makes use of the following expression, which would serve as a good motto for an Anarchist club, ἀκούει δ ̓ οὐδὲν οὐδεὶς οὐδενός. Clytemnestra, also, in speaking of the murder of her husband ('Ag.' 1551-52) says: · πρὸς ἡμῶν κάππεσε, κάτθανε, καὶ καταθάψομεν. * That Greek alliteration is capable of imitation is shown by Pope's translation of the well-known linet πολλὰ δ ̓ ἄναντα κάταντα πάραντά τε δόχμιά τ' ἦλθον 'O'er hills, o'er dales, o'er crags, o'er rocks, they go.' Pope at times brought alliteration to his aid in cases where no such device had been adopted by Homer, as when, in desscribing the labours of Sisyphus, he wrote: 'With many a weary step, and many a groan, Up the high hill he heaves a huge round stone.' On the whole, although a good deal more than is contained in this article may be said on either side, it would appear that, broadly speaking, Dryden's principle holds good for prose translations, and that experience has shown, in respect to translations in verse, that, save in rare instances, a resort to paraphrase is necessary. The writer ventures, in conclusion to give two instances, in one of which there has been comparatively but slight departure from the text of the original Greek, whilst in the other there has been greater indulgence in paraphrase. Both are taken from the Anthology. The first is an epitaph on a shipwrecked sailor by an unknown author: · ναυτίλε, μὴ πεύθου τίνος ἐνθάδε τύμβος ὅδ ̓ εἰμί, 'No matter who I was; but may the sea *By us he fell, he died, and we will bury him.' The other is by Macedonius: • Αὔριον ἀθρήσω σε· τὸ δ ̓ οὔ ποτε γίνεται ἡμῖν ταῦτά μοι ἱμείροντι χαρίζεαι, ἄλλα δ' ἐς ἄλλους 'Ever "To-morrow" thou dost say; My faithfulness thou dost despise. "At even come," thou say'st, "not now." Dryden's well-known lines in 'Aurengzebe' embody the idea of Macedonius in epigrammatic and felicitous verse: GREEK PROSE ROMANCES An Ethiopian History, written in Greek by Heliodorus. Englished by THOMAS UNDERDOWNE, Anno 1587. With an Introduction by CHARLES WHIBLEY. Tudor Translations. 1895. PLUT LUTARCH has described how at Carrhae (53 B.c.) the Parthian Surena vanquished the Romans; how he slew Crassus; how as victor he entered Seleucia in mock triumph, followed by all the strumpets and women Minstrels of the city,' who went singing songs of mockery and derision ' of Crassus womannish cowardlinesse'; how 'Surena, having called the Senate of Seleucia together, laid before them Aristides bookes of ribaldry, intituled "The Milesians,” which was no fable, for they were found in a Romane's fardle or trusse called Rustius. This gave Surena great cause to scorne and despise the behaviour of the Romanes, which was so far out of order, that even in the warres they could not refraine from doing evill and from the reading of such vile bookes.' So Sir Thomas North translates a famous passage in The 'Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans.' The story shows with what contempt, in the last years of the Roman Republic, a virile people regarded the fashionable occupation of novelreading. Two centuries later, the Emperor Severus could find nothing worse to say of his defeated rival Albinus than that he had grown grey in the study of such old-wives' trifles as the Milesian tales. Something of the same feeling has survived the improvement in the character of modern prose romance. To-day, no soldier would be disgraced by carrying a work of fiction in his knapsack, and all the world now reads novels. Yet there are still Surenas who condemn, at least for others, the profitless study of prose fiction. Every country, at every stage of history, has had its popular tales of wonder, told by all sorts and conditions of men. Such a story, for instance, as that of the Two Brothers,' written 3000 years ago by the Egyptian Enna, has all the sincerity of a legend of the people, caught from the lips of living peasants, and preserved in a literary form. In such tales Graecia mendax was rich. Of fables, apologues, and allegories, she had her stores. But the deliberate composition of prose fiction for popular entertainment was a late growth, which, in the case of Greece, accompanied the degeneracy of her literature. It is not difficult to suggest some reasons for this slow development. In the days of their glory, the crowded life of the Greek States left little space for leisure or for privacy. No need was felt for other distractions than those which the State supplied. Public orations, public readings, public disputations, public games, public festivals, absorbed men's energies. It was not that imagination was starved by its exclusion from the field of prose romance. Rather it was inspired from different sources, and adopted modes of expression more suited to existing conditions. Its highest thoughts flowed naturally into verse. In scenic representations it found the most direct means of communication. It was warmed by the clear flame of the passion for liberty. It was fed by an all-pervading mythology, which implanted a wholesome fear of the Gods, peopled the elements with Nature-spirits, surrounded hearth and home with superhuman beings and spirits of the human dead. Nor was the material for social romance in ancient Greece either rich or varied. Domestic slavery moulded society into too monotonous a shape to admit of much diversity of form or colour, and the women of the home occupied too inferior a position to allow full play to the passion, adventures, and stratagems of love. A state of society that afforded scope for the new comedy of Menander might well have fostered a taste for the novel of domestic life. But if any prose picture of manners and customs was painted through the medium of imaginary actors in a love intrigue, it has entirely disappeared. Probably the taste for romance was diverted into other directions by contemporary events. The conquests of Alexander the Great, for instance, powerfully stimulated a new passion for adventure, and a new curiosity about remote peoples and unknown lands, which created semi-fabulous geographies and histories of Persia and India. At the same time, the extension of their Empire brought the Greeks into contact with Oriental countries. It made them familiar with Eastern tales of magic and sorcery, of demons and genii. It added new worlds of wonder to the more native tales of transformations of men into animals or of animals into men, of which, in the second century before Christ, at least two collections already existed. As the Christian era was approached and passed, conditions became more favourable to the growth of prose fiction. Poetry throve best when the national spirit rose highest. It was otherwise with the development of the Greek novel. Roman rule gave to the world a semblance of political cohesion; but it crushed national liberty, or only preserved its forms. Before B.C. 30 Athens had been humiliated, the Macedonian monarchy destroyed, Asiatic Greece mastered. With the loss of political influence disappeared some of the living activities of the Greek people. Rhetoricians and sophists usurped the honours of poets and politicians. Under a suspicious government the path of safety lay in frivolity. Society grew more leisured, luxurious, licentious. The old religion lost its hold upon the learned. For them, it ceased to be a creed or moral sanction, and degenerated into an antiquarian taste or a superstitious regard for omens and divinations. Scepticism and credulity went hand in hand. Wild tales of ghosts, vampyres, succubi, demons, and 'incredible natures'* were the beliefs of the ignorant, and, in the presence of mysteries of the unknown, even the learned suspended the exercise of their critical faculties. Life was still crowded with cult, ritual, ceremonial. But the chaos of religions grew more and more bewildering, as the old Pantheon was invaded by foreign divinities. Philosophy was degraded into the handmaid of the new worships, occupied in dignifying their mystic teaching or in tracing unity through their diversities. The highest minds or strongest characters might be captivated by the Stoic ideal. But the man in the street found its moral standard unattainable, because it threw him back upon himself. What he craved was some power, some authority, some certainty, outside and above the weakness of his own nature. Herein lay the gathering strength of Christianity. Meanwhile, the biography of Apollonius of Tyana illustrates the depths of credulity into which the human mind had sunk, just as the work of Lucian, who turns into the keenest ridicule every religious creed or philosophical system, indicates the collapse of guiding principles or central purposes in life. * A collection of these tales was freedman of the Emperor Hadrian. by Damascius two centuries later. of its contents is given by Photius. made by Phlegon, the Lydian Another collection was made The work is lost. But a table |