No More Learning

We shall hear a sad tale
then, no doubt, of the crowns and the applause he has left behind him.
Meanwhile, he is mightily elated over the bull exploit, and the
distinction it has won him. What is one to think? Does it ever occur
to him that he must _die_ some day?

_Her_. How should he think of death? He is at his zenith.

_Ch_. Well, never mind him. We shall have sport enough with him before
long; he will come aboard with no strength left to pick up a gnat, let
alone a bull. But pray,

Who is yon haughty hero?
No Greek, to judge by his dress.

_Her_. That is Cyrus, son of Cambyses, who transferred to the Persians
the ancient empire of the Medes. He has lately conquered Assyria, and
reduced Babylon; and now it looks as if he meditated an invasion of
Lydia, to complete his dominion by the overthrow of Croesus.

_Ch_. And whereabouts is Croesus?

_Her_. Look over there. You see the great city with the triple wall?
That is Sardis. And there, look, is Croesus himself, reclining on a
golden couch, and conversing with Solon the Athenian. Shall we listen
to what they are saying?

_Ch_. Yes, let us.

_Cr. Stranger, you have now seen my stores of treasure, my heaps of
bullion, and all my riches. Tell me therefore, whom do you account the
happiest of mankind_?

_Ch_. What will Solon say, I wonder?

_Her_. Trust Solon; he will not disgrace himself.

_So_. _Croesus, few men are happy. Of those whom I know, the happiest,
I think, were Cleobis and Biton, the sons of the Argive priestess_.

_Ch_. Ah, he means those two who yoked themselves to a waggon, and
drew their mother to the temple, and died the moment after. It was but
the other day.

_Cr_. _Ah. So they are first on the list. And who comes next_?

_So_. _Tellus the Athenian, who lived a righteous life, and died for
his country_.

_Cr_. _And where do I come, reptile_?

_So_. _That I am unable to say at present, Croesus; I must see you end
your days first. Death is the sure test;--a happy end to a life of
happiness_.

_Ch_. Bravo, Solon; _you_ have not forgotten us! As you say, Charon's
ferry is the proper place for the decision of these questions. --But
who are these men whom Croesus is sending out? And what have they got
on their shoulders?

_Her_. Those are bars of gold; they are going to Delphi, to pay for an
oracle, which oracle will presently be the ruin of Croesus. But
oracles are a hobby of his.

_Ch_. Oh, so that is _gold_, that glittering yellow stuff, with just a
tinge of red in it. I have often heard of gold, but never saw it
before.

_Her_. Yes, that is the stuff there is so much talking and squabbling
about.

_Ch_. Well now, I see no advantages about it, unless it is an
advantage that it is heavy to carry.

_Her_. Ah, you do not know what it has to answer for; the wars and
plots and robberies, the perjuries and murders; for this men will
endure slavery and imprisonment; for this they traffic and sail the
seas.

_Ch_. For this stuff? Why, it is not much different from copper. I
know copper, of course, because I get a penny from each passenger.

_Her_. Yes, but copper is plentiful, and therefore not much esteemed
by men. Gold is found only in small quantities, and the miners have to
go to a considerable depth for it. For the rest, it comes out of the
earth, just the same as lead and other metals.

_Ch_. What fools men must be, to be enamoured of an object of this
sallow complexion; and of such a weight!

_Her_. Well, Solon, at any rate, seems to have no great affection for
it. See, he is making merry with Croesus and his outlandish
magnificence. I think he is going to ask him a question. Listen.

_So_. Croesus, will those bars be any use to Apollo, do you think?

_Cr_. Any use! Why there is nothing at Delphi to be compared to them.

_So_. And that is all that is wanting to complete his happiness, eh? --
some bar gold?

_Cr_. Undoubtedly.

_So_. Then they must be very hard up in Heaven, if they have to send
all the way to Lydia for their gold supply?

_Cr_. Where else is gold to be had in such abundance as with us?

_So_. Now is any iron found in Lydia?

_Cr_. Not much.

_So_. Ah; so you are lacking in the more valuable metal.

_Cr_. More valuable? Iron more valuable than gold?

_So_. Bear with me, while I ask you a few questions, and I will
convince you it is so.

_Cr_. Well?

_So_. Of protector and protege, which is the better man?

_Cr_. The protector, of course.

_So_. Now in the event of Cyrus's invading Lydia--there is some talk
of it--shall you supply your men with golden swords? or will iron be
required, on the occasion?

_Cr_. Oh, iron.

_So_. Iron accordingly you must have, or your gold would be led
captive into Persia?

_Cr_. Blasphemer!

_So_. Oh, we will hope for the best. But it is clear, on your own
admission, that iron is better than gold.

_Cr_. And what would you have me do? Recall the gold, and offer the
God bars of iron?

_So_. He has no occasion for iron either. Your offering (be the metal
what it may) will fall into other hands than his. It will be snapped
up by the Phocians, or the Boeotians, or the God's own priests; or by
some tyrant or robber. Your goldsmiths have no interest for Apollo.

_Cr_. You are always having a stab at my wealth. It is all envy!

_Her_. This blunt sincerity is not to the Lydian's taste. Things are
come to a strange pass, he thinks, if a poor man is to hold up his
head, and speak his mind in this frank manner! He will remember Solon
presently, when the time comes for Cyrus to conduct him in chains to
the pyre. I heard Clotho, the other day, reading over the various
dooms. Among other things, Croesus was to be led captive by Cyrus, and
Cyrus to be murdered by the queen of the Massagetae. There she is:
that Scythian woman, riding on a white horse; do you see?

_Ch_. Yes.

_Her_. That is Tomyris. She will cut off Cyrus's head, and put it into
a wine-skin filled with blood. And do you see his son, the boy there?
That is Cambyses. He will succeed to his father's throne; and, after
innumerable defeats in Libya and Ethiopia, will finally slay the god
Apis, and die a raving madman.

_Ch_. What fun! Why, at this moment no one would presume to meet their
eyes; from such a height do they look down on the rest of mankind. Who
would believe that before long one of them will be a captive, and the
other have his head in a bottle of blood? --But who is that in the
purple robe, Hermes? --the one with the diadem? His cook has just been
cleaning a fish, and is now handing him a ring,--"in yonder sea-girt
isle"; "'tis, sure, some king. "

_Her_. Ha, ha! A parody, this time. --That is Polycrates, tyrant of
Samos. He is extremely well pleased with his lot: yet that slave who
now stands at his side will betray him to the satrap Oroetes, and he
will be crucified. It will not take long to overturn _his_
prosperity, poor man! This, too, I had from Clotho.

_Ch_. I like Clotho; she is a lady of spirit. Have at them, madam! Off
with their heads! To the cross with them! Let them know that they are
men. And let them be exalted in the meantime; the higher they mount,
the heavier will be the fall. I shall have a merry time of it
hereafter, identifying their naked shades, as they come aboard; no
more purple robes then; no tiaras; no golden couches!

_Her_. So much for royalty; and now to the common herd. Do you see
them, Charon;--on their ships and on the field of battle; crowding the
law-courts and following the plough; usurers here, beggars there?

_Ch_. I see them. What a jostling life it is! What a world of ups and
downs! Their cities remind me of bee-hives. Every man keeps a sting
for his neighbour's service; and a few, like wasps, make spoil of
their weaker brethren. But what are all these misty shapes that beset
them on every side?

_Her_. Hopes, Fears, Follies, Pleasures, Greeds, Hates, Grudges, and
such like. They differ in their habits. The Folly is a domestic
creature, with vested rights of its own. The same with the Grudge, the
Hate, the Envy, the Greed, the Know-not, and the What's-to-do. But the
Fear and the Hope fly overhead. The Fear swoops on its prey from
above; sometimes it is content with startling a man out of his wits,
sometimes it frightens him in real earnest. The Hope hovers almost
within reach, and just when a man thinks he is going to catch it, off
it flies, and leaves him gaping--like Tantalus in the water, you know.
Now look closely, and you will make out the Fates up aloft, spinning
each man his spindle-full; from that spindle a man hangs by a narrow
thread. Do you see what looks like a cobweb, coming down to each man
from the spindles?

_Ch_. I see each has a very slight thread. They are mostly entangled,
one with another, and that other with a third.

_Her_. Of course they are. Because the first man has got to be
murdered by the second, and he by the third; or again, B is to be A's
heir (A's thread being the shorter), and C is to be B's. That is what
the entangling means. But you see what thin threads they all have to
depend on.
Now here is one drawn high up into the air; presently his
thread will snap, when the weight becomes too much for it, and down he
will come with a bang: whereas yonder fellow hangs so low that when he
does fall it makes no noise; his next-door neighbours will scarcely
hear him drop.

_Ch_. How absurd it all is!

_Her_. My dear Charon, there is no word for the absurdity of it. They
do take it all so seriously, that is the best of it; and then, long
before they have finished scheming, up comes good old Death, and
whisks them off, and all is over! You observe that he has a fine staff
of assistants at his command;--agues, consumptions, fevers,
inflammations, swords, robbers, hemlock, juries, tyrants,--not one of
which gives them a moment's concern so long as they are prosperous;
but when they come to grief, then it is Alack! and Well-a-day! and Oh
dear me! If only they would start with a clear understanding that they
are mortal, that after a brief sojourn on the earth they will wake
from the dream of life, and leave all behind them,--they would live
more sensibly, and not mind dying so much. As it is, they get it into
their heads that what they possess they possess for good and all; the
consequence is, that when Death's officer calls for them, and claps on
a fever or a consumption, they take it amiss; the parting is so wholly
unexpected. Yonder is a man building his house, urging the workmen to
use all dispatch. How would he take the news, that he was just to see
the roof on and all complete, when he would have to take his
departure, and leave all the enjoyment to his heir? --hard fate, not
once to sup beneath it! There again is one rejoicing over the birth of
a son; the child is to inherit his grandfather's name, and the father
is celebrating the occasion with his friends. He would not be so
pleased, if he knew that the boy was to die before he was eight years
old! It is natural enough: he sees before him some happy father of an
Olympian victor, and has no eyes for his neighbour there, who is
burying a child; _that_ thin-spun thread escapes his notice. Behold,
too, the money-grubbers, whom the aforesaid Death's-officers will
never permit to be money-spenders; and the noble army of litigant
neighbours!

_Ch_. Yes! I see it all; and I ask myself, what is the satisfaction in
life? What is it that men bewail the loss of? Take their kings; they
seem to be best off, though, as you say, they have their happiness on
a precarious tenure; but apart from that, we shall find their
pleasures to be outweighed by the vexations inseparable from their
position--worry and anxiety, flattery here, conspiracy there, enmity
everywhere; to say nothing of the tyranny of Sorrow, Disease, and
Passion, with whom there is confessedly no respect of persons. And if
the king's lot is a hard one, we may make a pretty shrewd guess at
that of the commoner. Come now, I will give you a similitude for the
life of man. Have you ever stood at the foot of a waterfall, and
marked the bubbles rising to the surface and gathering into foam? Some
are quite small, and break as soon as they are born. Others last
longer; new ones come to join them, and they swell up to a great size:
yet in the end they burst, as surely as the rest; it cannot be
otherwise. There you have human life. All men are bubbles, great or
small, inflated with the breath of life. Some are destined to last for
a brief space, others perish in the very moment of birth: but all must
inevitably burst.

_Her_. Homer compares mankind to leaves. Your simile is full as good
as his.

_Ch_. And being the things they are, they do--the things you see;
squabbling among themselves, and contending for dominion and power and
riches, all of which they will have to leave behind them, when they
come down to us with their penny apiece. Now that we are up here, how
would it be for me to cry out to them at the top of my voice, to
abstain from their vain endeavours, and live with the prospect of
Death before their eyes? 'Fools' (I might say), 'why so much in
earnest? Rest from your toils. You will not live for ever. Nothing of
the pomp of this world will endure; nor can any man take anything
hence when he dies. He will go naked out of the world, and his house
and his lands and his gold will be another's, and ever another's. ' If
I were to call out something of this sort, loud enough for them to
hear, would it not do some good? Would not the world be the better for
it?

_Her_. Ah, my poor friend, you know not what you say. Ignorance and
deceit have done for them what Odysseus did for his crew when he was
afraid of the Sirens; they have waxed men's ears up so effectually,
that no drill would ever open them. How then should they hear you? You
might shout till your lungs gave way. Ignorance is as potent here as
the waters of Lethe are with you. There are a few, to be sure, who
from a regard for Truth have refused the wax process; men whose eyes
are open to discern good and evil.

_Ch_. Well then, we might call out to _them_?

_Her_. There again: where would be the use of telling them what they
know already? See, they stand aloof from the rest of mankind, and
scoff at all that goes on; nothing is as they would have it. Nay, they
are evidently bent on giving life the slip, and joining you. Their
condemnations of folly make them unpopular here.

_Ch_. Well done, my brave boys! There are not many of them, though,
Hermes.

_Her_. These must serve. And now let us go down.

_Ch_. There is still one thing I had a fancy to see. Show me the
receptacles into which they put the corpses, and your office will have
been discharged.

_Her_. Ah, _sepulchres_, those are called, or _tombs_, or _graves_.
Well, do you see those mounds, and columns, and pyramids, outside the
various city walls? Those are the store-chambers of the dead.

_Ch_. Why, they are putting flowers on the stones, and pouring costly
essences upon them. And in front of some of the mounds they have piled
up faggots, and dug trenches. Look: there is a splendid banquet laid
out, and they are burning it all; and pouring wine and mead, I suppose
it is, into the trenches! What does it all mean?

_Her_. What satisfaction it affords to their friends in Hades, I am
unable to say. But the idea is, that the shades come up, and get as
close as they can, and feed upon the savoury steam of the meat, and
drink the mead in the trench.

_Ch_. Eat and drink, when their skulls are dry bone? But I am wasting
my breath: you bring them down every day;--_you_ can say whether they
are likely ever to get up again, once they are safely underground!
That would be too much of a good thing! You would have your work cut
out for you and no mistake, if you had not only to bring them down,
but also to take them up again when they wanted a drink. Oh, fools and
blockheads! You little know how we arrange matters, or what a gulf is
set betwixt the living and the dead!

The buried and unburied, both are Death's.
He ranks alike the beggar and the king;
Thersites sits by fair-haired Thetis' son.
Naked and withered roam the fleeting shades
Together through the fields of asphodel.

_Her_. Bless me, what a deluge of Homer! And now I think of it, I must
show you Achilles's tomb. There it is on the Trojan shore, at Sigeum.
And across the water is Rhoeteum, where Ajax lies buried.

_Ch_. Rather small tombs, considering. Now show me the great cities,
those that we hear talked about in Hades; Nineveh, Babylon, Mycenae,
Cleonae, and Troy itself. I shipped numbers across from there, I
remember. For ten years running I had no time to haul my boat up and
clean it.

_Her_. Why, as to Nineveh, it is gone, friend, long ago, and has left
no trace behind it; there is no saying whereabouts it may have been.
But there is Babylon, with its fine battlements and its enormous wall.
Before long it will be as hard to find as Nineveh. As to Mycenae and
Cleonae, I am ashamed to show them to you, let alone Troy. You will
throttle Homer, for certain, when you get back, for puffing them so.
They were prosperous cities, too, in their day; but they have gone the
way of all flesh. Cities, my friend, die, just like men; stranger
still, so do rivers! Inachus is gone from Argos--not a puddle left.

_Ch_. Oh, Homer, Homer! You and your 'holy Troy,' and your 'city of
broad streets,' and your 'strong-walled Cleonae'! --By the way, what is
that battle going on over there? What are they murdering one another
about?

_Her_. It is between the Argives and the Lacedaemonians. The general
who lies there half-dead, writing an inscription on the trophy with
his own blood, is Othryades.

_Ch_. And what were they fighting for?

_Her_. For the field of battle, neither more nor less.

_Ch_. The fools! Not to know that though each one of them should win
to himself a whole Peloponnesus, he will get but a bare foot of ground
from Aeacus! As to yonder plain, one nation will till it after
another, and many a time will that trophy be turned up by the plough.

_Her_. Even so. And now let us get down, and put these mountains to
rights again. After which, I must be off on my errand, and you back to
your ferry. You will see me there before long, with the day's
contingent of shades.

_Ch_. I am much obliged to you, Hermes; the service shall be
perpetuated in my records. Thanks to you, my outing has been a
success. Dear, dear, what a world it is! --And never a word of Charon!

F.




OF SACRIFICE


Methinks that man must lie sore stricken under the hand of sorrow, who
has not a smile left for the folly of his superstitious brethren, when
he sees them at work on sacrifice and festival and worship of the
gods, hears the subject of their prayers, and marks the nature of
their creed. Nor, I fancy, will a smile be all. He will first have a
question to ask himself: Is he to call them devout worshippers or very
outcasts, who think so meanly of God as to suppose that he can require
anything at the hand of man, can take pleasure in their flattery, or
be wounded by their neglect? Thus the afflictions of the Calydonians,
that long tale of misery and violence, ending with the death of
Meleager--all is attributed to the resentment of Artemis, at Oeneus's
neglect in not inviting her to a feast. She must have taken the
disappointment very much to heart. I fancy I see her, poor Goddess,
left all alone in Heaven, after the rest have set out for Calydon,
brooding darkly over the fine spread at which she will not be present.
Those Ethiopians, too; privileged, thrice-happy mortals! Zeus, one
supposes, is not unmindful of the handsome manner in which they
entertained him and all his family for twelve days running. With the
Gods, clearly, nothing goes for nothing. Each blessing has its price.
Health is to be had, say, for a calf; wealth, for a couple of yoke of
oxen; a kingdom, for a hecatomb. A safe conduct from Troy to Pylos has
fetched as much as nine bulls, and a passage from Aulis to Troy has
been quoted at a princess. For six yoke of oxen and a robe, Athene
sold Hecuba a reprieve for Troy; and it is to be presumed that a cock,
a garland, a handful of frankincense, will each buy something.

Chryses, that experienced divine and eminent theologian, seems to have
realized this principle. Returning from his fruitless visit to
Agamemnon, he approaches Apollo with the air of a creditor, and
demands repayment of his loan. His attitude is one of remonstrance,
almost, 'Good Apollo,' he cries, 'here have I been garlanding your
temple, where never garland hung before, and burning unlimited thigh-
pieces of bulls and goats upon your altars: yet when I suffer wrong,
you take no heed; you count my benefactions as nothing worth. ' The God
is quite put out of countenance: he seizes his bow, settles down in
the harbour and smites the Achaeans with shafts of pestilence, them
and their mules and their dogs.

And now that I have mentioned Apollo, I cannot refrain from an
allusion to certain other passages in his life, which are recorded by
the sages. With his unfortunate love affairs--the sad end of Hyacinth,
and the cruelty of Daphne--we are not concerned. But when that vote
of censure was passed on him for the slaughter of the Cyclopes, he was
dismissed from Heaven, and condemned to share the fortunes of men upon
earth. It was then that he served Admetus in Thessaly, and Laomedon in
Phrygia; and in the latter service he was not alone. He and Posidon
together, since better might not be, made bricks and built the walls
of Troy; and did not even get their full wages;--the Phrygian, it is
said, remained their debtor for no less a sum than five-and-twenty
shillings Trojan, and odd pence. These, and yet holier mysteries than
these, are the high themes of our poets. They tell of Hephaestus and
of Prometheus; of Cronus and Rhea, and well-nigh all the family of
Zeus. And as they never commence their poems without bespeaking the
assistance of the Muses, we must conclude that it is under that divine
inspiration that they sing, how Cronus unmanned his father Uranus, and
was king in his room; and how, like Argive Thyestes, he swallowed his
own children; and how thereafter Rhea saved Zeus by the fraud of the
stone, and the child was exposed in Crete, and suckled by a goat, as
Telephus was by a hind, and Cyrus the Great by a bitch; and how he
dethroned his father, and threw him into prison, and was king; and of
his many wives, and how finally (like a Persian or an Assyrian) he
married his own sister Hera; and of his love adventures, and how he
peopled the Heaven with gods, ay, and with demi-gods, the rogued for
he wooed the daughters of earth, appearing to them now in a shower of
gold, now in the form of a bull or a swan or an eagle; a very Proteus
for versatility. Once, and only once, he conceived within his own
brain, and gave birth to Athene. For Dionysus, they say, he tore from
the womb of Semele before the fire had yet consumed her, and hid the
child within his thigh, till the time of travail was come.

Similarly, we find Hera conceiving without external assistance, and
giving birth to Hephaestus; no child of fortune he, but a base
mechanic, living all his life at the forge, soot-begrimed as any
stoker. He is not even sound of limb; he has been lame ever since Zeus
threw him down from Heaven. Fortunately for us the Lemnians broke his
fall, or there would have been an end of him, as surely as there was
of Astyanax when he was flung from the battlements. But Hephaestus is
nothing to Prometheus. Who knows not the sorrows of that officious
philanthropist? How he too fell a victim to the wrath of Zeus, and was
carried into Scythia, and nailed up on Caucasus, with an eagle to keep
him company and make daily havoc of his liver? However, _there_ was a
reckoning settled, at any rate. But Rhea, now! We cannot, I think,
pass over her conduct unnoticed. It is surely most discreditable;--a
lady of her venerable years, the mother of such a family, still
feeling the pangs of love and jealousy, and carrying her beloved Attis
about with her in the lion-drawn car,--and he so ill qualified to play
the lover's part! After that, we can but wink, if we find Aphrodite
making a slip, or Selene time after time pulling up in mid-career to
pay a visit to Endymion.

But enough of scandal. Borne on the wings of poesy, let us take flight
for Heaven itself, as Homer and Hesiod have done before us, and see
how all is disposed up there. The vault is of brass on the under side,
as we know from Homer. But climb over the edge, and take a peep up.
You are now actually in Heaven. Observe the increase of light; here is
a purer Sun, and brighter stars; daylight is everywhere, and the floor
is of gold. We arrive first at the abode of the Seasons; they are the
fortresses of Heaven. Then we have Iris and Hermes, the servants and
messengers of Zeus; and next Hephaestus's smithy, which is stocked
with all manner of cunning contrivances. Last come the dwellings of
the Gods, and the palace of Zeus. All are the work of Hephaestus; and
noble work it is.

Hard by the throne of Zeus

(I suppose we must adapt our language to our altitude)

sit all the gods.

Their eyes are turned downwards; intently they search every corner of
the earth; is there nowhere a fire to be seen, or the steam of burnt-
offerings

. . . in eddying clouds upborne?

If a sacrifice is going forward, all mouths are open to feast upon the
smoke; like flies they settle on the altar to drink up the trickling
streams of blood. If they are dining at home, nectar and ambrosia is
the bill of fare. In ancient days, mortals have eaten and drunk at
their table. Such were Ixion and Tantalus; but they forgot their
manners, and talked too much. They are paying the penalty for it to
this day; and since then mortals have been excluded from Heaven.

The life of the Gods being such as I have described, our religious
ordinances are in admirable harmony with the divine requirements. Our
first care has been to supply each God with his sacred grove, his holy
hill, and his own peculiar bird or plant. The next step was to assign
them their various sacred cities. Apollo has the freedom of Delphi and
Delos, Athene that of Athens (there is no disputing _her_
nationality); Hera is an Argive, Rhea a Mygdonian, Aphrodite a
Paphian. As for Zeus, he is a Cretan born and bred--and buried, as any
native of that island will show you. It was a mistake of ours to
suppose that Zeus was dispensing the thunder and the rain and the rest
of it;--he has been lying snugly underground in Crete all this time.
As it would never have done to leave the Gods without a hearth and
home, temples were now erected, and the services of Phidias,
Polyclitus, and Praxiteles were called in to create images in their
likeness. Chance glimpses of their originals (but where obtained I
know not) enabled these artists to do justice to the beard of Zeus,
the perpetual youth of Apollo, the down on Hermes's cheek, Posidon's
sea-green hair, and Athene's flashing eyes; with the result that on
entering the temple of Zeus men believe that they see before them, not
Indian ivory, nor gold from a Thracian mine, but the veritable son of
Cronus and Rhea, translated to earth by the hand of Phidias, with
instructions to keep watch over the deserted plains of Pisa, and
content with his lot, if, once in four years, a spectator of the games
can snatch a moment to pay him sacrifice.