528 



GREECE. (LANGUAGE). 



unacquainted with the practice of augury. The 

 Greek was iiu-lined to festivity, even in religion, and 

 MT\fd the gods less in spirit than in outward cere- 

 monies. His religion had little influence on his 

 morals, his belief, and the government of his thoughts. 

 All it required was a belief in the gods, and in a 

 future existence : a freedom from gross crimes, and 

 an observance of prescribed rites. The simplicity 

 of their manners, and some obscure notions of a 

 supreme God, who hated and punished evil, loved 

 and rewarded good, served, at first, to maintain good 

 morals and piety among them. These notions were 

 afterwards exalted and systematized by poetry and 

 philosophy, and the improvement spread from the 

 cultivated classes through the great mass of the peo- 

 ple. In the most enlightened period of Greece, clearer 

 ideas of the unity ofthe deity, of his omniscience, his 

 omnipresence, his holiness, his goodness, his justice, 

 and of the necessity of worshipping him by virtue and 

 purity of heart, prevailed. The moral system of some 

 individuals among the Greeks was equally pure. 

 The precepts of morality were delivered at first in 

 sententious maxims ; for example, the sayings of the 

 seven wise men. Afterwards, Socrates and his dis- 

 ciples arose, and promulgated their pure doctrines. 

 The love of freedom among the Greeks sprang from 

 their good fortune, in having lived so long without 

 oppression or fear of other nations, and from their 

 natural vivacity of spirit. It was this which made 

 small armies invincible, and which caused Lycurgus, 

 Solon, and Timoleon to refuse crowns. Their free- 

 dom was the work of nature, and the consequence of 

 their original patriarchal mode of life. The first 

 kings were considered as fathers of families, to whom 

 obedience was willingly paid, in return for protec- 

 tion and favours. Important affairs were decided by 

 the assemblies of the people. Each man was master 

 in his own house, and in early times no taxes were 

 paid. But as the kings strove continually to extend 

 their powers, they were ultimately compelled to re- 

 sign their dignities, and free states arose, with forms 

 of government inclining more or less to aristocracy 

 or democracy, or composed of a union of the two ; 

 the citizens were attached to a government which was 

 administered under the direction of wise laws, and 

 not of arbitrary power. It was this noble love for a 

 free country, which prompted Leonidas to say to the 

 king of Persia, that he would rather die than hold a 

 despotic sway over Greece. It was this which in- 

 spired Solon, Themistocles, Demosthenes, and Pho- 

 cion, when, in spite ofthe ingratitude of their country- 

 men, they chose to serve the state and the laws, rather 

 than their own interests. The cultivation of their 

 fruitful country, which, by the industry of the inha- 

 bitants, afforded nourishment to several millions, and 

 the wealth of their colonies, prove the activity ofthe 

 Greeks. Commerce, navigation, and manufactures 

 flourished on all sides ; knowledge of every sort was 

 accumulated ; the spirit of invention was busily at 

 work ; the Greeks learned to estimate the pleasures 

 of society, but they also learned to love luxury. From 

 these sources of activity sprang also a love of great 

 actions and great enterprises, so many instances of 

 which are furnished by Grecian history. Another 

 striking trait ofthe Grecian character, was a love of 

 the beautiful, both physical and intellectual. This 

 sense of the beautiful, awakened and developed by 

 nature, created for itself an ideal of beauty, which 

 served them, and has been transmitted to us, as a cri- 

 terion for every work of art. A noble simplicity per- 

 vades every thing which comes from them. It is 

 this which has made the Greeks the instructors of all 

 ages and nations. 



Greek Language and Writing. The language 

 which we call Greek, was not the primitive lan- 



guage of Greece, for Greece was originally inhabited 

 by the Pelasgi. Their language was already ex- 

 tinct in the time of Herodotus, who asserts that it 

 was different from the Hellenic, and adds, that it is 

 probable that the Hellenes have retained their origi- 

 nal language (I. 57). But on the question whence. 

 it originated, there is a diversity of opinion ; for 

 some derive it from the Persian, others from the 

 Scythian two opinions, which are not, perhaps, in- 

 compatible with each other. 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. From the great num- 

 ber of Hellenic tribes of the same race, it was to be 

 expected that there would be different dialects, the 

 knowledge of which is the more necessary for be- 

 coming acquainted with the Greek language, since 

 the writers of this nation have transmitted the pecu- 

 liarities of the different dialects in the use of single 

 letters, words, forms, terminations, and expressions, 

 and that not merely to characterize more particularly 

 an individual represented as speaking, but even 

 when they speak in their own person. It is custom- 

 ary to distinguish three leading dialects, according to 

 the three leading branches of the Greeks, the yEolio, 

 the Doric, and the Ionic, to which was afterwards 

 added the mixed Attic dialect ; besides these, there 

 are several secondary dialects. The four leading dia- 

 lects may be reduced to two, the Hellenic-Doric, and 

 the Ionic- Attic. The former was the oldest; in 

 fact, Doric was generally used to signify what was 

 ancient. The oldest Doric style is displayed in the 

 Molic dialect, from which the Latin language is 

 derived. The Doric was hard and harsh ; the Ionic- 

 was the softest. The jEolic was spoken on the 

 north of the Isthmus (excepting in Megara, Attica, 

 and Doris), in the ./Eolian colonies of Asia Minor, 

 and on some of the northern islands of the JEgean 

 sea. The Doric was spoken in the Peloponnesus, 

 in the Doric Tetrapolis, in the Doric colonies of 

 Asia Minor, of Lower Italy (Tarentum), of Sicily 

 (Syracuse, Agrigentum), and most purely by the 

 Messenians ; the Ionic in the Ionian colonies of Asia 

 Minor, and on the islands of the Archipelago ; and 

 the Attic in Attica. In each of these dialects, there 

 are celebrated authors. To the Ionic dialect be- 

 long, in part, the works of the oldest poets, Homer, 

 Hesiod, Theognis, etc. ; it is found pure in some 

 prose writers, especially Herodotus, and Hippocrates; 

 the poems of Pindar, Theocritus, Bion, and Mos- 

 chus. Little Doric prose remains, and that is mostly 

 on mathematical or philosophical subjects. In 

 ^Eolic, we have fragments of Alcaeus and Sappho. 

 After Athens had obtained the supremacy of Greece, 

 and rendered itself the centre of all literary cultiva- 

 tion, the masterpieces of JEschylus, Sophocles, Euri- 

 pides, Aristophanes, Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato, 

 Isocrates, Demosthenes, etc., made the Attic the 

 common dialect of literature. Grammarians after- 

 wards distinguished the genuine Attic, as it exists in 

 those masters, from the Attic of common life, call ing 

 the latter the common Greek, or Hellenic dialect, 

 and even the later Attic writers, posterior to the 

 golden age of the literature, Hellenes, or common 

 Greeks. In this latter class are Aristotle, Theophras- 

 tus, Apollodorus, Polybius, Plutarch, and others, 

 many of whom, however, wrote genuine Attic, as 

 Lucian, ^Elian, and Arrian. Except the dramatists, 

 the poets by no means confined themselves to the 

 Attic ; the dramatists themselves assumed the Doric, 

 to a certain degree, in their choruses, for the sake 

 of giving them additional solemnity, because these 

 belonged to the oldest liturgy of the Greeks; and 

 the other poets retained the Homeric style. It can- 

 not be denied, tliat he Greeks were much better 



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