men in Persia being slaves save one is not a piece of Greek rhetoric;
it was the official language of the empire. The greatest officer of
state next to the King was still his “slave” and was so addressed by
him. The King was lord and absolute. An inscription at Persepolis
reads _I am Xerxes the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of
many-tongued countries, the King of this great universe, the Son of
Darius the King, the Achaemenid. Xerxes the Great King saith: “By grace
of Ahuramazda I have made this portal whereon are depicted all the
countries.”_ The Greek orator Aeschines says, “He writes himself Lord
of men from the rising to the setting sun.” The letter of Darius to
Gadatas—it exists to-day—is addressed by “Darius the son of Hystaspes,
King of Kings.” That, as we know, was a favourite title. The law of the
land was summed up in the sentence: _The King may do what he pleases_.
Greece saved us from that.
No man might enter the sacred presence without leave. Whoever was
admitted must prostrate himself to the ground. The emperor sat on a
sculptured throne holding in his hand a sceptre tipped with an apple
of gold. He was clad in gorgeous trousers and gorgeous Median robe. On
his head was the peaked _kitaris_ girt with the crown, beneath which
the formally curled hair flowed down to mingle with the great beard.
He had chains of gold upon him and golden bracelets, a golden zone
engirdled him, from his ears hung rings of gold. Behind the throne
stood an attendant with a fan against the flies and held his mouth lest
his breath should touch the royal person. Before the throne stood the
courtiers, their hands concealed, their eyelids stained with _kohl_,
their lips never smiling, their painted faces never moving. Greece
saved us from all that.
The King had many wives and a great harem of concubines—one for each
day of the year. You remember the Book of Esther. Ahasuerus is the
Greek Xerxes. There is in Herodotus a story of that court which,
however unauthentic it may be in details, has a clear evidential value.
On his return from Greece Xerxes rested at Sardis, the ancient capital
of Lydia. There he fell in love with the wife of his brother Masistes.
Unwilling to take her by force, he resorted to policy. He betrothed his
son Darius to Artaynte, the daughter of Masistes, and took her with him
to Susa (the Shushan of Esther), hoping to draw her mother to his great
palace there, “where were white, green and blue hangings, fastened
with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of
marble.” In Susa, however, the King experienced a new sensation and
fell in love with Artaynte—who returned his affection. Now Amestris the
Queen had woven with her own hands a wonderful garment for her lord,
who inconsiderately put it on to pay his next visit to Artaynte. Of
course Artaynte asked for it, of course in the end she got it, and of
course she made a point of wearing it. When Amestris heard of this,
she blamed, says Herodotus, not the girl but her mother. With patient
dissimulation she did nothing until the Feast of the Birthday of the
King, when he cannot refuse a request. Then for her present she asked
the wife of Masistes. The King, who understood her purpose, tried to
save the victim; but too late. Amestris had in the meanwhile sent the
King’s soldiers for the woman; and when she had her in her power _she
cut away her breasts and threw them to the dogs, cut off her nose and
ears and lips and tongue, and sent her home_.
It may be thought that the Persian monarchy cannot fairly be judged by
the conduct of a Xerxes. The reply to this would seem to be that it
was Xerxes the Greeks had to fight. But let us choose another case,
Artaxerxes II, whose life the gentle Plutarch selected to write because
of the mildness and democratic quality which distinguished him from
others of his line. Yet the _Life of Artaxerxes_ would be startling in
a chronicle of the Italian Renaissance. The story which I will quote
from it was probably derived from the _Persian History_ of Ktesias,
who was a Greek physician at the court of Artaxerxes. This Ktesias, as
Plutarch himself tells us, was a highly uncritical person, but after
all, as Plutarch goes on to say, he was not likely to be wrong about
things that were happening before his eyes. Here then is the story, a
little abridged.
_She_—that is, Parysatis the queen-mother—_perceived that
he_—Artaxerxes the King—_had a violent passion for Atossa, one of
his daughters.... When Parysatis came to suspect this, she made more
of the child than ever, and to Artaxerxes she praised her beauty and
her royal and splendid ways. At last she persuaded him to marry the
maid and make her his true wife, disregarding the opinions and laws_
(Nomoi) of the Greeks; she said that he himself had been appointed by
the god_ (Ahuramazda) _a law unto the Persians and judge of honour
and dishonour.... Atossa her father so loved in wedlock that, when
leprosy had overspread her body, he felt no whit of loathing thereat,
but praying for her sake to Hera_ (Anaitis?) _he did obeisance to
that goddess only, touching the ground with his hands; while his
satraps and friends sent at his command such gifts to the goddess that
the whole space between the temple and the palace, which was sixteen
stades_ (nearly two miles) _was filled with gold and with silver and
with purple and with horses_.
Artaxerxes afterwards took into his harem another of his daughters. The
religion of Zarathustra sanctioned that. It also sanctioned marriage
with a mother. According to Persian notions both Xerxes and Artaxerxes
behaved with perfect correctness. The royal blood was too near the
divine to mingle with baser currents. There is no particular reason
for believing that Xerxes was an exceptionally vicious person, while
Artaxerxes seemed comparatively virtuous. It was the system that was
all wrong. What are you to expect of a prince, knowing none other
law than his own will, and surrounded from his infancy by venomous
intriguing women and eunuchs? Babylon alone used to send five hundred
boys yearly to serve as eunuchs.... I think we may now leave the
Persians.
_Hear again Phocylides: “A little well-ordered city on a rock is better
than frenzied Nineveh.”_ The old poet means a city of the Greek type,
and by “well-ordered” he means governed by a law which guarantees
the liberties of all in restricting the privileges of each. This,
the secret of true freedom, was what the Barbarian never understood.
Sperthias and Boulis, two rich and noble Spartans, offered to yield
themselves up to the just anger of Xerxes, whose envoys had been flung
to their death in a deep water-tank. On the road to Susa they were
entertained by the Persian grandee Hydarnes, who said to them: _Men of
Sparta, wherefore will ye not be friendly towards the King? Beholding
me and my condition, ye see that the King knoweth how to honour good
men. In like manner ye also, if ye should give yourselves to the King
(for he deemeth that ye are good men), each of you twain would be
ruler of Greek lands given you by the King._ They answered: _Hydarnes,
thine advice as touching us is of one side only, whereof thou hast
experience, while the other thou hast not tried. Thou understandest
what it is to be a slave, but freedom thou hast not tasted, whether it
be sweet or no. For if thou shouldst make trial of it, thou wouldest
counsel us to fight for it with axes as well as spears!_
So when Alexander King of Macedon came to Athens with a proposal
from Xerxes that in return for an alliance with them he would grant
the Athenians new territories to dwell in free, and would rebuild
the temples he had burned; and when the Spartan envoys had pleaded
with them to do no such thing as the King proposed, the Athenians
made reply. _We know as well as thou that the might of the Persian
is many times greater than ours, so that thou needest not to charge
us with forgetting that. Yet shall we fight for freedom as we may.
To make terms with the Barbarian seek not thou to persuade us, nor
shall we be persuaded. And now tell Mardonios that Athens says: “So
long as the sun keeps the path where now he goeth, never shall we
make compact with Xerxes; but shall go forth to do battle with him,
putting our trust in the gods that fight for us and in the mighty
dead, whose dwelling-places and holy things he hath contemned and
burned with fire.”_ This was their answer to Alexander; but to the
Spartans they said: _The prayer of Sparta that we make not agreement
with the Barbarian was altogether pardonable. Yet, knowing the temper
of Athens, surely ye dishonour us by your fears, seeing that there is
not so much gold in all the world, nor any land greatly exceeding in
beauty and goodness, for which we would consent to join the Mede for
the enslaving of Hellas. Nay even if we should wish it, there be many
things preventing us: first and most, the images and shrines of the
gods burned and cast upon an heap, whom we must needs avenge to the
utmost rather than be consenting with the doer of those things; and,
in the second place, there is our Greek blood and speech, the bond of
common temples and sacrifices and like ways of life—if Athens betrayed
these things, it would not be well._...
οὐ καλῶς ἂν ἔχοι, “it would not be well.” When I was writing about
Greek simplicity I should have remembered this passage. But our
present theme is the meaning of Eleutheria. “Our first duty,” say the
Athenians, “is to avenge our gods and heroes, whose temples have been
desecrated.” Such language must ring strangely in our ears until we
have reflected a good deal about the character of ancient religion. To
the Greeks of Xerxes’ day religion meant, in a roughly comprehensive
phrase, the consecration of the citizen to the service of the State.
When the Athenians speak of the gods and heroes, whose temples have
been burned, they are thinking of the gods and heroes of Athens, which
had been sacked by the armies of Mardonios; and they are thinking
chiefly of Athena and Erechtheus.
Now who was Athena? You may read in books that she was “the
patron-goddess of Athens.” But she was more than that; she _was_
Athens. You may read that she “represented the fortune of Athens”; but
indeed she _was_ the fortune of Athens. You may further read that she
“embodied the Athenian ideal”; which is true enough, but how small a
portion of the truth! It was not so much what Athens might become, as
what Athens was, that moulded and impassioned the image of the goddess.
It was the city of to-day and yesterday that filled the hearts of those
Athenians with such a sense of loss and such a need to avenge their
Lady of the Acropolis. For that which had been the focus of the old
city-life, the dear familiar temple of their goddess, was a heap of
stones and ashes mixed with the carrion of the old men who had remained
to die there.
As for Erechtheus, he was the great Athenian “hero.” The true nature
of a “hero” is an immensely controversial matter; but what we are
concerned with here is the practical question, what the ancients
thought. They, rightly or wrongly, normally thought of their “heroes”
as famous ancestors. It was as their chief ancestor that the Athenians
regarded and worshipped Erechtheus. Cecrops was earlier, but for some
reason not so worshipful; Theseus was more famous, but later, and
even something of an alien, since he appears to come originally from
Troezen. Thus it was chiefly about Erechtheus as “the father of his
people,” rather than about maiden Athena, that all that sentiment, so
intense in ancient communities, of the common blood and its sacred
obligations entwined itself. This old king of primeval Athens claimed
his share of the piety due to the dead of every household, an emotion
of so powerful a quality among the unsophisticated peoples that some
have sought in it the roots of all religion. It is an emotion hard to
describe and harder still to appreciate. Erechtheus was the Son of
Earth, that is, really, of Attic Earth; and on the painted vases you
see him, a little naked child, being received by Athena from the hands
of Earth, a female form half hidden in the ground, who is raising
him into the light of day. The effect of all this was to remind the
Athenians that they themselves were _autochthones_, born of the soil,
and Attic Earth was their mother also. Not only her spiritual children,
you understand, nor only fed of her bounty, but very bone of her bone
and flesh of her flesh. _Gê Kourotrophos_ they called her, “Earth
the Nurturer of our Children.” Unite all these feelings, rooted and
made strong by time: love of the City (Athena), love of the native
and mother Earth (Gê), love of the unforgotten and unforgetting dead
(Erechtheus)—unite all these feelings and you will know why the defence
of so great sanctities and the avenging of insult against them seemed
to Athenians the first and greatest part of Liberty.
So Themistocles felt when after Salamis he said: _It is not we who
have wrought this deed, but the gods and heroes, who hated that one
man should become lord both of Europe and of Asia; unholy and sinful,
who held things sacred and things profane in like account, burning
temples and casting down the images of the gods; who also scourged the
sea and cast fetters upon it._ And it is this feeling which gives so
singular a beauty and charm to the story of Dikaios. “Dikaios the son
of Theokydes, an Athenian then in exile and held in reputation among
the Persians, said that at this time, when Attica was being wasted
by the footmen of Xerxes and was empty of its inhabitants, it befell
that he was with Demaratos in the Thriasian Plain, when they espied a
pillar of dust, such as thirty thousand men might raise, moving from
Eleusis. And as they marvelled what men might be the cause of the dust,
presently they heard the sound of voices, and it seemed to him that it
was the ritual-chant to Iacchus. Demaratos was ignorant of the rites
that are performed at Eleusis, and questioned him what sound was that.
But he said, _Demaratos, of a certainty some great harm will befall
the host of the King. For this is manifest—there being no man left in
Attica—that these are immortal Voices proceeding from Eleusis to take
vengeance for the Athenians and their allies. And if this wrathful
thing descend on Peloponnese, the King himself and his land army will
be in jeopardy; but if it turn towards the ships at Salamis, the King
will be in danger of losing his fleet. This is that festival which the
Athenians hold yearly in honour of the Mother and the Maid, and every
Athenian, or other Greek that desires it, receives initiation; and
the sound thou hearest is the chanting of the initiates._ Demaratos
answered, _Hold thy peace, and tell no man else this tale. For if these
thy words be reported to the King, thou wilt lose thine head, and I
shall not be able to save thee, I nor any other man. But keep quiet
and God will deal with this host._ Thus did he counsel him. And the
dust and the cry became a cloud, and the cloud arose and moved towards
Salamis to the encampment of the Greeks. So they knew that the navy of
Xerxes was doomed.”
Athena, the Mother-Maid Demeter-Persephone with the mystic child
Iacchus, Boreas “the son-in-law of Erechtheus,” whose breath dispersed
the enemy ships under Pelion and Kaphareus—of such sort are “the gods
who fight for us” and claim the love and service of Athens in return.
It is well to remember attentively this religious element in ancient
patriotism, so large an element that one may say with scarcely any
exaggeration at all that for the ancients patriotism was a religion.
Therefore is Eleutheria, the patriot’s ideal, a religion too. Such
instincts and beliefs are interwoven in one sacred indissoluble bond
uniting the Gods and men, the very hills and rivers of Greece against
the foreign master. Call this if you will a mystical and confused
emotion; but do not deny its beauty or underestimate its tremendous
force.
But here (lest in discussing a sentiment which may be thought confused
we ourselves fall into confusion) let us emphasize a distinction,
which has indeed been already indicated. Greek patriotism was as wide
as Greece; but on the other hand its intensity was in inverse ratio
to its extension. Greek patriotism was primarily a local thing, and
it needed the pressure of a manifest national danger to lift it to
a wider outlook. That was true in the main and of the average man,
although every generation produced certain superior spirits, statesmen
or philosophers, whose thought was not particularist. It was this
home-savour which gave to ancient patriotism its special salt and
pungency. When the Athenians in the speech I quoted say that their
first duty is to avenge their gods, they are thinking more of Athens
than of Greece. They are thinking of all we mean by “home,” save that
home for them was bounded by the ring-wall of the city, not by the four
walls of a house.
The wider patriotism of the nation the Greeks openly or in their
hearts ranked in the second place. Look again at the speech of the
Athenians. First came Athens and her gods and heroes—their _fathers’_
gods; next _To Hellenikon_, that whereby they are not merely Athenians
but Hellenes—community of race and speech, the common interest in the
_national_ gods and their festivals, such as Zeus of Olympia with the
Olympian Games, the Delphian Apollo with the Pythian Games. Of course
this Hellenic or Panhellenic interest was always there, and in a sense
the future lay with it; but never in the times when Greece was at its
greatest did it supplant the old intense local loyalties. The movement
of Greek civilization is from the narrower to the larger conception of
patriotism, but the latter ideal is grounded in the former. Greek love
of country was fed from local fires, and even Greek cosmopolitanism
left one a _citizen_, albeit a citizen of the world. So it was with
Eleutheria, which enlarged itself in the same sense and with an equal
pace.
This development can be studied best in Athens, which was “the Hellas
of Hellas.” One finds in Attic literature a passionate Hellenism
combined with a passionate conviction that Hellenism finds its best
representative in Athens. The old local patriotism survives, but is
nourished more and more with new ambitions. New claims, new ideals are
advanced. One claim appears very early, if we may believe Herodotus
that the Athenians used it in debate with the men of Tegea before the
Battle of Plataea. The Athenians recalled how they had given shelter
to the Children of Heracles when all the other Greek cities would not,
for fear of Eurystheus; and how again they had rescued the slain of the
Seven from the Theban king and buried them in his despite. On those two
famous occasions the Athenians had shown the virtue which they held to
be most characteristic of Hellenism and specially native to themselves,
the virtue which they called “philanthropy” or the love of man. What
Heine said of himself, the Athenians might have said: they were brave
soldiers in the liberation-war of humanity.
There is a play of Euripides, called _The Suppliant Women_, which
deals with the episode of the unburied dead at Thebes. The fragmentary
Argument says: _The scene is Eleusis. Chorus of Argive women,
mothers of the champions who have fallen at Thebes. The drama is a
glorification of Athens._ The eloquent Adrastos, king of Argos, pleads
the cause of the suppliant women who have come to Athens to beg the
aid of its young king Theseus in procuring the burial of their dead.
Theseus is at first disposed to reject their prayer, for reasons of
State; he must consider the safety of his own people; when his mother
Aithra breaks out indignantly: _Surely it will be said that with
unvalorous hands, when thou mightest have won a crown of glory for thy
city, thou didst decline the peril and match thyself, ignoble labour,
with a savage swine; and when it was thy part to look to helm and
spear, putting forth thy might therein, wast proven a coward. To think
that son of mine—ah, do not so! Seest thou how Athens, whom mocking
lips have named unwise, flashes back upon her scorners a glance
of answering scorn? Danger is her element. It is the unadventurous
cities doing cautious things in the dark, whose vision is thereby also
darkened._ And the result is that Theseus and his men set out against
the great power of Thebes, defeat it and recover the bodies, which with
due observance of the appropriate rites they inter in Attic earth.
“To make the world safe for democracy” is something; but Athens never
found it safe, perhaps did not believe it could be safe. _Ready to
take risks, facing danger with a lifting of the heart ... their whole
life a round of toils and dangers ... born neither themselves to rest
nor to let other people._ In such phrases are the Athenians described
by their enemies. A friend has said: _I must publish an opinion which
will be displeasing to most; yet (since I think it to be true) I will
not withhold it. If the Athenians in fear of the coming peril had
left their land, or not leaving it but staying behind had yielded
themselves to Xerxes, none would have tried to meet the King at sea._
And so all would have been lost. _But as the matter fell out, it would
be the simple truth to say that the Athenians were the saviours of
Greece. The balance of success was certain to turn to the side they
espoused, and by choosing the cause of Hellas and the preservation of
her freedom it was the Athenians and no other that roused the whole
Greek world—save those who played the traitor—and under God thrust back
the King._ And some generations later, Demosthenes, in what might be
called the funeral oration of Eleutheria, sums up the claim of Athens
in words whose undying splendour is all pride and glory transfiguring
the pain of failure and defeat. _Let no man, I beseech you, imagine
that there is anything of paradox or exaggeration in what I say, but
sympathetically consider it. If the event had been clear to all men
beforehand ... even then Athens could only have done what she did, if
her fame and her future and the opinion of ages to come meant anything
to her. For the moment indeed it looks as if she had failed; as man
must always fail when God so wills it. But had She, who claimed to be
the leader of Greece, yielded her claim to Philip and betrayed the
common cause, her honour would not be clear.... Yes, men of Athens,
ye did right—be very sure of that—when ye adventured yourselves for
the safety and freedom of all; yes, by your fathers who fought at
Marathon and Plataea and Salamis and Artemision, and many more lying
in their tombs of public honour they had deserved so well, being all
alike deemed worthy of this equal tribute by the State, and not only (O
Aeschines) the successful, the victorious._...