CHAPTER XIX
THE GIFTS OF GREECE TO THE WORLD
What man achieves is, in regard to its permanent value, of less importance than the spirit in which he achieves it; what one learns is of less importance than how one learns; learning facts is of less importance than developing certain qualities of mind. It is not possible, and were it possible it would not be desirable, to reproduce in modern life, the conditions of a past age, but certain qualities of the mind and spirit are undying, and some of the greatest of these qualities have come to us from the Greeks.
History is the story of the way in which man has learned and is still learning, how to live: of how through long centuries he has sought to satisfy the practical needs of his body, the questioning of his mind, and the searching of his spirit.[1]
Mankind is still engaged upon the high adventure for this three-fold quest, and not yet has any one civilization succeeded in bringing into perfect accord the demands of the body, of the mind, and of the spirit. If, in the beginning of this story in the ancient world, the Hebrews stand supreme amongst the teachers of those who have sought to satisfy the searching of the spirit, so are the Greeks the great teachers of those who have sought to satisfy the questioning of the mind. The Greeks gave to the mind of man three definite qualities: the love of Freedom, the love of Truth, and the love of Beauty. These are practical qualities which show themselves quite definitely in what the Greeks did, in what they thought and in what they built, or in other words, in their political history, their literature and their art.
It must not be thought that the Greeks perfectly fulfilled their great ideals. Greek history shows quite clearly that they did not. If the story of the Greeks as it has been told in this book has emphasized their ideals rather than their failure always to attain these, it is because their ideals are the imperishable gifts they have given to the world. But the Greeks were not dreamers; they were practical men, keen and interested in all the practical affairs of every day life. Their history shows how they failed in perfectly carrying out their ideals because of certain weaknesses of character and of certain conditions and limitations in their life from which the men of to-day can learn many useful lessons. The greatness of the Greeks lies, not in what they did not do or did imperfectly, but in their spirit, that spirit which in their political history, their literature and their art sought for Freedom, for Truth, and for Beauty.
The Greeks showed the world the way to Freedom. They won their own national freedom against almost overwhelming odds, for never before had a small country maintained her independence in the face of a great empire, and been victorious. They also maintained a political freedom, which they carried too far, for the inability of Greek states to form alliances and to unite was one of the sources of weakness which finally led to their downfall. Nevertheless the spirit of sturdy independence is one that has endured. The Greeks carried their vision of freedom further than the political independence of each state, and one of their chief characteristics was their personal freedom. In a speech to the Athenian army before the battle in the harbour at Syracuse, Nicias "reminded them that they were the inhabitants of the freest country in the world, and how in Athens there was no interference with the daily life of any man."[2] Modern times are apt to pride themselves on the freedom of speech allowed to all, but no modern state permits greater liberty of speech (and some would not tolerate as much) than was allowed in Athens in the fifth century B.C. when Aristophanes wrote his satirical comedies.
The Greeks loved Truth. By this is not meant truthfulness, for the Greeks were insincere and never trusted even one another, but the spirit which desired to see all things straight, "with an unclouded clearness of mind"; the spirit which could distinguish clearly between right and wrong, which could judge without prejudice or passion, above all the spirit which knew its own limitations and which acknowledged what it did not know. Perhaps the greatest Greek searcher for truth was Socrates, and some knowledge of his life and teaching will show us what is our debt to Greece in the story of how the mind of man has gained freedom in its search for truth.
During the last years of the Peloponnesian War, a strange figure might have been seen in Athens: a short, ugly, odd-looking man, poorly-clad and utterly indifferent to criticism of his habits or appearance, but a man to whom every one listened when he began to speak. This was Socrates, the Greek philosopher.
His father was a stone-cutter and a poor man, but he seems to have given to his son the best education that was to be had in Athens, for Socrates often quoted from Greek literature, especially from Homer, and he speaks of having studied with his friends "the treasures which the wise men of old have left us in their books."
Very little is known of the early life of Socrates, but he passed his youth and early manhood during the greatest years of Athenian history. He was born ten years after the Persian had been defeated at Plataea and driven out of Greece; as a boy, he had seen the Long Walls being built; he had grown up in the Athens of Pericles, a contemporary of Sophocles, and Euripides, of Pheidias and of Thucydides. When the clouds gathered over Athens and war came, he served in the army as a common soldier; he had lived through the short-lived triumphs and the tragic disasters which befell the city; he had been hungry when food was scarce, he had seen Athens besieged and taken; he had watched the Long Walls destroyed, and he had lived through the Terror when the Thirty ruled Athens. It was a life lived in very stirring times, and Socrates had taken his share in the happenings. During the war, he served in one of the northern campaigns, and he amazed everyone by his extraordinary power of enduring hunger and thirst, and all the hardships of a cold Thracian winter. One of his friends says of this time that
his fortitude in enduring cold was surprising. There was a severe frost, for the winter in that region is really tremendous, and everybody else either remained indoors, or if they went out had on an amazing quantity of clothes, and were well shod, and had their feet swathed in felt and fleeces: in the midst of this, Socrates with his bare feet on the ice and in his ordinary dress marched better than the other soldiers who had shoes, and they looked daggers at him because he seemed to despise them. Another tale of what he did on this expedition is worth hearing. One morning, he was thinking about something which he could not resolve; he would not give it up, but continued thinking from early dawn until noon—there he stood fixed in thought; and at noon attention was drawn to him and the remark ran through the wondering crowd that Socrates had been standing and thinking about something ever since the break of day. At last in the evening after supper, some Ionians out of curiosity (I should explain that this was not in winter but in summer), brought out their mats and slept in the open air that they might watch him and see whether he would stand all night. There he stood until the following morning, and with the return of light he offered up a prayer to the Sun and went his way.[3]
At the close of the war Socrates was in Athens, a man now of over sixty years of age. He held one or two offices of state, when he was known for his fearless refusal to do what he thought was wrong. On one occasion he refused to obey orders that were given him, because he believed that obedience would involve him in doing what he thought to be wrong. "I showed," he said, "not by mere words but by my actions, that I did not care a straw for death: but that I did care very much indeed about doing wrong."
Socrates was very poor and as he would take no money for his teaching, his means of livelihood were very scanty. He went about barefoot and had only one cloak which he wore until it was so old that it became a matter of joke amongst his friends. He not only had no luxuries of any kind, but hardly the bare necessities of life, yet he was quite content and used to say: "How many things there are which I do not want." Socrates married Xanthippe, a woman of a most violent temper. He used to say that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; and "as they," said he, "when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with anyone else whatever."[4]
The Athenians had always been intellectually very alert and had tried to solve all kinds of problems. They asked how it was that things came into being, how they continued to exist, of what they were made and similar questions. But when Athens had become an Empire and ruled over many men and states, the questions began to change. People were less interested in how things originated, than in questions arising from their daily experience. They asked, what is a state, what is a citizen, what is justice, what is temperance, courage, cowardice and so on. In order to answer these questions, a body of teachers had arisen in Athens who were called Sophists, or Wise Men. They taught every kind of subject and established a number of schools. The older Greek teachers did not like these Sophists, partly because they took money for their teaching, and hitherto, though Athenian philosophers had accepted presents, they had never charged definite fees; partly because they taught so many subjects that it was thought they could teach nothing thoroughly; partly because they seemed to aim at teaching young men to argue in order to get the better of their opponents rather than to seek for Truth; and above all, because they were often sceptical as to the existence of the gods. There were some very good teachers amongst the Sophists, and they opened up a great many new fields of thought to the Athenians, but a weak side to their teaching was that they only stated general principles, and often asserted as absolute facts things that never had been definitely proved one way or the other. They used words carelessly without stopping to think of their real meaning, and they never suggested that there was anything they did not know.
Socrates saw that though the teaching of the Sophists might increase information it was fatal to real thinking, and he began to teach in Athens in order to show what real thinking was. He taught in no school, had no classes and took no pay. He was willing to talk to any and everyone who would listen to him. He ever
lived in the public eye; at early morning he was to be seen betaking himself to one of the promenades or wrestling grounds; at noon he would appear with the gathering crowds in the market-place; and as day declined, wherever the largest throng might be encountered, there was he to be found, talking for the most part, while anyone who chose might stop and listen.[5]
Socrates talked to and questioned everyone and tried to show people what real knowledge was. He was filled with a passionate belief in the importance of truth above all things. He said that to make inaccurate statements and to use words with a wrong or careless meaning was "not only a fault in itself, it also created an evil in the soul." He showed those who listened to him the evil that came from pretending to know what one did not know, and the first step in his teaching was to make them realize their ignorance. To this end he questioned and cross-examined them, until they contradicted themselves, or found no answer and generally ended in hopeless difficulties, simply because they would not acknowledge at the beginning that they did not know what he had asked. One of his friends once said: "Indeed, Socrates, I no longer believe in my answers; everything seems to me to be different from what it used to seem," and another speaking of him said: "Socrates makes me acknowledge my own worthlessness. I had best be silent for it seems that I know nothing at all."
Socrates believed that Virtue was Knowledge, that if a man knew a thing was wrong, he would not do it, and that those who knew what was right would always do it. In this Socrates was not wholly right; he only saw a part of the truth, but his greatness lies in that he was the first to teach the importance of having a reason for what we believe, of learning accurate habits of mind, and that the search for knowledge is one rich in imagination and beauty.
Socrates was always arguing, talking, questioning, but he was never rude or discourteous to those who disagreed with him, he never brought his own personal feelings into his arguments, and he never descended to expressions of wounded pride or irritation.
The teaching of Socrates opened the minds of those who listened to him to the possibilities to which knowing the truth might lead them, and he had great influence over numbers of young Athenians. It was all new to them, they had never heard anything like it before. "Mere fragments of you and your words," said one of them, "even at second-hand, and however imperfectly repeated, amaze and possess the soul of anyone who hears them," and he went on to say,
I have heard Pericles and other great orators and I thought that they spoke well, but I never had any similar feeling; my soul was not stirred by them, nor was I angry at the thought of my own slavish state. But this Socrates has often brought me to such a pass that I have felt as if I could hardly endure the life I am leading. For he makes me confess that I ought not to live as I do, neglecting the wants of my own soul. And he is the only person who ever made me ashamed, and there is no one else who does the same.[6]
But if Socrates gained friends, his method of exposing the ignorance of others also gained him enemies. No one before had ever thought such thoughts, and to ordinary Athenians his questioning was wicked. But Xenophon, one of his friends, tells us that "no one ever heard him say or saw him do anything impious or irreverent, and he was so piously and devoutly religious that he would take no step apart from the will of heaven." Yet his enemies maintained that he disbelieved in the gods. His teaching was all the more disturbing because Athens, having been defeated by Sparta, had just lived through the terrible months of the rule of the Thirty, and though these had been driven out, (this was in the year 399 B.C.), Athens was in a state of unrest, of fear and of suspicion. Anyone who taught anything new was looked upon as a possible enemy to the state, and the enemies of Socrates seized this opportunity to bring definite accusations against him. They said: "Socrates is guilty, inasmuch as he does not believe in the gods whom the city worships, but introduces other strange deities; he is also guilty inasmuch as he corrupts the young men, and the punishment he has incurred is death."[7]
A trial followed. In an Athenian trial, first the accusers made their speeches, and then the accused was allowed to defend himself. Plato, the great pupil of Socrates, has given us the speech made by his master at his trial, a speech known as the Apology of Socrates. In it, the philosopher, an old man now of over seventy, set forth the principles which had guided him in his teaching.
He began by saying that he had never taught men to disbelieve in the gods, and that the accusation of impiety against him was false, but he did say that it was fair to ask him just what he had been trying to do which had given rise to these reports. He then told them the story of how a friend of his had gone to Delphi, and had asked the Oracle if there were any man wiser than he, and that the Oracle had answered that there was no man.
Now see why I tell you this. I am going to explain to you the origin of my unpopularity. When I heard of the Oracle I began to reflect. What can God mean by this dark saying? I know very well that I am not wise, even in the smallest degree. Then what can he mean by saying that I am the wisest of men? It cannot be that he is speaking falsely, for he is a god and cannot lie. And for a long time I was at a loss to understand his meaning: then, very reluctantly, I turned to seek for it in this manner. I went to a man who was reputed to be wise, thinking that there, if anywhere, I should prove the answer wrong, and meaning to point out to the Oracle its mistake, and to say, "You said that I was the wisest of men, but this man is wiser than I am."
But Socrates went on to say that after talking to this man, who was a politician, he found that he was not wise because he thought he knew things that he did not know, and because he would not acknowledge his ignorance. He tried to prove to him that he was not wise, but only succeeded in making him his enemy.
Next, [said Socrates], I went to another who was reputed to be still wiser than the last, with exactly the same result. And there again I made him, and many other men, my enemies.
By reason of this examination, Athenians, I have made many enemies of a very fierce and bitter kind, who have spread abroad a great number of calumnies about me, and people say that I am a "wise man." For the bystanders always think that I am wise myself in any matter wherein I convict another man of ignorance. But, my friends, I believe that only God is really wise: and that by this oracle he meant that men's wisdom is worth little or nothing. I do not think that he meant that Socrates was wise. He only made use of my name, and took me as an example, as though he would say to men: "He among you is the wisest, who, like Socrates, knows that in very truth his wisdom is worth nothing at all." And therefore I still go about testing and examining every man whom I think wise, whether he be a citizen or a stranger, as God has commanded me: and whenever I find that he is not wise, I point out to him on the part of God that he is not wise. And I am so busy in this pursuit that I have never had leisure to take any part worth mentioning in public matters, or to look after my private affairs. I am in very great poverty by reason of my service to God.[8]
Socrates then went on to prove that nothing in his teaching could corrupt the young men, as his enemies declared he was doing, and to prove his belief in the gods. He knew that he was on trial for his life, but no fear of death stopped him from speaking that which he believed to be the truth.
My friends, [he said], if you think that a man of any worth at all ought to reckon the chances of life and death when he acts, or that he ought to think of anything but whether he is acting rightly or wrongly, and as a good or bad man would act, you are grievously mistaken. It would be very strange conduct on my part if I were to desert my post now from fear of death or of any other thing, when God has commanded me, as I am persuaded that he has done, to spend my life in searching for wisdom, and in examining myself and others. That would indeed be a very strange thing: and then certainly I might with justice be brought to trial for not believing in the gods; for I should be disobeying the Oracle, and fearing death, and thinking myself wise when I was not wise. For to fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that man can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
Athenians, if you put me to death, you will not easily find another man to fill my place. God has sent me to attack the city, as if it were a great and noble horse, to use a quaint simile, which was rather sluggish for its size, and which needed to be roused by a gadfly: and I think that I am that gadfly that God has sent to the city to attack it; for I never cease from settling upon you as it were at every point, and rousing and exhorting, and reproaching each man of you all day long.[9]
Socrates then referred to the custom in Athens that when a man was on trial for his life, his wife and children sometimes appeared in court in order to appeal to the pity of the judges and so obtain a favourable sentence, but he refused to do that, for knowing that the judges had taken an oath to administer justice justly, he believed that such an act on his part would be an attempt to make them break their oaths.
Were I to be successful and to prevail on you by my prayers to break your oaths, I should be clearly teaching you to believe that there are no gods; and I should be simply accusing myself by my defence of not believing in them. But, Athenians, that is very far from the truth. I do believe in the gods as no one of my accusers believes in them: and to you and to God I commit my cause to be decided as is best for you and for me.
Socrates was found guilty by 281 votes to 220, and the penalty to be inflicted was death. He had the right under Athenian law to suggest an alternative penalty.
What counter-penalty shall I propose to you Athenians? What I deserve, of course, must I not? What is a suitable reward to be given to a poor benefactor who requires leisure to exhort you? There is no reward, Athenians, so suitable for him as a public maintenance in the Prytaneum. It is a much more suitable reward for him than for any of you who has won a victory at the Olympic Games with his horse or his chariots. So if I am to propose the penalty which I really deserve, I propose this—a public maintenance in the Prytaneum.
Or shall I propose imprisonment? And why should I pass the rest of my days in prison, the slave of successive officials? Or shall I propose a fine, with imprisonment until it is paid? I have told you why I will not do that. I should have to continue in prison, for I have no money to pay a fine with. Shall I then propose exile? Perhaps you would agree to that. Life would indeed be very dear to me if I were unreasonable enough to expect that strangers would cheerfully tolerate my discussions and reasonings, when you who are my fellow-citizens cannot endure them, and have found them so burdensome and odious to you that you are seeking now to be released from them. No indeed, Athenians, that is not likely. A fine life I should lead for an old man, if I were to withdraw from Athens, and pass the rest of my days in wandering from city to city, and continually being expelled.[10]
The alternatives were not accepted, as indeed Socrates knew they would not be, and he was condemned to die. He accepted the sentence calmly, "and with infinite gentleness and manliness. No one within the memory of man, it is said, ever bowed his head to death more nobly."[11] But death offered no terrors to Socrates.
If death [he said to his judges] is a journey to another place, and the common belief be true, that there are all who have died, what good could be greater than this? Would a journey not be worth taking, at the end of which, in the other world, we should be released from the self-styled judges who are here, and should find the true judges who are said to sit in judgment below? Or what would you not give to converse with Orpheus and Homer? I am willing to die many times if this be true. And above all, I could spend my time in examining those who are there, as I examine men here, and in finding out which of them thinks himself wise, when he is not wise. What would we not give, my judges, to be able to examine the great leader of the expedition against Troy, or Odysseus, or countless other men and women whom we could name?. It would be an infinite happiness to converse with them, and to live with them, and to examine them. Assuredly there they do not put men to death for doing that. For besides the other ways in which they are happier than we are, they are immortal, at least if the common belief be true.
But now the time has come, and we must go hence; I to die, and you to live. Whether life or death is better is known to God, and to God only.[12]
Socrates was taken to prison where he spent a month before his sentence was carried out. The delay was caused by the voyage of the sacred ship, said to be that of Theseus, which had only just set out on its annual voyage to Delos, and no Athenian could be put to death during its absence.[13] He spent this month talking to his friends, especially to Crito, who was very devoted to him, and who entreated him to escape from prison, an escape for which he could very easily have arranged. But the brave old man, loyal to his principles to the end, refused, and he reminded Crito how all his life he had taught that the greatest misfortune that could befall a man was to do wrong, and the greatest crime a man could commit against his state was to break her laws.
The last day arrived. The story of that day has been told by one who was present:
I will try to relate the whole story to you from the beginning. On the previous days I and the others who had always met in the morning at the court where the trial was held, which was close to the prison; and then we had gone in to Socrates. We used to wait each morning until the prison was opened, conversing: for it was not opened early. When it was opened, we used to go in to Socrates, and we generally spent the whole day with him. But on that morning we met earlier than usual; for the evening before we had learnt, on leaving the prison, that the ship had arrived from Delos. So we arranged to be at the usual place as early as possible. When we reached the prison, the porter, who generally let us in, came out to us and bade us wait a little, and not to go in until he summoned us himself; "for the Eleven," he said, "are releasing Socrates from his fetters, and giving directions for his death today." In no great while he returned and bade us enter. So we went in and found Socrates just released, and Xanthippe, you know her, sitting by him, holding his child in her arms. When Xanthippe saw us, she wailed aloud, and cried, in her woman's way, "This is the last time, Socrates, that you will talk with your friends, or they with you." And Socrates glanced at Crito, and said, "Crito, let her be taken home." So some of Crito's servants led her away, weeping bitterly and beating her breast.[14]
Once more Socrates and his friends conversed, and once more he expressed his joy at "going to the place where he hoped to gain the wisdom that he had passionately longed for all his life." They talked together until later in the day, and then he rose and went into another room to bathe himself:
Crito went with him and told us to wait. So we waited, talking of him and dwelling on the greatness of the calamity which had fallen upon us: it seemed as if we were going to lose a father, and to be orphans for the rest of our life. When he had bathed, and his children had been brought to him, he had two sons quite little, and one grown up, and the women of his family were come, he spoke with them in Crito's presence and gave them his last commands; then he sent the women and children away, and returned to us. By that time it was near the hour of sunset, for he had been a long while within. When he came back to us he sat down, but not much was said after that.
Presently the gaoler came in and told him that the hour had come for him to die:
I have found you, [he said], the noblest and best man that has ever come here; and now I am sure that you will not be angry with me, but with those who you know are to blame. And so, farewell, and try to bear what must be as lightly as you can; you know why I have come.
With that he turned away weeping and went out.
Then Crito made a sign to his slave who was standing by, and the slave went out, and after some delay returned with the man who was to give the poison, carrying it prepared in a cup. When Socrates saw him, he asked, "You understand these things, my good sir, what have I to do?"
"You have only to drink this," he replied, "and to walk about until your legs feel heavy, and then lie down; and it will act of itself." With that he handed the cup to Socrates, who took it quite cheerfully, without trembling, and without any change of colour or of feature, and looked up at the man with that fixed glance of his, and asked, "What say you to making a libation of this draught? May I, or not?" "We only prepare so much as we think sufficient, Socrates," he answered. "I understand," said Socrates. "But I suppose that I may, and must, pray to the gods that my journey hence may be prosperous: that is my prayer; be it so." With these words he put the cup to his lips and drank the poison quite calmly and cheerfully. Till then most of us had been able to control our grief fairly well; but when we saw him drinking, and then the poison finished, we could do so no longer: my tears came fast in spite of myself: it was not for him, but at my own misfortune in losing such a friend. Even before that Crito had been unable to restrain his tears, and had gone away, and Apollodorus, who had never once ceased weeping the whole time, burst into a loud cry, and made us one and all break down by his sobbing and grief, except only Socrates himself. "What are you doing, my friends?" he exclaimed. "I sent away the women chiefly in order that they might not offend in this way; for I have heard that a man should die in silence. So calm yourselves and bear up." When we heard that we were ashamed, and we ceased from weeping.[15]
Socrates then walked about a little, but soon lay down on the couch, and slowly the numbness crept over him. He knew that when it reached his heart, he would die. Once more he spoke. "Crito," he said, "I owe a cock to Aesculapius; do not forget to pay it." These were his last words, for in a few minutes he was dead.
Such was the end [said the friend who was with him to the last] of a man who, I think, was the wisest and justest, and the best man that I have ever known. But I did not pity him, for he seemed to me happy, both in his bearing and in his words, so fearlessly and nobly did he die. I could not help thinking that the gods would watch over him still on his journey to the other world, and that when he arrived there it would be well with him, if it was ever well with any man.[16]
III. GREEK LITERATURE: THE PHILOSOPHERS
The word philosophy means the love of wisdom, and to the Greeks this wisdom was the serious effort made to understand both the world and man. To us philosophy generally means a wise understanding of the right way of living, but with the Greeks it included a great deal of what we to-day call science. Greek philosophy was concerned with finding out the origins of things, and from that knowledge to build up a right way of life. We do not to-day go to the Greeks to learn science: their answers to the questions asked were, some of them, wrong, and some of them inadequate. But modern science has been made possible by the qualities of mind which the Greeks brought to their enquiries: their passionate desire to know the truth about things, their power of going behind old superstitions, and of seeing things as they really are, their open-mindedness and willingness to accept new truths, their powers of patient study and observation and of reaching the unknown from the known.
The earliest Greek philosophers lived in Ionia in the sixth century B.C., and the greatest of them were Thales of Miletus and Pythagoras of Samos. Something has already been said about Thales.[17] He went further than the Egyptians and Babylonians had done, not so much because of the new discoveries he made, but because he brought to those discoveries not only the desire to know that they were facts, but the desire to go behind the facts and find out the reason for their existence.
Thales lived to be an old man, but neither age nor infirmities lessened his zeal for learning, and
it is said that once he was led out of his house by an old woman for the purpose of observing the stars, and he fell into a ditch and bewailed himself, on which the old woman said to him: "Do you, O Thales, who cannot see what is under your feet, think that you shall understand what is in heaven?"[18]
Pythagoras of Samos lived later in the sixth century than Thales. He was a great traveller and seems to have visited not only the mainland of Greece, but also Egypt and Crete, where he had many rare experiences going into the innermost parts of temples where as a rule no strangers were admitted. He also went to Italy where he founded a school, and gathered about three hundred pupils round him.
Though it was not believed by the world at large until nearly two thousand years later, Pythagoras taught that the world was round, and, as far as is known, he was the first thinker who made this discovery. It was Pythagoras who laid the foundations for later mathematical knowledge, especially in geometry and arithmetic, and who taught that there was a science of numbers apart from their use as a practical means of calculation.
In the fifth century B.C., Athens had become an Empire and the "school of Hellas," and the centre of Greek learning was found there and no longer in Ionia. The story of Socrates has already been told.[19] This great teacher did not write anything himself because he believed that it was a greater thing for a man to live well than to write well, and that his particular way of teaching and constant intercourse with his fellow-men was the best way of teaching those truths in which he believed. The account of his life and teaching, however, was written down and given to the world by his pupil Plato, who carried on his master's work. Plato was about twenty-eight years old when Socrates was put to death, and for twelve years after that time he travelled. Then he returned to Athens, bought a house and garden (unlike Socrates he was well-off), and spent the next forty years of his life teaching in the Academy. Plato was an idealist, and in addition to his writings about Socrates, he has left us the Republic, the picture of what he thought an ideal state should be, and some other works in which he discusses at great length what things it is most worth while that men should pursue in life, and why they should pursue them. He taught that goodness was worth being sought after for its own sake and not for any material reward that comes from pursuing it. In all his teaching he emphasizes the fact that the greatest things in life and those which are eternal are not always the things that can be seen, and that the soul of man does not live on material things but on wisdom, beauty, truth and love. The importance of Plato in this teaching was that he was the forerunner of the great Christian writers who believed with St. Paul that "the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."[20]
As a young man, Plato had seen in Athens under the rule of the Thirty, the lawlessness and confusion that arose from a tyrannously ordered state, and the Republic was an attempt to show what he thought life in an ideal state might be. His vision is not a very practical one, but Plato was not a practical statesman. The great value of the Republic to the world to-day is that just because its ideals could never be wholly carried out, the questions which all statesmen in all ages have had to settle, could be and were fearlessly discussed, unhampered by the compromises and conventions which beset modern politics.
Plato could write of other things besides politics and ideals. He had a gift for poetry which comes out in many a fairy-tale that he introduces here and there into his writings, knowing that sometimes a great truth can be more easily driven home in such a form. Socrates and a friend were once walking by the stream Ilissus. It was a hot summer's day, and as they were barefoot, they cooled their feet in the water and then sat down under the shade of a plane-tree to rest and talk. And as they rested, Socrates told his friend the legend of the grasshoppers. They were said to have been
human beings in an age before the Muses. And when the Muses came and song appeared they were ravished with delight; and singing always, never thought of eating and drinking, until at last in their forgetfulness they died. And now they live again in the grasshoppers; and this is the return which the Muses make to them: they neither hunger nor thirst, but from the hour of their birth they are always singing, and never eating or drinking; and when they die they go and inform the Muses in heaven who honours them on earth.[21]
When Philip of Macedon wanted the best Greek teacher known as a tutor for his son Alexander, he sent for Aristotle. We know very little about the life of Aristotle. He had been a pupil of Plato at the Academy for twenty years and had learnt the best of all that great philosopher could teach him. On his return from Macedonia, he founded a school of his own at Athens, the Lyceum, where he spent the rest of his life teaching and studying. He died in 322 B.C., one year after his pupil Alexander. But if little is known of the details of his life, we know something of his character from things that Alexander said about him, and the esteem in which he held him, and something of the kindliness of his nature from his will which has been preserved. He made provision for all who had faithfully served him and gave many of his slaves their freedom. He had been twice married, and his second wife "who behaved so well towards me," was so provided for that she could marry again, and he made arrangements for the marriage of his daughter. In reading of the life of the Athenian man and the Athenian woman, their ways seem to lie far apart and the wife to have had very little share in the interests of her husband. In his will Aristotle gives us a glimpse of the place which the wife sometimes, at least, held. He left directions that the bones of his first wife, the wife of his youth, were to be taken from their resting-place and buried with his, and this was to be done "as she herself charged."
The work of Aristotle is amazing, for he not only wrote on every conceivable subject, but wrote as a master. For more than a thousand years after his death, the books he wrote were studied in schools and universities, and formed the foundation of all education. He wrote on astronomy, mathematics, biology, botany and many other subjects, and he has not only been called the Father of Natural Science, but his writings remained the standard authority on many scientific subjects for centuries after his death. Aristotle was more practical than Plato, though less inspiring as a writer. As we have already seen, he, too, wrote about an ideal state in his Politics.[22] Aristotle believed that the life of a state was like that of an individual; that the aim of both should be noble living, and that peace and justice between states was just as important as between individuals. But he did more than describe an ideal state; he described the education which such a state should give to its youth, the result of which should be not that a man should boast that his state was great and glorious, but that, being the citizen of such a state, in all that he did he should strive to be worthy of her.
Greek philosophy and science had begun in Ionia and then passed to Athens. To the thinkers of the fourth century B.C. the fall of Athens must have seemed a great disaster, but in reality it was of the utmost service to the world. The Greek spirit was one of those imperishable things that cannot die, and it was to go out from Athens and spread over a wider world than it had hitherto known. It spread first to Alexandria where, in the Hellenistic Age, the next great group of philosophers and men of science were to be found.
IV. GREEK LITERATURE: THE HISTORIANS
The word history is a Greek word and means an enquiry. The Greeks were not the first people in the world who wrote history, but they wrote it as it had never been written before, and some of the greatest history in the world is that which was written by Greeks. These writers were not content with merely narrating events that had taken place, they made what the word history means, an enquiry. They possessed the imagination, not only to describe events and scenes vividly, but to feel as the people about whom they were writing felt, and to understand the passions that moved them at great crises of their history. They were the first historians who took the trouble to find out why nations and individuals acted as they did, and to sift their evidence, finding out what was true and what was false.
The oldest of the Greek historians was Herodotus, the Father of History, an Ionian born in Halicarnassus in 484 B.C. He spent a good part of his life travelling, during which time he collected materials which he afterwards used in his history. He was a man who was intensely interested in everything he saw, a very credulous traveller, for he seems to have believed almost everything that was told him: old traditions, all kinds of miraculous occurrences, and many things that it is evident could never have happened. Though he undoubtedly believed a great deal that was not true, he did not swallow all that was told him, for after narrating some marvel he will say: "I am bound to report all that is said, but I am not bound to believe it."
Herodotus was a deeply religious man, and he lived before the disturbing days when men began to question the existence of the gods. To him history was a great drama, the plot of which was the triumph of the Greek over the Barbarian, which he saw as the will of the gods, and to him, as to all devout Greeks of his day, all wrong-doing, all disobedience to the will of the gods brought its own punishment, its retribution, what the Greeks called its Nemesis.
As a story-teller, Herodotus is unrivalled. He wrote his history in order that "the great and wonderful deeds done by the Greeks and Persians should not lack renown," and the earlier books which give an account of all he had learnt in his travels in the East, of Egypt and Babylonia, of Lydia and Persia, lead up to the great climax, the invasion of Greece by the Persians.[23] In the pages of Herodotus we live again, as we live nowhere else, through all the excitement and thrill of the days when Greece fought the Barbarian and drove him out of the land.
The greatest of the Greek historians was Thucydides, great not only among the Greek writers, but among the historians of the world. He was born about 471 B.C., and he wrote the history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides was an Athenian, a man of wealth and good position, and was one of the few who had the plague and recovered from it. As the war went on, he was anxious to fight and help to bring it to a victorious close, but a far greater career was in store for him. He was elected a general and sent at the head of an army to relieve Amphipolis and prevent its surrender to the Spartans. But he arrived too late, the city had been taken, and he was exiled in consequence.[24] To this exile we owe his history.
Thucydides is one of the most accurate and impartial of historians. He was filled with an abiding love for Athens, but, unlike some Athenians, he felt no bitterness towards her for exiling him. The only remark he makes about his banishment is that it gave him the opportunity to write his history. He was scrupulously fair to both sides, and he tells us himself of the care he took to be accurate and to accept nothing on the evidence of mere tradition.
Men do not discriminate, [he said], and are too ready to receive ancient traditions about their own as well as about other countries; and so little trouble do they take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand. Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. If he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten.[25]
Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides did not trace events to the will of the gods, but he held that the deeds of men and the use or misuse they made of their opportunities were responsible for them. He never moralizes, but in the clear and reasoned order in which he narrates events the story is carried down from the beginning to its inevitable conclusion.
Thucydides has preserved for all time the memory of what Athens was in her greatest days, and the ideals of one of her great statesmen.[26] But the claim of his book to be an "everlasting possession" is justified not because of the actual history he recorded, but because of the critical and scientific way in which he made his enquiry which has become a model for all later historians.
Thucydides left the story of the Peloponnesian War unfinished; he never even finished the last sentence. The story was completed by Xenophon. He was not a great historian like his predecessors, but he has left us valuable information about the later events of the war in the Hellenica, the romantic tale of adventure which tells how a band of Ten Thousand Greeks found their way home from the heart of Mesopotamia,[27] and the Economist, a delightful picture of a Greek household.[28]
There is one other Greek writer, who, though he did not write history, has left us much valuable historical information. This was Plutarch (A.D. 46-120) who lived long after the great days of Greece had passed. He was a Greek from Boeotia, a well-educated man who had many friends with whom he was wont to discuss all kinds of subjects: Philosophy, history, literature, or politics, and he was also a writer. The great work for which his name is remembered is the Parallel Lives of the Greeks and Romans. These are the biographies, arranged in pairs of a Greek and a Roman, each pair followed by a comparison between the two. Plutarch never imagined that he was writing history, and in these Lives there is no wide view over a whole period, but in each life there is a vivid picture of a personality and a character. Plutarch knew how to choose picturesque details and anecdotes, and he was attracted by simple, upright, honourable, patriotic characters, which makes his book a storehouse of stories about such men. Few biographies in the world have been read so widely or have achieved such immortality as have the Lives of Plutarch, and probably none have done more to encourage manliness and the spirit of good sportsmanship.
A classic is a work of art or of literature that never dies, a book that will be read forever, no matter when or by whom it was written. We have said that when the history of a nation is recorded in language we call it literature, but by such literature is meant not only historical writing, but whatever takes the form of letters. The history of a nation is an enquiry into how that nation thinks as well as into what it does, and its philosophers, historians and dramatists are as much a part of its history as its statesmen and men of action. The great Greek dramatists were men living the life of their time, and it was a time when stirring things were happening. The dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were written during the period which began with the repulse of the Persians, which included the golden days of Pericles, and which saw the tragic changes which came over Athens during the long-drawn-out misery of the Peloponnesian War.
Now the great Greek dramas are among the classics of the world.[29] There are various reasons for this, but one, and not the least, is that they are the outward expression of that love of beauty and of self-control that is one of the priceless gifts of Greece to the world. To the Greek, beauty meant perfection in all that he did, the association of beautiful words and forms with beautiful deeds and scenes. To him beauty was the same as goodness, and ugliness was evil. And beauty meant self-control, the absence of all excess and exaggeration. The Greek dramatists had no models to guide them, yet they produced works that almost perfectly attained this Greek ideal of Beauty.
The oldest of these dramatists was Aeschylus. He took an active part in the Persian Wars, and he thought this of so much greater importance than any literary success he had achieved, that his epitaph, said to have been written by himself, saying nothing about his poetry, states only that he fought the Persians. His name and birthplace were inscribed and then that "the grove of Marathon can bear witness to his good soldierhood, and the long-haired Mede who felt it." One of the few Greek plays of which the plot was not taken from ancient Greek legend was the Persians of Aeschylus,[30] interesting because it is the first historical play written by a poet who took part himself in the events of which it tells.
The greatest work of Aeschylus was a Trilogy, (i.e., three consecutive plays bearing on the same subject): the Agamemnon, the greatest of all his plays; the Libation-Bearers, and the Furies. These tell the tale, so often told in the Greek drama, of the murder by his wife of Agamemnon on his return from Troy, of Orestes who avenged his father's death, of the Furies who followed him as a result of his deed, and of how in the end he found release. These plays are haunted throughout by the belief that over certain families hangs a curse, that the sins of their fathers are visited on their children, and that from this punishment there is no escape. Aeschylus was filled with the realization of the power of the great unseen forces that move the world, but he believed that if on one side there were the Furies demanding blood for blood, on the other were Apollo and Athena, symbols of the self-control that could overcome the heritage of anger and of passion.
Sophocles lived through the great years of Athens. Only sixteen years old when the battle of Salamis was fought, he must have been filled with all the enthusiasm of youth over the victory. It was said of Sophocles that he had "such charm of character that he was loved by everybody wherever he went." Life seems to have been happy and prosperous for him from the beginning. He won the first prize at the festival with his first play, and when he was only twenty-eight he won a prize over Aeschylus who was then nearly sixty.
The greatest plays of Sophocles are those which tell of the ancient legends of Thebes: of Oedipus as King, and then as Outcast, and of Antigone, who in one play—Oedipus at Colonus—goes forth with her exiled father, and in another, the great play that bears her name, was faced with the terrible problem of having to break either the laws of God or those of the state, and of deciding which she would do. By all who understand the real greatness of the Greek drama, Sophocles is accounted the greatest of the dramatists. He represents in literature the spirit that Athena Parthenos represented on the Acropolis: a spirit of reverence, of the serenity that comes when the conflict is over and the victory won, and of triumphant belief in all that is good and beautiful and true.
SOPHOCLES.
Lateran Museum, Rome
Very different from either Aeschylus or Sophocles was Euripides. According to tradition, he was born in the island of Salamis on the very day of the battle. As he grew up, he became a friend of Socrates, but for the most part he lived a solitary life, not very much liked, and taking as little part in public life as he could. He was essentially a student, and was one of the first Athenians to collect a library. Euripides lived in Athens during the Peloponnesian War, a period of restless questioning, of breaking away from old traditions and beliefs, of lowering of the old ideals. The war had brought a new spirit and Euripides represented it. He criticized customs and beliefs which he thought were unworthy of the best spirit in Athens, he questioned belief in the gods, and in one great play, the Trojan Women,[31] he showed the misery brought by war. He was the first poet to strip war of its glamour and to show it as it affected the conquered. In the Electra and in Iphigenia in Tauris,[32] Euripides deals with the familiar tragedy of Orestes, pursued by the Furies after the murder of his mother, and in the Alcestis he tells the old tale of how a noble woman was willing to sacrifice her life for that of a selfish husband, and of how she was brought back from the gates of Hades by Heracles.
The strength of Euripides lies in his wonderful portrayal of character. He judges his characters by the standards of the men and women of his own day and not by those of the gods and heroes, and he is a merciless critic. This makes his dramas most extraordinarily vivid and human, but it also accounts for some of the criticism and dislike he met with in his own day.
Aristophanes wrote comedies.[33] His plays are based on the daily life of his time, and, to understand them, one must know what were the political questions of his day, who were the leaders, who were the writers, the gossip of the Agora and the barber's shop, the likes and dislikes of the men amongst whom he lived. But to those who know enough of these things to follow his allusions, the plays of Aristophanes are full of interest, and we learn a great deal about life in Athens from them.
Aristophanes was younger than Euripides, but, unlike the older man, he was very conservative, and he disliked the new ways by which the Sophists were teaching the youths, for he believed that the new methods would make them irreverent, good at idle talk but at nothing else, shallow and effeminate. He constantly compared the young men of his own day with those of the generation that had fought at Marathon, and in comparing them he found them wanting, for to him the heroes of the age of Marathon represented all that was best in Athenian manhood.
The Greeks loved Beauty, especially the Athenians of the fifth century B.C., but they did not spend all their time in a conscious search for it. They were very busy about and interested in a great many other things: the administration of the city, relations with other states, often fighting, trading and travelling, building ships and sending out colonies. We have already seen what the Greeks meant by Beauty,[34] and an appreciation of it touched all these things.
Now a great mistake has been made in modern times in that art has too often been looked upon as a luxury, as something that the rich can have but not the poor, something that has not very much to do with a practical every-day life. But to believe that is to misunderstand altogether what art is, for art is something that is done, not something that is merely looked at. All men have within them a vision of what kind of world they would make, if it was left to them to order, and in its widest meaning art is the outward and concrete expression of that vision. To confine art to architecture, sculpture and painting, is to rob it of half its meaning. The forms of art are as many and varied as are the interests of every-day life, and this belief is one of the great gifts of Greece to the world. It was not given to every Greek to be a great artist. Not every one could be an Aeschylus and write the Agamemnon, a Sophocles and write the Antigone, a Pheidias and create the Parthenon, or a Praxiteles and model the Hermes, but every one could work in the spirit of which these great works are the supreme examples.
The history of a nation is an enquiry into how that nation expresses itself in stone and marble, as well as into what it thinks and does; and its architects, artists and sculptors stand beside its historians, philosophers, dramatists and statesmen as the men who have made its history.
In its narrower, modern sense, art is the outward sign of the spirit of a nation as it is expressed in painting and in stone and marble. Except for the vase-paintings, Greek painting has almost entirely disappeared, but the achievements of the Greeks in architecture and sculpture are amongst the greatest that the world has ever seen. Something has already been said about Greek architecture[35]; the same spirit expressed itself in Greek sculpture. To know the Greeks and the real worth of what they have given to the world, it is not enough to read about them; one must learn to know them at first-hand. To do that one must read what they wrote (if not in Greek, then in translations), and look at what they built and at their sculpture (if not at the originals, then by means of casts and photographs), and when one does that, one begins to know a little of what the spirit was that produced such things. The Greeks considered that the human form was the most fitting subject for representation in sculpture, yet they were not great portrait makers; that was left for a later race to achieve. What they aimed at doing was to give outward expression to those qualities of the mind and spirit which they, as a people, prized so highly: Beauty, Self-control, Harmony, Restraint. The greatest Greek sculpture was, as it were, the answer, wrought in marble, to the prayer of Socrates to Pan: "Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and the inward man be at one."[36]
The Greeks lived at a time when so much was being done for the first time, and to all their art they brought a spirit of Youth and of Joy in creation, yet also a spirit of Patience in achieving results, for they were never in a hurry, and they knew that there were no short cuts to the perfection which was to them so important a part of beauty. Their statues are very idealistic, but their idealism was practical, and though, as we know, they did not always fulfil their ideals, they knew that fulfilment was possible. Though the sculpture of the Greeks represented man, not as he always was, but as they believed he might be, did he but follow where his best instincts led, it did sometimes result in something that to them was not only an ideal, but something so real and life-like that they could say of a sculptured figure of a Sleeping Ariadne:
Strangers, touch not the marble Ariadne, lest she even start up on the quest of Theseus.[37]