THE AGE OF HERO-WORSHIP
Greek civilization was made by a large number of different tribes,
inhabiting islands, or fertile valleys and plains separated by mountain
ranges. Among these tribes there was incessant rivalry and bitter
jealousy. They were never able to form a national or racial union, and
their history is a succession of inter-tribal intrigues and wars. In
addition to this came the class struggle. The aristocratic classes,
based on landlordism, held the government, while the proletariat,
crowding into the towns, clamored for power; popular leaders arose, and
there were conspiracies and civic tumults. Invariably the leaders of the
dispossessed party would form alliances with outside states for war upon
their own state. More significant yet, some would take the money and
serve the cause of the Persian kings, who represented barbarian
despotism.
In the beginning of their written record we find the Greeks just
emerging from the family stage. The old men ruled; they were the wise
and the rich, and no one disputed their authority. They formed alliances
and led expeditions for the plundering of other states; then, returning
to their ancestral halls, they hired musicians to entertain them by
chanting the story of their exploits. So we have the Homeric poems,
ruling-class propaganda, written to glorify the ancestors of powerful
chieftains and fighting men, and to inculcate the spirit of obedience
and martial pride in the new generations.
Every device of the poet’s art is employed to lend prominence and
splendor to the Homeric heroes. They are frequently demigods, the result
of some mood of dalliance on the part of one of the high gods of
Olympus, who came down to earth and encountered a lovely Greek maiden
wandering in a meadow. This divine illegitimacy entitles the heroes to
the center of the stage, and they take it. They are a set of extremely
greedy, jealous, vain and capricious school-boys; and, what is still
more significant, their gods, the highest ideal they could conceive, are
exactly as greedy, jealous, vain and capricious. The only beautiful
emotion in the poems is when some of the mothers and fathers, the wives
and children of those heroes express for them an affection of which they
are unworthy.
We are accustomed to use the words “Homeric” and “epic” to signify
something vast, elemental, portentous. How is it that Homer secures to
his characters this “heroic” effect? By causing all the rest of the
world to bow to their pretensions, by interesting the gods in their
fate--and, above all else, by portraying them as unrestrained in their
emotions and limitless in their desires. These are the familiar devices
whereby aristocracy signifies itself.
And that explains why such men as Matthew Arnold and Gladstone write
volumes of rhapsody over Homer. There is in England a class which has
invented ways of setting forth to the world the fact that it does not
have to work for a living. There are things this class can do which the
vulgar herd cannot do; and one of these things is to read and appreciate
Latin and Greek literature. Homer is to the British world of culture
what the top-hat is to the British world sartorial.
Homer serves these purposes, because he has the aristocratic point of
view, and gives the aristocratic mind what it craves. Just as we cherish
genealogy volumes to prove that our ancestors came over in the
_Mayflower_, so the Homeric minstrel chanted a catalogue of the ships
which had taken part in the Trojan war. And just as our members of good
society preach “law and order” to the lower classes, so in the Homeric
poems it is made clear that the common soldier exists to shed his blood
for the glory of his chief. Only once does a common man lift his voice
in the “Iliad”--the famous scene in the council where Thersites dares to
rise up. He is represented as a hunchbacked and offensive brawler; he is
overwhelmed with ridicule, and finally receives a sound thrashing from
Ulysses, called “the wily,” the Greek ideal of the shrewd and sensible
man of the world. “The sovereignty of the many is not good,” declares
this “wily” one; “let there be one sovereign, one king.”
We shall find that the bards of aristocracy seldom neglect to flatter
their masters by showing some rebel thus being taught his place. We
shall find Shakespeare treating Jack Cade precisely as Homer treats
Thersites; neither stopping for a moment to inquire whether the grumbler
had any just cause to grumble. We shall find also that leisure-class
critics always accept these scenes as pure and undefiled “art,” and are
shocked by the suggestion of their mighty minstrels stooping to
propaganda in the interest of those who pay them. In those early days
the pay was poor; if legend is to be trusted, Homer wandered blind and
friendless among the Greek towns, which afterwards claimed the honor of
being his birthplace. Says the epigram:
Seven wealthy towns contend for Homer dead,
Through which the living Homer begged his bread.
Taking the “Iliad” on the basis of literature, we say it contains fine
poetry, and vivid pictures of old-time manners, fascinating to read
about--if you come on them while you are young. There is a stage of life
when we are naïve and uncritical in our acceptance of “heroism.” We
adopt a certain shining person, we share his glories, we go out to
battle with him, we thrill to every stroke of his broad sword, we shout
when he wins the victory--and never reflect that we might exactly as
well be interested in the other fellow, who has exactly as much right to
survive. The average person reaches that age of hero-worship at twelve
years, and passes it at sixteen, if he passes it at all. Let children
read the “Odyssey” in a good translation; they will enjoy these perils
and later on they will discover that the universe has not yet been
entirely explored--there are perils in the starry spaces, and in the
deeps of our minds.