the Poems to suit the feelings of a more civilized audience; see _Rise
of the Greek Epic_,{3} pp. 120-4. Many scholars believe that the Poems
did not exist as a written book till the public copy was made by
Pisistratus; see Cauer, _Grundfragen der Homerkritik_{2}, (1909), pp.
113-45; _R. G. E._,{3} pp. 304-16; Leaf, _Iliad_, vol. i, p. xvi. This
view is tempting, though the evidence seems to be insufficient to
justify a pronouncement either way. If it is true, then various passages
which show a verbal use of earlier documents (like the Bellerophon
passage, _R. G. E._,{3} pp. 175 ff.) cannot have been put in before the
Athenian period.
[49:2] In his _Zeus, the Indo-European Sky-God_ (1914, 1924). See _R. G.
E._,{3} pp. 40 ff.
[50:1] A somewhat similar change occurred in Othin, though he always
retains more of the crooked wizard.
[50:2] _Themis_, chap. i. On the Zeus of Aeschylus cf. _R. G. E._,{3}
pp. 277 ff.; Gomperz, _Greek Thinkers_, ii. 6-8.
[50:3] Farnell, _Cults_, iv. 100-4. See, however, Gruppe, p. 107 f.
[51:1] _Hymn. Ap._ init. Cf. Wilamowitz's Oxford Lecture on 'Apollo'
(Oxford, 1907).
[51:2] _Themis_, p. 439 f. Cf. ὁ Ἀγοραῖος. Other explanations of the
name in Gruppe, p. 1224 f., notes.
[51:3] Hdt. i. 147; Plato, _Euthyd._ 302 c: _Socrates_. 'No Ionian
recognizes a Zeus Patrôos; Apollo is our Patrôos, because he was father
of Ion.'
[52:1] See Gruppe, p. 1206, on the development of his 'Philistine
thunderstorm-goddess'.
[52:2] Hoffmann, _Gesch. d. griechischen Sprache_, Leipzig, 1911, p. 16.
Cf. Pind. _Ol._ vii. 35; Ov. _Metam._ ix. 421; xv. 191, 700, &c.
[53:1] As to the name, Ἁθηναία is of course simply 'Athenian'; the
shorter and apparently original form Ἀθάνα, Ἀθήνη is not so clear, but
it seems most likely to mean 'Attic'. Cf. Meister, _Gr. Dial._ ii. 290.
He classes under the head of Oertliche Bestimmungen: ἁ θεὸς ἁ Παφία
(Collitz and Bechtel, _Sammlung der griechischen Dialekt-Inschriften_,
2, 3, 14{a}, {b}, 15, 16). 'In Paphos selbst hiess die Göttin nur ἁ θεός
oder ἁ ϝάνασσα;--ἁ θιὸς ἁ Γολγία (61)--ἁ θιὸς ἁ Ἀθάνα ἁ πὲρ Ἠδάλιον (60,
27, 28), 'die Göttin, die Athenische, die über Edalion (waltet)';
'Ἀθ-άνα ist, wie J. Baunack (_Studia Nicolaitana_, s. 27) gezeigt hat,
das Adjectiv zu (*Ἀσσ-ίς 'Seeland'): Ἀττ-ίς; Ἀτθ-ίς; *Ἀθ-ίς; also Ἀθ-άνα
= Ἀττ-ική, Ἀθ-ῆναι ursprünglich Ἀθ-ῆναι κῶμαι.' Other derivations in
Gruppe, p. 1194. Or again αἱ Ἀθῆναι may be simply 'the place where the
Athenas are', like οἱ ἰχθύες, the fish-market; 'the Athenas' would be
statues, like οἱ Ἑρμαῖ--the famous 'Attic Maidens' on the Acropolis.
This explanation would lead to some interesting results.
We need not here consider how, partly by identification with other
Korae, like Pallas, Onka, &c., partly by a genuine spread of the cult,
Athena became prominent in other cities. As to Homer, Athena is far more
deeply imbedded in the _Odyssey_ than in the _Iliad_. I am inclined to
agree with those who believe that our _Odyssey_ was very largely
composed in Athens, so that in most of the poem Athena is original. (Cf.
O. Seeck, _Die Quellen der Odyssee_ (1887), pp. 366-420; Mülder, _Die
Ilias and ihre Quellen_ (1910), pp. 350-5.) In some parts of the _Iliad_
the name Athena may well have been substituted for some Northern goddess
whose name is now lost.
[53:2] It is worth noting also that this Homeric triad seems also to be
recognized as the chief Athenian triad. Plato, _Euthyd._ 302 c, quoted
above, continues: _Socrates._ 'We have Zeus with the names Herkeios and
Phratrios, but not Patrôos, and Athena Phratria.' _Dionysodorus._ 'Well
that is enough. You have, apparently, Apollo and Zeus and Athena?'
_Socrates._ 'Certainly.'--Apollo is put first because he has been
accepted as Patrôos. But see _R. G. E._,{3} p. 49, n.
[54:1] Ridgeway, _Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse_, 1905,
pp. 287-93; and _Early Age of Greece_, 1901, p. 223.
[54:2] Cf. Plut. _Q. Conv._ ix. 6; Paus. ii. 1. 6; 4. 6; 15. 5; 30. 6.
[54:3] So in the non-Homeric tradition, Eur. _Troades_ init. In the
_Iliad_ he is made an enemy of Troy, like Athena, who is none the less
the Guardian of the city.
[56:1] _Od._ θ 339 ff.
[56:2] See Paus. viii. 32. 4. _Themis_, pp. 295, 296.
[56:3] For the connexion of Ἥρα ἤρως Ἡρακλῆς (Ἡρύκαλος in Sophron, fr.
142 K) see especially A. B. Cook, _Class. Review_, 1906, pp. 365 and
416. The name Ἥρα seems probably to be an 'ablaut' form of ὥρα: cf.
phrases like Ἥρα τελεία. Other literature in Gruppe, pp. 452, 1122.
[57:1] _Prolegomena_, p. 315, referring to H. D. Müller, _Mythologie d.
gr. Stämme_, pp. 249-55. Another view is suggested by Mülder, _Die Ilias
und ihre Quellen_, p. 136. The jealous Hera comes from the
Heracles-saga, in which the wife hated the bastard.
[57:2] P. Gardner, in _Numismatic Chronicle_, N.S. xx, 'Ares as a
Sun-God'.
[57:3] Chadwick, _Heroic Age_, especially pp. 414, 459-63.
[59:1] Chap. xviii.
[59:2] Introduction to his edition of the _Choëphoroe_, p. 9.
[61:1] The spirit appears very simply in Eur. _Iph. Taur._ 386 ff.,
where Iphigenia rejects the gods who demand human sacrifice:
These tales be false, false as those feastings wild
Of Tantalus, and gods that tare a child.
This land of murderers to its gods hath given
Its own lust. Evil dwelleth not in heaven.
Yet just before she has accepted the loves of Zeus and Leto without
objection. 'Leto, whom Zeus loved, could never have given birth to such
a monster!' Cf. Plutarch, _Vit. Pelop._ xxi, where Pelopidas, in
rejecting the idea of a human sacrifice, says: 'No high and more than
human beings could be pleased with so barbarous and unlawful a
sacrifice. It was not the fabled Titans and Giants who ruled the world,
but one who was a Father of all gods and men.' Of course, criticism and
expurgation of the legends is too common to need illustration. See
especially Kaibel, _Daktyloi Idaioi_, 1902, p. 512.
[62:1] Aristophanes did much to reduce this element in comedy; see
_Clouds_, 537 ff.: also _Albany Review_, 1907, p. 201.
[62:2] _R. G. E._,{3} p. 139 f.
[64:1] Justin, _Cohort._ c. 15. But such pantheistic language is common
in Orphic and other mystic literature. See the fragments of the Orphic
Διαθῆκαι (pp. 144 ff. in Abel's _Hymni_).
[65:1] I have not attempted to consider the Cretan cults. They lie
historically outside the range of these essays, and I am not competent
to deal with evidence that is purely archaeological. But in general I
imagine the Cretan religion to be a development from the religion
described in my first essay, affected both by the change in social
structure from village to sea-empire and by foreign, especially
Egyptian, influences. No doubt the Achaean gods were influenced on their
side by Cretan conceptions, though perhaps not so much as Ionia was. Cf.
the Cretan influences in Ionian vase-painting, and e. g. A. B. Cook on
'Cretan Axe-cult outside Crete', _Transactions of the Third
International Congress for the History of Religion_, ii. 184. See also
Sir A. Evans's striking address on 'The Minoan and Mycenaean Element in
Hellenic Life', _J. H. S._ xxxii. 277-97.
[66:1] See _R. G. E._,{3} p. 58 f.
[68:1] 2 Sam. vi. 6. See S. Reinach, _Orpheus_, p. 5 (English
Translation, p. 4).
[72:1] Cf. Sam Wide in Gercke and Norden's _Handbuch_, ii. 217-19.
[73:1] The Ξύνεσις in which the Chorus finds it hard to believe,
_Hippolytus_, 1105. Cf. _Iph. Aul._ 394, 1189; _Herc._ 655; also the
ideas in _Suppl._ 203, Eur. Fr. 52, 9, where Ξύνεσις is implanted in man
by a special grace of God. The gods are ξυνετοί, but of course Euripides
goes too far in actually praying to Ξύνεσις, Ar. _Frogs_, 893.
[77:1] Cf. the beautiful defence of idols by Maximus of Tyre, Or. viii
(in Wilamowitz's _Lesebuch_, ii. 338 ff.). I quote the last paragraph:
'God Himself, the father and fashioner of all that is, older than the
Sun or the Sky, greater than time and eternity and all the flow of
being, is unnameable by any lawgiver, unutterable by any voice, not to
be seen by any eye. But we, being unable to apprehend His essence, use
the help of sounds and names and pictures, of beaten gold and ivory and
silver, of plants and rivers, mountain-peaks and torrents, yearning for
the knowledge of Him, and in our weakness naming all that is beautiful
in this world after His nature--just as happens to earthly lovers. To
them the most beautiful sight will be the actual lineaments of the
beloved, but for remembrance' sake they will be happy in the sight of a
lyre, a little spear, a chair, perhaps, or a running-ground, or anything
in the world that wakens the memory of the beloved. Why should I further
examine and pass judgement about Images? Let men know what is divine (τὸ
θεῖον γένος), let them know: that is all. If a Greek is stirred to the
remembrance of God by the art of Pheidias, an Egyptian by paying worship
to animals, another man by a river, another by fire--I have no anger for
their divergences; only let them know, let them love, let them
remember.'
III
THE GREAT SCHOOLS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY, B. C.
There is a passage in Xenophon describing how, one summer night, in 405
B. C., people in Athens heard a cry of wailing, an _oimôgê_, making its
way up between the long walls from the Piraeus, and coming nearer and
nearer as they listened. It was the news of the final disaster of
Kynoskephalai, brought at midnight to the Piraeus by the galley Paralos.
'And that night no one slept. They wept for the dead, but far more
bitterly for themselves, when they reflected what things they had done
to the people of Mêlos, when taken by siege, to the people of Histiaea,
and Skîonê and Torônê and Aegîna, and many more of the Hellenes.'[79:1]
The echo of that lamentation seems to ring behind most of the literature
of the fourth century, and not the Athenian literature alone. Defeat can
on occasion leave men their self-respect or even their pride; as it did
after Chaeronea in 338 and after the Chremonidean War in 262, not to
speak of Thermopylae. But the defeat of 404 not only left Athens at the
mercy of her enemies. It stripped her of those things of which she had
been inwardly most proud; her 'wisdom', her high civilization, her
leadership of all that was most Hellenic in Hellas. The 'Beloved City'
of Pericles had become a tyrant, her nature poisoned by war, her
government a by-word in Greece for brutality. And Greece as a whole
felt the tragedy of it. It is curious how this defeat of Athens by
Sparta seems to have been felt abroad as a defeat for Greece itself and
for the hopes of the Greek city state. The fall of Athens mattered more
than the victory of Lysander. Neither Sparta nor any other city ever
attempted to take her place. And no writer after the year 400 speaks of
any other city as Pericles used to speak of fifth-century Athens, not
even Polybius 250 years later, when he stands amazed before the solidity
and the 'fortune' of Rome.
The city state, the Polis, had concentrated upon itself almost all the
loyalty and the aspirations of the Greek mind. It gave security to life.
It gave meaning to religion. And in the fall of Athens it had failed. In
the third century, when things begin to recover, we find on the one hand
the great military monarchies of Alexander's successors, and on
the other, a number of federations of tribes, which were generally
strongest in the backward regions where the city state had been least
developed. Τὸ κοινὸν τῶν Αἰτωλῶν or τῶν Ἀχαιῶν had become more important
than Athens or Corinth, and Sparta was only strong by means of a
League.[80:1] By that time the Polis was recognized as a comparatively
weak social organism, capable of very high culture but not quite able,
as the Covenant of the League of Nations expresses it, 'to hold its own
under the strenuous conditions of modern life'. Besides, it was not now
ruled by the best citizens. The best had turned away from politics.
This great discouragement did not take place at a blow. Among the
practical statesmen probably most did not form any theory about the
cause of the failure but went on, as practical statesmen must, doing as
best they could from difficulty to difficulty. But many saw that the
fatal danger to Greece was disunion, as many see it in Europe now. When
Macedon proved indisputably stronger than Athens Isocrates urged Philip
to accept the leadership of Greece against the barbarian and against
barbarism. He might thus both unite the Greek cities and also evangelize
the world. Lysias, the democratic and anti-Spartan orator, had been
groping for a similar solution as early as 384 B. C., and was prepared
to make an even sharper sacrifice for it. He appealed at Olympia for a
crusade of all the free Greek cities against Dionysius of Syracuse, and
begged Sparta herself to lead it. The Spartans are 'of right the leaders
of Hellas by their natural nobleness and their skill in war. They alone
live still in a city unsacked, unwalled, unconquered, uncorrupted by
faction, and have followed always the same modes of life. They have been
the saviours of Hellas in the past, and one may hope that their freedom
will be everlasting.'[81:1] A great and generous change in one who had
'learned by suffering' in the Peloponnesian War. Others no doubt merely
gave their submission to the stronger powers that were now rising. There
were openings for counsellors, for mercenary soldiers, for court savants
and philosophers and poets, and, of course, for agents in every free
city who were prepared for one motive or another not to kick against the
pricks. And there were always also those who had neither learned nor
forgotten, the unrepentant idealists; too passionate or too heroic or,
as some will say, too blind, to abandon their life-long devotion to
'Athens' or to 'Freedom' because the world considered such ideals out of
date. They could look the ruined Athenians in the face, after the lost
battle, and say with Demosthenes, ''Οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως ἡμάρτετε.
It cannot be that you did wrong, it cannot be!'[82:1]
But in practical politics the currents of thought are inevitably
limited. It is in philosophy and speculation that we find the richest
and most varied reaction to the Great Failure. It takes different shapes
in those writers, like Plato and Xenophon, who were educated in the
fifth century and had once believed in the Great City, and those whose
whole thinking life belonged to the time of disillusion.
Plato was disgusted with democracy and with Athens, but he retained his
faith in the city, if only the city could be set on the right road.
There can be little doubt that he attributes to the bad government of
the Demos many evils which were really due to extraneous causes or to
the mere fallibility of human nature. Still his analysis of democracy is
one of the most brilliant things in the history of political theory. It
is so acute, so humorous, so affectionate; and at many different ages of
the world has seemed like a portrait of the actual contemporary society.
Like a modern popular newspaper, Plato's democracy makes it its business
to satisfy existing desires and give people a 'good time'. It does not
distinguish between higher and lower. Any one man is as good as another,
and so is any impulse or any idea. Consequently the commoner have the
pull. Even the great democratic statesmen of the past, he now sees,
have been ministers to mob desires; they have 'filled the city with
harbours and docks and walls and revenues and such-like trash, without
Sophrosynê and righteousness'. The sage or saint has no place in
practical politics. He would be like a man in a den of wild beasts. Let
him and his like seek shelter as best they can, standing up behind some
wall while the storm of dust and sleet rages past. The world does not
want truth, which is all that he could give it. It goes by appearances
and judges its great men with their clothes on and their rich relations
round them. After death, the judges will judge them naked, and alone;
and then we shall see![83:1]
Yet, in spite of all this, the child of the fifth century cannot keep
his mind from politics. The speculations which would be scouted by the
mass in the marketplace can still be discussed with intimate friends and
disciples, or written in books for the wise to read. Plato's two longest
works are attempts to construct an ideal society; first, what may be
called a City of Righteousness, in the _Republic_; and afterwards in
his old age, in the _Laws_, something more like a City of Refuge,
uncontaminated by the world; a little city on a hill-top away in Crete,
remote from commerce and riches and the 'bitter and corrupting sea'
which carries them; a city where life shall move in music and discipline
and reverence for the things that are greater than man, and the songs
men sing shall be not common songs but the preambles of the city's laws,
showing their purpose and their principle; where no wall will be needed
to keep out the possible enemy, because the courage and temperance of
the citizens will be wall enough, and if war comes the women equally
with the men 'will fight for their young, as birds do'.
This hope is very like despair; but, such as it is, Plato's thought is
always directed towards the city. No other form of social life ever
tempts him away, and he anticipates no insuperable difficulty in keeping
the city in the right path if once he can get it started right. The
first step, the necessary revolution, is what makes the difficulty. And
he sees only one way. In real life he had supported the conspiracy of
the extreme oligarchs in 404 which led to the rule of the 'Thirty
Tyrants'; but the experience sickened him of such methods. There was no
hope unless, by some lucky combination, a philosopher should become a
king or some young king turn philosopher. 'Give me a city governed by a
tyrant,' he says in the _Laws_,[84:1] 'and let the tyrant be young, with
a good memory, quick at learning, of high courage, and a generous
nature. . . . And besides, let him have a wise counsellor!' Ironical
fortune granted him an opportunity to try the experiment himself at the
court of Syracuse, first with the elder and then, twenty years later,
with the younger Dionysius (387 and 367 B. C.). It is a story of
disappointment, of course; bitter, humiliating and ludicrous
disappointment, but with a touch of that sublimity which seems so often
to hang about the errors of the wise. One can study them in Seneca at
the court of Nero, or in Turgot with Louis; not so well perhaps in
Voltaire with Frederick. Plato failed in his enterprise, but he did
keep faith with the 'Righteous City'.
Another of the Socratic circle turned in a different direction.
Xenophon, an exile from his country, a brilliant soldier and adventurer
as well as a man of letters, is perhaps the first Greek on record who
openly lost interest in the city. He thought less about cities and
constitutions than about great men and nations, or generals and armies.
To him it was idle to spin cobweb formations of ideal laws and
communities. Society is right enough if you have a really fine man to
lead it. It may be that his ideal was formed in childhood by stories of
Pericles and the great age when Athens was 'in name a democracy but in
truth an empire of one leading man'. He gave form to his dream in the
_Education of Cyrus_, an imaginary account of the training which formed
Cyrus the Great into an ideal king and soldier. The _Cyropaedeia_ is
said to have been intended as a counterblast to Plato's _Republic_, and
it may have provoked Plato's casual remark in the _Laws_ that 'Cyrus
never so much as touched education'. No doubt the book suffered in
persuasiveness from being so obviously fictitious.[85:1] For example,
the Cyrus of Xenophon dies peacefully in his bed after much affectionate
and edifying advice to his family, whereas all Athens knew from
Herodotus how the real Cyrus had been killed in a war against the
Massagetae, and his head, to slake its thirst for that liquid, plunged
into a wineskin full of human blood. Perhaps also the monarchical rule
of Cyrus was too absolute for Greek taste. At any rate, later on
Xenophon adopted a more real hero, whom he had personally known and
admired.
Agesilaus, king of Sparta, had been taken as a type of 'virtue' even by
the bitter historian Theopompus. Agesilaus was not only a great general.
He knew how to 'honour the gods, do his duty in the field, and to
practise obedience'. He was true to friend and foe. On one memorable
occasion he kept his word even to an enemy who had broken his. He
enjoined kindness to enemy captives. When he found small children left
behind by the barbarians in some town that he occupied--because either
their parents or the slave-merchants had no room for them--he always
took care of them or gave them to guardians of their own race: 'he never
let the dogs and wolves get them'. On the other hand, when he sold his
barbarian prisoners he sent them to market naked, regardless of their
modesty, because it cheered his own soldiers to see how white and fat
they were. He wept when he won a victory over Greeks; 'for he loved all
Greeks and only hated barbarians'. When he returned home after his
successful campaigns, he obeyed the orders of the ephors without
question; his house and furniture were as simple as those of a common
man, and his daughter the princess, when she went to and fro to Amyclae,
went simply in the public omnibus. He reared chargers and hunting dogs;
the rearing of chariot horses he thought effeminate. But he advised his
sister Cynisca about hers, and she won the chariot race at Olympia.
'Have a king like that', says Xenophon, 'and all will be well. He will
govern right; he will beat your enemies; and he will set an example of
good life. If you want Virtue in the state look for it in a good man,
not in a speculative tangle of laws. The Spartan constitution, as it
stands, is good enough for any one.'
But it was another of the great Socratics who uttered first the
characteristic message of the fourth century, and met the blows of
Fortune with a direct challenge. Antisthenes was a man twenty years
older than Plato. He had fought at Tanagra in 426 B. C. He had been
friends with Gorgias and Prodicus, the great Sophists of the Periclean
age. He seems to have been, at any rate till younger and more brilliant
men cut him out, the recognized philosophic heir of Socrates.[87:1] And
late in life, after the fall of Athens and the condemnation and death of
his master, the man underwent a curious change of heart. He is taunted
more than once with the lateness of his discovery of truth,[87:2] and
with his childish subservience to the old _jeux d'esprit_ of the
Sceptics which professed to prove the impossibility of knowledge.[87:3]
It seems that he had lost faith in speculation and dialectic and the
elaborate superstructures which Plato and others had built upon them;
and he felt, like many moralists after him, a sort of hostility to all
knowledge that was not immediately convertible into conduct.
But this scepticism was only part of a general disbelief in the world.
Greek philosophy had from the first been concerned with a fundamental
question which we moderns seldom put clearly to ourselves. It asked
'What is the Good?' meaning thereby 'What is the element of value in
life?' or 'What should be our chief aim in living?' A medieval Christian
would have answered without hesitation 'To go to Heaven and not be
damned', and would have been prepared with the necessary prescriptions
for attaining that end. But the modern world is not intensely enough
convinced of the reality of Sin and Judgement, Hell and Heaven, to
accept this answer as an authoritative guide in life, and has not
clearly thought out any other. The ancient Greek spent a great part of
his philosophical activity in trying, without propounding supernatural
rewards and punishments, or at least without laying stress on them, to
think out what the Good of man really was.