A FEW DAYS IN ATHENS;
BEING
THE TRANSLATION
OF
A GREEK MANUSCRIPT
DISCOVERED IN HERCULANEUM.
BY
FRANCES WRIGHT,
AUTHOR OF
“VIEWS OF SOCIETY AND MANNERS IN AMERICA.”
“——joining bliss to virtue, the glad ease
Of Epicurus, seldom understood.”
BOSTON:
PUBLISHED BY J. P. MENDUM.
1850.
TO
JEREMY BENTHAM,
AS A TESTIMONY
OF
HER ADMIRATION OF HIS ENLIGHTENED SENTIMENTS,
USEFUL LABORS,
AND ACTIVE PHILANTHROPY,
AND OF
HER GRATITUDE FOR HIS FRIENDSHIP,
THIS WORK
IS
RESPECTFULLY AND AFFECTIONATELY
INSCRIBED
BY
FRANCES WRIGHT.
London,
_March 12th, 1822_.
TO THE READER.
That I may not obtain credit for more learning than I possess, I beg to
acknowledge the assistance I have received in my version of the curious
relict of antiquity now offered to the public from the beautiful Italian
MSS. of the erudite Professor of Greek in the university of *****. I
hesitate to designate more clearly the illustrious Hellenist whose
labors have brought to light this curious fragment. Since the
establishment of the saintly domination of the Vandals throughout the
territories of the rebellious and heterodox Italy, and particularly in
consequence of the ordinance of his most orthodox, most legitimate, and
most Austrian majesty, bearing that his dominions being in want of good
subjects, his colleges are forbidden to send forth good scholars,[1] it
has become necessary for the gownsmen of the classic peninsula to banish
all profane learning from their lectures and their libraries, and to
evince a holy abhorrence of the sciences and arts which they erst
professed. The list of the class books now employed in the transalpine
schools is exceedingly curious; I regret that I have mislaid the one
lately supplied to me by an illustrious Italian exile. My memory recalls
to me only that, in the school of rhetoric, the orations of Cicero are
superseded by those of the Marquis of Londonderry, and the philippics of
Demosthenes by those of M. de Peyronnet; that the professors of history
have banished the decades of Livy for _the Martyrs_ of Mons. de
Chateaubriand; and that the students of Greek, in place of the Odes of
Pindar, and the retreat of the ten thousand from Cunaxa, construe the
hexameters of the English Laureate, and the advance of Louis the XVIII.
upon Ghent. In this state of the Italian world of Letters, it is not
surprising that the scholar, to whose perseverance, ingenuity, and
learning, the public are indebted for the following fragment, should
object to lay claim to the honor which is his due.
Footnote 1:
_Je ne veux pas de savans dans mes etats, je veux de bons sujets_, was
the dictum of the Austrian Autocrat to an Italian Professor.
The original MS. fell into the hands of my erudite correspondent in the
autumn of the year 1817. From that period until the commencement of last
winter, all his leisure hours were devoted to the arduous task of
unrolling the leaves, and decyphering the half defaced characters. The
imperfect condition of the MS. soon obliged him to forego his first
intention of transcribing the original Greek; he had recourse,
therefore, to an Italian version, supplying the chasms, consisting
sometimes of a word, sometimes of a line, and occasionally of a phrase,
with a careful and laborious study of the context. While this version
was printing at Florence, a MS. copy was transmitted to me in Paris,
with a request that I would forthwith see it translated into the English
and French languages. The former version I undertook myself, and can
assure the reader that it possesses the merit of fidelity. The first
erudite translator has not conceived it necessary to encumber the volume
with marginal notes; nor have I found either the inclination or the
ability to supply them. Those who should wish to refer to the allusions
scattered through the old classics to the characters and systems here
treated of, will find much assistance from the marginal authorities of
the eloquent and ingenious Bayle.
I have only to add, that the present volume comprises little more than a
third of the original MS.; it will be sufficient, however, to enable the
public to form an estimate of the probable value of the whole.
A FEW DAYS IN ATHENS.
CHAPTER I.
“Oh! monstrous,” cried the young Theon, as he came from the portico of
Zeno. “Ye Gods! and will ye suffer your names to be thus blasphemed? Why
do ye not strike with thunder the actor and teacher of such enormities?
What! will ye suffer our youth, and the youth of after ages, to be
seduced by this shameless Gargettian? Shall the Stoic portico be
forsaken for the garden of Epicurus? Minerva, shield thy city! Shut the
ears of thy sons against the voice of this deceiver!”
Thus did Theon give vent to the indignation which the words of
Timocrates had worked up within him. Timocrates had been a disciple of
the new school; but, quarrelling with his master, had fled to the
followers of Zeno; and to make the greater merit of his apostacy, and
better to gain the hearts of his new friends, poured forth daily
execrations on his former teacher, painting him and his disciples in the
blackest colors of deformity; revealing, with a countenance distorted as
with horror, and a voice hurried and suppressed as from the agonies of
dreadful recollections, the secrets of those midnight orgies, where, in
the midst of his pupils, the philosopher of Gargettium officiated as
master of the accursed ceremonies of riot and impiety.
Full of these nocturnal horrors the young Theon traversed with hasty
steps the streets of Athens, and, issuing from the city, without
perceiving that he did so, took the road to the Piræus. The noise of the
harbor roused him to recollection, and feeling it out of tune with his
thoughts, he turned up the more peaceful banks of Cephisus, and, seating
himself on the stump of a withered olive, his feet almost washed by the
water, he fell back again into his reverie. How long he had sat he knew
not, when the sound of gently approaching footsteps once more recalled
him. He turned his head, and, after a start and gaze of astonishment,
bent with veneration to the figure before him. It was of the middle
size, and robed in white, pure as the vestments of the Pythia. The
shape, the attitude, the foldings of the garment, were such as the
chisel of Phidias would have given to the God of Elocution. The head
accorded with the rest of the figure; it sat upon the shoulders with a
grace that a painter would have paused to contemplate—elevated, yet
somewhat inclining forward, as if habituated gently to seek and
benevolently to yield attention. The face a poet would have gazed upon,
and thought he beheld in it one of the images of his fancy embodied. The
features were not cast for the statuary; they were noble but not
regular. Wisdom beamed mildly from the eye, and candor was on the broad
forehead: the mouth reposed in a soft, almost imperceptible smile, that
did not curl the lips or disturb the cheeks, and was seen only in the
serene and holy benignity that shone over the whole physiognomy: It was
a gleam of sunshine sleeping on a lucid lake. The first lines of age
were traced on the brow and round the chin, but so gently as to mellow
rather than deepen expression: the hair indeed seemed prematurely
touched by time, for it was of a pure silver, thrown back from the
forehead, and fringing the throat behind with short curls. He received
benignly the salutation of the youth, and gently with his hand returning
it—“Let me not break your meditations; I would rather share than disturb
them.” If the stranger’s appearance had enchanted Theon, his voice did
now more so: never had a sound so sweet, so musical, struck upon his
ear.
“Surely I behold and hear a divinity!” he cried, stepping backwards, and
half stooping his knee with veneration.
“From the groves of the academy, I see,” said the sage, advancing and
laying his hand on the youth’s shoulder.
Theon looked up with a modest blush, and encouraged by the sweet aspect
of the sage, replied, “No; from the Stoic portico.”
“Ah! I had not thought Zeno could send forth such a dreamer. You are in
a good school,” he continued, observing the youth confused by this
remark, “a school of real virtue; and, if I read faces well, as I think
I do, I see a pupil that will not disgrace its doctrines.”
Theon’s spirit returned; the stranger had that look, and voice, and
manner, which instantly give security to the timid, and draw love from
the feeling heart. “If you _be_ man, you exert more than human influence
over the souls of your fellows. I have seen you but one moment, and that
moment has laid me at your feet.”
“Not quite so low, I hope,” returned the sage with a smile; “I had
always rather be the companion than the master.”
“Either, both,” said the eager youth, and seizing the half-extended hand
of the sage, pressed it respectfully to his lips.
“You are an enthusiast, I see. Beware, my young friend! such as you must
be the best or the worst of men.”
“Then, had I you for a guide, I should be the best.”
“What! do you a stoic ask a guide?”
“I, a stoic! Oh! would I were! I yet stand but on the threshhold of the
temple.”
“But standing there you have at least looked within and seen the
glories, and will not that encourage you to advance? Who that hath seen
virtue doth not love her, and pant after her possession?”
“True, true; I have seen virtue in her noblest form—Alas! so noble, that
my eyes have been dazzled by the contemplation. I have looked upon Zeno
with admiration and despair.”
“Learn rather to look with love. He who but admires virtue, yields her
but half her due. She asks to be approached, to be embraced—not with
fear, but with confidence—not with awe but with rapture.”
“Yet who can gaze on Zeno and ever hope to rival him?”
“You, my young friend: Why should you not? You have innocence; you have
sensibility; you have enthusiasm; you have ambition—With what better
promise could Zeno begin his career? Courage! courage! my son!”
stopping, for they had insensibly walked towards the city during the
dialogue, and laying his hand on Theon’s head, “We want but the will to
be as great as Zeno.”
Theon had drawn his breath for a sigh, but his action and the look that
accompanied it, changed the sigh to a smile. “You would make me vain.”
“No; but I would make you confident. Without confidence Homer had never
written his Iliad—No; nor would Zeno now be worshipped in his portico.”
“Do you then think confidence would make all men Homers and Zenos?”
“Not all; but a good many. I believe thousands to have the seeds of
excellence in them, who never discover the possession. But we were not
speaking of poetry and philosophy, only of virtue—all men certainly
cannot be poets or philosophers, but all men may be virtuous.”
“I believe,” returned the youth with a modest blush, “if I might walk
with you each day on the borders of Cephisus, I should sometimes play
truant at the portico.”
“Ye gods forbid (exclaimed the sage playfully) that I should steal a
proselyte! From Zeno too? It might cost me dear.—What are you thinking
of?” he resumed, after a pause.
“I was thinking,” replied Theon, “what a loss for man that you are not
teacher in the gardens in place of the son of Neocles.”
“Do you know the son of Neocles?” asked the sage.
“The gods forbid that I should know him more than by report! No,
venerable stranger; wrong me not so much as to think I have entered the
gardens of Epicurus. It is not long that I have been in Athens, but I
hope, if I should henceforth live my life here, I should never be
seduced by the advocate of vice.”
“From my soul I hope the same. But you say you have not long been in
Athens—You are come here to study philosophy.”
“Yes; my father was a scholar of Xenocrates; but when he sent me from
Corinth, he bade me attend all the schools, and fix with that which
should give me the highest views of virtue.”
“And you have found it to be that of Zeno.”
“I think I have: but I was one day nearly gained by a young Pythagorean,
and have been often in danger of becoming one of the academy.”
“You need not say _in danger_: For though I think you choose well in
standing mainly by Zeno, I would have you attend all the schools, and
that with a willing ear. There is some risk in following one particular
sect, even the most perfect, lest the mind become warped and the heart
contracted. Yes, young man! it is possible that this should happen even
in the portico. No sect without its prejudices and its predilections.”
“I believe you say true.”
“I _know_ I say true,” returned the sage in a tone of playfulness he had
more than once used; “I _know_ I say true; and had I before needed
evidence to confirm my opinion, this our present conversation would have
afforded it.”
“How so?”
“Nay, were I to explain, you would not now credit me: No man can see his
own prejudices; no, though a philosopher should point at them. But
patience, patience! Time and opportunity shall right all things. Why,
you did not think,” he resumed after a short pause, “you did not really
think you were without prejudices? Eighteen, not more, if I may judge by
complexion, and without prejudices! Why, I should hardly dare to assert
I was myself without them, and I believe I have fought harder and
somewhat longer against them than you can have done.”
“What would you have me do?” asked the youth, timidly.
“Have you do?—Why, I would have you do a very odd thing—No other than to
take a turn or two in Epicurus’s garden.”
“Epicurus’s garden! Oh! Jupiter!”
“Very true, by Juno!”
“What! To hear the laws of virtue confounded and denied?—To hear vice
exculpated, advocated, panegyrized?—Impiety and atheism professed and
inculcated?—To witness the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery?—Ye
gods, what horrors has Timocrates revealed!”
“Horrors, in truth, somewhat appalling, my young friend; but I should
apprehend Timocrates to be a little mistaken. That the laws of virtue
were ever confounded and denied, or vice advocated and panegyrized, by
any professed teacher, I incline to doubt. And were I really to hear
such things, I should simply conclude the speaker mad, or otherwise that
he was amusing himself by shifting the meaning of words, and that by the
term virtue he understood vice, and so by the contrary. As to the
inculcating of impiety and atheism, this may be exaggerated or
misunderstood. Many are called impious, not for having a worse, but a
different religion from their neighbors; and many atheistical, not for
the denying of God, but for thinking somewhat peculiarly concerning him.
Upon the nocturnal orgies of vice and debauchery I can say nothing; I am
too profoundly ignorant of these matters, either to exculpate or condemn
them. Such things may be, and I never hear of them. All things are
possible. Yes,” turning his benignant face full upon the youth, “even
that Timocrates should lie.”
“This possibility had indeed not occurred to me.”
“No, my young friend; and shall I tell you why? Because he told you
absurdities. Let an impostor keep to probability, and he will hardly
impose. By dealing in the marvellous, he tickles the imagination, and
carries away the judgment; and judgment once gone, what shall save even
a wise man from folly?”
“I should truly rejoice, to find the Gargettian’s doctrine less
monstrous than I have hitherto thought them. I say _less monstrous_, for
you would not wish me to think them good.”
“I would wish you to think nothing good, or bad either, upon _my_
decision. The first and the last thing I would say to man is, _think for
yourself_! It is a bad sentence of the Pythagoreans, ‘The master said
so.’ If the young disciple you mentioned should ever succeed in your
conversion, believe in the metempsychosis for some other reason than
that Pythagoras ‘taught it.’”
“But, if I may ask, do you think well of Epicurus?”
“I meant not to make an apology for Epicurus, only to give a caution
against Timocrates—but see, we are in the city; and fortunately so, for
it is pretty nigh dark. I have a party of young friends awaiting me,
and, but that you may be apprehensive of nocturnal orgies, I would ask
you to join us.”
“I shall not fear them where I have such a conductor,” replied the
youth, laughing.
“I do not think it quite so impossible, however, as you seem to do,”
said the sage, laughing in his turn, with much humor, and entering a
house as he spoke; then throwing open with one arm a door, and with the
other gently drawing the youth along with him, “I am Epicurus!”