Part 31

Extraordinary as this is, the above quotations introduce us to a subject quite as extraordinary and far more interesting and important, namely, the distortion of truth caused by extreme classical enthusiasm.[52] It is perfectly easy to see how such enthusiasm arises. Greek art and literature are not only intrinsically wonderful and valuable but, seeing that they were produced by a comparatively small population in a barbaric age, they constitute the greatest (secular) marvel in the history of the world. Everything tends to excite enthusiasm for this remote, alien, primitive, but most remarkable people. I need not speak of the art in which they stand unrivalled throughout the ages. As regards their literature, apart from its intrinsic excellence and the beauty of the language in which it is written, it has an additional fascination and charm, because it is the speech and song of the infancy of the world. Through it we see into the mind and realize the life of the most interesting race that ever lived. Possessing astounding intellect and intense originality, they were nevertheless the children of nature. Their earth was peopled with fauns and nymphs, their gods lived and moved and had their being in every natural object—and they had very little of our ideas of right and wrong. They had nothing of our wide knowledge and experience, yet they constructed a world of life and thought for themselves. It is absorbingly interesting to read their beautiful poetry, fine literature, and philosophic thought, bearing in mind that it was produced in the ignorant childhood and paganism of the human race, over two thousand years ago. And one of the most astonishing things about them is that essential product of civilization, a keen sense of humour. So curiously “modern” is their literature that the writers speak to us across the ages with as vivid a voice as if they were still alive. No other primitive race has been able to leave us any such adequate conception of its life and thought. Moreover, we can never forget how the Greek arose out of the tomb, where he had slept for many centuries, to preside at the re-birth of our own modern world—that emergence of Europe from medieval darkness which we call the Renaissance. It was largely Greek art and literature that stimulated the mental activity of the world and made us what we are to-day.

Very great enthusiasm is, therefore, warranted in the Greek student—but there comes a point where enthusiasm may become pure _fanaticism_, and lead to that most deadly of all things, the perversion of the truth.

In the above quotations two Greek poems are quoted, and another is referred to in the lines I have italicized. The first two[53] refer to vice, which to us is revolting and criminal, but to the whole Greek nation was natural, and recognised by law. The third expresses even more revolting passion. It will be seen, therefore, that Myers, in order to illustrate the “departed loveliness” of Greek life made a strange choice of quotations (which also, standing alone, would give a very false notion of classic Greek poetry).

Seeing that Myers was one of the purest-minded of men, what is the explanation of this very remarkable fact? The explanation is simply that Myers was a _classical enthusiast_. He had forgotten the warning he himself gave in the first quotation. It is absolutely amazing how such an enthusiast, however brilliant a scholar and capable a man in other respects, can blind himself to the most obvious facts where anything Greek is concerned. It is very certain that Myers read into each poem a perfectly innocent meaning—and he would not be alone in that respect. Take, for instance, the third quotation which is from Sappho. In my youth the _great majority_ of classical men appeared to have convinced themselves that a poem of terribly fierce passion was an expression of mere friendship! Even our leading reference-book, Smith’s _Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography_, gave the same absurd view until about 1877.[54] However, we must get away from this ugly subject and seek further illustrations elsewhere.

This perverted enthusiasm seems to permeate all books of the last fifty or sixty years dealing with Greek life, art and literature that I have met with. This is a very large statement to make, and, of course, I do not mean that such flagrant instances as those above referred to are the rule. But to me there seems always to be _some_ bias which tends to exaggerate or falsify the facts to _some_ extent. We can trace this tendency back more than eighteen hundred years to Plutarch. (_On the Malice of Herodotus_). He, as Mr. Livingstone[55] says, “took the view that the Greeks of the great age could do no wrong, and rates the historian for ‘needlessly describing evil actions.’” And it is largely in this way that the enthusiast works—by _omitting facts_. I should think few readers unfamiliar with the classics will have known all the facts already put before them in these notes—because such facts, although known to all classical scholars, are kept in the background as much as possible. Again the tendency is to judge the Greeks by their greatest men—to imagine every Greek to have been a Plato!

I might add greatly to what I have already said about the Greeks, but I must confine myself to a few matters, repeating nothing that has been said in previous notes. The Greeks had very little regard for truthfulness. An _oath_ was a matter of religion and was supposed to be binding upon them, but it was excusable to twist out of it. They also saw nothing immoral in theft. Hermes was the god of thieves, and “the wily Odysseus” was a favourite hero of the Greeks. Autolycus, the grandfather of Odysseus, was taught by Hermes himself to surpass all men in stealing and perjury. (_Od._ XIX, 395.) Hence it was thought quite a proper thing to make war for the purpose of robbing neighbours of territory or property. I need quote only the truly “German” opinions of _Socrates_ and _Aristotle_ placed by Mr. Zimmern at the head of his chapter on Warfare in _The Greek Commonwealth_. “But, Socrates, it is possible to procure wealth for the State from our foreign enemies.” “Yes, certainly you may, if you are the stronger power” (Xen. _Mem._, III, 6, 7). “War is strictly a means of acquisition, to be employed against wild animals and against inferior races of men who, though intended by nature to be in subjection to us, are unwilling to submit[!], for war of such a kind is just by nature” (Aristotle, _Politics_, 1256). On considering that such sentiments are expressed by their greatest philosophers, we are not surprised to find that _the history of the Greeks is one of lies, perfidy, and cruelty_.[56] It further illustrates their unsympathetic pagan character when we find the Greek mother mourning for her dead son because he will not “feed her old age,” and Socrates valuing friendship because friends were useful.[57] When the enthusiast is confronted with the debased Greek religion he tells us, or leads us to think, that the people did not believe in their dissolute gods. As regards this I cannot do better than quote the terse statement of Mr. Livingstone. After pointing out that there were some advanced thinkers among the Greeks who were more or less sceptics (and that there were also some small sects who are said to have had higher _moral_ beliefs than their countrymen[58]) he says, “We are concerned with the state religion, which Athenians learnt to reverence as children, which permeated the national literature, which crowned the high places of the city with its temples, which consecrated peace and war and everything solemn and ceremonial in civil life, which by its intimate connection with these things acquired that support of instinctive sentiment which is stronger than any moral or intellectual sanction.”[59] Something may be added to this. Why was the Greek so greatly concerned about his tomb and his burial rites? The main reason why he burdened himself with a wife and household was that a son should be left to see to those rites and look after his tomb. He did not see his wife before marriage, and, however beautiful he found her to be, the uneducated girl would be no companion for him; and her beauty would soon fade in the unwholesome confined life she led. Her office was fulfilled when she had borne him sons—and he looked for his pleasures elsewhere. Surely this one fact alone proves that the Greeks had a very real belief in their religion. Again why do we find that only Socrates and a few other thinkers appear to have been charged with impiety? Mr. Livingstone, curiously enough, argues from this that there was greater freedom of thought among the Greeks. Surely the simple and natural explanation is far preferable, namely, that there were _no other pronounced sceptics_ than those few advanced thinkers. Imagine the danger of declaring anything against the gods which would throw in doubt the divinity of the patron goddess Athena![60] It is often argued that the intelligent Greeks could no more have believed the monstrous stories of their gods, than we believe some of the Old Testament stories of Jehovah. But the position is entirely different. We disbelieve stories that offend our moral sense: the gods of the Greeks had a character similar to their own, and acted as they themselves would have acted if they had been gods. Also they had no ethnology, no knowledge of purer religions to teach them the falsity and depravity of their own—nor, indeed, would the proud Greeks have condescended to learn from barbarians (especially as they believed themselves descended from heroes who were sprung from the gods). Finally one has only to read the accounts of travellers in Greece to learn that the religion _even lingers on to-day_—see, for instance, S. C. Kaines Smith’s _Greek Art and National Life_ (pp. 153, 172), where the woodcutters, when a tree is falling, throw themselves on the ground and hide their faces in deadly fear of the Dryads,[61] and an _eminent Greek gentleman_ crosses himself at the name of the Nereïds. (See also W. H. D. Rouse’s _Tales from the Isles of Greece_. I learn from the _Spectator_ review of a book just published, _Balkan Home Life_, by Lucy M. J. Garnett, that the religion has a very strong hold on the people.)

My statement has been very one-sided so far, as I have said very little of the virtues of the Greeks. These virtues were those of intelligent primitive people, love of freedom, justice, and equality (_but confined to their own nation and not including their own women and slaves_), personal courage, great patriotism, fidelity to kinsfolk and guests; they showed at times generosity to a valiant enemy and recognized some such duties as burying the dead. While I do not think we can carry the national virtues much further than this, there would be gradations of character among the Greeks, and probably many would be more or less kindly, others have a true affection for their wives, others show private virtues in various directions—we can only conjecture as to something of which there is very little evidence in their literature. On the one hand, we know that Socrates suffered martyrdom for the truth,[62] and we may surmise that there were other fine characters; on the other hand, we know that this highly intellectual _nation_ put the philosopher to death as a blasphemer against their profligate gods.

But while we can give the Greeks credit for little of the morality of modern civilization, on the other hand we would be thinking very absurdly if we regarded their vices as though the people were on the same moral plane as ourselves. (This is the fact to be recognised. The ridiculous tendency of the modern enthusiast is to depict the Greeks as a highly moral nation striving for righteousness!) Strictly speaking, the Greek practices and habits should not be called vices, because the Greeks had no reason to believe that they were doing anything wrong. Their virtues and their vices were those of ordinary primitive life.[63] The moral principle, that highest product of creation, had not yet developed itself among the people to any appreciable extent, but we see it gradually emerging in the growing disbelief in the national religion among thinking men, and reaching an advanced stage in Plato, the greatest philosopher of antiquity. But to the average Greek, apart from religion (including respect for parents), the patriotism which they had learnt from Homer, their one great book, covered much of what they meant by “virtue”.[64] Whatever was good for the State was a virtue, whatever bad for the State a vice. We can hardly realize what Athens stood for in the Greek mind. For instance, Æschylus tells us that the patron goddess Athena came to Athens to preside over the balloting of the jurors and conduct the trial of Orestes, and also that the Furies lived among the citizens in a sacred grotto. The Greeks saw that they were immensely superior to the surrounding “barbarians,” and they regarded their State practically as an object of _worship_ (as Rome was also regarded by the Romans).

It would have been interesting to discuss here the ethical views of the philosophers, but the subject is far too intricate for this note—and in any case they and their followers formed only a few exceptions among the Greeks. It will be seen later that the use of such words as “virtue,” “holiness,” etc., causes a vast deal of meaning to be read into Plato which never entered that philosopher’s mind.

The great outstanding fact about the Greeks is their astonishing intellect, combined with sound commonsense (σωφροσύνη) and a quite modern gift of humour. Their powerful intellect, however, had very poor material to work upon. In a previous note I have mentioned their remarkably limited idea of the world—but, while knowing this to be a fact, we still cannot realize the _mental attitude_ of men who had even _one_ false conception of such magnitude as regards their general outlook and thought. Let us take an instance of a different kind from the great philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who came after Plato—bearing in mind that the average Greeks would be vastly more ignorant and superstitious than their greatest thinkers. In his _Mechanica_ Aristotle explains the power of a lever to make a small weight lift a larger one. His explanation is that a _circle has a certain magical character_. A very wonderful thing is a circle, because it is both _convex_ and _concave_; it is made by a _fixed_ point and a _moving_ line, which are contradictory to each other; and whatever has a circular movement moves _in opposite directions_. Also, Aristotle says, movement in a circle is the most _natural_ movement! Hence we get the result: the long arm of the lever moves in the _larger circle_ and has the greater amount of this magical _natural motion_, and so requires the lesser force! Again, let us take a story which was as firmly believed by Aristotle as the most ignorant of his countrymen. Our word halcyon is the Greek word _Alkuon_, meaning a bird, probably of the Kingfisher species. The Greeks supposed the word to be formed of two words, _hals kuon_, meaning “conceived in the sea”—therefore they believed the bird _was_ so conceived and that it was bred in a nest floating on the sea—and, as the sea must then be smooth, they further believed that a period of fourteen days’ calm necessarily occurred about Christmas—finding there was no such period of calm around their own coasts they either thought that it must occur (and the birds breed) elsewhere, or, like Theocritus, that the bird could _charm_ the sea into tranquillity.[65]

The Greeks believed queer things about animals. I take the following instances of birds alone from Mr. Rogers’ Introduction to his _Birds of Aristophanes_, so that I need not give references. By looking at a plover, who returns the look, a man is cured of jaundice. Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, was said to have been so named because, having been cast into the sea, she was rescued by widgeons (Greek, _penelops_). The song of the dying swan was a belief of the Greeks. The raven was the bird of augury and had mysterious knowledge. The cranes fought the pygmies and swallowed stones for ballast. The young storks fed their aged parents. The sisken foresees the winter and snowstorms. Mr. Rogers has no need to discuss the yet more extravagant stories of the phœnix, sirens, harpies, etc. Plutarch (_De Is. and Os._ LXXI) tells us how the Greeks regarded birds and other animals in relation to the gods; he says that while they did not, like the Egyptians, _worship_ animals, “they said and believed rightly that the dove was the sacred animal of Aphrodite, the raven of Apollo, the dog of Artemis, and so on.” (Possibly Aristophanes’ comedy did not win the prize, because the audience saw little humour in exaggerating the powers which they really believed the birds to have. To the Greeks the birds were _greater_ and the gods _smaller_ than we ourselves picture them. Ruskin’s translation of Od. V. 67,[66] the seabirds which “have care of the works of the sea,” seems much more likely to be correct than the accepted version that the birds live by diving and fishing. Consider how the Greeks would regard the birds that flew round and over their ships or fishing-nets and over the waves and rocks, where the sea-gods lay beneath—and compare _Il._ II, 614.)[67]

All that has been said about the Greeks in this and previous notes is intended, not so much to exhibit the character of that nation—a matter which does not greatly concern me—but for other reasons. In one instance the intention was to indicate how vast a gulf exists between Christianity and the ancient world. Many classical enthusiasts do not seem to realize this, and a definitely _pagan_ tendency is very apparent in their habits of thought.

But the main object of pointing out the inferior state of civilization among the Greeks, their non-moral character in certain respects, their ignorance and superstition, and their low standard of morality generally, has to do with the important question of interpreting Greek literature and philosophy. It would matter very little that the enthusiast should picture the Greeks as a race of saints and demigods, if there were no beautiful and valuable literature to be coloured and falsified by reason of such views. It is only by realizing the actual life and thought of this primitive race that _we can understand their language_, that is to say, we can learn what meanings should be attached to the words they use. Only thus can we _interpret their literature_. We have already had two simple illustrations of this. In one case what appears to be a poetic fancy in Theocritus, when the voyager hopes the halcyons will calm the sea for him, is seen to be a wish that the birds _will actually exercise the power that they possess_. The other instance appears on page 294. But much more important is it that, in reading words of knowledge such as references to the starry heavens or the constitution of matter, or mental or moral phenomena, we should not attribute to the Greek writer conceptions far larger and higher than he had in his mind. To amplify what I have said in a previous note, let us take the words in Plato, Aristotle or, say, Euripides which are translated by such English words as “morality,” “purity,” “virtue,” “honour,” “religion,” etc. It is clear that the original Greek expressions cannot signify, for instance, either purity as we know it, or even abstention from unnatural vice or from infanticide.[68] We are, therefore, mistranslating when we use such English words (because they are the nearest equivalent to the Greek expressions), and this fact needs to be steadily borne in mind. Again when interpreting, say, a Greek play, it is necessary to bear in mind, not only the _supposed_ character of the _dramatist_, but also the _actual_, _known_ character of the _audience_ to whom the play was addressed. I now propose to give an illustration which will bring me on dangerous ground.

Is it reasonable to ask if the Athenians, some few of whose characteristics have been outlined in these notes, would have flocked to hear, and have greatly enjoyed, a play replete with high moral teaching, and containing hymns that might have come out of a Church Hymnal? Now the _Bacchae_ of Euripides, one of the most popular of Greek plays, and the _Hippolytus_ of the same dramatist, have been translated by one great Greek scholar, Professor Gilbert Murray, in a manner that (at any rate, as regards the _Bacchae_) received the “hearty admiration and approval” of another great Greek scholar, Dr. Verrall. In this version, one after another of the debased Greek gods is called “God.” We also find such expressions as (note the capitals) “God’s grace,” “Virgin of God,” “Babe of God,” “God’s son,” and even “God’s true son” (who is Dionysus or Bacchus), “Spirit of God,” “Child of the Highest,” “Heaven,” “Purity,” “Saints” (who are the Maenads!), “righteous,” “divine,” “holy,” and so on.

Professor Murray is put in a difficulty when two or more gods are referred to. In some cases he becomes illogical (and reminds us of the Kaiser), as when Dionysus has to say “God and me.” In others he has to use the Greek name for one god, and then the words sound blasphemous, as when he speaks of Dionysus who was “born from the thigh of Zeus and now is God.” These instances are taken quite at random and there must be many others.

Take the following two lines as a short illustration of Professor Murray’s version:

Where a voice of living waters never ceaseth In God’s quiet garden by the sea.

The original reads: “Where the ambrosial fountains stream forth by the couches of the palaces of Zeus,” or, to give them a more musical turn, Mr. A. S. Way’s version is:

Where the fountains ambrosial sunward are leaping By the couches where Zeus in his halls lieth sleeping.