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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
In the history of Greek literature, as regarded by the general reader, there are two remarkable intermissions. The first occurs when ancient Greek literature comes to an end with Lucian in the second century after Christ; or perhaps when the hexameter itself begins to dissolve in the hands of Nonnus in the fourth. The second break naturally follows when Byzantine literature is cut short by the fall of Constantinople in 1453—after which it is commonly and wrongly supposed that hardly a Greek put pen to paper, save in the way of commerce or grammar, until the revolutionary songs of Eegas heralded the revival at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is, however, one of the fascinations of Greek studies that they introduce us to a language that can be traced in an unbroken descent from Homer to the present day: and wherever the Greek language has been spoken the art of literature has never quite perished, though its traces are sometimes rather faint and its beauties rare. But for the complete study of a language second-rate authors must not be neglected where masterpieces are few and far between. Unfortunately it is only in the last fifty years that scholars have turned their attention to publication of the obscure works that carry on the literary tradition from Byzantium to modern Greece. Of these authors ‘of the Turkish period’ the learned Sophocles, in the introduction to his Lexicon, remarks (1860) : ‘It is unnecessary to inform the reader here that, with very few exceptions, they are beneath criticism.’
1 Cf. Rangabé, A. R., Histoire de la Littérature Néo-Hellénique (1877)Google Scholar, ‘… de grossiers produits d'ignorance et de mauvais goût’ … and the ironical remarks of Koraes about the Erotokritos.
2 Leake, (Researches in Greece, p. 100)Google Scholar actually suggests that ‘the measure of our old English ballads originated, in all probability, among the Greeks’ (ef. also Tozer, , Researches in the Highlands of Turkey, Vol. II. p. 251Google Scholar, quoting Dr. Guest, History of English Rhythms). He was presumably thinking of the English ‘fourteener,’ which is the nearest thing in English to the Greek ‘political,’ as the ‘fifteener’ or ‘political’in English too easily breaks up into two lines (partly because English is less polysyllabic). The ‘fourteener’ in English has much the same defects and beauties as the Greek ‘political.’ Compare especially Chapman's translation of Homer, and Saintsbury's, remarks, History of English Prosody, Vol. II. pp. 108 ft.Google Scholar The ‘fourteener’ becomes a ‘political’ when it requires a double rhyme: e.g. the apprentices' song in the Knight of the Burning Pestle:
‘And let it nere be said for shame, that we, the youths of London,
Lay thrumming of our caps at home, and left our custom undone.’
Or the Elizabethan popular poem, Sir Martin Mar-people (1590):
‘Such partial judgments in the Judge for whom the Judge do favour,
Such justice judge and judgments too, doth of injustice savour.’
But note that the ‘political’ being syllabic as well as accentual cannot drop a final syllable as easily as the English ‘fourteener’ can acquire one.
3 See Krumbacher, p. 644 ff.
4 See 
in the 
Vol. II., Athens, 925.
5 For the practice of writing Greek in Italian characters see Legrand's introduction to his edition of the Erophile, in Bibliothèque grecque vulgaire, Vol. II. pp. xci ff., and Xanthoudides' introduction to Φορτουνᾶτος, p. 6.
6 Romances of Chivalry on Greek Soil (1911), p. 22.
7 El Greco, 1545–1614.
8 There are actually six plays extant: Thysia tou Avraam, Zenon, Stathes, Gyparis, Erophile, and Fortounatos. Of the three not dealt with in this paper only one, the Zenon, fails to rank as an original work.
9 For a further account of these performances see the appendix to a popular edition of the play edited by Sophia Antoniadi (Athens, 1922).
10 The earliest editions in the British Museum are Venice 1713 (237. i. 17 (2)) and 1795 (868. e. 28).
11 
The title-page is quoted by Legrand. See also Pernot's comment, p. 259. But I prefer the testimony of Xanthoudides (Erotokr. p. cxx), that these words must refer to a previous unrhymed version.
12 Except the Zenon, which from a topical allusion in the prologue appears to have been performed in 1669 during the siege of Candia.
13 Enc. Brit., 8. 498, 511; 14. 905. There is a fifteenth-century English Abraham and Isaac, apparently from the French, as well as the Brome play usually assigned to the fourteenth century, and the Chester play on the same theme (see A. W. Pollard, English Miracle Plays).
14 Although we must not forget that the Patriarch Cyril Loukares, a Cretan (1572–1637), studied, amongst other places, at Geneva.
15 The Genesis story is probably a survival of some ancient ritual. It is curious that Sir James Frazer does not mention it in the appendix to his edition of Apollodorus (Loeb Classics) ‘on putting Children on the Fire.’ But see The Golden Bough, iv. 177, where it is connected with the worship of Moloch and the feast of the Passover (substitution of lamb for first-born).
16 See Psichari … ‘l'auteur tient à mêler le plus d'humanité possible aux choses divines … le poète laisse voir sa manière toute terrestre de comprendre le drame, par un monologue d'Abraham qui ne s'incline pas tout de suite devant l'ordre divin. … Le poète cherche done à résoudre un problème purement humain…’
17 Old Testament Legends … by Chumnos, Georgios … edited by Marshall, F. H. … 1925.Google Scholar ‘An attempt to popularise the results of theological learning.’ Perhaps it is unfair to call it illiterate; but the atmosphere certainly suggests Sinai rather than Venice.
[It is worth noting that Choumnos follows the Biblical narrative closely in describing Abraham's sacrifice, and that, except perhaps in small details mentioned below, his poem does not appear to have influenced the author of the present drama.—F. H. M.]
18 Xanthoudides, , Erotokritos, cxx.Google Scholar As the probable date of the Erotokritos is 1550–1650, an early work of the same author might still have been published in 1535. Xanthoudides himself inclines to the later date, 1650, for the Erotokritos.
19 1134: 
20 Adah (Genesis xxxvi. 4) and Tamar (Genesis xxxviii. 6) are spelled Ἀδά and Θαμάρ in the Septuagint version; the names in the play are spelled Ἂντα and Τάμαρ.
21 In Genesis (xxii. 17) this particular promise—
—is only made after the sacrifice. [It may be remarked that Choumnos also gives this promise before the sacrifice—at the time of Ishmael's mocking:
F. H. M.]
22 Genesis xxii. 9: ‘and Abraham built an altar there …’; [Choumnos makes the building of the altar the joint work of father and son:
F. H. M.]
23 There are copies of the 1637 and 1672 editions in the British Museum (868. c. 41, and 868. b. 30), and a MS. of the play at Munich, collated by Wagner and described by Bursian; another manuscript in Italian characters, incomplete, was published by Legrand (1881).
24 The plays most usually mentioned are:—
G. B. Giraldi, Orbecche; produced Ferrara 1541; printed 1543 (2nd edition, Venice 1583). (Hesseling and Bursian.)
Trissino, Sofonisba; Venice, 1620. (Sathas.)
Antonio Camelli da Pistoja, Filostrato e Pamfila; performed Ferrara, 1499; printed Venice, 1508. (Sathas.)
Mondella, Isifile; Verona, 1582. (Leake.)
Francesco Bozza, Candiotto, Fedra; Venice, 1578. (Sathas.)
25 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 8. 504 α. The opening scene of Orbecche, in which the goddess Nemesis calls up the Furies with their lighted torches, can hardly be uncon nected with the scene at the end of the Third Act in Erophile.
26 Annotations to Warton, quoted by J. Drinkwater, A Book for Bookmen.
27 The Old Drama and the New, p. 46.
28 Grazzini, in his Gelosia (1550)Google Scholar, according to Hesseling; Sathas also refers to Buonarotti's, Tancia (1612).Google Scholar Grazzini first introduced choruses of witches and satyrs.
29 Stathes, Erophile and Fortounatos. In the Stathes the two interludes are unconnected, one being an episode from the Trojan War (as are all four in the Fortounatos), the other from contemporary Crete.
30 It is surprising that Bursian, according to Sathas (p. πζ′), noted no difference in style between the interludes and the play. A reference, quoted by Sathas, to Hortátzes refers ambiguously to a certain Katzaropos, which may be the name of a collaborator. See Sathas, p. νή, and Legrand, p. lxxxvi.
31 Iambic trimeters are rare in Greek popular poetry; but there is one song in Passow (520), in some versions of which (521, 522, 523) the metre may be found breaking up into two lines. The same iambic line, in rhymed couplets, is used in the Εὐμόρφη Βοσκοποῦλα, another Cretan poem, published in 1627; and in the oral version of this, taken down in Chios, (Κανελλάκης, Χιακὰ Ἀνάλζκτα, 1890)Google Scholar, a similar break-up, or break-down, of the modern Greek iambic may be observed. It is curious that the ‘political’ in English and the senarius in modern Greek seem to have a special tendency to break up into two lines. But of course the ‘political’ also breaks up in Greek under the influence of song and dance. See especially Κυριακίδης, Ε. Π., τὰ παιδιὰ τοῦ δεκαπεντασυλλάβου (Athens, 1923)Google Scholar, who traces the formation of, e.g., a trochaic quatrain from the break-up of a ‘political’ and the insertion of refrains.
32 The chief dates are:—
Aminta, favola boschereccia, performed 1573, printed 1581.
Pastor Fido, tragicommedia pastorale, performed 1585, printed 1590.
Alceo, favola pescatoria, written 1581, printed 1582.
The Faithful Shepherdess, 1610.
The Sad Shepherd, 1641.
33 Ben Jonson's own essay, The Sad Shepherd, is open to the same objection. His shepherds talk about Heliodorus, Longus and Eustathius; except that there is also plenty of talk about cheese, and his extremely scholarly shepherds are balanced by the sporting talk of Robin Hood and his huntsmen, by the landscape of Sherwood Forest and by the witch of Paplewick. All that Shakespeare wanted of the pastoral he put into the wood near Athens in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
34 Anth. Plan. 152: 
and so on.
35 Sathas quotes an N. G. Gypares from a contemporary (1877) newspaper report.
36 Κρήτης, Ποιμενικὰ in Λεξικογραφικὸν ἀρχεῖον τῆς μέσης καὶ νέας Ἑλληνικῆς Vol. V., Athens, 1918.Google Scholar
37 ‘Weniger bedeutend sind die kretischen Tragödien Zenon, Stathis und Gyparis, die Sathas mit der Erophile veröffentlicht hat.’
38 I know this only from the references of Legrand, Sathas and Krumbacher.
