CHAPTER XII

THE LAY AUTHORS

Theology and Philosophy, each in its own way attempting to go beyond

inadequate popular belief, could only very gradually transcend the

limits of those narrow communities within which their influence was

first felt and reach the circles in which that popular belief held

sway. During the earliest successes of the theological and

philosophical spirit hardly a voice was raised that might have

suggested that the belief in the imperishability and divine nature

of the human Soul, of the inherence of all things spiritual in one

imperishable, fundamental substance, might become something more

than a mystery known to the wise and illuminated, and enter into the

convictions of the people and the unlearned. "After the death of the

body, the Image of Life remains alive; for that alone is descended

from the gods"--such is the announcement of Pindar. But for all the

confidence with which, as though anticipating no contradiction, he

here proclaims the view of the soul's immortality and bases it upon

its divine nature, such an opinion can at that time have been no

more than the persuasion of isolated communities formed and

instructed in that particular doctrine. It cannot be merely

accidental,[1\12] that in the fragments which have come down to us

of the lyric and semi-lyric (elegiac and iambic) poetry--poetry

intended for a wide and unspecialized public and expressing feelings

and ideas in language that all could understand--hardly a trace

appears of that enhanced conception of the worth and nature of the

Soul. Reflexion does not linger over such dark subjects; whenever

they are illuminated for a passing moment, we discern the outlines

of those figures from the spirit world just as the Homeric

imagination had given them shape.

Life and light are only to be found in this world;[2\12] Death, to

which we are all "owing",[3\12] leads the soul into a realm of

nothingness.[4\12] Inarticulate, voiceless, the dead man lies in the

grave like a statue.[5\12] Upon earth, and not in any shadowy

hereafter, is completed that judgment[6\12] which divine Justice

passes upon the criminal himself, or upon his descendants in whom

something of him still lives on. It is the lack of such descendants

that forms the bitterest pang, as he goes down to Hades, of the man

who passes childless out of this life.[7\12] {412}

More distinctly and bitterly, in this age of advancing civilization

and growing sensibility, sounds the wail over the pain and

affliction of life, the obscurity of its ways, and the uncertainty

of its outcome.[8\12] Silenos, the prophetic wood-spirit, so went

the ancient legend, when captured by King Midas in his rose-gardens

at Bermios earned his release with the judgment of melancholy wisdom

that the Greek was never tired of repeating in ever-varying

forms--not to be born is the best thing for men, but having been

born, let him pray that he may return as soon as possible to the

kingdom of Night,[9\12] and of Hades.[10\12] The cheerful enjoyment

of life is no longer so sure of itself as once it had been in the

days of its naïve confidence: and yet there is no substitute

attempted, no compensatory hereafter in a next world of justice and

untroubled happiness. We rather hear the opinion expressed that rest

is the greatest of all earthly blessings; and rest is brought by

Death. Nevertheless there is little demand for consolation; a robust

and virile sense of life that can put up with whatever may befall of

evil or hardship in healthy indifference, is in the air, and speaks

to us from many a page of this poetic legacy with unpretending

veracity. No attempt is made to smooth over the hardship and cruelty

of life. Man's power is small, his efforts go unrewarded, one

necessity after another besets his short life: over all alike hangs

the shadow of inevitable death. All things come at last to the awful

chasm--the bravest virtue and the highest authority in the

world.[11\12] Yet life is good and death an evil; else, why do the

blessed gods not die? asks Sappho[12\12] with feminine naiveté;

though indeed, her life's path had lain through the deepest valley

of the shadow. Even the dead man, if he wishes to be preserved from

utter nothingness, must depend upon the world of the living as the

only place of reality; the fame of his virtues and his deeds is all

that outlasts his death.[13\12] Perhaps some dim perception of that

fame reaches even to the dead.[14\12] They themselves are for the

living as though they had passed into nothingness; we should not,

thinks a poet, give them another thought after we have buried

them.[15\12]

Here even the time-honoured conventions associated with the cult of

souls seem to be perversely cast aside. In general, the poet with

his wide-ranging observation of mankind had small occasion to be

reminded of the cult of the soul that the narrow circles of family

or city offered to their dead, or of the conceptions thereby

encouraged of the continued life enjoyed by the departed. The

omission is supplied by the Orators of the fifth and fourth

centuries and by what they say--and do {413} not say--of the state

of things hereafter. The greatest period of lyric poetry was by that

time already fading into the past, and yet whoever wished in

speaking before a citizen assembly to meet with general agreement

and understanding was still obliged to refrain from speaking of the

blessed immortality, the eternity and divinity of the soul. The

Orators[16\12] never pass beyond the conceptions of the survival,

power, and rights of the souls of the departed which were called

forth and maintained in existence by the cult of the soul. The

continued existence of the souls in the next world is not called in

question; but the opinion that the souls still preserve their

consciousness and have any knowledge of what happens on this earth

is only expressed with the most cautious avoidance of

definiteness.[17\12] What--apart from the sacrificial offerings of

their relatives--still binds the dead to the life upon earth, is

little more than the fame accorded to them among the living.[18\12]

Even in the elevated language of solemn funeral orations the

consolations offered to the survivors omit all mention of any

enhanced state of being, any thought of immortal life in

fully-conscious blessedness, that might belong now to the glorious

departed.[19\12] Such high visions and hopes for the future were

still, it appears, as little necessary or demanded for the comfort

of the people as they had been in the times of the great wars of

liberty.[20\12] The beloved dead who had given their lives for their

country in those wars, as well as many others of the time whom death

had overtaken, were the recipients of the epitaphs composed by

Simonides the master of brilliant and condensed inscriptions.

Nevertheless, not once does he vouchsafe a word that might point

forward to a land of blessed immortality for the departed. There is

a vestige of life still remaining for the dead--but it is in this

world; the memory of the living and their own great name honoured by

after generations is all that can prolong their existence.

It seems like an echo from another world when (about the middle of

the fifth century) Melanippides the dithyrambic poet addresses a god

in the words: "Hear me Father, marvel of all mortal men, Thou that

rulest over the _everliving Souls_." The words must be addressed to

Dionysos;[21\12] for such as entered into the magic circle of his

nightly festival those visions of the imperishability of the human

soul and its divine power acquired reality. Such wisdom received but

partial assent from those who lived unaffected by the conceptions of

isolated sects of the theologically or philosophically minded. {414}

§ 2

A peculiar position is taken up by Pindar. Two contrasted views of

the nature, origin, and destiny of the soul seem to be combined in

his mind with equal claim to authority.

In the Victory Odes allusions predominate which imply an agreement

with the popular view expressed in the sayings of poets and the

presuppositions of the cult of souls and the worship of Heroes.

After its separation from the body, the soul disappears into the

underworld.[22\12] The piety and affectionate memory of relatives

and descendants remains as a link between the dead and the

living;[23\12] whether the soul itself is still conscious of any

connexion with the world of the living seems uncertain.[24\12] Its

power is over and done with--it is certainly no condition of blessed

happiness into which it has entered. Only the glorious name, the

fame that is honoured in song, rewards the great deeds of the

virtuous after death.[25\12]

An exalted state of being, after their departure from this earth, is

attributed to the _Heroes_ alone. The belief in the existence,

importance, and power of these illuminated spirits holds complete

sway;[26\12] it emerges in lively reality from the words and

narrations of the poet throughout all his work. Moreover, the

ancient conception--in reality rendered untenable by the belief in

Heroes--that only with the undivided union of body and soul is

complete life imaginable, is discernible in many allusions and

stories of Translation that imply that conception. Amphiaraos, the

most illustrious of those who have been translated to everlasting

life, is specially dear to the heart of the Theban poet, and is

glorified more than once in the language of unaffected faith in such

miracles.[27\12] But, further, even when death has occurred in the

meantime, elevation to a higher life remains possible--even beyond

the heights of the "Hero". Semele lives for ever, though she died

under the crash of the thunder-bolt.[28\12] The barrier between men

and gods is not insuperable; we can distantly approach the immortals

not only in greatness of mind, but in bodily vigour.[29\12] One

mother gave birth to both races, though the gulf between them is

indeed a deep one; man is nought--a shadow's dream-image; for the

gods the brazen heavens remain for ever as an unconquerable

stronghold.[30\12] Only a miracle of divine interference with the

lawful and normal course of nature, can raise the individual soul to

the everlasting life of the gods and Heroes.

Such visions as these could be indulged in by one who still {415}

kept his feet firmly fixed upon the ground of popular belief. And

yet side by side with them in Pindar's works are to be found

descriptions of quite another order in which is expressed, with

elaborate fullness and dogmatic exactitude, a complete doctrine of

the nature, destiny, and fate of the soul; passages in which, in

spite of some little poetic licence in detail, a well ordered and,

in the main, consistent whole is pictured.

The Soul, the "Image of Life", the other Self of the living and

visible man, sleeps while the limbs of man are active; when the

individual is asleep it shows him dream-visions of the

future.[31\12] This psyche[32\12] which during the waking and

conscious hours of the man is itself lying in the darkness of

unconsciousness, is far from being the totality of mental powers

gathered together in a single creature, or at any rate, in a single

concept, such as the philosophers as well as the everyday use of the

word at that period understood by the name "psyche". Here, again,

the name once more denotes the double of mankind dwelling within the

living man such as it was known to primeval popular belief and to

the Homeric poems. A theological meaning has, however, been added to

it. This "Image" of man, we are told, "is alone descended from the

gods," and with this the _reason_ also is discovered why the

soul-image alone after the destruction of the body by death remains

alive.[33\12]

Derived from the gods and therefore eternally exempt from

destruction, everlasting and immortal, the soul is none the less

condemned to finiteness; it dwells within the mortal body of man.

This is the result of the "ancient guilt" of which, quite in the

manner of theological poetry, Pindar also speaks.[34\12] After the

death of the body it is to await in Hades the stern sentence that

"One" shall pronounce over its earthly deeds.[35\12] For the

condemned there is in store "affliction past beholding"[36\12] in

deep Tartaros, "where the slow rivers of murky night spit out

endless darkness," and forgetfulness encloses the victims.[37\12]

The just enter into the subterranean places of bliss where the sun

gives them light when he has set upon earth.[38\12] In flowery

meadows they enjoy an existence of resplendent idleness, such as

only the Greek imagination, nourished amid the artistic surroundings

of Greek life, could describe without falling into emptiness and

futility.

But the soul has not even so found its last resting place. It must

again give life to a body and not until it has completed upon earth

a third faultless life can it hope for an end of its earthly course

of being.[39\12] The conditions of each new life {416} upon earth

depend upon the degree of purity that the soul has achieved in its

previous lifetimes. When at last the Queen of the Underworld

considers that its "ancient guilt" has been atoned for, she sends

forth the souls after the ninth year[40\12] of their last sojourn in

Hades once more to live in the upper world, this time in happiness.

Here they pass through one more lifetime as kings, mighty men of

valour, and Wise Men.[41\12] Then at last they escape from the

necessity of earthly rebirth. As "Heroes" they are honoured among

men;[42\12] and they have therefore entered into a state of higher

being which the popular belief of Pindar's time ascribed not only to

the souls of the great ancestral figures of the past, but also to

many who had departed hence in more recent times after a life of

valour and service.[43\12] Now they are beyond the reach of Hades as

much as of the world of men. Faith seeks them in "Islands of the

Blest" far out in Okeanos; thither, to the "Citadel of Kronos" they

travel on the "Way of Zeus"[44\12] and enjoy, in company with the

great ones of the past, under the protection of Kronos[45\12] and

his assessor Rhadamanthys, a life of bliss for ever undisturbed.

Such conceptions of the origin, fortunes, and ultimate destiny of

the soul, the more they diverge from commonly held opinions, the

more certainly must they be regarded as being part of the private

and real persuasion of the poet himself. The poet, who on other

occasions when he makes passing and casual reference to the things

of the next world accommodates himself to the traditional view,

gives himself up willingly to such hopes and aspirations where the

circumstances of his song provided an opportunity of dealing at

length with such matters--especially in hymns of mourning for the

dead. He may have paid attention in such poems to the special

opinions of those who were to be the first hearers of his song.

Theron, the ruler of Akragas, to whom was dedicated the second

Olympian Ode of Victory that deals so fully with the hope of bliss

to come, was an old man whose thoughts might well be occupied with

the life after death.[46\12] In this case, therefore, we may presume

perhaps the special interest of the person whose praises are sung in

these reflections that lead so far away from the commonly accepted

view of the Soul.[47\12] But that Pindar, proud and self-willed,

conscious of specific knowledge and proud of that consciousness,

should have given expression to strange doctrine so foreign to

popular ideas simply out of complaisance to another's will, and in

**subservience to another man's belief--that is quite unthinkable.

It is rather the substance of what he believes himself {417} and has

achieved by his own struggles that in a solemn hour he reveals for a

moment to like-minded friends.

The different elements out of which Pindar has composed his special

view are not hard to distinguish. He is following theological

doctrine in what he tells of the divine origin of the soul, its

wanderings through several bodies, the judgment in Hades, the

special place assigned to the just, and that of the wicked. But it

is layman's theology that he is propounding; it does not bind itself

to a single unalterable formula, and betrays throughout that its

exponent is a poet. Pindar, throughout the whole of his poetic

activity, combines the office of singer with that of professional

teacher, more especially where he has to speak of the things of an

invisible divine world. But for all his didactic professionalism he

remains the poet, for whom as depository and trustee of the Myth it

is out of the question to abandon the traditional, whether in legend

or belief. His task is to keep pure what has been handed down to

him, to make it more profound, perhaps to supplement and complete

it, but with all this to justify it. Thus, poetic legend and popular

belief enter even into his theologian's doctrine of the Soul; the

Islands of the Blest, the elevation of man to Hero--these were

things he could not give up.

From what particular direction Pindar's theological interests may

have come to him we cannot say with precision or certainty. Orphic

as well as Pythagorean doctrines may have come to his notice in

Sicily whither he made repeated visits after 477 B.C.[48\12] For

both sects this country was the original nursery and breeding

ground.

There, too, the poet may perhaps have (even at that date) met with

certain varieties of the Orphic mystical doctrine which, like his

own views, were intermingled with elements taken from conventional

mythology. Examples of this type of Orphic mysticism allied with

foreign elements are the verses which, inscribed upon gold tablets,

were found not long ago in graves near the ancient Sybaris.[49\12]

Three of these poems begin with phrases that are common to them all,

and imply the same underlying conceptions; after that they part

company and represent two different views. The soul of the dead

person[50\12] thus addresses itself to the Queen of the lower world,

and the other gods of the depths below: "I draw near to you purified

and born of pure parents."[51\12] It belongs then to a mortal who,

like his parents before him, has been "purified" in the sacred

mysteries of a religious association.[52\12] It claims also to be

descended from the blessed race of the deities of the lower {418}

world.[53\12] "Lightning robbed me of life," so one of the versions

goes on,[54\12] "and so I escaped from the Circle, the burdensome,

the grievous". In these words purely Orphic belief is expressed: the

Soul has now at last escaped entirely from the "Circle of

Births",[55\12] and it enters as it tells us "with speedy feet into

the wished-for precinct",[56\12] and buries itself in the bosom of

the Queen of the Underworld.[57\12] It is the latter, probably, who

at the end greets the liberated soul with the words: "Fortunate and

to be called Blessed art thou; now shalt thou be, instead of a

mortal--_a god_."

Much less exalted are the hopes expressed in the other two versions

of the mystic document--two versions that resemble each other in

most essentials. Here the soul asserts that it has done penance for

unrighteous deeds; now it appears before the revered Persephoneia to

implore her graciously to send it to the dwelling places of the pure

and the holy.[58\12]

How are we to explain the discrepancy? It would indeed be possible

to explain the more restrained version as that of a sect whose

members were less confident of their own divine origin and of the

necessary return of the soul at last to its enfranchised divine

state. It is much more probable, however--since in fact the

presupposition of the divine nature of the soul and its kinship with

the divine is really made in both cases and with the same

words--that we here have to do with the beliefs of one and the same

sect, and that the varying heights of felicity aspired to correspond

to different stages of the process of redemption. He who through

participation in the sacred mysteries has atoned for the ancient

guilt, can be admitted by the goddess into the paradise of the blest

in the midst of Hades. But he must still, in subsequent rebirths

upon earth first complete the cycle before he can be fully released

from rebirth and become once more what he was at the beginning,

entirely a god. The dead man of the first tablet has reached the

final goal of his pilgrimage; the other two have only reached an

intermediate resting place.[59\12] Another inscription, found in a

grave of the same neighbourhood,[60\12] by its use of a mystic

formula[61\12] appended also to the first version of the

above-mentioned poems, reveals itself as an expression of faith

deriving from the same sect. Among a variety of disconnected

instructions and appeals to the dead,[62\12] strung together with no

particular arrangement, it contains the following statement: "a

_god_ hast thou become instead of a mortal", This then always

remained the crowning point of the salvation promised by the sect.

{419}

In the cult and beliefs of this sect which thus with divided voice

speaks to us in these verses, the worship of the ancient Greek

divinities of the Underworld (among whom Dionysos is not this time

included) was fused with the boldest conception belonging to the

Dionysiac mysteries: the confident assurance that the divine nature

of the soul must in the end break through, purified and triumphant

over the earthliness that obscured it. Pindar in another, but not

very different, way has brought the same elements into conjunction.

One would indeed like to be able to estimate the influence which his

doctrine, which lay so close to his own heart, may have exercised on

the hearers and readers of his poems. He was at once something more

and something less than a theological teacher. Never again among the

Greeks did the blessed life of the sanctified soul receive such

majestic expression, clothed in such ample and resplendent diction,

as that which poured so freely from the heart of this richly gifted

poet. But though the poet may have touched the heart of his hearer

and tempted his imagination to stray along the path laid out for

him, yet it cannot have been easy (and perhaps the greatness of the

poet's triumph almost made it harder) permanently to mistake the

magic gleam of poetry for the sunlight of reality. One may doubt

whether the poems in which Pindar recounted his dreams of future

blessedness can have found many hearers in whom they awakened not

merely æsthetic satisfaction, but belief in the literal truth of the

teaching, in the reality of those beautiful, dim, haloed figures.

§ 3

But perhaps by the expression of such doubts we do less than justice

to the influence which a Greek poet might exercise upon the minds

and dispositions of his hearers. Greek popular opinion was very much

inclined to place the poet on a pedestal to which his modern

representative would hardly care to aspire, and to which at any rate

he could never attain. The purely artistic value and importance of a

poem did not seem to be impaired by the demand that it should at the

same time instruct and edify. The poet was to be the teacher of his

people in an age when, in the conditions of Greek life, the people

had no other instructor. He was to be a teacher in the highest sense

of all when, speaking in the language of the most exalted poetry, he

dealt with the doubts and certainties of religion and the

relationship between religion and morality. In these matters he

could supplement out of the wealth of {420} his own far-reaching

reflection what was lacking in the public morality of the time

through the absence of an official, authoritative religious Book. By

giving them intelligible and memorable expression, together with

greater cohesion and unity, he could strengthen the foundations of

the common stock of moral ideas that had been evolved in the course

of social and city life. He might also expand and give greater depth

to the ideas of popular morality, tempering them in the fire of his

own more rigorous thought and interpreting and refining them from

the heights of a more elevated understanding of the divine. What he

thus gave back to the people stamped with the impress of his own

very personal temperament and outlook, no longer remained the casual

opinion of a single individual, but took root in suitably

constituted minds and became for many a valued possession, an

enduring addition to their consciousness.

It was not until the rise in later times of a fully developed

philosophy extending its range of interpretation to the whole of

life that poetry was deprived of its special office of instructress

to the aspiring minds among the people.[63\12] Poetry had always

been willing to exercise this function, but never so decidedly or

with such fully conscious purpose as in the times of transition at

the beginning of which Pindar lived--the transition from an

unsophisticated faith in the traditional view of all things visible

and invisible to a fresh stabilization of belief secured by, and

resting upon, philosophic conviction. The need felt for the

readjustment or verification of the ancestral or traditional forms

of belief was vividly awakened, and it was still only poetry that

could extend the light of its teaching to illuminate the minds of

whole classes of the population. The influence of the poets must

have increased in proportion as the numbers increased of those who

were ready to receive the special bounty which they were able to

offer. But if the influence wielded by Pindar, the Pan-Hellenic poet

of the great Festivals, as the teacher of his people was, as we have

seen, considerable, a very wide field indeed for the propagation of

fruitful ideas lay open to the Attic tragedians in the huge

concourse of the people which flocked together to hear their

creations--a multitude which seemed all the greater for being

confined within a narrower space. The poets themselves frequently

allow it to be seen how seriously they regarded themselves as the

teachers of their public, and the people admitted their claims. All

men expected and demanded instruction from the word of the poet--the

highest instruction from the highest poetry.[64\12] We shall not be

much mistaken {421} if we believe that the opinions and reflections

to which Aeschylus, Sophokles, and not least Euripides, gave

utterance in their tragic drama did not remain the sole property of

those in whose minds they had first arisen.

§ 4

The Attic Tragedy of the fifth century must of its own accord, even

if the conscious purpose of the dramatists had not tended in the

same direction, have developed into an artistic product based on

psychological interest. The real theatre of that drama must

inevitably have become the interior of its hero's mind.

The tragic poet attempted something hitherto unknown. The characters

and events of ancient legend or history which had passed shadowlike

before the minds of the hearers or readers of all earlier poetry, at

the mercy of those hearers' own private and variously limited

imagination--these same events and characters were now to take form

and body and appear visibly before the eyes of all beholders alike

in equal clearness. What had hitherto seemed a dream-vision of the

imagination now visibly presented itself to the eyes of the

beholder, unchanging, precise, independent of the limitations of

intellect among the audience, a concrete and self-moving object of

waking perception. Thus reawakened to a palpable and fully realized

life, the myth was seen in a new light. What in it was mere incident

became subordinated to the personality of the man who plays his part

in these events before our eyes, and whose importance and content is

not exhausted in the single particular action. The old legend in

becoming drama has undergone an extension both spatial and temporal,

and even in externals the plot that unfolds itself in a series of

momentary acts plays the least part in the story. The speeches and

counter-speeches of the hero and the other actors who take part in

the story were bound to take up the greater part of the time.

Motives of action, expressed, debated and fought out in words,

become more important than their eventual outcome in passionate deed

or mortal woe. With the advance of artistic skill the intellect

seeks to grasp the permanent outlines of the character that in the

given circumstances can be moved by particular motives to particular

acts. Thus, the complete materialization of the myth leads to its

complete spiritualization. The eyes and mind of the beholder are

directed less to the external events--these, being familiar from the

ancient legend, could {422} awaken little curiosity--and more to the

inward meaning and import of what the hero does and suffers.

And it was here that the dramatic poet was faced with his special

and peculiar problem. What was to happen in his drama was settled

out of hand by the course of the ancient legend (in a few cases by

the course of historical events) and the lines along which his

invention must move were planned out for him in advance. To give

life to the personages of the drama, motivation and justification to

the events of the drama--that was his particular business. But in

this he was thrown entirely upon his own resources. Even if he could

he was not permitted to derive the inner motive forces of the action

from the real modes of feeling and thinking that had belonged to the

distant past in which the myth had first been conceived. Such

motives would have remained unintelligible to the audience, and his

play would have been stillborn. But on the other hand, how was he to

make plausible and intelligible to the vastly different mentality

and changed feelings of the age in which he lived actions which

really sprang from the habits and moral ideas of a long since

vanished age? It is open to him (if he is not content to be a mere

annalist simply stringing together bare events) to take the actual

incident given him by the mythical legend and set over against it

the actor in the story whose emotions are those of a modern man, and

upon whose shoulders the burden of the event is laid; he may

represent this opposition as beyond reconciliation, and so lead to

the most simple and overwhelming of tragic conflicts. This simple

opposition of character and destiny which places both the poet and

his hero--another Hamlet--in a position of direct hostility to the

mythological background can, however, never become the rule. It is

the business of the poet as far as possible to assimilate and make

his own the spirit that actually called forth the dark and cruel

legend of the past, while yet remaining true to the mode of

perception proper to his own time. He must manage to leave

undisturbed the full primitive sense of the mythical story and bring

it about that by its marriage with the spirit of a later age its

meaning is not destroyed but deepened. He is committed to the search

for an adjustment between the mental attitudes of an older and a

newer age.

Such an adjustment came most easily to Aeschylus and satisfied the

needs of his temperament. As one who had grown to manhood in the

Athens of the period before the Persian wars his own character had

its roots in ancient and traditional modes of thought. These he

built up under the guiding {423} influence of his own special ways

of thinking and feeling into a new and loftier whole: to corroborate

this whole, which appeared to him as a law of the moral world, by

reference to typical examples taken from mythology--examples chosen

by him with deliberate care to serve as subjects of his dramatic

poetry--this was one of the chief aims of his art. To the plot in

its moral--nay, its religious--sense, all his thoughts are directed;

the characters of the actors themselves are only illuminated from

the standpoint of this special interest; their wider, independent

existence outside the life of the drama which completely **envelops

them is not meant to draw attention to itself. He himself gives us

the right, in studying his plays, to leave out of sight for a moment

the representational aspect of the particular and the personal--all

that in fact makes them essentially works of art--in order to

observe more closely the under-current of generalized belief which

we may reasonably call the ethic and theology of the poet.

Behind the living tissue of his artistic creation Aeschylus allows

us to perceive pretty clearly the firm outlines of his own ethical

and religious convictions. He fuses together elements prescribed to

him from without with that which was dictated by his own spirit.

What is prescribed to him by legend--which he allows to run its full

course, in strictly dramatic form and by preference as a trilogy, a

form in this case uniquely adapted to the subject--is a history that

deals with the continued operation of the forces of evil and

suffering upon several generations of a family, persisting from

father to son and from son to son's son. The belief also in such

interconnexion of human destinies is prescribed to him from without.

That the sins of the ancestors were visited upon their descendants

here upon earth was an ancient article of faith especially strong in

Attica.[65\12] What Aeschylus contributes on his part is the

unswerving conviction that the son and grandson of the sinner are

punished for their _own_ sin too. Suffering is punishment,[66\12]

and suffering would not have overtaken Oedipus, nor the sons of

Oedipus, if Laïos had been the only guilty one--if their own sin had

not deserved punishment.

And yet it does not lie within their power to choose whether the

guilt shall be theirs or not: they cannot escape the deed of sin.

How, we may ask, can a guilty deed be necessitated, imposed upon the

guilty one by the decree of a higher power, and yet at the same time

the _fault_ of the doer of the deed, as though he had acted of his

own free will? {424} The question is a perplexing and a formidable

one, and it was by no means unnoticed by the poet. Behind the

external apparatus of myth he finds himself faced by the problem of

the freedom or determination of man's will, which, as civilization

and culture advance, feels itself morally responsible for every

decision. He finds a way out of the difficulty in the view that it

is not merely the deed of wickedness itself, but the conscious

decision that leads up to the deed that arises out of the family

inheritance of crime. The conscious choice and decision, though

regarded as necessary, seemed to demonstrate fully the personal

guilt and responsibility of the doer.[67\12] The cloud of evil that

proceeds from the deed of the ancestor casts a dark shadow also over

the minds of his son and his son's son. Not from his own mind or

character does the will to do wrong take its origin. The noble, pure

and resolute Eteokles, the model of intelligent manhood, the shield

and protection of his people, falls in a moment, a victim to ominous

destiny; his clear-sighted spirit is darkened, he gives himself

up--his better self--for lost,[68\12] and rushes upon his doom with

awful resolve. The "sins derived from his ancestors"[69\12] drive

him on. Then, and not till then, is the full measure of penance at

last paid for the crime done by the ancestor;[70\12] his descendants

are his representatives, and become guilty on his behalf and then,

for their own guilt as well as his, they suffer retribution.

Divinity, or a spirit of vengeance sent with a divine mission,

drives the victims burdened with the inheritance of crime to the

criminal deed. The divine guidance is actuated no longer, as in

ancient and undying popular belief, by personal desire of vengeance,

anger or malice,[71\12] but by divine justice, acting with "just

deceit",[72\12] that the measure of guilt may be fulfilled, and that

the divine will to justice may have a means to complete

satisfaction. The evil Spirit of the House assists Klytaimnestra to

conceive the thought of murdering her husband;[73\12] God himself

guides and urges forward Orestes to the act of matricide which he

plans and carries out with fully conscious purpose--a crime that is

also a duty. To the poet the old ideas of the duty of avenging

murder are a very living reality. The right to worship and cult

possessed by the souls, their claim to vengeance when they have been

violently done to death, their ghostly influence exerted upon the

life and destinies of their immediate kinsfolk upon whom the duty of

taking vengeance rests--all these things are for him not the

obsolete fancies of an older generation but true and awful

realities.[74\12] Whole dramas, the **Choephoroi and the Eumenides,

for {425} instance, would appear as a meaningless beating of the air

if they were not animated and made significant by unaltered faith in

the right and the might of the souls, the reality and potency of the

daimonic counsel, the Erinyes,[75\12] who appear on behalf of the

murdered mother. And now at last light breaks through the dark and

clouded sky of awful imagination: where Duty and Crime have become

inextricably confused, divine grace, though yielding nothing of its

rights, finds at last a solution.

All these things, however--conflict and solution, crime and its

expiation in ever-renewed crime and the suffering that arises

thence--fulfil themselves in _this_ world. Guilt is avenged always

upon earth. The "other" world is by no means an indispensable link

in this chain of conceptions and fancies; the poet's view is rarely

turned in that direction. Speculation upon the state of the soul

after death, upon a blessed life in the kingdom of the

spirits,[76\12] does not interest him. Only such portions of the

eschatological imaginings of the theologians as might serve the

purposes of moral inspiration or support, found favour with the

poet. There are occasional allusions to the judgment that, in Hades,

"another Zeus" holds over the deeds of earthly life,[77\12] but they

remain dark and vague. It is not explained in what relation this

judgment in Hades stands to the complete equivalence of guilt and

destiny that, here upon earth, Zeus and Moira bring to completion in

the person of the criminal himself and, after his death, of his

descendants. Side by side with the allusions to the judgment in the

underworld implying the complete consciousness of the dead, stand

expressions that call up a picture of the senseless, twilight

existence of the souls in Hades like that described in Homer.[78\12]

The poet, to whom every feature of the beliefs derived from the cult

of the souls about the relations of the departed to the life of the

dwellers on earth was intensely and vividly real, never cared to fix

his attention for long upon the nature and condition of the dead in

their separate other-world existence. In fact his chosen work of

giving a moral significance and deeper meaning to popular and

ancient faith was wholly derived from this faith itself; and so also

was the lofty and consistent idea of divinity which fills the

background of his picture of life. The generation which had fought

at Marathon, in spite of a profounder and even more sombre

meditation upon life and destiny, could still dispense almost

entirely with the assistance of the theological doctrines of the

sects who sought refuge from the dark and austere {426} realities of

this unsatisfying world in thoughts of an imagined hereafter.

§ 5

Towards the great problems of dramatic philosophy--the problems of

the freedom or compulsion of the will, the guilt and destiny of

man--Sophokles took up a position that differed essentially from

that of his great predecessor. A maturer and calmer self-abandonment

to the observation of life and its difficulties made him less able

to rest content with simple or sweeping solutions of the

complexities; made him seek out other and more various modes of

understanding. The individual man, stamped with the unique

impression of his peculiar being, with him becomes more fully

detached from the background of omnipotent might and universal law.

The individual finds within himself the rules of his behaviour, the

causes of his success, or his tragic failure. No petty, egotistical

motive inspires the action of Antigone or Elektra: they are obedient

to the old, unwritten laws of the gods. But the force that leads

them to obey is derived solely from the special fashion and impulse

of their own hearts. No one else could do what they do, suffer what

they suffer. We realize the necessity and justification of what they

do and suffer solely from the contemplation of the strength and

weakness of their own characters as displayed for us in the action

that takes place upon the stage. Indeed, the length to which

Sophokles, in the "Elektra", goes in the suppression of such

universally recognized and binding motives as those derived from the

duty of vengeance and the rights of injured souls, may well cause

surprise. The special and individual case must for him carry its own

justification within itself, and in fact it receives such

justification so completely from the character and behaviour of the

actors in the drama that, unlike the hero of Aeschylus' tragedy,

Orestes needs to have no qualm of doubt in the performance of his

deed, and suffers no remorse after the murder of the wicked

murderess. Once again as in the Homeric story, with Orestes'

"righteous deed of blood",[79\12] the circle of calamity is

complete: no Erinys rises from the earth to demand his

overthrow.[80\12]

So, too, when the suffering and calamity that befalls the mortal

hero comes not from his own conscious decision and exercise of will,

but from obscure decrees of fate it is still the special character

of the hero which not only demands the greater part of our

attention, but entirely conditions and sufficiently explains the

course of events. The same {427} misfortune might overtake another

man, but neither its inward nor its outward effects would be the

same as they are for Oedipus or Aias. Only tragically extreme

characters can have a tragic fate.

And yet, in these as in other tragedies, what gives the first

impulse and direction to the course of the story does not arise from

the will or character of their heroes. The mind of Aias is not free

but subject when he performs the deed that sends him to his death.

Oedipus, Deianeira take vengeance upon themselves for the deeds of

horror that they have brought about without knowing what they did.

Notwithstanding the fact that the interest of the "Philoktetes"

centres so completely round the vividly contrasted characters of

Philoktetes, Neoptolemos, and Odysseus, yet the situation which

brings them into opposition is one which it was beyond the power or

the purpose of man to bring about or to hinder. An obscure destiny

plunges man into suffering, drives him to actions in the face of

which easy and ready-made judgments about "guilt" and the relation

between suffering and desert are silenced. It is not inherited

family crime that here forces the son and the grandson to deeds that

can hardly be called their own. The poet, it is true, knows of these

conceptions[81\12] that play so large a part in the poetry of

Aeschylus, but they are mere historical tradition to him, not vital

motives of his drama. Nor is it mere irrational chance, or

impersonal fate working by necessity and without passion that

directs the mind and guides the hand of the actor in his bondage.

Clearly or obscurely moving about in the background of events the

will of a divine power can be discerned that, inevitable as

fate,[82\12] guides the deeds and the fate of men in accordance with

its own purpose.

The divine purpose brings to maturity a plan in which the individual

man and his destiny are mere instruments. To make plain the

premeditated character of this purposeful direction of human affairs

is the object of the prophetic anticipations of the future, the

divine oracles and prophecies of seers of which we hear so much in

the plays. If this divine purpose should involve the fatal act, the

undeserved suffering of the individual, then that purpose will be

fulfilled though human happiness may be destroyed in the process,

and though pain, crime, agony, and violent death may overwhelm the

mortal individual. The well-being of the individual does not enter

into the question where the intentions of a divinity that sees far

beyond this puny existence are concerned. An honest, simple-minded,

good-hearted man, without {428} deceit or fault, like Philoktetes,

is abandoned for many long years to every kind of suffering in order

that he may not interfere prematurely in the development of the war

against Troy with the magic weapons that are in his

possession.[83\12] He is an involuntary martyr for the good of the

whole community. In order that Herakles may be released from this

life at the precise moment of time that has been fixed by divine

foreknowledge,[84\12] Deianeira, the most devoted and womanly

character in the whole of the Attic drama, must out of the goodness

of her heart and the love she bears to her husband send him to the

most awful of deaths and then perish herself. Simply because such is

the will of heaven[85\12] must Oedipus, unknowing and blameless,

slay his father, marry his mother, and plunge himself into the

deepest depth of misery.

Thus, out of the darkness, the hand of divine superiority guides the

destinies of humanity, the will and behaviour of men, according to

its own purposes. The problematical in human life, the disparity

between personal guilt and personal suffering, which daily

experience brings before our eyes, seemed to the poet to be rendered

more intelligible by this conception. He preaches dutiful submission

to these dispensations of a higher power. He himself is one of the

pious, in the specific sense of the word,[86\12] for whom to

perceive the will of the gods is sufficient to call forth adoration

of the gods; who feel no need that this mighty will should justify

itself to human ideas of morality and goodness.[87\12] It may be

right to call this will a holy will; but there is no need for it to

prove itself such at the bar of human judgment. Nor does such piety

find itself disturbed in its worship when, in order to assert the

divine prerogative over humanity (whose first duty it is to

recognize the limits of what is allowed and possible for it), divine

inhumanity and cold lust of vengeance manifest themselves so clearly

as in the Athene of the "Ajax".[88\12] It gives the measure of the

peculiar and unique character of Sophoklean art and the Sophoklean

attitude to life--a quite personal character not to be explained on

abstract grounds--that this attitude of awed submissiveness in

matters of religion could exist side by side with the strong

appreciation and justification of the unfettered action of free

individuality. Rarely--only once or twice in the plays--is a cry of

pain wrested from the lips of one of these uncomplaining victims of

a purpose not their own.[89\12] As a rule, the eye shuns to behold,

the judgment to criticize, the ultimate reasons of divine action. It

is partly artistic restraint no doubt, but religious discretion,

too, makes the poet leave {429} such things in

semi-obscurity.[90\12] The majesty of divine power remains for the

most part in the background and does not mingle familiarly with men

or too notoriously interfere with human destiny.[91\12]

But the individual who with his sufferings must serve a purpose that

is not his own, Humanity that lives under such bitter laws--what

elevating and consoling thoughts are awakened by the contemplation

of their fate. The poet employs all the resources of his

overwhelming art to secure the profoundest sympathies of his hearers

for the undeserved sufferings of the victim, for the delusions of

well-intentioned but limited vision that must always stray from the

goal at which it aims. The moral of the play is not lost even on the

sufferer's foe as he beholds the error and guilt of the noble but

misguided heart.[92\12] What thus overwhelms the strong and the

wise, the good and the well-meaning, through no fault of their own,

may descend upon any member of the human family. Thus the destinies

of men are allotted. The lament over the vanity and the sorrow of

life, its brief happiness, and the uncertainty of its joy, is poured

forth in memorable lines.[93\12] They end on a note of resignation

which gives the keynote of the poet's own character; but there is a

bitterness which remains behind.

It might have been supposed that one who thus abandoned all attempt

to reconcile the worth and actions of men with their fate upon

earth, would feel all the more need, for his own satisfaction and

that of others, to prove the existence of a divine justice that

should restore the balance in a future state of being. But the poet

shows little sign of any such need. Thoughts of what may happen

after death are never of very great moment to him. They never

distinctly affect the behaviour of those whose deeds or suffering

fill his plays.[94\12]

When, however, light is thrown for a passing moment on the unknown

land beyond the grave the scene that imagination reveals hardly

differs at all from the picture that had once been present to the

minds of the Homeric singers. The place that is in store for the

departed is Hades,[95\12] the unlovely country of the dead,[96\12]

whither the Soul flits powerless, shadowlike, little more than a

nothing,[97\12] feeling no joy but no pain either;[98\12] where it

enters upon a state of insensibility that the grief-stricken

sufferer on earth often longs for as a much-desired haven of

rest.[99\12] Plouton, Persephone, all the deities of the earth

below,[100\12] there rule over the departed. But it is not grace nor

kindliness that prevails there--only Justice: Hades demands equal

justice for all.[101\12] {430} Pious veneration of the gods

continues also in the other world,[102\12] and for the rest we hear

nothing of either reward or punishment or of a final supplementing

in the land of the Souls of the inadequacy of the justice that

fulfils itself on earth.

But though departed into Hades the dead have still a claim upon the

upper world and on those who still are living there. Together with

the Homeric picture of the lower world is united the cult of the

souls and the ideas, connected with that cult, of the continued life

of the dead. The next of kin owe to the departed the ceremonious

burial that is the first expression of their pious solicitude for

his soul's welfare.[103\12] In two plays the "Ajax" and the

"Antigone", the love and loyalty of the survivors is obliged to

fight for this right of the dead in desperate encounter with earthly

authority and even with the sacrifice of their own devoted lives.

Such instances serve to bring out clearly the fact that it is no

empty convention or tradition that is thus defended and carried

through to the end. Nor does the completion of the burial mark the

end of the dead man's relations with the upper world: even after

that he may be benefited by offerings made at his grave.[104\12]

Information of what happens on earth may penetrate to the

dead;[105\12] and he himself, under the protection of the underworld

spirits and of their assessor Dikê, who take cognizance of his

claims,[106\12] may interfere in the affairs of the living as a

"Curse-spirit" upon those who disregard his wishes,[107\12] by

sending threatening dream-visions upon his foes,[108\12] and as a

very present help and unseen ally to his friends in their hour of

need.[109\12]

As to an eternity of bliss awaiting the soul, the god in man, after

its final release from the shackles of the body, the poet knows as

little of such as he does of an eternity of damnation for the

wicked. Only the quite special state of grace which is enjoyed by

those who have been purified in the mysteries of the goddesses at

Eleusis receives mention by him[110\12]: he is frequently disposed

to think of this supreme expression of Attic worship with patriotic

pride.[111\12] But it is only a minority of the good who thus

achieve by the grace of the goddesses a privileged "life" in the

kingdom of shadows. One and only one is lifted by the divine grace

clear of the human fate of annihilation, and in the Grove of the

Erinyes the sorely-tried Oedipus is translated without seeing death

out of this earthly life.[112\12] So living a reality to this poet

of ancient piety is the conviction that the divine miracle of

translation[113\12] is a literal truth, that he is even ready {431}

to make this strange circumstance serve as the sole aim and purpose

of a whole drama: a miracle which all the other scenes serve not so

much to prepare as simply to postpone, and thus heighten the

expectancy with which the event is awaited. It is not supreme virtue

that secures an immortality for Oedipus which others also who showed

an equal degree of goodness might possibly attain. He reveals

himself to us as an innocent sufferer indeed,[114\12] but also as

obdurate in his rash and violent nature, vindictive, stubborn, and

self-willed, not ennobled but rather brutalized by his

sufferings.[115\12] Nevertheless, divine power elevates him to the

state of immortal _Hero_ less almost for the sake of the

satisfaction and bliss to himself as in order that he may be the

saviour of the Attic land, the country of humanity and kindness that

has taken into its protection[116\12] the unfortunate one, and

desires to preserve for ever his power of blessing.[117\12] Just as

once it had pleased divine power to overwhelm the innocent victim in

a sea of crime and suffering, so now it pleases the same divine

power to raise the sufferer, without any new or special merit on his

side, to a fate of superhuman bliss.[118\12] In his case a divine

miracle occurs, into the ultimate reasons for which it is not

profitable to inquire.

In his views, so far as he allows us to see them, of the things of

the next world, Sophokles differs not at all from those who still

saw life and worshipped the gods as their fathers had done before

them. The great poet of human, tragic destiny, the profound student

of the divine government of this mournful world, was unwilling to

set by the side of it a brighter and more comforting picture of a

spirit world of the imagination. In this, too, he is modest and will

not say much--he knows no more of these matters, and in no other

fashion, than "any other honest citizen of Athens".[119\12]

§ 6

In the course of a long life Sophokles was able to make himself

complete master of his art and grow up into strong and generous

manhood without the guidance or support of either theological or

philosophical learning. Theology he did not care to seek out in its

hiding place, the obscurity of isolated sects. Philosophy, in the

period of his impressionable youth, had not yet reached Athens, and

when he had attained riper years his noble simplicity of temper had

little to gain or to fear from the meditated wisdom or folly of the

younger generation. In serene detachment he passed on his way

through all the press and clamour of the market place. {432}

The moving impulse which since the end of the sixth century had

collected together at Athens all the intellectual forces of Greece

for a final expansion of their capacity now began, in the middle of

the fifth century, to take hold of philosophy as it had long since

done literature and the fine arts. Athens saw the last

representatives of Ionian physiology gathered together within her

walls. Some, like Anaxagoras, took up their residence there for a

long period, and left the impress of their teaching upon the

foremost minds of the city. The others who paid briefer visits were

those who in conscious opposition to the recent trend of thinking,

stoutly upheld the older principles of philosophic Monism or

Hylozoism, such as Diogenes of Apollonia or Hippon of Samos; or who

sought like Archelaos to reconcile the old and the new Ionic

doctrine. Besides these, Athens was a headquarters of the wandering

exponents of the newest wisdom, the Sophists. Nowhere did unfettered

discussion find such cultivated appreciation of its daring; nowhere

was such an eager welcome given to the dialectical word-play that,

seeming to be an end in itself, was destined to become the most

fruitful nursery of native Athenian philosophy. All traditional

beliefs and customs that had not their origin or their justification

in reflexion were already doomed as soon as they, together with

every conventional view of life and the world, were deprived of

their natural protection of unchallenged self-evidence by the cold

scrutiny of the sovereign tyrant Dialectic. The Sophists, those

skirmishers of a new and as yet unrecognizable philosophy, scattered

and put to flight the old guard of positive and doctrinal wisdom,

but to the individual, who was bidden to depend upon his own

resources, they offered stimulus to reflection in abundance but no

permanent foothold in the shifting sands of opinion. It would be but

a final assertion of the principle that there are no principles if

by any chance the Sophists themselves should for a moment speak in

the language of edification and, for example, lend the support of

their eloquence to certain articles of doctrine that provided a

positive teaching as to the nature and life of the soul.[120\12]

If Sophokles remained quite unaffected by this whole movement which

reached its flood tide in Athens, Euripides was drawn completely

into its current. He sought out philosophers and sophists personally

and in their writings. His was a spirit that urgently desired to

know the truth and he followed every available guide to knowledge

and wisdom for a stage upon their journey. But he was never able to

continue permanently in any one direction; in the restlessness {433}

and bewilderment of search and experiment he is the true son of his

age.

His philosophical and sophistical leanings were sufficiently marked

to make it impossible for him to accept any part of the belief or

tradition of his countrymen without trial. So far as it is possible

within the limits of dramatic art, he instituted an unsparing and

unhesitating criticism of all accepted things, and in the process

felt himself immeasurably superior to the wit and wisdom of the

past. And yet he never satisfied himself. He could never rest

content with a merely negative position, for all onesidedness was

foreign to his nature. The tremendous honesty of his nature made it

impossible for him to admit that element of frivolity which made the

sophistic movement and the dialectical negation of all certainty so

simple and attractive, and at the same time took away half its

sting. But he could take nothing easily; and so with all his

sophistic enlightenment he was never happy. The pupil of the

Sophists would hear every other side as well; there were even

moments when he longed to take refuge in the restful narrowness of

old and traditional piety. But it was not given to him to settle

down in any fixed set of opinions; all his convictions were

provisional, mere hypotheses adopted for the purposes of experiment.

Afloat on a changeful sea, he let himself be driven hither and

thither by every wind of intellectual excitement or artistic

necessity.

When all convictions were involved together in a state of perpetual

change and instability, the conception of the nature and being of

the soul and its relation to the powers of life and death could not

alone remain in fixed and dogmatic certainty.

Where the content and character of the fable chosen as the subject

of his drama demand it, the poet frankly adopts the popular view of

the nature and destiny of the departed soul, its power and claim

upon the worship of the survivors upon earth. In the fairy-tale play

of the "Alcestis" the whole apparatus of popular belief plays its

part; the God of Death and his awful office, the dwelling of the

dead in the underworld, are spoken of as facts and creatures of

experience and reality.[121\12] The elaborate funeral ceremonies

owed to the dead are treated with the utmost seriousness and

precision.[122\12] A whole drama, the "Suppliant Women", has as its

real subject, or at least as its ostensible motive, the religious

importance of a ritual burial,[123\12] nor is there any lack of

isolated passages in which the importance of burial and the honour

paid to graves is stressed.[124\12] The survivors on earth give

pleasure to the dead by offerings at their graves,[125\12] {434} and

in this way obtain their goodwill and can count upon their

support.[126\12] Power and honour belong not only to the great ones

of antiquity translated to a higher state of being;[127\12] not only

"Heroes" can extend their influence beyond their graves and affect

the course of earthly events:[128\12] from the soul of his murdered

father, the son expects assistance and succour in his time of need.

The dread creatures of antique faith, the Erinyes, exact vengeance

for the murdered mother.[129\12]

But at this point it becomes apparent that the poet only associates

himself for his own purposes with this circle of ancient and

sanctified popular fancy--so long in fact as it suits the tone that

he wishes to give to the drama and its characters. The Erinyes are

excellent material for the play--that in reality their horrid

figures only exist in the imagination of the mentally diseased is

clearly asserted in the "Orestes".[130\12] The whole series of

beliefs and demands--murder ever calling forth fresh murder in

accordance with the sacred duty of vengeance, the Erinyes, the

bloodthirsty patrons of the murdered victim who leaves no proper

avenger behind him--all these have ceased to have any validity for

him. The "animal and bloodthirsty" part of these figures of ancient

belief call forth the loathing of the poet living in the days of

organized justice and humaner manners.[131\12] He does not believe

in the souls' right to blood; the ancient legends which depend on

this right are an abomination to him. In fact, he only seems to have

written his plays about them in order, by the manner of his

presentation, to have his revenge upon this material that was almost

unavoidably thrust upon him by the tradition of the tragic stage.

The duty of the living to offer a cult to the departed souls becomes

doubtful in its turn. The seriousness with which that cult is

sometimes handled in the plays is compromised by such reflections as

these: it is certain that it matters little to the dead whether rich

offering are placed in their graves or not; such things only satisfy

the idle vanity of the living;[132\12] honour and dishonour are of

no further consequence to the dead.[133\12] How should they be, if

the departed no longer feel either pleasure or pain, are nothing at

all, as is repeatedly declared even in the middle of the

"Alcestis"?[134\12]

It is evident that only from an arbitrarily adopted point of view do

the picturesque creations of popular belief in the soul and of the

cult of souls seem real to the poet; apart from this they disappear

from his mind like the creatures of a dream.[135\12] The teachings

of the theologians supplied him with no real substitute for popular

faith; at the most they were a {435} momentary and passing stimulus.

No doubt he did not shut his eyes completely to these manifestations

of the spiritual life of his time. His plays contain allusions to

Orphic poetry and he joins the asceticism of the Orphics to the cold

virtue of his Hippolytos.[136\12] The thought that the soul has

fallen from a higher state of being and is enclosed within the body

like the dead man in his coffin takes captive his imagination for a

moment. "Who knows then whether life is not a kind of death," so

that in death the soul awakes to its real life?[137\12] The gloomy

view of human destiny upon this earth to which the poet so often

gives expression, might seem to hint at a consolation to come in a

more satisfactory hereafter; but the poet has no longing for the

consolation offered by the theologians. Among the many and various

reflections of the poet upon the reality that may reveal itself when

the curtain is drawn aside by death, we never meet with the

conception that lies at the bottom of the assurances made by the

theologians--the conception that the spiritual individual is certain

of its immortality because in its individuality it is of divine

nature and is itself a god.[138\12] True, he is the author of the

bold saying so often quoted and varied in later times, that God is

nothing else but the mind that dwells in men.[139\12] But this makes

no allusion to the theological doctrine of the multiplicity of

individual gods or daimones banished into the life of men; it rather

implies a semi-philosophic doctrine of the soul in which one may

perceive for the first time the expression of a permanent conviction

on the part of the poet.

In quite inapposite contexts Euripides sometimes introduces passing

allusions to a philosophical view of the world and humanity, that is

the more certainly to be regarded as the private conviction of the

poet himself as the utterances fail to correspond fully with the

character of the person in the play who makes them, and do not arise

necessarily from the dramatic situation. Everything in the world has

had its origin from Earth and "the Aether of Zeus"; the Earth is the

maternal womb from which the Aether brings everything to

birth.[140\12] Both constituents combine to produce the multiplicity

of appearance; they are not fused together nor are they to be

derived from a single common original element;[141\12] they remain

in dualistic contrast side by side.[142\12] It was probably the

dualism of this cosmological fancy that reminded the ancients of

Anaxagoras; but these statements cannot be regarded as simply a

poetical version of the doctrine of Anaxagoras;[143\12] for they

derive the multiplicity of matter and things from the simple element

of "Earth" from which {436} they arise only by a process of change

and transformation, while in the "seedmixture" of Anaxagoras, the

unchangeable seeds of all things only separate themselves out from

the whole and give rise by mechanical reassemblings to all the

perceived appearances of the world. The "Aether" of Euripides in its

relations with the "Earth" is besides being the active partner also

the intellectual and animated element. The isolation of such an

element from the rest of matter does indeed remind us of the

procedure of Anaxagoras. But the poet's Aether is still an element

though it may be penetrated by mind and animated by spirit; it is

not a mental being standing over against all the other elements in

essential distinctness like the _Nous_ of Anaxagoras. The fact that

it is the element of the Aether, i.e. the dry and hot air, in which

intellectual capacity is said to inhere, may be regarded as having

been borrowed from Diogenes of Apollonia, a philosopher who was held

in considerable estimation at Athens at that time, and who was well

known to Euripides.[144\12] In his doctrine, the air (which indeed,

in contrast to the view of Euripides, produces all other things

simply out of itself) is expressly identified with the "Soul" and is

itself described as "having understanding".[145\12]

This view of the elementary forces and constitution of the universe,

made up as it is from philosophical suggestions of a scarcely

reconcilable character, in which the dualistic tendency is in fact

finally predominant, suggests itself to the poet whenever in an

exalted mood he speaks of the final destiny of the human soul. The

soul on its separation from the body will depart to join the

"Aether". But in such conceptions it is not always the imagination

of the philosopher-poet that finds expression. On this subject it is

accompanied or replaced by a more popular view that only distantly

resembles it, but which led to the same result. When we hear now and

again of the Aether, the luminous atmosphere above the clouds, as

being the _dwelling place_ of the departed souls,[146\12] the

view--more theological than philosophic in its character--seems to

be implied that after death the liberated soul will float upwards to

the seat of the gods[147\12] which has long ceased to be situated

upon Olympos, but is in "heaven" or in this same Aether. This, too,

was the meaning of a saying traditionally ascribed to Epicharmos the

comic-poet of Sicily who was himself versed in philosophy. In this

saying the pious man is assured that for him death will bring no

evil for his "mind" will dwell permanently in "heaven".[148\12] This

conception, which appears so frequently in later epitaphs, {437}

must have been familiar to popular imagination at Athens at an early

period; at least in the grave-epigram officially dedicated by the

state to the memory of the Athenians who fell in the year 432 before

Poteidaia, we find the belief expressed (as a commonly received

opinion) that the souls of these brave men have been received by the

"Aether" just as the earth has received their bodies.[149\12] Such

official use implies a commonly accepted opinion and the fundamental

ideas of the popular cult of the souls might have led to similar

results. From the beginning popular belief had regarded the psyche,

which got its name from the air or breath, as closely akin to the

winds, the mobile air and its spirits. It would not be difficult for

the idea to arise that the soul, as soon as it was free to decide

for itself what should become of it, should go to join the elemental

spirits that are its kinsfolk. Perhaps this, too, is what Epicharmos

means when on another occasion he says that in death when the united

are parted asunder each returns whence it came, the body to earth,

but the soul up to the heights--its name, in which allusion is made

to its perpetual mobility, being now after the example of Xenophanes

derived from the breath of the wind, the moving air (~pneu=ma~), a

usage which became very common in later times.[150\12]

But perhaps the use of such a name is an indication that this poet

also regards the soul as standing in a close relation and kinship

with the Aether that is destined to receive it after its release

from the body; so that from this side, too[151\12]--in addition to

the more popular conception just mentioned--Euripides may have

received a hint for his peculiar version of the physiological theory

of Diogenes. In his view the soul participates in the nature of the

Aether. But it is more important to notice that the Aether

participates in the nature and true reality of the soul; it

possesses life, consciousness and power of thought. They both belong

to one family. The Aether according to the poet--and here the

speculations of Anaximenes as revived by Diogenes are

unmistakable[152\12]--is a true vital atmosphere, an all-embracing

psychic element, so that it becomes, not a mere vehicle of mind, but

the All-Mind itself. The concept is even condensed and

half-personified, it is called by the name of the highest divine

power, Zeus,[153\12] and the poet as though speaking of a personal

god, calls it "immortal".[154\12] The human mind, too, as akin to

the universal god and the All-Mind, appears, as it had been in the

teaching of Diogenes,[155\12] as a part of this God, this universal

Mind. God is the mind, and the mind and understanding in us is

God--so the poet clearly asserts.[156\12] In death, when {438} the

separation of the mind from its earthly elements takes place, the

Pneuma of man will "not indeed live", as it had done in the separate

existence of the individual man, but it will "preserve an immortal

consciousness", entering into the immortal Aether and fusing itself

with the All-living and the All-thinking.[157\12] None of the

physiologists who conceived the same idea of an immortality

excluding the personal immortality of the individual, of the

universal spirit of life in mankind, has expressed his meaning with

such distinctness as this philosophic layman.

The poet may have wished to remain permanently upon the sublime

heights of this Pantheistic vision; but he must, in his peculiar

all-embracing spirit that never held fast to any one view with

enduring persistence, have experienced too often the truth of the

saying of Protagoras that every statement calls forth its equally

legitimate opposite,[158\12] to have become an unswerving adherent

of any single opinion. Death, and whatever may reveal itself after

death, is beyond the experience of any man.[159\12] It may be that

complete disappearance into nothingness follows death; that the dead

man becomes simply nothing.[160\12] It may be that in the permanence

of the human race the great name and the renown of glorious deeds

lives on undying.[161\12] Whether there may remain besides a vestige

of life in a spirit world, who can tell? Perhaps such a thing is

hardly even to be wished.[162\12] It is just what makes death such a

comforting thing, that it puts an end to all feeling and therefore

to all pain and every care. We should not lament over our fate if,

like the harvests that follow each other in the course of the years,

one generation of men after another flowers, fades, and is carried

off. So it is ordered in the course of Nature, and we ought not to

be dismayed by anything that is rendered inevitable by her

laws.[163\12]

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

[1\12: The learned and more particularly the philosophers of later

ages paid special attention to utterances of the older poetry that

gave expression to belief of a spiritualist tendency. Just as they

selected and preserved passages from Pindar (and from Melanippides

in the case soon to be mentioned), which bore witness to an advanced

view of the soul, so they must also have given us similar passages

from other melic or from iambic and elegiac poets--if such passages

had existed. They must, for example, have been absent from the

~thrê=noi~ of Simonides which were famous as the models of this kind

of poetry. And so with all the rest.]

[2\12: Hades puts an end to all pleasure for every man; hence the

warning that man should enjoy his youth upon earth: Thgn. 973 ff.;

cf. 877 f., 1191 ff., 1009 f.; Sol. 24; Thgn. 719 ff.]

[3\12: ~thana/tô| pa/ntes opheilo/metha~--an ancient saying often

repeated; cf. Bergk on Simon. 122, 2; Nauck on Soph., _El._ 1173

[Blaydes ad loc.].]

[4\12: Hades himself plays the part of Thanatos and carries off the

souls to the lower world. Thus as early as Semon. i, 13 f., ~tou\s

d' A/rei dedême/nous pe/mpei melai/nês Aï/dês hupo\ chthono/s~. In

metaphorical language ~Ha/idês~ for ~tha/natos~ is quite regular

from the time of Pindar onwards. This, in turn, lent support to the

use of the name of ~Ha/idês~ instead of the _personified_

~Tha/natos~. So esp. in Pi., _O._ ix, 33-5; cf. besides, _Epigr.

Gr._ 89, 3-4. ~to/nde . . . ma/rpsas Ha/idês hoi skoti/as

amphe/balen pte/rugas~; cf. 201, 2; 252, 1-2. (And therefore in

Eur., _Alc._ 261, we should not alter the ~pterôto\s Ha/idas~ who is

named instead of Thanatos--not even in favour of the otherwise

ingenious ~ble/pôn . . . ha/|dan~.)]

[5\12: ~dêro\n e/nerthen gê=s ole/sas psuchê\n kei/somai hô/ste

li/thos a/phthoggos~ Thgn. 567 f.--the condition of things in Hades

is regarded exactly as in the Homeric pictures: Thgn. 704-10.]

[6\12: See esp. Sol. 13, 29 ff.: Thgn. 731-42; 205 ff.]

[7\12: Mimn. ii, 13: ~a/llos d' hau= pai/dôn epideu/etai, hô=nte

ma/lista himei/rôn kata\ gê=s e/rchetai eis Aï/dên~. Without

children there can be no assurance that the cult of the soul will be

carried on. But we may well believe that the attaching of so much

importance to offspring was assisted by the natural human belief

that the man who left children behind him on earth did not

completely perish in death (hence ~aeigene/s esti kai\ atha/naton

hôs thnêtô=| hê ge/nnêsis~ as in Plato, _Smp._ 206 E). This alone

gives a meaning and a reason for the widespread belief among the

Greeks that the wicked man who is punished after his death in his

children and children's children himself feels that punishment.]

[8\12: Semon. 1; 3. Mimn. 2. Sol. 13, 63 ff.; 14. Thgn. 167 f.; 425

ff. We may also add here the expressions of resignation, Hdt. vii,

46; i, 31.]

[9\12: ~Nukto\s tha/lamos~ [Ion] _fr._ 8, 2.]

[10\12: On the story of Midas and Silenos see _Griech. Roman_, p.

204 f. As to the ancient and often repeated maxim ~archê\n~ (or

~pa/ntôn) me\n mê\ phu=nai epichthoni/oisin a/riston ktl.~, see

Bgk., _Opusc._ ii, 214; _PLG^4. ii, p. 155 f. Nietzsche, _Rh. Mus._

xxviii, 212 ff. (whose view that the {440} beginning ~archê\n . . .~

is old and original--but not his involved explanation of this--has

been fully confirmed by the finding of the primitive form of the

~agô/n~: Mahaffy, _On the Flinders Petrie Papyri_, i, p. 70).]

[11\12: Simon, _fr._ 39; 38.]

[12\12: _fr._ 137.--Usener, _Götternamen_, 229, 13, says of Sappho

that "she was possessed by the belief that as a poetess she would

live again after her death among the gods, and would therefore

become a _heroine_; see _frr._ 68 and 136". But from these fragments

of Sappho no such belief can be extracted without first reading into

them a good deal that they do not say.]

[13\12: Of the man who has fallen in glory on the battlefield

Tyrtaios says, 12, 31 f.: ~oude/ pote kle/os esthlo\n apo/llutai

oud' o/nom' au/tou=, all' hupo\ gê=s per eô\n gi/gnetai

_atha/natos_~ (i.e. in renown upon earth). Thgn. says to his Kyrnos,

243 ff., in your lifetime my songs will make you famous ~kai\ ho/tan

dnopherê=s hupo\ keu/thesi gai/ês bê=|s polukôku/tous eis Ai/dao

do/mous, oude/pot' oude\ thanô\n apolei=s kle/os alla\ melê/seis

a/phthiton anthrô/pois aie\n e/chôn o/noma . . .~ cf. Aesch.,

_Epigr._ iii, 3 (241 Bgk. = 449 Di.), ~zôo\n de\ phthime/nôn

pe/letai kle/os~.]

[14\12: Even in Hades the dead perceive ~chthoni/a| phreni/~ if they

themselves or the ~aretai/~ of their descendants upon earth are

praised: Pi., _P._ v, 98: cf. _O._ viii, 81 ff.; xiv, 20 ff.; [Ion]

_Anth. Pal._ vii, 43, 3 (to Eurip.), ~i/sthi d' hupo\ chthono\s ô/n,

ho/ti soi kle/os a/phthiton e/stai ktl.~--In the expressions

collected by Meuss, _Jahrb. f. Philol._ 1889, p. 812 f., from the

fourth century orators there only remains a very faint recollection

of such a belief.]

[15\12: Semon. 2, ~tou= me\n thano/ntos ouk a\n enthumoi/metha, ei/

ti phronoi=men, plei=on hême/rês miê=s~.--Stes. 51, ~atele/stata

ga\r kai\ ama/chana tou\s thano/ntas klai/ein~. 52, ~thano/ntos

andro\s pa=s' apo/llutai pot' anthrô/pôn cha/ris~.]

[16\12: This emerges at once if we review the material collected by

H. Meuss upon "the conceptions appearing in the Attic orators of

existence after death": _Jahrb. f. Philol._ 1889, pp. 801-15. For

the cult of the soul and all that attaches to it the orators are our

most authoritative witnesses and as such are frequently examined in

the sections of this book that deal with the subject.]

[17\12: ~_ei/_ tines tô=n teteleutêko/tôn la/boien _tro/pô| tini\_

tou= nu=n gignome/nou pra/gmatos ai/sthêsin~ and frequently in this

style: cf. the passages quoted by Westermann on D., _Lept._ (20),

87; cf. also Lehrs, _Pop. Aufs._ 329 ff. The question is always

whether the dead are capable in any way of apprehending what goes on

in this world. The continued life of the dead is never doubtful but

rather implied throughout, for without such implication no

possibility whatever would be left for that ~ei~--.]

[18\12: See Nägelsbach, _Nachhom. Theol._ 420. Meuss, p. 812.]

[19\12: This is well brought out by Lehrs, _Pop. Aufs._ 331. But the

statement holds good in an even more precise and exclusive sense

than he there gives it. The words of Hyper., _Epit._ xiii, § 39,

deal simply with the existence in Hades of those who have died for

their country (with some traditional embellishments; see above,

chap. vii, n. 5)--this much can hardly ever have been expressly

doubted or denied by any orator. But it is wrong to say (as Lehrs

does: p. 331) that Hyp. expresses, though in other words, what was

afterwards laid down by [D.H.] _Rhet._ vi, 5, as proper "for such

funeral speeches" (no, only for _private_ funerals--which is quite

another matter). It is true that the advice there given is to say

that the soul is _~atha/natos~_ and now dwells {441} "with the

gods". But it never enters into the head of Hyp. to say any such

thing (nor in the frag. of the speech preserved by Stob., _Fl._ 124,

36). In fact, the precept of this sophistic writer (still more the

advice given by Men. Rhet., _de Encom._ 414, 16 ff.; 421, 16 ff.

Sp.) rather reveals the enormous contrast between the style of the

sophistic funeral oratory of a later period and the real

characteristics of the old Attic funeral orations: a difference

founded upon the difference of sentiment manifested by the public

that listened to such speeches in two different ages. Even the

statements of [Dem.] _Epit._ (60) 34 (~pa/redroi toi=s ka/tô

theoi=s~ together with the ~agathoi\ a/ndres~ of earlier times ~en

maka/rôn nê/sois~) betray sophistic colouring though falling far

short of the excesses of Ps.-D.H. and Men. Rhet.]

[20\12: The only thing ~ agê/rantos~ about those who have fallen in

the wars of freedom is their ~eulogi/ê~ Simon. 100, 4; cf. 106, 4

(with Bgk.'s note). 99, 3-4 ~oude\ tethna=si thano/ntes epei/ sph'

aretê\ kathu/perthen kudai/nous' ana/gei dô/matos ex Aï/deô~ (which

is imitated in the epitaph of Thrasymachos the Kretan ~oude\ thanô\n

areta=s o/num' ôle/sas, alla\ se Pha/ma kudai/nous' ana/gei dô/matos

ex Aï/da~, _BCH._ 1889, p. 60).]

[21\12: ~klu=thi/ moi ô= pa/ter, thau=ma brotô=n, ta=s aeizô/ou

mede/ôn psucha=s~, Melanipp. 6. The words ~thau=ma brotô=n~

(modelled on the ~thau=ma brotoi=si~ of Homer) can refer only to

Dionysos (of the gods who enter into the question here): ~Diô/nusos,

cha/rma brotoi=sin~, ~X~ 325. Further, it is natural to think of

Dionysos in the work of a dithyrambic poet.]

[22\12: The dead man ~amph' Ache/ronti naieta/ôn~, Pi., _N._ iv, 85.

This is the general assumption: e.g. _P._ xi, 19-22; _O._ ix, 33-5;

_I._ viii, 59 f.; _fr._ 207 Bgk.]

[23\12: ~e/sti de\ kai/ ti thano/ntessin me/ros ka\n no/mon

erdo/menon; katakru/ptei d' ou ko/nis suggo/nôn kedna\n cha/rin~,

_O._ viii, 77 ff.]

[24\12: Something of the kind is adopted for the moment, e.g. in

_O._ xiv, 20 ff.; viii, 81 ff. A real belief in such a possibility

appears perhaps most clearly in _P._ v, 98 ff.]

[25\12: For him who dies fighting for his country there is in

store--not blessedness but only Fame, _I._ vii, 26 ff. He who comes

~kala\ e/rxais aoida=s a/ter eis Aï/da stathmo/n~ has little reward

for his pains (his reward would, in fact, have been just the praise

given in the ~aoida/~), _O._ x, 91 ff., cf. _N._ vii, 30-2.]

[26\12: A strange expression is the ~dai/môn gene/thlios~ of _O._

xiii, 105 (in the same poem we also have ~Xenophô=ntos dai/môn~ 28,

which in this case at least is something more than "destiny",

otherwise the normal meaning of ~dai/môn~ in Pindar, cf. _P._ v,

123, _I._ vii, 43). It almost seems as if it were intended to

describe the ancestor spirit that brings good luck to the house like

the _genius generis_ or ~hê/rôs suggenei/as~ (see above, chap. v, n.

132).]

[27\12: Amphiaraos, _O._ vi, 14; _N._ ix, 24 ff.; x, 8 f. (Amph.

from his underground cavern sees the fighting in the war of the

Epigonoi, _P._ viii, 39-56. There is no suggestion that the

~Epi/gonoi~ inquire at his oracle--as Dissen supposes; with this the

~hô=d' eipe _marname/nôn_~ 43 is inconsistent.)--Ganymedes

translated to eternal life, _O._ i, 44; x, 104 f. Apart from this

there are temporary translations to the gods or from one place on

earth to another, _O._ i, 36 ff.; ix, 59; _P._ ix, 5ff.; _I._ viii,

20 f.]

[28\12: _O._ ii, 27 ff.]

[29\12: ~alla/ ti prosphe/romen e/mpan ê\ me/gan no/on ê/toi phu/sin

athana/tois~, _N._ vi, 4 f.]

[30\12: ~skia=s o/nar a/nthrôpos~, _P._ viii, 95. ~he\n andrô=n he\n

theô=n ge/nos, ek mia=s de\ pne/omen matro\s ampho/teroi; diei/rgei

de\ pa=sa kekrime/na du/namis, {442} hôs to\ me\n oude/n, ho de\

chalkeos asphale\s aie\n he/dos me/nei ourano/s~, _N._ vi, 1 ff.]

[31\12: _fr._ 131 Bgk.]