most part such as nature offers, when man has hardly left the mark
of his hand upon the earth, when little has been appropriated, and
that little indeterminately, then the description of right which is
least understood should also be least respected; namely, the law which
withdraws things from original community of use into individual
dominion. To this day we dispute, what was the pristine foundation of
the law of property. Why do we not perceive that this is equivalent
to an admission, that in the first periods of political society, the
whole idea of property must of necessity have been more or less vague?
And consequently, that even plunder in primitive times is a different
thing from plunder in later times, not only as to public estimation,
but as to the moral colour of the act, and that it should be judged
accordingly?
~_Points of superiority in the former._~
Let us then consider the notes of moral superiority which the Heroic
age of Greece presents to us.
Human sacrifices were not then offered upon bloody altars to the gods.
Not even the direst extremity of suffering suggested the thought of
cannibalism as an alternative of escape from death[903]. Wailing
infants were not then exposed to avoid the burden of their nurture.
The grey hairs of parents were treated with reverence and care; and if
their weakness brought down insult upon them, it stung the souls of
their children, even after death. To age in general a deep and hearty
reverence was paid by the young. Woman, the grand refining element of
society, had not then been put down in the estimation of any man, far
less of the wisest men, to the level of persons degraded by the habits
of captivity, and was not held to be a ζῶον ἔμψυχον. Slavery itself was
mild and almost genial. It implied the law of labour, and possibly,
in ordinary cases, a prohibition to rise in life: but of positive
oppression, and of suffering in connection with it, or of any penal
system directed to its maintenance, we have no trace whatever. Marriage
was the honourable and single tie between man and his helpmate[904].
Connections with very near relations were regarded with horror; the
wife was the representative, the intelligent companion and friend, of
her husband; adultery was held in aversion, a crime rarer then than in
most after-periods: and the sacred bond between husband and wife was
not liable to be broken by the poor invention of divorce.
[903] Od. xii. 327-51.
[904] On this and the kindred points, see inf. sect. ix.
Organized unchastity had not then become a kind of devil’s law for
society. The very name and nature of unnatural lusts appear to have
been unknown in Greece, centuries after Sodom had been smitten for
its crimes. The detestable invention, which set gladiators to kill
one another for the amusement of enraptured spectators, was reserved
for times more vain of their philosophy and their artificial culture.
The rights of the poor were acknowledged in the form of an unlimited
obligation to relieve them, under pain of the divine displeasure: and
no stranger or suppliant could be repelled from the door of any one,
who regarded either the fear of God or the fear of man.
As respects the gods, the remains of ancient piety still in some degree
checked the activity of the critical faculty, and the reverence for the
Power that disposes events and hates the wicked was not yet derided
by speculation, nor wholly buried beneath fable and corruption. True,
sacrifice was regarded as the indispensable and effective basis of
religion: but in general, as between Greek and Greek, those who were
most careful of virtue were also most regular in their offerings. Men
were believers in prayer: they thought that, if in need they humbly
betook themselves to supplication, they would be heard and helped.
In short, they kept their hold upon a higher power, which we see
to have been real, because they resorted to it at those times when
human nature eschews illusion, and cries out for reality. Ulysses, in
affliction or in need, addresses himself to the gods: even Ægisthus,
when alarmed, begins to think much of them: but Cicero or Quintilian,
when the arrow of grief has touched them to the quick, seek for comfort
in philosophical calculations on the great woe and little weal of life.
Yet, even while all this was so, there lay in the accumulating
mythology the thickly scattered seeds of destruction, both for belief
and for duty. How could marriage continue single, pure, or permanent,
in the face of the promiscuous lusts of Jupiter? Why should not
helpless infants be exposed, when Juno, disgusted with the form of
Vulcan, threw him down into the sea? Why should not man make a joyous
spectacle of blood and wounds, when they were already beheld with
amusement by the highest of the gods? The examples of rebellion, of
discord, of luxury and selfish ease, were all of them ready to forward
the process of corruption among men; and this armoury of curses was
prepared too in the very quarter, where his eye should behold nothing
but what is august and pure.
Again. In all descriptions of tender feelings the Greeks of the Homeric
age are much nearer than those of later times to the standard of truth
and nature.
The heroes of Homer weep freely; but, says the Agamemnon of
Euripides[905], while he complains of the restriction, weeping is the
recognised privilege of humble life only;
[905] Iph. in Aul. 446.
ἡ δυσγένεια τ’ ὡς ἔχει τι χρήσιμον·
καὶ γὰρ δακρύσαι ῥᾳδίως αὐτοῖς ἔχει
ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐκβαλεῖν μὲν αἰδοῦμαι δάκρυ.
And Aristotle thought, as is thought now, that weeping was unfit for
men. The wise man, he conceives[906], cannot incite others to mourn
with him, διὰ τὸ μηδ’ αὐτὸς εἶναι θρηνητικός: but women, and woman-like
men, γύναια καὶ οἱ τοιοῦτοι ἄνδρες, are glad of such companionship in
sorrow.
[906] Aristot. Eth. IX. xi. 4.
There are indeed three most important points of the Homeric poems, in
which it would appear that the Greek character greatly hardened, and
greatly sank, as the nation advanced in its career. One of them is the
principle of sympathy. Another is that of placability, which Homer has
very powerfully exhibited in Achilles. The third is that of humility,
of which we have an example in Helen, in the Helen of Troy and the
Helen of Sparta, such as heathenism nowhere else, I believe, presents
to us.
It has thus appeared that if we take the state of morality as it
appears among mankind in the poems of Homer, and compare it with that
of Greece in its highest civilization, we find before us two grand
differences. Those offences against the moral law, which constitute
crimes of violence, were more justly appreciated at the later period;
but as to those which constitute, in the language of Christianity, the
lusts of the mind and of the flesh, a great preference is due to the
former.
We are naturally led to inquire, Whence these two movements in opposite
directions? That mankind should either lose ground or gain it, in
morality as a whole, is far less startling at first sight, than that,
at one and the same time, with respect to one great portion of the
moral law there should be progress, and with respect to another,
retrogression.
In reality, however, this was the condition of man: retrogression as to
his spiritual life, but advance and development, up to a certain point,
with regard to the intellectual and the social career. Sins of the
flesh lay chiefly between God and the individual conscience: the social
results did not palpably and immediately reach beyond the persons
immediately concerned. But crimes of violence struck directly at the
fabric of society by destroying security of person and property; and
robbed mankind, especially the ruling part of mankind, of the immense
advantages and enjoyments which they reaped from civilized life. Thus,
the moral sense was quick, and even grew quicker with the lapse of
time, when it was fed and prompted by such motives of self-interest
as lay within its appreciation, like those which the desire to enjoy
the commodities of life supplied. But it languished and all but died,
when its business was to maintain those virtues which involve severe
self-denial, and of which the reward never can be fully appreciated
except by those who are so favoured as to practise them in the highest
degree.
Nor must we overlook some special bearings of the institution of
slavery upon this question. As it grew and was consolidated, it of
course entailed an increased necessity for laws to defend life and
goods against violence. But as regarded the other class of offences,
its influence was all in the sense of more and more relaxation. For
beauty and defencelessness, when they were combined in slaves, at once
wrought up attraction to the uttermost, and removed all obstacles to
enjoyment. While at the same time the partial indulgence, which at all
periods has commonly attended such commerce between slaves and their
masters, operated as a safety valve to let off the political dangers
of that system: so that, on the one hand, slavery was a feeder to lust,
and, on the other, lust was a buttress to slavery.
That it was not on moral grounds that in the later times of Greece life
and property were better defended than in the former, we may partly
judge from finding that, though it is in the nature of all society that
a nation should rather incline to gild the days of its forefathers
with ornaments beyond the truth, the later Greek traditions crammed
the heroic age with a mass of crimes of which Homer knows nothing.
He sets Minos and Rhadamanthus before us as characters positively
good: Thyestes and others are at worst neutral in character: but all
these, according to the later tradition, were either accessory to, or
contaminated with, the most horrible enormities.
~_Notes in the Poems of commencing decline._~
It seems, indeed, as if Homer had himself lived to note the signs
of moral degeneracy. In part, we may perhaps say, it is inseparably
associated with that deterioration in the character and idea of
government, which begins to be traceable in the Odyssey. But in that
poem he has given us another indication of it, unlike any thing in the
Iliad, where he never contrasts the present unfavourably with the past,
except as to mere corporal strength. For he makes Minerva as Mentor
deliver to Telemachus the sentiment, that among sons a small number
only are equal to their fathers[907], a very few indeed excelling them,
but the greater part falling short of them. In later times, we have
come to associate threnodies of this kind with the notion that they
are complaints of course, formulæ taken up and reiterated successively
from generation to generation. It may or may not be just thus to view
them: but whether it be just or not for later times, I think that we
ought not so to limit the force of the idea when it meets us in the
age of Homer: the world was then young, and human society had not so
learned its ‘ancient saws or modern instances,’ as to separate them
from the truths of experience and of observation. The greatest ornament
of the poems of Hesiod, the series of the Ages declining from gold to
iron, probably expresses the actual state of the facts, as it seems to
move on the same line with the narrative of the early Scriptures: and
Homer’s lamentation on degeneracy in all likelihood may belong to a
real portion of the same descending process.
[907] Od. ii. 276.
SECT. IX.
_Woman in the Homeric age._
No view of a peculiar civilization can on its ethical side be
satisfactory, unless it include a distinct consideration of the place
held in it by woman. And, besides, the position of the Greek woman of
the heroic age is in itself so remarkable, as even on special grounds
to require separate and detailed notice. It is likewise so elevated,
both absolutely and in comparison with what it became in the historic
ages of Greece and Rome amidst their elaborate civilization, as to form
in itself a sufficient confutation of the theories of those writers
who can see in the history of mankind only the development of a law
of continual progress from intellectual darkness into light, and from
moral degradation up to virtue.
The idea and place of woman have been slowly and laboriously elevated
by the Gospel: and their full development has constituted the purest
and most perfect protest, that the world has ever seen, against the
sovereignty of force. For it is not alone against merely physical, but
also against merely intellectual strength, that this protest has been
lodged. To the very highest range of intellectual strength known among
the children of Adam, woman seems never to have ascended, but in every
or almost every case to have fallen somewhat short of it. But when we
look to the virtues, it seems probable both that her average is higher,
and that she also attains in the highest instances to loftier summits.
Certainly there is no proof here of her inferiority to man. Now it is
nowhere written in Holy Scripture that God is knowledge, or that God is
power; while it is written that God is love: words which appear to set
forth love as the central essence, and all besides as attributes. Woman
then holds of God, and finds her own principal development in that
which is most God-like. Thus, therefore, when Christianity wrought out
for woman, not a social identity, but a social equality, not a rivalry
with the function of man, but an elevation in her own function reaching
as high as his, it made the world and human life in this respect also
a true image of the Godhead.
Within the pale of that civilization which has grown up under the
combined influence of the Christian religion as paramount, and of what
may be called the Teutonic manners as secondary, we find the idea of
woman and her social position raised to a point even higher than in the
poems of Homer. But it would be hard to discover any period of history
or country of the world, not being Christian, in which they stood so
high as with the Greeks of the heroic age.
There are various heads under which we may inquire into the subject
before us.
One is the law of marriage in the heroic age, and the state of the
specific relation between the sexes.
A second is the employments assigned to women; how high did they reach,
and how low did they descend?
A third is the social footing on which they stood, as tested by
manners.
A fourth is the general outline of the woman’s character, as it is to
be estimated from the varied specimens which Homer has set before us.
~_Law and custom of marriage._~
Firstly; a main criterion of the general condition of woman in a given
state of society is to be found in the view which it may exhibit of
the great institution of marriage. In proportion as that institution
is purified and elevated by just restraint, the condition of woman
is honourable, free, and happy. In proportion as it is relaxed, in
accommodation to human infirmity or appetite, the condition of woman
is degraded and servile; for where desire is the law, strength is its
appropriate and only sanction, and the cause of the weaker fails. Just
as a strict and efficient police is most important to the unprotected,
so a strict law of marriage is most for the interest of the woman.
The general position of womankind in the Homeric age is high on both
sides of the Archipelago; but, as respects marriage, its chiefest
pillar, it is perceptibly even higher among the Greeks than among
the Trojans. Among the multitude of cases, that either directly or
incidentally come before us in the poems, there is nothing that at
all resembles the Asiatic household of Priam, or that seems to favour
polygamy. Nor have we any instance where a wife is divorced or taken
away from her husband, and then made the wife of another man during
his lifetime. The froward Suitors, who urge Penelope to choose a new
husband from among them, do it upon the plea that Ulysses must be
dead, and that there is no hope of his return: a plea not irrational,
if we presume that the real term of his absence came to even half the
number of years which Homer has assigned to it. The ancient law of
England, while it repudiated the principle of divorce, recognised the
presumption of the husband’s death, when brought near to certainty by
a long term of absence, as equivalent to death itself for the purpose
of exempting the wife from civil penalty in case of her marriage.
Ægisthus, again, finds it extremely difficult to corrupt Clytemnestra:
and his success in inducing her to marry him entails, as if a matter
of course, the murder of her former husband. The crime is mentioned
by Jupiter, in the Olympian Court, as consisting of the two parts, of
which he by no means specifies the latter as the more atrocious[908];
[908] Od. i. 36.
(1) γῆμ’ ἄλοχον μνηστὴν, (2) τὸν δ’ ἔκτανε νοστήσαντα.
The law of marriage differs from most other human laws in a very
important particular. It is their excellence to impose the _minimum_
of restraint, which will satisfy the absolute wants of society: but
the aim and the criterion of a good law of marriage is to impose the
_maximum_ of restraint that human nature can be induced _bonâ fide_ to
accept. Doubtless there is here also a conceivable excess: but it would
be and has been indicated by the general withholding of submission,
or evasion of obedience. Up to that point, the restrictions of the
marriage law are not evils to be endured for the sake of a greater
good, but are good in themselves.
In order that this great institution may thoroughly fulfil its ends, it
is especially requisite,
1. That it should not be contracted between more than one man and one
woman.
2. That it should on both sides be, in the main and as a general rule,
deliberate and spontaneous.
3. That the contract, once made, should not be dissolved.
And closely allied to these there is yet a fourth negative:
4. That nuptials should not be contracted between persons who stand
within certain near degrees of relationship.
5. It is always requisite that this engagement should exclude not only
the possibility of marriage for either partner with a third person, but
also any other fleshly connection without marriage.
Of these propositions, the first, third, and fourth, are heads of
restraint on marriage. Every one of the three was acknowledged by the
Greeks of the heroic age.
~_Marriage always single._~
The rule of conjugal fidelity was admitted, though not wholly without
relaxation, to be as applicable to men as to their wives. This, and
all the other restrictions, were applied to women with undeviating
strictness.
1. As regards the first, it is plain, from a mass of evidence so large
as to amount, in spite of its being negative, to demonstration, that
the uniform practice of the Greeks required the marriage union to be
single. This, however, of itself, is saying little; but it imports much
besides what is on the surface: it implies, that, with due allowances,
the spirit of the marriage contract is a spirit of equity and of well
adjusted rights, as between those who enter into it.
2. This relation was also conceived by the Greeks in a spirit of
freedom.
It held a central place in life thoroughly European, as opposed to
the Oriental ideas. Nay, it approximated very much to the ideas
prevailing in our own country as well as age. We do not find in the
poems any instance of a marriage enforced against the will of a young
maiden, or contracted when she was of years too tender to exercise a
judgment. Nausicaa fears that if she is seen with Ulysses, censorious
tongues will immediately put it about that she is going to be married
to him. They will say, ‘Who is this tall and handsome stranger with
Nausicaa?’[909] Surely she is going to become his bride. Truly she
has picked up some gallant from afar, who has strayed from his ship:
or some god has come down to wed her. Better it were if she found a
husband from abroad, since, forsooth, she looks down upon her Phæacian
suitors, though they are many and noble. Then continues this model of
maidens; ‘Thus I shall come into disgrace; and indeed I myself should
be indignant with any one who should so act, and who, against the will
of her parents, frequented the company of men before being publicly
married.’ In this remarkable passage we have such an exhibition of
woman’s freedom, as scarcely any age has exceeded. For it clearly shows
that the marriage of a damsel was her own affair, and that, subject to
a due regard freely rendered to authority and opinion, she had, when of
due age, a main share in determining it. That is to say, to the extent
of choosing a mate among the competitors. The expression of giving
away or promising a daughter, by parents, is often used[910], but we
perceive the limits of its meaning from the passage just quoted. The
more so, because similar expressions as to the proceedings of parents
are applied in Homer to the marriages of sons[911]. I do not suppose it
would have been open to any maiden to remain single. That all should
marry, that there should be no class living in celibacy, was a kind
of law for society in its infant state, even as now it may be said to
be almost a law for the most numerous classes of society. Above all I
suppose it to be clear that a marriageable widow could not ordinarily
remain in widowhood. No reproach arises to Helen, on account of the
renewal of her irregular union with Deiphobus; and when Penelope,
or others in her behalf, contemplate the death of Ulysses, and her
consequent release from the marriage state, that change is always
treated as the immediate preface to another crisis, namely, the choice
of a second husband.
[909] Od. vi. 275-88.
[910] Il. xi. 296. xix. 29. ix. 141. vi. 191. Od. vii. 311. iv. 6.
[911] Il. ix. 394. Od. iv. 10.
Although social intercourse with man might not, as Nausicaa says, be
sought by damsels, it might innocently come on occasions such as those
afforded by public festivities, or by an ordinary calling[912].
[912] Il. xviii. 567, 593, and xxii. 126.
~_Freedom of the woman._~
But again, the persecution of Penelope by the Suitors bears emphatic
testimony to the freedom of woman within the limits I have described.
The utmost of their aim is to coerce her into marrying some one; even
as their sin lies in bringing this pressure to bear upon her before
the death of Ulysses has been ascertained. On the other hand, the
pressure is a moral one: her violent removal is never thought of; and
the absolute silence of the poem on the subject proves that it would
have been at variance with the prevailing manners, had any cabal been
formed, in order even to constrain her choice towards a particular
person. The very presents, by which the profligate Suitors endeavoured
to ingratiate themselves with the women of the household of Ulysses,
speak favourably of the free condition of the sex, and seem to show,
that it descended even into lower stations.
For the Greek in the heroic age, marriage was the pivot of life. It
took place in the bloom of age: hence[913] the beautiful expression,
θαλερὸς γάμος, Od. vi. 66, xx. 74. It even marks of itself the age of
persons; Alcinous has five sons, three ἠΐθεοι, and two ὀπυίοντες, (Od.
vi. 63): three youths or bachelors, and two married.
[913] Friedreich, Realien, §. 57. p. 200.
Presents were usually brought by the bridegroom, and dowries sometimes
given with the bride. Where the two concurred, the presents may have
been either in the nature of compliments, or intended to meet the
expense of the wedding festivities. The absence of the former, and the
occurrence of the latter, seem each to be more or less in the nature of
an exception. With a wife returning to her parents, the dowry returned
also[914]. On the other hand, to judge from the story of Vulcan and
Venus, wherever adultery was committed, the guilty man was bound to pay
a fine[915]. The poems give us several instances where personal gifts
and energy served instead of wealth, as recommendations in suing for a
wife[916]. The drawing of the Bow affords a conspicuous example of the
prevailing ideas.
[914] Od. ii. 132.
[915] Od. viii. 329.
[916] Od. xi. 287. xiv. 210. Il. xiii. 363.
Upon the whole, then, in all that related to forming engagements by
marriage, there seems to have been preserved a large regard to the
freedom and dignity of woman[917]. War was doubtless in this respect
her great enemy; she then became the prey of the strongest, and it
is probable that this may have been the most powerful instrument in
promoting the extensive introduction of concubinage into Greece.
[917] Friedreich, Realien, c. III. ii. p. 204.