conqueror. The second great musical theme of the Georgics is Failure. The lacrimae rerum, of which Vergil spoke in a later poem, 'the sense of tears in mortal things', as Matthew Arnold called it, the Latin <or Celtic?> sense of pity and pathos which Charles Eliot Norton loved to dwell upon, quoting Vergil and Arnold, as the very heart of a whole civilization, this theme is strong in the Georgics. Our modern pastor, with a more hopeful northern joy in work, may learn as he studies the rhythms of the Latin poet to find some gladder music. But he must first face sorrow and work with a sense of beauty and rhythm like that of Vergil.

In no theme is there more need of courage and rhythm than when one feels that 'sense of tears' in the failure of the Commonwealth. We can see how Vergil felt this in his first Book of the Georgics; for, when talking of signs in the sun and the moon and the earth, he passes naturally to the distress of his own nation. The civil wars of the Commonwealth had left their traces in the farm lands; and the poet calls out with a cry of sorrow to the traditional gods of the fatherland, for the need was great:

Quippe ubi fas versum atque nefas, tot bella per orbem, tam multae scelerum facies; non ullus aratro dignus honos: squalent abductis arva colonis.

'Here right and wrong are all confused; so many wars there are throughout the world, so many forms of crime; there is no worthy honor for the plough, the plough-lands are all in sorrow for the withdrawal of the tillers of the soil'; and so on.

In Vergil there is another theme in the first book, in the first movement of his symphony, and this is the Freshness of Outdoor Life, like a strong breeze blowing through the work and the sorrow. There is a remarkable description of a thunder storm, if you read it in Latin, with a true sense of rhythmical values in the words. And altogether you find a strong sense of the winds of God, of flying birds, of cattle snuffing up the breeze. Perhaps one of the best things is the return of the ravens to their nests and their young, nescio qua dulcedine laeti, 'gladdened with some sweet mysterious joy', when the rains are over and gone.

The second movement of Vergil's Farm Symphony is the happiest of all. The second book of the Georgics deals with Trees and the Vine. Trees have something kindly and soothing in them, if they grow not in the wild, tangled forest but on the farm, where man has mastered the world. There they become his friends, speaking peace in times of anxiety and worry, or yielding fruit to gladden his heart. And Vergil, while thinking of the glad growths of many lands, realizes how he loves best his own Italy. This is the next theme of the Georgics, Italy the Happiest Fatherland, the land of grain and wine and of the olive, where spring comes and stays long, and there is summer in months not its own, a land free from lions and tigers and the worst poisonous things, a land blessed by the sea, and near Vergil's home by the great lakes, a land of famous cities,

a mother of men. We may dwell a moment on these Italian cities:

Adde tot egregias urbes, operumque laborem, tot congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis, fluminaque antiquos subterlabentia muros.

'So many wondrous cities with all the labour of their works, so many towns gathered (like eagles' nests), by work of men's hands upon the cliffs of the rocks, while rivers glide beneath the ancient walls'. These cities are a part of nature, and yet they are homes of human victory over nature, homes of art and of a life worth living. Vergil knows, indeed, the danger of the city, and describes it later in this book in contrast to the country life.

Ferrea iura, says he, insanum forum, aulas et limina regum, hunc plausus hiantem corripuit: 'iron laws', 'the frenzied business exchange', 'the courts and doorways of the money-kings', 'applause that seizes on the heart of the wide-mouthed fool'.

Gaudent perfusi sanguine fratrum, exsilioque domos et dulcia limina mutant, atque alio patriam quaerunt sub sole iacentem.

"They find a joy in the very stain of their brother's blood, they give up the sweet gateways of their homes for exile, they seek a fatherland under an alien sun'. And yet there is a sense in which the city is the very perfection of man's life; and we must build cities which shall be a part of nature while ruling it, which shall bless men with art and religion, while keeping near the country and the trees and vines. One striking thought in this Tree movement of the symphony is Vergil's thought of Spring, the time of God's presence on earth, the divine reminder of a primeval golden age, as we might say, "a touch of Eden, and a promise of Paradise". The whole book ends with a heart-free praise of the farmer's life, as it might be if he should know his own good, in the land of long springtime, in the life of the golden age.

Then Vergil goes on with the third movement of his musical poem, and the music describes animal life. No one has any right to claim that he is a poet of country life who does not care for animals. The animal motif must be part of the musician's equipment, and one might find in Handel's Creation suggestions which could be worked out in a modern way. So the country pastor, if he is to be a leader and inspirer of country folk, must love animals as Vergil did. It is worth while to notice how the poet dwells on the characters of a noble horse, or a fine cow, in his rhythms. Especially interesting to me is the description of a spirited young horse, such as you would make a point of selecting. Here is one bit of it:

Primus et ire viam et fluvios temptare minaces
audet, et ignoto sese committere ponti;
nec vanos horret strepitus.

'He is a leader out on the high road, the first to venture the trial of a threatening river or to trust himself to an unknown bridge; he does not start at any idle

noise'. The picture of eager racing horses on the track would appeal to some, but we will let that pass. Then, again, there are the mares at pasture:

saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum flumina, muscus ubi et viridissima gramine ripa, speluncaeque tegant, et saxea procubet umbra.

"They feed in the lonely hill pastures and along the full-flowing streams, where the moss is, where the grass on the river bank is greenest, where there are caverns for the sheltered pools, and the shadow of the rock rests on the water'. In another passage there is a description of two bulls in battle, and the wanderings of the beaten bull through rough, lonely lands. The pasturing of sheep is described with great sympathy, first in the morning time,

dum gramina canent, et ros in tenera pecori gratissimus herba, 'when the grasses are glistening, and the dew on the tender blade is most welcome to the flock'; and so on, at different times and seasons. Moreover, all this Italian pasturing is contrasted with the life of shepherds in hot Africa, or the cold North. There is one picture, by the way, of catching deer in the deep snow of the Northland, which I thought was a traveller's tale, until a trustworthy guide in Northern Maine told me details essentially the same.

One can see how, in this Animal Movement of the symphonic poem, Vergil combines the animal themes with those of the fresh green vegetation, given in the second book. And, indeed, the thoughts of refreshment and peace, which come from the pastures and rivers, and the general Freshness of Outdoor Life, are most necessary in this connection; for Vergil realizes sympathetically, as every lover of animals does, how brief is their life, and how op n to pain as well as to pleasure:

optima quaeque dies miseris mortalibus aevi prima fugit; subeunt morbi, tristisque senectus, et labor; et durae rapit inclementia mortis.

'Ever the best day of life for unhappy dying creatures is the first fleeting one; soon come diseases, and sorrowful old age, and toil, and the merciless quick grasp of hard death'. Thus the theme of Failure comes again into the poem, along with Animal Life; and in close connection with Failure comes the theme of Love. All animals, including human creatures, feel it:

In furias ignemque ruunt; amor omnibus idem. 'Into frenzy and fire they rush; love is the same for them all'. The sorrow, the fierceness, the mad power of love, are especially dwelt upon. In Vergil's mind it seems to belong with Toil and Failure, rather than with joy. Other dangers also are dwelt upon. There is the motif of the Serpent, especially the deadly snake of water pools and rivers, who, in time of drought and heat, comes out with flaming eyes and darting tongue, a danger to every living creature in the pasture lands, as he rolls his coils along, a very personification of evil. And after him Vergil mentions disease, and finally the

Pestilence, so that, the animal book ends with the thoughts of Failure and Death. We need not bathe ourselves so fully as he does in the sorrow of animals, but we do need to enter into some feeling of sympathy for our fellow-workers in the animal world, whose loves, and sorrows, and need of refreshing rivers and glad pastures are not alien to our own life. Notice Vergil's brief elegy on the faithful ox, who has fallen sick and died in the pestilence: 'No more can any touch of nature stir his heart-the shadows of the high woodland, the soft meadows, the brook, clearer than amber, rolling over the rocks on its way to the field. His loins are utterly relaxed, a weary lethargy weighs down his eyes, his neck with its heavy burden sinks to earth. What blessing has he from his labour and his deeds of kindness, for turning with the ploughshare the heavy earth of the farm-lands?' And so on. We may remember, as we read, that the oxen are like their master, strong, patient, with deep powers of natural joy, doing much unrewarded labour.

Let us see now what in these three movements of our farmers' poem (as we pause before the last, the fourth) our great themes have been. Labour, Failure, the Freshness of Outdoor Life, the Blessing of Trees and the Vine, the Commonwealth, Italy the Happy Fatherland, the presence of Heaven on Earth in Springtime, Animal Life, with its beauty, love and sorrow; these have made our music. The fourth movement of the symphony combines all these themes in a harmony hard to describe. Nominally, it is a book about bees, and the care of bees, whose honey was more important for the ancient world than it is for us; but the essence of this work of the bees, providing as they do sweetness for human life, is that they are a Commonwealth on Wings. The bees labour, but they work gladly, flying through the bright air of Italy, labouring out of doors, amidst the fresh fragrance of flowers. They are a form of animal life, but are much more glad and free than the cattle of the farms, or the horses of the race-course and the cavalry battle. They have a love of flowers, and of the glorious work of making the sweet honey; and they have an intense love of their queen, or, as Vergil calls her, their king. Fault may easily be found with the poet's entomology, in several ways, but this is not to the point. Rather we should grasp the suggestion which he has given us of a Commonwealth on Wings. Our own country is, just now, alive to the needs of the farmer. Our government and our people are bestirring themselves. We are trying to solve problems of marketing farm produce, of developing rural household industries, of rural sport and recreation, rural sanitation and so on. But country life needs also a poet-prophet, who will show us how to work on the wing. A commonwealth the rural folk must be, with thorough organization, working in an earth where God's presence is felt, where there is a divine fragrance in the flowers and fruit, a divine blessing in the bright air. As Vergil loved Italy, so our country pastor must love America, its wide spaces and free air, its bright mountains and

great rivers, its flowers and birds, its rocks and seashores, its great lakes like the sea, as Vergil says of Garda, the lake near his home:

Fluctibus et fremitu adsurgens Benace marino

'Thee, Benacus, lifting thyself with waves and roar, like the very sea'. Christianity began, as Secretary Seward once said, on the shores of a lake, the Sea of Tiberias, and Christian civilization has centered round great seas, first the Mediterranean, and now the Atlantic, as it will round the Pacific Sea.

Out of doors then we must build our Commonwealth; the city must be made a part of the country and in fresh relation to it; the city folk and the country folk must be one community. To this end the country pastors must find a way; they must organize themselves to hasten the coming of a prophet greater than they, and to prepare the way before him; they must proclaim in a modern and Christian way Vergil's message:

deum namque ire per omnis terrasque, tractusque maris, caelumque profundum. 'God doth go on his way through all the lands, through the stretches of the sea, through the deep sky'. And again:

nec morti esse locum, sed viva volare sideris in numerum, atque alto succedere caelo. "There is no place for death, but <all creatures returning when set free> fly alive to the rhythm and number of a star, and come to the depths and heights of Heaven'.

And yet, even Vergil's community of bees, with its lessons of immortality, with its joyous labour, its love of work and queen, and fragrant honey, was open, it would seem, to disease, failure and death. And the poet, while suggesting a way to bring new bees to life, launches out into a fable of great spirit and beauty, into a narrative <poets of our day and pastors must learn the power of narrative>, telling how Aristaeus lost his bees, and appealed to his mother's love for his mother was divine and learned from her to capture and question the sea god Proteus, as our poets must learn how to capture and question Nature and the Divine power hidden in nature, to learn the secret of our failure. I cannot, in this brief time and space, give any idea of the spirit and vigor of this narrative, or of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, which is bound up with it. But we find in the Orpheus story a wonderful account of human Love and Music. The lover, the great musician, penetrated even to the land of the dead, the realm of the King of Terrors. Then in a brief re-possession of his wife (a half possession which might have turned to reality), the very intensity of his eagerness caused his loss, and left the lover in sorrow. In this utter hopeless sorrow, for seven whole months, by the great lonely river of Thrace, and in the shadow of a great rock, and under the cold stars, he thought it all out in music, and by his song went to the heart of fierce animals and rooted trees, subduing them. No other love, except this lost love, had any power with him, and his end was a violent death at the hands of human beings in the wild orgies

of a wild religion. They alone failed to feel the power of his song. Yet we feel that somehow the intensity of his human love and loss had opened to him the secret of all Nature, and was sure to bring him to divine success at last. Our country pastor cannot teach his people to find perfect happiness, even in the loveliest country life, or in the most perfect organization. 'This is not your rest,' he will say; 'but, if you learn the secret of true human love and sacrifice, you will find that life is stronger than death, even as Vergil felt it was'. HARVARD UNIVERSITY. CHARLES POMEROY PARKER.

REVIEWS

Euripides and his Age. By Gilbert Murray. New York: Henry Holt and Company (1913). Home University Library, 73. Pp. vi + 256. 50 cents. Students of the Classics and all interested in the best literature will welcome this delightful volume by the Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford. The book amply deserves a place in the Home University Library in that it treats of a subject “of living and permanent interest", in keeping with the aim of the

series.

Greek literature is a comfort and joy to Professor Murray. In the preface to his admirable book, Ancient Greek Literature, published in 1897, we find in the following passage one of his reasons for writing that work:

Such knowledge of Greek Literature as I possess has been of enormous value and interest to me; for the last ten years at least, hardly a day has passed on which Greek poetry has not occupied a large part of my thoughts, hardly one deep or valuable emotion has come into my life which has not been either caused or interpreted, or bettered by Greek poetry.

In that book the author's sympathy seems to be drawn towards Euripides rather than to Aeschylus or Sophocles. Is this not due to a certain kinship of mind and similarity in the outlook on life of the two men?

By his scholarly text-edition of the complete works of Euripides, but far more by his charming poetical versions of a number of the plays, some of which have been most successfully presented on the stage, Professor Murray has now for some time fixed the attention of the public upon this fascinating and many-sided thinker and poet, whose plays have been the subject of such controversy both in antiquity and in modern times. In this volume, the author presents to us in vivid and forcible style a learned yet most readable summary of the life and work of this brilliant and enigmatical poet. We have in the introductory chapter a lucid statement of various important estimates of Euripides, old and new, and an explanation of his later popularity as being the exponent of "the recognized literary language of the east of Europe and the great instrument and symbol of civilization" (11). His very clarity of style and thought is, according to Professor Murray, opposed to the more indirect and introspective utterance of modern poetry and is the great obstacle between him and us.

In a suggestive passage, the author states that our own age is in reaction against the Victorian Age, as was Euripides against the Periclean Age (15-17). He finds the spirit of revolt, criticism and discontent of our own day analogous to the spirit prevalent in the plays of Euripides.

How, then, are we to reconcile the rebel against tradition, determined to proclaim the truth and overthrow wrong and abuses, and the consummate artist who follows the traditions and conventions of his art, because by them alone he can be understood by his hearers? It is because these two elements, of the thinker and of the artist, are not harmoniously blended in him, as they are in Sophocles, that we have difficulty in understanding Euripides.

Of the nine compact chapters in the book six are devoted to an exposition of the political and intellectual atmosphere of fifth-century Athens, and of Euripides's expression of and criticism of that period. For he was both the child of his age, and in revolt against it.

The brief critical treatment of the myths, traditions and 'memories' of the poet, including the fragments of Satyrus recently unearthed in Egypt, is a model of its kind (20-58). In the third chapter (59-78) there is a good statement of the origin of tragedy and how its technical parts also are plainly derived from the old ritual of Dionysus. In a review of the early plays due comment is given to the lost play Telephus, so frequently parodied by Aristophanes. In his treatment of the Greek drama, Professor Murray never loses the modern point of view. But anthropology, cult studies and modern analogies are merely aids to his interpretation of Hellenic life. He is not only a student of books but knows human life and the passions of the heart. Hence the originality and freshness of his criticism of such great tragedies as the Medea, the Hippolytus, the Ion and the Bacchae.

All the great Greek philosophers, poets and thinkers were likewise men of action, taking their place in the strife of every-day life. Euripides was no exception to this rule. Though somewhat of a recluse, a reader of books and a stern critic of the errors and stupid conservatism of his time, he was for all that far more a man of action than most modern thinkers and men of letters. Herein is an important difference between the old Greeks and ourselves. Euripides was a true patriot and most sensitive to the mistakes and to the misfortunes of his beloved city. The varying events of the Peloponnesian War are reflected in his plays, and in his treatment of such subjects as slavery, marriage, and the oppression of the weak by the strong he was far in advance of his age.

In attempting to solve the 'riddle of the Bacchae' and the religious views of the poet (179-195), Professor Murray does not claim to say the last word. His belief in the poet's faith in man, when untrammeled by self-interest and convention, seems to be supported by the following quotation from the Bacchae, irrevelant though it is to the theme of that strange play:

As for knowledge I bear her no grudge; I take joy in the pursuit of her. But the other things <i. e. the other elements of existence> are great and shining. Oh, for life to flow toward that which is beautiful, till man through both light and darkness should be at peace and reverent, and, casting from him laws that are outside Justice, give glory to the gods!

The last two chapters on the Art of Euripides (196243) are perhaps the most useful in the book. Within the stereotyped traditional form we have in Euripides, says Professor Murray, the living spirit, the note of sincerity, and the courage to face a situation and follow it to its consequences. The technical features of a play (prologue, messenger, deus ex machina and the chorus) are explained in a simple but illuminating manner. This book should be read by all classical teachers, and it is to be hoped that the clear and sympathetic exposition of these great plays will lead many to read them in the original.

Aristotle called Euripides 'the most tragic of the poets'. He has been studied and admired by the greatest poets of modern times. We may close by citing with Professor Murray Goethe's remark: 'Have all the nations of the world since his time produced one dramatist who was worthy to hand him his slippers?' Setting Shakespeare aside, can this dictum be contradicted?

A quarter of a century has elapsed since the discovery of Aristotle's Constitution of the Athenians compelled scholars to subject their reconstruction of early Athenian history to a renewed scrutiny. The generation which so painfully emended obscure and broken places in the manuscript now faces the criticism of a younger generation which has studied the Politeia as a whole, without reference to the facsimile, and which is not misled by the glamor of a recent and unparalleled resurrection of a long lost manuscript.

Many questions, some of them new, are raised by Ledl's Studies in the Constitutional History of Early Athens. The book as a whole is divided into four sections. In the first, we have a rather disappointing chapter on the source-analysis. We are told that, for the period before the Persian Wars, Aristotle followed one main source, to which he here and there added facts acquired elsewhere. This source was identical with that used by Plutarch in his Life of Solon. The account of the 'Constitution of Draco' is an interpolation, but one made by Aristotle himself! The next chapter is devoted to an elaborate discussion of this constitution as given by Aristotle, and the following to a briefer study of the date of Cylon. The second section takes up in great detail the Attic king-lists. As introduction, we are led to study the mythical chronology of Herodotus. When this writer dates events so many years

'before my time', he is in reality using the era 488-487, which he has borrowed from one of his predecessors. Another main era is, not the Trojan War, but the generation after it, that is, 1288-1287. The list of Athenian kings is then traced through its different transformations, through Hellanicus, Castor, and the Parian Marble particularly, with much incidental reconstruction of the ancient authorities on chronology. Finally, we study the archons for life. The third section deals with the Solonian Council of the Four Hundred and the Areopagus, and the fourth with the various methods of selecting officials at Athens.

The book is in no sense popular. Long extracts in Greek, especially from the Politeia, fill its pages, and there is much in the text that we should expect to find in the notes. The discussion is carried into every corner where the slightest bit of information may be found, often to the detriment of the clear progress of the account, though some of these side-journeys furnish some of the most interesting results. There is no general summary at the end of the book and no attempt has been made to fit individual results into the general course of history. This is the more to be regretted in view of the manner in which treatment of the various events has been scattered. For example, the Draconian constitution is completed before page 76, the laws of Draco are in 290 ff., while an incidental reference on page 266 gives his status. The most necessary task of the reviewer is therefore the presentation of these general results.

Our present list of Erechthid rulers of Athens is late and much expanded. In its earliest form, it had but Cecrops, Erechtheus, Pandion, Aegeus, and Theseus. Its progressive expansion, in which doubling of rulers plays a large part, can easily be traced in the later literature. The list of post-Erechthid rulers began with Medon, for Melanthus and Codrus are not original, and the same may be said of the Alcmeonids, Megacles, Pheracles, and Alcmeon. Our earliest traditions show the Medontids to be kings. The archonship was established by 850 B.C. at the least, and existed side by side with the kingship. The Acastus oath was not taken by an archon of that name; rather it was the oath between the first archon and king Acastus. From the beginning, the archonship was annual, while the kingship, even after it had ceased to be more than the performance of certain religious rites, lasted for life. Only at a comparatively late time did the kingship become annual and elective. The list of Medontids is not official, as is that of the archons, which begins with 686. To join the two together, there were invented the ten-year archons, who are in no respect authentic. The polemarch is later than the archon and the thesmothetae are earlier than the end of the hereditary kingship. By unwritten law, the magistrates were always taken from the nobility, though elected by the shouts of the assembled folk. The single council was still formed by men of birth.

The revolt of Cylon is to be placed before the time of

Draco, the account given by Herodotus being a reading back into the past of the conditions of his own time. Draco was 'king' when he introduced his code of laws. The only fragment of these which was known to later times is the one preserved in the inscription of 409 B. C. The other laws lost their identity when incorporated in those of Solon.

The 'Constitution of Draco' is not authentic. It breaks the natural course of constitutional development; it rates the classes on a money basis; the strategus is the chief official of the state. Thus internal evidence shows that it cannot be earlier than the end of the fourth century. It was not known to Antiphon when he worked out the constitution of the Four Hundred in 412. The highly important pseudo-Xenophantic Constitution of the Athenians shows us that the same general sort of political ideas had been floating about for some time. A close date for its 'discovery' is given by the Draco inscription of 409, which shows renewed interest in that lawgiver. It was 'discovered' by Theramenes and his circle, not, however, near the end of Theramenes's life, but during the reaction of 411-410, and was to be used to prove that the compromise measure of that year was in reality modeled upon the 'Ancestral Constitution'.

In the place of the old single council, Solon established two, one for political and the other for judicial administration. The second was especially charged with murder cases. A relatively advanced stage had been reached by the Athenians in their treatment of murder, because they had already attempted to differentiate between the different types of homicide, while the Ionians had followed a false path in their development of money payment for such crimes. The origins of punishment for murder must be found in the judicial functions of king and council in early times. As in certain other periods of history, the oath must have been the decisive factor at this early date. Religious asylums, temples of refuge, must be postulated from the beginning. From these developed the custom whereby the court sat in different places for different types of the crime. The ephetae existed before Draco, as is shown by his failure to define fully their status. Officials were elected by vote of all the people until the time of Clisthenes and the archons continued to be so chosen until 487.

The book is not in every respect beyond criticism. Source-analysis is frequent; sometimes it is a little too keen. Especially hardy seems the theory of interpolation by Aristotle himself. Let us take the case of chapter four, the account of the Draconian Constitution. Ledl assumes that it is a later insertion of its author. There is a passage in the Politics which expressly denies a constitution to Draco and Ledl admits its authenticity. He therefore must believe that the interpolation in the Politeia was made after both it and the Politics had been written. If, as seems fairly certain, the Politeia was simply a collection of material to be utilized in the preparation of the funda