The Making of Athens; A History of Greece, 495-431 B.C.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV. LITERATURE. 1. Lyric Verse: Simonidcs: Pindar.-- 2. Traljedy: Origin and Early Modifications: the Early Dramatists.-- 3. Tragic Representations: the Theatre.-- 4. Aeschylus: Works and Style: the Orcstcia.-- 5. Sophocles.-- 6. Euripides and Others.-- 7. Satyric Drama: Comedy: Aristophanes.-- 8. Sicilian Comedy: Epicharmus: Sophron.-- 0. Prose Writing: the Early Philosophers--Ionic, Italian, and Sicilian.-- 10. Early Logopoci: Herodotus.-- 11. The Rhetoricians: Gorgias. 1. Three facts distinguish the literature of this period: within it falls the consummation of lyrical poetry in the genius of Pindar, the perfection of the tragic drama in Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the development of prosocomposition. In the evolution of Greek literature lyrical poetry succeeded to the didactic and to the still earlier epic styles. Its infancy and growth are associated with the names--little more than names--of Callinus of Ephesus, Simonidcs of Amorgus, Tyrtaeus of Aphidnae, the Lesbians Alcaeus and Sappho, and the Sicilian Stesichorus of Himera. Of the form in which Callinus, the legendary inventor of lyrics, clothed his thoughts, we know nothing certain. Ilia successors adopted metres of every kind--the elegiac couplet, tho quatrains known from their chief patrons respectively as Alcaics and Sapphics, iambics, and a dozen other schemes of versification. The tendency, however, was towards metres of increasing complexity and elaboration, resulting at length in the metres of Pindar, to interpret which is the study of a specialist, and to a large extent a matter of dispute. Bather earlier than Pindar, but little his inferior in the matter of mere technique, was Simonides of Ceos, 55G--469 B...