THE GIFTS OF GREECE TO THE WORLD
I. THE GREEK SPIRIT
What man achieves is, in regard to its permanent value, of less
importance than the spirit in which he achieves it; what one learns
is of less importance than how one learns; learning facts is of less
importance than developing certain qualities of mind. It is not
possible, and were it possible it would not be desirable, to
reproduce in modern life, the conditions of a past age, but certain
qualities of the mind and spirit are undying, and some of the
greatest of these qualities have come to us from the Greeks.
History is the story of the way in which man has learned and is
still learning, how to live: of how through long centuries he has
sought to satisfy the practical needs of his body, the
questioning of his mind, and the searching of his spirit.[1]
Mankind is still engaged upon the high adventure for this three-fold
quest, and not yet has any one civilization succeeded in bringing
into perfect accord the demands of the body, of the mind, and of
{359} the spirit. If, in the beginning of this story in the ancient
world, the Hebrews stand supreme amongst the teachers of those who
have sought to satisfy the searching of the spirit, so are the Greeks
the great teachers of those who have sought to satisfy the
questioning of the mind. The Greeks gave to the mind of man three
definite qualities: the love of Freedom, the love of Truth, and the
love of Beauty. These are practical qualities which show themselves
quite definitely in what the Greeks did, in what they thought and in
what they built, or in other words, in their political history, their
literature and their art.
It must not be thought that the Greeks perfectly fulfilled their
great ideals. Greek history shows quite clearly that they did not.
If the story of the Greeks as it has been told in this book has
emphasized their ideals rather than their failure always to attain
these, it is because their ideals are the imperishable gifts they
have given to the world. But the Greeks were not dreamers; they were
practical men, keen and interested in all the practical affairs of
every day life. Their history shows how they failed in perfectly
carrying out their ideals because of certain weaknesses of character
and of certain conditions and limitations in their life from which
the men of to-day can learn many useful lessons. The greatness of
the Greeks lies, not in what they did not do or did imperfectly, but
in their spirit, that spirit which in their political history, their
literature and their art sought for Freedom, for Truth, and for
Beauty.
{360}
The Greeks showed the world the way to Freedom. They won their own
national freedom against almost overwhelming odds, for never before
had a small country maintained her independence in the face of a
great empire, and been victorious. They also maintained a political
freedom, which they carried too far, for the inability of Greek
states to form alliances and to unite was one of the sources of
weakness which finally led to their downfall. Nevertheless the
spirit of sturdy independence is one that has endured. The Greeks
carried their vision of freedom further than the political
independence of each state, and one of their chief characteristics
was their personal freedom. In a speech to the Athenian army before
the battle in the harbour at Syracuse, Nicias "reminded them that
they were the inhabitants of the freest country in the world, and how
in Athens there was no interference with the daily life of any
man."[2] Modern times are apt to pride themselves on the freedom of
speech allowed to all, but no modern state permits greater liberty of
speech (and some would not tolerate as much) than was allowed in
Athens in the fifth century B.C. when Aristophanes wrote his
satirical comedies.
The Greeks loved Truth. By this is not meant truthfulness, for the
Greeks were insincere and never trusted even one another, but the
spirit which desired to see all things straight, "with an unclouded
clearness of mind"; the spirit which could distinguish clearly
between right and wrong, which {361} could judge without prejudice or
passion, above all the spirit which knew its own limitations and
which acknowledged what it did not know. Perhaps the greatest Greek
searcher for truth was Socrates, and some knowledge of his life and
teaching will show us what is our debt to Greece in the story of how
the mind of man has gained freedom in its search for truth.
II. SOCRATES
During the last years of the Peloponnesian War, a strange figure
might have been seen in Athens: a short, ugly, odd-looking man,
poorly-clad and utterly indifferent to criticism of his habits or
appearance, but a man to whom every one listened when he began to
speak. This was Socrates, the Greek philosopher.
His father was a stone-cutter and a poor man, but he seems to have
given to his son the best education that was to be had in Athens, for
Socrates often quoted from Greek literature, especially from Homer,
and he speaks of having studied with his friends "the treasures which
the wise men of old have left us in their books."
Very little is known of the early life of Socrates, but he passed his
youth and early manhood during the greatest years of Athenian
history. He was born ten years after the Persian had been defeated
at Plataea and driven out of Greece; as a boy, he had seen the Long
Walls being built; he had grown up in the Athens of Pericles, a
contemporary of {362} Sophocles, and Euripides, of Pheidias and of
Thucydides. When the clouds gathered over Athens and war came, he
served in the army as a common soldier; he had lived through the
short-lived triumphs and the tragic disasters which befell the city;
he had been hungry when food was scarce, he had seen Athens besieged
and taken; he had watched the Long Walls destroyed, and he had lived
through the Terror when the Thirty ruled Athens. It was a life lived
in very stirring times, and Socrates had taken his share in the
happenings. During the war, he served in one of the northern
campaigns, and he amazed everyone by his extraordinary power of
enduring hunger and thirst, and all the hardships of a cold Thracian
winter. One of his friends says of this time that
his fortitude in enduring cold was surprising. There was a
severe frost, for the winter in that region is really tremendous,
and everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out
had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod, and
had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this,
Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress
marched better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they
looked daggers at him because he seemed to despise them. Another
tale of what he did on this expedition is worth hearing. One
morning, he was thinking about something which he could not
resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from
early dawn until noon--there he stood fixed in thought; and at
noon attention was drawn to him and the remark ran through the
wondering crowd that {363} Socrates had been standing and
thinking about something ever since the break of day. At last in
the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should
explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out
their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him
and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood until
the following morning, and with the return of light he offered up
a prayer to the Sun and went his way.[3]
At the close of the war Socrates was in Athens, a man now of over
sixty years of age. He held one or two offices of state, when he was
known for his fearless refusal to do what he thought was wrong. On
one occasion he refused to obey orders that were given him, because
he believed that obedience would involve him in doing what he thought
to be wrong. "I showed," he said, "not by mere words but by my
actions, that I did not care a straw for death: but that I did care
very much indeed about doing wrong."
Socrates was very poor and as he would take no money for his
teaching, his means of livelihood were very scanty. He went about
barefoot and had only one cloak which he wore until it was so old
that it became a matter of joke amongst his friends. He not only had
no luxuries of any kind, but hardly the bare necessities of life, yet
he was quite content and used to say: "How many things there are
which I do not want." Socrates married Xanthippe, a woman of a most
violent temper. He used to say that one ought to live with a restive
woman, just {364} as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; and "as
they," said he, "when they have once mastered them, are easily able
to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live
with anyone else whatever."[4]
The Athenians had always been intellectually very alert and had tried
to solve all kinds of problems. They asked how it was that things
came into being, how they continued to exist, of what they were made
and similar questions. But when Athens had become an Empire and
ruled over many men and states, the questions began to change.
People were less interested in how things originated, than in
questions arising from their daily experience. They asked, what is a
state, what is a citizen, what is justice, what is temperance,
courage, cowardice and so on. In order to answer these questions, a
body of teachers had arisen in Athens who were called Sophists, or
_Wise Men_. They taught every kind of subject and established a
number of schools. The older Greek teachers did not like these
Sophists, partly because they took money for their teaching, and
hitherto, though Athenian philosophers had accepted presents, they
had never charged definite fees; partly because they taught so many
subjects that it was thought they could teach nothing thoroughly;
partly because they seemed to aim at teaching young men to argue in
order to get the better of their opponents rather than to seek for
Truth; and above all, because they were often sceptical as to the
existence of the gods. There {365} were some very good teachers
amongst the Sophists, and they opened up a great many new fields of
thought to the Athenians, but a weak side to their teaching was that
they only stated general principles, and often asserted as absolute
facts things that never had been definitely proved one way or the
other. They used words carelessly without stopping to think of their
real meaning, and they never suggested that there was anything they
did not know.
Socrates saw that though the teaching of the Sophists might increase
_information_ it was fatal to real thinking, and he began to teach in
Athens in order to show what real thinking was. He taught in no
school, had no classes and took no pay. He was willing to talk to
any and everyone who would listen to him. He ever
lived in the public eye; at early morning he was to be seen
betaking himself to one of the promenades or wrestling grounds;
at noon he would appear with the gathering crowds in the
market-place; and as day declined, wherever the largest throng
might be encountered, there was he to be found, talking for the
most part, while anyone who chose might stop and listen.[5]
Socrates talked to and questioned everyone and tried to show people
what real knowledge was. He was filled with a passionate belief in
the importance of truth above all things. He said that to make
inaccurate statements and to use words with a wrong or careless
meaning was "not only a fault in itself, {366} it also created an
evil in the soul." He showed those who listened to him the evil that
came from pretending to know what one did not know, and the first
step in his teaching was to make them realize their ignorance. To
this end he questioned and cross-examined them, until they
contradicted themselves, or found no answer and generally ended in
hopeless difficulties, simply because they would not acknowledge at
the beginning that they did not know what he had asked. One of his
friends once said: "Indeed, Socrates, I no longer believe in my
answers; everything seems to me to be different from what it used to
seem," and another speaking of him said: "Socrates makes me
acknowledge my own worthlessness. I had best be silent for it seems
that I know nothing at all."
Socrates believed that Virtue was Knowledge, that if a man knew a
thing was wrong, he would not do it, and that those who knew what was
right would always do it. In this Socrates was not wholly right; he
only saw a part of the truth, but his greatness lies in that he was
the first to teach the importance of having a reason for what we
believe, of learning accurate habits of mind, and that the search for
knowledge is one rich in imagination and beauty.
Socrates was always arguing, talking, questioning, but he was never
rude or discourteous to those who disagreed with him, he never
brought his own personal feelings into his arguments, and he never
descended to expressions of wounded pride or irritation.
{367}
The teaching of Socrates opened the minds of those who listened to
him to the possibilities to which knowing the truth might lead them,
and he had great influence over numbers of young Athenians. It was
all new to them, they had never heard anything like it before. "Mere
fragments of you and your words," said one of them, "even at
second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the
soul of anyone who hears them," and he went on to say,
I have heard Pericles and other great orators and I thought that
they spoke well, but 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 Socrates has often brought me to such a
pass that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life I am
leading. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I
do, neglecting the wants of my own soul. And he is the only
person who ever made me ashamed, and there is no one else who
does the same.[6]
But if Socrates gained friends, his method of exposing the ignorance
of others also gained him enemies. No one before had ever thought
such thoughts, and to ordinary Athenians his questioning was wicked.
But Xenophon, one of his friends, tells us that "no one ever heard
him say or saw him do anything impious or irreverent, and he was so
piously and devoutly religious that he would take no step apart from
the will of heaven." Yet his {368} enemies maintained that he
disbelieved in the gods. His teaching was all the more disturbing
because Athens, having been defeated by Sparta, had just lived
through the terrible months of the rule of the Thirty, and though
these had been driven out, (this was in the year 399 B.C.), Athens
was in a state of unrest, of fear and of suspicion. Anyone who
taught anything new was looked upon as a possible enemy to the state,
and the enemies of Socrates seized this opportunity to bring definite
accusations against him. They said: "Socrates is guilty, inasmuch as
he does not believe in the gods whom the city worships, but
introduces other strange deities; he is also guilty inasmuch as he
corrupts the young men, and the punishment he has incurred is
death."[7]
A trial followed. In an Athenian trial, first the accusers made
their speeches, and then the accused was allowed to defend himself.
Plato, the great pupil of Socrates, has given us the speech made by
his master at his trial, a speech known as the _Apology of Socrates_.
In it, the philosopher, an old man now of over seventy, set forth the
principles which had guided him in his teaching.
He began by saying that he had never taught men to disbelieve in the
gods, and that the accusation of impiety against him was false, but
he did say that it was fair to ask him just what he had been trying
to do which had given rise to these reports. He then told them the
story of how a friend of his had gone to Delphi, and had asked the
Oracle if there were {369} any man wiser than he, and that the Oracle
had answered that there was no man.
Now see why I tell you this. I am going to explain to you the
origin of my unpopularity. When I heard of the Oracle I began to
reflect. What can God mean by this dark saying? I know very
well that I am not wise, even in the smallest degree. Then what
can he mean by saying that I am the wisest of men? It cannot be
that he is speaking falsely, for he is a god and cannot lie. And
for a long time I was at a loss to understand his meaning: then,
very reluctantly, I turned to seek for it in this manner. I went
to a man who was reputed to be wise, thinking that there, if
anywhere, I should prove the answer wrong, and meaning to point
out to the Oracle its mistake, and to say, "You said that I was
the wisest of men, but this man is wiser than I am."
But Socrates went on to say that after talking to this man, who was a
politician, he found that he was not wise because he thought he knew
things that he did not know, and because he would not acknowledge his
ignorance. He tried to prove to him that he was not wise, but only
succeeded in making him his enemy.
Next, [said Socrates], I went to another who was reputed to be
still wiser than the last, with exactly the same result. And
there again I made him, and many other men, my enemies.
By reason of this examination, Athenians, I have made many
enemies of a very fierce and bitter kind, who have spread abroad
a great number of calumnies about me, {370} and people say that I
am a "wise man." For the bystanders always think that I am wise
myself in any matter wherein I convict another man of ignorance.
But, my friends, I believe that only God is really wise: and that
by this oracle he meant that men's wisdom is worth little or
nothing. I do not think that he meant that Socrates was wise.
He only made use of my name, and took me as an example, as though
he would say to men: "He among you is the wisest, who, like
Socrates, knows that in very truth his wisdom is worth nothing at
all." And therefore I still go about testing and examining every
man whom I think wise, whether he be a citizen or a stranger, as
God has commanded me: and whenever I find that he is not wise, I
point out to him on the part of God that he is not wise. And I
am so busy in this pursuit that I have never had leisure to take
any part worth mentioning in public matters, or to look after my
private affairs. I am in very great poverty by reason of my
service to God.[8]
Socrates then went on to prove that nothing in his teaching could
corrupt the young men, as his enemies declared he was doing, and to
prove his belief in the gods. He knew that he was on trial for his
life, but no fear of death stopped him from speaking that which he
believed to be the truth.
My friends, [he said], if you think that a man of any worth at
all ought to reckon the chances of life and death when he acts,
or that he ought to think of anything but whether he is acting
rightly or wrongly, and as a good or bad man would act, you are
grievously mistaken. It would be very strange conduct on my
{371} part if I were to desert my post now from fear of death or
of any other thing, when God has commanded me, as I am persuaded
that he has done, to spend my life in searching for wisdom, and
in examining myself and others. That would indeed be a very
strange thing: and then certainly I might with justice be brought
to trial for not believing in the gods; for I should be
disobeying the Oracle, and fearing death, and thinking myself
wise when I was not wise. For to fear death, my friends, is only
to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think
that we know what we do not know. For anything that man can
tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but
they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest
of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of
thinking that we know what we do not know?
Athenians, if you put me to death, you will not easily find
another man to fill my place. God has sent me to attack the
city, as if it were a great and noble horse, to use a quaint
simile, which was rather sluggish for its size, and which needed
to be roused by a gadfly: and I think that I am that gadfly that
God has sent to the city to attack it; for I never cease from
settling upon you as it were at every point, and rousing and
exhorting, and reproaching each man of you all day long.[9]
Socrates then referred to the custom in Athens that when a man was on
trial for his life, his wife and children sometimes appeared in court
in order to appeal to the pity of the judges and so obtain a
favourable sentence, but he refused to do that, for knowing that the
judges had taken an oath to administer justice justly, he believed
that such an {372} act on his part would be an attempt to make them
break their oaths.
Were I to be successful and to prevail on you by my prayers to
break your oaths, I should be clearly teaching you to believe
that there are no gods; and I should be simply accusing myself by
my defence of not believing in them. But, Athenians, that is
very far from the truth. I do believe in the gods as no one of
my accusers believes in them: and to you and to God I commit my
cause to be decided as is best for you and for me.
Socrates was found guilty by 281 votes to 220, and the penalty to be
inflicted was death. He had the right under Athenian law to suggest
an alternative penalty.
What counter-penalty shall I propose to you Athenians? What I
deserve, of course, must I not? What is a suitable reward to be
given to a poor benefactor who requires leisure to exhort you?
There is no reward, Athenians, so suitable for him as a public
maintenance in the Prytaneum. It is a much more suitable reward
for him than for any of you who has won a victory at the Olympic
Games with his horse or his chariots. So if I am to propose the
penalty which I really deserve, I propose this--a public
maintenance in the Prytaneum.
Or shall I propose imprisonment? And why should I pass the rest
of my days in prison, the slave of successive officials? Or
shall I propose a fine, with imprisonment until it is paid? I
have told you why I will not do that. I should have to continue
in prison, for I have no money to pay a fine with. Shall I then
propose exile? {373} Perhaps you would agree to that. Life
would indeed be very dear to me if I were unreasonable enough to
expect that strangers would cheerfully tolerate my discussions
and reasonings, when you who are my fellow-citizens cannot endure
them, and have found them so burdensome and odious to you that
you are seeking now to be released from them. No indeed,
Athenians, that is not likely. A fine life I should lead for an
old man, if I were to withdraw from Athens, and pass the rest of
my days in wandering from city to city, and continually being
expelled.[10]
The alternatives were not accepted, as indeed Socrates knew they
would not be, and he was condemned to die. He accepted the sentence
calmly, "and with infinite gentleness and manliness. No one within
the memory of man, it is said, ever bowed his head to death more
nobly."[11] But death offered no terrors to Socrates.
If death [he said to his judges] is a journey to another place,
and the common belief be true, that there are all who have died,
what good could be greater than this? Would a journey not be
worth taking, at the end of which, in the other world, we should
be released from the self-styled judges who are here, and should
find the true judges who are said to sit in judgment below? Or
what would you not give to converse with Orpheus and Homer? I am
willing to die many times if this be true. And above all, I
could spend my time in examining those who are there, as I
examine men here, and in finding out which of them thinks himself
{374} wise, when he is not wise. What would we not give, my
judges, to be able to examine the great leader of the expedition
against Troy, or Odysseus, or countless other men and women whom
we could name?. It would be an infinite happiness to converse
with them, and to live with them, and to examine them. Assuredly
there they do not put men to death for doing that. For besides
the other ways in which they are happier than we are, they are
immortal, at least if the common belief be true.
But now the time has come, and we must go hence; I to die, and
you to live. Whether life or death is better is known to God,
and to God only.[12]
Socrates was taken to prison where he spent a month before his
sentence was carried out. The delay was caused by the voyage of the
sacred ship, said to be that of Theseus, which had only just set out
on its annual voyage to Delos, and no Athenian could be put to death
during its absence.[13] He spent this month talking to his friends,
especially to Crito, who was very devoted to him, and who entreated
him to escape from prison, an escape for which he could very easily
have arranged. But the brave old man, loyal to his principles to the
end, refused, and he reminded Crito how all his life he had taught
that the greatest misfortune that could befall a man was to do wrong,
and the greatest crime a man could commit against his state was to
break her laws.
The last day arrived. The story of that day has been told by one who
was present:
{375}
I will try to relate the whole story to you from the beginning.
On the previous days I and the others who had always met in the
morning at the court where the trial was held, which was close to
the prison; and then we had gone in to Socrates. We used to wait
each morning until the prison was opened, conversing: for it was
not opened early. When it was opened, we used to go in to
Socrates, and we generally spent the whole day with him. But on
that morning we met earlier than usual; for the evening before we
had learnt, on leaving the prison, that the ship had arrived from
Delos. So we arranged to be at the usual place as early as
possible. When we reached the prison, the porter, who generally
let us in, came out to us and bade us wait a little, and not to
go in until he summoned us himself; "for the Eleven," he said,
"are releasing Socrates from his fetters, and giving directions
for his death today." In no great while he returned and bade us
enter. So we went in and found Socrates just released, and
Xanthippe, you know her, sitting by him, holding his child in her
arms. When Xanthippe saw us, she wailed aloud, and cried, in her
woman's way, "This is the last time, Socrates, that you will talk
with your friends, or they with you." And Socrates glanced at
Crito, and said, "Crito, let her be taken home." So some of
Crito's servants led her away, weeping bitterly and beating her
breast.[14]
Once more Socrates and his friends conversed, and once more he
expressed his joy at "going to the place where he hoped to gain the
wisdom that he had passionately longed for all his life." They
talked together until later in the day, and then {376} he rose and
went into another room to bathe himself:
Crito went with him and told us to wait. So we waited, talking
of him and dwelling on the greatness of the calamity which had
fallen upon us: it seemed as if we were going to lose a father,
and to be orphans for the rest of our life. When he had bathed,
and his children had been brought to him, he had two sons quite
little, and one grown up, and the women of his family were come,
he spoke with them in Crito's presence and gave them his last
commands; then he sent the women and children away, and returned
to us. By that time it was near the hour of sunset, for he had
been a long while within. When he came back to us he sat down,
but not much was said after that.
Presently the gaoler came in and told him that the hour had come for
him to die:
I have found you, [he said], the noblest and best man that has
ever come here; and now I am sure that you will not be angry with
me, but with those who you know are to blame. And so, farewell,
and try to bear what must be as lightly as you can; you know why
I have come.
With that he turned away weeping and went out.
Then Crito made a sign to his slave who was standing by, and the
slave went out, and after some delay returned with the man who
was to give the poison, carrying it prepared in a cup. When
Socrates saw him, he asked, "You understand these things, my good
sir, what have I to do?"
{377}
"You have only to drink this," he replied, "and to walk about
until your legs feel heavy, and then lie down; and it will act of
itself." With that he handed the cup to Socrates, who took it
quite cheerfully, without trembling, and without any change of
colour or of feature, and looked up at the man with that fixed
glance of his, and asked, "What say you to making a libation of
this draught? May I, or not?" "We only prepare so much as we
think sufficient, Socrates," he answered. "I understand," said
Socrates. "But I suppose that I may, and must, pray to the gods
that my journey hence may be prosperous: that is my prayer; be it
so." With these words he put the cup to his lips and drank the
poison quite calmly and cheerfully. Till then most of us had
been able to control our grief fairly well; but when we saw him
drinking, and then the poison finished, we could do so no longer:
my tears came fast in spite of myself: it was not for him, but at
my own misfortune in losing such a friend. Even before that
Crito had been unable to restrain his tears, and had gone away,
and Apollodorus, who had never once ceased weeping the whole
time, burst into a loud cry, and made us one and all break down
by his sobbing and grief, except only Socrates himself. "What
are you doing, my friends?" he exclaimed. "I sent away the women
chiefly in order that they might not offend in this way; for I
have heard that a man should die in silence. So calm yourselves
and bear up." When we heard that we were ashamed, and we ceased
from weeping.[15]
Socrates then walked about a little, but soon lay down on the couch,
and slowly the numbness crept {378} over him. He knew that when it
reached his heart, he would die. Once more he spoke. "Crito," he
said, "I owe a cock to Aesculapius; do not forget to pay it." These
were his last words, for in a few minutes he was dead.
Such was the end [said the friend who was with him to the last]
of a man who, I think, was the wisest and justest, and the best
man that I have ever known. But I did not pity him, for he
seemed to me happy, both in his bearing and in his words, so
fearlessly and nobly did he die. I could not help thinking that
the gods would watch over him still on his journey to the other
world, and that when he arrived there it would be well with him,
if it was ever well with any man.[16]
III. GREEK LITERATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS
The word _philosophy_ means the love of wisdom, and to the Greeks
this wisdom was the serious effort made to understand both the
world and man. To us _philosophy_ generally means a wise
understanding of the right way of living, but with the Greeks it
included a great deal of what we to-day call _science_. Greek
philosophy was concerned with finding out the origins of things,
and from that knowledge to build up a right way of life. We do
not to-day go to the Greeks to learn science: their answers to
the questions asked were, some of them, wrong, and some of them
inadequate. But modern science has been made possible by the
qualities of mind which {379} the Greeks brought to their
enquiries: their passionate desire to know the truth about
things, their power of going behind old superstitions, and of
seeing things as they really are, their open-mindedness and
willingness to accept new truths, their powers of patient study
and observation and of reaching the unknown from the known.
The earliest Greek philosophers lived in Ionia in the sixth
century B.C., and the greatest of them were Thales of Miletus and
Pythagoras of Samos. Something has already been said about
Thales.[17] He went further than the Egyptians and Babylonians
had done, not so much because of the new discoveries he made, but
because he brought to those discoveries not only the desire to
know that they were facts, but the desire to go behind the facts
and find out the reason for their existence.
Thales lived to be an old man, but neither age nor infirmities
lessened his zeal for learning, and
it is said that once he was led out of his house by an old woman
for the purpose of observing the stars, and he fell into a ditch
and bewailed himself, on which the old woman said to him: "Do
you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that
you shall understand what is in heaven?"[18]
Pythagoras of Samos lived later in the sixth century than Thales. He
was a great traveller and seems to have visited not only the mainland
of Greece, but also Egypt and Crete, where he had {380} many rare
experiences going into the innermost parts of temples where as a rule
no strangers were admitted. He also went to Italy where he founded a
school, and gathered about three hundred pupils round him.
Though it was not believed by the world at large until nearly two
thousand years later, Pythagoras taught that the world was round,
and, as far as is known, he was the first thinker who made this
discovery. It was Pythagoras who laid the foundations for later
mathematical knowledge, especially in geometry and arithmetic, and
who taught that there was a science of numbers apart from their use
as a practical means of calculation.
In the fifth century B.C., Athens had become an Empire and the
"school of Hellas," and the centre of Greek learning was found there
and no longer in Ionia. The story of Socrates has already been
told.[19] This great teacher did not write anything himself because
he believed that it was a greater thing for a man to live well than
to write well, and that his particular way of teaching and constant
intercourse with his fellow-men was the best way of teaching those
truths in which he believed. The account of his life and teaching,
however, was written down and given to the world by his pupil Plato,
who carried on his master's work. Plato was about twenty-eight years
old when Socrates was put to death, and for twelve years after that
time he travelled. Then he returned to Athens, bought a house and
garden (unlike Socrates he was well-off), and spent the {381} next
forty years of his life teaching in the Academy. Plato was an
idealist, and in addition to his writings about Socrates, he has left
us the _Republic_, the picture of what he thought an ideal state
should be, and some other works in which he discusses at great length
what things it is most worth while that men should pursue in life,
and why they should pursue them. He taught that goodness was worth
being sought after for its own sake and not for any material reward
that comes from pursuing it. In all his teaching he emphasizes the
fact that the greatest things in life and those which are eternal are
not always the things that can be seen, and that the soul of man does
not live on material things but on wisdom, beauty, truth and love.
The importance of Plato in this teaching was that he was the
forerunner of the great Christian writers who believed with St. Paul
that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which
are not seen are eternal."[20]
As a young man, Plato had seen in Athens under the rule of the
Thirty, the lawlessness and confusion that arose from a tyrannously
ordered state, and the _Republic_ was an attempt to show what he
thought life in an ideal state might be. His vision is not a very
practical one, but Plato was not a practical statesman. The great
value of the _Republic_ to the world to-day is that just because its
ideals could never be wholly carried out, the questions which all
statesmen in all ages have had to settle, could be and were
fearlessly discussed, unhampered {382} by the compromises and
conventions which beset modern politics.
Plato could write of other things besides politics and ideals. He
had a gift for poetry which comes out in many a fairy-tale that he
introduces here and there into his writings, knowing that sometimes a
great truth can be more easily driven home in such a form. Socrates
and a friend were once walking by the stream Ilissus. It was a hot
summer's day, and as they were barefoot, they cooled their feet in
the water and then sat down under the shade of a plane-tree to rest
and talk. And as they rested, Socrates told his friend the legend of
the grasshoppers. They were said to have been
human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came
and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing
always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in
their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the
grasshoppers; and this is the return which the Muses make to
them: they neither hunger nor thirst, but from the hour of their
birth they are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and
when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours
them on earth.[21]
When Philip of Macedon wanted the best Greek teacher known as a tutor
for his son Alexander, he sent for Aristotle. We know very little
about the life of Aristotle. He had been a pupil of Plato at the
Academy for twenty years and had learnt the best of all that great
philosopher could teach him. {383} On his return from Macedonia, he
founded a school of his own at Athens, the Lyceum, where he spent the
rest of his life teaching and studying. He died in 322 B.C., one
year after his pupil Alexander. But if little is known of the
details of his life, we know something of his character from things
that Alexander said about him, and the esteem in which he held him,
and something of the kindliness of his nature from his will which has
been preserved. He made provision for all who had faithfully served
him and gave many of his slaves their freedom. He had been twice
married, and his second wife "who behaved so well towards me," was so
provided for that she could marry again, and he made arrangements for
the marriage of his daughter. In reading of the life of the Athenian
man and the Athenian woman, their ways seem to lie far apart and the
wife to have had very little share in the interests of her husband.
In his will Aristotle gives us a glimpse of the place which the wife
sometimes, at least, held. He left directions that the bones of his
first wife, the wife of his youth, were to be taken from their
resting-place and buried with his, and this was to be done "as she
herself charged."
The work of Aristotle is amazing, for he not only wrote on every
conceivable subject, but wrote as a master. For more than a thousand
years after his death, the books he wrote were studied in schools and
universities, and formed the foundation of all education. He wrote
on astronomy, mathematics, biology, botany and many other subjects,
and he has not only been called the _Father of Natural Science_,
{384} but his writings remained the standard authority on many
scientific subjects for centuries after his death. Aristotle was
more practical than Plato, though less inspiring as a writer. As we
have already seen, he, too, wrote about an ideal state in his
_Politics_.[22] Aristotle believed that the life of a state was like
that of an individual; that the aim of both should be noble living,
and that peace and justice between states was just as important as
between individuals. But he did more than describe an ideal state;
he described the education which such a state should give to its
youth, the result of which should be not that a man should boast that
his state was great and glorious, but that, being the citizen of such
a state, in all that he did he should strive to be worthy of her.
Greek philosophy and science had begun in Ionia and then passed to
Athens. To the thinkers of the fourth century B.C. the fall of
Athens must have seemed a great disaster, but in reality it was of
the utmost service to the world. The Greek spirit was one of those
imperishable things that cannot die, and it was to go out from Athens
and spread over a wider world than it had hitherto known. It spread
first to Alexandria where, in the Hellenistic Age, the next great
group of philosophers and men of science were to be found.
IV. GREEK LITERATURE: THE HISTORIANS
The word _history_ is a Greek word and means an _enquiry_. The
Greeks were not the first people in {385} the world who wrote
history, but they wrote it as it had never been written before, and
some of the greatest history in the world is that which was written
by Greeks. These writers were not content with merely narrating
events that had taken place, they made what the word history means,
an enquiry. They possessed the imagination, not only to describe
events and scenes vividly, but to feel as the people about whom they
were writing felt, and to understand the passions that moved them at
great crises of their history. They were the first historians who
took the trouble to find out why nations and individuals acted as
they did, and to sift their evidence, finding out what was true and
what was false.
The oldest of the Greek historians was Herodotus, the _Father of
History_, an Ionian born in Halicarnassus in 484 B.C. He spent a
good part of his life travelling, during which time he collected
materials which he afterwards used in his history. He was a man who
was intensely interested in everything he saw, a very credulous
traveller, for he seems to have believed almost everything that was
told him: old traditions, all kinds of miraculous occurrences, and
many things that it is evident could never have happened. Though he
undoubtedly believed a great deal that was not true, he did not
swallow all that was told him, for after narrating some marvel he
will say: "I am bound to report all that is said, but I am not bound
to believe it."
Herodotus was a deeply religious man, and he lived before the
disturbing days when men began to {386} question the existence of the
gods. To him history was a great drama, the plot of which was the
triumph of the Greek over the Barbarian, which he saw as the will of
the gods, and to him, as to all devout Greeks of his day, all
wrong-doing, all disobedience to the will of the gods brought its own
punishment, its retribution, what the Greeks called its Nemesis.
As a story-teller, Herodotus is unrivalled. He wrote his history in
order that "the great and wonderful deeds done by the Greeks and
Persians should not lack renown," and the earlier books which give an
account of all he had learnt in his travels in the East, of Egypt and
Babylonia, of Lydia and Persia, lead up to the great climax, the
invasion of Greece by the Persians.[23] In the pages of Herodotus we
live again, as we live nowhere else, through all the excitement and
thrill of the days when Greece fought the Barbarian and drove him out
of the land.
The greatest of the Greek historians was Thucydides, great not only
among the Greek writers, but among the historians of the world. He
was born about 471 B.C., and he wrote the history of the
Peloponnesian War. Thucydides was an Athenian, a man of wealth and
good position, and was one of the few who had the plague and
recovered from it. As the war went on, he was anxious to fight and
help to bring it to a victorious close, but a far greater career was
in store for him. He was elected a general and sent at the head of
an army to relieve {387} Amphipolis and prevent its surrender to the
Spartans. But he arrived too late, the city had been taken, and he
was exiled in consequence.[24] To this exile we owe his history.
Thucydides is one of the most accurate and impartial of historians.
He was filled with an abiding love for Athens, but, unlike some
Athenians, he felt no bitterness towards her for exiling him. The
only remark he makes about his banishment is that it gave him the
opportunity to write his history. He was scrupulously fair to both
sides, and he tells us himself of the care he took to be accurate and
to accept nothing on the evidence of mere tradition.
Men do not discriminate, [he said], and are too ready to receive
ancient traditions about their own as well as about other
countries; and so little trouble do they take in the search after
truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.
Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any
chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have
described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from
others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry.
The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same
occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered
or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. If
he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the
events which have happened, and of the like events which may be
expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall
pronounce what I have written {388} to be useful, then I shall be
satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize
composition which is heard and forgotten.[25]
Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides did not trace events to the will of the
gods, but he held that the deeds of men and the use or misuse they
made of their opportunities were responsible for them. He never
moralizes, but in the clear and reasoned order in which he narrates
events the story is carried down from the beginning to its inevitable
conclusion.
Thucydides has preserved for all time the memory of what Athens was
in her greatest days, and the ideals of one of her great
statesmen.[26] But the claim of his book to be an "everlasting
possession" is justified not because of the actual history he
recorded, but because of the critical and scientific way in which he
made his enquiry which has become a model for all later historians.
Thucydides left the story of the Peloponnesian War unfinished; he
never even finished the last sentence. The story was completed by
Xenophon. He was not a great historian like his predecessors, but he
has left us valuable information about the later events of the war in
the _Hellenica_, the romantic tale of adventure which tells how a
band of Ten Thousand Greeks found their way home from the heart of
Mesopotamia,[27] and the _Economist_, a delightful picture of a Greek
household.[28]
{389}
There is one other Greek writer, who, though he did not write
history, has left us much valuable historical information. This was
Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) who lived long after the great days of Greece
had passed. He was a Greek from Boeotia, a well-educated man who had
many friends with whom he was wont to discuss all kinds of subjects:
Philosophy, history, literature, or politics, and he was also a
writer. The great work for which his name is remembered is the
_Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans_. These are the
biographies, arranged in pairs of a Greek and a Roman, each pair
followed by a comparison between the two. Plutarch never imagined
that he was writing history, and in these _Lives_ there is no wide
view over a whole period, but in each life there is a vivid picture
of a personality and a character. Plutarch knew how to choose
picturesque details and anecdotes, and he was attracted by simple,
upright, honourable, patriotic characters, which makes his book a
storehouse of stories about such men. Few biographies in the world
have been read so widely or have achieved such immortality as have
the _Lives_ of Plutarch, and probably none have done more to
encourage manliness and the spirit of good sportsmanship.
V. GREEK LITERATURE: THE DRAMATISTS
A classic is a work of art or of literature that never dies, a book
that will be read forever, no matter when or by whom it was written.
We have said that when the history of a nation is recorded in {390}
language we call it literature, but by such literature is meant not
only historical writing, but whatever takes the form of letters. The
history of a nation is an enquiry into how that nation _thinks_ as
well as into what it _does_, and its philosophers, historians and
dramatists are as much a part of its history as its statesmen and men
of action. The great Greek dramatists were men living the life of
their time, and it was a time when stirring things were happening.
The dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were written during
the period which began with the repulse of the Persians, which
included the golden days of Pericles, and which saw the tragic
changes which came over Athens during the long-drawn-out misery of
the Peloponnesian War.
Now the great Greek dramas are among the classics of the world.[29]
There are various reasons for this, but one, and not the least, is
that they are the outward expression of that love of beauty and of
self-control that is one of the priceless gifts of Greece to the
world. To the Greek, beauty meant perfection in all that he did, the
association of beautiful words and forms with beautiful deeds and
scenes. To him _beauty_ was the same as _goodness_, and ugliness was
evil. And beauty meant self-control, the absence of all excess and
exaggeration. The Greek dramatists had no models to guide them, yet
they produced works that almost perfectly attained this Greek ideal
of Beauty.
The oldest of these dramatists was Aeschylus. He took an active part
in the Persian Wars, and he {391} thought this of so much greater
importance than any literary success he had achieved, that his
epitaph, said to have been written by himself, saying nothing about
his poetry, states only that he fought the Persians. His name and
birthplace were inscribed and then that "the grove of Marathon can
bear witness to his good soldierhood, and the long-haired Mede who
felt it." One of the few Greek plays of which the plot was not taken
from ancient Greek legend was the _Persians_ of Aeschylus,[30]
interesting because it is the first historical play written by a poet
who took part himself in the events of which it tells.
The greatest work of Aeschylus was a Trilogy, (i.e., three
consecutive plays bearing on the same subject): the _Agamemnon_, the
greatest of all his plays; the _Libation-Bearers_, and the _Furies_.
These tell the tale, so often told in the Greek drama, of the murder
by his wife of Agamemnon on his return from Troy, of Orestes who
avenged his father's death, of the Furies who followed him as a
result of his deed, and of how in the end he found release. These
plays are haunted throughout by the belief that over certain families
hangs a curse, that the sins of their fathers are visited on their
children, and that from this punishment there is no escape.
Aeschylus was filled with the realization of the power of the great
unseen forces that move the world, but he believed that if on one
side there were the Furies demanding blood for blood, on the other
were Apollo and Athena, symbols of the self-control that could
overcome the heritage of anger and of passion.
{392}
Sophocles lived through the great years of Athens. Only sixteen
years old when the battle of Salamis was fought, he must have been
filled with all the enthusiasm of youth over the victory. It was
said of Sophocles that he had "such charm of character that he was
loved by everybody wherever he went." Life seems to have been happy
and prosperous for him from the beginning. He won the first prize at
the festival with his first play, and when he was only twenty-eight
he won a prize over Aeschylus who was then nearly sixty.
The greatest plays of Sophocles are those which tell of the ancient
legends of Thebes: of Oedipus as King, and then as Outcast, and of
_Antigone_, who in one play--_Oedipus at Colonus_--goes forth with
her exiled father, and in another, the great play that bears her
name, was faced with the terrible problem of having to break either
the laws of God or those of the state, and of deciding which she
would do. By all who understand the real greatness of the Greek
drama, Sophocles is accounted the greatest of the dramatists. He
represents in literature the spirit that Athena Parthenos represented
on the Acropolis: a spirit of reverence, of the serenity that comes
when the conflict is over and the victory won, and of triumphant
belief in all that is good and beautiful and true.
[Illustration: SOPHOCLES. Lateran Museum, Rome]
Very different from either Aeschylus or Sophocles was Euripides.
According to tradition, he was born in the island of Salamis on the
very day of the battle. As he grew up, he became a friend of
Socrates, but for the most part he lived a solitary {393} life, not
very much liked, and taking as little part in public life as he
could. He was essentially a student, and was one of the first
Athenians to collect a library. Euripides lived in Athens during the
Peloponnesian War, a period of restless questioning, of breaking away
from old traditions and beliefs, of lowering of the old ideals. The
war had brought a new spirit and Euripides represented it. He
criticized customs and beliefs which he thought were unworthy of the
best spirit in Athens, he questioned belief in the gods, and in one
great play, the _Trojan Women_,[31] he showed the misery brought by
war. He was the first poet to strip war of its glamour and to show
it as it affected the conquered. In the _Electra_ and in _Iphigenia
in Tauris_,[32] Euripides deals with the familiar tragedy of Orestes,
pursued by the Furies after the murder of his mother, and in the
_Alcestis_ he tells the old tale of how a noble woman was willing to
sacrifice her life for that of a selfish husband, and of how she was
brought back from the gates of Hades by Heracles.
The strength of Euripides lies in his wonderful portrayal of
character. He judges his characters by the standards of the men and
women of his own day and not by those of the gods and heroes, and he
is a merciless critic. This makes his dramas most extraordinarily
vivid and human, but it also accounts for some of the criticism and
dislike he met with in his own day.
Aristophanes wrote comedies.[33] His plays are based on the daily
life of his time, and, to {394} understand them, one must know what
were the political questions of his day, who were the leaders, who
were the writers, the gossip of the Agora and the barber's shop, the
likes and dislikes of the men amongst whom he lived. But to those
who know enough of these things to follow his allusions, the plays of
Aristophanes are full of interest, and we learn a great deal about
life in Athens from them.
Aristophanes was younger than Euripides, but, unlike the older man,
he was very conservative, and he disliked the new ways by which the
Sophists were teaching the youths, for he believed that the new
methods would make them irreverent, good at idle talk but at nothing
else, shallow and effeminate. He constantly compared the young men
of his own day with those of the generation that had fought at
Marathon, and in comparing them he found them wanting, for to him the
heroes of the age of Marathon represented all that was best in
Athenian manhood.
VI. GREEK ART
The Greeks loved Beauty, especially the Athenians of the fifth
century B.C., but they did not spend all their time in a conscious
search for it. They were very busy about and interested in a great
many other things: the administration of the city, relations with
other states, often fighting, trading and travelling, building ships
and sending out colonies. We have already seen what the Greeks meant
by {395} Beauty,[34] and an appreciation of it touched all these
things.
Now a great mistake has been made in modern times in that art has too
often been looked upon as a luxury, as something that the rich can
have but not the poor, something that has not very much to do with a
practical every-day life. But to believe that is to misunderstand
altogether what art is, for art is something that is _done_, not
something that is merely _looked at_. All men have within them a
vision of what kind of world they would make, if it was left to them
to order, and in its widest meaning art is the outward and concrete
expression of that vision. To confine art to architecture, sculpture
and painting, is to rob it of half its meaning. The forms of art are
as many and varied as are the interests of every-day life, and this
belief is one of the great gifts of Greece to the world. It was not
given to every Greek to be a great artist. Not every one could be an
Aeschylus and write the _Agamemnon_, a Sophocles and write the
_Antigone_, a Pheidias and create the _Parthenon_, or a Praxiteles
and model the _Hermes_, but every one could work in the spirit of
which these great works are the supreme examples.
The history of a nation is an enquiry into how that nation expresses
itself in stone and marble, as well as into what it thinks and does;
and its architects, artists and sculptors stand beside its
historians, philosophers, dramatists and statesmen as the men who
have made its history.
In its narrower, modern sense, art is the {396} outward sign of the
spirit of a nation as it is expressed in painting and in stone and
marble. Except for the vase-paintings, Greek painting has almost
entirely disappeared, but the achievements of the Greeks in
architecture and sculpture are amongst the greatest that the world
has ever seen. Something has already been said about Greek
architecture[35]; the same spirit expressed itself in Greek
sculpture. To know the Greeks and the real worth of what they have
given to the world, it is not enough to read _about_ them; one must
learn to know them at first-hand. To do that one must read what they
wrote (if not in Greek, then in translations), and look at what they
built and at their sculpture (if not at the originals, then by means
of casts and photographs), and when one does that, one begins to know
a little of what the spirit was that produced such things. The
Greeks considered that the human form was the most fitting subject
for representation in sculpture, yet they were not great portrait
makers; that was left for a later race to achieve. What they aimed
at doing was to give outward expression to those qualities of the
mind and spirit which they, as a people, prized so highly: Beauty,
Self-control, Harmony, Restraint. The greatest Greek sculpture was,
as it were, the answer, wrought in marble, to the prayer of Socrates
to Pan: "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place,
give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward
man be at one."[36]
{397}
The Greeks lived at a time when so much was being done for the first
time, and to all their art they brought a spirit of Youth and of Joy
in creation, yet also a spirit of Patience in achieving results, for
they were never in a hurry, and they knew that there were no short
cuts to the perfection which was to them so important a part of
beauty. Their statues are very idealistic, but their idealism was
practical, and though, as we know, they did not always fulfil their
ideals, they knew that fulfilment was possible. Though the sculpture
of the Greeks represented man, not as he always was, but as they
believed he might be, did he but follow where his best instincts led,
it did sometimes result in something that to them was not only an
ideal, but something so real and life-like that they could say of a
sculptured figure of a Sleeping Ariadne:
Strangers, touch not the marble Ariadne, lest she even start up
on the quest of Theseus.[37]
[1] _The Book of the Ancient World_.
[2] Thucydides, VII.
[3] Plato: _Symposium_, translated by Jowett.
[4] Diogenes Laertius.
[5] Xenophon: _Memorabilia_.
[6] Plato: _Symposium_, translated by Jowett.
[7] Diogenes Laertius.
[8] Plato: _Apology_, translated by F. J. Church.
[9] Plato: _Apology_, translated by F. J. Church.
[10] Plato: _Apology_, translated by F. J. Church.
[11] Xenophon: _Memorabilia_.
[12] Plato: _Apology_, translated by F. J. Church.
[13] See p. 9.
[14] Plato: _Phaedo_, translated by F. J. Church.
[15] Plato: _Phaedo_, translated by F. J. Church.
[16] Plato: _Phaedo_, translated by F. J. Church.
[17] See p. 111.
[18] Diogenes Laertius.
[19] See p. 361 ff.
[20] II Corinthians IV, 18.
[21] Plato: _Phaedrus_, translated by Jowett.
[22] See p. 72.
[23] See Chapters viii and ix.
[24] See p. 302.
[25] Thucydides, I.
[26] See _The Funeral Speech_, p. 187.
[27] See Chapter XVI, v. _The March of the Ten Thousand_.
[28] See Chapter XII, ii. _The Athenian Lady_.
[29] For the construction of a Greek drama, see Chapter XIV.
[30]See p. 163.
[31] See p. 300.
[32] See Chapter XIV.
[33] See p. 300.
[34] See p. 390.
[35] See Chapter XV.
[36] See in this connection the reference to Praxiteles on p. 222.
[37] Author Unknown: From _Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology_,
translated by J. W. Mackail.
{398}