SCATTERED OVER the sections of the Anthology are a
number of epigrams touching on this life, which are the more valuable to us,
because it is just this side of the ancient world of which the mass of Greek
literature affords a very imperfect view. In Homer indeed this is not the
case; but in the Athenian period the dramatists and historians give little
information, if we accept the highly idealised burlesque of the Aristophanic
Comedy. Of the New Comedy too little is preserved to be of much use, and even
in it the whole atmosphere was very conventional. The Greek novel did not come
into existence till too late; and, when it came, it took the form of romance,
concerning itself more with the elaboration of sentiment and the excitement of
adventure than with the portraiture of real manners and actual surroundings.
For any detailed picture of common life, like that which would be given of our
own day to future periods by the domestic novel, we look to ancient literature
in vain. Thus, when we are admitted by a fortunate chance into the intimacy of
private life, as we are by some of the works of Xenophon and Plutarch or by
the letters of the younger Pliny, the charm of the picture is all the greater:
and so it is with the epigrams that record birthdays and bridals, the toys of
children, the concord of quiet homes.
