The Historians' History of the World 03

Slight as is our knowledge of the personal relations of these great contemporaries, there are a few traditions from which we can gather some idea of the intercourse of Pericles with the most eminent among them and of their intercourse with one another. We know that Pericles equipped the chorus for a theatrical performance in which Æschylus carried off the prize. We know of the friendship of Herodotus and Sophocles, and we actually possess the beginning of some occasional verses addressed to Herodotus by the poet, then in the fifty-fifth year of his age; a letter in elegiac metre dating from the time when the historian migrated to Thurii, and withdrew from the delightful society of the best men of Athens. Sophocles was before all things sociable, and we hear that he formed a circle of men skilled in the fine arts and dedicated it to the Muses, and that it held regular meetings. This reciprocal stimulus resulted in a steady advance in all directions. In every branch of art we can trace the epochs of development as surely as in the structure of the trimetre of the drama. But as, generally speaking, Greek art owed its unfaltering progress to the fact that the younger artists did not endeavour to gain a start by rash attempts at originality, but held fast the good in all things and readily adopted and perfected methods that had once gained acceptance, so in Athens we see the elder masters gratefully praised and honoured by their pupils, like Æschylus by Sophocles and Cratinus by Aristophanes.

It is one of the most notable characteristics of the intellectual life of Athens that her eminent men, however high a view they took of their own calling, did not owe their pre-eminence in it to any narrow-minded restriction of their interest to their own peculiar sphere. This versatility was rendered possible by the vitality for which the contemporaries of Pericles were remarkable, and it seems as though the brilliant prime of the Greek nation manifested itself most plainly in the frequent combination of extraordinary mental and physical powers. We cannot but admire the men who retained their vital force unimpaired to extreme old age and advanced in the practice of their art to the last.

Sophocles, after having composed 113 dramas, is said to have read the chorus of the Œdipus at Colonus aloud, to disprove the rumour that he was incapable of managing his own affairs by reason of the infirmities of old age. Cratinus was ninety-one when he produced Dame Bottle

, the saucy comedy with which he defeated Aristophanes, who had looked upon him as a rival whose day was over. Simonides, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno, were likewise examples of healthy and vigorous old age. Timocreon combined the skill of an athlete with the profession of a poet. Polus, Sophocles’ favourite actor, was competent to take the leading part in eight tragedies in four days. Lastly, the sterling capacity and versatility of the masters of those days is shown by the fact that though extraordinarily prolific authors of imaginative works, they spared time to strive after scientific certainty concerning the problems and resources of their art, and combined absolute self-possession and the love of theoretical study with the enthusiasm of the artist temperament. Thus Lasus, the inventor of the perfected form of the dithyrambus, was at the same time an accomplished critic and one of the first writers on the theory of music; and Sophocles himself wrote a treatise on the tragic chorus, to set forth his views as to its place and purpose in tragedy. In like manner the most distinguished architects wrote scientific treatises on the principles of their art, Polyclitus worked out the theory of numbers which lies at the root of plastic symmetry, and Agatharchus the principles of optics, according to which he had arranged the decoration of the stage. In so doing he took the first step towards the teaching of perspective, which was subsequently developed by Democritus and Anaxagoras.b

Aristophanes

CHAPTER XXX. THE OUTBREAK OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR