schoolboys. And yet once he stood on a level with Homer. He is in
reality the complement of Homer, and no picture of the Greek Middle Ages
can be complete without him. The Parian Marble sets Hesiod thirty years
earlier than Homer, Herodotus places them both about 850-800 B.C.
Hesiod’s principal works are two, the “Works and Days” and the
“Generations of Gods” or “Theogony.” The “Works and Days” is generally
supposed to be a treatise on husbandry, but it seems to be in origin a
letter of remonstrance to a wicked brother, Persis, who had ousted
Hesiod from his property. The letter is embroidered freely with morals,
maxims, and examples from mythology. Persis is exhorted to practise
industry and good farming, for which some proverbial hints are given.
But the main purport of this curious jumble is the reiteration of
complaints against the “bribe-devouring kings”--always in the
plural--who have given a corrupt judgment against the poet on his
brother’s lawsuit. No one pretends to see real monarchy or anything but
oligarchy in Hesiod, yet his rulers are called βασιλεῖς, just as are
Homer’s. The “Works and Days” contains also the earliest versions of two
most famous legends which together make up the Greek story of creation,
the story of how Prometheus stole fire from heaven and the story of
Pandora, the Eve of Greek mythology. The chief interest for modern
readers lies in a very quaint and curious list of taboos and some
personal reminiscences which form, I suppose, the oldest piece of
autobiography in existence. He has already described seafaring as a very
disagreeable business, to be avoided if possible; he now advises his
brother to “wait for a seasonable sailing day, and when it comes, then
drag down thy swift ship to the sea, and have a fit cargo stowed away on
it, that thou mayest return home with profit; even as my father and
thine, most witless Persis, used to make voyages for an honest living.
Once he came even to this country, after a long voyage in a black ship
from Cyme, in Æolis, turning not from rich resources and prosperity, but
from dire poverty, which Zeus gives to men. And he dwelt near Helicon in
this beggarly hamlet of Ascra--Ascra, vile in winter, uncomfortable in
summer, and good never at all. But do thou, my Persis, be seasonable in
all thy doings, but above all in seafaring praise a small ship, but put
thy cargo in a great one. The freight will be greater and the profit
greater if the winds keep off their dreadful storms. Whenever thou
turnest thy rash heart to trade, wishing to escape debt and joyless
famine, I will show thee the limits of the thundering main without being
skilled at all in seafaring or in ships, for I have never sailed the
broad sea in a ship except when I crossed to Eubœa from Aulis, where the
Achæans in times long past were storm-bound when they gathered a mighty
host from holy Hellas for Troy of the fair women. There did I take
passage for Chalcis to try for the prizes of wise Amphidamas” (_i.e._
prizes offered at his funeral games), “the many well-prepared prizes
which his lordly sons offered. There I boast to have won the prize for
the hymn, and brought home a tripod with handles which I set up to the
Muses of Helicon where first they taught me to be a clear-voiced bard.
So little trial have I made of well-caulked ships, but still I shall
declare the mind of Zeus who bears the ægis, for the Muses have taught
me to sing a hymn without bounds.”
[Illustration: Coin of Croton, showing Tripod]
Quaint old Hesiod! How like the literary man of all ages! He has never
been to sea except on the channel ferry, but in virtue of his literary
gifts he is competent to instruct other landsmen in navigation. So by
help of the Muses he declares the mind of Zeus--“Never put to sea in a
storm!”
Well, this is the reverse of Homer’s medal: the god-nurtured kings
frankly revealed as corrupt nobles, the unrelenting toil on the stony
farm, the perilous commercial enterprises in small unseaworthy ships,
the emigrant returning home to Bœotia in poverty from his Eldorado in
Æolis, the superstition, and the pessimism.
[Illustration: Ship of Odysseus. From a Vase]
III
THE AGES OF TRANSITION
οὐ μὴν οὐδ’ ὑπαρχόντων τούτων ἁπάντων ἤδη πόλις,
ἀλλ’ ἡ τοῦ εὖ ζῆν κοινωνία.--ARISTOTLE.
THE COMING OF APOLLO
“He bringeth to men and women cures for their grievous sicknesses, he
giveth the harp, and he granteth the Muse to whomsoever he will; he
ruleth his oracular shrine, bringing peace and lawful order into our
hearts; he stablished the descendants of Heracles and Ægimius in
Lacedæmon and Argos and most holy Pylos.” Such is the Theban poet’s
summary of the attributes of the Dorian god. Healing, harp-music and
lyric poetry, discipline fostered by the Delphic oracle, and the Dorian
government of Sparta, Argos, and Messenia--these are the gifts of Apollo
to Greece. There is nothing here to connect him with Nature-worship. He
is not even connected with light or sun.
We have already seen something of the earliest strata of religious
beliefs on Greek soil. The Ægean worship was principally “aniconic
fetishism”--that is, the worship of inanimate, possibly symbolical,
objects, such as stones, pillars, crosses, axes, horns, and trees. Then
there were animal deities, possibly totemistic in origin, such as the
snake-goddess, the dove-goddess, and the bull-man, or Minotaur, powers
mainly representing fecundity. There was certainly also ghost-worship;
for the dead in the tholos tombs were certainly honoured by sacrifices,
and very likely by human sacrifices at first. There seem to have been no
temples at all in these stages of religion; it was rather a system of
private local cults in great and bewildering variety. But it is certain
that the Ægean peoples had developed some wholly anthropomorphic deities
before the end. Some of the regular Olympian deities of historical
Greece seem to belong partially, and some wholly, to this earlier
civilisation. Poseidon, the sea-god, Hermes, the Arcadian shepherd-god,
and Demeter or Mother Earth, are of the latter class, with mysterious
forms like the Fates, the Curses, the Harpies, and the Sirens. But there
was little exclusiveness about ancient religion; new deities are quite
readily accepted into polytheistic systems, though in some cases there
was a protracted struggle to keep them out. Hesiod remarks that the
deities have many names for a single shape, and often a double name
reveals assimilation, such as Phœbus Apollo or Pallas Athene. In most
cases, indeed, the great name of an Olympian god covers a host of minor
deities with varying and sometimes quite opposite attributes. Thus the
national Zeus has swallowed up countless local heroes, as when the
Laconians worshipped Zeus Agamemnon.
All these processes of change are reflected in mythology. It would seem
as if mythologists, or, as we should say, expert theologians, set out to
reconcile the people to new forms of worship by inventing delightful
stories to account for the change. Homer and Hesiod were doing precisely
that sort of work. For example, the introduction of the Northern Zeus
was effected by means of a curious myth. It was agreed that he had not
always been King of Heaven; formerly his old father Cronos had ruled, he
whose wife was the earth. Zeus was born in Crete--that is, he was
attached to
[Illustration: PLATE XIII. HERMES KRIOPHOROS: (THE LAMB-CARRIER)]
an ancient Cretan story of a divine nativity in which a she-goat suckled
a babe. That indicates the transition from an animal deity to an
anthropomorphic one, just as does the old Mother Wolf of Roman legend.
Doubtless some artistic representations of a she-goat and a she-wolf
play their part in such stories. Again, Cronos is said to have tried to
crush the usurper in the bud by swallowing his dangerous child, but to
have swallowed a stone instead. That may cover the transition from
stone-and pillar-worship. Still more instructive are the legends of
contest between deities for worship at a particular shrine. The ordinary
device for the introduction of Zeus was to make him the father of the
local hero. “God,” says Voltaire, “first made man in His own likeness,
and man has been returning the compliment ever since.” It is the secret
of anthropomorphic religion that the worshipper is worshipping himself,
or rather an idealised vision of himself projected upon the public
conception of his god. The human heart has an unlimited power of thus
adapting its faith to its habits. Anthropologists are continually
telling us of the persistence of ancient cults in spite of pretended
changes of faith, rituals that belong to Artemis transferred to the
Virgin, dirges for Adonis transformed into mourning for Christ. Often
when the polite antiquarian Pausanias asked the Greeks of his day about
the objects of their worship he got conflicting answers. That is how it
becomes easy to make converts if you are content to leave ritual
unchanged, and that was how Apollo got himself accepted as the young
man’s god all over Greece. There was, indeed, a rival young man’s god in
Hermes, a very ancient deity. Remnants of antique aniconic worship
attach themselves to Hermes: his statues even in classical times are
three parts pillar to one part god. He is the shepherd-god of
Arcady,[15] and the Arcadians represent more purely than any other
peoples of Greece the aboriginal Ægean stratum. Hermes is a god of music
too, but his instrument
[Illustration: Lyre]
[Illustration: Cithara]
is the lyre, which in shape and construction resembles the modern
mandoline, for the body was made from the shell of a tortoise, an
indigenous Greek creature, with a sounding-board of parchment stretched
over it. Apollo properly plays on the cithara, or Northern harp. The
popularity of Hermes persisted throughout because he became identified
with Luck, and Luck is the one god we all worship. He is also associated
with commerce; he it is who drives a sharp bargain; and, as we saw, the
aboriginal stratum of Greece provided the trading element in the
Hellenic races. This attribute the trade-despising warriors of the
dominant race turned to his discredit, for poor Hermes in Homer, and
generally in literature, becomes a sharper of the worst description. If
you ask “Who stole the cows?” the answer is, “Hermes.” He is the
messenger of Zeus, but he is also his spy. Hermes, then, was much too
strongly planted to be uprooted by the intruding Apollo. But it seems
that some male god of the older race was swallowed up and bodily
incorporated under that name. For in classical Greece there are two
rival Apollos, one the Delian or Cynthian Apollo, the centre of whose
cult was the island of Delos, the other the true Dorian god, called
Pythian Apollo, and worshipped above all at Delphi. The Delian shrine
was a centre of the Ionians, and Delos afterwards became the
headquarters of the maritime league of Athens and the Ionian States.
Delos boasted itself to have been the god’s birthplace, and mythology
presented an elaborate nativity for this Apollo and his sister Artemis.
“Homeric” hymns to both Apollos are preserved, and it is interesting to
notice how the Ionian bard who is praising the Apollo of Delos mentions
all the centres of his worship in a longish list which tallies closely
with the list of Athenian allies in the Delian confederacy. But this
Delian Apollo is not the important one; in many respects he is only a
pale reflection of the other, and his vogue principally depended on the
extreme sanctity of the little island of Delos.
The true Apollo is the Northern god who had his home at Delphi. He and
his worship play such a prominent part in the making of classical as
distinct from prehistoric and heroic Greece that I put him in the
forefront of this age of transition. Delphi is one of the most
impressive sites in Greece, lying high in a narrow glen with precipitous
and almost awe-inspiring crags on every side.[16] Several times in Greek
history rash invaders failed to penetrate into this mysterious shrine.
The god’s majesty and the terrors of his abode were sufficient
protection. It is clear from the mythological presentation of his coming
that before Apollo there was already an ancient oracle at Delphi, the
source of which was a snake called Pytho. Snakes figure largely in the
animistic worship of the old race, as typifying the spirits of the dead
issuing from the earth. The myth described how Apollo came and conquered
this serpent. He built a great temple in this valley of Parnassus, and
took the place of Earth, or Themis, as Pythian Apollo, lord of the
Delphic oracle.
Apollo is the most virile god on Olympus, as he is the representative
god of the most manly race in Hellas, the Dorians. He is the young
athlete god. If we trace the history of his type in art we see him at
first a rudimentary male figure, only just evolved out of the pillar
shape. He is always nude in these early statues, and it is not easy to
say how many of the so-called early Apollos represent the god, and how
many are simply statues of male athletes. It makes little difference,
for the god and his worshipper are one. At first there is little
expression, as in the “Apollo of Orchomenos,”[17] for the artist is
still struggling with his stubborn material, happy if his chisel can get
the semblance of human shape out of the marble. In the next stage,
represented by the “Tenean Apollo,” the sculptor has attained
considerable mastery over his tools, and has succeeded in his main
object, namely, a faithful expression of the muscles of the male
body.[18] The reader will notice “the archaic grin” on the faces of all
gods and goddesses of this period. This is probably an attempt to
indicate the benevolence of the deity; the god smiles when he intends to
grant the prayer of his suppliant. Apollo was always the god of healing;
Æsculapius was his son and Hygiæa his daughter. By-and-by the artists
learn how to express benevolence less crudely,[19] and all the time they
are learning more anatomy and a fuller mastery over their tools, until
in the glorious fifth century Alcamenes (who, by the way, was an
Athenian) could make a noble figure such as stands calm and powerful,
every inch a god, in the midst of battle on the West Pediment of the
great temple at Olympia.[20] Study this god. If you can love him you
will have learnt the secret of Dorian greatness. He is very simple,
serious, and severe; he has the asceticism of a good athlete who knows
what discipline means for the sake of his club or country. You must
judge him as archaic work, you must allow, when you criticise the
stiffness of his hair, for the use of tinting and the crown of gilt
bay-leaves which once passed through the hollow underneath his hair. You
will perceive that there is something wrong with the angle of his
eyelids, which meet without overlapping. Sculptors of the next
generation learnt to correct that, but they never conceived a grander
figure of the sort of god that a gentleman and a Spartiate might fitly
worship. Of course this is not a temple image; it is only one detail of
a piece of ornament under the gable at the back of a temple, but it is
the conception of a great artist. After that they began to think too
much about the beauty of Apollo and young athletes in general,
worshipping both with extravagant devotion. Hermes as a more graceful
and sensuous young god began to supplant Apollo in the favour of Art. At
last we get to the dandified young swell with the elaborate coiffure and
the studied
[Ilustration: PLATE XV. “APOLLO,” FROM ORCHOMENUS
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
theatrical pose, the Apollo Belvedere, who seemed to our
great-grandfathers the most perfect of Greek statues, though he was
carved to suit a decadent taste in the days when Greece had lost the
very memory of manliness. Another conflicting, but, I believe, equally
Dorian type of Apollo represents him in the flowing and almost feminine
robes of a musician. This is Apollo the artist, not the athlete, the
Apollo who leads the choir of Muses on Parnassus.
To return to the god and his oracle: the Dorians had planted him at
Delphi on their way south about 1000 B.C., and when they had overrun the
whole Peloponnesus, except Arcadia and Achaia, occupying the southern
islands, including Crete, and overflowing even into the south of Asia
Minor, Delphi became their central shrine and oracle. So cleverly was
that oracle managed by the Delphic priests that it became the common
centre for advice to all Greece, until it formed a sort of focus of
Greek nationality. Even semi-barbarian monarchs like Crœsus of Lydia
applied to it for advice, and paid for its oracles with lavish
dedications. As ambassadors kept coming to Delphi from all parts of the
Greek world, the priests had good opportunity of collecting information.
They were especially strong in geography, and if a city found its
population increasing beyond the extent of its wall space, or if there
were a gang of mischievous young nobles to be got rid of, or if the city
sought new commercial openings, it would send an embassy to Delphi to
consult Apollo about a suitable site for a new colony. After due
sacrifices and oblations and various mysterious rites to ensure the
proper reverential spirit, they would be introduced into the inmost
shrine, where a priestess sat upon a tripod over the identical crack in
the ground where the old serpent Pytho had once made his den. Here was a
conical stone representing the omphalos or navel of the earth. Then the
inspiration would seize the Pythian priestess, she would fall into a
kind of fit or trance, caused, they say, by burning leaves of laurel,
and in the course of it she uttered wild and whirling words. Before you
left the priests would hand you the substance of her remarks neatly
composed in rather weak hexameter verses. Very often the advice would
turn out excellently, for the priests knew their business. If it did not
they could usually point out that their words bore quite a different
interpretation if you had had the sense to understand them. Thus Crœsus
asked whether he should make war on the growing power of Persia; he was
told that if he did he would destroy a mighty empire. After the success
of Cyrus, the oracle, of course, explained that Crœsus had in fact
destroyed a mighty empire--namely, his own.
The supple intelligence of the Greeks devoted a good deal of its
ingenuity to inventing smart _double-entendres_ like this, but I am
afraid that the Delphic priests were actually guilty of a good deal of
low trickery, though they would hardly have won the national confidence,
as they did, if that sort of answer had been their ordinary practice. In
politics they played a very important part until the Persian wars, when
their more accurate knowledge of external affairs led them to overrate
the power of Darius and Xerxes and to counsel submission, whereby they
somewhat injured their credit. They formed a sort of international
bureau, a sort of Hague, though not always on the side of peace, for the
statesmen of Greece. Two institutions in particular made them a
much-frequented shrine; one was the Pythian Games, the second in
importance of the four great religious and athletic festivals of Greece,
and the other was the Delphic Amphictyony. The latter was an
international league for religious worship which looked, at times, as if
it were going to develop into a real Panhellenic confederacy. Delphi had
crept in here, supplanting a much older religious union of neighbours at
Anthela. Even in historical times the Amphictyons or their delegates met
alternately at the shrine of Demeter at Anthela and at the temple of
Apollo at Delphi. The meeting was mainly for common worship, but some of
the proceedings touched international politics, and there was an old
Amphictyonic oath
[Illustration: Plate PLATE 16.--Apollo of Tenea.
_Hanfstaengl._]
resembling the Geneva Conventions, in which the members bound themselves
not to cut off running water from any other city of the league.
Unfortunately, the inveterate feuds of the Greeks often led to the abuse
of this league for political ends, and, instead of enforcing holy peace,
we often find it waging sacred wars.
We saw that Pindar placed _eunomia_--good order--among the gifts of
Apollo. Like Athena, Apollo was greatly interested in political and
constitutional systems. In the course of the seventh century, which is
the period when Delphi first began to extend its influence, we find the
oracle deliberately claiming the authorship of some of the most
celebrated legal and constitutional systems of the day. Sparta was not
only the chief Dorian State, with a preponderant influence or hegemony
over all Southern Greece, but the possessor of the most elaborate and
successful political system in the whole country. We can see the Delphic
oracle deliberately inserting itself as the founder of this good order.
The historian Herodotus got much of his information from the oracle, and
he tells us its version, how a certain Lycurgus had come to Delphi to
ask for laws and a constitution, and had received it from the god. But
the Spartans themselves had not yet been convinced. They still believed
that theirs were the true Dorian institutions--as, in fact, they mostly
were--dating back to their original leaders, “the sons of Heracles,” and
closely resembling those of Dorian Crete. A generation or two after
Herodotus the Delphic claim was admitted, for constitutional writers of
all parties were glad to accept the sanction of the god for the
constitution as they severally interpreted it. Thus Lycurgus, who had
originally been an obscure hero with a half-forgotten cult, came to rank
as the Spartan law-giver and the author of the remarkable system of life
and government which we shall presently describe. They did the same for
the famous legal systems of the West, claiming to have inspired
Zaleucus, the law-giver of Locri, and Charondas of Catane with their
codes. There is some indication of similar proceedings with regard to
Solon of Athens, but they met with little success among the
rationalistic worshippers of Athena, who was as much a patron of law and
order as Apollo himself. Delphi endeavoured to appropriate the wisdom of
the Seven Sages, mostly early historical philosophers who belong to
these ages of transition. Apollo even claimed the philosophy of
Pythagoras, whose name lent itself peculiarly to a supposed Delphic
origin. By such means as these the Delphic oracle became the chief
sanctuary in Greece, and exerted a very great influence, which, however,
some modern scholars have tended to exaggerate.
ATHLETICS
The coming of Apollo and his Dorians meant also a great impetus to the
cult of athletics in Greece. The boxers and the bull-fighters of Cnossos
prove that athletics were already at home on Greek soil before the
Northerners came, and this fact alone should prove that the earlier
civilisation was not Asiatic, not at any rate Semitic. But the Achæans
and Dorians were also devoted to manly sport. With them it seems to have
had from the first a religious significance, especially in connection
with funerals and ancestor-worship. In the Iliad the funeral of
Patroclus is honoured with sports at his tomb. The programme of this
early meeting was an elaborate one. It might be described in modern
technical style somewhat as follows:
CHARIOT RACE. First Prize: A blameless, accomplished woman and a
tripod with handles. Second Prize: A brood mare. Third Prize: A new
kettle. Fourth Prize: Two talents of gold. Fifth Prize: A new
two-handled pan.
Antilochus won the toss and took the inner station. In the first
lap there was little in it, but on rounding the turn Eumelus’ team
pushed to the front, with Diomede lying second, close up. Phœbus
Apollo knocked the whip out of Diomede’s hand, whereupon Pallas
Athene responded by breaking the leader’s yoke, the driver being
seriously injured. Result: Diomede 1, Antilochus 2, Menelaus 3,
Meriones 4, Eumelus 0. The fifth prize was awarded to Nestor as the
oldest member present. Menelaus’ objection to Antilochus on the
score of dangerous driving was amicably settled.
BOXING MATCH. Prize: A six-year-old mule. Consolation Prize: A
two-handled cup.
[Illustration: PLATE XVII. THE “STRANGFORD APOLLO”
_Mansell & Co._]
Epeius and Euryalus were the only entrants. Epeius was an early
winner, finding the Theban champion’s jaw in the first round and
knocking him out like a fish out of water.
WRESTLING MATCH. Prize: A large tripod, value twelve oxen.
Consolation Prize: A clever woman, value four oxen.
Of the two wrestlers Ajax showed superior strength, but Odysseus
was more than his match in science. This seems to have been a
regular rough-and-tumble, both champions being pinched black and
blue; there was nothing to choose between them, and after a
ding-dong struggle the match was declared a draw.
FOOT-RACE. First Prize: Handsome silver punch-bowl of Sidonian
make. Second Prize: Fat ox. Third Prize: Half a talent of gold.
Odysseus, none the worse for his recent encounter, entered in a
field of three. Ajax son of Oileus was first off the mark, closely
followed by Odysseus. The latter, unable to get on terms with his
speedier rival, prayed to Pallas Athene for help. On nearing the
prizes Ajax fell, and Odysseus was declared the winner. The
objection lodged by Ajax on the ground of celestial interference
was dismissed with ridicule.
SHAM DUEL. Prize: The armour of Sarpedon.
Diomede and Telamonian Ajax were so evenly matched that this event
also was pronounced a draw.
PUTTING THE WEIGHT. Prize: A lump of natural iron.
Polypoetes won this event with a record put, amid general
enthusiasm.
ARCHERY. First Prize: Ten double axes. Second Prize: Ten single
axes.
The mark was a dove tied to a mast. Teucer won the toss and took
first shot, missing his bird, but cutting the string by which it
was attached. Thereupon Meriones snatched the bow, and, vowing a
hecatomb to Apollo, pierced the dove to the heart, thus proving his
title to the first prize.
JAVELIN-THROWING. First Prize: Ornamental cauldron, value one ox.
Second Prize: Javelin.
Agamemnon walked over.