The defeat of the Persians at Salamis in 480 B.C. made Athens
the first state in Greece. Not only had she suffered enormous losses in
the ruin of her city and lands for the common cause, but she had borne
the brunt of the naval fight at Salamis, as ten years before, with the
brave men from Plataea, she had driven the Persian hordes from the
plain of Marathon into the sea. The Athenians had acquitted themselves
well, for they had shown the loftiest patriotism and loyalty to the
cause of Hellas; now their high position was recognized even by their
jealous rivals. Athens entered on a brilliant period of fifty years
which has never been equalled in the world’s history. Within that time
she produced statesmen, architects, artists, and poets who have never
been surpassed since in any state in the same length of time. Her naval
power, her wealth and culture, placed her in a supreme position.
Neither the Athenians nor the other Greeks forgot the gods to whom they
believed that they owed their victory over the Persians. To Apollo
at Delphi the allies sent a golden tripod set on a pillar of three
bronze serpents bearing the names of those who made the offering; the
Athenians on their own account erected a trophy there, and on the
Acropolis they deposited the broken cables of the bridge which the
Persians had built across the Hellespont. Soon they set up in the
same place a colossal bronze statue of Athena made from the spoils
captured at Marathon. A new temple to the goddess in place of the one
destroyed by the Persians was planned by Cimon; but his ostracism in
461 B.C. stopped its building. When Pericles was able to
carry out his plans for adorning Athens, he determined to enlarge the
structure; as a result the Parthenon with its wondrous sculptures and
great chryselephantine statue of the goddess was completed in 438
B.C. At the entrance of the Acropolis a splendid propylaea
was begun and many other public buildings were erected to adorn the
city. The chief divinity of Athens, the goddess Athena, now held her
position without a rival; all the other gods were in second place. The
conception of the goddess was essentially that fixed by the Homeric
poems, and as such Phidias represented her with aegis, spear, and
shield, carrying victory in her hand. She became the embodiment of the
power and the glory of the state.
In an earlier lecture I referred to the part which Pisistratus
played during the sixth century in fostering Orphism at Athens and
in developing the mysteries at Eleusis. Now the Athenian success in
driving back the Persian invaders had filled the citizens with a
spirit which had little desire for the sacraments of the Orphics, and
furthermore the mysteries at Eleusis satisfied all longing for mystic
assurance of security and of future happiness. But Pisistratus had also
emphasized the Olympian religion as set forth in the Homeric poems.
Indeed, we may say that he produced a Homeric revival; for whatever
the truth may be in the tradition that he had the Homeric text fixed
and written down in the Attic alphabet, there can be little question
that he made the Iliad and Odyssey more widely known by ordaining that
the rhapsodes should recite them at the great Panathenaic festival.
The emphasis given by him to the Olympian divinities resulted in the
exaltation of Athena and the subordination of most local cults to her
worship upon the Acropolis. It was Pisistratus also who developed and
gave new magnificence to the Panathenaic festival. This was annual,
but was celebrated with special splendor every fourth year. At these
festivals the recitation of the Homeric poems brought before the
people in impressive manner the whole pageantry of Olympus. The great
procession with which the festival culminated—that procession known to
us from Phidias’ frieze upon the Parthenon—had as its objective point
the Acropolis, where the sacred robe and other gifts were offered to
the patron goddess, Athena. Her old temple on the site once occupied
by the goodly house of Erectheus was adorned at the tyrant’s orders
with a peristyle and new pediment sculptures. The battle of Athena
Polias and the gods against the giants replaced the old sculptures of
Zeus encountering a three-headed monster and of Heracles destroying
the Hydra. Thus Pisistratus made the temple of Athena the center of
the united Athenian state, and established the goddess as the chief
divinity of Attica.
This Olympian religion was well suited to the state in the fifth
century. The Athenian success in saving Greece from the Persians had
magnified the importance of Athens in the eyes of all her citizens.
Their life was now one of action; they were proudly conscious of their
expanding empire, their growing power, and increasing wealth. The joy
which they felt in their present existence had something of the epic
quality in it. Furthermore the growth of free democracy, which opened
up many channels of successful activity through the state, had not yet
resulted in that individualism with its disintegrating tendencies which
marked the fourth century, and the common interests of the Athenians
made the state the center of their thought. They regarded it as an
organization existing for the benefit of all free citizens. Its unity
and its power, so far as Athens was concerned, were symbolized by the
goddess Athena. On her home and on her worship the resources of the
state were lavished. It was inevitable that her religion should be
regarded as primarily a state affair, and that at the same time she
and the other protecting gods should seem to the individual citizen
somewhat more removed from human interests and sympathy as they gained
in the august majesty which the wealth of the empire lent them. Exactly
as to many a Christian the wealth and magnificence of a splendid
cathedral seem to put God farther away than the bare simplicity of some
beloved chapel, so the Parthenon undoubtedly made Athena seem more
august and more remote to many an Athenian than the rude and simple
protecting deity of his country home.
The result of these various causes which were operative in the fifty
years of Athens’ greatness was that a part of religion became a state
concern, and that men’s loyalty was centered on the state. Patriotism
and pride in empire took the place to a considerable extent of what
may be roughly described as personal religion. This, of course, does
not mean that a belief in the gods among the mass of the people had
died out in any sense. The ordinary Athenian continued his worship
as before at the local shrines and joined with the other citizens in
paying tribute to the great divinities. But especially with many of the
intellectual and leading men religion was absorbed, so to speak, into
patriotism, exactly as has been the case in our own time in France and
Italy. This attitude of mind finds supreme expression in the funeral
oration of Pericles, which he pronounced over those who had died in
the first year of the Peloponnesian War. His speech is devoted to
glorifying the Athenians and to celebrating the noble service which the
fallen rendered when they gave up their lives for their fatherland.
There is not one syllable about the gods, one word of gratitude to
heaven, or a single expression of solace to the relatives of the dead
based on any hope of immortality. In the service of the state Pericles
saw every incentive and every reward. This will be clear from the
following paragraphs:[154]
“Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens, and the
living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit, although they
may pray for a less fatal issue. The value of such a spirit is not to
be expressed in words. Any one can discourse to you forever about the
advantages of a brave defence, which you know already. But instead of
listening to him I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the
greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the love of her; and
when you are impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that
this empire has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had the
courage to do it, who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonor
always present to them, and who, if they failed in an enterprise, would
not allow their virtues to be lost to their country, but freely gave
their lives to her as the fairest offering which they could present at
her feast. The sacrifice which they collectively made was individually
repaid to them; for they received again each one for himself a praise
which grows not old, and the noblest of all sepulchres—I speak not of
that in which their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory
survives, and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both
in word and deed. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous men;
not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own
country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial
of them, graven not on stone, but in the hearts of men. Make them
your examples, and esteeming courage to be freedom and freedom to be
happiness, do not weigh too nicely the perils of war. The unfortunate
who has no hope of a change for the better has less reason to throw
away his life than the prosperous who, if he survive, is always
liable to a change for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall
makes the most serious difference. To a man of spirit, cowardice and
disaster coming together are far more bitter than death, striking him
unperceived at a time when he is full of courage and animated by the
general hope.
Wherefore I do not now commiserate the parents of the dead who stand
here; I would rather comfort them. You know that your life has been
passed amid manifold vicissitudes; and that they may be deemed
fortunate who have gained most honour, whether an honorable death
like theirs, or an honorable sorrow like yours, and whose days have
been so ordered that the term of their happiness is likewise the term
of their life. I know how hard it is to make you feel this, when the
good fortune of others will too often remind you of the gladness which
once lightened your hearts. And sorrow is felt at the want of those
blessings, not which a man never knew, but which were a part of his
life before they were taken from him. Some of you are of an age at
which they may hope to have other children, and they ought to bear
their sorrow better; not only will the children who may hereafter be
born make them forget their own lost ones, but the city will be doubly
a gainer. She will not be left desolate, and she will be safer. For a
man’s counsel cannot have equal weight or worth, when he alone has no
children to risk in the general danger. To those of you who have passed
their prime I say: ‘Congratulate yourselves that you have been happy
during the greater part of your days; remember that your life of sorrow
will not last long, and be comforted by the glory of those who are
gone. For the love of honour alone is ever young, and not riches,
as some say, but honour is the delight of men when they are old and
useless.’”
The loyalty to the state, however, which animates this oration we must
remember actually resulted in the glorification of Athena and the other
great gods. For they, too, were a part of the state, and had a share
in its reputation and prosperity. But I must point out again that in
this exaltation of the Olympic gods there was nothing of that personal
relation of the individual to divinity, such as must exist in every
really religious age.
Yet at the risk of repetition, I would recall the fact that the
practice of religion by individuals had not ceased at Athens. The
common man still paid devotion to his guardian gods, made offerings to
the dead, and shared in many forms of worship. Furthermore the spread
of the Eleusinian mysteries in this century, so that a new and larger
initiation hall had to be erected at Eleusis, shows that thoughts
of the future life and the deepest religious feelings still existed
in large numbers of the citizens. We have here, then, an apparent
contradiction, such as has appeared many times and in many places in
the religious history of man. Many of the leaders of the state were
interested in religion only as it was an affair of state, in the same
way in which the army and navy were. On the other hand there were
large numbers who felt a more personal interest in religion and who
cultivated a more personal relation to divinity. Nor were there lacking
men of the most intellectual class to deal with the higher concepts of
religion which had been developing during the recent centuries. These
ideas find their truest utterance in the work of the poets, and we have
already seen how Pindar, Aeschylus, and Sophocles interpreted nobler
views with regard to the gods, human conduct, and man’s relation to the
divinities, to all Greece and especially to Athens which had now become
the intellectual center of the Hellenic world.
But another new force had been developing among the Greeks during
the sixth century which was destined to deal a far greater blow to
traditional religion than any other—I mean philosophy. This began
in Ionia and was cultivated in other parts of greater Greece before
it came to Athens. But after the Persian Wars the prominence and
prosperity of that city was so great and her intellectual eminence
was so high that she attracted the men of note in many departments of
life. Among them was the philosopher Anaxagoras of Clazomenae who made
Athens his home for about thirty years (c. 462-432 B.C.).
He became a member of the most intellectual Athenian society of his
day, a friend of Euripides, and an intimate of Pericles. When dangers
began to threaten the state, with the prospect of war looming on the
horizon, the people began to blame their great leader; to injure him,
they banished one and another of his friends. The two most noted were
Phidias the sculptor, of whose art the marbles of the Parthenon are
still the unsurpassed witnesses, and Anaxagoras the philosopher; the
charge against both was impiety. Anaxagoras taught that the sun was a
red hot mass of rock, as the moon was a cold mass, like the earth.
According to this teaching the sun and moon could no longer be
regarded as gods, so that a charge of impiety was as easily based on
such doctrines as it was on the teaching of Galileo twenty centuries
later. But although the philosopher was driven out, philosophy could
not be so easily banished. The eager intellectual life of Athens had
caught the spark, and the flame of philosophy was never extinguished
on the Athenian altars for almost a thousand years, until the Emperor
Justinian closed the philosophic schools in 529 A.D.
Now philosophy aimed from the very first to explain the origin and
structure of the universe by reducing all things to a single principle,
or to a few principles at most. The purpose of the philosopher was
to carry out a more systematic search for unity than the thought of
the poet or of the ordinary man could accomplish. We have seen how
Hesiod and the Orphics tried by cosmogonies to explain the origin
of the world. The philosophers turned to physical science for their
explanation. But in every case their work was from its very nature
antagonistic to popular polytheism, which saw a separate divinity in
every phenomenon. It was inevitable that the conflict should become an
open one sooner or later.
Xenophanes of Colophon (flor. c. 540 B.C.) was the first to
enter the lists. Driven into exile by civil disturbances at about the
age of twenty-five, he lived most of his life in Sicily. He was as much
a social and religious reformer and satirist as philosopher. With a
frankness which passed beyond the freedom of his age he struck at
the popular beliefs with regard to the gods, which taught that the
gods were born and had clothes and voices and forms like mortals. He
illustrated the folly of the Greeks in making the gods after their own
image by reminding them that the Ethiopians made their gods flat-nosed
and black, and the Thracians theirs blue-eyed and red-haired, while if
cattle and horses and lions had but hands and could draw and mould and
fashion like men, then each would draw and fashion the gods in his own
image.[155] For the current notions of divinity he held Homer and Hesiod
responsible and charged that these poets had attributed to the gods
everything that was reckoned as shame and reproach among men—stealing,
adultery, and cheating.[156] He likewise opposed the doctrine that
the gods had taught men their knowledge, but declared that man had
always learned through experience and investigation the better way
for himself.[157] Xenophanes went even further than this and used the
science of his day to prove that what was regarded as the appearances
of the gods was merely meteorological phenomena. In the place of many
gods he declared that there was but one, and he not like mortal men
either in form or intelligence, but that he was wholly sight, wholly
intelligence, wholly hearing—that is to say, god and the universe are
identical, and the cosmos is eternal, sentient, and intelligent.[158]
There could hardly have been a greater contrast than between this
pantheism and the polytheism of the day. It is true that Xenophanes
offers no adequate explanation of the way in which phenomena arise;
he does not solve the problem of deriving the transient out of that
which is permanent and fixed. But nevertheless he crudely anticipated
the thought of later philosophers and theologians and began the open
struggle with polytheism which was to continue for many centuries.
Another philosopher who deserves our attention here is Heraclitus of
Ephesus who flourished in the early fifth century. As he surveyed the
world he was impressed with the variety of phenomena that moved before
him, with the fact that nothing is stable but that everything is always
in process of change. He declared therefore that nothing is permanent
but that all things in reality are in a state of flux and flow
(πάντα ῥεῖ). The explanation for this constant change he apparently
found in the crude science of the day which observed that changes in
temperature cause changes of form, some solids becoming liquid and
liquids gaseous. This phenomenon he thought was due to fire. Fire he
regarded as universal in the cosmos—indeed, as identical with it, and
he is reported as saying that this universe, which is the same for all
beings, no god or mortal has made, but it has always been and is and
ever will be eternal fire, which sometimes grows the brighter and again
is quenched. This fire he is willing to call god; it is to him the
principle which permeates the universe and causes all change within it.
Such being the case, Heraclitus maintains that true knowledge is not
concerned with many things but solely with the unity in the world
which his teachings set forth. In his scorn for his predecessors
he outdoes Xenophanes. Not only Homer and Hesiod, but Pythagoras,
Xenophanes, Archilochus, and Hecateus are alike condemned. Homer
and Archilochus he declares deserve to be driven from the games and
flogged, such folly had they taught.[159] In his assaults on the popular
religion Heraclitus did not concern himself so much with mythology
as with the rites and ceremonies current in his time. He evidently
attacked the representatives of the mystery religions, calling them
night walkers, magi, priests of Bacchus, devotees of the wine-vat, and
mystery-mongers. In another fragment he ridicules those who pray to
the images of the gods, for that is as if one were to pray to a man’s
house; and again he declares that if men on ordinary occasions sang
songs like the hymns which they raise in honor of Dionysus they would
be acting most shamelessly. Man’s duty to his mind is to devote himself
wholly to the apprehension of the divine unity in the world, of that
wisdom to which alone he would consent to give the name of Zeus.[160]
We have now seen from these two representatives how philosophy regarded
traditional polytheism, and taught that the unity of the universe was
identical with god. But neither Xenophanes nor Heraclitus offered any
satisfactory explanation of the way in which multiplicity could arise
out of unity. Still less did they conceive of a personal god. This
concept was reserved for Plato or possibly for his great teacher. A
slight approach toward an explanation of variety was made, it is true,
by Heraclitus, through his “fire” and also through a doctrine which I
have not mentioned, namely that “strife,” the action of opposites, is
the cause of change. Now another philosopher, Empedocles of Agrigentum,
whom we have already met as a mystic, offered an explanation of the
cause of phenomena not dissimilar to that of Heraclitus, and yet one
that marked an advance. For his elements Empedocles took the four of
popular belief—earth, air, fire, water, which he said were combined
in various forms by the principles of “friendship” and of “strife”;
or, as we should say today in less symbolic language, by affinity and
incompatibility. But like Heraclitus Empedocles fails to make clear how
or why these principles act at all on his elements. In short before
Anaxagoras no thinker conceived of any satisfactory formative or
motive principles to explain phenomena; likewise none had arrived at a
well defined distinction between a material principle and a formative
principle. Anaxagoras solved the problem in a way highly satisfactory
for his age and in a manner which unconsciously anticipated many of
the principles of modern science. According to him all substances
are elementary, existing in seeds or germs, infinite in number,
infinitesimal in size. Aristotle and the ancients in general understood
him to mean that these seeds or germs are minute particles of the
things which we know in the mass, as for example bread or water, or
flesh and bones. Some modern scholars think that he meant that the
original mass of matter was infinitely divided and that every atom had
in it a portion of everything else: the various combinations of these
seeds, atoms, we name bread, water, or flesh and bones according to the
predominance of these things in the seeds which make up the whole. Yet
whether Aristotle and the ancients or the moderns be right is a matter
of little moment to us now. Anaxagoras thought that these “seeds,”
whatever they were, were set in motion and combined to produce the
infinite diversity of the natural objects by Mind (Νοῦς).
Anaxagoras’ great service, then, was his introduction of Mind into
philosophy as a formative, a motive principle to provide the cause for
change and diversity. It is not to be denied that Anaxagoras conceived
his principle to be as material as the elements themselves, and that
he did not employ his principle fully, even after he introduced it
into the world. Indeed, he did not advance beyond a mechanical concept
of the cause of phenomena. But nevertheless he is significant in the
history of European thought as the founder of the dualistic system
which largely prevailed thereafter. His contemporaries, too, recognized
him as an innovator, for we are told that the wits of Athens nicknamed
him “Mind.” With the consequences of this new dualism we shall be much
concerned hereafter.
Another group of men contributed to the intellectual life of that
wonderful fifty years of Athenian history which began with the defeat
of the Persians and ended with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.
How keen the intellectual life of that time was is shown by the high
excellence of the plays to which the masses of the common citizens
listened in the theater. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were
not enjoyed by the few but by the great body of Athenian citizens,
and their plays were known even among the remote Greek colonies.
The intellectual spirit of the age was stimulated to inquiry and to
scepticism. Herodotus is wholly sceptical, and the agnostic tendency
of the time is shown by the entire lack of mythology and superstition
displayed by Thucydides. A further stimulus was furnished by the
development of a higher education given by professional teachers—the
Sophists.
The last half of the fifth century is often called with good reason
the “Age of the Sophists.” We must understand clearly just what we
mean by this term as applied to the men of this time, for today the
word sophist has an unfavorable connotation. The Sophists of the fifth
century neither formed a philosophic school nor were they charlatans.
The most prominent among them was Protagoras of Abdera whose ability
and character is shown by the fact that Pericles selected him to draw
up the laws for Thurii in 444-43 B.C. Gorgias of Leontini in
Sicily enjoyed such high reputation that in 427 he was sent at the head
of an embassy to Athens. These Sophists were simply men devoted to the
pursuit of wisdom, frequently professional teachers who undertook to
give a general culture, to train their pupils to take part in society
and the state. For the old training which had been gained by
observation they substituted a formal discipline; they offered
instruction in rhetoric, politics, music, in short in all the higher
branches, as we should call them. But they had no unity of doctrine. By
the close of the fifth century they had fallen somewhat into disrepute
and were under suspicion, since in the Athenian state all the youths
who could afford to pay the fees which these professional teachers
charged belonged to the aristocratic class, which frequently voted
against the democracy. The Sophists owed their great influence to
the fact that they met an actual need in the small society of Athens
which included an unusual number of men with eager alert minds and
great intellectual curiosity. Now it should be observed that rhetoric,
which formed a considerable part of the new education introduced by
these professional teachers since political life was the chief career
open to a young Athenian, led to habits of examination, analysis, and
definition. We are all familiar with the fact that any attempt to
analyze and define customary beliefs and practices is pretty certain to
detect inconsistencies unobserved before; to lead, at first at least,
to confusion and to doubt as to the validity of the practice or belief
under consideration; and that when applied to traditional morality or
religion it is likely to loosen the obligations which men have hitherto
regarded. For illustrations of this truth we have only to look about
us and to see how in this generation, as in the generations of our
fathers, long accepted beliefs have crumbled before examination, as for
example the institution of slavery, the justice of which few questioned
a century and a quarter ago. So it was inevitable that in Athens
some of the effects of the sophistic teaching should be destructive.
And these effects were exaggerated by the great store which was set
on skill in disputation. When moral or religious themes were under
discussion, the point at issue was not the value of this or that
position, but rather the relative skill of the disputants. We are so
familiar with this in academic life, in college debates, for example,
that the question of the moral effect does not rise in our minds. But
it is little wonder that in the fifth century in Athens the Sophists
were charged with making the worse cause the better.
Furthermore the Sophists were sceptical as to the possibility of
acquiring absolute knowledge about anything. This scepticism may have
been due to a failure on the part of the science of the day which led
individuals to turn from nature to man as the object of their inquiry.
Protagoras maintained that all knowledge was relative, since the only
way in which a man can know anything is through his senses; through
them he perceives that an object is hot or cold, round or square, sweet
or bitter. He pointed out, also, that the same object will not always
appear the same even to the same individual; hence he declared that
there is no such thing as absolute truth, but that whatever seems true
to you or to me at the moment is the truth for you or for me, and that
it is not at all necessary that you and I should hold the same thing to
be true at one and the same time. Whatever seems to the individual true
is true, according to him. From this came his famous dictum that man,
that is the individual, is the measure of all things.[161] It is clear
that this doctrine when applied to politics, morals, or religion was
upsetting.
So long as men studied nature, they were concerned with discovering
the inflexible laws which govern the world. But when they turned their
attention from nature to society or government, they realized that
human institutions seemed to be the result on the whole of conventions
agreed upon and adopted by mankind. The Sophists held in general that
the form of the state, the current moral and religious beliefs and
social customs had no absolute validity; that they were the results of
convention; and that their only warrant was that they worked well in
practice, that they were profitable to the individual and to society.
This pragmatic view of institutions fell in well with the temper of the
last half of the fifth century, both in the period of Athens’ imperial
supremacy and in the time of her trial during the Peloponnesian War,
when in passion or despair the people disregarded law and, as in the
case of the Melians, all that humanity had counted sacred. It was an
age when many held that might and right were identical, and for this
view the Sophists, even though unwittingly, furnished arguments; for
if the test of an institution or act is that it works well when put
into practice, success proves validity. The Sophists, too, taught that
virtue (ἀρετή) was nothing else than what we call today efficiency. It
is not strange that the conservative Athenians came to look on them
with suspicion.
With regard to the gods Protagoras was naturally agnostic. He began
his “Treatise on the Gods” with the words: “So far as the gods are
concerned, I cannot know whether they exist or do not exist; or what
their nature is. Many things prevent our knowing. The matter is
obscure and life is short.”[162] One may be curious to know what large
matter Protagoras found for his discussion when he began with this
frank confession of ignorance; but it should be observed that in this
confession there is nothing necessarily antagonistic to the popular
theology of his day. It only shows what the words plainly declare, that
a belief in the gods cannot depend upon knowledge. Another Sophist,
Prodicus, maintained that the divinities were nothing but the kindly
powers of nature which man had deified;[163] and the “Gentle Critias,”
one of the worst of the Thirty Tyrants, and a ready pupil of the
earlier Sophists, is said to have set forth in a satyric drama the
theory that the gods were the clever invention of someone who wished
to scare men out of their desire to do evil.[164] The effect of such
scepticism and agnosticism we can easily imagine.
Many things had been wrongly laid at the door of the Sophists, but it
is small wonder that the conservative Athenian citizens came to look
with distrust and alarm on these new-fangled subversive notions; that
they banished Protagoras and burned his books in the market place; or
finally that they should have put Socrates to death.
Into this age of intellectual ferment and readjustment, of scepticism
and eager inquiry, the age of Anaxagoras and the Sophists, Socrates
entered. He was at once the child of his time and the greatest
fecundator of men’s minds that Europe had yet known. He was born in 469
B.C. and was forced to drink the hemlock in March, 399, so
that he had completed the allotted span of life. The son of a sculptor,
we are told that he followed his father’s profession in his youth,
but apparently he did not continue this long. Whence he derived the
means of livelihood we do not know. He received the regular Athenian
education, was interested especially in geometry and astronomy;
the works of the philosophers he had read, but professed that he
gained little from them. One is tempted to dwell on the picturesque
characteristics of this man—his refusal to teach for pay, as did the
ordinary teachers, his profession of complete ignorance—his only claim
to wisdom, he said himself,—his ugliness of feature, and his beauty
of soul, his omnivorous interest in the work of the humble craftsmen,
above all on his belief that he had a warning spirit, a daemon, which
checked him when his course was wrong. Although in obedience to this
inward monitor Socrates refrained from politics, he fulfilled all his
civic duties in peace and in war. He conformed to the traditional
religion, sacrificing and praying to the traditional gods, although he
undoubtedly did not hold that they were the limited and sensual
creatures of the popular belief. When he prayed he asked not for gold
or silver or power, but for what the gods knew was good for him. At the
close of Plato’s Phaedrus he offers this appeal: “Beloved Pan, and all
ye other gods who haunt this place, grant me beauty of the inward soul,
and make the outward and the inward man to be but one.” This was the
man who was charged with corrupting the youth of Athens.
Socrates had much in common with the Sophists. Although it is evident
that in his earlier years he had been interested in physical science,
we know that he turned away from that in the course of time, convinced
that man alone was more than man could understand. He rather confined
his attention to man himself, and made man and his conduct the center
of philosophic inquiry. With the Sophists Socrates held that the
cultivation of excellence, of virtue, whatever that might be, was
the chief thing. He also identified virtue and knowledge, and like
the Sophists was sceptical as to man’s ability to attain absolute
knowledge. Practicability was the test he applied to various opinions.
If one notion as to the state or society or anything else worked
better than another, it was, therefore, in his view the better; and
according to him it was by the adoption of such useful opinions that
the individual became the wiser man. He held that education does not
consist in putting things into people’s heads, but in leading them to
discover the truths which they already possess. He therefore employed
discussion as to the validity of hypotheses to bring out the
latent knowledge in the minds of his young friends. This method of
his—dialectic—was not identical with that of the Sophists apparently,
but was not unlike theirs. It was, therefore, natural that his own time
should have reckoned him as one of the professional class.
How then was he distinguished from these Sophists? Externally, first of
all, by the fact that he did not teach for pay, that his purpose was
unselfish, his interest being solely the elucidation of truth and so
the establishment of virtue. He himself believed that he had a divine
commission to serve the Athenians as a missionary. Plato makes him
declare in his defence before his judges: “Men of Athens, I should be
guilty of a crime indeed if through fear of death or anything else I
should desert the post to which I am assigned by the god. For the god
ordains ... that I should follow after wisdom and examine myself and
others.”[165] He conceived of himself as the physician of the soul, and
maintained that his whole business was “to persuade all, both young and
old, not to care about the body or riches, but first and foremost about
the soul—how to make the soul as good as possible.”[166]
As I have already said, he believed that if men could only know what
justice, goodness, and temperance were they would naturally and
inevitably be just and good and temperate. Vice he thought was due to a
lack of knowledge; therefore he employed his questioning, dialectic, to
endeavor to secure clear definitions of these and other virtues, for
he was convinced that if only he and his associates could discover
what virtue was, they would at once pursue virtue and flee from all
wrongdoing. We may smile at the naïveté of this belief, that virtue
is something that can be taught, that to be practised it needs only to
be seen; but we must remind ourselves that his confidence was based
on another belief, which was that virtue is the best and the most
profitable for the individual; and that since each man desires the
best for himself, if he sees what is right, he will follow that course
unswervingly to the end. It may be said with reason that this is a
utilitarian view, and so it is; but in Socrates it was combined with
a power of will which enabled him to translate his convictions into
reality, for it was in obedience to this conviction that the great
teacher gave up his life.
Thus far we have seen that in the ferment of the last part of the fifth
century in Athens there were two forces which were in a sense opposed
to each other, the Sophists with their inevitable scepticism, who
taught that all truth was subjective, that justice and goodness were
only that which seemed just and good to the individual; opposed to them
in reality was Socrates, not only in spirit but also by the doctrine
which he endeavored to establish; for his search was always directed
at finding the reality, was always aimed at knowledge in opposition to
opinion. These objective truths, the universals, which to him were the
only real things in the world, he endeavored to obtain by a process of
definition which was not wholly adequate; but he turned men away from
mere observation, from what seemed to be true, to search for permanent
objective reality. How fruitful his teaching was, was shown by many
schools, but above all by his greatest pupil, Plato. His followers have
lasted to the present day.
The last third of the fifth century was a new era for Greece. The
Peloponnesian War broke out in the year 431, and lasted until 404.
On the one side was Athens with the empire which she had boldly
built and somewhat ruthlessly held; on the other was a large number
of allied states of Greece with Sparta at their head. The war ended
with the complete humiliation of Athens. She lost her empire, her
wealth, and a large part of her population. These disasters gave
opportunity and occasion for new forces to come to the front. Early in
the war the mercurial Athenians had shown themselves impatient of the
leadership which had made Athens great, and they rejected Pericles.
They were easily led astray by wild schemes, as when they followed the
imperialistic party headed by Alcibiades and sent out the Sicilian
expedition in 415, which was to meet irreparable disaster two years
later. In time of distress, under the burden of political and economic
misfortune, men often turn to reconsider the bases of their beliefs
and actions, to test the validity of the doctrines which have hitherto
guided them. This was the case at Athens. The old beliefs went by the
board; society, government, and religion all became subjects of doubt
and of reexamination.
The greatest spokesman of this time was Euripides. Although he was the
younger contemporary of Sophocles, who outlived him by a few months,
Euripides belongs to a new age. The former represents imperial Athens
of the age of Pericles, the latter the Athens of the Peloponnesian War.
Born of a family apparently well-to-do he certainly received a liberal
education. Politics and society seem never to have attracted him to
active participation in them, but the intellectual life of his time
he shared to the full; and more than any extant writer of his day, he
shows that he felt the force of the movements which were transforming
Athenian thought. It has been aptly said that in Sophocles the poetical
course of traditional religion culminated; in Euripides we have for the
first time the poetic and philosophical development fully combined.
He was a profound thinker, troubled by the most difficult problems of
humanity, and approaching tradition with the liberal frankness of the
new age. Yet we must always bear in mind that he was a dramatic poet,
not a systematic theologian or moral teacher. Again and again fidelity
to his art made him put sentiments into the mouths of his characters
which must have been abhorrent to him. Nor have we any right to search
for some hidden meaning in his plays. Yet after all allowances have
been made, we cannot doubt that in his dramas he frequently expresses
his personal views on politics, morals, and religion, which were quite
at variance with the views of tradition.
Toward the gods of the current mythology no one could have been more
frankly sceptical or scornful than he. As Nestle, a German critic, has
pointed out, the basic principle of his attacks is found in his verse:
εἰ θεοί τι δρωσιν αἰσχρόν, οὐκ εἰσὶν θεοί.[167]
If the gods do aught that is base, then they are not gods.
That is, as the same critic says, for Euripides “God and sin are
mutually exclusive terms.” Sophocles held the same belief, yet his
point of view was wholly different, as is shown by his verse:
αἰσχρὸν μὲν οὐδὲν ὧν ὑφηγοῦνται θεοί.[168]
Nothing to which the gods lead men is base.
That is, whatever the gods do is good no matter how it may seem
to man. There is then a fundamental difference between the two
tragedians: the elder has faith to believe in the righteousness of the
traditional gods, the younger is ready to throw tradition over. The
unreasonableness and immorality of popular beliefs and the baffling
existence of evil in the world Euripides could not reconcile with a
faith in the existence of all powerful and just beings such as he
held the gods must be, if they exist at all. His firm conviction that
divinity, if it have any existence, must be absolutely just, explains
the poet’s boldness in holding up to scorn the popular notions. In the
Hippolytus he exhibits the goddess of love in a shameful light, and
makes Artemis join with the innocent hero of the play in condemning her.
Indeed throughout the tragedy the traditional beliefs are treated with
powerful irony. When Phaedra is filled with shame at the passion for
her step-son with which Aphrodite has inspired her, the nurse tempts
her to yield, quoting ancient tales of the celestials’ amours as
examples:
Whoso have scrolls writ in the ancient days,
And wander still themselves by paths of song,
They know how Zeus of yore desired the embrace
Of Semele; they know how radiant Dawn
Up to the gods snatched Cephalus of yore,
And all for love; yet these in Heaven their home
Dwell, neither do they flee the face of Gods,
Content, I trow, to be love’s vanquished ones.
Thou—wilt not yield?[169]
* * * * *
Nay, darling, from thy deadly thoughts refrain,
And from presumption—sheer presumption this,
That one should wish to be more strong than Gods.
In love flinch not; a God hath willed this thing.[170]
But Phaedra dies by her own hand rather than yield to the goddess’s
design. The innocent Hippolytus, second victim of divine injustice,
cries out as he dies:
Innocent I, ever fearing the Gods, who was wholly heart-clean
Above all men beside,—
Lo, how am I thrust
Unto Hades, to hide
My life in the dust!
All vainly I reverenced God, and in vain unto man was I just.[171]
What greater condemnation of the traditional gods could there be than
this!
In the Hercules Hera drives the hero mad and makes him the slayer of
his own innocent children, all because of the goddess’s jealousy of
Zeus. Small wonder that Hercules cries when the truth is brought home
to him:
To such a Goddess
Who shall pray now? who, for a woman’s sake
Jealous of Zeus, from Hellas hath cut off
Her benefactors, guiltless though they were.[172]
The hero refuses to find any consolation for his woes in the suggestion
that the gods too have sinned and suffered for their wrongs—“if
minstrel legends be not false.” Whereat he exclaims:
I deem not that the Gods for spousals crave
Unhallowed: tales of Gods’ hands manacled
Ever I scorned nor ever will believe,
Nor that one God is born another’s lord.
For God hath need, if God indeed he be,
Of naught: these be the minstrels’ sorry tales.[173]
This play then like the Hippolytus is a condemnation through Hera and
Zeus of the whole system of gods.
In these sentiments there is something more than direct defiance of
tradition. Euripides does not, like Pindar, refine away the baser
elements of legends; or, like Aeschylus and Sophocles, obscure the
uglier features of the ancient mythology. On the contrary, constrained
by his profession as dramatic poet to draw his themes from the dark
tales of gods and heroes in a mythological age—tales whose immorality
was wholly hateful to him—he accomplishes his purpose by showing these
gods and heroes on his stage engaged in actions and prompted by motives
which are so base as to destroy the spectator’s regard for beings of
such a sort, and to win the onlooker’s sympathy for the mortal victim
against the higher power. To the shameless natures of the gods the poet
bluntly gives fitting characterizations: he names them cruel, vengeful,
treacherous, licentious.
Euripides is no less iconoclastic in dealing with current religious
practices; there is none that escapes his scorn. Sacrifices and votive
offerings seem to him unworthy of true gods. The folly of popular
wonder at the riches of temples is brought out in a fragment of the
lost Philoctetes, in which the hero sarcastically bids his hearers see
how even the gods prize gain, and therefore men should not hesitate
to get profit and thereby make themselves equal to the gods.[174] That
it is not the size of the gift, but piety which secures the favor of
just Heaven, is the lesson of another couplet.[175] Temples and statues,
and all the sacred privileges attached thereto are treated with equal
disregard for tradition; and the sacred institution of blood-vengeance
is most emphatically condemned. For the common trust in omens given by
dreams and the flight of birds he has only ridicule. So in the Tauric
Iphigenia when Iphigenia learns from Orestes that her brother lives,
she cries: