in the Iliad. But this appears to be only for the same reason, as that
which makes the meals of the camp more simple, than those which were
served in the tranquillity of peace and home.
~_Explanations of the presumed difficulty._~
The words commonly employed by Homer in this matter refer to two
separate parts of the operation: first, the bathing and anointing, then
the dressing. They are commonly for the first λούω and χρίω: for the
second βάλλω, with the names of the proper vestments added (Od. iii.
467);
ἀμφὶ δέ μιν φᾶρος[998] καλὸν βάλεν ἠδὲ χιτῶνα.
[998] Or χλαῖναν, as in Od. x. 365.
But the whole question, in my view, really depends upon this: whether
the verbs used mean the performance of a particular operation, or the
giving to the person concerned the means of doing it for himself.
Just as by feeding the poor, we mean giving them wherewithal to feed
themselves. This is the suggestion of Wakefield[999], and I believe it
to be the satisfactory and conclusive solution of the whole question.
We might be prevailed upon to travel a good way in company with Heroic
simplicity, and yet not quite be able to reach the point which the
opposite interpretation would require.
[999] On Pope, Od. iii. 464-8.
I think that the construction, which I have indicated as the proper
one, is conclusively made good, first by the general rules for the
sense of the words λούω, λούομαι, and kindred words in Homer: and
secondly, by the detailed evidence of facts.
When the guests at a feast wash their hands, the standard expression
is in the middle voice, χερνίψαντο δ’ ἔπειτα. When Ulysses and Diomed
washed in the sea, the expression is ἱδρῶ ἀπενίζοντο: when they
afterwards bathed and anointed themselves, it is λούσαντο, λοεσσαμένω,
ἀλειψαμένω[1000]. To smear arrows with poison is ἰοὺς χρίεσθαι
χαλκήρεας[1001]. For the maidens of Nausicaa, when they bathe and are
anointed, we have λοεσσάμεναι and χρισάμεναι[1002]. In fact the usage
is general.
[1000] Il. x. 572-7.
[1001] Od. i. 262.
[1002] Od. vi. 96; cf. 219, 20.
The case stands rather differently with βάλλω. Here the active usage
is, I believe, the common one. But there is ample authority for the
converse or active use of the middle voice, which corresponds with the
middle use of the active. As for instance,
αὐτίκα δ’ ἀμφ’ ὤμοισιν ἐβάλλετο κάμπυλα τόξα[1003].
[1003] Il. x. 333. Cf. Od. xi. 427.
There can therefore surely be no reason to doubt that βάλλειν in this
place follows the inclination of the leading words of the passages,
and signifies, that as the water and the oil, so likewise the fresh
clothing to put on, were given by the damsel for the purpose, but by no
means that the operations, or any of them, were actually performed by
her.
If the word βάλλειν meant ‘to put on,’ there would be, as
Eustathius[1004] observes, an ὑστερολογία, for the χίτων was as a
matter of course put on before the φᾶρος. But if it means ‘to give for
the purpose of putting on,’ then there is no solecism in the mode of
expression.
[1004] On Od. iii. 467.
We must not, however, pass by the case of Circe in the Tenth Odyssey,
where, as we have seen, it is stated that the water was actually poured
by the Sorceress over the head and shoulders of Ulysses. It is also
true that the old word λοέω, equivalent to λούω, is used there in the
active voice.
Upon this I observe three things:
1. The statement that the water was poured over his head and shoulders,
as he sat in the bath, evidently implies that what may be called
essential decency was preserved.
2. Even if it were not so, we could not in this point argue from the
manners or morals of a Phœnician goddess to those of a Greek damsel.
3. The meaning probably of λοέω is middle, in this as well as in the
other cases: she gave him water to wash with, pouring it over his head
and shoulders, and then leaving to him the substance of the operation,
which was not completed by this mere act of affusion.
~_Case of Ulysses landed in Scheria._~
Finally, let us consider the evidence from the case of Ulysses in
Scheria, which appears of itself conclusive.
1. In Od. vii. 296. Ulysses says that Nausicaa (according to the
popular construction of the term) bathed him: καὶ λοῦσ’ ἐν ποταμῷ.
2. But from Od. vi. 210, we find that what she did was not to
bathe him, but to give orders to her attendants that he should be
bathed,--that is, should be provided with the requisites for bathing.
Her words were, λούσατέ τ’ ἐν ποταμῷ, ὅθ’ ἐπὶ σκέπας ἔστ’ ἀνέμοιο.
3. Upon this they took him to a recess, gave him clothing and oil,
and bid him bathe himself, ἤνωγον δ’ ἄρα μιν λοῦσθαι: upon which he
requested them to stand off, as otherwise he could not proceed: ἄντην
δ’ οὐκ ἂν ἐγώγε λοέσσομαι (ibid. 218-22).
It would appear therefore, that the statements of Homer give no ground
whatever for sinister or disparaging imputation. His pictures do not
entirely correspond with modern ideas: but they may well leave on our
minds the impression that, in the period he described, if the standard
of appearances in this department was lower, that of positive thought
and action was higher, as well as simpler, than in our own day.
We have now concluded what it seemed needful to say on the employments
of women.
~_Subsequent declension of the place of woman._~
It was, however, little likely that a state of things, such as has been
described, should last.
The idea of marriage was in aftertimes greatly lowered, together with
the moral tone in general; and the very name of γάμος, with its kindred
words, underwent a change of sense, and was made applicable to such a
relation as that established between the Greek chieftains in the war of
Troy and their captives in cases where they had wives already[1005].
[1005] The case of Achilles, who calls Briseis his wife, and who had no
other, has been already discussed.
Thus, in the Hecuba of Euripides, as the mother of Cassandra, she
intercedes with Agamemnon to avenge the murder of her son Polydorus,
on the ground that the youth had become a κηδεστὴς, or relation by
affinity to Agamemnon, who had a wife already[1006]:
[1006] Hecuba, 817.
τοῦτον καλῶς δρῶν ὄντα κηδεστὴν σέθεν
δράσεις.
And, in the Troades, Cassandra has with Agamemnon certain σκότια
νυμφευτήρια (258); and again,
γαμεῖ βιαίως σκότιον Ἀγαμέμνων λέχος[1007].
[1007] Ibid. 44. cf. ver. 358.
Similar language is used in the case of Andromache[1008]. The ideas of
the heroic age would have admitted no such depravation of marriage.
[1008] Ibid. 724.
In truth it would seem not only as if, before Christianity appeared,
notwithstanding the advance of civilization, the idea and place of
woman were below what they should have been, but actually as if, with
respect to all that was most essential, they sank with the lapse of
time.
The contrast between the views of the marriage state entertained in
the heroic age, and at the period which we regard as the acmè of the
Greek civilization, will, perhaps, be best conceived by referring to
the passage ascribed to Demosthenes, as it is quoted by Athenæus,
which explains succinctly the several uses of prostitutes, concubines,
and wives, apparently as classes all alike recognised, and without
any note of a moral difference in their social position and repute
respectively. The first are for pleasure, the second for daily use, the
last for legitimate offspring, and for good housekeeping[1009].
[1009] Athenæus xiii. 31. Döllinger Heid. u. Jud. ix. 31.
And yet it continued to be, in the time of Aristotle, a favourable
distinction of Greece as compared with the barbarians, that the woman
was not with them equivalent to the slave. Throughout their history
they continued to be a nation of monogamists, except where they became
locally tainted with oriental manners[1010].
[1010] Arist. Pol. I. ii. 4. Döllinger ix. 25.
Again, Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, taking a general survey
of the relation between man and wife, describes it as a government
indeed, but as analogous to that natural and perfect form of government
which he terms aristocracy. It is founded on merit and fitness. The man
leaves to the woman all for which she is best suited, and each kind
contributes its particular gifts to make up the common stock.
There was much, then, of solidity, and permanence in the ground secured
for the Greek woman by the heroic age. But the philosopher, sagacious
and dispassionate as he is, had still a much less elevated view of her
position than Homer had exhibited.
There may[1011], he says, be in a tragedy a good or bad woman, a good
or a bad slave; there is room for variety even in these; καί τοίγε ἴσως
τούτων τὸ μὲν χεῖρον τὸ δὲ ὅλως φαῦλόν ἐστι. No such classification,
no such comparison, could have found place in the heroic age. Yet more
remarkable is the little postscript assigned to the widows of the
dead in the funeral oration assigned by Thucydides to Pericles: “If I
must also say a few words, for you that are now widows, concerning
what constitutes the merit of a woman, I will sum up all in one short
admonition. It will be much for your character not to sink beneath your
own actual nature (τῆς ὑπαρχούσης φύσεως μὴ χείροσι γένεσθαι); and to
be as little talked about as possible among men, whether for praise or
for dispraise[1012].”
[1011] Aristot. Poet. c. 28.
[1012] Thuc. ii. 45.
SECT. X.
_The office of the Homeric Poems in relation to that of the early Books
of Holy Scripture._
Even if they are regarded in no other light than as literary treasures,
the position, both of the oldest books among the Sacred Scriptures,
and, next to them, of the Homeric poems, is so remarkable, as not
only to invite, but to command the attention of every inquirer into
the early condition of mankind. Each of them opens to us a scene, of
which we have no other literary knowledge. Each of them is, either
wholly or in a great degree, isolated; and cut off from the domain of
history, as it is commonly understood. Each of them was preserved with
the most jealous care by the nation to which they severally belonged.
By far the oldest of known compositions, and with conclusive proof
upon the face of them that their respective origins were perfectly
distinct and independent, they, notwithstanding, seem to be in no
point contradictory, while in many they are highly confirmatory
of each other’s genuineness and antiquity. Still, as historical
representations, and in a purely human aspect, they are greatly
different. The Holy Scriptures are like a thin stream, beginning from
the very fountain-head of our race, and gradually, but continuously
finding their way through an extended solitude, into times otherwise
known, and into the general current of the fortunes of mankind. The
Homeric poems are like a broad lake outstretched in the distance, which
provides us with a mirror of one particular age and people, alike full
and marvellous, but which is entirely dissociated by an interval of
many generations from any other records, except such as are of the
most partial and fragmentary kind. In respect of the influence which
they have respectively exercised upon mankind, it might appear almost
profane to compare them. In this point of view, the Scriptures stand
so far apart from every other production, on account of their great
offices in relation to the coming of the Redeemer, and to the spiritual
training of mankind, that there can be nothing either like or second to
them.
But undoubtedly, after however wide an interval, the Homeric poems thus
far at least stand in a certain relation to the Scriptures, that no
other work of man can be compared to them. Their immediate influence
has been great; but that influence which they have mediately exercised
through their share in shaping the mind and nationality of Greece,
and again, through Greece upon the world, cannot readily be reduced
to measure: _Les vraies origines de l’esprit humain sont là; tous les
nobles de l’intelligence y retrouvent la patrie de leurs pères_[1013].
Insomuch that, passing over the vast interval between those purposes
which concern salvation, and every other purpose connected with man,
this remains to be admitted, that there is a relative parallelism
between the oldest Holy Scriptures and the works of Homer. For each
of them stands at the head of the class of powers to which they
respectively belong; and the minor seems to present to our view, as
well as the major one, the indications of a distinct Providential aim
that was to be attained through its means.
[1013] Renan, Études d’Histoire Religieuse, p. 40.
The relation, however, of the Homeric poems to the earlier portion of
the Sacred Scriptures, appears to me to be capable of being represented
in a more determinate form than it assumes when they are merely
compared as being respectively the oldest known compositions, and as
each confirming the testimony of the other by numerous coincidences of
manners.
~_Providential functions of Greece and Rome._~
For the Eastern world, it is, I suppose, generally acknowledged that
we ought to regard Mahometanism as having had, no less than Judaism,
a place, though doubtless a very different place, in the determinate
counsels of God. So in the West, we must view the extraordinary
developments, which human nature received, both individually and in
its social forms, among the Greeks and Romans, as having been intended
to fulfil high Providential purposes. They supplied materials for the
intellectual and social portions of that European civilization, which
derives its spiritual substance from the Christian Faith. And they
wrought out solutions apparently conclusive for the questions which
absolutely required an answer, as to the capacity or incapacity of man,
when without the aid of especial divine light and guidance, to work out
his own happiness and peace. That Divine Word, which tells us that the
Redeemer came in the fulness of time, indirectly points to the great
transactions which filled the space of ages since the Fall, when time
was not yet full; and the greatest of all those great transactions
surely were the parts played by Greece and Rome, as the representatives
of humanity at large in its most vigorous developments. They too, as
well as the discipline of the Jewish people, doubtless belonged to the
Divine plan. All these varied manifestations may differ much in their
character and rank, but yet, like the body, soul, and spirit of a man,
they are to be referred to one origin, and they are integrants to one
another.
Just in the same manner with the parallel currents of historical
events, it would appear that the early Scriptures and the Homeric
poems combine to make up for us a sufficiently complete form of the
primitive records of our race. The Scriptures of the Old Testament give
us the history of the line, in which the promise of the Messiah was
handed down. But the intellectual and social developments of man are
there represented in the simplest and the slightest, nay, even in the
narrowest forms. With the exception of Solomon, who, in spite of his
wisdom, was enticed away from God by lust, and of the two illustrious
specimens of uncorrupted piety in the midst of dangerous power, Joseph
and Daniel, I know not whether we can, on the authority of Holy
Scripture, point to any character of the Mosaic or Judaic history as
great in any other sense, than as the organs of that Almighty One,
with whom nothing human is either great or small. It is plain that if
we bring the leading characters of that history into contrast with the
Achilles or the Ulysses of Homer, and with his other marked personages,
these latter undoubtedly give us a representation and development of
human nature, and of man in his social relations, that Scripture from
its very nature could not supply. Each has its own function to perform,
so that there is no room for competition between them, and it is
better to avoid comparison altogether; and to decline to consider the
legislation of Moses as a work to be compared either with the heroic
institutions, or with systems like those of Lycurgus or of Solon. We
then obtain a clear view of it as a scheme evidently constructed not
alone with human but with superhuman wisdom, if only we measure it in
reference to its very peculiar end. That end was not to give political
lessons to mankind, which are more aptly supplied elsewhere. It was to
fence in, with the ruder materials of the ceremonial and municipal law,
a home, within which the succession of true piety and enlightened faith
might be preserved; a garden wherein the Lord God might, so to speak,
still walk as He had walked of old, and take His delight with the sons
of men. But this high calling had reference only to chosen persons,
a few among the few. Over and above this interior work, there was a
national vocation also. The aim of that vocation seems to have been
to isolate the people, so as to stop the influences from without that
might tend in the direction of change; and so far to crystallize, as it
were, its institutions within, that they might preserve in untainted
purity the tradition and the expectation of Him that was to come.
When the Almighty placed his seal upon Abraham by the covenant of
circumcision, and when He developed that covenant in the Mosaic
institutions, in setting the Jewish people apart for a purpose the most
profound of all His wise designs, He removed it, for the time of its
career, out of the family of nations.
~_Sacred Books not mere literary records._~
Should we, like some writers of the present day, cite the Pentateuch
before the tribunal of the mere literary critic, we may strain our
generosity at the cost of justice, and still only be able to accord
to it a secondary place. The mistake surely is to bring it there at
all, or to view its author otherwise than as the vehicle of a Divine
purpose, which uses all instruments, great, insignificant, or middling,
according to the end in view, but of which all the instruments are
perfect, by reason not of what is intrinsic to themselves, but, simply
and solely, of their exact adaptation to that end[1014].
[1014] To show with what jealousy believers in revelation may justly
regard the mere literary handling of the Older Scriptures, I would
refer to the remarkable work of M. Ernest Renan, ‘_Études d’Histoire
Religieuse_.’ This eloquent and elastic writer treats the idea of a
revealed religion as wholly inadmissible; highly extols the Bible as a
literary treasure; but denies that the general reading of the Bible is
a good, except in so far as _il vaut beaucoup mieux voir le peuple lire
la Bible que ne rien lire_ (pp. 75, 385).
If, however, we ought to decline to try the Judaic code by its merely
political merits, much more ought we to apply the same principle to the
sublimity of the Prophecies, and to the deep spiritual experiences of
the Psalms. In the first, we have a voice speaking from God, with the
marks that it is of God so visibly imprinted upon it, that the mind
utterly refuses to place the prophetical books in the scale against any
production of human genius. And all that is peculiar in our conception
of Isaiah, or of Jeremiah, does not tend so much to make them eminent
among men, as to separate them from men. Homer, on the other hand, is
emphatically and above all things human: he sings by the spontaneous
and the unconscious indwelling energies of nature; whereas these are as
the trumpet of unearthly sounds, and cannot, more than Balaam could,
depart from that which is breathed into them, to utter either less or
more.
But most of all does the Book of Psalms refuse the challenge of
philosophical or poetical competition. In that Book, for well nigh
three thousand years, the piety of saints has found its most refined
and choicest food; to such a degree indeed, that the rank and quality
of the religious frame may in general be tested, at least negatively,
by the height of its relish for them. There is the whole music of the
human heart, when touched by the hand of the Maker, in all its tones
that whisper or that swell, for every hope and fear, for every joy and
pang, for every form of strength and languor, of disquietude and rest.
There are developed all the innermost relations of the human soul to
God, built upon the platform of a covenant of love and sonship that had
its foundations in the Messiah, while in this particular and privileged
Book it was permitted to anticipate His coming.
We can no more then compare Isaiah and the Psalms with Homer, than
we can compare David’s heroism with Diomed’s, or the prowess of the
Israelites when they drove Philistia before them with the valour of the
Greeks at Marathon or Platæa, at Issus or Arbela. We shall most nearly
do justice to each by observing carefully the boundary lines of their
respective provinces.
~_Providential uses of the Homeric poems._~
It appears to be to a certain extent agreed that Rome has given us the
most extraordinary example among all those put upon record by history,
of political organization; and has bequeathed to mankind the firmest
and most durable tissue of law, the bond of social man. Greece, on the
other hand, has had for its share the development of the individual;
and each has shown in its own kind the rarest specimen that has been
known to the world, apart from Divine revelation. The seeds of both
these, and of all that they involved, would appear to be contained in
the Homeric poems[1015]. The condition of arts, manners, character,
and institutions, which they represent, is alike in itself entire, and
without any full parallel elsewhere. It is for the bodily and mental
faculties of man, that which the patriarchal and early Hebrew histories
are for his spiritual life.
[1015] In the Roman History of Mommsen is contained a masterly
comparison between those two rival developments of human life, the
collective and the individual, which are represented by Rome, and by
later or historic Greece, respectively. (Mommsen Röm. Gesch. I. 2. pp.
18-21.) Both of them are open to criticism. In the one we may notice
and brand the characteristic of an iron repression, in the other that
of a lawless freedom. But the age which ended with the war of Troy, and
cast the reflection of its dying beams upon its noble but chequered
epilogue in the Odyssey, appears to make no fundamental deviation
from the mean of wisdom in either direction: on the whole, it united
reverence with independence, the restraint of discipline with the
expansion of freedom: and it stood alike removed, in the plenitude of
its natural elasticity, from those extremes which in modern religion
have, on the one side, absorbed the individual, and on the other (so to
speak) excommunicated him by isolation.
Of the personal and inward relations of man with God, of the kingdom
of grace in the world, Homer can tell us nothing: but of the kingdom
of Providence much, and of the opening powers and capabilities of
human nature, apart from divine revelation, everything. The moral law,
written on the tables of stone, was in one sense a schoolmaster to
bring us to Christ, because it demonstrated our inability to tread the
way of righteousness and pardon without the Redeemer. And perhaps that
ceremonial law, which indulged some things to the hardness of heart
that prevailed among the Jews, was by its permissions, as some have
construed a very remarkable passage in Ezekiel[1016], a schoolmaster in
another sense; because it witnessed to the fact that they had greatly
fallen below the high capacities of their nature. And again, in yet
a third sense, we may say with reverence that these primeval records
are likewise another schoolmaster, teaching us, although with another
voice, the very same lesson: because they show us the total inability
of our race, even when at its maximum of power, to solve for ourselves
the problems of our destiny; to extract for ourselves the sting from
care, from sorrow, and above all, from death; or even to retain without
waste the vital heat of the knowledge of God, when we have become
separate from the source that imparts it.
[1016] Ezek. xx. 25.
~_They complete the code of primitive instruction._~