悲劇的誕生The Birth Of Tragedy 第66期:奴隸的樂觀
The new comedy could now address itself to a prepared, enlightened crowd, for whom Euripides had served as choirmaster--only in this case it was the chorus of spectators who had to be trained.
As soon as this chorus had acquired a competence in the Euripidean key, the new comedy--that chesslike species of play--with its constant triumphs of cleverness and cunning, arose.
一旦這種歌隊受過訓練，能夠唱歐裏庇德斯的調子，一種棋逢敵手似的戲劇便興盛起來，那是描寫勾心鬥角以智取勝的新喜劇。Meanwhile choirmaster Euripides was the object of fulsome praise;
然而，歌隊長歐裏庇德斯還是不斷博得稱譽；
in fact, people would have killed themselves in order to learn more from him had they not known that the tragic poets were quite as dead as tragedy itself.
真的，爲了要從他學得更多一點，甚至有人寧願自殺，殊不知悲劇的詩人們，像悲劇那樣，從此寂滅了。With tragedy the Greeks had given up the belief in immortality:
然而，自從詩人之死，希臘人也拋棄了對不配的信仰，not only the belief in an ideal past, but also the belief in an ideal future.
不但不信仰理想的過去，且亦不信仰理想的未來。The words of the famous epitaph "Inconstant and frivolous in old age" apply equally well to the last phase of Hellenism.
那句有名的墓誌“像老人那樣輕浮任性”也適用於衰老的希臘化時代。Its supreme deities are wit, whim, caprice, the pleasure of the moment.
片刻的享樂，機智，輕率，煩躁，是那個時代的至尊之神；The fifth estate, that of the slaves, comes into its own, at least in point of attitude, and if it is possible at all now to speak of Greek serenity,
現在是第五等級，奴隸階級，當權了，最低限度在精神狀態上是如此；then it must refer to the serenity of the slave, who has no difficult responsibilities, no high aims, and to whom nothing, past or future, is of greater value than the present.
假如現在還有甚麼“希臘的樂觀”可言，那就是奴隸的樂觀而已；奴隸沒有甚麼重大的責任心，沒有甚麼偉大的憧憬，他們重視目前遠甚於過去或未來。It was this semblance of Greek serenity that so outraged the profound and powerful minds of the first four centuries after Christ.
正是這種虛僞的“希臘的樂觀”，激怒了基督教時代最初四百年間那些深思而可畏的志士；This womanish escape from all seriousness and awe, this smug embracing of easy pleasure, seemed to them not only contemptible but the truly antiChristian frame of mind.
在他們看來，這種女性似的逃避責任與困難，這種懦夫似的貪圖安逸，不但是可鄙的，而且是尤其反基督教的精神狀態的。It was they who handed on to later generations a picture of Greek antiquity painted entirely in the pale rose hues of serenity
這種精神的影響由來已古：流傳了數百年的希臘古代世界觀，不屈不撓地始終保持着一些淡紅的樂觀色彩，as though there had never been a sixth century with its birth of tragedy,
彷彿從來沒有過公元前六世紀的文明，悲劇的誕生，its Mysteries, its Pythagoras and Heracleitus, indeed as though the art works of the great period did not exist at all.
祕儀的崇拜，畢達哥拉斯和赫拉克里圖的哲學，彷彿從未產生過那個偉大時代的藝術作品；And yet none of the latter could, of course, have sprung from the soil of such a trivial ignoble cheer, pointing as they do to an entirely different philosophy as their raison d'etre.
固然，我們不能說這些現象每個都是從這種衰老的、奴性的貪生求樂之心理產生的；固然，它們顯然另有一種完全不同的世界觀爲其存在的根據。
