Causes of the change.

literary pursuit, and the chosen home of men of genius, as Athens was in the age of Pericles. Although, from causes already examined, she was never in any age herself prolific in authors; she had yet in those early days her Cinathon in the epic department of poetry, and her Gitiadas and Xenodamus among the musicians of recorded fame; while it was in the capacity of Spartan guests or citizens that most of the celebrated Æolian, Ionian, and Dorian masters,-Terpander, Thaletas, Sacadas, Alcman, Polymnestus,- composed and taught. That Sparta was also familiar from the eighth century downwards with the Homeric poems is evinced, as well by the tradition of their importation into Greece by Lycurgus, as by the fact of Terpander, the state-musician of Sparta, having adapted portions of them to his musical compositions. Athens on the other hand, during the same Poetical period, produced neither epic poet nor musician; and far from being able to boast either a Terpander or an Alcman among her adopted citizens, the single lyric artist whom she claims is only known to have been an Athenian from the circumstance of his having preferred Sparta as the field for the exercise of his talents. Even the poems of Homer were, if we may trust her own tradition, unknown or little cared for in Athens until the time of Solon and Pisistratus. Before the days of those two enlightened citizens, Attica was, in fact, in all that concerns literature, a still more barren waste than Lacedæmon became in her turn during the period now before us, in which Athens appears as the hotbed of Hellenic talent, and the centre of every species of intellectual pursuit both to her own citizens and to the foreigners who flocked to her schools.

3. This remarkable interchange of habits and tastes,

between the two leading states of Greece, is one of those phenomena which the more careless student of history is apt to overlook altogether; which often cause serious embarrassment to the critical inquirer; and which as often lead the more subtle speculator into fallacious theories, in his attempts to trace them to their origin. The best and simplest explanation of the problem which here presents itself, in so far at least as Athens is concerned, has already been given in the remark above made, as to the ascendant of the Intellectual over the Imaginative faculty in that particular modification of the Greek mind which fell to the lot of the Athenians. This peculiarity naturally rendered the full development of their equally peculiar order of talent for literature dependent on a corresponding advancement of their social condition. The circumstances are here parallel to those formerly noticed as having tended during the Poetical period, first to retard, and then to stimulate, the cultivation of lyric art. As in the Hellenic nation at large a certain advance of civilisation was required to bring that more intellectual order of poetry to maturity; so the peculiar genius of the Attic Hellene required a still further advance of social life to bring his peculiar order of literary talents into activity. Those talents accordingly, though enlivened in the vigour of their cultivation by a share of the brilliant fancy common to the rest of the Greek race, will yet be found, as compared with those of rival tribes, to be far more dependent, for their full development and successful exercise, on the resources of the intellect than on those of the imagination.

Hence may be explained, not only why Attica was barren of men of genius during the Poetical age, but

The Athecient in

nians defi

inventive genius,

the no less striking fact, that, while admitted to have carried to perfection all the higher branches of composition which flourished during the present more enlightened period, the drama, history, oratory, and didactic prose, she did not initiate a single one of them. Original invention in elegant pursuit is the special province of the Imagination; to mature and perfect the inventions of others is that of the Intellect. Prose composition in all its departments had reached an advanced stage of maturity before Athens produced a prose writer. Oratory was first raised to the rank of a written order of composition by Sicilians. Didactic prose, comprising grammar and criticism, also took its rise in the colonial states of Greece; to whom the Athenians owed their first instruction in those departments. If there be any branch of literature in which Athens might seem to possess a legitimate claim to priority, it is the drama. Yet even here her title is defective. The germ of all scenic entertainment is confessedly traceable to the Dorians. And even admitting the merit, which cannot be denied to Athens, of having formed the classical drama out of the rude elements supplied by the dithyramb of Arion, or the comedy of Susarion, to be equivalent to invention, this single exception would tend in some sense to confirm the rule. The Attic drama is of all orders of poetical composition the most artificial; being, in fact, an ingenious compound of the same epic and lyric elements which had already, in their separate form, reached their highest excellence in the works of Homer, Archilochus, and Stesichorus: it is consequently, of all, the one least dependent on the spontaneous working of the imagination, and the most dependent on the exercise of the intellect. It may be further remarked, as

musical

another practical proof of the justice of this estimate And in of Attic genius, that of all the tribes of Greece the talent. Athenians were the least distinguished by talent for the art of music. Nor is this deficiency limited to their early days. It is observable throughout the whole period of their ascendancy in elegant pursuit. While the Eolians muster, in every age, by far the most numerous array of masters of first rank, Terpanden, Arion, Sappho, Stesichorus, Xenocritus; the Dorians had also their Thaletas, Sacadas, Crates, and Lasus; the Ionians their Archilochus, Polymnastus, and Timotheus. But not a single native Athenian musician of high celebrity is upon record, scarcely the name of an Athenian musician of any rank at any period. This remark may be extended from the art of music, to the branch of poetry which chiefly depends on musical accompaniment. Athens cannot boast at any epoch of her history a single melic poet of high distinction. It is true that much fine melic composition is embodied in the Attic drama, and in so far the great masters of the Athenian stage may rank as melic poets. But here again they must rank as poets of the artistic rather than the original order. The dithyrambic branch of lyric composition, the only branch ever popular at Athens, was also the most artificial; and not one even of the more distinguished dithyrambic poets was a native of Attica. This defect of Attic genius also shows itself in the lateness of the epoch at which the Athenian musical festivals, in the proper sense, were established, and in the small celebrity which they enjoyed as compared with those of Sparta. The Spartan Carnea and Gymnopædia, are the most antient institutions of the kind on

Decline of polite culture in Sparta.

ficial influence on the art of Grecian music. No notice occurs of any similar institution at Athens before the time of Solon1; and such as afterwards existed are acknowledged, by the Attic critics themselves, to have done more to corrupt, than improve, the musical taste of the nation.2

The decline among the Spartans of that taste for polite literature which distinguished their early days, finds its explanation in the political institutions of the state rather than in the character of the citizens unless, indeed, in so far as the institutions of every country must be considered as reflecting in some degree the character of the people. Although the letter of the Spartan legislation can hardly have been less rigorously enforced in the age of Lycurgus, or in that of the rulers who rank as his immediate successors, than in later times, there is yet reason to believe that the ascetic spirit of that legislation was extended with the extension of the power of the republic. In the primitive ages of her constitution, the rude discipline which it enjoined could have constituted but a slender mark of distinction between her manners and those of the kindred states of Peloponnesus. The laws of Lycurgus did little more probably than reduce to method and permanence, stereotype as it were, those primitive usages which were once more or less common to the other subdivisions of the Dorian race. While the neighbouring states, unfettered by the restrictions to which Lacedæmon had subjected herself, continued to advance, simultaneously with the rest of Greece, in social refinement, the Spartans remained stationary.

1 The first establishment of a lyric solemnity, in the proper sense, at Athens, is ascribed by Plutarch to Pericles, in Vit. XIII. See Vol. III. p. 91.