pursuit. This was more especially the case in Athens, amid the absence of indigenous taste or talent for narrative composition in that state before the time of Thucydides. The study of the art of composition came accordingly to be directed mainly to its advantage and use in forensic debate. Under these circumstances it was natural that the influence of this engrossing branch of polite literature should be extensively felt in every other; that the lecture of the philosopher, the narrative of the historian, and the disquisition of the popular essayist should be more or less impregnated with rhetorical ingredients. Hence the practice universal among the early sophists, and partially maintained after their time, of embodying treatises on every kind of subject in the form of orations. Hence the preference by the popular schools of philosophy for the dialectic mode of inculcating their doctrines. Hence the accumulation of speeches in the text of the historian. Hence too may be explained and palliated that involution of language, and those long-drawn and complicated periods, which, in the page of the best Greek authors, so often puzzle the modern student, and excite his surprise that the same difficulties should not have given greater offence to the delicate taste of an Athenian public. It is probable, however, that the embarrassment which we here experience was but little felt by the more subtle intellect of the Attic reader. Trained from his youth to follow with intense interest the discussions of the senate or law court, through the mazes of acute argument or animated peroration, elucidated and enforced by all the aids of voice, countenance, and gesture, which an accomplished Attic orator had at command, he transferred the habit thus acquired, of alternately concentrating and subdividing his attention, from his forensic attendance to his chamber studies; and found as little difficulty in apprehending an elaborately prolonged period when brought under the one sense in a written form, as when conveyed to the other from the lips of the orator. Hence, in every subsequent stage of classical literature (for the habit of the Romans in this respect, partly from similarity of manners, partly from deference to their Attic masters, is akin to that of the Greeks), the term Literary composition, in the vocabulary of criticism, is nearly synonymous with that of Rhetoric; the standard works on this varied subject are entitled treatises on rhetoric or oratory; and the standard models of style held up to the imitation of the student are the works of the popular orators, rather than those of the historians or essayists. With every allowance for the peculiar genius of the age in which the masterpieces of Attic prose were produced, a consideration which must always have a certain weight in literary judgements, still, the impartial modern critic cannot but discern, in this pervading rhetorical tone, a defect, perhaps the only serious defect, in the classical Greek style. The essence of all art is the imitation of nature; and the forms which nature supplies, while they may be idealised or embellished, can never without a sacrifice of genuine excellence in art's productions be entirely effaced. But it is certainly not natural for the historian or the popular essayist, to address his readers in the same tone in which the defender of a client, or the denouncer of a political opponent, addresses a public assembly. Nor is it natural that the characters who figure in a historical narrative 130 EARLY HISTORY OF PROSE COMPOSITION. Book IV. should be introduced haranguing each other in elaborate speeches, composed by the author and placed in their mouths for the occasion. Such speeches, even where they represent with any fidelity the sentiments of those to whom they are ascribed, must be purely imaginary in form, and in most cases are, it is certain, no less imaginary in substance. But a historical work is, in its nature and essence, the reverse of a work of imagination. Truth and reality, in the fullest extent to which they can be investigated, ought to be the inflexible guides of the historian's course; and it is as plain an infringement of this fundamental law of his art, to attribute to men words which they never spoke, as actions which they never performed. CHAP. III. HISTORIANS PRIOR TO HERODOTUS. PART I. HISTORIANS FLOURISHING PRIOR TO THE PELOPON NESIAN WAR. 1. EARLY FABULOUS OR APOCRYPHAL WRITERS. ACUSILAUS. HIS GENEALO GICAL WORK. HIS VERSION OF THE LEGEND OF TROY.-2. SCYLAX OF DEMO PART II. HISTORIANS FLOURISHING DURING THE PELOPON NESIAN WAR. 10. PHERECYDES. HIS AGE AND BIRTHPLACE. HIS ARCHÆOLOGIA. - 11. HIS SYSTEM OF MYTHOLOGY. HIS STYLE.-12. ANTIOCHUS OF SYRACUSE. HIS NOTICE OF ROME.-13. STESIMBROTUS OF THASOS. HIS MEMOIRS OF ATHENIAN STATESMEN. HIS CHARACTER OF CIMON, AND OF PERICLES. - 14. ION OF CHIOS. HIS PROSE WORKS. HIS CHARACTER OF PERICLES, AND OF CIMON. - 15. HIS STYLE. 16. HERODORUS OF HERACLEA. HIS LIFE OF HERCULES. HIS ARGONAUTICA. HIS COMPOSITION AND STYLE. HIS OTHER WORKS. 17. HELLANICUS OF LESBOS. HIS AGE. LIST OF HIS WORKS.-18. HIS DEUCALIONIA: PHORONIS: ATLANTIS.-19. HIS ATTHIS: ÆOLICA LESBICA: TROÏCA: PERSICA ARGIVE PRIESTESSES: CARNEONICÆ. 20. APOCRYPHAL WORKS. HIS KNOWLEDGE OF THE LATIN TONGUE. HIS STYLE. DAMASTES OF SIGEUM, 1. FOLLOWING the method of a popular antient critic, we shall, in the present chapter, treat of the authors who form its subject under the two heads: of Historians flourishing before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, in 431 B. C.; and Historians flourishing Early fabulous and authors. during that contest, 431-404 B. C. As the works ascribed to these writers have in no instance been transmitted entire, and as the general characteristics by which they are distinguished have engaged our attention in the previous pages, a proportionally limited space will be required for their special history or that of their authors. It has been remarked in previous portions of this apocryphal work1, that several of the poets who flourished during the latter part of the Poetical period obtained credit with the popular Greek public for the composition of prose histories in addition to their metrical productions. We have, however, also seen that the genuine character of these histories is more than doubtful. As the long passage quoted by Pausanias from the "Corinthian history" of Eumelus is identical in substance with a fragment of the metrical Corinthiaca of the same author, there is the more reason to believe the history to have been but a prose paraphrase of the poem by some bookmaker of a later period. The notices of prose compositions by Aristeas or Epimenides are scarcely sufficient to establish that such works, whether genuine or forged, ever were current under the names of those authors.8 Concerning Cadmus of Miletus, little need be added to what has been said in the last chapter. Even admitting his real personality, it was not pretended that any of his writings had survived his own age. 1 Supra, Ch. ii. § 2. conf. Vol. II. p. 450. 469. 473. 2 Vol. II. p. 450. Eumelus is further stated by Clemens of Alexandria (Strom. VI. p. 629. A.) to have paraphrased Hesiod in prose. The work here alluded to was probably the same mentioned by Pausanias (Iv. iv. 1.), which Clemens may have described in those terms, owing to some correspondence observable between the Corinthian mythology of Eumelus and that of Hesiod. 3 Supra, p. 58. seq. |