CHARACTER OF APEMANTUS. LITTLE has descended to us from antiquity re specting this person. He is most known by the mention made of him in the passage from Plutarch at the head of the last article. He is there stated to have been the only man admitted to intimacy with Timon after the latter had contracted his misanthropical habits. Yet sympathy of feeling and manners did not prevent Timon from being at times crusty, as it is called, with his friend: witness the compliment which passed at the feast of sacrifices for the dead. Apemantus could not simply remark that the dinner was good, without being taken up, and told that his presence spoiled it. The inducement for mentioning a personage with whom we have such slender acquaintance, is to show the skill of Shakspeare in discriminating it from a character of so much general similarity as that of Timon. Plutarch tells us that they associated from sympathy of feeling and of manners: had that sympathy been entire, Shakspeare would not have introduced a polygraphic copy of his own picture. But one was the misanthrope of experience and bitter disappointment: the other was the misanthrope of Cynic philosophy. One was the hatred of feeling; the other of pride and affectation. G Warburton says, that this character of a Cynic is finely drawn by Lucian, in his Auction of the Philosophers, and that Shakspeare has copied it well. There appears to be a want of exactness in this remark. We have before seen that Shakspeare could only have copied Lucian at second or third hand, as that witty writer had not been translated in his time. "This character of a Cynic" would justify the reader in inferring, that Lucian had drawn Apemantus: he has indeed drawn the Cynic in glowing colours; but the sitter is Diogenes, not Apemantus. The observation, however, is not substantially objectionable. Shakspeare had probably met with the draft of a Cynic, borrowed from Lucian, either anonymous or under the name of Diogenes; and finding that Apemantus was the companion of Timon, justly concluded that "the knight of the shire might represent them all;" the disciple of the sect might inherit the mantle of his master. It might not improbably be supposed, that he found this outline in Mr. Strutt's manuscript play: but it is not so. The persona dramatis have Philargurus, a covetous churlish old man; but no Apemantus, a churlish philosopher. A single specimen of Apemantus is all that our limits will allow : Hey day, what a sweep of vanity comes this way! Like madness is the glory of this life, As this pomp shows to a little oil, and root. With poisonous spite, and envy. Who lives, that's not Not one spurn to their graves of their friend's gift? This anathema against dancing might have subjected our poet to the charge of classical plagiarism, had his means of reading been sufficiently extensive to support it. Cicero, in his Oration for Murena, seems to look at this exercise with puritanical abhorrence. "Nemo enim fere saltat sobrius, nisi forte insanit: neque in solitudine, neque in convivio moderato atque honesto." CHARACTER OF ALCIBIADES. ALCIBIADES furnishes an important and curious study of human nature. Splendour of birth and personal beauty seem to have been the two circumstances, which gave his character its form and pressure. He was nearly related to Pericles; but by what tie, is disputed among authors. Suidas says, he was the son of Clinias and Pericles's sister. Valerius Maximus calls Pericles his uncle; but Plutarch tells us he was the son of Dinomache, the daughter of Megacles. Whatever was the relationship, Alcibiades was brought up under the guardianship, and in the house of Pericles. In Isocrates, there is an oration, De Bigis, professing to be delivered by the son of Alcibiades, containing a defence and panegyric of his father. He there enters into a long genealogical deduction: Καὶ τὸ τελευταῖον ̓Αλκιβιάδης, καὶ Κλεισθένης, ὁ μὲν πρὸς πα τρὸς, ὁ δὲ πρὸς μητρὸς ὤν πρόπαππος τοῦ πατρὸς τοὐμοῦ, στρατηγήσαντες, τῆς φυγῆς κατήγαγον τὸν δῆμον, καὶ τοὺς τυράννους ἐξέβαλον, καὶ κατέςησαν ἐκείνην τὴν δημοκρατίαν, ἐξ ἧς οἱ πολῖται πρὸς μὲν ἀνδριάν οὕτως ἐπαιδεύθησαν, ὥστε τοὺς βαρβάρους τοὺς ἐπὶ πᾶσαν ἐλθόντας τὴν Ἑλλάδα, μόνοι νικᾶν μαχομένοι. then goes on to state that Alcibiades's father and his own grandfather fell in the battle of Cheronea. Ἐπιτροπεύθη δὲ ὑπὸ Περικλέους, ὃν πάντες ἂν ὁμολογήσαιεν ὡς σωφρονέστατον, καὶ δικαιότατον, καὶ σοφώτατον γεγενῆσθαι τῶν πολιτῶν. It appears clearly in Herodotus, that Clinias He was the son of the Alcibiades meant in the first passage of Isocrates, and father of the Alcibiades whose fame was afterwards so celebrated in Greece. Τῶν δὲ Ἑλλήνων κατὰ ταύτην τὴν ἡμέρην ἠρίστευσαν ̓Αθηναῖοι, καὶ ̓Αθηναίων Κλεινιής ὁ ̓Αλκιβιάδεω. Plutarch censures Pericles for negligence in his office of guardian; for he appointed Zopyrus, an old Thracian slave of obstinate temper, to be his schoolmaster.* All the ancients concur in admiration of his extraordinary comeliness. Plutarch says, οὐ γὰρ, ὡς Εὐριπίδης ἔλεγε, πάντων τῶν καλῶν καὶ τὸ μετόπωρον καλόν ἐστιν, but that the figure of Alcibiades retained its attractive character, through the advantage of a naturally vigorous and healthy temperament. On the subject of his lisping, Plutarch quotes a passage from the Vespa of Aristophanes : Τῇ δὲ φωνῇ καὶ τὴν τραυλότητα ἐμπρέψαι λέγουσι, καὶ τῷ λάλῳ πιθανότητα παρασχεῖν, χάριν ἐπιτελοῦσαν. μέμνηται δὲ καὶ ̓Αριστοφάνης αὐτοῦ τῆς τραυλότητος ἐν οἷς ἐπισκώπτει Θέωρον, Εἶτ ̓ ̓Αλκιβιαδης εἶπε πρὸς με τραυλίσας, Καὶ ̓Αρχιππος τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ ̓Αλκιβιάδου σκώπτων, Βαδίζει, φησὶ, διακεχλιδὼς, θοιμάτιον ἕλκων, ὅπως ἐμφερὴς τῷ πατρὶ μάλιςα δόξειεν εἶναι, Κλαυσαυχενεύεται τε καὶ τραυλίζεται. Cicero begins a letter to Cælius with a similar ridicule of fashionable affectation, where he spells the name of Hirrus, Cælius's competitor for the ædileship, according to the lisping pronunciation. * Alcibiades's early partiality for Homer is well known. |