144 



THE CENTURY BOOK OF FACTS. 



records were recovered with great difficulty by 

 succeeding emperors. 



GREEK LITERATURE. 



The language which we call Greek was not 

 the primitive language of Greece, for that 

 country was originally inhabited by the Pelasgi, 

 whose language had become extinct in the 

 time of Herodotus. With regard to its origin, 

 there is a diversity of opinion among the 

 learned, although it evidently forms a branch 

 of the extensive family of languages known 

 by the name of the Indo-Germanic. It has 

 existed as a spoken language for at least three 

 thousand years, and, with the exception of the 

 Arabic and the English, has been more widely 

 diffused than any other tongue. Out of Greece, 

 it was spoken in a great part of Asia Minor, of 

 the South of Italy and Sicily, and in other 

 regions which were settled by Grecian colonies. 

 The Greek language is divided into four lead- 

 ing dialects, the JEolic, Ionic, Doric, and Attic, 

 beside which there are several secondary dia- 

 lects. The four principal dialects may, how- 

 ever, be reduced to two, the Hellenic-Doric, 

 and the Ionic- Attic, the latter originally spoken 

 in the northern part of Peloponnesus and 

 Attica, the former in other parts of Greece. 

 In each of these dialects, there are celebrated 

 authors. To the Ionic dialect, belong in part 

 the works of the oldest poets, Homer, Hesiod, 

 Theognis ; of some prose writers, especially 

 Herodotus and Hippocrates ; and the poems of 

 Pindar, Theocritus, Bion, and Moschus. The 

 Doric dialect was of the greatest antiquity. 

 We have few remains of Doric prose, which 

 consists chiefly of mathematical or philo- 

 sophical writings. After Athens became the 

 center of literary cultivation in Greece, the 

 works of ^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, 

 Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, 

 Isocrates, Demosthenes, and so forth, were re- 

 garded as standards of style, and made the 

 Attic the common dialect of literature. Poetry, 

 however, was not written in the Attic dialect. 

 The peculiarities of Homer were imitated by 

 all subsequent poets except the dramatists, 

 and even they assumed the Doric to a certain 

 degree in their choruses, for the sake of the 

 solemnity of expression which belonged to the 

 oldest liturgies of the Greeks. According to 

 the general tradition, Cadmus the Phrenician 

 was the first who introduced the alphabet into 

 Greece. His alphabet consisted of but six- 

 teen letters ; four are said to have been in- 

 vented by Palamedes in the Trojan war, and 

 four more by Simonides of Ceos. It has been 

 maintained, however, by some persons, that 

 the art of writing was practiced by the Pe- 

 lasgi before the time of Cadmus. On the 



other hand, many of the most sagacious critics 

 place the origin of writing in Greece at a muclt 

 later period. 



The origin of Greek literature, or the in- 

 tellectual cultivation of the Greeks, by uiiitt-u 

 works, dates at a period of which \w- have 

 few historical memorials. The first period oi 

 Grecian cultivation, which extends to ei-lilv 

 years after the Trojan war, is called the ;tnte- 

 Homeric period, and is destitute of any liter- 

 ary remains properly deserving the name. Of 

 the poets previous to Homer, nothing satisfac- 

 tory is known. The most ancient was Olen, 

 who is mentioned by Pausanias. He was fol- 

 lowed by Linus, Orpheus, Musaeus, and others, 

 but the poems which are circulated under their 

 names cannot be regarded as their genuine 

 productions. It was in the Greek colonies of 

 Asia Minor that the first great impulse was 

 given to the development of literature ; and 

 among them we find the earliest authentic 

 specimens of Greek poetry and historical com- 

 position. Situated on the borders of a noble 

 sea, enjoying a climate of delicious softness 

 and purity, abounding in the most nutritious 

 and tempting products of nature, whose fertil- 

 ity was not inferior to its beauty, these colo- 

 nies possessed a character of refined voluptuous- 

 ness which, if not favorable to the perform- 

 ance of great deeds, allured the dreamy spirit 

 to poetical contemplations, and was manifested 

 in noble creations of the fancy, which have 

 not been surpassed in the progress of cultiva- 

 tion. Living near the scene of the Trojan 

 war, the bards devoted their first poems to the 

 celebration of Grecian heroism. With them 

 commenced the second period of Greek litera- 

 ture, which we call the Epic age. Of these, 

 Homer alone has survived. We have from 

 him the two great poems, the Iliad and ( Mys- 

 sey, with several hymns and epigrams. He 

 gave his name to the Homeridae, an Ionian 

 school of minstrels, who preserved the old 

 Homeric and epic style, and who are probably 

 the authors of much that has been ascribed to 

 Homer himself. 



Next to the Homeridse, come the Cyclic 

 poets, whose works embrace the whole circle 

 of mythology and tradition, describing the 

 origin of the gods and of the world, the ad- 

 ventures of the Heroic times, the Argonautio 

 expedition, the labors of Hercules and Theseus, 

 the principal events of the Theban and Trojan 

 wars, and the fortunes of the Greeks after the 

 fall of Troy. A transition between these his- 

 toric poets and the later school of Ionian min- 

 strelsy is formed by Hesiod, who conducted 

 poetry back from Asia Minor into Greece. Of 

 the sixteen works ascribed to him, we have the 

 Theogony, the Shield of Hercules, and WorLt 



