The wider patriotism of the nation the Greeks openly or in their hearts ranked in the second place. Look again at the speech of the Athenians. First came Athens and her gods and heroes—their fathers’ gods; next To Hellenikon, that whereby they are not merely Athenians but Hellenes—community of race and speech, the common interest in the national gods and their festivals, such as Zeus of Olympia with the Olympian Games, the Delphian Apollo with the Pythian Games. Of course this Hellenic or Panhellenic interest was always there, and in a sense the future lay with it; but never in the times when Greece was at its greatest did it supplant the old intense local loyalties. The movement of Greek civilization is from the narrower to the larger conception of patriotism, but the latter ideal is grounded in the former. Greek love of country was fed from local fires, and even Greek cosmopolitanism left one a citizen, albeit a citizen of the world. So it was with Eleutheria, which enlarged itself in the same sense and with an equal pace.
This development can be studied best in Athens, which was “the Hellas of Hellas.” One finds in Attic literature a passionate Hellenism combined with a passionate conviction that Hellenism finds its best representative in Athens. The old local patriotism survives, but is nourished more and more with new ambitions. New claims, new ideals are advanced. One claim appears very early, if we may believe Herodotus that the Athenians used it in debate with the men of Tegea before the Battle (Note 96)of Plataea. The Athenians recalled how they had given shelter to the Children of Heracles when all the other Greek cities would not, for fear of Eurystheus; and how again they had rescued the slain of the Seven from the Theban king and buried them in his despite. On those two famous occasions the Athenians had shown the virtue which they held to be most characteristic of Hellenism and specially native to themselves, the virtue which they called “philanthropy” or the love of man. What Heine said of himself, the Athenians might have said: they were brave soldiers in the liberation-war of humanity.
There is a play of Euripides, called The Suppliant Women, which deals with the episode of the unburied dead at Thebes. The fragmentary Argument says: The scene is Eleusis. Chorus of Argive women, mothers of the champions who have fallen at Thebes. The drama is a glorification of Athens. The eloquent Adrastos, king of Argos, pleads the cause of the suppliant women who have come to Athens to beg the aid of its young king Theseus in procuring the burial of their dead. Theseus is at first disposed to reject their prayer, for reasons of State; he must consider the safety of his own people; when his mother Aithra breaks out indignantly: Surely it will be said that with unvalorous hands, when thou mightest have won a crown of glory for thy city, thou didst decline the peril and match thyself, ignoble labour, with a savage swine; and when it was thy part to look to helm and spear, putting forth thy might therein, wast proven a coward. To think that son of mine—ah, do not so! Seest thou how Athens, whom mocking lips have named unwise, flashes back upon her scorners (Note 97)a glance of answering scorn? Danger is her element. It is the unadventurous cities doing cautious things in the dark, whose vision is thereby also darkened. And the result is that Theseus and his men set out against the great power of Thebes, defeat it and recover the bodies, which with due observance of the appropriate rites they inter in Attic earth.
“To make the world safe for democracy” is something; but Athens never found it safe, perhaps did not believe it could be safe. Ready to take risks, facing danger with a lifting of the heart ... their whole life a round of toils and dangers ... born neither themselves to rest nor to let other people. In such phrases are the Athenians described by their enemies. A friend has said: I must publish an opinion which will be displeasing to most; yet (since I think it to be true) I will not withhold it. If the Athenians in fear of the coming peril had left their land, or not leaving it but staying behind had yielded themselves to Xerxes, none would have tried to meet the King at sea. And so all would have been lost. But as the matter fell out, it would be the simple truth to say that the Athenians were the saviours of Greece. The balance of success was certain to turn to the side they espoused, and by choosing the cause of Hellas and the preservation of her freedom it was the Athenians and no other that roused the whole Greek world—save those who played the traitor—and under God thrust back the King. And some generations later, Demosthenes, in what might be called the funeral oration of Eleutheria, sums up the claim of Athens in words whose undying splendour is all pride and glory transfiguring the pain of failure and defeat. Let no man, I beseech you, imagine that there is anything of paradox or exaggeration in what I say, but sympathetically consider it. If the event had been clear to all men beforehand ... even then Athens could only have done what she did, if her fame and her future and the opinion of ages to come meant anything to her. For the moment indeed it looks as if she had failed; as man must always fail when God so wills it. But had She, who claimed to be the leader of Greece, yielded her claim to Philip and betrayed the common cause, her honour would not be clear.... Yes, men of Athens, ye did right—be very sure of that—when ye adventured yourselves for the safety and freedom of all; yes, by your fathers who fought at Marathon and Plataea and Salamis and Artemision, and many more lying in their tombs of public honour they had deserved so well, being all alike deemed worthy of this equal tribute by the State, and not only (O Aeschines) the successful, the victorious....
Demosthenes was right in thinking that Eleutheria was most at home in Athens. Now Athens, as all men know, was a “democracy”; that is, the general body of the citizens (excluding the slaves and “resident aliens”) personally made and interpreted their laws. Such a constitution was characterized by two elements which between them practically exhausted its meaning; namely, autonomy or freedom to govern oneself by one’s own laws, and isonomy or equality of all citizens before the law. Thus Eleutheria, defined as the Reign of Law, may be regarded as synonymous with Democracy. “The basis of the democratical constitution is Eleutheria,” says Aristotle. This is common ground with all Greek writers, whether they write to praise or to condemn. Thus Plato humorously, but not quite (Note 99)good-humouredly, complains that in Athens the very horses and donkeys knocked you out of their way, so exhilarated were they by the atmosphere of Eleutheria. But at the worst he only means that you may have too much of a good thing. Eleutheria translated as unlimited democracy you may object to; Eleutheria as an ideal or a watchword never fails to win the homage of Greek men. Very early begins that sentimental republicanism which is the inspiration of Plutarch, and through Plutarch has had so vast an influence on the practical affairs of mankind. It appears in the famous drinking-catch beginning I will bear the sword in the myrtle-branch like Harmodios and Aristogeiton. It appears in Herodotus. Otanes the Persian (talking Greek political philosophy), after recounting all the evils of a tyrant’s reign, is made to say: But what I am about to tell are his greatest crimes: he breaks ancestral customs, and forces women, and puts men to death without trial. But the rule of the people in the first place has the fairest name in the world, “isonomy,” and in the second place it does none of those things a despot doeth. In his own person Herodotus writes: It is clear not merely in one but in every instance how excellent a thing is “equality.” When the Athenians were under their tyrants they fought no better than their neighbours, but after they had got rid of their masters they were easily superior. Now this proves that when they were held down they fought without spirit, because they were toiling for a master, but when they had been liberated every man was stimulated to his utmost efforts in his own behalf. The same morning confidence in democracy shines in the reply of the constitutional king, Theseus, (Note 100)to the herald in Euripides’ play asking for the “tyrant” of Athens. You have made a false step in the beginning of your speech, O stranger, in seeking a tyrant here. Athens is not ruled by one man, but is free. The people govern by turns in yearly succession, not favouring the rich but giving him equal measure with the poor.
The naïveté of this provokes a smile, but it should provoke some reflection too. Why does the rhetoric of liberty move us so little? Partly, I think, because the meaning of the word has changed, and partly because of this new “liberty” we have a super-abundance. No longer does Liberty mean in the first place the Reign of Law, but something like its opposite. Let us recover the Greek attitude, and we recapture, or at least understand, the Greek emotion concerning Eleutheria. Jason says to Medea in Euripides’ play, Thou dwellest in a Greek instead of a Barbarian land, and hast come to know Justice and the use of Law without favour to the strong. The most “romantic” hero in Greek legend recommending the conventions!
This, however, is admirably and characteristically Greek. The typical heroes of ancient story are alike in their championship of law and order. I suppose the two most popular and representative were Heracles and Theseus. Each goes up and down Greece and Barbary destroying hybristai, local robber-kings, strong savages, devouring monsters, ill customs and every manner of “lawlessness” and “injustice.” In their place each introduces Greek manners and government, Law and Justice. It was this which so attracted Greek sympathy to them and so excited the Greek imagination. For the Greeks were surrounded by dangers like those which Heracles or Theseus encountered. If they had not to contend with supernatural hydras and triple-bodied giants and half-human animals, they had endless pioneering work to do which made such imaginings real enough to them; and men who had fought with the wild Thracian tribes could vividly sympathize with Heracles in his battle with the Thracian “king,” Diomedes, who fed his fire-breathing horses with the flesh of strangers. Nor was this preference of the Greeks for heroes of such a type merely instinctive; it was reasoned and conscious. The “mission” of Heracles, for example, is largely the theme of Euripides’ play which we usually call Hercules Furens. A contemporary of Euripides, the sophist Hippias of Elis, was the author of a too famous apologue, The Choice of Heracles, representing the youthful hero making the correct choice between Laborious Virtue and Luxurious Vice. Another Euripidean play, The Suppliant Women, as we have seen, reveals Theseus in the character of a conventional, almost painfully constitutional, sovereign talking the language of Lord John Russell. As for us, our sympathies are ready to flow out to the picturesque defeated monsters—the free Centaurs galloping on Pelion—the cannibal Minotaur lurking in his Labyrinth. But then our bridals are not liable to be disturbed by raids of wild horsemen from the mountains, nor are our children carried off to be dealt with at the pleasure of a foreign monarch. People who meet with such experiences get surprisingly tired of them. There is a figure known to mythologists as a Culture Hero. He it is who is believed to have introduced law and order and useful arts into the rude community in which he arose. Such heroes were specially regarded, and the reverence felt for them measures the need of them. Thus in ancient Greece we read of Prometheus and Palamêdes, the Finns had their Wainomoinen, the Indians of North America their Hiawatha. Think again of historical figures like Charlemagne and Alfred, like Solon and Numa Pompilius, even Alexander the Great. A peculiar romance clings about their names. Why? Only because to people fighting what must often have seemed a losing battle against chaos and night the institution and defence of law and order seemed the most romantic thing a man could do. And so it was.
Such a view was natural for them. Whether it shall seem natural to us depends on the fortunes of our civilization. On that subject we may leave the prophets to rave, and content ourselves with the observation that there are parts of Europe to-day in which many a man must feel himself in the position of Roland fighting the Saracens or Aëtius against the Huns. As for ourselves, however confident we may feel, we shall be foolish to be over-confident; for we are fighting a battle that has no end. The Barbarian we shall have always with us, on our frontiers or in our own breasts. There is also the danger that the prize of victory may, like Angelica, escape the strivers’ hands. Already perhaps the vision which inspires us is changing. I am not concerned to attack the character of that change but to interpret the Greek conception of civilization, merely as a contribution to the problem. To the Greeks, then, civilization is the slow result of a certain immemorial way of living. You cannot get it up from books, or acquire it by imitation; you must absorb it and let it form your spirit, you must live in it and live through it; and it will be hard for you to do this, unless you have been born into it and received it as a birth-right, as a mould in which you are cast as your fathers were. “Oh, but we must be more progressive than that.” Well, we are not; on the contrary the Greeks were very much the most progressive people that ever existed—intellectually progressive, I mean of course; for are we not talking about civilization?
The Greek conception, therefore, seems to work. I think it works, and worked, because the tradition, so cherished as it is, is not regarded as stationary. It is no more stationary to the Greeks than a tree, and a tree whose growth they stimulated in every way. It seems a fairly common error, into which Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton sometimes fall, for modern champions of tradition to over-emphasize its stability. There has always been the type of “vinous, loudly singing, unsanitary men,” which Mr. Wells has called the ideal of these two writers; he is the foundational type of European civilization. But it almost looks as if Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton were entirely satisfied with him. They want him to stay on his small holding, and eat quantities of ham and cheese, and drink quarts of ale, and hate rich men and politicians, and be perfectly parochial and illiterate. But Hellenism means, simply an effort to work on this sound and solid stuff; it is not content to leave him as he is; it strives to develope him, but to develope him within (Note 104)the tradition; to transform him from an Aristophanic demesman into an Athenian citizen. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton are Greek in this, that they have constantly the sense of fighting an endless and doubtful battle against strong enemies that would destroy whatever is most necessary to the soul of civilized men. Well I know in my heart and soul that sacred Ilium must fall, and Priam, and the folk of Priam with the good ashen spear ... yet before I die will I do a deed for after ages to hear of!
It needs imagination for the modern man to live into the atmosphere of ancient Greece. It ought not now to be so hard for us who have seen the lives and sanctities of free peoples crushed and stained. It should be easier for us to reoccupy the spiritual ground of Hellas, to feel a new thrill in her seemingly too simple formulas, a new value in her seemingly cold ideals. It is opportune to write about her now, and justifiable to write with a quickened hope. For all that, mental habits are the last we lose, and the habit of regarding our civilization as secure has had time to work itself deep into our minds. It has coloured our outlook, directed our tastes, altered our souls.
That last expression may appear overstrained. Yet reflect if it really be so. These many ages we have felt so safe. If fear came on us, it was not fear for the fabric itself of civilization. We grew delicately weary of our inevitably clasping and penetrating culture. We called it our “old” civilization, with some implication of senility; and we were restive under its restraints and conventions. We were affected in different ways, but we were all affected, we were all tired of our security. To escape it some of us fled to the open road and a picturesque gipsyism, some hunted big game in Africa. One or two of us actually did these things, a greater number did them in imagination, reading about them in books. Others, not caring to fatigue their bodies, or too fastidious or sincere or morbid to find relief in personal or vicarious adventures—for this reason or that—pursued “spiritual adventures” or flamed out into rebellion against what they felt insulted their souls. It seems clear enough that our bohemianism of the city and the field is not two things but one, and I am not put from this opinion by the consciousness of temperamental gulfs between typical moderns such as (not to come too near ourselves) Whitman and Poe in America. The symptoms are different, but the malady is the same.
I am not concerned to defend the word “malady,” if it be thought objectionable. It may be a quite excellent and healthy reaction we have been experiencing. But a reaction means a disturbance of poise, leaving us to some extent, as we say, unbalanced. It may have been so in an opposite sense with the Greeks. I may not deny (for I am not sure about it) that they went to the other extreme. It is possible and even likely. But if they were rather mad about the virtues of sanity, and rather excessive in their passion for moderation, this intensity can only be medicinal to us, who need the tonic badly. It may help us to reach that just equilibrium in which the soul is not asleep, but, in fact, most thrillingly sensitive. Being what it is, the human soul seems bound to oscillate for ever about its equipoise. It will always have its actions and reactions. Our violent reaction against the sense of an absolute security is entirely natural because of that strange passion, commingled of longing and fear, that draws us to the heart of loneliness and night. But it has exactly reversed our point of view. We have wished for the presence of conditions which the Greeks, having them, wished away. We have wished the forest to grow closer to our doors. We have admired explorers and pioneers. We have admired them because we are different. Well, the Greeks were explorers and pioneers—and not merely in things of the spirit—and they wished the forest away. Naturally, you see; just as naturally as we long for it to be there.
There is a line in Juvenal which means that when the gods intend to destroy a man they grant him his desire. If we suddenly found ourselves in the heart of savagery, most of us would wish to retract our prayers. Robinson Crusoe tired of his delightful island. Men who live on the verge of civilization are apt to cherish ideals which create strong shudders in the modern artistic soul. On the African or Canadian frontiers, or cruising in the south seas, a man may dream of a future “home” of the kind which has moved so many of our writers to laughter or pity. Whatever our own aspiration might be under the burden of similar circumstances, we should at least experience a far profounder sense of the value of those very civilities and conventions, of which we had professed our weariness. To uphold the flag of the human spirit against the forces that would crush and humiliate it—that would seem the heroic, the romantic thing. Exactly that was the mission of Greece, as she knew well, feeling all the glory and labour of it. And so far as to fight bravely for a fair ideal with the material odds against you is romantic, in that degree Greece was romantic. Her victory (of which we reap the fruits) has wrought her this injury, that her ideal has lost the attraction that clings to beautiful threatened things. It has become the “classical” ideal, consecrated and—for most of us—dead.
But it is not dead, and it will never perish, for it is the watchword of a conflict that may die down but cannot expire; the conflict between the Hellene and the Barbarian, the disciplined and the undisciplined temper, the constructive and the destructive soul. Let that conflict become desperate once more, and we shall understand. But a little exercise of imagination would let us understand now. As it is, we hardly do. We note with chilled amazement the passionate emphasis with which the Greeks repeat over and over to themselves their Nothing too much! as if it were charged with all wisdom and human comfort. We understand what the words say; we do not understand what they mean.
The explanation is certain. The Greek watchword is uninspiring to us, because we do not need it. We are not afraid of stimulus and excitement, because we have our passions better under control, because we have more thoroughly subdued the Barbarian within us, than the Greeks. It is at least more agreeable to our feelings to put it that way than to speak of “this ghastly thin-faced time of ours.” The Greeks, on the other hand, were wildly afraid of temptation, not much for puritanic reasons, although for something finer than prudential ones. It may seem a little banal to repeat it, but— they had the artistic temperament. They had the exceptional impressionability, and they felt the very practical necessity (at least as important for the artist as the puritan) of a serenity at the core of the storm. The wind that fills my sails, propels; but I am helmsman is the image in Meredith. I once collected a quantity of material for a study of the Greek temperament. I have been looking over it again, and I find illustration after illustration of an impressionability rivalling that of the most extreme Romantics. It is difficult to appraise this evidence. Quite clearly it is full of exaggeration and prejudice. If you were to believe the orators about one another, and about contemporary politicians, you would think that fourth-century Athens was run exclusively by criminal lunatics. Nor are the historians writing in that age much better, infected as they are by the very evil example of the rhetoricians. But the cumulative effect is overwhelming, and is produced as much, if not more, by little half-conscious indications, mere gestures and casual phrases, as by the records of hysterical emotionality and scarlet sins. Don’t you remember how people in Homer when they meet usually burst into tears and, if something did not happen, might (the poet says) go on weeping till sunset? It is not so often for grief they weep—unless for that remembered sorrow which is a kind of joy—as for delight in the renewal of friendship, or merely to relieve their feelings. The phrase used by Homer to describe the end of such lamentations is one he also applies to people who have just thoroughly enjoyed a meal. There is a sensuous element in it. Of course, one murmurs “the southern” or (Note 110)“the Latin temperament”; but if we understood the Latin temperament better, we should be able to read more meaning into that warning Nothing too much!
A friend said to Sophocles, “How do you feel about love, Sophocles? Are you still fit for an amorous encounter?” “Don’t mention it, man; I have just given it the slip—and very glad too—feeling as if I had escaped from bondage to a ferocious madman.” To be sure Sophocles was a poet and had the poetical temperament, and it would argue a strange ignorance of human nature to make any inferences concerning his character from the Olympian serenity of his art. But listen to this anecdote about an ordinary young man. Leontios the son of Aglaion was coming up from the Piraeus in the shadow of the North Wall, on the outside, when he caught sight of some corpses lying at the feet of the public executioner. He wanted to get a look at them, but at the same time he was disgusted with himself and tried to put himself off the thing. For a time he fought it out and veiled his eyes. His desire, however, getting the mastery of him, he literally pulled apart his eyelids and, running up to the dead bodies, said, “There you are, confound you; glut yourselves on the lovely sight!”
Both anecdotes are in Plato, and may serve as a warning when we are tempted to think him too hard on the emotional elements of the soul. He knew the danger, because he felt it himself, because he understood the Greek temperament—better, for instance, than Aristotle did. Undoubtedly there is an ascetic strain in Plato, as there is in every moralist who has done the world any good. But Greek asceticism is an attuning of the instrument, not (Note 111)a mortification of the flesh. It is just the training or discipline that is as necessary for eminence in art or in athletics as for eminence in virtue. The Greek words—askêsis, aretê—level these distinctions.
This high tension is the natural reaction of a spirit, finely and richly endowed as the Greek was, to the pressure of strong alien forces. If the tension relaxed or broke, the result was what you might expect; there was a rocket-like flash to an extreme. Others as well as I may have wondered at the sort of language we find in Greek writers concerning “tyrants.” The horror expressed is not merely conventional or naïve as in a child’s history book, it is real and deeply felt. The danger of tyranny was of course very actual in most of the Greek states, even in Athens. But it is not so much the danger of suffering as of exercising a tyranny that is in the minds of the best Greek writers. The tyrant is a damned soul. Waiting for him in the dark are “certain fiery-looking” devils and the Erinyes, Avengers of Blood. The tyrant is the completion and final embodiment of human depravity.... Well, perhaps he is. But we should never think of giving the tyrant so very special a pre-eminence over every other type of criminal. Yet the Greek feeling seems quite natural when we reflect that the very definition of a tyrant is one that is placed above the law, and is therefore under no external obligation to self-restraint, lacking which the average Greek very rapidly and flamboyantly went to the devil.
There was, for example, Alexander prince of Pherae, whom Shakespeare read about in his Plutarch. Alexander had a habit of burying people (Note 112)alive, or wrapping them in the skins of bears or boars; he used to hunt them with dogs. He consecrated the spear with which he had murdered his uncle, crowning it with garlands and offering sacrifices to it under the name of Tychon, an obscene god. This same Alexander was present once at a performance of Euripides’ Trojan Women, and was so overcome by his feelings that he hurried from the theatre, leaving a message for the leading actor, which explained that he did not disapprove of the acting, but was ashamed to let people see him, who had never shown the least pity for his victims, crying over Hecuba and Andromache. What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?
One might perhaps say of Alexander what Ruskin (speaking, as he assures us, after due deliberation) says of Adam Smith, that he was “in an entirely damned state of soul.” It would be easy to multiply examples like that of this Pheraean, but it would be still easier to disgust the reader with them. I will take, then, a milder case (more instructive in its way than much pathology) which has for us this twofold value, that it is full of human and pathetic interest, and at the same time reflects, all the more if there are legendary elements in it, the popular imagination of the tyrant’s mood. It is the tragedy of Periandros, lord of Corinth. Hear Sosikles the Corinthian in Herodotus.
When Kypselos had reigned thirty years and ended his life happily, he was succeeded by his son, Periandros. Now Periandros was milder than his father at first, but afterwards by means of messengers he joined himself to Thrasyboulos the tyrant of Miletus, and became yet more bloody by far than Kypselos. For he sent a herald to Thrasyboulos and inquired how he might most safely put affairs in order and best govern Corinth. Thrasyboulos brought the messenger of Periandros forth from the city, and entering into a field of corn he went through the corn, putting one question after another to the herald on the matter of his coming from Corinth. And ever as he spied an ear that overtopped the rest, he would strike it off, and so marring it cast it down, until in this way he destroyed the fairest and tallest portion of the crop. And having traversed the field he sends away the herald without giving him a word of counsel. When the herald returned to Corinth, Periandros wished to learn the counsel. But the other said that Thrasyboulos had answered nothing, and that he marvelled at him, what manner of man he had sent him to, one beside himself and a destroyer of his own possessions; relating what he saw done by Thrasyboulos. But Periandros, understanding the action and perceiving that Thrasyboulos advised him to slay the most eminent of the citizens, then showed every manner of villainy towards the Corinthians. Whatever Kypselos had left unaccomplished by his slaughterings and banishments, Periandros fulfilled. And in one day he stripped naked all the women of Corinth for his wife Melissa’s sake. For when he had sent messengers to the river Acheron in Thesprotia, to the Oracle of the Dead there, to inquire concerning a treasure deposited by a stranger, the ghost of Melissa appeared and said that she would not signify nor declare in what place the treasure was laid; for she was cold and naked, since she had no profit of the garments that had been buried with her, for that they had not been burned; and for proof that her words were true she had a secret message for his ear.... When these things were reported to Periandros (for the secret forced him to believe, since he had had to do with Melissa when she was dead) immediately after he caused it to be proclaimed that all the wives of the Corinthians should come forth to the temple of Hera. And when they came, wearing their richest garments as for a holy feast, he set his bodyguard in their way, and stripped them all, bond and free alike, and gathering all into a trench he burned the pile with prayer to Melissa. And when he had done this, and had sent to her the second time, the ghost of Melissa told him where she had deposited the stranger’s treasure.
Periandros had murdered Melissa. After her death another calamity, says Herodotus, befell him as I shall tell. He had two sons by Melissa, one seventeen years of age and the other eighteen. Their mother’s father Prokles, tyrant of Epidaurus, sent for them to his castle and kindly entreated them, as was natural, for they were his daughter’s children. But when he was bidding them farewell, he said, “Know ye, my children, who slew your mother?” This saying the elder regarded not, but the younger, whose name was Lykophron, when he heard it was so moved—the poor young man—that when he came to Corinth, he spake no word to his father, accounting him his mother’s murderer, neither would he converse with him nor answer any question. And at last Periandros in great anger drave him from the house. And after he had expelled him, he questioned the elder son, what discourse their uncle had held with them. And he told his father that Prokles had received them kindly, but made no mention of that speech of Prokles, which he uttered at their departing, for he had not marked it. But Periandros declared that it was in no way possible but that he had given them some counsel, and closely questioned the lad, till he remembered and told this also. And Periandros, understanding the matter and resolved not to yield weakly in any thing, sent a messenger to those with whom the son whom he had driven forth was living, and forbade them to take him in. And whenever the wanderer came to another house, he would be driven from this also, Periandros threatening those who received him and commanding them to thrust him forth. And he went wandering from house to house of his friends, who, for all their fear, used to receive him, seeing that he was the son of Periandros. But at last Periandros caused proclamation to be made, that whosoever should receive him in his house or speak to him, the same must pay such and such a sacred penalty to Apollo. Therefore because of this proclamation no man was willing to speak to the lad or to give him shelter. Moreover neither would he himself try to obtain that which was forbidden him, but endured all, haunting the public porticos. On the fourth day Periandros saw him all unwashen and emaciated for lack of food, and was moved to pity, and remitting somewhat of his anger he approached and said, “My son, whether is better, to fare as now thou farest, or to take over my lordship and the good things that are mine, reconciled to thy father? But thou, my son and prince of wealthy Corinth, hast chosen a vagrant life, opposing and showing anger against him whom thou oughtest least to hate. If there has been a mishap in that matter, the same hath befallen me also, and I have the larger share therein, as mine was the deed. But apprehending how far better it is to be envied than pitied, and at the same time what manner of thing it is to be wroth with them that begat thee and are stronger than thou, come back home.” With these words Periandros sought to constrain his son, but he made no other answer but only this, that his father had incurred the sacred penalty to the god by entering into speech with him. And Periandros, perceiving that there was no dealing with nor overcoming of the enmity of his son, sends him away out of his sight on board a ship to Corcyra, for he was master of Corcyra also. But after he had dispatched him, Periandros made an expedition against Prokles his father-in-law, blaming him chiefly for what had happened, and took Epidaurus, and took Prokles himself alive.
But in course of time Periandros came to be old, and knew himself no longer capable of watching over and administering affairs. Wherefore he sent to Corcyra and recalled Lykophron to the tyranny; for he saw nothing in his elder son, but looked upon him as somewhat dull of wit. But Lykophron would not even answer the messenger. But Periandros, who was bound up in the young man, made a second attempt, sending his own daughter, Lykophron’s sister, thinking he would most readily listen to her. And when she had come she said, “Dear Lykophron, is it your desire that our lordship should fall to others and thy father’s substance be scattered abroad, rather than come away and have it thyself? Come home; cease punishing thyself. A proud heart is poor profit. Do not cure one evil with another. Many prefer mercy to justice; and many ere now in seeking what was their mother’s have lost what their father had. A tyranny is a slippery thing, and many there be that long for it; and he is now an old man and past his prime. Give not away what is thine own to others.” These were her words, which her father had taught to her as the most persuasive. But Lykophron answered that he would on no account come to Corinth so long as he knew his father was alive. When she had brought back this answer, Periandros sends a third messenger, a herald, to propose that he should go himself to Corcyra, and bidding Lykophron come to Corinth to succeed him in the tyranny. The young man agreed to these terms, and Periandros was setting out for Corcyra and the prince to Corinth, when the Corcyraeans, becoming aware of all this, in order that Periandros might not come to their land, put the lad to death. Therefore Periandros took vengeance on the Corcyraeans.
The revenge of the old man was to send three hundred boys of the chief Corcyraean families to the great Lydian king, Alyattes, to be made eunuchs.... He was cheated of his revenge by a humane stratagem of the Samians. The lonely old man, with that touch of original nobleness all gone now, black frustrate rage in his heart, love turned to an inhuman hate of all the world, wearing this Nessus shirt of remorse and despair! Such is tyranny, says Sosikles at the end of his speech, Such is tyranny, O Lacedaemonians, and such its consequences.
Periandros, you see, has already become a type. There is a curious fitness in the application to these old “tyrants” of the worn quotation from The Vanity of Human Wishes—they do very specially point a moral and adorn a tale. The moral they point is the danger of losing Sophrosyne. There is a wonderful description in Plato’s Republic of the tyrant’s genesis, a description which may startle us by the intensity of feeling which one touches in it. It is a story of the gradual loss of Sophrosyne, ending in perfect degeneration and the loss of all the other virtues as well. This Sophrosyne (one of the cardinal Greek virtues and the most characteristic of all) confronts us at the outset of any study of the Hellenic temperament. To understand the one is to understand the other. Complete understanding is of course impossible, but we may get nearer and nearer to the secret.
Sophrosyne is the “saving” virtue. That means little—or nothing—until it is steeped in the colours of the Greek temperament, and viewed in the Greek attitude to life. Well then, the Greek attitude to life—how shall we describe that? I am going to describe it in a phrase which is at least accurate enough to help on our discussion greatly: it looks upon life as an Agon, and by an Agon is meant the whole range of activities from the most to the least heroic, from the most to the least spiritual, contest or competition. The reader will forgive an appearance of pedantry in this, since the word needs careful translation. Now my suggestion is that this agonistic view of life, if I may so call it, pervades and characterizes all Classical antiquity. To understand clearly the nature of an Agon we must keep firmly in mind its origin. It would be misleading surely to call its origin religious—as if men needed to be religious to fight!—but it is undeniable that its roots are embedded in that primitive life which is so largely mastered by religion and magic. In consequence an ancient Agon was nearly always a religious ceremony. That seems curious enough to a modern mind, yet nothing is more certain. The great national Games like the Olympic, the rhapsodic and musical contests, the Attic Drama (which was specifically an Agon)—all had this religious or supernatural aura investing them. And when one looks into Greek religion itself, one finds everywhere as its characteristic expression a choric dance, which normally takes the form of an actual or mimic contest between two sides or “semi-choruses.”
The motive then of an Agon differed from that of an ordinary modern contest. It was normally a ritual contest, and its motive a religious motive. It was not held for its own sake, like a football match, but for a definite object. This object the Greeks called Nikê, which we translate—inadequately enough, as is plain from the facts we have been considering—as “victory.” It was felt to be not so much a personal distinction as a blessing upon the whole community. It possessed a magical virtue. There was even a sense in which in an ancient Agon everybody won. Nor does it seem extravagant to say that Greek society, like a primitive society, only in a far richer, more complex, more significant and spiritual way, was organized for the production of Nikê.
That is a large matter. There is, to be sure, no need of accumulated detail to prove that the Agon was the most characteristic institution of ancient life; it only requires to be pointed out; everywhere we find these competitions. What may chiefly interest us for the moment is that the Agon was simply the outward expression of the characteristic Greek outlook upon life and upon the whole human (Note 120)scene. For the Greek looked upon life itself as a struggle, an Agon, an opportunity for the production of Nikê. Mr. Wells gives to one of his essays the title of “The Human Adventure.” Life as the Human Adventure very well expresses the Greek feeling about it. Only let us not forget that the Nikê which is the object and justification of every Agon is—I have already remarked it—something utterly, qualitatively different from mere success. It is the triumph of the Cause. “Success”—“the successful business man”—not that kind of success.
The most successful man in Greece, every one remembers, was rewarded with a little garland of wild olive. God help us, Mardonios, said a noble Persian when he heard this, what men are these thou hast brought us to fight against!—men that contend not for money but for merit. The individual Greek could want money badly enough, as may be gathered from the amusing, but satirical, Characters of Theophrastus. Yet in the soul of Hellas, for all its strong sense of reality and despite some inclination to avarice, one finds at last something you might almost call quixotic. Is there not some element of quixotry in every high adventure? And what adventure could be higher than to fight for “the beautiful things,” Ta Kala, against the outnumbering Barbarian?
Sophrosyne is the virtue that “saves” in this battle. Understand it so, and you must share some part of the ardour this word inspired. It means the steady control and direction of the total energy of a man. It means discipline. It means concentration. It is the angel riding the whirlwind, the charioteer driving the wild horses. There is no (Note 121)word for it in English, and we must coldly translate “moderation,” “temperance,” “self-restraint.” “Moderation” as a name for this strong-pulsed, triumphant thing! Why even the late-born, unromantic Aristotle, even while he is describing Sophrosyne as a “mean” between excessive and deficient emotionality, turns aside to remark, as a thing almost too obvious to need pointing out, that “there is a sense in which Sophrosyne is an extreme.” This is She whom Dante beheld on the Mountain of Purgatory such that “never were seen in furnace glasses or metals so glowing and red”:
It was an ancient hypothesis that the Gods are only deified men. A certain Euêmeros suggested this. His favourite illustration was Zeus; that greatest of the Gods, he said, was a prehistoric king in Crete, as the Cretan legends about him proved. This theory has received a fresh life from the investigations of modern scholars. Historically, it seems to be largely true; psychologically, it explains nothing at all. All men have need of the Gods, says Homer; the religious instinct, that is the important thing, or rather (since the other is important too) that is the fundamental thing. It is also the prior thing, the spring of the religious act. If I want to know why primitive men make a god of one of their number, it seems no answer to assure me that they do so. Yet the historical inquiry has great interest too, and throws a dim and rather lurid light on the development of religion and religious thought. And I could not leave untouched an aspect of the old Greek life so vital as its belief about the gods without illustrating how here also the conflict of Greek and Barbarian worked itself out.
It is almost the other day that we rediscovered (Note 123)the old Aegean religion—the immemorially ancient religion of the non-Greek peoples, the Barbarians, who lived about the Aegean Sea. It is now clear that the Hittites, the Phrygians, the ancient peoples of Anatolia generally, worshipped a kind of triad or trinity of Father, Son and Consort. Sometimes, as in the Hittite sculptures, the Father and the Son seem the important members of the group; sometimes, as in the Phrygian religion, the emphasis is chiefly on the Mother and Consort, and the Son. But the third member can always be discovered too, standing pretty obviously in the background. In prehistoric Crete (which, of course, became Greek in historical times) we again recognize the divine Three in the persons of those native divinities whom the Greeks learned to call Kronos, Rhea and Zeus. That is the skeleton of the old religion; the living flesh in which it was clothed was begotten in tribal custom. Primitive peoples fashion their gods after their own image. Their chief god they think of as a greater and more worshipful “king,” swayed by the passions, observing the etiquette, and wearing the regalia of their earthly rulers. Now the primitive king held his place by force or craft or the terror of his rages (his menos)—and by no other tenure. He lived in constant dread of the rival who, younger and stronger, would one day rise against him and seize his throne. The rival might be a stranger, but more frequently he was the king’s own son, who, for one thing, would be thought likely to inherit the magical virtue of his sire. Accordingly, when the Young King was born, the Old King would seek his life. But there he would be apt to meet the opposition of the Queen, (Note 124)who would seek to convey the child to a safe retreat. Then, grown at last to manhood, suddenly the Prince would return to challenge the Old King to mortal combat. The Gods behave exactly like that.
The chief depositary in ancient Greece of popular beliefs about the Gods is the curious poem attributed to Hesiod, called the Theogony. Along with certain parts of Homer, it formed what might be called the handbook of orthodoxy, and it tells us with an incomparable authoritativeness what the sacred tradition was. Eldest of all, says the Theogony, was Gaia or Mother Earth, a goddess. Now she bare first starry Ouranos, equal to herself, that he might cover her on every side ... and afterward she lay with him, and bare the deep coil of Okeanos, and Koios, and Krios, and Hyperîon, and Iapetos, and Thea, and Rhea, and Themis, and Mnemosyne, and Phoibe with the gold upon her head, and lovely Tethys. And, after these, youngest was born Kronos the Crooked-Thinker, most dangerous of her sons, who loathed his lusty begetter. There is a fuller account in another place. Next, of Gaia and Ouranos were born three sons, huge and violent, ill to name, Kottos and Briareos and Gyes, the haughty ones. From their shoulders swang an hundred arms invincible, and on their shoulders, upon their rude bodies, grew heads a fifty upon each; irresistible strength crowned the giant forms. Of all the children of Gaia and Ouranos most to be feared were these, and they were hated of their Sire from the first; yea, soon as one was born, he would not let them into the light, but would hide them all away in a hiding-place of Earth, and Ouranos gloried in the bad work. And, being straitened, huge Gaia groaned inwardly; and she thought of a cruel device. Hastily she created the grey flint, and of it fashioned a mighty Sickle, and expounded her thought to her Sons, speaking burning words from an anguished heart. “Sons of me and of an unrighteous Father, if ye will hearken to me, on your Father ye may take vengeance for his sinful outrage, for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!”
So spake she, but fear seized them all, I ween, neither did one of them utter a word. But mighty Kronos the Cunning took heart of grace, and made answer again to his good Mother. “Mother, I will undertake and will perform this thing, since of our Father (‘Father!’) I reck not; for it was He began the devising of shameful deeds!” So spake he, and mighty Gaia rejoiced greatly in her heart, and hid him in an ambush, and put in his hands the sharp-fanged Sickle, and taught him all the plot.
Great Ouranos came with falling night and cast him broadly over Gaia, desiring her, and outstretched him at large upon her. But that other, his Son, reached out with his left hand from the place of his hiding ... and with his right grasping the monstrous fanged Sickle, he swiftly reaped the privy parts of his Father and cast them to fall behind him.
In calling this story Barbarian, I feel as if I ought to apologize to the Barbarians. Nevertheless it is clearly more in their way than in the way of the Greeks. It excellently illustrates the kind of stuff from which Greek religion refined itself. You will see that it is the old savage stuff of the battle between the Kings. On this occasion it is the Young King who prevails and pushes the Old King from his throne—not to die (for he was a God), but to (Note 126)live a shadowy, elemental life. But neither was Kronos able to escape his destiny. For Rhea, subdued unto Kronos, bare shining children, even Hestia, and Demeter, and gold-shod Hera, and strong Hades, that pitiless heart, dwelling under ground, and the roaring Earth-Shaker, and Zeus the Many-Counselled, the Father of Gods and men, by whose thunder the broad earth is shaken. They also—great Kronos was used to swallow them down, as each came from the womb to his holy Mother’s knees, with intent that none other of the proud race of Ouranos should hold the lordship among the Everliving. For he knew from Gaia and starry Ouranos that he was fated to be overcome of his own child.... Therefore no blind man’s watch he kept, but looked for his children and swallowed them; but Rhea grieved and would not be comforted. But when she was at point to bring forth Zeus, then she prayed her own dear parents, Gaia and starry Ouranos, to devise a plan whereby she might bear her Son in secret, and retribution be paid by Kronos the Crafty Thinker for his father’s sake and his children that he gorged. And they truly gave ear to their daughter and obeyed her, and told her all things that were fated to befall concerning Kronos the King and his strong-hearted Son. And they conveyed her to Luktos in the fat land of Crete, when she was about to bring forth the youngest of her sons, great Zeus. Him gigantic Gaia received from her in broad Crete to nurture and to nurse. Thither came Gaia bearing him through the swift black night, to Luktos first; and she took him in her arms and hid him in a lonely cave, withdrawn beneath the goodly land, there where the wild-wood is thick upon the hills of Aigaion. But she wrapped a great Stone in swaddlingclouts, and gave it to the Son of Ouranos so mightily ruling, the Old King of the Gods. And Kronos seized it then with his hands, and put it down in his belly without ruth, nor knew in his own mind that for a Stone his Son was left to him unvanquished and unharmed, that was soon to overcome him by main strength of his hands, and drive him from the sovranty, and be King himself among the Everliving.
For swiftly thereafter mightiness was increased to the Young King and his shining limbs waxed greater, and, as the seasons rounded to their close, great Kronos the Cunning was beguiled by the subtile suggestions of Gaia, and cast up again his offspring; and first he spewed forth the Stone, that he had swallowed last. Zeus planted it where meet the roads of the world in goodly Pytho under the rock-wall of Parnassus, to be a sign and to be a marvel to men in the days to come.
The Stone was there all right, for the French excavators have found it, looking highly indigestible. But it is unfair to treat Hesiod in this spirit. In fact, to read in him such passages as I have quoted is to give oneself quite a different emotion. There is the most curious conflict between one’s moral and one’s æsthetic reactions to them. You have a matter which it is poor to call savage, which is more like some atavistic resurrection of the beast in man; and you find it told in a style which is like some obsolescent litany full of half-understood words and immemorial refrains. The most primitive-minded is also the most literary poet in Greek, if by “literary” one means influenced by a tradition in style. He is full of the epic clichés, and he repeats them in a helpless, joyless way, as if he had no choice in the matter. If you wish to be unkind, you may (Note 128)describe his style as the epic jargon. But you will be unjust if you do not admit a certain grandeur arising (it would almost seem) out of its very formalism. Even in its decay the epic style is a magnificent thing. The singing-robes of Homer have faded and stiffened, but they are still dimly gorgeous, and it is with gold that they are stiff. The poet of the Theogony—I call him Hesiod without prejudice—wears them almost like a priest. But if you have to tell a story like those I have quoted, what other manner is possible than just such a conventional, half-ritualistic style, which acts like a spell to move the religious emotions and suspend the critical judgment? I am not quite finished with Hesiod, and I want the reader to have a little more patience with him and with me.
Before he was cast out of his throne, Ouranos, having conceived a hatred of his Sons, Briareos and Kottos and Gyes, strongly bound them, being jealous of their overbearing valour, their beauty and stature, and fixed their habitation under the wide-wayed earth, where they were seated at the world’s end and utmost marge, in great grief and indignation of mind. Natheless the Son of Kronos, and the rest of the immortal Gods that deep-haired Rhea bare in wedlock with Kronos, brought them up to the light again by the counsels of Gaia, who told them all the tale, how they would gain the victory and bright glory with the aid of those. In another place we read that Briareos and Kottos and Gyes were grateful for that good service, and gave Zeus the thunder and the burning bolt and the lightning-flash, that aforetime vast Gaia concealed; in them he puts his trust as he rules over mortals and immortals. (Note 129)He required them almost at once in his battle with the Titans. The word “Titans” seems to mean nothing more or less than “Kings.” They were the Old Kings at war with the Young Kings (who, because they lived on Mount Olympus in Thessaly, came to be called the “Olympians”) with Zeus at their head. Naturally the Old Kings took the side of Kronos, but after a ten years’ war they were beaten in a terrific battle, and Zeus reigned supreme. And then how do we find him behaving? Like this. And Zeus King of the Gods took to wife first Metis, that was wisest of Gods and men. And when indeed she was about to bring forth the blue-eyed Goddess Athena, he beguiled her with cunning words, and put her down into his belly, by the counsels of Gaia and starry Ouranos, who counselled him so, lest some other of the ever-living Gods should hold the sovranty in the stead of Zeus, for of her it was fated that most wise children should be born, first the bright-eyed Maid Tritogeneia, of equal might with her Sire and of a wise understanding, and after her I ween she was to bear a high-hearted Son, that would be King of Gods and men. So he clutched her and put her down in his belly, in fear that she would bear a stronger thing than the Thunderbolt.
Now, of course, the Greeks once believed this sort of thing; otherwise you would not have Hesiod solemnly repeating it. But they very early repudiated it; and it is just the earliness and the thoroughness of their repudiation wherein they show themselves Greek. For the surrounding Barbarians kept on believing myths hardly less damnable, and kept acting on their faith; whereas as early as Homer you find the Greek protest. In (Note 130)Homer it is silent; he simply leaves Hesiod’s rubbish out. But the Ionian philosophers were not silent; indeed they included in their condemnation Homer himself. Heraclitus said that Homer deserved to be scourged out of the assemblies of men, and Archilochus likewise. Xenophanês said, Homer and Hesiod attribute to the Gods all things that are scandals and reproach among men—to thieve, to be adulterers, and to deceive one another. Pindar (a very moral poet) is indignant at the suggestion that an immortal god would eat boiled baby. Naturally, however, the poets and the philosophers approached the myths in a different spirit, which led to what in Plato’s time was already “a standing quarrel.” The philosophers objected to them altogether; the poets made them so beautiful in the telling that they passed beyond the sphere of the moralist. Even the Theogony in parts achieves nobility; even in the Theogony the Hellenizing process is at work on the Barbarian matter.
We shall be better instructed, however, if we observe the process in a later poet and a much greater artist. It so happens that the Prometheus Bound of Aeschylus, like the Theogony, deals with the relations between the Old King and the New. The drama which we know as the Prometheus Bound is only a part of what ancient scholars called a trilogy, which is a series of three plays developing a single theme; and we cannot even be certain whether it is the first part or the second. Of the other members of the trilogy we possess little more than the titles, which are Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Carrier. Most students are now strongly disposed to believe that the Fire-Carrier received its name from the circumstance that the play had for its theme, or part of its theme, the foundation of the Prometheia or Festival of Prometheus at Athens, the culmination of which was a torch-race engaged in by youthful fire-carriers. Every year the Athenian ephêbi, running with lit torches in relays of competitors, contended which should be the first to kindle anew the fire upon the common altar of Prometheus and Hephaistos in the Academy. If this conjecture regarding the theme of the Fire-Carrier is just, then we may be sure that this play came last in the series, because it celebrates the triumph of the hero. Accordingly it is usual to arrange the trilogy in the order: Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound, Prometheus the Fire-Carrier.
The Prometheus Bound deals with the punishment of Prometheus by Zeus. It is commonly said that the hero of the play is punished because he had stolen fire, which Zeus had hidden away, and bestowed it upon mortals, who are represented as hitherto uncivilized. There is a certain amount of truth in this view, for in the opening scene of the play, when Prometheus is nailed to his rock, the fiend Kratos repeats that the reason for this torture is the theft of fire. But the proper theme of the Prometheus Bound is not so much the binding of the Titan as the keeping him in bonds; and the reason for the prolongation of his torture is quite different from the reason for beginning it. The new reason is the refusal of Prometheus to reveal a secret, known to him but not to Zeus. All that Zeus knows is that one day he is fated to be superseded by his own son. What he does not, and what Prometheus does know, is who must be the mother of that son. On the withholding and the final revelation of this secret revolves the whole plot, not only of the Prometheus Bound, but also of the lost plays of the trilogy. To get the truth Zeus patiently tortures his immortal victim for three myriads of years, himself tortured by the old dynastic terror. It is the recurring situation of the Theogony renewing itself once more.
Such crude material lay before Aeschylus. But his genius and his time alike required from him a different treatment from that which does not dissatisfy us in the archaic chronicle of Hesiod. The genius of the Athenian poet is of course essentially dramatic, and he lived in an age which had woken to the need for what I will simply call a better religion. Therefore he chose the subject of Prometheus, and therefore he treated it dramatically. Now for the poet and his audience what is most dramatic is, or ought to be, what is felt by them as most human; and what is most human is simply what is most alive and real to them; for drama aims at the illusion of reality. So Aeschylus could not handle his matter with the hieratic simplicity of the Theogony. The issues could not be so simple for the dramatist, because they are never so simple in actual life. If Aeschylus was to make Prometheus his hero, he would have to make him “sympathetic.” And so, in Prometheus Bound, he does; Prometheus engages all our sympathy, while Zeus appears a tyrant in the modern, and not merely the ancient, sense of the word. But that is not the conclusion of the matter. We know that in the last play of the trilogy the tormentor and the tormented were reconciled. To the uncompromising Shelley this was intolerable; and so he wrote his “Prometheus Unbound.” And nearly every one who in modern times has written on the subject, whatever explanation or apology he may have put forward in behalf of Aeschylus, has wished in his heart that the Greek had felt like the Englishman.
That he did not, is just the curious and disconcerting thing we should like explained.
The tradition, of course, counts for much. Aeschylus did not invent his story. He found it already in existence, and he found it ending in a certain way. We cannot tell if it ended precisely in the way that Aeschylus represented. But we can be perfectly sure that it did not end in an unqualified victory for Prometheus. The tradition appears to be dead against him. Aeschylus therefore was so far bound by that. Then the problem presented itself to him with this further complication, that as a matter of knowledge Zeus was reigning now. So the justification of Zeus against the rebel Titan becomes a justification of the moral governance of the universe. Yet although Aeschylus felt the restraint of the myth and the restraint of the moral issue, it is to be believed that he submitted to them with full, and even passionate, acceptance. Like the great artist, like the great dramatic poet he is, he begins by stating the case for Prometheus as strongly as he can—more strongly, it would seem, than the existing legends quite allowed—and even in the end the Titan is not shorn of his due honour. But as against the Olympians, Aeschylus argues (with the Greek poets in general), the Titans were in the wrong. The sin of the Titans was lawlessness. Prometheus, in bringing to mortals the gift of fire, broke the law which forbade them its use. The question whether the dealings of God with man were “just” or no, was not to be decided by your feelings (as Prometheus judged), but by cool and measured reflection as to what was best in the end for mankind, or rather for the universe, of which they formed after all so small a part.
Such doctrine falls chillingly on the modern spirit. But that is largely because we realize so ill what it means. The Prometheus-trilogy was a dramatization of the conflict of Pity and Justice embodied in two superhuman wills. Before you condemn the solution of Aeschylus, perhaps you are bound to answer the question if this is not the conflict which the modern world is trying with blood and tears to solve. In the end (so the old poet fabled) Zeus the rigid Justicer learned mercy, while his passionate enemy came to recognize the sovereignty of Law. A compromise, if you like; but if you are sorry for it, it only means that you are sorry for human life. I daresay Aeschylus was sorry too, but then he was not going to be sentimental. Life is after all governed by a compromise between Justice and Pity. And if it comes to a mere question of emotional values, does not one love Prometheus all the more because at the last he had, like any man, to give up a little of his desire?
Even so we shall not have done complete justice to the Greek position, until we have renewed in our minds the Greek emotion about law, order, measure, limitation—the things we are engaged in criticizing and, most of us, in disparaging. We must for our purpose accept the Hellenic paradox. We must see with the Greek that it was not the wilderness, but the ploughed field and the ordered vineyard that was truly romantic. And in the moral reign it was Temperance, Self-Discipline, Sophrosyne; in the sphere of art the strict outline, the subjugation of excess, that filled the Greek with the pleasurable excitement we find in the exotic, the crude, the violent, the bizarre. The explanation is engagingly simple. To the ancient world law and order were the exception—the wild, romantic, hardly attainable exception; while us they interest about as much as a couple of boiled potatoes. We are for the Open Road and somewhere east of Suez. But the attraction then and now is exactly the same. It is the attraction of the unfamiliar.
We could understand the Hellenic paradox better if we had to live in an unsettled country. We should then receive the thrill which words like Nomos and Thesmos and Kosmos, the watchwords of civilization, awakened in the Greek bosom. We should understand the longing for a clue in the maze of the lawless, a saving rule to guide one through the thickets of desperate and degrading confusion. But as it is we are so hedged about by the barbed-wire entanglements of Government regulations and social conventions that our desires are chiefly concentrated on breaking through—breaking through, let us admit, at but a little point and for but a little time, for we are really rather fond of our prison-house and care not to be too long out of it. Yes, I think with a little effort we can understand. We can believe that the sense of home is strongest in the wanderer. He wanders to find (Note 136)his home, and when he has found it, he cannot make it “home-like” and conventional enough.
So to the ancients Greek civilization had the flavour of a high and rare adventure. It was a crusade, the conquest of the Barbarian—the Barbarian without and within. Viewed in this light, the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus assumes an aspect novel enough to us. Zeus represents the Law—unjust in this instance if you will, unjust as perhaps Zeus himself came in the end partly to admit—but still the Law. Prometheus represents Anarchy. In this he shows himself truly a Titan, for the Titans embodied the lawless forces of nature and an undisciplined emotionality. Our fatigued spirits love to gamble a little with these excitements. But the Greeks had just escaped from them, and were horribly afraid of them. There is nothing their art loved to depict like the victory of the disciplined will—fairly typified in Zeus, perfectly in Athena—over unchained passion. Hence those endless pictures of Olympians warring against Titans, against Giants—of Greeks against Amazons—of Heracles, of Theseus against the monsters. They are records of a spiritual victory won at infinite cost.
The true theme of the Prometheus-trilogy is the Reign of Law. Law in the realm of affairs, Sophrosyne in morals, form in art. There is nothing tame or negative about the doctrine. The Greek spirit was not tame or negative; it would be difficult to say how much it was not that! Indeed the inspiration of their creed was just the desire of the Greeks to extract the full value of their emotions. None knew better the danger lest one