of the English public was fixed with intense anxiety on the fortunes
of one man, who had undertaken a perilous mission in the service of
his country. When the Egyptian difficulty was at its worst, General
Gordon had started for Khartoum, to aid the Government, by his personal
influence, in the policy of rescuing the garrisons and retiring from
the Soudan. The journey, while it reflected fresh honor on him,
necessarily imposed a grave responsibility on those who had sanctioned
it. Any moment might bring the news of his death. If such news came, it
was generally thought and said, the Ministry would fall. In a country
with the temperament of England, the mere existence of such a belief
set one thinking. A year ago, Gordon’s name, though familiar to the
well-informed classes, would not have acted like a spell on the nation.
But a popular biography of him which had appeared had given occasion
for much writing in the newspapers. A short time had sufficed to make
the broad facts of his career known throughout the length and breadth
of the land. People knew that he had welded a loose Chinese rabble
into an army which saved the reigning dynasty of China; that, alone of
Christians, he is named in the prayers of Mecca; that he does not care
for personal rewards; that he is fearless of death; and that he trusts
in God. To impress these facts on the popular imagination had been the
work of a few weeks; to concentrate the force of popular opinion, if he
had been sacrificed, would have been the work of a few hours. Seldom,
perhaps, has anything illustrated more vividly that great and
distinctive condition of modern existence in free countries,—the
double power wielded by the newspaper press, at once as the ubiquitous
instructor and as the rapid interpreter of a national mind. It
was natural at such a time, for one whose pursuits suggested the
comparison, to look from the modern to the ancient world, and to
attempt some estimate of the interval which separates them in this
striking and important respect. In the ancient civilisations, were
there any agencies which exercised a power analogous in kind, though
not comparable in degree, to that of the modern press? To begin with,
we feel at once that the despotic monarchies of the ancient East will
not detain us long. For them, national opinion normally meant the
opinion of the king. We know the general manner of record which is
found graven on stone, in connection with the images or symbols of
those monarchs. As doctors seem still to differ a good deal about the
precise translation of so many of those texts, it might be rash to
quote any, but this is the sort of style which seems to prevail among
the royal authors: “He came up with chariots. He said that he was my
first cousin. He lied. I impaled him. I am Artakhshatrá. I flayed
his uncles, his brothers, and his cousins. I am the king, the son of
Daryavush. I crucified two thousand of the principal inhabitants. I
am the shining one, the great and the good.” From the monarchical
East, we turn with more curiosity to Greece and Rome. There, at least,
there was a life of public opinion. Apart from institutions, which are
crystallised opinion, were there any living, non-official voices in
which this public opinion could be heard?
The Homeric poems are not only the oldest monuments of Greek
literature, but also the earliest documents of the Greek race. Out of
the twilight of the prehistoric past, a new people, a new type of mind,
are suddenly disclosed in a medium of pellucid clearness. Like Athene
springing adult and full-armed from the head of Zeus, this new race,
when Homer reveals it, has already attained to a mature consciousness
of itself, and is already equipped with the aptitudes which are to
distinguish it throughout its later history. The genius of the Homeric
Greek has essentially the same traits which recur in the ripest age of
the Greek republics,—even as Achilles and Ulysses are personal ideals
which never lost their hold on the nation. This very fact points the
contrast between two aspects of Homeric life—the political, and the
social. In Homeric politics, public opinion has no proper place. The
king, with his council of nobles and elders, can alone originate or
discuss measures. The popular assembly has no active existence. But the
framework of Homeric monarchy contains a social life in which public
opinion is constantly alert. Its activity, indeed, could scarcely be
greater under the freest form of government. And we see that this
activity has its spring in distinctive and permanent attributes of the
Hellenic race. It arises from quickness of perception and readiness of
speech. The Homeric Greek feels keenly, observes shrewdly, and hastens
to communicate his thoughts. An undertone of popular comment pervades
the Homeric poems, and is rendered more impressive by the dramatic form
in which it is usually couched. The average man, who represents public
feeling, is expressed by the Greek indefinite pronoun, τις. “Thus would
a man speak, with a glance at his neighbor,” is the regular Homeric
formula. We hear opinion in the making. This spokesman of popular
sentiment is constantly introduced at critical moments: for the sake
of brevity we may call him by his Greek name _Tis_. When the fight is
raging over the corpse of Patroclus, _Tis_ remarks to his friends that
they will be disgraced for ever if they allow the Trojans to carry
off the body;—better die on the spot. Hector, in proposing a truce
to Ajax, suggests that they should exchange gifts, and imagines what
_Tis_ will say: _Tis_ will approve of it as a graceful courtesy between
chivalrous opponents. Menelaus considers that another hero, Antilochus,
has beaten him in a chariot race by unfair means; but thinks it
necessary to take precautions against _Tis_ imagining that he has
brought this complaint in the hope of prevailing by the influence
of his rank. This is perhaps one of the most remarkable Homeric
compliments to the penetration and to the influence of _Tis_. When the
sounds of music and dancing, as at a marriage feast, are heard in the
house of Odysseus in Ithaca, _Tis_ is listening outside; and he blamed
Penelope for her fancied hardness of heart, “because she had not had
the courage to keep the great house of her gentle lord steadfastly
till he should come home.” _Tis_ is not always the mouthpiece of such
elevated sentiments. With a frank truth to life and nature, Homer
depicts _Tis_ as indulging in an ignoble joy by stabbing the corpse
of his once-dreaded foe, Hector, and remarking that he is safer to
handle now than when he was burning the ships. In the _Odyssey_, when
the maiden Nausicaa is conducting Odysseus to the city of her father
Alcinous, we catch glimpses of a _Tis_ who nearly approaches the
character of Mrs. Grundy, with an element of spiteful gossip added.
The fidelity with which _Tis_ reflects public opinion is further seen
in the circumstance that his solicitude for the rights of man is not
strong enough to counteract his natural disposition to exalt over the
fallen. Thersites was a commoner who presumed to speak his mind among
his betters,—when one of them, Odysseus, dealt him a smart blow on
the back, and caused him to resume his seat in tears. _Tis_ laughed
for joy, saying in effect that it served Thersites right, and that he
probably would not do it again. The Tory sentiment of this passage
makes it appropriate to quote the version of it by the late Lord
Derby:—
“The Greeks, despite their anger, laughed aloud,
And one to other said, ‘Good faith, of all
The many works Ulysses well hath done,
Wise in the council, foremost in the fight,
He ne’er hath done a better, than when now
He makes this scurril babbler hold his peace.
Methinks his headstrong spirit will not soon
Lead him again to vilify the kings.’”
Here it might be said that _Tis_ figures as the earliest authentic
example of a being whose existence has sometimes been doubted by
British anthropologists, the Conservative working-man. But, if we would
be just to _Tis_ in his larger Homeric aspects, we must allow that his
sympathies are usually generous, and his utterances often edifying.
As to the feeling with which _Tis_ was regarded, Homer has a word for
it which is hard to translate: he calls it _aidos_. This _aidos_—the
sense of reverence or shame—is always relative to a standard of
public opinion, _i.e._ to the opinion formed by the collective sayings
of _Tis_; as, on the other hand, the listening to an inner voice,
the obedience to what we call a moral sense, is Homerically called
_nemesis_. And just as _Tis_ is sometimes merely the voice of smug
respectability, so _aidos_ is sometimes conventional in a low way. When
Diomedes is going by night to spy out the Trojan camp, several heroes
offer to go with him, but only _one_ can be chosen. Agamemnon tells
him that he must not yield to _aidos_, and take the man of highest
station rather than the man of highest merit: where _aidos_ appears as
in direct conflict with _nemesis_. But more often these two principles
are found acting in harmony,—recommending the same course of conduct
from two different points of view. There is a signal example of this
in the _Odyssey_, which is also noteworthy on another ground, viz.,
as the only episode in the Homeric poems which involves a direct and
formal appeal from established right of might to the corrective agency
of public opinion. The suitors of Penelope have intruded themselves
into the house of her absent lord, and are wasting his substance by
riotous living. Her son Telemachus convenes the men of Ithaca in public
assembly, and calls on them to stop this cruel wrong. He appeals to
_nemesis_, to _aidos_, and to fear of the gods. “Resent it in your
own hearts; and have regard to others, neighboring folk who dwell
around,—and tremble ye at the wrath of the gods.” The appeal fails.
The public opinion exists, but it has not the power, or the courage, to
act.
After the age which gave birth to the great epics, an interval elapses
before we again catch the distinct echoes of a popular voice. Our
Homeric friend _Tis_ is silent. Or, rather, to be more exact, _Tis_
ceases to speak in his old character, as the nameless representative
of the multitude, and begins to speak in a new quality. The individual
mind now commences to express itself in forms of poetry which are
essentially personal, interpreting the belief and feelings of the poet
himself. _Tis_ emerges from the dim crowd, and appears as Tyrtaeus,
summoning the Spartans, in stirring elegy, to hear _his_ counsels; or
as Sappho, uttering _her_ passion in immortal lyrics; or as Pindar,
weaving _his_ thoughts into those magnificent odes which glorify
the heroes and the athletes of Greece. It is a capital distinction
of classical Greek literature that, when its history is viewed as a
whole, we do not find it falling into a series of artificial chapters,
determined by imitation of models which were in fashion at this or that
epoch. Greek literature is original, not derivative; we trace in it the
course of a natural growth; we hear in it the spontaneous utterance of
Greek life from generation to generation. The place of Pindar in this
development has one aspect of peculiar interest. There is a sense in
which he may be said to stand midway between Homeric epos and Athenian
drama.[57] His poetical activity belongs to the years which immediately
preceded and followed the invasions of Greece by the hosts of Persia.
A great danger had drawn the members of the Hellenic family closer
together; a signal deliverance had left them animated by the memory of
deeds which seemed to attest the legends of Agamemnon and Achilles;
warmed by a more vivid faith in those gods who had been present with
them through the time of trial; comforted by a new stability of
freedom; cheered by a sense of Hellenic energies which could expand
securely from the Danube to the Nile, from the Euxine to the Atlantic;
exalted in thought and fancy by the desire to embody their joy and hope
in the most beautiful forms which language and music, marble, ivory,
and gold could furnish for the honor of the gods, and for the delight
of men who, through the heroes, claimed a divine descent. The Greek
mind, stirred to its centre by the victorious efforts which had
repelled the barbarian, could no longer be satisfied by epic narratives
of the past. It longed to see the heroes moving; to hear them speaking;
to throw back upon their world the vivifying light of contemporary
reflection. In a word, the spirit of drama had descended upon Hellas;
and already it breathes in Pindar, the poet of the games. Olympia,
with its temples, its statues, and its living athletes, corresponded
to the essence of Greek drama—action idealised by art and consecrated
by religion. Pindar, the last of the great lyric poets, is the lyric
exponent of an impulse which received mature expression from Aeschylus,
Sophocles, and Euripides.
The community which Athenian drama addressed was precisely in the mood
which best enables a dramatist to exert political and moral force.
There was much in its temper that might remind us of Elizabethan
England; but I would venture to illustrate it here by words borrowed
from the England of a later time. The greatest plea in the English
language for the liberty of the press—or perhaps we should rather
say, for the freedom of the mind—belongs to the close of that year
which saw the hopes of the Parliamentarians, in their struggle with
the Royalists, raised to an assurance of final success by the crushing
defeat of Rupert. An enthusiastic confidence in the large destinies
opening before the English people already fired the mind of the poet
who was to end his days, like Samson
“Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.”
Then, in 1644, Milton, thinking of the victory of Marston Moor, was
rather like Aeschylus raising his dramatic paean for the victory
of Salamis; and the glowing language in which he describes the new
alertness of his country’s spirit might fitly be applied to the Athens
for which the great dramatists wrote. “As in a body, when the blood is
fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous not only to vital but to rational
faculties and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit
and suttlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body
is, so when the cherfulnesse of the people is so sprightly up, as that
it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety
but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of
controversie and new invention, it betok’ns us not degenerated, nor
drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the old and wrincl’d skin
of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entring the
glorious waies of Truth and prosperous vertue destin’d to become great
and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble
and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and
shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her
mighty youth, and kindling her undazl’d eyes as the full mid-day beam,
purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of
heav’nly radiance.”
In estimating the influence of Athenian drama on public opinion,
we must, first of all, remember the fact which makes the essential
difference between the position of the dramatist—viewed in this
light—and that of the epic poet. The epic poet gave expression to a
mass of popular belief and feeling in an age when they had as yet no
direct organ of utterance. But in the Athens of the dramatists the
popular assembly was the constitutional organ of public opinion. Every
Athenian citizen was, as such, a member of that assembly. The influence
of the Athenian dramatist was thus so far analogous to that of the
modern journalist, that it was brought to bear on men capable of giving
practical effect to their sentiments. A newspaper publishes an article
intended to influence the voters in a parliamentary division, or the
constituents whom they represent. An Athenian dramatist had for his
hearers, in the theatre of Dionysus, many thousands of the men who,
the next day might be called upon to decide a question of policy in
the assembly, or to try, in a law-court, one of those cases in which
the properly legal issues were often involved with considerations of a
social or moral kind. Even Tragedy, in its loftiest and severest form,
might be the instrument, in a skilful hand, of inculcating views or
tendencies which the poet advocated—nay, even of urging or opposing a
particular measure. Thus, in his _Furies_, Aeschylus finds occasion to
encourage his fellow-citizens in their claim to a disputed possession
in the Troad, and utters a powerful protest against the proposal to
curtail the powers of the Areopagus. He becomes, for the moment, the
mouthpiece of a party opposed to such reform. In verses like the
following, every one can recognize a ring as directly political as that
of any leading article or pamphlet. “In this place”—says the Athene of
Aeschylus—that is, on the hill of Ares, the seat of the court menaced
with reform—
“Awe kin to dread shall stay the citizens
From sinning in the darkness or the light,
While their own voices do not change the laws ...
Between unruliness and rule by one
I bid my people reverence a mean,
Not banish all things fearful from the State.
For, with no fear before him, who is just?
In such a righteous dread, in such an awe,
Ye shall possess a bulwark of the land,
A safeguard of the city, not possess’d
By Scythia or the places of the south.
This court, majestic, incorruptible,
Instant in anger, over those who sleep
The sleepless watcher of my land, I set.”
Again, there are at least two tragedies of Euripides—the _Heracleidae_
and the _Supplices_—in which the strain of allusion to the politics of
the Peloponnesian War is unmistakable. It is needless to dwell on the
larger sense in which Euripides everywhere makes drama the vehicle of
teachings—political, social, moral—which could nowhere have received
such effective publicity as in the theatre. Nowadays, they would have
been found in the pages of a newspaper or a magazine accepted as the
organ of a party or a school. In the days of Voltaire, journalism, as
free countries now understand it, had no more existence than in the
days of Euripides; and, as a recent historian of French literature
remarks, it has been thought that the tragedies of Voltaire owed their
popularity chiefly to the adroit manner in which the author made them
opportunities for insinuating the popular opinions of the time.[58] We
must not forget that peculiar feature of Greek drama, the Chorus, who
may be regarded as a lineal descendant of the Homeric _Tis_. The
interest of the Chorus, in this connection, does not depend so much on
the maxims that it uttered as on the fact that it constituted a visible
link between the audience and the drama, bringing the average spectator
into easier sympathy with the action, and thereby predisposing him to
seize any significance which it might have for the life of the day. I
have so far dwelt on this aspect of Athenian Tragedy, because we might
be rather apt to regard it as a form of art altogether detached from
contemporary interests, and to overlook the powerful influence—not the
less powerful because usually indirect—which it must undoubtedly have
exercised in expressing and moulding public sentiment.
But we must now turn to that other form of Athenian drama in which
the resemblance to the power of the modern press is much more direct
and striking—that which is known as the Old Comedy of Athens. Mr.
Browning, in his _Apology of Aristophanes_, makes the great comic poet
indicate the narrow limits to the influence of Tragedy on opinion. The
passage is witty; and though, as I venture to think, it considerably
underrates the effect of Tragedy in this direction, at least it well
marks the contrast between the modes in which the two forms of drama
wrought. When we think of the analogy between Aristophanes and the
modern political journalist, one of the first things that strikes
us is the high and earnest view which Aristophanes took of his own
calling. He had gone through every stage of a laborious training
before he presumed to come before the Athenian public. He had seen his
predecessors fail, or fall from favor. So in the _Peace_, he claims
that he has banished the old vulgar tomfoolery from the stage, and
raised his art “like an edifice stately and grand.” He saw clearly the
enormous force which this literary engine, Comedy, might wield. He
resolved that, in his hands, it should be directed to more elevated and
more important aims. Instead of merely continuing the traditions of
scurrilous buffoonery, in which virulent personality was often the only
point, he would bring his wit to bear on larger aspects of politics and
society.
But, while his wit and style had the stamp of bold originality,
Aristophanes is not the champion of original ideas. Rather his position
depends essentially on the fact that he represents a large body of
commonplace public opinion. He represents the great “stupid party,”
to use a name which the English Tories have borne not without pride,
and glories to represent it; the stupid party, who are not wiser than
their forefathers; who fail to understand how the tongue can swear,
and the soul remain unsworn; who sigh for the old days when the plain
seafaring citizen knew only to ask for his barley-cake, and to cry
“pull away;” who believe in the old-fashioned virtues, and worship
the ancient gods. He describes himself as the champion of the people,
doing battle for them, like a second Hercules, against superhuman
monsters. The demagogues, whom he lashes, try to represent him as
slandering the country to foreigners; but he is the country’s best
friend. Athenians are hasty, fickle and vain. He has taught them not
to be gulled by flattery. He has taught them to respect the rights and
redress the wrong of their subjects. The envoys who bring the tribute
from the island long to see him. The King of Persia, he says, asked two
questions about the combatants in the Peloponnesian War. Which side
had the strongest navy? and which side had Aristophanes? Thirlwall,
in his _History of Greece_, denies that Aristophanic Comedy produced
any serious effect. “We have no reason,” he says, “to believe that it
ever turned the course of public affairs, or determined the bias of
the public mind, or even that it considerably affected the credit and
fortunes of an obnoxious individual.” Grote’s opinion is much the same,
except that he is disposed to credit Comedy with a greater influence
on the reputations of particular men. The question is much of the same
nature as might be raised concerning the precise effect of political
writing in newspapers, or of literary reviews. The effect is one which
it is impossible to measure accurately, but which may nevertheless be
both wide and deep.
In the first place, we must dismiss the notion that Comedy could make
no serious impression because the occasion was a sportive festival. The
feelings of Athenians at Comedy were not merely those of a modern
audience at a burlesque or a pantomime. Comedy, like Tragedy, was
still the worship of Dionysus. Precisely in those comedies which most
daringly ridicule the gods—such as the _Birds_ and the _Frogs_—we
find also serious expressions of a religious sense, illustrating what
might be called the principle of compensatory reverence. Again, the
power of the Old Athenian Comedy is not to be gauged by any influence
which it exercised, or sought, over special situations or definite
projects. Indeed, it rarely attempted this. Almost the only extant
instance occurs in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, where he urges that
a general amnesty should be granted to all citizens who had been
implicated in the Revolution of the Four Hundred. In such a sense, it
may be granted, Comedy might do little; but its real power operated
in a totally different way. When a large body of people has common
opinions or feelings, these are intensified in each individual by the
demonstration that so many others share them. A public meeting tends
in itself to quicken enthusiasm for a party or a cause, be the oratory
never so flat and the sentiments never so trite. Aristophanes gave the
most brilliant expression to a whole range of thought and feeling with
which thousands of minds were in general sympathy. Can it be doubted
that he contributed powerfully to strengthen the prejudice against
everything that he regarded as dangerous innovation? Or, again, can it
be doubted that he did much to give his fellow-citizens a more vivid
insight into the arts of unscrupulous demagogues? The cajolers of the
people, as depicted in the comedy of the _Knights_, are drawn in strong
colors, but with fine strokes also: while the character of Demus, the
People—their supposed dupe—is drawn with a tact which no satirist
or political journalist has ever surpassed. If I have to stake the
political power of Aristophanes on the evidence of one short passage,
it should be that dialogue in which the Knights deplore the dotage of
Demus, and Demus tells them that, while he seems to doze, he always has
one eye open (vv. 1111-1150).