No More Learning

This coast, however, is but a narrow
strip for several miles; just behind it lies amid the grass the
deceptive marsh, not visible at any considerable distance. This
morass and its conformation will explain the great miracle of the
battle: namely, its decisiveness, notwithstanding the enormous
disparity in the numbers of the two contending armies. For the
morass was the treacherous enemy lurking in ambuscade at the
rear and under the very feet of the Persians.
In regard to the battle of Marathon we have only one trust-
worthy account: this is given by Herodotus, the Father of His-
tory. It is short, and omits much that we would like to know,
indeed must know in order to comprehend the battle. Still, a
view of the ground will suggest the general plan, with the help
of the old historian's hints, and of one contemporary fact handed
down by the traveler Pausanias. The battle was a fierce attack
in front, aided by the enemy in the rear, the morass, which had
a double power. It on the one hand prevented the foe from
getting assistance, which could only come from the ships by a
long detour round the narrow strip of coast easily blocked by
a few soldiers. On the other hand, broken or even unbroken
lines being forced into the swampy ground would become hope-
lessly disordered, and would have enough to do fighting the
enemy under their feet.
――――――
Imagine now this line of coast with the vessels drawn up
sternwards along the shelving bank; then comes the narrow
strip of shore on which a portion of the Persian army lies en-
camped; then follows the marshy tract, then the plain upon which.
another portion of the Persian army is drawn up; still further
and beyond the plain is the slope of the mountain, where with
good vision you can see the Athenians arrayed in order of battle.
At the mouth of one of the two villages, doubtless near the
modern hamlet of Vrana, they have taken position; since they
could easily pass round the road and protect the other valley, if
a movement should be made in that direction by the enemy.
Single-handed of all the States of Greece they stand here; they
had sent for aid to the Spartans, who refused to come on ac-
count of a religious festival. Still the suspicion lives, and will


## p. 13616 (#430) ##########################################

13616
DENTON J. SNIDER
forever live through history, that this was a mere pretense; that
the Spartans would gladly have seen their rival destroyed,
though at the peril of Greek freedom.
But who are these men filing silently through the brushwood
of Mount Kotroni, in leather helmets and rude kilts, hurrying
forward to the aid of the Athenians? They are the Platæans,
a small community of Boeotia,- in all Greece the only town out-
side of Attica that has the courage and the inclination to face
the Persian foe. One thousand men are here from that small
place,―a quiet rural village lying on the slopes of Kithæron: the
whole male population, one is forced to think, including every
boy and old man capable of bearing arms, is in that band; for
the entire community could hardly number more than three or
four thousand souls. Yet here they are to the last man: one
almost imagines that some of the women must be among them
in disguise,—as to-day the Greek women of Parnassus often
handle the gun with skill, and have been known to fight desper
ately in the ranks alongside of their fathers and brothers. But
think of what was involved in that heroic deed: the rude vil-
lagers assemble when the messenger comes with the fearful news
that the Persian had landed just across at Marathon; in the
market-place they deliberate, having hurried from their labor in
the fields, in 'coarse rustic garb with bare feet slipped into low
sandals; uncouth indeed they seem, but if there ever were men
on the face of this earth, they were in Platæa at that hour. No
faint-hearted words were there, we have the right to assume — - no
half-hearted support; no hesitation: every man takes his place in
the files, the command to march is given, and they all are off.
Nor can we forget the anxiety left behind in the village: the
Greek wife with child on her arm peers out of the door, tak-
ing a last look at the receding column winding up Kithæron,
and disappearing over its summit; there is not a husband, not a
grown-up son remaining in Platæa. What motive, do you ask?
I believe that these rude Greek rustics were animated by a
profound instinct which may be called not only national but
world-historical,- the instinct of hostility to the Orient and its
principle, in favor of political autonomy and individual freedom.
Also another ground of their conduct was gratitude toward the
Athenians who had saved them from the tyranny of Thebes,
their overbearing neighbor: now their benefactors are in the sor-
est need; patriotism and friendship alike command; there can be
no hesitation. So those thousand men on a September day wind
I


## p. 13617 (#431) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13617
through the pines and arbutes of Kotroni with determined tread,
are received with great joy by the Athenians, and at once take
their position on the left wing ready for the onset.
Let any
village in the world's history match the deed! Well may the
Athenians after that day join the Platæans with themselves in
public prayers to the gods in whose defense both have marched
out.
Scarcely have these allies arrived, we may suppose, when the
moment of battle is at hand. Doubtless it was the most favor-
able moment, and as such eagerly seized by Miltiades: why it
was so favorable, no one at this late day can know. Perhaps the
much-feared Persian cavalry were absent on a foraging expedi-
tion; perhaps the enemy were negligent, or were embarking; or
as Herodotus says, because it was Miltiades's day of command,
-alas, who can tell? At any rate the order to charge is given;
down the declivity the Greeks rush, over the plain for a mile.
The deep files on the wings of their army bear everything before
them; but the centre is defeated for a time and driven back, for
it had apparently been weakened to strengthen the wings. Such
is the first fierce attack.
Now comes the second stage of the struggle, the battle at
the marshes. The front of the enemy, pressed by the Greeks,
and consolidated into a mass of panic-stricken fugitives, bore the
rear backwards; thus the whole hostile army pushed itself into
the swamp.
Whoever has seen a regiment of infantry in a mo-
rass, reeling, struggling with broken lines, sinking under their
equipments, soldiers extricating one foot only to sink deeper with
the other, cursing their stars and damning the war,- that is, a
complete loss of all discipline, and a sort of despair on account
of the new victorious enemy underfoot,—such a person can
imagine the condition of a large part of the Persian army after
that attack. The Greek lines stood on the edge of the marsh,
and smote the struggling disordered mass with little or no loss
to themselves. They also prevented succor from coming round
the narrow tongue of coast till the battle at the morass was over,
wholly victorious for the Greeks.
The narrative of Herodotus omits entirely this second stage.
of the conflict, and modern historians have slurred it over with
little or no separate attention. Thus, however, the whole battle
is an unaccountable mystery. Fortunately this struggle at the
morass and its result are vouched for by an authority at once
XXIII-852


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13618
DENTON J. SNIDER
original and contemporaneous, an authority even better than
Herodotus, who was a foreigner from Asia Minor. It was the
picture in the Pokile at Athens painted not long after the battle.
Of the details of that picture we have several important hints
from ancient authors. Says Pausanias, evidently speaking of its
leading motive, it shows "the barbarians fleeing and pushing one
another into the swamp. " There can be no doubt that this was
the salient and decisive fact of the battle: the barbarians fled
and pushed one another into the swamp. By the fierce onset of
the Greeks the front lines of the enemy were driven upon the
rear, and th
whole multitude was carried by its own weight into
the treacherous ground, numbers only increasing the momentum
and the confusion. Such was the conception of the artist paint-
ing the battle before the eyes of the very men who had partici-
pated in it; such therefore we must take to be the contemporary
Athenian conception. The picture may well be considered to be
the oldest historical document we have concerning the fight, and
as even better evidence than the foreign historian. The ground,
moreover, as we look at to-day, tells the same story. A skill-
ful military commander of the present time, other things being
equal, would make the same plan of attack. Thus too the great
miracle of the battle-the defeat of so many by so few, and the
small loss of the victors-is reasonably cleared up.
____
The third stage of the conflict was the battle at the ships,
while the enemy were embarking. This, to be successful, had
to take place partly upon the narrow strip of shore to which
the Greeks must penetrate at a disadvantage. In their zeal they
rushed into the water down the shelving pebbly bottom in order
to seize the fleet; still the faithful traveler visiting the scene
will, after their example, wade far out into the sea. Seven vessels
were taken out of six hundred, the enemy making good their
embarkation. Many Greeks here suffered the fate of brave
Kynegeirus, brother of the poet Eschylus, who, seizing hold of a
vessel, had his arms chopped off by a Persian battle-axe. In
general, the Greeks were repulsed at the battle of the ships; but
this third stage, since the enemy were leaving, is the least import-
ant of the whole conflict.
Not a word does Herodotus say about the numbers engaged
on either side: a strange, unaccountable omission. Yet he must
have conversed with men who fought at the battle,- with the
leaders possibly,-and he gives with the greatest care the loss on


## p. 13619 (#433) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13619
both sides,-6,400 Persians, 192 Athenians.
The omission leads
to the conjecture that he could not find out the true figures;
yet why not at Athens, where they must have been known? It
is a puzzle: let each one solve it by his own conjecture, which
is likely to be as good as anybody else's.
Ancient writers much later than the battle give to the Per-
sians from 210,000 to 600,000 men; to the Athenians and Platæ-
ans 10,000 men. Modern writers have sought through various.
sources to lessen this immense disparity, by increasing the
Athenian and diminishing the Persian numbers. Indeed, Mara-
thon became the topic of the wildest exaggeration for the Greek
orators and rhetoricians: 300,000 were said to have been slain by
less than 10,000; Kynegeirus, already mentioned, is declared to
have had first the right hand cut off, then the left hand, then
to have seized the vessel with his teeth like a wild animal; Cal-
limachus, a brave general who was slain, is represented to have
been pierced by so many weapons that he was held up by their
shafts. It was the great commonplace of Athenian oratory;
thence it has passed to be the world's commonplace. Justly, in
my opinion: for it is one of the supreme world-events, and not
merely a local or even national affair; thus the world will talk
of its own deeds. Do not imagine with the shallow-brained de-
tractor that rhetoric has made Marathon; no, Marathon rather
has made rhetoric, among other greater things.
Far more interesting than these rhetorical exaggerations of a
later time are the contemporary accounts which come from the
people and show their faith,-the legends of supernatural appear-
ances which took part in the fight. For there was aught divine,
the people must believe, at work visibly upon the battle-field that
day. Epizelus, a soldier in the ranks, was stricken blind, and re-
mained so during life, at the vision of a gigantic warrior with a
huge beard, who passed near him and smote the enemy. The-
seus the special Athenian hero, Hercules the universal Greek hero,
were there and seen of men; no doubt of it, the heroes all did
fight along, with very considerable effect too. Nor were the gods
absent: the god Pan, regardless of slighted divinity, met the
courier Phidippides on the way to Sparta for aid, and promised
his divine help if the Athenians would neglect him no longer.
Finally, Athena herself, the protecting goddess of the city, in
helm and spear strode there through the ranks, shaking her
dreadful ægis, visible to many-nay, to all-Athenian eyes.


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13620
DENTON J. SNIDER
Even a new hero appears, unheard of before; in rough rus-
tic garb, armed with a plowshare he smote the Oriental foe who
had invaded his soil. After the battle he vanishes: who was he?
On consulting an oracle, the Athenians were merely told to pay
honors to the Hero Echetlus. On the whole the most interesting
and characteristic of all these appearances - the rustic smiter he
is, who reveals the stout rude work put in by the Attic peasant
on that famous day. Indeed, all who fell were buried on the
sacred ground of the battle, and were worshiped as heroes with
annual rites. Still in the time of the traveler Pausanias, about
a hundred and fifty years after Christ, the air was filled at night
with the blare of trumpets, the neighing of steeds, and the clan-
gor of battle.
Says he: "It is dangerous to go to the spot for
the express purpose of seeing what is going on; but if a man
finds himself there by accident without having heard about the
matter, the gods will not be angry. " Greece was, at the period
of Pausanias, extinct in Roman servitude; yet the clash of that
battle could be heard-loud, angry, even dangerous-over six
hundred years after the event. Still the modern peasant hears
the din of combat in the air sometimes; I asked him, he was a
little shy of the matter; the noise, however, has become to him
comparatively feeble,- still there is a noise. But long will it be,
one may well think, before that noise wholly subsides.
So the heroes and gods fought along with the Athenians at
Marathon, visible, almighty, and in wrath. Thus it has been
delivered to us on good authority: thus I, for one, am going to
believe, for the event shows it; far otherwise had been the story
if the gods had not fought along on that day. There would
have been no Marathonian victory, no Athens, no Greek liter-
ature, for us at least. But now Theseus, the deserving hero, will
have a new temple, beautiful, enduring, at this moment nearly
perfect, after almost twenty-four centuries. Athena also will
have a new temple, larger and more beautiful than any hereto-
fore, still the unattained type of all temples; it shall be called,
in honor of the virgin goddess, the Parthenon. Attic song will
now burst forth, Attic art too, celebrating just this Marathon.
victory; that long line of poets, orators, philosophers, historians,
will now appear, all because the gods fought along at Mara-
thon.
The most prominent object on the plain of Marathon is an
artificial mound, perhaps thirty feet high at present; upon it is


## p. 13621 (#435) ##########################################

DENTON J. SNIDER
13621
growing some low brushwood. It is generally considered to be
the tomb of the 192 Athenians who were buried on the battle-
field, and had there a monument on which their tribe and their
names were written. To the summit of this mound the traveler
will ascend and sit down; he will thank the brambles grow-
ing upon it that they have preserved it so well in their rude
embrace from the leveling rains. He may reasonably feel that
he is upon the rampart which separates the East from the
West. Yonder just across this narrow strait are the mount-
ains of Eubœa, snow-capped and loftily proud; yet they stooped
their heads to the Persian conqueror. All the islands of the sea
submitted; Asia Minor submitted. But here upon this shore,
defiantly facing the East, was the first successful resistance to
the Oriental principle; its supporters could hardly do more than
make a landing upon these banks, when down from the mount-
ains swept fire and whirlwind, burning them up, driving them
into the sea. Here then our West begins or began in space and
time, we might say upon this very mound; that semicircular
sweep of hills yonder forms the adamantine wall which shut out
Orientalism. Regard their shape once more: they seem to open
like a huge pair of forceps, only in order to close again and
press to death.
Strange is the lot of the men buried here. the unconscious
instruments of a world's destiny-nameless except two or three
possibly. Yet they had some mighty force in them and back of
them: one is quite inclined to think that they must have remotely
felt in some dim far-off presentiment what lay in their deed for
the future, and that such feeling nerved their arms to a hun-
dredfold intensity. Here upon the mound this question comes
home to us before all others: What is man but that which he is
ready to die for? Such is his earthly contradiction: if he have
that for which he is willing to give his life, then he has a most
vital, perdurable energy; but if he have naught for which he
would die, then he is already dead, buried ignobly in a tomb of
flesh.
➖➖
But what is this Greek principle which Marathon has pre-
served for us against the Orient? It is not easy to be formulated
in words, to anybody's complete satisfaction. Politically, it is
freedom; in art, it is beauty; in mind, it is philosophy; and so
on through many other abstract predicables. Perhaps we may
say that the fundamental idea of Greece is the self-development


## p. 13622 (#436) ##########################################

13622
DENTON J. SNIDER
of the individual in all its phases, the individual State, the indi-
vidual city or town, the individual man. Henceforth the task is
to unfold the germ which lies within, removed from external
trammels; to give to the individual a free, full, harmonious devel-
opment. Thus will be produced the great types of States, of men,
of events; still further, these types will then be reproduced by the
artist in poetry, in marble, in history, and in many other forms.
This second production or reproduction is indeed, of all Gre-
cian things, the most memorable.
The battle of Marathon is itself a type, and has always been
considered by the world as a supreme type of its kind, represent-
ing a phase of the spiritual. Athens from this moment has
the spirit of which the Marathonian deed is only an utterance.
Soon that spirit will break forth in all directions, producing new
eternal types, just as Marathon is such a type in its way. Athen-
ian plastic art, poetry, philosophy, are manifestations of this same
spirit, and show in a still higher degree than the battle, the vic-
tory over Orientalism. The second Persian invasion came, but
it was only a repetition of the first one; it too was defeated
at Marathon, which was the primitive Great Deed, the standing
image to Greece of herself and all of her possibilities. Hence
the use of it so often by her writers and speakers, as well as by
those of the entire Western world.
-
With Marathon, too, history properly begins; that is, the stream
of history. Now it becomes a definite, demonstrable, unbroken
current, sweeping down to our own times. Before Marathon
indeed there is history, and much history; but it is in flashes,
short or long, then going out in darkness. The history of Greece.
itself before Marathon is merely an agglomeration of events quite
disconnected. The head-waters take their start at Marathon;
Oriental bubblings there, are in abundance, but no stream. In
fact it could not be otherwise: such is just the character of the
Orient, to be unable to create this historical continuity. But
the West has it, and it was won at Marathon, marking the great-
est of all transitions both in the form and in the substance of
history. Moreover, the historic consciousness now arises; history
for the first time is able to record itself in an adequate manner.
If you now scan him closely, you will find that man has come
to the insight that he has done in these days something worthy
of being remembered forever. But where is the scribe to set
it down? Behold, here he comes, old Herodotus, the Father of
P


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13623
History, with the first truly historical book; in which he has
written, together with the rest of the Persian war, the noble
record of just this great Marathonian deed. Thus with the
worthy action appears the man worthy of transmitting its glory.
Still the traveler remains upon the top of the mound, asking
himself, Why is Marathon so famous? Other battles have had
the same disparity of numbers between the two sides, and the
same completeness of victory, while they have had the same
principle of freedom and nationality at stake. The battle of
Morgarten, with its sixteen hundred Swiss against twenty thou-
sand Austrians, is often cited, and is sometimes called the Swiss
Marathon. But Morgarten to the world is an obscure skirmish:
it is not one of the heroic deeds which determined a civilization;
it is not one of the hallowed symbols of the race. This then
must be the cause: Greece has created to a large extent what
we may call the symbols of our Western world, -the typical
deeds, the typical men, the typical forms which are still the ideals
by which we mold our works, and to which we seek, partially at
least, to adjust our lives.
Marathon therefore stands for a thousand battles: all other
struggles for freedom, of which our Occident has been full, are
merely echoes, repetitions, imitations to a certain extent, of that
great primitive action. And Greece is just the nation in his-
tory which was gifted with the power of making all that she did
a type of its kind. The idea of the West she first had, in its
instinctive form, in its primal enchanting bloom; most happily
she embodied that idea in her actions, making them into eternal
things of beauty.
That is, all the deeds of Greece are works of art. In this
sense the battle of Marathon may be called a work of art.
Grandeur of idea with perfect realization is the definition of
such a work, and is that quality which elevates the person who
can rightly contemplate it into true insight. It fills the soul of
the beholder with views of the new future world, and makes him
for a time the sharer of its fruits. Marathon is only that single
wonderful event, yet it is symbolical of all that are to come after
it, you may say, embraces them all; it tells the race for the
first time what the race can do, giving us a new hope and a
new vision. So indeed does every great work of art and every
great action: but this is the grand original; it is the prophecy
of the future standing there at the opening of history, telling us


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13624
DENTON J. SNIDER
what we too may become,- imparting to us at this distance of
time a fresh aspiration.
One step further let us push this thought, till it mirror itself
clearly and in completeness. The Athenians were not only doers
of beautiful deeds, they were also the makers of beautiful things
to represent the same: they were artists. Not only a practical,
but an equal theoretic greatness was theirs: in no people that
has hitherto appeared were the two primal elements of human
spirit will and intelligence-blended in such happy harmony;
here as in all their other gifts there was no overbalancing, but
a symmetry which becomes musical. They first made the deed
the type of all deeds, made it a Marathon; then they embodied
it in an actual work of art. They were not merely able to enact
the great thought, but also to put it into its true outward form,
to be seen and admired of men. Their action was beautiful, often
supremely beautiful,- but that was not enough; they turned
around after having performed it, and rescued it from the mo-
ment of time in which it was born and in which it might perish,
and then made it eternal in marble, in color, in prose, in verse.
>
Thus we can behold it still. On the temple of Wingless Vic-
tory at Athens is to be seen at this day a frieze representing the
battle of Marathon. There is still to be read that tremendous
war poem, the 'Persæ of Eschylus, who also fought at Mara-
thon; the white heat of this first conflict and of the later Persian
war can still be felt in it through the intervening thousands of
years. Upon the summit of the mound where we now stand,
ancient works of art were doubtless placed; the stele inscribed
with the names of the fallen is mentioned by Pausanias. Only a
short distance from this tomb ancient substructions can still be
observed: temples and shrines, statues and monuments, must have
been visible here on all sides; to the sympathetic eye the whole
plain will now be whitened with shapes of marble softly reposing
in the sunshine. The Greeks are indeed the supreme artistic peo-
ple: they have created the beautiful symbols of the world; they
have furnished the artistic type and have embodied it in many
forms; they had the ideal and gave to it an adequate expres-
sion. Moderns have done other great things, but this belongs
to the Greeks.
―
So after the mighty Marathonian deed there is at Athens a
most determined struggle, a supreme necessity laid upon the
people, to utter it worthily, to reveal it in the forms of art, and


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DENTON J. SNIDER
13625
thus to create beauty. Architecture, sculpture, poetry, spring
at once and together to a height which they have hardly since
attained, trying to express the lofty consciousness begotten of
heroic action; philosophy, too, followed; but chiefest of all, the
great men of the time, those plastic shapes in flesh and blood,
manifesting the perfect development and harmony of mind and
body, rise in Olympian majesty, and make the next hundred
years after the battle the supreme intellectual birth of the ages;
-and all because the gods fought along at Marathon and must
thereafter be revealed.
But let us descend from this height, for we cannot stay up
here all day: let us go down from the mound, resuming our
joyous sauntering occupation; let our emotions, still somewhat
exalted, flow down quietly and mingle once more with the soft
pellucid Marathonian rill. The declining sun is warning us that
we have spent the greater part of a day in wandering over the
plain, and in sitting on the shore and the tumulus. Let us still
trace the bed of the river up from the swamp: everywhere along
its bank and in its channel can be seen fragments of edifices.
Here are ancient bricks with mortar still clinging to them;
there is the drum of a column lying in the sand half buried;
pieces of ornamented capitals look up at you from the ground
with broken smiles. Remains of a wall of carefully hewn stone
speak of a worthy superstructure: the foundation of a temple of
Bacchus was discovered here a few years ago, together with a
curious inscription still preserved in the town. The fragments
scattered along and in the channel for half a mile or more tell
of the works once erected on this spot to the heroes and gods
of the plain, and which were things of beauty. The traveler
will seek to rebuild this group of shrines and temples, each in
its proper place and with suitable ornament; he will fill them
with white images, with altars and tripods; he will call up the sur-
ging crowd of merry Greek worshipers passing from spot to spot
at some festival.
As one walks slowly through the fields in the pleasant sun, a
new delight comes over him at the view of the flowers of Mara-
thon. Everywhere they are springing up over the plain, though
it be January still,- many of them and of many kinds, daisies,
dandelions, and primroses,-looking a little different from what
they do at home, yet full as joyous. The most beautiful is a
kind of poppy unknown to me elsewhere; so let me call it the


## p. 13626 (#440) ##########################################

13626
DENTON J. SNIDER
*
Marathonian poppy.
In most cases it wraps its face in a half-
closed calyx, as the Greek maiden covers forehead and chin in
her linen veil: still you can look down into the hood of leaves
and there behold sparkling dark eyes. Some of the flowers,
however, are entirely open, some only in bud yet; then there is
every variety of color,-red, purple, and blue, with infinite deli-
cate shadings. One tarries among them and plays after having
gone through the earnest battle; he will stoop down and pluck a
large handful of them in order to arrange them in groups pass-
ing into one another by the subtlest hues. So, after being in
such high company, one gladly becomes for a time a child once
more amid the Marathonian poppies.
.
But will this city [St. Louis] ever mean to the world the
thousandth part of what Marathon means?
Will it ever make a
banner under which civilization will march? Will it ever create
a symbol which nations will contemplate as a thing of beauty and
as a hope-inspiring prophecy of their destiny? Will it rear any
men to be exemplars for the race? Alas! no such man has she
yet produced; very little sign of such things is here at present:
we are not a symbol-making people, do not know nor care what
that means; our ambition is to make canned beef for the race
and to correct the census. St. Louis has some fame abroad as a
flour market, but she is likely to be forgotten by ungrateful man
as soon as he has eaten his loaf of bread or can get it from
elsewhere. A great population she has doubtless, greater than
Athens ever had; but I cannot see, with the best good-will, that
in the long run there is much difference between the 350,000
who are here, and the 150,000 who are not but were supposed
to be. Marathon River is often a river without water; but will
turbid Mississippi with her thousands of steamboats-stop! this
strain is getting discordant: at Marathon should be heard no
dissonance, least of all the dissonance of despair. Yes, there is
hope; while the future lasts—and it will be a long time before
that ceases- there is hope. The Marathonian catabothron is
certain to rise here yet, with many other catabothrons, and form
with native rivers a new stream unheard of in the history of the
world. Who of us has not some such article of faith? When
this valley has its milliard of human beings in throbbing activity
over its surface, we all of us, I doubt not, shall look back from
some serene height and behold them; we shall then see that so
many people have created their beautiful symbol.
-
-


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SOCRATES.


## p. 13626 (#443) ##########################################

J
n.
T
1.
11


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13627
SOCRATES
(469-399 B. C. )
BY HERBERT WEIR SMYTH
REAT teachers are not often great writers: some indeed have
written nothing, and among these the greatest is Socrates.
If the qualities of his genius made Socrates a teacher
chrough the spoken, not through the written word, he created a liter-
ature in which, through the devotion of his pupils, his message to the
world has been transmitted to us. It is fortunate that Xenophon and
Plato were so different in character and aptitudes. If the historian
was incapable of grasping the full significance of his master's search
for truth and its transforming power, he pictures for us the homelier
side of the life of Socrates,- his practical virtues, his humanity,—
and defends him from calumny and reproach. In the larger vision of
Plato the outlines of the man were merged into the figure of the ideal
teacher. To disengage with certainty the man Socrates from the
dialectician into whose mouth Plato puts his own transcendental phi-
losophy, is beyond our powers; but in the pages of Xenophon, un-
illumined indeed by Plato's matchless urbanity and grace, we have
a record of Socrates's conversations that bears the mark of verisimil-
itude.
The life of Socrates falls in a period of the history of thought
when the speculations of a century and more had arrived at the hope-
less conclusion that there was no real truth, no absolute standard
of right and wrong, no difference between what is essential and what
is accidental; and that all man can know is dependent upon sensa-
tion, and perception through the senses. But the position of. Socrates
in history is not to be understood by a mere statement of his meth-
ods, or his results in regenerating philosophical investigation.
Born in 469, or perhaps 471, the son of the statuary Sophroniscus
and Phænarete a midwife, he received the education of the Athenian
youth of the time in literature, which embraced chiefly the study
of Homer, in music, and in geometry and astronomy. He is said to
have tried his hand for a time at his father's trade; and a group of
the Graces, currently believed to be his work, was extant as late as
the second century A. D. Like the Parisian, whose world is bounded
by the boulevards, Socrates thought Athens world enough for him.
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13628
SOCRATES
He remained in his native city his entire life; unlike the Sophists,
who traveled from city to city making gain of their wisdom. On
one occasion indeed he attended the games at Corinth; and as a sol-
dier underwent with fortitude the privations of the campaign at Poti-
dæa, where he saved the life of Alcibiades, whose influence, directly
or indirectly, was to work ruin alike to Athens and his master. He
was engaged in the battles of Delium in 424 and Amphipolis in 422.
His life was by preference free from event. Warned by the deterrent
voice of his "divine sign," he took no part in public affairs except
when he was called upon to fulfill the ordinary duties of citizenship.
Until his trial before the court that sentenced him to death, he ap-
peared in a public capacity on only two occasions; in both of which
he displayed his lofty independence and tenacity of purpose in the
face of danger. In 406, withstanding the clamor of the mob, he alone
among the presidents of the assembly refused to put to vote the
inhuman and illegal proposition to condemn in a body the generals
at Arginusæ; and during the Reign of Terror in 404 he disobeyed
the incriminating command of the Thirty Tyrants to arrest Leon,
whom they had determined to put to death.
He seems at an early age to have recoiled from pec ulations as
to the cause and constitution of the physical world; believing that
they dealt with problems not merely too deep for human intellect but
sacred from man's finding out. "Do these students of nature's laws,"
he indignantly exclaimed, "think they already know human affairs
well enough, that they begin to meddle with the Divine ? »
To Socrates "the proper study of mankind is man. " In the
market-place he found material for investigation at once more tan-
gible and of a profounder significance than the atomic theory of
Democritus. "Know thyself" was inscribed on the temple of the
god of Delphi; and it was Socrates's conviction that a "life without
self-examination was no life at all. " Since the Delphian oracle de-
clared him to be the wisest of men, he felt that he had a Divine
mission to make clear the meaning of the god, and to seek if haply
he might find some one wiser than himself; for he was conscious that
he knew nothing.
To this quest everything was made subordinate.
He was pos-
sessed of nothing, for he had the faculty of indigence. Fortunately,
as Renan has put it, all a Greek needed for his daily sustenance was
a few olives and a little wine. "To want nothing," said Socrates, "is
Divine; to want as little as possible is the nearest possible approach
to the Divine life. " Clad in shabby garments, which sufficed alike
for summer and winter, always barefoot (a scandal to Athenian pro-
priety), taking money from no man so as not to "enslave himself,"
professing with his "accustomed irony" to be unable to teach anything


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himself, he went about year after year,- in the market-place, in
the gymnasium, in the school,-asking continually, "What is piety?
What is impiety? What is the honorable and the base? What is
the just and the unjust? What is temperance or unsound mind?
What is the character fit for a citizen? What is authority over
men? What is the character befitting the exercise of such author-
ity? " Questioning men of every degree, of every mode of thought
and occupation, he discovered that each and all of the poets, the poli-
ticians, the orators, the artists, the artisans, thought that "because
he possessed some special excellence in his own art, he was him-
self wisest as to matters of another and a higher kind. " The Athen-
ian of the day multiplied words about equality, virtue, justice; but
when examined as to the credentials of their knowledge, Socrates
found all alike ignorant. Thus it was that he discovered the pur-
port of the divine saying-others thought they knew something, he
knew that he knew nothing.
The Sophists claimed to have gained wisdom, which they taught
for a price: Socrates only claimed to be a lover of wisdom, a philos-
opher. Though he continued to affect ignorance, in order to con-
found ignorance, he must have been conscious that if in truth he was
the "wisest of men," he had a heaven-attested authority for leading
men to a right course of thinking. Only by confessing our ignor-
ance, he said, and by becoming learners, can we reach a right course
of thinking; and by learning to think aright, according to his intel-
lectual view of ethics, we learn to do well. God alone possesses
wisdom; but it is man's duty to struggle to attain to knowledge,
and therewith virtue. For virtue is knowledge, and sin is the fruit
of ignorance. Voluntary evil on the part of one who knows what
is good, is inconceivable.
In his search for knowledge, Socrates found that it was imperative
to get clear conceptions of general notions. These he attained by
the process of induction.
"Going once, too, into the workshop of Cleito the statuary, and beginning
to converse with him, he said, 'I see and understand, Cleito, that you make
figures of various kinds, runners and wrestlers, pugilists and pancratiasts; but
how do you put into your statues that which most wins the minds of the
beholders through the eye-the lifelike appearance? As Cleito hesitated, and
did not immediately answer, Socrates proceeded to ask, 'Do you make your
statues appear more lifelike by assimilating your work to the figures of the
living? (Certainly,' said he. 'Do you not then make your figures appear
more like reality, and more striking, by imitating the parts of the body that
are drawn up or drawn down, compressed or spread out, stretched or relaxed,
by the gesture? Undoubtedly,' said Cleito. And the representation of
the passions of men engaged in any act, does it not excite a certain pleasure
in the spectators? ' 'It is natural, at least, that it should be so,' said he.


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SOCRATES
'Must you not, then, copy the menacing looks of combatants? And must you
not imitate the countenance of conquerors, as they look joyful? > (Assuredly.
said he. A statuary, therefore,' concluded Socrates, must express the work-
ings of the mind by the form. » (Xenophon, in the 'Memorabilia. ')
There is no deadlier weapon than the terrible cut-and-thrust pro-
cess of cross-examination by which the great questioner could reduce
his interlocutor to the confession of false knowledge. Sometimes, we
must confess, Socrates seems to have altogether too easy a time of
it, as he wraps his victim closer and closer in his toils. If we tire
of the men of straw who are set up against him, and our fingers
itch to take a hand in the fight, we cannot but realize that the process
destructive of error is a necessary preliminary to the constructive
process by which positive truth is established.
If Greek thought was saved from the germs of disintegration
by Socrates's recognition of the certainty of moral distinctions, it is
his incomparable method of teaching that entitles him to our chief
regard. He elicited curiosity, which is the beginning of wisdom;
he had no stereotyped system of philosophy to set forth,- he only
opened up vistas of truth; he stimulated, he did not complete, inves-
tigation. Hence he created, not a school, but scholars; who, despite
the wide diversity of their beliefs, drew their inspiration from a com-
mon source.
If his fertility of resource, his wit and humor, his geniality, his
illustrations drawn from common life, his well-nigh universal sympa-
thy, charmed many, the significance of his moral teachings inspired
the chosen few. Those who could recover from the shock of discov-
ering that their knowledge was after all only ignorance, were spurred
by his obstinate questionings to a better life. He delivered their
minds of the truths that had unconsciously lain in them.
With his wonted art, Plato has made the most dissolute of Socra-
tes's temporary followers the chief witness to his captivating elo-
quence. In the Banquet,' Alcibiades says:-
(
----
"I shall praise Socrates in a figure which will appear to him to be a cari-
cature; and yet I do not mean to laugh at him, but only to speak the truth.
I say, then, that he is exactly like the masks of Silenus, which may be seen
sitting in the statuaries' shops, having pipes and flutes in their mouths; and
they are made to open in the middle, and there are images of gods inside
them. I say also that he is like Marsyas the satyr.
"And are you not a flute-player? That you are; and a far more wonderful
performer than Marsyas. For he indeed with instruments charmed the souls
of men by the power of his breath, as the performers of his music do still;
for the melodies of Olympus are derived from the teaching of Marsyas, and
these whether they are played by a great master or by a miserable flute-
girl have a power which no others have. - they alone possess the soul and


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13631
reveal the wants of those who have need of gods and mysteries, because they
are inspired. But you produce the same effect with the voice only, and do
not require the flute; that is the difference between you and him. When
we hear any other speaker,-even a very good one,- his words produce abso
lutely no effect upon us in comparison; whereas the very fragments of you
and your words, even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated,
amaze and possess the souls of every man, woman, and child who comes
within hearing of them.
"I have heard Pericles and other great orators: but though I thought that
they spoke well, I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not stirred
by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state. But this
Marsyas has often brought me to such a pass, that I have felt as if I could
hardly endure the life which I am leading (this, Socrates, you admit); and I
am conscious that if I did not shut my ears against him, and fly from the
voice of the siren, he would detain me until I grew old sitting at his feet.
For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do,— neglecting the
wants of my own soul, and busying myself with the concerns of the Athen-
ians; therefore I hold my ears and tear myself away from him. And he is
the only person who ever made me ashamed,- which you might think not to
be in my nature; and there is no one else who does the same. For I know
that I cannot answer him, or say that I ought not to do as he bids; but
when I leave his presence the love of popularity gets the better of me. And
therefore I run away and fly from him, and when I see him I am ashamed
of what I have confessed to him. And many a time I wish that he were
dead, and yet I know that I should be much more sorry than glad if he
were to die: so that I am at my wits' end. "
Socrates must have seemed in very truth a satyr to the large body
of Athenians careless of his mission. How could they, who had been
taught that the "good is fair" and that the "fair is good," believe
that good should issue from those thick, sensual lips; or realize that
within that misshapen body, with its staring eyes and upturned nose
with outspread nostrils, there resided a soul disparate to its covering?
Surely this rude creature of the world of Pan could not speak the
words of Divine wisdom! Then too his eccentricities. Like Luther,
he combined common-sense with mysticism. He would remain as
if in a trance for hours, brooding over some problem of the true or
good. As early as 423, Aristophanes made him the scapegoat for
his detestation of the natural philosophers and of the Sophists, who
were unsettling all traditional belief.
Strepsiades — But who hangs dangling in the basket yonder?
Student-
HIMSELF.
-
Strepsiades-
Student-
And who's Himself?
Why, Socrates.
Strepsiades-Ho, Socrates! Call him, you fellow-call loud.
Student- Call him yourself - I've got no time for calling.
[Exit in-doors.


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SOCRATES
Strepsiades - Ho, Socrates! Sweet, darling Socrates!
Socrates- Why callest thou me, poor creature of a day?
Strepsiades-First tell me, pray, what are you doing up there?
Socrates- I walk in air, and contemplate the sun.
Strepsiades -Oh, that's the way that you look down on the gods-
You get so near them on your perch there - eh?
I never could have found out things divine,
Had I not hung my mind up thus, and mixed
My subtle intellect with its kindred air.
Socrates-
The ethical inquirer here is pilloried by the caricaturist for the very
tendency against which his whole life was a protest. -When in 399
Socrates was brought to trial, he confesses that the chief obstacle
in the way of proving his innocence is those calumnies of his "old
accusers"; for even if Aristophanes was able to distinguish between
Socrates and the Sophists, he did not, and the common people could
not.
The indictment put forward by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon, who
were merely the mouthpieces of hostile public opinion, read as fol-
lows:-
-
"Socrates offends against the laws in not paying respect to those
gods whom the city respects, and introducing other new deities; he
also offends against the laws in corrupting the youth. "
It is not difficult to see why Socrates provoked a host of enemies.
Those who, like Anytus, felt that he inflamed their sons to revolt
against parental authority; those who regarded the infamous life and
treason of Alcibiades, and the tyranny of Critias, as the direct result
of their master's teachings; those who thought him the gadfly of the
market-place, and who had suffered under his merciless exposure of
their sham knowledge; those who saw in his objection to the choice
of public officers by lot, a menace to the established constitution,—
all these felt that by his death alone could the city be rid of his pes-
tilential disputatiousness.
For his defense, Socrates made no special preparation. "My whole
life," said he, "has been passed with my brief in view. I have
shunned evil all my life;- that I think is the most honorable way in
which a man can bestow attention upon his own defense:" words
that anticipate those spoken on a still more memorable occasion,-
"But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what
ye shall speak. "
If the accusations were false, the trial was legal. Against the
count of the indictment on the score of impiety, Socrates could set
his reverence for the gods. His daimonion was no new deity, and
it had spoken to him from his youth up. He had discharged the
religious duties required by the State; he even believed in the


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manifestations of the gods through signs and oracles when human
judgment was at fault, and this at a time when the "enlightened"
viewed such faith with contempt. He recognized with gratitude the
intelligent purpose of the gods in creating a world of beauty. "No
one," says Xenophon, "ever knew of his doing or saying anything
profane or unholy. " He was temperate, brave, upright, endowed with
a high sense of honor. Though he preserved the independence of
his judgment, he had been loyal to the existing government. A less
unbending assertion of this independence, and a conciliatory attitude
toward his judges, would have saved Socrates from death. But he
seems to have courted a verdict that would mark him as the "first
martyr of philosophy. "
[NOTE. The chief ancient authorities for the life and teaching of
Socrates are Xenophon's 'Memorabilia,' or Memoirs of the philosopher,
and his Symposium'; Plato's 'Apology,' 'Crito,' and parts of the
'Phædo. ' Such dialogues as the 'Lysis,' 'Charmides,' 'Laches,' 'Pro-
tagoras,' 'Euthyphro,' deal with the master's conception of the unity
of virtue and knowledge; and are called "Socratic" because they are
free from the intrusion of features that are specifically Platonic, such
as the doctrine of the Ideas, and the tripartite division of the soul.
The 'Apology' included among the writings of Xenophon is probably
spurious. The 'Life' by Diogenes Laertius is an ill-assorted and un-
critical compilation, filled with trivial gossip. ]
Herbert Wei Seryth
-
SOCRATES REFUSES TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON
From Plato's 'Crito'
-
OCRATES
SOCK
Then we ought not to retaliate or render evil for
evil to any one, whatever evil we may have suffered from
him. But I would have you consider, Crito, whether you
really mean what you are saying. For this opinion has never
been held, and never will be held, by any considerable number of
persons; and those who are agreed and those who are not agreed
upon this point have no common ground, and can only despise
one another when they see how widely they differ.
Tell me,
then, whether you agree with and assent to my first principle,
that neither injury nor retaliation nor warding off evil by evil is
ever right. And shall that be the premise of our argument? Or
XXIII-853


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SOCRATES
do you decline and dissent from this? For this has been of old
and is still my opinion; but if you are of another opinion, let
me hear what you have to say. If, however, you remain of the
same mind as formerly, I will proceed to the next step.
Crito-You may proceed, for I have not changed my mind.
Socrates-Then I will proceed to the next step, which may
be put in the form of a question: Ought a man to do what he
admits to be right, or ought he to betray the right?
Crito-He ought to do what he thinks right.
Socrates-But if this is true, what is the application? In leav-
ing the prison against the will of the Athenians, do I wrong
any? or rather do I wrong those whom I ought least to wrong?
Do I not desert the principles which were acknowledged by us
to be just? What do you say?
Crito-I cannot tell, Socrates; for I do not know.
Socrates-Then consider the matter in this way: Imagine
that I am about to play truant (you may call the proceeding by
any name which you like), and the laws and the government come
and interrogate me: "Tell us, Socrates," they say,
what are
you about? are you going by an act of yours to overturn us—
the laws and the whole State-as far as in you lies? Do you
imagine that a State can subsist and not be overthrown, in which
the decisions of law have no power, but are set aside and over-
thrown by individuals? What will be our answer, Crito, to these
and the like words? Any one, and especially a clever rhetorician,
will have a good deal to urge about the evil of setting aside the
law which requires a sentence to be carried out; and we might
reply, "Yes; but the State has injured us and given an unjust
sentence. " Suppose I say that?
>>>
Crito-Very good, Socrates.
Socrates-"And was that our agreement with you? " the law
would say; «< or were you to abide by the sentence of the State? "
And if I were to express astonishment at their saying this, the
law would probably add: "Answer, Socrates, instead of opening
your eyes: you are in the habit of asking and answering ques
tions. Tell us what complaint you have to make against us which
justifies you in attempting to destroy us and the State? In the
first place, did we not bring you into existence? Your father
married your mother by our aid and begat you. Say whether
you have any objection to urge against those of us who regulate
marriage? " None, I should reply. "Or against those of us who


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13635
regulate the system of nurture and education of children in which
you were trained? Were not the laws which have the charge of
this, right in commanding your father to train you in music and
gymnastics? " Right, I should reply. "Well then, since you were
brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you
deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your
fathers were before you?