New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1896-09-30

Ihelr way OF treating the epic sub
jects must have been very nearly th
same always, or the review Of the whole
as collected in the Had and Odyssee, wa
a very thorough one, since all ssthe late
ages until 795 took these epopees TO
the work of one man In that year. ap
peared Fr. Aug. VOLTS work on Homer
in which he showed that a man like Thu
blind old singer, called Homer, the re
puted author Of the epopees mentioned
has never existed. That so many cities
claimed to be his birthplace, that he
was said to have been blind, that there
were certain contradictions and repeti-
tlons in the epopus, that the Had and
Odyssee have an entirely different char
acter, the former apparently represent
ing less civilized state, all tllis ought
to have aroused suspicion long ago. Yet
even to this day there is quite a number
of scholars who cannot part with the
idea, that one man should have composed
these poems, just as there are always
some learned men at work trying to find
the authors of the Nibelungenlied and
the Gudron. Both tasks would seem to
be as fruitless as trying to find the
square of the circle; or to make. gold !;
although we know that these long re-
searches have not been without good
results in other directions. Let me add
that the time of the writing down If
those songs by order of Pisistratus, the
famous tyrant Of Athens, is about 525
B. G.
The epic poetry of the Greeks was
closely followed by the lyric that high
ly talented people, after having reached
a definite settlement of the different
tribes Of which it consists, rapidly APP
preached the highest aims of culture
that it could reach. We are only too
much inclined to regret Its pit1able down.
fall at, and after. thesstime of Alexander
the Great,but it could not be otherwise,
and Rome experienced similar fate
500 years later, mainly because the civil
ization of both was based upon slavery;
it was entirely arlstocratic. Take for
Sparta and Athens at the time
of Pericles; to one citizen there were in
the former commonwealth about twelve,
in the latter eight persons without the
privileges of free citizens.
Lyric poetry begins to flourish about
700 B. c., when the increase in popula-
lion and commercial interests caused al
most all the tribes to send out numerous
We find the first, and most Of
the prominent, lyric poets on the islands
and in the colonies, which shows, the ef-
feet of colonization on the minds of men.
The most interesting characters, and
poets to be mentioned here are; G. Ar
the inventor of the iambic
verse, which he used for ridieuling his
enemies; (2) Aleacus, the first political
poet; (3) Sappho, the first female poet,
who wrote love songs; az Anacyeon, the
singer Of wine and love; and (5) half a
century after him, Pindar, who made it
a business to compose eulogies on the
victories in the national games ands,con-
tests of Greece. This man is regarded
by the Greeks and also by the Romans
as the greatest lyric poet of classic an
tiquity; and indeed the meters Of his
forty-four songs ale manifold in
construction and wonderful in art while
the contents show the high flight of a
genius and master. g..
We cannot expect the first develop
ment of dramatic poetry to have. been
quite as rapid as that of lyric poetry
and it would perhaps have taken much
longer time before the great dramatists
appeared, had not the immense increase
in wealth in the fifth century and the
national glory of the unsuccessful wars
against the Persians given the conditions
required fora high state of the drama
tic art. These are the same always.
Rome had it's Plantus and Terence, when
the republic gained the hardly contested
but glorius and decisive victories evel
the CarthaginiaLs. France had rs Ger.
nellie, Racine and Moliere, when through
the union of all means in the hands Of
the absolute Louis XIV. and the colonia
activity of France, that country coulc
withr right claim to be the most civilized
the most powerful, and the most glorl
GUS Of the globe. England had it
Shakespeare when the people rallied
around their queen, when they success
fully resisted the formidable Span1sl
Armada, and when wealth was multiply
ing. Germany on the OTHER hand. il