Part 6

ATOSSA. _Who is their shepherd over them and lord of their host?_

CHORUS. _Of no man are they called the slaves or subjects._

Now hear Herodotus amplifying and explaining Aeschylus. _For though they are free, yet are they not free in all things. For they have a lord over them, even Law, whom they fear far more than thy people fear thee. At least they do what that lord biddeth them, and what he biddeth is still the same, to wit that they flee not before the face of any multitude in battle, but keep their order and either conquer or die._ It is Demaratos that speaks of the Spartans to King Xerxes.

Eleutheria the Reign of Law or _Nomos_. The word _Nomos_ begins with the meaning “custom” or “convention,” and ends by signifying that which embodies as far as possible the universal and eternal principles of justice. To write the history of it is to write the history of Greek civilization. The best we can do is to listen to the Greeks themselves explaining what they were fighting for in fighting for Eleutheria. They will not put us off with abstractions.

No one who has read _The Persians_ forgets the live and leaping voice that suddenly cries out before the meeting of the ships at Salamis: _Onward, Sons of the Hellenes! Free your country, free your children, your wives, your fathers’ tombs and seats of your fathers’ gods! All hangs now on your fighting!_ This, then, when it came to action, is what the Greeks meant by the Reign of Law. It will not seem so puzzling if you put it in this way: that what they fought for was the right to govern themselves. Here as elsewhere we may observe how the struggle of Greek and Barbarian fills with palpitating life such words as Freedom, which to dull men have been apt to seem abstract and to sheltered people faded. For the Barbarians had not truly laws at all. How are laws possible where “all are slaves save one,” and be responsible to nobody? So the fight for Freedom becomes a fight for Law, that no man may become another’s master, but all be subject equally to the Law, “whose service is perfect freedom.”

That conception was wrought out in the stress of conflict with the Barbarians, culminating in the Persian danger. On that point it is well to prepare our minds by an admission. The quarrel was never a simple one of right and wrong. Persia at least was in some respects in advance of the Greece she fought at Salamis; and not only in material splendour. That is now clear to every historian; it never was otherwise to the Greeks themselves. Possessing or possessed by the kind of imagination which compels a man to understand his enemy, they saw much to admire in the Persians—their hardihood, their chivalry, their munificence, their talent for government. The Greeks heard with enthusiasm (which was part at least literary) the scheme of education for young nobles—“to ride a horse, to shoot with the bow, and to speak the truth!” In fact the two peoples, although they never realized it, were neither in race nor in speech very remote from one another. But it was the destiny of the Persians to succeed to an empire essentially Asiatic and so to become the leaders and champions of a culture alien to Greece and to us. In such a cause their very virtues made them the more dangerous. Here was no possible compromise. Persia and Greece stood for something more than two political systems; the European mind, the European way of thinking and feeling about things, the soul of Europe was at stake. There is no help for it; in such a quarrel we must take sides.

Let us look first at the Persian side. The phrase I quoted about all men in Persia being slaves save one is not a piece of Greek rhetoric; it was the official language of the empire. The greatest officer of state next to the King was still his “slave” and was so addressed by him. The King was lord and absolute. An inscription at Persepolis reads _I am Xerxes the Great King, the King of Kings, the King of many-tongued countries, the King of this great universe, the Son of Darius the King, the Achaemenid. Xerxes the Great King saith: “By grace of Ahuramazda I have made this portal whereon are depicted all the countries.”_ The Greek orator Aeschines says, “He writes himself Lord of men from the rising to the setting sun.” The letter of Darius to Gadatas—it exists to-day—is addressed by “Darius the son of Hystaspes, King of Kings.” That, as we know, was a favourite title. The law of the land was summed up in the sentence: _The King may do what he pleases_. Greece saved us from that.

No man might enter the sacred presence without leave. Whoever was admitted must prostrate himself to the ground. The emperor sat on a sculptured throne holding in his hand a sceptre tipped with an apple of gold. He was clad in gorgeous trousers and gorgeous Median robe. On his head was the peaked _kitaris_ girt with the crown, beneath which the formally curled hair flowed down to mingle with the great beard. He had chains of gold upon him and golden bracelets, a golden zone engirdled him, from his ears hung rings of gold. Behind the throne stood an attendant with a fan against the flies and held his mouth lest his breath should touch the royal person. Before the throne stood the courtiers, their hands concealed, their eyelids stained with _kohl_, their lips never smiling, their painted faces never moving. Greece saved us from all that.

The King had many wives and a great harem of concubines—one for each day of the year. You remember the Book of Esther. Ahasuerus is the Greek Xerxes. There is in Herodotus a story of that court which, however unauthentic it may be in details, has a clear evidential value. On his return from Greece Xerxes rested at Sardis, the ancient capital of Lydia. There he fell in love with the wife of his brother Masistes. Unwilling to take her by force, he resorted to policy. He betrothed his son Darius to Artaynte, the daughter of Masistes, and took her with him to Susa (the Shushan of Esther), hoping to draw her mother to his great palace there, “where were white, green and blue hangings, fastened with cords of fine linen and purple to silver rings and pillars of marble.” In Susa, however, the King experienced a new sensation and fell in love with Artaynte—who returned his affection. Now Amestris the Queen had woven with her own hands a wonderful garment for her lord, who inconsiderately put it on to pay his next visit to Artaynte. Of course Artaynte asked for it, of course in the end she got it, and of course she made a point of wearing it. When Amestris heard of this, she blamed, says Herodotus, not the girl but her mother. With patient dissimulation she did nothing until the Feast of the Birthday of the King, when he cannot refuse a request. Then for her present she asked the wife of Masistes. The King, who understood her purpose, tried to save the victim; but too late. Amestris had in the meanwhile sent the King’s soldiers for the woman; and when she had her in her power _she cut away her breasts and threw them to the dogs, cut off her nose and ears and lips and tongue, and sent her home_.

It may be thought that the Persian monarchy cannot fairly be judged by the conduct of a Xerxes. The reply to this would seem to be that it was Xerxes the Greeks had to fight. But let us choose another case, Artaxerxes II, whose life the gentle Plutarch selected to write because of the mildness and democratic quality which distinguished him from others of his line. Yet the _Life of Artaxerxes_ would be startling in a chronicle of the Italian Renaissance. The story which I will quote from it was probably derived from the _Persian History_ of Ktesias, who was a Greek physician at the court of Artaxerxes. This Ktesias, as Plutarch himself tells us, was a highly uncritical person, but after all, as Plutarch goes on to say, he was not likely to be wrong about things that were happening before his eyes. Here then is the story, a little abridged.

_She_—that is, Parysatis the queen-mother—_perceived that he_—Artaxerxes the King—_had a violent passion for Atossa, one of his daughters.... When Parysatis came to suspect this, she made more of the child than ever, and to Artaxerxes she praised her beauty and her royal and splendid ways. At last she persuaded him to marry the maid and make her his true wife, disregarding the opinions and laws_ (Nomoi) of the Greeks; she said that he himself had been appointed by the god_ (Ahuramazda) _a law unto the Persians and judge of honour and dishonour.... Atossa her father so loved in wedlock that, when leprosy had overspread her body, he felt no whit of loathing thereat, but praying for her sake to Hera_ (Anaitis?) _he did obeisance to that goddess only, touching the ground with his hands; while his satraps and friends sent at his command such gifts to the goddess that the whole space between the temple and the palace, which was sixteen stades_ (nearly two miles) _was filled with gold and with silver and with purple and with horses_.

Artaxerxes afterwards took into his harem another of his daughters. The religion of Zarathustra sanctioned that. It also sanctioned marriage with a mother. According to Persian notions both Xerxes and Artaxerxes behaved with perfect correctness. The royal blood was too near the divine to mingle with baser currents. There is no particular reason for believing that Xerxes was an exceptionally vicious person, while Artaxerxes seemed comparatively virtuous. It was the system that was all wrong. What are you to expect of a prince, knowing none other law than his own will, and surrounded from his infancy by venomous intriguing women and eunuchs? Babylon alone used to send five hundred boys yearly to serve as eunuchs.... I think we may now leave the Persians.

_Hear again Phocylides: “A little well-ordered city on a rock is better than frenzied Nineveh.”_ The old poet means a city of the Greek type, and by “well-ordered” he means governed by a law which guarantees the liberties of all in restricting the privileges of each. This, the secret of true freedom, was what the Barbarian never understood. Sperthias and Boulis, two rich and noble Spartans, offered to yield themselves up to the just anger of Xerxes, whose envoys had been flung to their death in a deep water-tank. On the road to Susa they were entertained by the Persian grandee Hydarnes, who said to them: _Men of Sparta, wherefore will ye not be friendly towards the King? Beholding me and my condition, ye see that the King knoweth how to honour good men. In like manner ye also, if ye should give yourselves to the King (for he deemeth that ye are good men), each of you twain would be ruler of Greek lands given you by the King._ They answered: _Hydarnes, thine advice as touching us is of one side only, whereof thou hast experience, while the other thou hast not tried. Thou understandest what it is to be a slave, but freedom thou hast not tasted, whether it be sweet or no. For if thou shouldst make trial of it, thou wouldest counsel us to fight for it with axes as well as spears!_

So when Alexander King of Macedon came to Athens with a proposal from Xerxes that in return for an alliance with them he would grant the Athenians new territories to dwell in free, and would rebuild the temples he had burned; and when the Spartan envoys had pleaded with them to do no such thing as the King proposed, the Athenians made reply. _We know as well as thou that the might of the Persian is many times greater than ours, so that thou needest not to charge us with forgetting that. Yet shall we fight for freedom as we may. To make terms with the Barbarian seek not thou to persuade us, nor shall we be persuaded. And now tell Mardonios that Athens says: “So long as the sun keeps the path where now he goeth, never shall we make compact with Xerxes; but shall go forth to do battle with him, putting our trust in the gods that fight for us and in the mighty dead, whose dwelling-places and holy things he hath contemned and burned with fire.”_ This was their answer to Alexander; but to the Spartans they said: _The prayer of Sparta that we make not agreement with the Barbarian was altogether pardonable. Yet, knowing the temper of Athens, surely ye dishonour us by your fears, seeing that there is not so much gold in all the world, nor any land greatly exceeding in beauty and goodness, for which we would consent to join the Mede for the enslaving of Hellas. Nay even if we should wish it, there be many things preventing us: first and most, the images and shrines of the gods burned and cast upon an heap, whom we must needs avenge to the utmost rather than be consenting with the doer of those things; and, in the second place, there is our Greek blood and speech, the bond of common temples and sacrifices and like ways of life—if Athens betrayed these things, it would not be well._...

οὐ καλῶς ἂν ἔχοι, “it would not be well.” When I was writing about Greek simplicity I should have remembered this passage. But our present theme is the meaning of Eleutheria. “Our first duty,” say the Athenians, “is to avenge our gods and heroes, whose temples have been desecrated.” Such language must ring strangely in our ears until we have reflected a good deal about the character of ancient religion. To the Greeks of Xerxes’ day religion meant, in a roughly comprehensive phrase, the consecration of the citizen to the service of the State. When the Athenians speak of the gods and heroes, whose temples have been burned, they are thinking of the gods and heroes of Athens, which had been sacked by the armies of Mardonios; and they are thinking chiefly of Athena and Erechtheus.

Now who was Athena? You may read in books that she was “the patron-goddess of Athens.” But she was more than that; she _was_ Athens. You may read that she “represented the fortune of Athens”; but indeed she _was_ the fortune of Athens. You may further read that she “embodied the Athenian ideal”; which is true enough, but how small a portion of the truth! It was not so much what Athens might become, as what Athens was, that moulded and impassioned the image of the goddess. It was the city of to-day and yesterday that filled the hearts of those Athenians with such a sense of loss and such a need to avenge their Lady of the Acropolis. For that which had been the focus of the old city-life, the dear familiar temple of their goddess, was a heap of stones and ashes mixed with the carrion of the old men who had remained to die there.

As for Erechtheus, he was the great Athenian “hero.” The true nature of a “hero” is an immensely controversial matter; but what we are concerned with here is the practical question, what the ancients thought. They, rightly or wrongly, normally thought of their “heroes” as famous ancestors. It was as their chief ancestor that the Athenians regarded and worshipped Erechtheus. Cecrops was earlier, but for some reason not so worshipful; Theseus was more famous, but later, and even something of an alien, since he appears to come originally from Troezen. Thus it was chiefly about Erechtheus as “the father of his people,” rather than about maiden Athena, that all that sentiment, so intense in ancient communities, of the common blood and its sacred obligations entwined itself. This old king of primeval Athens claimed his share of the piety due to the dead of every household, an emotion of so powerful a quality among the unsophisticated peoples that some have sought in it the roots of all religion. It is an emotion hard to describe and harder still to appreciate. Erechtheus was the Son of Earth, that is, really, of Attic Earth; and on the painted vases you see him, a little naked child, being received by Athena from the hands of Earth, a female form half hidden in the ground, who is raising him into the light of day. The effect of all this was to remind the Athenians that they themselves were _autochthones_, born of the soil, and Attic Earth was their mother also. Not only her spiritual children, you understand, nor only fed of her bounty, but very bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. _Gê Kourotrophos_ they called her, “Earth the Nurturer of our Children.” Unite all these feelings, rooted and made strong by time: love of the City (Athena), love of the native and mother Earth (Gê), love of the unforgotten and unforgetting dead (Erechtheus)—unite all these feelings and you will know why the defence of so great sanctities and the avenging of insult against them seemed to Athenians the first and greatest part of Liberty.

So Themistocles felt when after Salamis he said: _It is not we who have wrought this deed, but the gods and heroes, who hated that one man should become lord both of Europe and of Asia; unholy and sinful, who held things sacred and things profane in like account, burning temples and casting down the images of the gods; who also scourged the sea and cast fetters upon it._ And it is this feeling which gives so singular a beauty and charm to the story of Dikaios. “Dikaios the son of Theokydes, an Athenian then in exile and held in reputation among the Persians, said that at this time, when Attica was being wasted by the footmen of Xerxes and was empty of its inhabitants, it befell that he was with Demaratos in the Thriasian Plain, when they espied a pillar of dust, such as thirty thousand men might raise, moving from Eleusis. And as they marvelled what men might be the cause of the dust, presently they heard the sound of voices, and it seemed to him that it was the ritual-chant to Iacchus. Demaratos was ignorant of the rites that are performed at Eleusis, and questioned him what sound was that. But he said, _Demaratos, of a certainty some great harm will befall the host of the King. For this is manifest—there being no man left in Attica—that these are immortal Voices proceeding from Eleusis to take vengeance for the Athenians and their allies. And if this wrathful thing descend on Peloponnese, the King himself and his land army will be in jeopardy; but if it turn towards the ships at Salamis, the King will be in danger of losing his fleet. This is that festival which the Athenians hold yearly in honour of the Mother and the Maid, and every Athenian, or other Greek that desires it, receives initiation; and the sound thou hearest is the chanting of the initiates._ Demaratos answered, _Hold thy peace, and tell no man else this tale. For if these thy words be reported to the King, thou wilt lose thine head, and I shall not be able to save thee, I nor any other man. But keep quiet and God will deal with this host._ Thus did he counsel him. And the dust and the cry became a cloud, and the cloud arose and moved towards Salamis to the encampment of the Greeks. So they knew that the navy of Xerxes was doomed.”

Athena, the Mother-Maid Demeter-Persephone with the mystic child Iacchus, Boreas “the son-in-law of Erechtheus,” whose breath dispersed the enemy ships under Pelion and Kaphareus—of such sort are “the gods who fight for us” and claim the love and service of Athens in return. It is well to remember attentively this religious element in ancient patriotism, so large an element that one may say with scarcely any exaggeration at all that for the ancients patriotism was a religion. Therefore is Eleutheria, the patriot’s ideal, a religion too. Such instincts and beliefs are interwoven in one sacred indissoluble bond uniting the Gods and men, the very hills and rivers of Greece against the foreign master. Call this if you will a mystical and confused emotion; but do not deny its beauty or underestimate its tremendous force.

But here (lest in discussing a sentiment which may be thought confused we ourselves fall into confusion) let us emphasize a distinction, which has indeed been already indicated. Greek patriotism was as wide as Greece; but on the other hand its intensity was in inverse ratio to its extension. Greek patriotism was primarily a local thing, and it needed the pressure of a manifest national danger to lift it to a wider outlook. That was true in the main and of the average man, although every generation produced certain superior spirits, statesmen or philosophers, whose thought was not particularist. It was this home-savour which gave to ancient patriotism its special salt and pungency. When the Athenians in the speech I quoted say that their first duty is to avenge their gods, they are thinking more of Athens than of Greece. They are thinking of all we mean by “home,” save that home for them was bounded by the ring-wall of the city, not by the four walls of a house.

The wider patriotism of the nation the Greeks openly or in their hearts ranked in the second place. Look again at the speech of the Athenians. First came Athens and her gods and heroes—their _fathers’_ gods; next _To Hellenikon_, that whereby they are not merely Athenians but Hellenes—community of race and speech, the common interest in the _national_ gods and their festivals, such as Zeus of Olympia with the Olympian Games, the Delphian Apollo with the Pythian Games. Of course this Hellenic or Panhellenic interest was always there, and in a sense the future lay with it; but never in the times when Greece was at its greatest did it supplant the old intense local loyalties. The movement of Greek civilization is from the narrower to the larger conception of patriotism, but the latter ideal is grounded in the former. Greek love of country was fed from local fires, and even Greek cosmopolitanism left one a _citizen_, albeit a citizen of the world. So it was with Eleutheria, which enlarged itself in the same sense and with an equal pace.

This development can be studied best in Athens, which was “the Hellas of Hellas.” One finds in Attic literature a passionate Hellenism combined with a passionate conviction that Hellenism finds its best representative in Athens. The old local patriotism survives, but is nourished more and more with new ambitions. New claims, new ideals are advanced. One claim appears very early, if we may believe Herodotus that the Athenians used it in debate with the men of Tegea before the Battle of Plataea. The Athenians recalled how they had given shelter to the Children of Heracles when all the other Greek cities would not, for fear of Eurystheus; and how again they had rescued the slain of the Seven from the Theban king and buried them in his despite. On those two famous occasions the Athenians had shown the virtue which they held to be most characteristic of Hellenism and specially native to themselves, the virtue which they called “philanthropy” or the love of man. What Heine said of himself, the Athenians might have said: they were brave soldiers in the liberation-war of humanity.