erecting, at a cost of 300 talents, and was so large that there were few who could embrace its thumb. It was overthrown by an earthquake 56 years after its erection. But the most beau

tiful work of the Rhodian school at this period is the famous group of the Laocoon in the Vatican, so well known by its many copies. (See drawing on p. 579.) It was the work of three sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus. In this group the pathos of physical suffering is expressed in the highest degree, but not without a certain theatrical air and straining for effect, which the best age of Greek art would have rejected. To the same school belongs the celebrated group called the Farnesian bull, in the Museum at Naples, representing Zethus and Amphion binding Dirce to a wild bull, in order to avenge their mother. (See drawing on p. 564.) It was the work of two brothers, Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles. About the same time eminent schools of art flourished at Pergamus and Ephesus. To the former may be referred the celebrated dying gladiator in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, and to the latter the Borghese gladiator in the Louvre. The well-known statue of Aphrodité at Florence, called the "Venus de Medici," also belongs to the same period. It was executed by an Athenian artist named Cleomenes, whose exact date is unknown, but who lived before the capture of Corinth, in B.C. 146.

§ 8. When Greece began to fall into the hands of the Romans, the treasures of Greek art were conveyed by degrees to Rome, where ultimately a new school arose. The triumphs over Philip, Antiochus, the Etolians, and others, but, above all, the capture of Corinth, and, subsequently, the victories over Mithridates and Cleopatra, filled Rome with works of art. The Roman generals, the governors of provinces (as Verres), and finally, the emperors, continued the work of spoliation; but so prodigious was the number of works of art in Greece, that, even in the second century of the Christian era, when Pausanias visited it, its temples and other public buildings were still crowded with statues and paintings.

* Nero alone is said to have brought 500 statues from Delphi, merely to adorn his golden house.

§ 1. The drama. The Middle comedy. The New comedy: Philemon, Menander. § 2. Oratory. Circumstances which favoured it at Athens. §3. Its Sicilian origin. § 4. The ten Attic orators: Antiphon, Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isæus, Eschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. § 5. Athenian philosophy, Plato. § 6. Sketch of his philosophy. §7. The Megarics, Cyrenaics, and Cynics. §8. The Academicians. § 9. Aristotle and the Peripatetics. 10. The Stoics and Epicureans. § 11. The Alexandrian school of literature. § 12. Later Greek writers: Polybius, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, Appian, Plutarch, Josephus, Strabo, Pausanias, Dion Cassius, Lucian, Galen. § 13. The Greck Scriptures and Fathers. Conclusion. § 1. IN reviewing the preceding period of Greek literature, we have already had occasion to notice the decline of tragedy at Athens. It continued, indeed, still to subsist; but after the great tragic triumvirate we have no authors who have come down to us, or whose works were at all comparable to those of their predecessors. There are, however, a few names that should be recorded; as that of Agathon, the contemporary and friend of Euripides, whose compositions were more remarkable for their flowery elegance than for force or sublimity of Iophon, the son of Sophocles, whose undutiful conduct towards his father has been already mentioned, the author of 50 tragedies, which gained considerable reputation of Sophocles, the grandson of the great tragic poet and of a second Euripides, the nephew of the celebrated one. With regard to comedy the case was different. After the days of Aristophanes it took, indeed, a

wholly different form; but a form which rendered it a more perfect imitation of nature, and established it as the model of that species of composition in every civilized nation of aftertimes. We have already noticed, in the plays of Aristophanes himself, a transition from the genuine Old Comedy to the Middle Comedy. The latter still continued to be in some degree political; but persons were no longer introduced upon the stage under their real names, and the office of the chorus was very much curtailed. It was, in fact, the connecting link between the Old Comedy and the New, or the Comedy of Manners. The most distinguished authors of the Middle Comedy, besides Aristophanes, were Antiphanes and Alexis. The New Comedy arose after Athens had become subject to the Macedonians. Politics were now excluded from the stage, and the materials of the dramatic poet were derived entirely from the fictitious adventures of persons in private life. The two most distinguished writers of this school were Philemon and Menander. Philemon was probably born about the year 360 B.C., and was either a Cilician or Syracusan, but came at an early age to Athens. He is considered as the founder of the New Comedy, which was soon afterwards brought to perfection by his younger contemporary Menander. Philemon was a prolific author, and is said to have written 97 plays, of which only a few fragments remain. Menander was an Athenian, and was born in B.C. 342. Diopithes, his father, commanded the Athenian forces on the Hellespont, and was the person defended by Demosthenes in one of his extant speeches.* Menander was handsome in person, and of a serene and easy temper, but luxurious and effeminate in his habits. Demetrius Phalerus was his friend and patron. He was drowned at the age of 52, whilst swimming in the harbour of Piræus. He wrote upwards of 100 comedies; yet during his lifetime his dramatic career was not so successful as his subsequent fame would seem to promise, and he gained the prize only eight times. The broader humour of his rival Philemon seems to have told with more effect on the popular ear. But the unanimous praise of posterity made ample compensation for this injurious neglect, and awakens our regret for the loss of one of the most elegant writers of antiquity. The number of his fragments, collected from the writings of various authors, show how extensively he was read; but unfortunately none are of sufficient length to convey to us an adequate idea of his style and genius. The comedies, indeed, of Plautus and Terence may give us a general notion of the New Comedy of the Greeks, from

* Περὶ τῶν ἐν Χερσονήσῳ.

which they were confessedly drawn; but there is good reason to suppose that the works even of the latter Roman writer fell far short of the wit and elegance of Menander.

§ 2. The latter days of literary Athens were chiefly distinguished by the genius of her orators and philosophers. Both rhetoric and philosophy were at first cultivated exclusively by the sophists, and, till the time of Socrates, remained almost entirely in their hands. Socrates, by directing the attention of philosophers to the more useful questions of morals, effected a separation between rhetoric and philosophy. After his time we find various schools of moral philosophy springing up, as the Academicians, Peripatetics, Stoics, &c., whilst the more technical part of the art of speaking became a distinct profession.

The extreme democratical nature of the Athenian institutions, especially after the reforms of Pericles, rendered it indispensable for a public man to possess some oratorical skill. All public business, both political and judicial, was transacted by the citizens themselves in their courts and public assemblies. The assembly of the people decided all questions not only of domestic policy, but even those which concerned their foreign relations. They not only made but administered the laws; and even their courts of justice must be regarded as a sort of public assemblies, from the number of dicasts who composed them. The vast majority of those who met either in the public assemblies or in the courts of justice were men of no political or legal training. The Athenian citizen was a statesman and a judge by prerogative of birth. Although he took an oath to decide according to the laws, he was far from considering himself bound to make them his study, or to decide according to their letter. The frequency and earnestness with which the orators remind the dicasts of their oath betray their apprehension of its violation. It contained, indeed, a very convenient clause for tender consciences, as it only bound the dicast to decide according to the best of his judgment; and the use which might be made of this loophole by a clever advocate is pointed out by Aristotle.* Hence it is surprising how little influence the written code had on the decision of a case. The orators usually drew their topics from extraneous circumstances, or from the general character of their adversary, and endeavoured to prejudice the minds of their audience by personal reflections wholly foreign to the matter in hand, and which modern courts would not tolerate for a moment. In addition to all this, the natural temperament of the Athenians rendered them highly susceptible

* Rhetoric, 1, 15, 5.

of the charms of eloquence. They enjoyed the intellectual gladiatorship of two rival orators, and even their mutual reproaches and abuse.

§ 3. It is remarkable, however, that, though the soil of Attica was thus naturally adapted to the cultivation of eloquence, the first regular professors of it, as an art, were foreigners. Protagoras of Abdera, who visited Athens in the earlier part of the fifth century before Christ, was the first who gave lessons in rhetoric for money. He was followed by Prodicus of Ceos, and Gorgias of Leontini; the latter of whom especially was very celebrated as a teacher of rhetoric. The art, however, had been established in Sicily before the time of Gorgias by Corax and his pupil Tisias. Corax has been regarded as the founder of technical oratory, and was at all events the first who wrote a treatise on the subject. The appearance of Gorgias at Athens, whither he went as ambassador from Leontini, in 427 B.C., produced a great sensation among the Athenians, who retained him in their city for the purpose of profiting by his instructions. His lectures were attended by a vast concourse of persons, and attracted many from the schools of the philosophers. His merit must have been very great to have drawn so much attention in the best times of Athens; and we are told by Cicero that he alone of all the sophists was honoured with a golden, and not merely a gilt, statue at Delphi.

4. The Athenians had established a native school of eloquence a little before the appearance of Gorgias among them. The earliest of their professed orators was Antiphon (born B.C. 480), who stands at the head of the ten contained in the Alexandrian canon. Gorgias seems to have been known at Athens by his works before he appeared there in person; and one of the chief objects of Antiphon was to establish a more solid style in place of his dazzling and sophistical rhetoric. Thucydides was among the pupils in the school which he opened, and is said to have owed much to his master. Antiphon was put to death in 411 B.C. for the part which he took in establishing the oligarchy of the Four Hundred. Fifteen of his orations have come down to us.

The remaining nine Attic orators contained in the Alexandrian canon were Andocides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isæus, Æschines, Lycurgus, Demosthenes, Hyperides, and Dinarchus. Andocides, who has been already mentioned as concerned with Alcibiades in the affair of the Hermæ,* was born at Athens in B.c. 467, and died probably about 391. We have at least three genuine orations of

* See p. 334.