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PREFACE
PREFACE
The following pages are intended to serve as a general introduction to Greek literature and thought, for those, primarily, who do not know Greek. Whatever opinions may be held as to the value of translations, it seems clear that it is only by their means that the majority of modern readers can attain to any knowledge of Greek culture; and as I believe that culture to be still, as it has been in the past, the most valuable element of a liberal education, I have hoped that such an attempt as the p
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LIST OF TRANSLATIONS USED
LIST OF TRANSLATIONS USED
AESCHYLUS (B.C. 525—456). "The House of Atreus" (I.E. the "Agamemnon," "Choephorae" and "Eumenides"), translated by E. D. A. MORSHEAD (Warren and Sons). The "Eumenides," translated by DR. VERRALL (Cambridge, 1885). ARISTOPHANES (C. B.C. 444—380). "The Acharnians, the Knights, and the Birds," translated by JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE (Morley's Universal Library, Routledge). [Also the "Frogs" and the "Peace" in his Collected Works, (Pickering)]. The "Clouds," the "Lysistrata" ["Women in Revolt,"] the "Peac
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CHAPTER I.—THE GREEK VIEW OF RELIGION
CHAPTER I.—THE GREEK VIEW OF RELIGION
1. Introductory 2. Greek Religion an Interpretation of Nature 3. Greek Religion an Interpretation of the Human Passions 4. Greek Religion the Foundation of Society 5. Religious Festivals 6. The Greek Conception of the Relation of Man to the Gods 7. Divination, Omens, Oracles 8. Sacrifice and Atonement 9. Guilt and Punishment 10. Mysticism 11. The Greek View of Death and a Future Life 12. Critical and Sceptical Opinion in Greece 13. Ethical Criticism 14. Transition to Monotheism 15. Metaphysical
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CHAPTER II.—THE GREEK VIEW OF THE STATE
CHAPTER II.—THE GREEK VIEW OF THE STATE
1. The Greek State a "City" 2. The Relation of the State to the Citizen 3. The Greek View of Law 4. Artisans and Slaves 5. The Greek State primarily Military, not Industrial 6. Forms of Government in the Greek State 7. Faction and Anarchy 8. Property and the Communistic Ideal 9. Sparta 10. Athens 11. Sceptical Criticism of the Basis of the State 12. Summary...
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CHAPTER III.—THE GREEK VIEW OF THE INDIVIDUAL
CHAPTER III.—THE GREEK VIEW OF THE INDIVIDUAL
1. The Greek View of Manual Labour and Trade 2. Appreciation of External Goods 3. Appreciation of Physical Qualities 4. Greek Athletics 5. Greek Ethics—Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical Points of View 6. The Greek View of Pleasure 7. Illustrations.—Ischomachus; Socrates 8. The Greek View of Woman 9. Protests against the Common View of Woman 10. Friendship 11. Summary...
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CHAPTER IV.—THE GREEK VIEW OF ART
CHAPTER IV.—THE GREEK VIEW OF ART
1. Greek Art an Expression of National Life 2. Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical points of View 3. Sculpture and Painting 4. Music and the Dance 5. Poetry 6. Tragedy 7. Comedy 8. Summary...
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Section 1. Introductory.
Section 1. Introductory.
In approaching the subject of the religion of the Greeks it is necessary to dismiss at the outset many of the associations which we are naturally inclined to connect with that word. What we commonly have in our mind when we speak of religion is a definite set of doctrines, of a more or less metaphysical character, formulated in a creed and supported by an organisation distinct from the state. And the first thing we have to learn about the religion of the Greeks is that it included nothing of the
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Section 2. Greek Religion an Interpretation of Nature.
Section 2. Greek Religion an Interpretation of Nature.
When we try to conceive the state of mind of primitive man the first thing that occurs to us is the bewilderment and terror he must have felt in the presence of the powers of nature. Naked, houseless, weaponless, he is at the mercy, every hour, of this immense and incalculable Something so alien and so hostile to himself. As fire it burns, as water it drowns, as tempest it harries and destroys; benignant it may be at times, in warm sunshine and calm, but the kindness is brief and treacherous. An
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Section 3. Greek Religion an Interpretation of the Human Passions.
Section 3. Greek Religion an Interpretation of the Human Passions.
And as with the external world, so with the world within. The powers of nature were not the only ones felt by man to be different from and alien to himself; there were others, equally strange, dwelling in his own heart, which, though in a sense they were part of him, yet he felt to be not himself, which came upon him and possessed him without his choice and against his will. With these too he felt the need to make himself at home, and these too, to satisfy his need, he shaped into creatures like
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Section 4. Greek Religion the Foundation of Society.
Section 4. Greek Religion the Foundation of Society.
But this relation to the world of nature is only one side of man's life; more prominent and more important, at a later stage of his development, is his relation to society; and here too in Greek civilization a great part was played by religion. For the Greek gods, we must remember, were not purely spiritual powers, to be known and approached only in the heart by prayer. They were beings in human form, like, though superior to ourselves, who passed a great part of their history on earth, interven
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Section 5. Religious Festivals.
Section 5. Religious Festivals.
For it was in ritual and art, not in propositions, that the Greek religion expressed itself; and in this respect it was closer to the Roman Catholic than to the Protestant branch of the Christian faith. The plastic genius of the race, that passion to embody ideas in form, which was at the root, as we saw, of their whole religious outlook, drove them to enact for their own delight, in the most beautiful and telling forms, the whole conception they had framed of the world and of themselves. The ch
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Section 6. The Greek Conception of the Relation of Man to the Gods.
Section 6. The Greek Conception of the Relation of Man to the Gods.
Admitting, however, that all this is true, admitting the place of religion in Greek life, do we not end, after all, in a greater puzzle than we began with? For this, it may be said, whatever it may be, is not what we mean by religion. This, after all, is merely a beautiful way of expressing facts; a translation, not an interpretation, of life. What we mean by religion is something very different to that, something which concerns the relation of the soul to God; the sense of sin, for example, and
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Section 7. Divination, Omens, Oracles.
Section 7. Divination, Omens, Oracles.
Let us take first a question which much exercised the Greek mind—the difficulty of forecasting the future. Clearly, the notion that the world was controlled by a crowd of capricious deities, swayed by human passions and desires, was incompatible with the idea of fixed law; but on the other hand it made it possible to suppose that some intimation might be had from the gods, either directly or symbolically, of what their intentions and purposes really were. And on this hypothesis we find developed
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Section 8. Sacrifice and Atonement.
Section 8. Sacrifice and Atonement.
In Homer, we find that sacrifice is frankly conceived as a sort of present to the gods, for which they were in fairness bound to an equivalent return; and the nature of the bargain is fully recognised by the gods themselves. "Hector," says Zeus to Hera, "was dearest to the gods of all mortals that are in Ilios. So was he to me at least, for nowise failed he in the gifts I loved. Never did my altar lack seemly feast, drink-offering and the steam of sacrifice, even the honour that falleth to our d
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Section 9. Guilt and Punishment.
Section 9. Guilt and Punishment.
It must not be supposed, however, that the popular superstition described by Plato, however characteristic it may be of the point of view of the Greeks, represents the highest reach of their thought on the subject of guilt. No profounder utterances are to be found on this theme than those of the great poets and thinkers of Greece, who, without rejecting the common beliefs of their time, transformed them by the insight of their genius into a new and deeper significance. Specially striking in this
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Section 10. Mysticism.
Section 10. Mysticism.
But there is nothing so misleading as generalisation, specially on the subject of the Greeks. Again and again when we think we have laid hold of their characteristic view we are confronted with some new aspect of their life which we cannot fit into harmony with our scheme. There is no formula which will sum up that versatile and many-sided people. And so, in the case before us, we have no sooner made what appears to be the safe and comprehensive statement that the Greeks conceived the relation o
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Section 11. The Greek View of Death and a Future Life.
Section 11. The Greek View of Death and a Future Life.
Of all the problems on which we expect light to be thrown by religion none, to us, is more pressing than that of death. A fundamental, and as many believe, the most essential part of Christianity, is its doctrine of reward and punishment in the world beyond; and a religion which had nothing at all to say about this great enigma we should hardly feel to be a religion at all. And certainly on this head the Greeks, more than any people that ever lived, must have required a consolation and a hope. J
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Section 12. Critical and Sceptical Opinion in Greece.
Section 12. Critical and Sceptical Opinion in Greece.
And now let us turn to a point for which perhaps some readers have long been waiting, and with which they may have expected us to begin rather than to end. So far, in considering the part played by religion in Greek Life, we have assumed the position of orthodoxy. We have endeavoured to place ourselves at the standpoint of the man who did not criticise or reflect, but accepted simply, as a matter of course, the tradition handed down to him by his fathers. Only so, if at all, was it possible for
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Section 13. Ethical Criticism.
Section 13. Ethical Criticism.
The incongruity of all this with any adequate conception of deity is patent, if once the critical attitude be adopted; and it was adopted by some of the clearest and most religious minds of Greece. Nay, even orthodoxy itself did not refrain from a genial and sympathetic criticism. Aristophanes, for example, who, if there had been an established church, would certainly have been described as one of its main pillars, does not scruple to represent his Birds as issuing— "A warning and notices,
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Section 14. Transition to Monotheism.
Section 14. Transition to Monotheism.
The myths, but not religion! The criticism certainly of Plato and probably of Euripides was prompted by the desire not to discredit altogether the belief in the gods, but to bring it into harmony with the requirements of a more fully developed consciousness. The philosopher and the poet came not to destroy, but to fulfil; not to annihilate but to transform the popular theology. Such an intention, strange as it may appear to us with our rigid creeds, we shall see to be natural enough to the Greek
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Section 15. Metaphysical Criticism.
Section 15. Metaphysical Criticism.
While thus, on the one hand, the Greek religion by its inner evolution, was tending to destroy itself, on the other hand it was threatened from without by the attack of what we should call the "scientific spirit." A system so frankly anthropomorphic was bound to be weak on the speculative side. Its appeal, as we have seen, was rather to the imagination than to the intellect, by the presentation of a series of beautiful images, whose contemplation might offer to the mind if not satisfaction, at l
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Section 16. Metaphysical Reconstruction—Plato.
Section 16. Metaphysical Reconstruction—Plato.
The argument is an old one into whose merits this is not the place to enter. But one thing is certain, that the sceptical spirit which was invading religion, was invading also politics and ethics; and that towards the close of the fifth century before Christ, Greece and in particular Athens was overrun by philosophers, who not only did not scruple to question the foundations of social and moral obligation, but in some cases explicitly taught that there were no foundations at all; that all law wa
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Section 17. Summary.
Section 17. Summary.
At this point, where religion passes into philosophy, the discussion which has occupied the present chapter must close. So far it was necessary to proceed, in order to show how wide was the range of the religious consciousness of the Greeks, and through how many points of view it passed in the course of its evolution. But its development was away from the Greek and towards the Christian; and it will therefore be desirable, in conclusion, to fix once more in our minds that central and primary pha
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Section 1. The Greek State a "City."
Section 1. The Greek State a "City."
The present kingdom of Greece is among the smallest of European states; but to the Greeks it would have appeared too large to be a state at all. Within that little peninsular whose whole population and wealth are so insignificant according to modern ideas, were comprised in classical times not one but many flourishing polities. And the conception of an amalgamation of these under a single government was so foreign to the Greek idea, that even to Aristotle, the clearest and most comprehensive thi
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Section 2. The Relation of the State to the Citizen.
Section 2. The Relation of the State to the Citizen.
First, let us consider the relation of the state to the citizens—that is to say, to that portion of the community, usually a minority, which was possessed of full political rights. It is here that we have the key to that limitation of size which we have seen to be essential to the idea of the city-state. For, in the Greek view, to be a citizen of a state did not merely imply the payment of taxes, and the possession of a vote; it implied a direct and active co-operation in all the functions of ci
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Section 3. The Greek View of Law.
Section 3. The Greek View of Law.
For nothing is more remarkable in the political theory of the Greeks than the respect they habitually express for law. Early legislators were believed to have been specially inspired by the divine power—Lycurgus, for instance, by Apollo, and Minos by Zeus; and Plato regards it as a fundamental condition of the well-being of any state that this view should prevail among its citizens. Nor was this conception of the divine origin of law confined to legend and to philosophy; we find it expressed in
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Section 4. Artisans and Slaves.
Section 4. Artisans and Slaves.
We have now arrived at a general idea of the nature of the Greek state, and of its relations to the individual citizen. But there were also members of the state who were not citizens at all; there was the class of labourers and traders, who, in some states at least, had no political rights; and the class of slaves who had nowhere any rights at all. For in the Greek conception the citizen was an aristocrat. His excellence was thought to consist in public activity; and to the performance of public
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Section 5. The Greek State Primarily Military, not Industrial.
Section 5. The Greek State Primarily Military, not Industrial.
The source of this divergence of view must be sought in the whole circumstances and character of the Greek states. Founded in the beginning by conquest, many of them still retained, in their internal structure, the marks of their violent origin. The citizens, for example, of Sparta and of Crete, were practically military garrisons, settled in the midst of a hostile population. These were extreme cases; and elsewhere, no doubt, the distinction between the conquerors and the conquered had disappea
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Section 6. Forms of Government in the Greek State.
Section 6. Forms of Government in the Greek State.
While, however, this was the general idea of the Greek state, it would be a mistake to suppose that it was everywhere embodied in a single permanent form of polity. On the contrary, the majority of the states in Greece were in a constant state of flux; revolution succeeded revolution with startling rapidity; and in place of a single fixed type what we really get is a constant transition from one variety to another. The general account we have given ought therefore to be regarded only as a kind o
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Section 7. Faction and Anarchy.
Section 7. Faction and Anarchy.
This internal schism which ran through almost every state, came to a head in the great Peloponnesian war which divided Greece at the close of the fifth century, and in which Athens and Sparta, the two chief combatants, represented respectively the democratic and the oligarchic principles. Each appealed to the kindred faction in the states that were opposed to them; and every city was divided against itself, the party that was "out" for the moment plotting with the foreign foe to overthrow the pa
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Section 8. Property and the Communistic Ideal.
Section 8. Property and the Communistic Ideal.
And, as we have seen, this internal schism of the Greek state was as much social as political. The "many" and the "few" were identified respectively with the poor and the rich; and the struggle was thus at bottom as much economic as political. Government by an oligarchy was understood to mean the exploitation of the masses by the classes. "An oligarchy," says a democrat, as reported by Thucydides, "while giving the people the full share of danger, not merely takes too much of the good things, bu
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Section 9. Sparta.
Section 9. Sparta.
The preceding attempt at a general sketch of the nature of the Greek state is inevitably loose and misleading to this extent, that it endeavours to comprehend in a single view polities of the most varied and discrepant character. To remedy, so far as may be, this defect, to give an impression, more definite and more complete, of the variety and scope of the political experience of the Greeks, let us examine a little more in detail the character of the two states which were at once the most promi
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Section 10. Athens.
Section 10. Athens.
In the institutions of Sparta we see, carried to its furthest point, one side of the complex Greek nature—their capacity for discipline and law. Athens, the home of a different stock, gives us the other extreme—their capacity for rich and spontaneous individual development. To pass from Sparta to Athens, is to pass from a barracks to a playing-field. All the beauty, all the grace, all the joy of Greece; all that chains the desire of mankind, with a yearning that is never stilled, to that one gol
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Section 11. Sceptical Criticism of the Basis of the State.
Section 11. Sceptical Criticism of the Basis of the State.
Having thus supplemented our general account of the Greek conception of the state by a description of their two most prominent polities, it remains for us in conclusion briefly to trace the negative criticism under whose attack that conception threatened to dissolve. We have quoted, in an earlier part of this chapter, a striking passage from Demosthenes, embodying that view of the objective validity of law under which alone political institutions can be secure. "That is law," said the orator, "w
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Section 12. Summary.
Section 12. Summary.
We have now given some account of the general character of the Greek state, the ideas that underlay it, and the criticism of those ideas suggested by the course of history and formulated by speculative thought. It remains to offer certain reflections on the political achievement of the Greeks, and its relation to our own ideas. The fruitful and positive aspect of the Greek state, that which fastens upon it the eyes of later generations as upon a model, if not to be copied, as least to be praised
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Section 1. The Greek View of Manual Labour and Trade.
Section 1. The Greek View of Manual Labour and Trade.
In our discussion of the Greek view of the State we noticed the tendency both of the theory and the practice of the Greeks to separate the citizens proper from the rest of the community as a distinct and aristocratic class. And this tendency, we had occasion to observe, was partly to be attributed to the high conception which the Greeks had formed of the proper excellence of man, an excellence which it was the function of the citizen to realise in his own person, at the cost, if need be, of the
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Section 2. Appreciation of External Goods.
Section 2. Appreciation of External Goods.
In the first place, the Greek ideal required for its realisation a solid basis of external Goods. It recognised frankly the dependence of man upon the world of sense, and the contribution to his happiness of elements over which he had at best but a partial control. Not that it placed his Good outside himself, in riches, power, and other such appendages; but that it postulated certain gifts of fortune as necessary means to his self-development. Of these the chief were, a competence, to secure him
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Section 3. Appreciation of Physical Qualities.
Section 3. Appreciation of Physical Qualities.
While, however, the gifts of a happy fortune are an essential condition of the Greek ideal, they are not to be mistaken for the ideal itself. "A beautiful soul in a beautiful body," to recur to our former phrase, is the real end and aim of their endeavour. "Beautiful and good" is their habitual way of describing what we should call a gentleman; and no expression could better represent what they admired. With ourselves, in spite of our addiction to athletics, the body takes a secondary place; aft
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Section 4. Greek Athletics.
Section 4. Greek Athletics.
It is this conception which gives, or appears at least in the retrospect to give, a character so gracious and fine to Greek athletics. In fact, if we look more closely into the character of the public games in Greece we see that they were so surrounded and transfused by an atmosphere of imagination that their appeal must have been as much to the aesthetic as to the physical sense. For in the first place those great gymnastic contests in which all Hellas took part, and which gave the tone to thei
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Section 5. Greek Ethics—Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical Points of View.
Section 5. Greek Ethics—Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical Points of View.
And as with the excellence of the body, so with that of the soul, the conception that dominated the mind of the Greeks was primarily aesthetic. In speaking of their religion we have already remarked that they had no sense of sin; and we may now add that they had no sense of duty. Moral virtue they conceived not as obedience to an external law, a sacrifice of the natural man to a power that in a sense is alien to himself, but rather as the tempering into due proportion of the elements of which hu
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Section 6. The Greek View of Pleasure.
Section 6. The Greek View of Pleasure.
From all this it follows clearly enough that the Greek ideal was far removed from asceticism; but it might perhaps be supposed, on the other hand, that it came dangerously near to license. Nothing, however, could be further from the case. That there were libertines among the Greeks, as everywhere else, goes without saying; but the conception that the Greek rule of life was to follow impulse and abandon restraint is a figment of would-be "Hellenists" of our own time. The word which best sums up t
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Section 8. The Greek View of Woman.
Section 8. The Greek View of Woman.
In the preceding account we have attempted to give some conception of the Greek ideal for the individual man. It is now time to remind ourselves that that ideal was only supposed to be proper to a small class—the class of soldier-citizens. Artisans and slaves, as we have seen, had no participation in it; neither, and that is our next point, had women. Nothing more profoundly distinguishes the Hellenic from the modern view of life than the estimate in which women were held by the Greeks. Their op
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Section 9. Protests against the Common View of Woman.
Section 9. Protests against the Common View of Woman.
Nevertheless, there are not wanting indications, both in theory and practice, of a protest against it. In Sparta as we have already noticed, girls, instead of being confined to the house, were brought up in the open air among the boys, trained in gymnastics and accustomed to run and wrestle naked. And Plato, modelling his view upon this experience, makes no distinction of the sexes in his ideal republic. Women, he admits, are generally inferior to men, but they have similar, if lower, capacities
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Section 10. Friendship.
Section 10. Friendship.
From what has been said about the Greek view of women, it might naturally have been supposed that there can have been little place in their life for all that we designate under the term "romance." Personal affection, as we have seen, was not the basis of married life; and relations with Hetaerae appear to have been, in this respect, no finer or higher than similar relations in our own times. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to conclude, from these conditions, that the element of romance was a
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Section 11. Summary.
Section 11. Summary.
If now we turn back to take a general view of the points that have been treated in the present chapter, we shall notice, in the first place, that the ideal of the Greeks was the direct and natural outcome of the conditions of their life. It was not something beyond and above the experience of the class to which it applied, but rather, was the formula of that experience itself: in philosophical phrase, it was immanent not transcendent. Because there really was a class of soldier-citizens free fro
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Section 1. Greek Art an Expression of National Life.
Section 1. Greek Art an Expression of National Life.
In approaching the subject of the Art of the Greeks we come to what, more plausibly than any other, may be regarded as the central point of their scheme of life. We have already noticed, in dealing with other topics, how constantly the aesthetic point of view emerges and predominates in matters with which, in the modern way of looking at things, it appears to have no direct and natural connection. We saw, for example, how inseparable in their religion was the element of ritual and ceremony from
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Section 2. Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical Points of View.
Section 2. Identification of the Aesthetic and Ethical Points of View.
But on the other hand, it seems to be clear from all that we can learn, that their habitual way of regarding works of art was not to judge them simply and exclusively by their aesthetic value. On the contrary, in criticising two works otherwise equally beautiful, they would give a higher place to the one or the other for its ethical or quasi-ethical qualities. This indeed is what we should expect from the comprehensive sense which, as we have seen, attached in their tongue to the word which we r
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Section 3. Sculpture and Painting.
Section 3. Sculpture and Painting.
Let us take, first, the plastic arts, sculpture and painting; and to bring into clear relief the Greek point of view let us contrast with it that of the modern "impressionist." To the impressionist a picture is simply an arrangement of colour and line; the subject represented is nothing, the treatment everything. It would be better, on the whole, not even to know what objects are depicted; and, to judge the picture by a comparison with the objects, or to consider what is the worth of the objects
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Section 4. Music and the Dance.
Section 4. Music and the Dance.
Turning now from the plastic arts to that other group which the Greeks classed together under the name of "Music"—namely music, in the narrower sense, dancing and poetry—we find still more clearly emphasised and more elaborately worked out the subordination of aesthetic to ethical and religious ends. "Music," in fact, as they used the term, was the centre of Greek education, and its moral character thus became a matter of primary importance. By it were formed, it was supposed, the mind and tempe
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Section 5. Poetry.
Section 5. Poetry.
If now, as we have seen, in the plastic arts, and in an art which appears to us so pure as music, the Greeks perceived and valued, along with the immediate pleasure of beauty, a definite ethical character and bent, much more was this the case with poetry, whose material is conceptions and ideas. The works of the poets, and especially of Homer, were in fact to the Greeks all that moral treatises are to us; or rather, instead of learning their lessons in abstract terms, they learnt them out of the
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Section 6. Tragedy.
Section 6. Tragedy.
The character of Greek tragedy was determined from the very beginning by the fact of its connection with religion. The season at which it was performed was the festival of Dionysus; about his altar the chorus danced; and the object of the performance was the representation of scenes out of the lives of ancient heroes. The subject of the drama was thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle of legends familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom might be allowed to the poet in
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Section 7. Comedy.
Section 7. Comedy.
Even more remarkable than the tragedy of the Greeks, in its rendering of a didactic intention under the forms of a free and spontaneous art, is the older comedy known to us through the works of Aristophanes. As the former dealt with the general conceptions, religious and ethical, that underlay the Greek view of life, using as its medium of exposition the ancient national myths, so the latter dealt with the particular phases of contemporary life, employing the machinery of a free burlesque. The a
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Section 8. Summary.
Section 8. Summary.
And here must conclude our survey of the character of Greek art. The main point which we have endeavoured to make clear has been so often insisted upon, that it is hardly necessary to dwell upon it further. The key to the art of the Greeks, as well as to their ethics, is the identification of the beautiful and the good; and it therefore is as natural in treating of their art to insist on its ethical value as it was to insist on the aesthetic significance of their moral ideal. But, in fact, any i
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
Now that we have examined in some detail the most important phases of the Greek view of life, it may be as well to endeavour briefly to recapitulate and bring to a point the various considerations that have been advanced. But, first, one preliminary remark must be made. Throughout the preceding pages we have made no attempt to distinguish the Greek "view" from the Greek "ideal"; we have interpreted their customs and institutions, political, social, or religious, by the conceptions and ideals of
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