The Heroic Age.--Theseus.--His legislative Influence upon Athens.--
Qualities of the Greek Heroes.--Effect of a Traditional Age upon the
Character of a People.
I. As one who has been journeying through the dark [84] begins at
length to perceive the night breaking away in mist and shadow, so that
the forms of things, yet uncertain and undefined, assume an
exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,--so now,
through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline
of the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us,
in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of
the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the
possessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law and
indistinct control;--of adventure--of excitement;--of daring qualities
and lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to the
North: the roving warriors and the pirate kings who scoured the seas,
descended upon unguarded coasts, and deemed the exercise of plunder a
profession of honour, remind us of the exploits of the Scandinavian
Her-Kongr, and the boding banners of the Dane. The seas of Greece
tempted to piratical adventures: their numerous isles, their winding
bays, and wood-clad shores, proffered ample enterprise to the bold--
ample booty to the rapacious; the voyages were short for the
inexperienced, the refuges numerous for the defeated. In early ages,
valour is the true virtue--it dignifies the pursuits in which it is
engaged, and the profession of a pirate was long deemed as honourable
in the Aegean as among the bold rovers of the Scandinavian race [85].
If the coast was thus exposed to constant incursion and alarm, neither
were the interior recesses of the country more protected from the
violence of marauders. The various tribes that passed into Greece, to
colonize or conquer, dislodged from their settlements many of the
inhabitants, who, retreating up the country, maintained themselves by
plunder, or avenged themselves by outrage. The many crags and
mountains, the caverns and the woods, which diversify the beautiful
land of Greece, afforded their natural fortresses to these barbarous
hordes. The chief who had committed a murder, or aspired
unsuccessfully to an unsteady throne, betook himself, with his
friends, to some convenient fastness, made a descent on the
surrounding villages, and bore off the women or the herds, as lust or
want excited to the enterprise. No home was safe, no journey free
from peril, and the Greeks passed their lives in armour. Thus,
gradually, the profession and system of robbery spread itself
throughout Greece, until the evil became insufferable--until the
public opinion of all the states and tribes, in which society had
established laws, was enlisted against the freebooter--until it grew
an object of ambition to rid the neighbourhood of a scourge--and the
success of the attempt made the glory of the adventurer. Then
naturally arose the race of heroes--men who volunteered to seek the
robber in his hold--and, by the gratitude of a later age, the courage
of the knight-errant was rewarded with the sanctity of the demigod.
At that time, too, internal circumstances in the different states--
whether from the predominance of, or the resistance to, the warlike
Hellenes, had gradually conspired to raise a military and fierce
aristocracy above the rest of the population; and as arms became the
instruments of renown and power, so the wildest feats would lead to
the most extended fame.
II. The woods and mountains of Greece were not then cleared of the
first rude aboriginals of nature--wild beasts lurked within its
caverns;--wolves abounded everywhere--herds of wild bulls, the large
horns of which Herodotus names with admiration, were common; and even
the lion himself, so late as the invasion of Xerxes, was found in wide
districts from the Thracian Abdera to the Acarnanian Achelous. Thus,
the feats of the early heroes appear to have been mainly directed
against the freebooter or the wild beast; and among the triumphs of
Hercules are recorded the extermination of the Lydian robbers, the
death of Cacus, and the conquest of the lion of Nemea and the boar of
Erymanthus.
Hercules himself shines conspicuously forth the great model of these
useful adventurers. There is no doubt that a prince [86], so named,
actually existed in Greece; and under the title of the Theban
Hercules, is to be carefully distinguished, both from the god of Egypt
and the peaceful Hercules of Phoenicia [87], whose worship was not
unknown to the Greeks previous to the labours of his namesake. As the
name of Hercules was given to the Theban hero (originally called
Alcaeus), in consequence of his exploits, it may be that his
countrymen recognised in his character or his history something
analogous to the traditional accounts of the Eastern god. It was the
custom of the early Greeks to attribute to one man the actions which
he performed in concert with others, and the reputation of Hercules
was doubtless acquired no less as the leader of an army than by the
achievements of his personal prowess. His fame and his success
excited the emulation of his contemporaries, and pre-eminent among
these ranks the Athenian Theseus.
III. In the romance which Plutarch has bequeathed to us, under the
title of a “History of Theseus,” we seem to read the legends of our
own fabulous days of chivalry. The adventures of an Amadis or a
Palmerin are not more knightly nor more extravagant.
According to Plutarch, Aegeus, king of Athens, having no children,
went to Delphi to consult the oracle how that misfortune might be
repaired. He was commanded not to approach any woman till he returned
to Athens; but the answer was couched in mystic and allegorical terms,
and the good king was rather puzzled than enlightened by the reply.
He betook himself therefore to Troezene, a small town in Peloponnesus,
founded by Pittheus, of the race of Pelops, a man eminent in that day
for wisdom and sagacity. He communicated to him the oracle, and
besought his interpretation. Something there was in the divine answer
which induced Pittheus to draw the Athenian king into an illicit
intercourse with his own daughter, Aethra. The princess became with
child; and, before his departure from Troezene, Aegeus deposited a
sword and a pair of sandals in a cavity concealed by a huge stone
[88], and left injunctions with Aethra that, should the fruit of their
intercourse prove a male child, and able, when grown up, to remove the
stone, she should send him privately to Athens with the sword and
sandals in proof of his birth; for Aegeus had a brother named Pallas,
who, having a large family of sons, naturally expected, from the
failure of the direct line, to possess himself or his children of the
Athenian throne; and the king feared, should the secret of his
intercourse with Aethra be discovered before the expected child had
arrived to sufficient strength to protect himself, that either by
treason or assassination the sons of Pallas would despoil the rightful
heir of his claim to the royal honours. Aethra gave birth to Theseus,
and Pittheus concealed the dishonour of his family by asserting that
Neptune, the god most honoured at Troezene, had condescended to be the
father of the child:--the gods were very convenient personages in
those days. As the boy grew up, he evinced equal strength of body and
nobleness of mind; and at length the time arrived when Aethra
communicated to him the secret of his birth, and led him to the stone
which concealed the tokens of his origin. He easily removed it, and
repaired by land to Athens.
At that time, as I have before stated, Greece was overrun by robbers:
Hercules had suppressed them for awhile; but the Theban hero was now
at the feet of the Lydian Omphale, and the freebooters had reappeared
along the mountainous recesses of the Peloponnesus; the journey by
land was therefore not only longer, but far more perilous, than a
voyage by sea, and Pittheus earnestly besought his grandson to prefer
the latter. But it was the peril of the way that made its charm in
the eyes of the young hero, and the fame of Hercules had long inspired
his dreams by night [89], and his thoughts by day. With his father’s
sword, then, he repaired to Athens. Strange and wild were the
adventures that befell him. In Epidauria he was attacked by a
celebrated robber, whom he slew, and whose club he retained as his
favourite weapon. In the Isthmus, Sinnis, another bandit, who had
been accustomed to destroy the unfortunate travellers who fell in his
way by binding them to the boughs of two pine trees (so that when the
trees, released, swung back to their natural position, the victim was
torn asunder, limb by limb), was punished by the same death he had
devised for others; and here occurs one of those anecdotes
illustrative of the romance of the period, and singularly analogous to
the chivalry of Northern fable, which taught deference to women, and
rewarded by the smiles of the fair the exploits of the bold. Sinnis,
“the pine bender,” had a daughter remarkable for beauty, who
concealed herself amid the shrubs and rushes in terror of the victor.
Theseus discovered her, praying, says Plutarch, in childish innocence
or folly, to the plants and bushes, and promising, if they would
shelter her, never to destroy or burn them. A graceful legend, that
reminds us of the rich inventions of Spenser. But Theseus, with all
gentle words and soothing vows, allured the maiden from her retreat,
and succeeded at last in obtaining her love and its rewards.
Continued adventures--the conquest of Phaea, a wild sow (or a female
robber, so styled from the brutality of her life)--the robber Sciron
cast headlong from a precipice--Procrustes stretched on his own bed--
attested the courage and fortune of the wanderer, and at length he
arrived at the banks of the Cephisus. Here he was saluted by some of
the Phytalidae, a sacred family descended from Phytalus, the beloved
of Ceres, and was duly purified from the blood of the savages he had
slain. Athens was the first place at which he was hospitably
entertained. He arrived at an opportune moment; the Colchian Medea,
of evil and magic fame, had fled from Corinth and taken refuge with
Aegeus, whose affections she had insnared. By her art she promised
him children to supply his failing line, and she gave full trial to
the experiment by establishing herself the partner of the royal couch.
But it was not likely that the numerous sons of Pallas would regard
this connexion with indifference, and faction and feud reigned
throughout the city. Medea discovered the secret of the birth of
Theseus; and, resolved by poison to rid herself of one who would
naturally interfere with her designs on Aegeus, she took advantage of
the fear and jealousies of the old king, and persuaded him to become
her accomplice in the premeditated crime. A banquet, according to the
wont of those hospitable times, was given to the stranger. The king
was at the board, the cup of poison at hand, when Theseus, wishing to
prepare his father for the welcome news he had to divulge, drew the
sword or cutlass which Aegeus had made the token of his birth, and
prepared to carve with it the meat that was set before him. The sword
caught the eye of the king--he dashed the poison to the ground, and
after a few eager and rapid questions, recognised his son in his
intended victim. The people were assembled--Theseus was acknowledged
by the king, and received with joy by the multitude, who had already
heard of the feats of the hero. The traditionary place where the
poison fell was still shown in the time of Plutarch. The sons of
Pallas ill brooked the arrival and acknowledgment of this unexpected
heir to the throne. They armed themselves and their followers, and
prepared for war. But one half of their troops, concealed in ambush,
were cut off by Theseus (instructed in their movements by the
treachery of a herald), and the other half, thus reduced, were obliged
to disperse. So Theseus remained the undisputed heir to the Athenian
throne.
IV. It would be vain for the historian, but delightful for the poet,
to follow at length this romantic hero through all his reputed
enterprises. I can only rapidly sketch the more remarkable. I pass,
then, over the tale how he captured alive the wild bull of Marathon,
and come at once to that expedition to Crete, which is indissolubly
intwined with immortal features of love and poetry. It is related
that Androgeus, a son of Minos, the celebrated King of Crete, and by
his valour worthy of such a sire, had been murdered in Attica; some
suppose by the jealousies of Aegeus, who appears to have had a
singular distrust of all distinguished strangers. Minos retaliated by
a war which wasted Attica, and was assisted in its ravages by the
pestilence and the famine. The oracle of Apollo, which often laudably
reconciled the quarrels of princes, terminated the contest by
enjoining the Athenians to appease the just indignation of Minos.
They despatched, therefore, ambassadors to Crete, and consented, in
token of submission, to send every ninth year a tribute of seven
virgins and seven young men. The little intercourse that then existed
between states, conjoined with the indignant grief of the parents at
the loss of their children, exaggerated the evil of the tribute. The
hostages were said by the Athenians to be exposed in an intricate
labyrinth, and devoured by a monster, the creature of unnatural
intercourse, half man half bull; but the Cretans, certainly the best
authority in the matter, stripped the account of the fable, and
declared that the labyrinth was only a prison in which the youths and
maidens were confined on their arrival--that Minos instituted games in
honour of Androgeus, and that the Athenian captives were the prize of
the victors. The first victor was the chief of the Cretan army, named
Taurus, and he, being fierce and unmerciful, treated the slaves he
thus acquired with considerable cruelty. Hence the origin of the
labyrinth and the Minotaur. And Plutarch, giving this explanation of
the Cretans, cites Aristotle to prove that the youths thus sent were
not put to death by Minos, but retained in servile employments, and
that their descendants afterward passed into Thrace, and were called
Bottiaeans. We must suppose, therefore, in consonance not only with
these accounts, but the manners of the age, that the tribute was
merely a token of submission, and the objects of it merely considered
as slaves. [90]
Of Minos himself all accounts are uncertain. There seems no
sufficient ground to doubt, indeed, his existence, nor the extended
power which, during his reign, Crete obtained in Greece. It is most
probable that it was under Phoenician influence that Crete obtained
its maritime renown; but there is no reason to suppose Minos himself
Phoenician.
After the return of Theseus, the time came when the tribute to Crete
was again to be rendered. The people murmured their dissatisfaction.
“It was the guilt of Aegeus,” said they, “which caused the wrath of
Minos, yet Aegeus alone escaped its penalty; their lawful children
were sacrificed to the Cretan barbarity, but the doubtful and
illegitimate stranger, whom Aegeus had adopted, went safe and free.”
Theseus generously appeased these popular tumults: he insisted on
being himself included in the seven.
V. Twice before had this human tribute been sent to Crete; and in
token of the miserable and desperate fate which, according to vulgar
belief, awaited the victims, a black sail had been fastened to the
ship.
But this time, Aegeus, inspired by the cheerful confidence of his son,
gave the pilot a white sail, which he was to hoist, if, on his return,
he bore back Theseus in safety: if not, the black was once more to be
the herald of an unhappier fate. It is probable that Theseus did not
esteem this among the most dangerous of his adventures. At the court
of the wise Pittheus, or in the course of his travels, he had
doubtless heard enough of the character of Minos, the greatest and
most sagacious monarch of his time, to be convinced that the son of
the Athenian king would have little to fear from his severity. He
arrived at Crete, and obtained the love of Ariadne, the daughter of
Minos. Now follows a variety of contradictory accounts, the most
probable and least poetical of which are given by Plutarch; but as he
concludes them all by the remark that none are of certainty, it is a
needless task to repeat them: it suffices to relate, that either with
or without the consent of Minos, Theseus departed from Crete, in
company with Ariadne, and that by one means or the other he
thenceforth freed the Athenians from the payment of the accustomed
tribute. As it is obvious that with the petty force with which, by
all accounts, he sailed to Crete, he could not have conquered the
powerful Minos in his own city, so it is reasonable to conclude, as
one of the traditions hath it, that the king consented to his alliance
with his daughter, and, in consequence of that marriage, waived all
farther claim to the tribute of the Athenians. [91]
Equal obscurity veils the fate of the loving Ariadne; but the
supposition which seems least objectionable is, that Theseus was
driven by storm either on Cyprus or Naxos, and Ariadne being then with
child, and rendered ill by the violence of the waves, was left on
shore by her lover while he returned to take charge of his vessel;
that she died in childbed, and that Theseus, on his return, was
greatly afflicted, and instituted an annual festival in her honour.
While we adopt the story most probable in itself, and most honourable
to the character of the Athenian hero, we cannot regret the various
romance which is interwoven with the tale of the unfortunate Cretan,
since it has given us some of the most beautiful inventions of
poetry;--the Labyrinth love-lighted by Ariadne--the Cretan maid
deserted by the stranger with whom she fled--left forlorn and alone on
the Naxian shore--and consoled by Bacchus and his satyr horde.
VI. Before he arrived at Athens, Theseus rested at Delos, where he is
said to have instituted games, and to have originated the custom of
crowning the victor with the palm. Meanwhile Aegeus waited the return
of his son. On the Cecropian rock that yet fronts the sea, he watched
the coming of the vessel and the waving of the white sail: the masts
appeared--the ship approached--the white sail was not visible: in the
joy and the impatience of the homeward crew, the pilot had forgotten
to hoist the appointed signal, and the old man in despair threw
himself from the rock and was dashed to pieces. Theseus received the
news of his father’s death with sorrow and lamentation. His triumph
and return were recorded by periodical festivals, in which the fate of
Aegeus was typically alluded to, and the vessel of thirty oars with
which he had sailed to Crete was preserved by the Athenians to the
times of Demetrius the Phalerean--so often new-pieced and repaired,
that it furnished a favourite thesis to philosophical disputants,
whether it was or was not the same vessel which Theseus had employed.
VII. Possessed of the supreme power, Theseus now bent his genius to
the task of legislation, and in this part of his life we tread upon
firmer ground, because the most judicious of the ancient historians
[92] expressly attributes to the son of Aegeus those enactments which
so mainly contributed to consolidate the strength and union of the
Athenian people.
Although Cecrops is said to have brought the tribes of Attica under
one government, yet it will be remembered that he had divided the
territory into twelve districts, with a fortress or capital to each.
By degrees these several districts had become more and more distinct
from each other, and in many cases of emergency it was difficult to
obtain a general assembly or a general concurrence of the people; nay,
differences had often sprung up between the tribes, which had been
adjusted, not as among common citizens, by law, but as among jealous
enemies, by arms and bloodshed. It was the master policy of Theseus
to unite these petty commonwealths in one state. He applied in
person, and by all the arte of persuasion, to each tribe: the poor he
found ready enough to listen to an invitation which promised them the
shelter of a city, and the protection of a single government from the
outrage of many tyrants: the rich and the powerful were more jealous
of their independent, scattered, and, as it were, feudal life. But
these he sought to conciliate by promises that could not but flatter
that very prejudice of liberty which naturally at first induced them
to oppose his designs. He pledged his faith to a constitution which
should leave the power in the hands of the many. He himself, as
monarch, desired only the command in war, and in peace the
guardianship of laws he was equally bound to obey. Some were induced
by his persuasions, others by the fear of his power, until at length
he obtained his object. By common consent he dissolved the
towns’-corporations and councils in each separate town, and built in
Athens one common prytaneum or council-hall, existent still in the time
of Plutarch. He united the scattered streets and houses of the citadel,
and the new town that had grown up along the plain, by the common name
of “Athens,” and instituted the festival of the Panathenaea, in honour
of the guardian goddess of the city, and as a memorial of the
confederacy. Adhering then to his promises, he set strict and narrow
limits to the regal power, created, under the name of eupatrids or
well-born, an hereditary nobility, and divided into two orders (the
husbandmen and mechanics) the remainder of the people. The care of
religion, the explanation of the laws, and the situations of
magistrates, were the privilege of the nobles. He thus laid the
foundation of a free, though aristocratic constitution--according to
Aristotle, the first who surrendered the absolute sway of royalty, and
receiving from the rhetorical Isocrates the praise that it was a contest
which should give most, the people of power, or the king of freedom. As
an extensive population was necessary to a powerful state, so Theseus
invited to Athens all strangers willing to share in the benefits of its
protection, granting them equal security of life and law; and he set a
demarcation to the territory of the state by the boundary of a pillar
erected in the Isthmus, dividing Ionia from Peloponnesus. The Isthmian
games in honour of Neptune were also the invention of Theseus.
VIII. Such are the accounts of the legislative enactments of Theseus.
But of these we must reject much. We may believe from the account of
Thucydides that jealousies among some Attic towns--which might either
possess, or pretend to, an independence never completely annihilated
by Cecrops and his successors, and which the settlement of foreigners
of various tribes and habits would have served to increase--were so
far terminated as to induce submission to the acknowledged supremacy
of Athens as the Attic capital; and that the right of justice, and
even of legislation, which had before been the prerogative of each
separate town (to the evident weakening of the supreme and regal
authority), was now concentrated in the common council-house of
Athens. To Athens, as to a capital, the eupatrids of Attica would
repair as a general residence [93]. The city increased in population
and importance, and from this period Thucydides dates the enlargement
of the ancient city, by the addition of the Lower Town. That Theseus
voluntarily lessened the royal power, it is not necessary to believe.
In the heroic age a warlike race had sprung up, whom no Grecian
monarch appears to have attempted to govern arbitrarily in peace,
though they yielded implicitly to his authority in war. Himself on a
newly-won and uncertain throne, it was the necessity as well as the
policy of Theseus to conciliate the most powerful of his subjects. It
may also be conceded, that he more strictly defined the distinctions
between the nobles and the remaining classes, whether yeomen or
husbandmen, mechanics or strangers; and it is recorded that the
honours and the business of legislation were the province of the
eupatrids. It is possible that the people might be occasionally
convened--but it is clear that they had little, if any, share in the
government of the state. But the mere establishment and confirmation
of a powerful aristocracy, and the mere collection of the population
into a capital, were sufficient to prepare the way for far more
democratic institutions than Theseus himself contemplated or designed.
For centuries afterward an oligarchy ruled in Athens; but, free
itself, that oligarchy preserved in its monopoly the principles of
liberty, expanding in their influence with the progress of society.
The democracy of Athens was not an ancient, yet not a sudden,
constitution. It developed itself slowly, unconsciously,
continuously--passing the allotted orbit of royalty, oligarchy,
aristocracy, timocracy, tyranny, till at length it arrived at its
dazzling zenith, blazed--waned--and disappeared.
After the successful issue of his legislative attempts, we next hear
of Theseus less as the monarch of history than as the hero of song.
On these later traditions, which belong to fable, it is not necessary
to dwell. Our own Coeur de Lion suggests no improbable resemblance to
a spirit cast in times yet more wild and enterprising, and without
seeking interpretations, after the fashion of allegory or system, of
each legend, it is the most simple hypothesis, that Theseus really
departed in quest of adventure from a dominion that afforded no scope
for a desultory and eager ambition; and that something of truth lurks
beneath many of the rich embellishments which his wanderings and
exploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibility
of the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race of
Attica, who, Plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind that
undertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with the
people, or rather with the nobles. The absence of a king is always
the nurse of seditions, and Menestheus succeeded in raising so
powerful a faction against the hero, that on his return Theseus was
unable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring forth a
solemn curse on the Athenians, departed to Scyros, where he either
fell by accident from a precipice, or was thrown down by the king.
His death at first was but little regarded; in after-times, to appease
his ghost and expiate his curse, divine honours were awarded to his
memory; and in the most polished age of his descendants, his supposed
remains, indicated by an eagle in the skeleton of a man of giant
stature, with a lance of brass and a sword by his side, were brought
to Athens in the galley of Cimon, hailed by the shouts of a joyous
multitude, “as if the living Theseus were come again.”
X. I have not altogether discarded, while I have abridged, the
legends relating to a hero who undoubtedly exercised considerable
influence over his country and his time, because in those legends we
trace, better than we could do by dull interpretations equally
unsatisfactory though more prosaic, the effigy of the heroic age--not
unillustrative of the poetry and the romance which at once formed and
indicated important features in the character of the Athenians. Much
of the national spirit of every people, even in its most civilized
epochs, is to be traced to the influence of that age which may be
called the heroic. The wild adventurers of the early Greece tended to
humanize even in their excesses. It is true that there are many
instances of their sternness, ferocity, and revenge;--they were
insolent from the consciousness of surpassing strength;--often cruel
from that contempt of life common to the warlike. But the darker side
of their character is far less commonly presented to us than the
brighter--they seem to have been alive to generous emotions more
readily than any other race so warlike in an age so rude--their
affections were fervid as their hatreds--their friendships more
remarkable than their feuds. Even their ferocity was not, as with the
Scandinavian heroes, a virtue and a boast--their public opinion
honoured the compassionate and the clement. Thus Hercules is said
first to have introduced the custom of surrendering to the enemy the
corpses of their slain; and mildness, justice, and courtesy are no
less his attributes than invincible strength and undaunted courage.
Traversing various lands, these paladins of an elder chivalry acquired
an experience of different governments and customs, which assisted on
their return to polish and refine the admiring tribes which their
achievements had adorned. Like the knights of a Northern mythus,
their duty was to punish the oppressor and redress the wronged, and
they thus fixed in the wild elements of unsettled opinion a recognised
standard of generosity and of justice. Their deeds became the theme
of the poets, who sought to embellish their virtues and extenuate
their offences. Thus, certain models, not indeed wholly pure or
excellent, but bright with many of those qualities which ennoble a
national character, were set before the emulation of the aspiring and
the young:--and the traditional fame of a Hercules or a Theseus assisted
to inspire the souls of those who, ages afterward, broke the Mede at
Marathon, and arrested the Persian might in the Pass of Thermopylae.
For, as the spirit of a poet has its influence on the destiny and
character of nations, so TIME itself hath his own poetry, preceding
and calling forth the poetry of the human genius, and breathing
inspirations, imaginative and imperishable, from the great deeds and
gigantic images of an ancestral and traditionary age.