Pictures of Hellas
FIVE TALES OF ANCIENT GREECE
BY
PEDER MARIAGER
TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH
BY
MARY J. SAFFORD
NEW YORK
WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER
11 MURRAY STREET
1888
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1888
By WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE.
The author’s preface to “Pictures of Hellas” isso full, that the translator has nothing to add to theEnglish version except the acknowledgment of valuableassistance rendered in “the obscure recesses ofGreek literature” by Professor Andrews, Ph.D., ofMadison University.
Mary J. Safford.
i
PREFACE.
Nearly all the more recent romances and dramas,whose scene is laid in classic times, depict the periodof the great rupture between Paganism and Christianity.This is true of “Hypatia,” “Fabiola,” “TheLast Days of Pompeii,” “The Epicureans,” “The Emperorand The Galilean,” “The Last Athenian,” andmany other works. The cause of this coincidence isnot difficult to understand; for a period containingsuch strong contrasts invites æsthetic treatment.
The present tales derive their material from adifferent, but no less interesting epoch. They givepictures of the flowering of Hellas, the distant centurieswhose marvellous culture rested solely on the purelyhuman elements of character as developed beneath amild and radiant sky.
Yet it required a certain degree of persistence toprocure this material. When we examine the Greekwriters to find descriptions of the men of those timesor the special characteristics of the social life of theperiod, Greek literature, so rich in accounts of historicalevents, becomes strangely laconic, nay almostsilent.
How entirely different is the situation of a personiiwho desires to sketch a picture of the Frenchmen ofthe sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. The whole collectionof memoirs is at his disposal. In these writingsthe author discourses familiarly with the reader,gives him lifelike portraits of the ladies and gentlemenof the court, and tells him the most minute anecdotesof the society of that day.
Greek literature has nothing of this kind. The descriptionof common events and the history of daily existenceare forms of writing of later origin, nothing wasfarther from the minds of ancient authors than the ideathat private life could contain anything worth noting.Herodotus and Thucydides narrated little or nothing ofwhat the novelists of the present day seek, nay, evenamong the orators only scattered details are found, andstrangely enough there are more in the speeches ofLysias than of Demosthenes.
Among the poets Aristophanes produces a wholegallery of contemporary characters, but indistinctly andin vague outlines; they were what would now becalled “originals from the street” who, during the performanceof his comedies, sat among the spectators, andwhom he only needed to mention to evoke the laughterof the crowd. Something more may be gatheredfrom Lucian and Apuleius, together with the better“Milesian” tales, especiall