[Sidenote: [_ca._ 1400-1200 B.C.]]
In thinking of the mythical period with its citations of fables about
gods and goddesses galore and heroes unnumbered, one is apt to become
the victim of a mental mirage. One can hardly escape imagining the
period in question thus veiled in mystery and peopled with half mythical
and altogether mystical figures as really having been a time when men
and women lived an idyllic life. As one contemplates the period he
intuitively falls into a day-dream in which there dance before him
light-robed artistic figures moving in arcadian bowers, tenanted by
nymphs and satyrs and centaurs. But when one awakes to a practical view
he recognises of course that all this is an illusion. Reason tells
him that this was a mythical age, simply because the people were not
sufficiently civilised to make permanent historical records. They were
half barbarians, living as pastoral peoples everywhere live, striving for
food against wild beasts, protecting their herds, cultivating the soil,
fighting their enemies. And yet, in a sense, their life was idyllic.
Heroic elements were not altogether lacking; the men were trained
athletes, whose developed muscles were a joy to look upon, and no doubt
the women, despite a certain coarseness, shared something of that figure.
Then the people themselves believed in the gods and nymphs and satyrs and
centaurs of which we dream, and so in a sense their world was peopled
with them: in a sense they did dwell in Arcady. Still one cannot disguise
the fact that it was an Arcady which no modern, placed under similar
restrictions, would care to enter.
In that early day writing was an unknown art in Hellas, and so the people
as they emerged from their time of semi-civilisation brought with them no
specific tangible records of the life of that period, but only fables and
traditions to take the place of sober historical records. To the people
themselves these fables and traditions bore, for a long time at any rate,
a stamp of veritable truth. Even the most extravagant of their narratives
of gods and godlike heroes were believed as implicitly, no doubt, by
the major part of the people even at a comparatively late historical
period, as we to-day believe the stories of an Alexander, a Cæsar, or a
Napoleon. As time went on these fables became even more intimately fixed
in the minds of the people through becoming embalmed in the verses of the
poet and the lines of the tragedian. Here and there, to be sure, there
was a man who questioned the authenticity of these tales as recitals
of fact, but we may well believe that the generality of people, even
of the most cultured class, preferred throughout the entire period of
antiquity to accept the myths at their face value. Not only so, but for
many generations later, throughout the period sometimes spoken of as the
“Age of Faith” of the western world, a somewhat similar estimate was
put upon the Greek myths as recited by the classical authors. Even after
the growth of scepticism and the development of the scientific spirit
rendered the acceptance of the myths as recitals of fact impossible, for
a long time it seemed little less than a sacrilege to think of severing
them altogether from the realm of fact.
THE VALUE OF THE MYTHS
That, considered as historical narratives, they had been elaborated and
their bald facts distorted by the creative imagination of a marvellous
people, was clearly evident. No one, for example, in recent days would
be expected to believe that the hero Achilles had been plunged into the
river Styx by his mother and rendered thereby invulnerable except as
to the heel by which he was held. But to doubt that the hero Achilles
lived and accomplished such feats as were narrated in the _Iliad_ would
seem almost a blow at the existence of the most fascinating people
of antiquity. There came a time, however, in comparatively recent
generations when scepticism no longer hesitated to invade the ranks of
the most time-honoured and best-beloved traditions, and when a warfare of
words began between a set of critics, who would wipe the whole mass of
Greek myths from the pages of history, and the champions of those myths
who were but little disposed to give them up. Thus scepticism found an
obvious measure of support in the clear fact that the mythical narratives
could not possibly be received as authentic in their entirety. Further
support was given to the sceptical party a little later by the study of
comparative mythology, which showed to the surprise of many scholars
that the Greek myths were by no means so unique in their character
as had been supposed. It was shown that in the main they are closely
paralleled by myths of other nations, and a theory was developed and
advocated with much plausibility that they had been developed out of a
superstitious regard of the sun and moon and elements, that most of them
were, in short, what came to be called solar myths, and that they had no
association whatever with the deeds of human historic personages.
Looking at the subject in the broadest way it, perhaps, does not greatly
matter which view, as to the status of myths, is the true one. After all,
the main purport of history in all its phases has value, not for what it
tells us of the deeds of individual men or the conflicts of individual
nations, but for what it can reveal of the process of the evolution of
civilisation. Weighed by this standard, the beautiful myths of the Greeks
are of value chiefly as revealing to us the essential status of the Greek
mind in the early historical period, and the stage of evolution of that
mind.
The beautiful myths of Greece cannot and must not be given up, and
fortunately they need not. The view which Grote and the host of his
followers maintained, practically solves the problem for the historian.
He may retain the legend and gain from it the fullest measure of
imaginative satisfaction; he may draw from it inferences of the greatest
value as to the mental status of the Greek people at the time when the
legends were crystallised into their final form; he may even believe
that, in the main, the legends have been built upon a substructure of
historical fact, and he may leave to specialists the controversy as to
the exact relations which this substructure bears to the finished whole,
content to accept the decision of the greatest critical historians of
Greece that this question is insoluble.
From the period of myth pure and simple when the gods and goddesses
themselves roved the earth achieving miracles, taking various shapes,
slaying pythons, titans, and other monsters, and exercising their
amorous fancies among the men and women of earth--from this period we
come to the semi-historical time of the activity of the demi-gods and the
men who, superior to the ordinary clay, were called Heroes.
The term “Heroic Age” has passed into general use with the historian
as applying to the period of Grecian history immediately preceding and
including the Trojan wars. As there are very few reliable documents at
hand relating to this period--there were none at all until recently--it
is clear that this age is in reality only the latter part of that
mythical period to which we have just referred. Recent historians tend
to treat it much more sceptically than did the historians of an earlier
epoch; some are even disposed practically to ignore it. But the term
has passed far too generally into use to be altogether abandoned; and,
indeed, it is not desirable that it should be quite given up, for,
however vague the details of the history it connotes, it is after all the
shadowy record of a real epoch of history. We shall, perhaps, do best,
therefore, to view it through the eyes of a distinguished historian of an
earlier generation, remembering only that what is here narrated is still
only half history--that is to say, history only half emerged from the
realm of legend.[a]
The real limits of this period cannot be exactly defined; but still, so
far as its traditions admit of anything like a chronological connection,
its duration may be estimated at six generations, or about two hundred
years.[6] The history of the heroic age is the history of the most
celebrated persons belonging to this class, who, in the language of
poetry, are called heroes. The term “hero” is of doubtful origin, though
it was clearly a title of honour; but in the poems of Homer, it is
applied not only to the chiefs, but also to their followers. In later
times its use was narrowed, and in some degree altered; it was restricted
to persons, whether of the Heroic or of after ages, who were believed
to be endowed with a superhuman, though not a divine, nature, and who
were honoured with sacred rites, and were imagined to have the power
of dispensing good or evil to their worshippers; and it was gradually
combined with the notion of prodigious strength and gigantic stature.
Here however we have only to do with the heroes as men. The history of
their age is filled with their wars, expeditions, and adventures; and
this is the great mine from which the materials of the Greek poetry were
almost entirely drawn. But the richer a period is in poetical materials,
the more difficult it usually is to extract from it any that are fit for
the use of the historian; and this is especially true in the present
instance. We must content ourselves with touching on some which appear
most worthy of notice, either from their celebrity, or for the light they
throw on the general character of the period, or their connection, real
or supposed, with subsequent historical events.
THE EXPLOITS OF PERSEUS
We must pass very hastily over the exploits of Bellerophon and Perseus,
and we mention them only for the sake of one remark. The scene of their
principal adventures is laid out of Greece, in the East. The former,
whose father Glaucus is the son of Sisyphus, having chanced to stain
his hands with the blood of a kinsman, flies to Argos, where he excites
the jealousy of Prœtus, and is sent by him to Lycia, the country where
Prœtus himself had been hospitably entertained in his exile. It is
in the adjacent regions of Asia that the Corinthian hero proves his
valour by vanquishing ferocious tribes and terrible monsters. Perseus
too has been sent over the sea by his grandfather Acrisius, and his
achievements follow the same direction, but take a wider range; he is
carried along the coasts of Syria to Egypt, where Herodotus heard of him
from the priests, and into the unknown lands of the South. There can be
no doubt that these fables owed many of their leading features to the
Argive colonies which were planted at a later period in Rhodes, and on
the southwest coast of Asia. But still it is not improbable that the
connection implied by them between Argolis and the nearest parts of Asia
may not be wholly without foundation. We proceed however to a much more
celebrated name, on which we must dwell a little longer--that of Hercules.
THE LABOURS OF HERCULES
It has been a subject of long dispute, whether Hercules was a real or
a purely fictitious personage; but it seems clear that the question,
according to the sense in which it is understood, may admit of two
contrary answers, both equally true. When we survey the whole mass of the
actions ascribed to him, we find that they fall under two classes. The
one carries us back into the infancy of society, when it is engaged in
its first struggles with nature for existence and security: we see him
cleaving rocks, turning the course of rivers, opening or stopping the
subterraneous outlets of lakes, clearing the earth of noxious animals,
and, in a word, by his single arm effecting works which properly belong
to the united labours of a young community. The other class exhibits a
state of things comparatively settled and mature, when the first victory
has been gained, and the contest is now between one tribe and another,
for possession or dominion; we see him maintaining the cause of the weak
against the strong, of the innocent against the oppressor, punishing
wrong, and robbery, and sacrilege, subduing tyrants, exterminating his
enemies, and bestowing kingdoms on his friends. It would be futile
to inquire, who the person was to whom deeds of the former kind were
attributed; but it is an interesting question, whether the first
conception of such a being was formed in the mind of the Greeks by their
own unassisted imagination, or was suggested to them by a different
people.
It is sufficient to throw a single glance at the fabulous adventures
called the “labours” of Hercules, to be convinced that a part of them at
least belongs to the Phœnicians, and their wandering god, in whose honour
they built temples in all their principal settlements along the coast of
the Mediterranean. To him must be attributed all the journeys of Hercules
round the shores of western Europe, which did not become known to the
Greeks for many centuries after they had been explored by the Phœnician
navigators. The number to which those labours are confined by the legend,
is evidently an astronomical period, and thus itself points to the course
of the sun which the Phœnician god represented. The event which closes
the career of the Greek hero, who rises to immortality from the flames
of the pile on which he lays himself, is a prominent feature in the same
Eastern mythology, and may therefore be safely considered as borrowed
from it. All these tales may indeed be regarded as additions made at a
late period to the Greek legend, after it had sprung up independently
at home. But it is at least a remarkable coincidence, that the birth of
Hercules is assigned to the city of Cadmus; and the great works ascribed
to him, so far as they were really accomplished by human labour, may
seem to correspond better with the art and industry of the Phœnicians,
than with the skill and power of a less civilised race. But in whatever
way the origin of the name and idea of Hercules may be explained,
he appears, without any ambiguity, as a Greek hero; and here it may
reasonably be asked, whether all or any part of the adventures they
describe, really happened to a single person, who either properly bore
the name of Hercules, or received it as a title of honour.
We must briefly mention the manner in which these adventures are linked
together in the common story. Amphitryon, the reputed father of Hercules,
was the son of Alcæus, who is named first among the children born to
Perseus at Mycenæ. The hero’s mother, Alcmene, was the daughter of
Electryon, another son of Perseus, who had succeeded to the kingdom. In
his reign, the Taphians, a piratical people who inhabited the islands
called Echinades, near the mouth of the Achelous, landed in Argolis, and
carried off the king’s herds. While Electryon was preparing to avenge
himself by invading their land, after he had committed his kingdom and
his daughter to the charge of Amphitryon, a chance like that which caused
the death of Acrisius stained the hands of the nephew with his uncle’s
blood. Sthenelus, a third son of Perseus, laid hold of this pretext to
force Amphitryon and Alcmene to quit the country, and they took refuge in
Thebes: thus it happened that Hercules, though an Argive by descent, and,
by his mortal parentage, legitimate heir to the throne of Mycenæ, was, as
to his birthplace, a Theban. Hence Bœotia is the scene of his youthful
exploits: bred up among the herdsmen of Cithæron, like Cyrus and Romulus,
he delivers Thespiæ from the lion which made havoc among its cattle.
He then frees Thebes from the yoke of its more powerful neighbour,
Orchomenos: and here we find something which has more the look of a
historical tradition, though it is no less poetical in its form. The king
of Orchomenos had been killed, in the sanctuary of Poseidon at Onchestus,
by a Theban. His successor, Erginus, imposes a tribute on Thebes; but
Hercules mutilates his heralds when they come to exact it, and then
marching against Orchomenos, slays Erginus, and forces the Minyans to pay
twice the tribute which they had hitherto received. According to a Theban
legend, it was on this occasion that he stopped the subterraneous outlet
of the Cephisus, and thus formed the lake which covered the greater part
of the plain of Orchomenos. In the meanwhile Sthenelus had been succeeded
by his son Eurystheus, the destined enemy of Hercules and his race, at
whose command the hero undertakes his labours. This voluntary subjection
of the rightful prince to the weak and timid usurper is represented as an
expiation, ordained by the Delphic oracle, for a fit of frenzy, in which
Hercules had destroyed his wife and children.
This, as a poetical or religious fiction, is very happily conceived;
but when we are seeking for a historical thread to connect the Bœotian
legends of Hercules with those of the Peloponnesus, it must be set
entirely aside; and yet it is not only the oldest form of the story, but
no other has hitherto been found or devised to fill its place with a
greater appearance of probability. The supposed right of Hercules to the
throne of Mycenæ was, as we shall see, the ground on which the Dorians,
some generations later, claimed the dominion of Peloponnesus. Yet, in
any other than a poetical view, his enmity to Eurystheus is utterly
inconsistent with the exploits ascribed to him in the peninsula. It is
also remarkable, that while the adventures which he undertakes at the
bidding of his rival are prodigious and supernatural, belonging to the
first of the two classes above distinguished, he is described as during
the same period engaged in expeditions which are only accidentally
connected with these marvellous labours, and which, if they stood alone,
might be taken for traditional facts. In these he appears in the light of
an independent prince, and a powerful conqueror. He leads an army against
Augeas, king of Elis, and having slain him, bestows his kingdom on one
of his sons, who had condemned his father’s injustice. So he invades
Pylus to avenge an insult which he had received from Neleus, and puts him
to death, with all his children, except Nestor, who was absent, or had
escaped to Gerenia. Again he carries his conquering arms into Laconia,
where he exterminates the family of the king Hippocoön, and places
Tyndareus on the throne. Here, if anywhere in the legend of Hercules, we
might seem to be reading an account of real events. Yet who can believe,
that while he was overthrowing these hostile dynasties, and giving away
sceptres, he suffered himself to be excluded from his own kingdom?
It was the fate of Hercules to be incessantly forced into dangerous and
arduous enterprises; and hence every part of Greece is in its turn the
scene of his achievements. Thus we have already seen him, in Thessaly,
the ally of the Dorians, laying the foundation of a perpetual union
between the people and his own descendants, as if he had either abandoned
all hope of recovering the crown of Mycenæ, or had foreseen that his
posterity would require the aid of the Dorians for that purpose. In
Ætolia too he appears as a friend and a protector of the royal house, and
fights its battles against the Thesprotians of Epirus. These perpetual
wanderings, these successive alliances with so many different races,
excite no surprise, so long as we view them in a poetical light, as
issuing out of one source, the implacable hate with which Juno persecutes
the son of Jove. They may also be understood as real events, if they are
supposed to have been perfectly independent of each other, and connected
only by being referred to one fabulous name. But when the poetical motive
is rejected, it seems impossible to frame any rational scheme according
to which they may be regarded as incidents in the life of one man, unless
we imagine Hercules, in the purest spirit of knight-errantry, sallying
forth in quest of adventures, without any definite object, or any
impulse but that of disinterested benevolence. It will be safer, after
rejecting those features in the legend which manifestly belong to Eastern
religions, to distinguish the Theban Hercules from the Dorian, and the
Peloponnesian hero. In the story of each some historical fragments
have most probably been preserved, and perhaps least disfigured in the
Theban and Dorian legends. In those of Peloponnesus it is difficult to
say to what extent their original form may not have been distorted from
political motives. If we might place any reliance on them, we should be
inclined to conjecture that they contain traces of the struggles by which
the kingdom of Mycenæ attained to that influence over the rest of the
peninsula, which is attributed to it by Homer, and which we shall have
occasion to notice when we come to speak of the Trojan war.
THE FEATS OF THESEUS
The name of Hercules immediately suggests that of Theseus, according to
the mythical chronology his younger contemporary, and only second to
him in renown. It was not without reason that Theseus was said to have
given rise to the proverb, _another Hercules_; for not only is there a
strong resemblance between them in many particular features, but it also
seems clear that Theseus was to Attica what Hercules was to the rest of
Greece, and that his career likewise represents the events of a period
which cannot have been exactly measured by any human life, and probably
includes many centuries. His legend is chiefly interesting to us, so
far as it may be regarded as a poetical outline of the early history of
Attica [where it will be recounted in detail].
The legend of his Cretan expedition most probably preserves some genuine
historical recollections. But the only fact which appears to be plainly
indicated by it, is a temporary connection between Crete and Attica.
Whether this intercourse was grounded solely on religion, or was the
result of a partial dominion exercised by Crete over Athens, it would
be useless to inquire; and still less can we pretend to determine the
nature of the Athenian tribute, or that of the Cretan worship to which
it related. That part of the legend which belongs to Naxos and Delos was
probably introduced after these islands were occupied by the Ionians. A
part is assigned in these traditions to Minos, who is represented by the
general voice of antiquity as having raised Crete to a higher degree of
prosperity and power than it ever reached at any subsequent period [and
whom we shall also discuss later in connection with Cretan history].
[Illustration: TEMPLE OF THESEUS, ATHENS]
THE SEVEN AGAINST THEBES
Our plan obliges us to pass over a great number of wars, expeditions,
and achievements of these ages, which were highly celebrated in heroic
song, not because we deem them to contain less of historical reality
than others which we mention, but because they appear not to have been
attended with any important or lasting consequences. We might otherwise
have been induced to notice the quarrel which divided the royal house
of Thebes, and led to a series of wars between Thebes and Argos, which
terminated in the destruction of the former city, and the temporary
expulsion of the Cadmeans, its ancient inhabitants. Hercules and Theseus
undertook their adventures either alone, or with the aid of a single
comrade; but in these Theban wars we find a union of seven chiefs;
and such confederacies appear to have become frequent in the latter
part of the heroic age. So a numerous band of heroes was combined in
the enterprise, which, whatever may have been its real nature, became
renowned as the chase of the Calydonian boar. Plassman[f] suspects
that this was in reality a military expedition against some of the
savage Ætolian tribes, and that the name of one of them (the Aperantii)
suggested the legend. We proceed to speak of two expeditions much more
celebrated, conducted like these by a league of independent chieftains,
but directed, not to any part of Greece, but against distant lands; we
mean the voyage of the Argonauts, and the siege of Troy, which will
conclude our review of the mythical period of Grecian history.
THE ARGONAUTS
The Argonautic expedition, when viewed in the light in which it has
usually been considered, is an event which a critical historian, if
he feels himself compelled to believe it, may think it his duty to
notice, but which he is glad to pass rapidly over as a perplexing and
unprofitable riddle. For even when the ancient legend has been pared down
into a historical form, and its marvellous and poetical features have
been all effaced, so that nothing is left but what may appear to belong
to its pith and substance, it becomes indeed dry and meagre enough,
but not much more intelligible than before. It relates an adventure,
incomprehensible in its design, astonishing in its execution, connected
with no conceivable cause, and with no sensible effect. The narrative,
reduced to the shape in which it has often been thought worthy of a place
in history, runs as follows:
In the generation before the Trojan war, Jason, a young Thessalian
prince, had incurred the jealousy of his kinsman Pelias, who reigned
at Iolcus. The crafty king encouraged the adventurous youth to embark
in a maritime expedition full of difficulty and danger. It was to be
directed to a point far beyond the most remote which Greek navigation
had hitherto reached in the same quarter; to the eastern corner of the
sea, so celebrated in ancient times for the ferocity of the barbarians
inhabiting its coasts, that it was commonly supposed to have derived
from them the name of “Axenus,” the inhospitable, before it acquired the
opposite name of the “Euxine,” from the civilisation which was at length
introduced by Greek settlers. Here, in the land of the Colchians, lay the
goal, because this contained the prize, from which the voyage has been
frequently called the adventure of the golden fleece. Jason having built
a vessel of uncommon size,--in more precise terms, the first 50-oared
galley his countrymen had ever launched,--and having manned it with a
band of heroes, who assembled from various parts of Greece to share the
glory of the enterprise, sailed to Colchis, where he not only succeeded
in the principal object of his expedition, whatever this may have been,
but carried off Medea, the daughter of the Colchian king, Æetes.
Though this is an artificial statement, framed to reconcile the main
incidents of a wonderful story with nature and probability, it still
contains many points which can scarcely be explained or believed. It
carries us back to a period when navigation was in its infancy among the
Greeks; yet their first essay at maritime discovery is supposed at once
to have reached the extreme limit, which was long after attained by the
adventurers who gradually explored the same formidable sea, and gained a
footing on its coasts. The success of the undertaking however is not so
surprising as the project itself; for this implies a previous knowledge
of the country to be explored, which it is very difficult to account
for. But the end proposed is still more mysterious; and indeed can only
be explained with the aid of a conjecture. Such an explanation was
attempted by some of the later writers among the ancients, who perceived
that the whole story turned on the Golden Fleece, the supposed motive
of the voyage, and that this feature had not a sufficiently historical
appearance. But the mountain torrents of Colchis were said to sweep down
particles of gold, which the natives used to detain by fleeces dipped in
the streams.
This report suggested a mode of translating the fable into historical
language. It was conjectured that the Argonauts had been attracted by
the metallic treasures of the country, and that the Golden Fleece was a
poetical description of the process which they had observed, or perhaps
had practised: an interpretation certainly more ingenious, or at least
less absurd, than those by which Diodorus transforms the fire-breathing
bulls which Jason was said to have yoked at the bidding of Æetes, into
a band of Taurians, who guarded the fleece, and the sleepless dragon
which watched over it, into their commander Draco; but yet not more
satisfactory; for it explains a casual, immaterial circumstance, while it
leaves the essential point in the legend wholly untouched. The epithet
“golden,” to which it relates, is merely poetical and ornamental, and
signified nothing more as to the nature of the fleece than the epithets
white or purple, which were also applied to it by early poets. According
to the original and genuine tradition, the fleece was a sacred relic, and
its importance arose entirely out of its connection with the tragical
story of Phrixus, the main feature of which is the human sacrifice which
the gods had required from the house of Athamas. His son Phrixus either
offered himself, or was selected through the artifices of his stepmother
Ino, as the victim; but at the critical moment, as he stood before the
altar, the marvellous ram was sent for his deliverance, and transported
him over the sea, according to the received account, to Colchis, where
Phrixus, on his arrival, sacrificed the ram to Jupiter, as the god who
had favoured his escape; the fleece was nailed to an oak in the grove of
Mars, where it was kept by Æetes as a sacred treasure, or palladium.
But the tradition must have had a historical foundation in some real
voyages and adventures, without which it could scarcely have arisen at
all, and could never have become so generally current as to be little
inferior in celebrity to the tale of Troy itself. If however the fleece
had no existence but in popular belief, the land where it was to be
sought was a circumstance of no moment. In the earlier form of the
legend, it might not have been named at all, but only have been described
as the distant, the unknown, land; and after it had been named, it might
have been made to vary with the gradual enlargement of geographical
information. But in this case the voyage of the Argonauts can no longer
be considered as an isolated adventure, for which no adequate motive is
left; but must be regarded, like the expedition of the Tyrian Hercules,
as representing a succession of enterprises, which may have been the
employment of several generations. And this is perfectly consistent with
the manner in which the adventurers are most properly described. They
are Minyans; a branch of the Greek nation, whose attention was very
early drawn by their situation, not perhaps without some influence from
the example and intercourse of the Phœnicians, to maritime pursuits.
The form which the legend assumed was probably determined by the course
of their earliest naval expeditions. They were naturally attracted
towards the northeast, first by the islands that lay before the entrance
of the Hellespont, and then by the shores of the Propontis and its
two straits. Their successive colonies, or spots signalised either by
hostilities or peaceful transactions with the natives, would become the
landing-places of the Argonauts. That such a colony existed at Lemnos,
seems unquestionable; though it does not follow that Euneus, the son of
Jason, who is described in the Iliad as reigning there during the siege
of Troy, was a historical personage.
If however it should be asked, in what light the hero and heroine of the
legend are to be viewed on this hypothesis, it must be answered that both
are most probably purely ideal personages, connected with the religion of
the people to whose poetry they belong. Jason was perhaps no other than
the Samothracian god or hero Jasion, whose name was sometimes written in
the same manner, the favourite of Demeter, as his namesake was of Hera,
and the protector of mariners as the Thessalian hero was the chief of
the Argonauts. Medea seems to have been originally another form of Hera
herself, and to have descended, by a common transition, from the rank
of a goddess into that of a heroine, when an epithet had been mistaken
for a distinct name. We have already seen that the Corinthian tradition
claimed her as belonging properly to Corinth, one of the principal seats
of the Minyan race. The tragical scenes which rendered her stay there
so celebrated were commemorated by religious rites, which continued
to be observed until the city was destroyed by the Romans. According
to the local legend, she had not murdered her children; they had been
killed by the Corinthians; and the public guilt was expiated by annual
sacrifices offered to Hera, in whose temple fourteen boys, chosen every
twelve-month from noble families, were appointed to spend a year in all
the ceremonies of solemn mourning. But we cannot here pursue this part
of the subject any further. The historical side of the legend seems to
exhibit an opening intercourse between the opposite shores of the Ægean.
If however it was begun by the northern Greeks, it was probably not long
confined to them, but was early shared by those of the Peloponnesus. It
would be inconsistent with the piratical habits of the early navigators,
to suppose that this intercourse was always of a friendly nature; and it
may therefore not have been without a real ground, that the Argonautic
expedition was sometimes represented as the occasion of the first
conflict between the Greeks and Trojans. We therefore pass by a natural
transition out of the mythical circle we have just been tracing, into
that of the Trojan war, and the light in which we have viewed the one may
serve to guide us in forming a judgment on the historical import of the
other.
We have already seen in what manner Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus,
had usurped the inheritance which belonged of right to Hercules, as the
legitimate representative of Perseus. Sthenelus had reserved Mycenæ and
Tiryns for himself; but he had bestowed the neighbouring town of Midea
on Atreus and Thyestes, the sons of Pelops, and uncles of Eurystheus.
On the death of Hercules, Eurystheus pursued his orphan children from
one place of refuge to another, until they found an asylum in Attica.
Theseus refused to surrender them, and Eurystheus then invaded Attica
in person; but his army was routed, and he himself slain by Hyllus,
the eldest son of Hercules, in his flight through the isthmus. Atreus
succeeded to the throne of his nephew, whose children had been all cut
off in this disastrous expedition; and thus, when his sceptre descended
to his son Agamemnon, it conveyed the sovereignty of an ample realm.
While the house of Pelops was here enriched with the spoils of Hercules,
it enjoyed the fruits of his triumphant valour in another quarter. He had
bestowed Laconia on Tyndareus, the father of Helen; and when Agamemnon’s
brother, Menelaus, had been preferred to all the other suitors of this
beautiful princess, Tyndareus resigned his dominions to his son-in-law.
In the meanwhile a flourishing state had risen up on the eastern side
of the Hellespont. Its capital, Troy, had been taken by Hercules, with
the assistance of Telamon, son of Æacus, but had been restored to Priam,
the son of its conquered king, Laomedon, who reigned there in peace and
prosperity over a number of little tribes, until his son Paris, attracted
to Laconia by the fame of Helen’s beauty, abused the hospitality of
Menelaus by carrying off his queen in his absence. All the chiefs
of Greece combined their forces, under the command of Agamemnon, to
avenge this outrage, and sailed with a great armament to Troy.[c] Their
enterprise, famous for all time as the Trojan War, stands quite by itself
in interest and importance among the traditions of the Heroic Age, and
demands exceptional treatment here.
THE TROJAN WAR
Historic criticism is almost a pendulum in its motion. Nowhere has this
been more vividly seen than in the attitude of prominent historians
toward the Trojan War and the poetical chronicle of it known as Homer’s
_Iliad_. Scholarly belief has passed through all imaginable grades of
opinion ranging between a flat denial that there was ever such a place as
Troy, such a war as the Trojan, or such a man as Homer, to an acceptance
of them all with an unquestioning credulity matching that of the early
Greeks.
It was textual criticism, the deadly work of the critical scalpel in the
verbal form of the poems that first destroyed the good standing of the
Homeric legend. It is the revivifying work of the pickaxe and shovel in
the actual ground as wielded by the excavator and archæologist that have
brought back the repute of Homer. A few years ago and a Gladstone arguing
for the reality of a Homer and of an Homeric epic was dismissed by the
professor as an old-fashioned ignoramus. To-day almost the same terms are
applied to those who cling to the fashion of yesterday and claim that the
Trojan War and Homer himself are myths. In the new swing of the pendulum,
however, the cautious will still avoid extremes.
What has already been said about the status of Greek myth applies in the
main to the Homeric poems. They are legends doubtless with some measure
of historical foundation, but they cannot be accepted by the critical
student of to-day as historical narratives in the narrow sense. But the
Homeric poems have an interest of quite another kind which gives them a
place apart among the legends of antiquity. This interest centres about
the personality of the author of the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_. From the
earliest historic periods of Grecian life the authorship of the _Iliad_
and _Odyssey_ was unquestionably ascribed to a poet named Homer. If
doubts ever arose in the mind of any sceptical or critical person as to
the reality of Homer, such doubts were quite submerged by the popular
verdict. It was not generally claimed that Homer himself had written
the works ascribed to him,--it was long held, indeed, that he must have
lived at a period prior to the introduction of writing into Greece,--but
that the person whom tradition loved to speak of as the blind bard had
invented and recited his narratives _in toto_, and that these, memorised
by others, had been brought down through succeeding generations until
they were finally given permanence in writing, were accepted as the most
unequivocal of historical facts.
[Illustration: HOMER]
But in the latter half of the 18th century, these supposed historical
facts began to be called in question, Wolf[k] leading the van and holding
all scholarship in terror of his name for nearly a century. Critical
students of Homer were struck with numerous anomalies in his writings
that seemed to them inconsistent with the idea that the _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ had been composed at one time and by one person. To cite but
a single illustration, it was noted that the various parts of these
poems were not all written in the same dialect, and it seemed highly
improbable that any one person should have employed different dialects
in a single composition. Such a suggestion as this naturally led to
bitter controversies--controversies which have by no means altogether
subsided after the lapse of a century.[a] Later scholarship denies the
“stratification of language” in the poems.[b] But the controversy did not
confine itself to the mere question whether such a person as Homer had
lived and written, it came presently to involve also the subject of the
Homeric poems, in particular, of the _Iliad_.
Certain details aside, the Trojan War had been looked upon as an
historical event, quite as fully credited by the modern historian as
it had been by Alexander when he stopped to offer sacrifices at the
site of Troy. But now the iconoclastic movement being under way there
was a school of students who openly maintained that the whole recital,
by whomsoever written, was nothing but a fable which the historian
must utterly discard. It was even questioned whether such a place as
Troy had ever existed. Such a scepticism as this seemed, naturally
enough, a clear sacrilege to a large body of scholars, but for several
generations no successful efforts were made to meet it with any weapons
more tangible than words. Then came a champion of the historical verity
of the Homeric narrative who set to work to prove his case in the most
practical way. Curiously enough the man who thus championed the cause of
the closet scholars and poets and visionaries was himself a practical man
of affairs, no less experienced and no less successful in dealing with
the affairs of an everyday business than had been the man from whom the
iconoclastic movement had gained its chief support. This man was also a
German, Heinrich Schliemann.[l]
Having amassed a fortune, the income from which was more than sufficient
for all his needs, he retired from active business and devoted the
remainder of his life to a self-imposed task, which had been an ambition
with him all his life, the search, namely, for the site of Ancient
Troy. How well he succeeded all the world knows. But in opposition to
the opinions of many scholars he selected the hill of Hissarlik as the
site of ancient Ilium, and his excavations there soon demonstrated that
at least it had been the site not of one alone but of at least seven
different cities in antiquity--one being built above the ruins of another
at long intervals of time. One of these cities, the sixth from the
top,--or to put it otherwise, the most ancient but one,--was, he became
firmly convinced, Ilium itself.
The story of his achievements cannot be told here in detail,
and it is necessary to point the warning that Dr. Schliemann’s
excavations--wonderful as are their results--do not, perhaps, when
critically viewed, demonstrate quite so much as might at first sight
appear. There is, indeed, a high degree of probability that the
city which he excavated was really the one intended in the Homeric
descriptions, but it must be clear to any one who scrutinises the
matter somewhat closely, that this fact goes but a little way towards
substantiating the Homeric narrative as a whole. The city of Ilium may
have existed without giving rise to any such series of events as that
narrated in the _Iliad_. Dr. Schliemann himself was led to realise this
fact, and to modify somewhat in later years the exact tenor of some
of his more enthusiastic earlier views, yet the fact remains that the
excavations at Hissarlik must be reckoned with by whoever in future
discusses the status of the Homeric story.
This is not the place to enter into a statement of the multitudinous
phases scepticism has taken in dealing with the Trojan legend. The
story, whether pure fancy, as some have thought it, or a dramatised and
romantic version of actual history, is indispensable to any chronicle of
Greece or of Grecian influence.[a] Taking Homer as a basis, it may be
outlined as follows:
_The Town of Troy_
The origin of Dardanus, founder of the Trojan state, has been very
variously related; but the testimony of Homer to the utter uncertainty
of his birth and native country, delivered in the terms that he was
the son of Jupiter, may seem best entitled to belief. Thus however it
appears that the Greeks not unwillingly acknowledged consanguinity with
the Trojans; for many, indeed most, of the Grecian heroes also claimed
their descent from Jupiter. It is moreover remarkable that, among the
many genealogies which Homer has transmitted, none is traced so far into
antiquity as that of the royal family of Troy. Dardanus was ancestor in
the sixth degree to Hector, and may thus have lived from a hundred and
fifty to two hundred years before that hero. On one of the many ridges
projecting from the foot of the lofty mountain of Ida in the northwestern
part of Asia Minor, he founded a town, or perhaps rather a castle, which
from his own name was called Dardania.
The situation commanded the narrow but highly fruitful plain, watered
by the streams of Simois and Scamander, and stretching from the roots
of Ida to the Hellespont northward, and the Ægean Sea westward. His son
Erichthonius, who succeeded him in the sovereignty of this territory, had
the reputation of being the richest man of his age. Much of his wealth
seems to have been derived from a large stock of brood mares, to the
number, according to the poet, of three thousand, which the fertility of
his soil enabled him to maintain, and which by his care and judgment in
the choice of stallions produced a breed of horses superior to any of
the surrounding countries. Tros, son of Erichthonius, probably extended,
or in some other way improved, the territory of Dardania; since the
appellation by which it was known to posterity was derived from his
name. With the riches the population of the state of course increased.
Ilus, son of Tros, therefore, venturing to move his residence from the
mountain, founded, on a rising ground beneath, that celebrated city
called from his name Ilion [or Ilium], but more familiarly known in
modern languages by the name of Troy, derived from his father.
Twice before that war which Homer has made so famous Troy is said to have
been taken and plundered: and for its second capture by Hercules, in the
reign of Laomedon, son of Ilus, we have Homer’s authority. The government
however revived, and still advanced in power and splendour. Laomedon
after his misfortune fortified the city in a manner so superior to what
was common in his age that the walls of Troy were said to be a work of
the gods. Under his son Priam, the Trojan state was very flourishing
and of considerable extent; containing, under the name of Phrygia,
the country afterwards called Troas, together with both shores of the
Hellespont and the large and fertile island of Lesbos.
A frequent communication, sometimes friendly, but oftener hostile, was
maintained between the eastern and western coasts of the Ægean Sea;
each being an object of piracy more than of commerce to the inhabitants
of the opposite country. Cattle and slaves constituting the principal
riches of the times, men, women, and children, together with swine,
sheep, goats, oxen, and horses, were principal objects of plunder. But
scarcely was any crime more common than rapes; and it seems to have
been a kind of fashion, in consequence of which the leaders of piratical
expeditions gratified their vanity in the highest degree when they could
carry off a lady of superior rank. How usual these outrages were among
the Greeks, may be gathered from the condition said to have been exacted
by Tyndareus, king of Sparta, father of the celebrated Helen, from the
chieftains who came to ask his daughter in marriage; he required of all,
as a preliminary, to bind themselves by solemn oaths that, should she
be stolen, they would assist with their utmost power to recover her.
This tradition, with many other stories of Grecian rapes, on whatsoever
founded, indicates with certainty the opinion of the later Greeks, among
whom they were popular, concerning the manners of their ancestors. But
it does not follow that the Greeks were more vicious than other people
equally unhabituated to constant, vigorous, and well-regulated exertions
of law and government. Equal licentiousness but a few centuries ago
prevailed throughout western Europe. Hence those gloomy habitations
of the ancient nobility, which excite the wonder of the traveller,
particularly in the southern parts, where, in the midst of the finest
countries, he often finds them in situations so very inconvenient and
uncomfortable, except for what was then the one great object, security,
that now the houseless peasant will scarcely go to them for shelter. From
the licentiousness were derived the manners, and even the virtues, of the
times; and hence knight-errantry with its whimsical consequences.
_Paris and Helen_
The expedition of Paris, son of Priam king of Troy, into Greece, appears
to have been a marauding adventure, such as was then usual. It is said
indeed that he was received very hospitably, and entertained very kindly,
by Menelaus king of Sparta. But this also was consonant to the spirit
of the times; for hospitality has always been the virtue of barbarous
ages: it is at this day no less characteristical of the wild Arabs than
their spirit of robbery; and in the Scottish highlands we know robbery
and hospitality flourished together till very lately. Hospitality indeed
will be generally found in different ages and countries very nearly in
proportion to the need of it; that is, in proportion to the deficiency of
jurisprudence, and the weakness of government. Paris concluded his visit
at Sparta with carrying off Helen, wife of Menelaus, together with a
considerable treasure: and whether this was effected by fraud, or as some
have supposed, by open violence, it is probable enough that as Herodotus
relates, it was first concerted, and afterward supported, in revenge for
some similar injury done by the Greeks to the Trojans.
An outrage however so grossly injurious to one of the greatest princes
of Greece, especially if attended with a breach of the rights of
hospitality, might not unreasonably be urged as a cause requiring the
united revenge of all the Grecian chieftains. But there were other
motives to engage them in the quarrel. The hope of returning laden with
the spoil of the richer provinces of Asia was a strong incentive to
leaders poor at home, and bred to rapine. The authority and influence of
Agamemnon, king of Argos, brother of Menelaus, were also weighty. The
spirit of the age, his own temper, the extent of his power, the natural
desire of exerting it on a splendid occasion, would all incite this
prince eagerly to adopt his brother’s quarrel. He is besides represented
by character qualified to create and command a powerful league;
ambitious, active, brave, generous, humane; vain indeed and haughty,
sometimes to his own injury; yet commonly repressing those hurtful
qualities, and watchful to cultivate popularity. Under this leader
all the Grecian chieftains from the end of Peloponnesus to the end of
Thessaly, together with Idomeneus from Crete, and other commanders from
some of the smaller islands, assembled at Aulis, a seaport of Bœotia. The
Acarnanians alone, separated from the rest of Greece by lofty mountains
and a sea at that time little navigated, had no share in the expedition.
_The Siege of Troy_
A story acquired celebrity in aftertimes, that, the fleet being long
detained at Aulis by contrary winds, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter
Iphigenia as a propitiatory offering to obtain from the gods a safe
and speedy passage to the Trojan coast. To the credit of his character
however it is added that he submitted to this abominable cruelty with
extreme reluctance, compelled by the clamours of the army, who were
persuaded that the gods required the victim; nor were there wanting
those who asserted that by a humane fraud the princess was at last
saved, under favour of a report that a fawn was miraculously sent by the
goddess Diana to be sacrificed in her stead. Indeed the story, though
of such fame, and so warranted by early authorities, that some notice
of it seemed requisite, wants, it must be confessed, wholly the best
authentication for matters of that very early age; for neither Homer,
though he enumerates Agamemnon’s daughters, nor Hesiod, who not only
mentions the assembling of the Grecian forces under his command at Aulis,
but specifies their detentions by bad weather, has left one word about so
remarkable an event as this sacrifice.
The fleet at length had a prosperous voyage. It consisted of about twelve
hundred open vessels, each carrying from fifty to a hundred and twenty
men. The number of men in the whole armament, computed from the mean
of those two numbers mentioned by Homer as the complement of different
ships, would be something more than a hundred thousand; and Thucydides,
whose opinion is of the highest authority, has reckoned this within the
bounds of probability; though a poet, he adds, would go to the utmost of
current reports. The army, landing on the Trojan coast, was immediately
so superior to the enemy as to oblige them to seek shelter within the
city walls: but here the operations were at a stand. The hazards to
which unfortified and solitary dwellings were exposed from pirates and
freebooters had driven the more peaceable of mankind to assemble in
towns for mutual security. To erect lofty walls around those towns for
defence was then an obvious resource, requiring little more than labour
for the execution. More thought, more art, more experience were necessary
for forcing the rudest fortification, if defended with vigilance and
courage. But the Trojan walls were singularly strong: Agamemnon’s army
could make no impression upon them. He was therefore reduced to the
method most common for ages after, of turning the siege into a blockade,
and patiently waiting till want of necessaries should force the enemy
to quit their shelter. But neither did the policy of the times amount
by many degrees to the art of subsisting so numerous an army for any
length of time, nor would the revenues of Greece have been equal to it
with more knowledge, nor indeed would the state of things have admitted
it, scarcely with any wealth, or by any means. For in countries without
commerce, the people providing for their own wants only, supplies cannot
be found equal to the maintenance of a superadded army. No sooner
therefore did the Trojans shut themselves within their walls than the
Greeks were obliged to give their principal attention to the means of
subsisting their numerous forces. The common method of the times was to
ravage the adjacent countries; and this was immediately put in practice.
But such a resource soon destroys itself. To have therefore a more
permanent and certain supply, a part of their army was sent to cultivate
the vales of the Thracian Chersonesus, then abandoned by the inhabitants
on account of the frequent and destructive incursions of the wild people
who occupied the interior of that continent.
Large bodies being thus detached from the army, the remainder scarcely
sufficed to deter the Trojans from taking the field again, and could not
prevent succour and supplies from being carried into the town. Thus the
siege was protracted to the enormous length of ten years. It was probably
their success in marauding marches and pirating voyages that induced
the Greeks to persevere so long. Achilles is said to have plundered no
less than twelve maritime and eleven inland towns. Lesbos, then under
the dominion of the monarch of Troy, was among his conquests; and the
women of that island were apportioned to the victorious army as a part
of the booty. But these circumstances alarming all neighbouring people
contributed to procure numerous and powerful allies to the Trojans. Not
only the Asiatic states, to a great extent eastward and southward, sent
auxiliary troops, but also the European, westward, as far as the Pæonians
of that country about the river Axius, which afterwards became Macedonia.
At length, in the tenth year of the war, after great exertions of valour
and the slaughter of numbers on both sides, among whom were many of the
highest rank, Troy yielded to its fate. Yet was it not then overcome by
open force; stratagem is reported by Homer; fraud and treachery have
been supposed by later writers. It was, however, taken and plundered:
the venerable monarch was slain: the queen and her daughters, together
with only one son remaining of a very numerous male progeny, were led
into captivity. According to some, the city was totally destroyed, and
the survivors of the people so dispersed that their very name was from
that time lost. But the tradition supported by better authority, and in
no small degree by that of Homer himself, whose words upon the occasion
seem indeed scarcely doubtful, is, that Æneas and his posterity reigned
over the Trojan country and people for some generations; the seat of
government however being removed from Troy to Scepsis: and Xenophon has
marked his respect for this tradition, ascribing the final ruin of the
Trojan state and name to that following inundation of Greeks called the
Æolic emigration.
_Agamemnon’s Sad Home-coming_
Agamemnon, we are told, triumphed over Troy; and the historical evidence
to the fact is large. But the Grecian poets themselves universally
acknowledge that it was a dear-bought, a mournful triumph. Few of the
princes, who survived to partake of it, had any enjoyment of their
hard-earned glory in their native country. None expecting that the war
would detain them so long from home, had made due provision for the
regular administration of their affairs during such an absence. It is
indeed probable that the utmost wisdom and forethought would have been
unequal to the purpose. For, in the half-formed governments of those
days, the constant presence of the prince as supreme regulator was
necessary towards keeping the whole from running presently into utter
confusion. Seditions and revolutions accordingly remain recorded almost
as numerous as the cities of Greece. Many of the princes on their return
were compelled to embark again with their adherents, to seek settlements
in distant countries. A more tragical fate awaited Agamemnon. His queen,
Clytemnestra, having given her affection to his kinsman Ægisthus,
concurred in a plot against her husband, and the unfortunate monarch on
his return to Argos was assassinated; those of his friends who escaped
the massacre were compelled to fly with his son Orestes; and, so strong
was the party which their long possession of the government had enabled
the conspirators to form, the usurper obtained complete possession of the
throne. Orestes found refuge at Athens; where alone among the Grecian
states there seems to have been then a constitution capable of bearing
both the absence and the return of the army and its commander without any
essential derangement.
Such were the Trojan war and its consequences, according to the best of
the unconnected and defective accounts remaining, among which those of
Homer have always held the first rank. In modern times, as we have seen,
the authority of the great poet as an historian has been more questioned.
It is of highest importance to the history of the early ages that it
should have its due weight; and it may therefore be proper to mention
here some of the circumstances which principally establish its authority;
others will occur hereafter. It should be observed then that in Homer’s
age poets were the only historians; whence, though it does not at all
follow that poets would so adhere to certain truth as not to introduce
ornament, yet it necessarily follows that veracity in historical
narration would make a large share of a poet’s merit in public opinion, a
circumstance which the common use of written records and prose histories
instantly and totally altered. The probability and the very remarkable
consistency of Homer’s historical anecdotes, variously dispersed as they
are among his poetical details and embellishments, form a second and
powerful testimony. Indeed, the connection and the clearness of Grecian
history, through the very early times of which Homer has treated, appear
very extraordinary when compared with the darkness and uncertainty that
begin in the instant of our losing his guidance, and continue through
ages.[h]
CHARACTER AND SPIRIT OF THE HEROIC AGE
In the tales of Grecian mythology a great difference is apparent
between the earlier and later centuries of the heroic age. They show
us a considerable progress in culture during the course of the period.
The legends of Perseus, Hercules, and Theseus, or of the battle of
the Lapithæ and Centauri, depict the early Greeks as a half wild race
tormented by fierce animals, robbers, and tyrants. Giants, fearful
snakes, and other monsters, also adventures in the nether world, often
appear in these legends, and the Grecians seem to be engaged in a battle
with the wildness of nature and with their own crudity. The same land
appears utterly different in the legends and poems of the Trojan war and
the other events of the later heroic age. In these legends the manners of
the Greeks are represented as friendlier and more peaceful, and, with a
few exceptions, we find no more real miracles, but everything points to a
quieter time and a more orderly state of affairs.
We have a poetical, yet essentially faithful, description of these last
centuries in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_, the two oldest extant Grecian
literary works. Both poems are, besides the recital of a part of the
heroic legends, a true picture of the customs, the conquering spirit, and
the domestic as well as public life of the Greeks at the time of the
Trojan war and immediately after it. The Grecians at that time do not
seem to have been a very numerous people. They lived in small states,
with central cities in active intercourse with one another, not differing
much in their ways of life, customs, and language. They were a rustic,
warlike race, who rejoiced in simple customs and led a happy existence
under a friendly sky. The similarity of religion, language, and customs
made the Greeks of that time, as it were, members of a great organism,
holding together although divided into many tribes and states. At the end
of the heroic age some of the tribes were brought even closer together
by near relationship and by means of temples and feasts in common. But
the link that held them all together had not as yet become a clear
conviction; therefore, so far there was no joint name for the Greek
nation.
Agriculture and cattle raising were the principal occupations of the
people. Besides this they had few industries. Other sources of wealth
were the chase, fishing, and war. The agriculture consisted of corn and
wine-growing and horticulture. The ox was the draught animal, donkeys
and mules were used for transport, horses were but seldom used for
riding, but they drew the chariots in time of war. The herds consisted
principally of cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs. Slaves were used for the
lower work. These were purchased from sea-robbers, obtained in victorious
wars, or born in the house. They had a knowledge of navigation, although
their ships generally had no decks, and were worked more by means of oars
than sails. There was no commerce on a large scale; war and piracy served
instead as a means of obtaining riches. Many metals were known; they used
iron, the working of which was still difficult. Coinage was not used at
all, or, at all events, very little. Weaving was the work of women; the
best woven stuffs, however, were obtained from the Phœnicians, who were
the reigning commercial people of the Grecian seas. They made various
kinds of arms, which were in part of artistic workmanship, ornaments
and vessels of metal, ivory, clay, and wood. The descriptions of these
objects show that the taste for plastic art, that is, the representation
of beautiful forms, was already awakened among them. They possessed
further a knowledge of architecture; towns and villages are mentioned,
also walls with towers and gates. The houses of princes were built of
stone; they contained large and lofty rooms, as well as gardens and halls.
Caste was unknown to the Grecians. The people in the heroic age, to be
sure, consisted of nobles and commons, but the latter took part in all
public affairs of importance, and the privileges of the former did not
rest upon their birth alone; an acquisition of great strength, bravery,
and adroitness was also necessary--virtues which are accessible to all.
The difference between the two classes was, therefore, not grounded, like
the oriental establishment of caste, on superstition and deception, but
on the belief that certain families possessed bodily strength and warlike
abilities, and were therefore appointed by the gods as protectors of the
country; that their only right to superiority over others lay in their
actual greater capacity for ruling and fighting.
The system of government was aristocratic monarchy, supported by the
personal feelings and co-operative opinions of all free men. The state
was thus merely a warlike assembly of vigorous men, consisting of nobles
and freemen, having a leader at their head. The latter was bound to
follow the decisions of the nobility, and in important affairs had to ask
the consent of the people.
The king was only the first of the nobility, and the only rights he
possessed which were not shared by them was that of commander in battle
and high priest. Therefore, if he wished to excel others as real ruler,
everything depended on his personality; he had to surpass others in
riches, bodily strength, bravery, discernment, and experience. The king
brought the sacrifice to the gods for the totality and directed the
religious ceremonies. He also sat in judgment, but mostly in company
with experienced old men from the nobility, being really arbitrator and
protector of the weak against the strong; for if no plaintiff appeared
there was no trial at the public judgment-seat. It was the king’s duty to
offer hospitality to the ambassadors of other states and to be hospitable
to strangers generally. His revenues consisted only of the voluntary
donations of his subjects, of a larger share in the spoils of war, and
of the produce of certain lands assigned to him. The only signs of his
royalty were the sceptre and the herald that went before him. He took the
first place at all assemblies and feasts, and at the sacrificial repasts
he received a double helping of food and drink. He was addressed in terms
of veneration, but otherwise one associated with him as with any other
noble, and there was no trace of the oriental forms of homage towards
kings among the ancient Greeks.
The nobility was composed of men of certain families to whom especial
strength and dexterity were attributed as hereditary prerogatives; they
sought to keep these up by means of knightly practices and to prove them
on the battle-field. As has already been said, they took part in the
government of the country. The common people or free citizens of the
second class were assembled on all important occasions, to give their
votes for peace or war, or any other matter of importance. The assemblies
of the people described in the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ show the same
general participation in public affairs and that lively activity which
later reached such a high development in the Grecian republics. Beside
this, at that time bravery and strength showed what every man was worth,
and still more than mere bodily strength, experience, eloquence, and a
judicious insight into life and its circumstances brought to any one
honour and importance.
In time of war the decision depended more upon the bravery of the kings
and nobles than upon the fighting of the people, who arranged themselves
in close masses on the battle-field. The chiefs were not trained to be
generals or leaders, but rather brave and skilled fighters. Swiftness
in running, strength and certainty in throw, and skill in wrestling as
in the use of arms, of the lance and the sword, were the most important
items. Every leader had his own chariot, with a young companion by his
side to hold the reins, while he himself fought with a javelin. The
fortifications of the towns consisted of a trench and a wall with towers.
As yet they had no knowledge of how to conduct a siege. They knew of no
implement which would serve in the taking of a town.
Music and poetry played an important part in the lives of these warlike
people. These were inseparable from their meals, their feasts, and
military expeditions. The lyre, the flute, and the pipe were the musical
instruments in the heroic age; the trumpet was not used until the end of
that time. Flute and pipe were the instruments of shepherds and peasants.
The lyre, on the other hand, was played by poets and singers and even
by many of the kings and nobles, and always served as the accompaniment
of songs. The subjects of their songs were the deeds of living or past
heroes. There were singers or bards who composed these songs and sang
them while men stood round to listen and these bards were held in great
esteem.
Religion and politics were closely connected; but there was no trace of
a priesthood with predominant influence. The king was the director of
sacrifices, the presence of a priest not being required. There already
existed, to be sure, besides the ancient oracle of Dodona, the oracle
of Delphi in Phocis, which became so celebrated at a later period; but
neither had any great influence in the heroic age. On the other hand,
there were so-called soothsayers, who were supposed to possess much
wisdom and at the same time a kind of association with the gods. For this
reason they were consulted, so as to foretell the results of important
undertakings, and to discover the cause of general misfortunes as well as
a means of removing them.
The most renowned of these men were Orpheus, who played the part of
prophet in the expedition of the Argonauts; Amphiaraus, who joined the
expedition of the Seven against Thebes in the same character; Tiresias,
who was the prophet of the Thebans both at that time and in the war of
the Epigoni; and lastly Calchas, the soothsayer of the Greeks in the
Trojan war. Even these men had no influence to be compared with the
oriental priesthood.
They were really only looked upon as pacifiers of the outraged godhead
and as advisers; their soothsayings were not always respected, and when
their prophecies were unsatisfactory they had to face the anger of those
in power.
[Illustration: ZEUS
(From a Greek Statue)]
The religious belief of the heroic age was the origin of the later
national religion. It sprang probably from various sources. Therefore it
cannot be distinguished by any special belief like that of the Indians
and Egyptians. The religion of the Greeks was never a perfected system
and therefore not free from contradictions, especially as oriental
conceptions were introduced into it from ancient times. The Grecians of
this time believed heaven, or rather the summit of the towering Mount
Olympus, to be inhabited by beings, like the earth; they imagined that
these beings resembled human beings in appearance and inner nature, but
with the difference that they ascribed to them invisibility, greater
strength, freedom from the barriers of mortality, and a powerful
influence over earthly things. The life of the gods, according to the
representation of the heroic age, only differed from that of men in the
fact that it had a more beautiful colouring and higher pleasures. They
therefore looked upon the gods as personal beings and had that form of
religion known as anthropomorphism, the essential characteristic of which
is the belief that the gods resemble men. But joined in an inexplicable
manner with this view, was the idea that the gods were at the same time
natural phenomena and powers of nature. For instance Zeus, the king and
ruler in the kingdom of the gods, was also regarded as the god of the
atmosphere; Apollo of the sun; Poseidon the god of the sea; and the
woods, wells, valleys, and hills were believed to be inhabited by divine
beings called nymphs.
The king offered sacrifice for the people and every father for his house
and family. The religious ceremonies consisted chiefly of sacrifices and
prayers. There were but few temples, but on the other hand every town
had a piece of land set apart, on which there was an altar. They did not
feel bound to these holy places for the worship of the gods, but often
built an altar on some spot in the open field for prayer and sacrifice.
The sacrifice consisted in burning some pieces of flesh to the gods
and the pouring of wine into the fire; while the rest was consumed at
a general and merry feast. Even the appointed religious feast days had
quite a festive colouring: they feasted, drank, joked, held tournaments,
and listened while bards sang of the deeds of heroes. There was no trace
to be found among the religious ceremonies of the heroic Greeks of that
wild, intoxicating character which generally existed at the feasts of the
oriental people.
This was how the character of the later Grecian heroic age was formed.
They were a vigorous people, with warlike tastes and simple customs,
living under a mild heaven. All took part in public affairs, all were
free, and, in spite of a certain inequality among them, they were all
connected; and divided by no great contrasts in education, the community
felt no kind of oppression. The limited population of the country and the
possession of slaves permitted a careless and merry way of life. Rough
work was unknown to the greater part of the populace. They exercised
their bodies and steeled their strength with warlike undertakings,
hunting, practice with arms, and wrestling. Their mental intelligence
was directed to higher things through religious customs and soothsayers,
and developed rapidly by means of the merry association of the nobility,
frequent consultations about public affairs, and mutual military
expeditions; and, above all, by means of the poetical stories related by
the bards, who put into pleasant form what all felt, and were the real
teachers of a higher mental culture; and lastly by means of the elevating
power of music.
The Greek, under his bright heaven, looked upon life in the kind sunlight
of the upper world as a real life; but that of the lower regions
seemed to him, even if he obtained the greatest honours, and reigned
like Achilles “over the entire dead as king,” only a sombre picture
as compared with the upper world: he loved life and did not throw it
ostentatiously away, where there was no necessity. He did not look upon
flying from a stronger foe as disgrace; swiftness of foot was regarded by
him as a heroic merit, like cunning and a mighty arm.[d]
GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
If we endeavour to ascertain the extent of Homer’s geographical
knowledge, we find ourselves almost confined to Greece and the Ægean.
Beyond this circle all is foreign and obscure: and the looseness with
which he describes the more distant regions, especially when contrasted
with his accurate delineation of those which were familiar to him,
indicates that as to the others he was mostly left to depend on vague
rumours, which he might mould at his pleasure. In the catalogue indeed
of the Trojan auxiliaries, which probably comprises all the information
which the Greeks had acquired concerning that part of the world at the
time it was composed, the names of several nations in the interior of
Asia Minor are enumerated. The remotest are probably the Halizonians of
Alyba, whose country may, as Strabo supposes, be that of the Chaldeans
on the Euxine. On the southern side of the peninsula the Lycians appear
as a very distant race, whose land is therefore a fit scene for fabulous
adventures: on its confines are the haunts of the monstrous Chimæra,
and the territory of the Amazons: farther eastward the mountains of the
fierce Solymi, from which Poseidon, on his return from the Ethiopians,
descries the bark of Ulysses sailing on the western sea. These Ethiopians
are placed by the poet at the extremity of the earth; but as they are
visited by Menelaus in the course of his wanderings, they must be
supposed to reach across to the shores of the inner sea, and to border
on the Phœnicians. Ulysses describes a voyage which he performed in
five days, from Crete to Egypt: and the Taphians, though they inhabit
the western side of Greece, are represented as engaged in piratical
adventures on the coast of Phœnicia. But as to Egypt, it seems clear
that the poet’s information was confined to what he had heard of a river
Ægyptus, and a great city called Thebes.
On the western side of Europe, the compass of his knowledge seems to be
bounded by a few points not very far distant from the coast of Greece.
The northern part of the Adriatic he appears to have considered as a vast
open sea. Farther westward, Sicily and the southern extremity of Italy
are represented as the limits of all ordinary navigation. Beyond lies a
vast sea, which spreads to the very confines of nature and space. Sicily
itself, at least its more remote parts, is inhabited by various races
of gigantic cannibals: whether, at the same time, any of the tribes who
really preceded the Greeks in the occupation of the island were known
to be settled on the eastern side, is not certain, though the Sicels
and Sicania are mentioned in the _Odyssey_. Italy, as well as Greece,
appears, according to the poet’s notions, to be bounded on the north by a
formidable waste of waters.
When we proceed to inquire how the imagination of the people filled
up the void of its experience, and determined the form of the unknown
world, we find that the rudeness of its conceptions corresponds to the
scantiness of its information. The part of the earth exposed to the
beams of the sun was undoubtedly considered, not as a spherical, but as
a plane surface, only varied by its heights and hollows; and, as little
can it be doubted, that the form of this surface was determined by that
of the visible horizon. The whole orb is girt by the ocean, not a larger
sea, but a deep river, which, circulating with constant but gentle flux,
separates the world of light and life from the realms of darkness,
dreams, and death. No feature in the Homeric chart is more distinctly
prominent than this: hence the divine artist terminates the shield of
Achilles with a circular stripe, representing “the mighty strength of
the river _Ocean_,” and all the epithets which the poet applies to it
are such as belong exclusively to a river. Homer describes all the other
rivers, all springs and wells, and the salt main itself, as issuing from
the ocean stream, which might be supposed to feed them by subterraneous
channels. Still it is very difficult to form a clear conception of
this river, or to say how the poet supposed it to be bounded. Ulysses
passes into it from the western sea; but whether the point at which he
enters is a mouth or opening, or the two waters are only separated by
an invisible line, admits of much doubt. On the farther side however is
land: but a land of darkness, which the sun cannot pierce, a land of
Cimmerians, the realm of Hades, inhabited by the shades of the departed,
and by the family of dreams. As to the other dimensions of the earth,
the poet affords us no information, and it would be difficult to decide
whether a cylinder or a cone approaches nearest to the figure which he
may have assigned to it: and as little does he intimate in what manner
he conceives it to be supported. But within it was hollowed another vast
receptacle for departed spirits, perhaps the proper abode of Hades.
Beneath this, and as far below the earth as heaven was above it, lay the
still more murky pit of Tartarus, secured by its iron gates and brazen
floor, the dungeon reserved by Jupiter for his implacable enemies.
Some of the epithets which Homer applies to the heaven, seem to imply
that he considered it as a solid vault of metal. But it is not necessary
to construe these epithets so literally, nor to draw any such inference
from his description of Atlas, who “holds the lofty pillars which keep
earth and heaven asunder.” Yet it would seem, from the manner in which
the height of heaven is compared with the depth of Tartarus, that the
region of light was thought to have certain bounds. The summit of the
Thessalian Olympus was regarded as the highest point on the earth, and
it is not always carefully distinguished from the aerian regions above.
The idea of a seat of the gods,--perhaps derived from a more ancient
tradition, in which it was not attached to any geographical site,--seems
to be indistinctly blended in the poet’s mind with that of a real
mountain. Hence Hephæstus, when hurled from the threshold of Jupiter’s
palace, falls “from morn to noon, from noon to dewy eve,” before he drops
on Lemnos; and Jupiter speaks of suspending the earth by a chain from the
top of Olympus.
NAVIGATION AND ASTRONOMY
A wider compass of geographical knowledge, and more enlarged views of
nature, would scarcely have been consistent with the state of navigation
and commerce which the Homeric poems represent. The poet expresses the
common feelings of an age when the voyages of the Greeks were mostly
confined to the Ægean. The vessels of the heroes, and probably of the
poet’s contemporaries, were slender half-decked boats: according to
the calculation of Thucydides, who seems to suspect exaggeration, the
largest contained one hundred and twenty men, the greatest number of
rowers mentioned in the catalogue: but we find twenty rowers spoken
of as a usual complement of a good ship. The mast was movable, and
was only hoisted to take advantage of a fair wind, and at the end of
a day’s voyage was again deposited in its appropriate receptacle. In
the day-time, the Greek mariner commonly followed the windings of the
coasts, or shot across from headland to headland, or from isle to isle:
at night his vessel was usually put into port, or hauled up on the
beach; for though on clear nights he might prosecute his voyage as well
as by day, yet should the sky be overcast his course was inevitably
lost. Engagements at sea are never mentioned by Homer, though he so
frequently alludes to piratical excursions. They were probably of rare
occurrence: but as they must sometimes have been inevitable, the galleys
were provided with long poles for such occasions. The approach of winter
put a stop to all ordinary navigation. Hesiod fixes the time for laying
up the merchant ship, covering it with stones, taking out the rigging,
and hanging the rudder up by the fire. According to him, the fair season
lasts only fifty days: some indeed venture earlier to sea, but a prudent
man will not then trust his substance to the waves.
The practical astronomy of the early Greeks consisted of a few
observations on the heavenly bodies, the appearances of which were
most conspicuously connected with the common occupations of life. The
succession of light and darkness, the recurring phases of the moon, and
the vicissitude of the seasons, presented three regular periods of time,
which, though all equally forced on the attention, were not all marked
with equal distinctness by sensible limits. From the first, and down to
the age of Solon, the Greeks seem to have measured their months in the
natural way, by the interval between one appearance of the new moon and
the next. Hence, their months were of unequal duration; yet they might
be described in round numbers as consisting of thirty days. It was soon
observed that the revolutions of the moon were far from affording an
exact measure of the apparent annual revolution of the sun, and that if
this were taken to be equal to twelve of the former, the seasons would
pass in succession through all the months of the year. This in itself
would have been no evil, and would have occasioned no disturbance in
the business of life. Seen under the Greek sky, the stars were scarcely
less conspicuous objects than the moon itself: some of the most striking
groups were early observed and named, and served, by their risings and
settings, to regulate the labours of the husbandman and the adventures of
the seaman.
COMMERCE AND THE ARTS
Commerce appears in Homer’s descriptions to be familiar enough to the
Greeks of the heroic age, but not to be held in great esteem. Yet in
the _Odyssey_ we find the goddess, who assumes the person of a Taphian
chief, professing that she is on her way to Temesa with a cargo of
iron to be exchanged for copper: and in the _Iliad_, Jason’s son, the
prince of Lemnos, appears to carry on an active traffic with the Greeks
before Troy. He sends a number of ships freighted with wine, for which
the purchasers pay, some in copper, some in iron, some in hides, some
in cattle, some in slaves. Of the use of money the poet gives no hint,
either in this description or elsewhere. He speaks of the precious metals
only as commodities, the value of which was in all cases determined
by weight. The _Odyssey_ represents Phœnician traders as regularly
frequenting the Greek ports; but as Phœnician slaves are sometimes
brought to Greece, so the Phœnicians do not scruple, even where they are
received as friendly merchants, to carry away Greek children into slavery.
The general impression which the Homeric pictures of society leave on
the reader is, that many of the useful arts,--that is, those subservient
to the animal wants or enjoyments of life,--had already reached such
a stage of refinement as enabled the affluent to live, not merely in
rude plenty, but in a considerable degree of luxury and splendour. The
dwellings, furniture, clothing, armour, and other such property of the
chiefs, are commonly described as magnificent, costly, and elegant, both
as to the materials and workmanship. We are struck, not only by the
apparent profusion of the precious metals and other rare and dazzling
objects in the houses of the great, but by the skill and ingenuity which
seem to be exerted in working them up into convenient and graceful forms.
Great caution, however, is evidently necessary in drawing inferences
from these descriptions as to the state of the arts in the heroic ages.
The poet has treasures at his disposal which, as they cost him nothing,
he may scatter with an unsparing hand. The shield made by Hephæstus for
Achilles cannot be considered as a specimen of the progress of art, since
it is not only the work of a god, but is fabricated on an extraordinary
occasion, to excite the admiration of men. It is clear that the poet
attributes a superiority to several Eastern nations, more especially to
the Phœnicians, not only in wealth, but in knowledge and skill, that,
compared with their progress, the arts of Greece seem to be in their
infancy. The description of a Phœnician vessel, which comes to a Greek
island freighted with trinkets, and of the manner in which a lady of the
highest rank, and her servants, handle and gaze on one of the foreign
ornaments, present the image of such a commerce as Europeans carry on
with the islanders of the South Sea. It looks as if articles of this
kind, at least, were eagerly coveted, and that there were no means of
procuring them at home.
It is possible that Homer’s pictures of the heroic style of living may
be too highly coloured, but there is reason to believe that they were
drawn from the life. He may have been somewhat too lavish of the precious
metals; but some of the others, particularly copper, were perhaps more
abundant than in later times; beside copper and iron, we find steel
and tin, which the Phœnicians appear already to have brought from the
west of Europe, frequently mentioned. There can be no doubt that the
industry of the Greeks had long been employed on these materials. We may
therefore readily believe that, even in the heroic times, the works of
Greek artisans already bore the stamp of the national genius. In some
important points, the truth of Homer’s descriptions has been confirmed
by monuments, brought to light within our own memory, of an architecture
which was most probably contemporary with the events which he celebrated.
The remains of Mycenæ and other ancient cities seem sufficiently to
attest the fidelity with which he has represented the general character
of that magnificence which the heroic chieftains loved to display. On
the other hand, the same poems afford several strong indications that,
though in the age which they describe such arts were, perhaps, rapidly
advancing, they cannot then have been so long familiar to the Greeks as
to be very commonly practised; and that a skilful artificer was rarely
found, and was consequently viewed with great admiration, and occupied
a high rank in society. Thus, the craft of the carpenter appears to be
exceedingly honourable. He is classed with the soothsayer, the physician,
and the bard, and like them is frequently sent for from a distance.
The son of a person eminent in this craft is not mixed with the crowd
on the field of battle, but comes forward among the most distinguished
warriors. And as in itself it seems to confer a sort of nobility, so it
is practised by the most illustrious chiefs. Ulysses is represented as a
very skilful carpenter. He not only builds the boat in which he leaves
the island of Calypso, but in his own palace carves a singular bedstead
out of the trunk of a tree, which he inlays with gold, silver, and ivory.
Another chief, Epeus, was celebrated as the builder of the wooden horse
in which the heroes were concealed at the taking of Troy. The goddess
Athene was held to preside over this, as over all manual arts, and to
favour those who excelled in it with her inspiring counsels.
The chances of war give occasion, as might be expected, for frequent
allusions to the healing art. The Greek army contains two chiefs who have
inherited consummate skill in this art from their father Æsculapius; and
Achilles has been so well instructed in it by Chiron, that Patroclus, to
whom he has imparted his knowledge, is able to supply their place. But
the processes described in this and other cases show that these might
often be the least danger from the treatment of the most unpractised
hands. The operation of extracting a weapon from the wound, with a knife,
seems not to have been considered as one which demanded peculiar skill;
the science of the physician was chiefly displayed in the application of
medicinal herbs, by which he stanched the blood, and eased the pain.
When Ulysses has been gored by a wild boar, his friends first bind up the
hurt, and then use a charm for stopping the flow of blood. The healing
art, such as it was, was frequently and successfully practised by the
women.
We have already seen that several of the arts which originally ministered
only to physical wants, had been so far refined before the time of Homer,
that their productions gratified the sense of beauty, and served for
ornament as well as for use. Hence our curiosity is awakened to inquire
to what extent those arts, which became in later times the highest glory
of Greece, in which she yet stands unrivalled, were cultivated in the
same period. Unfortunately, the information which the poet affords on
this subject is so scanty and obscure, as to leave room on many points
for a wide difference of opinion. If we begin with his own art, of which
his own poetry is the most ancient specimen extant, we find several
hints of its earlier condition. It was held in the highest honour among
the heroes. The bard is one of those persons whom men send for to very
distant parts; his presence is welcome at every feast; it seems as if one
was attached to the service of every great family, and treated with an
almost religious respect; Agamemnon, when he sets out on the expedition
to Troy, reposes the most important of all trusts in the bard whom he
leaves at home. It would even seem as if poetry and music were thought
fit to form part of a princely education; for Achilles is found amusing
himself with singing, while he touches the same instrument with which the
bards constantly accompany their strains. The general character of this
heroic poetry is also distinctly marked; it is of the narrative kind, and
its subjects are drawn from the exploits or adventures of renowned men.
Each song is described as a short extemporaneous effusion, but yet seems
to have been rounded into a little whole, such as to satisfy the hearer’s
immediate curiosity.
_The Graphic Arts_
An interesting and difficult question presents itself, as to the degree
in which Homer and his contemporaries were conversant with the imitative
arts, and particularly with representations of the human form. We find
such representations, on a small scale, frequently described. The garment
woven by Helen contained a number of battle scenes; as one presented by
Penelope to Ulysses was embroidered with a picture of a chase, wrought
with gold threads. The shield of Achilles was divided into compartments
exhibiting many complicated groups of figures: and though this was a
masterpiece of Hephæstus, it would lead us to believe that the poet must
have seen many less elaborate and difficult works of a like nature. But
throughout the Homeric poems there occurs only one distinct allusion
to a statue, as a work of human art. The robe which the Trojan queen
offers to Athene in her temple, is placed by the priestess on the knees
of the goddess, who was therefore represented in a sitting posture. Even
this, it may be said, proves nothing as to the Greeks. They can only be
admitted as additional indications that the poet was not a stranger to
such objects.
To pictures, or the art of painting, properly so called, the poet makes
no allusion, though he speaks of the colouring of ivory, as an art
in which the Carian and Mæonian women excelled. It must, however, be
considered that there is only one passage in which he expressly mentions
any kind of delineation, and there in a very obscure manner, though he
has described so many works which imply a previous design.[c]
THE ART OF WAR
[Illustration: PAVEMENT OF SOUTHWEST RAMPARTS OF THE WALLS OF TROY]
The art of war is among the arts of necessity, which all people, the
rudest equally and the most polished, must cultivate, or ruin will
follow the neglect. The circumstances of Greece were in some respects
peculiarly favourable to the improvement of this art. Divided into little
states, the capital of each, with the greater part of the territory,
generally within a day’s march of several neighbouring states which might
be enemies and seldom were thoroughly to be trusted as friends, while
from the establishment of slavery arose everywhere perpetual danger of
a domestic foe, it was of peculiar necessity both for every individual
to be a soldier, and for the community to pay unremitting attention to
military affairs. Accordingly we find that so early as Homer’s time the
Greeks had improved considerably upon that tumultuary warfare alone known
to many barbarous nations, who yet have prided themselves in the practice
of war for successive centuries. Several terms used by the poet, together
with his descriptions of marches, indicate that orders of battle were in
his time regularly formed in rank and file. Steadiness in the soldier,
that foundation of all those powers which distinguish an army from a
mob, and which to this day forms the highest praise of the best troops,
we find in great perfection in the _Iliad_. “The Grecian phalanges,”
says the poet, “marched in close order, the leaders directing each his
own band. The rest were mute: insomuch that you would say in so great
a multitude there was no voice. Such was the silence with which they
respectfully watched for the word of command from their officers.”
Considering the deficiency of iron, the Grecian troops appear to have
been very well armed both for offence and defence. Their defensive armour
consisted of a helmet, a breastplate, and greaves, all of brass, and
a shield, commonly of bull’s hide, but often strengthened with brass.
The breastplate appears to have met the belt, which was a considerable
defence to the belly and groin, and with an appendant skirt guarded also
the thighs. All together covered the forepart of the soldier from the
throat to the ankle; and the shield was a superadded protection for every
part. The bulk of the Grecian troops were infantry thus heavily armed,
and formed in close order many ranks deep. Any body formed in ranks and
files, close and deep, without regard to a specific number of either
ranks or files, was generally termed a phalanx. But the Locrians, under
Oïlean Ajax, were all light-armed: bows were their principal weapons; and
they never engaged in close fight.
Riding on horseback was yet little practised, though it appears to have
been not unknown. Some centuries, however, passed before it was generally
applied in Greece to military purposes; the mountainous ruggedness of
the country preventing any extensive use of cavalry, except among the
Thessalians, whose territory was a large plain. But in the Homeric armies
no chief was without his chariot, drawn generally by two, sometimes
by three horses; and these chariots of war make a principal figure in
Homer’s battles. Nestor, forming the army for action, composes the
first line of chariots only. In the second he places that part of the
infantry in which he has least confidence; and then forms a third line,
or reserve, of the most approved troops. It seems extraordinary that
chariots should have been so extensively used in war as we find they were
in the early ages. In the wide plains of Asia, indeed, we may account
for their introduction, as we may give them credit for utility: but how
they should become so general among the inhabitants of rocky, mountainous
Greece, how the distant Britons should arrive at that surprising
perfection in the use of them which they possessed when the Roman legions
first invaded this island, especially as the same mode of fighting was
little if at all practised among the Gauls and Germans, is less obvious
to conjecture.
The combat of the chiefs, so repeatedly described by Homer, advancing to
engage singly in front of their line of battle, is apt to strike a modern
reader with an appearance of absurdity perhaps much beyond the reality.
Before the use of fire-arms, that practice was not uncommon when the art
of war was at its greatest perfection. In Cæsar’s _Commentaries_ we have
a very particular account of an advanced combat, in which, not generals
indeed, but two centurions of his army engaged. The Grecian chiefs of
the heroic age, like the knights of the times of chivalry, had armour
apparently very superior to that of the common soldiers; which, with
the skill acquired by assiduous practice amid unbounded leisure, might
enable them to obviate much of the seeming danger of such skirmishes.
Nor might the effect be unimportant. Like the sharp-shooters of modern
days, a few men of superior strength, activity, and skill, superior also
by the excellence of their defensive armour, might prepare a victory by
creating disorder in the close array of the enemy’s phalanx. They threw
their weighty javelins from a distance, while none dared advance to meet
them but chiefs equally well-armed with themselves: and from the soldiers
in the ranks they had little to fear; because, in that close order, the
dart could not be thrown with any advantage. Occasionally, indeed, we
find some person of inferior name advancing to throw his javelin at a
chief occupied against some other, but retreating again immediately into
the ranks: a resource not disdained by the greatest heroes when danger
pressed. Hector himself, having thrown his javelin ineffectually at Ajax,
retires toward his phalanx, but is overtaken by a stone of enormous
weight, which brings him to the ground. If from the death or wounds of
chiefs, or slaughter in the foremost rank of soldiers, any confusion
arose in the phalanx, the shock of the enemy’s phalanx, advancing in
perfect order, must be irresistible.
Another practice common in Homer’s time is by no means equally
defensible, but on the contrary marks great barbarism; that of stopping
in the heat of action to strip the slain. Often this paltry passion
for possessing the spoil of the enemy superseded all other, even the
most important and most deeply interesting objects of battle. The poet
himself was not unaware of the danger and inconveniency of the practice,
and seems even to have aimed at a reformation of it. We find indeed in
Homer’s warfare a remarkable mixture of barbarism with regularity. Though
the art of forming an army in phalanx was known and commonly practised,
yet the business of a general, in directing its operations, was lost in
the passion, or we may call it fashion, of the great men to signalise
themselves by acts of personal courage and skill in arms. Achilles and
Hector, the first heroes of the _Iliad_, excel only in the character
of fighting soldiers: as generals and directors of the war, they are
inferior to many. Excepting indeed in the single circumstance of forming
the army in order of battle, so far from the general, we scarcely ever
discover even the officer among Homer’s heroes. It is not till most of
the principal Grecian leaders are disabled for the duty of soldiers
that at length they so far take upon themselves that of officers as to
endeavour to restore order among their broken phalanges.
We might, however, yet more wonder at another deficiency in Homer’s art
of war, were it not still universal throughout those rich and populous
countries where mankind was first civilised. Even among the Turks,
who, far as they have spread over the finest part of Europe, retain
pertinaciously every defect of their ancient Asiatic customs, the easy
and apparently obvious precaution of posting and relieving sentries,
so essential to the safety of armies, has never obtained. When, in
the ill turn of the Grecian affairs, constant readiness for defence
became more especially necessary, it is mentioned as an instance of
soldiership in the active Diomedes, that he slept on his arms without
his tent: but no kind of watch was kept; all his men were at the same
time asleep around him: and the other leaders were yet less prepared
against surprise. A guard indeed selected from the army was set, in the
manner of a modern grand-guard or out-post; but though commanded by two
officers high both in rank and reputation, yet the commander-in-chief
expresses his fear that, overcome with fatigue, the whole might fall
asleep and totally forget their duty. The Trojans, who at the same
time, after their success, slept on the field of battle, had no guard
appointed by authority, but depended wholly upon the interest which
every one had in preventing a surprise; “They exhorted one another to
be watchful,” says the poet. But the allies all slept; and he subjoins
the reason, “For they had no children or wives at hand.” However, though
Homer does not expressly blame the defect, or propose a remedy, yet he
gives, in the surprise of Rhesus, an instance of the disasters to which
armies are exposed by intermission of watching, that might admonish his
fellow-countrymen to improve their practice.
The Greeks, and equally the Trojans and their allies, encamped with great
regularity; and fortified, if in danger of an attack from a superior
enemy. Indeed Homer ascribes no superiority in the art of war, or even in
personal courage, to his fellow-countrymen. Even those inland Asiatics,
afterwards so unwarlike, are put by him upon a level with the bravest
people. Tents, like those now in use, seem to have been a late invention.
The ancients, on desultory expeditions, and in marching through a
country, slept with no shelter but their cloaks; as our light troops
often carry none but a blanket--a practice which Bonaparte extended
to his whole army, thereby providing a speedy and miserable death for
thousands in his retreat from Russia. When the ancients remained long on
a spot they hutted. Achilles’ tent or hut was built of fir, and thatched
with reeds; and it seems to have had several apartments.[h]
TREATMENT OF ORPHANS, CRIMINALS, AND SLAVES
There are two special veins of estimable sentiment, on which it may be
interesting to contrast heroic and historical Greece, and which exhibit
the latter as an improvement on the former, not less in the affections
than in the intellect.
The law of Athens was peculiarly watchful and provident with respect both
to the persons and the property of orphan minors; but the description
given in the _Iliad_ of the utter and hopeless destitution of the orphan
boy, despoiled of his paternal inheritance and abandoned by all the
friends of his father, whom he urgently supplicates, and who all harshly
cast him off, is one of the most pathetic morsels in the whole poem.
In reference again to the treatment of the dead body of an enemy, we
find all the Greek chiefs who come near (not to mention the conduct of
Achilles himself) piercing with their spears the corpse of the slain
Hector, while some of them even pass disgusting taunts upon it. We may
add, from the lost epics, the mutilation of the dead bodies of Paris
and Deiphobus by the hand of Menelaus. But at the time of the Persian
invasion, it was regarded as unworthy of a right-minded Greek to maltreat
in any way the dead body of an enemy, even where such a deed might seem
to be justified on the plea of retaliation.
The different manner of dealing with homicide presents a third test,
perhaps more striking yet, of the change in Grecian feelings and manners
during the three centuries preceding the Persian invasion. That which the
murderer in the Homeric times had to dread, was, not public prosecution
and punishment, but the personal vengeance of the kinsmen and friends
of the deceased, who were stimulated by the keenest impulses of honour
and obligation to avenge the deed, and were considered by the public as
specially privileged to do so. To escape from this danger, he is obliged
to flee the country, unless he can prevail upon the incensed kinsmen to
accept of a valuable payment (we must not speak of coined money, in the
days of Homer) as satisfaction for their slain comrade. They may, if
they please, decline the offer, and persist in their right of revenge;
but if they accept, they are bound to leave the offender unmolested,
and he accordingly remains at home without further consequences. The
chiefs in agora do not seem to interfere, except to insure payment of the
stipulated sum.
In historical Athens, this right of private revenge was discountenanced
and put out of sight, even so early as the Draconian legislation, and at
last restricted to a few extreme and special cases; while the murderer
came to be considered, first as having sinned against the gods, next
as having deeply injured the society, and thus at once as requiring
absolution and deserving punishment. On the first of these two grounds,
he is interdicted from the agora and from all holy places, as well as
from public functions, even while yet untried and simply a suspected
person; for if this were not done, the wrath of the gods would manifest
itself in bad crops and other national calamities. On the second ground,
he is tried before the council of Areopagus, and if found guilty, is
condemned to death, or perhaps to disfranchisement and banishment.
The idea of a propitiatory payment to the relatives of the deceased
has ceased altogether to be admitted: it is the protection of society
which dictates, and the force of society which inflicts, a measure of
punishment calculated to deter for the future.
The society of legendary Greece includes, besides the chiefs, the general
mass of freemen (λαοὶ), among whom stand out by special names certain
professional men, such as the carpenter, the smith, the leather-dresser,
the leech, the prophet, the bard, and the fisherman. We have no means of
appreciating their condition. Though lots of arable land were assigned in
special property to individuals, with boundaries both carefully marked
and jealously watched, yet the larger proportion of surface was devoted
to pasture. Cattle formed both the chief item in the substance of a
wealthy man, the chief means of making payments, and the common ground
of quarrels--bread and meat, in large quantities, being the constant
food of every one. The estates of the owners were tilled, and their
cattle tended, mostly by bought slaves, but to a certain degree also by
poor freemen called _thetes_, working for hire and for stated periods.
The principal slaves, who were entrusted with the care of large herds of
oxen, swine, or goats, were of necessity men worthy of confidence, their
duties placing them away from their master’s immediate eye. They had
other slaves subordinate to them, and appear to have been well-treated:
the deep and unshaken attachment of Eumæus the swineherd and Philœtius
the neatherd to the family and affairs of the absent Ulysses, is among
the most interesting points in the ancient epic. Slavery was a calamity,
which in that period of insecurity might befall any one: the chief who
conducted a freebooting expedition, if he succeeded, brought back with
him a numerous troop of slaves, as many as he could seize--if he failed,
became very likely a slave himself: so that the slave was often by birth
of equal dignity with his master--Eumæus was himself the son of a chief,
conveyed away when a child by his nurse, and sold by Phœnician kidnappers
to Laertes. A slave of this character, if he conducted himself well,
might often expect to be enfranchised by his master and placed in an
independent holding.
On the whole, the slavery of legendary Greece does not present itself as
existing under a peculiarly harsh form, especially if we consider that
all the classes of society were then very much upon a level in point
of taste, sentiment, and instruction. In the absence of legal security
or an effective social sanction, it is probable that the condition of
a slave under an average master, may have been as good as that of the
free Thete. The class of slaves whose lot appears to have been the most
pitiable were the females--more numerous than the males, and performing
the principal work in the interior of the house. Not only do they seem to
have been more harshly treated than the males, but they were charged with
the hardest and most exhausting labour which the establishment of a Greek
chief required; they brought in water from the spring, and turned by hand
the house-mills, which ground the large quantity of flour consumed in his
family. This oppressive task was performed generally by female slaves,
in historical as well as in legendary Greece. Spinning and weaving was
the constant occupation of women, whether free or slave, of every rank
and station; all the garments worn both by men and women were fashioned
at home, and Helen as well as Penelope is expert and assiduous at the
occupation. The daughters of Celeus at Eleusis go to the well with their
basins for water, and Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, joins her female
slaves in the business of washing her garments in the river. If we are
obliged to point out the fierceness and insecurity of an early society,
we may at the same time note with pleasure its characteristic simplicity
of manners: Rebecca, Rachel, and the daughters of Jethro, in the early
Mosaic narrative, as well as the wife of the native Macedonian chief
(with whom the Temenid Perdiccas, ancestor of Philip and Alexander, first
took service on retiring from Argos), baking her own cakes on the hearth,
exhibit a parallel in this respect to the Homeric pictures.
We obtain no particulars respecting either the common freemen generally,
or the particular class of them called _thetes_. These latter, engaged
for special jobs, or at the harvest and other busy seasons of field
labour, seem to have given their labour in exchange for board and
clothing: they are mentioned in the same line with the slaves, and were
(as has been just observed) probably on the whole little better off.
The condition of a poor freeman in those days, without a lot of land of
his own, going about from one temporary job to another, and having no
powerful family and no social authority to look up to for protection,
must have been sufficiently miserable. When Eumæus indulged his
expectation of being manumitted by his masters, he thought at the same
time that they would give him a wife, a house, and a lot of land near to
themselves; without which collateral advantages simple manumission might
perhaps have been no improvement in his condition. To be _thete_ in the
service of a very poor farmer is selected by Achilles as the maximum of
human hardship.[b]
MANNERS AND CUSTOMS
The Trojan war gives a great shock to Greece and hurls it for the first
time against Asia. Herodotus saw very well in this war, still mixed with
fables, but certain in its principal events and in its issue, the first
act of this long struggle between Greece and Asia, which will have for
end the expedition of Alexander.
The Eastern armies are richer, the habits more slack, the spirit less
active and less enterprising. Greece already lived its own life, it was
conscious of itself and practised in its own centre that military and
intellectual activity of which the Trojan War was the first development.
Marriage is no longer, as in the East, a sale, where the woman is
considered as a thing; an exchange of presents between the two families
seems to indicate a certain equality between the husband and wife. The
legitimate wife, in this society where the scourge of polygamy has not
passed, has a dignity and influence unknown in Greece. Penelope is
the companion of Ulysses. The nobleness of her sorrow, her authority,
are signs of the new destiny of women. The wife of Alcinous rules the
domestic affairs. Helen herself, after her return to family life, will
come and sit down, free and respected by the hearth of her spouse.
Lastly, Andromache is the true companion of Hector, and seems worthy of
sharing in all his fortune. But the woman is still far from being the
equal of man. Favourite slaves frequently take from her her influence,
and slavery, which the chances of war can bring down on the noblest,
vilifies her at every instant. That tripod, given to a victor in a
contest, is worth twelve oxen. We see the princes Iphitus and Ulysses,
labourers and shepherds, Anchises, who is shepherd and hunter. The shield
of Achilles shows us a king harvesting. Neleus gives his daughter in
marriage for a flock; Andromache herself takes care of Hector’s horses;
and Nausicaa, at a later and more civilised period than the _Odyssey_, is
depicted to us washing the linen of the royal family.
The guest almost makes part of the family; it is the gods who send him, a
touching and wholesome belief in that time of brigandage and of difficult
communications. You are going to spurn this guest; take care! perhaps
it is Jupiter himself. How many times have the gods not come thus to
try mortals? Also hospitality formed a sacred link which united, in the
most distant tribes, those who had received it to those who had given
it. This gave rise to duties of gratitude and friendship that nothing
could efface, and which kept their sway even to the encounters on the
battle-field. Glaucus and Diomedes met in the midst of the conflict and
exchanged weapons, which they would have a horror of staining with the
blood of a guest. It is not in vain that Hercules and Theseus travelled
over Greece, punishing the violators of hospitality. There were no castes
in the Grecian society, but slavery from the most ancient times, with the
right of life and death for sanction. War was the most ordinary cause
of servitude. The enemy spared became the slave of the victor; it is
thus that Briseis fell to the power of Achilles. There was no town taken
without slaves, and the inhabitants formed part of the booty. Hector
predicted slavery for his wife and his sons, and depicts Andromache as
fetching water from the fountain, and spinning wool in the house of a
Greek. The carrying off of children by pirates, who made a regular trade
of them, already maintained slavery; it is thus that Eumæus was sold
at Ithaca. This custom of taking away children from the inhabitants
of the coasts, lasted as long as the ancient world. The Greek comedy,
and after it Roman comedy, made of this carrying off the most ordinary
source of their intrigues. But if servitude was already rooted in Greek
civilisation, it was at least then singularly softened by the simplicity
of the customs, and above all by the rural and agricultural life, which
brought together in common works master and slave.
Poetry was already a fashion in these rising societies, and in the
middle of these hard wars the pleasures of the mind had their place.
The warriors, seated in circles, listened with an eagerness, full
of patience, to the interminable recitals of the _ædes_ or singers.
Competitions of music and religious poetry are already instituted in
the small towns, which call the rising art to their ceremonies. These
poetries were sung with the accompaniment of the lyre, and there was no
king who had not his singer. Agamemnon treated his with honour, and in
leaving, entrusted to him his wife and his treasures. This religious
and heroic poetry preceded Homer, who found established rules and fixed
types. As to the beauty of this primitive poetry, it must be judged by
the immortal creations of its most illustrious representative. Certainly
there were not many Homers, but he was not the only poet, and the
imposing simplicity of his poetry could not be a unique fact in this age
of chanted legends. Art and sciences were in infancy, but the curiosity
and admiration that the poets testify for the still imperfect work of
the artists, and for the fabulous tales of travellers, remind us that we
see at its beginning the most industrious and the most inventive race of
antiquity.[i]
FOOTNOTES
[6] [This estimate must not be taken too literally. The “Heroic Age” is
more a racial memory than a chronological epoch.]
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