CHAP. II.

EPIC, LYRIC, AND DRAMATIC POETRY OF GREECE.

THE highest energies of the Grecian mind, as we have said, were devoted to the worship of the gods from the very earliest times. At first, doubtless, this worship consisted, as Müller remarks *, " chiefly in mute motions of the body and symbolical gestures, and in broken ejaculations expressive of the inward feelings of the worshippers." The first outpourings of poetry were simple songs, which supplied these same excited feelings with a more appropriate form of expression. Songs, relating to the various seasons of the year at which each festival occurred, gave a natural expression to the religious feelings which these seasons called forth, the periods of the harvest and the vintage being celebrated by songs of joy and gladness, while the rites of Demeter and Cora, and possibly of Dionysus, falling in the winter, as naturally suggested, in a worship mainly directed to the phenomena of outward nature, the song of wailing and lamentation for the departed brightness

* Literature of Ancient Greece, ch. iii.

and splendour of summer days. These, at first, were sung wildly and irregularly, as also were the glad hymenæal, and the pæan of Apollo, and the mournful threnos, and the dirge called by the name of Linus. It is uncertain how far they were extemporised, and how far they consisted of a traditional form of words. One form of expression, which the worship of the gods more especially employed, was that of the dance; and the chorus, of which we shall hear so much hereafter, so far from having anything to do with music, was originally the level space set apart in towns for sacred dances and other public festivities. By a common figure of speech, the term was afterwards applied to the body of youths and maidens who, hand in hand, performed their graceful and expressive dance round the citharist. The latter, seated in the midst, sang some lay of the gods or heroes, accompanying himself upon the cithara or phorminx, and was said "to begin the song and the dance," † because the chorus danced in concert with his measures, regulating their gestures and motions in accordance with the subject of the song. A choral dance of this kind, such, for instance, as that described by Homer as worked by Vulcan upon the shield of Achilles, was in fact a kind of hyporcheme; that is, one in which the action described by

* Xopós is, etymologically, the same word as x@pos. Hence the Homeric expression λetaívei Xopóv, to level or prepare a place for dancing; and xopóvde lévai, to join the dance: and hence cities having spacious squares are called εὐρύχοροι.

the song was at the same time outwardly expressed with mimic gestures by certain individuals, who came forward for that purpose from the body of the chorus. This description of choral dance, though probably in early times it was very generally in use, never occurs in later periods, except in connection with the worship of Apollo; and to it we shall have occasion to return. hereafter.

We have mentioned the citharist, and the lays which he sang at the festivals of the gods when seated in the midst of the choral troop, as affording the earliest vestiges of the choral element of the Greek drama. To trace the rise of the other element, the dialogue, our readers must now transfer themselves in mind from the worship of the gods to the feasts in the halls of the nobles of the Homeric times. They will remember, especially in the Odyssey, frequent mention being made of the θεῖος ἀοιδός, οι "divine minstrel," who so often charmed the ear of the banqueters by the singing, or rather the recitation, of lays of gods or heroes. "Though possessing less still, as servants of

authority than the priests the Muses, and dedicated to their pure and innocent worship, the minstrels were held in peculiar esteem*, and always held an important post at every festal banquet; for the song and the dance were the chief

* Thus Ulysses, at the massacre of the suitors, respects the person of Phemius their hordós (Odyss. viii. 479. and xxii. 344.); and it was to his faithful minstrel that Agamemnon entrusted his wife during his expedition against Troy. (Odyss. iii.

ornaments of the feast, and were reckoned the highest pleasure by the nobles of the Homeric age."* The songs or lays which they sang were the first rudiments of the epos, the connection of which with the tragic dialogue we shall afterwards have occasion to explain.

The connection, then, between epic poetry and the banquets of the nobles, was of very ancient date in Greece; and, from being made so much a part of their social life, the epos lasted down to a period much more recent than the Trojan war, and only perished with the downfal of the ancient monarchies. The spirit of epic poetry was strictly monarchical, and wholly opposed to the enthusiastic spirit of civil freedom which in aftertimes became the master principle of the Hellenic mind. "It is clear," observes Müller, "that the Homeric poems were intended for the especial gratification of princes, not of republican communities ... and though Homer

flourished some centuries later than the heroic age, which appeared to him like some distant and marvellous world, from which the race of man had degenerated both in bodily strength and courage, yet the constitutions of the different states had not undergone any essential alteration, and the royal families, which are celebrated in the Iliad and the Odyssey, still ruled in Greece and in the colonies of Asia Minor. To these princes the minstrels naturally turned, for the purpose of making them acquainted

with the renown of their forefathers; and whilst the pride of these descendants of heroes was flattered, epic poetry became the instrument of the most various instruction, and was adapted exclusively to the nobles of that age."

But the recital of epic poetry was customary, at least as early as the time of Homer, not only at the feasts of the nobles, but also at those poetical contests which formed part of the proceedings at public festivals. Those who entered these poetical contests were called rhapsodists (paqdol), † a term which seems gradually to have superseded the Homeric name of bards (ȧoidoí). As the term itself denotes, these rhapsodists recited continuous portions of their epic lays with an even and continuous flow, though probably in a sonorous recitative approaching to a high-pitched chaunt, with some simple and expressive modulations of the voice, and without any musical accompaniment. The poems which these rhapsodists recited were doubtless partly their own, and partly borrowed from traditional sources; but in either case, as the use of letters had not yet been in* Müller, Literature of Greece, ch. iv.

† Ibid.

The phorminx was used in the introduction (avaßoλ), and merely served to give to the voice the necessary pitch. "In the present day," says Müller, "the heroic lays of the Servians, who have most faithfully retained their original character, are delivered in an elevated tone of voice by wandering minstrels, after a few introductory notes, for which the gurla, a stringed instrument of the simplest construction, is employed."- Lit. of Greece, ch. iv. This description is identical with that which a great noble of the Homeric age in Greece would give of a rhapsodi al recitation of his own day.