^ Classen, De Grain. Gr. primordiis (1829), p. 45 f. 

3 Deuschle, Die Plat. Sprachphilosophie (1852), p. 8 f . 

•* Cp. Theaet. 206 D, Symp. 198 B, 199 B, Rep. 340 E, 462 c, 464 A, 474 A, 
562 c, Tim. 49 e; also Crat. 425 A, 431 B (Deuschle, p. 9). 



VII.] THE BEGINNINGS OF GRAMMAR. 9 1 

predicate. Thus, in the Cratylus (399 b), Au <^tXo? (being 
predicated of a person) is called a pi7/i.a, while its derivative 
Ai<^iAo? is an ovo\i.ai. In later times Plato's ovo/ia and pi7/xa were 
regarded as grammatical parts of speech, and the question whether 
this division was meant by Plato to be exhaustive, or whether the 
other parts of speech were only omitted because they were com- 
paratively unimportant, was discussed by Plutarch in his Platonic 
Questions {Moralia ii 1008), and decided in the latter sense. In 
Plato we find suggestions of the distinction afterwards drawn in 
grammar between the Substantive and the Adjective (cp. ctto)- 
w/xta in Farm. 131 a, Soph. 225 D, Phaedr. 238 a); he also 
recognises Number {Soph. 237 e), Tenses of Verbs {Parm. 151 e, 
156 a: Soph. 262 d), and 'Active and Passive' {Soph. 219 b; 
Philebus 26 e)\ 

Moods are not yet mentioned, but Protagoras had already 
distinguished in rhetoric some of the various modes of expression 
which correspond to the Moods of grammar (p. 27). He had 
also divided nouns into three classes, male, female, and inanimate 
{a-Kfvr}), a classification apparently founded on a real or natural, 
and not on a grammatical basis, 'male' and 'female' nouns 
denoting male and female persons, or distinctions in sex, whether 
in mankind or among animals in general, and things inanimate 
including the names of all other objects, natural and artificial, 
real and abstract. This last class contains many words which are 
grammatically masculine or feminine, but the classification of 
Protagoras can hardly be identified with a classification of nouns 
as masculine, feminine and neuter. Protagoras uses in the sense 
of ' classes ' the same term (yc'vi/), which was afterwards adopted 
in grammar to denote ' genders ' -. 

In the earlier Greek philosophers we find a few traces of 
speculation on the origin of language. Thus Pythagoras {Jl. 540- 
510 B.C.) held that, next to 'number', the highest wisdom 
belonged to 'him who gave things their names '^ Heracleitus 

1 Deuschle, pp. 10, 17, 18 ; cp. Schomann, Die Lehre von den Kedethdlen 
(1862), p. 2 ; and Steinthal, Sprachwissenschaft, i- 137 f. 

- Cope in Journ. of CI. and S. Phil, iii 48 f., and on Arist. Phet. iii 5, 5 
and Introd. p. 293. Ar. Clouds 659 ff. may be a satire on Protagoras. 

' 6 ra bvbiuna. toTs Trpdyiuiai de/ievos, Proclus on Plato's Cratylns, p. 6; 
Cicero, Tusc. Disp. i 25 ; Steinthal, p. 157 f. 



92 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

^fl- 5°3 B.C.), though celebrated for the obscurity of his language, 
appears to have laid stress on linguistic expression, but we know 
of no scientific enunciation of his on this subject. He is, how- 
ever, known to have held that words existed naturally (</)uo-£t). 
Words, he said, were not like the artificial, but like the natural 
images of visible things ; they resembled shadows, and reflexions 
in water, or images seen in mirrors'. Democritus (460-357 B.C.) 
described the names of the gods as their 'vocal images'^. His 
contemporary Hippocrates {c. 460-359 B.C.) called names 'ordi- 
nances of nature ' (<^vo-tos vofiode-njfjLaTa) ; and Antisthenes (yf. 
400 B.C.) wrote on names and on language in connexion with his 
dialectical theories^ But our knowledge of these speculations is 
very imperfect. In the case of Plato we have more material for 
forming an opinion, but even here there is much that is confused 
and perplexing. It was said of Plato that he was the first to 
speculate on the nature of 'grammar'^; and some of the passages 
on language in his dialogues have been collected by Stobaeus®, 
but all these are of less importance than the dialogue known as 
the Cratylics. 

In the Cratylus there are three interlocutors holding different views as to 
the nature and origin of language. (1) Hermogenes holds that language is 
conventional, and that all names have their origin in convention and mutual 
agreement {^vvQ-qKi) koX ofxoXoyia, 384 d); like the names of slaves, they may be 
given and altered at pleasure. (2) Cratylus, a follower of Heracleitus, holds 
that language is nattiral, and that every name is either a true name or not a 
name at all; he cannot conceive of degrees of imitation; a word is either the 
perfect expression of a thing or a mere inarticulate sound. (3) Socrates 
takes up an intermediate position, holding that language is founded on nature, 
but modified by cotiveniion^ . In his view 'language is conventional and also 
natural, and the true conventional-natural is also the rational; it is a work not 
of chance but of art ; the dialectician is the artificer of words, and the legislator 

1 Ammonius on Aristotle, de Interp. p. 24 B Aid., quoted by Lersch, 
Sprachphilosophie, i 11 f; cp. Plato, Theaet. 206 D; Steinthal, pp. 171, 173. 

^ dydXnara (pwvrjevTa, Olympiodorus on Plato, Philebus, p. 242 ; Steinthal, 
p. 182. 

3 Zeller's Plato, p. 211 f. 

^ Favorinus ap. Diog. Laert. ni i 19, 25, -wpOno^ ideuprjae ttjs ypa.niu.aTiK7Js 
rriv SivaiJi.iv. 

5 81 §§ 14—16 (Pkilehus, p. 186 ; Theaet. 202 B ; Sophist, 261 d). 

® Lewis Campbell, Encycl. Brit. ed. 9, s.v. Plato. 



VII.] PLATO'S CRATYLUS. 93 

gives authority to them'*. Words are the expressions or imitations of things 
by means of sound. In the extravagance of some of his etymologies, Socrates 
is regarded by Jowett as 'ridiculing the fancies of a new school of sophists and 
grammarians-; but, 'when the fervour of his etymological enthusiasm has 
abated', he ends, as he began, with 'a rational explanation of language'. 
'Having explained compound words, by resolving them into their original 
elements, he proceeds to analyse simple words into the letters of which they 
are composed'. He 'supposes words to be formed by the imitation of ideas in 
sounds; he also recognises the effect of time, the influence of foreign languages, 
the desire of euphony...; and he admits a certain element of chance'^. He 
says, apparently in irony, 'my notion is, that we may put in and pull out 
letters at pleasure and alter the accents, and we may make words into 
sentences and sentences into words' (399 a). The name ovflpwiroj (he adds) is 
a case in point, for a letter has been omitted and the accent changed; the 
original meaning being 6 avadpCiv a 6iruirev — 'he who looks up at what he 
sees'. He observes in a more serious mood that, in speaking of the gods, we 
are only speaking of our names for them: — 'the truest names of the gods are 
those which they give themselves, but these are unknown to us' (400 e). 
Inquiring about the hiiftian names of the gods, he makes many fanciful 
suggestions, the only one which can be accepted being his derivation of the 
name of Pallas a-irh rod wdWeiv ra oirXa (407 a). He suspects that certain 
words, which cannot be explained with the help of Greek alone, must be of 
foreign origin, ' for the Greeks, especially those who were under the dominion 
of the barbarians, often borrowed words from them. Consider whether this 
word TTvp is not foreign ; for it is not easily brought into relation with Greek, 
and the Phrygians may be observed to have this same word slightly inflected, 
just as they have vduip and icvve^, and many other words' (409 D, 410 a). 
KaK6v (416. a) and 6<pe\\£iv (417c) he considers 'foreign' words; but 'the idea 
that the Greek language and that of the barbarians could have had a common 
source never entered his mind'^. After proposing some far-fetched etymo- 
logies, he excuses himself by adding 'you must remember that all language is 
in a process of disguise or transition; and letters are taken out and put in at 
pleasure, and twisted and twirled about in the lapse of ages — sometimes for 
the sake of euphony' (414 c). Again, 'mere antiquity may often prevent our 
recognising words, after all their complications ; and we must remember that, 
however far we carry back our analysis of words, there must be some ultimate 
elements which can be no further analysed' (421 D, e). 'Secondary names 
derive their significance from the primary ; how, then, do the primary indicate 
anything?' (422 a). 'The only way in which the body can express anything 
is by imitalioti ; and the tongue or mouth can imitate as well as the rest of the 

* Jowett's Plato, i 622*= 257^ 
2 ib. p. 624^ 259'. 
^ ib. p. 625^ 259^ 

* Max Miiller's Lectures, i 132 (1866). 



94 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

body. What, then, is a name ? A name is not a musical or pictorial imita- 
tion, but an imitation of that kind which expresses the nature of the thing; 
and is the invention not of a musician, or of a painter, but of a namer' (423 
a-e). "The way to analyse names will be by going back to the letters, or 
primary elements of which they are composed. First, we classify the letters 
of the alphabet, and, when we have learnt the letters singly, we shall learn to 
know them in their various combinations. We may apply letters to the 
expression of objects, and form them into syllables ; and these again into 
words (424 c-e). I mean that this was the way in which the ancients formed 
language. Whether the primary and secondary elements are rightly given, is 
a question which we can answer by conjecture alone. But still we hold that 
the method which we are pursuing is the true and only method of discovery. 
Otherwise we must have recourse to a Deus ex machina, and say that 'the 
gods gave the first names, and therefore they are right'; and this will perhaps 
be our best device, unless indeed we say that the barbarians are older than we, 
and that we learnt of them, or that the lapse of ages has cast a veil over the 
truth" (425 a-e). Primary words which do not admit of derivation from 
foreign languages 'must be resolved into the letters of which they are com- 
posed, and therefore the letters must have a meaning. The framers of language 
were aware of this : they observed that a was adapted to express size ; ri 
length; roundness; v inwardness; j> rush or roar; X liquidity; 7X the deten- 
tion of the liquid or slippery element; 5 and t binding; <f>, \j/, a, f, wind and 
cold, and so on' (426C-427 D). 

'Plato's analysis of the letters of the alphabet', says Jowett^, 'shows a 
wonderful insight into the nature of language'. 'In passing from the gesture 
of the body to the movement of the tongue', he "makes a great step in the 
physiology of language. He was probably the first who said that 'language is 
imitative sound', which is the greatest and. deepest truth in philology". But 
convention has its influence no less than imitation. *■ Itnitation'' , says Plato, 
' is a poor thing, and has to be supplemented by convention, which is another 
poor thing; although I quite agree, that if we could always have a perfect 
correspondence of sound and meaning, that would be the most perfect form of 
language' (435 c-d). 

Plato, it will be observed, is a supporter of what has since been called the 
onomatopoetic theory of language. 'He was probably also the first who made 
a distinction between simple and compound words...; but he appears to have 
been wholly unaware of the difference between a root and a termination'''. 
The dialogue may have been in part 'a satire on the philological fancies of the 
day'^; the author may have been ridiculing 'the arbitrary methods... which 
were in vogue among the philologers of his time'^, but this is uncertain. 

The etymological speculations of Plato in the Cratyltis were regarded with 

1 Jowett's Plato, i p. 646^, 283 — 4^. 

2 ib. p. 646^, 284^. ^ ib. p. 625', 260^. 
* ib. p. 627^, 262^. " 



VII.] PLATO'S CRATYLUS. 95 

respect by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and by Plutarch, but they are now 
generally treated as too absurd to be taken seriously. Schleiermacher describes 
as 'a valuable discovery of modem times' the view that Plato meant all or 
most of his etymologies as mere parody and caricature. This view is accepted 
by Stallbaum, Brandis, Zeller* and others; but is opposed by Grote-, who 
here (as elsewhere) appears to take an unduly literal and prosaic view of the 
flights of fancy and the play of humour which are among the most constant 
characteristics of Plato's manner. But, if we do not accept Plato's etymo- 
Ic^es as intended to be taken seriously, it does not necessarily follow that he 
meant them as mere caricatures of the etymological speculations of his day. 
'The position which he takes up in the Cratylus is' (as suggested to me by 
Dr Henr)- Jackson) 'a definite one, and seriously maintained. He holds that, 
whereas the significance of names is determined by custom and convention, 
the names themselves have their origin in attempts to represent vocally the 
things signified by them. For, secondary names are derived from primary 
names, and primary names are constructed out of rudimentary sounds, which, 
in virtue of the action of the organs used in producing them, are naturally 
suitable for the representation of certain rudimentary processes and states: 
eg. the letter p, in virtue of the movement of the tongue in producing it, 
appropriately represents movement. But, to all appearance, he wishes to 
suggest (i) that, partly because from the beginning there was in names an 
arbitrary element, partly because in the course of time names have been 
corrupted and disguised, their origins are lost in obscurity; and (2) that, 
inasmuch as names could at best represent the %-iews of their makers, they 
cannot be, as the Heracleiteans seem to have thought them, guides to truth. 
It would appear then that Plato attaches no value whatever to the particular 
etymologies offered ; and, as in his wilder flights he ironically appeals to the 
authority of Euthyphro (396 D), it may well be that in this part of the exposi- 
tion there is a satirical element. Moreover, Plato's interest in the general 
question about the origin of language is subordinate to his interest in the 
theory of ideal unities, which at the end of the dialogue he opposes to the 
dogma of Cratylus, that things are to be studied in their names '. 

The dialogue has been discussed by Steinthal, who maintains that Plato 
begins by assuming that words exist as a product of nature, but ends by 
holding that they exist as the result of conveniion^. This view is confessedly 
opposed to the scholiastic tradition, as represented by Proclus, who makes 
Plato a supporter of the natural origin of language*; but the views may be 
jnciled by regarding Plato as holding an intermediate position between the 
lerents of nature and convention. It has also been discussed by many others*, 

^ Plato, p. 213 n. - Plato, ii 519 — 529. 

* Sprathwissenschaft, \- 107, 150. 
ib. 168. 

e.g. Dittrich (Berlin) 1841 ; Schaarschmidt, Rheinisches Museum, xx 
-356, Alberti, ib. xxi 180 — 209, xxii 477 — 499, Lehrs, ib. xxii 436 — 440; 



96 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

best perhaps by Deuschle\ and (from the comparative philologist's point 
of view) by Benfey'^. It is a dialogue of enduring interest as the earliest 
attempt at a philosophy of language, but language is here (as elsewhere) in 
Plato's view subordinate in importance to dialectic. Its general teaching 
seems, in Zeller's opinion, to be summed up in the conclusion that ' we must 
give up seeking in words a knowledge of things' (435 D-436 D, 438 c); 'we 
must turn our attention not to names, but to the things themselves' (439 A, 
440c), and 'acknowledge the dialectician to be superior to the maker of 
language' (389 A-390E)*. Similarly, it has been shown by Mr D. D. Heath 
in the Jotcrnal of Philology (xvii 192-218) that Plato's sketch of the theory of 
nomenclature, and his discussion and criticism of the Heracleitean school, is 
entirely 'subordinate to the clearly expressed conclusion': — 'A scientific 
nomenclature as perfect as possible might suffice for teaching the truths of 
nature. But, inasmuch as names are but images, and therefore necessarily 
imperfect representations of things, the surest way is the study of the things 
themselves; and therefore... a knowledge of the truth of things, independently 
acquired, is a necessary preliminary to the formation of such an approximately 
perfect nomenclature'' (p. 193). On the question how far Plato is serious in his 
etymologies taken in detail Mr Heath holds that 'Plato had no thought of 
propounding an elaborate history and analysis of the Greek language', and 
that this part of the dialogue may be compared to the myths in other dialogues, 
described by Grote as 'fanciful illustrations invented to expand and enliven 
general views' (p. 201). 

The controversy as to the origin of language long continued. Aristotle 
rejected the opinion that words existed naturally, and held that their meaning 
was purely conventional {De Interp. c. 2 and 4) ; Epicurus, that words existed 
at first naturally, and afterwards conventionally {Qicy^y. The Megarian 
philosopher, Diodorus, took the side of convention, and, by way of asserting 
his right to invent a language of his own, himself called one of his slaves dWa 
iLi\v, and gave the others arbitrary names from other Greek particles'. The 
Stoics on the other hand traced the origin of language to nature^; and the 
same view was held by the Roman grammarian Nigidius Figulus (d. 45 B.C.), 
as we learn from Aulus Gellius (x 4), who describes the question as one which 
was much debated. 

Luckow (Treptow) 1868 ; Hayduck (Breslau) and Dreykorn (Zweibriicken) 
1869; also by Steinhart in his Prolegomena, Susemihl in his Genetische 
Entwickelung, i 144 — 174, and Ch. Lenormant in his Commentaire (Athens), 
1861. 

1 Die Platonische Sprachphilosophie (Marburg), 1852, pp. 83. 

'■' Gottingen Abhandlungen, xii (1866), 189 — 330. 

^ Zeller's Plato, p. 214. 

* Diog. Laert. x 75 ; Lucr. v 1027 f. 

* Ammonius on Arist. de Interp. p. 103, ap. Lersch, i 42. 

* Origen, contra Celsum, i 24 (Lersch, i 46). 



VII.] GRAMMAR IN ARISTOTLE. 97 

Aristotle's treatise on Poetry includes an analysis of the parts 
of speech and other grammatical details (c. 20), and 
a passage on the gender of nouns (c. 21). Probably 
both of these passages are interpolations. In the former a 'letter' 
is defined, and letters divided into vowels, semivowels and mutes 
{<f>o)v7J€VTa, iiij.i<f)0iva and a(f>uiva) ; a noun, a verb, and a ' connecting 
word ' (avvBea-fLos) are also defined ; and ' inflexion ' (irroJo-is) is 
described as belonging to the noun and the verb, and expressing 
'of, ' to ', or the like, or the relation of number, or that of ' mode 
of address". In the De Jnterpretatione the verb in the present 
tense is the pi7/Aa, and the other tenses are its Trrwo-cts, and else- 
where the TTTOKrei? of a noun include even adjectives and adverbs. 
In contrast with irrwo-i?, the nominative is called »cAi7o-is*. Various 
cases are distinguished by Aristotle, but their number and their 
names are still undetermined'. In addition to 'Active and 
Passive ' Verbs, those subsequently known as ' Neuter ' and 
'Deponent' are now recognised for the first time*. The symbol 
of the rough breathing distinguishing OPOS 'boundary' from OPOZ 
' mountain " is called by Aristotle {Soph. El. 177 ^ 3) a Trapdarjfioy, 
the former word being probably written as '0P02. The writings of 
Heracleitus are described {Rhet. iii 5) as hard to punctuate (8ia- 
oTi^ai), but the only mark of punctuation actually mentioned by 
Aristotle is the ■7rapaypa<f>Tj {ib. 8), a short horizontal dash drawn 
below the first word of the line in which the sentence is about to 
end. It is from this ancient symbol, which marks the close of 
the sentence, that we give to the sentence itself, or to a connected 
group of sentences, the name of a ' paragraph '. 

The only parts of speech that Aristotle recognises in the first 
chapter of the Categories are 6vop.a and pyjpa, the Noun and the 
Verb. In the Rhetoric (iii 5 and 12) and the Problems (xix 20) he 
makes incidental mention of crvv8«o-/i,oi, a term including conjunc- 
tions, connecting particles and even connecting clauses. In the 
Poetic (c. 20) he is also made to mention a.pOpa (Pronouns and 
Articles), but we are assured by Dionysius of Halicamassus {De 
Comp. c. 2) that only three parts of speech were recognised by 

' Classen, /. c. 52 — 58 ; Steinthal, /. c. i* 253—9. 

2 Steinthal, i^ 266 f. s Classen, 64 f. 

* Schwalbe's Beitrag (1838), p. 92. 

S. 7 



98 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Aristotle, and, for this and other reasons, the chapter in question 
is best regarded as an interpolation. 

In the controversy as to the origin of language Aristotle, as 
already observed (p. 96), is an adherent of ' convention ' and not 
of ' nature '. The terms constituting a Proposition are declared 
by Aristotle to be a Noun in the nominative case as Subject, and 
a Verb as Predicate'; and the Verb is distinguished from the 
Noun as connoting time (16 /' 2). While Plato {Soph. 261 f) 
regards the Proposition as composed of the ovo/i,a and the prj^ia 
(having no other terms than these for Subject and Predicate), and 
expresses affirmation by </)acrts and negation by d7ro<^ao-t9, Aristotle 
has a technical term not only for affirmation (Kara^acrts) and 
negation (a,7rd<^a(ris) and for negative Noun and Verb, but also 
for Subject (to v-KOK^Lfxevov) and for Predicate (to KaTriyopoxifx^vov)' . 
' Subject ' is in fact the modern form of subjecUim, the late Latin 
rendering in Martianus Capella (iv 361) of the term first found in 
Aristotle. 

The further development of the terminology of Grammar was 

reserved for the Stoics of the third and following 
tetic srhoo^*" centuries b.c.^ Meanwhile, the Peripatetic School 

carried on the Aristotelian tradition by the special 
study of the history and the criticism of Literature. Our survey 
of the Athenian age may here conclude with a brief mention of a 
few of the members of that School. 

Heracleides Ponticus of Sinope {fl. 340 B.C.) had been a pupil 

of Plato before he became a pupil of Aristotle. 
p^tic^us^' ^^ While his philosophical works were soon forgotten, 

his grammatical and literary writings long survived. 
He wrote on Rhetoric and Music, and also on Poetry and Poets, 
on Homeric problems, on the age of Homer and Hesiod, on 
Homer and Archilochus, and on Sophocles and Euripides. One 
of his works, entitled ypa/x/xaTtKa, may have touched on questions 
of literary criticism. The excerpts Ik tQv 'UpaKXciSov irepl 
iroXiTeiwv are portions of an abridgement of the TroXtretai of 
Aristotle, now ascribed to Heracleides Lembos, an Alexandrian 

1 Grote's Aristotle, i 156. 

2 ib. 194 f; cp. Steinthal, i- 183 f, 235 f. ^ p. 144 f. 



VII.] THE PERIPATETIC SCHOOL. 99 

'grammarian' who lived under Ptolemy Philometor (182-146 b.c.)\ 

A fellow-countryman and a rival of Heracleides Ponticus, named 

Chamaeleon, wrote on Homer, Hesiod, Stesichorus, 

Sappho, Anacreon, I^sus, Pindar, Simonides, 

Thespis and Aeschylus ; also on the early history of Tragedy 

and on Ancient Comedy (Athen. 406 e)1 The Peripatetic 

School included Aristoxenus of Tarentum, the 

Aristoxenus 

leading authority in the ancient world on Rhythm 
and Music {fl. 318 B.C.), who wrote on the History of Music, and 
on Tragic dancing and Tragic poets, besides biographies of 
Pythagoras, Archytas, Socrates and Plato ^ 

The critical study of prose style was continued by Aristotle's 
successor, Theophrastus of Eresos in Lesbos (372- 

^ . ./"" Theophrastus 

287). Among the ten works on rhetonc ascribed to 
him by Diogenes Laertius (v 46-50) was a treatise On Style {Trepl 
\t^€w<;), still extant in the time of Cicero. He is expressly named 
in Cicero's Orator in connexion with the style of Herodotus and 
Thucydides (§ 39), the four points of excellence in style (79), the 
rhythm of prose (172, 228), and the use of the paean (194, 218); 
while several passages may probably be traced to him, e.g. that on 
delivery and its effect on the emodons (55), on beauty of diction 
(80) and on moderation in the use of metaphor (81). To Theo- 
phrastus we also owe the division of style into the ' grand ', the 
'plain', and the 'mixed' or 'intermediate', adopted by Cicero in 
§§ 20, 21. In the Augustan age his treatise on style is either 
ex-pressly quoted or otherwise noticed in several passages of 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus *, and is possibly the source of other 
passages where his name is not mentioned'. Theophrastus also 

1 Grafenhan, /. c. i 63 f, 360 ; Classen, /. c. p. 8 ; Muller, F. H. G. ii 
197 — 207; Christ, Gr. Litt. § 420*; also Unger, Rhehi. Mus. xxxviii 481 ff; 
Cohn, Breslau, 1884; Schrader, Philol. xliv 236 ff; Holzinger, PhiloL liv, Ivi; 
Voss, Rostock, 1897; Susemihl, Lit. Alex, i 501-5. 

- Christ, § 420^; Kopke, Berlin, 1856. 

' Miiller, ii 262 — 292; Christ, § 422*; Hiibner, Bibliographie, p. 12. 

■• De Comp. 16, De Lysia 14, De Dem. 3, De Isocr. 5 ; cp. Theophr. 
Fragin. iii 93 — 96 Wimmer, and the present writer's ed. of Cic. Orator, p. Ixx 
and note on § 79 ; also Rabe, De Theophr. vepl Xe|ews (Bonn), 1890. 

' Usener (D. H. de Imitatione, 1889, p. 141) says of Dionysius: 'normas 
elocutionis aestimandae Theophrasto plerumque debet '. 

7—2 



lOO THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

wrote a work on Comedy (Athen. 261 d). He and his school 
appear to have discussed the question whether by parts of speech 
ouo/xa and pri/xa alone were meant, or whether they also included 

apOpa and o-vvStcr/xot'. 

Among the younger pupils of Aristotle was Uicaearchus of 
Messana (347-287 b.c), the author of an important 

Dicaearchus • r>/ t /c> 

work entitled ptos T17S EXAaoos. It was the first 
attempt at a history of civilisation, tracing the 'Life of Greece' 
from the dawn of history to the age of Alexander. It included an 
account of the geography and history, as well as the moral and 
religious condition of the country, besides embracing music and 
poetry in its extensive range. Treatises on Constitutions, such as 
those of Pellene, Corinth and Athens, mentioned by Cicero (ad 
Att. ii 2), may have either formed part of this work or served as 
materials for it ; while that on ' musical competitions ' may have 
belonged to a larger treatise on ' Dionysiac contests '. His name 
is assigned to certain Arguments to the plays of Sophocles and 
Euripides ; and those on the Alcestis and Medea are still extant. 
He also wrote biographies of the Seven Wise Men, and of 
Pythagoras and Plato, besides treating of the leading poets in the 
course of his great work on Greece. He did much for the study 
of Greek geography, and his maps were known to Cicero {ad Att. 
vi 2) ; but he was much more than a mere student. He measured 
the altitudes of the mountains of the Peloponnesus, and he 
appeared as a public speaker at the Panathenaic festival at 
Athens, and at the Panhellenic festival at Olympiad 

A pupil of Theophrastus, Praxiphanes of Rhodes or Mytilene 
(y?. 300 B.C.), was one of the first to pay special 
attention to 'grammatical' studies in the literary 
sense of the term (p. 7). His interests included history, poetry, 
rhetoric, and the criticism and interpretation of literature. He 
was the first to suggest the spuriousness of the beginning of the 
ordinary text of Hesiod's Works and Days on the ground of its 
omission in the earlier mss ; and he also criticised the opening 
words of Plato's Timaeus. His work on poetry was in the form 
of a dialogue between Plato and Isocrates ; and, probably be- 

' Simplicius on Arist. Categ. fol. 8, ed. Ven. 

2 Miiller, F. H. G. ii 225—253 ; Christ, § 421*; Hiibner, p. 13. 



VII.] DExMETRIUS OF PHALERON. lOI 

tween 291 and 287 B.C., he counted among his pupils Aratus and 
Callimachus^ 

All the members of the Peripatetic School, whose names have 
hitherto been mentioned, belonged by birth to other lands than 
Attica. They had come from Italy and Sicily, from the shores of 
the Euxine and from the islands across the Aegean, to find a 
philosophic training of the most varied kind in the city which was 
the school not of Greece alone but also of the Greek world in its 
widest sense. We now turn in conclusion to the name of one 
who, although he was the son of a freedman only, was neverthe- 
less of Attic birth, and rose to the highest political position in 
Athens, and even in his fall was a most appropriate intermediary 
for the transmission of the learning of Athens to the new city, 
which Alexander, the victorious advancer of Greek civilisation in 
the distant East, had founded early in 330 B.C. on the western 
verge of the Delta of the Nile. 

Demetrius of Phaleron, who was born about 354-348 b.c. and 
died after 283. was a pupil of Theophrastus, and 
began his public career about 324. For'a period of phal^n^"^ ° 
ten years (317-307) he ruled with distinction at 
Athens as Regent for Cassander. As an incident of literary 
interest, it may be mentioned that he was the first to introduce 
recitations by rhapsodists into the theatre of Athens (Athen. 
620 b). After his fall in 307 he fled to Thebes, and, ten years 
later, in 297, left for Eg)'pt, where he attained great influence at 
le court of Ptolemy I, and gave the first impulse towards the 
unding of the Alexandrian Library. Having urged Ptolemy I 
t to appoint Ptolemy Philadelphus as his successor, Demetrius 
naturally banished from Alexandria when Philadelphus be- 
came sole ruler in 283. Besides his numerous political and 
oratorical works, he wrote on the Iliad and the Odyssey, collected 
the Fables of Aesop, and drew up a chronological list of the 
Archons of Athens. In his treatise on Rhetoric he told the story 
he had heard from Demosthenes himself, on the way in which 
the orator had in his youth corrected the defects of an indistinct 

' Susemihl, i 144 f ; cp. Preller, De Praxiphane (1843) in Ausgewahlte 
Aufsatze (1864) ; also articles in Hermes xii 326 f (Wilamowitz), xiii 46 f 
(Hirzel) and 446 f (Scholl). 



latei 

i 



I02 THE ATHENIAN AGE. [CHAP. VH. 

delivery (Plut. Dem. c. ii); the work also included details as to 
the birth of Isaeus and the death of Isocrates, and as to the 
masterly manner in which the architect Philon described the 
construction of his naval armoury in the presence of the people 
(Cic. de Or. i 62). The treatise Tre/at k{ni.'t]vda.<i which bears his 
name belongs to a later age. His public speeches are only 
represented by inadequate fragments; we have therefore to rely 
mainly on Cicero for our knowledge of his oratorical charac- 
teristics. He is described as the leading representative of the 
' intermediate ' style, which combines the minimum of force with 
the maximum of charm ; his diction was marked by a placid 
smoothness, and ' lit up by the stars of metaphor and metonymy ' 
{Orator §§ 91 f.). More florid than Lysias and Hypereides 
{Brutus 285), he marks the beginning of the decline in Attic 
eloquence which followed the death of Demosthenes'. In the 
history of Scholarship he marks the close of the Athenian and the 
beginning of the Alexandrian age, serving as a link between the 
first capital of Greek culture and the second, in so far as, after 
holding a prominent position in the oratorical and political world 
of Athens, he prompted the founding of the famous Library of 
Alexandria. 

1 Introd. to Cic. Orator, p. xxxiii. Cp. Christ, § 424''; Susemihl, i 135 — 
144. 




Alexander the Great. 

Silver tetradrachm of Lysimachus, king of Thrace. 
(From the British Museum.) 



BOOK II 

THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE 



TToAAot \k\v ^OdKovrai iv AlyvTrrtj ■iroXv<f>vX.<a 
/SiySAiaKot )^apaKtTai direipiTa SrjpiobiVTes 
Movo-e'wv ev rakapw. 

TiMON OF Phlius, ap. Athen. 22 d. 



In the thronging land of Egypt, 
There are tnany that are feeding, 
Many scribblers on papyrus 
Ever ceaselessly contending. 
In the bird-coop of the Muses. 

On the Alexandrian Museum, c. 230 B.C. 



Conspectus of Greek Literature &c 


., c. 300— 


I B.C. 


Rulers of 


Rulers of 


Poets 


Scholars and 


Chronologers, 




Egypt 


Pergamon, &c. 


Critics, &c. 


Historians &;c. 


PMlosophers 






floruit 






322 Theophras- 


330 foundation 




300 Philetas 






tus> 


of Alexandria 




c. 340— c. 285-3 






320 Pyrrhon 


323 d. of Alex- 




290 Hermesia- 






c. 360—270 


ander 




nax 




295 Sosibius 


317-07 Deme- 


Ptolemy I 




285 Alexander 


285 Zenodotus 


c. 280 Craterus 


trius of Phale- 


{Soier) 




Aetolus 


c. 325— c. 234 


280 Berosus 


ron/ 


322 satrap 




b. c. 315 






314 Polemon a 


305 king 


283 Philetaerus 


285 Lycophron 




277 Manetho 


3o8Zeno^ 


285 Ptolemy II 




b. c. 330-325 






f 350-260 
306 t-picurus 


{Philadelphus) 


278 Antigonus 


276 Aratus 




272Hieronymus 


270 d. of Arsi- 


Gonatas king 


276 Timon of 




of Cardia 


341—270 


noe II 


of Macedonia, 


Phlius 




264 Mnrinor 


304 Grantor'' 




d. 239 
263 Eumenes I 


c. l'5-c. 226 
272 Iheccntus 




Parinm 


300 Praxi. 
phanes/ 


247 Ptolemy III 




b. c. 324 






287 Straton/ 


{Euergetes I) 




Leonidas of Ta- 
rentum 






276-0 Crates" 
270 Arcesilas"! 






263 Callimachus 




240 Antigonus 


c. 315-241 






c. 310—.:. 235 




of Carystos 


264 CleantheS'T 


238 decree of 


241 Attains I 


250 Apollonius 




295-0— c. 220 


331-232 






Rhodius 

b. c. 283 
250 Rhianus 
c. 250 Herondas 


234 Eratosthenes 
c. 276—196-4 




241 Lacydes'' 
232Chrysippus-f 
c. 280— c. 208-4 


222 Ptolemy IV 


222 Antiochus 


220 Euphorion 








(Philo/xitor-) 


the Great, king 


b. c. 276 








205 Ptolemy V 


of Syria, d. 187 










{Epip/ianes) 






200 Hermippus 






"00 














197 Eumenes II 










196 Rosetta 






195 Aristophanes 


197 Neanthes 




stone 






of Byzantium 
c. 257— c. 180 


191 Heracleides 
c. 185 Polemon 




182 Ptolemy VI 








of Ilium 




{Eupator) 












182 Ptolemy VII 












{Phiiometor) 






180 Aristarchus 








159 Attains II 




c. 217-5— 145-3 


170 Demetrius 




i^eWUiPhilo- 




150? Moschus 


168 Crates of 


of Scepsis 


i76Aristobulus/ 


pator Neos) 




150 Nicander 


Mallos 


b. c. 214 


155 Carneades" 


146 IX (Euer. 








170 Polybius 


c. 219-129 


getcs II, or 


138 Attains III 


Antipater of 




c. 205— c. 123 


140 Panaetius^ 


Physcon-) 


133 d. of Attains. 


Sidon 


c.i45Ammonius 


144 Apollodorus 


c. 181-C-. 109 


117 Cleopatra 
III and her 


who makes 




c. 130 Diony sins 






Rome his heir 




Thrax 




chus" 


sonsX(y">4/^. 










c. xis-c. 105 


ntftor Soter 












II. or Lathy- 










105 Philo of 


rus) and XI 










Larissa '^ 


(^A lexander) 










c. 147—80 


100 














100? Bion 








81 Ptolemy XII 




iot Bionis epi- 


Ptolemy of As- 




8oAntiochus« 


(AlexanderW) 




taphius 


calon 




d. 68 


81 Ptolemy XI 1 1 






Philoxenus 


70 Castor of 


80 Poseidonius-f 


(Auletes) 






45 Apollodorus 


Rhodes 


c. 135— c. 45 






60 Meleager 


(rhetor) of Per- 


60 Diodorus 




51 Cleopatra VI 






gamon, 105-23 


(c. 90— c. 30) 


60 Andronicus.;» 


andPtoI.XIV, 








visits Egypt 


55 Philodemus 


(47) Ptol. XV, 


' 




30 Didymus 






and (45) Cae- 






C.65B.C.— lOA.D. 






sar ion 






Aristonicus 




Q. Sextius 


30 Egypt be- 






Tryphon 




b. c. 70 


comes a Ro- 






30—8 Dionysius 




Philo Judaeus 


man province 






of Halicarnas- 




b. 20 B.C. d. 






12 Antipater of 


sus 


24 Strabo {c. 63 


after 40 a.d. 






Thessalonica 


Caecilius 
25 Juba 

d. 20 A.D. 

Apollonius 


B.C.— c. 24 A.D.) 
visits Egypt 





Academics, P Peripatetics, 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA. 

Greek Scholarship was fostered in Alexandria under the rule 
of the earlier Ptolemies. It was during the reign of Ptolemy 
Soter, who had been satrap of Eg}'pt from 322 to 305 rc, and 
was king from 305 to 285, that Demetrius of Phaleron gave the 
first impulse towards the founding of pubUc libraries in the 
Egj'ptian capital {c. 295 B,c.)'. Ptolemy Soter, who had in vain 
invited Theophrastus and Menander to settle in Alexandria, 
entrusted the education of his son and successor Ptolemy 
Philadelphus (285-247) to the poet and scholar, Philetas of Cos, 
and to the philosopher, Straton, the successor of Theophrastus. 
Early in the Alexandrian age literary institutions of the highest 
importance were founded in Alexandria. The foundation of the 
Great Library in particular was probably due in the first instance 
to Ptolemy Soter, acting under the advice of Demetrius", but the 
credit is often assigned to Philadelphus, who may have continued 
and completed his father's designs^, though he was himself mainly 
interested in zoology*. Philadelphus' is also credited with the 
foundation of the splendid shrine of learning known 

^ ° The Museum 

as the Movo-cioj', ' the temple, or home, of the 
Muses ', which is described by Strabo, who \'isited Alexandria in 
4 B.C., as forming part of the royal quarter of the city, and as 

Susemihl, Geschichte cUr Griechischen Litter atur in der AUxandrinerzeit 
(1891), i 6. 138. 

- Wilamowitz, Antigonos von Karystos, p. 291, and Kuiper (Utrecht) 1894 
(Mahaffy's Empire of the Ptolemies, 1895, p. 92). 

^ Susemihl, i 6—7. 

* Diodorus, iii 36, 3 f (Mahafly, /. c, p. 128 f). 

' Athen. 203 c, E. 



I06 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

including a covered walk, an arcade furnished with recesses and 
seats, and a large building containing a common hall, in which 
the Scholars who were members of the Museum met for their 
meals. This learned body had endowments; and its president, 
nominated by the government, was called 'the priest of the 
Museum '^ The provision for the maintenance of these Scholars 
was apparently on so liberal a scale that a satirical poet of that 
age, Timon of Phlius (writing about 230 B.C.), humorously called 
it a ' bird-coop of the Muses 'I It is among the attractions of 
Alexandria mentioned by Herondas (i 31), immediately after the 
6e<Sv aSe\<f>oiv T€fji€vo<;, the precinct of the temple of Philadelphus 
and his sister and wife, Arsinoe II, who (as we now know)^ died 
in 270 B.C.'' It had some points of contact with the Academy and 
the Lyceum. The name recalls the Platonic brotherhood, or thiasos, 
with its common cult of the Muses in the 'groves of Academe', 
as well as the ' Museum ' mentioned in the will of Theophrastus®; 
while its covered walk, or peripatos, is no less suggestive of still 
earlier memories of the Peripatetic School. But we may realise 
its character still better by regarding it as a kind of prototype of a 
College at Oxford or Cambridge, with its common hall for dining 
and its cloisters and grounds, and with some provision for the 
endowment of research. The members of the Museum probably 
received annual stipends ; but whether the Library, as in an 
English College, was part of the buildings of the Museum, is 
unknown, though it was probably very near them. We are also 
unaware whether there were any arrangements for instruction. 
Even 500 years after its foundation it is eulogised by Philostratus 
as a society of celebrities^; in the following century the quarter of 

^ P- 793 fj T^v bk ^affi\ei(i)v fiepos iffrl /cat t6 Movaelov, I'x*"' ire piiraTov 
Kol i^iSpoLv Kal oIkov fiiyav, iv (^ t6 ffv<T<r iriov twv (liTtxovruv tov Movffelov 
{piXoXoyuv avSpQiv ktK. 

^ Quoted on p. 103. 

^ Mahaffy's Ptolemaic Dynasty, p. 79. 

* For portraits of Ptolemy Soter (and Berenike I) and also of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus and Arsinoe II, see coin inscribed OEriN AAEA4>nN 
on p. 143. 

^ Diog. Laert. v 51. 

® Vit. Soph, i 22, 5, Tpdire^a Alyvirria ^vyKaXovaa tovs iv irdcr] ry yfj 
iWoyi/xovs. 



VIII.] THE MUSEUM AND LIBRARIES OF ALEXANDRIA. IO7 

the city where it lay is described by Ammianus MarcelUnus as 
'having long been the home of eminent men", while the last who 
is actually named as a member of the Museum is the celebrated 
mathematician and neo-platonist Theon {fl. 380 a.d.), the father 
of the noble-hearted and ill-fated Hypatia (d. 415 a.d.). It is in 
connexion \\'ith the pathetic story of her life that the old associa- 
tions of this memorable haunt of Alexandrian scholars and poets 
have been happily characterised by Kingsley : — ' School after 
school, they had all walked and taught and sung there, beneath 
the spreading planes and chestnuts, figs and palm trees. The 
place seemed fragrant with all the riches of Greek thought and 
song ' *. 

The other literary institutions of the earlier Ptolemies were the 
two Libraries. The larger of these is stated to have 

° The Library 

been m the Brucheion, the N.E. quarter of Alex- 
andria, and was probably verj' close to the Museum I It has 
however been conjecturally placed in the western half of the city, 
S.E. of the Heptastadion, about 400 yards from the Great 
Harbour, and to the north of the main street, which was lined 
with shady colonnades* and extended for nearly four miles from 
the N.E. to the S.W. of Alexandria*. 'There it towered up, the 
wonder of the world, its white roof bright against the rainless 
blue ; and beyond it, among the ridges and pediments of noble 
buildings, a broad glimpse of the bright sea '.- 

The smaller Library, sometimes called the ' daughter-library ', 
was in the Rhakotis, the S.W. quarter, near the temple of Serapis 

^ xxii 16, diuturnum praestantium hominum domicilium. The Museum 
and the Libraries of Alexandria have been the theme of several monographs, 
by Panhey and by Klippel, 1838, and by G611 1868, Weniger 1875, and Couat 
1879; ^hey have also been discussed by Clinton, Fasti, iii 380 f; Ritschl, 
Gpuscula, i (first published in 1838); Bemhardy, Gr. Litt. i 527—542*; 
Susemihl, /. c; Holm, Gr. Hist, iv, c. 14; Mahaffy's Empire of the Ptolemies, 
91—99 ; and Dziatzko in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Bibliotheken, 409 — 414. 

2 Hypatia, c. 2. 3 Susemihl, i 336. 

Ansiides, ii 450 Dind., ei> n^ jueydXy Spofup ti^ kuto. rdj arods. 

' Cp. Dziatzko, in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Bibliotheken, p. 412. Similarly 
Botti's map of 1898, reproduced in Mahaffy's Eg^'pt under the Ptolemaic 
Dynasty, puts the Museum in the middle of the Neapolis, and south of the 
Emporium, with the Public Gardens between the Museum and the main 
street ; but this seems too far west from the Brucheion and the Royal Palace, 



I08 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

and ' Pompey's Pillar ', and not far from the Mareotic lake, 

which extends behind the spit of land on which 

The Library Alexandria was built. It is this Library which is 

Serapeum doubtless intended by the rhetorician Aphthonius 

(end of cent, iv), when he mentions it in the course 

of his glowing description of the ' acropolis ' of Alexandria. The 

description has a twofold interest, firstly, because it appears to 

imply that, by the time when it was written, an 'acropolis' had 

been formed on the rising ground surrounding the Serapeum ' ; 

and secondly, because the library is stated to have been closely 

connected with a temple and with certain colonnades, and both 

of these are among the characteristics of ancient libraries ^ 

The completion of the Library of the Serapeum, like that of 
the Great Library of the Brucheion, may be ascribed to Ptolemy 
Philadelphus. It was also Philadelphus who, according to the 
'Letter of Aristeas', quoted by Josephus {A?it. Jud. xii 2), caused 
the Law of Moses to be translated into Greek by a commission of 
learned Jewish elders, thus beginning the version known as the 
Septuagint, probably projected in the reign of Ptolemy Soter^. 
To the reign of Philadelphus, and to about the year 255 B.C., 
belongs the settlement of a Greek colony in the newly reclaimed 
and greatly enlarged oasis of Lake Moeris, now known as the 
Faiyiim. The Hellenic culture of that district is attested by the 
numerous papyri there discovered by Mr Flinders Petrie in 1 889- 
90, including portions of the Phaedo and Laches of Plato, and of 
the Antiope of Euripides, ascribed to the 3rd century b.c.^ 

It may here be observed that Zoilus of Amphipolis, whose 
name is proverbial for the bitterness of his criticisms on Homer, 
is wrongly assigned to the age of Philadelphus, who is described 
in Vitruvius {Praef. vii) as having listened to his criticisms with 

1 Cp. Clem. Alex. Protrep. p. 14 Sylburg. 

- Aphthonius, Progymnasmata, c. 12 (i 107 Walz), irapif)Ko56/nrivTai 5^ 
(T7]Koi tC)v (ttowv ^pSodev, oi fiiv Tajxiai yeyevrifMevoi. roh ^i^Xois, roh (piXoirovovaiv 
afetpyiJ.ei'oL (pi\oao(pe7t', Kai wokw awaffav eh ^^ovcriav rrjs ao(f>ias eiraipovrt^, o'l di 
Toi)s xdXai Ti/xdv ISpu/j.^voi Oeovs. 

^ Susemihl, i 6 (note) and Swete's Introduction to the Greek Old Testament, 
pp. 9—28, 520. 

* Mahaffy's Empire of the Ptolemies, pp. 156, 180; Kenyon, Palaeography 
of Greek papyri, p. 6 f. Cp. Facsimile on p. 87 supra. 



VIII.] THE DATE OF ZOILUS. IO9 

silent contempt, and also as ha\-ing caused him to be crucified for 
his pains. Zoilus the critic is now regarded as identical \\-ith 
Zoilus the rhetorician, and his true date is determined by the fact 
that the rhetorician was a pupil of Polycrates, an earlier contem- 
porar)- of Isocrates, that his rhetorical writings are said to have 
been studied by Demosthenes in his youth {c. 365 B.C.), and that 
he composed a historical work ending with the death of Philip 
336 B.C.). He accordingly flourished between the above dates. 
The description of his person in Aehan {Far. Hist, xi 10), his 
short cloak, his long beard and his closely shaven crown, are 
suggestive of a Cynic. His pupil Anaximenes was also a pupil 
of Diogenes the Cynic ; it was probably in sympathy with the 
Cynics that he attacked Plato ; like Antisthenes, the founder of 
the Cynics, he also attacked Isocrates ; and above all he signalised 
himself by attacking Homer. His criticisms on Homer filled 
nine books, and the designation Homeromastix, said by Suidas 
to have been a nickname of the author, may possibly have been 
the title of the work. It included an encomium on. the ill-used 
Cyclops, Polyphemus, in the course of which the critic remarked 
that, as soon as Odysseus had been cursed by the Cyclops, he 
was abandoned even by his guardian-goddess Athene'. The 
companions of Odysseus, described by the poet as 'weeping' 
when turned into swine by Circe, he ridiculed as 'whining 
porkers'*; he satirised the perfect symmetry with which Odysseus, 
in his contest with the Cicones, lost exactly six men from each of 
his ships ( Od. ix 60) ; he criticised the poet for describing 
Achilles as bidding Patroclus ' mingle stronger drink ' for the 
Achaean envoys (//. ix 203) ; Apollo, as making the innocent 
mules and dogs of the Achaean camp the first victims of his 
pestilential arrows (//. i 50) ; and Zeus himself, as weighing the 
Fates in a pair of scales (//. xxii 209 ). Like Plato {Rep. 388 a), 
he found fault with the inordinate grief of Achilles over the 
death of Patroclus (//. xviii 22). He also carped at the descrip- 
tion of Athene causing 'the fire to blaze from the head and 
shoulders ' of Diomedes (//. v 7), to the peril of that hero's life, 
and of Idaeus 'leaving his stately chariot' (//. v 20), when he 



^ Schol. on 'Plato's' Hipparchus, p. 229 D. 
^ X<x-piSia kXcuoptu (repi vif/ovs 9 § 14). 



II 



no THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

might have escaped more easily (if that indeed had been his 
object) by remaining in it. He attacked the statement that ' the 
spirit fled away beneath the ground, like smoke' (//. xxiii loo), 
whereas smoke rises upwards. Like Chrysippus, he charged Homer 
with combining a plural verb with a singular noun in //. i 129, 
Zeus Swo-t, and was refuted by Aristarchus, who pointed out that 
the right reading was Swo-t (the contracted form of the 3rd Person 
Singular of the Subjunctive Aorist 8cu'r/(rt), as in Od. i 168, Trar-^p 
d7ro8u)o-tj/'. But, in comparison with the attacks on the poet's 
invention, the. attacks on his grammar are rather rare. A con- 
fused legend preserved by Suidas makes the assembled Greeks at 
Olympia indignantly drive him from the festival and fling him 
down from the crest of the Scironian cliffs, — which are not far 
from the scene of the Isthmian games. One or two of his 
criticisms on Homer (those on //. i 50 and ix 203) happen to be 
identical with those to which Aristotle replies in his treatise on 
Poetry (c. 25). In the Alexandrian age the first to answer his 
attack on Homer was Athenodorus, the brother of the poet 
Aratus'^, while in Roman times he is described by Ovid as owing 
his name and fame solely to his envious detraction of the merits 
of Homer : 

' ingenium magni livor detrectat Homeri : 
quisquis es, ex illo, Zoile, nomen habes ' ^ 

To return to our immediate subject, the number of MSS 
comprised in the two Alexandrian Libraries is variously stated. 
We are informed that, in reply to a royal inquiry, it was stated by 
Demetrius of Phaleron (about 285 B.C.), that it was already 
200,000, and that he would soon bring it up to 500,000^ In 
the time of Callimachus {c. 310-^. 235 B.C.), the larger Library 
contained 400,000 volumes, including several works in each 
volume, and also 90,000 separate works*. In the middle of the 

1 Cobet, Misc. Crit. 339. 

^ Susemihl, i 293, note 39. 

^ Rented. Amoris, 365 (cp. Pope's Essay on Criticism, 465 f, and the 
sequel to 1. 124 in the first draft of the poem). On Zoihis see esp. Lehrs, De 
Aristarchi studiis, 200 — "^^, and Blass, Att. Ber. ii" 373 — 8 ; and cp. Clinton's 
Fasti, iii 380 f, 485. 

* 'Aristeas' ap. Euseb. Praep. Ev. s\vr p. 350 «. 

^ Tzetzes, ap. Susemihl, i 342. 



VIII] ALEXANDRIA AND PERGAMON. Ill 

first century B.C. the number is said to have been 700,000'. The 
-mailer Librar}' comprised 42,800 volumes^ which were probably 
comparatively modern MSS with each roll complete in itself ^ 

The Ptolemies are said to have resorted to many ingenious 
devices vnth a view to adding to the treasures of their Libraries. 
^Ve are told by Galen (xvii a p. 606) that the numerous vessels 
which entered the harbour were compelled to surrender any mss 
which they had on board, and that the owners of these mss had 
to rest content with copies of the same ; these mss were known 
as Ttt €K trkoiixiv, and among them (according to one version of the 
story) was a MS of a book of Hippocrates brought to Alexandria 
■by the physician Mnemon of Side in Pamphylia*. Galen is also 
the authority for the story already quoted (p. 58) as to the way in 
which the official text of the three great tragic poets of Athens 
was secured for Alexandria by Ptolemy Euergetes, i.e. either the 
first of that name (247-222 B.C.), or the second', also known as 
Ptolemy Physcon (146-117 B.C.). The keenest rivalr)' arose 
between the royal patrons of learning at Alexandria and Pergamon. 
It is even stated that one of the Ptolemies, probably Phila- 
delphus, prohibited the export of paper made from the Egyptian 
papyrus, and thus led to the use of skins of animals as materials 
for writing in the reign of the Pergamene prince, Eumenes (I, 
263-241 B.c.)^ But such materials had been long in use, so that 
we can only infer that improvements in their preparation were 
introduced at Pergamon. In process of time skins were made 
smooth for writing on both sides, instead of only one, and the 
material thus manufactured was called charta pergamena, or 
' parchment ' ; but the word is not found earlier than the Edict of 
Diocletian (301 A.D.)^ Eumenes II (197-159 B.C.) is said to 
have imnted the Alexandrian Librarian, Aristophanes of Byzan- 
tium, to leave Alexandria for Pergamon, and the mere suspicion 
that the Librarian was ready to accept such an invitation prompted 
Ptolemy Epiphanes (205-182 b.c) to put him in prison^ The 

^ Gjellius vi 17; Amm. Marc, xxii i6, 13. 

^ Tzetzes, u.s. ^ Dziatzko, I.e., p. 411. 

■• Susemihl, i 815, ii 681. * Usener in Susemihl, ii 667. 

® Pliny, .'V. H. xiii 70. ^ Birt, Aniike Buchwesen, p. 51. 

® Suidas, ap. Susemihl, i 431 ; cp. ii 667. 



112 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

royal passion for collecting mss at Alexandria and Pergamon 
naturally led to the fabrication of many spurious works ' ; and to 
various devices tor giving recent copies a false appearance of 
antiquity^; it also led to careless transcription for the mere sake 
of rapidity of production ^ 

It will be remembered that the Library has been conjecturally 
placed at a distance of about 400 yards from the harbour of 
Alexandria (p. 107). In 47 B.C., shortly after the death of Pompey, 
the conflicts between the Roman soldiers and the Egyptians in 
the streets of the city compelled Caesar to set the royal fleet on 
fire to prevent its falling into the hands of the Egyptians. The 
naval arsenal was also burnt*. According to the historian Orosius 
{c. 415 A.D.), the flames spread to the shore, where 40,000 
volumes happened to be stored up in the adjacent buildings*. 
The phrase used by Orosius has led to the conjecture that these 
volumes, having been removed by Caesar from the Library, were 
temporarily stacked in certain buildings near the harbour, with a 
view to their being shipped to Rome as part of the spoils of 
conquest : and that the burning of these books led to the legend 
of the burning of the Library". It is not at all probable that the 
Library itself was at this time consumed by fire. The author of 
the Bellum A/exandrinum (i 2) expressly states that, as even the 
private houses of the citizens, including the very floors and roofs, 
were built entirely of stone, Alexandria was in general safe from 
the risk of a conflagration. Writing about 80 a.d., Plutarch in 
his Life of Caesar (c. 49) implies that the flames spread from the 
fleet to the docks and from the docks to the Library ; and, early 
in the 3rd century, Dio Cassius (xlii 38) describes the arsenal and 

' Galen, xv p. 105, irplv yap toi>s iv 'AXe^avdpelg: Kal llepydixtfi yevia-dai 
^atriXets eirl KT-qaei /Si/SXiwi/ (pi\oTi/j,T)divTas, oiideirui (l) i/'eu5ws erreyiy pairro 
aijyypa/jL/jLa' \afi^a.v€iv 8' dp^afievwv fiiffdov rQv /coyU.tfo/uej'wi' avroh avyy pa/j./j,a 
iraXaiov rivoi di'dpos, ovtws ij5t] ttoWo. \pevSws eiriypdipoi'Tei eKO/ju^ov, and id. 
p. 109. 

2 David (or Elias) in Schol. on Aristot. 28 a 13 f (Susemihl, ii 4(3, note 

367). 

3 Strabo, 609 (Susemihl, ii 667 f ). * Caesar, B. C. iii in. 

5 Orosius, vi 15, 31, quadraginta milia librorum proximis forie aedibus 
condita exussit. 

" Parthey, Miiseuvi Alex. p. 32. 



VIII.] FATE OF THE ALEXANDRIAN LIBRARY. II 3 

the stores of corn and of books as having perished in the flames ; 
but these accounts seem less probable than the suggestion that it 
was not the Library itself, but only those of the books which had 
been transferred to buildings near the harbour, that suffered 
destruction. The Court Journals at Alexandria were consulted 
not only by Diodorus Siculus (iii 38), before Caesar's visit, but 
also by Appian {Fraef. 10) long after {c. 160 a.d.). The story of 
the burning of the Library is not mentioned either by Cicero, who 
shortly afterwards induced Cleopatra, during her stay in Rome, to 
promise to get him some books from Alexandria', or by Strabo, 
who visited Alexandria only 22 years later. The earliest mention 
of the disaster which befell the mss is in Seneca^ 'The Per- 
gamene Libraries ', containing 200,000 separate volumes, were 
presented to Cleopatra by Antonius in 41 B.C. (Plut. Atit. 58), and 
Domitian is said to have supplemented the deficiences of the 
libraries in Italy by means of transcripts from the Alexandrian 
MSS (Suet. Dom. 20). In the time of Aurelian (272 a.d.) the 
larger part of the region of Alexandria in which the Library was 
situated was laid waste {Amm. Marc, xxii 16, 5), and it may be 
conjectured that this was the date when the Library suffered most 
damage ; for, late in the following century, we find a rhetorician 
of Antioch, Aphthonius, assigning a special importance to another 
Library, identified as that of the Serapeuni^. Under Theodosius I 
(391 A.D.) the temple of Serapis, which had been partly burnt in 
183 A.D., was demolished, and transformed into a church and 
monastery, by Theophilus, the patriarch of Alexandria, and the 
lesser Library of the Serapeum can hardly have survived this 
destruction. Orosius, at the time of his visit, saw only empty 
book-cases in 'the temples' of the city*, but his evidence is very 
vague*. In 642 a.d., when Amrou, the general of Omar, Caliph 
of the Saracens, captured Alexandria, it is stated that Johannes 

1 AdAtt. xiv 8, XV 15 (Mahaffy, I.e., 461). 

^ De Tranq. An. 9, quadraginta milia librorum Alexandriae arserunt. 

' Aphthonius, quoted on p. 108. 

* Orosius, vi 15, 32, quamlibet hodieque in templis exstent, quae et nos 
vidimus, armaria librorum, quibus direptis exinanita et a rusticis hominibus 
nostris temporibus memorant, etc. 

' Bury's Gibbon, iii 495. 

s. 8 



114 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Philoponus, the commentator on Aristotle, asked the conqueror 
for the gift of the Alexandrian Library, that the conqueror felt 
constrained to consult the Caliph, and that the Caliph made the 
well-known reply :— ' if these writings of the Greeks agree with 
the book of God, they are useless and need not be preserved ; if 
they disagree, they are pernicious and ought to be destroyed '. 
It is added that the contents of the Library were consigned to the 
flames, and that they served for six months as fuel for the 4000 
baths of Alexandria. The authority for this story is Abul- 
pharagius^ ; but it has been urged by Gibbon (c. 51) that his 
account, written in a distant province six centuries after the 
event, is refuted by the silence of two annalists of an earlier date 
and of a direct connexion with Alexandria, the more ancient of 
whom, the patriarch Eutychius, has minutely described the 
destruction of the city. The destruction of books, the historian 
adds, is contrary to the principles of Mohammedanism. In any 
case it may well be doubted whether any large number of ancient 
MSS were still to be found in Alexandria at the date of its capture 
by the general of the Saracens ^ 

The first four Librarians of Alexandria were Zenodotus 

{c. 285-r. 234 B.C.); Eratosthenes {c. 234-195); 
Librarians Aristophanes of Byzantium (195-180); and Aris- 

tarchus (180 or 172-146). It has sometimes been 
supposed that Callimachus was Librarian between the time of 
Zenodotus and that of Eratosthenes ; and Apollonius Rhodius, 
between that of Eratosthenes and Aristophanes ; but chrono- 
logical considerations make this view improbable*. Nearly a 
century after the appointment of Aristarchus, an inscription from 
Paphos shows that the office was given, after 89 B.C., to a kinsman 
and priest of Ptolemy Soter II (Lathyrus), named Onesander, 
who is otherwise unknown \ 

^ Dynast, p. 114, vers. Pocock (cp. Bury's Gibbon, v 453, 515). 

^ Cp. Susemihl, i 344. The modern writers agreeing or disagreeing with 
Gibbon on this point are quoted by Parthey, Mus. Alex. p. 106. Cp. notes in 
Bury's Gibbon, v 454, and 452 (where it is observed that Philoponus lived 
more than a century before the conquest of Alexandria). 

'^ Busch, De bibliothecariis Alex, qui feruntur primis, 1884; Dziatzko in 
Pauly-Wissovva, s.v. Bibliotheken, p. 412. , 

4 Journ. Hell. St. ix 240. 



VIII.] ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE. II 5 

Of the names above menrioned CalHmachus and ApoUonius 
Rhodius are celebrated in the history' of Literature as well as in 
that of Scholarship ; we may therefore cast a passing glance on 
the literature of the Alexandrian age before giving a more 
detailed account of the representatives of Scholarship in the same 
period. 

The literature of this age was slavishly imitative rather than 
spontaneously creative ; it was inspired not by the 
immediate impulse of true genius, but by the uttJature^"*" 
reflected reminiscences of a golden age that was 
gone for ever ; it appealed not to the general body of free citizens, 
but to the cultivated few, who formed a separate class of men of 
learned and critical tastes, either actually enjoying or attempting 
to attract the favour of the court, amid the multitudinous popula- 
tion of a vast commercial city. In this age Parody and Satire are 
represented by Timon of Phlius (c. 315-^. 226), who lived at 
Calchedon and Athens, cultivating his garden to the age of nearly 
ninety, and using the vehicle of hexameter verse for those criti- 
cisms on the dogmatic schools of philosophy, which incidentally 
supply us with an early satirical allusion to the Alexandrian 
Museum (p. 103). Pastoral Poetry is represented by Theocritus 
of Syracuse (y?. 272 B.C.). Of his idylls, the 17th (273-1 B.C.) is 
an encomium on Ptolemy Philadelphus, celebrating his extensive 
empire, his extraordinary wealth, and his generosity towards 
priests and poets ; the 14th (after 269 rc.) is on the soldiers in 
his service; the 15th, the Adoniazusae (before 270 B.C.), paints a 
graphic picture of the thronging crowds of Alexandria at a festival 
attended by two ladies from Syracuse; while his bucolic poems in 
general must have charmed the dwellers amid the dust and din 
and glare of Alexandria with glimpses of the idyllic life of 
shepherds and herdsmen resting beside the fountains beneath the 
plane-trees, or amid the pine-woods and the upland pastures that 
look down on the Sicilian sea. With Theocritus we associate the 
two other bucolic poets, Moschus of Syracuse, the author of the 
Runaway Eros (c. 150), and Bion of Smyrna, the author of the 
Lament for Adonis {c. 100 B.C.). The recently recovered Mimes 
of Herondas may be as early as the latter part of the reign of 
Philadelphus. Theocritus and Herondas alike found a model in 



Il6 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the Mimes of Sophron, which must have remained in existehce 
till late in the first or early in the second century a.d., as the 
label of a ms of that date has been found in Egypt'. Didactic 
Poetry is represented by Aratus of Soli, who Hved at the court of 
Pella (276 B.C.), and imitated Hesiod in his extant astronomical 
poem entitled the Phaenometia, paraphrased from Eudoxus, 
concluding with Prognostics of the Weather, paraphrased from 
Theophrastus. It was a work that won the praises of Calli- 
machus {Anth. ix 507), and, in the Roman age, the compliment 
of repeated translation by Varro Atacinus, Cicero, Germanicus 
and Avienus. Didactic poetry is also represented by the extant 
epics on venomous bites {Theriaca) and on antidotes [Alexi- 
pharmaca) composed by Nicander (150 B.C.), one of whose lost 
poems was imitated in the Metamorphoses of Ovid. Other 
learned types of verse are represented by the elegiac Hymns and 
Epigrams of Callimachus {c. 310-^. 235), by the epic poem of 
ApoUonius Rhodius {fl. c. 250-200) on the Argonauts, and by the 
iambic drama of Lycophron {c. 295). In the same age mathema- 
tical and other kindred sciences were represented by Euclid {fl. 
300 B.c.)^ and Archimedes of Syracuse [c. 287-212 b.c); by those 
masters of Mechanics, Heron of Alexandria and Philon of Byzan- 
tium ; by the earliest writer on Conic Sections, ApoUonius of Perga, 
and by the astronomer, Hipparchus of Nicaea; Geography, by 
Eratosthenes; the Chronology of Chaldaea by Berosus (280), that 
of Egypt by Manetho (277), and that of Greece by the unknown 
author of the Parian Marble, now in Oxford, with its summary of 
Greek history beginning from the earliest times and originally 
ending with 264 B.C.' The important trilingual inscriptions, in 
hieroglyphic and demotic Egyptian and in Greek, which are 
known as the 'decree of Canopus', discovered by Lepsius in 

1 Oxyrhynchiis Papyri, ii p. 303. 

2 It was Ptolemy I who was informed by Euclid that there was no royal 
road to geometry (Proclus in Eucl. p. 68). 

^ ed. Flach, 1884. The fall of Troy is here assigned to 1208 B.C. It had 
previously been assigned to 11 71 B.C. by Sosibius, a member of the Alexan- 
drian Museum under Ptolemy II, and the author of a chronological work, in 
which Homer is described as having flourished c, 865 B.C. The fall of Troy 
was afterwards placed by Eratosthenes in 11 84, and this has become the 
traditional date. 



VIII.] ALEXANDRIAN LITERATURE. II 7 

1865, and the ' decree of Memphis ' or the ' Rosetta Stone ', found 
by the French near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile in 1798, belong 
to the years 238 and 196 respectively \ The 'Rosetta Stone' 
was placed in the British Museum in 1802, and the Greek text 
restored by Porson early in the following year; it afterwards 
supplied Young and ChampoUion with the key to the deciphering 
of Egyptian hieroglyphics. The great age of Alexandrian criti- 
cism is drawing to its end with the death of Aristarchus about 
145 B.C., when we reach an important representative of Historj' 
in the person of Polybius {c. 20^-c. 123), who in 146 B.C. 
witnessed the destruction of Carthage and the burning of Corinth, 
closing with that year his record of Roman conquest, which 
throws light on the historj' of Eg}'pt, especially between the 
accession of Ptolemy Philopator (222 b.c ) and that of Ptolemy 
Physcon (146). Though he is the first great historian since 
Herodotus and Thucydides, he is little interested in the earlier 
Greek literature, quoting Herodotus only twice, and Thucydides 
and Xenophon only once. His historic \ision rests far less on 
Alexandria than on Rome ; and, in the histor}' of Scholarship, 
his work is mainly interesting as the earliest and best example, 
now extant, of the 'common dialect', founded on Attic Prose, 
which prevailed in the Greek world from about 300 B.C. In the 
centur)- after Polybius we find in Diodorus Siculus {c. 40 B,c.) a 
historian who took Ephorus, the pupil of Isocrates, for his model, 
and who, in compiling a histor}' which ended with Caesar's Gallic 
Wars, consulted the Libraries and the public archives of Rome, 
visited Alexandria and parts of Upper Eg)'pt about 60 B.C., and, 
in relating the early history of Eg)pt, paused over the name of 
the ancient king, Osymandyas, who placed above the portal of a 
librar)- of sacred books in Thebes an inscription describing it as 
a 'sanatorium for the soul'*. Of Alexandria at the date of his 
own \-isit he tells us, as an eye-witness, that a Roman who had 
accidentally killed a cat was mercilessly put to death by the 
populace (i 14). The incident is of some importance for 
our present purpose. It proves that the mob of Alexandria 

^ Texts in Mahaffy, I.e., pp. 226 — 239, and 316 — 327. 
* Diod. Sic. i 49, 3, ^i/x^s iarpiiov. The king has been identified with 
Ramses (II) Miamun (cent. 14 B.C.). 



Il8 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

was 'no longer Greek, as it professed to be', but was 'deeply 
saturated with Egyptian blood", thus showing that, towards the 
close of the Alexandrian age, as at the beginning, Greek civilisa- 
tion in Alexandria was confined to a very limited circle. 

The Alexandrian age is in the main an age of erudition and 
criticism. Even its poets are often scholars. The 

Philetas ,. ^ , , ^ , ^ , . 

earliest of the scholars and poets of this age is 
Philetas of Cos^ (c: 340— <:. 285-3), the preceptor not only of 
Ptolemy Philadelphus (about 295-2 B.C.), but also of Zenodotus 
and of the elegiac poet Hermesianax. He was remarkable for 
the extreme delicacy of his frame ; it is even stated that he was 
compelled to wear leaden soles to prevent his being blown away 
by the wind''. He was the author of a glossary of unusual poetic 
words, quoted as araKra or araKTOi yXcucro-at or simply yAworo-at'*. 
The readings which he preferred in the Homeric text are noticed 
in several of the scholia^, and he was criticised by a greater 
Homeric scholar, Aristarchus, in a work entitled Trpos ^Lki]Ta.v. 
About 292 he returned to Cos, where he apparently presided over 
a brotherhood of poets including Theocritus and Aratus". Cos 
had been 'liberated' from Antigonus by Ptolemy Soter in 310; 
in that island his son Philadelphus had been born in 308 ; and 
from this time onwards it was closely connected with Alexandria. 
It was a place of safety for royal exiles ; and, with its lofty 
mountains and its verdant slopes, it was also a favourite retreat 
for men of letters weary of the heat and turmoil of the great 
commercial city'. It is doubtful whether it was a 'place of 
education for royal princes ' ; it seems more probable that 
Philetas was summoned to Alexandria than that Philadelphus 

1 Mahaffy, I.e. 440. * Strabo, 657 ult., ttoitjttjs cifj-a kuI KpiriKis. 

3 Athen. 552 B ; Aelian, V. H. ix 14. ^ Cp. Athen. 383 B. 

** //. ii 269, xxi 126, 179, 252 (Susemihl, i 179, n. 26). 

' Susemihl, i 175, and in Philologus, 57 (1898). The identification of 
Aratus the friend of Theocritus {Id. vi) with the astronomical poet is doubtful 
(cp. Wilamowitz in Gottingcn Nachrichten, 1894, quoted in Cholmeley's 
Theocritus, p. 17). 

^ Mahaffy, /. c. 54. Cos is the scene of the second poem of Herondas. 
It was off Cos that Philadelphus was defeated by Antigonus c. 258, thus 
losing for a time the mastery of the sea which he recovered off Andros in 247 
{ib. 150). 



VIII.] PHILETAS. ZENODOTUS. Up 

was sent to Cos. As a poet, Philetas was a writer of amatory 
elegiacs of simple form, but without any special power. At 
Alexandria his fame was soon superseded by that of Callimachus, 
though Roman writers regard them as nearly equal in repute. 
They are linked together in a well-known couplet of Propertius 
(iv I, i):— 

'Callimachi manes et Coi sacra Philetae, 

in vestrum, quaeso, me sinite ire nemus^' 

His pupil Zenodotus of Ephesus (r. 325-r. 234 rc.) was 
made the first Librarian of the great Alexandrian 
Librar}' early in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus. 
As Librarian, Zenodotus classified the epic and lyric poets, while 
Alexander Aetolus dealt with the tragic and Lycophron with the 
comic drama-. He compiled a Homeric glossary, in which he 
was apparently content with merely guessing at the meaning of 
difficult words^ Shortly before 274 he produced the first 
scientific edition of the Iliad and Odyssey. It was about that date 
that Timon of Phlius, when consulted by the poet Aratus about a 
proposed edition of Homer, replied that it must be founded on 
ancient mss and not on those that had already been revised (Tor9 
17817 SuopOwfi.ii'OL'i)''. Zenodotus is described as the earliest editor 
{8iop6u»Tt]<;) of Homer*; his edition was founded on numerous 
MSS ; each of the two poems was now for the first time divided 
into 24 books, and spurious lines marked with a marginal obelus. 
His reasons for condemning such lines were mainly because he 
deemed them inconsistent with the context, or unsuited to the 
persons, whether deities or heroes, whose action is there described. 
Thus he rejected //iad iii 423-6 on the ground that it was 
unbecoming for Aphrodite to 'carry a seat' for Helen; and 
similarly he altered a passage in iv 88, because it is out of 

^ Cp. iii 26, 31 ; iv 3, 52 ; v 6, 3 ; Quint. X i, 58. 

* Scholium 11 of Tzetzes on Greek Comedy: § 19 in Studemund's article 
in Philologiis 46 (1888) p. 10, iariov on ' W^^avSpoi 6 At'rwXis Kal AvKO^pup 6 
XaXici5ei>s inrb UroXenaioi' tov ^i\aSeX<pov irpoTpavivm raj ffKrjviKas did.'p6wacw 
/3t/3\oi'S' Avk6<Ppwv fiiv Tai t^j KWfUfjSias, ' AX^^avdpos Si raj rrjs rpaytfiSias, id. 
§ 2 1 Totj 5e' 7e ffKrjviKas 'AXi^avSpos re... Kal AvKOippwv diwpOdjffavTO- rds 5^ ye 
iroii]Ti.Kai ZiTivoSoTos irpcDroj' Kai vartpov ' Apiffrapxos SiupOiJxravTO. 

^ Knaack, s.v. AUxandrinische Litt. in Pauly-Wissowa, p. 1404. 

* Diog. Laert. ix 113. * Suidas, s.v. 



120 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

character for a goddess to endeavour to find the object of her 
search. In both cases a later critic in the Venetian scholia 
(probably Aristarchus) triumphantly replies that the goddess is 
for the time disguised in human form, and the supposed im- 
propriety vanishes'. Himself an epic poet, he occasionally 
inserted verses of his own to complete the sense, or blended 
portions of several verses into one. He deserves credit, however, 
for making the comparison of mss the foundation of his text. 
Our knowledge of his criticisms rests almost entirely on statements 
recorded in the scholia on the Venice MS (A) of Homer. He 
sometimes confuses o-^wi (2d person) and crc/xoe (3d person), vcot 
(Nom. and Ace.) and vulcv (Gen. and Dat.)^, makes the dual 
interchangeable with the plural, regards -arat as a singular as well 
as a plural termination, and -tw instead of -i-wv as a termination of 
the Comparative ; but he rightly recognises the fact that eos is not 
confined to the third person, and the readings preferred by him 
are not unfrequently important*. He is sometimes right, when 
his great successors, Aristophanes and Aristarchus, are wrong ^ 
His recension of Homer was the first recension of any text which 
aimed at restoring the genuine original. It was succeeded by a 
recension executed with taste and judgement by the epic poet 
Rhianus\ Zenodotus also produced a recension of Hesiod's 
Theogony, and possibly one of Pindar and Anacreon*. His 
merits as a Homeric critic are well summed up by Sir Richard 
J ebb. 'In the dawn of the new scholarship, he appears as a 
gifted man with a critical aim, but without an adequate critical 
method. He insisted on the study of Homer's style; but he 
failed to place that study on a sound basis. The cause of this 
was that he often omitted to distinguish between the ordinary 
usages of words and those peculiar to Homer. In regard to 

1 Lehrs, De Aristarchi Sttuiiis Homerids, p. },^f; cp. Cobet, Misc. Crit. 
225 -.^9 (esp- 227, 234) and 251. 

2 Cobet, /. c. 250. 

3 See Index to Dr Leafs lliaii, s.v. Zenodotus. 

■• Romer in Abhandl. Miinch. Akad. I CI. xvii 639 — 722. 

' Mayhoff, De Rhiani Cretensis Stndiis Honiericis, 1870, ap. Susemihl, i 

399 f- 

6 Duntzer, De Z. Stndiis Hontericis, 1848; Romer, I.e.; Christ, § 428'; 
Susemihl, i 330 — 4, and Hiibner's Bibliographie, § 7. 



VIII.] ALEXANDER AETOLUS. LYCOPHRON. 121 

dialect, again, he did not suflficiently discriminate the older from 
the later Ionic. And, relying too much on his own feeling for 
Homer's spirit, he indulged in some arbitrary emendations. 
Still, he broke new ground ; his work had a great repute ; and to 
some extent, its influence was lasting ' \ 

Alexander Aetolus (bom c. 315, fl. 285-276 B.C.) was 
responsible for the classification of the tragic and 
satyric dramas in the Alexandrian Library-. It is Aetolus" ^"^ 
probably owing to this fact that he is called a 
ypa/A/tiariKos by Suidas. His work at Alexandria lasted from 
c. 285 to 276 B.C., at which date he withdrew to the Macedonian 
capital of Antigonus Gonatas. In his youth he was probably a 
companion of Theocritus and Aratus in Cos, and he was also 
associated with the latter in Macedoniiu As a tragic poet, he 
was included among the seven known as the Alexandrian Pleias. 
He also wrote in epic verse, and in anapaestic tetrameters. 
Among the latter were some notable lines on Euripides : — 

6 5' ' kva^ayopov Tp6<pi/jLos x"'""^ <TTpt.<f>vbs fxh> ffioiye wpoffeiireh', 
Kal /uffoyiXws, Kai Twffd^eiv oitSi xap' oivov fiefiaOriKujs, 
dXX' o Tt 7pdi^ai, tout^ di* fjJXiros kclI aeipi^vwy ererei^xft". 

Lycophron of Chalcis in Euboea (bom c. 330-325 b.c.) was 
summoned to Alexandria c. 285 B.C., and entrusted 

. , , r 1 • • 1 Lycophron 

\snth the arrangement of the comic poets m the 
Alexandrian Library. About ten years previously {c. 295) he 
had written his Alexatidra, a very lengthy tragic monologue 
consisting of a strange combination of mythological, historical and 
linguistic learning, grievously wanting in taste and deliberately 
obscure in expression. He was one of the tragic Pleias of 
Alexandria. He also wrote the earliest treatise on Comedy in at 
least eleven books, the extant fragments of which give an un- 
favourable impression of his attainments as a scholar*. 

Callimachus of Cyrene (^.310-^. 235), and his somewhat earlier 
contemporary Aratus, studied at Athens under the Peripatetic 

^ J ebb's Homer, p. 92 f. 

* ap. Gellius xv ^o, 8. Cp. Meineke, Analecta Alexandrina, 215 — 251; 
Couat, Poesie Alex. 105 — no; Susemihl, i 187 — 190. 

* Strecker, De Lycophrotu etc., ap. Susemihl, i 274; Lycophron 's Alex- 
andra, ed. Holzinger, 1895; and Hiibner, Bibliographie, % 7. 



122 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Praxiphanes (p. loo). In his youth he was invited to Alexandria, 
where he spent the rest of his life. His Coma 

Callimachus „ . . . , , , . . 

Berenices, written ni 246 B.C., and only preserved in 
the translation by Catullus, incidentally refers to the famous sister 
and second wife of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Arsinoe II, who died 
in 270 B.C. (p. 106), and was worshipped as Aphrodite Zephyritis, 
while the poem as a whole is intended as a compliment to 
Berenice, the newly-wedded queen of Ptolemy Euergetes I. His 
literary feud with Apollonius Rhodius {c. 263 B.C.) has left its 
mark on the poems of both' . Even in his old age he was still 
conscious of this feud, when he described himself as having ' sung 
strains which envy could not touch ', o V lyctcrev Kpicraova. fia- 
o-KaviT/sl In contrast to the vast and diffuse epic of Apollonius, 
he preferred composing hymns and epigrams, and treating heroic 
themes on a small scale, expressing his aim in a phrase that has 
become proverbial : — iiiya fiijBXiov /xiya kukov^. He is sometimes 
supposed to have succeeded Zenodotus as head of the Alex- 
andrian Library. Whether he actually held that official position or 
not, he was certainly a most industrious bibliographer. He is 
said to have drawn up lists of literary celebrities in no less than 
120 volumes described as TriVaKcs T(Zv ir irda-rj TraiSet'a Sia\afji\f/dvTO)v 
KOL (Lv a-vveypaij/av. This vast work was far more than a mere 
catalogue. It included brief lives of the principal authors, and, 
in the case of the Attic drama, the dates of the production of the 
plays. It was divided into eight classes : — (i) Dramatists, (2) Epic 
poets etc., (3) Legislators, (4) Philosophers, (5) Historians, 
(6) Orators, {7) Rhetoricians, (8) Miscellaneous Writers. In the 
Drama, the order was that of date ; in Pindar and Demosthenes, 
that of subject; in Theophrastus and in the Miscellaneous 
Writers, the order was alphabetical. If the authorship was 
disputed, the various views were stated. In these lists, as well 
as on the label {aL\X.v/3o?) attached to each roll in the Library, 

1 Apollonius in An^A. Pal. xi 275, KaXXi/uaxos* t6 Kadapfia, rb iraiyviov, 
6 ^vXwbs voDi. I aiTLos' 6 ypA^pas ' oifrta KaWifidxov ' (Croiset, LiU. Gr. v 
211), Argonautka, iii 932 f; and Callimachus in Hymn to Apollo, 105 — 114. 

2 Epigr. 21, 4. 

* Athen. 72 A, KaXXi;U,axos 6 ypafifxaTiKhs rb fiiya ^i^Xiov iaov ^Xeyev elvai 



VIII.] CALLIMACHUS. ERATOSTHENES. 1 23 

the opening words and the number of lines contained in each 
work were given, in addition to the author and the title'. Legends 
of the origin and foundation of various cities were included 
not only in the four books of his poem known as the Airta, but 
also in one of his prose-works. Among the latter was a list of 
the writings and of the provincialisms of Democritus. His works 
in prose and verse extended to over 800 volumes-. To his school 
belonged some of the most celebrated scholars and poets, such as 
Eratosthenes, Aristophanes of Byzantium, his own rival Apollonius 
Rhodius, with Hermippus, Istrus, and Philostephanus of Cyrene. 
His monograph on the different names given to the same thing in 
different nations, and a work on dialects by Dionysius lambos, 
had a considerable effect on linguistic research in the next 
generation. This may be traced not only in the remains of 
Aristophanes and Istrus, but also in those of Neoptolemus of 
Parion and Philemon of Athens. Neoptolemus wrote on 
' glosses ', and also composed a treatise on poetry, which was one 
of the authorities followed by Horace in his Ars Poetica^ ; while 
Philemon wrote on 'Attic nouns and glosses', and was the 
precursor of the purists who in later times maintained the integrity 
of Attic Greek against foreign corruption ^ 

While the evidence in favour of describing Callimachus as 
head of the .Alexandrian Library is very far from conclusive, and 
indeed depends mainly on a priori probabilities, it is certain that 
that high office was actually filled by his pupil and fellow-country- 
man, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who is now generally regarded as 
the second of the Alexandrian Librarians. 

Eratosthenes {c. 276 — c. 196-4 b.c.) spent some years in 
Athens, whence he was recalled to Alexandria by 

■' Eratosthenes 

Ptolemy Euergetes {c. 235 B.C.), and placed at the 
head of the Librar)'. He remained in that important position 
during the reigns of Ptolemy Euergetes (d. 222 B.C.), and Philo- 
pator (222-205). 'The tastes of the former were scientific, those 

^ O. Schneider's Callimachea, ii 297 — 322; Susemihl, i 337 — 340. 
^ On Callimachus, see Couat, Poisie Alex, in — 184; Christ, § 349^; 
Susemihl, i 347 — 373 ; and Hiibner's Bibliographic, § 8. 
^ Porphyrion, ap. Susemihl, i 405. 
* Susemihl, i 372 — 3. 



124 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

of the latter literary and aesthetic. Philopator was not only the 
author of a tragedy, but also honoured the memory of Homer by 
building a temple which was adorned with a seated statue of the 
poet, surrounded by statues of the cities which claimed his birth'. 
The building of this temple has been regarded as an indication of 
a change of attitude towards Homer. While Zenodotus had 
allowed his personal caprice to introduce fanciful alterations into 
the poet's text, the influence of Callimachus and Eratosthenes 
inspired a feeling of greater reverence for Homer as the Father of 
Greek poetry, and also led to a more sober treatment of his text 
by Aristophanes and Aristarchus, as well as to a careful imitation 
of his manner in the epic poems of Rhianusl 

Eratosthenes bore among the members of the Museum the 
singular designation of ^rjra, which is supposed to be due either 
to some physical peculiarity (such as the bowed back of old age) 
or (far more probably) to his attaining the second place in many 
lines of study I The more complimentary designation of ttcVt- 
aOXo's implied his high attainments in more than one kind of 
mental gymnastics, while (like the second sense of ^rjra) it 
suggested that he was inferior to those who confined themselves 
to a single line of study*. We can easily imagine each of the 
specialists of the Museum proudly conscious of his supremacy 
in his own department, and enviously depreciating his widely 
accompUshed and versatile colleague, who was really 'good all 
round ', as a ' second-rate ' man. But it is only in his minor epics 
and elegiacs and in his philosophical dialogues that he seems 
actually to have deserved a place lower than the very highest. 
In other respects he attained the foremost rank among the most 
versatile scholars of all time. It was this wide and varied learning 
that prompted him to be the first to claim the honourable title of 
<^t\oXoyo? (p. 5). He was the first to treat Geography in a 

^ Aelian, Far. Hist, xiii 22. 

^ Usener ap. Susemihl, ii 671. 

^ ^, 7, 5, e, f, 0, \ were all used as nicknames; cp. Photius, Bibl. p. 151, 
7 — 28, and Parthey, Mus. Alex. p. 53 n. In Rostand's VAiglon, i iii, we 
find the phrase, /(f /a/j done le beta. 

* In [Plato] Anterastae, 135 E, ol irivraOXoL are described as de^rrepoi as 
compared with the best runners and wrestlers. Cp. iJiraKpos, 136 A, and nepl 
i}\j/ovs, c. 34 § I, (of Hypereides) ffxeSw HiraKpos ev iraaiv ws 6 wivradXos. 



VIIL] ARISTOPHANES OF BYZANTIUM. 12$ 

systematic and scientific manner'. He also wrote on Mathe- 
matics, Astronomy and Chronology, and, in connexion with the 
latter, we may mention his work on the Olympian victors. But 
the masterpiece of his many-sided scholarship was a work in at 
least twelve books, the first of its kind, on the Old Attic Comedy 
(irepl Tiys apxaM<: Kw/xwSias). He there corrected his predecessors, 
Lycophron and Callimachus, dealing with his theme, not in the 
order of chronology, but in a series of monographs on the author- 
ship and date of the plays, and on points of textual criticism, 
language and subject-matter. He w^as less strong in his know- 
ledge of Athenian antiquities^ than in that of the Attic dialect in 
its historical development. His encyclopaedic learning was not 
incompatible with poetic taste. In opposition to the prosaic 
opinion that the battles of the warriors in the //iad, and the 
wanderings of the hero of the Odyssey, were a precise description 
of actual events, he maintained that the aim of every true poet is 
to charm the imagination and not to instruct the intellect ^ 'The 
scenes of the wanderings of Odysseus will be found ' (said Erato- 
sthenes), 'when you find the cobbler who sewed up the bag of the 
winds, and not before ' ■*. 

His successor as Librarian (c. 195 B.C.) was Aristophanes of 
Byzantium {c. 2S7-c. 180), the pupil of Zenodotus, 
Callimachus and Eratosthenes. He was the first of^Byzandum* 
of the Librarians who was not a poet as well as 
a scholar; but in Scholarship he holds, with Aristarchus, one 
of the foremost places in the ancient world. He reduced 
accentuation and punctuation to a definite system. Some sort 
of punctuation had already been recognised by Aristotle (p. 97). 
To Aristophanes are attributed the use of the mark of elision, the 
short stroke {v-n-oSiaa-ToXrj) denoting a division in a word (such as 
the end of a syllable), the hyphen (w below the word), the comma 
{inroa-TLyfJH]), the colon (f-ie'cn/ orty/XT;) and the full-Stop (reXcta 
o-Tiy/xTj) ; also the indications of quantity, ^ for ' short ' and — for 

^ Tozer's History of Ancient Geography, p. 182. 2 p jg^ ^^^^ 

' Strabo, p. 7, TroirjTrii iraj ffTOxdj^erai \j/vxa.ywylas, oii di5aoKa\iat (an 

opinion criticised by Strabo). 

* ib. p. 24. On Eratosthenes, cp. Christ, § 429^, Susemihl, i 409 — 428 ; 

and Hiibner's Bibliographie, § 9. 



126 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

' long ', and lastly the accents, acute ', grave \ and circumflex ^ or 
''\ These accents were invented with a view to preserving the 
true pronunciation, which was being corrupted by the mixed 
populations of the Greek world. Aristophanes was certainly the 
originator of several new symbols for use in textual criticism. 
To the short horizontal dash called the o^eAos or ' spit ' — , which 
had already been used by Zenodotus to denote a spurious line, he 
added the asterisk -X- to draw attention to passages where the 
sense is incomplete, and, in lyric poets, to mark the end of a 
metrical kw\ov ; also the KcpavvLov T, to serve as a collective 
obelus where several consecutive lines are deemed to be spurious ; 
and, lastly, the dvTto-iy/Aa, or inverted sigma, D , to draw attention 
to tautology^ These symbols were used in his edition of the 
I/iad and Odyssey, which marked an advance on that of Zeno- 
dotus and the next editor, Rhianus. He agreed with Zenodotus 
in obelising many lines, but he also reinstated, and obelised, 
many which had been entirely omitted. by his predecessor. Thus 
he appears to have had some regard for manuscript evidence, or 
at least for the duty of faithfully recording it, even if he dis- 
approved it. In rejecting certain lines, he acted on independent 
grounds ; in this he showed considerable boldness, but was often 
right. A good example of his acuteness is his rejection of the 
conclusion of the Odyssey, from xxiii 296 to the end^. Like 
Zenodotus, however, he is apt to judge the picture of manners 
presented in the Homeric poems by the Alexandrian standard, 
and to impute either impropriety, or lack of dignity, to phrases 
that are quite in keeping with the primitive simplicity of the 
heroic age\ 

1 Pseudo-Arcadius, pp. 186—190, ap. Nauck, Aristophanis Byz. frag. 
(1848) p. 12 f; this epitome of Herodian has been ascribed to Theodosius 
(end of cent. 4, Christ, p. 838^). Cp. Steinthal, I.e., ii 79 n. See also Blass 
on Gr. Palaeogr. in Iwan Miiller's Handbuch, vol. i, C § 6. It is contended 
by K. E. A. Schmidt, Beitrdge zur Gesch. d. Gr. p. 571 f, that accents and 
marks of punctuation existed before Aristophanes. The account in Pseudo- 
Arcadius may possibly have been fabricated by Jacob Diassorinus (cent. 16; 
see Cohn in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Arkadies). Cp. Lentz, Herodiani rell. i xxxvii. 

2 Nauck, I.e., pp. 16—18 ; Lehrs, De Aristarchi Studiis Hotnerieis, p. 332=*, 
note 240; Reifferscheid, Snetoni Reliquiae, p. 137 — 144. 

* Nauck, /. c, p. 32. 

4 Od. XV 19, 82, 88 ; xviii 281 etc., quoted by Cobet, Mise. Crit. 225 — 7. 



VIII.] ARISTOPHANES OF BYZANTIUM. 12/ 

Besides his Homeric labours, he edited the Theogony of 
Hesiod, and the lyric poets, Alcaeus, Anacreon and Pindar. In 
the case of Pindar he produced what was probably the first 
collected edition. He divided the odes into sixteen books, eight 
on divine, and eight on human themes (eis ^covs and cis dv- 
^pojTTovs). Each of these groups had further subdivisions, viz. i 
(on divine themes), hymns, paeans, dithyrambs, prosodia, parthenia 
(the last three in 2 books each); 11 (on human themes), hypor- 
chemata (in 2 books), encomia, threnoi, epinikia (in 4 books). A 
book of ceremonial odes was added to i as an appendix to the 
parthenia (to. KcxoipLa/jieva tu^v irapdivCoyv), and similarly, at the end 
of the book of Nemean odes, which was probably the last of the 
four books of epinikia, an appendix of poems unconnected with 
Nemean victories (probably under the name of ra Kexf^piaiMeva 

TCOV Nc/icoviKwv) ^. 

The general outline of this arrangement assumes that the 
titles of the various books in the poet's Zi/e in the Breslau MS are 
ultimately due to Aristophanes. Further, there is reason to 
believe that it was Aristophanes who divided the texts of the 
lyrical poets into metrical KwXa^. The test of metre was thus 
easily applied, and interpolations detected ^ The scholia on 
Pindar, unlike those on Homer, assume a fixed text, and it seems 
probable that this text was practically settled by Aristophanes^ 
In the lyric poets, his erudition enables him to defend readings 
which Zenodotus had condemned. Thus 'Anacreon describes a 
fawn as forsaken Kepo€<T(rr]<; ..vrro fxarpo^. Zenodotus wrote ipo- 
cVoT/s (' lovely ') on the ground that only the males have horns. 
Aristophanes vindicated the text by showing that the poets ascribe 
horns to hinds as well as to stags '*. 

^ Wilamowitz, Eur. //^r. i 139; cp. Thomas Magister, Fiia Pindari. 

* Dion. Hal. De Comp. Verb. 22, »fwXo...o6ic oh '&.pi.<rTO<pdpT)%, ri rQyv dXXon' 
T« fierpiKQv, SifKcxTfiij^e rdr <fi5ds (of Pindar) ; cp. ti. 26 (of Simonides). The 
MS of Bacchylides is written in KwXa. 

' Thus, in Pindar, O/. ii 26, «^i\et Se fuv IlaXXaj aid is followed in many 
MSS by ^iXeovffi 8e Moi(rcu, but the Scholiast remarks : — dderei 'Aptffro^oj'ijs, 
Tepcrrdeiv yap avro <fniffi xpos <:Tdj> din-iffrpoipai. 

* Wilamowitz, /. c, p. 142 f. 

' Lehrs, De Aristarchi Stud. Horn. p. 35 2^, quoted in Jebb's Homer, p. 93. 
The authority for the views of Zenodotus and Aristophanes on this point is the 



128 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

It may fairly be inferred from the scholia on Euripides and 
Aristophanes that he prepared a recension of both of those 
poets. It is probable that he also edited Aeschylus and 
Sophocles. He wrote introductions to the plays of all the three 
tragic poets, as well as to Aristophanes, and these have survived 
in an abridged form in the Arguments (iitto^co-cis) prefixed to 
their plays', which are ultimately founded on the researches of 
Aristotle and others of the Peripatetic School I Aristophanes 
also divided the works of Plato into trilogies, viz. (i) Republic^ 
Timaeus, Critias ; (2) Sophistes, Politicus, Cratylus ; (3) Laws, 
Minos, Epinomis; (4) Theaetetus, Euthyphron, Apologia; (5) Crito, 
Phaedo, Letters^ ; but an arrangement which separates the Crito 
and Phaedo from the Apologia cannot be regarded as satisfactory. 

He further compiled an important lexicographical work entitled 
Ae'^cts*, in the course of which he treated of words supposed to be 
unknown to ancient writers, or denoting different times of life, 
forms of salutation, terms of relationship or civic life or of Attic 
or Laconian usage ^ The work showed a wide knowledge of 
dialects, and marked a new epoch by tracing every word to its 
original meaning, thus raising ' glossography ' to the level of 
lexicography". He probably wrote a work on Analogy or gram- 
matical regularity, as contrasted with Anomaly or grammatical 
irregularity ^ In this work he apparently endeavoured to de- 

scholium of Didymus on Pindar, 01. iii 29 = 52, xpvcroKipuv i\a<pov d-ZiXeiav 
(identified as a reindeer by Professor Ridgeway, £ar/y Age of Greece, i 360—3). 
^ Schneidewin in Abhdl. d. Gott. Ges. vi 3 — 37. 

2 Wilamowitz, p. 144 f (see supra, p. 64 f). 

3 Diog. Laert. iii 61, ap. Nauck, I.e., p. 250; cp. Christ, p. 429^, and 
Platon. Stud. p. 5 f. 

* A fragment of this work, preserved in a MS of Mount Athos, is pubhshed 
in Miller's Melanges, 427—434 ; cp. Cohn, in Jahrb. f. Phil., Suppl. xii 285, 
and Fresenius, De \iiiU3v...excerptis Byzantinis, Wiesbaden, 1875. 

5 His articles on irpd^evoi, idi.6^evoL, dopv^evoi and feVoi are clearly the 
source of the 3rd scholium on Lucian's Phalaris, ii i. 

* Nauck, pp. 69 — 234 ; Susemihl, i 439 f. 

7 Varro, L. L. x 68, tertium (analogiae) genus est illud duplex quod dixi, 
in quo et res et voces similiter proportione dicuntur, ut bonus mains, boni mali ; 
de quorum analogia et Aristophanes et alii scripserunt ; and ix 12, Aristophanes 
...qui potius in quibusdam veritatem ( = analogiam) quam consuetudinem 
secutus. Cp. Nauck, pp. 264—271 ; Steinthal, ii 78—82; Susemihl, i 441. 



VIIL] the ALEXANDRIAN CANON. 1 29 

termine the normal rules of Greek declension, by drawing 
attention to general rules of regular inflexion rather than irregular 
and exceptional forms. Among his other works was a great 
collection of proverbs, an article on a phrase in Archilochus 
(axvvfievr] (ncvrdX-q). a treatise on comic masks, and a list of 
passages borrowed by Menander'. He also wrote a work on the 
7rtVa>c«? of Callimachus". Lastly, there is reason to believe that 
he drew up lists of the ancient poets who were foremost in the 
various forms of poetr>'. This is inferred from a passage of 
Quintilian (x i 54) stating that ApoUonius Rhodius is not included 
in the ordo a graj/imaticis datus, 'because Aristarchus and Aris- 
tophanes did not include any of their own contemporaries'. In 
the same chapter (§ 59) he states that Archilochus was one of the 
three iambic poets approved by Aristarchus; elsewhere (i 4^ 3) 
he describes the ancient grammatici not only as obelising lines 
and rejecting certain works as spurious, but also as including 
certain authors in their list and entirely excluding others; and 
from the first chapter of his tenth book (§§ 46-54) we infer that 
the four leading epic poets were Homer, Hesiod, Antimachus and 
Panyasis. These passages are almost all the foundation for the 
discussions on the Alexandrian canon from the time of Ruhnken' 
downwards. Ruhnken regarded it as a classified list of writers of 
prose, as well as verse. Bemhardy'' and others limited it to poets 
alone, while the canon of the orators has since been regarded 
either as the work of the Pergamene school {c. 125 b.c.)^ or as 
due to Didymus, or still more probably to Caecilius of Calacte*, 

1 His indication of Menander's debt to others was combined with a 
marked admiration for the poet expressed in the words, w MA'avSpc Acot ^U, | 
TTOTtpos fip' vpLwi' TOTtpov awefufiriixaTO ; Syrianus in Hermogenem, ii 23 Rabe. 

■ Athen. 408 F, to irpbs tovs KaWi/xdxov TivaKas, and 336 E, dvaypcupri 
Spafidrwv. 

^ //isi. Crit. Oral. Gr., pp. 94 — 100— Opusc. i 385 — 392; cp. Wolf's 
Kleine Schri/len, ii 824. 

* Gr. Litt. i* 185—8. 

^ Brzoska, De catione decern oratorum AUicontm, 1883. 

* Suidas mentions among his works xapafJ^pes '■w" '' pVTdpwv. Cp. Meier, 
Opusc. i 120 f, esp. 128; P. Hartmann, De cattotu decern oratorum, 1891 ; 
Susemihl, i 444, S2i, ii 484 and esp. 694 f; and Kroehnert, Canonesne 
poetarum scriptorum artificum per antiquitatem fuerunt ? 1897; also Heyden- 
reich's Erlangen Dissertation, 1900. 



il: 



I30 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the friend of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Between the age of 
Aristarchus and that of Strabo, Philetas and Callimachus were 
added to the canon of the elegiac, and Apollonius, Aratus, 
Theocritus and others, to that of the epic poets. The most 
important document bearing on the Alexandrian canon is a list 
published by Montfaucon from a MS of the tenth century from 
Mount Athos, and (with some variations) by Cramer from a late 
MS in the Bodleian. The following are the names included in 
this list, as revised by UsenerS who omits late additions. The 
last in the list is Polybius, who died more than 50 years after 
Aristophanes of Byzantium. 

(Epic) Poets (5): Homer, Hesiod, Peisander, Panyasis, Antimachus. 

Iambic Poets (3) : Semonides, Archilochus, Hipponax. 

Tragic Poets (5) : Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Ion, Achaeus. 

Comic Poets, Old (7) : Epicharmus, Cratinus, Eupolis, Aristophanes, 
Pherecrates, Crates, Plato. Middle {2): Antiphanes, Alexis. New (5): 
Menander, Philippides, Diphilus, Philemon, Apollodorus. 

Elegiac Poets (4) : Callinus, Mimnermus, Philetas, Callimachus. 

Lyric Poets (9) : Alcman, Alcaeus, Sappho, Stesichorus, Pindar, Bacchy- 
lides, Ibycus, Anacreon, Simonides. 

Orators (10): Demosthenes, Lysias, Hypereides, Isocrates, Aeschines, 
Lycurgus, Isaeus, Antiphon, Andocides, Deinarchus^. 

Historians (lo): Thucydides, Herodotus, Xenophon, Philistus, Theo- 
pompus, Ephorus, Anaximenes, Callisthenes, Hellanicus, Polybius'. 

Aristophanes of Byzantium was probably nearly 60 when he 
^ . ^ counted among his pupils his successor Aristarchus 

Anstarchus ° ^ ^ 

of Samothrace {c. 217-5 — ^45-3 ^.c), who lived in 
Alexandria under Ptolemy Philometor (181-146), and, on the 
murder of his pupil Philopator Neos and the accession of 
Euergetes II (146), fled to Cyprus, where he died soon after. 
His continuous commentaries {vTrofivtjfxaTo) filled no less than 
800 volumes, partly as notes for lectures, partly in finished form. 
These were valued less highly than his critical treatises (avyypdfi- 

1 Dion. Hal. de Imitatione, p. 130. 

2 Deinarchus, omitted by Usener, is restored by Kroehnert. 

' On the Canon, see Steffen, De canone qui dicitur Aristophanis et 
Aristarchi, 1876; Kroehnert, /. c. (who rejects all 'canons' except that of the 
Orators) ; and Susemihl, i 444 — 7 ; and on Aristophanes in general, ib. i 428 — 
448; Christ, § 435'; Cohn s.v. in Pauly-Wissowa; 2LndYi\xbn&r's Bibliogra- 
phie, § II. 



VIII.] ARISTARCHUS. 13I 

fiara) on such subjects as the I/iad and Odyssej, on the naval 
camp of the Achaeans, and on Philetas and on Xenon (one of the 
earliest of the chorizontes, who ascribed the Iliad and the Odyssey 
to different poets). As a commentator he avoided the display of 
irrelevant erudition, while he insisted that each author was his 
own best interpreter. He also placed the study of grammar on a 
sound basis ; he was among the earliest of the grammarians who 
definitely recognised eight parts of speech, Noun, Verb, Participle, 
Pronoun, Article, Adverb, Preposition and Conjunction'. As a 
grammarian he maintained the principle of Analogy, as opposed 
to that of Anomaly. He produced recensions of Alcaeus, 
Anacreon and Pindar; commentaries on the Lyciirgiis of Aes- 
chylus, and on Sophocles and Aristophanes ; and recensions, as 
well as commentaries, in the case of Archilochus and Hesiod. 
He had a profound knowledge of Homeric vocabulary, and was 
the author of two recensions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, with 
critical and explanatory symbols in the margin of each. These 
symbols were six in number: (i) the obelus — to denote a spurious 
line, already used by Zenodotus and Aristophanes (p. 126); 
{2) the diple {SnrXr}) >, denoting anything notable either in 
language or matter : (3) the dotted diple {^nr\rj TrepuoTty/ic'v?/) >, 
drawing attention to a verse in which the text of Aristarchus 
differed from that of Zenodotus ; (4) the asterisk (a(TT€pL(TKo<:) H , 
marking a verse wrongly repeated elsewhere ; (5) the stigme or 
dot {(TTLyn-ri), used by itself as a mark of suspected spuriousness, 
and also in conjunction with (6) the antisigma D, in a sense 
differing from that of Aristophanes, to denote lines in which the 
order had been disturbed, the dots indicating the lines which 
ought immediately to follow the line marked with the antisigma 
<cp. p. I4o)^ 

^ ovo/ia, pTJfM, fxeroxv, avTwvvfda, &pdpov, iirippri/jLa, vpodeffis, a^Seanos 
{opofia included the Adjective). Quint, i 4, 20, alii ex idoneis...auctoribus 
octo partes secuti sunt, ut Aristarchus. 

* Lehrs and Reifferscheid, quoted on p. 126; Ludwich, Aristarchs 
Homerische Textkritik, pp. 19 — 22 ; and Jebb's Homer, p. 94. Similar sym- 
bols were used in an edition of Plato (Diog. Laert. iii 66) sometimes identified 
with that of Aristophanes of Byzantium, mentioned on p. 128 (Gomperz, Plat. 
Aufsdtze, ii). On Aristarchus see also Wilamowitz, Eur. Her. p. 138^; 
P. Cauer's Griindfragen, 11—35; Susemihl, i 451 — 463; Cohn s.v. in Pauly- 
Wissowa; and Hiibner's Bibliographie, § 12. 

9—2 



132 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

In his criticisms on Homer three points have been noticed, 
(i) His careful study of Homeric language. Thus he observes 
that in Homer wSc never means ' here ' or ' hither ', but always 

* thus ' ; that ftdWttv is used of missiles, ovrd^eiv of wounding at 
close quarters ; <^o/8os of ' flight ', and ttovo? of the ' stress ' of 
battle. (2) His strong reliance on manuscript authority^ and, in 
cases of conflicting readings, on the poet's usage. In contrast 
with Zenodotus, he abstained from merely conjectural readings, 
and was even censured by later critics for excess of caution. 
(3) His comments on the subject-matter, comparing the Homeric 
versions of myths with those in other writers, and noticing charac- 
teristic points of Homeric civilisation. His interest in topography 
led him to make a plan of the Trojan and the Greek camp ; and 
to notice that "Apyos neXao-yiKw denotes Thessaly, and "Apyo? 
'AxatKov the Peloponnesus '. As a critic he is more sober and 
judicious than Zenodotus and Aristophanes, but he sometimes 
lapses, like his predecessors, into an over-fondness for finding 

* improprieties ' of expression in the plain and unaffected style of 
Homer'. 

The Homeric mss accessible to Aristarchus mainly fall into 
two groups, those bearing the names of (i) persons, or (2) places. 
The former are known as at Kar' avSpa (cKSoo-eis) ; the latter as at 
kolto. TrdActs, or at 0.1:0 (or Ik, or ^ia) rtSv ttoAccov, or at tuJv ttoAcojv. 
The former are often cited by the name of the editor : — Anti- 
machus, Zenodotus, Rhianus, Sosigenes, Philemon, Aristophanes ; 
the latter, by the names of the places from which they came : — 
Massilia, Chios, Argos, Sinope, Cyprus, Crete and Aeolis ; but 
the Cretan edition was probably not used by Aristarchus, and the 
Aeolian is cited only for some variants in the Odyssey. Besides 
these groups there were other texts denoted as 'common' or 
'popular' (Kotvai, 8r//xaj8€ts), representing the 'vulgate' of the 
day, described as ' the more careless ' (ctKatdrepat) as contrasted 
with the 'more accurate' or 'scholarly' (xapteo-rcpat)^. 

^ Jebb's Homer, p. 94 f. ^ Cobet, Misc. Crit. 229. 

^ La Roche, Ho7n. Textkritik, p. 45 f ; Ludwich, /. c, i 3—16; Jebb's 
Homer, p. 91 f ; and Mr T. W. Allen in Class. Rev. 1901, pp. 241 — 6, The 
eccentric editions and Aristarchus. On the history of the Homeric poems in 
the Alexandrian age cp. Mr D. B. Monro's ed. of Odyssey xiii — xiv, pp. 418 — 
454- 



VIII.] THE TEXT OF HOMER. 133 

The extant evidence for the text of Homer is to be found 
mainly in the two mss in Venice, A and B, belonging to the loth 
and nth century respectively, together with statements in the 
scholia in the earlier of these mss, and quotations in ancient 
authors. From these materials what may be called the ' vulgate ' 
text of Homer has been formed, and down to the year 1891 the 
evidence of Homeric -papyri, going back as far as the Christian 
era, was in agreement with this text. In contrast with this text 
were the readings of the Alexandrian critics, and certain of the 
quotations in ancient authors. In 1891 fragments of an earlier 
papyrus of Iliad xi 502-537, found by Mr Flinders Petrie among 
dated documents belonging to 260-224 B.C. and published by 
Professor MahafTy, supplied indications of a text differing from 
the vulgate and including four more lines in a passage consisting 
of 39 lines. Similar phenomena were noticed in the fragment 
published by M. Nicole at Geneva in 1894, and by Messrs 
Grenfell and Hunt in 1897. Two suggestions arose from these 
discoveries. The first was that these Ptolemaic papyri repre- 
sented a prolix prae-Alexandrian text, before it was cut down 
into the current text by the criticisms of Zenodotus, Aristophanes 
and Aristarchus. But this suggestion is opposed to the evidence 
of the scholia, which record the readings preferred by the 
Alexandrian critics and show that the Alexandrian school had 
hardly any effect on the traditional text. The second suggestion 
was that the remarkable additions to the Homeric text found in 
nearly all the few Ptolemaic papyri proved that the vulgar text of 
the present day could not have been in existence in the Ptolemaic 
times, but must have come into existence later. But (1) the 
statements in the scholia relating to the Alexandrian critics, 
Didymus and Aristonicus, who distinguish between the editions of 
their Alexandrian predecessors, especially those of Aristarchus, 
and certain other editions, known as 'common' or 'popular', 
show that a vulgar text of some sort or other was in existence in 
Alexandrian times. (2) The evidence of quotations in prae- 
Alexandrian writers shows that their text of Homer was sub- 
stantially the same as ours. 152 portions of the Homeric text 
are quoted by 29 writers from Herodotus downwards, and the 
480 lines (or thereabout) thus quoted do not include more than 



134 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

9 to 1 1 lines in addition to the ordinary text. It may thus be 
inferred that the ordinary Homeric text preceded the Alexandrian 
age and that it existed as early as the fifth century B.C. The 
Ptolemaic papyri may therefore be regarded simply as a few stray 
examples of eccentric texts of Homer, and texts no less eccentric 
may have been not unknown to the author of the Second Alci- 
biades\ and to Aeschines and Plutarch, who occasionally quote 
from a text including lines not found in the ordinary text of 
Horner^ 

Notwithstanding the very slight impression which Aristarchus 
produced on the current text of Homer, later writers had a 
profound respect for his authority as a critic. In the Venice ms 
(A) of Homer the scholiast on //. ii 316 knows that the accent of 
TTTcpvyos is normally proparoxytone, but accepts the paroxytone 
TTTcpryos solely on the authority of Aristarchus^ ; and on //. iv 
235 he follows Aristarchus in preference to Hermappias, 'even 
although the latter appears to be in the right''*. His power of 
critical divination is recognised by Panaetius, who calls him a 
'diviner'^; and with Cicero {ad Att. i 14, 3) and Horace {A. P. 
450) his name is a synonym for a great critic, and it has so 

^ 149 D. 'The fact that this spurious quotation is found in a spurious 
Platonic dialogue only emphasizes the fact that to the real Plato Homer is our 
Homer, neither more nor less ' (Leaf- on //. viii 548 f). 

^ See esp. Ludwich, Die Homer-vulgata ah voralexandrinische erwiesen, 
1898, rev. by Mr T. W. Allen in Class. Rev. 1899, pp. 39—41. In the same 
volume, p. 334 f, Mr Allen shows that the modern Homeric text is identical 
with the ancient vulgate to the extent of about 60 per cent, of the passages 
where its readings are noticed, and further that in about 20 per cent, the 
ancient vulgate was in conflict with another text, and in about 20 per cent, had 
been dislodged by that text. On p. 429 f he shows that, of the known 
readings of Aristarchus (664 in number), between one-fifth and one-sixth have 
left no trace whatever in our Mss, and only one-tenth are found in all MSS 
hitherto collated. In Class. Rev. 1900, p. 242 f, he shows that of the known 
readings of Zenodotus (385 in number) 259 survive in none of our mss, and 
the rest in all or some, only 4 being found in all ; also that of the readings 
peculiar to Aristophanes of Byzantium (81), 46 are found in none of our mss, 
and the rest in some or all, only two being found in all. 

2 ir€id6/J.e6a avT(^ us irdvv dpiaTtf! ypaixfiariKC^. 

* €1 Kal SoKei oK-qdeieLv, This grammarian is also quoted on xi 326, xiii 
137, but is otherwise unknown. 

* fidfTis, Athen. 634 c. 



VIII.] CALLISTRATUS. HERMIPPUS. APOLLODORUS. 1 35 

remained ever since. He was the founder of scientific Scholar- 
ship. He was also the head of a School, and Apollodorus, 
Ammonius and Dionysius Thrax were among the most famous of 
his forty pupils. Even the king (Euergetes II), whose accession 
in 146 was the signal for a persecution of his Hellenic subjects 
from which men of letters, like Aristarchus, were not exempt, 
discussed points of Homeric criticism with his courtiers far into 
the night, and himself proposed an ingenious emendation of a 
line in the Odyssey (v 72) \ 

Next to Aristarchus, the most important pupil of Aristophanes 
was Callistratus, whose admiration for his master 
led to a bitter feud with Aristarchus. He wrote 
criticisms on the passages in Homer attacked by the latter, as 
well as a commentar)' on the Iliad, and on Pindar, Sophocles, 
Euripides and Aristophanes*. 

Before turning to the pupils of Aristarchus, we must mention 
a pupil of Callimachus, Hermippus of Sm\Tna, the 

, - . . . ^ , . , ,,.,,. Hermippus 

author of an extensive biographical and biblio- 
graphical work, connected with his master's Pinakes and including 
lives of literar}' celebrities and lists of their writings, so far as they 
were preserved in the Alexandrian Library-. The work is cited 
under its various subdivisions, On the Legislators, On the Seven 
Wise Men, On Pythagoras, Gorgias, Isocrates, Aristotle and 
Chr}sippus (d. 204 B.C.). It was one of the chief authorities 
followed by Diogenes Laertius, and by Plutarch in his Lives of 
Lycurgus, Solon and Demosthenes^. 

Apollodorus of Athens {fl. 144 B.C.) was a pupil of Aris- 
tarchus in Alexandria, which he left c. 146 B.C. 
After 144 B.C. he dedicated to Attalus II of 
Pergamon a great work on Chronolog}-, beginning with the 
fall of Troy and ending with the above date. The work was 

^ Plut. de adul. 17, 60 A, WroKifuxii^ </>iXofui0€ii' Sokovwti repi yXiamii Kal 
errixiSiov Kal urropiai fxaxbuevoi fUxp^ fUiruv vvktup avireurov. Athen. 61 C, 
IItoX. 6 5€i>Tcpoi Evfffyfnjs rap' 'Ofirtpi^ d^io? ypaipuv, ' afxtpi. Si Xet/xwwj 
fiokaKol ffiov ridi ff€\b>ov.' aia (a marsh plant) yap fxera aeXivov <t>v(a0ai dXX4 
fivto- (Susemihl, i 9). 

- R. Schmidt, Di CalUstrato Aristophamo, reprinted with Nauck, Aristoph. 
Byz. ; cp. Susemihl, i 449 f. 

' Christ, § 4313; Susemihl, i 492—5. 



136 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE [CHAP. 

afterwards brought down to 119 B.C. It was written in comic 
trimeters, possibly as an aid to the memory ; it unfortunately 
superseded the probably far greater chronological work of Erato- 
sthenes, and took its place as a great storehouse of chronological 
facts. Apollodorus is named by Cicero {ad Att. xii 23, 2) as likely 
to throw light on the date of an Epicurean philosopher and of 
certain politicians at Athens. Where the exact date of the birth 
and death of any personage was unknown, he used some im- 
portant date in that personage's active life to determine the time 
at which he flourished ; this was called his d/c/xiy and was regarded 
as corresponding approximately to the age of 40. Following in 
the track of Eratosthenes and of Demetrius of Scepsis, he wrote 
a commentary in 12 books on the Homeric catalogue of ships, 
often quoted by Strabo ; also on Sophron and Epicharmus, and 
on Etymology, and further a geographical compendium in iambic 
verse, and an important work in 24 books on the Religion of 
Greece (Trcpi Omv)\ ir^ome of the numerous fragments of this 
work are inconsistent with the corresponding passages in the 
mythological Bibliotheca, which bears the name of the same 
author. Between 100 and 55 B.C. a handbook of mythology was 
compiled, which became the source from which Diodorus, Hyginus 
and Pausanias drew their information on this subject : this was 
also the source of the extant Bibliotheca (possibly of the time of 
Hadrian) bearing the name of Apollodorus ^ 

Aristarchus was succeeded by his pupil Ammonius, who 
devoted himself mainly to the exposition and the 
defence of his master's recensions of Homer. He 
wrote * on the absence of more than two editions of the Homeric 
recension of Aristarchus ', ' on Plato's debt to Homer ', and also 
' on Prosody ', probably in the course of his criticisms on Homer. 
He was one of the main authorities followed by Uidymus in his 
work on the recension of Homer by Aristarchus. Lastly, he 
wrote a commentary on Pindar, in which he appears to have 
followed in his master's footsteps^ 

1 Christ, § 608*; Susemihl, ii 33 — 44; Schwarz in Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. 
p. 2857 — 75; and Hiibner's Btbliographie, § 14, p. 21. 

* Christ, § 576^*; Susemihl, ii 50 f ; cp. Schwarz, /. <r., p. 2875 — 86. 

* Susemihl, ii 153; Pauly-Wissowa, s.v, p. 1865. 



VIII.] AMMONIUS. DIONYSIUS THRAX. 1 37 

Another eminent pupil of Aristarchus was Dionysius Thrax 
(bom c. 1 66 B.C.). In his admiration for his 
master's apparently perfect familiarity with all the xh^aT^^'"* 
tragedies in existence, he painted his master's 
portrait with a figure representing Tragedy (possibly on a breast- 
plate) near his heart'. He afterwards taught in Rhodes, where he 
made a model of Nestor's cup (//. xi 632-5), the material for 
which was provided by means of a subscription on the part of his 
pupils. But his main title to fame is that he was the author of 
the earliest Greek Grammar. This is still extant. It is a work 
of less than 16 printed pages-. It begins by defining Grammar 
(p. 8 supra), and stating its parts (dmyvwo-is, ($TJyr]aL^, yAwo-o-cjv 
Koi lOToptwv d7ro6o(ris, irvfioXoyCa, dvoAoyias cKAoyitr/xos, Kptcrts 
■7roL7}fj.dT(ov). It next deals with Accentuation (tovos), Punctuation 
(a-Tiyfirj), Letters and Syllables {a-TOLxela koL (rvXkafiaC), and, after 
enumerating the Parts of Speech {ovofjui, prffxa^ fifrox^, apOpov, 
avTiowiJua, rrpodeai^, eiripprjfia, aviBca-fxos), ends with Declension 
and Conjugation, without including either Syntax or precepts on 
Style. In this Grammar uvofia includes not only the Noun, but 
also the Adjective and the Demonstrative and Interrogative 
Pronouns ; and apOpov, not only the Article but also the Relative 
Pronoun ; while avrwyvfjua (' Pronoun ') is limited to the Personal 
and Possessive Pronouns^. It remained the standard work on 
grammar for at least 13 centuries. It was known to the great 
grammarians of the imperial age, ApoUonius and Herodian. 
Among its many commentators may be mentioned Choeroboscus 
(end of cent. 6), Stephanus (early in cent. 7), and (not much 
later) Heliodorus and Melampus*. It became the source of the 
grammatical catechisms (cptaTT^yxara) of the Byzantine age, e.g. 
that of Moschopulos, and also of the manuals introduced into 
Italy during the Renaissance by Byzantine refugees such as 
Chr>soloras, Gaza, Constantine Lascaris and Chalcondylas. The 

^ .\ristarchus, however, was sometimes criticised severely by his pupil, as 
appears from the scholia on //. ii 262, xiii 103. 

* Bekker's Anecdota Gr. (1816), pp. 629 — 643 ; Engl, trans, by T. Davidson, 
1874: the best text is that of Uhlig, 1883. It was apparently written at 
Rhodes, under Stoic influence. 

^ Classen, De Gram. Gr. prim., p. 85. 

* Susemihl, ii 173 note. Cp. A. Hilgard's ed. of the Scholia, 1901. 



138 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Greek terms of this treatise thus survived for many centuries ; 
e.g. ovopia, ycVos, dpi^/u.os, /cXicrei? ('Declensions'), tttwotcis {'Cases'), 
TTTtoo-is ovofxaa-TLKT] KoX ivdda (Nom.), yiviKTj (Gen.), SoTtKTJ (Dat), 
alTiaTLKi] (Ace), K\r]TLKr'i (Voc); prjiJia, av^vyiaL ('Conjugations'), 
8ia^€o-€t9 ('Voices'), cyKXto-cts ('Moods'), xP^vot ('Tenses'), 
irp6<Ti3iira (' Persons '). With a strict adherence to Attic usage 
the Active and Passive Voices are here exempHfied by tutttco and 
TVTTTO/tai, the Numbers by tvtttw, TVTmTov and Tv-mofxiv, and the 
Persons (in inferior mss) by tvtttw, ruTrreis, tuVtci. It was ap- 
parently in the Canons of the late Alexandrian grammarian 
Theodosius (probably a friend of Synesius of Cyrene,^. 400 a.d.), 
that this verb appeared for the first time with the complete 
paradigm of all its imaginary moods and tenses. Before the end 
of the fifth century this paradigm was included in the Armenian 
and Syriac versions of the supplements to Dionysius Thrax'; 
and, through the Manuals of the Renaissance, it has found its 
way into modern Grammars, although, as is now well known, the 
Present and Imperfect, Active and Passive, were the only tenses 
actually used in Attic prose of the Athenian age'. 

Among the Romans, Varro was indebted to the Grammar of 
Dionysius Thrax for his definition of the ' Persons ' of the Verb, 
and for that of Grammar itself. It was also the authority followed 
by Suetonius, by Remmius Palaemon (the teacher of Quintilian), 
and (probably at second hand) by later Roman grammarians, 
such as Donatus, Diomedes, Charisius and Dositheus. The 
original text was known to Priscian. 

Dionysius Thrax was also the writer of two or three rhetorical 
works, together with a critique on Crates, and commentaries on 
the Works and Days of Hesiod, and on the Odyssey and the 
Iliad. In this last he followed Aristarchus in actually regarding 
Homer as a native of Athens ^ 

It is sometimes stated that Dionysius Thrax taught in Rome 
as well as in Rhodes. This arises from a confusion 
between Dionysius and his pupil, Tyrannion the 

* ed. Uhlig, pp. liii, 49, 51. 

2 Cp. Dem. Select Private Orations, ii, Excursus to Speech against Conon. 
" Christ, § 439^; Susemihl, ii 168 — 175; and li\xhri&v''s Bibliographie, § 14, 
p. ^o. 



VIII.] TYRANNION. DIDYMUS. 1 39 

elder, who was taken to Rome by Lucullus and was a teacher 
there in the time of Pompey the Great. Tyrannion was among 
the first to recognise the value of the Aristotelian mss transported 
to Rome by Sulla in 86 b.c. (p. 85). His pupil, Tyrannion the 
younger, who reached Rome as a prisoner and owed his freedom 
to Terentia, the wife of Cicero, wrote on Homeric prosody and 
on the parts of speech, and on the connexion between the Greek 
and Latin languages'. 

The most versatile and industrious of all the successors of 
Aristarchus was Didymus (c. 6z B.C.-10 A.D.), who 

J "^ -J " Didymus 

taught at Alexandria, and perhaps also in Rome*. 
To his prodigious industr)' he owed the notable name of Chalc- 
enterus^. He is said to have written between 3500 and 4000 
books, and we are not surprised to learn that he sometimes forgot 
in one book what he had himself written in another*. He is 
described by Macrobius (v 18) as grammaticorum facile eru- 
ditissimus omniiimque quique sint quique fiierint instructissimus. 
His lexicographical labours included treatises on ' metaphors ', on 
' words of doubtful meaning ', on ' names corrupted by change of 
spelling ', and two vast works on the language of Comedy, and on 
the language of Tragedy (Xc'^ci? Kw/juKai and rpayiKat). The last 
two (and especially the second of these) may be regarded as the 
ultimate source of most of the lexicographical learning which has 
come down to us in Athenaeus and the scholia, and in the 
lexicons of Hesychius and Photius. The 28th book of the 
work on the language of Tragedy is cited by Harpocration'; and 
one of the longer fragments is preserved by Macrobius*. Turning 
to his labours as an editor, textual critic and commentator, we 
have first to mention his elaborate attempt to restore the Homeric 
recension of Aristarchus in his work ircpi 7175 'Apia-rapxtiov 8iop- 
^oxrcws. Aristarchus had produced two recensions of the text; 
but both were lost, and Didymus had to restore their readings 

1 Christ, § 44i3. 

- Susemihl, ii 195, note 264; and esp. Wilamowitz, Eur. /^. 157 — 168. 

' XdKKifTepos, cp. Amm. Marc, xxii 16, 16, multiplicis scientiae copia 
memorabilis. 

* Quint i 8, 19, cp. Athen. 139 c. 
' s.v. ^paXoufxi^. 

• V 18 §§ 9, 12, on the use of 'Axe^^os for water in general. 



HO THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE, [CHAP. 

with the help of transcripts together with such evidence as could 
be derived from the critical monographs and the continuous 
commentaries of Aristarchus. At the end of each book of the 
Iliad in the Venice MS of Homer known as A, Didymus is 
mentioned, together with his younger contemporary, Aristonicus, 
and Herodian, the author of a treatise on the prosody and 
accentuation of the Iliad {c. i6o a.d.), and Nicanor, the writer 
on Homeric punctuation {c. 130 a.d.), as one of the sources of 
the scholia in that MS. The following is a simple example of a 
scholium on //. x 306, in which the readings preferred by 
Zenodotus, Aristophanes and Aristarchus are all recorded : — 
8(uo-u 7dp 8C<f>pov T€ 8v« T* cpixivx^<^s Virtrovs, 
ol' K€v dpio-Tcvcitcrt Oor^is kiA vr\vfr\v 'Axaiwv, 
ouTwj ' Apiarapxos, o'i k€v dpKrroi Iwcr 6 5e Zr]v65oTos avroiis ot 
<pop4ovfft.v dfiv/Mova IlriXeiuva (cp. 1. 323)' ' A.pi<7To<t>a.v7]s KaXoi/s ot 
(pop^ovffiv. 

In the following passage (//. viii 535-541) we have critical 
symbols in the margin, with a scholium giving the statement by 
Aristonicus of the views of Zenodotus and Aristarchus, and adding 
that the statement of those views by Didymus was identical with 
that of Aristonicus : — 

a 
3 av'piov i^v ap«T»^v BiaeCo-trai, A vC h^hv ^YX®' 
13 (jLtivT^t ^irepxoiAtvov' dX.X' hi -irpwroio-iv, otw, 
3 Kt£(r€Tai ovTTiOcis, iroXcts 8' dp.<j>' avrbv craipoi, 

• T]€\iov dviovTos €s avpwv. tl -ydp l^wv cos 

• £1't)V dOdvaros Kal d'yT^pcos TJp,aTa iravra, 

• TioipiT]v 8* <is t£€t* 'AOrjva^T) Kal 'AiriSWwv, 
us vvv tipipt} 'fjSc komAv <^pct 'ApYc^oio-iv. 

on r\ TovTovs del rails rpus (TtIxovs fiiveiv, oh t6 avriffiy/xa TrapaKeirai, 17 
Toilis ^^^r rpeis, oh ai (TTiy/xal irapaKfivraf els yap ttjv avTT)v ytypapLH^voi eiVt 
didvoiav. eyKplvei Si /xaXXov 6 ' ApLarapxos roiii devripovs 5ict to /cai/x»?M'''''^'w- 
r4povs elvat roiis Xoyovs' 6 Si Ztjj'oootos roiis irpurovs rpth ovdi iypa<pei>. to, 
air a Si Xiyei ire pi rwv (Trix.<^v rovruv 6 AiSvfios a Kal 6 ' ApiffroviKos' Sib ovk 
iypd^afiev rk AiSvp.ov. (In the MS the third ffriypL-q should have been prefixed 
to the last line, and not to the last but one, which was apparently absent from 
the recension of Aristarchus ^) 

^ Aristophanes, Aristarchus and his successor Ammonius, as well as 
Didymus and Aristonicus, are mentioned in the interesting scholia on //. x 
398, partly quoted in Leaf's n. 



VIII.] DIDYMUS. 141 

Didymus also wrote commentaries on Hesiod, Pindar and 
Bacchylides, and on Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. 
Many of the scholia on Pindar and Sophocles, as well as the 
extant Lives of the three tragic poets, are probably in the main 
due to Didymus. He further commented on the comic poets, 
Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, the extant scholia on the 
last being traceable through Symmachus to Didymus, and ulti- 
mately to Aristophanes of Byzantium ^ Extending his industrj' 
to prose, he produced an edition of Thucydides, whose life by 
Marcellinus is, either entirely, or at least as far as regards §§ i- 
45, taken from Didymus*; also of the Attic orators Antiphon, 
Isaeus, Hypereides, Aeschines and Demosthenes, besides at 
least ten books of rhetorical memoranda on the orators, and a 
monograph Trcpl ror ScKarcvo-ai. His grammatical works included 
a treatise on inflexions (Trcpl Tra^oSv), and on orthography ; his 
literary and antiquarian works, a treatise on myths and legends 
{ikvT] ia-Topia), on the birthplace of Homer, on the death of 
Aeneas, on Anacreon and Sappho ^ on the lyric poets, on the 
amoves of Solon*, on proverbs, and even on the £>e Republica of 
Cicero. 

Notwithstanding his restoration of the Aristarchic recension of 
Homer, he appears to have had an imperfect sense of the re- 
quirements of systematic textual criticism. His younger contem- 
porary, Aristonicus of Alexandria, wrote a treatise on the critical 
signs used by Aristarchus ; and, wherever the views of Didymus 
differ from those of Aristonicus, the latter are as a rule to be 
preferred ^ The work of Aristonicus was probably written before 
that of Didymus on the same general subject"", and appears to 
have given a more complete account of the passages criticised by 
Aristarchus'. In the comments of Didymus on Pindar and 
Aristophanes, and on Sophocles and Euripides, there is little 

I^K ^ Symmachus^. 100 B.C. (Wilamowitz, Eur. Her. i 179); cp. O. Schneider, 

w^^beveterum in Ar. scholiontm fontibiis, pp. 59 — 63. 

I^B ' Susemihl, ii 203, note 31 4. 

IB » Seneca, Ep. 88 § 37. * Plut. Sohn, i. 

IB ' Cp. Christ, § 4433, p. 612; Waamowitz, /. c, 161. 

I^B • Lehrs, I.e., 28*; Ludwich, Aristarchs Homerische Textkritik nach den 

y^Fragmenten des Didymos. '\ ^\. 



142 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

trace of any exceptional acumen ; but he deserves our gratitude 
for gathering together the results of earlier work in criticism and 
exegesis, and transmitting these results to posterity. The age of 
creative and original scholars was past, and the best service that 
remained to be rendered was the careful preservation of the varied 
stores of ancient learning ; and this service was faithfully and 
industriously rendered by Didymus'. 

Among the younger contemporaries of Didymus was a 
specialist in grammar and pure scholarship, who flourished under 
Augustus, named Tryphon, son of Ammonius, 
probably not the pupil of Aristarchus bearing that 
name (p. 136). Fragments of his works are preserved by writers 
such as Apollonius Dyscolus, Herodian, Athenaeus, and a third 
Ammonius {c. 389 a.d.) who abridged a work on Synonyms by 
Herennius Philo {c. 100 a.d.). It appears from these fragments 
that, besides dealing with points of orthography and prosody, and 
with various parts of speech, he wrote on purity of Greek, on 
ancient style, on terms of music, and on names of plants and 
animals. Late abridgements of his works on letter-changes and 
on tropes and metres are still extant, but many of them 
now survive in their titles alone, e.g. those on the dialect of 
Homer and the lyric poets, and on Doric and Aeolic Greek. 
The titles of several show that he was a strict adherent of 
■■ Analogy '^ 

Theon the ' grammarian ', of Alexandria, who flourished under 
Tiberius, wrote a commentary on the Odyssey, and 
possibly also on Pindar; and, Hke Didymus, he 
compiled a lexicon of comic diction. Besides completing the 
commentary of his father, Artemidorus, on the Aina of Calli- 
machus, he was himself a commentator on Lycophron, Theo- 
critus, Apollonius Rhodius, and Nicander. To the poets of the 
Alexandrian age he stood in the same relation as that of Didymus 
to the great writers of the classical age of Athens. He has 

1 Wilamowitz, Eur. Her. i 157—166; cp. Christ, § 443'; Susemihl, ii 
155 — 210; M. Schmidt, Did. fragm. (1854); and Hiibner's Bibliographic, 
% 14, p. 22. 

2 Christ, § 554^; Susemihl, ii 210 — 3; Fragments collected by Velsen 
<Berlin) 1853. 



VIII.] 



TRVPHON. THEON. 



143 



accordingly been aptly described as "the Didymus of the 
Alexandrian poets ' '. 

In this brief notice of Tryphon and Theon, we have already 
passed the chronological limits of this Book. Later Alexan- 
drians, beginning with Pamphilus and Apion, are reserved for 
the Roman age. 

1 Christ, § }tt^- Susemihl, ii 215 — 7. Cfi. Maass in /*//»/. C'n/. iii 33, and 
cp. Wilamowitz, A f., i i;6, i6r, 186. 




Ptolemy I 
and Berenike I. 



Ptoiemy II 
and Arsinoe II. 



Gold Octadrachm of Ptolemy II and Arsinoe II 
inscribed GEHN AAEA<t>nN. 

(From the British Museum.) 



For other portraits of Ptolemy I, Berenike I and their son Ptolemy II see 
the sard from the Muirhead collection figured in Mr C. W. King's Antiqtu 
Gems and Rhigs, I p. ix and II pi. xlvii 6, and supposed by Mr King to have 
been engraved for the Signet of Ptolemy II. 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE STOICS AND THE SCHOOL OF PERGAMON. 

Grammar was studied by the Stoics, not as an end in itself, 

but as a necessary part of a complete system of 

The dialectics. Much of their terminology has become 

Grammar of • , , , 

the Stoics a permanent part of the grammarian s vocabulary, 

and some of their views on matters of language 
may seem to the modern reader very far from novel. They 
distinguished between the inarticulate cries of animals, and the 
articulate voice of man {(fxtivrj lvap6po%). The latter might be 
either reduced to writing (lyypa/j,/u.os) or not (aypa/x,ju,os). When 
reduced to writing, it became a Xc'^ts, having for its elements the 
24 letters. They further distinguished between the sound (orot- 
X«rov) of the letter, and its written character (xapaKrrjp rov 
aroix^iov), and the name of the character (e.g. aA^a). They 
regarded the letters as consisting of seven vowels and six con- 
sonants (j8 y 8, TT K t), the rest being perhaps loosely regarded as 
semivowels. From these letters words (Ae^cts) were formed, 
either conveying sense {(r-qpLavTiKai) or not. The former became 
a Aoyos ; Ac'yctv was the expression of reason in words, while irpo- 
cf>€pe<Tdai was merely the utterance of a sound. Speech might be 
either in Prose or Verse ; it was also of a twofold nature, appealing 
to the ear and to the mind'. While the earlier Stoics recognised 
four parts of speech, ovop-a, prjp.a, crvvB€crp.o<;, apOpov, Chrysippus 
distinguished between ovop.a as 'a proper name' (e.g. '^wKpa.T-qs,), 
and ovo/xa TrpocrrjyopLKov, novicji appellativum (e.g. avBpuiiro';). Under 

^ Diog. Laert. vii 55 — 58; cp. R. Schmidt, Stoicorum Grammatka, p. 18 f ; 
Gr'afenhan, Gesch. da' Fhilologie, i 441, 505; Steinthal, Sprachwissenschaft, \^ 
291—3, and Egger, I.e., p. 349 f. 



CHAP. IX.] THE GRAMMAR OF THE STOICS. 145 

dpBpov was included the pronoun as well as the article, and it 
was noticed that, while the apBpov was inflected, the orwSetr/xos 
was not. The definition of the prjfia is identical with that of the 
Ka-njyoprjfLo, or predicate. Predicates may be active (op^a), 
passive (vtttuz), or neuter (ouScVcpa). A special variety of the 
verbs passive in form, but not in sense, are the 'reflexive causative' 
verbs (avrnreTrovdoTa) now generally called ' middle '. The term 
TTTcoo-is or 'inflexion' is applied by the Stoics to the noun and 
the apOpov (pronoun and adjective), not to the verb. \\Tiile 
Aristotle calls the nominative ovo/xa, and the oblique cases 
TTTtixrcts, the Stoics apply irrwo-is to the nominative as well, but 
they do not (like Aristotle) call an adverb a TrraKris of the 
corresponding adjective \ In fact they confine irroJo-ts to the four 
cases, the nominative {opOr] n-rcUcrts or evOela, casus rectus) and the 
three oblique cases (tttoktcis TrAayiai), the genitive (yevnaj), the 
dative (Botiktj) and the accusative (airiaTuo;). The original 
meaning of these oblique cases was soon forgotten ; the accusative 
did not originally mean the case that denotes the object of an 
accusation, but the case that denotes the effect of (to aiTtaTOK, 
' that which is caused by ') an action ; so that its original meaning 
is best expressed by the epithet effectivus or causativus. Again, 
yiviio] to the Stoics could only mean the case that denotes the 
ycVos or kind or class (as in the 'partitive' genitive), although 
Priscian afterwards translated it by generalis^. A verb, when 
used with a nominative subject, is called by the Stoics a cru/xySa/ta 
(e.g. TTcpiTraTcT) ; when used \s*ith an oblique case a Trapaa-vfji/3ap.a 
(e.g. /A€Ta/x€'A.a). A verb with a nominative subject needing an 
oblique case to complete the sentence is called eXarrov ^ o-v/x^a/ia 
(e.g. XIAarwv <^ty\€r Aicjm) ; a verb with an oblique case needing 
another oblique case to complete the sentence is called tXa-rrov ^ 
irapaa-vufiafxa (e.g. SwKpaTct /Acra/AcAci 'AXKiyStaSous) '. In Other 
words, we have two kinds of verb, personal and impersonal, and 
each of these kinds may be either transitive or intransitive. 
Time past, present and future was distinguished as {xp6vo<;) 
Trapw^^r^/xeVos, evcoTtJs and /ic'Wwv. The Stoics named the present 
and past tenses as follows : 



I 



^ Supra, p. 97. Steinthal, i 297 — 303. 

^ Zeller's Stoics etc. p. 94. ' Steinthal, i 306. 

s. 10 



146 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Present: (xp6vos) ive<XTM% TraparaTiKd^ (or dreX'^j). 

Imperfect: 7ra/)vxW^>'os iraparariKoi (or dTeXi)s). 

Perfect: evecrTus avvreXiKdi (or riXeios), 

Pluperfect: 7ro/)<^x'?M^''os crvvreXiKSs (or rAetoj). 

The above four tenses, whether TcXciot or dTcXet?, are all 
lapia-fjuivoL, {tempora) finita) the other tenses, whether future or 
past, are dopioroi ; but, while the future is called 6 fieXXwv 
(xpovos), the term dopiaros is only used of the past'. 

The Stoics also paid special attention to Etymology. They 
regarded language as a product of nature, and ' onomatopoeia ' as 
the principle on which words were first formed. This is defi- 
nitely stated by Origen*, and the statement is confirmed in a 
treatise bearing the name of St Augustine^; while, before the 
time of either, the fanciful etymologies of the Stoics had been 
singled out for attack by Galen'*. Apart from Diogenes Laertius 
and certain ancient commentators on Aristotle, our chief authority 
for the views of the Stoics on questions of language is the treatise 
of St Augustine above mentioned^. Their grammatical theories 
were known to Varro, who (as he tells us) combined the study of 
Cleanthes with that of Aristophanes of Byzantium*. 

The founder of the Stoics, Zeno of Citium (336-264), is said 
to have written Trtpl Xe'lewv, and as, in Stoic termi- 
nology, At^ts is defined as ' voice in written form ', 
it has been conjectured that the work dealt mainly with definitions 
of terms, while it included passages in which the author gave an 
extended meaning to the term ' solecism ' ^. He also wrote on 

^ Steinthal, i 309, 314; T. Rumpel, Castislehre, 1845, pp. i — 70. 

^ Contra Celsum, i p. 18, ...ws vofj.ii^'ovffiv 01 diro ttjs 2roas (f>\j(Tei {iarl rd. 
ovd/J-ara), /xifiov/x^vuv tCiv irpdiruv (pwvQv rk ir pay fxara Kad' Civ to. ovofiara, Kadb 
/cat (TTOixeia, riva erv/JLoXoyia^ eladyovcriv. 

■^ Principia Dialecticae, c. 6, haec quasi cunabula verborum esse credide- 
runt, ut sensus rerum cum sonorum sensu concordarent. 

* De Platonis et Hippocr. Dogm. ii 2, dXafwi' kari fj-dprvi 17 irvfj-oXoyia..., 
(Chrysippus appeals to the evidence of poets and) Trjv ^eXricrrrjv irvfioXoyiav -fj 
Ti. 6.XX0 TOLovTOv, d Trepalvfi p.kv oiiSiv, dvaXiffKu Se Kai Kararpi^ei fidr-qv rj/xCov 
rbv -xfibvov. — On the subject in general cp. R. Schmidt, Stoicoriim Grammatica, 
1839; also Steinthal, i 27: — 374; Christ, § 426-', and Susemihl, i 48 — 87. 

6 Steinthal, i 293 f; Teuffel, Rom. Lit., § 440, 7 Schwabe. 

^ Varro, L. L. v 9, non solum ad Aristophanis lucernam, sed etiam ad 
Cleanthis lucubravi. 

' A. C. Pearson, Fragments of Zeno and Cleanthes, pp. 27, 81, 82. 



IX.] ZENO. CLEANTHES. CHRYSIPPUS. I47 

' poetry ', together with five books on ' Homeric problems ', full of 
allegorical interpretations, which were justly attacked by Aris- 
tarchus'. Like Aristotle, he accepted the Margites as a work of 
Homeric authorship, and in Od. iv 84 he introduced by emen- 
dation a reference to the ' Arabians ' ^ He regarded Zeus, Hera 
and Poseidon as representing aether, air and water respectively ; 
and, in interpreting Hesiod's Theogony, he gave free play to his 
etymological fancy ^ The allegorical interpretation of myths in 
general, and of the Homeric poems in particular, was in fact one 
of the characteristics of the Stoic school*. 

Zeno's successor, Cleanthes of Assos (331-232), wTote on 
grammar, and was the first of the Stoics to write on 

, . , ^ , . , , » ., , , Cleanthes 

rhetoric . In his work ircpi tov iroLrfTov he treated 
of Homer, applying playful etymologies and fanciful allegories to 
the interpretation of the poet. In the allegorical sense which he 
applies to the herb ' moly ' we find the earliest known example of 
the word aXXrpfopiKw^^. With Cleanthes 'the Eleusinian mys- 
teries are an allegory ; Homer, if properly understood, is a witness 
to truth ,: the very names given to Zeus, Persephone, Apollo, and 
Aphrodite are indications of the hidden meaning which is veiled 
but not perverted by the current belief, and the same is true of 
the myths of Heracles and Atlas '". He described poetry as the 
best medium for expressing the dignity of divinity^; and his grave 
and dignified Hymn to Zeus is still extant ^ 

As a representative of the grammatical as well as the general 
teaching of the Stoics he was less famous than Chrj-- 
sippus (c. 280 — c. 208-4), who is proverbially known 
as the Pillar of the Stoic Porch'", d \i.t] yap rjv Xpvannro^, ovk av 
rjv Sroa". He showed his independence of character by de- 

^ Diog. Laert. vii 4; Dion Chrys. Or. 53, 4. 

* Pearson, I.e., pp. 31, 218, 219. 

» Pearson, I.e., pp. 13, 155. * Zeller's Stoics, 334—348. 

' Cic. de Fin. iv 7; Quint, ii 15, 35; Striller, De Stoicorum studiis rhe- 
toricis. 

* Pearson, pp. 287, 293. ^ ib. p. 43. 

* Philodemus, De Musiea, col. 28; cp. Seneca, Ep. 108, 10 {ib. p. 279 f). 
' Stobaeus, Eel. i i, 12 (ib. p. 274). 

^* Cic. Aead. ii 75, qui fulcire putabatur porticum Stoicorum. 
^^ Diog. Laert. vii 183. 



148 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

dining an invitation to the court of Alexandria, and by never 
dedicating to royalty any of his numerous works. They exceeded 
the number of 700, and it was said of him that no one ever was 
a clearer dialectician or a worse writer' ; accordingly his writings 
have not survived. Himself a native of Soli in Cilicia, he wrote 
several works on ' Solecisms ', a term which then had no con- 
nexion with the dialect of the inhabitants of Soli, but implied 
faults of logic, as well as offences against good taste and correct 
pronunciation ^ He also wrote a series of works on 'ambiguity' 
(d/i,^i/3o/\ta), with treatises ' on the five cases ', * on singular and 
plural terms', 'on rhetoric', and 'on the parts of speech 'I To 
the five parts of speech recognised by Chrysippus (ovo/xa, irpocr- 
■qyopia, prjfia, <rvvS€crixo<: and apOpov), his pupil, Antipater of 
Tarsus, added a sixth (p.ea-oTrj'i, the participle). Chrysippus 
agreed with Zeno in holding that not only justice, but also law, 
and language in its correct form {6p66<; Adyos), exist by nature. 
He wrote four books on ' anomaly '^ being (so far as is known) 
the first to use the term in a grammatical sense, as the opposite 
of ' analogy '\ the adherents of 'analogy' insisting on the ru/es 
applicable to the forms of words, and the adherents of ' anomaly ' 
on the exceptions. The cause of ' analogy ' was maintained by the 
Alexandrian critic, Aristarchus, while among the most conspicuous 
adherents of ' anomaly ' was the Stoic Crates of Mallos, who, like 
Chrysippus and Antipater, was a native of Cilicia, and (about 
168 B.C.) was the head of the Pergamene school. 

Pergamon, the literary rival of Alexandria, was a town of 

ancient origin in a lofty situation looking down on 
andTts^'uiers ^^^ vallcy of the Caicus, about 15 miles from the 

Mysian coast. Early in the Alexandrian age a 
dynasty was there founded by Philetaerus, treasurer of Lysimachus, 
king of Thrace. Throwing off his allegiance to Lysimachus 
{c. 283), he appropriated the vast treasure of 9000 talents entrusted 

1 Dion. Hal., De Comp. Verb. c. 4. 

2 Grafenhan, i 508 f. 

' Classen, De Gram. Gr. Prim. 73 f. 

* Diog. Laert. vii 192, Trepi tt)% Kara rdj X^^eis dvunaXLas Trpbs Aluva, 5'; 
Varro, L. L., ix i (Susemihl, ii 8). 
5 Lersch, Sprachphilosophie, i 51. 



IX.] PERGAMON AND ITS RULERS. 149 

to his care, and bequeathed his power to his nephews Eumenes I 
(263-241) and Attalus I (241-197). Eumenes I was not only a 
generous patron of Arcesilaus, a native of the neighbouring town 
of Pitane, the first president of the Middle Academy at Athens, 
and the writer of epigrams in honour of Attalus I ; he also 
invited to his court the Peripatetic philosopher, Lycon'. His 
famous successor Attalus I claimed the title of king after his 
early victories over the Gallic invaders, and celebrated those 
victories by a splendid series of sculptures in bronze, the most 
famous of which is familiar to us in the marble copy now known 
as the 'Dying Gaul' of the Capitoline Museum. Among the 
sculptors employed on these works was Antigonus, who also wrote 
treatises on the toreutic art and on famous painters, and is once 
called Antigonus of Car>stos*. The sculptor and writer on art 
has accordingly been identified with the author of that name and 
place, who died later than 226 B.C., after writing lives of philoso- 
phers founded on his personal knowledge and frequently quoted 
by Diogenes Laertius, and also a work on the wonders of nature, 
which is srill extant. In literature he is the leading representative 
of the earlier Pergamene School*. Attalus I was himself an 
author, and his description of a large pine-tree in the Troad is 
preserved in Strabo (p. 603). He invited to his court Lacydes, 
the successor of Arcesilaus, as the head of the Academy at 
Athens, but Lacydes declined with the apt reply that pictures 
should be seen from a certain distance. He nevertheless laid out 
for Lacydes a special garden in the grounds of the Academy*. 
He was more successful in inviting the future historian of his reign, 
the younger Neanthes, and the eminent mathematician, Apol- 
lonius of Perga, who dedicated to the king his celebrated work on 
Conic Sections. It was probably under his rule that books 
began to be collected for the Pergamene Librar\', 

, , ,. ^ .,..,,.. ^ .. . The Library 

but the credit of actually buildmg the fabnc is 

expressly assigned by Strabo (p. 624) to his successor Eumenes II 

^ Diog. Laert. iv 30, 38. 

* Zenobius, Paroem., v 82. 

' Cp. the brilliant and su^estive work of Wiiamowitz, Antigonos von 
Karystos, in Phil. Unt. iv ; also Christ, § 430* ; and Susemihl, i 468 f. 

* Diog. Laert. iv 60. 



11^ 



I50 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

(197-159 B.C.), the elder son of Attalus I by ApoUonis, whose 
beautiful head may still be seen figured on the coins of Cyzicus^ 
Eumenes II strove to bring the Library to the same level as that 
of Alexandria, and apparently endeavoured to induce Aristophanes 
of Byzantium to leave Alexandria for Pergamon^ He adorned 
his capital with magnificent structures, including a great altar of 
Zeus. The frieze represented the battle of the Gods and Giants 
in a perfect pantheon of highly animated mythological figures, 
whose varied attributes possibly owed part of their inspiration to 
the learned mythologists of the Pergamene Library ^ The altar 
has been assigned to about 180-170 b.c, and our knowledge of 
its sculptures, as well as of the architecture and topography of 
Pergamon in general, has been vastly increased by the German 
excavations of 1878 to 1886*. Along a lower level than the 
precinct of the altar, ran the vast terrace of the theatre, with the 
theatre itself above it, to the left of the altar. Above the theatre 
and the altar was the precinct of the temple of Athena Polias 
Nicephorus, with the acropolis rising beyond it, looo feet above 
the level of the sea. The precinct of Athena, a quadrangle of 
about 240 feet by 162, was bounded on the east by a single 
colonnade, about 19 feet in breadth, and by a double colonnade, 
twice as broad, to the north. These colonnades were in two 
stories, and to the north of the upper storey of the double 
colonnade the remains of four large rooms have been discovered. 
The largest of these is 42 feet in length and 49 in width ; the rest 
vary in length, and are 39 feet wide. Along the eastern, northern 
and western sides of the largest room are the foundations of a 
narrow platform or bench, and in the centre of the northern side 
a mass of stonework identified as the pedestal of a statue. In 
front of this pedestal, and facing the south-east entrance, was 
found a colossal statue of Athena, the tutelar divinity of libraries"; 
and, in adjacent portions of the ruins, pedestals of statues bearing 

^ Head's Coins of ike Ancients, Plate 48, 6. For portrait of Eumenes II, 
see p. 164 infra. 

^ Suidas {s.v. 'Apia-roip.) ws ^ov\6ij.fi>os irpos 'Ev/i^fri ^vyeiv, supra, p. in. 

^ E. A. Gardner's Handbook of Gr. Sculpture, ii 462. 

* Cp. the official reports; also Baumeister's Denkmdler, pp. 1201 — 1287; 
and Holm, iv c. 21, n. i etc. 

^ Juv. iii 219; Plin. N. H. vii 210. 



1 



IX.] THE PERGAMENE LIBRARY. I5I 

the names of Homer, Alcaeus, Herodotus and Timotheus of 
Miletus (d. 357 b.c), besides two Macedonian historians (Apol- 
lonius and Balacrus) who are less known to fame'. A block of 
stone inscribed with a couplet in honour of Sappho, identical 
with that assigned in Anth. vii 15 to Antipater of Sidon 
(c. 150 B.C.), had been seen at Pergamon early in the fifteenth 
centur}\ Such portrait-statues are characteristic of libraries*. In 
the largest room were observed two rows of holes in the north 
wall, and the lower of these two rows was continued along the 
east wall. These holes may have served to receive supports for 
brackets or shelves. There is every probability that the ruins of 
these four rooms are all that remains of the famous Pergamene 
Library ^ The small adjacent rooms may have been used by 
copyists and attendants, while the upper floor of the colonnade 
in front of the Library may have served as a place of either 
transit or lounge. In any case it had a sunny outlook towards the 
S.E., thus commanding an immediate view of the temple of the 
'Victorious Athena' and the sculptured memorials of victory or 
of gratitude in the court below, and, beyond the latter, a wide 
prospect of the valley of the Caicus. 

The inscriptions above the colonnades and on the literary 
statues already mentioned are sometimes assigned to the reign of 
Attalus 11 (159-138)*, who, like both of his predecessors, was a 
patron of art and learning. It was to Attalus II that Apollodorus 
of Athens dedicated his great work on Chronology after leaving 
Alexandria for Pergamon (c. 146 B.C.)'. As a pupil of the Stoic 
Seleucus, and, for a still longer time, of Aristarchus, Apollodorus 
forms a link between the school of Alexandria and that of 
Pergamon, which was closely connected with the Stoic philo- 
sophy, 

1 Frankel, nos. 198—^03. 2 pijn_ j\/^, //, xxxv 10. 

' Conze, Monatsher. d. Berlin. Akad. 1884, pp. 1259 — 1270; Baumeister's 
Dmkmdler, p. 1222 with general plan on p. 1215 and restoration of the pre- 
cinct of Athena on p. 12 19; Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Bibliotheken, p. 414; Pon- 
tremoli and Collignon's Pergame, pp. 135—152 ; and J. W. Clark, The Care of 
Books (1901), pp. 7 — II, where there is a plan of the Library reduced from 
Plate iii in vol. 11 of the Altertiimer von Pergamon, 1885. 

* Urlichs, Perg. Inschr. (1883) p. 20 f. 

' See p. 135. 



152 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Attalus II was succeeded by Attains III (138-133), a san- 
guinary tyrant, who failed to follow the great example set by his 
predecessors either as patrons of learning or as promoters of the 
arts of sculpture and architecture. He was apparently, however, 
the theme of an encomium by Nicander {c. 202 — c. 133), already 
mentioned (p. 116) as the author of didactic poems on venomous 
bites and on antidotes, who possibly had some sympathy with the 
king's pursuits. Neglecting his royal duties, he amused himself 
with gardening, taking special interest in the cultivation of 
poisonous plants. He also had a fancy for making models in wax 
and casting figures in bronze '. Such was the degenerate form in 
which the patronage of art expired in the last of the Attalids. 
The inscriptions of Pergamon'^ credit him however with military 
prowess in some victory (possibly involving a slight extension of 
territory) which is otherwise unknown. In his brief reign of five 
years there appears to have been nothing more notable than the 
bequest of his property to the Roman people (133 b.c). His 
family had then been in power for exactly 150 years ^ 

Antigonus of Carystos has already been mentioned as the 
leading representative of the early Pergamene school 
iiimn'"°"° (P- ^49)- Among other scholars who owed allegiance 
to the rulers of Pergamon, was Polemon of Ilium, a 
contemporary of Aristophanes of Byzantium {fl. 200-177 B.C.). 
He is known to have addressed a letter to Attalus, probably the 
first of that name. It was doubtless in recognition of his work on 
the treasures of Delphi that he was made diproxenus of that place 
in 177 B.C. He lived for some time at Athens, of which he 
became a citizen, and also probably at Pergamon; but he was 
specially famous for his extensive travels in all parts of Greece, 
and in Italy and Sicily. He was a prolific writer on Greek 
topography, and his diligence in copying, collecting and ex- 
pounding inscriptions led to his receiving from an adherent of 

^ Justin xxxvi 4, 3 (ap. Susemihl, ii 415). 

* Frankel, nos. 246, 249. 

3 On the history of Pergamon, cp. Fynes-Clinton, Fasti Hell., iii 400 — 4 10; 
Holm's History of Greece, iv c. 13, n. 6, and c. 21; and Wilcken in Pauly- 
Wissowa, s.v. Attains. On the 'will' of Attalus HI cp. Mommsen, History of 
Rome, Bk iv c. i, and Mahafify in Her7tiathena, ix (1896), pp. 389—405. 



IX.] POLEMON. DEMETRIUS OF SCEPSIS. 1 53 

Crates in a later age the title of stelokopas, or 'the tapper of 
tablets", a title reminding us of the itinerant antiquar)' whose 
care in tending the moss-grown memorials of the names of the 
Covenanters led to his being known as 'Old Mortality'. Polemon 
was however more widely known as the periegetes. His works 
were quoted by Didymus and Aristonicus, and by Strabo and 
Plutarch, the latter of whom eulogises his learning and his vivid 
interest in Hellenic matters-. He devoted four books to the 
Votive Offerings on the Athenian Acropolis alone. The question 
how far Pausanias is directly or indirectly indebted to Polemon 
has been much discussed, but his indebtedness is conclusively 
disproved by Mr Frazer'. His interests were not limited to 
topography. His antiquarian researches led him to the study of 
Greek Comedy, and we owe to Polemon nearly all that is known 
on the subject of Greek parodies*. 

Antiquarian research was represented in the same age by 
Demetrius of Scepsis in the Troad (born c. 214 B.C.), 
who wrote a discursive work in 30 books on the scep^s*""*" 
list of the Trojan forces comprised in only 60 lines 
of the second book of the Iliad. In the language of Professor 
Jebb, ' this work appears to have been one of the most wonderful 
monuments of scholarly labour which even the indefatigable 
erudition of the Alexandrian age produced. The most complete 
examination of every point which the subject raised or suggested 
was supported by stores of learning drawn from ever)- province of 
ancient literature, from every- source of oral or local tradition. 
Mytholog)', histor)-, geography, the monographs of topographers, 
the observations of travellers, poetr)- of ever}- age and kind, 
science in all its ancient branches, appear to have been laid under 
contribution by this encyclopaedic commentator'*. He is quoted 
by Strabo in more than 25 passages, particularly in connexion 
with the topography of the Troad, where his local knowledge is 
described as especially valuable (p. 602, § 43). In agreement 

* Herodicus ap. Athen. 434 D. 

* Qu. Syntp. v 2, 675 B, xoKvy-adov^ koX w vvaTa.^ovTo% ev rdis 'EXXiju/cors 
rpdyfuunv dvdpos. 

' Pausanias, I Ixxxiii — xc. 

* Athen. 698 B. Susemihl, i 665—676. » /. H. S. ii 34 f. 



154 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

with the views of Hellanicus of Miletus, Polemon of Ilium had 
with local patriotism identified the Greek Ilium in the Trojan 
plain as the site of Homeric Troy. The Greek Ilium corresponds 
to Hissarlik, or Schliemann's 'Troy', which lies only 3 miles 
from the Hellespont. The pretensions of the Ilians were re- 
jected by Demetrius of Scepsis in favour of a lofty site about 
3I miles further inland, corresponding to the village of Bundr- 
bashi^. 

From Polemon of Ilium and Demetrius of Scepsis, who 
belonged to the district of the Troad subject to the rulers of 
Pergamon, we pass to the name of one who was closely connected 
with Pergamon itself. The head of the Pergamene school during 

the reign of Eumenes II (the builder of the Library) 
Malfo^s^ ° ^'^s Crates of Mallos. He was a strong opponent 

of his somewhat earlier contemporary, the great 
critic Aristarchus of Alexandria, being (like Chrysippus) an 
adherent of 'anomaly' as opposed to ' analogy '^ He was also 
an opponent of Aristarchus in the allegorical treatment of Homer 
which (as we have seen, p. 147) was characteristic of the Stoic 
school to which Crates belonged. His views were expounded in 
an allegorical commentary on Homer, and also in a critical 
commentary, entitled 'O/jirjpLKd and 8iopOu)TtKd respectively^. Frag- 
ments of these are preserved in the scholia, which also contain 
traces of a ' life of Homer '. Besides these we have some stray 
remarks on Hesiod, and fuller proof of the existence of commen- 
taries on Euripides and Aristophanes, with a work on the Attic 
dialect. Whether he produced any 'edition' of Homer, as 
distinguished from critical remarks on the text, is uncertain*. 

1 Jebb's Homer, p. 148; cp. J. H. S. ii 33, iii 185 f; and (in favour of 
Hissarlik) Mahaffy, ib. iii 69 f. 

2 Varro, L. Z. ix 1, Crates nobilis granimaticus qui fretus Chrysippo 
homine acutissimo, qui reliquit Trepi dvwfiaXias nil libros, contra analogiam 
atque Aristarchum est nixus. Gellius, ii 25, dvaXoyia est similium similis decli- 
natio, quam quidem Latine proportionem vocant. dvui/jLaXia est inaequalitas 
declinationum, consuetudinem sequens. Duo autem Graeci Grammatici illus- 
tres, Aristarchus et Crates, summo opere ille d.va\oyiav, hie dvufiaXlav defen- 
sitavit. 

^ He appears to have proposed Bis for rpis in Od. xii 106 (Ludwich's 
Homervulgata, p. 193 f). 

* C. Wachsmuth, De Cratete Mallota (i860), p. 31 ; Ludwich, i 43 ; Maass, 



IX.j CRATES OF MALLOS. 155 

Among his Homeric readings several deserve mention, as in //. 
xxi 323, Tu/i^oxor/? (for Tv/i/Soxoi7<r(ai), preferred by Aristarchus), 

ib. 558, ■Kpo'i ireBiov 'ISt^lov (for 'Ikrjiov), and xxiv 253, /cari/c^ccs 

(for KaTr](fi6i€^). In xi 754 he preferred 8ta o-TriSe'os to 81' do-TriScos 
TreStoto'. He agreed with Zenodotus and Eratosthenes, against 
Aristarchus, in allowing Homer to combine the dual with the 
pluraP. He endeavoured to bring Homer into accord with the 
Stoic views on geography. The stream of Oceanus was supposed 
to flow through the torrid zone, sending forth two branches 
towards each of the poles. The scene of the voyage of Odysseus 
was accordingly laid in the outer and not (as Aristarchus thought) 
in the inner (or Mediterranean) sea\ Menelaus in his voyage of 
seven years was deemed to have sailed from Gadeira to India *. 
In the description of the land of the Laestrygones, where 'the 
courses of the night and day are near together' (Od. x 86), Crates 
saw a reference to the short northern nights'. His interest in 
geography was further shown by the fact that he constructed a 
terrestrial globe, mentioned by Strabo (p. 116)®, 

The controversy on 'analogy' and 'anomaly', in which Crates 
was interested as a grammarian of the Stoic school, turned 
mainly on matters of declension and conjugation. Aristophanes 
of Byzantium had endeavoured to classify words by the application 
of five tests. If two words were of the same 'kind', e.g. both of 
them nouns or verbs, in the same ' case ' or ' inflexion ', and 
identical in termination, number of syllables and sound, they were 
'analogous' to one another; i.e. they belonged to the same 
declension or conjugation. Aristarchus added a sixth test, by 
which both the words compared were to be simple or both of 
them compound. Crates appears to have regarded all the trouble 
spent on determining the laws of declension and conjugation as 
idle and superfluous, and preferred simply to accept the phe- 



Aratea, pp. 167 — 207. Maass (p. 172) maintains that Crates produced three 
Homeric works, (i) 5i6pdu<ris, (2) xcpt SiopOdxreus or diopduriKd, (3) 'O/jirjpiKd. 

^ Wachsmuth, 28 f. 2 ,3 ^q f_ 

3 Cell, xiv 6, 3. ■• Strabo, p. 38. 

' Schol. on Aratus, Phaen. 61. 

• Vol. Hercul. xi 147^, rh. irepl ttjs ff<paipoirot<xs 6 Kp[d}n]i (Usener, ap. 
Maass, I.e., p. 169). 



156 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

nomena of language as the arbitrary results of custom and usage. 
But he was wrong in denying all 'analogy', and in practically 
opposing the accurate grammatical scholarship of the Alexandrian 
school'. 

Crates was probably responsible for drawing up the classified 
lists (TTiVaKcs) of authors in the Pergamene Library, in which (as is 
sometimes held) the leading writers of prose, especially the orators, 
had a prominent place, just as the poets had in the lists of the 
Alexandrian grammarians ^ It is true that Dionysius of Halicar- 
nassus mentions the Pergamene lists in connexion with a speech 
of Deinarchus* ; but he also states that he had found no detailed 
account of that orator written either by Callimachus, or by the 
Pergamene scholars'*. This shows that the critic was equally 
prepared to find what he wanted in the lists of the Alexandrian as 
in those of the Pergamene school, and that the orators were not 
necessarily excluded from the former. Again, Athenaeus^ says of 
a play ascribed to Alexis, that it was not included in the lists of 
Callimachus or Aristophanes, or even in those drawn up by the 
scholars in Pergamon. It will be observed that poets were not 
excluded from the Pergamene lists. The poet Alcman is the 
subject of the only notice which has been conjecturally identified 
as a fragment of the lists of Crates'; and the only epigram 
attributed to Crates (Anth. xi 218) describes the epic poet 
Choerilus as far inferior to Antimachus. 

Crates was sent as an envoy to the Roman Senate 'shortly 
after the death of Ennius'. Now, Ennius died in 169 B.C., and 
Suetonius', who connects the visit of Crates with that event, also 

' Susemihl, ii 7—10; cp. Steinthal, ii 121—126. On Crates in general cp. 
Lubbert, Rhein. Mus. xi (1857), 428—443 ; C. Wachsmuth, I.e., and Hiibner's 
Bibliographic, § 13. 

2 Reififerscheid, Breslau, 1881-2; Brzoska, ibid. 1883 (Susemihl, i 343, 521, 
ii 12, 484, 694). 

* De Dein. 11, o\]tq% iv roh IlepyafjLrjvoh Ulva^t ^iperai ws KaWiKpdrovi. 

* ib. I, hpQsv ovUv cLKpi^es o&re KaWlfiaxov oSre roits iK nepyafiov ypa/xfia- 
TiKoiis nepl avrov ypaxpavras. 

* 336 E, 01 ras €V Ylepydfiii! avaypa(pks iroiriffdfjLevoi. 

^ Suidas, 'AXKfjLav AaKuv dwb Me<xff6as, Kara 5i tov Kpar-qra. rrTaiovra (?) 
Avdbs iK "ZdpSeuv. 

7 De Grammaticis, c. 2, primus... studium grammaticae in urbem intulit 



I 



IX.] per(;amox and rome. 157 

states that Crates was sent to Rome by Attalus, i.e. Attalus II, 
who came to the throne in 159 b.c. Hence it is sometimes 
assumed (e.g. by Fynes-Clinton) that the visit of Crates belongs 
to the year 159. But it appears probable that, while Suetonius is 
right in connecting it closely with the death of Ennius, he is 
wrong in assigning it to the reign of Attalus. Attalus was re- 
peatedly in Rome as the envoy of his elder brother Eumenes II 
when the latter was on the throne. Of the five years in which he 
was in Rome (193, 181, 168, 163, 160), one was 168 B.C., the 
year immediately after the death of Ennius, when, after fighting 
on the side of Aemilius Paulus at Pydna, he was sent to con- 
gratulate the Romans on their victor)'. On this occasion he was 
certainly accompanied by the physician Stratius (Liv. xlv 19), and 
it appears probable that he was also accompanied by Crates. It 
would thus appear that Crates was really sent ab Eutnene rege cum 
Atta/o, and not ab Attalo rege. By a curious accident the visit of 
Crates had a remarkable effect on literary studies in Rome. 
\\'hile he was wandering on the Palatine, he accidentally stumbled 
over an opening in a drain and broke his leg. He passed part of 
the time during which he was thus detained in giving lectures, 
which aroused among the Romans a taste for the scholarly study 
of literature, %nth results which will be mentioned as soon as we 
reach the Roman age (p. 1 70). It may here, however, be suggested 
that, in the course of his conversations with leading Romans, he 
could hardly have failed to mention the halls and colonnades of 
the Pergamene Librar\' and the adjacent temple, the building of 
which is assigned to Eumenes II, whose envoy he seems to have 
been. As Attalus whom he apparently accompanied to Rome 
had fought at Pydna, and as Quintus Metellus was one of the 
three selected to carry to Rome the despatches announcing the 
victor)- (Li\7 xliv 45), Metellus doubtless met Crates in Rome. 
In this connexion it is interesting to remember that in 146 b.c, 
Metellus built the colonnades of the Porticus Metelli and one of 

Crates Mallotes, Aristarchi aequalis, qui missus ad senatum ab Attalo rege 
inter secundum ac tertium Punicum bellum sub ipsam Ettnii mortem, cum 
r^one Palatii prolapsus in cloacae foramen cms fregisset, per omne legationis 
simul et valetudinis tempus plurimas acroasis subinde fecit assidueque disseruit, 
c nostris exemplo fuit ad imitandum. Cp. Scioppius, Introd. to Gram. Phi- 
losophka (1628), quoted in Max Miiller's Lectures, ii no*. 



158 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the temples which they enclosed, and that the Porticus Odaviae, 
built by Augustus on its site (after 33 B.C.), included within its 
colonnades a Ubrary of Greek and also a library of Latin books, 
which succeeded that of Asinius Pollio in the Airiufn Libertatis 
(37 B.C.), and preceded the Palatine Library (28 B.C.)'. Thus the 
visit of Crates may have ultimately had some influence on the 
structural arrangements of the public libraries of Rome. 

The most famous pupil of Crates was the Stoic philosopher 

Panaetius*. To his school also belonged Artemon 
of'c'rltM^°°^ of Pergamon, the author of a commentary on 

Pindar's Odes in honour of Sicilian princes ; Zeno- 
dotus of Mallos, who defended certain Homeric passages obelised 
by Aristarchus; Asclepiades of Myrleia in Bithynia (born between 
130 and 80 B.C.), who wrote a learned monograph on Nestor's 
cup, with commentaries on Homer and Theocritus, a history of 
Bithynia and a history of 'grammarians'; and Heracleon of 
Tilotis in Egypt, the author of a commentary on the Iliad and 
Odyssey''. 

While there is no evidence as to any direct connexion between 
Pergamon and the 'Asiatic' style of oratory represented {c. 250 B.C.) 
by Hegesias, a native of the city of Magnesia ad Sipylum, about 
40 miles distant, we have certainly a point of contact between 
Pergamon and the Attic reaction in the first century B.C., and also 

between both and Rome. Pergamon was the birth- 
of^Pe°rgamor P^^^^ of the rhetorician ApoUodorus {c. 102— 

c. 20 B.C.), who, after counting 'the Attic Dionysius' 
among his pupils in his native place, left Pergamon for Rome, 
where he was selected by Julius Caesar as an instructor of the 
young Octavian (45 B.C.), and where he founded a flourishing 
school of rhetoric'*. Another point of contact between Pergamon 

and Rome may be found in the person of the Stoic 

Athenodorus of Tarsus, who abused his position as 
head of the Pergamene Library by attempting to tamper with 

^ Cp. Middleton's Ancient Rome, ii 200 f ; and J. W. Clark, The Care of 
Books, pp. 12 — 14. 

'^ The friend of the younger Scipio, and the authority followed by Cicero 
in the De Officiis. 

3 Susemihl, ii 13 — 27. * Susemihl, ii 504 f. 



IX.] THE SCHOOL OF CRATES. 1 59 

passages in the works of the earUer Stoics differing from the views 
of their successors \ He is perhaps in part responsible for the 
stor)' respecting the Peisistratean redaction of the Homeric 
poems ^ He was already an old man in 70 b.c when Cato 
visited Pergamon, and invited him to become an inmate of his 
house in Rome, where he died^ The school of Crates claims 
another learned Greek who settled in Rome, 
Alexander Polyhistor {c. 105 — c. 35 B.C.). Taken Alexander 

1 • /■ r^ 11 . -. . . Polyhistor 

prisoner in the time of Sulla, he was made a citizen 
of Rome by the Dictator, after he had served as a teacher in the 
house of Lentulus. His writings, which were more remarkable 
for their quantity than their quality, were mainly uncritical 
compilations on historical and geographical subjects. His 
legendary histor>' of Rome was followed in certain points by Livy 
(i 3), Tibullus (ii 5) and Virgil {Aai. x 388); and his list of the 
Sibyls and his early history of Delphi, by Pausanias. He was 
interested in the nations of the East and especially in the Jews. 
He appears to have aimed at supplying the imperfectly educated 
Roman public mth a variety of information which would enable 
them to understand the learned poets of the day, and would 
foster a belief in the legendary' connexion between the kings of 
Rome and the heroes of Troy. Among his pupils was the freed- 
man Hyginus, who was appointed by Augustus to preside over 
the Palatine Library*. 

In comparing the scholarship of Alexandria with that of 
Pergamon, we must remember that the former 
passed through several phases. Under the first an^'pe^rglJTon 
Ptolemy, Hecataeus of Abdera, who was a historian 
as well as a scholar, wrote a histor>' of Eg>pt representing it as 
the home of wisdom from time immemorial^ Under the first 
three Ptolemies, whose combined rule extended over a century 
(323-222 B.C.), scholarship of the first rank flourished at Alex- 
andria and left its mark on all later ages, while the poetry of that 
time, which found imitators in Rome, was of the second rank, 



I 



^ Diog. Laert. vii 34. 2 Susemihl, ii 246. 

» Plut. Cato Minor, 10, 16. 

* Susemihl, ii 356—364; Pauly-Wissowa, i 1449 f, 

* Holm, iv c. 20, n. 8. 



l6o THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

except in the case of Theocritus, who was not very closely 
connected with Alexandria. In the first age of Alexandrian 
scholarship Philetas, Zenodotus, Callimachus and Eratosthenes 
were 'poets' as well as scholars. In the second, Aristophanes 
and Aristarchus were scholars alone : the scholar had now 
narrowed into the specialist, but had gained a new power in the 
process. This second age closes with the accession of Ptolemy 
Physcon (146), and the death of Aristarchus (c. 143). Physcon 
played at textual criticism, and yet persecuted the Greeks of 
Alexandria, including the great critic himself. The Alexandrian 
Greeks are described by Polybius (xxxiv 14), who visited their 
city about 136 B.C., as less uncivilised than the mercenary soldiers, 
while, in comparison with both, the native Egyptians were ' clever 
and civilised'. Physcon set his mercenaries upon the Alex- 
andrians of Greek descent with the result that this class was 
almost extinct when Polybius visited the place. This persecution 
of the Greeks made the Jews, who had been influenced by Greek 
culture, and were regarded with suspicion by Physcon, an in- 
creasingly important element in the intellectual life of Alexandria. 
It also 'filled the islands and cities with grammarians, philosophers, 
geometricians, musiqians, painters, trainers, physicians and many 
other professional persons, whose poverty impelled them to teach 
what they knew, and thus to turn out many notable pupils '^ In 
the third age of Alexandrian scholarship, a pupil of Aristarchus, 
Apollodorus of Athens, preferred Athens and Pergamon to 
Alexandria, while Dionysius the Thracian left Alexandria for 
Rhodes, and Didymus, a century later, possibly resided in 
Rome. 

But in all its phases the school of Alexandria was in the main 
a school of verbal criticism. Even the versatile and widely- 
accomplished Eratosthenes laid himself open to the attacks of a 
representative of the Pergamene school, Polemon of Ilium, who 
exposed his mistakes in matters connected with Attic antiquities, 
drawing from them the ironical inference that Eratosthenes, who 
was actually educated at Athens, could never have visited Athens 



1 On Physcon (Euergetes II), see stipra, p. 135, n. i. 
^ Menecles ap. Athen. 184 c. 



IX.] ALEXANDRIA AND PERGAMOX. l6l 

at air. This is one of the earliest indications of the literary 
rivalr>- between Alexandria and Pergamon. The conflict between 
Aristarchus, the adherent of ' analog}' ', and Crates, the adherent 
of ' anomaly ', is another. The feud descended to the successors 
of both : pupils of Aristarchus, such as Dionysius Thrax and 
Parmeniscus, attacked the opinions of Crates, while a pupil of 
Crates, Zenodotus of Mallos, attacked those of Aristarchus ^ It 
found an echo even in distant Babylon. A follower of Crates, of 
uncertain date, named Herodicus of Babylon, doubtless recalling 
the disputes of the Alexandrian critics on the epic forms of the 
personal pronouns, and especially the fact that Aristarchus had 
proved that Homer used only /xiv, not vlv, describes the followers 
of Aristarchus as 'buzzing in corners, and busy with mono- 
syllables': — 

ywvio^6fi^vKfS fiovwTvWa^oi, dffi fuenrjKev 
rb <r<f)iv Kai ffipwtv kcu rb fup TjSi rb viv^. 

^^'hile the school of Alexandria was mainly interested in 
verbal scholarship, the school of Pergamon found room for a 
larger variety of scholarly studies. In that school art and the 
history of art were represented by Antigonus of Carystos ; learned 
travel and the study of inscriptions, by Polemon of Ilium ; 
topography, by Demetrius of Scepsis ; chronolog)', by Apollodorus 
of Athens ; the philosophy of the Stoics, combined with grammar 
and literary criticism, by Crates of Mallos. The cosmopolitan 
Stoics were readily induced to settle in Pergamon, while philo- 
sophers of the Academic school remained true to Athens. 
Attalus I and Eumenes I showed a special interest in that school, 
and in Athens in general. The former commemorated his 
conquest of the Gauls by dedicating famous works of sculpture 

1 irept rijj \Kdr)VT)<Tu> 'Eparoffdivovs (Trid-rj/juai. Cp. Strabo, p. 15, with 
Wilamowitz, Antigonos von ICarystos, p. 164 f; and Susemihl, i 670 f. 

^ C. Wachsmuth, /. c. 7. 

3 Athen. p. 222 A, cp. Cobet, Misc. Crit., p. 250, and Susemihl, ii 24 f. 
Similarly Philip of Thessalonica (probably in the time of Trajan) satirically 
describes grammarians as belonging to the pack of Zenodotus and the troops 
of Callimachus, as hunters of wretched particles, who delight in luv and <T<piv 
(Anth. xi 321), and as bookworms of the school of Aristarchus; and prays 
that an inglorious night may descend on the followers of Callimachus {ib. 347) ; 
cp. xi 142, and Virgil, Catal. ii 4. 

S. II 



l62 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. 

on the acropolis of Athens, as well as on the lofty terraces of 
Pergamon ; and, in the time of the latter, Pergamon had its own 
festival of the Panathenaea. The Attalid dynasty was also 
strongly attracted towards Rome. While the Alexandrian Aris- 
tophanes suggested the possible spuriousness of the lines in which 
Poseidon foretells the rule of Aeneas (//. xx 306-8), a belief in 
the legend of Aeneas was prudently fostered by the school of 
Pergamon ^ 

As compared with Pergamon and Alexandria, few of the cities 

of the Greek world were of special importance as seats of learning 

during the Alexandrian age. Under the spell of its 

Athens . . 

olden associations, Athens continued to be fre- 
quented as a school of philosophy. Of the foremost representatives 
of the New Comedy, which flourished there from the death of 
Alexander to about 250 B.C., Philemon alone visited Alexandria. 
Athens was also the home of historians. It was there that 
Philochorus was engaged on the study of the history of Attica 
until he met a violent end as a supporter of the cause of Ptolemy 
Philadelphus against Antigonus Gonatas (261). It was there that 
the half-brother of Antigonus, Craterus (321—^. 265), the son of 
Alexander's general of the same name, collected and elucidated 
the historic decrees preserved in the public archives. It was 
there also that Apollodorus composed his great works on chro- 
nology and mythology. Among natives of other lands, Timaeus 
of Tauromenium (345-249) spent the last 50 years of his life at 
Athens, and Polemon of Ilium found a centre of his travels in the 
world-famous city which had made him one of her honorary 
citizens. In the Alexandrian age, Pella, the capital 
of the Macedonian kings, was a place of literary 
resort under Antigonus Gonatas alone (275-239), when the king, 
who was himself a pupil of a Megarian philosopher (Euphantus), 
and a friend of Zeno, attracted to his court two of Zeno's pupils ; 
probably also the philosopher and poet, Timon of Phlius; and 
certainly the poets Alexander Aetolus and Aratus, w^ho is said to 
have been indebted to the king himself for the theme of his great 
astronomical poem. Aratus also visited the Syrian court in the 
time of Antiochus Soter (287-262). Under Antiochus the Great 
^ Wilamowitz, I.e., p. 158 f, esp. 161. 



IX.] ATHENS AND OTHER SEATS OF LEARNING. 1 63 

(224-181), Antioch, the newly founded capital of Syria, was 
adorned with a theatre and a circus, and with works 
of art and a library, which in 220 B.C. was placed 
under the care of the learned epic poet, Euphorion of Chalcis, 
who there remained until his death, and in the following century 
became a favourite model with poets such as TibuUus, Propertius, 
and Cornelius Callus, besides being the theme of a passing 
reference in Virgil {Ed. x 50). Antioch is described as a home 
of learning and culture in the youth of Cicero's client the 
poet Archias, who was bom r. 119 b. c' A Hbrary, mth a 
temple of the Muses, was also founded there by the last of the 
Antiochi (after 69 B.C.). Antioch thus received from the last of 
the Seleucids the gift of a 'Museum', which Alexandria had 
received from the first of the Ptolemies. Tarsus 
was celebrated for its schools, but only her own 
citizens resorted to them, and even these finished their education 
elsewhere (Strabo, p. 673). Cos, as has been already noticed 
(p. 118), was a literary retreat closely connected 
with Alexandria, while Rhodes, which welcomed Rhodes"** 
from Alexandria the poet of the Argonautic expedi- 
tion and the author of the earliest of Greek grammars, was a 
school of rhetoric not only in the last few years of the life of 
Aeschines, but also in the early part of the first centur}' B.C., when 
the eclectic school of Molon contributed its share to the training 
of the eloquence of Cicero. Rhodes was also the scene of the 
studies of Castor, the author of an important chronological work, 
quoted by Varro" and by Julius Africanus, beginning with Ninus, 
king of Assyria, and ending with Pompey's triumph in 61 b.c.=^ 
It was further famous as the birth-place of the Stoic Panaetius 
{c. 1 8 5- 1 10), and as the school of his pupil Poseidonius (138-45), 
whose lectures were attended by Cicero in 78, and by Pompey in 
67 and 62 B.C. His extensive travels in Italy, Gaul and Spain, 
resulted in a continuation of Polybius from 145 to 82 B.C., a work 
inspired by a keen interest in geography, ethnography and the 
historical development of human society at large. Its influence 
has been traced in Diodorus and Strabo; in Lucretius, Livy, 



L 



^ Pro Archia, 4. - Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xxi 8, 

' Susemihl, ii 365 — 372. 



1 64 THE ALEXANDRIAN AGE. [CHAP. IX. 

Caesar and Sallust ; in Varro and Cicero, and, recently, even in 
the Germania of Tacitus \ Lastly, it was the birth-place of 
Andronicus, who presided over the Peripatetic school at Athens 
shortly before the middle of the first century B.C., and produced 
a new edition of the ' systematic ' works of Aristotle and Theo- 
phrastus, with classified lists of their writings, copies of their wills, 
and paraphrases of the Categories and commentaries on certain 
other works of Aristotle^ As a Peripatetic he thus rendered at 
least as great a service to literature as any that had been rendered 
at Athens in the Alexandrian age by Academic philosophers such 
as Polemon, whose favourite poets were Homer and Sophocles^; 
or Crantor, the admirer of Homer and Euripides", and the writer 
not only of the first commentary on the Ttmaeus or on any part 
of Plato ^ but also of a work on consolation, afterwards imitated 
by Cicero and Plutarch ; or Clitomachus, who was destined to 
be one of the main authorities followed by Cicero in the De 
Divinatione as well as in the De Natura Deorum. 

1 Gudeman, Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc, xxxi (1900) 107 f ; cp. Christ, § 405^ 
and Susemihl, ii 128 f. 
"^ Susemihl, ii 301 — 5. 

* Diog. Laert. iv 20. 

* ib. 26. 

* Proclus on Tim. 24 A. 




Silver Tetradrachm of Eumenes II 

Founder of the Pergamene Library (see p. 149 f). 

(From the British Museum.) 



BOOK III 



LATIN SCHOLARSHIP IN THE ROMAN AGE 



Gramtnatica Romae ne in usu qiiidem olim, nedum in honore 
ullo erat, rudi scilicet ac bellicosa etiam turn civitate, necdum mag- 
nopere liberalibus disciplinis vacante. 

Suetonius, De Grammaficis, § i. 



Je treuve Rome plus vaillante avant qu'elle feust s(avante. 
Montaigne, Essais, i 24. 



Conspectus of Latin Literature &c 


, c. 300—1 


B.C. 




PoUtical 
Events 


Literary 
Events 


Poets 


Historians 


Orators 


Scholars and 
Critics &c. 




300 














Third Samnite 














War 298— 2QO 














272 Tarentum 




272 Andronicus 




280 Appius 






taken 




reaches Rome 




Claudius 






First Punic War 








Caecus 






264—241 


240 the first 
Latin play 
exhibited at 
Rome 


240 Andronicus 
c. 284 — c. 204 

235 Naevius 
c. 264—194 

Plautus 
254-1— 184 










Second Punic 






216 Q. Fabius 








War 2.8-202 




204 Ennius 


Pictor^- 
b. c. 254 
210 L. Cincius 












239—169 














Alimentus-f 








200 














First Macedon- 














ian War 














200—197 

Syrian War 

192—190 






195 Cato 


195 Cato 








179 Caecilius 


234-149 


2.34—149 






Second Mace- 


Cato, De Agri 


Pacuvius 




167 L. Aem. 






donian War 


Cultura, the 






Paulus 






171-168 


earliest extant 






147 Scipio Afri- 








work in Latin 


166 Terence 




canus minor 


168 Crates of 




Third Punic 


Prose 


185—159 


151 A.Postumius 


144 Ser. Sulp. 


Mallos visits 




War 149—146 
NumantineWar 


161 expulsion of 
Greek rheto- 




Albinus-r 


Galba 


Rome 




Lucilius 


142 C. Acilius^- 


140 C. Laelius 






143-133 


philosophers 
155 Critolaus, 


180—103 
L.Accius 




137 M. Lepidus 








170— c. 90 




133 Tib. Grac- 
chus 163—133 


133 Valerius So- 




123 Leges Sem- 


Carneadesand 






ranus b. c. 154 




proniae 


Diogenes at 






123 C. Gracchus 


Porcius Licinus 




Cimbrian War 


Rome 






154— 121 


Volcatius Sedi- 




113— 102 






115 L. Coelius 


115 M. Aemilius 


gitus 




Jugurthine War 






Antipater 


Scaurus 


100 L. Ael. Stilo 




III— 106 








105 P. Rutilius 
Rufus 


c. 154— '^- 74 




100 

Marsian War 




Laberius 




QQ M. Antonius 


Servius Clodius 




90—88 




105—43 




143-87 


d. 60 




82 Sulla dictator 


92 schools of 


Lucretius 


CI. Quadri- 


95 L. Licinius 


Staberius Eros 






Latin rhetoric 


97—53 


garius Valerius 


Crassus 


Varro 116-27 






closed 


Catullus 


Antias 


88 P. Sulp. Ru- 


Orbihus 






c. 88 school of 


c. 84—54 


78 Sisenna 


114— <:. 17 






Latin gram- 


Bibaculus 


73 Macer Corn. 


fus 124—88 


Atticus 109—32 




60 First trium- 


mar opened 


c. 83-c. 24 


Nepos 99—54 


c. 85 auctor ad 


Santra 




virate 


by Sevius Ni- 


Varro Atacmus 


Sallust 86—34 


Hereuniutn 


Tiro 




Gallic War 


canor, and of 


82 — 37 


A. Hirtiusd. 43 


75 C. Aur. Cotta 


c. 104— <:. 4 




CiviTwar 


Latin rhetoric 






124—74 


Valerius Cato 




by L. Plotius 






69 Hortensius 


b. c. 100 




49—45 


Gallus 






114—50 


58 Nigidius Fi- 




44 d. of Caesar 




45 Publ. Syrus 




63 Cicero 


gulus 98—45 
Ateius Praetex- 




43 Second trium- 


39 first public 
library found- 


Gallus 70-27 




106 — 43 




virate 


Virgil 70—19 




59 Caesar 


tatus 






ed by PoUio 


Horace 65-8 




100—44 


28 Hyginus 






28 bibliotheca 


Tibullus 54—19 




Calvus 82—47 


64 B.C.— 17 A.D. 






Palatitia 


Propertius 




40 PoUio 


Feneslella 




31 battle of Ac- 


22 Aen. ii, iv 


49—15 




76 B.C.— 5 A.D. 


52 B.C.— 19 A.D. 






and vi recited 


Ovid 




31 Messala 


12 Q. Caecilius 




30 Augustus 


^^CarmenSae. 


43B.C.— 18A.D. 




64 B.C.— 8 A.D. 


Epirota 




63 B.C.— 14 A.D. 


culare 












14 Vitruvius De 




Livy 




Flaccus 






A rchitectura 




59 B.C.— 1 8 A.D. 










9 close of Livy's 














History 













S denotes historians ivho wrote in Greek. 



CHAPTER X. 

LATIN SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE DEATH OF ENNIUS 
(169 B.C.) TO THE AUGUSTAN AGE. 



The Latin alphabet was (either directly or indirectly) borrowed 
at an early date from the Greek colonists of Magna Greek influ- 
Graecia; and Latin literature, which is best regarded ence before 169 
as beginning with the close of the First Punic War 
(241 B.C.), was founded mainly on Greek models. Its earliest 
writers were not natives of Rome ; they were not even natives 
of Latium. Thus the first of Latin poets was the Greek Andro- 
nicus {c. 284 — c. 204), afterwards known as L. Livius Andronicus, 
who taught Greek and Latin in Rome, and produced in rude 
Satumian verse a rendering of the Odyssey which was still in use 
as a text-book in the youth of Horace {Ep. ii i, 65). He also 
translated Greek plays into Latin, in metres approximating to 
those of the Greek originals, and with a special preference for 
plays connected mth the tale of Troy. The first of these plays 
was exhibited about 240 B.C. Next in order is Naevius {c. 264 — 
194), a native of Campania, but of Latin descent, who exhibited 
in 235 B.C. the first of many plays of Greek origin. Late in life 
he produced in the old Satumian measure an important poem on 
the First Punic War, parts of which were imitated in the Aeneid 
of Virgil. In the four Satumian lines of his epitaph, he is so 
conscious of his position as a Latin poet, and so forgetful of his 
debt to Greece, that he describes his loss as lamented not by 
the foreign 'Muses' but by the native Italian Camenae, adding 



l68 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 



that on his death the old Latin tongue ceased to be spoken in 
Rome. 

'Mortales immortales flere si foret fas, 

Flerent Divae Canienae Naevium poetam; 

Itaque, postquam est Orcino traditus thesauro, 

Obliti sunt Romai loquier Latina lingua'^. 

Naevius is followed by Ennius (239 — 169), the native of a 
small town in Calabria, who was as familiar with Greek and Oscan 
as with Latinl By a curious irony of fortune it was Cato, the 
pertinacious opponent of Greek influence, who prompted Ennius 
to settle in Rome (204 b.c), where he gave lessons in Latin and 
Greek. In his tragedies he was largely indebted to Greek 
originals. In his great epic poem on the history of Rome, 
known as the Annales, he discarded the old Saturnian measure 
for the Greek hexameter, casting contempt on the rude versifica- 
tion of his predecessors : — 

Others have told the tale 
In verses sung of yore by Fauns and Bards, 
Ere my own time, when none as yet had climbed 
The Muses' cliffs or learnt the lore of song^. 

The new metre was further elaborated by Lucretius, who pays 
his predecessor the noble tribute of having been 'the first to 
bring down from lovely Helicon a crown of leaf unfading, destined 
to flourish in fame amid the nations of Italy'*; and it was tuned 
to new harmonies of cadence by Virgil, who in his Aeneid not 
merely borrows here and there from the earlier poet, but is also 
imbued throughout with his national spirit. It was characteristic 
of Ennius to write an inscription for his own bust, not in the 
Saturnian measure of old Rome but in the elegiac couplet lately 
imported from Greece. 

'Nemo me lacrimis decoret, nee funera fletu 
Faxit. Cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum''. 

The poet who had done Latin literature the great service of 
supplying it with a new epic metre, also took an interest in minor 
points of scholarship, such as grammar and spelling, and is said to 

' Gellius, i 23. "^ ib. xvii 17. 

' Cic. Brutus 71, 76; Orator 171. * Lucr. i 117. 

^ Cic. Tusc. Disp. i 34. 



I 



X.] GREEK INFLUENCE IN LATIN LITERATURE. 169 

have invented a system of shorthand'. All the three early poets 
above mentioned, Andronicus, Naevius and Ennius, wrote comedies 
as well as tragedies, but their comedies were exclusively of the 
kind caWed palliatae, plays 'dressed in the Greek mantle'. The 
school of Ennius claims Pacuvius, his sister's son, the author of 
twelve tragedies founded on the legends of Greece, and modelled 
in one case on Sophocles and in another on Euripides. Greek 
originals belonging to the New Attic Comedy of Philemon, E)i- 
philus and Menander, were the models followed by Plautus (254 — 
184) and by Terence (185 — 159). Intermediate in time between 
Plautus and Terence is Caecilius, who died in 168 B.C. (one year 
after the death of Ennius, and two years before the production of 
the Andria), leaving to the literature of his country some forty 
comedies, the titles of all of which are suggestive of Greek originals. 
The debt of Latin literature to Greek in epic and dramatic poetrj- 
was also extended to histor)'. The earliest of Roman historians, 
Q. Fabius Pictor (born c. 254 B.C.), who belonged to the age of 
Xae\-ius and Ennius, wrote in Greek, and the same is said 
(whether truly or not) of his younger contemporar}', L. Cincius 
Alimentus (praetor in 210 b.c.)1 Greek was certainly the lan- 
guage in which A. Postumius Albinus wrote the History of Rome 
which he dedicated to Ennius*. Foremost among the Roman 
nobles in the study of Greek was C. Sulpicius Galus, who pre- 
sided as praetor at the performance of a play of Ennius in the 
year of the poet's death^ and who fought in the battle of Pydna 
and predicted the eclipse of the moon which immediately pre- 
ceded it'. 

The defeat of the Macedonian king, Perseus, by Lucius 
Aemilius PauUus at the battle of Pydna (168 B.C.) marks the 

1 Teuffel's History of Roman Literature, ed. Schwabe, trans, by G. C. W. 
Warr, ed. 1900, p. 127 and § 104, 5. Two books de litteris syllabisqite a.nd de 
nutris are attributed to a later Ennius (Suet. Gram, i), who may also be the 
author of the system of shorthand mentioned by Isidore, Orig. i 22, vulgares 
notas Ennius primus invenit. Cp. M. Schanz, Geschichte der Romischen LitU- 
ralur (in I wan Miiller's Haiidbtuh), § 39 ult. 

- Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. i 6 (cp. H. Nettleship, Essays, i 341, and 
Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, Book ni c. xiv note). 

* Teuffel, § 127, I. 

* Cic. Brutus 78. 5 Liv. XLiv 37. 



I/O THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

beginning of a new epoch, and several incidents of literary interest 
are connected with that event. The conqueror of Pydna, on his 
visit to Olympia, standing before the Zeus of Pheidias, knew 
enough of the Homeric poems to declare that the sculptor must 
have derived his inspiration from Homer ; and Aemilius Paullus 
was apparently the theme of the only truly Roman play mentioned 
among the works of Pacuvius (220 — 132), the nephew of Ennius. 
Again, the battle of Pydna and the consequent predominance of 
Rome in the Greek world led to the expatriation of 1000 men of 
mark among the Achaeans, who were scattered among the Etrus- 
can towns. After dwindling in seventeen years to 300, they were 
restored to their native land with Polybius, the foremost of the 
exiles, who afterwards returned to Rome to renew his friendship 
with the younger Scipio, and ultimately to tell the story of the 
conquests of Rome from the beginning of the Second Punic War 
to the fall of Carthage and of Corinth in 146. Further, the Greek 
library of the king defeated at Pydna was reserved for the use of 
the conqueror's sons, the second of whom was the future con- 
queror of Carthage, famous in literature as the centre of the 
'Scipionic circle'. And, finally, the victory of Pydna led to a 
further expansion of Greek influence in Latin literature by bring- 
ing to Rome in the person of Crates of Mallos, and probably in 
the train of those who came to congratulate the Romans on their 
victory, the foremost representative of the school of Pergamon. 

Our authority for the visit of Crates and its consequences is 
the treatise of Suetonius De Grammaticis. He begins that treatise 
with the remark that in earlier times, while Rome was still uncivil- 
ised and engrossed in war, and was not yet in the enjoyment of 
any large amount of leisure for the liberal arts, the study of 
Uterature {grammatica) was not in use, much less was it in esteem. 
The beginnings of that study, he adds, were unimportant, as its 
earliest teachers, who were poets and half-Greeks (namely Livius 
Andronicus and Ennius, who were stated to have taught in both 
languages at Rome and elsewhere), limited themselves to trans- 
lating Greek authors or reciting anything which they happened 
to have composed in Latin. After adding that the two books on 
letters and syllables and also on metres ascribed to Ennius were 
justly attributed to a later writer of the same name, he states that, 



■btaki 



X.] ACCIUS. LUCILIUS. I /I 

in his own opinion, the first to introduce the study of literature 
into Rome was Crates of Mallos, who, during his accidental 
detention in Rome, gave many recitations and lectures which 
aroused an interest in the subject ^ We are further informed 
that the example set by Crates led to the publication in seven 
books of a new edition of the epic of Naevius on the First Punic 
War, and to the public recitation of the Annals of Ennius ; and 
also (two generations later) to the recitation of the satires of 
Lucilius. The text of Ennius was emended not long after his 
death by Octavius Lampadio*. 

The death of Ennius and the visit of Crates were immediately 
preceded by the birth of L. Accius (170 B.C.), who 
was among the first of the Romans who travelled in 
Asia Minor, and was also famous as the author of numerous 
tragedies on the tale of Troy. In the history of Scholarship he 
concerns us only as the author of a histor}' of Greek and Roman 
poetry, especially that of the drama, written in Sotadean verse, 
under the name of Didascalica, a title probably suggested by the 
SiSao-KoAiat of Aristotle^. He was the first to discuss the genuine- 
ness of certain plays wrongly assigned to Plautus*. Among the 
peculiarities of his orthography we are told that he never used the 
letters Y and Z, and that, when A and E and U were long, he 
denoted the fact by writing them double*. His interest in these 
subjects is proved by the fact that Varro dedicated to him the 
treatise de antiquitate litterarum^. The innovations in language 
and spelling introduced by Accius are ridiculed by 
Lucilius (180 — 103 B.C.), who, besides discussing 
points of orthography and prosody, satirises the bombastic language 
of the Latin tragedians, criticises even Homer and Euripides, and 
es his contemporaries to task for their provincialisms and also 



I 



^ See p. 157. It is assumed by Mommsen (Bk iv c. 12) that the Homeric 
poems were the theme of these lectures. On this there is no evidence, but 
Homer was certainly a main subject of the literary studies of Crates. 

* Gellius, xviii 5, 11. 

^ Mad\-ig, Of use. i 87 f (p. 70 f, ed. 1887); Hermann, Opusc. viii 390; 
Lachmann, Kl. SchrifUn ii 67. 

* Gellius, iii 3, 9. 
= Mar. Vict. Gram. Lat. 6, 8; Ritschl, Opitsc. iv 142. 

* Teuffel, § 134, 7 and 1 1 ; Schanz, §§ 49, 50. 



1/2 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

for their affected imitation of Greek phraseology', Lucilius was 
succeeded by an epigrammatic poet less known to fame, Porcius 
Licinus, the author of a trochaic poem on the history of Roman 
literature, in the course of which he insisted on the lateness of the 
origin of Roman poetry in the oft-quoted lines : 

'Poenico bello secundo Musa pinnato gradu 
Intulit se bellicosam in Romuli gentem feram'^. 

Among the younger contemporaries of Accius and the pre- 
cursors of Varro was Q. Valerius of Sora (born c. 154), a man of 
distinction in linguistic and antiquarian research. When Varro 
was asked the meaning oifavisae Capitolinae, he admitted that he 
knew nothing of the origin of the word favisae and took refuge in 
quoting the opinion of Valerius to the effect that favisae was a 
corruption oS. flavisae and meant the same as thesaurP. 

The foremost scholar of this age was L. Aelius Stilo Praeco- 
ninus {c. 154 — c. 74 B.C.) of Lanuvium, a Roman 
knight, who read the plays of Plautus and others 
with younger men such as Varro and Cicero. He owed the name 
of Praeconinus to his father's occupation as a praeco, and that 
of Stilo (or 'Penman') to his skill in writing speeches for members 
of the Roman aristocracy*. We find him designated litteris orna- 
tissimus by Varro, as quoted by Gellius (i 18, 2), who himself 
describes him as doctissimus eorum temponim, adding that Varro 
and Cicero followed his example in refraining from the use of 
novissimum in the sense of extremum {ib. x 21, 2). He is charac- 
terised by Cicero in the Brutus (205) as a man of the profoundest 
learning in Greek and Latin literature, and as an accomplished 
critic of ancient writers and of Roman antiquities in their intel- 
lectual as well as in their historical and political aspects. His 
legal and antiquarian pursuits are noticed in the De Oratore^. 
His grammatical and especially his etymological inquiries were 
partly inspired by his devotion to the Stoic philosophy. He 
appears to have been an industrious writer, and much of his 
lore passed into the pages of Varro and of Verrius Flaccus, 
of Pliny the elder and of Gellius. His writings included a 

^ TeufFel, § 143, 7. ^ Gellius, xvii 21, 45. 

•* ib. ii 10, 3 (Teuffel, § 147, i). * Suet. Gram. 3. 

^ i 193, Aeliana (Madvig for aliend) studia. 



X.] Q. VALERIUS. STILO. VARRO. 1/3 

commentary on the Carmina Saliorum^; a critical list of the plays 
of Plautus, in which he recognised 25 plays as genuine, and in 
connexion with which he possibly passed the encomium on the 
style of Plautus quoted by Varro, to the effect that, had the 
Muses wished to speak in Latin, they would have used the 
language of Plautus ^ He also wrote a treatise on axiomatic 
statements (Trcpi a^iw/xaTtov) apparently connected with the Syntax 
of the Stoics, which Gellius (xvi 8, 2) found after diligent search 
in the Library in the temple of Peace ; an edition of the works of 
Q. Metellus Numidicus, whom he accompanied into exile in 
100 B.C. ; probably also an antiquarian work on the laws of 
the XII Tables, and lastly a glossary' including articles on et>'mo- 
logical, antiquarian and historical subjects*. The Satires of 
Lucilius and the Annals of L. Coelius Antipater were dedicated 
to Stilo. Among the scholars who succeeded Stilo'' were L. Plotius 
Gallus and Saevius Nicanor, early teachers of Latin rhetoric and 
literature respectively ; Aurelius Opilius, a student of Plautus ; 
Antonius Gnipho, a commentator on the Annals of Ennius; 
M. Pompilius Andronicus, who wrote criticisms on the Annals, 
published by Orbilius ; Servius Clodius, who married the daughter 
and stole some of the papers of Stilo, and is described as the 
author of a catalogue of the genuine plays of Plautus*; and 
lastly Staberius Eros, the instructor of Brutus and Cassius, whom 
Pliny the elder* calls with some exaggeration conditor grammaticae. 
Stilo's most famous pupil, M. Terentius Varro (116 — 27 B.C.), 
is characterised by Cicero" as diligentissimus investi- 
gator antiquitatis, by Quintilian* as vir Romanortim 
eruditissimus, and by St Augustine as one who had read so much 

^ Varro, L. L. vii 2 ; cp. Festus s.v. manuos, molturum, fescia, quoted by 
Suringar, Historia Critica Scholiastarum Latinoruiii, i 29. 

- Quint. X I, 99. 

=* Goetz in Pauly-Wissowa, i 532 f. Cp. Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, Bk iv 
c. 12 and 13; Teufiel, § I48; Schanz, § 76. 

* Suet. Gram. 3, 5—8 etc. Teuffel, § 159; Schanz, §§ 194—6. 

' Gellius, iii 3, i. Cp. Cic. ad Fam. ix 16, 4 (to Paetus), Servius, frater 
tuus, quem litteratissimum fuisse iudico, facile diceret 'hie versus Plauti non 
est; hie est', quod tritas aures haberet notandis generibus poetarum et consue- 
tudine legend i. 

6 XXXV 199. 7 Brutus 60. * x i, 95. 



174 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

that one wondered he had any time left for writing, and had 
written so much that one might well believe that scarcely any one 
could have read the whole of his works'. His books numbered 
as many as 620, belonging to 74 separate works. They included 
XLi books Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et dtvtnarwn, with 
other antiquarian works de vita and de gente populi Romani, a 
book of ' origins ' called Aetia (like the Aina of CalHmachus), and 
a treatise on Trojan families and on the Roman tribes. His 
writings on literary history comprised works on Plautus^ and on 
the drama, on poetry and on style, with three books on Libraries ; 
but unhappily they have not survived, and there is nothing to 
show that they were seriously concerned with literary criticism. 
His grammatical writings included xxv books de Lingua Latina, 
of which V — X (published before 43 B.C.) are extant; 11 — vii were 
on etymology ; viii — xvi on inflexion, analogy and anomaly ; and 
XVII — xxv on syntax ; also a book on the origin of the Latin 
language, three books on analogy {de similitudine verborum), and 
four de utilitate sermonis. Further he was the author of the first 
encyclopaedic work in Latin on the 'liberal arts'. Under the 
name of disciplinarmn libri noveni, it comprised (i) grammar, 
(2) logic, (3) rhetoric, (4) geometry, (5) arithmetic, (6) astronomy, 
(7) music, (8) medicine, (9) architecture, the first seven of which 
were the seven liberal arts of Augustine* and Martianus Capella, 
afterwards represented by the trivium and the quadriviuni of the 
educational system of the Middle Ages. His poetical works in- 
cluded certain saturae Menippeae, of which fragments remain. 
Lastly there were his three books de Re Rustica^. A large 

^ De Civ. Dei, vi 2. Much the same was afterwards said of St Augustine 
by Isidore (vii 179 ed. 1803), 'mentitur qui te totum legisse fatetur'. 

- The 1 1 plays recognised by Varro were called the Fabulae Varroniatiae 
(Gellius iii 3, 3), which may safely be identified with the 20 extant plays and 
the Vidularia, of which fragments only have survived in the Ambrosian 
Palimpsest (cent. v). 

3 Retract, i 6, where however 'philosophy' is substituted for 'astronomy'. 

* Teuffel, §§ 164 — 9. Cp. Ritschl, Opusc. iii 419 — 505; Mommsen, Hist, 
of Rome, Bk v c. 12 ; Wordsworth's Early Latin, pp. 356 — 8; and Nettleship, 
ii 146 f; also Schanz, §§ 183 — 193; Wilmanns, De Varronis libris gramma- 
ticis, pp. 226, 1864; and Reitzenstein, Varro und Johannes Mauropus von 
Ettchaiia, eine Studie zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, pp. 97, 1901. 



X.] ANALOGY AND ANOMALY. 1/5 

portion of this varied literary activity is the theme of Cicero's 
glow-ing eulogy in the Academica (i § 9). 

But (apart from fragments) the only works which have survived 
are the books de Re Rustica, and six books de Lingua Latina. 
Books v — XXV of the latter were dedicated to Cicero, who had 
waited impatiently for the fulfilment of Varro's promise to dedicate 
to him an important work, and who thus received a recognition of 
the handsome compliment paid by himself in dedicating to Varro 
the second edition of his Academica (45 B.C.). Varro's treatise is 
the earliest extant Roman work on grammar. The first three of 
the survi\-ing books are on Etymology, book v being on names of 
places, VI on terms denoting time, and vii on poetic expressions. 
To ourselves the value of these books lies in their citations from 
the Latin poets, and not in their mar\ellous etymologies. But 
\'arro is right in regarding meridies as standing for niedius (and 
not merus) dies, and in connexion with this word he records the 
interesting fact that he had himself seen the form in D earned on 
a sun-dial at Praeneste'. The next three books are concerned 
with the controversy on Analog)' and Anomaly : viii on the argu- 
ments against Analogy, ix on those against Anomaly, and x on 
Varro's own view of Analogy. 

In the first of these books we have arguments and illustrations in favour of 
the charms of variety : ex dissiniilitudine plus voliiptatis, quam 

ex similitudine, saepe capitur ; hence it may be inferred verbo- . Analogy and 

' ^ ^ ' J Anomaly in 

ruM dtssimilituiinem, quae sit in consuetudine, non esse vitan- Varro 
dam (31-32). In speech, it is urged by the anomalist, there 
is no rule ; the inflexions of similar words are sometimes similar, as, from 
bonum and malum, bono and malo ; sometimes dissimilar, as, from lupus and 
lepus, lupo and lepori ; again the inflexions of dissimilar words are sometimes 
dissimilar, as Priamus, Paris, and Priamo, Pari; sometimes similar, as 
luppiter, oz'i% and lovi, ovi. If analogy is not universal, argues the anomalist, 
there is no such thing as true analogy. The book ends with many examples 
of irregularity in declension, in the degrees of comparison, and in diminutives 
and proper names. The next book (ix), in arguing against anomaly, begins 
with the suggestion that that nobilis grammaticus. Crates, in accepting the view 
of Chrysippus, and in attacking that of Aristarchus, had misunderstood both. 
When Chrysippus wrote on anomaly, he meant to show that similar things 
are often denoted by dissimilar words, and dissimilar things by similar words, 
which is true. Again, when Aristarchus wrote on analogy, he held that we 
must accept the inflexion or derivation of certain words as a pattern (or 
^ L. L. vi 4. 



176 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

paradigm) for the rest, so far as custom admits (§ i). Varro is probably wrong 
in describing Crates as having mistaken the meaning of Chrysippus and Aristar- 
chus, and, when he himself admits the claims of consuetttdo, he virtually gives 
up the case for strict analogy. All that the anomalist maintained was that 
analogy very often broke down, and he accordingly concluded that it was not 
analogy but consuetudo that was the guiding principle of language. As Varro 
was reluctant to call himself an anomalist, he takes refuge in the expedient of 
bringing forward a third party, consisting of those who in loquendo partiin 
sequi iubent ttos consuetudinetn, partim rationevt. So long as partim remains 
undefined, this description comes to nothing, as either of the two contending 
parties might claim it as representing their views. Varro regards this third 
party as approximating to his own view of analogy; at the same time he 
regards that party as open to the same objection as the anomalists: — consuetudo 
et analogia coniunctiores sunt inter se, quam it credunt (ix 2)^. 

Cicero's view agrees with that of Varro. He is an analogist, who never- 
theless respects consuetudo. As a practical orator it would 
have been impossible for him to disregard it. So he keeps 
to himself his knowledge of the scientifically correct forms, and is content to 
follow popular usage. He knew that in earlier Latin there had been no 
aspirate in pulcros, Cetegos, triumpos, Kartaginem, but he followed popular 
usage in introducing the aspirate {Orator, 160). He uses confidens in the 
sense of 'shameless', although he knows it is wrong (Tusc. Disp. iii 14); he 
finds no fault with scripsere, although he holds that scripserunt alone is right 
[Orator, 157). Ustiiii loquendi populo concessi, scientiatn tnihireservavi [ib. 160). 
Cicero does not follow euphony for its own sake, but simply as part of popular 
usage: constietudini auribus indulgenti libenter obsequor {ib. 157)^. 

Analogy was the theme of a work by Caesar, written while he was crossing 
the Alps^, probably in 55 B.C. It was dedicated to Cicero'*, 
and consisted of two books (i) on the alphabet and on words, 
and (2) on irregularities of inflexion in nouns and verbs. It was in this work 
that Caesar laid down the memorable rule : ut tamquam scopulum, sic fugias 
inauditum atque insolens verbum^. He thus admitted the claim of consuetudo 
even in a work characteristic of his ruling passion for reducing everything to 
law and order and uniformity. Similarly the decay and the revival of words is 
made by Horace to depend on usus, quern penes arbitrium est et ius et norma 
loquendi {A. P. 71 f). 

The conflict between the analogists and the anomalists continued beyond 

the limits of time assigned to this chapter. To complete our survey of the 

subject, it may here be added that Pliny the elder (25 — 

79 A.D.), among whose works were dubii sermonis libri octo^, 

was an analogist, but he allowed co7tsueiudo its full rights {consuetiidini et 

' Steinthal, Sprachwissenschaft, ii 130—136^. Cp. Reitzenstein, I.e. pp. 
44 — 65. ^ Steinthal, ii 154. 

^ Suet. Caes. 56. "* Brutus 253; Gellius, xix 8, 3. 

" Gellius, i 10, 4. " Plin- Ep- "i 5, 5- 



X.] LITERARY CRITICISM. 1 77 

suavitati aurium censet summani esse tribuendani), holding esse quidem rationetn, 

sed tniilta iam consiutudine sitperari^. Although originally language may have 

been entirely guided by analogy, consuetudo is the natural enemy of ratio and 

often drives it from the field. Pliny thus recognises the rights of consuetudo 

far more openly than Varro. He also recognises the force of authority, and 

accepts forms sanctioned veteri dignitate. Authority and antiquity are the 

constant allies of anomalous consuetudo, and against these three forces analogy 

must straggle in vain-. 

Quintilian (<-. 35 — 95 A.D.) is also an analogist, but he limits the province 

of analogy to deciding in cases of doubt (i 6, 4). With Ouin- 

, 1^ , . , Quintilian 

tuian analogy rests not on reason but on precedent; it does 

not legislate on language, but simply observes and notes its laws (ib. 16). 

A century later in Greek literature the sceptical physician, Sextus Empi- 
ricus, who flourished between 180 and 200 A.D., was a spirited 
champion of anomaly. He ridicules the extreme analogists of Em^jiidcus 
his day as 'scholars who, although scarcely able to string two 
words together, wanted to convict of barbarism all the ancient ^Titers who 
were conspicuous for correctness of language (eu^p<£5eia) and excellence of 
Greek ('EXXijj'tff/xij), e.g. Thucydides, Plato and Demosthenes* (adv. Math. 
ipS). 

The struggle, however, between the two principles was mainly limited to 
rather more than one century before and one centurj' after our era. Under the 
influence of the Aristarchic school of analogists, grammatical forms were in- 
vestigated with great accuracy. The paradigms of grammar were the result 
of this struggle, which gave ' the necessary impulse to a complete analysis of 
the forms of language' ». In the first effort to reduce the facts of the Greek 
language to order, the observation of the vast mass of regular forms led to 
their classification, and tempted the grammarian to endeavour to reduce all 
irregularities into agreement with the normal types. Such was the work of 
the earlier analogists. We may say of them that they held a brief for the 
'rule'; while the anomalists showed cause for the 'exception'. The net result 
of the struggle was the ultimate recognition of the fact that in the realm of 
langxiage, as in the world of nature, uniformity and variety are inextricably 
intermingled with one another. 

Literary criticism in the Roman age was partly borrowed from 
Greek sources such as the Poetic and Rhetoric of 
Aristotle, and the lost treatise On Style by Theo- critiS^ 
phrastus. It may also have been influenced by 
critics such as Aristophanes and Aristarchus, the reputed founders 
of the Alexandrian 'canon' (p. 129 f), while the Ars Foetica of 

1 Charisius, i p. 99, 2 Steinthal, ii 155. 

* Cp. J. Wordsworth's Early Latin, pp. 653 — 4. 



1/8 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Horace included among its sources of inspiration a lost treatise on 
poetical composition by Neoptolemus of Parium', whose date is 
probably between that of Callimachus and Aristophanes ^ 

Early in the first century B.C. we find a ' canon ' of ten Latin 
comic poets drawn up by Volcatius Sedigitus ; the names included 
are Caecilius, Plautus, Naevius, Licinius, Atilius, Terence, Turpi- 
lius, Trabea, Lucius and Ennius'\ A threefold variety of style 
was recognised by Varro (as by Theophrastus) ; and Pacuvius 
was taken by him as a type of ubertas, Lucilius of gradlttas, 
Terence of mediocritas in the good sense of the term*. Literary 
criticisms also appeared incidentally in his saturae, where he says, 
in one passage, that the palm is claimed by Caecilius for his plots, 
by Terence for his delineation of character, and by Plautus for 
his dialogues; and, in another, that truth to character is the 
special merit of Titinius, Terence and Atta ; while the excitement 
of the emotions is that of Trabea, Atilius and Caecilius ^ The 
criticisms on ancient poets current in the youth of Horace" have 
been attributed to Varro''. 

Literary criticism in Cicero (io6 — 43 b.c.) has a conventional 
and borrowed element, as in the frequent comparison 

Cicero . ... 

between literature and the arts of pamtmg and 
sculptured In this he had been preceded by Neoptolemus and 
he was succeeded by Dionysius® and Quintilian'". The late 
Greek criticism also produced many new technical terms, several 
of which passed into the Latin of the Ciceronian and Augustan 
ages". The critical vocabulary of the Latin language was largely 
extended by Cicero, who shows a special fondness for discriminat- 
ing between varieties of style by means of metaphors borrowed 
either from moral qualities or from the physiology of the human 

^ Porphyrion discussed by Nettleship, Essays, i 173, ii 46—48. 
^ Susemihl, i 405. * Gellius, xv 24. 

* ib. vi (vii) 14, 8. 

^ Nettleship, ii 50 — 3; cp. Saintsbury's History of Criticism, i 240 f. 
« Ep. ii I, 55. 
"^ Nettleship, ii 52. 

8 Brutus 70, 75, 228, 261, 298; Orator 36 (with the present writer's Intro- 
duction, pp. Ixxi — Ixxiii). 

® De Comp. 11, De Isocr. 2, De Isaeo 4. 

" xii 10, I— 10. " Nettleship, ii 56. 



X.] LITERARY CRITICISM IN CICERO. I79 

body'. Whenever he is original in his criticisms on poetry, he 
has a marked preference for the grand and free style of the older 
poets, such as Accius, Ennius and Pacu\nus. In his criticisms on 
oratorical prose, in the Brutus and the Orator, he vindicates his 
own literar)' principles against a new school, that of the Roman 
Atticists, comprising orators like Calvus, whose models were 
Lysias and Thucydides. As a test of the truth of these divergent 
views he lays down the principle that, 'given time and opportunity, 
the recognition of the many is as necessary a test of excellence in 
an artist as that of the few'^ A great style must therefore 'com- 
bine ali the elements of excellence ' ^ Cicero's genius as a critic 
is revealed in his review of the stj'les of Galba and Gaius Gracchus, 
of Antonius, Crassus and Scaevola, of Cotta and Sulpicius ; of 
Caesar, Calidius and Hortensius*. In a few terse phrases he 
summarises the literary qualities of the speakers whom he passes in 
review, displaying a fulness of insight, a perfect master)' of thought, 
and a power of self-controlled expression standing in strong con- 
trast with his usual prolixity. In the JDe Legibus (i 5), as in the 
De Oratore (ii 51 f), history, in accordance with the traditional 
Greek view dating from the time of Ephorus and Theopompus, the 
pupils of Isocrates, is regarded as a branch of oratory. The idea 
of a painful study of authorities undertaken with the simple purpose 
of ascertaining the truth, is unfamiliar to his age. It might have 
been developed among the philosophers or the scholars of the time, 
but philosophy turned towards 'problems of speculative ethics, 
while scholarship satisfied itself with verbal and textual criticism'*. 
In the De Republica (iv 13) Cicero happily describes Comedy as 
the imitatio vitae, the speculum consuetudinis, the imago veritatis. 
In the De Oratore (iii 27 f) he touches on the varied excellences 
of Greek and Roman poets and orators, and {ib. 149 — 207) unfolds 
a detailed theory of beauty of speech depending either on words 
themselves and their combinations or on figures of speech and 

Cp. the present writer's notes on Cic. Oraior, §§ 25, 76; also Causeret's 
£tude (1886), pp. 155 — 8, and Saintsbury, i 220. 
- Brutus 183 f (Nettleship, ii 58 f). 
' De Or. iii 96 f, loi. 

* Brutus §§ 93, 125, 139, 143, 148, 201, 261, 274, 301. 
' Nettleship, ii 56—68. 



l8o THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

thought. In the Pro Archia he shows a personal interest in 
eulogising literature in the presence (as we know from the 
scholiast) of his brother Quintus. He also supplies us with 
valuable evidence as to the state of Greek culture in Southern 
Italy, and also in Latium and Rome, shortly before 102 B.C. ' In 
the Letters the only important piece of literary criticism is the 
much discussed phrase in which Cicero expresses his agreement 
with his brother as to the ' poems ' of Lucretius : — ' Lucretii 
poemata, ut scribis, ita sunt ; multis luminibus ingenii, multae 
tamen artis' {ad Quintum, ii 11), where it has (perhaps unneces- 
sarily) been proposed to insert a non either before tnultis or before 
multae". It is disappointing to find in Cicero so vague a criticism 
of the merits of a poet who had done him the honour of studying 
and imitating his own translation of Aratus^. 

The Orator, which supplies some of the best examples of 
Cicero's taste as a literary critic, also affords us valuable evidence 
as to the nature and extent of his knowledge of the philology of 
the Latin language. In the course of an excursus on the proper 
collocation of words, in accordance with the laws of euphony 
(§§ 146 — 162), we find him regarding vexillum as the earlier form 
of velum (§ 153) instead of being a diminutive of it; capsis as 
standing for cape si vis (§ 154), an opinion rightly rejected by 
Quintilian ; and the compound words ignoti, ignavi and ignari, 
as preferred for reasons of euphony to in7ioti, innavi and innari 
(§ 158), whereas gnoti, gnavi and g7iari are obviously the original 
forms of the simple words. 

Asinius PolHo (76 B.C. — 5 a.d.) wrote a severe criticism on 

the archaisms of Sallusf*, who in this respect was 

regarded as having imitated and even plagiarised 

from the elder Cato*. On the other hand he expressed a very high 

opinion of Cicero : — ' huius viri tot tantisque operibus mansuri in 

1 Pro Archia 5, erat Italia turn plena Graecarum artium ac disciplinarum, 
studiaque haec et in Latio vehementius turn colebantur quam nunc isdem in 
oppidis, et hie Romae propter tranquillitatem rei publicae non neglegebantur. 

2 Introd. to Munro's Lucr. vol. i pp. 313 — 5, ed. 1873; cp. Saintsbury,. 
pp. 214—7. 

3 Munro on Lucr. v 619; cp. Mackail's Latin Literature, p. 50. 

■• Suet. Gram. 10. ^ Suet. Aug, 86 ; Quintilian viii 3, 29. 



I 



( 



X,] CONTEMPORARIES OF CICERO. l8l 

omne aevum praedicare de ingenio atque industria supervacuum 
est ' ^ 

An account of the consulship of Cicero was written in Greek 
during his life-time by his friend Atticus*(io9 — 32), 
whose libet- annaiis, a chronological work covering ^j^q "^"^ ^" 
seven centuries of Roman history^, is probably the 
source of the Fasti Capitolini and of the 'Chronograph' of 
354 A.D.* He also played an important part in literature as the 
head of an establishment of learned slaves engaged as copyists^ 
We still possess the Life of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, while 
that of Cicero is unfortunately lost. Cicero's Life was also wTitten 
by his freedman Tiro, and it is to Atticus and Tiro that we are 
doubtless mainly indebted for the survival of his works. Tiro is 
specially named in connexion with the Letters and the Speeches®. 
He wrote several works on the Latin language', and invented a 
system of shorthand, which was carried further by Philargj'rus, a 
freedman of Agrippa, and Aquila, a freedman of Maecenas, and 
also by Seneca^. After flourishing in the Carolingian age, it 
became less common at the beginning of the tenth century, and 
vanished after the twelfth ^ 

Among the younger contemporaries of Cicero, the Neo- 
Pythagorean P. Nigidius Figulus {c. 98 — 45 B.C.), 
the praetor of 58 B.C., was ranked by a later age Figulus'"* 
as second to Varro in learning'**. His commentarii 
granwiatici dealt with grammar in general, and especially with 
orthography, synonyms, and etymology. They are often quoted 
by Gellius, who complains of their being more obscure and less 
p)opular than the corresponding works of Varro". He was perhaps 

^ Seneca, Suas. vi 24. 
^ Ad Att. ii 41 ; Nepos, Atticus, 18. 
^ Nepos, I.e.; Cic. Orator 120, Brutus 14, 19. 
* Schanz, § 116. 

« Nepos, I.C., 13, 3 ; Cic. ad Att. xiii 21, 3 ; 44. 3 ; Fronto, Ep. 10. Hul- 
lemaia's Atticus, p. 173. 

" Ad Att. xvi 5, 5; Gellius, i 7, i ; xiii. 21, 16; cp. Quint, x 7, 30. 

^ Gellius, xiii 9, 2. » Isidore, Orig. i 21. 

9 Schanz, § 178, ult. 

^^ Gellius, iv 9, i. 

" xvii 7, 5; xix 14, 3. 



1 82 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

the inventor of the method of denoting the long vowel by an 
apex'. L. Ateius Praetextatus, who was born at 

Praetextatus Athens and became a Roman freedman, assumed 
(like Erastosthenes) the name of Philologus. He 

was a student of style and of Roman history, and a friend of 
Sallust and Asinius Pollio^ Valerius Cato, who 

Valerius Cato , , , r i i 

had a great reputation as a teacher of young noble- 
men with a taste for poetry, closed his life in extreme poverty; 
but even the satirical lines of Bibaculus unconsciously do him 
honour by comparing him as a summus grammaiicus with the 
scholars of Alexandria and Pergamon : — en cor Zerwdoti, en iecur 
Cratetis^. 

Latin grammar owes its terminology, in the first instance, to 

Varro ; and, in the next, to Nigidius Figulus. In 
tc?m1noTogy"' ^he middle of the first century B.C. the Gender or 

genus of a noun or nomen substatitivum was distin- 
guished by the terms virile, muliebre and neutrum {masculinum 
and femininum not occurring earlier than the second century 
A.D.)1 The Number or Humerus was described by Varro as 
either singularis or multitudinis, while pluralis is found later in 
Quintilian (who represents the teaching of Remmius Palaemon), 
and plu7-ativus in Gellius. A Case (as with the Stoics) might be 
either rectus or obliquus ; the casus rectus was also known to Varro 
as the casus notninandei or nominativus ; the Genitive was called 
by Varro the casus patricus, by Nigidius the casus interrogandi ; 
the Dative was described by both as the casus dandi, while gene- 
tivus and dativus occur in Quintilian ; the Accusative is in Varro 
the casus accusandei or accusativus ; the Vocative the casus vocan- 
dei, while vocativus is found in Gellius ; the Ablative, recognised 
by Quintilian, possibly owes its name to Caesar, Varro's name for 
it being the sextus or Latinus casus, as it was not found in Greek. 
The Declensions and Conjugations are unrecognised by Varro. 
He divides each of the three times, past, present and future, into 

1 Teuffel, § 170; Hiibner, Romische Litt. § 45* (p. 44 Mayor) ; Mommsen, 
Hist, of Rome, Bk v c. 12; also Schanz, Rom. Litt., § 181. 

2 Suet. Gram. 10; Schanz, § 195, 5. 
» ib. 1 1 ; Teuffel, § 200. 

* First found in Caesellius Vindex (Gellius vi (vii) 2). 



I 



X.] GRAMMAR. LITERARY CRITICISM IN HORACE. 183 

a tempus infectum and a tempus perfectum ; but he knows nothing 
of any technical sense of modus^. 

The earliest of the literar}' criticisms of Horace (65 — 8 B.C.) 
are those of the fourth and tenth of his first book 

Literary 

of Satires (35 B.C.). He there asserts his own prin- criticism in 
ciples under the guise of a polemic against Lucilius. 
His predecessor's style, he says, is too hasty and too slovenly, 
while the Old Attic Comedy is too narrow in its scop)e to serve 
as a model for his own satiira. Poetr}', he insists, is not a matter 
for the crowd; it is the gift and privilege of the few*. About 
19 B.C. we have the criticisms of his Ars Poetica, founded in part 
on Greek originals and prompted apparently by a desire to recall 
his countr}'men from the critical principles of the Ciceronian and 
the Alexandrian ages, to those on which the great works of Hellas 
were founded. Mr Saintsbur}', who justly describes it as 'the 
only complete example of literary criticism that we have from any 
Roman ', criticises its desultoriness and its arbitrary convention- 
ality, while he fully recognises its brilliancy, its typical spirit, and 
its practical value*. In the two Epistles of the Second book 
Horace discards the framework of Greek works and Greek texts, 
and relies on his own genius. In poetry he insists on the worth- 
lessness of mere antiquity, and on the importance of perfect finish. 
The older Latin poets, admired by Varro and Cicero, are more 
coldly regarded by Horace, while they meet with a warmer appre- 
ciation in Ovid^ Virgil and Horace became classics soon after 
their death, driving out the taste for the older poets, and finding 
admirers and imitators in Lucan and Persius respectively. 

^^^lile Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics were published during his 
life-time, the Aeneid was first edited by Varius and 
Tucca after his death (19 B.C.). He was attacked of^vSr'""*^ 
by Car\-ilius Pictor in his Aeneidomastix ; his vi/ia, 
or supposed faults of style, were collected by Herennius ; his 

^ Cp. Lersch. Sprachphilosophu, ii 223 — 256; Grafenhan, ii 291 — 306; 
and L. Jeep, Zur Geschithte von den Redetheilen bet den Lateinischen Gramma- 
tikem, pp. 124—259. 

• i 4, 40 and 71 : Nettleship, ii 70. 
» Hist, of Criticism, i 221—8. 

* Amores, i 15 — 19, Tristia, ii 423; Nettleship, ii 70 — 73. 



1 84 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

furta, or alleged plagiarisms, by Perellius Faustus ; and his trans- 
lations from the Greek, by Octavius Avitus ; while his detractors 
were answered by Asconius, better known as the earliest commen- 
tator on Cicero \ The first to expound Virgil in the schools of 
Rome was a freedman of Atticus, named Q. Caecilius Epirota, 
who opened a school after the death of his second patron, the 
poet CorneUus Gallus (27 b.c.)^ Virgil was criticised by Hygi- 
nus, the librarian of the Palatine Library, and by Cornutus, the 
friend of Persius. In the time of Quintilian'' and Juvenar he 
shared the fate, which Horace^ had feared for himself, of being a 
textbook for use in schools. The first critical edition of Virgil 
was that of Probus in the time of Nero. Among his interpreters 
were Velius Longus, under Trajan ; Q. Ter. Scaurus, under 
Hadrian ; Aemilius Asper (towards the end of the 2nd century) ; 
and Aelius Donatus (yf. 353 a.d.). The earliest extant commen- 
taries are those in the Verona scholia, including quotations from 
Cornutus, Velius Longus, Asper, and Haterianus (end of 3rd 
cent.); that on the Eclogues and Georgics bearing the name of 
Probus {fl. 56 — 88 A.D.) ; that on the Aeneid by Tib. Claudius 
Donatus (end of 4th century), which is simply a prose paraphrase 
exhibiting the rhetorical connexion of the successive clauses ; and 
that on the whole of Virgil by Servius (late in 4th century), which 
includes references to the lost commentary by Aelius Donatus, 
who appears to have been deficient in knowledge and judgement 
and far too fond of allegorising interpretations, and in these 
respects inferior to the learned and sober Servius". The earliest 
Mss of Virgil belong to the 4th or 5th centuries. 

The first critical edition of Horace was that of Probus; the 

first commentary that of Q. Terentius Scaurus, 
of^Hol^ace"''^ followed (late in the 2nd century) by Helenius 

Aero, who also expounded Terence and Persius. 
The only early commentaries now extant are the scholia collected 
by Pomponius Porphyrio (3rd cent), and by Pseudo-Acro, and 
those compiled for various mss by Prof Cruquius of Bruges. It 

' Nettleship in Conington's Virgil, \^ pp. xxix — <:ix. 
2 Suet. Granim. 16. =* i 8, 5—6. 

* vii 226 f. ^ Ep. i 20, 17. 

® Nettleship, I.e.; cp. Schanz, § 248. 



X.] EARLY STUDY OF VIRGIL AND HORACE. 1 85 

is only through Cruquius (1565) that we know anything of the 
codex antiquissimus Blandinius, borrowed from the librar)- of a 
Benedictine monaster)' near Ghent, and burnt with the monaster)' 
after it had been returned to the librar)'. It represented a recen- 
sion earlier than the date of Porphyrio, as, in Sat. i 6, 1 26, instead 
oi fugio rabiosi tempora signi (recognised by Porphyrio), it had 
the true text : — -fugio camputn lusumque trigonem. The only MS 
which retains the latter is the codex Gothanus (cent. 10). In this, 
and seven other mss, we find a record at the end of the Epodes 
showing that, at the close of the Roman age, there was a recen- 
sion of Horace produced, with the assistance of Felix, orator 
urbis Romcu, by Vettius Agorius Basilius Mavortius (the consul of 
527)'. The earliest extant ms belongs to the eighth or ninth 
century. 

In the next chapter we shall turn to the Grammarians and 
Scholars of the Augustan age. 

' Cp. Schanz, §§ 263 — 5; and Teuffel, § 240, 6 and 477, 3. 



IDALrAELVCOSVBIM 
FLOW BVSETDVLCIAD 
lAMQ;! BATD iCTOPiVR 

From Codex Saxgallexsis 1394 (Century iv or v) of Virgil 
{Aen. i 693 f ). 

(E. M. Thompson's Palaeography, p. 185.) 



Conspectus of Latin Literature, &c., i — 300 A.D. 



Roman 


Poets 


Historians, 


Orators, 1 


Scholars, OtherWriters | 


Emperors 


Biographers 


Rhetoricians 


Critics, &c. 


Of Prose 


A.D. 




9 Pompeius 
Trogus 


L. Ann. Seneca I 

54 B.C.— 39 A.D. 






14 Tiberius 


Germanicus 
IS B.C.— 19 A.D. 
c. 14 Manilius 


30 Velleius Pat- 
erculus 


P. Rutilius 
Lupus 




c. 14 Celsus 


37 Caligula 


30-40 Phaednis 


31 Valerius 






43-4 Pomponius 


41 Claudius 


L.Ann.Senec2 II 


Maximus 




35-70 Palaemon 


Mela 




4 B.C. — 6s A.D. 


41 Q. Curtius 






L.Ann. Seneca II 
4B.C.— 6s A.D. 


54 Nero 


54 Calpurnius 
Persius 34—62 






54-7 Asconius 
3-88 


Petronius d. 66 




Lucan 39—65 






56—80 Probus 


64-5 Columella 


68 Galba 






68-88 Quintilian 






69 Otho 






c. 35—95 






69 Vitellius 












69 Vespasian 


Valerius Flaccus 










79 Titus 


d. c. 90 






76 Elder Pliny 




81 Domitian 


Statius d. c. 95 






23—79 




96 Nerva 


Silius 25-101 


Tacitus 






70-97 Frontinus 


98 Trajan 


Martial 
c. 40—104 


c. 55— "o 


loo Younger 
Pliny 61-105 




d.c. 103 




J uvenal 
<:. 5 5 or 60— 140 






L. Caesellius 




117 Hadrian 




120 Suetonius 

c. 75—160 
137 Florus 




Vindex 
Q. Ter. Scaurus 
Velius Longus 












138 Antoninus 


poetae neoterici 




143 Pronto 


c. 150 C. Sulp. 




Pius 




Justin 


c. 90—168 


ApoUinaris 


Gaiusiio— 180? 


161 M. Aurelius 






158 Apuleius 


d. c. 160 




(161-9 L. Verus) 








169 Gellius 

b. c. 130 
Aemilius Asper 
Flavins Caper 




180 Commodus 








Statilius 




193 Pertinax 








Maximus 




193 Julianus 
193 Septimius 








Terentianus 










Maurus 


Tertullian 


Severus 








Helenius Aero 
Festus 


c. 150-230 


200 

211 Caracalla 












2T7 Macrinus 








Porphyrio 




218 Elagabalus 










2i8?Solinus 


222 Alexander 












Severus 




223 Marius 




C. Julius 


Cyprian 


235 Maxirain 




Maximus 




Romanus 


c. 200-255 


238 Gordian 1,11 












^sSlBafbfnur 








238 Censorinus 




238 Gordian III 












244 Philippus 












249 Decius 


249 Commodia- 










251 Gallus 


nus 










253 Aemilianus 




250 Junius Cor- 








253 Valerian & 




dus 








Gallienus 












268 Claudius II 












270 Aurelian 












275 Tacitus 












276 Florianus 












276 Probus 






Aquila 
Romanus 






282 Carus 




Spartianus 






283 Carinus & 
Numerian 




Capitolinus 










Vulcatius Galli 


29s Arnobius 






284 Diocletian 
(286 Maximian) 


284 Nemesianu 


5 canus 


297 Eumenius 


Mar. Plotius 






TrebelliusPoUic 


Lactantius 


Sacerdos 

















Ik 



CHAPTER XI. 

LATIN SCHOLARSHIP FROM THE AUGUSTAN AGE 
TO 300 A.D. 

The Temple of the Palatine Apollo, founded in memor)' of 
the \-ictor}' of Actium, was dedicated by Augustus in 28 a.d. 
Like the Temple of the 'Victorious Athena' at Pergamon, it was 
surrounded by colonnades giNing access to a Library. The 
Librar}' consisted of two apartments, one for Greek and the other 
for Latin books, with a spacious hall between ; and we are 
informed that the books were collected by Pompeius Macer\ 
and that the Head Librarian was C. Julius Hyginus^ 

Hyginus {c. 64 B.C. — 17 .\.D.), the pupil of Alexander Poly- 
histor (p. 159) and the friend of Ovid, was one of 

^^ •'^' ^ Hyginus 

the foremost scholars of the Augustan age. In his 
studies he followed the traditions of Varro as well as those of 
Nigidius Figulus. Among the most important of his multifarious 
works were (i) his commentary on Virgil, and (2) his treatise on 
the Urbes Itaiiae, rep>eatedly cited by Servius'. Hyginus was 
succeeded by his own freedman Modestus, who is mentioned in 
Quintilian (i 6, 36) and Martial (x 21, i); and by M. Pomponius 
Marcellus, who began life as a boxer and ended it as a pedant. 
During a discussion in court as to whether a word used by the 
emp>eror Tiberius was good Latin or not, he had the courage to 
say to the emperor : ' ci\-itatem dare potes hominibus, verbo non 

^ Suet. Caesar 56. ^ Suet. Gram. 20. 

3 TeuflFel, § 262 ; Schanz, §§ 342—6 ; he is not the author of the extant 
works on Astronomy and Mytholc^y which bear his name (Schanz, §§ 347 — 
350). For most of the scholars mentioned in this chapter and the next, cp. 
Grafenhan, iv 57 — 94. 



1 88 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

potes'\ Varro was the model set up by Fenestella (52 B.C. — 19 A. D.), 
the author of more than 22 books of Annals, which 

Fenestella . - , ,. 

became the source of a vast variety 01 later erudi- 
tion connected with Roman antiquities and literary history. He 
is described by Lactantius as a ' diligentissimus scriptor'^ In the 
same age Verrius Flaccus (y?. 10 B.C.) produced his 
Fiaccu"^ great work De Verborum Significatu, the first Latin 

lexicon ever written. This survives in the incom- 
plete and fragmentary abridgement by Pompeius Festus (2nd cent. 
A.D.), which in its turn was further abridged by Paulus, who 
dedicated his epitome to Charles the Great. We learn from 
Suetonius that Verrius Flaccus introduced among his pupils the 
principle of competition. He was made tutor to the grand- 
children of Augustus and died as an old man in the reign of 
Tiberius. The remains of his work may still be traced in 
Quintilian, Gellius, Nonius, Macrobius and other writers^. It 
appears to have been of the nature of an encyclopaedia, including 
' not only lexicographical matter, but much information on points 
of history, antiquities, and grammar, illustrated by numerous 
quotations from poets, jurists, historians, old legal documents, 
and writers on religious or political antiquities'*. Much of his 
treatise De Orthographia can be recovered from the works on 
the same subject by Terentius Scaur us and Velius Longus, who 
wrote under Trajan and Hadrian, and from Quintilian i 4 and 7^ 
At Praeneste, a statue was erected in his honour with a semi- 
circular marble recess inscribed with his Fasti^, partially preserved 
in the Fasti Praenestini^ . 

A name of note in the history of Latin Grammar is that of 

Q. Remmius Palaemon {fl. 35-70 a.d.) of Vicentia. 

By birth a slave, and by trade a weaver, he learnt 

the elements of literature, while accompanying his master's son 

on his way to school ; and, after obtaining his freedom, he held 

the foremost place among teachers of Grammar in Rome. He 

^ Suet. Gram. 22. 

2 Inst. Div. i 6, 14, ap. Teuffel, § 243, 2. Cp. Schanz, § 331. 

* Nettleship, i 201 — 247. 

^ ib. p. 205. * ib. ii 151— 8. 

6 Suet. De Gram. 17. Teuffel, § 74, 3. 

7 Teuffel, § 74, 3 and § 261 ; Schanz, §§ 340—1. 



XI.] VERRIUS FLACCUS. 1 89 

was bom towards the end of the reign of Augustus, and lived 
under Tiberius and Claudius, both of whom declared that morally 
he was the last man to whom the education of youth ought to be 
entrusted. His popularity was due to his marvellous memory, his 
readiness of speech, and his power of impro\asing poetry. His 
Ars Gratnmatica, probably published between 67 and 77 A.D., 
was the first exclusively scholastic treatise on Latin Grammar. 
We infer from Juvenal (vi 452 f, vii 215) that it contained rules 
for correct speaking, examples from ancient poets, with chapters 
on barbarism and solecism. The scholia on Juvenal (vi 452) 
inform us that Palaemon was the preceptor of Quintilian, and 
it is highly probable that (in i 4 and 5^ i — 54) Quintilian is 
paraphrasing from his preceptor's treatise. He was the first to 
distinguish four declensions ; and part of his grammatical teaching 
is preserved by Charisius (4th century). Palaemon humorously 
regarded his own advent as an arbiter of poetry as predicted by 
Virgil in the phrase, venit ecce Palaemon ; and he vain-gloriously 
asserted that letters had been bom at his birth, and would die at 
his death'. 

The elder Seneca, L. Annaeus Seneca of Corduba {c. 54 b.c. — 
39 A.D.), is a link between the republican and the 
imperial times. In the first half of his life he was elder""* ^^^ 
an admirer of the style of Cicero and of PoUio and 
Messala, while in his old age he recorded his earlier recollections 
in works which illustrate the history of oratory under Augustus 
and Tiberius, and are interesting in connexion with matters of 
rhetorical criticism*. He mentions Apollodorus of Pergamon 
(who included Augustus among his pupils), and he supplies some 
reminiscences of Ovid as a declaimer^ In the latter part of his 
life we may place P. Rutilius Lupus, the author of an abridgement 
of a work on the figures of speech by the younger Gorgias (44 B.C.) 
containing well-chosen examples translated from speeches of Attic 
orators which are no longer extant^. 

^ Suetonius, Gram. 11 ; Teuffel, § 282 ; Nettleship, ii 149, 163 — 9 ; Schanz, 
§ 475 ; also K. Marschall, De Q. Remmii Palaemonis libris gramnuiticis, 1887; 
Bursian's Jahresb. vol. 68 (1891 ii), p. 132 f ; and Jeep's Redetkeile, p. 172 f. 

2 Cp. Saintsbury, i 230 — 9. ^ Controv. ii 2, 8. 

^ Teuffel, § 270 ; Schanz, § 480; Halm, Rhet. Lat. Min., 3— 2t. 



ipO THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

The younger Seneca^ {c. 4 B.C. — 65 a.d.) is absorbed in the 
philosophy of the Stoics, but does not share their 
voungTr^*^^ interest in Grammar. He criticises Cicero and 
Virgil for their admiration of Ennius*, and notes 
the obsoleteness^ of the language of Ennius and Accius, and even 
of that of Virgil, whom he nevertheless cites very frequently, 
calling him a 'vir disertissimus'^ and a 'maximus vates". He 
quotes Horace occasionally, especially the Satires, and Ovid far 
oftener, especially the Metamorphoses, describing their author as 
'poetarum ingeniosissimus, ad pueriles ineptias delapsus'*'. He 
casts contempt on those who are wholly engaged in the study of 
'useless letters', and satirises the craze of the Greeks for inquiring 
as to the number of the oarsmen of Ulysses, and whether the 
Iliad was written before the Odyssey, and whether the same poet 
was the author of both I In the 88th of his Letters, he sneers at 
the ' grammatici ' (§ 3) ; he justly ridicules the attempts to make 
out Homer to have been a Stoic, an Epicurean, a Peripatetic or a 
Platonist (§ 5) ; he does not even care to inquire whether Homer 
or Hesiod was the earlier poet (§ 6) ; and he pities the ' super- 
fluous ' learning contained in the 4000 volumes of Didymus, with 
their discussions on the birthplace of Homer, and the moral 
character of Sappho and Anacreon (§ 37). In his io8th Letter he 
complains that the spirit of disputatiousness has turned 'philo- 
sophy' into 'philology' (§ 23), and also points out that the 
'grammarian' examines Virgil and Cicero from a point of view 
different from that of the 'philologer' or the 'philosopher' 
(§§ 24 — 34 ; supra p. 9). He is almost afraid of taking an undue 
interest in such matters himself (§ 35), though elsewhere he is 
generous enough to describe the ' grammarians ' as the custodes 
Lati?ii sermonis {Ep. 95 § 65). Lastly, in making the earliest 
mention of the alleged destruction of 40,000 mss at Alexandria 
(p. 112 f), he leaves it to Livy to praise the Alexandrian Library 
as 'a noble monument of royal taste and royal foresight', himself 

1 Cp. Saintsbuiy, i 246 f; Teuffel, §§ 287 — 290; Schanz, §§ 452 — 472. 

2 Gellius, xii 2 (Seneca, Frag, no — 3) and Dial, v 37, 5. 
» Ep. 58, 1—6. ^ Dial, viii i, 4. 

■> ib. X 9, 2. * Nat. Q. iii 27, 13. 

7 Dial. X 13, 1—9; cp. Nat. ^. iv 13, i. 



XL] SENECA. PETRONIUS. PERSIUS. I9I 

regarding it as a monument of learned extravagance, and even 
withdrawing the epithet ' learned ' ; for the books (he maintains) 
had been bought for mere show and not for real learning {Dial. 
ix 9, 5)- 

Much more interest in literature seems to be shown by another 
victim of Nero, a far less moral writer, Petronius 

, , ., , XT- 1 • • /- Petronius 

(d. 66 A.D.). His extant work is in form a satura 
Menippea, in which prose is interspersed with verse in various 
metres parodying the style of Seneca, Lucan and Nero'. Literary 
criticism is here incidentally represented in the opening protest 
against the bombasdc language which results from the practice of 
declamation (.^ i, 2). It is also exemplified in a later passage 
warning the poet against allowing any particular sentence to be 
too obtrusive for its context, insisting on the use of choice 
language and the avoidance of vulgarity, and justifj-ing this view 
by appealing to Homer and Virgil, as well as the Greek Lyric 
poets, and Horace with (what Petronius happily describes as) his 
atriosa felicitas (§ 11 8) I Literar)' criticism also finds its place in 
the Satires of Persius (34-62 A.D.), who touches on 
the interest felt by the descendants of Romulus for ^rsms 
the after-dinner discussion of literar)' topics (i 31). His highly 
satirical and allusive prologue is followed by a satire on the 
professional poet and on the mania for poetic recitation, with 
parodies of the ' precious ' "style affected by the poetasters of the 
day. There is also a critical element in the opening passages of 
the fifth and sixth Satires, his general attitude being a protest 
against a fantastic pursuit of Greek themes, and a preference for a 
manly Roman styled 

One of the most competent commentators of the first century 
was Q. Asconius Pedianus {c. 3-88 a.d.), who was 
certainly acquainted with Livy, and was probably, ■^^<=°"'"s 
like Livy, born at Patavium. He was the author of a lost work in 
vindication of Virgil^ but is best knowTi as the \vriter of a learned 
historical commentarj' on Cicero's speeches. All that has survived 
is certain portions of the commentar}' on the Speeches in Pisonem, 

1 Teuffel, § 305, 4 ; Schanz, §§ 393-6. 

* Saintsbury, i 242 — 5. » /^ j ^48 — 253. 

* Contra obtrectatora Vergilii, quoted by Donatus in his Life of \'irgil. 



192 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

pro Scauro, pro Milone, pro Cornelio, and in toga Candida. It 
abounds in historical and antiquarian lore, and shows familiarity 
with even the unpublished works of Cicero, and the speeches of 
his partisans and his opponents. It was composed about 55 a.d., 
and is only preserved in transcripts of the ms found by Poggio at 
St Gallen in 1416'. 

Grammar was one of the many subjects which attracted the 
attention of the elder Pliny (23-79 a.d.), who, in 
^^Ph^nythe ^^^ Preface to his Nahiralis Historia (§ 28), men- 

tions what he modestly calls certain libelli which he 
had written on this subject. His nephew, Pliny the younger 
(iii 5, 5), names in the list of his uncle's works eight libri on 
dubius sermo (or Irregularities in Formation), written in the time 
of Nero. It is probably this work that is the source of a large 
part of Quintilian i 5, 54 to i 6, 287 I It is also probably the 
same work that is meant by the Ars Gratnniatica attributed to 
Pliny by Priscian and by Gregory of Tours. Pliny, as we have 
already noticed (p. 176), is an analogist. Little else is known of 
his views, but there is reason to believe that the work by Valerius 
Probus de nomine is founded on the grammatical writings of the 
elder Pliny ^. The books of his encyclopaedic Naturalis Historia 
which deal with Ancient Art are (with all their imperfections) the 
foundation of our knowledge of that subject. The work has sur- 
vived in many mss, having been very popular in the Middle Ages. 
Extracts from the geographical portions appear in Solinus, and 
other excerpts in the Medicina Plinii. 

M. Valerius Probus of Beyrut {fi. 56-88 a.d.) was the foremost 

grammarian of the first century a.d. Weary of the 

career of a soldier, he resolved on becoming a 

scholar. His interest in literature was first excited by certain 

ancient Latin authors which he had read before arriving in Rome, 

and here he continued his studies and gathered round him a num- 

1 Madvig (1828) ; Teuffel, § 295, 2 — 3; Wissowa in Pauly-Wissowa s.v.\ 
ed. in Orelli's Cicero v 2 pp. i — 95, and by Kiessling and SchoU (1875). Cp. 
Suringar, Hist. Critica, i 117 — 146; also Schanz, § 476, esp. p. 43 1' ad fin. 

2 NeUleship, ii 158— 161. 

^ O. Froehde, Valerii Probi de nomine libellu?7i Plinii Secundi doctrinam 
continere demonstratur, 1892; cp. Nettleship, ii 146, 150; Schanz, § 494, 5. 



XI.] ASCONIUS. PLINV. PROBUS. I93 

ber of learned friends, with whom he spent several hours a day in 
discussing the Latin literature of the past'. Martial, in sending 
into the world his third book of epigrams, bids it farewell with 
the words: nee Probum timeto (iii 2, 12). Gellius, among several 
eulogistic references, describes him as an ' illustrious grammarian ' 
(i 15, 18), and Sidonius Apollinaris calls him 'a pillar of learning' 
( Carm. ix 334). He published a few unimportant criticisms, besides 
leaving behind him a silva observationum sermo?iis antiqiii. Speci- 
mens of his conversational teaching on this subject are preserved 
by Gellius, who cites at second-hand his remarks on Plautus, 
Terence, Virgil, Sallust and Valerius Antias, mentions some of his 
writings, e.g. on the Perfect form occecurri, and also states that he 
made the penultimate of the Accusative of Hannibal and Hasdru- 
bal long, on the ground that it was so pronounced by Plautus and 
Ennius (whose pronunciation of these forms has not been followed 
by Horace or Juvenal). He produced recensions of Plautus (?), 
Terence, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace and Persius, with critical 
symbols like those used by the Alexandrian Scholars. These 
symbols, which were 21 in number, had already been used by 
Vargunteius and by Aelius Stilo^. He also wrote a work on 
the ancient contractions used in legal Latin. In settling the 
text of Virgil, he went back to the earUest authorities. We are 
told that he had himself examined a MS of the First Georgic 
corrected by Virgil's own hand^, and traces of some of his 
critical signs survive in the Medicean MS of Virgil, while we 
may ascribe to him the nucleus at least of the extant commentary 
on the Bucolics and Georgics, which bears his name. Among the 
grammatical works assigned to Probus is one on anomaly {de 
inaequalitate consuetudinis), another on tenses, and on doubtful 
genders. Two treatises have come down to us under his name : 
(i) Catholica, dealing with the noun and the verb; (2) a proHx 
and feeble treatise on Grammar (to which the title Instituta 
.. Artium has been given) with an appendix de differentiis and de 
IMnomine excerpta. It is supposed that these are ultimately founded 

^ Suet. De Gram. 24. 
rt ^ ^€\^^x%(^€\di, Snetoni Reliquiae, ^. xn I. Teuffel, § 41, 2. Grafenhan, 
fev 372, 380. 
IK * Gellius, xiii 21, 4. 

L • 



194 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

on the remains of the teaching of Probus which may have been 
reduced into the form of a textbook in two parts : — ^(i) the Insti- 
tuta Artium, dealing with letters, syllables and the eight parts of 
speech; and (2) the Catholica, dealing with nouns and verbs'. 
Pliny and Probus are probably responsible for most of the remarks 
on irregularities of declension and conjugation found in the later 
grammarians. To these two writers, and to Palaemon, may be 
ascribed the main outlines of the traditional Latin Grammar^ 
From Probus we turn to a name of far greater note. Fabius 
Quintilianus {c. 35-95 a.d.), born at Calagurris on 
the Ebro, was the pupil of Palaemon and the 
preceptor of Tacitus and the younger Pliny. His father was 
a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, where he himself passed the 
greater part of his life as a pleader in the law-courts and as a 
professor of rhetoric. In 88 B.C. he was placed at the head 
of the first State-supported school in Rome, and probably three 
years afterwards he began his great work, the Institntio Oratoria. 
The study of literature {de grammatica) is the theme of chapters 
4 — 8 of his first book, while c. 9 is de officio grammatici. There 
is reason to believe that c. 4 and c. 5 §§ 1 — 54 are founded on 
Palaemon; c. 5 § 54 to c. 6 § 27 on Pliny, and c. 7 §§ i — 28 on 
Verrius Flaccus^ In the controversy between analogists and 
anomalists, Quintilian, as we have seen, was on the side of the 
former without adhering to them very strictly (p. 177). In the 
first chapter of the tenth book he suggests a course of reading 
suitable for the future orator, including (i) the Greek and (2) the 
Latin classics arranged under the heads of poetry, the drama, 
history, oratory and philosophy. In (i) he virtually admits that 
he is giving the criticism of others, not his own. These criticisms 
have so much in common with those of Dionysius of Halicar- 
nassus that it is practically impossible to dispute Quintilian's 
indebtedness to that author, though an attempt has been made 
to show that the identity is due to both having borrowed from the 
same earlier authority*. In part of his criticisms on the Greek 

^ Teuftel, § 300; Schanz, §g 477 — 9. 

- Nettleship, ii 170 f; Schanz, §§ 494 — 5. ^ Nettleship, ii 169. 

■* Usener, Dion. Hal. de Imitatione, p. 132. Heydenreich, De Quuitiliani 
...libra X (1900), maintains that Quintilian was directly indebted to Dionysius. 



XI.] QUINTILIAX. TACITUS. YOUNGER PLINY. I95 

poets, historians and philosophers, he appears to be indebted to 
Theophrastus and the Alexandrian critics, such as Aristophanes 
and Aristarchus'. In (2) his aim throughout is to make canons 
of classical Latin authors corresponding as closely as possible with 
the canons of Greek authors. He gives no independent opinion 
on Pacuvius and Accius, and hardly notices Plautus, Caecilius, 
and Terence ; he misconceives Lucretius ; and although his 
criticisms on post-Ciceronian writers are sound and well-expressed, 
they are generally brief. It is clear that literature before and 
after Cicero has comparatively little attraction for Quintilian. 
His refined and carefully written criticism on Cicero is a monu- 
ment of trained insight, grounded on manly and sober sense. 
While Quintilian is concerned with the literar)' and professional 
aspects of the question as to the reading which is best suited for 
the formation of a good oratorical style, Tacitus 
{c. 55-120 A.D.) in his Dialogue De Oratoribus 
(81 A.D.) takes a loftier view, seeing clearly that literature must 
be 'judged as the expression of national life, not as a matter of 
form and of scholastic teaching'^. The doubts as to the Tacitean 
authorship of the Dialogue have been partly met by the fact that 
a phrase there found (9 and 12)^ is mentioned as expressing the 
opinion of Tacitus in a letter addressed by Pliny the younger 
(61-105 A.D.) to Tacitus himself (ix 10, 2)^ The 
criticism of oratory has also an attraction for the pj[^y younger 
younger Pliny. He \vTites a long letter to Tacitus, 
in the course of which he refers to the typical orators in 
Homer, and quotes the ancient eulogies on the style of Pericles 
(i 20). He also refers to the De Corona and the Meidias of 
Demosthenes (ii 3 10; vii 30, 4), and quotes several passages 
from his public speeches as examples of happy audacity of phrase 
(ix 26, 8— 12)^ 

1 Nettleship, ii 76 — 83 ; and Peterson's Qitiiitil. X, pp. xx%Tii — xxx\ai. 

- NeUleship I.e. p. 87 ff. Teuffel, § 325 (Quintilian); § 334 (Tacitus); cp. 
Schanz, § 483 f and § 428. For 3l facsimile from a MS of Quintilian (x i, 87), 
see p. 203. 

^ in nemora et lucos ; nemora et luci. 

* po€mata...quae tu inter nemora et lucos commodissime perfici putas. 

' Teufiel, § 340 ; Schanz, § 444 f. Literary criticism in Pliny, Tacitus and 
Quintilian is fully treated by Saintsbury, i 270 — 32.1. 



11^ 



13—2 



196 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

Pliny was born in about the same year as Juvenal, and died in 
about the same year as his earlier contemporary 
Martial. Of these two poets, Martial {c. 40 — 
c. 102-4 A.D.) shows a high appreciation of Catullus (x 78 etc.) 
who was beyond the reach of the flattery which he lavishes on 
his own contemporary Silius Italicus (iv 14; vii 63). In criticising 
another contemporary, whose verses were so obscure as to call for 
a scholiast, he expresses a hope that his own poems may give 
pleasure to grammarians, but may be intelligible without their 
aid^ In many other epigrams, as has been fully shown by 
Mr Saintsbury^, 'we have a very considerable number of pro- 
nouncements on critical points or on points connected with 
criticism '. In Juvenal (c. 55-60 — 140 a,d.) there is 

Juvenal . i ,• • • • 

much mention 01 literature, but literary criticism 
is hardly to be found. He satirises the learned ladies who prefer 
talking Greek to Latin (vi 185 — 7), and weigh the merits of 
Homer and Virgil (435 — 6). In the seventh Satire he describes 
the ideal poet, and pays a passing compliment to Quintilian (53 f, 
186 f); in the tenth (114 — 132) he 'points a moral' as to the 
perils of a political career by referring to the fate of Demosthenes 
and Cicero, but he does not permit any of these themes to tempt 
him into the criticism of literature^. Juvenal is the 
only contemporary of Statius {c. 40 — c. 96 a.d.) who 
mentions that poet*, and there are some fine touches of criticism 
in the poem by Statius on the birthday of Lucan, where Ennius 
and Lucretius (amongst others) are briefly characterised : — 

' Cedet Musa rudis ferocis Enni, 
Et docti furor arduus Lucreti ' ^. 

From this group of poets we turn to the name of a writer 

of prose, who is our main authority on the history of Latin 

Scholarship from 168 B.C. to the time of Probus, and whose 

varied erudition made him a favourite author in the early Middle 

Ages. C. Suetonius Tranquillus ic. 75-160 a.d.), 

Suetonius f , , ^ ) '^ , . ' 

who was an advocate under Trajan, and private 
secretary to Hadrian, spent the latter part of his life in preparing 

^ X 21, grammaticis placeant, sed sine grammaticis. 

- i 256 — 268. ^ if). 253—6. ■* Juv. vii 82 — 7. 

'^ Silvae, ii 7, 75 f ; cp. Saintsbury, i 268 f. 



L 



XI.] MARTIAL. JUVENAL. STATIUS. SUETONIUS. I97 

encyclopaedic works on the history of language and literature. 
Apart from his extant work de vita Caesarum, he wrote a series of 
biographies entitled de viris illustribtis under the headings of 
'poets', 'orators', 'historians', 'philosophers', 'scholars' (gram- 
matici), and 'rhetoricians'. Of the early part of this work we 
possess excerpts alone. From the book on 'poets', we have short 
lives of Terence, Horace, Lucan, Virgil and Persius, and some 
remnants of the life of I^ucretius '; from that on 'historians', a few 
remains of a life of the elder Pliny. Of his 36 biographies of 
'scholars and rhetoricians', no less than 25 have survived. He 
also wTOte a work on Roman institutions and customs. It was 
probably in another lost work entitled Pratum or Praia that 
(among many other topics) he treated of various notations of 
time in connexion with the Roman year, being one of the 
authorities followed on this point by Censorinus and Macrobius^ 
besides being one of the main sources of the erudition of Isidore 
of Seville. The works of Suetonius included a defence of Cicero 
against the attacks of the Alexandrian Scholar, Didymus, and a 
treatise on the critical signs used in the margins of mss*. Most 
of our knowledge of the meanings of these symbols is due to 
Suetonius*. 

Among the Scholars of the second centur}' a.d. were Caesellius 
Vindex, a learned analogist* ; Q. Terentius Scaurus, 
who wrote on orthography as well as Grammar and veUus"Longus 
Poetr)', and was also a commentator on Plautus and 
Virgil, and probably on Horace*; Velius Longus and Fla\aus 
Caper', both of whom wrote on orthography ; and 
Aemilius Asper, the learned and acute commen- ^^^^' ^"^^ 
tator on Terence, Sallust and Virgil^ A special interest attaches 

^ J. Masson mjotirnal of Philology., xxxiii 220 — 237. 
- Reifferscheid, Suetoni Reliquiaty p. 149 f. 

* irept T^s KtKe'pwi'os a-oXtreZaj, and xept tSiv kv roh ^i^Xiois atjfuitjv 
(Suidas). 

* Reifferscheid, p. 135 f. — On Suetonius in general, cp. Teuffel, § 347, 
Schanz, §§ 529—536; and Mace, Sur Sueione, 1900. 

5 Teuffel, § 343 ; Schanz, § 593. 

»^- § 352 ; Schanz, § 594 f. 
^ ib. § 343 ; Schanz, §§ 596, 599. 

ib. § 328 ; Schanz § 598. 



198 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

to M. Cornelius Fronto of Cirta {c. 90-168 a.d.), the tutor of 
M. Aurelius and the admirer of the earlier Roman 

Fronto . ,,_,,_. 

literature as represented by Plautus, Ennius, Cato, 
Gracchus, Lucretius, I^aberius and Sallust. He never mentions 
Terence or Virgil, though he betrays occasional reminiscences not 
of Virgil only but also of Horace and Tacitus. He depreciates 
Seneca, but bestows frequent encomiums on Cicero, though he 
cares more for his letters than for his speeches, in which he finds 
very few of those rare words for which Fronto himself had an 
excessive partiality'. In literary criticism 'his utterances do not 

go beyond neatly formulated criticisms of the old 
ApoifinLris'''^ scholastic type'^ Mention may here be made of 

C. Sulpicius ApoUinaris of Carthage, the teacher of 
Pertinax and of Gellius, and the author of the quaestiones episto- 

licae, and of metrical summaries of Plautus, Terence 
Ceisus"*'"^ and the Aeneid'^ ; and Arruntius Celsus, an anno- 

tator on Plautus and Terence". 
More important than either of these is Aulus Gellius' (born 

c. 130 A.D.), J;he author 6f the Nodes Atticae, an 

interesting and instructive compilation of varied 
lore on the earlier Latin Language and Literature, and on Law 
and Philosophy, deriving its name from the fact that the author 
began it, about the age of thirty, in the winter evenings near 
Athens. Its main importance is due to its large number of 
citations from works which are now no longer extant. At Athens 
the author became acquainted with the mysterious philosopher, 
Peregrinus Proteus (xii 11, i), and was often invited to the 
country-house of that distinguished patron of learning, Herodes 
Atticus (i 2, I ; xix 12); he attended the monthly meetings of 
the students (xv 2, 3), and made excursions to Aegina and Delphi 
(ii 21, xii 5). In his extant work he shows himself a most 
industrious student and a typical Scholar. He frequents Libraries, 
whether in the domus Tiberiana on the Palatine, or in the Temple 

1 Teuffel, § 355, 5; Schanz, §§ 549 f, esp. § 552. 

2 Nettleship, ii 91. ' Teuffel, § 357, 1—2; Schanz, § 597. 
* ib. 357. 3; Schanz, § 605, 5. 

® ib. 365 ; Schanz, § 607—9; Nettleship, i 248 — 276 ; cp. Boissier, Fin du 
Paganisnie, ed. 3, 1898, i 178—180; and Saintsbury, i 322—9. 



XI.] FRONTO. AULUS GELLIUb. 199 

of Peace founded by Vespasian, in the Temple of Trajan, or in 
that of Hercules at Tibur, or even at Patrae in Greece, where he 
finds a 'really ancient ms' of Livius Andronicus\ The reading 
aloud of a passage on melted ice or snow from a ms of Aristotle, 
borrowed by a friend from the Temple at Tibur", leads him to 
forswear cold drinks for the rest of his life. He has pleasant 
memories of his teacher Antonius Julianus, who paid a large sum 
for the purpose of verifying a single reading in an ancient ms of 
Ennius (xviii 5, ii)^ he refers to good MSS of Fabius Pictor, Cato, 
Catullus, Sallust, Cicero and Virgil, but in these references it is 
possible that he may be really borrowing from Probus who, 
according to Suetonius, 'gave an immense amount of attention 
to the collection of good mss of classical authors '\ In matters 
of style, he has some general remarks accompanying a short 
comparison between Plato and Lysias (ii 5), also between 
Menander and CaeciHus (ii 23), and C. Gracchus and Cicero 
(x 3). He tells the story of the meeting at Tarentum between 
the aged PacuWus and the youthful Accius, when Pacuvius, after 
hearing Accius read his A/reus, pronounced it grand and sonorous, 
but perhaps harsh and crude, and Accius replied that he hoped 
his poems would improve in time, like apples that were harsh and 
crude at first, but afterwards became sweet and mellow (xiii 2). 
He quotes a comparison between the eruption of Aetna as 
described by Pindar and by Virgil (x\-ii 10). He also defends 
Sallust and Virgil against their detractors, and discusses the 
style of Seneca (xii 2). More than a fourth of his work is 
concerned with Latin lexicography, e.g. the singular use of mt'/le 
(i 16), with notes on pedarii senatores (iii 18), on the different 
senses of obnoxins (vi 17), on proletarii and adsidui (x\d 10), on 
the exact meaning of the phrase in Ennius, ex iure manum 
consertum (xx 10), and on Cicero's use oi paenitere (xvii i). He 
also discusses synonyms, words of double meaning, derivations, 
and moot points of Grammar, such as the pronunciation of H and 
^ xiii lo, I ; xvi 8, 2 ; xi 17, i ; ix 14, 3 ; xviii 9, 5. 

* xix 5, 4 ; cp. ix 14, 3. 

* It was Julianus who, in the summer holidays, took Gellius and his other 
pupils to hear a recitation from the Annals of Ennius in the theatre of Puteoli 
(xviii 5, 1—5). 

* Suet. Gram. 24 (Nettleship, i 274). 



200 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP 

V (ii 3 ; X 4), the quantity of in and con in composition (ii 17), 
the question whether one should say tertium or tertio, curam vestri 
or vestrum (x i; xx 6), and the difference between multis honiini- 
bus and multis mortalibus (xiii 28). He quotes a large variety of 
Greek and Latin authors, taking a special interest in the earlier 
Latin Literature and in Latin 'grammarians'. But he rejects a 
friend's suggestion that he should discuss (among many other 
minor matters) the question what was the name of the first 
'grammarian' (xiv 6, 3). Among the more miscellaneous con- 
tents of his work, readers of Sandford and Merton may be 
interested to find the original text of the story of ' Androclus and 
the Lion,' here quoted from the Alexandrian ' grammarian ' Apion 
(v 14, 10 — 30). In a history of Classical Scholarship it may be 
worth noticing that, while Cicero' describes Cleanthes and Chry- 
sippus as quintae classis in comparison with Democritus, Gellius 
contrasts a 'scriptor classicus^ with a 'scriptor proletarius''^, 
obviously deriving his metaphor from the division of the Roman 
people into classes by Servius TuUius, those in the first class being 
called classici^, all the rest infra classem, and those in the last 
proletarii. As infra classem and classici testes are explained by 
Paulus^ in his abridgement of Festus (the epitomiser of Verrius 
Flaccus), it is probable that Verrius is also the authority followed 
by Gellius. In any case it is from this rare use of classicus that 
the modern term ' classical ' is derived. 

To the close of the 2nd century may be assigned Terentianus 
Maurus, the writer of a manual in verse on ' letters, 

Terentianus. ..... 

Aero. Festus. syllables and metres', the metrical portion of which 
orp yno .^ founded on a work by Caesius Bassus, the friend 

of Persius* ; also Aero, the commentator on Terence and Horace ; 
and Festus, the author of the abridgement of Verrius Flaccus just 
mentioned. Porphyrio, whose scholia on Horace are still extant, 
probably belongs to a later date than Aero, whom he quotes on 
Sat. i 8, 25, and whose name is wrongly given to a number of 

^ Acad, ii 73. 

^ xix 8, 15, classicus adsiduusque scriptor, non proletarius. 

^ vi (vii) 13, I where Cato is quoted. 

* pp. 113 and 56 (Nettleship, i 269). 

' Teuffel, § 373''; Schanz, § 514. 



XI.j AULUS GELLIUS. ACRO AND PORPHYRIO. 20I 

miscellaneous scholia on Horace founded partly on Aero and 
Porphyrio with some additions from the Roma of Suetonius ^ 
Statilius Maximus is known to have revised a MS of the Second 
Agrarian speech of Cicero with the aid of the text edited by 
Cicero's freedman, Tiro", whose libri Tironiani are mentioned by 
Gellius (i 7, i ; xiii 21, 16) in connexion with the Verrine orations. 
Statilius, who is also known to have commented on peculiarities 
in the diction of Cato, Sallust and Cicero, falls between the time 
of Gellius, who never quotes him, and that of Julius Romanus, 
who quotes him repeatedly. 

The Scholars of the 3rd centvuy include the learned gram- 
marian, C. Julius Romanus, extensively quoted by Charisius^; and 
the writer of several grammatical works, Censorinus*, 

° Censonnus 

whose extant but incomplete treatise De die natali 
(238 A.D.), mainly compiled from a lost work of Suetonius, contains 
much valuable information on points of history and chronology. 
In the second half of this century we may place Aquila Romanus, 
the author of a work on figures of speech, adapted from Alexander 
Numenius*; and Marius Plotius Sacerdos, the author of an Ars 
Grammatica in three books, the second of which is mainly iden- 
tical with the Catholica ascribed to Probus {supra, p. 193)^ 

A characteristic product of this age is the epitome of Pliny 
bearing the name of Solinus, which afterwards became popular in 
a new form and under the pretentious title of Folyhistor. Just 
before the last quarter of this century the emperor Tacitus (275-6) 
provided for the preservation of the works of his ' ancestor ' the 
historian by causing a copy to be placed in each of the public 
libraries and by arranging for the transcription of further copies in 
the future ^ 

As we glance over the three centuries from the age of Augustus 
to that of Diocletian, which have been rapidly traversed in this 

1 Teuffel, § 374; Schanz, §601—2. 

"^ Statilius Maximus rursus emendavi ad Tyronem etc. (A. Mai, Cic. cod. 
Ambros., p. 231, ap. Jahn, Sachs. Berichte, 1851, 329). 

* ib. § 379, I ; Schanz, § 603. 

* ib. 6—8; Schanz, §632. 

' ib. % 388 ; Halm. Rhet. Lat. Min. 22 f. 

« Teuffel, § 394; Schanz, § 6o4f; Jeep, Redeiheile, pp. 73—82. 
Vopiscus, Tcu. 10. 



202 THE ROMAN AGE. [CHAP. 

chapter, we are bound to recognise that, in the iirst century a.d., 
grammatical studies are more systematic, but at the same time 
more narrow, than in the last century of the repub