The Classical Tradition: Greek And Roman Influences On Western Literature

THE CLASSICAL TRADITION Helen, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, wayworn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome. THE CLASSICAL TRADITION GREEK AND ROMAN INFLUENCES ON WESTERN LITERATURE BY GILBERT HIGHET OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS New York Oxford Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Dar es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland and associated companies in Beirut Berlin Ibadan Mexico City Nicosia Copyright 1949 by Oxford University Press, Inc.; renewed 1976 by Gilbert Highet First published in 1949 by the Clarendon Press, Oxford First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1957 Reissued in paperback, 1985, by Oxford University Press, Inc., 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016-4314 Oxford is the registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Highet, Gilbert, 1906-1978. The classical tradition. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. Literature, Comparative—Classical and modern. 2. Literature, Comparative—Modern and classical. PN883. H5 1985 809 85-15477 ISBN 0-19-500206-7 (pbk.) Printing (last digit): 9 8 7 6 Printed in the United States of America PREFACE T HIS book is an outline of the chief ways in which Greek and Latin influence has moulded the literatures of western Europe and America. The Greeks invented nearly all the literary patterns which we use: tragedy and comedy, epic and romance, and many more. In the course of their two thousand years of writing they worked out innumerable themes—some as light as 'Drink to me only with thine eyes', others as powerful as a brave man's journey through hell. These themes and patterns they passed on to the Romans, who developed them and added much of their own. When the Roman empire fell civilization was nearly ruined. Literature and the arts became refugees, hiding in outlying areas or under the protection of the church. Few Europeans could read during the Dark Ages. Fewer still could write books. But those who could read and write did so with the help of the international Latin language, by blending Christian material with Greek and Roman thoughts. New languages formed themselves, slowly, slowly. The first which has left a large and mature literature of its own is AngloSaxon, or Old English. After it came French; then Italian; and then the other European languages. When authors started to write in each of these new media, they told the stories and sang the songs which their own people knew. But they turned to Rome and Greece for guidance in strong or graceful expression, for interesting stories less well known, for trenchant ideas. As these languages matured they constantly turned to the Greeks and Romans for further education and help. They enlarged their vocabulary by incorporating Greek and Roman words, as we are still doing: for instance, television. They copied and adapted the highly developed Greco-Roman devices of style. They learned famous stories, like the murder of Caesar or the doom of Oedipus. They found out the real powers of dramatic poetry, and realized what tragedy a