A history of classical Greek literature / by J.P. Mahaffy.

  • John Pentland Mahaffy
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: A history of classical Greek literature / by J.P. Mahaffy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    history may have been produced by the influence of Isocrates will be discussed in its proper place. § 476. Turning to his Works, it seems that he is one of those few authors, like Plato, whose literary labours have been handed down to us complete. The dark ages have exacted from him no tribute of oblivion. The ancients counted forty books, which corresponds fairly with the sum of the subdivisions of our collection, nor is any work cited by them not to be found in our catalogue, even when their citations cannot be verified in our texts. As to their chronology, it is tolerably certain that one of them, the tract on the Athenian Constitution^ is far ante- rior in date to all the rest. But though the once-received early date for Xenophon’s birth might make his authorship of the tract possible, most good critics have agreed in declaring it an anonymous production, which has been incorporated in his works on account of its analogy to the genuine tract on the Lacedcjemonian Constitution. The condition of Athenian affairs assumed in the work cannot have existed after 425 b.c., so that we have before us (discounting the fragment of Gorgias) the earliest extant specimen of Attic prose, the remains of Antiphon being generally supposed to date from the latest period of his career. But here even the partial agreement of critics about this very interesting tract is exhausted, if we except their perhaps harmonious chorus of complaint as to the miserably corrupt and lacerated condition of the text. Indeed, if we consult the critical preface of Sauppe, we may find, even on the date of its composition, opinions varying from that already given, down to the Macedonian period, the latter extreme being sup- ported by Bemhardy, on account of the statement ^ that the Attic dialect was an idiom containing a mixture of all the rest. There has been an equally great and bootless controversy about the authorship. Few scholars maintain Xenophon’s claim, though Cobet seems to admit it. But (in addition to Thucydides!) both Critias and Alcibiades have been named, • (tTfira tpuvijv iracrav iKovovres tovto fxev 4k TTjs rovro 54 4k KoX ol fiiv EAXTjves iSla fJ-aWov Ka't ipuvri Kal iiaiTf) Kal <rx^/iOT» XP^vTai, ’AOrjuaiei 54 KeKpafxfuj] 4^ a-ndvruv rwv 'EWijvwp Kal fiapfidpwy (ii. 8). This is a wonderful statement.
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