urging Penelope to marry, but their living upon him while prosecuting
the suit[875]. But then this is a father, whom he has never known or
consciously seen. The Shade of Achilles in the nether world is anxious
upon one subject: it is that he may know if old Peleus is still held
in honour. In another he is also deeply interested; it is the valour
of his son: and the gloom of his chill existence is brightened into an
exulting joy, when he learns that Neoptolemus is great in fight[876].
The mother of Ulysses died neither of disease nor of old age, but of
a broken heart for the absence of her son[877]. But the most signal
proof of the power of the instinct is in its hold upon the self-centred
character of Agamemnon, which, as a general rule, leaves no room in
his thoughts for anything, except policy alone, that lies beyond the
range of his personal propensities and especially his appetite for
wealth. But when the gallant Menelaus, ashamed of the silence of his
countrymen, accepts the challenge of Hector[878], Agamemnon seizes
him by the hand, and beseeches him not to run so terrible a hazard.
And again, in the Δολώνεια, when Diomed has to select a companion,
Agamemnon, in dread lest his choice should fall on Menelaus, desires
him to take not the man of highest rank, but the most valiant and
effective companion for an enterprise of so critical a kind. His motive
was apprehension for the safety of his brother[879]:
[875] Ibid. 50 and seqq.
[876] Od. xi. 494, 538.
[877] Od. xi. 198-203.
[878] Il. vii. 92-119.
[879] Il. x. 234-40.
ὣς ἔφατ’, ἔδδεισεν δὲ περὶ ξανθῷ Μενελάῳ.
The war too is full of the most pleasing instances of attachment
between brothers; Ajax and Teucer, Glaucus and Sarpedon, and many
other instances less illustrious, might be quoted. It is the sad end
of Polydorus which at the last works up Hector into the most daring
heroism; and again in the Odyssey, the advantage is set forth of having
brothers, who defend a man while he is living, and avenge him when he
is dead[880].
[880] Od. viii. 585, xxiv. 434, and xvi. 97, 115-21.
And hence it is that, even though Greeks were hot of head and ready
of hand, we find no instance where, in consequence of a broil, one
member of a family inflicts violence or death upon another of the same
household. The horrible idea of parricide, and the execration with
which public opinion would brand such a crime, restrain Phœnix at the
very height of his passion from laying hands upon his father[881]:
[881] Il. ix. 461.
ὡς μὴ πατροφόνος μετ’ Ἀχαιοῖσιν καλεοίμην.
Directly that we pass beyond the household and its affections
intertwined by habit, the aspect of the case alters. Out of six
instances of unpremeditated homicide in Homer, three[882] are committed
upon relations by blood or by affinity, though not very near ones.
Medon, the bastard of Oileus, kills a relation of the lawful wife.
Tlepolemus the son of Hercules kills his grand-uncle Licymnius.
Epeigeus of Budeum kills his cousin.
[882] Il. xiii. 695-7. ii. 658-70. xvi. 57.
~_Relationships close, not wide._~
This marked line of distinction, between the homicides of crime
and the homicides of misfortune, illustrates another point in the
structure of Greek society. Relationships do not appear to have been
reckoned by them as subsisting beyond a rather narrow range. We cannot
trace any defined idea of kin more remote than the first cousin. The
lexicographers treat the term ἀνέψιος as capable of a wider sense; but
the only individuals named as ἀνέψιοι by Homer, whose relationships
we can follow, are first cousins: namely, Caletor son of Clytius, and
Dolops son of Lampus, both first cousins of Hector[883]. There are also
persons named in the poems, whose consanguinity we can trace, while it
is nowhere noticed by the Poet: for instance, Eumelus is first cousin,
once removed, to Nestor. Priam and Anchises are second cousins: Æneas
and Hector third. These relationships are never referred to. Thus
then society is not arranged in clans, but in tribes, united by the
general sense of a common name, a common abode, a common history, a
common religion, and a remote sense of a common tribal stock, without
any sense of personal affinity in each individual case. Again, it is
curious to observe that the xenial relation was not less vivacious
than that of blood. The tie of blood subsists in the second generation
from the common ancestor; and Diomed and Glaucus similarly own one
another as ξεῖνοι, because two generations before Œneus had entertained
Bellerophon[884].
[883] Il. xv. 419, 22; 525, 54.
[884] Il. vi. 215.
~_Purity in the heroic age._~
The elevated and free social position of womankind in the Homeric
times of itself implies a great purity of ideas respecting them. This
subject, however, will receive a separate discussion.
There is a passage of Athenæus which conveys to us a tradition of
no ordinary beauty, and effectually severs for us ideas and objects
which only a corrupt bias has associated. He tells us that Zeno of
Citium[885], whatever the practice of the Stoic leader may have been,
conceived of Ἔρως, the God of Love, as a deity of friendship, liberty,
concord, and public happiness, and of nothing else. So likewise his
antecessors in philosophy taught that this deity was as a being
perfectly pure: σεμνόν τινα καὶ παντὸς αἰσχροῦ κεχωρισμένον. This idea
took refuge in the Venus Οὐρανία, the opposite one in the Πάνδημος, or
promiscuous[886]. In the later ages of Greece, the distinction of these
two characters one from the other feebly lived on: but there was no
subjective basis for the separate existence of the former, and it was
practically eclipsed, if not absorbed. The true severance of the ideas
probably was effected before the time of Homer; and they were lodged
in separate impersonations. The effective form of the Celestial Venus
is to be sought most probably in Diana, though it was natural for Plato
and the philosophers to keep alive the memory of the distinction by
way of apology for the popular religion. The traces of this unstained
conception were in later times only to be found in the sphere of art,
and were even there not always visible: but in the Homeric poems, and
probably in the Homeric period, this purity of admiring sentiment
towards beautiful form appears to have been a living reality.
[885] Athen. b. xiii. c. xii. p. 56.
[886] Döllinger, Heid. u. Jud. II. ii. 41. Plato Sympos. 8. (180 C.)
Our inquiry on this subject must have reference partly to the Poet,
and partly to his period and nation. I will first deal with the points
which have a bearing upon the age as well as the bard: and will
thereafter subjoin what appears to touch Homer only.
~_Lay of the Net of Vulcan._~
Let us commence, then, by considering that one and only case, in the
whole compass of twenty-eight thousand lines, which might lead to an
opposite conclusion: the case of the second Lay of Demodocus, or the
adultery of Mars and Venus[887].
[887] Od. viii. 266-366.
Of course it is impossible to justify this single passage upon its
own merits: but there are many circumstances that ought to be borne
in mind by those who wish to form an accurate judgment upon it in its
connection with the morals either of the Poet himself, or of the age to
which he belonged.
Of these the most important, in my view, is the tendency which the
Pagan religion already powerfully showed to become itself the positive
corrupter of morality, or, to speak perhaps more accurately, to
afford the medium, through which the forces of evil and the downward
inclination would principally act for the purpose of depraving it.
Even in Homer’s time, the existing mythology contained ample warrant
for the scene of indulgence here laid bare; and we see the remaining
modesty and delicacy of mankind feebly resisting the torrent of
passion, which ought to have been counteracted, but which, on the
contrary, was principally swollen and impelled, by the agency of the
acknowledged religion of the country.
It was impossible for Homer to be altogether above the operation of
influences so closely allied with an origin believed to be celestial:
nor could it be easy for the popular Poet wholly to disregard the
tastes of his hearers: the Poet, whose strains swept over the whole
height and depth of life and nature, both human and divine, could
not absolutely shut out from his encyclopædic survey so marked a
characteristic of Olympian habits. He has not omitted to mark as
peculiar, in more ways than one, the licence he has assumed. The lay
is sung in an assembly attended by men only: and it purports also to
describe a scene, from which the goddesses intentionally kept away.
The amusement of the deities present is not universal: Neptune, the
senior one among them, does not laugh[888], but takes the matter
gravely, and desires to put an end to the scandal, by promising to
make to the injured husband a pecuniary reparation[889]. He evidently
appears to act under an impulse of offended dignity at least, though
not of modesty. Again, the Poet endeavours to give a ridiculous air,
not only a laughable one, to the whole proceeding, through the extreme
mortification of the guilty persons; who, when released, are made
to disappear in real dismay and discomfiture[890]. In this point he
altogether differs, undoubtedly, from the generality of the writers of
licentious pieces, as materially as he does in the simplicity of his
details; and that supposition of a partially moral aim on which some
have ventured, is not so extravagant as to deserve total and absolute
rejection.
[888] The translation in Pope’s Odyssey, which in the most material
parts has a more highly charged colouring than the Greek original, here
reverses the sense. Homer says Neptune did not laugh, οὐδὲ Ποσειδάωνα
γέλως ἔχε: Pope says, ‘even Neptune laughs aloud.’ Pope’s work is a
great work: but it is not a good rendering, nor a bad rendering, of
Homer: it is no rendering at all. Od. viii. 244.
[889] Od. viii. 347, 356.
[890] Od. viii. 361, 2.
It has been common to employ, in vindication of Homer, the supposition
that the passage is spurious. There is something rather more marked
in the personal agency of the Sun than the poems elsewhere present;
and undoubtedly Apollo is made to assume a tone wholly singular, and
unsupported by what is told of him in the rest of the poems. These
are arguments, so far as they go, against it. But I do not venture
to adopt this alluring expedient: for the general character of the
colouring, diction, and incidents, appears to be Homeric enough. And
again, if licentiousness was to come in, this was exactly the way
for its entrance, because it was after a banquet; because it was
among men exclusively, and not in the presence of women; because of
the connection with mythology; and because the tale is thoroughly in
keeping with the mythological character of the personages chiefly
concerned.
The direct reference however of the evil to the influence of a
perverted religion can be supported by distinct evidence from other
parts of the poems. In the Iliad there appear to be but two passages,
which can fairly be termed indelicate. One is the account of the
proceeding of Juno, with the accompanying speech of Jupiter, in the
Fourteenth Book[891]. This relation belongs strictly to the mythology
of the poem, and it is evidently handled in an historical manner; for
Jupiter’s details, at least as it seems to me, are introduced for the
purpose of fixing ancient national legends, as much as the stories of
Nestor and Phœnix. The other passage is that, which in a few words
contains the sensual advice given by Thetis, as a mother, to her son
Achilles in his grief, by way of comfort;
[891] Il. xiv. 312-28. 346-53.
ἀγαθὸν δὲ γυναικί περ ἐν φιλότητι
μίσγεσθ’[892].
[892] Il. xxiv. 130.
This precisely exemplifies the relation of which I speak. The deity
teaches the debased lesson: the human hero passes by the recommendation
in silence. Homer would have put no such language as this into the
mouth of one of his matrons.
When we come to pass sentence upon Homer, we must remember that, since
in the Odyssey he represents the comic as well as the serious side of
life, he ought in justice to be first compared with his successors.
And here we not only shall find he gains by the comparison with
Aristophanes or with Horace, but that he gains yet much more when tried
by the standard of the other great school of poets which followed him
in associating heroic subjects with wit and with amusement, namely,
the poets of the Italian romance. There is hardly, perhaps, one of
that whole school of Christian writers, who has not descended to
licentiousness of far more malignant type. Nor let it be supposed that
the Æneid shows in this respect any superiority in Virgil or in his
hearers. As to Virgil, and as to his poems, if we take the whole of
them into view, I am afraid that whatever the veil of words may do,
the case was in reality bad enough: as to the hearers of the Æneid,
we must remember that they were not a people, but a court: we must
compare his Roman auditors with the hearers of Homer, not as to that
particular only of their public amusements, but as to the whole; that
is, we must compare the Homeric poems not with the Æneid alone, but
with the Æneid and the Floralia. In Homer’s time, men had not learned
to screen their vices behind walls which also serve to fortify them.
And it still remains more than doubtful whether the appetite of Homeric
Greece would have endured the garbage on which Christian Florence was
content to feed, during its carnivals, in the period of its most famous
civilization.
~_Evidence of comparative purity._~
From this scene let us turn to consider the evidence for asserting the
comparative purity of Homer’s age, and the peculiar purity of his mind.
2. We find in Homer no trace whatever of the existence of those
unnatural vices, which appear to have deeply tainted the lives of
many of the most eminent Greeks of later days[893]; which drew down
the blasting sentence of St. Paul[894]; which in early times had been
visited on the Cities of the plain; and which, it is no less strange
than horrible to think, have left their mark upon more than one period
or portion even of the literature of Christendom, in a manner and
degree such as must excite scarcely less of surprise than shame.
[893] Athenæus, b. xiii. c. 77-84.
[894] Rom. i. 24-7.
The seizure of Ganymedes became in later times the basis of a tradition
of this kind: but there is not a trace of it in Homer. The intense love
and admiration of beauty to which his pages bear constant witness is
wholly disconnected from animal passions, and in its simplicity and
earnestness is, for its combined purity and strength, really nearer the
feeling of some of the early Italian painters, and of Dante, than any
thing else I can recall.
This is the more remarkable when we bear in mind what had already, and
long before his time, happened in the East, and is recorded for us in
the Book of Genesis.
Homer most rarely alludes to what is unbecoming in the human form: in
the case of woman not once, and in the case of men only where he has
a legitimate and sufficient purpose. Thus when Ulysses[895] threatens
to strip Thersites to the skin in the event of his repeating his
turbulence and insolence, it is plainly with an honest view to inflict
upon him the last extremity of shame, and to make him an object of
general and wholly unmixed disgust. Again, when Priam refers to the
likelihood that his own body may be stripped naked, and then mangled
by animals after his death, every one feels that the insult to natural
decency, which he anticipates, contributes only to enhance the agony
of his feelings. And the scene in the Odyssey, where Ulysses emerges
from the sea upon the coast of Scheria, will always be regarded as one
of the most careful, and yet most simple and unaffected, examples of
true modesty contained in the whole circle of literature. Now these
appear to be, not peculiarities, but samples of the general manners. We
should look in vain for the proofs of an equal truth and fineness of
perception among the Hebrews or among their forefathers, unless it be
among a very few individuals, who, under a direct teaching from above,
became select examples of virtue.
[895] Il. ii. 262. See also on this subject, Il. v. 429. vi. 357. Od.
v. 149-59, 227.
Many other indications in the poems converge upon the same point.
The horror with which incest was regarded is one. The deep grief and
humility stamped on the character of Helen is a second. The manner
in which the chastity of Bellerophon is held up to admiration, and
followed by reward, is a third[896]. The high-toned living widowhood of
Penelope is of itself conclusive on the point before us.
[896] Il. vi. 161, 2.
Homer’s subject in the Iliad was one, which tempted and almost forced
him into indecency, where he had to refer to the original crime of
Paris or to describe his private life. The manner in which he has
handled it is deserving of all praise. He treats as an evil gift the
original promise and temptation to Paris. The scene in the end of the
Third Book was necessary in order to complete the view of the character
of that bad prince: and it could not have been drawn in a manner
less calculated to seduce the mind, whether by the management of its
details, or by the sentiments of loathing which it raises against the
principal actor.
Undoubtedly we must, as regards the whole morality of the poems,
ascribe much to the praise of Homer personally: yet it is plain that he
represented his age in no small degree. First, because, as a popular
and famous minstrel, he could not have been in sharp or general
contrast with the feeling of his contemporaries. Secondly, because we
perceive remains of this seriousness and purity in the older Greek
writers junior to Homer. Thirdly, because we find from Thucydides
that, at the time when the original Olympian games were instituted,
it was still the custom carefully to avoid the exposure of the human
form, and that a different practice was introduced afterwards by the
Lacedæmonians, probably without evil intention, and for gymnastic ends
alone (Thuc. i. 6).
And now, if we contemplate the belief, ideas, and institutions of
the heroic period, as they would work upon an individual, we shall,
perhaps, find that they fully justify the outline with which this
section began. We may, indeed, see in the Homeric pictures of that age
much to condemn or to deplore; but we may also be led to believe that
if, through God’s mercy, there have been happier, there also have been
less happy forms, for human destiny to be cast in.
~_Life of the high-born Greek._~
The youth of high birth, not then so widely as now separated from
the low, is educated under tutors in reverence for his parents, and
in desire to emulate their fame: he shares in manly and in graceful
sports, acquires the use of arms, hardens himself in the pursuit,
then, of all others the most indispensable, the hunting down of wild
beasts, gains the knowledge of medicine, probably also of the lyre.
Sometimes, with many-sided intelligence, he even sets himself to
learn how to build his own house or ship, or how to drive the plough
firm and straight down the furrow, as well as to reap the standing
corn[897]. And when scarcely a man, he bears arms for his country or
his tribe, takes part in its government, learns by direct instruction
and by practice how to rule mankind through the use of reasoning and
persuasive power in political assemblies, attends and assists in
sacrifices to the gods. For all this time he has been in kindly and
free relations, not only with his parents, his family, his equals of
his own age, but with the attendants, although they are but serfs, who
have known him from infancy on his father’s domain.
[897] Od. xviii. 366-75.
He is indeed mistaught with reference to the use of the strong hand.
Human life is cheap; so cheap that even a mild and gentle youth may
be betrayed, upon a casual quarrel over some childish game with his
friend, into taking it away. And even so throughout his life, should
some occasion come that stirs up his passions from their depths, a wild
beast, as it were, awakes within him, and he loses his humanity for
the time until reason has re-established her control. Short, however,
of such a desperate crisis, though he could not for the world rob his
friend or his neighbour, yet he might be not unwilling to triumph over
him to his cost, for the sake of some exercise of signal ingenuity:
while, from a hostile tribe or a foreign shore, or from the individual
who has become his enemy, he will acquire by main force what he
can, nor will he scruple to inflict on him by stratagem even deadly
injury[898]. He must, however, give liberally to those who are in need;
to the wayfarer, the poor, the suppliant who begs from him shelter and
protection. On the other hand, should his own goods be wasted, the
liberal and open-handed contributions of his neighbours will not be
wanting to replace them.
[898] Od. xiii. 259-70.
His early youth is not solicited into vice by finding sensual excess in
vogue, or the opportunities of it staring in his eye and sounding in
his ear. Gluttony is hardly known; drunkenness is marked only by its
degrading character and the evil consequences that flow so straight
from it, and is abhorred. But he loves the genial use of meals, and
rejoices in the hour when the guests, gathered in his father’s hall,
enjoy a liberal hospitality, and the wine mantles in the cup[899].
For then they listen to the strains of the minstrel, who celebrates
before them the newest and the dearest of the heroic tales that stir
their blood, and rouse their manly resolution to be worthy, in their
turn, of their country and their country’s heroes. He joins the dance
in the festivals of religion; the maiden’s hand upon his wrist, and
the gilded knife glancing from his belt, as they course from point to
point, or wheel in round on round[900]. That maiden, some Nausicaa or
some Hermione of a neighbouring district, in due time he weds, amidst
the rejoicings of their families, and brings her home to cherish her,
‘from the flower to the ripeness of the grape,’ with respect, fidelity,
and love.
[899] Od. viii. 5-11. xiv. 193-8.
[900] Il. xviii. 594-602.
Whether as a governor or as governed, politics bring him, in ordinary
circumstances, no great share of trouble. Government is a machine, of
which the wheels move easily; for they are well oiled by simplicity
of usages, ideas, and desires; by unity of interest; by respect for
authority, and for those in whose hands it is reposed; by love of the
common country, the common altar, the common festivals and games, to
which already there is large resort. In peace he settles the disputes
of his people, in war he lends them the precious example of heroic
daring. He consults them, and advises with them, on all grave affairs;
and his wakeful care for their interests is rewarded by the ample
domains which are set apart for the prince by the people[901]. Finally,
he closes his eyes, delivering over the sceptre to his son, and leaving
much peace and happiness around him[902].
[901] Il. ix. 578. xii. 313.
[902] Od. xxiii. 281-4.
Such was, probably, the state of society amidst the concluding phase of
which Homer’s youth, at least, was passed. But a dark and deep social
revolution seems to have followed the Trojan war: we have its workings
already become visible in the Odyssey. Scarcely could even Ulysses cope
with it, contracted though it was for him within the narrow bounds of
Ithaca. On the mainland, the bands of the elder society are soon wholly
broken. The Pelopid, Neleid, Œneid houses are a wreck: disorganization
invites the entry of new forces to control it: the Dorian lances
bristle on the Ætolian beach, and the primitive Greece, the patriarchal
Greece, the Greece of Homer, is no more.
~_Ethics of earlier and later Paganism._~
When we take a general survey of the practical morality of the Heroic
age, and compare it with that of later times, we must at once be struck
with the great superiority of the former, in all that most nearly
touches the moral being of man. The mere police of society, indeed,
improves with the advance of civilization. The law of determinate
rights to property, which we rather dangerously call the law of _meum_
and _tuum_, whereas it is but a limited part of that great ordinance,
comes to be better understood in later times, and better defended by
penal sanctions. A clearer ideal, as well as actual, distinction, is
gradually established between force and civil right. But who will
venture to say that the duties of man to the Deity, or the larger
claims of man upon man, were better understood in the age of Pericles
or Alexander, of Sylla or of Augustus, than in the days of Homer?