say exactly what share in that result is attributable to journalistic
repetition and suggestion—to the cumulative impression wrought on the
public mind, through weeks, months, and years, by the Conservative or
the Liberal press. And he would be a bold man who presumed to say how
little or how much the Old Comedy may have to do with the phenomena
of oligarchic reaction in the latter part of the Peloponnesian War,
or with the stimulation of all those sentiments which have their
record in the death of Socrates. The confused travesty of Socrates in
the _Clouds_ corresponds, in its general features, with the confused
prepossessions of which he was afterwards the victim. In this case,
as in others, Comedy was not the origin, but the organ, of a popular
opinion. It did not create the prepossessions; but it strengthened
them by the simple process of reflecting them in an exaggerated form.
Briefly, Aristophanic Comedy had many of the characteristics of
vehement party journalism, but was directed either against persons,
on the one hand, or against general principles and tendencies on
the other—not against measures. Its most obvious strength lay in
brilliant originality of form; but its political and social effect
depended essentially on its representative value. It was the great
ancient analogue of journalism which seems to lead opinion by skilfully
mirroring it—unsparing in attack, masterly in all the sources of
style, but careful, where positive propositions are concerned, to keep
within the limits of safe and accepted generalities.
Just as the Old Comedy was losing its freedom of utterance, a new
agency began to appear, which invites comparison with journalism of a
calmer and more thoughtful type. Rhetoric, of which we already feel
the presence in Athenian drama, had now become a developed art. Skill
analogous to that of the modern journalist was often required, for
purposes of speaking, by the citizen of a Greek republic.[59] He might
desire to urge his views in a public assembly where the standard of
speaking was high and the audience critical. He might be compelled
to defend his fortunes, or even his life, before a popular jury of
many hundreds, when the result would depend in no small measure on
oratorical dexterity. Already a class of men existed who composed
speeches for private persons to deliver in law-courts. The new art was
naturally enlisted in the service of any party politics. A skilful
writer now felt that there was a way of producing an effect which would
be less transient than that of a speech in the assembly. From the end
of the fifth century B.C. we begin to meet with a species of
composition which may best be described as a political pamphlet.
The paper on the Athenian polity, which has come down under Xenophon’s
name, is an aristocratic manifesto against the democracy, which
might have appeared in an ancient _Quarterly Review_. The paper on
the _Revenues of Athens_, belonging to the middle of the fourth
century B.C., is a similar article in favor of peace and
the commercial interests. Many of the extant pieces of the orator
Isocrates, in the fourth century B.C., though couched in the
form of speeches, were meant to be read, not spoken, and are in reality
highly finished political pamphlets. More, perhaps, than any other
writer of antiquity, Isocrates resembles a journalist who is deeply
impressed with the dignity and responsibility of his calling; who
spares no pains to make his work really good; and who has constantly
before his mind the feeling that his audience is wider, and his power
greater, than if he was actually addressing a public assembly on the
same theme. His articles—as we may fitly call them—are usually
intended to have a definite effect at a particular moment. He wishes
to make Athens and Sparta combine at once in an expedition to Asia. He
wishes to strike in with a telling argument for peace at the moment
when negotiations are pending between Athens and her allies. He desires
to strengthen the hands of the party, at Athens and at Sparta, who
refuse to recognize the restoration of Messene by the power of Thebes.
In this last case, we know that a pamphlet on the other side was
written by the rhetorician Alcidamas. Here then is an example of
literary controversy on contemporary public affairs.
Nor is it merely in regard to the political questions of the day that
Isocrates performs the part of a journalist. He deals also with the
social life of Athens. He expresses the feeling with which men of the
old school observed a deterioration of manners connected, in their
views, with the decay of Conservative elements in the democracy. He
shows us the throngs of needy citizens, eagerly casting lots outside
the law-courts for the privilege of employment as paid jurymen—while
at the same time they are hiring mercenary troops to fight their
battles abroad. He pictures the lavish display which characterized the
festivals of the improvident city—where the amusement of the public
had now become a primary art of statesmanship—when men might be seen
blazing in gold spangled robes, who had been shivering through the
winter in rags. He brings before us the young men of a degenerate
Athens—no longer engaged in vigorous exercises of mind and body, in
hunting or athletics; no longer crossing the market-place with downcast
eyes, or showing marks of deference to their elders—but passing their
hours in the society of gamesters and flute-players, or lazily cooling
their wine in the fountain by the Ilissus. He is, in brief, a voice of
public opinion on all the chief matters which come within the province
of the publicist. In order that such a writer should have an influence
similar to that of a newspaper, it was enough that copies of his
writings should be sufficiently multiplied to leaven the conversation
of the market-place and of private society. Every possessor of a copy
was a centre from which the ideas would reach the members of his
own circle. And there is good evidence that, in the fourth century
B.C., the circulation of popular writings throughout the
Hellenic world was both wide and rapid. The copying industry, in the
Greece of that age, doubtless fell far short of the dimensions to which
the labor of cultivated slaves (the _literati_) afterwards raised it at
Rome—where we hear of Augustus, for instance, confiscating no fewer
than two thousand copies of a single work—the psuedo-Sibylline books.
But it was still amply sufficient to warrant a general comparison,
in the sense just defined, between the influence of such a writer as
Isocrates, and that of a modern journalist.
We have hitherto spoken only of the written rhetoric, in which the
form of a speech was merely a literary fiction, like that adopted—in
imitation of Isocrates—by Milton, when he chose to couch his
_Areopagitica_ in the form of a speech addressed to the Lords and
Commons of England. But in passing, we should note that the actually
spoken rhetoric of antiquity—especially of Greece—bore a certain
analogy to the more elaborate efforts of journalism. This depends on
the fact that ancient usage fully recognised, and generally expected,
careful premeditation; while the speaker, conscious of the demand
for excellence of form, usually aimed at investing his speech with
permanent literary value. Demosthenes and Cicero are both witnesses to
this: Cicero, doubtless, piqued himself on a faculty of extemporising
at need, but probably trusted little to it on great occasions; while
with Demosthenes it was the rule, we are told, never to speak without
preparation. Take the oration delivered by Lysias at the Olympian
festival, where he is exhorting the assembled Greeks to unite against
the common foes of Hellas in Sicily and in Persia. Here the orator
is essentially an organ of patriotic opinion, and his highly-wrought
address is a finished leading-article, for which the author sought the
largest publicity.
In turning from Greece to Rome, we are prepared to find literature
holding a different relation towards public opinion. The Greek
temperament with its quick play of thought and fancy, had an
instinctive craving to make the sympathy of thoughts continually felt
in words, and to accompany action with a running comment of speech. The
Roman, as we find him during Rome’s earlier career of conquest, was
usually content to feel that his action was in conformity with some
principle which he had expressed once for all in an institution or a
statute. His respect for authority, and his moral earnestness—in a
word his political and social gravity—rendered him independent of the
solace which the lively Greek derived from a demonstrated community of
feeling. Rome, strong in arms, severe, persistent, offering to people
after people the choice of submission or subjugation; Rome, the head of
the Latin name, the capital of Italy, the queen of the Mediterranean,
the empress of a pacified, because disarmed, world; Rome, who never
deemed a war done until conquest had been riveted by law which should
be the iron bond of peace,—this idea was the true inspiration of the
Roman; and, as the literature was matured, it was this which added
order to strength, and majesty to order, in the genius of the Roman
tongue. It is especially curious to observe the fate which Comedy
experienced when it first appeared at Rome, and endeavored to assume
something of the political significance which its parent, Greek Comedy,
had possessed at Athens. The poet Naevius appeared just after the
first Punic War. He was a champion of popular liberties against the
domination of the Senate; and, in his plays, he treated some of the
Senatorian chiefs with satire of a quality which, to judge from the
extant specimens, was exceedingly mild. “Who had so quickly ruined the
commonwealth?” was a query put in one of his comedies; and the reply
was, “New speakers came forward—foolish young men.” In another piece,
he alluded to the applauses bestowed on him as proving that he was
a true interpreter of the public mind, and deprecated any great man
interfering with him. A very slave in one of his comedies, he added,
was better off than a Roman citizen nowadays. Contrast these remarks
with the indescribable insults which Aristophanes had boldly heaped on
the Athenian demagogues. Mild as Naevius was, however, he was not mild
enough for the “foolish young men.” Having ventured to observe that the
accession of certain nobles of high office was due to a decree of fate,
he was promptly imprisoned; he was afterwards banished; and he died
in exile. This seems to have been the first and last attempt of Roman
Comedy to serve as an organ of popular opinion. The Roman reverence for
authority was outraged by the idea of a public man being presented in a
comic light on the boards of a theatre. On the other hand, Roman
feeling allowed a public man to be attacked, in speaking or in writing,
with almost any degree of personal violence, provided that the purpose
was seriously moral. Hence the personal criticism of statesmen, which
at Athens had belonged to Comedy, passed at Rome into another kind of
composition. It became an element of Satire.
The name of Satire comes, as is well known, from the _lanx satura_,
the platter filled with first-fruits of various sorts, which was an
annual thank-offering to Ceres and Bacchus. “Satire” meant a medley, or
miscellany, and the first characteristic of Roman satire was that the
author wrote in an easy, familiar way about any and every subject that
was of interest to himself and his readers. As Juvenal says,—
“Men’s hopes, men’s fear—their fond, their fretful dream—
Their joys, their fuss—that medley is my theme.”
Politics, literature, philosophy, society—every topic of public or
private concern—belonged to the _Satura_, so long as the treatment was
popular. Among all the forms of Roman literature, Satire stands out
with a twofold distinction. First, it is genuinely national. Next, it
is the only one which has a continuous development, extending from the
vigorous age of the Commonwealth into the second century of the Empire.
Satire is pre-eminently the Roman literary organ of public opinion. The
tone of the Roman satirist is always that of an ordinary Roman citizen,
who is frankly speaking his mind to his fellow-citizens. An easy,
confidential manner in literature—as of one friend unbosoming himself
to another—seems to have been peculiarly congenial to the ancient
Italian taste. We may remember how the poet Ennius introduced into
his epic a picture of the intimate converse between himself and the
Roman general Servilius Geminus—a picture not unworthy of a special
war-correspondent attached to head-quarters. Then Satire profited by
the Italian gift for shrewd portraiture of manners. Take, for instance,
the picture of a coquette, drawn some twenty centuries ago by Naevius:
“Like one playing at ball in a ring, she tosses about
from one to another, and is at home with all. To one
she nods, to another she winks; she makes love to one,
clings to another.... To one she gives a ring to look
at, to another blows a kiss; with one she sings, with
another corresponds by signs.”[60]
The man who first established Satire as an outspoken review of Roman
life was essentially a slashing journalist. This was Lucilius, who
lived in the latter years of the second century B.C. He
attacked the high-born statesmen, who, as he put it, “thought that they
could blunder with impunity, and keep criticism at a distance by their
rank.” On the other hand, he did not spare plebeian offenders. As one
of his successors says, “he bit deep into the town of his day, and
broke his jawtooth on them.” Literature and society also came under his
censures. He lashes the new affectation of Greek manners and speech,
the passion for quibbling rhetoric, the extravagance of the gluttons
and the avarice of the misers. Even the Roman ladies of the time do
not wholly escape. He criticises the variations of their toilettes.
“When she is with _you_, anything is good enough; when visitors are
expected, all the resources of the wardrobe are taxed,” The writings
of this trenchant publicist formed the great standing example of free
speech for later Roman times. Horace eschews politics; indeed, when he
wrote, political criticism had become as futile as it was perilous; but
he is evidently anxious to impress on the Roman public that he is true
to the old tradition of satire by fearlessly lashing folly and vice.
Persius, who died at the age of twenty-eight in the reign of Nero, made
Roman Satire a voice of public opinion in a brave and a pure sense.
Horace had been an accomplished Epicurean, who found his public among
easy-going, cultivated men of the world. Persius spoke chiefly to minds
of a graver cast: he summoned Roman citizens to possess themselves of a
moral and intellectual freedom which no Cæsar could crush, the freedom
given by the Stoic philosophy,—that philosophy which had moulded the
jurisprudence of the Republic, and was now the refuge of thoughtful
minds under the despotism of the Empire. Then we have once more a
slashing publicist in Juvenal, who is national and popular in a broader
sense than Horace or Persius. His fierce indignation is turned against
the alien intruders, the scum of Greece and Asia, who are making Rome a
foreign city, and robbing Roman citizens of their bread. He denounces
the imported vices which are effacing the old Roman character. He is
the last of the Roman satirists, and in much he resembles the first.
It may be noted that each of the three satirists of the Empire—Horace,
Persius, Juvenal—gives us a dialogue between himself and an imaginary
friend, who remonstrates with him for his rashness in imitating
Lucilius, the outspoken satirist of the Republic. Horace, replies,
in effect, “Never mind, _I’m_ not afraid—Augustus will stand by me
as Scipio and Laelius stood by Lucilius;” but, in fact, Horace never
strikes like Lucilius; he keeps us smiling while he probes our faults;
“he gains his entrance, and plays about the heart;” his censures even
when keen, show cautious tact. Persius replies: “You need not read me
if you do not like: but the joke is too good; I _must_ tell some one
that Midas has the ears of an ass.” When Juvenal is warned, we catch
quite a different tone in the answer. After painting the Rome of his
day, he says (I venture to give a version of my own):—
“Nought worse remains: the men of coming times
Can but renew our lusts, repeat our crimes.
Vice holds the dizzy summit: spread thy sail,
Indignant Muse, and drive before the gale!
But who shall find, or whence—I hear thee ask—
An inspiration level with the task?
Whence that frank courage of an elder Rome,
When Satire, fearless, sent the arrow home?
‘Whom am I bound,’ she then could cry, ‘to spare?
If high-placed guilt forgive not, do I care?’
Paint _now_ the prompter of a Nero’s rage—
The torments of a Christian were thy wage,—
Pinned to the stake, in blazing pitch to stand,
Or, on the hook that dragg’d thee, plough the sand....
* * * * *
No danger will attend thee if thou tell
How to Aeneas warlike Turnus fell;
No spite resents Achilles’ fateful day,
Or Hylas, with his urn, the Naiads’ prey;
But when Lucilius, all his soul afire,
Bared his good sword and wreak’d his generous ire,
Flush’d cheeks bewrayed the secrets lock’d within,
And chill hearts shivered with their conscious sin.
Hence wrath and tears. Ere trumpets sound, debate:
Warriors, once armed, repent of war too late.
‘Then shall plain speech be tried on those whose clay
Rests by the Latin or Flaminian Way.’”
He did indeed try the plainest of speech, not only on dead tyrants
and their ministers, but on the society of his own time. The elder
Disraeli remarks that Richard Steele meant the _Tatler_ to deal with
three provinces—manners, letters, and politics; and that, as to
politics, “it remained for the chaster genius of Addison to banish this
disagreeable topic from his elegant pages.” Horace was in this respect
the Addison of Satire under the Empire. In Juvenal, the Italian medley
once more exhibits, though with necessary modifications, the larger and
more vigorous spirit of its early prime. The poetical epistle, which in
Horace is so near to Satire, usually differed from it in having less
of the chatty miscellaneous character, and in being rather applied to
continuous didactic exposition. The prose epistle, which was often
meant for publication even when formally private, also contributed not
only to express, but to mould, public opinion. Epigrams and lampoons
might happen to be vehicles of a general feeling; but they differ from
the forms of literature here considered in being essentially personal,
like the satirical poetry of early Greece.
There is yet another agency, common to Greece and Rome, at which we
must glance—the Oracles. Often, of course, they had a most important
part in directing public opinion at critical moments; but this was
not all. There were occasions on which an oracle became, in a strict
sense, the organ of a political party. Thus the noble Athenian family
of the Alcmaeonidae bribed the Delphian priests to make the oracle an
organ of public opinion in favor of freeing Athens from Peisistratus.
Accordingly, whenever Spartans came to consult the god on any subject
whatever, this topic was always worked into the response. Apollo, in
short, kept up a series of most urgent leading articles; and at last
the Spartans were roused to action. Then, when Cleomenes, one of the
two Spartan kings, wished to have his colleague Demaratus deposed, he
made friends with an influential man at Delphi; the influential man
bribed the priestess; and the oracle declared that Demaratus was not of
the blood royal. In this case, the fraud was found out; the priestess
was deposed; and when Cleomenes died mad, men said that this was the
hand of Apollo. When the Persians were about to invade Greece, the
Delphic oracle took the line of advising the Greeks to submit. The
Athenians sent to ask what they should do, and the oracle said, “Fly
to the ends of the earth.” The Athenians protested that they would not
leave the temple until they got a more comfortable answer. Hereupon an
influential Delphian advised them to assume the garb of suppliants; and
this time Apollo told them to trust to their wooden walls. Herodotus
mentions between seventy and eighty oracles (I believe) of one sort
or another, and less than half of these contain _predictions_. The
predictions usually belong to one of two classes; first, those
obviously founded on secret information or on a shrewd guess; and,
secondly, those in which the oracle had absolutely no ideas on the
subject, and took refuge in vagueness.
Any one who reads the column of Answers to Correspondents in a
prudently conducted journal will recognize the principal types of
oracle. In truth, the Delphic oracle bore a strong resemblance to a
serious newspaper managed by a cautious editorial committee with no
principles in particular. In editing an oracle, it was then, as it
still is, of primary importance not to make bad mistakes. The Delphian
editors were not infallible; but, when a blunder had been made, they
often showed considerable resource. Thus, when Croesus had been utterly
ruined, he begged his conqueror to grant him one luxury—to allow him
to send to Delphi, and ask Apollo whether it was his usual practice to
treat his benefactors in this way. Apollo replied that, in point of
fact, he had done everything he could; he had personally requested
the Fates to put off the affair for a generation; but they would only
grant a delay of three years. Instead of showing annoyance, Croesus
ought to be grateful for having been ruined three years later than he
ought to have been. There are Irish landlords who would see a parable
in these things. Sometimes we can see that Apollo himself is slightly
irritated, as an editor might be by a wrong-headed or impertinent
querist. Some African colonists had been pestering Apollo about their
local troubles and his own former predictions; and the response from
Delphi begins with the sarcastic remark, “I admire your wisdom if you
know Africa better than I do,” The normal tendency of the Delphic
oracle was to discourage rash enterprise, and to inculcate maxims of
orthodox piety and moderation. The people of Cnidos wanted to make
their peninsula an island by digging a canal, but found it very hard
work; and the oracle told them that if Zeus had meant the peninsula
to be an island, he would have made it an island—which reminds one
of some of the arguments against the Channel Tunnel. In one special
direction, however, Delphi gave a real impulse to Hellenic progress.
It was a powerful promoter of colonization: for instance, the first
Greek settlements in Corsica and on the coast of Africa were directly
due to Delphic oracles. We even find the oracle designating individuals
for work abroad; as when it nominated a man of Mantinea to reform the
constitution of Cyrene. In Scotland we are wont to take a keen interest
in everything that bears on colonial careers for young men; and one day
a Greek class had been reading about the Delphic oracle telling some
Thracians to choose as their king the first man who should ask them to
dinner. Miltiades had this privilege, and forthwith got the Thracian
appointment. “Do you think,” a thoughtful student asked, “that there
could have been any collusion?”