THE OLD GREEK LIFE
_The Old Greek Life Was the Starting Point of Western
Civilization_.--Civilization is a continuous movement--hence there is a
gradual transition from the Oriental civilization to the Western. The
former finally merges into the latter. Although the line of
demarcation is not clearly drawn, some striking differences are
apparent when the two are placed in juxtaposition. Perhaps the most
evident contrast is observed in the gradual freedom of the mind from
the influences of tradition and religious superstition. Connected with
this, also, is the struggle for freedom from despotism in government.
It has been observed how the ancient civilizations were characterized
by the despotism of priests and kings. It was the early privilege of
European life to gradually break away from this form of human
degradation and establish individual rights and individual development.
Kings and princes, indeed, ruled in the Western world, but they learned
to do so with a fuller recognition of the rights of the governed.
There came to be recognized, also, free discussion as the right of
people in the processes of government. It is admitted that the
despotic governments of the Old World existed for the few and neglected
the many. While despotism was not wanting in European civilization,
the struggle to be free from it was the ruling spirit of the age. The
history of Europe centres around this struggle to be free from
despotism and traditional learning, and to develop freedom of thought
and action.
Among Oriental people the idea of progress was wanting in their
philosophy. True, they had some notion of changes that take place in
the conditions of political and social life, and in individual
accomplishments, yet there was nothing hopeful in their presentation of
the theory of life or in their practices {206} of religion; and the few
philosophers who recognized changes that were taking place saw not in
them a persistent progress and growth. Their eyes were turned toward
the past. Their thoughts centred on traditions and things that were
fixed. Life was reduced to a dull, monotonous round by the great
masses of the people. If at any time a ray of light penetrated the
gloom, it was turned to illuminate the accumulated philosophies of the
past. On the other hand, in European civilization we find the idea of
progress becoming more and more predominant. The early Greeks and
Romans were bound to a certain extent by the authority of tradition on
one side and the fixity of purpose on the other. At times there was
little that was hopeful in their philosophy, for they, too, recognized
the decline in the affairs of men. But through trial and error, new
discoveries of truth were made which persisted until the revival of
learning in the Middle Ages, at the time of the formation of new
nations, when the ideas of progress became fully recognized in the
minds of the thoughtful, and subsequently in the full triumph of
Western civilization came the recognition of the possibility of
continuous progress.
Another great distinction in the development of European civilization
was the recognition of humanity. In ancient times humanitarian spirit
appeared not in the heart of man nor in the philosophy of government.
Even the old tribal government was for the few. The national
government was for selected citizens only. Specific gods, a special
religion, the privilege of rights and duties were available to a few,
while all others were deprived of them. This invoked a selfishness in
practical life and developed a selfish system even among the leaders of
ancient culture. The broad principle of the rights of an individual
because he was human was not taken into serious consideration even
among the more thoughtful. If he was friendly to the recognized god he
was permitted to exist. If he was an enemy, he was to be crushed. On
the other hand, the triumph of Western civilization is the recognition
of the value of a human being and his right to engage in all human
associations {207} for which he is fitted. While the Greeks came into
contact with the older civilizations of Egypt and Asia, and were
influenced by their thought and custom, they brought a vigorous new
life which gradually dominated and mastered the Oriental influences.
They had sufficient vigor and independence to break with tradition,
wherever it seemed necessary to accomplish their purpose of life.
_The Aegean Culture Preceded the Coming of the Greeks_.--Spreading over
the islands of the Aegean Sea was a pre-Greek civilization known as
Minoan. Its highest centre of development was in the Island of Crete,
whose principal city was Cnossos. Whence these people came and what
their ethnological classification are still unsettled.[1] They had a
number of centres of development, which varied somewhat in type of
culture. They were a dark-haired people, who probably came from Africa
or Asia Minor, settling in Crete about 5,000 years B.C. It is thought
by some that the Etruscans of Italy were of Aegean origin. Prior to
the Minoans there existed a Neolithic culture throughout the islands of
Greece.
In the great city of Cnossos, which was sacked and burned about the
fourteenth century B.C., were found ruins which show a culture of
relatively high degree. By the excavations in Crete at this point a
stratum of earth twenty feet thick was discovered, in which were found
evidences of all grades of civilization, from the Neolithic implements
to the highest Minoan culture. Palaces with frescoes and carvings,
ornaments formed of metal and skilfully wrought vases with significant
colorings, all evinced a civilization worthy of intensive study. These
people had developed commerce and trade with Egypt, and their boats
passed along the shores of the Mediterranean, carrying their
civilization to Italy, northern Africa, and everywhere among the
islands of Greece, as well as on the mainland. The cause of the
decline of their civilization is {208} not known, unless it could be
attributed to the Greek pirates who invaded their territory, and
possibly, like all nations that decline, they were beset by internal
maladies which marked their future destiny. Possibly, high
specialization along certain lines of life rendered them unadaptable to
new conditions, and they passed away because of this lack.
_The Greeks Were of Aryan Stock_.--Many thousand years ago there
appeared along the shores of the Baltic, at the beginning of the
Neolithic period of culture, a group of people who seem to have come
from central Asia. It is thought by some that these were at least the
forerunners of the great Nordic race. Whatever conjectures there may
be as to their origin, it is known that about 2,000 years before
Christ, wandering tribes extended from the Baltic region far eastward
to the Caspian Sea, to the north of Persia, down to the borderland of
India. These people were of Caucasian features, with fair hair and
blue eyes--a type of the Nordic race. They were known as the Aryan
branch of the Caucasian race. Whether this was their primitive abode,
or whether their ancestors had come at a much earlier time from a
central home in northern Africa, which is considered by ethnologists as
the centre from which developed the Caucasian race, is not known.
They were not a highly cultured people, but were living a nomadic life,
engaged in hunting, fishing, piratical exploits, and carrying on
agriculture intermittently. They had also become acquainted with the
use of metals, having passed during this period from the Neolithic into
the Bronze Age. About the year 1500 B.C. they had become acquainted
with iron, and about the same time had come into possession of the
horse, probably through their contact with central Asia.
The social life of these people was very simple. While they
undoubtedly met and mingled with many tribes, they had a language
sufficiently common for ordinary intercourse. They had no writing or
means of records at all, but depended upon the recital of deeds of
warriors and nations and tribes. Wherever the Aryan people have been
found, whether in Greece, {209} Italy, Germany, along the Danube,
central Asia, or India, they have been noted for their epics, sagas,
and vedas, which told the tales of historic deeds and exploits of the
tribal or national life. It is thought that this was the reason they
developed such a strong and beautiful language.
They came in contact with Semitic civilization in northern Persia, with
the primitive tribes in Italy, with the Dravidian peoples of India, and
represented the vigorous fighting power of the Scythians, Medes, and
Persians. They or their kindred later moved up the Danube into Spain
and France, with branches into Germany and Russia, and others finally
into the British Islands. It was a branch of these people that came
into the Grecian peninsula and overthrew and supplanted the Aegean
civilization--where they were known as the Greeks.
_The Coming of the Greeks_.--It is not known when they came down
through Asia Minor. Not earlier than 2000 B.C. nor later than 1500
B.C. the invasion began. In successive waves came the Phrygians,
Aeolians, the Ionians, and the Dorians--different divisions of the same
race. Soon they spread over the mainland of Greece and all the
surrounding islands, and established their trading cities along the
borders of the Mediterranean Sea. These people, though uncultured,
seemed to absorb culture wherever they went. They learned the methods
of the civilization that had been established in the Orient wherever
they came in contact with other peoples, and also in the Aegean
country. In fact, though they conquered and occupied the Aegean
country, they took on the best of the Minoan civilization.[2] As
marauders, pirates, and conquerors, they were masterful, but they came
in conflict with the ideas developed among the Semitic people of Asia
and the Hamitic of Egypt. Undoubtedly, this conquest of the Minoan
civilization furnished the origin of many of the tales or folklore that
afterward were woven into the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_ by {210} Homer.
It is not known how early in Greek life these songs originated, but it
is a known fact that in the eighth century the Greeks were in
possession of their epics, and at this period not only had conquered
the Minoan civilization but had absorbed it so far as they had use for
it.
They came into this territory in the form of the old tribal government,
with their primitive social customs, and as they settled in different
parts of the territory in tribes, they developed independent
communities of a primitive sort. They had what was known in modern
historical literature as the village community, which was always found
in the primitive life of the Aryans. Their mode of life tended to
develop individualism, and when the group life was established, it
became independent and was lacking in co-operation--that is, it became
a self-sufficient social order. Later in the development of the Greek
life the individual, so far as political organization goes, was
absorbed in the larger state, after it had developed from the old Greek
family life. These primitive Greeks soon had a well-developed
language. They began systematic agriculture, became skilled in the
industrial arts, domesticated animals, and had a pure home life with
religious sentiments of a high order. Wherever they went they carried
with them the characteristics of nation-building and progressive life.
They mastered the earth and its contents by living it down with force
and vigor.
The Greek peninsula was favorably situated for development. Protected
on the north by a mountain range from the rigors of a northern climate
and from the predatory tribes, with a range of mountains through the
centre, with its short spurs cutting the entire country into valleys,
in which were developed independent community states, circumstances
were favorable to local self-government of the several tribes. This
independent social life was of great importance in the development of
Greek thought. In the north the grains and cereals were grown, and in
the south the citrus and the orange. This wide range from a temperate
to a semi-tropical climate {211} furnished a variety of fruits and
diversity of life which gave great opportunity for development. The
variety of scenery caused by mountain and valley and proximity to the
sea, the thousand islands washed by the Aegean Sea, brought a new life
which tended to impress the sensitive mind of the Greek and to develop
his imagination and to advance culture in art.
_Character of the Primitive Greeks_.--The magnificent development of
the Greeks in art, literature, philosophy, and learning, together with
the fortunate circumstance of having powerful writers, gives us rather
an exaggerated notion of the Greeks, if we attempt to apply a lofty
manner and a magnificent culture to the Homeric period. They had a
good deal of piratical boldness, and, after the formation of their
small states, gave examples of spurts of courage such as that at
Marathon and Thermopylae. Yet these evidences were rare exceptions
rather than the rule, for even the Spartan, trained on a military
basis, seldom evinced any great degree of bravery. Perhaps the gloomy
forebodings of the future, characteristic of the Greeks, made them fear
death, and consequently caused them to lack in courage. However, this
is a disputed point. Pages of the earlier records are full of the
sanction of deception of enemies, friends, and strangers. Evidently,
there was a low moral sense regarding truth. While the Greek might be
loyal to his family and possibly to his tribe, there are many examples
of disloyalty to one another, and, in the later development, a
disloyalty of one state toward another. Excessive egoism seems to have
prevailed, and this principle was extended to the family and local
government group. Each group appeared to look out for its own
interests, irrespective of the welfare of others. How much a united
Greece might have done to have continued the splendors and the service
of a magnificent civilization is open to conjecture.
The Greeks were not sympathetic with children nor with the aged. Far
from being anxious to preserve the life of the aged, their greatest
trouble was in disposing of them. The honor and rights of women were
not observed. In war women {212} were the property of their captors.
Yet the home life of the Greeks seems to have been in its purity and
loyalty an advance on the Oriental home life. In their treatment of
servants and slaves, in the care of the aged and helpless, the Greeks
were cold and without compassion. While the poets, historians, and
philosophers have been portraying with such efficiency the character of
the higher classes; while they have presented such a beautiful exterior
of the old Greek life; the Greeks, in common with other primitive
peoples, were not lacking in coarseness, injustice, and cruelty in
their internal life. Here, as elsewhere in the beginnings of
civilization, only the best of the real and the ideal of life was
represented, while the lower classes were suffering a degraded life.
The family was closely organized in Greece. Monogamic marriage and the
exclusive home life prevailed at an early time. The patriarchal
family, in which the oldest male member was chief and ruler, was the
unit of society. Within this group were the house families, formed
whenever a separate marriage took place and a separate altar was
erected. The house religion was one of the characteristic features of
Greek life. Each family had its own household gods, its own worship,
its private shrine. This tended to unify the family and promote a
sacred family life. A special form of ancestral worship, from the
early Aryan house-spirit worship, prevailed to a certain extent. The
worship of the family expanded with the expansion of social life. Thus
the gens, and the tribe, and the city when founded, had each its
separate worship. Religion formed a strong cement to bind the
different social units of a tribe together. The worship of the Greeks
was associated with the common meal and the pouring of libations to the
gods.
As religion became more general, it united to make a more common social
practice, and in the later period of Greek life was made the basis of
the games and general social gatherings. Religion brought the Greeks
together in a social way, and finally led to the mutual advantage of
members of society. {213} Later, mutual advantage superseded religion
in its practice. The Greeks, at an early period, attempted to explain
the origin of the earth and unknown phenomena by referring it to the
supernatural powers. Every island had its myth, every phenomenon its
god, and every mountain was the residence of some deity. They sought
to find out the causes of the creation of the universe, and developed a
theogony. There was the origin of the Greeks to be accounted for, and
then the origin of the earth, and the relation of man to the deities.
Everything must be explained, but as the imagination was especially
strong, it was easier to create a god as a first cause than to
ascertain the development of the earth by scientific study.
_Influence of Old Greek Life_.--In all of the traditions and writings
descriptive of the old Greek social life, with the exception of the
_Works and Days_ of Hesiod, the aristocratic class appears uppermost.
Hesiod "pictures a hopeless and miserable existence, in which care and
the despair of better things tended to make men hard and selfish and to
blot out those fairer features which cannot be denied to the courts and
palaces of the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_." It appears that the foundation
of aristocracy--living in comparative luxury, in devotion to art and
the culture of life--was early laid by the side of the foundation of
poverty and wretchedness of the great mass of the people. While, then,
the Greeks derived from their ancestry the beautiful pictures of heroic
Greece, they inherited the evils of imperfect social conditions. As we
pass to the historical period of Greece, these different phases of life
appear and reappear in changeable forms. If to the nobleman life was
full of inspiration; if poetry, religion, art, and politics gave him
lofty thoughts and noble aspirations; to the peasant and the slave,
life was full of misery and degradation. If one picture is to be drawn
in glowing colors, let not the other be omitted.
The freedom from great centralized government, the development of the
individual life, the influences of the early ideas of art and life, and
the religious conceptions, were of great importance in shaping the
Greek philosophy and the Greek {214} national character. They had a
tendency to develop men who could think and act. It is not surprising,
therefore, that the first real historical period was characterized by
struggles of citizens within the town for supremacy. Fierce quarrels
between the upper and the lower classes prevailed everywhere, and
resulted in developing an intense hatred of the former for the latter.
This hatred and selfishness became the uppermost causes of action in
the development of Greek social polity. Strife led to compromise, and
this in turn to the recognition of the rights and privileges of
different classes.
SUBJECTS FOR FURTHER STUDY
1. The Aegean culture.
2. The relation of Greek to Egyptian culture.
3. What were the great Greek masterpieces of (_a_) Literature, (_b_)
Sculpture, (_c_) Architecture, (_d_) Art, (_e_) Philosophy?
4. Compare Greek democracy with American democracy.
5. What historical significance have Thermopylae, Marathon,
Alexandria, Crete, and Delphi?
[1] Sergi, in his _Mediterranean Race_, says that they came from N. E.
Africa. Beginning about 5000 years B.C., they gradually infiltrated
the whole Mediterranean region. This is becoming the general belief
among ethnologists, archaeologists, and historians.
[2] Recent studies indicate that some of the Cretan inscriptions are
prototypes of the Greece-Phoenician alphabet. The Phoenicians
evidently derived the original characters of their alphabet from a
number of sources. The Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet about
800-1000 B.C.
{215}