No More Learning

Medea — Dear to their mother, not to thee. Jason — And yet thou didst slay them ? Medea — Yea, to vex thy heart.
Jason — One last fond kiss, ah me !
lips imprint.
Medea — Embraces now, and fond farewells for them ; but
then a cold repulse !
I fain would on their
Death Mask of Keats.
THE BACCHANALS.
89
Jason — By heaven I do adjure thee, let me touch their tender skin.
Jason — O Zeus, dost hear how I am driven hence; dost mark the treatment I receive from this she-lion, fell murderess of her young ? Yet so far as I may and can, I raise for them a dirge, and do adjure the gods to witness how thou hast slain my sons, and wilt not suffer me to embrace or bury their dead bodies. Would I had never begotten them to see thee slay them after all !
Medea — No, no ! in vain this word has sped its flight.
THE BACCHANALS. By JOHN KEATS.
(From "Endymion. ")
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The natural hue of health, from vermeil lips ?
To give maiden blushes
To the white rose bushes ?
Or is 't thy dewy hand the daisy tips ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The lustrous passion from a falcon eye ?
To give the glowworm light ?
Or on a moonless night,
To tinge, on siren shores, the salt sea spray ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow — The mellow ditties from a mourning tongue ?
To give at evening pale
Unto the nightingale,
That thou mayst listen the cold dews among ?
O Sorrow,
Why dost borrow
Heart's lightness from the merriment of May ?
— Though he should dance from eve till peep of day
A lover would not tread A cowslip on the head,
—
THE BACCHANALS.
Nor any drooping flower
Held sacred for thy bower, Wherever he may sport himself and play.
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind ;
But cheerly, cheerly,
To Sorrow
She loves me dearly ;
She is so constant to me, and so kind :
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah ! she is so constant and so kind.
Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I sat a weeping : in the whole world wide There was no one to ask me why I wept, —
And so I kept
Brimming the water-lily cups with tears
Cold as my fears.
Beneath my palm trees, by the river side,
I
Cheated by shadowy wooer from the clouds,
sat a weeping : what enamored bride,
But hides and shrouds
Beneath dark palm trees by a river side ?
And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revelers : the rills Into the wide stream came of purple hue —
'Twas Bacchus and his crew !
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills From kissing cymbals made a merry din —
'Twas Bacchus and his kin !
Like to a moving vintage down they came, Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame All madly dancing through the pleasant valley,
To scare thee, Melancholy !
O then, O then, thou wast a simple name !
And I forgot thee, as the berried holly
By shepherds is forgotten, when, in June,
Tall chestnuts keep away the sun and moon : —
I rushed into the folly !
Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood, Trifling his ivy dart, in dancing mood,
With sidelong laughing ;
THE BACCHANALS.
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms, and shoulders, enough white
For Venus' pearly bite :
And near him rode Silenus on his ass, Pelted with flowers as he on did pass
Tipsily quaffing.
Whence came ye, merry Damsels ! whence came ye ! So many, and so many, and such glee ?
Why have ye left your bowers desolate,—
Your lutes, and gentler fate?
"We follow Bacchus ! Bacchus on the wing,
A conquering !
Bacchus, young Bacchus ! good or ill betide,
We dance before him through kingdoms wide : — Come hither, lady fair, and joined be
To our wild minstrelsy ! "
Whence came ye, jolly Satyrs ! whence came ye ! So many, and so many, and such glee ?
Why have ye left your forest haunts, why left
" Your nuts in oak-tree cleft ? —
For wine, for wine we left our kernel tree ; For wine we left our heath, and yellow brooms,
And cold mushrooms ;
For wine we follow Bacchus through the earth ; Great god of breathless cups and chirping mirth ! — Come hither, lady fair, and joined " be
To our mad minstrelsy !
Over wide streams and mountains great we went, And, save when Bacchus kept his ivy tent, Onward the tiger and the leopard pants,
With Asian elephants:
Onward these myriads — with song and dance, With zebras striped, and sleek Arabians' prance, Web-footed alligators, crocodiles,
Bearing upon their scaly backs, in files,
Plump infant laughers mimicking the coil
Of seamen, and stout galley rowers' toil :
With toying oars and silken sails they glide,
Nor care for wind and tide.
Mounted on panthers' furs and lions' manes, From rear to van they scour about the plains ;
THE BACCHANALS.
A three days' journey in a moment done :
And always, at the rising of the sun,
About the wilds they hunt with spear and horn,
On spleenful unicorn.
I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown Before the vine-wreath crown ! I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing
To the silver cymbals' ring !
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce
Old Tartary the fierce !
The kings of Inde their jewel scepters vail, And from their treasures scatter pearled hail ; Great Brahma from his mystic heaven groans,
And all his priesthood moans ; Before young Bacchus' eye wink turning pale. Into these regions came I following him,
Sick hearted, weary — so I took a whim
To stray away into these forests drear
Alone, without a peer :
And I have told thee all thou mayest hear.
Young stranger !
I've been a ranger
In search of pleasure throughout every clime :
Alas, 'tis not for me I
Bewitched I sure must be,
To lose in grieving all my maiden prime.
Come then, Sorrow ! Sweetest Sorrow !
Like an own babe
I thought to leave thee
I nurse thee on my breast :
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
There is not one,
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid ;
Thou art her mother,
And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. 93
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE. By WILLIAM EWABT GLADSTONE.
(From " Juventus Mundi. ")
[William Ewart Gladstone : An English statesman and writer ; born in Liverpool, December 29, 1809 ; died May 19, 1898. He was sent to Eton and then to Oxford, taking the highest honors at the university. He then studied law ; entered Parliament ; became president of the Board of Trade, chancellor of the exchequer ; succeeded Lord Palmerston as leader of the House of Com mons ; in 1868 succeeded Disraeli as first lord of the treasury ; and held many other high offices. He was the greatest statesman in England, and also took a high rank among men of letters. His writings are many and varied, including essays, translations, and works on theology and philology. Among the more notable are: "The State in its Relations with the Church" (1838), "Church Principles considered in their Results" (1840), "Manual of Prayers from the Liturgy" (1845), "On the Place of Homer in Classical Education" (1857), " Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age " (3 vols. , 1858), " 1Ecce Homo' " (1868), "A Chapter of Autobiography" (1868), "Juventus Mundi" (1869), "The Vatican Decrees" (1874), "Homeric Synchronism" (1876), "Homer" (1878), "Gleanings of Past Years" (7 vols. , 1879), "Landmarks of Homeric Study" (1890), "An Introduction to the People's Bible History" (1895), "Studies Subsidiary to the Works of Bishop Butler" (1896), and "On the Condition of Man in a Future Life " (1896). ]
The point in which the ethical tone of the heroic age stands highest of all is, perhaps, the strength of the domestic affections.
They are prevalent in Olympus ; and they constitute an
amiable feature in the portraiture even of deities who have
nothing else to recommend them. Not only does Poseidon
care for the brutal Polyphemus, and Zeus for the noble and
gallant Sarpedon, but Ares for Ascalaphus, and Aphrodite for
jEneas.
morality ; but parental affection is vehement in the characters, somewhat relaxed as they are in fiber, both of Priam and of Hecuba. Odysseus chooses for the title, by which he would be known, that of the Father of Telemachus. The single por traiture of Penelope, ever yearning through twenty years for her absent husband, and then praying to be removed from life, that she may never gladden the spirit of a meaner man, could not have been designed or drawn, except in a country where the standard, in this great branch of morality, was a high one. This is the palmary and all-sufficient instance. Others might be mentioned to follow, though none can equal it.
Perhaps even beyond other cases of domestic relation, the
In the Trojan royal family there is little of the higher
94 ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE.
natural sentiment, as between parents and children, was pro foundly ingrained in the morality of the heroic age. The feel ing of Achilles for Peleus, of Odysseus for his father Laertes and his mother Anticlea, exhibits an affection alike deep and tender. Those who die young, like Simoisius by the hand of Ajax, die before they have had time to repay to their parents their threptra, the pains and care of rearing them. Phoenix, in the height of wrath with his father, and in a country where homicide was thought a calamity far more than a crime, is restrained from offering him any violence, lest he should be branded, among the Achaians, with the stamp of Parricide. All this was reciprocated on the side of parents : even in Troy, as we may judge from the conduct and words of Hector, of Andromache, of Priam. While the father of Odysseus pined on earth for his return, his mother died of a broken heart for his absence. And the Shade of Achilles in the Underworld only craves to know whether Peleus is still held in honor ; and a momentary streak of light and joy gilds his dreary and gloomy existence, when he learns that his son Neoptolemus has proved himself worthy of his sire, and has attained to fame in war. The very selfish nature of Agamemnon does not prevent his feeling a watchful anxiety for his brother Menelaus. Where human interests spread and ramify by this tenacity of domestic affections, there the generations of men are firmly knit together ; concern for the future becomes a spring of noble action ; affec tion for the past engenders an emulation of its greatness ; and as it is in history that these sentiments find their means of sub sistence, the primitive poet of such a country scarcely can but be an historian.
We do not find, indeed, that relationships are traced in Homer by name beyond the degree of first cousins. But that the tie of blood was much more widely recognized, we may judge from the passage in the Second Iliad, which shows that the divisions of the army were subdivided into tribes and clans. Guestship likewise descended through generations : Diomed and Glaucus exchange arms, and agree to avoid one another in fight, because their grandfathers had been xenoi.
The intensity of the Poet's admiration for beautiful form is exhibited alike with reference to men, women, and animals. Achilles, his greatest warrior, is also his most beautiful man : Ajax, the second soldier, has also the second place in beauty, according to Odysseus. Nireus, his rival for that place, is
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE.
95
commemorated for his beauty, though in other respects he is declared to have been an insignificant personage. Odysseus, elderly, if not old, is carried into rapture by the beauty of Nausicaa. Not Helen alone, but his principal women in gen eral, short of positive old age (for Penelope is included), are beautiful. He felt intensely, as appears from many passages, the beauty of the horse. But this admiring sentiment towards all beauty of form appears to have been an entirely pure one. His only licentious episode, that of the Net of Hephsestus, he draws from an Eastern mythology. He recounts it as sung before men only, not women ; and not in Greece, but in Scheria, to an audience of Phoenician extraction and associa tions. It is in Troy that the gloating eyes of the old men fol low Helen as she walks. The only Greeks to whom the like is imputed are the dissolute and hateful Suitors of the Odyssey. The proceedings of Here in the Fourteenth Iliad are strictly subordinated to policy. They are scarcely decent; and a single sentiment of Thetis may be criticised. But the observa tions I would offer are, first that all the questionable incidents of sentiments are in the sphere of the mythology, which in several important respects tended to corrupt, and not to ele vate, mankind. Secondly, how trifling an item do they con tribute to the great Encyclopedia of human life, which is pre sented to us in the Poems. Thirdly, even among the great writers of the Christian ages, how few will abide the applica tion of a rigid test in this respect so well as Homer. And lastly, let us observe the thorough rectitude of purpose which governs the Poems : where Artemis, the severely pure, is com monly represented as an object of veneration, but Aphrodite is as commonly represented in such a manner as to attract aver sion or contempt, and when, among human characters, no licen tious act is ever so exhibited as to confuse or pervert the sense of right and wrong. The Poet's treatment on Paris on earth, whom he has made his only contemptible prince or warrior, is in strict keeping with his treatment of Aphrodite Immortals.
With regard to anything which is unbecoming in the human person, the delicacy of Homer is uniform and perhaps unri valed. In the case of women, there is not a single allusion to it. In the case of men, the only allusions we find are grave and admirably handled. When Odysseus threatens to strip Ther- sites, it is only to make him an object of general and unmitigated
among
96 ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE.
disgust. When Priam foretells the mangling of his own naked corpse by animals, the insult to natural decency thus anticipated serves only to express the intense agony of his mind. The scene in which Odysseus emerges from the sea on the coast of Scheria, is perhaps among the most careful, and yet the most simple and unaffected, exhibitions of true modesty in all liter ature. And the mode in which all this is presented to us suggests that it forms a true picture of the general manners of the nation at the time. That this delicacy long subsisted in Greece, we learn from Thucydides. The morality of the Homeric period is that of the childhood of a race : the morality of the classic times belongs to its manhood. On the side of the latter, it may be urged that two causes in particular tend to raise its level. With regular forms of political and civil organization, there grows up in written law a public testimonial on behalf, in the main, of truth, honesty, and justice. For, while private conduct represents the human mind under the bias of every temptation, the law, as a general rule, speaks that which our perceptions would affirm were there no such bias. But further, with law and order comes the clearer idea and fuller enjoyment of the fruits of labor ; and for the sake of security each man adopts, and in general acts upon, a recogni tion of the rights of property. These are powerful agencies for good in a great department of morals. Besides these, with a more imposing beauty, but probably with less of practical efficacy, the speculative intellect of man goes to work, and establishes abstract theories of virtue, vice, and their conse quences, which by their comprehensiveness and method put out of countenance the indeterminate ethics of remote antiquity. All this is to be laid in one scale. But the other would, I think, predominate, if it were only from the single considera tion that the creed of the Homeric age brought both the sense and the dread of the divine justice to bear in restraint of vice and passion. And upon the whole, after the survey which has been taken, it would in my opinion be somewhat rash to assert that either the duties of men to the deity, or the larger claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles or Alexander, of Sylla or Augustus, than in the age of Homer.
Perhaps the following sketch of Greek life in the heroic age may not be far wide of the truth.
The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from the low, is educated under tutors in reverence of his
ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE.
97
parents, and in desire to emulate their fame ; he shares in manly and in graceful sports ; acquires the use of arms ; hardens himself in the pursuit, then of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild beasts ; gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre. Sometimes, with many- sided intelligence, he even sets himself to learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plow firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing corn.
And, when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruc tion and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in sacrifices to the gods. For, all this time, he has been in kindly and free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who have known him from infancy on his father's domain.
He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand. Human life is cheap ; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for the time, until reason has reestablished her control. Short, however, of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his friend or his neighbor, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity ; while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual who has become his enemy, he will ac quire by main force what he can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly injury. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need ; to the wayfarer, to the poor, to the suppliant who begs from him shelter and protec tion. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbors will not be wanting to replace them.
His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in vogue, or the opportunities of it glaring in his eye and sounding in his ear. Gluttony is hardly known ; drunken ness is marked only by its degrading character, and by the evil consequences that flow so straight from it ; and it is abhorred.
VOL. II. —7
98 ETHICS OF THE HEROIC AGE.
But he loves the genial use of meals, and rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered in his father's hall, enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup. For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who celebrates before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir their blood, and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their turn, of their country and their country's heroes. He joins the dance in the festivals of religion ; the maiden's hand upon his wrist, and the gilded knife gleaming from his belt, as they course from point to point, or wheel in round on round. That maiden, some Nausicaa, or some Hermione of a neighboring district, in due time he weds, amidst the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her, " from the flower to the ripeness of the grape," with respect, fidelity, and love.
Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary circumstances, no great share of trouble. Govern ment is a machine, of which the wheels move easily enough ; for they are well oiled by simplicity of usages, ideas, and desires ; by unity of interest ; by respect for authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed ; by love of the common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes of his people, in war he lends them the precious ex ample of heroic daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs ; and his wakeful care for their inter ests is rewarded by the ample domains which are set apart for the prince by the people. Finally, he closes his eyes, delivering over the scepter to his son, and leaving much peace and happi ness around him.
Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the conclud ing phase of which Homer's youth, at least, was passed. But a dark and deep social revolution seems to have followed the Trojan war ; we have its workings already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could even Odysseus cope with it, con tracted though it was for him within the narrow bounds of Ithaca. On the mainland, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly broken. The Pelopid, Neleid, GSnid houses are a wreck : disorganization invites the entry of new forces to control it ; the Dorian lances bristle on the ^Etolian beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal Greece, the Greece of Homer, is no more.
LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME. 99
LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME. By J. P. MAHAFFY.
[John Pentlakd Mahafft, born in Switzerland of Irish parentage, February 26, 1839, is one of the most brilliant of recent scholars and writers on classical Greek subjects ; especially the literature, habits, and morals of the Hellenic or Hellenized peoples down to the time of Christ. He is professor of ancient his tory in Trinity College, Dublin. He has written only one formal history of events, " The Empire of the Ptolemies " (1896) ; though much valuable incidental historic and biographic matter is contained in his other works, the chief of which are "Social Life in Greece," " Greek Life and Thought" (a continuation of the former), "Greece under Roman Sway," "Problems in Greek History," " History of Greek Classical Literature," etc. ]
I estimate the society and the morals of the Iliad and Odyssey quite differently from those writers who have com pared them with primitive conditions in other nations. Of course primitive features remained, as they do in every nation ; but they were combined with vices which betray the decadence of culture, and with virtues rather springing from mature re flection and long experience than from the spontaneous impulse of a generous instinct.
Mr. Grote, Mr. Gladstone, and others have made the Ho meric age more familiar than any other phase of Greek life to English readers. They have accepted the descriptions of the rhapsodists as a literal account of a real contemporaneous society ; they have moreover deduced, with exceeding subtlety, all the inferences which can be extracted from the poems in favor of Homeric honor and purity. Every casual utterance is weighted with the deepest possible meaning ; every ordinary piece of good nature attributed to profound and self-denying benevolence. We are told that morals in historic Greece had decayed ; that a social state of real refinement and purity had passed away, to make way for cold calculation and selfish aggrandizement. How far this picture is real we shall see.
The mediaeval knights, with whom it is fashionable to com pare the princes of the Iliad and Odyssey, were wont to sum up the moral perfection which they esteemed under one com plex term — a term for which there is no equivalent in Greek — the term Honor. It may be easily and sufficiently analyzed into four component ideas, those of courage, truth, compassion, and loyalty. No man could approach the ideal of chivalry, or rank himself among gentlemen and men of honor, who was not
100 LITE IN THE HOMERIC TIME.
ready to contend, when occasion arose, against any odds, and thus to encounter death rather than yield one inch from his post. He must feel himself absolutely free from the stain of a single lie, or even of an equivocation. He must be ever ready to help the weak and the distressed, whether they be so by nature, as in the case of women and children, or by circumstances, as in the case of men overpowered by numbers. He must with his heart, and not with mere eyeservice, obey God and the king, or even such other authority as he voluntarily pledged himself to obey. A knight who violated any of these conditions, even if he escaped detection at the hands of his fellows, felt himself degraded, and untrue to the oath taken before God, and the obligation which he had bound himself to fulfill. This, I con ceive, was the ideal of knighthood.
Let us now turn to the Homeric poems to obtain information on these four points, remembering that, as the real knight may have fallen short of the ideal we have just sketched, so doubt less the real Homeric Greeks were considerably worse than the ideal characters depicted by the rhapsodists.
I believe I shall run counter to an old-established belief when I say that the courage of the Homeric chiefs — in this types of their historical descendants —was of a second-rate order. It was like the courage of the modern French, depend ent upon excitement, and vanishing quickly before depression and delay. No doubt the Greeks were a warlike nation, like the French, fond of glory, and reveling in excitement ; but they did not possess that stubborn valor which was the duty of the mediaeval knight, and which is the physical characteristic of the English and German soldier. With the exception of Achilles and of Diomede, all the chiefs in the Iliad are subject to panics, and fly before the enemy.
Of course, the flattering bard ascribes these disgraceful scenes to the special interference of the gods, but as he equally attributes special feats of valor to a like interference, we may discount the marvelous element, and regard these men, as we do a French army, to be capable of splendid acts of daring and of courage, but liable to sudden relapse into dismay and craven flight. Even Achilles flies in fear from the pursuit of the river Scamander, but this is rather the dread of an ignoble death, as he himself says, than proper cowardice. Ajax, who approaches nearest of the ordinary men in the poem to our notions of a stubborn soldier — even he is surprised by panic, and makes for the ships.
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There are farther indications of the same thing in the Odyssey. When Ulysses hears from Circe what sufferings he has yet to undergo, he tells us himself, " So she spake, but my spirit was broken within me, and I sat crying on the bed, and I felt no more desire to live and see the light of the sun. " This was natural enough, but very different from the courage, not only of the mediaeval knight, but of the modern gentleman. Still worse, when the hero is telling Achilles among the Shades of the valor of his son Neoptolemus, he says that as the chiefs entered the wooden horse, though they were the best of the Greeks, yet " the other leaders of the Danai wiped tears from their eyes, and the limbs of each trembled beneath him, but Neoptolemus alone neither grew pale nor wept. "
These hints in an ideal description, professing to tell of the highest possible heroism, indicate plainly that the Greeks of the heroic age were no extraordinary heroes, and that they were not superior in the quality of courage to the Greeks of history. In this respect, then, the Acheean chiefs were indeed but the fore runners of their descendants. The same combination of war like ardor, but of alternating valor, meets us all through Greek history. The Athenians, the brave people who first ventured to look the barbarians in the face, whether at Sardis, or at Marathon, as Herodotus says — these brave Athenians are fre quently seized with panics and run for their lives. The same may be said of all the Greeks, except the Spartans, who suc ceeded in curing their national defect by a very strict and complete discipline. But this discipline controlled all their lives, and sacrificed all higher objects to that of making them stand firm in their ranks. I conclude this discipline to have been unnatural and strained, from the fact that no other Greek city, much as they all admired Spartan organization, ever at tempted to imitate it. When we nowadays see the German armies better disciplined than our own, we forthwith propose to reform ourselves on their model. No such attempt ever occurs in Greek history. This could hardly have been so, but for the reason just assigned. The Spartan training was so oppressive that not even the certainty of victory in battle could induce other Greek politicians to recommend it, or other Greek citizens to adopt it. Thucydides hints at this very plainly, and
in the mouth of Pericles, shows that even with inferior military training, the real advantages are on the side of wider culture. Aristotle supports the same view in stronger and more explicit
102 LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME.
terms. I cite these authorities to show how artificial and facti tious a thing the Spartan valor was, and how different from the spirit of the Viking, the Baron, and the Yeoman. We know, too, how even the Spartan valor collapsed as soon as Epami- nondas met it with superior tactics, and how little idea there was, either at Leuctra or Sphacteria, of resisting to the death. The Greeks, then, though a very warlike, were not a very cour ageous people.
The reasons of this curious combination are obvious enough, and worth a moment's digression. In the first place, the Greeks, from Homer's day downward, were an exceedingly sensitive people. Evidences of this feature crowd upon us in the Iliad and Odyssey. The delicate tact with which unpleas ant subjects are avoided in conversation shows how easily men were hurt by them, and how perfectly the speaker could fore tell it by his own feelings. In fact, so keenly alive are the Homeric Greeks to this great principle of politeness, that it seriously interferes with their truthfulness ; just as in the present day the Irish peasant, with the same lively imagination and the same sensitiveness, will instinctively avoid disagree able things, even if true, and " prophesy smooth things " when he desires especially to please. He is not less reluctant to be the bearer of bad news than the typical messenger in Greek tragedy, who complains, in regular stock phrases, of the hard and ungrateful duty thrust upon him by untoward circum stances.
To this mental sensitiveness there was doubtless joined a corresponding bodily sensitiveness. An acute sense of pain and of pleasure, delicate nerves of taste and touch — these gifts were essential for the artistic products in which the Greeks excelled. We know how important a place was held in histor ical times by cooks, and how keenly the Greeks enjoyed the more refined pleasures of the table. So we may find Plato's contemporaries disputing in music on the difference of notes almost identical, showing that they appreciated dissonances which we consider unimportant.
I cannot parallel these facts in Homer, except by a curious case of sensitiveness in smell. When Menelaus is windbound off the coast of Egypt, and at his wit's end, a goddess (Ei- dothea) explains to him how to catch and interrogate Proteus, and engages to place him in ambush, which she does by con cealing him with three comrades under fresh sealskins. These
LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME. 103
men were in danger of their lives, and were engaged on the perilous errand of doing violence to a marine god. Yet the point which left its mark most strongly on Menelaus' mind was the bad smell of the sealskins ! " That would have been a most dreadful ambush ; for a most deadly stench of sea-bred seals distressed us sore. For who would lie down beside a sea monster ? But the goddess saved us, and devised a great boon. She brought and put very sweet-smelling ambrosia under our nostrils, and it destroyed (counteracted) the smell of the seal. "
If we combine with this great delicacy of sensibility the gloomy and hopeless views which the Homeric Greeks held concerning a future life, we shall see good reason for their dread of death. For although Homer distinctly admits an after life, and even introduces us to it in the Odyssey, he represents the greatest kings and heroes in weakness and in misery, without hope or enjoyment, save in hearing the vague and scanty rumors that reached them from the world of mortal men. The blessed islands of the West were indeed even then a home for the dead, but they had not yet been opened to moral worth, as in the days of Pindar. They were reserved for those who, like Menelaus, had the good fortune of being nearly re lated to the gods by marriage or family connections. From this aristocratic heaven therefore even Agamemnon, Achilles, and Ajax were excluded, and wandered forlorn in the doleful meadow of asphodel.
There will be less controversy as to the low sense of truth among Homeric Greeks. At no period did the nation ever attain that high standard which is the great feature in Ger manic civilization. Even the Romans, with all their coarseness, stood higher in this respect. But neither in Iliad nor Odyssey is there, except in phrases, any reprobation of deceit as such. To deceive an enemy is meritorious, to deceive a stranger inno cent, to deceive even a friend perfectly unobjectionable if any object is to be gained. So it is remarked of Menelaus, as it were exceptionally, that he will tell the truth, if you press him, for he is very considerate. This was said to Telemachus, who was expecting melancholy news, and in such a case I have already observed that the Greeks would almost certainly avoid the truth. But the really leading characters (except Achilles) in the Odyssey and Iliad do not hesitate at all manner of lying. Ulysses is perpetually inventing, and so is his patroness, Pallas Athene ; and she actually mentions this quality of wily deceit
104 LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME.
as her special ground of love and affection for him. Zeus de ceives both gods and men, the other gods deceive Zeus ; in fact, the whole Homeric society is full of guile and falsehood.
There is indeed as yet a check upon men, which is often ignored in later Greek society. There is still a belief in the gods, and an expectation that if they are called to witness a transaction by means of an oath, that they will punish deceit. This belief, apparently surviving from an earlier and simpler state of society, must have been rudely shaken in Homeric times, when we consider the morality of Olympus in the epic poetry. The poets clearly held that the gods, if they were under no restraint, or fear of punishment from Zeus, were at liberty to deceive as they liked. One safeguard as yet re mained, the oath by the Styx ; the penalties of violating which are enumerated in Hesiod's " Theogony," and consist of nine years' transportation, with solitary confinement and hard labor. As for other oaths, the Hymn to Hermes shows that in succeeding generations their solemnity was openly ridiculed. Among the Homeric gods, as well as among the heroes, there were indeed old-fashioned characters who adhered to probity. The char acter of Apollo is unstained by deceit. So is that of Menelaus. But Apollo fails in defending his favorite against the reckless party politics of Here and Pallas ; he gives way in battle before Poseidon ; he is like Menelaus among men, an eminently re spectable but second-rate personage. The experience of Ho meric men was aged enough to know that probity secured no man from the troubles of life and the reverses of fortune. The gods were often ungrateful and thankless, and so the weight of public opinion inclined decidedly to the belief that honesty was indeed respectable, and of better repute than deceit, but that it was not safe to practice it without the help of superior force. So Achilles was master of the situation, and to him lying was useless to attain ends that might be better attained by force. This subject will naturally recur when we come to compare the Homeric with later Greeks.
We pass to the third element in chivalrous honor, a sense of compassion for the weak, and an obligation to assist the oppressed. Unfortunately this duty appears to have been dele gated to Zeus, whose amours and other amusements often pre vented him from attending to his business. How badly he performed it in this respect is plain from the very pathetic pas sages in which the condition of the decrepit father, the forlorn
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widow, and the helpless orphan are described. We must not for a moment imagine that the Homeric age was wanting in sympathy for children. On the contrary, Herodotus alone, of later Greek authors, shows this sympathy as strongly as we find it in the Iliad. The Homeric similes — and no similes are more thoroughly realistic" and drawn from actual experience — con stantly imply it. As a mother drives away the fly from her child when it lies in sweet sleep. " " Why do you weep like an infant girl, who, running along by her mother, begs to be carried, and holding on by her dress delays the hurrying woman, but looks up at her with her eyes full of tears in order that she may be taken up and carried? " Apollo destroys the earth works of the Greeks " very easily, as a child treats the shingle by the seaside, who, when he has heaped it up in his childish sport, in his sport again levels it all with his hands and feet. "
These comparisons are evidently drawn from the same society which suggested the delightful picture of Andromache with her nurse and darling son, coming to bid farewell to Hector as he was hurrying to the battle. The whole picture — the child " fair as a star," his terror at Hector's helmet and nodding crest, the strong love of the parents sorrowing at the very prospect of misfortune for their child : this picture, which I dare not abridge, and which is too long for quotation, shows no ordinary feeling for helpless innocence. But all this sympathy in the poet, and doubtless in the society which he described, did not save little children from cruelty and from neglect. There is no passage in the two poems, if we except that on the dog Argus, which will bring more tears into hard modern eyes than the lament of Andromache over Hector : —
Now thou beneath the depths of earth art gone, Gone to the viewless shades ; and me has left A widow in thy house, in deepest woe,
Our child an infant still, thy child and mine. Ill-fated parents both ! nor thou to him,
Hector, shalt be a guard, nor he to thee ;
For though he 'scape this tearful war with Greece, Yet naught for him remains but ceaseless woe,
And strangers on his heritage shall seize.
No young companions own the orphan boy.
With downcast eyes, and cheeks bedewed with tears, His father's friends approaching, pinched with want,
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He hangs upon the skirt of one, of one
He plucks the cloak ; perchance in pity some
May at their tables let him sip the cup,
Moisten his lips, but scarce his palate touch :
While youths with both surviving parents blest
May drive him from their feast with blows and taunts : Begone, thy father sits not at our board !
Then weeping to his widowed mother's arms
He flies, that orphan boy, Astyanax, etc.
It is here the lamentable condition of the orphan that strikes us so forcibly. "Who has seen the misery of men has seen nothing, one must see the misery of women ; who has seen the misery of women has seen nothing, one must see the misery of children. " How different, for example, do we find the Irish peasants, with whom I have already compared the Greeks, where the neighbors divide among them without complaint the children left destitute by the death or emigration of the parents, and extend their scanty fare and their wretched homestead to the orphan as to their own children. The Homeric gentleman, of whose refinement and delicate politeness we hear so much, was far removed from such generosity. We feel almost pain fully the beauty of the simile, by which the poet pictures the joy of Ulysses, when, after two nights and two days in the deep, he sees land from the summit of the great rocking wave (e 394) : —
As when a father on the point to die
Who for long time in sore disease hath lain,
By the strong fates tormented heavily
Till the pulse faileth for exceeding pain,
Feels the life stirring in his bones again,
While glad at heart his children smile around ;
He also smiles — the gods have loosed his chain —
So welcome seemed the land, with forest crowned,
And he rejoicing swam, and yearned to feel the ground.
And again (6 523) : " As when a woman weeps falling upon the body of her dear lord, who has fallen before his city, and com manding his people, in defending the town and his children from the pitiless day [of slavery] . She then, seeing him gasp ing in death, casts her arms about him with shrill cries. But they (the enemy) striking her with spears on the back and
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shoulders, bring her into slavery, to have sorrow and misery, and her cheeks waste with piteous woe. "
Little, indeed, need be said about the respect for the rights of women. As is well known, when a town was captured, the noblest and fairest ladies, whether married or not, became the property of the victors as their concubines. But a still more significant fact has not been adequately noted — that such a fate, though felt as a lamentable misfortune, was in no sense a dishonor to the Greek lady, of which she need afterwards be ashamed. In spite of all the courtliness with which ladies are treated in the Homeric poems, in spite of the refinement of their characters and the politeness of their ordinary life, the hard fact remains that they were the property of the stronger, and that they submitted to this fate without being compromised in society. Neither Briseis nor Chryseis seem the least dis graced by their residence in the Greek camp ; and still worse,
Helen, after living for years with Paris, is then handed over to Deiphobus, and finally taken back by Menelaus without scruple or difficulty. If we weigh carefully her appearance in the Odyssey, we shall see that her regrets are chiefly for the tur moil she has caused, and for the tears and blood wasted upon her recovery; her dignity has suffered no great shock, nor does she avoid (except in words) the eyes of men.
These facts show with great clearness how completely the law of force prevailed over the weak, and how the Homeric lady was so constrained by its iron necessity, that all delicate feeling, however ornamental to the surface of society, vanished in stern practice. The case of Penelope corroborates this view: it was hateful to her to marry one of the rude and ungentle- manly suitors, who thrust their attentions upon her in her grief. Yet if Ulysses were surely dead, there was no help, she must pass into their hands, whether she choose it or not.
Stranger and not less characteristic is the treatment of old age. The king or chief, as soon as his bodily vigor passed away, was apparently pushed aside by younger and stronger men. He might either maintain himself by extraordinary use fulness, like Nestor, or be supported by his children, if they chanced to be affectionate and dutiful; but except in these cases his lot was sad indeed. We hear Achilles lamenting that doubtless in his absence the neighboring chiefs are ill- treating the aged Peleus, and he longs to dye his spear in their blood. We see Laertes, the father of Ulysses, exiled, appar
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ently by grief and disgust, to a barren farm in the country, and spending the close of his life, not in honor and comfort, but in poverty and hardship. When these princes, who had sons that might return any day to avenge them, were treated in such a way, it is surely no strained inference to say that unprotected old age commanded very little veneration or re spect among the Homeric Greeks. While therefore we find here, too, much courtliness of manner, and respectfulness of address towards the aged from their younger relations, the facts indicate that helpless women and children and worn-out men received scanty justice and little consideration. Among friends and neighbors, at peace and in good humor, they were treated with delicacy and refinement; but with the first clash of con flicting interests such considerations vanished. The age was no longer, as I have said, a believing age; the interference of the gods to protect the weak was no longer the object of a simple faith, and Greek chivalry rested on no firmer basis.
I may add, by anticipation, that at no period of Greek his tory can we find old age commanding that respect and rever ence which has been accorded it in modern Europe. We hear, indeed, that at Sparta the strictest regulations were made as to the conduct of young men towards elders; but this seems an exceptional case, like most things at Sparta. There is a hack neyed story of an old man coming into the crowded theater at Athens, and looking in vain for a seat, till he came near the Spartan embassy, who at once stood up and made room for him. Though the whole theater applauded this act of courtesy, I am sure they did not habitually imitate it. The lyric and tragic poets, as I shall show by ample quotations in future chapters, were perpetually cursing the miseries of old age, and blessing youth, fair in poverty, fairer still in riches. Probably old Athenian gentlemen were for these reasons like old French men, who are very prone to prolong their youth by artificial means, and strive to maintain a place among their fellows which they will lose when they are confessedly of the past generation. And so in Greece, as in France, old age may have come to lack that dignity and that importance which it obtains in the British army, on our Governing Boards, and in Chinese society. The comic features in Euripides' old men, and their ridiculous at tempts to dance and to fight, show the popular feeling about them to have recognized this weakness. But apart from these peculiarities of race, the feverish and agitated condition of
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Greek politics, the perpetual wars and civil conflicts must have made prompt action and quick decision all-important; and so the citizens could not brook the slowness and caution of old age, which often mistakes hesitation for deliberation, and brands prompt vigor as rashness.
There yet remains the idea of loyalty — I mean hearty and unflinching allegiance to superior authority, or to the obliga tions taken by oath or promise. The idea is not unknown to Homer's men and women. Achilles and Penelope (more espe cially the latter) are in the highest sense loyal, the one to his friend Patroclus, the other to her husband Ulysses. But in the Greek camp, the chiefs in general are woefully deficient in that chivalrous quality. I will not lay stress on their want of conjugal loyalty, — a point in which Menelaus, according to the scholiasts, formed an honorable but solitary exception. In those days, as in the times of the Mosaic law, absolute fidel ity was expected from women, but not from men. In their own homes, indeed, scandals of this kind were avoided as the
cause of ill will and domestic discomfort. It is specially ob served that Laertes avoided these relations with Euryclea from respect for his wife's feelings, and the misconduct of the suitors in the same direction is specially reprobated; but when the chiefs were away at their wars, or traveling, the bard seems to expect no continence whatever. The model Ulysses may serve as an example, instar omnium.
But it is in their treatment of Agamemnon that the want of loyalty is specially prominent. Achilles is quite ready to insult him ; and but for the promptings of Athene (that is, of pru dence), who suggests that he may play a more lucrative game by confining himself to sulkiness and bad language, is ready even to kill him. The poet, too, clearly sympathizes with Achilles. He paints Agamemnon as a weak and inferior man, succeeding by fortune to a great kingdom, but quite unfit to govern or lead the turbulent princes whose oath had bound them to fol low him to Troy. It is in fact Ulysses, Diomede, and Nestor who direct him what to do. It may be said that we might ex pect such insubordination in the case of an armament collected for a special purpose, and that even the mediaeval knights did not escape this disgrace in the very parallel case of the Cru sades. I will not, then, press the point, though Agamemnon's title to supremacy is far different from that of Godfrey de Bouillon. Take the case of Peleus, which I have already men
110 LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME.
tioned. Take the case of Ithaca in the absence of its king : we are told repeatedly that he treated his people like a father, and yet only a few old servants seem to side with him against the worthless aspirants to the throne.
The ezperimentum cruris, however, is the picture of the gods in Olympus. We have here Zeus, a sort of easy-going but all- powerful Agamemnon, ruling over a number of turbulent self- willed lesser gods, who are perpetually trying to evade and thwart his commands. At intervals he wakes up and terrifies them into submission by threats, but it is evident that he can count on no higher principle. Here, Poseidon, Ares, Aphro dite, Pallas, all are thoroughly insubordinate, and loyal to one thing only, that is, their party. Faction, as among the Greeks of Thucydides, had clearly usurped the place of principle ; and we are actually presented with the strange picture of a city of gods more immoral, more faithless, and more depraved than the world of men.
This curious feature has much exercised critics, and caused many conjectures as to the real moral attitude of the epic poets. I think the most natural explanation is based upon the notorious levity and recklessness of the Ionic character, as developed in Asia Minor. We know from the lyric poets, we know from the course of history, how the pleasure-loving Ionians of Asia Minor seem to have lost all the stronger fiber that marked the Greeks of Hellas. Reveling in plenty, associating with Asiatic splendor and luxury, they very soon lost those sterner fea tures — love of liberty, self-denying heroism, humble submission to the gods — which still survived in Greece ; and thus I con ceive the courts at which the bards sang, enjoyed a very free and even profane handling of the gods as a racy and piquant entertainment, so that presently it was extended even to the so-called Homeric hymns, which of all Greek poetry treat the gods in the most homely and even sensual way. The Hymn to Aphrodite, detailing her amour with Anchises, and that to Hermes, detailing his theft and perjury, are exact counterparts to the lay of Demodocus, which treats both Ares and Aphrodite in the same way.
This bold and familiar attitude was narrowly connected with another leading feature in the Greeks — their realism in art. There is nothing vague, or exaggerated, or incompre hensible, tolerated by their chaste judgment and their correct taste. The figures of dogs or men, cast by Hephsestus, are
LIFE IN THE HOMERIC TIME. Ill
specially remarked for being lifelike throughout the Homeric poems. They actually walk about, and are animated by his peculiar cunning. This, as Overbeck has well observed, is merely the strong expression of the object proposed to himself by the Greek artist, in contrast to the cold repose and mute deadness of Egyptian sculpture. The Egyptians seldom meant to imitate life in action. The Greeks, from their very first rude essays, set before them this higher goal. Like the statu ary, so the poet did not waste his breath in the tiresome and vague adoration of the Egyptian psalmist, but clothed his gods in the fairest and best human form, and endowed them with a human intellect and human will.
Homer's gods are therefore too human to embody an abstract principle ; and so this side of their religion the poets relegated to certain personified abstractions, which seldom appear, and which seem to stand apart from the life of the Olympic gods. Perhaps Zeus himself, in his Dodonean character, has this im personal aspect as the Father of light and of good. But Zeus of Olympus is quite a different conception. So there is a per sonified or semipersonified Ai'Stu? and an "Atj; and Acrai and an 'E/jiVw, which represent stern and lasting moral ideas, and which relieve the Olympic gods from the necessity of doing so, except when the poet finds it suitable to his purpose. But as these moral ideas restrained and checked men, so the special privilege of the gods seems to be the almost total freedom from such control. The society of Olympus, therefore, is only an ideal Greek society in the lowest sense, — the ideal of the schoolboy, who thinks all control irksome, and its absence the summum bonum, —the ideal of a voluptuous man, who has strong passions, and longs for the power to indulge them with out unpleasant consequences.
It appears to me, therefore, that the Homeric picture of Olympus is very valuable as disclosing to us the poet's notion of a society freed from the restraints of religion. For the rhapsodists were dealing a deathblow (perhaps unconsciously) to their religion by these very pictures of sin and crime among their gods. Their idea is a sort of semimonarchical aristoc racy, where a number of persons have the power to help favor ites, and thwart the general progress of affairs ; where love of faction overpowers every other consideration, and justifies violence or deceit. It will quite satisfy our present object to select the one typical character which both the poems place in
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the foreground as the Greek ideal of intelligence and power of the highest order.
The leading personage in Homer's world of men and gods is undoubtedly Pallas Athene. She embodies all the qualities which were most highly esteemed in those days. She is evi dently meant to be the greatest and most admirable of the deities that concern themselves with men. Yet, as Mr. Hay- man has truly observed, she is rather infra-human than super human. There is no touch of any kindly feeling, no affection or respect for either God or man. There is not even a trace of sex, except in her occasional touches of spite. " Her character is without tenderness or tie of any sort ; it never owns obliga tion, it never feels pain or privation, it is pitiless ; with no gross appetites, its activity is busy and restless, its partisanship unscrupulous, its policy astute, and its dissimulation profound. It is keenly satirical, crafty, whispering base motives of the good (indeed she comprehends no others), beating down the strong, mocking the weak, and exulting over them ; heart less — yet stanch to a comrade ; touched by a sense of liking and admiration for its like, [she accounts expressly for her love of Ulysses by his roguery and cunning,] of truth to its party ; ready to prompt and back a friend through every hazard. " Such is Mr. Hayman's picture, verified by citations for each and every statement.
This very disagreeable picture is not, as he would have it, an impersonation of what we call the world. Surely the modern world at least professes some high motives, and is touched by some compassion. But it is the impersonation of the Greek world, as conceived by Thucydides in his famous reflections on the Corcyraean massacre. He was mistaken in deed, profoundly mistaken, as we shall often see in the sequel, in considering this hard and selfish type a special outcome of the civil wars. No doubt they stimulated and multiplied it. But here, in the Iliad and Odyssey, in the days of Greek chiv alry and Greek romance, even here we have the poet creating his ideal type — intellect and energy unshackled by restraints ; and we obtain a picture which, but for the total absence of sex, might be aptly described as a female Antiphon. The great
historian, despite of his moral reflections, speaks of Antiphon, the political assassin, the public traitor to his constitution, as " in general merit second to none. " The great epic poet silently expresses the same judgment on his own Pallas Athene.