After the age which gave birth to the great epics, an interval elapses before we again catch the distinct echoes of a popular voice. Our Homeric friend Tis is silent. Or, rather, to be more exact, Tis ceases to speak in his old character, as the nameless representative of the multitude, and begins to speak in a new quality. The individual mind now commences to express itself in forms of poetry which are essentially personal, interpreting the belief and feelings of the poet himself. Tis emerges from the dim crowd, and appears as Tyrtaeus, summoning the Spartans, in stirring elegy, to hear his counsels; or as Sappho, uttering her passion in immortal lyrics; or as Pindar, weaving his thoughts into those magnificent odes which glorify the heroes and the athletes of Greece. It is a capital distinction of classical Greek literature that, when its history is viewed as a whole, we do not find it falling into a series of artificial chapters, determined by imitation of models which were in fashion at this or that epoch. Greek literature is original, not derivative; we trace in it the course of a natural growth; we hear in it the spontaneous utterance of Greek life from generation to generation. The place of Pindar in this development has one aspect of peculiar interest. There is a sense in which he may be said to stand midway between Homeric epos and Athenian drama[1]. His poetical activity belongs to the
- ↑ In an essay on "Pindar" in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (vol. iii.), from which some points are repeated in this paragraph, I have worked this out more in detail.—See above, p. 41.
