Part 7

There is a play of Euripides, called _The Suppliant Women_, which deals with the episode of the unburied dead at Thebes. The fragmentary Argument says: _The scene is Eleusis. Chorus of Argive women, mothers of the champions who have fallen at Thebes. The drama is a glorification of Athens._ The eloquent Adrastos, king of Argos, pleads the cause of the suppliant women who have come to Athens to beg the aid of its young king Theseus in procuring the burial of their dead. Theseus is at first disposed to reject their prayer, for reasons of State; he must consider the safety of his own people; when his mother Aithra breaks out indignantly: _Surely it will be said that with unvalorous hands, when thou mightest have won a crown of glory for thy city, thou didst decline the peril and match thyself, ignoble labour, with a savage swine; and when it was thy part to look to helm and spear, putting forth thy might therein, wast proven a coward. To think that son of mine—ah, do not so! Seest thou how Athens, whom mocking lips have named unwise, flashes back upon her scorners a glance of answering scorn? Danger is her element. It is the unadventurous cities doing cautious things in the dark, whose vision is thereby also darkened._ And the result is that Theseus and his men set out against the great power of Thebes, defeat it and recover the bodies, which with due observance of the appropriate rites they inter in Attic earth.

“To make the world safe for democracy” is something; but Athens never found it safe, perhaps did not believe it could be safe. _Ready to take risks, facing danger with a lifting of the heart ... their whole life a round of toils and dangers ... born neither themselves to rest nor to let other people._ In such phrases are the Athenians described by their enemies. A friend has said: _I must publish an opinion which will be displeasing to most; yet (since I think it to be true) I will not withhold it. If the Athenians in fear of the coming peril had left their land, or not leaving it but staying behind had yielded themselves to Xerxes, none would have tried to meet the King at sea._ And so all would have been lost. _But as the matter fell out, it would be the simple truth to say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece. The balance of success was certain to turn to the side they espoused, and by choosing the cause of Hellas and the preservation of her freedom it was the Athenians and no other that roused the whole Greek world—save those who played the traitor—and under God thrust back the King._ And some generations later, Demosthenes, in what might be called the funeral oration of Eleutheria, sums up the claim of Athens in words whose undying splendour is all pride and glory transfiguring the pain of failure and defeat. _Let no man, I beseech you, imagine that there is anything of paradox or exaggeration in what I say, but sympathetically consider it. If the event had been clear to all men beforehand ... even then Athens could only have done what she did, if her fame and her future and the opinion of ages to come meant anything to her. For the moment indeed it looks as if she had failed; as man must always fail when God so wills it. But had She, who claimed to be the leader of Greece, yielded her claim to Philip and betrayed the common cause, her honour would not be clear.... Yes, men of Athens, ye did right—be very sure of that—when ye adventured yourselves for the safety and freedom of all; yes, by your fathers who fought at Marathon and Plataea and Salamis and Artemision, and many more lying in their tombs of public honour they had deserved so well, being all alike deemed worthy of this equal tribute by the State, and not only (O Aeschines) the successful, the victorious._...

Demosthenes was right in thinking that Eleutheria was most at home in Athens. Now Athens, as all men know, was a “democracy”; that is, the general body of the citizens (excluding the slaves and “resident aliens”) personally made and interpreted their laws. Such a constitution was characterized by two elements which between them practically exhausted its meaning; namely, _autonomy_ or freedom to govern oneself by one’s own laws, and _isonomy_ or equality of all citizens before the law. Thus Eleutheria, defined as the Reign of Law, may be regarded as synonymous with Democracy. “The basis of the democratical constitution is Eleutheria,” says Aristotle. This is common ground with all Greek writers, whether they write to praise or to condemn. Thus Plato humorously, but not quite good-humouredly, complains that in Athens the very horses and donkeys knocked you out of their way, so exhilarated were they by the atmosphere of Eleutheria. But at the worst he only means that you may have too much of a good thing. Eleutheria translated as unlimited democracy you may object to; Eleutheria as an ideal or a watchword never fails to win the homage of Greek men. Very early begins that sentimental republicanism which is the inspiration of Plutarch, and through Plutarch has had so vast an influence on the practical affairs of mankind. It appears in the famous drinking-catch beginning _I will bear the sword in the myrtle-branch like Harmodios and Aristogeiton_. It appears in Herodotus. Otanes the Persian (talking Greek political philosophy), after recounting all the evils of a tyrant’s reign, is made to say: _But what I am about to tell are his greatest crimes: he breaks ancestral customs, and forces women, and puts men to death without trial. But the rule of the people in the first place has the fairest name in the world, “isonomy,” and in the second place it does none of those things a despot doeth._ In his own person Herodotus writes: _It is clear not merely in one but in every instance how excellent a thing is “equality.” When the Athenians were under their tyrants they fought no better than their neighbours, but after they had got rid of their masters they were easily superior. Now this proves that when they were held down they fought without spirit, because they were toiling for a master, but when they had been liberated every man was stimulated to his utmost efforts in his own behalf._ The same morning confidence in democracy shines in the reply of the constitutional king, Theseus, to the herald in Euripides’ play asking for the “tyrant” of Athens. _You have made a false step in the beginning of your speech, O stranger, in seeking a tyrant here. Athens is not ruled by one man, but is free. The people govern by turns in yearly succession, not favouring the rich but giving him equal measure with the poor._

The _naïveté_ of this provokes a smile, but it should provoke some reflection too. Why does the rhetoric of liberty move us so little? Partly, I think, because the meaning of the word has changed, and partly because of this new “liberty” we have a super-abundance. No longer does Liberty mean in the first place the Reign of Law, but something like its opposite. Let us recover the Greek attitude, and we recapture, or at least understand, the Greek emotion concerning Eleutheria. Jason says to Medea in Euripides’ play, _Thou dwellest in a Greek instead of a Barbarian land, and hast come to know Justice and the use of Law without favour to the strong_. The most “romantic” hero in Greek legend recommending the conventions!

This, however, is admirably and characteristically Greek. The typical heroes of ancient story are alike in their championship of law and order. I suppose the two most popular and representative were Heracles and Theseus. Each goes up and down Greece and Barbary destroying _hybristai_, local robber-kings, strong savages, devouring monsters, ill customs and every manner of “lawlessness” and “injustice.” In their place each introduces Greek manners and government, Law and Justice. It was this which so attracted Greek sympathy to them and so excited the Greek imagination. For the Greeks were surrounded by dangers like those which Heracles or Theseus encountered. If they had not to contend with supernatural hydras and triple-bodied giants and half-human animals, they had endless pioneering work to do which made such imaginings real enough to them; and men who had fought with the wild Thracian tribes could vividly sympathize with Heracles in his battle with the Thracian “king,” Diomedes, who fed his fire-breathing horses with the flesh of strangers. Nor was this preference of the Greeks for heroes of such a type merely instinctive; it was reasoned and conscious. The “mission” of Heracles, for example, is largely the theme of Euripides’ play which we usually call _Hercules Furens_. A contemporary of Euripides, the sophist Hippias of Elis, was the author of a too famous apologue, _The Choice of Heracles_, representing the youthful hero making the correct choice between Laborious Virtue and Luxurious Vice. Another Euripidean play, _The Suppliant Women_, as we have seen, reveals Theseus in the character of a conventional, almost painfully constitutional, sovereign talking the language of Lord John Russell. As for us, our sympathies are ready to flow out to the picturesque defeated monsters—the free Centaurs galloping on Pelion—the cannibal Minotaur lurking in his Labyrinth. But then our bridals are not liable to be disturbed by raids of wild horsemen from the mountains, nor are our children carried off to be dealt with at the pleasure of a foreign monarch. People who meet with such experiences get surprisingly tired of them. There is a figure known to mythologists as a Culture Hero. He it is who is believed to have introduced law and order and useful arts into the rude community in which he arose. Such heroes were specially regarded, and the reverence felt for them measures the need of them. Thus in ancient Greece we read of Prometheus and Palamêdes, the Finns had their Wainomoinen, the Indians of North America their Hiawatha. Think again of historical figures like Charlemagne and Alfred, like Solon and Numa Pompilius, even Alexander the Great. A peculiar romance clings about their names. Why? Only because to people fighting what must often have seemed a losing battle against chaos and night the institution and defence of law and order seemed the most romantic thing a man could do. And so it was.

Such a view was natural for them. Whether it shall seem natural to us depends on the fortunes of our civilization. On that subject we may leave the prophets to rave, and content ourselves with the observation that there are parts of Europe to-day in which many a man must feel himself in the position of Roland fighting the Saracens or Aëtius against the Huns. As for ourselves, however confident we may feel, we shall be foolish to be over-confident; for we are fighting a battle that has no end. The Barbarian we shall have always with us, on our frontiers or in our own breasts. There is also the danger that the prize of victory may, like Angelica, escape the strivers’ hands. Already perhaps the vision which inspires us is changing. I am not concerned to attack the character of that change but to interpret the Greek conception of civilization, merely as a contribution to the problem. To the Greeks, then, civilization is the slow result of a certain immemorial way of living. You cannot get it up from books, or acquire it by imitation; you must absorb it and let it form your spirit, you must live in it and live through it; and it will be hard for you to do this, unless you have been born into it and received it as a birth-right, as a mould in which you are cast as your fathers were. “Oh, but we must be more progressive than that.” Well, we are not; on the contrary the Greeks were very much the most progressive people that ever existed—intellectually progressive, I mean of course; for are we not talking about civilization?

The Greek conception, therefore, seems to work. I think it works, and worked, because the tradition, so cherished as it is, is not regarded as stationary. It is no more stationary to the Greeks than a tree, and a tree whose growth they stimulated in every way. It seems a fairly common error, into which Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton sometimes fall, for modern champions of tradition to over-emphasize its stability. There has always been the type of “vinous, loudly singing, unsanitary men,” which Mr. Wells has called the ideal of these two writers; he is the foundational type of European civilization. But it almost looks as if Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton were entirely satisfied with him. They want him to stay on his small holding, and eat quantities of ham and cheese, and drink quarts of ale, and hate rich men and politicians, and be perfectly parochial and illiterate. But Hellenism means, simply an effort to work on this sound and solid stuff; it is not content to leave him as he is; it strives to develope him, but to develope him within the tradition; to transform him from an Aristophanic demesman into an Athenian citizen. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton are Greek in this, that they have constantly the sense of fighting an endless and doubtful battle against strong enemies that would destroy whatever is most necessary to the soul of civilized men. _Well I know in my heart and soul that sacred Ilium must fall, and Priam, and the folk of Priam with the good ashen spear ... yet before I die will I do a deed for after ages to hear of!_

V

SOPHROSYNE

It needs imagination for the modern man to live into the atmosphere of ancient Greece. It ought not now to be so hard for us who have seen the lives and sanctities of free peoples crushed and stained. It should be easier for us to reoccupy the spiritual ground of Hellas, to feel a new thrill in her seemingly too simple formulas, a new value in her seemingly cold ideals. It is opportune to write about her now, and justifiable to write with a quickened hope. For all that, mental habits are the last we lose, and the habit of regarding our civilization as secure has had time to work itself deep into our minds. It has coloured our outlook, directed our tastes, altered our souls.

That last expression may appear overstrained. Yet reflect if it really be so. These many ages we have felt so safe. If fear came on us, it was not fear for the fabric itself of civilization. We grew delicately weary of our inevitably clasping and penetrating culture. We called it our “old” civilization, with some implication of senility; and we were restive under its restraints and conventions. We were affected in different ways, but we were all affected, we were all tired of our security. To escape it some of us fled to the open road and a picturesque gipsyism, some hunted big game in Africa. One or two of us actually did these things, a greater number did them in imagination, reading about them in books. Others, not caring to fatigue their bodies, or too fastidious or sincere or morbid to find relief in personal or vicarious adventures—for this reason or that—pursued “spiritual adventures” or flamed out into rebellion against what they felt insulted their souls. It seems clear enough that our bohemianism of the city and the field is not two things but one, and I am not put from this opinion by the consciousness of temperamental gulfs between typical moderns such as (not to come too near ourselves) Whitman and Poe in America. The symptoms are different, but the malady is the same.

I am not concerned to defend the word “malady,” if it be thought objectionable. It may be a quite excellent and healthy reaction we have been experiencing. But a reaction means a disturbance of poise, leaving us to some extent, as we say, unbalanced. It may have been so in an opposite sense with the Greeks. I may not deny (for I am not sure about it) that they went to the other extreme. It is possible and even likely. But if they were rather mad about the virtues of sanity, and rather excessive in their passion for moderation, this intensity can only be medicinal to us, who need the tonic badly. It may help us to reach that just equilibrium in which the soul is not asleep, but, in fact, most thrillingly sensitive. Being what it is, the human soul seems bound to oscillate for ever about its equipoise. It will always have its actions and reactions. Our violent reaction against the sense of an absolute security is entirely natural because of that strange passion, commingled of longing and fear, that draws us to the heart of loneliness and night. But it has exactly reversed our point of view. We have wished for the presence of conditions which the Greeks, having them, wished away. We have wished the forest to grow closer to our doors. We have admired explorers and pioneers. We have admired them because we are different. Well, the Greeks were explorers and pioneers—and not merely in things of the spirit—and they wished the forest away. Naturally, you see; just as naturally as we long for it to be there.

There is a line in Juvenal which means that when the gods intend to destroy a man they grant him his desire. If we suddenly found ourselves in the heart of savagery, most of us would wish to retract our prayers. Robinson Crusoe tired of his delightful island. Men who live on the verge of civilization are apt to cherish ideals which create strong shudders in the modern artistic soul. On the African or Canadian frontiers, or cruising in the south seas, a man may dream of a future “home” of the kind which has moved so many of our writers to laughter or pity. Whatever our own aspiration might be under the burden of similar circumstances, we should at least experience a far profounder sense of the value of those very civilities and conventions, of which we had professed our weariness. To uphold the flag of the human spirit against the forces that would crush and humiliate it—that would seem the heroic, the romantic thing. Exactly that was the mission of Greece, as she knew well, feeling all the glory and labour of it. And so far as to fight bravely for a fair ideal with the material odds against you is romantic, in that degree Greece was romantic. Her victory (of which we reap the fruits) has wrought her this injury, that her ideal has lost the attraction that clings to beautiful threatened things. It has become the “classical” ideal, consecrated and—for most of us—dead.

But it is not dead, and it will never perish, for it is the watchword of a conflict that may die down but cannot expire; the conflict between the Hellene and the Barbarian, the disciplined and the undisciplined temper, the constructive and the destructive soul. Let that conflict become desperate once more, and we shall understand. But a little exercise of imagination would let us understand now. As it is, we hardly do. We note with chilled amazement the passionate emphasis with which the Greeks repeat over and over to themselves their _Nothing too much!_ as if it were charged with all wisdom and human comfort. We understand what the words say; we do not understand what they mean.

The explanation is certain. The Greek watchword is uninspiring to us, because we do not need it. We are not afraid of stimulus and excitement, because we have our passions better under control, because we have more thoroughly subdued the Barbarian within us, than the Greeks. It is at least more agreeable to our feelings to put it that way than to speak of “this ghastly thin-faced time of ours.” The Greeks, on the other hand, were wildly afraid of temptation, not much for puritanic reasons, although for something finer than prudential ones. It may seem a little banal to repeat it, but— they had the artistic temperament. They had the exceptional impressionability, and they felt the very practical necessity (at least as important for the artist as the puritan) of a serenity at the core of the storm. _The wind that fills my sails, propels; but I am helmsman_ is the image in Meredith. I once collected a quantity of material for a study of the Greek temperament. I have been looking over it again, and I find illustration after illustration of an impressionability rivalling that of the most extreme Romantics. It is difficult to appraise this evidence. Quite clearly it is full of exaggeration and prejudice. If you were to believe the orators about one another, and about contemporary politicians, you would think that fourth-century Athens was run exclusively by criminal lunatics. Nor are the historians writing in that age much better, infected as they are by the very evil example of the rhetoricians. But the cumulative effect is overwhelming, and is produced as much, if not more, by little half-conscious indications, mere gestures and casual phrases, as by the records of hysterical emotionality and scarlet sins. Don’t you remember how people in Homer when they meet usually burst into tears and, if something did not happen, might (the poet says) go on weeping till sunset? It is not so often for grief they weep—unless for that remembered sorrow which is a kind of joy—as for delight in the renewal of friendship, or merely to relieve their feelings. The phrase used by Homer to describe the end of such lamentations is one he also applies to people who have just thoroughly enjoyed a meal. There is a sensuous element in it. Of course, one murmurs “the southern” or “the Latin temperament”; but if we understood the Latin temperament better, we should be able to read more meaning into that warning _Nothing too much!_

A friend said to Sophocles, “_How do you feel about love, Sophocles? Are you still fit for an amorous encounter?_” “_Don’t mention it, man; I have just given it the slip—and very glad too—feeling as if I had escaped from bondage to a ferocious madman._” To be sure Sophocles was a poet and had the poetical temperament, and it would argue a strange ignorance of human nature to make any inferences concerning his character from the Olympian serenity of his art. But listen to this anecdote about an ordinary young man. _Leontios the son of Aglaion was coming up from the Piraeus in the shadow of the North Wall, on the outside, when he caught sight of some corpses lying at the feet of the public executioner. He wanted to get a look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted with himself and tried to put himself off the thing. For a time he fought it out and veiled his eyes. His desire, however, getting the mastery of him, he literally pulled apart his eyelids and, running up to the dead bodies, said, “There you are, confound you; glut yourselves on the lovely sight!”_

Both anecdotes are in Plato, and may serve as a warning when we are tempted to think him too hard on the emotional elements of the soul. He knew the danger, because he felt it himself, because he understood the Greek temperament—better, for instance, than Aristotle did. Undoubtedly there is an ascetic strain in Plato, as there is in every moralist who has done the world any good. But Greek asceticism is an attuning of the instrument, not a mortification of the flesh. It is just the training or discipline that is as necessary for eminence in art or in athletics as for eminence in virtue. The Greek words—askêsis, aretê—level these distinctions.