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The History of the Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece, Volume 1 (of 3) by James Augustus St. John.
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[Illustration: TOPOGRAPHY OF SPARTA.]
THE HISTORY OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ANCIENT GREECE.
BY J. A. ST. JOHN.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. I.
LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET, =Publisher in Ordinary to Her Majesty.= 1842.
LONDON: _PRINTED BY S. AND J. BENTLEY, WILSON, AND FLEY,_ Bangor House, Shoe Lane.
DEDICATION.
---
TO BAYLE ST. JOHN.
I DEDICATE the following work to you, my dear Son, as a token of mygratitude for the cheerful patience with which you have aided me incompleting it, despite the calamity that overtook me in the midst of mylabours. Whatever may be the fate of the publication it will alwaysrecall to me some of the happiest hours of my life, rendered so chieflyby beholding the contented serenity with which you subdued theirksomeness of studies so little suited to your years. At length,however, you are delivered from lexicographers and scholiasts. The finalpage has been written, the last proof read. I escape from a taskcommenced before you were born, and you from a four years’apprenticeship to the craft and mystery of authorship. All that nowremains is to watch the reception which the fruit of our toil may meetwith in the world. It has been produced and has grown up under verypeculiar circ*mstances. Whithersoever we have travelled, the wrecks ofGrecian literature have accompanied us, and the studies to which thesepages owe their existence have been pursued under the influence ofalmost every climate in Europe. Nay, if I pushed my researches stillfurther and visited the portion of Africa commonly supposed to have beenthe cradle of Hellenic civilisation, it was solely in the hope ofqualifying myself to speak with some degree of confidence on the subjectof those arts which represent to the Modern World so much of thegrandeur and genius of Greece. Here, probably, the action ofpestilential winds, and of the sands and burning glare of the desertcommenced that dimming of the “visual ray,” which, in all likelihood,will wrap me gradually in complete darkness, and veil for ever from mysight those forms of the beautiful which have been incarnated, if I mayso speak, in marble. This is a language which neither you nor yoursister can read to me. All that sweet Olympian brood which used to smileupon me with kindly recognition when I was a solitary wayfarer in landsnot my own, will, as far as I am concerned, be annihilated. Those twelvemystical transformations of Aphroditè into stone, which may be beheldall together at Naples, and appeared to me more lovely than its vauntedbay, or even the sky that hangs enamoured over it, will, I conjecture,be seen of me no more, or seen obscurely as through a mist. Homer,however, and Æschylus, with Plato and Thucydides and Demosthenes, willbe able still through the voices of my children—voices more cheerful andwilling than ministered to the old age and blindness of Milton—toproject their beauty into my soul. I will not, therefore, repine; but,imitating the example of wiser and better men, submit unmurmuringly tothe will of God. Had things been otherwise ordered, I might havecontinued these researches. As it is, I take leave of them here. Ourfriend, Mr. Keightley, who has visited Italy for the purpose, willperform for the Romans what I have endeavoured to accomplish for theGreeks; and his extensive and varied learning, the excellence of hismethod, and the pleasing vivacity of his style, will, probably, ensurefor his work a still greater degree of popularity even than that whichhis very successful productions already enjoy.
Believe me, my dear son, Ever affectionately yours, J. A. ST. JOHN.
London, October 13th, 1842.
INTRODUCTION.
Many moral phenomena appear to baffle the sagacity of statesmen,because, confiding too implicitly in experience, they omit to widen therange of their contemplation so as to embrace the whole circle of thepeople’s existence whose fortunes and character they desire tocomprehend. To be successful in such an inquiry it is requisite to layopen, as far as possible, the influence on that people of climate andgeographical position, to break through the husk and shell of customs,manners, laws, religions, that we may come to the kernel of its moralnature, to that inner organization, intellectual and physical, of whichthe external circ*mstances of its civil and political life are but somany fluctuating symbols.
To accomplish this, however, even in the case of a contemporary nation,among whom we may behold in full activity all the material movements ofsociety, is no easy task. But the difficulty must be very muchaugmented, when, in addition to the obstacles which necessarily underthe most favourable circ*mstances beset every avenue to a people’s innerlife, those are added arising out of the distance on the track of timeat which the nation we are considering happens to stand, the scantinessand contradictory nature of the reports that reach us, and more,perhaps, than all, the atmosphere of prejudice through which we are aptto view whatever in any degree differs from our own manners andinstitutions. But this consideration, though it should bespeakindulgence for the unavoidable errors even of the most diligentinvestigator, can certainly be no reason for abstaining from all furtherinvestigation. For, notwithstanding the disadvantages under which welabour, it is still possible to extract from the fragments remaining ofancient literature materials for reconstructing something more than theskeleton of antiquity. We can invest the bones with sinews and muscles,clothe them with flesh and skin, spread over the whole colours thatshall resemble life; and if we cannot steal from heaven celestial fireto kindle this image of surpassing beauty, that, at least, is the onlything which exceeds our power.
In saying this, I merely state my opinion of what is possible, not byany means what I conceive myself to have effected in the present work. Iam but too sensible of how far the execution falls short of “the ampleproposition that hope made,” when, many years ago, the idea suggesteditself to me at that ardent and flattering season of life in which weare apt to imagine all things within our reach. But as
Every action that hath gone before Whereof we have record, trial did draw Bias, and thwart; not answering the aim And that unbodied figure of the thought That gave ’t surmised shape;
so, no doubt, in my own case, the realisation will be found to be a veryimperfect embodying of the ideal plan.
Few subjects, however, abound more in interest or instruction than theone I have here ventured to treat. The inquiry turns upon theinstitutions and moral condition of a people to whose fortunes historyaffords no parallel; of a people that, like the cloud no bigger than aman’s hand, which the servant of the prophet saw from the top of Carmel,contained within itself the seeds of mightiest and most momentousevents. The Hellenes can never, in fact, by any but the uninformed beregarded in the same light as ordinary political communities. Theirpower, vast and astonishing for the age in which they flourished, aroseentirely out of their national character and the spirit of theirinstitutions. It was the power of intellect. They were in reality thesun and soul of the ancient world, and darted far into the darknessaround them those vivifying rays which, reflected from land to land,have since lighted up the world.
Athens, the wisest and noblest of Grecian states,
Mother of arts And eloquence,
was the great preceptress of mankind. The spirit of her laws,transmitted through those of Rome, still pervades the whole civilizedworld. Her wisdom and her arts form, in all polished communities, aprincipal object of study; and to comprehend and to enjoy them is to bea gentleman. Sallust, therefore, notwithstanding his genius andsagacity, took but a commonplace view of national greatness, when heconsidered that of Athens to be chiefly based on the splendour shedaround her achievements by historians. Her triumphs, it is true, werenot effected by vast military masses, such as those which many barbarousnations in different ages have put in motion for the purpose of spoil orconquest. Athens built her glory on other foundations. She could not,indeed, lead countless armies into the field, but she knew how, with alittle band, to defeat those who could. In the days of her freedom nohuman force could subdue her. To effect this, every man within theborders of Attica must have been exterminated; for so long as anAthenian was left, the indomitable spirit of democracy would havesurvived in him and sufficed to kindle up fresh contests.
But the energies of Athens, how great soever, did not, like those ofmost other states, develope themselves chiefly in war. It is thecharacteristic of barbarians to destroy, but to create nothing. Thedelight and glory of the people of Athens consisted, on the contrary, inthe exercise of creative power, in calling into existence new arts,founding colonies, widening the circle of civilisation, covering theearth with beautiful structures, sacred and civil; in producingpictures, statues, vases, and sculptured gems, of conception anddelicacy of workmanship inimitable. Wherever the Athenian set his foot,the very earth appeared to grow more lovely beneath it. His geniusbeautified whatever it touched. His imagination vivified everything. Hespread a rich mythological colouring over land and sea. Gods, at hisbidding, entered the antique oak, sported in the waters of brook andfountain, scattered themselves in joyous groups over the uplands andthrough the umbrageous valleys, and their voices and odoriferous breathmingled with every breeze that blew.
In the distant colonies whither he betook himself, when poverty hadrelaxed the chain that bound him indissolubly to the Attic soil, a fewyears saw a new diminutive Athens springing up. The Pnyx, the Odeion,the Theatre of Bacchos, the Prytaneion, the Virgin’s Fane, rose on adiminished scale around him, presenting an image, though faint, of hisearlier home, the loveliest, undoubtedly, and, after Jerusalem, the mosthallowed spot ever inhabited by man. Above all things, he was everywherecareful to enjoy the blessings of his ancestral institutions, andlistened, as in the mother city, to those popular thunders which, thricein every month, rolled from the bema over the assembled crowd,communicating pleasurable emotions to his mind, and rousing continuallythe passion for freedom.
It were needless to dwell at any considerable length on the naval andmilitary achievements of the Athenians. The world is still full of thevictories of Marathon, Salamis, and Platæa, and the soil, drenched indefence of liberty with Attic blood, is to this day sacred in the eyesof the most phlegmatic. I appeal in proof of this to every man’s dailyexperience: for does not the bare mention of any spot where the greatDemos triumphed or suffered some national calamity, make the blood boundmore rapidly and tingle in our veins? Even the grovelling andworldly-minded, who affect to consider nothing holy but Mammon, can havefire struck out of their cold natures by the spell of those glorioussyllables; for virtue, and valour, and that religious link which bindsthe soul to the spot where a mother’s dust reposes, are found, and willever be found, to kindle warm admiration in every heart. And never sincesociety began did these great qualities develope themselves more visiblythan among the people of Athens. For this reason, who can visitSyracuse, or the shores of the Hellespont, or the site of Memphis’sWhite Castle, without experiencing as he gazes on the scene anelectrical thrill of mental anguish at the recollection of what Atheniancitizens more than two thousand years ago suffered there? EvenThermopylæ, glorious as it is, scarcely stirs our nature so deeply asMarathon; for the coarser and more material genius and institutions ofSparta, the nurse of those heroes who fell at the Gates of Hellasinspire less of that fervent admiration which the great actions andgreat men of Athens awaken in every cultivated mind.
Of the political institutions which throughout Hellas influenced sopowerfully the developement of the national character, it is not mydesign in the present volumes to speak. I confine myself entirely to theother causes which rendered the ancient Greeks what they were; reservingthe examination of their forms of government for a separate treatise.The subject here discussed possesses sufficient interest of itself. Ithas been my aim to open up as far as possible a prospect into thedomestic economy of a Grecian family, the arts, comforts, conveniences,regulations affecting the condition of private life, and those customsand manners which communicated a peculiar character and colour to thedaily intercourse of Greek citizens. For, in all my investigations aboutthe nature and causes of those ancient institutions which, during somany ages constituted the glory and the happiness of the most highlygifted race known to history, I found my attention constantly directedto the circ*mstances of their private life, from which, as from a greatfountain, all their public prosperity and grandeur seemed to spring.
Indeed, the great sources of a nation’s happiness and power must alwayslie about the domestic hearth. There or nowhere are sown, and for manyyears cherished by culture, all those virtues which bloom afterwards inpublic, and form the best ornaments of the commonwealth. Men areeverywhere exactly what their mothers make them. If these are slaves,narrow-minded, ignorant, unhappy, those in their turn will be so also.The domestic example, small and obscure though it be, will impress itsimage on the state; since that which individually is base and little,can never by congregating with neighbouring littleness, become great, orlead to those heroic efforts, those noble self-sacrifices, which elevatehuman nature to a sphere in which it appears to touch upon and partakesomething of the divine.
By minutely studying, as far as practicable, those small obscuresanctuaries of Greek civilisation—the private dwellings of Attica--Ihoped to discover the secret of that moral alchemy by which were formed
Those dead, but sceptred sovereigns who still rule Our spirits from their urns.
In these haunts, little familiar to our imagination, lay concealed thegerms of law, good government, philosophy, the arts, and whatever elsehas tended to soften and render beautiful the human clay. That this wasthe case is certain; why it should have been so, we may perhaps beunable satisfactorily to explain; but that is what we shall at leastattempt in the present work, and for this purpose, it will at the firstglance be apparent, that the most elaborate delineation of the politicalinstitutions of Athens must prove altogether insufficient. These werebut one among many powerful causes. The principal lay deeper in acombination of numerous circ*mstances:—a peculiarly perfect andbeautiful physical organization; a mind fraught with enthusiasm, force,flexibility, and unrivalled quickness; a buoyancy of temper which nocalamity could long depress; consequent, probably, upon this, a strongreligious feeling ineradicably seated in the heart; an unerringperception of the beautiful in art and nature; and lastly, the enjoymentof a genial climate, and an atmosphere pure, brilliant, and full ofsunshine as their minds.
Races of men, though not in precisely the same manner as individuals,yet exhibit, at particular periods of their history, a freshness, avigour, a disinterestedness, like that of youth; and, because this stateof feeling may more than once occur in the course of their career, theyseem to spring, like Æson, out of convulsions and apparent dissolutionto a state of perfect rejuvenescence. Calamity and suffering purifywhole communities as they do individuals. In the boiling and commotionof revolutions the impurities of the national character bubble upwardsand are skimmed away by the iron hand of misfortune. These politicalconvulsions are, in fact, so many efforts of nature to expel somedisease lurking in the constitution, and which, though the race beimmortal, might, if suffered to remain in the frame, produce a lethargyworse than death. This truth we should bear constantly in mind; foramong the characteristics of the Athenian constitution, not the leastremarkable are the many efforts it made to right itself, and adapt itsframework to the changing circ*mstances of the times.
In the present inquiry we must, as I have already said, discover, if wecan, how much Hellas owed to its climate, to its position on the globe,and to the physical organization of its inhabitants. It would be absurdto infer with some writers, that the influence of these circ*mstances isimaginary, because Greece seems to remain where it was of old, and theconstitution and temperament of the people to be likewise unchanged. Butthis is not the case. Greece no longer occupies in the map of the worldthe position it occupied in antiquity. It has been lifted out of thecentre of civilisation, to be cast upon its outskirts, or, which is thesame thing, civilisation has shifted its seat. Nor are the Greeks anylonger what they formerly were, though perhaps by a fortunatecombination of circ*mstances they might still be rendered so. At presentthere is the same difference between them and their ancestors as betweena jar of Falernian, and an empty jar. The clay, indeed, is there,beautifully moulded, and the purple hue of life is on the cheek; buttyranny from the battle of Cheronæa,
“That dishonest victory Fatal to liberty!”
until now has been draining out the soul. In the day when Hellas wasitself its children walked in light, in the first beautiful light of themorning, which long seemed to shine only upon them; and now, perhaps,after the revolution of a cycle almost equal to the Great Year, theymay, probably, be approaching another dawn.
Comparing the several states of Greece together, it is customary tobestow the palm of energy and military valour upon the Spartans, whomade war their sole profession, and passed their lives as it were in thecamp from the cradle to the grave. But, in thus deciding, justice isscarcely done to the character of Athens; for, if the former excelled indiscipline, to the latter belonged, indisputably, the superiority innative courage. Trained or not trained they faced whatever enemypresented himself, and won at least as many laurels from Sparta, on theocean, as the Doric State, in all its wars, ever gathered on land. And,lastly, at Platæa, among which race, among Ionians or Dorians, was mostactivity manifested? In whose ranks was found the greatest ardour toengage? Who bore the first brunt of the Median horse, and broke thedreaded shock of that vaunted Asiatic chivalry which the Barbarian hopedwould have trampled down with its innumerable hoofs the spirit ofGrecian freedom? This was effected by the Athenians; by those gay andseemingly effeminate soldiers, who went forth from their beautiful citycurled, perfumed, clad in purple, as to the mimic combats of thetheatre. The spirit of their commonwealth, all splendour without and allenergy within, urged them to the field. Their cry at the approach of theking was “Freedom or honourable graves!”—such as their countrymen hadever been wont to repose in.
In fact, the Athenians, under a free government, had learned what it wasto live—had imbibed from their education the feeling, that if deprivedof such a government, if reduced to bow beneath the yoke of despotism,to die, if the Apostle’s words may without blame be thus applied, wouldbe gain. It will readily be conceived that the citizens of such a statefelt an impassioned attachment to their country,—an attachmentunintelligible to persons living under any other form of civil polity.Athens was the cradle of their freedom and their happiness. There was areligion in the love they bore it; they had, according to mythicaltraditions, which they believed, sprung on that spot from the bosom ofthe earth. It stood, therefore to them in the dearest of all relations,being, to sum up everything holy in one word,—their MOTHER; and theyembodied their profound veneration for the sacred spot in every fond,every endearing, epithet their matchless language could supply. Even thegods, in their patriotic partiality, were believed to look on Athens asthe most lovely, no less than the most glorious city on the broadearth,—an idea which they expressed by representing Poseidon and Athenacontending for the honour of becoming their tutelar divinity.
To persons so thinking no calamity short of the entire extinction oftheir race could appear so intolerable as beholding that sacred city,with the tombs of their ancestors, the sanctuaries of their gods, thevenerable but immoveable symbols of their faith and mythologicalhistory, delivered over to be trodden down or obliterated with sword andfire by barbarian slaves, strong only from their countless numbers. Yeteven to this did the love of freedom reconcile the Athenian people. Theyabandoned their holy place, and, embarking on board the fleet with theirwives and children, took refuge in Trœzen and Salamis. History hasdescribed in touching language the circ*mstances of this event, thanwhich it has nothing more pathetic to record save, peradventure, thecarrying away of Judea and her children into captivity. I will notdisturb its archaic simplicity. No eloquence could heighten its effect.It goes at once to the heart and rouses our noblest sympathies. “Theembarkation of the people of Athens was a very affecting scene. Whatpity, what admiration of the firmness of those men who, sending theirparents and families to a distant place, unmoved with their cries andembraces, had the fortitude to leave the city and embark for Salamis!What greatly heightened the distress was the number of citizens whom, onaccount of their extreme old age, they were forced to leave behind. Andsome emotions of tenderness were due even to the tame domestic animalswhich, running to the shore with lamentable howlings, expressed theiraffection and regret for the persons by whom they had been fed. One ofthese, a dog belonging to Xanthippos, the father of Pericles, unwillingto be left, is said to have leaped into the sea and to have swam by theside of the galley till it reached Salamis, where, quite spent withtoil, it immediately died. And they show, to this day, a place calledCynossema—‘the dog’s grave’—where they tell us it was buried.”[1]
Footnote 1:
Plutarch, Life of Themistocles, in Langhorne’s plain and vigorous translation.
The Athenian people, on this and similar occasions, were enabled toresolve and perform boldly from the generous spirit inspired by theirnational system of education. Their institutions, also, were eminentlycalculated to bring into play the energies of every individual citizen,and to diffuse in consequence through the whole community a grandeur ofsentiment and an heroic enthusiasm peculiar to free states. At Athenswhoever possessed the means of serving his country could easily,whatever might be his rank, make those means known, and bring them intooperation. If he were virtuous his virtue was remarked and placed him onthe road to promotion. If genius constituted his title to distinction,if nature had gifted him with the power to serve the state, the state,without inquiry whether he were poor or rich, readily availed itself ofhis capacity, rewarded him during his life with political honours andauthority, and, after his death, with imperishable glory. If in war heperformed any act of superior conduct or courage, a general’s name washis reward; if he received wounds that name, or the hope of it, healedthem; if in the achieving of any heroic deed he perished, his country,he knew, would honour his ashes, watch over his memory, and, with wordspowerfully soothing because embodying a nation’s sympathy, dry up thetears of his parents and beloved children. He knew that his glory,heightened by matchless masters of eloquence, would flash like lightningfrom the bema; that lovely bosoms would beat high at his name; thathands, the fairest in Greece, would yearly wreath his tomb withgarlands; and that tears would be shed for ever on the spot by thebrave.
If children remained behind him, the state would become their parent;every Athenian would share with them his salt; would impart to themtheir best inheritance—the feeling of patriotism and an inextinguishablehatred of tyranny; would repeat to them with unenvious pride the eulogyof their father, and point daily to the laurels which kept his graveever green. The Athenian was taught, from the cradle, to consider deathbeautiful when met on the red battle-field in defence of his home. And,according to the creed of his country, he believed that his spirit wouldin such an event be numbered among the objects of public worship. Hencethe sublimity, the thrilling power of that oath in Demosthenes, who, inswearing by the souls of those that fell at Marathon, accomplished theirapotheosis and placed them among the gods of Athens.
That such were the habitual feelings of this most gallant andgenerous-minded people appears even from the admission of theirbitterest enemies. “They,” observe, in Thucydides, the Corinthianambassadors, when urging Sparta into the Peloponnesian war,—"they pushvictory to the utmost, and are least of all men dejected by defeat;exposing their bodies for their country as if they had no interest inthem, yet applying their minds in the public service as if that andtheir private interest were one. Disappointment of a proposedacquisition they consider as a loss of what already belonged to them;success in any pursuit they esteem only as a step towards fartheradvantages; and, defeated in any attempt, they turn immediately to somenew project by which to make themselves amends: insomuch, that, throughtheir celerity in executing whatever they propose, they seem to have thepeculiar faculty of at the same time hoping and possessing. Thus theycontinue ever amid labours and dangers, enjoying nothing throughsedulity to acquire; esteeming that only a time of festival in whichthey are prosecuting their projects; and holding rest as a greater evilthan the most laborious business. To sum up their character, it may betruly said, that they were born neither to enjoy quiet themselves, norto suffer others to enjoy it."[2]
Footnote 2:
Mitford, History of Greece, iii. 53.
The feeling that what they fought for was their own, which accounts forthe heroism of Hellenic armies, likewise led, particularly at Athens, tothe beautifying and adorning of the city, and the perfection of publictaste. The people saw among them no palaces devoted to the privateluxuries of a despotic court, where persons maintained at the publicexpense learn to look with contempt on the honest hands that supportthem. There, whatever was magnificent belonged to the people at large,no private individuals, during the best ages of the commonwealth,presuming, how great soever might be their talents or their influence,to arrogate to themselves more than can be due to individuals, or toenshrine their perishable bodies in buildings suited only to the worshipof God. Yet, in genuine grandeur, no monarch, with the wealth of half aworld at the disposal of his caprice, ever rivalled the Athenian people.True taste, the genuine sense of the beautiful and the sublime, will,while the world endures, refuse to be the subject of a tyrant, or toinhabit the same city with him; because no patronage, pensions, orlavish expenditure, can create in one state of society what belongs toanother; and pure taste being nothing more than the cultivated popularfeeling spontaneously expanding, can nowhere exist but in a free state.A prince may, doubtless, know what pleases him; but the people only cantell what pleases the people, which nothing certainly will unless it beproduced expressly for them, without the slightest reference to anyother person.
Such, in the best periods of Grecian history, were the Athenians. Amongthem Nature generally was allowed to make herself heard; from the cradleupwards it was their guide. A pure religion they had not, or puremorality. Far from it; they barely caught indistinct glimpses of what infaith and practice is true and beautiful. Nor could it be otherwise; forthe sun had not then risen, and men but felt their way uncertainly andtimidly amid the obscurities of the dawn. Nevertheless, the lightvouchsafed them they did not spurn. According to the best notions thenprevailing, they were of all men the most pious; and though of thispiety much, nay, the greater part, was superstition, yet, doubtless,God, according to the saying of the Apostle, accounted it unto them forrighteousness, that, having not the law, they were a law untothemselves.
The Spartans, on the other hand, were mere monastic soldiers, brave,indeed, and true as their swords, but ungifted with those loftier andmore exquisite sympathies which properly constitute the beauty of humancharacter, and are alone the parents of love. Few, perhaps, were allthings within their reach, would choose to be citizens of Sparta; whileno one, for whom the poetry of life has any charms, would hesitate,after his own country, perhaps, to select Athens for his home. And thatthis is no scholastic fancy created by literary preferences is clearfrom the practice of antiquity. Every man possessing superior genius,whether sprung from Ionic or Doric race, betook himself to Athens, as tothe Greece of Greece—the common country of letters, sciences, and arts.Thither, too, as now to London, fled the oppressed and persecuted of alllands, and there they found welcome and encouragement. It was the greatasylum, the common city of refuge to all men. Strangers who could becontent with hospitality and generous protection were never driven fromthence. There every man might live as he pleased, think as he pleased,and utter freely what he thought. The recorded instances of persecutionare barely sufficiently numerous to serve as exceptions to the generalrule; and in Gorgias of Leontium, Polos, Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias,“and what the Cynic impudence uttered,” we discover to how great anextent the spirit of toleration was carried at Athens. It would beabsurd to object the examples of Anaxagoras, Aspasia, and Socrates; forthese were merely instances of the rage of party spirit, from which,while men continue men, no state will ever be free, and can no more beimputed to the Athenian people, or to the spirit of their government,than the execution of Sir Thomas More, or Cranmer, or Fisher, can belaid to the charge of the English Constitution.
CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
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BOOK I.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Original Inhabitants of Hellas 1 II. Character of the Greeks 29 III. Geographical Outline 51 IV. Capital Cities of Greece—Athens 70 V. Capital Cities of Greece—Sparta 92
BOOK II.
EDUCATION.
I. Theory of Education.—Birth of Children.—Infanticide 107 II. Birth-feast.—Naming the Child.—Nursery.—Nursery 128 Tales.—Spartan Festivals III. Toys, Sports, and Pastimes 144 IV. Elementary Instruction 164 V. Exercises of Youth 189 VI. Hunting and Fowling 206 VII. Schools of the Philosophers and Sophists 233 VIII. Education of the Spartans, Cretans, Arcadians,&c. 265 IX. Influence of the Fine Arts on Education 289 X. Hellenic Literature 314 XI. Spirit of the Grecian Religion 349
BOOK III.
WOMEN.
I. Women in Heroic Ages 369 II. Women of Doric States 382 III. Condition of unmarried Women.—Love. 401
THE HISTORY OF THE MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ANCIENT GREECE.
BOOK I.
CHAPTER I. ORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF HELLAS.
The country of the Hellenes, which, in imitation of the Romans, wedenominate Greece, was to its own inhabitants known by the name ofHellas. But the signification of this term was not fixed, beingsometimes confined to Greece Proper, at others, comprehending likewisethe possessions of the Hellenes in Asia; that is, Hellas within andbeyond the Ægæan, as we now say, India within and beyond the Ganges.[3]The progress of the name seems to have been as follows: it designated,originally,[4] a city of Thessaly, built by Hellen son of Deucalion;next, Phthiotis; the whole of Thessaly; all Greece, with the exceptionsometimes of Peloponnesos, sometimes of Macedonia, sometimes,—which isvery remarkable,—of Thessaly itself; sometimes of Epeiros; then allGreece within the Ægæan; afterwards all countries inhabited by Greeks inwhatever part of the world; and, lastly, it would appear to have beenoccasionally employed to signify Athens alone.[5] The most ancient name,Pelasgia, sprang from the race who first, perhaps, peopled that part ofEurope.
Footnote 3:
Paus. v. 21. 10. Palm. Desc. Gr. Ant. p. 32. Exercit. p. 397.
Footnote 4:
Il. β. 190. Strab. ix. 5. 297. Tauchnitz. with the authorities quoted by Palmerius, Græc. Ant. i. 3.
Footnote 5:
Fisch. ad Theoph. Char. p. 5. L. Bos. Ant. Gr. Zeun. i. 1.
Nearly all writers who treat of Grecian history or antiquities, haveventured more or less upon inquiries respecting the original inhabitantsof the country, some contending that it was peopled by many independentraces, while others content themselves with supposing one primary stock.To arrive at certainty in such investigations is scarcely to be hopedfor, since, over the whole field, facts have moved in so close aconjunction with fables, “that the most which remaineth to be seen, isthe show of dark and obscure steps where some part of the truth hathgone.”[6] It appears, however, to be a fact established, that theHellenes were not the first who occupied Greece. They were preceded by anumber of tribes all apparently of Pelasgian origin. But who and whatthe Pelasgians were, how and whence they came into the country, and bywhat gradations and influences they were ripened into Hellenes, or wereby these expelled from the land, are questions to which no satisfactoryanswers have ever been given, but must still be discussed whatever theresult of the investigation may be.
Footnote 6:
Hooker, Ecc. Pol. i. p. 95.
Even the name of this people has opened up an endless labyrinth ofconjecture, at least among the moderns, for the ancients when suchpoints were to be cleared up, easily removed the difficulty by inventinga hero or a demigod, with an appellation exactly suited to theirpurpose. Thus from Hellen they derived the name of the Hellenes, fromHeracles that of Heracleidæ, from Ion that of the Ionians, and fromPelasgos, the son sometimes of Zeus, sometimes of Poseidon, sometimes ofTriops or Inachos or Lycaon or Palachthon or of the earth itself,[7]that of the Pelasgi. An Attic writer, familiar with this question, andhinting at a part of the theory which I have adopted, imagines the nameof Pelasgi to have been at first bestowed on the race because theyusually made their appearance on the shores of Hellas like migratorybirds in spring.[8] But though conjecture in such matters may amuse, itis not likely, at this distance of time, to lead to truth.
Footnote 7:
Paus. viii. 1. 6; ii. 14. 4; 22. 1. Herod, ii. 56. Æsch. Prom. 859. Supp. 248. Nieb. Hist. of Rome, i. 24. Apollod. ii. 1. Serv. ad Æn. i. 628; ii. 83. Sch. Apol. Rhod. i. 580. Tzetz. ad Lyc. 177. 481. Natal. Com. p. 96. and conf. Palm. Græc. Ant. p. 41. sqq. Exercit. p. 527. with Buttm. Lexil. p. 155.
Footnote 8:
Philochor. Siebel. p. 14.
The ancients had evidently formed no theory as to whence the Pelasgicame, but were satisfied with the notion of their autochthoneïty,[9]which we cannot adopt. It must be acknowledged, however, that we arelittle able to trace them with certainty beyond the limits of Greece,before their arrival in that country. My own opinion is, that when themigrations began from that vast and lofty table land of Central Asia,which formed the primitive abode of mankind, and where the motherlanguage of the Sanskrit, the Greek, and many other dialects was firstspoken, the illustrious race, afterwards known under the name ofPelasgi, moved westward by the Caspian, along the Caucasian range,through Armenia and Kourdistân, until they descended into the plains ofAsia Minor. Here we seem to touch upon the obscurest verge of Grecianfable, for the tradition which sent Argo to Colchis, at the Easternextremity of the Black Sea, evidently contemplated the people of theland as a kindred race, of similar faith, character, and manners. Bywhat precise channel the stream of population rolled westward, cannot bedetermined: but here and there, on the southern shores of the Euxine, wediscover some obscure footsteps of the parents of the Greeks, as theycontinued their journeyings towards the land which they were afterwardsto encircle with glory. Moving through Pontos, Paphlagonia, andBithynia, they appear everywhere to have made settlements on the coast,until they reached the narrow stream of the Bosporos, over which theythrew themselves into Europe.
Footnote 9:
Marsh. Chron. Sec. ix. p. 130.
Up to this point we have little whereon to build our conclusions, savewhat is supplied by the general theory of ancient migrations, and whatappear to be facts dimly seen within the extreme orbit of mythology. Theancients themselves seem to have obtained some uncertain glimpses oflinks connecting their ancestors with Asiatic Scythia, for there werethose among them who represented the Caucons of Paphlagonia stretchingalong the banks of the Parthenios, and between the Maryandinians and thesea, as a nation of Scythian origin. Now the Caucons were undoubtedlyPelasgians, as were the Phrygians, the Carians, and the Leleges, who,united by the ties of blood, flocked to the defence of Troy.[10] In amuch remoter age, the heroes of the traditional Argo were, it is said,confounded by night at Cyzicos,[11] in Mysia, with the warlike Pelasgi,even then masters of the sea, and accustomed with their galleys to vexthe coast and plunder the settled inhabitants. I regard the working ofthe gold and silver mines on the southern shores of the Euxine, anteriorto the Trojan war, as another proof of the settlement of the Pelasgi inthat part of Asia Minor;[12] and who but they, at a period beyond thereach of tradition, could have opened those gold mines on the shores ofThrace, which on his conquest of the country Philip of Macedon found tohave been long ago worked and abandoned by some unknown people?[13]
Footnote 10:
Strab. viii. 3. p. 127.
Footnote 11:
Apollod. i. 9. 18. The mythology describes the Pelasgi as driven out of Thessaly by the Æolians, and, under the guidance of Cyzicos, taking possession of the peninsula of that name previous to the Argonautic expedition. They fought with the Argonauts, and were afterwards expelled by the Tyrrhenians, who in their turn were driven out by the Milesians. Phot. Bib. p. 139. a. 25. Bekk.
Footnote 12:
Il. β 857.
Footnote 13:
Payne Knight, on the Worship of Priapus, p. 147.
Be this as it may, it was over the Bosporos and through Thrace that thePelasgi seem to have made their earliest approaches towards Greece. TheThracians themselves were of Pelasgian origin. Thracians inhabited bothsides of the Bosporos; traces of Pelasgian settlements and Pelasgiannames are likewise found on both sides. The stream of knowledgeunquestionably poured through Thrace into Greece; and it is highlyprobable that the stream of population had, at a remoter period, flowedin the same channel. Once in Macedonia, the adventurers would be temptedsouthward by the beauty of the climate and country; so that while somemoved up the valley of the Haliacmon, others, perhaps, took possessionof the ridge of Olympos, Ossa and Pelion, where they were known underthe names of Centaurs and Lapithæ.[14] From these lofty ridges theylooked down upon the great lake which in those ages covered the wholeplain of Thessaly, and, following the ramifications of the mountains,peopled Pelasgian Argos, Phthiotis, and the roots of Œta, while thelowlands were still under water: thence, too, they crossed over intoEubœa, where they assumed the names of Macrones[15] and Curetes. Thislatter tribe settling at Chalcis,[16] and having been worsted in acontest for the Lalantian plain, fled across the Euripos, and traversingthe whole of Bœotia, founded a new settlement about Pleuron in Ætolia,and gave the name of Curetis to the whole country. Hence, also, inprocess of time, they were driven by the Ætolians from Pisa in Elis,upon which they took refuge in Acarnania.[17]
Footnote 14:
Λέλεγας γάρ φασι πρότερον αὐτοὺς προσαγωρευομένους, διὰ τὸ ἀποκεντῆσαι τοὺς ἵππους προσαγορευθῆναι Ἱπποκενταύρους. Sch. Pind. Pyth. ii. 78. Cf. Schœll. Hist. de la Lit. Grecq. i. 4. seq.
Footnote 15:
Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1024. Cf. Winkel. Hist. de l’Art. i. 317.
Footnote 16:
Strab. x. 3. p. 349.
Footnote 17:
Strab. x. 3. p. 349. Sch. Pind. Olymp. iii. 19. Pliny, iv. 2. Eustath. ad Il. β. 637. Certain ancient writers maintained that the Ætolians were called Curetes by Homer; and at a still earlier period Hyantes, and the country Hyantis.—Steph. Byzant. _v._ Αἰτωλ. p. 71. a. Palm. G. Ant. p. 426.—Acarnania itself was formerly called Curetis.—Demet. ap. Steph. _v._ Ἀθῆν. p. 45. a. Hard. ad Plin. iv. 2. p. 7.
But the principal tribe, and that which subsequently spread throughoutGreece, after filling with population the valley of the Haliacmon,traversing the Caulavian range, and descending along the course of theAoös, seem on the banks of the Celydnos, to have turned their facessouthward. Following that stream upwards towards its source, they foundthemselves in Epeiros, a land abounding with water brooks, with lovelymountains, and lovelier valleys, and at length settled, and erectedthemselves lasting habitations in the sacred neighbourhood ofDodona,[18] where the first oracle known to the Hellenes flourishedunder the protection of the Pelasgian Zeus.[19]
Footnote 18:
Strab. vii. 7. p. 124. seq. Hesiod. Frag. 54. et 124. Gœttl.—A second Dodona is supposed to have existed in Thessaly.—See Thirl. Hist. of Greece, i. 36.—Cf. Buttm. Diss. de orac. Dodon. Orat. Att. vii. 133. sqq.
Footnote 19:
Il. π. 233.
Up to this point we have been treading, with little or no light to guideus, over a soil shifting, unsure, and treacherous; but here we touchupon comparatively firm ground, while the light of poetry dawns around,and enables us to direct our footsteps towards the luminous terra firmaof history.
It must not be denied that much of the foregoing theory is erected oninference and conjecture. Nevertheless, it rests in part on facts whichan historian ought not to reject. For example, though it be nowhere,perhaps, distinctly stated that the Thracians were entirely of Pelasgianorigin, we are compelled by various circ*mstances to believe that suchwas the case: first, Samothrace on the coast was undoubtedly peopled byPelasgi;[20] secondly, the Macedonians, plainly of the same stock withthe Thracians, are acknowledged to have been Pelasgi;[21] and since theIllyrians likewise were a kindred people,[22] we have a line ofPelasgian settlements stretching along the whole northern frontier ofGreece, the Ægæan, the Hellespont, and the Propontis, from the Adriaticto the Black Sea. The chain of proofs, indeed, is not complete, butappears and disappears alternately, like the stream of the Alpheios,though little doubt can be entertained of the existence of the linkswhich happen to lie out of sight. In nearly every part of Macedonia thefootsteps of the Pelasgi are clearly discernible; at Crestona,[23] onthe Echidoros in Pœonia; in Emathea, and Bottiœa;[24] and looking at thelanguage of the country, we find it at all times to have been identicalwith that of Greece. That the same thing must be predicated of Thrace,even in the remotest ages, appears indisputably from this, that herbards, Thamyris and Orpheus traversed the whole of Hellas, and sangtheir wisdom to its inhabitants; while Olen coming from Lycia, aPelasgian settlement,[25] likewise brought his kindred songs to the sametolerant and hospitable land.
Footnote 20:
Herod. ii. 51.
Footnote 21:
Justin. vii. 1. Thucyd. ii. 99.
Footnote 22:
Müller, Dor. i. 2.
Footnote 23:
Herod, i. 57.—On the situation of this city see Poppo, Proleg. ad Thucyd. ii. p. 383.
Footnote 24:
Justin, vii. 1. Æsch. Supp. p. 261. Cf. Thucyd. iv. 109.
Footnote 25:
Diod. v. p. 396. Wesseling.
But to follow the movements of the Pelasgi through Greece itself, where,though no chronology of events can be attempted, our views rest on astable foundation. Much, however, of our reasoning will be confused orperhaps unintelligible, if it be not borne in mind that the name of thePelasgi, like that of the Tartars or Arabs, was a general appellationapplied to the whole race, while the several tribes bore separatedenominations; as the Chaones,[26] the Dryopes, the Leleges, theCaucons, the Cranaans, with many others,[27] precisely as among theArabs, we find the Ababde, the Mahazi, the Beni Sakker, &c. ThePelasgian tribe which first made its appearance, and became powerful inEpeiros, a country not to be separated from Greece, was that of theChaones, whose chief seat was Cheimera,[28] at the foot of the Ceraunianmountains. An obscure scholiast, indeed, denominates thembarbarians;[29] but as from the best authority we know them to have beenPelasgi, this shows the value of the term in the mouth of the laterwriters. Another class,—the Levites, perhaps, of those primitivepeople,—settled amid the oak forests which surrounded the lovely lake ofDodona, where under the name of Selli,[30] they founded the mostcelebrated oracle of early antiquity. In their habits they remind us ofthe Sanyasis, and other religious anchorites of India, living from viewsof penance with unwashed feet, and sleeping on the bare ground. Othertribes renowned of old in Epeiros, and all Pelasgian,[31] were theThesprotians, the Molossians, the Perrhæbians, and the Dolopians, thelast rough mountaineers inhabiting both the eastern and western slopesof Pindos.[32]
Footnote 26:
Steph. Byz. _v._ Χαονία, p. 753. g.
Footnote 27:
Hermann, however, (Polit. Ant. p. 14,) imagines that the Caucons, Leleges, &c. were independent races, though less civilised and illustrious than the Pelasgi.
Footnote 28:
Plin. iv. 1.
Footnote 29:
Schol. ad Aristoph. Eq. 78.
Footnote 30:
Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. p. 39.—Il. π. 234. seq.
Footnote 31:
Steph. Byz. _v._ Ἔφυρα, p. 367. c. Strab. vii. 7 p. 119. See also Müll. Dor. i. 6. Plut. Pyrrh. 1.—See the authorities collected by Niebuhr, i. 26.
Footnote 32:
Dolops was the son of Hermes, and dying in the city of Magnesia in Thessaly, had there a tomb erected by the sea-shore. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 587. 558.
When Epeiros had been thus thickly sprinkled with settlements, anearthquake appears to have produced in the range of Pelion the narrowprecipitous gap, afterwards known as Tempe, by which the waters of theThessalian lake discharged themselves into the sea. This happened, weare told, while one Pelasigos[33] reigned over the mountaineers in thedistrict of Hæmonia. They were celebrating a great feast, when a certainslave named Peloros, brought them tidings of what had come to pass,speaking with admiration of the vast plains which were appearing throughthe ebbing waters. In gratitude for the news he communicated, theycaused the man to seat himself at table while both the king and hisattendants, in the joy and fulness of their hearts ministered to him.This, it is said, was the origin of the Pelorian festival, afterwards,down to a very late period, celebrated with great pomp and magnificencein Thessaly, where, for the day, masters changed condition with theirslaves, and became their servants.[34] The same festival in thePelasgian settlements of Italy was known down to the latest times, underthe name of Saturnalia.
Footnote 33:
Palmer. Exercit. p. 527.—Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 500.—Dion. Hal. i. 3. 1.
Footnote 34:
Athen. xiv. 45.
On the interior of Thessaly becoming thus habitable, the Pelasgiantribes of Epeiros, beginning to be straitened for room, and feelingstill the original wandering impulse, poured over the heights of Pindosinto the valleys of Histiæotis, and moved eastward along the foot of theCambunian mountains, settling every where as they advanced. The tribewhich took this direction bore the name of Perrhæbians, and left tracesof their movements in the great Perrhæbian forest, stretching to thefoot of Olympos, and in the name of the whole district extending fromthe Peneios to the northern limits of Thessaly. In this rich and fertiletract they became powerful, spreading their dominion along the banks ofthe Peneios, quite down to the sea. But the Lapithæ rising intoconsequence and overcoming the Perrhæbians in battle, reduced a portionof the tribes under their yoke, while the remainder, enamoured ofindependence, retreated inland, again crossed the Pindos, andestablished themselves in the upper valley of the Acheloös. About thesame time, perhaps, a fragment of this tribe traversing the whole ofThessaly crossed over into Eubœa, where they subdued and took possessionof Histiæotis. It was possibly the entrance of these adventurers intothe island, pushing fresh waves of population southward, that caused thecontest for the Lalantian plain, and the emigration of the Curetes tothe continent.
Other Pelasgian tribes established themselves, and became illustrious inThessaly. The Centaurs, for example, a Lelegian clan inhabiting MountPelion, where they were, perhaps, the first tamers of the horse, whencethe fable of their double form. Other sections of the Leleges were alsofound in Thessaly,[35] as were also the Dryopes. In this country,[36]notwithstanding that it must be regarded upon the whole as only thesecond stage of the Pelasgians in their migrations southward, we findmore traces of their power and influence than anywhere else in NorthernGreece. Here were two cities, called Larissa; here was PelasgianArgos;[37] here, too, was a great district known by the name ofPelasgiotis, while that of Pelasgia seems to have preceded Thessaly asthe appellation of the whole province.[38] This people, like mostothers, seem to have had a number of names, to which they werepeculiarly attached, which we nearly always find reappearing whereverthey formed a settlement. Generally, too, it may be regarded as certainthat the more northern were the most ancient: thus we find Pelagonia inthe kingdom of Macedon and in Thessaly; Larissa[39] on the Peneios;Larissa Cremaste near the shore. The Dryopes,[40] again, appear first inEpeiros, not far from Dodona; next we find them in Thessaly, then inDoris, finally in Peloponnesos; and Strabo is careful to remark that thelast-mentioned were an off-shoot from those in the north.
Footnote 35:
Serv. ad. Æn. viii. 725.
Footnote 36:
Paus. iv. 36. 1. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. ii. 1239.
Footnote 37:
Pliny, iv. 14.—Even Phthiotis itself, one of the earliest cradles of the Hellenes, is recorded to have been a Pelasgian settlement. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 14.—Cf. ad. i. 40. 580.
Footnote 38:
Sch. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 26.; i. 906. 580.
Footnote 39:
Steph. Byzant. _v._ Λάρισσ. p. 511. b, c, d. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 40.
Footnote 40:
That the Dryopes were Pelasgi, appears from this:—they received their national appellation from Dryops, son of Lycaon, (Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1218,) who was himself the son of Pelasgos.—Suid. _v._ Λυκ. Cf. Etym. Mag. 154, 7. 288, 32. Paus. viii. 2. 1.
From Thessaly the tide of population rolled southward;[41] differenttribes of Pelasgi, under the name of Leleges, Hyantes, Aones, andDryopes taking possession of the mountains and valleys of Doris, Locris,Phocis, and extending their migrations into the plains of Bœotia. Fromthence, across the isthmus, some few straggling hordes appear to havefound their way into Peloponnesos, where, as shepherds, they graduallydiffused themselves over its rich plains. All the Pelasgi in fact appearlike the Arabs and Tartars to have been originally Nomades, differenttribes of whom, as they were tempted by the beauty of particularregions, quitted their wandering life, as the Arabs have done in Egypt,Yemen, and elsewhere, and from shepherds became husbandmen. In processof time, the descendants of the settlers, accustomed to the easy andluxurious life of cities, learned to look back upon their wanderingancestors as a wretched and a barbarous race. Indeed, they sometimesspeak of them[42] after their arrival in Peloponnesos as cannibals,naked, houseless, ignorant of the use of fire, on a level, in short,with the fiercest and most brutal savages existing in the islands of thePacific. But these erroneous ideas evidently arose from the theory ofautochthoneïty which supposes man to have gradually ripened out of abeast into a man; whereas, the low savages discovered in various partsof the world, do not represent the original state of mankind, but aremere instances of extreme degeneracy. In fact, a different set oftraditions also prevailed among the Greeks, which, referring evidentlyto the period when their ancestors were Nomades, spoke with rapture andenthusiasm of their happy and tranquil life, when, following theirflocks from vale to vale and from stream to stream, they fed upon thespontaneous productions which nature spread before them. On this periodthe poets bestowed the name of the Golden Age, and, perhaps, if examinedphilosophically, there is no stage in the history of civilisation atwhich there is so much to enjoy and so little to suffer, as when thewhole nation are shepherds, and happen to light upon a land where, asyet too few to inconvenience each other, they can live unmolested byforeign tribes.
Footnote 41:
Just. xiii. 4.—The Epicnemidian Locrians were anciently called Leleges, and by them the channel of the Cephissos was opened to the sea.—Pliny, iv. 12. Solin. vii. p. 55. Bipont. Hesiod. Frag. 25. Gœttl. Strab. vii. 7. p. 115; ix. 1. p. 248. Scymn. Chius, p. 24.—Phot. Bib. 321. b.
Footnote 42:
Mnaseas of Patræ ap. Sch. Pind. Pyth. iv. 104.—Dion. Hal. (Ant. Rom. i. 31) is one of those writers who considers the Pelasgi miserable because they were wanderers. Upon this notion Palmerius remarks judiciously: “Sed si tales migrationes miseræ sunt, miserrimi olim Galli majores nostri, qui usque in Asiam, post multas errores, armis victricibus penetrâsse historiæ omnes testantur, et hoc seculo miserrimi Tartari et Arabes, qui Nomadice vivunt, et sedes identidem mutantes, non se miseros existimant, et id genus vitæ Attalicis conditionibus mutare recusarent.”—Græc. Antiq. p. 60.
It has now been shown how Hellas might have been entirely peopled fromthe north; but certain traditions, prevailing from the earliest times,compel us to admit that some portion, at least, of its populationreached it by a different route; that is, through Asia Minor and theislands. I have already alluded briefly to the existence of a Pelasgiantribe in Paphlagonia,[43] that is to say, the Caucons, whoseestablishment in this region supplies a link in the chain of proofs bywhich we endeavour to connect the Pelasgi with the Scythians of CentralAsia; for the Caucons are admitted to have been of Pelasgian origin, andan opinion prevailed among the ancients that they were likewiseScythians.[44] Thus we find that certain Scythians settled inPaphlagonia, were called Caucons, that the Caucons were Pelasgi, andthat the Pelasgi peopled Greece. The Greeks, therefore, by this account,traced their origin to Scythia. Circ*mstances connected with thegeography of Asia Minor and of Hellas, seem to furnish traces of theroute of the Pelasgi westward. It appears to have been among theprimitive articles of their creed, that the deity delighted to abide onthe summits of lofty and even of snowy mountains; and whenever in theirsettlements the features of the earth presented any such toweringeminence, they seem to have bestowed on it the name of Olympos, orCelestial Mansion.[45] Immediately south of the Cauconian settlements,on the limits of Bithynia and Galacia, we accordingly find a mountain ofthis name; again, travelling westward, we have another Mount Olympos, onthe northern confines of Phrygia; a third meets us in the island ofLesbos;[46] a fourth in Cypros, a fifth in Arcadia,[47] a sixth in Elis,and a seventh, best known of all, near the cradle of the Hellenes inThessaly. In Mysia,[48] the footsteps of the race are numerous;Pelasgian cities—Placia, Scylace, Cyzicos, Antandros—studded the coast;inland there was a Larissa;[49] and the lovely-leafed evergreen, whichshaded the slopes and crags of the Trojan Ida, was named the Pelasgianlaurel.[50] Other facts there are connecting the Trojans with thePelasgian stock: thus the Caucons, whom we find among their allies inHomer, are called a Trojan tribe; the language of Troy was evidently aPelasgian dialect, closely allied to the Greek,[51] which may likewisebe predicated of the Phrygian, the Lydian, the Carian, the Lycianextending along the whole western coast of Asia Minor. The gods,oracles, rites, ceremonies of all these people appear in early times tohave been identical with those of Hellas, and mythology represents theheroes of both continents as sprung from the same gods. Nay, positivetestimony describes the Pelasgi as a great nation, holding the wholewestern coast of Asia Minor, from Mycale to the Hellespont;[52] andspeaks of the Leleges as inhabiting a part of Caria, where theirdeserted fortifications, called Lelegia,[53] apparently of Cyclopianconstruction, were still found in the time of Strabo,[54] together withtheir tombs, probably barrows, resembling those scattered throughPeloponnesos, and called the “Tombs of the Phrygians.”[55] Similarsepulchral relics of Carian dominion were found and opened by theAthenians in the purification of Delos.[56] Possibly, too, the tumuli,existing to this day in Tartary, and occasionally rifled by theSiberians, mark the original seat of the Pelasgi in Asia; though similarmonuments are found in other parts of the East, as in Nubia, where Icounted a cluster of ten or twelve, and nearly all over Europe. Homerspeaks of one on the plains of Troy, and the Greeks themselves cast upbarrows over their heroes, as Ajax, where
“Far by the solitary shore he sleeps.”
Footnote 43:
According to the reading of Callisthenes, Homer himself fixes their residence in Paphlagonia.—Cf. Strab. xiii. p. 16. viii. p. 157. Sch. Hom. Υ. 329.—Unless we adopt this reading we must suppose with the Scholiast, that they were not separately mentioned in the catalogue, because Homer confounded them with the Leleges, or because they arrived late in the war.
Footnote 44:
Οἱ μὲν Σκύθας φασὶν, οἱ δὲ τῶν Μακεδόνων τινὰς, οἱ δὲ τῶν Πελασγῶν. Strab. xiii. p. 16.—To the same tradition alludes the Scholiast: Ἔθνος Παφλαγονίας, οἱ δὲ Σκυθίας· οἱ δὲ τοὺς λεγομένους Καυνίους εἴπον. Il. κ. 429.
Footnote 45:
In the dialect of the Dryopes, this mountain was known by the name of Βηλὸς, by which word the Chaldæans denoted the highest circle of the heavens.—Etym. Mag. 196. 19 seq.
Footnote 46:
Plin. v. 39.
Footnote 47:
Paus. viii. 38. 2. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 599. Meurs. Cypr. i. 28. p. 76. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Ὄλυμπ. p. 612. e.—Mention, moreover, is made of an eighth Olympos in Cilicia. (Sch. Apoll. ut sup.)—A ninth in Lycia. (Plin. xxi. 7.)
Footnote 48:
Phot. Bib. 139. a. 12. 25. Herod. vii. 42. cf. i. 57. Pomp. Mela. i. 19.
Footnote 49:
Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 40.
Footnote 50:
Pliny, xv. 39.
Footnote 51:
Plato, Cratyl. I. iv. p. 58.—See, likewise, Müller (Dor. i. 9–11), where, however, too much ingenuity by far is displayed. Another proof of relationship is supplied by Homer (Il. ρ. 288) who represents Hippothoös, a Pelasgian, insulting the body of Patroclos.—Strab. xiii. 3. p. 142.—Niebuhr (i. 28) conjectures that the Trojans were not a Phrygian, but a Pelasgian tribe; though, in reality, both Phrygians and Trojans sprang from the same stock.
Footnote 52:
Strab. xiii. 3. p. 144.
Footnote 53:
Paus. vii. 2. 8.
Footnote 54:
W. f. 7. p. 114.—The Carians themselves are said to have lived habitually amid inaccessible rocks.—Schol. Arist. Av. 292.
Footnote 55:
Athen. xiv. 21.
Footnote 56:
Thucyd. i. 8.
Not to omit any material facts, on which my view of Pelasgian history isfounded, I shall proceed to mention in order the principal points on theAsiatic shore where the footsteps of the Pelasgi appear. We find, then,that they occupied the greater part of Lydia,[57] and at the time of theIonian migration held the citadel of Ephesos. They, too, in conjunctionwith the Nymphs were the founders of the temple of Hera at Samos,[58]and crossing the Mæander they re-appear again at Miletos on the coast ofCaria. Indeed this city[59] was originally, from its inhabitants, calledLelegeis, though it afterwards was known under a variety of names, asPituoussa from the surrounding pine woods, Anactoria, and lastly,Miletos. A little further southward was another Lelegian settlement atPedasos on the Satneios.[60] From a passage in Homer it has beensupposed that the Carians and Lelegians were distinct races, but inreality the Carians were a Lelegian tribe;[61] that is Pelasgi, who likethe Hellenes in Greece, gradually acquired power and dominion, andeclipsed their brethren. This they were enabled to do by applyingthemselves passionately to the use of arms, a circ*mstance which at alater period led them to make a traffic of their valour and hire theirswords to the best bidder. In earlier and better times they achievedconquests for themselves, and rivalling the Phœnicians in maritimeenterprise and success, reduced under their sway the greater number ofthe Ægæan islands,[62] and even some portion of the Hellenic continentit*elf.[63] Certain clans of this martial race sought an outlet fortheir restless daring by joining the Cilicians[64] in their piraticalenterprises, and probably it was in this character that they firstobtained possession of some of the smaller isles. Positive historicaltestimony there seems to be none for fixing the Pelasgi in Cypros,[65]though we cannot doubt that it was included in their dominions, from theruins of Cyclopian fortresses still found there, and the Olympian Mountalready mentioned. In Rhodes, however, and Samos antiquity speaks oftheir settlements;[66] they, too, were the earliest inhabitants ofChios,[67] whence they sent forth a colony to Lesbos,[68] which receivedfrom them the name of Pelasgia. They expelled the Minyans fromLemnos,[69] which afterwards, through fear of Darius, their king cededto the Athenians,[70] and held Imbros[71] and Samothrace[72] in thenorth; Scyros, too, was originally named Pelasgia.[73] Andros waspeopled by one[74] of their colonies, and Delos, as we have alreadyseen, held their bones until they were cast forth by the Athenians. Butit is unnecessary to enumerate each separate point, since we knowgenerally that all the Ægæan isles were anciently in theirpossession,[75] and that even the great island of Crete formed, inremote ages, a portion of their empire. Here under the names of Curetes,Corybantes, Telchines and Dactyli,[76] they flourished in the mythicaltimes, and were the reputed preservers and nurses of the infant Zeus, agod pre-eminently Pelasgian, so that wherever his worship was found Iregard it as a proof that the Pelasgi had settled there.
Footnote 57:
Paus. vii. 2. 8. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Ἀγύλλα, p. 30, d. Ed. Berkel.
Footnote 58:
Athen. xv. 12. Thirl. Hist. of Greece, i. 43. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 14.
Footnote 59:
Pliny, ii. 31. Steph. de Urb. _v._ Μίλετ. p. 559. b. c. Eustath. in Dion. Perieg. 825. 456. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 186.
Footnote 60:
Il. φ. 86. Cf. Sch. ad κ. 429.
Footnote 61:
A glimpse of this fact is obtained from a tradition preserved by Hecatæos:—Τοὺς δὲ Λέλεγας τινὲς μὲν τοὺς αὐτοὺς Καρσὶν εἰκὰζουσιν. Strab. vii. 7. p. 114. From other authorities we learn that the Carians were regarded as Pelasgians.—Habitator incertæ originis. Alii indigenas, sunt qui Pelasgos, quidam Cretas existimant. Pomp. Mela, i. 16.—See likewise Barnes ad Eurip. Heracl. 317. But the strongest testimony is that of Herodotus, i. 171.
Footnote 62:
Strabo, xiv. 2. p. 208. Thucyd. i. 8.
Footnote 63:
Strabo, viii. 6. p. 204.
Footnote 64:
Strab. ap. Palmer. Gr. Ant. i. 10, p. 65. Serv. ad Æn. viii. 725. We again find these two people united at Troy; but not mentioned in the catalogue, because their leader had fallen and there were few of them left to be ranged under Hector. Their leaders were Helicon and his sons. Their capital city “Thebes with lofty gates” had been sacked by Achilles. Strab. xiii. 3. p. 141.
Footnote 65:
Travels of Ali Bey.
Footnote 66:
Phot. Bib. 141. a.
Footnote 67:
According, however, to a tradition preserved by Ephoros, the city of Karides, in this island, was founded by those who escaped with Macar from the Deluge of Deucalion. Athen. iii. 66.
Footnote 68:
Plin. v. 39.
Footnote 69:
Paus. vii. 22.
Footnote 70:
Suid. _v._ Ἑρμώνιος χάρις. t. i. p. 1044.
Footnote 71:
Herm. Pol. Antiq. p. 13. Herod. vi. 138, 140. v. 26.
Footnote 72:
Herod. ii. 51.
Footnote 73:
Thucyd. i. 98. cum not. Wass.
Footnote 74:
Phot. Bib. 139. a.
Footnote 75:
Phot. Bib. 141. a. Both the island of Lesbos, and its city Himera were called Pelasgia. Pliny, v. 39.
Footnote 76:
Serv. ad Æn. iii. 131. Strabo, x. 3. Pelasgic remains are still found in the island. Pashley, Trav. in Crete, i. 152.
Passing thus from island to island in the very infancy of navigation,the Pelasgi appear by way of the Sporades and Cycladæ, to have migratedinto Peloponnesos, first landing at Argos. Probably on their arrivalthey found there some few inhabitants who by the isthmus had entered andscattered themselves at leisure over the peninsula. But whether this wasso or not, certain it is that the oldest legends of Hellenic mythologyallude to the peopling of Argos by sea, representing Inachos, its firstruler, as a son of the ocean.[77] From this chief, whether historical orfabulous, the principal river of Argos received its appellation, andmembers of his family bestowed their names on Argolis first, andafterwards on the whole of Peloponnesos, which from Apis was denominatedApia;[78] from Pelasgos, Pelasgia;[79] and from another prince socalled, it received the name of Argos.[80] In this division of Hellas,which the rays of poetry and mythology unite to render luminous, thePelasgi[81] seem early to have struck deep root, and made a rapidprogress in civilisation. Here, accordingly, in historical times werefound the most numerous monuments of their power and grandeur; and here,in the treasury of Atreus and the walls of Tiryns denominated Cyclopian,we still may contemplate proofs of their opulence and progress in thearts. Among them would appear to have existed a class or caste namedCyclops, addicted extremely to handicrafts, particularly building. Theseit was who erected the walls and citadel of Argos,[82] on which theybestowed the name of Larissa, together with certain labyrinths, said tohave existed in the neighbourhood of Nauplia. Mycenæ appears to havebeen the most ancient capital of the country, built while the site ofArgos was yet a marsh,[83] or perhaps under water; then came Tiryns, andlastly Argos. Other early seats of the Pelasgi were at Epidauros andHermione.[84]
Footnote 77:
Apollod. ii. 1. Keightley, Mythol. 405.
Footnote 78:
Cf. Athen. xiv. 63.
Footnote 79:
Tzet. ad Lyc. 177. Plin. iv. 5. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. i. 1024. Nic. Damasc. in Exc. p. 492.
Footnote 80:
Sch. Eurip. Orest. 1245.
Footnote 81:
Æsch. Supp. 642. 919.
Footnote 82:
Strab. viii. 6. p. 202. Müll. Dor. i. 90. Frag. Incert. Pind. p. 660. Diss.
Footnote 83:
Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. p. 38.
Footnote 84:
Strab. viii. 6. p. 204.
But the province of Peloponnesos which the Pelasgi most delighted toconsider their home, was the rough, wild, and elevated table land ofArcadia,[85] resembling on a small scale their original seat in centralAsia; belted round by mountains with many streams and rivers pouringdown their sides: here long shut out from commerce with the rest ofmankind they multiplied in ease and security, and became a greatnation,[86] who, to express the idea of their own extreme antiquity,professed themselves to be older than the moon.[87] Having lost alltradition of their arrival in the country, they looked upon themselvesas autochthons, and regarded their mountain-girt land as the greatreservoir of Pelasgian population,[88] whence its colonies like streams,flowed outwards, and peopled the rest of Hellas; and probably it wasthence that the first emigrants descended into the valley of theEurotas, spread themselves through Laconia, and found a mountain onwhich they bestowed the holy name of Olympos. In this province one ofthe most famous of the Pelasgian tribes, is by some traditions said tohave had its origin; for Lelex,[89] who gave his name to the Leleges,they fabled to have been an autochthon of Laconia, and down even to thetimes of Pausanias an heroum was shown at Sparta erected in honour ofhis name. Undoubtedly a mythical legend connected with this hero wasdeeply interwoven with the fabulous history of Laconia. His son Eurotaswas the father of Sparta, wife of Lacedæmon, who gave his name to thecountry. He had two daughters, Amycla and Eurydice, the latter of whombecame the wife of Acrisios.[90] The Acarnanians, however, had amongthem a tradition which made Lelex an autochthon of Leucadia,[91] and thepeople of Megara spoke of one Lelex[92] who arrived in their country bysea from Egypt.
Footnote 85:
Which Strabo (viii. 3, 157,) says was the original seat of the Caucons.
Footnote 86:
Sch. Apoll. Rhod. iv. 264.
Footnote 87:
Clem. Alex. i. 6.
Footnote 88:
Herod. i. 146. Pliny iv. 10. Nic. Damasc. in Exc. p. 494. Paus. viii. 1. 4.
Footnote 89:
Paus. iii. 12. 5.—i. 1. The country, moreover, obtained the name of Lelegia, iv. i. 1.
Footnote 90:
Apollod. iii. 10. 3.
Footnote 91:
Strab. vii. 7. p. 115.
Footnote 92:
From whom the people were called Leleges. Paus. i. 39. 6. He was said to be the son of Poseidon and Libya, and his tomb was shown near the sea-shore, 44. 3.
To proceed, however, with the traces of the Pelasgi in Peloponnesos. Ithas sometimes been supposed that no proof exists of their having heldany part of this peninsula excepting Argos, Achaia and Arcadia;[93] buterroneously, for we have seen the Leleges, a Pelasgian tribe, inLaconia; and we find a settlement of the Pelasgi in Messenia. Here alsoat Andania flourished the Pelasgian worship of the Dii Kabyri fromSamothrace;[94] colony of Leleges, under Pylos, son of Cleison, settledat Pylos on the Coryphasian promontory.[95] The Caucons heldCyparissos;[96] that is both in the interior of Messenia and along thesea coast we find settlements of the race which peopled the wholepeninsula. Passing northward into Elis, we immediately on crossing theNeda find Caucons in the Lepreatis,[97] where, probably, in proof thatthe tribe originated there, they showed in Strabo’s[98] time the tomb ofCaucon. They had likewise a river Caucon[99] in the north of Elis, andin short the whole country from the Neda to the Larissos bore ancientlythe name of Cauconia.[100] Some, however, maintain that they were foundonly at three points on the coast, that is, in the south ofTriphylia,[101] in the north near Dyme, and at Hollow Elis on thePeneios, which Aristotle considered their chief seat.[102] NeverthelessAntimachos regarded the Epeians as Caucons,[103] and since theseinhabited the whole western coast from Messenia northward, we mustconsider Elis as the principal though not the original seat of thistribe; for we find them represented as issuing from Arcadia, and we havealready shown that they were settled in Paphlagonia, and weredenominated a Trojan tribe.
Footnote 93:
Thirl. Hist. of Greece, i. 38.
Footnote 94:
Paus. iv. 1. Müll. Dor. i. 116.
Footnote 95:
Paus. iv. 36. i.
Footnote 96:
Strab. viii. 3. 156.
Footnote 97:
Ibid. viii. 3. 152.
Footnote 98:
Ibid. viii. 3. 157.
Footnote 99:
Ibid. viii. 3. 151.
Footnote 100:
Ibid. viii. 3. 157.
Footnote 101:
Ibid. viii. 3. 151. The Caucons, however, mentioned by Athena in the Odyssey (θ. 366.) were different from those of Triphylia. The Triphylian Caucons held all the land lying south-east of Pylos on the way to Lacedæmon. Strab. viii. 3. 157.
Footnote 102:
Strab. viii. 3. 157.
Footnote 103:
Ibid.
Turning our faces eastward from the promontory Araxos, we discover alongthe coast a chain of Pelasgian settlements founded by Ionians fromAthens.[104] To complete our list of proofs that there was no spot inall Hellas not possessed by the Pelasgi, we find a prince of that race,and named Pelasgos, receiving the goddess Demeter at Corinth in theremotest periods of the mythology.[105]
Footnote 104:
Herod. vii. 14.
Footnote 105:
Paus. i. 14. 2.
Thus, then, we have traced this illustrious people under various namesthrough every region of Greece, save Attica; and there also they werefound, but whether they arrived by land or sea, I profess myself whollyunable to determine. A modern historian[106] who experienced the samedifficulty, observes, that the Ionians appear to have dropped fromheaven into Attica. Unquestionably we do not know whence they came, andas their own legends represent them as autochthons[107] we can expect noaid from tradition. The most probable supposition is, that when themigratory hordes were pushing southward from Thessaly, some clans, morefortunate than the rest, traversing the heights of Cithæron soon foundthemselves in possession of this unfertile but lovely land, covered inthose ages with forests, diversified by hill and dale, and breathingperfume from every thicket. The succeeding tide of emigration breakingagainst the ridge of Cithæron seems to have turned westward and flowedinto the Peloponnesos, leaving Attica unmolested. Some have regarded itsown barrenness as the rampart which protected it from invasion. But whymay we not suppose that the inhabitants finding themselves thriving andtranquil, resolved early to fight for their possessions, and hedgedthemselves from invasion by courage and arms? be this as it may, Atticawas the first part of Hellas that enjoyed permanent exemption from war,so that the olive, its principal ornament and riches, became in allafter ages the emblem of peace. Once settled in this country the Pelasgiwere never driven thence,[108] nor did they ever receive anyconsiderable mixture of foreign settlers. Individuals from time to timewere permitted to take up their abode among them; but, in this favouredspot, unalloyed by foreign mixture, the Pelasgic genius completelydeveloped itself, and reached the highest pitch of civilisation known tothe ancient world.
Footnote 106:
Müll. Dor. i. 12.
Footnote 107:
Sch. Arist. Acharn. 75.—Nubb. 971.
Footnote 108:
Herod. i. 56. vii. 161. Lesbon. Protrept. ii. 22. f. Conf. Wessel. ad Herod. p. 26.
The earliest name bestowed on the Pelasgian tribe which held Attica wasthat of Cranaans;[109] but whether they were so distinguished beforetheir migration thither, or, which is more probable, derived theirappellation from the rocky nature[110] of their country, does notappear. Like most of the ancient nations, however, they frequentlychanged their name: at first perhaps simply Pelasgi, next Cranaans, thenCecropidæ and Ionians; afterwards, under the reign of Erechtheus theyobtained from their patron divinity the name of Athenians, by which theyhave been known down to the present day. Among the fables of themythology we discover traces of several attempts at disputing with theAborigines the sovereignty of Attica. Thus Eumolpos, with a colony ofThracians, is by one tradition said to have obtained possession of thewhole country,[111] while another and more probable legend representshim as settling with a small band at Eleusis, where his family duringthe whole existence of Paganism exercised the office of priests ofDemeter.[112] The Cretans again under Minos sought to obtain a footingin the country; but the close of the tradition which speaks of thisinvasion shows that though disgraceful to Attica it was without anypermanent result. Afterwards, when the unsettled Pelasgi had degeneratedinto pirates and freebooters, a powerful band of them appears to havefound its way thither, and obtained a settlement in the immediateneighbourhood of the capital,[113] on condition, apparently, oflabouring at the erection of walls round the Acropolis. A portion of thefortifications is said to have been completed by these marauders, and tohave obtained from them the name of the Pelasgian wall. But even thesestrangers were not suffered to remain; quarrels arising either about theland which the Pelasgi had obtained on the slopes of Hymettos, or onaccount of violence offered to certain Athenian maidens descending tothe fountain of Callirrhoë for water. The emigrants were expelled andtook refuge in Lemnos. In revenge for what they regarded as an injury,they carried away a number of Attic virgins who were celebrating thefestival of Artemis at Brauron, which led in after times to the captureof Lemnos by Miltiades.
Footnote 109:
Herod. i. 57. viii. 44.
Footnote 110:
Suid. _v._ Κραν. t. i. p. 1518. d.
Footnote 111:
Strab. vii. 7. p. 114.
Footnote 112:
Palmer. Græc. Antiq. p. 62.
Footnote 113:
Paus. ii. 8. 3. Philoch. p. 13. Siebel. Herod. ii. 51. seq.
It seems to result from the above inquiry that every district in Hellaswas originally peopled by the Pelasgi, which the poets in after agesexpressed by saying that a king of that nation reigned over the wholecountry as far northward as the Strymon in Thrace.[114]
Footnote 114:
Æschyl. Suppl. 259. sqq.
We have shown that their dominions extended much further, and includednot Thrace only, beyond the limits of Greece, but a great part likewiseof Asia Minor and nearly every island in the Ægæan. But even thesespacious limits were not wide enough to contain the whole Pelasgianpopulation; for traversing the Adriatic, they penetrated into Etruria,and there and elsewhere in Italy, under the name of Tyrrhenians, erectedCyclopian cities, and deposited the germs of its futurecivilisation.[115] Hence the great resemblance which historians andantiquaries have observed between the Etruscans and the Greeks. Bothwere offshoots from the great Pelasgic stem; though the simplicity ofthe original race in religion and manners maintained longer its groundin Italy than under the warmer skies of Greece. In these more westernsettlements, however, new tribes sprang up, who in glory eclipsed themother race, which they learned to regard with contempt, so that theybestowed the name of Pelasgi on their slaves. A similar circ*mstance hadpreviously occurred in Asia Minor, where the Carians reduced toservitude such of their brethren as in later times retained the name ofLeleges.[116]
Footnote 115:
Gœttl. ad Hes. Theog. 311. 1014. Οἱ Τυρσηνοὶ δὲ, Πελασγοί. Sch. Apoll. Rhod. 580. The Pelasgi were the founders of Agylla, afterwards Cære in Etruria. Steph. Byzant. v. Ἀγύλλα, p. 30. d. Plin. iii. 8. Serv. ad Æn. viii. 479, who also gives another tradition according to which Agylla was built by Tyrrhenians from Lydia. Cf. Vibius, Sequest. 421, who says that the Tuscans were Pelasgi. The Poseidoniatæ, a Tuscan tribe, entirely forgot their original language, the manners of their country, and all its festivals, save one, in which they assembled to repeat the ancient names of kings, and recall the remembrance of their original home. They then separated with groans, cries, and mingling together their tears.—Athen. xiv. 81. The Bruttii are said to have been driven out of their country by the Pelasgi (Plin. iii. 8); who also settled in Lucania and Bruttium (9, 10). Pelasgi came out of Peloponnesos into Latium, settled on the Sarna, called themselves Sarrhastes, and built, among others, the town of Nuceria.—Serv. ad Æn. vii. 738. A different tradition brings them from Attica; another from Thessaly, because of the many Pelasgian relics found there.—Idem. viii. 600. Dion. Hal. i. 33.
Footnote 116:
Nieb. i. 22. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Χῖος, p. 758. b. Victor. Var. Lect. i. 10. Athen. vi. 101.
If now we cast a rapid glance over the sciences and civilisation of thePelasgi, we shall probably have acquired as complete an idea of thatancient people as existing monuments enable us to frame.[117] Traditionattributed to them the invention of several arts of primary necessity,as those of building houses and manufacturing clothing, which they didfrom the skins of wild boars, the animals first slain by man for food. Arelic of this primitive style of dress remained, we are told, to a verylate age among the rustics of Phocis and Eubœa.[118] Other traditionswill have it that mankind fed on grass and herbs until the Pelasgitaught them the greater refinement of feeding upon acorns. But leavingthese poetical fancies, we shall find in many genuine monuments andfacts undisputed proofs of the power and knowledge of the Pelasgi. Inthe first place, they it was who bequeathed to their Hellenicdescendants some knowledge, though imperfect and obscure, of the trueGod.[119] In their minds the recognition of the unity of the DivineBeing formed the basis of theology, and the philosophers of after ageswho reasoned best and thought most correctly rose no higher on thesepoints than their rude ancestors.
Footnote 117:
See Nieb. i. 24.
Footnote 118:
Paus. viii. 1. 5.
Footnote 119:
Herod. ii. 32. 51. Plato, Tim. t. vii. 22–31. 96. 142.
But the natural tendency of the human mind to error soon disturbed thesimplicity of their faith; for as the tribes separated, each taking adifferent direction, they all in turns learned to consider the God astheir patron, so that speedily there were as many gods as tribes, andpolytheism was created. Thus the Pelasgi, who had at first like thepolished nations of modern times no name for _the gods_, because theybelieved in but one, degenerated in the course of time, and inventedthat system of divinities and heroes which afterwards prevailed inGreece. They, too, it was, who in the developement of their superstitionmade the first steps towards the arts by setting up rude images of thepowers they worshipped, and to them accordingly the introduction of theHermæan statues at Athens is attributed.[120] There was likewise in atemple of Demeter between mount Eboras and Taygetos, a wooden statue ofOrpheus, supposed to be the workmanship of the Pelasgi.[121] Evidentlytoo, the worship of Demeter, and of all the rural gods grew uporiginally among them, as did likewise the adoration of supreme powerand supreme wisdom in Zeus and Athena.[122]
Footnote 120:
Herod. ii. 51.
Footnote 121:
Paus. iii. 20. 5.
Footnote 122:
We find mention, too, of a Pelasgian Hera, Alex. ab. Alex. p. 321. Sch. Apol. Rhod. i. 14.
Usually the Pelasgi are considered as a much wandering people,[123]though it would be more correct to represent them, like the Anglo-Saxonrace in modern times, as the prolific parents of many settlements,spreading widely, but taking root wherever they spread. A proof of thisstill exists in the vast structures[124] which they reared, whose ruinsare yet found scattered through Asia, Greece, and Italy. These Cyclopianbuildings, palaces, treasuries, fortresses, barrows, were not the worksof nomadic hordes, but of a people attached to the soil and resolute indefending it. Navigation, likewise, they cultivated, and were among theearliest nations who possessed a power at sea,[125] which lednecessarily to the study of astronomy, together with the occult scienceof the stars.[126] Of their progress in the more ordinary arts ofutility we have very little knowledge, but we find in the Iliad aPelasgian woman staining ivory to be used as ornaments of awar-horse;[127] the invention of the shepherd’s crook was attributed tothem; so likewise was the religious dance called Hyporchema;[128] theirproficiency in music is spoken of;[129] and their pre-eminence in warwas signified by representing them as inventors of the shield.[130]
Footnote 123:
Strab. xiii. 3. p. 144.
Footnote 124:
Serv. ad Æn. vi. 630. Winkelmann, ii. 557. On the Cyclopian walls of Crotona. Mus. Cortonen. pl. i. Rom. 1756.
Footnote 125:
Palm. Gr. Ant. p. 60. Herm. Pol. Ant. p. 13.
Footnote 126:
Palm. Gr. Ant. p. 72.
Footnote 127:
δ. 142. Sch. Apol. Rhod. iii. 1323. Natal. Com. 611.
Footnote 128:
Phot. Bib. 320. b.
Footnote 129:
They were the inventors of the trumpet. Πελασγιὰς ἔβρεμε σάλπιγξ, Nonn. Dion. 47. 568. Cf. Paus. ii. 21. 3. Gœttl. ad Hes. Theog. 311.
Footnote 130:
Serv. ad Æn. ix. 505.
On the language of the Pelasgi various opinions are entertained. Some,relying on particular passages in ancient writers, have imagined that itwas very different from the Greek,[131] but although in support of suchan opinion much ingenuity may be exhibited there are circ*mstances whichcompel us to reject it. The Athenians and Arcadians, for example, thoughof Pelasgian origin, spoke, and that from the remotest times, the samelanguage with the rest of the Greeks; and though the Æolic dialect,[132]the most ancient in Arcadia, or indeed in all Greece, was transformed toLatin in Italy, we are not on that account to infer that Latin bore acloser resemblance than the Greek to the mother tongue of both. ThePelasgian language indeed appears to have been the Hellenic in theearlier stages of its formation, just as the Pelasgi themselves wereGreeks under another name and in a ruder state of civilisation. Whetherthey possessed any knowledge of written characters before[133] theintroduction of the Phœnician we have now no means of ascertaining, thepassages usually brought forward in behalf of such an opinion being ofsmall authority. To them, however, tradition attributes the introductionof letters into Latium,[134] and there can be no doubt that the use ofwritten characters was known in Greece before its inhabitants had ceasedto be called Pelasgi.
Footnote 131:
Nieb. i. 23.
Footnote 132:
Palm. Gr. Ant. p. 55.
Footnote 133:
See, however, the question discussed in Palmerius, Gr. Ant. p. 49. sqq. Conf. Eustath. ad Il. β. 841.
Footnote 134:
Plin. vii. 56. Tacit. Annal. xi. 14. et Rupert ad loc. Hygin. Fab. 277. p. 336.
I have now, I imagine, proved that the Pelasgi whencesoever they came,occupied, under one name or another, the whole continent of Greece andmost of the islands. The Athenians, and consequently the Ionians, are onall hands acknowledged to have sprung from the Pelasgian stock. It onlyremains to be shown that the Dorians also traced their origin to thispeople, and we shall be satisfied that the whole of the illustriousnation, known to history under the name of Greeks, flowed from one andthe same source. The Hellenes, of whom the Dorians were a tribe,[135]occupied in later times the south of Thessaly, but at a much earlierperiod, along with the Selli,[136] dwelt in the mountainous tracts aboutDodona, where they were known under the name of Greeks ormountaineers,[137] which was the original signification of the term.This district of Epeiros, it has been shown, was among the very earliestof the Pelasgian settlements, from which of itself it might be inferredthat the Hellenes were Pelasgi. We are not left to rely in this matteron mere inference, since Herodotus states distinctly that they were afragment of the Pelasgi.[138]
Footnote 135:
Serv. ad Æn. ii. 4.
Footnote 136:
Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. p. 39.
Footnote 137:
Palm. Gr. Ant. 5.
Footnote 138:
I. 58.
It will be seen that I have hitherto made no allusion to the receivedfables about Egyptian and Phœnician colonies.[139] Nevertheless it isquite possible that on many occasions certain fugitives, both fromPhœnicia and Egypt, may have taken refuge in Greece, and been permitted,as in after ages, to settle there. These persons, coming from countriesfarther advanced in civilisation, would undoubtedly bring along withthem a superior degree of knowledge in many useful arts, which, ingratitude for their hospitable reception, they would undoubtedlycommunicate to the inhabitants. But the most active agent in thediffusion of civilisation was probably commerce, which, by bringingneighbouring nations into close contact, by enlarging the sphere oftheir experience, and teaching them the advantages to be derived frompeaceful intercourse, has in all ages softened and refined mankind. Whenthe use of letters began first to prevail in the East is not known, butit was probably communicated early to the Pelasgi, along with thematerials for writing; and whatever inventions were made on either sideof the Mediterranean passed rapidly from shore to shore, so that thecivilisation of the Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Greeks, advancedsimultaneously, though the beginnings of improvement were undoubtedlymore ancient on the banks of the Nile and among the maritime Arabs thanin Hellas. The amount, however, of eastern influences I conceive was notgreat, and as to colonies, properly so called, with the exception ofthose already described from Asia Minor, I believe there never were any.
Footnote 139:
See Mitford (Hist. of Greece, 81. ff.) who is full of these colonies. Herod. i. 2. Conf. Thirl. i. 185. Keightley, Hist. of Greece, p. 11. Müll. Dor. i. 16.
CHAPTER II. CHARACTER OF THE GREEKS.
Having in the foregoing chapter endeavoured to ascertain by what racesGreece was originally peopled, we shall next speak of the character andphysical organization of its inhabitants. In doing this it may be usefulto consider them in three different stages of their progress: first, inthe heroic and poetical times; secondly, in the historical andflourishing ages of the Hellenic commonwealth; thirdly, in their corruptand degenerate state under the dominion of the Macedonians and Romans.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the Hellenes, when poetryfirst places them before us, is a profound veneration for the divinityand every thing connected with the service of religion. By the force ofimagination heaven and earth were brought near each other, not so much,indeed, by elevating the latter, as by bringing down the former withinthe sphere of humanity. Gods and men moved together over the earth,cooperated in bringing about events, keeping up a constant interchangeof beneficence; the god aiding, the mortal repaying his aid withgratitude;[140] the god guiding, the mortal submitting to be directed,until, sometimes, as in the case of Odysseus and Athena, the feeling ofgrace and favour on the one side, and of veneration and gratitude on theother, ripened into something like friendship and affection.
Footnote 140:
Cf. Plut. Pericl. § 13.
No man entered on any important enterprise without first consulting thegods, and throwing himself upon their protection, by sacrifice,divination, and prayer.[141] They conceived, according to the bestlights afforded them by their rude creed, that although means existed ofwarping the judgment, perverting the affections, and vitiating thedecisions of their divinities, yet upon the whole and in the naturalorder of things they were just and beneficent, mercifully caring for thepoor and the stranger, the guardians of friendship and hospitality, andavenging severely the offences committed against their laws. Habitually,when not provoked to vengeance by impiety or crimes, the gods theybelieved were not only beneficent towards mankind, but given amongthemselves to cheerfulness and mirth, loving music, songs, and laughter,feasting jovially together in a joy serene and almost imperturbable,save when interrupted by solicitude for some favoured mortal.Philosophy, in more intellectual times, condemned this rude conceptionof divine things; but men’s ideas, like their offerings, belong to thestate of society in which they live, and the Greeks of the heroic agesunquestionably attributed to their gods the qualities most in esteemamong themselves.
Footnote 141:
See Man. Moschop. ap Arist. Nubb. 982.
Next to religion the most prominent feeling in the mind of the earlyGreeks was filial piety.[142] Nowhere among men were parents held inhigher honour. The reverence paid to them partook largely of thereligious sentiment. Regarded as the instruments by which God hadcommunicated the mysterious and sacred gift of life, they were supposedby their children to be for ever invested with a high degree of sanctityas ministers and representatives of the Creator. Hence the anxietyexperienced to obtain a father’s blessing and the indescribable dread ofhis curse. A peculiar set of divinities, the terrible Erinnyes, all butimplacable and unsparing, were entrusted with the guardianship of aparent’s rights, and indescribable were the pangs and anguish supposedto seize upon transgressors. These were the powers who tracked about thematricides Orestes and Alcmæon, scaring them with spectral terrors andfilling their palaces with the alarms and agonies of Tartaros. On theother hand, nothing can be more beautiful than the pictures of filialpiety exhibited by the nobler characters of heroic times. The examplesare innumerable, but none is so striking or complete as that of Achillestowards his father Peleus. Fierce, vehement, stern in the ordinaryrelations of life, towards his aged father he is gentle as a child. Hisheart yearns to him with a strength of feeling incomprehensible to ameaner nature. He submits to his sway and authority not from anyapprehension of his power, not even from the fear of offending him, butfrom the fulness of his love, from the natural excellence and purity ofhis heart. He would erect his valour and the might of his arm into arampart round the old man, to protect him from injury and insult; andeven in the cold region of shadows beyond the grave this feeling isrepresented as still alive, so that in death, as in life, the uppermostanxiety of the hero’s soul is for the happiness of his father. Even inthe government of his impetuous passions during his mortal career, inthe choice of the object of his love, Achilles expresses a desire torender his feelings subordinate to those of his parent, thus verging onthe utmost limits of self-denial and self-control conceivable in a stateof nature. Homer understood his countrymen well when he gave thesequalities to his hero. Without them, he knew that no degree of courageor wisdom would have sufficed to render him popular, and, therefore, wefind him not only pre-eminent for his piety towards the gods, but at thesame time the most affectionate and dutiful of sons, the warmest, mostdisinterested, and unchangeable of friends.
Footnote 142:
Respect for old age is still a remarkable feature in the Greek character. Thiersch. Etat Actuel de la Grèce, i. 292. On the same trait in their ancestors see Mitf. i. 186. Odyss. ω. 254. Plat. Repub. vi. p. 6. f. Æsch. cont. Tim. § 7.
And this leads us to consider another remarkable feature of the Greekcharacter,—its peculiar aptitude for friendship. No country’s historyand traditions abound with so many examples of this virtue as those ofGreece. In truth, it was there regarded as the most unequivocal mark ofan heroic and generous nature, being wholly inconsistent with anythingbase, sordid, or ignoble, and flourishing only in company with virtuesrarest and most difficult of acquisition. Poetry, no doubt, has clad thefriendship of heroic times with a splendour scarcely belonging to reallife, but the experience of history warrants us in making but slightdeductions. Nature in those ages appeared to delight in producing men inpairs, each suited to be the ornament and solace of the other,possessing different qualities, imperfect when apart, but complete,united. Men thus constituted were a sort of moral twins, an extension,if we may so speak, of unity, the same yet different, bringing two soulsunder the yoke of one will, desiring the same, hating the same,possessing the same, valuing life and the gifts of life only as theywere shared in common, seeking adventures, facing dangers together,conforming their thoughts, opinions, feelings, each to the other, havingno distinct interest, no distinct hope, but engrafting two lives on thechances of one man’s fortune, and both perishing by the same blow.
This feeling has by some been supposed to have owed its strength, inpart at least, to the degraded position of women in society; a subjecton which I shall have more to say hereafter, but may here remark thatsuch an opinion is wholly incompatible with an impartial interpretationof the Homeric poems and the older traditions of Greece. Throughoutfabulous times women are the prime movers in all great events; and therespect which as mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters they received,though expressed in uncourtly language, was perhaps as great as has everbeen paid them in any age or country. Every distinguished woman in Homeris the centre of a circle of tender and touching associations. We beholdthem beloved by their relatives, honoured by their dependants, enjoyingevery decent freedom, every becoming pleasure, with all the influenceand authority appertaining to their sex. Thus Helen, both before andafter her fall, is entire mistress of her house, and treated with allpossible deference and delicacy: so Hecuba, Andromache, Penelope, Arete,Nausicaa, and Iphigeneia in their respective positions, are held in thehighest esteem, and command as great a share of love from those whoseduty it was to love and honour them, as any other women in history orfiction. Nor were due respect and tenderness confined to the high andthe noble; for innumerable proofs occur in Homer that even among thehumblest ranks, that delicate self-respect which is shown by respect toour other self, and may be regarded as the pivot of civilisation, wasalready in that age very generally diffused.
But if the Greeks of heroic times possessed the good qualities we haveattributed to them, they were still more, perhaps, distinguished forothers, which often obliterated the footsteps of their virtues, andappeared to be the guiding principles of their lives. Chief among thesewas their passion for war and violence,[143] which engaged them ineverlasting struggles with their neighbours, developed overmuch theirfierce and destructive qualities, and threw into comparative shade suchof their propensities as were gentler and more humane. War by land,piracy by sea, filled the whole country with incessant alarms. Commercewas checked and confined within very narrow channels, both travellingand navigation being exceedingly unsafe, while bands of marauderstraversed land and sea in quest of rapine and plunder. In some states noother mode was known of arriving at opulence, and the humbler classes ofsociety were wholly subsisted by it.[144] The laws of war, too, wereproportionably savage. It was customary either to give no quarter, or todevote all prisoners taken to servitude; and, accordingly, every pettystate was filled with unfortunate captives, many of them of illustriousbirth and qualities, reduced to the humblest conditions, being compelledto earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. In peace, too, and intheir own homes their warlike habits led frequently to the perpetrationof violence; their passions being strong and unbridled they resentedinsults on the spot, and numerous homicides were, in consequence, foundflying from the country whose infant institutions their passions hadsought to overthrow.
Footnote 143:
See Thirlwall i. 180. sqq. and Mitford i. 181.—Among the Sauromatæ, in the time of Hippocrates, even the women mounted on horseback and fought in battle. They were not allowed to marry until they had slain three enemies.—De Aër. et. Loc. § 78. A circ*mstance is related of the Parthian court, illustrative of the ferocity which prevailed generally in antiquity. The monarch, it is said, kept a humble friend, whom he fed like a dog, and whipped till the blood flowed, for the slightest offence at table, apparently for the amusem*nt of the guests.—Athen. iv. 38. This trait of barbarism was imitated by the Czar Peter, by servile historians denominated the Great, who used brutally to maltreat the princess Galitzin before his whole court.—Mem. of the Margrav. of Bayreuth, vol. i. p. 34.
Footnote 144:
Thucyd. i. 5.
But in all stages of society it has been ordained by Providence that outof the wickedness of man some compensating good shall flow: thus, fromthe dangers and difficulties surrounding the stranger the virtue ofhospitality[145] sprang up in generous minds. From the distress andmisery of the passionate or accidental slayer of man arose the mercifulrites of expiation, and all the friendly ties which subsisted betweenthe purifier and the purified. Wanderers driven from their home oftenfound a better in a foreign land; and thus even the transgressions andmisfortunes of men, by breaking down the narrow enclosures of familiesand clans, and connecting persons of distant tribes together by benefitsand gratitude, hastened the progress of refinement and paved the way forthe greatness and glory of succeeding ages.
Footnote 145:
Il. ρ. 212. seq. The word ξένος signified, actively and passively, the host and the guest. The rights of hospitality were hereditary, the descendants of men being compelled to entertain the descendants of those with whom their forefathers had contracted hospitable ties. Πρόξενοι sometimes signified persons who publicly received ambassadors, as Antenor among the Trojans. Agamemnon had hospitable ties with the Phrygians, because he came of Phrygian ancestors. Damm. _v._ ξένος. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 347. Cf. Virg. Æn. viii. 165. et Serv. ad loc. Plat. Soph. t. iv. p. 125, where Socrates alludes to a passage in Homer, in which Zeus is said to be the companion of the wanderer, observing jocularly that the Eleatic stranger might probably have been some deity in disguise. Cf. Tomas. Tess. Hosp. c. 23. ap. Gronov. Thesaur. ix. 266. sqq. It was a proverb at Athens that the doors of the Prytaneion would keep out no stranger.—Sch. Aristoph. Ach. 127. The Lucanians had a law thus expressed: “If a stranger arriving at sunset ask a lodging of any one, let him who refuses to be his host be fined for want of hospitality.” The object, I imagine, of the law, says Ælian (Var. Hist. iv. i.) was at once to avenge the stranger and Hospitable Zeus.
It will, from what has been said, be seen that among the elements of theGreek character passion greatly predominated; but, even from theearliest times, the existence was apparent of other powerful principles,by the influence of which the nation was led to emerge rapidly from itsperiod of barbarism. These were an innate love of magnificence, and astriking inclination towards all social enjoyments; the former leadingto the cultivation of commerce and industry, the latter communicating anextraordinary impetus to the natural desire common to mankind forcompanionship and society. But in developing these principles naturepursued in Greece a peculiar route. Instead of establishing a commoncentre, towards which the energies of the whole nation might tend,society was broken up into numerous parts, each forming, when consideredseparately, a whole, but united with its neighbours by identity oforigin, language, religion, and national character.
Philosophers usually seek in geographical position a key to the fact ofthe formation of so many separate states as the Hellenic population wasdivided into; but the cause was probably of a different kind. Amongevery other people, a difficulty has always been experienced indiscovering men capable of conducting public affairs; and, when any suchhave arisen, they have easily subdued to their will their lessintellectual and, consequently, less ambitious neighbours. Among theGreeks the case was wholly different: every province, every district,nay, every town and village abounded with men endowed with the abilityand passion for governing. These feelings begot the aversion to submitto the government of others; this aversion engendered strife; and it wasonly the accident of a numerical superiority existing in one division ofthe country, or of a statesman of extraordinary genius springing up,that enabled one village to subdue its neighbours for a few milesaround, and thus establish a small political community.
History rarely penetrates back so far as the period in which this stateof things existed. But we have an example in the annals of Attica, wherethe twelve small municipal states, if one may so speak, were, partly bypersuasion, partly by force, brought under the authority of one city,possessing the advantages of a superior position and wiser and moreenterprising leaders.
These diminutive polities once formed, many causes concurred to preservetheir integrity, of which the most obvious and powerful was the pride ofrace, and, next to this, certain religious feelings and peculiarities,which stationed gods along the frontier line of states, and rendered itimpious for the worshippers of other divinities to invade or dispossessthem of their lands. Communities having at first been thus isolated,numerous circ*mstances arose to make eternal the separation. The readyinvention of the people gave to each state its heroes and heroictraditions, based, perhaps, on the exploits of border warfare, in whichthe ancestors of one community had suffered or inflicted injuries on theancestors of another. Poets sprang up who celebrated these deeds insong, and every assembly, every festival, every merry-making resoundedwith the commemoration of deeds as galling to one people as they wereglorious to the other. These prejudices, this cantonal patriotism, thistribual vanity, if I may coin a new word to express a new idea,constituted a far more impassable barrier between the diminutive statesof Greece, than either mountains or rivers; though, in process of time,some few cases occurred in which very small communities were immersedand lost in greater ones. The heroism, however, with which the smallestcommonwealth struggled to preserve its separate existence, the watchfuljealousy, the undying solicitude, the fierce and sanguinary valour bywhich it hedged round its independence, the indescribable agonies ofpolitical extinction, may be seen in the examples of Ægina, Megara,Platæa, and Messenia.
In fact the most remarkable peculiarity in the Greek character was acertain centrifugal force, or abhorrence of centralisation, whichpresented insurmountable obstacles to the union of the whole Hellenicnation under one head. The inhabitants of ancient Italy exhibited onthis point an entirely dissimilar character. Though differing from eachother widely in manners, customs and laws, they still possessed so muchof affinity as enabled them successively to unite themselves with Rome,and melt into one great people. The causes lay in their moral andintellectual character: possessing little genius or imagination, butmuch good sense, they experienced less keenly the misery of inferiority,the anguish of defeat, the tortures of submission, and calculated morecoolly the advantages of protection and tranquillity, and all the otherbenefits of living under a strong government. Where the masses are butslightly impregnated with the fire of genius they are naturally disposedto amalgamation, and form a vast body necessarily subjected to one head.But where a nation is everywhere pervaded and quickened by genius, whereimagination is an universal attribute, where to soar is as natural as tobreathe, where the principal enjoyment of life is the exercise of power,where men hunger and thirst more for renown than for their daily bread,where life itself without these imaginary delights is insipid anddespicable, no force, while the vigour of the national charactercontinues unbroken, can erect a central government, or achieve extensiveconquests, that is, subject one part of the nation to the sway of theother. And perhaps it may be found when we shall farther have perfectedthe science of government, that in politics as in physics the largestbodies are not the most valuable, or the most difficult to be shattered.The diamond resists when the largest rock yields. The true tendency ofcivilisation, therefore, is to reduce unwieldy empires into compactbodies, which the light of education can penetrate and render luminous.Vast empires are but opaque masses of ignorance.
From precisely the same causes arose the peculiar notions of the Greekson the subject of government; that is, the citizens of each stateapplied to one another the principle which regulated the conduct ofcommunities. Every man experienced an aversion to yield obedience to hisneighbour, every man was ambitious to rule; but, as this was impossible,it became necessary to invent some means by which public business couldbe carried on without offering too much violence to the nationalcharacter. Hence the origin of republicanism and the establishment ofcommonwealths, in which the sovereignty was acknowledged to reside inthe body of the people, and where such of the citizens as by abilities,rank, friends, were qualified, might rule in vicarious succession.
But the various families of the Hellenes were not all equally endowedwith the energy and intellect which belonged to their race; somepossessed more of these qualities, others less, and there were besidesin operation numerous peculiar and local causes which modified the formsof polity adopted by the various states of Greece. The heavier, thecolder, the more inert naturally chose that form of government whichwould least tax their mental faculties, and most completely relieve themfrom the care of public affairs, in order the more sedulously to attendto their own; while the fierier, the busier, more active and buoyantpreferred that political constitution which would afford their energeticnatures most employment, and supply a legitimate outlet for the ardourand impetuosity of their temperament. Thus, in certain communities therewas a leaning towards monarchy, in others towards oligarchy; in a thirdclass towards aristocracy; while Athens and some few smaller statespreferred the stir, bustle, and incessant animation of democracy.
Again these institutions, springing at first out of nationalidiosyncrasies, became in their turn among the most active causes whichimpressed the stamp of individuality on the population of each separatestate: for the principle which animates a form of government is not abarren principle, but impregnates, leavens, and vivifies the communitysubjected to its influence, and produces an offspring analogous to thesource from which it sprang. Thus, in monarchies the summits of a nationare rich with verdure and glorious with light; in aristocracies a broadtable-land is fertilized and rendered beautiful; while in commonwealths,properly so called, the whole surface of society unrolls itself like avast plain to the sun, and receives the light and comfort, andinvigorating influence of its beams:—and all these various modificationsof civil polity were at different times and in different parts of thecountry beheld in Greece, where they produced their natural fruits.
Among the principal results of the causes we have enumerated were a highintellectual cultivation, the profoundest study of philosophy, the mostardent pursuit of literature, a matchless taste for the beautiful innature and in art, an irrepressible enthusiasm in the search afterknowledge of every kind, and, joined with these, as their causesometimes, and sometimes as their consequence, an invincible andlimitless craving after fame. And these characteristic qualities of thepeople exhibited themselves in various ways. Sometimes, as in Thessaly,men sought to distinguish themselves by their wealth and the pomp bywhich they were surrounded:—sometimes their ruling passion urged them topluck, amidst blood and slaughter, the laurels of war, as in Crete andSparta, where military discipline was carried to its utmost perfection,where men lived perpetually encamped around their domestic hearths,cultivated the habits, preferences, tastes, and feelings of soldiers,and looked upon dominion as the supreme good:—sometimes religion, withits rites and pomp and sacrifices, absorbed a whole people, as in Elis,where the worship of supreme Zeus and the celebration of sacred gamesconferred a sanctity upon the land and people which all men of Hellenicblood respected:—elsewhere mountaineers,[146] of indomitable valour,hired out their swords to the best bidder, and became, as it were, thejourneymen of war:—elegant pleasures in many cities, and commerce andmagnificence, occupied and depraved the whole community; whileothers,[147] of grosser minds and more sordid propensities, passed theirwhole lives in indolent gluttony round the festive board, amid crowds ofsingers, flute-players, and dancers; or else, like the Delphians, wereever seen hovering amid the smoke of the altars, whetting theirsacrificial knives or feasting on the savoury victims; and yet thetriumphs of the Thebans proved that even the lowest of the Greeks, whencirc*mstances led them to cultivate the arts of war, were capable ofplanning and executing great designs, and acquiring lasting celebrity.The arts, however, by which the Greeks rose to greatness,[148] andbecame the instructors and everlasting benefactors of mankind,flourished chiefly at Athens, and in the numerous colonies which sheplanted in various parts of Asia and the islands. To men of Ionian racewe owe, in fact, the invention and most successful culture of poetry andphilosophy, and those plastic and mimetic arts which added to the worldof realities another world more beautiful still. If the Greeks borrowed,as no doubt they did, certain varieties and forms of art and learningfrom the barbarians, they immediately so refined and improved them, thatthe original inventors would no longer have recognised the works oftheir own hands. The glory of giving birth to several of the arts andsciences belongs to them: they were the inventors of the art of war;among them alone, in the ancient world, painting and sculpture assumedtheir proper dignity; and in politics and statesmanship, and that art ofarts, philosophy, they led the way, and taught mankind the steps bywhich to arrive at perfection.
Footnote 146:
According to Hippocrates, the inhabitants of lofty mountains, well watered, are generally hardy and of tall stature, but fierce and ferocious. In saying this, the philosopher describes the Arcadians without naming them. De Aër. et Loc. § 120.
Footnote 147:
Athen. iv. 74.
Footnote 148:
Clem. Alex. Strom. i. p. 355. l. 12. Wink. Hist. de l’Art, i. 316.
Greece, by the means we have described, was gradually reclaimed from thestate of nature, covered with beautiful cities, harbours, docks,temples, palaces adorned with infinite variety of works of art, withsculpture in ivory and gold, with paintings, gems, and vases, whichconverted her principal cities into so many museums. Her plains, herdells, her mountain recesses were studded with sanctuaries and sacredgroves, conferring the external beauty of religion on the whole face ofthe country. Public roads, branching from numerous capital cities,traversed the land in every direction; bridges spanned her rivers,agriculture covered her hills and plains with harvests, the vine hung infestoons from tree to tree, the foliage of the olive clothed themountain sides, and a belt of beautiful gardens surrounded every city,town, and village.
The primary cause of all this amazing activity has, by philosophers,been sought for in various circ*mstances of the condition of the Greeks,in the form of their institutions, in the rivalry of so many smallcommunities, in the fact of their being inventors, and the consequentfreshness of their pursuits. But although all these circ*mstances andmany others contributed, as we have shown, to expedite the progress ofthe Greeks in civilisation, they were none of them the fountain head,which lies far beyond our ken. It were in fact as easy to tell why onestar differs from another star in glory, as why one nation or one manrises in intellect above his fellows. But we are supplied with a link inthe chain which connects the above effects with their cause, by thephysical organisation of the Greeks, who possessed the most perfectforms in which humanity ever appeared. Their frame exhibiting all thebeauty of which the human body is susceptible, uniting strength withlightness, dignity and elegance with activity, the utmost robustness ofhealth with extreme delicacy of contour, the muscles developed byexercise, and developed over the whole structure alike, suggested theidea of power and indefatigable energy; the stature, generally above themiddle size, the free and unembarrassed gait, the features[149] full ofbeauty, the expression replete with intellect, and the eye flashing witha consciousness of independence:—all these united conferred upon theform of the Greek an elevation, a grandeur, a majesty which we stillcontemplate with admiration in their sculpture, and denominate theideal. Above all things, the form of the Grecian head was mostexquisite, with its smooth, expansive, almost perpendicular forehead andmajestic outline, describing a perfect oval. Generally the complexionwas of a clear olive, the hair and eyes black, the temperament inclinedto melancholy, though numerous instances occurred of sanguine fairpersons with light eyes and chesnut or auburn hair, which the youthwore, as now, in a profusion of ringlets falling to the shoulders.Instances likewise occurred among the Greeks of individuals, who, likeour own Chatterton, had eyes of different colours. Thus the poetThamyris[150] is said to have had one eye grey, the other black. Nay,this peculiarity was even remarked among the inferior animals, moreparticularly the horses.[151]
Footnote 149:
Among the ancient Scythians an extraordinary uniformity of feature was observable, as also among the Egyptians, (the same is the case at present,) supposed to proceed, in the one case from the rigour, in the other from the extreme heat, of the climate. Hippoc. de Aër. et Loc. § 91. But in every country, the climate being alike for all, the same effect ought to be produced on the whole population. The similitude is chiefly to be traced to the absence of all mixture with foreign races; and the equal indevelopement of the mind.
Footnote 150:
Poll. iv. 141.
Footnote 151:
Aristot. de Gen. Anim. v. i.
The characteristic beauty of the nation displayed itself in every stageof life, only assuming new phases in its progress from the beauty ofinfancy to the beauty of old age, inspiring the mingled feelings of loveand admiration; and notwithstanding the effects of time, andinter-marriage with barbarous races, the same is the case still. Fornowhere in Europe do we meet with infants so lovely, with youths sosoft, so virginal, so beautiful in their incipient manliness, with oldmen so grave, stately, and with countenances so magnificent, as amongthe living descendants of the Hellenes, whose destiny may yet be, oneday, as enviable as their forms.
To push our enquiry one step further; it may be questioned, whether theglorious organisation we have been describing was not itself an effectof air, climate, and soil.[152] Certain at any rate it is, that theatmosphere of Greece is clearer, purer, more buoyant and elastic, thanthat of any other country in our hemisphere. At night, particularly,there is a transparency in the air, which appears to impart additionallustre and magnitude to the stars and moon. Its mountain tops, theintervening space being, as it were, removed, seem to mingle with theconstellations which cluster in brightness on the edge of the horizon.
Footnote 152:
Cf. Hippoc. de Aër. et Loc. § 125, seq. § 23, seq. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 94. seq.
A principal cause of this clearness and pellucidness is the greatprevalence of the north wind,[153] which brings with it few or novapours, but gathers together the clouds in heaps and rolls them fromthe land towards the Mediterranean. The reason why this wind so oftenprevails may be discovered in the geographical configuration of thecountry, which is not, like Italy, divided from the rest of thecontinent by a range of Alps that might have screened it from the colderblasts, but lies open like an elevated threshing-floor, to be purged andwinnowed on all sides by the winds, which in many parts are so violentthat no tree can attain to any great height, while the stunted woodsthrow all their branches in one direction, and the vines and otherclimbing shrubs are laid prostrate along the rocks. These winds,however, prevail not constantly, but the southern and western breezes,blowing at intervals, bring along with them the warm atmosphere of Syriaor Egypt, or the cooling freshness of the ocean. Another cause, whichgreatly tends to promote the purity of the air, is the lightness,friability, and dryness of the soil, which, distributed for the mostpart in thin layers over ledges of rocks, permits no stagnation ofmoisture, but enables the rain that falls to trickle through, collect inrills and brooks, and find its way rapidly to the sea. The plains andirregular valleys, which form an exception to this rule, are notnumerous enough, or of sufficient magnitude to affect the generalproposition. There appear, moreover, to be many peculiar properties andvirtues in the soil itself, causing all fruits transplanted thither toattain to speedy ripeness and superior flavour, while odoriferous plantsand flowers, as the jasmine, the wild thyme, and the rose exhale sweeterand more delicious fragrance. This is more particularly the case inAttica, which accordingly produced in antiquity, where due care wasbestowed on gardening and agriculture, the finest fruits and sweetesthoney in the world.[154]
Footnote 153:
This wind, wherever it prevails, increases the appetite; and the Greeks were a hearty-eating people.—Aristot. Probl. xxvi. 45. The wind Ornithias was often so cold as to strike birds dead on the wing. Schol. Aristoph. Ach. 842.
Footnote 154:
Aristot. Probl. xx. 20. The black myrtle, which is much larger than the white, grew wild about the hills. (xx. 36.) The southern breezes were considered highly salutary to the plants of the Thriasian plain. (xxvi. 18.)
The same qualities in soil and climate which affect vegetation, likewisepowerfully influence the character and temperament of men and animals.It is, for example, well known in the Levant, that the Bedouinsinhabiting Arabia Proper and the Eastern Desert degenerate both incharacter and physical organisation when transplanted to the Libyanwastes on the western banks of the Nile. But if particular soil andsituation engender particular diseases; if the air of fens and marshesblunt the senses and paralyse, to a certain degree, the intellectualfaculties, the converse of the proposition must also hold good; so thatit is conceivable that the light soil and pure air of Greece may haveproduced corresponding effects on the bodies and minds of itsinhabitants. The experiment, in fact, is made daily; for strangersarriving there with the germs of disease in their constitution, are, inmost cases, speedily destroyed by the force of the climate; while thehealthy and vigorous acquire the vivacity, the cheerfulness, the nervousand impetuous energy of the natives themselves, and, like them, extendthe term of life to its utmost span. Greece, indeed, has always been thehabitation of longevity; its philosophers in antiquity,—its monks,anchorites, and rural population in modern times, furnishing, perhaps,more examples of extreme old age than could be found on the same extentof territory in any other part of the globe.
Now this excess of vitality, this superabundance of the principle oflife, which constitutes what we intend by physical or moral energy,almost inevitably produces, among an ill-governed, ill-educated people,a large harvest of crime, and, accordingly, the modern Greeks have oftenbeen distinguished for audacious villany; the intrepid vigour of theircharacter, controlled neither by religion nor philosophy, easilybreaking through the restraints of tyranny and unjust laws in the chaseafter power or excitement. That Frenchman spoke more truly than hethought, who said the Greeks were still the same “canaille” as in thedays of Themistocles: for, give them the same laws, the same education,the same incentives to virtue and to heroism, and they will probably beagain as virtuous, as wise, and as heroic as their illustriousancestors. I judge in this way partly from my own experience, for I haveseldom become acquainted with a Greek,—and I have known many,—who hasnot improved upon acquaintance, won my esteem, and, in most cases, myaffection, and impressed me with the firm belief that there is no nationin the varied population of Europe which, if ruled with wisdom andjustice, would exhibit loftier or more exalted qualities. In these viewsI am happy to be borne out by the testimony of Monsieur FredericThiersch, whose facilities for studying the modern Greek have been farmore ample than mine, and whose opinions are marked by the cautiousacuteness of the statesman with the depth and originality of thephilosopher.
In alluding to the causes which pervert the feelings and misdirect theenergies of the existing race, I have touched also at the great sourceof crime among their ancestors,—I mean, defective laws and institutions;for although the Greek character was, in force and excellence, all thatI have said, and more, it, nevertheless, contained other elements thanthose I have described, which it now becomes my duty to speak of. From avery early period there existed in Greece two political parties,variously denominated in various states, but upholding,—the one, thedoctrine that the many ought to be subjected to the few; the other, thatthe few ought to be subjected to the many: in other words, theoligarchical and democratical parties. From the struggles of these twofactions the internal history of Greece takes its form and colour, as tothem may be traced most of the fearful atrocities, in the shape ofconspiracies, massacres, revolutions, which, instructing while theyshock us, stain the Greek character with indelible blots.[155] Ambitiousmen are nowhere scrupulous. To enjoy the delight imparted by theexercise of power, individuals have in all ages stifled the dictates ofconscience; and where, as in modern Italy and in ancient Greece,numerous small states border upon each other, sufficiently powerful todream of conquest though too weak to achieve it, the number of theambitious is of necessity greatly multiplied. In proportion, however, tothe thirst of power in one class was the love of freedom andindependence in the other, so that the process of encroachment andresistance, of tyranny and rebellion, of usurpation and punishment, wascarried on perpetually,—the oligarchy now predominating, and cutting offor sending into exile the popular leaders, while the democratic party,triumphing in its turn, inflicted similar sufferings on its enemies. Bydegrees, moreover, there sprang up two renowned states to representthese opposite principles, and the contests carried on by them assumedconsequently many characteristics of civil war,—its obstinacy, itsbitterness, its revenge.
Footnote 155:
See the savage anecdote of Stratocles in Plutarch. Demet. § 12.
In these struggles seas of blood were shed, and crimes of the darkestdye perpetrated. Cities, once illustrious and opulent, were razed to theground; whole populations put to the sword or reduced to servitude;fertile plains rendered barren; men most renowned for capacity andvirtue made a prey to treachery or the basest envy; the morals of greatstates corrupted, their glory eclipsed, their power undermined, and away paved for the inroads of barbarian conquerors who ultimately put aperiod to the grandeur of the Hellenes.
Examples without number might be collected of these horrors. It will besufficient to advert briefly to a few, more to remind than to inform thereader. In the troubles of Corcyra[156] the nobles and the commonsalternately triumphing over each other, carried on with the utmostruthlessness the work of extermination with abundant baseness andperfidy, some portion of which attached to the Athenian generals: thewrongs and sufferings inflicted by the Spartans on the brave butunfortunate inhabitants of Messenia, with the annual butchery of theHelots, the treacherous withdrawal of suppliants from sanctuary, andtheir subsequent slaughter,[157] the extermination of the people ofHysia,[158] the precipitating of neutral merchants into pits,[159] thebetrayal of the cities of Chalcidice and the islands, the massacre incold blood of the Platæans, of four thousand Athenians in theHellespont,[160] the reduction of innumerable cities to servitude: bythe Athenians, the extermination of the people of Melos,[161] theslaughter of a thousand Mitylenians, the cruelties at Skione, Ægina, andCythera;[162] but beyond these, and beyond all, the fearful excesses ofcivil strife at Miletos where the common people called Gergithes havingrisen in rebellion against the nobles and defeated them in battle, tooktheir children and cast them into the cattle stalls where they werecrushed and trampled to death by the infuriated oxen; but the noblesrenewing the contest and obtaining ultimately the victory, seized upontheir enemies,—men, women, children, and covered them with pitch, towhich setting fire they burnt them alive.[163]
Footnote 156:
Thucyd. iii. 70. sqq.
Footnote 157:
Ælian. Var. Hist. vi. 7. Cf. Eurip. Andr. 445. seq.
Footnote 158:
Thucyd. v. 83.
Footnote 159:
Thucyd. ii. 67.
Footnote 160:
Pausan. ix. 32. 9.
Footnote 161:
Thucyd. v. 126; iii. 50.
Footnote 162:
Thucyd. v. 32; iv. 57.
Footnote 163:
Heracl. Pont. ap. Athen. xii. 26.
From these glimpses of guilt and suffering, we may learn to whatextremes the Greek was sometimes hurried by passion and the thirst ofpower. But propensities so wolfish were not predominant in hisnature.[164] On the contrary, in private life, even the Spartans and theDorians generally put off their cruel and severe habits, and relaxed onall proper occasions into joviality and mirth. In their socialintercourse, in fact, few nations have been more cheerful or addicted tojokes and pleasantry than the Greeks, and above all the Athenians, whosehours of leisure were one continued round of gossip, sport, andlaughter.[165] Never in any city were news-mongers, or evennews-forgers, so numerous. In the mouth of young and old no question wasso frequent as, “What is the news?” These were the sounds thatcirculated from rank to rank in the assembly of the people before theorators began their harangues, that were bandied to and fro in theAgora, that filled by their incessant repetition the shops of barbersand perfumers.[166] Akin to this itching ear was the passion for showand magnificence, every man, from highest to lowest, affecting as far aspossible spacious dwellings, superb furniture and costly apparel. Eventhe bravest of the brave, the heroes of Marathon, were _petit*-maîtres_at their toilette, and went forth to the field in purple cloaks, theirhair curled, adorned with golden ornaments, and perfumed with essences.The study of philosophy itself failed in most cases to subdue thisostentatious spirit. Plato loved rich carpets and splendid raiment. EvenAristotle was an exquisite, and Æschines an acknowledged coxcomb.
Footnote 164:
Cf. Wink. Hist. de l’Art, i. 320. Thiersch, Etat. Act. de la Grèce, i. p. 290. sqq; and for their disinterestedness, Pashley, Trav. in Crete, i. 221.
Footnote 165:
Loud laughter was nevertheless considered vulgar among the Greeks.—Plat. Repub. t. vi. 112. The Athenians were addicted to the language of shrugging and nodding, κ.τ.λ. To nod upwards was to deny, downwards to confess. Sch. Aristoph. Ach. 112.
Footnote 166:
Aristotle says that the orators of Athens, who governed the people, passed sometimes the whole of the day seeing mountebanks or jugglers, or talking with those who had travelled as far as the Phasis or Borysthenes; and that they never read anything save the Supper of Philoxenos and that not all.—Athen. i. 10. It was in the opinion of these persons perhaps, that “a great book was a great evil.”—Id. iii. 1.
From several of these weaknesses the Spartans were free. They caredlittle for news, still less for dress, and less still for cleanliness;so that their beautiful long hair and waving beards swarmed with thoseautochthonal beasts, for the expulsion of which there was no law inSparta. Though neither a knowing nor cleanly race, however, their witwas bright and piercing. No people uttered pithier or finer sayings, andtheir taste both in music and poetry was cultivated and refined.Probably, therefore, the dining halls and gymnasia and public walks ofSparta were enlivened by as much mirth as those of any other Greciancity, where usually cheerfulness was so prevalent, that “to be as merryas a Greek,” has become a proverb in all countries.
On the third period of the Greek character it is unnecessary to speak atany length. Most of their good qualities having departed with theirfreedom they degenerated into a dissembling, hypocritical, fawning anddouble-dealing race, with little or no respect for truth, withoutpatriotism, and without genuine valour. The literature, painting, andsculpture, to which in their period of degradation they gave birth, boreevident marks of their degeneracy, and tended by the corruption theydiffused to avenge them on their conquerors the Romans; whose minds andmorals they vitiated, and whose career of freedom and glory they cutshort. Through their vices, however, the fame of their more noble andvirtuous ancestors has greatly suffered, for the Romans contemplatingthe Greeks they saw before them, and implanting their opinion throughoutthe whole civilised world, their false and unjust views have beenbequeathed to posterity; for it is still in a great measure through theRomans that people study the Greeks.
CHAPTER III. GEOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE.
To render still clearer the point we have been insisting on in theforegoing chapter, it may be useful to take a rapid survey of thegeography of the country, and enter somewhat more at length into itspeculiar configuration and productions.[167] Considered as a whole, themost remarkable feature in the aspect of Greece consists in the greatvariety of forms which its surface assumes in the territories of thenumerous little states into which the country was anciently divided. Ofthese no two resemble each other, whether in physical structure, climateor productions; so that it may be said that in general the atmosphere ofGreece is mild,[168] but not in every part, for within its narrowboundaries are found nearly all grades of temperature. The inhabitantsof Elis and the valley of the Eurotas are exposed to a degree of heatlittle inferior to that of Egypt, while the settlers about Olympos,Pindos and Dodona, with the rough goat-herds of Parnassos, Doris and theArcadian mountains experience the rigours of an almost Scandinavianwinter. In this extraordinary country the palm tree and the myrtleflourish within sight of the pine, the larch, and the silver fir of thenorth. In several of the islands and on parts of the continent certaintropical birds, as the peaco*ck and the golden pheasant, have long beennaturalised, while in other districts snipes and woodco*cks[169] appearearly; storms of sleet and hail are frequent, and the summits ofmountains are capped with eternal snow.[170] A no very elevated range ofhills separates the marsh miasmata and wit-withering fogs ofBœotia,[171] the home of gluttony and stupidity, from the blandtransparent cheerful atmosphere and sweet wholesome soil of Attica,where, as a dwelling-place for man, earth has reached her highestculminating point of excellence, and where, accordingly, her noblestfruits, wisdom and beauty, have ripened most kindly.
Footnote 167:
Cf. Hermann, Pol. Ant. § 6. Müll. Dor. ii. 425.
Footnote 168:
Varro gave the preference to the soil and climate of Italy, where everything good was produced in perfection. He thought no barley to be compared with the Campanian, no wheat with the Apulian, no rye with the Falernian, no oil with the Venafran. The whole country was so thickly planted with trees that it seemed to be an orchard. Not even Phrygia itself abounded more in vineyards; nor was Argos so fertile as parts of Italy, though it was said to produce from ten to fifteen pipes the juger. De Re Rustica, i. 2. p. 46. b.
Footnote 169:
“Woodco*cks and snipes, I am informed, visited the neighbourhood of Attica during the winter in considerable quantities. I heard the curlew and the red shank cry along the marsh to the right of the Piræus.” Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 76.
Footnote 170:
Cramer, Desc. of Greece, i. 8.
Footnote 171:
Βοιωτία ὗς. Pind. Olymp. vi. 151. Cram. ii. 200.—Thick and foggy atmosphere. Hipp. de Aër. § 55. Plat. De Legg. v. t. vii. p. 410. seq—Cicero observes:—“Etenim licet videre acutiora ingenia et ad intelligendum acutiora eorum, qui terras incolant eas, in quibus aër sit purus ac tenuis, quàm illorum, qui utantur crasso cœlo atque concreto.” De Nat. Deor. ii. 16. “The purple and the grey heron frequent the marshes of Bœotia.” Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 76.
To proceed, however, with an outline of the country: along the shores,more especially towards the west, rugged cliffs of great elevationimpend over the deep, and in stormy weather present an appearance highlydesolate and forbidding. But descending the Ionian sea, and doublingCape Crio, the south westernmost promontory of Crete, the approachtowards the tropics is felt both in the air and in the landscape. Thenights are beyond description lovely, the stars appear with increasedsize and brilliancy,[172] and morning spreads over both land and wave abeauty but faintly reflected even in poetry. Every rock and headland,clothed with the double light of mythology and the sun, emerges from theobscurities of the dawn glittering with dew and fresh as at thecreation. The slopes of the mountains, feathered with hanging woods,lead the eye upwards to those aspiring peaks, the cradle of many aHellenic legend, where snows pale and shining as those of MontBlanc,[173] descending on all sides in wavy gradations to meet theforests, rest for ever, and at the opening and the close of day exhibitthat crimson blush which we observe among the higher Alps. All thelowlands at their base are meantime covered, perhaps, with heavy mists,while lighter and more fleecy vapours hang here and there upon themountain tops, augmenting their grandeur by allowing the imaginationlike a Titan to pile them up as high as it pleases towards heaven. Thecoasts of eastern Hellas, including those of Eubœa, along the whole lineof Thessaly to the confines of Macedonia, are bold and rocky, frowninglike the ramparts of freedom upon the slaves of the Asiatic plains.
Footnote 172:
I never saw the Pleiades appear so large as on the coast of Messenia. See Coray, Disc. Prel. ad Hipp. de Aër. et Loc. § 115.
Footnote 173:
Even the Cheviot hills are sometimes (as in 1838) covered all the summer with patches of snow, on which occasions the peasants are said to pay no rent. _Tyne Mercury_, July 1, 1838.
Traversed in almost every direction by mountain chains infinitelyramified and towering in many places to a vast height, Greece has,likewise, its elevated table-lands, lakes, bogs, morasses, withextensive open downs and heaths. Lying between the thirty-sixth andforty-first degrees of north latitude, and excepting on the Illyrian andMacedonian frontier everywhere surrounded by the sea, it may in manyrespects be said to enjoy the most advantageous position on the globe.From the barbarian countries of Macedonia and Illyria it is divided by aseries of contiguous mountain ridges, which commencing with Olympos,(covered all the year round with snow, amid which the poet Orpheus[174]was interred,) and including the Cambunian range, with the lofty peak ofLacmos, stretches westward across the continent, and terminates in thestormy Acroceraunian promontory. The most northern provinces of Hellas,immediately within this boundary and west of the Pindos range, wereChaonia and Molossia, and towards the east Thessaly—a circular valley ofexceeding fertility, encompassed by chains of lofty mountains. Thisprovince contains the largest and richest plains in Greece; and many ofthe names most hallowed by its religious traditions and most renowned inpoetry, belong to Thessaly. Here, in fact, was the supposed cradle ofthe Hellenes. From hence sailed the Argo and incomparably the greatestof all the heroes who fought at Troy
“—--mixed with auxiliar gods.”
Footnote 174:
Paus. ix. 30. 9. Anthol. Græc. vii. 9. Menag. ad Diog. Laert. Proœm. § 5. Here, too, one of the three Corybantes, when he had been slain by his brethren, found a grave. Clem. Alex. Protrept. c. xi. t. i. p. 16. From the blood of this man sprang the herb parsley.
The geography of Thessaly is remarkable. According to a traditionalready mentioned it was once a mountain-girt lake, the waters of whichaugmented by unusual rains burst their stupendous barriers and torethemselves a way through opposing rocks to the sea. Among the tribes ofnorthern Hindùstân a similar tradition prevails respecting the formationof the Vale of Kashmèr; and whether in these cases the voice of fame haspreserved or not an historical truth, such events may be regarded as notimprobable in countries abounding with mountain lakes whose beds lieconsiderably above the level of the sea. The lofty ridge which skirtsthe shores of the Ægæan, and is said to have been rent in remoteantiquity by the waters of the lake, presents a highly varied aspect tothe approaching mariner. First on sailing northward Pelion comes insight: a broad ridge rising from the waves like a huge uncrenalatedwall, and covered in Homeric times with fiercely waving woods. To thissucceeds Ossa, with its steep conical peak, clothed with durable snowsand divided by a narrow dusky gap from Olympos. This gap is Tempe,[175]whose savage beauties poets and sophists have vied with each other indescribing, though the reality is still finer than their pictures. Onentering the defiles of the mountains a narrow glen hemmed in byprecipitous rocks, bare in some places, in others verdant with hangingoaks, receives the waters of the Peneios, which, like the Rhone at St.Maurice and the Nile at Silsilis, in some places fill up the wholebreadth of the pass, leaving scarcely room for a straitened road carriedover rocky ledges. Farther on they diffuse themselves over a broadpebbly bed, and narrow prospects are opened up through woody vistas intosoft pastural recesses, carpeted with emerald turf, and perfumed withflowers and shrubs of the richest fragrance. Anon the vale contractsagain, gloomy cliffs frown over the stream and sadden its surface withtheir shadows, until at length the whole chain is traversed and thePeneios precipitates its laughing waters into the Ægæan.[176] Crossingthe great range of Pindos we enter Epeiros,[177] a country ancientlydivided into many provinces, and partly inhabited by semi-barbaroustribes, where on the borders of a lake singularly beautiful andpicturesque stood the fane and oracle of Dodonæan Zeus. Homer,accustomed to the mild skies of Ionia, speaks of its climate as rude andsevere. But Byron, born among the hungry rocks of Caledonia, andhabituated to the savage features of the north, was smitten with itswild charms, and thus describes one of the scenes in the neighbourhoodnear the sources of the Acheron.
Monastic Zitza, from thy shady brow, Thou small but favoured spot of holy ground, Where’er we gaze,—around, above, below, What rainbow tints, what magic charms are found! Rock, river, forest, mountain,—all abound; And bluest skies that harmonize the whole. Beneath, the distant torrent’s rushing sound Tells where the volumed cataract doth roll Between those hanging rocks which shock yet please the soul.
Footnote 175:
Æl. Var. Hist. iii. 1. Holland 291–95. Clarke iv. 290–97. Dodwell, 109. sqq. Gell. Itiner. of Greece, 280.
Footnote 176:
Aristotle accounts for what every traveller will have remarked, the extreme blueness of this sea, which he contrasts with the whitish waves of the Pontos Euxeinos. In the latter case, he observes, the air, thick and whitish, is reflected from the surface of the turbid waters; while, in the Ægæan, the sea, transparent to a great depth, reflects the bright rich colour of the sky.—Prob. xxiii. 6. He adds that the sea is more transparent during the prevalence of the north wind.
Footnote 177:
Though this country be not generally included by geographers within the limits of Hellas, I have considered it as a part of Greece, because Homer evidently so thought it. He reckons the Perrhæbi and Ænianes, and the dwellers about the cold Dodona, among the followers of Agamemnon, that is classes them among the Greeks.—Il. β. 749–755. The ancient name of the country is said to have been Æsa.—Etym. Mag. 39. 19. Cf. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Δωδών. p. 319. d. sqq.
Clusters of islands clothed with poetical verdure stretch along thecoast thickly indented by diminutive bays and embouchures of rivers. Ona point of the Acarnanian shore[178] in the mouth of the Ambracian gulf,the Commonwealth of Rome which had foundered so many rival statessuffered final shipwreck, and the shores of avenged Hellas were strewedwith the wrecks of Roman freedom. Ætolia, Doris, Locris, Phocis, inwhich was the mystic navel of Gaia,[179] and the deep valley of Bœotia,divided from each other by mountains or by considerable rivers, minutelyintersected by streams, and broken up into a perpetual succession ofhill and dale, conduct us southward to the Corinthian Gulf and theborders of Attica.
Footnote 178:
Where stood a celebrated Temple of Apollo.—Thucyd. i. 29.
Footnote 179:
The “rocky Pytho” afterwards Delphi. Iliad, β. 519.
Reserving this illustrious division of Hellas, and Megaris whichoriginally formed a part of it, for the close of our rapid outline, weenter the Peloponnesos,—a country remarkable both for its physicalconfiguration, and for the races which anciently inhabited it. Connectedwith the continent by the narrow isthmus of Corinth it immediatelyexpands westward and southward into a peninsula of large dimensions, inform resembling a ragged plantain leaf or outstretched palm.[180] Likethe northern division of Hellas the Peloponnesos is rough with mountainchains, and belted round with cliffs. Towards the centre it swells intoa lofty plateau, known to antiquity under the name of Arcadia. Foreignpoets, misapprehending the nature of the country, have described thisprovince as a succession of soft pastoral scenes.[181] But its realcharacter is very different, consisting chiefly of an extensivetable-land, supported by vast mountain buttresses, which in some placestower into peaks of extraordinary elevation. It is broken up intoinnumerable valleys and deep glens, overhung with wild precipitousrocks, clothed with gloomy forests, and buried during a great part ofthe year in clouds and snow. The inhabitants were rough and unpromisingas the soil, distinguished like the modern Swiss for no quality butbravery, which, like them too, they sold with a mercenary recklessnessto the best bidder.[182] Achaia is a slip of sea-coast sloping towardsthe north. Elis, a succession of beautiful plains with few eminencesintervening, well watered and renowned for their fine breed of mares.This, the Holy land of the Hellenes, sacred every rood to Zeus, was tothe Greeks a place of pilgrimage, as Mecca to the Arabs and Palestine tothe Christians of the West. In the Homeric age it was confined withinnarrow limits, its sea-coast only extending from Buprasion to thepromontory of Hyrminè, scarcely indeed, so far, as Myrsinos is said tobe its last city towards the north, and Buprasion is mentioned rather asa separate state. It was divided from Achaia by Mount Scollis, whichHomer calls “the rock Olenia,” and Aleision is the boundary to thesouth; consequently, neither Mount Pholöe nor Olympia, nor the Alpheioswas then included in Elis, still less Triphylia.
Footnote 180:
Strb. viii. 2. 140. Dion. Perieg. ap. Palm. Gr. Ant. 16.
Footnote 181:
Cf. Palm. Gr. Ant. 61. On the climate of Arcadia see Aristot. Problem. xxvii. 60. He observes that the winds, blowing in from the sea, were not colder there than in other parts of Greece; but that during calms the exhalations from the stagnant waters were particularly chill. See also Hippoc. de Aër. et Loc. § 120.
Footnote 182:
Cf. Steph. Byzant. _v._ Ἀρκας. p. 166. b. seq.
Argolis, on the opposite side of the peninsula, is traversed by a broadridge of hills, which, branching off from Mount Cyllene and Parthenionin Arcadia, abounds in deep ravines and spacious natural caverns. Itcontains, however, several plains of much fertility; but, though marshyand subject to malaria, the neighbourhood of the capital is deficient ingood water. The fame of Argos[183] rests almost wholly on a fabulousbasis: it was great in the infancy of Greece; it took the lead in theTrojan war; but, with the irruption of the half-barbarous Dorians intothe Peloponnesos, the glory of the old heroic race
“that fought at Thebes and Ilion,”
waned visibly, and Argos and its twin city, Mycenæ, sank intocomparative insignificance.
Footnote 183:
Il. β. 559. Mases, an Argive city, is mentioned by Homer in conjunction with Ægina, which island also belonged at that time to Argos. This place, in later ages, was the harbour of the Hermioneans.—Pausan. ii. 36, 83. Cf. Müll. Æginet. p. 85.
Laconia consists of a hollow valley, enclosed between two mountainchains, proceeding from the great Arcadian barrier, Parnon and Kronios,and stretching southward to the sea. Down the centre of this vale flowsthe Eurotas, whose sources lie above Belemina, among the steep recessesof Taygetos.[184] Though enlarged by several tributary brooks, itpreserves, until some way below Sparta, the character of a mountaintorrent; but after precipitating itself in a romantic sparkling cascade,appears for some time to be lost in a morass. Escaping, however, fromthe swamp, it flows during the remainder of its course over a firmgravelly bed to the Laconian gulf. Immediately above Sparta the valleynarrows exceedingly; but, at this point, the hills receding suddenly onboth sides, sweep round a small circular plain, and, a short distancebelow the city, again approach, and press upon the bed of theEurotas.[185] The site of Sparta, therefore, resembles on a small scalethat of the Egyptian Thebes, which is similarly hemmed round by theArabian and Libyan mountains. It follows, too, that the condition of theatmosphere must to a certain extent be alike in both places; for theridges of Taygetos and Thornax rising to a great height, not onlyintercept the cooler breezes from the west and north, but, bendingamphitheatrically round the plain, concentrate the sun’s rays, which,being bare and rocky, they reflect with great force. In summer,therefore, the heat is intense: in winter, on the other hand, theirgreat elevation suffices morning and evening to exclude the slantingbeams, thus causing a degree of cold little inferior, perhaps, to whatis felt in the highlands of Arcadia.
Footnote 184:
This mountain (which in one place Vibius Sequester converts into a river, p. 19, Cf. Virg. Georg. ii. 487,) was sacred to Bacchos. Serv. ad. Virg. ut sup.—Strabo describes it at length, and Pausanias observes that it was adapted to the chase. On its summit horses were sacrificed to the sun.—Paus. iii. 20. 2. Cf. Oberlin, ad Vib. Sequest. p. 375.
Footnote 185:
Coronelli, Mém. Hist. et Géog. du Roy. de la Morée, &c. p. 90. sqq. Poucqueville, Travels in the Morea, p. 87. Chateaubriand, Itinéraire, t. i. pp. 102–118. Cf. Thiersch, Etat Actuel de la Grèce, i. 287, who gives the following romantic glimpse of the Laconian valley:—“Oh! que ce pays était beau, lorsqu’au mois de Mai 1832, nous traversâmes ses ravissantes vallées au milieu des montagnes de la Laconie, et ses villages situés au bord de ruisseaux limpides et entourés d’arbres fruitiers tout en fleurs! Quelle était belle cette terre, lorsque, le soir, revenant des ruines de Sparte à Mistra, nous étions comme baignés de ces parfums qu’exhalent les orangers qui remplissent la plaine, et rafraichis par la brise délicieuse descendue des montagnes majestueuses du Taygète, dont les cimes, encore couvertes de neige, semblaient toucher le ciel parsemé d’étoiles! Nôtre sommeil fut interrompu la nuit par le chant mélodieux d’une troupe de rossignols.”
But though lofty and bleak, the uplands of Laconia are not incapable ofcultivation, and in many places were anciently covered with forests ofplane trees. Their eastern slopes were likewise clothed with vines,irrigated, as in Switzerland and Burgundy, by small rills, conductedthrough artificial channels from springs high up in the mountains.[186]The summits of Taygetos are waste and wild; rent and shattered byfrequent earthquakes, lashed by rain-storms, and here and there boredand undermined by gnawing streams, working their way to the valley, itpresents the aspect of a fragment of nature in its decrepitude. South,however, of Mount Evoras the country opens into a plain of considerablefertility, extending eastward towards Mount Zarax and the sea. On theMessenian frontier, also, are many valleys highly productive. Thisportion of Lacedæmon obtained in the time of Augustus the name, givenperhaps in mockery, of the land of the Eleuthero Lacones, or “FreeLaconians.”[187]
Footnote 186:
Aleman, ap. Athen. i. 57.
Footnote 187:
Strab. viii. 6. p. 190. Paus. iii. 21. 6.
Protected on the land side by mountains difficult to be traversed, andpresenting towards the sea an inhospitable harbourless coast, Laconiaseems marked out by nature to be the abode of an unsocial people. Likethat of many Swiss cantons, its climate is generally harsh and rude,vexed by cold winds alternating with burning heats, and appears tocommunicate analogous qualities to the minds of its inhabitants, whohave been in all ages remarkable for valour untempered by humanity. Insuch a country the nobler arts can never be completely naturalised. Thevirus imbibed from nature will find its way into the character, and defythe influence of culture and of government.
Messenia presents, in every respect, a contrast to Laconia. Along thesea-coast, indeed, particularly from Pylos to Cape Aeritas, itsbarrenness is complete; neither woods nor thickets, nor any vestige ofverdure being visible upon the red cinder-like precipices beetling overthe sea, or sloping off into grey mountains above. But having passedthis Alpine barrier, we find the land sinking down into rich plains,which on the banks of the broad Pamisos were anciently, for theirluxuriant fertility,[188] denominated “the Happy.” North, and about thesources of the Balyra, the Amphitos, and the Neda the scenery growshighly romantic and picturesque, the eye commanding from almost everyelevated point innumerable narrow meandering glens, each with itsbubbling streamlet circling round green eminences, clothed to theirsummits with hanging woods. Messenia, which, as soon inhabited, musthave been wealthy, appears to have been a favourite resort of poets inremote antiquity. Here the Thracian Thamyris, in a contest, as wasfabled, with the Muses, lost his sight, together with the gift of song;and in a small rocky island on its coast,—the haunt, when I saw it, ofsea-mews and cormorants,—Sparta received from an Athenian general ofmean abilities one of the most galling defeats recorded in her annals.
Footnote 188:
Cf. Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 60.
Returning out of the Peloponnesos by way of the Isthmos, and quitting atthe Laconian rocks the territories of Corinth, we enter theMegaris,[189] originally, as I have before observed, a part of theAthenian territories. Attica is a triangular promontory, of smallextent, projecting into the Myrtöan sea, between Argolis and Eubœa. Amountain chain, of no great elevation, forms, under several names, theboundary between this country and Bœotia; and Mount Kerata, in latertimes, divided it from Megaris. On every other side Attica is washed bythe sea, which, together with nearly all the circumjacent islands, was,in antiquity, regarded as a part of its empire.[190] This minutedivision of Greece, fertile in nothing but great men, is seldom viewedwith any eye to the picturesque. Satisfied that Athens stood there, wecommonly ask no more. Genius has breathed over it a perfume sweeter thanthe thyme of its own hills,—has painted it with a beauty surpassing thatof earth,—rendered its atmosphere redolent for ever of human greatnessand human glory,—and cast so dazzling an illusion over its very dust andruins, that they appear more beautiful than the richest scenes and mostperfect structures of other lands.
Footnote 189:
Strab. ix. i. p. 232.
Footnote 190:
Strab. ix. 1. Philoch. Siebel. p. 28.
Independently, however, of its historical importance, Attica is investedwith numerous charms. Consisting of an endless succession of hill anddale,[191] with many small plains interspersed; and swelling towards itsnorthern frontier into considerable mountains, it presents a miniatureof the whole Hellenic land.[192] In antiquity its uplands and ravinesand secluded hollows were clothed with wood,—oaks, white poplars, wildolive-trees, or melancholy pines. The arbutus, the agnus castus, wildpear, heath, lentisk, and other flowering shrubs decked its hill-sidesand glens; on the brow of every eminence wild thyme, sweet marjoram,with many different kinds of odoriferous plants exhaled their fragrancebeneath the foot;[193] while rills of the clearest and sweetest water inthe world, leaped down the rocks, or conducted their sparkling currentsthrough its romantic and richly cultivated valleys. Southward, among themountains of scoriæ of the mining district, springs of silver[194] maybe said to have usurped the place of fountains. The face of the countryis nearly everywhere arid and barren,—the plains are parched,—thegullies encumbered with loose shingle,—the eminences unpicturesque anddreary; yet wherever vegetation takes place, the virtue of the Atticsoil displays itself in the production of fragrant flowers, whence thebee extracts the most delicious honey in the world, superior in qualityto that of Hybla or Hymettos.
Footnote 191:
Mardonius, in fact, found Attica too hilly for the operations of cavalry:—οὔτε ἱππασίμη ἡ χώρη ἦν ἡ Ἀττική.—Herod. ix. 13.
Footnote 192:
See, in Plato’s Critias, t. vii. p. 153. the eulogium of its beauty and fertility. At present “the plain of Attica, if we except the olive-tree, is extremely destitute of wood, and we observed, on our return, the peasants driving home their asses laden with Passerina hirsuta for fuel.”—Sibthorp in Mitchell, Knights, p. 155. But the description by no means applies to the whole country. At the foot of Cithæron there are still forests four hours in length.—Sibth. in Walp. Mem. i. 64.
Footnote 193:
This is accounted for by the dryness and purity of the atmosphere; for, as Pliny remarks, “hortensiorum odoratissima quæ sicca; ut ruta, mentha, apium, et quæ in siccis nascantur.”—Hist. Nat. xxi. 18. p. 46.
Footnote 194:
Ἀργύρου πηγή τις αὐτοῖς ἐστι, βησαυρὸς χθονός.—Æschyl. Pers. 238. In all countries the waters of mining cantons are bad.—Hippocr. de Aër. et Loc. § 35.
Comparative barrenness may, however, upon the whole, be considered ascharacteristic of Attica. Indeed, Plato,[195] in a very curious passage,likens to a body emaciated by sickness the hungry district round thecapital, where the soil has collapsed about the rocks. But from thisinnumerable advantages have arisen. The earth being light and porouspermits whatever rain falls immediately to sink and disappear, as inProvence,[196] which, more than any other part of Europe, resemblesAttica. Hence, except in some few inconsiderable spots,[197] no bogs, nomarshes exist to poison the air with cold effluvia: a ridge of mountainsprotects it against the northern blasts: mild breezes from the oceanprevail in almost all seasons: snow seldom lies above a few hours on theground. The atmosphere, accordingly, kept constantly free from terreneexhalations, is buoyant and sparkling as on the Libyan desert, when, atnoon, every elevated rock appears to be encircled by a luminoushalo.[198] In air so pure the act of breathing is a luxury whichproduces a smile of satisfaction on the countenance; the mind performsits operations with ease and rapidity; and life, everywhere sweet,appears to have a finer relish than in countries exposed to watery andunwholesome fogs. It was perfectly philosophical, therefore, inPlato,[199] to regard Attica as a place designed by nature to bring thehuman intellect to the greatest ripeness and perfection, a qualityextended by Aristotle to Greece at large. The same atmosphericproperties were favourable to health and long life, warding off manydisorders common in other parts of the country.
Footnote 195:
Critias, t. vii. p. 154. Words. Athens and Attica, 62.
Footnote 196:
Coray, Notes sur Hippoc. De Aër. et Loc. § 126. t. ii. p. 403.
Footnote 197:
Vide Sch. Aristoph. Lys. 1032.
Footnote 198:
Aristid. i. 187. Jebb. Aristophanes appears to speak of the brilliance of its atmosphere in the following verse (Ran. 155):
ὅψει τι φῶς κάλλιστον, ὥσπερ ἐνθάδε.
though Spanheim supposes him to mean the light of the world generally.—Not. in loc.
Footnote 199:
Plat. Tim. t. vii. pp. 12. 15. sqq. Bekk. Aristot. Pol. vii. 6. Cf. Coray, Disc. Prelim. ad Hippoc. De Aër. et Loc. p. cxxix. sqq.
A learned and ingenious but fanciful writer[200] considers Peloponnesosto have been the heart of Greece. Following up this idea, we mustunquestionably pronounce Athens to have been the head, the seat ofthought, the place where its arts and its wisdom ripened. But ere wetouch upon the capital, which cannot be slided over with a cursoryremark, it will be necessary to enter into some little detail respectingthe demi or country towns of Attica,[201] of which in the flourishingtimes of the republic there existed upwards of one hundred andseventy-four. Of these small municipal communities, of which too littleis known, several were places of considerable importance, possessingtheir temples, their Agoræ, their theatres, filled with walks andsurrounded by impregnable fortifications. The Athenians regarded Athens,indeed, as the Hebrews did Jerusalem, in the light of their great andholy city, the sanctuary of their religion and of their freedom. Butthis did not prevent their preferring the calm simplicity of a countrylife to the noisier pleasures of the town. Many distinguished families,accordingly, had houses in these demi, or villas in their vicinity.Here, also, several of the greatest men of Athens were born: Thucydideswas a native of Halimos,[202] Sophocles of Colonos, Epicurus ofGargettos, Plato of Ægina, Xenophon of Erchia, Tyrtæos, Harmodios, andAristogeiton of Aphidnæ, Antiphon of Rhamnos, and Æschylus of Eleusis.
Footnote 200:
Müll. Dor. i. 76.
Footnote 201:
See Col. Leake, Trans. Roy. Soc. Lit. i. 114–283.
Footnote 202:
Poppo, Prolegg. in Thucyd. i. 22.
In other points of view, also, the towns and villages of Atticapossessed great interest. They long continued to be the seats of theprimitive worship of the country, where the tutelar deities ofparticular districts, of earth-born race, were adored with thataffectionate faith and that fervency of devotion which peculiarly belongto small religious communities. The gods they worshipped appeared almostto be their fellow citizens, and to exist only for their protection. Infact, they were the patron saints of the villages. Fabulous legends andhistorical traditions combined with religion to shed celebrity over theAttic demi. There was hardly in the whole land a single inhabited spotwhich did not figure in their poetry or in their annals as the scene ofsome memorable exploit. Aphidnæ[203] was renowned, for example, as theplace whence the Dioscuri bore away their sister Helen, after her rapeby Theseus, in revenge for which the youthful heroes devastated thewhole district. “Grey Marathon,”[204] as Byron aptly terms it, wasembalmed for ever in Persian blood, and rendered holy by the vastbarrows raised there by the state over the ashes of its fallen warriors.Rhamnos on the Attic Dardanelles became famous for its statue ofNemesis, originally of Aphrodite, the work of Diodotos or Agoracritos ofParos, not unworthy to be compared for size and beauty with theproductions of Pheidias. The irruption of the Peloponnesians conferred amelancholy celebrity on Deceleia,[205] and Phylæ obtained a place inhistory as the stronghold where Thrasybulos gathered together the smallbut gallant band which avenged the cause of freedom upon the thirty. OfEleusis,[206] it is enough to say that there the ceremonies ofinitiation into the mysteries were performed.
Footnote 203:
Paus. i. 17. 5.
Footnote 204:
Paus. i. 32. 3. sqq. “We observed the long-legged plover near Marathon; the grey plover and the sand plover on the eastern coast of Attica.” Sibth. Walp. Mem. i. 76. Chandler, ii. 83.
Footnote 205:
Where Sophocles and his ancestors were buried. Chandler, ii. 95.
Footnote 206:
Clem. Alex. Protrept. § 2. t. i. p. 16. seq. where he relates the story of Demeter and Baubo.
The capital of Megara, like Athens, stood a short distance from the sea;but was joined by long walls to its harbour Nisæa, protected from theweather by the Minoan promontory. In sailing thence to the Peiræeus wepass several islands, none of which, however, are of any magnitude, saveSalamis, in remote antiquity a separate state governed by its own laws.The old capital, already deserted in the time of Strabo, stood on thesouthern coast over against Ægina; but the principal town of later timeswas situated on a bay at the root of a tongue of land projecting towardthat part of Attica[207] where Xerxes sat to behold his imperial armadaannihilated by the republicans of Hellas. Salamis was known of old undervarious names,—Skiras, Cychræa and Pituoussa, from the Pitus, or pinetree, by which its rocks and glens were in many places shaded.Immediately before the engagement in which his navy was destroyed, thePersian monarch sought to unite Salamis to the continent by a dam twostadia in length; his project, had it succeeded, would have ruined theferrymen of Amphialè, a class of individuals whose operations Solonjudged of sufficient importance to be regulated by a particular articlein his code. Of the smaller islets that form the outworks of the Atticcoast, little need be said, since they were nearly all barren, andinhabited only by a few legendary traditions. The tomb of Circe wasshown on the larger of the Pharmacoussæ; and the island of Helena, eastof the Samian promontory obtained the reputation of having been the spotwhere the faithless queen of Menelaus consummated her guilt.[208]
Footnote 207:
On one of the projecting roots of Mount Ægaleus, which anciently, according to Statius, was well-wooded, and clothed like Hymettos with thyme.—Theb. xii. 631. Suid. _v._ Μᾶσσον. This mountain produced likewise an abundance of figs (Theoc. Eidyll. i. 147), which were considered the best in Attica.—Athen. xiv. 66. Meurs. Rel. Att. c. i. p. 4. seq. Cf. Leake, Topog. 71.
Footnote 208:
Il. γ. 445. where we find its ancient name to have been Kranäe.—Cf. Eurip. Helen. 1672. Strab. ix. 1. p. 245.—Pausanias (i. 35. 1) has preserved another tradition representing Helen as landing here on her return from Troy.—Chandler, ii. 7.
Ægina belonged to Attica only by conquest; but as when subdued itssubjection was complete and lasting, it must not be altogether omittedin this glance over the home territories of the Great Demos. Like Atticaitself, the island lying in the Saronic Gulf is of a triangular shape.By proximity it belongs to the Peloponnesos, being within thirty stadiaof the Methanæan Chersonesos, while to Salamis is a voyage of ninetystadia, and to the Peiræeus one hundred and twenty. But the sea itselfhaving been considered a part of Attica, whose flag, like that ofEngland, streamed for ages triumphantly over its billows, the islandsalso which it surrounded fell one by one into the hands of the people,and this small Doric isle among the rest. A number of diminutive islets,or rather rocks, cluster round the shores of Ægina, some barren andtreeless, others indued with a certain degree of fertility and verdantwith pine woods.
The most remarkable objects in Ægina were placed at the angles of theisland. The city and harbour towards the west, on the east lookingtowards Attica the temple of Athena, and, near its southern extremity,“a magnificent conical mountain, which from its grandeur, its form, andits historical recollections, is the most remarkable among the naturalfeatures of Ægina.”[209] An eminence so lofty and in shape so beautifulwould naturally be an object of much interest in so small an island. Thelocal superstitions would necessarily cluster round it, as around Ida inCrete and Olympos in Thessaly. Accordingly on the summit of thismountain the fables of Ægina represent King Æacos praying, in the nameof the whole Hellenic nation, to Zeus for rain, as the prophet prayedfor the Israelites, and with equal success. Here, therefore, a recenttraveller has with great judgment fixed the site of the Panhellenion,near the spot where a chapel, dedicated to the prophet Elias, nowstands. In dimensions Ægina, according to Scylax, ranked twelfth amongthe isles of Hellas. Strabo attributes to it a circumference of onehundred and eighty stadia; but Sir William Gell, in his Argolis,[210]considers its perimeter, not including the fluctuations of the bays andcreeks, to be not less than two hundred and ten stadia, and its squarecontents three thousand one hundred and sixty-four stadia, or forty-onesquare miles.[211] The interior is rocky, rough, and perforated withcaverns, in which, according to fabulous legends, the Myrmidons resided,and Chabrias afterwards lay in ambush for the Spartan Gorgopos and hisÆginetan allies.[212] A light thin soil nourishes but sparing vegetationon the mountains, but several of the small valleys, filled with earthwashed down by rains from the uplands, are rich and fertile, watered bysprings and rivulets, and beautified with groves of imperishableverdure.[213]
Footnote 209:
Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 262.
Footnote 210:
Ib. 28. ap. Müll. Æginet. p. 8.
Footnote 211:
Cf. Clint. Fast. Hellen. ii. 335.
Footnote 212:
Xen. Hellen. v. 1. 11.
Footnote 213:
Chandler (ii. 12) speaks of the whole island as covered with trees.
Much has been written on the extent and population of Attica, respectingwhich most of the philosophers of the last generation entertained veryerroneous ideas. An examination of their statements might still,perhaps, be interesting; but it would lead me far beside the scope of mypresent work, and occupy space that can be better filled up. Accordingto the most careful calculation Attica contained seven hundred andtwenty square miles, or taking into account the island of Salamis sevenhundred and forty-eight. The whole of this extremely limited spaceswarmed, however, with population; for even so late[214] as 317 B. C.after all the calamities which the republic had undergone, Attica stillcontained five hundred and twenty-seven thousand six hundred and sixtypersons, or nearly seven hundred and seventy-three to the square mile, aproportion much higher than is found in the most thickly peopledcounties of England.
Footnote 214:
Clint. Fast. Hellen. ii. 386. sqq. Cf. Boeckh, Pub. Econ. of Athens, i. 44. seq. On the number of the citizens _vide_ Philoch. Siebel, p. 17. 28. Schol. Vesp. Aristoph. 709. Strab. ix. i. t. ii. p. 234. Hermann. Pol. Ant. § 18. Bochart, Geog. Sac. i. 286.
This, however, taking into account the form of government, theindustrious habits, and extreme frugality of the people, is entirelywithin the bounds of probability. But in what is related of thepopulation of Ægina, the calculations current among learned authors areso extravagant as to exceed all belief. Müller and Boeckh,[215] who onother occasions, and sometimes very unseasonably affect scepticism,unhesitatingly admit the account in Athenæus, which attributes fourhundred and seventy thousand slaves to the Æginetans.[216] To these theformer adds a free population of forty thousand, making the whole amountto upwards of half a million, or twelve thousand four hundred andfifty-seven to the square mile. Mr. Clinton,[217] clearly perceiving theabsurdity of this calculation, proposes to read seventy thousand, whichwill leave a population in the proportion of two thousand six hundredand eighty-two to the square mile. The passage in Athenæus is no doubt,as Bochart suspects,[218] corrupt, and this being the case nothing isleft but to determine from analogy the population of Ægina, which,supposing it equally dense with that of Attica would have amounted tosomething more than thirty thousand souls.
Footnote 215:
Æginet. 128. Econ. of Athens, i. 55, seq.
Footnote 216:
Deipnosoph. vi. 103. Cf. Schol. Pind. Olymp. viii. 30.
Footnote 217:
Fast. Hellen. ii. 423.
Footnote 218:
Geog. Sac. Pars Prior, l. iv. c. 20, p. 286.
CHAPTER IV. CAPITAL CITIES OF GREECE.—ATHENS.
From these more general considerations, into which it was perhapsnecessary to enter, let us now pass to the picture antiquity has left usof the principal capitals, confining ourselves chiefly to Athens andSparta, which may be regarded as the representatives of all the rest.The physiognomy of these, like the features of an individual, may insome respects be considered as a key to the character of theinhabitants; a remark which, with great truth, may be applied to allcapitals.
In the structure of the one, external and internal,[219] there waseverywhere visible an effort to embody the principle of beauty,improving the advantages and overcoming the difficulties of position. Inthe other little could be discovered indicative of imaginative power, ofthe thirst to create, of the yearning of the mind after the ideal, ofthe desire of genius to breathe a soul into stone, to live and obtain aperpetuity of existence in the works of its own hands, to gaze on itsown beauty reflected on all sides from its own creations as from aconcave mirror. At Athens everything public, everything which hadreference to the united efforts of the people wore an air of grandeur.The Acropolis inhabited only by the gods appeared worthy to be thedwelling place of immortal beings: all the poetry of architecture wasthere; it seemed to have owed its birth to a concentration of the bestreligious spirit of the ancient world, aiming at giving earth aresemblance to heaven; at peopling it with mute deities, speaking onlythrough their beauty and surrounding these representatives of theinvisible Olympos with everything most excellent, most valuable, mostcherished among men. At Sparta a spirit of calculating economy enteredinto the very worship of the gods. They seemed, in the manner theylodged and entertained them, to have always had an eye to their commontables and their black broth. Between the temples of Athens and Spartathere was, in fact, the same contrast that now exists between St.Peter’s at Rome and a Calvinistic conventicle. Accordingly, severalancient writers have vied with each other in heaping encomiums uponAthens, which they regarded as at once the most glorious and the mostbeautiful of cities. Athenæus denominates it the “Museum of Greece;”Pindar, “the stay of Greece;” Thucydides, in his epigram upon Euripides,“the Greece of Greece;” and the Pythian Apollo, “the home and place ofcouncil of all Greeks.”[220] By others it was termed “the Opulent;”though the principal part of its riches consisted in the wise and greatmen whom it produced, and whose achievements covered it with glory. Inthe same spirit the Arabs call Cairo the “Mother of cities;” and allnations concentrate more or less upon their capital, their affection andtheir pride.
Footnote 219:
Dem. Olynth. iii. 9. Palm. Exercit. in Auct. Græc. p. 622. Zander, De Luxu Athen. c. iii. 5, § 6.
Footnote 220:
Athen. v. 12. Soph. Œdip. Col. 107. seq.
The superior magnificence of Athens appears from this; that it wasalways the place to which the Greeks referred when desirous ofmagnifying the splendour of their own country, in comparison with whatcould be found elsewhere. Thus Dion Chrysostom[221] affirms that Athensand Corinth in all that constitutes real grandeur surpassed the famouscapitals of Persia, Syria, and Ecbatana, and Babylon, and the metropolisof Bactriana. Nay, in the opinion of this writer the Kraneion with itsgymnasia, fountains, and shady walks, and the Acropolis with itsPropylæa, antique altars, temples, and population of gods, exceeded inmagnificence the palaces of the Great King, though there was somethingexceedingly striking in the site and structure of what may properly becalled the Acropolis of Ecbatana.[222] The city itself was unwalled, butthe citadel, which probably rose in the midst of it, occupied the slopesof a conical hill, not unlike Mount Tabor, and was girt by seven wallsof different colours and elevation, rising in concentric circles aboveeach other to the summit. The circumference of the lowest is said tohave equalled that of Athens including the Peiræeus. The colour of thiswall was white; the next being black for the sake of contrast, wassucceeded by one of light purple, which was followed by walls of skyblue, of scarlet, of silver and of gold.
Footnote 221:
Orat. vi. t. i. p. 199.
Footnote 222:
Herod. i. 98. Bochart, Geog. Sac. Pars Prior, l. iii. c. 14. p. 222. Aristot. De Mund. ch. 6. Apuleius, p. 19.
In mere magnitude the great capitals of the East far exceeded Athens.The circuit, for example, of Babylon, is said to have been at least fourhundred stadia, while, according to the orator Dion, that of Athens wasin round numbers two hundred stadia, or twenty-five miles. Aristeidesprobably adopted the same calculation when he pronounced it to be aday’s journey in compass. But there is some exaggeration in theseaccounts; for, according to Thucydides, the total extent of the wallsdid not exceed one hundred and seventy-eight stadia. The area, however,of the city was not proportioned to the vast range of itsfortifications, consisting of two distinct systems of buildings, theAstu, or city proper, and the Peiræeus or harbour, connected together bythree walls more than four miles in length. There were other capitals inthe western world equal in dimensions, as Syracuse, one hundred andeighty stadia in circumference, and Rome, which in the time of Dionysiosof Halicarnassos did not command a larger circuit, though the spaceincluded within the walls was much greater.
In order, however, to convey a more complete idea of the ancient home ofDemocracy and the Arts, we must, as far as possible, open up a view intothe interior of Athens, which, with its harbours, docks, arsenals, itsmarket-places, bazārs, porticoes, public fountains and gymnasia,probably formed the noblest spectacle ever presented to the eye by acluster of human dwellings. From whatever side approached, whether byland or by sea, the city appeared to be but one vast group ofmagnificence. In sailing up along the shore from the promontory ofSunium, the polished brazen helmet and shield of the colossalAthena,[223] standing on the brow of the Acropolis, were beheld fromafar flashing in the sun. On drawing nearer, the Parthenon, thePropylæa, the temple of Erectheus, with the other marble edificescrowning the Cecropian rock, glittered above the pinnacles of the lowercity, and the deep green foliage of the encircling plain and olivegroves. Among its principal ornaments in the later ages of the republicwas a remarkable monument in the road to Eleusis,—the tomb of thehetaira Pythionica, who dying while her beauty still bloomed and herpowers of fascination were unimpaired, the love she had inspiredsurvived the grave and manifested itself by rearing a costly pile ofmarble over her ashes.[224]
Footnote 223:
Paus. i. 28. 2.
Footnote 224:
Athen. xiii. 67.
Upon sailing into the Peiræeus,[225] where generally ships from everyquarter of the ancient world lay at anchor, the stranger was immediatelystruck by manifestations of the people’s power and predilection forstateliness and grandeur. The entrance into the port, barely wide enoughto admit a couple of galleys abreast, with their oars in full sweep, laybetween two round towers, in which terminated on either hand themaritime fortifications of the city. Across the mouth vast chains wereextended in time of war, rendering the Peiræeus a closed port;[226]arrived within which, the pleased eye wandered over the spacious quays,wharfs, and long ranges of warehouses extending round the harbour, withtombs and sepulchral monuments rising here and there in open spacesbetween. Among them was a cenotaph in the form of an altar, raised bythe repentant people in memory of Themistocles,[227] the founder of thenaval power of Athens, whose bones however it has sometimes beensupposed were brought thither from Magnesia. The Peiræeus consisted ofthree basins, Zea, Aphrodision, which was by far the largest, andCantharos. On the western shore were the vast docks and arsenals of thecommonwealth erected by Philon,[228] in which, during peace, all thatportion of the public navy not engaged in protecting its trade indistant colonies, was drawn up in dry docks, roofed over and surroundedby massive walls. Towards the centre of the town stood theHippodameia,[229] an agora or market place, which appears to haveresembled Covent Garden, with ranges of stalls in the area andsurrounded by dwelling-houses. This building derived its name fromHippodamos of Miletos, the architect who erected it, and laid out thewhole maritime city in the regular and beautiful style of which he wasthe inventor.[230] Here, also, were several other market-places orbazārs, among which may be reckoned a place[231] resembling the Laura ofSamos, the Sweet Ancon of Sardis, the Street of the Happy at Alexandria,and the Tuscan Street at Rome, in which fruit, confectionary, withdelicacies and luxuries of every kind were exposed for sale. In theseagora, as now in the bazārs of Cairo, Damascus, and Constantinople, werebeheld, in close juxtaposition, the wines of Spain and Portugal, amberfrom the shores of the ocean, the carpets, shawls, and jewels of theEast, fruit and gold from Thasos, ivory and ostrich feathers fromAfrica, and beautiful female slaves from Syria, Dardania, and thesouthern shores of the Euxine, the Mingrelians and Georgians of themodern world.[232] Around these singular groups the young men of Athens,in an almost oriental pomp of costume, might be seen lounging, someperhaps purchasing, others merely looking on, half in haste to return tothe gymnasium or to the lectures of Socrates.
Footnote 225:
Cf. Steph. De Urb. v. Πειραιός. p. 633. G. sqq.
Footnote 226:
Leake, Top. of Ath. p. 311. sqq.
Footnote 227:
Paus. i. 1, 2. Plut. Them. § 32. Meurs. Pir. c. 3.
Footnote 228:
Strab. ix. 1. p. 239.
Footnote 229:
Harp. _v._ Ἱπποδ. Xen. Hell. ii. 4. Dem. in Timoth. § 5. Andoc. de Myst. § 10.
Footnote 230:
Arist. Polit. vi. 8. p. 40. 16. vii. 11. p. 199. 25. Hesych. v. Ἱπποδ. νέμησις.
Footnote 231:
Athen. xii. 57, 58. Animad. t. 11. p. 468. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 98.
Footnote 232:
See for the authorities, Book vi. chapters 11 and 12.
Among the public buildings[233] in the harbour were the Deigma[234] orExchange, where the merchants met to transact business, bringing alongwith them samples of their goods; the Serangion[235] or public baths;the superb temples of Zeus and Athena adorned with exquisite picturesand statues, where in an open court seems to have stood the celebratedaltar erected by Demosthenes[236] in commutation of his fine of thirtytalents; the Long Portico which served as an agora to those living nearthe shore;[237] the theatre,[238] and the court of Phreattys[239] on thebeach, where the accused pleaded his cause from a galley lying afloat.Somewhere in the Peiræeus was an altar to “the unknown Gods,”[240]which, notwithstanding that the plural form is used, may possibly havebeen that to which Saint Paul alludes in his speech to the Athenians onthe hill of Areiopagos.
Footnote 233:
Meurs. Pir. c. 4, 5, 6.
Footnote 234:
Harpocrat. in v. p. 74. Maussac. Etymol. Mag. 259. 51. Suid. in v. t. i. p. 665. Xen. Hellen. v. 1. 21. Aristoph. Eq. 975. et Schol. Dem. adv. Lacrit. § 7. Lys. cont. Tynd. frag. 120. Polyæn. Strat. vi. 2. 2.
Footnote 235:
Harpocrat. in v. p. 166. Suid. in v. t. ii. 734 a. Isaeus De Philoct. Hered. § 6.
Footnote 236:
Meurs. Pir. c. 7.
Footnote 237:
Paus. i. 13.
Footnote 238:
Xen. Hellen. ii. 4. 33.
Footnote 239:
Paus. i. 28. 11.
Footnote 240:
Paus. i. 1. 4; v. 14. 8.
Besides the Peiræeus, Athens possessed two other harbours Munychia andPhaleron, which were enclosed by the same line of fortifications, and inprocess of time formed but one city, superior in extent to the Astuitself. Of these the latter was the most ancient, and from henceMnestheus sailed for Troy and Theseus for Crete.[241] The Munychianpromontory,[242] abounding in hollows and artificial excavations, andconnected by a narrow neck of land with the continent, was the strongestposition on the coast, and may be regarded as the key of Athens, sincewhoever held possession of it could command the city. In this Demosstood the Bendideion[243] where shows were exhibited in honour of Bendisthe Thracian Artemis, to behold which Socrates and his friends came downfrom the city, when at the house of Cephalos that conversation tookplace with Glaucon and Adimantos, out of which arose the Republic ofPlato. This division of the port likewise possessed its theatre,[244]and here were fought some of those battles with the thirty thatre-established the liberty of the commonwealth.
Footnote 241:
Paus. i. 1, 2.
Footnote 242:
Strab. ix. 1. t. ii. p. 239.
Footnote 243:
Xen. Hellen. ii. 4, 11.
Footnote 244:
Thucyd. viii. 93. Lys. in Agorat. § 7.
Footnote 245:
Of which there were three. Plat. Gorg. t. iii. p. 22. Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 187. Dr. Cramer, Desc. of Greece, ii. 346, seq. understands the long walls to have been but two in number.
Proceeding inland towards the Astu or city of Athens proper, thestranger beheld before him a straight street upwards of five miles inlength, extending from the Peiræeus to the foot of the Acropolis,between walls[245] of immense elevation and thickness, flanked by squaretowers at equal distances. Along the summit of these vast piles ofmasonry a terrace was carried, commanding superb views of the Saronicbay and distant coasts of Peloponnesos; and, on the other hand, of thecity relieved against the green slopes of Lycabettos[246]. The spacebetween the long walls abounded with remarkable monuments. Here were thetombs of Diopethes, Menander, and Euripides, the temple of Hera, burnedby the Persians, and left in ruins as a memento to revenge, and numerouscenotaphs and statues of illustrious men.
Footnote 246:
Marin. vit. Procl. p. 74. ed. Fabric.
Spacious and lofty gates admitted you into the Astu, through a belt ofimpregnable fortifications: and the appearance of the interior,[247]though the streets for military purposes were mostly narrow and winding,and the houses low, projecting over the pavement or concealed byelevated front-walls, surpassed in all probability the promise of itsdistant aspect. The grandeur which peculiarly belonged to the Atheniandemocracy was visible at every step. But it would weary the reader tolead him in succession through all the public places—the Pnyx, theAgora, the Cerameicos: let us ascend the Acropolis, from whose rampartsthe plan of the whole city will unfold itself before us like a map.
Footnote 247:
Boeckh, Pub. Econ. of Athens, i. 88. seq.
Half the beauty of all civilised countries springs out of theirreligion. At Athens nearly everything costly or magnificent belonged tothe Gods; even the Propylæa,[248] apparently a mere secular or militarystructure, probably owed its erection in so expensive a style to thecirc*mstance of its adorning the entrance to the sacred enclosure ofAthena, and the other tutelary divinities of Athens, and spanning theroad by which the pomp of the Panathenaic procession descended andascended the mount. Be this as it may, a road[249] which, by runningzigzag up the slope, was rendered practicable for chariots, led from thelower city to the Acropolis, on the edge of the platform of which stoodthe Propylæa, erected by the architect Mnesicles in five years, duringthe administration of Pericles. A pile of architecture, similar in name,is usually found at the entrance of the court of Egyptian temples, andthe Propylæa Luxor and Karnak, with their aspiring obelisks, couchantsphynxes, and ranges of colossal statues, may be reckoned among the mostchaste and beautiful monuments in the valley of the Nile. The Propylæaof Athens, richer in design and materials, and executed with a grace andperfection unknown to the Egyptians, enjoyed in its mere site an immenseadvantage over their noblest works which, the pyramids and the greattemple of Koom Ombos excepted, stand on a dead level, while thisoccupies the brow of a precipitous rock, visible on every side fromafar. Pillars, architraves, pediments, walls, and roof, were all ofsnow-white marble, with mouldings of bright red and blue, and ceilingsof azure bedropped with stars.[250] Externally, on either hand, wereequestrian statues of the sons of Xenophon,[251] placed on lofty squarebasem*nts; and, overlooking the whole on the left, stood the colossalstatue of Athena Promachos.[252]
Footnote 248:
Suid. in v. t. ii. p. 611. d. Harpocrat. in v. p. 254. Paus. i. 22. 4. Leake, Topog. p. 177. Wordsworth, Athens and Attica. p. 112.
Footnote 249:
Up this road goats were never allowed to ascend (Athen. xiii. 51). Even crows were said never to alight on the top of the sacred rock; and Chandler (ii. 61) remarks, that although he frequently saw these birds flying about the Acropolis, he never observed one on the summit. “The hooded crow, which retires from England during the summer, is a constant inhabitant of Attica, and is probably that species noticed by the ancients under the name of κορώνη. It is the word applied at present to it by the Greek peasants, who are the best commentators on the old naturalists.” Sibthorp in Walp. Mem. l. 75.
Footnote 250:
Wordsworth, Athens and Attica, p. 114.
Footnote 251:
Paus. i. 22. 4.
Footnote 252:
Müll. De Phid. Vit. p. 18 seq.
On entering through the gates of the Propylæa a scene of unparalleledgrandeur and beauty burst upon the eye. No trace of human dwellingsanywhere appeared, but on all sides temples of more or less elevation,of Pentelic marble, beautiful in design and exquisitely delicate inexecution, sparkled like piles of alabaster in the sun. On the leftstood the Erectheion or fane of Athena Polias; to the right thatmatchless edifice known as the Hecatompedon of old, but to later ages asthe Parthenon. Other buildings, all holy to the eye of an Athenian, laygrouped around these master structures, and in the open spaces between,in whatever direction the spectators might look, appeared statues, someremarkable for their dimensions, others for their beauty, and all forthe legendary sanctity which surrounded them. No city of the ancient ormodern world ever rivalled Athens in the riches of art. Our best filledmuseums, though teeming with her spoils, are poor collections offragments compared with that assemblage of gods and heroes which peopledthe Acropolis, the genuine Olympos of the arts, where all the divinitiesof the pagan heaven appeared grouped in immortal youth and beauty roundthe Thunderer and his virgin daughter. Many volumes were written inantiquity on the pictures, statues, and architectural monuments whichthronged the summit of this rock, and though those works have perished,a long and curious list might still be given of the objects of this kindwhich we know to have existed there.[253] It will, however, besufficient to glance over a few of the more striking features of thescene.
Footnote 253:
Somewhere in a cavern in the rock of the Acropolis was a slab called the pillar of infamy, on which were engraved the names of traitors and other public delinquents. Thrasybulos accused Leodamas of having had his name on this pillar.—Aristot. Rhet. ii. 23.
On one side of the entrance stood a chariot drawn by four horses inbronze, and directly opposite a chapel of Aphrodite, containing a bronzelioness, with a statue of the goddess herself by Calamis; a littlefurther the eye rested on Diitrephes, pierced like St. Sebastian witharrows; two figures of the goddess Health; a youth in bronze, by Lycios,bearing the Perirrhanterion, or brush for sprinkling holy water; Myron’sgroup of Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa, and the three Gracesdraped by Socrates,[254] son of Sophroniscos. Advancing past the chapelof Artemis Brauronia you beheld, amid numerous groups of less strikingmonuments, the Attic conception of the Trojan horse; Athena smitingMarsyas; Heracles strangling the serpents in his cradle; Phrixossacrificing the ram; and Theseus, the national hero, slaughtering theMinotaur in the Cretan labyrinth.[255] Here, too, was an Athena issuingfrom the head of Zeus, together with the figure of a bull presented bythe Senate of Areiopagos; and, a little beyond, an embodiment of a verypious and a very beautiful thought,—a figure of Earth, the mother ofgods and men, praying to the ruler of Olympos for rain. Of Zeus, theCloud-Compeller, there were numerous representations by artists ofcelebrity; the figure of Apollo, by Pheidias, standing before theeastern front of the Parthenon, was lighted up by the first rays of themorning. But the tutelar gods of Attica, Athena and Poseidon, the geniiof political wisdom and maritime power, exhibited as struggling for themastery over the Athenian mind, met the eye in various parts of theAcropolis,—the piety of the people delighting to reproduce with variousattributes the objects of their affectionate adoration. Among thesedivinities, the statues of several poets, orators, and generals werefound; Anacreon, Epicharmos, Phormio, Timotheus, Conon, Pericles, andIsocrates. On drawing near the Parthenon, its sculptured pediments andmetopes, representing legends in the mythology and religious processionsof Athens, excited admiration, and still excite it, by their originaldesign and matchless workmanship: and, suspended from its highly paintedfriezes, and resting on its white marble architraves, were rows ofhighly burnished shields of gold.[256]
Footnote 254:
Paus. i. 22. 8.
Footnote 255:
On the labyrinth at present shown in Crete, see Tournefort, i. 76. sqq.
Footnote 256:
They were votive offerings, and the impressions they made are still visible upon the marble.—Words. Athens and Attica, 117. Lachares afterwards, when Athens was besieged by Demetrius, carried them away with him into Bœotia.—Paus. i. 25. 7. To facilitate his escape, he is said to have scattered handfuls of golden Darics on the road, which, tempting the cavalry in pursuit, prevented his capture.—Polyæn. iii. 7. 1.
Technical descriptions of buildings, whether religious or civil, wouldbe out of place in the present work; but a compendious account of theErectheion and Parthenon, the two great sanctuaries of the Acropolis,could not with propriety be omitted. To commence with the former, as themore ancient and sacred:—this edifice, of irregular design though highlybeautiful, contained three chapels, with the same number of porticoes.The chapel of Erectheus, entered through a portico of six columns, facedthe east, where stood the altar of supreme Zeus, never stained by bloodor libations of wine. The pavement of this portion of the edifice wasraised eight feet above the level of the other chapels. Here the pietyof Athens had erected altars to Erectheus, Poseidon, Butas, andHephaistos, and pictures dedicated by the sacred family of theEteobutadæ adorned the walls. In a subterraneous chamber beneath thefloor lay the mortal remains of Ericthonios, a man sprung in amysterious manner from the gods. The Erectheion being about twenty-fourfeet square, some have imagined it must have been hypæthral, unless thestone blocks of the roof were supported by pillars. But the ancientsemployed slabs of much greater dimensions in building and roofing theirtemples; for at the Egyptian quarries of Hajjar Silsilis and Essouan weobserved blocks from forty-two to seventy feet in length and of suitableproportions, while others equally vast had been removed. Volney, too, asthe reader will remember, found masses of no less magnitude in the wallsof Syrian temples: besides, several obelisks, now on their pedestals,fall little short of a hundred feet in height.
Between the Erectheion and the chapel of Athena Polias there was no doorof communication. Having surveyed the former, therefore, the strangeragain issued into the open air, and turning to the left entered thestately portico leading from the north into the temple of Pandrosos,where, constructed of Pentelic marble, stood the altar of frankincense.Passing this, and traversing the Pandrosion, he entered the ancientsanctuary of Athena, unwindowed and gloomy, whither not even that “dimreligious light” which contends with obscurity in our gothic cathedralscould find its way. This is the case in many Egyptian temples where theadyta are totally dark. But sunshine and the splendour of day would illhave suited the mystic rites here celebrated; for which reason thesesacred recesses were lighted up with lamps, magnificent in form andmaterials, that shed a soft pale ray over the worshippers. Themany-branched[257] golden candelabrum of Athena’s sanctuary wasfurnished with asbestos wicks, and, according to the temple-wardens, ofsufficient dimensions to contain oil for a whole year. Once lighted,therefore, it burned with perennial flame, and the smoke was receivedand conducted to the roof by a hollow bronze palm tree reversed.
Footnote 257:
A conjecture of Müller, Minerv. Pol. v. 25.
This inextinguishable lamp was kindled and kept burning, throughreverence for that antique image of Athena in wood of olive whichconstituted one of the palladia of Attica. In honour, moreover, of thisprimitive statue the Panathenaic procession is said to have beeninstituted, during which, like the velabrum of the temple of Mekka, thepeplos,[258] whatever this may have been, was dedicated with vast pompand ceremony to the service of the goddess.
Footnote 258:
Antiquarians have formed many ingenious conjectures; but to me it appears evidently to have been a female veil, such as Helenos in the Iliad (σ. 734) commands to be offered to the same goddess of citadels, by his mother and the other matrons of Troy.
The principal argument, however, against supposing the peplos to havebeen designed for the gold and ivory statue of the Parthenon,—that itwas not needed, is of very little weight. None of the ceremoniesattending its presentation were necessary. The offering was a work ofdevotion; and however costly in itself and elaborately adorned, may havebeen simply designed to protect the image from dust and the action ofthe air. That Pheidias represented the goddess without her peplos, is noargument that his statue needed none, but the contrary. He may haveomitted it expressly that it might be supplied by the piety of thestate. Besides, the sculptured metopes of the Parthenon, representingthe Panathenaic procession, are themselves a strong argument forconnecting the presentation of the peplos and the other ceremonies ofthe festival with that more splendid structure and image rather thanwith the Erectheion. As the Athenians supposed the Islands of theblessed and the dwelling-place of their gods to have been somewhere inthe regions of the west, they were accustomed to pray with their facesturned in that direction;[259] and so also buried they their dead. Forthis reason, desiring to behold the countenance of their divinitiesduring this religious service, the statues of the gods were generallyset up with their faces eastward; and hence, too, the front of thetemples looked in the same direction. This was the case with theolive-wood image of Athena Polias; and in the reign of Augustus theAthenians, rendered more superstitious than ever by their misfortunes,were vehemently terrified on finding that the goddess had turned herback upon them,[260] as if preparing to seek her ancient home in theAtlantic Ocean. But her real presence had forsaken the city long beforethe battle of Chæroneia.
Footnote 259:
Plut. Sol. § 10. Visconti, Mem. p. 18. Müll. Minerv. Pol. p. 27.
Footnote 260:
Dion. Cass. iv. 7.
But Athena, though the principal, was not the sole inhabitant of hersanctuary. On one side of the door stood a phallic statue of Hermes,originally set up by the Pelasgians,[261] and in later ages nearlyconcealed by a profusion of myrtle branches. Here, also, in a veryextraordinary inmate were found traces of that animal worship whichextended so widely over the ancient world. In a den constructed for itsuse lived a great serpent, considered as the guardian of the temple, andsupposed to be animated by the soul of Ericthonios, who here performedthe part assigned in the fane of Demeter to Cadmos, likewise believed tohave undergone a similar transformation after death. The snake-god ofthe Acropolis received its daily sustenance from the priestess ofAthena; and once every month was propitiated with pious offerings ofcakes of the purest honey.[262] Relics of this worship are still foundin Egypt. In a deep chasm, among the wild rocky mountains on the Arabianside of the Nile, we were shown a fissure in a hermit’s cell, whence alarge reptile of this species is said to issue forth at stated days toreceive the offerings of food brought him by the neighbouring peasants.This creature, as well as the guardian of the Athenian Temple, issupposed to possess a human soul, that of the holy Sheikh Haridi.
Footnote 261:
Herod. ii. 51.
Footnote 262:
Herod. viii. 41. Combe, Terra-cottas of the British Museum, pl. 28. Petit. Radel, Musée Napol. iv. 33.
Like most other Hellenic sanctuaries, the chapel of the goddess was akind of museum filled with memorials of Athenian victories and otherremarkable objects. Here were shown curious or beautiful specimens ofarms or armour, taken from the enemy; among which were the breast-plateand scimitar of Masistios,[263] commander of the Median cavalry at thebattle of Platæa. Close beside these warlike memorials, stood a foldingcamp-stool, the invention, it was said, and workmanship of Dædalos; thearchetype of all those portable seats borne after the maidens of Atticaby the daughters of aliens in the grand Panathenaic procession.
Footnote 263:
Paus. i. 27. 1. The Athenians in the age of this traveller confounded, it seems, Masistios with Mardonios, nothing very extraordinary several hundred years after the event referred to. Pausanias speaks of it as a mistake; Mr. Müller, who is less ceremonious, as a falsehood. Minerv. Pol. 29. The passion for relics, which led to the preservation of these objects, existed in all its whimsicality among the ancients. But they were scarcely so ingenious as the Roman Catholics of the continent, whose sacred treasures include a number of feathers from the wings of the angel Gabriel, a small bone of one of the cherubim, and a few rays of the star by which the wise men of the East were led to Bethlehem. They have also a small phial, containing some of the darkness that overspread the land of Egypt. (Cf. Fabric. ad Cod. Pseud. epigr. v. i. p. 93. t. 11. and Christophori Carmen, ap Boissonade ad Eunap. p. 277. seq.) In the temples of antiquity relics nearly as curious were preserved: they had an egg of Leda, possibly, as Lobeck conjectures, an ostrich’s (Aglaoph. i. 52; Paus. iii. 16. 1); the teeth of the Erymanthean boar (Paus. viii. 24. 2), whose spoils were also shown at Tegea (Lucian adv. Indoct. § 13); the teeth of the Calydonian boar were preserved at Beneventum (Procop. Bell. Goth. i. 15. 349. c); they had also the sword of Memnon (Paus. iii. 3. 6); the iron spear of Epeios (Justin. xx. 7), the brazen vessel in which Pelias was boiled, the arrows of Teucer, the chlamys of Odysseus, were preserved in the temple of Apollo at Sicyon. (Ampel. Memor. viii. 68. Beckm. Hist. of Invent. ii. 364. Germ. in Lobeck.) In the Troad the anvils were shown which Zeus suspended to the heels of Hera, when he hung her up between heaven and earth (Eustath. p. 15. l. 30); here, too, anyone might see the cithara of Paris. (Plut. Alex. § 15.) Like the Catholics, too, they showed the same thing in two or three places; for example, the hair of Isis might be seen at Koptos (Etym. Mag. _v._ κόπτος, 522. 12), and at Memphis. (Luc. adv. Ind. § 13.) The Romans, according to Horace (Carm. ii. 3. 21), possessed the bronze wash-hand-basin of Sisyphos. A much more extensive list may be found in Beckmann, Hist. of Inven. ii. 42. seq. _Eng. Tr._
Not the least interesting portion of this extraordinary edificededicated to the worship of so many gods and heroes, was the smallchapel of Pandrosos, where Pandora and Thallo were said to have lived,and where the ashes of Cecrops reposed. Here dwelt the priestess, shutup for several months with the Ersephoræ. This cella may, therefore, besaid to have belonged not only to Pandrosos, who was one of the earliestministers of these rites, but to all who from her received the office.The building opened on the south into a portico, adorned with Caryatidesinstead of columns, and filled with ceremonial and religiousassociations. Here grew the Pancuphos, or sacred olive tree, which,burned by the Persians, shot up a cubit in a single night, and wasthought to be endued with the power of undying vegetation, for, if thetrunk were cut down, new shoots immediately succeeded. Near the sacredolive was the salt well, called the sea of Erectheus, which Poseidon issaid to have produced by smiting the rock with his trident. In thehollow of this fountain, during the prevalence of the south wind, asound like the murmuring of the waves was supposed to be heard. Thiswell has not been discovered in modern times; but in another part of thecitadel there existed a spring of brackish water, known by the name ofthe Clepsydra, which, about the rising of the dog-star, while theEtesian winds were blowing, overflowed; but on their cessation againsubsided.[264]
Footnote 264:
This fountain was likewise called Empedo.—Sch. Arist. Vesp. 857. I may here mention, by the way, that most ancient cities were supplied with water by pipes underground, as Syracuse.—Thucyd. vi. 100. Cf. Sch. Arist. Achar. 1145.
We have perhaps too long lingered among the dusky recesses of thisancient fane, spell-bound by the charms of a beautiful mythology. Weemerge now into the light of history, and approach that matchlessstructure erected by Ictinos where the Athenian people offered up theirdaily prayers to heaven.[265] The Parthenon occupies the most elevatedplatform of the Acropolis, the pavement of its peristyle being on alevel with the capitals of the columns of the Propylæa. It wasconstructed entirely of white Pentelic marble,[266] and consisted of acella surrounded by a Doric peristyle having eight columns on eitherfront, and seventeen on the sides. These pillars, thirty-four feet inheight, sprang from a pavement elevated three steps above the rockyplatform, from whence the total height of the building was aboutsixty-five feet. The arrangement of the interior like that of the greattemples of Egypt had reference rather to utility and the convenience ofpublic worship, than to the effect which long ranges of lofty pillars,extending through unencumbered space, would have produced upon the mind:for the cella, sixty-two feet in breadth, was divided into two chambersof unequal size,—the western about forty-four feet in length, theeastern nearly one hundred. In both these chambers the ceiling wassupported by columns.
Footnote 265:
It is worthy of remark that from this temple all persons of Doric race were excluded. King Cleomenes, therefore, when desirous of obtaining admission, denied his birth-right, and called himself an Achæan.—Herod. v. 72.
Footnote 266:
The quarries of this mountain, worked to so great an extent by the ancients, are now filling again with marble which grows rapidly.—Chandler, ii. 191. Cf. Magius, Var. Lect. t. iv. 182. b. Gemme Fisica Sotterranea, l. 1. c. ix. § 6. p. 87.—For the manner in which it is thought to vegetate, see Tournefort, i. pp. 225. 228. sqq.
Colonel Leake, to whose elaborate work I beg to refer the readerdesirous of entering into minute details, concludes his generaldescription as follows:—"Such was the simple construction of thismagnificent building, which, by its united excellencies of materials,design, and decoration was the most perfect ever erected. Its dimensionsof two hundred and twenty-eight feet by a hundred and two, with a heightof sixty-eight feet to the top of the pediment, were sufficiently greatto give an impression of grandeur and sublimity, which was not disturbedby any obtrusive division of parts, such as is found to diminish theeffect of some larger modern buildings. In the Parthenon, whether viewedat a small or at a great distance, there was nothing to divert thespectator’s contemplation from the simplicity and majesty of mass andoutline which forms the first and most remarkable object of admirationin a Greek temple; and it was not until the eye was satiated with thecontemplation of the entire edifice that the spectator was tempted toexamine the decorations with which this building was so profuselyadorned; for the statues of the pediments the only elevation which wasvery conspicuous by its magnitude and position, being enclosed withinframes, which formed an essential part of the design of either front,had no more obtrusive effect than an ornamental capital has to a singlecolumn."[267]
Footnote 267:
Topog. of Athens, pp. 211, 212. See also Chandler, ii. 49. sqq.
That object of art, whatever its dimensions, is sufficiently great,which fills the mind with high ideas of grandeur and beauty. There is,moreover, in mere size, a point, beyond which if we proceed, the eyewill fail to grasp the whole at a glance, and create a feeling of wantof unity; but, in proportion as we fall short of that point will be oursense of the absence of sublimity. In this predicament, perhaps, thetemples of Greece too generally stood. Considerations of expense, whichin the end affected their habits of thinking, cramped the ideas of thearchitects, or forced them to direct their studies towards beauty ofform unconnected with that grandeur which springs out of mass andelevation.
Among the barbarous nations of the East, where the whole resources ofthe country lay at the disposal of the monarch or of the priestly caste,as in Hindùstân, Persia, and Egypt, full scope, on the contrary, wasgiven to the imagination of the architect, who, if his invention wereequal to it, might give his structures the elevation of a mountain andthe spaciousness of a vast city. Hence, the grandeur arising frommagnitude, is, in most cases, found to belong to the sacred edifices ofEgypt;[268] and in some instances a feeling of symmetry, a sense of thebeautiful, appears to have restrained the artist within due bounds, asin the great temple of Apollinopolis Magna, which, whatever may be theimperfections of its architectural details, is invested, as a whole,with an air of genuine magnificence and sublimity. Proceeding from thecontemplation of these to the religious structures of Greece, therewould be found, I imagine, in most minds a slight feeling ofdisappointment, and though afterwards, the delight imparted by thepresence of extreme beauty,—a delight serene, soft, and inexpressiblysoothing, may more than compensate for the want of awe and wonderingadmiration, their absence will still be felt.
Footnote 268:
Of these temples Lucian says: ὅμοιαι ... τοῖς Αἰγυπτίοις ἱεροῖς: κᾀκεῖ γὰρ, αὐτὸς μὲν ὁ νεὼς κάλλιστός τε καὶ μέγιστος, λίθοις τοῖς πολυτελέσιν ἠσκημένος, καὶ χρυσῷ, καὶ γραφαῖς διηνθισμὲνος. ἔνδον δὲ ἢν ζητῆς τὸν βεὸν ἢ πιθηκός ἔστιν, ἢ ἴβις, ἢ τράγος, ἢ αἴλουρος. Imagin. § 11.
But to proceed: in rich and elaborate decorations the Parthenonresembled the temple of Tentyris. Every part of its exterior, whereornament was admissible, presented to the eye some creation of Hellenictaste and fancy, figures in high and low relief, grouped in action orrepose, conceived and executed in a style worthy of the prince of themimetic art.[269] Many wrecks of these matchless compositions are nowprotected from further defacements in the metropolis of Great Britain,but withal so mutilated and decayed that none but a practised eye candiscern, through the ravages of age, all the sunshine of beauty andloveliness which beamed from them when fresh from the Pheidian chisel.One of the greatest works of this artist filled the interior of theParthenon with the emanations of its beauty, the statue of Athena inivory and gold,[270] which, representing a form distinguished for allthe softness and roundness belonging to womanhood, and a countenanceradiant with the highest intellect, must in some respects have borneaway the palm from the Olympian Zeus; for in the latter, after all,nothing beyond masculine energy, dignity, majesty could have existed.These indeed were so blended, so subdued into a glorious and god-likeserenity, that this creation of human genius, like the august being ofwhich it was a mute type, possessed in a degree the celestial power ofchasing away sadness and sorrow, and shedding benignity and happinessover all who beheld it.[271] But for men at least, the Zeus must havelacked some attributes possessed by the Athena. She was in all heretherial loveliness, a woman still, but without a woman’s weakness, or asingle taint of earth. The Athenians paid the highest possiblecompliment to womanhood when they gave wisdom a female form; and thedelicacy of the thought was enhanced by surrounding this mythologicalcreation with an atmosphere of purity which no other divinity of thepagan heaven could lay claim to. Nor in beauty did Athena yield even toAphrodite herself. Her charms partook indeed of that noble severitywhich belongs to virtue; and to intimate that she was rather of heaventhan of earth, her eyes were of the colour of the firmament. Yet thisspiritual elevation above the reach of the passions, only appears tohave enhanced, in the estimation of the Athenians, the splendour of herpersonal beauty, which shed its chastening and ennobling influence amongher worshippers like the droppings of a summer cloud.
Footnote 269:
Vid. Müll. De Parthenon. Fastig. p. 72, sqq.
Footnote 270:
Thucyd. ii. 13. Schol. t. v. p. 375. Bipont. Müll. De Phid. Vit. p. 22.
Footnote 271:
Arrian. Epict. I. 6. p. 27, seq.
According to Philochoros,[272] this colossus was set up during thearchonship of Theodoros, that is, in the third year of the eighty-fifthOlympiad. The Athenians, it has been ingeniously conjectured, seized forthe dedication of the statue, on the period of the celebration of themost gorgeous festival in their calendar, the greater Panathenaia, whichlike a kind of jubilee occurred but once in an Olympiad.[273] Whatlength of time Pheidias employed in finishing this statue we possess nomeans of determining; but as the Parthenon itself is supposed not tohave been completed in less than ten years, the artist need not havebeen hurried in his work.[274]
Footnote 272:
Frag. ed. Siebel. p. 54. Müll. Phid. Vit. § 11. p. 22.
Footnote 273:
Boeckh. Corp. Inscrip. p. 182.
Footnote 274:
Quatremère de Quincy, Jup. Olymp. p. 222.
In the temple of Zeus at Olympia and in every sacred structure wevisited in Egypt and Nubia, there was a staircase conducting to theroof. No positive testimony remains to prove this to have been the casein the Parthenon, though antiquarians, with much probability, havesupposed it to have been so.[275] Let us therefore assume the fact, andascending to the summit of the edifice survey the surrounding scene andthe superb city encircling the rock at our feet. Few landscapes in theworld are more rich or varied, none more deeply interesting. History haspeopled every spot within the circle of vision with spirit-stirringassociations; or if history has passed over any, there has poetry beenbusy, building up her legends from the scattered fragments of tradition.Carrying our eye along the distant edge of the horizon we behold thepromontory of Sunium, Ægina rising out of the Myrtoan sea, Trœzen, thebirth-place of Theseus the national hero, the mountains of Argolis, thehostile citadel of Corinth, with Phylæ and Deceleia rendered too famousby the Peloponnesian war. Nearer the shore is “sea-born” Salamis, andthat low headland where the barbarian took his seat to view the battlein the straits. Yonder at the extremity of the long walls are the portsof Munychia, Phaleron and Peiræeus; on our left is Hymettos with its beeswarms and odoriferous slopes;[276] to the right Colonos, the grove ofthe terrible Erinnyes, and the chasm in the rock by which the wretchedŒdipus, having reached the end of his career, descended to the infernalworld.[277] Beyond lies Eleusis and the Sacred Way.[278] Yonder in themidst of groves is the Academy; here is the Cerameicos[279] filled withthe monuments which the republic erected to its heroes, there theCynosarges and the Lyceium. The hill of Areiopagos, contiguous to therock of the Acropolis, divides the Pnyx from the Agora planted by Cononwith plane trees. Near at hand, encircled by ordinary dwellings, are theLeocorion, the temple of Theseus, the Odeion, the Stoa Pœcile, and theDionysiac theatre, with various other monuments remarkable for theirbeauty or historical importance.[280]
Footnote 275:
Leake, Topog. p. 215.
Footnote 276:
About half a mile from Athens in this direction was a temple of Artemis (Ἄγρα), on the Ilissos, with an altar to Boreas; where, according to the fable, the god carried away Orithyia while playing on the rock with Pharmacia.—Plat. Phæd. i. 7. In consequence of the alliance thus contracted Boreas always felt a particular friendship for the Athenians, to whose succour he hastened with his aërial forces during the Median war.—Herod, vii. 189.
Footnote 277:
Antigone, in Sophocles, (Œdip. Col. 14-18) speaks of the towers of Athens as seen from Colonos, and describes that village, the birth-place of the poet, as rendered beautiful by the sacred grove of the Eumenides, consisting of the laurel, the olive, and the vine, in which a choir of nightingales showered their music on the ear.
Footnote 278:
Near this road stood the Hiera Suke. Athen. iii. 6.
Footnote 279:
Κεραμεικός, ἀπὸ τοῦ κεραμεύς. Etym. Mag. 504. 16. Cf. Suid. et Harpocrat. in voce. Paris, in like manner, has given the name of Tuileries to its principal palaces and gardens, from the tiles (_tuiles_) which were anciently manufactured on the spot.
Footnote 280:
Strab. ix. 1. 239–241.
CHAPTER V. CAPITAL CITIES OF GREECE.—SPARTA.
From what has been said, the reader will, perhaps, have acquired atolerably correct idea of the city of Athens, its splendour and extent.But the remaining fragments of Hellenic literature do not enable us tobe equally clear or copious in our account of Sparta.[281] In fact soimperfect and confused is the information that has come down to usrespecting it, so vague, unsatisfactory, and in many respectscontradictory are the opinions of modern scholars and travellers, thatafter diligently and patiently examining their accounts, and comparingthem with the descriptions of Pausanias, the hints of Xenophon, Livy,Polybius, and Plutarch, with the casual references of the poets, I amenabled to offer the following picture only as a series of what appearto me probable conjectures based upon a few indisputable facts.
Footnote 281:
The plan which accompanies the present chapter, based on the description of Pausanias, agrees in many of the main points with that given by Mr. Müller in his map of the Peloponnesos. M. Barbie du Bocage’s Essay on the Topography of Sparta, upon the whole faulty, is, nevertheless, in my opinion, right with respect to the portion of the bridge Babyx which Mr. Müller throws over the Tiasa, contrary to all the reasonable inferences to be derived from history. Colonel Leake’s plan, given in his travels in the Morea, conveys a different idea of Spartan topography; but I am unable to reconcile his views with the account of the city in Pausanias, though I very much regret that the plan I have adopted should not be recommended by the support of a writer so learned and so ingenious.
The reader who has endeavoured to discover anything like order inPausanias’ topography of Sparta,[282] will fully comprehend thedifficulty of constructing from his information anything like anintelligible plan of the city. Nevertheless, by setting out from a fixedpoint, by laboriously studying the thread of his narration, by diviningthe secret order he seems to follow in enumerating and delineating thevarious public buildings of which he speaks, and by comparing hisfragmentary disclosures with the present physiognomy of the site, I haveformed a conception of the features of ancient Sparta which may,perhaps, be found to bear some resemblance to the original.
Footnote 282:
III. 11–20. Cf. Polyb. v. 22. Liv. xxxiv. 26. seq.
We will suppose ourselves to have passed the Eurotas, and to be standingon the summit of the loftiest building of the Acropolis, the Alpion forexample, or the temple of Athena Chalciœcos,[283] from which we cancommand a view of the whole site of Sparta from the Eurotas, where itflows between banks shaded with reeds and lofty rose laurels[284] on theeast, to the brisk sparkling stream of the Tiasa, and the roots of theTaygetos on the west. North and south the eye ranges up and down thevalley,[285] discovering in the latter direction the ancient cities ofTherapne[286] and Amyclæ,[287] celebrated for their poetical and heroicassociations. Beyond the Eurotas eastward, occupying the green andwell-wooded acclivities upwards, from the banks of the stream towardsthe barren and red-tinted heights of the Menelaion,[288] lay scatteredthe villas of the noble Spartans, filled with costly furniture and everyother token of wealth,[289] while here and there, on all sides,embosomed in groves or thickets, arose the temples and chapels of thegods surrounded by a halo of sanctity and communicating peculiar beautyto the landscape.
Footnote 283:
In the precincts of this temple, evidently the strongest place in the city, the Ætolian mercenaries took refuge after the assassination of Nabis.—Liv. xxxv. 36.
Footnote 284:
Plut. Instit. Lacon. § 10. Chateaubriand, Itin. xi. 110. Poucqueville’s description of the stream is striking and picturesque: “The banks,” he says, “are bordered with never-fading laurels, which, inclining towards each other, form an arch over its waters, and seem still consecrated to the deities of whom its purity is a just emblem; while swans, even of a more dazzling whiteness than the snows that cover the mountain-tops above, are constantly sailing up and down the stream.”—Travels, p. 84. The Viscount Chateaubriand, however, sought in vain for these poetical birds, and, therefore, evidently considers them fabulous.
Footnote 285:
Strabo’s brief description of the site deserves to be mentioned: ἔστι μὲν οὖν ἐν κοιλοτέρῳ χωρίῳ τὸ τῆς πόλεως ἔδαφος, καίπερ ἀπολαμβάνον ὄρη μεταξύ. viii. 5. t. ii. p. 185.
Footnote 286:
Xen. Hellen. v. 5. 2.
Footnote 287:
At this ancient city Castor and Polydeukes were worshipped not as heroes but as divinities. Isoc. Encom. Helen. § 27. Cf. Pind. Pyth. xi. 60, sqq. Nem. x. 56. Dissen supposes these tombs to have been vaults under ground in the Phœbaion.—Comm. p. 508.
Footnote 288:
Steph. de Urb. v. Μενέλαος, p. 551, a. Berkel.—Polyb. v. 22.
Footnote 289:
Xen. Hellen. vi. 5. 27.
Contracting now our circle of vision, and contemplating the distinctvillages or groups of buildings of which the capital of Laconiaanciently consisted,[290] we behold the encampments as it were of thefive tribes, extending in a circle about the Acropolis.[291] The quarterof the Pitanatæ,[292] commencing about the Issorion and the bridge overthe Tiasa on the west, extended eastward beyond the Hyacinthineroad[293] to the cliffs overhanging the valley of the Eurotas above theconfluence of that river with the Tiasa. Immediately contiguous to thedwellings of this tribe in the north eastern division of the city,opposite that cloven island in the Eurotas, which contained the templeof Artemis, Orthia, and the Goddess of Birth, dwelt the Limnatæ,[294]who possessed among them the temple erected by the Spartans to Lycurgus.North again of these, and clustering around that sharp eminence whichconstituted as it were a second Acropolis, were the habitations of theCynosuræ,[295] whose quarter appears to have extended from the oldbridge over the Eurotas to the temple of Dictynna, and the tombs of theEuripontid kings on the west. From this point to the Dromos, lyingdirectly opposite the southern extremity of the Isle of Plane Trees,formed by the diverging and confluent waters of the Tiasa, lay thevillage of the Messoatæ,[296] where were situated the tomb of Alcman,the fountain Dorcea, and a very beautiful portico overlooking thePlatanistas. The road extending from the Dromos to the Issorion formedthe western limits of the tribe of the Ægidæ,[297] whose quarterextending inward to the heart of the city, appears to have comprehendedthe Acropolis, the Lesche Pœcile, the theatre, with all the otherbuildings grouped about the foot of the ancient city.
Footnote 290:
Thucyd. i. 10.
Footnote 291:
See Müller, Dor. ii. 48.
Footnote 292:
Paus. Olymp. vi. 27. Diss. ἡ Πιτάνη φυλή. Hesych. Cf. Herod. iii. 55. ix. 53. Eurip. Troad. 1101. Thucyd. I. 20. et schol. Plut. de Exil. § 6. Apophth. Lacon. Miscell. 48. Plin. H. N. iv. 8. Athen. i. 57. Near this κώμη were the villages of Œnos, Onoglæ and Stathmæ, celebrated for their wines.
Footnote 293:
Athen. iv. 74.
Footnote 294:
Strab. viii. 4. p. 184. 5. p. 187. The marshes existing in this quarter anciently had been drained by the age of Strabo:—ἀλλ᾽ οὐδέν γε μέρος αὐτοῦ λιμνάζει· τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν ἐλίμαζε τὸ προάστειον, καὶ ἐκάλουν αὐτὸ Λίμνας· καὶ τὸ τοῦ Διονύσου ἱερὸν ἐν Λίμναις ἐφ᾽ ὑγροῦ βεβήκος ἐτύγχανε· νῦν δ᾽ ἐπὶ ξηροῦ τὴν ἵδρυσιν ἔχει. 5. p. 185. seq.
Footnote 295:
Hesych. in v. Berkel. ad Steph. Byzant. p. 490. Schol. ad Callim. in Dian. 94. Spanh. Observ. in loc. p. 196.
Footnote 296:
Steph de Urb. in v. p. 554. b. who refers to Strabo (viii. 6. p. 187). The words of the geographer are Μεσόαν δ᾽ οὐ τὴς χώρας εἶναι μέρος, τῆς Σπάρτης δὲ καθάπερ καὶ τὸ Λιμναῖον. Paus. vii. 20. 8.
Footnote 297:
Herod. iv. 149.
The prospect presented by all these villages, nearly touching eachother, and comprehended within a circle of six Roman miles, was once, nodoubt, in the days of Spartan glory, singularly animated andpicturesque. The face of the ground was broken and diversified, risinginto six hills of unequal elevation, and constituting altogether a smalltable-land, in some places terminating in perpendicular cliffs;[298] inothers, shelving away in gentle slopes to meet the meadows on the banksof the surrounding streams. Over all was diffused the brilliantlight[299] which fills the atmosphere of the south, and paints, astravellers uniformly confess, even the barren crag and crumbling ruinwith beauty.
Footnote 298:
Leake, Trav. in Morea, v. i. p. 154.
Footnote 299:
Cf. Chateaub. Itin. i. 112. Similar, also, is the testimony of Mr. Douglas. “The mixture of the romantic with the rich, which still diversifies its aspect, and the singularly picturesque form of all its mountains, do not allow us to wonder that even Virgil should generally desert his native Italy for the landscape of Greece; whoever has viewed it in the tints of a Mediterranean spring, will agree with me in attributing much of the Grecian genius to the influence of scenery and climate.” Essay, &c. p. 52.
The structures that occupied the summit of the Acropolis appear to havebeen neither numerous nor magnificent. The central pile, around whichall the others were grouped, was the temple of Athena Chalciœcos,[300]flanked on the north and south by the fanes of Zeus Cosmetas and theMuses. Behind it rose the temple of Aphrodite Areia, with that ofArtemis Cnagia, and in front various other edifices and statues,dedicated to Euryleonis, Pausanias, Athena Ophthalmitis, and Ammon.Somewhere in the neighbourhood of the temenos of Athena stood twoedifices, one called Skenoma and the other Alpion. The relative positionof all these it is now extremely difficult, if not impossible, todetermine. Let us therefore descend into the agora, and having brieflydescribed the objects which there offered themselves to the eye of thestranger, endeavour to thread our way through the various streets ofSparta, pointing out as we go along the most remarkable monuments itcontained.
Footnote 300:
Plut. Apophtheg. Lacon. Archid. 6. Lycurg. 7.
In all Greek cities the point of greatest importance, next to thecitadel, was the market-place, where the body of the citizens assemblednot only to buy and sell, but to transact public business, and performmany ceremonies of their religion. Thus, in the agora of Sparta, in thecentre of which probably stood an altar, surrounded by the statues ofApollo, Artemis, Leto, and the soothsayer Hagias who foretold thevictory of Lysander at Ægospotamos, sacred chorusses and processionswere exhibited during the Gymnopædia in honour of Phœbos Apollo, inconsequence of which, a part at least of the place obtained the name ofChoros: here, likewise, was a colossal statue, erected in honour of theSpartan Demos, with a group representing Hermes bearing the infantDionysos in his arms, and a statue of King Polydoros, doubtless set upin the neighbourhood of his house, Boonetos, lying between the streetAphetæ and the steep road leading up to the citadel. The edifices bywhich the agora was encircled, though in most cases, perhaps, far frommagnificent, when separately considered, presented a grand _coup-d’œil_.This will be made evident if, placing ourselves near the central altar,we enumerate and briefly describe them in the order in which theyfollowed each other in the great circle of the agora. First, beginningon the right-hand corner of the street Aphetæ we behold the palace ofthe Bidiæi, the five magistrates who watched over the education of theyouth; next succeeds that of the Nomophylaces, or guardians of the laws;then that of the Ephori; and, lastly, the senate-house, standing at thecorner of the street leading to Therapne. Crossing over to thesouth-eastern side of the Agora we behold a spacious and stately porticocalled the Persian, because erected from the spoils of the Persians. Itscolumns of white marble were adorned with bassi relievi representingPersian warriors, among others Mardonios and Artemisia daughter ofLygdamis queen of Halicarnassos, who fought in person at the battle ofSalamis. Beyond the road to Amyclæ, we meet with a range of temples toGaia, Zeus Agoræos, Athena, Poseidon the Preserver, Apollo, and Hera;and traversing the western street opening into the Theomelida, andaffording us a glimpse in passing of the tombs of the Agid kings wearrive at the ancient halls of the Ephori, containing the monuments ofEpimenides and Aphareus. To this edifice succeed the statues of ZeusXenios and Athena Xenia. Next follows the temple of the Fates, nearwhich was the tomb of Orestes lying on the left hand of the road leadingto the sanctuary of Athena Chalciœcos. On the other side stands thehouse of King Polydoros, which obtained in after ages the name ofBoonetos because purchased of his widowed queen with a certain number ofoxen. With this terminates the list of the buildings by which the Agorawas encompassed.
Quitting, now, this central point, we proceed northward through thestreet called Aphetæ, and observe on the right hand at a short distancefrom each other three temples of Athena Keleuthia, together with theheroa of Iops, Lelex, and Amphiaraos. On the opposite side apparently,stood the temenos of Tænarian Poseidon, with a statue of Athena, erectedby the Dorian colonists of Italy. We next arrive at a place called theHellenion, probably nothing more than a large open space or square inwhich the deputies or ambassadors of foreign states assembled onextraordinary occasions. Close to this was erected the monument ofTalthybios. A little further on were the altar of Apollo Acreitas, theGasepton, a temple of earth, and another altar sacred to ApolloMaleates. At the end of the street, near the walls of the late city, wasa temple of Dictynna, with the tombs of the kings called Eurypontidæ.
Returning to the Hellenion, and proceeding eastward up the great publicroad leading to the bridge Babyx, you saw the temple of Arsinoë,daughter of Leucippos, and sister to the wives of Castor and Polydeukes.Further on, near the Phrouria or Barriers, stood a temple of Artemis;and advancing a little you came to the monument of the Eleiansoothsayers called Iamidæ, and the temple of Maron and Alpheios, whowere among the bravest of those who fell with Leonidas at Thermopylæ.Beyond this stood the fane of Zeus Tropæos erected after the reductionof Amyclæ, when all the ancient inhabitants of Laconia had been broughtunder the yoke of the Dorians. Next followed the temple of the GreatMother and the heroic monuments of Hippolytos and Aulon. On a spotcommanding the bridge stood the temple of Athena Alea.
Setting out once more from the Agora, and advancing up the streetleading towards the east the first building on the left-hand was calledSkias[301] contiguous to the senate-house: it was of a circular formwith a roof like an umbrella, and erected about seven hundred and sixtyyears before Christ, by Theodoros of Samos, inventor of the art ofcasting statues in iron. Here the Spartan people held their assemblieseven so late as the age of Pausanias, who relates that the lyre ofTimotheus[302] the Milesian, confiscated as a punishment for his havingadded four strings to the seven already in use, was suspended in thisbuilding as a warning to all innovators. Near the Skias was anothercircular building erected by Epimenides, containing statues of OlympianZeus and Aphrodite. On the other side apparently of the street, in frontof the Skias, were the tombs of Idas and Lynceus, the temple of KoraSoteira, said to have been built by Orpheus, or Abaris the Hyperboræan,the tomb of Cynortas and the temple of Castor. Near these were thestatues of Apollo Carneios, and Aphetæos, the latter of which marked thepoint whence the suitors of Penelope started in their race for a wife,running up the street Aphetæ, whence the name. Immediately beyond thiswas a square surrounded with porticoes, where all kinds of cheap wareswere anciently sold. Further on stood altars of Zeus, Athena, and theDioscuri, all surnamed Amboulioi; opposite which was the hill calledColona whereon was erected a temple of Dionysos, and close at hand atemenos sacred to the hero who conducted the god to Sparta. Not far fromthe Dionysion was a temple of Zeus Euanemos, giver of gentle breezes;and immediately to the right the heroon of Pleuron. On the summit of ahill at a little distance stood a temple of the Argive Hera, togetherwith the fane erected in honour of Hera Hypercheiria, built by order ofthe oracle after the subsiding of an inundation of the Eurotas. In thisedifice was a very ancient wooden statue of Aphrodite Hera. Close to theroad which passed to the right of the hill was a statue of Etymoclesmany times victor in the Olympic games. In descending towards theEurotas you beheld a wooden statue of Athena Alea, and a little abovethe banks a temple of Zeus Plousios. On the further side of the riverwere temples of Ares and Asclepios.
Footnote 301:
Σκιὰς, τὸ ᾠδεῖον ἐκαλεῖτο τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων κατὰ τὴν ἀρχαίαν φωνήν. κ. τ. λ.—Etym. Mag. 717. 36. seq.
Footnote 302:
Cf. Plut. Agis, § 10.
Once more retracing our steps to the Agora, and quitting it by a streetleading towards the west, the first remarkable object that struck theeye was the cenotaph of Brasidas, and a little beyond it a spacious andbeautiful theatre of white marble.[303] Directly opposite were the tombsof Leonidas and Pausanias, and near these a cippus, on which wereengraved the names of the heroes who fell at Thermopylæ, together withthose of their fathers. At this spot games were annually celebrated, inwhich none but Spartans were allowed to contend for the prizes.Discourses were likewise here pronounced in honour of the dead. Themultitudes at these games required a large clear space in which tocongregate, and this I suppose to have been the place called Theomelida,opening on both sides of the road, and extending as far as the tombs ofthe Agid Kings, and the Lesche of the Crotoniatæ. Near this edificestood the temple of Asclepios, the tomb of Tænaros, and temples ofPoseidon Hippocourios, and Artemis Ægeinea. Turning back towards theLesche, probably round the foot of the Hill of the Issorion,[304] youobserved on the slope of the eminence towards the Tiasa the temple ofArtemis Limnæa the Britomartis of the Cretans, somewhere in the vicinityof which were temples of Thetis, Chthonian Demeter, and Olympian Zeus.
Footnote 303:
This theatre, as Mr. Douglas has observed, is the only remaining fragment of ancient Sparta, the other ruins still visible on its site, belonging all to Roman times.—Essay on certain Points of Resemblance between the Ancient and Modern Greeks, p. 23.
Footnote 304:
Ἰσσώριον, ὄρος τῆς Λακωνικῆς ἀφ’ οὗ ἡ Ἄρτεμις Ἰσσωρία.—Steph. Byz. in v. 426. d. with the note of Berkel. Cf. Hesych. in v. Polyæn. Strat. ii. 1. 14. Plut. Agesil. § 32.
Starting from the crossroad at the north-west foot of the Issorion, onthe way to the Dromos, the first edifice which presented itself on theleft was the monument of Eumedes, one of the sons of Hippocoon. A littlefurther on was a statue of Heracles, and close at hand, near theentrance to the Dromos, stood the ancient palace of Menelaos, inhabitedin Pausanias’ time by a private individual. Within the Dromos itselfwere two gymnasia. This was the most remarkable building in the westernpart of the city, from whence branched off many streets, while numerouspublic structures clustered round it; to the north, for example, thetemples of the Dioscuri, of the Graces, of Eileithyia, of ApolloCarneios, and Artemis Hegemona: on the east the temple of AsclepiosAgnitas, and a trophy erected by Polydeukes after his victory overLynceus. On the west towards the Platanistas were statues of theDioscuri Apheterii, and a little further was the heroon of Alcon, nearwhich stood the temple of Poseidon Domatites, near the bridge leadingover to the island covered with plane trees. On the other handapparently of the road a statue was erected to Cynisca, daughter ofArchidamos, the first lady who ran horses at Olympia.
Along the banks of the Tiasa from the Dromos to a line extendingwestward from the temple of Dictynna to the upper bridge leading to thePlatanistas, lay a road adorned with numerous public buildings, amongothers a portico, behind which were two remarkable monuments, the heroaof Alcimos and Enaræphoros. Immediately beyond were the heroa of Dorceusand Sebros, and the fountain Dorcea flowing between them. The whole ofthis little quarter obtained from the latter hero the name of Sebrion.To the right of the last mentioned heroon was the monument of the poetAlcman;[305] beyond which lay the temple of Helen, and near it that ofHeracles close to the modern wall.
Footnote 305:
Ἀλκμάν, Λάκων ἀπὸ Μεσσόας.—He was an erotic poet said to have been descended from servile parents.—Suid. i. p. 178. ed. Port.
Hard by a narrow pathway, striking into the fields from the road leadingeastward from the Dromos, was the temple of Athena Axiopænos, said tohave been erected by Heracles.
Leaving the Dromos by another road running in a south-easterly directionthrough the midst of the quarter of the Ægidæ, we behold, on one hand,the temples of Athena and Hipposthenes, and directly opposite thelatter, a statue of Ares in chains. At a short distance beyond these wasthe Lesche Pœcile, and in front of it, the heroon of Cadmos son ofa*genor, those of two of his descendants, Œolycos and his son Ægeus, andthat of Amphilocos. Farther on lay the temples of Hera Ægophagos, socalled because she-goats were sacrificed to her, and at the foot of theAcropolis, near the theatre, the temples of Poseidon Genethlios, oneither side of which probably stood an heroon, the one sacred toCleodæos son of Hyllos, and the other to Œbalos.
We must now return to the Lesche Pœcile, and following a road skirtinground the hill of the Acropolis, towards the east-south-east, pass bythe monument of Teleclos, and the most celebrated of all the temples ofAsclepios at Sparta, situated close to the Boonetos. Traversing thestreet Aphetæ and proceeding along the road leading to the Limnæ, thefirst temple on the left was that of Aphrodite, on a hill, celebrated byPausanias for having two stories. The statue of the goddess was hereseated, veiled and fettered. A little beyond was the temple of Hilaeiraand Phœbe wherein were statues of the two goddesses, the countenance ofone of which was painted and adorned by one of the priestesses accordingto the later rules of art, but warned by a dream she suffered the otherto remain in its archaic simplicity. Here was preserved an egg adornedwith fillets and suspended from the roof, said to have been broughtforth by Leda. In a building near at hand, certain women wove annually atunic for the Apollo of Amyclæ, from which circ*mstance the edificeitself obtained the name of Chiton. Next followed the house of theTyndaridæ, the heroa of Chilon and Athenæus, and the temple of Lycurgus,with the tomb of Eucosmos behind it. Near them was the altar of Lathriaand Anaxandra, and directly opposite the monuments of Theopompos andEurybiades and Astrabacos. In an island in the marshes were the templeand altar of Artemis Orthia, and the fane of Eileithyia.
On the road leading from the Agora to Amyclæ[306] there were fewremarkable monuments. One only, the temple of the Graces, is mentionednorth of the Tiasa, and beyond it the Hippodrome; towards the west thetemple of the Tyndaridæ near the road, and that of Poseidon Gaiouchostowards the river.[307]
Footnote 306:
Οὗ τὸ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος ἱερόν. Strab. viii. 5. t. ii. p. 185.
Footnote 307:
Xen. Hellen. vi. 5. 30.
Let us now consider the proofs on which the above description is based.Pausanias informs us that the citadel was the highest of the hills ofSparta. Colonel Leake observes that the eminence found in the quarterwhich I have assigned to the Cynosuræ is equal in height to thatimmediately behind the theatre; but the former is pointed and appears tohave retained its natural shape, while the summit of the latter has beenlevelled for building. Now if its height be still equal, it must havebeen considerably greater before the levelling process took place.Therefore the hill behind the theatre was the Acropolis. Admitting this,the spacious flat or hollow immediately at its foot on the south-eastside must have been the Agora,[308] for that the Agora was close to thecitadel is clear from history, which represents Lycurgus and kingCharilaos escaping thither from the market-place.[309] Again we knowfrom Pausanias that it lay a little to the east of the theatre, havingnothing between them but the cenotaph of Brasidas. The position of theAgora being thus fixed beyond dispute, we arrive with certainty at thedirection of the four great streets that diverge from it; for, first, weknow that the road to the Issorion lay towards the west; the road toAmyclæ towards the south. The street called Skias terminated at theextremity of the city between two small hills. These two hills are stillthere on the brink of the high ground overlooking the valley of theEurotas on the east. This therefore was the direction of the Skias. Asan additional proof, it may be mentioned that the temple of HeraHypercheiria was erected in commemoration of the subsiding of aninundation of the Eurotas, which shows it must have been somewherenearly within reach of the waters of that stream. For the street Aphetæno direction is left but that towards the north-west or the north-east;but the latter led to the temple of Artemis Orthia in the Limnæ, theformer to the temple of Dictynna. The street Aphetæ led therefore to thenorth-west, no other road being mentioned but that leading from MountThornax over the bridge Babyx, which was not the street called Aphetæ.Thus we have the direction of every one of the great streets of Spartaincontrovertibly determined. Proceed we now to establish the position,with respect to the citadel, of each of the five tribes who occupied asmany quarters of the city. First we learn from Pausanias that thePitanatæ inhabited the quarter round the Issorion:[310] from Pindar[311]and his scholiast that they dwelt likewise near the banks of theEurotas. They possessed therefore the whole southern quarter of thecity.[312] As the Limnatæ obtained their name from the marshes nearwhich they lived, the position of the Limnæ determined by the chain ofreasoning given above, proves them to have occupied the eastern quarterof the city directly opposite the temple of Artemis Orthia. That thetribe of the Ægidæ inhabited all that part extending in one directionfrom the Issorion to the Dromos, and in the other from the banks of theTiasa to the Boonetos, may almost with certainty be inferred from thecirc*mstance that the tomb of Ægeus, their founder, was situated in thisquarter, close to the Lesche Pœcile. The quarter of the Mesoatæ lay inthe north-west, between the Dromos and the temple of Dictynna; for herewas found the tomb of Alcman who belonged to that tribe. All the rest ofthe site being thus occupied, there remains only for the tribe of theCynosuræ that part lying between the road to Thornax and the temple ofDictynna, where accordingly we must suppose them to have lived.
Footnote 308:
Plut. Lycurg. § 11. Lacon. Apoph. Lycurg. 7.
Footnote 309:
Plut. Lycurg. § 5.
Footnote 310:
Polyæn. Stratag. ii. 1. 14. with the notes of Casaub. and Maasvic.
Footnote 311:
Olymp. vi. 28. Cf. Spanheim, ad Callim. in Dian. 172.
Footnote 312:
Cf. Athen. i. 57.
With respect to the bridge Babyx, if bridge it really was, it appearsvery difficult[313] to believe that it spanned the Tiasa, though westill find massive ruins of arches in the channel of that stream. Thereseems to be much stronger reason for supposing it to have been thrownover the Eurotas, where the road from the Isthmus traversed it.[314] Weshould then understand by the oracle which commanded Lycurgus toassemble his people between Babyx and Cnacion,[315] that he was togather them together anywhere within the precincts of the city.Accordingly we find in the time of Lycurgus, that the Agora in thecentre of Sparta was the place were the Apellæ[316] were held. This,too, is evident, by the sense in which the matter was understood byPlutarch, who, speaking of the victory of the Bœotians over the Spartansat Tegyra, observes, that by this event it was made manifest that notthe Eurotas, or the space between Babyx and Cnacion alone produced braveand warlike men.[317] Now it appears to me, that a few meadows withoutthe city on which assemblies of the people were occasionally convenedcould never be said to produce these people. I have therefore supposedthat Babyx was the bridge by which travellers coming from the Isthmusentered Sparta.
Footnote 313:
This, however, is the opinion of Mr. Müller, Dor. ii. 456.
Footnote 314:
See the passage in which Xenophon (v. 5. 27), describes the advance of the Thebans upon Sparta.
Footnote 315:
Plut. Lycurg. § 6.
Footnote 316:
Gœttl. ad Aristot. Pol. Excurs. i. p. 464.
Footnote 317:
Pelop. § 17.
BOOK II. EDUCATION.
CHAPTER I. THEORY OF EDUCATION.—BIRTH OF CHILDREN.—INFANTICIDE.
Whether on education the Greeks thought more wisely than we do ornot,[318] they certainly contemplated the subject from a more elevatedpoint of view. They regarded it as the matrix in which futuregenerations are fashioned, and receive that peculiar temperament andcharacter belonging to the institutions that presided at their birth.Their theories were so large as to comprehend the whole developement ofindividual existence, from the moment when the human germ is quickenedinto life until the grave closes the scene, and in many cases lookedstill further; for the rites of initiation and a great part of theirethics had reference to another world. On this account we find theirlegislators possessed by extreme solicitude respecting the character ofthose teachers into whose hands the souls of the people were to beplaced, to receive the first principles of good or evil, to beinvigorated, raised, and purified by the former, or by the latter to beperverted, or precipitated down the slopes of vice and effeminacy, bywhich nations sink from freedom to servitude. Among them, moreover, itwas never matter of doubt, whether the light of knowledge should beallowed to stream upon the summits of society only, or be suffered todescend into its lower depths and visit the cottages of the poor.Whatever education had to impart was, in most states, imparted to allthe citizens, as far as their leisure or their capacity would permitthem to receive it. The whole object, indeed, of education among theGreeks was to create good citizens, from which it has by some beeninferred that they confined their views to the delivering of secularinstruction. But this is to take a narrow and ignorant view of thesubject, since religion was not only an element of education butregarded as of more importance than all its other elements takentogether. For it had not escaped the Hellenic legislators, that in manycirc*mstances of life man is placed beyond the reach and scrutiny oflaws and public opinion, where he must be free to act according to thedictates of conscience, which, if not rightly trained, purified, andrendered clearsighted by religion, will often dictate amiss. It is ofthe utmost moment, therefore, that in these retired situations manshould not consider himself placed beyond the range of every eye, and sobe tempted to lay the foundation of habits which, begun in secrecy, maysoon acquire boldness to endure the light and set the laws themselves atdefiance. Accordingly over those retired moments in which man at firstsight appears to commune with himself alone, religion was called in toteach that there were invisible inspectors, who registered, not only theevil deeds and evil words they witnessed, but even the evil thoughts andemotions of the heart, the first impulses to crime in the lowest abyssesof the mind. Consistently with this view of the subject, we discovereverywhere in Greek history and literature traces of an almostpuritanical scrupulousness in whatever appeared to belong to religion,so that in addressing the Athenians St. Paul himself was induced toreproach them with the excesses of their devotional spirit, whichdegenerated too frequently into superstition. But the original designwith which this spirit was cultivated was wise and good, its intentionbeing to rescue men from the sway of their inferior passions,—from envy,from avarice, from selfishness, and to inspire them with faith in theirown natural dignity by representing their actions as of sufficientimportance to excite the notice, provoke the anger, or conciliate thefavour of the immortal gods. This religion, which base and sordid mindsregard as humiliating to humanity, was by Grecian lawgivers and foundersof states contemplated as a kind of holy leaven designed by God himself,to pervade, quicken, and expand society to its utmost dimensions.
Footnote 318:
Dion Chrysostom tells a curious story respecting a blunder of the Athenians on this subject. Apollo once commanding them, if they desired to become good citizens, to put whatever was most beautiful in the ears of their sons, they bored one of the lobes, and inserted a gold earring, not comprehending the meaning of the God. But this ornament would better have suited their daughters or the sons of Lydians or Phrygians; but for the offspring of Greeks, nothing could have been intended by the God but education and reason, the possessors of which would probably become good men, and the preservers of their country.—Orat. xxxii. t. i. p. 653. sqq.—The popular maxim that knowledge is power may be traced to Plato.—De Rep. v. t. vi. p. 268.
The question which commands so much attention in modern states, viz.whether education should be national and uniform, likewise much occupiedthe thoughts of ancient statesmen, and it is known that in most casesthey decided in the affirmative. It may however be laid down as anaxiom, that among a phlegmatic and passive-minded people, where thegovernment has not yet acquired its proper form and developement, theestablishment of a national system of education, complete in all itsparts and extending to the whole body of the citizens, must beinfallibly pernicious. For such as the government is at the commencementsuch very nearly will it continue, as was proved by the example of Creteand Sparta. For the Cretan legislators, arresting the progress ofsociety at a certain point by the establishment of an iron system ofeducation, before the popular mind had acquired its full growth andexpansion, dwarfed the Cretan people completely, and by preventing theirkeeping pace with their countrymen rendered them in historical timesinferior to all their neighbours. In Sparta, again, the form of politygiven to the state by Lycurgus, wonderful for the age in which it wasframed, obtained perpetuity solely by the operation of his pædonomicalinstitutions. The imperfection, however, of the system arose from thiscirc*mstance, that the Spartan government was framed too early in thecareer of civilisation. Had its lawgiver lived a century or two later,he would have established his institutions on a broader and moreelevated basis, so that they would have remained longer nearly on alevel with the progressive institutions of neighbouring states. But hefixed the form of the Spartan commonwealth when the general mind ofGreece had scarcely emerged from barbarism; and as the rigid andunyielding nature of his laws forbade any great improvement, Spartacontinued to bear about her in the most refined ages of Greeceinnumerable marks of the rude period in which she had risen. From thiscirc*mstance flowed many of her crimes and misfortunes. Forbidden tokeep pace with her neighbours in knowledge and refinement, which byrendering them inventive, enterprising, and experienced, elevated themto power, she was compelled, in order to maintain her ground, to haverecourse to astuteness, stratagem, and often to perfidy.
The Spartan system, it is well known, made at first, and for some ages,little or no use of books. But this, at certain stages of society, wasscarcely an evil;[319] for knowledge can be imparted, virtues implantedand cherished, and great minds ripened to maturity without their aid.The teacher, in this case, rendered wise by meditation and experience,takes the place of a book, and by oral communication, by precept, and byexample, instructs, and disciplines, and moulds his pupil into what hewould have him be. By this process both are benefited. The preceptor’smind, kept in constant activity, acquires daily new force and expansion;and the pupil’s in like manner. In a state, therefore, like that ofSparta, in the age of Lycurgus, it was possible to acquire all necessaryknowledge without books, of which indeed very few existed. Butafterwards, when the Ionian republics began to be refined and elevatedby philosophy and literature, Sparta, unable to accompany them, fellinto the background: still preserving, however, her warlike habits shewas enabled on many occasions to overawe and subdue them.
Footnote 319:
Montagne relates, in his Travels (t. iii. p. 51), an instance of how the mind may be cultivated, particularly in poetry, by persons ignorant of the art of reading and writing. His Lucchese improvisatrice may be regarded as a match for the ancient rhapsodists.
Among the Athenians,[320] though knowledge was universally diffused,there existed, properly speaking, no system of national education. Thepeople, like their state, were in perpetual progress, aiming atperfection, and sometimes approaching it; but precipitated by the excessof their intellectual and physical energies into numerous and constantlyrecurring errors. While Sparta, as we have seen, remained content withthe wisdom indigenous to her soil, scanty and imperfect as it was,Athens converted herself into one vast mart, whither every man who hadanything new to communicate hastened eagerly, and found the sure rewardof his ingenuity. Philosophers, sophists, geometricians, astronomers,artists, musicians, actors, from all parts of Greece and her mostdistant colonies, flocked to Athens to obtain from its quick-sighted,versatile, impartial, and most generous people that approbation which inthe ancient world constituted fame. Therefore, although the lawsregulated the material circ*mstances of the schools and gymnasia,prescribed the hours at which they should be opened and closed, andwatched earnestly over the morals both of preceptors and pupils, therewas a constant indraught of fresh science, a perpetually increasingexperience and knowledge of the world, and, consequent thereupon, adeep-rooted conviction of their superiority over their neighbours, animpatience of antiquated forms, and an audacious reliance on their ownpowers and resources which betrayed them into the most hazardous schemesof ambition.
Footnote 320:
Cf. Plat. De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 1.
But, by pushing too far their literary and philosophical studies, theAthenians were induced at length to neglect the cultivation of the artsof war, which they appeared to regard as a low and servile drudgery. Andthis capital error, in spite of all their acquirements and achievementsin eloquence and philosophy,—in spite of their lofty speculation and“style of gods,” brought their state to a premature dissolution; whileSparta, with inferior institutions, and ignorance which even thechildren at Athens would have laughed at, was enabled much longer topreserve its existence, from its impassioned application to the use ofarms, aided, perhaps, by a stronger and more secluded position. Fromthis it appears that of all sciences that of war is the chiefest, since,where this is cultivated, a nation may maintain its independence withoutthe aid of any other; whereas the most knowing, refined, and cultivatedmen, if they neglect the use of arms, will not be able to stand theirground against a handful even of barbarians. They mistake, too, who lookupon literature and the sciences as a kind of palladium againstbarbarism,[321] for a whole nation may read and write, like theinhabitants of the Birman empire, without being either civilised orwise; and may possess the best books and the power to read them, withoutbeing able to profit by the lessons of wisdom they contain, as is provedby the example of the Greeks and Romans, who perished rather from asurfeit of knowledge than from any lack of instruction. But it is time,perhaps, to quit these general speculations, and proceed to develope, asfar as existing monuments will enable us, the several systems ofeducation which prevailed in the different parts of Greece.
Footnote 321:
Notwithstanding that Plato regards knowledge as the medicine of the soul.—Crit. t. vii. p. 145.—Cf. t. viii. p. 2. seq.—Aristot. Ethic. vi. 13.
Among Hellenic legislators the care of children commenced before theirbirth. Their mothers were subject while pregnant to the operation ofcertain rules; their food and exercises were regulated, and in mostcases the laws, or at least the manners, required them to lead asedentary, inactive, and above all a tranquil life.[322] Physicians,guided by experience, prescribed a somewhat abstemious diet; and winewas prohibited, or only permitted to be taken with water, which, wherereason is consulted, we find to be the practice at the present day. ButLycurgus, in the article of exercise, gave birth to, or, at least,sanctioned, customs wholly different.[323] Even while _enceinte_ hiswomen were required to be abroad, engaged in their usual athleticrecreations, eating as before and drinking as before.
Footnote 322:
Plat. de Legg. l. vii. t. viii. pp. 4. et 11.—During the pregnancy of women great care was taken not to bring into the house the wood of the ostrya or carpinus ostrys, the appearance of which was ominous of difficult births, or even of sudden death. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 10. 3.
Footnote 323:
Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. i. 3. Perizon. ad Ælian. Var. Hist. x. 13.
On this occasion, too, as on all others, the deep-rooted piety of thenation displayed itself. Prayers and sacrifices were habitually offeredup by all married persons for children, as afterwards by Christianladies to the saints;[324] and these of course were not discontinued,when it appeared by unequivocal signs that their desires had begun toreceive their fulfilment. What the divinities were whom on theseoccasions the Athenian matrons invoked under the name of _Tritopatores_,it seems difficult to determine. Demon in Suidas[325] supposes them tobe the winds; but Philochoros, the most learned of ancient writers onthe antiquities of Attica, imagined them to be the first three sons ofHelios and Gaia. According to some they were called Cottos or Coros,Gyges or Gyes, and Briareus; according to others Amalcides, Protocles,and Protocleon, the watchers and guardians of the wind. There areauthors, moreover, by whom they have been confounded with the Dii Kabyriof Samothrace.
Footnote 324:
Theodoret. iv. 921.
Footnote 325:
_v._ Τριτοπ. t. ii. p. 947. b. seq. Cf. Siebel. ad Frag. Philoch. p. 11. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 264. Lect. Att. iii. 1. Vales. in Harpoc. p. 223. seq.
During the period of their confinement women were supposed to be underthe protection of Eileithyia. This goddess, who by Olen the Lycian wasconsidered older than Kronos,[326] had the honour as certain mythicallegends relate, of being the mother of love,[327] though several ancientauthors appear to have confounded her with Pepromene or Fate, otherswith Hera, and others again with Artemis or the moon. The traditions ofthe mythology respecting this divinity were various. Her worship seemsto have made its first appearance among the Greeks in the island ofDelos, whither she is said to have come from the country of theHyperboreans, to lend her aid to Leto, when beneath the palm tree, whichZeus caused to spring up over her,[328] she gave birth to the gods ofnight and day. From that time forward she was held in veneration by theDelians, who in her honour offered up sacrifices, chaunting the hymns ofOlen, whence we may infer she was a Pelasgian deity.
Footnote 326:
Paus. viii. 21. 3.
Footnote 327:
Paus. ix. 27. 2. Cf. Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 23.
Footnote 328:
Callim. ii. 4.
From thence her name and worship were diffused through the other islandsand states of Hellas; though the Cretans pretended that she was born atAmnisos in the Knossian territory, and was a daughter of Hera. TheAthenians, who erected a temple to Eileithyia appeared to favour bothtraditions, since of the two statues which were found in her fane themore ancient was said to have been brought from Delos by Erisicthon,while the second, dedicated by Phædra, came from Crete. Among theAthenians, alone, as an indication of the national modesty, the woodenimages of this mysterious divinity were significantly veiled to thetoes.[329]
Footnote 329:
Paus. i. 18. 5. Cf. Keightley, Mythol. p. 193. In Arcadia, also, this goddess was so closely draped that nothing was visible but the countenance, fingers, and toes.—Paus. vii. 23. 5.
The simple delicacy of remoter ages required women to be attended, whilebecoming mothers, by individuals of their own sex. But the contrarypractice, now general among civilised nations, prevailed early atAthens, where the study of medicine, in which the accoucheur’s[330] artis included, was prohibited to women and slaves. The consequences bearstronger testimony to the refined taste and truly feminine feelings ofthe Athenian ladies than a thousand panegyrics. Numbers, rather thansubmit to the immodest injunctions of fashion, declined all aid, andperished in their harems: observing which, and moved strongly by thedesire to preserve the lives of her noble-minded countrywomen, a femalecitizen named Agnodice, disguised as a man, acquired a competentknowledge of the theory and practice of physic in the medical school ofHerophilos; she then confided her secret to the women who universallydetermined to avail themselves of her services, and in consequence herpractice became so extensive that the jealousy of the otherpractitioners was violently excited. In revenge, therefore, as she stillmaintained her disguise, they preferred an accusation against her in thecourt of Areiopagos as a general seducer. To clear herself Agnodice madeknown her sex, upon which the envious Æsculapians prosecuted her underthe provisions of the old law. In behalf of their benefactress theprincipal gentlewomen appeared in court, and mingling the highesttestimony in favour of Agnodice with many bitter reproaches, they notonly obtained her acquittal, but the repeal of the obnoxious law, andpermission for any free woman to become an accoucheuse.[331]
Footnote 330:
The duties of an accoucheuse are briefly enumerated by Max. Tyr. Dissert. xxviii. p. 333. Cf. Pignor. de Serv. 184.
Footnote 331:
Hygin. Fab. 274.
Mention is made by ancient writers of several rude and hardy tribes,whose women, like those of Hindùstân at the present day, stood in verylittle need of the midwife’s aid. Thus Varro,[332] speaking of the roughshepherdesses of Italy, observes that among the countrywomen of Illyria,bringing forth children was regarded as a slight matter; for that,stepping aside from their work in the fields, they would returnpresently with an infant in their arms, having first bathed it in somefountain or running stream, appearing rather to have found, than givenbirth to, a child. Nor are the manners of these uncultivated people atall altered in modern times, as appears from an anecdote related toPietro Vittore,[333] by Francesco Sardonati, professor of Latin atRagusa, who said that he saw a woman go out empty-handed to a forest forwood, and return shortly afterwards with a bundle on her head and anew-born infant in her arms. At Athens, however, where the women werepeculiarly tender and delicate, the young mother remained within doorsfull six weeks,[334] when the festival of the fortieth day wascelebrated, after which she went forth, as our ladies do to be churched,to offer up sacrifices and return thanks in the temple of Artemis orsome other divinity.
Footnote 332:
De Re Rust. ii. 10.
Footnote 333:
Var. Lect. xxxiv. 2.
Footnote 334:
Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 260. sqq. Censor. de Die Natali. c. 11.
New-born infants, when designed to be reared, were at Athens and in therest of Greece bathed in cold water: at Sparta in wine, with the view ofproducing convulsions and death should the child be feeble, whereas,were its constitution strong and vigorous, it would thus they imagined,“acquire a greater degree of firmness, and get a temper in proportion,as Potter[335] expresses it, like steel in the quenching.”Swaddling-bands[336] also, in use throughout the rest of Greece, werebanished from Sparta, which led the way therefore to that improvedsystem of infant management advocated by Rousseau, Lacépède andothers,[337] and now generally adopted in this country, though butpartially in France. The ceremonies and customs of the Greeks were akind of symbolical language, many times containing important meaning,and always perhaps indicative of the character and familiar feelings ofthe race. Much stress was laid on the thing wherein the infant wasplaced upon its entrance into the world. This, among the Athenians,consisted of a wrapper adorned with an embroidered figure of theGorgon’s head, the device represented on the shield of Athena, tutelardivinity of the state. From the beginning every citizen seemed thus tobe placed under the immediate shelter of that goddess’s ægis whichshould be extended over him in peace and in war. In other parts ofGreece the child’s first bed, and too frequently his last, was ashield.[338] In accordance with this custom we find Alcmena cradling hertwin boys Heracles and Iphicles in Amphytrion’s buckler; and the samepractice prevailed, as might have been expected, at Sparta, where warconstituted to men the sole object of life.[339] Elsewhere other symbolsspoke to the future sense rather than the present of the new citizen. Inagricultural countries the military symbol was replaced by a winnowingvan, not unfrequently of gold or other costly materials;[340] though itmay be doubted whether the word so rendered meant not rather a cradle inthe form of that rustic implement.
Footnote 335:
Antiq. ii. 320.
Footnote 336:
Coray, ad Hippoc. de Aër. et Loc. ii. 309.
Footnote 337:
Even so early as the age of Montaigne the necessity of some change was felt. “Les liaisons et emmaillottements des enfans ne sont non plus necessaires.” He then alludes to the practice of the Spartan nurses.—Essais, ii. 12. However, in certain habits of body, swaddling is not merely useful, but necessary: as Hippocrates remarks in his account of the Scythians (de Aër. et Loc. § 101), and as his able commentator, Coray, confirms by example. _ubi sup._
Footnote 338:
Theoc. Eidyll. xxiv. 4. ἢ τὰν ἢ ἐπὶ τὰς. Plut. Lacæn. Apophtheg. t. ii. p. 187.
Footnote 339:
Nonn. Dionys. xli. 168. seq. Sch. Thucyd. ii. 39.
Footnote 340:
Callim. Hymn. in Jov. 48.
In another custom, long on these occasions observed, we discern tracesof that serpent-worship which at different epochs diffused itself sowidely over the world. Among opulent and noble families at Athensnew-born children were laid on golden amulets in the form of dragons bywhich they were supposed to commemorate Athena’s delivery ofErichthonios to the care of two guardians of that description.[341]
Footnote 341:
Eurip. Ion. 15. sqq.—There were certain amulets, too, called περίαπτα which superstitious mothers hung about the necks of their children to defend them from fascination and the evil eye. Pollux, iv. 182. Vict. in Arist. Ethic. Nicom. p. 42.
But under certain circ*mstances, instead of the joy and gladness bywhich the noble and the great are greeted on their entrance into theworld, the birth of a child was, as in Thrace,[342] an event fraughtwith sorrow and misery. It announced in fact the approach of an enemy,of one who, if he survived, must snatch from them a portion of whatalready would scarcely sustain life. Together with the announcement ofhis birth, therefore, came the awful consciousness that war must be madeon him—that he must in short be cast forth, a scape-goat for the sins ofsociety, not for his own—that his parents who should have cherished him,whose best solace he should have been, must steel their hearts and closefast their ears against the voice of nature, and become hisexecutioners. The poor-laws of Greece, or rather their substitutes forpoor-laws, were exceedingly imperfect, and foundling hospitals had notbeen introduced. They got rid of their surplus population, as manynations still do, by murder; for infanticide, under various forms, hasmore or less prevailed in all civilised countries, if the term civilisedcan properly be applied to nations among whom crimes so demoralising arehabitually perpetrated. No doubt the sullen reluctance of a father toimbrue his hands in the blood of his child produced daily many aheart-rending scene; no doubt the sting of want must have been keenlyfelt before the habit of slaughter was confirmed;—but the fashion onceset, children were thrown into an earthen pot and exposed in mountainousand desert places to perish of cold, or fall a prey to carnivorousbirds[343] or wolves, as coolly as they are murdered by their young andfrail mothers in our own Christian land.
Footnote 342:
Sext. Empir. p. 186.
Footnote 343:
Vict. (Var. Lect. ii. 3) has an useful chapter on the exposing of infants, in which he has collected several valuable testimonies.
Under all circ*mstances, however, the parents thus criminal are objectsof pity. Misery is blind, and crime is blind. But what shall we say tothose priests of humanity, those sacred and reverend interpreters ofnature,—the philosophers who come forward to sanction and justify thepractice? It would be criminal to disguise the fact, that both Plato andAristotle, the great representatives of the wisdom of the Paganworld,[344] conceived infanticide, under certain circ*mstances, to beallowable. Near, therefore, as the former stood to the truths ofChristianity, there was still a cloud between him and them. What he saw,he saw through a glass darkly. Christ had not then stamped the seal ofdivinity upon human nature, had not shed abroad that light by whichalone we discover the true features of crime, no less than the truefeatures of holiness. Philosophy is beautiful; but with the beauty ofone involuntarily polluted. Religion alone, breathing of heaven, radiantwith light, reflected on its whole form from the face of God, is lovelyaltogether without spot or blemish. The Greeks wanting this guide wentastray. They looked at the question of population as coarseutilitarians,—all but the gross, unintellectual Thebans, who, relying onthe vast fertility of their soil, or led by some better instinct, onthis point soared high above their cultivated neighbours, an example ofhow the foolish things of this world, even in the unregenerate state ofnature, may sometimes confound the wise. Among the Tyrrhenians,[345]likewise, a people of Pelasgian origin, infanticide was unknown,probably because among them it was accounted no disgrace to be theparents of illegitimate offspring; indeed the sense of shame could not,in any case, be very keen among a people whose female slaves servednaked at table, and where even the ladies appeared at publicentertainments in the same state, drinking bumpers and joining freely inthe conversation of the men.
Footnote 344:
Plato, de Rep. v. § 9. p. 359. Stallb. Aristot. Pol. vii. 16. Cf. Lips. Epist. ad Belg. Cent. 1. c. 85. with the work of Gerard Noodt, entitled “Julius Paulus,” in opp. Lugd. Bat. 1726. pp. 567, seq. 591. seq. Elmenhorst. ad Minuc. Felic. Octav. 289. ed. Ouzel.
Footnote 345:
Athen. xii. 14.
In the modern world to take the life of an infant is a capital offence,yet we see with how little fear or ceremony the law is set at nought. Itwill, therefore, readily be supposed that in those countries ofantiquity where neither law nor public opinion opposed the practice, butin some cases winked at, in others enjoined it, the number ofchild-murders must have been enormous. Sparta very naturally took thelead in this guilty course.[346] Here it was not permitted to privateindividuals to make away with their offspring stealthily, and with thosemarks of shame and compunction inseparable from individual guilt. Thestate monopolized the right to Herodise, and by sharing the criminalityamong great numbers appeared to silence the objections of conscience.Fathers were compelled by law to bring their new-born infants to certainofficers, old, grave men,[347] who held their sittings in the Lesche oftheir tribe, and after due deliberation determined on the claim of eachchild to live or die. By what rules they decided, rude and ignorant ofphysiology as they were, it would now be impossible positively toaffirm. Little skill no doubt had they in detecting the latent seeds ofrobustness and physical energy, still less those of splendid mentalendowments lurking in the crimson countenance of helpless infancy. Theywho might have proved the wise and good of their generation no doubtoften went instead of the mere animal. However, giving orders that thestrong and apparently healthy should be nursed, the weakly and delicate,often the noblest men, and the bravest soldiers, as witness LuciusSulla, were condemned to be cast like so many puppy dogs into theApothetæ, a deep cavern at the foot of Mount Taygetos. This den of deathrelieved the Spartans from the necessity of erecting workhouses orenacting poor-laws. The surplus population went into that pit.
Footnote 346:
Compare the coolness of Hase. p. 190. Müller. ii. 313. with Lamb. Bos. p. 212. seq. and the humane remarks of Ubbo Emmius iii. 83. Potter, too (ii. 326. sqq.), seems to disapprove of the practice.
Footnote 347:
Plut. Lycurg. 16.
To a certain extent, and in a mitigated form, the same practiceprevailed at Athens. Here, however, it was more a matter of custom thanof law, and in this respect differed materially[348] from the practiceof Sparta, that it was left entirely to the father to determine the fateof his children. Accordingly, the more cold-blooded had recourse tomurder, while the less atrocious exposed them in jars in desert placesto perish, or in the thronged and crowded quarters of the city in thehope that they might excite in others that compassion, which he, theirfather, denied them.[349] And humane individuals were often found who,like our Squire Allworthy, would sympathise with these desertedcreatures.[350] Numerous examples occur in the comic poets. In thesecases poverty was no doubt the motive, particularly when boys wereexposed; but even wealthy persons, reasoning like the Rajpoots ofnorthern India, would prefer exposing their daughters, to the care andexpense of educating them to an uncertain destiny. On these occasionsthe child was dressed and swaddled more or less carefully, placed in alarge earthen vessel called a chytra,[351]—the same in which soup wasmade, and which ought, therefore, to have awakened humaneassociations,—and laid at the mouth of some cave without the walls, orin such situations as I have above described. To this custom allusion ismade in the anecdote of a foundling, who amusing himself by rolling achytra before him with his foot, “What! exclaimed some one desirous ofreminding him of his origin, have you the impiety to kick your mother inthe belly?”[352]
Footnote 348:
Petit is of the contrary opinion, but his authorities by no means bear him out.—Legg. Att. lib. ii. tit. 4. p. 144.
Footnote 349:
Paulus, ap. Petit. ubi sup.
Footnote 350:
On the ceremony of adoption, see Potter ii. 335. Compare Lady Montague’s Works, iii. 12.
Footnote 351:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 289, or sometimes ὄστρακον, Ran. 1221.
Footnote 352:
Sch. Aristoph. Thesmoph. 509.
Sometimes when the object was rather to escape shame than to shun theexpense of education, rings, jewels, or other valuable tokens weresuspended about the child, or put along with it into the chytra.[353]And in the comic writers these usually assist in bringing about adiscovery. If they fell into the hands of the poor the costly marks ofnoble birth, always held in honour by the ignorant and needy, wouldperhaps tempt them to preserve and cherish the off-cast, as in the caseof Shakespeare’s Perdita, or in the event of death, would defray theexpenses of their funerals. Sometimes superstition operated on theirminds, urging them into a mock show of sharing their possessions withthe little wretches they abandoned.[354] Thus Sostrata, wife of Chremes,in the Self-tormentor delivered along with her little daughter to theperson who was to expose it, a ring from her own finger to be left withthe child, that should it die it might not be wholly deprived of allshare of their property. Such also is the behaviour of Creusa inEuripides; for Hermes, whom the poet introduces unfolding the argumentof the drama, relates that when the young princess laid her new-born sonto perish in the cavern, where he had been conceived, she took off hercostly ornaments and with them decked her devoted boy.[355]
Footnote 353:
Vict. Var. Lect. ii. 3. Aristot. Poet. xvi.
Footnote 354:
Terent. Heautontim. iv. i. 36 seq. Victor. Var. Lect. ii. 3. Cf. Ter. Hecyr. iii. 3. 31. sqq.
Footnote 355:
Eurip. Ion, 26. seq. Cf. 15. sqq.
From another part of the same play it may be inferred that children wereoften exposed on the steps of Apollo’s temple at Delphi, and nurtured bythe Pythoness.[356] Indeed the priestess, on discovering Ion, who hadbeen brought thither by Hermes from Attica, concludes at once that someunfortunate Delphian girl[357] is his mother, and adopts him under thatimpression. From the sequel it would appear that such children were theslaves of the temple, and under the immediate protection of thegod.[358]
Footnote 356:
Conf. Hypoth. Ion.
Footnote 357:
Δελφίδων τλαίη κόρη. κ. τ. λ. Ion, 44. sqq.
Footnote 358:
Ion, 53. sqq.
In the plain of Eleutheræ, near the temple of Dionysos, is a cavern, andclose beside it a fountain. Here, according to the poets, Antiopebrought forth Zethos and Amphion, twin sons of Zeus, whom, to concealher shame, she abandoned where they were born. The infants wereimmediately afterwards discovered by a shepherd, who, having bathed themin the neighbouring spring, took them to his cot, where they werebrought up as his own children.[359] The catastrophe of many an ancientplay was brought about by a discovery of the real characters of personswho had been exposed in infancy. Thus Œdipus, whose story is too wellknown to need repetition, was abandoned on Mount Cithæron. The daughtersof Phineus,[360] of whom nothing else has come down to us, had been castforth in infancy and preserved, and were afterwards brought to be put todeath on the same spot; by alluding to which their lives were saved. Thesons,[361] likewise, of Tyro, Peleus and Neleus, were deserted by theirmother, who placed them in a little bark or chest on the banks of theEnipeus, a circ*mstance which served afterwards to reveal the parentageof the twins. The story of Romulus and Remus, who were thus abandoned bytheir vestal mother, is familiar to every reader; and from the exampleof Moses recorded in the sacred volume, we may infer that the exposingof children was common in remoter ages in Egypt. Pindar,[362] inrelating the birth of the prophet Iamos, presents us with a poeticalpicture of one of these unhappy transactions. Evadne, daughter ofPoseidon by the river-nymph Pitana, dwelling at the court of Æpytos aking of Arcadia, going forth, like the daughters of the Patriarchs, todraw water from a fountain, is overtaken by her birth-pangs.
“Her crimsoned girdle down was flung, The silver ewer beside her laid, Amid a tangled thicket, hung With canopy of brownest shade; When forth the glorious babe she brought, His soul instinct with heavenly thought. Sent by the golden-tressed god, Near her the Fates indulgent stood, With Eileithyia mild. One short sweet pang released the child, And Iamos sprang forth to light. A wail she uttered; left him then, Where on the ground he lay; When straight two dragons came, With eyes of azure flame, By will divine awaked out of their den; And with the bees’ unharmful venom they Fed him, and nursled through the night and day. The king meanwhile had come From stony Pytho driving, and at home Did of them all after the boy inquire Born of Evadne; for, he said, the sire Was Phœbos, and that he Should of earth’s prophets wisest be, And that his generation should not fail. Not to have seen or heard him they avouched, Now five days born. But he, on rushes couched, Was covered up in that wide brambly maze; His delicate body met With yellow and empurpled rays From many a violet: And hence his mother bade him claim For ever this undying name.”
Footnote 359:
Paus. ii. 6. 4.—Cf. Casaub. Diatrib. in Dion. Chrysost. ii. 469.
Footnote 360:
Aristot. Poet. xvi. 8. cum not. Herm. p. 156.
Footnote 361:
Arist. Poet. xvi. 3.
Footnote 362:
Olymp. vi. 39. sqq. Diss. I give the passage as it is elegantly translated by Mr. Cary.
Generally, it would appear, illegitimate children were exposed in theneighbourhood of the Gymnasium, in the Cynosarges, because, as suggestedby Suidas, Heracles, who was himself a bastard, had a temple there.
On the subject of infanticide the Thebans,[363] as I have said,entertained juster sentiments than the rest of their countrymen. Bytheir institutions it was made a capital crime; but because severe lawswould not furnish the indigent with the means of supporting the childrenthey were forbidden to kill, they by another enactment provided fortheir maintenance. If a poor man found himself unable to support anaddition to his family, he was commanded to bear his childrenimmediately from the birth, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, to themagistrates, who disposed of them for a small sum to wealthy people inwant of children or servants: for, according to the Theban laws, theywho undertook the charge of foundlings, if they may be so called, wereentitled to their services in return for their nursing and education.
Footnote 363:
Ælian, Var. Hist. ii. 7.—Cf. Phil. Jud. de Legg. Special. p. 543.
Connected with infanticide is another subject equally important, but ofvery difficult treatment; that is practices to destroy the infant beforethe birth.[364] In modern nations all such offences are theoreticallyvisited with very severe punishment by the law, and public opinion sostrongly condemns them that no one solicitous of upholding a respectablecharacter in society will dare to be their apologist. It was otherwisein antiquity. The greatest dread of a superabundant population was inmany states felt, and led to customs and acts of a very nefariousnature; for some classes of which, if not for all, writers of highesteminence are found to plead. Thus Pliny,[365] commonly a great declaimerin behalf of virtue, admits that some artificial limit should be put tofemale productiveness; and Aristotle, despite his far nobler and moregenerous ethics, had on this point no loftier views. The regulationsalso of the Cretan Minos—but let them remain in the obscurity whichencompasses his entire code.
Footnote 364:
See in Pollux, ii. 7. and iv. 208. a whole vocabulary of terms connected with this practice. In his note on the former passage, p. 297. Iungermann refers to the Commentaries of Camerarius, c. 32. Cf. Comm. in Poll. p. 507. seq. p. 541. et 891. seq. Tim. Lex. Plat. v. ἐξαμβλοῦν. cum. not. Ruhnken. p. 62. ed. Lond. Plat. Theæt. t. iii. p. 190. Max. Tyr. xvi. p. 179. Jacob Gensius (Victimæ Humanæ, pt. ii. p. 247. seq.), enters fully into the question of abortion, which at Rome, according to Justin, was procured to preserve the shape. The same practice prevails in Formosa.—Richteren, Voyage de la Compagnie des Indes, v. p. 70. Compare Lactant. v. p. 278. Phocyl. v. 172. seq.
Footnote 365:
Hist. Nat. xxxix. 27. t. viii. p. 404. Franz. Impie satis, as Kühn observes in his note on Ælian, Var. Hist. ii. 7. Arist. Pol. vii. 15. 253. Gœttl. Cf. Foës. Œcon. Hippoc. vv. Ἀμβλῶσαι and ἀποφθορά.
Among the Romans several modern writers appear to suppose the existenceof more humane feelings, for which it would certainly have beendifficult to account. An ancient law attributed to Romulus has misledthem. By this it was enacted that no male child should be exposed; andthat of daughters the first should be permitted to live, while theothers having been brought up till they were three years old, might thenif judged expedient be destroyed.[366] The legislator, it is argued,knew human nature too well to fear that parents who had preserved theirchildren three years would after that take away their lives. But infantsexceedingly mutilated or deformed might be killed at once, having firstbeen shown to five neighbours, and these neighbours, like the overseersof murder at Lacedæmon, were probably lax in interpreting the law,which, acknowledging the principle, would easily tolerate variations inthe practice.[367] Be this, however, as it may, child-murder and childdropping were in imperial times of ordinary occurrence at Rome. Therewas in the Herb-market a pillar called the “Milky column,”[368] whitherfoundlings were brought to be suckled by public nurses, or to be fedwith milk—for the passage in Festus may be both ways interpreted, andtheir numbers would seem to have been considerable. The Christianwriters constantly object the practice of infanticide to the Romans.“You cast forth your sons,” says Tertullian,[369] “to be picked up andnourished by the first woman that passes.” And the poor, as Ambroseremarks, would desert and expose their little ones, and if caught denythem to be theirs.[370] Others adopted more decisive measures, andinstead of exposing strangled them.[371] Probably, moreover, it was theatrocious device of legislators to get rid of their superabundantpopulation that gave rise to the rite of child-sacrificing known to haveprevailed among the Phœnicians, who passed their children through fireto Moloch; and among their descendants the Carthaginians,[372] whooffered up infants to their gods, as at the present day our ownidolatrous subjects in the East cast forth their first-born infants onislands at the mouth of the Ganges, to be devoured by the alligators. InChina Christianity has performed for infancy the same humane duty as inancient Rome, as many of the converts made by the Jesuits consisted offoundlings whom they had picked up when cast forth by their parents toperish in the streets.
Footnote 366:
Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. i. 81; ii. 15.
Footnote 367:
Seneca, de Irâ, l. i. Apuleius Metam. x. where a husband gives command for the destruction of his daughter immediately on her birth.—Ap. Lips. Epist. ad Belgas, Cent. i. p. 818. seq.
Footnote 368:
Fest. v. Lactaria Columna.
Footnote 369:
Apolog. c. 9.
Footnote 370:
Hexæm. l. v. c. 18.
Footnote 371:
Arnob. cont. Gent. viii. Lactant. Instit. vi. 20. ap. Lips. Epist. ad Belg. 819.
Footnote 372:
Vid. Festus, v. Puelli.—In Syria children were sacrificed to the goddess, in like manner with other victims, by being tied up in a sack and then flung down from the lofty propylæa of her temple, their parents, in the mean while, overwhelming them with contumely, and protesting they were not children, but oxen.—Lucian. De Syriâ Deâ, § 58.
CHAPTER II. BIRTH-FEAST—NAMING THE CHILD.—NURSERY—NURSERY TALES—SPARTAN FESTIVAL.
To quit, however, this melancholy topic: while the poor, as we haveseen, were driven by despair to imbrue their hands in the blood of theiroffspring, their more wealthy neighbours celebrated the birth of achild[373] with a succession of banquets and rejoicings. Of these, thefirst was held on the fifth day from the birth, when took place theceremony called Amphidromia, confounded by some ancient authors with thefestival of the tenth day.[374] On this occasion the accoucheuse or thenurse, to whose care the child was now definitively consigned,[375]having purified her hands with water,[376] ran naked[377] with theinfant in her arms, and accompanied by all the other females of thefamily, in the same state, round the hearth,[378] which was regarded asthe altar of Hestia, the Vesta of the Romans. By this ceremony the childwas initiated in the rites of religion and placed under the protectionof the fire goddess, probably with the same view that infants arebaptized among us.
Footnote 373:
More particularly that of a son.—Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 307.
Footnote 374:
Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. 757.
Footnote 375:
Etym. Mag. 89. 54.
Footnote 376:
Suid. in v. t. i. p. 214. d.
Footnote 377:
Hesych. in. v. δρομιάφιον. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 20. Brunck, in Aristoph. Av. 922.
Footnote 378:
Harpocrat. in v. Cf. not. Gronov. p. 26.
Meanwhile the passer-by was informed that a fifth-day feast wascelebrating within, by symbols suspended on the street-door, which, incase of a boy, consisted in an olive crown; and of a lock of wool,alluding to her future occupations, when it was a girl.[379] Athenæus,apropos of cabbage, which was eaten on this occasion, as well as byladies “in the straw,”[380] as conducing to create milk, quotes a comicdescription of the Amphidromia from a drama of Ephippos, which provesthey were well acquainted with the arts of joviality.
“How is it No wreathed garland decks the festive door, No savoury odour creeps into the nostrils Since ’tis a birth-feast? Custom, sooth, requires Slices of rich cheese from the Chersonese, Toasted and hissing; cabbage too in oil, Fried brown and crisp, with smothered breast of lamb. Chaffinches, turtle-doves, and good fat thrushes Should now be feathered; rows of merry guests Pick clean the bones of cuttle-fish together, Gnaw the delicious feet of polypi, And drink large draughts of scarcely mingled wine.[381]”
Footnote 379:
Hesych. ap. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 20.
Footnote 380:
Potter, ii. 322.
Footnote 381:
Athen. ix. 10. Cf. Ludovic. Nonn. De Pisc. Esu. c. 7. p. 28.
A sacrifice[382] was likewise this day offered up for the life of thechild, probably to the god Amphidromos, first mentioned, and thereforesupposed to have been invented by Æschylus.[383] It has moreover beenimagined that the name was now imposed, and gifts were presented by thefriends and household slaves.[384]
Footnote 382:
Cf. Aristoph. Lys. 700. cum not. et schol.—Plaut. Truc. ii. 4. 69.
Footnote 383:
Semel. fr. 203. Well.
Footnote 384:
Meurs. Gr. Fer. p. 21.
But it was on the seventh day that the child generally received itsname,[385] amid the festivities of another banquet; though sometimesthis was deferred till the tenth.[386] The reason is supplied byAristotle.[387] They delayed the naming thus long, he says, because mostchildren that perish in extreme infancy die before the seventh day,which being passed they considered their lives more secure. The eighthday was chosen by other persons for bestowing the name, and, thisconsidered the natal day, was solemnized annually as the anniversary ofits birth, on which occasion it was customary for the friends of thefamily to assemble together, and present gifts to the child, consistingsometimes of the polypi and cuttle-fish[388] to be eaten at the feast.However the tenth day[389] appears to have been very commonly observed.Thus Euripides:[390]
“Say, who delighting in a mother’s claim Mid tenth-day feasts bestowed the ancestral name?”
Footnote 385:
Alex. ab Alex. 99. a.
Footnote 386:
Harpocrat. _v._ Ἑβδομ. p. 92. Cf. Lomeier, De Lustrat. Vet. Gentil. c. 27. p. 327. sqq.
Footnote 387:
Hist. Anim. vii. 12. Bekk.
Footnote 388:
Suid. v. Ἀμφιδ. t. i. p. 214. d.
Footnote 389:
Isæus, Pyrrh. Hæred. § 5. Dem. Adv. Bœot. §§ 6, 7. Lys. in Harpocrat. v. Ἀμφιδρομ. p. 19.
Footnote 390:
Ægei. Frag. i.
Aristophanes, too, on the occasion of naming his Bird-city, which ahungry poet pretends to have long ago celebrated, introducesPeisthetæros saying,
“What! have I not but now the sacrifice Of the tenth day completed and bestowed A name as on a child?”[391]
Footnote 391:
Aves, 922. seq.
Connected with this custom, there is a very good anecdote in Polyænos,from which Meursius[392] infers that there existed among the Greekssomething like the office of sponsor. Jason, tyrant of Pheræ, most ofwhose stratagems were played off against members of his own family, hada brother named Meriones, extremely opulent, but to the last degreeclose-fisted, particularly towards him. When at length a son was born toJason, he invited to the Nominalia many principal nobles of Thessaly,and among others his brother Meriones, who was to preside over theceremonies. In these he was probably occupied the whole day, duringwhich, under pretence, apparently, of providing some choice game for hisguests, the tyrant went out for a few hours with his dogs and usualfollowers. His real object, however, soon appeared. Making direct forPagasæ, where his brother’s castle stood, he stormed the place, andseizing on Meriones’ treasures, to the amount of twenty talents,returned in all speed to the banquet. Here, by way of showing hisfraternal consideration, he delegated to his brother the honour ofpouring forth the libations, and bestowing the name, which was thefather’s prerogative. But Meriones receiving from one of the tyrant’sattendants a hint of what had taken place, called the boy “Porthaon,” orthe “Plunderer.”[393] At Athens the feast and sacrifice took place atnight, with much pomp, and all the glee which such an occasion wascalculated to inspire.[394]
Footnote 392:
Græc. Feriat. p. 22.
Footnote 393:
Polyæn. Strat. vi. i. 6.
Footnote 394:
Suid. v. Δεκάτην ἑστιάσαν, t. i. p. 654. c. d.
On the bestowing of the name Potter’s information is particularly full.He is probably right, too, in his conjecture, that in most countries theprincipal object of calling together so great a number of friends towitness this ceremony was to prevent such controversies as might arisewhen the child came out into the business of the world. But at Athensthe Act of Registration[395] rendered such witnesses scarcely necessary.The right of imposing the name belonged, as hinted above, to the father,who likewise appears to have possessed the power afterwards to alter itif he thought proper. They were compelled to follow no exact precedent;but the general rule resembled one apparently observed by nature, which,neglecting the likeness in the first generation, sometimes reproduces itwith extraordinary fidelity in the second. Thus, the grandson inheritingoften the features, inherited also very generally the name of hisgrandfather,[396] and precisely the same rule applied to women; thegranddaughter nearly always receiving her grandmother’s name.[397] Thus,Andocides, son of Leagoras, bore the name of his grandfather; the fatherand son of Miltiades were named Cimon; the father and son of Hipponicos,Cleinias.[398] The orator Lysias formed an exception to this rule, hisgrandfather’s name having been Lysanias.[399] In short, though thereexisted no law upon the subject, yet ancient and nearly invariablecustom operated with the force of law.[400]
Footnote 395:
Harpocrat. v. Μεῖον, Poll. iii. 53. Schol. ad Aristoph. Ran. 810. Etym. Mag. 533. 37. Meurs. Lect. Att. iii. 1.
Footnote 396:
Palmer, Exercit. p. 754. Sluiter. Lect. Andocid. c. i.
Footnote 397:
Isæus de Pyrrh. Hæred. § 5.
Footnote 398:
Aristoph. Av. 284.
Footnote 399:
Plat. Rep. l. i. t. vi. p. 9.
Footnote 400:
Dem. c. Macart. § 17. Taylor, Lect. Lysiac. c. 5.
The names of children were often in remote antiquity derived from somecirc*mstance attending their birth, or in the history of their parents.Sometimes, too, their own deeds, as in the case of modern titles,procured them a name; or perhaps some misfortune which befell them.Thus, Marpissa, in Homer, being borne away[401] by Apollo, obtained thename of Halcyone, because her mother, like the Halcyon, was inconsolablefor the loss of her offspring.[402] Scamandrios, son of Hector, wasdenominated Astyanax, because his father was τοῦ ἄστεος ἄναξ, “thedefender of the city;”[403] and Odysseus, metamorphosed by the Romansinto Ulysses, is supposed to have been so called τοῦ ἄστεος ἄναξ διὰ τὸὀδυσσέσθαι τοῦ Αὐτολυκου, from the anger of Autolychos.[404] Again, theson of Achilles, at first called Pyrrhos, as our second William, Rufus,from the colour of his hair, afterwards obtained the name ofNeoptolemos, “the youthful warrior,” from his engaging at a very earlyage in the siege of Troy. It came, in aftertimes, to be consideredindecorous for persons of humble condition to assume the names of heroicfamilies. Thus, the low flatterer Callicrates, at the court of Ptolemythe Third, was thought to be audacious because he bestowed upon his sonand daughter the names of Telegonos and Anticleia, and wore the effigyof Odysseus in his ring, which appeared to be claiming kindred with thatillustrious chief. In fact, to prevent the profanation of revered names,the law itself forbade them to be adopted by slaves or females of badcharacter,[405] though, in defiance of its enactments, we find therewere hetairæ, who derived their appellation from the sacred games ofGreece, Nemeas, Isthmias, and Pythionica.[406]
Footnote 401:
See in Winkel. iii. p. 248, an account of a picture representing this transaction.
Footnote 402:
Il. i. 552. seq.
Footnote 403:
Potter, ii. 225.
Footnote 404:
Odyss. τ. 406. sqq.
Footnote 405:
Athen. xiii. 51.
Footnote 406:
Anim. ad Athen. t. xii. p. 170.
But of this enough: we now proceed to the management and education ofchildren, beginning with their earliest infancy. In old times the womenof Greece always suckled their own offspring, and for the performance ofthis office they were excellently adapted by nature,[407] since they hadno sooner become mothers than their breasts filled so copiously withmilk than it not only flowed through the nipple, but likewise transpiredthrough the whole bosom. On the little derangements of the systempeculiar to nurses the Greeks entertained many superstitious opinions;for instance, they conceived those thread-like indurations whichsometimes appear in the breasts to be caused by swallowing hairs, whichafterwards come forth with the milk, on which account the disorder wascalled Trichiasis.[408] The nourishment supplied by mothers so robustand lactiferous was often so rich and abundant as, like over-feeding, tocause spasms and convulsions, supposed to be most violent when theyhappened during the full moon, and began in the back. The usual remedyamong nurses would appear to have been wine, since Aristotle,[409] inspeaking of the disorder, observes that white, particularly if dilutedwith water, is less injurious than red, though even from the former hethought it better to abstain. The administering of aperient medicinesand the absence from everything that could cause flatulence, heconsidered the only safe treatment. Nurses, however, sometimes placedmuch reliance on the brains of a rabbit.[410]
Footnote 407:
When the case happened to be otherwise the remedies recommended by physicians were numerous, among which was the halimos, a prickly shrub found growing along the northern shores of Crete.—Dioscor. i. 120. Tournefort. i. 44.
Footnote 408:
Arist. Hist. An. vii. 10. Foës. Œconom. Hippoc. v. Τριχίασις.
Footnote 409:
Hist. An. vii. 11.
Footnote 410:
Dioscor. ii. 21.
In Plato’s Republic the nurses were to live apart in a distinct quarterof the city, and suckle indiscriminately all the children that were tobe preserved; no mother being permitted to know her own child.[411]
Footnote 411:
Plat. Rep. v. t. vi. p. 236.—The desire of the philosopher was, that the people, or the state, should be regarded as the father of the child. Among our ancestors illegitimate children were denominated “sons of the people,” which was then thought equivalent to being the sons of nobody. Hence the following distich:—
Cui pater est populus, pater est sibi nullus et omnis, Cui pater est populus, non habet ipse patrem.
Fortescue, Laud. Legg. Angl. c. 40.
Every one must have observed, as well as Plato,[412] that children areno sooner born than they exhibit unequivocal signs of passion andanger, in the moderating and directing of which consists the chiefestdifficulty of education. Most men, through the defect of nature orearly discipline, live long before they acquire this mastery, whichmany never attain at all. Generally, however, where it is possessed,much may certainly be attributed to that training which begins at thebirth, so that of all the instruments employed in the[413] forming ofcharacter, the nurse is probably the most important. Of this theancients generally appear to have been convinced, and most of all theSpartans and Athenians. The Lacedæmonian nurses, on whom the force ofdiscipline had been tried, enjoyed a high reputation throughoutGreece, and were particularly esteemed at Athens.[414] They no doubtdeserved it. To them may be traced the first attempt to dispense withthose swathes and bandages which in other countries confined thelimbs, and impeded the movements of infants, and by their skilful andenlightened treatment, combined with watchfulness and tendersolicitude, they are said to have preserved their little charges fromthose distortions so common among children. But their cares extendedbeyond the person. They aimed at forming the manners, regulating thetemper, laying the foundation of virtuous habits, at sowing in shortthe seeds, which in after life, might ripen into a manly, frank, andgenerous character. In the matter of food, in the regulating of which,as Locke confesses, there is much difficulty, the Spartan nurses actedup to the suggestions of the sternest philosophy, accustoming thechildren under their charge, to be content with whatever was putbefore them, and to endure occasional privations without murmuring.Over the fear of ghosts too they triumphed. Empusa and theMormolukeion, and all those other hideous spectres which childhoodassociates with the idea of darkness, yielded to the discipline of theSpartan nurse.[415] Her charge would remain alone or in the dark,without terror, and the same stern system, which overcame the firstoffspring of superstition, likewise subdued the moral defects ofpeevishness, frowardness, and the habit of whining and mewling, whichwhen indulged in render children a nuisance to all around them. Nowonder therefore, these Doric disciplinarians were everywhere inrequest. At Athens it became fashionable among the opulent to employthem, and Cleinias, as is well known, placed under the care of one ofthese she-pædagogues that Alcibiades, whose ambitious character, to becurbed by no restraints of discipline or philosophy, proved the ruinof his country and the scourge of Greece.[416]
Footnote 412:
Repub. i. 315. Stallb.—On the harshness and severity of nurses, Teles remarks in that curious picture of human life, which he has drawn quite in the spirit of the melancholy Jaques. Stob. Floril. Tit. 98. 72.
Footnote 413:
Cf. Cramer de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. 9. Odyss. β. 361. seq. Terpstra, Antiq. Homer. 122. seq.
Footnote 414:
Plut. Alcib. § 1.
Footnote 415:
Or if not, the Spartan legislator had recourse to other expedients for extirpating these superstitious terrors in after years. It being customary among the Laconians to drink moderately in the syssitia, says Plutarch, they went home without a torch, it not being lawful to make use of a light on these or any other occasions, in order that they might be accustomed to walk by night and in darkness boldly, and without fear. Instit. Lacon. § 3.
Footnote 416:
Plut. Lycurg. § 16.
Plato, however, while framing at will an imaginary system, and thoughinclined upon the whole to laconise, adheres, in some respects, to thecustoms of his country, and ordains that infants be confined byswaddling bands till two years old. From the mention of this age, itmay be inferred that children commonly did not walk much earlier atAthens, which is the case in the East, as we may learn from the storyof Ala-ed-deen Abushamet. Plato would also have nurses to be vigorousand robust women, much inclined to frequent the temples, in order,probably, to introduce into the minds of their charges earlyimpressions of religion, and to stroll about the fields and publicgardens until the children could run alone; and even then, and untilthey were three years old, he urged the necessity of their beingfrequently carried, to prevent crooked legs and malformed ankles. Butbecause all this might press hard on one nurse, several were employed,as among ourselves,[417] and a kind of Nursery Governess overlookedthe whole. The Gerula or under-nurse was, in later times, the personupon whom fell the principal labour of bearing the infant about; butin remoter ages the Greeks, more particularly their royal and noblefamilies, employed in this capacity a Baioulos[418] or nurse-father,who, as in the case of Phœnix, was sometimes himself of illustriousbirth. Cheiron, too, the Pelasgian mountain prince, performed thissacred office for the son of his friend Peleus.
Footnote 417:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 5. Pignor. de Serv. p. 185.
Footnote 418:
Pignor. de Serv. p. 186. seq.
Our readers, we trust, will not be reluctant to enter a Greeknursery,[419] where the mother, whatever might be the number of herassistants, generally suckled her own children. Their cradles were ofvarious forms, some of which like our own required rocking,[420] whileothers were suspended like sailors’ hammocks from the ceiling, andswung gently to and fro when they desired to pacify the child or lullit to sleep:[421] as Tithonos is represented in the mythology to havebeen suspended in his old age.[422] Other cradles there were in theshape of little portable baskets wherein they were carried from onepart of the harem to another.[423] It is probable, too, that as in theEast the children of the opulent were rocked in their cradles wrappedin coverlets of Milesian wool.
Footnote 419:
See in Winkelmann, vignette to l. iv. ch. 3. a view of an ancient nursery, where the mother, the pædagogue, the nurse, &c. are engaged in the work of education, t. i. p. 414. Cf. Max. Tyr. Diss. iv. p. 49. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 713.
Footnote 420:
Pignor. de. Serv. p. 186.
Footnote 421:
Schweigh. Animadv. in Athen. vi. 74.
Footnote 422:
Eudoc. ap. Villois. Anecdot. Græc. t. i. p. 396. Tzetz. ad Lyc. v. 16.
Footnote 423:
Mus. Real. Borbon. t. i. pl. 3.
Occasionally in Hellas,[424] as everywhere else, the nurse’s milkwould fail, or be scanty, when they had recourse to a very originalcontrivance to still the infant’s cries; they dipped a piece of spongein honey which was given it to suck.[425] It was probably undersimilar circ*mstances that children were indulged in figs; the Greeksentertaining an opinion that this fruit greatly contributed to renderthem plump and healthy. They had further a superstition that byrubbing fresh figs upon the eyes of children they would be preservedfrom ophthalmia.[426]
Footnote 424:
It was even then remarked that sucking children teethe much better than such as are dry nursed.—Aristot. de Gen. Anim. v. 8. Hist. Anim. vii. 10.
Footnote 425:
Sch. Arist. Acharn. 439.
Footnote 426:
Athen. iii. 15.
The Persians attributed the same preventive power to the petals of thenew-blown rose.[427] When a child was wholly or partly dry-nursed, thegirl who had charge of it would under pretence of cooling its pap,commonly made of fine flour of spelt,[428] put the spoon into her ownmouth, swallow the best part of the nourishment, and give the refuseto the infant, a practice attributed by Aristophanes to Cleon, whoswallowed, he says, the best of the good things of the state himself,and left the residue to the people.[429]
Footnote 427:
Geopon. xi. 18.
Footnote 428:
Dioscor. ii. 114.
Footnote 429:
Equit. 712. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 326.
All the world over the singing of the nurse has been proverbial. Musicbreathes its sweetest notes around our cradles. The voice of womansoothes our infancy and our age, and in Greece, where every class ofthe community had its song, the nurse naturally vindicated one toherself.[430] This sweetest of all melodies—
“Redolent of joy and youth”
was technically denominated Katabaukalesis, of which scraps andfragments only, like those of the village song which lingered in thememory of Rousseau, have come down to us. The first verse of a Romannursery air, which still, Pignorius[431] tells us, was sung in histime by the mothers of Italy, ran thus:—
“Lalla, Lalla; dorme aut lacte. Lalla, Lalla; sleep or suck.”
Footnote 430:
Ilgen. de Scol. Poes. p. xxvi. Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 204. seq.
Footnote 431:
De Serv. p. 186. seq. Cf. Athen. xiv. 10.
The Sicilian poet, whose pictures of the ancient world are stillso fresh and fragrant, has bequeathed to us a Katabaukalesis ofextreme beauty and brevity which I have here paraphrasticallytranslated:[432]—
“Sleep ye, that in my breast have lain, The slumber sweet and light, And wake, my glorious twins, again To glad your mother’s sight. O happy, happy be your dreams, And blest your waking be, When morning’s gold and ruddy beams Restore your smiles to me.”[433]
Footnote 432:
A nurse’s lay prevalent among our own ancestors may not inaptly find a place here:
“Now suck, child, and sleep, child, thy mother’s own joy, Her only sweet comfort to drown all annoy; For beauty, surpassing the azurèd sky, I love thee, my darling, as ball of mine eye.”
D’Israeli, Amenities of Literature ii. 287.
Footnote 433:
Theoc. Eidyll. 24. 7. sqq.
The philosopher Chrysippos[434] considered it of importance toregulate the songs of nurses, and Quintilian,[435] with a quaint butpardonable enthusiasm, would have the boy who is designed to be anorator placed under the care of a nurse of polished language andsuperior mind. He observes,[436] too, that children suckled andbrought up by dumb nurses, will remain themselves dumb, which wouldnecessarily happen had they no other person with whom to converse.When the infant was extremely wakeful the soothing influence of thesong was heightened by the aid of little timbrels and rattles hungwith bells.
Footnote 434:
Quintil. i. 10.
Footnote 435:
Instit. Orat. i. 1.
Footnote 436:
Quintil. Inst. Orat. l. x. c. i. Herod. ii. 2.
A very characteristic anecdote is told of Anacreon apropos ofnurses.[437] A good-humoured wench with a child in her arms happeningone day to be sauntering _more nutricum_, through the Panionion, orGrand Agora of Ionia, encountered the Teïan poet, who returning fromthe Bacchic Olympos, found the streets much too narrow for him, andwent reeling hither and thither as if determined to make the most ofhis walk. The nurse, it is to be presumed, felt no inclination todispute the passage with him; but Anacreon attracted, perhaps, by herpretty face, making a timely lurch, sent both her and her chargespinning off the pavement, at the same time muttering somethingdisrespectful against “the brat.” Now, for her own part, the girl feltno resentment against him, for she could see which of the divinitieswas to blame; but loving, as a nurse should, her boy, she prayed thatthe poet might one day utter many words in praise of him whom he hadso rudely vituperated; which came to pass accordingly, for the infantwas the celebrated Cleobulos, whose beauty the Teïan afterwardscelebrated in many an ode.[438]
Footnote 437:
See in the Mus. Cortonens. pl. 35. the figure of a nurse bearing the infant Bacchos.
Footnote 438:
Max. Tyr. Diss. xi. p. 132.
Traces of the remotest antiquity still linger in the nursery. The wordbaby, which we bestow familiarly on an infant, was with littlevariation, in use many thousand years ago among the Syrians, in whosenursery dialect _babia_[439] had the same signification. _Tatta_, too,_pappa_ and _mamma_[440] were the first words lisped by the childrenof Hellas. And from various hints dropped by ancient authors, it seemsclear that the same wild stories and superstitions that still flourishthere haunted the nursery of old. The child was taught to dread Empusaor Onoskelis or Onoskolon,[441] the monster with one human foot andone of brass, which dwelt among the shades of night and glided throughdusky chambers and dismal passages to devour “naughty children.” Thefables which filled up this obscure part of Hellenic mythology, werescarcely less wild than those the Arabs tell about their Marids, theirEfreets, and their Jinn; for Empusa, the phantom minister ofHecate,[442] could assume every various form of God’s creatures,appearing sometimes as a bull, or a tree, or an ass, or a stone, or afly, or a beautiful woman.[443] Shakspeare, having caught, perhaps,some glimpse of this superstition, or inventing in a kindred spirit,attributes a similar power of transformation to his mischievous elf inthe Midsummer Night’s Dream, located on Empusa’s native soil.
“I’ll follow you, I’ll lead you about, around, Through bog, through bush, through brake, through briar. Sometimes a horse I’ll be, sometime a hound, A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire, And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire at every turn.”
Footnote 439:
Phot. Biblioth. 31. l. 11. Menage shrewdly supposes Baby, Babble, &c. to have been derived from Babel.—D’Israeli, Amenities of Literature, i. 5.
Footnote 440:
Pignor. de Serv. p. 187. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 1365.—Pac. 119.
Footnote 441:
Lil. Gyrald. Synt. xii. Hist. Deor. 361 seq. Cf. Lucian. Ver. Hist. lib. 2 § 46. This spectre was said to glide before the sight of persons celebrating the rites of initiation, and therefore the mother of Æschines who performed a part in the rites, and also appeared to the initiated was, with much bad taste, called Empusa by Demosthenes.—De Coronâ, § § 41. 79. Adam Littleton in his Cambridge Dictionary supposes this to have been her real name, which, however, was Glaucis or Glaucothea. Stock. and Wunderl. ad loc. Cf. Harpoc. in. v. Sch. Aristoph. Concion. 1056. Ran. 293, 294. ὁρᾲς τὸν Αἰσχινην ὅς τυμπανιστρίας υἱὸς ἠν. Lucian. Somn. § 12.
Footnote 442:
This goddess was also known by the name of Artemis Phosphoros. Aristoph. Concion. 444 et schol.
Footnote 443:
Aristoph. Ran. 293. Epicharm. ap. Nat. Com. p. 854. See also Sch. Apol. Rhod. iii. 478. iv. 247.
It was this spectral being that was said to appear to those whoperformed the sacrifices to the dead, to men overwhelmed withmisfortune,[444] and travellers in remote and dismal roads; ashappened to the companions of Apollonios of Tyana who, in journeyingon a bright moonlight night, were startled by the appearance ofEmpusa, which having stood twice or thrice in their way, suddenlyvanished.[445] To protect themselves against this demon thesuperstitious were accustomed to wear about them a piece of jasper,either set in a ring, or suspended from the neck.[446]
Footnote 444:
Meurs. Lect. Att. iii. 17.
Footnote 445:
Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. l. ii. c. 2.
Footnote 446:
Cf. De Boot, De Lap. p. 251. sqq. on the properties and virtues of this stone.
The Lamia, too, fierce and beautiful, the ancestress of our “Whiteladies,” and of the Katakhanas or Vampire of the modern Greeks, roamedthrough solitary places to terrify, delude, or destroy good folks, bigor little, who might lose their way amid moonlit crags or shores madewhite with bones and sea-shells. They loved to relate “around the fireo’ nights,” how Lamia had once been a beautiful woman caressed andmade the mother of a fair son by Zeus; how Hera through jealousy haddestroyed the boy; and how, thereupon Lamia took to the bush anddevoted her wretched immortality to the destroying of other women’schildren.[447] According to another form of the tradition there weremany Lamiæ, so called from having capacious jaws, inhabiting theLibyan coast,[448] somewhere about the Great Syrtis, in the midst ofsand hills, rocks, and wastes of irreclaimable aridity. Formed abovelike women of surpassing beauty, they terminated below in serpents.Their voice was like the hissing of an adder, and whatever approachedthem they devoured.[449]
Footnote 447:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 1035. Philost. Vit. Apoll. Tyan. iv. 25.
Footnote 448:
Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1035.
Footnote 449:
Lil. Gyrald. Hist. Deor. Synt. xv. 447. seq.
Another race of wild and grotesque spirits were the Kobaloi,[450]companions of Dionysos, who doubtless subsist still in our woods andforests under the name of goblins and hobgoblins. Our Elves and Trollsand Fairies appear likewise to belong to the same brood, though inthese northern latitudes, they have become less mischievous and moreromantic, delighting the eyes of the wayfarers by their frolics andgambols, instead of devouring him.
“Fairy elves, Whose midnight revels, by a forest side, Or fountain, some belated peasant sees, Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon Sits arbitress, and nearer to the earth Wheels her pale course; they on their mirth and dance Intent, with jocund music charm his ear, At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds.”
Footnote 450:
Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 279.
Though, as we have seen, weak children were unscrupulously sacrificedat Sparta, they still made offerings to the gods in favour of thestrong. The ceremony took place annually during certain festivals,denominated Tithenidia,[451] when, in a moment of hospitality, theynot only made merry themselves, but overlooked their xenelasia, andentertained generously all such strangers as happened to be present.The banquet given on this occasion was called Kopis, and, inpreparation for it, tents were pitched on the banks of the Tiasa nearthe temple of Artemis Corythalis. Within these, beds formed of heapsof herbs were piled up and covered with carpets. On the day of thefestival the nurses proceeded thither with the male children in theirarms, and, presenting them to the goddess, offered up as victims anumber of sucking pigs. In the feast which ensued loaves baked in anoven, in lieu of the extemporary cake, were served up to the guests.Choruses of Corythalistriæ or dancing girls, likewise performed inhonour of the goddess; and in some places persons, called Kyrittoi, inwooden masks, made sport for the guests.[452] Probably it may havebeen on occasions such as this that the nurses, like her in Romeo andJuliet, gave free vent to their libertine tongues, and indulged inthose appellations which the tolerant literature of antiquity haspreserved.[453]
Footnote 451:
Athen. iv. 16.
Footnote 452:
Meurs. Græc. Fer. 261. seq.
Footnote 453:
Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. 161.
When children were to be weaned, they spread, as the moderns do,something bitter over the nipple,[454] that the young republican mightlearn early how—
“Full in the fount of joy’s delicious springs Some bitter o’er the flower its bubbling venom flings.”
Footnote 454:
Athen. vi. 51.
CHAPTER III. TOYS, SPORTS, AND PASTIMES.
Having described, as far as possible, the management of infants andyoung children, it may not be uninteresting to notice briefly theirtoys, sports, and pastimes; for, though children have beensubstantially the same in all ages and countries, the forms of theiramusem*nts have been infinitely varied, and where they have resembledeach other it is not the less instructive to note that resemblance.The ancients[455] have, however, bequeathed us but little informationrespecting the fragile implements wherewith the happiness of thenursery was in great part erected. Even respecting the recreationswhich succeeded and amused the leisure of boys our materials forworking out a picture are scanty, so that we must content ourselveswith little more than an outline. Nevertheless, though the accountsthey have transmitted to posterity are meagre, they attached muchimportance to the subject itself; so that the greatest legislators andphilosophers condescended to make regulations respecting it. ThusPlato, with a view of generating a profound reverence for ancientnational institutions, forbade even the recreations of boys to bevaried with reckless fickleness; for the habit of innovation onceintroduced into the character would ever after continue to influenceit, so that they who in boyhood altered their sports without reason,would without scruple in manhood extend their daring hands to the lawsand institutions of their country.[456]
Footnote 455:
Plato had the utmost faith in the power of education over both mind and body; but his system embraced much more than is usually comprehended under the term, even taking charge of the infant before its birth, and immediately afterwards, in the hope of wisely regulating its physical developement. As the child grows most during the first five years, its size in the following twenty being seldom doubled, most care, he thought, should then be taken that the great impulses of nature be not counteracted. Much food is then consumed, with very little exercise; hence the multitude of deaths in infancy and diseases in after-life, of which the seeds are then sown. For this reason he would encourage the violent romping and sports of children, that the excess of nourishment may be got rid of. De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 2. seq.
Footnote 456:
Plat, de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 21. seq.
Amongst the Hellenes the earliest toy consisted, as in most othercountries, of the rattle, said to be the invention of the philosopherArchytas.[457] To this succeeded balls of many colours,[458] withlittle chariots, sometimes purchased at Athens in the fair held duringthe feast of Zeus.[459] The common price of a plaything of this kindwould appear to have been an obolos. The children themselves, aswithout any authority might with certainty be inferred, employed theirtime in erecting walls with sand,[460] in constructing littlehouses,[461] in building and carving ships, in cutting carts orchariots out of leather, in fashioning pomegranate rinds into theshape of frogs,[462] and in forming with wax a thousand diminutiveimages, which pursued afterwards during school hours subjected themoccasionally to severe chastisem*nt.[463]
Footnote 457:
Aristot. Polit. viii. 6. 1.
Footnote 458:
Dion. Chrysost. Nat. viii. p. 281.
Footnote 459:
Aristoph. Nub. 862. sqq. et Schol. Rav. in loc. Cf. Suid. v. Ἁμαξὶς, t. i. p. 194. b. Pollux, x. 168.
Footnote 460:
Damm. v. Ἄθυρμα.
Footnote 461:
Lucian. Hermot. § 33.
Footnote 462:
Aristoph. Nub. 877. sqq. et Schol.
Footnote 463:
Lucian. de Somn. § 2.
Another amusem*nt which the children of Hellas shared with theirelders was that afforded by puppets,[464] which were probably aninvention of the remotest antiquity. Numerous women appear to haveearned their livelihood by carrying round from village to villagethese ludicrous and frolicsome images, which were usually about acubit in height, and may be regarded as the legitimate ancestors ofPunch and Judy. By touching a single string, concealed from thespectators, the operator could put her mute performers in action,cause them to move every limb in succession, spread forth the hands,shrug the shoulders, turn round the neck, roll the eyes, and appear tolook at the audience.[465] After this, by other contrivances withinthe images, they could be made to go through many humorous evolutionsresembling the movements of the dance. These exhibitors, frequently ofthe male sex, were known by the name of Neurospastæ. This art passed,together with other Grecian inventions, into Italy, where it wasalready familiar to the public in the days of Horace, who, in speakingof princes governed by favourites, compares them to puppets in thehands of the showman.
“Tu, mihi qui imperitas, aliis servis miser; atque Duceris, ut nervis alienis mobile lignum.”[466]
Footnote 464:
Buleng. de Theat. l. i. c. 36. sqq. Muret. ad Plat. Rep. p. 645. Eustath. in Odyss. δ. p. 176. Mount. Not. ad Dem. Olynth. ii. § 5. Perizon. ad Æl. Var. Hist. viii. 7. See also the article Marionnette in the Encyclopédie Française; and Caylus, Rec. d’Antiq. t. vi. p. 287. t. iv. pl. 80. no. i.
Footnote 465:
Aristot. de Mund. c. 6. translated by Apuleius, p. 20. Herod. ii. 48. See Comment. ad Poll. vii. 189. Duport. ad Theophr. Char. p. 308. This juggler having, for his ill behaviour, been driven from Athens, flew to Philip, with whom such persons were always in favour. Dem. Olynth. i. § 7.
Footnote 466:
Sat. ii. 7. 81. seq. Plerumque simulacra de ligno facta nervis moventur.—Vet. Schol.
A very extraordinary puppet, in the form of a silver skeleton, was,according to Petronius Arbiter,[467] exhibited at the court of Nero;for, like the Egyptians, this imperial profligate appears to have beenexcited to sensual indulgences by the remembrance of the grave: “Letus eat and drink,” cried he, “for tomorrow we die.” The skeleton beingplaced upon the table, in the midst of the tyrant’s orgies, threw itslimbs strangely about, and bent its form into various attitudes withwonderful flexibility, which having performed once and again, and thensuddenly ceasing to move, the master of the feast exclaimed, “Alas,alas! what a mere nothing is man! Like unto this must we all be whenOrcus shall have borne us hence. Therefore let us live while enjoymentis in our power.” But to return to the children of Hellas. Among theearliest sports of the Greek boy was whipping the bembyx or top,[468]which would appear to have been usually practised in those open spacesoccurring at the junction of several roads:—
“Where three ways meet there boys with tops are found, That ply the lash and urge them round and round.”[469]
Sometimes also, as with us, they spun their tops with cord. Theamusem*nt is thus described by Tibullus:[470]
“Namque agor, ut per plana citus tota verbere turben, Quem celer assuetâ versitat arte puer.”
Footnote 467:
Satyric. p. 80. Helenop. 1610. Wouwer. Anim. p. 418. Erhard. Symbol. p. 611. Plut. Conv. Sept. Sap. ch. 2.—A story is told of an Ionian juggler who proceeded to Babylon to perform what he deemed a wonderful feat before the Great King, and the feat was this: fixing a long point of steel on a wall, and retiring to a considerable distance, he threw at it a number of soft round pellets of dough, with so nice an aim that every one of them was penetrated, the last pellet driving back the others. Max. Tyr. Diss. xix. p. 225. Anim. ad Poll. vii. 189. p. 532.
The hoop, too, so familiar to our own schoolboys, formed one of theplaythings of Hellenic children. It was sometimes made of bronze,about three feet in diameter,[471] and adorned with little sphericalbells and movable rings, which jingled as it rolled. The instrumentemployed to urge
“the rolling circle’s speed,”
as Gray expresses it, in his reminiscences of the Eton play-ground,was crooked at the point, and called a plectron: its exactrepresentation may any day, in the proper season, be seen in thestreets of London impelling forward the iron hoop of our own children.The passages of ancient authors, in which mention of the trochosoccurs, appear to have been imperfectly understood before thediscovery of a basso-rilievo, in marble, on the road from Rome toTivoli, afterwards removed to the vineyard of the Cardinal AlexanderAlbani. On certain engraved gems also, in the cabinet of Stosch, areseveral representations of boys playing at hoop, where the trochos insome cases reaches to the waist, in others to the breast, and wherethe child is very small up to the chin. It has been conjectured byWinkelmann,[472] that a circle represented in one of the paintings ofHerculaneum was no other than an ancient trochos. Rolling the hoopformed a part of the exercises of the palæstra, which were performedeven by very young children. Thus we find the nurse describing thesons of Medeia returning from playing at hoop the very day that theywere slain by their mother.[473] This amusem*nt has been describedbriefly by the Roman poets. Thus Martial:[474]—
“Garrulus in laxo cur annulus orbe vagatur Cedat, et argutis obvia turba trochis.”
Footnote 468:
Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 1517. Diog. Laert. i. 4. 8. Cf. Hyde Nerdilud. p. 259.
Footnote 469:
Callim. Ep. i. 9. seq. p. 180.
Footnote 470:
I. 5. 3.
Footnote 471:
Cf. Caylus, Rec. D’Antiq. t. vi. 318. seq.
Footnote 472:
Descr. des Pierres Grav. du Cab. de Stosch. 452. seq.
Footnote 473:
Eurip. Mod. 45. et Sch.
Footnote 474:
L. xiv. Ep. 169.
Propertius[475] notices the crooked form of the plectron, or clavis:—
“Increpat et versi clavis adunca trochi.”
Horace[476] likewise alludes to the game:—
“Indoctusque pilæ discive trochive quiescit.”
This poet clearly informs us that the Romans received the game fromthe Greeks:[477]—
“Ludere doctior, Seu Græco jubeas trocho, Seu malis vetita legibus alea.”
Another less innocent amusem*nt was[478] spinning goldchafers, whichappears to have afforded the Greek urchins the same delight astormenting co*ckchafers does their successors of the north. Thisspecies of beetle making its appearance when the apple-trees were inbloom, was therefore called _Melolanthe_, or apple-blossom. Havingcaught it, and tied a linen thread about its feet, it was let loose,and the fun was to see it move in spiral lines through the air as itwas twisted by the thread.[479]
Footnote 475:
iii. 12.
Footnote 476:
Ars Poet. 380. where the ancient scholiast seems doubtful whether the trochus was a hoop or a top:—“Trochus dicitur turben, qui flagello percutitur, et in vertiginem rotatur, aut rota quam currendo pueri scuticâ vel virgâ regunt.”
Footnote 477:
Carm. iii. 24. 56. sqq.
Footnote 478:
On the games at present practised in Greece, see Dodwell, ii. 37. sqq.; and Douglas, Essay on certain points of resemblance between the Anc. and Mod. Greeks, p. 127. sqq.
Footnote 479:
Poll. ix. 124.
It was the practice among the children of Greece, when the sunhappened to be obscured by a cloud, to exclaim, “Ἔξεχ᾽ ὦ φίλ᾽ἥλιε!”—“Come forth, beloved sun!” Strattis makes allusion to thiscustom in a fragment of his Phœnissæ:—
“Then the god listened to the shouting boys, When they exclaimed, ‘Come forth, beloved sun!’”[480]
It is fortunate that our English boys have no such passion forsunshine; otherwise, as Phœbos Apollo hides his face for monthstogether in this blessed climate, we should be in a worse plight thanDionysos among the frogs of Acheron, when his passion for Euripidesled him to pay a visit to Persephone. In some parts of the country,however, the children have a rude distich which they frequently bawlin chorus, when in summer-time their sports are interrupted by along-continued shower:—
“Rain, rain, go to Spain; Fair weather, come again.”
Footnote 480:
Poll. ix. 123.
The Muïnda was our “Blindman’s-buff,” “Blind Hob,” “Hobble ’em-blind,”and “Hood-man-blind,” in which, as with us, a boy moved about with hiseyes bandaged, spreading forth his hands, and crying “Beware!” If hecaught any of those who were skipping around him, the captive wascompelled to enact the blind-man in his stead. Another form of thegame was for the seers to hide, and the blind man to grope round tillhe found them; the whole probably being a rude representation ofPolyphemos in his cave searching for the Greeks who had blinded him. Athird form was, for the bystanders to strike or touch the blindfoldedboy until he could declare who had touched him, when the personindicated took his place. To this the Roman soldiers alluded when theyblindfolded our Saviour and smote him, and cried, “Prophesy who struckthee.”[481] In the Kollabismos,[482] the Capifolèt of the French, oneperson covered his eyes with his own hands, the other then gave him agentle blow, and the point was, for the blindfolded man to guess withwhich hand he had been stricken. The Χαλκὴ Μυῖα,[483] or Brazen Fly,was a variety of Blindman’s-buff, in which a boy, having his eyesbound with a fillet, went groping round, calling out, “I am seekingthe Brazen Fly.” His companions replied, “You may seek, but you willnot find it”—at the same time striking him with cords made of theinner bark of the papyros; and thus they proceeded till one of themwas taken. Apodidraskinda (“hide and seek,” or “whoop and holloa!”)was played much as it is now. One boy shut his eyes, or they were keptclosed for him by one of his suspicious companions, while the otherswent to hide. He then sallied forth in search of the party who layconcealed, while each of them endeavoured to gain the post of theseeker; and the first who did this turned him out and took his place.
Footnote 481:
This has been observed by Hemsterhuis, ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1173, where his commentary alone can render the text intelligible.—Cf. Matthew, xxvi. 68. Mark, xiv. 64. Luke, xxii. 65.
Footnote 482:
“Jeu de la main chaude.” Steph. Thes. Ling. Græc. v. Κολλαβισμός.
Footnote 483:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 266.
Another game was the Ephedrismos, in which a stone called the Dioroswas set up at a certain distance, and aimed at with bowls or stones.The one who missed took the successful player upon his back, and wascompelled to carry him about blindfolded, until he went straight fromthe standing-point to the Dioros. This latter part of the game hasbeen described by several ancient authors, under the appellation ofEncotyle, though they are rightly, by Hesychius,[484] considered asdifferent parts of the same sport. The variety called Encotyle,—the“Pick-back” or “Pick-a-back,” of English boys, consisted in one lad’splacing his hands behind his back, and receiving therein the knees ofhis conqueror, who, putting his fingers over the bearer’s eyes, drovehim about at his pleasure. This game was also called the Kubesinda andHippas,[485] though, according to the conjecture of Dr. Hyde, thelatter name signified rather our game of “Leap-frog,”—the “mazidha” ofthe Persians, in which a number of boys stooped down with the handsresting on the knees, in a row, the last going over the backs of allthe others, and then standing first.
Footnote 484:
In v. Ἐφεδρίζειν.
Footnote 485:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 241.
In the game called Chytrinda, in English[486] “Hot-co*ckles,” “Sellingof pears,” or “How many plumbs for a penny,” one boy sat on theground, and was called the chytra or pot, while his companions,forming themselves into a ring, ran round, plucking, pinching, orstriking him as they went. If he who enacted the chytra succeeded inseizing upon one of the buffeters the captive took his place. Possiblyit was during this play that a mischievous foundling, contrary torule, poking, as he ran round, the boy in the centre with his foot,provoked from the latter the sarcastic inquiry, “What! dost thou kickthy mother in the belly?” alluding to the circ*mstance of the formerhaving been exposed in a chytra.[487] Another form of the Chytrindarequired the lad in the centre to move about with a pot on his head,where he held it with his left hand, while the others struck him, andcried out, “Who has the pot?” To which he replied, “I Midas,”endeavouring all the while to reach some one with his foot,—the firstwhom he thus touched being compelled to carry round the pot in hisstead.[488]
Footnote 486:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 263.
Footnote 487:
Sch. Aristoph. Thesm. 509. But see above, p. 122.
Footnote 488:
Poll. ix. 114.
Another game, peculiar to girls, was the Cheli Chelone, or “thetortoise,” of which I remember no representative among Englishpastimes. It somewhat resembled the Chytrinda of the boys. For onegirl sat on the ground and was called the tortoise, while hercompanions, running round, inquired “Tor-tortoise what art thou doingthere in the middle?” “Spinning wool,” replied she, “the thread of theMilesian woof;” “And how, continued they, was thy son engaged when heperished?” “He sprang from his white steeds into the sea.”[489] Ifthis was, as the language would intimate, a Dorian play, I shouldconsider it a practical satire on the habits of the other Hellenicwomen, who remained like tortoises at home, carding and spinning,while their sons engaged in the exercises of the palæstra or thestadium. Possibly, also, originally the name may have had someconnection with καλλιχέλωνος “beautiful tortoise,” the figure of thisanimal having been impressed on the money of the Peloponnesians; infact, in a fragment of the Helots of Eupolis, we find the obolosdistinguished by the epithet of καλλιχέλωνος.[490]
Footnote 489:
Poll. ix. 125.
Footnote 490:
Id. ix. 74. Cf. Suid. v. Καλλικολώνη t. i. p. 1359. c. Meurs. De Lud. Græc. p. 41.
The Kynitinda was so called from the verb κυνέω to kiss, as appearsfrom Crates in his “Games,” a play in which the poet contrived tointroduce an account of this and nearly all the other juvenilepastimes. The form of the sport being little known, the learned havesometimes confounded it with a kind of salute called the chytra inantiquity, and the “Florentine Kiss” in modern Italy, in which theperson kissing took the other by the ears. Giraldi[491] says heremembers, when a boy, that his father and other friends, when kissinghim, used sometimes to take hold of both his ears, which they calledgiving a “Florentine kiss.” He afterwards was surprised to find thatthis was a most ancient practice, commemorated both by the Greek andLatin authors. It obtained its name, as he conjectures, from theearthen vessel called chytra, which had two handles usually laid holdof by persons drinking out of it, as is still the practice withsimilar utensils in Spain. This writer mentions a present sent fromthe peninsula to Leo X, consisting of a great number of chytræ of redpottery, if we may so call them, of which he himself obtained one.Crates, as Hemsterhuis[492] ingeniously supposes, introduced a wantonwoman playing at this game among the youths in order that she mightenjoy the kisses of the handsome.
Footnote 491:
Opp. ii. p. 880. Theocrit. v. 133. Wart.—Poll. x. 100.
Footnote 492:
Comment. ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1180.
The Epostrakismos[493] was what English boys call “Ducks and Drakes,”and sometimes, among our ancestors at least, “A duck and a drake and awhite penny cake,” and was played with oyster-shells. Standing on theshore of the sea at the Peiræeus, for example, they flung the shellsedgeways over the water so that they should strike it and boundupwards again and again from its surface. The boy whose shell mademost leaps before sinking, won the game. Minucius Felix gives a verypretty description of this juvenile sport. “Behold, he says, boysplaying in frolicsome rivalry with shells on the sea-shore. The gameconsists in picking up from the beach a shell rendered light by theconstant action of the waves, and standing on an even place, andinclining the body, holding the shell flat between the fingers, andthrowing it with the greatest possible force, so that it may rase thesurface of the sea or skim along while it moves with gentle flow, orglances over the tops of the waves as they leap up in its track. Thatboy is esteemed the victor whose shell performs the longest journey ormakes most leaps before sinking.”[494]
Footnote 493:
Poll. ix. 119.
Footnote 494:
Seber ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1188.
The Akinetinda was a contention between boys, in which some one ofthem endeavoured to maintain his position unmoved. Good sport musthave been produced by the next game called Schœnophilinda, or “Hidingthe Rope.” In this a number of boys sat down in a circle, one of whomhad a rope concealed about his person, which he endeavoured to dropsecretly beside one of his companions. If he succeeded, the unluckywight was started like a hare round the circle, his enemy followingand laying about his shoulders. But on the other hand, if he againstwhom the plot was laid detected it, he obtained possession of the ropeand enjoyed the satisfaction of flogging the plotter over the samecourse.
The Basilinda[495] was a game in which one obtained by lot the rank ofking, and the vanquished, whether one or many, became subject to him,to do whatever he should order. It passed down to the Christians, andwas more especially practised during the feast of the Epiphany. It iscommonly known under the name of Forfeits, and was formerly called“One penny,” “One penny come after me,” “Questions and commands,” “Thechoosing of king and queen on Twelfth night.” In the last-mentionedsense it is still prevalent in France, where it is customary forbakers to make a present to the families they serve, of a large cakein the form of a ring in which a small kidney bean has been concealed.The cake is cut up, the pieces are distributed to the company, and theperson who gets the bean is king of the feast. This game entered inGreece likewise into the amusem*nts of grown people, both men andwomen, as well as of children, and an anecdote, connected with it, istold of Phryne, who happened one day to be at a mixed party where itwas played. By chance it fell to her lot to play the queen; uponwhich, observing that her female companions were rouged and lilied tothe eyes, she maliciously ordered a basin and towel to be brought in,and that every woman should wash her face. Conscious of her own nativebeauty, she began the operation, and only appeared the fresher andmore lovely. But alas for the others! When the anchusa, psimmuthion,and phu*kos had been removed by the water, their freckled and coarseskins exposed them to general laughter.[496]
Footnote 495:
Poll. ix. 110.
Footnote 496:
Galen. Protrept. § 10. Kühn. Compare the admirable note of Hemsterhuis ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1066. seq.
The Ostrakinda was a game purely juvenile. A knot of boys having drawna line on the ground, separated into two parties. A small earthenwaredisk or ostrakon, one side black with pitch, the other white, was thenproduced, and each party chose a side, white or black. The disk wasthen pitched along the line, and the party whose side came up wasaccounted victorious, and prepared to pursue while the others turnedround and fled. The boy first caught obtained the name of the ass, andwas compelled to sit down, the game apparently proceeding till allwere thus caught and placed hors de combat. He who threw the ostrakoncried, “night or day,” the black side being termed _night_, and theopposite _day_. It was called the “Twirling of the ostrakon.” Platoalludes to it in the Phædros.[497]
Footnote 497:
Poll. ix. 111. seq. Plat. Phæd. t. i. p. 29. seq. Bekk.
The Dielkustinda, “French and English,” was played chiefly in thepalæstra, and occasionally elsewhere. It consisted simply in twoparties of boys laying hold of each other by the hand, and pullingtill one by one the stronger had drawn over the weaker to their sideof the ground.
The Phryginda was a game in which, holding a number of smooth anddelicate fragments of pottery between the fingers of the left hand,they struck them in succession with the right so as apparently toproduce a kind of music.[498]
Footnote 498:
Turneb. Advers. xxvii. 33. Poll. ix. 114. Comment. t. vi. p. 1178.
There was another game called Kyndalismos, played with short batons,and requiring considerable strength and quickness of eye. A stickhaving been fixed up-right in a loose moist soil, the business was todislodge it by throwing at it other batons from a distance; whence theproverb, “Nail is driven out by nail, and baton by baton.”[499] Aperson who played at this game was called by some of the Doric poetsKyndalopactes.[500] A similar game is played in England, in which theprize is placed upon the top of the upright stick. The player winswhen the prize falls without the hole whence the upright has beendislodged.
Footnote 499:
Vid. Vatic. Append. Proverb. Cent. ii. prov. 12. et Ib. not. And. Schotto. Kühn ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1190.
Footnote 500:
Meursius, Græc. Lud. p. 26. and after him Pfeiffer, Ant. Græc. iv. p. 120. read κινδαλοπαίκτης, which Hemsterhuis observes is contrary to the authority of the MSS.
The game of Ascoliasmos[501] branched off into several varieties, andafforded the Athenian rustics no small degree of sport. The first andmost simple form consisted in hopping on one foot, sometimes in pairs,to see which in this way could go furthest. On other occasions thehopper undertook to overtake certain of his companions who wereallowed the use of both legs. If he could touch one of them he cameoff conqueror. This variety of the game appears to have been theEmpusæ ludus of the Romans. “Scotch hoppers,” or “Fox to thy hole,” inwhich boys, hopping on one leg, beat one another with gloves or piecesof leather tied at the end of strings, or knotted handkerchiefs, as inthe _diable boîteux_ of the French. At other times victory depended onthe number of hops, all hopping together and counting theirsprings,—the highest of course winning. But the most amusing varietyof the game was that practised during the Dionysiac festival of theAskolia. Skins filled with wine or inflated with air, and extremelywell oiled, were placed upon the ground, and on these the shoelessrustics leaped with one leg and endeavoured to maintain a footing,which they seldom could on account of their slipperiness. However, hewho succeeded carried off the skin of wine as his prize.
Footnote 501:
Phurnutus, De Nat. Deorum, c. 30. p. 217. seq. Gale.—Poll. ix. 121. Sch. Aristoph. Plut. 1130. Kust.—Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 52; Græc. Ludibunda, p. 6.
A game, evidently also of rustics, was the Trygodiphesis, Tantaliludus, “Bobbing for cherries,” “Bob cherry,” in which something verynice was thrown into a bowl of wine lees, which the performer, withhis hands behind his back, was to fish up with his lips. The fun wasto see the ludicrous figure he cut with his face daubed anddiscoloured by the lees.
Phitta Maliades, Phitta Meliai, Phitta Rhoiai, “Hasten, nymphs!” maybe regarded as exclamations of encouragement uttered by Dorian girls,when engaged in a race.[502]
Footnote 502:
Poll. ix. 127. with the note of Hemsterhuis.
Playing at ball was common, and received various names. Episkyros,Phæninda, Aporraxis and Ourania. The first of these games was alsoknown by the names of the Ephebike and the Epikoinos. It was playedthus: a number of young men assembling together in a place coveredwith sand or dust, drew across it a straight line, which they calledSkyros, and at equal distances, on either side, another line. Thenplacing the ball on the Skyros, they divided into two equal parties,and retreated each to their lines, from which they immediatelyafterwards rushed forward to seize the ball. The person who picked itup, then cast it towards the extreme line of the opposite party, whosebusiness it was to intercept and throw it back, and they won who byforce or cunning compelled their opponents to overstep the boundaryline.
Daniel Souter[503] contends that this was the English game offootball, into which perhaps it may, in course of time, have beenconverted. This rough and, it must be confessed, somewhat dangeroussport, originally, in all probability, introduced into this country bythe Romans, may still on Shrove Tuesday be witnessed in certain townsof South Wales. The balls consist of bulls’ bladders protected by athick covering of leather, and blown tight. Six or eight are madeready for the occasion, every window in the town is shut by break ofday, at which time all the youths of the neighbourhood assemble in thestreets. The ball is then thrown up in front of the town-hall, and themultitude, dividing into two parts, strive with incredible eagernessand enthusiasm to overcome their antagonists, each endeavouring tokick the foot-ball to the other extremity of the town. In the strugglesevere kicks and wounds are given, and many fierce battles take place.The ball sometimes mounts thirty or forty feet above the tops of thehighest houses and falls far beyond, or goes right over into thegardens, whither it is immediately followed by a crowd of young men.The sport is kept up all day, the hungry combatants recruiting theirstrength from time to time by copious horns of ale, and an abundantsupply of the nice pancakes which the women sell in baskets at thecorner of every street. To view this sport, thousands of personsassemble from all the country round, so that to the secludedpopulation of those districts it is in some sort what the battle inthe Platanistas was to the Spartans, or even what the Isthmian andNemean games were to the whole of Greece.
Footnote 503:
Palamedes, iii. 4. p. 207. Alex. ab Alex. iii. 21.
The Phæninda[504] is supposed to have received its name either fromits inventor, Phænides (called Phænestios in Athenæus[505] and theEtymologicon Magnum), or from the verb Φενακίζειν[506] “to deceive,”because, making as though they would throw at one person, theyimmediately sent it at another, thus deluding the expectation of theformer. It appears at first to have been played with the small ballcalled Harpaston, though the game with the large soft one mayafterwards perhaps have also been called Phæninda. The variety namedAporraxis consisted in throwing the ball with some force against theground and repelling it constantly as it rebounded; he who did thismost frequently, winning. In the game called Ourania, the player,bending back his body, flung up the ball with all his might into theair; on which there arose a contention among his companions who shouldfirst catch it in its descent, as Homer appears to intimate in hisdescription of the Phæacian sport. They likewise played at ball in themodern fashion against a wall, in which the person who kept it uplongest, won, and was called king; the one who lost, obtained the nameof ass, and was constrained by the laws of the game to perform anytask set him by the king.[507]
Footnote 504:
Cf. Souter. Palam. iii. 3. p. 201.
Footnote 505:
Deipnosoph. i. 26.
Footnote 506:
Cf. Schweigh. ad Athen. t. vi. p. 248. seq.
Footnote 507:
Poll. ix. 106.
A game generally played in the gymnasia was the Skaperda. In this apost was set up with a hole near the top and a rope passed through it.Two young men then seized each one end of the rope, and turning theirback to the post exerted their utmost strength to draw theirantagonist up the beam. He who raised his opponent highest won.Sometimes they tried their strength by binding themselves together,back to back, and pulling different ways.
The Himanteligmos, “pricking the garter,” in Ireland “pricking theloop,” was really an ingenious amusem*nt. It consisted in doubling athong, and twisting it into numerous labyrinthine folds, which done,the other party put the end of a peg into the midst in search of thepoint of duplication. If he missed the mark the thong unwound withoutentangling the peg; but if he dropped it into the right ring his pegwas caught and the game won. Hemsterhuis[508] supposes the Gordianknot to have been nothing but a variety of the Himanteligmos. Heconjectures that the boys of Abdera were fond of this game, on whichaccount the sophisms of Democritus were called ἱμαντελικτεαὶ, andhence probably a sophist, as one who twists words together, to _lash_others, was called Himantelicteus.
Footnote 508:
Ad Poll. t. vi. p. 1186. sqq. Cf. Plut. Symp. i. 1.
Another game, not entirely confined to children, was the Chalkismos,which consisted in twisting round rapidly on a board or table a pieceof money, and placing the point of the finger so dexterously on itsupper edge as to put a stop to its motion without permitting it tofall. This was a favourite amusem*nt of Phryne the hetaira, asbuilding houses of cards was of La Belle Stuart.[509] Some of thesesports were peculiar to the female sex,[510] as the Pentalitha, whichis still played by girls in some remote provinces of our island, whereit is called “Dandies.” The whole apparatus of the game consisted infive astragals—knuckle bones—pebbles, or little balls, which, gatheredup rapidly, were thrown into the air and attempted to be caught infalling on the back of the hand or between the slightly spreadfingers. If any fell it was allowable to pick them up, provided thiswere done with the fingers of the same hand on which the otherastragals rested.[511] The girls of France, according to Bulenger,still amuse themselves with the Pentalitha, there played with fivelittle glass balls, which are flung in the air and caught sodexterously as seldom to fall either on the table or on the ground. Ihave never, however, seen it played myself in that country.
Footnote 509:
Poll. ix. 118.
Footnote 510:
The game of astragals, properly so called, was common to both sexes (Paus. vi. 24. 7), who saw in Elis one of the Graces, represented with an astragal in her hand, while her two companions held the one a rose, the other a branch of myrtle, symbolical of their relationship to Aphrodite. The poets sometimes transfer these sports of earth to the Olympian halls, where we find Eros and Ganymede playing with golden astragals—Cf. Apollon. Rhod. iii. 117. seq. Cf. Odyss. α. 107. Il. χ. 87. seq.
Footnote 511:
Poll. ix. 126.
The Astragalismos,[512] which by the Romans was denominated talorum ortaxillorum ludus, (by Hyde through the Greek πάσσαλος, derived fromthe Hebræo-Punic Assila,) by the Arabs Ka’b or Shezn, by the PersiansShesh-buzhûl bâzi, by the Turks Depshelìm, (played in their countryboth by girls and boys,) by the French Garignon or Osselets, inEnglish “co*ckall.”[513] In the game of astragals the Persians, as isimplied in the name given above, often use six bones while the Greeksemployed only four, which were thrown either on a table or on thefloor. According to Lucian,[514] the huckle bones were sometimes thoseof the African gazelle.
Footnote 512:
Children, according to Lysander, were to be deceived with astragals, and men with oaths.—Plut. Lysan. § 8.
Footnote 513:
Hyde, Hist. Talor. § 2. t. ii. p. 314.
Footnote 514:
Amor. § 16. Theoph. Char. c. 5. See Nixon. Acc. of Antiq. at Hercul. Phil. Trans. vol. 50. pt. i. p. 88. Hyde. Hist. Talor. p. 137.
The several sides of the astragal or huckle bone had their characterexpressed by numbers, and obtained separate names, which determinedthe value of the throw.[515] Thus, the side showing the Monas wascalled the Dog, the opposite side Chias, and the throw Chios. Inco*ckall as in dice there are neither twos nor fives. The highestnumber, six, was called the Coan (συνορικὸς or ἑξίτης); the Dog or onewas called the Chian or dog-chance; to which the old proverb alludedΚῶος πρὸς χῖον, six to one. To have the Dog turn up was to lose,hence, perhaps, the phrase, “going to the dogs,” that is, playing alosing game. The throw of eight was denominated Stesichoros, becausethe poet’s tomb at Himera consisted of a perfect octagon. Among theforty who succeeded to the thirty at Athens Euripides was one, andhence, if the throw of the astragals amounted to forty points, theybestowed upon it the name of Euripides. All animals in which theastragal is found have it in the hough or pastern of the hind legs.The τὸ πρανὲς, the gibbous side or blank, because it counts fornothing; the τὸ κοῖλον, the hollow side or “put in;” the χῶα, thetortuous side, "co*ckall," or “take all,” so called because it wins thestake; the smooth side τα χῖα, “take half,” because of the money putin, it wins half. Among the Greeks and Romans the _put in_ was calledtrias, the blank tetras, the half-monas, and the co*ckall hexas.[516]By the Arabs they are denominated the thief, the lamb, the wezeer, andthe sultan; by the Turks the robber, the ploughman, the kihaya, or thedog, and the bey; by the Persians the robber, the rustic, the wezeer,and the schah; by the Armenians the thief, the ploughman, the steward,and the lord. The number of casts among the Greeks, according toEustathius, amounted to thirty-five.[517] Pliny[518] speaks of a workof Polycletos representing naked boys playing at this game, and thereader will probably remember the mutilated group in the BritishMuseum, in which a boy having evidently been beaten at astragals, isbiting in revenge the leg of his conqueror.
Footnote 515:
Hyde. Hist. Talor. p. 141. sqq. Poll. ix. 100.
Footnote 516:
Arist. Hist. Anim. ii. 2. p. 30. Bekk.
Footnote 517:
Meurs. Græc. Lud. p. 7.
Footnote 518:
xxxiv. 19. Vid. Calcagnin, Dissert. de Talis. J. Cammer. Comment. de Utriusque Ling. c. 846.
To play at Odd or Even[519] was common; so that we find Platodescribing a knot of boys engaged in this game in a corner of theundressing room of the gymnasium. There was a kind of divination byastragals, the bones being hidden under the hand, and the one partyguessing whether they were odd or even. The same game was occasionallyplayed with beans, walnuts, or almonds, or even with money, if we maycredit Aristophanes, who describes certain serving-men playing at Oddor Even with golden staters.[520] There was a game called EisOmillan,[521] in which they drew a circle on the ground, and, standingat a little distance, pitched the astragals at it; to win consistingin making them remain within the ring. Another form of the Eis Omillanwas to place a trained quail within a circle, on a table for example,out of which the point was to drive it by tapping it with the middlefinger. If it reared at the blow, and retreated beyond the line, itsmaster lost his wager. The play called Tropa[522] was also generallyperformed with astragals, which were pitched into a small hole, formedto receive such things when skilfully thrown. The common acorn, andfruit of the holm oak, were often substituted for astragals in thisgame. The Ephentinda seems to have consisted in pitching an ostrakoninto a circle, so as to cause it to remain there. The Skeptindaconsisted in placing an ostrakon, or a piece of money, on the ground,and pitching another at it so as to make it turn.[523]
Footnote 519:
Hyde, Hist. Nerdilud. p. 261.
Footnote 520:
Plut. 817. sqq. Cf. Sch. in loc.
Footnote 521:
Suid. et Hesych. in v. Poll. ix. 102. Cf. Meurs. Græc. Ludib. p. 69.
Footnote 522:
Cf. Meurs. de Lud. Græc. p. 61. Hesych. v. Τρόπα.
Footnote 523:
Poll. ix. 117.
CHAPTER IV. ELEMENTARY INSTRUCTION.
In Greece, as everywhere else, education[524] commenced in thenursery; and though time has very much obscured all remaining tracesof the instruction which the children there received, we are not lefton this point wholly without information. From the very day of hisbirth man begins to be acted on by those causes that furnish his mindwith ideas. As his intelligence acquires strength, the five sluiceswhich let in all that flood of knowledge which afterwards overflowshis mind, appear to be enlarged, and education at first, and for sometime, consists in watching over the nature and quality of the ideasconveyed inward by those channels. It is difficult to say when actualinstruction commenced: but among the earliest formal attempts atimpressing traditionary knowledge on the infant mind was therepetition by mothers and nurses of fables and stories, not always, ifPlato may be credited, constructed with a religious or ethicalpurpose.[525] They, in fact, introduced into the minds of theirchildren the legends of the mythology, under the forms of which truthsof the greatest importance, such as Bacon has developed in his “Wisdomof the Ancients,” lay sometimes concealed, though more frequently,perhaps, they inculcated no useful lesson, but were the mere sportivecreations of fancy, or if they contained any moral kernel the shell inwhich it was cased was too hard for the teeth of the vulgar. Such, forexample, as the legend of Zeus in Hesiod mutilating his father Kronos,which, in Plato’s opinion, was not to be delivered to the empty-headedmultitude or to untaught children; but, having sacrificed, not a hog,but the most precious victim, in mysterious secrecy to a few.
Footnote 524:
Among the ancient writers on education, of which the greater number have perished, was Clearchos of Soli, on whom see Voss. de Hist. Græc. i. Athen. xv. 54. Men. in Diog. Laert. p. 4. b.
Footnote 525:
Rep. ii. t. vi. p. 94.—Cf. Adolph. Cramer, 8, 9.
Wholly different from these, however, were the fables[526] properly socalled, which, invented apparently by Hesiod,[527] (at least his Hawkand Nightingale is the oldest example extant in Hellenic literature,)were afterwards sprinkled by the greatest poets, through theirwritings, or spontaneously uttered in pressing emergencies to warntheir countrymen against the approaches of tyranny. Archilochos’ Eagleand Fox[528] was famous throughout antiquity, as was likewise theHorse and the Stag, related by Stesichoros[529] to the people ofHimera, to put them on their guard against the Machiavellian policy ofGelon. But the most complete, perhaps, of these ancient compositionsis the fable of the lion, delivered by Eumenes to the Macedoniangenerals under his order, when they had been tampered with byAntigonos, who would have persuaded them to disband.[530]
Footnote 526:
Cf. Suid. v. Καὶ τὸ τοῦ λύκου. i. 1427.
Footnote 527:
Opp. et. Dies, 202–212. Quintil. v. 2.
Footnote 528:
Plat. Rep. l. ii. cap. 8. c. p. 117. Schol. Aristoph. Av. 652. Philostrat. Imag. i. 3.
Footnote 529:
Phot. Bib. 139. b. 8. Hor. Epist. i. 10. Gyraldi, de Poet. Histor. p. 462. a. sqq. Aristot. Rhet. ii. 20.
Footnote 530:
Diod. Sic. l. xix. c. 25.
“It is said,” observed the Prince, “that once upon a time a lionfalling in love with a young maiden came to make proposals of marriageto her father. The old man replied that he was quite ready to bestowon him his daughter upon one condition, namely, that he should pluckout his teeth and his claws, for that he feared his majesty might uponthe wedding night forget himself and unwittingly destroy the bride. Tothese terms the lion consented, and allowed his teeth and claws to bepulled out, upon which the father seeing he had lost the only thingswhich rendered him terrible fell upon him with a club and beat him todeath.” The Æsopic fables[531] which Socrates a few days before hisdeath amused himself by turning into verse,[532] are known to ussolely by comparatively modern imitations, and of those which weredenominated Sybaritic we know nothing[533] beyond the name; for thoughone scholiast informs us that the Sybaritic fables brought men uponthe scene, as the Æsopic did animals, another states the directcontrary. In the earlier and ruder ages of Greece, however, thesecompositions were in great repute, as they are still among the peopleof the East. To the infancy of nations as of individuals the wisdomthey contain is, in fact, always palatable; for which reason they werehighly esteemed by Martin Luther as particularly adapted to the spiritof his times.
Footnote 531:
Aristoph. Pac. 128. Vesp. 1392, sqq. et Scholia.
Footnote 532:
Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 22.
Doubtless we know too little of how the foundation of the republicancharacter was laid in the ancient commonwealths; but it was laid bywoman, and for centuries cannot have been laid amiss, as the glorioussuperstructure of virtue and patriotism erected upon it fullydemonstrates. On this point we must reject the testimony of Plato’sacademic dream. The historic fields of Marathon, Platæa, Thermopylæ,and a thousand others confute his fanciful theorising, provingincontestably that the love of glory and independence could, in thevery polities which lie least esteemed, achieve triumphs unknown tothe subjects of other governments.
Footnote 533:
Sch. Aristoph. Av. 471. Sch. Vesp. 1251.
At seven years[534] old boys were removed from the harem and sentunder the care of a governor to a public school, which, from the storyof Bedreddin Hassan, we find to have been formerly the practice amongthe Arabs, even for the sons of distinguished men and Wezeers. “Whenseven years had passed over him his grandfather, (Shemseddeen, Wezeerof the Sultan of Egypt,) committed him to a schoolmaster, whom hecharged to educate him with great care.”[535]
Footnote 534:
Aristot. Polit. vii. 15.
Footnote 535:
Arabian Nights, i. 286. Lane’s Translation.
Mischievous no doubt the boys of Hellas were, as boys will everywherebe, and many pranks would they play in spite of the crabbed old slavesset over them by their parents; on which account, probably, it is thatPlato considers boys, of all wild beasts the most audacious, plotting,fierce and intractable.[536] But the urchins now found that it was onething to nestle under mamma’s wing at home, and another to delve underthe direction of a didaskalos, and at school-hours, after the bitterroots of knowledge. For the school-boys of Greece tasted very littleof the sweets of bed after dawn. “They rose with the light,” saysLucian, “and with pure water washed away the remains of sleep, whichstill lingered on their eyelids.”[537] Having breakfasted on bread andfruit, to which through the allurements of their pædagogues theysometimes added wine,[538] they sallied forth to the didaskaleion, orschoolmaster’s lair as the comic poets jocularly termed it,[539]summer and winter, whether the morning smelt of balm, or was deformedby sleet or snow, drifting like meal from a sieve down the rocks ofthe Acropolis.
Footnote 536:
De Legg. vi. t. viii. p. 41. Creuzer. de Civ. Athen. p. 556.
Footnote 537:
Amor. § 44.
Footnote 538:
Athen. xiii. 61. sqq.
Footnote 539:
Poll. iv. 19.
Aristophanes has left us a picture, dashed off with his usualgrotesque vigour, of a troop of Attic lads marching on a winter’smorning to school.[540]
“Now will I sketch the ancient plan of training, When justice was in vogue and wisdom flourished. First, modesty restrained the youthful voice So that no brawl was heard. In order ranged, The boys from all the neighbourhood appeared, Marching to school, naked, though down the sky Tumbled the flaky snow like flour from sieve. Arrived, and seated wide apart, the master First taught them how to chaunt Athena’s praise, ‘Pallas unconquered, stormer of cities!’ or ‘Shout far resounding’ in the self-same notes Their fathers learned. And if through mere conceit Some innovation-hunter strained his throat With scurril lays mincing and quavering, Like any Siphnian or Chian fop— As is too much the fashion since that Phrynis[541] Brought o’er Ionian airs—quickly the scourge Rained on his shoulders blows like hail as one Plotting the Muses’ downfal. In the Palæstra Custom required them decently to sit, Decent to rise, smoothing the sandy floor Lest any traces of their form should linger Unsightly on the dust. When in the bath Grave was their manner, their behaviour chaste. At table, too, no stimulating dishes, Snatched from their elders, such as fish or anis, Parsley or radishes or thrushes, roused The slumbering passions.”[542]
Footnote 540:
Cf. Plato, de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 41. seq.
Footnote 541:
For an account of this musician, see Pollux iv. 66. with the notes of Kühn and Iungermann, t. iv. p. 709. sqq.
Footnote 542:
Aristoph. Nub. 961. sqq. Cf. Plaut. Bacchid. iii. 3.
The object of sending boys to school was twofold: first to cultivateand harmonise their minds by arts and literature; secondly, so tooccupy them that no time could be allowed for evil thoughts andhabits. On this account, Aristotle enumerating Archytas’ rattle amongthe principal toys of children, denominates education the rattle ofboys.[543] In order, too, that its effect might be the more sure andpermanent, no holidays[544], or vacations appear to have been allowed,while irregularity or lateness of attendance was severelypunished.[545] The theories broached by Montagne, Locke, and others,that boys are to be kept in order by reason and persuasion were notanticipated by the Athenians.[546] They believed that to reduce thestubborn will to obedience, and enforce the wholesome laws ofdiscipline, masters must be armed with the power of correction, andaccordingly their teachers and gymnasiarchs checked with stripes[547]the slightest exhibition of stubbornness or indocility.[548]
Footnote 543:
Polit. viii. 6. 268. Gœttl.
Footnote 544:
Casaub. ap. Theoph. Char. p. 273.
Footnote 545:
Plaut. Bacchid. iii. 3. 22.
Footnote 546:
Plato, indeed, at one time entertained a similar fancy.—De Rep. t. vi. p. 385. (Cf. Muret. in Aristot. Ethic. 71.) But, afterwards, in his old age, adopted the general conviction of mankind, that he who spares the rod spoils the child.—De Legg. t. viii. p. 12. seq. Varro, however, who wrote much on education, observes, that “remotissimum ad discendum formido, ac nimius timor, et omnis perturbatio animi. Contra delectatio pro telo ad discendum.” Victor. Var. Lect. l. xv. c. 2. Theodoric, the Gothic king of Italy, had another reason for sparing the rod in education. The child, he said, who had trembled at a rod would never dare to look upon a sword.—Gibbon vii. 19. This Gothic prince was not, therefore, acquainted with the Spartan system of education.
Footnote 547:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 959.
Footnote 548:
Cf. Cressoll. Theat. Rhet. v. 6. p. 471. seq.
Nor did their pædagogues[549] or governors behave towards them withless strictness. These were persons,—slaves for the most part,—who atAthens as in the rest of Greece, Sparta not excepted, were from theearliest ages intrusted with the care of boys, and whose ministrycould on no account be dispensed with. By Plato[550] even theseprecautions were deemed insufficient. In his ideal state he would havethe pædagogues themselves, as at Sparta, under the strictestinspection, making it the duty of every citizen to have an eye uponthem, and arming him with the power to correct their delinquencies aswell as those of the boys under their charge. There was to be,moreover, a general inspector intrusted with authority to punishneglect, by whichsoever of the parties committed. Upon these pointsthe views of the Athenians were unquestionably judicious, for sinceboys did not amongst them pass at once from the hands of their mothersand domestic guardianship into those of the state as at Sparta, suchgovernors were necessary to preserve their manners from defilement andcontamination.[551] Their principal duty consisted in leading the ladto and from school, in attending him to the theatre, to the publicgames, to the forum, and wherever else it was thought fit he shouldgo.[552] It has been by some conjectured that while the boys continuedunder the care of the schoolmaster the governors remained in thehouse, or in a building adjoining denominated the pædagogeion, toawait their return; but the inference, drawn chiefly from the name ofthe edifice, is erroneous; pædagogeion was employed to signify theschool itself,[553] and we have the testimony of Plato to prove thatthe pædagogue having delivered the boy to the didaskalos, usuallyreturned to his master’s house.
Footnote 549:
On these and the other persons engaged in the education of youth, see Bergmann, ad Isoc. Areop. § 14.
Footnote 550:
De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 42. See p. 11 of Cramer’s excellent little pamphlet, which I have frequently found extremely useful.
Footnote 551:
Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. ii. 1. 2.
Footnote 552:
Plat. Lysis. t. i. p. 118. De Legg. iv. t. viii. p. 325. De Rep. iii. t. vi. p. 128.
Footnote 553:
Poll. iv. 19. Ulp. ad Demosth. de Cor. § 78. Orat. Att. t. x. p. 113. Plat. Lysis. t. i. p. 145.
On the character of these governors[554] antiquity appears to havetransmitted us more satire than information. If we may credit somewriters, it was not merely slaves who were intrusted with the care ofboys, but often the meanest and vilest of slaves,—base in mind,depraved in manners,—whose guardianship, when they chanced to becrabbed and morose, could be no other than disgusting to theircharges; and, when inclined to indulgence, most pernicious. Nay, werethey themselves corrupt, what could be of more evil tendency thantheir own example? They who take this view of the matter appear to meillogical and inconsistent.[555] Though aware that these men werechosen by the parents to preserve their children from bad example,from the infection of corrupt manners, from the allurements of viciouscompanions, these writers persuade themselves that they voluntarilygave them as companions and guardians men worse than whom could not befound. It is more reasonable to conclude that when these pædagoguesproved unworthy of the trust reposed in them they were sufficientmasters of hypocrisy to conceal their vices at home, and only revealedthemselves to their young masters gradually as their lessons producedtheir evil fruits. Thus, it is clear, that the father whom the comicwriter Plato, in his Fellow Deceiver,[556] introduced reproaching thepædagogue who had corrupted his son, knew nothing of his evil wayswhen he delivered the lad to his keeping.
“The youth, O wretch, whom I intrusted to thee Thou hast perverted, teaching him vile habits Once stranger to his mind; for now he drinks Even in the morning, which was not his wont.”
Footnote 554:
Plut. de Lib. Educ. § 7. The Athenians sought to create a high idea of this class of persons by annually offering sacrifice to Connidas, the reputed pædagogue of Theseus.—Plut. Thes. § 4.
Footnote 555:
Cram. de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. p. 12.
With the greatest reason we may suppose, that of all the domestics inthe family the most staid and sober, the most attached, the mostfaithful, were chosen to fulfil this important duty, such as Plautusdescribes an honest pædagogue,—
Eademque erat hæc disciplina olim, cum tu adolescens eras? Nego tibi hoc annis viginti fuisse primis copiæ, Digitum longe a pædagogo pedem ut efferres ædibus, Ante solem exorientem nisi in palæstram veneras, Gymnasii præfecto haud mediocres pœnas penderes. Idque ubi obtigerat, hoc etiam ad malum arcessabatur malum Et discipulus et magister perhibebantur improbi. Ubi cursu, luctando, hasta, disco, pugillatu, pila, Saliendo sese exercebant magis, quam, scorto aut saviis: Ibi suam ætatem extendebant, non in latebrosis locis. Inde de hippodromo et palæstra ubi revenisses domum, Cincticulo præcinctus in sella apud magistrum assideres: Cum librum legeres. Si unam peccavisses syllabam, Fieret corium tam maculosum quam est nutricis pallium * * * * * Id equidem ego certo scio. Nam olim populi prius honorem capiebat suffragio, Quam magistri desinebat esse dicto obediens.[557]
Footnote 556:
Athen. xiii. 61. 63.
Footnote 557:
Plaut. Bacchid. Act iii. Sc. 3.
Lucian, too, speaking of the attendants of youths in the better timesof the republic, describes them as an honourable company who followedtheir young masters to the schools, not with combs and looking-glasseslike the attendants of ladies, but with the venerable instruments ofwisdom in their hands, many-leaved tablets or books recording theglorious deeds of their ancestors, or if proceeding to the musicmaster bearing, instead of these, the melodious lyre.[558]
Footnote 558:
Amor. §. 44.
In fact the fortunes of war often in those days reduced men of virtueand ability to the condition of slaves, when they would naturally bechosen as the governors of youth. Thus we find Diogenes the Cynicpurchased by a rich Corinthian, who intrusted to him the education ofhis sons. The account which antiquity has left us of his sale,reception by his master, and manner of teaching, being extremelybrief, we shall here give it entire. Hermippos[559] who wrote a smalltreatise called the Sale of Diogenes, observes that when thephilosopher was exposed in the slave-market and interrogatedrespecting his qualifications, he replied that “He could command men;”and then addressing himself to the herald, bade him inquire whetherthere was any one present who wanted a master. Being forbidden to sitdown, he said “This matters nothing, for fish are bought in whateverway they may lie.” He remarked also, that he wondered that when peoplewere buying a pot or a dish they examined it on all sides, whereaswhen they purchased a man they were contented with simply looking athim. Afterwards, when he had become the slave of Xeniades, he informedhis owner that he expected the same obedience to be paid to him as menyield to a pilot or a physician.
Footnote 559:
Diog. Laert. Vit. Diog. vi. ii. 4. sqq. with the observation of Menage, t. ii. p. 138.
It is further related by Eubulos, who likewise wrote a treatise onthis incident, that Diogenes conducted with the utmost care theeducation of the children under his charge. In addition to theordinary studies, he taught them to ride, to draw the bow, to use thesling, and to throw the javelin. In the palæstra, moreover, where,contrary to the Athenian practice he remained to watch over the boys,Diogenes would not permit the master of the Gymnasium to exercise themafter the manner of the athletæ; but in those parts only ofgymnastics, which had a tendency to animate them and strengthen theirconstitutions. They learned also by heart,[560] under his direction,numerous sentences from the poets and historians, as well as from hisown writings. It was his practice likewise very greatly to abridge hisexplanations in order that they might the more easily be committed tomemory. At home he habituated them to wait on themselves, to becontent with frugal fare, and drink water, from which it may beinferred that others drank wine. He accustomed them to cut their hairclose, not to be fastidious in dress, and to walk abroad with himbarefoot and without a chiton, silent and with downcast eyes.[561] Healso went out with them to hunt. On their part they took great care ofhim, and pleaded his cause with their parents. He therefore grew oldin the family, and they performed for him the rites of sepulture.
Footnote 560:
I may say with Herault de Sechelle “Apprendre _par cœur_; ce mot me plait. Il n’y a guère en effet que le cœur, qui retienne bien, et qui retienne vîte.”—Voyage à Montbar, &c. p. 77.
Footnote 561:
Cf. Luc. Amor. § 44. Καὶ χλανίδα ταῖς ἐπωμίαις περόναις συῤῥάψας ἀπὸ τῆς πατρῴας ἑστίας ἐξέρχεται κάτω κεκυφὼς, καὶ μηδένα τῶν ἀπαντών τῶν ἐξ ἐναντίου προσβλέπων. In his exhortation to Demonicos, Isocrates has thrown together numerous precepts which almost constitute a code of morals and politeness. They are far superior to Lord Chesterfield’s even where the Graces only are recommended; and have the advantage of almost always subjoining the reason to the rule.
Now what Diogenes was in the house of Xeniades numerous pædagogueswere doubtless found to be in other parts of Greece. But the majorityit is thought were open to blame; and so they are everywhere, and sothey would be, though taken from the best classes of mankind. That is,they were men with many failings, far from what could be wished; butthat their character upon the whole was respectable seems to medemonstrated by the powers delegated to them by the parents. For notonly could they use upon occasion, as we have said, menace and harshlanguage,—they were even permitted to have recourse to blows, in orderto preserve their pupils from vices which none would have soonertaught than they, had their characters been such as is commonlybelieved. For example, would they have made a drunkard the guardian ofa boy’s sobriety? a thief the guardian of his honesty? a libertine ofhis chastity? a coarse and ribald jester the inculcator of modesty andpurity of language?[562]
Footnote 562:
Cf. Dion. Chrysost. ii. p. 261; i. 299.
At home, of course, the influence and example of the parents surpassedall other influences, of the mother more especially, who up to theirmanhood retained over her sons the greatest authority. Of this aplayful illustration occurs in the Lysis of Plato.[563] Socrates,interrogating the youth respecting the course of his studies, inquiresarchly whether when in the harem he was not as a matter of coursepermitted to play with his mother’s wool basket, and loom, and spathe,and shuttle?
Footnote 563:
Opp. t. i. p. 118. The influence of imitation over the gesture, voice, and thoughts of youth is forcibly pointed out in the Republic.—t. vi. p. 124.
“If I touched them,” replied Lysis, laughing, “I should soon feel theweight of the shuttle upon my fingers.”
“But,” proceeds the philosopher, “if your mother or father requireanything to be read or written for them, they, probably, prefer yourservices to those of any other person?”
“No doubt.”
“And in this case, as you have been instructed in reading andspelling, they allow you to proceed according to your own knowledge.So likewise, when you play to them on the lyre, they suffer you, asyou please, to relax or tighten the chords, to touch them with thefingers, or strike them with the plectron,—do they not?”
“Certainly.”
From this it would appear that the authority of the parents was equal;though generally at Athens, as Plato[564] elsewhere complains, greaterreverence was paid to the commands of the mother even than to those ofthe father. Indeed to be wanting in respect to her was there deemedthe _ne plus ultra_ of depravity.[565] The father, however, ofnecessity took a considerable share in the instruction and moraltraining of his son,[566] who at home profited by his conversation,and, arrived at the proper age, accompanied him abroad.[567] Whenreduced to the state of orphanhood the republic took children underits own protection, not considering it safe to intrust them to thesole guidance of masters or pædagogues.
Footnote 564:
Repub. viii. 5. t. ii. p. 182. Stallb.
Footnote 565:
Aristoph. Nub. 1443. Δυοῖν δ᾽ ὀνομάτοιν σεβασμίοιν πᾶσαι τιμαι μένουσιν, ἐξίσου παρτὶ μητέρα προσκυνούντων.—Luc. Amor. § 19.
Footnote 566:
On the force of example and imitation see Plato, de Rep. t. vi. p. 124.
Footnote 567:
Plat. Lach. t. i. p. 269.—Among the public places to which a father might take his sons the courts of law were not included, though we find Demosthenes, when a boy, contriving to introduce himself, where unseen of the judges he might listen to the eloquence of Callistratos.—Victor. Var. Lect. l. xxx. c. 20.
Care, too, was taken lest those public schools, established for theadvancement of virtue and morals, should themselves be converted intonurseries of vice. They were by law[568] forbidden to be opened beforesunrise, and were closed at sunset; nor during the day could any othermen be introduced besides the teachers,[569] though it appears fromsome of Plato’s dialogues that this enactment was not very strictlyobserved.[570] To prevent habits of brawling, boys were forbidden toassemble in crowds in the streets on their way to school. Nor werethese laws deemed sufficient; but still further to protect theirmorals ten annual magistrates called Sophronistæ, one from each tribe,were elected by show of hands,[571] whose sole business it was towatch over the manners of youth. This magistracy, dated as far back asthe age of Solon,[572] and continued in force to the latest time. TheGymnasiarch, another magistrate,[573] was intrusted with thesuperintendence of the Gymnasia, which, like the public games andfestivals, appeared to require peculiar care; and, if we can receivethe testimony of Plautus[574] for the classical ages of thecommonwealth, transgressors received severe chastisem*nt.
Footnote 568:
Æsch. cont. Timarch. § 5, 6.
Footnote 569:
See Theoph. Char. c. 5. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 180.
Footnote 570:
Lysis. t. i. p. 145. Theætet. t. iii. p. 179.
Footnote 571:
Etym. Mag. 742. 38.
Footnote 572:
Cramer de Educ. Puer. ap. Athen. p. 13.
Footnote 573:
Vandale Dissert. pp. 584–727.
Footnote 574:
Bacchid. iii. 3.
It has sometimes been imagined that in Greece separate edifices werenot erected as with us expressly for school-houses, but that both thedidaskalos and the philosopher taught their pupils in fields, gardensor shady groves.[575] But this was not the common practice, thoughmany schoolmasters appear to have had no other place wherein toassemble their pupils than the portico of a temple[576] or somesheltered corner in the street, where in spite of the din of businessand the throng of passengers the worship of learning was publiclyperformed. Here, too, the music-masters frequently gave their lessons,whether in singing or on the lyre, which practice explains theanecdote of the musician, who, hearing the crowd applaud one of hisscholars, gave him a box on the ear, observing, “Had you played wellthese blockheads would not have praised you.” A custom very similarprevails in the East, where, in recesses open to the street, we oftensee the turbaned schoolmaster with a crowd of little Moslems abouthim, tracing letters on their large wooden tablets or engaged inrecitations of the Koran.
Footnote 575:
See Coray, Disc. Prelim. sur Hippoc. de Aër. et Loc. § 41. t. i. p. 46. seq.
Footnote 576:
In the Antichita di Ercolano (t. iii. p. 213.) we find a representation of one of these schools during the infliction of corporal chastisem*nt. Numerous boys are seated on forms reading, while a delinquent is horsed on the back of another in the true Etonian style. One of the carnifices holds his legs, while another applies the birch to his naked back. Occasionally in Greece we find that free boys were flogged with a leek in lieu of a birch. Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 622. Schneid. ad Theoph. Hist. Plant. vii. 4. 10. p. 574.
But these were the schools of the humbler classes. For the children ofthe noble and the opulent spacious structures were raised, andfurnished with tables, desks,—for that peculiar species ofgrammateion[577] which resembled the plate cupboard, can have beennothing but a desk,—forms, and whatsoever else their studies required.Mention is made of a school at Chios[578] which contained one hundredand twenty boys, all of whom save one were killed by the falling in ofthe roof. From another tragical story we learn that in Astypalæa,[579]one of the Cyclades, there was a school which contained sixty boys.The incidents connected with their death are narrated in the romanticstyle of the ancients. Cleomedes, a native of this island, having inboxing slain Iccos the Epidaurian, was accused of unfairness andrefused the prize, upon which he became mad and returned to his owncountry. There, entering into the public school, he approached thepillar that supported the roof, and like another Sampson seized it inan access of frenzy, and wresting it from its basis brought down thewhole building upon the children. He himself however escaped, but,being pursued with stones by the inhabitants, took sanctuary in thetemple of Athena, where he concealed himself in the sacred chest. Thepeople paying no respect to the holy place still pursued him andattempted to force open the lid, which he held down with giganticstrength. At length when the coffer was broken in pieces Cleomedes wasnowhere to be found, dead or alive. Terrified at this prodigy theysent to consult the oracle of Delphi, by which they were commanded topay divine honours to the athlete as the last of the heroes.[580]
Footnote 577:
Poll. iv. 18, 19. x. 57. seq.
Footnote 578:
Herod. vi. 27.
Footnote 579:
Called the Table of the Gods, from its beauty and amenity.—Steph. de Urb. in v. p. 189. b.
Footnote 580:
Paus. vi. 9. 6. seq. Plut. Rom. § 28.
In the interior of the school there was commonly an oratory[581]adorned with statues of the Muses, where, probably in a kind of font,was kept a supply of pure water for the boys. Pretending often, whenthey were not, to be thirsty, they would steal in knots to thisoratory, and there amuse themselves by splashing the water over eachother; on which account the legislator ordained that strict watchshould be kept over it. Every morning the forms were spunged,[582] theschoolroom was cleanly swept, the ink ground ready for use, and allthings were put in order for the business of the day.
Footnote 581:
Sch. Æsch. cont. Tim. in Orator. Att. t. xii. p. 376 a.
Footnote 582:
Dem. de Cor. § 78. seq.
The apparatus[583] of an ancient school was somewhat complicated:there were mathematical instruments, globes, maps, and charts of theheavens, together with boards whereon to trace geometrical figures,tablets, large and small, of box-wood, fir, or ivory[584] triangularin form, some folding with two, and others with many leaves; books tooand paper, skins of parchment, wax for covering the tablets, which, ifwe may believe Aristophanes,[585] people sometimes ate when they werehungry.[586]
Footnote 583:
Pollux, iv. 19. Cf. Herod. vii. 239. ii. 21. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 529.
Footnote 584:
Poll. i. 234. Lucian. Ner. § 9. Amor. § 44. Antich. di Ercol. t. ii. p. 55. t. iii. p. 237.
Footnote 585:
Poll. x. 58, 59.
Footnote 586:
On this subject Isidorus Hispal. vi. 9. has a curious passage: “Ceræ literarum materies, parvulorum nutrices. Ipsæ dant ingenium pueris primordia sensus, quarum studium primi Græci tradidisse produntur. Græci enim et Thusci primum ferro in ceris scripserunt. Postea Romani jusserunt, ne graphium ferreum quis haberet. Undè et apud scribas dicebatur, Ceram ferro ne lædito. Postea institutum est, ut in cerâ ossibus scriberent, sicut indicat Alsa in Satyrâ dicens: Vertamus vomerem in ceram, mucroneque aremus osseo.” Cf. Pfeiffer, Antiq. Græc. p. 413.
To the above were added rulers, reed-pens,[587] pen-cases, pen-knives,pencils, and last, though not least, the rod which kept them to thesteady use of all these things.
Footnote 587:
It was as the instrument of literature that the reed subdued half the world, though Pliny only celebrates its conquest as an arrow. “Ac si quis Æthiopas, Ægyptum, Arabas, Indos, Scythas, Bactros, Sarmatarum tot gentes et Orientis, omniaque Parthorum regna diligentiùs computet, æqua fermè pars hominum in toto mundo calamis superata degit.”—Hist. Nat. xvi. 65.
At Athens these schools were not provided by the state. They wereprivate speculations, and each master was regulated in his charges bythe reputation he had acquired and the fortunes of his pupils. Someappear to have been extremely moderate in their demands.[588]
Footnote 588:
Which was the case even among the sophists, as we find Proclos granting a perpetual admission to his lectures for a hundred drachmæ.—Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 21. § 3. This he was the better enabled to do from his carrying on the business of a merchant.—§ 2. Professors’ charges appear to have been often disputed, as we find mention, in many authors, of law-suits between them and their pupils.—Lucian. Icaromenip. § 16. “The wages of industry are just and honourable, yet Isocrates shed tears at the first receipt of a stipend.”—Gibbon, vii. 146.
There was for example a school-master named Hippomachos, upon enteringwhose establishment boys were required to pay down a mina, after whichthey might remain as long and benefit by his instructions as much asthey pleased. Didaskaloi were not however held in sufficient respect,though as their scholars were sometimes very numerous,[589] as manyfor example as a hundred and twenty, it must often have happened thatthey became wealthy. From the life of Homer, attributed toHerodotus,[590] we glean some few particulars respecting the conditionof a schoolmaster in remoter ages.
Footnote 589:
Athen. xiii. 47.
Footnote 590:
Vit. Hom. §§ 5. seq. 25. seq.
Phemios it is there related kept a school at Smyrna, where he taughtboys their letters and all those other parts of education thencomprehended under the term music. His slave Chritheis, the mother ofthe poet, spun and wove the wool which Phemios received in paymentfrom his scholars. She likewise introduced into his house greatelegance and frugality, which so pleased the school-master that itinduced him to marry her. Under this man, according to the traditionreceived in Greece, Homer studied, and made so great a proficiency inknowledge that he was soon enabled to commence instructor himself. Hetherefore proceeded to Chios,[591] and opened a school where heinitiated the youth in the beauties of epic poetry, and, performinghis duties with great wisdom, obtained many admirers among the Chians,became wealthy, and took a wife, by whom he had two sons.
Footnote 591:
Speaking of the antiquities of this island Chandler remarks: “The most curious remain is that which has been named, without reason, _The School of Homer_. It is on the coast at some distance from the city, northward, and appears to have been an open temple of Cybele, formed on the top of a rock. The shape is oval, and in the centre is the image of the goddess, the head and an arm wanting. She is represented, as usual, sitting. The chair has a lion carved on each side, and on the back. The area is bounded by a low rim or seat, and about five yards over. The whole is hewn out of the mountain, is rude, indistinct, and probably of the most remote antiquity.” i. 61.
The earliest task to be performed at school was to gain a knowledge ofthe Greek characters, large and small, to spell next, next to read.Herodes the Sophist experienced much vexation from the stupidityexhibited in achieving this enterprise by his son Atticus, whosememory was so sluggish that he could not even recollect theChrist-cross-row. To overcome this extraordinary dulness he educatedalong with him twenty-four little slaves of his own age, upon whom hebestowed the names of the letters, so that young Atticus might becompelled to learn his alphabet as he played with his companions, nowcalling out for Omicron now for Psi.[592] In teaching the art ofwriting their practice nearly resembled our own; the master tracedwith what we must call a pencil (γραφὶς), a number of characters on atablet, and the pupil following with the pen the guidance of the faintlines[593] before him, accustomed his fingers to perform the requisitemovements with adroitness.[594] These things were necessarily thefirst step in the first class of studies, which were denominated_music_,[595] and comprehended everything connected with thedevelopement of the mind; and they were carried to a certain extentbefore the second division called gymnastics was commenced. Theyreversed the plan commonly adopted among ourselves, for with thempoetry[596] preceded prose, a practice which coöperating with theirsusceptible temperament, impressed upon the national mind thatimaginative character for which it was preëminently distinguished. Andthe poets in whose works they were first initiated were of all themost poetical, the authors of lyrical and dithyrambic pieces,selections from whose verses they committed to memory, thus acquiringearly a rich store of sentences and imagery ready to be adduced inargument or illustration, to furnish familiar allusions or to be woveninto the texture of their style.[597]
Footnote 592:
Philost. Vit. Soph. ii. 10.
Footnote 593:
Quint. i. 1. Poll. vii. 128. Aristoph. Thesm. 778.
Footnote 594:
Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 181.
Footnote 595:
See Plat. de Rep. ii. t. vi. p. 93. seq. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 188. seq.
Footnote 596:
In the Homeric age men, we are told, received their mental instruction from the bards, and their physical at the gymnasium.—Athen. i. 16.
Footnote 597:
Cf. Plat. de Rep. t. i. p. 149. Stallb.
Considerable difference however existed in the practice of differentteachers. Some imagining that by the variety of their acquirementsthey would be rendered eloquent, recommended the indiscriminate studyof the poets,[598] whether they wrote in hexameter, in trimeter, orany other kind of verse, on ludicrous or on serious subjects. Certainpoets there were who like Fenelon and the pretended Ossian, wrotetheir works in prose,[599] respecting the use of whose compositionsPlato was in some doubt.
Footnote 598:
Cf. Plato de Legg. t. viii. p. 44. sqq. On the style of declamation used in the Greek and Roman schools, see Schömann, de Comit. p. 187.
Footnote 599:
There were likewise poems written in the language of the common people.—Athen. xiv. 43.
By other philosophers wandering unrestrained over the vast fields ofliterature was condemned. They desired to separate the gold from thedross, contending that persons accustomed from their infancy to theloftier and purer inspirations of the muse will regard with contemptevery thing mean or illiberal, whereas they who have learned todelight in low and vulgar compositions will consider all otherliterature tame and insipid. For so great is the force of imitation,that habits commenced from the earliest years pass into the mannersand character of a man, affecting even his voice and corporealdevelopement, nay, modifying the very nature of the thoughtsthemselves.
Among the other branches of knowledge[600] most necessary to bestudied, and to which they applied themselves nearly from the outset,was arithmetic, without some inkling of which, a man, in Plato’sopinion, could scarcely be a citizen at all. For, as he observes,there is no art or science which does not stand in some need of it,especially the art of war, where many combinations depend entirely onnumbers. And yet Agamemnon in some of the old tragic poets wasrepresented by Palamedes as wholly ignorant of calculation, so thatpossibly, as Socrates jocularly observes, he could not reckon his ownfeet.[601] The importance attached to this branch of education,nowhere more apparent than in the dialogues of Plato, furnishes oneproof that the Athenians were preëminently men of business, who in alltheir admiration for the good and beautiful never lost sight of thosethings which promote the comfort of life, and enable a man effectuallyto perform his ordinary duties. With the same views were geometry andastronomy pursued. For, in the Republic, Glaucon,[602] who may besupposed to represent the popular opinion, confesses at once, upon themention of geometry, that as it is applicable to the business of warit would be most useful. He could discover the superiority of thegeometrician[603] over the ignorant man in pitching a camp, in thetaking of places, in contracting or expanding the ranks of an army,and all those other military movements practised in battles, marchesor sieges. To Plato however this was its least recommendation. Heconceived that in the search after goodness and truth the study ofthis science was especially beneficial to the mind, both because itdeals in positive verities, and thus begets a love of them, andlikewise superinduces the habit of seeking them through lengthenedinvestigation and of being satisfied with nothing less.
Footnote 600:
Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 62. where he describes the Egyptian method of teaching arithmetic by rewards and allurements. Locke, however, condemned the practice. “He that will give to his son apples or sugar-plums, or what else of this kind he is most delighted with, to make him learn his book, does but authorise his love of pleasure, and co*cker up that dangerous propensity, which he ought by all means to subdue and stifle in him.” Education § 52. Vid. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 340. seq. Muret. Orat. iv. 43. Sir Josiah Child has some good remarks on the value of arithmetic as a branch of education: “It hath been observed in the nature of arithmetic, that, like other parts of the mathematics, it doth not only improve the natural faculties, but it inclines those that are expert in it to thriftiness and good husbandry, and prevents both husbands and wives in some measure from running out of their estates, when they have it always ready in their heads what their expenses do amount to, and how soon by that course their ruin must overtake them.”—Discourse of Trade, p. 5.
Footnote 601:
Plat. de Rep. vii. t. vi. p. 340. sqq.
Footnote 602:
Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 349. seq. De Legg. t. viii. p. 371. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 180. Cf. Cicero de Orat. iii. 32. t. ii. 319. ed. Lallemand.
Footnote 603:
See in Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 181. an anecdote of Thales cutting a new channel for the river Halys.
In the study of astronomy[604] itself a coarse and obvious utility wasalmost of necessity the first thing aimed at, and even in the age ofSocrates, when philosophical wants were keenly felt in addition tothose of the animal and civil life, there were evidently teachers whoconsidered it necessary to justify such pursuits, by showing theirbearing on the system of loss and profit. For when Socrates comes inhis ideal scheme of education to touch on this science, Glaucon, thepractical man, at once recognises its usefulness, not only inhusbandry and navigation, but in affairs military. Nor are such fruitsof it to be despised. But philosophy proposes a higher aim, insisting,in opposition to popular belief, that by means of such pursuits thesoul may be purified, and its powers of discovering truth, overlaidand nearly extinguished by other studies, rekindled and fanned intoactivity like a flame.
Footnote 604:
Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 357. seq.; de Legg. t. viii. p. 370. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 860. 208.
The importance of music,[605] in the education of the Greeks, isgenerally understood. It was employed to effect several purposes.First, to soothe and mollify the fierceness of the national character,and prepare the way for the lessons of the poets, which, deliveredamid the sounding of melodious strings, when the soul was rapt andelevated by harmony, by the excitement of numbers, by the magic of thesweetest associations, took a firm hold upon the mind, and generallyretained it during life. Secondly, it enabled the citizens gracefullyto perform their part in the amusem*nts of social life, every personbeing in his turn called upon at entertainments to sing or play uponthe lyre. Thirdly, it was necessary to enable them to join in thesacred choruses, rendered frequent by the piety of the state, and forthe due performance in old age of many offices of religion, thesacerdotal character belonging more or less to all the citizens ofAthens. Fourthly, as much of the learning of a Greek was martial anddesigned to fit him for defending his country, he required someknowledge of music that on the field of battle his voice mightharmoniously mingle with those of his countrymen, in chaunting thosestirring, impetuous, and terrible melodies, called pæans, whichpreceded the first shock of fight.
Footnote 605:
Vid. Ilgen. de Scol. Poes. xiv.—“Post Persica demum bella musicæ assidue operatos Græcos dicit. Et præmia diebus festis nonnullis constituta iis pueris adolescentibusque, qui lyrica carmina Solonis aliorumque optime cecinissent.”—Creuzer. de Civ. Athen. Omn. Hum. Par. p. 55. seq.
For some, or all of these reasons, the science of music began to becultivated among the Hellenes, at a period almost beyond the reacheven of tradition. The Bards, whom we behold wandering on the remotestedge of the fabulous horizon, have invariably harps or lyres in theirhands; and the greatest of the heroes of poetry, the very acme of Epicexcellence, is represented delighting in the performance of music, andchaunting on the shores of the Hellespont the deeds of formerwarriors. In those ages the music of the whole nation possessedevidently a grave and lofty character; but as that of the Ioniansbecame afterwards modified by the influence of a softer climate andimitation of the Asiatic, while the Dorian measure remained nearlyunchanged, the latter is supposed to have possessed originally thesuperiority over the former, which in reality it did not. In processof time, however, the existence of three distinct measures wasrecognised, the Dorian, the Æolian, and the Ionian: the first wasgrave, masculine, full of energy, and though somewhat monotonouspeculiarly adapted to inspire martial ardour; the last distinguishedby a totally different character, rich, varied, flexible, breathingsoftness and pleasure, adorning the hour of peace and murmuringplaintively through the groves and temples of Aphrodite, Apollo, andthe Muses; while the second, which was fiery, with a mixture ofgaiety, formed the intermediate step between the two measures,partaking something of the character of each. The Hypermixolydian andHyperphrygian, at one time cultivated among the Ionians, werecomparatively recent inventions.[606]
Footnote 606:
Athen. xiv. 20. sqq. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 984. Clem. Alex. i. 3. 5.
The Phrygian measure distinguished for its exciting and enthusiasticcharacter,[607] was much employed upon the stage, on which accountAgias the poet used to say that the styrax burned on the altar in theorchestra had a Phrygian smell, because its odours recalled the wildPhrygian measures there heard. The national instrument of thePhrygians was the flute, and it is worthy of remark that up to a verylate period flute-players at Athens were usually distinguished byPhrygian names. Olympos the greatest musician known to the Greeks, wasprobably himself a native of Phrygia, since he is said to have been apupil of Marsyas. In fact the barbarians of antiquity appear, thoughin a somewhat different way, to have made as much use of music as theGreeks themselves. They chaunted the songs of their bards in going tobattle, sang funeral dirges at tombs, and even caused theirambassadors when proceeding on a mission to foreign states to beaccompanied by music.[608] No people, however, appear to have carriedtheir love for music to so preposterous a length as the Tyrrhenians,who caused their slaves to be flogged to the sound of the flute.
Footnote 607:
Luc. Nigrin. § 37.
Footnote 608:
Athen. xiv. 24.
The music of the flute[609] was supposed to be peculiarly delightfulto the gods, so that those who died while its sounds were on theirears were permitted to taste of the gifts of Aphrodite in Hades, asPhiletæros expresses it in his Flute-lover:
“O Zeus! how glorious ’tis to die while piercing flutes are near Pouring their stirring melodies into the faltering ear; On these alone doth Eros smile within those realms of night, Where vulgar ghosts in shivering bands, all strangers to delight, In leaky tub from Styx’s flood the icy waters bear, Condemned, for woman’s lovely voice, its moaning sounds to hear.”
Footnote 609:
On the effect of music on the mind, see Magius, Var. Lect. p. 204 b.
The teachers of music were divided into two classes: the Citharistæ,who simply played on the instrument, and the Citharœdi who accompaniedthemselves on the cithara with a song.[610] Of these the humble andpoorer taught, as we have already observed, in the corners of thestreets, while the abler and more fortunate opened schools of music orgave their lessons in the private dwellings of the great. The Cithara,however, was not anciently in use at Athens, if we may credit thetradition which attributes to Phrynis its introduction fromIonia.[611]
Footnote 610:
Kühn ad Poll. iv. p. 711. Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 49.
Footnote 611:
Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 958; Vesp. 574.
Damon the great Athenian musician[612] used to observe, that whereverthe mind is susceptible of powerful emotions there will be the songand the dance, and that wherever men are free and honourable theiramusem*nts will be liberal and decorous, where men are otherwise thecontrary. A very judicious remark was likewise made by Caphesias theflute-player. Observing one of his pupils striving to produce loudsounds, he stamped on the ground and said,—"Boy, that is not alwaysgood which is great; but that is great which is good."[613]
Footnote 612:
Cf. Plat. Repub. t. vi. p. 133.
Footnote 613:
Athen. xiv. 26.
The power of music in assuaging passion and anger is well illustratedby an anecdote of Cleinias the Pythagorean philosopher, a mandistinguished for his virtue and gentleness. If at any time he felthimself moved to wrath, taking up his lyre he would touch the chordsand chaunt thereto some ode, and if any questioned why he did so, hewould reply, “I am in search of serenity.”[614]
Footnote 614:
Πραΰνομοι. Cham. Pont. ap. Athen. xiv. 18.
Like the Hebrews, also, the people of Hellas attributed to music stillmore marvellous virtues,[615] conceiving it to be able to curediseases both of the mind and body. Thus the sounds of the flute weresupposed to remove epilepsy, and sciatica, and faintness, and fear,and paroxysms of long-established madness,[616] which will probablyremind the reader of David playing before Saul, when his mind wastroubled.
Footnote 615:
Thus demons were expelled by the sound of brass bells.—Magius, Var. Lect. p. 205. b.
Footnote 616:
Athen. xiv. 18. Apollon. ap. Schweigh. Animad. xii. p. 399. on the story, and bronze votive offerings on the Tænarian promontory of the musician Arion.—Herod. i. 23. seq. Dion. Chrysost. Orat. xxxvii. p. 455. Pausan. i. 24. Ælian. de Nat. Animal. xii. 45.
In the later ages of the commonwealth drawing likewise, and theelements of art entered into the list of studies pursued by youths,partly with the view of diffusing a correct taste, and the ability toappreciate and enjoy the noble productions of the pencil and chisel,and partly, perhaps, from the mere love of novelty, and the desirewhich man always feels to enlarge the circle of his acquirements.Aristotle,[617] indeed, suggests a much humbler motive, observing thata knowledge of drawing would enable men to appreciate more accuratelythe productions of the useful arts; but this perhaps was said more indeference to that spirit of utilitarianism then beginning to showitself than from any conviction of its soundness.
Footnote 617:
Polit. viii. 3.
CHAPTER V. EXERCISES OF YOUTH.
Simultaneously with the above studies,[618] that highly intricate andartificial system of exercises denominated gymnastics occupied aconsiderable portion of the time of youth. Among northern nations theinfluence of education is requisite to soften the manners and checkferocity; but in the south hardihood must in general be the fruit ofdiscipline, and flourishes only while assiduously cultivated. Thus wefind that the Persians,[619] by acting on the advice of Crœsos, andteaching the Lydians to become musicians and shopkeepers, uprootedentirely their martial spirit. In Greece, however, during theflourishing period of her history there was more danger that thepassion for war should drown all others, than that its influenceshould be too feeble. Among the Athenians particularly, that restlessenergy of character, so marvellous and so distasteful to the Dorians,sought vent in dangerous and distant wars and stupendous schemes ofambition. This characteristic trait is adduced by Plato for thepurpose of suggesting a contrast with the rival race. He had beendwelling, to his Cretan and Spartan companions, on the exercisesnecessary for pregnant women,[620] and observing their astonishment,he could understand, he said, how it might appear extraordinary tothem, but at Athens his recommendation would be perfectlyintelligible; for there, people were rather too active than otherwise.The difficulty always was to find becoming employment. Accordingly,for lack of something better, not merely boys but grown-up men,comprehending nothing of the _dolce far niente_, employed themselvesin breeding co*cks, quails, and other birds for fighting, and the careof these imposed on them the necessity of much exercise. To be sure,these co*ck-fighters, during their professional perambulations,presented a spectacle infinitely ludicrous. All regard to appearanceswas abandoned. With a couple of small co*cks[621] in their hands, andan old one under either arm, they sallied forth, like vagabonds whohad been robbing a henroost, to give their favourite animals air andgentle exercise, and thus laden often strolled several miles into thecountry.
Footnote 618:
Cf. Plato, de Rep. t. vi. p. 139, seq.
Footnote 619:
Herod. i. 155. Cf. Polyæn. vii. 6. 4. Justin, i. 6.
Footnote 620:
De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 3. cf. p. 11.
Footnote 621:
Plato, de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 3. seq.—On the practice of quail-fighting, see Poll. vii. 16. Comm. p. 237. Büd. Com. Ling. Græc. p. 615. Paris. Iungermann ad Poll. vii. 136. p. 427, observes that it was customary to exhibit public quail-fights at Athens. But Lucian who states this (Anach. § 37), confounds the quail with the co*ck-fighting.—Ælian. V. H. ii. 28. Cf. Ludovic. Nonn. de Re Cib. ii. 22. p. 228. Poliarchos, an Athenian, buried his dogs and co*cks magnificently.—viii. 4. In the same spirit, a French lady erected a mausoleum to her cat with this epitaph:
“Ci-gît une chatte jolie, Sa maîtresse qui n’aima rien L’aima jusques à la folie. Pourquoi le dire? On le voit bien.”
The dog who detected the robber of Asclepios’s temple, received while he lived the marks of public gratitude, and was maintained like a hero at the people’s expense.—Ælian. V. H. vii. 14.
To such a people the gymnasium opened up a source of peculiar delight,and in the end became a passion prejudicial to the cultivation of theunderstanding. But within the bounds of moderation it was prescribedby philosophers in lieu of physic, and as an antidote against thosepale faces and emaciated frames, too common where intellectual studiesare ardently pursued.[622] It was a law of Solon, that everyAthenian[623] should be able to read and to swim; and the whole spiritof Attic legislation, leaving the poor to the exercise of industriousand hardy occupations, tended to create among the opulent and thenoble a taste for field-sports, horsemanship, and every martial andmanly exercise.[624] The difficulty, of course, was to render themsubordinate to mental cultivation, and to blend both so cunninglytogether as to produce a beautiful and harmonious system ofdiscipline, well fitted to ripen and bring to greatest perfectionevery power and faculty of body and mind.
Footnote 622:
Aristoph. Nub. 185. Plat. Repub. t. vi. p. 146.
Footnote 623:
Petit. de Legg. Att. l. ii. tit. iv. p. 162. Æsch. cont. Tim. § 2–4.
Footnote 624:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. 17. seq.
The practises of the gymnasium may be traced backward to the remotestantiquity, and probably commenced among the warriors of the heroicages,[625] in the peaceful intervals occurring between expeditions,from the desire to amuse their leisure by mimic representations ofmore serious contests. At first, no doubt, the exercises, frequentlyperformed in honour of the gods,[626] were few and rude; but by theage of Homer they had assumed an artificial and regular form, andcomprehended nearly all such divisions of the art as prevailed inlater times. Other views than those with which they were instituted,caused them to be kept up. When reflection awoke, it was perceivedthat in these amicable contests men acquired not only force andagility, a martial bearing, the confidence of strength, beauty, andlightness of form; but, along with them, that easy cheerfulness intowhich robust health naturally blossoms.[627] In fact, so far were thelegislators of Greece from designing by gymnastics to create, asMontesquieu[628] supposes, a nation of mere athletes and combatants,that they expressly repudiate the idea, affirming that lightness,agility, a compactly knit frame, health, but chiefly a well-poised andvigorous mind, were the object of this part of education. In order thebetter to attain this point, Plato in his republic ordains that boysbe completed in their intellectual studies, which in his ideal statethey were to be at the age of sixteen, before they entered thegymnasium, the exercises of which were to be the companions of simplemusic. From converting their citizens into athletes they wereprevented by experience; for it was quickly discovered that those menwho made a profession of gymnastics acquired, indeed, by their dietand peculiar discipline a huge stature and enormous strength, but werealtogether useless in war, being sleepy, lethargic, prodigious eaters,incapable of enduring thirst or hunger, and liable to the attacks ofsudden and fatal diseases if they departed in the least degree fromtheir usual habits and regimen.[629]
Footnote 625:
Cf. Athen. i. 16.
Footnote 626:
Hom. Hymn. Apoll. 149.
Footnote 627:
Plat. Gorg. t. iii. p. 14.
Footnote 628:
Esprit des Loix, l. iv. c. 8.
Footnote 629:
Cf. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 151.—To express the sweat gained by exercise or labour, the Greeks used to say ξηρὸς ἱδρὼς, or ‘dry sweat.’—Phæd. t. i. p. 26. Runners, it was observed, had large legs; wrestlers small.—Xenoph. Conv. ii. 17.
Already in the Homeric age, gymnastics, though not as yet sonamed, constituted the principal object of education, and manybranches of the art had even then been carried to a high degree ofperfection.[630] The passion for it descended unimpaired to theSpartans, whose polity, framed solely for the preservation ofnational independence and the acquisition of glory in war,inspired little fondness for mental pursuits, but left the youthchiefly to the influence of the gymnasia, which gradually createdin them a temper of mind compounded of insensibility andferocity,[631] not unlike that of the North American Indians.This, however, they above all things prized, though as has beenjustly observed their exercises could in no sense be consideredamong the aids to intellectual cultivation.[632]
Footnote 630:
Feith, Antiq. Homer. iv. 6. 304. Cramer. p. 35.
Footnote 631:
Plat. de Rep. t. vi. 154.
Footnote 632:
Hermann. Polit. Antiq. § 26. n. 2.
At Athens they came later into vogue, though common in the age ofSolon. When, however, this ardent and enthusiastic people commencedthe study of gymnastics, admiring as they did strength and vigour offrame, when united with manly beauty, their plastic genius soonconverted it into an art worthy to be enumerated among the studies ofyouth. In very early ages they imitated the Spartan custom ofadmitting even boys into the gymnasia. But this was soon abandoned, itbeing found more profitable first to instruct them in several of thebranches of study above described, and a class of men[633] calledpædotribæ or gymnasts arose, who taught the gymnastic art privately,in subordination to their other studies, and were regarded asindispensable in the progress of education.[634] These masters gavetheir instructions in the palæstræ,[635] which generally formed a partof the gymnasia, though not always joined with those edifices, and tobe carefully distinguished from them. It is not known with certaintyat what age boys commenced their gymnastic exercises, though itappears probable that it was not until their grammatical and musicalstudies were completed, that is somewhere perhaps, as Plato counsels,about the age of sixteen. For it was not judged advisable to engagethem in too many studies at once, since in bodies not yet endowed withall their strength over-exertion was considered injurious.
Footnote 633:
Cf. Æsch. cont. Tim. § 37. Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 200.
Footnote 634:
Cramer, p. 36.
Footnote 635:
Poll. iii. 149.
Before we enumerate and explain the several exercises it may be properto introduce a description of the gymnasia themselves. Of theseestablishments there were many at Athens;[636] though three only,those of the Academy, Lyceum, and Cynosarges have acquired celebrity.The site of the first of these gymnasia being low and marshy was inancient times infested with malaria, but having been drained by Cimonand planted with trees it became a favourite promenade and place ofexercise.[637] Here, in walks shaded by the sacred olive, might beseen young men,[638] with crowns of rushes in flower upon their heads,enjoying the sweet odour of the smilax and the white poplar, while theplatanos and the elm mingled their murmurs in the breeze of spring.The meadows of the Academy, according to Aristophanes the grammarian,were planted with the Apragmosune,[639] a sort of flower so called asthough it smelt of all kind of fragrance and safety like ourHeart’s-ease or flower of the Trinity. This place is supposed to havederived its name from Ecadamos, a public-spirited man who bequeathedhis property for the purpose of keeping it in order. Around it weregroves of the moriæ sacred to Athena, whence the olive crowns used inthe Panathenaia were taken. The reason why the olive trees as well asthose in the Acropolis were denominated moriæ must be sought for amongthe legends of the mythology, where it is related that Halirrothiosson of Poseidon formed the design of felling them because thepatronship of the city had been adjudged to Athena, for the discoveryof this tree. Raising his axe, however, and aiming a blow at the trunkthe implement glanced, and he thus inflicted upon himself a woundwhereof he died.[640]
Footnote 636:
There was a gymnasium sacred to Hermes, near the Peiraic gate.—Leake, Topog. of Attica, p. 124.
Footnote 637:
Cf. Xenoph. de Off. Mag. Equit. iii. 14.
Footnote 638:
Aristoph. Nub. 1001.
Footnote 639:
Sch. ad Aristoph. Nub. 1003.
Footnote 640:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 992.
The name of the Lyceum[641] sometimes derived from Lycus, son ofPandion[642] probably owed its origin to the temenos of Lycian Apollothere situated. It lay near the banks of the Ilissos, and was adornedwith stately edifices, fountains and groves. Here stood a celebratedstatue of Apollo, in a graceful attitude, as if reposing after toil,with his bow in the left hand, and the right bent negligently over hishead. The walls, too, were decorated with paintings. In this placeanciently the Polemarch held his court[643] and the forces of therepublic were exercised before they went forth to war.[644]
Footnote 641:
Pausan. i. 19. 3. Harpocrat. v. Λύκειον, p. 190.
Footnote 642:
Here Aristotle taught (Cic. Acad. Quæst. i. 4.) as he had previously done at Stagira, where the stone seats and covered walls of his school remained in the age of Plutarch.—Alexand. § 7.
Footnote 643:
Suid. v. Ἄρχων. i. p. 452. c.
Footnote 644:
Aristoph. Pac. 355. seq. Suid. v. Λύκειον, t. ii. p. 66. b. Xenoph. de Off. Magist. Equit. iii. 6.
Appended to the name of the Cynosarges, or third gymnasium surroundedwith groves[645] was a legend which related that when Diomos wassacrificing to Hestia, a white dog snatched away a part of the victimfrom the altar, and running straightway out of the city deposited iton the spot where this gymnasium was afterwards erected.[646] Herewere several magnificent and celebrated temples to Alcmena, to Hebe,to Heracles, and to his companion Iolaos. Its principal patron,however, was Heracles,[647] who, lying himself under the suspicion ofillegitimacy, came very naturally to be regarded as the protector ofbastards, half citizens, and in general all persons of spurious birth,who accordingly in remoter ages resorted thither to perform theirexercises.
Footnote 645:
Liv. xxxi. 24.
Footnote 646:
Suid. v. Κυνόσαργ. t. i. p. 1550. e.
Footnote 647:
In the gymnasia, the statue of Eros was generally placed beside those of this divinity and Hermes.—Athen. xiii. 12.
Themistocles afterwards, by prevailing upon several of the youngnobility to accompany him to the Cynosarges, obliterated its reproach,and placed it on the same level with the other gymnasia.[648] Hereanciently stood a court in which causes respecting illegitimacy, falseregistry, &c. were tried. But to proceed to the general description.“The gymnasia were spacious edifices, surrounded by gardens and asacred grove. The first entrance was by a square court, two stadia incircumference, encompassed with porticoes and buildings. On three ofits sides were large halls, provided with seats, in whichphilosophers, rhetoricians, and sophists assembled their disciples. Onthe fourth were rooms for bathing and other practices of thegymnasium. The portico facing the south was double, to prevent thewinter rains, driven by the wind, from penetrating into the interior.From this court you passed into an enclosure, likewise square, shadedin the middle by plane-trees. A range of colonnades extended roundthree of the sides. That which fronted the north had a double row ofcolumns, to shelter those who walked there in summer from the sun. Theopposite piazza was called Xystos, in the middle of which, and throughits whole length, they contrived a sort of pathway, about twelve feetwide and nearly two deep, where, sheltered from the weather, andseparated from the spectators ranged along the sides, the youngscholars exercised themselves in wrestling. Beyond the Xystos was astadium for foot-races.”[649]
Footnote 648:
Plut. Them. § 1.
Footnote 649:
Barthel. Trav. of Anach. ii. p. 133. sqq.
The principal parts of the gymnasium were,—first, the porticoes,furnished with seats and side-buildings where the youths met toconverse. 2. The Ephebeion,[650] that part of the edifice where theyouth alone exercised. 3. The Apodyterion, or undressing-room.[651] 4.The Konisterion, or small court in which was kept the haphe, or yellowkind of sand sprinkled by the wrestlers over their bodies[652] afterbeing anointed with the ceroma, or oil tempered with wax. An importantpart of the baggage of Alexander in his Indian expedition consisted ofthis fine sand for the gymnasium. 5. The Palæstra, when considered aspart of the gymnasium,[653] was simply the place set apart forwrestling: the whole of its area was covered with a deep stratum ofmud. 6. The Sphæristerion,[654]—that part of the gymnasium in whichthey played at ball. 7. Aleipterion or Elaiothesion,[655] that part ofthe palæstra where the wrestlers anointed themselves with oil. 8. Thearea: the great court, and certain spaces in the porticoes, were usedfor running, leaping, or pitching the quoit. 9. The Xystoi have beendescribed above. 10. The Xysta[656] were open walks in which, duringfine weather, the youths exercised themselves in running or any othersuitable recreation. 11. The Balaneia or baths, where in numerousbasins was water of various degrees of temperature, in which the youngmen bathed before anointing themselves, or after their exercises. 12.Behind the Xystos, and running parallel with it, lay the stadium,[657]which, as its name implies, was usually the eighth part of a mile inlength. It resembled the section of a cylinder, rounded at the ends.From the area below, where the runners performed their exercises, thesides, whether of green turf or marble, sloped upwards to aconsiderable height, and were covered with seats, rising behind eachother to the top for the accommodation of spectators.
Footnote 650:
Vitruv. v. 11.
Footnote 651:
Plin. xxv. 13.—Even old men performed their exercises naked.—Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 221.
Footnote 652:
Casaub. ad Theoph. Char. p. 172.
Footnote 653:
Poll. iii. 149.
Footnote 654:
Suet. Vesp. c. 20. with the note of Torrentius, p. 375.
Footnote 655:
In the Gymnasium of Asclepios at Smyrna, Heracleides the sophist erected an anointing-room, containing a fountain or well of oil, and adorned with a gilded roof.—Philostr. de Vit. Sophist. ii. 26. p. 613.
Footnote 656:
Vitruv. v. 11. Cf. on the Xystoi, Xenoph. Œconom. xi. 15.—Cicero, Acad. iv. 3; ad Att. l. 8. Of this covered walk Aristeas makes mention in a fragment of his Orpheus:—
Ἦν μοὶ παλαίστρα καὶ δρόμος ξυστὸς πέλας. Poll. ix. 43.
Footnote 657:
Potter, Book i. chap. 8.
Such were the buildings which Athens appropriated to the exercises ofits youth; and if we consider the conveniences which they contained,the large spaces they enclosed, and the taste and magnificence whichthey exhibited, we shall probably conclude that no country in theworld ever bestowed on the physical training of its citizens so muchenlightened care.
The first step in gymnastics was to accustom the youth to endure,naked, the fiercest rays of the sun and the cold of winter, to whichthey were exposed during their initiatory exercises.[658] This isillustrated in a very lively manner by Lucian, where he introduces theScythian Anacharsis anxious to escape from the scorching rays of noonto the shade of the plane-trees; while Solon, who had been educatedaccording to the Hellenic system, stands without inconveniencebareheaded in the sun. The step next in order was wrestling, alwaysregarded as the principal among gymnastic contests, both from itssuperior utility and the great art and skill which the proper practiceof it required. To the acquisition of excellence in this exercise thepalæstra and the instructions of the pædotribæ were almost entirelydevoted; while nearly every other branch of gymnastics was performedin the gymnasium. These, according to Lucian, were divided into twoclasses, one of which required for their performance a soft or muddyarea, the other one of sand, or an arena properly so called.[659] Inall these exercises the youth were naked, and had their bodiesanointed with oil.
Footnote 658:
Lucian, Amor. § 45. seq.
Footnote 659:
Lucian, Anach. § § 1–3. 28.
To render, however our account of the exercises more complete, it maybe proper to give a separate though brief description of each. Thefirst or most simple was the Dromos or Course,[660] performed, as hasbeen above observed, in the area of the stadium, which, in order topresent the greater difficulty to the racers, was deeply covered withsoft and yielding sand. Still further to enhance the labour, the youthsometimes ran in armour, which admirably prepared them for thevicissitudes of war, for pursuit after victory, or the rapid movementsof retreat. The high value which the Greeks set upon swiftness may belearned from the poems of Homer, where likewise are found the mostgraphic and brilliant descriptions of the several exercises. Some ofthese we shall here introduce from Pope’s version, which in this partis peculiarly sustained and nervous. Speaking of the race betweenOilean Ajax, Odysseus, and Antilochos, he says:—[661]
“Ranged in a line the ready racers stand, Pelides points the barrier with his hand. All start at once, Oileus led the race; The next Ulysses, measuring pace with pace, Behind him diligently close he sped, As closely following as the mazy thread The spindle follows, and displays the charms Of the fair spinster’s breast and moving arms. Graceful in motion, thus his foe he plies, And treads each footstep ere the dust can rise; The glowing breath upon his shoulder plays, Th’ admiring Greeks loud acclamations raise, To him they give their wishes, heart, and eyes, And send their souls before him as he flies. Now three times turned, in prospect of the goal, The panting chief to Pallas lifts his soul; Assist, O Goddess, (thus in thought he prayed,) And present at his thought descends the maid; Buoyed by her heavenly force he seems to swim, And feels a pinion lifting every limb.”
Footnote 660:
Accumenes, the friend of Socrates, advised persons to walk on the high-road in preference to the places of exercise, as being less fatiguing and more beneficial.—Plat. Phæd. t. i. p. 3. On the rapidity of public runners see Herod. vi. 106. Cf. on the Pentathlon West, Dissert. on the Olympic Games, p. 77. They appear to have acquired so equable and steady a pace that time was measured by their movements, as distance is by that of caravans in the East. Thus Dioscorides, ii. 96. gives direction that gall should be boiled while a person could run three stadia.
Footnote 661:
Il. ψ. 754. sqq. Cf. Odyss. η. 119.—As an illustration of the necessity there was of going through all the various exercises, it is mentioned by Xenophon that runners had large legs, wrestlers small ones.—Conviv. ii. 17.
Next in the natural order, proceeding from the simplest to the mostartificial exercises, was leaping, in which the youth among the Greeksdelighted to excel. In the performance of this exercise they usuallysprang from an artificial elevation (βατὴρ), and descended upon thesoft mould, which, when ploughed up with their heels, was termedἐσκαμμένα.[662] The better to poise their bodies and enable them tobound to a greater distance, they carried in their hands metallicweights, denominated _halteres_,[663] in the form of a semi disk,having on their inner faces handles like the thong of a shield,through which the fingers were passed. Extraordinary feats are relatedof these ancient leapers. Chionis the Spartan and Phaÿllos theCrotonian, being related to have cleared at one bound the space offifty-two, or according to others, of fifty-five feet.
Footnote 662:
Poll. iii. 151.
Footnote 663:
Paus. v. 26. 3; 27. 12.
With the latter account agrees the inscription on the Crotonian’sstatue:
“Phaÿllos leaped full five and fifty feet, The discus flung one hundred wanting five.”[664]
Footnote 664:
Eustath. ad Odyss. θ. 128. Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 210.
Homer briefly describes leaping among the sports of the Phæacians:
“Amphialos sprang forward with a bound, Superior in the leap a length of ground.”[665]
Footnote 665:
Odyss. θ. 128.
To this succeeded pitching the quoit, which in the Homeric age wouldappear to have been practised with large stones or rude masses ofiron. On ordinary occasions it has been conjectured that one discusonly was used. But Odysseus, desirous of exhibiting his strength tothe Phæacians, converts into a quoit the first block of stone withinhis reach.[666]
“Then striding forward with a furious bound He wrenched a rocky fragment from the ground, By far more ponderous and more large by far Than what Phæacia’s sons discharged in air; Fierce from his arm the enormous load he flings, Sonorous through the shaded air it sings; Couched to the earth, tempestuous as it flies, The crowd gaze upwards while it cleaves the skies. Beyond all marks, with many a giddy round, Down rushing it upturns a hill of ground.”
Footnote 666:
Odyss. θ. 186. sqq. Cf. Il. ψ. 836. seq.
The disk[667] in later times varied greatly both in shape, size, andmaterials. Generally it would seem to have been a cycloid, swelling inthe middle and growing thin towards the edges. Sometimes it wasperforated in the centre and hurled forward by a thong, and on otheroccasions would appear to have approached the spherical form, when itwas denominated solos.[668]
Footnote 667:
Schol. Hom. Il. β. 774.
Footnote 668:
Schol. Hom. Il. β. 774.
Other of these exercises were shooting with the bow at wisps of strawstuck upon a pole,[669] and darting the javelin, sometimes with thenaked hand and sometimes with a thong wound about the centre of theweapon. In the stadium at Olympia, the area within which the pentathlileaped, pitched the quoit, and hurled the javelin, appears to havebeen marked out by two parallel trenches: but if these existedlikewise in the gymnasia, they must have been extremely shallow, as wefind in Antiphon[670] a boy meeting with his death by inconsideratelyrunning across the area while the youths were engaged in thisexercise. Instead of throwing for the furthest, they would seem, fromthe expressions of the orator, to have aimed at a mark.
Footnote 669:
Lucian. Hermot. § 33.
Footnote 670:
Tetral. ii. 1. Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 51. sqq. 142.
Wrestling[671] consisted of two kinds, the first, called Orthopale,was that style, still commonly in use, in which the antagonists,throwing their arms about each other’s body, endeavoured to bring himto the ground. In the other, called Anaclinopale, the wrestler whodistrusted his own strength but had confidence in his courage andpowers of endurance, voluntarily flung himself upon the ground,bringing his adversary along with him, and then by pinching,scratching, biting, and every other species of annoyance, sought tocompel him to yield.
Footnote 671:
Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 569.
An example of wrestling in both its forms occurs in Homer, where AjaxTelamon and Odysseus contend in the funeral games for the prize.[672]
“Amid the ring each nervous rival stands, Embracing rigid, with implicit hands; Close locked above, their heads and arms are mixt; Below their planted feet at distance fixt. Like two strong rafters which the builder forms Proof to the wintry winds and howling storms; Their tops connected, but at wider space Fixed on the centre stands their solid base. Now to the grasp each manly body bends, The humid sweat from every pore descends, Their bones resound with blows, sides, shoulders, thighs Swell to each gripe, and bloody tumours rise. Nor could Ulysses, for his art renowned, O’erturn the strength of Ajax on the ground; Nor could the strength of Ajax overthrow The watchful caution of his artful foe. While the long strife even tires the lookers-on, Thus to Ulysses spoke great Telamon: Or let me lift thee, Chief, or lift thou me, Prove we our strength and Jove the rest decree. He said; and straining heaved him off the ground With matchless strength; that time Ulysses found The strength t’ evade, and where the nerves combine His ankle struck: the giant fell supine. Ulysses following on his bosom lies, Shouts of applause run rattling through the skies. Ajax to lift Ulysses next essays; He barely stirred him but he could not raise. His knee locked fast the foe’s attempt defied, And grappling close they tumbled side by side, Defiled with honourable dust they roll, Still breathing strife and unsubdued of soul.”
Footnote 672:
Il. ψ. 708, sqq. et Heyne ad loc.
Boxing, which has very properly been called a rough exercise, thoughcondemned by physicians and philosophers, was still practised in thegymnasium, sometimes with the naked fist but more frequently with thecestus, which consisted of a series of thongs, bound round the handand arm up to the elbow, or even higher.[673] This exercise, however,seems to have been little practised, except by those who designed tobecome athletæ by profession. Homer has described the combat with thecestus in its most terrible form.[674]
“Amid the circle now each champion stands, And poises high in air his iron hands: With clashing gauntlets now they firmly close, Their crackling jaws re-echo to the blows, And painful sweat from all their members flows. At length Epeus dealt a weighty blow Full on the cheek of his unwary foe. Beneath that ponderous arm’s resistless sway Down dropped he powerless, and extended lay. As a large fish, when winds and waters roar, By some huge billow dashed against the shore, Lies panting, not less battered with his wound, The bleeding hero pants upon the ground. To rear his fallen foe the victor lends Scornful his hand, and gives him to his friends, Whose arms support him reeling through the throng, And dragging his disabled legs along. Nodding, his head hangs down his shoulders o’er, His mouth and nostrils pour the clotted gore. Wrapped round in mist he lies, and lost to thought, His friends receive the bowl too dearly bought.”
Footnote 673:
Theoc. Eidyll. xxii. 3. et 80. Mercurial. de Art. Gymnast. ii. 9. Virg. Æn. v. 401. sqq. Paus. viii. 40. 3. Poll. ii. 150. Scalig. Poet. i. 22. p. 92.
Footnote 674:
Il. ψ. 684. sqq.
Among the exercises of the gymnasium which Hippocrates advises to bepractised during winter[675] and bad weather, when it is necessary toremain under cover, is walking on the tight rope. This feat seems tohave been so great a favourite among the youths of antiquity, thatthey applied themselves to it with constant assiduity, and arrived atlength at a degree of skill little inferior to that of ourmountebanks. It seems, in fact, to have been a common practice in thegymnasium to run upon the tight rope. The Romans, seeking in somethingto outdo the Greeks, taught an elephant to perform a similar exploit.
Footnote 675:
But Galen cautions youth against useless acquisitions, which he says are not arts at all: such as πεττευριπτεῖν, throwing the tali,—walking over a small tight rope,—whirling round without being giddy, like Myrmecides the Athenian and Callicrates the Spartan.—Protrept. § 9. p. 20. Kühn.—He then speaks very slightingly of gymnastic exercises. The studies he recommends are: medicine, rhetoric, music, geometry, arithmetic, dialectics, astronomy, grammar, and jurisprudence, to which may be added, modelling and painting.—§ 14. Cf. Foës. Œcon. Hip. p. 366.
Another branch of gymnastics consisted in the various forms of thedance, to be ignorant of which was at Athens esteemed a mark of anilliberal education. To excel in this accomplishment was nearly by allthe Greeks[676] considered absolutely necessary, either as apreparation for the due performance of the movements and evolutions ofwar, sustaining a proper part in the religious choruses, or regulatingthe carriage with the requisite grace and decorum in the variousrelations of private life. Thus the Cretans, the Spartans, theThessalians, and the Bœotians, held this division of gymnastics inespecial honour, chiefly with a view to war, while the Athenians, andIonians generally, contemplated it more as a means of developing thebeauty of the form, and conferring ease and elegance on the gait andgesture. But because in treating of the theatre I design fully todescribe the several varieties of scenic dances, I think it proper tothrow together in that place whatever I may have to say on thissubject.[677]
Footnote 676:
Vid. Aristot. de Poet. i. 6. Herm.
Footnote 677:
See Book iv. Chapter 8.
To all these branches of gymnastics the Grecian youth[678] appliedthemselves with peculiar eagerness, and on quitting the schoolsdevoted to them a considerable portion of their time, since they wereregarded both as a preparation for victory in the Olympic and othergames, and as the best possible means for promoting health andripening the physical powers. Nor could anything be easily conceivedbetter suited to the genius of their republics. In the first place, asI have already observed, the wild and headstrong period of youth waswithdrawn by these agreeable exercises from the desire and thoughts ofevil, while a wholesome feeling of equality was cultivated, andsomething like brotherhood engendered in men destined to live and acttogether. Besides what could more admirably prepare them forfulfilling their duties as citizens and more especially for defendingtheir country, than a system of physical training, which at the sametime brought to perfection their strength, their vigour, and theirmanly beauty, and fitted them for the acquisition of that peculiarspecies of glory which success in the sacred games conferred? Theacquisition, moreover, of robust health and that vigour of mind whichaccompanies it, was a consideration second to none. And it willreadily be conceived that a judicious system of exercises, such as wehave described, would necessarily render men patient of labour,inaccessible to fear, and be productive at once of graceful habits andlofty and honourable sentiments.
Footnote 678:
Cf. Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 97.—The gymnasia in the later ages of Greece were so little frequented, that their area was sown with corn. Dion. Chrysos. i. 223.
CHAPTER VI. HUNTING AND FOWLING.
Among the sports and pastimes of the Greeks, which may be consideredas a kind of supplement to gymnastics, we must class first the chase,which Xenophon vainly hoped might be made to operate as a check on theluxurious and effeminate habits of his contemporaries.[679] But eachage having its own distinctive characteristic, it profits very littleto aim at engrafting the customs of one period of civilisation uponanother. The world will go its own gait. Chuckfarthing and Prickingthe Loop might as well be recommended to young gentlemen and ladiesdying for love, as hunting to the population of a vain and foppishcity, to whom wild boars and wolves must seem certain death. However,the country gentlemen, and the agricultural population generally, longin their own defence continued the practice of the chase, though inAttica the absence of wild animals, consequent upon a high and carefulcultivation, had reduced it at a very early period to a matter of mereamusem*nt.
Footnote 679:
In the early ages of the world, hunting we are assured led to the establishment of monarchy by accustoming youth whose brains were in their sinews to pay implicit obedience to their leaders in the chase.—Bochart, Geog. Sac. t. i. p. 258.
But in remoter times, and in those parts of the country where gamealways continued to abound, there were never wanting persons whodelighted in the excitement of the chase. Herdsmen, particularly, andshepherds, considered it part of their occupation.[680] Thus we findAnchises a young Trojan chief, who inhabited the hill country, makinghis lair of bears and lion-skins, the spoils of his own lance.[681]Sport, of course, it would furnish to bold and reckless young men, aslion and tiger hunting still does to our countrymen in Northern India;but from this recreation proceeded in some measure their safety, sincewhere wild beasts are numerous they not only devastate thecountry,[682] trampling down the corn-fields and devouring herds andflocks, but occasionally, if they chance to find them unarmed, dinealso upon their hunters. Thus the chase of the Calydonian boar, thetally-ho’s and view-halloes of which still sound fresh in song, wasundertaken by the Ætolians and Curetes, for the purpose of deliveringthe rustic population from a pest;[683] and precisely the same motiveurged Alcmena’s boy into the famous conflict with the Nemeanlion,[684] which he brought down with his invincible bow and finishedwith his wild olive club. In like manner Theseus, his rival in glory,slew the Marathonian bull; and delivered the Cretans from anothermonster of the same kind.[685] He engaged, too, with a sow of greatsize at Crommyon on the confines of Corinthia, and slaughtered thepig, an achievement of much utility and no little glory.
Footnote 680:
Iliad, λ. 547.
Footnote 681:
Hom. Hymn in Vener. 160. seq.
Footnote 682:
Paus. i. 27. 9.
Footnote 683:
Iliad, ι. 547. sqq.
Footnote 684:
Theocrit. xxv. 211. sqq.
Footnote 685:
Paus. i. 27. 9. sqq.
The arms and accoutrements of these primitive sportsmen correspondedwith the rough service in which they were engaged. Sometimes, to theattack of the wild bull or the boar, they went forth with formidablebattle-axes.[686] But when their game was fleet and innocuous ahandful of light javelins and the bow sufficed, as when Odysseus andhis companions beat the country in search of wild goats.[687] In theÆneid, too, we find the hero doing great execution among a herd ofdeer with his bow. Boar-spears also were in use ere the period of theTrojan war, as Odysseus, who appears to have been excessively addictedto the chase, is represented going thus armed to the field with thesons of Autolycos when he was wounded by the hog.[688] With the sameweapon we find Adrastos engaged in the same sport, killing the son ofCrœsos.[689] The chase of the lion, which in Xenophon’s time couldno longer be enjoyed in Greece Proper, required the most daringcourage and the most formidable weapons, spears, javelins, clubs, andburning torches, with which at last they repelled him at night fromthe cattle stalls. Homer, as usual, represents the contest to thelife:[690]
“He turned to go, as slow retreats the lion from the stalls,Whom men and dogs assault while round a shower of javelins falls.They all night watch about their herds, lest he intent on preyShould bear the flower of all their fields, the fattest bull away.Onward impetuously he bounds—the hissing javelins flyFrom daring hands, while torches send their blaze far up the sky.He dreads, though fierce, the dazzling flames thick flashing on his sight,And hungry still and breathing rage, retires with morning’s light.”
Footnote 686:
Iliad, ρ. 520. seq. Feith. Antiq. Hom. iv. c. 2. § 2.
Footnote 687:
Odyss. ι. 155. seq.
Footnote 688:
Odyss. ι. 465. seq.
Footnote 689:
Herod. i. 43.
Footnote 690:
Il. ρ. 657. Cf. Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 31. Oppian Cyneget. iv. 131. sqq.
The existence of wild beasts in a country has by some been enumeratedamong the causes of civilisation, and it may, under certaincirc*mstances, deserve to be so considered, though generally suchmodes of accounting for things are exceedingly unphilosophical.Mitford, who advances it,[691] needed but to cast a glance across theMediterranean to dissipate his whole theory, since nowhere are theremore wild beasts or men less civilised than in Africa. Egypt, Chaldæa,Assyria, the earliest peopled countries, enjoyed few of these helps torefinement. The reasons of Greek civilisation lay neither in theircountry or in the accidents of it, but in the race itself, which, asone family in a nation is distinguished from its neighbours bysuperior genius, was thus distinguished from other races of men.However, the lion, as we have seen, formerly existed among them,though never probably in great numbers, and even in the age ofHerodotus was still found in a wild tract of country extending fromthe Acheloös in Acarnania to the Nestos in Thrace,[692] where infabulous times Olynthos, son of Strymon,[693] is said to have beenslain in a lion hunt. In the age of Dion Chrysostom, however, thisfierce animal was no longer known in Europe.[694]
Footnote 691:
Hist. of Greece, i. 16.
Footnote 692:
Herod. vii. 125. seq.
Footnote 693:
Conon, Dieg. iv. ap. Phot. 131. Rüdig. Prolegg. ad Dem. Olynth. p. 3.
Footnote 694:
Orat. 21. t. i. p. 501. Reiske.
Dogs, all the world over and from the remotest times, have been man’scompanions in the chase, and Homer, the noblest painter of the ancientworld, has bequeathed us many sketches of the antique hunting breed.It has above been seen that in company with man they feared not toattack even the lion. Odysseus’ famous dog Argos was a hound that
“Never missed in deepest woods the swift game to pursueIf once it glanced before his sight, for every track he knew.[695]”
Footnote 695:
Odyss. ρ. 316. seq.
And again when the same sagacious Nimrod makes his rounds in quest of“belly timber,” a brace of dogs runs before him “examining thetraces,” while with boar-spear in hand he follows close at theirheels.[696] But already, even in those days, the habit of keeping morecats than catch mice had got into fashion—that is among thegreat—since we find grandees with their κύνες τραπεζῆες or “tabledogs,”[697] valued simply for their beauty. Patroclus maintained nineof these handsome animals, and Achilles understanding his tastes, casttwo of them into the flames of his funeral pile, that their shadesmight sit at his board in the realms below.[698]
Footnote 696:
Id. τ. 436. seq.
Footnote 697:
Id. ρ. 310.
Footnote 698:
Iliad ψ. 173. seq.
Footnote 699:
Deipnosoph. i. 22. et 24.
Fowling too, if we may depend upon Athenæus,[699] entered into thelist of heroic amusem*nts. It is clear, however, that the sportsmen ofthose days were arrant poachers, for, not content with attacking theirprey in open fight, they condescended to spread nets for them and setgins for their feet. But being accomplished bowmen, however, theycould occasionally, when pressed for provisions, fetch down a thrush,a pigeon, or a dove with an arrow, dexterously as that Jew inEusebius[700] who exhibited his marksmanship to demonstrate thefallacy of augury. For in the funeral games of Patroclus, we find oneof the heroes hitting from a considerable distance a dove which hadbeen tied by a small cord to the summit of a mast.[701]
Footnote 700:
Præp. Evang. l. ix. c. 4. p. 408. d.
Footnote 701:
Iliad, ψ. 853. sqq.
They were given moreover not only to fishing with nets—a practice innowise unbecoming a hero when in want of a dinner—but even to anglingwith “crooked O’Shaughnessies,”[702] as Homer expresses it; though thepassage in the Iliad, indeed, where a net is mentioned, cannot well beadduced in corroboration, since it may refer to fowling as well as tofishing.[703] Certain verses in the Odyssey, however, prove beyond adoubt that the Greeks had already begun to derive a great part oftheir sustenance from the sea;[704] and the Homeric heroes evenunderstood the value of oysters, which, as appears from the Iliad,were procured by diving.[705]
Footnote 702:
Γναμπτοῖς ἀγκιστροίσιν. Odyss. μ. 331. seq. Ludovic. Nonn. de Re Cibar. iii. 4. p. 294. Plut. de Solert. Anim. § 24. Cf. Antich. di Ercol. t. i. tav. 36. p. 191. From an expression of Augustus, if we can regard it as anything more than a figure of speech, it may be inferred that to increase the luxury of the sport by converting it into a species of gambling, people sometimes fished with golden hooks.—Polyæn. Strat. viii. 24. 6.
Footnote 703:
Iliad, γ. 487. seq. Eustath. ad Odyss. χ. 386.
Footnote 704:
Odyss. χ. 386.
Footnote 705:
Iliad, π. 747. sqq.
Nevertheless these ancient heroes, though by no means averse as wehave seen to pigeons or oysters, delighted chiefly in the chase of thelarger animals, in which article of taste they agreed with Plato, whoconsidered all other kinds as unworthy of men. He appears to haveentertained an especial aversion for the Isaac Waltons of the ancientworld, and in his advice to youth earnestly exhorts them to eschewhooks and fish-traps, which he slily classes with piracy andhouse-breaking: and so he does fowling. Nor would his generousphilosophy countenance poaching with nets and gins and snares. Hissportsmen, modelled after the old Homeric type, were to mount theirchargers,[706] and accompanied by their dogs come to close quarterswith their wild foes in open daylight, and subdue them by dint ofpersonal courage.[707] Precisely similar views prevailed in the heroicage, when the chiefs and principal men were exercised from boyhood inthe chase, as appears from the examples of Achilles and Odysseus;[708]of whom the former, according to Pindar, tried his hand at a lion atthe age of six years, ἐξέτης τοπρῶτον. Being swift of foot as thoseArabs of Northern Africa, who, as Leo[709] says, are a match for anyhorse, he used without the aid of dogs to overtake and bring down deerwith his javelin, and whatever prey he took he carried to his oldmaster Cheiron. This passage Mr. Cary has translated in the followingvigorous and elegant manner:—
“In Philyra’s house a flaxen boy Achilles oft in rapturous joy His feats of strength essayed. Aloof like wind his little javelin flew, The lion and the brinded boar he slew; Then homeward to old Cheiron drew Their panting carcases. This when six years had fled; And all the after time Of his rejoicing prime It was to Dian and the blue-eyed Maid A wonder how he brought to ground The stag without or toils or hound. So fleet of foot was he.”
Footnote 706:
Cf. Poll. Onom. v. 17.
Footnote 707:
De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 71. seq.—In his Republic boys were to be permitted when they could do so with safety to proceed to the field of battle, and there to approach sufficiently near the scene as to be able like young hounds to taste, so to speak, of blood.—t. vi. p. 367.
Footnote 708:
Pind. Nem. iii. 43. seq. Diss. Odyss. τ. 429. seq.
Footnote 709:
Descrip. Afric.
Similar manners, if we may confide in Virgil,[710] prevailed among theold inhabitants of Latium, and Xenophon[711] in his monarchical Utopiatrains the youth in the same habits.
Footnote 710:
Æneid, ix. 605.
Footnote 711:
Cyneg. ii. 1.
On hunting,[712] as practised in the civilised ages of Greece, wepossess more ample details, and it is chiefly by the minuter touchesthat a picture of this kind can be invested with interest and utility.Xenophon, an aristocratic country gentleman, who living in a corruptage was, as I have said, wisely partial to the nobler manners of thepast, considers the chase as a branch of education.[713] He does not,however, entertain upon this subject the heroic views of Plato, but,looking solely to utility, not only describes the physical conditionsand mental qualities of the hunter, but the nets, poles, arms, andevery implement made use of by the ancients in the chase.
Footnote 712:
To form a proper idea of the sporting vocabulary of the Greeks, the reader should consult Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, v. 9.-94.
Footnote 713:
Cyneg. ii. 1.
Not to interfere with the discipline of the schools and the gymnasia,the youths were exhorted to betake themselves to field-sports aboutthe age of twenty. Their notions of a sportsman’s costume differedmaterially from our own, for instead of decking themselves like ourfox-hunters in scarlet, they selected the soberest and least brilliantcolours both for their cloaks and chitons. The latter were in generalextremely short, reaching merely to the hams, as Artemis is usuallyrepresented in works of art. But the chlamys was long and ample, thatit might be twisted round the left arm in close contest with thelarger animals. Their hunting boots reached to the knee, and werebound tight round the leg with thongs. Probably also, as intravelling, they covered their heads with a broad-brimmed hat.
The apparatus of a Greek sportsman would appear somewhat cumbersome,and perhaps a little ludicrous to a modern Nimrod. But understandingtheir own object they went their own way to work; their arms andimplements, varying with the chase in which they were engaged,consisted of short swords, hunting knives[714] for the purpose ofcutting down brushwood to stop up openings in the forest, axes forfelling trees, darts furnished with thongs for drawing them back whenthey had missed their aim, bows, boar-spears, weapons peculiarlyformidable, nets small and large, some for setting up in the plains,some for traversing glades or narrow alleys in the woods, and othersshaped like a female head-net, to be placed in small dusky openings,where being unperceived the game sprang into them as into a sack,which closed about it by means of a running cord, net-poles, forkedstakes, snares, gins, nooses, and leashes for the dogs.[715] The dartsused on these occasions had ashen or beechen handles, and the netswere usually manufactured with flax imported from Colchis on thePhasis, Egypt, Carthage, and Sardinia.[716] Generally, too, they tookalong with them the Lagobalon, a short, crooked stick with a knob atone end, with which they sometimes brought down the hare in itsflight.[717] This practice, common enough among poachers in ourcountry, is by them denominated _squailing_.
Footnote 714:
Poll. v. 19.
Footnote 715:
Cf. Grat. Falisc. Cyneg. p. 14. Wase.
Footnote 716:
Xen. Cyneg. ii. 3. Grat. Falisc. Cyneg. p. 6. Wase. Pollux, v. 26.
Footnote 717:
Spanh. Obs. in Callim. Hymn. in Dian. ii. p. 122. Poll. v. 20.—Hares are hunted with sticks in South Guinea by the blacks.—Barbot. iii. 14.
Without the aid of dogs, however, hunting is a poor sport. Theancients, therefore, much addicted to this branch of education, paidgreat attention to the breed of these animals, of which some weresought to be rendered celebrated by heroic and fabulous associations.Thus the Castorides, it was said, sprang[718] from a breed to whichthe twin god of Sparta was partial; the Alopecidæ were a cross betweena dog and a she-fox; and a third kind[719] arose from the mingling ofthese two races. Among modern sportsmen, there are also goodauthorities who prefer harriers with a quarter of the fox-strain.[720]Other kinds of hounds, as the Menelaides and Harmodian derived theirappellation from the persons who reared them.[721]
Footnote 718:
Poll. v. 39. Xen. Cyneg. iii. 1.
Footnote 719:
Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 28. Poll. v. 39.
Footnote 720:
Letters on Hunting, p. 60.
Footnote 721:
Poll. v. 40.
But the whole breeds of certain countries[722] were famous, as theArgive, the Locrian, the Arcadian, the Spanish, the Carian, theEretrian; the Celtic or greyhound (not known[723] in more ancienttimes); the Psyllian, so called from a city of Achaia; the dog ofElymæa, a country lying between Bactria and Hyrcania; the Hyrcanian,which was a cross with the lion; the Laconian, of which the bitch wasmore generous,[724] sometimes crossed with the Cretan, which wasitself renowned for its nose, strength and courage,[725] those whichkept watch in the temple of Artemis Dictynna having been reckoned amatch even for bears; the Molossian, less valued for the chase than asa shepherd’s dog, on account of its great fierceness and power tocontend with wild beasts;[726] the Cyrenaic, a cross with the wolf,and lastly the Indian, on which the chief reliance was placed in thechase of the wild boar. This breed, according to Aristotle, wasproduced by crossing with the tiger, probably the Cheeta.[727] Thefirst and second removes were considered too fierce and unmanageable,and it was not until the third generation that these tiger-mules couldbe broken in to the use of the sportsman. Some sought in mythology theorigin of this noble animal; for, according to Nicander, the hounds ofActæon, recovering their senses after the destruction of their master,fled across the Euphrates and wandered as far as India. Strangestories are related of this breed, of which some it is said wouldcontend with no animal but the lion. Alexander’s dog, which hepurchased in India for a hundred minæ, had twice overcome and slainthe monarch of the forest.[728]
Footnote 722:
Arist. de Gen. Anim. v. 2. p. 344. Virg. Georg. iii. 405. See the enumeration by Gratius, Cyneg. p. 20. seq.
Footnote 723:
Arrian, de Venat. c. 2.
Footnote 724:
Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 1. Soph. Ajax, 8. Virg. Georg. iii. 405. Λάκαιναι σκύλακες, Plat. Parmen. t. ii. p. 7. had long noses. Arist. de Gen. Anim. v. 2. 344.
Footnote 725:
Æl. De Nat. Anim. iii. 2. Pashley, Travels in Crete, i. 33. Hughes, Travels, &c. i. 489, 501.
Footnote 726:
Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. i.
Footnote 727:
Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 28, with the observations of Camus, t. ii. p. 215. Cf. Scalig. de Subtilitat. x. p. 383. Æl. de Nat. Anim. viii. i.
Footnote 728:
Æl. De Nat. Anim. viii. 1. Poll. Onom. v. 42. seq.
Let us, therefore, now imagine the hounds exactly what they ought tobe, and observe under what circ*mstances they were led afield. As inEngland, their principal sport was the hare. In winter,[729] it wasobserved that puss, from the length of the nights, took a widercircuit, and therefore afforded the dogs a better chance of detectingher traces.[730] But when in the morning the ground was covered withice or white with hoar-frost, the dogs lost their scent, as alsoamidst abundant dews or after heavy rains. The sportsman accordinglywaited till the sun was some way up the sky, and had begun to quickenthe subtile odours communicated to the earth.[731] The west wind,[732]which covers the heavens with vast clouds and fills the air withmoisture, and the south blowing warm and humid, weaken the scent; butthe north wind fixes and preserves it.[733] By moonlight, too, as theold sportsmen remark, and the warmth it emits, the scent is affected;besides that when the moon shines brightly, in their frolicsome andsportive mood the hares, in the secluded glades of the forest, takelong leaps and bounds over the green sward, leaving wide intervalsbetween their traces.[734]
Footnote 729:
See on the subject of scent, Sport. Mag. Jan. 1840, and compare Essay on Hunting, p. 1. et seq.
Footnote 730:
Cf. Poll. v. 11. Σύμβολα ἐν τετυπωμένα τῇ γῇ.
Footnote 731:
The phrase in Pollux is ἀποφέρεται ἀπ᾽ αὔτων (τῶν ἰχνῶν) τὸ πνεῦμα. v. 12. The author of the Essay on Hunting (p. 15.) enumerating the several kinds of scent, speaks of them as stronger, sweeter, or more distinguishable at one time than another; and Pollux makes use of much the same language: ἄνοσμα, δύσοσμα, εὔοσμα, κ. τ. λ. l. c.
Footnote 732:
Arist. Prob. xxvi. 23—Falling stars were regarded as a prognostic of high winds, 24. Letters on Hunting, p. 106.
Footnote 733:
Cf. Xen. Cyneg. viii. 1.
Footnote 734:
Xen. Cyneg. v. 4. Poll. v. 67.
From a remark of Xenophon it appears that at least on one point thesportsmen of antiquity were less humane than the modern, since theypursued the chase even in breeding time.[735] They, however, sparedthe young in honour of Artemis;[736] the spirit even of falsereligion, on this, as on many other occasions, strengthening theimpulses of humanity.
Footnote 735:
See also Spanh. Obs. in Callim. t. ii. p. 123.
Footnote 736:
Xen. Cyneg. v. 14. Klaus. Com. in Agam. p. 114.—Leverets, properly λαγίδια, were often in common with the young of all other wild animals denominated ὀμβρίαι and ὀμβρίκια by the poets.—Poll. v. 15.
Several causes coöperated to render hares unplentiful on the Helleniccontinent,—the number of sportsmen, of foxes which devoured both themand their young, and of eagles that delighted in its lofty and almostinaccessible mountains, and shared its game with the huntsman and thefox. Homer, in a few picturesque words, describes the war carried onagainst puss by this destructive bird.[737] On the islands, whetherinhabited or not, few of these obstacles to their increase existed.Sportsmen rarely passed over to them, and in such as were sacred toany of the gods the introduction of dogs was not permitted, so that,like the pigeons and turtle-doves of Mekka, they multiplied in thoseholy haunts prodigiously.
Footnote 737:
Il. χ. 308. sqq.
It was prohibited by the laws of Attica[738] to commit the slightesttrespass during the chase. The sportsman was not allowed to traverseany ground under cultivation, to disturb the course of running water,or to invade the sanctity of fountains. The scene of actionaccordingly lay among the woods and mountains, the common property ofthe republic, or, if not, abandoned by general consent to the use ofthe sportsman. Such were, for example, the woodland districts ofParnes and Cithæron on the borders of Bœotia. Towards these thehuntsman, well shod, plainly and lightly dressed,[739] and with astick in his hand, set out about sunrise in winter, in summer beforeday.[740] On the road strict silence was observed[741] lest the hareshould take the alarm and to her heels. Having reached the cover, thedogs were tied separately that they might be let slip the more easily,the nets were spread in the proper places, the net-guards set, and thehuntsman with his dogs proceeded to start the game, first piouslymaking a votive offering of the primitiæ to Apollo and Artemis,[742]divinities of the chase.[743]
Footnote 738:
Xen. Cyneg. v. 34.
Footnote 739:
Poll. v. 17.
Footnote 740:
The pleasure experienced on these occasions is thus enthusiastically described by Christopher Wase:—"What innocent and natural delights are they, when he seeth the day breaking forth, those blushes and roses which poets and writers of romances only paint, but the huntsman truly courts! When he heareth the chirping of small birds perched upon their dewy boughs, when he draws in that fragrancy of the pastures and coolness of the air! How jolly is his spirit when he suffers it to be imported with the noise of bugle-horns and the baying of hounds which leap up and play around him!"—Pref. to Tr. of Gratius, p. 3.
Footnote 741:
See, in the Cyropædia, i. 6. 40, an extremely interesting passage on the chase of the hare.—Cf. Oppian. de Venat. iv. 422.
Footnote 742:
Hence the goddess obtained many of the epithets bestowed on her by the poets, as: ἀγροτέρα, καὶ κυνηγέτις, καὶ φιλόθηρος, καὶ ὀρεία, ἀπὸ τῶν ὀρῶν· καὶ Ἰδαία, ἀπὸ τῆς Ἴδης, καὶ δίκτυνα, ἀπὸ τῶν δικτύων· καὶ ἑκηβόλος, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἑκὰς τὰ θνρία βάλλειν· καὶ πολλὰ ἄλλα ὀνόματα ἀπὸ θήρας.—Poll. v. 13.
Footnote 743:
Xen. Cyneg. vi. 1. seq. Poll. v. 13.—It was customary, moreover, to nail the head or a foot of the game to some tree in honour of Artemis.—Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 143.
And now, exclaims the leader of the Ten Thousand, I behold the hounds,joyous and full of fire, spring forward in the track of their game.Eagerly and ardently do they pursue it—they traverse—they run about ina circle—they advance now in a straight line, now bounding awayobliquely—they plunge into the thickets, across the glades, throughthe paths, known or unknown, hurrying one before the other, shakingtheir tails, their ears hanging low,[744] their eyes flashing withfire. Drawing near the game they indicate the fact to their master bytheir movements, kindling up into a warlike humour, bounding emulouslyforward, scorning all thought of fatigue,—now in a body, nowsingly,—till reaching the hiding-place[745] of the hare they springtowards it all at once. In the midst of shouts and barking the swiftanimal glances from her form with the hounds at her heels. Thehuntsman, his left hand wrapped in his chlamys, follows staff in hand,animating his dogs, but avoiding, even if in his power, to head thegame.[746]
Footnote 744:
C. Poll. v. 61.
Footnote 745:
Οἱ θάμνοι, the technical term for covert. Poll. v. 15.
Footnote 746:
Xen. Cyneg. vi. 14–17.
A singular species of chase, now common in our own rabbit-warrens,appears to have passed over from Africa to the Balearic Isles, in anancient account of which the first mention of it occurs. Thoseislands, it is said, were almost entirely exempted from vermin, but,on the other hand, contained prodigious numbers of rabbits, whichalmost destroyed every herb and plant by biting their roots. Atlength, however, they discovered a remedy for this evil. They importedferrets from Africa, which, having first muzzled them, they let loosein the rabbit-warrens. Creeping into the holes they scared forth theinmates, which were caught by the sportsman. Strabo, who relates thecirc*mstance, calls the ferret a “wild cat.” Pliny, having likewisedescribed the devastations of the rabbits, speaks of it under the nameof _viverra_, and says it was held in great estimation for its utilityin this chase, which in the seventeenth century was practised in theisland of Procida, where they procured the animal from Sicily, anddenominated it Foretta, whence the English name. The common Italianappellation was donnola.[747]
Footnote 747:
Vict. Var. Lect. xxxi. 20. p. 883. seq. Cf. Plin. Hist. Nat. viii. 8, cum notis. Strab. iii. 2. p. 231.
It is clear, however, that in classic times the ferret was unknown inGreece, otherwise we should never have heard of the proverb of theCarpathian and his Hare[748] applied to persons who brought evil uponthemselves. Originally, we are told, the Island of Carpathos[749] was,like Ithaca, entirely destitute of hares; but a pair having been atlength introduced, multiplied so prodigiously that they almostdepopulated the island by devouring the fruits of the earth. A similarfact is related of the island Porto Santo, near Madeira, for PrinceHenry of Portugal, immediately after its discovery, “sent BartholomewPerestrello with seeds to sow and cattle to stock the place; but onecouple of rabbits put in among the rest increased so prodigiously thatall corn and plants being destroyed by them it was found necessary tounpeople the place.”[750]
Footnote 748:
Suid. v. Λαγώς. t. ii. p. 3.
Footnote 749:
This island now abounds in cattle and game, particularly quails and partridges.—Dapper, Descrip. des Iles de l’Archip. p. 173.
Footnote 750:
Hist. of Navig. prefixed to Church. Coll. of Voy. and Trav. vol. i. p. xx.
A peculiar kind of hare is commemorated by the ancients as found inElymœa. It is said to have been little inferior in size to the fox, tohave been elongated and slender in shape, and blackish in colour, witha long white tip at the end of the tail. It is remarked by the samewriter that the scent left by leverets on the ground is stronger andmore pungent than that of the grown hare, so that the dogs becomefurious on getting wind of it.[751]
Footnote 751:
Poll. v. 74.
From the chase of the hare and rabbit we pass on to that of the fawnand the stag, in which they made use of Indian dogs,[752] animals ofgreat strength, size, speed, and courage. Fawns[753] were hunted inspring, the season of their birth. The first step was for thesportsman to beat up the woods to discover where the deer werenumerous; and having found a proper place he returned thither beforeday, armed with javelins, and accompanied by a game-keeper with a packof hounds. The dogs were kept in leash afar off, lest they should givetongue at the sight of the deer. He himself took his station on thelook-out. At break of day[754] the does, with their yellowish andrichly-speckled skins, were seen issuing from the thickets, followedby their still more delicately-spotted fawns, which they led to theplaces[755] where they usually suckled them, while the stags stationedthemselves at a distance, as an advanced guard, to defend them fromall intruders. The graceful creatures then lay down to perform theirmatronly office, looking round watchfully the while to observe whetherthey were discovered. This pleasing task completed, they, like thestags, posted themselves in a circle about their fawns to protectthem. Sportsmen have no sentiment. At the very moment when this mostbeautiful exhibition of mute affection would have warmed with sympathythe heart of the philosopher or the poet, the dogs were let loose,while their master and his companions, armed with javelins, closedupon the game. The fawn itself, unless chilled and drenched by thedew—in which case it frisked about—would remain still in its place andbe taken. But on hearing its cries the doe rushed forward to deliverit, and was smitten down by the javelins or torn to pieces by thedogs. The chase of the female elephant in Africa exhibits the sametraits of affection in the brute and ferocity in man. In this case theyoung will fight for his mother, or the mother for her young tilldeath.
Footnote 752:
Xen. Cyneg. ix. 1.
Footnote 753:
The terms by which, in our old hunting vocabulary, the stag was known at the different periods of his life are as follow:—1. a fawn; 2. a pricket; 3. a sourell; 4. a soure; 5. a buck of the first head; 6. a buck. Wase. Pref. to Gratius, p. 12.
Footnote 754:
Xen. Cyneg. ix. 3.
Footnote 755:
That is on the ὀργάδες or lawns, which, according to Pollux they chiefly frequented, v. 15. Cf. Schneid. ad Xen. Cyneg. ix. § 1.
When the fawn had attained any considerable size, and begun to feedamong the herd, the chase of it became more arduous. The fidelity ofinstinctive love, opposed to human sagacity, exhibited all its force.Closing round their young and drawing up in front of them, the stags,emboldened by affection, trampled the dogs under their feet,frequently to death, unless the huntsman, dashing into the midst ofthem, could succeed in detaching a single animal from the herd. But,supposing this done, the hounds at first remained far behind the fawn,which, terrified at finding itself alone, bounded along withincredible velocity, though, its strength soon failing, it in the endfell a prey to the hunter.
The object of the ancients, however, in the chase not being simplesport, but to obtain possession by the shortest method possible of thegame, they set snares in the narrows of the mountains, around themeadows, near the streams and freshes, and in the thickets—wherever,in short, stags could be taken. Pitfalls, too, were dug, as in Africafor the lion,[756] and most of those stratagems resorted to which theNubians and Egyptian Arabs put in practice against the gazelle. It wasin fact common to erect, with rough stones or wood, a sort of skreen,perhaps semicircular, like those behind which the hunters of thedesert hide, to conceal themselves when lying in wait for thegame.[757]
Footnote 756:
Xen. Cyneg. ix. 14. sqq.—Ælian describes another method of taking these animals not much practised by modern sportsmen; that is to say by the charms of music, as the Egyptian Psylli captured serpents.—De Nat. Anim. xii. 46.
Footnote 757:
Poll. v. 36.
For the chase of the wild boar,[758] at once a manly and a usefulsport, somewhat complicated preparations were necessary. In this thedogs of India, of Crete, of Locris, of Sparta, hunted side by side,and the sportsman took the field armed with strong nets, javelins,hunting poles, and snares. The boar-spears of the ancients[759] weremost carefully fashioned, with a broad sharp head and handle of toughwood. So likewise were their hunting-poles armed with long ironpoints, fixed in brazen sockets, with a shaft of service wood.Footsnares of great strength were set at intervals. This was not thesport of a solitary hunter. They went out in considerable numbers, andkept close together, finding still, for lack of fire-arms, no smalldifficulty in coping with the foe. On reaching the spot where theysupposed the hog to be ensconced, the dogs were all led carefully inleash with the exception of one Spartan hound, which was let loose andaccompanied in all his movements. When he appeared to have found thetrack, they followed him, and he thus took the lead in the chase.Numerous signs also directed the movements of the hunter; in softplaces the track, broken branches in thickets, and in forests thewounds on the bark of trees, given by the boar in sharpening his tusksas he passed.[760]
Footnote 758:
Cf. Aristoph. Vesp. i. 202. seq. Xen. Cyrop. i. 6. 28.
Footnote 759:
Xen. Cyneg. x. 3.
Footnote 760:
The huntsmen give judgment of the wild boar by the print of his foot, by his rooting; a wild swine roots deeper than our ordinary hogs, because its snout is longer, and when he comes into a corn-field, as the Calydonian boar in Ovid, turns up one continued furrow, &c.—Wase, Illustrations, V. p. 64.
Generally the traces were found leading to some sheltered nook, warmin winter, in summer cool, where the boar made his lair. Ondiscovering him the dog gave tongue, but the animal in general refusedto rise. The hound was then withdrawn and put in leash with theothers, and every opening, save one, leading to the place, closed withnets, the upper ends of which were passed over the forks of trees. Thenets were hung so as to belly outwards, and carefully disposed so thatthey could be seen through. Bushes cut hastily supported them oneither side, and closed every aperture through which the game couldattempt to force a way. This done the hounds were all slipped, and thehunters, armed with pikes and spears, entered the netted enclosure.One of the boldest and most experienced led the dogs; the othersfollowed at intervals, leaving an ample space between them for theboar, which if closely hemmed in might have inflicted on his opponentsthe fate of Adonis. Presently the hounds sprang all at once upon thegame, which rising in sudden alarm tossed the first it encounteredinto the air, and breaking through the pack made away towards thenets, followed by men and dogs in full cry. On finding theunaccustomed opposition, he would, if running down hill, plunge rightforward to force his way through; if in a plain he would stand still,glaring fiercely around.
The dogs, however, soon closed upon his track, while the huntersgalled him with javelins and stones, approaching closer and closertill he was driven by his own impetuosity into the nets. Upon this themost daring of his pursuers drew near, pike in hand, and sought to putan end to the contest by piercing him in the head. Sometimes,notwithstanding all they could do, instead of plunging into the toilshe would turn upon them; in which case some dexterous sportsman, armedwith spear or pike, usually presented himself to receive his chargewith one foot advanced, impelling the weapon with the right hand,directing it with the left. Instead, however, of rushing on at oncethe hog would perhaps pause a moment to reconnoitre, when it behovedhis antagonist carefully to mark every movement of his head or glanceof his eye.[761] For in the very moment that a blow was aimed at him,he would sometimes dash the spear aside with tusk or snout, and thenext moment be upon his enemy, whose only chance of safety nowconsisted in throwing himself instantaneously on his face, and holdingfast by whatever he could grasp, since, the tusks of the boar curvingupwards, he found it difficult to gore his enemy thus lying, andfailing to turn him over would in his fury trample on him. A secondhunter now rushed forward to deliver his companion, and usually drewoff the hog by dexterous attacks in flank. The fallen sportsman,recovering at the same time his feet and his spear, must by the lawsof the chase return to the combat, and could only secure hisreputation by immolating his foe. By this time, indeed, the task hadgenerally become easier; for, rendered reckless by fury, he wouldthrow himself impetuously on their pikes, which, but for theprotecting guards at the head, would have gone through him handle andall. His whole frame now appeared to be kindled with rage, his bloodboiling, his eyes flashing, and his tusks so nearly on fire that ifbrought in contact with hair at the moment of death, they wouldfrizzle it like a red-hot iron.[762]
Footnote 761:
Cf. Poll. v. 23. sqq.
Footnote 762:
Οὕτω δὲ πολλὴ ἡ δυναμίς ἐστιν αὐτοῦ, ὥστε καὶ, ἃ οὐκ ἂν οἴοιτό τις, πρόσεστιν αὐτῷ· τεθνεῶτος γὰρ εὐθὺς ἐάν τις ἐπὶ τὸν ὀδόντα ἐπιθῇ τρίχας, συντρέχουσιν· οὑτως εἰσὶ θερμοὶ· ζῶντι δὲ διάπυροι, ὅταν ἐρεθίζηται· οὐ γὰρ ἂν τῶν κυνῶν, ἁμαρτάνων τῇ πληγῄ τοῦ σώματος, ἄκρα τὰ τριχώματα περιεπίμπρα.—Xen. Cyneg. x. 17. Cf. Poll. v. 80. Oppian. Venat. iii. 379. seq. Scalig. Poët. v. 14. p. 698.
Of the hunting of the bear[763] the ancients have left us no exactdescription. As this animal abounded, however, in most parts ofGreece, where it was extremely troublesome and destructive,particularly to the fruit-trees, various expedients were hit upon fortaking and destroying it. Sometimes it was pursued as game and broughtdown by the bow; but the common method appears to have been to makeuse of traps and snares. They dug, for example, a deep trench roundone of those trees in the fruit of which the bear particularlydelighted, and covering it with reeds or brittle branches, theysprinkled thereon a thin layer of earth, and concealed the wholeapparatus with fresh grass. The bear, proceeding as usual towards thetree on his thievish errand, broke in the roof of the pit with hisweight, and was caught. Even in the most civilised times this animalhad not been wholly extirpated from Attica,[764] but, as well as theboar, was found on Mount Parnes. In Laconia also, through the wholerange of Taygetos, it abounded, together with hogs, deer, and wildgoats. Bruin was sacrificed in Achaia to Artemis Laphria. In Thracethe white bear was found.[765]
Footnote 763:
Pausanias mentions the bear as an inhabitant of Pendeli. “About three years since one was shot in the mountains of Parnassos, and brought to Aracooa. The lynx, the wild cat, the wild boar, the wild goat, the stag, the roebuck, the badger, the martin, and squirrel inhabit the steeper rocks of Parnassos, and the thick pine forests above Callidia. The rough mountains about Marathon are frequented by moles, foxes, and jackals; weasels are sometimes taken in the villages and out-houses; hares are too numerous to be particularised.” Sibthorp in Walp. Mem. i. 73.
Footnote 764:
Paus. i. 32. 1.
Footnote 765:
Paus. iii. 20. 4. vii. 18. 13. viii. 17. 3.
Respecting the habits of the Grecian bear the ancients have left ussome few facts which may be worth repeating. When it comes forth fromthe den,[766] where it has passed the winter, it is said to chew bitsof wood, and to feed on snake-weed, wake-robin, or cuckoo-pint (arummaculatum[767]), which has a purgative power. These operationsperformed, its ravenous appetites immediately awake, and it commencesits devastations in the farm-yard, the orchard and the apiary.Delighting greatly in honey it attacks and overthrows the hives whichit tears to pieces in order to devour the combs, though Pliny[768]adduces another reason for this fact, exceedingly characteristic ofthat writer. He says that the bear, after his winter sleep, findinghis eyes dim and his head heavy, applies to the bees as to skilfuloculists, that in revenge for robbing them of their honey, sting himangrily about the face, which by letting much blood relieves him atonce from his ophthalmia and his headache. The bear, it is well known,is omnivorous like man. He accordingly plunders the bean-fields, andfeeds on every kind of pulse. In robbing orchards,[769] too, hiscourage and ability are great, being as I have said as complete anadept as a school-boy in climbing trees, out of which when he hassatisfied himself he descends, like the aforesaid mischievous beast,feet foremost. When none of the delicacies above enumerated was withinhis reach, the bear would feed on ants, crabs, or any kind of vermin,but preferred of course the flesh of the larger animals, such as thestag, the wild boar, and the bull. His mode of taking his prey wascurious. Upon the boar and stag he probably dropped from his hidingplace in the trees, but the stratagem by which he usually got the bullinto his power was this.[770] Throwing himself on the ground directlyin his way he provoked the lord of the herd to gore him, upon which,seizing his horns, and fastening ravenously upon his shoulder, hebrought him to the ground, where he fed upon his carcass at leisure.When flying from the more terrible face of man, the female usuallydrove her young before her, or taking them up in her mouth or on herback, she would endeavour to escape with them into the trees.[771]
Footnote 766:
Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 6. viii. 17. vi. 30. Ælian de Nat. Anim. vi. 3. Cf. Buffon, Hist. Nat. t. viii. p. 27.
Footnote 767:
This now we find is the food of swine. “Leaving Pyrgo (in Bœotia), we advanced along the plain to Eremo Castro; in our road we observed droves of pigs tearing up the ground for the roots of the cuckow-pint (arum maculatum) which was called by the swineherds δρακοντίο.”—Sibth. in Walp. i. 65.
Footnote 768:
Nat. Hist. viii. 54.
Footnote 769:
Aristot. Hist. Anim. viii. 5.
Footnote 770:
Ælian. de Nat. Anim. vi. 6. Aristot. ut sup.
Footnote 771:
Aristot. Hist. Anim. ix. 6. Ælian. de Nat. Anim. vi. 6.
As the lion was not found in Greece in the civilised periods of itshistory, the chase of it cannot be said to have formed an Hellenicamusem*nt.[772] They might, however, by proceeding a little beyond theborders in their colonies of Thrace and Asia Minor, on Mount Pangæos,on the Mysian Olympos, and in Syria, enjoy this dangerous pastime ifthey desired it. In all those countries, however, both the lion,[773]the panther, the pard, the lynx, and other animals of this destructiveclass had been confined to the mountains, where, as an acute andexperienced observer has remarked, they lose much of their force andferocity. The expression made use of by Xenophon proves in fact thatthe dread of man had driven them almost into inaccessible fastnesses,whither they could not be pursued by the hunter, so that they werechiefly taken in their descent to the lowlands by poisoning, withaconite,[774] the waters or the baits which they set for them:sometimes, indeed, when want compelled them into the plains, partiesof hunters on horseback, and armed to the teeth, would assault anddestroy them, not without imminent peril. Pitfalls, too, of ingeniousconstruction were dug for them, having an earthen pillar in the centreon which a goat was tied.[775] The encircling moat, like that abovedescribed, destined for the bear, was concealed by a covering ofslender bushes which, breaking under them, they were precipitated tothe bottom and there killed. The wolf, though a sacred animal[776] inAttica, had by the laws a price set upon his head, at whichMenage[777] wonders, though the Egyptians also slaughtered theirsacred crocodiles, when they exceeded a certain size.
Footnote 772:
Xen. Cyneg. xi. 1.
Footnote 773:
Pollux (v. 14.) observes that in his time lions were chiefly found in mountainous tracts as wild boars were in marshes and pardales in the depths of the woods.
Footnote 774:
Xen. Cyneg. xi. 2. Poll. v. 82. Plin. viii. 27. Dioscor. iv. 77. Foxes were supposed to be killed by baits steeped in the juice of bitter almonds (Id. i. 176); wolves, panthers, dogs, &c. by dog’s-bane.—Id. iv. 81.
Footnote 775:
Oppian. de Venat. iv. 85. sqq.
Footnote 776:
Cf. Hesych. v. Λυκαβ.
Footnote 777:
Ad D. Laert. p. 20. b. c. Meurs. Solon, c. 19.
In the chase of the wild goat the bow, among the mountains of Crete,was made use of, and so skilful as marksmen were the Cretans[778] thatfrom the depths of the valleys they would bring down their game fromthe pinnacles of the loftiest cliffs.[779] They were fabled to havebeen taught the art of hunting by the Curetes, and, practising itconstantly in steep and difficult places, they acquired greatsuppleness and agility of body, and were exceedingly swift offoot.[780]
Footnote 778:
The very name of the Cretans has by some been derived from the use of the bow. Κρῆτες, παρὰ τὸ ἐπὶ κέρασι βιοτεύειν· κυνηγετικοὶ γάρ. Etym. Mag. 537. 54. See in Homer a description of the bow of Pandaros where we are told it was made from the horns of a wild goat.—Il. δ. 105. sqq.
Footnote 779:
Ælian. Var. Hist. i. 10. On the cothurnos which these hunters wore, see Spanheim ad Callim. in Dian. 16. p. 142. sqq. Bœttig. Les Furies, p. 37. The high half-boot worn by Artemis in the chase is represented in Mus. Chiaramon. pl. 18.
Footnote 780:
Athen. xii. 28. Meurs. Cret. p. 177.
The Macedonians, too, were both practised and enthusiastic sportsmen,and delighted in the amusem*nt even whilst engaged in their mosttoilsome expeditions. Thus during the campaigns of Alexander in Asia,we find the generals Leonatos and Menelaos or Philotas[781] carryingabout among their baggage, linen skreens, ten or twelve miles inlength, which during their halts they caused to be stretched round agiven district, where they hunted as in a park. An anecdote is relatedstrikingly illustrating the high estimation in which the chase washeld at the court and among the nobles of Macedonia, where it wascustomary for the son to sit upright on a chair at his father’s tableand not to recline among the guests until he had slain a wild boar outof the toils. Cassander, son of Antipater, continued, it is said,[782]up to his thirty-fifth year bolt upright at the regal board, because,though a brave man and a skilful hunter, fortune had constantly deniedhim the pleasure of despatching the hog after the prescribed fashion.
Footnote 781:
Athen. xii. 55. Plut. Alex. § 40. See in Wase’s Illustrations, p. 68. an account of the Polish royal hunts in which, on a smaller scale, the same practice prevailed.
Footnote 782:
Athen. i. 31.
There is one department of the chase, and that perhaps the mostcurious and interesting, which was not practised by the Greeks ofclassical times, though it cannot be said to have been unknown tothem; I mean falconry, described by several ancient writers as it waspursued in India and in Thrace. If I give a short description of it,therefore, it must be regarded as a digression introduced for thepurpose of completing, as far as possible, the circle of ancientamusem*nts. Ctesias,[783] who was contemporary with Socrates, andpublished his Indian history four hundred years before Christ, seemsto be the oldest writer by whom falconry is mentioned. He tells usthat among the Hindùs hares and foxes were hunted with kites, ravens,and eagles, and minutely describes the way in which the birds werebroken in. Having been caught while young, they were first taught tofly at tame hares and foxes in the following manner. The animals withpieces of flesh tied to them were started in sight of the falcons,which were immediately let loose and sent in pursuit. When they caughtand brought back the game the flesh was given them as their reward,and by this bait and allurement they were encouraged to persevere.When sufficiently trained, they were taken to the mountains and flownagainst wild hares and foxes. The passion for falconry is still keptalive in the East, particularly in Persia, where the shâh-baz, orroyal falcon, is flown against hares and antelopes, occasionallyinvested with leathers, which protect him from being tornasunder.[784] But the most daring and dangerous service in whichfalcons have ever been employed is the chase of the wild horse by theTurcomâns of Khiva on the eastern shores of the Caspian.[785] A moredetailed description of ancient falconry than that given by Ctesias isfound in a work attributed to Aristotle.[786] It is said, observesthis writer, that the youth of Thrace, who were addicted to hunting,pursued their game by the assistance of hawks. On arriving upon theground, the falcon, which had evidently been trained for the purpose,obeyed the calls of the sportsmen and chased the birds into thethickets, where they were knocked down with hunting-poles and taken.Even when the falcons themselves captured the game, they brought it tothe hunters, who as in modern times gave them, as a reward, someportion of the animal.
Footnote 783:
Ap. Ælian. de Nat. Anim. iv. 26.
Footnote 784:
Sir John Malcolm’s Sketches of Persia.
Footnote 785:
Anthony Jenkinson in Hackluyt, v. i. p. 368.
Footnote 786:
De Mirab. Auscult. 128. Beckm. Hist. of Discov. and Inven. i. p. 321.
In their fowling they made use of great cruelty:—Pigeons andturtle-doves were commonly blinded, to be used as decoys, and in thiscondition would sometimes live eight years.[787] Partridges wereemployed for the same purpose in a different manner. The male birdhaving been tamed was put out in the neighbourhood of a covey, uponwhich the boldest of the wild birds came forward to fight him, and wassecured with the net. The challenge was usually accepted by every malebird in the covey until one after another they were all taken. Whenthe female was employed she drew them successively to the nets by hercall.[788] The first that is deluded is generally the principal co*ckin the covey, which the others collecting together seek to drive away.To elude their pursuit the leader sometimes drew near the decoy insilence, that he might not have to contend with the other males. Notunfrequently they would descend and allow themselves at such times tobe caught on the roofs of the houses.[789]
Footnote 787:
Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 8. Xenoph. Cyrop. i. 6. 39. has introduced many particulars respecting fowling.
Footnote 788:
Cf. Xen. Memorab. ii. 1. 4. Their nets were denominated νεφέλαι, Schol. Aristoph. Av. 194. Cf. Schol. Pac. 1144. The man who watched the nets bore the name of λινόπτης.—Aristot. ap. id. ibid.
Footnote 789:
Athen. ix. 42.
The Greeks established at Alexandria had, according to Athenæus, whowas a native of Egypt, a kind of chase peculiar to themselves, viz.that of the horned owl. The sophist of Naucratis has indeed beensuspected of confounding the ὠτὸς with the ὠτὶς, that is, the owl withthe bustard;[790] but it having been in his power to examine what herelates, I shall lay his account before the reader, who will judge forhimself. This bird, it is said, is found in great numbers in thedesert near Alexandria, (though I myself saw none there,) and is asmuch given to mimicry as a monkey. Above all things he is ambitious ofimitating man, and, as far as possible, will do whatever he sees doneby the fowler. Aware of his propensity in this way, these gentlemen,when desirous of taking an owl, carried along with them into thedesert a thick tenacious glue, with which on coming within eyeshot ofthe Otos they affected to anoint their eyes. Then laying down theglue-pot on the sand they retreated to some hollow for concealment.Upon this the owl having watchfully observed their movements,approached, and covering his eyes with the treacherous ointment wasblinded and taken.
Footnote 790:
Alexand. Myndius calls it the λαγωδίας in which case it may probably mean the _Ptarmigan_.
Another mode of catching this bird also prevailed. It having beendiscovered that he was as partial as the Bedouin Arab to the companyof a horse, the fowlers covered themselves with horses’ skins, and inthis disguise approaching the flock were enabled to catch as many asthey pleased. A third method of taking the Otos was one which exposedthe unfortunate bird to the ridicule of the comic poets. The fowlerssetting out upon the chase in pairs, separated at coming in sight ofthe game. One of the two then stepped out in front of the game andcommenced a jig, upon which the thoughtless mimic immediately did thesame, beating exact time with his feet, and keeping his eye fixed uponhis wily teacher. While the merry victim was thus engaged, capering,springing, and pirouetting like a feathered Taglioni, the otherbird-catcher approached from behind and seized him by the neck.
The same story is related by other writers of the Scops ormocking-owl, in imitation of whose movements, the ancients had acelebrated dance.[791]
Footnote 791:
Athen. ix. 44. seq. Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 12 ad fin.
Quails in certain seasons of the year frequent Greece in vast numbers,as they do Egypt and Southern Italy.[792] It has been supposed thatthe island of Delos received the name of Ortygia from the quails(ὄρτυγες), which alighted on it in great numbers during theirmigration towards the north. They were likewise plentiful inPhœnicia,[793] where they sacrificed them to Heracles. Numerouscontrivances were resorted to for catching this bird. During pairingtime it was taken as follows: mirrors were set up in the fields withsnares in front of them, and the quail running towards the imaginarybird was there entrapped. Clearchos of Soli describes a curious modeof capturing jackdaws. In places frequented by those birds they used,he says, to lay broad vessels filled to the brim with oil. Presentlythe jackdaws, curious and prying in their temper, would alight on theedges, and, being vastly pleased with the reflection of their ownbeauty, would chuckle over it and clap their wings, till becomingsaturated with oil the feathers stuck together and they could nolonger fly.
Footnote 792:
They are taken in so great numbers in the island of Capri that they constitute the chief source of revenue to the bishop of that island.
Footnote 793:
Phanodem. l. iii. ap. Ath. ix. 47.
CHAPTER VII. SCHOOLS OF THE PHILOSOPHERS AND SOPHISTS.
Having thus drawn as complete a picture as the plan of our work wouldpermit, of the physical training of the Greeks in all its branches,comprehending Gymnastics properly so called, together with those otherexercises which under the name of field-sports were enjoyed ratherthan studied under the lead of no master but experience, we now returnto that mental discipline, which for the most part exerted itsinfluence in the developement of the intellectual faculties at thesame time that the foregoing bodily discipline brought forth all theenergies of the frame. We shall thus have traversed the whole circleof Hellenic education, when we shall have exhibited the youth passingthrough the schools of the philosophers and sophists into theworld.[794]
Footnote 794:
Cf. M. Ant. Muret. Orat. vii. p. 70. sqq.
Their mode of teaching differed very materially from ours. It scarcelyseemed an object with them to devour large quantities of learning, butgoing leisurely again and again over the same ground they appeared togive the lessons they received time to sink like gentle rain intotheir minds. Some advantage, too, arose from their method of teaching,as far as possible, orally. The master was to them instead of alibrary. A book has but one set of phrases for all. But the livingteacher, if he found his pupils could not rise to his language, couldlower it to meet them half-way, could be brief or expansive, orgeneral or minute, as the necessities of the moment required. Therewas a familiarity, too, in the relation, scarcely compatible with ourmanners. The youth forgot he was learning, and rather supposed himselfto be searching in the company of a friend for truths equally unknownto both. This appears to have been more particularly the case in theirmoral studies,[795] at least in the Socratic schools, where all thepomp of wisdom was laid aside that it might be the more popular.
Footnote 795:
Vid. Ant. Muret. Orat. iv. 43. sqq.
It has been already remarked that the first lessons in morals werelearned from the poets, whom, in my opinion, Plato wrongs mostegregiously when he arraigns their fables as so many sources ofimmorality.[796] He appears, in fact, wilfully to confound them withthose impostors, the purificators and diviners, who furnished thePopes with the original hint of penitences and indulgencies, andexpiating crimes by proxy. But this is unjust. It is visiting the sinsof low and sensual versifiers upon the divine heads of bards whomheaven itself had inspired. However this may be, upon the Greeks youngand old no teachers exercised so powerful an influence as the poets,who, from Homer down to Callistratos,[797] whether in epic orafter-dinner song, wielded the empire of their feelings despotically,prompting them to actions pregnant with renown. And the avidity withwhich their lessons were imbibed, is compared to that of a swarm ofbees alighting (ἐπιπτομένοι)[798] on a bed of spring flowers. In fact,what Jason of Pheræ said of himself,—that he was devoured by the loveof empire[799]—appears to have been true of the Athenian youth, intheir irrepressible thirst after knowledge. Such of them, at least, aswere εὐφυεῖς καὶ ἱκανοὶ, are said to have hungered fiercely afterphilosophy, and that not for any particular part but for the whole.And Socrates declares that he who while young is fastidious in hisstudies, rejecting this, disliking that, before mature reason hastaught him which is useful and which is not, may consider himself whathe pleases, but can never be great in learning or philosophy. To excelin these it is necessary insatiably to covet every kind ofinstruction, and joyfully to enter on the acquisition of it. He says,indeed, that they resemble sight-seers, greedy of every spectacle; ormusical people, who are led by the ear wherever fiddling and singingare going forward; except that, with the latter pleasure is the solemotive, with the former an exalted passion for truth.[800] But whattruths are the object of philosophy? Those which have regard to thenature and attributes of goodness, from which, as from a fountain,flow all the usefulness and advantages of virtue. Philosophy in Greececomprehended religion, and to be religious was to act justly,benevolently, mercifully towards men, humbly and piously towards God.To live thus, that is, to be virtuous, they considered it necessary topossess a knowledge of the whole theory of ethics, since virtue, intheir opinion, is incompatible with ignorance. But man, besides beinga moral being, accountable to God, is a political being, accountableto the laws of his country. He has duties also to perform towards thatcountry. To perform these properly he must comprehend the nature of astate, and the relations subsisting between the state and theindividuals who compose it; that is, he must be acquainted with thescience of politics. Again in all free states, reasoning andpersuasion, not blind will and brute force, are the instruments ofgovernment. The citizen must, therefore, be versed in logic andeloquence,[801] that he may think correctly and explain clearly andforcibly to others the convictions which determine his own judgment.We have thus a cycle of Greek studies with the reasons on which theywere founded.
Footnote 796:
Plat. de Rep. ii. t. i. p. 112. sqq. Stallb. Cf. Hardion, Dissert. sur l’Eloquence, iii. Biblioth. Academ. t. iii. p. 194. p. 210. sqq.
Footnote 797:
See Schoel. Hist. de la Lit. Grecq. i. 288. Lowth. Poes. Sacr. Hebr. p. 12. Leipz.
Footnote 798:
Plat. de Rep. ii. t. i. p. 115. Stallb. On the ardent and noble temperament of Athenian youth, see the note of Valckennaer, ad Xenoph. Mem. iii. 3. 13. p. 286. Schneid. Cf. Plat. de Rep. v. t. i. p. 345.
Footnote 799:
Aristot. Polit. iii. 4.
Footnote 800:
Plat. de Rep. v. t. i. p. 393. seq. Stallb.
Footnote 801:
Plat. Gorg. t. iii. p. 27. De Rep. t. vi. p. 358. sqq. Bekk.
With regard to their religious education, which commenced in thenursery and was interwoven with every other study, it may be observedthat without it no person at Athens could rise to any eminence, orcommand, even in private life, the respect of his fellow-citizens. Tobe in favour with them a man must be supposed to stand well with thegods. They conceived, in fact, that while conscience remainedunstifled, there would be a sense of religion, and that when thiswent, probity, for the most part, and honour fled along with it. Forregarding the deity in the light of a parent,—"we are all hisoffspring,"—irreligion appeared to them something like a dispositionto parricide, a compound of injustice with the basest and mostatrocious ingratitude. Arrived at this pitch, a man to compass hisends would scruple at nothing. They, therefore, regarded every symptomof impiety as a blow aimed at the democracy, of which Zeus was king.He who tramples on his country’s religion, which is the basis of allits laws, will infallibly, if it be in his power, trample next onthose laws themselves, and next on his fellow-citizens whom the lawsprotect. Hence the terror, the vengeance, and, indeed, the crueltyarising out of the mutilation of the Hermæ, and the profanation of themysteries, and the prosecution which followed, of Alcibiades,Andocides, and the rest. An attempt had been made to break down thatenclosure of reverential sanctity which surrounded the commonwealth,and commended it to the protection of heaven. They considered the acta formal renouncing of the Almighty, and feared,—so imperfect weretheir notions,—lest the impiety of the few should redound to thedetriment of the whole.
The remark is common in the mouths[802] of men that the education ofthe people should be conformable to the spirit of their institutions.But this is a mere truism, and means no more than this,—that menshould not be enjoined one thing by their laws and politicalconstitution, and another by the habits and maxims taught in youth.The grand difficulty, however, always has been to make them so toharmonise in practice that they should be but two parts of the samesystem.
Footnote 802:
See on this part of the subject Destutt de Tracy. Com. sur l’Esprit des Loix, p. 25. sqq.
In monarchies[803] a spirit of exclusion, something like that on whichthe system of castes is built, must pervade the whole business ofeducation. The nobility must have schools to themselves, or, ifwealthy plebeians be suffered to mingle with them, superior honour andconsideration must be yielded to the former. The masters must look upto them and to their families, not to the people for preferment andadvancement; and the plebeians, though superior in number, must beweak in influence, and be taught to borrow their tone from theprivileged students.
Footnote 803:
In an ill-constituted state, observes Muretus, a good man cannot be a good citizen, for he will desire to alter the government, which being bad he cannot respect.—In Aristot. Eth. p. 398.
In an oligarchy, properly so called, there should be no mingling ofthe classes at all. Schools must be established expressly for thegovernors, and others for the governed. The basis of education shouldbe the notion that some men were born for rule and others forsubjection; that the happiness of individuals depends on uninquiringsubmission to authority; that their rulers are wise and they unwise;that all they have to do with the laws is to obey them; and allteachers must be made to feel that their admission among the greatdepends on the faithful advocacy of such notions.
In free states, again, the contrary course will best promote the endsof government; the schools must be strictly public, and not merelytheoretically but practically open to all. There should be nocompulsion to attend them, but ignorance of the things there taughtshould involve a forfeiture of civil rights as much as being ofunsound mind; for in truth, an ignorant man is not of sound mind, anymore than one unable to use all his limbs is of sound body. Here thediscipline must be very severe. A spirit rigidly puritanical mustpervade the studies and preside over the amusem*nts. Every tendencyirreligious, immoral, ungentlemanly, as unworthy the dignity offreedom, should be nipped in the bud. The students must be taught todespise all other distinctions but those of virtue and genius, inother words the power to serve the community. They should be taught tocontemplate humanity as in other respects wholly on the same level,with nothing above it but the laws. The teachers must be dependent onthe people alone, and owe their success to their own abilities andpopular manners. And this last in a great measure was the spirit ofAthenian education.[804]
Footnote 804:
The advantages of which were so much coveted by foreigners, that they sent their children in crowds to be educated at Athens.—Æsch. Epist. Orat. Att. xii. 214.
The best proof[805] that could be furnished of the excellence of asystem of education would be its rendering a people almost independentof government, that is swayed more by their habits than by the laws.This was preëminently the case with the Athenians. They required to bevery little meddled with by their rulers. Instructed in their dutiesand the reason which rendered them duties, accustomed from childhoodto perform them, they lived as moral and educated men live still,independent of the laws.
Footnote 805:
A commonwealth, says Plato, once well constituted will proceed like an ever rolling circle. For by persevering in good training and instruction, the minds and disposition of the people will be rendered good, and these again in their turn will improve the system of training and instruction, and even the race of man itself, as the breed of other animals, is rendered more excellent by care.—De Rep. t. vi. p. 173. Cf. Isocrates, Areop. § 14. seq.
This was the effect. The causes must be sought in their discipline andstudies. I have observed that among them a principal subject ofinvestigation was the science of politics, that is the scienceaccording to the principles of which states are framed and preserved.Nor did they, as some do, conduct their studies in that cold manner inwhich men investigate matters of mere curiosity, or things they arenever to do more than converse or write about. They studied it as aprofession, as a means of rising to power, and through power to fame,that is with all the ardour and earnestness of which enthusiasticyouth is capable. Education by this means exerted an influence unknownunder other forms of government. A consciousness that they wereengaged in a sort of sacred contest, of which all Greece wasspectator, pervaded the youth of every rank, and impelled themirresistibly into that course of studies which promised the greatestprobability of success. Hence, no doubt much of the enthusiasm withwhich philosophy was cultivated. It was often not so much the abstractlove of wisdom as a conviction of the political value of that wisdomwhich filled the schools of the great men who taught at Athens,whether they were physiologists, mathematicians, masters of music, ofstrategy, or of eloquence. The example of Pericles applying himself tonatural philosophy under Anaxagoras, and deriving thence those streamsof pure and masculine eloquence which overflowed the Pnyx, operatedforcibly on public opinion. By the same arts and studies men hoped tomount to equal elevation, forgetting that Anaxagoras only watered theplant spontaneously produced by nature.
However, the hopes and aspirations I have described filled the schoolsfirst of the philosophers, then of the sophists. And this is thenatural course of things. Few pursue wisdom for its own sake, in orderthat it may purify and render holy their own minds. And by thisdispensation of Providence society is a gainer; for, as man isconstituted, no sooner does he possess any mental excellence, anyknowledge or art or experience, which can be rendered available, thanhe comes eagerly forward with it to extort praise or reward from thecommunity by conferring benefits upon it. The examples of reserve inthis matter are few, nor, in fact, are they to be commended who inthis or in any thing else hide their light under a bushel; andtherefore Plato is wrong when he teaches that wise men will as a ruleabstain from intermeddling with state affairs, unless constrainedthereto by fines and menaces. He confesses, indeed, that the worst ofall punishments is to be governed by evil men, and that to avoid thiseven philosophers will consent to hold the reins of government.[806]But where they do not, they are always in free states the masters ofthose who do. Their schools were the colleges and universities of theancient world, and so long as freedom endured the great object oftheir philosophy was to create able citizens and a happy state. Onthis account their remains are still instinct with life. Their objectwas gradually to ripen human nature into perfection by perfecting itseducation and its institutions. They knew how completely a people isin the power of its teachers for good or for evil, and accordingly,with some few exceptions, applied themselves to elevate theconceptions, the moral tone, the feelings of their countrymen, seldomdescending to trifling disquisitions excepting for relaxation in theintervals of more important inquiries.
Footnote 806:
Repub. i. t. vi. p. 42. seq. Bekk.
The physical sciences,[807] save in the case of their earliestcultivators, were regarded as simple handmaids to ethics and politics.Nevertheless, in the study of them much earnestness was exhibited.For, where knowledge is at all held in honour, men will always befound sufficiently prone to the palpable and visible. But even thesepursuits assumed a peculiar form in Greece. The genius of the nation,essentially creative, developed its force and its peculiar energy inframing systems of physics, explaining the origin of the world, thebirth of the human race, its early fortunes and fabulous history.Every great philosopher became, like an intellectual sun, the centreof a system of physics, and his disciples like satellites revolvedaround him, receiving and reflecting his light. This, despite of someinconveniences, was highly favourable to science. It compelled men tothe study of the philosophical art of attack and defence. Each schoolbecame the reviewers and critics of its rivals, sought out their weakpoints, studied them profoundly, called up all its acuteness, all itssubtlety, both to assault others and defend itself; and thus, whateverbecame of the system, the professors of it carried, as far as might betowards perfection, their intellectual powers, invested theirreasonings with every grace of which they were susceptible, culledfrom the most recondite arts and hidden resources of style andeloquence.
Footnote 807:
Vid. Athen. ii. 18.—That geography entered but very little into their studies may be inferred from Thucydides, vii. 1.
But, while this golden currency was circulating through Greece,enriching its mind and augmenting its chances of independence andhappiness, a race of men sprang up, who brought into use a number ofingenious and beautiful counters,—I mean the sophists.[808] Theinfluence of these men in the education of the Greeks has seldom beencorrectly appreciated. It has been more common to vituperate than tostudy them. They corrupted, we are told, the mind and manners ofyouth. But how? No one, as far as I know, has observed that to them isto be traced the extinction of the republican spirit and the openingof a way for despotism.[809] That they created the yearning afterinnovation I will not affirm; but their epoch constituted a period oftransition from republican to monarchical institutions, and the onlyway in which they can be said to have corrupted the youth was byundermining that love of liberty and of country, the feeling ofdisinterestedness on which chiefly a commonwealth must be founded, andinculcating in lieu thereof a system of ethics more in conformity withthe modifications of civil polity prevalent in modern times. In thisway only did they corrupt and undermine the morals of their country.But in so far they effected it, and that the more easily, in thatcirc*mstances conspired, about the time they arose, to fling the wholebusiness of teaching into their hands, insomuch that to be a sophist,and to teach youth, grew to be synonymous terms.[810]
Footnote 808:
Vid. Herod. i. 29. And Cf. Schœll. Hist. de la Lit. Grecq. ii. 134. Isoc. de Perm. § 26. Muret. in Arist. Ethic. p. 477. Menag. ad Diog. Laert. p. 5. a. b. &c.
Footnote 809:
Hobbes, the great representative of this class of men in modern times, living under the despotism of the Stuarts, sought to turn the tables upon the philosophers, and accused them of corrupting the minds of youth. “As to rebellion, in particular against monarchy, one of the most frequent causes of it is the reading of the books of policy and histories of the ancient Greeks and Romans; from which young men, and all others that are unprovided of the antidote of solid reason, receiving a strong and delightful impression of the great exploits of war, achieved by the conductors of their armies, receive withal a pleasing idea of all they have done besides; and imagine their great prosperity not to have proceeded from the emulation of particular men, but from the virtue of their popular form of government.”—Leviathan, pt. ii. c. 29. vol. iii. p. 315.—Edition of Sir William Molesworth.
Footnote 810:
Poll. iv. 17.
They were themselves, however, but a corruption of what in its originwas good, and always continued in the opinion of the undiscerning tobe confounded with the men they aped.[811] Whether we have sophistsamong us at the present day, I will not determine; but this is the waythey arose in Greece. It was soon discovered by shrewd and calculatingmen, that since philosophy excited much admiration and rendered itsteachers objects of mark and reverence, it might by a little ingenuitybe converted into a source of profit.[812] But by what means?—Thephilosophers at the outset were in possession of the popular ear, morethrough the sanctity of their lives, of which all could judge, thanthrough their doctrines, necessarily comprehended in their fullestextent by few. They despaired, therefore, of the people. Thereexisted, however, in Greece, and will ever exist in free states, youngmen of immeasurable ambition, who, impatient of the restraint of laws,would gladly cast them off, seize the reins of government, and becomethe tyrants of their country. The mere conception of such a designimplies the possession of wealth and powerful friends. Eager for anyhelp they enthusiastically welcomed all who seemed capable ofpromoting their views, and when the sophists appeared, enriched with avariety of knowledge, specious, eloquent, unscrupulous, they eagerlythrew themselves into their arms, became their pupils, and inconjunction with them framed the subjugation of Greece.
Footnote 811:
Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 286. seq. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 331.
Footnote 812:
That money was the sole object of the sophists is observed by Isocrates, Hel. Encom. § 4. Elsewhere, with a stroke of sly humour not usual with him, he says, they would sell anything short of immortality for three or four minæ.—Cont. Sophist. § 3, p. 576. See on the whole subject of the Sophists, Hard. Dissert. v. Bibl. Acad. t. iii. p. 240. sqq. Muret. in Arist. Ethic. p. 533. Cressol. Theat. Rhet. v. iii. p. 447.
In tracing this class of men to their origin, we must look back agreat way, and endeavour to detect them, under a variety of forms,different from that in which they ultimately settled. They arose withthe first philosophers, or the first poet who made self the centre ofhis researches, and sought to render the investigation of science ameans of personal aggrandisem*nt. Protagoras describes in Plato therise of his own art; where, though a side blow be wrongfully aimed atpoetry itself, the truth of the accusation against a number of poetscannot be denied. He makes good at the very outset what I haveasserted above. They travelled, he says, over all Greece, alluring thenoblest youths to abandon the company of their friends andfellow-citizens, to become their pupils, and be guided wholly by theirmaxims, the nature of which I shall presently unfold. The feelingsthey thus excited, he denominates envy and malevolence, though intruth it was nothing more than that patriotic and parental jealousyand hatred experienced by the good when they behold those they loveled astray. The better to escape this hostility, the ancient sophistsadopted various disguises, sometimes enveloping their art in the foldsof poetry as Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides, on other occasionsaffecting to be the interpreters of foreign rites and oracles, asOrpheus and Musæus; while a third class concealed the features oftheir art under the less suspected mask of gymnastics, such as Iccosof Tarentum, and that Herodicos of Silymbria a man of Megarean originwho in the art of sophistry was second to none of his age.Occasionally they made their entrance into cities as professors ofmusic. In this capacity Damon conversed with Pericles, and Agathocles,an Athenian by birth, diffused through the state the seeds ofsophistry; Pythocleides, too, the Coan, pursued the same course; andthus a youth, while ostensibly engaged in gaining a proficiency on thelyre or cithara, was initiated in the mysteries of tyranny, irreligionand injustice.[813]
Footnote 813:
Plat. Protag. t. i. p. 163. seq. Bekk.
By degrees, however, it was discovered that all disguise might be verysafely laid aside.[814] In fact the object at first aimed at,—toescape the notice of men in power,—was found impracticable; and as tothe people, against whom all these shafts were directed, it was easyto delude them, since what their leaders recommended they praised.Protagoras, accordingly, boldly professed himself a sophist, trustingfor safety to his eloquence, and that growing laxity of manners whichwas rapidly undermining the old republican constitution and preparingthe way for a new order of things. His candour was praiseworthy, butlamentable were the circ*mstances which rendered it safe.
Footnote 814:
At a late period, by a decree of Sophocles, the sophists were driven out of Attica.—Athen. xiii. 92. Cf. Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 12. p. 87.
I would not, however, be understood to share the opinions of those,who can discern nothing but evil in the doctrines of the sophists. Onmany points their notions harmonised altogether with those of thewisest philosophers. Accordingly it was not precisely what theyinculcated, but the principles which regulated their teaching, thatrendered them sophists. They taught with a view to enrich themselves,which is wholly incompatible with a strict allegiance to truth; since,with such views, men will always be found to prophesy agreeably inorder that they may effect their purpose.
This circ*mstance has not been sufficiently considered by the writerswho undertake their apology. They compare them with the literary menof modern times, and imagine this comparison a defence. But does itnot rather substantiate the accusation? It is true that, like modernliterary men, they haunted the houses of the great, whom they regardedas their patrons; that to them, rather than to the people, they lookedfor support; that, like them, they worshipped wealth and abhorredpoverty; that their studies, their discourses, their writings,diffused far and wide through society a taste for arts and elegance;that they furnished the public in their declamations, satires, novels,of which they were the inventors, with inexhaustible sources ofamusem*nt:—but what virtue did they inculcate? On whom did they urgethe necessity of sacrificing private to public good? On what occasiondid they dare to stem the torrent of immorality, of impiety, ofunpatriotic maxims, which the base and the selfish were pouring forthagainst the old bulwarks of freedom? That among them there were men ofa very high order of genius, it is impossible to deny. Gorgias ofLeontium, from whose name we have borrowed an epithet to expresswhatever is most glorious in nature or dazzling and elaborate in art,Protagoras, Prodicos, Hippias of Elis, Polos of Agrigentum,Thrasymachos of Chalcedon, have left behind them an imperishablememory;[815] but so have Busiris and Phalaris and Catiline. They areremembered for the good they might have done, and the evil they did.
Footnote 815:
Muretus considers the word sophist to be synonymous with a teacher of eloquence: “Sophista, id est, dicendi magister;” and, speaking of this same Thrasymachos, cites a passage from Cicero which attributes to him the invention of the rhetorical style. Orat. § 12. Suidas regards Thrasymachos as the first who made use of the period and the colon; and supposes him to have been pupil to Plato and Isocrates, whereas he preceded both.—Muret. Comm. p. 631. seq.
Since, however, the sophists acted so important a part in theeducation of the Greeks, the space I devote to them is clearly theirdue: it is necessary to the thorough comprehension of the subject.Almost from the moment they arose they aimed at a monopoly of the artof teaching, and the father of the art, properly so called, wasGorgias. Few names of antiquity, as Geel[816] has well observed, arebetter known or more celebrated than that of this distinguishedsophist, among the causes of whose amazing popularity must be reckonedthe number of great men whom he instructed in eloquence, and thesplendid vices of style which his example and precept brought intovogue. The exact date of his birth is not known:[817] he is, however,supposed to have been born at Leontium in Sicily, about theseventy-third Olympiad. His father’s name was Charmantes.[818] Nearlyall the particulars of his early life are unknown, the ancients havingbeen as much too negligent as we are too lavish of biographicaldetails. Under whom he studied, with whom he conversed, how much heowed to others, and how much to his own genius and industry, arepoints not easy to be determined, though we cannot adopt the opinionof Ælian,[819] who sends him to school to Philolaos; or of DiogenesLaertius, who will have Empedocles to have been his teacher, since thelatter was very little older than himself, and the former muchyounger. Empedocles is indeed said to have invented the art ofrhetoric, in which case we might suppose Gorgias to have been hisscholar. But how invented? He may have been the first who sought toreduce it into an art, or who so called it; but as Aristotle observes,every man who reasons persuasively is a rhetorician, whether hiseloquence be based on the formal study of the art or not. Inphilosophy, indeed, he would seem[820] to have been the disciple ofEmpedocles; but in rhetoric they both very probably derivedinstruction from Corax and Tisias, who flourished and taught rhetoricin Sicily about the period of their youth.[821]
Footnote 816:
Hist. Sophist. p. 13.
Footnote 817:
Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ii. 28. 65. 67. Geel (Hist. Sophist. p. 14) assumes the seventieth Olympiad as the date of his birth; but as it seems to result from the text of Pausanias that he was still living in 380. B.C. this would extend the duration of his life beyond that assigned to it by any ancient writer.
Footnote 818:
Of whom, as Muretus (Comm. p. 631. seq.) observes, no mention occurs save in Plato de Repub. i. § 2. t. i. p. 8. Stallb.
Footnote 819:
Var. Hist. i. 23. Diog. Laert. viii. 58.—Mr. Clinton, however, adopts the opinion of Diogenes (Fast. Hell. ii. 365); and, to render it probable, supposes Empedocles to have been a few years older than his pupil.
Footnote 820:
Plat. Men. p. 14. g.
Footnote 821:
Cic. Brut. § 12. Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 15. seq. Sext. Empir. p. 306. seq.
These, however, are mere conjectures. He would probably have died inobscurity, and been forgotten with the kings who reigned _anteAgamemnona_, had not the misfortunes of his country brought him, inold age, to the great workshop of Fame. The immediate occasion wasthis; the people of Leontium having engaged and been worsted in war bythe Syracusans, sent ambassadors to demand succour of the Athenianpeople, and among these the principal speaker was Gorgias. Practisedin a style of oratory new at Athens, indulging in a profusion ofmetaphors and other figures bordering on the licences of poetry, heimmediately hurried away captive his hearers, fulfilled the desires ofhis fellow citizens, and established for himself a reputation[822]where all men most desired to possess one. To augment his glory it hasnot been unusual to enumerate Pericles and Thucydides among those whobecame his scholars. But this embassy took place in the fifth year ofthe Peloponnesian war when Pericles had been dead two years. ThatThucydides heard him, however, is not at all improbable, since hisexile did not take place[823] till the eighth year of the war. Amonghis admirers are mentioned two other men, whose principles and historyafford the best illustration of what fruit the teaching of thesophists was likely to produce,—Critias and Alcibiades, whose ability,courage, and profligacy rendered them the scourges of their country.It has been with great probability supposed that, having on his returnto Leontium rendered an account of his mission, he quitted Sicily forever, for the purpose of becoming a professor of eloquence in Greece.This is Diodorus’s account, but the Scholiast on Hermogenes supposeshim to have remained at Athens. Whether this was the case or not, hesoon considered one city, however great or celebrated, too confined atheatre for the display of his merit. He, therefore, adopted theprofession of an itinerant lecturer, with the double view ofgratifying his vanity and filling his purse. And he thoroughlyunderstood the art of dazzling mankind, for, not supposing it enoughto unfold before his auditors his magazines of tropes and figures,stored up, like theatrical thunder and lightning, to be introduced atthe proper moment, he had recourse to other dramatic arts forproducing effect, appearing in magnificent attire, flowing purplerobes, embroidered sandals, his fingers sparkling with gold and gems.But though the oldest of the sophists, he was not the first whoadopted this course. Protagoras, and perhaps others, had previouslycommenced their peregrinations, and begun to practise on the credulityand weakness of the multitude. Among the Athenians they were paidchiefly with praise; “the solid pudding” was to be sought elsewhere.And accordingly we find, as Plato sarcastically expresses it, thatupon the advent of the sophists, the Thessalians, usually celebratedfor their full purses and fine horses,[824] grew all at onceremarkable for their love of wisdom, that is, paid the sophistshandsomely, in the hope of thus enticing knowledge to remain amongthem. In fact they supposed that wisdom is like a candle and lantern,by which you may have light,—or a saint’s shirt, by wearing which youinfallibly become holy,—or the lamp of Epictetus, which a rich manbought at three thousand drachmas, in the hope that it would light himinto the very adyta of philosophy. However this may be, it is verycertain that the Thessalians became the patrons of the sophists, whodisposed in that country of more wisdom and eloquence than in anyother part of Greece, and the principal purchasers of it were of therich family of the Aleuadæ, the earliest Mæcenases, I believe, onrecord.
Footnote 822:
Diod. Sicul. xii. 53.
Footnote 823:
I cannot, therefore, see the reason of Geel’s doubt.—Hist. Sophist. p. 18. Cf. Clint. Fast. Hellen. ii. p. 68.
Footnote 824:
Plat. Hip. Maj. t. v. p. 416.
But the sophists, to their credit be it acknowledged, were no misers.What they easily gained they spent freely; and not merely so, but inmany instances converted the effects of their personal vanity intopublic ornaments of the whole country. Thus Gorgias, enriched by thespoils of Thessaly, erected at Delphi a golden statue[825] of himself,which argued a more generous spirit than he would have shown bysetting it afloat in the channels of trade or husbandry or usury, inthe hope of rendering himself a great capitalist.
Footnote 825:
Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 8.
Gorgias was long absent from Athens, and visited during his travelsthe most considerable cities of Greece. Among other places he came toDelphi, where from the steps of the altar, probably during the games,he delivered that oration called the Pythian, in celebration of whichhe erected the above-mentioned statue.[826] From thence perhaps,—forthe chronology of his journey is not exactly known,—he proceeded toOlympia, where he also assisted at the games for the purpose ofexhibiting his oratorical talents in the presence of all Greece, andreaping as it were in an hour a harvest of glory. This declamation,delivered during the Peloponnesian war, had at least therecommendation of being patriotic. Standing in front of the temple ofZeus, the god of concord and of peace, he earnestly recommended unionand harmony.[827] If war they must have, there were thebarbarians,—let their arms be turned against them. With what successhe spoke, history has informed us; but the satirists of antiquity,ever naturally addicted to scandal, are careful to remark that thisgreat advocate of concord and unanimity kept up a civil war in his ownhouse, where the charms of some beautiful-cheeked θεραπαινίδιον[828]excited the jealousy of Madame. At the same time the old gentleman, toadopt the most moderate computation, must have been hard uponthree-score and ten, though some would make him eighty.
Footnote 826:
Geel, Hist. Sophist. p. 23.
Footnote 827:
They sometimes selected more humble subjects for their panegyric, for example, the bumble-bee, or salt.—Isocrat. Hel. Encom. § 4. p. 461. Plutarch, too, speaks of a learned work on salt, which he considered very edifying.—Sympos. § 5. A French author of the same class devoted twenty years of his life to a treatise on the nightingale. Another member of this confraternity is celebrated by Rousseau:—“On dit qu’un allemand a fait un livre sur un zeste de citron; j’en aurais fait un sur chaque gramen des prés, sur chaque mousse des bois, sur chaque lichen qui tapisse les rochers; enfin, je ne voulais pas laisser un poil d’herbe, pas un atome végétal qui ne fût amplement décrit.”—Réveries, t. iii. p. 106. On the verbal trifling of the sophists see Muret. in Aristot. Ethic. p. 79. By Le Conte, in his Commentary on the Anabasis, Gorgias is transformed into “a prudent and experienced officer,” because Proxenos is said to have studied under him.—t. i. p. 246.
Footnote 828:
Plut. Conj. Præcept. § 43. whom Geel follows.—Hist. Sophist. p. 25. But Isocrates, who had been himself a hearer of Gorgias in Thessaly (Cic. Orat. § 22), relates that he was never married, and had no children.—De Permut. § 26. 10. Another tradition however speaks of his son Philip as having been condemned by the Heliasts.—Schol. Aristoph. Av. 1700.
Over the latter days of Gorgias[829] hovers the same darkness whichconceals from view the commencement. It is known with no degree ofcertainty where he spent the close of his long life or where he died,though as no account exists of his return to Sicily, it probably wasin Greece.
Footnote 829:
See Athen. xii. 71.
Next to Gorgias in reputation was Protagoras, whose history is stillless known. In the opinion of some writers he was the oldest of thesophists. Though the date of his birth be later than that of Gorgias,he preceded him in the profession of the art. He was certainly, Ithink, born much earlier than is supposed either by Clinton or byGeel, who take him to have been almost exactly of Socrates’ age, thatis to have come into the world about 479 B. C. But in this opinion Icannot concur. It is in direct contradiction with a passage inPlato[830] who, however careless in matters of chronology, would, I ampersuaded, never push his negligence so far as to make one man say toanother, born in the same year with himself, that he was old enough tobe his father. To me, therefore it appears necessary that we throwback ten or twelve years the date of his birth. He was ten years, itis admitted, older than Democritos. The latter, who had madeconsiderable progress in philosophy when he saw Protagoras in thecapacity of a wood-carrier and undertook to initiate him in hissystem, could hardly have been less than seven or eight and twenty, sothat the former was little short of forty. He exercised the professionof sophist during forty years, and died about 406 B. C. He musttherefore have been born about 484–485 B. C.[831]
Footnote 830:
Addressing Socrates, among many others, he says in one place, ἀλλὰ πότερον ὑμῖν, ὡς πρεσβύτερος νεωτέροις, μῦθον λέγων ἐπιδείξω. κ. τ. λ.—Protag. i. 170. But this is nothing to what he elsewhere says: οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐ πάντων ἂν ὑμῶν καθ᾽ ἡλικίαν πατὴρ εἴην.—Id. p. 165.—which without extreme absurdity a man could not say to a person exactly of his own age. Meiners. (Hist. des Arts et des Sciences, iii. 258), evidently refers to this passage; as does also Hardion. Dissert. vii. Bib. Acad. iii. 295. Yet it must have wholly escaped Geel, who (Hist. Sophist. p. 71) says: “Deinde _nescimus_ quomodo efficiatur e Platonis Protagorâ, sophistam ejusdem nominis _multo_ majorem fuisse Socrate.”
Footnote 831:
Diog. Laert. ix. 55. observes that, according to some writers, he died, at the age of 90, during a journey.—Geel, p. 81. It is sufficiently remarkable that most of the Sophists attained to a very great old age, and the same thing may be said generally of the philosophers of antiquity. Lord Bacon undertakes to account for the fact. Having given the palm of long life to hermits and anchorites, he says: “Next unto this is a life led in good letters, such as was that of Philosophers, Rhetoricians, Grammarians. This life is also led in leisure, and in those thoughts which, seeing they are severed from the affairs of the world, bite not, but rather delight through their vanity and impertinency: they live also at their pleasure, spending their time in such things as like them best, and for the most part in the company of young men, which is ever the most cheerful.”—History of Life and Death, p. 24.
But I cannot here pursue the history of the sophists, which no furtherbelongs to my work than as it is connected with the subject ofeducation. On their writings, however, and manner of teaching it isnecessary that I should be more explicit. Whether Gorgias firstpublished or Protagoras is of little moment; both evidently wrote withthe same aim, which was to confound truth and error, right and wrong,not perhaps through any enmity to truth or to virtue, but from thesheer vanity of being thought capable of any thing, and the desire ofconverting their talents to account. One distinguishing quality of theclass was fertility. They piqued themselves on being able to pourforth volume after volume, treatise after treatise, speech afterspeech. This, indeed, it was that constituted their principal claim tosuperiority over the philosophers, a pains-taking race, among whom theperiod of intellectual gestation was longer than that of the elephant;whereas your true sophist, without meditation, study or experience,astonished his admirers by the copiousness of his invention, byimagery, gorgeous and glittering, generally stolen from the poets, andby a piquant air of profoundness and originality, which the art ofseeming to doubt all that other men believe never fails to confer.
Besides, comprehending enough of human nature to know that whoeveramuses is listened to, whatever atrocities he may utter, they werecareful to invest their doctrine with a light and graceful exterior.No man ever excelled them at a joke. They in fact managed matters sothat in their hands every thing became a joke, and to overthrow anantagonist demanded nothing more than to be able to raise a laugh athis expense; for, all the world over, in the opinion of the vulgar,whoever is ridiculous is wrong. From calculation, they eschewed theuphill task of correcting error, or advancing truth, or reformingmanners. To upbraid men for their faults and counsel amendment, is toincur their enmity. Reformers, prophets, apostles of truth have alwaysbeen persecuted, often put to death. The sophists felt no ambition tobe martyrs. Poverty, too, and obscurity, spare diet, a coarse mantle,and the solitude in which the poor great man walks the world, theycould not away with. To their happiness crowds of admirers, opulence,costly robes[832] and all the refinements of luxury formed a _sine quânon_; and accordingly in the choice of their doctrines they wereguided by one consideration only, viz. how they might amuse mankind,and reap all the advantages of popularity.
Footnote 832:
Herault de Sechelles, who, had he lived, would have excelled Boswell in biography, describes with singular felicity the passion of that arch-sophist, Buffon, for the splendours of dress. Even among the peasants of Montbar, a race of primitive simplicity, the French Hippias would never appear but in an embroidered suit, curled and decorated as if at court. He had nicely calculated the effect of external appearances on the mind; and we must forgive him, since he shared the weakness with Lord Bacon and Aristotle.—See Voyage à Montbar, p. 42, seq.
The eloquence which statesmen employed to recommend their measures,the sophists applied to fictitious uses, imagining themselves inimpossible circ*mstances, reversing times, confounding manners, andattacking or defending men long since dead. In all such cases theinterest would chiefly depend on the novelty or ingenuity of thethoughts and the subtle artifices of style. Hence the extravagance,the coldness, the perversion of imagery, the distortion and monkeytricks of language, for which their manner of compositions becameremarkable. The false position they took up led, in philosophy, toresults equally disastrous. To aim at truth, would have been to throwthemselves into the wake of the philosophers, to share, withoutworldly compensation, their dangers, labours, and comparativeinsignificance. They struck out, therefore, a new course forthemselves. Taking philosophy as it was, they undertook to dispute onall and every part of it; to show that for a skilful dialecticianthere was no proposition that might not with nearly equal facility beattacked or defended; that by means of syllogisms or enthymemes,artfully arranged, darkness may be proved to be light, and lightdarkness; that between lying and speaking the truth there is nodifference; that in fact both veracity and falsehood are nonentities,all our notions being mere arbitrary fictions; and that to beat yourdog and to beat your father is the same thing.
Of this novel and ingenious style of argumentation,[833] in whichHudibras was an adept, we are furnished with abundant examples byPlato, more especially in the Euthydemus, where two old fellows, witharguments longer than their beards, luxuriate in the felicitousinventions by which, like another Circe, they are enabled to transformtheir hearers into hogs and bulldogs. In humorous extravagance thedialogue scarcely falls short of an Aristophanic comedy or a Christmaspantomime. Socrates[834] plays the Clown, Ctesippos the Harlequin, andthe blows dealt upon the magicians in the course of the piece, aresuch as, were they fully comprehended, would set all Drury Lane orCovent Garden in a roar. But the length of the scenes prevents theirtransplantation into my pages, and the abridgment of a joke is a verydull thing. Let us, however, hear by what logic they proved Socratesto have been a second “man without a navel.”
Footnote 833:
Another example may be found in Athen. iii. 54.
Footnote 834:
Socrates has been confounded with the Sophists, because he frequented their company to refute them; but there was between them the same difference, as between a thief-taker and a thief.
“Answer me,” cried Dionysidoros.
“Well then,” replied Socrates, “I answer that Iolaus was the nephew ofHeracles, and, as far as I can see, no nephew of mine. For my brotherPatrocles was not his father, but quite another guess sort of person,Iphicles the brother of Heracles.”
“And Patrocles was your brother?”
“By the mother, not by the father.”
“Then he was your brother, and not your brother?”
“By the father’s side he was not,” answered Socrates, “since he wasthe son of Charidemos, and I of Sophroniscos.”
“But Sophroniscos, no less than Charidemos, was a father.”
“Exactly; the former was my father, the latter Patrocles’.”
“Then was Charidemos other than a father?”
“He was other than mine.”
“Then he was a father, and not a father? But, come, are you the samething as a stone?”
“I fear,” replied Socrates, “I shall appear to be no better in yourhands, though I do not discover the identity.”
“Well, being other than a stone, you are not a stone; being other thangold, you are not gold. And must not the same thing happen toCharidemos? Being something else than a father, he is not a father.”
“So it seems,” replied the philosopher.
“And what is true of Charidemos,” replied the younger sophist, “mustbe true of Sophroniscos. Being other than a father, he is not afather: from which, my good friend, it follows that you never had anyfather at all![835]”
Footnote 835:
Plat. Opp. iii. 444, seq.
Socrates being thus placed on a level with the first man, his friendCtesippos took up the ball, and sent it with so much force into theface of the sophists, that it somewhat startled them.
“Come, then,” said he, “is not your own father in precisely the samecirc*mstances? Is he not different from my father?”
“Not at all,” answered Euthydemos.
“What, then, he is the same?”
“Exactly.”
“I should be sorry to think so. However, is he my father only, or ishe everybody else’s father?”
“Everybody’s, of course; for can you imagine him to be a father, andnot a father?”
“I should have thought so,” answered Ctesippos.
“What! that gold is not gold, and that a man is not a man?”
“Not so, friend Euthydemos; but you do not, as the saying is, mingleflax with flax; and your assertion, that your father is the father ofall men, seems very extraordinary.”
“But he is, though.”
“Very good; but is he not only the father of men but of horses andevery other animal?”
“Of everything!”
“And your mother, in like manner, is the mother of all things?”
“Certainly.”
“Then she is the mother of the sea-hedgehog.”
“And so is yours!”
“And you are the full brother of gudgeons, cubs, and sucking-pigs.”
“So are you!”
“And your father is a dog.”
“And yours, too!”
It was now evident they were in anger, and accordingly Dionysidorosinterposed, and observed jocularly,—
“Provided you will answer me, Ctesippos, I undertake to make youconfess that your father is just what my brother has said. So, tellme, have you a dog?”
“I have, and a snappish cur he is, too.”
“And has he young ones?”
“Ay, and they are more snappish than himself.”
“Well, now, is not the dog their father?”
“No doubt.”
“And the dog is yours?”
“Certainly.”
“It follows then, if he be a father and yours, that he must be yourfather; so that his cubs are your brothers.”
Before the young man could reply to this compliment the sophistproceeded:
“Answer me, Ctesippos, a little longer. Do you ever beat that dog?”
“That I do,” replied Ctesippos laughing; “and I wish I couldadminister the same discipline to you in your turn.”
“Then you beat your own father!”
“The beating,” answered the young man, “would be more justly inflictedon yours, for having knowingly let loose two such sages uponmankind!”[836]
Footnote 836:
Plat. Opp. t. iii. p. 245.—The amusing manner of teaching introduced by these sophists was sometimes imitated by the philosophers. Thus Theophrastus, who, before proceeding to his school, used to anoint himself with oil and perform his exercises, had recourse to extraordinary drollery for the purpose of charming his pupils, adapting all his gestures and movements to his discourses; so that when describing the manners and character of a glutton, he used, like a comic actor, to thrust out his tongue and lick his lips.—Athen. i. 38.
But these, after all, were but laughing sophists, who, though they hadsucceeded in confounding and obliterating from their own minds everytrace of difference between right and wrong, fell short of that superbdegree of wickedness at which Polos, Callicles, and Thrasymachosarrived, at least in speculation. The former were mere babblers, whocorrupted a pupil or two whom bad luck threw in their way.Thrasymachos flew at higher game. His sophistry was political,[837]and his aim the destruction of freedom, by extinguishing that sense ofjustice on which it must ever be based. The genius of the man wasconsiderable. He had deep thoughts, and investigated boldly; but hissympathies having somehow been early perverted, he grew sombre,fierce, and unsociable, and without the slightest disguise advocated,like our Hobbes,[838] tyrannical maxims and morals. Money, like therest, he of course worshipped. Nay, in the conversation at the houseof Cephalos he even ventures to sneer rudely at Socrates’ poverty;upon which Glaucon[839] observes:—"Don’t fear to go unpaid for theinstruction you may give him, for we will enter into a subscription onhis behalf."[840] Thrasymachos, however, was still more vain thanavaricious. He thirsted to exhibit his notions in order to enjoy thesatisfaction arising from shocking those who heard him. He maintainedthat justice is nothing more than what in any state the rulers thinkproper to establish; and that, consequently, the ordinances of atyrant are as binding and as just as the laws of a free state, sinceby nature all actions are indifferent.
Footnote 837:
Cf. Dem. Lacrit. § 10. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 113.
Footnote 838:
The modern Thrasymachos is as frank in his hatred of philosophers as the ancient. He compares their enthusiasm in favour of freedom to the virus imparted by the bite of a mad dog, imagining that nothing is so sedulously to be guarded against as liberty. He would, if possible, have the study of ancient statesmen and historians prohibited, or at least that care should be taken to counteract their maxims by the teaching of discreet sophists. “I cannot imagine,” he says, “how anything can be more prejudicial to a monarchy than the allowing of such books to be publicly read, without present applying such correctives of discreet masters, as are fit to take away their venom; which venom I will not doubt to compare to the biting of a mad dog, which is a disease the physicians call _hydrophobia_, or _fear of water_. For, as he that is so bitten has a continual torment of thirst, and yet abhorreth water, and is in such an estate, as if the poison endeavoured to convert him into a dog; so, when a monarchy is once bitten to the quick, by those democratical writers, that continually snarl at that estate, it wanteth nothing more than a strong monarch, which, nevertheless, out of a certain _tyrannophobia_ or fear of being strongly governed, when they have him, they abhor.”—Leviathan, Pt. ii. c. 29. iii. 315. Count Capo D’Istrias, if he was ignorant of the language of ancient Greece, appears at least to have understood something of the spirit of ancient philosophy, for, designing to establish a tyranny, he prohibited the reading of Plato in the public schools. He may possibly have learned his maxims of government from Hobbes, as well as that the master of the academy deserved his hatred.—Thiersch. Etat. Act. de la Grèce, ii. 121.
Footnote 839:
Plat. Rep. i. § 11. t. i. p. 41. Stallb.
Footnote 840:
Ἔρανος. Cf. Sympos. t. iv. p. 379. Bekk.
It was, in fact, a part of the sophistical doctrine, to maintain inpolitics, what Hobbes afterwards advocated, the right of thestronger:—
—--"The good old rule, the simple plan, That they should take who have the power, And they should keep who can."
But because there is in every man’s heart a rooted prejudice in favourof justice, they were fain to argue that all governors, in as far asthey deserved the name, would ordain what was best for themselves, andthat, whatever it might be, was just:[841] a very satisfactorydoctrine, which has never grown wholly out of fashion. They laughed toscorn, as persons who required nurses to look after them and wipetheir noses,[842] whomsoever they found entertaining the notion thatgovernments were instituted for the good of the governed.
Footnote 841:
Upon this point Father Paul observes:—"We must reduce under the title of justice everything that may contribute to the service of the state; for the prince has no greater justice than to preserve to himself the quality of prince, and, in order to this, to keep his subjects in a dutiful subjection to his authority."—Max. of the Gov. of Venice, chap. i. § 1.
Footnote 842:
Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 34.
Their staple comparison was always a flock or a herd. What shepherd,they inquired, ever looked after his flock for their benefit, and notfor his own use? In like manner magistrates, who, as is proper, holdthe chief place in cities, look on the public exactly as if they areso many sheep or oxen, and think of nothing, night or day, but howthey may derive most advantage from them. Justice, therefore, is whatpromotes the interests of the governors, though it may be loss to thegoverned. The man, esteemed just and pious and holy by thephilosopher, was merely, in their opinion, a fool. Whenever anythingis to be gained he gets less than any man, and when anything is to bedone for the community he does more. He is always ready with his pursewhenever anything is to be paid; always out of the way when gain isafloat. The unjust man, on the contrary, knows what he is about. Hepays and does as little as possible for the public, and takes from itall he can. The former renders himself disagreeable to his friends anddomestics, by refusing to commit any unjust action on their behalf.The latter, on the other hand, unscrupulous in acquisition, is able tooblige many by his wealth if he happens to require their services.Thus even in private life and small matters injustice is to bepreferred; but when it operates on a grand scale, plunders wholecities, and usurps over them supreme authority, it reaches the acme offelicity, is saluted by the name of prince, and becomes an object ofenvy to all mankind.
Nor did they pause even here. It was not enough to show the happinessof vice as vice; they undertook to prove that vice is virtue andvirtue vice, which may be considered as their magnum opus. They wentto work boldly, but, like the fox of Archilochos,[843] always keptsomething of their figure concealed, that, if any necessity arose,they might be able to retreat by treating their whole chain ofargumentation as a mere rhetorical exercise. “You appear to be inearnest,” observed Socrates on one occasion. “What does it signify toyou whether I am in earnest or not,” replied the sophist, “if youcannot refute what I advance?” With this prudent reserve, they taughtthat injustice is a powerful and beautiful principle, reckoning itamong the virtues, and attributing to it all the characteristicsusually attributed to justice.[844] Pascal, in developing the moralsof the Jesuits, describes their principles exactly. They patronisedeven cutting purses, providing the operator had the ingenuity toconceal his performance. No doubt, in thus arguing, they did violenceto their secret convictions, and might, by an able dialectician, bemade to feel, though never to acknowledge, the deformity of theirdoctrines, as Thrasymachos, driven up in a corner by the logic ofSocrates, blushes and is chap-fallen;[845] but as sophistry was theiroccupation, the misery and degradation was, that, convinced or notconvinced, they must still sing the old song. It is evident, in fact,that, like many sophists of other days, they were bold with the lipswhile the heart within trembled. The light of conscience could not bewholly quenched. They conceived the gods to be armed with power anddisposed to exert it, not only against evil doers but against evilspeakers also. Pressed upon this point, whether the bad be notobnoxious and the good agreeable to the deities, Thrasymachos wouldnot deny it. And why? Lest he should render himself hateful to them,ἴνα μὴ τοῖς δὲ ἀπέχθωμαι. So that in the worst times of paganism,religion, how corrupt soever, failed not to preserve some influenceover men’s minds, to save them from the bestial recklessness intowhich they seemed desirous to plunge.[846]
Footnote 843:
Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 72. Bekk.
Footnote 844:
Id. i. t. vi. p. 44. seq.
Footnote 845:
Plat. de Rep. vi. 49. i. 76. Stallb. Cf. Vict. Var. Lect. iii. v.
Footnote 846:
Plat. Rep. t. vi. p. 52.
Nevertheless, the sophists on many points did but methodise, condenseand embody in florid language the maxims and modes of thinking currentin corrupt ages among the vulgar. Their doctrines were but an echo ofwhat was heard in the ecclesiæ, in the law courts, in the theatres,and in the camps. It would have been to little purpose, therefore, tohave silenced them, unless, at the same time, the above schools couldhave been purified, wherein young and old, men and women, imbibed theopinions, maxims, prejudices, which constituted the system of thesophists.[847] And Plato, who observes this, supplies us, in doing so,with a fresh proof that women frequented the theatre. In one of thesefour places, he says, they were corrupted: but they were not soldiers,and, therefore, not in the camp; they were not dicasts, and,therefore, not in the law courts; they were neither orators norvoters, and, therefore, not in the ecclesiæ. The evil doctrines theyimbibed, therefore, must have been imbibed at the theatre.[848] Here,too, the youth, disciplined and principled in better things by hisphilosophical teachers, received a new education which overthrew theformer. Deeds and words, condemned by his teachers, he often found tobe greeted here with rapturous applause, re-echoed by rocks and walls;while hisses, sneers, or vociferous vituperation would, perhaps, beshowered on things he had been taught most to revere. In his feelings,therefore, and internal convictions a revolution was soon effected. Hegrew ashamed of the notions implanted in him at school. Everylingering sentiment of honour seemed to him an unfortunate prejudicedespised by men of the world, and he hastened to shift his notions asa clown does his dress to prepare for admittance into fashionablecompany.
Footnote 847:
Id. vi. 290.
Footnote 848:
Plat. Rep. vi. t. vi. p. 289. Cf. Athen. ii. 54.
The sophists, skilled in the study of mankind, soon discovered, thatto please and ultimately to rule the ignorant, it was necessary tohumour their failings, and, in appearance at least, to adopt theiropinions. In a commonwealth, governed by wholesome principles, greatmen obtain influence, not by resembling the majority but bydiffering from them. They are popular by the authority of theirvirtues. They are reverenced with the reverence due to a father fromhis child, who confides in him from long experience in his love andimplicit faith in his honour, and will submit to be rebuked andchastised, and determined by him in his actions from the convictionthat his superior wisdom and probity and affection entitle him torule. But the sophists, and their political disciples, despaired ofthus governing the people. In their manners there was none of thedignity, in their minds none of the wisdom, in their resolutionsnone of that inflexible firmness arising from consciousness ofright, which neither threats nor clamour can subdue. They regardedthe populace as a huge beast, whose ways and temper they must study,whose passions and desires they must know how to raise and how tosatisfy; by what arts they might safely enter his den, stroke histerrible paws, or mount, if they thought proper, on his back anddirect his irresistible might against their enemies. And this theyesteemed as wisdom, and upon those who excelled in it they bestowedthe name of statesmen and philosophers.[849] Among the arts by whichthis influence was acquired were flattery and boasting; by theformer they disposed people to listen, by the latter they sought tojustify them for listening, by dwelling on the wonders they couldperform. If they might be believed, they could convert fools intowise men, which philosophers regarded in the light of a miracle.This disposition τὸ θρασὺ καὶ τὸ ἰταμὸν,[850] as Basilius expressesit, is admirably painted by Plato in the character of Thrasymachos.And the contrast afforded by Socrates makes good, as Muretusobserves, the wise remark of Thucydides ὅτι ἀμαθία μὲν θάρσος,φρόνησις δ᾽ ὄκνον φέρει.
Footnote 849:
Plat. de Rep. vi. 293.
Footnote 850:
Plat. de Rep. vi. 333. Cf. Muret. Adnot. in Repub. p. 667, seq. 677, seq.
Such, however, as they were, the reputation of the sophists spread farand wide. Even among the barbarians of Asia a desire was felt to havethe ear tickled by their eloquence, as we may gather from the letterof Amytocrates, an Indian king, to Antiochos, requesting him to shipoff for India as soon as possible, some boiled wine, dried figs, and asophist, observing that he would very willingly pay the price of him.But Antiochos, either loth to part with so useful a servant of themonarchy, or out of pity for the Indians, whom he suspected to bealready sufficiently tormented, replied, that as for boiled wine andfigs he might be supplied to his heart’s content, but that withrespect to sophists the law prohibited their exportation.[851] He hadall the while, however, without knowing it, abundant specimens of therace in his own realms, where the Brahmins have, time out of mind,cultivated and thriven by the same arts, and maintained the sameopinions, as conferred celebrity on the followers of Gorgias andProtagoras. Their practices, indeed, as well as those of the Yoghis,are in India modified by the state of society and public opinion. Thewonder which among the Greeks was excited by the advocacy of monstrousdoctrines, on the banks of the Ganges, arises out of physical pranks.The Greek sophist tortured his mind, the Indian tortures his body forthe edification of the public, but the result is the same; thepractitioners thus contrive to subsist in idleness on the earnings ofthe industrious and credulous.
Footnote 851:
Athen. xiv. 67.
CHAPTER VIII. EDUCATION OF THE SPARTANS, CRETANS, ARCADIANS, ETC.
A different picture is presented to us by the education of theSpartans,[852] which, almost perfect in its kind, aimed chiefly atunfolding the powers of the body. Mental acquirements in the states ofDoric origin were few, and the object even of these seems to have beenrather connected with the developement of the animal than thespiritual nature of man, though they were not utterly destitute of allthose arts and accomplishments which embellish a life of peace. Littlestress, however, can be laid on the elaborate divisions of youth intonumerous classes, the intention of which is not stated. There can,nevertheless, be no doubt that much art, reflection and wisdom wasexhibited in the forming of the system whose object was the creationof a military character, and through this the enjoyment of thehegemonia or lead in the public affairs of Greece, an honour whichSparta attained to and held during many years.[853]
Footnote 852:
See Müll. Dor. ii. 313, sqq. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. ii. 57. p. 370.
Footnote 853:
To destroy the power of Sparta the Achæans could imagine no better means than to change their system of education.—Plut. Vit. Philop. § 16. Paus. vii. 8. 5. The Mityleneans, too, desirous of breaking the military spirit of certain of their allies, forbade them to give the least instruction to their children.—Ælian, V. H. vii. 15. With the same view the Emperor Julian closed the public schools against the Christians.—Gibbon, iv. 111. Among our ancestors, too, when a blow was meditated against Dissenters, no measure more severe could be devised than to deprive them of education.—Lord John Russell, Hist. of Eur. i. 273.
A modern writer has correctly remarked that by permitting the state todecide on the lives of infants, the institutions of Lycurgusrecognised the authority of the community to regulate, how it pleased,the education they were to receive. The authority of parents overtheir children was thus all but annihilated, for, although therecognition and feeling of relationship continued after the state hadundertaken the training of youth, their influence was exceedinglyweakened, a circ*mstance to which may be attributed the seemingheroism of the Spartan women, who could stoically bear the death oftheir sons because they had been in a great measure estranged fromthem.
As, however, the institutions of Lycurgus differed in all things elsefrom those of other Grecian legislators, it is not surprising theyshould also differ on the subject of education. But it may greatly bedoubted whether we altogether comprehend his system. The accountstransmitted to us are in many points contradictory, and it may ingeneral be remarked that on no subject whatever do modern ideas differso much from those prevalent in antiquity, as on the subject ofeducation. Plutarch and Xenophon, or rather the sophist who assumedhis name, two of the authors on whom in this discussion most relianceis usually placed, were prejudiced and credulous, and often, to speakfrankly, extremely ignorant. Both were unwilling, even if theypossessed the power, to criticise the system, and yet by modernwriters their opinions have generally without scruple been adopted.Xenophon himself, as well as the sophist who here apes him, was inpredilections a Spartan, and as strongly disposed to satirise andunderrate the institutions of his own country as to exaggerate themerits of the Laconian. Even were the trifling essay on theLacedæmonian republic proved to be his, we should yet lay littlestress upon its testimony, unless when corroborated by the evidence ofother and better writers.
Elsewhere in Greece,—observes the author of this tract,[854] whoeverhe was,—persons, the most solicitous respecting the education of theirchildren, placed over them at the first dawn of intellectualdevelopement, pædagogues, who at the outset undertook theirinstruction, and afterwards conducted them to the schools whereletters, music, and gymnastics were taught. In this respect, however,as a modern writer has shown, the institutions of Sparta were in nodegree superior, since Helots were there the instructors of youngchildren; and, on this account, he rejects the story of Plutarch,[855]that they were compelled to intoxicate themselves, to exhibit to theyouths a practical proof of the deformity of drunkenness.[856] It wascontrary, he says, to common sense. But as common sense had verylittle to do with any part of the system, this is a poor argument, andwill not weigh against positive testimony.
Footnote 854:
Rep. Lac. ii. 1. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. p. 370.
Footnote 855:
Lycurg. 28. Müll. Dor. ii. 39. Commonly, also, the nurses of the kings were Helots.—Plut. Ages. § 3.
Footnote 856:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 29.
Another evil which the Pseudo-Xenophon discovers in the commonHellenic plan of training,[857] was that lads were indulged with theuse of shoes, and rendered effeminate by frequent changes of cleanlinen, while their appetite, generally keen in boyhood,[858] wassuffered to be the measure of what they ate. Lycurgus, he remarks,managed all these things differently. Instead of remaining under thesuperintendence of their parents, and frequenting what schools andmasters they might judge proper, boys at Sparta passed under a sort ofcamp discipline regulated by the laws and intrusted to theguardianship of a particular magistrate, whom they denominated aPædonomos. This part of the system Xenophon[859] prefers to theAthenian practice of intrusting youth to the care of servilepædagogues. The Pædonomos, however, resembled in many respects theAthenian Gymnasiarch, and, so far as I can perceive, possessed nosuperiority over him, except that his authority extended beyond schoolhours. He was, indeed, a kind of despot, vested with the power to callthe boys together when he pleased, and inflict chastisem*nt, at hisown discretion, on any whom he detected exhibiting the least symptomof effeminacy. To enable him to carry his resolutions instantly intoeffect he marched about the town like an executioner, attended by menhaving whips, who at his nod seized the boy delinquent and subjectedhim at once to the torture. Thus possessing the power of enforcingobedience, a great show at least of reverence attended him.
Footnote 857:
De Rep. Laced. ii. 5. Cf. Plut. Lycurg. § 17.
Footnote 858:
And keen it must needs have been before they could have relished their black broth, with a dose of which Dionysios once made an experiment upon his stomach. Having put a spoonful of the compound into his mouth, he instantly spat it out again, declaring that he could not swallow it, for it was the filthiest stuff he had ever tasted; upon which his Spartan cook remarked, “You should have first bathed in the Eurotas.”—Plut. Inst. Lac. § 2.
Footnote 859:
De Rep. Lac. ii. 2. Lycurg. § 17. Cf. Hesych. v. Παιδονόμος.
The privilege of sharing the paternal cares of the Pædonomos was notrigidly confined to the sons of Spartans (πολιτικοὶ παῖδες);[860] theMothaces also, Spartans of half blood, and even strangers might shareit. Who the Mothaces were it is extremely difficult to determine. Somecontend that they were slaves brought up in the family.[861] ButAthenæus, and Phylarchos whom he quotes, state most distinctly thatthey were free, ἐλεύθεροι μέν εἰσί. In order to remove theunfavourable impression made on mankind by the accounts transmitted tous of Spartan slavery, it has been pretended that they, as well as theNeodamodes, were Helots. Of the Neodamodes, however, the very authoron whom reliance is placed asserts the contrary. They were originallyslaves indeed, he says, but different from the Helots, ἑτέρους ὄνταςτῶν εἱλώτων. With respect to the Mothaces,[862] notwithstanding thetestimony of Hesychius and other grammarians, it seems clear that theywere the sons of free though poor Laconians, who, desirous ofobtaining for them the rights of Spartans, sent them to be thecompanions of such youthful citizens as would consent to receive them.It is moreover added that the youth, according to their means, choseone, two, or more of these companions; which shows that although theright of controlling the studies of its children was vested in thestate, the expenses, in whole or in part, devolved upon the parents.
Footnote 860:
Athen. vi. 102.
Footnote 861:
Müll. ii. 314.
Footnote 862:
Harpocrat. v. Μόθωνες.
The Mothaces, or Mothones as they are sometimes called, were identicalwith the σύντροφοι:[863] but the τρόφιμοι were such youthfulstrangers—for example, the sons of Xenophon[864] and Phocion—as, bysubmitting to the severities of Spartan discipline, acquired thefreedom of the city, the privilege of aspiring to politicaldistinction, and, according to some writers, even a share of the land.This, if true, would render credible the statement of the philosopherTeles,[865] who affirms that even Helots, by the means abovedescribed, could rise to the rank of Spartans; while they who in thispoint disobeyed the laws, were they even the children of kings, sankto the condition of Helots, and of course forfeited their estates,otherwise there would have been no land to bestow on the militaryneophytes. Three of the most remarkable men in Spartan story,Lysander, Gylippos, and Callicratidas were Mothaces, whose fatherswere obscure.[866] It will be seen that we have here the original ofthat system of education sketched by Xenophon in his Persian Utopia,and designed to recommend monarchy to his countrymen, as that of SirThomas More was framed for the contrary purpose.
Footnote 863:
De Rep. Lac. iii. 3. 3. Schneid.
Footnote 864:
Diog. Laert. ii. c. vi. § 10. Xen. Hellen. v. 3. 9. Plut. Ages. § 6.
Footnote 865:
Ap. Stob. Florileg. 40. 8. Gaisf. Cf. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 21, 22. Athen. vi. 103. Müll. Dor. ii. 315. note p.—In Xenophon’s Persian Utopia such citizens as were too poor to maintain their children at school lost the benefits of public training; but, according to law, the advantages of the Spartan system were open to all.—Arist. Polit. iv. 9.
Footnote 866:
Ælian, Var. Hist. xii. 43.
According to the laws of Lycurgus the heir-apparent to the throne wasexempted from the necessity of mixing with his fellow-citizens in thepublic schools, though the younger members of the royal familyoccupied the same level with other boys.[867] That this was an unwiseregulation, however, will be at once evident, since no man stands somuch in need of severe discipline as a prince, who in spite ofcorrection is too apt to be guided by his unbridled passions. Fact,too, bears out this view, for two of the noblest sovereigns of Sparta,Leonidas and Agesilaos, had been subjected, while boys,[868] to thecorrection of their teachers.
It has been already remarked that the spirit of Spartan education wassevere. It was, in fact, precisely the same as that which, in the lastgeneration, pervaded the discipline of the Seneka and Mohawk Indians,and produced those numerous examples of patience, fortitude, andmagnanimity, together with that force, agility and suppleness of bodyso greatly admired and, perhaps, envied by civilised nations. It wasthis stern and martial system that constituted the secret model,according to which Locke fashioned his plan of youthful training,designed rather to produce a sound mind in a sound body than toshatter and enervate the latter by the piling up in the brain ofmiscellaneous and often useless knowledge. But in his attempts athardening the frame and rendering it invulnerable to the stings ofsuffering, our countryman did not dare to go the lengths of theSpartan legislator, who in this, at least, exhibited superior wisdom,that he did not consider the chastisem*nt of stripes to have anytendency towards creating a base and servile habit of mind.[869]
Footnote 867:
Plut. Ages. § i.
Footnote 868:
Müll. Dor. ii. 315.
Footnote 869:
On the democratic tendency of Spartan discipline see Bœckh. in Plat. Min. 181. sqq. Isocrat. Areop. § 14–16.
Consistently with the general aim of his institutions, Lycurgus,instead of ordaining, like Locke, that his alumni should wear leakyshoes, dispensed with the incumbrance altogether. And, certainly, in asoldier, the habit of trampling with the naked foot on ice and snowand the sharpest rocks, is worthy of acquisition.
Institutions are generally based on the actual circ*mstances ofsociety. Lycurgus legislated for a people to whom it was important tobe able easily to climb steeps, or descend them with a sure foot, tospring forward also, to run, to bend, and perform innumerable acts ofpersonal dexterity. He, therefore, commenced with boyhood theinculcating of those habits and exercises which their manhood wouldimperatively require of them.
It has been seen that for change of linen an especial aversion wasentertained at Sparta. Children were, therefore, taught to be contentwith one clean shirt per annum, at the termination of which period itwas probably as well peopled as the Emperor Julian’s beard,particularly as, during all that time, it was considered low andunfashionable to bathe or make use of the ordinary ointments, anindulgence permitted to them but for a few days in the course of theyear. All this time, however, they might more properly, perhaps, besaid to be shirtless, since the himation only was left them, thechiton being taken away.[870] They were compelled also, as incipientsoldiers, to lie hard on pallet beds, made with the tops of reedscollected, perfunctorily, without the help of the knife or dagger,from the banks of the Eurotas. To this, as an especial indulgence,they were in winter permitted to add a quantity of thistle-down, whichmaterial was supposed to contain much warmth.[871]
Footnote 870:
Plut. Lycurg. § 17. Inst. Lac. § 5. Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 4.
Footnote 871:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 10.
The initiation into these accomplishments commenced at the age oftwelve. At the same time, acting upon the Galenian maxim, that “a fatstomach makes a lean wit,” the boys were reduced to short commons, theBouagor, or leader of the juvenile troop, being instructed to pinchthem as closely as possible on that score, in order that when thechances of war should reduce them to the necessity of subsisting onfamine rations, they might be prepared without murmuring to submit toit. Persons so educated, moreover, would be little delicate in thechoice of provisions. Anything, from a sea hedgehog to a snail, wouldsuit their stomachs; and it would be hard indeed if war could everplace them in circ*mstances where such food as they were accustomed tomight not be found. Health, too, and light spirits, as Lycurgus wellunderstood, are the offspring of an abstemious diet. The sparewarrior, clean-limbed and agile, would leap round the man puffed outand bloated with overfeeding, and, therefore, to be fat was at Spartaan offence punishable at law.[872] However, not to be too hard on theyoung gentlemen, it was always permitted, when hunger grewtroublesome, to have recourse to what, for want of a fitter name, wemust call stealing.[873]
Footnote 872:
Ælian. V. H. xiv. 7. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 13. Athen. xii. 74.—Apropos of this subject, the ancients have left us a very curious anecdote. Dionysios, son of Clearchos, the first tyrant of Heraclea, having succeeded to the government of his country, became insensibly so corpulent by his daily excess and extreme niceness in the choice of his viands, that he was nearly suffocated by the enormous mass of his fat. Every time he fell into a deep slumber it was feared he would never wake again; and, to rouse him from his lethargy, the physicians were often compelled to thrust long, sharp needles into his body until they reached the quick, upon which he would again exhibit signs of animation. Of this prodigious obesity his majesty was so much ashamed, however, that, when transacting business or giving audience to strangers, he would ensconce himself behind a large trunk, so that no part of him was visible but his face. Yet, in spite of this infirmity, he lived fifty-five years and reigned thirty-three; and, to the honour of corpulence be it remarked, that no tyrant ever before exhibited so much mildness and moderation.—Id. xii. 72.
Footnote 873:
Xen. Rep. Lac. ii. 6.—This writer observes, that what might be filched was determined by law.—Anab. iv. 6. 14. And Plutarch explains, that they might take as much food as they could.—Inst. Lac. § 12.
In modern times it would be thought a poor compliment to any system ofeducation to represent it as an admirable method for rendering a manan accomplished thief. But the Spartan sophists, whose wisdom Plato,in a jocular mood, so greatly extols, held a different theory. Theydid not undertake the teaching of morals, but such habits as became asoldier, among which thieving always maintains a distinguished place.Xenophon, however, is careful to guard us against the supposition thatthis habit of appropriation arose from want. The object of thelegislator was, without the incurring of moral guilt, to nourish allthe useful habits commonly found in a thief,—as, the power to watch bynight, to wear the mask of honesty by day, craftily to lay snares, andeven to set spies upon the individual to be plundered. To men designedto spend their lives in war such qualities are, doubtless, of thehighest importance, since they enable them to procure provisions andoverreach the enemy.[874] To this practice Xenophon alludes in theAnabasis, where the army is placed in circ*mstances of muchdifficulty. “I understand,” he says to Cheirisophos, “that among youLacedæmonians the habit of stealing is carefully cultivated fromchildhood; and that, so far from being disgraceful, it is considered anecessary accomplishment, so long as you keep within the boundsprescribed by law. When detected, however, it is equally lawful to bescourged.”[875]
Footnote 874:
Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 7.
Footnote 875:
Anab. iv. vi. 14.
Were they scourged, then, for stealing? Not at all, but simply forbeing caught; and Xenophon is right in remarking, that, in all humanarts, they who unskilfully perform what they undertake are punished,and so should a bungling thief.[876] The passage immediately followingis mutilated or inextricably corrupt,[877] but, from an attentiveexamination, it would appear that the boys detected on these occasionswere selected to be flogged[878] during the festival of ArtemisOrthia, or Orthosia, whose altar was thus annually smeared with humanblood. This impartial superstition extended its empire over all ranksand conditions of men, servile or free, from the beggar to the prince;for here, we are told, Helots had sometimes the honour to be scourgedin company perhaps with a scion of the Eurypontid or Agid kings. AtAlea, in Arcadia, women, by the command of an oracle, were subjectedto the same discipline. “Here,” says Pausanias,[879] “during thefestival of Dionysos women, by command of an oracle, were flogged likethe youth of Sparta at the altar of Artemis Orthia.”
Footnote 876:
De Rep. Lac. ii. 8.
Footnote 877:
Schneid. in Xen. de Rep. Lac. ii. 9.
Footnote 878:
Sometimes to death.—Plut. Inst. Lac. § 39. Vit. Aristid. § 17. Pausan. iii. 16. 6. Sext. Empir. Pyrrh. Hypot. iii. 24. p. 153. c. Spanheim ad Callim. in Dian. 174. The Scholiast on Pindar derives this name of Artemis from Mount Orthion or Orthosion in Arcadia.—Olymp. iii. 54. Cf. Lycoph. 1330. with the Schol. of Tzetzes. Schol. Plat. de Legg. p. 224. Ruhnk.
Footnote 879:
Arcad. viii. 23. 1. Meurs. (Græc. Fer. p. 256,) understands _sese flagellabant_.
The above ordinance of Lycurgus led in the next instance to thehybernation of the youth upon the mountains:[880] to inure them stillfurther to hardships, and, practically to teach them the art ofproviding for themselves, they were sent forth with a rovingcommission to prowl about the highlands and less frequented parts ofLaconia, armed for self-protection, and that they might be able tobring down their game. At first, perhaps, they confined themselveswithin the limits prescribed by law. But almost of necessity theywould become involved in quarrels with the Helots, by plundering whosefarms and villages they chiefly subsisted. The Helots would sometimesresist and sometimes resent their incursions. Ill blood would beengendered. Hot and fiery youths, abandoned to their own guidance,would easily discover excuses for cruelty and revenge. From quarrelsthey would proceed to blows—from blows to assassination; and beaten,perhaps, by day, they would fall suddenly on the defenceless peasantsin the dead of night, and butcher whole hamlets to avenge an affrontoffered to them perhaps by an individual. Thus, out of a customblameless enough in its origin, grew the terrible institution of theCrypteia,[881] or annual massacre of the Helots, denied by some modernwriters, but too well authenticated, and too much in keeping with theSpartan character and general policy, to allow of our indulging in anyscepticism on the point.
Footnote 880:
The Platonic Scholiast confounds this practice with the Crypteia, so called, he says, because the youth were compelled to conceal themselves while they subsisted on plunder. Ἀπολύοντες γὰρ ἕκαστον γυμνὸν, προσέταττον ἐνιαυτὸν ὅλον ἔξω ἐν τοῖς ὄρεσι πλανᾶσθαι, καὶ τρέφειν ἑαυτὸν διὰ κλοπῆς, καὶ τῶν τοιούτων, οὕτω δὲ ὥστε μηδενὶ κατάδηλον γενέσθαι· διὸ καὶ κρύπτεια ὠνόμασται· ἐκολάζοντο γὰρ οἱ ὅπου δήποτε ὀφθέντες.—Ad Legg. p. 225. Ruhnk.
Footnote 881:
For a fuller account of this institution see Book V. Chapter VIII.
But, in addition to the above, there were other branches of educationtaught at Sparta,—that is gymnastics and music. Writers, desirous ofenhancing the mental acquisitions of the Dorians, adhere somewhat toostrictly to the meaning often affixed by the Greeks to the word_music_, which they employed to signify literature. But Xenophon, inhis treatise on the Lacedæmonian Commonwealth, appears invariably touse it in its limited and modern signification.
To gymnastics the Dorians, upon the whole an unintellectual people,were naturally much addicted,—far too much according to ancientwriters; but here again their modern historian steps in to theirdefence. He will have it, that it was in later times that they becamephilogymnasts, and quotes Dion Chrysostom as if he was the principalwitness. Plato, to be sure, is referred to as a parasitical authority,and so is Aristotle;[882] but then the latter only says, that theirconstant violent exercises rendered them brutal, in which thehistorian appears to discover no harm. “This want of moderation,however, though it occurred in later times, is never perceivable inthe maxims and ideas of the Dorians, who in this, as in several othercases, know how to set bounds to youthful ardour, and check itspernicious effects.”[883] This, it appears to me, is the language ofan apologist. If they had such knowledge, how culpable must they havebeen not to check it in the matter of the Crypteia?
Footnote 882:
Polit. viii. 3. 3.—To this may be added the testimony of Plato, who evidently, without naming them, means to describe the Spartans, where he speaks of a people wholly given up to the study of bodily exercises, and by that means becoming brutal and ferocious.—De Rep. t. vi. p. 154.
Footnote 883:
Dorians, ii. 319. seq.
It may be observed, however, that though they devoted to gymnasticstoo much of their leisure, the fault lay in them, not in the system ofexercises, which was in itself one of extreme beauty and simplicity.Its object,—which it was excellently calculated to attain,—was not tocreate athletæ but soldiers, not gigantic strength, but an elastic,agile, beautiful frame, adapted for all the movements of war. Boxing,accordingly, and the pancration[884] were banished from theirgymnasia, a regulation evincing at the same time their wisdom andtheir taste; the former being the most barbarous and useless, thelatter the most unseemly portion of gymnastics, often exhibiting theantagonists rolling and struggling, like savages or animals devoid ofreason, on the ground.
Footnote 884:
Ταῦτα μόνα μὴ κωλύσαντος ἀγωνίζεσθαι τοὺς πολίτας, ἐν οἷς χεὶρ οὺκ ἀνατείνεται.—Plut. Lycurg. § 19. The exercises, in which the admission of being vanquished was made by holding up the hand, are elsewhere named:—Πυγμὴν δὲ καὶ παγκράτιον ἀγωνίζεσθαι ἐκώλυσεν, ἵνα μηδὲ παίζοντες ἀπαυδᾷν ἐθίζωνται.—Reg. Apophtheg. Lycurg. 4. Apophtheg. Lacon. Lycurg. 23.
As the ancient idea of education included every thing employed todevelope the powers of body or mind, we must regard in this light themilitary games peculiar to the Spartans and Cretans.[885] Among theformer the youth, having sacrificed to Ares in a temple at Therapne,passed over into an island dyked round and called Platanistas, where,dividing off into separate parties, they engaged in a contest whichwanted nothing but arms to render it a genuine battle. A learnedhistorian, seldom sparing of words, avoids describing this interestingscene; and wherefore?—Because a faithful description of it must conveya striking idea of Spartan ferocity. “They exerted” says he, “everymeans in their power to obtain the victory.”—Exactly; but what werethose means? “Adolescentium greges Lacedæmone vidimus ipsi indibilicontentione certantes, pugnis, calcibus, unguibus, morsu denique; quumexanimarentur priusquam se victos faterentur.[886]” Yet were thesebattles carried on under the eyes of magistrates, the five Bidiæi[887]appointed to superintend these exercises as well as those performedelsewhere. The little island where they fought was a spot of greatnatural beauty, encircled by a sheet of clear water, and approached onall sides through thick and lofty groves of platane trees. A bridgethrown over the canal led to the island on both sides, and on the onestood a statue of Heracles, on the other of Lycurgus. This battle wasreckoned among the institutions of the latter, and under theprotection probably of the former. The preliminaries to the fight wereas follow. They first sacrificed in the Phœbaion which stands withoutthe city, not far from Therapne. Here each of the two divisions of theyouth offered up a dog’s whelp to Ares, the bravest of domesticanimals, sacred in their opinion to the bravest of the Gods. No otherGrecian people sacrificed the dog excepting the Colophonians, whooffered up a black bitch to Hecate. In both cities the sacrifice wasperformed by night. After the ceremony two tame boars were broughtforward, one by each party, which they compelled to fight; and theywhose brute champion proved superior, thence augured that victoryawaited them in the Platanistas. On the following day, a little beforenoon, they entered by the bridges into the island, one party by onebridge, the other by the other. But the choice was not left to them,having been determined on the preceding night by lot. Being arrived,they faced each other, and commenced the battle, striking with thefist, kicking, leaping on each other, tearing one another with theirteeth, and gouging after the most approved Kentucky fashion. Thus theystruggled, man to man, urging forward together and thrusting eachother into the water.[888] From these words, as well as from thetestimony of Cicero cited above, it is clear the combat was conductedwith no other arms than those furnished by nature, though Lucian,misemploying the verb ὁπλομάχειν,[889] would lead us to a differentconclusion. But this kind of battle is always enumerated among thegymnastic exercises or contests; and what necessity would there havebeen to have recourse to fists, feet, teeth, and nails, had they beenpermitted the use of arms? Fatigued with this violent exertion theybetook themselves for a short time to repose, refreshed by which theyresumed their exercises, dancing in most intricate measures to thesound of the pipe.[890] Akin in spirit to the contests in thePlatanistas were the ever-recurring battles fought by the young menwith the three hundred followers of the Hippagretæ; three inferiormagistrates appointed by the Ephori, who selected each one hundredfollowers from among the healthiest and bravest of the youthfulpopulation. Against this chosen band all the other young men of thecity were bound by custom to make war; and, but that they could beparted by any citizen who might happen to be passing by, it isprobable that these fierce boxing matches would often have terminatedfatally.
Footnote 885:
Müll. ii. 26.
Footnote 886:
Cic. Tusc. Disput. v. 27.
Footnote 887:
Paus. iii. 11. 2.
Footnote 888:
Paus. iii. 14. 8. sqq.
Footnote 889:
Anachars. § 38.
Footnote 890:
Cf. Ubb. Emm. Antiq. Græc. iii. 89. sqq.
Similar customs prevailed in Crete, where, as in most other parts ofGreece, the business of education appears to have commenced at the ageof seven years, when the cake called Promachos was given to the boys,because, as it has been conjectured, they were thenceforward to betrained for fighting. Up to the age of seventeen they were denominatedApageli, since they were not until then admitted into those Agelæ[891]or bands, in which they thenceforward performed their exercises. Here,as in Sparta, the greatest possible care was taken to extirpate fromthe character every germ of effeminacy. They ate whatever food wasgiven them squatting on the ground, not being permitted to join theirelders at the board, and went abroad in all weathers clad in a singlegarment, like the boys of Sparta during their hibernation. However,the youth of the several Agelæ, armed with stones, and iron weapons,marching to the sound of flutes, and assailing each other, convertedtheir exercises into something very like real warfare. Ourcudgel-playing, single-stick, &c. are pastimes of the samedescription; and boxing now nearly exploded, can plead classicalprecedent. They were habituated, says Ephoros, to labours and arms,and taught to despise both heat and cold, rough roads and cliffs, andthe blows they received in the gymnasium and their mock battles. Theuse of the bow formed part of their education, as well as the armeddance, at first taught by the Curetes, and afterwards named thePyrrhic; so that a warlike spirit breathed through the whole system oftheir education.[892]
Footnote 891:
Ἀγέλη for the boys, συσσίτιον for the men.—Strab. x. 4. p. 379. Müll. (Dor. ii. 326.) uses both indiscriminately.
Footnote 892:
Strab. x. 4. p. 380. seq.—This agrees with what Plato relates of the Cretan polity.—De Legg. t. vii. p. 260. t. viii. p. 86.
With all these facts before him, though many of them he hassuppressed, the historian of the Doric race, in direct contradictionto Plato and Aristotle, contends naïvely that it would be erroneous toconclude that the aim of bodily exercise among the Dorians was war, orthat in their result they rendered the youth either brutal orferocious. Their object, in his opinion, was to obtain something likeideal beauty of form, strength, and health, which, he says, theyaccordingly attained, being, about B. C. 540, the healthiest of theGreeks and most renowned for beautiful men and women. But Xenophonwhom, on the subject of health he quotes, does not authorise hissuperlative:—"It would not be easy," are his words, “to find healthieror more active men.”[893] Again, the language of Herodotus by no meansbears him out. He, indeed, affirms that Callicrates, a Spartan, wasthe handsomest man in the army at Platæa, but says nothing of theSpartans being handsomer than the other Greeks; but rather thecontrary. He was not merely the handsomest man among his countrymen,but, which he evidently considered more remarkable, among all theother Greeks.[894]
Footnote 893:
De Rep. Lac. v. 9.—At a later period the reputation of being the handsomest men in Greece was enjoyed by certain young men of Athens.—Æschin. cont. Tim. § 31.
Footnote 894:
Herod. ix. 72.
Not, however, to insist on such points as these, let us proceed toexamine the intellectual cultivation of the Dorians.[895] That the artof writing never flourished very generally at Sparta appears to be onall hands admitted, though we can by no means doubt that among themnumerous individuals possessing this accomplishment might always befound. Thus, in the old story of the combat of the three hundredSpartans and Argives, it is related that Othryades, the sole survivorof the Laconian band, having remained last on the field of battle,erected a trophy and wrote upon it with his blood Λακεδαιμόνιοι κατ᾽Ἀργείων, immediately after which he died of his wounds.[896]Generally, however, no great stress was laid on a knowledge of the artof writing, which, in the opinion of some authors, was ofcomparatively little value where the people were taught to chant theirlaws as well as their songs. Similar customs and regulations prevailedon this head in Crete, where, nevertheless, letters appear to havebeen viewed with a more favourable eye.[897] In addition to their bodyof legal poetry, which was probably less voluminous than a metricalversion of the statutes at large, the youth were taught to sing hymnsin honour of the gods and the praises of illustrious men.[898] Inmusic, too, they were permitted to make some proficiency, thoughgenerally, we are told, it was their ambition to excel rather in theregularity of their manners than in the extent of their acquirements.
Footnote 895:
Cf. Ælian. Var. Hist. xii. 50.
Footnote 896:
Stob. Florileg. vii. 67.
Footnote 897:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 14. seq.—The Spartans sacrificed to the muses before going to battle in order that they might perform something worthy of notice by them.—Id. § 16. It is remarked of king Cleomenes that he studied philosophy under Sphæros the Borysthenite who was likewise permitted to impart his system to the other youth.—Id. Cleom. § 2.—Cf. Diog. Laert. vii. 6.
Footnote 898:
In later times learning grew to be more highly valued. Thus it was ordained by law that the youth should assemble annually in the Hall of the Ephori to hear the work of Dicæarchos on the constitution of their country read to them.—Suid. v. Δικαίαρχ. t. i. p. 730. d.
With respect to the Spartans it is probable, though the testimony ofancient writers be sufficiently contradictory, that no great stresswas laid even on the ability to read; for, while Plutarch[899]conceives this art to have been among their ordinary acquirements,Isocrates, a grave and more competent authority, is decidedly of theopposite opinion.[900]
Footnote 899:
Inst. Lac. § 4. Lycurg. § 16.
Footnote 900:
Panathen. § 83. Τοσοῦτον ἀπολελειμμένοι τῆς κοινῆς παιδείας καὶ φιλοσοφίας εἰσιν ὥστ᾽ οὐδὲ γράμματα μανθάνουσιν.
Ælian,[901] too, coming in the rear of Plutarch, observes that theLacedæmonians were ignorant of mental culture (μουσικῆς) meaningevidently as Perizonius has already observed, not “music” as Kühnwould translate it, (for in this they were learned,) but a knowledgeof poetry and eloquence.[902]
Footnote 901:
Var. Hist. xii. 50.
Footnote 902:
So again in Ælian. Var. Hist. iv. 15. Gelo, king of Syracuse, an illiterate person is termed ἄμουσος.
That the Spartans were noted for their indifference to literature, iswell known. Even Xenophon, their apologist, instituting a comparisonbetween their system of education and that prevailing among the otherGreeks, observes that the latter sent their boys to school that theymight learn their letters, music, and the exercises of the palæstra,while the former placed them under the care of a grave man who mightpunish them if slothful and inactive, and inculcate great modesty andobedience in lieu of the usual accomplishments. Plato also, in theGreater Hippias,[903] having observed that their laws were averse fromthe reception of foreign learning, adds immediately after that themajority of them were even ignorant of arithmetic. In anotherplace,[904] indeed, the philosopher appears to hold a differentlanguage, and is literally understood by Perizonius. But the readerwho examines the passage attentively, will probably agree with me inconsidering it nothing more than one of those profoundly ironicalstrokes in which, above all writers, he abounds. He in fact remarks,what in another sense may have been very true, that no countries weremore fertile in sophists than Crete and Lacedæmon, but that theydissembled their wisdom and feigned ignorance, lest they should appearto excel all their countrymen in sapience, of which in reality therewas very little danger. He observes, however, no less ironically, thatthose rude and unrhetorical nations were of all men most philosophicaland eloquent, and that it had long been understood by a great manythat to _laconise_, or act the Spartan, was rather to be a philosopherthan a diligent student of gymnastics. Perizonius,[905] indeed,conceives that all this is to be understood of natural sound sense,applied to morals and those brief and pithy sayings or λογοὶ, whichconstituted the science of laconics.
Footnote 903:
T. v. p. 418.
Footnote 904:
Protag. t. i. p. 209.
Footnote 905:
Not. ad Ælian. xii. 50.—From an ironical passage of Plato we may likewise infer that they were able genealogists and story-tellers.—Hipp. Maj. t. v. p. 419.
But, after all, there never was, as Cicero observes, a single oratoramong the Spartans; nor could it be otherwise, since all the artswhich beget and foster eloquence, and, more important still, everypolitical institution which favours it, were unknown in their state.Nay, so far did they push their aversion for the oratorical art, thatif any citizen of Sparta acquired, in his experience abroad, the skillartificially to wield a syllogism or a trope, he was subjected topunishment,[906] while rhetoricians were expelled the city.[907]Ignorance, therefore, of whatever learned nations prize, was theirchief boast. To them the sublime speculations of the Academy, and thelogic, sharp and irresistible, of the Lyceum, were equally strangers;yet their discipline, and the habits of youth, imparted to them whatin modern jargon is termed a kind of practical “philosophy.” Theyunderstood the great art, at least among them, how to command theirpassions; as Maximus Tyrius[908] relates of Agesilaos who, thougheducated in no school of philosophy, was nevertheless not a slave tolove, which therefore the sophist infers could not be a matter ofgreat difficulty. However there were limitations to their aversionsfor learning. They opened in their state an asylum for those antiqueteachers of mankind, the poets,[909] proscribed by Plato, and were inthis respect so superior in good taste to that philosopher, that theyat length, in imitation of the Great Preceptors of Greece, institutedpublic recitations of Homer. And this, Maximus Tyrius adduces as aproof that many well-constituted states had existed in which Homer wasnot publicly studied, for he could not mean that he was once entirelyunknown at Sparta.[910]
Footnote 906:
The laws of Sparta were in this respect, as in many others, merely imitations of those of Crete.—Sext. Empir. adv. Mathemat. l. ii. p. 68. Plutarch having remarked that they did learn to read, adds—τῶν δὲ ἄλλων παιδευμάτων ξενηλασίαν ἐποιοῦτο, οὐ μᾶλλον ἀνθρώπων ἢ λόγων.—Instit. Lac. § 4.
Footnote 907:
Cressol. Theat. Rhet. i. 12. p. 88.
Footnote 908:
Dissert. ix. p. 118.
Footnote 909:
Cf. Athen. xiv. 33.
Footnote 910:
Dissert. vii. p. 91.
Into the character of the Greeks, generally, there entered an elementbut faintly discernible in the moral composition of modern nations, Imean a most exquisite and exalted sensibility, which rendered them tothe last degree susceptible, and liable to be swayed irresistibly forgood or for evil by poetry and music. And this characteristicdistinguished in some degree the Doric as well as the Ionic race. Theycould be excited, past belief, by the agency of sound. Music,therefore, with us at least a mere source of enjoyment, among them wasinvested with a moral character, and employed in education as apowerful means of harmonising, purifying, ennobling the principles andthe affections of the heart. For this reason the government, which inGreece was in reality a Committee of Public Safety,[911] watched overthe music no less sedulously than over the morals of the people, whichit powerfully influenced. It must, nevertheless, be confessed thatmany ancient authors are little philosophical in relating or reasoningupon the effects of music. They often confound consequences withcauses. Thus, in the example which certain authors undoubtingly adduceof the Sicilian Dorians,[912] whose morals we are told were corruptedby their fiddlesticks, they omit to inquire whether it was not ratherthe natural and necessary degeneracy of a wealthy people, whichcorrupted the music. This is my interpretation. For, in the history ofthe ancient Sicilians, I can discover causes enough of lax andimperfect morals, without calling in the aid of lyre or cithara. Butsome writers on this point have an easy faith. They suppose that thestrict domestic discipline of Sparta “would hardly have beenpreserved”[913] without the old-fashioned music.
Footnote 911:
Plut. Inst. Lac. § 17.
Footnote 912:
Max. Tyr. iv. p. 54. Cic. de Legg. ii. 15.—Cicero, though apt in most cases to defer to the opinion of Plato, hangs back here. He does not, indeed, consider it a matter of indifference what songs are sung, or what airs prevail in a state; but neither does he credit the inferences drawn too subtilely by the great philosopher from his musical theory.
Footnote 913:
Dorians. ii. 340.
In whatever way we decide on the metaphysics of the matter, certain itis that in old times music was an universal accomplishment in mostparts of Greece; but this was when it was little more than thechanting of savages, in which, however ignorant, any one may join.Exactly in proportion as it rose into an art its cultivatorsdiminished in number, until, when a high degree of perfection had beenattained, it was abandoned almost wholly to professional musicians.The Athenians had been commanded by the Pythian oracle to chantchorically in the streets, a divine service in honour of Bacchos.[914]At Sparta similar performances took place during the gymnopædia, whenchoruses of naked men and boys, with crowns of palm leaves on theirheads, proceeded through the streets singing the songs of Thaletas andAlcman and the pæans of Dionysidotos.[915] Mr. Müller, who loves tocomplete or round off the accounts he finds in ancient authors, saysthat, _doubtless_, a large portion of the inhabitants of the city tookpart in these exhibitions. Perhaps they did, but we have no authorityfor such a supposition. The place in the agora which contained statuesof Apollo, Artemis and Leto, was called _Choros_,[916] because therethe Ephebi danced in choruses in honour of Apollo. On these occasionsunwarlike persons were sometimes thrust into the least honourableplaces,[917] while bachelors were excluded; so that, as Schneider haswell remarked, cowardice was less dishonourable than celibacy. But itdoes not at all appear that the Spartans themselves were ever goodmusicians, though they were not incapable of relishing goodmusic;[918] and hence the foreign musicians who flocked thither founda welcome reception. The developement of the warlike constitution ofthe state threw the favourable side of their discipline into theshade.[919]
Footnote 914:
Demosth. in Mid. § 15.
Footnote 915:
Athen. xv. 22.
Footnote 916:
Paus. iii. 11. 9.—Müller, ii. 341., supposes the whole agora may have been thus denominated.
Footnote 917:
Xen. de Rep. Lac. ix. 5. Plut. Lycurg. § 15.
Footnote 918:
Aristot. Pol. viii. 5.
Footnote 919:
Cf. Müll. Dor. ii. 342.
The Arcadians, likewise, made great use of music in their system ofeducation, and, though otherwise a rude race, continued to practise itup to the age of thirty. Among them alone, in fact, were childrenaccustomed from infancy to sing, in certain measures, hymns and poems,in which they celebrated the praises of the gods and heroes of theircountry. After this, observes Polybius,[920] they learned the _nomoi_of Timotheus and Philoxenos, and every year during the Dionysia formedchoruses in the theatre, where they danced to the sound of the flute.Here boys contended with antagonists of their own age, and the youngmen with those more advanced towards their prime. During the whole oftheir lives they frequented these public assemblies, where theyinstructed each other by their songs, and not by means of foreignactors. With respect to other branches of education they considered itno disgrace to profess themselves ignorant; but not to know how tosing would, in Arcadia, have been a mark of extreme vulgarity. Theyhabituated themselves to walk with gravity to the sound of the flute,and, having been thus instructed at the expense of the state,proceeded once a year in public procession to the theatre. Theirancestors introduced these customs, not with any view to pleasure, orthat they might grow rich by the exercise of their talents, but inorder to soften the austerity of character which their cold and murkyatmosphere would otherwise have engendered. For the character ofnations is invariably analogous to the air they breathe, and it is thegeographical position of races which determines alone their temper ofmind and the colour and configuration of their bodies.
Footnote 920:
iv. 20. 7. Athen. xiv. 21. seq.
Besides what has already been said of the Arcadians, it may be added,that it was customary among them for the men and women to unite inchanting certain odes, and to offer up sacrifices in common. Therewere also dances in which the youth of both sexes joined, and theirobject was to create and diffuse humane and gentle manners.
But the same habits were not prevalent throughout the whole country.The Kynæthes made no progress in these humanising arts, and as theydwelt in the rudest districts of Arcadia, and breathed the crudestair, their ferocity became proverbial; they addicted themselves tostrife and contention, and degenerated into the fiercest and mostuntameable savages in Greece. In fact, obtaining possession of severalcities, they shed so much blood that the whole nation was roused, andat length united in expelling them the land. Even after theirdeparture the Mantinæans thought it necessary to purify the soil bysacrifices, expiations, and the leading of victims round the wholeboundary line.
Dancing very naturally constituted a separate branch of education atSparta as in Crete. In both places the execution of the Pyrrhicappears to have been regarded as a necessary accomplishment, theyouths, from the age of fifteen or earlier, having been taught toperform it in arms.[921] It was or is—for the Pyrrhic still lingers inGreece,
“Ye have the Pyrrhic dance as yet—”
an exhibition purely military. The dancers, accoutred with spear andshield, went gracefully and vigorously through a number of movements,wheeling, advancing, giving blows or shunning them, as in realaction.[922] In other parts of Greece, however, the Pyrrhic quicklydegenerated in character, becoming little better than a wild dance ofBacchanals.[923] It has been rightly observed that at Sparta “thechief object of the Gymnopædia was to represent gymnastic exercisesand dancing in intimate union, and, indeed, the latter only as theaccomplishment and end of the former.”[924] One of the dances,resembling the Anapale, partook of a Bacchanalian character.”[925] Theyouth, also, when skilled in these exercises, danced in rows behindeach other to the music of flutes, both military and choral dances, atthe same time, repeating an invitation in verse to Aphrodite and Erosto join them, and an exhortation to each other.[926]
Footnote 921:
Athen. xiv. 29.—The armed dance was in particular favour with Plato.—De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 17. Boys danced in armour during the Panathenaia at Athens.—Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 935.
Footnote 922:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 54.
Footnote 923:
Athen. xiv. 29.
Footnote 924:
Müll. Dor. ii. 351.
Footnote 925:
Creuz. Com. Herod. i. 230.
Footnote 926:
Lucian de Saltat. § 10. seq.
It will be seen from the above details that the object of education atSparta was rather the formation of habits and the disciplining of themind to act in exact conformity with the laws, than to develope totheir fullest extent the intellectual powers of individuals. Theydesired to amalgamate the whole energies of the people into one mass,upon the supposition that being thus impelled in any particulardirection they would prove irresistible. No account was made ofprivate happiness. Everything seems to have been devised for theeffecting of national purposes, though from the known laws of thehuman mind even the restraint and tyrannical interference of such asystem would with time be reconciled to the feelings and contribute toindividual content. But very much of what renders life sweet, wassacrificed. Letters and arts, that subordinate creation, that worldwithin a world which the beneficence of Providence has permitted manto call into existence, were at Sparta unknown. They enjoyed little ornothing of that refined delight which arises from multiplying thealmost conscious fruits of the soul, from sending winged thoughtsabroad to move, enchant, electrify millions, from deifying truth andconfounding error, from ascending to the greatest heights ofmortality, and diffusing from thence a light and a glory to warm andilluminate and gladden the human race for ever. This greater felicitywas reserved for the education of Athens, which must, therefore, inall enlightened times, bear away the palm of excellence and utility.
CHAPTER IX.
INFLUENCE OF THE FINE ARTS ON EDUCATION.
It behoves us now to quit the circle of studies, which, takentogether, are commonly supposed to constitute the whole of education,and consider the influence exercised by other elements on the minds ofthe Hellenic youth. Even in these days we speak intelligibly andcorrectly of that experience which young men gain on their firstentrance into life, from travel and fashionable society, as of aparticular stage in their education, it being during that period thatthey learn to estimate the value of their school acquirements, howadvantageously to conceal or display them according to circ*mstances,and to bend the neck, perchance, of their lofty theories and sublimespeculations to the yoke of the world. But in Greece this was morepalpably the case; for, though escaped from the formal rule ofpreceptors and pædagogues, the youth had still to master severaldepartments of study, either by their own independent exertions orunder the guidance of judicious friends: I mean those infinitelyvaried creations of art and literature, which, as they are in harmonywith them or otherwise, confirm or subvert the principles anddiscipline of the schools.
Thoroughly to comprehend, therefore, the nature and extent of thatsway which the state and its institutions directly or indirectlyexerted over the minds of the citizens, it is necessary briefly toinquire into the character of the plastic and mimetic arts which foundencouragement in the Grecian commonwealths, and afterwards to examinefor a moment the stores of thought and sentiment and passion, andpiety and virtue, which the literature and religion of Greece laidopen to the contemplation of those who were entering upon the careerof life. We shall begin with the arts, as they were the inculcators ofthe principle of the beautiful, advance next to literature, theteacher of wisdom and patriotism, concluding with religion, whichopened up to their view a prospect, though dim, of heaven, anddirected their footsteps thitherward.
It is certain that, to the generality, the vast superiority of theGreeks in the arts, which like an universal language need notranslation, is more palpable and apparent than their superiority inliterature; though Demosthenes be in reality as much above any orator,Thucydides above any historian, Plato above any philosopher, Homerabove any epic poet, Milton perhaps excepted, who has since written,as Pheidias, or Polycletos, or Praxiteles rose above any sculptor ofthe north. Nor can we account for this any more than we can explainwhy Shakespeare was superior to Ford or Massinger. Nature infused moregenius into their souls. They loved or rather worshiped the beautiful.It breathed within and around them: their minds were pregnant with it,and, when they brought forth, beauty was their offspring. ThusAristophanes[927] insinuates, that even the gods borrowed much oftheir majesty and splendour from the human mind, when he says, thatheaven-born peace derived her loveliness from some relationship toPheidias.
Footnote 927:
Pac. 614. seq.
Religion, in one sense, may be called the parent of the fine arts; butit would perhaps be more philosophical to consider religion and thearts as twin sisters, both sprung from that yearning after the idealwhich constituted the most marked feature in the Hellenic mind. Wemust carry back our investigations very far, if we would discover themradiant with loveliness in their cradle; but when they issued thenceit was to shed light over the earth, a light derived from the skies.For man does not originate his ideas of the beautiful, which fall likeimages from heaven on the speculum of his mind; he gives back but whathe receives. The conception of beauty is an inspiration, a thing whichdoes not come when called upon; or rather, shining on all, it is loston the dull and opaque fancy, and is reflected only from the luminousand bright.
Man needs companionship always, and the creative and imaginative maketo themselves companions of their own ideas, and clothe them inmaterial forms to render the illusion more complete. There is animpassioned intercourse between the soul and its offspring. We lovenothing like that which has sprung from ourselves, and in this we aretruly the image of God, who saw all things that he had made, and,behold, they were very good. And he loved his creation; and from himwe inherit, as his children, the love we bear to our creations. Hencethe enthusiasm for art, hence the power and the inspiration of poetry.They are not things of earth. They are the seeds of immortalityripening prematurely here below; and therefore we should love them.They are the warrant, the proof that we are of God; that we are bornto exercise an irresistible sway over the elements; that our thronesare building elsewhere; that in the passion for whatever is spiritualwe exhibit instinctively indubitable tokens that spirits we are, andin a spiritual world only can find our home.
It does not belong to this work to attempt a history of Grecian art,which in a certain sense has been already written. My object, if I canaccomplish it, is to describe the spirit by which that art was createdand sustained, and this I should do triumphantly if love weresynonymous with power; for never, since the fabled artist hungenamoured over the marble he had fashioned, did any man’s imaginationcleave more earnestly to the spirit that presided over Grecian art,not the plastic merely but every form of it, from the epic in poetryand sculpture down to the signet ring and the drinking song. But thething is an ample apology for the enthusiasm. There, if anywhere, wediscover the culminating point of human intellect and humangenius;—there
“The vision and the faculty divine”
meet us at every step. Even the fragments of her literature and herart are gathered up and treasured in all civilised countries, as ifthe fate of our race were mystically bound up in them. And so it is:for when we cease to love the beautiful, of which they are the mostperfect realisation we know, our own race of glory and greatness willhave been run: we shall be close on the verge, nay, within the pale ofbarbarism.
Socrates used to say, that whatever we know we can explain; but not soalways with what we feel. There is in the ideal of beauty, whichformed the vivifying principle of Greek art, a certain subtile andfugitive delicacy, a certain nameless grace, a certain volatile andfleeting essence, which defy definition, and, rejecting the aid oflanguage, persist in presenting themselves naked to the mind. And bythe mind only, and only, moreover, by the inspired mind, can they bediscerned.
It was in the attempt, however, to chain this spirit, and to imprisonit in durable forms, that all the poetry and arts of Greece consisted.They beheld within them a world of loveliness, of living forms whichknocked at the golden door of fancy, and demanded their dismissal fromthe spiritual to the material universe. All their studies were but howto dress these celestial habitants in fitting habiliments to go abroadin; and their lives were often spent in the throes of creatures bigwith immortal beauty. It is a privilege to the world to converse withminds of such a nature. It is ennobling to approach them. Theirenergy, their vivifying power continues ever active, ever operating,and if high art be ever to flourish and command, not admiration, butlove in England, it can only be by kindling here the lamp removed fromGreece, but essentially Greek, that is, essentially beautiful.
The proof that religion issued with art from the same womb in Greece,and was not its parent, is supplied by every other country. There isreligion elsewhere, while nowhere is there art like that of theGreeks. But religion had nevertheless much to do with the forms inwhich the creative faculty there developed itself, as it invariablyhas with whatever is great or beautiful among men. The persuasionarose in them that the inhabitants of Olympos could be represented bymaterial forms, and as they found their own reverence for the divinebeing represented, augment in proportion to the beauty or grandeur ofits image, the conclusion was natural that the deity himself would bepleased by the same rule, so that their piety was their first and mostpowerful incentive to excellence. They hoped to recommend themselvesto the gods, as they did to their countrymen, by the greatness oftheir workmanship; and veneration from without, and piety from within,united in urging them forward. And this, with the poet equally as withthe artist, inflamed the desire to excel.
There are, as has already been observed,[928] three periods in thehistory of art: 1st. that, in which the necessary is sought; 2ndly,that in which the study of the beautiful is pursued; and 3dly, theperiod of superfluity and extravagance. But in some countries menappear to pass from the first to the third, without traversing thesecond. Thus, in Egypt, Persia, Etruria, in Germany, Holland, France,England[929] the wild, the grotesque, the terrible have been aimed at,seldom the beautiful. Even in Italy, where in modern times art hastaken firmest root and most luxuriantly flourished, the object soughtto be attained has lain on a lower level. Among the northern nationsthe grotesque variously disguised or modified is the spirit of art;among the Italians it is voluptuousness, among the Greeks thebeautiful. Hence no Greek statue of the flourishing period of art isindecent.[930] Naked it may be, but like the nakedness of infancy, itis chaste as a mother’s love. Our thoughts are instantly carried awayby it to the regions of poetry; the soft influence of the idealdescends like dew upon our fancy; we are elevated above the region ofthe passions to heights where all is sunny and calm and pure. Thebeautiful is chaste as an icicle, yet warm as love. It breathes inRaffaelle’s virgins which we regard as some “bright particular star,”things to inspire a holy affection, a love not akin to earth. Yet thisbeauty is not distanced from us by its severity: no! but by itsintense innocence, by its unsullied purity, by its inexpressibleconcentration and mingling up of maternity and girlhood. It was thisbeauty that Milton sought in his Comus to express, when he representschastity as its own guard. And this is preëminently the spiritbreathing through Grecian art. In the Artemis, in the Athena, nay,even in Aphrodite or Leda, or an orgiastic Bacchante, the overrulingsense of beauty, after the first flutter of sensation, hurries theimagination far beyond all considerations of sex or passion. The rootof all the pleasures we feel, seems to be hidden under the load ofthree thousand years, not because the things are old, but because theyare the material representatives of a period when the foot of thebeautiful rested on the earth.
Footnote 928:
By Winkelmann, Hist. de l’Art, i. 2.
Footnote 929:
It is remarked by Winkelmann that Rubens painted the figures of Flemings after many years’ residence in Italy.—i. 60. The Greek grew up from infancy in the presence of the beauty he afterwards represented: his mother, his sisters, his father, and all around him. What he saw constituted the basis of what he painted or sculptured. In most modern nations the school models of our youth are Greek; but their home models, and which are to them models from the cradle, are of a different style. Hence they are under two sets of influences, the one neutralising the other, and producing that coldness which the mock classical exhibits. This may, perhaps, be one cause of the slow progress of art among us.
Footnote 930:
Plato, jocularly perhaps, bestows the same praise on Egyptian art, and Muretus seriously adopts his notions: “Meritoque Ægyptios commendat Plato, apud quos et pictorum et musicorum licentia legibus coërcebatur, quod permagni interesse judicarent, ut adolescentes à teneris annis honestis picturis, et honestis cantibus assuefierent.”—In Aristot. Ethic. p. 249. But perhaps Plato had not looked very narrowly into the sacred sculptures of Egypt which in reality abound with images offensive to decency.
No doubt we come prepared to regard them with eyes coloured, and afancy haunted by the beauties of Grecian literature. Possibly, it isunder the spell of Homeric verse that our eyes grow humid with delightat the aspect of Aphrodite, that we behold divinity in Zeus or PhœbosApollo; but this only proves that the fragments of Helleniccivilisation throw a light upon each other, and are parts of one greatwhole. Perhaps, too, no man ever enjoyed the sculpture of Greece as heshould, unless conversant with her poetry—the right hand of her art.In this we find the first seeds and increments of those ideas, whichwere afterwards transplanted and bore fruit in another field. Wediscover, therefore, but half the subject when we see only thesculpture. It is unknown to us whether the artist has fulfilled theconditions into which he entered, by undertaking to clothe in marble,thoughts already invested with the forms of language. Hence the littlesympathy between Hellenic art and the people generally of modernnations. The figures they behold are dumb to them. To a Greek, on thecontrary, or to a man with a Greek’s soul, a thousand sweetreminiscences, a thousand legends, a thousand dim but cherishedassociations appear clustering round them. Every time they flash uponhim, he lives his youth over again. The briery nook, the dewy lanes,the dim religious forests, the pebbly or wave-fretted shore, where thepoetry of Greece first opened its eyes upon him in boyhood, sweep inprocession over his fancy. He starts to see the hamadryad or the faunor the mountain nymph, before him but one remove from life; to him artspeaks not merely in an intelligible, but in an impassioned tongue. Hecomprehends all the mysteries she has to reveal, and loves her becausein a land as it were of foreigners they can converse with each other,and speak of the past and the future.
It is scarcely philosophical to regard poetry, sculpture, andpainting, as the offspring of pleasure, though pleasure in some sensebe as necessary to man as food. Man possesses creative and imitativefaculties, and must, at certain stages of society, employ them. Themoment his merely animal wants are provided for, he begins to feelthat he has others which demand no less imperiously theirgratification. First, he desires to clothe with material forms thethings he worships, and hence the first-born of art are gods. At theoutset, indeed, (and this is a strong argument against their havingborrowed their arts from the East,)[931] the Greeks were content withsetting up rude stones, as symbols rather than representations oftheir divinities; then followed the head upon a rude pillar; then, theindications of the sex; next, the round thighs began to swell out ofthe stone; to these succeeded legs and feet; and, lastly, arms andhands completed the figure. Dædalos, a mythological personage, issupposed to have been the first who carried the art to this point ofimprovement. His figures were of wood, and already executed withconsiderable skill, though they would have been despised in the daysof Socrates.[932]
Footnote 931:
See Winkel. t. i. p. 7.—Pollux gives a list of the names under which the representations of the gods were classed.—i. 7.
Footnote 932:
Plat. de Repub. t. vi. p. 354. Cf. Hipp. Maj. t. v. p. 410.—Winkelmann slightly misinterprets the sense of Plato.—Hist. de l’Art, t. i. p. 12.
For some ages, perhaps, a stiff, unanimated manner, not unlike theEgyptian, prevailed; but the impulse, once given, went on increasingin strength. One improvement imperceptibly followed another. Artists,together with their experience, acquired professional learning, theresults of which soon became visible in their productions. Movementand variety of position succeeded. But though knowledge of art wasenlarged and strict rules laid down, there still remained a hard,square massiveness in the style, resembling what we find in modernsculpture as improved by Michael Angelo. And this manner became thetype of the Æginetan school, which expressed the character of theDoric mind, powerful but rude, harmonious but heavy, wanting in grace,wanting in elegance, and aiming rather at effect than beauty.[933]
Footnote 933:
Cf. Winkelmann, t. i. p. 22.
Numerous causes, however, concurred in ripening the principle of artin Greece,—the climate, the form of government, the happy taste of thepeople, and, lastly, the high respect which was there paid to artists.Nor is it at all paradoxical to affirm, that moral causes concurredpowerfully with physical, in begetting that radiant beauty ofcountenance which distinguished the nation. The consciousness offreedom and independence produces satisfaction in the mind; theserenity thus originated communicates itself to the features; thencearise harmony and dignity of aspect and mien; these are so manyelements of beauty, and such feelings long indulged would operatepowerfully on the countenance, and, seconded by the tranquillisinginfluences of external nature, end by creating symmetry andproportion, which, joined with intellect, are beauty. Artists in sucha country, besides that they must themselves involuntarily beimpressed with a veneration for it, would soon discover the reverencepaid to beauty and the value set upon accurate representations of it.
Of the high estimation in which beauty was held innumerable proofsexist in Greek literature. At Ægion in Achaia, the priest of Zeus waschosen for the splendour of his personal charms, to determine which asort of contest was instituted. This office he held till his beardbegan to appear, when the honour passed to the youth then judged toexcel[934] in the perfection of his form. So, also, at Tanagra, theyouth selected to bear the lamb round the walls in honour of Hermeswas supposed to be the first for beauty in the city.[935] Of theinvoluntary power of beauty history has recorded various instances.Phrynè, accused of impiety and on the point of being condemned,obtained her acquittal through the hardihood of her advocate, whobared her bosom before the judges. Another example is said to havebeen afforded by Corinna, sole poetess of Tanagra, who, contendingwith Pindar for the prize of verse, obtained the victory more by herbeauty, (she being the loveliest woman of her time,) and the sweetnessof the Æolic dialect in which she wrote, than by the greatness of hergenius.[936]
Footnote 934:
Paus. vii. 24. 4.
Footnote 935:
Id. ix. 22. 1.
Footnote 936:
Id. ix. 22. 3.
In another instance heroic honours were paid to a man after death forthe beauty of his person.[937] This happened at Egestum in Sicily,where Philippos, a native of Crotona, obtained this distinction, whichHerodotus observes never fell to any other man’s lot before.[938]
Footnote 937:
Euripides, speaking of course as a poet, pronounces beauty to be worthy of supreme power. But many ancient nations were seriously of this mind, and chose the finest person among them to be their king: which was the practice of those Ethiopians called the Immortals.—Athen. xiii. 20. If by Ethiopians be meant the people now known under the name of Nubians, I am sure they had very good reason to encourage beauty, than which there is, at this day, nothing more rare in their country.
Footnote 938:
V. 47.
It was to its artists that Greece delegated, at least in someinstances, the privilege of deciding on the rival pretensions of thefair and beautiful. They were permitted to select from the loveliestwomen of the land models for their female divinities, and at othertimes made their mistresses the representatives of goddesses. Painswere taken, by filling their apartments with beautiful statues, toimpress upon the imagination of pregnant women the perfect forms ofgods and heroes, as of Nireus, Narcissos, Hyacinthos, Castor andPolydeukes, Bacchos and Apollo.[939] This was at Sparta. In otherparts of the Peloponnesos a species of Olympic contest for the prizeof beauty took place, instituted, it is said, by Cypselos, an ancientking of Arcadia. Having founded a city in the plain on the banks ofthe Alpheios, in which he fixed a colony of Parrhasians, he dedicateda temple and altar, and instituted a festival in honour of EleusinianDemeter, during which the women of the neighbourhood disputed witheach other the prize, and received from some circ*mstance connectedwith the contest the name of Chrysophoræ. The first woman who won wasHerodice, wife of the founder Cypselos. This institution flourishedupwards of fourteen hundred years, having been established in the timeof the Heracleidæ, and still existing in the age of Athenæus.[940]
Footnote 939:
Opian. Cyneg. i. 357. sqq.
Footnote 940:
Deipnosoph. xiii. 90. Eustath. ad Il. τ. 282. relates briefly the same facts, concluding with the very words made use of by Athenæus. Palmerius, who, in his remarks on Diogenes Laertius quotes them, immediately adds: “quæ non dubito Eustathiun ab aliquo auctore antiquo accepisse.”—Exercit. in Auct. Græc. p. 448. In which conjecture he was right; and that ancient author was Nicias in his history of Arcadia.
A similar practice prevailed in the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos,where likewise the ebullitions of vanity were concealed beneath theveil of religion. The exhibition took place in the temple of Hera, towhom, as the goddess of marriage, beauty should be dear. Priapos,however, was in some places supposed to be the deity who awarded theprize of loveliness in the Callisteia, on which account Niconoë, aBacchante perhaps, dedicated to him her fawn-skin and goldenewer.[941] But the ladies were not singular in these displays. Foramong the Eleians, who had as favourable an opinion of themselves asOliver Goldsmith, a similar show took place, and the pretensions ofthe male candidates were as carefully sifted as if they had been totake academical honours on their figures. And honours in fact they didtake. They were presented with a complete suit of armour, which thewinner consecrated with extraordinary pomp and rejoicing in the templeof Athena, whither he was led garlanded with fillets by his triumphantfriends. According to Myrsilos, he was likewise decorated with amyrtle crown.[942]
Footnote 941:
Schol. ad Il. ι. 129. Cf. Meurs. Gr. Fer. p. 177. Hedyl. in Anth. Gr. vi. 292. Athen. xiii. 90.
Footnote 942:
Athen. xiii. 90.
In some places, not named by historians, a contest was institutedwhich, though unconnected with the arts, we will intreat the reader’spermission to introduce here, for its extraordinary nature. This was acontest in prudence and good housewifery, in which certain barbariannations followed the example. And, to show that character and mentalqualifications were properly esteemed by the Greeks, it is added byTheophrastos[943] that it is these that render beauty beautiful, andthat without them it is apt to degenerate into wantonness. Winkelmann,who has noticed several of these facts, is betrayed into some errors.He speaks of an Apollo of Philesia[944] at whose festival a prize wasbestowed on the youth who excelled in kissing. The contest took placeunder the inspection of a judge, he supposes, at Megara. Meursius,though under the name of Diocleia he notices the Megarean festival,overlooks the writer who gives the fullest account of it;—I mean thescholiast on Theocritus, who observes that Diocles was an Athenianexile who took refuge at Megara. In a battle in which he was engaged,he fought side by side with a friend, whose life he saved at theexpense of his own. He was interred by the Megareans, who institutedan annual festival in his honour, where the youth who excelled hiscompanions was crowned and led in triumph to the arms of hismother.[945]
Footnote 943:
Ap. Athen. xiii. 90.
Footnote 944:
Lutat. ad Stat. Theb. viii. 178. Cf. Barth. iii. 828. Hist. de l’Art, i. 319. Carlo Fea with a simplicity rare in an Italian, remarks upon this: “Il est question ici de baise-mains!” The Apollo intended is Apollo Philesias, whose statue was sculptured in Æginetic marble by Canachos.—Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxiv. 19. 14.
Footnote 945:
Sch. in Theocrit. xii. 28.
The exercises, discipline, and moral notions of the Greeks haddoubtless much effect on their form; for in the decline of theirstates, when despotism had succeeded to freedom, and vice to virtue,beauty became exceedingly rare. Cotta, in the De Naturâ Deorum,observes that he found few handsome youths at Athens, where in the ageof Demosthenes the most beautiful in Greece flourished;[946] and DionChrysostom observes that in his time there were scarcely any thatcould be so considered.[947]
Footnote 946:
Æschin. cont. Tim. § 31.
Footnote 947:
Orat. 21. t. 1. p. 500. sqq. Reiske.
If we come now to the other causes which account for the progress ofthe arts in Greece, we shall find the principal of these to have beenthe high consideration and esteem[948] in which artists were held.Riches, no doubt, obtained credit there as elsewhere, but not to theexclusion of other recommendations as in modern Europe, or at least inEngland. Winkelmann scarcely comprehends the irony of Socrates,however, when he supposes him seriously to mean that artists alonewere wise; though, since the sage had himself been a sculptor, he hadsome reason to think well of them. It is, nevertheless, perfectly truethat men of this profession might become legislators or generals, oreven behold a statue erected to them beside those of Miltiades andThemistocles, or among the gods themselves.[949] The historian of artobserves with pride that Xenophilos and Straton were permitted atArgos to place their own statues, even in a sitting posture, nearthose of Asclepios and Hygeia.[950] Cheirisophos, who sculptured theApollo at Tegea, dedicated in the same fane a statue of himself inmarble, which was erected close to his great work.[951] The figure ofAlcamenes occupied a place among the bassi-rilievi on the temple ofDemeter at Eleusis. Parrhasios and Silanion shared the reverence paidto their picture of Theseus; and Pheidias affixed his name to hisOlympian Zeus, the nearest approach perhaps which the arts have evermade to perfection.[952]
Footnote 948:
At the same time the earnings of inferior sculptors were small.—Luc. Somm. § 9.
Footnote 949:
Cf. Plut. Thes. § 4.
Footnote 950:
Pausan. ii. 23. 4.
Footnote 951:
Pausan. viii. 53. 8.
Footnote 952:
Id. v. 10. Wink. iv. 1. § 12. p. 332.
If the satisfaction of beholding a whole nation, I might say a wholeworld, smitten with delight and wonder at his performance, would repayan artist for years of toil and study, Pheidias had his reward. Andnot to the narrow circle of his life was this admiration confined; forsix hundred years after his death pilgrims from all parts of thecivilised world flocked to Olympia[953] to behold his matchlessperformance; for to die without having partaken of this enjoyment wasconsidered a misfortune. But neither praise, nor encouragement, norhonour, nor gain will suffice to bring the arts to perfection. Toensure this, the nation to which the arts address themselves mustcomprehend their language. For, if the people be incapable of decidingwhen an artist has succeeded and when he has failed, it is verycertain that he will seldom succeed at all. Men soon find theuselessness of producing what no one around them can appreciate. Evenin the matter of virtue and vice, few will soar very high in countrieswhere a low standard of morals prevails generally; and, in the arts,no one will devote himself to the creation of forms which he knowswill be dumb to the public eye.
Footnote 953:
Εἰς Ὀλυμπίαν μὲν ἀποδημεῖτε ἵν᾽ εἰδῆτε τὸ ἔργον τοῦ Φειδίου· καὶ ἀτύχημα ἕκαστος ὕμων οἴεται, τὸ ἀνιστόρητον τούτον ἀποθανεῖν.—Arrian. Com. in Epict. l. i. p. 27.
In Greece every condition required to ripen the genius of an artistexisted. He knew that his reputation and fortune would depend on thecaprice of no particular individual or class of individuals. Heperceived among his countrymen at large the knowledge, the taste, andthe enthusiasm which just decisions in art demand, and labouredfearlessly for them, not doubting that he should obtain the reward hisgenius merited. There were public exhibitions, as among us, both atCorinth and at Delphi;[954] but, instead of converting them into asordid traffic, the whole world was invited to behold theirperformances, and judges were appointed to decide upon the merits ofthe exhibitors. Instances no doubt there were of artists showing theirperformances for money: at least the memory of one example has comedown to us. Zeuxis of Heraclea, having finished his picture of Helen,opened an exhibition and fixed a certain admission price, by which hecleared a large sum of money; but to mark their disapprobation of suchconduct, his contemporaries bestowed on his picture the name of thecourtesan.[955]
Footnote 954:
Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 35.
Footnote 955:
Ælian, Var. Hist. iv. 12. Cf. Meurs. ad Lycoph. Cassand. 131. p. 1189. and Val. Max. iii. 7.
In the public exhibitions they appear to have looked solely to merit,and not to have allowed themselves to be dazzled by great names; forwhen Panænos, brother of Pheidias, entered the lists, neither his ownreputation, nor that of the illustrious sculptor, could obtain for himthe preference over Timagoras, who was allowed to have excelled. Alike spirit prevailed among the judges of Olympia, whither artistssometimes brought their pictures during the games to delight assemblednations, and reap a harvest of joy and glory in a day. Thus when Ætionappeared with his “Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,” before theHellanodicos Proxenides,[956] he not only obtained the credit due tohis genius, but that magistrate, more emphatically to express hisadmiration, bestowed on him the hand of his daughter. And Lucian, whohad seen the picture in Italy, has left a description of it whichjustifies the enthusiasm of Proxenides.
Footnote 956:
Lucian. Herod. § 4.
I have already in a former chapter accounted in some measure for thediffusion of a correct taste among the great body of the people. Itformed with them an indispensable branch of study. The arts of designwere cultivated by the philosopher, the politician, in short, by everyone who claimed to be considered a gentleman.[957] Nay, gentlewomenalso enjoyed these advantages, and instances are recorded of theirarriving at professional excellence and celebrity; for example,Timarete,[958] daughter of the younger Micon, an Athenian, and Helenan Alexandrian Greek, who painted the “Battle of the Issos,”afterwards consecrated in the temple of Peace.[959] It was in thenature of things, that artists moving in such a moral atmosphereshould partake largely of the national grandeur of sentiment, and lookrather to the perpetuation of their name than to any sordidconsiderations of gain, above which they were elevated by the formwhich the national gratitude assumed. For we may be sure that what isrelated of the great historian of Halicarnassos was, to a certainextent, true of great artists. Men pointed at him, we are told, as hemoved through the public assemblies, exclaiming, “That is he! That isthe man who has celebrated our victories over the Barbarians!”
Footnote 957:
Diog. Laert. iii. 5.—Aristot. Pol. viii. 3.
Footnote 958:
Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 35.
Footnote 959:
Phot. Bib. p. 149.
Winkelmann, who understood human nature no less than the arts,enumerates similar facts among the causes why art flourished inGreece;[960] and though sometimes mistaken, as in so large a work wasto be expected, his reasoning generally, and his illustrations,deserve that every lover of art should be familiar with his writings.
Footnote 960:
Hist. de l’Art, l. iv. c. 1. § 13.
This distinguished historian, however, is not sufficiently guarded inhis expressions, when he contends that the productions of art wereconsecrated solely to the deity or to public utility; for, though theywere principally directed to these ends, many individuals possessedcollections in their houses,[961] which were by no means the humbledwellings he supposes. However the public constituted the great patronof art, and uniting in itself natural aptitude, acquired knowledge,and an inherent leaning towards grandeur, communicated to those wholaboured to gratify it corresponding taste and elevation. In manycases the whole population of a city identified its own glory withthat of some celebrated picture or statue within its walls. Olympia,though peopled by works of art of surpassing excellence, still lookedupon the Pheidian Zeus[962] as the apex of its glory; and even Athens,where probably more objects of art were crowded together than in anyother city of the world, the colossal statue of Athena stoodpreëminently the ornament of the Acropolis. In one respect we havebegun to imitate the Greeks, who often erected by general subscriptionthe statue of a divinity, or of some Athletæ victorious in the sacredgames. Some minor cities are solely remembered for the works of artthey contained: for example, that of Aliphera which owed its celebrityentirely to its statue of Athena in bronze, the work of Hecatodorosand Sostratos.[963]
Footnote 961:
Galen, Protrept. § 8. t. i. p. 19.
Footnote 962:
On the interior of this statue inhabited by rats and mice. See Luc. Som. seu. Gall. § 24.
Footnote 963:
Polyb. iv. 340. d. Winkel. iv. 1. 15. The Eros of Thespiæ, also, and the Aphrodite of Cnidos, were famous. Luc. Amor. § 11. seq.
Winkelmann supposes that both sculpture and painting arrived earlierat a certain degree of perfection than architecture, and, assuming thefact, proceeds philosophically to account for it. But his theoryitself, on this point, appears to be erroneous. In Egypt, at least,where the mind would necessarily be guided by the same laws as inGreece, it is certain that while sculpture and painting never escapedfrom the swaddling bands of infancy, architecture advanced to a veryhigh degree of perfection. The force of necessity, which leads to thecreation of architecture, communicates a far more lasting impulse thanthe instinct of imitation. Men must everywhere build to protectthemselves from the fury of the elements; and the first step thusmade, and leisure supervening, that sense of proportion and symmetryand arrangement, which is almost an instinct, would soon lead to thecontemplation of the ideal and the creation of architecture as an art.Sculpture sprang later into existence, and still later painting; butlike the children of one family,—of whom some are older, othersyounger,—all the arts flourish nearly together, and nearly togetherdecay. Nevertheless we may subdivide this period into minuter cycles,when we shall find that architecture and sculpture reached almost liketwins their acme together, while, like a younger sister, paintingattained its greatest beauty when the former two had fallen somethingfrom their perfection. Thus, the Zeus of Pheidias and the Hera ofPolycletos, two of the most celebrated statues of antiquity, alreadyexisted, while Hellenic painting exhibited no knowledge ofchiaro-scuro and was wholly destitute of harmony.
Apollodoros and after him Zeuxis, master and disciple,[964] whoflourished about the ninetieth Olympiad, were the first who renderedthemselves remarkable for a knowledge of light and shade.[965] But,arrived at this pitch, the beauty of the art began to be felt, picturegalleries were commenced in various temples,[966] and, a new world offorms and colours disclosing itself to the imagination, the versatileGreeks transferred to it a large share of the admiration hithertomonopolised by sculpture. Painting, in fact, speaks a more popularlanguage. It tells a story, while sculpture can but embody a thoughtor fix an incident. Its accessories realise events more completely.The Apollo, in sculpture, has bent his bow and discharged hisarrow—the remainder of the action the imagination must shape foritself. Painting gives us the whole scene teeming with life,—thewrithing dragon, the rocks, the woods, the mountain, the sky, with allthe illusions spread before the eye by many-coloured light. Sculpturefurnishes the nucleus of glorious associations, but ’tis we that mustgroup them into sublime beauty. It asks more knowledge, more fancy,more in short of every element of genius in its admirers than doespainting. Hence the latter will always number, and justly, morepartisans. In most persons a preference for sculpture would be mereaffectation. It cannot equally please the many.
Footnote 964:
Winkel. iv. 1. 16.
Footnote 965:
Quintil. xii. 10. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxv. 36.
Footnote 966:
In the Stoa of Dionysos, at Rhodes, there was a picture gallery filled with historical and mythic pieces.—Luc. Amor. § 8. Similar exhibitions appear to have existed at Cnidos, in the portico of Sostratos.—§ 11. Works of art, sacred to the gods, were likewise treasured up at home.—§ 16. In some temples, we learn, even pictures of immoral tendency, by Parrhasios and others, were admitted.—Lobeck, Aglaopham. p. 606. Aristotle takes from this circ*mstance occasion to sneer at the religion of paganism which patronised such excesses.—Polit. vii. 15. p. 255. Gœttl.
However, in proportion as the public became more enlightened, and, tojustify its admiration and enthusiasm, imposed harder conditions onartists, the latter enlarged the circle of their studies, whichgradually expanded until it embraced a certain portion of metaphysics,the science of form and colours, with that art of grouping andarrangement which constitutes a species of narrative in painting. Acomplete exposition of their studies would be the best manual whichcould be put into the hands of contemporary artists, and at the sametime would furnish the best explanation of their seeminglyinexplicable superiority. But such an exposition would be out of placehere. My object is simply to hint at what may be done, not to attemptit myself; and to show, that if the Greek nation affordedencouragement to its artists, it was because those artists met theircountrymen more than half way, and laboured to deserve encouragement.
There existed in Greece a philosophy of art, that is, a perfect theoryof what its object is, and of all the means by which that object maybe accomplished. Now the object of art is delight, a delight whichaggrandises and ennobles the mind, and such delight is only to beobtained through the contemplation of the beautiful. This convictionestablished, the studies of the Greek artist were directed to thediscovery of the elements of the beautiful, not such as it exists inthe original types of the intellectual world (which he abandoned tothe philosopher), but such as we find it in material developements ofthe ideal, and chiefly in the forms of our own species.
Their researches, conducted in a philosophical spirit, by degreestaught them that perfect beauty, like perfect happiness, consists inabsolute serenity and repose. Thus, the heavens are beautiful when inthe noon of a summer’s day their blue depths are unstained by a cloud,and not a breath is heard among the trees. Thus, the ocean isbeautiful when the most perfect calm broods upon it, and has smootheddown every ripple and converted it into a mirror for reflecting thecerulean purity of the sky. And this is what the poets signify whenthey represent Aphrodite, the very soul of beauty and of love,springing up from the level and glittering surface of such a sea. Inthe same state the human countenance is most beautiful, when everyfeature in the most perfect equilibrium breathes of calm, joy, andserenity, and by the force of sympathy converts all who approach itinto so many mirrors reflecting its absolute bliss. This is the secretof that beauty which exists in Grecian sculpture.
It was a maxim of Greek philosophy, that the magnanimous man isseldom, under any circ*mstances, disturbed. In action, therefore, hewould exhibit the same tranquil countenance as when at rest. Thus,Socrates at Potidæa, at Delion, in the Prison of the Eleven about toquaff the hemlock, would in looks be much the same. And thisself-command, observable in one great man, art attributed generally tothe gods and heroes, who, in whatever actions they might be engaged,would still retain a self-possessed and serene aspect. Hence, even thebattle-pieces of the Greeks are beautiful. Men fight and die, butunder the guidance of duty. We behold none of those demoniacalpassions, nothing of that animal ferocity, or of that succumbing topain which convert so many modern pictures into slaughter-houserepresentations. We feel that the actors contemplated death only asthe distributor of imperishable glory,—that imagination had colouredeverything around them with its rainbow tints,—that by anticipationthey enjoyed the panegyric which would be pronounced over them in thehearing of all they loved,—the monument which would be raised overtheir ashes,—the deathless reward which would be bestowed on theirpatriotism and valour in the historic page. To men, so feeling and sothinking, where was the sting of death? They could compress eternityinto a moment, and grasp all future time, and live through it by theirresistible force of imagination.
To be able to represent such forms and features, it was necessary tostudy simultaneously the conceptions of the poets, and the progressivedevelopement of the human figure from infancy to age. From this studyresulted a body of experience, the fruit of innumerable comparisons,out of which sprang that gradually corrected and improved and elevatedconception of the human figure which is denominated _the ideal_.Instances, isolated from the great body of artistic study, have creptinto ordinary books, and been thereby invested with an air ofvulgarity. But this will not hinder the philosopher or the artist fromincluding them in his scheme of study and converting them into germsof utility. In this part of their progress religion stepped in to theaid of the artist. The several goddesses represented each a style ofwomen of whom they might be considered the original type. Aphrodite,for example, represented the impassioned and tender,[967] naturallyparasites of man and too often frail; Hera, the chaste matron,dignified, authoritative, energetic, but inclined to violence andself-will; Artemis, reserved, modest, retiring, like a nun, was theprototype of unspotted maidenhood, revered for its own purity; Athena,perfect in intellect as in form, uniting the loveliness of Aphrodite,the majesty of Hera, the delicacy and chastity of Artemis with thewisdom of Zeus, constituted properly the ideal of womanhood, loftierthan Eve before the fall and such as it can exist only in theimagination.
Footnote 967:
An ancient author has the following expression: οὐκοῦν τὸ θῆλυ, κᾄν λίθινον ᾖ, φιλεῖται· τί δ᾽ εἴ τις ἔμψυχον εἶδε τοιοῦτον κάλλος;—Luc. Amor. § 17.
Something very like which is found in Byron:
“There, too, the Goddess _loves in stone_, and fills The air around with beauty.”
In search, however, of female forms to represent these ideal originalsartists travelled through the whole of Greece, gathering up as theywent those fragments of beauty which, when united, were to approachperfection. They resembled Isis in search of the limbs of Osiris.Sometimes, as at Crotona and Agrigentum, parents did not scruple toexpose their daughters naked to their eyes, that from them they mightfashion that loveliness which was to represent to their senses thedivine being they worshiped. But this excess of superstition was rare.In general the Hetairæ, their mistresses and companions, served forthe models after which the soft divinities of Greece were moulded:
“If Queensberry to strip there’s no compelling, ’Tis from a handmaid we must take a Helen.”
Thus Phryne, idealised by art, became Aphrodite, Anadyomene in thehands of Apelles, or Aphrodite of Cnidos in those of Praxiteles.
Childhood obtained its representative in Eros the god of love. Thus,from infancy upwards, even to old age, the human form in all itsphases became the object of study to the Greek artist, not to beservilely copied, but to be idealised, to be clothed with poetry, tobe divested of everything mean, gross, unspiritual, and embalmed ineternal beauty. And their success is proved by this, that, even withtheir works before them, modern artists have never been ablesatisfactorily to imitate their excellences. Of this Winkelmann[968]mentions some examples which have not come under my own notice.“Although the best modern artists,” he says, “have striven to imitateexactly the celebrated Medusa of the Strozzi cabinet at Rome, which,nevertheless, is not a countenance of the highest beauty, anexperienced antiquary will always be able to distinguish the originalfrom the copy.” The same thing is true, he says, with respect to thePallas of Aspasios, engraved by Natter and others. But this isperfectly intelligible. The original artist, working after his ownideas and comprehending thoroughly his own object, would impart to hiscreations a flexibility, a grace, a freedom, not to be reached by onewhose type existed out of his own mind. For even in literature it isthus—language, malleable, expansive, obedient to control in the handsof the original writer, who breathes into it his own ideas andrequires it only to drape them, becomes a stiff unmanageable mass withthe imitator like a corpse put in motion by galvanism.
Footnote 968:
Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 23.
To be conversant with the arts of Greece, is to move among a race ofgods endued with eternal youth. In the goddesses the small neck, theundeveloped bosom convey the idea of virgin innocence. The nippleshrinking inward retreats from the eye. Over the visage a radianceindescribable appears to play; the form, whether draped or undraped,suggests the idea of divine unfleeting existence—of the poetry of lifeand love—such as youth dreams of in its purest aspirations. For thegods our feelings are in a slight degree different. Zeus, investedwith the majesty of Olympos, in the fulness of manhood, powerful,beautiful, sublime, awakens in us a mingling of reverence and love, astowards a father. Apollo towers like an elder brother above our heads.Hades, Poseidon, Ares are powers whom we do not love. Mighty theywere, but strangers whom our sympathies do not cling to. But Dionysos,with his vine garland and beautiful face of friendship, with Eros andHeracles and the heroic twins and Hephæstos and Seilenos, and theFauns, with every haunter of grove, or spring, or mountain seemfamiliar all and formed to inspire and repay affection. They arespirits of joy every one of them. They have lived from boyhood in ourdreams, they have constituted one principal link in binding us to thepast, one principal argument in favour of Grecian genius: and who cando otherwise than love them? Nay, in some measure, when we considertheir manifold escapes from time and barbarism, they appear to us asOthello to Desdemona—we “love _them_ for the dangers they havepassed,”—and it asks no faith in miracles to persuade us that they“love _us_ that we do pity them.”
Winkelmann, who on so many questions connected with art has putforward opinions highly just and philosophical, appears to have fallenshort of his wonted acumen in the theory he had formed of the beautyof the goddesses. His language in fact descends to puerility where hesays:—"Since on the subject of female beauty there are fewobservations to be made, it may be concluded that the study of it isless complicated and far easier for the artist. Nature itself appearsto experience less difficulty in the formation of women than of men,_if it be true_ that there are born fewer boys than girls."[969] Sincethe direct contrary is true, this imaginary difficulty of Nature (notto hazard a more sacred word) may be dismissed with contempt; but theremark by which it is ushered in requires to be confuted. Artists arewell aware, and Winkelmann himself admits, that the beau ideal ofheroic beauty (that for example of Achilles or of Theseus) is merelythe blending of feminine loveliness with masculine power, so as toleave it undetermined, from the countenance, to which sex it belongs.And still the beauty of the Grecian youth, where they are beautiful,consists in a near approach to that of the female, so near indeed thatthey might be easily mistaken for women. If, therefore, the beauty ofmen when highest and most perfect, consists chiefly in what it borrowsfrom that of woman, the latter necessarily constitutes the apex ofhuman beauty; and the artist whom this conviction guides in hiscreations, will be the first to rival the great masters of antiquity.Another observation which it is strange to find in the Historian ofArt, is that artists draped their female figures because of the littledifficulty there is in imitating the naked form. But was it theextreme facility of representing paternal grief that led Timanthes toveil the face of his Agamemnon? In draping their goddesses andheroines, artists were guided by other reasons, of which the principalwas their desire to conform to the ideas of the poets and to popularbelief.
Footnote 969:
Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 67.
CHAPTER X. HELLENIC LITERATURE.
From the arts the transition is natural to the literature[970] ofGreece, which in the historical period necessarily constituted theprincipal agent in ripening and stamping their peculiar character uponthe fruits of education among the people. Literature is in fact theschool-mistress of nations. In it so long as it remains entire, we maycontemplate the whole character, intellectual and moral, of the raceout of whose passions, yearnings, tastes, and energies it may be saidto be fashioned. And this, true of all literature, is especiallyapplicable to that of Greece, which more than any other bears theimpress of nationality. Every idea, every image, every maxim, everyreflection seems to emanate from one source. Nothing is foreign.Neither the inspiration, nor the spirit which regulated it and mouldedit into beauty, borrowed a single impulse from anything existingbeyond the circle of Hellenic thought. Greece supplied at once thematrix and the materials, the active power and that delicate sense ofbeauty and perfection which presided over its organisation andrendered it the delight of mankind.
Footnote 970:
Speaking of the influence of literature on education Plato remarks, that persons accustomed from their infancy to the loftier and purer inspirations of the muse will regard with contempt everything mean or illiberal; whereas they who have always been familiar with low and vulgar compositions will look upon all other literature as tame and insipid.—De Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 30.
In characterising this literature many singular notions have beenbroached. We have been told that its spirit is exclusively masculine,which means, of course, that while it abounds with strength andenergy, with sublimity of speculation and impassioned and impetuousimpulses, it is wanting in that sweetness, delicacy, grace, andtenderness which confer on the intellectual offspring of some modernnations a feminine aspect. Grecian literature, however, is neithermasculine nor feminine, but androgynous like the son of Aphrodite andHermes. There is no excellence of thought or language, of which, evenin its present fragmentary state, it does not offer us some example.There is a predominance, doubtless, of stern grandeur and colossalelevation of thought; but, beside these, we discover frequentlymodifications of light and airy beauty, infantine purity of sentiment,ease, grace, felicitous negligence, and a dreamy luxury of speculationnot to be outdone by the most subtile and fanciful literatureexisting. If there be a deficiency of any thing, it is ofspirituality. The imagination of the Greeks confined itself toorigidly perhaps to this “bank and shoal of time.” Not being able tolift the veil which curtains the realms beyond the grave, it busieditself too little about those things with which the disembodied soulmust converse for ever. In most Greek writers there is a visiblereluctance to walk amid the forms of Hades. Their fancy will not beconducted beyond the limits of the visible universe, but shudders,rears and reverts its eyes towards the light where alone it finds firmfooting for speculation. But on the other hand if it refuse to quitthis earthly scene of existence, how glorious is the flood of sunshineand splendour which it pours over it! It is in these walks ofliterature that we discover truly the freshness and the loveliness ofmorning. The very clouds that hover over the landscape only add to itsmajesty, by diversifying the prospect and introducing those shadowsand contrasts which the mind delights everywhere to discover.
Poets,[971] it is constantly repeated, commence in every country themental movement which evolves civilisation out of the chaos ofbarbarism; but it remains a mystery how and by what they themselvesare moved. There may possibly be something more than a figure ofspeech in the old affirmation that they were inspired of heaven. Theirimagination towered to so great a height that it was kindled by thelamps of the firmament, and may be regarded as that fabled Prometheuswho applied the flame of science to the human clay. I do not thereforesee what objection can be urged against our maintaining the olddoctrine that poets partook and partake still, when their minds arepure, of a divine impulse—that to the infant nations of the earth theywere teachers commissioned from on high.
Footnote 971:
Cf. Lil. Gyrald. Opp. t. ii. p. 2. “Nihil traditum videbis in religionibus et mysteriis, nihil in theologiâ et philosophiâ aliisque bonis artibus à principio fuisse sine poeticâ, ita ut hoc verè me tibi dicturum existimem, ex omnibus disciplinis unam hanc divinam extitisse, quasi totius vitæ magistram.”
The condition of the mind in those early ages when poets were the onlyoracles, it is difficult for men surfeited with the luxuries of aprolific literature to comprehend. Among the Arabs of the desert wemay still perhaps discover something similar. Deprived of books, butenjoying much leisure, they eagerly treasure up in their memories themoral distich, the apologue, the tale which instructs while itdelights, and thus mentally furnished with a few weapons they areoften wiser in deliberation, more persuasive in discourse, more readyin action than persons of education in civilised countries, whoseintellectual armoury is so full that in the moment of danger they knownot what weapon to choose. Poets, among such a race and under suchcirc*mstances, feel that they have a high mission to fulfil; theirendeavours are not by polished rhythmical trifles to amuse a few richand noble persons, but to clothe in befitting language and marry toimmortal verse those great central truths, upon which the whole systemof the future world of civilisation must revolve. We find them alwayscuriously adapting their revelations to the times. First, the greatfundamental truths of religion, the basis of the social structure, areinfused into the public mind. Next the rudiments of politics andlegislation, the precepts of agriculture, the leading rules of theuseful arts, the observances of civil life, and the first faintwhispers of the passions and affections are treasured up in theirlays. Then, growing bolder by degrees, they aim at subduing the wholeempire of knowledge, and impetuously, with numerous charms andallurements, hurry mankind forward in a sort of orgiastic rapture tothe very threshold of philosophy.
Among the earliest names in the literary traditions of Hellas arethose of Olen, Pamphos, Musæos and Orpheus,[972] who, for theirwisdom, are said to be sprung from the gods. They were sacred bards,whose genius obtained for them an ascendency over the minds of theircountrymen. Yet all they attempted, perhaps, was to teach the doctrineof prayer, thanksgiving, sacrifice, which, being afterwardsmisunderstood, caused them to be confounded with those impostors andincantation-mongers, who, in more recent times, granted absolutionsand sold indulgences both to individuals and states, with a hardihoodworthy of Giovanni di Medici. Musæos, older probably than Orpheus,though sometimes regarded as his disciple, is said by certaintraditions to have been a teacher of ethics, who delivered a body ofmoral precepts in four thousand verses. His country is unknown,—for heis now represented as an Athenian, now as a Thracian,—but his name andthe name of Orpheus and Eumolpos are associated with the expiations,orgies, mysteries, celebrated during many ages in honour of Demeterand Dionysos.[973] We must rest content, however, with very imperfectnotions of what they were, for, in looking back at these great men,whom we behold on the edge of the horizon, enlarged like the sun atit* setting by misty exhalations, but by the same means rendered dimand obscure, we can form no just idea of their character.
Footnote 972:
Plato de Repub. t. ii. p. 113. seq. Stallb.—De Legg. t. vii. p. 243. Bek. Athen. i. 24. Paus. ix. 27. 2. Diog. Laert. Proœm. iv. 5.
Footnote 973:
Muret. in Plat. Rep. p. 699. seq. Cf. Lil. Gyrald. ii. 5. Wolf. Proleg. in Homer. p. 51.
These, however, and such as these, were the men who fabricated thefirst link in that chain of thought and beauty, which, stretching overthe gulf of time and fastened to the skies, still holds up the nationsof the earth from sinking into barbarism. Literature is degraded whencontemplated as an art or as an amusem*nt. It is a paradise, intowhich the best fruits of the soul, when arrived at their greatestmaturity and beauty, are transplanted to bloom in immortal freshnessand fragrance. It is the garner wherein the seeds of religion, virtue,morals, national greatness and individual happiness are preserved forthe use of humanity. It is a gallery, where the likenesses of all thegreat and noble souls who have shed light and glory on the earth, aretreasured up as the heirloom and palladium of the human race. It isimpossible, therefore, for any but the most sordid minds to look backtowards the venerable fathers of literature without a deep thrill offilial reverence and love, conjoined with the generous impulse andyearning desire to enlarge and add fresh brightness to the halo whichencircles their names. They were not, what since too many have been,the instruments and panders to the pleasures of worldlings. Consciousof the holy mission wherewith, according to their creed, the father ofgods and men had intrusted them, they stood forward as the apostles oftruth, encircled by the majesty which a sense of divine inspirationmust impart. They felt a harmony within their souls which, inmanifesting itself, sought the aid of harmonious language; and hencethe precepts of wisdom, distilling from their lips like honey from thehoneycomb, moulded themselves naturally into verse, at whose sound thefountains of the great deep of knowledge were broken up, and thewindows of heaven opened, and a deluge of philosophy and science andintellectual delight poured forth upon the amazed world.
In what age or province of Greece arose the first minister of thispoetical revelation, it is not now possible to decide. The art ofwriting, however, which the Egyptian king regarded as the enemy ofmemory, had not passed the Ægæan. The songs men heard were wafted onthe wings of music from tongue to tongue, and, by degrees, theprofessors of this marvellous art, by which the wisdom and the gloryof the past were embalmed in the sweets of verse, embodied themselvesinto a distinct order called Aoidoi or Singers.[974] The life of thesem*n in the remote ages of antiquity is little known to us. Wanderers,however, for the most part they were, in some respects not unlike theJongleurs and Troubadours of the middle ages, though occupying ahigher station and guided by a higher aim. Their first and ostensibleobject was, doubtless, to delight; but it is of great importance toinspire men with a delight in lofty and ennobling conceptions,—towithdraw them for a moment from pursuits sordid or brutalising orunmanly, to the contemplation of heroic acts,—of honour, ofpatriotism, of friendship,—of the great and solid advantages accruingfrom peace and commerce, and the experience of travel and adversity.
Footnote 974:
Cf. Wolf. Proleg. in Hom. p. 73. 93. sqq.
What were the rewards they obtained it is easy to conjecture. Theyconsisted, principally, in the rays of joy reflected back upon them bya thousand happy countenances at once. Gain they neither would norcould regard. He who renders multitudes wise and happy must be happyand wise himself; and wisdom scorns to measure its gifts against gold.The truly wise and great man, therefore, if fortune have originallybefriended him, will shower his benefactions, as God his rain,liberally and without distinction upon all; and if necessity compelhim to receive some return, his moderation will content itself withthe least possible amount. Embraced within the circle of refinementwhich they themselves had created, however, they gradually becamesecularised, though we must be careful to distinguish them from theirsuccessors of a later age. The prodigious admiration which they andtheir songs excited may be learned from those passages in Homer wherePhemios and Demodocos are introduced, and from that animated dialogueof Plato, in which the rhapsodist Ion describes his office and hisaudience. It has been justly remarked, that if this man, a mere actor,could hurry into whatever channel he pleased the affections of a wholetheatre, melt them into tears, fire them with indignation, or clothetheir countenances with the smiles of joy, much more would the poetsthemselves work upon their passions by an art far nearer nature.
Care must, no doubt, be taken not to confound the Rhapsodists with theAoidoi who preceded them, though it be certain that the manners andcondition of the later race may serve to throw considerable light onthose of the earlier. Both have recently much occupied the attentionof the learned; and Wolff in particular deserves credit for hisdefence of the Rhapsodists, into which, however, he was chiefly led bythe requirements of his celebrated theory. They were certainly, atfirst, a remarkable order of men, whom it would be injurious toconfound with their frivolous representatives in the age of Plato andXenophon. Nevertheless, the above distinguished scholar is perhapsinclined to exaggerate their merits, since to them, in his opinion, weowe it that the great Homeric poems have come down to us. But this istaking for granted the matter in dispute between him and hisopponents, who maintain that the author of the Iliad and Odysseypossessed both the knowledge and the materials for writing. He, withreason however, assumes that both theatrical and oratorical actionfound a way opened for them by the rhapsodic art, though itsprofessors were neither actors nor orators, but men exercising anoffice connected with a peculiar state of society, and no longerexisting in modern times.
It has often been supposed, grounding the opinion on a falseinterpretation of the word _rhapsodist_, that the members of thisfraternity were mere compilers or patchers up of poems from fragmentspilfered out of various authors. And, to augment the absurdity, thepractice of a recent age has been attributed to remote antiquity,when, as some imagine, the great rhapsodists like a modern lecturer,carried about with them pictures of the subject they were upon, andpointed out to the audience with a stick[975] the various charactersor incidents they might be describing. Another error much insisted onby Wolff, is the supposition that the Homeric poems alone were chantedby the older Rhapsodists, which no doubt is contrary to the testimonyof antiquity and to common sense. For, as might naturally beconcluded, not only the songs of Hesiod[976] and the whole epic racewere thus publicly sung, but those likewise of the lyric and iambicpoets, and the very laws of the state when the legislator happened tohave composed them in verse. It must nevertheless be remarked, (thoughof this Wolff takes no notice,) that so much did recitations ofHomer’s works predominate over all others, that Rhapsodists andHomerists were often regarded as synonymous terms;[977] and even inlater ages, when at any rate the art of writing was not unknown,Demetrius Phalereus introduced upon the stage a class of reciters,who, down to the days of Athenæus, enjoyed the name of Homerists.Still, as I have observed above, the works of other good poets were attimes recited, as Hesiod, Archilochos, Mimnermos, and Phocylides. Nay,the Rhapsodist Mnasion, as Lysanias relates, used to recite theIambics of Simonides; Cleomenes, the Purifications of Empedocles, andHegesius the comedian, the Histories of Herodotus; that is, someportions of them I presume. Certain authors delivered their ownproductions in this way,[978] as Xenophanes, who composed both epics,elegies and iambics.[979]
Footnote 975:
Anim. ad Athen. xii. p. 371. Cf. Suid. v. Ῥαψῳδοί. t. ii. p. 678. Etym. Mag. 703. 32. Aristoph. Concionat. 674.
Footnote 976:
Ῥαψῳδὸν δὲ, καλῶς Ἰλίαδα καὶ Ὀδυσσεῖαν ἢ τι τῶν Ἡσωδείων διατιθέντα, τάχ᾽ ἂν ἡμεῖς οἱ γέροντες ἥδιστα ἀκούσαντες νικᾷν ἂν φαῖμεν πάμπολο.—Plat. de Legg. ii. t. vii. p. 243. Bekk. Again: Ἅμα δὲ ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι ἔν τε ἄλλοις ποιηταῖς διατρίβειν πολλοῖς κᾀγαθοῖς καὶ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα ἐν Ὁμήρῳ, κ. τ. λ. Ion. Plat. Opp. t. ii. p. 172.
Footnote 977:
Ὅτι δ᾽ ἐκαλοῦντο οἱ ῥαψῳδοὶ καὶ Ὁμηρισταὶ Ἀριστοκλῆς εἴρηκε, κ. τ. λ.—Athen. xiv. 12.
Footnote 978:
Athen. xiv. 12.
Footnote 979:
Diog. Laert. ix. 18.
It has with reason been observed that although the name of therhapsodic art would seem to have been invented posterior to Homer, thething itself existed long before, and was held in greater honour thanat any subsequent period. In fact, the poets of those times werethemselves Rhapsodists, and for many ages the only ones, if it be truethat Hesiod[980] was the first who reduced the chanting of other men’spoems into an art. Afterwards, from the age of Terpander the Lesbian(Olymp. 34) down to Cynæthos of Chios (Olymp. 69) supposed to havebeen the author of the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and a man ofdistinguished genius, the Rhapsodists sometimes chanted the poems ofothers, sometimes their own, and occasionally perhaps interpolated newverses into the golden relics of the past, as our modern actors oftenfoist their one-legged jokes into the stage text of Shakespeare. Thereappears, however, to be no foundation for the notion, that nearlyevery one of these chanters was likewise a clever poet, which noancient writer, I believe, asserts, and which the assertions of fiftywould not render credible, though the probability is, that of thosenumerous rhapsodists some were themselves poets, and others desirous,without the genius, of being thought such; so that it is quite aslikely that their vanity frequently laid claim to the works of others,where detection could be escaped, as that others were suffered to robthem of their just fame.
Footnote 980:
Ῥαψωδῆσαι φησὶ πρῶτον τὸν Ἡσιοδὸν Νικοκλῆς.—Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1. Cf. Dissen. ad loc. Wolf. Proleg. p. 96. sqq.
They who contend for the flourishing of the system of castes inGreece, would probably maintain that the Rhapsodists constituted fromthe first _a clan_, as the Homeridæ are said to have been inChios.[981] Among the few arts which commanded the undivided time andstudy of numerous professors in those ages, that of the Aoidos orPoet, was certainly one, and that, too, the most honoured and revered.Doubtless their characters were pure and noble, to overcome the envywhich superior abilities usually inspire. For whether at home orabroad, in their native cities no less than in the public assemblies,and at the festive boards of kings, they were regarded as dear to godsand venerable to men. The Rhapsodists likewise enjoyed the sameestimation and led the same kind of life until other studies and othermanners, with that most debasing of all passions, the love of gain,brought contempt on their profession and pursuits.[982]
Footnote 981:
Schol. Pind. Nem. ii. 1. Etym. Mag. 623. 50.
Footnote 982:
Payne Knight, Proleg. in Hom. § 13. 28.
In the Homeric poems themselves we discover abundant proofs of thehigh honour in which the professors of the poetical art were held bytheir countrymen. They fulfilled in Greece[983] the office performedamong the Hebrews by the Schools of the Prophets,[984] or the solitarypossessors of the vaticinatory power who revealed to their countrymenthe will of heaven, and taught by what practices it might bepropitiated. Some institution of this kind probably existed, as I havealready observed, from the very dawn of civilisation which itprincipally created. Most princes, like Agamemnon, Alcinoüs andOdysseus, retained in their palaces a man at once their chaplain andtheir laureate, who, when guests foreign or domestic assembled attheir board, might administer instruction and delight, by chanting thepraises of the gods, the exploits or greatness of their ancestors, oreven by delivering precepts in morals or the useful arts. To a poet,also, as to the holiest of guardians, kings entrusted the care oftheir wives and families,[985] when departing on distant expeditions;and so great was the veneration paid to their character, that we findClytemnæstra banishing the poet before she dares to become theparamour of Ægisthos.
Footnote 983:
Athen. i. 16.
Footnote 984:
Cf. Sigon. de Rep. Hebræorum v. 9. Godwin, Moses et Aaron, i. 6.
Footnote 985:
But the δόμων προφῆται in Æschylus (Agam. 377 Klausen,) were household prophets, who not only disclosed the secrets of the future and interpreted dreams, but acted also the part of counsellors in present emergencies, and treasured up the records of the past. Apollo is called the Prophet of Zeus, because he receives oracles from him.—Eum. 19. 618. So Amphiaraos is denominated a great prophet.—Sept. c. Theb. 611.
See the comment of Klausen, Agam. p. 143. seq.-Notice of the household interpreters of dreams δόμων ὀνειρόμαντες and again κριταὶ τῶν ὀνειράτων (Choep. 36. 39), is found in several parts of Æschylus, who loved to furnish traits of these old superstitions. In the Persians we find Atossa speaking of the τῶν ἐνυπνίων κριτὴς (226) as a person of supernatural powers.
But those men of great original genius whose fame spread rapidly,and who probably found superior enjoyment in the independence of awandering life, not content with the patronage of a single prince,or the admiration of a single people, moved perpetually from land toland, enhancing at once their glory and experience. We in factdiscover in Homer, Pindar, and other original poets proofs that theflowers from which they collected the honey of their melodies grewnot all on one spot. Odysseus was a type of the bard who sang hisadventures, and looking still further back we find the ThracianThamyris, whom the Muses were said to have punished for his vanity,penetrating into the obscurest parts of Peloponnesos, protected bythe sanctity of his character and the reverence due to hisprofession.[986]
With respect to Homer, both ancient tradition and the form and spiritof his poems, require us to consider him in this light, though thereis no ground for supposing him with Payne Knight to have celebratedthe different heroes of Greece for the purpose of ingratiating himselfwith their descendants.
Footnote 986:
Iliad β. 590. sqq. Payne Knight, Proleg. § 74.
Those writers who imagine the works of Homer to have been composedfortuitously by a club of poets, all actuated by a blind instinct toproduce a number of parts which, when completed, should fit as welltogether as the several members of a statue, are necessarily desirousto establish two points: first, that the Aoidoi recited their worksfrom memory, and that because, secondly, the art of writing wasunknown. By far too much ingenuity has already been expended on thisquestion to allow it to be any longer tempting from its novelty. Wolffand Heyne have obtained all the credit they sought by their visionaryhypothesis, and the echoes of their scepticism are not yet silenced inthe academies and universities. The argument, derived from thepractice of the Rhapsodists, of repeating from memory, is attended bytwo inconveniences: first, it cannot be shown that the order arosebefore the art of writing was common; second, these recitations wereequally made from memory, not only in the age of Pericles, but down tothe latest period of their flourishing. It may, therefore, without theslightest risk to the argument, be granted the academic sceptics thatthe Rhapsodists recited from memory, even when we know with certaintythat they learned the poems from written copies.
To render more credible the notion that the art of writing in the ageof Homer was not yet known, great stress is laid on the powers ofmemory in certain individuals, though from these nothing can inreality be inferred, except, that when necessary, men can certainlyremember a great deal. It matters little, however, for my presentpurpose, whether the Iliad and Odyssey were written by one man or by ahundred; the grandeur of the poetry remains, and to it as a greatfountain-head may be traced several principal streams of Helleniccivilisation.
Plato, indeed, who laboured so assiduously in enlarging the empire andcorroborating the powers of the human understanding, at timesmaintained the fancy that little benefit had been conferred on Greeceby her bard. He observes, but in a manner so ironical that it isdifficult to determine his meaning, that if Homer and Hesiod hadpossessed the gift of improving their contemporaries in virtue theywould never have been suffered to wander about chanting their poems.People, he thinks, would have constrained them by benefits to remainwith them, or, not succeeding in this, would have quitted their homesto attend their footsteps, as in his age many did in the case of thesophists.[987]
Footnote 987:
De Rep. x. 4. t. ii. 318. Stallb.
At the same time he admits the general opinion to have been that Homerwas the great preceptor of Hellas, who taught the sciences of politicsand ethics, together with the whole discipline and economy of humanlife.[988] Perhaps, notwithstanding his great wisdom and his genius,he looked upon the question from a wrong point of view, regardingpoetry as the rival rather than the precursor of philosophy. Themission of the former had, however, in his time been in a greatmeasure accomplished, as far, I mean, as concerned positive teaching;and he did not consider that as civilisation advances and materialisesnations the curb of poetry is the more required to check theirdownward tendencies, and direct their head towards the skies. Theobject of poetry is to keep alive in the human breast the love ofwhatever is noble and beautiful, to dazzle the worldling from theworship of gold by showing him something more glorious than anythingthat gold can purchase, to accomplish the apotheosis of pureaffection, of virtue, of disinterestedness, of great passions, ofpatriotism,—and in Homer all this is effected with a spontaneousenergy, which like the ocean appears equal to bear the whole weight ofhumanity clothed with all its attributes upon its breast.
Footnote 988:
De Rep. x. 7. t. ii. 336.
Greece has no poet worthy to be compared with our Shakespeare and ourMilton but Homer, who possesses some advantages over them both.Shakespeare, buoyant and full of life as was his spirit, feltevidently the waves of his imagination lapse at times from about himand leave his mind stranded and bare on the shores of the immeasurableuniverse. Melancholy creeps over him, like a black vapour, concealingthe Titanian head wont to tower above the region of the clouds. Evenover Milton’s soul, serene in its fiery brightness as it usually is, Ithink I discover something which at times obscures his faith inhimself and human nature, and produces a flagging of the fancy. But inHomer this never appears. Cheerfully and joyously he pursues hiscourse with eternal sunshine on his brow, and a heart beating full andtrue, as if the life of all the world were within him. There is no endof his vitality. He seems as if he could never grow old. His strengthis inexhaustible. Equal to whatever may happen, he nowhere seems to behurried by his subject, or compelled to strain a nerve to accomplishwhat he desires. In himself he appears happy as a god, and only tosympathise in human suffering from the boundlessness of his charity.He comes forth as the sun in the morning, full of brightness, showingall the tears that sprinkle the earth and drying them too, butshedding none. We call him old, though in reality he is allyouthfulness and love. Every function of life goes on harmoniously inhis frame. He enjoys whatever nature brings within the circle of hisexperience. He drinks in with rapture the freshness of dawn,—baskssmilingly in the blaze of noon,—welcomes the stillness of evening—thesolemn grandeur of night. Sleep, too, has for him inexpressiblecharms, and on the pleasures we taste among its bowers he has bestowedevery grateful, every endearing epithet. Milton is far more spiritual,and careers in a course nearer the stars. Shakespeare, in hismetaphysical subtlety and yearning to pierce beyond the grave,suggests stranger thoughts, and calls up a wilder world of fancies.But Homer, as if admitted behind the veil, never doubts for a moment.Habitually, too, his thoughts are of action, of man as he is, of thevirtue of the citizen, of the soldier, of the husband, of the father,of the son, of the wife. He loved the world and all that it contains.His eye could detect beauty where the atrabilious sceptic beholdsnothing but deformity.
Hence the universal fame and admiration of his writings. For, wherevera well-spring of delight exists, the world will discover it and haverecourse to it for ever. The tragic poets who took up his mantlediffered widely from him both in temper and character. The experimentof civilisation had been tried, and been the cause of less happinessthan at the outset it seemed to promise. A spirit of dissatisfactionhad consequently grown up in society, which, shaken by convulsionswithin and assaulted from without by storms, appeared to be fastresolving into its original elements. Upon the minds of the tragicpoets there accordingly fell a gloomy shadow. They looked backwardsand around them, and were saddened by the view of terrible pictureswhich the dark pencil of Fate was constantly filling up. Theinexplicable influence of events upon the inner organisation of manhad caused them too, and their contemporaries equally, to delight ingloom, in slaughter, in revenge, in exhibitions of suffering,analogous in many cases to what they beheld their countrymen inflictupon each other.
Observe the creations of Æschylus:[989] in them, pregnant all withMiltonic haughtiness, energy, grandeur, we already discover symptomsof profound discontent with the character of actual existence and aninvincible yearning towards the past. He seemed desirous to haunt theimaginations of his contemporaries with gigantic phantoms, quarriedout of the wrecks of a vanished ethical system, in which suchgreatness found congeniality and sympathy. His ideas seemed to clothethemselves spontaneously in language of massive structure, like aCyclopean wall, such as before or since no man ever used. He projectedhimself by the force of meditation into the heroic spheres, conversedthere with mighty shades, acquired among them stern principles ofaction, of thought, of belief, of composition; and with these hesought to inspire the men of his own time. His object seems less todelight than to overawe, to persuade than to command. His ideas movealong the highest arch of imagination which spans the universe frompole to pole, or rise out of a sea of darkness which they illuminatefor a moment like lightning flashes in their passage.
Footnote 989:
The plays of this poet, like those of Shakespeare, were, in succeeding ages, altered for the stage—Quint. Instit. Orat. x. 1. The orator, Lycurgus, procured a decree, ordering the tragedies of the three poets to be copied, and statues to be erected in their honour.—Plut. Vit. x. Orat.
All Æschylus’s more marked characters come before us invested withmarvellous attributes, and their voices awake a thrilling mysteriousecho in the depths of the soul. Prometheus, for example,—who or whatin poetry is like him? Some features of resemblance he may have to theSatan of “Paradise Lost,” but only in his indomitable energy, in hisunconquerable will; in all other respects he stands differenced fromthat “archangel ruined” by qualities the most remarkable. Towardsmankind he appears in the relation of supreme love. For their sakealone he braves the anger of Zeus, who, in the tempest of vengeancewhich he pours upon the naked form of this beneficent god, ispresented to the mind as a tyrannical oppressor. Again, in theErinnyes, what mysterious phantoms does he conjure up! The wholescene, where black and blood-dripping they rise before the fancy inthe shrine of Delphi, is, beyond imagination, awe-inspiring andsublime. Like Orestes himself, the fancy is haunted, as we read, by anuneasy consciousness of their presence. They appear like the summitsof the infernal world, thrust up visibly into the world of reality.They are frightful dreams endued with form and vitality, and walkingabroad to scare us even while waking. Never did faith in visionarybeings equal in strength the faith which he constrains us to have inthese his creations. The scent of blood fills the nostrils as we read.We pant,—we shudder,—we expect to hear their footsteps on the carpetbehind us. Nevertheless the effect of Æschylus’ poetry is not, likeByron’s, to humiliate or depress. On the contrary, it imparts to usits energy as we read. It fills,—it expands,—it aggrandises,—itelevates the mind.
Sophocles presents us with a wholly different type of genius. Hisconceptions, without being gigantic, are still great, and have arichness and roundness something like the form of woman. To him, as toRaffaelle, the world appeared pregnant on all sides with beauty. Yet,there was a vein of pensiveness in his fancy which, running throughall his works, imparts to them a witchery independent of the amount ofintellect displayed. He never, like Æschylus, transports us into thedim twilight of mythology amidst the nodding ruins of systems andcreeds. However antique may be the subject which he treats, hisinvention gives it completeness, and he brings it out fresh, glossy,distinct, and beautiful as the creations of to-day. Æschylus carriesus back to the past, Sophocles brings the past forward to us. By avigorous exertion of genius he breathes life into things dead; meltsaway from about them by his warm touch the hoar of antiquity; fills upthe outline; freshens the colours; converts them into contemporaryexistencies. All his sympathies, healthy and true, cling to the thingsaround him: the religion, the form of polity, the climate, the soil ofAttica, invested with the beauty which they assumed in his plasticvision, satisfied his desires. What he found not in realities hebestowed upon them. He idealised his contemporaries. His poetry issunny as the Ægæan in spring, and a breeze as healthful and refreshingbreathes over it. Like the nightingale, whose music he loved, it comesto us full of forgotten harmonies, re-awakening all the associations,all the delights, all the hopes and aspirations of youth. Sweet andmusical, and replete with tenderness, are his marvellous chorusses.They burst upon the heart like the first note of the cuckoo[990] inthe depths of a forest, curling round the mossy trunks of themeditative old trees upon the ear.
Footnote 990:
In Greece heard early in the spring.—Sibthorp, in Walp. Mem. i. 75.
And then his female characters, in which above all things he excels.Not Imogen herself, whose breath like violets perfumes the page ofShakespeare, rises before us a more exquisite vision than Antigone, inher maiden purity, her unfathomable tenderness, her holy affection,filial and fraternal. Even Œdipos, supported and led into the light bysuch a daughter, appears glorious as a god, his involuntary stainsworked off by years of suffering, his reverend old age garlanded bycalamity, wreathed with the tendrils and snowy blossoms of adaughter’s love. And Tecmessa, does she not seem to be Desdemonaripened into a mother? There is no poet who has pourtrayed a wife ofmore unmingled gentleness, or who has better sounded the depths of amother’s heart. Her affection expands like an atmosphere round the boyEurysaces, menaced at once by treacherous enemies and by his father’smadness, and casts a pure and bright ray over the sea of blood andstormy passion and guilt that floats around her. His Dejanira,likewise, is a character of great beauty; but in the Clytemnæstra andElectra, in the Chrysothemis and Ismene, he has been less successful.Among his male characters Œdipos is the masterpiece. Compounded ofungovernable passion, a powerful will, a resolution invincible bysuffering, extreme in love or hate, he stands before us in heroicgrandeur, and like the sun’s orb dilates as he descends beneath thehorizon. Next to him in originality and beauty are Neoptolemos andTeucer, youths of the greatest nobleness of soul, who contraststrikingly with his fox-like Odysseus and the mean-souled imperialbrothers.
To Sophocles succeeds Euripides,[991] whose genius inspired Miltonwith the deepest admiration, as it had before inspired Aristotle.Resembling Sophocles as little as the latter resembles Æschylus, he ismore deeply imbued than either with the tragic spirit, interprets moreunerringly the language of passion and the heart, and unlocks moresurely the hidden springs of pity. In him, however, poetry is less aninstinct than an art. His intellect, lofty, powerful, penetrating,ranged through the most untrodden paths of nature and philosophy,grasped at all learning, at all experience, enriched itself withprodigious stores of reflections, observations, imagery, over which itpossessed the most perfect mastery, to render them subservient to thepurposes of the drama. Other poets learned in effects, may exhibitaction with no less truth and skill; Euripides dares to unveil causes,to give the wherefore and the why of actions, to descend into theabysses of the mind and lay bare the curious mechanism, and, so tosay, central fires which produce and ripen our resolutions and ourdemeanour.
Footnote 991:
This writer, like most of his poetical contemporaries, used constantly to wear a tablet and stylus suspended to his dress.—Athen. xiii. 45. The use in fact of memorandum books was common.—Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 529.
Without the stern grandeur or the rich physical imagery of hispredecessors, he could more surely touch the feelings and create anintense interest in the story of his tragedies. No man, moreover, hasgiven birth to nobler sentiments. A moral beauty broods over hisscenes; he elevates,—he enlarges,—he purifies the affections. Truthsof greatest importance make themselves wings of melody in his verse,and fly across the gulf of two thousand years from him to us. Aboveall things, he may almost be said to have discovered the inexhaustiblemine of love, whence he drew the gold that fashioned the divine imageof Alcestis, the noblest mixture of earth’s mould that ever bore thename of woman. It is true this image is but dimly beheld. Perhaps nogenius, not even Shakespeare’s, could have filled up the outline ofunearthly beauty which Euripides dared to draw. It embodies all theimagination ever conceived of love. Pure as the celestial Artemis,impassioned to perfect disinterestedness, all devotion as a wife, alltenderness as a mother,—content to die, yet jealous of posthumouslove,—sacrificing everything for her husband’s life, yet haunted bythe fear that death might snap the golden links of affection, sheissues forth like a celestial vision to take her farewell of the sun.Euripides might well be proud of this creation. Not Andromache, notNausicaa, not even the far-famed consort of Odysseus can exceed intruth and beauty his conception of Alcestis. Yet this is the poet whomAristophanes had the bad taste to overwhelm with unceasing ridicule,and whom numerous critics, borrowing their canons from him, haverashly pronounced languid and insipid.
Moving on a level below this is the character of Electra in theOrestes. In the Alcestis we have rather the results than thedevelopement of inexpressible love, which
“raised a mortal to the skies.”
But Electra’s affection unfolds itself before us. There she watchesbeside her brother’s bed, contending with the inexpiable guilt ofmatricide, sharing his remorse but comforting him, herself oppressed,yet courageously bearing up for his sake against the worst
“ills that flesh is heir to.”
With the most supreme delicacy is Polyxena conceived; and generally,whatever may be said of Euripides’ aversion for the sex, it may beaffirmed that no poet has more ably or more nobly painted the femalecharacter.
Passing next to comedy, of which Aristophanes must be regarded as therepresentative, we have a department of literature peculiar to Greece,for its comedy resembles that of no other country. It has never,perhaps, been fairly characterised. They who take part with the poetagainst the philosopher exaggerate his merits: the admirers ofSocrates, in revenge for the unjust death of that great man, generallyundervalue them. Let us endeavour to be just. Aristophanes was a poetof vast genius, quick to perceive, and powerful to paint theimperfections, vices, follies, weaknesses, miseries of man in society.He was greedy, too, of reputation, in the acquisition of which hespared neither men nor institutions. The youthful, the gay, thethoughtless, reckoning laughter and amusem*nt among the real wants oflife, (as to the weak and frivolous perhaps they are,) he undertook tobuild his fame on easing the human character of those moral excrementswhich pass off in grinning and mirth. There is, in fact, a load ofsmall malignity and mischief in most mental constitutions, which, ifnot expelled, might obstruct the healthful play of the faculties.Mirth is the form it assumes in its exit, and comedy is one of themeans provided by Nature for promoting its discharge.
Aristophanes, who comprehended at least this part of philosophy, foundan abundant harvest of follies in his fellow-citizens. He saw, too,that of all men they possessed the most inexhaustible good-nature,—toforgive if they could not profit by the satire which was directedagainst themselves. No one could complain of them on this score. Theirrisible muscles were at every man’s service who could coin a joke, ormake faces, or draw a caricature or enact one. Athens was, in fact,the home of laughter: it was the weak side of the national character;and never, since merry-making was invented, did a more skilfulmanufacturer of this autochthonal production exist than Aristophanes.He could make round things square, or straight crooked; he couldinvest the noblest and most sacred things with burlesque and ridicule;he could convert patriotism into a laughable weakness, genius intopuerility, virtue into a farce. He knew how to make the brave man (asLamachos) seem a mere gasconader; the man of genius (as Euripides) adealer in rhythmical jingles; the possessor of highest wisdom and mostunsullied integrity a babbling impostor and a thief. Such were hisprodigious powers. Another excellence he had, not unakin to theformer; he could, when it suited his purpose, place the most nefariousvices on the same level with very harmless foibles, so that bothshould appear equally laughable or equally odious.
But the Athenians must have been a base people had these been thequalities which rendered him popular. They were not: on the contrary,they formed the great drawback on his reputation. His attack onSocrates caused the first cast of the Clouds to be hooted off thestage. But great and crying as were his delinquencies against moralsand philosophy, his genius triumphed, and he became popular in spiteof them; and in spite of them he has continued to be a favourite amongscholars down to the present day. No mean amount of creative powercould have achieved a triumph like this. He possessed, in fact, thequality, whatever it be, which confers vitality on the offspring ofthe mind. Each of his plays, however extravagant its conceptions,however improbable the plot or wild the scene or fantastic thecharacters, still developes a distinct cycle of existences into whichthe breath of everlasting life has been breathed. To every individualwhom he brings upon the stage has been assigned a distinct type ofcharacter, a marked individuality, a moral and intellectualphysiognomy as peculiar to himself as his mask. No man exhibitsgreater variety in a small compass. When he is working out a characterevery word tells, and his ease is infinite. Nothing appears to haveproceeded from him in a hurry. Like the wind, which now rises ingusts, now sinks to a whisper, but never suggests the idea ofweakness, Aristophanes may trifle, but always because he desires totrifle.
Moreover, however barren the subject may be, however rugged, bleak,intractable, he pours over it the dews of poetry, and clothes itmagically with flowers and verdure. Look at the comedies of the Frogsand the Birds. By whom but Aristophanes could they have been renderedtolerable? And yet what marvellous effects grow out of them in hishands! How completely is the imagination detached from the commoneveryday world, and sent drifting down the dreamy intoxicating streamsof poetry! Not in the island of Prospero or Philoctetes, not in thesavage-encircled nest of Robinson Crusoe, not in the most visionaryvale that opens before us its serene bosom in the Arabian Nights, dowe breathe more at large, or more fresh and wholesome air, than amongthe fogs and fens of Acheron, or the eternal forests of the Hoopooking.
With an art, in which Shakespeare was no mean proficient, he opens upa more culpable source of interest in the frequent satire of vices,condemned as commonly as they are practised. He unveils the mysteriesof iniquity with a fearless and by no means an unreluctant hand. Noabyss of wickedness was too dark for his daring muse. He venturedfearlessly upon themes which few since or before have touched on,despising contemporary envy and vindictiveness and the sterncondemnation of posterity. To be plain, he evidently shared in theworst corruptions of his age, and, like many other satirists, availedhimself joyfully of the mask of satire as an apology for entertaininghis own imagination with the description of them. No one with theleast clearsightedness or candour can fail to perceive and acknowledgethe depraved moral character of this comic writer. Only less filthythan Rabelais, his fancy runs riot among the moral jakes and commonsewers of the world, over which, by consummate art and the matchlessmagic of his style, he contrives unhappily to cast a kind of delusivehalo, and to breathe a fragrance which should never be found but wherevirtue is.
Upon the subject of his attack on Socrates his defenders must grantone of two things—that he libelled him ignorantly, or that heexhibited a degree of wickedness capable, under other circ*mstances,of rising to the enormity of Judas Iscariot. Socrates, both for geniusand for virtue, stands at the head of the pagan world. He whom Platoadmired must have stood on a higher level than Plato,—that is, haveoccupied the apex of mere humanity: and in that position we find himin the Gorgias, the Republic, the Euthyphron, and the Phædon. Manycharlatans, since the days of Aristophanes, have endeavoured to puffupward at him the smoke of their ignorance or their envy; and fromthose who tread the mire with them have for a moment hidden the allbut divine serenity that smiles on humankind from that lofty andimmovable basis where the homage of a world has placed him; but thenext breeze has cleared away the stinking vapours, and left both himand them where they were,—the one on the highest, the others on thelowest step of the ladder which connects human nature with the skies.
Upon the dramatic poets whose fragments only remain, it is in thisplace unnecessary to dwell. I therefore pass to the historians andorators, who, no less vividly than her poets, reflect the genius ofGreece. The first age of prose composition, there as elsewhere,exhibited the natural characteristics of dawning art—indecisivenessand timidity. Herodotus, properly speaking, was her earliesthistorian, and even he still walks within the gigantic shadow of epicfable which stretched far over the civilised and cultivated ages ofGreece, as doth that of Memnon at dawn over the Theban plains. Hischaracter as a writer is very remarkable. He narrates like a prophet.His language everywhere bears the impress and image of thesupernatural world wrought into its very substance. He had formed tohimself a poetical standard of human character and human action, whichaccordingly in his work develope themselves in poetical forms. Longand profound meditation had spread out the past before him like a map,on which he could trace every fluctuation in the stream of events withsomething like the skill of a diviner. Men, past or present, may beinterpreted by meditation, if we comprehend the science of humannature. Herodotus understood much of this science. Indeed his chiefgreatness lies in his wisdom.
Ordinary readers, who are always wiser than their dead instructors,discovering him to be frankly superstitious, to have faith in oracles,in dreams, in prodigies, to chronicle many trivial actions, manytrivial remarks, feel or affect for him a species of contempt. Butthey know very little of what is contained in that vast treasury ofepic events. Little do they suspect with how many great statesmen,generals and heroic kings the eloquent Halicarnassian could renderthem familiar. In his pages alone, perhaps, do we view in his trueproportions that man of men, Themistocles, who overtops by a head andshoulders all the other statesmen of the ancient world. There, too,may we best discover the character of his contemporaries, thoseextraordinary personages who connect the heroic with the historicalperiod, and constitute the steps by which we descend from the heightsof mythos and fable to the stern level of realities. Such an epochrequired an historian of peculiar character. In him were to be unitedthe power to comprehend poetical motives to action, and the solemneloquence fittingly to describe deeds springing from such a source.Both were found in Herodotus. He beheld Providence leading man as itwere into the light from the wilderness of mythological times, stillinvested with many of his heroic habits and his forehead beaming withvisionary splendours, but prepared to doff them one by one, and intheir stead to substitute the iron theory and practice ofcivilisation.
Thucydides, a few years only younger than Herodotus, found himselfplaced in the midst of events the most extraordinary, produced by asystem of civilisation prematurely decaying. Greece had not beensuffered to grow wise and great according to the laws which usuallyregulate the ripening of states. She had been scorched intofruit-bearing by the fiery conflicts of the Median war; and herstrength thus brought into play, and found to be great beyondcalculation, was immediately by ambitious statesmen seized upon,parcelled out into lots which were directed against each other, andthus exhausted in petty struggles. In Greece we have an example of astate whose energies, turned inwards, corroded themselves byconcentration; affording a contrast with Rome whose energies, workedoutward and were gradually weakened and lost by expansion. The geniusof the people begot corresponding historians. Rome, had itsperspicuous ornate, diffuse, haughty and sublime Livy; Athens herThucydides full of poetry indeed, and haughtier and more sublime, butcondensed as an oracle, and as an oracle obscure.
Few have measured the greatness of this man. Ordinary critics missingthe ostentatious display of what is termed philosophy, appear toimagine that Thucydides is not a philosophical historian, reservingthis praise for Gibbon, Hume, or Voltaire. But each of these greatwriters would have contemned the praise of such persons. Thucydides inhistorical writing stands above rivalry or comparison. The politicalatmosphere in which he lived, dusky with thunderclouds and continualstorms, his eye could penetrate through, and discover all the veryextraordinary figures that moved beneath it. Calmly, from heights ofspeculation never trodden before, he contemplated the various groupsof generals and statesmen dispersed over his horizon, pierced throughevery disguise into their characters, detected their motives,unravelled their plots, gave their secret maxims a tongue, weighed anddescribed their actions with an impartial sagacity which amonghistorians belongs to him alone. In this consists his philosophy. Thesociety, whose developement he studied, was torn by two antagonistprinciples—aristocracy and democracy, whose struggles, undying in freestates, were then more fierce than at any other period in the historyof the world. To enable his countrymen and posterity to comprehend thewhole chain of events, he opened up a long vista into the past, to thepoint at which those adversaries appeared upon the scene, and threw abroad light upon all their movements down to the time when Providenceremoved him from his post. His conception of an historian’s duty,somewhat different from that now entertained, was adopted by allantiquity, in which every succeeding writer bore testimony to hissuperiority by imitating him. He thought it not enough to narrate anddescribe, but, throwing open the council chamber and stilling thetumultuous agora, he brings the living statesman or demagogue upon thestage, developing in our hearing his views, his conceptions ofsurrounding circ*mstances and characters, his projects, his means foraccomplishing them. That the speeches found in his history wereactually in that form delivered, I will by no means affirm. Heprobably obtained but the substance from report, and himself clothedit in those vivid expressions which two thousand years have notstripped of their freshness. Nevertheless, the more trifling theamount of what he owed to the relations of others, the greater mustappear his genius, his unerring sense of fitness, his dramatic powerof projecting himself successively into a whole gallery of characters,and truly interpreting the opinions, maxims, feelings of each; for noone pretends that he has ever misrepresented a single individual. Andif those speeches be examined on the score of eloquence, whether ofthought or language, it will I think be found, that in almost everyexcellence they may rank with those of Demosthenes. In each a peculiareconomy is observed in the management of the arguments, in thesentiments, in the opinions, in the logical tone, in themanifestations of individuality which diffuse themselves over thewhole and give a colour to it.
The defects—for such there are—resolve themselves into a certainmagisterial air, indicating a consciousness of superiority, sure, moreor less, to offend in all cases, and a certain imperspicuity of stylearising principally from the loose manner in which the drapery oflanguage is flung over his ideas, which is chiefly observable in theorations, his narrative for the most part being free from thisimperfection. Besides, whatever be the series of facts he relates,their importance appears to be enhanced by his manner of handlingthem. He casts aside, as unworthy both of himself and the reader,whatever is of inferior moment. These, in fact, the mere chaff ofhuman affairs, only cling round the grain of action to conceal it, andmust be blown aside by the reader if the historian neglect to do it.
The circ*mstances of the times conferred upon his subject all theinterest and the gloom of tragedy. But it thus suited him the better.His genius delighted in terrible pictures: battles, plagues,earthquakes, general massacres, the storming of cities, theannihilation of great armies. His fancy vividly realised all,—theplague-tumbril rumbling, choked with dead, towards the sepulchralsuburbs,—the streets of Corcyra streaming alternately with democraticand aristocratic blood,—the expected slaughter of Mitylene,—thereality at Melos,—two thousand Helots cut off by the perfidy ofSparta,—the butchery at Platæa,—at Skione,—in Sicily! Through allthese scenes we are precipitated forward, shuddering, compassionating,detesting by turns. But we are neither overwhelmed nor inspired withdisgust for human nature. Our sympathies cling closer and closer tothe historian, who spares no villany, gratifies no malice, tramples onno noble principle, succumbs to no temptation of partiality. Faithfulto his trust he deals forth truth to all, to none the slightestflattery. Not even for his country will he lie. It was she, in fact,with her heroic ethics and grandeur of sentiment, that had taught himhis high principles, and he repaid her by recording all her errors,all her wrongs, all her imperfections: in which he acted like a greatand a wise man. He would have sacrificed for her his life,—he wouldnot sacrifice his conscience.
To him succeeds Xenophon, a writer whom it is difficult tocharacterise. There was in the temper of his mind somethingparasitical, which led him to lean on others for support,—on Socrates,on Cyrus, on Agesilaos. Incapable of acting in a republic the part ofa good citizen, he would have been that rare thing—a virtuouscourtier. From this the tone of his writings may be conjectured.Almost everywhere we discover a degree of gentleness, sweetness,modesty, which steals imperceptibly into the heart, and creates theimpression that he was a man highly amiable and upright. His piety,likewise, causes itself to be felt. He never mentions the gods butwith due reverence, exhibits a strong reliance upon Providence, and,according to his best apprehensions, justifies its ways to men withearnest solicitude. The style of his composition, necessarilyharmonising with the qualities of his mind, is full of suavity,polished elegance, gentlemanliness, bonhomie, the very characteristicsof a popular writer. Readers of moderate understanding can everywhereperceive his drift, can accompany him without feeling out of breath.He is communicative, sensible, rational, indulges in no cloudyflights, never dives out of sight in the ocean of speculation.
Xenophon, however, misunderstood himself when he conceived that it wasfor him to continue the history of Thucydides. It was as if Andrea delSarto had undertaken to complete a picture left in parts unfinished byMichael Angelo. He had neither the penetrating sagacity necessary tocomprehend the internal plan of the picture, the vivifying energy topreserve the intense tragedy of the action, nor the colours toharmonise with what he found painted. Still, considered by himself, hehas great merits. Several scenes in his history, the trial, forexample, of the generals, the death of Theramenes, the battles on theHellespont, exhibit a force of conception and a scope and flexibilityof style uncommon in any literature; and the Anabasis, withoutcomparison his greatest work, reads like a chronicle of the mostchivalrous knight-errantry. The attempt, however flagitious on thepart of Cyrus, had the merit of extreme boldness. It was the modelexpedition which disclosed the secret of Asia to Alexander, and showedwith how little danger its vast empires might be shattered to pieces.Xenophon who, young and adventurous, accompanied the Persian princeand the heroic mercenaries in his pay, contemplated with delight thephysical aspect of the East, its luxurious population, its rovingtribes, with the triumphs of his disciplined and warlike countrymenover innumerable barbarian hosts. This we discover from the interestand animation of his narrative, in which stern realities exceed ingrandeur and wildness the creations of romance. But it is equallyclear that he did not fully comprehend the moral of the scene. For,otherwise, he could never, with these facts before him, haveendeavoured by his Cyropædia, to recommend to his countrymen thoseinstitutions which rendered Persia, with all its wealth, a constantprey to the small republics of Greece.
Of the other writings of Xenophon little need be said: they are theparsley and the rue of Greek literature, bordering and adorning itsentrance, and therefore beheld of all. But most of these have theirbeauty. Even in the hunting treatise, amid the breeding of dogs, andnets, and knives, and boar-spears, and the slaughter of animals, wecatch glimpses of better things,—of glades where the hare frolics bymoonlight, and grassy uplands, dewy and fragrant, where does, poeticalas she of Rylstone, lead forth their fawns at break of day. Thetreatises on the states of Athens and Sparta have, I trust, beenfalsely attributed to this able and accomplished writer. They arecontemptible productions, conceived in the spirit of a servileflatterer of the Dorians, and of a satirist, equally servile andstupid, of the greater and infinitely more intellectual Ionic race.
I pass over the historians known to us only by a few scanty fragments,that I may at once come to the orators, the peculiar ornament andpride of Greece, whose greatest statesmen were equally great asspeakers, more especially at Athens, where, as an art, eloquence wasmost assiduously cultivated, and achieved its greatest triumphs.Tradition attributes to Themistocles, to Pericles, to Alcibiadesconsummate skill in guiding the currents of human sympathy, and asense of their glory lingered on the high places of society likesunshine on the Alps long after they had quitted the world. But asthey did not augment the stores of their country’s literature, we canhave nothing to speak of them here. The orators whose fragments timehas been unable to destroy are however sufficient, if not to satiateour thirst of admiration, at least to show, by the grandeur of theirproportions, how great and glorious Attic eloquence, when entire, musthave been. More than any other department of literature it is thegrowth of patience and toil. A man may be born with the instincts ofeloquence,—fancy, constitutional fire, vehemence,—but unless theseinstincts be broken in and trained by consummate art, nature will invain have bestowed her gifts. These truths were early understood atAthens. It was perceived that without eloquence political distinctionwas unattainable, and therefore all who aspired to
“wield at will that fierce democracy,”
subjected themselves to a course of laborious study, to which our morephlegmatic natures would not submit.
The results we may, in part, still contemplate in that body ofAthenian oratory, which to the author and the statesman is in itself alibrary. Every legitimate form of eloquence is there beheld. InAntiphon and Andocides it appears in rough simplicity, employingcontrivance and art, but employing them awkwardly. Lysias makesconsiderable advances beyond them, clothes his style with grace,constructs his narrative with extraordinary skill, and moves thepassions by considerable pathos. Isocrates it is common with themoderns, who echo one another, to underrate: their delicate ears,offended by his too nicely balanced periods, his antitheses, hismonotonous cadences, refuse to relish that stately harmony, andmajestic flow of language, which recommend the thoughts of this “oldman eloquent,” whose greatest panegyric is pronounced by Plato[992] inthe Phædros. In Isæos we have an argumentative, able pleader; inDeinarchos a vigorous accuser; in Demades the power of splendidimprovisation; in Lycurgus noble sentiments clothed in poeticallanguage, haughty patriotism, the rough virtues of a stoic; inÆschines an union of magnificent style, thoughts full of weight,admirable arrangement, warmth, vivacity, wit. Yet Demosthenes soarsfar above Æschines,—far above all. On him nature had bestowed everyquality which constitutes an ingredient of eloquence,—originality,love of labour, a clear head, a warm heart, a judgment all butunerring, with an impetuous vehemence perfectly irresistible.
Footnote 992:
Opp. t. i. p. 105. seq.—He is said to have received a thousand drachmas for each of his pupils.—Dem. cont. Lacrit. § 11.
A very extraordinary impression is created by the study of thiswriter. He seems never to put forth all his strength. You see him,indeed, bear down every thing before him, overwhelming the argumentsand the gold of Philip, crushing his rivals, annihilating his enemies;but the persuasion rests with you that he could have done more. Youdiscover amid the waves and foam of his terrible eloquence indicationsthat that vast ocean had never been stirred to the bottom, thatoccasion had never called forth all its latent powers of destruction.He measures himself with his antagonist, and is secure of victory. Hepresents a front bristling with the deadliest points of logic, likethe spears of the Macedonian phalanx, and wherever he moves he isinvincible. Nevertheless he appears to advance nothing for the sake ofeffect, to be in search of none of the beauties of style, but ratherto avoid them. He is neither draped, nor painted, nor adorned; but anaked colossus whose sublimity springs from the perfection andgreatness of its proportions.
Other orators persuade, Demosthenes enforces conviction. They wholisten to him have no choice,—they must believe. Without offending thereader’s pride, he makes him ashamed to hesitate. He reminds one ofthe Nile at the cataracts, where, confined by rocks within too narrowlimits, it pours resistlestly along, swelling, deep, with scatteredwhirlpools and foam scarcely visible on its vast surface, seeminglycalm at a short distance, but, to those who look near, agitated,angry, full of unstemmable currents and boiling motion. He hadprofoundly studied human nature, chiefly, of course, as it developesitself in free states, and, better than any man, knew by what motivesit may, in spite of corruption and degeneracy, be impelled tostrenuous action, though but for a brief space. His language, flashingthrough the moral gloom around him, called forth bright reflectionsfrom whatever was brilliant or polished, and kindled the fragments ofpatriotic emotions into a flame. If genius could regenerate, couldpour the blood of youth into the veins of age, could substituteloftiness of sentiment, heroic daring, disinterested love of country,religious faith, spirituality, for sensual self-indulgence, for sordidavarice, for a base distrust in Providence, Demosthenes had renewedthe youth of Athens. The spirit of the old democratic constitutionbreathes through all his periods. He stands upon the last defence ofthe republican world, when all else had been carried, therepresentative of a noble but perished race, fighting gallantly,though in vain, to preserve that fragment sacred from the foot of thespoiler. The passion and the power of democracy seem concentrated inhim. He unites in his character all the richest gifts of nature underthe guidance of the most consummate art, and, doubtless, Hume wasright when he said that, of all human productions, his works approachthe nearest to perfection.
Beyond this point it is irksome to proceed in our view of Grecianliterature, which, after the battle of Cheronæa, was overshadowed bydespotism and dwindled gradually into insignificance. Not that geniuswholly and suddenly disappeared. The soil of Hellenic intellect wasnot entirely exhausted, but the fruit it bore was comparativelyinsipid. A courtly stamp was set upon every thing. Men no longerobeyed their genuine impulses. It was dangerous generally, and alwaysprofitless to be frank and manly. Instead of addressing themselves tothe healthy natural sympathies of the people, writers servilelylaboured by conceit and flattery to wring reluctant patronage fromprinces. The spirit of affectation, accordingly, for the first timemade its appearance. Men tortured their ingenuity to invent smartthings. Enthusiasm and passion and earnestness, characteristics all ofpopular writers, are never fashionable among courtiers, who considersincerity vulgar, and hypocrisy a virtue. In the later Greek writers,therefore, who all wrote for some court or other, we discover theusual frigidity and extravagance which invariably deform theliterature of such states. Along with these faults, others also arefound far more pernicious: the inculcation of selfishness, grosssensuality, base maxims, a depraved taste. Man in the savage state isa garden in which noxious weeds and the most beautiful flowers anduseful plants grow together; civilised and free, he is the same gardencleared, as far as possible, of its weeds; but, when verging a secondtime into barbarism, the weeds again become luxuriant, and entirelychoke or conceal the flowers. And thus too it is in literature. In theliteratures of Greece, Rome, and modern Italy we can now contemplatethe complete process; in our own, a part only, how great a part—it isnot here my business to inquire.
CHAPTER XI. SPIRIT OF THE GRECIAN RELIGION.
Whether the Greeks received their earliest system of philosophy fromthe East, as is commonly believed, or themselves invented it, as to meseems most probable, there can I think be little doubt that onceengaged in philosophical speculations they exhibited in the pursuit adegree of boldness and originality, a patience of research, a power ofcombination rarely if ever equalled in succeeding times. For someages, it is true, from the days of Thales down to those of Socrates(B. C. 600 to B. C. 450) physical investigations and researcheschiefly occupied the philosophers of Greece. They conceived it to bewithin the power of man to discover the nature of the principalelements which compose the world, and the law’s that regulated itsformation.[993] The origin likewise of the human race, of whichnothing is yet known but that which has been revealed, naturallyawakened their curiosity and led to many theories wild and fantasticin the extreme.
Footnote 993:
Cf. Diog. Laert. Pr. iii. 4. Ἀρχαῖος μὲν οὖν τις λόγος καὶ πάτριος ἐστὶ πᾶσιν ἀνθρώποις, ὡς ἐκ θεοῦ τὰ πάντα, καὶ διὰ θεοῦ ἡμῖν συνέστηκεν.—Aristot. de Mund. c. 6. In c. 7. we have a curious list of the various epithets of Zeus, whose name the Pseudo-Aristotle conceives to signify the root of all existence: ὡς κᾄν εἰ λέγοιμεν, δἰ ὅν ζῶμεν. This thought St. Paul expresses by the well-known words—"in whom we live and move and have our being." The author of the Treatise De Mundo then quotes from the Orphic fragments a passage, the doctrine of which strongly resembles the Pantheism of Pope:
Ζεὺς πρῶτος γένετα, Ζεὺς ὕστατος ἀρχικέραυνος· Ζεὺς κεφαλὴ, Ζεὺς μέσσα· Διὸς δ᾽ ἐκ πάντα τέτυκται· Ζεὺς πυθμὴν γαίης τε καὶ οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος· Ζεὺς ἄρσην γένετο, Ζεὺς ἄμβροτος ἔπλετο, νύμφη· Ζεὺς πνοιὴ πάντων, Ζεὺς ἀκαμάτου πυρὸς ὁρμή· Ζεὺς πόντου ῥίζα· Ζεὺς ἥλιος, ἠδὲ σελήνη· Ζεὺς βασιλεὺς· Ζεὺς ἀρχὸς ἁπάντων ἀρχικέραυνος· Πάντας γὰρ κρύψας αὖτις φάος ἐς πολυγηθὲς Ἐξ ἱερῆς κραδίης ἀνενέγκατο μέρμερα ῥέζων.
Cf. Orphic. fragm. 6. p. 138.
Into any consideration of these it is not my design to enter; but theGreeks had another philosophy, which, resting on the basis oftheology, comprehended religion, morals, and politics, and may beregarded as the instrument, the soul, and the measure of theircivilisation. It seems to be a truth frequently overlooked, that manis civilised exactly in proportion as he is religious; at least thiswas the case in Greece, where the highest developement of the nationalmind concurred in Socrates and Plato with the utmost developement ofthe religious instinct, and began immediately to decline in Aristotleand his successors, arriving at the lowest degradation among thegrovelling sophists of the lower empire. This division of philosophyoccupied among the Greeks the place, which in modern times is assignedto religion,[994] that is, it was their guide through this life, andtheir preparation for a better. It may, indeed, be regarded as thespiritual part of paganism, teaching man his duties, and explainingthe grounds and motives which should lead to their performance.
Footnote 994:
“Do good to all,” an evangelical precept (Plat. Rep. i. § 9. p. 33. Stallb.), forming part of that philosophy which taught the Greeks what was honourable and what base, what just and what unjust, what was above all things to be desired and what avoided, how they were to demean themselves towards the gods, towards their parents, their elders, the laws, strangers, magistrates, friends, wives, children, slaves: to wit, that they were to reverence the gods, honour their parents, respect their elders, obey the laws, love their friends, be affectionate to their wives, solicitous for their children, compassionate towards their slaves.—Plut. de Educ. Puer. § 10.
There is one article of faith without which no religion can of courseexist—the belief in God. Devoid of this, it may be doubted whether anindividual or a nation ought not rather to be classed among theinferior animals than among men. It is superfluous, therefore, to saythat the Greeks, preëminently endowed with the highest attributes ofhumanity, were a religious people, and held firmly all the doctrineswhich entitle a people to such an appellation. From their ancestors,the Pelasgi,[995] they inherited a pure and lofty theism, which seemsto have always continued to be the religion of the more enlightened;while among the mass of the people, this central truth of religion wasgradually surrounded by a constantly expanding atmosphere of fable,which obscured its brightness, and in a great measure concealed itsform. Mr. Mitford, whose acute and philosophical mind clearlydiscerned this verity, also seems to have understood the cause. “Afirm belief both in the existence of the Deity, and in the duty ofcommunication with him, appears to have prevailed universally in theearly ages. But religion was then the common care of all men, asacerdotal order was unknown.”[996]
Footnote 995:
Herod. ii. 52.
Footnote 996:
History of Greece, i. 97. Dioscorides in Athenæus observes that no sacrifice is so acceptable to the gods as that which is offered up by members of a family living in unison.—i. 15. In the earliest ages of the world the first-born of every family was esteemed a prophet.—Godwin, Moses et Aaron, i. 6. 2.
The institution of an order of priests, however effected, almostnecessarily corrupted the simple truths of religion, but it isunphilosophical in the highest degree to consider those ancientpriests as impostors on this account, or to speak of their propagationof error as craft. Meditating, in seclusion and solitude, on the fewtruths which had come down to them by tradition or been discovered byreason, they soon bewildered their own wits, and wandered intosuperstition.[997] As was too natural, they conceived that theDivinity must be desirous of giving them signs, marking what was to bedone and what avoided. The mistake of concomitance for causation,often made in more learned and refined ages, would confirm them inthis view. They would, for example, find that in the order of time theflight of certain birds over their heads, the appearance of a serpentin their path, the apparition of certain objects in a dream, wasfollowed by certain misfortunes; while other apparitions weresucceeded by contrary events. Out of these observations the science ofaugury, divination, &c. arose. Yet the inventors were not thereforeimpostors, but rather, in their intentions, benefactors of mankind;and to be respected accordingly.
Footnote 997:
Plato, Crit. t. vii. 146.
The generation of polytheism is to be in like manner explained. It wasan abuse of the inductive method of philosophy. Men perceived, as soonas they began to observe nature and draw inferences from what theybeheld, that the sun and moon[998] exert extraordinary influence,beneficial or hurtful, upon mankind and the world they inhabit; andthe supposition was neither unnatural nor absurd that those gloriousbodies, by whose rising and setting, by whose approximation orretreat, they were in turn affected with gladness or melancholy, withcomfort or discomfort, with good or evil, must be themselves possessedof intelligence as well as power, or at least be inhabited anddirected by beings on whom they bestowed the name of gods. The air,too, “which bloweth where it listeth while thou canst not tell whenceit cometh or whither it goeth,” sweeping around them invisibly, andappearing only in its effects, soon obtained the rank of a deity,[999]as did the ocean which appears to be alive in all its extent, and theearth on whose inexhaustible bounty we subsist.
Footnote 998:
Plat. de Legg. t. viii. p. 182.
Footnote 999:
The air was Zeus.—Lycoph. Cassand. 80. Meurs. Comm. p. 1179. To some particular state of which the ancients alluded when they spoke of Kronos seeking to devour his children and swallowing stones instead of them. For the teeth of time which produce no effect on the air appear to devour whatever is composed of the element of earth. Mythologists, however, have generally omitted to remark that the stones which Kronos mistook for his children were not ordinary blocks of basalt or granite but rather so many statues of children endued, _pro tempore_, with life.—Ἔτι δέ, φησὶν, ἐπενόησε θεὸς Οὐρανὸς βαιτύλια, λίθοις ἐμψύχοις μηχανησάμενος.—Sanchon. ap. Euseb. Præp. Evang. l. i. c. 10. p. 37.
Out of these elements the sacerdotal families of Greece framed itsreligion, which, however, is by no means to be considered a system ofmaterialism. They conceived every portion of nature to be animated byits particular soul, just as they believed the whole, as a whole, tohave one universal soul, the source of all the others. Their mythologywas based on unity. At every step backwards we find the number of godsdiminish, till at length we arrive at the Great One, surrounded by theunfathomable splendours of eternity. This is the θεὸς ὁ θεῶν Ζεὺς, ofwhom Plato[1000] and Aristotle constantly speak when they employ theexpression τὸ δαιμόνιον.[1001] Philosophy, indeed, considered it to beits chiefest task to deliver men from their multitudinous errorsrespecting the nature of God, and of our duties towards Him; so that,in their speculative notions, very little difference from our own canbe detected. Above all men, Plato sought to elevate the sphere ofphilosophy. In his works, in truth, it moves frequently within theconfines of theology, and seldom quits them except for the purpose ofinfusing spirituality into politics and morals.
Footnote 1000:
Crit. t. vii. p. 173.
Footnote 1001:
Poll. i. 5.
This great man, whose profound veneration for the Deity equalled,perhaps, that of Newton himself, conceived that human happinessconsists wholly in the knowledge of God, concerning whose characterand attributes he was anxious that no unworthy ideas should beentertained. His doctrine was, “that we should ever describe God suchas he is.” But, as Muretus has well observed, this was requiring toomuch of human nature, for, most assuredly, we should never speak ofGod if we waited to discover language befitting His majesty. “For themind of man is incapable of comprehending the essence of God; thenature of God is known to God alone; he alone perfectly understandshimself, and in himself all things. The mind of man waxes dim,beholding that stupendous light whose brightness excels all otherlights; and, in proportion as it endeavours more daringly to soar, isit conscious of falling below its great aim.”[1002] The Egyptiansexpressed the same conviction in the celebrated epigraph on the baseof the veiled statue of Neith at Saïs: “I am whatever has been, is, orshall be, and no mortal has drawn aside my veil.” To the same purposewas the saying of Simonides to Hiero, “that the more he contemplatedthe Divine Nature the less he appeared to comprehend it.” AndSocrates, in the Philebos of Plato, observes that he shuddered asoften as the Great Name was to be pronounced lest he should bestowupon it some unworthy epithet.
Footnote 1002:
Muret. ad Plat. Rep. p. 726.
It would appear, indeed, that the idea which the theologians of Greecehad formed of the Almighty was very nearly the same as our own;though, in compliance with popular prejudices, they often made use ofthe plural for the singular. Goodness, power, and knowledge were hischaracteristics, which in substance are the same as the types of thetheologians of modern times—goodness, immutability, truth,—goodnessleading the van in both cases, and the remaining conditions answeringperfectly to each other. For in supreme power and supreme wisdom mustbe immutability and truth, since the Almighty can do all he wills andmust ever will what is right.[1003] In accordance with these views,the spiritual philosophy of Greece maintained that the Deity is thesource of no evil, though traces of a far different theory are hereand there discoverable among the poets. Thus, speaking of thecalamities arising from the anger of Achilles, Homer says
Διὸς δ᾽ ἐτελείετο βουλή.
And, again—
Ζεὺς δ᾽ ἀρετὴν ἄνδρασιν ὀφέλλει τε, μινύθει τε Ὅππως κεν ἐθέλησιν.[1004]
Footnote 1003:
Muret. ad Plat. Rep. p. 727.
Footnote 1004:
Iliad, υ. 242. seq.
So, again, the two vases in the palace of Zeus, out of which hedistributed good and evil to mankind.[1005] Hesiod also introducesZeus, boasting that instead of fire he will give men a curse:—
Τοῖς δ᾽ ἐγὼ ἀντὶ πυρὸς δώσω κακόν
But in all ages men lay their misfortunes at the door of Providence.However, though the notions men entertain of God be ever so just,their conduct will not be thereby influenced, or a religion, properlyspeaking, created, unless several other truths be equally believed. Itmust be established not only that the maker of the universe stillregards his workmanship, and will punish all those who seek todisorder the machine, by entailing remorse upon transgression, butthat man is not a fugitive being, who can escape out of the hands ofGod by shrinking into annihilation, but a creature who, in accordancewith his will, must run the vast circle of eternity, co-lasting withGod himself.[1006] This is the great keystone of religion: withoutthis, men will believe that even the Almighty can have no hold uponthem; that they die, and their accountability ceases. The doctrine ofimmortality, however, has everywhere opened the skies to man, and sethim upon the discovery of the steps leading thither, and, at the sametime, has checked his daring, and poisoned his guilty pleasures.
Footnote 1005:
Iliad, ω. 527. seq. Cf. Muret. p. 737.
Footnote 1006:
Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 95.
From the remotest ages the immortality of the soul constituted aleading dogma in the religion of Greece, and was necessarilyaccompanied by the persuasion, that to the good that immortality wouldbring happiness, and to the evil the contrary.[1007] Homer is full ofthis, and the fables, wherein the enemies of God, parricides,murderers, the perpetrators of impiety and wrong, are, after death,banished to the depths of Tartarus, while various degrees of glory andhappiness, not altogether unlike what is sublimely shadowed forth bySt. Paul, are attributed to the good. That part, for example, ofHeracles, which is divine, ascends to Heaven: Achilles enjoys theeverlasting serenity of the Islands of the Blessed; and, generally,every virtuous man who rightly performed his duty ascended to themansion prepared for him in the stars, there to live for ever inhappiness.[1008] They taught, moreover, that the spirit of man is ofheavenly birth: without this we had lived as so many animals. But Godbestowed upon us an immortal soul, to watch as a guardian angel overthe body, and placed it in the loftiest part of our frame, to teach usto look upward, and remember our birth,—that men are not creatures ofclay but children of God and heirs of immortality.[1009]
Footnote 1007:
Among the people of the East we even discover traces of the doctrine of the resurrection:—Καὶ ἀναβιώσεσθαι, κατὰ τοὺς Μάγους, φησὶ (Θεόπομποσ) τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ ἔσεσθαι ἀθανάτους.—Diog. Laert. Pr. vi. 9.
Footnote 1008:
Plato, Tim. Opp. vii. 45. Cf. p. 97.—Is there not some allusion in the following passage to the scriptural account of the creation of man before woman? Ὡς γάρ ποτε ἐξ ἀνδρῶν γυναῖκες καὶ τἄλλα θηρία γενήσοίντο ἠπίσταντο οἱ ξυνιστάντες ἡμᾶς.—Tim. Opp. t. vii. p. 111.
Footnote 1009:
Plato, Tim. Opp. t. vii. p. 137.
It will not, however, surprise those who comprehend the constitutionof human nature, to find that the Greeks, deprived as they were ofrevelation, were not content with the simple dogma of immortality,rendered happy or otherwise by rewards and punishments, but imagined areturn of the soul to earth, and its passage through a long successionof bodies, until the stains,[1010] contracted during its firstsojourn, had been obliterated: properly, therefore, their Hell was akind of Purgatory, and, no doubt, suggested the original idea of thatintermediate place to the Church of Rome. The religious part of thepagan world, those especially who went through the ceremonies ofexpiation and initiatory rites, firmly believed that bad men met inthe realms of Hades with a just retribution for their crimes, and wereagain launched into the career of life, that they might receive fromothers that which they had done unto them.[1011] Though even in thosedays there were not wanting persons who affected to possess the powerof absolution, nay, of granting for a moderate sum of moneyindulgences and licences to sin. These ragged impostors, of course,patronised only rich sinners, over whose heads vengeance might behanging for crimes committed either by themselves or their ancestors,(since the Greeks also believed that the sins of the parents arevisited upon the children to the third and fourth generations,[1012])professing to be masters of arts and incantations by which the godswere compelled to grant their prayers.
Footnote 1010:
Even among the ancient Christians this doctrine was not wholly exploded. Origen believed it:—Λέγει δὲ καὶ ἄλλα παραλογώτατα· καὶ δυσσεβείας πλήρη μετεμψυχώσείς τε γὰρ ληρωδεὶ καὶ ἐμψύχους τοὺς ἀστέρας καὶ ἑτέρα τούτοις παραπλησία.—Phot. Bib. p. 3. seq.
Footnote 1011:
Plato de Legg. ix. Opp. viii. 152. seq. Cf. 172. seq. 191. seq. De Rep. i. Opp. vi. 9. sqq.
Footnote 1012:
De Rep. ii. 7. t. i. p. 112. sqq. Stallb.—The belief that children suffered for the crimes of their parents, which widely pervaded the pagan world, is nowhere more clearly stated than by Plato:—Γὰρ ἐν Αἵδου δίκην δώσομεν ὧν ἂν ἐνθαδε ἀδικήσωμεν, ἢ αὐτσὶ ἢ παῖδες παῖδων.—Id. c. 8. p. 119.
But while the vulgar and the superstitious were thus deluded, they whopossessed superior education and superior minds, united, with a beliefin the future, a more cheerful faith in the justice and beneficence ofthe Deity. They discovered, even by the light of reason, that humannature has been perverted from its original perfection,—that an evilprinciple has been introduced into our inmost essence,—that in oursinful state we are at enmity with God and all goodness,—and must byprayers and sacrifices be purified and reconciled to him ere we cantaste of happiness. On the subject of prayer the wiser Greeksentertained notions not wholly unbecoming a Christian.[1013] They wellenough understood, that it is not to be considered as an importuningof God for wealth or fame or wisdom, or, as ignorant persons suppose,an impious desire that He would for our sakes depart from his eternalpurposes; but merely the nourishing in our minds of a profoundveneration for the Almighty, a trust in his Providence and wisdom, anhabitual disclosure voluntarily made of our inmost thoughts anddesires, which must be known to him whether we will or not. Hence thegreat philosopher of antiquity[1014] simply prayed for those thingswhich it might please God to send, and that if he asked for anythingwrong it might be denied him.
Footnote 1013:
Cf. Mitford, Hist. of Greece, i. 115. 8vo.
Footnote 1014:
Xen. Mem. i. 3. 2. Cf. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 26.
It is no doubt true, as Mr. Mitford[1015] has observed, that the Godsin Homer are sometimes introduced favouring the perpetrators ofinjustice. But this is in contradiction to the general tone of theGreek religion; according to the tenets of which, every injured personhad his Erinnyes who avenged whatever wrongs or violence he mightsuffer. Nay, even animals were comprised within the protecting circleof this beneficent superstition; and the God Pan was intrusted withthe punishment of excesses perpetrated against them,[1016]
“When vultures that, with grief exceeding measure, Lament their heart’s lost treasure, And o’er their empty nest, in torturing woe, Pass to and fro, Borne on their oarlike wings, Missing the task that brings Joy with it, send their piercing wail on high, Apollo, Pan, or Zeus hearing the cry, Charges th’ Erinnyes, though late, The penalty decreed by Fate To visit on the spoilers far or nigh.”
Footnote 1015:
Hist. of Greece, i. 108.
Footnote 1016:
Æsch. Agam. 55. sqq. with the commentary of Klausen. p. 104.—There occurs in the Scriptures a like sentiment, “He who stilleth the young ravens, when they cry.” So also the Mahomedan tradition, that in the midst of a battle-field, where two mighty hosts were engaged, God preserved from the hoofs of the chargers, and from the feet of men, the lapwing’s nest.
Another doctrine, which we might scarcely expect to discover inpaganism, constituted, nevertheless, a part of the Greek religion,—Imean the power of penitence. In all cases, indeed, this would notavail. The laws of nature (πεπρωμένη, fate) would have their coursewhatever might be the conduct or disposition of man; but in all othercases, tears[1017] shed in secret, solemn acts of religion, and deepcontrition were supposed to appease the anger of Heaven. Besides, whenafflictions fell upon men, they were not necessarily regarded asevils; for by suffering, the soul, they thought, is purified,chastened, endued with wisdom,—
“Sweet are the uses of adversity;”
and, hence, of those trials which ignorance regards as evils, most, ifnot all, are but so many dispensations of mercy, designed to work offthe dross of sin, and restore the spirit to its originalbrightness.[1018] By these means, likewise, transgressors werebelieved to make some atonement for their crimes. Remembrance hauntedthem even in sleep. Their miseries rose up before them, compassed themround, and urged them by invisible stripes into her track, “whose waysare ways of pleasantness, and all whose paths are peace.”
Footnote 1017:
Πηγὴ δακρύων—Soph. Trach. 852. Antig. 802. A Scriptural expression, “O that mine eyes were a _fountain of tears_.” Æsch. Agam. 68. sqq. Eumen. 900. Suppl. 1040.
Footnote 1018:
Æsch. Agam. 160. sqq.—Klaus. Com. p. 120. Hence the proverb, παθήματα μαθήματα.—Blomfield.
But over the impenitent wicked vengeance for ever impended; nor couldwealth or rank purchase impunity, as the bare-footed friars andass-mounters of the time were fain to persuade the credulous andweak-minded. Long withheld, the anger of the Gods descended at lengthin showers, utterly extirpating the evil-doers.[1019] Thus perishedParis, the violator of marriage and of hospitable rites; thusClytemnæstra and Ægisthos, adulterers and murderers; thus the wholehouse of [OE]dipos, involved in an unutterable cycle of misery andcrime. The interval, moreover, between the commission of guilt and itsfinal punishment, was given up to the Erinnyes,[1020] those dire andmysterious powers of vengeance, whose breathless chace after crime ispourtrayed with so much sublimity by Sophocles. These divinities,starting into instant birth, whenever blood was unlawfully shed,walked perpetually beside the murderer to his grave,—to him alonevisible, to him alone audible.
Footnote 1019:
Pind. Pyth. iii. 11. Æsch. Agam. 342. sqq. Klausen. Com. p. 140.
Footnote 1020:
Cf. Æsch. Eum. 859. seq.—Schol. ad Æsch. Tim. Orat. Att. t. 12. p. 384.
The gross and carnal-minded contrived, indeed, in the case of lessertransgressions, to remain blind to this deformity, while youth andhealth and prosperity cast their illusions over their path. But age inthis matter sharpened their sight. On drawing near the brink of thegrave, the vices, hitherto so blythe and comely, appeared to grow moreshrivelled and hideous and unlovely than their own impurecountenances, and they would then fain have parted company with them.But, no! Having been comrades of their own choosing, Zeus chained themto their side to the last, unless repentance severed the link; andtheir fearful howlings, night and day, broke their repose, harrowed uptheir feelings, augmented tenfold their terrors, while sweat andtears, and agonising shrieks burst from them even in their dreams. Thewicked, therefore, in the deepest darkness of paganism, were not leftwholly to the error of their ways. But God reserved himself a witnessin their hearts, and set up a light by which they might rightly, ifthey chose, direct their footsteps. It is true that the cardinalverities of religion were then but very imperfectly perceived, that,to get at them at all, men had to break through the shells of manyfables, and that, when found, they must be for the most part enjoyedin secret, far from the din of ambition. Not, indeed, that the peoplerefused their sympathy to virtue,—public opinion is never so farcorrupted,—but that in the world there has always existed a strongcurrent bearing men far from the track of duty and holiness.
There was, no doubt, some degree of fanaticism mixed up with all this.The priesthood, an order of men much calumniated, but without whomsociety would be worse by far than it is, found it necessary to alluremen into the bosom of their church by imposing ceremonies, bysacrifices, and by the mysterious disclosure of certain truths in theperformance of certain rites. It will be seen that I allude to themysteries. On the occasion of initiation, as if to intimate that mencannot be virtuous or religious by proxy, each individual became hisown priest and sacrificed[1021] for himself. But in what initiationitself consisted, no man knows. Antiquity has revealed nothing, andnothing can we discover. The hypotheses of scholars are, therefore, somany dreams, and a mere waste of ingenuity; for, if they should bychance hit the mark, there exist no means of proving that they havedone so. But of this we are sure, that a persuasion was widely spreadthat a blissful immortality awaited the initiated. A greater degree ofholiness was supposed to attach to them,—there was a spell shed aroundtheir persons,—in situations of danger they experienced less of thefear of death. In storms, for example, at sea, when the ship seemedabout to sink—"Have you been initiated?" was the question men askedeach other. Still, among philosophers, the wisest and best sometimesneglected this popular consummation of a pious life. Socrates belongednot to this communion, a circ*mstance which rendered it more easy tofasten upon him the charge of impiety, in those days more atrociousthan now, since, to be esteemed inimical to the gods, was the surestway to make enemies of men. Further than this, it is not necessarythat I enter into the gentile faith, which only incidentally, as itaffected morals, belongs to my subject.
Footnote 1021:
Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 712.
But there exists in all countries a minor cycle of superstitions,which, more strongly perhaps than anything paints the peculiarities ofthe national character. In the north, as we know, this indigenousbelief has survived all changes in the public creed, and will subsistto the last, lingering among our woods, our ruins, our moonlitmeadows, our churchyards, by our firesides. Fairies, witches, ghosts,goblins can by no advances in civilisation be put to flight. They sailin our steamers on the ocean, ride at quickest speed along therailroads, go to bed with the first lady in the land, and even nestlebeneath the statesman’s vest.[1022] With us these aërial beings, orspectres of crime, too commonly assume an aspect grotesque ordevilish, but they nevertheless keep alive in the popular mind thespirit of romance and poetry, one of the never-failing handmaids ofreligion. Mythology rarely penetrates down to these primitivesuperstitions, which, however, constitute the basis of the wholescience, and in Greece assumed, in many cases, forms of beautyanalogous to its loftier and more poetic fables.
Footnote 1022:
See, for example, Lord Castlereagh’s vision of the fire-devil in Mr. Lockhart’s Life of Sir Walter Scott.
The place occupied in our own popular mythology by the“light-sandalled fays,” was in Greece filled by the Hamadryads andNymphs.[1023] No wood or grove or solitary tree, no fountain or rillin moss-grown cell or rustic cavern, existed without its co-existentdivinity, female generally, and instinct with beauty and beneficence.These creatures, the Jinn and Jinneh of the Arabs, extended theirdominion over all minor streams, and sported, in the softness andstillness of night, athwart the billows silvered by the moon; but thedeities of great rivers, as the Acheloös, the Peneios, and others,were male. Being only a few degrees raised above humanity, they wereoften enamoured of mortals, to whom they appeared arrayed inloveliness, amid the glimmering forests, at dawn or twilight, or when
“overhead the moon Wheels her pale course.”
Footnote 1023:
The same superstitions, a little modified, are still found in many parts of Greece. “The religious feelings of the Cretan, in the nineteenth century, differ very little, if at all, from those entertained for the Naïads by his heathen ancestors.”—Pashley, Trav. in Crete, i. 89.
It was not always, however, that the love of a nymph proved ablessing. There were occasions when, having for a moment revealedtheir superhuman charms to some shepherd in his romantic solitude, orto some poet worshiping the muses alone, beside the inspiring mount orspring, they again capriciously withdrew, and left him vision-smittento pine or, perchance, to die.
Nor were the Greeks wholly devoid of belief in evil spirits, for thedemon Alastor,[1024] which was a deification of the principle thatincites to crime and afterwards brings vengeance, can in no way beregarded as good. Typhon, too, with the Giants and Titans, had atleast a predominance of evil in their character, but these are treatedof at length by the mythologists. Several superstitions, commonlysupposed to be wholly Oriental, were current in Greece, such as thatmen had the power by using certain spells to quit their mortal formsand roam disembodied through the earth. By magic rings, too, andhelmets they might be rendered invisible, and, thus protected, enterinto the secret chambers of kings, pollute their wives, and rifletheir treasures.[1025] Means, moreover, they had, confounded in thoseages with supernatural power, of charming poisonous serpents, as tothis day is done by the subjects of our Eastern empire, and thesnake-catchers of Egypt; and though it be now known that opiumconstitutes no small portion of this charm, the people generally, bothin the East and West, conceive other influences to be employed thanthose of legitimate art.
Footnote 1024:
Cf. Poppo, Proleg. in Thucyd. i. 14. Xenarchos observes that the home perishes when conflicting fortunes attach to the master, and into which the Alastor creeps:
φθίνει δόμος ἀσυντάτοισι δεσποτῶν κεχρημένος τύχαις, ἀλάστωρ τ᾽ εἰσπέπαικε.
Ap. Athen. ii. 64. seq. See also Æsch. Choeph. 119. Eumen. 560. 802. with Klausen. Æsch. Theolog. i. 9. 56. seq. et ad Agam. p. 119. The Egyptians had their Babys or Typhon, a god of evil.—Athen. xv. 25.
Footnote 1025:
Plat. Rep. ii. § 3. Stallb.
There was not in later times, perhaps, that boundless faith in spellsand transformations still subsisting in the East. But in the earlierages, and in the gloomy mountain recesses of Arcadia, events equallystrange were supposed to have happened. Thus Lycaon having sacrificedan infant to Zeus Lycæos, and sprinkled the blood upon the altar,immediately became a wolf;[1026] and it was reported that any one whoperformed this dreadful sacrifice, and afterwards by accident tastedof the human entrails, when mingled with those of other victims,forthwith underwent the same transformation.[1027] Thus we find thegloomy legend of the Breton forests existing in the heart of thePeloponnesos, where there can, I fear, be little doubt, that humanvictims were habitually offered up. Another ancient superstition,which found its way into Italy, was, that a person first seen by awolf lost his voice, whereas if the man obtained the prior glimpse ofthe animal no evil ensued.[1028]
Footnote 1026:
Paus. viii. 2, 3. Cf. Plat. Rep. viii. 16. Stallb.
Footnote 1027:
Plat. Rep. viii. 16. t. ii. p. 223. Stallb. Cf. Bœckh in Platon. Minoem. p. 55. seq.
Footnote 1028:
Muret. ad Plat. Rep. i. p. 670. where, with much ingenuity, he detects an allusion to this superstition in a hasty glance of the philosopher.—Plin. Hist. Nat. viii. 34. Schol. ad Theocr. xiv. 21. Virg. Ecl. ix. 53. Donat. in Ter. Adelph. iv. 1. 21. et Stallb. ad Plat. Rep. i. 37.
The belief in ghosts, coeval no doubt with man, flourished especiallyamong the Greeks. Hesiod entertained peculiar notions on this subject,which some suppose to have been borrowed from the East, that is, hebelieved that the good men of former times became, at their decease,guardian spirits, and were entrusted[1029] with the care of futureraces. Plato adopts these ghosts, and gives them admission into hisRepublic, where they perform an important part and receive peculiarhonours.[1030] When they appeared, as sometimes they would, by day,their visages were pale and their forms unsubstantial like thecreations of a dream.[1031] But, as among us, they chiefly affectedthe night for their gambols, and in Arcadia particularly, would appearto honest people returning home late in cross-roads, and such placeswhence they were not to be dislodged but by being pelted apparently bypellets made from bread crumb, on which men had wiped their fingers,carefully preserved for this purpose by the good folks aboutPhigaleia.[1032]
Footnote 1029:
Hes. Opp. et Dies, 121. seq. where see Goettling.
Footnote 1030:
De Rep. v. 15. t. i. 377. seq. The Magi, among whom supernatural sights and powers were most familiar, maintained that the Gods occasionally appeared to them, and that the atmosphere is filled with spectral shadows, which, floating about like mists or exhalations, are visible to the sharpsighted.—Diog. Laert. Pr. vi. 9. A similar belief prevailed among the early anchorites. “It was their firm persuasion, that the air which they breathed was peopled with invisible enemies; with innumerable dæmons who watched every occasion and assumed every form, to terrify, and, above all, to tempt, their unguarded virtue.”—Gibbon, vi. 263.
Footnote 1031:
Æsch. Agam. 68.—Klaus. Com. p. 108.
Footnote 1032:
Athen. iv. 31.
The most remarkable prank played by any ancient ghosts, however, withwhose history I am acquainted, did not take place in Greece, but inthe Campagna di Roma, where, after a bloody battle between the Romansand the Huns, in which all but the generals and their staff bit thedust, two spectral armies, the ghosts of the fallen warriors, appearedupon the field to enact the contest over again. During three wholedays did these valiant souls of heroes, as the Homeric phrase is,carry on the struggle; and the historian who relates the fact, iscareful to observe that they did not fall short of living soldiers,either in fire or courage. People saw them distinctly charge eachother, and heard the clash of their arms. Similar exhibitions were tobe seen in different parts of the ancient world. In the great plain ofSogda,[1033] for example, spectral armies of mighty courage butvoiceless, were in the constant habit of engaging in mortal combat atthe break of day. Caria likewise possessed a favourite haunt of thesewarlike phantoms. But here the apparition was only occasional, and allits evolutions were performed in the air, which was the case inEngland, as we have been assured by very old people, before thebreaking-out of the American war. Another fray of ghosts took placeevery summer in Sicily on the plain of the Four Towers, but in thiscase the whole business was carried on at noon, to the no smallannoyance of Pan who usually takes his siesta at that hour,—that is,if they were as noisy in their battles as the Campanianspectres.[1034]
Footnote 1033:
Which had once been a lake.—Vit. Isidor. ap. Phot. Bib. p. 839.
Footnote 1034:
Phot. Bib. p. 339.
Like the Roman Catholics, the Greeks had great faith in miraculousimages, holy wells, &c. and their descendants still maintain the samecreed. Near the Church of Haghia Parthenoë in Crete, is a most copiousfountain deriving its name from the same holy and miracle-workingvirgins to whom the church is dedicated, and who also preside over thewaters. “The worship of the headless body of Molos has also itsparallel in modern times.”[1035] As the Cretan Christians for manyyears reverenced the head of Titus, though deprived of its body, sotheir heathen ancestors used annually to honour by a religiousfestival the body of Molos, the well-known father of Meriones, thoughdeprived of its head. The legend, told to explain the ancient ceremonyin which the headless statue of a man thus exhibited, was that “afterMolos got possession of a nymph’s person without having first obtainedher consent, his body was found, but his head had disappeared.”[1036]An image of the Virgin travelled by water from Constantinople toGreece, where it was shortly after seen standing up in the waves nearMount Athos. Similar legends obtained of old. Near Biennos inCrete,[1037] “has been dug up the bones and skulls of giants, many ofwhom were eight or ten times the size of common men.”[1038]
Footnote 1035:
Pashley, Travels in Crete, i. 88.
Footnote 1036:
Pashley, Travels in Crete, i. 177.—Plut. de Orac. Def.
Footnote 1037:
Herod. iv. 33.—Pashley, Travels in Crete, i. 192.
Footnote 1038:
Pashley, i. 278.
Of the various modes of penetrating into the future,[1039] prevalentamong the people, I may mention some few. Prophetesses are frequentlyspoken of in Scripture, and in the Acts of the Apostles[1040] is givenan account of a young female slave who brought her master large sumsof money by this trade, which was that of a gipsy. Others there werewho, like many among the Orientals, professed to understand thelanguage of birds. A slave, said to possess this knowledge, iscelebrated, by Porphyry, and was probably from the East.[1041] Onesort of divination was practised by pouring drops of oil into a vesseland looking on it, when they pretended to behold a representation ofwhat was to take place. This in Egypt is still practised, merelysubstituting ink for oil, and a great many travellers appear tobelieve in it. Soldiers going to war were especially liable to fallinto this kind of foolery.[1042]
Footnote 1039:
See Max. Tyr. Diss. iii. p. 31–38.
Footnote 1040:
C. xvi. v. 16. sqq.
Footnote 1041:
De Abstinentiâ, iii. Cf. Cedren. Michael, Compotat. εἰσὶ γὰρ τίνες οἱ ἐν ἐλαίῳ ὁρίοντες μαντεύονται.—Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 1093.
Footnote 1042:
Οἱ γὰρ ἐπὶ πόλεμον ἐξιόντες ἐπητήρουν τὰς διοσημείας.—Schol. Aristoph. Acharn. 1106.
The use of holy water on entering temples is of great antiquity. Thiscustom was called περίῤῥανσις, and the act was performed with thebranch of the fortunate olive.[1043] There stood at the door of thetemple a capacious lustral font, whose contents had been rendered holyby extinguishing[1044] therein a lighted brand from the altar; thencewater was sprinkled on themselves, by worshipers or by the officiatingpriest. A similar apparatus stood at the entrance to the Agora, topurify the orators, &c. going to the public assembly. It was likewiseplaced at the door of private houses, wherein there was a corpse, thatevery one might purify himself on going out.[1045] Superstitiouspersons usually walked about with a laurel leaf in their mouth, oroccasionally bearing a staff of laurel, there being a preserving powerin that sacred shrub: hence arose the proverb δαφνίκην φορῶβακτήριαν,—"I carry a laurel staff," when a man would say, I have nofear. Persons not thus protected it is to be presumed were terrifiedif a weasel or dog crossed their path; and the omen could only beaverted by casting three stones at it, the number three beingexceedingly agreeable to the gods. Certain fruits would not burst onthe tree if three stones were cast into the same hole with the seedwhen the tree was planted. Two brothers walking on the way conceivedit ominous of evil if they happened to be parted by a stone. On everytrifling occasion altars and chapels were erected to the gods,particularly by women; no house or street was free from them. Forexample, if a snake crept into the house through the eaves, forthwithan altar was erected. At places where three roads met, stones were setup, to be worshiped by travellers, who anointed them with oil. If amouse nibbled a hole in a corn-sack, they would fly to the portentinterpreter, and inquire what they should do,—"Get it mended," wassometimes the honest reply. Horrid dreams[1046] might be expiated, andtheir evil effects be averted, by telling them to the rising sun. Whenthe candles spit, it was a sign of rain.[1047] During thunder andlightning they made the noise called _Poppysma_,[1048] which it washoped might avert the danger. On board ship sailors entertained theidea, that to carry a corpse would be the cause of shipwreck, ashappened to the vessel which was bearing to Eubœa the bones ofPelops.[1049] The sailors of the Mediterranean, for this reason, willrefuse to receive mummies on board.
Footnote 1043:
Ramo felicis olivæ.—Virgil. Æn. vi. 230.
Footnote 1044:
Athen. ix. 76.
Footnote 1045:
Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 287. Eurip. Alcest. 99.
Footnote 1046:
Cf. Plut. Alcib. § 39.
Footnote 1047:
Casaub. ad Theophr. Char. p. 300.
Footnote 1048:
Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 260. 262. 626.
Footnote 1049:
Pausan. v. 13. 4. Palm. Exerc. in Auct. Græc. d. 398.
BOOK III. WOMEN.
CHAPTER I. WOMEN IN THE HEROIC AGES.
There is no question connected with Grecian manners more difficultthan that which concerns the character and condition of women.[1050]On so many points did they differ in this matter from us, that, unlesswe can conceive ourselves to be in the wrong, the condemnation of thewhole Hellenic theory of female rights and interests and influencemust, as a matter of course, ensue. I do not say that, after all, thisis not the conclusion we should come to. Reason may possibly be on ourside; but certainly it appears to me, that too little pains hash*therto been taken to arrive at the truth; and as it is aconsideration by no means unimportant, I have bestowed on it more thanordinary attention in the hope of letting in additional light, howeverlittle, on this obscure and unheeded department of antiquities.
Footnote 1050:
Describing the approach to the temple of Aphrodite, Lucian says: εὐθὺς ἡμῖν ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ τοῦ τεμένους Ἀφροδίσιοι προσέπνευσαν αὖραι.—Amor. § 12. These gentle airs should breathe into the style and language of the author who treats of the women of Greece; but, in my own case, research I fear and the effects of fifty-two degrees of north latitude will prevent this consummation so devoutly to be wished.
In form the Greek woman was so perfect as to be still taken as thetype of her sex. Her beauty, from whatever cause, bordered closelyupon the ideal, or rather was that which, because now only found inworks of art, we denominate the ideal. But our conceptions of formnever transcend what is found in Nature. She bounds our ideas by acircle over which we cannot step. The sculptors of Greece representednothing but what they saw,[1051] and even when the cunning of theirhand was most felicitous, even when loveliness and grace and all thepoetry of womanhood appeared to breathe from their marbles, theinferiority of their imitations to the creations of God, in propertiesbelonging to form, in mere contour, in the grouping and developementof features, must have sufficed to impress even upon Pheidias, thathigh priest of art, the conviction of how childish it were to dream ofrising above nature. The beauty of Greece was, indeed, a creature ofearth, but suggested aspirations beyond it. Every feature in thecountenance uttered impassioned language, was rife with tenderness,instinct with love. The pulses of the heart, warm and rapid, seemed topossess ready interpreters in the eye. But, radiant over all, theimagination shed its poetic splendour, communicating a dignity, anelevation, a manifestation of soul, which lent to passion all themoral purity and enduring force that belong to love, when love isleast tainted with unspiritual and ignoble selfishness.
Footnote 1051:
On the beauty of the modern Greek women I can speak from my own observation; but most travellers are of the same opinion, and Mr. Douglas, in particular, gives the following testimony in their favour: “Though the delicacy of her form is not long able to sustain the heat of the climate and the immoderate use of the warm bath, I can scarcely trust myself to describe the beauty of a young Greek when arriving at the age which the ancients have so gracefully personified as the Χρυσοστέφανος Ἥβη. Were we to form our ideas of Grecian women from the wives of Albanian peasants we should be strangely deceived; but the islands of Andro, Tino, and, above all, that of Crete, contain forms upon which the chisel of Praxiteles would not have been misemployed.”—Essay, &c. p. 159.
I despair, however, of representing by words what neither Pheidias norPolycletos could represent in marble or ivory. The women of Greecewere neither large nor tall. The whole figure, graceful but notslender, left the imagination nothing to desire. It was satisfied withwhat was before it. Limbs exquisitely moulded,[1052] round, smooth,tapering, a _torso_ undulating upwards in the richest curves to theneck, a bosom somewhat inclined to fulness, but in configurationperfect, features in which the utmost delicacy was blended withwhatever is noblest and most dignified in expression. Both blue eyesand black[1053] were found in Greece, but the latter most commonly.Even Aphrodite, spite of her auburn hair, comes before us in the Iliadwith large black eyes, beaming with humid fire. No goddess but theAttic virgin has the cold blue eye of the North, becoming her maidenlycharacter, reserved, firm, affectionate, with a dash of shrewishness.The nose was straight and admirably proportioned, without anything ofthat breadth which in the works of inferior sculptors creates an ideaof Amazonian fierceness. Beauty itself had shaped the mouth and chin,and basked and sported in them. In these, above all, the Grecian womanexcelled the barbarians. Other features they might have resemblinghers, but seldom that Attic mouth, that dimpled, oval, richly-roundedchin, which imprinted the crowning characteristic of womanhood uponher face, and stamped her mistress of man and of the world.
Footnote 1052:
Cf. Winkelmann, iv. 4. 44.
Footnote 1053:
Plat. Repub. iv. t. vi. p. 167.—That black eyes were most common among the Greeks may be inferred from this, that, in describing the parts of the eye, they called the iris τὸ μέλαν, which is sometimes of one colour, and sometimes of another.—Arist. Hist. Anim. I. viii. 2. He observes, further on, that some persons had black eyes, others deep blue, others gray, others of the colour of goats.—§4. Other animals have eyes of one colour, except the horse, which has sometimes one blue eye. Eyes moderate in size and neither sunken nor projecting were esteemed the best.—§. 5. Large eyes, likewise, were greatly admired. Hence Hera is called βοῶπις by Homer. Aristœnetos, describing his Laïs, says: ὀφθαλμοὶ μεγάλοι τε καὶ διαυγεῖς καὶ καθαρῷ φωτὶ διαλάμποντες.—Scheffer ad Æl. Hist. Var. xii. 1. With respect to the colour of the hair see Winkelmann, iv. 4. 38. It was, of course, considered a great beauty to have it long, and, therefore, Helen, in honour of Clytemnæstra, cut off the points only.—Eurip. Orest. 128. seq.
A creature thus fashioned and gifted with an intellect which, if lessrobust and comprehensive, is equally active with that of man and stillmore flexible, could scarcely be degraded into a domestic drudge andslave, and in Greece was not.[1054] Already, in the heroic ages, womenoccupied a commanding position in society, somewhat less honourablethan is their due, but, in many respects, higher and more to be enviedthan was appropriated to them in the ignorant and corrupt times ofchivalry which the Homeric period has been thought greatly toresemble. In those days, though fashion required more reserve in thefemale character than is consistent with the spirit of modern manners,persons of different sexes could meet and converse together withoutscandal. Gentlewomen of the highest rank went abroad under their ownguidance. On the arrival of a foreign ship upon the shore we find anArgive princess descending without any male protector to cheapenarticles of dress and trinkets, which however, as the event proved,was not without danger, for both she herself and a number of her maidswere carried away captives by the perfidious strangers.[1055]
Footnote 1054:
On the respect paid to women, see Demosth. in Ev. et Mnes. § 11.
Footnote 1055:
Herodot. i. 1.
Homer abounds with proofs both of the liberty women enjoyed and thehigh estimation in which they were held. They were quite as much as isconsistent with prudence and delicacy the companions of men.[1056] Andin more than one particular, as in the bathing[1057] and perfuming ofdistinguished male guests, the manners of those times allowed of orrather enjoined familiarities greater than the customs of anycivilised modern nations permit. Ladies lived at large with theirhusbands and families in the more frequented parts of the house, dinedand drank wine with them, rode or walked out in their company, or,attended by a female servant, and were, in fact, in the modern senseof the word, mistresses of the house and everything it contained.
Footnote 1056:
Athen. i. 18.
Footnote 1057:
Describing the beauty of Hippodameia, daughter of Anchises, Homer says, she excelled all the maidens of her age in beauty, skill in female accomplishments, and endowments of the mind, for which reason Alcathoos, the noblest man in Troy, chose her to be his wife.—Iliad, ε. 480. sqq. He must necessarily, therefore, have enjoyed opportunities of studying her character. Another illustration of the freedom of heroic female manners is furnished by the author of the Little Iliad, who relates that, when Aias and Odysseus were contending for the armour of Achilles, the Greeks, by the advice of Nestor, sent certain scouts to listen beneath the battlements of Troy to the conversation of the virgins who, in the cool of the evening, it may be presumed, were wont to walk upon the ramparts and converse frankly of the exploits of their illustrious enemies.—Sch. Aristoph. Equit. 1051. Cf. Il. ζ. 239.
When the husband happened to be absent it was not, indeed, considereddelicate, if the mansion was filled with youthful and petulant guests,for the wife to be seen much among them,[1058] though it still appearsto have been incumbent upon married ladies to exercise the rites ofhospitality, which sometimes, as in the case of Helen, opened the wayto intrigue and elopement. A similar event, veiled in mythologicalobscurity, shipwrecked the virtue of Alcmena.[1059] Clytemnæstra, too,and Ægialeia the wife of Diomede, fell before the temptations affordedby the absence of their lords,[1060] while Penelope surrounded withyouthful suitors, assailed by reports of her husband’s death,alternately soothed and menaced, remained true to her vows and becameto all ages the pattern of conjugal fidelity.
Footnote 1058:
Hom. Odyss. α. 330. sqq.
Footnote 1059:
Apollod. ii. 4. 8.
Footnote 1060:
Ovid. Ibis. 349. seq. Tzetz. ad Lycoph. 384. 1093.
The examples are many of the facility of their intercourse withstrangers. Sthenobœa wife of Prœtos, king of Argos, must have enjoyednumerous occasions of being alone with Bellerophon before she could,like the wife of Potiphar, have tried his honour and forfeited herown.[1061] Helen after her return to Sparta, banquets and associatesfreely with strangers at the table of her husband, where, by herconversation and remarks, we discover how quick and penetrating theunderstanding of women was in those ages supposed to be. Nothing couldbe further from the mind of those heroic warriors than the idea ofregarding woman merely as an object of desire, or as a householddrudge.[1062] If she receives praise for her beauty, or industrioushabits, still more is she celebrated for her mental endowments, forher wisdom, for her maternal love. Where in fiction or in life shallwe find a lady more gentle, more graceful, more accomplished, moregifted with every charm of womanhood than Helen, who, nevertheless,falls a prey to seduction! Where more feminine tenderness, or truerlove than in Andromache? Where more matronly sweetness and dignitythan in the Phæacian Arete; more unblameable vivacity, blitheunreserve, greater sensibility, united with the noblest maidenmodesty, self command and proud consciousness of virtue, than in thatloveliest of poetical creations her daughter Nausicaa.
Footnote 1061:
Apollod. ii. 3. 7. Sch. Aristoph. Ran. 1041.
Footnote 1062:
Hesiod suggests a luxurious picture of female life in the heroic ages.—Opp. et Dies. 519. seq.
Homer himself felt all the charm of this exquisite creation andlingered over it with the fondness of a parent. She is the very flowerof the heroic age. In the rapid glimpse afforded us of her life, wediscover what the condition and occupations of a noble virgin were inthose primitive times, a felicitous mixture of splendour andsimplicity, approaching nature in the rough energy of the passions,with feelings healthy and vigorous and happy in the utter absence ofsickly sentimentality. Though daughter to a king Nausicaa does notdisdain to care for the family wardrobe. Her nuptial day is not fardistant, and, agreeably to the nature of her sex in all ages, she isdesirous that her dress should on that occasion appear to the bestadvantage, but to her father modestly feigns to think principally ofher brothers.[1063] Alcinoos aware of the feint, smiles inwardly whilehe approves of her solicitude. With his ready permission she piles thegarments on the royal car drawn by mules, and then, mounting the seatwhip in hand, departs for the distant rivulet accompanied by hermaids. Of these girls, the poet says, two, clothed by the graces withloveliness, used to sleep in the Princess’s chamber one on either sidethe door.
On reaching the secluded spot, the umbrageous embouchure of a mountainbrook where they usually performed their lowly task, it was theirfirst care to unharness the mules, which were turned loose to graze onthe shore. Their labours occupy them but a portion of the morning, andthese concluded, they dine sumptuously enough, in some shady nookoverlooking the stream, on wine and viands brought along with themfrom the palace. To remove every idea of sordid toil and fatigue Homeris careful to represent them full of life and animal spirits, boundingsportively along the meadows, having first bathed and lubricated theirlimbs with fragrant oils. The game which engages them while theirrobes and veils are drying on the pebbly beach received in later agesthe name of Phæninda,[1063] and consisted in throwing a ballunexpectedly from one individual to another of a large party scatteredover a field. As it was uncertain to whom the person in possession ofthe ball would cast it, every one was on the watch, and much of thesport arose from the eagerness of each to catch it.
Footnote 1063:
See Book II. v2-Chapter III.
In this game the princess takes part, laughing and singing with therest, and it is a clumsy throw of hers which sends the ball into theriver that excites the loud exclamation from her maids which awakensOdysseus. Her conversation with the hero thereupon ensuing suggests ahigh notion of female education at the period. The maids of honourterrified at his strange and grotesque appearance, unclothed, anddeformed with ooze and mud, take to flight, but Nausicaa relying onthe respect due to her father maintains her ground. Odysseusreverencing her youth and beauty prefers his petition from a distance.She grants far more than he seeks, and with many indications of femalegentleness mingles so much self-possession, forethought, compassionfor misfortune, consideration of what is due to her own character, andconfidence in the generosity and unsuspicious goodness of her parents,that we are constrained to suppose the existence of much instruction,mental training, and knowledge of the world. And if suchqualifications had not at that time been found in women, Homer hadmuch too keen a sense of propriety to have hazarded his reputation andhis bread by supposing their prevalence in his poems.[1064]
Footnote 1064:
Clytemnæstra, again, in Æschylus exhibits considerable knowledge of geography, which she could only have acquired from conversation with travellers or from the songs of the poets.—Agamemn. 287. sqq.
How the women of the heroic times received their instruction it is notdifficult to comprehend, though there has come down to us very littlepositive information on the subject. The poets, those propheticteachers of the infancy of humanity, had already commenced theirrevelations of the good and beautiful. Wandering from town to town,under the immediate direction of Providence, they scattered far andnear the seeds of civilisation. Their songs were in every mouth: bothyouths and maidens imbibed the wisdom they contained, and with theirsprightly strains, as in the case of Nausicaa, enlivened their lightermoments when alone, or delighted the noble and numerous guests attheir fathers’ board. Homer, indeed, nowhere introduces a lady singingat an entertainment, excepting in Olympos, where the Muses representthe sex; but Æschylus, a poet profoundly versed in antiquity, speaksof Iphigenia as performing this sweet office in her father’shall.[1065] The daughter of Alcinoos, however, shares in theamusem*nts and instruction supplied by the bard during theentertainment described by Homer, and converses freely with theirillustrious guest.[1066]
Footnote 1065:
And Theocritus enumerates among the accomplishments of Helen, that she could sing and play upon the cithara.—Eidyll. xviii. 35. sqq. et Kiesling ad Theocrit. Cf. Æneid. vi. 647.
Footnote 1066:
Odyss. θ. 457. sqq.
Footnote 1067:
Apophthegms, Old and New, § 278.
We have above seen that women in those ages were not creatures of mereluxury or show. Possessing considerable physical power and energy, andmuch skill in the elegant and useful arts of life, they were deterredby no false pride or ignorant prejudices from converting theircapacity to the use of their families. The magnificence of theirattire, their costly ornaments, or the consciousness of the highestpersonal beauty, nowise interfered with their thrifty habits; and LordBacon[1067] tells a very good anecdote to show that the same in formerdays was the case in England. There was a lady of the West country, hesays, who gave great entertainments at her house to most of thegallant gentlemen of her neighbourhood, among whom Sir Walter Raleighwas one. This lady, though otherwise a stately dame, was a notablegood housewife, and in the morning betimes she called to one of hermaids that looked to the swine, and asked, “Is the piggy served?” SirWalter’s chamber being near the lady’s, he heard this homely inquiry.A little before dinner the lady came down in great state to thedrawing-room, which was full of gentlemen, and as soon as Sir WalterRaleigh saw her, “Madam,” says he, “is the piggy served?” To which thelady replied, “You know best whether you have had your breakfast.”
An Homeric princess resembled this stately dame of the West, inthinking nothing beneath her which could contribute to the comfort orelegant adornment of those she loved. The employments of women inthose ages, however, included some things which, in the present stateof the useful arts, would seldom fall to their share, and among thesewere the labours of the loom, to excel in which was evidentlyconsidered one of their chiefest accomplishments and most necessaryduties.[1068] In this occupation they took refuge from anxiety andsorrow; to this we find Hector with rough tenderness urging hisbeloved wife to have recourse, when her affection would withdraw himfrom his post;[1069] and Telemachus, in a tone somewhat tooauthoritative, recommends, in the Odyssey, the same course to hismother:[1070] and in the Eastern world the same tastes and habitscontinued to prevail down to a very late age. When Sisygambis, thecaptive Persian queen, was presented, however, by Alexander withpurple and wool, she sank into an agony of grief and tears: theyreminded her of happier days. But the conqueror, misunderstanding herfeelings, and desirous to remove the notion that he was imposing anyservile task, observed:—"This garment, mother, which you see me wear,is not merely the gift but the work also of my sisters."[1071] Similarpresents passed between near relations in Persia; for in Herodotus wefind Amestris, the queen of Xerxes, conferring upon her husband, as agift of price, a richly variegated and ample pelisse, which thelabours of her own fair hands had rendered valuable.[1072] Augustus,too, even when all simplicity of manners had expired with therepublic, affected still to bring up the females of his family uponthe antique model, and wore no garments but such as were manufacturedin his own house.[1073]
Footnote 1068:
Alexand. ab Alexand. iv. 8.
Footnote 1069:
Iliad, ζ. 491.
Footnote 1070:
Odyss. α. 357.
Footnote 1071:
Q. Curt. v. 2. 18.
Footnote 1072:
Herod. ix. 188.
Footnote 1073:
Suet. in Vit. § 64. Conf. Feith. Antiq. Homer. iv. 34.
To return: constant practice and the delight which familiar andvoluntary labour inspires, had already in the heroic ages, enabled theGrecian ladies to throw much splendour and richness of invention intotheir fabrics. The desire also, perhaps, of excelling in works of thiskind the ladies of Sidon, communicated an additional impulse to theirindustry. At all events, Homer makes it abundantly clear that theyunderstood how to employ with singular felicity the arts of design,and to represent in colours brilliant and varied, cities, landscapes,human figures, and all the complicated movements of war.[1074] Wemust, no doubt, allow something for the poet’s own skill in painting;but, after every reasonable deduction, enough will remain still toprove that at the period of the Trojan war Greece had made remarkableprogress in every art which tends to ameliorate and embellish humanlife.
Footnote 1074:
In northern Greece and Macedonia women could depict such scenes from the life, since they learned the use of arms, and engaged personally in war.—Athen. xiii. 10. Tradition relates that Queen Matilda and her maids wrought the tapestry of Bayeux, representing the conquest of England by her husband.
Carding, also, and spinning entered into the list of theiroccupations. Even Helen though frail as fair, is laborious as aPenelope, plying her shuttle or her golden distaff, and surroundedhabitually by a troop of she-manufacturers.[1075] Arete, queen ofPhæacia, is likewise depicted sitting at the fire, distaff in hand,encircled by her maids;[1076] and the wife of Odysseus, famed for herhousehold virtues, is seen in the Odyssey at her own door spinning thepurple thread.[1077] The work-baskets of the ladies of that period, ifwe can rely on a poet’s word, were such as more modern dames mightenvy, formed of beaten gold and chased with figures richly wrought,and grouped with infinite taste and judgment.[1078] In these theirballs of purple were deposited when spun, though probably reed basketsor osier work contented the ambition of ladies less aspiring thanEuropa.
Footnote 1075:
Iliad, ζ. 491.—Odyss. δ. 131.—Theocrit. Eidyll. xviii. 32. sqq.
Footnote 1076:
Odyss. ζ. 491. 38.—Feith by mistake introduces the name of Nausicaa instead of that of her mother.—Ant. Hom. iv. 3. 2.
Footnote 1077:
Odyss. υ. 97.
Footnote 1078:
Mosch. Eidyll. ii. 37. seq.
Women also, but chiefly slaves, performed in those primitive times allthe operations of the kitchen. They even in the great establishment ofAlcinoos work at the mill, as they do also in the palace of Odysseus,where guided perhaps by the nature of the climate we find the youngwomen preferring for this operation the cool of the night.[1079] Evenin later ages, when juster ideas of what is due to the sex prevailed,this severe toil sometimes devolved upon female slaves, though ingeneral it was the males, and of these the most worthless, who workedthe mills, regarded at length almost in the light of correctionalestablishments.[1080] But the making of bread was very properlyappropriated to women almost throughout the East. The Egyptians,indeed, an effeminate and servile people, very early, as we learn fromGenesis, confounded the offices of the sex; but among the Lydians,even in the palace of Crœsos, we meet with a female baker,[1081] andthe Persian armies carried along with them women to bake their breadin their longest and most dangerous expeditions.[1082] In Greece topreside over the oven, was up to a very late period the prerogative ofthe fair. One hundred and ten women had the honour of being locked upwith the handful of warriors who during three years baffled the wholeforce of the Peloponnesos from the glorious walls of Platæa,[1083] andin the primitive ages of Macedonia the queen herself prepared thebread distributed among the royal shepherds.[1084]
Footnote 1079:
Odyss. η. 103. seq.—ο. 107.
Footnote 1080:
Theoph. Char. c. v.
Footnote 1081:
Herod. i. 51.
Footnote 1082:
Herod. vii. 187.
Footnote 1083:
Thucyd. ii. 78.
Footnote 1084:
Herod. viii. 139.
The Sacred Scriptures have rendered familiar and reconciled to us thesimplicity of patriarchal manners. To behold the daughter of Bethuelor of Laban coming forth to draw water for her flock, does not strikeus as at all out of keeping with the opulence or dignity of herfather, or with her own feminine delicacy; and we know that at thispresent day the wealthiest Bedouin Sheikh of the desert, though lordof a thousand camels, discovers nothing in his daughter’s conditionwhich should relieve her from this healthful employment. Similarnotions prevailed among the Greeks of the Heroic Age. For though inmany cases slave-maidens[1085] are found engaged in drawing water fromthe springs, virgins of noble birth, nay the daughters themselves ofkings, descend to the fountain with their urns, mingling there withfemale captives and young women of inferior rank. Thus, for example,the princess of the Lestrygons in Homer goes forth with herwater-jar[1086] to the well, and even among the Athenians, whererefinement of manners first sprang up, and civilisation made mostrapid strides, the daughters of the citizens in early times used todescend to the fountain of Callirrhoe to draw water.[1087] But thetask was commonly allotted to female captives and other slaves.Euryclea, Odysseus’ house-keeper, sends a troop of girls on thiserrand with orders to be quick in their movements, and Hector, in hisdeep fear for Andromache, already in apprehension beholds her toilingat the fountains of Argos.[1088]
Footnote 1085:
Eurip. Electr. 107. 309. sqq.
Footnote 1086:
Odyss. κ. 105.
Footnote 1087:
Herod. vi. 137—The historian uses the name of Enneacrounos given to the fountain by the tyrants. A similar practice is noticed by Arrian.—Anab. Alexand. ii. 3
Footnote 1088:
Odyss. φ. 153. seq.—Iliad. ζ. 59. seq.
CHAPTER II. WOMEN OF DORIC STATES.
The women of Sparta were even in Greece remarkable for their personalbeauty. Their education and exercises promoting their health andphysical energies, aided, at the same time, the natural developementof the frame, with all its inherent symmetry and proportion. It isprobable, however, that the charms of Helen may have led on this pointto some misapprehension; but Helen belonged to the old heroic race,with which the Dorians of Sparta had nothing in common, that is, likeso many other women celebrated by the poets of after times for theirbeauty, was an Achæan. Still, lovely they were, well-formed, brilliantof complexion, with features of much regularity, and eyes into whichexuberant health infused a sparkling brightness irresistibly pleasing.But it would require to be peculiarly constituted to pronounce themthe most beautiful women in all Greece.[1089] They were what in modernphrase would be termed fine women, but exceeding considerably what wedeem true feminine proportions, being, in fact, a sort of femalegrenadiers, robust, vigorous, bull-stranglers, as Lysistrata[1090]somewhat ironically expresses it, their beauty was rather that of men,than of women. Some among the Greeks preferred, it is true, ladies ofthis large growth. Thus, we find Xenophon, in the Anabasis, expressinghis apprehension that should his countrymen become acquainted with thefine tall women of Persia, they would, like the Lotos-eaters, forgetthe way to their country and their home.[1091] But this was a tastewhich never became general. The beauty which excited most admiration,where beauty constituted the noblest object of literature and art, wasa kind totally different in character, exquisitely feminine, gentle,soft, retiring, modest, instinct with grace and delicacy, the parasiteof the moral creation, clinging round man for support, but impartingmore than it receives.
Footnote 1089:
See Müll. Dor. ii. 296.
Footnote 1090:
Ὧ φιλτάτη Λάκαινα, χαῖρε. οἷον τὸ κάλλος, γλυκυτάτη, σοῦ φαίνεται. ὡς δ᾽ εὐχροεῖς, ὡς δὲ σφριγᾷ τὸ σῶμά σου, κἂν ταῦρον ἄγχοις.
Which may be thus translated:
Beloved Laconian, welcome! How glorious is thy beauty, love! how ruddy The tint of thy complexion! Vigour and health So brace thy frame that thou a bull couldst throttle.
Aristoph. Lysist. 78 sqq.
Footnote 1091:
Anab. iii. 2. 25.—Ἀλλὰ γὰρ δέδοικα μὴ, ἂν ἅπαξ μάθωμεν ἀργοὶ ζῇν, καὶ ἐν ἀφθόνοις βιοτεύειν, καὶ Μήδῶν δὲ καὶ Περσῶν καλαῖς καὶ μεγάλαις γυναιξὶ καὶ παρθένοις ὁμιλεῖν, μὴ, ὣσπερ οἱ λωτοφάγοι, ἐπιλαθώμεθα τῆς οἴκαδε ὁδοῦ.—And again, in the Cyropædia, Araspes praises Panthea for her majestic size. It appears from Homer that when Athena was desirous of making Penelope appear more lovely than ordinary, she added to her height.—Odyss. σ. 194.
Such beauty, however, would have been inconsistent with the aim ofLycurgus. Like a well-known modern despot, this great legislator aimedsolely at creating a nation of grenadiers, and to effect this, boththe education, laws, and manners of Sparta received a militaryimpress. Everything there breathed of the camp. The girls from theirtenderest years, instead of being instructed as in other communitiesto entwine all their feelings round the domestic hearth, and expecttheir chiefest happiness at home, were systematically undomesticated,brought incessantly into contact with men, initiated in immoralhabits, subversive of the female character,[1092] and taught toconsider themselves designed to be the wives of the state rather thanof individuals. Nature, the legislator was aware, has implanted theprinciples of love and modesty deep in the female heart; in generalalso, to eradicate one, is to root up the other; and both in the sensein which we contemplate them, being inimical to the purpose which hisconstitution was intended to promote, he sought to subvert the powerof love by obliterating from the female mind every trace of maidenlymodesty.
Footnote 1092:
Athen. xiii. 79.—Even Plutarch denominates the system of discipline observed by the Spartan women ἀναπεπταμένη καὶ ἄθηλυς,—"lax and unfeminine,"—and confesses that it afforded the poets an inexhaustible fund for ridicule. Ibycos, for example, called them φαινομηρίδες: and Euripides ἀνδρομανεῖς. Their education, in fact, rendered them coarse and domineering, “bold and mannish;” θρασύτεραι, and ἀνδριοδεῖς, are the words of Plutarch, who observes that they desired not only to rule by violence at home, but even audaciously to meddle with public affairs.—Compar. Lycurg. cum Num. § 3.
The power of political institutions over the feelings of the heart,over manners, over habits, over conscience, and opinions, was never sostrikingly exemplified as at Sparta. Whatever the legislatordetermined to be good was good.[1093] Example, affection, naturepleaded in vain. An iron system, strong as fate, encircled the wholescope of life, repressing every aspiration tending above the pointprescribed, guiding every wish into a given channel, curbing everypassion inconsistent in its full developement with the views of thelegislator. Aristotle, indeed, maintains that while the men of Spartaconformed to the design of the constitution, the women refused to bendtheir neck to the yoke, and persisted in the enjoyment of a freedomconstantly degenerating into licentiousness.[1094] He probably,however, supposes the existence in Lycurgus of a moral purpose, farloftier than he really aimed at. The virtues of a camp—and Sparta wasnothing else—are never too rigid, nor must we look among femalecamp-followers for much of that delicacy, reserve, self-control, orkeen sense of what is just and upright, of which none judge moreaccurately than well educated women. Doubtless the Doric lawgivercherished no other design than to promote the happiness of hiscountrymen. It would be unjust to suppose otherwise. But how far theregulations by which he sought to effect this purpose were calculatedto ensure success, is what we have to inquire.
Footnote 1093:
Philosophers, also, were found in antiquity as in modern times, who theoretically maintained this doctrine. Thus Archelaos contended, καὶ τὸ δίκαιον εἶναι καὶ τὸ αἰσχρὸν οὐ φύσει, ἀλλὰ νόμῳ.—Diog. Laert. ii. 4. 3. Here we discover the fundamental maxim upon which the whole system of Hobbes was constructed.
Footnote 1094:
Polit. ii. 9.
It may at once be observed that Lycurgus’s system of female educationwas the furthest possible removed from common place. He contemplatedboth the sexes in nearly the same point of view. Their form he saw;and in many points their character, their affections, their virtues,their vices, bear a close resemblance; and in his conception,perfection would be attained, if all such discriminating marks asnature has set up could be removed, and every quality of what heconsidered the superior sex transferred to the inferior. Muchmisapprehension appears to exist on this point. Writers pretend thatamong the Dorians the female character stood in high estimation, whilethe reverse they suppose to have been the case in Ionic States. Butthe Dorians betrayed their contempt for women as they came from thehands of nature, by endeavouring to convert them into men; theirneighbours the reverse, by contenting themselves with their purelyfeminine qualities, which among people of Ionic race were cultivatedand improved, perhaps, as far as was consistent with domestichappiness.
In the harems of the East the whip is of great service inmaintaining order, and the same, it is evident, was the case atSparta. Both youths and virgins from their tenderest years weresubjected to a severe discipline; regular floggers, as at our owngreat schools, always attended the inspectors of public instruction;and in this the system was wise, that habits were more regarded thanacquisitions.[1095] But of the habits cherished by the Spartansystem we cannot always approve. Like the boys, the virginsfrequented the gymnasia, where, naked as at their birth, theyexercised themselves in wrestling, running, pitching the quoit, andthrowing the javelin.[1096] To these accomplishments, others,according to a Roman poet, still less feminine were added. Theycontended, he says, in the ring with men, bound the cestus on theirclenched fists, and boxed their future husbands like so manyprize-fighters. No wonder that the partners of such women werehenpecked. Horsemanship, the sword exercise, and the rough sports ofthe chase, affected by women of similar character in our owncountry, completed the circle of female studies,[1097] and renderedthe Spartan maids something more than a match for their worsehalves, whether after marriage or before.[1098]
Footnote 1095:
Jamblich. vit. Pythag. xi. 5. 6.—Müller. Dor. ii. 317.
Footnote 1096:
Plut. Lycurg. §. 14. Compare the remarks of Ubbo Emmius who adopts, however, too implicitly the notions of Plutarch.—iii. 22. seq.
Footnote 1097:
Propert. iii. 12. p. 261. iv. 13. p. 88. Jacob.—Cicero, after quoting certain verses from an old poet, describing the exercises of the female Spartans, adds in his own words: “ergo his laboriosis excercitationibus et dolor intercurrit nonnumquam; impelluntur, ponuntur, abjiciuntur, cadunt: et ipse labor quasi callum quoddam obducit dolori.” Tuscul. Quæst. ii. 36.—In remoter ages we find women celebrated for their skill in hunting, and there were those who in later times sought to recommend this taste to their countrywomen:—Οὐ μόνον δὲ, ὅσοι ἄνδρες κυνηγεσίων ἡράσθησαν, ἐγένοντο ἀγαθοὶ ἀλλὰ καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες, αἷς ἔδωκεν ἡ θεὸς ταῦτα Ἄρτεμις, Ἀταλάντη, καὶ Πρόκρις, καὶ εἴ τις ἄλλη. Xen. de Venat. xiii. 18. 345. Schneid. Cf. Callim. Hymn. in Dian. 209. 215. Spanh.
Footnote 1098:
Alluding to the political power of women at Sparta, Aristotle inquires: what signifies it whether women govern or men be governed by women? Polit. ii. 9.
Some pains have in our own days been taken to pare away theroughnesses, and obliterate the peculiar features of the Doriceducational institutions, in order to bring them into greateruniformity with modern notions. There is no probability, we are told,that either youths or men were permitted to be present at theextraordinary exhibition of the female gymnasia.[1099] But whence isthis inference derived? From the delicacy of Spartan manners in otherrespects? And are we in fact reduced on this curious point to dependon inferences and probabilities? On the contrary, we are informed byantiquity that besides the personal advantages of health and vigour,derived to the women themselves, the legislator contemplated otherslittle less important, the promotion of marriage and the recreation ofall the useful portion of the citizens. For while the married men andyouths intent on connubial happiness, enjoyed the free entry to thesegymnasia,[1100] those sullen egotists called bachelors were veryproperly excluded. The former had some property in the young ladies,who were their daughters, sisters, or future spouses, but personsavowedly indifferent to the seductive influence of female charms couldhave no business there.
Footnote 1099:
Müll. Dor. ii. 333.
Footnote 1100:
Plut. Lycurg. § 14. 15. Müller, with the amusing partiality of an apologist, overlooks the passage, and introduces Plutarch affirming “that they only witnessed the processions and dances of the young (wo)men.” Note K. Dor. ii. p. 328. Here though _men_ be the printed word in the English translation women must be clearly meant. Even so, however, the assertion is unfounded, since we find that even strangers were admitted:—ἐπαινεῖται δὲ καὶ τῶν Σπαρτιατῶν τὸ ἔθος τὸ γυμνοῦν τὰς παρθένους τοῖς ξένοις. Athen. xiii. 20. The islanders of Chios would appear to have imitated this laudable practice, since the sophist speaks of it as a most pleasant spectacle to behold the youths and virgins wrestling together in the public place of exercise. Ibid.
Admitting, therefore, that when the Spartan virgins[1101] performed inthe gymnasia, for we must consider their exercises partly in the lightof scenic exhibitions, the whole city, bachelors excepted, could bepresent, it remains to be seen what other accomplishments they coulddisplay for the public entertainment. Singing and dancing it has beenshown were practised publicly by ladies of rank in the heroic ages,and this feature of ancient manners was preserved at Sparta, where notyouths and maidens only, but even the grave and aged joined, duringseveral great festivals, in the dance and the song.[1102] But we mustbeware how we apply to these performances the ideas suggested by thoseof modern times, or the gay and graceful movements of Ionian women. Todance at Sparta required great physical force.[1103] The maidens,unencumbered by dress, bounded aloft like an Anatole or a Taglioni,but instead of twirling round with one foot on earth, and the othersuspended at right angles in air, the supreme merit of her performanceconsisted in slapping the back part of the body with her heel for thegreatest possible number of times in succession.[1104] In this feat,which resembles strongly a Caribbee or Iroquois accomplishment, wholetroops of men and women often united; an exhibition which with theshouts of laughter arising from the bystanders, the grins of thegirls, and the wilful mistakes of young men who might send their feetin the wrong direction, must convey a curious idea of Spartan gravity.Such, however, was the celebrated dance called _Bibasis_,[1105] uponthe frequent execution of which a Laconian girl prided herself no lessthan a modern lady on her activity in the indecent waltz.
Footnote 1101:
Cf. Plato. De Legg. t. viii. p. 85.
Footnote 1102:
Plut. Lycurg. §. 21.
Footnote 1103:
As now among the Galaxidiotes. Dodwell. i. 133. seq.
Footnote 1104:
Aristoph. Lysistr. 82.
Footnote 1105:
Pollux. iv. 102.
But the other dances in which the Spartan maidens excelled werenumerous. Among them was the _Dipodia_[1106] of which the nature isnot exactly known, but it was accompanied by music and song andapparently consisted of a series of orgiastic movements, like thoseof the Bacchantes when, inspired by wine, they bounded fawnlike withdishevelled hair along the mountains.[1107] On other occasions theirmovements were designed to express certain passions of the mind,sometimes, as in the _Calabis_,[1108] highly wanton and licentious,though the latitudinarian spirit of paganism contrived to admit themamong the religious ceremonies, and that too in honour of Artemis.Another of these lewd dances performed in the worship of Apollo andhis sister, and accompanied by songs, conceived no doubt in the samespirit, was the _Bryallicha_[1109], which the historian of the Doricrace finds some difficulty to reconcile with the worship of Apollo,as if their deity had been himself free from the inherent vices ofthe Olympian dynasts. There was another dance called the_Deicelistic_[1110], a kind of rude pantomime intermingled withsongs supposed to have been performed by unmarried women[1111].
Footnote 1106:
Scaliger’s idea of the dance is peculiar: Erat et διποδία, in quâ junctis pedibus labore plurimo et conatu picas imitabantur. Poet. i. 18. p. 69.
Footnote 1107:
Aristoph. Lysistr. 1303. sqq.
Footnote 1108:
Athen. xiv. 29.
Footnote 1109:
Poll. iv. 104. Hesych. v. Βρυδαλίχα.
Footnote 1110:
Etym. Mag. 260. 42.
Footnote 1111:
Müll. Dor. ii. 335.
To these dances may be added the _Hyporchematic_, which was executedby a chorus, while singing, for which reason Bacchylides says, “Thisis not the work of slowness or inactivity.” By Pindar it is describedas a dance performed by Spartan girls; but in fact both young men andwomen united in the Hyporchema, and as this dance is said to haveresembled or been identical with the Cordax[1112], it will assist usin forming a notion of female delicacy at Sparta, where young womencould execute publicly in company with the other sex a dance scarcelyless indelicate than the fandango or bolero[1113].
Footnote 1112:
Cf. Nonn. Dionys. xix. 265. sqq. Etym. Mag. 712. 53. 635. 2. Scalig. Poet. i. 18. Poll. iv. 99.
Footnote 1113:
Athen. xiv. 30.
From such an education and such habits tastes essentiallyunfeminine would naturally spring. Accordingly we find Laconianladies of the first rank,—Cynisca daughter of king Archidamos, forexample,—attending to the breed of horses, and sending chariots tocontend at the Olympic games. Nor was her masculine ambitioncondemned by the Greeks. A statue of the lady herself, togetherwith her chariot, and charioteer, existed among other Olympianmonuments in the age of Pausanias. Afterwards many other women,but chiefly among the half barbarous Macedonians, followed theexample of Cynisca and Euryleonis another Spartan dame who hadbeen honoured with a statue at Olympia for the success of herchariot at the games.[1114]
Footnote 1114:
Pausan. iii. 15. 1. 17. 6. Cf. Vandal. Dissert. vii. p. 562. seq.
In strict keeping with the rough manners and masculine bearing ofthese ladies was the habit of swearing,[1115] to which in common withmost other Greek women they were grievously addicted. At Athens,however, gentlewomen swore by Demeter, Persephone and Agraulos,[1116]an oath by divinities of their own sex[1117] being considered moresuitable to female lips; but the viragos of Sparta spiced theirconversation with oaths by Castor and Polydeukes. According, moreover,to the poet whose testimony is commonly adduced against the Athenianladies, the women of Sparta drank[1118] as well as swore, and we knowfrom authority altogether indisputable, that in the age of Socratestheir licentiousness had already become universally notorious inGreece.[1119] A scholar, and a diligent inquirer, whose merits are toooften overlooked, observes very justly that it was probably theausterity, or more properly the pedantry of Lycurgus’s institutionsthat gave rise to the notion that chastity was a common virtue atSparta.[1120] It was supposed because occasionally subjected toviolent exercise, that they must necessarily be temperate in theirpleasures. But we might _à priori_ have inferred the contrary, and theuniform testimony of antiquity proves it. Their wantonness andlicentiousness knew no bounds. Even during the ages immediatelysucceeding the establishment of their constitution, that is at thetime of the Messenian wars, to preserve for any length of time theirchastity while their husbands were absent in the field was beyondtheir power, and substitutes were selected and sent home to become thehusbands of the whole female population.[1121]
Footnote 1115:
Aristoph. Lysistr. 81. sqq.
Footnote 1116:
Sch. Aristoph. Thesmophor. 533.
Footnote 1117:
But men we find likewise swore—Κατὰ ταῖν θεαῖν καὶ τῆς Πολιάδος..—Lucian. Diall. Hetair. vii. 1.
Footnote 1118:
Aristoph. Lysistr. 198. seq.
Footnote 1119:
Plat. de Legg. i. t. vii. p. 201. Bekk.
Footnote 1120:
Goguet. Orig. des Loix. t. v. p. 429.
Footnote 1121:
Dion. Chrysostom. Orat. i. 278. Justin. iii. 4.
But for this ungovernable sway of temperament the institutions of thestate were chiefly to blame.[1122] We have seen by the whole tenor oftheir education, modesty and virtue were sapped and undermined; nomerit, it was visible, attached to them in the eye of the law; andshrewdly gifted as they were with good sense, they must quickly havediscovered that marriage was a mere unmeaning ceremony, and thatprovided they gave good citizens to the state it would be of littleconsequence who might be their fathers.[1123] The ceremonies attendingthat lax union which for lack of a better term we must call marriage,resembled closely those which have been found to prevail among othersavages in very distant parts of the world.
Footnote 1122:
Plut. Compar. Lycurg. cum. Num. § 3. Aristot. Polit. ii. 9. who observes:—ζῶσι ἀκολαστῶς πρὸς ἅπασαν ἀκολασίαν καὶ τρυφερῶς.—Hermann in his Political Antiquities § 27, reasoning consistently with these ancient authorities, observes that the system of Lycurgus “gradually effaced every characteristic of female excellence from the Spartan women.”
Footnote 1123:
βουλόμενος γὰρ ὁ νομοθέτης ὡς πλείστους εἴναι τοὺς Σπαρτιάτας, προάγεται τοὺς πολίτας ὄτι πλείστους ποιεῖσθαι παῖδας· ἔστι γὰρ αὐτοῖς νόμος τὸν μὲν γεννήσαντα τρεῖς υἱοὺς ἄφρουρον εἶναι, τὸν δὲ τέτταρας ἀτελή πάντων.—Arist. Polit. ii. 9. Cf. Ælian. Var. Hist. vi. 6, who substitutes the number five for four.
Having gone through the ceremony of betrothment,[1124] in which thebride’s interest was represented by her father or brother, the loverchose some fitting occasion to seize and carry her away from amongsther companions. She was then received into the house of thebridesmaid, where her hair was cut short and her dress exchanged forthat of a young man, after which custom directed that she should beleft reclining on a pallet bed, in a dark chamber, alone. Thither thebridegroom repaired by stealth, and, afterwards, with equal secresy,returned to his companions, among whom he continued for some time tolive as if no change in his condition had taken place. During thisperiod, therefore, their union must be regarded rather as aclandestine intercourse than a marriage, since the husband continued,as at first, to steal secretly into the company of his wife and toeffect his escape with equal care, it being considered disreputablefor them to be seen together. Even the children springing from thisconnexion have been supposed to have ranked as bastards; but of thisthere is no sufficient proof.
Footnote 1124:
Cf. Xen. de Rep. Lac. i. 6. Plut. Lycurg. § 15.—Ubbo Emmius. Descr. Reip. Lacon. p. 96. seq.
A different account is given by other authors of the marriage ceremonyat Sparta, but, if properly examined, both relations may very well bereconciled. The above, in fact, appears to have been the ordinary modewhen young women of property who had dowries[1125] to bestow upontheir husbands, were to be disposed of. But the portionless girls,excepting, perhaps, the more beautiful, finding some difficulty inproviding themselves with helpmates, a contrivance was hit upon by thelegislator, calculated to give a fair chance to all. The unmarrieddamsels of the city, thus circ*mstanced, were shut up in the dark, ina spacious edifice,[1126] into which the young unmarried men wereintroduced to scramble for wives, the understanding being, that eachwas to remain content with the maiden he happened to seize upon. Andit would appear that the awards of chance were, in most cases,satisfactory, since we read of no one but Lysander who abandoned thewife he had thus chosen. He, however, having been presented, byfortune, with a maiden of homely features, immediately deserted herfor one more beautiful. The bad example thus set was not without itsevil consequences, for the men who married his daughters put them awayin like manner after his death.[1127] But, in both cases, fines forcontumacy were exacted by the Ephori. According to the laws of Sparta,men were likewise fined for leading a life of celibacy,[1128] formarrying late, or for marrying unsuitably. Thus, king Archidamos wasfined for selecting a little woman to be his queen, as if there wassomething regal in loftiness of stature.[1129]
Footnote 1125:
According to Justin, indeed, the Spartan legislator abolished the usage of dowries: Virgines sine dote nubere jussit, ut uxores eligerentur, non pecuniæ; severiusque matrimonia sua viri coërcerent, cum nullis dotis frœnis tenerentur, iii. 3. But Aristotle, who had deeply studied the polity of Sparta, gives a very different account:—ἔστι δὲ καὶ τῶν γυναικῶν σχεδὸν τῆς πάσης χώρας τῶν πέντε μερῶν τὰ δύο, τῶν τ᾽ ἐπικλήρων πολλῶν γινομένων, καὶ διὰ τὸ προῖκας διδόναι μεγάλας.—Polit. ii. 9.
Footnote 1126:
Athen. xiii. 2.
Footnote 1127:
Plut. Lysand. § 30.
Footnote 1128:
Athen. xiii. 1.
Footnote 1129:
Plut. Agis, § 2. Athen. xiii. 20. It was not without reason, perhaps, that the Ephori interfered with the marriages of their kings, since royalty has everywhere been capricious. But these honest magistrates were sometimes tyrannical in their ordinances and behaviour. Thus, when Anaxandrides married his niece for love, because she had no children he was compelled by them to take a second wife. When the first wife was confined they, fearing imposition, or feigning incredulity, sat about her bed.—Herod. v. 39–41.
On almost every point connected with Spartan marriages the accountstransmitted to us are contradictory. Thus, we are by some told, as hasbeen seen above, that the union of the bride and bridegroom took placesecretly, and remained for some time almost unknown. Nevertheless,there are not wanting those who speak of public ceremonies which tookplace on the occasion, as for example Sosibios,[1130] who informs us,that the cake, called cribanos, shaped like the female breast, waseaten at that repast which the Lacedæmonian women gave in honour of abetrothed maiden when her youthful companions assembled in chorus tochaunt her praises. At Argos, another Doric state, it was customarybefore the bride joined her husband for her to send him, as a present,the cake called creion, which his friends were invited to partake ofwith honey. It was baked upon the coals as cakes are still in theEast.
Footnote 1130:
Athen. xiv. 54.
When at Sparta the state had recognised the marriage, by permittingcohabitation, no man could call his wife his own. Any person mightlegally claim the favour of borrowing her for a certain time, inorder, if he did not choose to be burdened with a wife, to have afamily by her while she remained in the house of her lord. An elderlyman was sure to have his connubial privileges invaded in this way, andthe most able and philosophical advocates of Lycurgus’s institutionsinform us that the Spartan ladies highly approved of all thesearrangements. Yet, famous and learned authors undertake to break alance for the chastity of the Spartan dames, and maintain withinfinite complacency that adultery was unknown among them. The truthis that the Spartan laws recognised no such offence.[1131] It waslegal, common, of every day occurrence, though, from manycirc*mstances, it would appear, that such Lacedæmonians as travelledinto other parts of Greece, and learned in what light manners andmorals so lax were by them viewed, blushed for their country’sinstitutions, and, in defence of them, put in practice those arts ofdelusion and hypocrisy which constituted so distinguished a part oftheir education.
Footnote 1131:
Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. i. 7. 8. 9.
Much has been said of the stern virtue and patriotism of the Spartanwomen, and high praise has been bestowed on the callous indifferencewhich they sometimes exhibited on learning the death of theirsons;[1132] but English mothers, who have given birth to sons as braveas ever fought or bled for Sparta, will, I think, agree with me inrating very low their boasted stoicism, which, if properly analysed,might prove to be nothing more than a coarse and unnatural apathy. Thereader of the Greek Anthologia will here remember her who meeting herson a fugitive among the flying from a victorious enemy, inflicted onhim with her own hands the death he sought to shun. Had Nature, whichis but the voice of God indistinctly heard, anything to do with virtuesuch as that? Supposing the youth to have been a coward, which thefact of his flying before the enemy by no means proves, was it for thehands that had nursed him to become his executioners? A mother,deserving of the name, would no doubt have sorrowed not to find herboy numbered among the brave, but her maternal heart would not theless have yearned towards the unhappy youth; she would have fled withhim into obscurity, and uttered her mild reproaches and shed her tearsthere.
Footnote 1132:
Cic. Tusc. Quæst. i. 49.
As often happens, however, these female stoics who were so lavish ofthe blood of their children, displayed no readiness to set them theexample of making light of death when the fortunes of war affordedthem an occasion of putting their heroic maxims in practice; for whenthe Theban army[1133] burst forth from the depths of the Menelaion,and swept down the valley of the Eurotas like a torrent, wastingeverything before them with fire and sword, the women of Sparta, whohad never before seen the smoke of an enemy’s camp, lost in a momenttheir presence of mind, and, instead of encouraging their sons andhusbands calmly to rely upon their valour, ran to and fro through thestreets, filling the air with their effeminate wailings, anddistracting and impeding the movements of their natural protectors.Very different from this was the conduct of the female citizens ofArgos. For when Cleomenes and Demaratos, after having defeated theArgive army, approached the city in the expectation of being able totake it by storm, the poetess Telesilla armed her countrywomen, who,hastening to the defence of the walls, repulsed the Lacedæmoniankings, and preserved the state. In commemoration of this event afestival was annually celebrated, in which the ladies appeared in maleattire while the men concealed their heads beneath the femaleveil.[1134]
Footnote 1133:
Aristot. Polit. ii. 9. Xenoph. Hellen. vi. v. 27. It should be remarked, however, that on a future occasion, when Sparta was besieged by King Pyrrhus, the female disciples of Lycurgus behaved with more fortitude and energy; for when it was debated in the senate whether they should not convey their wives and children to Crete, and then, deriving courage from despair, determine to conquer or perish on the spot, Archidamia, daughter of the king, entered their assembly sword in hand, opposed their resolution, saying, it behoved the women of Sparta to live and die with their husbands. The female population was, in consequence, suffered to remain; and by digging with the men in the trenches, sharpening the arms, and attending on the wounded, so strongly excited the courage of the Spartans, that they at length succeeded in repulsing the Macedonians from their city. Cf. Plut. Pyrrh. § 27.—Polyæn. Stratagem. vii. 49.
Footnote 1134:
Plut. de Mulier. Virtut. t. ii. p. 195. Polyæn. Stratagem. viii. 33.
Again, when the Thebans broke into Platæa during the night, the women,instead of delivering themselves up pusillanimously to fear, joinedthe men in defence of the city, casting stones and tiles from thehousetops upon the enemy. Yet when defeated and flying for theirlives, it was one of these same women who, with the characteristichumanity of her sex, supplied them with a hatchet to cut their waythrough the gates.[1135]
Footnote 1135:
Thucyd. ii. 4.
But the most remarkable instance of self-devotion furnished by womenin the whole history of Greece was, perhaps, that which is related ofthe Phocian ladies,[1136] who, when their countrymen, under thecommand of Diophantos, were about to engage with the Thessalians in abattle which it was felt must finally determine the destiny of Phocis,strenuously, with the concurrence of their children, exhorted him topersevere in the design he had formed, of causing them to be consumedby fire should the battle be lost. Examples of this terrible expedientfor preserving the honour of women occur but too frequently in thehistory of India, where it is termed performing _johur_; and theRomans, in their Spanish wars, witnessed a similar act ofself-sacrifice at Numantia.
Footnote 1136:
Plut. de Mulier. Virtut. t. ii. p. 192.
It should, nevertheless, by no means be concealed that the annals ofSparta also contain some brilliant examples of female heroism, ofwhich the most striking, perhaps, is that furnished by the wife ofPanteus and her companions after the death of Cleomenes at Alexandria.“When the report of his death,” says Plutarch,[1137] “had spread overthe city, Cratesiclea, though a woman of superior fortitude, sankunder the weight of the calamity; she embraced the children ofCleomenes, and wept over them. The elder of them, disengaging himselffrom her arms, got unsuspected to the top of the house, and threwhimself down headlong. He was not killed, however, though much hurt;and when they took him up he loudly expressed his grief andindignation that they would not suffer him to destroy himself. Ptolemywas no sooner informed of these things than he ordered the body ofCleomenes to be flayed, and nailed to a cross, and his children to beput to death, together with his mother and the women her companions.Among these was the wife of Panteus, a woman of great beauty and mostmajestic presence. They had been but lately married, and theirmisfortune overtook them amid the first transports of love. When herhusband went with Cleomenes from Sparta, she was desirous ofaccompanying him, but was prevented by her parents, who kept her inclose custody. Soon afterwards, however, she provided herself with ahorse and a little money, and making her escape by night, rode at fullspeed to Tænaros, and there embarked on board a ship bound for Egypt.She reached her husband safely, and readily and cheerfully shared withhim in all the inconveniences of a foreign residence. When thesoldiers came to take Cratesiclea to the scaffold, she led her by thehand, assisted in bearing her robe,[1138] and desired her to exert allher courage, though she was far from being afraid of death, anddesired no other favour than that she might die before her children.But when they arrived at the place of execution the children sufferedbefore her eyes; and then Cratesiclea was despatched, uttering in herextreme distress only these words: ‘Oh! my children! whither are yougone?’
“The wife of Panteus, who was tall and strong, girt her robe about herand in a silent and composed manner paid the last offices to eachwoman that lay dead, winding up the bodies as well as her presentcirc*mstances would admit. Last of all she prepared herself for theponiard by letting down her robe about her and adjusting it in such amanner as to need no assistance after death, then, calling theexecutioner to do his office, and permitting no other person toapproach her, she fell like a heroine. In death she retained all thedecorum which she had preserved in life, and the decency which hadbeen so sacred with this excellent woman still remained about her.Thus in this bloody tragedy in which the women contended to the lastfor the prize of courage with the men, Lacedæmon evinced that it isimpossible for fortune to conquer virtue.”
Footnote 1137:
Cleomen. § 38. I have here made use of the translation of Langhorne, because it would be no easy matter to furnish a better.
Footnote 1138:
Πέπλος.
Another brief narrative given by the same historian exhibits in themost touching manner, the tenderness and self-devotion of a Spartanwoman. Cleombrotos, in conjunction with other conspirators, haddethroned king Leonidas his father-in-law and possessed himself of thecrown. Events afterwards restored the old man to his kingdom, uponwhich burning with resentment he hurried to take vengeance on hisson-in-law. "Chelonis, the daughter of Leonidas, had looked upon theinjury done to her father as done to herself, and when Cleombrotosrobbed him of the crown she left him in order to console her father inhis misfortune. As long as he remained in sanctuary she stayed withhim, and when he fled, sympathising with his sorrow, and full ofresentment against Cleombrotos, she attended him in his flight. Butwhen the fortunes of her father changed she changed too. She joinedher husband as a suppliant, and was found sitting by him with greatmarks of tenderness, and her two children one on each side at herfeet. The whole company were much struck at the sight, and could notrefrain from tears when they considered her goodness of heart anduncommon strength of affection.
"Chelonis, then, pointing to her mourning habit and her dishevelledhair thus addressed Leonidas. ‘It was not my dear father compassionfor Cleombrotos which put me in this habit and gave me this look ofmisery. My sorrows took their date with your misfortune and yourbanishment, and have ever since remained my familiar companions. Nowyou have conquered your enemies and are again king of Sparta should Istill retain these ensigns of affliction or assume festival and royalornaments, while the husband of my youth whom you yourself bestowedupon me falls a victim to your vengeance? If his own submission, ifthe tears of his wife and children cannot propitiate you he mustsuffer a severer punishment for his offences than even you require, hemust see his beloved wife die before him. For how can I live andsupport the sight of my own sex, after both my husband and my fatherhave refused to hearken to my supplications, when it appears that bothas a wife and a daughter I am born to be miserable with my family. Ifthis poor man had any plausible reasons for what he did I invalidatedthem all by forsaking him to follow you. But you furnish him with asufficient apology for his misbehaviour by showing that a crown is sobright and desirable an object that a son-in-law must be slain and adaughter totally disregarded when it is in question.’
“Chelonis, after this supplication, rested her cheek upon herhusband’s head, and with an eye dim and languid through sorrow lookedround on the spectators; Leonidas consulted his friends upon thepoint, and then commanded Cleombrotos to rise and go into exile, buthe desired Chelonis to stay and not to forsake so affectionate afather who had kindly granted her husband’s life. Chelonis, however,would not be persuaded. When her husband had risen from the ground sheput one child into his arms and took the other herself, and afterhaving paid due homage at the altar where they had taken sanctuarywent with him into banishment. So that had not Cleombrotos beencorrupted by the love of false glory he must have thought exile withsuch a woman a greater happiness than a kingdom without her.”[1139]
Footnote 1139:
Plut. Agis §§ 17. 18. Moore in his Lalla Rookh has expressed the same idea.
Fly to the desert, fly with me, Our Arab tents are rude for thee; But ah! the choice what heart can doubt, Of tents with love or thrones without?
CHAPTER III. CONDITION OF UNMARRIED WOMEN.—LOVE.
The condition of an Athenian lady it is far more important and, inproportion, more difficult to describe. Extremely erroneousimpressions appear to exist on the subject, several writers ofeminence having adopted the theory that they lived in total seclusion,and were little less ignorant and degraded than Oriental women arecommonly supposed to be. My own opinion is somewhat different. Aftervery patiently investigating the matter, the conclusions at which Ihave arrived are as follow:—
In delineating a picture of this kind, positive testimonies areunquestionably required; but I appeal to the impartial reader, whethervery great, I had almost said the greatest weight, should not, afterall, be attributed to that conviction which grows up, gradually andsilently, in the mind, during a long and habitual intercourse with thesubject. In this way, new authorities are formed, for to have examinedminutely and attentively what others have written, to have weighedauthorities and scrupulously sifted their several pretensions, may beallowed to entitle a man, if anything can, to express an opinion ofhis own.
The notion appears to prevail extensively, even among writers nototherwise ill-informed, that women occupied, among the Ioniansgenerally, and more especially among the Athenians, a very meanposition, were neglected and despised, and, consequently, exertedlittle or no influence on manners, morals, literature, or publicaffairs. With what design this error has been propagated it is notdifficult to comprehend. But to pervert history for party purposes is,after all, an useless undertaking, since the facts always remain, andit is never too late to rescue truth from the fangs of sophistry.
That the women of Athens were in the condition for which naturedesigned them, I will not affirm; a little more converse with theworld might have improved their understandings, they might have beenrendered more pleasing companions; but what they gained as social,they would probably have lost as domestic beings. No woman was everrendered better as a wife or as a mother by that indiscriminateenjoyment of society, which, it is supposed, the gentlewomen of Athenslost so much by being deprived of.
To form, however, a correct conception of their station, and thehappiness within their reach, we must take into consideration severalcirc*mstances peculiar to ancient society. In those times somethingvery different was understood by the word education from the meaningnow attached to it. It signified rather the disciplining of the mindto certain habits than the imparting of different kinds of knowledge.It was the culture of the intellectual powers, and the sowing of theseed, rather than the transplanting of notions, half-grown, from onemind to another. More care was bestowed on the building up, than onthe furnishing, of the mind. There was by far less acquisition, lessaccomplishment than in modern times; but the faculties were moresurely impregnated, quickened sooner, and ripened into more vigorousmaturity. Hence, among the ancients, there were few dreamers, eithermen or women. Exquisitely alive to all the peculiarities of theirsituation, they were, in the best sense of the word, a poeticalpeople, gifted, indeed, with imagination, but possessing, too, thepower to rein it in, to shape its course, and, on most occasions, torender it subservient to the dictates of judgment.
Of the management of infancy I have already spoken. At the age ofseven the sexes were separated, the girls still remaining in thenursery, while governors, kept expressly for the purpose, conductedthe boys to the public schools.[1140] Too little is known of thematerial circ*mstances attending the mental and bodily training of thegirls, or at what age they were taught to read and write. Much,however, in those ages was communicated orally. Their mothers impartedto them whatever notions they possessed of religion, performed intheir presence several sacrifices and other pious rites, and graduallyprepared them for officiating in their turn at their country’saltars.[1141] In a certain sense, therefore, every Athenian woman wasa priestess, and though their piety was imperfect and their faithcorrupt, it will still be admitted that important benefits must havebeen derived from imbuing the youthful mind with some principles ofreligion.
Footnote 1140:
From a passage in Terence (Phorm. i. 2. 30. sqq.) Perizonius concludes that even girls were sent to school. But he applies to Athenian maidens of free birth what in the Roman poet is related of a servile music girl: Ea serviebat lenoni impurissimo.—(Not. ad Ælian. Hist. Var. iii. 21.) It appears, however, from this passage, as Kuhn has already observed, that there existed public schools for girls at Athens, whatever might be the condition of the persons who frequented them. In Lambert Bos’s Antiquitates, (Pars. iv. c. 5. p. 216,) the error of Perizonius is repeated; that is, in the note; for, according to the text, the Attic virgins were closely confined to the house.
Footnote 1141:
Πολλὰς ἑορτὰς αἱ γυναῖκες ἔξω τῶν δημοτελῶν ἦγον ἰδία συνερχόμεναι.—Sch. Aristoph. Lysist. i. In Homer we find the Trojan women performing sacrifice to Athena—Il. ζ. 277. 310, just as the Athenian matrons did on the Acropolis.—Aristoph. Lysistr. 179.
The performance of these pious duties commenced very early.Immediately on attaining the age of five years, they might be calledon to officiate, clothed in saffron robes,[1142] in the rites ofArtemis Brauronia, when a she-goat was sacrificed to the goddess,while professed rhapsodists chaunted select passages from the Iliad.Here they were initiated in the mysteries of their nationalpiety,[1143] accompanied by all the charms of music, and of a styleof declaiming no less impressive than that of the theatre. At thisfestival, celebrated every five years, all the ceremonies wereperformed by virgins, none of whom could be above ten yearsold;[1144] we must, therefore, infer that they underwent muchprevious training, and were instructed carefully respecting theobject of the rites. Another religious festival at which youthfulvirgins only officiated, was the Arrhephoria, celebrated in honourof Athena or Herse. The ceremonies performed on this occasion appearto have required something more of preparation, since it wasnecessary that the youthful sacrificers should, at least, be sevenyears old and not exceed eleven. Four, selected for their noblebirth and training, presided, and other two were chosen to weave thesacred peplos, while engaged in which they resided in theSphæresterion, on the rock of the Acropolis, habited in whitegarments with ornaments of gold.[1145] The bread which they eatduring their seclusion was called Anastatos.[1146]
Footnote 1142:
Suid. v. ἄρκτος. t. i. p. 425. c.—Sch. Aristoph. Lysistr. 645.—Meurs. Græc. Fer. lib. ii. p. 67.—During the dances performed in honour of this goddess, the women commonly played on brazen castanets.—Athen. xiv. 39.
Footnote 1143:
As Plato in his Republic appropriates to each sex a separate class of songs, it may be inferred that both in Athens and elsewhere in Greece, men and women habitually sung the same lays.—De. Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 30.
Footnote 1144:
Pollux. viii. 107.—Cf. Herod. vi. 138. Women practised various dances, to perform which with skill constituted a branch of their accomplishments. One of these dances was called the Apokinos, or Mactrismos, of which Cratinos made mention in his Nemesis, Cephisodoros in his Amazons, and Aristophanes in his Centaurs. These dances, however, appear to have been a particular class, and obtained the name of Marctypiæ. Athen. xiv. 26.
Footnote 1145:
Etym. Mag. 149, 13. sqq.—Suid. v. Ἁῤῥηνηφ. t. i. p. 222. c. Ἀῤῥηφορια—ἐπειδὴ τὰ ἀῤῥητα ἐν κίσταις ἔφερον τῇ θεῷ ὡι παρθένοι. idem. t. i. p. 423. c. et v. χαλκεῖα t. ii. p. 110 d. Harpocrat. v. ἀῤῥηφόρειν. p. 48 Maussac.—Aristoph. Lysistr. 643. et. schol.—Lys. Mun. Accept. Apollog. §. 1.—Plut. Vit. Dec. Orat. iv. t. v. p. 145.—Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 241. In several religious processions the women except the canephori, followed not the pageant, but looked upon it from the housetop.
Footnote 1146:
Athen. iii. 80.
I own it is not a little remarkable, that in proving the women ofAthens to have received what in our times are regarded as the humblestelements of education, we should be compelled to rely on indirectevidence, or on mere inferences, or, indeed, that the point shouldrequire proof at all.[1147] This fact itself is decisive of theircomparative seclusion. Had they mingled much in society, moreoccasions would have occurred of dwelling on their acquirements, andin dramatic compositions of representing them delivering opinions, andexhibiting tastes and preferences, obviously incompatible with anuncultivated intellect. But, though the difficulty of the investigatorbe augmented by the paucity and indistinct manner of the witnesses, weare still not left entirely without ground for coming to a decision,and if writers have, hitherto, so far as I know, overlooked some ofthe principal testimonies, that must be regarded only as an additionalcause for bringing them forward now.[1148]
Footnote 1147:
Muretus has brought forward several passages to prove that learned women bore but an indifferent character in antiquity.—Var. Lect. viii. 21. The Hetairæ of course were taught to read. Of this we have abundant proof: τὰ ἐπὶ τῶν τοίχων γεγγραμμένα ἐν τῷ κεραμεικῷ ἀναγνοθὶ, ὅπου κατεστηλίτευται ὑμῶν τὰ ὀνομάτα—says the jealous lover to Melitta in Lucian.—Diall. Hetair. iv. 2. Nay even the servant maid of this Hetaira Acis is able to read; for desirous to ascertain whether there was any thing in the report of her lover, Melitta sends forth the girl to examine the walls, who discovers and reads the words “Melitta loves Hermotimos,” &c. which written there in jest by some wag had proved the cause of her lover’s jealousy and the quarrel that ensued.
Footnote 1148:
Cf. Telet. ap. Stob. Florileg. Tit. 108. 83. Gaisf.
A report current in antiquity, and preserved by Marcellinus in hisLife of Thucydides,[1149] represents the daughter of that greathistorian as the continuator of her father’s work, and as, in fact,the author of the whole eighth book. The biographer does not, indeed,receive the legend, but in rejecting it his assigned reasons are notthat in the days of Thucydides Athenian ladies were not taught toread, and were, therefore, incapable of any species of literaryexertion, but that the portion in question of the history bearsevident marks of the same lofty and masculine mind to which we owe therest, and no-wise resembles the productions of a woman. HadMarcellinus known the art of writing to have formed no part of anAthenian lady’s education, that could have been the proper reason toassign for his doubt. He might, under such circ*mstances, haveridiculed the folly of such a supposition. But no such objectionoccurred to him. He knew well that they could and did write, and had,therefore, recourse to the proper argument for establishing his point.
Footnote 1149:
P. xxi. For Plato’s views on the education of women, see De Legg. t. viii. p. 36.—Cf. Xen. Conviv. ii. 9, 10.
Again, in that fragment of the oration of Lysias which he wrote forthe children of Diodotos, an Athenian woman of rank is introduceddefending, under very distressful circ*mstances, the rights of herchildren against her own father. Diodotos, it seems, had married hisniece, and by her had several children. He was at length required bythe commonwealth to proceed on a military expedition, during which hefell under the walls of Ephesos. Diogeiton, father of his wife, havingbeen appointed guardian of the children, endeavours to defraud them oftheir property, and their mother, calling in the aid of impartialarbiters, pleads before them her children’s cause, and the orator,addressing one of the tribunals of Athens, does not hesitate to put inher mouth language worthy of a rhetorician. This, however, I am aware,cannot be regarded as a proof. But, in the course of her speech shediscloses a circ*mstance which must be so considered. During theperiod of her stay in her fathers house, the old man removed from onestreet to another, and in the confusion a small memorandum book,dropped from among his papers, was picked up by one of the childrenand brought to their mother.[1150] It happened to contain the accountof the money her husband had left on departing for the army; this shereads,[1151] and thus discovers the state in which the affairs of thefamily had been left on the departure of her husband.
Footnote 1150:
Lys. Cont. Diog. § 5. By τοὺς παῖδας: Reiske, however, understands the servants of Diogeiton, though these would have been more likely to carry the book to their master.
Footnote 1151:
See also in Demosthenes the account of a wife and husband examining a will.—Adv. Spud. § 8.
Another proof that writing formed one of the accomplishments of womenoccurs in Xenophon. Ischomachos is laying open the road to domestichappiness and wealth. He enters, as elsewhere will be shown, into avariety of interesting details, and among other things, discusses thecharacter and duties of a housekeeper; for in Greece the principalcare of the household was always committed to women. Thus, going backto the Heroic ages, we find Euryclea the housekeeper ofOdysseus,[1152] and Hector’s palace in Troy is also placed under thecare of a woman.[1153] In the Cretan states, moreover, even the publictables had female inspectors,[1154] and at Athens, where domesticeconomy was so much better understood than in the rest of Greece,women necessarily obtained the government of the household,[1155]which men would have certainly managed more imperfectly. But inwell-regulated families, the supreme control of everything rested withthe wife, whom Xenophon[1156] represents engaging with her husband intaking a list of all the moveables in the house, and this afterwardsremains in her hands as a check upon the housekeeper, which, had shenot known how to read, it would not have been. Besides, she is spokenof as aiding in writing the catalogue, and displays throughout thedialogue so much ability and knowledge that it would not surprise usto find her discoursing with Socrates on household affairs. There is,moreover, a remark of Plato[1157] subversive at the same time ofanother error on this same subject, which exhibits women exercisingtheir judgment in literary matters. Children, he says, may find comedymore agreeable, but educated women, youths, and the majority indeed ofmankind, will prefer tragedy. Here we find the opinion corroboratedthat both the comic and tragic theatres were open to them, otherwiseit could not have been known which they would prefer. But of this moreelsewhere.
Footnote 1152:
Odyss. α. 428. β. 345, 361.
Footnote 1153:
Iliad. ζ. 381. 390.
Footnote 1154:
Athen. iv. 22.
Footnote 1155:
In the household of Pericles, however, we find mention made of a steward, and learn that the regulation of affairs was taken out of the hands of the women.—Plut. Pericl. § 16.
Footnote 1156:
Œconom. ix. 10. p. 57, Schneid. Similar business habits prevailed among our neighbours, the Dutch, while they enjoyed the advantages of republican institutions. Among the causes of their prosperity Sir Josiah Child enumerates, “the education of their children, as well daughters as sons, all which, be they of never so great quality or estate, they always take care to bring up to write perfect good hands, and to have the full knowledge and use of arithmetic and merchants’ accounts, the well understanding and practice whereof, doth strangely infuse into most that are the owners of that quality, of either sex, not only an ability for commerce of all kinds, but a strong aptitude, love and delight in it; and in regard the women are as knowing therein as the men, it doth encourage their husbands to hold on in their trades to their dying days. Knowing the capacity of their wives to get in their estates and carry on their trades after their deaths; whereas if a merchant in England arrive at any considerable estate, he commonly withdraws his estate from trade, before he comes near the confines of old age, reckoning that if God should call him out of the world while the main of his estate is engaged abroad in trade, he must lose one third of it, through the inexperience and inaptness of his wife to such affairs, and so it usually falls out.”—Discourse of Trade, p. 4.
Footnote 1157:
De Legg. l. ii. t. vii. p. 243. Bekk.—Ἐὰν δέ γ᾿ οἱ μείζους παῖδες, τὸν τὰς κωμῳδίας· τραγωδίαν δὲ αἵ τε πεπαιδευμέναι τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τὰ νέα μειράκια καὶ σχεδὸν ἴσως τὸ πλῆθος πάντων.
In all countries, a great part of a woman’s education takes placeafter marriage. But at Athens, where they entered so early[1158] intothe connubial state, marriage itself must be reckoned among theprincipal causes of their mental developement. They came into thehands of their husbands unformed, but pliable and docile. The littlethey had been taught seemed rather designed to fit them to receive hisinstructions than to dispense with them.[1159] Their seclusion fromthe world preserved their character unfixed and impressionable. Theypassed from the nursery, as it were, to the bridal chamber, timid,unworldly, unsophisticated, and the husband, if he desired it, mightfashion their mind and opinions as he pleased. In the women of Athenswe, accordingly, observe the most remarkable contrast to the Spartans.Their influence, in effect greater, perhaps, acted invisibly, warmingand impelling the ruder masculine clay, but without humbling theirlords or exposing them to the ridicule of living under petticoatgovernment. Yet in Themistocles we have an example of the sway theyexercised. Fondling one day his infant son he observed, sportively,but with that ambitious consciousness of power ever present to themind of a Greek—"This little fellow is the most influential person Iknow." His friends inquired his meaning—"Why, replied Themistocles, hecompletely governs his mother, while she governs me, and I the wholeof Greece."[1160]
Footnote 1158:
The Roman ladies entered still earlier into the married state; at the age of twelve, says Plutarch, or under. Parall. Num. et Lycurg. § 4.
Footnote 1159:
Xenoph. Œconom. vii. 5. 6. sqq.
Footnote 1160:
Plut. Themist. § 18.
The steps by which an Athenian girl might arrive at so envied aposition are not unworthy our attention. From the age of fifteen shemight look to become the mistress of a family; and it is probable thatthe maxim of Cleobulos,[1161] that women should approach theirnuptials young in years but old in understanding, often governed theirconduct. Love no doubt was not the only matchmaker at Athens.[1162] Ingeneral the heart, as in modern times, followed in the train ofprudential calculation. But this arose, not so much from anyimpracticability[1163] of obtaining interviews, as from the habitualpreference for gold, which, in all ages, has been found to actuate theconduct of the majority. To this day, in every country in Europe,marriage in the upper classes is too frequently a matter of merebargain and sale, in which the feelings remain altogether unconsulted.And it was the same at Athens, though to suppose with Müller thatinterest was always the sole motive would be palpably to embrace anerror, alike uncountenanced by history and philosophy.
Footnote 1161:
Diog. Laert. i. 6. 4.
Footnote 1162:
In Greece, as everywhere else, portionless girls had few admirers. Diog. Laert. v. 4. 1.
Footnote 1163:
Examples occur in the comic poets, of men choosing for themselves. Thus in Terence a young man declines the lady offered him by his father, and proposes to marry the mistress of his choice, to which both parents agree. Heautontimor. v. 5. sub. fin.
When it is said that virgins in all Ionic states led an extremelysecluded life, we are not thence to conclude that no opportunity ofbeholding, or even conversing with them, was enjoyed by men.[1164] Ithas already been seen that from the age of five years variousceremonies of their ancestral religion[1165] led females into thestreet, that they walked leisurely, arrayed with every resource of artand magnificence, in frequent processions to the temples, and it isknown that numerous private occasions, such as funerals, marriages,&c., exposed them to the indiscriminate gaze of the public. Thus, wehave in Terence a youth who from beholding a young lady with faceuncovered and dishevelled hair lamenting at her mother’s funeral,falls desperately in love;[1166] and the wife in Lysias, whose frailtyled to the murder of Eratosthenes,[1167] was first seen and admiredunder similar circ*mstances. Excuses, in fact, were never wanting tobe in public, and occasions unknown to us were clearly afforded menfor becoming acquainted with the temper and character of their futurespouses, since we find Socrates conversing with men well acquaintedwith their country’s manners, jocularly feigning to have chosenXantippe for her fierce, untameable spirit.[1168]
Footnote 1164:
Athen. xiii. 29.
Footnote 1165:
The religious rites in which the women of Athens officiated were numerous and important: 1. The orgiastic ceremonies in honour of Pan were performed with shouts and clamour, it not being permitted to approach that divinity in silence.—Sch. Aristoph. Lysistr. 2. They celebrated sacred rites in honour of Aphrodite Colias, id. ibid. 3. Another divinity, in whose honour they congregated together, was Ginesyllis a goddess in the train of Aphrodite, who obtained the name ἀπὸ τῆς γενέσεως τῶν παίδων. id. ibid. Cf. Luc. Amor. § 42. 4. The part they took in the orgies of Dionysos is well known. 5. They, too, were the principal actors in the festival of Adonis. Plut. Alcib. § 18. and to mention no more they may strictly be said to have constituted the principal attraction of the Panathenaic procession.
Footnote 1166:
Phorm. 2. 2. 40. sqq.
Footnote 1167:
Lys. De Cæd. Eratosth. § 2.
Footnote 1168:
Diog. Laert. ii. 5. 18.
It has been supposed by many distinguished scholars, that, atAthens,[1169] the theatre—that great bazaar of female beauty in modernstates—was closed against the women, at least the comic theatre. Oneprincipal ground of this opinion is the coarse and licentiouscharacter of the old comedy which, with its broad humour, politicalsatire, and reckless disregard of decency, appears fitted for menonly, and those not the most refined. But there are strangecontradictions in human nature. The very religion of Greece teemedwith indecency. Phallic statues crowded the temples and the publicstreets. Phallic emblems entered into many of the sacred ceremonies atwhich women, even in their maiden condition, assisted, and the poemschaunted at sacrifices, where they associated in every rite, were, inmany parts, broader than an Utopian legislator would considerpermissible. Besides, to prove the nullity of this objection, we needonly note the history of our own stage. English women refused not,when they were in fashion, to behold, under the protection of amask,[1170] the comedies of Massinger, Wycherly, Beaumont andFletcher. They still read, and, on the stage, admire, Shakespeare, andfrom these the interval is not wide to Aristophanes, the lewdest andmost shameless of ancient comic writers.[1171] And, further, it shouldnever be forgotten, that their perverted religion flung its protectingwing over the stage. Plays exhibited during the festivals of Bacchoswere, like our old mysteries and moralities, strictly sacred shows,and, consistently, women could no more have been excluded from themthan from the other exhibitions connected with public worship.
Footnote 1169:
To prove the presence of the women at the theatre among the other Greeks, ample testimonies might be collected. Thus, when in Æolis, a certain Alexander exhibited dramatic performances, the people flocked thither from all the neighbouring towns and villages, upon which he surrounded the theatre with soldiers, made prisoners both men, women, and children, and only released them on payment of a large ransom.—Polyæn. Stratagem. vi. 10.
Footnote 1170:
To this Pope alludes:
“And not a mask went unimproved away.”
See also Swift, Tale of a Tub, § ix.
Footnote 1171:
On the coarseness of the German theatre, in the eighteenth century, frequented by the empress and the first ladies of the court, see Lady Montague’s Letters, ix.
As on many other points, however, the positive and direct testimoniesto be adduced in proof of the position I maintain are scanty, and ofmodern authorities nearly all are against me. Still, truth is notimmediately to be deserted because there happens to be much difficultyin defending it. It will be time enough to run when we have exhaustedall our resources. An unknown writer, but still a Greek,[1172] relatesthat, during the acting of the Eumenides, that awe-inspiring andterrible drama of Æschylus, the sight of the furies rushingtumultuously, like dogs of hell, upon the stage, with their frightfulmasks and blood-dripping hands, shed so deep a terror over thetheatre, that children were thrown into fits, and pregnant womenseized with premature birth-pangs. This, if admitted, would beevidence decisive as regards the tragic stage. But, because it isimpossible to elude its force, modern critics boldly assume theprivilege to treat the whole passage contemptuously, opposing scornwhen they have no counterproof to oppose. Such a mode of arguing,however, by whomsoever pursued, must clearly bear upon the face of itthe mark of sophistry, for in that way there is no position whichmight not be overthrown or established.
Footnote 1172:
Τινες δὲ φάσιν, ἐν τῇ ἐπιδείξει τῶν Εὐμενίδων σποράδην εἰσαγαγόντα τὸν χορὸν, τοσοῦτον ἐκπλῆξαι τὸν δῆμον, ὥστε τὰ μὲν νήπια ἐκψύξαι, τὰ δὲ ἔμβρυα ἐξαμβλωθῆναι.—Vit. Æschyl. p. 6.
But our anonymous authority has not been left to encounter the attacksof the critics and historians alone. Other ancient authors, thoughtheir corroborative testimonies have, hitherto, been generallyoverlooked, furnish incidental hints and revelations which, dulyweighed, will, I make no doubt, be admitted to amount to positiveproof. Describing the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, Strabo observes,that so vast were its dimensions, that during the celebration of themysteries, it would contain the whole multitude usually assembled atthe theatre.[1173] Now, in the mysteries, we know that the Atheniansof both sexes, and of all ages above childhood, were present, so that,if men only had been admitted to the theatre, it need not have beenhalf the size of the Eleusinian temple, and, consequently, would havefurnished the geographer with no proper subject of comparison. Again,in the passage quoted above, from Plato, the presence of women at boththe tragic and comic theatres is indubitably presumed, since, to judgeof both these kinds of exhibitions, it was necessary either to seethem, or to read the plays. If they read the plays there could be noreason for restraining them from the theatre, since, whatever theycontained of objectionable matter would thus be equally placed withintheir reach. It is to be presumed, therefore, even from this passage,that the theatre was free to women.
Footnote 1173:
Ὄχλον θέατρου δέξασθαι δυνάμενον.—Strab. ix. i. p. 238.—We have in Pollux, ii. 56. and iv. 121., θεάτρια “a spectatress,” and συνθεάτρια “a fellow spectatress,” a word used by Aristophanes, and, doubtless, applied to women forming part of a theatrical audience.
But the philosopher is elsewhere more explicit. Treating in hisDialogue on Laws expressly of tragic poetry, and speaking always inreference to his imaginary state, he respectfully and with manyflattering compliments proscribes this branch of the mimetic arts,not, however, without assigning his reasons. Assuming for the momentthe part of leader of the legislative chorus, he informs thetragedians, that “we, also, in our way, are poets, and aim atproducing a perfect representation of human life. You must regard us,therefore, as your rivals, and believe that we labour at thecomposition of a drama, which it is within the competence of perfectlaw only to achieve. You must not, accordingly imagine, that, asjealous rivals, we shall readily admit you into our city to pitch yourtents in our agora, and, through the voice of loud-mouthed, actors toimbue our wives and children and countrymen with manners the veryopposite to ours.”[1174] Now, what point, or, indeed, what sense wouldthere be in this, if in the commonwealths actually existing dramaticpoets had always been prohibited from addressing themselves to thewomen? Would it not have been just such another novelty as aningenious philosopher of our days would hit upon, were he in a stateof his own invention, to propose, as a great improvement on existingcustoms, that women should go to church?
Footnote 1174:
Plat. de Legg. vii. t. viii. p. 59. Bekk. Compare with this the song of the φαλλοφόρος..—Athen. xiv. 16.
Σοὶ, Βάκχε, τάνδε μοῦσαν αγλαΐζομεν, Ἁπλοῦν ῥυθμὸν χεόντες αἰόλῳ μέλει, Καὶ μὰν, ἀπαρθένευτον. κ. τ. λ.
His songs and his acting were, no doubt, little suited to the taste of a virgin; but if virgins had never frequented the theatre, and the comic theatre, too, where would have been the necessity for any such remark?
This, therefore, were there no other proof, would, to me, appearconvincing; but a still stronger remains. It is well known that thetheatre was, among the ancients, parcelled out into several divisions,some more, some less honourable; and of these one whole division, bythe decree of Sphyromachos, was appropriated to the female citizens,who would appear previously to have sat indiscriminately among the menand female strangers. To the latter the upper ranges of seats wouldappear to have been appropriated.[1175] On this point, therefore, theopinion received among the generality of writers is erroneous. Womenwere not debarred the amusem*nt or instruction of the theatre,[1176]which, for good or for evil, influenced their education, and renderedtheir minds subservient or otherwise to the designs of the legislatorand the welfare of the state.
Footnote 1175:
Aristoph. Eccles. 22. et Schol.
Ἐνταῦθα περὶ τὴν ἐσχάτην δεῖ κερκίδα Ὑμᾶς καθιζούσας βεωρεῖν ὡς ξένας. Alexis, ap. Poll. ix. 44.
Footnote 1176:
An anecdote related by Plutarch, would of itself, in my opinion, suffice to prove the presence of women at the theatre, as well as that Athenian ladies habitually went abroad attended by a single maid-servant. For on one occasion, when an actor who played the part of a queen would have refused to appear upon the stage unless furnished with a splendid costume and a large suite of attendants, Melanthios, the manager, pushed him on the boards, saying, “Don’t you see the wife of Phocion constantly going abroad attended by but one maid? And wouldst thou affect superior pomp and corrupt our wives?” It is evident that the pride of this actor could not have exercised any evil influence on the women had they not been present to witness his ostentation. We must necessarily infer, therefore, that they were, and that they joined the theatre in the thunders of applause with which it received the observation of Melanthios, who had spoken so loud as to be heard by the whole audience.—Plut. Phoc. § 19. The passage of Alexis had not escaped Casaubon, who, in his notes on Theophrastus’ Characters, p. 165, has discussed the point with his usual learning and ability. A passage in the Thesmophoriazusæ of Aristophanes, seems however, but only seems, to make against this opinion. There a woman says that when men returned from seeing a play of Euripides, a “Woman-hater,” they used to search the house in quest of lovers; but when Euripides’ plays were acted they might be supposed to remain at home from pique.
From all which it will be apparent that the sexes enjoyed at Athensabundant occasions of meeting; and in the other Ionian states similarcustoms and similar manners prevailed. For this we are reduced to relyon no obscure scholiast or grammarian. Thucydides himself, describingthe second purification of Delos by the Athenians, and the institutionof the Delian games, observes, that from very remote times the peopleof Ionia and the neighbouring islands had been accustomed to come withtheir wives and children to the sacred festivals there celebrated inhonour of Apollo. On these occasions gymnastic exercises and musicalcontests took place; and of the chorusses who chaunted the praises ofthe god some were female. The whole of the ceremonies are described inthe Homeric hymns to the tutelar divinity, where the poet veryanimatedly recapitulates the principal features of the games.
To thee, O Phœbos! most the Delian isle Gives cordial joy, excites the pleasing smile, When gay Ionians flock around thy fane, Men, women, children,—a resplendent train: Where flowing garments sweep the sacred pile,— Where youthful concourse gladdens all the isle,— Where champions fight,—where dancers beat the ground,— Where cheerful music echoes all around, Thy feast to honour, and thy praise to sound.[1177]
Footnote 1177:
Thucyd. iii. 104. The version is Dr. Smith’s. Cf. Hom. Hymn. in Apoll. 146. sqq.
Footnote 1178:
I have, as the reader will perceive, adopted the verse proposed by Barnes:—
Δηλιάδες δὲ τε κοῦραι Ἀπόλλωνος θεράπαιναι.
Though Ernesti is perhaps right in supposing no addition necessary. See his note on v. 165. Franke, in his recent edition of the Hymns, has, with Ernesti, rejected the verse.
The great historian who quotes this hymn, and unhesitatinglyattributes it to Homer, brings forward to prove the occurrence ofmusical contests another passage, in which, as he observes, the poetspeaks of himself:—
But now, Apollo, with thy sister fair, Smile as the lingering bard prefers his prayer; And ye, O Delian nymphs,[1178] who guard the fane Of Phœbos, listen to my parting strain; Should some lone stranger, when my lay no more Floats on the breezes of the sacred shore, Demand who best, with soul-entrancing song, Earned blithe your praise, and bore your hearts along? Then answer with a warm approving smile— “The blind old man of Chios’ rocky isle.”[1179]
Footnote 1179:
Of these verses (Hymn. in Apol. v. 165. 172) I give my own translation, the last line excepted, which Byron had somewhere done ready to my hand.
And down to the period of the Peloponnesian war similar games andsacred rites were performed at Ephesos, at which the Ionians withtheir wives and children were usually present.
The Doric historian, to whom all these circ*mstances must befamiliarly known, makes, however, no account of them, but consistentlywith his theory, if not with facts, remembers no well-authenticatedinstance in the annals of Attica of a person’s marrying for love. Whathe would admit to be well authenticated it were difficult to say. Herejects, whenever his particular notions seem to require it, thetestimonies both of Herodotus and Thucydides, so that for a narrativeresting on the authority of Polyænus, Plutarch, and Valerius Maximus,we can expect no quarter. Nevertheless, as these writers are at leastfaithful in their delineations of manners, the following romanticincident may be hazarded even on their authority. Thrasymedes, anAthenian youth, entertaining a strong passion for the daughter of thetyrant Peisistratos, had the hardihood one day as she walked in areligious procession to kiss her openly in the street. Her brothers,young men of a fiery temper, regarded the act as an affront almostinexpiable, and were apparently preparing to take vengeance on theoffender, when the old prince allayed their anger by observing,—"If wepunish men for loving us, how shall we conduct ourselves towards ourenemies?" Escaping thus, Thrasymedes still cherished his love. Hetherefore determined on carrying away the lady by force; and gainingover a number of his associates, he seized the occasion of a sacrificeon the sea-shore in which the maiden was officiating, and rushing,attended by his followers with drawn swords, through the crowd, hesucceeded in conveying her to a boat, and set sail for Ægina.Unfortunately, however, for his design, Hippias, eldest son ofPeisistratos, happened at this moment to be cruising in the bay on thelookout for pirates, and perceiving a bark putting hastily out to sea,he bore down upon it, took the young men prisoners, and conducted themtogether with his sister back to Athens. Thrasymedes and hiscompanions being brought before the tyrant, abated not a jot of theircourage, but bade him, in determining their punishment, use his owndiscretion, since from the moment they resolved on the enterprise theyhad made light, they said, of life. Peisistratos, tyrant though hewas, regarded their loftiness of soul with admiration, freely bestowedhis daughter on Thrasymedes, and won them to his interest bygentleness and friendship. In this, says Polyænus, acting the part ofa good father and a popular citizen rather than of a tyrant.[1180]
Footnote 1180:
Polyæn. Strat. v. 14. Meurs. Peisist. vi. p. 46. seq. Plutarch. in Apophthegm. Peisist. § 3. who calls the young man Thrasybulos. Valer. Max. v. 1.
But supposing no instances remained on record, who can doubt that theheart prompted, and the hand followed its promptings, at Athens aselsewhere? Its walls, its columns, every plane-tree in the Academy,the Cerameicos, and other public walks, glowed with the language ofthe passions, and the names of virgins beloved for their beauty. Therewas, no doubt, some want of delicacy in this; but the manners of theAthenians, though they presented no insuperable bar to so much ofintercourse as might serve to enkindle affection,[1181] opposed,nevertheless, that facility of communication which at Sparta existed,and in our own country is common. However, had the beloved beenincapable of reading, to what purpose should her name, coupled withendearing epithets, have illuminated the bark of the smilax, or themarble skreens of the gymnasia? It was traced there in order that herbright eyes might peruse it, and learn who of all the youth of Athens,had singled her forth from the world to be the object of his love.Lucian, in his sarcastic humour, represents a mad lover of the goddessAphrodite carving every tree and end of wall with her name.[1182] Froma fragment of Callimachos it would seem too as if men had sometimeswritten the beloved syllables on the leaves of trees;[1183] which maywell have been, since in our own days we have seen the English peopleinscribing in letters of gold the name of their youthful queen onleaves of laurel. Euripides, who lost no opportunity of venting hisaversion for the sex, introduces one of his characters protesting thathis opinion of women would not be bettered though every pine in MountIda were covered with their names.[1184]
Footnote 1181:
Schol. in Aristoph. Acharn. 144. Vesp. 98. Young men in love would appear to have played at dice, with fortune, to discover whether they should be successful or otherwise. Luc. Amor. § 16. Speaking of Ameipsias’ Sphendone, or Jewelled Ring, Hemsterhuis observes:—“Nomen habere potuerit hæc comedia ab annulo mutui amoris signo, atque arrha, cujus in palâ fuerit insculpta, quod haud apud antiquos insolens, amoris figura, quæque vario ut modo per aliorum manus vagata.” ad Poll. ix. 96. t. vi. p. 1123.
Footnote 1182:
Amor. § 16. Τοῖχος ἄπας ἐχαράσσετο, καὶ πᾶς μαλακοῦ δένδρου φλοιὸς Ἀφροδίτην καλὴν ἐκήρυσσεν.
Footnote 1183:
Callim. Frag. xxv. p. 241. Spanh.—Theoc. Epithal. Hell. 48.
Footnote 1184:
Ap. Eustath. Iliad, ζ. 490. Potter, Archæol. ii. 244.
Another mode of declaring love, not quite unknown in modern times, wasto clothe the language of the heart in verse. Poets, we are told,often disguised their own feelings by attributing them to the actorsin a feigned narrative, which they would compose as an offering to theobject of their attachment who, it is very obvious, to appreciate sucha gift, must have been able to read it.[1185] They had likewiseanother fashion, particularly Greek, of making known their sentiments,which was to suspend garlands of flowers, or perform sacrifice beforethe door where the person possessing their heart resided.[1186]Sometimes they repaired to the spot and poured forth libations of wineas at the entrance of a temple, a practice alluded to by the Scholiaston Aristophanes, who relates that a number of Thessalian gentlemenbeing in love with Laïs,[1187] betrayed their passion by publiclysprinkling her doors with wine. Among the symptoms which disclosed thecondition of the feelings, a garland loosely thrown upon the head wasone.[1188] Women suffered their secret to escape them by beingdiscovered wreathing garlands for their hair.[1189]
Footnote 1185:
Philostrat. Epist. xx. p. 921. Hermann. Com. in Arist. Poet. p. 87.
Footnote 1186:
Athen. xv. 9.
Footnote 1187:
Cf. Naïs according to Harpocrat. in v. p. 203. Sch. Aristoph. Plat. 179. Cf. Athen. xiii. 51.
Footnote 1188:
Athen. xv. 9.
Footnote 1189:
Aristoph. Thesmoph. 400.
But in whatever way the existence of passion was externallymanifested, a more interesting question is the modification which thepassion[1190] itself underwent in the Greek mind.[1191] Numerouscirc*mstances concur to mislead our judgment on this subject. In thefirst place, the writers who sprang up like fungi amid the corruptionand profligacy which attended the decay of Hellenic society, standingnearer to us, obstruct our view. Among them a coarse unhealthy cravingafter excitement led to nefarious perversions of sentiment, and tocountenance their own excesses they threw back their vile pollutingshadows upon the loftier and brighter moral station of theirforefathers. Even so early as the age of Æschylus this culpablepractice began to prevail, for this great poet scrupled not toattribute to Achilles vices, which, in the Homeric period, wereevidently unknown.[1192]
Footnote 1190:
Σὲ δέσποινα τῶν ὑπὲρ σοῦ λόγων, Ἀφροδίτη, σὲ βοηθὸν αἱ ἐμαὶ δεήσεις καλοῦσιν. Luc. Amor. § 19.
Footnote 1191:
See the whole question treated with peculiar ability by Maximus Tyrius viii. 105. sqq. Homer, in the opinion of this writer, exhibits especial felicity in his description of love, from the cool, timid dawn of passion to its fervid noon, pourtraying its operations, the age at which it is experienced, its forms, its feelings, chaste or unchaste. See too Lycophron Cassand. 104. with the commentary of Meursius, p. 1184. 1186. sqq.
Footnote 1192:
The friendship of Achilles for Patroclos is celebrated by Maximus Tyrius, viii. 106. Cf. Luc. Amor. 20.
But rightly to comprehend the spirit of an age, we must by no meansconfide in the interpretation of the succeeding, or even in any oneclass of contemporary writers. Least of all, in the authors of comedy,who seldom paint men as they are, but run into exaggeration andcaricature for the sake of effect. To the imaginative, spiritual,impassioned must we have recourse, if we would learn what theimpassioned, spiritual and imaginative felt, and to such only in anyage or country, is love, in the poetical sense of the word, familiaror indeed intelligible.
In the apprehension of several modern writers, love among the Greeks,was not merely based upon physical elements, as it must everywhere be,but included little or nothing else.[1193] It had there, they suppose,none of these romantic features, nothing of that heroic self-devotionor lofty intercommunion of soul with soul, which among northernnations, more particularly in fiction, characterises this powerful andmysterious principle, which binds together in indissoluble unionindividuals of different sexes, and renders throughout life thecontentment and happiness of the one, dependent on the well-being ofthe other.
Footnote 1193:
Maximus Tyrius has, on the origin of love, a very beautiful passage. “Its well-spring is the beauty of the soul gleaming upward through the body. And as flowers seen under water appear still more brilliant and exquisite than they are, so mental excellence seems to manifest additional splendour when invested with corporeal loveliness.” ix. 113. Euripides, whatever he may have written in his old age, was once an enthusiastic panegyrist of love, of which he has left a brilliant description. Athen. xiii. 11. In the gymnasia the statue of Eros was placed beside those of Hermes and Hercules—eloquence and strength. Love festivals Ἐρωτίδια were celebrated by the Thespians. Athen. xiii. 12. Before entering battle the Cretans and Spartans sacrificed to Eros, Id. xiii. 12. Alexis imitates Plato in describing this passion. Eros had two bows, the one of the graces producing happiness, the other engendering violence and wrong. Id. xiii. 14. On the power of love see § 74. Cleisophos of Selymbria fell in love at Samos with a statue of Parian marble. § 84.
But I can discover in the Greeks nothing which, on this point, candistinguish them from other civilised races, except, perhaps, thatthere was in their love, more of earnestness and reality and less ofdreaminess and fantastic affectation, than might be brought home toseveral modern nations. Their fables, however, and their poetry teemwith ideas and examples of the loftiest and purest love, such love,I mean, as is natural to mankind, as harmonises with the structureof their minds, and the object and tendency of their passions,growing like the oak out of earth, but springing upward and rearingits majestic stature and beautiful foliage towards heaven. ThusOdysseus in Homer prefers the sunshine of a wife’s affection toimmortality[1194] and the smiles of a sensual goddess. Hæmon with atenderness carried to excess, spurns the blandishment of empire,nay, the very laws of duty and nature, that he may cling to the formof Antigone[1195] and join her in the grave. And Alcestis, risingabove them all, quits in youth and health and beauty
“The warm precincts of the cheerful day,”
that she may preserve the existence of one beloved still more thanlife.[1196]
Footnote 1194:
Καὶ τὴν Πηνελόπην ἄλλως Ὀδυσσεὺς ὁρᾷ, ἄλλως ὁ Εὐρύμαχος.—Max. Tyr. ix. 115.
Footnote 1195:
Soph. Antig. 635. sqq.—Καὶ ἐν εὐτυχίαις συνευτύχει καὶ ἀποθανόντι συναποθνήσκει, Max. Tyr. ix. 116. We discover the same idea in our own marriage ceremony, where husband and wife are said to be joined together, “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.”
Footnote 1196:
Even Lucian could discover that there was something holy in love. Κοινὸν οὖν ἀμφοτέρῳ γένει πόθον ἐγκερασαμένη, συνέζευξεν ἄλληλοις θεσμὸν ἀνάγκης ὅσιον. Amor. § 19.
Nay, to prove the elevated conceptions of love that prevailed inearlier Greece, we find a personification of this passion reckonedamong the most ancient gods of its mythology. Altars were erected,festivals instituted, sacrifices offered up to it, as to a power, inits origin and nature divine.[1197] It breathed the breath of lifeinto their poetry, it was supposed to elicit music and verse from thecoldest human clay, like the sun’s rays from the fabulous Memnon—itallied itself in its energies with freedom—to love, in the imaginationof a Greek, was to cease to be a slave,[1198]—it emancipated andrendered noble whomsoever it inspired,—it floated winged through theair, and descended even in dreams[1199] upon the mind of men or women,revealing to sight the forms of persons unknown, annihilatingdistance, trampling over rank, confounding together gods and men byits irresistible force.[1200] Much of the beauty of their fables isconcealed from us by the atmosphere of triteness and familiarity withwhich our injudicious education invests them. Every puling sonneteerbabbles of Eros. And Aphrodite, a creature of the imagination brighterand lovelier than her own star, has been rendered more common inmodern verse, than the most celebrated of her priestesses in ancientCorinth. But the poets of Greece possessed the art of clothing theirgods in colours warm as life, varied as the rainbow; and as to Love,never was his influence more delicately shadowed forth than by him whointroduces Endymion slumbering with unclosed lids on Mount Latmos,that the divinity of sleep might enjoy the brightness of hiseyes![1201]
Footnote 1197:
See too in Stobæus, the addresses of a bereaved husband to philosophy—ὦ φιλοσοφία, τυραννίκά σου τὰ επιτάγματα· λεγεις φίλει· κᾄν ἀποβάλῃ τις, λέγεις, μὴ λύπου. 34. Cf. Senec. Epist. 99. Scheffer, ad Ælian. 27. p. 471.
Footnote 1198:
Max. Tyr. x. 119. This author observes that the love depicted by the tragedians was a piece of ill-regulated passion rarely leading to happiness. Id. 123. 124. Cf. Luc. Amor. § 37.
Footnote 1199:
Ἐξ ὀνείρων ἐραστης. Max. Tyr. x. 126.
Footnote 1200:
See the invocation to Love in Lucian: σὺ γὰρ ἐξ ἀφανοῦς καὶ κεχυμένης ἀμορφίας τὸ πᾶν ἐμόρφωσας. κ. τ. λ. Amor. § 32.
Footnote 1201:
This thought occurs in a fragment of Licymnios
Ὕπνος δὲ χαίρων ὀμμάτων αὐγαῖς, ἀναπεπταμένοις ὄσσοις, ἐκοίμιζεν κούρον.
Athen. xiii. 17.
=END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.=
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6.n1 Steph. Byzant. _v._ [Ἀ/Α]ἰτωλ. p. 71. Replaced. a.23.24 not wide enough to contain[.] the whole Removed.49.14 that were band[i]ed to and fro Inserted.49.21 _petit*-ma[í/î]tres_ Replaced.54.34 like a huge uncrenalated _sic_: uncrenelated68.14 but Sir Willia[n/m] Gell Replaced.78.4 couchant s[y/p]hynxes Replaced.155.35 like those of Hindùs[s]tân Removed.166.29 the love of glory and independ[a/e]nce Replaced.170.4 and where[-e]ver else it was thought fit Removed.174.n1 Cf. Dion. Ch[r]ysost. Inserted.176.6 to the latest times[,/.] Replaced.178.n7 aremus osseo.[”] Added.178.n8 calamis superata degit.[”] Added.186.26 its moaning sounds to hear.[”] Added.213.30 by heroic and fabulous associa[a]tions. Removed.222.n2 as the Calydo[do]nian boar in Ovid Removed.225.32 from his ophthalmia and his headach[e] Added.234.32 εὐφυεῖς καὶ [ἰ/ἱ]κανοὶ Breathing corrected.288.1 Bacchanalian character.[”] Added.343.33 had the merit of extreme boldness[.] Added.263.29 [ὄ/ὅ]τι ἀμαθία μὲν θάρσος Breathing corrected.347.4 full of unstem[m]able currents Added.359.15 By these means, likewise, Inserted. tran[s]gressors360.8 in the case of lesser tran[s]gressions Inserted.361.32 which only incidena[ta/at]lly Transposed.371.n2 ὀφθαλμο[ι\ὶ] μεγάλοι τε καὶ διαυγεῖς Replaced.357.37 it is a clumsy throw of her[’]s Removed.379.16 the list of their occupations[,/.] Replaced.391.32 τρεῖς υ[ἰ/ἱ]οὺς ἄφρουρον Breathing corrected.393.14 regal in loftiness[s] of stature. Removed.409.7 decisive of their comparative Added. seclusion[.]418.n2 per aliorum manus vagata.[”] Added.423.n1_1 συν[εζεἠ/έζευ]ξεν Replaced.423.n1_2 ἄλληλοις θεσμὸν ἀνάγκ[ὴ/η]ς ὅσιον. Replaced.
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