Читать книгу Greek Tragedy in the Light of Vase Paintings онлайн

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The reliefs on the Etruscan and Roman sarcophagi carry us to Italian soil and furnish us with a much larger field for pursuing our subject than could be found in Greek sculpture. Of all the Italian races with whom the Greeks came into contact, the Etrurians were by far the most advanced in civilization; and during the centuries of active commercial relations between the two peoples this nation, whose origin is the puzzle of historians, and whose language is the crux of philologists, came more under the influence of Greek literature and art than any of the Latin races that remained unhellenized. They have left abundant evidence of these hellenizing influences. In various classes of monuments which may still be studied—urns, mirrors, cistae, tomb-paintings, and vases—one discovers Greek mythology and poetry. The national mythology of the Etruscans is so much of an exception in their art, and the Greek is so universally adopted, that one is at a loss to account for the strange fact. On hundreds of Etruscan monuments one sees the workings of Greek poetry, which found its way into Etruria before Livius Andronicus produced the first tragedy in Rome 240 B.C. That the Greek drama was introduced for the most part directly and not through the medium of the early Latin tragedians, is shown by the fact that the latter flourished in the second and first centuries B.C., while the urns exhibiting tragic subjects are, for the most part, from the third century B.C. Some may, indeed, date from the fourth century. Roman tragedy can not be said to have really become at all a matter of general interest before Ennius went to Rome in 204 B.C. He died 169 B.C., and one should not think that the influence of these Latin adaptations and translations of Greek plays took an immediate hold upon the neighbouring Etruscans. Such elements percolate gradually into the various strata of national life, to say nothing of the time required to reach a foreign people whose language and customs are so different. But the summus epicus poeta^[22] was not the most popular or most prolific pilferer of Greek plays. His tragedies numbered only about twenty. In Accio circaque eum Romana tragoedia est^[23]; and the probable truth of this statement is well attested by the list of fifty plays that have come down to us under Accius’ name. This poet, however, was born 170 B.C. and first exhibited tragedies in 140 B.C. It is therefore very doubtful whether one can rightly speak of the influence of Latin tragedy upon the Etruscan artists. One dare not, at any rate, bring the ash-urns too far into the second century B.C., as Brunn and those immediately under his teaching formerly did. More recent investigations have proved the chronological impossibility of interpreting these reliefs with the help of Ennius, Accius, and Pacuvius.