two months, the rest of his reign, five years, being spent on the
continent “in his proper line of business”—fighting. The two months
were distinguished by two things: his extortion from his subjects,
and his famous visit in the disguise of an abbott to Robin Hood,
the merry outlaw of Sherwood Forest. Popular ballads have it that
Richard indulged in a little “fun” with the doughty outlaw, and was
badly worsted; while sober history has it that the lion-hearted
king’s method of raising money “combined the attributes of the tyrant
and the swindler.[B]” England had already been impoverished by the
enormous taxes to raise the king’s ransom, and his return was the
signal for fresh exactions. He ordered the great seal to be broken,
declared the title to all property void, and required everybody to
take out new deeds and pay the price over again for the affixing of
the new seal. Ah, yes; “life was earnest in those days, stormy in its
ambition, hearty in its sports,” and we ought to add, rascally in its
administration. Government is gentler and more refined now—is it more
honest?
The manner of Richard’s death was in as marked contrast to the heroic
character which poetry and romance have given him, as were his capture,
captivity and deliverance. He was killed in Normandy in a sordid
quarrel for the possession of a pot of money which one of his knights
had found concealed in his castle—very much as if Alexander the Great
had met his death in a gambling-house row over the stakes.
The vulgar and repulsive features of Richard Cœur de Lion’s career
did not detract at all from his character as a hero in the days
of chivalry. Indeed, the minstrels sang admiringly of Richard’s
atrocities: of how he supped gayly on a fat Saracen baby when he could
not get roast pig; and caused a Saracen’s head to be roasted and served
up to the courtly ambassadors of Saladin; and butchered his prisoners
by the thousands. If the troubadours do not truly set forth Richard’s
achievements, they truly mirror the spirit of chivalry in the imputed
attributes of its most perfect champion. Comparing the character of
this lion-hearted Plantagenet, as thus reflected, with that of Robin
Hood, the Saxon hero, as pictured in the popular ballads, we must
feel that the common people’s idea of manliness and virtue, though
personified in a bandit, was higher than that of the Norman chivalry,
and we justify Knight in saying:
“The outlaw had the same attributes of bravery and
generosity with which the character of Richard the Lion
Hearted has been invested, without exhibiting those
ferocious traits which belong to the chivalric worship of
mere brute courage and blind fanaticism. The popular notion
of a hero is the more refined one, although Robin be merely
‘a good yeoman.’”
“So curtyous an outlawe as he was one
Was never none yfounde.”
[To be continued.]
FOOTNOTES:
[A] “Ivanhoe,” chapter vii.
[B] Knight.
STUDIES IN ANCIENT GREEK LIFE.
By J. P. MAHAFFY, A.M.
GENERAL FEATURES OF THE GREEK HOUSEHOLD.—While the citizen prized
above all things his liberty and his rights as a member of the state—a
feeling which produced in many cases a citizen democracy—this principle
was unknown within the household, in which he was a despot, ruling
absolutely the inferior members, who had no legal grades except as
distinguished into free and slaves. The laws were very cautious about
interfering with his rights, and he was permitted to exercise much
injustice and cruelty without being punished. If in such a case he was
murdered by his dependants, the whole household of slaves was put to
death, unless the culprit was detected. Nor could a household exist
(except perhaps in Sparta) without the master. If he died, his widow
became again the ward of her father or eldest brother, or son; and so
strongly was this sometimes felt that men on their death-beds betrothed
their wives to friends, who were likely to treat them and their orphan
children with kindness. Of course clever women and servants often
practically had their own way, and ruled their lord or master; but the
theory of the Greek home was nevertheless always that of an absolute
monarchy, if not a despotism.
THE LADY OF THE HOUSE—HER DRESS.—There were two distinct styles of
female dress prevalent. The first was the Dorian, which was noted for
its simplicity. Unmarried girls at Sparta often wore but a single light
garment (_chitonion_) fastened with clasps down the sides—a dress
much criticized by their neighbors. Over this was the Doric _peplos_,
fastened on the shoulders with clasps and leaving the arms bare. The
Ionians wore a long linen chiton with sleeves, which reached down
to the ground, and over it a large flowing wrapper, fastened with a
girdle, worn high or low according to fashion; whereas the other band
called _strophion_ was worn under the _chiton_, and took the place
of modern stays. As a general rule, unmarried women confined their
hairdressing to mere artistic arrangement of the hair itself, while
married women wore bands, fillets, nets, and coronets. Dyeing the hair
was not uncommon, and the fashionable color was auburn, or reddish
fair hair. Women’s shoes were very carefully made, and they carried
fans and parasols, as may be seen in the terra-cotta figures so common
in our museums. Both sexes wore rings, but in addition the women wore
earrings, armlets, and ankle-rings, generally of gold. These were the
ornaments against which lawgivers made enactments, and which were
forbidden or discouraged in days of trouble or poverty. The ornaments
of one rich lady are spoken of as worth 50 minæ (about £195), a very
large sum in those days. The ordinary color of women’s dress was white,
but saffron cloaks, and even flowered patterns, are mentioned.
HER DUTIES.—The constant outdoor life of the Greek gentleman, his
many occupations in politics, and campaigns in war, must have made a
sensible wife even more necessary than she is to modern men, and yet
we do not find that any Greeks valued her high qualities for these
important duties rightly except the Spartans. For among them alone we
find the mistress of the house a person of real importance, appearing
when she chooses in public, and even offering an opinion which is
respected on public affairs. In cultivated Athens, on the contrary,
she was only taught spinning and cooking, and what rude medicine
might be wanting for the treatment of her household in trifling
illness. One of her main duties was always the weighing out of wool
to her women slaves, and her own working at the loom. If a lady of
the higher classes, she was not supposed to appear to male visitors,
but only saw her lady friends and her nearest male relatives in her
own house. She seldom went out, except either to the funeral of a
near relation or to some religious procession and sacrifice. Thus the
liberty of women varied from a freedom as great as need be in Sparta
to a life of seclusion and neglect at Athens. Other states may have
held an intermediate position. As for the vaunted dignity and liberty
of ladies in Homer, it is to be remarked that he speaks of the wives
and daughters of reigning princes, who probably retained the same
importance in historical Greece, wherever they were to be found. For
example, aristocratic ladies, such as Cimon’s sister, Elpinice, were
unrestrained, even at Athens, and went where they chose. This was
also the case everywhere with the poor people, who could not afford
to keep their wives and daughters in the idleness and the restraint
unfortunately so fashionable in higher life.
HER RIGHTS.—In Homeric days we find the old barbarous custom still
surviving of buying a girl from her father for a wife, and this was
commonly done, unless the father himself offered her as a compliment.
The father, however, usually gave her an outfit from the price he
received for her. In case of a separation this outfit came back to the
father, but he was also obliged to restore the price he had received
for his daughter. She does not appear to have had any legal rights
whatever. In later days the custom of paying money was reversed, and
the husband received with his wife a dowry, which was regarded as
common property with his own, so long as she lived with him. In case
of separation or divorce, this dowry had to be repaid to her father,
and at Athens 18 per cent. was charged upon it in case of delay in
repayment. In many states to marry a second wife during the life of
the first was against the practice, and probably the law, of the
Greeks, but concubinage was tolerated and even recognized by them,
though a married woman had at Athens a right to bring an action for
general ill-treatment against her husband, in which she was obliged
to appear and give evidence in person. The dowry seems to have been
partly intended as a useful obstacle to divorce, which required its
repayment, but we find that heiresses made themselves troublesome by
their airs of importance, and this is referred to in Greek literature,
in which men are frequently advised not to marry above them in wealth
or connections. As all citizens were considered equal in birth, and as
marriages with aliens were illegal and void, we do not hear of advice
to young men not to marry beneath them. To marry a poor citizen girl
was always considered a good deed, and is commended as such.
WEDDING CUSTOMS.—Though marriage among the Greeks was recognized
thoroughly as a civil contract, for the purpose of maintaining the
household, and raising citizens for the state, yet a religious
solemnity was considered by them not less essential to its dignity
than by us, and though this ceremony was not performed by an official
priest, it consisted in prayers and offerings to the gods who presided
over marriage. These were generally Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and Artemis,
but many local fashions existed. So also the full moon and the winter
season were generally but not everywhere preferred. A bath in the
most sacred water of the district was thought necessary before the
union, by way of purification. Omens were carefully observed, and
votive offerings dedicated to the gods. The preliminaries closed
with a solemn sacrifice and feast combined, at which the bride was
present, closely veiled, with her female friends. This was often
a large dinner party, for we find laws restricting the number to
thirty, and complaints of the bad taste of much display. She was then
brought in solemn procession late in the evening to her husband’s
house, generally on a carriage, with the bridegroom and his best man
sitting on either side of her. Both were covered with garlands and
perfumed, while the Hymenæus or marriage song was sung by the company
to the sound of harps and flutes. The bride’s mother had the special
duty of carrying a torch behind the carriage, while the bridegroom’s
mother received them torch in hand at his door. The bride brought
with her some household utensils, and was presented with others, and
with sweetmeats, on her arrival. The next morning the married pair
separated for a day (_apaulia_), and the bridegroom slept at the
house of his father-in-law, when the bride sent him a present of a
garment. Then only the young couple were to receive their friends,
who offered congratulations and wedding-presents, which were called
_anakalupteria_, because the bride unveiled herself to her friends
on that day. Such were the general customs of a Greek marriage, but
many old and rude habits survived in various places. Of these the most
primitive was that of Sparta, where the bridegroom pretended to carry
off his bride by violence, and visited her secretly for some time even
after his marriage. This marriage by capture is still common among
savages, and points to a ruder state of life than the marriage by
purchase, which was common in Homer’s time.
OF THE BIRTH AND TREATMENT OF INFANTS.—When a child was born in the
house, it was usual in Attica, and probably elsewhere also, to hang a
wreath of olive in case of a boy, a fillet of wool in case of a girl,
over the door. This served as an announcement to friends and neighbors.
Greek law permitted the parents absolutely to dispose of it as their
property, and there was no provision against exposing it, which was
often done in case of girls, in order to avoid expense. These exposed
children if found and brought up, became the slaves of the finder.
But on the other hand, the laws showed special favor to the parents
of large families. If a child was not exposed, there followed on the
fifth day a solemn purification of all the people in the house, and on
the seventh a sacrifice, when the relations assembled and the child
was named, generally after parents and grand-parents, sometimes by
reason of special wants or fancies—in fact on the same principles which
we follow in christening our children. There is no evidence until
the later Macedonian times that birthday feasts were held yearly;
and Epicurus’ direction that his should be kept after his death was
thought very peculiar. Children of rich people were often nursed by
hired nurses—an employment to which respectable Athenian citizens were
reduced in the hard times at the end of the Peloponnesian war. But a
Lacedæmonian nurse was specially valued, and often bought at a great
price among prisoners, as they were famed for bringing up the child
without swaddling-clothes, and making him hardy and courageous. The
Greeks used cradles for children as we do, and gave them honey as we do
sugar, and the nurses represented on the vases are distinguished by a
peculiar kerchief on the head, as they often are in our day by a cap or
national costume.
OF TOYS AND GAMES FOR CHILDREN.—As might be expected, the inventive
genius of the Greeks showed itself in the constructing of all manner
of toys, and children devised for themselves perhaps all the games now
known and many more besides. Aristotle says you must provide them with
toys, or they will break things in the house, and the older philosopher
Archytas was celebrated for inventing the child’s rattle. Plato also
complains of the perpetual roaring of younger, and the mischievousness
of older, children. We may infer from these things that the Greek boys
were fully as troublesome as our own. They had balls, hoops, swings,
hobbyhorses, and dice, with dolls for the girls, and various animals of
wood and earthenware, like the contents of our Noah’s arks. They played
hide and seek, blind man’s buff, French and English, hunt the slipper,
the Italian _morra_, and many other games which the scholiasts and
Germans have in vain endeavored to explain. But for grown people, we
do not find many games, properly speaking, played for the game’s sake,
like our cricket. There was very simple ball-playing, and, of course,
gambling with dice. Of gymnastic exercises I will speak separately.
GREEK EDUCATION GENERALLY.—As for the girls of the house, they were
brought up to see and hear as little as possible. They only went out
upon a few state occasions, and knew how to work wool and weave, as
well as to cook. We may fairly infer that the great majority of them
could not read or write. The boys, on the contrary, were subjected to
the most careful education, and on no point did the Greek law-givers
and philosophers spend more care than in the proper training, both
physical and mental, of their citizens. The modern system, however, of
public school training was not practiced anywhere save at Sparta, where
a state schoolmaster (_paidonomos_) was appointed, and all the Spartan
boys taken out of the control of their parents. They lived together
under the care of elder boys, as well as masters, so that the system of
monitors, and even that of fagging, was in ordinary practice. They were
encouraged to fight out their disputes, and were much given to sports
and athletic amusements, just like our schoolboys. But the public
school training and discipline lasted much longer at Sparta than among
us, and embraced the university period, as well as the school period,
of life.
In the other states of Greece, which were chiefly towns, or suburbs
of towns, the system of day schools was universal, and the boys went
to and from home under the charge of a special slave, chosen because
he was no longer fit for hard work. He was called the boy’s leader,
or pedagogue (_paidagogos_), a word which never meant schoolmaster
among the Greeks, though it is so rendered in our English Bible (Gal.
iii. 24). The discipline of boys was severe, and they were constantly
watched and repressed, nor were they allowed to frequent the crowded
market place. Corporal punishment was commonly applied to them, and
the quality most esteemed in boys was a blushing shyness and modesty,
hardly equalled by the girls of our time. Nevertheless Plato speaks
of the younger boys as the most sharp-witted, insubordinate, and
unmanageable of animals.
OF SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS.—It does not seem that the office of
schoolmaster was thought very honorable, except of course in Sparta,
where he was a sort of Minister of Education. It was, as with us, a
matter of private speculation, but controlled by police regulations
that the school should open and close with sunrise and sunset and
that no grown men should be allowed to go in and loiter there. The
infant-school teachers, who merely taught children their letters
(_grammatodidaskolos_), were of a low class in society, sometimes even
teaching in open air, like the old hedge schoolmasters in Ireland.
The more advanced teaching of reading and writing was done by the
_grammatikos_, whose house was called, like that of philosophers and
rhetoricians, _schole_, a place of leisure. For the physical and the
æsthetic side we have still to mention the trainer (_paidotribes_)
and the teacher of music (_kitharistes_), the former of whom taught
in the palæstra the exercises and sports afterward carried on by the
full-grown citizens in the gymnasia, which were a feature in all Greek
towns. The teachers of riper youth stood in social position above the
mere teachers of letters, but beneath the professors of rhetoric and
philosophy (sophists). These latter performed the functions of college
tutors at our universities, and completed the literary side of Greek
education. The fees paid to the various teachers were in proportion
to their social importance. Some of the sophists made great fortunes,
and exacted very high fees; the mere schoolmasters are spoken of as
receiving a miserable pittance.
OF WHAT THEY TAUGHT.—The Greeks never thought of making foreign
languages a matter of study, and contented themselves with learning
to read and write their own. In so doing the schoolmasters used as
text-books the works of celebrated epic or elegiac poets, above all
Homer, and then the proverbial philosophy of Hesiod, Solon, Phocylides,
and others, so that the Greek boy read the great classics of his
language at an early age. He was required to learn much of them by
heart, especially when books were scarce; and his teacher pointed out
the moral lessons either professedly or accidentally contained in
these poets. Thus they stood in the place of our Bible and hymns in
education. All this was _grammatike_, which with music and gymnastics,
made up the general education of the Greeks. It excluded the elementary
arithmetic of our “three R’s,” and included what they do not, a
gentlemanly cultivation in music and field sports. It is very doubtful
whether swimming was included, though Herodotus speaks of the Greeks
generally as being able to swim. There is, however, evidence that
from the fourth century B. C. onwards both elementary geometry and
arithmetic, and also drawing, were ordinarily taught.
As regards music every Greek boy (like modern young ladies) either had
or was supposed to have a musical ear, and he was accordingly taught
either the harp or the flute, and with it singing. Here again the
lyric poems of the greatest poets were taught him, and the Greek music
always laid the greatest stress on the words. Aristotle and others
complain that amateurs were spending too much time on the practising of
difficult music, and we know from the musical treatises preserved to
us that the Greeks thought and taught a great deal more about musical
theory and the laws of sound than we do. The Greek tunes preserved are
not pleasing, but we know that they used the strictest and most subtle
principles in tuning instruments, and understood harmony and discord as
well as we do. Great Athenians, like Cimon, were often able to sing and
accompany themselves on the harp, or lyre as we should rather call it.
The Greeks laid great stress on the moral effects of music, especially
as regards the performer, and were very severe in their censure of
certain styles of music. They distinguished their scales as _modes_,
and are said to have put far greater stress on keys than we do, calling
some manly and warlike (Dorian), others weak and effeminate, or even
immoral (Mixo-Lydian). The modern Chinese have the same beliefs about
the moral effects of music. The Greeks had their keynote in the middle
of the scale, and used chiefly the minor scale of our music. They had
different names and signs for the notes of the various octaves which
they used, and also different signs for vocal and for instrumental
music.
GYMNASTICS.—Among the various exercises taught were those in fashion
in the public contests in the games—throwing the discus, running, and
wrestling, and those of use in war—throwing the dart, managing the
sword and shield, and riding. Boxing was not highly esteemed, and
seems not to have been properly understood by the Greeks, who would
have had no chance against an English prize-fighter. The severest
contest was the _pancration_, where the combatants, who were naked
and unarmed, were allowed to use any violence they liked to overcome
their adversary. It was therefore a combination of boxing, wrestling,
and kicking, with occasional biting and gouging by way of additional
resource. We hear of a wonderful jumping feat by Phayllus of Croton,
who leaped forty-four feet; but as he probably jumped down-hill, and
used artificial aids, we can not be sure that it was more than can
be done now-a-days. The Spartans specially forbad boxing and the
pancration, because the vanquished was obliged to confess his defeat
and feel ashamed; and they did not tolerate professional trainers. All
the special exercises for developing muscle practised in our gymnasia
seem to have been known, and they were all practised naked, as being
sunburnt was highly valued. The Greeks smeared themselves first with
oil and then with sand before their exercises, and cleaned themselves
with a scraper or _strigil_, or in later days by taking a bath.
CUSTOMS ON COMING OF AGE.—Most Greek states seem to have wished to
free young men as soon as possible from the control of their parents.
Hence, having passed the age of boyhood, when they were called children
(_paides_), they were made _epheboi_, or “men of age,” at the age of
sixteen or eighteen, when they were enrolled solemnly in the list of
citizens. This was done at Athens with a religious service, and with a
solemn oath on the part of the youth, who declared his allegiance to
the laws and to the religion of his city, and promised to defend it
against all enemies and seditions. He was then enrolled on the list
of his deme or parish, and this roll was called _the lexiarchikon
grammateion_. He was then competent to join in debate at the assembly,
to plead in court, to marry, and perform all the duties of citizenship.
It is not clear how he stood as regards his father, except that, if
the latter became unable to manage his affairs, the son could have him
so declared by an action in court, and so become the owner during his
father’s life. Before the young men settled down, they were employed
for two years in outlying garrison duty and in patrolling the frontiers
of the land, during which time they were called _peripoloi_. This gave
them the necessary training for war, and made them acquainted with the
bounds of their country. Many remains of these frontier forts which
were once garrisoned by the youth of Athens still survive in Attica.