Part 32

In Professor Murray’s two lines Zeus becomes “God,” “living waters” is taken from the Song of Solomon, and “God’s quiet garden” from Isaiah and Ezekiel. Such expressions, with their tender and beautiful associations, do not in the least convey the sense of the original. Used to describe the palace of a vicious, barbaric deity, they are a _mistranslation_. Also every one of the expressions referred to above is, wherever used, another mistranslation (although some may be necessitated by the limitation of language). Again there are other more pronounced mistranslations, some of which are pointed out by Verrall (_Bacchants of Euripides_). Thus where the very old man Cadmus, setting out on an unusual journey, merely says to his ancient comrade, “We have pleasantly forgotten that we are old” (_Bacchae_ 184-9). Professor Murray interpolates a stage direction, “_A mysterious strength and exaltation_” (from the god Dionysus) “_enters into him_”—and he alters the words of Cadmus to conform with the miracle:

Sweetly and forgetfully The dim years fall from off me!

Here, therefore, we find _an important episode_ deliberately introduced into the play.

Take another instance which Verrall does not mention. In the very enthusiastic “Introductory Essay,” Professor Murray tells us that Euripides longed to escape from the bad, hard, irreligious Athenians[69] of that day, and proceeds as follows:

“What else is wisdom?” he asks, in a marvellous passage:—

What else is wisdom? What of man’s endeavour Or God’s high grace so lovely and so great? To stand from fear set free, to breathe and wait; To hold a hand uplifted over Hate; And shall not loveliness be loved for ever?

There is nothing here, nor in the translation that follows, to indicate that there has been any interference with the text. It is only upon turning to the notes _at the end of the translation_ (which the average reader would hardly study) that we find the third line is “_practically interpolated._” He gives reasons for this that are not easy to follow, and says “If I am wrong, the refrain is probably a mere cry for revenge;” I add that the latter is the generally accepted meaning, and the only meaning I can see in the original Greek.

Now Professor Murray’s object in all this is to convey in words that appeal to our minds his conception of the devout, religious and, therefore, _highly moral_ attitude of, not only Euripides, _but also his Athenian audience_. The attitude of mind must be that of the _audience_, as well as the dramatist, because none but devout, religious people go to a “Service of Song,” and, as stated above, the _Bacchae_ was a very popular play among the Greeks. If, however, Professor Murray thought that, by colouring, altering, and adding to the play, he gave a more correct impression of it as it appeared to the Greeks, he was perfectly at liberty with that object to mistranslate as much as he pleased—_provided he told his readers and hearers that they were not reading or hearing the words that Euripides wrote_.

Has he told them this? The book is entitled “Euripides _translated_ into English rhyming verse.” In the Preface he also begins by telling us definitely that it is a translation; later on he says: “As to the method of this translation ... my aim has been to build up something as like the original as I possibly could, in form and what one calls ‘Spirit.’ To do this, the first thing needed was a work of painstaking scholarship, a work in which there should be _no neglect of the letter_ in an attempt to snatch at the spirit.” He then goes on to tell us that “The remaining task” was to reproduce the poetry of the original and (here is the only admission that he has varied from the text) he ‘has often changed metaphors, altered the shapes of sentences, and the like.... On one occasion he has even omitted a line and a half’ (because unnecessary) and he says, he ‘has added, of course by conjecture, a few stage directions.’ Let the non-classical reader look back over what has been said above and ask himself whether such words—however carefully studied—would have given him the least impression of what this “_translation_” actually amounts to.

Without entering into any long discussion as to the so called “purity choruses” of the _Bacchae_, let us simply ask the question, Does this pious, fervently-religious version represent the actual play that the cruel, lying, treacherous and unspeakably sensual Greeks flocked to see and enjoy? Further comes a much more important question, Would such a “translation,” put before English readers, or staged before an English audience, give them a _true_ or a _false_ idea of the character of the Greeks?

I might compare with this Ruskin’s view of the Greek character (_The Crown of Wild Olive._). This is what he says the Greeks won from their lives: “Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and _requited love_, and _the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to their pain_.” (Italics mine.) This is truly amazing! I am tempted to go back again to Professor Murray’s _Euripides_ (p. lxiii) and quote a like passage:

“Love thou the day and the night,” he (Euripides) says in another place. “It is only so that Life can be made what it really is, a Joy: _by loving not only your neighbour_—he is so vivid an element in life that, unless you do love him, he will spoil all the rest!—but the actual details and processes of living, etc., etc.”

The italics are again mine—but here it will be seen that Euripides has, _as a matter of course_, anticipated the great evangel of Christ! He has even gone a step further—but I must leave Professor Murray to his love of the “details and processes of living,” whatever that may mean.

Finally, in this extraordinary essay, I come to something which is absolutely _repulsive_. I must first briefly premise that the Dionysiac mystery cult was not sectarian. It was orthodox, believing in the plurality and the profligacy of the gods. Its adherents had no more idea of morality or purity than other Greeks. Its rites were indecent. The so-called “purification rites,” including regulations regarding continence, were simply _training rules_ preparatory to their hideous orgies. The essential rite of the cult was practised by the Maenads or Bacchantes. They tore to pieces live animals (and at one time human beings) and devoured their raw, quivering flesh. As stated above, these horrible women are Professor Murray’s “Saints.” He now proceeds to _draw an analogy between their loathsome god Dionysus and Jesus Christ_! Thus Dionysus is born of God (Zeus) and a human mother. He is the “twice-born”—having been hidden in Zeus’s thigh after birth! He “_comes to his own_ people of Thebes, _and—his own receive him not_.” Again “It seemed to Euripides in that favourite metaphor of his, which was always a little more than a metaphor, that a _God had been rejected by the world_ that he came from.” Dionysus “_gives his Wine to all men_.... It is a mysticism which includes democracy, as it includes _the love of your neighbour_.” Dionysus “_has given man Wine, which is his Blood and a religious symbol_.” In the translation Dionysus is called “_God’s son_” and even “_God’s true son_.” Reading this and such statements as Miss Jane Harrison’s (see p. 292, n.), one stands amazed. Apparently this fanatical enthusiasm destroys the critical faculties, so that the enthusiast becomes utterly incapable of appreciating the beauty and value of Our Lord’s ethical teaching and its exemplification in His life.

For my last illustration of how enthusiasm affects our leading classical authorities (and, therefore, leads to _perversion of the truth_) I take Mr. A. E. Zimmern’s _Greek Commonwealth_. This, like Mr. Livingstone’s work, is a very excellent book, which should be in all libraries.

Mr. Zimmern quotes and _definitely endorses_ the well-known statement in Galton’s _Hereditary Genius_ (1869), which is as follows:—“The average ability of the Athenian race is, _on the lowest possible estimate_, very nearly two grades higher than our own, that is, _about as much as our race is above that of the African Negro_.” (The italics are mine.) Here I have happened by chance[70] upon an excellent illustration of classical enthusiasm, which is worth while dwelling upon at some length. In the first place Galton’s statement is perhaps the most absurd utterance ever made by an important thinker; in the second place _it appears to have been accepted by English and European authorities for nearly half a century_.

Galton bases his argument on the number of great men produced by a nation in proportion to its population. He states that between 530 and 430 B.C. the Athenian Greeks produced fourteen highly illustrious men:—Themistocles, Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Pericles (statesmen and commanders), Thucydides, Socrates, Xenophon, and Plato (literary and scientific men), Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes (poets), and Pheidias (sculptor). I take the minor objections to his statement first.

He estimates the population of free-born Greeks in Attica at 90,000. In this instance he was misled by the authorities of his time and is not to blame; _but I take Mr. Zimmern’s own figures, as he endorses Galton’s statement_. The 90,000 should have been, according to Mr. Zimmern’s more correct figures, 180,000 to 200,000. _This alone cuts down Galton’s estimate of the “average ability” of the Greeks to at least one-half._ Galton also excludes the resident aliens who, according to him, numbered 40,000, but according to Mr. Zimmern 96,000. Yet both these and the outside aliens must be considered, for there were intermarriages. Themistocles and Cimon had alien mothers, Thucydides also probably had an alien mother, or at any rate was partly of Thracian descent, and there would be _some_ ground for the charge of usurping citizenship repeatedly made by Cleon against Aristophanes. Galton also takes no account of the slaves, the number of whom he estimates at 400,000, but Zimmern at about 112,000. These cannot be entirely omitted when we consider the life of the Greek women and the habits of the men. It should be remembered that the slaves were often Greeks of other States and also by reason of the practice of exposing children some would be Athenians and even of the best families (Plato’s _Laws_, 930, deals with children of slaves and Greek men and women). However, on these figures, it will be seen that Galton’s estimate has to be enormously reduced.

Next, the _greatest_ of all the names in his list, Plato, has to be _struck out_. There can be no reasonable doubt that he was not born until 428 or 427 B.C. (This appears to have been well recognised in 1869 and it is unaccountable that Galton and his reviewers should not have known it.) However, there is _some_ evidence that he was born in 430, and let us assume that this is so. But, if we are to include in the 100 (or rather 101) years everyone who _is born_ or _died_ in that time, we are actually taking a period of 200, not 100, years, and _doubling_ the proper estimate! Besides Plato, I may mention that Aristophanes and Xenophon could have been only about fourteen years of age in 430, Thucydides had not then begun to write, and of the eighteen plays extant of Euripides two only were written before 430. Here again is another enormous reduction of Galton’s estimate.

Again let us take Galton’s opinion of the ability of these fourteen men. It is amazingly high. It will be seen that there are only _two grades_ between ourselves and the African negro. Again, in Galton’s table, “eminent men” are _two grades_ above “the mass of men who obtain the ordinary prizes of life.” _He now places the whole of these fourteen Greeks two grades above the eminent men!_ To what starry height he means to raise them, it is impossible to say, for the whole statement is exceedingly vague; but he tells us that two of the fourteen, Socrates and Pheidias, _stand alone as the greatest men that ever lived_.

It is clear then that the fourteen Greeks have to be placed at a tremendous height in our estimation. It is impossible here to take each man and discuss his ability, but let us inquire what qualifications Galton had _as a critic_. We turn to his list of great modern English and European literary men. Although he goes back as far as the Fifteenth Century and his list comprises _only fifty-two_ writers, he finds room among them for such names as John Aikin and Maria Edgeworth! Again his ten great English poets are Milton, Byron, Chaucer, _Milman_, Cowper, _Dibdin_(!), Dryden, _Hook_, Coleridge, and Wordsworth. (Some names would no doubt be omitted because they did not throw light on questions of heredity, but these lists in any case are highly absurd.)

We need not greatly prolong this part of the discussion. We might ask, however, what ground had Galton, for example, to place such men as Miltiades, Aristides, or Cimon even _on an equality with_, say, Cæsar, Alexander, or Marlborough. How can he class Xenophon as even _equal_ to our great writers? It is the interesting _facts_ he tells us of, not his literary ability, that makes this somewhat monotonous writer so very interesting. (The important point to remember is that Greek literature has a very special interest and value for us, quite apart from its great intrinsic _literary_ value. Taking De Quincey’s classification, see p. 227, it is both “literature of power” and “literature of knowledge.”)

Now take another point which I might illustrate from Galton’s own pages. He tells us (in another connection) that about sixty years before the time he is writing (1869) there were Senior Wranglers in Cambridge who also obtained first classes in the Classical Tripos—and even at a later date men could take high rank in both departments. Is it then to be argued that the earlier men were the greater? Not so, but, as Galton says, knowledge had become so far advanced that it was no longer possible for a man to gain such a distinction in more than one of the two subjects. Here we have the point—the world of knowledge and activity is infinitely wider to-day than when it formed the subject of Greek speculation. Their great men were very original thinkers—but _in a very few subjects_. Moreover, they had no books to read, no foreign languages to learn. Even their social and political life was far less complicated and involved than our own.

Again, where we speak of “average ability,” it is not correct to compare large populous countries, where great talents are often submerged (see Gray’s “Elegy”) with smaller communities that afford far ampler scope. Take my own State, South Australia, with its huge territory and a population of under half a million, less than that of one of the larger English towns. We have our Premier, Government, Parliament, Town Councils, Heads of Departments, University, schools, judges, lawyers, journalists and literary men, financiers, merchants, men who design and construct railways, irrigation and other important works, mining men, heads of institutions and so on—which means a large number of men of ability and resource in all departments of life. If we compare ourselves with an average half-million of Englishmen, how great our superiority would apparently be! And yet, we know that we are not actually more capable—our ability has been simply brought into play. Mr. W. M. Hughes might himself have been a “flower to blush unseen,” if he had not emigrated to Australia.

We have so far dealt with minor matters, which have nevertheless reduced Galton’s arithmetical estimate by, say, 75 per cent. at the very least. Let us now take the one great misrepresentation that must have immediately flashed upon the minds of all reviewers of Galton’s book, if they had not been blinded by classical enthusiasm. It is truly remarkable that not a single one of them seems to have called attention to the obvious fact that Galton takes the one great Athenian period, _as though it were an average period in their history_! From Homer’s time to the Fifth Century, B.C., would probably be about as long as from the Norman Conquest to the present time, or from King Alfred to Shakespeare—and there are again the many centuries that followed. Is the “average ability” of the Greeks during hundreds or thousands of years to be estimated on their one most brilliant period? The question needs no discussion. Galton might in the same way have taken our Elizabethan period when London had a population of 150,000, and Great Britain of about three millions—and proved _that our own ancestors_ were as far above ourselves as we are above the negro.[71]

Mr. C. T. Whiting, of the Adelaide Public Library, knowing how my time was limited, very kindly volunteered to make an extensive search for references to Galton’s statement in such of the literature of the time as is available in Adelaide. In addition to a number of books, he has searched through _thirty-eight_ journals. He finds reviews of Galton’s book in the following:—_Athenæum_, _British Quarterly_, _Saturday Review_, _Edinburgh Review_, _Fortnightly Review_, _Chambers’ Journal_, _Journal of Anthropology_, _Atlantic Monthly_, _Frazer’s Magazine_, _Nature_, _Times_, _and Westminster Review_. The first seven do not refer at all to the statement—they apparently accept it as a matter of course. Of the last five _Frazer’s_ mentions the statement, and says vaguely that the chapter in which it is contained “offers several vulnerable points to the critic;” the _Westminster_ states the fact without taking any exception to it; the _Atlantic Monthly_ raises the question whether Miltiades, Aristides, Cimon, and Xenophon were so very illustrious, and enters into an argument on Galton’s figures; the _Times_ considers that we have had other men in different fields of human effort, who could be named with Socrates and Pheidias, and lays stress on the enormous increase of knowledge and activity in modern life; in _Nature_ A. R. Wallace, misreading Galton as referring only to the age of Pericles[72] admits the truth of the statement as applied to the Athenians of that time. None of them refer to the fact that Galton takes the most brilliant period of Greek history as a normal period—and the arguments, taken together, amount to very little. As regards the twenty-six journals which appear to have taken no notice of so startling a statement in an important book, the fact seems to indicate that to the writers for those journals the statement contained nothing of a remarkable or dubious character! (Even _Punch_ missed the chance of an amusing cartoon!)

It may be objected that the reviewers of the book would not be classical men. But _first_ it must be remembered that the writers of 1869 would practically all have had a classical education and _secondly_ it needed no special classical knowledge to see the absurdity of the statement. Every one without exception would know, for example, that the period taken by Galton was the one great Greek period. The statement must also have excited interest on all sides. I myself remember how it was talked of when I was a boy in Melbourne, and I have heard it repeated as an acknowledged fact up to the present time—and, therefore, comment would have been expected _in every direction_. But apparently the statement was generally accepted. Mr. Whiting finds that in 1892, twenty-three years after, Galton calmly repeated the statement word for word, _without reference to any criticisms_. Again we find Mr. Zimmern accepting it as a matter of course in his _second_ edition in 1915. As it was in his first edition, which would be reviewed in the classical journals, it must presumably have met with no adverse comments.

But we have to go even further than this. Galton’s was one of those important books that are studied by _all Europe_. Seeing that he makes no mention of adverse criticism in his second edition, and Mr. Zimmern sees no reason to qualify the statement, it is fair to assume that no serious objection has been made in England or Europe during nearly half a century. So amazingly does classical enthusiasm pervade the thought of the world! I do not think I need say anything further on this subject.[73]

Mr. Zimmern heads one of his chapters “Happiness or _the Rule of Love_,” the “Rule of Love” being his translation of εὐδαιμονία! This chapter is occupied exclusively by the famous Funeral Speech of Pericles. I invite the reader to look through that terribly hard speech, and see how much _love_ it contains! Again to another chapter the heading is “Gentleness or the Rule of Religion,” followed by two quotations which are evidently intended to be read as parallel passages:

στέργοι δέ με σωφροσύνα δώρημα κάλλιστον θεῶν.[74]—Eur. _Medea_, 638.

Give unto us made lowly wise The spirit of self-sacrifice.—Wordsworth.

Apart from the question whether the proud Greek could ever by any possibility have become “lowly wise,” the word σωφροσύνη “temperance,” “moderation”—or perhaps better still, “commonsense”—becomes not only a “Rule of _Religion_” but even the highest conception of Christianity, self-sacrifice. It is very extraordinary. Imagine the _Greeks_—as we know them, and as Mr. Zimmern knows them—having the faintest conception of what we mean by self-sacrifice! It reminds one very much of Humpty Dumpty in _Through the Looking Glass_: “When _I_ use a word” (εὐδαιμονία or σωφροσύνη) “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

As this is my last note I am giving myself great latitude, but I must not prolong it into a treatise. I shall, as briefly as I can, refer to only one other matter, the Greek sense of beauty. I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that we are given to believe that in this respect the Greeks are exalted high as gods above the rest of mankind. What is the fact? _They saw beauty in only one natural object, the human body._ In a land of clear skies, wonderful sunsets, starry nights, remarkable for its ranges of mountains and extent of sea-coast, they were (with some tiny exceptions not worth mentioning) absolutely blind to any beauty in inanimate nature. Nor did any bird or beast or insect, tree or flower appeal to them to any appreciable extent as a thing of beauty. They admired only what was useful or added to their comfort—the laden fruit tree, the shady grove, the clear spring, the soft water-meadows.