The first part of the Graeco-Roman period may be defined as extending from 146 B.C. to the close of the Roman republic. At its commencement stands the name of one who had more real affinity than any of his contemporaries with the great writers of old Athens, and who, at the First part:
146–30 B.C.same time, saw most clearly how the empire of the world was passing to Rome. The subject of Polybius (c. 205–120) was the history of Roman conquest from 264 to 146 B.C. His style, plain and straightforward, is free from the florid rhetoric of the time. But the distinction of Polybius is that he is the last Greek writer who in some measure retains the spirit of the old citizen-life. He chose his subject, not because it gave scope to learning or literary skill, but with a motive akin to that which prompted the history of Thucydides—namely, because, as a Greek citizen, he felt intensely the political importance of those wars which had given Rome the mastery of the world. The chief historical work which the following century produced—the Universal History of Diodorus Siculus (fl. c. 50 B.C.)—resembled that of Polybius in recognizing Rome as the political centre of the earth, as the point on which all earlier series of events converged. In all else Diodorus represents the new age in which the Greek historian had no longer the practical knowledge and insight of a traveller, a soldier or a statesman, but only the diligence, and usually the dulness, of a laborious compiler.
The Greek literature of the Roman empire, from Augustus to Justinian, was enormously prolific. The area over which the Greek language was diffused—either as a medium of intercourse or as an established branch of the higher education—was co-extensive with the empire itself. Second part:
30 B.C.–A.D. 529.An immense store of materials had now been accumulated, on which critics, commentators, compilers, imitators, were employed with incessant industry. In very many of its forms, the work of composition or adaptation had been reduced to a mechanical knack. If there is any one characteristic which broadly distinguishes the Greek literature of these five centuries, it is the absence of originality either in form or in matter. Lucian is, in his way, a rare exception; and his great popularity—he is the only Greek writer of this period, except Plutarch, who has been widely popular—illustrates the flatness of the arid level above which he stands out. The sustained abundance of literary production under the empire was partly due to the fact that there was no open political career. Never, probably, was literature so important as a resource for educated men; and the habit of reciting before friendly or obsequious audiences swelled the number of writers whose taste had been cultivated to a point just short of perceiving that they ought not to write.
In the manifold prose work of this period, four principal departments may be distinguished. (1) History, with Biography, and Geography. History is represented by Dionysius of Halicarnassus—also memorable for his criticisms on the orators and his effort to revive a true standard Departments of prose literature. of Attic prose—by Cassius Dio, Josephus, Arrian, Appian, Herodian, Eusebius and Zosimus. In biography, the foremost names are Plutarch, Diogenes Laërtius and Philostratus; in geography, Hipparchus of Nicaea, Strabo, Ptolemy and Pausanias. (2) Erudition and Science. The learned labours of the Alexandrian schools were continued in all their various fields. Under this head may be mentioned such works as the lexicons of Julius Pollux, Harpocration and Hesychius, Hephaestion’s treatise on metre, and Herodian’s system of accentuation; the commentaries of Galen on Plato and on Hippocrates; the learned miscellanies of Athenaeus, Aelian and Stobaeus; and the Stratagems of Polyaenus. (3) Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres. The most popular writers on the theory of rhetoric were Hermagoras, Hermogenes, Aphthonius and Cassius Longinus—the last the reputed author of the essay On Sublimity. Among the most renowned teachers of rhetoric—now distinctively called “Sophists,” or rhetoricians—were Dio Chrysostom, Aelius Aristides, Themistius, Himerius, Libanius and Herodes Atticus. Akin to the rhetorical exercises were various forms of ornamental or imaginative prose—dialogues, letters, essays or novels. Lucian, in his dialogues, exhibits more of the classical style and of the classical spirit than any writer of the later age; he has also a remarkable affinity with the tone of modern satire, as in Swift or Voltaire. His Attic prose, though necessarily artificial, was at least the best that had been written for four centuries. The emperor Julian was the author both of orations and of satirical pieces. The chief of the Greek novelists (the forerunner of whom was Aristides of Miletus, c. 100 B.C., in his Milesian Tales) are Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus, representing a purely Greek type of romance, and Heliodorus—with his imitators Achilles Tatius and Chariton—representing a school influenced by Oriental fiction. There were also many Christian romances in Greek, usually of a religious tendency. Alciphron’s fictitious Letters—founded largely on the New Comedy of Athens—represent the same kind of industry which produced the letters of Phalaris, Aristaenetus and similar collections. (4) Philosophy is represented chiefly by Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, in both of whom the Stoic element is the prevailing one; by the Neoplatonists, such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus; and by Proclus, of that eclectic school which arose at Athens in the 5th century A.D.
The Greek poetry of this period presents no work of high merit. Babrius versified the Aesopic Fables; Oppian (or two poets of this name) wrote didactic poems on fishing and hunting; Nonnus and Quintus Smyrnaeus made elaborate essays in epic verse; and the Orphic lore inspired Verse.
The Anthology.some poems and hymns of a mystic character. The so-called Sibylline Oracles, in hexameter verse, range in date from about 170 B.C. to A.D. 700, and are partly the expression of the Jewish longings for the restoration of Israel, partly predictions of the triumph of Christianity. By far the most pleasing compositions in verse which have come to us from this age are some of the short poems in the Greek Anthology, which includes some pieces as early as the beginning of the 5th century B.C. and some as late as the 6th century of the Christian era.
The 4th century may be said to mark the beginning of the last stage in the decay of literary Hellenism. From that point the decline was rapid and nearly continuous. The attitude of the church towards it was no longer that which had been held by Clement of Alexandria, by Justin Martyr or by Origen. There was now a Christian Greek literature, and a Christian Greek eloquence of extraordinary power. The laity became more and more estranged from the Greek literature—however intrinsically pure and noble—of the pagan past. At the same time the Greek language—which had maintained its purity in Italian seats—was becoming corrupted in the new Greek Rome of the East. In A.D. 529 Justinian put forth an edict by which the schools of heathen philosophy were formally closed. The act had at least a symbolical meaning. It is necessary to guard against the supposition that such assumed landmarks in political or literary history always mark a definite transition from one order of things to another. But it is practically convenient, or necessary, to use such landmarks.
Bibliography.—The first attempt at a connected history of Greek literature was the monumental and still indispensable work of J. A. Fabricius (14 vols., 1705–1728; new ed. in 12 vols. by G. C. Harless, 1790–1809); this was followed by F. Schöll’s Hist. de la littérature grecque (1813). Both these works begin with the earliest times and go down to the latest period of the Byzantine empire. Of more modern and recent works the following may be mentioned: G. Bernhardy, Grundriss der griechischen Literatur (1836–1845; 4th ed., 1876–1880; 5th ed. of vol. i., by R. Volkmann, 1892), chiefly confined to the poets; C. O. Müller, History of Greek Literature (unfinished), written for the London Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and published in English in 1840, the translation being by G. Cornewall Lewis and J. W. Donaldson (the latter completed the work to the end of the Byzantine period for the edition of 1858; the German text was published by E. Müller in 1841; 4th ed. by E. Heitz, 1882–1884); W. Mure, Critical History of the Language and Literature of Ancient Greece (1850–1857); T. Bergk, Griechische Literaturgeschichte (1872–1894, vols. 2, 3, ed. G. Hinrichs, vol. 4 by R. Peppmüller) containing epos,
