In the preceding lecture we considered together various manifestations
of the mystic tendencies which developed in Greece during the seventh
and sixth centuries B.C. Now we must turn back and ask what
evidence we have from the poets of these centuries as to the course of
morality and religion. To the epic poetry of Homer and the didactic
verse of Hesiod succeeded the elegiac, iambic, and melic poets. The
individualism of the age, the spirit of reflection, political changes,
personal ambitions and passions are all mirrored in their verses. When
we summon them as witnesses to their day, we must remember that the
evidence they can offer is only incidental and frequently partial;
that it reflects the temper of the audience as well as the views of
the poet. In this fact, indeed, lies our chief warrant for consulting
them, for while poets may be leaders in thought far in advance of their
time, a contemporary hearing is secured by them only when their hearers
sympathize with the ideas which they express. Again it must be borne
in mind that we have for the most part only fragments of the poetry of
this time, preserved by quotations, and that we cannot therefore form
adequate judgments of the whole.
When, however, we examine the scanty remains that we possess, we find
that on the whole there is little evidence of progress in morality
and religion beyond Homer and Hesiod. The concepts of the gods are
essentially the Homeric, except that Zeus plays a larger part in the
divine economy than in Homer. In the Iliad and Odyssey, as we have
seen, he is often thwarted and outwitted by the other gods, some of
whom seem at times almost on an equality with him. But in the poets
of the seventh and sixth centuries the will of Zeus is unquestionably
supreme. No god hopes to oppose him successfully; all the rest play
minor rôles. Indeed, it is not too much to say that we have here a
developed sense of unity in the world, although the poets of this
time did not by any means reach the position of the philosophers or
attain to any real pantheism. Yet an advance is made: not only is Zeus
supreme, but Zeus and Fate are now more closely identified, so that
there is no conflict between them, such as we noticed in the Homeric
poems.
Of all the poetry that has been preserved to us from the sixth century
the elegiac verses which have been handed down under the name of
Theognis show most reflection. The poet himself was an aristocrat of
Megara, who about the middle of the century was driven into exile by
the violent struggles between the aristocratic and the democratic
parties. Much of the verse which we have is addressed to a youth,
Cyrnus, and is of a didactic or gnomic character. The poet undertakes
to teach his young friend conduct in life, so that the verses consist
largely of rules for living adapted to various situations and of a
universal nature. Although it is probably true that much of what passes
under the name of Theognis was not written by him, on the whole the
tenor of the verses is such that we may use them with a good deal
of confidence to illustrate the thought and the spirit of his age.
Xenophon in commenting on this poet but slightly exaggerated the truth
when he said that he was concerned with nothing else but virtue and
wickedness, and that his poetry is a treatise on man, just as if a
horse-fancier should write a treatise on horses.[96]
Theognis, like Homer, teaches that it is from the gods that all things
come, both good and evil. He declares that no mortal man can be either
wealthy or poor, base or good, apart from divinity. He bids his young
friend pray to the gods, for they have all power and without them are
no blessings or misfortunes to men.[97] A similar view is expressed by
Simonides who insists that no one, neither state nor mortal man, has
ever attained to virtue without the gods;[98] likewise by Archilochus,
who in verses, imitated by Horace centuries later, exhorts his hearer
to trust fully to the gods, and reminds him that oftentimes the
gods set upright men who as a result of misfortune are prostrate on
the black earth, and oftentimes they overthrow those who are very
prosperous.[99] And again he declares that from Zeus come all things to
mortals, and that no one should be surprised at any marvel which Zeus
brings to pass.[100] In fact, from Homer on, the poets regard Zeus and
the other gods as the source of all things, both good and evil. It is
only later that the doctrine of man’s complete responsibility for his
sin supplants this earlier view.
It was natural that Theognis and his contemporaries should regard the
lot of man with a pessimism exceeding that of Homer. As they looked
about them they saw evil everywhere, the good afflicted, the wicked
prosperous. They were oppressed by the weakness of humanity, so that
their verses with regard to man and his lot are gloomy indeed—so much
so that in one passage Theognis declares that in reality no mortal man
on whom the sun shines is truly happy. Again he holds that man can have
no foresight into the future, for it is hardest of all, he says, to
learn the end of a thing as yet unaccomplished, to know how god will
bring that to pass; a mist is stretched before men’s eyes, and there
is no way for mortals to test and try the outcome of the future.[101]
The poet feels a deep despair, when he reflects that no knowledge or
foresight for mortals is possible, but the gods accomplish everything
according to their will; and because there is little hope of implanting
virtue in men, then it were better not to be born at all and never to
have seen the bright rays of the sun. But since this may not be, then
he is most fortunate who enters Hades most quickly, and has a high
mound of earth heaped over him.[102] Still there are other passages
which show that man’s case was not considered wholly hopeless. There
is an appeal to self-pride, an expression of the view that poverty is
the test of a man, that has a tonic sound. The poet says that poverty
reveals the worthless man and the superior whenever need of money comes
on them, for the mind of the good man, whose thought is ever upright
in his heart, thinks only of justice.[103] In another place he assures
his young friend that the good man ever has his wit with him, and his
courage, whether he be in adversity or in good fortune. But if a god
gives abundance and riches to a base creature, then he in his folly
cannot restrain his baseness.[104] Again the poet exhorts his own soul:
“Endure, my soul, although thou hast suffered unendurable things at
the hands of the wicked”; he bids it not be distressed or angry over
misfortune and disaster, nor to blame friends or cheer enemies by
failure: “For mortal man may not easily escape the fated gifts of the
gods, though he dive into the very depth of the purple sea, or even
when the dark shadow of Tartarus holds him.”[105] Thus we see that the
poet, in spite of his pessimism and of his realization of the hardship
and injustice in the world, still urged his young friend to face it in
the same spirit in which the later Stoics like Marcus Aurelius exhorted
themselves to endure.
Although in the world as seen by the poets of the sixth century Zeus is
supreme and the gods are the source of all things for mortals, their
rule nevertheless is based on justice, which the gods love and which is
their chief attribute. Opposed to justice is insolence (ὓβρις), which
they detest and which they wish to punish. Archilochus addresses Father
Zeus, declaring that his is the rule of heaven, and that he oversees
all the works of man, both those which are base and those which are
lawful, and has a care even for insolence and justice among wild
beasts.[106] The statesman Solon assures the Athenians that their city
will never come to ruin contrary to the will and intention of Zeus
and the immortal gods; that ruin only can be brought upon the city by
the citizens themselves, by the unjust spirit of the leaders of the
people, whose mighty insolence will bring great suffering upon them.
Like Aeschylus Solon believes and teaches that insolence must fail in
the end and that Justice, who in silence knows all things both present
and future, will recompense completely in due season.[107] In another
passage Solon dwells on the fact that the riches which are sought with
insolence bring doom quickly, and in striking verses compares the
beginning of destruction with the spark which springs from a little
fire, slight at first, but finally consuming all; even so are the
results of insolence that fall upon mortals; for Zeus sees the end of
all things: as the wind suddenly in the springtime quickly scatters the
clouds, stirs up the sea, and works destruction over the grainbearing
earth, reaching to very heaven, the steep home of the gods, and makes
the bright sky appear again, and the brilliant sun shine far over the
rich earth, so that there are no longer any clouds to be seen; even so
is the vengeance that comes from Zeus. Zeus is not quick to anger over
each fault like mortal man, but whoever has a wicked heart never
escapes his notice, but in the end is utterly destroyed.[108] It would
be possible to cite similar passages from other poets which show a
deepening of that sense of the inevitableness of punishment which was
first expressed in Hesiod.
Yet the problems of evil and of the justice of the gods were not
satisfactorily solved for Theognis and his contemporaries. In two
striking passages he criticizes Zeus, saying first: “Dear Zeus, I
wonder at thee, for thou rulest over all things, having thrice great
honor and great power, and thou knowest well the mind and will of each
man, and thy own power is supreme over all, O King. How is it, then,
son of Cronos, that thy mind endures to keep wicked men and the just
subject to the same lot? Whether the mind of the one be turned to
prudence or of the other, who trusts in unjust action, to insolence,
there is no distinction made by god or mortals; nor is there any road
which one may travel and please the gods.”[109] In the second passage
his reproach is the keener from the form of its expression: “Father
Zeus, would that it might be the will of the gods that insolence be
the pleasure of the wicked, and would that it might be their pleasure,
that whoever contriveth wicked deeds in heart and thought, having no
regard for the gods, should pay for his wickedness himself; and the
folly of the father not harm the children thereafter; and would that
the children of an unjust father, who themselves have just purposes
and regard for thy wrath, Son of Cronos, they who from childhood love
justice along with their fellow citizens, might not pay for the
insolence of their sires. I would that such might be the will of the
blessed gods. But as it is, the man who does evil escapes, and another
then bears the evil. How then is this just, King of the Immortals,
that a man who has no part in unjust deeds should himself be treated
unjustly?”[110] Here we have not only a recognition of the fact that the
sins of the fathers are visited upon the children even to the third and
fourth generations—a truth which Solon had earlier enunciated,[111]—but
also a protest against the injustice of it.
These are some of the conflicting expressions on morality, justice,
and religion, which we find among the fragments of these early poets.
The contradictions which they show need not surprise us, for we are
drawing, as I have already said, from mere fragments written on various
themes and for different occasions; so the record is inevitably
imperfect. Nor must we suppose that the poets of this time had arrived
at any clearer conceptions with regard to these fundamental questions
than thinkers of a later age; the problem of evil, the justice of
the divine economy, the prosperity of the wicked and the sufferings
of the good are matters which still baffle men as they did more than
twenty-five centuries ago.
But let us now turn to the poets of the fifth century, above all to
Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, of whose works we have considerable
portions. These were poets whose position and genius made them the
truest witnesses to the highest thoughts of Greece, and especially of
Athens in that glorious period of her supremacy from the time of the
Persian Wars through the Periclean age. The poetry of Pindar and of the
tragedians was by its very nature connected with the service of the
gods. The former wrote his odes to the victors who had won renown at
the great national festivals of Zeus, Apollo, and Poseidon, or composed
his hymns and paeans in honor of the divinities. The tragedians
produced their plays for performance at the great festival of Dionysus.
And yet we must be cautious here, as everywhere, since we are not
always justified in attributing to the poet the sentiments which he
puts into the mouths of his speakers. The tragedian’s purpose was first
of all artistic. While it is true that his own beliefs inevitably
colored and tempered his work, still he never became a preacher. He
dealt with traditional material, which he might modify somewhat, but in
large measure his themes were determined for him. Yet there are many
passages both in choral songs and in single speeches which certainly
reflect the poet’s own thought or his interpretation of the views held
by his audience. The very strength of personality which Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides possessed made it impossible that they should
not voice their own conceptions, and that too without violence to
their poetic purpose. Pindar’s work lay in different fields, but he no
less than the tragedians helped to interpret and mould the moral and
religious sentiments of his audience.
Pindar was born about 522 B.C. of a noble family near Thebes
in Boeotia; but he belonged to all Greece. He wrote in the first half
of the fifth century when the influence of the preceding century was
still strong upon men’s minds, and he also shared the great stimulus
which their country’s victory over the Persians imparted to the Greeks.
Of his personal devotion to the gods we have abundant evidence. He
spent a part of his fortune in dedications at Thebes. There in the
second century of our era the traveller Pausanias saw three statues
which the poet had set up, one in honor of Apollo, another to Hermes,
and a third, by the famous sculptor Calamis, which stood in the shrine
of Zeus Ammon. To the Asiatic Cybele and to the new Arcadian Pan Pindar
erected a shrine before his own door; there, as he himself tells us,
the Theban maidens came by night and sang their hymns.[112]
Pindar shows throughout the pervasive influence of Homer, both in his
conception of the gods and in his style as well. He makes no break with
the Homeric anthropomorphism, and his divinities are subject to the
needs and desires of mortals; but his concept is a noble one, for his
gods are mighty and permanent, while men are transitory and weak: “One
is the race of men and of gods; from one mother we have the breath of
life. Yet in power we are wholly diverse: for man is nothing, but the
brazen heaven abides, a home ever unshaken. Still we resemble somewhat
the immortals either in lofty mind or in nature; yet we know not in the
day or in the night what course fate has marked out for us to run.”[113]
The power and the knowledge of the gods are in fact complete and
perfect; they are not the limited creatures of the Homeric pantheon.
With them resides all power, so that they easily bring things to pass
beyond man’s expectation. Their might may cause man’s wonder, but
“nothing ever appears to be incredible”;[114] and in his second Pythian
Ode the poet writes: “God bringeth every end to pass according to his
desires. He overtaketh even the winged eagle and passeth the dolphin in
the sea; and he bringeth low many a proud man, granting to others glory
that grows not old.”[115] And in the ninth Pythian Ode he addresses
Apollo thus: “Thou who knowest the final destiny of all things and
all the paths thereto; all the leaves that the earth sends up in the
spring, and all the sands whirled by the waves in sea and rivers and by
the blasts of the winds; thou seest well the future and whence it shall
come to pass.”[116]
Pindar’s gods are thus all-wise and all-powerful. At times he shows a
certain tendency toward pantheism, for he speaks of god or divinity
in a general sense, as if his mind conceived the divine nature to be
one, so that the divinities were no longer several gods, but, as it
were, bound together in a common divine unity. But we must not deceive
ourselves into thinking that this pantheistic tendency was at all
clearly developed in Pindar, or that he broke with polytheism. Rather
he seems to have conceived of divinity as something which presents
itself in many persons, the varied gods of the traditional pantheon.
If we accept as genuine the fragment preserved by Clement of
Alexandria,[117] in which the poet asks, “What is God?” and answers
“The all,” we can hardly think that this pantheistic definition means
more than the universal cause; unless indeed it resulted from the
Orphic pantheism. But whatever Pindar’s views as to the unity of the
divine, his teachings as to the gods’ power are clear. He warns men
that they cannot hope to avoid the gods’ watchful eyes: “For if man
expects to escape god’s notice when he does aught, he is mistaken.”[118]
Moreover, Pindar teaches that the gods, though the givers of both good
and evil to men, like Homer’s divinities, are nevertheless just and
truthful beings who reward the righteous and reverent and punish the
wicked: “The bliss of men who feel reverence lives longer, but he who
associates with wicked purposes prospers not forever.”[119]
Truth also belongs to god: indeed she is “the daughter of Zeus”, “the
foundation of virtue.” Of Apollo it is said that he “lays not hold of
lies.”[120] Here is a great advance over Homer’s ideas of the godhead.
Pindar’s attitude in this respect is not dissimilar to that of Hesiod,
who, as we have seen, first gave poetic expression to the idea that
justice is an attribute and handmaid of Zeus.
Consonant with these higher views of divinity is Pindar’s treatment
of the myths. The grosser elements he leaves aside as being unworthy
of the gods. At times he openly protests, as for example in the first
Olympian Ode where he declares that he will not treat the story of
Pelops in the traditional way, which made Tantalus offer his son’s
flesh at a dinner given the immortals: “I will speak differently from
those who have gone before. I may not call any one of the blessed
gods a cannibal.”[121] This revolt against the current forms of myths
was due in part to his belief in the moral perfection of divinity, in
part to his moral sense concerning man. His rule was, as laid down
by himself, that man should say only good things of the gods, and he
shrank from attributing to the divinities things which it would be base
for men to do. So in his fifth Nemean Ode he was unwilling to tell of
the fratricide of the heroes Peleus and Telamon, but broke off his
narrative abruptly, just as he rejected with indignation the shameful
tales told of Tantalus. Furthermore Pindar subjected the myths and
religious beliefs with which he had to deal to the test of reason;
among the several versions which he found current he recognized that
some must be false, and so he endeavored to separate the good from the
evil, to control the traditions of his people, and thus to practise a
free criticism in his work.
On the nature of sin Pindar, as the Greeks in general, holds that
whenever man passes the bounds appointed between a mortal and a god,
or between man and his fellowmen, he becomes thereby a sinner. Excess
is the form of sin which he makes repeatedly his theme. When he
praises Lampon of Aegina for “pursuing the mean with his thought and
maintaining it in his acts,”[122] he is recalling the principle laid
down in Hesiod’s verse, which had passed long since into a proverb:
“Keep a middle course; the seasonable in all things is best.”[123]
Again and again in varied forms he warns us to remember that man is
mortal: “If one prosper and enjoy a good name, still seek not to become
Zeus. Thou hast all, if ever perchance the fate to possess these
honors should come to thee. Mortal things befit a mortal.”[124] And
again he says: “But if a man shall have wealth and excel other men in
beauty, and if in the games he hath exhibited his strength and gained
distinction, let him still remember that his garment wraps mortal limbs
and that earth shall be the raiment of all in the end.”[125] Sin then
is presumption, and as such is punished by the gods. That “envy of
the gods,” which seems in Homer almost a childish resentment, is thus
given an ethical value which coincides very closely with Aeschylus’
interpretation of this belief. The moral character of Pindar’s form of
this doctrine is secured in part by the poet’s apparent belief that man
is a free moral agent. The sinner sometimes, like Ixion, might not be
able to endure prosperity, and so fall into insolent pride, and thence
into blind infatuation. In like fashion Bacchylides teaches that the
giants were destroyed by insolent pride, whereas the path to happiness
is open to all who will follow justice: “Warriors of Troy, Zeus, who
rules on high and beholds all things, is not the author of grievous
woes for mortals; no, open before all men is the path that leads to
unswerving Justice, attendant of holy Eunomia and prudent Themis: happy
the land whose sons take her to dwell with them. But insolence—the
spirit void of reverence, who luxuriates in shifty wiles and illicit
follies—who swiftly gives a man his neighbor’s wealth and power, but
anon plunges him into a gulf of ruin—she it was who destroyed the
Giants, overweening.”[126]
On the question of man’s freedom Pindar is not entirely clear. And yet
he seems to hold that man, and not some god, is responsible for his
initial wrongdoing. But he also points out that when man has once given
way to that insolent pride, which is presumptuous sin, then the gods
in punishing him may drive him on his wrong course until the man is
utterly ruined. This doctrine appears more clearly in Aeschylus.
When we come to Pindar’s view of the life after death, we find that
he has a more exalted vision than the poets of an earlier day. The
ideas of immortality, of future rewards and punishments, of rebirth,
and of a possible final bliss, which were current from the early sixth
century at least, had not failed to have their effect on our poet. In
a remarkable fragment he sets forth a doctrine as to the relation of
body and soul which is very similar to that held by the Orphics, under
whose influence he had evidently come: “The bodies of all men follow
all-conquering death; but life’s image still liveth on, for that only
is from the gods. It sleeps when the limbs are active, but ofttimes in
dreams it shows to the sleeper coming judgment, a judgment of peace
and pain.”[127] That is, when the body is awake it hampers the soul
so that the soul is numbed in sleep; but when the soul is free from
the domination of the imprisoning flesh, it then enjoys its proper
powers. There is a famous passage in the second Olympian which sets
forth Pindar’s views of future reward and punishment. According to
this passage, sins committed on the earth are punished beneath the
earth, and those done beneath the earth are punished in the soul’s next
reincarnation. So heaven and hell are always present to man’s soul,
whether here in the light of the sun, or in the darkness of Hades.
Those from whom atonement is accepted in the lower world are allowed to
return to the earth in high positions; when they have accomplished this
rebirth thrice, if they have been just, they may enter into their final
happiness. These are Pindar’s words: “The guilty souls of the dead
straightway pay the penalty here on earth; and the sins done in this
kingdom of Zeus are judged by one beneath the ground, who delivereth
his judgment to hateful necessity. But ever in the night and in the day
alike the good receive as their lot a life free from toil, enjoying the
light of the sun. They vex neither the ground nor the water of the sea
for food that does not satisfy, but among the honored gods, those who
have found their pleasure in keeping their oaths, enjoy a life free
from tears; but the others bear suffering too great to look upon. Yet
all those who have tarried thrice on either side (of death) and have
persevered in keeping their souls wholly free from unjust deeds, travel
the road of Zeus to the tower of Cronos. There the ocean breezes blow
around the islands of the blest, golden flowers bloom, some from
glorious trees on the land, others water feeds. With garlands the blest
entwine their hands and crown their temples.”[128]
We need not pause here to point out in detail the great contrast
between Pindar’s ideas of religion and those expressed in the Homeric
and Hesiodic poetry. He presented a higher doctrine of future rewards
and punishments, which was binding upon men in all the relations of
this life; and he expressed a higher conception of morality and of
justice, to whose obligations the gods as well as men were subject.
The baser elements of mythology he refined away and elevated thereby
men’s ideas of the divine; and by making righteousness and truth the
prime attributes of the gods, in accordance with which they punished
the wicked and blessed the good, he lifted morality and religion to a
nobler plane.
When we turn to the two older tragic poets, Aeschylus and Sophocles,
we find that they teach doctrines very like those of Pindar, although
naturally they dwell on those elements in religion and morality that
are adapted to their tragic themes; and they differ between themselves
in the points which they emphasize. Aeschylus makes prominent the
punitive aspect of divine justice; he dwells upon the punishment which
must inevitably follow sin, and which pursues a guilty line from
generation to generation. The poet displays a moral earnestness and
intensity like that of a Hebrew prophet, and he shows an extraordinary
profundity in his handling of moral and religious themes; furthermore
he is consciously a religious teacher. Sophocles keeps religion more in
the background, using it as one of the materials which he as a literary
artist can employ in his dramas; yet he is important as a religious
poet for he lays especial stress on the necessity of purity of heart,
which for him is the substance of piety toward the gods.
The elder tragedian, Aeschylus, was born at Eleusis about the year 525
B.C. Tradition told that he fought in the Persian wars and was
wounded at Marathon. He began to present tragedies about the year 500,
and continued to produce them until about three years before his death
in 456. Aeschylus was a man of mighty concepts and massive thought, to
which his condensed and pregnant style corresponds; a man of a profound
and religious nature, strongly influenced by the Mysteries, he thought
deeply upon the problems of men and of gods. He faced with honesty the
contradictions involved in the current notions with regard to the moral
nature of the gods, and in the ethical standards of men. Like Pindar he
elevated and refined the traditional myths and made them a medium for
the teaching of great moral truths.
Aeschylus regards the order of the universe as moral throughout. This
view appears even in the Prometheus Bound, that unique drama of revolt.
When we now read this tragedy alone, it seems as if Zeus were
represented as a lawless tyrant, using his power and might in most
unjust ways. But it is evident that if we had the other two plays of
the trilogy, the sympathy which we feel with the Titan Prometheus would
be lessened, that we should realize that the extant play represents the
transition from violence to law, and that in reality the rule of Zeus
is not one of might but one subject ultimately to the law of justice.
Although Aeschylus, like all of his day, was a polytheist, he exalts
Zeus far above all other divinities. He regards him as preëminent,
the possessor of all majesty and power, whose will always prevails,
so that, when he speaks, the thing he wishes comes to pass. The poet
uses the highest and most comprehensive epithets of him throughout his
plays; in the Supplices the chorus appeal to Zeus as “King of kings,
most blessed of the blessed, most perfect power of perfect powers;
blessed Zeus”; and again they address him as “the one who rules through
infinite time.”[129] In other passages the poet seems to feel as if
language were unequal to the task of describing adequately the majesty
and power of this supreme god. In his mind Zeus surpasses the other
gods so much that his will represents the whole of the divine laws; to
him man inevitably turns in doubt and perplexity. As the chorus say in
the Agamemnon:
Zeus—whate’er ’Zeus’ expresseth of His essence—
If the name please him on the lips of prayer,
With his name on my lips I seek his presence,
Knowing none else I may with him compare.
Yea, though I ponder, in the balance laying
All else, no help save Zeus alone I find,
If I would cast aside the burden weighing,
All to no profit, ever on my mind.[130]
It is not impossible that Aeschylus cherished ideas of divinity which
approached the pantheism or the henotheism of a later age. Clement of
Alexandria has preserved two of his verses which are so extraordinary
that we are glad to have them attested also by Philodemus.[131] When in
these the poet says: “Zeus is the ether, Zeus the earth also; also
the sky. Zeus is all things, and that which is above all things as
well,” this syncretistic expression may well be due to the influence
of Orphism or of the philosopher Heraclitus; but whatever the source
of the idea it stands at diameter with popular tradition. Of course it
does not exclude the gods of the popular belief, who could be included
in the divine unity, as later thought usually conceived them. That
Aeschylus uses the gods of the people in his plays is not surprising,
for the dramatic poet, whatever his personal belief, must always use
material familiar to his audience and suited to his dramatic and poetic
purpose.
In the Prometheus Bound the Titan threatens Zeus with Fate and declares
that even he cannot escape Necessity. But we must remember that
the Prometheus, as I have said before, is a drama which represents
transition from the old order to the new, and that at the end of the
trilogy there was no conflict between Zeus and Fate; and in general
Aeschylus, though not always clear, most often represents Fate either
as the will of Zeus himself or as his assistant. The former idea is
again and again expressed in the Supplices, where the will of the
supreme god is shown as something mighty and absolute which none may
transgress.
But if Zeus is exalted to this supreme position, it is as a god
of supreme justice. With the poet the ideas of justice and piety,
injustice and impiety are equivalent. Like Hesiod he makes Justice the
daughter of Zeus, whom Zeus always supports and avenges, “allotting
duly ill to the wicked, blessing to the righteous.” To the poet it is
inconceivable that a god of perfect justice could desire anything in
the world except what is right and just; and therefore he conceives
that man’s obligation is to strive after that which is just and
righteous, and so to put himself into harmony with the divine will. A
failure to do this is sin. Indeed the poet says that when men disregard
justice they injure the gods, and more than once sin is spoken of as a
disease of the mind. The sinner is a vain creature, laboring under a
delusion which oftentimes springs from o’erweening pride and is doomed
to bear tears for its fruit. The envy of the gods, which seems in Homer
a childish thing, is in Aeschylus only the resentment which they feel
toward a sinner who has been led away by success into insolent pride
and so is doomed to punishment. In the Persians Xerxes is represented
as having been swept away by his haughty insolence so that he lacked
discretion (σωφροσύνη) and came to his doom. The shade of Darius says
to the chorus:
Zeus sits above, a chastener of thoughts
Exceeding proud, a stern inquisitor.
Wherefore, since Heaven’s warning bids be prudent,
Admonish him with counsel of wise speech
To cease from flouting Gods with reckless pride.[132]
And Xerxes’ armies were likewise doomed to pay the price of insolence
and of their godless thoughts.
Furthermore Aeschylus teaches that good men must avoid the wicked, and
illustrates the truth by the fact that it was evil companions who urged
Xerxes to his folly. There is a striking passage in the Septem in which
Eteocles, when informed that the seer Amphiaraus is among the heroes
who are besieging Thebes, says:
Woe for the omen that with impious men
Joineth a righteous man in fellowship!
Than evil converse, in all enterprise
Nothing is worse; its harvest let none reap.
Infatuation’s field hath death for fruit.
If the godfearing man for shipmates hath
A crew hot-hearted in iniquity,
With that god-hated tribe he perisheth:
The righteous man who dwells with citizens
Traitrous to guests and reckless of the Gods,
Is justly taken in the selfsame net,
Lashed by the same impartial scourge of God.[133]
We have just seen that Pindar shows a tendency to make man responsible
for his sin, quite in contrast to the popular belief which still kept
the Homeric view that the gods were responsible for all things. With
this popular idea Aeschylus seems at times in accord. But if we
consider his plays in their entirety, he makes man responsible for the
first step. In the Eumenides, for example, the Furies declare that
no just man has ever put his hands justly to any deed and met their
wrath. The lesson is that when men have taken the initial downward step
themselves an evil divinity or daemon drives them on, but that the
first step no man is forced to take. When, however, he has taken it,
then the poet represents the sinner as through god’s will infatuated
with his sin. No other extant poet shows so impressively how sin
relentlessly persists through generation after generation.
The most familiar illustration is found in Aeschylus’ treatment of the
story of the bloody line of Atreus, who sinned by slaying his brother’s
sons and offering their flesh, an unholy banquet, to their father;
then Agamemnon’s queen, with her paramour Aegisthus, slew her lord on
his return from Troy; and finally Agamemnon’s son Orestes murdered his
mother and Aegisthus to avenge his sire. Thus through three generations
the curse ran, each generation adding its own crime until only the
divine intervention of Apollo and Athena could stay the course of sin
and its doom. When in the Choephoroe Orestes has exacted his vengeance
and stained himself with his mother’s blood, the chorus finally sings:
Lo, how upon the palace royal hath burst
The third storm that fulfils the house’s fate!
First, wretch Thyestes at a feast accurst
Of his own children ate:
Then shrieked the second storm the agony
Of that king in that laver hacked to death,
When the Achaians’ chief to treachery
There yielded up his breath:
Now on the third storm’s wild wings down doth sweep
A Saviour—or a Doom shall he be named?
Where shall the Curse end?—how be lulled to sleep
Its fury?—how be tamed?[134]
A similar theme was handled by him in his tragedies which dealt with
the history of the royal house of Thebes. Against the warning of the
oracle Laius married Jocasta; their son Oedipus slew his father and
wed his own mother who bore him children. Under the burden of Oedipus’
curse their two sons, Eteocles and Polynices, fell in fratricidal
strife. These are dark bloody tales, but in the tragedies of Aeschylus
they were given a fearful moral import. It is true that the same
stories were handled by other tragedians, but by none with such moral
impressiveness.
The mind of the poet was too searching and earnest to avoid the
difficult problems which appear in real life when there is a conflict
of duties. Such a conflict arises when Agamemnon has to choose between
slaying his daughter and failing to do his duty by his country; again
when Antigone at the close of the Seven against Thebes has to decide
whether she will disobey the higher law which requires that the dead
shall be buried, or resist the edict of the state which forbids her the
service to her dead. Throughout the Choephoroe and Eumenides Orestes
has to face the duty of avenging his father’s death laid upon him by
Apollo, and the pious reverence which he should show his mother. The
poet offers no satisfactory solution to such problems as these—indeed,
his purpose in bringing them out clearly was probably dramatic rather
than moral. Yet whatever his purpose, it is important for us to note
that he realized the moral conflict clearly as a part of man’s common
experience.
I have already said that Aeschylus dwells chiefly upon the retributory
nature of punishment, teaching that the sinner must suffer for his own
deeds. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” was no less binding
in Greek than Hebrew justice:
Destinies, Mighty Ones, grant that from Zeus may the issue betide
Even as Justice requireth, who now is arrayed on our side.
‘Ever the tongue of hate shall the tongue of hate requite:
Aye for the stroke of murder the stroke of murder shall smite’
Justice exacting her dues cries ringing-voiced this law.
‘Doers must suffer’—so sayeth the immemorial saw.
* * * * *
A law saith, ‘Murder-drops of blood-libation
On earth spilt, cry for blood in expiation.’
The Avenging Sprite shrieks, hastening Havoc on
Which brings from graves of men dead long agone
Ruin to crown the work of ruin done.[135]
This principle runs through the entire trilogy of the Oresteia.
Agamemnon lost his life as recompense for the life of his daughter
Iphigenia whom he slew with his own hand, and the murder of Agamemnon
was avenged by the slaughter of Clytemnestra and her paramour.
Throughout the three plays doom follows the criminal relentlessly and
only divine interference in the end clears the account. And yet at
times Aeschylus teaches a gentler belief, that wisdom comes through
suffering and constraint, and that it is through the discipline of pain
that we travel the road to understanding.
Although Aeschylus lays overwhelming emphasis on the truth that
punishment for sin falls upon the sinner in this life, he also teaches
that there is punishment for the wicked in the world below. In his
description of the dead there are many reminiscences of Homer. But his
Hades is not Homeric; there is reality in punishment there no less than
upon earth. In the Eumenides the Furies threaten Orestes thus:
Nay, I shall suck—thou canst not choose but pay the penalty—
The red gore from thy living limbs, and win me out of thee
The banquet of a draught that shall with awful anguish flow.
Yea, I will waste thy living frame, then drag thee far below,
There to pay all thy penalty, the mother-murder’s woe.
So shall all else that have transgressed,
Have sinned against a God, a guest,
Or parents, mark how each receives
The dues of sin that Justice gives.
For Hades ’neath the earth waits every soul,
A mighty judge who watcheth to enscroll
All sins on his eternal memory’s roll.[136]
Of the rewards of the righteous in the next life Aeschylus has no word
to say. There is no Elysium or Islands of the Blest.
Aeschylus represents the Athens of the Persian Wars; Sophocles belongs
to the Periclean age. He was born fifteen years before the battle of
Salamis and led the chorus which sang a paean to celebrate the Greek
victory. To his contemporaries his life seemed happy, as if he were
beloved by the gods above all other men. In 468 B.C. he was
successful in contending for the tragic prize with Aeschylus, and
he continued to write until his death in 406. Instead of the rugged
strength and passion that we find in Aeschylus, Sophocles displays
a sunny and gentle nature that naturally sought out the kindly and
mediating elements in life. A conservative, he was not an innovator,
critic, or teacher, as both Aeschylus and Euripides were; he does
not make his characters reason much on the deeper things of life or
criticize the traditional order.
Yet in one sense he is the most religious of the Greek poets, showing
a faith in divine government and a wide outlook on the universe which
the two other tragedians did not display. He does not break with the
traditional belief as to the nature of the gods; indeed at most points
he follows closely the Homeric conception; they are still to his mind
the givers of evil as well as of good to men, and in fact his chorus in
the Antigone quotes with approval the ancient saying that evil seems
good soon or late to him whose mind the god draws to mischief.[137]
Although he does not follow Pindar and Aeschylus in ascribing to divine
beings a pure morality, yet he is inclined to believe with the elder
poets that “Justice revealed from of old sits with Zeus in the might
of the eternal laws.”[138] There are only two passages in which his
characters may be said to criticize the gods. In the first Philoctetes,
smarting under his suffering and neglect, exclaims:
No evil yet was crushed.
The Heavens will ever shield it. ’Tis their sport
To turn back all things rancorous and malign
From going down to the grave, and send instead
The good and true. Oh, how shall we commend
Such acts, how construe them? When I extol
Things god-like, I find evil in the Gods.[139]
But it must be observed that any other sentiment would have been out
of character for Philoctetes at this point. The second is a fragment
from his lost play, Aleites, in which some speaker, contemplating the
prosperity of the wicked and the misfortunes of the good, declares
that the gods ought not to order things thus for mortals, but that
on the contrary the pious should have some evident profit from their
piety and the unjust should pay the penalty for their wrongs that all
might see.[140] But this fragment is so at variance in sentiment with
Sophocles’ general attitude that it has been conjectured, not without
probability, that it came from Euripides. Even if we reject this
conjecture, as I think we must, we need not suppose that the sentiments
which the poet puts into the mouths of his characters always represent
his real view. A dramatist, as we must remind ourselves, should make
the speakers in his play express sentiments in harmony with their
characters and for the most part will have them utter moral ideas with
which most of his audience is in sympathy, unless indeed he would play
the part of innovator or prophet. As a matter of fact Sophocles’ own
attitude seems to be expressed in another fragment: “No man is wise
save him whom god honors; but if one look unto the gods, even if the
god bid him depart from justice, there he must go. For nothing to
which the gods lead men is base.”[141] This seems the key to Sophocles’
religious attitude. He is confident that however things may seem to us
in our short-sightedness, if we could only see the purposes of the gods
in their totality, we should know that they are good.
The bases of man’s life and action, his highest duty, Sophocles teaches
is piety and discretion, σωφροσύνη. When in the Philoctetes Heracles
appears, he urges upon the heroes that when they return to Troy they be
mindful, in laying waste the land, to show reverence towards the gods:
But, take good heed,
Midst all your spoil to hold the gods in awe.
For our great Father counteth piety
Far above all. This follows men in death,
And fails them not when they resign their breath.[142]
And the chorus sings at the end of the Antigone:
Wise thought hath the first place in happiness
Before all else, and piety to Heaven
Must be preserved. High boastings of the proud
Bring sorrows to the height to punish pride:—
A lesson men shall learn when they are old.[143]
In the Ajax Athena says:
Then, warned by what thou seest, be thou not rash
To vaunt high words toward Heaven, nor swell thy port
Too proudly, if in puissance of thy hand
Thou passest others, or in mines of wealth.
Since Time abases and uplifts again
All that is human, and the modest heart
Is loved by Heaven, who hates the intemperate will.[144]
There is an extraordinary passage in the Oedipus Coloneus where Oedipus
is made to say, when his strength fails him and he cannot go to the
altar to sacrifice, but must send one of his daughters: “For I think
that one soul suffices to pay this debt for ten thousand, if it come
with good will (purity) to the shrine.”[145] Piety, reverence, and
purity, these to Sophocles are the highest qualities of man.
For the poet the moral order was unchanging, dependent not upon caprice
but having a divine source and a divine sanction; the laws of heaven
are therefore superior to those of man, and man’s obedience to the
higher law is made his duty and the means of his consecration. In an
ode in Oedipus the King, which is called forth by the king’s harshness
and by the suspicion that he is not wholly guiltless, as well as by the
queen’s bold contempt for Apollo’s oracle, the chorus sings:
O may I live
Sinless and pure in every word and deed
Ordained by those firm laws, that hold their realm on high!
Begotten of Heaven, of brightest Ether born,
Created not of man’s ephemeral mould,
They ne’er shall sink to slumber in oblivion.
A Power of God is there, untouched by Time.[146]
That is, the chorus here pray that they may always show their piety and
reverence by obeying the divine laws. This sentiment is repeated more
than once in the extant tragedies; as when Odysseus warns Agamemnon
not to refuse burial to the body of Ajax: “’Tis not he, ’tis the law
of heaven that thou would’st hurt.”[147] Through this belief Sophocles
justified Antigone in her decision to defy the edict of the state, for
Creon had ordained that her brother Polynices might not be buried,
since he had attacked Thebes. But Greek belief regarded it as a sacred
duty of the next of kin to bury their dead, and this duty Antigone
could not but fulfil, although she knew that death would be her lot.
When Creon asks her if she did indeed dare to transgress his edict, she
replies:
I heard it not from Zeus, nor came it forth
From Justice, where she reigns in the Underworld.
They too have published to mankind a law.
Nor could I think thine edict of such might
That one who is mortal thus could overrule
The infallible, unwritten laws of Heaven.
Their majesty begins not from today
But from eternity, and none can tell
The hour that saw their birth.[148]
It was for this same principle that Socrates, a generation later, gave
up his life. In his defense he told his jury why: “Perhaps someone
may say, ‘But Socrates, can you not go off and live in exile, give up
talking and be quiet?’ This is the very point on which it is hardest to
persuade some of you, for if I say that this is exile to be disobeying
the god and therefore that it is impossible to keep quiet, you will
not believe me, but will say that I am ironical.”[149] Socrates
believed that he had a divine commission to question and examine
others, and that duty he must perform as the heroine in the tragedy
must perform hers, cost him what it might.
The eternal problem of human suffering, the fact that pain and
misfortune are not always the result of wrong doing, but that the
innocent suffer while the guilty escape, was a matter with which
Sophocles was much concerned. His predecessor Aeschylus had tried to
show in opposition to experience that sin always preceded pain; and in
Sophocles the doom of Creon and his house is due to the king’s proud
resentment wherein he sinned against heaven’s law. But in the same play
the heroine Antigone, who has obeyed the divine mandates, is forced to
suffer a most pathetic fate. King Oedipus was not intentionally guilty,
and the fate of the innocent queen Deianeira surpasses in pathos that
of any other tragic heroine. She was impelled by the tender desire to
recall the love of her faithless husband, and the poet acquits her of
blame, “She erred, though she intended well.”[150] But none the less she
involved both husband and herself in dreadful doom.
The tragic poet found his solution of this ancient perplexing problem
only in the larger view, which regarded the individual as but a slight
factor in the economy of the whole. At times suffering was regarded as
a means of discipline: “The soul that has been bedded in misfortune
sees many things.”[151] Thus through pain one learns and has his nature
developed. Theseus, in the Oedipus Coloneus, offers a kindly welcome
to the exile Oedipus and his daughters, for his own sufferings in
exile have produced a spirit of kindliness and charity in him. Oedipus
himself in the same play is unlike the headstrong king of the earlier
tragedy; suffering and time have chastened and enlightened him, though
they have not made him mild in spirit.
Sophocles also displays great sympathy with human weakness and
suffering. This appears in his treatment of the character of Deianeira,
and above all in the tender pathos with which he brings out the
human longings of Antigone, who though she has nobly obeyed heaven’s
unwritten law, yet shrinks from suffering and death and from the loss
of all that youth promises. It is not surprising, therefore, that we
find in Sophocles mercy emphasized as a divine attribute, and this
quality in the gods held up as an example to men. On this Polynices
makes his appeal to Oedipus:
But seeing that Zeus on his almighty throne
Keeps Mercy in all he does to counsel him,
Thou, too, my father, let her plead with thee![152]
The sentiment is not far from Portia’s plea:
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice.
Sophocles’ sympathy for undeserved suffering, his understanding of
the weakness of men, of their liability to error, and his faith in
the gods, all led him to try to take the larger view of the ills of
life, to which the philosopher Heraclitus had already given expression
when he said that god does all things for the harmony of the whole;
and that while men regard some things as right and others wrong, to
god all things are fair and good and right. The individual is only a
part of the great whole, and when human experiences are regarded _sub
specie aeternitatis_, we shall find that that which seems evil is
only permitted to make a just and harmonious unity. The poet tried to
conceive of the life of man,
As a great whole, not analyzed to parts
But each part having reference to all.
Looked at from this universal point of view the sufferings of
Philoctetes, Antigone, Deianeira, and Oedipus are justified to men.
It was natural that Sophocles should use many Homeric concepts with
reference to the condition of men and the life after death. In the
Antigone alone is there any personal hope of future happiness. It
may well be that the poet’s sense of what was fitting dramatically
is responsible for his conservative attitude; he was dealing with
traditional material, and using themes and incidents which were
far remote in time from his audience. It may have seemed to him
that fidelity to his subject and the requirements of artistic unity
prevented his putting into the mouths of his characters sentiments
which an early age could hardly have conceived. Sophocles was not
animated by the iconoclasm which we shall find in the bolder Euripides;
but if the future life is not pictured in Sophocles’ extant tragedies,
we need not doubt for a moment that he believed in immortality. He had
been initiated into the Mysteries and one of the finest expressions of
the ecclesiastical confidence which the initiates felt came from his
pen: “Thrice blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites and
then go to the house of Hades, for they alone have life there; but all
others have only woe.”[153]
Such, in brief, were the teachings of some of the greatest poets of the
sixth and fifth centuries before our era. But these represent only one
side of Greek thought in this time. In Athens there were influences,
political, social, and intellectual, which were working profound
changes. Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles belonged to an older order;
the voices of the new age will concern us in our next lecture.