A HISTORY OF HELLENISM.* PROFESSOR MAHAFFY has given us, in
the present volume, a continuation of his well-known Social Life in Greece. But the two books are very different in plan and execution. The former work dealt with a period for which we have the most ample original testimony of every kind, and which has been made familiar even to the "general reader" through the con- stant attention paid to it by modern historians and critics. The new period, on the contrary—from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest of Greece—is comparatively obscure even to the scholar : literature dies out in Greece itself ; at Alexandria it is learned and artificial, and avoids "local allu- sions "; so that, until we reach Polybius, we have to depend largely upon, and be thankful for, such authorities as the Lives of Plutarch. Moreover, the English reader, in whom we may always assume some acquaintance with the century of Themistocles and Pericles, has had small opportunity hitherto of similar acquaintance with Hellenistic times. Grote ends with the death of Alexander; Curtius breaks off even earlier. The his- tory of Thirlwall, which brings us down to the Sack of Corinth, treats only of Greece Proper, not of the Hellenistic kingdoms ; and the great work of Droysen has not yet found an English translator. "Hence," says Professor Mahaffy, "there is more actual history in the present volume than in its predecessor." The account of life and manners must be accompanied throughout by at least an outline of political events ; other- wise the reader could only be bewildered and irritated by allusions and generalisations to which he possessed no key in fact.
But the principal reason for this difference of plan in the new book is one which we are reminded of in the mention of Thirlwall : the chronicler of life and manners is here no longer confined within the narrow limits of classical Hellenedom ; "Greek life after the conquests of Alexander extends far beyond the bounds of Greece, and its most interesting phases are in Syria and Egypt." (p. vii.) Athens and Sparta occupy now but a narrow portion of the stage ; the active life and vigour of the period, its wars and conquests, are to be sought in the Hellenized kingdoms—Macedonia, Syria, Egypt—of the Diadochi and their successors; Athens is still, as always, the * Greek Life and Thought, from the Age of Alexander to the Roman Conquest. By J. P. Malady, Fellow, do., of Trinity College, Dublin. London : Macmillan and Co. 1887. home of philosophy and serious thinking, but for literature we turn to Alexandria, and for art to Pergamum. Of a subject- matter so wide and varied we can scarcely look for any real unity of treatment ; and Professor Mahaffy gives us instead a series of brilliantly coloured pictures of the different centres of Hellenistic "life and thought," all the while skilfully combining history and biography with the review of social and intellectual conditions.
Greece Proper, in the third century, stands reft of its earlier glory. We find there, it has been well said, the dregs of a nation, the vigour of whose political and literary life has for ever passed away." Its spirit has gone forth to leaven the new kingdoms of the Macedonian; but Greece itself has lost its prowess in arms, its art and literature. The very possibility of a healthy political existence ceased for it with the supremacy of Macedon. The reign of Alexander was followed by "the rapid and complete antiquating of patriotic politics and politicians in Greece, who could henceforth aspire to nothing beyond communal liberty for the Greek cities" (p. 9) ; "no doubt all Greek cities alike suffered from the emigration of the young and vigorous, who saw at home no scope for their energies, and who left Greece for ever to settle with honour and fortune in Alexandria, Antioch, and other leading cities of the East." (p. 128). That the country had not lost all its old vigour, is, indeed, shown by the rise to power of the Achman and 2Etolian Leagues (whose sudden growth Mr. Mahaffy ingeniously ascribes to the wealth acquired by lEtolians and Achseans as mercenaries in the East). But these federations have made little mark in the world's history. The 2Etolians were mere valiant freebooters ; the Achaeans win our sympathy and respect., and their leaders—Aratus, Philopcemen, Lydiadas —were men after the antique pattern ; but, with the most upright and patriotic aims, they could accomplish nothing against the dominating forces of Macedon and Rome.
At Athens, under Demetrius the Phalerean and Demetrius the Besieger, the decline is startling, and is reflected in the extant literature. The writers of the new comedy "produced a whole literature of graceful talk, polite immorality, selfish ethics, and shallow character" (p. 116) ; the Characters of Theophrastus depict "the nature of man as shown in an idle and decaying provincial society—the passions and pursuits of people with no public spirit or interests ; the virtues are omitted, even the stronger vices, and all the changes rung upon the foibles and vulgarities of every-day life." (p. 118). The practical teaching of Zeno and Epicurus was no doubt a regenerating influence, though rather to the individual than to the State at large. Professor Mahaffy has written an in- teresting chapter on the foundation and growth of the philosophical schools, whose importance is evidenced by the famous Decree of Sophocles for their banishment from Athens, by the crowded audiences attracted to such teachers as Theophrastus, and, in the case of Stoicism, by such eminent disciples as the philosopher-king Antigonus Gonatas.
But every region and every period of the Hellenistic world comes under Professor Mahaffy's review. Following upon a vivid sketch of the characters and fortunes of the Diadochi and Epigoni (one of the best things in the book), and the account of Athens just mentioned, we have four chapters on life and literature at Alexandria under its first and second Kings. Then Pergamum, with its art and refined culture ; Rhodes, the trading centre of the world; Syria, with its line of great monarchs ; and the Greece of Aratus, are brought before us. The last chapters are occupied with the later fortunes and decay of Hellenism in Egypt and Syria and Macedon, together with an interesting notice of the Jews in the two former kingdoms ; and the book closes with a detailed review of Polybius and his age. The writer is to be con- gratulated on the skill with which he has worked an enormous mass of material into order, if not unity; though he has been compelled to give so much space to the narration of events, he has kept steadily in view the social and intellectual characteristics of the times ; witness the chapter (xvii.) on education and the drama—where the best and latest authori- ties have been consulted—and the full citation of the reflections and anecdotes of Polybius.
Special attention is paid to Egypt and its capital, a novel feature being the use made of native Egyptian texts. Every reader will be grateful for the chapters which deal with the Museum and its learned men, with the Alexandrian poets- Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, Theociitus, and Aratus- with the great city itself and its busy populace of all nationalities ; and, later on, with the strange decline of Hellenism, and the self-assertion of the native and Jewish elements there. Here is Professor Mahafffs picture of Alexandria (pp. 165-66) :— " But if the commercial site of Alexandria was brilliant, we cannot say much for its natural beauty. Sandhills and a tideless -sea, without wooding, without cliffs, with no mountains or islands in sight—what could be more dreary to those who had been accustomed to the enchanting sites of the Greek and Asiatic coast towns ? We know that the Greeks of classical days said little about the picturesque, and seldom described it. Nevertheless, its unconscious effect upon poetry and other forms of art is clearly -discernible, and perhaps not a little of the unpicturesqueness of Alexandrian culture is due to the absence of this vague yet powerful influence. The grandeur of solemn mountains, the mystery of deep forests, the sweet homeliness of babbling rivers, the scent of deep meadows and fragrant shrubs, all this was familiar even to the city people of Hellenic days. For their towns were small, and all surrounded by the greatest natural beauty. But the din and dust of the new capital, reaching over an extent as great as modern Paris, were only relieved within by a few town-parks or gymnasia, and without by fashionable bathing zuburbs, with the luxuries of city life replacing the sweets of Nature; and if there was retirement and leisure within the university, it was eminently the retirement among books—the natural home for pedants and grammarians. How much this city life weighed upon the spirits of men is proved not only by the general dryness and clulbaess of the literature it produced, but still more by the great popularity of the poet of pastoral life, who delighted the jaded senses of his literary friends by a return into the simplest, if not the purest, country life ; and who rejoiced the pedants by putting them into pastoral dress, to feed their flocks on uplands of wide view, or lie idle in the rich grass, or sit by a fountain 'and sport with Amaryllis in the shade.' It has been generally recog- nised that the success of the late after-growth of genuine Greek poetry was due to this strong and declared contrast, but perhaps the dulling effect of the actual surroundings at Alexandria has not been equally appreciated."
Many are the remaining topics of interest ; the art of Pergamum and Rhodes,—the former, at least, no unworthy desc en dant of the earlier schools ; the growth of city life throughout the Hellenistic world, "that gigantic turning of eountry-people into towns-people which might be almost called a definition of Hellenism" (p. 326) ; and all the good stories culled from Athenwus, Plutarch, Polybius, and Josephus,—that of the Byzantines, for example, who "lived a drunken and luxurious life, chiefly, we are told by Athenwus, in pothouses, so that a General who was put to great straits to make them man the walls had these establishments set up close inside the fortifications." The freshly coloured and lifelike characterisation of men and peoples which distinguishes the book is well illustrated in the following presentment of the Macedonians (pp. 214-15) :- - "But the people with whom Antigonus had chiefly to deal were not the easiest material for the development of these [cosmopolitan] views. In the Macedonians he had, indeed, subjects differing widely from those of the King of Egypt, or from all those who were really subject to the Court of Antioch. Instead of sand-hills or desert or the lazy river carrying down its wealth amid tropical heats, through fields of golden wheat, we have in Macedonia alpine wilds, foaming torrents, forests of primeval timber, upland pastures with winter snows,—the everlasting home of a free and bold race of mountaineers, given to war and the chase, and as shepherds despising the laborious tiller of the soil. All the splendour of their court never subdued a certain rudeness in these Macedonians ; they never produced, that I can remember, a great man of letters. They seem to have acquiesced in the loss of some of their pristine liberties, and to have submitted to the tolerably absolute monarchy of their philosophic King. But then, the position of Macedonia was that of a military outpost against barbarism ; and among a nation of soldiers absolute obedience is easily transferred from the camp, where it is indispensable, to the homestead. Yet withal, the Mace- donian still went about through the Greek and Syrian world as the Englishman has been accustomed to go through Europe,—the acknowledged superior in physique, and the citizen of a nation which had dominated the world."
A word should be said on Professor Mahaity's style, which has lost none of its vivacity (to use no severer term). A certain license of colloquial or " direct " expression may be conceded to the idiosyncrasy of the Professor, however unsuited it be to the dignity of history ; we are prepared to read of the "younger sons" of the Greeks who "went abroad as mercenaries and knocked about in satraps' courts" (p. 294), of Rome's "vulgar mawkishness about Greek liberties" (p. 446), and of the "down- right snobs" among the Romanizing Greeks (p. 449). It induces only a faint shudder when the banqueting-chamber at Philadelphus's great festival is brought before our eyes as "a sort of glorified Holborn Restaurant, where the resources of art are lavished on the walls of an eating-room." (p.201). But the use of the "modern instance" is easily overdone ; it is justified in the comparison of the first Ptolemy to Victor Emanuel, and of Philopcemen to Garibaldi (pp. 191 and 441) but to illustrate the politics of the Achaaan or " patriotic " party and their opponents in Greece by reference to our present Irish Question, appears to us at once misleading and in bad taste. Let the author, we entreat him, run his pen everywhere " blottesquely " through the words " Home-rule " in text and index (the latter, by the way, a full and useful one). In a new edition, too, Mr. Mahaffy, who is himself so good a scholar, should cancel his childish animadversions on the "pedant," "pure scholar," or, as he is designated in the introduction, "the superannuated schoolboy who holds fellowships and raasterships at English colleges, and regards himself as a perfectly trained Greek scholar." The book would be much improved were these things away ; with or without them, it is a capital piece of work, at once painstaking and brilliant, and may be heartily recommended to all lovers of the Hellenes.
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