Part 21

The Homeric poems are not only the oldest monuments of Greek literature, but also the earliest documents of the Greek race. Out of the twilight of the prehistoric past, a new people, a new type of mind, are suddenly disclosed in a medium of pellucid clearness. Like Athene springing adult and full-armed from the head of Zeus, this new race, when Homer reveals it, has already attained to a mature consciousness of itself, and is already equipped with the aptitudes which are to distinguish it throughout its later history. The genius of the Homeric Greek has essentially the same traits which recur in the ripest age of the Greek republics,—even as Achilles and Ulysses are personal ideals which never lost their hold on the nation. This very fact points the contrast between two aspects of Homeric life—the political, and the social. In Homeric politics, public opinion has no proper place. The king, with his council of nobles and elders, can alone originate or discuss measures. The popular assembly has no active existence. But the framework of Homeric monarchy contains a social life in which public opinion is constantly alert. Its activity, indeed, could scarcely be greater under the freest form of government. And we see that this activity has its spring in distinctive and permanent attributes of the Hellenic race. It arises from quickness of perception and readiness of speech. The Homeric Greek feels keenly, observes shrewdly, and hastens to communicate his thoughts. An undertone of popular comment pervades the Homeric poems, and is rendered more impressive by the dramatic form in which it is usually couched. The average man, who represents public feeling, is expressed by the Greek indefinite pronoun, τις. “Thus would a man speak, with a glance at his neighbor,” is the regular Homeric formula. We hear opinion in the making. This spokesman of popular sentiment is constantly introduced at critical moments: for the sake of brevity we may call him by his Greek name _Tis_. When the fight is raging over the corpse of Patroclus, _Tis_ remarks to his friends that they will be disgraced for ever if they allow the Trojans to carry off the body;—better die on the spot. Hector, in proposing a truce to Ajax, suggests that they should exchange gifts, and imagines what _Tis_ will say: _Tis_ will approve of it as a graceful courtesy between chivalrous opponents. Menelaus considers that another hero, Antilochus, has beaten him in a chariot race by unfair means; but thinks it necessary to take precautions against _Tis_ imagining that he has brought this complaint in the hope of prevailing by the influence of his rank. This is perhaps one of the most remarkable Homeric compliments to the penetration and to the influence of _Tis_. When the sounds of music and dancing, as at a marriage feast, are heard in the house of Odysseus in Ithaca, _Tis_ is listening outside; and he blamed Penelope for her fancied hardness of heart, “because she had not had the courage to keep the great house of her gentle lord steadfastly till he should come home.” _Tis_ is not always the mouthpiece of such elevated sentiments. With a frank truth to life and nature, Homer depicts _Tis_ as indulging in an ignoble joy by stabbing the corpse of his once-dreaded foe, Hector, and remarking that he is safer to handle now than when he was burning the ships. In the _Odyssey_, when the maiden Nausicaa is conducting Odysseus to the city of her father Alcinous, we catch glimpses of a _Tis_ who nearly approaches the character of Mrs. Grundy, with an element of spiteful gossip added. The fidelity with which _Tis_ reflects public opinion is further seen in the circumstance that his solicitude for the rights of man is not strong enough to counteract his natural disposition to exalt over the fallen. Thersites was a commoner who presumed to speak his mind among his betters,—when one of them, Odysseus, dealt him a smart blow on the back, and caused him to resume his seat in tears. _Tis_ laughed for joy, saying in effect that it served Thersites right, and that he probably would not do it again. The Tory sentiment of this passage makes it appropriate to quote the version of it by the late Lord Derby:—

“The Greeks, despite their anger, laughed aloud, And one to other said, ‘Good faith, of all The many works Ulysses well hath done, Wise in the council, foremost in the fight, He ne’er hath done a better, than when now He makes this scurril babbler hold his peace. Methinks his headstrong spirit will not soon Lead him again to vilify the kings.’”

Here it might be said that _Tis_ figures as the earliest authentic example of a being whose existence has sometimes been doubted by British anthropologists, the Conservative working-man. But, if we would be just to _Tis_ in his larger Homeric aspects, we must allow that his sympathies are usually generous, and his utterances often edifying. As to the feeling with which _Tis_ was regarded, Homer has a word for it which is hard to translate: he calls it _aidos_. This _aidos_—the sense of reverence or shame—is always relative to a standard of public opinion, _i.e._ to the opinion formed by the collective sayings of _Tis_; as, on the other hand, the listening to an inner voice, the obedience to what we call a moral sense, is Homerically called _nemesis_. And just as _Tis_ is sometimes merely the voice of smug respectability, so _aidos_ is sometimes conventional in a low way. When Diomedes is going by night to spy out the Trojan camp, several heroes offer to go with him, but only _one_ can be chosen. Agamemnon tells him that he must not yield to _aidos_, and take the man of highest station rather than the man of highest merit: where _aidos_ appears as in direct conflict with _nemesis_. But more often these two principles are found acting in harmony,—recommending the same course of conduct from two different points of view. There is a signal example of this in the _Odyssey_, which is also noteworthy on another ground, viz., as the only episode in the Homeric poems which involves a direct and formal appeal from established right of might to the corrective agency of public opinion. The suitors of Penelope have intruded themselves into the house of her absent lord, and are wasting his substance by riotous living. Her son Telemachus convenes the men of Ithaca in public assembly, and calls on them to stop this cruel wrong. He appeals to _nemesis_, to _aidos_, and to fear of the gods. “Resent it in your own hearts; and have regard to others, neighboring folk who dwell around,—and tremble ye at the wrath of the gods.” The appeal fails. The public opinion exists, but it has not the power, or the courage, to act.

After the age which gave birth to the great epics, an interval elapses before we again catch the distinct echoes of a popular voice. Our Homeric friend _Tis_ is silent. Or, rather, to be more exact, _Tis_ ceases to speak in his old character, as the nameless representative of the multitude, and begins to speak in a new quality. The individual mind now commences to express itself in forms of poetry which are essentially personal, interpreting the belief and feelings of the poet himself. _Tis_ emerges from the dim crowd, and appears as Tyrtaeus, summoning the Spartans, in stirring elegy, to hear _his_ counsels; or as Sappho, uttering _her_ passion in immortal lyrics; or as Pindar, weaving _his_ thoughts into those magnificent odes which glorify the heroes and the athletes of Greece. It is a capital distinction of classical Greek literature that, when its history is viewed as a whole, we do not find it falling into a series of artificial chapters, determined by imitation of models which were in fashion at this or that epoch. Greek literature is original, not derivative; we trace in it the course of a natural growth; we hear in it the spontaneous utterance of Greek life from generation to generation. The place of Pindar in this development has one aspect of peculiar interest. There is a sense in which he may be said to stand midway between Homeric epos and Athenian drama.[57] His poetical activity belongs to the years which immediately preceded and followed the invasions of Greece by the hosts of Persia. A great danger had drawn the members of the Hellenic family closer together; a signal deliverance had left them animated by the memory of deeds which seemed to attest the legends of Agamemnon and Achilles; warmed by a more vivid faith in those gods who had been present with them through the time of trial; comforted by a new stability of freedom; cheered by a sense of Hellenic energies which could expand securely from the Danube to the Nile, from the Euxine to the Atlantic; exalted in thought and fancy by the desire to embody their joy and hope in the most beautiful forms which language and music, marble, ivory, and gold could furnish for the honor of the gods, and for the delight of men who, through the heroes, claimed a divine descent. The Greek mind, stirred to its centre by the victorious efforts which had repelled the barbarian, could no longer be satisfied by epic narratives of the past. It longed to see the heroes moving; to hear them speaking; to throw back upon their world the vivifying light of contemporary reflection. In a word, the spirit of drama had descended upon Hellas; and already it breathes in Pindar, the poet of the games. Olympia, with its temples, its statues, and its living athletes, corresponded to the essence of Greek drama—action idealised by art and consecrated by religion. Pindar, the last of the great lyric poets, is the lyric exponent of an impulse which received mature expression from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

The community which Athenian drama addressed was precisely in the mood which best enables a dramatist to exert political and moral force. There was much in its temper that might remind us of Elizabethan England; but I would venture to illustrate it here by words borrowed from the England of a later time. The greatest plea in the English language for the liberty of the press—or perhaps we should rather say, for the freedom of the mind—belongs to the close of that year which saw the hopes of the Parliamentarians, in their struggle with the Royalists, raised to an assurance of final success by the crushing defeat of Rupert. An enthusiastic confidence in the large destinies opening before the English people already fired the mind of the poet who was to end his days, like Samson

“Eyeless in Gaza, at the mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke.”

Then, in 1644, Milton, thinking of the victory of Marston Moor, was rather like Aeschylus raising his dramatic paean for the victory of Salamis; and the glowing language in which he describes the new alertness of his country’s spirit might fitly be applied to the Athens for which the great dramatists wrote. “As in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous not only to vital but to rational faculties and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and suttlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is, so when the cherfulnesse of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety but to spare, and to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest points of controversie and new invention, it betok’ns us not degenerated, nor drooping to a fatall decay, but casting off the old and wrincl’d skin of corruption to outlive these pangs and wax young again, entring the glorious waies of Truth and prosperous vertue destin’d to become great and honourable in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant Nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an Eagle muing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazl’d eyes as the full mid-day beam, purging and unscaling her long abused sight at the fountain it self of heav’nly radiance.”

In estimating the influence of Athenian drama on public opinion, we must, first of all, remember the fact which makes the essential difference between the position of the dramatist—viewed in this light—and that of the epic poet. The epic poet gave expression to a mass of popular belief and feeling in an age when they had as yet no direct organ of utterance. But in the Athens of the dramatists the popular assembly was the constitutional organ of public opinion. Every Athenian citizen was, as such, a member of that assembly. The influence of the Athenian dramatist was thus so far analogous to that of the modern journalist, that it was brought to bear on men capable of giving practical effect to their sentiments. A newspaper publishes an article intended to influence the voters in a parliamentary division, or the constituents whom they represent. An Athenian dramatist had for his hearers, in the theatre of Dionysus, many thousands of the men who, the next day might be called upon to decide a question of policy in the assembly, or to try, in a law-court, one of those cases in which the properly legal issues were often involved with considerations of a social or moral kind. Even Tragedy, in its loftiest and severest form, might be the instrument, in a skilful hand, of inculcating views or tendencies which the poet advocated—nay, even of urging or opposing a particular measure. Thus, in his _Furies_, Aeschylus finds occasion to encourage his fellow-citizens in their claim to a disputed possession in the Troad, and utters a powerful protest against the proposal to curtail the powers of the Areopagus. He becomes, for the moment, the mouthpiece of a party opposed to such reform. In verses like the following, every one can recognize a ring as directly political as that of any leading article or pamphlet. “In this place”—says the Athene of Aeschylus—that is, on the hill of Ares, the seat of the court menaced with reform—

“Awe kin to dread shall stay the citizens From sinning in the darkness or the light, While their own voices do not change the laws ... Between unruliness and rule by one I bid my people reverence a mean, Not banish all things fearful from the State. For, with no fear before him, who is just? In such a righteous dread, in such an awe, Ye shall possess a bulwark of the land, A safeguard of the city, not possess’d By Scythia or the places of the south. This court, majestic, incorruptible, Instant in anger, over those who sleep The sleepless watcher of my land, I set.”

Again, there are at least two tragedies of Euripides—the _Heracleidae_ and the _Supplices_—in which the strain of allusion to the politics of the Peloponnesian War is unmistakable. It is needless to dwell on the larger sense in which Euripides everywhere makes drama the vehicle of teachings—political, social, moral—which could nowhere have received such effective publicity as in the theatre. Nowadays, they would have been found in the pages of a newspaper or a magazine accepted as the organ of a party or a school. In the days of Voltaire, journalism, as free countries now understand it, had no more existence than in the days of Euripides; and, as a recent historian of French literature remarks, it has been thought that the tragedies of Voltaire owed their popularity chiefly to the adroit manner in which the author made them opportunities for insinuating the popular opinions of the time.[58] We must not forget that peculiar feature of Greek drama, the Chorus, who may be regarded as a lineal descendant of the Homeric _Tis_. The interest of the Chorus, in this connection, does not depend so much on the maxims that it uttered as on the fact that it constituted a visible link between the audience and the drama, bringing the average spectator into easier sympathy with the action, and thereby predisposing him to seize any significance which it might have for the life of the day. I have so far dwelt on this aspect of Athenian Tragedy, because we might be rather apt to regard it as a form of art altogether detached from contemporary interests, and to overlook the powerful influence—not the less powerful because usually indirect—which it must undoubtedly have exercised in expressing and moulding public sentiment.

But we must now turn to that other form of Athenian drama in which the resemblance to the power of the modern press is much more direct and striking—that which is known as the Old Comedy of Athens. Mr. Browning, in his _Apology of Aristophanes_, makes the great comic poet indicate the narrow limits to the influence of Tragedy on opinion. The passage is witty; and though, as I venture to think, it considerably underrates the effect of Tragedy in this direction, at least it well marks the contrast between the modes in which the two forms of drama wrought. When we think of the analogy between Aristophanes and the modern political journalist, one of the first things that strikes us is the high and earnest view which Aristophanes took of his own calling. He had gone through every stage of a laborious training before he presumed to come before the Athenian public. He had seen his predecessors fail, or fall from favor. So in the _Peace_, he claims that he has banished the old vulgar tomfoolery from the stage, and raised his art “like an edifice stately and grand.” He saw clearly the enormous force which this literary engine, Comedy, might wield. He resolved that, in his hands, it should be directed to more elevated and more important aims. Instead of merely continuing the traditions of scurrilous buffoonery, in which virulent personality was often the only point, he would bring his wit to bear on larger aspects of politics and society.

But, while his wit and style had the stamp of bold originality, Aristophanes is not the champion of original ideas. Rather his position depends essentially on the fact that he represents a large body of commonplace public opinion. He represents the great “stupid party,” to use a name which the English Tories have borne not without pride, and glories to represent it; the stupid party, who are not wiser than their forefathers; who fail to understand how the tongue can swear, and the soul remain unsworn; who sigh for the old days when the plain seafaring citizen knew only to ask for his barley-cake, and to cry “pull away;” who believe in the old-fashioned virtues, and worship the ancient gods. He describes himself as the champion of the people, doing battle for them, like a second Hercules, against superhuman monsters. The demagogues, whom he lashes, try to represent him as slandering the country to foreigners; but he is the country’s best friend. Athenians are hasty, fickle and vain. He has taught them not to be gulled by flattery. He has taught them to respect the rights and redress the wrong of their subjects. The envoys who bring the tribute from the island long to see him. The King of Persia, he says, asked two questions about the combatants in the Peloponnesian War. Which side had the strongest navy? and which side had Aristophanes? Thirlwall, in his _History of Greece_, denies that Aristophanic Comedy produced any serious effect. “We have no reason,” he says, “to believe that it ever turned the course of public affairs, or determined the bias of the public mind, or even that it considerably affected the credit and fortunes of an obnoxious individual.” Grote’s opinion is much the same, except that he is disposed to credit Comedy with a greater influence on the reputations of particular men. The question is much of the same nature as might be raised concerning the precise effect of political writing in newspapers, or of literary reviews. The effect is one which it is impossible to measure accurately, but which may nevertheless be both wide and deep.

In the first place, we must dismiss the notion that Comedy could make no serious impression because the occasion was a sportive festival. The feelings of Athenians at Comedy were not merely those of a modern audience at a burlesque or a pantomime. Comedy, like Tragedy, was still the worship of Dionysus. Precisely in those comedies which most daringly ridicule the gods—such as the _Birds_ and the _Frogs_—we find also serious expressions of a religious sense, illustrating what might be called the principle of compensatory reverence. Again, the power of the Old Athenian Comedy is not to be gauged by any influence which it exercised, or sought, over special situations or definite projects. Indeed, it rarely attempted this. Almost the only extant instance occurs in the _Frogs_ of Aristophanes, where he urges that a general amnesty should be granted to all citizens who had been implicated in the Revolution of the Four Hundred. In such a sense, it may be granted, Comedy might do little; but its real power operated in a totally different way. When a large body of people has common opinions or feelings, these are intensified in each individual by the demonstration that so many others share them. A public meeting tends in itself to quicken enthusiasm for a party or a cause, be the oratory never so flat and the sentiments never so trite. Aristophanes gave the most brilliant expression to a whole range of thought and feeling with which thousands of minds were in general sympathy. Can it be doubted that he contributed powerfully to strengthen the prejudice against everything that he regarded as dangerous innovation? Or, again, can it be doubted that he did much to give his fellow-citizens a more vivid insight into the arts of unscrupulous demagogues? The cajolers of the people, as depicted in the comedy of the _Knights_, are drawn in strong colors, but with fine strokes also: while the character of Demus, the People—their supposed dupe—is drawn with a tact which no satirist or political journalist has ever surpassed. If I have to stake the political power of Aristophanes on the evidence of one short passage, it should be that dialogue in which the Knights deplore the dotage of Demus, and Demus tells them that, while he seems to doze, he always has one eye open (vv. 1111-1150).

When a change of Ministry occurs in England, no one would undertake to say exactly what share in that result is attributable to journalistic repetition and suggestion—to the cumulative impression wrought on the public mind, through weeks, months, and years, by the Conservative or the Liberal press. And he would be a bold man who presumed to say how little or how much the Old Comedy may have to do with the phenomena of oligarchic reaction in the latter part of the Peloponnesian War, or with the stimulation of all those sentiments which have their record in the death of Socrates. The confused travesty of Socrates in the _Clouds_ corresponds, in its general features, with the confused prepossessions of which he was afterwards the victim. In this case, as in others, Comedy was not the origin, but the organ, of a popular opinion. It did not create the prepossessions; but it strengthened them by the simple process of reflecting them in an exaggerated form. Briefly, Aristophanic Comedy had many of the characteristics of vehement party journalism, but was directed either against persons, on the one hand, or against general principles and tendencies on the other—not against measures. Its most obvious strength lay in brilliant originality of form; but its political and social effect depended essentially on its representative value. It was the great ancient analogue of journalism which seems to lead opinion by skilfully mirroring it—unsparing in attack, masterly in all the sources of style, but careful, where positive propositions are concerned, to keep within the limits of safe and accepted generalities.